So. Challengers.
There are four, count them, four upstart writers who think they can take my crown.
Bring it on, I say.
Voting starts today. Head on over to QuillsAndZebras and vote for your favourite story.
Entries are anonymous. Pick the story you like the best!
Will I hold on to the crown, or will they pry it from my cold, dead hands?
Your votes will decide.
(Pic by Gemmyjade.)
I have too much on my plate, and most of it is the day job. One of the perks of running your own business is that you can set your own hours. The downfall of running your own business is that you don’t get to leave early on a Friday, and you work through lunch.
Money is still super-tight (thank you mortgage) so I’m pleased that there’s work out there, but it is eating into my writing time and I am not happy. I had planned to have Dark plotted and ready to write by now, but it’s not happening. I am barely keeping up with my critique responsibilities. I have two shorts half-written, and two half-edited.
This is the life of the hobbyist, and sadly, the life of the midlister and any writer who isn’t living off their writing. There will always be the Day Job to interfere. Money, familial responsibilities, chores, all take time away from the page. Most of us are sensible enough to realise that the starving-writer-in-a-garret scenario is just a movie trope, not real life.
So we keep working, and thinking, and scribbling, and wondering when we can get rid of the responsibilities long enough to focus on the labour of love.
December. I’m banking on December.
By now, the pantsers will be champing at the bit. “We just want to write!”
So let’s write.
To recap, you should have started by setting up the program to brainstorm your new idea. But I know a lot of pantsers do minimal prep; they rely on serendipity to provide all the background details. (If you haven’t read the first two tutorials, I highly recommend you do; this tutorial is written assuming you have.)
Either way, you will probably need a place to store things that you don’t want to forget. So go ahead and setup the brainstorming workplace as per the first tutorial; leave out the scenes list if you don’t use it, but at least have the builder and the scratchpad setup. Use it as you write to quickly jot down inspiration and then flick right back to writing again. Make sure you save the workspace, then close all the items except for the file listing.
The next thing you need to do is create a Planner. Go into the Create menu and choose Create -> New Planner. Call it “First draft of (my book title)”. If the viewing pane is missing, press F1 until it appears. Unlike previous tutorials, you will need this. Save this Workspace.
When you have completed as much of the brainstorming as you need to write the story, you need to set up LSB to suit your writing style.
This is where things get tricky; because there are a myriad of ways that you can turn your brainstorming into a list of book chapters. This is both a positive and negative aspect of the program. It allows you absolute freedom to work the way you want; but it also provides so many options that you can easily become overwhelmed.
In this tutorial, I am going to offer you a number of ways to work with the program, focusing on four different writing styles;
I’ve had to split the tutorial up into two posts. This post deals with plotters; Part 2b will deal with pantsers.
I found this great page on creating a mock book cover. What a wonderful way to procrastinate – I had so much fun with it!
Here, then, is the cover for my current WIP, Dark. (For the front page recommendations, I took liberties with some posts in my comment trail. Sorry guys!)
Click on the pic for a more readable version.
The image is courtesy of Aeioux and is used here under a Creative Commons licence.
It was actually a great exercise in another way, because I had to think seriously about my blurb, and get it into some sort of order in my head.
Please note: This is meant to be in fun. DO NOT get the idea into your head that a mock cover would look great with your query letter!
Have fun with it! I’d love to see your efforts – if you do make a mock cover, please leave me a link so I can check it out.
This is part 1 of my tutorial on using Liquid Story Binder (LSB) my way. I’m writing it to give you tips on using this complicated but useful program, and also as an illustration of the way I work.
If you look at the picture in this post, you can see how I work with pen and paper. It’s a fairly simple system, but I end up with a lot of notes, pads and cards scattered across the desk while I’m working. I have tried numerous writing programs in the past, but they don’t work for me, because I still end up with masses of notes (which I consistently lose) while the bulk of the text is in the writing program.
When I read about LSB, I thought I might have finally found a program that suits the way I work. Because LSB is basically a folder (binder for the US readers) only electronic. You have the facility to store everything; notes, characters, chapters, worldbuilding, scenes, all linked and related and easy to find.
Unfortunately, the program itself is not intuitive and has a steep learning curve. And for some reason the designers opted for confusing and non-intuitive names for things. Planners? Not what you think. Builders? Sequences and storyboards? What’s the difference? Dossiers, listings, galleries, images, mindmaps! The possibilities are endless, but opening the program for the first time is overwhelming.
But it’s worth persevering with. It really is.
There are tutorials, and I learned a lot from them, but I still had to sit back and think about the program, work out how to use it to my advantage. This series of tutorials is the result.
I’m not participating this year, but I thought I’d put up a quick list of handy tools to help you make it through the month.
No time to research! But if you need to find fast answers, Wikipedia is the way to go. And the way to read Wikipedia is through WikiMindMap. From the site:
WikiMindMap is a tool to browse easily and efficiently in Wiki content, inspired by the mindmap technique. Wiki pages in large public wiki’s, such as wikipedia, have become rich and complex documents. Thus, it is not allways straight forward to find the information you are really looking for. This tool aims to support users to get a good structured and easy understandable overview of the topic you are looking for.
For example, say your story is set in Paris. You’re writing away frantically, and need a location. But your character has already been to Eiffel Tower. Where else can he go? Pop Paris into the WikiMindMap search box, and voila! Click on ‘cityscape’ and you have many wonderful locations for a chance meeting between two star-crossed lovers. Or click on ‘transportation’ to find out how your main character gets to the docks in time to stop the villain from escaping. Click on ‘cuisine’ to find out what dish the ambassador is eating when the terrorists burst through the glass doors, guns blazing.
Need some fast character motivations and goals? The folks at Astrodienst have a number of horoscopes which can help. Choose a personal portrait for a character overview, entering your characters name, birth city, DOB etc. For quick inspiration, choose a daily horoscope to see what’s influencing their actions in the scene. Or use the Short Report Forecast to see where your character is headed.
Get the NaNoWriMo Tracking Spreadsheet from Nidonocu and keep a careful eye on your progress and look at all the pretty graphs of your progress.
Or, if you want a more functional (but more complicated) spreadsheet that shows you how much you need to write each day to make your goal, get the Zotuku spreadsheet instead.
Liquid Story Binder is also a great tool for NaNo, as demonstrated by Ann-Kat at Today I Read.
No NaNo event would be complete without random generators. Names, towns, ideas, organisations; all created at the click of a button. You can choose from a number of great sites offering a range of generators; Seventh Sanctum, Feath’s Bookcase, Namator, SkyEye (for star names), Serendipity, the Story Idea Generator, Callihoo and The Speculative Fiction Muse. If you can’t find what you need from that list, time to hang up your pen.
Good luck!
I found this fun little meme via KLC, and since I’m in a procrastinatory mood, decided to play.
Using only song names from ONE ARTIST, answer these questions. You can’t use the band I used. Try not to repeat a song title. It’s a lot harder than you think! Repost as “my life according to (band name)”
Are you a male or female: I Saw It in the Mirror
Describe yourself: Dream World
How do you feel: Like An Angel Passing Through My Room
Describe where you currently live: Crazy World
If you could go anywhere, where would you go: Sitting In The Palmtree
Your favorite form of transportation: On and On and On
Your best friend is: My Love, My Life
You and your best friends are: One of Us
What’s the weather like: And the Wind Cries Mary
If your life was a TV show, what would it be called: Burning My Bridges
What is life to you: I Have a Dream
Your last relationship: Kisses of Fire
Your current relationship: The Way Old Friends Do
Your fear: The Visitors
What is the best advice you have to give: Put On Your White Sombrero
Thought for the Day: People Need Love
Your soul’s present condition: Should I Laugh Or Cry
Your motto: I’m Still Alive
Would love to see you join in!
Thanks to everyone who asked where I was. Nothing dire happened! But my mother left on Tuesday and I have guests tonight, so the majority of my Spring cleaning got condensed into a couple of days. (Yes, I know Spring is 2 months old, but I have been sick. And busy.)
I love Spring cleaning. It’s cathartic; decluttering, airing, dusting, evicting all the spiders from their winter residences. Go, you! Set up house in the garden. And while you’re there, see if you can make a dent in the snail population…I promise, they’re tasty. With a little garlic. Or so I’ve heard.
The great thing about cleaning (apart from being clean) is that it gives the brain ample time to think. So I have been mulling over where I want to go next with my writing. I have a number of potential projects, but none of them were screaming to be written; they all needed brain time.
Well they got plenty of brain time. I’ve decided to put the shapeshifter romance away for now. The modern fantasy also got shelved. The half-finished fantasy novel that I planned to cut and rewrite as a YA has been put away, never to see the light of day. There’s just not enough there that’s different and fresh, though I will be stealing a few interesting characters for later projects.
When I was tidying all of these projects up, I found 17k words of a political SF that I started in, oh, 2002 I think. I read it through, and oh dear god it was bad. But it rumbled about in my head and I found that I couldn’t leave it alone. Things kept popping up to disturb me. Body parts. A domed city of perpetual night. A female detective facing off with an assassin. Suicide that becomes art. It was a big concept piece that I was in no way ready for at the time. I’m not sure that I’m ready for it now. But it’s talking to me, and I feel that I need to explore, to ask questions, to find out what’s going on.
Because I don’t know. There were no notes with the draft; no idea of where I had planned to take it. Which is fantastic. Because I have these big set piece moments all ready to go, and I have all the fun of finding out how they fit together.
So the plans for November have changed. I’m not doing NaNo, but I will be embarking on a new first draft, assuming I can figure out what’s going on in the next 8 days.
How about you? Are you NaNo-ing? If not, are you writing? What are you working on?
Oh, and P.S: I’ll be doing the whole thing in Liquid Story Binder. It’s about time I actually tested it fully. I’m a bit apprehensive to be honest, as I’m finding myself quite badly blocked lately when I sit at the computer to write. But I will persevere, and see if I can get some sort of usage guide out there for people who aren’t sure whether it’s worth the cash. Stay tuned!
