Ghosts and Goblins and Ghoulies, Oh My!

Yes, it's time for my favorite holiday!  No, you won't see me dressed in Halloween garb nor will I have carved or uncarved pumpkins lining my porch.  But I do have my office decorated for this special time.

There are those who collect Santa Clauses and Christmas villages.  I collect bats and witches and trick-or-treating children.  Well, not real bats or real children.  That would be wrong.  My big witch hangs from the ceiling, and my black, feathered witch hat hangs on my wall.  And just like Christmas shoppers, my youngest daughter and I visit Walgreens several times every year before Halloween for collectible goodies, and tomorrow we'll haunt Walmart for the clearance sale so we'll have a start on next year.

Plans for the night?  We don't get many trick-or-treaters on our street, so my custom has become to turn out the lights and turn on the TV, while I watch TAPS investigating some spooky place or maybe the history of Halloween on the History Channel.  But more than likely it'll be a Halloween-y movie.  Here's a short list to choose from:

• The entire Buffy the Vampire series
• Casper
• The Crucible (How scary to have been named a witch in those days!)
• Ghostbusters 1 & 2
• Jeepers Creepers (not my style at all)
• Scream, Scream 2, Scream 3, Scream 4 (I watched the first one Saturday night, just for a warm-up.)
• Little Shop of Horrors
• Rocky Horror Picture Show (Nothing like a little Time Warp to get the ball rolling.)

This year I think I'll choose Hocus Pocus, followed by Practical Magic, my favorite witchy movies.  I mean, who can resist Aiden Quinn as a sheriff with one blue eye and one brown eye?  Can we say HERO?  It'll be a great Halloween!  And if, as the veil between this life and beyond lifts, there's a message, I'll be sure to pay attention.  Well, if I'm not too focused on Aiden, not to mention Goran Visnjic, that is.

"Eye of newt, and toe of frog,
Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,
Adder's fork, and blind-worm's sting,
Lizard's leg, and howlet's wing,--
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble."
     Macbeth (IV, i, 14-15), William Shakespeare

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

To Nano Or Not To Nano

It's that time of year when, if you know any writers, you're sure to have heard the word NaNoWriMo.  Yeah, whatever that means, right?  But even those of us who've never participated in the national event--yes, national--are familiar with it and know that it stands for National Novel Writing Month.  And November is just around the corner.

Before the question comes up, yes, it's possible to write a novel in a month.  WRITE a novel in a month, not have a finished, clean, and ready manuscript for an agent, editor, or even print. That isn't the goal of NaNoWriMo.  But the 50,000 words that are the goal certainly can lead to the chance of having that novel ready to submit.

NaNoWriMo began in July 1999, the dream child of Chris Baty, with 21 participants.  The following year, the project was moved to November to take advantage of weather that begged for more indoor activity than outdoor.  NaNoWriMo took root and grew.  And grew!  By last year (2010), 200,000 participants wrote 2,872,682,109 words.  That's right, almost 3 billion words!

But I haven't yet made the leap to saying, yes, I'm ready to sign on the dotted line and pledge myself to 30 days of intense writing.  (That's 1666.6666 words or approximately 7 pages per day and very doable.)  I have other irons in the fire that would have to be put aside for later, and I'm not sure if I should do that.  On the other hand, it would be very nice to have something written and ready to edit, weeks before Christmas craziness sets in.  I even have a choice of what I'd like to work on.  I have several plotted but not written stories that are begging for attention.  And there's that YA (possibly a paranormal?) that my brain was plotting as I finished a nap today.  That's definitely a sign that it's ready for my attention.  But if I choose it, I only have 5 days to plot it, and I'm not sure my brain is up to it, after having just finished plotting another book this past week.

A final decision will be made on Monday.  If I choose to sign up, I may be the last one to do it!  If I choose not to, there's always next year. :)  Stay tuned!

Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness.  One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.  ~George Orwell, "Why I Write," 1947  

Living, Breathing Characters

I'm sure Angela and Becky won't mind a little promo for their exceptional blog.  Now that I've found it, I don't know how I lived without it.  Okay, I don't know how I wrote without it, but you get the drift.

So what's the big deal about The Bookshelf Muse?  These wonderful ladies have created the most fantastic thesauruses (thesaurusi?) for a writer's toolbox.  Need a way to describe what a character is doing/how a character is looking while feeling a certain way?  Just a couple of suggestions for "annoyed" would be a clenched jaw or tapping fingers on the table top.  Yes, fellow writers, this is where that Show Don't Tell comes in, and we can all use a little help with it now and then.  But emotions aren't everything, so there's more!

• Emotion Thesaurus
• Character Trait Thesaurus
• Settings Thesaurus
• Weather & Earthly Phenomena Thesaurus
• Color, Textures & Shapes Thesaurus
• Symbolism Thesaurus

And if those aren't enough to keep you busy giving more punch to your writing, their blog posts are just as great!  So get thee to The Bookshelf Muse where, as they say, you'll find "Writing Tools & Musings on Reading, Writing and Other Randomness."  Become one of their more than 2500 stalkers.  You'll be glad you did!

 Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.  ~E.L. Doctorow

The Merry-Go-Round Isn't Always Merry

Hi, I'm Roxann, and I'm a plotter.  (Please hold your gasps.)

As I've mentioned before, I wasn't always a plotter.  I began, as most do, as a panster, and then evolved.  Or devolved, as some might believe.  Now I'm to the point where I MUST plot.  If I don't know where the story is going, I panic.

In the column on the right is the progress meter I used to keep track of my writing.  My goal was to finish the first three chapters of a book I intend to propose to my editor, along with another story.  The meter shows I reached my goal of 14080 words, even surpassing it.  When all was said and done, the final total was 15,510 words that came in at 48 pages

The next step in the process for me is writing the synopsis.  The story was plotted...or at least I thought it was...but I had a feeling something wasn't quite right.  The story was "off" and I feared it could easily come in too short.  Not a good thing.  Or wouldn't be smooth.  An even worse thing.  I wanted to be able to hand in a proposal I felt was solid, so it was back to the drawing board to find what went wrong where.

I again  pulled out my plotting boards (new ones that can be seen below), along with an overview of the story and characters that I'd previously sent to my editor.  I was right.  There was a small difference, and that made a much bigger difference in how the story would play out to the end.  Once I realized it yesterday morning, I spent the rest of the day shuffling scenes around, until they flowed from a solid opening to a hook that I hoped would grab a reader's attention (the first three chapters), then go on through conflicts to be solved and finally coming to a satisfying HEA.  Making the changes also involved new writing of half of a scene and moving another to later in the timeline.  But they worked.

Writing sometimes is easy, but more often involves staving off panic that can be caused by one, very small slip-up.  If plotting and correcting things in the early days of writing helps keep my heart from hammering in my chest and my fingers from fumbling on the keyboard, while my brain calls out for help, then it's what I have to do.  It works.  At least for the time being.

An author in his book must be like God in the universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere.  ~Gustave Flaubert

Refilling the Well

There comes a time--or several times--in a writer's life where she (or he) feels empty and unable to produce anything with substance.  Some aren't able to produce anything at all.  These are the times when it's almost physically painful to try to string coherent words together to make a story.

Some people call this inability to create a writer's block, when in fact it isn't something that only writers experience.  Anyone who is creative can and usually does experience this phenomenon once in a while.

What?  You're not a writer?  Not an artist?  Wrong.  Everyone is creative in some way.

Filling -- or more accurately 'refilling' -- the well is what we do when we find that we're unable to create or have lost the love of creating.  The reasons for not being able to create are many and can include:

• Being on a long run of deadlines with no or very short breaks
• Experiencing a string of rejections or even the first rejection
• Life changes, which can include a new baby, a marriage or divorce, a move, or anything that disrupts a normal pattern
• Being overwhelmed by day to day life
• Fear of failure
• Fear of success

But like the reasons for being unable to create, refilling the well of creativity can take many forms.  Some writers choose to refill their well by reading, often outside of their own genre.  Some turn to other types of "art," such as drawing, photography, music, sewing and handcrafts, woodworking, even redecorating. Whatever we do, each of us much choose our own way of refilling.  Need an idea?  Check out how one author at Jaunty Quills does it.

When there isn't a lot of time to turn to something different, there's an alternative.  In the book The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron, the author suggests scheduling an "Artist's Date" at selected intervals.  Whether it's sipping a cup of yummy coffee at Starbucks, checking out a local flea market, or taking a walk around the block, just getting away from the grind for a new and different experience can give an artist/writer the chance to regain a new perspective aka refilling the well.  There's more on the "Artist's Date" at  Live to Write - Write to Live blog.  Picking up a copy of The Artist's Way is a great idea, too.  It's also available as an ebook, I hear.

Take the time to refill your creative well whenever possible.  It doesn't have to take a lot of time, and the benefits can't be matched.

Monday Morning Quarterbacking

It was a busy weekend here.  Too busy, which is evidenced by the fact that my total word count for Saturday and Sunday was 171, and that was done late last night.  It also shows that, in spite of good intentions, we don't always get words on paper as planned.

That low word count does set me back a little, but because I had a few days when I managed more words than my 640, I'm not that far behind.  The key is to keep writing past that daily word count on the days when the words flow from your fingertips--or at least you have the time to push yourself for more--and not beat yourself up when life gets in the way.  At present, I'm 354 words behind, but that's less than two pages.  I know I can catch up in a day and maybe even gain a little extra ground.

So what kept me from reaching my daily goals this weekend?  Saturday we attended Woofstock and had a wonderful time.  (I'll blog about it over at scribbles tomorrow.)  Saturday evening was family night, so I never get any writing done then.  Yesterday I met with a friend and attended an event for a couple of hours, then did some catching up on other things at home that had been shoved aside to make more time for writing.

The other thing that kept me from adding to my word count was that I wasn't quite sure where I was going.  I'd finished the first chapter on Friday night with a total of 1675 for the day--an example of how some days the writing goes well--but I was feeling iffy about how the next scene would play out.  I'd done some storyboarding to write the overview of the story for my editor to look at, but an overview only contains the highlights and turning points of the story.  I had a lot of holes to fill to get from point A to B and Y to Z.  I still don't have it finished, but I have ideas and will do some work on it today.

If you're wondering about storyboards, what they are or how to go about making and using one, check out Harlequin Romance author Susan Meiers' blog on Using a Storyboard.  You can also check out my blog, Who, Me?  Plot?, for more and a photo of my (old) plotting board.  It's old because I have a new one!

Sometimes we can't control the interruptions in our plans.  When that happens, even if it's because the interruption is planned by us, the best thing to do is take a step back and reassess what needs to be done to catch up.  Keep in mind that catching up doesn't have to happen in one day, but can be spread over several.  Like a football team working a few yards at a time to reach the goal line and score posts, we don't give up simply because we didn't make the word count needed to advance.  We'll get another chance again the next day, and maybe then we'll make a long run for the goal posts.