I Suck at Writing: A Confession

I suck at writing. I don't mean my prose, or my descriptions, or my characterizations (though I'm sure to be lacking in a number of those areas).

I mean in my work ethic.

I haven't written a single word of real writing in ~8 weeks.

There are all sorts of excuses I could line up, between my day-job workload, to travelling, to any number of things. None of them are truly valid to the writer in me. I've had all those things going on before and I soldiered through and got the words down.  Hell, some of my most productive times have been when my day-job was demanding 12-16 hours of my life per day.

So what have I done? Well, let's see. I've read a BUNCH of books. I sort of caught up on some of the TV I've recorded. I've seen a few movies in theatres (and really enjoyed them). I've kicked some ass at The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker HD. And I've spent far too much money on Skylanders.

Writing related? I've cycled out a few more queries on CROW'S BLOOD. Tracked through and kept up with the blogs of all the writers I know and love. And I've re-worked the outline for my historical fantasy about six times.

Six times may seem like I've been keeping busy, but really I haven't. Not busy enough anyway. I could be doing a lot more... you know... writing.

I've been doing some much-unneeded self-examination on what exactly my problem is. Turns out it's pretty simple:

I suck at writing. This time I am talking about the prose, descriptions, and characterizations.

I worked on CROW'S BLOOD for a LONG time. I finished the first draft in November of 2011! Never mind that I completely threw that draft and story away and re-worked the entire novel from the ground up. That's more than 2 years ago!!!

It's been that long since I really dug in and worked on something new. The sense of accomplishment I felt at the end of every draft as the story and prose got tighter is gone, and the distance from that first clunky and painful draft is vast.

When I look at what I've written lately (and by lately I mean before I got into my writing funk), all I can see is the warts and garbage and things that make me want to set it on fire and walk away. It's no wonder I've re-outlined the thing so many times. Outlines are safe. I can write a REALLY cool outline. Point form mind-maps don't have to be pretty.

I've forgotten that it's OK to suck, especially on your first draft. No one has everything worked out. No one has the perfect words for every sentence. No one really knows where the commas are supposed to go!

I suck at writing. But I desperately need to remember and keep reminding myself that it's OK to suck. I'm going to keep doing it, updating my word-counts here on my blog so you can all keep score (and I can keep myself accountable).

I need to push on and get through the first draft. That first, clunky, broken, full of holes draft. I need to finish the story. I need to tie up all the loose ends. And I really need to achieve that awesome sense of finishing something.

You know why?

I'm really good at revision.

- Alex

P.S. Have any of you ever hit that wall? Let me know how you got past it in the comments.

The Shatner Comma

As anyone who's ever read my writing pre-revision (or even after 3-4 passes of my own) can attest: I have a serious problem with Shatner Commas.

Let me explain first what a Shatner Comma is, and second, why I have such a problem with them.

Shatner Comma (n): Improperly placed commas that serve no grammatical purpose and thwart the rules of proper punctuation. They instruct the reader to take unnatural and illogical pauses, much in the way William Shatner so famously delivered his lines in Star Trek (TOS).

Why do I have such a problem with them? Because I was instructed (as were most people) to put commas where I would naturally pause in speech. That's right, I pause frequently and illogically in my regular everyday speech.  In my case it isn't something I do to create a sense of drama. As best I can tell the problem traces back to my childhood stutter.

To be clear, my stutter wasn't as horrible as in The King's Speech, and I wasn't endlessly teased for it (though I was dreadfully self-conscious about it).

I reminisced about it recently with my grandmother and she recalled that even at the age of 7 I worked endlessly to eliminate it. I'd sit playing on her living room floor reciting and repeating any sentence or word that I'd stuttered on until I had it silky smooth, at least so far as the stutters were concerned.

In their place came the pauses. To give my brain time to work around the hitch I think I subconsciously inserted a pause. That pause lingers to this day.

I spent many a Saturday morning on that same floor at my grandmother's watching re-runs of Star Trek:TOS, so maybe a bit of Shatner's delayed speech and odd timing crept in as well. We'll never know.

With the help of my Critique Partners and a LOT of hard work I'm edging towards eliminating reducing the Shatner Comma from my writing, but I can make no guarantees. As for the pause in my speech? It lingers to this day though I'm working to lessen it now that I'm fully aware of it. And it wasn't a cure-all for my stutter, which can still be found in diminished capacity any time I get overly excited about something.

My NaNoWriMo Survival Kit or How I Won and Didn't Lose My Mind

I promised this at the beginning of the month: A list of the tools and tricks I use to survive (and win, 3 years in a row) NaNoWriMo.

I want to be perfectly clear, I don't work for any of the following (except perhaps the last), and I don't make any money off promoting their products. They're simply things that have become an essential and integral part of being able to write 50,000 words in 30 days.

Could I do it without them? Sure. I absolutely could (except again, the last). I won my first year of NaNo using MS Word and nothing else. But I've built this arsenal and I intent to continue using it as I work to build and perfect my craft.

So here it is.

Literature & Latte's Scrivener and Scapple
I used Scrivener during NaNo last year, in fact I learned Scrivener during NaNo last year. It's an incredibly robust piece of writing software that I now do 95% of all my writing in (even the technical documents I often write for work).

It has an easy to grasp interface with plenty of places for notes, synopsis, and tags, that all feeds into a neat little corkboard interface you can use to shift scenes about. It's robust built-in tool-set can be overwhelming if you just dive in and try to use it all at once. Take some time and do the tutorials, and always remember: You don't have to use EVERY feature. Use what works for you.

Just a note on Scrivener, the Manuscript Target display loses count somehow and will be short on words if you leave it open all the time. Use the "Project=>Project Statistics" count for a closer idea, it will also update the Manuscript Target count.

Scapple is new for me this year (it's a fairly new product). Where Scrivener is robust and complex, Scapple is stark and simple. It's a free-form mind-mapping tool that I've started to use for outlining (and taking notes at work...). I'm positive I've just barely scratched the surface of what Scapple can do.


Nuance Mobile's Swype for Android with Dragon Dictation
If it weren't for this software I'm positive I would have lost my mind. I spend ~3 hours a day, 4 days a week commuting from my day job. That's 12 hours of potential writing time I waste in my car. At the same time, driving is boring, which also makes it one of the best times to have epiphanies about plot points, scenes, and character interactions.

Before using the Dragon Dictation piece of Swype I would do my best to remember all the little ideas I had while driving, and I'd inevitably fail.

That said, Dragon Dictation is FAR from perfect in a car with a great deal of road noise (I drive a 2012 Civic that I'm positive is made out of aluminium foil). Not to mention it might be less than optimal that I'm dealing with a Hidden History/Fantasy story with words that people just don't use on a daily basis.

Still, even with the clean-up I had to do on what it scratched out for me, it was a great help in not losing my mind.

Mur Lafferty's I Should Be Writing NaNoWriMo Specials
I listen to the ISBW Podcast regularly (well, as regularly as Mur gets them out there, but she's a busy writerly type person, with books coming out and deadlines and whatnot so I harbour no ill will). This year she's done a series of podcasts dedicated solely to NaNoWriMo. I found them to be a nice break, and at times a good reminder that other people suffer from the same problems and blocks I do while writing.

Clementine Player's "Rain" Extra.
This one's a little different. On my Mac I use Clementine Player instead of iTunes, mainly because iTunes doesn't support FLAC or some of the formats I've purchased or ripped music into. I write in a room adjacent to where the rest of my family watches TV, and frankly, I think they're all going deaf.

Sometimes if I'm writing something challenging where I need to concentrate the sounds from the TV just don't help. I need something without words to distract me and send me off on tangents. Sometimes that means classical music, instrumental, or even house/club/trance/techno.

Then there are the times where even having something with a regular beat, or discernible patterns causes problems. That's where the "Rain" feature under "Extras" comes in. It's a generated thunderstorm, where the thunder and rain patterns are random and non-repeating. It's perfect.

ZeFrank's "An Invocation for Beginnings"
If you ever needed a kick in the pants to get something started, whether it's the project on the whole, writing a particular scene, or just getting your butt in the chair, Ze's Invocation is just what the doctor ordered.

I listen to it when I start out. I listen to it when I hit a wall. I listen to it when I just don't feel like writing. It hasn't failed me yet.

My Wife
She holds all the loose pieces on that seem ready to fly off at any given moment. Not only does she give me the time (time she loses) to write, she supplies encouragement and support, and most important of all, she sometimes even brings me caffeine!

She tolerates my cranky moods when things are going well. She kicks me in the ass when I whine too much. And she doesn't make me sleep on the couch if I'm up 'til 1am "just finishing one more paragraph".

Out of all the things that make winning NaNo possible, she's the one I couldn't do it without. Oh... and a word processor, because writing 50,000 words out by hand or on a typewriter would suck.

Thiiiiiiiis close!

The last five days have been harrowing, dreadful, bone-chilling days. With my latest revision complete and polished, and with my Query Letter and Pitch polished for #PitchMadness, I really only had one thing missing from my arsenal: A Synopsis.

Let me define that little eight-letter-word for you as best I can: 

Synopsis [si-nop-sis] (n):

1. A brief or condensed statement giving a general view of some subject.
2. An evil  creation of agents and editors for the express purpose of torturing writers.
3. A soul-sucking vampire in word form.

There's no perfect consensus in the writing world on what exactly a synopsis is but this is what I've found to be most often repeated:

• 1-5 single-spaced pages
• Block formatted paragraphs (no indents)
• Double-space between paragraphs (a single blank line)
• No smaller than 10pt font
• Outline ONLY the main plot of your book

From what I've seen, 2 pages is the standard length for an agent (at least with the agents I intend to query in my first round that require them).

Sounds easy enough right? Just take your ~60,000 - ~115,000 word (240 - 460 page) book and boil it down to ~1,000 words. Oh, and keep it interesting! Remember: You're selling your idea here!

Simple right?

ARGH!!!

So here's what I did: 

I went through my manuscript, skimming chapter by chapter, and making notes of the major points of that chapter. I tried to keep it short and ended up with around 2,900 words.

Then I went through and mercilessly cut anything that didn't directly have anything to do with the main plot. 1,900 words.

I pared, whittled, reworded, and tweaked every sentence, revising from my quickly written notes to the most sparse text I could get while still maintaining clarity and some semblance of flow. 1,300 words.

I did that two more times, ending at just over 1,000 words, which fit nicely within 2 pages at 10pt Arial and 10pt Times New Roman.

Then I called it a day.

Now, that ordeal is done until I've had someone other than me, who's read the last revision, go over it and tell me what I've done wrong.

I have to apologize and thank my wife and children for bearing with me and giving me the time to work on this and a sounding board for my complaints, and my friends and followers on Twitter who have had to deal with me exploding/ranting/whining/begging over the past five days. I'm sorry if I've gotten on any of your nerves.

- Alex

One Third of the Way

I'm well past my due date for checking in. I haven't even blogged in July!

That little progress bar at the right is moving along though. Slowly but surely, and as fast as it can with only an hour or two on most nights.

I've just come back from visiting my father in Winnipeg, which is a truly, uh, flat place. He's lived out there most of my life, doing his thing, which I have to admit is doing a lot of good for a lot of people. I know my kids miss seeing more of him though. I do too.

Winnipeg has one thing I definitely do NOT like: Mosquitoes. Mosquitoes that were likely the cause of any and every mass extinction since they came about. That mosquito in amber in Jurassic Park? Yeah, my money is on IT being the reason dinosaurs were wiped out.

Pterodactyl-mosquitoes aside, we had fun spending time with family and seeing the sights out there.

I've updated the Movie List a few times recently. Between writing and other Real Life™ stuff this year I haven't seen nearly as many movies as I'd have liked. I'm hearing that Pacific Rim is good fun though, so I'm working on seeing that.

On the writing/revising side of things (because, really, that's the point of this blog), things are going relatively well... I think. That's the problem with being a first time writer, and a really good reason to have Critique Partners: You're too close to your own work, and you simply don't know what you're doing wrong!

No! Really! One of the major points of this revision is to give more depth to Flynn, the MC. I know I'm giving some more depth, but is it enough? Can there be too much? I really have no idea...

So I plan to forge onwards until this revision is done, then send it to my Alpha Readers and CP's (and 1 or 2 new sets of eyes) for more feedback. I hope that they won't shun me...

I do know that I've cleaned up some of what my CP's and I found were real pain points plot/story wise. I only hope I haven't opened more in doing so.

As for a deadline? I aim to be done this pass before the end of August, mostly because at the end of September I'll be reaching a year on this book and I think I should be moving faster.

Zug Zug

Remember that little progress bar to the right? Take a peek at that sucker!

BAM! That's right. Revision 4 complete! It took considerably longer than it probably should have, but Real Life™ tends to not care what we have planned.

I put every spare moment I had into getting it done (hence the disgusting lack of blog updates). The problem being that spare moments weren't as plentiful as I'd hoped they would be. That said, in the interest of getting it done, I've learned a new skill.

I can now revise, out loud, in public places, with lots of distractions. Sure, people probably thought I was crazy, and it didn't go nearly as fast as when I hide in my writing cave, but it was time to revise I didn't have otherwise. I've now revised out loud in places such as hockey arenas, train stations, hotels, coffee shops, and book stores.

This revision was a game changer, and I have to say, I'm going to do an out loud pass on everything I write from here on out (yes, including this blog entry). It makes such a difference to the flow and clarity of the written words. There's something about engaging the speech and hearing centres of the brain that catches all the crud the eyes miss.

Take another look at that progress bar, see the numbers under it? That's 4,598 words shaved off the word count, all in the name of clarity. And it wasn't just 4,600 words dropped, it was closer to 7,000 words cut, then more words built on top.

During this process I won a 40 page critique from Kat Ellis on her blog. Her feedback was AMAZING, and I tried to take it into consideration throughout the rest of the draft. I can only hope I succeeded.

I've put the latest in my DropBox for my Alpha Readers, and e-mailed copies to 2 of my 3 current Critique Partners (Colten Hibbs, Rachel Russel, and Clara Mitchell). Now it's all over except for the terror... and feedback.

- Alex

#PitchMadness

#PitchMadness is a contest run by the fantastic/wonderful/hard-working/must-be-crazy Brenda Drake. You can read a great deal more about it on her blog. The contest submission window opened at 6am this morning and closed at noon. Here's the thing, a bunch of my favourite people in the Twitter Writing Community are involved, either as Blog Hosts and Slush Zombies, or Agents (4 of my Top 10 list of agents are involved!!!).

After some prodding from my friends in the community I made the jump and entered. The time of my submission? 6:05am. No, I didn't get up that early just to submit (there was no cut-off, and after 11am is more my style), I was up for a hockey tournament.

Even if I don't make it to round 2, this is an experience, and I'm meeting a fair number of new people at a similar stage in their writing aspirations. So it's a win no matter what happens.

The submission requirements were: A pitch of no more than 35 words (which is a LOT harder than you think, YOU try summarizing your favourite book in 35 words or less while sounding original AND grabbing attention), and an excerpt of the first 250 words.

Here's my submission:

Title: CROW’S BLOOD

Genre: YA Fantasy

Word Count: 100,000

Pitch:

Flynn, a talented young thief, is the prime suspect in a series of grisly ritual murders. He’s also the kingdom’s best chance to find the real killer. He’ll just need to pull one last heist.

Excerpt: 

A sharp crack broke the silence of the cavernous Inner Sanctum of the Praetorian Order, echoing off the vaulted ceiling and the stained glass dome at its centre. A small segment disappeared from the scene depicting the Goddess, her four Scions, and her Adversary. Pale moonlight, mostly from the Other, the brighter of the two moons at that hour, struck downwards to light a small circle on the mosaic near the centre of the floor in the great library. The larger moon, Ambrosia, having just crested the horizon, wasn’t bright enough to lend its pink hue.

The black rope uncoiled down the shaft of moonlight with a soft whisper. Flynn vaulted into the gap, and dropped along the rope’s length, matching the speed of its fall. He grabbed on to slow himself only at the last instant, and touched down soundlessly.

Looking back up at the hole in the stained glass, he could make out the silhouette of his mentor, Martin, framed against the glowing white spectre of the Other. He couldn’t make out any of Martin’s features, backlit as he was. Flynn knew there would be a scowl set deep in the older man’s lined face. Martin worried too much.

Crouched in the centre of the great library, Flynn turned in a slow circle to get his bearings. He mentally compared the layout with the map he’d memorized in the days before. Spotting one of his landmarks, he set off into the concentric rows of heavily laden bookshelves. 

Long years of practice meant the only sound Flynn made was the faint ripple of the air past his close fitting, mottled-grey outfit. 

What's in a name?

...that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;

- Romeo Montague to Juliet: Romeo & Juliet by Shakespeare

Character names, book names, chapter names, pen names. They're all malleable to one degree or another and there are choices and reasons for all of them. 

I started thinking on the topic tonight because of an article on io9.com about character names that should be banned for all time (of which I have used... none!).

Spiralling into the topic of names was so rough on my overworked brain that it almost derailed my revision session this evening. 

You see, I write under a pen name: Alexander C. Pierce or Alex C. Pierce. It's not my real name, though Alexander and Pierce are my 2 middle names, which, when bookended by my first and last name sounds almost as awesomely pretentious as Benedict Cumberbatch (best name EVER!). I include the C. at this point because a Google Search on Alexander Pierce brings up such a HUGE list of results including convicts, authors of propaganda, and so much more, that I needed a bit of separation from what is apparently a very common name.

I use a pen name for a few reasons, not the least of which is that I have ideas and themes for stories that may be controversial that I don't necessarily want to blow back on my family. Nothing too outrageous, but I'd rather not put other parties at risk. I also have a long standing tendency to NOT use my real name online (outside of work, though Facebook has ruined that to some degree... thanks family and friends!).

But the subject of names goes so much further, as the article on io9 aptly points out character names can play a big part in engaging or putting potential readers off, and they're not exactly easy things to come up with. For a time I used a program called Everchanging Book of Names, which was great for secondary characters if you could figure out how to use it (it's not that hard once you read the instructions). I've come to understand Scrivener itself has a name generator built in, which I haven't used yet as my characters all have names at this point.

I couldn't tell you where half the names of my characters come from, but I haven't received any negative feedback on them yet (though I have heard some interesting thoughts on where I might have cooked some up). I only hope they're not derivative of some other work that's sitting in the back of my skull because I think they're awesome! (the io9 article points out that might be a problem too).

As for chapter names and book names... I'm flexible with those and they tend to change on a fairly regular basis at this point in the process. From what I understand if I go and get published the publisher will have a say in it as well and I'm ok with that.

What are your thoughts on the use of pen names? How do you come up with names for things? Let me know!

- Alex

P.S. Chapter update for my Alpha Readers, I've dropped up to chapter 23 and I'm starting to get feedback from multiple people! Thanks!

Ripples in the Pool

The good news: I'm up to revising Chapter 19 of Book B, Crow's Blood.
The not-as-good news: I'm updating the blog less frequently than I did writing the 0-draft while revising

The last four chapters or so have involved a good deal of rearranging and rewriting, which has considerably slowed my pace and eaten up my revision time, but I think the story is all that much stronger for it.

The little changes from the final outline that I've made while writing the ending and revising the beginning are sending out ripples that meet in the middle of the book. Those ripples are ensuring that I have a lot of clean up to do.

When I look back at the original concept of this story, and the rough and detailed outlines that followed I'm astonished at how much it's changed. All for the sake of trying to write the best story possible. I don't think the "me" that had the original idea would recognize much beyond the setting and the villain (I think villains are a strength of mine).

The main character? Changed entirely while tightening the outline! The main I've written the entire book around used to be the original main's foil in the original outline. That first main is still in the book, but as a secondary character.

The original outline had five major viewpoint characters and six vignette's (single chapters) from minor viewpoints. In reworking the outline I brought it down to one viewpoint and seven vignette viewpoints. My main viewpoint has grown a fair bit stronger as a result, and I've felt less stressed about the vignette viewpoints, which has made writing each of them as a separate character easier.

In simplifying the structure and the various side plots I've given more room for the actual characters to come through, though admittedly I do still have a ways to go on breaking out of the "white room" problem. I'm working to add more description about the characters physical surroundings with each revision pass.

This particular pass is all about plot and making sure that everything works without great big holes.

Now That's a plot hole!

I'm closing every one of those up that I find. As I said earlier, I'm finding a lot more in the middle than I did at the beginning or than I expect to at the end. This is a learning process, so who's to say if I have more sitting near the end waiting to swallow me whole?

Then I'll start letting my Critique Partners have a look at some of it (all if they think it's their thing) and I'll do a pass of line edits (not that I'm not trying to get as much of that done as possible on this pass) while they're building their massive weapons of feedback to destroy my soul. But that's getting ahead of myself, how about I finish the plot pass first?

That's where things sit right now. I'm still plugging away, for anywhere between two and four hours a night, trying not to let too much of that time escape into "the Twitter".

Just add arsenic!

The Real Life™side of things is going well, though I'm building a snuggle debt with my wife and a serious backlog of recorded TV while revising. She takes care of her photography stuff, gaming, and Facebook socializing while I grind, buff, and polish this story so it hopefully has some lustre to it.

She keeps providing me with homemade hot cocoa while I'm writing, so she still loves me, or she's poisoning me slowly and it just tastes really good.

Either way I'll keep drinking the stuff in the great big mildly disturbing Mickey Mouse mug it gets given to me in.

Oh, and I've been introduced to a band called Caravan Palace by Bridget Smith who heard them in a coffee shop and described what she was hearing on Twitter as "jazz-influenced electronica" in a genre that is apparently properly called "Electro-swing". It's not for everyone (including my wife) but I like it.

Revising Intensely

That's not to say I'm revising the word "intensely" but my revisions of late have been picking up speed.

After the debacle that was the first week of my 3 week "vacation" I felt a little pressed for time in amongst the holidays and visiting with family. I did what any (in)sane writer would do, once I got the tiniest fraction of time I hunkered down, turned off the outside world (including updating my blog), and revised.

My Alpha Readers have ~32,000 words/14 Chapters revised (sometimes 3 or 4 times) at their disposal for feedback and they get more almost every day. It's my hope that they're still captivated by the story and ecstatic about being part of my "process". So far the feedback I've been getting has really helped tighten some things and clean stuff up.

I do have one concern as I'm revising, I'm aiming for 90,000-95,000 words in the polished draft, but my word count, despite cutting aggressively, is going up as I flesh out some of the chapters that were mere skeletons before. It's sitting at ~101,000 as of this blog post.

So I've formed a plan! A devious, dangerous, and cunning (read mundane and boring) plan!

1. Finish this revision process, cutting and adding as "needed".
2. Get it to myself in a "new format" either print it out, throw it on a tablet. Really anything so I can take it to a different "space" and mark it up. My Alpha Readers will get it in various formats as well (electronic, if you want dead trees, be responsible for them yourself)
3. Merge in changes/cuts/fixes.
4. Find a Critique Partner or group of said individuals.

Number 4 is where it gets a little dicey, as that will involve not only having my work critiqued by someone who's actually interested in doing so (scary), but also critiquing their work (terrifying). CPSeek.com should help with the whole "finding people" part, it's the rest that bothers me.

What if I have several critique partners who don't like my work? What if I don't like theres?

I'm not good with confrontation.

Happy New Year 2013

For so many of us today is the first day of a new year, and a time for new beginnings and the putting away of old things. For some, it's just Tuesday, and in some cases, it's a Tuesday with a wicked headache and a desire to watch the world burn.

Every year many people make no resolution or plans for the coming year. I used to be one of those people, but I realized that there was no harm in making plans for the future and planning to have a future gives its own sort of hope and drive.

We do these things on January 1st, but it doesn't have to be done on any particular day. You can make a resolution any hour of any day as long as you have the drive to stick to a commitment.

2 years ago at the end of February I resolved to get myself in better shape by going to the gym. I'd hit a plateau in getting healthier that changing my eating habits wouldn't get past and I needed to kick things up a bit. 2 years into that resolution I'm still going to the gym at least 4 days a week and still improving (albeit slower than I would like). It wasn't a New Years resolution, but it was a new ME resolution.

I started making resolutions after a long hiatus last January 1st. Succeeding in the gym and changing from the 104kg (230lb) blob that I was to the 69kg (152lb) man that I see in the mirror convinced me that I could do things when I set my mind to it.

January 1st 2012 I resolved to write a novel from start to finish. I've wanted to be a writer (or a master thief) since I was a child and it certainly seemed like an attainable goal. I did it. Crow's Blood is currently in revision at 103,000 words and it's been a blast.

This year I'm getting a little more detailed in my resolutions, but I will still strive to meet every one.

First and foremost, the writerly side of things.

I do not resolve to get an agent or get published in 2013. That will happen when it happens and I won't let its lack stop me from writing and working my hardest to improve my craft.

I resolve to:

• Write good stories. Be they short or long, I will write them to the best of my ability.
• Work out how to get the humour and wit into my stories that I find so effortless in conversation. For some reason it disappears when I'm following a plot.
• Get better at revision, because right now it's kicking my ass and making me feel that my writing is all manner of suck.
• Revise Crow's Blood (BookB) enough to get it out to some Critique Partners, who's advice I will use to better my craft.
• Work better with my Alpha Readers. They're doing this for me and getting little more than gratitude in return. Make it easier for them.
• Refine my Pitch, Synopsis and Queries and the processes that generate them.
• Submit Queries to Agents and learn from each rejection.
• Write at least two more Zero-Draft books in 2013.
• Read more. I've broadened the genres and catagories that I read in 2012, I'm going to do MORE of that in 2013.

Now on the personal side of things.
I resolve to:

• Continue trying to be the best Husband and Father that I can be. I'm far from perfect and I'll never be perfect, but I can always try to be better.
• Continue to advance and put out the best work I can at my day job. Something has to pay the bills until I have a few best-sellers under my belt ;-)
• Be a good friend. I know this writing thing I'm doing has isolated me a bit from the people I used to hang out with and talk to every day. I want to keep those connections alive and some of them are in pretty bad shape.
• Eat even better than I did in 2012. It helps that every time I've gotten into junk food over the holidays I've felt truly dreadful afterwards.
• Push myself even further in the gym. Not only do I want to work harder, I want to make sure I'm doing everything I can and doing it right.
• Face at least one fear and overcome it. I don't know what this is yet, whether it will be writing related or otherwise, but I will overcome at least one fear I have in 2013.
• Watch lots of movies!
• Have fun!

That's about it. It's an extensive list in a public place. 2013? Bring it on.

P.S. I've updated the Movie List with last night's movies.

Surviving the Holidays

Well, I'm here. That means I survived. If you're reading this, then you too are a survivor. Congratulations!

The holidays, regardless of which ones you celebrate or why you celebrate them, are about tradition and bringing families together. Anyone who survives that dangerous mix deserves their due credit.

I didn't do it alone, my wife and children helped me through it all with a continuous flow of joy and rich foods. My wife is an artist with food and confection at a level that I strive for with words.

I'd have to say the hardest part of the whole holiday ordeal was not writing. It's not that I didn't write or revise at all, but it certainly wasn't to the schedule I've grown used to. It kept leaving me with a nagging sense that I was being lazy and leaving things undone.

I'm revising now, which means I'm learning a LOT about my bad habits and just how horrible and clunky some of my prose can be. 

I've got this fantastic thing I do, which likely comes from my personal speech patterns, where I use more complicated words when simple will do. I don't seem to let it creep into dialog, which is a good sign that I'm not overpowering my character voices.

I'm enjoying the experience so far. Granted, I've only revised 6 chapters in to a ~50 chapter manuscript,  but some of them needed serious surgery. I'm talking the "hit it repeatedly with an ax until it stops moving" kind of surgery. Messy, somewhat painful, but necessary. 

I've started to receive feedback from my Alpha Readers on some of what they have so far and it's been invaluable. It's really quite amazing how much some of them pick up on. I probably drive them batty with how I'm dropping, revising, and re-dropping the same chapters to them on Dropbox, and I'm trying to clean up that process so they'll have a frame of reference when I give them updated revisions.

I still aim to push it out to some Critique Partners over at CPSeek.com and on Twitter by end of January. The timeline from that to Agent Query Submission will have to be more flexible depending on feedback at that level.

This writing thing is a lot of work. It's a good thing I enjoy it.

Acknowledgement Problems

I read a blog post recently stating that Authors should keep their acknowledgements in their books short and concise. It got me thinking (not that I'm in a position to start thinking about an Acknowledgements Page yet but bear with me). I don't know about every other aspiring writer but I have a strong need for good information, external validation, and support. How on earth would I pare down the massive list of everyone who's given me a little (or big) push, or some really key piece of information that inspired or helped me limp through this process called writing?

Let me give you an example of what I mean.

Offline, my main support comes from my lovely wife. She allows me the time to write, which is a pretty big consideration, we have a 3 year old that keeps us busy and a 13 year old in Rep Hockey, so she's sacrificing her alone-time with me. She also props me up when I have my little personal crises and think that I suck and shouldn't bother. All in, it probably helps that my writing keeps me out of her hair and makes me far less grumpy on the whole.

We just passed our 16th anniversary together, as I'm only 33 you can do the math and figure out that we're Highschool sweethearts. I wouldn't have it any other way. She's a light in my life and a strong foundation I can always turn to.

For information, like most, I tend to go online and I devour anything I can find on the subject of writing. I'm like a writing zombie constantly in search of other people's brains. There's a lot of great stuff out there if you look, books, blogs, podcasts, and Twitter people (Tweeple?).

You know what I've found along the way? An awful lot of contradiction with a strong core of consistency. Most of that seems to come from the fact that there are really very few keys to becoming a successful and accomplished writer. The rest of it is a matter of personal style and what works for the individual.

It appears the key points to being a halfway decent and possibly successful writer are as follows (in no particular order after the first):

• Write every day.
• Finish what you start.
• Allow yourself to suck (on the first draft at least).
• Read often (and in the genre you write for).
• Have a story to tell.
• Revise (and revise, and revise, and revise, and revise)!
• Persevere

Other elements such as outlining/architecting vs. pantsing/discovery writing, character vs plot, etc. are all up for debate (on the whole). I myself strongly believe in a combination in both cases. 

I outline my plot and story arcs heavily while allowing both to change drastically if "discovery" strikes or something feels flat. 

When it comes to scenes and characters I have to "write myself" into them, which is most definitely a "discovery writer" thing to do.

Prose, grammar, and spelling are all things to be cleaned and touched up in revision as far as I'm concerned. Yes, I have some inspired moments while writing the first draft, and some of them may even make it into the final manuscript, but I won't know that until I get there.

That's what I've got so far, and it's by no means clean or polished and certainly up for debate. Like everything to do with writing, I'm learning as I go. Without the people that I meet online, or the podcasts and blogs that I follow with their myriad of tips and helpful information I wouldn't be nearly as far along as I am.

It will likely take several more books to streamline and work it out for myself, and that's a good thing, because it lends to my whole solution to the "Acknowledgements" problem: Write and publish enough books to cover everyone. It's going to take at least 20-30 books.

- Grimm

P.S. I was originally going to list and link some of the blogs and Twitter folks that I follow but I've decided against it in this particular post, as many of the tips and information comes from multiple sources and it would just be a mess. Instead I'm looking to add a people/links bar to the already overcrowded right hand bar once I clean some stuff up.

Revision! Revision! Revision! (Alpha Readers!)

I had to travel on a commuter train today. I generally enjoy travelling on the train when I have to as it means I don't have to pay much attention to my surroundings. It takes all the stress of driving my commute and leaves them behind. At the same time, I get to sit on a crowded train with lots of people I don't know and their stinky sandwiches.

Focusing on the positive, it means I get to spend 2 hours (1 way) doing just about anything else, provided I have enough battery power. I spent today's train ride starting in on a clean-up pass on my book. I've run through the first 3 chapters and surprised myself at how much I cleaned up. I was either very sloppy, or my writing has vastly improved in the last 6 weeks (both are distinct possibilities).

I'm going to drop some PDFs in the Alpha Reader Dropbox for my Alphas to pick up and take a read over. I hope they'll be pleasantly surprised with what I've done, and give me hell for anything I've screwed up or dropped the ball on. I want you guys to know that I appreciate any and all feedback as long as you're honest and clear with me. I promise I won't take any of it personally (unless you target me personally :P)

I'm going to be taking at least a week or two off from daily writing related work to put some time in on some other things, that's not to say I won't be working on it at all, but it won't be every night for the next little while. I intend to have these Alpha drops fairly frequently and I'll be doing a full run through of all the chapters before going back to work on the feedback.

Let me know in the comments if you want something other than a PDF to mark up and get back to me and I'll do my best to accomodate. If you want to be an Alpha Reader, drop me a line in there as well and we'll chat.

- Grimm

Today the Words Were Easy

If I could have writing days like this all the time I'd be published by now. There's a saying that you have to write a million words before you get published. Well, if I could pull off the ~3,400 I did today every day, that would only take me 295 days.

To top it, look at that, two blog posts in one day! And I had a productive day at my paying job too! Of course, if all of my writing consists of starting sentences with conjunctions and ending them with exclamation marks, well, let's just say I'd need one hell of a good Agent and a very tolerant Editor to get published.

My draft just ticked past 80,000 words and it's on the steep uphill slope of the final climax in the book. The one piece I've drafted over and over and over, and it seems to be flowing pretty damned good right about now.

If it wasn't for the heaviness of my eyelids I'd probably continue writing. Let's just say I've learned not to do that. Now I just make myself some quick notes and wobble off to bed.

That said, it's time to commence wobbling.

- Grimm

P.S. Be sure to check out The Next Big Thing Blog Hop entry on my blog. I'm kicking it over to Brandi M Lynch on her blog at http://www.branwrites.blogspot.com. I'm looking forward to what she has to say!

Like a Madman!

Work has been driving me barmy lately. Between the nightmare of dealing with Windows platforms integrating with Linux NFS WatchFolders and other platforms integrating with those Windows platforms I could just about lose my mind.

I spend at a minimum 6 of my 8 hour workday up to my eyeballs in configurations, log files, xml traces, and metadata, then I spend at least 3 hours a day commuting to and from my job. It's a wonder I have any time to write at all.

The key is, I make time. In the evening, after my kids are in bed, and my wife is gently tucked into her Pandaren in World of Warcraft, or Facebook, or Pinterest, I shut down my browser, put on my headphones and write.

I started behind the 8-ball on NaNoWriMo but I'm slowly and steadily catching up. I even took a night off for Skyfall (go see it) and I'm still gaining ground.

Tonight I hit ~70K words on my draft. I started November at 50,000 words even on the draft. I went so far as to change a few wordings here and there to make it even out so I could do NaNo and keep on track with minimal math. I'm supposed to be at 73,333, putting me 3,333 behind, which is far better than the ~7K hole I've been climbing out of.

So anyone out there who's having trouble catching up on their NaNo. Sit your butt in the chair and shut down your browser. Disconnect your internet (turn off wi-fi or unplug it) if you must. If I can do it with only 2 hours a day, then you should be able to.

- Grimm

P.S. Natalie Bahm and her agent Sara Megibow are running a promotional contest on her book The Secret Underground with all the profits going to help a sick baby boy named Jayden. The contest is simple, comment on the contest blog post for a chance to win a 50 page critique by Sara Megibow (agent extraordinaire) on a finished or unfinished manuscript (yours or your friend's).

While you're at it, buy the book, the cause is most definitely worth it and from what I gather it's a damned good book (I haven't received my copy yet).

Home Playing Catch-up

From ~2,600 words in 3 days to ~2,400 in 2 hours I think I can catch up now that I'm at home. I'm really looking forward to sleeping in my own bed without a 3 year old flopping around.

I'm also quite happy to be home with my writing space, my selection of loose leaf teas, and my beasties.

My cat Mal, who was quite sick when we went away, and a constant source of worry for me over the weekend, seems to be doing better. He's being his usual social self again, and eating and drinking. So it's quite possible he's passed some of the foam rubber and stuffed animal fluff that he ate.

My blog posts will likely be just as frequent during NaNoWriMo/NaNoFiMo, but they will likely be shorter, as I'm conserving my word count for actual writing instead of blogging.  Even my Twitter use has dropped a bit.

If anything momentous happens, or if I come across anything like, oh, say an Auction to promote Kids Literature and Sandy Relief that includes several chances at having your picture book or manuscript professionally critiqued by a professional (sorry for the redundant sentence, I had to use enough words for all the links). There are 42 items in all (currently). Go have a look.

I really need to get my book in shape for these sorts of things.

- Grimm

A Slow Start in a Hotel

My family and I are away from home at the moment at a hockey tournament (it didn't end well but Monster played fantastically) and I'm finding it hard to write in a hotel. I'm participating in NaNoWriMo this year (dubbed NaNoFiMo or National Novel Finishing Month by Laura Hughes on Twitter), as I've said a few times recently and it's making for a slow start.

I don't know what it is about sleeping in a hotel that just doesn't work for me. Whether it's being in an unfamiliar environment with no white noise (I sleep with the en-suite fan on at home), or whether it's my 3 year old (AKA Bear) constantly tossing and turning next to me but I just don't get a good night's sleep.

It could be the food. I've gotten quite used to eating home-cooked whole foods, and you really don't get that when you're away from home and at the mercy of restaurants or other parents (pot-lucks are great for socializing, and the food is often delicious, but ugh).
~
My writing has sucked while here, in 3 nights I've knocked out only ~2,600 words. I'm exhausted tonight and definitely looking forward to going home tomorrow and sleeping in my own bed, with my cat and my dogs and the only other person in the bed with me being my wife.

Alright, I'm done whining. Tomorrow I'll try and get back on track, or at least get a little more done.

- Grimm

And then some.

It's the Saturday before Hallowe'en, time for parties and costumes and mistakenly bedding the wrong kangaroo costume clad spouse at drunken parties.  Good thing I don't drink or go to parties, and my wife doesn't dress as a kangaroo (most of the time).

What did I do on the Saturday evening before Hallowe'en?  I bashed out enough words to put this draft of BookB at 50,000 words.  That's right, I sat in a chair at my kitchen table and played pretend in my head with my fingers flying across the well worn keyboard of my MacBook.

I did it to music of course.  Not the music you'd traditionally get at a Hallowe'en party, tonight it was Radiohead's In Rainbows, which I bought during their blitz "pay what you want" sale for $8.  It did roll over into Kid A at some point, but I was too engrossed in my own little world to notice.

Speaking of Hallowe'en, or better still All Hallow's Read, check out yesterday's blog post for links and information on getting a free audiobook written and narrated by Neil Gaiman while supporting charity.

I've been thinking a lot about NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), and religiously following Kevin J Anderson's blog for great tips for any writer, even if they aren't participating in NaNo.  The goal for NaNo is to write 50,000 words in the month of November, a worthy goal for any writer who holds down a day job.

They classify 50K words as a novel, and at ~200 manuscript pages (205 with my style setup) I suppose it is.  But having hit that mark a few times now I'm not sure I could fit this novel into such a tight constraint.  Granted, the outline sits around 19,000 words, but I'm a heavy outliner.  I'm shooting for just shy of 100,000 words, and looking at my outline versus what I've written, that's about spot on.

For those of you who follow my blog, or who have randomly jumped around and read that I've just entered the Third Act of the draft, you might wonder how I could possibly only be at 50K words.  Well, fear not my friends (and potential enemies looking for weaknesses via my blog), I have a fair number of chapters that still need to be written further back in the draft, and a good number of small re-writes to do.

If you recall (or care to search), I re-jigged the entire outline and dropped a number of viewpoint characters to rein in the story to something a little more manageable and character focused.  I'm still on track to finish the draft by the end of the year, and if I succeed for the second straight year in NaNoWriMo, possibly by the end of November.  Tack on a few months for edits and polish and I could be submitting by February.

Then again, I could be working on the next revision to clean up any major holes I leave this time :)

We'll see soon enough.  Either way, I intend to enjoy the ride more than any possible accidental and mistaken pseudo-marsupial encounters I could be having.

- Grimm

P.S. Kat Ellis retweeted my Blog update announcement on Twitter (cause that's where you retweet things) and my readership for last night's blog post tripled!  For any of you who stick around, it's good to have you.  There will be free explosions for words for all.

A nice day for writing.

Ah, I got to sleep in today, which was nice.

We dropped the kids off at my in-laws last night and went to see Seven Psychopaths. It was a fantastic movie and made #2 on my Movie List for the year.  If you saw and liked In Bruges (and you really really should), then you'll love Seven Psychopaths.  Conversely, if you've seen Seven Psychopaths and liked it, check out In Bruges.  Colin Ferrel plays a screenwriter suffering from writers block, and the character is written and acted superbly.

After the kids got home we went to hockey practice, where I backed my car into someone's van and left a note.  They seemed reasonably pleasant when they called me, hopefully it doesn't cost a small fortune to repaint a bumper.  Still, there was no screaming or swearing on the phone.

I spent my first hour of writing time helping my oldest daughter with homework (computer problems were slowing her down), then sent her off to bed.

Needless to say, when I sat down to write with my cup of tea it was nice and relaxing and exactly what I needed.  I've written just over 3000 words in 2 hours.

Tonight I pushed this draft into the Third Act, crossing that barrier in the space of roughly a chapter and a half where my protagonist goes from constantly reacting to the world around him to being proactive.  It'll need some cleaning for sure, but I think I've pulled it off convincingly where character motivation is concerned.

Hook Line and Sinker enters into its Third Round tomorrow morning, I can't wait to see how the YA section goes.  I've been following it closely and it's getting down to the most thrilling part (for me anyway).  I hope to see some fantastic "I found an Agent through #HLandS" stories in the coming weeks.  I always love to read those.  It gives me hope.

Well, it's past midnight here, and I have to commute to work in the morning, so I should trundle off to bed. Yes, I trundle when I'm tired.

- Grimm