The Writing Life Archives - Page 44 of 62

Slogging Through

October 10, 2013 By Kerry Gans Leave a Comment

Last week I discussed the “black moment” of writing, and Greg Frost commented that author Maureen F. McHugh said that the dark moment was followed by “slogging.” Well, my black moment has passed, and I am thoroughly in the midst of the slog.

My first 7 chapters needed the most revision. Luckily, my husband and preschooler went away for the weekend, so I was forced to move past my dark moment and jump into editing with both feet. No time to wallow in self-pity when you have childless writing time available!

Thus the slog began.

I have been slogging ever since, plowing though a chapter at a time, making sure everything fits with the revised first 7 chapters, as well as deleting repetition (a big one for me) and unneeded inner monologue (another biggie for me). I also need to deepen some setting and make my protagonist’s reactions a little more relateable in spots. So, a long way to go (238 pages as of this writing).

The good news is, having taken the plunge with those first chapters and wrestling them into shape in a 10-hour writing marathon, the slog is getting easier. It’s less like plodding through waist-deep mud and more like wading along the edge of the ocean. My feet are getting wet, sometimes up to my knees, and the water pushes and pulls at me, but it’s more pleasant than torturous. Finishing those first 7 chapters has made the revision of the rest of the book much clearer. I can see the focus of each scene better now, see why it works or doesn’t, and how to make it forward the plot strongly.

So I made it through the black moment and am making progress on the slog. And at the end of it all, I will have a stronger, more marketable product. But most of all, I will have completed the work to the best of my ability–and that is a victory in itself.

Where are you in your project? Slogging or soaring?

The “Black Moment” of the Writing Process

October 3, 2013 By Kerry Gans 7 Comments

My friend Jerry Waxler likened the writing of a book to the Hero’s Journey. As most of you know, one of the stages of the Hero’s Journey is the black moment or dark moment–that moment in the story where all seems lost and hope is gone. I think Jerry is on to something with his analogy, because I have experienced a black moment in the writing process just recently.

Over the weekend, I got my YA novel back from my developmental editor, the wonderful Kathryn Craft. I knew I was in for a lot of work, but I didn’t mind because I am one of those writers who actually enjoys revision. I did not have a chance to look at Kathryn’s report over the weekend, so I waited until Monday.

Monday was a bad day to look at the report. My daughter had gotten me up before 6 AM, meaning I was running on about 4.5 hours sleep. That’s never good for morale. And I was in a bad mood for other reasons that had nothing to do with writing. So when I read Kathryn’s report, my eyes filled with tears and I said, “This rewrite is never going to happen. I can’t do this.”

The whole rest of the day I struggled with defeat. Why was I even trying? Why bother? No one really cares if I ever write another word or not. I’m not writing anything deep and meaningful. I’m not going to change anyone’s world.

I have been here before, crushed by the knowledge that my very best effort still is not anywhere near as good as it needs to be–anywhere near where I want it to be. On good days, this is what I love about writing–the knowledge that there is always more to learn, the excitement of scaling the next mountain, reaching the next plateau. On bad days, all I see is a debris pile that used to be my manuscript, and the toil involved in clearing the rubble seems beyond my strength.

I am slowly coming out of the overwhelmed funk. Time helps. Being stubborn (ahem, persistent) helps. Chocolate helps. Being addicted to writing helps. But what really helps is that Kathryn is not only a fabulous editor but an enthusiastic cheerleader, who when I emailed her in a panic told me that I could do it and it would all come clear.

Writing can be lonely, and facing a huge rewrite can be demoralizing. Like our protagonists in their blackest moment, it is our friends who help us find the strength to push through the darkness and continue the journey.

It’s not Thanksgiving yet, but I am thankful for my fellow writers-in-arms. Without them, I would not be where I am, and I certainly would not still be moving forward.

How about you? Do you hit “black moments” in your process? How do you work through them?

Writing Process Relativity

September 26, 2013 By Kerry Gans 2 Comments

Last week I wrote about how time is relative. Specifically, I noted that I can accomplish about 4 times as much work in a child-free hour as a child-full hour. I’ve since noticed that the writing process itself is subject to the time-warping effects of relativity. Some parts fly past, some drag–even if they take exactly the same amount of real time.

I don’t do much in the way of outlining and prewriting (although I am trying to do a little more with my latest WIP), so that doesn’t take me too long. I think if I tried detailed outlining I would find the process tedious and draining, which I why I steer clear. While I admire the authors who can write a scene-by-scene outline, I just cannot get the passion for basically writing the book before I write the book. If I tried, that would be a part of the process that would seem to move at a snail’s pace for me.

Some writers say the first draft drags for them. For me, the first draft is fits and starts. Some days the words flow so fast I lose track of time, I am so immersed in the story. Other days the words don’t come and every time I look at the clock it seems the hands haven’t moved. But even though this is one of the physically longer time frames in the process, it does not move slowly for me. I tend to make steady progress, so I feel good about it.

The revision is where time relativity really can come into play. I find large-scale revisions such as moving scenes, deleting scenes, writing new scenes or new parts of scenes to move quickly. I have more of a big-picture brain, so I enjoy this part of the process a great deal. Probably why it seems to go quickly for me.

It’s the small-scale edits that drag for me. The typos and the grammar and the punctuation and the sentence-level structure. Grammar-type issues such as punctuation have never been my strong suit, and, although I am learning, it is still a struggle. The reading the book out loud edit always takes a long time, but it is completely necessary for me. One time I found that my global search-and-replace had failed to change my protagonist’s name in 4 different places. I never would have caught that without reading out loud. My mind, when reading silently, had inserted the correct name all the previous times I had read it–and I was on the 7th major revision at that point!

I don’t know about you, but when I get to the revision stage, I make a list of all the things I need to do. For a while, this list grows instead of shrinks, since often changing one thing will lead to more changes further downstream. Then the list seems to stall, as if I cannot check off anything no matter how hard I work. But then a miracle of relativity happens, and one day I look at my list and there’s only one or two things on it! I experienced that with the non-fiction genealogy project I am working on for my family. Just this weekend I looked at what had been a very long list, and realized I was on the second-to-last thing! What a thrilling moment to finally see the light at the end of the tunnel.

How about you? Which parts of the writing process fly for you, and which are like pulling teeth?

Time is Relative

September 19, 2013 By Kerry Gans Leave a Comment

Don’t panic! I’m not going to attempt to explain Einstein’s theory of relativity and how it applies to time. But I think we all know that time, or at least our perception of time, can vary a great deal. To a child, a week seems like a year, while to an adult a year passes in the blink of an eye. An hour at work can feel like a day, while an hour spent doing something you love seems like a minute. So we all understand intuitively what we mean when we say that time is relative, even if we can’t explain the physics of time.

I mentioned in an earlier post that I now have about 10 hours a week child-free. The first week I sort of loafed through those 10 hours, enjoying them and doing what I wanted. But even by the end of the first week, a pattern had started to form.

I write in the library when my daughter is at school. The problem is that the library doesn’t open until about an hour after I drop her off most days (Monday is the exception–they open early that day). So I’ve gotten into the habit, now that it’s cooler and I won’t sweat or stink, of walking several thousand steps around the grounds while waiting for them to open. I use this time to think about the things I am going to do once I sit down to work. For instance, much of this blog post was written in my head as I walked.

Then I sit in my car or at the tables in front of the library (depending on weather) and fire up my laptop. My laptop battery won’t last the full hour, so it’s just as well I walk for some of the time. Exercise is important, too! Then I work on whatever I need to until the library opens, when I move the writing party inside and can plug in.

My problem has been in planning what to do each day. I always do have a plan of action, but it always turns out to be woefully inadequate to the amount of time available–I often run out of planned things to do long before the two hours is up. Because, see, time is relative–a child-free hour is massively more productive than a child-full hour. But after a summer of writing catch-as-catch-can, it is hard to remember just how much work can be done when you’re not constantly being interrupted!

Almost 4 times as much work.

That’s a lot.

I need to get better at planning what I’m going to work on, because there is no doubt that when I have a focus or a path firmly in mind when I sit down, I write faster and better and more than if I sit and stare and wonder what to do next. This goes for fiction as well as non-fiction. If I know what chapters I plan to work on, I can really think them through the night before, the morning of, and while I’m walking, so I can sit down and really write, instead of thinking. Thus getting the most out of my concentrated writing time.

So, to be at my most productive, I have to realign my brain to Non-Parental Standard Time when I plan my child-free writing hours. And then switch back to Parental Sanity Savings Time once I pick up Preschooler.

I sure hope I can avoid the jet lag.

What makes time fly (or drag) for you?

Frittering Time

September 12, 2013 By Kerry Gans 5 Comments

My daughter went back to school this week. Yay! I have magically acquired 10 child-free hours a week in which to work. It’s like Christmas in September.

It’s not all fun and games, however–the new schedule requires adjustment. For one thing, we need to get up at 7 AM–not terribly early by most standards, but my body does not like it. I have always noticed a huge difference in how I feel just getting up at 8 versus 7. And I mean with the same number of hours of sleep. For example, I am much more awake with 6 hours of sleep (my usual) getting up at 8 than I am with 6 hours and getting up at 7. That’s just the way I am wired.

How I wake up is another factor. I am either A) jerked out of a deep sleep by my alarm, which I swear erodes years off my life, or B) awake around 6 AM and then never go back to sleep because I know I have to get up in an hour. Neither is ideal, and no doubt contributes to my tiredness during the day.

But the main adjustment I need to make is that I actually have more work time. So I need to actually WORK during that time. This first week, with this abundance of time, I find myself frittering my work time. I think, “Oh, I have plenty of time.” and then spend just a few more minutes online, or playing an extra game of Solitaire, or reading just one more chapter, or diverting time to another hobby (or sometimes even cleaning the house). And suddenly I find I have gotten no more work done with this extra time available than when I did not have it.

Now, we all need to have some leisure time to recharge, so spending a little of this extra time reading or on a hobby (or–gasp–sleeping!) can in the long run be a productive use of time, in that it keeps me from burning out. But to reach the goals I have set for myself this year, I need to buckle down and use 80% of this “found time” to forward my work. And I will.

Any time my work time fluctuates wildly, either getting more or getting less, it takes a week or so to adjust my mindset to match. So for this week, I am letting myself play a little, as long as my must-do work gets done. Next week the focus will return, and hopefully I will have adjusted to the sleep schedule as well.

10 child-free hours a week. You can conquer the world with that much free time.

How about you? Do you have trouble being productive when you suddenly have a great deal of free time?

Smashword-ing: Another step forward

September 5, 2013 By Kerry Gans 2 Comments

This past week I took another small step up the writing career ladder. I posted a short story, TO LIGHT AND GUARD, for sale on Smashwords. I am now a millionaire and can retire.

Okay, I drifted off into fantasy for a minute there.

Seriously, this seemingly minor step of posting a short story for sale is a big step in the psychological progression of my career. I have been published, but never for pay. So the moment I sold my first copy of this story, I became a professional author, because someone purchased something I wrote. (Definitions of “professional author” vary from writer to writer–this is mine.)

Celebrate!

Posting to Smashwords was painstaking but not technically difficult–at least, not for a geek like me. If you find it too hard to follow their incredibly thorough Style Guide, they will provide you with a list of people you can pay to format your book. Basically, what Smashwords needs is a file with all the auto-formatting stripped away, then selective formatting put back in strategically. Like I said, painstaking, but not terribly hard.

So now my story is up on Smashwords in all formats. It has not yet been distributed to all other channels, such as Sony and Apple, but should be this week sometime. Amazon is another issue altogether. Apparently, Smashwords has to manually upload their files into Amazon, which as you can imagine takes a lot of time. As a result, Smashwords requires $2,000 in sales on their site/other distributors before they will upload your book to Amazon. So unless 2,000 of my blog readers are willing to pony up the $0.99 for the book to get me there, I will need to look into how to post my story to Amazon separately.

I am extremely excited to have taken this step in my career. I am using this short story as a learning experience (as well as hoping for some sales!) both technically and marketing-wise. I am having fun with it and hoping to have other short stories to join it eventually.

A small step, perhaps. But a long journey is accomplished one step at a time.

What steps (small or large) are you celebrating in your career right now?

A New Journey

August 29, 2013 By Kerry Gans 4 Comments

I wrote several weeks ago about a new novel that came to life in my head—the first new novel in more than 3 years. Well, this week I put pen to paper on this new Work In Progress (WIP). Just a few paragraphs, nothing mind-blowing. But it felt really, really good to start on a new journey.

I’m trying something a little different with my process this time: I’m trying to think more before I write. Not necessarily plot more, but spend more time in the pre-writing stage, getting to know my characters, their motivations, their world. To have more of the subtext in place in my head before I write.

My main reason for this is because I want to try to get my characters stronger earlier in the writing process. My biggest struggle of late is to make my characters “real” to the reader. It takes a great deal of revision to layer and nuance characters who were flat in the beginning, and even then it doesn’t always work. Some things are easier if you get them on a good footing from the beginning.

Another reason for the pre-writing is so I can hopefully cut down on the number of revisions I go through before my story is ready to go out. I love the revision process, but the more depth and detail and structure I can have in place in the first draft, the less revising it will take to get it in there later. My first drafts tend to be quite underwritten. While I think that will not change too much, I am hopeful that more of what is there will be valuable, and less will be dross to be thrown away completely.

As I said in the beginning, this does not mean I intend to plot every scene, as some people do. I cannot work that way. However, I do intend to plot the high points of the action and the character arcs—from there I can play connect-the-dots as I write, and let the story figure out how to get from point A to point B. My intention is to improve my writing speed by having some idea where I am going as I write, rather than simply meandering all over the place. Some meandering is necessary to my writing, but a little more control will not hurt.

So my new journey with my new WIP has begun, and I am trying a few different approaches to try and hone my process. A long road remains ahead—and what a wonderful adventure it will be!

The Impatient Patient

August 22, 2013 By Kerry Gans 4 Comments

I don’t know about you, but I am terrible at being ill or injured. It’s not so much the pain and discomfort that gets me, it’s the mental aspect of being thrown totally off your game. Illness or injury not only impacts your physical abilities to do things, but it messes with your mind and spirit as well.

I am an impatient patient. I find that healing takes much longer than I think it should. Most of the time, my mind and spirit have recovered long before my body does, and I chafe at the restraints of my condition.

I had surgery a little over a week ago (nothing serious), and I had great plans for how I would spend my recuperation. Editing and writing, mostly. Care to guess how closely I followed my plan?

You guessed it – not at all.

The day of my surgery lasted longer than expected. The day after I could do little but sleep. I think it was the first day of my life that I can honestly remember doing literally NOTHING. The next two days were better, but I still slept a lot—everything exhausted me.

I am finally feeling more myself, but perhaps that is the worst time of all for me. I FEEL like I CAN do all these things…but I can’t. Physically I am still in some pain, and creatively I am still drained and unable to focus. So what’s an impatient patient to do?

Go with the flow.

I have managed to catch up on all the back issues of my magazines. I also have read 8 Newbery Award books in a little over a week. I’ve cruised the net, learned more about my new coin collecting hobby, written a couple of blog posts and stayed on top of social media. So not unproductive time—just not what I had planned.

Am I upset that I ended up not following my plan? Not really. I know that I could not have done good work if I had tried. And the things I have done needed doing, and were better suited for my condition. Having cleared the decks of those things, I will be able to focus more fully on the creative writing when I get my mojo back.

Sometimes the key to finding contentment in life is not sticking to your plan, but learning to adjust your goals to find success in the moment (a topic I will discuss more in depth on Tuesday over at The Author Chronicles).

How about you? Are you, too, an impatient patient, and how do you deal with times when your body betrays you?

Tales from Silver Lands by Charles J. Finger

August 15, 2013 By Kerry Gans Leave a Comment

I am a firm believer that, at bottom, people are more similar than they are different. The cultural differences we have grown into due to geography and environment and years of local traditions are, in the main, things we have learned. Most people want the same things—to live in peace, to have enough to eat and drink, to have a decent place to live, and for their families to be happy and healthy.

I might have mentioned that I am reading my way through the Newbery Award winners (follow my progress on Goodreads). I just finished Charles J. Finger’s Tales from Silver Lands, which is a collection of Native Indian tales from South America. The book won the Newbery in 1925.

The stories within fall into two broad categories: “creation myths” that explain how a place or a landmark or an animal came to be, or “hero myths” where a hero takes on evil and dispatches it with his virtuous power.

In spite of being tales from a civilization so far removed from my own, the tales were relatable and familiar. Of course, Joseph Campbell’s “Hero’s Journey” was in evidence. But the basic tenets—the urge to explain the mysteries of the world and that good will overpower evil—are universal.

Like many good books, this one transported me to a cultural time and place vastly unfamiliar—yet within it I found people just like us.

Renaissance: Reviving my Muse

August 8, 2013 By Kerry Gans 2 Comments

I’ve written before about the creative slump I’ve been in since my child was born 3 years ago. All the long-form works I’ve put out since then have been projects I began before her birth. In most cases, the entire first draft had been done prior to her arrival.

Truthfully, the complete lack of creative drive and new ideas scared me. It felt like something inside me had died, and that’s a pretty permanent feeling. I had this secret fear that I would never have another idea for any other novel for the rest of my life. But I slogged along, hoping that somehow the spark would rekindle.

I did all I could to stoke the fire. I took workshops, I went to conferences, I blogged, I read, I began writing short stories, I hung out with really cool fellow writers. I kept writing—even if it wasn’t very good. Most of the time I felt like I was getting nowhere really, really fast.

But then a strange thing happened. I went to the 2013 Philadelphia Writer’s Conference—and came away with stirrings I hadn’t felt in close to 3 years. Whispers of the Muse. Sparks. Nothing concrete, but a sign that all hope was not lost.

The fire burst forth in full conflagration just a few weeks ago. I had a long day of driving ahead of me. Usually, I love this alone time and don’t even turn on the radio. With a curious 3-year-old around, quiet is something I rarely have, so I find solo drives soothing. But with over 4 hours on the road, I knew I wanted some music this time.

So I stocked the CD player with songs I hadn’t listened to in years—songs that have a strong writing connotation for me. Songs that evoke particular stories I’ve written, characters I’ve created, and worlds I’ve imagined. Songs that take me back to a time long before marriage and child, and even before adulthood. A time when creativity geysered out of my brain.

And a new novel was born.

By the time I got home, the characters, the world, the backstory—all of it—glowed there in my mind, longing to break free. I jotted notes and reveled in the whirling dance. Although I can’t jump in with both feet right now (trying to finish another project on a deadline), my shiny new object is waiting for me like a reward. Just knowing it is there makes me giddy.

This new novel has a long way to go before it becomes anything, but I have not been in this stage of creation for so long that I had forgotten the elation of it. While I am certain the sleep deprivation and motherhood will make my creative process less than smooth, I am once more standing at the start of a new adventure.

And it feels amazing.

Have you ever lost your writing mojo? How did you get it back?

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