Kate Larking's Blog: Anxiety Ink, page 70

Quagmires: Pros and Cons

I was going to open up with a Family Guy joke…ha. Seriously, I bet you could get stuck to Quagmire. He seems like he’d be sticky…

Anyway.

I believe I mentioned in my last post that I’ve been stuck editing one story for the past few months. Because my life is so utterly unbalanced right now I pretty much edit it on Sunday afternoons; that’s the day I have the energy and staying power to sit in front of my story and immerse myself in it. I just can’t seem to edit, or even write, after work right now and the other days off I’ve been given were taken over by appointments and chores.

On the one hand, I like being able to focus on one story with its specific cast of characters and world. Being quagmired allows me to stay attuned with my setting and get to know these characters closely which allows me to work the story better according to them. With every read through I’m able to see more clearly what details stay true to plot, motivation, etc.

On the other hand, this story is taking up ALL of my time. I have done zero writing, aside from my blog posts and edits, since I started my full time job. That was the beginning of December. DECEMBER. Gah.

I think I’ve been on this one for much too long. Luckily, my attention to it is largely sporadic and I’m still enjoying working with it. All in all, I love devoting my time to one story versus spreading myself thin and trying to juggle too many threads. Still, yet again, I have to concede my lack of headway here. That part I don’t love.

What are other people’s thoughts on getting quagmire long- or short-term?

Goal Checkup

Elisa started this really weird idea of accountability to our new year resolutions. Say Whaaatttt??

So here is my checkup and let’s see how this is going.

Revise interWIRED and query  - I got stuck at the end of January after snagging on a worldbuilding issue. Talk about major pain in the ass. Mentally, I have the story back on track. I’m letting it ruminate a bit more because I take pen to paper.
Write 6 days a week  - Getting there. some days are chore heavy. Some days, I’m applying to jobs like a crazy woman. One week, I was out of the country. But I feel I have a better system in place now. I have my post-job trauma put aside and am able to buckle down and get to work.
Walk or Work Out 6 days a week  - I’m at between 3-4 times a week on the treadmill. Walking was tough given this horrific winter of -30-ness. But I am getting out when it’s not -30 or disastrously icy. I’ve signed up for a 10K run in May. Hopefully I can run it all (except for this one killer hill part) and, if not, I at least have to finish
Submit a short story a month  - HAH! Not happening. I’ve leaned more towards developing novel ideas. However, there is a short story in the wild I am waiting to hear back on…
Minimize book and magazine purchases - I have actually done really well on this. I have not bought as many magazines and my book buying has been relatively curbed. I can go to the book store and not come out with 300 books in my arms. Most of the time, i actually leave empty-handed O.o This being said, I am tapped out on holiday giftcards. Most of those went to ebooks *sigh*.

How about you? How have you done up until now on your resolutions?

Checking Goals: First Quarter

It’s still early in the year for a lot of my goals, but it’s always fun to check in. It also helps light a fire to keep me motivated and on track.

Here is my post on 2014 goals and mile-markers, in case you want the reminder.

In travel goals: I have plane tickets for Istanbul in May (but holy catfish, is there a lot to do between now and then)! ReaderCon is far from set in stone. I desperately want to go, but I’ll have to take stock of my finances after Istanbul to see if that’s a stupid move or not. World Fantasy is set in stone. I’ve had my membership since 2012 and I’ve reserved the hotel. Flights, however, have to wait as it might be a multi-purpose trip.

Over on my personal blog, I said that I want to write every day, but not beat myself up over missing the occasional day. My tally system has been going strong — only two days, so far! — and I’m doing better than I ever anticipated. The tallies are celebration of all the days I’ve written just for me. I don’t feel guilty when I add a mark, and it’s so much more fun than trying to reach a certain goal.

I’m writing a lot more slowly than before. The current novel draft — the same one I was working on during NaNo — should have been finished by the end of January, at the very latest. Instead, I still have a chapter and a half to go. But I think I might be coming to terms with my lack of speed.

So I’ve struck a better balance with writing and the day job. And thanks to my husband encouraging me to cut back on time wasters (like video-binging) last month, I’ve actually managed to get more accomplished.

Social media is harder. I’m doing more, though my Twitter (@mjkingwrites) appearances are still sporadic. I think I’m finding a better balance with writing for my personal blog. But I’m beginning to suspect I have a finite attention span for communication with this current job of mine.

I don’t think I’ve written a single letter this year. (Sorry, Kate!) When it comes to phone calls and emails, I have dropped the ball more than once these last few months. And working full time, I don’t want to leave the house on my days off, which significantly adds to the difficulty of spending time with friends and family I sometimes like.

But at least I know what I still have to work on!

Goal Checkup

This is the first of my quarterly goal checkups, you know, those goals I wrote about back in January. I have to say, I’ve been avoiding writing this post. One, because March, like February, snuck up on me! All of a sudden I’m in the second week of March and it feels like I’ve only just blinked on New Years. How come time never passes this fast when I want it to? Two, I’ve been very lazy in the achieving goals department. And in denial in regards to my not paying attention.

I have lots of excuses but you probably don’t want to read about them….

Needless to say, I haven’t done my goals much justice. I’ve been trying with a few of them but overall I’m not at all happy with myself. The list is posted on the wall in front of my desk and every time I look up from my computer (the item most consistently in front of me when I’m in my swivel chair), I have overwhelming feelings of guilt.

Since avoiding my wall is somewhat impossible -I do basically live in that room- my guilt has finally pushed me to get my butt in gear with a few goals. Here are the ones I’m on top of (in one way or another):

I’m tackling my apocalypse story for What Follows almost every weekend. Having just a few uninterrupted hours during one day of the week, the one I’m not dead tired, is making me lag behind pretty bad. The story is almost presentable though!
Like I said above, I only have a few uninterrupted hours where my head is screwed on straight. It’s basically devoted to editing so I am not getting my 1000 words a week in. This is a life/balance issue I need to rectify asap because I’m standing still right now.
I’ve been reading quite slowly this year but I’m taking my “4th old book” rule seriously! I just finished the oldest book on my tbr pile and absolutely LOVED it. I like this goal already!
All of us at Anxiety Ink are at weird points in our lives but we’ve been keeping steady with Anxiety, which I’m very happy about! I say we’re concretizing.
I really need to exercise regularly. REALLY need to.
My mom would really like it if I cooked…
I’m on the accountability train! I need to do better but I’m holding on.
I’m kind of positive?
I’m stuck in a gargantuan reference book right now, but I haven’t bought any others. I can’t decide if this is a good thing?
I’m being more social lately, barely. I’m trying!
I’m still VERY cluttered –which is irritating.

I have no new goals to add right now. I do have some contests I wish to enter and that might help a few of the above.

Realistically, I can’t tackle all my goals at once. I know this and yet those feelings of inadequacy like to rear their head. But, of course, there are easy goals on my list that I should focus on instead of stressing about the big ones. That’s kind of why I put them on there. D’uh, self.

How are everyone else’s goals/resolutions going?

Author Marketing

I have been reading a lot about marketing lately. It’s not entirely unusual for me–I do have a degree in marketing where I vastly enjoy theory but am wary about non-arts practice.

A lot of the marketing information I have been able to look at involves indie and self-published authors working on building a platform. A lot of the information has been focused on the practical, time-constrained tactics of Kindle and KDP, mailing-lists, websites, and social media accounts. There are discussions on presence in those medias, being certain you have control over reader communication channels you are establishing, bundling purchases, marketing funnels, blah blah blah. Interesting to me, likely dull if I were to summarize here without any information of my own to add.

However, a lot of these voices have one thing in common: they start their spiel with, “Now, I/we do not have an education in marketing.”

So let me weigh in on the most pronounced trend I have seen that really needs to be recognized between both self-published authors and traditionally published authors, something a few hit on but most miss while drowning in technicalities:

As an author, you should not focus all of your “marketing” energy on understanding sales and discounts. By doing so, you are bribing readers/customers to purchase your books/goods. Marketing is about connecting with readers, creating value in your book/series/author identity that both you and the reader can enjoy.

All books all the time? It can look a little dull, kind of like the above image.

What does this mean?

Presenting your passions in reflection of your writing. The more your readers buy into you being an authentic reflection of your worlds and work, the more the more motivated they are to support you. This is especially important for fantasy writers, I think. The more you act as a point between your reality-based reader and your fantasy-based work, the easier it is to connect the readers to your work, to keep them engaged in your marketing without it feeling like a disingenuous sale.

Your online presence is a marketing tool, the widest net you can spread. It is important to have it–and even more important that you use that presence correctly. If your mindset is only sell-sell-sell, your readers won’t really want to buy-buy-buy into you, into your work, into your world.

The more you can connect with them over your passions above and beyond writing, the more you connect with your reader on an emotional level above any beyond marketing and sales techniques, the better off both you and your reader will be.

Readers seek to be connected if they are online. They don’t look for their favourite authors on social media, on author websites, on mailing-list to find out when the next book is out–they can use Amazon or any online bookseller for that. They want you as an author to snag them, to bring them into an additional depth into your creativity, your created worlds, your books. They want that online presence, that marketing, to serve them as bonus material above and beyond a product they liked.

Establishing that connection with a reader? That makes for good marketing.

Changing Scene

While we happen to be on the topic of settings, I have another approach to offer.

We all know how easy it is to get stuck in a rut, creatively (and otherwise). Even if you don’t believe in writer’s block, I’m betting you’re familiar with ruts: nothing comes out right, or very little does, productivity crawling at a snail’s pace, creativity seems tapped dry . . .

Sound familiar?

Problems focusing tend to typify these phases for me. Really, that’s one of my greatest challenges, period. (And when I do focus, interruption is grounds for bodily harm. You have been warned.)

You would think that trying to write someplace with more — or at least different — distractions would work in opposition to attempts at focusing. And you’d be right. Some of the time.

I have friends who write best in coffee shops. I write best when I don’t have the distraction of the internet. (Harder to achieve, now that I have a magic phone.) But I also have the tendency to fall into habits, often bad ones, and the only way to break them is to shock the routine.

One reason I like to get out of the house and write at other places is because it shakes things up and keeps those bad habits from sticking.

At the same time, I’m cheap, gas isn’t, and it’s nearly a half-hour drive, minimum, to places I can write without my fingers going numb.

I can’t wait for summer.

Recently, I took a break from the novel (it’s so close to done, this is driving me crazy) and all the bad habits that have slowly settled back into place, and spent a morning at a coffee shop owned by friends of mine.

The place is amazing, as are they and their coffee, so if you’re ever in Bar Harbor, I recommend stopping at the Trailhead Cafe. Seriously.

I needed the break from home both because of my recent rut and because of the need to switch gears as I went from rough drafting a novel to editing a short story. It worked. Between the time at the cafe and the time in an empty theater (one of my favorite writing spaces, by the way), I edited the whole short story. While visiting with friends and watching a show.

It’s dangerous — new spaces can become their own bad habit — but it can be a necessary shock to the system. It’s one way to get past ruts and writer’s block.

Do you have any favorite methods?

The Complications of Choosing Setting

To explain my title further: I’m not going to talk about putting a setting into your work or discuss the best details I think you should use in order to do so. What I want to bring up today is the process of actually choosing the locales where your story takes place. I want to do this because I think the process involves more than picking your favourite city and throwing your characters in it; culture, history, customs, traditions ALL factor in because they affect what your story can do.

One of my favourite prof’s had us read a book called Place: A Short Introduction when we were studying Edmund Spencer’s works. I won’t get into the Edmund Spencer part, but the idea behind reading Place was to get our minds thinking about the intricacies of where events took place. Place/space is multilayered, and there’s so much you can do on a metaphorical and metaphysical level with location. But that’s getting way beyond my expertise.

Bear with me here, I have to delve a bit more into my history in order to convey what I want to convey.

As most readers know I’m Canadian, if you didn’t know that SURPRISE. Not. Anyway, Canadian writers have a bit of a problem when it comes to their writing that not a lot of writers from other countries have, and I am going to single out American writer’s especially here. This problem concerns setting our stories in Canada because this affects the commerciality of the story –in some circles. Stories set in the US don’t have this issue; globally, the US is seen as an ”everywhere” full of “every people.” Canada doesn’t have that status.

This is a real point of contention for me because I like my country and I want my stories to be accessible to a wide audience. I was actually so irritated by this idea that I incorporated it into my honours thesis and took a number of history courses about the US, Canada, and even an American/Canadian cultural comparative course. In case you’re wondering, I didn’t come up with any definitive answer and had to change my research direction because I wasn’t getting anywhere with the questions I was asking. Bugger.

Retrospectively, after reading more stories by Canadian authors set in the US and abroad and being able to look at my thesis with some distance, I’ve had a few revelations about this Canadian setting conundrum.

I’ll use Kelley Armstrong’s Omens as my prime example. Armstrong is an author based out of Ontario, famous for her Women of the Otherworld series. The first two books in that series are narrated by the character Elena, who is Canadian, but set mostly in New York. And, the series didn’t actually take off until book three came out, narrated by Paige, who was born and raised around Portland. Now, Elena is a werewolf and the books she narrates are intensely gory and violent. Paige is a white witch, but there’s a decent amount of violence in her life. You can look at it from two angles, really, but I’m supposed to be talking about Omens here.

Omens is set outside of Chicago. After reading the first chapter I will admit that I was pissed, I figure if you’re a Canadian you should choose your country over salability of your story, by golly! I took it a bit personally…for the life of me I have no idea why. Probably bad timing after not being able to come up with answers for my project. And other neurotic writer issues.

Now (that I have my sanity back), and I’ve dissected aspects of the story, I understand it. My best example with this book involves guns. There needs to be easy access to legal guns in Omens and there’s a high level of gun violence involved. I think it’s well understood that it is easy to get your hands on guns in the US, moreover, they are perceived much differently in the US than in Canada. It’s damn near impossible to get a legally owned gun here, and damn near as difficult to keep it. There are more regulations it seems than guns in our country. If Omens was set in Canada all of those parts would have to be amended in the story because they legitimately do not work in our country. I will concede that this would wreck a lot of really good parts of the story, and overly complicate others.

Lesson learned: writers can set their stories wherever they please because it’s their story and their choice –as long as setting makes sense.

So that’s what I’m talking about when I say choosing where your story takes place involves so much more than you sometimes think. Ciao!

The Special Curse

We all want to write about characters who are special. Often, in fantasy, to make a character stand out, we write and read about queens and kings, princes and princesses, ladies and knights, and hidden heirs. In fantasy, the stakes are usually world-challenging, trend-bucking, magic-changing.

We wonder. We dream. We want to see a girl who can change the world.

But often, we take those characters and give them prophecies to fulfill, lovers to mesmerize, rivals to who are defeated to only showcase that rival’s own evil and hideous motivations.

But is that a challenge?

Are our characters really allowed to struggle and emerge triumphant without a hidden legacy? Or a secret legitimacy for seeking power?

Are our characters really given the ability to fight for what they want? Fighting is where characters–people–can grow the most. Fighting for something we want and believe in.

But as we think more and more in developing our characters, sometimes we give them things that they haven’t had to fight for. Or we give the reader too much assurance of success. Or we give the character too much cluelessness about the situation to know how to apply themselves, to stretch and to grow, in order to achieve what they need to achieve, plot-wise and character-wise.

Characters need to fight for what they need to survive and thrive. Characters need more than specialness to back them up when a tight situation comes around. While dynamic and loyal friends can assist, they need the character to appreciate them more than just as a tool along the path of the journey. Characters need to earn loyalty in that regard.

While characters can have a background mythology or a guiding prophecy, they need to earn their success.

While it seems basic, there are so many temptations to give the protagonist an extra boost, an extra shove into a class for specialness reserved for those whose stories are meant to be told. Our histories often only tell the tales of the remarkable elite. There is a note in most guides to writing romance that mid-to-low class Regency or Victorian characters do not make good reads; readers don’t want to face the realities of those times in escapist literature. But as we work to make our characters more and more a breed of fighters, there is more story to be had, more engagement and adventure to be seen, more genre to explore.

Golden Silence

Why do some people have such a difficult time with silences?

I mean, I get it — if you’re used to a constant hum of noise, quiet can be unnerving. It cues your brain that something is wrong. And it can be exhausting. If your brain is used to filtering out the background noise, suddenly not having anything to filter is like how your cell phone will drain its battery searching for a signal where there is none.

But an inability to withstand quiet, to feel the need to fill the space with something — anything — that, I don’t understand. What is so terrifying to exist in your own head for two minutes?

Seriously, if anyone out there has an answer, please share.

As a mass generalization, I think writers are one of those groups more at ease with silences. We exist so much in our own heads, anyway. I am fortunate I grew up in a family that never needed to chatter away the quiet, and my husband is even more quiet-loving than I am.

It certainly helps productivity. I can’t do much of anything with someone constantly talking at me, and I’m not alone in this.

Background music while writing, especially if the music somehow relates to the scene or story I’m working on, is great, but my preference is for silence. Maybe because my I don’t own a TV and rarely play music without headphones, my ability to do anything with that sort of thing in the background is drastically reduced from what it once was.

But even as a kid, I found that filling a space with noise when I was with others made me less mindful of my time with them. My parents divorced not long after I started kindergarten, so I’ve had more than two decades to study what “quality time” means in a practical sense. When you only have two days with someone you love, how do you make those fulfilling? The more we tried to do, to cram into that frame, the greater the dissatisfaction at the end of it.

I loved the quiet moments best. The times we just existed together, speaking if we had something to say, but otherwise just basking in each other’s presence.

So I really can’t comprehend the need to fill the silences. Please weigh in: agree? Disagree? Where do your comfort levels lie?

Neil Gaiman Awe

I will not be surprised if the title of this post caught your eye. Neil Gaiman has a following the likes of which isn’t seen very often when it comes to writers. But he’s so cool! And just a little bit odd. Or a lot odd. Take your pick.

I was lucky enough (in no small part because of Kate’s ingenuity), this past Monday, to have a ticket to see Gaiman speak as the University of Calgary’s Distinguished Writers Program’s guest. It was incredible!! For a man of many varied works, Gaiman is not a man of very many spoken words. At least he wasn’t at this venue. With is slightly Americanized English accent, he speaks with great care and thought, something I truly appreciate.

I took so much away from the talk. SO MUCH, but I won’t write all of it down. Because I don’t have time, or space. And attention spans will wane with my nattering.

I will discuss the most important thing I think Gaiman said: don’t ever let anyone put you in a box. When he was a young journalist, he told us of bestselling authors he interviewed, ones unhappy with their writing lives because publishers wanted them to write the same thing over and over because they were so successful at it the first time. It’s a money game to some, life for others. Gaiman never wanted that, he didn’t want to be told what to do and he consistently says no when publishers ask him to perform repeats. He’s an artist that wants to create, not paint by numbers.

I love an author with spine.

This was his first topic and the one that resonated with me throughout the rest of the evening. I’ve always been multi-generic: I read nearly every genre and I would honestly like to write in all the genres I love. Right now, for ease of explanation, I claim to write urban fantasy because when people ask me what I write and I say, “Oh, just about anything,” they’re lost. It’s frustrating for me because I don’t want to be confined and frustrating for them because they want to label me.

The box metaphor has inspired me though! I’ll write what I want and people can say what they want about it. I have lots of stories in lots of genres to tell and I’m going to do just that.

Like I said, I could continue to gush, but I’ll keep myself under control. I will end with yet another solid gold piece of advice (paraphrased!) from the incredible Mr. Gaiman: “If the world doesn’t care what you have to write, don’t fret, because the world can’t read. It’s a world. Besides, if you reach just one reader, you can potentially change the world for them. And that’s a heck of a lot more awesome.”