Plant Butt in Chair

Even  with good intentions, it may be hard to concentrate.  Observe cat on desk.

How do you motivate yourself to write and finish that novel?
It isn't easy.  I have a friend with  five (!) 50,000 word unfinished novels from NaNoWriMo.  Maybe one of these days she will finish one.  Maybe not.
It takes a lot of time to get your plot laid out (no matter how rudimentary) and get to know your characters and nail your the salient details of your setting.  But, as Mary Poppins said, "well begun is half-done."
Perhaps.  We all start off like gangbusters and after a few chapters maybe you see how anemic the plot is, or your characters stop speaking to you, or you realize you need to take a little (or a long trip) to bring your setting to life.  It happens to every writer, but it's what you do after you reach this impasse that distinguishes the pros from the amateurs.
Plant butt in chair.  The truth is, we learn to know our characters by writing about them.  Develop.  Develop.  They'll surprise you.  Everyone has heard of a character taking over a book.  It does happen.  But not unless you are actively writing the book.
Plotting can be done in the shower, behind the wheel of your car, making dinner, falling asleep at night.  But you better get those great ideas on paper as soon as possible, or they'll disappear into the ether.  Sit down and write notes to yourself: ideas for a scene, fragments of dialogue.
Spend an evening researching your setting online.   I've "been" to both Cuba and Panama via online visits.  What you can ferret out and the great believable details you can discover are there for the taking.  You can find photos, blogs, discussion groups--I tapped into some sailors' listserve about sailing in Cuban waters and the Florida straights.  I found out about Hemingway Marina and the dos and don'ts on how to behave.  Saw photos of the taxis.  Found lists of gifts to take.  Googled the airport and imagined  how it would look just after take off.  Pretty soon, I felt like I had been there, walking along the Malecon and taking a carriage ride through the old city.  Same thing for Panama.  But remember:  my butt was right here in the chair.
The only rule is:  there are no rules.  If so, no one knows what they are.  Really.  There is no rule that you must write the book in sequence.  You can do the BIG scenes and then string them together.  You can write the ending and keep going back in time, always asking yourself, "what would have to happen to make this happen?"  You can write a  400 page outline and spend more time on it than the book.
Sometimes, the ending and the beginning will confound you and require a skidload of rewrites and much thought.  That's okay.  The book takes five years?  Thaat's okay, too.  You WROTE and FINISHED it.
Remember, it isn't easy.  Just don't stop after 50,000 words.  You're over half way there.  And the best advice I had as a beginning writer was:  almost anything can be fixed.  In mystery writing, there's a saying that if the plot bogs down, have a man with a gun come through the door.  This can be literal or it is can be figurative.  Make something happen.
Writers are always writing, whether in their heads on in their chairs, but to get the book written and finished you are going to have to PLANT BUTT IN CHAIR!
Good Luck!   


These fine writers will have plenty of good advice on the subject.  Take a look at what they have to say.


Skye Taylor http://www.skye-writer.com/blogging_by_the_sea
Margaret Fieland http://margaretfieland.wordpress.com
Heather Haven http://heatherhavenstories.com/blog/
Dr. Bob Rich http://wp.me/p3Xihq-SK
Connie Vines http://mizging.blogspot.com/
Victoria Chatham http://victoriachatham.blogspot.ca
Helena Fairfax http://www.helenafairfax.com
Beverley Bateman http://beverleybateman.blogspot.ca/
Marci Baun  http://www.marcibaun.com/blog/  Rachael Kosinski http://rachaelkosinski.weebly.com/
Diane Bator http://dbator.blogspot.ca/
A.J. Maguire  http://ajmaguire.wordpress.com/
Rhobin Courtright http://www.rhobinleecourtright.com

The Pain of Changing Computers

A while back, I switched from PC to a MAC, a move that still seems right.  There was pain involved, mostly from having to get off my old version of Microsoft Money and find a new financial tracking system.  I tried the "lite" version of Quicken, which was, frankly a piece of crap for the MAC.  After a lot of research I opted for I-Bank, which has been  o.k. except when I did a conversion and for some reason the system decided Euros rather than dollars was my "currency."  Once this happens, you can't go back, and I had to do a ton of work to bring things back to a working state.  I have learned to do the reporting, and I still have the ancient PC and the ancient Money which I can run old reports off of as needed.  We have a small rental property out of state and I treat my writing as a business, so there is much financial info to keep track of, and I also help out another relative with finances.  This is  a time suck, and for unexplained reasons I make more mistakes using I-Bank than Money.  It does have some good features, but  I loved Money most, one of the best products Microsoft ever made and then they discontinued it.  Go figure.  Beta vs. VHS all over again.  The best product doesn't always win out. 

When I switched computers, the Apple folks saved my emails and my bookmarks, but they were always hard to access and now I can't remember where I stashed them.  A computer search turned up nothing.  The worst thing is that for my 1928 California book, I had done enormous amount of research and without the bookmarks it's, well, it's gone.  I can probably find it again, but it's going to be difficult, and another time suck.   Fortunately, a few things are saved directly to my hard drive, and those gems are still available.  Getting back to the novel now, and I have to recreate the research.

There was a wonderful group of painters in California in the 1920's and I'm using some of that history in my book.  This book is NOT crime fiction, and I'm having little trouble with that.  After six crime fiction books, one just tends to keep writing it, whether anyone buys it or not.  (See the title of this blog).  One of these days I will trek to Southern California to do the remaining research.  Once I have a first draft manuscript.  Maybe I'll try Nanowrimo (National Novel Writing Month).  Naturally this book will be longer than 50K words, and Nanowrino tends to produce shitty first drafts, but at this point, any draft is better than no draft.

The new novel is also an "historical" which I've never written.  But I have characters and a setting and a plot.  That should make the writing easy, right?  Right?  Wrong.  Guess I'll just have to plunge into it and put the period stuff and the slang and the music and the rest in later.   Or not.

The Writer's Desk Top, Inordinately Neat

Someone said there are three rules for writing a novel, but no one knows what they are.  Amen.

Novel in Process: some good; some bad

It's always instructive to take a critical look at one's own writing. I find ups and downs. Of course the ups are nice to read, the scene is humming along, one is showing not telling, and then, eeek! What was a thinking? Does that even make sense? Where was my grammar angel? How did I go to sleep at night after having written a sentence that bad?

One of the first things I learned, at the first writing conference I attended was that almost everything can be fixed? Cardboard characters? Yup? Stupid plots? Probably. Grammar, spelling, punctuation? Assuredly.

I don't know if an incredibly stupid plot can be fixed, but it probably can be. With lots of work. Knuckle down to the manuscript and rewrite, rewrite, rewrite. Hemmingway did. Everyone does, or should. My understanding is that Robert Parker does not, but maybe he is better than us.

Someone is always better. It can happen that almost everyone is better. I entered a first rate univeristy from a small town high school where competition was sparse and I was an academic standout. At the prestigious university, almost everyone was better. Prep schools, big city high schools. And they all knew how to study. I had just breezed through. My self-esteem went into the toilet and then mucked about in the sewer for two years. Writing can be the same way. You are pretty good in your writer's group or writing course and then you run into people who can write rings around you. Knuckle down. And remember what they say about persistence.

You gotta show up. Manuscript in hand, synopsis, query, pitch, looking civilized and with your best manners.

It's a bitch.

Lost in one's own novel

My latest novel, In Flight hit 72,ooo words this week, and of course the book is in my head, but as you can imagine, it's fairly hard to keep all those words in your head.

Last night, I created a calendar, keeping track of the major plot points of the book in a time line, which was a good thing, because then I could mention Father's Day and the 4th of July is coming soon and I think my characters just might want to mosey off the beaten track and do something kookie. Anyway, they will have to observe the day like everyone else.

I'm trying to figure out roughly how many words I need, and of course I can't quite estimate that. Four more big plot points, coming fairly close together. Bam. bam. bam.

So today I printed all 270 pages of the manuscript. Found a bunch of bad sentences. Have to make a major change to the beginning of the book. Was going to wait until I had a draft, but methinks I'll do it now. Nothing difficult, but adding a big dramatic scene. And then I find stuff I thought I had changed but I didn't. What's that all about?

Just managing one of these manuscripts takes some doing. I used to keep all the chapters/scenes in separate docs, but now I use one doc, and it sure does make it easier to find and fix problems.

So: now I have to read the damn thing, with my red pen poised. It's amazing how often you can go over these manuscripts and how often you find writing that can be improved. Work. Work. Work.

A peasant soup from the south of France for dinner--meatless, and quite tasty. Well, all that garlic. . . . We probably reek. Bon soir.

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Confidence

Image is from: edutechgeek.files.wordpress.com

Lately, I've spread my writing wings a bit beyond genre fiction and blogging. I've got one and one-half short stories written, a food memoir, a report on an event and even a deposition for a court case. I'm also looking forward to writing and delivering a humorous Toastmaster's speech.

What is remarkable is this: these days when I sit down to write anything, I have the confidence that I can do the writing, both first and subsequent drafts and that it will be at least acceptable. How did it get from my cybercrime sleuth to Jill of all trades?

Plant butt in chair is the big advice for writers. In other words, sit down and write. And yanno, if you do it often enough (5+ novels,umpteen blog entries, this 'n that) eventually you get the hang of it, and you know you can do it. You can produce whatever is needed without blood and tears. Sweat may still be involved, but one out of three isn't bad.

I'm feeling pretty good about this, because it's been a long time coming. When I first started writing, "they" said you had to write half a million words (500,000 for the math dumbos) before you were any good. I did that and more in 5 novels. Probably wrote close to 750,000 with rewrites and so on. In the beginning, that many words sounded impossible, when I had written maybe 75,000. Yikes! And another beginning writing teacher hushed me when I tried to bring this up in class. I believe he thought that it would discourage the "beginners." Dammit ! Ambition should be made of sterner stuff.

Maybe I should thank my blog readers, whoever they are, for reading the blog and keeping me blogging, because "Suck It Up" counts for a words written, too, over the years. And writing with brevity helps the cause.

So thanks. Comments, as always are welcome.

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Writing Tasks

I'm actually working on the beginning of Promiscuous Mode. Finding minor stuff to make it better and am considering how to bring more tension to the beginning.

Tonight we're going to listen to a motivational speaker who talks about writing, and the last time I heard him I became very productive. For a while.

On my walk today (unbelievable January thaw) I thought about the short story I'm working on and developed that a bit. Everything that isn't backsliding is progress.

Steve Kelner, a motivational psychologist and author of Motivate YourWriting!, teams up with multi-award-winning mystery author Toni Kelner, to show how to motivate your writing -- LIVE! Toni provides the examples ofher writing process and Steve explains why they work for her, so they can beused by you. Toni has written novels and short stories set in NorthCarolina, Boston, and a pirate ship and edited a bestselling anthology, so we should have lots of grist for Steve's mill -- and yours!

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