Tag Archives: writing

I have been reading a lot of writing blogs lately, as well as comments posted on those blogs by wannabe and somewhat successful writers. (Really successful novel writers, I noticed, post little online. They must be saving every word for their publishers.)

Naturally, many post or comment about their reasons for writing. Most say that it’s for the love of the craft. Many write to remember and I can certainly understand that, because my own writing started with simple entries in a daily journal. I still have the journal and read it every now and then, wishing I kept it up.

Some writers think of their books as “messages in a bottle” or write to communicate with the larger community. Some do it for self-awareness, others to understand the world. Some even claim they would stop breathing if they were to stop writing (I assume a YA writer). Only one so far admitted that it was all about the money.

I became so fascinated with this topic, while procrastinating away valuable writing time, that i even googled “why i write”. (I know, it’s an OCD). Turned out it’s a George Orwell essay, in which he talks about the four “great motives for writing”, which are ego satisfaction, the pleasure of making up something beautiful, or a historical or political need.

Surprisingly, none of the bloggers (so far) or even Mr. Orwell have mentioned my main reason for writing. For me personally it’s being able to say, under pretence of writing fiction, everything I wish I could say in real life. Simple things, like telling my boss what I think about his brilliant new idea and where I think he should put it. Calling an ex-boyfriend and saying, “it wasn’t me, it was you”. Yelling “shut up!” at someone on the train who believes in letting everyone in on his phone conversation. My protagonist gets to do those things.

Oh, and I wish I could admit that I’m in it for the money. It’s okay, my protagonist will.

I know, IHD was on 1st of January and I am a bit late with my wishes of quick recovery and hopes that you lost nothing of value (like, say, your dignity). It has taken me that long to get over mine. I just wrote my New Year resolutions, and “no more drinking” was first on the list, even before “get a book published”.

I still sort of functioned and even went to work, although I’ve accomplished little more than cleaning out my inbox. The effort of sitting up straight and keeping my eyes focused when talking to people was just too much. Remarkably, I still wrote at night! The words may not have been as inspired, but the desire to click on the keys and get my jumbled thoughts on the page was still there. Somehow, despite everything, I am now at 65K words, a mere month away from printing out the first draft.

There has been one noticeable side effect, though. I don’t know if it’s the hangover, or the fact that I am actually approaching the end of the story, but I have suddenly found myself wallowing in self-doubt. This almost never happens, as I’ve learned over the years that blind enthusiasm pays better dividends than caution and pessimism. I’ve started doubting everything, from my writing style (it reads more like a film than a traditional novel) to the plot (just how ridiculous can a comedy get before the reader says ‘that would never happen!’)

Luckily, Google came to the rescue. I spent a few hours googling pathetic queries like “is my writing good enough?” and “can I make it as a writer?”. And you know what I learned? That a lot of people want to sell me ebooks guaranteed to improve my writing style, get me published, and get back my pre-baby body. I didn’t buy them of course, not only because I’ve never had a baby, but also because I suspect that they are not any better writers than me, just maybe more savvy and even more blindly enthusiastic.

Okay, there was one thing I did learn, and for free, too! Just about everybody who ever published a book says you have to keep doing it. No matter what, keep writing, editing, deleting, and writing again. So that’s what I’m going to do today – pick up my writing shovel and throw another couple of thousand words onto my mountain. I know that I will love every minute of it, which certainly helps.

So, in addition to quick recovery of your reputation, I wish that all your ridiculous New Year resolutions come true. And if there is a book in them, then what are you waiting for? Pick up your shovel, eh laptop!

Last time I told everyone how I got over my writers block by creating a plan. Sadly, my happiness was short-lived, as I became so obsessed with Twitter that reading, retwitting and commenting on tweets has left me with literally no time to write. I was perfectly content with spending hours laughing about other people jokes, not realising that I hardly wrote any of my own anymore. My followers list kept growing and the few jokes I twitted, got retwitted dozens of times. As far as I was concerned, I was doing well by collecting fans who will eventually read and love my book. Right?

My family certainly agreed. They are very supportive of everything I do.

“Oh, you are going back to school? We are so proud!”
“Oh, you are quitting school? Wise decision!”
“Gonna be a sculptor? You are so talented!
“Kiteboarding sounds like fun!”
“Getting a divorce? We never liked him anyway!”
“You are the best actor we know!”
“Two new jobs in one year? You go, girl!”
“You have a blog AND a Twitter account? You are a social media mogul!”

So it was a huge shock to the system when my agent took me out to dinner and proceeded to give me the third degree about “wasting time on Twitter”. He was adamant that I “quit that nonsense” and “finish the book instead”. I tried to protest and paint a vision in which thousands of Twitter followers will be eagerly awaiting the release of my book, to which he asserted that if I spend all my time twitting, there will be no book to speak of.

Somewhere in the back of my mind I had an inkling that constant twitting, retwitting and following was possibly a massive waste of time. I also became concerned that I started “speaking in tweets” in my regular life and interrupting engaging conversations with “I’ve got to tweet this!” So, I did the unthinkable and listened to my agent’s advice.

I am happy to report that, of course, I didn’t listen to ALL of his advice. I have since completely ignored the bit about “pacing myself”. Instead, I made a quick Excel spreadsheet that has set out a goal of a thousand words per day and I have been tracking my daily progress there. It’s like my own NaNoWriMo, with a slightly more manageable goal and extended deadline.

I am also happy to report that I am now nearly Twitter-free and instead completely obsessed about the two lines (blue-the goal and red-the progress) creeping up across the page. In fact, I have managed to use this new bit of inspiration to average nearly 1,500 words per day! The first draft is at 38K words and I’m on track to hand my surprised agent a thick printout at the end of January.

I can only hope that nothing else distracts me in the meantime. Like archery. It’s so cool! I have tried it the other weekend and got a couple of arrows in “the gold”. Do they accept 40-year olds to Olympic teams?

Hi there! I know, I promised to write about plot development a week ago, but now that I am a writer, I also have writer’s block. I even talked about it in a writers support group. Everyone’s got it – it’s like a rite of passage. We also bitched and moaned about lack of time for writing, probably for a good couple of hours. I then twitted about it.

I am, however, happy to report that I seem to be completely cured! I have written a couple of thousand words in just the last few days, and that’s in the evenings, after a hard day’s work. How did I get over the block, I hear you asking? Deceptively simple – I wrote a plan. It’s technically a chapter outline based on a plot, but in a way it is a plan of how I will write this book. I can hear the “organic” writers protesting, and maybe it wouldn’t work for everyone, but for me it has been a breakthrough. The organic writing still happens, it’s just that now I know what to write about.

I started with writing my ideas for a plot on post-its and plastering them on a long wall in my house. I did one row for the main plot and put subplot ideas in other rows. The finished plot ended up looking like this:

The photo above shows the plot after about a week of staring at it, reading about plotting, conflict and character arcs, and staring at it again. I found a huge number of plot holes in the beginning! For starters, my protagonist lacked motivation. It didn’t bother me at first – I rationalised that because it’s a comedy the motivation is not needed, after all Beavis and Butthead are not motivated, right? Then I thought about it. Beavis and Butthead’s burning desire to score with chicks made them worthy of a feature film. I thought about other comedy protagonists and had to admit to myself that every single one of them was motivated, even the lazy ones.

Another problem was sporadic appearance of subplots and support characters. By sticking pieces of paper on the wall, I was able to see easily where I completely forgot about a character for a few chapters. I added ideas on post-its, moved them, threw some out, added more. I used little blue stickers to break the plot into 20 chapters. I used a five-act structure, which is really a variation of the classic three act structure: life as usual (setup), confrontation, and resolution. I marked out small conflicts leading progressively to the ultimate “everything is lost” moment and the eventual solution to the problem.

The plot and chapter outline will probably evolve as I go along, but for now they are great tools to help guide my avalanche of verbiage into a coherent story. Best of all – look Ma, no writer’s block!

Hi there everyone! (by “everyone” I mean ten or so people that have subscribed to my blog in the two weeks it was up and live).

I have to apologise for the misleading advertising of my intent to publish Shizzle, Inc online, chapter by chapter. I thought it was a pretty clever idea, to get some fans for the eventual publication of a sequel. I expected that maybe in a year or so I would get enough followers to get interest from an agent or publisher.

What I did not expect, is that by sheer luck (not unlike that Isa, my protagonist, encounters on a regular basis), I would run into a literary agent while filming a commercial. Or that he would agree to read a few sample chapters. Or that he would like them enough to agree to represent me.

The only problem, the agent did not think it was at all genius to publish my book online – not if he can sell it to a publisher. He did criticise my plot and wants me to improve it before submitting, so it is still possible that the book doesn’t sell and I revert to the original plan, but I sure hope not.

So, in the meantime, I will blog about my experiences of trying to be a writer (which I think is way harder than coming up with fiction). I will start with what I learned about plot development. Tomorrow. Cause it’s late and stuff, okay?