Playlist Complete; or Music To Scribble Words By

Posted on October 13, 2011 by sheilamcclune

(Post-A-Day Challenge, Day 12)

Okay, I can now check another item off of my NaNoWriMo “to do” list:  I’ve finished rebuilding my playlist.  I think, if you clicky on the thingy below, you should be able to see a spreadsheet list of all the tracks.  Sadly, at 2,500+ songs, it’s a little too long for me to just throw the actual music out onto the web for y’all to enjoy with me.

(Or, alternatively, go to Google Docs to see the whole thing.)

So there it is.  I make no apologies for any of it; I like all of this music, and that’s what counts.

Of course, once I’d finished it, the first thing I did was to export it to a spreadsheet.  That way, should something happen to corrupt or delete the list again, I’d at least have that much to help me rebuild it.

Imagine my surprise when, as soon as I hit “Save”, my music management program opened up the last folder in which I’d saved something.  And in that folder was one file…named “Nanoplaylist2010.xls”.

Yep.  I’d apparently had the same brilliant idea about saving a copy of the list last year.  But in the meantime, I’d completely forgotten about it.  If I’d remembered, I could have saved myself a great deal of angst when it came to rebuilding.  But then I’d have had less to blog about.  So I guess it all works out.

For what it’s worth, this year’s list has 500 more songs on it than last year’s.  Either I’ve acquired some new music in the meantime, or I’m less picky about what I included, or (most likely) some of each.

I expect the list will get pared down a bit as I go along.  Last year’s did, too.  When I’m sampling tracks to find things I think will work, I can usually only give each song about six seconds. (Otherwise, I’d still be here long after November was over!)  So sometimes, something that sounded great when sampled actually turns out to be not quite so nice when it pops up in actual play.  My main criterion is that the music should not be jarring or distracting.  For the most part, that means instrumentals.  Since I have a large (13,000+ tracks and growing) music library, I don’t always remember which tracks are vocals and which are instrumentals.  So sometimes I accidentally throw a vocal into the mix, and I don’t know it until it comes up during play.  It’s an easy matter to weed it out, though.

Another thing I’ll weed out are songs that are discordant, loud, or grating in any way.  So while I have some ambient music that makes great listening otherwise, if it makes me clench my teeth or wince, it’s out.

And then there are the songs that are too quiet or too boring.  Those are fine when I want to be lulled to sleep, but not so great when I’ve got a word count to meet.

Oh, and for those who care, the music management program I use is MediaMonkey.  It lets me look up and tag music, add cover art, rip CDs, and synch with my iPOD.  I like it much better than iTunes.

So what music inspires other people to write?  What kinds of music/specific artists can you not stand to listen to while writing?

Posted in Writing | Tagged | 2 Comments

Progress Toward Goals; or November Is Even Closer Now

Posted on October 11, 2011 by sheilamcclune

(Post-A-Day Challenge, Day 11)

Well, we’re about a third of the way through the month.  I have to admit that coming up with a topic for a posting each and every day is harder than I thought it would be.  But never fear, I haven’t run out of topics yet!

Last week, I posted some of my NaNoWriMo preparation goals.  I haven’t cleaned my desk yet, but tonight I did finally clean out the garage refrigerator.

I learned a couple of important lessons about refrigerators tonight, too.  First (and I think I did know this, just didn’t have the time to do anything about it when it would have made the difference) is that if you’re going to leave a refrigerator unplugged and closed up for a while, you really want to make sure it’s clean and mostly dry first.  Unfortunately, there was just a little bit of water in this fridge when it got closed up, which meant that there were a few patches of mold that needed to be taken care of before I could deem it “food safe”.

And the second lesson I learned is that you should clean out the refrigerator and then plug it back in.  Or at least, you should clean the freezer side before plugging it in.  Did you know that 409 freezes?  I didn’t.  Made cleaning a bit of a challenge, until I figured out that I could turn the freezer section off and leave the door open, and it would thaw enough for cleaning to happen.

So the refrigerator is now cleaner than it has probably been since it was brand new.  I’ve even started to stock the freezer section with quick but healthy meals for the coming month.  Yes, it really is possible to eat from the freezer and still be reasonably healthy about it.  And it does make portion control easier.

While cooking is one of my joys in life, between shopping, preparing the food, and cleaning up afterwards, it can take quite a bit of time.  Which is why I don’t do a lot of cooking during NaNoWriMo.  (Except for Thanksgiving, of course.  That’s another matter entirely.)

The other goal toward which I’ve made some progress is rebuilding my NaNoWriMo playlist.  I have a feeling it’s going to be an iterative process — throw some music into it. play it for a while, toss out the songs that don’t work, load some more music….  I think that’s okay, since I’m constantly finding more music I like, in addition to finally getting around to getting some of my old favorites loaded into the computer for easier access.

So that’s what I’ve managed so far.  I’ll keep y’all posted on the other goals.

Posted in Writing | Tagged , | 1 Comment

The Mystery Of The Amazing Disappearing Characters; or, She Was Here Just A Second Ago!

Posted on October 10, 2011 by sheilamcclune

(Day 10 of Post-A-Day Challenge)

 

Anyone ever had a character (or several characters) disappear on them?

I have.  All the time.

The sad part is, most of the time I don’t even notice it until later.  I set up a scene where six characters enter a room…but only two of them end up having anything to say to one another.  The rest, apparently, all slink off to the hotel bar for a highball or something, because they just disappear from the scene.  Later on, one of them might pop in to say something pithy, but otherwise, they’re AWOL.

It’s especially bad when you have a character who is a bit reticent to start with.  If you don’t pay close attention to her, she’ll vanish faster than doughnuts in my office’s kitchen.

The problem is, having a character say something just so he or she can be present in the scene is problematic, too.  It can lead to stilted, awkward dialogue at best (and at worst, well, I’d just prefer not to think about it, thanks).

So what can you do to keep characters from disappearing?  Here are some tips I’ve discovered:

  1. Re-evaluate whether the “disappearing” characters really need to be in the scene to start with.  If the scene is really about a discussion between your main character and her mother, do dad and younger brother really need to be there, too?
  2. Transfer some dialogue from another character.  This can be especially helpful if you have a character who tends to steal scenes.  Take away a few of his lines and give them to someone else.  Just make sure to change the voice to match the new speaker!
  3. A character doesn’t have to speak to be part of the scene.  Have one of your vanishing characters stick around to pour the tea instead.  Give them little beats of body language or facial expression.  Have one of them raise an eyebrow at the preposterous claim your main character just made.  Perhaps the tired four-year-old crawls into Mommy’s lap to fall asleep, rather than dozing off on the chair across the room and disappearing from the scene.  There are lots of fun possibilities here!
  4. If your scene takes place somewhere where there are people moving around in the background — a busy street, the shopping mall, the hospital emergency room — give us a note or two to let us know that the folks in the background are still there.  Have the hard-boiled police detective pause to wonder why a mime just wandered past.  Have the young man in the corner of the Starbucks sneeze and receive a chorus of “bless you”s from everyone on that side of the room.  Describe how the teething baby’s wails echo sharply off of the roof of the train station, high overhead….  You get the idea.

What are some other tricks people have used to pull disappearing characters back into a scene?

Posted in Writing | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Beating The Bushes; or, Finding Time To Write (Even When Your’re Not Writing)

Posted on October 9, 2011 by sheilamcclune

(Post-A-Day Challenge, Day 9)

One of the challenges of writing, unless you’re lucky enough to be independently wealthy and don’t have to hold down a day job, is finding the time to do it.  So, like lots of other people who aspire to being an author, I have to squeeze my writing in around the other bits and pieces of my life–my job, friends and family, housework, and, oh yeah, yard work.

Bushes to beat

My yard, sadly, does not look this good. Though it does have bamboo!

This afternoon, the yard work beckoned, and even though I would rather have been writing, I sallied forth with my hedge trimmer to try to beat the flora surrounding my house into some semblance of order.

Fall has finally come to Colorado; there was a definite nip in the air.  Not enough to make working outdoors unpleasant, but enough to give me a runny nose.

That got me thinking about a scene I had written from the POV of one of my secondary characters, a young woman who lives in a terribly impoverished situation, one that has been steadily growing worse for the last several years.  As she labors outdoors on a bitterly cold day, she laments the fact that she is forced to wipe her runny nose on her sleeve, “just like a common peasant,” because the last of her handkerchiefs has finally disintegrated from washing and use.

I had known, of course, that this woman was not a common peasant.  But if she isn’t…then what is she?  I know she’s not part of the nobility, unless it’s from “the wrong side of the blanket,” as it were.  Nor does she seem as though she’s from a burgher/merchant class kind of family.  So what does that leave?

I finally decided that she is the last in a long line of people who have served the local nobility as upper servants — stewards, butlers, etc. — for generations.  As such, she would have better manners and a better education than a common servant, and would of course think of herself as being of a different class than the average person from her village.

Which just goes to show that one does not need to be parked in front of a computer with hands on keyboard in order to write.  Got a plot point to work out?  Mull it over in the checkout line in the grocery store.  Having trouble visualizing a character?  Brainstorm ways to get to know her while folding laundry.  Not sure if a bit of dialogue works?  Practice saying lines out loud in the car on the way to work.  (Hint:  You won’t look like a lunatic if you put on your cell phone headset first!  And if you don’t have a cell phone headset…GET ONE.)

And when in doubt…take a shower!

What other ways have people found to move their stories along without actually sitting down in front of a computer and writing?  Anyone else have suggestions for creative multi-tasking?

Posted in Writing | Tagged | Leave a comment

Details, Details; or, Adding The Highlights

Posted on October 8, 2011 by sheilamcclune

(Post-A-Day Challenge, Day 8)

One of the things I am trying to do on my current edit pass on Book 1 of the Winterbourne series is to add in some of the little details that will help bring the story to life.

Often, when I’m writing a story, I’m in too much of a rush to capture the essence of the scene on paper (well, okay, in bytes) to attend to all of the little details.  So little things like smells and sounds, unless they are essential to the story, tend to get left out.

And on my earlier edit passes, I just don’t see the point to going in and primping every scene to make it look its best when I’m not even certain that the scene is going to remain in the finished story.

But now that I’m homing in on what will be the first of several “final” drafts, it’s worth touching things up here and there to bring out the best in the story.

Which is not to say that I’m going back and adding in lengthy exposition paragraphs at the beginning of each scene to describe the setting in elaborate detail.  There are a few scenes where more detail is indeed called for, as they appear to take place in a void in deep space.  But in those cases, I’m doing my best to work setting details into the scene as it progresses.

In a lot of cases, I’m not making huge sweeping changes.  In one scene Celia notices the smell of coal smoke clinging to her father’s clothing; in another, I add the word “grimy” to the description of a train-station platform.  We now know that there are narrow, cobblestone streets in Oxford, instead of just “streets”.

And in some cases, it’s a matter of word choice.  If I can have a character “shuffle” rather than “walk dejectedly,” it’s clearer, more vivid…and saves me a word on my word count.

The other problem I’m planning to address, related to this, is that of Amazing Disappearing Characters.  But that, my friends, is a topic for another day.

How do you “primp up” your work?  What are some tricks you’ve used for bringing a scene to life?

Posted in Writing | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Dragon Friday #1

Posted on October 8, 2011 by sheilamcclune

(Post-A-Day Challenge, Day 7)

[Pretend that it’s still last night and that I didn’t fall asleep in the middle of posting this…]

I’m trying something a little different today.  One of the things I’ve been meaning to do for a while now is to post a story, serial fashion, on my blog, more-or-less as I write it.

I’ve had the story kicking around in the back of my mind for a couple of years now.  I’ve even written the first couple thousand words of it (though I’ve revised the first bit pretty heavily to make this posting, and I’ll be continuing to revise the rest as I go along).  But what you’re going to see here is essentially a first draft.  So the pacing may be a bit uneven, and it may not be as polished as it could be.  I hope it’s still fun.

I plan to post a segment every week, probably around 750 words or so.  I’ll warn you now that I may have to put this on hiatus during November, for NaNoWriMo.  We’ll see how that goes.

This story takes place in what I call my “Fae Gates” universe:  Essentially, it’s the present day, but for some reason, all of the gates between our world and all of the worlds of Faerie suddenly popped open for the first time in a thousand years, and all kinds of creatures came pouring through.  Our heroine, Maddie Anderson, runs into a little problem with…a dragon.

The Dragon, The Wench, and Her Wardrobe
(working title)
© 2011 Sheila McClune

Talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I mean, yeah, pretty much everyone remembers where they were when the seven hundred and seventy-two gates between Earth and the various realms of Faerie were blasted open by a combination of an errant spell on their end and a freak power surge on ours.

But I was in a particularly bad spot.

Oh, it hadn’t seemed like that bad a spot five seconds earlier. I was on an outbound train at Denver International Airport, headed for Concourse B and my first-class seat on a red-eye flight to Boston for–get this–a science fiction convention. I’d even managed to slip onto the train at the front end, so I could sit on the bench seat across the front window and catch a well-deserved breath.

The day had started poorly and gone downhill from there. Let’s face it, any day that starts with my phone ringing at oh-dark-thirty in the morning is not going to be great. Hearing my boss’ ringtone—Bach’s Toccata and Fugue—only made it worse. And the capper? It was supposed to have been my day off.

I fumbled amid the clutter atop my nightstand for my cell phone. It took me two tries to hit the right button to make the ringing stop. “’Lo?”

“Maddie? It’s Teri. I didn’t wake you up, did I?”

I squinted at the clock. 6:03. “Well, yeah.”

“Listen, I’m really sorry, but I need you to come in early today. Cliff just called from Atlanta. He’s making major changes to his board presentation for tomorrow, and I’m going to need….”

“Teri? Teri!” I tried to stop her.

“…your help to re-do all of the…what?”

“I’m on vacation. Remember?”

For a moment, her end of the line got so quiet I thought I’d lost the connection. “But…that’s not until next week,” she finally said. “Isn’t it?”

“No, it’s this week. I reminded you on Tuesday.”

“Well…I’m really sorry, but you’re going to have to reschedule. We have to re-do Cliff’s entire presentation.”

I groaned. I’d spent weeks on that presentation! “Teri, I can’t! I’ve been planning this for six months. I’m supposed to be flying to Boston in five hours. I’ve got plane tickets and a cat-sitter and everything.” Irrational tears gathered in the corners of my eyes.

“But…Maddie…I can’t do this without you!”

I gritted my teeth. “I’m really sorry. But I can’t change my plans.”

I heard her tapping away at a keyboard. Was she already in the office? “What if the company buys you tickets to go to Boston next weekend instead? We’ll even pick up your rental car. How’s that?”

“That won’t work. I’m going out there for a convention. Next week will be too late.” Not to mention that it would also be too late to finally meet Paul, face-to-face.

Paul Rogers and I had been friends for two years now, thanks to the Internet. We’d met on a fan forum for a show we both watched, and something had clicked between us. We’d been planning the Boston trip for ages—he lived in Seattle, and we’d joked about how it would have been too easy for us to just meet in one city or the other, so we’d had to both fly to the east coast to get together.

I heard more keyboard taps from Teri’s end of the line. “What time does your convention start?”

“Noon tomorrow,” I admitted, reluctantly. “But….”

“What if I got you on a later flight today? The company can pay the change fees.”

“How much later?” Paul’s flight wasn’t supposed to get in until nine o’clock or so.

“I see a flight that leaves here at 5:51, arrives in Boston at 11:35. It’s a non-stop. Will that work?”

I crawled out of bed and crossed the room to my computer desk, pausing to nudge Paisley, my calico longhair, off of the chair.

“I’ll even use some of Cliff’s frequent flyer miles to upgrade you to business class,” Teri added, since I hadn’t answered right away. “Both ways.”

“Well….” I didn’t want to seem too eager, but an upgrade was an upgrade, after all. I powered up the computer so I could let Paul know about the change in plans. “I guess that’ll work.”

“Thank you, Maddie, thank you, thank you. I owe you one. Big time.”

“Yes, you do,” I said, remembering all of the other “ones” Teri already owed me.

“Get here as quick as you can. I’ll have coffee and bagels waiting.”

. . .

Posted in Dragon Friday | Tagged | Leave a comment

November Is Coming; or, NaNoWriMo Prep

Posted on October 6, 2011 by sheilamcclune

(Day 6 of Post-A-Day Challenge)

On the various lists and communities to which I belong, I’m beginning to see more postings about things people are doing to prepare for the upcoming NaNoWriMo challenge.  I’ve seen people who already have detailed outlines for half of their novel, and others who are writing lengthy character studies, and doing research for details that will be important to their stories.

Those are all fine things to do, and if I was the kind of writer who could write to an outline, or knew in advance what research needed to be done, I could do them.  Since my planned novel this time out is a sequel, I don’t have too many new characters to profile.  But I am prepping for NaNoWriMo…in my own way:

  1. Installing New Keyboard:  While I will probably write most of this year’s novel on my netbook, there’s a chance that I might want to use my desktop computer from time to time.  Given that, last night I decided to finally get around to installing the new ergonomic keyboard I bought six months ago after I broke one of the little prop-up feet on the back of my old one.  Coincidentally, it turned out that one of my co-workers had just been given the same model of keyboard by the company’s IT department, only she didn’t want an ergo keyboard.  So we traded out, and now I have the same keyboard at work and at home.  Nice.
  2. Prepping the Playlist:  Sometime last spring, we transferred our music library to a much larger external hard drive.  Unfortunately, that process somehow wiped out my entire NaNoWriMo music playlist.  I re-built about half of it, but I need to get the rest of it put back together sometime between now and November.
  3. Making Some Userpics:  Because I keep my personal blog on LiveJournal, and that’s where I’ll be squeeing to my friends about the ups and downs of NaNoWriMo, I need to create some 100 x 100 icons/userpics to decorate those postings.  I do still have the ones I’ve used in previous years, but I always like to have some new ones, too.
  4. Cleaning My Desk:  Like everyone–well, almost everyone–my desk in my home office can get a bit cluttered from time to time.  So sometime in the next couple of weeks, I need to take a few minutes to de-clutter it, and maybe even give it a dusting.  I need to bring up the hot pot I bought so I’d be able to make tea in there on those chilly November nights, and I need to stock a selection of tea and a cup or two.
  5. Stocking the Freezer:  Since I’m watching my weight this year, I need to stock my freezer with healthy, low-calorie foods that I can toss in the microwave and eat for quick meals that won’t keep me away from the keyboard for too long.  I need to make sure I have a few treats around that aren’t too bad for me (though thankfully, I never really got into the habit of eating while writing).  And I have to make sure Beloved Husband doesn’t starve, either.
  6. Storing Up Blog Ideas:  I plan to post updates on my progress here, but it would be nice if I had a few other entries during the month, too.  Wouldn’t it?  So I’ve already begun to make lists of potential blog topics that I can write about when I need a quick break from NaNo.
  7. Finishing Current Editing Projects:  I know from past experience that it’s really difficult for me to be writing on one project while editing another.  So my goal is to have finished up my current editing pass on the first Winterbourne book prior to the beginning of November.  (This all assumes that my critique group, due to review the last section of the novel in a couple of weeks, doesn’t up and tell me that the ending sucks and I have to re-write the whole thing from scratch.)

Which ought to be plenty to keep me busy between now and the beginning of November!

So is anyone else participating in NaNoWriMo this year?  Any past participants?  What did you do/are you going to do to get ready?

Posted in Writing | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

The Big Picture; or, Pondering the Story Arc

Posted on October 5, 2011 by sheilamcclune

(Day 5 of Post-A-Day Challenge)

Okay, since one of the purposes of participating in the Post-A-Day Challenge is to get me ready for NaNoWriMo, I should probably talk about that at some point, shouldn’t I?

So if you’re new around here, or have somehow missed all of my past ramblings about it, National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, takes place every year in November.  The challenge is to write a novel of 50,000 words in one month.  Which means writing 1,667 words per day, every day, for the entire month.

The idea is that with a goal and deadline in sight, participants will focus on getting the writing done, and not on micro-editing or second-guessing themselves to the point where the story never gets written.

I’ve participated four times previously (2006, and 2008-2010), and “won” the challenge all four times.  My current editing project, the first book in the Winterbourne series, was my 2009 entry.  Last year, I wrote Book 2 in the series, and this year, I’m hoping to complete Book 3.  (There are currently four books scheduled in the series.)

But my story arc is going to need a little work this time out.  Because what I’m really writing this year is the second half of Book 2.  Halfway through last November (or maybe even later than that), I decided that there was far too much plot to Book 2 for it all to fit into one book.  So I ended that book at what seemed to be a logical ending point, and left the rest of the story for this year.

Except that what’s left really has kind of a weak story arc, and I need to figure out how to make it meatier without adding 100,000 words to the manuscript (and necessitating the splitting of the second half of Book 2 into two parts, which would just be silly).

In this book, Celia Winterbourne is headed to the Boston Institute of Science and Technology (now known as MIT) for the spring term, as part of an exchange program with the Royal Academy of Science in Oxford.  Along with her are two of her three sisters…and two stowaways.  Unbenownst to her, also on his way to Boston is her former fiancee and now enemy Tarmanian agent, Nicholas Fletcher.

One of Celia’s goals is to persuade the Americans’ Institute not to send teachers to the newly-founded Tarmanian Institute of Science.  And of course, one of Nicholas’ goals is to recruit teachers for the new college, of which he is to be the first Chancellor.

I know that in the process, the debate will grow to be over much more than teachers, growing to become a contest for each side to gain the support of the American government as well.  Both sides of the war between the British and the Tarmanians are in desperate need of resources.

I know how the story needs to end.  It’s a scene I’ve been imagining since I was about halfway through the first book.  I’ve been laying little clues to it as I went.  I hope the payoff ends up being as satisfying as I’ve imagined it.

But the problem is, how to build up to that final, climactic scene?  How do I keep the story interesting and the reader invested until it’s time for that fatal shot to be fired?

I suppose, in true NaNoWriMo tradition, I’ll make it up as I go along.

Anybody else taking part in NaNoWriMo?  Got plot?

Posted in Writing | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Graphics Challenge; or, I Double-Dog Dare You

Posted on October 4, 2011 by sheilamcclune

(Post-A-Day Challenge, Day 4)

So since this blog is supposed to include forms of creativity that aren’t writing–at least, once in a while–I’ve decided to make this the obligatory weekly non-writing blog entry.

One of the other things I’ve mentioned that I like to do is to edit photographs I’ve taken into either headers for this blog, or icons/userpics for use on my LiveJournal.  In order to give myself incentive (and permission) to do at least a little of this every week, I’ve started up an icon-making community over on LiveJournal, called icon_if_i_wanna.  The community is open and free for anyone who wants to join (though you will need a LiveJournal account).

I like the challenge of creating banners and icons, because it’s fun to try to tell a story in a small space.  Also, the formats for these two forms are unlike the normal photographic ratios, so finding a composition that works can be trickier than it looks.  A picture that works well as a photograph may be impossible to crop down to a good banner or icon.  Conversely, that really boring picture you took that’s mostly sky with just a few mountains in the distance?  That’s perfect banner fodder.

In a normal week, my goal is to post at least:

  • One icon made from a picture I took
  • One icon made from a picture someone else took (usually art found on the internet)
  • One texture for use in creating graphics
  • And, more recently, one header/banner suitable for use on this blog.

But this week, I decided to mix it up a bit.  So I posted a picture challenge:  take the picture I posted, and create either an icon, a texture, or a banner.

I don’t know if I’ll get any takers — the community is pretty small, so far — but if nothing else, it will give me something different to do.

Anyone reading this is more than welcome to join in.  If you don’t want to go to the trouble of signing up for a LiveJournal account, just create your entry (or entries), post them on your favorite photo-sharing site, and post a link to them in the comments here.  It’s pretty low-stress — why not give it a try?

Oh, and if you don’t have PhotoShop, don’t panic — there are some good tools available on the interwebs, and for free, even.  My two favorites:

  • Irfan View:  This is a basic graphics editing tool that will let you crop, resize, rotate, and do some color tweaking.  There are some effects tools (sharpen, blur, etc.), too.  The resizing function is one of the best I’ve found (make sure to pick the “Lancosz” option), as it preserves more of the detail from the original.
  • GIMP:  A more powerful editing tool, allows you to do things like create your own brushes, use textures, and edit in layers.  A little confusing to use at first, but I got the hang of it pretty quickly.  There are lots of on-line tutorials available, which helps.  This is also my tool-of-choice for adding text to a graphic, because I can add an outline to the text that really makes it “pop”.

Have fun!

Posted in Photography and Graphics | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Paring It Down; or Sometimes, Less Is More

Posted on October 3, 2011 by sheilamcclune

(Post-A-Day Challenge, Day 3)

One of the hardest parts of editing for me is figuring out which scenes are needed and which are not.  I have to admit that my judgment is often clouded by how much I like a scene.  If I like it a lot, I’m more likely to want to leave it in the story, whether it makes sense for it to be there or not.

In the novel I’m currently editing (Book one of the Winterbourne series), I recently discovered that if I deleted a scene, not only did it make the story tighter, but it increased tension between two of the characters.

I’d originally had a sweet little scene where Celia Winterbourne tells her beau, Nicholas Fletcher, that she’s just discovered that she’s not her father’s only child.  Instead, she keeps her secret, and he now learns the news when Dr. Winterbourne announces it to the rest of the world.

But in the meantime, Celia has time to worry whether the announcement will affect her relationship with Nicholas, which is a good and fine thing, since I’ve had a number of comments that the relationship goes too smoothly in the first part of the book.  This adds just a little tension to that relationship.

(Though I do have to admit that part of me still likes that sweet little scene better….)

Little by little, I will shape this mass of writing into a story!

Posted in Writing | Tagged | Leave a comment

One-Stop Shopping For Character Ideas; or A Visit To The Big Blue Store

Posted on October 2, 2011 by sheilamcclune

(Post-A-Day Challenge, Day 2)

I know what I’m going to do the next time I have a free day — or even just several hours — to spend on brainstorming for writing.

I’m going to Ikea.

Colorado just got an Ikea this past summer, and for a lot of us, it’s still new and novel.  Beloved Husband and I were there today, and I discovered that it’s a great place to go shopping…for character ideas.  And stories.  And scenes.  And dialogue.

We discovered this when we sat down to test drive a couple of ottomans in the sofa section, and inertia set in for ten minutes or so.  It was fascinating to sit and watch people to go by.

One thing I noticed was that there were a higher-than-average proportion of obviously pregnant women shopping there.  It must be a great place to be if you’re in nesting mode!

So after that, I got to thinking that the next time I have a “use-it-or-lose-it” PTO day from work, I should take my netbook and just go sit at Ikea for a while.  It’d be a great place to spend the day — free parking, places to sit, and if I get hungry, I only need to scrape together three bucks and change to get a plate of meatballs and mashed potatoes.

I think my favorite place to hang out was at the exit of the showroom floor, right at the entrance to the warehouse section.  You could tell who had been in before and who hadn’t.  I heard more than one “Holy sh*t!” as people who thought they were near the end of the very very long path through the store suddenly discovered that there was still a lot of walking left to do.  (The good news is that there are cinnamon rolls and frozen yogurt cones at the end of the trail!)

But also, there at what is essentially the exit to the store, you get to see what people came out with (besides furniture).  You see single men sheepishly slinking out with a vase or a packet of dish towels under their arms.  You see people who really should have gotten a cart struggling along under the weight of their big yellow bag.  You see teenagers doing their best to look bored, but sometimes failing.  You see hipsters with artwork and older couples with lamps and young couples with cartons of wine glasses and henpecked husbands wishing they were home watching The Game.

There have to be a bazillion stories there.  One day, I’m going to go back and find some of them and jot them down.

Posted in Writing | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Post-A-Day Challenge; or, I Obviously Wasn’t Busy Enough Already

Posted on October 1, 2011 by sheilamcclune

Damn you, WordPress.

There I was, quietly minding my own business, when you had to oh-so-innocently toss a lure my direction:  Warm up for NaNoWriMo by participating in the Post-A-Day Challenge.

It wasn’t enough that I had already challenged myself to post to my blog at least once a week, or that I also have a little icon/graphics challenge with myself going on over on LiveJournal.

No, you had to toss that challenge out there, knowing I’d be unable to resist, knowing I couldn’t just look the other way and pretend I’d never seen it.

Well, then, fine.  If that’s the way it’s going to be, then that’s just the way it is.  You have no one but yourself to blame for the month’s worth of drivel that’s going to come spilling out of my fingers now.

You’ll be sorry.

(Well, okay, probably not.  But it sounded good.)

So yeah.  NaNoWriMo warmup will be happening here and throughout the month of October.  And I’ll probably continue to post my thoughts as I  edit my last couple of NaNos.

Meanwhile, back to editing….

Posted in Writing | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Notes from Edit-head; or, More Musings on Revisions

Posted on September 30, 2011 by sheilamcclune

I’ve spent a fair amount of time in “edit head” this week.

Which is not a new thing for me, or terribly unusual  What is unusual is that I seem to be bouncing around between projects.

I dabbled a bit on editing my once-and-future Regency romance earlier in the week.  It’s just such a dauntingly huge task, though, and I’m not sure if it ever can be finished, so it’s hard for me to stay focused on it for any length of time.

So when my attention wandered from that, I started on the revisions to my suburban fantasy/fairy story, as suggested from my recent workshop experience in Reno (that was last week’s entry, in case anyone missed it).  I got the first of the two suggested major changes made, and I think it really does improve the story.

But the second suggested change is a little trickier, as it involves changing the underlying structure of the story.  Essentially what I need to do is to delete one entire scene and replace it with something else.  That, in and of itself, is not difficult to do.  The problem is that the scene occurs fairly early on in the story, and therefore a lot of what follows depends on or refers to it.  Which means that most of the rest of the story has to be revised as well.  Not a quick or easy task.  I think I need to go read my notes again and make sure I’m moving in the right direction before I tackle that one.  It may just need a little more time to “cook” before I can see the solution.

Which brought me back around to editing Book 1 of the Winterbourne series again.  Almost the whole novel has been through my critique group now, and I think I have a better handle on some of the places where the narrative could be trimmed down a bit.  The characters seem a little sharper in my mind, and the underlying themes a bit clearer.

The main problem I’m having with this one is that there are several things I want to accomplish on this edit pass.  My first priority, as always, is to try to locate scenes that can be trimmed down or deleted.  While the file is now (finally) down under 150K words, I’d be happier still if I could get it down to 125K or 130K.  That may not be realistic; but with every trim, I can feel the story getting just a little tighter, a little more in focus.  Little by little, I’m trimming away the excess to leave just what is essential for the story.

But while I’m doing that, I’m also trying to incorporate feedback, both from my critique group and my devoted and loyal corps of brave alpha readers.  Everyone who has read the story has had at least one useful suggestion (though “print it up and use it as a doorstop” might not have been the most useful of the suggestions), and trying to keep all of those in mind as I go through and make revisions is a challenge.

And then, too, I need to be on the lookout for things that are on my list of “bad writer habits”: weak words, vague phrasing, passive voice, and the dreaded POV shift.  And while I’m at it, I need to look for little touches I can add to make the story more vivid, such as smells, sounds, and costume and setting details.

In the end, that may be more than my brain can juggle at one pass.  And of course, there’s an argument to be made that I shouldn’t spend a lot of time snipping and primping and prettying up a scene until I’m certain it’s going to stay in the story.  So I may divide this up into two separate edit runs.  We’ll see.

But when I finish this round of editing, I’m going to be looking for more test readers.  I know I’ve got a couple of folks who are interested, but if you might like to read the revised version and provide some basic feedback (whether you’ve read an earlier version or not), please leave me a comment and let me know.

How do other people juggle multiple priorities while editing?  Do you try to do all of your editing at once, or do you break it up and try to focus on fixing one aspect of your manuscript at a time?

Posted in Writing | Tagged | Leave a comment

Link Salad, September 2011 Edition

Posted on September 28, 2011 by sheilamcclune

Hi, everyone!

Popping in today with a “link salad” posting.  Which means, basically, that I’m taking all of the good writing links that I’ve found and saved up over the past month or so and sharing them with you.

First up, from Writer’s Digest:  Plot Like a Bestseller:  8 Things You Should Know

I found this helpful, because while I can create characters and settings and even put the two together and tell a story, I don’t always manage to come up with a good plot.  Keeping these things in mind should help!

Next, from Huffington Post’s “Writer Wednesday”:  Getting an Agent: Alternatives to the Traditional Method

Since I and a couple of my writer friends have completed manuscripts that we’re either beginning to shop or are about to shop, these tips could be handy.

Next, from The Bluestocking Blog:  Write, Revise, Rest, Repeat

Some great thoughts here on the writing process, with links to illustrate and inform each step.

After that, we have tips on writing and creativity from author Annie Proulx, via The Oregonian:  Annie Proulx at Portland Arts and Lectures

I love her advice on characters:  If you have a character that isn’t working, try changing their sex. It can be useful, and “at the very least, it’s amusing.”

The above link came to me via mystery and YA author April Henry, whose blog is often entertaining, and who posts great links from time to time.  (I’ve enjoyed her books, too.)  If you’re not following her on LiveJournal, you should be.

And finally, a new website that might be of interest to genre writers:  Book Country bills itself as a place to discover and share fiction.

That’s it for this round.  Enjoy!

[EDIT:  By request, adding raspberry vinaigrette to the link salad and tossing to coat.  Enjoy!]

(P.S.  WordPress tells me that, combined with the entries I carried over from The Melt-Ink Pot, this is my 100th entry!  Woot! {throws confetti})

Posted in Writing | Tagged | Leave a comment

Comin’ Back For More; or, What I Learned From My Second WorldCon Writer’s Workshop

Posted on September 23, 2011 by sheilamcclune

So, now that it’s more than a month after my second experience with a WorldCon Writer’s Workshop (this time in Reno), I thought I’d share my experiences with everyone. (I first posted about this back in July; rather than repeat all the background information again, here’s a link back to that entry, in case you missed it.)

I first did a writer’s workshop in Montreal, two years ago. I thought then that I was prepared for this kind of workshop, but having not experienced it before, I really wasn’t. It was still a valuable experience, especially since it got me in with the ongoing on-line Anticipation Writer’s Workshop, and I really did get some good and useful feedback (I mean, one of the professional writers for my group was Nancy Kress–how can a person go wrong there?). But it was still an emotional experience for me. (Okay, let’s be honest: I went back to my hotel room and cried because my story, which I’d thought was perfect, had so much wrong with it!)

This time around, though, I thought I was better prepared. I had a story snippet which I’d read about the first third of to a few friends (and Beloved Husband), and had gotten good feedback (especially from one friend who says he doesn’t usually enjoy that sort of thing.) But I wasn’t really sure if part of it worked. Well, no better way to find out than to have a truly impartial group of people read it for me and let me know.

So that’s the piece I submitted, and guess what? I was right! Both about being better prepared, and about the part of my story that didn’t work. But as before, both the professional authors and the other workshop participants gave me some great ideas about how to fix the parts that aren’t working. And moreover, the parts that are working, worked really well. One of the pros said that until she reached the broken part, her advice was going to be to send it out now. Feedback was universal that the characters were good, appealing, and well-drawn. I left the workshop feeling really excited about the story and how to fix it.

But more than that, I feel (hope) that because I now have more critiquing experience under my belt, I was able to give better, more targeted, and more substantive feedback to the other workshop participants in my group. That made me feel good, too, because the two stories that I got to read both had things to recommend them as well as things that could benefit from some tweaking.

Aside from the workshop itself, I also got to meet and spend time with some of the folks from the on-line Anticipation group (hereinafter known as the Anticipeeps). I knew I had gotten in with a good group of people, and getting to hang with them only confirmed it. It was like meeting up with old friends, with whom one is instantly comfortable. It was an unusual WorldCon experience for me, because oftentimes, while we have other friends and acquaintances around, we don’t spend a lot of time with any one group of people. It’s usually just Beloved Husband and me. So it was nice to have a little “pod” of people to sit with at the Hugos, to go out and eat sushi with, and to hang around in hotel rooms with until the not-so-wee-small-hours of the morning.

So all-in-all, I’d have to say that this year’s WorldCon was a success as far as workshop participation went for me. I can’t wait until next year, in Chicago!

Has anyone else had recent experience with feedback on their work? Was it a good experience for you?

Posted in Writing | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Making It Pretty; or Other Things I Do With My Time #1

Posted on September 20, 2011 by sheilamcclune

This week, having had a little bit of time on my hands (okay, stolen from my lunch break, but still…), I decided to pretty up my blog a bit. So I created some new header graphics. I think, if you refresh the page, you’ll get a different one each time.

The headers are all cropped from photographs I’ve taken. I’m not a professional photographer by any means, but I do enjoy taking pictures, and I also enjoy using pictures I’ve taken to create icons, banners, and backgrounds. I’ve uploaded my current crop to my Flickr account, where you can view and download if you wish. My only request is that if you use them, I’d appreciate a credit.

Enjoy!

Posted in Photography and Graphics | Tagged , | Leave a comment

A New Blog Home; or, I’m Ba-a-ack!

Posted on September 15, 2011 by sheilamcclune

Yay! I finally did it!  I created a new writing blog for myself here on WordPress.  As the title says, this blog is going to be about writing and other creative endeavours.  That means that while I will still (once again) put up a writing-related post on Thursdays, you’ll also get other occasional entries regarding the various ways I like to be creative.  So there may be entries on photography, or costuming, or cooking, or jewelry-making, or whatever I have a whim to post.

But I’ve missed writing about writing.  I don’t always have anything deep or profound to say, but I really enjoyed sharing tidbits of what I’d learned about the craft on The Melt-Ink Pot.  Unfortunately, all of my co-bloggers over there had serious attacks of Real Life, and no longer had the time and attention to devote to it, so it has gone away.

However, that doesn’t mean that all of the past wisdom I’ve shared with you has gone away as well!  Thanks to the wonders of WordPress, I was able to import all of my old blog entries from The Melt-Ink Pot.  That, I have to admit, was one of the key factors in my decision to go with WordPress as a platform.  Eventually, I’ll get things set up so that my personal web domain points here, too.  But for the time being, I’ve at least got a place to come and blog again.  It feels so good!

I’ve been saving up all kinds of good ideas for postings, too.  Such as:

  • My experiences at the writer’s workshop at this year’s World Science Fiction Convention
  • How I did on my Summer Writing Challenge
  • Rules for Safe Brainstorming
  • Reasons to avoid wordy writing
  • Writing goals
  • And lots of other fun stuff!

So that’s what we’ve got to look forward to in the next few weeks.  In the meantime, welcome to my new blog.  Hope you enjoy it as much as I intend to!

Posted in Writing | Tagged | 2 Comments

The Story Behind The Story; or, Why Are You Telling Me This Now?

Posted on July 15, 2011 by sheilamcclune

(This posting originally appeared on The Melt-Ink Pot)

My WIP has taken a strange turn.

My brain has suddenly insisted that I stop what I’m writing and set down a (fairly detailed) account of the main character’s eighteenth birthday. Chances are good that 99% of these scenes will never see the light of day. But I appear to have decided that I need to write it all down anyway.

I’m discovering, as I get deeper into editing some of my WIPs, that there are some scenes that need to be written not because they need to appear in the final story, but because I, as the author, need to assimilate that information about my character(s), and the best and most effective way to do that seems to be by writing out scenes that will never appear in the finished story.

The trick is to recognize the difference between the back story bits that need to appear in the finished work, and the ones that don’t. In my current story, I know that there are two bits of information from the “birthday” section that do need to be worked into the final story. One is that the MC’s grandmother, gave her and heirloom pendant for her eighteenth birthday, and the other is an interaction between her and her stepfather that occurred later that night and prompted her to move out of her parents’ house the next day. I’ll probably be able to work those bits in without too much trouble. But the other 3,500 words…well, I guess I’ll save them for the “director’s cut” version.

I’ve been having problems making forward progress on this story anyway (see previous blog entries), but the fact that this is happening now tells me that I have a problem with my story: I don’t know my character well enough. Writing this bit of backstory helps me understand her and her motivations better, as well as those of her older sister, who is another key player in the story. I knew that the character owned a pendant that had been given to her by her grandmother. But now I know that:

– The pendant should, by rights, have gone to the MC’s older sister. But it turns out that her older sister is really just her half-sister. Grandma knows this, but the MC does not. The trick will be for Grandma to justify her bequest without revealing the reason why the legacy is not passing to the older sister.
– The MC had more than sufficient reason for wanting to move out of her mother and stepfather’s house when she did.
– The MC’s sister was completely unaware of how the MC was being treated by their stepfather.
– When the MC left her parents’ house, she moved in with her paternal grandmother for the remainder of the school year.
– The MC went to Iowa State University on a full scholarship, and majored in English. (Now if she would only tell me what she did for a living before she was laid off!)

Could I have finished writing the story without knowing all of these details about the MC. Sure, just like I could make spaghetti sauce without putting in eight or ten different herbs/seasonings and a tablespoon of sugar. I could make spaghetti sauce with just garlic and oregano, and it wouldn’t taste bad. But with all of the subtle flavors added by the additional herbs and spices, it has a richer, deeper flavor–just like knowing all of this information about my MC will give my story a richer, deeper flavor.

How do other folks approach back story? Do you write it all into the story and edit it out later? Do you write it all down before you even start writing the main story? (I don’t, but maybe I should!) Got any tricks for recognizing back story that doesn’t need to appear in the final product?

Posted in Writing | Tagged | Leave a comment

Working Through The Rough Bits; or, What To Do When The Words Just Won’t Come Out

Posted on July 11, 2011 by sheilamcclune

(This posting originally appeared on The Melt-Ink Pot)

I’ve been plugging slowly, stolidly away on my current WIP, working title “Fairies Living At The Bottom Of The Garden.” But it’s going slowly. Very slowly.

I know why it’s going slowly:

1) Inner Editor won’t shut up. She’s read the first three chapters and thinks they’re pretty good…and wants to know why the rest can’t be up to that high standard.

2) Other People have read, or will read, parts of what I’ve written on it so far. (This is the piece I submitted to the WorldCon workshop, I also read parts of it to Beloved Husband and some friends.) That’s as bad as letting Inner Editor out of her cave, if not worse. Because now other people have expectations for how the story is going to turn out, and what if I don’t live up to them? The weight of those expectations can be crushing, sometimes.

3) Vacation Happened. We went out of town for a week, and while I thought I could get some writing done while Beloved Husband drove, turns out when he was driving, he wanted to listen to Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy (we only recently discovered that they made more than just the twelve episodes). It’s impossible for me to write while listening to something like that. And then, once we were there, we were involved in activities from 9:00 am to 1:00 am every day. So, almost no writing got done.

4) Motivational Challenges: I’m working on this story as part of my summer writing challenge, which is a Good And Fine Thing, but somehow I’m having problems motivating to stay interested in it. Probably because last year, my friend Branni was also taking part in the challenge, and she helped motivate me. Since she’s no longer with us, I’m finding it difficult to stay focused.

So, now that I know what the problem is, how can I fix it?

Inner Editor is notoriously hard to jam back into her box once she’s been let loose. I just have to convince myself it’s okay to do things like use the word “unfamiliar” twice or even three times in one paragraph, because I can go back later and fix it. But that’s not always easy to do. So perhaps I need to start posting daily word count updates on my LJ, so my friends can help guilt me into keeping the words flowing.

Dealing with the fact that others have read parts of the story is harder to deal with. What if they come up with an obvious and glaring problem that requires me to go back and do an extensive re-write? Wouldn’t it be better to wait until I have the critiques back before I finish? Worse yet, what if people read it and think it’s not even worth finishing? No. I just have to convince myself to trust my instincts, that this is a good story, and that it’ll be worth finishing, for my own satisfaction if nothing else. But that’s easier said than done.

As far as coming up with the time to write, that’ll be more difficult. It being summer, the yard demands a certain amount of my time. Also, we have various projects we’d like to complete before heading off to WorldCon. But perhaps I can go back to getting a few hundred words done in the morning before work, and a few more at lunchtime. That would make a difference.

When it comes to motivation, I’m hoping that posting my daily word counts will help with that as well. After all, it’s mighty embarrassing to get out there for several days in a row and have to admit that I’ve written nothing. Hopefully, that will provide enough incentive to keep me writing.

What do other people do when they hit a writing road block?

Posted in Writing | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Workshops; or, How To Let The Air Out Of Your Ego In One Easy Step

Posted on July 8, 2011 by sheilamcclune

(This posting originally appeared on The Melt-Ink Pot)

I’ve gone and done it again.

I’ve submitted three chapters of my current work in progress to the Writer’s Workshop at the World Science Fiction Convention.

What does that mean? It means that a couple of other budding writers, as well as one or possibly two published professionals, will be reading the novel excerpt I’ve submitted and providing a critique on it. And, in turn, I’ll be providing a critique on the excerpts submitted by the other budding writers.

I did this two years ago, when the convention was held in Montreal. It was an eye-opening experience for me, mostly because I was sure I had written the next best-seller, and everyone was going to lavish praise on my story. Only I hadn’t, and they didn’t.

I’m able to look back at it more objectively now. To be fair, my style and voice did earn praise. But the folks doing my critique felt there was too much of a disconnect between the beginning of my story and the rest of it. They felt it was too gritty and almost photorealistic compared to the almost farcical chapters that followed.

I was, at the time, heartbroken. I couldn’t even think about writing for about a month afterward. But I can see that their criticisms were valid, despite the fact that I still haven’t figured out how to really fix the story. I’ve plotted out an alternate beginning that might work, but I’m lacking the motivation to write it. One of these days, I’ll probably get around to it and see how it goes.

So why am I doing this again, you ask? Well, for a couple of reasons.

First, while my initial experience was not all I had hoped for, as a result of it, I did end up in a great on-line writing workshop, with some of the best critique partners on the planet (including one person who was in that original critique group). Second, I do feel as though I’ve grown as a writer as a result, and now I’m absolutely positive I’ve written the next best-seller. (Okay, just kidding about the second part of that last sentence.) But I think I have a more realistic idea of what to expect this time around. And third, I firmly believe that in order to grow, one has to challenge oneself. Even if it’s scary (and this is). This is me, challenging myself. Hear me roar.

Renovation (this year’s World Science Fiction Convention) is in Reno, August 17-21. I’ll let y’all know how it goes.

What scary things have other people done to further their growth as writers?

Posted in Writing | Tagged | Leave a comment