One aspect of writer's block

I started a new story some time ago, but it stalled out when I was only 8k into it. No matter what I did, I couldn't bring myself to continue working on it. So it went into my story ideas folder, along with the notes I'd sketched out, to sit until I felt like working on it again.

I dusted it off over the weekend. I could see where I went wrong, but I wasn't sure how to fix it. I went back to the characters notes and realized I hadn't fleshed them out enough. I went through and did that. Once I was finished, the way to move the story forward finally came to me. It took erasing a good chunk of that, a little over 5k to be precise, to get it back to where I could make the story flow again. But it was worth it because I started getting somewhere instead of sitting and staring at the cursor blinking.

What happened to me initially with the story is, to me at least, a form of writer's block. I have a story I want to tell, but sometimes telling it gets in the way of the story itself. I wanted to keep it set to a series of events that I was planning for. I built it up too fast and then found it too difficult to keep going. How was I going to top some of the tension I'd already created moving forward? I wasn't sure I could, so it stalled out as I tried to figure out where to go.

Now I'm using minor bursts of tension to raise the stakes but not so much that I can't get around it when it comes time for the climax. Getting to that point too early in the book makes it more difficult to handle the coming scenes. Every character has a story, and some of them are subplots for the main one. I'm letting a little bit of those stories, not every detail but a hint of them, come out here in the beginning. This is giving me a lot more to work with than I initially had.

This is part of where being a pantser can be difficult at times. Which is why I may write the story by the seat of my pants, but I at least try to have a few conversations with my characters before I start just to get a sense of them and their stories.

What do you do? Do you write out notes for every little detail? Do you just wing it completely? Or are you somewhere in between?

Writing process and goal setting

I got talking with Himself this weekend over characterization in my books. He was startled at the fact that I don't detail out how my character is going to act, who they are, and where they're going before I write. I have a vague idea of who they are and where they're going, but I feel like it's up to them to tell me how they get there. I may have a few key points of the story that I want them to deal with but I don't know how they'll react to them. I may actually have to remove those points because the characters don't like them and refuse to do it. But then they give me different ideas and I can progress from there.

I also don't flesh out my minor characters, my placeholder characters (a shopkeeper, a blacksmith, a healer, characters that don't play an important role), and my secondary characters that interact intensely with the main character. I know their names, I have a vague idea of their personalities, but I don't develop them like you'd develop a D&D character (that's what Himself was comparing things to). I just don't work that way.

Himself brought up a good point that by the end of the story I have to go back and do some major revisions as I probably need to rework some points as I get to know the characters better. It does get frustrating at times to have to do this. But I find I like the kernel of the story more if that's how I do things.

I know there are a lot of writers out there who dig deep into their characters before they even write a word. They create character backgrounds, personalities, and motivations in detail before introducing their characters to the world they've built specifically for them. I completely admire them for this. I think it's fascinating that they can do this. This just isn't a skill I have.

I've tried it several times, along with outlining. But the characters were wooden, they didn't speak to me, and I couldn't get into their heads by doing that. Same with outlining. No matter how general the outline, I couldn't get into the story with it. I need to let it grow organically from my mind. The first draft is just that – a first draft. It's me vomiting the story onto the page.

Now, I do have a problem with going back and editing as I go. Himself was right about that. I need to let it go and write the damn thing without going back every five minutes to fix things. I need to make myself notes and just move on, which is what I'm attempting to do with Marked. He also brought up another good point. When I'm not futzing around, I can finish a first draft in two months.

So I've set myself a goal. Last month doesn't count (since I had a hell of a time writing last month due to various issues), but as of this month, I'm going to get the first draft of Marked finished by October 1^st. Based on my current word count and how long I think this is going to be, that's a word count goal of 10-15k a week. Then, when it's done, I'll give it a week and start editing it as well as plan what story to do for NaNoWriMo because I will be participating again this year. Maybe I'll try Cracked World again. Or Burning Dreams. Or maybe I'll switch gears and work on one of my sci fi stories in November. It might not hurt to take a break from the fantasy for a month or two.

Whatever it is, I'll set my goal and see what it takes to accomplish it. Then I'll do it. So, keep me on my toes. Chase me down on Facebook or Twitter (if we're friends...you can find me as Alison Guynes-Annikka Woods on FB (not to be confused with Alison Guynes which is also me but is the one where I post for my family and isn't that interesting for anyone not family) and @annikkawoods on Twitter). Harass me. Leave me comments on blog posts asking me how I'm doing and demand updates. I will be setting more goals as I go for other things, and I think I'll use Monday as a “goal update” post. So be looking out for that, as well as my usual maundering.

"Orphaned" characters and ideas

“My angel, my light, I bid you good night.”

I've had this line kicking around in my head for months. I've been looking for a home for it since it obviously belongs in a story somewhere. Except I haven't had much luck with finding one because it doesn't fit in with anything so far. Yet I don't want to leave it out in the cold. So I'm tucking it into the back of my mind to rest there until I find a place for it.

I end up with a lot of these “orphans”; lines that don't seem to have a place, bits of dialogue or the introduction to a character who has no home. A lot of these end up in a file on my hard drive that I back up frequently so I don't lose any of them. They're there for when I need them.

Sometimes I have a problem with creating too many characters for a story, and when I go back to edit these characters get cut. The scenes with them in them get cut, and many times those scenes will also end up in a file, on the chance that they will be needed again in a later story or a whole new book. I've converted characters between genres and added them to stories as needed.

I find that this is all part of my creative process, and an important one at that. My imagination rarely ever stops working, even when I'm not focusing on anything in particular. What I see, hear, and read ends up in my head and I mix a lot of those things together to create something new. I don't always have places for these new things, so I have to put them somewhere until I'm ready for them.

Take one of my sci fi stories, Fury. That actually started out as a random drivel I was going to post on my blog as a kind of serial. I didn't know much about Fury and her friends. In fact, I wrote a few scenes and decided I wasn't sure I liked it. So I tabled it. I kept the characters around, figuring I'd use them somewhere else. Then I had a dream that sparked something in my subconscious and those characters came out to play. I watched some episodes of Babylon 5, Firefly, and Serenity. I read a few sci fi stories and some interesting articles on technological advances. Fury came back to me and demanded another chance at being in the spotlight. The result was a (currently) 56k story dealing with a colonist and her struggles against the core worlds of her solar system. I think the story is coming out well, and I'm glad I listened when those bits and pieces I collected came together to form a new voice.

For all the writers out there, do you sometimes find “orphans” crop up in your plotting/writing? Do you find you have characters that need homes? Or am I alone and weird in this? ;)

My writing process

So I was tagged for this writing process hop by Joelle Casteel. You can find her blog here. (WARNING: Her blog is not for the under 18 or particularly squeamish person - she writes BDSM and gets into some hardcore things.) I thought it was a fun little post and all I really had to do was swap the day between one of my shorts and this post so I figured I'd do it.

What am I working on now?

That's a good question. I'm editing Marked, I'm writing Fury, and I'm still writing my blog posts. Marked takes place at the birth of a new "race" (for lack of a better term) in my fantasy kingdom of Lytharia. The Majin as they will come to be called are fleeing certain death at the hands of the Imperial army because of a difference found frightening by the Emperor and the High Lords. Death is imminent for them on more than one occasion but they survive to go on.

Fury is the working title of a science fiction story that deals with a war between the colonies and the central worlds in what is now an expansive galactic community of planets. There are no FTL drives so getting places is time consuming and difficult, but it doesn't stop Fiera from heading to one of the core worlds to attend university. She's there as her father's spy, listening to the gossip of the wealthy elitest students to see what they have to say about violence towards the colonies. She's found other young women to attend the parties for her. The bane to her existence is the son and heir to one of the greatest fortunes in the galaxy. This story is turning more into an erotic romance with a F/F/M poly triad. Not sure how that's going to work but that's what it's turning into.

How does my work differ from others of its genre?

With Marked, it's not a classic HEA for my characters. Their life is not all happy and good when the story ends. They're alive but that's it. With the fantasy novels set on this continent I have a tendency to not have happy stories. They are violent, devastating to the characters, and coming out alive is going to be one of the best things that happens to them. I'm not saying there won't be some happy moments. Just don't expect complete and total happiness for anyone.

With Fury, I haven't seen very many sci fi novels with a poly triad. I haven't seen many with an erotic romance twist. I've seen a few here and there. I'm still not sure how this one is going to turn out. I don't write sex scenes or erotic anything. I do the whole “fade to black”. Instead, not only am I focusing on romance I'm writing most of the sex too. It's an experiment and of course when I write one I can't pick something easy.

Why do I write what I do?

I write fantasy and sci fi. I don't have another sci fi like Fury but I still have several stories in the planning stages. I've read fantasy and sci fi most of my life and I've wanted to be an author since I was a kid. I write what I do because I love to live out the stories in my head. My imagination runs strongly to fantasy and sci fi. Epic fantasy, urban fantasy, paranormal romance (again not my usual genre), soft sci fi, space opera. All of these things I've got things planned in, some of them are even in the process of being written. I have a story idea file, folders for each of my stories, and a story graveyard for things that just don't work right now.

What is my writing process?

Well, it's totally random most of the time. I research, I read, I jot down notes and some attempts at outlines. Then I abandon those notes and outlines and write by the seat of my pants. I let the characters tell me the story for the first draft and chop it to pieces (and even rewrite large chunks) when I go through the first edit.

From start to finish, this is what it looks like. I create the world. Races, lands, languages. Everything that makes up the setting I think up. Then I find characters to inhabit the world. I listen to them talk, watch them as they move, see them to get an idea of what they look like. I learn their backgrounds, what they want, what they're willing to do to get it. I learn who's the protagonist and who's the antagonist for the story. Sometimes for me the protagonist for one story is the antagonist for another. It all depends on the perspective.

I tend to bounce ideas off of my husband. He's helped me refine my worlds, bring new depth to my characters, and change the setting to suit the stories. But most of the time I think it through completely before I even start writing. There have been times (like Fury) I start with a vague idea and take it wherever it goes. That's rare though and I try to make it somewhat organized as I attempt to write what the characters tell me to.

The one thing is I rarely know how a book is going to end, until I get there.

I have to write beginning to end. I don't write in chapters. I don't write in segments. I have to write the story chronologically. If I come up with an idea that happens later in the story from the point I'm at, I will make a few notes and move on until I get there.

As for the actual physical act of writing, I get up in the morning. I turn on my laptop. I play around on Facebook and Twitter for an hour or so. When I'm done with that, I shut down Facebook and Twitter. Open up the web pages I use for naming things. I have my IM up so I can talk with an author friend of mine. We tend to chat all day. But after everything else is taken care of, I open up the document I'm working on and I start writing.

Since I'm home all day because I'm disabled, I only rest when I'm hungry or want to take a much needed brain break. At that point it's onto my blog roll to read posts, Facebook to scroll through what's on my feed, and skim through Twitter to see if there's anything I want to retweet and make a few posts to keep my feed from getting too boring. I also do some stretches, maybe walk a little even if it's just around the room a few times, to work out some of the kinks that come with the territory of sitting in one place for extended periods of time.

I have a tendency to focus almost obsessively on my word count, measuring my progress by it each day. Some days I can manage up to 10k a day. Other days I barely make 1k because it's a slow writing day. I usually make it somewhere in between. I enjoy what I do. It makes me happy. It also helps pass the time of what could be a long and boring day.

I'm supposed to be tagging someone, but those I know who'd do this have already done it. So I'm not going to tag them again.

Why can't I make it work - in other words, how many first drafts do I need?

I've been trying to write Marked for over a year now. It's gone through many incarnations. It was Only A Name for a while. Then I put out a call on Twitter for a new title. I was given several suggestions. Marked is the one that stuck. I completely revamped it from the earlier version of the story and thought that was it. I'd finish the first draft and then move on to another novel, saving the first draft for future revisions.

I'm on version number three now, and I don't mean through edits. I'm on the third complete rewrite of Marked. In the two previous versions there was so much I didn't like that editing wouldn't have done me any good. I have both versions saved so I can refer back to them for the things I liked, and I've taken notes on that to help with the third version.

The problem is I'm not sure if the third version is going to work either. I've already taken a large chunk of it and put it into a side file for future reference because I didn't like how the story was going at the point it was at. I like it so far but what happens if I find I don't like how it's going again? I'll probably cut the offending text and paste it into another document to save for dissection.

Why do I do this? Well, the main problem is I have a hard time settling on one story. I'm also forever tweaking the world so even though I've done extensive world building things are perpetually in flux. I try to settle on one thing and a new idea springs up and I have to examine it. If I like it, it stays. If I don't like it, it doesn't get included and I move on. I've finally settled on the look of the world and the way politics are set up in one of the countries. But there are still two more countries and a lot of races to deal with that are only vaguely formed.

Now, you might ask how that works out for me. I'm a pantser not a plotter. I sketch out my characters and get an idea of their world and then let them go from there. I let them tell their story as I write it. For a few of the shorts I've written, though they do need to be edited, it worked out great. With Marked, it's not. But if I try to write from an outline the story falters and dies and I can't get anything done.

So right now I'm just allowing the story to flow forward as it wants to, stopping every now and then to check details and make sure I'm not changing things halfway through. I'm keeping lists of things so I don't forget them and making notes as I go. Those will help with my synopsis I'm sure when I'm ready to write it. But first I have to settle on one version of the story.

So tell me, how do you do it? What do you do that makes you love or hate the first draft of your story, and what do you do about it? How many versions of your first draft do you go through before you settle on one and go from there? Am I the only one with this problem?

Monday Maundering - #Tagyoureit #bloghop

I was tagged by my lovely friend Joelle Casteel (WARNING: her blog is 18+ due to BDSM and other adult themes) to participate in the blog hop. Check out the link to see her answers to the questions. Here are mine.

1. What are you working on now?
A novella regarding the birth of one of my goddesses and three short stories that need to be rewritten, all of which I intend to self publish. The Birth of the Silver Lady, and Rescue, The Soldier and the Lady, and The Pigeon and the Fiddler all take place in my world of Aleran. Three are precursors to my novel Marked while the fourth takes place after the novel ends.

2. How does it differ from other books in its genre?
I haven't read too many stories about how a mortal woman becomes a goddess and ends up choosing those who will become her children, so I suppose that's one way the novella differs from the other books in the genre. As for the other three stories, they're about the struggles of a man and his family as they try to cope with their ever changing world.

3. Why do you write what you do?
I write what I want to read. I write fantasy, science fiction, dystopian, urban fantasy, and really bad poetry. Now I don't necessarily want to read really bad poetry, but it sometimes helps me frame my thoughts if I restrict myself to the limitations of poetry. I love world building and delving into the lives and cultures of those characters who tell me their stories.

4. How does your writing process work?
*laughs* My writing process is chaos. I write stories, and then I go back and rewrite them. I scrap them and start over. I write multiple variations of the same story over and over again until I find the one I like. I make copious notes on the world, and then change my mind and update them as I go. I don't seem to be able to pin myself down to one idea. I finish a story and immediately want to rewrite it because it isn't perfect. Hence the reason I always have more than one WIP. I'm always writing something.

Writing Wednesday - Minor characters becoming not so minor

Has that ever happened to you?  A minor character you expect to play second fiddle to your main character suddenly steps up and demands your attention?  You find you like them better than you like your MC and even consider changing your story to let this minor creation take the spotlight?

I hope the answer is 'yes', because I know this has happened to me a few times.  I've got a couple stories that started out as something completely different but evolved into their present (roughly written or roughly plotted) form because of a minor character I fell in love with.  I've also written side stories that gave a secondary character his/her own storyline and their own chance on center stage.

In another one of my stories, a character who was supposed to be strictly in the background and only there to be the shoulder for one the MC to cry on has evolved into a major player in the story - to the point where she becomes closer to the MC than a lover or a parent.  She's become an incredibly complex woman who ultimately becomes the perfect partner for this MC.  She's the main force in keeping him from becoming a threat to the world...again.  It's not as complicated as it sounds but she was never meant to hold that kind of power.  She was just meant to be the kindly teacher who became a second mother to him.

Or how about Scat?  If you've seen my ONLY A NAME stuff, you know she's the main character of the story. Originally, Scat was a side character in a completely different story.  She was the slave who ran errands and carried notes for her mistress but that was it.  She wasn't even all that interesting - until I gave her the limp.  Then I wanted to know where the limp came from, where were her parents, had she been born a slave or as something else, etc.  Now she's the star of a book of her own, and her discoveries are pivotal in helping to change how an entire race is born.

For me, if a minor character is so demanding that I have to stop the story to take care of those demands, perhaps I was focusing on the wrong character to begin with.  Or maybe I should take a look at offering a side character a full time starring role in his/her own saga.  Either way, if a minor character wants more than a cameo I'll at least take a look at and listen to them.

What about you?  Has this ever happened to you?  What do you usually do when something like this happens?

Writing Wednesday - Guest Blogger G.L. Drummond

Today we're hosting Ms. G.L. Drummond (aka @Scath on Twitter) to celebrate the release of her new book Code Walker.  We're celebrating with a guest post in her blog tour...and a contest!  The following is the description of the book, taken directly from Smashwords:

In the fickle worlds created when cyberspace and reality overlap, it’s all too easy to blur and shift lines…moral lines, lawful lines, lines of code and destiny, until the surreal becomes real. Walking those lines back to the source, and rebooting the system, isn’t exactly a job for a girl who plays nice - but it does pay extremely well.

As Riley Cabot never qualified as a ‘nice girl’, life as the Code Walker is sweet.

Only thing about codes is that they break.

Now, I did mention something about a contest, didn't I?  I have a coupon code, generously granted by Ms. Drummond, for a free e-book copy of Code Walker from Smashwords.  I'll be awarding that coupon at random to a commenter on this blog post.  I'll announce the winner for this contest in the same post I announce the winner of my own contest.

Now...on to the interview!
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Thanks for having me, Annikka!

You were curious about the inspiration behind Code Walker. I’ll have to lay the blame at the feet of all the sci-fi novels I read as a kid (and adult), plus movie watching.

I’m certain the most obvious comparison will be The Matrix movies, because of the virtual reality hook.

Books and movies I’ve devoured simmer in some hidden corner of my mind, and every so often, a Voice starts talking to me. Or at me, as the case may be.

That’s what happened with Code Walker, while I was working on a different project in 2008. Riley said ‘Brain jack’, and then TJ laughed. I knew he was an AI, and that she was a code walker with an alter ego that did cyber assassinations, among other things.

I had to stop what I was doing, and write down what they were telling me.

Seth popping up in the first chapter was a surprise. Somewhere around 16k or 17k later, we all ran out of juice. I put Code Walker away, and returned to another story.

I kept meaning to finish it, because I knew how it would end, and that there was even a possibility of a second story afterwards. But other stories kept getting in the way.

That’s a problem I have. If I know how a story is going to end, I sometimes lose enthusiasm to finish it. The one thing that will offset that is having a lot of feedback ongoing while I’m writing something. I thrive with feedback, to the point that I can finish a 35k novella in 8 days, if I have a constant source of it.

What can I say? I work better with an audience, LOL.

Finally, this year, I pulled Code Walker out and finished it. Woohoo!

You also wanted to know about my creative process.

First thing to know is that I seldom use outlines for anything. I don’t always know how a story is going to end. Much of the time, I write in a linear manner, but there are instances when non-linear comes into play.

It’s pretty much whatever works for the particular story. All first drafts are written with pen and paper.

Each story begins with a Voice speaking up inside my head. The Voices seem to prefer popping up when I’m driving, or out at the barn, cleaning stalls and feeding horses. Weird, huh?

From then until the words run out (meaning when the Voice(s) decide to wander off, or tell me ‘That’s it. The end.’), I just write. I don’t worry about problems like skipped scenes or someone magically knowing something they didn’t the chapter before the one I’m writing.

All of that is stuff to fix when I begin editing. I go over and over each story before turning them over to my beta readers. Once they’ve all weighed in, I cut, add, rewrite, and then go over and over the story again. After that, the story goes to one of my two editors.

When the editing is finished, I approve edits and incorporate suggestions. And spend even more time going over it before finally deciding it’s ready to be published.

Any time during the actual writing, things may halt for some research or world building. There’s only a few of my stories, mainly those that belong in a series, which have a lot of world building notes involved.

So that’s my creative process: a Voice speaks, I listen and begin writing. Pit stops for research and/or world building as necessary. Go over and over each to fix mistakes, fill holes, or tighten things up.

Not all that exciting, but it does give results.
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For a limited time, you can purchase Code Walker for .99 on both Amazon for the Kindle and Smashwords.  The offer is limited and expires on on April 25th.  So I'd hurry in and purchase your own copy of this awesome book.

Writing Wednesday - The Writing Process

A DM I got on Twitter asked me what my writing process was.  I had to think about that for a minute when I was asked because, honestly, I don't usually think about the writing process.  I just DO it.

I start with an idea.  Who knows where the idea comes from?  It could be a random snatch of conversation heard in the break room or the servery.  It could be a line from another book or a movie.  It could be a flock of birds, a cloud formation, or a sunset.  It could be a dream.  But wherever it comes from, I always have to start with an idea.

That idea could be a character, or it could be a setting.  Many times it's a little of both.  I sit down and I write.  I write as much of the story as I know.  Then, when I've written what I know, I let it sit for a few days while I work on something else.

Once I've let it sit, I go back and read through what I've written.  I decide what I like and what I don't, and I work with those parts that I like.  Sometimes I don't even wait a few days.  If the story catches fire in my mind I push through and get the whole story told.  It doesn't always have a lot of detail in places, but I can go back and add that detail later in revisions.

Now there are times when the idea I start with is a barely formed character.  I use that character to build up the world he or she inhabits. (As evidenced by my WW posts on world building with Ashe.)  Sometimes I have a setting and must create the characters to interact with the setting.  As long as I get my ideas down onto paper or word processor, that's what matters.

So my process is as follows:

• Get an idea.
• Write as much as I can on that idea.
• Revisit the idea after a short period of time and expand on what works.
• Revise again and again until I have a polished piece.
• Repeat as necessary.

So what's YOUR writing process?