Counting Progress

NaNoWriMo can be used to create a good habit - writing every day - but it can also create some bad habits.  Namely, what you consider to be progress, and how you judge yourself.

I'm struggling with this right now.  I've had to take a break in writing to work on some research, and it feels like getting nothing done.  NaNoWriMo teaches you to only count actual words written as progress, and researching means no writing is getting done.

But research is still important, and I didn't want to waste time writing a few very specific scenes without doing some research first.  I also didn't want to keep going with the rest of the novel - which NaNoWriMo encourages, in order to prioritize the writing of words - and have to come back and research and write these scenes later, when I'm not in the flow of the story any longer.  (I'm a fairly linear writer, and typically write in order of how I envision things happening in the book.  This is different from writing in order of how things happen, because, for instance, I write flashbacks when the flashback happens in the story, rather than when it happened before the story took place.)

So I don't have much progress showing on my graph for a few days, but that's okay, because I was working on my novel during that period.

I've also been allowing myself breaks on the weekend, but that's a subject for another post.

Writer Talk: What Do You Do When You Get Another Idea?

Most writers get story ideas all the time.  Sometimes one is so powerful that it's hard to stay focused on the current project and not get distracted by the urge to start another.

So what do you do when that happens?

I usually find that trying to ignore it 1) makes the urge to write something else worse, and 2) means a potentially lost story idea, so I usually try to at least write down my idea.  Sometimes that means a few quick notes, sometimes that's a basic outline, and sometimes it's writing the intro or a scene.

In fact, Ruby started out as a middle-of-the-night idea that I hurriedly wrote down one night.  One of my best-ever short stories was also a late night idea, that I sat up writing until about 2am.

A couple of days ago, I got a story idea that just wouldn't quit.  I opened up Plottr and started sketching out an outline, and before I knew it, I had a pretty fully fledged basic outline and character sheets for the main characters.

I'm not done outlining it or writing up the character sheets yet, but the question is, what do I do now?  Do I start working on the novel?  I think it would be a fairly simple one, so possibly a quick write.  Or do I finish my draft of Ruby, and then write this?

I'm aware of the value of getting caught up in the excitement of a new project.  It's good motivation and can be good to follow it.  At the same time, there's also something to be said by sticking with something and not running off after every story idea that comes to mind.

I haven't decided yet what I'll do, but I'm aware that it might not be a bad idea to have other books available than just my Vampire Noir series, especially if I'm self-publishing.  The bigger your network of books, the more opportunity you have for sales, especially repeat sales from existing readers.  Having a few standalone books available when I publish Ruby might be helpful for anyone who wants to read more of my books while they're waiting for the next installment in the Vampire Noir series.

Plus there's the nonfiction ebook I'm working on currently, a specialized piece that's more related to my doll business than my fiction writing.

I definitely have a lot of irons in the fire right now.  I'm not freelancing right now (more on that later), but maybe it's good timing, since I have a lot else I want to accomplish!

To Read or Not to Read

With only two and a half weeks until NaNoWriMo is upon us (!!!), I'm starting to think about my reading materials in the next few weeks and during November.  My plan was to reread some of my 1920s research materials leading up to NaNo - in addition to reading my own novel, of course.  But now I'm a little afraid I won't have enough time before November to read everything I wanted to.

I also have to decide what to read during the writing process.  I remember reading some author's thoughts on the matter once, saying that they read voraciously while they were planning the novel - research materials, other similar books, etc. - right up until they started writing it.  And then, at that point, they read only other stuff, books that wouldn't be similar enough to what they were writing that it would unintentionally influence them.

I wish I could remember who that was.

Anyway, I know a lot of people don't read at all during NaNo.  They think they can't or shouldn't spare the time away from their novel.  But I'm a voracious reader - I'm always reading something, no matter how busy I get.  Even if it's only for five or ten minutes, I have to read at least a little bit every night.  I could probably count on one hand the number of times I've gone straight to bed without reading, and they've always been because of something extremely out of the ordinary, such as when my horse almost died in the spring.

So my plan is to read a bunch of 20s stuff - both research and fiction, probably - to get me in the mood before November, and then during November I'll try to stick to completely unrelated fiction.

What about you?  Do you read while you're writing a novel, and do you have any rules for yourself about what you read?

Ruby Ransome revived

I've had somewhat of a hard time working on Ruby's story regularly.  I'm midway through revisions on my rough draft of the first novel, and I really need to finish... but revisions are haaaard, and I'm having trouble staying focused long enough to see one round of revisions all the way through.

I have a lot of my own projects I am struggling to find time for, actually, so this year for NaNoWriMo I chose to work on other projects -- anything, really, as long as I was working on something of my own (rather than client work) every day.  It's gone fairly well, but it's had an interesting effect.

Missing pieces

Besides finally straightening out the timeline (mostly -- still a few more dates to assign in that department), last week I also finally got to work on the missing chapter -- the one I skipped over by accident, assuming it was going to happen a little further on... and then realizing that what I had just written actually occurred after that chapter.

And this is why I hadn't done the timeline yet -- sometimes it rearranges itself while I'm writing, and I have to go back later on and nail down the dates once I've written the draft.

No loose ends and minding the details

I just updated the progress meter in the sidebar to reflect my current word count of 94,172.  I was thinking that my rough draft of Book 3 would be just shy of the initial goal of 100k (kind of like the rough draft of Pandora's Box was just shy of the initial goal of 80k), but now I'm thinking it will be a little over.  How much over I don't know -- I think I have 6k to go until the end, easily, but then I also have to go back and fill in a chapter that I missed earlier on.

Motivation

Last night I wrote another nearly 3,000 words.  I've now got a little over 90k total, which is more than I wrote on the first novel by more than 10k.  I think I'll need to cut some ultimately -- the first quarter or third of the novel may meander a little too much -- but I'll see when I go back to do revisions.  In the meantime, a new character has proven himself to be a plot ninja, and is going to tell his story before the end of the book, so I may surpass 100k after all.

Almost done!

I just updated my side bar word count meter to reflect my work over the weekend.  I wrote nearly 6k over the weekend: 3,500 words on Saturday and 2,400 words on Sunday.  Considering I've been stalled since the end of November, I'm pretty pleased with that chunk of progress.

Progress post-NaNoWriMo

Progress has been on the slow side since NaNoWriMo ended, but I haven't stopped writing.  My goal on days that I write is a thousand words.  Over the weekend I got there.  Monday night I only got about halfway.

But I also am developing a better idea for where the novel is going.  Some things that I planned in my outline are going to work, and other things are being changed.  I've changed the order of events in this end section several times, trying to find something that feels right and maintains the pacing I want.

I've updated the meter in the sidebar to reflect the current word count: 81,297.  That's up 2k from the end of NaNoWriMo, at which point I had 79,293 words.  Not spectacular, by any means, but none too shabby, either.

I'd like to finish the novel by the end of 2012.  I doubt there is more than 15k left, so if I write a thousand words every day, I ought to get there -- and then I can focus on rewriting and revising (starting with finishing the job on the first novel) in early 2013!

Writing that second draft

I'm currently working on some more research for both the first book and the soon-to-be-started second book in my Ruby Ransome vampire series, but as I finish up with the research I will begin working on the second draft of the first book.  (I want to do the research first because there are a few holes I want to fix in the first draft.)

Revising is a pretty big deal for me, since this will be the first time in my entire life that I've done a second draft of a novel.  I've written novels before, but I've always simply put them away when I was finished writing the first draft.  I never revised them, never wrote a second draft (let alone a third or fourth) trying to make them better.

I plan to do many rounds of revisions on these books as I finish them, plus hire a professional editor, since my goal is to self-publish.  Having never done revisions, though, I'm a little anxious about how it's going to go.  I know that I'm going to start by reading through the entire novel and making notes about what I want to change, but I don't know what to expect from there.  I know I'll have to do some rewriting in order to bring the second draft up to where I want it, but I don't know how much it'll take, or how much additional research I will find that I need to do.

Thanks to Nook's PubIt page, I found this article with tips on writing your second draft, but it's only marginally helpful because it reads more like an inspiration piece than an actual how-to.  I also may have found an app (of course!) for my Nook that will help me with this stage, but more on that in a future post.

Perhaps in a couple of months I'll have some tips of my own for those who are starting their second drafts!

The art of writing multiple books per year

Since I am writing a series, and planning on getting started on the next book right away, I found this blog post interesting: How Can You Write 4+ Books a Year and Maintain Quality Work?

The article isn't so much about how to maintain quality work, but how to set aside enough time to write a large number of books per year.  While making the point that the same thing isn't going to work for every writer, the blogger gives some advice on getting into a writing routine (setting aside time to write so many words per day), putting book releases and other milestones on your calendar, writing about stuff that excites you (so that you're more likely to want to get it done), and hiring editors so that you can focus on the writing part.

I agree with most of the stuff in the post.  Most obviously, if you're not excited enough to want to work on your novels every day, you should probably reconsider what you're writing — sounds like you're not cut out for it.  And getting into a routine is great advice — something that I think NaNoWriMo and similar challenges really help with.

Hiring an editor is also necessary, I think, especially if you are planning on self-publishing — but I don't think I would do what this author does, and hire people to do all the editing for me.  I think going through your own work and revising is necessary, especially since you might want to make huge changes to the story that an hired editor wouldn't or couldn't do.  I plan to do several rounds of revision myself on each one of my novels, and only then will I have an editor come through to do a final check for problems.

And even then, I will probably read through it one more time myself.

Churning out multiple books a year is definitely possible, and it's also possible to maintain quality while doing so.  But I do want to have a larger hand in revising and editing my own work, even if it means I finish fewer books per year.

What about you?  Coming right out of NaNoWriMo, I imagine a good number of my readers are "wrimos," but if you do write throughout the year (and not just in November), how many books do you typically finish in one year?  Or do you have a plan for how many you'd like to finish?

79,145 words: Finished?

Last night I finished the skipped scene in my novel, the one I had to go back and do after writing the ending.  It ended up being a few hundred words more than I thought it was going to be, but the first draft is still only 79,145 words — nearly a thousand short of my original goal of 80k.

I'm not sure how I feel about that.  I was hoping at one point that it would actually be a little longer, more like 90k.  I guess when I go back through and make revisions, one of the things I will be doing is looking for places where there is room for another scene or two.  I've been toying with a new idea for the denouement, one that would likely add a couple thousand words (and, in my opinion, possibly make it a little better — I feel like something is missing, like the last 10k of the novel is too rushed and doesn't pack enough of a punch, so to speak).

In any case, I'm going to set this aside and sit on it for a month or so, and then I'll begin revisions.  In the meantime, I am going to take a short break (to get caught up on other stuff) and then start researching Book 2.

Tips for writing a series

If you didn't already know it, I'm planning an entire series about Ruby Ransome and her adventures with vamps.  I already have ideas for future books, and I need to sit down and brainstorm one of these days to flesh some of them out and come up with more ideas — the first book takes place in 1923, so I need to see how many books I'm going to want to cram into the remaining 10 years of the decade.  Some of the ideas I have take place in specific years — one of them in 1929 — so I really need to get an idea of all the books I want to have in the series before I get too far along.  Initially I thought of doing a book per year, but most will cover fairly short periods, so maybe I should plan for more.

Anyway, Barnes & Noble's PubIt Facebook page linked to a very interesting article today, on dealing with continuation issues in a series.  (The title is somewhat misleading — the article isn't really about continuation issues to avoid, but how to deal with the issues.)

I've already come up with ideas for my covers that I think will create a strong brand, so I'm good on number 4.  I also have a very good idea of the overall story for the series (Ruby and Victor fighting vampire-driven organized crime in the 1920s), so put a check next to number 5.  I also feel good about Ruby's character arc throughout the series, so we're good there too.  And number 7 deals with what I was just talking about: planning out the series ahead of time, so that I can make the time line work.

Numbers 1, 2, and 3 are more about keeping the details straight.  I'm actually not sure 1 and 3 aren't the same thing — 1 talks about getting character details right, and both 1 and 3 talk about rereading prior books to make sure you're remembering the details correctly.  Personally, I keep an "outline" (loosely defined as such) with character information, and I try to add important details as I think of them.  I may develop this to include more detailed character sheets for each one.

Two is a very interesting issue.  Do you make each book a standalone?  Do you repeat information in each book in order to bring up to speed the readers who are just now coming into the story?  While I agree that books need to bring readers up to speed — for those who read the last book or books a while ago, as much as for those who have never read them — I think too much of this really bogs down the story, and in my books I'd like to keep it to a minimum.

I've written novels before (though never published), but writing a series will be a new adventure for me.  I have to say I'm looking forward to sticking with these characters for a while!

Word count woes

I did a little bit of searching yesterday for information on typical word counts for a novel.  I know I once saw a chart that showed the expected word count according to genre, but I don't recall where that was.  I think it was an edition of the Writers Market, back before I realized that the Internet pretty much eliminates the need for that book, but it's not the last edition I bought (and the only one still on my shelf), 2007.

Anyway, I found this most helpful post in determining the appropriate word count for juvenile and YA books, but since I decided some time ago that Ruby Ransome wasn't YA after all, that's not very helpful.  I did some other searching, and finally Googled the titles of a few books I think are most like mine in subject matter and audience.

Dead Until Dark, the first of the Sookie Stackhouse novels, is at right about 90,000 words.  I found another site that stated adult fiction should be above 80,000.  I also found some information about word count per published page (250-300) and according to that, if I want my book to be 300 pages or so (which I do, at least that), what all of this means is that I really do need to make 80k.

So, after a short period of doubting, I'm back to my original goal for total word count.  Hopefully, once I fill in the gaps in my outline, this won't seem quite so impossible!