Research! Research! Research!!

Unless you are making your whole world from scratch, you must research.  If you don't, your readers will hate you for it.  They will read over a section, and those in the field you're pretending to understand will sit there and cringe.

I don't know how many times I've read over something and just sat there shaking my head.  It wouldn't take that much work to find out the details and make it correct.  One little web search.  One little trip to the library.

If you are writing about imaginary things, you get to make it up, to a point.  A fictional disease can have whatever rules you want.  It can take 2 weeks to incubate, then kill in 2 days.  Whatever, no big deal.  But if you're writing a REAL disease, please, for the love of Pete, learn it inside and out.  Make sure your timeline fits the real disease.  Make sure your symptoms match.  Confuse the doctors by having something extra going on if you must, but make it fit!!

Even if you are making your world from scratch, you must know the details that rule that universe.  Write them down.  Keep them on hand for reference.

I say this as I edit my current book, and am tediously going over the details of a certain issue that happens.  It needs to happen, and I need the timeline to be right.  If I mess it up, I won't be able to forgive myself.  Because as a reader, that kind of thing would drive me crazy!  And I'm hardly alone in this.

It's ok to put place holders in as you write and research later.  (x number of days) or (symptoms) etc in the place where the real info goes.  Trust me, it makes those things easier to find and fix, later, upon editing.  Having a general knowledge before you write is helpful, but use the parentheses to help with the tiny details you might forget.  It's a good thing to double check later, at the very least.

Anyway!  Carry on.  But please, please, research.  The more knowledgeable you are about something, the better you will be able to get it across to people.  And that, my friends, makes for a good read.

pic:  my kiddos, hanging out with books before school.  "Put your books down, it's time for school!" is a phrase I never thought I'd say.  But there it is.  ;)

Using Your Dreams for Inspiration

We all dream.  I'm not talking about wanting to be a published author with a great following, or anything like that.  I'm talking about when you are asleep and your subconscious is working for you.  Most of our dreams, we don't remember, and that's just the nature of them, but the ones we do remember?  They can be our inspiration for great things.

If you don't already do so, consider journaling them.  Or write them down in a note file on your phone or in your computer.  Jot down what you can remember, and file it away for later.  You might not think anything of it right now, but it might turn into something big later.  If it evoked feelings, write that down too.

The same thing goes with daydreams or random ideas that come to you during the day.  If you don't write them down, you are likely to forget them, which is sad.

The novel I'm working on editing today was inspired by a dream, which is why I bring it up.  It was the kind of dream that would terrify most people, and yes, I was scared.  But when I woke up, the first thought in my mind was, "I can USE this!!" and I wrote it down.  It was the beginning of my zombie creatures, different than any other zombie creatures I've read/seen before (not to say it hasn't been done, but I haven't seen it myself!).

I got a feel for how they moved, ate, operated in a group, and lived.  I understood why they were nocturnal, and got a feeling for how the unchanged humans might feel if their loved ones had changed and disappeared.  And I have used all of that.  The details in my book and in my dream are different, but the feeling is what I'm running with, and it inspired me to use that world as a setting for another story I'd wanted to do for a long time.

It's working out beautifully, and I just wanted to share that little tip!  Dreams.  Write them down.  You never know when they might be useful!

Happy writing!  And if you missed it, a few days ago, I posted the Prologue for this work in progress!  It's rather a fun read, and is a unique way to show the zombies for the first time.  It was a lot of fun to write!  

Peering back 15 years...

Found this old picture of me tonight.  It was from back when I lived in Chicago, had my hair spiky, wore huge jeans that didn't fit me, a chain wallet, and this flannel jacket which I surely stole from someone...  

I moved out there to go to college at Colombia College.  Was all of 17 when they accepted me into the fiction writing program there.  I didn't really know what that meant, at the time.  I didn't end up going, because of transcript issues, but did live there, and spent most of my time writing.

I hated having a roommate, and trying to learn how to navigate a new place.  Being on my own, being truly responsible for the first time ever.  Being distant from all my really good friends, and being alone.  Really alone, for the first time in my young life.  

Yeah, I had a roommate, but we were mostly just living companions, and while I am grateful to have had her, at the time I would have said something different, I'm sure.  We drove each other crazy, fought a lot, and tried to rule each other's lives, all things told.  And when I ended up moving home for various reasons, I couldn't get out of there fast enough.

Looking back, I wouldn't trade the time for anything.  I miss the city.  I miss walking by the lake at night, even the part where I almost was arrested for being near people I wasn't actually WITH.  I miss the time to just sit and work without interruption.  Riding the EL, even working at Target.  Heck, I saw David Bowie on the street one night, and that was pretty awesome, even though all I could remember of him at the time was his role in Labyrinth.

They were my first months away from home, away from everything close and safe, and I was tossed in the deep end, left to flounder.  Left to find my own way.  And I did.  I made friends and had a blast, ate lots of great vegetarian food, and learned some valuable life lessons.  Like, if you get the power shut off when you don't live there anymore and there was milk in the fridge?  It will stink.  Yep.  Good to know.

But most of all, in my time there in the windy city where my doors were snowed shut once or twice, I learned I can stand on my own two feet.  I can go places by myself.  I don't need someone else's permission to do what feels 'right'.  And I learned I really can sit down and write something.  Every single day.

I still have my old Brother World Processor.  I actually do have plans to copy over the work I did while I lived there.  There was a good story started.  I didn't know where it was going yet, but it has the feel of something real, and these older wiser hands would love to have a crack at it.

Anyway, don't discount your younger years.  Your first years starting out.  Even if, in the moment, you hate it?  You will look back fondly.  I would give anything to go back there and have a second chance.  To go to school at Colombia.  To learn how wonderful it is to write in a group setting.  To stand on my own feet, and drink too much coffee, and get lost on the trains again.

In the end, all the moments we have, the good, the bad, the ugly and terrible...  they are what grow us into the people we are to become.  I'm not saying be happy about it...  but allow yourself to feed from it.  Grow, learn, discover.  And see just what it is you really are capable of.

You might just surprise yourself.

Now that it's all over...

Now that NaNo is all over...  what are you finding to do with your time?  Are you back to your normal old life?  Does that seem strange?  Not writing every day?

Or are you keeping at it?  Using your month of daily writing to help establish good habits, and working on, without the word count ticker?

There are several places you can go, year round, if you miss the ticker, or the challenge.

www.writeordie.com has a fun self-challenge thing.  Worst case, your words will be EATEN BEFORE YOUR EYES if you stop working.  That's just mean!!  But there are nicer levels on there, and it is worth looking into.

www.writtenkitten.net is very silly, giving you kitten rewards for meeting your word counts.  Awww, another kitteh!!!  SO CUTE!!!!!!

There are various versions of this, now, too.

Puppy:  http://writtenkitten.net/?search=puppy
Dog:  http://writtenkitten.net/?search=dog
Chihuahua: http://writtenkitten.net/?search=chihuahua

Are we sensing a theme?  Put whatever word you want in the search area and VOILA!
You can put ANY word in there and it will try to find you motivational images.  Whatever those might be, to float your boat.  *ahem*  Some may only be adult-friendly.  Play with your new toy responsibly, please!

Really, it just takes any search for images and makes the answers random.  It's kinda clever, but is all based on some search engine somewhere.  But, if it motivates you?  Great!

There's always www.750words.com too.  It's a private thing, and can be used to journal, but it tries to make you write at least 750 words per day.  Tracks your moods through the words you choose, kind of cool.

In any case, DO NOT let people suggest you only are allowed to write during November.

If you want to write?  WRITE.  End of story.

So, what are you still sitting here for?  Go!  Get to it!  There are stories that want to be told!

PS:  The weekly-ish flash fiction challenges will begin again this Thursday night.  Check back for details, or look at the Flash Fiction stuff from previous challenges for ideas of how it will look!

<<<<< Over there, word bubble or search feature!  :)

Writer = Crazy. But that's okay.

There are moments, when writing, that make you seem like a completely crazy person.

You find yourself talking about your characters like they are real, and they ARE, at least to you. You grow attached to them, don't want bad things to happen to them, and are sad when their lives are not going well.

You might have your coworkers looking at you like you need to be medicated (Like I was for a while today, myself...). You might have to defend your obsession with word count, or find yourself talking about the book too much. Or lament things you have to do to your characters, like I was doing today.

Why lament?  Well, I have to do a terrible thing today, and most people do not understand. I'm 23,000 words into my current book, and I am struggling with moving from beginning to middle. The character I was trying to push over the edge just wouldn't *break*.

Last night, it hit me. I know what I need to do. But I don't want to. It's horrible. And sad. But I have to do it. The father needs to break, emotionally, and leave his family. Depression isn't doing it. So...

I have to kill his 5 year old girl. She is sweet, and kind, has bad dreams about monsters. She still mispronounces marshmallows, loves snuggling on the couch to read books, and carrying the cat around like a baby. And she has to die, or he will never leave. And the story will not work unless he leaves.

*steels self to head out for a writing gathering (a NaNoWriMo local write in) at a small bookstore, and kill off a lovable character while crying in public*

But it's okay. We writers understand. These feelings are valid, and it's difficult to do these things.

Just remind yourself. If you are this attached to the characters, if you cry while you write the horrible things in their lives, if you bleed on the page, it will come through in the writing. Your readers, later, will thank you for it. Because it will be real. It will make them feel something too. And that, my friends, is the mark of a great book.

Be strong!!

This year, it's a family affair.

I have kiddos starting their NaNo stories just like me.  Tonight we went to the store and bought a batch of brand new pencils, they each chose a special notebook just for NaNo, and my daughter sits beside me at the table pouring over a baby name book.  She is naming her characters.

We discussed plot ideas, the importance of writing our ideas down (Miss Anna, 9, nearly forgot her idea entirely by NOT writing it down!), and that it is okay to write fan fiction if they want.  Mr. Aaron, 8, is going to be writing a Harry Potter fanfic.

But, regular homework must come first.  I'm keeping the boy's Spiderman notebook until he finishes his spelling list, and writes out his reading log.  I might have to confiscate it at the end of each day so we start fresh on these projects each day.

In any case, my kids, 8 and almost 10, are BOTH joining me for the first time ever.  Anna gave it a half-hearted try last year, and gave up all too soon.  She would have met her goal had she continued.

I look forward to seeing their ideas come together and help them tackle their problems within their plotlines!  This is going to be a fun year!

NOW!  If only they'd stop talking aloud about their own ideas so I could think about mine!!  LOL

You can do this.

Repeat it to yourself if you worry.  If you are staring at the blank screen, waiting to figure out what words come next.  If you can't think of that perfect word you need just now.

If you worry, know you are not alone.  Everyone worries.  That it won't be good enough.  That you won't finish.  That you'll get sick or distracted or stranded on a desert island with nothing more to write with than a stick and the sand.

It will never be good enough if you don't start it.  Or if you just let it go half way through.  You will never be able to make it good enough if you don't finish your first draft and move on to editing.  Here's a little trade secret:  No matter how good you feel your first draft is?  It's crap.  It honestly doesn't matter who you are.  Your first draft is crap.  You make the book in the editing.

You will never know if you can finish in the 1 month time frame if you don't try.  And hey, if you don't finish the first draft in that frame...  you can finish it after!  :)  Also...  if you don't manage to meet the official word count (50,000 words seems really big at first!!), just think of it this way.  You did a lot, in a short amount of time.  And that's something.  :)

If you plan a little in advance to get a few hundred words ahead every day, and you get sick?  You're covered.  If you get distracted, unplug.  Do a word sprint.  Turn on music and don't let yourself stop writing until an entire album is done.  You are in control of this.  You control yourself.  You control your word count.  You don't have to let the words rule YOU.

Now, that desert island thing?  Sucks to be you.  Hope you have flares.  ;)

NaNoWriMo begins at Midnight!!!

Are you ready?  What is your plan for this year?  Are you going to plot or pants it this go round?  Plotting being planning out your story ahead of time, and pantsing being flying by the seat of your pants and just going with it as it comes.

Really both options are valid.  I've won both in NaNo ways.  In some ways, for me, plotting is a better idea. The year I pantsed it (that's totally not a real word and no I don't care!), I wrote the beginning to book 1 of a trilogy.  I need to finish book 1 after NaNo this "year".  Meaning, between NaNos, I want to actively work on that book and finish it, and get the second (and third!) planned out.

But the idea, while the beginning came to me, was slow to mature.  It was difficult to know where it was going.  I had my characters and their reasons for behaving the way they did, but I had no earthly clue where the story was going.  I ended up repeating myself a LOT and upon editing I will have to tear out a lot of stuff.

I thought I was being so clever...  Turns out, being clever is not what you want!  I was trying to tell the story from different points of view.  And then when I read some of the books in the Game of Thrones series (I'm still behind!), I realized the way he did it might work, but the way I was doing it did not.  I was repeating myself, not moving the story forward from one set of eyes, then bouncing back.

I was doing it that way so I could keep the word count up while continuing to have NO idea where it was all going.  When I finally got my hook, it was about half way through the book, and it really picked up from there.  If I had put some thought into it ahead of time, I would have known what the hook was, and been able to write toward it.  It would have made it easier on me, come editing time.

Anyway!  So, pantsing can work, and I know many people who it works very well for!  If you have a general idea, maybe start there, but see if you can think a few steps ahead.  Have an idea for where you are taking it all.  It will probably help you along the way.

And if you are plotting, get it written down NOW!  Today is the day.  After all, I don't count my notes in my word count.  It's not the story.  It's the notes.  So I can do that today.  Unfortunately, this happens to be my very favorite holiday, AND I work all day.  Well, Professor McGonagall works all day for me...



And she will be busy handing out candy all evening.  Alas.  I will have to wait for the trick or treaters to move along before I can really type it all out.  But I have notes in my phone to get me started, and a very basic plot in mind.

Heck, I've told my basic idea to several people, and most of them demand to read it RIGHT NOW.  So, I'm guessing, as long as I don't flub it up too badly, this one will go far.  :)  Just have to get it moving!

If you want to see, or friend me, or whatever, this is me over on NaNo.  And be warned, the website is going to be BOGGED DOWN today.  Keep trying and you'll get through.  :)

http://nanowrimo.org/en/participants/bekajoi

Happy Writing!!  Will post tips and such, just like last year.  But if you're impatient, you can search for NaNo in my handy dandy search bar up over there <<< and find last year's notes!  :)

Standing there, looking back at what you've done...

You get this empty feeling because it's all over now.  You did so well!  Or maybe you don't feel like you did well, but you certainly did better than you thought you would...  NaNoWriMo is over now, and now what?  I keep seeing the question asked all over the place.

I won't pretend to be quite as awesome as Chuck Wendig in his post-NaNo blog posting..  but I cannot stress this enough:

You are allowed to write today.  You are allowed to write whenever you want.  You do not need the permission of November to accomplish something big.  Something real.

If you aren't done yet, press on!  Push yourself!  Still see if you can aim for that 1667 word goal every day.  Or maybe for you, it's 500.  Maybe for you, it's 1000.  Maybe it's 3000 or 5000.  However, I'll be the first to say 5000 every day may not be a reasonable goal to expect yourself to hold up forever.  I'd say set the bar to a reasonable but difficult level.  1000 is not so hard when you get in the habit of it.

My personal goal is 1000-3000 when I'm actively writing something.  I go in spurts of writing and editing, since I have kids and a job I have to work with/around.  If you can write full time, you should absolutely be writing and editing some, every day.

Not the same project, sorry if that was confusing.  Write one project in the morning, take a break, and edit another project in the afternoon.  Some people can't do this, can't work on multiple things at the same time, and if that's you, that's OK.  Do what you can, but do SOMETHING every day.

If you want to keep going with word sprints, you can roll with them by yourself by setting a timer or watching the clock just like you did in NaNo.  You can also see if you can find a community of people who are interested in doing the same thing.  I'm currently in all of these, because, let's face it, some of them are bound to fizzle out.  I can hang out and stick with them all, and whichever of them wins out, I'll be there.  So I share my links with you!  Use them wisely.

• NaNo MS Recovery Group
• WriMore International
• NaNoWriMo AYR
• NaNoBuddies forum
• Writing Forums, a not-NaNo, but always busy awesome writing hub to visit.

If my links don't work or something, you can always bug me for them again, here, or my FB page: bekajoi (this is the name I use most places if you're continuing this weird stalking thing of yours!  LOL)

Also, if you know of good places, please let us know!  I'll add them to my link list.  :)

Don't stand there staring behind you at what could have been.  Make it happen.  It's in your hands.  Do with it what you will.  You know you can.  I know you can.  So do it already!  :)

Choose a fucking ending. Please. For the love of Pete!

I just watched a movie (Last Night), and am thoroughly irritated with the ending.  I mean, really.

I could handle either direction.  They talked, they didn't talk.  They fought.  They broke up.  They made up and pushed forward.  But for the love of all that is holy, suck it up and give me an ending.

Dragging things out for people to decide for themselves how something ends is a major fucking cop-out.  It's goddamned lazy.  And there's nothing in a good story I hate more.

The rest of the story was solid.  The rest of it was deep, moving, and absolutely felt real.  But they had to leave it on an in breath that was clearly at the beginning of the spoken word, leaving you to decide what happened?

Take some responsibility for your stories, writers!  FINISH.  Maybe some people won't like the ending.  Maybe only a handful will.  But finish.  Writing a work of fiction is not a choose-your-own-adventure for grown ups.  The grown ups want to have resolution.  Give it to them.  Please.

Pete loves you, he doesn't want to have to murder you in your sleep with a baseball bat.  Don't make him.

Number Obsessions

Happy Friday, oh, if only it were a really REAL Friday for me.  Alas, I work all weekend.  Not on the words.  Probably not on the words at all, actually, not after this morning.  Work does tend to take over the entire three days of the weekend at the brick and mortar place that pays me regularly and provides insurance for my blow-up-from-bug-bites kid and the occasional random kidney infection.  Oh, insurance how nice you are.  How lovely it would be if you were not a worry...  WishingthiswasCanada says what?

I digress...  Kids go to school today, to Grandma's tonight, while I work tonight and tomorrow morning (yay, close/open!).  This means I have the whole morning/day/until my husband wakes up and gets distracting to get my words OUT!

So, my general goal, of late, has been 1000-3000 words per day.  Yesterday I managed 2100, day before 1800, 1700 before that...  Yeah, I do tend to obsess about the numbers just a WEE little bit.  Sometimes.  Maybe.  (Also, going to start obsessing about regularly posting here, just because.  So get used to it!)

So, let's see if I can hit 3000 words before the hubband wakes up and puts on something lovely and distracting.  You know, something like Big Bang Theory where I find myself guffawing over whimsical ducks and their umbrellas.  No wait, that was yesterday when I nearly fell in the tub...  It was funny when I wasn't falling anymore.

Tubs are slippery.

In Which I Give a Mini Update

Orange juice, check!  Breakfast sandwich from cheap fast food place, check!  Tiny round wanna-be-potato thingies, check!

Ok, I'm up, I'm up!  Stop your nagging!  And the kids DID get to school...  only slightly late.  Nice start to my day, eh?  I'm trying to make up for it with food.

So last night, my assumptions were all proven correct.  I can't drink, not even wine, not even slowly, and get ANY work done.  I had guessed it, but wanted to try it out.  Usually it's my Absolut Citron with Simply Lemonade (Raspberry, please!) and that makes me more fun-drunk than simply laid back.  So last night, I got myself a bottle of Moscato d'Asti from Costco (I love you Costco!), and proceeded with my experiment.

Utter fail.  Nope, can't write.  Was trying to read instead, my new lovely book on writing (because, well, if you can't write, you may as well read about writing, right?  Were there enough "write" sounds in that sentence?  Writey writey write write, right?), Confessions of a Freelance Penmonkey....  I had already finished the shorter writing book-thingy by the same most excellent writer dude, 250 Things You Should Know About Writing~  I couldn't read without getting overly tired either.  Damn it.  So I decided to watch a movie instead.  Watch a movie I knew I liked, but had not seen in a while, and pay attention to the STORY behind the visuals.  Let the story take me away...

So I did.  And it was not as awesome a movie as I remember, but I now have a child the age of the one the Main Character lost in an accident, so I got all teary and blubbery anyway.  Ah well, such is life.

Anyway, so the ramble ramble here is all gearing up to why I'm trying to crank out words!  I'm nearing completion on the first draft of a book I've been working on.  I started this one for National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, in 2009, and I got to my 50k words and walked away even though it wasn't done.  I'm picking it back up, seeing where it goes, and taking it for a spin.  I'm about 79k words in right now, and have the end mapped out.  Just have to do the leg work!  And then, well, edit it about a gajillion times before I'm willing to let people look at it.  Well, unless you peek at my NaNo page, where I failed hard last year, and read the little excerpt.

So, I'm all quiet-like here, but I promise, I really am working.  ;)  Pinkie swear!