Kate Larking's Blog: Anxiety Ink, page 7

Ink Link Roundup -books, books, and more books

Since we’re in the midst of gift-giving season, here’s a list of books for the STEM-minded people in your life (younger and older):

7 Books with Brainy Ladies in STEM

And a list for the writers in your life–with books all of us have recommended at one time or another!

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Am I Micromanaging Myself?

At the day job there is a chronic issue with micromanagement. My particular district has struggled with results for the last decade or so; the answer the powers that be have come up with involves tracking—anything and everything—and conference calls—nearly every day, sometimes feeling like they last all day—and incessant nagging for “action plans.” Apparently, the ideal solution to this problem is to make more useless work for people and take up time they could otherwise use to apply themselves to tasks that would help them hit targets and solve the issue in the long run.

But I digress.

My specific office is usually shielded from the micromanaging because we have consistently good results and our manager doesn’t bother us with requests about tracking and plans when those demands comes down the ladder. She was gone for two weeks recently and my manager stepped into that role to cover. She barely made it through. And I barely made it through having to hear about it.

As I tried to come up with something to write about today, I scrolled through old posts like I normally do when looking for inspiration. I saw my 6 Month Tracker Post and thought I should do an update. I immediately realized I had decided a couple of months ago that I am not going to continue with that kind of productivity recording come 2018 (I will write a wrap up post). Then I thought, yeesh, I track myself in a lot of odd ways.

Of course, this led me to the big thought: Am I micromanaging myself?

I have a tendency to let life take over and forget to do my tracking. Then I spend close to an hour sometimes playing catch up. That’s close to an hour I could spend writing. Or reading. Or getting better things done. I have somehow conflated tracking with productivity; I have turned the recording of productivity into actual productivity in my mind, and that is not the case.

For instance, if I am behind on my targets and goals and I start seeing those numbers regularly somehow I believe I will recognize that I’m failing and I’ll intuitively correct the problem. Instead of applying myself to writing I track how little writing I’m doing—like giving myself trouble will help me straighten up and fly right. Having seen this kind of treatment firsthand in my district I know the opposite is true. It sucks the fun and life out of everything. It destroys motivation. It wastes time.

I do like to track my output and the time I spend doing all the things I do in terms of writing. But I need to develop a system that doesn’t detract from the joy of writing. Because it should still be a joy regardless of how hard it can be. I used to record my word output in timed intervals. It was easy and let me be competitive with myself. It was fun. Why did I change that?

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Ink Links Roundup

This week, I found out that Leonardo DaVinci’s notebooks are now available to read for free online. How cool is that? So much story research potential…

Kate has an excellent Twitter thread for us, courtesy of Seanan McGuire about foundational texts in sci-fi/fantasy. (As a sf/f writer who has read very little Asimov, absolutely no Heinlein, and couldn’t make it past the first few chapters of The Hobbit, let alone any of Tolkien’s other work, I love this thread.)

Elisa found a list of six YA sci-fi books that everyone can get into.

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Changing Process, Setting Targets

There are milestones in life where changing becomes unavoidable. Becoming a parent is one of them. Going into this, the only thing I really knew was that I didn’t know what would happen.

What I had not prepared for? Significant changing of my writing process. I had not anticipated that my process could alter so much so quickly.

What I’ve learned so far (originally part of this post on my personal blog):

Don’t draft by hand when I’ll have to transcribe it later. This little one just does not allow me that much time, so in the interest of productivity and my mental state, this is no longer an option (after having been my preferred process for more than a decade). And no, I’m not interested in dictation software; composing aloud is a tragedy waiting to happen, I don’t want to use a crap program that will just cause me more work in the long run but can’t justify to myself the expense of a good program, and the times it would be most useful – so far – are times when I least want to risk waking the baby.
Multiple projects at once are my friends. Where before I couldn’t split my focus enough to make this a feasible approach, split focus is now my baseline standard. Can’t make words come on one project? Switch to another. Most recently, I’ve had two short stories in process of rough draft going in Scrivener, plotting of another short story by hand (because plotting just works me through things; I don’t have to type it later), and a novel manuscript on my Kindle for the necessary read-through before tackling revision.
Don’t power through; sleep. When the computer starts sliding off my lap, or the pen starts making feathery blotches on the page, or the Kindle starts slipping from my fingers, it is past time for me to sleep. I need to be functional for the little one, and I need to be functional to make my words coherent.

To go with these new quirks of process, my attempt at NaNoWriMo has given me an idea of my new limits. (Stats tracking is a wonderful thing!)

By the end of the month, I will have written 12,000 words. Many of those blog posts in various corners of the internet and pages in my journal. So not story-writing, but they count.

My various targets going forward:

10,000 words for the month of December, between holidays and returning part time to work
8 blog posts
3 short stories to various states of finished/polished
50 pages revised in the novel

Really, all of these are only for December. I’ll revise again from there, particularly the novel revision, as I don’t have a clear grasp of what I can reasonably expect of myself.

All in all, I would say my attempt at NaNo has been a success. At least, I’ve gotten what I hoped out of it.

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Do You Know Your Writing Style?

Last Monday I completed a timed assignment for my current PR course in which I had to write three news releases incorporating facts the instructor listed for us. We had a 25 minute block for the first story, then 20, then 15; the whole idea was to teach us how to work within a time constraint and be creative under pressure. It was also an opportunity for us to develop and/or apply our own writing style.

That phrase always amuses me: Writing style. I’ve been writing for so long that I don’t actively think about what my style is when I approach a piece or assignment. I just attack it.

I did, however, attempt to pay attention to my style after the fact this time. I’ve determined mine varies depending on the audience and what exactly I’m writing, but I do have some commonalities that thread through all of my pieces:

My writing is imagery heavy: I love metaphor. I love beautiful language. While I’m no poet, I do have a tendency to get creative when given the opportunity. There is no law that states certain writing has to be boring and only other writing can sing.
I write with an elevated vocabulary: I like words and I know many. I have never excelled at dumbing myself down, not that I think people who don’t use “fancy” words are dumb. I do my best to be clear and not confuse my audience, but I also have faith that people can and do understand bigger words than they think they might. Context is pretty helpful on that front.
I’m blunt: Both on paper and in life I have a tendency to tell it like it is. I’ve never been good at sugar-coating; I’m simply a realist. People who prevaricate drive me nuts and I personally prefer being told good and bad things directly. I know this seems to counter my love of imagery, but obviously there’s a time and a place for both. For instance, with fiction, you should never go into a long-winded description of scene or emotions in the middle of a fight scene. Always stick tight to the action.
I enjoy creating long, complicated sentences: This is not necessarily a positive. I’m constantly editing myself to make sure my sentences are clear and concise. I am excellent at burying clauses within other clauses; however, that doesn’t mean the reader is going to follow me as well as I follow myself. This is why editing is utterly important.

That’s about the extent of my self-analysis. Do you know your writing style?

 

P.S.: Apparently writing style is something I think about more than I realized! Nearly two years ago I wrote this post on writing style after reading Blood Cross and Acceptance. I tackled much different aspects in my first post.

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Late Post, and an Absence

Posting super late today. Given how much I am working (around 10 hours a day), I just haven’t had time to develop as a writer or reader, think of topics, and keep up with blogging.

So unfortunately I will be low on updates for a while, as I sort out things in my life and keep earning money to offset my parental leave.

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Ink Links Roundup

Having passed that tipping point of 30 years, and having been that child who at seven thought she was already too old to start some things, Melissa occasionally needs this reminder that she’s not “too late” to become a successful writer (whatever the definition of “success”).

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Kate has been continuing to waffle on what to do with her personal website. For those who don’t have one yet, here’s a good starting point post about whether or not you should have one.

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Why NaNoWriMo is Liberating for Some Writers and Dangerous for Others

This post really hit home for Kate, as she doesn’t usually participate in NaNoWriMo even though the allure is so great.

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NaNoWriMo Check-In: Weeks 2-3ish

From Kathleen: a status report!

I’ve fallen behind!

I was doing pretty well until Day 13, when I didn’t quite make the word count. After that, I compounded things by not adding to my novel for the next 6 days. (Spoiler alert: much of Week 3 has been a wash.)

As of today (Day 19), I’d need to write 2,412 words per day to finish on time. *Le gasp!* It’s doable, but lo, it will be hard.

Something this NaNoWriMo attempt has been good for is helping me notice patterns in my writing style and writing needs that NaNo helps or actively works against. My NaNo daily word counts look like a staircase: I’ll write ahead, not write for a few days—during which I fall behind—and then jump ahead again. I’ve been doing that because I’m primarily a pantser: a writer who doesn’t plot their story out ahead of time. Other terms for that are “compass” writer, “gardener” (vs. “mapper” and “architect,” respectively, which I learned from a Spanish-speaker when comparing writing styles), and “discovery” writer. If I know too much about how things play out, the story loses the magic that makes me want to sit down and write it. When I did NaNo in 2006, pantsing benefitted me: I hadn’t planned things out, so every day was a new discovery on the way to the group’s ultimate destination.

Something else that worked in my favor in 2006 was not planning to try to publish the novel I was writing. I was writing it to see if I could, not to make something worth re-working. Writing with that mindset, if the characters spent a scene quibbling over something inconsequential, that was fine. If I left a scene in brackets to go back and write later because I didn’t want to bother writing it now, that was also fine. I wrote the scenes that interested me, summarized the rest, and moved on, riding the magic of discovery and learning the characters and world along the way. In the 11 years since, I’ve opened the novel document less than five times, and haven’t reread it even once. I’m not interested. It was a throwaway novel, a learning experience, and a challenge I committed to meeting. Just by finishing on time, I got what I wanted to out of that novel: a challenge met by deadline and the knowledge I could do it if I ever needed to. The words and decisions I made ultimately didn’t matter, because a novel I could publish with my name on the front was never the goal.

My goal this NaNoWriMo is different. It’s to finally finish a novel I started years ago. And while I’m still writing to discover, still riding the magic of learning the characters and seeing what happens next, this isn’t a throwaway novel; this is something I care about. I plan to finish the rough draft, reread it, revise it, submit the novel for publication, and hopefully be proud of it when all is said and done.

At this point, I no longer think I’ll finish the novel this month. Parts of it are already going on longer than I anticipated, and I’m not sure at this point how much of that is my NaNo word count requirements making permissible tangential exchanges I’ll want to cut later, and how much is the story stretching out to fill a bigger shape than I’d anticipated it needing. I’m not worrying about that until the draft is finished, but still, it’s something I’m wondering.

I’m writing chronologically again, but this time I’m not using brackets so I can skip to the good parts. Character arcs, not plot, are the focus of this novel, so I need to know the details of every character interaction so they can be built upon in future scenes. That means I have to write the less exciting bits, which is slowing me down.

Something else slowing me down is not having time for the next scenes to percolate in my head before the NaNo deadline necessitates getting more words on the page. My stair-step word counts are that way because I needed time between scenes to figure out what the shape of the next scene was, what the emotional beats would be, what felt right for where the characters were in the story. When I was ready to write the next part, I’d know. When the next part wasn’t clear in my head, I’d feel resistant to writing, and stare at the page in frustrated bafflement as I tried to puzzle out what insight I was missing about my characters and the shape of the story that made putting words down at that moment feel so aimless and wrong.

That’s why I didn’t write the last 503 words of Day 13’s target word count. That’s why the scene I began and have been stuck on since that day still won’t come. My story is telling me I’m missing something, something important, something key, and until I figure out what that is, it’s going to fight me so I don’t veer off track.

NaNo has helped me add 4 sections to my novel that I’d have written much more slowly otherwise. Doing NaNo with my housemate has gotten us both writing a lot more. But NaNo makes me feel rushed and lack confidence in my decisions, makes me write wholly by the seat of my pants in a way that is detrimental to my writing and enjoyment of the story…so I’ve had to be careful this year.

The best way to write is to do what works for you, not what someone says to do because it works for them. What that means for me is this:

If I’m writing a long-term project, I’m not going to write it every day. I need some days off, to refill the well and puzzle out the next scene or character conundrum, and I need other days to write for hours and hours and emerge from the finished scene as if from a baptismal fount. I’m a compass writer: I know the direction I’m going, the destination, and some stops along the way, and the magic lies in discovering and following the best path to get there.

NaNoWriMo’s deadline keeps trying to confiscate my compass, to override my internal guide through the story. Since I won’t let it do that, it behooves me to spend days I’m not adding to the novel working through the snarls in scenes I’m stuck on.

Since I was exhausted this past work week, I didn’t write for 5 days—not even to freewrite and puzzle out the current scene—so I’m about 10,000 words behind.

Can I catch up? Yes. Do I plan to try? Yes. Will I finish NaNoWriMo on time? That, I’ll let you know.

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Brain Food Shortage

If you’ve been reading my posts regularly since, well, January really, you’ll have seen a trend of tiredness and lack of focus. Both have been chronic issues most of my life, but this year I am really feeling them.

With my overloaded schedule in the past few months especially, I am noticing the effects on my mental acuity. I’m not getting nearly any reading done because the focus simply isn’t there; and I am so slow when I do sit down with a book that I’m slightly embarrassed. Not only that, I am barely getting any words down when I do sit and to write. Finally, my coursework assignments feel like they take me much longer than they should—admittedly, this is likely 80% a perfectionist issue compounded by a 20% exhaustion issue. My recall is awful, day to day. For someone who is used to remembering minute details in any given moment, I’m especially frustrated by this.

Anyway, this isn’t supposed to be a whining post—consider the above some scene setting.

Lately, I’ve developed an addiction to click-bait and gossip articles. A year ago, I would have stated outright that I don’t have the patience to read such garbage. Now, I tell myself I’m “looking into the human condition.” Uh huh. The more fatigued I grow, the more I don’t want to do anything, particularly anything mentally difficult.

I think this has turned into a legitimate, habitual mental laziness problem. Sure, I’m tired, but I’ve always been tired. A few months ago I was reading academic articles for an assignment and was struck by how much I missed doing so regularly. I felt mentally nimble, engaged, and present. Unfortunately, that feeling didn’t last. And it’s absolutely my own fault: I returned to reading the garbage.

It doesn’t help that right now much of my non-fiction time is devoted to (usually) mind-numbing textbooks. It also doesn’t help that I have no one to talk to about the brainier pieces I read; this is a big issue since I used to read those types of things in preparation for a discussion. Reading them and having just my perspective and thoughts is nowhere near as much fun. That’s a lame excuse though, and I might be slighting people in my life who would be interested in discussing them with me if only I would ask.

I’ve got some me time coming in December that will last nearly till the end of January. I need to get my reading life in shape! I need to dump the bad brain food and start nurturing the neurons again. I have to snap my brain out of this rut because I know it will translate into more creative output down the road.

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I just want to write!

Naturally, when one doesn’t have time to write, all one thinks about is writing. I just want to write.

Work two jobs is killer, especially when you’re low on funds so you know you need to work lots (yay parental leave. Definitely not financially relaxing). So when I am taking a few minutes, either showering or lying down to go to sleep, I want to write. I want to read. I want to be creative.

But I simply don’t have the time.

Given that I have given myself a pass on being productive outside of work from now until end of January–when the double work should end–I’m not fighting with some idealistic image that says I should be writing. That would be so devastating. One thing I’ve learned in setting goals here on Anxiety Ink is that when there are a lot of goals with diverse time needs set, you need to examine the time needs and what can realistically get done.

Working two jobs and writing? It can’t really be done without a significant sacrifice to my family, to sleep, to hygiene, to the basic things I need to be functional enough TO work two jobs.

My wife has been incredible and taking on a lot of home things, understanding because there is an end in sight. And the money won’t hurt right now from working two jobs at once.

But I still have this itch, where I want to write. I have an image in my head of writing that is way less time intensive than my usual writing, where I can plunk out a draft of a novel in hours. I WISH. My fingers are slow and sloppy when it comes to typing, and my brain can’t decide on one structure long enough to get the framework out. But I know that when February comes, I will be opening a document and putting at least an hour a day into writing because now I’ll understand what I can do with my time.

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