Linda Maye Adams's Blog, page 19

Pantsing Question and Halloween Beagles

A trip to the farmer’s rally lands me near an early morning political rally.  We have such a hotly contested governor’s race, the incumbent has already retained a lawyer to dispute the results next week.  Me?  I just want my vegetables. 

I also spotted the more adorable beagle dressed up for Halloween.  He’s wearing a top hat with a striking red ribbon and a little waistcoat.  He had enormous round eyes and was very intent on not going where the owner wanted!

Writing on and off all afternoon.  I’m struggling enough with the scenes I’m working on that near the end of the day, past when I usually write, I think about why.  I think it’s because I’m in a slow descending low point for the character and I haven’t put in the why this is happening.  So I spend my last 30 minutes typing in random questions to myself to see if I can jar loose what I’m missing.

In the meantime…

Since we’re about to head into Nano, I’ll start some pantsing tips.  Pantsing is one of those techniques of writing that’s dismissed outright by a lot of writers because they don’t comprehend how you can create a story without outlining it first.  Whereas, I don’t understand how someone can figure out the story before they write it.

For the record, I have done a completed story with an outline, though the outlining process caused me to break It so badly I tossed the story out and started from scratch.  But according to “knowledgable” writers, the reason I broke it wasn’t the outline itself but how I did the outline (translation: they didn’t know why, but it couldn’t possibly be the outline).

But I’ve learned a tremendous amount now about how to do it since I wrote the Pantsers Guide, enough that I created worksheets for pantsers, and expect that I will continue to learn more.

So I’ll start with this question: Does anyone have a specific question about pantsing a novel?

Friday Ho!

My morning walk yields the oddity of seeing a woman waiting for the bus in what looks like—my first reaction is pajamas.  My second is a clown suit.  It’s probably an ill-advised matching outfit, the kind where you buy the top and bottom together.  It’s a pair of pants and a shirt in a fire engine red, giant white polka dots.

Twitter can do without me today.  I head on over to the Future workshop for my last 15 minutes before work.  It rains and rains and rains all day, one of those steady drizzles that gets annoying after a while. 

At lunch, TV is meh.  JAG went off, so I turned to Emergency.  They’re running the movies where the disaster and rescues became more important than the characters.  So I spend my lunch finding an image for Vanguard By Blood, building the cover, and proofreading.

At the end of the day, I’m off, out to eat.  I spot a woman with a donut umbrella.  It’s a brown cake donut, chocolate, frosting, and sprinkles.  Makes me smile.  Never be anything I’d want for myself, but a good way to wrap up Friday.

Back for more writing, though I’m dragging again.  I stop and ready a submission to go to an anthology call.  One of my 52 stories fits in with the theme, so I do a quick proofread, then spend 30 minutes formatting it to the guidelines, then send it off.  I also deal with a form rejection I got earlier in the week.  For good measure, I finish the last video of my Future workshop.

Our Tip Culture and Fiction Writing

I thought I might be able to get some writing in this morning…have the writing meeting this evening.  I like that I don’t have to race around getting ready to dash off for a 30-minute commute (and that’s short by the standards of the Washington DC area).  I often started the day stressed because of that.

Today, my alarm gets me up a little later, so it doesn’t leave me time for anything else.  I grab a five-minute session on Twitter, then I do my walk in the dark under the glow of the half-moon. I think about getting a little bit of writing in, but time’s not on my side this morning.

After work, I have my evening writing meeting.  Several of the topics make me think about how our culture has become tip-focused.

Everyone wants easy and quick to get to the next thing.  People surge into writing fiction for the first time and they want tips to become a best selling writer.  Someone, they leap from the actual idea, past the creation of the story to “It’ll be a best seller and I can quit my day job.”

So the writing books of today don’t actually talk about the craft of fiction.  Their audience is the person who has decided he’s going to write his first novel.  The goal of the book is to help them write the novel, not get published. 

That’s right, not get published.

Because that’s hard.  They can’t give authoritative tips and sound like an expert.  But our tip culture is focused on now and fast.

What is it doing to fiction writing?

Inside Jokes

Up a little later this morning, so only some time for 15 minutes on Twitter.  The wind’s blowing pretty cold outside.  The weather’s normal for this time of the year, though it’s early.  The winds come after the leaves turn (so it can knock the leaves off the trees).

Still getting used to the new Windows 11 interface.  Everything’s in a different place.  I also have to unpin all the “helpful” icons, which don’t include two I use regularly.  It seems to be what Microsoft thinks I ought to use.  Sigh.

Some writing after work.  I’m dragging again. I think it’s the weather.  Sometimes all you can do is plug away at it anyway, even if it isn’t much.  But I get an hour in though I don’t feel terribly productive.

NCIS’s is on and I discover an inside joke or Easter egg on NCIS.  In an early episode, Tony discovers a closetful of Hawaiian shirts, including a Thomas Magnum shirt from Magnum P.I.  Magnum P.I. was a show produced by NCIS’s producer, Donald Bellisario.  The dog’s names, Zeus and Apollo also were mentioned, and Zeus is another inside joke.  Magnum PI had been running for a few years before Airwolf.  One of the characters on Airwolf was code-named Zeus.

Crutch Words

We still have the tail end of the storm this morning.  Lots of gusting wind, moaning as it sweeps between the buildings.  The trees sway back and forth, branches dropping off.

Twitter first—15 minutes, and another 30 on the Future workshop.  Almost done!

Right before I go to work, I set the Windows 11 update to go.  Might as well let the computer do the work while I’m not on it, especially since it’s such a major update.

Looks a little different, and I later have to uninstall some things.

I’m tired and struggling in the evening.  I end up searching for the word “but” and work on replacing it.  I overuse it a lot, sometimes up to three times in one paragraph.  It’s not always easy to fix, so I’ll be working on that for a while.

Here are the big offenders:

1. Was

2. Were

3. Had

4. But

5. That

6. Been

7. Got

8. Then

9. Probably

12. Very

13. Looked (this one is not much of a problem for me once I started working on depth more.  Unfortunately, other crutch words were in the sentences that replaced it. Sigh).

14. Turned

15. Just

16. Even

Heading into the Stretch

On Twitter for a bit this morning, about 15 minutes.  I just want to get my walking done this morning, so I’m out before sunrise.  The moon’s already waning, dim and fuzzy under clouds.

Back in the saddle again with the Future workshop.  I only have a little left to finish—two videos of one lesson and another lesson.  This one hits very broadly on copyright, a subject most writers don’t pay nearly enough attention to.  I’ve been guilty in the past of mailing my story to myself, and it’s a testament to how little I knew then (the envelope thing is an urban legend).

So I find a recent article on copyright, which is on fictional characters:  This  Protecting Fictional Characters Under U.S. Copyright Law – The Passive Voice

This reminds me of the copyright lawsuit for Harry Potter.  I visited the other writer’s site during the lawsuit.  They had up a comparison on the similarities, which involved things like:

Harry Potter – dragon / their book – dragonHarry Potter – wizard / their book – wizard

Which could be in any fantasy because they’re such generic things.

By the time I get off work, a storm blows in, the wind kicking up and banging my blinds.  Thunderstorm in another area but we might have flooding.  I’m not far from the Potomac River, so everything is downhill!

As I start on my novel, I realize I’ve lost track of how many days have passed in the story.  It’s easy to get into the writing and forget the timeline, especially things like the weekend.  When I originally started writing the story, I identified the day and the time at the top of the scenes, at least until it started annoying me.

Now I’m finding a different annoyance.  The last part of this story is messy and chaotic since that’s how my brain works sometimes.  I cycle through this section, shaking out the wrinkles (and lots and lots of typos).  This next is going to be interesting bringing it all together.  I have some decisions to make.

Sunday Slog

I jump in this morning for an hour prepping more promotional tweets.  I feel like I’m perpetually behind with this.  I checked on one of the writers I’m in a promotion with next month, just to see what other people were doing.  She was running something like five Book Funnel promotions at once in October (recommended from them is 1-2).  I don’t know how she managed that.  Hard enough doing one.  Yikes.

In the afternoon, I work on the novel.  I feel a bit like it’s a slog, but I keep pushing.  Not far off from finishing.  The hardest part is always when you get near the end.  Never happens fast enough!

Visiting a historic farm

This morning, I’m off to a historic farm about 45 minutes from Washington DC.  Rain spits at me when I walk out of the restaurant from breakfast, then stops, leaving cloudy gray skies.

The farm is from the 1920s and was turned over to the county to be a historic site as a living, working farm.  They even sell milk, eggs, and cheese when that’s available.  They also take baby farm animals from other places, like when a mama goat has twins (the mama will ignore the second goat).  Today, they have baby cows and baby pigs.

I’m surprised at how many people are here.  Lots of families, some people walking their dogs.

It’s a popular site.  I arrive about an hour after they open and am concerned that I won’t be able to find a parking spot.  But the farm is big enough that it doesn’t feel crowded.

My first stop is the pigs and this fellow snoozing away.  The pig pen is quite…odoriferous. 

Then I spot this beatify, right next to the fence.  Look at those eyes!

In a pen nearby, these two calves have a rollicking good time.  One of them stands in a tub of water, splashing around.

Circling to the inside of a barn, I find the hiding place for the baby pigs.  There are two different litters, one group a little bigger than the other.  They’re all napping under a red light to keep them warm.  Aren’t they cute?

When I wander back a little later for a look, the tiny ones have woken up and are running and jumping all over the place.  They are surprisingly agile and fast!

I walk between two pastures in search of more cows and horses.  I find a goat grazing right next to the fence line and he’s happy for petting.  His fur is nut-brown with a black stripe, quite coarse. 

No cows, and the horses are out in the middle of the field, too far away to see (they are the only animals the farm has signs up about: No petting!).  But then I spot this beauty, though I’d don’t get to see him open his feathers.  His colors are amazing.  The peahens don’t look as spectacular, but they are both huge birds.

I stop by the historic farmhouse.  That’s closed due to COVID, offering only a virtual tour.  Virtual just isn’t the same.  You don’t get the full experience of the way people lived, even if museum-houses are dead places (there’s a difference between a museum and a historic house that’s lived in).

By now, it’s lunchtime, so I decided to go out to eat.  I’m lucky to grab a pot.  The shopping village is having one of those restaurant days.  You know, buy tickets and get samples.  I don’t pay any attention to the vendors, given the majority are local breweries.  I do check out all the beautiful dogs being walked, including a St. Bernard that is a service dog in training. Magnificent dog!

Back at home, I spend three hours working on marketing tweets.  I have another promotion starting November 1.  My goal is to get ahead as much as possible.  For October, it felt almost like I hadn’t done anything at all because I pre-loaded Tweets—and I did that weekly.  It makes that much of a difference to have them done.

So today, I spend 3 hours—3 hours!—writing two weeks’ worth of tweets.  I want to set as much up as I can so I can ignore it the rest of the month.  And I’m shocked at how much effort and time it takes.

Leisure Time and Mandatory Fun

The morning moonset is hiding behind clouds today…  I can see the glow of where it is through the clouds.  They blow off later in the morning, making for a gorgeous—and somewhat warm—day, especially after the few days of cold we’ve had.  Hard on the sinuses!  They don’t know what to make of it.

I spend most of my time this morning finishing up the second to last lesson on the Futures business workshop.  Taking this one to heart…leisure time.  I don’t always do enough of it, and I’m thinking I need to do something other than simply walk on Saturday.

That’s hard for me sometimes.  I’ll get into this thinking that Saturday I have to go out and have fun…sort of “mandatory fun,” which is from the military. My unit would hold a party on Saturday and require everyone to attend.  The problem with mandatory fun is that isn’t fun.  So I stop doing stuff because of that.  COVID-19 didn’t help, and museums are so restricted that it starts chipping at that fun, too.

But leisure is just as important for the writing as writing.  So I shall ponder.

No writing for me tonight.  I cut off at the end of the day and go out to eat.  By the time I come back, I’m ready to say I’m done for the evening.

Almost the end of the week…

Gorgeous moonset when I take a walk outside this morning.  A brilliant white disk against the fading velvet of the sky.  But the moon actually isn’t white.  That’s from some research I did for one of my stories.  The white is from the light of our sun and can be other colors like orange, red, or blue. The moon’s surface is gray.

Twitter for 15 minutes, and the Future workshop for 30 minutes.  I should have this one done soon!

To work…only one more day left this week.  Always glad to get to the end of the week after leave.

No writing this evening.  I have my weekly writing meeting.