What I Learned Last Year

Today on the 'Writing Excuses Podcast' they each talked about what they had learned in the last year. The writing prompt this week was to come up with the same thing for ourselves, what we learned, and then carry it forward and determine what we want to learn next year. (Then put it some place where you can find it at the end or 2015 and review it.)

If you are trying to be a writer and you haven't listened to this podcast, you're missing out. I've picked up and dropped a lot of podcasts, gown out of them, I guess, but this one always stays fresh and useful. The four normal participants have varied and valuable experience. Of course, just hearing what Brandon Sanderson is working on, or releasing, would make it worth it to me all by it self.

I won't go into what they said; you can listen to that yourself. I want to take the writing prompt and run with it for a little bit. I've already stated that this is the purpose of my blog; try and share what I learned this last year, and what I want to learn in the coming year.

One thing I learned in 2014 about writing.

Just setting a goal doesn't mean it's going to happen. They, whoever they are, say you need to make your goals realistic and achievable, but also make you stretch. I've always had a problem aligning these two concepts. If I'm going to be realistic I figure I need to set it within my current capabilities, and if I've set it there, I'm not going to do much stretching. 

So I guess and alternate way of setting goals is to commit to completing them and adjusting expectations as you work toward that goal. 

Last March I set a goal to publish three novels by the end of the summer. That really didn't happen. I learned  that it just takes more time to do some things than I had counted on.

"Shooting Stars" was the novel I thought I would publish first. I had made the unfounded assumption that a friend whom I valued very much for her writing and editing skills would read what I had done with my vampire love story and say, "Yup. Here you are. It's ready to publish." It turns out it wasn't as perfect as I thought it was. I learned to lower my expectations of what I have given over to others to do and that I use the words 'was' and 'felt' way too much.

In the mean time, I finished an edit of "Flypaper Boy" and sent it to an editor I met at LDStory Makers  in April of 2014. She got  that one back to me and I fine tuned it and was able to make it my one published novel of the year. (September 29, 2014. A week after summer ended.)

In the meaner time, I rewrote my 2011 Nanowrimo story, "The Galactic Battle Base: Family Ties", during the summer and renamed it "TGGB: Trigger Warnings". I let that rest while I finished up Flypaper Boy, and did my rework of Shooting Stars, based on my friend's recommendations.

I got both of those done just in time for Nanowrimo 2014 and wrote my first draft of Shooting Stars 2: Drawn into the Mist. 

With family visiting at Thanksgiving, I didn't get as much time to write/edit as I thought I would, so only sent the final draft of Trigger Warnings to Winston Crutchfield on the 15th of December and then reworked Shooting Stars, based on my editor's input, (Of the story that I thought was done, again.)

So, at this point, both my 'completed' novels are in the hands of editors, and I have learned that if I am going to make a career of writing it has to be Nanowrimo every month--no days off to breath after one project is complete/passed to the next player.

So, that's what I learned about setting goals. I've learned about other things, but those will have to come later. You know what I want to learn next year. You're going to be the first to hear what I learn, as I learn it, because I'm going to learn how to sell novels.

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"What it is like to go to war"

I crossed the 50K line on my Nanowrimo a few days ago. I still haven't verified my win yet. I'd like to see if I can get it all written before I do that. I think I have another 10K left to write.

They are currently embroiled in climactic battle of the story.

A week or so ago I started listening to Episode #199 or the "Mental Illness Happy Hour" podcast. Paul Gilmartin mentioned a book at the beginning of the podcast called, "What it is Like to Go to War", written by Karl Marlantes who was a marine officer in Viet Nam.

After the first three hours I had to turn it off. It was too intense in the description of combat and killing. I came back to it a few days later and have since finished it off. It was extremely moving and touched a lot on the psychology of war and killing.

I went back to my Nanowrimo manuscript and rewrote two scenes which I had written based on my limited knowledge about battle. I've ramped up those scenes with some of the psychology Marlantes discussed in his book and I think it gives a better idea of Chuck's personality and feeling as he is drawn into mortal  combat with evil.

"What it is like to go to war" is available through Audible and I'm sure it's available on Amazon.

Where I'm at today.

I'm participating in the Clarion Write-a-thon. It's longer than Nanowrimo by ten days so I thought that setting a writing goal of 60k words would be easy. Turns out I may not reach my goal. I have written every day, but haven't gotten signed into the website every day. I'm at 52K words, but I've finished writing my novel. I was already at 22k when I started the write-a-thon and this draft stands at about 68K. It's more finished than any other first draft I've done--but then, it's not really my first draft. I wrote the story for Nanowrimo in 2010. I did change it a lot from the original draft. I also changed it in a major way from how I outlined it this time.

Two weeks back Dave Farland ran a special on his MyStoryDoctor.com classes. I couldn't resist and signed up for Story Mastery 1 and I'm really enjoying it. It's helping me focus on the many things I skip over when I write because I'm in such a hurry to get through the plot to the end. All the exercises I'm doing in this course, I'm applying to this Battle Base book, so that on my next edit I can really improve it.

I'm applying all the words I write in the exercises to my word goal, but I'll still be a couple thousand short.

Anyway. Things are looking up. 

Flypaper Boy is back from the editor and Dan Absolonsen is working on the cover art for it. 

Shooting Stars is still with the editor and Rebekah Durhey is working on the cover for that one.

The Galactic Battle Base is done with the first manuscript and waiting on me to go over the edits of Flypaper before I do my next pass. I hope to send GBB to Winston Crutchfield by October. My working title for that one has always been, "Galactic Battle Base: The Knife Cuts Two Ways". My protagonist is a girl who cuts herself, (Non Suicidal Self Injury - NSSI). I'm thinking of changing it to "GBB: Trigger Warning."

So the plan is still self publishing three novels by the end of the year.

I've started listening to the Self Publishing Podcast  by the authors of the book, "Write, Publish, Repeat". I believe what they are saying that the way to really grow a writing business is to write a series with a compelling first book. All three of my novels are firsts in a series, and GBB is a serial with stories all taking place on the Base, but with different people most the time. I say this because November is creeping up on  us all and I want to use Nanowrimo to knock out my "Next in a Series" to follow up something I've published. I'll need to outline it in October.

Next year, while my 2014 Nano is simmering, I want to do my first edit of the 2013 Nano, "The Pariah". So those are the two novels for publishing next year, The Pariah and Something Part 2.

Update:

Whenever I have started one of these blogs I have done so to update all my unknown and non-existent fans about what I am currently working on and where I am on the various projects.

So, here's how it stands.

1) Fly Paper Boy: Coming of Age. I just completed my third full edit. It now stands at over 99.5K words and I believe it is complete. I have a ten minute pitch session with an agent at the LDStory Maker's conference later this month. But, unless he actually begs me for it, my plan is to self publish it as an ebook and audiobook concurrently at Scribl.com. They have a new approach to selling and pricing self published books. I figure if I can get a few YA books on the site before anyone else does, I will have a toe hold in their market that would be advantaous.

2) Shooting Stars: A Magical Teenage Love Story from a Boy's Perspective. I just got rejected by Tor YA. I had decided a week after I sent of this submission that I wanted to switch my attention to self publishing. So I started recording this one last week, figuring I would be getting my rejection soon. I've noticed is my 100 Word Weekly Challenge stories that I had an echo going on. So, I set up my recording booth  and I've recorded the first two chapters three times now. I think I've finally got the feel I want the narration to have. Now I just need to keep charging through the remaining 300 pages. This will be my first submission to the Scribl.com system. As I am recording this story, which I thought was complete, I'm finding a number of things I need to edit. Therefore, I'm making this my fourth and final edit. I'm marking down the corrections I make while recording and will go through the ebook manuscript again before formatting it for download.

3) What I'm working on next. I'm aiming to release Shooting Stars by June 1 and Fly Paper Boy by Aug 30. I'd like to have one more released by Dec 31. The three I have in the background are Galactic Battle Base: Knife Cuts, Galactic Battle Base: Family Ties and this last years Nanowrimo, The Pariah. I think the story most ready to fine tune is Pariah, but last month I got a wild hare and started re-writing Knife Cuts. I think it is the one which is the most emotionally charged, and the most meaningful to me.

I'm a novelist.

I crossed another milestone today. I'd submitted my YA urban fantasy to my first choice of a publisher, and apparently they didn't think it was as good as I did. Actually, I thought they would reject it, but I wanted the LDS fiction market to get the first choice.

I got my first "Rejection Form Letter" today. I believe authors used to paper their walls with these. To do that now, I would have to print it out. Instead, I think I'll just copy it into a Word Doc and start a file for them.

Onward and upward. I've already sent it off to another publisher. There was a third publisher I found who I think is my best bet for getting published. They are using the newer method of, No Advancement, but 50% of the sales. They also accept simultaneous submissions, so if it comes to that, in another 90 days, I can shotgun it out to a few of these new wave publishers.

Other projects right now are a short story for an anthology, my 2011 Nano is still out to Beta Readers and I'm getting some good feedback. My original plan was to do my first edit on my 2013 Nano rough draft, but I've had some experiences recently that pointed me to 2010 Nano and I've started to read/edit that one.

We'll just have to see what actually ends up as my next novel.

Happy New Year

In the last quarter of 2013 I stepped up my writing career to a new level. I feel like I made some significant progress. Here are my four successes of that quarter:

1) Submitted a novel manuscript to a publisher. This was the major turning point for me. After five years of practicing it's time to start playing the game.

2) Purchased my dedicated website. If you are reading this, you're at my site. That's good.

3) In November I took my sixth Nanowrimo challenge. I've completed at least 50K words each year, but never really felt like I had a complete novel in that amount of time. This year I finished the story in 28 days with a total of 100,138 words. That was almost 3600 words a day.

4) I edited my 2011 Nano, "Fly Paper Boy: Coming of Age" before January 2014. That ended up with 93K words.

What I believe this shows is that I can create a rough draft in a short period of time. With this years Nano, I did outline heavily in October, but ended up only covering the first third of the plot in this novel. It also shows that I can take that rough draft and smooth it considerably in an equally short period of time.

Goals for the first quarter of 2014 are:

1) Edit "The Pariah" (2013 Nano)

2) Write a short story for Jeff Hite's new anthology about a magic portal beneath the kitchen sink. I'll look for the link.

3) Fine tune Fly Paper Boy for submission. It's currently out to several beta readers and I've asked them to read it and get back to me with in 30 days.

Other things on the back burners are outlining the second and third books for "Shooting Stars", outline for the final book of "The Price of Friendship", a first edit on "Human Magnetism", my Nano from 2012, and finally, the second book after "The Pariah".

That should be enough to keep me busy.

Norvaljoe

Writing Excuses Podcast, Oct 14, 2013

I was listening to the Writing Excuses Podcast yesterday. If you are trying to write genre fiction at any level and you haven't found this podcast, you really need to. Here's the link: http://www.writingexcuses.com/

I found it because I'm a Brandon Sanderson fan. But, there are four authors who are all intelligent, imaginative, and humorous. 

There was a question about "organic" writing. Also known as "seat of the pants" writing, if you're not familiar with the term, it's when you just  start writing with an idea, not really knowing where it will go. Really, even with organic writing, you should have an ending in mind before you start writing to give your plot some direction, but some organic writers don't even have that. The question was, what do you do to keep your plot moving, when you're an organic writer, and you don't know where to go next. 

Brandon suggested something that I really liked. He said to imagine what's the worst thing that could happen to your protagonist, of course while moving the plot forward, and what is the best thing that could happen. Then figure out how to make it look like the worst thing is going to happen and have her/him overcome in it a way that no one will expect.

I know Brandon is very "Architectural" in outlining a story, which is the opposite of organic. Mary, on the podcast, is more in between the two extremes. But, she does lay out what she wants to happen in each chapter. Someone else also mentioned that a person doesn't need to write linearly. If you're an organic writer and you're stuck, move to another section and write, even if it's far down the eventual plot line. In writing that part you might find how to bring the two pieces together.

In preparing for Nanowrimo this year I am going much more extreme in my planning than I have in years past. My first three Nanos were very organic. My second year I found myself writing myself into plot circles. I got more than 65K words written but never finished the story. 

Last year was the first time I really had an outline of the whole book, but as usual got off on enough organic tangents that I was still interested in the story as it developed. Sometimes the plot twists which are best are those unexpected ones which surprise you as you write them.

This year I am world building and character building the heck out of it. I've got tectonic plates, weather and ocean current patterns. I have races with differing values and leaders with conflicting political intentions and hidden agendas.

I think my fear in the first few years was that I would get into it, write a story, finish and not have enough words. I find that much less of a concern now. In fact, this may be the year that I have too much story for one book. We'll see.

If you're a Nanowrimer, I'd love to be a writing buddy with you so that we can encourage one another. Here's a big surprise, my Nanowrimo name is Norvaljoe. Look me up. I follow back anyone who follows me.

Here's the link: http://nanowrimo.org/participants/norvaljoe 

Nanowrimo 2013

I just signed up for 2013. 

This is my fifth Nano in a row. I had only just begun to write when I started my first on in 2008. When I finished that one, I had 51,000 words of garbage. I tried to rewrite it a year ago and got bogged down trying to stay in-sync with what I had written before, but that was way too hard. I just completely started over. 60K words later I got bogged down again. I'll probably start that one over again, someday....

This year I'm basing the novel on a short story I wrote during the summer about the Pig-Frog, or Pariah. I've been world building the heck out of it, (A lot different than my first Nano, when I essentially had an idea of how I wanted to start it and ran with it.) 

I have a good idea of how the story will go through the first half and most of the events toward the end, but I need to work out a little more conflict and a twist or two. There is a blerb and a piece of the short story on my Nanowrimo site.

If you do Nanowrimo, too. Let me know so we can be writing buddies.  

My site is: http://nanowrimo.org/participants/norvaljoe