Madge's Weblog

NaNoWriMo -- Week Two

Okay, so week one didn't go so great.  I've been using this weekend to try to catch up and stay on pace.  I'm happy to say that I caught up quite a bit this weekend.  I'm close to 15,000 words right now and I'm take a break to write this post.  Too bad the words for this post don't count toward my novel :-)  I thought that sharing some tips will help me stay motivated and on pace for the next week.  Week three is always the worst week for NaNoWriMo and I'm sure it will be extra hard because I've been slacking.  My goal is to write every night on my novel and post here to let everyone know how I'm doing.  I'll let you know my tips and how I keep myself motivated every day.

This weekend I used 30 minute word wars to stay motivated.  I also broke up the word wars with cleaning.  I would write 2,000 words then move around the house doing chores before sitting my butt back in the chair and starting again.   The activity seems to keep things fresh and moving.  I find that I'm a little jittery like I've had too much coffee right after I've done a word war so it helps to move around a bit.  If I'm really concentrating I can usually do about 2,000 words in 30 minutes.  Its sounds like a lot, but it really isn't.  You have to write non-stop whatever comes into your mind at that moment.  Kinda like this blog entry right now.

Wish me luck!

NaNoWriMo -- Day late and a dollar short

I've had a really hard time getting going with NaNoWriMo this year.  Right now I'm almost caught up.  I'm about a day behind on my word count goal.  Below are a few tips that have helped me try to keep pace.  Normally I'd refer to the forums, but the website is so ridiculously slow that those aren't much help this year.  Not sure what happened, last year the format of the site was much more involved and it was fairly fast.  The page load times make me think that their server is in a basement somewhere with smoke pouring out of every crevice.

My word count right is now is a little over 6,000 words.  I need to be at 8,334 words tonight to be on pace for 50,000 words.

Tips:

Word wars on the forums - see how many words you can write in 30 minutes.  Just let it flow and don't think.

Rewards - bribe yourself with your favorite food or drink.

Get up and move around - after a half hour of word wars make yourself get up and do something active.

Time yourself -- start writing on the hour and tell yourself that after you write a thousand words you can take the rest of the hour off.  I once wrote 10,000 words in a day using this technique.

NaNoWriMo 2007

I am gearing up for the 2007 edition of NaNoWriMo.  Last year I didn't do any prep for my novel.  Things didn't flow as well as the year before so for this year's novel I'm going to do a plot outline.  I am also going to make my novel a fantasy story so that I don't need to do any specific research.  We will see how that goes this year.  Things have been incredibly busy with work so I only have a few days left to plot before the chaos begins. 

Wishing everyone a successful round of noveling!

Writer's Guideline Pet Peeve -- From a Writer's Viewpoint

I'm looking for places to submit a new science fiction story.  The first two were a given for me, they are the two places I always submit my best short science fiction work -- Asimov's and Fantasy & Science Fiction.  My philosophy is that if I'm serious about my writing I always need to start at the top and work my way down the list of possible outlets based on reputation and payscale.

Here's where the pet peeve comes in.  In researching the next outlet I came across writers guideline from a publication that says:

" Unless you are convinced that your work is of a top-shelf, global standard – the sort of excellent fiction published by, for example, Asimov’s – please don’t bother."

Wait, I'm confused, if you're an author convinced that your short story is good enough for Asimov's shouldn't that be where you send it?  Why would you send it to this unknown publication instead?

Seriously people, it can't be that hard to write your guidelines that you have to resort to things like "Only take what should be published in 'World Renowned Publication XYZ'."   I've actually seen this sort of wording before and it has become a BIG pet peeve of mine.  I never send my work for consideration to any outlet that says stuff like this.  I'm positive that lack of my short stories to reject has never harmed one of these outlets :-)  but it makes me feel better to not support an outlet that resorts to lazy guidelines.

Resources for Character and Story Ideas

I have two resources that I use regularly for character and story ideas.  One is a fairly new resource, or rather its fairly new that it is free.  I use the archives of the New York Times for historical data points to make my fantasy stories more real.  This information was just freed up from behind a paywall.  I am beyond excited about having it as a free resource. 

I also use the Dear Abby and Dear Margo columns in the newspaper for inspiration.  For instance there was a great letter yesterday in Dear Abby where a woman was writing in to say that her husband wouldn't let her lock the doors to their house.  This is a great "why" and "what-if" scenario for a short story or even a novel. It is especially useful for me because the one area where I struggle is in the character arc.  I have trouble making my characters change by the end of the story.  The Dear Abby and Dear Margo letters set-up fabulous opportunities to build character arcs.

Time Management for Writers -- The Waiting Room

Get out a piece of paper and a pen.  List the places where you have to sit and wait during the course of a week or month.  These aren't things that could be considered activities like 'eating dinner with the family' or 'sitting in church' these are places and times when you are in between activies.  Think sitting in the waiting room at the doctor's office, commuting or sitting in the car to pick the kids up from school.  Do you have your list?  Now write down next to each thing how long you spend waiting in each scenario.  It might be a lot of time or just a few minutes, but when added all up the number is pretty significant, especially when you think of it in terms of months or years.

Next time you have to go to the doctor or pick the kids up from school take a notebook and a pen with you.  Even if you just get down one paragraph or one idea, you're writing and that's what counts.  If you drive to work I would suggest using a tape recorder rather than a pen and paper :-) but I'm sure you get the idea.  Make every little second count and you might find yourself arriving a little early for that dentist's appointment just so you can have a few extra minutes to write.

One interesting benefit of trying this out is that you can see how different environments affect your writing.  You might write dialogue better while you are sitting on the bus to go to work or perhaps be better at descriptions when you have the windows on the van rolled down while you're waiting for the kids.  The best thing about writing is that you don't have to write your story from beginning to end so you can use your newly discovered preferences to strengthen what you do.

Drabble

I've been writing drabble lately.  I don't seem to have the attention span for anything else. Drabble is a story that is less than 100 words.  I've found that writing these pieces has helped immensely with my descriptions and pacing in longer works.  If you only have 100 words to work with every word has to be essential.

Simultaneous Submissions

A podcast I listen to, Mur Lafferty's I Should Be Writing, gave me an idea.  I had put a couple of my stories on the shelf because I'd submitted them to some outlets but then gotten frustrated because they are the 'social outcasts' of my unpublished work.  These two stories don't quite fit in anywhere and the outlets that take 'outcast' stories often take awhile to review and respond to submissions.  Mur is currently on an agent search and has been doing simultaneous submissions.  The lightbulb went on over my head and I went on a submission spree for those two stories.  Instead of feeling lost and disappointed when my stories are rejected one by one, I decided to go whole hog and send each out to multiple outlets. 

A word of caution about simultaneous submissions, ALWAYS make sure that the publication accepts simultaneous submissions and tell them that what you are providing has also been submitted elsewhere.  Also, once your story is accepted by one publication IMMEDIATELY withdraw it from submission at the other publications.  If you keep to these rules you won't ruin simultaneous submission for the rest of us.  Happy Submitting!

Story Maintenance

I've been doing a little story maintenance this weekend.  I use a spreadsheet to keep track of where all my stories have been, are and will be going.  There are a couple of stories that I checked in on this week because they've been lost in the slush pile.  I have had one story on submission to a publication for a year.  The magazine's stated response time was 5-6 months.  I've checked on magazine a couple of times and been told by the editor that yes, it is still being published. 

I've found that in situations where your story is buried in the shuffle somewhere -- its been at least two months past the stated time range for reply -- the best approach is to nicely and politely query the editor once a month.  If it has been a REALLY long time, you can always pull your story from submission and start again elsewhere.  That's pretty simple to do, just send an email to the submission address -- or write a letter to the snail mail address -- with your name, title of the story and submission date and let the editor know that you are withdrawing the story from submission.  I've done that once, the story had been on submission for a year and half with no responses to my queries.  The magazine was still in publication so the fact that no one answered me was quite odd so I withdrew the story and submitted elsewhere.

Belated Announcement -- Story Published!

A reprint of my short story "Don't Call It Frisco" came out in the June issue of The Deepening.  I normally send out an email to friends and family letting them know that I've published something.  This last month I procrastinated the whole month away and didn't get the email out.  Luckily stories stay posted on The Deepening so I can still send out an announcement, but it does seem a little odd.