Play lists

I've always wanted to be a writer that had a playlist to go with my books. I want it more than ever, after reading BuildingMyLife's playlist posts for her WiP "Lighthouse". 1, 2, 3 and 4.

The fact is that while a song might inspire a story, or while I might think a song has a similar theme to one of my stories, I don't have play lists. I can't write and listen to music at the same time. I've tried, but I'm just one of those people that tunes out the sounds around me when I write.

However, I've been thinking of trying to find ways to create playlists for my stories anyway. A kind of "If I could listen to playlists, these songs would have been on it for this book". Or if I ever make a book trailer, I could use those songs as the music for trailer. (Oops, then there's the whole thing about getting rights to use those songs.)

Progress Report

I finally got past chapter eight this week. It's not beautiful, but it's there. This round of revisions is all about getting the scenes in the right order. I'm afraid I'm going to have some left over scenes when I get to "the end". Then I will have to decide if I am going to try to shoe-horn them in, or just cut them completely.

Chapter eight is one of my favorites. That and chapter twelve. I've been trying to figure out why I like those best. I'm afraid that it may be because those are the chapters where the worst things happen to Troll Wife. Which makes me afraid that there isn't enough of that in the other chapters of the book. I'm trying very hard not to worry about that right now. Because if it's true, I'm afraid the book will get trunked.

I'm working on chapter nine this morning. I'm frustrated that I'm not already done with this. Why is this revision taking so much longer than the writing? Why is it so much less fun?

In Which I Discuss Some Things I Have Learned About Writing

To give my mind something shiny to play with while working on revisions for A Troll Wife's Tale (and let's not kid ourselves, unlike writing, for me revisions are work) I've decided to restart world building for The Clockwork Cat.

So, how will The Clockwork Cat be different from A Troll Wife's Tale? (Besides things like, you know, point of view and genre.)

Hopefully, I will apply the things that I learned (am learning) while writing Troll Wife and avoiding mistakes with Clockwork Cat. I'll be making all new mistakes, but that's ok. If they're new, it shows my learning curve.
Note:These are my things. If they resonate for you, great! But don't listen to them if they don't work for you. (That's part of Thing 1.)

Thing 1. The big one. Don't do something to your story just because an expert tells you to. If I'm ever lucky enough to get an agent, and the agent wants revisions, I will have to relearn this one in a different way, which involves listening to revisions and deciding if they make the story stronger and then writing based on that. However, for the very first writing process, when I'm the only reader, I should write the book my way.

Thing 2. Outlines are your friend. It's ok to deviate from an outline, but if you do, update the outline with the changes. Outlines are a great help during the writing process, but they are also a wonderful tool when creating a synopsis. It's easier to create a synopsis from an outline than it is from each page and chapter of the book.

Thing 3. There is no Thing 3 (as per Dr. Seuss). Yes, I hope I've learned more than two things in Troll Wife, but these two are so big, they overwhelm everything else right now.

How to make your one freebie work for you

Yesterday, I posted about the idea of "one freebie". Once you figure out what your one freebie is, how can you make it work for you?

For example, my one freebie is world building. Why am I good at it? I like the research, I like the brain storming, I like making fantastical things seem realistic.

Now, I'm afraid that character voice is one of my weaker areas. So, how can I use the things that work for me in world building in creating character voice?

Research my characters. What kind of backgrounds do they have? Educational level? Personal traumas or quirks? Myers Briggs type?

Brainstorm about my characters. Fast talkers, slow talkers, use of slang, etc. Oubliette, for example, comes from a different era and has a background from a faeish culture that doesn't exist any more. She's incredibly angry at humans. She feels alone in her outrage about what humans have done to faeish and wants to win faeish (specifically Troll Wife) over to her side of the fight. So, she would sound archaic. She would use faeish (rather than human) idioms. She would speak compellingly.

Make the fantastical sound realistic. Who was someone that is famous for speaking compellingly? Winston Churchill. How did he do it? He wrote his speeches, and then in his final edits he rewrote them into blank verse. So, maybe Oubliette would speak in blank verse.

Oh. My. Gosh. Now I need to research blank verse. But at least I have a handle on how to take my strengths and use them to deal with my weaknesses.

One Freebie

Years ago, when I was kind-of-but-not-really studying yoga, I first heard of the concept of "one freebie". The idea is that every newbie has one pose in yoga that they can do as though they had been studying that pose for years. You just have a natural gift for that pose.

Recently, I'd heard the concept applied to writing skills as well. Every writer has one thing that they can do effortlessly. The trick is to know what the one thing is. For me, I think it's world building.

I love world building, so even if I weren't any good at it, I would still end up doing it well because I love it and spend a lot of time on it. I'm all about being internally self consistent, so that when my stories have something strange in them, the reader can have a sense of how it all fits together.

What's you're one freebie?

Today is 3x5 card day!

A week or so ago, I made a whiny post about my utter failure of my revision process. Thanks to both Piedmont Writer (who pointed me to Falen) and Falen, who wrote about her revision process (complete with pictures) on her blog.

So, today is 3x5 card day! Today I start putting all my plot points on my 3x5 cards and slicing and dicing my WIP the easy way. As opposed to moving huge chunks of text around in Word, and getting utterly lost.

Of course, I'm also celebrating my shiny new husband's birthday today. And tomorrow is Father's Day, so I may not get as much done as I hope, but at least it's a start.

Next month I'll take Nicole MacDonald's suggestion to make sure I have enough detail.

Affinity groups

Sometimes I think that, in addition to writers groups that are affiliated by genre, there should be affinity groups of writers that are affiliated by theme. Mostly because, while two people that are writing about fantasy will have lots to offer each other, I also think that two people that are writing about "love conquers all" will have lots to offer each other, even if (especially if?) they are writing in different genres. I think of these "theme affinity groups" as supplements for writers :)