The Thing I Wrote, NaNoWriMo, and Writers' Digest

Tap tap...is this thing on?

So. I've been gone from this blog. And you know why? I've been cheating on my fiction with another genre.

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love "the Rules"

(CC-BY-NC-ND)  by tamaki

My mother is a musician. She's a harpist, which is part of why my social media avatar is a cat playing the harp (I play, too, but not well). So when she had children, it was no wonder that she wanted all of us to have music lessons.

My brothers played the violin, learning via the Suzuki method, which is a method that teaches young children to play using the same principles of language learning—first you listen, then you imitate, then, when you are already proficient at producing speech (or music in this case) you learn to read.

When I was four or so, I started dancing to my brothers' "listening tapes," the music they were learning to play. My mother, instead of taking this as a sign to get me dance lessons (which was what I wanted), decided to get me piano lessons instead.

Now, in the grand, grand scheme of things, I don't play piano very well. I took lessons for seven years, until just after I turned eleven. One thing I remember most about piano lessons is how unbelievably tedious they were—having to learn to put my fingers in exactly the right order, practicing scales. I remember my teacher telling me things like "this needs to be even" or telling me to bend my wrist more. Her rigid insistence that it wasn't enough just to get all the notes right, I also had to bother with the mezzo pianos and the mezzo fortes (there's a difference?) and that even though fortissimo was a super fun volume, the keys still had to be struck just so.

And every day I had to practice for at least a half an hour. Crazy.

Shitty Scrivener First Drafts

One of my favorite (well, probably my absolute favorite) writing books is Anne Lamott's BIRD BY BIRD. If you haven't read it, I recommend going out to the bookstore immediately and procuring a copy. It's a book that's as much about life as writing, and I find myself remembering things from it often.

The piece of her her advice I've always found difficult to put into practice, however, is the bit about creating the SFD: the shitty first draft. The ability to allow yourself, as a writer, to produce crap the first time around, so that you don't scare yourself out of putting something down on the page. I always think about it, and sometimes, I do better than others (NaNoWriMo comes to mind), but usually, I tend to get in my own way because the truth is I do produce better writing with relatively minimal attention to it. But it also means sometimes I get stuck, waiting for the next thing to move me forward.

However, after NaNoWriMo 2011 (and after they produced the Windows version), I bought Scrivener. At first, I just used it for revision, and preferred to produce my writing within Microsoft Word. But now I've transitioned almost completely to using it as my drafting tool.

And it's had a really unexpected effect: I feel a lot freer to make a mess.

Scrivener gives you the ability to work scene by scene, and to drag and drop those scenes into any organization you want. Currently, my method is to use the Blake Snyder beat sheet for drafting, and to organize my scenes into their beats, and then to go back and reorganize them into chapters.
Somehow, being able to drag and drop a scene anywhere has freed something up in my brain. Since it's not necessarily going to stay where I put it, I feel freer to write something that might not make sense right there. Or to jump to a scene I'm itching to write without writing the bridge (although I try to get to the bridge in the next writing session, lest I build up a writing project in which all the fun scenes are written and I end up with only the hard parts). I know that it's as easy as dragging the scene to "trash" to remove it, or back from trash to reinstate it, and somehow, that makes it much easier to write.

Additionally, I know I can tag the status of a scene. Scrivener's basic statuses are "to do" "first draft" "revision" and "final draft," but like all things in the program, they can be infinitely customized. So I have some statuses like, "WTF was I thinking?" or "Really  great" to clue me in as to how much revision a particular scene is going to take and/or how happy I am with it (because happiness may simply be a factor of it being in the wrong place in the book, which is easily fixed!)
I find I'm drafting faster, revising harder, and that all of it is a lot more fun. I wouldn't have thought that I would adapt to a program--I'm a techie, if you can't tell, and so I usually find ways to make programs adapt to me--but Scrivener has finally brought me around to having the freedom that I first read in Anne Lamott's book almost twenty years ago.

I'm glad to have found it.

Do you use Scrivener or another noveling program? How do you like it?

And just for bonus kicks: here's my Scrivener template for the Blake Snyder Beat Sheet. Feel free to use it and share!

W is for Write

So in April, I participated in the A-Z Blog Challenge. It was an absolute flurry of blog crazy. I was worried at the outset that I wouldn't make it; given that it's only been in 2013 that I've managed to get the discipline of blogging every Tuesday, and also that April for me means end-of-term grading plus hunting for summer internships and jobs.  Well, actually that last stuff turned out to be the first week of May, which is why this post is going up on the Tuesday after I intended it to! But I'm pleased to say I turned in my grades Monday morning at 2:30 AM, ahead of the 8AM deadline, and that I also got an email offering me a great summer internship. So, yay! One week blog break...worth it. 

But despite all my busy, I did the A-Z, and I'm glad.

I was going to make a reflection about all the great lessons I learned from doing it—and there were many!—but really, there was only one main one I found myself coming back to, again and again and again and that was this:

It's not hard.

Sometimes I despair when I see people who are blogging day in and day out, at the fresh, breezy tone of their posts, and the way it seems to be effortless. In the past, I've felt like I needed to have Something To Say™ before I blogged. And I needed to think about how it sounded. And compare it. And worry about whether it was too long. Or too short. Or too unprofessional. Or too crazy-seeming.

A-Z forced me out of that. I had some things I was excited to talk about (cool things you can do to "hack" your writing experience), and a goal of talking about them every day, and the next thing I knew, I was blogging. Every day. In a breezy tone. Effortlessly. It wasn't hard. When I showed up, the words did, too.

So for that reason, A-Z was amazing. It reminded me of a very important thing, which has lately been getting lost in the world of twitter, and blogging, and social media, and revisions. The lesson that,  that to write, you simply...

...write.

And that's a reminder that we could all use from time to time.

Get to Know You

There's a lot of great software out there.
There are lots of ways to better take advantage of resources you already have available.
Many ways to create good, sustaining, writing rituals.
And to protect your time and writing space.

In almost every single post, I've found myself writing something along the lines of, "This may not be for everyone."

And the reason for that?

Because the best writing hack is You.

What do you want? What kinds of books do you want to write? Which things will most help you achieve those goals? Are you a morning writer, or an evening writer? Do you feel stifled by a daily wordcount, or does it energize you? Do you prefer a longhand notes notebook, or does storyboarding software make your fingers tingle with joy?

The best way to make the most out of your writing time is to pay attention...to yourself. Because what makes your writing time tick isn't what makes mine tick. What works for one person won't necessarily work for everyone.

The key is to know yourself as a writer. This might come through journaling about your writing process, or through trying different things and throwing them out, or simply by experiencing yourself as you write.

But most importantly, it involves writing.

Know yourself. When you do, whatever system you have will be the most "hacked" and the best one there is...

...for you.

Thanks for coming along on my first A-Z! It's been super fun, and I've loved getting to surf around to so many different blogs. I hope to write an A-Z recap next week, with some important new lessons that the A-Z experience taught me about writing, of course!

In the meantime, happy writing.

This month I'm participating in the A-Z blog challenge. My theme is "writer hacks," or 26 shortcuts you can do as a writer to get the most out of writing and the journey toward and through publication. Find out more about it at a-to-zchallenge.com, and hop around to read the other cool blogs that are part of the challenge!

Use X-Ray to Improve Your Structure

So, I'm not a giant fan of the 'Zon, for a lot of reasons (and actually, none of which have to do with my being employed by their main competitor, as it's a part time job and my world wouldn't crash if suddenly my employer disappeared). But I definitely have to give them props for the things they do well, for instance, their fabulous book-finding algorithms.

One thing the 'Zon does really well is the X-Ray feature on Kindle. And it works on the Kindle apps, too, so you can discover it even if you don't have a Kindle. X-ray was designed to allow people to surf easily through a book for all the mentions of a particular character, to define terms, and basically to allow people to more easily navigate a book.

But I've found it is helping me think about novel structure in a way I haven't before.

For instance, here is a screenshot from my iPad of an X-ray from a Kindle book I enjoyed recently, SOMETHING LIKE NORMAL, by Trish Doller.

Looking at this page, I can see a few things. How often is the MC's old love interest mentioned? (Paige Manning) How about one of his close friends? (Ken Chestnut) How much time does the author spend explaining and talking about the Marines? (not a lot)

I can also see how dense these mentions are. The first part of the book is about Travis coming home to North Carolina; the second half is more about him reconnecting with his Marine buddies and coming to grips with what happened to all of them in Afghanistan. As I think about that in parallel with looking at how often and where these characters get mentioned, I can see that in the beginning, there's a lot of to-do about the ex-girlfriend, and while she's still present as the book goes on, her mentions get shorter and more infrequent. By contrast, the love interest, Harper, has exactly the opposite trajectory.

X-Ray lets you see a book's structure at a glance, and lets you peer into the clockwork of books you think work well (and perhaps books you thought did not). Where should it be unbalanced, and where should it be balanced? Which characters get a lot of screentime, and which do not? And importantly, how does that compare to how I've handled the same issues in my own work? It helps me see not only what works in another novel, but also what I can do to improve my own.

Do you have a helpful method for thinking about how you've structured your novels? 

This month I'm participating in the A-Z blog challenge. My theme is "writer hacks," or 26 shortcuts you can do as a writer to get the most out of writing and the journey toward and through publication. Find out more about it at a-to-zchallenge.com, and hop around to read the other cool blogs that are part of the challenge!

Get Started Easily with Unfinished Work

(CC) by Wouter Kiel

I was talking to my advisor one day about some of my academic writing, and how my fiction writing habits were resulting in better academic papers. I mentioned the bit about getting started at the same time each day. He perked up. "It's also helpful to park downhill," he said.

Park downhill?

Parking downhill refers to leaving some part of your work unfinished. It's super-satisfying to finish a writing session by triumphantly capping off a scene or chapter. But the next morning, booting up and staring at "CHAPTER NINE" can be a stifling thought. It might stall you a few minutes, or it might keep you bouncing around the internet procrastinating for days.

Instead, what my advisor suggested was to leave one section unfinished. Leave with something you have a lot of momentum on, so that you can sit right back down the following day and pick up where you left of. Some writers I know even go as far as to leave off in the middle of a sentence!

Most of the time what I do is leave off in the middle of a scene (or, you know, the methods section of my dissertation) and jot myself a note or two directly into the document of where I'm going next. Then the next morning, when I'm still groggy, I can just connect the dots that I drew the day before...and by the time I've done that, I've got new momentum for the day.

What are your strategies for keeping your muse going from one day to the next?

This month I'm participating in the A-Z blog challenge. My theme is "writer hacks," or 26 shortcuts you can do as a writer to get the most out of writing and the journey toward and through publication. Find out more about it at a-to-zchallenge.com, and hop around to read the other cool blogs that are part of the challenge!

Mind the Time

T is for Time, and for Timers.

W. Somerset Maugham has been oft quoted as being asked if he wrote at a set time or only when inspiration struck him. He answered, “I write only when inspiration strikes. Fortunately for me, it strikes every morning precisely at nine.”

I’ve written a lot in these hacks about ritual, with music and software and playlists and so on, but perhaps there is no better writing ritual than time. Sitting down at the keyboard at the same time each day pre-programs the juices to flow in a way that few other things do. It’s recommended in writing book after writing book after writing books (my favorite being How to Write a Lot by Paul Silva, which, while geared toward academic writers, does a great deal for fiction writers as well).

The other T is for Timers. Setting a timer to try to write for a set period is another way to push yourself to stay focused and to write a reasonable amount. Twitter wars like #WriteClub can serve this function, or you can set one yourself. I find that I can challenge myself to write my daily 750 words in one hour, which works out to about 13 words per minute, and I will check up on my pace from time to time. The tick of the timer keeps my momentum moving.  Often I’ll use the PomodoroTechnique of writing for awhile and then breaking; there are online timer tools just for its implementation. 

This month I'm participating in the A-Z blog challenge. My theme is "writer hacks," or 26 shortcuts you can do as a writer to get the most out of writing and the journey toward and through publication. Find out more about it at a-to-zchallenge.com, and hop around to read the other cool blogs that are part of the challenge! 

Give Yourself a Quota

The first year I tried NaNoWriMo, I wrote about 700 words and then stopped completely. (I still count that as a year that I tried though—I'm masochistic like that!) But I think one of the reasons that year failed so spectacularly was that I had no idea how many words per day 50,000 words worked out to be. I could've picked up a calculator, but the thought to do so just didn't occur to me.

The following year, I'd bought Chris Baty's No Plot? No Problem! which had a handy-dandy little chart breaking down each day's writing requirement: day 1, 1667, day 2, 3334, day 3, 5001, and so on and so on. (This was in the days before all the fancy metrics on the NaNoWriMo site itself).

And I finished.

Turns out, having the daily goal right there was part of the key.

Many authors swear by writing a set number of words each day. In On Writing, Stephen King recommends 1,000 words. Nora Roberts is said to sit at her desk and write 9-5, 50 weeks a year just like any other working stiff. One of the first novel writing books I ever read, How to Write & Sell Your First Novel recommended 750 words per day.

But whatever the quota is, there seems to be little doubt that the quota helps. Gives you something to keep track of, and keeps you moving forward as you see yourself inching toward you goal.

Right now, I'm using 750words.com to help me reach my 750-words a day quota. Do you have a daily (or weekly) writing quota? How do you track it? Do you find it helpful?

This month I'm participating in the A-Z blog challenge. My theme is "writer hacks," or 26 shortcuts you can do as a writer to get the most out of writing and the journey toward and through publication. Find out more about it at a-to-zchallenge.com, and hop around to read the other cool blogs that are part of the challenge! 

Use OmmWriter to Write Your Zen

The NaNoWriMo before last, I discovered an awesome program. It's called Ommwriter (with two m's, like the chant). The entire idea is to get your writing to a Zenlike state—it takes over your entire screen, provides you with a soothing background, gives you zen background music and typewriter sounds, and just cuts you loose with your writing.

Like with using music, I've found that the Ommwriter background sounds get me into the groove of writing; when I see the screen and hear the music, something inside says, "Aha. Time to let fly." I often finish a session in Ommwriter and am blown away by the number of words I've produced.

Best of all? It's free. And for the extended version, which has more sounds and more backgrounds, you give an at-will donation ($4.11 I believe is suggested).

A screencapture of Ommwriting in progress!

Check out the video on their site! It explains the software far better than I do.

Ommwriter 

This month I'm participating in the A-Z blog challenge. My theme is "writer hacks," or 26 shortcuts you can do as a writer to get the most out of writing and the journey toward and through publication. Find out more about it at a-to-zchallenge.com, and hop around to read the other cool blogs that are part of the challenge! 

Make Writing a Sport with NaNoWriMo

In my creative writing seminar in my senior year of college, one of the other students kept coming in with a hoodie on. It had this strange word across the front:

NaNoWriMo

Our professor asked her what it stood for. "National Novel Writing Month," she said. "You write a 50,000-word novel in 30 days." 

Like many, our professor scoffed at the idea. What kind of good work can you produce in 30 days? 

Well, with the ever-growing number of books that are coming out having begun as a NaNoWriMo challenge, the answer very well may be...a lot. 

I've participated in NaNoWriMo for a full decade now, and while I haven't finished every year (but I've finished more often than I haven't!), it's a funny thing...it works. See, NaNo creates competition. Humans thrive on competition. You know this firsthand if you've ever tried to get a little kid to clean up by saying, "I bet I can put more toys in the toybox than you can!" Something about feeling like you're doing something and accountable to other people for "winning" creates a primal drive that can get you to do almost anything.  

Now, the Office of Letters and Light sponsors two other noveling events each year, during Camp NaNoWriMo. So no matter where you are in the year, a 30-day frenzy isn't too far away. Yes, yes, ideally, we all write a little bit every day. But if you've fallen off the wagon and need a kick in the pants to get you moving, or just want to step on the accelerator with a work you've had jangling around in the recesses of your brain...log on to NaNoWriMo.org and make your writing a no-holds-barred competition.

And if you're not into NaNoWriMo, there are lots of other ways to create competition--try doing a word war with your critique partner(s), or for year-round NaNo-like craziness (including the fun of community!) join the #WriteClub hashtag for word sprints on Twitter.

 

Office Of Letters and Light

NaNoWriMo (Novermber)

Camp NaNoWriMo (April and July)
What is Write Club? (Megan Whitmer's Blog)

This month I'm participating in the A-Z blog challenge. My theme is "writer hacks," or 26 shortcuts you can do as a writer to get the most out of writing and the journey toward and through publication. Find out more about it at a-to-zchallenge.com, and hop around to read the other cool blogs that are part of the challenge! 

Foster Pavlovian Creativity with Music

I mentioned in my post about iTunes that most of the time, I write to the Bach unaccompanied suites for cello (the version recorded by Yo-Yo Ma). It was through this that I started to understand the power of Music in my writing routine.

I always start my cello playlist with the first suite, first movement, "Prelude." And after a long time, I started to notice something. Hearing the opening bars of Prelude would bring up issues in my work; either a spark of creativity for where to go next, an idea for a future scene down the road, or a way to go forward with something I'd gotten stuck on.

The music itself was creating the idea in my mind: "It's time to write."

Now, this tip probably isn't for everyone. Some people need silence when they write, or they really need to hear something different every time. However, it can be worth trying at least for a little while. There are lots of studies out there showing that routine and ritual are some of the keys to good habits, and incorporating sound into your routine to elicit a particular response...

...well, Pavlov discovered the value of that technique ages ago.

 

Not Yo-Yo, of course, but uploaded by the performer himself. Here there be no pirates!

This month I'm participating in the A-Z blog challenge. My theme is "writer hacks," or 26 shortcuts you can do as a writer to get the most out of writing and the journey toward and through publication. Find out more about it at a-to-zchallenge.com, and hop around to read the other cool blogs that are part of the challenge! 

Instant Inspiration with iTunes

One of my most indispensable writing tools is iTunes. 

Now, I don't much care for playlists. I almost never have a playlist for any given novel, and I'm always amazed (and a little intimidated!) by writers who do have a list of songs that inspired them for each part of their books. I do most of my writing to the Bach unaccompanied cello suites or to the background music in Ommwriter (that's O, by the way—more on it later!).

But every now and then, I do have a need to hear a specific song. I'll just get this weird sense that one song would be a great catalyst for the scene or chapter I'm writing. So for that reason, I ask for gift cards to iTunes for small occasions, and let my friends and family know that iTunes cards never go to waste. That way, I keep a balance at all times, and whenever I just have to have a song to write to, I just go and buy it with my balance, utterly guilt-free. 

You can find similar services on Amazon Music. And if you want to be truly cheap frugal, these days a lot of artists are putting professional recordings on YouTube/Vimeo, although you usually have to create a playlist to get the songs you want to loop, and the non-pirated versions (if you're picky like me and try not to listen to pirated music) usually have ads. 


This month I'm participating in the A-Z blog challenge. My theme is "writer hacks," or 26 shortcuts you can do as a writer to get the most out of writing and the journey toward and through publication. Find out more about it at a-to-zchallenge.com, and hop around to read the other cool blogs that are part of the challenge!

Cancel Noise With Headphones

One of my most useful writing tools is my pair of noise-cancelling Headphones. My sister-in-law gave them to me for helping her move, and I admit, I might not have dropped $150-$300 on a set when earbuds seem to suffice.

But let me tell you a story about my headphones. See, last summer, this strange straight-line thunderstorm called a derecho hit Washington, D.C. like a freight train. I'm fortunate to live in an area where power lines are buried, but a lot of people lost power for weeks. Basically, it consisted of hurricane-force winds, rain, hail, thunder and lightning.

I had absolutely no idea it was even going on.

The storm hit on June 29, the day before Camp NaNoWriMo ended, and as usual, I was frantically typing away, trying to get my 50,000 words in.  So I had on my noise-cancelling 'phones, and it wasn't until I stopped to take a break that I looked out my window.

The weather was so crazy that I kid you not, I turned back to my computer to be certain I hadn't missed a tornado warning.

So, take my word for it—these suckers WORK. And they let you write in just about any environment. For me, that's more than worth the price, and when/if mine ever die, I'll be shelling out for another pair right away.

This month I'm participating in the A-Z blog challenge. My theme is "writer hacks," or 26 shortcuts you can do as a writer to get the most out of writing and the journey toward and through publication. Find out more about it at a-to-zchallenge.com, and hop around to read the other cool blogs that are part of the challenge!

Get "Freedom" From Distraction

We all know the internet can be one hell of a timesuck. It's so much easier to view that nineteenth cute cat video than it is to sit down and work on the WIP. I've written before about how to firewall your attention with a lamp timer that's set to turn your internet on and off at set times. But there are also software options as well.

A number of writers swear by using Freedom, a software designed to disable your access to the internet for predetermined intervals. If you want to get back online before your time is up, you'll have to save your WIP, close all your windows, and reboot your computer—enough of a hassle to keep most people on task. It's used by writers like Nick Hornby, Dave Eggers, Timothy Ferriss  and Seth Godin. Here's hoping a little of their success rubs off on all of us who use it!

Freedom

This month I'm participating in the A-Z blog challenge. My theme is "writer hacks," or 26 shortcuts you can do as a writer to get the most out of writing and the journey toward and through publication. Find out more about it at a-to-zchallenge.com, and hop around to read the other cool blogs that are part of the challenge!

Capture Ideas with Evernote

E is for Evernote, the universal-platform note-keeper. I first found out about Evernote on the forums for Getting Things Done, the book by David Allen, but it wasn't until I added my iPad and iPhone to my tech gagetry that I became a convert.

So for that reason, I suggest that Evernote is perhaps not the best choice for those who don't own a smartphone and/or tablet. You just won't get as much out of the "on the fly note-taking" (though you still may appreciate the syncing). But if you do? Holy cow. I just started using it three months ago when I became an iPad owner, and well...let's  say now I understand the hype.

In Evernote, you can sync across every device you own: PC, Mac, Android—doesn't matter. You can even access your own notes via the web. And you can make darn near anything a "note..." Want to record something? Go ahead. Have a handout at that meeting? Touch the camera icon and snap a photo of it. And of course, you can just take notes, too.

If you're like me, the muse sometimes strikes in really inconvenient places, and the perfect line of dialogue or the exact image you need to make the transition that's had you stuck for weeks pops up when you least have the ability to wrangle it. But now, if you want to jot some of your WIP on the subway, you can do so, and let it sync back up with your laptop or desktop when you next have a good connection. Or if you see a billboard with the perfect embodiment of your main character, just snap a photo.

You can organize your notes into notebooks, or let them float free, since Evernote has a fantastic search tool, as well. You can even take photos of text and make it searchable.

Best of all, the basic service, which gives you all most people would ever need, is completely free.

I use it for taking notes on data for my students, for jotting down ideas that come to me about my WIP, or for crafting whole scenes on the go. Although I prefer to write in Word and Scrivener, I know some novelists who write their entire novels on Evernote and use the notebooks to organize their ideas.

I'll stop, before I sound any more like an ad (seriously, I love this program), but this is one of my writers' tools that I'm glad I dove into, and which I can't imagine living without again. I encourage you to give it a try.

Evernote

This month I'm participating in the A-Z blog challenge. My theme is "writer hacks," or 26 shortcuts you can do as a writer to get the most out of writing and the journey toward and through publication. Find out more about it at a-to-zchallenge.com, and hop around to read the other cool blogs that are part of the challenge!

Make Your Desk Environment Work

My D writer hack is for Desk Environment. If you're serious about writing, you're probably spending some reasonable amount of time writing each day. Given that, it's helpful to take the time to make your desk or other writing space work for you. 

Some things to think about:

• Ergonomics. Yes, writing curled up on the couch with your cat and a cup of coffee feels nicely indulgent. But it can be hell on your back. One of the better investments I ever made was in a decent desk chair with a mesh back and adjustable everything, so that I could set it to exactly what I need to write. Since I freelance for extra money, write with hopes of publication, and 
• Appearance. What's appealing to you? No two people like the same environment. Do you need sun? Color? A plant? Room for the cat? You'll spend time in your writing area (one hopes), so make it visually appealing.
• Organization. Yech, I know. But my favorite definition of "organized" is that organization means that you know where everything is—even if its place is "In the middle of the giant stack on the left." Are you a super type-A  like me who needs a step file sorter and an inbox/outbox to feel like a pro? Or do you thrive on the chaos of balled-up papers from the last round of edits and a few leftover cups of coffee? Think about what you need and create it. 
• Supplies/Reference. I do academic writing, freelance work, and fiction writing from my desk. So one thing I've done for myself is keep all the necessaries at hand—a shelf above my desk holds dictionaries, style guides, and notebooks for all my WIPs, and a full bookshelf within arms' reach has two shelves of books on my academic discipline, and a full shelf of writing books (as well as supplies and knicknacks and whatnot). Maybe all you need is the dictionary on your computer and room for a big mug of coffee. Or maybe you need a fifth of vodka for those times your characters are getting out of hand. Whatever it is you need, keep it close at hand.

One of the best things about having a good desk environment is that when a place is appealing to write, you'll write in the same place—and when you write in the same place, the mere act of sitting down there can literally fuel you to write. When I plunk down in my desk chair, I know I mean business...and that's a helpful mode to get myself into.


And lest you assume from this post that I must be a complete Type-A neatnik--a photo of my writing space in its usual "in use" state.

Some desk inspiration for you: Lifehacker's Featured Workspace Page. Or check out this post by Kendall at Blogging for YA about Judy Blume's envy-inducing writing space!

Do you have a favorite thing about your writing area?  Or is there one you lust after?


This month I'm participating in the A-Z blog challenge. My theme is "writer hacks," or 26 shortcuts you can take as a writer to get the most out of writing and the journey toward and through publication. Find out more about it at a-to-zchallenge.com, and hop around to read the other cool blogs that are part of the challenge!

The Surprising Joy of Goal Tracking

I discovered something awesome.

I finally decided to get my act together and use Goodreads more in 2013. I've had an account since 2011, but like many things, it's taken me time to use it well. And I decided, in conjunction with realizing I couldn't let graduate school take over my entire life, that I needed to set a doable reading goal for 2013 and then actually strive to reach it.

I entered the reading challenge, and challenged myself to 36 books: 3 per month (on top of any articles I need to read, beta jobs I do, or academic books I read for my dissertation).

Here's the really surprising part--in 2012, I challenged myself to 35 books, didn't think about what I'd have to do to reach that goal, and didn't do a very good job of using my "currently-reading" shelf. Instead, I tried to input my books when I finished them, and always had a "currently-reading" shelf that was full to bursting with the books  I was "kinda" reading at any given time (you know how it is—the three you set aside, the one you intend to absolutely start...tomorrow...etc.)

I read 5 books. Or at least, I kept track of 5 books.

Fast forward to 2013. 36 books is 3 per month, or about one every 10 days. It means if I read on my commute, I'll do okay. I've cleared my currently-reading shelf to only what I'm actively reading every single day—one or two books, max. Every time I stop reading a book, I make a progress update, so that I can see the bar inching closer and closer to 100% on any given title.

And I'm 4 books ahead of schedule. I've read 12 books so far this year, and beta read a thirteenth.

Tracking, it turns out, is fun. It's why NaNoWriMo is so much more fun than drafting a novel by yourself, and why such a greater percentage of NaNo writers finish their goal versus those who just say, "Oh, I'm going to write a novel." Seeing that little bar inch forward toward your goal is heartening, and fun, and the added competition aspect of NaNoWriMo puts people even more in the "must get it done" mindset. Like I do when I'm writing a NaNo novel, I find myself checking my GR progress every time I click "finished" on a book.  Seeing the progress toward the goal is fueling me to do whatever I can to achieve it, and I'm having a blast.

Meanwhile I fully intended to enter WriteOnCon's Pitch Fest this week, with my rewrite. But I missed the deadline of finishing my rewrite by a HUGE margin. But now, armed with this knowledge, of just exactly how well the Goodreads challenge is working, I know I need to start tracking what I'm doing so I can see my own progress as I go. I've started with 750words, a website where you commit to writing 750 words each day. Every day I do it, a green "X" appears on the date, and every day I don't, the box stays white. It hasn't been perfect, but it does up the pain threshold for the days that I don't get my little green X.

So...onward! Toward my goals...but with tracking.

Do you track your writing goals? Publicly? Privately? Any cool tools I should be aware of?

Liebster Award 2013

As I mentioned yesterday, I used to try to crawl into a hole when someone was sweet enough to nominate me for a blog award. Who wants to listen to me answer questions? But now I know better, and moreover, even if you think my answers are boring, I have people I want *you* to meet.

So I thank KS Collier for nominating me for the Liebster award, and I’m also going to tag back Tricia Clasen, who tagged me for the same award awhile back and was very gracious about the fact that I crawled into a hole.

Here’s a bit more about Liebster:

Liebster Award Rules:

1. Thank the blogger who presented you with the Liebster Award, and link back to his or her blog.

2. Answer the 11 questions from the nominator; list 11 random facts about yourself, and create 11 questions for your nominees.

3. Present the Liebster Award to 11 bloggers, who have blogs with 200 followers or less, whom you feel deserve to be noticed. Leave a comment on the blogs letting the owners know they have been chosen. (No tag backs.)

4. Upload the Liebster Award image to your blog.

So without further adieu, my answers, my facts, and my questions.

Da Capo

So something happened last year.

I queried a novel. I poured my heart and soul into the query, and revised like a mad maniac. But deep down, some part of me knew that something wasn't quite right.

The query got great results. The manuscript...well, it left something to be desired, and I couldn't quite put my finger on what that was. One agent, to whom I'm forever indebted for just this one word of critique, called it "quiet." I pulled it from the query-go-round after only a handful of queries, when an agent of awesome gave me some super suggestions and an offer to look at the revisions. I wanted to make those revisions. I didn't want to be out there with anything other than the very best thing I could put out there.

But instead of diving in, I put it aside, and started working on another novel (and got derailed from writing for a whole host of reasons that have a lot to do with a big famous book and that I don't want to complain about here). Along the way, I found that something felt more natural about the way new novel was going, something that made first novel feel inorganic. So as I got partway through new novel, I went back to old novel.

And then I came back to it. With fresh eyes, a new perspective, and that little, niggling word.

Quiet.

This week I'm up for critique in my writers' group, and I knew I wanted to give them the revision of my first chapter. Except it isn't a revision, so much as an evisceration. To produce it, I didn't start with an open document, or with the first scene open in a second window in Scrivener. To produce this, I started again with a blank page, a sense of where the story was going, and a character whose story I feel needs to be told.

In music, you get the instruction to "Da Capo," which literally means "to the head," and in short form means, "Return to the beginning." Returning to the beginning is scary. You have to do it again, but you have to do it again with a fresh interpretation, in a way that doesn't bore you.

In writing, if you return to the beginning, it's because something about the beginning failed the first time. You're putting a new spin on it, moving the music around, changing the beats, changing the dynamics. In writing, if you return to the beginning, you're doing far more than just a simple repeat.

But when I returned to the beginning this month, I found that my character was still there, funny as ever, with new insights and a great voice. At the suggestion of one of my writers' group CPs, I gave him a new piece to play, both literally (he's a pianist) and figuratively. A piece that is more forceful, more dynamically interesting, more in-your-face.

In short, it's louder. And I'm loving every minute of putting it down on paper.

This month, I went back to the beginning. To play it all again.

And it's fun.

Have you done a full rewrite of a book? What's it like? Why did you do it? And how did it turn out?