Category: Challenges

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Challenges

Reflection: Write Like a Pro

After a long 10 weeks of a challenge, Write Like a Pro (WLaP) has come to an end. I’m not sure how successful it was as a site-wide challenge, but it was interesting enough within my personal writing group, so at least it was a semi-success? I know it was long and people were unsurprisingly unwilling to give up their opportunity to sleep in on their days off from their day-jobs, so that definitely hurt the challenge a little. But, there were a handful of people who tried to do the single day each week, so overall, I’m calling it a win. Will I run it again? Probably not. But it was a fun summer experiment that served the exact purpose that I wanted it to serve — figuring out when, where, and how I prefer to write and helping me to start to figure out what an “ideal day” would look for me as a full time writer.

It helped me confirm something I’ve always known: I am a morning person. Through and through. Which works well because apparently most non-substance-abusing writers are also morning people. Maybe it’s because they want to still appear to be humans, rather than vampires, maybe it’s because they’ve read and believe the studies that people are scientifically more productive once they’re accustomed to waking up earlier, maybe it’s because in order to get things done, they’ve decided to actually get up and treat writing like a serious, full time job. Regardless of the reason, the majority of the “known” writing schedules started before 7am. Which was not ideal for my summer vacation mindset, waking up to an alarm on the weeks that were earlier than 6am, but… For the challenge, it was worth it.

It also helped me learn that I do best with a short burst of writing and then a break for some sort of physical activity. Don’t be fooled, I’m no Murakami, running a 10k daily, but working out and getting some sort of physical activity in was surprisingly helpful for my creative process.

And lastly, something the final week taught me was… I do not have the brain power to be creative at work all day and then turn around and be creative at home. If I weren’t completely starting from scratch this year at work, I’m fairly confident that would be different. Unfortunately, this year, that wasn’t in the cards for me. Maybe I’ll try Kafka’s schedule again another time when I’m a little more equipped to split my mental capacity between multiple different endeavors (which, I actually am doing technically, teaching 3 brand new classes, but that’s beside the point).

Now, the real end goal from this is going to be coming up with an ideal writing week. So… I’m still working on coming up with my own, but that’s a thing for everyone to look forward to.

What’s your ideal writing schedule?

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Challenges

The Beta Project — An Overview

As I’ve mentioned in the majority of my State of the Author posts this month, I participated in the Absolute Write Beta Project this year. This is an annual event organized by a member of the AW site wherein people submit basic information, a hook, and the first 750 words of their novel to be critiqued by other members of the forum. Once you’ve done your 3 required, wonderfully match-made crits, you are able to request stories to do a full beta on.

I participated because it’s always nice to have more eyes on your novels — especially the one I put in because I’m so deep into my LTA universe, I don’t know what makes sense to outsiders anymore — and for me, it was important that I found someone who typically reads within my genre to take a look at it. While I adore my regular readers / writer friends and greatly value their advice, they’re all writing / reading primarily speculative fiction of some degree. Sure, they can tell me if the basic story makes sense and they can help with line edits / grammar errors, but to tell me if I hit the pacing and fulfilled the needs of a romance novel? They’re as lost as I am. But, having someone look through who’s familiar? It gives them the opportunity to point out a ton of brand new issues to be fixed that I’d never thought about before.

Which, while it sounds like a bad thing, really isn’t. Anything to make the novel stronger, right? Right.

Now, I’m sure that sounds like everything about the Project was perfect and wonderful, which the majority really was, but… There were some not-so-great parts as well.

The Pros:

  • I was blessed with getting two beta requests out of the project and both have already completely finished their beta’ing.
  • I tried some advice from Sarra Cannon and had both betas working in the same document, so the three of us could chat in the comments and make sure things were going the way they should / clear up any misconceptions (and then figure out how to also do the same within the novel), and share opinions. It was the closest thing to a true fiction workshop experience that I have experienced outside of my creative writing courses back in college and I loved it. I will honestly probably continue interacting with my betas like this for the rest of my writing life. Without this Project, I probably never would have tried it.
  • I know where / how to tighten my hook or add detail when I go to expand it into a query.
  • My novel is better already than it was when I started.

The Cons:

  • I had one beta who was flawless and did exactly what I specified in my “what I look for in a beta” section (which was posted with the initial post, prior to them sending requests)… And one who focused much more on the tiny, nit-picky line edits. While I am not entirely sad at this, because eventually I will need these done, I mentioned up front that large chunks of this novel were going to be trashed and completely rewritten. So, if they spent all this time perfecting my language and having me decide between my use of “so” and “yet” / “his” and “the,” it’s just going to be a waste of their time, and mine.
  • I also had one beta who was borderline rude / cruel at times, but then others was singing my praises. Sometimes, she claimed to “absolutely abhor” my novel, and other times saying she “rather enjoyed the whole thing.” Which is rather confusing, if I’m being entirely honest. I’m not upset that maybe she didn’t love my novel or even the places where she said she would have stopped reading — those are things I need and want to know! However, I do take issue with the way some of the comments were phrased as more of a personal “you have no idea what you’re doing” sort of attack / accusation than constructive criticism. I have pretty thick skin (thank you, creative writing class that brought me SO MUCH STRESS but was obviously worth it. Also thank you overly critical job where people tell me how bad I am every time I turn around.), but even so, some of her comments struck a nerve with me. There was even a point that my other beta told her that she needed to dial it back a notch and stop being so outright rude. So… wasn’t just a me thing.
  • Not everyone got a beta. And I know there’s no real way to prevent this, but it really just rubbed me the wrong way to see so many of the participants posting in the thread that they’d love to get beta requests, but they weren’t in a place to give any of their own. I’m sorry, but someone is literally reading and editing your novel for you for free, and you can’t find the time to request just one novel to return the favor for? There were several people requesting just basic comments / read-throughs on novels that were either not finished or 60k and under. Some weren’t even finished with their novels yet and wouldn’t be asking for feedback for some amount of time. I don’t know. I think the right thing to do in that situation would be to find one that you enjoyed and think you’d like to read through for someone, offer up the request, and explain that you’ve got things going on that are going to make the beta take some time. If they’re okay with that, cool. If not, they can say no from there. But to expect to get something for nothing (especially the people being salty / complaining that they didn’t receive any requests of their own…)? Just rubs me the wrong way.
  • I didn’t get to beta anything. I sent one request early in the event — it was one of my three required crits — and heard nothing back. Because I had a pending request, I didn’t offer to do any others until the last day, just in case they got back to me. I knew I wouldn’t have time to devote to doing more than one beta well (or two, depending on their requests for their betas), and I didn’t want to send out two more requests, only to have the original request respond and accept after all. Of course, I sent out two requests total and heard back from zero of them, so… That’s also a thing.

I know that looks like there were more cons than pros, but that’s definitely not the case (I think it’s just me being an over-explainer, per usual). Overall, I think the AW Beta Project is a fantastic idea and I’m already looking forward to participating again next year!

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Challenges

Back from the Dead?

This month’s topic:  ZOMBIES are a July tradition  for WriYe. Do you have a writing tradition of your own? How did it come about?
Well, this is awkward. As one of the founding members of this annual tradition… I’m actually not participating in Zombie July this year. I always love plotting and planning to write a zombie novel, but then when it comes down to actually writing them? I get maybe 10k in and then things die out and I get super frustrated that I spent all the time to plot / plan the book and wasted July… So, that’s a thing.
But, the real reason I’m not working on Zombies this month is because they don’t really fit into my genre. That is the downside of writing primarily realistic fiction — to do so many of the challenges that I’ve seen around, you either have to be writing speculative fiction or completely abandon what you’ve been working on the rest of the year. Which, normally isn’t an issue for me and I welcome July as a break from the “normal grind.” But, since I’m writing on borrowed time and July is one of two months I have to really dedicate myself to my craft? It’s very difficult to want to give up even a second of my time to something that isn’t one of my more “serious” projects.
I do, however, have some of my own writing traditions, however. For one, I do love hosting a kick-off party for large WriMo months (January, July, November) by grabbing myself some Wavy Lays plain potato chips, cheese dip, Cheez-Its, and Cherry Coke, then at midnight, do a 15 or 20 minute word sprint and just basically try and get as high a word count as possible before falling asleep while writing (usually around 3 or 4am). This started back when I was writing a lot more and would never miss a monthly WriMo kickoff. I would do that for every single month… And now it’s just stuck as something I “have” to do in order to really get into the writing groove, especially that late at night.
Other than that, I don’t really have any writing traditions. I mean, I try to outline before I write a novel. I usually watch Twitch or YouTube while I’m writing. I always edit in pink, purple, or green ink… But, those are more habits than traditions, I think.
What about you? Any writing traditions?
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Challenges

#editnfriends: Better Late than Never

We’re going to ignore the dates on that image and pretend that I am completely on time with this challenge that Elizabeth Szubert issued. Right? Right.

It’s been a while, but I did talk about my editing space back in March, and it’s very much the same most days as it was in that post. I’m still working by hand in my printed out manuscript with my pink pen and a furry little companion by my side. It’s going as well as one might imagine ripping apart your words might go. Things that I have learned now that I am officially 11 chapters in:

  • Pay attention to chapter numbers. If you have eight chapters labeled “9,” you’re going to get into a lot of very confusing ordering / sequence situations.
  • NUMBER YOUR PAGES BEFORE YOU PRINT OUT THE MANUSCRIPT. This alone would have saved me a million headaches.
  • If you end up having to add a scene or break up a chapter into two (or eight…), renumber things. Do not have 9a -9h. Just renumber the chapters after it.
  • Cutting scenes is actually kind of… Fun?
  • Do not print multiple drafts of the same chapter.

As you see, I’ve been having quite a specific struggle with my editing. And ended up spending an extra hour “working” yesterday than I planned because I found some chapters were in my print-version twice, one entire scene was missing completely, and things just weren’t in any sort of logical order. But, once I managed to figure out what went where and why… I feel like I was able to establish a much stronger sense of plot and really strengthen the dichotomy between the two potential love interests in doing so. I have notes and arrows and scribbles all over the pages for little links and transitions that I’ll need to write / add once I finish the paper-edits and move into putting them on the computer to finalize everything, but it actually feels like things are coming together nicely.

Which, is interesting to me because it makes the story feel like it is very full and robust, but, I ended up completely trashing (as in papers crumbled and thrown across the room towards a trashcan as if I were pretending to be some sort of athlete) 11 pages yesterday. Now, admittedly, 3 of them were because I for some reason printed two drafts of the same chapter. But the other 8? We just scenes that didn’t need to be there. I might bring one of the scenes back at some point — where Jimi shows off his “hobby room” and makes everyone hate him even more for bragging yet again about how nauseatingly rich he is — but where it was placed? It made the hate come on too hard, too fast. So, that’s been cut. Another scene got chopped because it seemed to be a bunch of fluff / filler that didn’t really add anything to the novel other than pages. And then a really random scene with a character that never reappears was removed. Because, really… If that’s their only purpose? They aren’t important.

Maybe I should be sad, grieving the lost of my words and hard work… But honestly? I’m glad to see them go. They served their purpose at one point of helping me to explore characters (and meet my NaNo word count for the day) and feel out the plot, but now? Now they were just bloating my novel for no reason. They’ll be much better off now that they’re gone.

#50in5 Words Written: 0
Chapters Edited: 11
Hours Spent Editing: 4.5
Scenes Rewritten Completely: 0 (yet — 2 are slated / marked for a rewrite)
Scenes Cut Out: 3
Beta Requests Sent: 0
Beta Requests Received: 0

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Challenges Lazy Tequila Afternoons Books

Camp NaNoWriMo: July 2019 Project Intro

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I am being a crazy ambitious person this month. It’s the last month I have to throw myself into writing full time before going back to the day job in August, so I want to make sure to get as much done as possible. So, because of that, I kind of have three projects happening simultaneously.

The first is that Sunshowers in Bluebell Fields has officially been submitted to the Absolute Write Beta Project 2019, so soon it’s going to be getting three basic crits of the first 750 words and (hopefully) at least 2-3 beta requests to launch it into the editing process officially. I’m both nervous and excited about this whole process because that will be one more novel that’s officially almost “done” within my series.

Which, actually, is why the second (and, in turn, the third) project exist as well. My second project for July is what I’m completing for CampNaNo — which is 45 hours of line and content edits on Sky of Light, which will officially be the LAST full edit I do on this novel (it will get one more read through from some friends / betas for proofreading) and then, it will be done-done. This is mostly a line edit, but there are a few chapters in the middle that I need to do one more pass for content on, so I’m just going to do these two steps simultaneously. I decided to work on this novel’s edits because well, it’s the most done of all my LTA books and it would be great to finally have a novel that I would consider 100% complete. So, that’s my real Camp NaNo goal that I’ll be checking in about every Monday throughout July: 45 Hours of Editing on Sky of Light.

And then, of course, there is my #50in5 project. Originally, I thought I was going to use those words to knock out the last two thirds / half of Static Lightning Skies (which I’ve been working on the rest of my summer) in order to finally get the first draft of that one finished. But, once I realized what other two books I would have in my brainspace this month, I thought it might be more beneficial to work on the sequel to my Beta Project and the true companion / same timeline novel as Sky of Light: Rainstorms in Bluebell Fields. So, that’s what I’m working on for my #50in5 words, as outlined in Friday’s post.

And now… It is officially Camp NaNo, which means it is time to start in on my editing hours! I plan on checking in here with a “State of the Author” type post every Monday throughout July, so you have that to look forward to! In the comments, let me know if you’re doing Camp NaNo this month and what your project is for the month, regardless of if you’re participating or not.

#50in5 Words Written: 0
Chapters Edited: 0
Hours Spent Editing: 0
Scenes Rewritten Completely: 0
Scene Cut Out: 0
Beta Requests Sent: 0
Beta Requests Received: 0