Off We Go

AH.

Hey! At least I’m further along than my sister, because I have a finished costume and a maybe decent query letter?

(She’s texting me pics because she’s working on her costume right now.)

(And it’s maybe decent because I had five people look at it and two said it was really good, two said it was good, and one said it was terrible. Which pretty much sums up my frustration with query letters in general.)

I’m meeting with a developmental editor once we get down to the conference hotel this evening, which should be interesting, but is also somewhat terrifying. Developmental editing is not one of the services I offer, because I don’t feel comfortable working directly with the core of people’s stories, but I’m hoping it will be helpful in terms of some of the issues I’ve been having with the current draft of Book One.

Anyway, said developmental editor has a copy of the infamous chapter one and we will be going over it, and then, depending on the amount of work needed and whether or not it’s doable, I may spend tonight/early tomorrow editing before my Read and Critique session tomorrow afternoon (Carol Berg! Ah!). If it’s a big job, though, I think I’ll just use the R&C as an opportunity to garner more knowledgeable feedback and then fix it next week sometime.

So I kind of feel like that madness is more or less out of my hands for now.

I may poke at the query and see if I can add in a little more detail without being too wordy (another thing I hate about queries), but I’m taking 3.5/5 as pretty decent no matter what. I researched the editor I’m meeting with yesterday so I could add in some personalization and he seems like a cool guy, lots of things in common, and he was the editor for Pierce Brown’s Red Rising trilogy which I’ve talked about here previously and enjoyed. So I’m feeling okay query-wise. We’ll see how that goes. That happens at some time on Saturday, but apparently I don’t get to know when until I get my info packet tomorrow morning.

So, basically, here’s the plan:

• Poke query but don’t worry if it’s not working
• Finish packing (remember things like notebooks, schedule, business cards)
• Print out copy of chapter one for editing purposes
• Print out query copies
• Dinner
• Drive down
• Developmental editor

And then it’s on to the madness of the weekend. I’ll see you guys on Tuesday to let you know how it went. If anyone’s going to PPWC, keep an eye out for me! I’ll be the tall blonde (and I will have tree pants on Saturday. Just FYI).

Conference Going for the Woefully Unprepared

We’re T-minus 2 days (and some change) until PPWC and I am not ready. It is unlikely I will ever be ready. Especially because I have reached that stage where I know I will never be ready and instead of, you know, working to be as ready as possible even if it’s not the ideal situation, I have spiraled down into a mess of unproductivity.

What, doesn’t everyone do that?

I did finish my costume today, which looks like I wanted it to look, so success! Except, of course, that one should argue that the costume that one will wear for a single evening is less important than, say, the query letter one needs to be pitching on Saturday, and one should probably be writing said query letter instead of sewing velcro onto a belt.

(Although, I can supervise the small, mobile ones and sew at the same time, whereas I cannot think and supervise at the same time, so it’s not like that time would have been useful no matter what. This morning, however, when I played Gardenscapes instead of working on said query letter…)

Anyway, here is this list of things that still need to be done (or at least worked on) by Thursday evening:

• Query letter. This involves writing said query letter (which I am, in theory, going to do after I finish this post), getting feedback on said query, and editing it.
• First chapter. I talked a few posts back about the first chapter thing and whether I was unsure I should edit it before the conference, or if it was a good opportunity to get feedback from someone who knows what they’re doing. I’m still unsure, but I do have people looking at it at the moment (the opportunity fell into my lap and I know a good thing when I see it) so if I get feedback in a timely manner AND it’s feedback I can easily incorporate, I will edit this monstrosity before the con. Have not decided if I will edit otherwise. With the way things are going, probably not. I’d like to, but I also need to go to the counter store.
• New draft. I am currently sitting around 45K (out of an estimated 100K) and I am not getting anywhere fast. If I were on track, I’d roll into the con with 55K, which is still not a full draft, but is at least half of one?
• General conference stuff. This is stuff like pick what to wear, pack my stuff, don’t forget business cards, etc. This is easy stuff. So of course I’m almost done because it helps me not do the things that really matter. Also in this category is picking panels to go to at the conference, and I have selected two for almost every time slot because I’m hoping my sister will go to one or the other, which is probably wishful thinking, but hey! Sometimes it works out. She will probably not go to the marketing panels for me, alas.

Now that the costume is done, I only have one non-conference related project to finish up (and am only waiting on the final go ahead), so I really have no excuse not to do the more important stuff. But will I? Hopefully.

If you didn’t vote in the nonfiction poll, I think wordpress probably closed it, but feel free to let me know your preferences in the comments. We’ll jump back into that once I’m done freaking out about the conference (which might be next week, but there might be residual freaking, so it may be the week after that).

And Now For Something Completely Different

We’re about a week away from PPWC (oh God, I just realized that and I am not ready! ::flails about::), so on top of the writing and the getting ready for pitching and whatnot, I’ve also been working on my costume.

I believe they either started the costume dinner tradition five years ago (which is the last time I went, if you remember) or maybe they only do it every five years (on the 5/10 anniversaries), but one night everyone is encouraged to dress up according to the theme. Not sure what it was last time. I was eight months pregnant so I went as Mother Earth, but my sister and friend went as Capital people from the Hunger Games.

This year is Heroes and Villains, so my sister called me up to ask me if we should do Murky and Lurky from Rainbow Brite (which was a cartoon show from my childhood that my sister and I both remember fondly). They’re both villains, and we ran into issues with who would be who, and eventually settled on me doing Rainbow Brite and her being the evil princess from the Star Stealer movie. (You look at that princess and you know exactly what era that movie is from.)

In the olden days, I would have made as accurate a costume as I could manage, but I don’t have time for that anymore (especially since I didn’t realize there was a costume dinner until my sister called), so what I’ve done is bought a white sleeveless dress and dyed it blue (more on that in a moment), and have ordered rainbow socks and arm warmers, which should get here today.

And then I will need to make a rainbow belt and get a purple ribbon for my hair, and probably hunt down a purple facepainting crayon. I’ve seen people typically wear red converses with Rainbow Brite costumes, but I don’t have red shoes (I can buy a pair for $20 at my local Payless) and am not sure I can be bothered.

Tuesday I went up to my mother’s to dye the dress (my kitchen is currently MIA) which proved to be a bit more work than expected. (Also, my fingers are still slightly blue on one hand.) I bought supplies from Dharma Trading, which is a lovely company that specializes in dyes and things to dye (I suspect their target consumers are artists that dye large amounts of things to sell) and specifically got what looked like their least complicated dye (pour in water, put in clothing, stir for a while), but the powder was a bit messy and a single grain made an awful lot of dye.

The color is perfect, though, I did notice a small hole in the back of the dress. Oh well. Beggars can’t be choosers and all that.

It’s been kind of fun to work on something creative that isn’t writing, even if it’s just making a mess of my mother’s kitchen and ordering stuff off of Amazon.

I wonder how my sister’s costume is coming along.

What have you been up to lately, Squiders? Any fun projects?

Changing Support Needs

I started writing seriously in 2006, Squiders. I mean, I’d had periods before that–I’d been writing on and off since I was 8, including a fairly prolific time in high school (where I admittedly started a lot of novels I never made it very far on, though I did enter some poetry contests). I started doing Nanowrimo in 2003 and won in both 2004 and 2005.

But in 2006, I made the conscious decision to focus on my writing and to actually do something with it. Part of this was because I had a lot of free time. I graduated from college in December of 2005 but my new job didn’t start until March of 2006, which left me three months to do nothing, which turned out to be terrible. At the time I had no responsibilities and had just moved to a new city/state where I knew absolutely no one.

So it was as much a decision to save my own sanity and work my way out of depression as to work on something I’d enjoyed for most of my life.

Having been successful with the Nano model, I searched out a yearlong community called NaNoWriYe (National Novel Writing Year), which was a good start. It gave me some place to check in, had monthly challenges (including a fun one where you had to smoosh two unrelated genres together), and had team challenges as well.

The issue with WriYe was that everyone tended to start the year out strong, but few people managed to make it the full year. So it tended to be a bit dead as time went on.

Next I found April Fool’s, which was a challenge every April where you could pick your own word count goal. AF was active, and had fun perks like word count bars and winners’ pips. It also had an extremely active dares forum. AF was a good community, with people who bothered to keep track of each other’s work and goals.

And then it got hacked and everything got lost.

From there I settled into my current online writing community, where I have been for ten years now. And I got a real life group out in California that met once or a couple times a week. And things were grand! I was productive, my friends were helpful, and I was getting all the support I needed as a writer.

And then we moved back to Colorado, so I lost my in-person group, though one friend and I kept up virtual write-ins for a few years past that. And eventually I found my current in-person group, the one that I run the storycraft meetings for.

And it’s just become obvious lately that–I need something else. My online group has changed a lot over ten years. We had to close membership due to a truly ridiculous amount of spammers, so we don’t get a lot of new blood, and slowly but surely most of the people who were once regulars have been eaten by life. So it’s not terribly active anymore. And those who are left, I love, and they are supportive, but many of them aren’t writing regularly, or aren’t writing with similar goals, so they aren’t always the most helpful.

And with my real life group, well, it’s the same sort of thing. It’s dying out, and a lot of the people at the same or a higher level than me don’t come anymore.

I’ve joined some other online groups that specialize in things like query critiques, but they’re not really communities–people just show up for help and don’t really make connections with one another.

So I find myself feeling a bit adrift. As I mentioned on Thursday, I’m feeling low confidence lately, and working with people with similar goals and levels, or people who are more experienced, could be really helpful, I feel.

But for the life of me, I have no idea where to find such a group. Or a mentor might also be really beneficial, but same thing. Where do you find a person/people who might be a good fit?

Any advice you might have on the matter would be greatly appreciated. If you have a group or a mentor, would you mind sharing how you went about finding them?

A Poll, a Conference, and an Update

Can you believe it’s April, squiders? And, yes, I realize that we are halfway through April, which almost makes it worse.

At the end of April, I am going to be attending Pike’s Peak Writers Conference (henceforth PPWC). This is my third time going, but it’s been five years since I last went. (My mother and sister went last year, and when they renewed for this year, they bought me a registration too. Really hard to say no to a free conference.) I probably talked about it here on the blog back in the day.

(I checked. I did.)

Part of me is really excited. I stopped going partially because it is expensive (almost $400 for the conference alone) and because I’ve spent the last several years working on indie projects (such as Shards, which came out in 2013, and City of Hope and Ruin, which came out last May, as well as ton of really fun anthologies). I am trying a few projects traditionally again this year, so the timing works out.

I’ve even secured choice assignments–an acquisitions editor at Del Rey for my pitch assignment, and Carol Berg (!!!) for my read and critique.

But I’m also not in a great place confidence-wise at the moment. While I am finally getting somewhere on my rewrite (approximately 35K in at the moment) it’s quite obvious to me that this isn’t the final draft. I’m still worried about pacing in the first part (now that I’m past the inciting incident, it seems to be fine) and the first chapter is just a mess all around.

And I feel like I’m being overly critical of my basic sentence structure, which makes flow hard, and what if there’s not enough description still, and…

Oy. You get the point.

At the end of March/April I considered switching projects before PPWC. My options were:

1. Pitch my YA paranormal that I’m finalizing submission stuff for. The novel is polished, the stuff is mostly ready, I could in theory start querying agents any day now. But I would have had to switch my requests for agents, etc., and that late in the game I was not likely to end up with anyone who was the right genre.
2. Switch to my space dinosaur space adventure story. It’s at about 54K, the draft thus far is very clean, and the approximately 30K left is easy to get done in a month. Plus, no switching on agents, etc. But I would have lost several days to project switching, and there were no guarantees that I wouldn’t have run into issues with the last part of the draft and still would have ended up at PPWC with an unusable manuscript.
3. Stay with the rewrite.

Which is what I did, because basically I’m not going to be ready no matter what. And here we go, come hell or high water.

I have been thrown into a bit of a panic re: Carol Berg. My first thought was “Oh God that is a lot more major of an author than I expected to be participating in this” and my second was “Oh God my first chapter should be burnt in a fire.” Having thought about it rationally-ish for a few days now, this could be a really good opportunity to get some help on something that has been giving me a lot of trouble. But it could also be an opportunity for me to make a giant fool of myself. Time will tell, I suppose!

Anyway. I’m going to keep the rest of the consistency topics for the book, so it’s time to figure out what we should move onto there.

As such, here is our favorite poll, yet again:

The weather’s been lovely here lately, squiders. I hope you have good plans for the weekend and that things are going well for you.

Cover Reveal: Ever Touched by Erin Zarro

Happy Monday, squiders! I know I don’t normally post on Mondays, but I wanted to share the cover for the third book in Erin Zarro’s science fantasy series, Ever Touched. (I have read an advanced copy and can confidently say it is an interesting addition to the series.)

Tada! And here’s the blurb:
One secret remembered, another forgotten…which one will explode first?

Brianna has two problems: she cannot remember her past, and she astrally projects to another woman who has predictions tortured out of her. As a result, she is lonely and feels distanced from her co-workers — the only family she has ever known — the Fey Touched Hunters. She is their intelligence gatherer, and her episodes are interfering with her ability to do her job.

When Fey Touched Hunter Cobra, her friend, finds her alone and injured from an episode, she accepts his help. But she’s terrified of doctors and of being thought mentally ill, so she refuses to tell him what’s wrong or let him take her to get medical help. Still, Cobra continues to help and protect her. They find themselves falling in love.

But Cobra, too, has a secret that could rip their fragile bond apart. 

When Brianna discovers through her episodes that someone has plans to destroy the Fey Clans, the Fey Touched decide to put their hatred aside and help them. But it’s not just a matter of someone with a grudge: there are other, more powerful players — beings thought to be legend.

As they unravel the mystery, Brianna’s episodes become more frequent and more dangerous until she is faced with a choice. To find the mystery girl and help the Fey Clans, she must risk opening herself up to the Hunters and to Cobra, and put her own life on the line. But is she prepared for the answers she’ll find?

Ever Touched will be available in early May, though you can pick up the first two books, Fey Touched and Grave Touched now.

Hope you have a lovely week, Squiders!

6 Strategies for Consistency

I think this will be the last post for this particular subject matter, Squiders, and I’ll keep the troubleshooting section for the book. Thank you again for working with me on this nonfiction posts. They have been hugely beneficial for me, and I hope you’re getting something out of it as well.

Today we’re going to look at specific strategies to help you meet your consistency goals.

1. Schedule Time

We talked about this a little bit in the basics section, but having a regular time that is writing (or whatever) time can be hugely invaluable. Doing the same thing at the same time in the same way helps a habit build up that much faster, and you don’t have to worry about stuffing things into your otherwise busy schedule. As a reminder, make sure the time you’re allotting for yourself is sufficient to meet your goals, and that it’s realistic (i.e., don’t plan to spend 10-midnight working every night if your brain shuts down at 9:30).

2. Figure Out Your Motivation

Knowing why you’re doing something can also help provide you with extra motivation for getting something done. Are you trying out something new that you want to share with your critique group? Do you want to see if you can write something you’ve never done before? Are you looking for publication, readers, to please your mother/sister/partner/friends, to share something with your children, to learn something before you lose access to it? This goes back to the visualization technique we talked about last time, where knowing where you want to be can help you get back up after failures and push toward your end goals.

3. Deadlines

Having deadlines can be a great motivator to help you become consistent. (It’s not for everyone. If deadlines make you go shaky with anxiety, just ignore this point.) A project can seem insurmountable, especially at the beginning, but knowing when you need to have something done by can help you know how much you need to get done every day and help you plan out your schedule. Breaking things done into easy, repeatable steps make them that much easier to accomplish. Deadlines can be self-imposed (“I want this book ready for publication before I’m 40”) or imposed by the activity (the submission date for an anthology, having material ready before the writer’s conference you spent a gazillion dollars on, making sure your section for your critique group is ready on time so people can look it over) but oftentimes knowing something has to be done by a certain point or you’re going to miss your chance can give you a needed kick in the butt.

Those are pretty general, and how you implement them will be up to how you work specifically. Here are some specific things to try:

4. The ABC Method

“ABC” stands for “Apply Butt to Chair” and is an oft-cited method brought up during monthly challenges such as Nanowrimo. The basics of this method are simple–you sit down in a chair in front of your computer or your notebook or your typewriter, or whatever medium you’re currently using, and you stay there until you get to your goal for the day. The idea is, in theory, that you get what you need to done, come hell or high water, and that you–also in theory–become more proficient and faster over time.

The con of the ABC method is that it requires a lot of time. It can be more useful for students or other people who don’t have a set schedule or a lot of responsibility and have the ability to sit in front of their computer for three hours at a time. So people who don’t have a lot of time at their disposal may find this method untenable. Another problem is that sitting at your computer does not directly correspond with productivity. You may want to combine this approach with an app or program that blocks the Internet (or specific websites) or games you may have to make sure you’re not wasting your time.

5. Prepare Your Day

You occasionally hear about these people who have greatly upped their word counts (going from 2000 words a day to 10000, for example), and the secret to doing so seems to be planning what you’re doing/writing about before you sit down to do it. (This tip works in other aspects of life also–I often see the same advice applied to making your to-do list, for example, as doing it the night before frees up valuable first-thing-in-the-morning time for actual work as opposed to administrative rigamole.) Outlining can help some in this regards, but it doesn’t have to be as formal as that unless that works for you. You can also run through what needs to happen in the story in your head, picture scenes before you write them, put in some prep work (such as doing research before you start so you don’t waste your writing time), and knowing where you want to be at the end of the day.

The idea is that when you sit down to write, you already know what you’re doing and can dive right in without getting bogged down by miscellany.

6. Consistency Challenges

A consistency challenge is a challenge, usually set up between you and other writers, where everyone pledges to consistently write a certain amount of words for a certain duration of time. The most common ones seem to be where each writer sets their own word count, and then comes back to some place (such as a single blog post or a forum thread) and reports their word count for each day. Some challenges require you to reset your streak if you miss a day, while others count cumulative days in a time frame, even if they’re not consecutive.

The idea is that having accountability (the other writers) make you more likely to follow through, to avoid the guilt of missing a day or to compete to see if you can write more consistently than everyone else.

The nice thing about consistency challenges is that you can tailor them to meet your needs. I’ve seen ones where the writer also sets a days-of-writing goal (“I’m going to write 25 days out of 30”) to build in some leeway if someone knows they can’t write on weekends or will be on a trip for part of the challenge. There’s also word count build consistency challenges, which can be useful if one hasn’t written in a while or wants to up their output in general. In a word count build challenge, writers start at a minimum word count (say, 100 words) and add a consistent amount each day to increase their goals. For example, a writer could decide that they’ll start at 100 words a day and add 50 words each day. So day 1’s goal would be 100, day 2 would be 150, day 3 would be 200, all the way up to whatever the end is. (So, at the end of a 30-day challenge, they’d be up to 1500 words a day.)

Challenges can also be set up with other metrics, such as measuring time or pages edited or whatever is relevant for the project at hand. I’ve also seen challenges with countdowns, such as ones trying to get drafts done before a certain event (start of a challenge, deadline for a contest, etc.). These challenges are customizable so you should play around and see what works for you. Changing up the rules every now and then can also be good, especially if you’re starting to feel like you’re stagnating.

If you don’t have a writing community in which to run a consistency challenge, have no fear. You can do it solo as well. One of the best ways to make the slog alone is by using 750words.com. You do lose the ability to set a goal under 750 words, but this website is one of the most effective ways I’ve found to keep track of a one-author consistency challenge. Each day you log in to the site, write (or copy and paste) your words into the box, and it keeps track of stats, such as how long it took you to write your 750 words (if you actively wrote it on the website), your words per minute, how many breaks you took, etc. It even analyzes the themes and your mindset of your writing, which can be kind of cool, to see what that particular passage is evoking, according to the site’s algorithms, at least. You also get nifty badges for writing certain numbers of days in a row.

Any other strategies you’d like to add, squiders?

Building Consistency Habits

Last week we discussed the basics of setting up a habit of writing (editing, marketing, etc.) regularly, but today we’re going to focus more on the nuts and bolts of putting together a plan for consistency. The more things you can do to set yourself up for success, the more likely it is that you’ll be able to get the results you want.

We’ve already talked about setting aside time, planning your goals, and setting up a “trigger” to help you get started. Let’s look at some other things to try.

• Find inspiration. Some days, nothing wants to come. If you have ready sources of inspiration, things you can look at or listen to or think about, even if they’re not directly related to whatever you’re working on, they can get the old muse juices flowing and can help loosen up your brain when it comes to what you are supposed to be doing. I use Pinterest boards and an idea file for this purpose.
• Give yourself something to aspire to. You know how they tell people who want to lose weight to hang “goal” pictures where they’ll be seen? You can do the same thing here. If you’d like to find an agent, you can hang the bio of your dream one on the wall. You can print out the book deal pages from Publisher’s Weekly and put them on the refrigerator. You can stick the latest bestseller list on your corkboard. Having a physical reminder of what you’re working toward can provide some extra motivation.
• Don’t allow exceptions. If you give up your writing time every time something else comes along, you’ll never get anything done. Yes, some days things won’t get done. You’ll have sick kid, or a big project at work, or need to go visit your mother. But if you’re making exceptions for other things–watching television, playing video games, whatever–you’re doomed. One “Well, just for today” can turn into weeks, or months, of inactivity.
• Remember that little bits help. Sometimes you can’t reach your daily/weekly/monthly goals. Life gets in the way somehow. Rather than giving everything up as a loss, remember that even partial progress still counts as progress. Sure, that 100 words a day may not be the 500 you wanted, but at the end of the week you’ll still be 700 words closer to your goal than if you just gave the time period up as lost.
• Track your progress. This may be the most important thing to do (beside the “trigger” that we talked about last week). I know I am 500% more successful if I have some method of tracking going than if I don’t. I prefer to use Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. I have various ones–ones for month-long goals, ones for longer projects, ones where I can track multiple projects a month, ones for editing. I also highly recommend sticking graphs in your spreadsheets. There’s something very fulfilling about graphs. Even if you’re behind, I find that the graphs can still provide motivation to try and catch up. If you don’t know how to program an Excel spreadsheet to automatically create graphs when you input data, the Internet has a ton of tracking spreadsheets you can download and modify. But you don’t need to use a spreadsheet, if that doesn’t work for you. You can mark days off on a calendar, make yourself a sticker chart, use a word counter–anything that allows you to keep track of how you’re doing.
• Make yourself accountable. Along with keeping track of how you’re doing, having some form of accountability can help motivate you to make sure you’re working. This can be a person–or a group of people–such as a writing partner or group. It doesn’t have to be, however. Maybe you don’t get to watch the latest episode of your favorite show until your writing is done for the day. Maybe if you reach your monthly goal you get to buy that pair of shoes you’ve been eying. And along those lines…
• Reward yourself. These can be little, such as a daily reward of half an hour of reading or a piece of cake, or big, such as dying your hair purple after your first major publishing deal. While you shouldn’t rely on rewards to get you to do your writing, they certainly can help you feel better about the whole process, especially when you’re still working on building up the habit, and can help you through rough times.
• Make it fun. Let’s be honest. If you hate something, all the triggers and tracking and rewards in the world aren’t going to make you do it. If you dread getting around to your writing, or you actively put it off, look at what you’re doing. Is there a way you can change things up that will make it more fun? Or more comfortable? Or easier on yourself? Challenges against friends can be a good way to spice things up a bit. Do you have to do things the way you are? Maybe you do, but there still might be a way to make things more enjoyable. Don’t be afraid to switch things around until they’re working for you.

Here’s my current tracker, for people who’d like to see an example. When I started this blog post series I realized that I’d let my own consistency fall by the wayside, so I’ve rededicated myself (and started this tracker on March 22, as you can see). And, not too shabbily, I’ve written 20,000 words in two weeks. This is my long challenge tracker, adapted from a spreadsheet put out by ROW80 (which I shall talk about next time). Another sheet has the graphs on it, and the color changing (from red to green when I meet my goals) is also very rewarding.

(The reason why the numbers are all weirdly decimal-y is because I’ve divided 94,000 words by 71 days. There is a way to make your equations round up to the nearest whole number, but I have not been annoyed enough by the giant decimals yet to remember how to do that.)

Anything else you’d add, Squiders? Next time (which might be Thursday, or might be next Tuesday) we’ll discuss additional processes to help build up your writing habits.