IWSG: The It's-All-Planned Edition... (#33)

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 optional question: What steps have you taken to put a schedule in place for your writing and publishing?

As of last spring/summer, I figured out "batching" is a scheduling trick that works for me in being productive for things I love to procrastinate. I spend three days per week, always leaving a day in between, just dedicated to writing and doing as little of anything else as possible. They are "writing days," thus they are just for that and not reading, watching TV, playing video games, or going shopping, etc. Just writing. I find I actually have the energy to do the writing with this trick.

It actually works for me really well, so I intend to keep doing that for writing. Right now, I'm doing research on the historical era I'm planning on writing about for a forth-coming Regency romance novel on the docket, but not batching that research, so I probably need to figure out how to do that. I'm having trouble with it. Batching helps me so much, I do it with the dusting because I HATE dusting....

Other than this, the plan is to write this historical romance novel, then write a free newsletter novella of the same genre and then write yet another historical romance novel. Can I do all this in one year? History would say, "no," but it might be worth trying, anyway. I may get a novel completed for a change by trying to get two-and-a-half completed in one year.

As for publishing, well... we'll take things in stride. I need to get used to finishing long novel WIPs first before I go "planning" how to publish said finished drafts.

What have you done to plan out your writing and publishing this year?

 

IWSG: The Writer's Block Edition (#23)

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.

It looks like it's that time of the month again, the Insecure Writers Support Group time. This month my writing insecurities are coming out and screaming at me, again. They haven't been so much in recent months, but they have returned from their sojourn.

This month I'm finding myself having trouble with a section of my novel work-in-progress that I have never been able to get clear about. While I have a lot of the story already planned, this is the portion I'm struggling to get through because I don't know what needs to happen. 

This might be caused by the fact that I never write long novels. Everything is much shorter, usually. So, I'm struggling to write something that has to be a bit long, maybe around 80,000 words, rather than a short novel, and it's tough. I'm having trouble making myself get the writing done that needs to be done and I'm procrastinating a lot, too. I hate when I do that. :(

The only thing I can think of to do to get through this is to really plan my scenes out ahead of my writing sessions. I guess I need to just write the summaries out for each scene in the order they need to appear because when I've done this in the past, it's really helped me to write. I usually know exactly what I'm going to write before I sit down to write, but I keep it in my head. Right now, I'm drawing a lot of blanks on how to get through this section of my novel.

Is this writer's block? I don't really know what that is because it seems like it can be defined in different ways. I figure it's some sort of writer's block. I'll just have to tough it out and plan, plan, plan.

Ever suffered from writer's block? 

Insecure Writers' Support Group (#9)

Insecure Writer's 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.

As some readers of my blog may already be aware, I've had problems crashing and burning when it comes to my writing in the recent past. It has not been pretty nor fun. I had gotten to the point where writing was so painful, I began to really dislike it and prefer doing anything else besides. And I want to do this for a living!

I had to do some realizing about why this was happening to me, since it hadn't ever happened before. So, I let this issue percolate in the back of my mind for a while, as I tend to do when trying to do damage control in my life (when am I ever NOT doing damage control?!).

I found a book on how to become more prolific (The 7 Secrets of the Prolific: [...] by Hillary Rettig) and the section on perfectionism really stuck out for me. I definitely needed to get over my perfectionism issues and just let myself write crap when composing my first drafts. Why I wasn't doing this, I'm not sure. I just didn't want to make mistakes, period. But, I realize now that it's okay to make them when first writing a draft, and even afterwards. I think I made an important breakthrough there.

But, that was hardly all I needed to do. I still felt very stuck and very unhappy when writing. Just my perfectionism alone wasn't all that was stifling me, clearly. I thought more and more about what made me love writing back when I was doing it for fun. And, something I had heard J.K. Rowling say in an interview once about why her Harry Potter books are so popular popped into my mind and wouldn't leave: she said, according to thousands of fan letters, it had to have been the characters she created that made her books endearing.

I thought about all that I had been writing since I wanted to write with the intention of publishing. It wasn't that I hated what I had been writing. It was that I wasn't writing characters that I could fall in love with anymore. That was the difference. It all occurred to me after figuring out that I used to write characters that made me love to write about them, and I had somehow, without realizing, stopped doing it.

When I love any book I read, truly love it, it's always, always, always because there's at least one if not more than one character in the book that I liked a lot, or even loved. That's it. That's why I read and that's also why I write. I'm a character-person above everything else.

I decided to zero-in on my newest characters in my current work-in-progress to ensure they were making me find them endearing. With a little effort on my part, I've been writing better characters, at least as far as I'm concerned, and really loving to write again! 

In the end, I don't even care if my characters don't enchant anybody else. Maybe everyone else will find them boring--who knows? For now, they need to be right for me and make me happy. All I've been wanting is to love writing again and I had to rediscover what it was that made me love it in the first place. Now, if I could only make myself remember this in the long run......

 

Insecure Writer's Support Group (#7)

Insecure Writer's 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 really need another IWSG....

Lately, I've come to realize that I simply don't enjoy writing anymore. I used to love it, which is why I do it. I used to love crafting a riveting story and making my characters say and do incredible things! But, nowadays, I just want to do anything other than put my butt in a chair at my computer and actually write.

I still love the aspects that I used to love about story-telling. Creating characters and worlds for them to live within is just as exciting for me still as it is for you fellow writers. But, it's the pressure of trying to make this a career and be serious about it that's sapping all the fun out of writing for me these days.

I'm not sure when this happened, but I only realized it recently. It could be that I've been unhappy like this for a couple of years, but wasn't perceptive enough to sense it. It is so much harder to write for serious than it is for fun. I'm not necessarily about to throw in the towel, but I just have to be honest about how un-fun this whole fiction writing thing actually is for me. 

I also figure I could be unduly unhappy because my confidence in my writing took a steep nosedive when I received a very, very insensitive critique from a former critique partner. After reading those comments, I actually DID give up my writing for a little while. Thankfully, my writing partner encouraged me to get back in the saddle again and I eventually did. 

But, I don't think I've ever recovered from that nightmarish critique. I still can't to this day write anything without being terrified I'm going to mess up and write terrible things, or make all those same mistakes I made according to that former crit partner. I write slow and spotty and can't seem to make myself sit in my chair and just let the words flow out of my fingertips. I'm lucky if I can write even a few days each week. I've written only 25,000 words since this year began.

So, I don't know what to do to regain my confidence. Nothing I do seems to work, although I can't say I've tried everything. I don't even know what to do other than to keep on keeping on as best I can. Mostly, I want to LOVE writing again, like how I did when I used to write for fun and not seriously. Is that even possible again? 


Do you still love writing, even though you have to be a serious author these days? Have you ever lost your confidence and regained it somehow?


 

WIP IT GOOD Blogfest

The WIP IT GOOD Blogfest is a one-time blog meme opporutnity for authors to share some information about their current manuscript Works-in-Progress. Hosted by DL Hammons & Elise Fallson.

I know I keep doing blog memes on this blog and I'm so sorry, everybody! One of these days I'll have original content again--I swear. 

In the meantime, I decided to do this fun blog meme at the last minute because I am a bad blogger and can't come up with blog content to save my life. But, at least this is something, right? So, I will answer the questions pertaining to this meme about one of my many unfinished WiPs (and I have several, but this one I'm currently working on). This is my newest one.


1. WIP Title:

Rise of Iron (1st book in a planned series)

2. Word Count (projected/actual so far):

8,212 actual words written thus far. Should be topping out over 100,000 by the time it's finished.

3. Genre:

Young Adult sci-fi apocalypse with some fantasy elements. 

4. How long have you been working on it?

I think since last month, April 2013. 

5. Elevator Pitch (if you came across an agent in an elevator ride, what couple of lines would you use to summarize your book?):

A teenage girl saves a man's life by turning him into a machine (a cyborg) so he can eliminate all the evil robots destroying the entire city of Los Angeles. 

Yeah, that's basically what this wacky story is about without all the frill and fluff of language!

6. Brief Synopsis:

Mindy Collins refuses to leave the city even after the metal has come to life and has already destroyed most of Los Angeles. She chooses to stay and fight, but she's not strong enough on her own. When she saves a man's life after being nearly killed by one of the cities many living metal robots, she has no choice but to recreate him into a living robot, too. With the strength of ten men, he's the only hope the city has of actually exterminating the conscious steel that is determined to wipe out all organic beings on Earth. 

7. Are you looking for a Critique Partner?

No. Have that squared away already.

8. Are you looking for a Beta Reader?

Yes, if anyone is interested! I'm open to having more than one.


Anyway, this is what I'm working on right now. It's coming along slowly, but I guess that's how I work. I find I need at least 9 months to create an entirely new world before I feel l've got it all figured out. So, I'm still conjuring my story and world building and will be for some time to come. 

What are you writers currently WIPping?

 

Celebrate the Small Things! (#2): Editing Edition

"Celebrate the Small Things" is a blog meme hosted by VikLit at Scribblings of an Aspiring Author

I've got another small victory to celebrate this weekend.... I'm so, so tired--just exhausted--because I finally finished a two-week intensive edit of my manuscript! 

I've been working on Camy Tang's (aka The Story Sensei) Deep POV Worksheet and I can tell you it. Is. Brutal. But, I highly recommend it to every writer no matter your experience level because I'm positive you will see your writing in a whole new light. I'm seeing just how shallow my POV has been all this time, and even how shallow a lot of the writing is from novels I've been reading lately. 

I never even got to the last tip, #8, because I just can't even understand it all that well and I figure I'll have to try it out during a future editing round. I need to rest and let my critique partners look at my WiP for now.

It's a small accomplishment, but feels like I just dug a tunnel through a mountain. Whew! I'm really happy, but I hope I get faster at this with some practice......


What small thing are you celebrating this weekend? 


Join the "Celebrate the Small Things" Blog Hop Every Friday! 

The rules are simple: you post something small you'd like to celebrate - tidying that cupboard, finally getting to the gym. You join the linky list. You hop around other people's blogs and say YAY and CONGRATS and join in the happy feelings.  
 

Insecure Writer's Support Group (#6)

Insecure Writer's 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 for IWSG, I'm going to vent about something that has been nitpicking at my sense of security (what little there is). 

I write Young Adult fiction--that's how I roll. I read it like it's going out of style (it ISN'T, trust me). It's in my bones to create stories about young people on the verge of becoming adults. Maybe it's because I simply refuse to think of myself as being any older than 17 and I've been thinking that way since I was...17. I'm just an old kid, not to mention a lot of adult fiction--a lot--feels too adult for me.

My fear is that I'm getting too old to be authoring books for teenagers anymore. This year, I'm going to turn 20 years older than the age I've been mentally stuck at for 20 years! All I see out there in the pantheon of YA writers are a bunch people much closer to their teens than me. Am I doing something strange here?

I'm not concerned that I'm out of touch with the teenage mentality. I'm more concerned because I am still in touch with it and, societally-speaking, really shouldn't be anymore. I guess I feel like some out-of-place person trying not to be too tragically unhip, but failing because I ain't gettin' any younger. (Do you guys even know what tragically unhip means anymore?)

Should authors move on to writing adult fiction because they have become too old to write for teens? Does that even happen? I don't see any 70-year-olds tearing up the NYT best seller list with their latest teen craze. Despite this, I want to write YA. I don't want to write for adults. Adults don't need anything from me. I feel like I have more to say to the youth of the world and I love how fresh every adult experience is to them. 

Don't hate me 'cause I'm old.......

What do you think? Is it weird for older adults to write for teens? Are we too out-of-touch for YA?    

Top Ten Tuesday (#3): Books I Was Surprised I Liked/Didn't Like

"Top Ten Tuesday" is a weekly (super fun) book blog meme hosted by the awesome folks at The Broke and the Bookish.

This week's topic is a REWIND, so I decided to do one I missed from an earlier TTT topic.

TOP TEN BOOKS I WAS SURPRISED I LIKED/DIDN'T LIKE

1. The Immortal Rules by Julie Kagawa

I adore Julie Kagawa's Iron Fey series so naturally I figured I'd love her newer vampire apocalypse series. Well.... It's really good and I like it, but I didn't feel like Kagawa brought her A-game in this book. The characters were not as interesting as the Iron Fey characters and the story spent a lot of time with certain uninteresting characters while ignoring the only truly interesting one in the entire story. Oh well... Can't win 'em all.

2. Hounded by Kevin Hearne

Before I read this book, I had it sitting on my shelf for several months. I figured it was a book I'd like, but until I read it, I didn't know just HOW much. I LOVE this book and the next two something fierce! It really surprised me, even though I had a good feeling I would like it beforehand. The characters are amazing and it's just so hilarious.

3. Stormdancer by Jay Kristoff

This YA steampunk fantasy is set in a Japan-like world with all the good stuff I've come to love from anime. I figured this book was a shoe-in for an all-time fave. Nuh-uh. Once I cracked it open, I felt like I had to slog through mud up to my ears just to get anywhere with this story. Slowest book I've ever read, ever. Too much description of everything and very boring, unrealistic characters. I was very disappointed (and kinda mad) at this book, as it felt amateurish at best. 

4. The Girl in the Steel Corset by Kady Cross

 
Let's face it. Sometimes authors can do better, right? I really thought I'd love this book to pieces. I loved the free ebook prequel, so why not the first actual novel? No. I just couldn't get into it. All the characters were superficially designed and felt like they barely stuck to the pages. The story had no purpose and it was just an unoriginal mess. The premise had potential, but the execution was lacking.

5. Flash Gold by Lindsay Buroker

I read this e-novella a couple of years ago because I happened to get it for free (it's still free) and decided to give it a shot. I didn't expect anything to stand out for me, but... Wow! This book was really awesome and the characters were so fun and hilarious together. I liked how the main character, Kali and the bounty hunter, Cedar got along. Very surprisingly interesting stuff here. (Lindsay, if you're reading this, you NEED to continue this series!)

6. The Collector by Victoria Scott

I was so excited and hyped about this book before it came out recently, so I preordered my copy back in January. I loved how the main character seemed to be cool and funny, reminding me of a favorite character from a video game series I love. I totally devoured the first half of this book, but the steam just dissipated after that. I realized I just didn't like this character all that much. The book ends very deus ex machina-like, depriving the protagonist a chance at "saving the day" himself. He was a bad boy going through major reformation, but I didn't end up believing it. Disappointing.

7. The Faerie Guardian by Rachel Morgan

I didn't have any expectations going into this YA faerie novel, but it ended up being so flippin' great! I had started out reading the free Part 1 ebook version and was totally hooked after that. I loved the character Oryn, who is the protagonist, Violet's, sort of faerie rival. As you can see, I'm big on characters and this book delivered surprisingly well. 

8. Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi

 
Everyone was going nuts over this book just after it came out and I figured I'd like it, too. I'd heard about the villain character being particularly interesting and I love me some great villains. But, when I read it, it was all about insta-love and an overly emotionally drawn out heroine who didn't seem very heroic to me. It was too shallow. 

9. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling

This one is really low on my list because it's not like I hated this book, or anything. I really liked it, actually. It's a book that has so much charisma going for it that even though I didn't love it, I knew it was special, nonetheless. I have a ton of respect for this book and I will read the remaining six sequels, but having heard so much hype for so many years prior to reading it, I expected to be blown away. I wasn't so much. It's awesome, but I suspect it's because I can't fully appreciate Middle Grade fiction, and it hampered my ability to completely love this very popular book. Don't kill me!

10. The Emerald Atlas by John Stevens

I suppose this book deserves to be on my list, too, because it was being touted as "the next Harry Potter" before it came out. I expected it to be phenomenal, but it was lukewarm at best. It's a nice enough book, but it's nowhere near as charming as Harry Potter. Again, I have trouble loving Middle Grade fiction, but even I could tell this book was never going to become another HP. 


Which books let you down or totally left you blown away unexpectedly? Read any of these books and feel the same as me?