• July Goals

    03Jul
    Categories: Fine Lines, Rewrites, The Editing Process Comments: 0

    Time to set some new writing goals.

    With a successful ‘writing’ month now behind me, it seems logical that I should attempt to follow it up with a successful ‘editing’ month.

    Editing isn’t my favorite thing. It tends to gum up the works a considerable amount. What should I change? What should I leave alone? What parts of a story are strong? What parts are 98-pound weaklings?

    I sometimes get so wrapped up in these sorts of details while writing that I now permit no editing while I’m writing. I read the previous day’s work to get started each day, but no major plot changes and no going back beyond the previous day’s work to make changes. There’s a time to write and a time to edit.

    I’ve also learned that it’s generally best to put some space between writing and editing. Some writers suggest a few days or a week or two. I seem to have the best results if I put another story between writing and editing.

    For example, I just finished the rough draft of Parting Gifts. But I’m not going to edit it immediately. I’m going to let it sit a while, to get ‘cold’ as a shorthand teacher from high school said. As an artist, I call it ‘gaining a fresh eye’.

    So I’ll work on writing another story and I’ll edit an older story in July.

    The story I’ll be working on is called Fine Lines and is in the third or fourth draft stage, depending on how you count the drafts. I did a quick read-through this past December as recommended in James Scott Bell’s excellent book, Plot & Structure. I have printed the editing guidelines work sheet and my intention is to read it through again and fill out that worksheet. From there, I should be able to determine what needs to be changed and how.

    What I am not going to do is analyze until the story goes stale, as was the case with Perfect Opportunities earlier this year. So I’ve divided my July goals into steps.

    July 1 – 7: Analyze Fine Lines using editing guidelines

    July 7 – 31: Rewrite Fine Lines according to results of the analysis

    Simple enough, right? We’ll see.

    If I can get the analysis done more quickly, great! I’ll put the additional time into rewriting.

    I will not allow analysis to go any longer than the first seven days. It will be finished at the end of the writing day on July 7 whether that worksheet is complete or not.

    I’m also going to keep writing, though it will be secondary to editing until the editing is done. At the very least, I’ll continue the 1,000 words a day goal. Unless there’s enough rewriting on Fine Lines to provide writing for this, I’ll be working on a new story that is also in the mystery category, Amelia Anderson.

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  • A Thousand Words a Day; Finished!

    01Jul
    Categories: Random Writings Comments: 0

    Well.

    It’s done.

    Thirty days of writing (except for Sundays).

    A total word count for the month of 61,225. Not too bad.

    In fact, it’s better than not bad. Both the goals for average word count and cumulative word count were double what I was hoping to achieve. I was looking for 1,000 words per writing day, I managed 2,355. I was looking for 26,000 cumulative words and the total count was 61,225.

    I’m taking two things from these results.

    The first thing is that I can participate in National Novel Writing Month without a significant change in the daily routine. There will have to be some changes, because chances are good I won’t get 25 writing days between Thanksgiving and events at the gallery. I will have to push a little harder, but it should be manageable.

    The second thing is that I clearly have been much too easy on myself from January to June because my daily goal was only 700. Looks like I might have to upgrade that somewhat for the rest of the year!

    What’s even better, I now have a completed rough draft for Parting Gifts. It is very rough, but it is complete and that was my goal! It was officially completed at 11:06 p.m., Saturday, June 27 and weighed in at 80,559 words. Woo-hoo!

    It also just happens to be the first new manuscript completed in eight or nine years, so, yeah, I’m thrilled! In spite of the hour, Neal took me to the Sonic Drive In for a root beer float when I announced the news.

    Rather than rest on these laurels, I picked up another story that I set aside for June and spent the last two writing days of the month working on that.

    In July, I’m going read through Fine Lines again and see what it would take to complete the second draft. Hopefully, not much, but that remains to be seen. Getting a polished version of this story, which has been in the pipeline since early 2000 is currently in it’s second or third draft, is one of my writing goals for 2009. Maybe I can check it off my list this month.

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  • Road Maps & Faith

    29Jun
    Categories: Monday Morning Devotional Comments: 0

    My husband, Neal, and I enjoy road trips.

    We enjoy road trips on roads that sometimes aren’t really roads. Do you know about the low-water bridge over the Whitewater River along Tawakoni Road, for example? Or how to get from Matfield Green to Emporia the back way?

    We travel those trips with a Kansas Gazeteer. The gazeteer shows the State of Kansas in small chunks that are enlarged enough to show an area of approximately 30 miles east to west and 40 miles north to south.

    In other words, every little thing is on those pages.

    Except every little thing may or may not still be in use. We have encountered many passages that do not appear on the map.

    We have also found roads that appeared on the map but were no longer passable for one reason or another.

    In other words, there is enough information on the map to make it a useful tool in navigating, but enough has changed to make a good deal of faith necessary.

    Hmmmm.

    Road maps. Journeys. Faith.

    This is starting to sound a lot like the Christian walk.

    There is in every life patches of good road, patches of bad road and patches of two-track or overgrown foot paths.

    Every life is provided with a ‘gazeteer’ more detailed and accurate than anything created by man. It is called the Bible. All the information we need to get from birth to eternity is presented between those covers.

    But it is written in such a manner that it also requires a great deal of faith to follow. We are given the rules and principles. We are not shown every step. It is up to us to use it.

    Yes, it is possible to get from Matfield Green to Emporia the back way without the gazeteer, but it’s a lot better to follow the map!

    Our faith journey is impossible to successfully complete without following the map.

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  • June Goals: Raising the Bar

    26Jun
    Categories: Random Writings Comments: 0

    The idea of setting monthly goals ranging from daily goals to an overall monthly goal has proven very beneficial to writing, to production and to completing manuscripts.

    In the last two posts, I’ve reported the progress I’ve made so far this month.

    What I haven’t mentioned is how these goals have impacted my writing life and my personal life, as well. So this is the time and place to do so.

    In a word, it has been fabulous!

    In May, I had a two-week cold that kept me out of the studio completely for most of that time. The worst part about that was that I had a portrait nearly finished that was already behind.

    So last week, I decided to set a short-term goal of finishing that thing that week. That didn’t happen, because on the same day, Thomas (the cat) and I had a little go-round that resulted in an injury to my right wrist. It wasn’t debilitating. I could still type, but I couldn’t flex my wrist enough to paint and couldn’t have held a brush for any length of time. So, no painting.

    The goal was pushed back to this week and so far, I’ve worked on the painting both of the two days I had available. On Wednesday, June 24, I worked for nearly an hour and a half straight, and worked not one, but two areas almost to completion! Cool! So the writing goals have impacted painting.

    As for writing, Parting Gifts continues forward at full steam. I believe the story has just passed through the second door of no return that leads the characters to the conclusion of the story. There may still be another four or five chapters to finish, but it is getting there.

    In addition to that, the cumulative word count for the month as of the close of business on Wednesday, was 44,560 with a daily average of over 2,100. I was astounded to see both of those numbers, but also very pleased.

    I was also motivated to adjust my goal upward.

    I’m going for 50,000 words now! Good NaNoWriMo practice!

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  • An Update on Parting Gifts

    24Jun
    Categories: Parting Gifts Comments: 0

    I thought I would post an update on Parting Gifts and the progress I’ve made so far.

    To begin with, the story first came into being in May 1996. I don’t remember now exactly what the impetus was, but it did come into being as a spin off of another idea that never seemed to reach completion.

    I have worked on it periodically throughout the thirteen years since, usually whenever the story I was working “seriously” faltered. A chapter here, a chapter there. If I had an idea for a scene or series of scenes, I’d take the time to write those scenes and add them to the file.

    But the story rarely received dedicated attention and was never at the top of the A list. I don’t think it ever even made the B list and the C list is questionable, as well. It languished for years at one point and when I moved from Michigan to Kansas, it changed locale, as well, but only after I’d been in Kansas for four or five years. Then, I began to read through it again, making a change here or there and adding a new scene or chapter periodically.

    In 2008, I wrote a total of over 14,000 words on Parting Gifts, but I couldn’t tell you how many of those were on the actual story and how many were journal notes. I can say it was the most productive year put into the novel since its inception, so I was pleased.

    Fast forward to the present and the June goals.

    On June 16, I topped the 26,000 word mark on Parting Gifts. That represented about 13 new chapters and a few scenes that may be used at the end, as well as some that I have already essentially ruled out. The continuous part of the story (the first 26-1/2 chapters) measures up to 50,693 words and the total document, including those disjointed scenes, is at 70,922 words.

    I’m not sure how close I am to the end. By chapter count, pretty close, since most of my novels top out at around 30 to 35 chapters. But the word count is low for that. At 2,000 words per chapter, that would finish the novel with somewhere between 77,000 and 87,000 words, which is a little bit short when compared to the last two finished rough drafts.

    But, I am writing as things come to mind, stringing together paragraphs, chapters and events without much planning just to see what happens. I have no idea whether or not the end result will be worth anything but the experience of writing it or, if it is worth further work, how much of it will make the cut in editing. But I’m not thinking about that right now. Not much, anyway.

    The more important question right now is can it be finished by the time I turn off my computer on Tuesday, June 30?

    Only time will tell!

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  • June Goals: An Update

    22Jun
    Categories: Random Writings Comments: 0

    What a dilemma!

    I don’t know whether I should count my June goals as half completed or one third completed.

    I set three basic goals at the beginning of June. They were pretty straight forward and it’s extremely easy to monitor progress. I will know exactly when I hit each goal (which also makes it much easier to stay motivated).

    • Write 1,000 words a day every day but Sunday
    • Write 26,000 words by the end of June
    • Finish the rough draft for Parting Gifts

    What’s the dilemma, you ask?

    On Tuesday, June 16, my word count for the month so far reached 26,000. So that goal is taken care of. 1 of 3 equals one-third completion. No argument there.

    What that also means is that even if I don’t write another word all month, I will average 1,000 words per writing day for June. Twenty six writing days (thirty days minus four Sundays). 26,000 words. Average word count per day, 1,000. So I can consider that goal attained, as well. Right?

    I sure would like to, but I don’t think I will. As they used to say in Amway meetings, if you set a goal and reach it ahead of schedule, you don’t rest on your laurels; you keep working the plan and moving toward the next goal.

    Besides, even if I wanted to take a break now, I would still have that third goal staring me in the face. Parting Gifts is not finished and looks like it’s another 10,000 to 20,000 words away from the finish. So I can’t stop now, can I?

    There is the added incentive that I set the first goal as a way of training myself for National Novel Writing Month in November. I will need to produce a certain average word every day for November in order to write a 50,000 word novel, which is the goal of National Novel Writing Month. I won’t be able to coast if I happen to get the appropriate number of words but the novel isn’t finished. I don’t think I’ll be able to coast at all, come to think of it.

    The better thing to do with counting goals accomplished or not seems to be to continue writing this month and to either up the ante to a higher, more challenging level for the last nineteen days of month then see if I can hit that, or to simply see how high an average I can attain without changing the original goals for the month.

    Besides, I would like to finish Parting Gifts by the end of the month and will require more than what I’ve done so far.

    So maybe I don’t really need to adjust my goals; I just need to do whatever it takes to finish this rough draft. When it’s done, I can take stock of the work for the month, see how I finished as far as word count averages and total word count, then determine what exactly I need to do to prepare for National Novel Writing Month.

    That sounds like a plan!

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  • Writing Left-Handed

    19Jun
    Categories: Random Writings Comments: 0

    Earlier this week, I had my right wrist injured by an angry cat. Let’s just let it go at that. I pressed my luck with said cat. I paid the price. (If you really want to know all the gory details, check out The Best Laid Plans of Mice & Men on Classical Paintings.)

    The result is that I am currently sporting three very nice teeth wounds and one that’s rather puny on the top of my right wrist. They actually look pretty good now, after the passage of a couple of days. The redness is reduced to just the area around the wounds. The swelling is likewise down to a tolerable level. Why, I even have wrinkles in the back of my hand when I flex my hand upward! It’s been a couple of days since I could say that.

    Treatment for these wounds has included soaking my wrist in warm water. I started out with Epsom salt water, but have found dish soap to be much more soothing. The oxidizing kind also provides some great cleaning qualities. Besides, that warm water just feels good and the ten or fifteen minutes I sit there each time also provides time for some serious vegging.

    But my writing is interrupted every time I have to soak my wrist, so I’ve been trying to think up things I can do to further the writing goals AND that can be done left handed. So far my list is quite short.

    #1
    First on the list is reading. While that may not seem at a glance to have much to do with producing words, I can legitimately count it if I’m doing genre research. If you’re anything like me, you can make any kind of reading fit into some form of genre research! I spent an hour doing ‘genre research’ that first evening. In fact, I read The Black Stallion’s Courage cover to cover while soaking my poor, aching wrist (it was bad that night!).

    #2
    Second on the list was writing. Maybe, I told myself, I could jot a few notes left handed and go from there. So today, I tried writing left handed. That was a miserable failure. I sat for nearly half of the ten minutes just trying to decide out to hold the pen and where on the paper to start. You wouldn’t think that would be such a big deal. Start on the left side of the paper and work to the right. Start at the top of the paper and work down. But that didn’t feel right at all.

    After all the deliberation, I managed to scratch out two words. “Writing” and “left handed”. I guess that’s three words, isn’t it? I have to tell you, I’ve done gesture drawings that made more sense than my left-handed writing! So scratch that off the list.

    So what else could a right-handed writer do with only a left hand? Mmmm.

    #3
    If I had a tape recorder or dictaphone, I could dictate text to be transcribed later.

    #4
    Even better, if I had one of those fancy computers and can take dictation, I could do that. That sounds like a good idea.

    But I don’t have either, so those two things are out.

    I have to confess that that’s all I have been able to come with so far. I suppose the fact that I get my arm in that nice, warm water and my mind tends to wander might have something to do with the lack of usable ideas for writing left-handed.

    Or, it could be that there just aren’t any! Unless, of course, you can use either hand equally well, which I most certainly cannot.

    I have gained definite respect for those natural born lefties out there, one my own sisters included. If any of you could provide any insight on this matter, it would be appreciated.

    Otherwise, here’s to a rapid healing!

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  • Writing on the Fly

    17Jun
    Categories: Random Writings, The Writing Process Comments: 0

    Subtitle:
    Flying by the Seat of Your Pants

    That’s what I feel like I’m doing these days. It’s a little bit scary, a little bit intimidating and a lot of fun!

    Typically, when I develop an idea for a story, I make a few journal notes to record the initial idea and some possible ways to develop the idea. A little bit of plotting, maybe, and some thoughts on lead characters and others.

    Sometimes, a new idea appears as a scene. The characters don’t have names and I know nothing about them except whatever is taking place in the scene that comes to mind. That scene may end right there, it may last a couple of days or it may take off and become a more fully developed story.

    Sometimes, I ‘hear’ someone ask a question or make a statement and an idea takes off from there. The very pertinent question, “Do you really believe all that stuff?” led to three or four scenes a few weeks back. I knew which character was asking the question when it suddenly popped up into my awareness and who he was speaking to, but not the context.

    What I’m doing this month doesn’t resemble any of those methods beyond the fact that writing is involved.

    What I’m doing this month is simply starting at Point A and writing to Point B without thought for plot or character development or anything but word production. At the beginning of each writing day, I start where I left off the day before and write either until I run out of time or run out of things to write about.

    When I sit down at the computer to write and have ideas tumbling out of my imagination, this “fly by the seat of your pants” writing method is great.

    When I wake up in the morning with scenes and ideas already partially developed and ready to go, it’s even better.

    But when I sit down and have only a computer screen and that flashing cursor to look at, it’s not so much fun. On days like that, it’s pretty much mind over matter. Write one word. Put another after that, then another, another and another and hopefully, by the end of the day, I’ll have met the day’s goal and, maybe, finished another chapter.

    That scariest thing about this writing method to a writer like me, though, is not knowing where the story is headed from one day to the next. For each of the last couple of days, for example, I’ve written myself out each day, writing everything that came to mind as quickly as possible. When I stopped for the day each day, I had no idea where I’d be going in the story the next day. On a couple of those days, I had no idea where I was going with the story when I sat down to write. All I can do is ask the Lord to give me whatever He wants me to write about, then start writing.

    That particular part of the process does make the rest of it worthwhile. Starting with nothing, praying for guidance and having it provided has been good for me personally as a form of spiritual confirmation. It makes me more fully understand that while I have been given the talent and inclination to write, I am just a tool in the hand of God. Just a tool.

    Slowly, I am coming to realize that it also allows me just to write without getting bogged down with logistics (I love logistics!), details, keeping track of what happened when, to whom and where and just lets me put words on paper (electronically speaking).

    So it is a good thing.

    Even if it is scary sometimes and even if I sometimes have no idea where the story is headed.

    And, most importantly, when it’s just plain, hard work.

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  • A Thousand Words a Day; The Half Way Point

    15Jun
    Categories: Random Writings Comments: 0

    Today, June 15, marks the halfway point on my new, improved Daily Writing Exercise. Time sure does seem to fly!

    When I started this particular challenge, I thought to myself, “This is going to be a breeze. A thousand words a day is no big deal. I can do it in my sleep. Piece of cake.” (Feel free to insert any other such phrase you may know of or like.)

    Well, for the most part it has been a pretty steady process. To use a Kansas phrase, there has been a steady “wind” of 1,000 words a day with gusts up to 2,000 plus.

    But it hasn’t all been easy. Some days, in fact, it has been a challenge to find time to write at all, let alone maintain the minimum. On those days, it’s more a matter of sheer determination, than inspiration. That’s when I think of Thomas Alva Edison, who said, “Success is 10 percent inspiration and 90 percent perspiration.” No waiting around for a muse to strike with Mr. Edison, who invited the incandescent light bulb AFTER discovering over 1,000 ways his idea didn’t work.

    No waiting around for muses to strike with this project, either. And, yes, I have written a lot of words so far this month that don’t seem to be working real well. You might even call them dim bulbs. Or burnt out bulbs!

    And that brings me to what has been the most difficult thing about writing this way. Not editing as I go!

    As difficult as the writing has occasionally been, it has been easy compared to reining in a latent desire to fix everything I write as soon as possible after it’s written. Sometimes as soon as it’s written, but usually within 24 hours. The idea of writing page after page after page and not editing it at least once by the end of the week is foreign to me. I’ve always started a writing day by reading what was written the day before and making changes, then sliding right into new work.

    Since I started this updated challenge, I’ve been forcing myself not to reread the previous day’s work and to refrain from going over anything already written. I’ve even tried not to refer back to previous incidents to see what exactly happened so I can accurately reference it later. I have been able to stick by those two rules pretty well, but I sure don’t like it!

    Like it or not, though, I can’t argue with production. The way the words are adding up sure is fun to watch and, even on the days when every word is a struggle, it’s a delight to get to the end and be able to tell my husband, “Hey, Dear! I wrote 1,000 words and one or two extra!”

    So far this month, the daily average has been well over 1,000 words, hovering right around 1,800 per day for the twelve working days so far this month, thanks to a handful of days in which I was able to do 2,000 or more words each day. (I like those days. They’re like days of doing wind sprints in a routine of daily jogging and they sure do feel good!).

    Total word count for June so far is 21,597, all of it on Parting Gifts.

    Parting Gifts has been in progress for some years now…see “A Never Ending Journey“). It began the month with 59,511 words and is now up to 66,616 (some old scenes that are no longer relevant have been removed).

    No writing has been done yet today.

    My secondary goal for this month is to finish the rough draft of Parting Gifts by midnight June 30, 2009, but the probably more realistic goal is to finish it this summer.

    I’ll keep you posted.

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  • A Never Ending Journey

    12Jun
    Categories: The Writing Process Comments: 0

    One of the active stories I’m working on is an old one.

    The main character can be traced all the way back to high school days, when my best friend came up and a cool character and a neat setting.

    That story was never finished, but it did provide the basis not only for several different characters (see previous post), but countless story ideas, as well. In an effort to find the right combination of setting, events and characters, I have considered just about everything. Romance. Mystery. Contemporary. Cozy. First person. Third person. Male lead. Female lead. I think the only things I haven’t considered are an animal story and a science fiction story.

    The story I am currently working most actively on is one of those many possibilities.

    Parting Gifts came into being May 11, 1996 after a series of false starts for characters and false starts for settings. I’ve worked on it periodically since then but picked it up again in early June with the idea of finishing the thing this summer. Warm up for National Novel Writing Month, you could say.

    It’s a somewhat contemplative work set in the Flint Hills and I’ve actually passed through or visited some of the locales I write about and experienced some of the weather extremes. That always makes writing easier.

    This particular story has the end in sight. In fact, the ending was one of the first scenes I wrote way back when, so what I’m doing now is working my way from the end of the beginning to the beginning of the end and hoping, somewhere in the 80,000 to 100,000 word range, the two will meet!

    How’s that for a plan?

    The lead character in this story is probably about as close to that original character as I will come. I have described him as “…honest and upright…but [with] a life experience or two that has completely derailed him”.

    Parting Gifts is about his efforts to run away from himself and God and God’s efforts to bring him back into the fold.

    I mentioned National Novel Writing Month in a previous paragraph. I am using Parting Gifts as a practice run that hopefully will not turn into a dry run. As per the rules, I am making every effort to just write, write, write and to keep from editing, editing, editing. That’s hard! Usually, I begin each writing day by reading over what was written the day before, making whatever minor changes I find (omitted words, misspelled words, poorly written sentences, etc.). That gets me warmed up and headed in the right direction for new writing.

    Now, I’m not even doing that, but just starting out cold every day and essentially sprinting for 1,000 words. Write whatever dialog, description and whatever else comes to mind without worrying about how well it goes together.

    I’m not sure I like that.

    I am sure I like the way that word count is increasing, though! I could definitely get used to that!

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