Sunday Links & The Week in #storyeachnight: April 15, 2012 Edition

The first link I want to draw everyone's attention to is Ken Liu's short story "Memories of My Mother." This will be the subject of April's Dissecting the Short Story post, which will appear on 4/26 or 4/30. So, if you want to be able to join in the discussion around this story, you could go ahead and read it now to be ready for that.

I've finally gotten back into the groove of regularly doing #storyeachnight. Here are this week's entries:

4/8 - "Amor Vincit Omnia" by K. J. Parker from THE YEAR'S BEST SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY, 2011 EDITION. Some rather fascinating worldbuilding in Parker's story, though not sure how I feel about the overall story arc.
4/9 -  "Older, Wiser, Time Traveler" by M. Bennardo from DAILY SCIENCE FICTION. I liked this story. Good voice and sense of where the story was going which, in a time travel story, can always be a bit tricky.
4/10 - "Final Exam" by Megan Arkenberg from the 6/12 ASIMOV'S. An interesting, very non-linear structure though I think I would have enjoyed it more if it had been a good bit shorter.
4/11 - "Waiting at the Altar" by Jack McDevitt from the 6/12 ASIMOV'S. Decent space exploration story though I enjoyed his recent "Maiden Voyage" (which featured the same characters) more. ("Maiden Voyage" was the subject of my January 6th "Dissecting the Short Story" entry.)
4/12 -  "Lethal Injection" by Kevin Levites from NOIR NATION #1. Seems like a lot of snake research went into this one. It had a very authentic feel.
4/13 - "The Green Book" by Amal El-Mohtar from THE YEAR'S BEST SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY 2011. A great, rather short, story about an enchanted book and people who have interacted with it.

4/14 - "A Brief Respite From Eternity" by Alex Shvartsman from STUPEFYING STORIES 1.5. A nice flash fiction which worked for me even though it deals with a particular subject area I'm getting a bit weary of.

Now, here are this week's writing-related links:

Sunday Links: December 11, 2011 Edition

I got the second of my "Write 1/Sub 1" stories for the month out earlier this week. It was a short one, an entry into Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine's monthly "Mysterious Photograph" contest. I've been working on a couple of other stories this week, too, though so I've gotten quite a few new words written. I also went back and took a final pass through one of the stories I'd done preliminary drafts on pre-NaNo and got it out on submission.

A quick blog announcement, I'm planning to take a brief hiatus from posting over the Christmas weekend. So that will mean no Dissecting the Short Story post on 12/23, no Sunday Links on 12/25, and no Monday post on 12/26. I'll have Wednesday posts on both 12/21 (though it won't be a DtSS preview, naturally) and 12/28. And, of course, if I have a burning desire to share something between the 21st and 28th, I may pop on long enough to put up a quick post.

And now, on to the links...

Sunday Links: December 4th, 2011 Edition

As part of my writing goals for December, I finished up a new short story Saturday and got it out on submission. This was the first of my "Write 1/Sub 1" stories for the month. This one ended up developing sort of interestingly. I ended up just starting freewriting with a setting and some characters and saw where it took me. That's something I basically never do, but it seems to have worked well in this case. So the lesson here is that sometimes breaking out of your existing writing routines can work well.

I also got a little pleasant surprise in my email this afternoon, word that one of my story submissions already out has moved on to a second round of consideration. Not a sale yet, but a nice little bit of encouragement for a Sunday afternoon.

And now, on to the links...

"Adrift" First Draft Complete

So here I am. Just a tiny bit under 28 days since NaNoWriMo started here in Ohio, and I've typed the last words on the first draft (very much a first draft!) of "Adrift," the working title for the project I chose for NaNo this year.

Honestly, I think I'm in a bit of a daze. Before a few months back, the longest thing I'd ever written was a roughly 9,500 word long mystery story (technically, I suppose, a novelette per "prize" definitions which tend to cut off "short story around 7,500 words). I started in late-summer/early-fall on a very half-baked novel idea which I honestly have no idea if I'll ever go back to.

But, you know, if I hadn't made that first attempt a couple of months back, I doubt I'd be sitting here typing these words now.

Four Things NaNoWriMo Has Taught Me (So Far)

Monday afternoon I passed the 25,000 word mark and then some on my NaNoWriMo project. So, I'm more than halfway to "winning" NaNoWriMo with 50,000 words for my work in progress. This is now by a fairly large margin the longest thing I've ever written. Before a couple of months ago, my longest ever work was a short story (more technically perhaps a novelette) of just under 10,000 words. I got about 18-20,000 words into a novel project in late-summer/early-fall before I stalled out on it for the time being.

Still, the longest completed work of mine remains that 10,000-ish word story. At this point, I'm estimating that the novel I'm working on, which I currently am calling "Adrift," will end up around 60,000 words. So by that measure I still have more than 50% of the work to go on the first draft. It's a daunting task, but I'm encouraged by the progress that I've made so far.

Thinking about the last two weeks' worth of writing, here are four things I've learned about my own creative process as a result of NaNoWriMo along with some comments on how other writers might look into the same aspects of their process.

1. I have a limit. For me, this is about 4,000 words in a writing session. Once I've gotten that much written, which probably means about 3-4 hours straight of composing (along with the occasional Twitter break and suchlike), I'm done. I feel tired, I feel unfocused, and I don't want to write another word. Even if I'm in the middle of a key scene, I have to take a break. I suspect that most writers have some similar limits, though I also know there are some who can write many more words in a session. The important lesson here for me is that trying something like "The 3 Day Novel" probably isn't even worth considering for me. I'd be miserable when I was done. The other key takeaway for me is that I can't let myself fall too far behind in NaNoWriMo this year or any other because I'd only be up to so much "catching up."
2. I work well when I have a plan. Yes, it's the famous "plotter" versus "pantser" discussion. I'm now firmly convinced that I'm a plotter. That doesn't mean that I don't end up going down paths I didn't originally expect in my writing. There have been several developments in my NaNo project that I either didn't expect or that presented themselves in an unplanned way (even if the development itself was planned). Granted, I've still got a lot further to go, but with my 2200 or so words of notes that I made in October (perfectly "legal" for NaNo) I feel much more confident about the path forward. The important thing for other writers here would be to be aware of what writing style works best for you. If you are sure you're a pantser, you probably aren't going to be happy plotting. If you're like me, and are sure you like plotting, don't go off willy-nilly into a long project and expect it to work out well.
3. Having a support group is important to me. In fairness, I had already sort of learned this before NaNoWriMo, but it's become even more obvious during these last two weeks. There are people on Twitter who I have done multiple word-sprints with throughout the month to-date. We've frequently sought each other out to see if we were available to urge each other on. I've had some very productive sessions during these word-sprints.
4. It's okay to not fill in all the blanks right away. I tend to write in a very linear fashion, starting at the beginning of the text and ending at the completion. Here, there have been several times it made sense for me to make a note about something I would want to research in more detail later and move on. These weren't things that had an impact on the plot where I would be likely to have a problem if my research led me to an unpleasant surprise, and it let me keep moving forward with the first draft. Would I advise doing this with a key plot point? No. But if it's a bit of period "texture" detail, I think it's just fine to make a note about what you want to research and move on.

Are you doing NaNoWriMo this year or have you done it in the past? What has it taught you?

NaNoWriMo Progress and Musings

Less than 48 hours ago I was sitting on 8,334 words. Now, after a good chunk of writing on Sunday, several hours at a write-in earlier today, and a #1k1hr session with some people on Twitter tonight I'm at 14,150. That's nicely ahead of "pace" for the first seven days of NaNoWriMo and gives me some buffer for the rest of the work week.

Will I make it to 11/30 with a completed first draft? Certainly, right now it's looking good, at least for hitting the 50,000 words required to "win." If I'll be actually to the final word of the story by then or not, I'm not sure yet, and probably won't be until I get a lot closer. I'm nearing the 25% point of my "outline", though, so guesstimating that 60,000 words is a likely final length doesn't seem unreasonable.

And, of course, then I'll be far from "done." I'll be thrilled with what I have accomplished, of course. I'll have planned and executed a project in a thirty-day time period and likely dealt with multiple unexpected events along the way (both real and fictitious!) which required adjustments in my plan. But the novel won't be ready for anyone else to read. I'm sure I'll need at least a second pass through before I want to let anyone see it, other than maybe some excerpts here and there.

I was having a Twitter conversation tonight where the topic of what the ratio of first draft time to editing time is likely to be for a NaNo novel. I haven't specifically tracked it, but I think that I spend about 2-4 times the amount of hours revising a piece of work as I spend in first draft. That includes all rounds including feedback from critique partners. So, realistically, it will probably be six months after 11/30 before I'd have a good sense of where my novel might be going next. And that's OK. It's a long race and there can be lots of winners. And even if what I ultimate decide is that this one's going in the trunk, I'll know that it's something which I am capable of doing, and I'm sure I'll have learned plenty in the experience.

Sunday Links

I hope everyone is having a good Sunday!  Here are a few writing-related articles which I've read in the last few days which I found interesting.


Changing Scale: Looking at Your Story from Different Angles by Janice Hardy (The Other Side of the Story) - Janice takes here architectural background here and relates it to writing. She talks about how changing your perspective -- going from looking at the "big picture" of your story to some details or vice-versa -- can help provide new ideas for your writing.


Forty-Five More Flaws That Expose Your Lack of Writing Experience, Part 3 (Plot to Punctuation) - A list with detailed examples of nine "gotchas" that novice (and -- as the author notes in the case of George Lucas -- experienced) authors can trip themselves up on.  Part three of five.

Why a Messy First Draft is a Good Thing by Julie Musil - I can see myself coming back to this one several times during NaNoWriMo.  "A messy first draft means you've finished a book."  Good words to remember!

What Self-Publishers Can Learn from Restaurant Impossible by Joel Friedlander (The Book Designer) - Since I've been thinking a lot recently about how publishing has changed and is changing, this article was interesting for me to read, and I liked his use of a TV show to draw parallels between writing and another business.