What's On Your Mind About Your Writing?

Thinking about paragraph and chapter length in terms of readability.

I find myself writing two projects at once, a novel and a screenplay. I've taken to focusing on the novel one day, the screenplay the next, and so on. Has anyone else find themselves rotating days when working on multiple projects?

Cheers.

Thinking about making sure the information is correct and up-to-date. The most important in nonfiction books.

I'm more concerned about my ability to write a "strong female character" than I am about writing a Saami character and a character with PTSD. Funnily enough, while I'm neither Saami nor have PTSD, I was AFAB and identified as female for the first twenty years of my life, LOL.

Thinking about art movements and how they can apply to writing styles.

DanielSTJ said:

Thinking about art movements and how they can apply to writing styles.

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My favorite's Chiaroscuro: mixing the darks and the lights for a starker, more dynamic contrast than if it were dominated by just one or the other

I'm so very frustrated that there is such an emphasis on sleeping enough for your health and waking up on time for morning classes, yet the only time I can actually write without being interrupted every five minutes is at 2am.

Yeah I feel you there, MIB.

Both my kids have sleep issues and that kind of means permanent exhaustion and/or being endlessly badgered in daytime.

I'm absolutely certain I'd do far less rewrites if my drafts were written while less tired!

Same, MIB. During the day, even when I'm alone at home, everything is just too loud and distracting. (Yours sincerely, ADHD.) The main street in front of my house, the neighbours rummaging around in the garden or even just walking down the stairs (Curse this townhouse!), and even the freaking birds.

Thinking about how much I love this book. I'm working on my revisions for my Shakespeare/Bearskin (fairy tale) crossover called SHATTERED DREAMING, that I put aside to simmer while I worked on AMBERSHIELD. It's had 2 months to percolate and I can tell I'm making this thing even better than it was. I love where it's going, I love writing about my hometown as though it were submerged in magic, and I love my main character, Glori. So very Slytherin, sly and sneaky, but she's had to be to stay alive. And now she's faced with freedom, but on a time limit and with a bet with a Trickster over her head. So exciting, I love it.

Will Collins said:

Has anyone else find themselves rotating days when working on multiple projects?

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Yep. It happened coincidentally while doing a light edit on my NaNo novel while prepping for two new novels. At first I thought it was a bad idea and might lead to distraction. Instead, it worked out great. When I was editing I forgot about prep, and vice versa. It kept my thinking surprisingly fresh.

I could (should) do the same thing now. I should swap between prep and short-fiction. In fact, I'm going to give it a shot. I keep putting off editing my short-fiction because I'm intimidated about submitting. This might help.

Thanks for the idea!

Will Collins said:

I find myself writing two projects at once, a novel and a screenplay. I've taken to focusing on the novel one day, the screenplay the next, and so on. Has anyone else find themselves rotating days when working on multiple projects?

Cheers.

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Yes. I work on my novel during the week when I have to do my day job, but on days off I'll put in the 1000 quota then move to a short story.

I finished the first draft, and I'm obsessed with how I can fix the stupid thing. It's definitely frustrating me right now, because I want the second draft to be of a quality where I'm not ashamed to send it to beta readers. And I know my actual baseline writing is, well, it's okay but there's a chunk of things I want to rewrite first and a couple of things missing before I can get to rewriting. It's to a point where I'm so frozen by the question of "but WHY" I cannot muster up imaginings of other story's whys, I'm convinced I've never once been smart enough to write a novel, and just knowing how to write a shiny sentence isn't good enough (well, it's not).

I don't have a dayjob. I may not be hirable. I have to succeed.

Why did I ever have to want to write a novel? Why couldn't I have been delighted by the idea of frying burgers or something that actually makes real money. Or like, my art makes me money, a tiny bit, enough that I barely, just barely, get by. Why couldn't I have just been 100% obsessed with drawing? Why does my stupid brain make me go WAIT GONNA WORDS NOW.

I know this is part of my usual editing process, but it's frustrating me that I'm not advancing at a rate of any further than a sentence or two of "okay, fix this" a day. I don't think it's good or will ever be good. It's not unusual for me to feel that way about my own work for about a year before I can actually begin to edit. It's just frustrating that it's slowing me down AND preventing me from making a new plot outline in the process, because this story is very much sticking with me. So it probably is halfway decent, if that's any clue, I'm just blind to it, I know, and I know what I'd advise someone else in the same position to do. It's just hard to DO.

Blah.

The Ghost Club launch tour is winding down. Some things worked well, others didn’t work at all, some people were early, some were late, I forgot stuff I should have remembered, and remembered stuff I should have left forgotten, and I’m not at all sure it does a single thing for book sales.


But I’ve been having a great time. There’s still a couple of podcasts and an interview to come, but the work at my end is done.


So what have I learned?


People are generally interested in the same things, and the main one seems to be, why do you do what you do? So here’s the condensed answer from all the words spoken, the blogs written, and the interview lies told.


I’m Willie, and I’m a storyteller.


I have few pretensions. I’m not a literary writer. I don’t spend days musing over le mot juste. I just get on and tell the story to the best of my ability. I tell a lot of stories. That has led to me being called a hack in some quarters, but if a hack is someone who values storytelling, then I suppose that’s what I am.


I choose to write mainly at the pulpy end of the market, populating my stories with monsters, myths, ghosts, men who like a drink and a smoke, and more monsters. People who like this sort of thing like it. But a lot of writers have been told that pulp = bad plotting and that you have to have deep psychological insight in your work for it to be valid. They’ve also been told that pulp = bad writing, and they believe it. Whereas I remember the joy I get from early Moorcock, from Mickey Spillane and further back, A E Merritt and Edgar Rice Burroughs. I’d love to have a chance to write a Tarzan, John Carter, Allan Quartermain, Mike Hammer or Conan novel, whereas a lot of writers I know would sniff and turn their noses up at the very thought of it.


I know I’m capable of producing readable fiction, and quite quickly at that. I’ve written thirty novels in the last fifteen years, and had them published in the specialist genre presses. I also enjoy writing stories for some of my favorites; Sherlock Holmes, Professor Challenger and Carnacki in the main, with a handful of collections in print.


And again, in some quarters, this is seen as beneath a ‘real’ writer, and has led to more accusations of being no more than fan fiction and hackwork. But recently this ‘hackwork’ has been getting me into professional anthologies from big publishers like ‘The Mammoth Book of’ series where I’ve placed both Holmes and Carnacki stories.


I thought I’d got most of the pastiche writing out of my system about eighteen months back, which is when I finished CARNACKI: THE EDINBURGH TOWNHOUSE. But then someone on Facebook mentioned H Rider Haggard and asked if I’d thought of doing something in that vein. I hadn’t really, then suddenly I had. But not just Haggard. I mentioned earlier about Wells, Verne, Stevenson and Doyle. I’d also read Haggard and Kipling, Tolstoy and Twain and more. And suddenly the Victoriana pulled me back in, I had a ‘what if…’ moment thinking about a ghost club, and there it was, a new idea in my head. I’ve been at it long enough to know that when something like that hits me, I have to write it.


It’s called THE GHOST CLUB, and it’s a simple premise.


In Victorian London a select group of writers, led by Arthur Conan Doyle, Bram Stoker and Henry James held an informal dining club, the price of entry to which was the telling of a story by each invited guest.


So I wrote a bunch of stories, containing tales of revenant loved ones, lost cities, weird science, spectral appearances and mysteries in the fog of the old city, all told by some of the foremost writers of the day: Verne and Wells, Tolstoy and Checkov, Stevenson and Oliphant, Kipling, Twain, Haggard, Wilde and Blavatsky alongside their hosts. I had more than a few moments of panic and self doubt, wondered many times whether the sin of pride would bite me on the arse or the ghosts of the dead writers would come along in their own little club and laugh me out of the room.


But you know what, I’d do it all over again, because the story is the thing for me, and these tales resonate with something in my psyche, whether it’s upbringing, early reading, or just plain love for a good tale.


I’m Willie, and I’m a storyteller.

I accidentally answered the question "What's the worst thing that could happen to this character?" Now I want to answer it for the other four characters. I feel evil, but in a good way.

And then ask yourself, "After that happens, what's an even worse thing that could happen, now that I've smashed that character to pieces?"

Trying to revamp a story I had previously written in the style of Hans Anderson; revamping because I think my chance of selling it is zero. Got an outline ready and 3.2 pages later my brain locked up. I firmly believe what Ray Bradbury told an audience in 2008, that if you have writer's block you're subconscious is stopping you from writing something you don't really want to.

I like the story I'm trying to tell: boy captured as slave in the ancient world, using witchcraft to curse the warlord who captured him and killed his family, accidentally makes them both immortal (so long as he keeps his hatred alive) and chases him across the centuries in an elaborate revenge scheme.

Now I'm unsure how best to tell it. This recent attempt was going to be a novelette, but I got bogged down in the boring.

Taylor Harbin said:

Trying to revamp a story I had previously written in the style of Hans Anderson; revamping because I think my chance of selling it is zero. Got an outline ready and 3.2 pages later my brain locked up. I firmly believe what Ray Bradbury told an audience in 2008, that if you have writer's block you're subconscious is stopping you from writing something you don't really want to.

I like the story I'm trying to tell: boy captured as slave in the ancient world, using witchcraft to curse the warlord who captured him and killed his family, accidentally makes them both immortal (so long as he keeps his hatred alive) and chases him across the centuries in an elaborate revenge scheme.

Now I'm unsure how best to tell it. This recent attempt was going to be a novelette, but I got bogged down in the boring.

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That sounds like an interesting story, something I might like to read - and that comes from someone that usually isn't into Fantasy.

indianroads said:

That sounds like an interesting story, something I might like to read - and that comes from someone that usually isn't into Fantasy.

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I'll be sure to keep you in mind once it's done. I had considered a kind of historical fantasy approach, but that would require so much research since three different civilizations are featured.

Taylor, your description evokes LeStat to me, yes? no? It sounds great, the traipsing across centuries to enact revenge. I like the time component best of all.

On my mind: Tension as a device to keep energy where it needs to be. Tension can be:between people, between a person and their goal, or (I think) between the story and the reader (this is mostly true in mystery.) Trying to find the slow areas and figure out what element of tension might help.

I named one of my cats Lestat.

Patty said:

Taylor, your description evokes LeStat to me, yes? no? It sounds great, the traipsing across centuries to enact revenge. I like the time component best of all.

On my mind: Tension as a device to keep energy where it needs to be. Tension can be:between people, between a person and their goal, or (I think) between the story and the reader (this is mostly true in mystery.) Trying to find the slow areas and figure out what element of tension might help.

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I regret I'm not familiar with Lestat.

Ooooh. That's the answer I was hoping for.

If you are looking for christmas titles, The Interview with the Vampire is one of Anne Rice's most popular works.

It was also made into a movie, with Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt (And Christian Slater.) (And Antonio Banderas.)

I think (It's been a while) that Antonio makes Cruise into a vampire 500 years ago, and Cruise makes Pitt recently. the story works because Rice spends a lot of time on the emotional cost of living so long against your will, and the rage that can entail when facing the one that made you that way.

Anyway, it's a good framework. I think you are onto something with your idea.

Atalanta said:

Yep. It happened coincidentally while doing a light edit on my NaNo novel while prepping for two new novels. At first I thought it was a bad idea and might lead to distraction. Instead, it worked out great. When I was editing I forgot about prep, and vice versa. It kept my thinking surprisingly fresh.

I could (should) do the same thing now. I should swap between prep and short-fiction. In fact, I'm going to give it a shot. I keep putting off editing my short-fiction because I'm intimidated about submitting. This might help.

Thanks for the idea!

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No worries, I hope it works out.