A New Writing Website, I'm A Winner, and Other Stuff:

Photo Courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I've been struggling for the past two weeks with what I wanted to write here. I'm resistant to the thought of going back to a "This is what I did today" format, so I'm trying to find interesting things to share on my blog. My friend, Patti, told me to write about my passion. Right now, that's writing--but not just my own, and I'll talk about that in a minute. Right now, I just want to say that things have changed a lot for me. I don't have as much free time as I did a year ago, but in many ways, that's a very good thing. It's forcing me to grow as a writer, to learn how to better manage my time, to learn discipline, to make time for what matters (even when it seems frivolous) rather than just doing whatever strikes my fancy in the moment. While that may be well and good for some people, it's very undisciplined, and one cannot be successful letting the winds take them every which way.

In an effort to earn some extra money while having fun with something I enjoy, I've become a part of a new Web site for writers. It's called Your Story Starters, and we're trying to gear it toward writers suffering from what many refer to as "writer's block," as well as teachers looking for material for their students. We offer prompts--story starters--that will get people thinking and, of course, writing. We've seen many sites on the Internet, many books, offering prompts. Most of them are very basic, or they're just plain weird or funny or--definitely not what we're offering. We try to give some tips and questions to get the writer or student thinking, to get them excited about the piece. We're not getting these prompts from other sources. We're putting a lot of time and effort into them because we want to offer the best product out there. We want to go above and beyond what everyone else is doing. We want to put out a product we can take pride in, something that people will recommend to others.

As a result of this, I'm learning a bit about social networking. I've had a Twitter account for a long time, as well as a Facebook account and a Google+ account, but I haven't used them as much as I could have. Mainly, they just seemed very overwhelming for someone who didn't really have anything to say most of the time. Now that I have something to talk about, I find I'm actually looking for things to Tweet or update about. And I'm finding I really love our hashtags (#yss and #yourstorystarters), even if we've only just begun using them. We're not making any money with this yet, but it's only a matter of time, right? The most important thing right now is that we're having fun, but we're also treating this as a real business, because that's what it is. It's work, and hard work at that, even if it is fun work. I'm glad to be a part of this, and I plan to do my part in making it the success I believe it can be.

In other news, Nanowrimo is coming up. I have no idea what I'll write. I haven't worked out any storylines. But I think I'd like to write some kind of fantasy. I have a D&D-style story I was working on, but I want to change it to fit my own fantasy world. The character names will all remain the same, but I'll have to tweak certain details. Should be interesting. I think for this year's Nanowrimo, I'll concentrate on the character's backstories. I should have plenty of information to come up with a novella length document.

I also have another story in the works. I'm working on the outline. It's slowgoing, and it's not for publication. It's for the roleplay. It's an interesting concept, and there's a lot to consider in this story. I want it to be complex, but interesting. Most of all, I need the characters to be real. Shouldn't be a problem. The hardest part is plotting, which is always the case, and I've got lots to go on in that regard. I'm still really loving my character, Dakota, too!

And now for the personal stuff. Eric and Chelsey have moved back up to Joplin. I won't go into detail, but Eric's already got a job, and he's also working on their new house with Chelsey's dad. It's a ton of work. Chelsey's been really busy, too. And Josiah's started pre-school. From what I've heard, he really loves it.

Jeff's still working at the greenhouse, and I still can't help wondering when they'll "go out of business" again or something, but I'm trying to stay positive and learn contentment where I am. Most of the time, it's relatively easy, but there are times when it's not. Just need to keep from letting those times bog me down. Easier said than done. 'Nuf said?

My mom's here. She's been here for more than two months. It's been a good visit. I feel kind of guilty spending so much time back in the studio working on this or that, but we get time to socialize in the evenings, too. And I imagine she loves the peace and quiet as much as I do.

We're hoping to go up to Joplin before my mom goes back. When the kids moved back up there, we went with them. Jeff drove the truck, and I kept him company. This was when Isaac came through, but it wasn't really that bad. It was kind of nice, actually. And as always, it was great to see Jeff's dad and step-mom. We want to go up there again within the next six weeks. We need to sit down and discuss when would be a good time. We'll also need to head to the airport at some point, when my mom has to fly back home.

Oh! One other thing on the subject of writing--sort of. I actually won a book! I follow The Plot Whisperer, Martha Alderson, on Twitter and Facebook. I also subscribe to her email, since I tend to miss a lot of tweets and status updates. In one of the most recent e-mails, I saw that she was doing a mini tour on the Internet, and I could possibly win her new book, The Plot Whisperer Workbook: Step-By-Step Exercises To Help You Create Compelling Stories. All I had to do was comment on an entry to be eligible. I didn't expect to win anything, but I wanted to comment and let my support for The Plot Whisperer be known. I figured I'd buy the workbook after a little while, so winning wasn't really all that important to me. But I won! I actually won! :D So far, I really love it. It asks a lot of really great questions about the plot, the characters, etc. I plan to use this for my Nanowrimo book of backstories, too. It should help make my characters and their world ever more complex and realistic, as well as the main story, when I get around to creating it.

~L

Note: Photo Courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Where has the time flown? Last time I posted here was, what--November? (That's not counting that article I re-posted in January, of course.) I need to change that!

I haven't been up to much--well, I have, but it's mostly nothing to write home about. Replaced a major appliance or two (very recently, in fact), did some writing and knitting, but not nearly as much as I would have liked, ate, slept, watched some TV--you know, the mundane stuff.

My son and his wife and kid moved back up north. They're only about 2 1/2 hours from here, but I miss them a lot! The little one (he's 3) just started pre-school yesterday. He loved it, from what I can tell, and didn't cry at all when his daddy dropped him off. So cute! :)

I've been roleplaying a lot through Dreamwidth. I'm still not completely used to doing it this way. It's mainly an issue of better organizing my time--especially since I'm now involved with YourStoryStarters.com--which is a lot of fun, I might add!

I also wrote a couple of articles over on my Wordpress blog a little while ago.

We made it through the drought alright, and Hurricane Isaac (he was more of a tropical depression when he got here, I think). I hope for some snow this winter, but knowing this area, we'll likely get squat. Small price to pay for not having any major tornado outbreaks in our immediate vicinity this past spring, right?

Anyway, I plan to start posting over here again--probably once a week (Tuesdays?) to start. Hopefully, my entries will be more exciting than this one has been. ;)

Hope you've all been doing well!

Lois

Writing Article -- Creating: Your Creative Paradigm

Getting your first draft written is a major strategic goal in writing your novel. But how do you get there? You need what I call a "creative paradigm" -- a method for doing your creative work. Creation tends to be messy and chaotic and hard. Your first draft is all about creation. Once you've got your first draft written, you'll be able to focus on editing, which is a whole other game. But you'll never have anything to edit until you've first created it, so in this article, let's worry only about the creative part.

When I was writing my book, WRITING FICTION FOR DUMMIES, my editor believed that there is one best creative paradigm to get that first draft done. She thought it was "obvious" that you should write an outline first, then write your novel sticking tightly to the outline. If that were the only possible creative paradigm, a lot of great books would never have been written. Plenty of authors simply can't write a novel from an outline. Their brains aren't wired that way.

In my book, I identified four common creative paradigms for getting to that first draft. Here they are:

* "Seat of the pants." When you write by the seat of your pants, you don't know how the story is going to end. You typically don't even know what's going to happen on the next page. You just sit down and start typing.

Stephen King writes by the seat of his pants, and he's done all right with it. So has Jerry Jenkins, author of the LEFT BEHIND series of apocalyptic novels. This is a very common road to the first draft. If you're a seat-of-the-pants writer (often called an SOTP), then don't try to change yourself. There's nothing wrong with you. There's nothing wrong with your method. However, when your first draft is done, there'll be a lot wrong with your manuscript. It'll be a big brick of paper with a wandering story that had no planning, and so it's going to need major revisions. That's the biggest problem with writing by the seat of your pants.

Most SOTP writers love the revision process, so they aren't intimidated by the fact that they're going to have to do a lot of it. Once the first draft is done, for them the real fun begins.

Sometimes the SOTP creative paradigm is called "organic" writing. In my view, this label really doesn't make any sense. Seat-of-the-pants writing is no more natural than any other creative paradigm and it doesn't produce inherently better final products.

* "Edit as you go." This creative paradigm is similar to writing by the seat of your pants except that you don't go very far before you stop and edit what you just wrote. Maybe every page. Maybe every scene. But you edit it. And edit it again. And again. Until it's perfect. Only then do you move on.

This is a fairly slow way to write a first draft, because you may revise a single page 20 times before you move on. It may seem like your progess is frozen-slug slow. But when the draft is done, the book is done. It's as perfect as you're going to make it. That's one of the nice things about the edit-as-you-go creative paradigm. You don't have a long extended phase of revisions to do after you finish the first draft. You just turn it in and move on to the next project.

Dean Koontz is a well-known edit-as-you-go writer, and his results speak for themselves. This method is fairly rare, but if it's your style, then it's your style and you probably can't imagine doing it any other way.

* "Outlining." Many writers simply can't face the idea of writing a first draft unless they know where they're going. All the way, in detail. So they first write an "outline." This is NOT the multi-level outline that you learned in fifth grade, using bullet points labeled with Roman numerals, letters and numbers. Instead, a novel "outline" is a synopsis, a narrative summary of the story, told in present tense and focusing on the plot, but possibly including some discussions of character development. Your outline may be a short synopsis of two pages, the typical length that you'd submit to an editor when trying to sell your book. It may be a twenty page synopsis with every scene sketched in. It may be a 150 page tome that functions as a very short first draft.

Robert Ludlum was famous for writing enormously long synopses for his spy novels. Many other writers over the years have found that they can't write a novel without an outline. If you're an outliner, then outline and be proud of it. Don't let anyone tell you that you're somehow more rigid and less natural than an SOTP. Write your novel the way you want to write it. If outlining works for you, then use it.

* "The Snowflake method." If I'm famous for anything, it's for inventing this creative paradigm, which I named after the famous "snowflake fractal" from pure mathematics. The main idea of the Snowflake is that you start small with one single story concept and then flesh it out in a succession of steps, each time adding more detail. You alternately work on the plot and the characters until you've got a strategic plan to guide you in writing your first draft.

In early 2003, I posted an article on my web site spelling out the Snowflake method. I had used the method to write my first published novel, and it just felt natural to me. (I used a very early version of the Snowflake to write my Ph.D. thesis in physics when I was at Berkeley back in 1986.) I've been pleased that the Snowflake has taken off massively all around the world. The Snowflake article on my web site has been viewed over 2 million times. Clearly, it struck a nerve. But I'm the first to tell you that it's not the only way to write a novel. If it works for you, then use it. Otherwise, find another road to nirvana.

How do you decide what creative paradigm you should use to write your novel?

I suspect that in reading the descriptions of the four paradigms above, one of them seemed natural to you and the others seemed unnatural. In that case, try the one that sounds natural. It's a good bet that your brain is wired to use that method. You may find that none of them seem natural. In that case, try each one for a month or so. See what works. When your book is published, nobody is going to know or care which creative paradigm you used to write your first draft. They'll care about whether your story works. Your story has the best chance of working if you write it using a creative paradigm that suits you. If you want to know more about each of the four paradigms, then feel free to consult chapter 4 of my book, WRITING FICTION FOR DUMMIES, which has much more detail than I've had room for here.

_______________________________

A Special Deal From Larry

My friend, Larry Brooks, just e-mailed me a few days ago to let me know that his latest e-book is now available, WARM HUGS FOR WRITERS. It includes over 30 chapters, each containing a short essay on a nugget of wisdom about writing that Larry learned the hard way.

Larry's got a special deal going right now for his book. Just do these two things:

• Buy WARM HUGS FOR WRITERS on Larry's web site or from Amazon.
• Send Larry an email containing the electronic receipt, with the words "Randy Sent Me" in the subject line.

If you do those two things, Larry will send you a bonus e-book -- your choice of one of several of his other e-books on the craft of fiction or one of his e-book novels.

To find out all about WARM HUGS FOR WRITERS and see the list of bonus e-books Larry's offering and get his email address, check out this page: http://storyfix.com/warm-hugs-for-writers

Larry always has good things to say about the craft of writing. He's one of my most respected teachers of fiction writing. And by the way, he's also a heck of a good novelist.

No, Larry didn't pay me to say any of that. I just like his stuff. A lot. You might too.

______________________________


This article is reprinted by permission of the author.

Award-winning novelist Randy Ingermanson, "Snowflake Guy," publishes the Advanced Fiction Writing E-zine, with more than 29,000 readers, every month. If you want to learn the craft and marketing of fiction, AND make your writing more valuable to editors, AND have FUN doing it, visit http://www.AdvancedFictionWriting.com

Download your free Special Report on Tiger Marketing and get a free 5-Day Course in How To Publish a Novel.

Nanowrimo, Days 15-21:

It's been several days since I've posted my progress, so thought I should do that today. I've written every day this month (so far) except for the 11th, 12th, 18th, and 19th. That's 16 days' worth of writing, and only one of those was under the suggested daily amount of 1,667 words. I'm not stressing over the word count. I enjoy writing, and I write as much as I can each day. That said, looking back on what I've written, it's nice to see my stats:

Tuesday, Nov. 15 -- Daily Word Count: 4,010 | Novel's Word Count: 35,150

Wednesday, Nov. 16 -- Daily Word Count: 3,935 | Novel's Word Count: 39,085

Thursday, Nov. 17 -- Daily Word Count: 1,806 | Novel's Word Count: 47,475

Sunday, Nov. 20 -- Daily Word Count: 2,898 | Novel's Word Count: 50,373

Monday, Nov. 21 -- Daily Word Count: 1,606 | Novel's Word Count: 52,044

I hope to write a little bit more. I'm about to add a new scene for Dakota. So far, the additions for his part in the storyline are going well. And now Lucky's about to meet his real dad, which really pleases me! :)

Anyway, I'm still just as excited about this story as I was when I first started planning it. I'm also looking forward to working on future stories for the series. Maybe I'll even turn them into movie scripts. Wouldn't that be something? :D

Lois

Nanowrimo, Days 13 & 14:

I didn't write anything on Friday and Saturday, but yesterday and today, I managed to add a good amount to Raven's Dawn, my Nano novel:

Sunday -- Daily Word Count: 4,342 | Novel's Word Count: 27,616
Monday -- Daily word Count: 3,524 | Novel's Word Count: 31,140

I've begun adding the scenes for Dakota...the scenes that will carry into future stories. And I've shown a bit more of Lucky's relationship with his "father," Lucas Raven. At times, it's been very slow going, and it'll need a lot of editing. I have an aversion to editing, but I'll need to do it.

But right now, I'm concentrating on the rough draft. After that, I'll put it away for a while and work on my screenplay. I need to read it, then make some notes on changes I want to make. After that, I'll write a treatment, then start on the second draft. I can't wait! :D

But first, I have to finish the rough draft of this novel. I love this story, and I'm really enjoying the process. :)

Lois

Nanowrimo, Days Eight and Nine:

I didn't write at all yesterday, but last night, I went to the write-in at Moka Joe's and managed to squeeze out a fair amount of words. And I did some writing this morning, too. Hopefully, I can write a bit more in a little while.

My stats for the past two days:

Day Eight -- Daily Total: 2,193 | Novel's Total: 19,603
Day Nine -- Daily Total: 1,970 | Novel's Total: 21,573

I haven't yet written the bit about Dakota that I wanted to. That will start with the next scene, I think. I just have to figure out how it comes about, then I'm good to go. :)

Lois

Nanowrimo, Days Four through Seven:

I've been busy, but not just with Raven's Dawn. Still, I've exceeded the minimum goal every day except one, so far. Here are my stats for the past few days:

• Friday, Day Four -- Daily Word Count: 502 | Novel's Word Count: 10,205
• Saturday, Day Five -- Daily Word Count: 3,633 | Novel's Word Count: 13,838
• Sunday, Day Six -- Daily Word count: 1,784 | Novel's Word Count: 15,622
• Monday, Day Seven (so far) -- Daily Word Count: 1,788 | Novel's Word Count (so far): 17,410

Over the past few days, Lucky has found out that his mother's lung cancer is no longer in remission, and she has only a few months to live, at the most. He is devastated, and if it weren't for one older brother and his friend, Dakota, he'd be in much worse shape than he is.

And as if that wasn't enough, he and his best friend are about to have a run-in with the school bully.

But good things are coming. Can't have all the bad without giving him some good stuff too, right? :)

Out of 71+ scenes, I've only written 17. I've combined some of them into chapters, but I doubt I'll be doing much more of that, which means I've got a long way to go. Good! I like it that way! :D

And that's how it's going, so far.

Lois