It’s not something we’re ready for at all times. The idea hits me and I want to run with it. The problem comes along later, when I realize the idea was not fully formed and is in dire need of tweaks and research and who knows what else… And when I run into that wall I end up with a partial draft of something that I’m not sure what to do with, because the idea takes a turn every time I actually finish the front end stuff.

Somehow that leads me to the idea I wasn’t quite ready to write it when I started setting fingers to keyboard. Later, when the ideas mature, I can put them in different combinations and make something better.

Example: I just pulled two ideas from my snippets and merged them with another idea I came up with more recently. While they were not related at first, this time they seem more suited to weaving together. Once I started down that path, a torrent of words spewed forth. Then I read my old notes and found nuances I had forgotten. I’m still trying to pin them together.

I’m not sure if it’s enough to write that novel yet. I have a couple different viewpoints I want to show in this world I’m creating, but I haven’t figured that all out yet. So it might be a few novellas woven together into a book. It might also be a series. Sometimes it’s hard to know exactly how much I have to say before it begins.

Other times I am not sure if I’m ready to say exactly what needs to be said. At least I have time to manage to think about it. I am focusing on editing my last manuscript (still working due to moving and having a baby and everything else that gets in the way of pure writing pursuits), yet in the meantime I still doodle and dream up this alternate place that sings to me when my creative side takes hold.

I’m not sure I’m ready to write it yet. The two year old and the two week old are definitely taking most of my waking hours and will continue to do that for some time. I’m also not sure what my message is, but somehow the idea won’t leave me alone for the moment.

It’s a little like when the unicorn kept telling me he was the one who wanted to skewer my last protagonist. Silly unicorn, she’s got her own magic to protect her. Now if only she could control it… But that’s another story that hasn’t quite been finished yet. I promise I will when I’m ready. The question of how to know when I’m ready troubles me, but I write hundreds of thousands of words in a year (250k+ last year). I have time to figure out drafts and redraft them later.

I’ll admit it would be seriously more efficient if I could figure that all out before I start drafting, but so far I haven’t been able to help myself. What do you do when that idea takes hold of your brain and won’t let go? Do you write it? Do you start building the world? Do you outline (or whatever other plot devices you use to figure it out before you write)? Or do you take a little snippet and let it simmer for later?

However, in the quest to be less attached to physical objects – the question keeps surfacing with as much as I read about the subject. Some laud Twitter as bringing people to make their updates in a succinct style, while others study that writers are wordier when they write directly into digital methods rather than on paper first and then transcribing later.

I’m sure most of that would be true in varying degrees depending on the writer. Some writers can go on and on about all kinds of things, while others make certain they boil it down to the most essential substance. It’s part of an individual style as much as anything else. I’m not sure wordiness can be equated with quality on any level. Some swear by the 1000 page novels and others prefer short pieces that don’t span the full page.

My moving saga has taken me away from my laptop with the two monitor system that I had in my little library. I love stacks of books surrounding me while I type out my next piece. Some of those books are blank and others are binders with hard copies littered with comments in varying colors. [I love using colorful ink.] The other missing part of my setup is the printer. It’s in storage for a time and I’m learning to compensate with different ways for that.

It’s not so bad. But I haven’t found a new writer’s group yet. I’ve been finding ways to not just write online, but also edit. I can’t say whether I’ve found all the ways to manage what I need. I’ve managed to critique a couple things from friends, and that’s been quite an experience to get the apps on my iPad running the way I want them. I keep thinking just one more… just one more…

I’m curious about other writers who manage without paper. It seems like a less physically demanding way to survive without the stacks of manuscripts covering the desk. Do writers exist in paperless environments, even on a temporary basis?

I write, therefore I exist — even without my comforting paper clutter. Right?

Right now I’m a stay-at-home mother. The writing is a side gig that occurs mostly when my little one sleeps. The SAHM gig is not to be regarded in any way less demanding or rewarding than other career options, but a statement that my time is claimed. Life hinders my productivity in domestic tasks, but I don’t tell my two-year-old that she can’t get out her toys, even if it does look like a war zone. We’re learning to pick them all up before bedtime.

More often we point our fingers to the obvious procrastination markers like Facebook or Twitter and try to justify them as promotion. I recently ran into an article saying how people ought to only check that stuff twice a day. I’m not sure how that’d work for Twitter, but Facebook would be easy enough.

Maybe the trick to becoming a productive moonlighting writer is to know why you’re writing and not just the things that are also taking up that coveted downtime. I write because I love exploring new worlds through fiction. I love stringing sentences together (even if they’re not very good at first) and sharing them with others. I enjoy the struggle to find the right words to portray something in my head. With that in mind, I crank out a lot of words.

Over 250,000 words since I began writing at 750words last May. I had no idea I could be so prolific. Sure, I’ve done NaNoWriMo and completed the challenge without breaking a sweat or trying to finish in the 11th hour, but I haven’t kept track of what I do normally. While the 750words site has focused me to write every day and not in the fits and starts I had done before, it also keeps track of what I’ve done since I joined.

I don’t have a full novel written there yet. My last project has morphed into something I’m not sure I’m ready to tackle just yet and I’m working on editing a young adult manuscript more than whipping a wayward work-in-progress into shape.

The other thing I really like about those kinds of statistics is it will track how long it takes me to spew out my words. Some days are a struggle, full of distractions and nearly an hour sessions spent trying to find words. Others can be as short as seven minutes to make the minimum word count. A couple have been spent with a timer and an idea and simply throwing out the ideas as fast as my brain can make it up.

Of the times when my daughter is asleep, I rarely wake before she does. So between writing during her afternoon nap and after she goes to sleep at night, I am much more productive in the afternoon hours and try to take advantage of that. I also shut down other distractions like Facebook.

Lately I feel like I’ve been just waiting, waiting, waiting for the baby to be born. [If you believe the computer, I'm due today. If you believe the 8-week ultrasound, I was due yesterday.]  That’s been hindering my productivity more than I like to admit. How much could be done while I’m not feeling the best but not as sleep-deprived as I soon will be? Another blog post? Another article read? Another chapter edited? Another story written? Another submission sent off?

I’ve managed to get my iPad mostly in order to be my productivity station on the go. I only have three games loaded on it. Mostly I have been reading a bunch of articles and keeping up through other social outlets. When the games become a serious time sink, I’ll have to let them go, too. It’s always good to have goals and keep them in view to know what can be achieved.

I believe goals ought to be flexible and intended to stretch abilities. When I see the goals I want to make happen, I work harder to keep those results at the top of my list. When I allow for life or other things to intrude, I make it more likely that I will stick with the goal instead of just throw in the towel. Take 750words as one example: I haven’t written every day since I joined on May 1. I’ve missed 12 days. Most of them were in a row during a difficult couple weeks. I’ve given myself permission to lose a day or two with the impending baby, though I’m trying not to use that.

Whatever hinders me is something I allow to happen. My choices lead me to where I will be next. Not everything has to be productive – not every moment, not every choice, not every little detail – but I manage to get things done. Maybe that’s just because no one’s sold me on a reason to spend 3000 hours on a WoW profile…

What do you think about productivity and downtime and how they affect your writing and your goals?

Good enough is a troublesome concept. It’s not just whether or not a piece is well-written. There are so many things to take into consideration, like the overall market and whether or not the editor likes it. Then when the rejection comes through, you wonder if you’d just worked a little harder, made just one little change, if it would have been okay.

I can’t be the only one wondering these things. I don’t let it stop me from sending things out. I aim high. I get rejected. I try not to let it get to me. It’s not easy.

This time I got lucky, or I just had a great fit with The Storm is Coming anthology.

My story, The Rescuers, is one I wrote a time ago, but it always sounded like Chapter 3 in a novel. I needed time to focus it into something much better. It happens that way sometimes, when you have a good premise but the writing doesn’t quite follow through on the promise.

It helps to not give up on yourself or the story that needs to be told. Sometimes that short story has to be made into a novel, but other times it can work if other pieces are different. I throw out a lot of rough drafts, and some of them I tweak endlessly (or so it seems) and others pop out fully formed and ready to be something.

I guess it just reminds me of that saying where you write what you are ready to write. Sometimes we have ideas we aren’t ready to tackle at the moment. Other times we tackle them and falter, but that doesn’t mean we can’t keep revisiting the idea until it gels.

There might be more to this Rescuers story later. I can’t say whether or not the characters will try to push their other adventures into my head or if I randomly run across something I know has to fit into their world. For now, I’m extremely excited to be slated for the upcoming anthology and waiting to see what else is in store from Sleeping Cat Books.

So the editing must have other things about it to make it into different piles. Do you plan out each step of the rewrite? Do you take it in sections? Do you just read and change it on the fly as you go?

Somehow it gets hard to focus on a rewrite when there are so many things to look at. I have been slowly going through the manuscript. I have a plan, but it does not take shape all at once. The latest thing I have been working on is the teen romance plot line. I don’t find that the easiest thing to do, but just taking that one part has made it easier.

Easier, possibly, but I find myself distracted by all the other pieces that need changing, too. Now and then the other things sneak in and they get tweaked. Overall it makes for a quicker change of the parts that absolutely contradicted the things I am working toward. Then I can bring out the more subtle pieces when the framework is in place.

It takes me a lot of time. I also get a little frustrated when I see how quickly those sections get read when they are polished. I could spend hours on a paragraph that the reader takes in less than 10 seconds. But if they enjoy it, all is well.

And they do say it takes thirty days to make or break a new habit. So what is it about resolutions that don’t stick? Perhaps it is because so many of us are trying to change things that are difficult to change. We also try the same things year after year and fail every time.

There is something about the new year that makes people want to try something new, correct bad habits, or just move out of the rut from the previous year.

I had a good year last year. So it isn’t a rut I am avoiding, unless it would be the part where I am having a baby and should figure that out before attempting to write a dozen novels. [A dozen novels in a year, you say? Possible, I think, but not in a year I have a baby.]

I already have a few goals to meet, like figuring out how to finish my manuscript and finish the next draft of the work in progress. The deadlines extend through the move and the upcoming baby. While I think it is important to keep making progress, I also believe that it is more important to make adjustments for things that happen instead of calling myself a failure.

Calling myself a failure will never give me anything but grief. So pardon me while I wait on some of those resolutions while I adjust the current goals for my circumstances. I hope all of you manage as well in your current and future endeavors.

When I was a child, holidays never stressed me out. It was a break from school, time to read as many books as I could fit into the time, and time to be excited about exchanging gifts.

Somehow as adulthood approaches, there are more pressures. We want things to be special for the kids- and in my family we have a great 7-year Santa tradition that none of us want to miss. Each year since my daughter’s birth we’ve sent out pictures of at least her with Santa. This year’s holiday card had a picture of my daughter hugging Santa, plus one of the four of us (my husband, my daughter, Santa, and me).

My husband and I were super organized during our recent relocation, and we had the labels printed off before we moved as well as a short letter to explain our recent developments (baby due in January, promotion and move). We had the cards printed and ready to send out by 1 December, but it took me another week to buy stamps. Some years the holiday cards feel like such a strain to get them all out with everything else going on. Yet I love receiving them from others and seeing how others change.

Then there’s always the question of gifts. I love shopping and finding a great gift someone on my list will love. Because I’m due in less than three weeks and a little restricted for travel, it changed how we normally celebrate the holidays. Most of my shopping was completed Black Friday and most of our gifts exchanged on the next day.

This year also marks a change in my attitude. We moved for my husband’s job about a month ago. We’re in temporary housing so we didn’t have to worry about all that while the baby was imminent. There’s only so much we can do at once, right? But with these two moves (one to temporary housing, one to a more permanent residence), it has me realizing that it won’t be a permanent residence, most likely. Just a more permanent one.

That makes me more willing to part with items that clutter up our living space, and more selective on the things I want to purchase for gifts. So part of my daughter’s gift was a museum membership (that we’re already enjoying). My husband often asks for clothes, so it makes it easy to keep him happy and well-dressed.

One of the few things I’m not willing to part with, or even entertain a discussion about getting rid of, are my books. No, they’re not easy to move. They’re heavy and bulky and I have a lot of them. Many more than goodreads would have you believe. One day I’ll catch up with that, but it won’t be in the near future. I love books and reading and writing.

“I cannot live without books.” Thomas Jefferson

I have been modifying some of my writing techniques, but I miss my printer. I have been accustomed to writing in a digital setting for some time, but I don’t always have access to my saved copies. Most of it is again at my fingertips, but I’m still using different computers than I’d gotten accustomed to in my home office. Not to mention that lovely iPad 2 I got for my birthday and the bluetooth keyboard I (already) received for Christmas (from that favorite sister-in-law).

The questions become how to keep it all compiled nicely where I can find it, and also how do I bypass the print and edit/revise/proofread step(s). At home I had novels trapped in binders that I could take with me to writing groups or simply lend to a friend who wanted to read the one up for revision. But those paper copies make it so easy to mark notes in margins and replace words I don’t like.

My current issues are organization of my digital files and keeping tabs on the draft copy I’m revising. Once I moved I realized I wasn’t sure where my best copy of in-progress revisions were hiding. Oops. While that’s partly under control, it tells me what else I need to do in order to be more productive.

Yes, productivity and efficiency are at the bottom of everything, from holiday shopping to organization to making a new place feel like home. Or maybe my household is just practical that way.

Happy Holidays! May your new year bring in many wonderful things.

I know that thinking about a project midway through definitely brings out the doubts more than the merits. At least when you’re finished you can pass it off to a trusted associate (or even your best friend) and say, hey, should I keep working on this? The problem with a midway project is sometimes they try to give advice about how it ought to go – whether that is the end in mind or not it can become a stumbling block. 

It’s not like i don’t have ten million other things I could be working on – believe me, I do. I’m the soon-to-be mother of two, naptime novelist, and I always think I can manage more than can be done in a day. So just one more thing never scares me, and the really important stuff does get done in time. Or it doesn’t – that happens often enough. 

Current mid-draft novel is sitting at 36k. It lacks direction and I’m not sure how my protagonist is going to get to the desired end. I’m still attacking it here and there. I mix it up with other projects so I don’t get too burnt on one thing – the holidays are near and there’s supposed to be a lot to do. Yesterday I wrapped gifts, which inspired my two year old to have fits. Today I’m hoping to mail the package, but we’ll see how the time runs with the little girl. 

I’m sure it doesn’t help that I keep thinking this novel might be better than the last one – which is currently sitting in the middle of a rewrite of the teen romance subplot. I don’t think I’m good at writing romance, but I know that’s what the protagonist needs right now. More tension! More drama! So I got to break him up with his girlfriend and let him focus on trying to ask out the new girl. 

The more I torture my characters, the more they know I love them, right? At least, that’s the fun of being the author. Then I can enjoy the drama-free parts of my days when the toddler isn’t being stubborn (like now when she’s not napping). Better luck tomorrow. 

1. Writing is stress relief.
2. I can write over 3000 words in an hour if I focus. (3332 was my record for a full hour, and 102 wpm was my record for a single 750 sprint.)
3. There is a limit to how many things can be accomplished in one day. (Wait, that isn’t new.)
4. Dreck is expected for a first draft, especially at a rough pace. Finish the draft and worry about edits later.
5. Don’t stop at 50 000 words. It’s about finishing the project.
6. Motivation is cumulative. Sitting down and making progress every single day is important for continuity and overall progress.

I’m not sure how long it will take to finish the novel. I allowed distractions to get in the way of my daily progress – so not all of my words for NaNoWriMo were part of this novel; however, all of them were fiction. The total was 67,854 words. And starting yesterday I refocused on the project and took it in a different direction to the tune of 1000 or more words per day.

We found a new place and we moved mid-month. Part of my distraction included the annoyance of packing up the belongings I needed to have for the six months we’ll be in this temporary place. I also packed up the things that might be considered clutter to prospective buyers to our home. Luckily I had a lot of help!

I’m too pregnant to actually move the boxes I pack, so someone has to move them when I’m done. That’s challenging because not too long ago I could move everything just fine. I suppose it’s fair to say I can start slowing down, because I’m only six weeks from a new baby.

After we moved, we managed to unpack. Again, I’m stymied by stacks of boxes to unpack, because a couple boxes came with us that I didn’t intend to unpack. Of course, these boxes are full of the books that don’t exactly fit on the bookshelves. I had two bookshelves to move to declutter my office space, so that shouldn’t count against me. And I am unpacking the minimum needed.

Wait, that should be “unpacked.” Because we were fully unpacked less than a week after moving. Within four days, even. Sure, we missed a few things, but those have either been fetched or replaced.

The first few days it felt like everything went wrong, but it’s improving this week. I’m hoping it keeps going.

I’m very appreciative to the support I’ve received from family and friends, and I’m again faced with the oft-asked question, “Where are you from?” I’m not sure why people think we must have moved to the area to be around family. This does happen to be a little closer to family for both my husband and I, but we moved for his job. If they moved us somewhere else, we’d go.

The good news is I can write from anywhere. I’m sure I’d even figure out how to put pen to paper if all my digital devices disappeared!

In Dubuque, the Old Navy staff know my sister-in-law by name. I end up shopping as often or more with her there than I do at my own Old Navy in Des Moines. Somehow CrowdTap gave me a bunch  of opportunities to rate Old Navy merchandise and has offered me opportunities for several sample shares – but I either didn’t have enough experience within CrowdTap or not the right credentials for the past ones. The first one I qualified for I shared with my sister-in-law, of course!

It was totally worth paying priority mail to get it to her. I was also ecstatic when they opened it from only the compression tops to all activewear tops. I’m 30 weeks pregnant today, so it would not have been comfortable or pretty to put me in a compression top, even only long enough for pictures.

One thing that cracks me up about this picture is I think she bought me the same coat that she’s wearing – at Old Navy. I’ve been wearing it all the time because it is only one of two coats that fit me while pregnant. We should get a picture together when we match.

As usual, she looks great in everything, but I think she made a good choice.

While this is not taken while I was teaching, I have already taught a couple classes in m new outfit. My internal thermometer gets me too hot while teaching and I have a fan blowing on me most of the time, but I wear the hoodie to and from class, and also while packing at home.

I love how easy it is to move in this outfit. I have an Old Navy maternity yoga top underneath, too. The shoes are Vibram FiveFingers and this is one of my most comfortable outfits while pregnant! The pants don’t roll underneath my belly, but stay snuggled up to my new curves.

And on to the moving update: I will be moving from Des Moines to the Quad Cities on November 19th. It’s all happening very fast, and I hardly know which way is up. It’s one reason I haven’t been updating this blog as often, and the posts will be somewhat infrequent until we land in our new space. Moving is difficult but, on the up side, I’ll be much closer to my sister-in-law to go shopping! Because I need more distractions from my writing…

Speaking of which, I have come to grips with my limitations at 30 weeks pregnant. Even though I am moving, I still have to sit down from time to time. During those times, I have been writing. I have an entire novel prepped from an October challenge with my writing buddies. We don’t spend a ton of time per day as a minimum, but sometimes we get carried away. I spent over 15,000 words brainstorming around the outline, and I think I’m ready to attempt the novel. I am not promising to make the 50,000 words in 30 days, but there’s a good chance I’ll make it anyway. Things are coming together at home and I’m quitting my part-time jobs for the move, which will mean more time when we land in our new temporary living space.

Until then, I will be up to my eyes in to-do lists and little chores to take care of. Wish me luck, and go shop at Old Navy!

I remember from my long-ago English classes that there are several points of view available to a writer. Some of them are used more often than others, the most common among the books I read are 1st person and 3rd person limited. There are a few 3rd person omniscient books running around, but there aren’t a lot of other viewpoints used.

Perhaps it’s because 2nd person is too distracting for most of us. Maybe our feeble minds just can’t handle a story from 1st person or any plural perspective. I know a lot of writers out there who each have their own ideas about what makes a good point of view to tell the stories they’re pouring out of their hearts. I’m no different in that way and have a few that I prefer.

But do you ever stop and wonder what this story, this novel, would be like from a different point of view? When you switch from 1st to 3rd, what are you losing? Does it connect with more readers?  When you axe your main character and put her best friend in the spotlight; it completely changes the question. Changing by a character is much different than simply changing the point of view, but it actually isn’t less work to change point of view. It’s about the details and how much your message comes through to the audience. It’s not just changing a bunch of instances of “she” into “I”, but about how the entire thing comes across.

Plus you have to figure out which she you mean if there are other female characters involved.

So often I find myself writing a story as the character is telling me it happened. Sometimes it feels stronger in 1st, so I put him right where the action is. Other times it feels a little more distant and I put it in 3rd. I’m not one to write in omniscient viewpoint if I can help it, but I’ve been experimenting with it as I learn more about it. I learned this summer the difference between head-hopping and a real omniscient viewpoint and it made me really consider writing that way to understand it better.

One thing I did learn and was re-iterated from a book on point of view I read: There has to be a reason for invading a character’s head. It isn’t about understanding what the turtle sees on page 5 if the turtle is just a distraction. The reader doesn’t care about how the water is flowing in his world if the book is about the humans having a conversation on the other side of the river. That is, at best, a distraction. Even in omniscient viewpoint a writer needs to decide whether to enter the thoughts of a character to share it with the reader. Some of them, like the poor turtle, are sidelines to the real action.

Then I wonder why we enter that mind. What did we learn? What was so important to use that character instead of one already established with point of view? I’m still learning to ask the right questions to the other writers about this, and I think they don’t like it because they know I’m not a fan of omniscient viewpoint. I am improving by learning about it.

A story from a friend in writer group unfolded a fairy tale with a 3rd person plural viewpoint. At first I found myself waiting for a single character to catch the spotlight. It didn’t, and when it ended the story wrapped the loose ends in a way that left me satisfied. I enjoyed it, but it would take a special novel to keep me engaged throughout several hundred pages.

But I’m also really curious what all of you think about point of view. Do you write in 1st or 3rd? Do you consider omniscient or stick with limited or head-hop? [Please say no to head-hopping and leave the turtle alone.] Are all the stories you write in one strict point of view or do you mix it up to suit the characters in each story? What do you think when you read something that is in an alternate point of view?

Typing is a necessity for many of us, writers even more than most. Something about all those novels makes it hard to understand how you could manage at a slow pace. Do you do 120,000 words on a novel for how many revisions?

In the interest of keeping the writing time down, do you organize your thoughts? Do you wade through an outline or just start chugging from page one through to the end? Do you write longhand or do you sit at the keyboard for hours on end?

I love it when people get to study things like writers tend to be wordier when they do rough drafts at a keyboard instead of by hand. So what does it mean by wordier? Did they put the same writers side by side on the same topics and count words for each of the outpourings? I think it has to be difficult to make a really good comparison between writers. Especially when you consider that there gets to be a point where each writer makes a decision about the form that works better on an individual basis.

I’m one of those writers who logs hours in front of a keyboard. Perhaps less than some who transcribe their longhand so much slower than I type, but more than many if you consider all the other things I do in front of a monitor. Ha.

When I’m warmed up and awake, I can type about 100 words per minute. That’s from a typing test, though, and it isn’t about how fast I can create the words in my head. Creating requires more attention to detail and sometimes the proper word doesn’t just sprout from the fingertips. At times you end up with a blue where you really need a cerulean or a navy.

For me, the first draft is about getting the ideas out. It’s all about the concept. It’s one reason I just let it all run out from my fingers like they’re on fire when the ideas come fast. When they come slow, it’s one word at a time. It’s all about continuing the stream. Sometimes I skip ahead and come back to the troublesome parts. I don’t like to stop where it gets slow; I jump ahead if I have momentum to keep things moving. The movement is how I finish things. Some projects languish when I lose the steam to keep things on track.

It’s one reason I like NaNoWriMo. Everyone’s about moving and keeping the words spilling onto the page without worry about the inner editors getting in the way with whether it ought to be a separate sentence or hooked together with a semicolon. It seems like a small distinction, but it impacts the finished project.

So instead of recording just how fast I type, I’ve been keeping tabs on how fast I can pour out ideas. It varies on topic and particular day for my energy, but it looks like I could finish a day’s worth of a NaNo requirement between 30 and 90 minutes. Big swing, so I’m working on it to see if I can narrow the gap.

In my writer’s group, one of the contributors is working on her first fiction project. She’s got a wonderful flair for description and the short bits she reads us are vivid. I’m sure it helps that she’s got a long history in nonfiction. One of the veterans asked her the question: “What’s the absolute worst thing that can happen to your protagonist? Do that and you’ll find your plot.”

It’s not always how I think of it, but it’s very good advice. Sometimes people try to go easy on their characters if they like them, though the best thing is to torture the poor protagonist until he wants to give up – except you never, ever let that happen. Even giving up is a choice and bad things can happen from it. Just like a juggler who throws all the balls in the air and then doesn’t try to catch them – one of them will turn into the brick to land on his head.

When was the last time you read a book where the worst thing didn’t happen? Did you get bored with reading it? The other extreme might be where believability hits. Did you put the book down because the events just couldn’t happen that way? Within each story world there are possibilities and consequences for every choice made.

Pretend you’re writing a young adult novel and Mom forbids the main character from talking on the phone for a week. The main character has two choices, to follow the restriction or to break it. Either choice has consequences. It seems very cut and dried, but what happens when you add the love interest who’s expecting a call that evening? What happens when you add the mother’s incessant checking of the phone logs? Then a father who allows it because he doesn’t know about the restriction? Does your character choose to follow the restriction even if it means the love interest will be upset? Does the character come clean to Dad about not being able to use the phone (and maybe even why)? Or is it just a one time thing that the character hopes won’t be noticed? Suddenly there’s a plot!

Might not be an epic plot right now, but the more consequences and reactions the writer adds to make the choices more tortured adds to the reader’s pleasure. Somehow George R. R. Martin gets named in protagonist-torturing crowd. Readers might get mad at him for killing off their beloved characters, but as far as I know they’re still reading. And making movies and a game out of the story line. I suppose we can’t all do it that way, but kudos to him for making it work well!

Next time you take a look at your plot, whether you’ve finished writing or if you outline beforehand, really dig in to see if you’ve made your protagonist’s life as troubled as you can. That’s when you know you’re writing a good story.

Note: This is not to say that writers love to torture people. We’re pretty much just aiming to get readers, and we can’t overdose on all the sugary fluffiness that it would require to make an entire novel out of things happening that aren’t bad. 

I have a protagonist that has an interesting voice. I have a couple antagonists, one obvious that is simply annoying and a potentially more difficult one who seems friendly mixed in with a lovely set of background events and characters who promise to make life difficult for the main character. I found a big question that my novel is probably answering.

The big challenge today was finding the question. The answer has not yet presented itself, but I’m still working. It’s silly because I wasn’t looking for that particular question. It just popped out of the free-writing exercise like it belonged right in the center of attention. So now, when I think my mind might be quiet, I hear that question whispering through my mind.

Like right before that yoga class I teach, I heard it. Luckily I didn’t repeat it out loud – I replaced it with ‘inhale’ and ‘exhale’ and some movements for my students to follow along. I’ve been thinking about it on and off all day, but it just isn’t clear what the best -or worst- thing to happen is.

I know some people don’t write with all this kind of preparation. A few people can dig right into the novel and write from Once Upon a Time and go until The End and have a story when they finish. Often it has to be dusted out of the wreckage of several drafts, but that’s the fun of writing, isn’t it?

I’m curious what you do to find your answers to those questions when you’re writing or when you’re planning a big project. Do you wait for inspiration to strike, or do you hunt down the answers to those questions with single-minded ferocity?

But, sometimes, I wonder what the point of expressing an opinion in a certain way is. I love to read. I love to write. I love this form of expression – and many of you who follow me on Google+ or Facebook will have noticed the YouTube video Words Are My Sandbox.

I learned from reviewing other authors and from working in critique groups that often it’s good to sandwich the bad stuff inside the good things you find about the piece. There are some where it can be difficult to find something nice. There are also venues with spoken-only reading and critique where it is easy to focus on just one flaw and miss all the rest of the beauty of that segment. Many groups implement rules about how to treat other writers and others try to focus on how professional the advice may be – but nearly all of them are not about tearing down an amateur. I know I never would want to be the reason someone decides to stop expressing opinions through words.

How does that change when someone becomes a big name professional? Why is it that I hear conversations where people discuss only the bad aspects of some series and trash the author for it? There are so many examples, but here are two:

1. Stephenie Meyer‘s Twilight series seems to take a bad rap from a lot of people. I know many who love the novels and read them again and again. I read them and enjoyed them, but they’re not something that will draw me to read them 50 million times. I’ve heard people call them nothing but a teenage romance and think it’s awful for a 110 year old man (or however old Edward’s character was at the time of publication) to be after a 17 year old girl. Whatever else you say about them, didn’t Meyer make some interesting characters?

2. J. K. Rowling‘s Harry Potter series has throwbacks to the British boarding school novels. Sure. I’m sure there were other critics, possibly about the whole good versus evil thing. But there were rich things in the story, too, that some of the amateur people won’t admit.

Maybe it boils down to jealousy or something else I can’t easily name. I don’t think a single novel will fit every reader out there – which is why we have so many different genres and subgenres and points of view on everything. I wonder if that’s how you know you’re successful – that there are people out there trying to trash your accomplishment. Perhaps I’m just too thin-skinned and I worry what people will say about my work if it’s out there more. It hasn’t stopped me from pursuing publishing yet, and it isn’t likely to in the future.

I can acknowledge that many of the authors I read and enjoy have flaws. Some of them take much less flack than others, but some are much better known than the rest, too. It doesn’t make anyone more discerning to burn another in effigy.

Next time you want to stomp all over someone else’s expressed art, think to yourself- did I even try to see the good in it? What is it about this that so many people find fascinating? We don’t have to “agree to disagree” (don’t get me started on the wrongness of this phrase) or agree on anything at all, but it might be nice to acknowledge that not everyone who disagrees with you is completely wrong. And, also, that the tired, worn-out, dog-eared copy of whatever your favorite novel is has its own baggage. Peace!

One thing keeps sticking with me. There are three developed countries who do not require companies to offer paid maternity leave: Papua New Guinea, Swaziland, and the United States.

Back up. Wait. Really? Why don’t we learn that in other places like we would learn about the Family Medical Leave Act? Do we really want to think about the fact that until 1993 we didn’t even really have something from the government to protect women while they take time off to have children?

At this point, that act guarantees only 12 weeks unpaid leave. Many families can’t afford that. Yet we think about how much time we can take off in terms of how long we can be gone from our positions. Americans must be workaholics. We’re not thinking about taking time off in terms of putting our family together on a schedule. Not considering the changes that will occur when the new bundle arrives. Not planning on discovering how their lives have to flex and going from there. No – it’s all about how much time you can afford to be out of your job.

Right- this shouldn’t be my rant. I stay at home. I don’t want to miss so many things about my children. I don’t have jobs that would pay me to be off since they’re based on my attendance and the students’. Then again, I have friends and acquaintances who tried or were expected to return to a full time schedule a mere two weeks after childbirth.

Why do we think this is acceptable? A woman hasn’t really recovered from the birth at that point. She definitely hasn’t had time to adjust to having a new life dependent on her. Many infants aren’t even close to having a schedule to allow either parent to have slept enough to be functional.

Sometimes I wonder if we know how much we’re missing. A friend of mine told me last night how she considers staying home. She knows there are more challenges with that – she and I speak often about how our lives are progressing. But she and her husband were on vacation with their young toddler and she realized how much she wanted to be part of her son’s daily life. Not that she isn’t – she spends quality time with him every day. She’s a great parent and so is her husband. Like many companies, however, she doesn’t have the flexibility to make her schedule less daunting. Some positions are like that. Many companies make them that way even if they don’t need to be.

Is it the workaholic nature of our culture that we feel this way about working and revolve everything else around that? Or is it that we don’t really value this part of our society except on an individual level? Our schools are falling farther behind and one look at Facebook will tell you how many adults can’t – or won’t – use anything close to proper English among “peers.”

Maybe I forgot we live in a capitalistic society. We follow the money – and right now it’s leading out of here because we’re not the best educated, not the most creative, not the ones to set the bar anymore. Do you ever wonder – what happened?

Part of the trouble is that it’s difficult to imagine my book alongside the ones I take home and read. Not that I won’t be thrilled when that happens, it’s just difficult to picture ahead of time. Sometimes the closer I get, the farther it feels to the eventual goal. I have a published book out there, though it isn’t on the physical shelves of the bookstore. Some days that is hard to remember.

Today I was asking friends about urban fantasy novels they enjoyed. I know I’ve read a few, but I’m curious what draws in others who read that genre. I’ll also be making a trip to the bookstore this week to see what I haven’t read on the shelves that might be interesting or in the same market segment. The tough part might be keeping that list up to date by the time I get this manuscript ready to put in front of someone who can do something about the book-on-physical-shelf thing.

My answer to the title question is yes. It doesn’t matter how many urban fantasy genre books there are – mine will still be different. It’s like so many other things that take time and effort and seem to be a dime a dozen (bloggers and novelists can both fit in this category). If you want to make it work, do it. If you’re going to allow yourself to be daunted by the established names in the field, you’re toast. I’m working toward my goals and I won’t be afraid of failing. The only thing to be afraid of is not trying.

The energy is gathering among people throwing in their hats, making decisions about what possible project might be good enough to focus so much time and effort. Sometimes we agonize over the big decisions, like can we manage to get enough world-building in the beginning to make it stretch over the novel writing time without slowing down. It’s a particularly large problem for anyone starting a science fiction or fantasy novel of any kind. How do you get enough of the NaNoverse painted if you drive in on Day 1 without any preparation at all?

It was just that question that drives so many of my friends to undertake a small amount of early work before attempting that big novel. We gather and cheer each other on – digitally since we’re geographically diverse – and sometimes even help get past the inevitable block.

The NaNoWriMo challenge is about writing a novel in a month – usually stated at 50,000 words. The problem with that stated challenge is that most novels don’t end at 50k. In science fiction and fantasy, they’re often between 70,000 and 120,ooo words. For young adult it’s much closer to the guidelines. Many of the challenge-takers stop at 50k instead of finishing the book, or they write so that the book ends at 50k. Then when it’s time for the revisions it gets interesting.

On the other hand, you end up with a half-finished novel even if you didn’t finish the challenge, and the rules are all about starting a new challenge next year, rather than finishing something that was an abandoned idea.

Another drawback is that it is difficult to look at that novel when December rolls around. The energy will sap into a stupor as the crowd that cheered everyone to the finish is taking a collective breath and thinking they ought to rejoin their families and friends. Edits are pushed off from December to June to some other future date. I think it’s just difficult to be that dedicated all the time for most people. Fits and starts get me through some edits, but I’m not consistent in that area.

Someday I’ll wrangle a bunch of people into NaNoEdMo with me, not that March is a better time than November but I think the energy of having a group working through the words would be fun and inspiring to get through it.

Who else plans to take a dash at a massive dump of creative words in November? What do you do with your manuscript when you finish (yes, we’re assuming that we’re all going to finish)? Does the creative flow of energy help you get in the spirit of the novel? Do you ever get bogged down by the pressure of 1667 words per day rather than gushing out of a story? I’d love to hear what NaNoWriMo means to you.

I’m especially excited about the new anthology, The Coming Storm. It’s open to many visual and written options – from black and white photography to poetry to fiction.

Speaking of anthologies, my first published story appeared in an anthology, Ruins Metropolis. It can be a great way to start to build a presence and get a name out there for readers to see who you are and what you want to say. It reminds me also that the reasons all of us write are different.

I know there are writers out there who work on a book or one specific world for all of their spare time. It’s about characters who become very close to them and I was really struck almost speechless when I heard a woman say she didn’t want to end the book because then she’d be done with the characters. Maybe that explains why we just keep moving slowly through the story.

Other writers have a couple things moving at a time, each at different paces, cycling through ideas and characters as if they have a shelf life and must be written before they expire.

Do you ever feel like one set of characters or one world is so close to you that it is impossible to work outside that zone? Do you instead put a little here and a little there and mark characters in as many different times, places, situations as you can manage to imagine? What makes you decide to write this set and not a different one at this time?

That’s always the ticket with me: is this going to fulfill my goals and is it worth my time? Time is incredibly precious and sometimes it seems completely based on perception. Is it my perception that time is dropping from an eyedropper to mimic the slowness of certain activities? Is it my perception that it magically speeds faster than light when I’m having fun? How am I supposed to judge similar activities as the same time – or not – if my brain is screaming that one went too fast and the other too slow?

Then there’s the other part about whether or not activities are productive. One goal is to be published. That cannot be achieved without doing specific work to help it along: writing, editing, revising, researching markets, submitting to markets, and responding to feedback when received.

There are other things that I track as far as goals are concerned. Sometimes it takes convincing to decide something isn’t worth the effort. Often when the time comes to let go of an activity, there are issues like commitments to other people and also overall enjoyment to consider. But if you never evaluate what you’re doing and how it reflects the goals you have, how do you know you’re doing what you ought to be doing?

A line on Big Bang Theory talked about how one of the characters, Sheldon Cooper, spent over 3000 hours on an online multi-player role playing game. I’m sure his character would have loved every minute of that and thought of it as quite an achievement. I know other people who use games to ‘kill’ time, and I wonder if that’s ever the best use of time. You have nothing at the end except a higher score or a different color badge. What do you gain? If it’s relaxation, then all may be well and good. If at the end you’re tense because some troll ate your carrot field and you have to start over, perhaps there’s another hobby that will suit you better. I stopped playing several games when I realized they weren’t giving me anything. Now I stick with Sudoku and a version of Mah Jong for solitaire play. I don’t spend much time on it, but it’s fairly low key.

So it’s time to re-evaluate. I’ve been listing activities and things that I have been doing to meet them or things I could be doing to reach it in different ways. Sometimes one gets crossed off or my focus changes to incorporate a new perspective. One day it’ll all be worth it, and I count myself successful as I reach those goals, or sometimes even just making significant progress toward a goal.

How do you count success and keep yourself focused?

But here’s where the debate lies: is 24 weeks equal to 6 months? My husband’s overly technical answer is no. He insists there are 4.3 weeks per month and that must be taken into account. I suppose he’s got a point, since there are 52 weeks in a year and 6 months is half a year, so 26 weeks, right? The issue there is that there are supposed to be 4 weeks in 1 month. Isn’t that what we learned when we were young? And 6 times 4 is 24. Feels like there ought to be wiggle room.

Then you add in the pregnancy thing being 40 weeks, give or take, and you get a messy tangle. Do you count that as ten months? Do you start the count from a different week to make things more confusing, but less difficult to say “I’m five months pregnant.” Do you ever wonder why we allow such discrepancies? Can’t it be fixed to say one month is so many days and so many weeks?

It’s probably just as easy as switching to the metric system. Something that is resisted in this country yet would make things easier once completed.

It also makes me think of time in books. Often I read science fiction and fantasy. Rarely is another time system used that isn’t based on Gregorian calendar. Many fantasy books turn months into moons, and it changes the pace and tone, but it’s a similar system. Science fiction often uses something along the same lines. Star Trek uses a stardate, but it’s simply a different way to state it.

One series I read by Gayle Greeno, The Ghatti’s Tale, had a system with eight days per week. At the time it made me wonder why more authors didn’t try something like that. Time and its passage isn’t a main focus in these novels or it might have become a problem. Like creating a new language and having to understand all the rules involved, time has its own issues. We think in terms of calendars we know. Once a reader has to convert all of the references into something that has no common point to the popular system of time measurement, it might give the reader a chance to check out and put the book down.

What do you think? Have you ever tried to create a time system for a book that didn’t have large similarities to the Gregorian calendar? Did it become a gargantuan task to keep everything straight in your head and your readers? How many books have you encountered that significantly altered the way time was measured for the story and did it change your opinion of the book?

So sometimes when I encounter a student that doesn’t know a certain word that seems like it should be beneath his level, I wonder. How many of these words did the people in my peer group pick up from their reading habits? There are many thousands of words in the English language. I’ll admit I don’t know a fair chunk of them. Only one visit to Save The Words convinced me that there are many words in danger of extinction because the majority of the populace doesn’t use them.

How does someone figure out what level a word is? Sure, a word like blue is in the vocabulary of most with a high degree of understanding, with the exception of the percentage of population who are blind or color-blind in the blue spectrum.

An interesting thing at Word Count is that it counts instances used in our language. While it may not be a good measure of the difficulty of a word, since some large words are used a lot in business settings or to make fun of manager-speak – it can give insight into the exposure a person might have to a certain word.

A somewhat random sampling of their ranking includes:
the – 1
and – 3
blue – 973
navy- 4252
cerulean – 69082 (For those who don’t know, it’s a shade of blue.)
conquistador – 86800 (And the last word listed at the moment.)

It kept me busy yesterday finding the approximate relation of all the rainbow colors. It also helped me understand why some people might have a common vocabulary in the beginning stages, but learn words sporadically as the rank increases.

What direction would you wander in to find the relative difficulty of a word? How do you choose which words to use for whatever level of reader you want to target in your writing? How often do you use some strange word because it’s exactly the one you need even if it requires someone to check in a dictionary? The word lover in me is poised on the edge of my chair to know.

It was disappointing that more of my classmates couldn’t make it, but I was pleased to see some of our elementary school teachers. One fourth, fifth, and sixth grade teacher were in attendance, only one of them still a full-time teacher. I suppose that ought to remind me how long ago elementary school was. While I wasn’t in that particular fourth grade section, I had both the others.

When I saw them (and it took a little bit for us to recognize each other), I remembered how many stories I made them sit and read through in my journal at the time. I always wanted to be a writer. It wasn’t understood to me at the time that I was a writer – one who writes. I filled the journal even then at different paces, some days filling in pages with my messy scrawl and others barely the minimum requirement. I don’t think they watched me too much on the minimum. I’m glad I got the chance to thank them for reading all that stuff I was so intent on spinning out.

Have you thanked a teacher lately? Especially one who took the time to encourage you when you were younger and make sure you weren’t so overwhelmed or lost that you gave up entirely? I know a lot of people think about teachers not as people but as little units of things that ought to get done. Perhaps it just seems that way during union talks or when there are cuts or something like No Child Left Behind. (Don’t get me started on that one.) Are there teachers out there you remember who helped you out? Who gave you something interesting to look forward to?

They hadn’t heard I was a published author now. Sometimes word travels slow, even in the small towns where I once attended a school that only seems familiar to the locals. Perhaps they’ll carry the word onward to the others who might have taught me. My former classmates got to see The Art of Science, too. Some of them have kids that age already, which is hard for me to imagine, since mine are 2.5 and forthcoming.

I’m really glad I went to the reunion. Despite my missing classmates, I did get to catch up with a few I really wanted to see. And here’s to all the rest who perhaps missed me there, and maybe I’ll catch them in another five years or more.

Don’t you wonder what people have to say if they think no one will read it? Maybe that’s why some people quit blogging. If no one out there is responding, they’re not about to keep putting themselves out there. Blogs have great tracking features to tell you how many people read your post. Plus you can add feeds for subscribers to increase your readability.

But it doesn’t really bring in readers. What you write does. So is what you’re saying interesting enough to hold an audience? Only of people who personally know you? Not even then? Even if you have something interesting, humorous, or noteworthy, you might not capture the audience. Perhaps someone will repost one of your thoughts, but never come back again. [I am recently guilty of this.]

I just don’t read that many blogs. I haven’t yet found the time. It doesn’t mean I won’t find the time, especially if someone shares it directly with me, but my focus is toward writing: blogs slanted that way, books on the topic, books in genres I write, plus the writing and revision of my own work. It’s time consuming. I let it be that way.

Not that I don’t pay attention to my family. That’s where the rest of my time goes.

I’m not really under delusions about how many people read my blog. If I were WordPress would definitely burst my bubble. It’s not about what I’m trying to tell someone else, but it’s an expression of something I want to say. I think a blog ought to be something you want to do. I originally started one because it seemed like the thing writers do – they blog. Some do and some don’t. Some are successful and some aren’t. There is no one way to label a writer or a blog. The expert opinion is to do it if you like it, but that there are plenty of ways to reach an audience other than blogging if that’s the author’s preference.

It’s a long way to say: if you’re reading, thanks. It’s nice to know someone wants to read it. I’d probably still be blogging anyway – but it makes me happy.

It’s always exciting to first be recognized as a blogger with a giveaway, though we both wonder how a company chooses specific bloggers to participate.

I love how she gives a full review of the software on her site, plus if you buy the software you get a $10 off coupon. How often do you get 25% off something? She doesn’t make any stringent requirements like writing an essay about how much you really need digital scrapbooking software or taking a million random pictures of scavenger hunt options – aren’t you glad I didn’t think up the rules for the giveaway? All you have to do is follow Shawna Skinner Meyer’s blog (she gives options) and follow the company (again, options) and let her know about it.

Don’t let me be the only one to enter. I don’t even scrapbook!