Planning

I wanted to do the March Madness challenge over at Forward Motion (basically, massive amounts of writing during the last week in March), but... it didn't work out. I had an idea, and I was doing chracter creation and working on an outline, but something was wrong with that story. I figured it out shortly after I began the planning, but tried to ignore it. I couldn't ignore it forever, though. The story was dead. I could try to resurrect it all I wanted, but it still wasn't anything more than a zombie with occasional flashes of life. I knew that I could fix it, but I also knew it would take longer than I had.

So I moved on. A fwe days before the challenge was supposed to start, I started an outline-less story, figuring that by the time the challenge started, the story would be rolling along on its own momentum and I'd be able to get plenty of words done on it. At least, this is what I hoped, even though I know I do much better when I have an outline to work from. I should be able to write without one, I thought. I'm a writer; I'm creative. And people keep saying that outlines get in the way of creativity. But I just don't write well like that. When I can separate the planning part from the wrong part, I can devote more attention to both, and I don't have to worry about losing track of my ideas. With this story, I had no idea where I was going with it. I considered pushing past it and forcing myself to write the story, but I had a bad experience a year and a half ago where I forced myself to finish an aimless and dying story and thus killed my creativity for months.

Next plan: Interconnected short stories. Deep down, I knew it wasn't going to work. But I tried anyway. And failed. And had to accept the fact that I just wasn't going to do the challenge this year.

So, back to planning.

I feel kind of guilty about all this planning I'm doing. I'm doing the 2YN class, where we've just finished character creation and have moved on to worldbuilding. I'm also doing worldbuilding for a series that I've been wanting to write for a very long time. I've got several ideas stewing in the back of my mind; I play with them every so often, and I can feel them bubbling away back there, soon to explode into something new and better. And I'm tentatively working iwth one of those ideas, trying to solidify it on paper. (This is hard for me, though; the 2YN novel is my current project, and I'm not used to splitting my creative focus like this.) All my projects are in the planning stage.

Don't get me wrong, I've been writing. (My February word count was something like 27,000... though that did include that very long short story.) But those words are all planning. They're details about plots and characters and worlds. They're not actual story words.

I know the planning part is just as necessary as any other. (Some people can skip it, and do better that way; I'm not one of those people.) But it still feels like I'm not doing real writing.

Statistics

A couple of statistics I heard the other day:

5% of people in America say they read books
82% of people in America say they are writing a book

I don't know if these are true (78% of all statistics are made up on the spot), but I'd believe it. It would explain the quality of some writing; it would also explain why people keep telling aspiring authors to read. I always thought that was sort of a silly thing to say - of course we're going to read! We love books; that's why we're writing them!

But then, some people don't write because they love books; some people write because they think it's the path to fame and fortune. I'm glad I'm not one of them; fame and fortune are hard to come by, but if you write because you love it, you'll still love it even when the mailbox is filled with nothing but rejections.

What It's All About

The other day I realized what my overall theme is - the theme that runs through all my stories, underneath the themes specific to each particular book.

It is this: the inherent beauty in an imperfect world.

The song "Still" by Alanis Morissette also sums it up nicely.

Bad things happen in my stories, and people face decisions that they can't neatly resolve. Good people do bad things. Bad people do good things. The world looks flawed.

It looks flawed... but it's not. There's beauty in all of it.

This is what I try to get across.

Driven

For awhile I've been trying to figure out whether I'm plot-driven or character-driven. I'm both, and yet neither. When I come up with a story, I usually come up with a very basic idea for a plot, and then I work out what characters would work best with it, and after that the characters and the plot build on each other until I have a story. Neither character nor plot is clearly dominant.

The other day, watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer, it hit me. Characters fascinate me. Plot fascinates me. But at the core, I'm emotion-driven. It's the emotional core of a story that drives me, and if that core disappears, I lose interest.

And yet... I tend to only skim the surface of the emotional realm when I'm writing. Because I'm self-conscious about it, and am afraid of seeming silly or melodramatic. The emotion is there when I'm planning the stories, but when I write them, I avoid that core and, in so doing, suck the life out of the stories. And lose interest in them.

Avoiding the part of the story that fascinates me most is probably not a good idea.

Submission Dread

I meant to do some short story submissions this year. I really did. Back in January, I was researching markets and everything. But here I am in March, with a total of zero stories submitted.

Usually I have an excuse for avoiding submissions. I'm not a short-story writer, I'm a novel writer. And so far, all my novels are fit only to be the stuff I look back on later and think with amazement about how far I've come. (With the exception of one of them, with is scheduled for a massive rewrite. Massive, as in different setting, different plot, and somewhat-different characters.) They're just not publishable-quality yet. Almost, but not quite.

But though novels are a much more natural form for me, I do sometimes go through phases of writing short stories. And I have a few good ones sitting on my computer, just waiting to be sent out (some for the first time, some for the second or third; I really have done submissions before, just... not very many).

Yet I'm avoiding it.

I don't like rejections; no one likes rejections. A wave of anxiety hits me when I see an envelope in the mail pile that has my address written on it in my handwriting. But my dislike for rejections is much less than I would have thought it would be, considering how insecure I am normally. Rejections are impersonal. There just isn't space for most of the stories editors receive. The editor isn't sitting at his desk with a malicious grin, thinking, "Whose dreams shall I crush today?" Editors have to reject most of the stories they get; that's just the way it works. (Maybe I'm only able to come to terms with this so easily because my short stories are much less a part of me than my novels are; I imagine it'll be harder to deal with the rejections once I start submitting a novel.)

Still, I'm scared that one day I'll open one of those envelopes and see a note explaining in excruciating detail why my story is the worst piece of drivel ever to cross this particular editor's desk. And I'm afraid of doing it wrong somehow. That's why I'm fanatical about following submission guidelines. It's one thing to have an editor read my story and not be able to use it; it's quite another to have that editor think I'm an utter moron.

Of course, I suppose I just try to avoid the idea of an editor reading my story and laughing at it and/or thinking I'm a moron for writing such a thing. I prefer to believe someone read the story, liked it, but couldn't use it. And I'll never know either way, so I might as well make it easier on myself.

I really need to send out some of those short stories.

Early Lessons

I had been thinking that my run of bad luck with writing classes started when I began taking college classes, but today I remembered that it actually started much earlier than that. It started in the fourth grade, when I took after-school classes aimed at gifted kids. I signed up for a creative-writing class; we spent most of the creative-writing class talking about nonverbal communication and the things that words can't convey but that things like dance can.

I'm quite serious.

And don't get me started on writing in school. I started homeschooling halfway through the sixth grade, but I managed to get in plenty of bad writing experiences during the years I was in school. My third-grade teacher was responsible for many of these. She once told me the word "awfully" was spelled "awfulley." So I erased "awfully" and wrote "awfulley," and stared at it for a minute. It looked wrong. So I changed it back. A couple of months later, we had a lesson on how words that end in "-ly" should not be spelled with a "-ley."

The story where she complained about the word "awfully" was the Mouse in the Pumpkin Patch story. Everyone had to write a story about a mouse in a pumpkin patch; she gave the same assignment every year. In my story, the mouse came across a hose at one point, and because I was seeing through the mouse's eyes, I described the water flowing from the hose as a river. "Were you talking about a hose?" she asked me when she saw the story. I nodded. "So why didn't you just call it a hose?" she asked.

Also, I had the mouse build a house inside a pumpkin. I said the mouse made furniture out of leaves. "You mean leaves and acorns," my teacher said when she saw this part. "He can't make furniture out of just leaves." I'd had a specific idea in mind - the way I saw it, the mouse had taken the thick strings ut of the leaves and hung up other leaves with them, like hammocks. But rather than try to explain this, I changed it. I'd learned it was best not to try to explain things to this teacher. (This is the teacher who, at the school ice cream social, cheerfully informed my mother that I was a very manipulative child but that she was curing me of it.)

Then there was sixth grade. When the Language Arts teacher handed a poem back to a friend of mine, she said, "I put a star next to every line that I like in a poem. There are no stars on this poem. Do you know what that means? That means this is a pathetic poem."

In that same class, we had to fill out a form poem about Autumn Leaves. We had to fill in an adjective here and a noun there, like a game of Mad Libs where the story was already visible. The last line was marked "Your Thoughts About Leaves." Since the poem had been describing leaves floating through the air, I wrote, "Like they never want to hit the ground." The teacher was not happy about this. "What is the last line supposed to be?" she asked me.

"Your Thoughts About Leaves," I read.

"That's right. The line you wrote isn't your thoughts. It's the leaves' thoughts."

Really, is it any wonder most people don't write?

Don't Sell Your Soul

I got a postcard in the mail the other day from a local tech school. At the top, it said something like, "Imagine a fulfilling career doing something you love!" Yes, I can imagine it very well. A writing career. The postcard presented me with such options as "Paralegal Studies" and "MicroComputer Technician"... my dreams are not filled with such careers as those.

Then I looked at the other side of the card. The last four digits of their phone number were "6660."

So I took that card as a reminder to keep imagining the career I want... and not to sell my soul to Satan for the sake of something more stable.

Naming Dilemma

I've been struggling with the name of one of my 2YN characters ever since the course started. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't seem to find anything that fit. I was getting sick of referring to him either by his role in the story or by the temporary name that is easy to remember but that I don't plan to use. I also wanted to find a name fairly fast, before the temporary name stuck and I couldn't think of him as anything else. But the universe was not cooperating; nothing suited him.

Yesterday, I remembered my eariest idea of a name for him, and decided it worked quite well for him. Cause for celebration... at least until I Googled the name and found out that it used to belong to a Power Ranger.

I certainly don't want my readers thinking of the Power Rangers every time they come across this character. (It's a fairly unusual name, too, so people probably wouldn't have too many other associations with it.) On the other hand, I think the name would work for him... and not many names will. So do I risk it? How popular was that particular incarnation of the Power Rangers, anyway?

I'm still undecided. For now, the character has been promoted from unnamed to maybe-named - and that's improvement.

Even if he does share a name with a Power Ranger.

Interesting.

Your Five Factor Personality Profile

Extroversion: You have low extroversion. You are quiet and reserved in most social situations. A low key, laid back lifestyle is important to you. You tend to bond slowly, over time, with one or two people. Conscientiousness: You have medium conscientiousness. You're generally good at balancing work and play. When you need to buckle down, you can usually get tasks done. But you've been known to goof off when you know you can get away with it. Agreeableness: You have high agreeableness. You are easy to get along with, and you value harmony highly. Helpful and generous, you are willing to compromise with almost anyone. You give people the benefit of the doubt and don't mind giving someone a second chance. Neuroticism: You have medium neuroticism. You're generally cool and collected, but sometimes you do panic. Little worries or problems can consume you, draining your energy. Your life is pretty smooth, but there's a few emotional bumps you'd like to get rid of. Openness to experience: Your openness to new experiences is medium. You are generally broad minded when it come to new things. But if something crosses a moral line, there's no way you'll approve of it. You are suspicious of anything too wacky, though you do still consider creativity a virtue.

The Five Factor Personality Test

The Typical Day

Anders Bruce asked, on his blog, about people's typical writing day. Mine is probably much more unstructured than average. I'm very disciplined, but in a weird way. I can force myself to write even when I don't feel like it, but if I make myself follow a set writing schedule, I start thinking of it as a chore that I have to get over with, and I rebel. My system probably wouldn't work for a lot of people, but it works for me - the writing gets done.

I wake up at the crack of nine, and spend an hour or two waking up by reading blogs and browsing forums. After that, I head downstairs and have breakfast, and take the dog out for a walk in the woods. Then I might come back upstairs and browse the web some more, or post work for the plethora of online classes I'm taking, or watch an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Angel (I'm making my way through both shows at a rapid pace), or I might open up the Word files for whatever project I'm currently working on and start writing.

After awhile I'll get myself a snack (I eat lots of snacks in between breakfast and dinner, rather than eating lunch; my body works better that way), and then I'll exercise for an hour. Exercising sometimes gives me new ideas for my writing; physical movement tends to help my creativity. I usually spend the rest of the afternoon working on my writing, with time for other stuff too (like reading, meditation, playing The Sims 2, and other such things). Oh, and somewhere in there I'll do work for college classes I'm taking (not that I get anything out of it; these classes are horrible).

Then I'll make dinner, and eat with Dad. After that, my evenings are pretty much just like my afternoons, until I head to bed at about 2 a.m. I usually spend about an hour reading before bed; I've learned not to spend this time writing instead. Sometimes I'm tempted, but if I work on creative stuff that close to bedtime, I get bouncy and energetic and it's harder for me to fall asleep, since what I really want to do is work on my writing some more. (It's hard enough to convince myself I want to go to bed; I'm usually much more tired when I wake up than I am when I go to bed.)

Then I wake up the next morning at the crack of nine, and it begins again.