I made this after attending a panel on mapmaking by Isaac Stewart at LTUE. Thought it might be fun to post. If you haven't realized, it's also my background.
Showing posts with label The Sometimes Sword. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Sometimes Sword. Show all posts
New Year's resolution? No thanks. But don't go away yet!
I'm one of those anti-resolution snobs. I don't believe in them. Now don't get me wrong, that doesn't mean I can't or don't support those that do. I think it's great to try to better yourself somehow, to make a fresh start. The problem is that I know myself well enough to realize that any sudden decision to change won't last long. Instead, I favor resolutions based around things already in my life. For instance: school starts once more on this coming Monday and I've decided to base a resolution around that, and not just the new year. To explain, I haven't been writing very much lately during the holiday break. Sure I've blogged a bit, even tapped out 1600 words in my book, but those are so small they almost don't count. So with the start of school I face a dilemma. All the free time I've become accustomed to in the last weeks will disappear in a puff smoke, and my reluctance/aversion to forcing myself to write will become even worse. In order to combat that, I'm taking this last week of freedom back from World of Warcraft. My goal is to write everyday this week, as much as I can manage. That way, when I finally start school again, I will already be in the habit of writing. I can't risk losing my drive to write. I have a dream dang it! I can't let it fall by the wayside.
It's my opinion that goals are better realized when tied to something solid, like the beginning of a school semester, rather than a year-spanning blanket promise to yourself. So wish me luck on this next semester, when I plan to finish my rewrite of The Sometimes Sword (60k words of 80k to go).
I had one more thing to say in this post. It's not directly related to writing, but it's been on my mind a lot. Some of you might not know, but music used to be my "thing", not writing. I was the vocalist in a local deathcore band for about three years. We were called A Horrible Night to Have a Curse (yeah, thats a Castlevania reference), and played shows weekly, sometimes even two or three in a week. We had the opportunity to play some really awesome shows with bands we always dreamed of playing with, and got to know a lot of people. It was a great time in my life, despite the incredible stress that goes along with running a band with four other young dudes. It's now been over two years since we called it quits, and I still miss it. At first it was really difficult to have nothing in my life that I was passionate about, and I even got bitter. All I was left with was my full time job, one that I hated. It was a rough two years at that job, but I eventually got over the painful cravings to perform and write music. Writing has since become my life, and I'm glad for it. If I had stayed involved in the hardcore scene as deeply as I was, I most likely would never have started writing seriously. But every once in a while, those cravings to get on stage and feel the music invade my heart and brain comes back. I know I never will again. Today is one of those hard days. I guess my point is that no matter what change happens in your life, you never know what the outcome will be. Let life happen, and take charge of yourself, despite what may happen to you. Also, don't be afraid to look back fondly, maybe even sadly. Just make sure you stay looking forward the majority of the time.
It's my opinion that goals are better realized when tied to something solid, like the beginning of a school semester, rather than a year-spanning blanket promise to yourself. So wish me luck on this next semester, when I plan to finish my rewrite of The Sometimes Sword (60k words of 80k to go).
 |
| Me at The Outer Rim (now closed) with A Horrible Night to Have a Curse. |
A little status update, and a word from Pat Rothfuss (via his blog, link in the body).
Okay, so I thought it was high time to write once more about writing, even if it's short. I've been steadily making progress on TSS 2.0 over the last few weeks. I estimate I've already passed the 50k word point, though only 20k of it is in the current first draft (the rest is garbage I eventually filed away). 30k is a lot of words to throw out, but I had good reason, and it wasn't for nothing.
As some of you may remember, in the course of rewriting the book from the ground up, I chose to convert it to a sort of urban fantasy, where a girl from our world crosses to a magical one. This is really exciting for me, and I feel like overall, it's going really well. But, there have been challenges. The biggest one has been the scene where she first appears in the new world, and subsequently needs to get some info about her new surroundings. (The reader also has to get info, otherwise they'd be completely lost.) My first attempt was about 15 pages long, and was a train wreck of info-dumping and unnatural dialogue. The second attempt trimmed it down to maybe 10 or 11 pages, but didn't really address or solve the original problems. (Keep in mind, these were complete rewrites of the same scene, not edits.) The third draft of the scene was about 8 pages, and I decided to rethink the process, eventually changing some key elements of the logistics so everything flowed a bit better, but once again, I didn't solve the problem. It was still too long and it still felt like an info dump (I was bombarding the reader with names and terms), both of which add up to a really, really bad scene.
So I asked some people what they thought. I asked my writing group (a bunch of really neat people who I have only met like 3 times, but we chat over the interwebs) for some suggestions, and threw some ideas around at my family. Eventually I was able to hammer out a new version, and with Becky's help, I reformulated the scene, switching out characters, and revising the outcome of the "magical explanation". I started to write it, and made it about halfway through before I once again realized it just wasn't right. The basics of the new idea were solid, and it would work, but I was still trying to do too much, too soon. A couple of writing groupies (is that a good term?) brought up some books that had slow reveals related to the magic system and travel to magical worlds, so I tried hard to edit my own thinking on the subject.
So I began Rewrite Number 5 of this particular scene. This time, I acknowledged that I couldn't do everything in one scene. I wrote it simple and fast, trying to be concise as possible. I eliminated several aspects of the previous scenes, made the reasons for appearing in a magical world more of a mystery, and withheld some stuff that the reader probably didn't need to know (the technical mumbo jumbo I had developed for myself).
I ended that version at 5 pages, and while it still needs the tweeks and revisions all first drafts need, I think I finally pinpointed the right way to do it. Last night I was able to move on and begin writing Chapter Five, where the story really gets interesting.
In all, my wasted words add up to about 30k, but the trimmed and lean version was worth it, and I learned a lot about myself as a writer, and also saw the deep black hole many writers fall into. Endless rewrites of a chapter early on can really take the passion out of you, and stall your book. While I think I escaped that trap this time, it's something to look out for in the future.
On a related note, I wanted to share something Pat Rothfuss (author of the Kingkiller Chronicles) posted in his blog a while back, and I hope he doesn't mind me linking it here.
How to overcome fear of failure, by Pat Rothfuss: "You come to grips with the fact that writing something that sucks is better than writing nothing at all.
If you write something and it sucks, then good for you. Not all explorers discovered lost golden cities and trade routes to the mysterious East. Some of them died in a ditch. A lot of them did, actually. But still, they get full props for being brave.
But if you sit there paralyzed with fear, afraid to get out of your chair, then you’re no kind of explorer at all. You’re just a sad bastard. You have no chance of being cool.
The same is true with writing."
As some of you may remember, in the course of rewriting the book from the ground up, I chose to convert it to a sort of urban fantasy, where a girl from our world crosses to a magical one. This is really exciting for me, and I feel like overall, it's going really well. But, there have been challenges. The biggest one has been the scene where she first appears in the new world, and subsequently needs to get some info about her new surroundings. (The reader also has to get info, otherwise they'd be completely lost.) My first attempt was about 15 pages long, and was a train wreck of info-dumping and unnatural dialogue. The second attempt trimmed it down to maybe 10 or 11 pages, but didn't really address or solve the original problems. (Keep in mind, these were complete rewrites of the same scene, not edits.) The third draft of the scene was about 8 pages, and I decided to rethink the process, eventually changing some key elements of the logistics so everything flowed a bit better, but once again, I didn't solve the problem. It was still too long and it still felt like an info dump (I was bombarding the reader with names and terms), both of which add up to a really, really bad scene.
So I asked some people what they thought. I asked my writing group (a bunch of really neat people who I have only met like 3 times, but we chat over the interwebs) for some suggestions, and threw some ideas around at my family. Eventually I was able to hammer out a new version, and with Becky's help, I reformulated the scene, switching out characters, and revising the outcome of the "magical explanation". I started to write it, and made it about halfway through before I once again realized it just wasn't right. The basics of the new idea were solid, and it would work, but I was still trying to do too much, too soon. A couple of writing groupies (is that a good term?) brought up some books that had slow reveals related to the magic system and travel to magical worlds, so I tried hard to edit my own thinking on the subject.
So I began Rewrite Number 5 of this particular scene. This time, I acknowledged that I couldn't do everything in one scene. I wrote it simple and fast, trying to be concise as possible. I eliminated several aspects of the previous scenes, made the reasons for appearing in a magical world more of a mystery, and withheld some stuff that the reader probably didn't need to know (the technical mumbo jumbo I had developed for myself).
I ended that version at 5 pages, and while it still needs the tweeks and revisions all first drafts need, I think I finally pinpointed the right way to do it. Last night I was able to move on and begin writing Chapter Five, where the story really gets interesting.
In all, my wasted words add up to about 30k, but the trimmed and lean version was worth it, and I learned a lot about myself as a writer, and also saw the deep black hole many writers fall into. Endless rewrites of a chapter early on can really take the passion out of you, and stall your book. While I think I escaped that trap this time, it's something to look out for in the future.
On a related note, I wanted to share something Pat Rothfuss (author of the Kingkiller Chronicles) posted in his blog a while back, and I hope he doesn't mind me linking it here.
How to overcome fear of failure, by Pat Rothfuss: "You come to grips with the fact that writing something that sucks is better than writing nothing at all.
If you write something and it sucks, then good for you. Not all explorers discovered lost golden cities and trade routes to the mysterious East. Some of them died in a ditch. A lot of them did, actually. But still, they get full props for being brave.
But if you sit there paralyzed with fear, afraid to get out of your chair, then you’re no kind of explorer at all. You’re just a sad bastard. You have no chance of being cool.
The same is true with writing."
Now at 22k words (not counting 10k that went into the trash) into TSS 2.0!
It's been a while since I posted, but I see that some people at least have continued to visit everyday. Thanks for that. I've been involved in school and am currently in a post-procrastination rush toward finals. With only a week left, I find myself horribly unprepared, so this will be a small island in a sea of non-existent posts.
First off, any of you who come to visit me and also participated in NaNoWriMo, congratulations (if you succeeded)! Even if you didn't make the 50k word goal, you should pat yourself on the back, then keep going! Finish it!
As the post title says, I'm currently at 22k words into my rewrite of TSS. I had planned to do NaNoWriMo, but only started mid month, so I guess you could say I'm on track so far to hit my 50k mid December. With school though, I'm looking at the middle of January as my goal. This particular rewrite is shaping up to be a lot longer too, possibly into the 110k range as opposed to TSS 1.0, which was 86K words. The story is progressing nicely, and oddly enough, becoming more mature and complicated, despite having made my characters 2 years younger than before.
Just a small note before I take off. If you writers out there haven't looked into a program called Scrivener, you need to do so, now. Click here and watch the videos, download a 30 day trial, and prepare to be blown away as it changes your writing forever.
Well, I'm off for another week at least, nose to the wheel and shoulder to the grindstone and all that. Thanks for stopping by!
First off, any of you who come to visit me and also participated in NaNoWriMo, congratulations (if you succeeded)! Even if you didn't make the 50k word goal, you should pat yourself on the back, then keep going! Finish it!
As the post title says, I'm currently at 22k words into my rewrite of TSS. I had planned to do NaNoWriMo, but only started mid month, so I guess you could say I'm on track so far to hit my 50k mid December. With school though, I'm looking at the middle of January as my goal. This particular rewrite is shaping up to be a lot longer too, possibly into the 110k range as opposed to TSS 1.0, which was 86K words. The story is progressing nicely, and oddly enough, becoming more mature and complicated, despite having made my characters 2 years younger than before.
Just a small note before I take off. If you writers out there haven't looked into a program called Scrivener, you need to do so, now. Click here and watch the videos, download a 30 day trial, and prepare to be blown away as it changes your writing forever.
Well, I'm off for another week at least, nose to the wheel and shoulder to the grindstone and all that. Thanks for stopping by!
Giving in to NaNoWriMo.
I officially signed up for NaNoWriMo last night. Yes, I know I'm half way through the month already, and I've only been writing for a week, but their little word count graph was just too much to pass up. I'm currently at just below 16,000 words, and need to step up my daily writing to finish 50,000 by the end of the month. My current goal was 2k per day, but now I need to do 2.3K to catch up. Will I succeed? I dunno. Finals are coming up in a few weeks, and I have a massive research paper in my Art History class, so I may be doomed to failure. However, it's important to me to know where I sit, and shooting for a goal will help motivate me, even if it may not be possible. So here goes.
I'll try to link my graph somehow....
I'll try to link my graph somehow....
Converting a draft into a new story.
I'm going to try and start writing shorter posts, to make it less of a chore for you to read. So here goes.
I'm in the first steps of tearing apart The Sometimes Sword, mostly just thinking about it. I have yet to do any actual changes to the words, but I'm making progress nonetheless. Yesterday while I was walking into the Tech building for my math class, I had an epiphany of sorts. It wasn't a specific idea for the story, more like an over-all revelation. It occurred to me that I wasn't thinking big enough, despite my intentions to reorganize the book. I needed to completely re-imagine the whole thing, from the ground up.
So I spent some time thinking about everything (you might begin to detect a common theme here about thinking...): what I like to read, what I want to write, whether or not I had pigeon-holed myself, etc. I came to several conclusions, one of which was a pretty big deal. I've always been a fan of urban fantasy, and wanted some of that feeling in my book, but at the same time, I don't want The Sometimes Sword to take place in our world. So as of right now, I am in the process of converting an existing character into a modern-day visitor to the world of TSS, sort of a Narnia/Harry Potter type infiltration of a magical world...deal. This changes so much existing material that I will essentially be rewriting the book as opposed to revising it, regardless of the scale. It's a monumental change, but since I'm writing it as a new book I will hopefully make more headway than if I had continued editing.
Perhaps this will give me the motivation I need to get some real progress made toward my dream of being a writer, and as winter break approaches, perhaps I'll have the time too.
I'm in the first steps of tearing apart The Sometimes Sword, mostly just thinking about it. I have yet to do any actual changes to the words, but I'm making progress nonetheless. Yesterday while I was walking into the Tech building for my math class, I had an epiphany of sorts. It wasn't a specific idea for the story, more like an over-all revelation. It occurred to me that I wasn't thinking big enough, despite my intentions to reorganize the book. I needed to completely re-imagine the whole thing, from the ground up.
So I spent some time thinking about everything (you might begin to detect a common theme here about thinking...): what I like to read, what I want to write, whether or not I had pigeon-holed myself, etc. I came to several conclusions, one of which was a pretty big deal. I've always been a fan of urban fantasy, and wanted some of that feeling in my book, but at the same time, I don't want The Sometimes Sword to take place in our world. So as of right now, I am in the process of converting an existing character into a modern-day visitor to the world of TSS, sort of a Narnia/Harry Potter type infiltration of a magical world...deal. This changes so much existing material that I will essentially be rewriting the book as opposed to revising it, regardless of the scale. It's a monumental change, but since I'm writing it as a new book I will hopefully make more headway than if I had continued editing.
Perhaps this will give me the motivation I need to get some real progress made toward my dream of being a writer, and as winter break approaches, perhaps I'll have the time too.
How we should all be viewing our "first drafts".
As for my blog, I think I may just need to suck it up and write about writing, not the lack thereof. Who knows, maybe it will eventually bring me back into the right state of mind. Today I wanted to focus on editing, specifically when you realize that the editing you are doing is a dead end. At some point a writer might stop in the middle of the second or third edit, sit back, and realize that the story they wanted to write has never been further away from reality than at that exact moment.
You wrote your first draft, maybe you gardened it, watching as it grew and took shape. Unfortunately, somewhere along the way the story also got away from you. Perhaps it still turned out well enough, but your original vision got lost in the metaphorical grocery store. Along with the usual horrible prose, shudder-inducing dialogue and other things that plague first drafts, you find yourself trying to find where your vision went. A lot of time can be wasted with this process, and even worse, you may find yourself struggling to deal with a fragmented and revision-heavy manuscript, purely dead weight. I found myself in just this situation a month or so ago. At the time I decided to give up the book indefinitely and move on to something else. I've since changed my mind, for many reasons (you can read about them in some of my previous posts).
So what do you do when you suddenly find yourself in this position? Some people give up, thinking they just aren't good enough writers, others move on to something else (like I almost did), and some people just keep plugging away at it, endlessly revising for years and years. I like to think there is another way. Chuck Wendig at Terribleminds.com has these wonderful lists he does, usually titled along the lines of "25 Reasons Why Writers Blank" and so on. Recently there has been a theme throughout them (possibly because of NaNoWriMo coming up) where he focuses on the purpose of a first/rough draft. I think many writers, myself included, think of the first draft as the stepping stone to the second draft, then on to the third and so on; something to be improved over time, incrementally revising each version until it shines. Naturally, this can lead to the aforementioned years of editing, or giving up.
You wrote your first draft, maybe you gardened it, watching as it grew and took shape. Unfortunately, somewhere along the way the story also got away from you. Perhaps it still turned out well enough, but your original vision got lost in the metaphorical grocery store. Along with the usual horrible prose, shudder-inducing dialogue and other things that plague first drafts, you find yourself trying to find where your vision went. A lot of time can be wasted with this process, and even worse, you may find yourself struggling to deal with a fragmented and revision-heavy manuscript, purely dead weight. I found myself in just this situation a month or so ago. At the time I decided to give up the book indefinitely and move on to something else. I've since changed my mind, for many reasons (you can read about them in some of my previous posts).
So what do you do when you suddenly find yourself in this position? Some people give up, thinking they just aren't good enough writers, others move on to something else (like I almost did), and some people just keep plugging away at it, endlessly revising for years and years. I like to think there is another way. Chuck Wendig at Terribleminds.com has these wonderful lists he does, usually titled along the lines of "25 Reasons Why Writers Blank" and so on. Recently there has been a theme throughout them (possibly because of NaNoWriMo coming up) where he focuses on the purpose of a first/rough draft. I think many writers, myself included, think of the first draft as the stepping stone to the second draft, then on to the third and so on; something to be improved over time, incrementally revising each version until it shines. Naturally, this can lead to the aforementioned years of editing, or giving up.
Nowadays, I'm suddenly not so sure that this is how it's intended to work. What if--and stay with me here--what if the first draft was meant to be a practice draft, and no more? What if a writer sat down and pounded out a 60k word manuscript just to clear his/her head? We all know what it's like to have an entire world, story, and several characters floating around all schizophrenia-like in our brains, especially when we first develop a story. It's sometimes painful, often confusing, and always frustrating to have so much information stored away without an outlet. What if that first draft was the outlet, and not the first step toward the final result? Crazy huh? (Maybe it's just me, maybe you all knew that back when you were five years-old, and I'm simply horribly behind the times.)
This is something I want experiment with on The Sometimes Sword. What will happen if I take a machete (metaphorically) and hack this book apart, ruthlessly throwing away any crap I encounter, and trim it down to its elements? I'm hoping this will relieve the dead weight, destroy the fragmentation, leaving only the scenes with worth, ready to be studied and arranged how they need to be (maybe even into a new book). Perhaps I can bring my story back to the original vision I had, before it got away from me.
I haven't actually done this yet, but I've been thinking a lot lately (thinking about a story is almost as important as writing it) and I think I have some fun ideas that will add a lot: considering new characters, introducing new plot lines, redefining the antagonist and her motivations, rearranging events, changing character personalities and backgrounds, etc. Another thing I want to bring back is the description of the world and locations, which fell out along the way. I want to dive into the history of the world and highlight the crazy creatures and individuals within it. This last bit is actually why I initially began to write the story, but in the course of devising plot and (struggling) to develop believable characters, this fell by the wayside. (I admit, Fablehaven was the series that sparked this particular desire. I've always had a soft spot for the "magical menagerie" type fantasies, and I wanted to write one myself). I need to bring it back, because it was what made writing The Sometimes Sword fun. Without it, I ended up where I am now with the book, depressed, bored, and pessimistic.
This is something I want experiment with on The Sometimes Sword. What will happen if I take a machete (metaphorically) and hack this book apart, ruthlessly throwing away any crap I encounter, and trim it down to its elements? I'm hoping this will relieve the dead weight, destroy the fragmentation, leaving only the scenes with worth, ready to be studied and arranged how they need to be (maybe even into a new book). Perhaps I can bring my story back to the original vision I had, before it got away from me.
I haven't actually done this yet, but I've been thinking a lot lately (thinking about a story is almost as important as writing it) and I think I have some fun ideas that will add a lot: considering new characters, introducing new plot lines, redefining the antagonist and her motivations, rearranging events, changing character personalities and backgrounds, etc. Another thing I want to bring back is the description of the world and locations, which fell out along the way. I want to dive into the history of the world and highlight the crazy creatures and individuals within it. This last bit is actually why I initially began to write the story, but in the course of devising plot and (struggling) to develop believable characters, this fell by the wayside. (I admit, Fablehaven was the series that sparked this particular desire. I've always had a soft spot for the "magical menagerie" type fantasies, and I wanted to write one myself). I need to bring it back, because it was what made writing The Sometimes Sword fun. Without it, I ended up where I am now with the book, depressed, bored, and pessimistic.
Back to the main point of this post however, my first draft has been treated as a diamond in the rough, as opposed to the wet clay sculpture it really is. There is no cutting and polishing of a precious gem, only demolition and rebuilding, mixing it back into itself. Now that the ideas have been vomited onto the paper, and my brain-clutter cleared away, I can begin writing the real first draft, the one that will eventually become the final manuscript. At least, that's the plan.
What do you think? Are you stuck in a draft that you think is the diamond in the rough, but in reality, is simply the first clay pot that you need to mix back in and start anew?
What do you think? Are you stuck in a draft that you think is the diamond in the rough, but in reality, is simply the first clay pot that you need to mix back in and start anew?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)