This is a continuation on our series on tips to make the writing process and your writing career more organized, less stressful, and more effective.
There is a small chance that I might be a little bit competitive.
My husband and I keep a cribbage board on our coffee table so we can continue our complicated, in-depth tournament whenever we have a spare half an hour. I may or may not have resorted to yelling at my sister over a game of Sorry or Apples to Apples. For me, it's just not a cozy family gathering until there are winners and losers and I am collecting my bountiful spoil.
Okay, okay, so I have to plead guilty.
There are a lot of ways in which being a writer and a competitive person is terrible combination. Obviously, there isn't a lot of good that can be done by stalking your critique partners' book reviews, or obsessing over the Amazon rankings of authors in your genre. However, there is still a place for healthy competition in a writer's life. For me, competition comes in three forms: against myself, against a clock, and against a situation I can't control.
To compete against myself, I keep a writing journal. Before I begin the day's work, I write down what I want to accomplish, what I've been struggling with, and how I think I'll fix certain problems. At the end of the day, I write down what I actually accomplished. End-of-day Me has to report to beginning-of-day Me and be held accountable for her actions. On good days, this means I write "I wanted to write 750 words today and get to the end of the scene with the Cheetos. I got to the end of the Cheetos scene at 600 words, but I kept writing and got 1,000 words today!" I like writing that a lot more than I like writing "I got distracted watching Property Brothers and, um, I thought about my plot a lot... does that count?"
When I am writing a first draft, I write best in short bursts. Give me a half an hour timer or an active sprinting hashtag on Twitter and I can churn out 1,000 words in half an hour. Just don't ask me to do it again for a while. It isn't a pace I can keep up, but slow and steady doesn't work for me during rough drafts. Fast and sporadic keeps me excited about the story, and my fast writing pace helps keep the plot moving forward as well.
My last method of competition is sort of a mix of the other two and is driven out of necessity. My husband and I will agree to watch an episode of Friends after he finishes the dishes. I'll put my daughter down for her nap on a Saturday afternoon. I have a limited, but uncertain, amount of time to finish what I need to write. This sense of urgency, combined with the uncertainty of not knowing when the dishes will be done or when my daughter will wake up, keeps me on task and focused.
For me, immersion in my world and characters doesn't come until I'm editing on paper. I need to get the story out before I concentrate on setting and whether my voice is consistent (confession: it probably isn't).
Do you work better with no distractions for hours and complete immersion, or in short bursts, working quickly? Does it vary depending on what part of the writing process you're in?
Showing posts with label Writer productivity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Writer productivity. Show all posts
Friday, February 27, 2015
Wednesday, February 18, 2015
Writing Productivity Tip: The Mini-Outline
This is a continuation on our
series on tips to make the writing process and your writing career more
organized, less stressful, and more effective.
The mini-outline is a thing of beauty for those of you that
are plotter pantser hybrids like me. My personal mini-outline came about
because the thought of writing out the arc of each chapter hurt me. But then
again, so did having to rewrite my entire book. I had to find a way to define
and structure the heart of my story while keeping it fun enough that I didn’t
give my outline the middle finger half way through. Mine goes like this:
Characters – I
always start by writing a paragraph about each primary (and sometimes
secondary) character’s backstory and quirks such as, “Roberta is obsessed with
grape soda and wears two pairs of underwear on road trips.” It’s also a great
place for me to put a reference picture. Plus, it’s easy to give to an agent or
editor as part of a proposal.
Setting – Just a
quick paragraph (or more if it’s SFF) to work out the rules of the environment.
The best case scenario is if I can make my setting into a character itself that
my MC has to wrassle with at some point.
Themes – This is
my absolute favorite. Identifying thematic layers can create more plot complexity.
Also, defining the characters and situations that work within each theme generates
all sorts of ideas for dialogue and conflict.
Tormenting My Main Character
– To begin with, I identify my MC’s primary objective in my plot. My acting
teacher always said that overarching objectives should be simple – find love,
right a wrong, protect family.
Then, I have to figure out how to systematically threaten my
MC’s objective in every way I can think of. I make a numbered list of the
crappiest mental, physical, and situational obstacles I can throw at her to
keep her from getting what she wants. Finally, I put them in order of
escalating conflict.
It feels kinda evil while I’m doing it, but it saves me from
a saggy middle and from going easy on my MC when I shouldn’t. Knowing the
subplots and transitions from one obstacle to another is something I like to
discover as I go. I’m not a fan of squeezing every bit of mystery out of a
story. But, I’m not interested in doing structural surgery on my story cause it
lacks momentum, either.
In total my mini-outline is really only a couple of pages.
It tackles the fun stuff, so my pantser-self enjoys writing it, yet it has
enough substance to keep my plotter-self confidently on track. It’s a huge time
saver.
Now, I’d like to believe that I made up this particular mini-outline,
but I’m sure others have done it before me. However, I’m perfectly happy to
live with the self-delusion that I’m a snowflake.
Don’t forget that our QueryTracker's 5x5x5 give-a-way has
begun. FIVE winners in FIVE weeks will receive a $100 prize. Bam!
Monday, February 16, 2015
Writing Productivity Tip: Defeat the Goliath
I remember the first time I used a real microscope. It was part of an old high school kit, with prepared slides with a three-lens magnification range, and had probably belonged to my uncle. It reminded me of horn-rimmed glasses and lettermen jackets and Richie Cunningham’s DeSoto, all sorts of ancient things that didn’t fit into the then-modern 80s.
But, man, did that thing blow my mind. It even came with a box of blank slides and cover slips so you could prepare your own specimens. If something was small enough to fit under that glass, it went under. I would examine each specimen and marvel at all its tiny parts, pretending to be a scientist, feeling like a giant.
The microscope wasn’t just a nifty gadget—it was an important learning tool. Not because it foreshadowed the microbiology classes I’d take in college (mmm, I can still remember the smell of the culture room. Yummy. *makes retching sound*) but because it taught me a subtle but important aspect of management: everything, no matter how big, is made up of tiny parts, and sometimes tiny parts are easier to manage than one great big part.
That concept is the basis for the way I manage big tasks in every aspect of my life, from my day job to my duties as a domestic deity. There is always something that needs doing, and I will be the first to admit that I might push off the big stuff in favor of smaller things. Facing a big, complex task (like Clean the Basement) is like facing a giant on the field of battle.
It reminds me of the ancient story of David and Goliath—a boy faced a giant on the field of battle, armed with only a slingshot and a handful of stones. One stone at a time, David brought that giant down.
Trouble is...goliaths are scary and I’m no David.
Facing Off Against a Giant
My writing life is no different. Books are big things. Completing a Novel is a goliath task when you step back and take it in as a whole. It’s nothing short of a formidable opponent.
But when you zoom in on the process and look at all the separate steps that go into it—writing, editing, revising, and so on—you can see the building blocks comprising that process.
Individual building blocks are manageable things. You can’t lift a brick house, but you can pick it up one loose brick at a time.
And that’s how David defeated Goliath, right? One stone at a time.
When I was writing my first novel, I only had one task: Write the Story. I wasn’t editing a separate book, or promoting an earlier release, or expanding a platform. My first novel was a hobby book and, spared the then-unknown distractions of marketing and promotion, I simply reveled in the experience of creating a world of characters and plots and intrigue and things with sharp teeth that hide in the shadows.
All I did was Write the Story. It was one task, and a very manageable one.
Now, my writing process isn’t so simple. Writing my current book has been a completely different experience. My main task is to Complete the New Novel. But that’s not the only thing on my to-do list.
I have a backlist that needs constant promoting. Halfway through writing the second draft I got a little distracted and produced two ebooks (and a print book. Whoops.) I ran blog tours and promotions and sales and messed around in Photoshop to design book covers and Facebook banners and even revamped my newsletter template.
When I look back at all that, I think: what a schedule! Each task on that list is a goliath in itself, with the top of the list being Complete the Novel.
Why didn’t I run away from it all? Because I did it one stone at a time. (Thankfully, those tiny stones pile up really fast.)
Defeat your Goliath
If you’ve never tried to deconstruct a goliath task before, I suggest you start with a list of projects you want to accomplish, then break each one down in outline form.
1) The Big Project (such as Complete the Novel)
a through z to the nth power) All the steps that go into completing it.
My current WIP outline looks something like:
Project: THE HEARTBEAT THIEF
1) The Heartbeat Thief manuscript
a) Complete first draft
b) Edit first draft
1) Write chapter summary and look for plot holes
2) Examine timeline for continuity
3) Historical reference fact check
a) Clothing/language
b) Vehicles/tech
c) Events
c) Enter revisions
d). Edit second draft
1) Spell check, typo scan
2) Grammar check
3) Format checks (em dashes, italics)
e) Enter revisions
f) Read through
g) Make tiny revisions as necessary
h) Send to first Beta readers
i) enter revisions if warranted
j) Repeat a-i and send to next beta reader
And that’s just the manuscript part. Number two is the cover, number three is formatting, number four is marketing plan, and so on.
Everything on that list is just a tiny part of what goes into the goliath sitting at the top of the list. THE PROJECT: Complete the Novel.
The Victor Emerges
I will complete that novel. I will get it done, line by line, part by part, one bullet point at a time. Breaking my big projects down like this keeps a project manageable, and keeps me moving forward. I complete a small task, I cross it off, and I’m ready to move on.
It also lets me celebrate little victories at the time. Each time I check a line off, I accomplish something. I’m a firm believer in encouragement and praise and having a cupcake for a job well done. I think most people are, too, but my philosophy of task deconstruction means lots of cupcakes along the way instead of a ten pound cake at the very end.
A goliath cake doesn’t get eaten all in one sitting, but a dozen cupcakes can be eaten, one by one, spread out over time. That's what makes the victory attainable—and so very sweet.
But, man, did that thing blow my mind. It even came with a box of blank slides and cover slips so you could prepare your own specimens. If something was small enough to fit under that glass, it went under. I would examine each specimen and marvel at all its tiny parts, pretending to be a scientist, feeling like a giant.
The microscope wasn’t just a nifty gadget—it was an important learning tool. Not because it foreshadowed the microbiology classes I’d take in college (mmm, I can still remember the smell of the culture room. Yummy. *makes retching sound*) but because it taught me a subtle but important aspect of management: everything, no matter how big, is made up of tiny parts, and sometimes tiny parts are easier to manage than one great big part.
That concept is the basis for the way I manage big tasks in every aspect of my life, from my day job to my duties as a domestic deity. There is always something that needs doing, and I will be the first to admit that I might push off the big stuff in favor of smaller things. Facing a big, complex task (like Clean the Basement) is like facing a giant on the field of battle. It reminds me of the ancient story of David and Goliath—a boy faced a giant on the field of battle, armed with only a slingshot and a handful of stones. One stone at a time, David brought that giant down.
Trouble is...goliaths are scary and I’m no David.
Facing Off Against a Giant
My writing life is no different. Books are big things. Completing a Novel is a goliath task when you step back and take it in as a whole. It’s nothing short of a formidable opponent.
But when you zoom in on the process and look at all the separate steps that go into it—writing, editing, revising, and so on—you can see the building blocks comprising that process.
Individual building blocks are manageable things. You can’t lift a brick house, but you can pick it up one loose brick at a time.
And that’s how David defeated Goliath, right? One stone at a time.
When I was writing my first novel, I only had one task: Write the Story. I wasn’t editing a separate book, or promoting an earlier release, or expanding a platform. My first novel was a hobby book and, spared the then-unknown distractions of marketing and promotion, I simply reveled in the experience of creating a world of characters and plots and intrigue and things with sharp teeth that hide in the shadows.
All I did was Write the Story. It was one task, and a very manageable one.
Now, my writing process isn’t so simple. Writing my current book has been a completely different experience. My main task is to Complete the New Novel. But that’s not the only thing on my to-do list.
I have a backlist that needs constant promoting. Halfway through writing the second draft I got a little distracted and produced two ebooks (and a print book. Whoops.) I ran blog tours and promotions and sales and messed around in Photoshop to design book covers and Facebook banners and even revamped my newsletter template.
When I look back at all that, I think: what a schedule! Each task on that list is a goliath in itself, with the top of the list being Complete the Novel.
Why didn’t I run away from it all? Because I did it one stone at a time. (Thankfully, those tiny stones pile up really fast.)
Defeat your Goliath
If you’ve never tried to deconstruct a goliath task before, I suggest you start with a list of projects you want to accomplish, then break each one down in outline form.
1) The Big Project (such as Complete the Novel)
a through z to the nth power) All the steps that go into completing it.
My current WIP outline looks something like:
Project: THE HEARTBEAT THIEF
1) The Heartbeat Thief manuscript
a) Complete first draft
b) Edit first draft
1) Write chapter summary and look for plot holes
2) Examine timeline for continuity
3) Historical reference fact check
a) Clothing/language
b) Vehicles/tech
c) Events
c) Enter revisions
d). Edit second draft
1) Spell check, typo scan
2) Grammar check
3) Format checks (em dashes, italics)
e) Enter revisions
f) Read through
g) Make tiny revisions as necessary
h) Send to first Beta readers
i) enter revisions if warranted
j) Repeat a-i and send to next beta reader
And that’s just the manuscript part. Number two is the cover, number three is formatting, number four is marketing plan, and so on.
Everything on that list is just a tiny part of what goes into the goliath sitting at the top of the list. THE PROJECT: Complete the Novel.
The Victor Emerges
I will complete that novel. I will get it done, line by line, part by part, one bullet point at a time. Breaking my big projects down like this keeps a project manageable, and keeps me moving forward. I complete a small task, I cross it off, and I’m ready to move on.
It also lets me celebrate little victories at the time. Each time I check a line off, I accomplish something. I’m a firm believer in encouragement and praise and having a cupcake for a job well done. I think most people are, too, but my philosophy of task deconstruction means lots of cupcakes along the way instead of a ten pound cake at the very end.
A goliath cake doesn’t get eaten all in one sitting, but a dozen cupcakes can be eaten, one by one, spread out over time. That's what makes the victory attainable—and so very sweet.
Ash Krafton is a speculative fiction writer who, despite having a Time Turner under her couch and three different sonic screwdrivers in her purse, still encounters difficulty with time management. She's the author of the urban fantasy trilogy The Books of the Demimonde as well as WORDS THAT BIND. She also writes for YA and NA audiences under the pen name AJ Krafton. THE HEARTBEAT THIEF, her Victorian dark fantasy inspired by Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death”, is now available.
Wednesday, February 11, 2015
Writer Productivity Tip: How To Increase Your Daily Word Count
Today’s post continues with the theme of how each member of the QT blog team keeps (or tries to keep) our writing or writing process/career organized, less stressful, and more effective.
Over the years, I’ve learned to streamline my writing (more so now that I’m a published author with multiple book deals). It used to take me a year to finish writing and editing a book. With my first book (which was never published), I got a tiny bit carried away and spent TEN MONTHS planning it. At that point, I was writing YA fantasy and for some reason felt it was necessary to figure out EVERY TINY DETAIL about my story world. And that included the types of plants that would grow there based on soil type. Did I use any of this information in my novel? Nope. It wasn’t necessary to the story.
Research is another area I’ve learn to rethink. My books often require some research before I can figure out my characterizations. For example, in my first published book (Tell Me When), I dealt with stalking and post traumatic stress disorder. I needed to understand how an eighteen-year-old girl would react to different situations in the book based on what she had endured prior to the story. I had to research these topics first. But while writing my books, I quickly learned that I didn’t need to stop writing every time I had a minor research question. Let me ask you a question. How many of you can go onto the internet and only look up the ONE thing you need to know? How many of you decide that since you’re already online, you might as well quickly peek at your inbox (especially when you’re querying)? How many of you end up then checking out Twitter and Facebook and all your other social media sites instead of returning to your WIP? *puts up hand* Now, I don’t stop to look up those details as I write. I make a note in my manuscript (which is easy to do because I use Scrivener), and go back to look them up once I’ve finished my first draft. And because I use Scrivener, those comments are easy to find. I don’t have to spend time combing through my manuscript to find them.
Another thing I do to increase my daily output is writing sprints. I see how many words I can write in an hour and then take a brief break before continuing with the next bout of sprints. I also write first thing in the morning (5:30 am) and don’t check my inbox until I’ve written for an hour (then I have to get my kids ready for school). I also schedule my writing time so that it gets done. All of these things have helped me increase my productivity.
What helps you increase your writing productivity?
Don’t forget that our QueryTracker's 5x5x5 give-a-way has begun. We're giving away $500 to celebrate the new QueryTracker version 5 coming soon. FIVE winners in FIVE weeks will receive their cut of the $500 prize.
How to Enter
• Look for the Rafflecopter entry form (see below) on all our blog posts for the next FIVE weeks.
• Log into Rafflecopter using your Facebook account or Email address.
• Follow the instructions to tweet, post, and follow and receive entries into the raffle for every action you take.
Prizes
We'll randomly award a $100 gift certificate to Amazon, B&N, or Apple every Sunday for the next FIVE weeks.
Good luck.
Over the years, I’ve learned to streamline my writing (more so now that I’m a published author with multiple book deals). It used to take me a year to finish writing and editing a book. With my first book (which was never published), I got a tiny bit carried away and spent TEN MONTHS planning it. At that point, I was writing YA fantasy and for some reason felt it was necessary to figure out EVERY TINY DETAIL about my story world. And that included the types of plants that would grow there based on soil type. Did I use any of this information in my novel? Nope. It wasn’t necessary to the story.
Research is another area I’ve learn to rethink. My books often require some research before I can figure out my characterizations. For example, in my first published book (Tell Me When), I dealt with stalking and post traumatic stress disorder. I needed to understand how an eighteen-year-old girl would react to different situations in the book based on what she had endured prior to the story. I had to research these topics first. But while writing my books, I quickly learned that I didn’t need to stop writing every time I had a minor research question. Let me ask you a question. How many of you can go onto the internet and only look up the ONE thing you need to know? How many of you decide that since you’re already online, you might as well quickly peek at your inbox (especially when you’re querying)? How many of you end up then checking out Twitter and Facebook and all your other social media sites instead of returning to your WIP? *puts up hand* Now, I don’t stop to look up those details as I write. I make a note in my manuscript (which is easy to do because I use Scrivener), and go back to look them up once I’ve finished my first draft. And because I use Scrivener, those comments are easy to find. I don’t have to spend time combing through my manuscript to find them.
Another thing I do to increase my daily output is writing sprints. I see how many words I can write in an hour and then take a brief break before continuing with the next bout of sprints. I also write first thing in the morning (5:30 am) and don’t check my inbox until I’ve written for an hour (then I have to get my kids ready for school). I also schedule my writing time so that it gets done. All of these things have helped me increase my productivity.
What helps you increase your writing productivity?
Don’t forget that our QueryTracker's 5x5x5 give-a-way has begun. We're giving away $500 to celebrate the new QueryTracker version 5 coming soon. FIVE winners in FIVE weeks will receive their cut of the $500 prize.
How to Enter
• Look for the Rafflecopter entry form (see below) on all our blog posts for the next FIVE weeks.
• Log into Rafflecopter using your Facebook account or Email address.
• Follow the instructions to tweet, post, and follow and receive entries into the raffle for every action you take.
Prizes
We'll randomly award a $100 gift certificate to Amazon, B&N, or Apple every Sunday for the next FIVE weeks.
Good luck.
Thursday, February 5, 2015
Writer Productivity Tip: Have a Routine
This is a continuation on our series on tips to make the writing process and your writing career more organized, less stressful, and more effective.
The bedtime ritual works because of a psychological function called cognitive cuing. The child’s brain has essentially wired itself to understand that the endpoint of the bedtime ritual is sleep. The process of relaxing into that state begins with the bath, and each step in the ritual is a conditioned step toward sleeping. There’s nothing intrinsically sleep-inducing about most of the steps themselves—brushing your teeth is not, independently, a cue for your brain to prepare for slumber. The key is simply the existence of the ritual.
Not surprisingly, when researchers have tried to examine the ideal situation for creative writing, what they’ve largely found is that the presence of a routine—cognitive cuing—is essential. In his book The Psychology of Writing, Cognitive psychologist Ronald T. Kellogg explains:This phenomenon can be reinterpreted in terms of the cognitive concept of encoding specificity. The abstract ideas, images, plans, tentative sentences, feelings, and other personal symbols that represent the knowledge needed to construct a text are associated with the place and time of the writing environment. These associations are strongest when the writer engages in few if any extraneous activities in the selected environment. Entering the environment serves as a retrieval cue for the relevant knowledge to enter the writer’s awareness.
In other words, going to the same place at the same time, then doing the same thing (writing awesome prose) when you get there, teaches your brain to expect to write. Instead of wasting a page or two “getting into the zone,” your brain eventually wires itself to know, “It’s six-thirty AM, I brushed my teeth, made a cup of coffee with my sexy French press, and ate some fruit, Now I’m sitting at the desk with my fingers on the keys, it must be time for awesome prose to explode out of my fingertips.
Substituting a different time of day to meet your scheduling needs wouldn’t harm anything (or much, Kellogg talks about time of day, too). You can swap brushing teeth for a regular chat session with a CP or turn that desk into a local coffee shop. Ultimately, what will yield results is your mind associating the routine with being deep inside a character, deep inside your novel. A place you can start writing from by giving your mind those cognitive cues that it’s time to be there.
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