Tag: ac

The Choice Not to Write Longhand

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watson typing
No, really, I type fast.  I just don’t know what to write at the moment.  Honest!

Speaking of calling it, I’m putting an end to my ongoing test of whether or not I can write a novel longhand.  It just doesn’t seem to be working out the way I’d like.  I’ve tried it with at least three projects over the past couple of years, and if I’ve learned anything, it’s this:

I write longhand much slower than I type.

I haven’t tested my typing speed, but I know it’s at least 70 wpm, if not faster.  [This doesn’t include my frequent misspellings; apparently the word “available” is the hardest one for me to type fast.  Thanks to my Day Job for pointing that out.]  I’ve never written longhand fast, because if I went any quicker it would be illegible shorthand.

I judge the pace of my novels as I write them.  When I get into a writing flow, I connect with the pace of the story.  I connect with the fast action scenes and the deliberately slow dramatic scenes.  I’ve written novels on the PC for almost twenty years now, so I’ve gotten used to this process.  And because I write longhand so much slower, I have trouble adjusting to the flow of the story.  I’ve attempted this multiple times with a handful of projects, and each time it’s lasted maybe a few months before I give up and restart the whole thing on MS Word.

I’ve been thinking maybe this might be one of the reasons why I’ve been having so much trouble with the Apartment Complex story, and why I’ve been having no trouble at all with In My Blue World.  I started noticing it again when restarted Can’t Find My Way Home the other night.  I was frustrated and straining trying to write it in my notebook, but as soon as I restarted it on Word, everything started flowing seamlessly.

So.  Does this mean I’ll give up longhand?  For novel projects, yes.  I’m still using it for my personal journal and other mini-projects, but for now, my novel writing will remain on the PC or on the laptop.

Back Burner Projects vs Trunked Novels

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shikamaru sigh
What a drag.

As mentioned on Wednesday, the Apartment Complex project (and by extension, the College Campus story, as they’re both in the same universe) have been put on the back burner.  Not trunked, just put aside for now.  I’ll get back to them sooner or later.

So, what’s the difference between trunking a project and putting it on hiatus?  Well, for me, anyway, trunking is when I’ve all but made my peace with it and given up.  It can be for any reason, really: loss of interest, failure to find any kind of strong plot, or growing dissatisfaction with the project overall.  I’m okay with those outtakes doing little more than just taking up space on the bookshelf next to my desk.  Every now and again I’ll think about them, but I won’t do any more writing on it.

But what about putting projects on the back burner?  There’s many reasons for that as well.  I don’t want to give up on them, not just yet.  They still show promise, they just need a hell of a lot more work than I’ve given them.  More often than not I put them on hiatus because I’m stuck.  I did this with The Balance of Light, and I’ve done it with a few other projects as well.  I need to distance myself from the project for a bit so I can get a clearer head.  Maybe I’m diving far too deep into the project and I’ve lost direction.

Or worse, maybe it’s that I’ve got some really cool ideas for it, with a lot of nothing in between.  That’s the main problem with the AC project.

How does one make this decision, whether to put it aside or to put it away?

I suppose it’s different for every writer.  Personally, if every moment feels more like a chore and I’ve lost all excitement about it, chances are I should trunk it.  I’ve trunked stories that at one time I really wanted to write, but the spark just isn’t there anymore.

On the other hand, if every moment feels like a chore but I still think the idea is worth working on, I’ll put it aside.  I’ve found over the years that these projects fall into one of two columns: either A) I just don’t have the emotional and/or intellectual energy to dedicate to it, or B) The story is far from coherent in my head.  The Balance of Light was in column A, while AC is in column B.

If I’m at either point, it’s best for me to back away and get my shit together.

Either way, it’s moved to the ‘Backburner’ subfolder on my PC.  I’ll get back to it soon enough.  Sometimes it’ll take a few months, sometimes it’ll take years.

But I’ll get back to them.

 

shikamaru temari
When A. stops by and slaps some sense into me.

Breakthrough!

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doctor who brilliant

On Tuesday evening I finally had a breakthrough with the Apartment Complex story!

Two, to be exact!  One, I have a title for it!  Though I’m not sharing it just yet… it’s a special word in the conlang of this story that means ‘bonded friend’ and ties in with the main theme of the story.  I’m going to play around with it, tweak the spelling and the pronunciation, double-check it with Google Translate to make sure it isn’t a word in another language, and reveal it when it’s ready.

Secondly, on the same evening, I finally sussed out what style the story needs.  That had been the main hang-up all this time; I knew I was doing it wrong, but it took me multiple tries to figure out which style was right for it.  And ironically, it’s the same style I used in the trilogy — rich in texture, world-building and characterization.  It’s definitely an ensemble piece; given the theme, it kind of has to be.  SO!  Now that I know how to write this damn thing, I can forge ahead!

I have to say, I do love it when I get those breakthrough moments.  Getting to that point can be the biggest pain in the ass ever, but once I hit that moment, it’s worth all that hard work.

Instinct

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dareka no manazashi
Source: Dareka no Manazashi by Makoto Shinkai

Meanwhile, the Apartment Complex story is slowly — finally — taking shape.  I’m trying not to give away too much, for fear that it’ll blow up in my face once more, but I’m feeling a little more hopeful this time.

Instinct is something that doesn’t get talked about when we talk about writing, except maybe in a clinical sense.  We talk about rules that we follow and rules we break.  We talk about inspiration.  We talk about styles, processes, all kinds of things.  But we don’t always hear about the instinct of a writer.

For me, it’s a very large part of how I create a story, to know if it feels right to me.  It’s more than just looking at a rough, just-written passage and feeling the frustration of how horrible it reads.  It’s more than keeping to the notes of future plot points written on my index cards (or in my head).  It’s more than knowing if I’m following the rules, mine or others’.

Regarding the Apartment Complex story, my continued frustration with the previous versions was that instinct kept telling me: this is not the way the story is supposed to go.  It was telling me: this is not the story you want to tell.  The prose was weak and the plot was forced, sure.  But instinct kept telling me I was going in the wrong direction.

With many of my projects, it’s instinct that tells me whether a possible plot point is worth it or just filler.  This is how I edit my own work, to some degree.  During the Great Trilogy Revision, I relied on instinct almost exclusively; I knew the story inside and out, so I could tell what was weak and need to be excised.  There are numerous scenes — many of them in The Balance of Light — that were cut for precisely this reason.  It just didn’t feel right to me.  In the context of the rest of the story, if it felt like a weak point, or a useless ramble, out it went.  But I was also putting the trilogy in the context of an extremely long single novel; I had to rely on instinct that what I was editing and revising in Book 3 connected on a deeper level to the other two books, and the entire story as a whole.

It’s not a magical thing, instinct.  But it’s something I’ve relied upon quite a bit over the years with my writing.  I connect myself to my writing on a level where I try to understand its spirit, if that makes sense.  Or perhaps it’s like music, my other obsession.  I understand the melody and where it’s going, anticipating its flourishes and quietness, connecting with its tempo and its ambiance.  And I try to sculpt the story into what I hear within me, waiting to come out.

It definitely took me years to learn this, but it’s never let me down once I did.

Wait, it’s April already?

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nichijou calendar
What the year feels like sometimes.  Source: Nichijou, of course.

I think I’ve trained myself to the point where I’m not looking at a calendar and going ‘Wait, it’s April already?  I haven’t done jack!  MY LIFE SUCKS’ anymore.  Well, not as often, anyway.  Right now I just look at every new month as a way to start off fresh with my whiteboard schedule and see how far I can go with it.  I don’t even feel bad when I miss a day for whatever reason (even if that reason is ‘laziness’).  I just do what I can in thirty-odd day increments.

Typing this made me think of something I’d said during a panel at FogCon a few weeks ago, when someone had asked about the ability to get anything done when one already has a full schedule.  I’d told them about my whiteboard calendar, telling them that it’s not a matter of getting everything completed in one go; it was a matter of doing doing a little bit at a time, and that would add up.  Don’t aim for the finish line every single time…sometimes all you need to do is aim for the end of the chapter, or maybe even a few hundred words.  It does indeed add up by the end of it.  That’s how I was able to write 80k words for Meet the Lidwells in such a short amount of time.

I will fall back into the occasional ‘I’m not even close to getting any shit done’ stress-out, of course.  I’ve been fighting it a lot lately, what with my multiple attempts at trying to write/rewrite/restart the Apartment Complex story.  It’s partly why I’m trying out a rough draft of In My Blue World using 750Words; I’m tricking my brain into thinking that I’m being twice as productive instead of spending all that time freaking out over a single project.  [I’m actually kind of surprised it’s working, to be honest.]

So yeah, I’m not too worried that it’s April already.  In fact, I’ve embraced it — it’s getting warmer here in the Bay Area to the point where I have the window open in Spare Oom to let some fresh air in.  It’s also given me the impetus to get my writing work done early so I can get back into the habit of going to the gym after the Day Job!

It’s just a matter of taking it a bit at a time, apparently.  Or in this case, a month at a time.

Take Three: On Rewriting (Again)

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8-Winnie-the-Pooh-quotes

RIGHT.  Let’s try this one more time.

I’m committed to getting this novel down correctly before I venture too far and end up frustrated again.  I know exactly what’s been wrong with the Apartment Complex story: not enough action.  I do have future scenes with action in them, sure, but I’m just not nailing the landing at all yet.  I’m screwing up on the pacing; it’s far too slow.  I’m focusing too much on the mood and not enough on the plot.  So instead of deleting it all and throwing the outtakes into the compost bin, I gave it a good long think-over during vacation.

Specifically, I thought about what I needed to do during the five-hour flights to Honolulu and back.  And during the return flight, I pulled out my index cards and proceeded to do some heavy-duty additional outlining.  I added at least six more scenes to the start of Act I (to be interspersed between the scenes I already have) that will help me get back to where I need to be.  I realized this was the same outlining style I used for the trilogy, where I focused primarily on the handful of scenes I’d be working on in the immediate future.  It worked then, so I see no reason why it wouldn’t work again now.

I’m usually never this stubborn about nailing the beginning, I’ll admit.  But sometimes it’s gotta be done, especially if I already believe in the story as a whole.  It might take me a few tries to get it right, but once I do, the rest of it should flow just as I want it.

On Multi-Tasking

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anime busy

One of the biggest changes to my writing schedule that I’d been looking forward to once I signed off on the trilogy was being able to multi-task.  I love working on a main project, but working on the same one for a long time (especially as long as that one) can definitely be detrimental.  I often find myself itching to work on something different now and again, and that certainly comes to the fore when I’m doing major revision work.

When I decided to write outtakes for Meet the Lidwells while working on the trilogy revision, it gave me a much-needed creative outlet to keep my Writer Brain going in a way that my blog entries and other outlets couldn’t.  If I hadn’t done that, it would have taken a lot longer for me to start a new project.  I’d have had to spend some time thinking about what to write, how to write it, and not really know if I have a viable story or a trunkable one until I’ve invested a lot of time on it.  Multi-tasking projects lets me cut out a lot of that possible wasted time.  The daily-words outtakes put the story idea to the test to see if I can graduate it to Main Project status.

This process worked so well for me that I’ve kept it going with the newer projects, and I’ll keep it going until it doesn’t work for me anymore.

Granted, it is a process that’s kind of tough to maintain if you’re juggling all this with a Day Job.  There are days when I’m amazed I can get anything done when the DJ kicks my ass.  The trick is to make it happen.  Find slow moments where you can write a few hundred quick words.  Use your work breaks and lunch if you can.  Worst case scenario, schedule out your writing days; one day for revision, another for new words, and so on.

It’s not a process you need to take if you don’t want to, but it works well if you have a lot of projects you’d like to work on, and you’d like a quick turnaround.  YMMV, of course!

On Character Development

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polar bear cafe wolf tiger
Source: Polar Bear Café

Creating the backgrounds for characters can be both fun and excruciating when you’re starting out a new project.  You can come up with interesting, unique people to write about, give them all sorts of back stories — their background, their culture, their quirks, their powers and their weaknesses — but at the same time, they don’t exist in a vacuum.  You need to also remember that they’re also there to interact with your other characters and the story itself.  Otherwise they’re just placeholders, or worse, redshirts — the throwaway characters put there for the sole purpose of getting rid of them later on.

I’ve been dealing with this quite a bit for the last few weeks, with both the Apartment Complex story and In My Blue World.  A lot of the central characters are springing forth rather easily, and that’s because I already have fully-planned purposes for them.  A few of the other characters, on the other hand, are still a bit vague and need more research and planning.  I only have vague purposes for them.  By vague, I mean that they support some of the main characters, but other than that, they’re kind of inconsequential.

Granted, both projects are still in their rough draft iterations and haven’t gotten the MS Word transcription/revision yet.  I’m not giving up on them just yet.  They’ll shine on their own eventually, once I flesh out the story and get a clearer picture of who they are and why they’re there.  I just have to be a bit patient about it sometimes!

So how do I know if I can trust this character to blossom during a later draft?  Or will they end up being a redshirt that I’ll have to edit out later?  Good question.  Often times I don’t. The point here is to let them give the old college try.  I put there for a reason, so I just need to figure them out.  I’ll give them just that little bit more TLC when I’m revising; I’ll think a bit more about their relationship to the story and the others within it.

Eventually, they’ll become part of the main entourage instead of a throwaway.

On Longhand: The Very, VERY Rough Draft

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parks rec no idea

I’ll be honest, I’m not used to writing this rough of a draft.  I usually start the the first draft straight to MS Word and fix it as I go along — quite often I’ll draft and revise at the same time.  So why am I still slogging away with some of the most randomly disjointed writing I’ve done in quite some time?

Well, one reason is that this is the only time I can afford it at the moment, considering I’m still working on the Lidwells final revision and prep for release.  Another is that while I do have a lot of outtakes from the daily warmup words, there’s a lot of in-between work that I still haven’t quite worked through yet.  This disjointedness is being done on purpose, to dive a little deeper with this story and its characters.  Once I have a better grasp of them, the plot and character evolution gets tighter.

Normally this happens during my initial MS Word draft, quite often around chapter five or so, when I’ve finally figured out who everyone is and what I can do with them.  The rest of this draft then ends up being pretty tight and straightforward with not that much major revision needed.  The downside to this is that I then need to do said major revision to the first four or five chapters.  This can be harder than it sounds, because not only am I creating the opening to a story, I must also make sure that I plant enough seeds of ideas that will show up later in the book.

As I’d mentioned many times earlier, writing longhand is how I wrote the pre-trilogy Bridgetown story The Phoenix Effect.  It wasn’t just about ease of writing anywhere I wanted to, though.  I did a lot of making-it-up-as-I-go for quite a bit before I finally figured out the story.  The final version of that story is quite different in many ways to the original longhand.

This is precisely why I’m still digging through the longhand of the Apartment Complex story.  Once more time opens up for me in the evenings, I’ll be able to do the same exact thing once more: rough draft during the day, and transcription/revision at night.  The longhand is there for me to write down the ideas; the revision is there to make those ideas work, and work better.

Doin’ a Whole Lotta Nothin’

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doing nothing
doot doot just sitting around

I had a vague plan that I’d do a bit of writing on the weekend, even if it was just a page or so.  I figured we’d go out, spend the day at Disneyland, have our fun, and then we’d get back to the hotel and I’d do some work.  I even packed the Apartment Complex story notebook.  If I wasn’t doing my daily words or my blog posts or anything else, I’d at least do something.  Right?

Yeah, we all know how that was going to go, even before we boarded the plane down to Orange County.  Heh.  I didn’t do a damn thing.  I didn’t even take it out of my bag.

But you know, I’m okay with that!  I’ve finally made peace with the fact that I’m due a few days off now and again.  I’d been writing for eleven days straight on not just that project, but on daily words, scheduled blogs, and whatever else I’ve been working on — on top of the Day Job.  But that’s not why I took the days off.  I wasn’t exactly exhausted mentally or physically.  I could have easily kept going with it if I wanted.  And the moment I admit to myself that I should take days off, I’m going to abuse that and not get anything done on time.

No, this was basically to accept that part of the process of writing is not writing.  I’ve gotta let myself just think about the story instead of trying to bleed it out of my brain.  I can instead listen to an album on the flight (The Sound of Arrows’ Stay Free, if you’re playing along) and think not about the story but about the characters in general.

That said, physically I’m still exhausted from the 8.6 miles we walked on Saturday and 7.7 miles on Sunday (plus the two today, thanks to travel through airports and whatnot), but mentally I’m ready to go come Tuesday.  Everything will be back to normal.

So yeah, I’m not too worried about not missing out on writing this past weekend.

PS – This seemed to be a perfect song for this post. It’s also a melody that keeps on popping into my head while writing the Apartment Complex story.