Jamie DeBree's Blog, page 3

Writing Notes: March 26, 2022

Weekly Writing Progress
Beet Down (Revisions): 2.5 scenes done
Ten Word Stories: 3
Poems: 1

The Descent
Reaching the summit, she admired the view.
One foot slipped.

Last week’s lack of post wasn’t due to the fact that I hadn’t written anything (though that’s the truth). It’s because I sprained my wrist keeping one of my dogs from going over our fence after a tiny dog on the other side, so typing was painful (literally) for a few days there.

That said, since that particular week was incredibly unproductive, just as well I skipped the blog post too. This week, I actually do have progress to report, which is always a good thing when keeping oneself accountable through blog posts.

I seem to have broken through my reticence regarding revisions, and while the first scene was far more difficult than it probably needed to be, things are clipping along a bit faster now. I’m not writing anything new at the moment aside from the micro fiction and poetry just so I don’t have any reason to procrastinate on the revisions, but if I can get one more week of solid revision progress, I may start a new story to work on for a bit each night as well.

My ultimate goal is to spend 45 minutes on new words and 45 minutes on revisions/editing per night, four nights per week. If I can slide into that routine comfortably for the rest of the year, I think I’ll finally be moving forward again rather than just treading water, so to speak.

I also wrote three ten-word stories, and a poem, because poetry month is just around the corner, and if I don’t take myself too seriously, poetry is fun.

For this next week, my goal is just four more days of revisions, three more ten-word stories, and one more poem. There’s no reason I shouldn’t be able to hit that goal…as long as I force myself to get to bed on time.

Ironically, one of my other goals is getting in the way of the whole sleeping thing. I’ve been trying to read more, which means I put the writing away at midnight, and read until 12:30am, which is supposedly bedtime. *ahem*

Reading before bed is dangerous, as I’m sure you know. But so is reading before work, reading at lunch, and sneaking reading in during the day, so…yeah.

There’s no “good” time to pick up a book.

There’s also no “bad” time to pick up a book.

(To see what I’m currently reading, visit the main Variety Pages blog)

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Writing Notes: March 12, 2022 – On Tiny Stories

Current Project Progress
Ten Word Stories:15
BD Revisions: Stalled
MM (Editing): Complete!

She stares, chest still. At her feet, a toppled teacup.

Do you ever plan out your time and think that you’ll be able to finish a project several days sooner than you actually do?

That’s what I did this week, and why the BD revisions are stalled. I thought I’d be able to finish my editing project by Tuesday night at the latest, and then I sat down late every night, due to procrastination, weariness, fatigue…pick your excuse. I didn’t get up from the living room as early as I should have, is what it boiled down to, and then between the time and my eyes, I only had time to work on one project. And I was so close to the end on the editing project that…I just finished it. Not until Thursday night though, and I stayed up a bit later to do that.

But it’s done, and now I can work heavily on revisions, or work on both drafting and revisions, depending on how I want my workflow to look.

I probably wouldn’t have done that, except that I knew I was going to take next Mon – Weds off work. I fully plan on using one of those three days solely for revisions on BD, which will give me a good jump-start on that.

I did do some writing this week. Up in the project area, you’ll see a new tally for “Ten Word Stories”, and above the project area, a tiny, ten-word story. Alli (The Alliance of Independent Authors) is doing a Ten-Word story contest as part of their upcoming tenth anniversary celebration, and when I saw that, I thought, “What a great idea!” I decided to take a break from the backlit screen every thirty – forty minutes and jot down a quick ten-word story. My eyes get a break, I get a tiny bit of fiction written, and whatever is passible but maybe not “contest worthy” can be used as memes on photos/videos for social media. Win-win!

So, I’m having fun with that. I think I’ll continue writing tiny stories (ten words, twenty, whatever) on tiny breaks throughout the day. It keeps my eyes happier and my mind doing something creative throughout the day, which I also think helps with the day job and being open to odd/creative solutions when problems come up.

Next week, revisions, more tiny stories, and maybe, depending on how revisions go, I’ll start something new. I’m having fun and feeling good about things. Good times.

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Writing Notes: March 5, 2022 – Unintentional Ghosts

Current Project Progress
Beet Down Revision: 1st scene
MM (Editing): Page 269 of 328

As you can see, I finally finished updating all of my too-small covers! And I think most of them look better than the originals, if I do say so myself. I can’t tell you how good it feels to have that little project behind me.

It was another weird, not-so-much writing week. And I spent more time than I thought I would floundering about trying to start my revisions, because I have all these layers I want to add, and thanks to a writing workshop I took last year, I know…how it needs to look when it’s done, but I was a bit overwhelmed with trying to figure out where/how to start.

– I deleted a whole scene, then put it back.
– Deleted a couple of paragraphs, then put them back.
– Realized that I hadn’t set this short story anywhere specific, and that even I didn’t have a clue what any of the characters actually looked like.

*sigh*

It wasn’t until I actually tried to start *adding depth* to the story – layering in description and setting (using what I learned in last year’s Depth in Writing workshop and this year’s Masterclass in World Building), that I realized something ridiculously annoying:

I had no idea where the story was happening, or what the characters actually looked like. *headdesk*

It was a severe moment of blinding (and painful) clarity – when I’m writing “off the cuff”, as it were, the story itself (the plot) and what’s going on inside the characters heads are the most important things to me. Where they are and what they look like take a backseat in my mind to the actual “what’s happening and how are the characters reacting to it”. And that is at least one of the reasons my stories haven’t had depth to this point. I generally have the filling, but not the wrapper. And without the wrapper, the filling doesn’t always stick together like it should. Dammit.

With that light-bulb moment, I had to go back and “create wrappers” for my characters, as well as decide where the story would take place. I prefer to write in fictional settings (because I’m lazy and I’d rather make stuff up than do research), so I decided to set it in one of the two fictional Montana towns I’ve been developing over the past couple of years. Meadowlark, which I created for a couple of other stories that are still in draft, is the perfect setting with the proper resources and topography for this particular plot, so that’s where this story will happen.

As for the character “wrappers”…because I’ve already written these characters, I had to think about how they act and react and their relationships/familial histories before I could decide on things like hair color, style, body shape, and clothing preferences.

For those of you silently screaming, “How could you not already know that?!”, I do sort of have a foggy idea of what characters look like when I’m writing, of course, but once I start writing and get into their heads, it really doesn’t matter much to me, because I’m personally more interested in their thoughts and feelings towards things. So it’s a matter of perspective and focus…I am the same way with real people. I’m not generally all that concerned with the packaging, I just want to know how people think and what processes/filters they use to formulate actions/reactions/philosophies of life.

So while I do understand that in writing, the whole package is very important, when I’m drafting I tend to just…write what comes to mind, and that’s naturally going to be filtered through my own perspective. I will be trying to change that a bit going forward, so I can write more rounded/complete characters and settings from the start.

Anyways, once I figured that out, I could finally start my revisions, but the week was pretty well over, so I’m still working on the first scene. Hopefully that was the last little piece I needed, and I can really make some good progress with the actual revision itself next week.

Recommended Resource
This week’s recommended writing resource is The Creative Penn. If you aren’t yet familiar with Joanna Penn, you should go check her out posthaste. She is a wealth of knowledge in all things writerly, and she recently decided to rewrite her first three books. She has a podcast all about it, and she puts the transcripts on her site, so you can read rather than listen if you prefer (I normally do with these, since they’re long). Check it out, and follow her on your preferred social media channel.

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Writing Notes: February 26, 2022

Current Project Progress
Beet Down: Plotting
MM (Editing): Page 225 of 328

It’s been a weird writing week. Mostly because I’ve spent the majority of my writing time plotting instead of writing. When I decided to plot out Beet Down (the latest Death by Veggies story by alter-ego Alex Westhaven), I thought it would be fairly simple and straightforward. It’s a 12,000 word short story draft, with a reasonably simple premise. Or it was…until I started pulling the story apart and pinning the scenes out on a plot grid to study like so many dead insects.

The good news is, it’s going to be a much better, more complex and fleshed-out (so to speak) story due to the plot “treatment”. And thankfully, I finished with the plot grid yesterday, so I can start revising/rewriting next week.

The bad news is, it took me all week to get that done, during my writing time, which means a full-length novel is going to take *forever* to do that with. But, I’m still going to at least try it with the romantic suspense draft I have done. And going forward, I’m going to try to plot as I write…so, write a little, then add to the plot grid. Write a bit more, plot a bit more. I’m hoping that I can use the plotting as a way to keep track of plot lines as I discover them, and make sure I have notes on how/where they need to be developed and finished so I don’t leave them dangling.

I often think I should just leave all these finished drafts sitting and start fresh with the new skills I’ve developed and the new workflow I’m trying to develop, but I keep telling myself that fixing these older drafts by pulling them apart and revising them into something I’d write today is just good practice, and practice that will still result in publishable books, even if it does take a little longer. So I’m going to keep working on that premise, at least for this year, and then I’ll revisit that strategy next year, if I’m not caught up by then.

Now, for this week’s writing resource, I’m recommending my favorite podcast: Writing Excuses. When I discovered this a while back, I listened to one episode, and decided to go back and listen to them all, in order. So I started with Season 1, Episode 1, and I listen to several of them while I’m making dog food on Sunday nights. I tell you what – this whole podcast is a master class of writing knowledge, and I have learned *so much* just by listening and absorbing all of the incredible discussions they have amongst themselves and their guests.

And the tagline is “15 minutes long, because you’re in a hurry, and we’re not that smart.” But they are actually “that smart”, so you get even more bang for your buck, so to speak.

Try it – I’m not a good listener, and I love them so much I can listen to four-six episodes in a row.

Until next week, happy reading/writing!

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Writer’s Notes: February 19, 2022

Current Project Progress
The Lucky Squirrel: 1,734 words (complete!)
MM (Editing): Page 180 of 328

It was a good week for writerly things, as you can see by my project progress above. Three days off from the day job helped a lot, and in addition to finally finishing LS, I got 40 more pages edited, and I also got five more covers redone, added to the ebook files, and uploaded to all the distribution points.

I *also* decided to switch writing programs after using Dabble’s plot grid to plan out the rest of the story and tell me what I needed to be writing each night. That helped immensely, and I think it’s going to help a lot when I start revising/rewriting all these drafts I have just sitting around. Not to mention keeping new ideas better organized. So I’m making backups of all the drafts I have in Novlr, and will add them to Dabble as I start working on them.

As for what I’m going to work on next, it’s going to be a spring short story release for April. The draft is done, but it needs pretty heavy revisions, so I’ll be plugging that into Dabble’s plot grid this coming Monday (I have the day off – it’s a federal holiday). I have another project I’ll be working on simultaneously on different days just to make sure I’m getting new words in each week.

So I’m finally moving faster than a tortoise, which feels great! And telling stories about gnomes, beets, and kisses (not all in the same story, though…that would be one crazy tale, methinks!).

It’s good to be back in the saddle, so to speak. Now if I could just get back to writing faster, or at least revising quickly, that would be spectacular.

It’s late as I’m writing this, and I need to get some sleep, but next week, I’ll start posting a resource I’ve found particularly helpful for authors – one per week.

Until then, happy reading and many words to you!

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Writer’s Notes: February 12, 2022

Current Project Progress
The Lucky Squirrel: 1,022 words
MM (Editing): Page 146 of 328

Nutrients. Hydration. Sleep.

Three things I need to keep my brain alert and creative, and two of which I deprive myself far too often (I mean, I never forget to eat, though sometimes *what* I eat is questionable).

Before writing this blog, I was trying to plot out the ongoing Lucky Squirrel story in some software I’m doing a trial of. I’ve never been a good plotter, always preferring to “pants” my way through a first draft and find out how the story goes as I write. But pantsing a story requires a certain amount of focus and thought that I find I have less and less time for. If I have a vague idea of what I need to write next on any given night, it tends to prime the writing pump, so to speak, and makes discovering the details as I write much easier.

But as I said, I’m not much of a plotter. And as I stared at the shiny new software, having read the instructions on how to use it and with a surface understanding of what I needed to do, I felt my brain shutting down and backing away, whispering, “Shouldn’t we check Facebook again? Instagram, maybe? Did you send that email? Do you want to write another one?”

Often, I don’t catch myself when this happens, I just follow it. But I want so badly to finish this story so I can move on to something else that my self-analytics kicked in, and I asked myself what the real problem was. I was tired from a lack of sleep the night before (my own fault), unfocused, and I considered what I could possibly do physically to kick my mental state up a notch.

I wasn’t hungry, but given my overall “droopy” state, I decided to eat something. I had a clementine for sugar, and a cheese stick for protein. And I felt moderately better. I got a big glass of water, because I am *never* hydrated, and instead of sipping on it, I told myself I needed to actually *drink* it in longer swallows. I got out of my chair and stood up, because I wanted to get the blood flowing.

And after all that, I looked at the software again, and it seemed slightly less daunting. So I took a stab at putting in my first plot line…and realized after I got a few cards in, that I was doing it wrong. But with that realization came the proverbial lightbulb moment when I realized how I needed to do it “right”. And I redid what I’d done, continued on, and managed to finish the entire plotting exercise, which in this particular piece of software, added all the necessary scenes right to my draft. So then I just had to divide what I’d already written into the scenes that were created, and then I knew exactly where I needed to go from there.

I purposefully kept my notes very vague and general, because if I know every detail of a story (or even a scene) before I sit down to write it, I lose interest in actually writing it because I already know it. But with a loose plot done, I had a general idea of what comes next, which makes actually jumping into the draft so much easier when I’m much more tired late at night.

Then I switched gears and wrote this blog post as a solid reminder that I need to take care of my physical needs for my brain to work optimally. I know it, but I need to *do* it, not right before I want to accomplish something (though it’s good knowing that’s an option, when I have time), but daily, so I don’t have to fight that procrastination, “don’t feel like it”, “no energy for new things” mentality.

This week hasn’t been a great writing week, but it had some great moments, and getting the LS story plotted so I can finish the thing was definitely one, in several different ways.

Next week I have three days vacation from the day job…which I’m hoping to use for a lot of publishing catch-up, but also some new words and process-testing as well. It should be a good week, and hopefully very productive.

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Writer’s Notes: February 5, 2022

Words This Week: 607
Current Projects: Gnome/Squirrel story
Editing: MM (a friend’s MS)

This week was not as productive as I’d have liked, but I still got quite a lot done. I had a couple of late starts, which meant not as much time for editing, unfortunately. And I’ve been slacking on reading too, just due to being distracted. I need to fix that this coming week.

You’ll notice the word count above – it’s small, but steady progress on the squirrel story, which turned into a gnome and squirrel story. I like it, I’m definitely on the right track, and I’ll have it finished next week for sure (maybe this weekend even, depending).

I subscribed to a time keeping app this week called Timesheet. It gives me an easy way to keep track of the time I spend on both writing and writing related tasks, and prompts me to record what I did when I stop the timer, which reminds me to keep track of word count. Could I do this myself for free? Absolutely. But this makes it feel more “official”, which in turn makes me less lazy about actually doing it. So, I’m trying this, for awhile, anyways.

While I’m working on staying in the new writing groove, I’m doing a lot of business admin on the publishing side as well. I have several older covers that have to be redone, and while I’m working on those, I’m also rewriting blurbs, adding tag lines, and reformatting those early book files to freshen them up. It’s very time-consuming, but it has to be done due to changing requirements on retail sites, so I’m slowly chipping away at the somewhat overwhelming project. Smashwords is the site requiring the larger covers, and since I make most of my writing income through them, it’s important to get these updated and moving through the distribution stream again.

Now that I’ve decided to get publishing again, I’m excited and impatient to get some books done and ready to go out. If I can just get my writing speed up a bit more (or a lot more – I’d really like to do at least 800-1000 words per day), I’d be super-stoked.

But, the important thing is, I’m writing, and making progress, however slow. And that’s good enough…for now.

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Writing Notes: January 31, 2022

Working On: Ornament story, Squirrel story
Editing: MM (a friend’s MS)

I wrote every night last week, and I keep telling myself I should keep track so I can see the progression. But, I often just sit down, open up my Freewrite and start writing, because I’m ready and I know I’m racing to get words in before the clock and my own end-of-day weariness take me down. Still, I get to the end of the week, and I’m curious as to how many words I got in. It really would take no effort at all to just write down the word count when I finish. I’m going to try keeping track of that this week.

The problem is, I’m working on a story that won’t work for the purpose I need it for, and while I can certainly find a use for it, I need to get a story that will work done. I also have several drafts in stages of disarray that I’d really, really like to finish and publish this year, because I’ve been working on them for so long, and starting new things isn’t getting those done. All four of them need to be either seriously revised or rewritten, and I feel like that should really be my first priority for the year.

I need to get tough with myself. I want and need to finish and publish these other stories. I think it would be very beneficial to my mental state, and motivating to get some things published again. It will take less time to finish “already in progress” drafts than to finish and revise/edit a new one, so it makes far more sense to finish what’s already started than to start new things.

I also think finishing those WIPs would be a good exercise in discipline and work ethic – I hate revising and editing, and that’s a big part of why those stories are all languishing. I need to push through that part of the process several times, so that it just becomes something I do, rather than something I dread. There will be a lot of rewriting involved with these (I’ve learned so much since I started them!), which I don’t mind so much, so it’s a good way to ease into the revision process, methinks.

With that in mind, this week, I’m setting the ornament story aside, and my main goal is to start and finish the squirrel story (which is the one I need for next Christmas). I’m still working on my editing/reading project for a friend (which I’m very much enjoying), and I’m also going to take some time and the shortest of those unfinished drafts (BD), and figure out what it needs to be finished so I can make a plan. I want to publish this draft in October, so having it ready to go this spring will put me ahead of the game (for once!).

So…another reset, but now that I have a good writing habit in place, it really shouldn’t be all that difficult to make good progress quickly.

Onward!

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Writing Notes: January 23, 2022

Working On: Ornament story, squirrel story
Editing: MM (a friend’s MS)

The good news is, my new writing time is working out beautifully. I’m getting back to my office earlier in the evening, and that allows me a good half hour or more to write before I start falling asleep and need to switch gears. As I get more used to writing every night, I’m writing faster, too, so all in all, things are going well.

The only thing is, the story I’m writing isn’t going to work for its intended purpose. It’s running too long, and it just doesn’t fit the audience. So, I do want to finish this particular story for a different purpose, but I’m also working on plotting a smaller flash story for my 2022 Christmas card story. I wish I’d figured this out sooner, but…that’s how things go sometimes.

I’m hoping my writing speeds stabilize soon, so I can predict how many words I’ll be able to get done in a week, and then I’ll be better able to prioritize and schedule out stories and publication dates.

I had to set my editing project aside for a couple nights this week to get a cover redesigned, which is less than optimal, but I had to get one done so I knew how long it would take. Longer than I wanted it to, for sure, but now I know, so I can work it into my schedule. Luckily, I have a bunch of day-job vacation time I need to take before the end of March, so I’m planning on scheduling a day here and there specifically to work on projects like these.

This week, I plan to finish the ornament story, and at least start on the squirrel story. I also plan to work more on the editing project, and redesign one more cover.

Busy, busy, but it all needs to be done, and it feels good actually making progress for once instead of getting more behind by just not doing anything.

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Writer’s Notes: January 18, 2022

Working On: Ornament Story
Editing: MM (a friend’s MS)

I opened the last post on my cell just to see when I last posted, and aside from the fact that it’s been six months (it was kind of a crazy fall), the blog template doesn’t work well on mobile, does it? I added that to my list of things to update. It’s too bad, because I really like the way this one looks, overall. Very…”writerly”. Alas, change is inevitable, as we’ve learned all too well from this pandemic-ridden world.

As far as writing goes, it’s a new year, and I’m in a new headspace. Those sacrifices I was talking about last July? I’m actually, finally making them. The most important one has been giving up the local news at 10pm (that was the only newscast I watched – I don’t get home until the early news is over). It’s half an hour that I took back specifically so I could get back to my home office earlier while I’m still awake enough to write.

And it’s working. I’ve written at least ten words (yes, it’s small…that’s the point, it’s just a hurdle to get me going) every weeknight since the first of the year. And once I start falling asleep at the keyboard, I know it’s time to switch to reading, which I’m finally making time for again too.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been combining reading with editing, simply because I’m editing a manuscript that’s not mine. I’m very much enjoying this particular story as I go through making notes in the margin, and also just sinking into a story that’s not mine again.

I made one other change that isn’t working quite as well as I’d hoped, but is still contributing to the abbreviated evening. And that is, instead of playing involved life-sim games at night in the hour between walking the dogs and starting my late night routine, I put together a digital jigsaw puzzle. Just one, and it’s enough to sort of get my brain relaxed and out of the day, but still ready to sit down and be creative.

I was hoping to use that time for publishing minutia, but the dogs and husband have other ideas, generally. So I’m working on trying to make time for those things on the weekend. But I still feel like I’m putting the time to better use, which makes me more relaxed and ready to sit down with the words later on.

I’m turning 47 this coming Monday, and it’s a very good age for me, for a lot of reasons. But one of the things that has hit me is that while retirement from the day job is much closer than it used to be, it’s not close enough, and I don’t want to wait any longer to write.

Being a writer is the only thing I’ve ever really wanted to do. And I am, but I want more from what I’m currently treating as more of a hobby, because I’m too practical to chuck it all and “be a writer”.

So, time to go after what I want. How badly do I want it? I guess we’ll see.

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