Got It for a Song

I did lower body weights at the gym this morning.

Usually when I weight-lift, I don't listen to music. The treadmill absolutely requires my aerobic track to keep me distracted. For weight-lifting, though, I'm counting and not fighting the certain despair that I'll never catch my breath again.

Today though, Air Force Guy had the TV up really loud with awful news about Libya. Since I have a strict policy about not depressing myself with news about events I can't affect, I jumped up from the adductor machine and grabbed the headphones.

Since I was mid-count, rather than searching out my weights playlist (why do I have one if I never use it? Hmm) I just clicked play. This one song that my long-time friend, Kev, sent me came on.

Because I could, I played that one song over and over. I love to do this. I can listen to the same song probably 50 times in a row. Something, I've discovered, the people around me don't enjoy so much.

Go figure.

Its an emotional song that strikes me on many levels. As some songs do, this one makes me want to write a story about it. I've never actually written a story from a song, but I think I might this time. As I kept clicking the back button to hear it just one more time (there's a way to put it on repeat, right? one day I should learn to maximize my iPod use), the story played out in my head, snippets of conversation. I could see the opening line, the penultimate scene.

It could be a great book.

Yesterday, I worked on two projects. If you follow this blog, you'll know I've been musing over whether I can move two writing projects forward at the same time. I'm a monogamous gal by nature, mainly because I'm simply not inclined to cheat. The thing I'm in love with is fine by me. It occurs to me now that this is the same aspect of my character that likes to listen to the same song over and over and over. Apple pie for the rest of my life? Sure! Still, with writing, I'd like to get more going.

So, yesterday, I clocked off the Internet for my usual two hours. (Yes, I'm weak and cannot stop myself from clicking if it's there to be clicked.) I wrote my 1K on the new novel, The Middle Princess. For the remaining 45 minutes, I worked on Sapphire revisions, from the editorial notes that came in this weekend.

And it worked!

Normally I'm not allowed to deviate from a current project, but since that experiment worked, I might try writing up a little of this morning's story - just enough to keep it alive and kicking.

Four Reasons I Don't Do NaNoWriMo

The moon behind the clouds last night. I nearly photoshopped out all the little points of light. I suspect they're artifact - bits of reflected light - but I thought we could pretend they're stars. On a cloudy night. See? We can have it all.

I am a fiction-writer, after all.

The writer Harley May sometimes roasts author photos, for her own twisted amusement, mostly. She roasted mine today. If you care for a good laugh, check it out.

I seem to be cutting a wide swath this week. Linda Grimes' blog post today is a result of me Double-Dog Daring her. And Marcella Burnard's blog post yesterday talked about a conversation we had about setting aside writing time. Must be my karma lately.

Either that or I spend way too much time yakking to people online. No, no - that can't be it.

Apropos of that, a number of people have asked me if I'm doing NaNoWriMo (National Novel-Writing Month). I've blogged about this before, but I won't point you to those posts because I've been kind of cranky on the topic in the past. Because, no, I don't like NaNoWriMo.

A lot of people do. They love the feeling of community, the outside deadline to draft 50,000 words in one month. Several people got their first serious start at regularly scheduled writing through the project, so they have great associations.

I think I've mentioned plenty of times here why it doesn't work for me, but enough people have asked that I thought it's worth mentioning again. I'm not one of those organized bullet-point bloggers, but today I do have a list of my Four Reasons I Don't Do NaNoWriMo.

1. It's not about developing a regular writing schedule

NaNoWriMo is about a one-month blast of a hell of a lot of writing. With some exceptions, most writers, even those who get to write full time, don't write that much in one month. People who commit to NaNoWriMo are making a pledge to do whatever it takes to meet the goal. That can be useful, but it's important to me to fence off that regular writing time, write every day and make steady progress. If I stick to 1K/day, I can write 365,000 words in one year. I'm not meeting that goal yet, but it's what I'm shooting for.

2. Too much pressure

Because I don't yet get to write full-time, I've found that 1K/day is about all I can handle and still be worth my salary. I can do more than that for short periods of time - I can write 5-7K in one day, when under pressure - but it drains me. I don't know that I could keep that up even if I didn't work full-time. Writing 50K words in November means 1667 words/day for thirty days in a row. That kind of pressure makes me crazy and, believe me, you don't need me more crazy.

3. It doesn't match my own method

To write that many words in that short a time means fast-drafting. That's writing as fast as you can with no editing, no careful crafting. The idea is that writing fast removes barriers and frees you to simply write. There are many jokes that December and January are novel-finishing and editing months. That kind of drafting can be really great if you like to write that way, or don't know yet how you like to write. I'm not much into fast drafting. I write reasonably quickly when I'm drafting, but I do go back and edit and reshape as I go. I produce pretty clean copy when I'm done. This is the method I've developed over about 25 years. It works well for me. Sometimes if I'm blocked, I'll try the vomit/fast draft approach to get through the wall. Otherwise, I'm happy with how I work. I believe it's important to find what works for you and, like nailing down a regular writing schedule, stick with it.

4. I'm a holiday girl

Okay, I get in trouble for saying this, but I'm endlessly amused that a guy started NaNoWriMo and picked November partly because of the Thanksgiving holiday. I'm sorry guys, but I think Thanksgiving ends up being four empty days for a lot of you and a whole bunch of work for a lot of gals. I know it doesn't apply to everyone, but how many households have you been in when the men are watching football and napping on Thanksgiving and the women are cooking? I love Thanksgiving. I love cooking for it. But I spend a LOT of time preparing for it. And when I'm not doing the labor of love, I'm spending time with family. The day after Thanksgiving I get to spend shopping and having lunch with my mom and my stepsister, Hope. It's a very fun day for me that I look forward to, but it's not a day for catching up on word count. All of that is fine, because I have my regular schedule and I take holiday from it, just as I do from my day job.

So, that's my NaNoWriMo Manifesto. (heh) But all of you digging in to do it, best of luck and full steam ahead. I'll provide the pumpkin pie.

A Thousand Words

The desert four o'clocks are in full bloom, lighting up the landscape with their intense purple.

Turns out that the New Mexico Tourism Department is running a photo contest. I think I'll enter, just for kicks. (No, not with this photo.) I can enter five, so if any of you have opinions on the pics you like best, let me know! I put all my best photos on the blog here, so I'll likely pick from those.

I don't expect you to troll through the entire blog archive, unless you're really excited to to it. The New Mexico photos start almost exactly one year ago, which is a serendipitous coincidence, with I'm Just Wild About Harry in June 2009.

After that week, you'd have to skip into July, for the house-hunting trip beginning with Our Eight Lovely Finalists (which are only pictures of houses). Then it's to August and Dances with Quail.

Yeah, I got sucked into reading those old posts. Such with the navel-gazing.

You'd be well-advised just to look through the photos. Or not. BUT, if someone suggests a photo and it wins anything, I'll give you a prize. A gift-certificate to Ten Thousand Waves or to the indie bookstore of your choice.

See? It's not always about writing.

Although, I can't help but notice that the saying is that a picture is worth a thousand words, and I write at least a thousand words a day. That means one photograph is the same as writing my 1K?

Yeah, not so much.

We need to reevaluate that saying.

A Single Step.

These yellow columbine are growing with crazed bushiness right now. I'm thinking I need to plant some rose bushes behind them, in the corner just there.

Pink ones.

Maybe a climber with a trellis. I still haven't put up any of the trellises I brought from the old house. Now I must be more ready to deal because I'm thinking about them and about climbing roses.

You know I'm big on the one-step-at-a-time thing. I can't deal with everything at once, but I can get things set up one by one.

The journey of 10,000 miles and all that.

This weekend I went to the LERA meeting (Land of Enchantment Romance Authors) and Gabi Stevens confessed immediately "I always read your blog, but I never comment. I feel really bad about it."

Which made me laugh. (Hi Gabi!)

And, of course, I told her there's absolutely no onus to comment. It's always fun to get comments, but I must admit, one of my blog-reading peeves are posts that are clearly set up only to elicit comments. You know the ones, little more than a remark and a question. To me, that's less like writing and more like soliciting.

Gabi, whose first book, The Wish List, came out from Tor in May, with two more to follow (I know - sweet deal), said well, yes, but she's trying to get better at the social media thing and she knows commenting is part of that and that's her next step.

Fair enough.

(I offered to help her figure it out, so let's see if she comments with a link to her site. If not, we need to nag her.)

I returned from the meeting feeling fired up to finish Sterling, which is all one can really ask for from a writers meeting. Matt McDuffie, who teaches screenwriting at University of New Mexico, and apparently has little internet presence, gave an energizing presentation on story structure. Nothing I didn't know before, but still stimulating. Listening to him talk, I could trace my story with it and feel where the next steps are going. I know I'm coming up on the crisis, the Act II climax, though it's taking a bit longer to get there than I thought. The way it's looking now, what I thought would be a 90K book looks like it'll come out around 113K, which is fine. I'm on track for that.

Which is good, because KAK came back from her meeting (lots of RWA groups meet on the second Saturday of the month - kind of an odd synchronicity), where Bob Mayer, who does the whole warrior-writer thing and has and exhaustive internet presence, got her fired up about accountability and goals.

And it turns out he's a fan of spreadsheets, too. So there.

So between KAK wanting to synchronize our goals and my screenwriting induced re-evaluation of my story arc, I discovered I had to up my daily wordcount goal if I'm going to make it by mid-July.

So no more 1K/day. I'm upping to 1850/day. I made it yesterday, pretty easily. We'll see if I can sustain it during the work week, too. The story is moving faster now, so that helps. Less time staring at the screen wondering what happens next. If I'm writing well, I can write about 1K/hour, so this should be doable.

One day at a time.

My Number One Pal

I'm working on being kinder to myself.

I know this sounds like a no-brainer, but it's not for me. I get in these modes where I find I'm flogging myself for more work, faster, better. This is exacerbated by my community of writers who focus heavily on word count, some doing 4,000 words per day, another doing 20 pages per day.

I've found that I can reliably produce 1,000 words per day. I can do more than that sometimes, but not for more than, say, a week or do. But 1K works for me, what with the full-time career and other commitments.

Also, for the past year or so, I've been writing this blog. I started out trying to post every day. I didn't make that goal. I posted 247 times in 2009. That's 67.7% for those keeping score at home. Almost spot-on 2/3. And you know how the song goes, two out of three ain't bad, right?

Fairly early on, I began taking Sundays off from the blog. Day of rest and all that. I'd like to tell you I spend the time studying philosophy or reflecting on my spiritual journey, but really it's more about obtaining fancy coffee drinks and lolling. When I figure out how to make a religion out of this, you all can sign up.

Most days, I post to the blog first. I exercise, then try to keep the blog post to 1/2 hr. I started out trying to keep it to 300-350 words, but I find normally I write about 500-600. That seems to be where I end up. Then I switch to my book or WIP.

Work in Progress, doncha know.

I never called it that before I hooked up with the romanceys. The lit types always refer to their book or their collection, whether it's done or not. It's an interesting distinction. For the lit types, it's always a book, pubbed or not. For the romanceys, it's a WIP until it's pubbed. Or maybe contracted.

Anyway, until just recently, I only counted my 1K for working on my book. And then I realized that, not unlike calling a book a WIP, I was devaluing what I write here. As if this is not part of my writing life, not part of keeping the writing juices flowing and honing my skills. Which it absolutely is.

Otherwise, it's not worth doing.

So I revamped my Progress Count spreadsheet to include my blog word count at the beginning of this week. What? Of course, I have a spreadsheet, in which I track progress on everything I'm working on. Yes, it has formulas and calculates completion dates from today's date. I celebrate this slice of Virgo in me and let her do these things to keep her happy.

This is why I know my blog tends to be 500-600 words. Which, when I get to count it, means I'm already more than halfway to my daily goal by the time I finish posting.

Which makes me feel good.

Then, when I turn to my book -- right now it's a novella -- I'm already halfway there. And interestingly, I put in 1K words on that every day except for one, when I stopped at 891 because work called and I never it made it back. Right now I'm only 135 words shy of making 7,000 words for the week. I'll likely do more than that, since I'll work on the novella today.

People often refer to the carrot and the stick method of motivating themselves, usually meaning a combination of treat and punishment. This is actually a misinterpretation of the original saying, which referred to the practice of tying a carrot to the end of a stick and dangling it before a donkey's nose to keep him moving forward. In that scenario, the carrot is forever out of reach.

With this approach, I gave myself credit, and carrots, early on in the process. And, son of a gun, it worked!

And the writing? It's good, too.

Travel weary

I'm tempted to say I failed.

I certainly didn't succeed in following my intentions, so that amounts to the same thing, doesn't it?

I really wanted to be able to continue to post to the blog while I was on work travel. Clearly I didn't. You can see my pleased, self-satisfied (a number of people have used that phrase to describe me lately and I'm wondering how to take it) post from the plane on Monday. Then nothing nothing nothing for the next four days. I got home at about 1 o'clock in the morning Thursday night, slept in and worked all day catching up. No 1K words, no blog posts. So much for resolutions.

I really thought I might post pithy observations about being in Dover, Delaware. About their coastal farmlands and abandoned malls. But I didn't. Penelope Trunk says your day job can't suck away your creative energy, but I'm not sure I agree. When I'm on my work trips, they drain me dry. I get back to the hotel in the evening with nothing left. Often I can't even summon the energy just to read. Only inane television can hold my attention until I fall asleep. I don't understand why.

But, as I've broken into this new schedule gradually, so I'll try with this. I'm home this week, then off to Raleigh/Durham the week after. Cross your fingers and look for the daily blogs!

A Wing and a Blog

I’m posting from the airplane today.

Well, more precisely, I’m drafting this on the airplane. I believe, though, that the day is not far off that we will be able to post to our blogs and continue our internet connectedness from the air. Yes, I’ve become one of those business travelers you see, who pull out their laptops as soon as they give the go ahead to use electronic devices that don’t broadcast a signal. Have you noticed that some of the newer airplanes have a little light for electronic device use now? The light-up icons for seatbelts and our symbiotic technology now displayed where the cigarette emblem used to be.

I have no idea what the implications of that may be. Perhaps we’ve only traded one kind of encroaching cancer for another. Feeding our lives into just another bad habit.
But it makes a difference to me, as much as I travel for the day job, to keep up with my connectedness. I wrote my 1K first, cozied into my cocoon of Bose headphones playing the very same writing music as I play in my skylit studio at home. (There’s a bit of my ritual, replicated there.) It feels good to have that done. My numbers safely recorded for the day. Then I replied to a few emails, set aside because other things had been on fire. They can leisurely wend their way over the ‘net when I land.

Now for this. As much as I ranted about computers disrupting my ritual, here the technology allows me to bring pieces of my life with me. Everything I accomplish here in 5C is one less thing I’ll have to sandwich elsewhere into my life.

Not a bad deal at all.

Blessed Release

I got in my one-thousand words this morning.

I have to let it sit there on its own line, because it looks so good to me. It's one of those celebrations that belongs to me and me alone. Well, and to Isabel, who's been sitting here offering silent support. Though I suspect she's just waiting for me to stop typing and start petting.

This is significant to me because I haven't written my self-required one-thousand words a day since I started this blog. That was my greatest fear -- that writing this would suck away my energy from working on my novel, or the sorority book or some of the essays I've promised to anthologies.

I knew going in that it would be a challenge. That I was changing my rituals and patterns. I gave myself the first week just to get used to writing the blog. Then I started phasing in my other writing again. And it just wasn't working. I'd blog, then add my posts to Facebook and MySpace, but not open my email. Sometimes I couldn't resist and would open my email, which is the kiss of death, the end of all further creative writing in favor of email replies. But, as I actually gained some friends on Facebook, that became the death knell to further writing.

So, today, I finally reversed the order. I did my 1K first, then wrote this. It's my own personal 1K Day, and the best part is I can have it every day!

Yes, I know you don't really care. You don't feel my rush. If you're not a writer, you probably think I'm nuts. But I know the writers out there understand.

Ten years ago, when we put on a Writers Summit for our region, we made a t-shirt. (Gotta have the shirt!) On the back we put this quote from Mark Rutherford:

"There is in each of us an upswelling spring of life, energy, love, whatever you like to call it. If a course is not cut for it, it turns the ground around it into a swamp."

That's why it feels good to get my words in. I've cut a course today and the swamp is draining. New life springs up in its wake. It's a good day.