Kate Larking's Blog: Anxiety Ink, page 73

World Exploring

I keep assuring my fellow Inkettes that I’m going to write a post on world building. Soon. Every couple of months someone asks if it’s in the works on some end and I pop my comment bubble in and say, “I’m the one who keeps saying they’re going to do it!”

This isn’t it. I’m debating putting an evil cackle in here. I shall resist.

The reason I’m not writing one –yet– is because I feel like I’d be making it up as I go, which I do a lot, but it would be a lot of BS that I’d be passing off as useful information. Flying by the seat of my pants is one thing, lying is another. So, I’m going to focus on exploration rather than construction today.

Right now, I am a full-fledged urban fantasy explorer; I need a few more notches in my tool belt before I can don the hard hat and be certified as a constructor. I’m happy with my current position because I think it’s takes an adequate world traveler to become a sufficient world builder, and I’m having so much fun exploring. My main means of exploration is writing short fiction set in the world I want to write my UF series in. And, for some reason, I write short fiction from the perspective of other creatures, not the werewolves who are going to be the protagonists, because it allows me to study them from outside. Basically, I’m studying the other as a different other. I seem to like to make my life difficult.

But it’s really fun! The wolves are always significant characters who are in 90% of the story, but I don’t write in their voice or with any of their knowledge (in the final edits). I’m a bit strange in that I refuse to start working from their perspective until I understand them as individuals and a unit, the dynamic that works best for all of them, what their motivations are, limitations, tensions, and so forth. I don’t have all the details of their universe worked out yet, there are a few details that aren’t going to work for the long haul I intend and I just can’t start until I know.

Most importantly, for me, is that if I do write a detail in one of these pieces of short fiction and it ends up not working in my wolf series it’s ok –because it hasn’t come from a wolf. I can say with total alacrity that that detail is insignificant and can be wrong. I don’t consider that a cheat, I consider it phenomenal loop holing.

Don’t worry, I’m not sitting here twiddling my thumbs, my subconscious is hard at work and I have pages of notes. As soon as I have an epiphany about something or someone it’s written down no matter where I am. I’m getting close to the beginning.

In a nut shell, if you’re feeling uncertain about a world you’re creating, explore it in the guise of someone else. Throw yourself in that world as someone who can study really important characters as an outsider so you can see what works, what falls short, what’s illogical, and so forth. It sounds simple but I’ve figured out that a lot of avenues I had intended to travel down in my series make absolutely no sense, that certain motivations are ludicrous, and a few back stories are cliché. It’s a time consuming method but it works, and it allows me to perfect a different part of the craft.

If you have an alternate method I would love to hear it. If not, give this one a try and see where you end up.

Learning like a MF-eh!

I flip-flopped A LOT in the last year about getting an MFA. I figured if I found an institution that catered more towards fantasy, popular fiction, or young adult genres, I would have more success not only in my writing but surviving the program.

When I met Elisa several years ago, I had returned to my University for additional classes. Why? I wanted to take the creative writing classes I was too frightened to take in conjunction with my business degree. I had been paranoid about my GPA and wanted to keep it high before I took a writing course.

Because I believe I suck at all things English.

It’s a horrible thing to say but the more I say it and realize that is what I believe about myself, the more I want to defeat that line of thinking. I have never done well to my own standards in English classes. I scraped by high school with high 70s, low 80s in English and Social Sciences while my Chemistry and Calculus 98% grades offset my average into the mid 90s. It was something I could never figure out about myself–why could I not succeed in English into the high 80s, low 90s?

The answer is that I didn’t believe in my intuitions. I would read a piece and think that the theme I was considering was too obvious. I had to boil down my approach to literature to a basic and formulaic method of thinking in order to not diverge too much in my timed essays. It was horrible. I took extra tutoring for my English marks, believing I couldn’t read properly and that was the problem.

I didn’t believe in myself.

This continued through university. I was hesitant to take English classes for fear of failure. I read copiously, I reviewed young adult fiction for a national newspaper chain, but I still had no confidence in my own abilities. I graduated with a minor in English but only by taking tangental classes, usually in fantasy and queer literature because I felt I didn’t have the traditional English-learning chops.

My first English class in university, I got a D on my first paper and felt DESTROYED. “The ideas are there,” the teacher–who I later came to hate for many reasons but I will cite this among them–, “but the writing isn’t.”

That one assessment destroyed me for years. I boiled down my approach, removed any possible pronoun to remove confusion. I became hyper-detailed in my literature analysis, tearing apart scant quotes and literary devices because I couldn’t trust myself to branch out in assessing theme, character, motivation. I reverted to the details because it was all I could do to survive.

I sat in the writing course with Elisa years later but still simmered with a seething hatred for traditional creative writing teaching environments. I withdrew from the course, frustrated by the professors lack of appreciation for fantastic literature, and frustrated by the other students’ lack of conviction, submitting hastily written pieces littered with grammatical and spelling errors. I would learn on my own, I thought.

I drowned at work. I drowned in stress of life. It was all I could do to keep working and keep my spouse’s head above water as we faced trial after trial.

But in the last year, I looked for escape and school was that escape. I could try for an MFA, a distance learning one, where the genre I wanted to learn about would be appreciated as legitimate.

In the end, it was money that squashed that ambition. Most of the schools that offered fantastic MFAs were in the US and, as we all know, US graduate schools are EXPENSIVE. Especially compared to Canadian schools.

So, instead, I plan on teaching myself by writing lots and giving myself a lesson in the real world of writing. I am very self-conscious and have mostly low hopes for myself. But I’m hoping that I will grow out of my depression and gain confidence as a writer.

In other news, I am very proud of the Canadian pun in the title of this blog post. Perhaps a little too proud.

Favorite Procrastinations

We all have them: those guilty pleasures, where the guilt is not in the pleasure, but in the knowledge that they’re simply delaying tactics. Delaying getting on with our passions, our lives.

Yes, I’m talking about procrastination.

I love productive procrastination, where in putting off one thing, I do another that’s hovered on the end of my to-do list for ages. Sometimes, I do chores to procrastinate on writing, but more often, I write to procrastinate on chores. Productive procrastination still leaves me feeling accomplished.

More often, procrastination is highly UNproductive, although reading and spending time with friends and family can fall on either side of the line.

Hours spent scrolling Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter and mindlessly refreshing my email embarrass me to admit to, when I have so much else to do. Webcomics are dangerous territory for me, because I will binge until I’ve caught up. Streaming video? Stick a fork in me; I’m done. At least those have commercial breaks (as I am too cheap to pay for subscriptions), during which I might scribble a few lines.

My kryptonite is Korean dramas. Some call them soap operas, but I see them more as mini-series. Each episode tends to be over an hour long, with phenomenal acting and storytelling, and they don’t have season after season. The stories actually reach a resolution, if they’re going to.

K-dramas also offer instant gratification — the whole series available RIGHT NOW. But I’ve watched enough of them to understand the time commitment involved, so I’ve gotten a lot pickier. Like a book, the concept has to grab me. Then I generally give it about 15 minutes for the first episode to grab me (they usually do). But if it has Lee Min-Ho or Ha Ji-Won, all bets are off. Seriously, I am just waiting for the day when those two are cast opposite each other in a fantasy/action story — just crossing my fingers that it will have a happy ending instead of a tragic one!

So these are some of the ways I procrastinate. Tell me about yours!

Tackling 2014

The New Year is upon us and I am more than ready for a fresh start! 2013 marked some amazing changes in my life, as well as new goals, new realizations about myself and the past, and a lot of other heavy things I don’t wish to bore anyone with. Besides, 2013 is not my current focus. I’m finished with being retrospective, my eyes are facing forward.

I’m so excited for the newness of this year and I’m ready to set up some goals for the coming months. I’m a self-challenger but not always an actualizer, usually because I set HUGE goals that can’t be attained in my reality. I need to learn the concept of baby steps and moving progressively instead of diving in head first into arctic water. I’m tired of being shocked.

I want to stress I’m setting goals, not resolutions. I don’t make “New Year’s Resolutions” because my experience from watching those around me who do so is that they’re easily forgotten by February. This translates to an inherent meaninglessness. And resolutions are too restrictive, I feel like making a resolution is like making a binding contract with myself that says I need to change because the current me isn’t good enough, then I feel bad when I don’t.

Conversely, goals smack of fluidity, they can expand, morph, and be removed depending on circumstance. Most importantly: they can always be made, I don’t need an arbitrarily marked day to make a goal.

Now I’ll get down to my list, a list in no particular order that I plan to print and put on my wall for accountability’s sake.

 

My Goals for 2014

Complete “Brew Disaster” and shop it around until it’s picked up
Complete my story for What Follows, no matter the fate of our current kickstarter
Do the necessary research for my NaNo novella and do at least one rewrite
Write a minimum of 1000 words a week
For every 4 “new” books I read I want to pick up an “old” book off my TBR shelf
Complete my werewolf dossiers and a schematic for book one, at least
Concretize current elements of Anxiety Ink
Act like a smoker, i.e.: take time to go outside and breathe a few times a day
Make time to exercise more for better energy and health
Make dinner a few times a week
Be more accountable: put everything on the calendar, make time, and budget accordingly
Don’t take on more than I can handle, acknowledge my limits
Be positive
Read my writing and grammar books before buying more reference books
Shop my literary stories around
Write a book for NaNoWriM0 2014 instead of short stories
Take an interest and reach out
Organize my writing fodder –the working pile on the desk must go
Declutter
Read at least 3 Shakespeare plays this year

 

That’s it for now, like my goals my list is fluid so I will edit as the year goes on.

I would love to hear other people’s goals/resolutions/desires for 2014, so please share!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

Holy crap. It’s 2014. For the longest time, I didn’t think 2013 would ever end. I mean, I got married in 2013. The first part of the year was at a snail’s pace as I planned the wedding and all that stress fell into place.

Goals

The below goals will only be applicable on months that I am not employed. My year is so variable that this is all I can speak for at the moment.

Revise interWIRED and query – The big goal, really. I want to sacrifice this piece up to the traditional publishing world and see who will bite.
Write 6 days a week – I don’t want to set naive goals. I want to set goals that I can work to hit. At the end of the month, I want to average having written 6 out of 7 days of the week. I don’t have a wordcount goal. Some days will be edit heavy, others will be writing heavy. But I must write something for a creative piece 6 days a week.
Walk or Work Out 6 days a week – It’s winter when I’m writing this. But I can definitely walk or run on the treadmill no matter what the weather. I need to move more. As I was stuck at work in a cubicle and in a far away land (aka a somewhat dangerous neighbourhood that I didn’t want to venture out in), I let my health deteriorate. And I need to change this. I want to get back to my Ballet Barre studio and work out with those ladies–I loved it there and the music was great. I just got bogged down with stress big time and everything fell apart in the end of the 2013.In addition to this, I have to say, I am going to Hawaii in 7 weeks for my honeymoon. I am slightly motivated to distance myself from my heaviest weight ever in the downward direction on the scale.
Submit a short story a month – When I am not working, I feel that I can craft a short story a month in addition to my novel work. I will write it, edit it, have it critted, and send it out every month. I have the first few markets planned and a story drafted for January submission so I will continue to do this.
Minimize book and magazine purchases – While I hate the idea of this, I need to curb my spending. I have a to-be-read shelf that has well over 200 books, maybe 300 plus. Will I be able to eliminate this purchasing? Probably not; I’m a glutton. But I will try to limit this to only long-awaited books.

There may be more goals and different goals when I approach different milestones this year. Will I get a part-time job or a full-time job? Will we be starting a family this year? There are so many variables this year. This will be the first year that I have entered where I’m simply going in blind. I have some savings. I have no job. I have ideas and dreams. I have the support of my wife and my family. I have the potential to travel.

What I do know is that every day will be broken down into to-do lists and I will make sure to tackle an array of tasks, not over-focusing on one portion of the jobs to be done. I’m looking at 2014 as an opportunity for balance.

What are your goals?

Resolutions And Reflections

I love the magic of one year winding down and flowing into the next. I think we all feel it, to some extent, and we all hope that the next year will be better than the last. It’s so much easier to be conscious and aware of all the new beginnings.

My year has been pretty awesome: I got my first story published, this blog began, I met some amazing people and made some amazing connections, I even got a new (better) day job and spent two weeks in Ecuador. I finished (multiple!) short stories, I have an awesome start to a new novel (even if it won’t be finished as soon as I had hoped), and some truly fantastic and talented people critiqued another novel of mine.

All in all, I lucked out with a pretty amazing 2013. So how does 2014 get any better?

First things first, What Follows, the awesome apocalyptic fantasy anthology on Kickstarter that all three of us Inkettes are writing for, could make its funding. That would totally rock the start of the year. *Hinthinthint!*

Like most of the rest of humanity, New Year’s resolutions and I tend not to get along. But I do have goals, and goals give me something a little more concrete to strive for.

Travel goals for 2014: visit Istanbul, Turkey and my uncle who lives there with my grandmother, attend Readercon this summer and World Fantasy Con in DC this fall. (Just thinking about it makes me feel poor. But it will be so, so worth it.)

Writing goals: to be honest, I’m terrified of setting these. Mostly because the ones that immediately come to mind are highly dependent on others — things like getting an agent, selling novels and short stories. Those all require the collaboration of gatekeepers.

Three short stories and two novels sounds like a decent, if horribly ambitious, goal for the year. But I will be counting the current project as one of those novels, so that’s not as horribly daunting as it seems.

In write/work life, I aim to find a better balance, carve out more writing time, and ease back on the video-binging.

Also, I want to be better at interacting on social media. I am the type of person who will fall off the face of the planet, sometimes going years without contacting people I love. With email and social media, that happens less, but it does mean I am maybe more reticent about online interactions than some others. Living in a town with absolutely no cellular data connection doesn’t help matters, either.

When I first started thinking back, 2013 didn’t feel like a busy or productive year, but it has been. And the plans for 2014 look even more spectacular.

So how about it? What are you looking forward to in this new year?

Line, Please?

This week, Anxiety Ink posted this link about first lines on our Facebook page. It was a continuation of last weekend’s theme starter here. For this one, we said: “Nothing makes or breaks a book like the beginning, right?”

Right.

The examples both links provided not only impressed me, they made me think of books where I’ve repeatedly reread the opening lines because I just needed to relish them. Then I was struck by a highly disconcerting thought: When was the last time I really thought about the importance of the first sentence in my own work? Shame followed because I know I haven’t lately. The opening lines of a story are some of the most crucial and I’ve just been laying them out there in order to get to the rest of the story. BAD! Bad bad bad.

It’s the fundamentals of Writing 101 that the hook is everything. The importance of the first sentences you toss at a reader’s feet in order to make them want to keep reading cannot be understated. No brainer, right? Then where is my brain!?

I’ve been feeling somewhat dissatisfied with my writing lately, especially my approach, and I haven’t been able to put my finger on it. This is probably it. I think I’ve said before that I’m working in a new genre. Perhaps having to feel my way through that is proving to be more of a mental hurdle for me than I thought. I’m uncomfortable out of my milieu, I need to get over that and get over it now because at the end of the day writing is writing, no matter who or what your characters are or what they’re doing.

I’m allowing too many road blocks to pop up in my path and hinder me. I’m letting myself be distracted from the basics and that’s not ok with me. I think it’s time I step back, breathe, and put my nose to the grindstone so I can get some adequate prose out there. I had a month to spew words, it’s time to get back to thoughtfully composing.

There’s an Irish proverb I came across just after scheduling this post: “Making the beginning is one third of the work.” Should I take that as a positive sign?

Merry Christmas! Writing Prompt DIY Gift!

First of all, Merry Christmas!

For the holidays, please see the below link for a PDF file of writing prompt characters. Print off the sheet and put them into a jar. At random, pull one or two out and see what ideas spark!

The character prompts!

The best ideas for me come when I pull two characters profiles out at the same time. Either combine the two prompts together–a Lady who is a Pickpocket?– or have the two encounter each other–Lady versus Pickpocket: go!

Now that you have the prompts, you really have to put them into something awesome. You might have a velvet drawstring bag to do it scrabble-style OR you can look into this page of really neat Mason Jar crafts I have up on my Pinterest:

Link to Kate’s Pinterest board of Mason Jar crafts!

I hope you and yours have a fantastic holiday and that you can steal away some time to generate an idea and write a page or two

The Little Moments

My Christmas tree is finally decorated. (I say “finally,” but we did go out to the woods and cut it down until yesterday before the worst of the freezing rain hit.) That was procrastination for this blog post, and this post is procrastination for wrapping presents. Don’t worry: my procrastination is rarely this productive. I expect it to run out any time now.

But I had a wonderful, frustrating moment the other night. I reached for a book I thought was on my to-read shelf, only to realize I was mixing up a couple of those books with stories in my head.

It’s the first time I’ve done that. And it is so, so frustrating to have the books I want to read so far away. I have to plan, draft, revise, revise, and revise.

Sometimes, I’ll have the urge to read a story I’ve already written — or at least begun. Bt that urge to go to the shelf and pull out a particular book? Never had that with one not yet begun. I knew the type of book and story I was in the mood for, and it took me a while to remember it was still just in my head.

In other news, that might just be the next rough draft I tackle . . .

One maxim of writing is to write what you want to read. I don’t normally think about my stories like that, but there is always some point in the process when I have approach them like a reader, rather than a writer. If I don’t love them, I won’t get past that stage.

So maybe next time you’re stuck trying to decide which project to pursue next, take a moment to figure out what you would most like to read, then go from there.

The Harlequin Learning Curve

Recently I rescued a box of Harlequins from work. They were lying around the office and someone asked if anyone wanted them because they were headed for the recycling bin. Of course, I jumped up and down saying, “Me, me!” My antics garnered a number of looks and a minor discussion about the terrible quality of Harlequin Romances. I’m new so I didn’t jump in to defend the books, I’ll let my book nerd colours shine later.

But this got me thinking. I brought the books home and my mom went gaga over them with me. I made a few, mostly positive, comments of my own about them, we laughed, and a blog post was born.

What is it about Harlequin’s that I love?

The awful titles make me laugh
The character names are usually dreadful, and must be spoken in a breathless whisper
The writing is usually sparse and I can read them in one go
The plots are formulaic and therefore easy to guess at, which makes me feel really smart for all of 5 minutes
The metaphors, especially during torrid scenes, sometimes make my eyes bug out in disbelief
The covers are fantastic
They’re just plain fun
And 1 time out of 10 there’s a genuinely good book to be found, and a writer on the way to greatness

Please don’t get me wrong, I am not disparaging Harlequin Romances. I love them enough that I can see their true colours and they are not without their faults –what is?– and I adore their entertainment value. I also think they provide an incredible learning opportunity. No, I’m not saying they’re the ideal means for learning how to not write. Rather, I think they underscore some of the most important things to keep in mind if you want to be a good writer.

Titles and covers are sometimes your books very first impression on a reader. You might not be able to control the cover design but you sure as heck have full control over what your book is named. My prime example from my box of goodies: Code Name Casanova. I laughed so hard I snorted between giggles when I read this title to my mom. Do I have high expectations for this story? Not really, the name is too goofy. Do I expect there to be a playboy character type who’s going to get his comeuppance? There better be. Is there going to be a spy element? “Code Name” is kind of a giveaway, and the author better deliver.

Character names are also really important in regards to your reader because they say a lot about you as a writer. A conscientious writer finds ideal names for their characters because it’s like naming their children. And when a name really suits, it shows. A big trend in romance is to recycle names, usually because writers are expected to be really prolific, but it can smack of laziness. As a reader I can’t help but wonder why I should invest in these people when the writer didn’t? My best example from the box: Saffron Shaw. And her eventual lover Fraser Ross. The book is called Wildcat Wife, because I know you want to know. It’s part of The Australians series. I’ll stop now. But please, think about your character names because they’re not only a reflection on you as a craftsmen but they influence your reader more than you think.

Formulaic writing has its place and uses. There are always genre trends and rules as well as reader expectations to consider but think outside the box. One of my writing rules is: “Subvert, never divert, reader expectations.” Basically, work within boundaries and throw as many curve balls as you can. Don’t mislead your reader, surprise them. And most importantly –be original! You wrote your story because it’s something you wanted to read and no one had written it yet. Don’t revamp what’s already been told exactly how it was told. Would you read something like that?

Writing is an art and metaphors are beautiful. If you’re not a poetic writer don’t force it. It hurts to read as much as it hurts to write. Seriously. Write how you write because you have a voice and style of your own and that’s what readers want to read. Here are examples to scare you away from this practice: http://www.tressugar.com/Bad-Sex-Tweets-2013-32410091.

I leave you with these covers to contemplate: