Kami's State of the Writing

Lately I've been having trouble with ideas.  Oh, I have lots of ideas.  I even have some frozen embryonic stories that I can take out and ... okay, ew factor just set in.

But lately I've been dissatisfied with my ideas in general.  I don't want just any story idea.  I want one with that special something, you know?  It doesn't have to be unique, or pretty, or smart.  It does have to resonate.  I have to feel it in my guts, get that special tingly thrill, and when I work on it, have unnoticed hours go by before I look up from the page.  

Long walks and hot baths are in order.  In the meantime, I've got my novels.  I can live there happily for a very long time.  Still, it would be nice to have a short story come grab me by the throat before Tuesday's write-in with my writing pals.  I'll be looking at contests, prompts and anthologies in an attempt to spark something in time for that.  If none of that does the trick, I'll just have to work with what I've got.  

I want to produce, which means that I must produce.  Letting vague feelings of dissatisfaction get in the way of writing might lead to a habit of waiting until I 'feel right' to write, which might eventually grow into full-blown short story block.  I love writing shorts, and I don't want to go a really long time without writing one.  It's incredibly satisfying to write something and have it done in a month (sometimes even in a day!) and a great way to break a pattern of rhythm in a rut that can sometimes form when I'm working on novels, or worse, a single novel, every day all day.  As fun as it is to be immersed in a novel, there's a constant danger of complacency.  When I'm complacent, I'm more forgiving and apt to overlook things.  It's much more fun to work on a short story for a while and come back to the novel than to do the only other thing I've found to break the highway hypnosis, and that's to work from the back of the book forward.  I can do it, but I'm not real fond of it.

So that's where I'm at with writing these days.  That and trying to ditch this cold.  Oh, and I have a couple of short stories that are 'overdue.'  I'm keeping my fingers crossed!

When a Writer is a Girlfriend

With my WotF sub safely in the mail as of the 28th and a query shipped off, I'm dealing with some inertia. I should be writing. I even have ideas and a list of things to do.

I have the day off tomorrow. Hopefully some free time without hours of mind-numbing retail stuff to drain me first will help me be productive.

At work a coworker has a girlfriend who is (apparently) a budding writer. I told him to have her email me. This has turned into a big thing for her, apparently, with all kinds of concerns about meeting a stranger and stuff. I suspect the stuff part is having a potentially dispassionate reader tell her the truth about her work. We may have another potential INKer, or she may turn out to be a fanfic (Kami flinches from the many steely knives bared as fanfic writers prepare to defend their craft) writer who will appear briefly in my email box and then vanish cryptically in a puff of lavender smoke. I'll make first contact and see what's what.

This may be a case of her telling her boyfriend that she writes fantasy and he translated this to mean that she actually writes fantasy, if you know what I mean. That would explain the severe shyness.

So here's a word to those boyfriends (and girlfriends) out there who have been told that their person of interest is a writer. There are kinds of writers and writer wannabes and until you know what their type is, think twice before dragging them in the direction of things like critique groups, writer's conferences and such. It may be just what they want and need, or it might be the worst torture you could put them through.

And here's a word to the people out there who call themselves writers. Writer encompasses a huge group, from published authors to folks who like to hand write letters to their relatives, from up-and-coming writers of short stories to closet novelists that should stay in the closet, from poets of every skill level to non-fiction article writers, journalists, bloggers, and the small child who writes their very first essay without really understanding what an essay is. If you're going to tell someone you're a writer, it may be a good idea to go a little further and talk about what you write and why. It might save you some trouble. Then again, it might get you into the good kind of trouble.

I'll always wince when I mention I'm a writer and someone leaps in and asks what I've published. I've got to get quicker with the "and I hope to be published soon."

I've had a new one, btw. I mentioned I spent my evenings writing to one of my bosses and she asked what I wrote. "Fantasy novels," I said.

And her voice did that downturn. "Oh."

It's better than being asked what I've published, though!

Titles

I never use to have a problem with titles. I'd have a title sometimes before I'd have my main characters named. But lately, titles confound me. I end up with very lame excuses for titles that are barely adequate for working titles.

Have I reached my title quota? Or am I just thinking about them too hard? I must admit, I can't seem to let it go. I keep playing lame titles through me head, testing them, trying to jar something better loose.

I know what I should do. I should stop thinking about it. I've learned that from when I'm stuck in a scene. I need to step away from that scene for a while, concentrate on something completely different, and then I'm usually hit with an idea when I least expected it (well, truthfully, it's usually in the shower--must be something in the water).

I should do that with this title, because I'm driving myself crazy with my inadequacy. I have a desperate need to write something on the folder, just to make the whole story endeavor official. And until I have that title, it's like the story isn't real. I need to name it to solidify the idea.

Gee, I'm really into this whole titling thing. I should revert back to the old way of titling, one that Kami and I do much of the time, and just call the thing by the characters' names.

Drat, that won't work either, because I have different versions of this particular story written under that titling already, and this version is so completely different.

Grrr.

Back to dwelling on it. Because now even the title generators have failed me.

I don't have writer's block. I have title block.

Almost Everything I Needed to Know about Writing I Learned by Daily Writing

Writing daily has its perks. There's a feeling of continuity, and a flow that comes with daily writing that turns the creative process into a kind of perpetual motion machine. The writing goes faster when it's daily too, and the habit of daily writing shortens or eliminates a lot of the chronic "now I'm sitting down to write" problems.

Writer's block: I haven't had as much trouble with writer's block as I used to back in the day, whenever the day was--it's been a long time. Sometimes I get dragged down by a scene, or I get bored, or a storyline fizzles. When that's happened a few gizillion times it's no longer a big deal. You go back and figure out where the story became predictable, or where you lost the thread, or where the action stopped and you fix it, or you let that project rest for a while and work on another one.

Staring at the blank screen: A blank screen isn't as intimidating as it used to be. A few seconds, sometimes minutes if I'm having to dig deep, and away we go. I'll probably change the beginning after the first draft anyway. A blank screen is an opportunity to finger paint before you get down to the actual process of creating art.

What-to-do-itis: Related to writer's block. Sometimes when the story runs out of steam, people get stressed. They start taking polls from their readers (if they're serializing it or workshopping it) asking what to do next. They fret that the story is horrible anyway and not worth pursuing. They try to work out logically what would be the next plot step, or hope that their characters will bail them out. When you've done enough daily writing, you learn what works for you, and it's probably none of the above strategies which involve popular opinion or muses or characters with their own will. Me? I do the worst possible thing to the character. Sometimes it's the thing they dread the most. Sometimes it's worse than the thing they dread the most, beyond their imagination. Doing the worst thing takes guts and thinking, and sometimes a little plot reworking. Yeah, I sweat, but you know, there's this magical thing called reverting to the original document if it doesn't work out. The point being, when the story stops working, it's time for the writer to get to work and stir things up a bit.

No time to write: Uh huh. The thinking is, if I don't have three hours, or an hour or whatever time frame, it's not worth sitting down to write. I have to have X amount of time to 'get in the mood' or 'find the flow,' etc. EH! Daily writing shortens this artificial time frame until eventually you sit down at the computer to check email, glance at the clock, and think hey, I've got five minutes before I have to start getting ready for work. And then you push that five minutes to fifteen and grab a Slimfast instead of making a bologna sandwich. Works for me.

These constant interruptions!: The situation is that when you sit down to write, there are distractions. Currently I'm tired, the cat is meowing for attention, I have dishes to do, I have a fresh sunburn that makes my shoulders do the heat emanation thing and makes my shirt feel scratchy. Some days you have to get up to deal with something every thirty seconds, or you contend with loud and obnoxious music or a couple fighting next door, dogs barking, or people come in and want to ask you this or want you to find them that, and you want to nail the door shut (if you have a door) to the office and hang up a "Do Not Disturb" sign next to a biohazard placard in the hopes that you'll have two frickin' minutes to rub together. With enough daily writing, two consecutive minutes aren't necessary, although they're very much appreciated. Fifteen seconds is enough to complete a sentence and/or thought between putting out fires and stoppage of arterial bleeding. (Looks like the kitty has food, and the dishes really can wait until morning. We're good to go for some writing, with or without further interruptions.)

Can't ... find ... right ... word: I used to use the thesaurus a lot. I also used to stop writing entirely until I found a fact I needed. I kept 3x5 cards (hard to imagine that I used to be organized) of various world building and character facts so that I could, at a glance, learn what the capitol city of Arrak el Eslahm was, count to fourteen using base 12 number systems and know exactly how long it takes to travel from Earth to Alpha Centauri traveling at 1.4 light speed. I kept careful timelines and took travel distances into account even on a first draft. If I had to look something up in the library, all writing would stop until I could convince my mom to take me or until I had enough cash to hop a bus there and back again. Ironic that I learned to just type XXXXXX or parenthetical comments like (and here Kami inserts a brilliant passage about Beggar Smith cleaning her black powder firearm with all kinds of juicy details supplied by Jacob) before Google and Wikipedia. Then again, relying too much on those 'fast' sources still slows down the writing process more than is strictly necessary. If researching facts, going back through your work to find the color of a character's horse or paging through a thesaurus inspires, fine. If it's an excuse to stop writing, boo! XXXXX rules!

I'm sure I learned more from daily writing, but I forgot. Oh well! Time to write some more!