IWSG: The I-Can't-List-Everything-In-One-Post Edition... (#32)

The Insecure Writer's Support Group (IWSG) is a monthly support system for blogging writers in need of finding other writers to connect with and share our deepest insecurities in a safe environment. Created by the clever Alex J. Cavanaugh with the expressed purpose to "share and encourage."

This month's question: As you look back on 2017, with all its successes and failures, if you could backtrack, what would you do differently?

What a loaded question! (For me, at least.) There are just too many things I wish I would have done differently this year, even limited to writing. I'm not perfect enough to look back and be so proud that nothing needs tweaking. I won't air out all those grievances, but I'll cough up one or two of the best (worst) ones.

It's like I imagine authors would say on their death beds, like how most regular people say they don't wish they'd spent more time at the office because they wish they'd have spent more time with loved ones. Maybe authors say they wish they'd written more. I definitely wish I'd written more this year. 

I spent some time learning a lot about how to write, and while that was not time wasted at all, I did end up spending time getting sidetracked by other non-writing projects just because they had been looming over my head for months and years needing to get done. I wanted to get them done before fully launching myself into writing a couple of novels I plan on writing afterwards, which is now something I still need to do starting early next year.

The next thing is I wish I'd gotten more outlines planned/mapped out for my stories because they take such a LONG time to outline. I'm finally outlining the best way for me, which means long, detailed outlines, but, man... they take forever to get done! It's worth it, though. I need all that hand-holding when I write a first draft because I got lost in the forest of my long stories very easily. Guess I need to learn to speed-outline.

I suppose that's enough from me. Any more, and I'll be writing a novel-length blog post that will need to be outlined before I can even attempt to write it!

Would you do anything differently from this year concerning your writing?  Just me?

 

IWSG: The 'I'm a Dungeon Writer' Edition... (#31)

The Insecure Writer's Support Group (IWSG) is a monthly support system for blogging writers in need of finding other writers to connect with and share our deepest insecurities in a safe environment. Created by the clever Alex J. Cavanaugh with the expressed purpose to "share and encourage."

Yes, I've changed my blog theme! 

This month's question is: Win or not, do you usually finish your NaNo project? Have any of them gone on to be published?

I have only ever "won" NaNoWriMo one time, and it was the Camp version of it where you could set your writing goal yourself, so I set it for 15k words and did win. Not too incredibly ambitious. 

I'm not much of a NaNo person because I like writing at my own pace and not trying to keep up with other people. (AKA, I'm slow....) It seems to work well for social writers, but I am, most definitely, NOT a social writer. Stick me in a dungeon all by myself with a laptop computer and I'll be better off.

I've yet to publish anything, so I don't have the ability to say any of my NaNo projects have gone on to be published.

Well, that's all for me this month. Short and sweet.

Has NaNo made a difference in your writing life, unlike mine?

IWSG: The I'm Shocked I Could Write Like That Edition! (#30)

Insecure Writers' Support Group (IWSG) is a really awesome meme that you should be doing along with the rest of us writers. Unless you truly are happy with your writing and don't feel the need to vent about your insecurities because they don't exist for you. But, really.... Don't they?  
IWSG is hosted by Captain Ninja Alex at his blog, Alex J. Cavanaugh.

 

I have to keep this post as short and sweet as I can because I've been sick for the the past month, but here's my response to this month's question:

Have you ever surprised yourself with your writing? (For example, by trying a new genre you didn't think you'd be comfortable in?)

I happened to be very recently reading a short play I wrote for a literature class I took way back in college--the class being centered around studying English drama from the Restoration Era, or the early 1700's. The professor assigned us students to write our own original play as an alternative option to writing an essay. Naturally, I chose the creative writing option, as I always did back then.

So, my play did a lot of interesting things that I didn't remember after all these years (sixteen, to be exact). I lampooned the actual drama of that era itself, which was given to lampooning everything in sight and tended to be comically bizarre, and mocked a lot of the typical tropes found in drama of that period and even from Shakespeare. I was astounded I was able to handle the comedy so well, and one scene of my comedic timing was so well-done, I had to read it a few times because it made me laugh so hard!

Mind you, I have virtually no memory of the specifics about this play any longer. I only have a physical copy of it--that's how old it is. A printed-out document that was originally typed up in WordPerfect from the late 90's or early 2000's. WordPerfect! That cracks me up.

At some point after I finished college, I got it into my head that I have no capacity to write comedy. I'm eating those words, though I still don't know HOW I wrote what I wrote, even though I can clearly see how hysterical this silly little play actually is. The me of today is not the me of that time period whatsoever. Maybe some people don't change much over the years, but I have, radically. Maybe that's why I can't, as the me of today, understand what I did back then.

Anyway, if anything, it does bolster my confidence that I can write something worthwhile. My professor was completely in love with the play and I remember having a table-read of it in class with my classmates reading the parts of the characters listed in the Dramatis Personae. I remember everybody in the class laughing a lot as it was being sort of "acted out." I guess I managed to create something good once upon a time, and if I haven't changed too-too much, maybe I can do it again.

Have you written something many years ago that you actually liked after years of it sitting in a drawer or on a shelf? (I'm probably weird that it worked out positively for me.)

IWSG: The Batching Edition... (#29)

Insecure Writers' Support Group (IWSG) is a really awesome meme that you should be doing along with the rest of us writers. Unless you truly are happy with your writing and don't feel the need to vent about your insecurities because they don't exist for you. But, really.... Don't they?  
IWSG is hosted by Captain Ninja Alex at his blog, Alex J. Cavanaugh.

This month's IWSG Question is, "What is one valuable lesson you've learned since you started writing?"

I'm sure I could go on about the valuable life lessons I've learned since becoming a serious writer, or even not-so-serious writer, ala The After School Special, but I feel like I would rather blog about something I have learned more recently that I feel is extremely valuable in the practical sense.

I've been trying to figure out how to organize my time in such a way so as to be more productive and get things done in a timely manner. Obviously, my writing productivity was needing a boost, most importantly, because I found simply squeezing in time to write everyday was not producing a whole lot of writing.

That sounds like it doesn't make sense, but it ended up being very true because I am quite the procrastinator. What I've discovered is that when I have an infinite amount of time to get something done, I will almost always choose to put it off for the next day. Only, the next day becomes the next week, then the next month, and sometimes even the next year.

I decided to not give myself so many days in the week to write anymore. That sounds kind of stupid, right? To experiment, I dedicated only three days to writing and I would just have to get all my week's worth of writing done in those few days, or I wouldn't be getting my writing done. Those other days were simply meant for other things. Turns out, that worked wonders for me!

I am getting so much writing done, it's amazing. I have to spend more time writing each of those three days, of course, but it's working in producing thousands of word-count days for me, which I never got done in any given day with my old system because I was squeezing in writing time, rather than letting myself have all night to write as much as I could for only three days during the week.

Funnily enough, I learned about this technique earlier this year and happened to recall learning it from Bryan Cohen, an indie author marketing guru, through his newsletter. He wrote about a productivity hack called "batching," where, instead of doing something a bit everyday, you give it a dedicated day for the week and get it all done, like catching up on email, reading, organizing your closet, whatever.

I didn't jump to try it out back when I first learned about it, but I ended up figuring out batching for myself. I use it now for everything, pretty much, and I am finally getting things done. Last year, I went off the rails and just allowed myself to get distracted by every little shiny thing, which resulted in virtually no writing, or planning of novels getting done, at all. I'm happy I've finally discovered something to battle the procrastination beast with because he was beginning to devour me whole!

Have you ever heard of "batching?" Have any productivity hacks you feel work amazingly well for you?

IWSG: The I've Tried to Quit Many Times and Failed Edition... (#28)

Insecure Writers' Support Group (IWSG) is a really awesome meme that you should be doing along with the rest of us writers. Unless you truly are happy with your writing and don't feel the need to vent about your insecurities because they don't exist for you. But, really.... Don't they?  
IWSG is hosted by Captain Ninja Alex at his blog, Alex J. Cavanaugh.

This month's IWSG question is, "Did you ever say, 'I quit'? If so, what made you come back to writing?"

I have to laugh at this question because I've tried to quit writing so many times over the last twenty years, it's better to just drop the first part of the question altogether. I've been a very insecure writer for a very long time. I remember about ten years ago giving it up completely to become an 'artist,' but, after a year of even MORE struggle and toil (as if it could get any worse), I started writing again and realized it was so much easier than drawing people and things realistically.

But, again, I tried to quit only a few years ago because I was a silly newbie writer (was still in that newbie phase, which lasted a significant number of years) who conflated how I felt about writing a particular novella with how good the novella was. Or, I just didn't even think about it's quality. I don't even know, but I got some supremely harsh feedback that was honestly inappropriate and needlessly rude, and proceeded to metaphorically fling myself off my writing roof.

Only for a few weeks or so, though, did I quit before I was back to it, again. So, that lovely former critique partner didn't succeed in whittling down the competition, after all. Although, I was forever changed by such a blindsided hit, but it was a good change, as I can see now. It certainly woke me up to how truly crappy of a writer I was at the time (perhaps, still am).

I proceeded to go through a difficult phase of writing that probably every creative person goes through, which is flipping HATING the thing you used to love doing the most. Writing was no longer fun and it was then that I had the best reason to truly throw in the towel. But, nay. I still persisted because I've got nothing else to do. That works for stick-to-it-tiv-ness, right?

I guess I just wanted to see if there was actual light at the end of that dark tunnel. You hear how there is always supposed to be, and you just hope against all hope that other people are right. I do now see that they were right, after all. I have finally come out of the dark tunnel, or am coming out of it, anyway. I'm phasing into a stage where I am learning to do things with my writing that I always wanted to be able to do, but didn't know how. It's great! And it's FUN to write, again. I love it! Now I remember how it felt to be writing ten years ago when I thought I knew what I was doing and didn't really.

I also now highly suspect the true reason behind why I struggle to finish the novels I start writing. It's because I was always able to see how I wanted to write them, but wasn't able to do it at the time, and thus, would not be able to finish them. I guess I'm just too objective about my own writing and can see how bad it is and how it's not living up to my standards. The only solution is to learn how to write up to my standards, so I'm trying to do that now.

So, that's my long-winded story. What's yours? You a quitter like me, but keep getting back on that horse because horses don't ride themselves?

IWSG: The Fiction Is My Second Language Edition... (#27)

Insecure Writers' Support Group (IWSG) is a really awesome meme that you should be doing along with the rest of us writers. Unless you truly are happy with your writing and don't feel the need to vent about your insecurities because they don't exist for you. But, really.... Don't they?  
IWSG is hosted by Captain Ninja Alex at his blog, Alex J. Cavanaugh.

Oh-ho, I am back from the dead of winter to meet you all in the fair month of March. I told you I wouldn't rear my head again for the rest of the year after that last blog post in December. (I'm so consistent about procrastinating. At least that's something.)

The topic I have chosen to write about today may seem rather odd. What in the world could I mean by saying, "fiction is my second language"? Yeah, what am I talking about? Well, this is something that has recently occurred to me after several years of suppression: I do and always have struggled with writing FICTION over another form of story-telling, that being stage play-writing....

What I mean is that when I first began to tell stories many years ago, mostly back in my college days, I was doing so in the form of dramatic stage plays, not fiction. In fact, I remember taking writing classes that required me to write poetry, fiction and drama and I always sucked at poetry (I snorted as I wrote this), struggled with fiction a fair amount, but truly exceeded my own and everyone else's expectations when it came to dramatic stage writing.

I don't know why, but it came more naturally to me. It just leads me to believe that, like anyone living in a country other than their own native country and who was raised away from that adopted land, the second language doesn't come as naturally as the first.

I decided it wasn't feasible to become a playwright in this day and age. When was the last time you went to the theater to see a play? And, not a musical, because we all know musicals are doing just fine, but I'm not Andrew Lloyd Webber. The stage play has seen better days. I won't even go into how incoherent the typical modern play is by now. You probably know what I'm talking about.... 

It is true that, for me, sitting in a theater and watching a live play is more transcendent than anything else I can think of, other than sitting through a musical, but we already established I'm not musically gifted or skilled. I knew I had to go a more realistic story-telling route, so I chose fiction. Trust me, it IS more realistic than writing stage plays.

Like an immigrant to a foreign land who must adopt the language of the natives in order to live and get by in their new environment, that's what I've been doing for twenty years with writing fiction. It just doesn't come to me as easily as telling a story through the dramatic medium.

This is just an interesting observation I recently made and it has helped me in understanding why I struggle so much with fiction. It makes sense now. It's like I forgot I'm not really from here. I would probably do that if I moved to a foreign country--just utterly forget my American roots if I lived long enough away from them.

But, like any of Hamlet's soliloquies, knowing this is not going to solve any of my problems. Though, I will be more inclined to forgive myself for not keeping up with the natives.

As for the IWSG Question of the Month: Have you ever pulled out a really old story and reworked it? Did it work out?

It's such funny timing because that's exactly what I've been doing. I realized it's been too long since I shared anything I've written with... anyone, really. So, I've pulled out an old fan fiction and am dusting it off (revising it) to share it on Archive of Our Own (AO3). It's time I stretched out these "sharing" legs of mine with something I actually finished once upon a time. If only I could finish something original that I could sell to an audience!