Apathy.

That’s the only word of this post I’ve typed in the last hour. I managed to hit an all time low on the motivation scale*. I have so very many things to do and I’m so overwhelmed by it all that I haven’t done anything.

So, to get over it I’m trying something new; getting organized.

I am making a list (I won’t check it twice) of things I need to do, ranked in priority from one  to three. The stuff at the top of the list is the stuff that will endanger my health/sanity/personal hygiene if I don’t do it.

Things at this level include: sleeping, bathing, eating, going to work, keeping the house habitable and wearing pants.

Next up is the stuff I really want to do. I won’t actually die, but I might feel like it. There are a surprising number of things on this list that I haven’t been doing at all.

Things at level two include (but are not limited to): Writing, physical training, reading, spending time with my partner, writing the articles that I promised people ages ago, spending time with my family and friends and wearing pants.

Finally are the little things that I kind of want to do. I seem to spend a lot of time doing this stuff. Half the time I don’t even want to, I just do these things out of apathy, laziness or overtiredness.

Level three has all the crap in it: Watching TV, reading magazines I don’t even like, mindlessly surfing the net, watching TV, playing computer games.

Of course everyone needs a little level three mindlessness as downtime, and there’s nothing wrong with spending some of your spare time just playing on the internet. My problem is that the level three stuff is taking place instead of everything else.

My new plan** is to throw out as much of the level three stuff for the rest of the year that I can. I’m still going to be taking plenty of planned downtime, but the key to it will be setting myself  time to just do whatever and sticking to it, instead of wasting entire days doing nothing because I feel burned out.

The point of all this is this: If you’re feeling burned out, or you simply don’t want to do anything, try this list thing out, then throw out all the level three stuff you don’t need for a week. Plan downtime where you give yourself permission to let it all hang out, but try not to waste anytime on things that aren’t helping you in any way.

This has been a bit of a rant, but I’d be keen to know what you do when apathy takes over?

* 10 is where you will, in fact, take over the world. 1 is where only physical reflex keeps you breathing.

** The old plan involved an elaborate ruse.

Hi everyone, I have a new review up of J C Hutchin’s excellent book 7th Son: Descent. You can check out the full review right here.

I’d like you to fast forward yourselves to the end of November.

You, sweaty and stained as if you’ve just emerged from a coal mine, are stared at a pile of printed paper. You choke back some tears and wonder about having another coffee. You silently curse and praise NanoWrimo at the same time.

You’re looking at your novel.

50,000 words in just one month, it’s an incredible achievement, one that you can brag about for months. Your future self reaches out to stuff the first three chapters and a query letter into an envelope. Printed on the front of this envelope is the address of your favorite literary agent*.

I want you step out of the time stream and punch your future self in the back of the head. As your unsuspecting, caffiene ravaged clone falls to the floor for the first rest they’ve had in ages I want you to take all of the envelopes addressed to agents and burn them.

Of course all this flitting about the time stream may bring about the end of the world, but it’ll be worth it to stop your future self from sending those chapters, or worse, whole novels out to agents they respect. Why is that?

You can’t write a saleable novel in thirty days.

You can get a first draft. You might even get a full length first draft but there is no way that you’re going to be able to get a proffesional standard, agent ready draft in thirty days. I know there are rumours of super ninja authors that can do it, but that’s not us. I think  you should do NanoWriMo, but you must keep in mind that if you think, even for  second, that you’re going to be able to get out a full sized novel (80,000 plus words) and make it professionally acceptable in a month you’re kidding yourself.

This goes double if you have any kind of a life outside writing.

So save the universe our potentially damaging trip to the future. Set the idea in your head that your NanoWriMo novel is a first draft, and when you’ve recovered from November’s insanity you’ll keep working to make it good…

Not just finished.

*You researched your agents and have found a favorite that fits with your novel and genre…right?

How do you start a book?

I’ve been thinking a lot about this question since ninja agent/blogger Nathan Bransford began running his “The 3rd Sort-of-Annual Stupendously Ultimate First Paragraph Challenge”.

I put in the first paragraph of my work in progress and forgot about it for a day or so. When I went back there were almost 2000 entries. I read a few, skimmed a few and bailed out of most of the entries I read within a few words. Of the hundred or so I read first, and then the almost five hundred I read after that I found around ten that would have enticed me to keep reading.

That’s not a good way to begin your book.

So how should you do it? I can only give you my personal likes and dislikes, as there are as many ways to start a book and there are words in every language on earth. There are a few things that stood out to me though:

Short and snappy

If your opening paragraph is too long, say more than five sentences, then there is every chance you’ve started your book to soon and are trying to give me too much detail. I don’t need to know the time, weather, clothes your character is wearing or what they had for breakfast. All I really need to know in that first paragraph is that something is happening. You have the rest of the book to describe the scene to me. Of course there are exception, there are some great writers that start out with some direct scene setting details and it still works, but the vast majority of the bad entries to Nathan’s contest* tried to cram too much into a small space.

I don’t need a full name

I’m not saying you can’t have a full name in there, but you need to work it in casually. Personally I prefer it if a writer gives me a first name to start with a works in a surname later.

Death’s Allusion

If you’re going to start with violence or death, allude to it; don’t just dump a corpse on me (figuratively speaking). A friend of mine is writing a forensics type novel and she sets up the first death scene so well that you actually care about the character when the killer gets to them. I can’t care about a character death if it happens in the first line or two.

Voice

This is a little harder to define, but let’s say I’m browsing a book store and I pick up your story. I’ll read the blurb and the first page or so to see if I want to buy it. If I don’t like, or even worse, can’t get a feel for how you write in that first page, then I probably won’t be taking your book to the counter. The best way to impart your voice to a page is to lay off the direct description and let me try and work out what’s going on for myself. A good example of that kind of opener is from Stephen King’s Dark Tower series:

“The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.”

How could I not want to read on? King doesn’t burden us with details, but he does establish that the gunslinger is chasing the man in black for some reason, and the gunslinger’s pursuit so bothers the man in black that he’s fled across a desert to get away.

What was my first paragraph? For the current work it’s:

Hunting down one amongst thousands of zombies is never easy. It’s worse when your brother is in your ear telling you what to do.

I tried to keep it short and snappy without dumping anything in anyone’s lap. I’m far too close to my own stuff to be really objective**, but I quite like it.

Of course the rest of your book has to be good, but in order to get a chance to show someone that you’ve got a great story, you need a great opening or there’s every chance the good stuff will end up in the bin/rejection pile/bonfire with the bad.

P.S Special message for Carrie of Heim Binas Fiction: Enter the contest. You’re really good, show the world!

* They’re not all bad. There are some in there that are good enough to restore my faith in mankind.
** A couple of days ago I wrote something so bad it endangered literature.

I’m flat out writing (and sadly, doing some re writing) of my novel. It’s actually getting there, and as long as I keep my nose to the stone I’m going to make 50,000 words by the end of the month. The reason for the big rewrite (almost 10,000 words need to be changed) was a fundamental problem I had with my main character (s).

I had no idea what they wanted.

Of course the good guys wanted life, liberty and happiness and the bad guys wanted money and power and all the moustache they could twirl but as to actual goals beyond surviving (and killing each other) I had no idea.

I’m a seat of the pants writer by nature, and planning comes difficult for me, but figuring out what your character wants is a nice, easy, non restrictive way to set some important things up before you get halfway through your story and have no idea where it’s going.

Even if you don’t yet know your plot, you can ask yourself what your protagonist wants from the next week of their lives. In the case of my main character one of the things he wants to do is stop working for his brother. Despite the more outlandish parts of my upcoming book, that desire is going to drive him towards certain decisions in the book. Another fundamental desire of his is towards protecting the people he loves, that too is going to change the way he reacts when things get ugly.

Try the same trick with your antagonist. I can’t quite go into my main bad guys psyche without giving everything away before I’ve written it, but if you look at any of your favourite books (I recommend Neil Gaiman for excellent antagonists that actually have some depth) you will be able to boil the bad guys motivations back to one of a very few things. Are the bad guy’s motivations selfish? If they are that’s the most common motivation for a bad guy to have, and there’s nothing wrong with that. If they want millions of dollars and your protagonist happens to be in the way of that, their reaction to being thwarted is what’s going to turn them from frustrated everyman into a true nemesis for your main character. Bear in mind that a bad guys* motivation can also be altruistic, but their pursuit of those altruistic goals can be what makes them the antagonist. A good example would be the environmental activist that decides that murdering timber cutters is a good plan. Most people can sympathise with the goal of cutting back on logging, but killing people to achieve it is beyond a rational response.

If you can combine the two into an antagonist that has their own selfish desire mixed in with an altruistic motive, then that’s the best thing you can do for your bad guy. If they think they’re actually a hero, then that’s even better. When was the last time you met someone acting like a real jerk that knew they were acting like a real jerk? I’m sure they’re out there, but for the most part people acting like jerks think they’re in the right, and the people they’re in conflict with are the ones being unreasonable. Of course to make your book interesting, your antagonist needs to go beyond ‘jerk’ into ‘nemesis’ or possibly ‘diabolical madman’ depending on your story. It’s the same concept though, just on a larger scale.

This has been a long post already and I desperately need sleep. Ponder what your characters want, with and without your main plot points driving them. Then, especially for your antagonist (s), consider how they justify those goals to themselves.

* I feel the need to point out that when I say good guys and bad guys, I actually mean good/bad guys/girls/squid creatures of your choice.

It was not a great weekend.

I got my first podcast done, and it sounded pretty good. I edited it, put a few extra bits and pieces and I was looking forward to sharing it with you all today.

 It was not to be.

 For whatever reason (I suspect human error) the podcast is so quiet it’s only audible to cats, and while my new kitten loves the soothing sound of my voice it’s not much help to anyone else. I tried playing around with the sound levels but it became quickly apparent that I’m going to need to re-record the whole podcast.

So, my apologies on the lack of audio content, there should be a podcast up by tomorrow evening, but at this stage I can’t guarantee anything.

 I also hope I won’t catch fire between now and then, but that may again prove to be too much to ask.

 It’s not all doom and gloom though. Work on my new project is going better than I had expected. My current plan is to get a complete outline, character bios and plot hooks ready for the beginning of NanoWriMo* in November and I’m well ahead of schedule.

What are your plans for the next few months? I’m always curious to know what other writers are doing. Are you doing NanoWriMo? Do you sometimes catch fire? How do you feel about bears?**

* NanoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month. A time of year where aspiring writers cast off the shackles of sleep, hygiene and caffeine toxicity to write a first draft in a single month. It’s the best kind of madness.

 ** Perhaps a better questions is “how do bears feel about you?”

I imagine the comma fairy as a tiny malevolent little gnome that sprinkles run on sentences into my work.

I also imagine him starting small fires. The little sod.

I’m especially guilty of long sentences when I’m trying to get a point across. The more complex the point, the more commas. When I first started writing I never met a forty word sentence I couldn’t love.

Slowly I’ve come to see the comma fairy as a problem. Admittedly it took a dire threat from an editor to make me take a hard look at my writing style, but the fewer commas I use, the better my writing seems to get.

It bothers me that there are so many commas in that last sentence.

Fortunately killing the comma fairy is easy*. Reading your manuscript out loud will show you exactly where commas are appropriate. It will also show you where and when you need a full stop instead.

As part of an action sequence I wrote this mind bogglingly long sentence in one my early projects:

“Cora weaved under Vadim’s punch, taking the opportunity to slam her palm under his chin as she slid past, then turned behind him and kicked him in the back of the knee, crumpling Vadim to the floor.”

Thirty seven words.  I must have been drinking when I wrote that. I hope I was drinking.

A better way to say the same thing might go something like this:

“Cora weaved under Vadim’s punch, slamming her hand into his chin as he passed by. Now behind him, Cora stomped on the back of Vadim’s knee. He dropped to the floor at her feet.”

The second example is almost as long, but it reads faster and the length of the sequence isn’t as noticeable. Try it with one of your own paragraphs; see if you can kill of the comma fairy.

Don’t feel bad for him, he has it coming.

* I stole the term comma fairy from Julie Butcher, editing ninja and talented writer. You can find her website here.

I set myself a big goal for the weekend: Write 20,000 words by hook or by crook. I utterly failed. At 8,000 words my brain turned to jello and I crashed out on the sofa with a box set of DVD’s.

You heard me.

As a writer, you’re going to fail at your goals sometime. I’m not trying to be depressive about it, it’s just that sometimes life gets in the way. If you catch fire I would expect you to put it out before getting on with chapter three.

It could happen.

The point of all of this is not that I failed to write 20,000 words, or even that I cooked my brain like a Christmas turkey. It’s that I got out 8,000 words, which is significantly more than I normally write (I usually go for 3 to 4 thousand words over a weekend). If I hadn’t gone for the big score, I wouldn’t have gotten 8,000 words out as a kind of failure by-product.

So lesson one in failing right is: Dream Big.

 If you don’t set a big goal, you have no chance of achieving it. Even if you don’t hit that big goal straight off, if it’s big enough, there’s always the chance you’ll get something worthwhile out of it anyway.

Like 8,000 words.

Of course, if I’d set myself a goal that was too big, like finish my first draft by the end of the weekend, I wouldn’t have done anything at all. You need to dream big, but it needs to be theoretically possible to hit your goal. As much as I joke about setting myself the impossible goal of finishing a first draft by the end of the month, it’s more than possible.

That make lesson two: Think difficult, not impossible.

I blog about these thing sin the hope that other people can learn from my mistakes, but I try not to give myself too much grief about the mistakes themselves. Of course I’m disappointed if I don’t get a goal, but being angry at yourself is a waste of energy you could be putting into your writing.

If being angry helps you write; by all means go nuts, but as soon as your writing is done with, put the anger away too. I’ve really made myself suffer in the past by being overly hard on myself for making mistakes. This is your writing, your novel. A mistake is not a tragedy because tomorrow, you can do some more writing.

Lesson Three is the big one: Learn from your mistakes, and then LET IT GO.

I’m on track to finish my first draft by the end of the month, and in part that’s because I haven’t let my innate ability to fail get in my way. If you check on all of your favourite authors, they’ve screwed up more than once on their way to becoming great writers.

Failure is temporary; it can’t stop you unless you let it. Now get writing.

Normally I tell people, no matter how bad your writing is, keep going. It’ll get better.

In rare instances, this advice may not be correct.

The link above is to Awful Library Books, a superb blog about weeding out the very worst things to grace the shelves of library’s everywhere.

Awesome.