Linda Maye Adams's Blog, page 17

Not a lot today

This morning, I try something new…I do my workout instead of walking.  I haven’t liked doing it in the morning, not since I was in the Army.  But Pink’s book on When said that if you want to lose weight, an early morning workout before breakfast will help.  So I’ll give it a try.

My writing meeting is tonight, so no writing today.  A writer in my group finishes her last story in the Great Challenge.  Party time!

Pantsing 101: Re-read the Guidelines

Zoomed in on Twitter this morning.  Not a lot of time this morning, though I ran across a bizarre tweet that said characters shouldn’t be developed until the second draft.  The writer thought you couldn’t develop the character until you knew what the plot was  (I think he was using story and plot interchangeably). 

This is why characterization is the foundation of story.  Without characters, the story is a mechanical construct.  That’s what Hollywood’s doing now with a lot of films and TV, putting together a story and adding characters.  And it shows.

I’m starting on a fresh, blank screen for my climax, so I don’t get distracted by the other pages.  Still, it’s a bit of a challenge to write, and I just have to do it, word by word.  Much sitting back and thinking, trying something, researching.  Sometimes I feel like I jumped into the deep end of the pool and I can’t see the bottom.

A dog leaping into a lake

Image by Jennifer McCallum

Onto pantsing…

This one comes from Sheila Chandra’s book Organising Your Creative Career | Sheila Chandra | Author & Life Coach.

She says before you start a project, reread the guidelines.  If you’re doing an anthology call, this will be an important step, especially for a pantser (more pants!).  We can take an idea and run with it, coming up with all kinds of interesting directions.

The problem with writing for an anthology is that there’s often a theme.  One time, I read the guidelines for an anthology call.  I sat on it for a few weeks, thinking about it.   I was about to write the story when I saw the book above.

So I went back to look at the guidelines.  And it was a good thing.  My creative side would have taken the story in a direction that didn’t fit the call.  Sometimes now I paste in the requirements in the Word document while I’m starting the story, so I can keep it in mind.

Pantsing 101: Staying Connected to the Story

This morning, I hit the Productivity for Writers lessons for the section on fear.  Since my discovery yesterday, I think it would be a good idea for a review.  It was 2014 when I took this course.  It doesn’t sound like a long time, but it feels like it because I’ve learned so much.  I might have to go over that one again.

Cycle through about three chapters.  Working out my final battle scene. Want to make sure it’s satisfying.

Head portrait of three dogs wearing autumn leafs crowns wide picture

Photo by iagodina

On to pantsing…

Peggy has an important point about pantsers needing to connect to the story.  If you stay away from it too long, you can lose the connection to it.  Rereading it and doing a cycling pass helps, but sometimes you don’t ever get that connection back.

I have one I started back in 2018, when I was trying Writing in Public.  It’s called Broken Notes.  I started the novel, got probably 10K into it, and bam!  Work levels got so unmanagable I was struggling not to burn out.  It toasted my writing entirely and that story stalled where it was.

I keep telling myself I should return to that story, and yet I feel like I lost the connection to it.  Some of it also involves how overwhelmed I felt at the time.  I may yet return to it in the future.  Or I could take the basic idea and redraft it new. Who knows?

I don’t even know how someone can spend ten years writing a book and stay connected to it.  For my first novel, I did that merry go round…writing up until about 1/3 point of the story and getting stuck.  It’s a common sticking point that no one talks about or how to resolve.

When I brought it up on the writing message boards, everyone suggested some variety of:

You must have a problem in the beginning of the story. Go back and revise it.Try an outline

The result was that I had one of those decades-long novel that was endlessly revised.  I revised it so much that I lost the connection to the story…and didn’t realize it.

One day, my former cowriter offered to work on a novel together.  The only way I could let the first novel go was to tell myself I would return to it once I finished the cowritten one.  That kicked me out of the tunnel vision endlessly revising the first novel gave me.  Once I finished the co-written one, I realized that I’d revised that old story so much I wasn’t the same person that had started writing it. 

How on earth would anyone stay connected to a story they’d been writing for ten years?

Pantsing 101: Stalling Out

Today I catch the end of the sunset when I take my walk.  It turns a brilliant orange against the clouds.  As I circle back around, it’s already gone.  The rays of the rising sun illuminates the tops of a stand of trees turning orange.  Amazing!

cute striped cat lies in the autumn garden surrounded by Golden and yellow fallen leaves

Awesome cat photo by Nataba

Come back, do a little writing…and then hit a question that I never asked myself about one of the characters.  I write it down so I can let my subconscious chew on it during the day.

And at the end of the day, as I write the next pantsing entry, I realize the true sticking point is fear.  I thought it was fear of finishing, though that’s not common for me. So I went back to the Productivity for Writers workshop to watch the lessons on fear.  Instead, I discover I’m focusing on the deadline and it was starting to translate as “can’t make the deadline.”

So I’m flipping it to I’m going to have fun finding out what happens to Dice.  And it helps.  I plow through the scene I had trouble with it and onto the next one.  Back to cycling.  I need to flesh some things out.

Onto pantsing!

This is an issue that pantsers can be particularly vulnerable to. It’s likely to be why some veer off to outlining in an attempt to solve it.

What is it?

You start writing your story.  You’re in the flow of it, having a blast with the characters.  Suddenly, bang!  You hit a roadblock and stall out.  You try to find your way around it. No dice.

In my case, in my first novel, I hit the craft books, looking for answers.  No one discussed anything that addressed this.

I asked the writing message boards if anyone had run into this.  I’m not quite sure how I got the idea of what I did, but I thought I had a problem with the subplots.  Maybe the story felt like it should veer off on a subplot at that time.  I’m guessing, also, this problem is where a lot of the structure topics that lead to outlining come from.

I had this problem through multiple books, and it was very frustrating. 

The message board writers were very quick to blame the pantsing.  The problem was so frustrating for me that I broke down and took a workshop on “Pantser-Friendly Outlining.”  Nope.  Outlining isn’t a magic fix.

Enter Dean Wesley Smith’s Productivity Workshop, a place I wouldn’t have expected to see the answer.

The 1/3 point of the story is a common place for fear to set in (also the beginning and the ending of the story).  You’ve just come out of the fun and excitement of the beginning of the story and now the middle stretches out in front of you. At that time, we were under Dean’s old version of WordPress for the classes, with a few other writers.  We all hit that video, heard that, and had the same reaction of “Wow” because it was so on target.

But there’s no “tip” or technique to solve it.  You have to work with yourself to figure out what’s going to push you through it.  One of the things I had to do was turn off the word count.  I always hit it at 10K, so I would start anticipating it, which made it come true.

One word at a time…

Some good days, some bad days

Eine junge Whippet Hündin sitzt im Wald und hält ein oranges, herbstliches Ahorn Blatt m Maul. Es sieht dabei so aus als würde sie in die Kamera lächeln.

I spent the day writing on and off.  The weather is in that transitional phase of sliding into fall and my sinuses have been very unhappy.  So not a lot for all the effort.  Shrug.  Good days and bad days.

And the Obligatory fall photo of a Whippet by Frank Günther that I forgot to include in a post a few days ago.

Why Writing Every Day Starting Out is Important

Might look like an odd title since I did zip in the writing department on Saturday. Partially because the weather is misbehaving on my sinuses, but just, I wanted a break.

And I spotted a writer on Twitter who was extremely angry and rebelling against writing every day. Probably his inner critic was kicking in big time and stalling him out. I’m betting he was looking at a blank screen and couldn’t make it to the Nano word count.

If you’re just starting writing or haven’t got into a regular habit, writing every day is important to do.

Writing fiction has a long learning curve. You have to produce a lot of words to get to the point where editors even start making personal comments. You don’t do that by writing when inspiration strikes, or by endlessly revising a single story.

It gives you confidence that you can finish a project. That’s surprisingly important, especially in today’s culture where people run like squirrels gathering the nuts of projects, finishing very few.  The Great Challenge was important for me because I finished 52 stories.  I met a deadline every single week.  And I have to keep reminding myself on hitting the one for my novel…and, at times, it’s terrifying.

Failing doesn’t carry as much weight.  If your entire hopes and dreams rest on this book that you labored over for ten years, it’s going to be a big blow when you get a rejection.  If you’re already ten stories ahead, it becomes, “Phhtt.  I’ll send it somewhere else.”

Habit gets you back to writing when things go haywire. I was working on a story and a family crisis happened. A relative landed in the hospital and flatlined. I become the information point for the rest of the family. After I got the initial phone call, I tried going back to writing, said, “Nope, not happening” and made the decision to call it for the time being. After the situation resolved itself (relative is okay), I got right back into writing.

Tomorrow, same Bat Channel, same Bat Time and more writing.

Pantsing 101: The Reverse Outline

I wake up to cars sluicing through wet streets.  The rain’s hard enough to bring down the leaves.  We haven’t even had that much color change.  Most of them are still green and drying out.  Some maples have turned red but not especially vibrant.

I spend an hour on the story, cycling through the previous chapter.  Hit the next chapter for cycling and I’ll need to gut that one.  It was a rabbit hole and one I don’t want to commit so much to in this story.  I’ve already done hints earlier, so most of the chapter is coming out.  I’m also going to move another part of the scene to another location, so a little rearranging is in order.

Pantsing 101: The Reverse Outline

In his book, lecture, and probably his workshop Writing into the Dark, Dean Wesley Smith talks about a “Reverse Outline.”  What he talks about and what James Scott Bell is as different as dogs and cats.

Obligatory fall photo of a Whippet by Frank Günther

James Scott Bell’s version:  Write the first draft.  Then go through the first draft and outline all the scenes you’ve written.  Then use it for your revision.  It’s probably going to be on a spreadsheet and pretty detailed.  And it puts everything on the revision’s plate.

Dean Wesley Smith’s version: It’s a cycling tool.  He uses a yellow legal pad, jots down some notes after he finishes a scene.  Checks back through it when he’s cycling, like what a character is wearing or making sure there isn’t one of those scenes where a character comes in, looks important, and then never returns.

Outliners always dismiss it, stating it confirms that Dean is outlining.

Here’s the difference:

With a traditional outline, you write the outline, then use it to write the story.

With JSB’s, you write it after you’ve done the first draft and use it to revise your story.  Essentially find the problems in the story after the fact so you can fix them.

With DWS’s, you jot down notes as you write, using it as a quick reference.  You can grab it at any time, flip back through the pages to see what your character was wearing the last time he was on the page.  It can be chicken scratch (and might very well be if your handwriting looks as bad as mine)…and it doesn’t matter.  It’s not something you save.  It’s a working document.

That being said, I’m writing on this topic, and I haven’t successfully used one.  The culture of “You must outline” still makes me want to stay away from it.  However, on my current book, I have been jotting notes on my maps because I get tired of scrolling back to check on a character’s name who appears in Chapter 2 and I can’t remember how to spell it.  Perhaps in the future…

Pantsing 101: Controlling the Timeline

It’s Veteran’s Day, so I’m off.  I pop over to a local restaurant…not looking for free meals (some are available in the area).  Everyone here generally loves the veterans because we have so many military.  If I wear my Desert Storm hat, I usually get some conversation.  The waitress all but ignores me.  It might be my imagination but she seems a little frosty.  I hope that’s just her and not the current climate.

This morning, I actively plan for four hours of writing.  Getting up to walk and thinking is okay, but randomly stopping to surf the net or watch TV is not.  I start reading through the scene I’m working on and trying to figure out how I want to fix it. 

First thing up—and a huge part of cycling—I add more description of two characters. One character has clothing as a tag, so he’s easy.  Tags are a shortcut, both for the reader and the writer.  It’s like Dresden always wearing his duster or Eve Dallas with her whiskey eyes.  They’re something, when you see them, you know it’s that character.

The other character I sort of autopiloted on. So I spend time thinking about what he would wear off “work” and have some fun figuring that out.  I do on-the-spot research, in and out.  Look up the types of men’s shoes, thinking about what both characters would wear.  Then it’s off to find pictures of a style of shirt and styles of men’s pants. I save both the shoe and pants sites into Evernote, since I’ll need that again.

And then I hit another description that I need to flesh out.  I search for pictures, find a couple, and I keep thinking about this one section.  What’s this owner got over there? I cast around, thinking about one word I saw in a book when I was growing up, look that up.  Nope, not what I thought it meant.  But it gets me thinking and I search for variations on it…and I find something.  My creative side runs with it.  I have no idea what I’m doing with it.

Two hours in the morning, two in the afternoon.  Made some good progress.

Onto pantsing…

This one comes from a convention I attended in 2014.  I was looking for a copy editor and have a lot of problems finding one.  Everyone seemed to only do developmental editing and no copy editing or proofreading.  I seriously thought less of anyone who would do developmental editing and couldn’t copy edit.  Told me they were probably writers who hadn’t been able to sell anything so they decided on paid critiques.

I attended a panel given by an editor (note: he was selling developmental editing).  But he talked about the timeline of the story.  He did a lot of young adult books, and it was fairly common for a writer to have their YA protagonist get up, go to school, get up, go to school—and forget there were two days when that wasn’t supposed to happen.  Oops.

With pantsing, it’s very easy to forget to pay attention to the days of the week, or lose track of how much time is passing.  I was disconcerted to read a book (by an outliner) and suddenly realize that she had a day that felt like it ran a week.

As we’re writing the book, it can trick us into thinking author time is the same as story time.  Author time is how long it takes to write the book.  You might have a book that takes place over three days and take a year to write it.  You don’t want your three days feeling like a year!

So what you can do is simply make yourself aware of the timeline.  Maybe it’s a notepad, or you could type it at the top of your scene.  What day of the week is it?  What date? Making a conscious decision of why can lead to all kinds of interesting story ideas.  Once you ask what date it is, you’re also asking why. 

Then think about how long the scene lasts?  Doesn’t have to be physical time necessarily.  Sometimes you get scenes where “Three days later…”

How to track this?  Start very simple.  You can always change it if it isn’t working, but human beings tend to overcomplicate things.  You don’t want to jump into a complicated spreadsheet with color coding and formulas that’s going to allow your inner critic to take control.  Just type your scene time and duration at the time of the scene and adjust as needed.

Four resources are available on this topic:

Writing and Selling Your Novel by Jack M. Bickham.  He talks about author time, story time, and reader time.The Story Grid: What Good Editors Know by Shawn Coyne.  He does a deeper dive into scene time and duration.Writing Time in Fiction | The Editor’s Blog (theeditorsblog.net) – a blog post of different ways you can use time.  Theres’ a lot to it!When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing by Daniel Pink.  This is not on writing.  It’s on time.  But it provides insight into how we view time as human beings.

Pantsing 101: Attitude is Contagious

It’s a pretty quiet day today at work.  A lot of people are already off for the holiday, and I’ll be doing that on Friday.  I’m reading a book called The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth About Extraordinary Results: Keller, Gary, Papasan, Jay: 9781885167774: Amazon.com: Books, where it stresses the importance of taking time off.  So much so that it says to plan all your vacations, and then the work around them.  In past years, I let the work dominate until I suddenly needed leave, and now, or having it bunch up at the end of the year when I had use or lose.

I’ve always thought that even the writing doesn’t come first on the priority list for me.  Health does.  If you don’t have good health, you’re not going to be able to spend a lot of time writing. 

I spend some time after work prepping tweets for the new December promotion. (Sneak peek here, starts November 27).  I want to set up the promotion for all of December, so once and done and I can ignore it.  I do 15 tweets for the promotion, load those.  Still thinking about what I need for the other three slots each day.

Some work on the climax.  Still cycling to straighten out something that my creative side put in but I need to back off of a little.  You know, leave it for a later book.

Onto pantsing!

This was inspired by the book I mentioned above, since it brings up what’s in my subject line.

Writing is pretty solitary.  I’m sitting at a desk in my walk-in closet, on a computer.  I can close the door and shut out the world.  The serious writers need that because otherwise they’ll get pulled out and never finish the book.

So we seek out other writers because they understand.  Online is super easy.  As a pantser and trying to figure out how to work with my process effectively, I used to visit writing message boards regularly.  Writers get together, ask questions, pass advice.  Seemed ideal to find solutions to problems.

Right?

Uh, no.  As I found out, their attitudes and bad advice were contagious.  The majority of the writers hadn’t completed a single book and were dispensing advice like they were experts.  The worst advice?  Anything for pantsers.

If they didn’t sneer at the thought of pantsing, they informed any pantsers they weren’t doing it correctly.  Or they told the pantsers, they’d see needed to be done eventually. 

I’ve been told everything from my first draft was my outline to I was outlining in my head. Or that my first draft—sight unseen—was a total mess or that only best sellers can “get away with” pantsing.  And I saw over and over, writers saying “pantsing doesn’t work.” It became a self-fulling prophecy.  I heard it so much that it crept into my writing process (causing the very problems I was having).

No one there will ever, ever tell you, “Try writing it without an outline.”

Think about that.

Pantsing 101: Get Out of Jail Free Card

Not a lot to report today.  I just feel lazy tonight.  I get a con survey requesting panels to pick, so I work on that.  I’ll be appearing at Chessiecon virtually on Thanksgiving weekend.  If you want to attend, the con is free.

Onto the pantsing tip:

As I’ve learned more about my writing process and the craft, my physical process of writing has gotten far less messy. I used to think of it as throwing paint at the wall to see what sticks—very frustrating! I’d rearrange chapters, shuffling them like cards, trying to get the order that felt right to me.  I’d go down a rabbit hole, hit a dead end, and have to dump—at its worst—10 chapters.  It’s hard to believe what I did in those days has changed so much.

But I still have one habit, partially ingrained by work habits.

If I do a major deletion, like a scene or a chapter, the first thing I do is resave the story as a new version.  Hurts nothing, and if I need to grab anything later, it’s there. 

Unlike some people I’ve worked with over the years who save every single version of every single thing, I dump the old versions when they start becoming a distraction.