Writing goals 2013

January 2, 2013 ~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ Leave a comment

The problem I’m having with setting a writing goal for the coming year is that there is no one task I do everyday when I’m writing. Not even putting words on a page. Which is why a daily word count goal is meaningless. Jeez, if my goal was word count alone, I could do that with a manuscript like that creepo was typing up in The Shining. Writing is also not (for me) a linear process of going from page one to page 341 (or whatever). I don’t write start to finish. Sometimes, the end has to come first, or the middle, because those sections help determine the beginning. So setting a goal of “one chapter a week” or every two weeks or every month is also not workable.

I hop between composing, editing, plotting, and research depending on where the energy of my creative focus is that day and what my story currently needs. Yeah, I edit while composing. Bad me, no cookie. I go back and rewrite previously-written stuff when I’ve changed my mind about how it should go because sometimes FIXING old stuff is psychologically necessary for moving forward with newer stuff that contradicts it.

So I think the best daily goal is a time chunk. Two and a half hours a day, six days a week. Which comes out to only 15 hours a week.

My main goal in January is re-visioning my MacGuffins. The “obscure, powerful” archeological artifacts that are at the center of a story that is really science fiction, not fantasy. They can’t be supernatural–they need to be Clarkesque technology, but they can’t be ridiculously complicated Clarkesque technology, either. So much of January will be taken up by research and contemplation, and very little of the writing I do on this task will end up in the 100,000 final words of the story.

And yet, my goal is to have a draft worthy of beta-reading and possible publication by the end of the calendar year. Onward.

Writing plan 2013

December 31, 2012 ~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ Leave a comment

It’s Monday morning, December 31st, 2012. Do you know what your writing plan for 2013 is? I recently read an article by Dean Wesley Smith on the topic, and his take(s) on it were (1) clearly for full-time writers, and, also, (2) insane.

http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=8367

But I am not here to be his poster girl for failure, making excuses why I can’t follow any of his suggested plans (words per hour? Seriously? How can anyone even have a ballpark figure of “how many new words they can write per hour” when no hour is ever equal to any other in (a) state of mind (b) state of life (c) level of distractions (d) level of carpal tunnels syndrome… Um, what?)

Word count goals, at any rate, never functioned for me. I can set a goal of say, 250 words a day, but quality and quantity are not the same thing–I mean how many of us have writtenshit during NaNo just to “win” and come out of that with only a few scraps we can actually use?

Smith has one suggestion that makes more sense to me–a “production goal.” Instead of counting words, you set a goal of what you want to produce. This, of course, depends on having not just an end-of-the-year goal, but a weekly goal, maybe even a daily goal, that you can stay focused on so your progress towards the big picture doesn’t weigh you down or discourage you.

He apparently writes short stories. One a week (what). I am a novelist, and I want to write the second draft of my novel. This goal does not mean just cleaning up the old draft, though, since as I indicated elsewhere, that draft turned out to really be more a first draft of the second book in a trilogy, rather than the first. So my job is to take the elements from the first draft that belong in the first book and give them their own structure (something I’ve been working on in December), then write that story in full.

And, at the same time, fix the stuff in the first draft I was never happy with, which is the real challenge. Every first draft has a universe-given right to SUCK. Second drafts need to rise above that.

So, fine, I will write my second draft. The next question becomes, do I write it in (1) a month, (2) three months, (3) six months, (4) 9 months, (5) a year? There are different pros and cons to each of these scenarios, but this is really where you have to Know Your Own Brain. And my brain works best when I give it space. This is what I’ve learned in thirty years of creative writing. I work, and work, and work, and work, fingers to the keyboard like a maniac, get frustrated because some story element is eluding me, get up out of my chair and do something else.

Then, days later, when I’m doing something Really Awkward like showering or trying to fall asleep, or lying with a dozen needles poking out of my skin, the answer comes to me. Or an answer to a question I never thought to ask comes to me. And I have to give my brain the space to work this way. Saying “I will write this draft in six months” and setting writing time goals and all the like is all well and good–priming the pump or whatever–but the best ideas will not come on demand.

Still, a year seems too long. I’d like to light the fire under my butt a little. These things drag on too long.

Well, as with all great ideas, I need to give my brain time to think about this. Brain, you have until the end of the week to come up with a great writing plan for 2013. Hop to it.

The Plan

November 3, 2012 ~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ Leave a comment

I am in the throes of NaNo-Envy, but I am still happy not to be doing NaNo. Yes, a contradiction, but I love the social energy this month brings in what is often such a solitary activity. OTOH, I am feeling under the weather, and I finished the first draft of my novel last Sunday, so… not great timing for me this year.

But I am in earnest planning mode on the second draft and the general outline for the trilogy of novels that is going to emerge from my first draft. I’ve actually been thinking of turning the novel into a series for a while now, because I see a lot of possibilities and stories in the world I am building (still building. I think my story-world was a bit thin in the first draft).

Back in July, I came across an online writing school, the bill-paying day-job of author Holly Lisle, http://novelwritingschool.com/. Other than a one-on-one writing coach and writer’s workshops, I have not taken any “writing classes” in the sense of instruction since I was a teenager/twenty-something. At that age, I was obsessed with learning “how to write fiction” and so never did any actual writing. Experience is the best teacher, IMO. I learned more from writing my first novel, Dis/inhibition, and The Destroyer series than I could have learned in a hundred writing classes. But I figured Lisle’s “How To Write A Series” course might have a few pointers.

I got through the first two of four lessons in July, then RL got in the way. The lesson videos and exercises guide you through the process of identifying what kind of series you will write, planning how it will unfold, etc (although I must say the video transcripts included are FULL of typos….)

So finishing that course is one goal I have set for my post-novel time. I also plan to work through The Plot Whisperer Workbook. Both of these are merely tools to help me focus on plotting and locating strong and weak story elements for the purpose of revision and expansion.

I reviewed the first two lessons of Lisle’s course this week, and realized quickly that a lot of the course exercises could benefit from me gathering together all the “future draft” notes I tucked away while working on the first draft–changes to plot points and characters I envisioned, ideas for expansion. So that is what I am working on now. I’ve got some good ideas brewing, and a LOT of research work ahead of me in physics, mythology, and random bits.

I just finished the first draft of my novel

October 28, 2012 ~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ Leave a comment

Woo-f***ing-hoo!!

But yes, alas, that means I am officially not doing NaNo this year, ’cause October has been my NaNoWriMo–a non-stop writing-and-editing spree that began each morning as soon as I woke up , stopped only so I could go to the stress-hell that has been work this month, and resumed the minute I got home until I collapsed in bed.

I think part of the reason I managed to whack out the rest of this story in one month is that work has been so sucky, writing distracted me from dwelling on it. Which, bonus. But I overdid it. I have been sick with the flu for over a week now. Still working at my job from home–blast modern remote login computers.

I crawled into my actual place of employment for meetings twice last week and couldn’t even sit up for the length of them.

Now I am all jealous of my friends prepping for NaNo. Not because I’m dying to spew out 1,667 words a day, but because it’s fun to be part of all that energy. My Nov and Dec will be spent planning the second draft of my novel (and posting on that process, hopefully). And it will need planning–lots and lots of planning, ’cause for Pantsers, the first draft is really the “outline.” It is the raw material out of which the “actual” novel is formed.

And there was so much I wanted to include in this draft I didn’t have room for, I slowly concluded it was three books instead of one. So now I need to plan out three books. And then, hopefully before the new year (but I’m not pushing it), start the “second” draft of the first book.

NoNoWriMo

September 29, 2012 ~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ Leave a comment

National Novel Writing Month, AKA NaNoWriMo, gets a bad rap. I certainly used to knock it. What could you possibly accomplish in the attempt to pound out 50,000 words of new original fiction in one 30-day span, other than incoherent drivel?

I still sort of think if I attempted the above exactly as stated, that’s what I’d get. Of course, I’m a pantser, not given to overly pre-planning new writing before I start it, because the act of writing itself always transforms whatever I thought to write into what I really wanted to write. Your mileage may vary.

NaNoWriMo is still considered by many the playground of enthusiastic amateurs. Still, I’ve come to like it and look forward to it. It’s like an annual party for the novelist crowd.

I was tempted into “NaNo,” as my friends call it, watching the social energy they harnessed at that time of year–how one person’s effort made it a little easier for someone else to put the effort in themselves. My friends aren’t the type to actually gather in rooms together on November evenings with laptops and paper pads like some participants (not my preference either–I find the presence of others distracting when I’m writing). They mostly blogged about their progress and process, but the result was much the same.

I have now “NaNoed” three times in the last six years. And every year I’ve participated, I picked a project I was already working on. One time it was a few episodes of a fan fiction WIP. Another time, a fleshing-out of an original story I’d been working on for about a year. Some days, I’d let words I wrote before November slip into my word count. This year, I had fully planned to set a goal of writing only 250 words a day instead of the recommended 1,667 that gets you to 50,000 after thirty days.

In other words, I’ve learned to find NaNo useful by never following the rules. Not exactly, anyway. And the folks who bring you NaNoWriMo, the Office of Letters and Light, have embraced the people who do that. They have a forum board just for the “NaNo Rebels” to hang out in together.

Alas, this year, it doesn’t look like I’ll be in a position to do NaNoWriMo. I am scrambling to finish the next-to-last chapter of the first draft of my novel before the end of the month, and I don’t see the final chapter going any faster. I think October will get eaten up by it. I had planned to use October to plan out the second draft. My suspicion is this first draft is going to end up being expanded into three separate novels, which will require actual outlining and plotting and Time to figure out. I won’t be ready to start writing the second draft of book one by November lst.

I’m kind of bummed about this. The social energy of NaNo has got to be, like quadrupled interstellar on Twitter, which I’ve only just started using this year. Maybe I will try to blog more about the Planning and Plotting process as it is going on, and post snippets in later months when I have them.

In defense of fan fiction

August 15, 2012August 27, 2012 ~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ 2 Comments

Earlier this week, I sent my website designer the content for my new author website. It contained a lot of things about me: my published novel, my current writing projects, my past projects. One of the things it contained was a blurb about and link to my fan fiction story, The Destroyer. I figured, why not, I worked hard on that story and readers liked it. It is an example of my SFF writing and series writing skills.

I think I forgot how few people out in the webosphere really understand what fan fiction is and why it can be a legitimate art form–an engagement with and reinterpretation of an existing text that can entertain us by continuing its story (or expanding the existing story), or shed critical light on aspects of that story the author might not have realized were in it.

Dis/inhibition paperback gets Ingram distribution

August 10, 2012August 10, 2012 ~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ Leave a comment

I found these this morning while Googling:

http://www.adlibris.com/se/product.aspx?isbn=1105603709
http://www.libri.de/shop/action/productDetails/19400201/nancy_e_shaffer_dis_inhibition_1105603709.html

There is still an issue with getting the book cover on some of U.S. sites, but I am told that’s being worked on.

“Inhibition is nature’s way of keeping you from doing something really stupid…”

Valerie Running Deer is a brash, brilliant neuroscience graduate student. Elizabeth Baldwin is her uptight, control-freak advisor. Elizabeth and Valerie’s relationship has always been a battle of wills, but when Elizabeth hands over one of Valerie’s original research ideas to another student, Valerie fires the shot that turns their cold war into a hot one: she makes a pass at Elizabeth’s daughter Lisa, a coy, impetuous teen who has been harboring a crush on her.

Valerie’s spiteful impulse is diffused when she starts to fall for Lisa behind Elizabeth’s back, but a confrontation is inevitable. Valerie’s tumultuous journey towards it will entangle her in the circuitous dance of the relationships around her as friends, colleagues, and family struggle to balance need and trust, impulse and restraint. Control freaks. Hot heads.

Timid artists. Impulsive kids. Dis/inhibition explores the complications of self-control both outside and inside the scientific laboratory.