 One of the most exciting aspects of writing, for me, is the process of discovery. I’ve found myriad layers of discovery from finding what’s in my imagination, discovering the motivations and personality traits of my characters, and most important, self-discovery.
As I’ve made the commitment to be more intentional about my writing over the last year, I’ve been learning what does and doesn’t work for me in the writing process. My first completed novel was one I had been working on half-heartedly for nearly ten years. I finally decided about a year ago to buckle down and finish it, spending a month rewriting and re-charting the 60,000 some-odd words I’d already produced, then finishing the first draft in about a month or so.
What was interesting about the process was how I unconsciously chose to approach the manual aspect of writing—good old paper and pencil. I purchased a five-subject spiral notebook, and went to work a few hours each day writing the remaining manuscript by hand, finishing it sometime in early October.
There’s a point to this story, so hang with me. The remainder of October was spent typing the hand-written manuscript into my computer, and though it was the extra step, it really became something of a blessing. During the transcription process, I was able to essentially do the first round of editing, so in the long run the time was not wasted.
When November came around, I was done with the transcription, and NaNoWriMo was under way. I had downloaded the trial version of Scrivener, determined to give it a real run for the money since I could purchase it at half price after winning NaNo. So here I was, suddenly shifting from writing a first draft by hand to writing on my laptop. Granted, I didn’t know if I could keep the minimum pace necessary to complete 50,000 words in 30 days writing my hand, but I suspect in hindsight I would have.
In fact, I now have suspicions I would have well exceeded the word count.
You see, I’ve since completed that NaNo novel, and as I’ve been going back to do a first round of revision, I’m finding I don’t like the voice of the novel as well as my hand-written one. Even after NaNo was over, and the pressure to produce a minimum word count was gone, I continued forging ahead on the laptop. I fell in love with Scrivener and used it daily to complete the first draft.
In the last couple of weeks, I’ve taken up plotting a new novel, and a short story as well. Without thinking about it, I’ve found myself with pencil and paper in hand, writing out the plots and notes to these stories by hand. I’m enjoying the process so much more than when sitting on the couch with my laptop, and I’m finding myself much less easily distracted. The whole experience feels more organic and natural to me, and I know I’m producing a better first draft.
NaNo is approaching, and I’m considering doing it by hand. Since I can enter a word count number of my own without using the official word counter, I’m thinking I can just figure out how many words per hand-written page I average and use that as a guide for my daily goal and word count. Sure, I’ll have to type it all up later, but I think I’ll come out with a much tighter manuscript in the end.
 With a name like Chaotic Shiny a website’s gotta be good right?
I have to thank Lynn Viehl at Paperback Writer for posting a bunch of links to Chaotic Shiny’s generators. I’ve already put one of them to good use.
I’m sure many of you have used name generators before—and this site has those—but the real beauty here is the sheer number of generators I’ve never seen anywhere else.
The Civilization Generator helped me flesh out an idea for the central culture of a novel I hope to write in the next year or so. You’ll find generators for superstitions, mottos, laws, languages, and much more.
I highly recommend you bookmark Chaotic Shiny.
 I’ve already made mention of how good I think James Scott Bell’s The Art of War for Writers is, but I’d like to put one of its recommendations into practice. To do so, I’m putting this up for public record.
Chapter 4 of the book talks about discipline as the first step toward victory. One area of discipline is to set writing goals and stick to them. I’ve already discovered this for myself, but in terms of writing there is a further piece of advice which Bell learned from Anthony Trollope.
Write a quota of words every week.
Rather than shoehorning a daily writing goal into a schedule which doesn’t always work out as planned, set a weekly quota based on six days of writing per week. That way, if writing one day goes awry, you can make it up on another day, plus have an extra day for making it up if absolutely necessary.
I still keep a daily record of the number of words I write, but my goal has shifted to a weekly rather than daily quota. Here are the quotas I’m setting for myself, broken up into two separate sets of circumstances.
While Working on Revisions:
- Weekly word quota: 8,000 words (average 1,333 words per day, six days a week)
- Weekly revision quota: 6 chapters (average 1 chapter per day, six days a week)
- Weekly reading quota: 6 chapters (average 1 chapter per day, six days a week; these are writing improvement books, not reading for pleasure)
- Weekly blogging quota: 3 posts per week minimum
While Not Working on Revisions:
- Weekly word quota: 9,000 words (average 1,500 words per day, six days a week)
- Weekly revision quota: 6 chapters (average 1 chapter per day, six days a week)
- Weekly reading quota: 6 chapters (average 1 chapter per day, six days a week)
- Weekly blogging quota: 3 posts per week minimum
Observations
- The pace of writing new content is only slightly reduced during revision work times. I’ll admit the revision/editing process is one I’ve not fully experienced before, so I may have to come back and adjust some quotas there. I finished my first novel just before NaNoWriMo started, and I set it aside until I finished my second novel just over this last weekend. I now have two 150,000+ word novels ready for revisions.
- I won’t beat myself up if I don’t reach the daily average. I used to feel bad about not making the daily goal, but since switching to this method, I’m finding myself surpassing the weekly quota by one to two thousands words fairly easily.
- I wonder if this method will work during NaNoWriMo? At first glance, it looks like it would, making the weekly goal 11,667 words per week. The pace during NaNo is frenzied anyway, but spreading it out over a week makes it seem more manageable. I’m concerned, however, that it takes away one of the largest motivating factors of the event—the daily pressure to produce.
- How does the brainstorming and planning of new stories work into all this? I’ve always wondered how other authors deal with the planning stages of their works? Are they still writing something everyday in addition to brainstorming, or do they count whatever notes they put down as counting toward a word count? Can anyone comment on this?
How do you set quotas for yourself? What methods or advice can you share that has helped you reach your writing goals.
 I just got The Art of War for Writers by James Scott Bell in the mail yesterday. I haven’t had a chance to get very far into it, but I know it’s going to be good.
How do I know? Well, here’s a simple paragraph from the introduction. Tell me this doesn’t sell the book.
“Because I am, like you, a writer. We understand each other. We are not like other people. We are, in fact, pitiable wretches.”
If those lines don’t resonate with you, you’re probably not a writer.
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 If you are a frequent reader of agent and editor blogs like I am, much of the information below is old news. If, by some chance, you are just starting out and trying to figure out what a query letter is, and how to promote yourself and your writing, here are some great, down-to-the-basics posts written over the last couple of days.
The Query by Natalie Whipple
What is reasonable in a book contract? by Chip McGregor
7 Blogs Every Author Should Follow at Author Tech Tips
Terms to Know: Right of First Refusal at Pimp My Novel
Will I Get Published Any Other Way? at How Publishing Really Works
Infographic: The Mechanics of Book Publishing at io9
Happy writing!
 Perhaps the most beneficial practice I’ve undertaken lately is that of timed writing sprints with my kids. I think I’ve mentioned we recently purchased netbooks for my two older children, a decision made mainly because of their desire to write stories. As a way of encouraging them and being involved in their creativity, I started doing writing sprints with them on fairly regular basis.
This all started back during NaNoWriMo when I noticed their official Twitter stream was encouraging mass participation in writing sprints. I got involved in a few, and immediately discovered the benefits. My daughter was participating as well, and so I decided to challenge her to our own writing sprints in house, and found it to be our most productive days during the month.
What’s a writing sprint? Take a timer, set it to count down for a predetermined length of time—usually between 15 and 30 minutes—and write like mad until the buzzer goes off. That’s it! Nothing profound.
Why do writing sprints? Here are a few things I’ve learned.
- Brings Focus: There’s nothing like an arbitrary time constraint to make you put butt in chair and start typing. That email you were worried about checking? No time. Those pretty birds singing outside your window calling for your attention? No time. The clock is ticking, and you’re trying to get words on the screen before the timer goes off.
- Permission to Write Crap: For me, one of my worst habits is forgetting the first draft is not the final revision. Sometimes I get so bogged down on word choice and grammar that I lose my train of thought. The story gets lost because of over-thinking, but the story is the whole point of writing in the first place. When you’ve only got 20 minutes to put words on the page, the crap flows much more easily. It can always be cleaned up later.
- Mutes the Internal Editor: Related to crap writing, when there’s a severely limited timeframe, the dreaded internal editor seems easy to ignore. Perhaps he suddenly begins cheering for you rather than criticizing you because he knows his success is actually tied to yours. He’ll get back to you during the revision stage.
- Isolation and Community: Writing sprints can be done alone, but they’re a whole lot of fun when done with others. There’s something about a little friendly competition that sharpens focus. Word counts go up, and even the story itself seems more lively.
- Bursts through Writer’s Block: The timer’s counting down, who’s got time for writer’s block?
Try sprints for yourself, and see if they don’t breathe vitality into your writing routine.
Also, for you fellow Mac users out there, here’s a pair of utilities I use to help do sprints properly.
 Freedom, allows you to kill the wireless networking on your MacBook or other computer for a pre-determined amount of time. It keeps you from distracting yourself by checking email, or doing “online research.” EDIT: I just learned there is also a Windows edition of this utility, but it costs $10. There is a free version of the Mac edition.
 Timer Utility does exactly what you need it to do and no more. Set it for an amount of time, hit start, and watch it count down. You can choose from a variety of sounds for your buzzer, or choose a built-in system tone. I like to keep it floating above my fullscreen Scrivener. Seeing the thing counting down out of the corner of my eye motivates me to keep on typing.
Happy writing!
 Sometimes I think I’m too worried about whether I’m worried enough about my writing. Some of you know what I mean. The constant questions the internal editor makes you ask yourself.
“Is this story good enough? Do I measure up as a writer? Is this story interesting enough? Was the query I just sent my best effort? Did it convey the proper sense of voice while evidencing plot, conflict, and character?”
The list goes on and on.
I’ve read several agent’s blogs lately where there seems to be an increasing influx of poorly crafted queries. I’m sure most of this is due to the internet, and the subsequent ease of firing off a quick email rather than sitting down to craft a letter by hand before typing it up on stationery. There’s no longer a significant cost of time and materials to consider. Even so, there has always been a small percentage of so-called writers whose queries just seem to be lazily thrown together.
Because they didn’t worry enough.
Somehow, these rogue query writers got it into their heads that simply writing up a short synopsis of their story and firing off multiple carbon copies to a myriad of agents is somehow going to land them a contract. They’ve done no work to learn the agents name, or what genres they will and will not represent.
A query is indicative of the writer’s product. If a writer doesn’t care enough to do a little research about proper queries, it’s likely their prose suffers from the same laziness. Why would an agent waste their time on such an author?
At the same time, I’ve come across those who constantly worry about getting the query just so, and end up talking themselves into inaction. They are so worried they’re about to do something wrong and wind up offending an agent in some way, permanently dashing any hopes of ever being published.
Get over it.
Have enough care to make a concerted effort, but don’t let the worry overwhelm you into a state of constant worry. Do your best to make it right, and the agent will notice, even if they decide not to take you on as a client.
Filed Under (writing, writing tips) by J. Mark Miller on 05-12-2009
One of the secrets I’ve learned about writing is to make it a habit. I’ve finally learned to make an effort to write every day. I may not get to my main work in progress, but still put forth the effort to write something every day. My writing for the day may be something as simple as a blog post, writing an entire chapter on my novel, writing a short story or piece of flash fiction, or simply a few paragraphs of free writing.
The biggest benefits of making writing a daily habit is how it helps overcome writer’s block. Many writers use writing prompts to help them, but there’s another type of prompt I really enjoy, using images.
Take an image—be it a painting or a photograph—and begin asking yourself questions. Here are a few examples.
 What happened to this old cathedral? Who are these visitors to the site? What are they doing there? What kind of god was worshiped here? Are these visitors members of some sort of religious order who once presided here, or are they up to no good?
Maybe they are thieves who have just stolen some sort of holy relic of power. Perhaps they’ve just competed a yearly pilgrimage to the shrine, praying to their god for restoration of the temple and a return of his presence to the world.
Maybe this place is not a temple at all, but the ruins of a palace. Who’s to say this is even some kind of fantasy setting as I’ve assumed. Maybe these are the ruins of an old cathedral after a bombing run by the Germans during WW2. It could be in the far flung future near the end of mankind’s war against an insurmountable alien force.
Who’s inside this ship? Are they invaders? Is that landscape below Earth?
Perhaps its a troop transport bringing lucky soldiers home from the war. Maybe it’s a big luxury liner full of passengers embarking on a cruise to the rings of Saturn.
Do I have it all wrong and what we see is not a manned ship of any kind, but rather a doomsday device sent against an overwhelming aggressor in a last ditch attempt to win a centuries long war. Possibly it’s a survey probe looking for a new home for a people whose planet was overrun by a virulent fungus which turns the populace into zombies.
Is it from the future? The past? An alternate reality altogether?
Maybe it’s simply a painting hanging in a museum. Why is it there? Is it a piece depicting a significant historical event? Is it just a piece of art?
Do you see the possibilities? I’m sure you could ask many of your own questions at this point. Using images as a writing prompt means you ask yourself those questions, and then seek to answer them in your writing. One of the best parts of using an image for a prompt is that it may force you to break away from the genre in which you commonly write. I cheated a little bit and picked images leaning toward speculative fiction—because that’s what I write. To really push the boundaries, I might choose a very well known image and freewrite from there.
Whatever you choose to do, don’t give up
Happy writing.
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