Craft Archives - Page 12 of 26 - Kerry Gans, Author

Exploring My Author Theme: Connection to the Past

April 7, 2016 By Kerry Gans Leave a Comment

A long time back in a post on The Author Chronicles blog, I talked about author theme—a theme that seems to recur in every book by that author. In that post, I realized that all of my current WIPs deal with individuality, with the struggle to be yourself and still be accepted and find a place to belong. So that seems to be my primary author theme.

Recently, I have found another author theme that seems to pervade my work—that of connection to the past, of problems set in motion well before the protagonist came into the picture. Perhaps this is an outgrowth of my fascination with genealogy, or perhaps it’s because I have a soft spot for Chosen One narratives. After all, Chosen Ones are, by definition, chosen by someone or something else outside themselves—usually because of events that happened before they were born or able to influence their own lives.

In one WIP, the protagonist’s problems start with something that happened when his uncle was a young archaeologist. In another, the secrets parents kept threaten to tear apart sisters. In a third, a battle 300 years in the past is influencing the present. In a fourth, a conflict of beliefs between her grandparents and her mother force hard decisions on the protagonist. So in many different ways, decisions made by people in the past propel the protagonist into the adventure of the present.

This is not the same as predestination. My protagonists are free to reject or pick up the task handed to them. They are free to handle the situation as they see fit—not as others deem proper. And even though the decisions of the past are driving the present, those decisions were not predestined, either—those people could have chosen differently.

So this is not predestination—it is reality. In the reality of our world, we are often impacted by decisions made in the past. Had my parents not moved to Pennsylvania, I would not have made the friends I’ve made or met the man I married. Would I have made other friends and met someone else? Probably. But that would have been a different life, a different narrative. And my daughter would not exist. A daughter might exist, but not the one who exists now. And that would change the future. Every decision our ancestors made led to our existence. Every decision we make, even as a child, changes the trajectory of the future.

As Jane Goodall said: “You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you. What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.”

Who or what made a difference in your protagonist’s past? What difference is your protagonist making today?

Break It Down to Avoid a Breakdown

March 10, 2016 By Kerry Gans Leave a Comment

If you read my post about all the hats we writers wear, you can see how overwhelming our tasks can be, and also see why so many authors get burnt out. With so many tasks to accomplish, how can we do it without having a mental breakdown? Simple: break it down.

Marketing is a huge task, and ideally all the many moving parts should combine into an overarching whole. But if I look at the marketing plan as a whole it seems un-doable. Mind-shattering—especially for a deep introvert like me. So I break it down.

Breaking down is not a new concept to any writer. We do this all the time when we write, particularly when we revise. Trying to fix everything in every chapter on one pass is impossible—we would inevitably miss something. So we break down the editing into multiple passes. We do one for structure, one for chronology, one for character arc, one for dialogue, one for grammar, etc. We take a huge, overwhelming task and break it down into smaller, more manageable tasks.

Marketing is another mammoth task that can paralyze me with its sheer magnitude. So I have to break it down. I choose one or two tasks a day to accomplish. One day I might contact possible reviewers. The next I might work on my email list. The following day I might update my website. And every day I carve out a little bit of time for the big social media platforms—Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc. (although I admit Facebook is where I spend most of my time).

When I break it down that way, it doesn’t seem as overwhelming. Also, since the marketing is the hardest (emotionally) task for me, knowing I have only one or two tasks to complete in a day makes it easier. Otherwise my well-honed procrastination skills would kick in and I’d push it off forever.

Breaking down large tasks creates a longer To-Do list, but it also gives me a sense of accomplishment because I can check tasks off the list quickly. That sense of immediate gratification is nice—especially with the marketing, where sometimes you don’t see the impact of your efforts for weeks. Plus, since I often have to grab small amounts of time to work, having smaller tasks allows me to get more done in the scattered work environment I have at the moment.

So that’s how I avoid having a mental breakdown over the huge tasks—I break them down and tackle the pieces one at a time.

Do you break down larger tasks into smaller ones?

Learning to Excel: Spreadsheets and Writing

February 25, 2016 By Kerry Gans 6 Comments

Sometimes it’s nice to be married to an engineer. My guy knows his way around Excel, which is a good thing for me, because I come up with the strangest ideas on what I want to track.

Now, I know many creatives aren’t data-driven. Numbers are not always our friends. But I am a strange mixture of left and right brain, and I like to see things in charts, color-coded and neat. I also like to have the computer do the math for me, so that’s where Excel (and my husband) is handy.

Since publishing is a business, I think many writers use Excel (or something similar) to track things such as inventory or where we have submitted our work. Some may also use it to track income and expenses, although accounting programs will do this for you.

However, I also use Excel for other, more writerly tracking. My To-Do list is an Excel spreadsheet, broken into columns for different tasks (Writing, Editing, Marketing, etc.). I then list the tasks in the columns and color code them—red, yellow, and green. When they are complete, I gleefully delete them. This way I can see at a glance what my priority should be on any given day.

I also use Excel in the writing process. In my current WIP, I have 3 POV characters, so I charted the entire story to ensure I didn’t “lose” someone’s thread for a long period of time. Again, I color –coded each individual so I could quickly see large gaps.

After I write my first draft, I will sometimes list each scene in Excel in the first column, then use further columns to track characters, arcs, and tension (although I think I will try this method from Roz Morris in my next WIP). This helps me see what scenes may not be needed, are not working, or need to be in a different place in the manuscript. It also allows me to see when scenes are missing because one scene does not lead logically to the next.

Lately, I have been using Excel as a motivational tool. I am motivated by specific, numerical goals. I like to be in competition with myself to reach those goals. I also like to track my work to see where I fall off in productivity and why. Since one of my goals for 2016 is to get back to focusing on writing, I decided to track my Word Count.

Now, I break Word Count into 3 phases: Drafting, Rewrite/Revise, and Copyedit/Proofread. The Drafting count is usually the lowest, since it takes the most time for me to think about and get words down. The Revise/Rewrite I can do more words in less time because I’m working with words already there (and probably adding to them—I tend to write first drafts short). Copyedit/Proofread I can burn up the computer because I can get through that process fast—even though I read it out loud at that stage.

So when I tell you what my Word Counts are, the totals combine all those and can therefore seem very high. For instance, my total Word Count for January was 96,333. Wow, that’s a whole book! No, not really. My Drafting count was 5,772, my Revise/Rewrite was 27,642, and my Copyedit/Proofread was 62,919.

By comparison, my February Word Count to date is only 25, 259. I figure I will end somewhere around 35,000, because most of my work this month is the Rewrite/Revise and Drafting categories.

In the same sheet where I’m keeping this running word count, I have my projects broken out—separate columns for my 2 novel-length WIPs, my blog, and Other (one-offs such as short stories, interviews, etc.). I want to try to get a handle on how long it takes me to get through each section of a novel-length WIP so I can be more realistic about how fast I can push the work out. That’s why tracking by project as well as for the whole year is important—because I have a feeling that the summer months, when my child is home all day, will see a drastic plunge in my productivity.

Having these numbers in color-coded detail (I coded each phase) helps urge me on. Watching the numbers pile up motivates me. I have some zero-word days (mostly weekends), but being able to see how much I accomplished during the week allows me to take those days in stride. Less stress is a beautiful thing.

For me, spreadsheets help motivate me and keep me focused. What tools do you use to track your productivity?

Critique Groups: A resource worth having

February 18, 2016 By Kerry Gans 4 Comments

I know not every writer is a critique group fan. I fully understand why—there are critique groups that become useless echo chambers, ones that don’t actually lift the craft of their members, or that contain a toxic mix of people. But while there are bad groups, having a good one is invaluable.

I am in a small critique group. We’ve purposely kept it small because we all write novels. With too many people, it takes far too long to put a whole novel through a group. We also kept it small because that way we have flexibility in meeting times—we can find a date that works for everyone.

We are diverse in age range and in what we write. Our backgrounds, both in writing and in life, are also a mixed bag, which brings a variety of expertise into our knowledgebase. Our craft strengths also vary, which allows for a well-rounded critique when you take all of the feedback as a whole.

Personality is a big part of how the group meshes, and we have been lucky to gather a group that leaves their ego at the door. Every one of us is grateful for the feedback (even if we don’t agree with it), and we are also grateful for the kind manner in which the feedback is given. After all, you don’t need to tear someone apart to critique them. We have quite a bit of laughter in our meetings, because while we take our writing seriously, we can laugh at ourselves and our mistakes.

My assessment is that a good critique group is an invaluable resource. My novel THE WITCH OF ZAL went through the group and it would not have made it out of the slush pile without their input. Every month I learn something new about my craft and begin to see and understand ways to improve.

What has your experience with critique groups been?

Editing Multiple Projects at Once: When It Rains…

January 21, 2016 By Kerry Gans 2 Comments

It pours. Or in my case, when it snows, it blizzards. We are getting some snow this weekend, and predictions range from 5 inches to several feet. So we will see if this will turn into Snowmaggedon 2016, or be a big bust!

I like to tackle creative projects one at a time (with the exception of when I am burnt out on one story and jump to another for relief). With much less writing time, I prefer to be able to keep the creative part of my brain in one world, one story—it makes my writing time more efficient, since my mind has chewed over the story while I’ve been running around doing life-y stuff.

However, I don’t always have the luxury of focusing on one story at a time, and this is one of those times. I am in the middle of a major revision of a YA manuscript, and my middle grade adventure manuscript has come back to me from my co-authors. So now I have two manuscripts to work on—in very different genres, very different voices.

My YA, Veritas, is a science fiction narrated from three different points of view. My MG, The Curse of the Pharaoh’s Stone, is an adventure story set in 1922 Philadelphia, narrated by a 12-year-old boy. How can I keep them straight, creatively speaking?

One thing to my benefit is the stage of the writing process for each of them. Curse is in a final proofread/copyedit before I send it out to readers. Veritas is in what I call 3rd draft stage, where I am still working on story, character, and depth. Because the stories are not in the same stage of development, I can switch gears between them a little more easily—copyediting does not call for the same creative muscle as deep revision.

The other thing I do to keep them apart in my mind is that I never work on one directly after the other. In my new work day schedule, I have writing time reserved in the morning (9-11 am), and again after my daughter goes to bed at night (9-11pm). By doing one in the morning and one in the evening, I leave enough time in between to “surface” from one world before diving into the other.

This seems to be doing the trick, although I wonder if it would be the same if I was in, say, drafting mode for both stories.

When you’re working on multiple projects at a time, how do you keep from having them bleed into one another?

Stay warm, people, and if you are in the path of the snowstorm, stay safe!

New Year, New Work Schedule

January 14, 2016 By Kerry Gans 1 Comment

Nat’l Wildlife Federation 2016 calendar*

In September, my daughter started full-day Kindergarten. Thoughts of how much work I could get done in the roughly 6 hours she was at school made me giddy. Before she’d been born, I’d been a workhorse, churning out words like crazy! This was going to be like old times.

Only it didn’t happen that way. Instead, I would find myself at the end of her school day wondering what I had spent all my time doing. In spite of my best intentions, I felt like I was getting nothing accomplished. My marketing languished, my non-writing projects ground to a halt, and worst of all my fiction writing word count dropped to zero. The only items I managed to get done regularly were my blogs—because other people counted on me to get them done.

Frustration and failure marked my days.

So I began my new year with a new approach. I scheduled my workday. It looks something like this:

Daughter goes to school, then:

45 minutes: exercise and social media/email

2 hours: writing fiction

45 minutes: exercise and lunch

1 hr, 15 minutes: marketing and social media/email

1 hr, 30 minutes: free time

Then my daughter’s back from school.

After she goes to bed: 2 hours: blog posts

You can see that I carved out specific time for my fiction writing. I had to do that, or I would fall into the same trap as before—thinking I didn’t have enough “time” to get into my world or my story. You may also note that this is the largest block of time in my workday. Priorities.

And, yes, you read that second to last entry right—I scheduled free time. This is time for me, to recharge after the workday and before my daughter gets home and we rush into the hurly burly of her after-school activities. I use this time to relax, but also to accomplish those “home projects” I have such as keeping up with the family photo albums or working on my genealogy or converting old videotapes to DVD. Having this time keeps those projects from piling up and adding pressure to me. And some days (like yesterday), I nap during that time.

My evening hours are slotted for blog posts (I usually write 2 a week), but if I’ve finished my posts for the week, then I use the time for whatever I want—fiction, projects, reading, sleeping.

So how’s this new schedule working?

Great! I set alarms on my phone, and when that rings, I am on to the next section of my day. The most exciting thing for me is that my word count has shot up. From January 4th through this post, I have written/revised 11,609 words. Even more exciting is that 8,504 of them are in my current fiction work-in-progress (WIP). I went from literally 0 words per day to an average of 1,000 words a day on my book. That’s something to celebrate!

This schedule is for weekdays. This past weekend, I had 2 days with 0 words written. I did a bit of research and reading, but got nothing written. Last year, this would have upset me. But with almost 6,300 words written (5,000 on my WIP), I could relax instead. I don’t expect that every weekend will be a goose egg for writing, but if I maintain my word count during the week, I won’t sweat it if it is.

I know there will be weekdays that I can’t adhere to this schedule. I will have errands to run and appointments to keep—in fact, last Thursday I lost the whole school day that way. But that’s okay, too, because most of the time this will work for me. This schedule keeps me focused because I know I will have a chance to “get to” everything I need or want to that day. It keeps me accountable by having those alarms going off and urging me to the next phase.

I am liking this new schedule, and the results speak for themselves.

Most of us writers are self-employed and self-motivated. What are some tricks you use to stay on track?

*Calendar photo copyrights: Penguins–copyright Phillip Colla/SeaPics.com Seal & Fox–copyright Lisa & Mike Husar/TeamHusar.com

The Best of The Goose’s Quill 2015

January 7, 2016 By Kerry Gans Leave a Comment

At the beginning of a new year, we typically look forward to the year ahead. Sometimes, though, it is helpful to look back in order to see how far you have come, and evaluate how you did in the past year. I examined my top 20 posts this past year and found that readers read a good mixture of craft and marketing, as well as some of my more personal writing-life posts. In case you missed any, here are the Best of The Goose’s Quill 2015. Enjoy!

When The Hero Is Not The Protagonist

What Big Question Do You Write To Answer?

How To Measure Growth As A Writer

Our Characters’ Other Lives

Adventures In The Land of Zal

Marketing: Doing The Things You Don’t Want To Do

Book Trailer Beginnings

The Truth About Your Productivity

Anticipation Angst and Announcement

The New To-Do List

Introverts, Extroverts, and Social Pain

The Insidious Persistence of Grief

My Biggest Takeaway: 2015 Philadelphia Writers’ Conference

Philadelphia Writers’ Conference: My Annual Oil Change

Writing Longhand: A Generational Divide

Working Vacation: Yes or No?

Empathy: Curse or Blessing?

Revising My Writing Process

Marketing Bits and Pieces

And my #1 post of 2015:

THE WITCH OF ZAL Cover Reveal and Surprise!

Thank you for reading in 2015—I hope you continue to join me in 2016!

Focus Forward

December 31, 2015 By Kerry Gans Leave a Comment

As 2015 draws to a close, I have a lot to be thankful for. My family is healthy and happy. I am comfortable in my life. And my first novel, THE WITCH OF ZAL, debuted from Evil Jester Press!

Now 2016 looms large ahead, and my focus is turning to the future. What do I want to accomplish in 2016? I decided to keep it simple and focus only on things I could control, because to do otherwise is an invitation to stress and frustration.

So what are these goals?

Create and implement a new marketing plan for THE WITCH OF ZAL.

Finish revising and polishing at least 2 of my works-in-progress.
- THE CURSE OF THE PHARAOH’S STONE is close to finished—one more go over and sending it out for proofreading. So I should easily reach this goal.
- VERITAS. This WIP is in a monster revision right now, and I feel that I have been procrastinating because of the magnitude of the task. Once I begin, I will be able to chip away, and there is no reason I can see that I should not finish this by the end of 2016.
- THE ORACLE OF DELPHI, KANSAS has been complete for a year or more, and has made the rounds of some agents. The feedback I received showed that I have some work to do on this book, but I have not yet looked to see how large a task fixing the issues would be. It is possible that this, too, can be done by the end of 2016, but I consider this a stretch goal.

When one of the manuscripts above is ready, I will send it out to agents. With luck, I will find one that connects with my work.

And that’s it!

Three things.

I can do that.

What are you looking forward to in 2016?

The Editing Puzzle

December 10, 2015 By Kerry Gans 2 Comments

My smartphone has a game on it called Move It! by AI Factory. The game is a spatial relations game, where you have pieces of various shapes on a board, and you have to move them around until you can guide a red square into the upper right hand corner. The game is fun, frustrating, and highly addictive.

Move It! is a lot like editing—at least the stage of editing where I am now. I have a WIP that I just finished putting through my critique group. I have reams of helpful suggestions that I cannot wait to get moving on—but there is so much work to be done, I find myself faced with a plethora of pieces scattered on a board of unknown dimensions.

Move It! specifies a target number—the least moves required to clear the board. Alas, my editing does not come with a target number.

My editing notes include checking for conflict in each scene, making sure Scene A leads logically to Scene B, noting my character goals for each scene. I need to follow character arcs, plot arcs, goal arcs. I have 3 POV characters, so I plan to separate their scenes out and listen to voice, check for character consistency, and make sure they are three-dimensional.

I also want to check continuity, symbolism, and rhythm. My ending needs some help, and the entire book needs a language overhaul because it sounds too middle grade and it’s YA. And of course there’s the nitty gritty of grammar, punctuation, and formatting.

Even with the target number, your game can run away with you. I had one game with a target of 72 moves and ended up with 265. I’m hoping to avoid that problem while editing, but you never know because when you change one story piece that changes them all.

At this moment, I am looking at the board, wondering how I can move those manuscript pieces in the most efficient way to get my book to the final position. I’m a bit overwhelmed and unsure where to start.

How you begin in Move It! sets you up for success or failure. A false start will get you to 265*. A good start narrows your available moves until only the successful path is left open to you.

Let’s hope I choose the right starting move with my manuscript.

How do you organize a huge editing project like this?

*My current score on that target 72 game is 76.

Our Characters’ Other Lives

December 3, 2015 By Kerry Gans 2 Comments

Today was Parent Visitation Day at my daughter’s school. We got a peek into this world she inhabits—a world we know very little about. The older my daughter gets, the more of her life happens out of our view, out of our sight. It’s her “other life.”

So she has this other life, this “offstage” life as it were, and what happens there impacts how she acts when I pick her up—when she is back “onstage.” If she had a good day, she will be happy and cheerful. If something is bothering her about school, she will be upset or pensive.

The same holds true for the characters in our stories. While our POV characters are rarely offstage, many of the secondary characters are. And of course any “walk-on” or “cameo” characters also enter our story having come from their own offstage life.

What happens to them while they are offstage is important. It will impact how they interact with the main character. A secondary character who was up all night with a screaming baby will react to a situation differently than one who had a good night’s sleep. And if you have a secondary character who is secretly working against the protagonist, what they do while offstage is vitally important.

Yet I find that I often do not consider my secondary character’s other lives when I write. They flit in and out of the story with just the right attitude, the needed info, fulfilling whatever need I have to fulfill. They are often too perfect in that way. And yet I find myself being lazy because it takes too long to visualize what they’re doing when they’re offstage. I mean, I’m juggling enough just trying to deal with the main character and the villain, right?

Wrong. I need to consider my other characters’ offstage lives more. Why? For a few of reasons. First, because it deepens their characters. I get to know them better, and so can write them with more nuance. Second, because it’s more realistic—life happens to people even when you’re not there to witness it. And third, because it can add tension to your story, especially in scenes where there is not much external tension or conflict.

After all, your secondary character could be having coffee withdrawal, and therefore be unlikely to follow the protagonist on a half-baked adventure. Or they could be coffee-stoked, and therefore they will follow the protagonist on that very same half-baked adventure simply because they can’t sit still. A variable as small as that can make a big difference in how a scene goes.

My friend Keith Strunk once said that even if your character is only borrowing a cup of sugar, there needs to be a motivation behind it (he’s an actor, can you tell?). What happened to that character before he showed up asking for the cup of sugar will determine how he reacts when you tell him that you have no sugar. If he had a bad day, he will react poorly. If he had a good day, he will react indifferently.

As a writer, which sugar-borrower would you want in your story? The one that bursts into tears or becomes irate when you have no sugar, or the one that shrugs and goes home to quietly eat the chocolate chips straight out of the bag? I know which one I’d want.

Do you consider your characters’ other lives when you write? How do you keep track of them all?

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