And so it begins. . . Again

This is the start of Halcyone Space, book 5. After letting the characters incubate in the back of my head for a few months, it was time to figure out the major goals and issues for each of them. This will help me form the main plots and subplots that form the core of the book.

I don't typically do a formal outline, though I will plan out several scenes ahead with one sentence 'blurbs' and once the story really starts cooking, I'll know where each character is and where they need to go. And I do know how the book will end. At some point, near the 75% mark, I typically go back and outline the entire project so I have a sense of its organization. I use this as a revision tool.

I have colleagues that write complete and detailed outlines before starting a single word on the story. That's not my process, but it's no less useful and valid. Don't let anyone get away with saying there's only one way to write a novel.

These beginning steps take some time. Once I find the flow, the story will move more quickly. Having done this a time or three already, I don't panic when I don't make my wordcounts for the day in these early stages.

There is a huge advantage to having gone through the process of idea to beginning through middle and finishing. It's one of the reasons I think it's important not to rewrite your first book over and over again, but to move on to something new. You can always go back to the earlier project and you'll have grown as a writer when you do. (Though sometimes even experience cannot help - I went back and did 2 major rewrites of Heal Thyself and it's still not ready for prime time. I haven't given up hope. Yet.)

I didn't know that when I started on my first novel in 2004. I thought if I kept at it, I could make it work. Four rewrites later and it's still trunked. I suspect no amount of poking at it will bring it to a publishable state. Trust me on this. It's 150,000 words of confused fantasy cliches and badly overwrought prose.

Books 1 through 12 represent my finished novels. 13 and 14 are works in progress. The ones in bold have been published.

1. 2004-6 Wings of Winter (trunked)
2. 2005-2006 MindBlind (trunked)
3. 2006-2007 House of Many Doors
4. 2007-2008 Heal Thyself
5. 2008-2009 The Between   (pub 2012)
6. 2009-2010 Future Tense  (pub 2014)
7. 2011-2012 untitled ghost story
8. 2012  Derelict   (pub 2014)
9. 2013-2014 Time and Tithe  (pub 2015)
10. 2014-2105 Ithaka Rising  (pub 2015)
11. 2015 - 2016 Dreadnought and Shuttle (pub 2016)
12. 2016 - 2017 Parallax (pub 2017)
13. 2017 Vito Nonce Project (in progress)
14. 2017 Halcyone Space book 4 (in progress)

That list comprises well over a million words of fiction. (And this doesn't count short stories.) Some of it unpublishable either for issues of quality, premise, or market. But each of the books I completed taught me invaluable lessons and made the next book better.
 
Halcyone Space, book 4, is my 14th novel.  (Not counting the 2 projects in the mid 2000's not listed here that I wrote about 30K each on and abandoned for various reasons.) Knowing what I know now about my process, (and barring any major catastrophe) I am confident that books 13 and 14 on this list will be finished, revised, polished, edited, and published.

At some point, I'll feel comfortable to share snippets of the work in progress.

Stay tuned!

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Squirrel!

Distracted? Who me? Photo of our dog, Dustin, by N. Halin,
used with permission

Once upon a time, I had the ability to focus and concentrate.

Really. I did.

Stop laughing! That's not nice!

Well, at least I seemed to be able to focus on my writing and get words down on the page in 20-30 minute writing sprints. These days, I'm about as flighty and distractable as a golden retriever puppy on speed. 

Partly, I blame the stress of last year, which left me unsettled and unmoored. Partly is likely the dubious joys of peri-menopause. Partly to blame is the siren call of always-on internet devices and the irresistible ping of notifications.

I know it's not possible to be creative and productive while multitasking. Hell, I know that neurologically, multitasking is, in itself, impossible. We just single-task serially, some of us more seamlessly than others, giving the illusion of multitasking. But the truth is, each interruption costs something in terms of performance.

I know this, and still, I let myself get seduced by checking email, Google Plus notifications, my Amazon sales page, all the while deluding myself that I'm actually writing.

So I decided that the first step was admitting I had a problem and needed help.

Then I found "Freedom". It's a program originally created for the Mac, now ported to Windows, etc, that lets you set internet free stretches of time. I used to think I had the self-discipline and scoffed at such controlling external measures.

I'm not scoffing anymore.

I shelled out the 10 or so bucks for the program and have been using it to return to 30 minutes of focused writing sprints, scattered through my day. It's frustrating to sit with a difficult scene and a blinking cursor, and my prior strategy would be to check email, or surf over to G+ rather than be with the discomfort. And I KNOW that clicking into another window just drained away all my creative energy. Yet, I did it anyway. Repeatedly. For much of the past year. Honestly, it's a wonder I got anything completed at all.

So now you know my dirty secret.

I am slowly rebuilding my 'concentration muscles.' And you know what? It feels good to work my brain in this way. I've missed it a lot.

And I think I'll let the dogs worry about chasing the squirrels.

Same old, same old

PB&J, photo by spcbrass cc license: CC BY-SA 2.0

I'm not a person who likes change very much. My mother used to tell a family story about my routines and habits centered around my lunches: She would make me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich every day during my elementary school years. One night at dinner, my father commented that maybe she should make me more varied food and for the next week, she made something different (that I generally enjoyed and would eat) for me to take.

After several days of this (to my mind maddening) variety, I broke down and cried at the dinner table. "Why can I have PB&J anymore? Don't you love me?"

Needless to say, we returned to the lunch routine.

With a history like that, you might think I wake up at the crack of dawn and sit down to write two hours a day between 7 and 9, like clockwork.

You'd be wrong.

I like predictability but not rigid structure. Do I write everyday? Yes and no. I am always thinking about some aspect of my job as a writer. Some days its a matter of studying a point of craft. Other days, it's cranking my 1K new word goals on a new story. Still others, it's editing or providing critique for a colleague. Part of my work as a writer is reading and creating blog posts, so all that counts, too.

But I don't organize my day according to a specific routine.

Part of that is because of my temperament, part is because I also have other hats I wear, including parent, which makes mock of any attempt at a perfect routine.

I think there is sometimes an unfair conflation of discipline with routine. As if one can't be disciplined without following a specific schedule. To my way of thinking, finding the way that works for you that gets you to 'the end' means you have discipline.

Does this mean I NEVER follow a routine or a schedule? Of course not. I just have a more loose interpretation of routine. I'm also willing to try new structures if something isn't working well.

And lest you think I am incapable of flexibility, I'll have you know that I left PB&J's for lunch behind with my childhood. In college I ate a sesame seed bagel with tuna salad and swiss cheese. Every day. For four years.

Today’s post was inspired by Forward Motion’s Merry-Go-Round topic,  ”Writing Routines”.  If you want to get to know nearly twenty other writers and read about their ideas, then check out the Merry-Go-Round Blog Tour.