Posts tagged as “Dragon Writers”

I have to fall in love with a story

Published February 29, 2012 by centaur

My fundamental philosophy about writing is very simple: I want to have fun, I want my readers to have fun, and I hope, if we're both lucky, that they learn something.

I've long understood that the third part of this troika, the learning, is both a product and a cause of the mammoth amount of research I do for even the simplest pieces. (And yes, I did look up Fat Albert on Wikipedia just to write the first sentence of this supposedly throwaway blogpost).

I've also understood that the second part, my readers having fun, is why I need to constantly work to hone my craft. That's why I don't self-publish, but work with a publisher with a strong editor who serves as a gatekeeper and holds my work to a high standard. That's why I attend a writing group; that's why I work with beta readers; and that's why I'm writing a monthly column on writing called The Centaur's Pen over at the Write to the End blog.

But only tonight did I realize the first part is why I need to fall in love with my own stories. When I'm writing a story, I can power through it if I have to, daydreaming sequences inspired by music, character and knowledge, weaving those scattered fragments together with the rules of plot and conflict, and winnowing the chaff until what's left is a cohesive whole.

But I'm better off if I fall in love with a story. I need characters to spring to life in my books and derail them, like Cinnamon in FROST MOON or Beneficenitor in HEX CODE (in progress). I need settings l fall in love with, like the Werehouse in FROST MOON and BLOOD ROCK or the Werehold in HEX CODE. I need vehicles on which I want to lavish detail, like the doomed Abadulon in DELIVERANCE (unreleased) or Independence in MAROONED (forthcoming). And I need scenes that I desperately want to write, like Dakota's challenging encounter with Transomnia in FROST MOON or her somewhat different encounter with the Streetscribe at the end of BLOOD ROCK.

I realized this need for love of my own work when I caught myself daydreaming about the first encounter of the Freemanship Independence with a mammoth Dresanian starship near the end of BESIEGED, the third book I have planned in the Seren series. A clip of "The Planet Krypton" shuffled through my iPod, I realized how the aftermath of the climactic battle could be shot in the movie ... and then began daydreaming how all the characters would react to what's happening.

Visualizing the Independence docking against the backdrop of a giant door like a Michael Whelan painting, a scenario I can visualize so strongly I was inspired to scribble it down on the spot, the question occurred to me: "Would the hero Serendipity finally secure sanctuary for her people ... or would the war criminal Seren finally be called to account for her crimes?" And how would the crew of Independence react if someone else came to claim someone they'd chosen to claim as their own?

That's falling in love with your story: when you think about it so much that random clips of music inspire you to write scenes, but you don't just visualize them, you are forced to think through how all the characters will react to what happened, how it fits their own personalities, the setting, the story.

That's what you should strive for in your writing: a love for your story that goes all the way down to its bones.

-the Centaur

Now that’s a sign we have a protagonist on our hands…

Published February 9, 2012 by centaur

Above is a wordle of the near-completed first draft (as opposed to rough draft) of THE CLOCKWORK TIME MACHINE. Wordles are great visualization tools for your texts, and this one reveals ... well, yes, Jeremiah is the protagonist.

Actually, now that I think of it, the full title of the book is JEREMIAH WILLSTONE AND THE CLOCKWORK TIME MACHINE so I should have expected that her name would bubble to the top.

Jeremiah's also the protagonist of "Steampunk Fairy Chick", which was published recently in the UnCONventional anthology now available on Amazon ... why yes, that was a shameless plug, why do you ask?

-the Centaur

“Stranded” Away

Published February 6, 2012 by centaur

"Stranded", the novelette which is the first third of the first book of my new young adult space pirates trilogy, is away to the editor! It came in somewhat over the desired length, so I hope she doesn't hurt me, but it is the first third of the first book of a planned trilogy, so some of that length is unavoidable. (My awesome beta and gamma readers liked it. :-)

"Stranded" tells the story of Serendipity, a young centauress explorer who must come to the aid of a shipload of children who've crashlanded on a world she wanted to claim as her own. It's got aliens and fungi, spaceships and rayguns, and plush robots and kung fu, but it's really about how people should be treated and learning to stand up for what's right.

Here's a teaser, illustrated thanks to my work on 24 Hour Comics Day:

Sirius flinched as sizzling grey bullets tumbled around him in zero-gee. The grey dented veligen pellets rattled through the cramped innards of Independence’s life support plant, stinging his nose with the scent of bitter almonds as his hands strained at the yellow-striped master fuse. The girls shouted, their guns fired, more bullets twanged around him, ricocheting off the ancient, battered equipment, striking closer with every shot—but Sirius just gripped the hot, humming tube harder, braced both booted feet, and pulled.

Andromeda and Artemyst screamed for him to stop. Dijo, the engineer, screamed for the shooting to stop. Even the air screamed, out a bullet hole in a vacuum duct near his feet. But with every second, Independence shot a half million clicks farther into the deep, flying away from the Beacon that was their only hope of survival, so Sirius didn’t stop: he just screamed too, pulling, pulling, jerking—until the master fuse popped out and he shot free, bursting the hatch open.

Sirius flew out of the life support service chamber into Independence’s cavernous cargo hold. His head clanged off a handrail, knocking him into a dizzy spin in zero-gee. He smacked into the tumbling brassfiber grille of the hatch he’d knocked free, halving his spin—and leaving him right in the crosshairs of Dijo, Artemyst and Andromeda, all clipped to orange handrails far out of his reach. All had their guns on him, red laser sights on, green safety lights off.

Then the ship’s lighting flickered, and the whine of the air cycler slowly spun down.

“Halfway Boy!” Andromeda said, staring at the yellow and black striped master fuse in Sirius’s hands, her eyes as wild as the spray of feathers sticking out of her snakeskin cowl. She motioned to Dijo, who kicked off towards the life support plant. “What have you done?”

“Saved all our lives,” Sirius said, still dizzy, still spinning. “You can thank me later.”

Assuming the editor doesn't put me in the hospital over the length issue, we hope the story will be out in an anthology later this year. "Stranded's" parent novel, MAROONED, will hopefully be out mid 2012. So I guess the above is really a teaser. Sorry about that. Well, not really. I hope you enjoy!

-the Centaur

(No) More Procrastination

Published February 2, 2012 by centaur

Finally finished my "From Nano to Novel" pep talk for the National Novel Writing Month site ... should be coming out later this month to the donors list. (What? You're not a Nanowrimo donor? You can fix that here: https://store.lettersandlight.org/donations). But I've posted that to Facebook and to Google+. Posting it again here is, I think, a good idea to make sure people know what I'm up to, but in another way it's just procrastination ... I've got the gamma comments on "Stranded" to work on and this is not that. Back to work! -the Centaur

Last gamma comments for STRANDED in…

Published February 2, 2012 by centaur

Alright, the last gamma reader comments for "Stranded" are in. (Gamma, because this is actually the second round of beta readers. :-) "Stranded" is the first novelette of three in a planned YA space adventure novel with the working title MAROONED. This will be part of a trilogy including MAROONED, PURSUED, BESIEGED, SHANGIAIED, COMMANDEERED ... oh damnit I've done it again, haven't I? "Stranded" is also the novelette I adapted for 24 Hour Comics Day. Don't know if I'll get back to that as I have already 3 books plotted out in this series and parts of the next two outlined. Hope to get "Stranded" the novelette out to the editor in the next two weeks for inclusion in an anthology maybe later this year (with MAROONED coming out next year we hope). When "Stranded" is away, then it's back to LIQUID FIRE (finishing the draft) and THE CLOCKWORK TIME MACHINE (polishing the draft to send to beta readers). -the Centaur

The Stack is Growing

Published January 27, 2012 by centaur

FROM THE WRITER'S ANONYMOUS 12-STEP SUPPORT GROUP MEETING: Hi, I'm Anthony Francis, and I'm an author. ("Hi, Anthony!") To feed my addiction, I get stuff published.

My first published novel, the urban fantasy FROST MOON featuring magical tattoo artist Dakota Frost, won an EPIC e-book award. It's out in paperback, Kindle, in German as SKINDANCER, and soon to be audiobook thanks to the wonderful reading skills of Traci Odom. The second book in the series, BLOOD ROCK, came out last year to good reviews, and the third book, LIQUID FIRE, will come out later this year. A spinoff series starring Dakota's daughter Cinnamon Frost, HEX CODE, will come out next year, also part of a planned trilogy.

One of my short stories, "Steampunk Fairy Chick," was recently published in the UnCONventional anthology. The story, featuring steampunk adventurer Jeremiah Willstone, is based on a novel called THE CLOCKWORK TIME MACHINE (again part of a planned trilogy) which I've got in rough draft form with a possible release late this year or early next year. Another of my short stories, "Sibling Rivalry," was published in The Leading Edge magazine in 1995, but is now available on my web site. I also write flash fiction. One of my flash shorts, "If Looks Could Kill", was just published in THE DAILY FLASH 2012 (pictured above) and another, "The Secret of the T-Rex's Arms", was just published in Smashed Cat Magazine.

My nonfiction research papers are largely available on my research page, including my nearly 700-page Ph.D thesis (hork). I and my thesis advisor Ashwin Ram have a chapter on "Multi-Plan Adaptation and Retrieval in an Experience-based Agent" in David Leake's book CASE BASED REASONING: EXPERIENCES, LESSONS AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS, and Ashwin, Manish Mehta and I have a chapter on "Emotional Memory and Adaptive Personalities" in THE HANDBOOK OF RESEARCH ON SYNTHETIC EMOTIONS AND SOCIABLE ROBOTICS.

I have more writing in the works, including a novelette called "Stranded" set in the Dresanian universe from which this blog takes its name, and more writing on the Internet. But what I list above is The Stack At This Time - what you can get in print. Enjoy!

-the Centaur

It’s Better to Be Done

Published January 26, 2012 by centaur

I am very interested in promoting creation. I think the world would be a better place if more people wrote, drew, painted, sculpted, danced, programmed, philosophized, or just came up with ideas. Not all ideas are great, and it's important to throw away the bad and keep the good - but the more ideas we can generate, the more we can test.

One of the biggest problems I see in unprofessional, unpublished or just unhappy creators is not finishing. It's very easy to start work on an idea - a painting, a novel, a sculpture, a program, a philosophy of life. But no matter how much you love what you do, there's always a point in creating a work where the act of creating transforms from play to work.

Whether you stall out because the work gets hard or because you get distracted by a new idea, it's important to realize the value of finishing. An unfinished idea can be scooped, or become stale, or disconnected from your inspiration. If you don't finish something, the work you did on it is wasted. More half finished ideas pile up. Your studio or notebook becomes a mess.

If you don't finish, you never learn to finish. You're learning to fail repeatedly. The act of finishing teaches you how to finish. You learn valuable skills you can apply to new works - or even to a new drafts. I know an author who was perpetually stalled out on a problematic story - until one day she made herself hit the end. Now it's on it's fourth draft and is really becoming something.

The tricky thing is you have got to put the cart before the horse: you've got to finish before you know whether it was worth finishing. This does not apply to experienced authors in a given genre, but if you're new to a genre, you have to finish something before you worry about whether you can sell it or even if it is any good.

You don't need for something to be perfect to finish it. I know too many amateurs who don't want to put out the effort to finish things because they don't know whether they can sell it. No. You've got a hundred bad programs in you, a thousand bad paintings, a million bad words, before you get to the good stuff. Suck it up, finish it, and move on.

Procrastination is a danger. This is the point in the article that I got distracted and wrote a quick email to a few other creators about ideas this (unfinished) article had inspired. Then I got back to it. Then I got distracted again doing the bullet list below and went back and injected this paragraph. The point is, it's OK to get distracted - just use that time wisely, then get back to it.

Finally, sometimes you just need help to finish the first time. The biggest thing is to find a tool which can help you over that hump when it stops being fun and starts being work - some challenge or group or idea that helps you get that much closer to done. To help people finish, I'm involved with or follow a variety of challenges and resources to help people finish:

Write to the End: It's not a critique group; it's a writing group. We meet almost every Tuesday at a local coffee house and write for 20 minutes, read what we wrote, and repeat until they kick us out. We normally hit three sessions, so I usually get an hour of writing in every night - and hear a half dozen to a dozen other writers. Inspirational. Our web site contains articles on writing, including my new column The Centaur's Pen.
National Novel Writing Month: A challenge to write 50,000 words of a new novel in the month of November. This seems daunting, but Nanowrimo has a truly spectacular support group and social system which really helps people succeed at the challenge. Even if you don't "win" the first time, keep at it, you will succeed eventually!
Script Frenzy: Write 100 pages of a script (play, screenplay, or comic script) in the month of April - another event sponsored by the creators of Nanowrimo. This is an event I haven't yet tried, but am planning to tackle this year to get back into screenwriting (as part of my 20-year plan to get into directing movies).
24 Hour Comics Day: It's a challenge to produce a 24 page comic in 24 hours, usually held the first weekend of October. I've tried this 3 times and succeeded once. It's taught me immense amounts about comic structure and general story structure and even improved my prose writing.
Blitz Comics: Because I failed at 24 Hour Comics Day, me and my buddy Nathan Vargas decided to "fake it until we make it" and to put on a boot camp about how to succeed at 24 Hour Comics Day. We produced a Boot Camp tutorial, a 24 Hour Comics Day Survival Kit - and along the way taught ourselves how to succeed at 24 Hour Comics Day.
Other Challenges: There are a couple of events out there to create graphic novels in a month - NaGraNoWriMo and NaCoWriMo - though both of these are 2010 and I don't know if either one is live. (If they're not active, maybe I'll start one). There's also a 30 Character Challenge for graphic artists to create 30 new characters in a month.

Finally, I want to finish with what inspired this post: the Cult of Done. I won't go too deeply into the Done Manifesto, but from my perspective it can be summed up in two ideas: posting an idea on the Internet counts as a ghost of done, and done is the engine of more. Get your stuff done, finish it, and if it's still half baked, post it to force yourself to move on to newer and better things.

The plane is landing. Time to get it done.

-the Centaur

Credits: The BlitzComics guy is penciled, inked and colored by me and post-processed by Nathan Vargas. Joshua Rothass did the Cult of Done poster and distributed it under a Creative Commons license. This blog post was uploaded by Ecto, which is doing well (other than an upload problem) and is probably going to get my money.

The Centaur’s Pen at Write to the End

Published January 21, 2012 by centaur

I'm part of a fantabulous writing group called Write to the End that meets at Mission City Coffee. This group, which started at Barnes and Noble at Steven's Creek before the economy and contracting book market convinced B&N to cut back on their community programs, has been the best thing for my writing productivity since ... well, ever. I'd even stopped doing National Novel Writing Month until I started attending the WTTE, but now I do Nano every year ... and go to the writing group almost every Tuesday. SO ... it's now time to give back. I'll be doing a monthly column on the WTTE blog titled "The Centaur's Pen." In it, I will write about writing: about why to write, what to write, how to write, how to edit, how to get published --- and how to behave AFTER you get published. Now, I am not a great writer, but I'm trying very hard, I think about writing almost all the time, and I've spent a lot of time talking to other aspiring writers and learning about the art, craft and business of writing. So I hope my insights will be of use to you!

January's inaugural article is on "Learning from Publication:" how seeing your work in print can be an opportunity to improve your craft, even though you can no longer change it. An excerpt follows:

Recently I wrote a short story called “Steampunk Fairy Chick” for the UnCONventional anthology. Even though the story went through many revisions, lots of beta readers, two editors and a copyeditor, when I read through my author’s copy I found there were still things I wanted to change. Nothing major—just line edit stuff, a selection of different choices of sentence structure that I think would have made the story more readable. I can’t react to this the way I would with a draft; the story’s in print. And I don’t want to just throw these insights on the floor. Instead, I want to analyze the story and find general ideas I could have applied that would have improved the story before it hit the stands—ideas I could use in the future on new stories.

To read more, click through to Write to the End and "Learning from Publication." If you want to read the story the article is talking about, click through to Amazon and buy the UnCONventional anthology (in print or ebook). Enjoy! -the Centaur

Yosemite puts the awe in awesome

Published December 14, 2011 by centaur

Awesome is a word I overuse, wearing away its original meaning of "breathtaking."

Yosemite, now Yosemite is breathtaking.

Hey human, get off my lawn.

Unlike the Grand Canyon, which is overwhelming in its detail, Yosemite's beauty comes from its sheer variety packed so close together.

Truly God's Country.

-the Centaur

Teaser for Steampunk Fairy Chick

Published December 14, 2011 by centaur

The UNCONVENTIONAL anthology is now available on Amazon, featuring my story "Steampunk Fairy Chick" starring Jeremiah Willstone, heroine of THE CLOCKWORK TIME MACHINE. The editors of the anthology, Kate Kaynak and Trisha Wooldridge, have made teasers of the first few pages of each story available, and you can read the start of "SFC" here. If you can't wait for that, you can see the first two paragraphs below:

Please enjoy! -the Centaur

Victory, Official

Published November 25, 2011 by centaur

Well, the team at Nano are handing out winner's certificates now, so it's official: I've won Nano, with an official word count of 55,492 words. I'm still writing more of the story, but am switching to work on STRANDED tonight. I didn't get much done over Thanksgiving, but I did get this chunk written either Wednesday night or this afternoon (don't remember):

I shoves the monster back, between 5 and 6, dinosaur legs scrabbling, towards the loading dock shared with 7 and 8, hurling it backwards through the pedestrian rail which snaps with a tong as Mister Gargoyle falls on his fanny into a Dumpster of yesterday’s garbage. I’m about to leap down on it and rub his face in it, yes I am, when one of those clawed extra-thick raptor legs flies out and connects with my tiger chin. I yelp, shake it off, but when I’m back to snarlin, the monster’s runnin, holdin’ its shoulder, limpin’ off into the night. I stands on the loading dock and lets out my best bloodcurdlin’ roar. I mean, I knows he’s a gargoyle, but I hopes it gives him blood just so it can curdle. But the tiger doesn’t want to give chase, and neither does I. The two of us are of one mind: we gotta go save All Hours Todd.

I've captured almost all of my notes on the story, so it's hopefully safe to shift gears. Though I have to admit it's hard to shake the momentum.

But I have deadlines ... in this case, Tuesday of next week, to get a draft of STRANDED to beta readers in time to get a final to my editors by January 31, 2012. Onward! -the Centaur

Chuggin’ Chuggin’ Chuggin’

Published November 23, 2011 by centaur

Well, Instant Upload is weirdly busted so you get my smilin' mug instead of coffee. HEX CODE is now at 55,000 words:

I'm taking it a little easier now than I was before I hit 50,000 words ... taking more time to read and catch up on email, even taking time to review notes on STRANDED.

But I do want to dump the rest of my floating ideas for HEX CODE into the document while they're fresh, so I don't lose them. From tonight:

I saw this thing earlier, out of the corner of my eye. It easily kept up with me, lopin’ along, twice as fast now that I think about the angles, using its superior speed to keep good cover between it and my line of sight. My only hope is to sit tight and hope it leaves. Then the dragging noise I thought was a trashcan crackles right up behind me. I’m on quadruple frozen now, concentrating on not even moving my tail—harder than you might think if you’re not a cat and don’t got one. I gotta breathe now, but I’m taking it in slow-like, through the mouth, in and out, so that my gut hurts from clenching.

Onward! -the Centaur

Viiiiictory for the Paper Tiger

Published November 22, 2011 by centaur

Once again I've completed National Novel Writing Month. This year, I finished 8 days early. Or, put another way, THIS is what happens if you turn off the Internet during Nano:

I've had a number of interruptions in Nano in the past and this year was no exception. I know I can finish 38,000 words in 10 days and I was initially trying to push to finish at twice the rate, or perhaps finish two books. Well, that didn't happen because of the Galaxy Nexus launch and you can see that in my progress here:

That chasm was the Galaxy Nexus launch (and a few other things tossed in there). But I made it through that, and ultimately succeeded today, sitting in a Starbucks at Santana Row here in San Jose (actually pictured is Michael's Gelato in Palo Alto because the pic from Santana Row hasn't uploaded).

Normally I survive Nano by taking the whole of Thanksgiving week off for a nine day writing intensive. But this time, I've finished early. I still have more to write on HEX CODE, of course, but I now have the luxury of leaning back and thinking through a few twists to the plot, with 50,000 words under my belt making the story solid. So ... I can actually take this vacation ... as a vacation.

So without further ado I present a snippet of the story that was written today ... raw Nano, unfiltered except for a little reformatting and removing some author's notes.

When I found out that Ben was human, or more accurately that elf meant human with special sauce, blabbermouth old me just had to go tell Mom. Then blabbermouth old me had to make up a story of how I found out, which involved a clever lie about school. Not so clever. That just called Mom’s attention to the fact that she now had two underage wards in need of schooling. Getting me into the Clairmont Academy was a pain in the ass, but now they all love us, so getting Ben in was as simple as selecting a school uniform. And boy, does he look hot in it. Hot hot hot. The points to his ears and the green in his skin and the red in the sweater, it’s like Christmas, and that poofy green helmet makes him look like a school uniform tree—when girls aren’t comin up to tousle it. They’re all lookin’ at him. I was sure he had a glamour, but now I’m thinkin it made him look scary. Now he just looks like a boy, a hot boy with funky green hair the girls can’t resist. A passing one does it again and darts off, and I feels for him! He winces, but he clearly likes it. “So, Cinnamon,” Surrey says, setting her tray down, “will you—oh, hello.” “Hello,” Ben says, and there would be a dotted line in the air between their elfin eyes. Surrey’s too frozen to sit down, so Ben stands up, takes her hand, and kisses it with a flourish. “Greetings from the halls of Appalachia, oh princess of Scandinavia.” “Oh, siddown,” I says, and Ben sits down with a plop. He glares at me, but I ignores him. “Ben, this is Surrey Eddington, one of my best friends. Surrey Eddington, this is Benjamin Damon.” My smile grows mean. “He’s my house elf.” “I swear, Cinnamon Frost,” Ben growls, “by the gleaming halls of elfland—” “By the power of Greyskull,” Megan says, sitting down next to the still-smitten Surrey. “Oh, hey, what are you?” she says, and Ben near jumps out of his seat—then plops back down again as Megan scratches her head and says, “Wait … I’m doing it again, aren’t I?”

Next up I plan on ... chilling out, having a nice dinner, and joining my writing group for the evening to review my outstanding projects. First up is probably finishing the edit of STRANDED for my beta readers ... and then finishing Dakota Frost 3, LIQUID FIRE. Or perhaps I'll just chill out and clean up my library for Thanksgiving, and thank God I have it. Good luck in Nano, all! -the Centaur

Why You Need to Turn off the Internet in Nano

Published November 19, 2011 by centaur

HEX CODE has an epigraph, a quote by Cicero. I'm not sure whether it will stay in the final book, but it sums up the theme of the book for me perfectly:

Nature urges Man to wish that human society existed and to wish to enter it. —Marcus Tullius Cicero, first historically verified werewolf.

The quote is my own tweak of a couple of different translations of this quote by Cicero - and of course Cicero wasn't really a werewolf. But I wanted to look up something about him, some damn thing about his tomb or whatever (not knowing at the time he'd been assassinated by the state and probably has no tomb) and made the stupid mistake of checking on Wikipedia. The sorry result, 30 minutes later, is what you see above. I'm turning off the Internet now, and I hope if you're doing Nano you do too. Because I think XKCD put the problem with Wikipedia best:

Wikipedia is a wonderful thing ... but browsing it isn't writing. Get back to work, nanoers! Onward! -the Centaur

Back on Track

Published November 19, 2011 by centaur

So, now that the Galaxy Nexus site with its snazzy 3D viewer has launched, now that I'm on my long lonely but highly productive 9-day Thanksgiving vacation, now ... I'm back on track. I hit 40,068 words in HEX CODE today, 38,524 added this month in Nano. So I've got 11,476 words left to go for HEX CODE. Since it's early in the day and I have two more writing sessions to go, I hope to actually finish that this weekend, or at least by Monday. Then, unless I'm going gangbusters on HEX CODE, I plan to go back to STRANDED to send to my beta readers, and after that try to finish LIQUID FIRE. Doubt all of that will happen in November, but I want to go from juggling 4 novels in my head to having 4 novels with beta readers! Oh, I almost forgot ... a snippet of HEX CODE:

The three will-o-the-wisps comes together, their colors merging as they swirls around each other into one big ball. The sphere brightens, shimmers, intensifies within its formless shield of mist—the light coming together with a ring and a dark spot, which whirls to face me. O.M.G. The three will-o-the-wisps have formed together into a giant eye. “Remember!” the Huntswoman cries. “You can hurt it with your sword, but not enough. It has a shield. You can defend yourself with your shield, but not enough. It has teeth. But it has one more thing, and that is the key. Find that, and you will find your victory.” “Oh, great,” I says, hefting my dumb little wooden plank blade. “Thanks. Even Yoda sent Luke after dreams before Vader.”

Actually make that 40,092 words ... I wrote some more when I went to grab the excerpt. Enjoy. -the Centaur

20,039 Added Words (4,344 of Them Today)

Published November 6, 2011 by centaur

This post should be titled "wheew". I've now just reached the point where I've caught up with my crazy goal of writing at twice the normal rate. I've written just a notch over the required 3,333 words a day, churning out 20,000+ words in HEX CODE (and that's NOT counting the 1500 word seed I started with).

I had hoped to be this caught up last night, but I erred and went to one of my favorite coffee houses and found it closed an hour earlier than I thought, cutting in to my writing time. I could swear these hours are new, but maybe I'm just hallucinating.

And when I got home I had to play with the cats, such as the cute little monster above, a feral, stray or perhaps just terribly surly cat that just might be our orange cat's father (or mother - I didn't get close enough to enquire). Regrettably, since we already have too many cats, they mark, and feral cats have been trying to get into our home, I had to shoo Mister Orange Cat away, gently touching him with my flashlight, which freaked him out as he didn't know what it was - no matter how much he whapped at it, it didn't react. He actually looked OFFENDED as he scrabbled away atop the fence. I'm sad to have to do that, but his possible son below is more than enough trouble - we can't take in any more cats.

The point being, I was exhausted, but by the time I did all my cat triage, I just fricking collapsed into blissful unconsciousness. Today, however, I had no plans. While I overslept for church, as I irritatingly often do, I still got up reasonably early thanks to Daylight Saving's Time. So I had an extra hour to get out, get to a Panera ... and get caught up. I got my day's writing done pretty quickly, got a notch more ahead, and then went home, fed the cats, cleaned the pee left when the rains discouraged one of them from going outside :-P and resumed writing with Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban in the background. A friend called, I hopped in the car while talking with him, and by the time we were done I was standing outside Chipotle with only 250 words to go. Short story, by taking the laptop out first and turning the internet off, I made it to 20039 words.

Now I'm freezing my ass off in a surprisingly chilly Barnes and Noble, sipping on a Frappucino (yeah, I know, cold drinks on a cold day, shut up, there's a reason my Top Gun name is Iceman) and taking a short break. Soon I'm going to dive back to it and try to finish another thousand words or so to give me a comfortable buffer. If all goes well, if I can keep up a bit less than the pace I've done so far, I should be able to coast through the second half of November. Maybe, just maybe, if I get done early enough ... I can go see The Thing again. Onward! -the Centaur

Ahead of where I need to be, behind where I want to be

Published November 5, 2011 by centaur

Well, I'm ahead of schedule for Nanowrimo ... or am I? I've been determined and lucky enough to complete at least 1667 words every day, so I'm ahead of where I have to be. But I'm trying to be crazy this year. At first I thought I would do TWO books, but now I'm thinking I want to do ONE book at twice the rate. Why do this to myself? Well, one reason would be to finish early. I could start a second book if I wanted to, or finish the first book, or, God forbid, actually use the week of vacation I've taken Thanksgiving week as a fricking vacation rather than a writing marathon. Or maybe it's because it takes Nanowrimo out of a safe place. Unlike 24 Hour Comics Day, I've succeeded every time I'd tried at Nanowrimo. Trying to write twice as fast takes me out of that comfort zone. If I fail, well, I'll still almost certainly succeed at the Nano challenge. If I succeed, well ... then maybe I can write 100,000 words in a month. And the most important thing about writing is writing. The more you write, the better you get. (The second most important thing is getting prompt, high quality feedback; the third most important thing is taking the feedback seriously and acting on it. But I digress). I've finished today's quota of 1,667 words. But yesterday I slacked, also only writing about 1,667 words. To keep up the accelerated pace, I need to catch up, to write almost 3000 more words today. But it's only 3:52 in the afternoon, and I have the whole day ahead of me. So here's seeing what I can do ... and I don't think I can lose, either way. -teh Centaur

9027 Added Words

Published November 3, 2011 by centaur

Still not making any progress on STRANDED, but HEX CODE is flying along - I'm getting about 3,000 words a day! The Writing Allies group tonight made many great suggestions and I've gotten whole scenes out of it, but the coffeehouse is about to close so time to be done for the day and go home and noogie a cat. Doing my best to keep it up ... excelsior! -the Centaur UPDATE: Make that 10,004 added words. I'm writing at double the normal rate, in the hope I can finish early and have some time off at the end to work on STRANDED ... or, heck, maybe even take some of the vacation days I set aside at the end of the month as VACATION! Whoda thunk it? Onward!

UPDATE UPDATE: Make that 10,350 added words. Had a brainflash while brushing my teeth. Now I really am going to bed - it's 2:18 AM. Excelziiszoorzzzzzzz...

5836 Added Words

Published November 3, 2011 by centaur

So ... HEX CODE is at 7380 words, which is 5836 more than the 1544 word seed I started with. I'm 12 percent done, a little bit ahead. Onward! -the Centaur

Nano Rules That Lead to Progress

Published November 1, 2011 by centaur

Mocha Freeze at Cafe Borrone, With Laptop Reflection

This is my sixth year attempting Nanowrimo and my sixth (and seventh) Nano book, and I've learned to adopt a few rules to help make the thing progress.

Nanowrimo comes first. All existing writing projects should be scheduled for before or after Nano. One of the worst experiences I had was trying to finish 38000 words of Nano in 10 days after having lost almost half of it to editing FROST MOON.
The Internet stays off until 1,667 words are done. There are a dozen reasons to use the Internet - to look something up, to check your email, to blog on Facebook. DON'T. Not even if you're ahead. Get a whole day's writing in before you log on. In particular, NO BLOGGING, Tweeting or Facebooking until you're caught up. Turn your Internet off if you have to - that's what I do, writing on a laptop.
Don't read+eat, then write; write+eat, then read. This one may not apply to you. I have a day job at The Search Engine That Starts With A G, so to get writing done, 3-5 days a week as wife, cats and friends permit, I go to dinner by myself, read something to feed my head, and then go out for coffee and write. But sometimes writing gets the short shrift when you do that, if you're reading something interesting or get lost in email. Normally that's OK; you should read more that you put out in writing. In Nano, I have to upend this and write first, come hell or high water.
Look things up later - use <angle brackets> if you have to. Even if you don't have the Internet, there are ways to look things up when you're writing. Don't. If you don't know Marcus Tullius Cicero's name, just write <cicero's name> in angle brackets and go back later, searching for angle brackets and looking things up. Your writing will thank you.
If you know the plot, write all the beats down, then expand them later. My process involves thinking about stories long before I write them. I think of a dozen, a hundred, a thousand ideas for every one I write down. I've been thinking about HEX CODE, for example, for a few years, and my head's full of ideas. So sometimes, even when your writing juice is gone, you can quickly bang down the beats of the plot - "Cinnamon leaves for the Rogue. She gets paranoid by the park. She thinks she sees somebody. Then Tully surprises her and gives her grief." There's 500 words tomorrow, all planned out today.
Use the Nano community. There's a South Bay Nanowrimo community and while I haven't had time to go to their events this year I did have time to learn from their wisdom. In particular, they had a suggestion to get a head start by going to a Denny's on Halloween and starting writing at midnight to get an entire day's writing in before the first day had really started. I was too wiped to do that, but ...
Get a head start. ... but I was not too wiped to set my alarm for thirty minutes past midnight and to get up and write at home. I stayed up from about 12:45 to 3AM, alternating between writing and puttering with the cats. I got a lot written - 1129 words. Then I took my laptop to lunch and finished out my day. Then I took my laptop to dinner and started work on the next day. Then I took my laptop to Cafe Borrone's and finished out the SECOND day. The result? I wrote 3500 words today. If I can keep up 1667 words a day, then I'll finish a day early. Woot!
Track your progress. I use a spreadsheet which I'm going to detail in a later post, but the long and the short of it is that you need to do 1667 words a day to finish 50,000 words by the end of November. Track your progress and hold your feet to the fire.
Write, write, WRITE! Enough said? No. There's a lot of planning you may need to do to finish Nano. WRITE FIRST. Get yourself a day or two ahead. THEN PLAN. Some of your best work will come from winging it.

Finally, one more word of wisdom. Don't start work on your second Nano book until you've finished your daily quota for the first. It's better to finish one book than it is to have two half finished books in the month. Remember, it's better to be done! In fact, I'll go further and say you should take a little break between the two of them, to say, for example, blog your Nano writing rules, just so you'll tackle the second book fresh. This advice only applies to insane people trying to do 2 novels in Nano. So, the result of me following these rules? 3500 words done today on HEX CODE:

And seriously, I'm only 96 extra words into STRANDED. Instead of trying to complete two Nano books, I'm going to try to make progress on completing my beta reader draft of STRANDED during my Nano downtime, as long as I'm making ahead-of-schedule progress on HEX CODE. And if I finish that ... THEN I can think of tackling STRANDED as a second Nano. -the Centaur