Tips for Writers

Apr 23

Photo by Andreas Levers, http://www.flickr.com/people/96dpi/

There are a lot of opinions about word counts. Some people feel that you shouldn’t rely on them – they lead to sloppy writing if all you care about it making your number. But other people find that word counts give them the extra push they need to keep writing.

Daily word counts as motivation

I tend to go back and forth on the subject. But I will say that one of the things that helps get me through NaNoWriMo is the word count graph. Seeing my word count growing is a real morality booster. Especially because when I’m writing, I don’t often remember what the word count was when I sat down to start writing for the day. Entering it into a graph shows me just how much I achieved. And this gives me the mental boost I need to keep going.

I don’t think writers should rely only on word counts. After all, editing usually leads to less word counts and brainstorming sessions don’t exactly add to the word count either. But not relying solely on them doesn’t mean they are a bad thing.

I’ve decided to start keeping track of my daily word count using a simple spreadsheet and graph. If nothing else, it will serve as a way to show the fiance (a.k.a. my financial backer) the progress I’m making. But I think it will also help push me to write more each day.

Writing out-of-order to keep me moving forward

In addition to keeping track of my word counts, I’ve also decided to break my cardinal rule by writing out-of-order. I’ve had this problem lately where I have scenes in my head that come much later in the book. I don’t write them because I want to write in order but then I find myself rushing through the connecting bits because I want to get to the scene I’m seeing. So, to save myself the extra editing that will result from rushed writing, I’ve decided to just get the scenes out on paper. I know that they may not flow into the rest of the story, but by extracting them, I will be able to move on to more writing.

What methods do you use to motivate yourself to write? Do you even need to motivate yourself? Do you write in order? Or do you sometimes like to mix things up?

Apr 16

Photo by Wally Gobetz, http://www.flickr.com/people/wallyg/

Last night I hit send on my fairy tale short story and sent it off to be critiqued. Maybe it will be selected as one of the short stories to make it into an anthology that will populate donated Kindles. Or maybe the judge will laugh at my writing and my idea and quote bits at cocktail parties as a big huge joke. But regardless of how it is received, I took a step towards being a real writer.

In truth, though, this is not the first thing I have submitted. I submitted a piece to a writing contest many, many years ago. And my short story was published. Only I was young and ignorant and, while they were supposed to pay me, they did not and I did not keep good track of the correspondence, so I was SOL. To rub salt in the wound, I couldn’t even get a copy of the published article.

Yesterday the fiance was asking me about the writing contest and like who would hold the rights to the work or how the work would be published, and, having learned from my mistakes many years ago, I was happy to actually knew the answers to his questions.

I don’t want to get all preachy and spout anti-trust sentiment, but if you decide to go down the writing contest road, be sure you know what you are getting yourself into. While I was happy to get published when I was in school, I should not have let the company shaft me on my fee. Also, had I done my research, I would have learned that they shafted other writers as well. No matter how desperate you are to be published, there are certain comprises you shouldn’t be willing to make. It is fine to have your work published for free, but only if that is the agreement you willingly enter into when you submit your work.

In short, writing contests are a great way to get your name out there and to practice your writing, but make sure you do your homework. And now to end things on a more positive note, here’s a link to the story I submitted, Once Upon a Cupcake.

P.S. Today is the Boston Marathon. I thought the photo of the finish line seemed fitting.

Apr 11

I recently read an article that said one of the best things you can do to help yourself get published is, well, to get published. Writing contests are a great way to get short stories out there which helps build a name for yourself and makes publishers feel a bit more comfortable about investing in your full book. Plus, stretching yourself to write a short story is a really good writing exercise. And for those of us who focus on full-length novels, a short story is a stretch, believe me.

I found a wonderful writing contest and am punching away at the keyboard to try to finish my submission before the April 15 deadline. This contest does not lead to any financial payout. And, if selected, your name will not be included on the published piece. But, the contest is for charity. And if I win, I can still list it as a publishing credit, even if my name is not on the published piece.

Kindle for Kids

The contest is to write a short story fairy tale to populate kindles that are going to be donated to a children’s hospital. Now, I don’t know if you’ve spent any time in a hospital, but I have. And boring doesn’t even begin to describe what a dull place hospitals can be. Now imagine being in a hospital as a child. Or imagine being that child’s parent, struggling to entertain your child while also trying to conquer your fear so your child doesn’t pick up on it. And in steps Kindles for Kids. By supplying Kindles to hospitals, children can have books to read or have their parents read to them while they wait for countless hours for all those scary hospital things. Who wouldn’t want to support this, right?

I’ll keep you posted on how the contest goes. And in case you were wondering about the title of this post, my short story is called Once Upon a Cupcake. I do love my cupcakes.

Apr 09

Navigating through a WIP can be as complicated as trying to navigate the Tokyo subway system.

Last week was a week of progress, only it wasn’t the adding to the word count kind of progress. Instead, it was a week of removing words, removing whole scenes, to get my WIP back on track. Talk about exhausting!

Writing’s Awesome. Editing Kind of Sucks.

I love writing. Nothing is more exciting than seeing your pages fill with words created by you, seeing your characters come to life, seeing the pictures in your head become reality on the paper. Editing and rewriting, on the other hand, kind of sucks. It means these brilliant scenes have to be reworked or sometimes erased all together. It means those words you thought so hard about, suddenly cease to exist.

Usually when I hit a roadblock, I know that means I went off course somewhere. And I start to find all sorts of other non-writing things I have to do because I know what going off course means. It means you have to find a way to get back on course. And sometimes it is hard to get yourself to go back and painstakingly rework the problems. But I think that is the difference between someone who enjoys writing as a hobby and someone who has chosen to make writing a career. Big words from someone who has yet to submit anything to a publisher and has definitely not made a cent from writing. But all the same, I notice that the writing I did in high school rarely led to serious rewriting. The writing I do now that I am taking my writing seriously, now that I know I have to present my best piece of work if I hope to get a paycheck, involves a lot of thinking and strategizing, and yes, even deleting.

How do you cope with roadblocks? Do you plow through them, or do you go back and try to figure out where you went wrong and, ultimately, fix the mistakes?

Mar 26

The windy road

I’ve finished my first week as a full-time writer. I know a lot of people have asked me what that means, how I will spend my time. So I thought I’d start a little series on being a full-time writer. As you will see, my first week did not go that well, but I’m hoping the second week will be better.

Day 1

OK, day 1 was a huge flop, as you will see if you read my post from last week, Diving In, or Taking Baby Steps. So day 1 was spent waiting for Comcast, nursing a migraine, dealing with the broken radiator, and researching claw foot tub storage solutions, as well as placing a massive order on Amazon for all of the things we will need in our new apartment. I did manage a little bit of work related stuff though – I reread chapter 1 of my WIP and I wrote a blog post. This day definitely did not go the way I imagined it would, but I suppose it could have been worse.

Day 2

Day 2 was not all that much better than day 1, and I realized pretty quickly that I am taking more of the baby steps approach as opposed to diving right in. I am going to blame the move on this one. So day 2 I took a walk around the neighborhood to try to help the headache, checked out the twitter sphere, read some of the blogs I follow, tried to donate blood but was rejected because of a recent trip to Roatan, bought some more things for the new apartment (gotta love The Container Store) and then I got to real work. If by real work I mean cleaning up my social networking sites. I went through Goodreads and added reviews and ratings to books I’ve read this year and then sorted through my to-read list to see what competition is out there for my WIP. I then did some tweeting to try to get my presence back up there. And then I sat down to read Julia Karr’s TRUTH. The best part about being a full-time writer – reading now counts as research.

Day 3

Today started with the best intentions. I cleaned up Twitter and added some tweets. I read some blogs. And then more move related things took over. It is really amazing how distracting an unfurnished apartment can be.

Day 4

Much like day 3, only I did manage to finish reading over my current WIP and started adding some new content. Still, I’m beating myself up about my lack of progress. But maybe it was a bit ambitious to think I could move to a new city and just dive into writing.

Day 5

The fiance and I took the day off to just spend sometime doing the things we need to do to get the apartment ready. We also went on a hunt for a chair so we could at least have a comfortable place to sit. This did not go well.

Week One Wrap Up

As you can see, my first week as a full-time writer was a bit of a flop. I did start a side project for a writing contest over the weekend though (details to come in a later post) and I saw The Hunger Games movie. I have high hopes that week 2 will be a bit smoother, if for no other reason than that we will (fingers crossed) have furniture.

Mar 04

In 2 weeks, I will be trading in the full-time job and guaranteed paycheck to try my hand at being a full-time writer. While it’s scary, I’m incredibly excited. Of course, there’s one extra challenge that comes along with this switch – moving across the country to California.

In preparing for this transition, finding an apartment in San Francisco that would provide me with a positive working environment was key. Even though it meant sacrificing luxury, finding an apartment with a separate office was non-negotiable. In my current apartment, there are two large rooms – a bedroom/office combo and a dining room/living room/office. The lack of dedicated writing space makes it very hard for me to focus and, while I like the apartment from a living perspective, it is not always the best from a working perspective. When your home is going to become your office, these are important distinctions.

Luckily, my fiance agreed with the importance of a designated space for me, and so we agreed to sacrifice some living comforts, like an open floor plan, a good-sized kitchen, and even a dishwasher (sigh) so that we could afford a two bedroom apartment to provide me with my own writing space.

As I wait to take this next step in my writing career, I cannot stop planning out the most efficient space for writing, which has also distracted me from writing because it means I’ve spent many hours online searching through magazine photos and store catalogs. But I would rather have the distractions now than when I get there.

Stay tuned for more updates on taking the leap, quitting my day job, and making my writing dreams come true. Have you taken the leap? Have you thought about it?

Feb 22

Imagery plays a vital role in the success of dystopian, fantasy, and science fiction books. Because these books are usually set in make-believe worlds or alternate worlds different from our present, worlds that live in the mind of the writer, it is essential to the success of these books for the reader to see the visuals the way the writer sees them. The world must find a way to live outside of the writer’s mind.

Visualizing my Imaginary World

When writing imagery, I often will see if I can find visual aids that support the images in my head. I find it easier to richly describe a scene/setting if I have a visual – the visual helps me see the rest of the details that my brain may have overlooked.

Ordering my Visual World

In the past, I bookmarked. A lot. Now I use Pinterest, a relatively new tool that allows you to “pin” images to a virtual pin board. By organizing my boards, I can create a collage of images for a specific WIP, a chapter, even a scene. The great thing about this is that it allows me to easily organize the images. Plus, I can view them all at once, on the same page, allowing the imagery to really flow together, creating a succinct visual of what I’m imagining.

Of course, the one flaw with Pinterest is that it is a superb procrastination tool. So you have to be careful with the amount of time you spend on it.

Do you use Pinterest to help with your writing? How do you use it? What do you think of it as a tool for writers?

I’m only just getting started on Pinterest, but if you want to see how I am using it, check out my writing inspiration board. And stay tuned for my chapter-by-chapters boards which should arrive shortly.

Jan 16

It’s a new year, and I’m hoping 2012 will be a year of good things to come. With that in mind, I settled down today to retackle my work-in-progress, and I’ve got to say, I was actually excited to read it. With my last rendition, which I am more or less completely rewriting, I was bored to tears. I didn’t care what happened. I wasn’t excited to follow the storyline. But with the current draft, I wanted to know what would happen, which is saying something since I wrote it and should know what happens.

In the past, I’ve berated myself for not having a published manuscript, for not yet achieving my lifelong goal of publishing a novel. Please insert laughter and snide remarks here, since by lifelong I really mean my dream of 28.5 years, assuming this dream started when I was an infant. When I’ve read about the unpublished novels published writers have tucked away in drawers, I always said that wouldn’t be me. But I currently have 2 more or less completed novels that will probably never see the inside of a publishing house. But out of those experiences, I am learning how to be a better writer, how to create engaging content and engaging characters. My failures are not actually failures. They are just test runs.

My fiance’s brother works for a video game company, and when he got the job, his father made a joke about how all of the hours he spent playing video games, he was actually interning for his current job. I’d like to think that my unpublishable books have all been part of an internship. And hopefully those efforts will pay off with the final prize, the right to legitimately call myself a writer.

Oct 30

Photo from Raider of Gin's photostream http://www.flickr.com/photos/fairerdingo/

I read a great blog post today about author platform and when/how to focus on building one. In short, publisher Rachelle Gardner said to stop trying to build your brand.

As writers, it is sometimes easy to tell ourselves that we are being productive when we blog and tweet and facebook. But are we really being productive? Or are we just procrastinating?

According to Gardner in her post Novelists: Stop Trying to Brand Yourself, an unpublished/unrepresented author should be focusing more on the actual craft of writing. Sure, writing blog posts and tweets helps with this to a degree, but what good is it if you have nothing to show your audience? And then we come to who your blog/twitter/facebook audience is. Are you writing these things for your future readers, or are you focusing more on attracting other writers/professionals in the industry?

Gardner stresses the importance of focusing on who you are writing books for. Industry professionals play into this, but the most successful writer blogs I’ve seen are the ones that focus more on the reader. And if you are writing to your reader, then it’s not procrastination. You are honing in on your voice while also attracting an audience.

How can an unpublished writer take their blog from industry focused to reader focused? How have you made your blog more reader friendly?

Jul 02

Photo by: yukatafish (flickr username) - http://www.flickr.com/photos/yukatafish/

Writing with an authentic voice is a difficult thing to learn, but lately I’ve been honing in on writers who do it well in an attempt to understand what makes a good voice. The writer I’ve been spending a lot of time with lately (through his books, not in person) is Scott Westerfeld. His books are compelling not just because of his ability to emerse the reader in a wonderfully built world, but also because of his amazing use of voice (which contributes to the world building, but more on that later).

Voice in the Uglies series

In the Uglies series, the main character, Tally, goes through a series of transformations. In each book, the reader can feel these transformations because of Westerfeld’s use of voice. Although told in third person, Westerfeld uses words and thoughts that Tally would use/have. He utilizes slang from his world (e.g. “bubbly” and “icy”) but also gets into the heart of the story. And because the voice is so authentic, he seemlessly transports the reader into Tally’s world. His use of voice wraps around the world, snuggling the reader inside; it is completely devoid of influences from our own world which keeps the illusion from being shattered.

Not only does his use of voice help to make the world real, but he also does a great job portraying many of the things that teenagers and adults alike face – wanting to fit in, insecurities about one’s appearance, never being good enough, etc. While he does this through the plot, these internal struggles would not be nearly as successful without the addition of a believable voice.

Voice in the Leviathan series

The other series of Westerfeld’s I’ve been reading is the Leviathan series. In this series, Westerfeld switches POV between Alek, the properly raised aristocrat fleeing for his life, and Deryn, the spunky Englander pretending to be a boy so she can be an airman. Again told in third person, Westerfeld switches the voice between the chapters. The reader can tell without thinking which POV belongs to which chapter. As with the Uglies series, Westerfeld is successful not just because of word choice and his addition of slang, but he brings out the thoughts and internal struggles of each main character in a believable way.

Other examples of good use of voice

If you are looking for other good examples of voice, Suzanne Collins’ the Hunger Games series uses great voice and is told in first person. In Ally Condie’s Matched, as in the Ugly series, the voice changes as the main character evolves. M.T. Anderson’s Feed, like Westerfeld’s books, incorporates rich dialog into the narration to aid the voice. Another book I recently read is Megan McCafferty’s Bumped, which, like the Leviathan series, uses two POVs. It’s not done to the same degree as what Westerfeld has done, but it’s still a good example of using two narrators within one book.

Do you have any other examples of authors/books that make good use of voice? What other skills can we learn from reading works by other authors?

← Previous
1
2
3
4
5
…
9
Next →

Page 3

Word Counts: Friend or Foe

Daily word counts as motivation

Writing out-of-order to keep me moving forward

In which I enter my first kidlit writing contest

Cupcakes and Faires and Writing Contests, Oh My

Kindle for Kids

One step forward, four steps back: my life as a full-time writer week 3

Writing’s Awesome. Editing Kind of Sucks.

My life as a full-time writer: week 1

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4

Day 5

Week One Wrap Up

Take the leap – Countdown to becoming a full-time writer

Pinterest as a tool for writers – keeping track of your inspiration

Visualizing my Imaginary World

Ordering my Visual World

2012: The Year of the Novel

Building an Author Platform – Do you need one?

Writing with an Authentic Voice

Voice in the Uglies series

Voice in the Leviathan series

Other examples of good use of voice