Insecure Writer's Support Group: What do you do when you grow bored of a story?

Happy New Year, folks!

I know I haven't been around much since I started working for CQ, but I'm aiming to rectify that this year.

2013 was an awesome year for me - love and thanks to all that helped make that happen <3 - and I hope 2014 is even better. One of the ways I want to improve on last year is by creating a better work/ writing/ blogging balance.

I don't want to make promises I won't keep, but I am going to try my hardest to keep up with blogging, and find time to work on my novel, while continuing my CQ work.

To that end, I'll be back next week with a proper update about work and writing, but today, I wanted to take part in my first ever IWSG!

I'm a long-time lover of Alex J. Cavanaugh's IWSG, I think it's an amazing concept, and the things Alex and the IWSG team have done with the group in the last year awe me. You guys rock. I hope your success continues and you know where I am if you ever need any help! <3

As for my own insecurity about writing, over the holiday break, I got to wondering, what do you do when you grow bored of a story? 

For the past year, I've been working on a new-adult paranormal-romance. I've written about 40k, and had most of that critiqued by a few trusted writer friends, while I continue writing the rest, and making revisions as they suggested.

For the most part, it's being going okay. When I have time between work, I've enjoyed writing the story. But ever now and again, I have moments when I just don't want to continue. I think it's too hard to get over these mountains, and I want to create something new.

I worry I'm addicted to the buzz of creating characters and worlds.

I have countless stories I've started and never completed. Most of them have been written during NaNoWriMo, and many are in different states; from complete and needing revising, to an unfinished mess.

I wonder if part of the problem is editing. I hate the process and find it really difficult. And when I find it difficult, I get bored. I start telling myself if I start a new project, I'll prepare and plan better and it will need less editing. But that's not true. No amount of preparing will create a perfect first draft. Editing is part of the growing process.

Then I start wondering should I just write for fun, for myself. Not caring if it's perfect or not, and never showing it to anyone. But I think no, a story that is never read isn't a real story. I want my story to have life outside my computer. It deserves that much.

I feel like I can't turn my back on these characters. I owe it to them to finish their story.

So for now, I'm back in that world, and enjoying it once again.

But I wonder, what do I do the next time this feeling inevitably creeps back? Go through the motions of wanting to give up and write something new until it passes and I fall in love with my original story again, and keep repeating that process until the novel actually gets finished?

Or is there something else I can do to keep me focused and on track?

I'd love to hear your tips and advice if you have them.

I hope everyone has an excellent week, and I will try to pop in on some of you to read your IWSG posts, and see what you've been up to recently.

Organisation and Time-Management

So, despite dropping out of the A-Z challenge two weeks ago (*waves to everyone who is completing it today * Congrats!) I admit I’ve been slacking a little on the writing front. 

Some of that is laziness on my part *slaps wrists * and some of it is having a crazy busy week with real life responsibilities.

I’m trying to get focused again this week though. 

One thing I have to balance is when and when not to write. 

I not only have to juggle real life responsibilities, but sometimes I also have to admit when life is getting a little too much and take a few days off to recuperate. 

As I’ve mentioned on my blog before, I think writer’s block is a myth. But I do think you can burn yourself out by taking on too much (see me trying to do the A-Z challenge on two blogs) and need to take a break from time to time. 

What I sometimes struggle with though is knowing the difference between when I genuinely need a break, and when I’m just being a lazy arse. 

This is when I have to "Patrick Rothfuss it", and I recalled this brilliant quote.

"Writers block is a myth. The myth stems from the belief that writing is some mystical process. That it’s magical. That it abides by its own set of rules different from all other forms of work, art, or play. But that’s bullshit. Plumbers don’t get plumber’s block. Teachers don’t get teacher’s block. Soccer players don’t get soccer block. What makes writing different? Nothing. The only difference is that writers feel they have a free pass to give up when writing is hard. When writing is hard, I grit my teeth and I do it anyway. Because it’s my job. Or sometimes I don’t. Sometimes it’s hard and I quit and go home and play video games. But let’s be clear. When that happens, it’s not because I’ve lost some mystical connection with my muse. It’s because I’m being a slacker. There’s nothing magical about that." - Patrick Rothfuss, Feb 23rd, 2011.

As part of my "Patrick Rothfussing it" and not slacking off, I made myself a lovely little timetable this week; detailing what I should be doing between when I get up at 7:30am and when the kids go to bed at 8PM (after that the time is mine and I can use it for whatever I want; be it writing, playing video games or bumming around online). It helps that said timetable can be placed on my beautiful Nexus 7, so if I’m tempted to play Simpsons Tapped Out, it’s there to remind me what I should be doing.

Of course, all this is subject to change, and I have to be flexible if something unexpected comes up - like Youngest coming down with chicken pox or the ASDA delivery forgetting some of our groceries - but when things go smoothly, this is the schedual I'm trying to stick to this week.  

Another thing I’ve done this week to organise myself, and hopefully make my writing more productive, is created a table (yes, I love tables, okay?) of the 8 chapters/ 18k words I’ve written so far; each one listing the chapter, page numbers, word count and a brief summary. I’m hoping this will help with editing, so I can clearly see what needs cutting or rearranging.

I've asterisked out the summaries, because I don't want to reveal too much about the story before it's complete, but you get the general idea. Going by the three-act structure plan I have, I estimate I've got about 2-3 chapters left to write in act one. It seems to be working out well so far, and I have a little tidying up before I'm ready to move onto act two.

 What are some ways you organise your time and your writing? I’d love to hear other tips! 

 Hope everyone is having a good week. I’ll be hopping around your blogs shortly to catch up on anything I’ve missed, but please feel free to let me know in the comments if there’s something important I should check out.

Am I Insane?

 The answer to that question is probably. 

When it comes to writing I love a little pressure. 

Write 50k of a novel in 30 days? No problemo. 

Blog every day of April, with each post being based on a letter of the alphabet? Easy peasy.

Come up with a (maximum) 8, 000 word fantasy short story in five days? Challenge accepted.

Thanks, Fests, and Camps

I want to start off this post by thanking all the awesome people who have helped me reach one-hundred followers. When I started this blog it was to write about my experiences doing NaNoWriMo, and now it's grown into a place where I can share my writing journey with everyone. I've had some excellent experiences - the A-Z challenge was both insane and awesome - made some great friends, and learned so many new things.

So, from the bottom of my heart, thank you everyone who has followed me and is joining me on my writing journey. I hope I'm blogging about my experiences for many years to come, and making more friends as I go along. You guys are all awesome, and I couldn't have gotten this far without your support!! ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

 

One of my favourite things about blogging is the fests and hops, and I've signed up for another one in June. Jaycee Delorenzo and Victoria Smith are hosing a follow-up to their 'Oh! My Hero!' bloghop, and I couldn't be more excited.

Here's what Jaycee and Victoria have to say about the hop:

Interview a heroine of your manuscript, novel, or WIP by a fellow female counterpart also from one of your written works.  Your featured heroine can be interviewed by her best friend, a heroine from another one of your written works, a sister, the opportunities are endless!
 

• Have your heroine answer at least 3 of the questions recommended below or make up your own!
• Post a picture of your heroine, the interviewer, or both!
• Post a song for the theme of the interview or a song that reflects your featured heroine's personality.
• Follow Victoria and Jaycee on their blogs.
• Post their hop button! (Though not required, feel free to repost on your blog about the hop!)
• Post your entries on June 22, 2012 and hop around the other blogs through the linky!

For this hop, the interview will have more of a "girls chatting" type feel because after all, Girls Just Wanna Have Fun!  So feel free to write it like a short scene in a book!

Here are the recommended questions for it:

1. How would you describe your hero?
2. What's your biggest date horror story?
3. What turns you off from a guy the most?
4. What's the best date you ever had?
5. Kiss on the first date?
6. What gets a guy a second date?
7. Boxers or briefs on your guy?
8. What is one thing you believe can tell a lot about a person?
9. What attracts you to a guy the most?

Prizes:

Victoria and Jaycee will each choose a heroine who's creativity and overall personality snagged our attention. 

Jaycee is offering a custom blog header or an ebook download of up to $10 from Amazon.

Victoria is offering up an ebook download or up to $15 Book from Book Depository

I will be interviewing the heroine of Perfect Ten, Nick Braxton's counterpart, Rainie Dalton. 

 

I've decided to take the plunge, and do CampNaNo this year. Because I'm Clare Dugmore, and I'm a NaNo addict!

No doubt between CampNaNo, editing Sibylline Nights, and all the other projects I've got going on, I'll be pulling my hair out by the end of the summer. But where's the fun in sanity, right?!

For those interested, my CampNaNo profile can be found here. I'll be adding novel infomation soon, but for that, I need your help!

I have two stories in mind for CampNaNo, and I can't decide which to write, so I'm hoping you guys will be able to help me pick. Whichever I don't do in August will be my November NaNo novel, so don't worry, both will get written eventually.

Here's a quick synopsis of them:

Untitled YA Fantasy

It's six o'clock and when the claxon sounds that can only mean one thing … RUN! Return to your homes before the Harvesters get you.

Forty tons of mobile metal machinery that if they catch you will turn you into robots like themselves, or so the rumours say.

Hen is trapped on the outskirts of town when she hears the claxon. She has two options; risk running into a Harvester on her way home or enter the abandoned mine.

But what will she find in there?

Legend has it the mines house the souls of the dead who were made into machines. Even if she ignores those silly stories, there's still the disused mining mechanisms to face. They look scary enough in the day light, let alone in the dwindling twilight.

But what choice does Hen have? She's already made a bargain with the infamous thief Karleon that she'll go down into the mine and collect ore in exchange for food. She can't let her little brother starve. Besides, the Harvesters will surely catch her if she returns to the slums now.

So, into the mines Hen goes, following the map Karleon gave her, and sneaking past the long forgotten mining robots that look as though the could reanimate at any second.

Hen reaches the spot marked on Karleon's map, but finds the ore supply already depleted. So she goes deeper into the mine, hoping to find something she can sell or trade. It's her only chance of survival, and the best way to pass the time until morning when the Harvesters will have returned to their home in the Shining City.

What Hen finds in the depths of the mine is the stuff of legend … and with the legend comes a whole new world of power Hen has only ever heard about from the history books.


Untitled Paranormal Drama

Lucy Pillman clearly remembers the night she died; it was the night she lost her unborn child too. Now with new supernatural gifts she's bent on nothing but revenge. Henry thought making a new progeny would combat the crippling loneliness he's faced for the past hundred years. But now he has to keep Lucy under control as she reels from one disaster to the next. Will Henry be able to make Lucy see sense and begin to accept her new life, or will he once again lose the only thing he's ever wanted; companionship?

What should I write for CampNaNo?

More P For Your Pound

As I was doing my daily browse through the blogs on the A-Z Challenge, I came across Madeleine Maddocks' Plotter or Pantser blogfest (via Kyra Lennon - thanks for the tip ^_~), and decided to sign up.

The fest seems especially poignant, as last night I mentioned I had a new story idea I'm going to begin plotting and planning, so I'm ready to begin writing for NaNoWriMo in November.

So what's Madeleine's fest all about?

Sign up to the linky and post your tips and secrets on how you plot your novels. Even if you are a Pantser rather than a Plotter, there must be some methods you follow when writing your stories. Or you can post about any aspect of plotting. 
 

How do you Plot your novels?

I've used both methods to varying degrees of success. 

Back in my fanfic writing days I'd write on the fly, hammering out a story as the inspiration hit - usually going for about a month straight before running out of steam. Often times I'd then lose my drive, and the story would remain incomplete. However, there was one fic I had a crude chapter plan for and I deem that my most successful fanfic.

For NaNo 2010 I had no plan. I signed up a month before, and had a vague premise. During the course of November and beyond that vague premise became the incomplete (at 69, 340 words) first draft of Destiny's Road. If I'm honest, it's a mess. There's not enough ground work for the plot, characters or world. Fantasy world building is hard, and I've now come to realise you can't jump straight into a world without all the kinks ironed out. There's the reason I've since shelved Destiny's Road - it's too much of a mess for me to want to fix right now. 

NaNo 2011 was different. For starters, I was basing Sibylline Nights in a slightly altered version of our world. It also helped that I'd had the idea for the story knocking around in my head for a few years before NaNo, and already had the three MCs planned out, as well as a few other characters. Before NaNo started I planned the supporting characters, and had a loose idea of the plot. I had a beginning and and end. What came in between was all discovered as I wrote, and it's worked pretty well. Some things didn't even pop into my head until I reached them, but they feel like integral parts of the story that have been there all along. Other aspects still need ironing out and going over as I edit the first draft. 

Now, I'm thinking of NaNo 2012. Once again I'm faced with a story that will take some world building. This time I'm determined to get it right. I don't want to invest months of effort, and tens of thousands of words only for me to have to scrap the story. I want to be able to take this idea as far as I possibly can. That's why I'm starting now. Today I bought myself a lovely notebook (that came with a pen) and for the next six months until NaNo I'm going to plot, plan and research, so that by the time November hits, I'm can start writing knowing exactly who my characters are, what their world is, and where they're headed.

However, as a general rule, I don't like to be too regimented in my planning. As I said above, some excellent ideas have come on the fly, and often if I have too strict a plan I feel boxed in and my creative juices stilted.

My feelings on plotting and planning are best described in this quote by the awesome George R R Martin:

"But I like to compare my books to a journey.
Like that map there [gestures to a U.S. map on the wall]. If you were going from Los Angeles to New York, you would look at a map like that and you would say, well, okay, I’m going to leave and I’m going to follow the route through Albuquerque and I’m gonna go north to Denver… So you know your eventual destination and the main roads and some of the big landmarks you’re going to go through, but you don’t know where you’re gonna stop for dinner the first night, or where there’s gonna be road construction that will force you to take a detour, where a hitchhiker is going to show up on the side of the road and tell you a fascinating story. These are the things you discover during the journey.
I know the ultimate destination, I know the principal landmarks and things that happen along the way, like [big event redacted] which had been planned from the beginning and all of that. But some of them I discover in the writing. Essentially I know the big stuff, but a lot of little stuff occurs in the course of the writing. And of course some of the little stuff is very, very important. The devil is in the details. The devil is what makes the journey more than just an outline or a Cliff’s Notes kind of experience." 

– George R R Martin, April 14th, 2011

That's how I hope to approach writing, and if I can write a novel even half as good Martin's I'll be happy. 

A Break From Your Regularly Scheduled Blogging

I'm taking a quick break to "squee" over something briefly.

Today, I was watching this trailer for the new Bethesda published/ Arkane Studios developed dystopia steampunk-inspired video game (it looks awesome, btw, but that isn't the point of this post).

I was discussing with the hubby how the mechs/ robots in the trailer scared me, and how I think I've got a fear of machinery (I can't stand going in the Dwemer ruins in Skyrim).

Then BAM out of the blue I'm hit with a story idea. I jotted it all down quickly, and while cooking the dinner, Hubby and I discussed it in more detail so that I've now got a vague plot, back story and opening. I even have a protagonist ... Hen!

I can't wait to get started ... but I've got to hold myself back a little. Firstly, there's Sibylline Nights I have to finish editing. Secondly, this new story will take a lot of world-building, and I feel like I didn't do that well enough for Destiny's Road and that's why the story fell apart.

Right now, I'm thinking I'm going to spend the next six to eight months planning and plotting, and then my new story will be my NaNoWriMo 2012 novel.

Of course that means all the other stories on my "works" page will have to go on the back-burner, but that's okay because I wasn't one hundred percent committed to any of them yet. They're still vague, intangible ideas, where as this new ideas already seems to be bursting from me.

I cannot wait ...