From the bottom of the writing/critiquing well…

shlomi on December 19, 2017

I’m watching other writers and their blog posts. Some are regular as clockwork—it’s part of their marketing campaign, their name branding, and they’ve got more time (and definitely more discipline) to keep on that track. I’ll need to do it as well—just not yet, please.

Speaking of discipline, I’ve talked with a whole bunch of writers, but more importantly people who say they “can’t write” because they don’t have the time, or can’t concentrate… Or “the usual” to writers who talk to folks on the other side.

I can easily push through 4,500 words in a day, in one sitting, when I’ve got a clear vision for what the coming scenes will bring. (And as a pantser those are visions constantly changing as the characters and situations bend the reality I’d “decreed” for the novel.)

I’ve got little sticktoitiveness when I’m not sure where the scene or characters are going. That’s when I do things like dishes, laundry, shopping—and writing posts on my blog.

That little screen grab is how I keep myself at least heading in the right direction. When I’m writing I’ve got non-spoken music (or, at least, not music with English lyrics) playing. If I’m blasting through, it’s a thirty-minute timer, with the option to just hit the reset and do another. But if I’m flagging a bit, I hit the five or ten minute timer to check the news, facebook, or a little game.

When thirty minutes seems an eternity and my characters seem embedded in tree resin, well on their way to amber, I use the ten-minute timer. Hammering hard is easy when I know there’s a break in a reasonably small number of minutes.

I also use the ten minute timer for when I need to do some online research and want to make sure I don’t get sucked down the rabbit hole of “just another link.”

That’s how I’m at 72,295 words on Angels, my current novel, and how I wrote over 173,000 words on Last Run in six months of steady, non-stressed, work. And why my blogging has been sporadic. And I’m sticking to that story.

WIP Screen

shlomi on September 29, 2017

Screen shot of WIP named AngelsJust a quick upload before Yom Kippur. My protagonist is an ultra-Orthodox (Misnaged) homicide detective. It’s fun to weave the Yiddishized syntax along with Yiddish into the manuscript.

I’ve ranted against Scrivener for years, but I don’t have the time to write something better. It’s mostly flaws with some good features, but not intuitive enough for me to figure everything out without asking someone or {shudder} reading the documentation. At any rate, this is my “perfect” layout for writing on a nice, wide screen.

What you’re not seeing is the second screen, where lurk my browser tabs, music, and network security tools. But they’re very much ancillary to the actual writing.

May my family and Jewish friends have an easy fast, a great breaking of fast, and a year of growth and happiness.

ArmadilloCon Flotsam & Jetsam

shlomi on August 12, 2017

Just little bit from last week’s conference. Also submission grinder, which has some useful search tools (but definitely slanted towards SF/FF/Horror and not “straight” fiction.

I came away with a hunger to write that I haven’t felt to this degree in years–and I’ve been ramping up my writing for a few years now.

More than that, I realized, in attending the panels and the critiques, that I have a few stories, partially completed, that deserve to get finished. They’ve got good characters, stories, and lives I’d love to share with readers.

Just as soon as I get a few more submissions in…

ArmadilloCon ’39 Critiques

shlomi on August 2, 2017

There are five writers per group at the ArmadilloCon writer’s workshop. Four manuscripts to critique. Along with life, job, and one’s own writing. Most folks do the 5k max, but I’ve got one (shown) that clocks in at around 3k.

There are some folks that can do a critique and still get their 2k/day words in. I… am not one of them.

In SlugTribe it’s a 5k word limit, but only about 20-30 minutes to read it. In reading feedback from them it’s clear that the edits go away towards the end (see previous post). But for the workshop, it’s every page. Well, almost every page. I say almost because between pointing out the passive voice a dozen times previously, and a typed analysis as well, sometimes the need to torture deceased equines is obviated by the need to get another story done!

The image at the top of this post is an example of a short story mid-critique. In addition to my (possibly unreadable) edits, in the background you can see a written critique that gets above the fray.

I hope I get as good as I’m giving, but, for me at least, the critiquing is at least as educational as a good first draft.

Critiquing and Paper Cuts

shlomi on July 25, 2017

I’m lucky to live in a city where there are overlapping supporting circles of writers in every possible genre. I’m involved in a few writing groups, including an invite-only one, the venerable and awesome Slug Tribe (that just got a great write-up in the Austin Chronicle), as well as occasionally hitting a Meet-Up group every now and again. Plus the Writers’ League of Texas is based here, with its annual Editors and Agents conference and the cozier, and perhaps more “incestuous” ArmadilloCon (and I mean that in the least creepiest way!). And the Austin NaNoWriMo group, a once and future way to spend November.

Three of the above perform critiques on pieces. The most paper-prolific by far—and I say this with two bandaged fingers—is Slug Tribe. Probably best to bring at least fifteen copies of a piece. With a 5,000 upper limit, that’s approximately twenty sides of writing (more if there’s a lot of dialog). On average sixty percent of Sluggers write comments on the pieces, which I dutifully reel back and bring to my editing operating theater. If you’re keeping score at home, that’s 300-400 pages single-sided. Which I try never to do, what with the lack of available earthworms at my place.

So here’s the evening’s tidbit: collate them by page, putting them in reverse page order (so you’re working from the back of the piece forwards). Take the “global” written comments (thank you, thank you all for the thought put into them!) and put them at the back of the pack. Why?

  1. People tend to comment less towards the end of the piece. On-the-spot editing is tiring, and once a reader has made their point, why flog the expired equine?
  2. Going backwards makes it harder to skip something because the mind forms the logical construct of the paragraph, and not the backwards verbs of the placement.
  3. Those pesky page numbers mean very little when going through the tenth set of edits. What was on page one, with an easily spotted paragraph shape is no longer there. That means wasting brain and time trying to find something that there. Going backwards en masse means never having to figure out where you were before you carved up two paragraphs and inserted four clauses.
  4. It’s hard to know who commented on a page, until you get the the end (first pages). This means addressing each suggested edit on its own merit, and not on the merit of the author making the comment. Just because they’re a great writer doesn’t mean their edits have a greater weight than a sharp-eyed newcomer.

Enjoy a slightly less painful time editing your next critiqued work!

On Research, and the Need for Brain Bleach

shlomi on July 18, 2017

I’m careful, when doing story research, not to trip up and set DHS, the USSS, or EIEIO on my tail. I recently moved to a private VPN connection because my damn Internet provider isn’t paying me enough to get access to my search history (neither is Google, but I’ve got other ways around that).

I also try not to click on sites that get me, um… to places I hadn’t intended on visiting. So I was surprised, when working on a bit of research on rosaries for a short story (novella? novel?) in my Upline universe. I was trying to see if there were any specific numbers of beads in a rosary. Interesting stuff, for an atheist Jew. What I didn’t expect is exhibit(ionist) A, to the left. Seriously, this site was selling rosaries. Lots of detail about the beads, and prayers, and everything. And then I kept looking (masochism knows no bounds) and found the incredibly apt ad for a rosary belt!

There’s oh so much I don’t understand about the Mysteries of some religions…

“Last Run” Topped Out

shlomi on July 5, 2017

By Leif Ørnelund – Oslo Museum: image no. OB.Ø59/2680 (Byhistorisk samling), via oslobilder.no., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=23247983

When a building’s top floor is in place, especially for tall buiildings, they’re “topped out.” Usually a tree, sometimes a flag.

Authors should have something analogous for a novel. Even if we’re not trying to appease the tree gods.

Sunday I pitched two projects to an agent at the Writers League of Texas Agents & Editors conference. A win for me, at my first pitching, would be “sure, I’d like to see the first ten pages and a query letter via email.” The agent with whom I chatted wanted to hear about two of my projects: my current novel, Last Run, a post-apocalyptic tale, and my Induction series, a “hot” SF set of novels. She wanted the first three chapters and a synopsis of the first, and then maybe the second. Yoiks.

Yesterday I “topped out” the novel, tearing up at the last scene. Last Run currently stands at around 173k words, and the sweet spot for novels in that category is closer to 85k words.

So… behold the mighty editor’s pen, out and primed in red.

 

Character infodump

shlomi on April 19, 2017

My current WIP has a cast of characters, a bunch of whom are all first seen by my POV character in a room together. My first draft of this was, upon re-reading, a flood of details that made the narrative not only drag, but flounder.

imagine you’re walking into a waiting room. You look down and see a tortoise. Sorry, attack of literary drift. Seriously: what do you notice when you look around? I went through this exercise going into a radiology office recently. For my PTSDness I first spotted exits, including windows. Then there was the arrangement of the chairs. Then people, starting with only the basic observations: hair color, bags, canes, or other visually interesting bits. Shoes, the floor. Then back to the people, actually noting the ones who caught my eye, or the tableaus in progress (two people helping an older relative sit down from standing at a walker, a young girl, maybe eight or nine, looking scared next to her dad, with short-cropped hair). Then actually checking people out. A woman wearing a 60’s-style, felted, dark blue coat with big buttons in two rows—and apparently nothing but leggings below. The mom with a toddler and a baby in a stroller, valiantly trying to keep them from hitting their boredom wall.

If I described all that it’d be interesting for that one paragraph. But characters deserve attention, to fix them in a reader’s mind. I resolve that (in the book) by interleaving my character’s action. In the above example, he’d walk across to the clerk’s desk and do business while idly puzzling about the woman in the coat. Then turn around, walk past the walker and people, maybe catch a snippet of conversation triggering a background thought. Then try and dodge the mom and her kids, and end up next to the close-shaved girl. Each stop gives the opportunity to really look, and describe, the character. It also is a way for you to go deeper with the POV person: how they react, what memories are triggered, comparisons with other people in the character’s past.

Today’s takeaway: describe characters the way your POV would, starting with details interesting to her or him, and use action to break up the internal monolog.

Writing and Fancy Keyboards

shlomi on April 5, 2017

I splurged yesterday and got myself a gaming keyboard. Not that I game, mind you, but I miss the clickety-clack of keys, and the Microsoft Ergonomic keyboard that I use at home is a pain in the tush to lug around to coffee shops all the time. So I went a bit wild, and ended up with something that’s smaller, clickety, and has glowing keys in every color and pattern.

Why someone would want to have a keyboard that swirls in every color of the rainbow is beyond me. Or flashes, strobe-like. But, used wisely, the keyboard color scheme can be helpful. Between disabling unused keys and creating a few nifty shortcuts I’ve made my Scrivener‘s experiment a bit more livable (still not too happy with a lot of it’s kludgy design), but that’s for another post.

And… back early in town

shlomi on March 5, 2017

My field research trip for my current novel made it as far as Big Spring — and barely, at that. Dunno what I picked up, but it was an arduous, stop-filled trip. And after a terrible night in a great hotel, I drove back to Austin rather than head out for the more adventurous destinations: the MacDonald Observatory, Alpine, Balmorhea, Fort Stockton and the Agate Ranch.

Well, it’ll have to be a short trip with more preparation as work for me starts this coming Monday. When I come up for air I’ll contact UT: they might have some folks to help save on some of my sneaker traffic…