Writing vs. margaritas

I am temporarily (and very happily!) in between jobs, which means I have a lot of extra writing time!

This is the first time I’ve had this much time off since I got focused on my writing, and it’s like a daydream come true. The dream, of course, would be to be able to do this full time and not have to have a job at all. 🙂 But this brief interlude is awfully nice nonetheless!

It’s a challenge to treat writing like a job. Sure, there are plenty of writers who get up at 5am and write before going to work (I’m not one of them…), or who spend their weekends writing, and all that. The hard part is when you’re trying to stay focused and a friend invites you to do something when you were planning on writing. That can be okay, but suppose multiple friends invite you out, and you have a few appointments, and the weeds are getting a nice head start in the garden, etc. All of a sudden your writing time gets whittled away to a tiny portion of your week.

Sure, right now I have a lot of free time. 🙂 But I ran into this last fall when I didn’t, and it was a great lesson in how to set boundaries and structure my time. I’m glad I put thought into this when I was still at my last day job. Doing so made me much more cognizant of this issue and how I wanted to handle it.

In an episode of The Creative Penn podcast last fall, Joanna Penn talked about how she schedules time to write and sticks to her schedule, even if something else comes up. This really resonated with me at the time. When I listened to that episode I was trying to focus super hard on my novel, but when a friend would invite me to do something I’d feel conflicted.

We all stick with our work obligations. How often do you skip out on a meeting at the office because someone invited you out for margaritas? Okay, maybe sometimes. 🙂 But not if you had a deadline, right? So when I was writing in the evenings and on weekends and I’d get invited to multiple social events in one week, I found myself torn. I love spending time with my friends, but if I booked myself for three evenings in one week that meant three days where I knew I’d get zero writing done. Plus my writing group meets every other week, so while that is writing-related and technically counts, it’s also another day where I know I won’t have any actual writing time. And Jasper’s agility classes have started up again, so that’s yet another evening that’s booked.

None of this would be a big deal if I wanted to dabble in writing, but I don’t want to be a dabbler. I did that for plenty of years, for a variety of reasons, and that was fine then – but it’s not fine now. I love writing more than any job I’ve ever had. I’m excited about getting stories out of my head and onto paper. So I’m working super hard and prioritizing. And yes, I may have a margarita occasionally… But I’m also setting goals and working super hard to achieve them.

Before I go back to work next month I’m going to finish the novel, tidy up a bunch of short stories and send them out, submit another short story to a writing competition, and complete at least the second draft of a novella. I’m taking three writing classes, am watching several other video training series, and am reading several books/documents on writing and publishing. I start a third writing class in May. I also have a list of administrative tasks, like setting up an iBooks account, and I’ll make progress on those. And before the end of April I’m going to start sending out a newsletter. I plan to send it out quarterly, and in each issue I will provide a password/link to a page on my website where I’ll post a free short story. I will be drinking margaritas this Friday, but I’ll have accomplished a lot by then!

And, of course, I will have fun with Jasper and Rosie every single day. 🙂

Damp but happy.
Damp but happy.

Springtime is for digging

We’ve had a pretty warm winter, but even with temperatures in the 70s it hadn’t felt like spring until this past week. The crocuses and grape hyacinths are blooming, my herbs are coming back to life (although we’ll have to see about the rosemary), and my garden is rapidly filling with grass and an invasive plant that masquerades as a flower but really wants to take over the world. Let the battle begin!

There’s an ongoing battle with my novel as well, but it’s a much more pleasant one than my yearly confrontations with the evil plant. And, of course, I know this will end as soon as I finish the book. 🙂 Right now I’m going over every scene and point of view shift to make sure they’re all working and necessary. That’s roughly fifty different pieces of the novel to review and evaluate. I haven’t done anything this detailed before, but this is also the first time I’ve written a story with four viewpoint characters. With Perfect Clarity had a few flashbacks, but the entire novel was written from one character’s point of view. That seems so easy now…

I have a spreadsheet where I’ve been recording a summary of each scene/point of view section (I’ll refer to them both as ‘scenes’ for simplicity), word count for each scene & each chapter, and viewpoint character. This helps me make sure I don’t have a bunch of short scenes and then one super long one, or have seven scenes in a row from the same character’s point of view (especially since there are four viewpoint characters in this story). I’ve added two things to this spreadsheet: scene cliffhanger and scene goals.

Not every scene has to have a cliffhanger, of course, but often they do – or if they don’t, it is sometimes easy to shuffle things around so that they do. I do my best to end all of my chapters with cliffhangers of some type, and try to do the same for scenes where that makes sense. In looking at the ‘goal’ of each scene I’m evaluating things like: Is a new fact revealed? Does the tension drop where it shouldn’t/too much/for too long? Is something revealed/discussed that is or could be handled better in a different scene? Is the scene too long/wordy?

For example, I have one scene in chapter four that I know is too long. It’s the first scene from the point of view of one of the two supporting characters (Katy). It’s important because I want the reader to understand her motivations, fears, etc. It achieves that goal very well, but right now it’s a little long and that diffuses the tension and emotional impact.

It would be nice if everything came out perfectly the first time, but it doesn’t. And even if you write something wonderful, that doesn’t mean it carries the story forward. When I was editing With Perfect Clarity I chopped out a chapter and a half in the middle of the book. This meant cutting a section I loved, and which my reviewers felt was well written. But the tension dropped significantly, and stayed low for too long, and even though something new was revealed it was something that was easily handled elsewhere. So I cut this section out. Fortunately by the time I got to that I’d learned how to be ruthless and look at what the story was – or wasn’t – achieving instead of focusing on how much I liked a piece.

Reviewing and evaluating everything feels like a humongous amount of work, and it is – but I believe it’s critical for making sure my story works. I’m about halfway through making my scene notes, then I’ll go through all of them and figure out what needs to be moved/removed/changed. Once that’s done the fun part – making those changes – will begin. 🙂

Spring means digging!
Springtime is digging time!

Series, seriously

I’ve recently discovered that I’m writing a series of books. Or perhaps series … although I keep wanting to use “serieses” as the plural. 🙂

But first: here’s the final cover for Entangled by Midsummer!!!

Entangled by Midsummer cover

I’m so excited! I’m working hard on finishing my part, and will announce a date once things are a little further along. 🙂

For a long time I’ve toyed with the idea of writing a series, but with one complicated exception, I never had an idea that would last past one book. The exception is a western series I plan to write in a year or two or three. I love the idea, but it requires a ton of historical research in order to be factually accurate.

Over the past year I have noticed a few of my fantasy stories have overlapped slightly in unplanned ways, but I didn’t really think about it until this past week. Then: shazam! Just like that I realized I have not one series, but two! At least! In retrospect, it’s clear my subconscious had this figured out long ago, but this was a surprise to my conscious mind nonetheless. 🙂

I’ve been busily connecting the dots I unknowingly put in place, as well as thinking about how I can expand up this. And, of course, I need to figure out what to call each series. So far the stories I’ve written or planned out (this includes short stories and novellas, as well as novels) all involve different protagonists, but I have some where a side character in one story is a main character in another.

I did recognize a small part of this. Last year I wrote a faerie story in which one of the side characters in Entangled by Midsummer appears as a much younger version of himself. I just didn’t see how I could turn all of this into more tightly related stories. Now it’s very clear, and I’ve been revamping my project schedule accordingly. I have a lot of writing to do!

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