I have gone through the many folders scattered hither and yon (but mostly on OneDrive) containing my writing and have organized everything into three main folders:
All Writing – current
All Writing – old
All Writing – non fiction
The folder names are pretty self-explanatory. Anything in the “current” folder is something I think is worth working on, though if I’m feeling whimsical/desperate I can also pull from the “old” folder at any time. I have further divided the folders into subfolders for easier sorting–short stories, plays, novels, ideas and so on.
Now that I have done this I need to start writing again or something.
The best way to start writing again is to start writing again.
It seems obvious because it is. It’s accurate, there’s no real room for argument. Stephen King doesn’t think about writing books, he writes books. James Patterson doesn’t think about writing books, he…well, actually, Patterson may just think about writing books and BOOF, a book appears. I’m not sure how else to explain the sagging shelves in bookstores loaded down with the thousands of novels he has put out.
But for most of those who write, the process is a matter of sitting down (or standing up if you have one of those zany standing desks, or even walking around if you use the even zanier approach of writing via dictation device) and doing it. You do it regularly, you make it a habit, you slowly improve and the process continues until Oprah declares your book the next selection in her book club and you sell a boatload of copies and revel in your brief moment of fame and fortune.
But it all starts with that first step.
Which I am not taking this week (writing on the blog doesn’t count, I’m talking about writing fiction here and as much as I like to stretch the truth in the name of entertaining, this blog is mostly about actual events and things, not ones I have concocted).
Instead, I am beginning with a series of small goals–laying the groundwork, easing into things, making excuses. Well, hopefully not the latter.
The first goal, to be done before the end of the week, is to go through the many scattered folders I have filled with many versions of stories, in various states of completion, and condense them all down into as few folders as possible. At the same time I will relegate older versions of stories, alternate version and anything that doesn’t qualify as done or an active work in progress to a single folder that will be backed up and then lovingly pushed aside.
I’ve wanted to do this sort of organization for awhile and my hope is that the process will help clear out some mental space and allow me to get a better sense of what I have that’s worth keeping while hopefully providing inspiration for what is yet to come. If it doesn’t work, I’ll just go back to reading Marmaduke* and give up on writing permanently.
* see, it’s funny because he’s such a big dog, lol
I have tried to find ways to motivate myself to write regularly because I know if I do it builds momentum that carries me along from one writing project–however big or small–to the next. I have done what many aspiring writers have done. I’ve read books designed to educate, to inspire, to prod and nag and drive you to the computer, typewriter (ho ho) or quill pen and legal pad (HarlanWrite™), I’ve tried the stick approach (“No cookie until I finish this page”), I’ve tried the carrot (“If I type a paragraph, I get a kitten. Yay kitten!” This is an actual thing, by the way. See here: Written? Kitten!), I’ve tried pretty much any approach one might come across in a few decades or more of cranking out words.
In the end I don’t have any magical, surefire technique to motivate myself, but somehow I always fumble my way back to writing. Sometimes I lapse for a few days or weeks, sometimes for years. The fallow years make me sad but not regretful. If I had written during those times it probably would have been about werewolf sex.
After hurting my right leg on August 3rd–three days into my vacation–I knew I would probably not run for the rest of the month and possibly longer. This bummed me out. Running is not only good exercise for me, it’s also great stress relief. When I’m out on a trail running on a warm summer day, serenaded by the music piping through my earbuds, I feel good. Not even wayward cyclists can bother me. To have this activity suddenly shut off made me think, “My blog isn’t going to be filled with jogging posts for weeks.” I had a choice–let the blog go dry until I started running again, fill the blog up with complaints about how I wasn’t running or, perhaps, actually write about things other than running.
I vowed then to write something every day. I didn’t actually start until August 19th but every day since then I have written something. Some days it’s been slight, other days it’s been a bit more substantial. I am tending toward the inane as I get my proverbial sea legs. But for now the momentum is back. It feels nice, like a good run.
(This is post #17 for the month, my best monthly output since July 24, 2014. I am both delighted and horrified by this.)
By the end of the year I am planning on having my 30+ short stories all bundled up into one lovingly handcrafted and self-published volume. Freed from the dictates of a publisher I am able to follow my own whims when it comes to book design and so on.
Today I was thinking about possible titles for the collection. If all of the stories were of the same genre it would be easier but they run the gamut from fantasy to horror to (laughably bad) science fiction to speculative stories that would work nicely as Twilight Zone episodes.
Still, the majority are horror stories or ‘weird tales’ and I love alliteration and word play, so I came up with this:
Tales of Madness and Macramé
I like it but it sounds like a murder mystery set in a knitting club. Not a bad idea for a story, though.
Then I thought I could take the number of stories, cut the number in half and voila:
16 Pairs of Shorts
I kind of like this. A good number of the stories are lighter in tone or deliberately comical so this could put the reader in the right general frame of mind.
And now I realize I am blanking on the other titles I’d come up with so I’ll end this here and edit in my other semi-finalist choices when my brain deigns to remember them
I’m not sure I’d want to read on a bookworm. It sounds uncomfortable. Maybe you’re meant to pile a bunch together to form a kind of platform to sit upon.
This post brought to you by the absence of commas.
My last Grand Writing Decision (GWD) of 2011 is to pull the plug on my moribund site thenwrite.com. Thinking it over, I’m just not prepared to give it the effort it needs to get rolling again and with the hosting due in a few days I’d rather put it on ice for now and mull its future over than re-commit and produce lots of nothing.
I may revive the short story exercises I did on the Martian Cartel forum. They worked fairly well overall and produced some nice results. Or maybe I will become a hermit and write haikus on the insides of clam shells while living under the pier at Jericho Beach.
I now have a (at the moment rather spartan) Smashwords profile. What is Smashwords? Allow me to quote:
Smashwords is an ebook publishing and distribution platform for ebook authors, publishers and readers. We offer multi-format, DRM-free ebooks, ready for immediate sampling and purchase, and readable on any e-reading device.
Much like the fellow in this Quarter to Three thread, I am planning on submitting some of my short stories (and ultimately bundling them into a collection at some point), some for free, some for a very modest cost, all in an effort to get my writing out there. I’ve imposed a deadline of one week (!) to get the first two stories out — both are already written, they just need to be fine-tuned and formatted. One will be gratis, the other likely to sell for the princely sum of 99 cents.
I shall report back with my success or lack thereof in due time.
This is one of those ‘may be embarrassing to look back a year later’ posts.
Today I began the second draft of my novel, The Ferry. It was written as part of National Novel Writing Month in November 2009 and you can see the play-by-play on its fevered creation in this thread on the Quarter to the Three forums. In 21 days I wrote a complete short novel — 50,810 words in total. It had started out as a short story back in 1993 that outgrew its short story status before eventually being abandoned. Over the years I revisited it, trying to get it steaming along again, one time even switching it from its first person narrative to third person but I could never figure out where to go with it and so it remained unfinished.
The ‘just for fun’ approach of NaNoWriMo took the pressure off, as I briefly recount in this blog post written the day after completing it.
The second draft will probably take a good deal longer to finish but I am relieved and happy to have gone through the experience.
Ho ho!
And so tonight, after a number of false starts, I begin the second draft. My marginal goal is to have the second draft done before NaNoWriMo 2011 begins. That gives me four months. I vow to update on this come October 31st!
2010 was a moribund year for me as far as writing went. I flamed out halfway through National Novel Writing Month, the writing group fell apart and my output slowed and then pretty much stopped for most of the year.
I’ve vowed to make 2011 the start of my writing renewal and part of that has been taking the writing group and exercises and moving them off a couple of scattered subforums and onto their own website, thenwrite.com. I’m hoping it will keep me and the other participants inspired and excited about putting words to page (and screen).
