Am I Writing a Novel?

New words in the new binder.

I’ll be honest, as much as I love writing; the idea of writing a novel has always intimidated me. There are a myriad of reasons, mostly the stock ones, that have kept me from embarking on a novel (the time commitment, the complexity, it’ll suck and all that work will be wasted, I won't have time to write short stories). Yeah, they’re all lame, and I do want to write a novel – hell, I’d like to write a novel a year if I could just work out how to tackle this first one.

I have notes, ideas, and nascent plans for a couple novels in my journals, but I keep finding ways to put off actually starting a novel. The top reason that I haven’t started this year is because I have a couple unfinished stories that I’m struggling to complete. I wanted to clear the decks before attempting a novel, even though in the back of my mind I have a suspicion that this is just another way to punt this new challenge down the road yet again.

I don’t know why I am so cagey about settling down to write a novel. Yes I love short stories, yes they are their own distinct form, and yes will always want to write them too, but novels offer a much greater canvas and I think I’m more than ready to explore the unique challenges that long form story telling has to offer.

But wait, it appears I am writing a novel.

At my last two in-person critique sessions, I’ve brought sections of one of my troublesome “novellas.” Both times, more than one Slugtriber said they felt the material they were reading feels like it is meant to be a novel. Both times, I heard a chorus of we want to spend more time in this world and with these characters (among other constructive critiques).

Considering this novella’s obstinate problems in light of expanding it to novel length makes a host of issues suddenly look manageable. Like my crit group, I also want to spend more time in this world and get to know these characters better. So, I’ve decided to go with it and just let this story be the novel that it is (hopefully) meant to be.

It appears I’ve subverted my reluctance to start a novel by inadvertently starting one. Hey, whatever works.

The time commitment still seems intimidating, but I suspect (again) that might be the panicked part of my brain trying to set up a last line of resistance. I’ve already written about 16,000 words, which just leaves 74,000 words for a 90,000 word first draft. If I set everything else aside and write 1,000 new words a day (excluding weekends) I’ll have my draft complete by October 24^th.

The only real sacrifice will be setting aside my other open projects for that time. I always want to write everything all at once… 

Leaving weekends out of my plan is a kind of safety valve. I’ll have weekends for catching up or downtime, or if I get lonely for the short story form I can write a quick piece of flash fiction.

Well, that’s the plan anyway. Here we go!

Clarion West Write-a-thon!

I sure wish a little bird had told me such a thing as the Clarion West Workshop existed when I was devoutly pursuing my English major in college. Now that I've returned to writing and embraced genre I would love to go, but I don't think the hubs, the girls, the dog, the chickens or the guppies would put up with me disappearing for six weeks to bask in writerly whatnot.

No matter, because they each year they host a Write-a-thon for the duration of the workshop. This year I'm going to participate and you can too!

There's a lot to like about this Write-a-thon:

It's longer than National Novel Writing Month, six weeks instead of four, and it's in the summer so it doesn't intersect with any major holidays (Thanksgiving, I'm looking at you).

Participants are tasked with setting their own goals. I wanted to challenge myself by just notching things up one tick. As I've blogged about before. I'm all about setting goals I can accomplish. Here's what I wrote:

I'm looking to step up my productivity by writing more consistently. I am committing to writing 1,000 words a day -everyday- throughout the write-a-thon. Also, since I consider revising writing, it counts - but in the case of revising I would like to revise 2,000 words or 8 pages/day. So, one or the other or some combination of the two every day. I hope over the course of the write-a-thon to finish the two novelettes I have in progress and write at least two new stories.

It's not just a Write-a-thon, it's a Write-a-long. The other participants include many published and established authors! Check out their pages here, and sign up for a chance to rub virtual shoulders with some great writers.

It's for a good cause: nurturing of great new genre writers, so that we'll have more fantastic literature to read in the not-so-distant future! For the fundraising side of it, if you donate on my Clarion West Write-a-thon page, I will write a flash fiction story with your name (or a name of your choosing) as the title character.

So, what are you waiting for? Check out their Write-a-thon page and get yourself signed up for the fun!

You can check out my author page here.

The Practice of Writing

Katie Walking the Labyrinth by James Jen

This started as a post about goal setting. I was going to title it Setting Doable Goals. But the more thought about it, I realized that I really have only one goal:

To write every day for the rest of my life.

Writing isn't a sprint, it isn't even a marathon, for me it's a way of life. To be both creative and productive is to be happy. I have a small constellation of lesser goals, but this one is my guiding star. This one keeps me focused on the fact that creative writing is, for me, a spiritual practice. This is important to remember when I find that I've committed to some overly-optimistic, unachievable goal that has scuttled my progress rather than encouraged it. That's when I return to my ONE goal and remember that every day that I leave a trail of words on the page, I walk away from my desk ready to be filled up again.

With that in mind, I do use short term goals as a tool to push myself to become a better writer and to keep my work organized. The latter is a challenge for me as I've adopted what I call the English Muffin Method for my writing. This consists of filling every available nook and cranny of my day with little bits of writing and/or editing; parsing big projects into a million tiny pieces. Daily, weekly and monthly goals help keep me on track.

A couple of books that exist in the real estate between writing as spiritual practice and writing for public consumption are: Brenda Ueland's If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit and Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within (Shambhala Library).

Finding the Middle Way with Goal Oriented Writing

1. Think about what you want to achieve don't just fill in the blanks according to what the world dictates. As I said in my last post, think about what success means to you personally. Spend some time on this, write it down in your journal.
2. Try simply tracking your output for a week or two before you set an arbitrary number. How many words can you write taking into account job, family, dog, a school of guppies, a flock of hens, or in my case, all of the above? You might be surprised, it might be more than you think.
3. When you're ready to set some goals be sure they are S.M.A.R.T. -- Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound
4. Set low bar and high bar, and build in time off. My low bar is 250 new words each day. That's one hand-written page, two double spaced pages on the computer. I've even tapped out 250 words with my thumbs on my iPod's writing app. Almost anyone can toss off 250 words in under ten minutes. I am absolutely not allowed to feel bad about myself if I do this. It's this low bar that keeps me on track with the real goal of writing every day.
5. Rejigger if you need to. Things change. We change. Life. The advantage to seeing your creative life as a spiritual practice is that you can work out the smaller goals any number of ways to support it. If one method isn't working, try something new. Even if it is working, but you're just feeling a little bored, try something new just for a change.

Remember this is supposed to be fun. Serious fun, sure, but fun. Creativity is close kin to play, and if what you're doing is not fun - not satisfying you on a deep, emotional level - then you're doing it wrong.

Hello spring!

Change

Making New Year's Resolutions means that you want to make a change. One look at the Self-Help shelves in any book store and it's clear that everyone loves the IDEA of change, but real, meaningful change; we don't love so much. Because real, meaningful change is hard, and being creatures of habit, we resist it for all we're worth. Luckily, it's January and that means that there's lots of how to stick to your resolutions advice floating around the Internet.

I found a couple things that seemed worth a try. First, James Clear's post about identity-based habits talks about how important it is to change from the inside out. Every aspiring writer has heard that they should start thinking of themselves as a writer and calling themselves a writer. That's all well and good but Clear's advice adds a level of concreteness that makes all the difference.

After reading his example, here are my examples:

I'm the kind of person who writes 1,000 words a day

I'm the kind of person who finishes a story a week

If I keep doing this, then being the kind of person who sells stories will follow.

"When you want to become better at something, proving your identity to yourself is far more important than getting amazing results."

He stresses that you prove your identity to yourself with SMALL wins. Baby steps here, people. I think of it as, first overlaying your new identity onto yourself, then encouraging yourself to GROW into that person.

The small wins are important because of the need for PERSISTENCE. And, to help with that Lifehacker posted an article about Seinfeld's productivity secret AKA: Don't Break the Chain. 

Of course there's an app for that and I've tried it before, but this is just thekind of thing that works better analog. Actually making big red Xs on a paper calender is surprisingly satisfying. Here's mind so far:

My daily minimum is to write 250 words on that week's story. Once I write that, I can put an X on the day. If I write 1,000 words I'm adding a gold star. I have two gold stars on last Saturday because I wrote over 2,000 words that day. Who doesn't love getting a gold star? Again, very satisfying. 

So my first full week is nearly over an my first story of the "a story a week" in 2013 is nearly drafted. Win!