Back in the Saddle #WriterlyWednesday #BabySteps

I’m Blogging Again...

 

I’ve written and re-written my “Hey, look, my blog is alive again” post so many times it’s sickening.  I’ve revised some of my published short stories fewer times.

Why is this post so hard? It’s not more personal than what I pour into my fiction nor what I give to the authors I edit.

If I’m to guess, it’s because I’m afraid I won’t keep up a schedule, that I’ll fail. I’ve dropped blogging so many times – though I do enjoy it – to make time for paying projects and such. And when you drop or fail something...and take a long time to get back into it, it’s So. Much. Harder.

That’s why, in horseback riding, when you fall off, you should always get back on right away. The longer you wait when it’s been a failure, a hurt, a fall, the more difficult it is to get back into the saddle.

Well, this is hardly the first, nor will it be the last blog post where I intersperse some riding wisdom with writing wisdom.

Here’s another piece, just for today:

Even a short ride or short interaction is worth it.

In writing, once you’ve been away from a project, you lose passion. It’s easy to forget it and keep putting it off. Same lesson...

Sometimes just making yourself write one sentence, edit one paragraph, re-read one page is a good start. Just keep at it.

I had one author friend who could only squeeze in one sentence a day. That’s all. Then she finished the story.

If you want to write, if you want to market, if you want to accomplish anything... baby steps are okay. Just keep making them.

My awesome/torturous/awesome-because-she-is-torturous riding instructor once had me dedicate an entire class to mounting/dismounting. Calico and I were having issues...and that was the baby step we needed.

So, here is my short #WriterlyWednesday blog post.

It’s okay to take baby steps; it’s okay to only write a little.

Just keep going.

On Organic Characters--Listening as Opposed to Engineering

A friend, looking at a synopsis of mine, was horrified to see I killed a particular character in the first 15 pages or so.

"She's such a great character!  You're not using her potential!"

The character did, indeed, have a lot of potential.  So do a lot of people who die "before their time."  While I've come a long way from being entirely a "seat of the pants" writer--shoot, I'm feeling downright nervous that I don't know the endgame for Loki or Coyote in my NaNoWriMo novel!--I still don't engineer a plot or a character.

I see plenty of blog posts about how to incorporate flaws into characters or how to create complications for a plot… and I feel relieved that I can just pass by them.  My characters come to me fully formed, with plenty of flaws intact, and they have their own plans with what will happen with any plot I create.

Not to say I do no engineering.  I compare my writing to gaming because I will create a plot and a series of potential problems and I have some outcome in mind.  I have a complex world that I've engineered in my head that has its own laws.  However, my characters will do what they will.  I can rein them in some by creating (hopefully logical) consequences for their action based on the laws of the world I've created.

Sometimes those consequences are that characters die.  I give my characters free will, just as any human ought to have.

Because they are people.  They - the characters, not the whole novels - are my children.  Each have pieces of me… combined with pieces of other people I've met, or seen, or read about… and given a spark of will.  The character, whether he or she or it be an adult or child, is the summation of many parts, a synthesis and a synergetic being. 

While I create the world and the original problem, most of my writing is listening to my characters and transcribing.  They tell me what they will do in these situations.  They don't always tell me why, but eventually I figure it out (or, I have so far… like I said, these Tricksters have me in a bit of a tizzy).  It's not me moving them around like chess pieces, it's me interacting with them as persons.

I've mentioned a few friends I have who do far more engineering.  Their outlines are huge and detailed… they ask me for my thoughts on something, and my answer is not helpful because I ask what would be the most likely thing the characters involved would do.  They make their characters do stuff; their characters serve their plan.  Plenty of good stories are written like this--just not by me.

My stories are archives of my characters' lives.  Once I discover how things go, I can't change the plot or the motivation.  I can adjust what I include in a story--and what you include or omit can make big differences!--but I know what happened and what will happen.  Not because I created it, but because I'm an omnipresent being in my characters' lives… and it's my job to tell their stories as truly as I can.

Even if they die in the first few pages.  It would dishonor their story to change it just because it's unfair or a waste.

These are a Few of My Favorite Things (About Editing)

Today, finally, I sent back my last MAJOR set of edits to one of the UnCONventional contributors.

I may have been stressing, I may have messed up my once-dependable blogging schedule, but damnit, I am so happy and proud of this project!  Having to get back on this "dependable blogging schedule" is SO worth it.  UnCONventional is already made of awesome--and it's not even out yet.

(If you're interested, though, you can SO preorder it here and make many of us even happier!)

Anyway, as I was getting through the edits, I was reminded of why I love this part of writing so much--well, at least when working with other people.

In the long tradition of online communications, here's a

Top 5 List of Things I Love About Editing

5.  The challenge of playing in parameters.  When you edit, you want to respect the author's creation, so offering suggestions and making changes need to be in line with the author's vision.  As much as free reign over a project is fun, it's even more fun to test one's creativity and writing skill by working within boundaries.

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4.  The thrill of teaching.  No matter how many students I teach, or how many friends I critique, or how often I post tips on my blog, there are still people who have not heard some of my favorite proofreading and writing strategies, like reading backwards, using find & replace to count word usage, and comparing word usage to overall word count.  Having someone thank me for teaching them something new sets my heart all aflutter.

3.  Discovering new worlds and being able to help them.  Haven't you ever wanted to make the world a better place?  And do you love escaping into alternate worlds?  When you edit, you get to do both.  You discover fantastic realms/realities, and you can help the author make them stronger--or at least present a clearer picture of them to readers.

2.  Amazing surprises.  In many stories, I've made suggestions for changes or even had no idea what to suggest.  In so many of those cases, the author came up with a fix that was ten to a hundred times better than anything I could have thought of.

1.  The creative sum is greater than the whole.  We selected what we felt the strongest submissions were, and then we advised ways to make them even stronger.  The end result of the author's creativity and love, plus the hard love from both Kate and me, is a piece that each of our individual parts could NEVER come up with alone.  AND, as an anthology, we increase that by 22 of us, exponentially.

So, the next step is to put all these stories into galleys and see how it fits our page count and do yet another proofread.  (And maybe 1 or 3 more after that.)  Per Kate, we're still on good schedule for our release party in January and to get Advanced Reading Copies out for some reviews before then.

Thanks to all the authors and my co-editor for making this such a great project!  I look forward to the rest of this journey with you.

(And, in earnest appeal, you really should pre-order a copy right now. :)  )

Go to Bed!

Inevitably, my pre-dawn posts inspire well-meaning friends and family to order me to get some sleep.  I understand, I do.

Sometimes they're right.

I will often stay up late trying to fit in all of the to-dos that I overbooked myself to accomplish in a day.  Sometimes I wander off to read some of my favorite webcomics and lose track of time.

Other days, it's not my fault.

Tonight I'm awake and typing on L'il Rosie while Big Rosie is getting a huge scan to kill some piece of malware that attacked earlier this evening.  Scott stayed up as late as he could, but he has less flexibility than I do in scheduling – especially this month.  So, I'm up, babysitting a malware scan.

My note for tonight actually had written on it (in caps): BED BY 1AM.

Ha!  The Universe continues to focus on me as a bit of late-night entertainment.  Obviously, some celestial being/s appreciate the irony of me being mostly able to complete my to-do list and moreso at the expense of being unable to meet a particular list item.

(Well, two list items.  Broadly Speaking was supposed to go up tonight.  Yeah… let's not post a file that may be infected! The link is for last month.  In the mean time, enjoy this month's Broad Pod.  It's still the PRIDE theme!)

Another loss, all of my short stories and poetry are on Big Rosie.  While I had one WIP that got sent out tonight – so I DID meet my "send subs" list item, I could not send out more.  :( 

As I am doing a bloggy-type-blog and not relying on the Broadly Speaking announcement to be my Manic Monday blog, I may as well tell anyone interested what I've been up to… and why the last two scheduled blogs are mysteriously missing.

I've had a lot of deadlines.  Like, a LOT.  And a lot of out-of-the-house plans.  And meetings.  And computer problems.

Basically, I will be facilitating an online course for the next 8 weeks – the same one I finished all the edits for.  That was a bunch of meetings and projects for this week.  I also had some articles due and follow-ups on my team reviews.

And I had a well-deserved writer-girl day on Wednesday where I went up to Portsmouth, NH with my Broad Universe buds, Jennifer Allis Provost and Justine Graykin.  We went to hear Neil Gaiman speak.  As it was an educational experience, it's totally a work-related business trip and expense.  And Jenn and I did a Mexican food review that I turned in that day.  Dinner at the Coat of Arms, a proper British Pub in Portsmouth, was excellent research for those of us writing about the UK.  Sometimes I really, really love being a writer!

And then, of course, the sleep deprivation sinks in and your hopes of catching up slip from your fingers with the flowing scan bar progress of Malwarebytes.

I still really, really love being a writer.  And I'll go to bed when I damn well feel like it!  (Here, Scan Gods, have some chocolate so this will be over soon so I can go to bed?  Please?)

Belated Blogging

My car has gremlins.

My personal joke about these gremlins is they are all potheads because the code they throw per the "Check Engine" light is 420.

For those of you who don’t know, the 420 code is anything potentially related to the catalyst and exhaust.  Which means, potentially, a whole bunch of crap at varying degrees of wallet devastation.  At least once a year, usually around when her sticker is due, my Buick baby (ok, my mature Buick who is pushing 200,000 miles and is 10 years old), throws this code and it's something different.  This year, she threw it a second time a month after I got my sticker. 

Most of the 420 issues are not "must fix now or your life is endangered by driving this vehicle," so I do my best to work around my favorite garage's schedule.  So, for about two weeks, we played musical appointments, and then Thursday we brought her in.  I always pack Little Rosie with me so I can get work done for the several hours I'm without my car and without a ride.  Well, we'd planned ahead for a full day on Thursday, and I was going to spend it writing at my friend's studio.

Long story short, it's Monday and we're waiting for another, entirely unexpected, part to arrive before my poor engine can be reassembled. 

Even better:  The H-of-A's car also broke over the weekend. 

Excellent!!

(H-of-A has a much easier problem than mine, a broken sway bar, that wasn't fixed at home because you need a few special tools.)

Add to that a mild stomach bug, weekend visitors, a handful of deadlines, and a few other things… and I'm terribly behind on a whole lotta stuff. 

In fact, I just remembered that I actually have this month's Broad Pod completed and ready to go by the fabulous Jean Marie Ward.  And I forgot to post it.

So, this is a brief space-holder blog for until I get home and can post the podcast.

On the other hand, my silver lining is that I've gotten a lot accomplished on Kelpie.  Waiting for repairs has some benefit.

Please wish us luck!