Tag Archives: methodology

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What to Do When the Ideas Won’t Stop Coming

So, I already have four stories on my plate at the moment. I’ve got The Monster in My Garden Shed, The Not-So-Super Superhero, the second in the Nickel and Dime series–this needs a name, but I’ll figure that out later, it’s one of those books–and another one.

Why then, with all of these stories going, do I have to have a bunch more ideas come to me? I’ve already got more than I can work on at the moment, and I’ve got notebooks and folders and files full of things I’ve started and not completed. One of them I picked up late last night and read over, realizing that, aside from the one part of it, there is absolutely no reason why it shouldn’t be done. I’ve got the beginning written and typed, most of the middle is handwritten or in notes, and the tail end is written as well. This thing should be done. No excuses, really.

So now I find myself wanting to do that.

I also want to start a brand new one that has a very fascinating (to me, at least) concept. Involves aliens and memories and was probably partially inspired by stuff from The Monster in My Garden Shed. This idea is dying to be written.

I don’t have time to do all of these things, though. I barely have enough time to write on the three major pieces, so I need to clear my plate a little before adding in something new.

I sometimes allow for rotation when I have a new story, but as I’m already in a rotation with stories, I can’t add a new one until one of the others completes. The Monster in My Garden Shed doesn’t want to cooperate with me on that, since it keeps adding in something I have to deal with before the end of it can come, and it’s still not clear what that end is. The Not-So-Super Superhero is in its second act, where Clayton is trying to make use of his power and make a life for himself instead of fighting it, and now he’ll have to fight against other people instead. That may mean it’s closer to a conclusion, but I’m not actually sure how long it will take to resolve all of that, either. The second Nickel and Dime is coming along, but it’s not ready to conclude yet. The other story is done, but can I really add another one in already? I don’t get to the ones that I’ve got enough as it is.

And what of the one that should be complete and isn’t?

And all the ones that I should type?

Well, I have some options. I write the idea down, and I might come back to it later. I might give it a scene or two, thinking I’ll get back to it in a while. This usually doesn’t work. If I don’t “run” with the story when it’s fresh, it doesn’t usually happen. Any Other Reality is an exception to this. It was put off for months, not started, and written in less than a month. Still, it’s an exception, not a rule.

The other option, and I do this with stories I know I don’t want to put down on paper, is to picture it in my head over and over until it’s done. I can “watch” the movie of the story and I’ve seen it. If I’ve gotten it to its conclusion, there are very few stories that I’m willing to write after that point. I’ve seen all the interesting parts. It’s done.

This new idea is not one to give to a mind movie, though, so it just might have to find a way to be a part of the rotation.

Not enough time, and always too many stories. That’s the nature of a writer, though, right?

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Edits, Edits, So Many to Do

Editing has to be the longest process in a book.

Possibly, in the past, publishing was the longest, but the thing is, once the format and cover art are done, it can be published as an ebook within a relatively short time. Really, how long the site takes to make it “live” is not nearly as long as editing a story can take.

Now, before, arguably, editing was a part of this publishing process. It still is, I guess, but I tend to separate it in my mind from the “publish” part where the button gets clicked and websites make the book available to the world.

What I learned the last time I went through this process, though, was that the actual end part, the final step, was so much simpler than the ones along the road.

My main delay in getting Just a Whim out there was really myself. I had edits, but I was scared to take those last steps and put them in and format it.

I find myself with almost the opposite problem now. I’ve got four complete stories–novels–and another three nearing that point, but I don’t have edits. In the last week, I’ve gone over them myself, with new fresh edits for Nickel and Dime, In the Family, Variety Store, and Any Other Reality. I’ve begun edits on The Memory Collector and after that, I’ll move onto another one. I’ve got plenty of them to work on, and while I’ve been putting off All the Men in My Life since I’ve been expecting edits back on that one, so it will probably be the last.

I was joking with myself about editing all of them in January, but with only a few more days to go, that’s not that likely, not with four novels to do and two of them over 80,000 words long. Still, it would be good to get as close to that as possible.

Every little edit is a step closer to publishing, after all.

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If I Was an Artist with Something Besides Words

If I was an artist with something besides words, then I would already have beautiful cover art finished and ready. I’d have my little scene dividers ready made and inserted.

I’d illustrate my own children’s book. I already wrote it. It’s there, finished but for the art.

Alas, I know my strength is with words, and if I do have any real artistic talent, it lies with my ability to tell a story, an entertaining and amusing one that diverts a person for a short time. I like to share stories, let people see the world and the fascinating characters that I’ve met along the way.

Since I am not an artist with pictures, I trust that to the other half of Kabobbles. Third, I suppose, since the cat is the ringleader, after all. Anyway, at the end of the day, I managed to accomplish… finally getting the right size and format for the scene divider for In the Family, multiple editing programs (Paint.NET, Gimp, Inkspace, Open Office Draw, and a couple from her Mac) later, many saved files (either of the document with the divider in it or the divider itself), many tests converted with Calibre, and a bunch of frustration (it’s too big! now it’s too small! it’s not transparent! it’s fuzzy! it’s in pieces!)
my brain hurts and I don’t understand half of the programs I played with, but I finally have it where it works.

I think. My brain hurt too much to be sure, so I’ll look again tomorrow.

The cover art for The Not-So-Super Superhero is coming along, and I edited a good part of The Monster in My Garden Shed and finished The Memory Collector. I even got my hair cut.

I was hoping to finish Variety Store today, too, but perhaps I was a little too ambitious.

I’ve still got a bit of time left before the end of the day and month, though, so… Here goes nothing. I know what’s supposed to happen. It’s just a matter of getting it on paper…

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Have I Mentioned Lately How Much I Hate Summaries?

So, in an effort to work with the “plan,” I’ve been working on some of the pieces that I need to get another book out there.

 

Mostly… I’ve been trying to come up with a summary for Nickel and Dime.

 

So far, my attempts have been:

 

Effie Lincoln owns a secondhand store and has a weakness for vintage clothes. Business hasn’t been great, and her habit of taking the best of the clothes for herself doesn’t help.

Her real problem has nothing to do with the store or her addiction to getting more clothes.

It’s her name.

She’s always hated it, but she never expected it to get her killed, either.

 

Which was a bit disconnected and everything, so I tried again with this:

 

Effie Lincoln has always hated her name, but she never expected it to get her killed.

Now, though, a case of mistaken identity has forced her from her home and beloved secondhand store. On the run for her life, her only protection a man who’s more dead than alive, what Effie would really like to know is why.

Who was this other Euphemia Lincoln, and what did she do that’s going to get Effie killed?

 

So now, feel free to give an opinion on either summary, and if you’d like to see more of the story, keep reading.

 

Pain didn’t lead to answers. They should have known that by now, but someone clearly hadn’t gotten the message. It would have been simpler if they had. It would have been nicer if they had. It wasn’t drugs. It wasn’t pain. None of that was going to get them the answer that they wanted—nothing would. He was sure of that. He could hold out beyond this. They were fools to think he wouldn’t. He had training. He had a high pain tolerance.

Most of all, though, he didn’t know the answer.

“Give us the location, and we will let you go.”

“I told you; I don’t have it.” It didn’t matter what he said. They weren’t going to believe him. He could tell them the truth; he could make up any of a dozen lies, but they weren’t going to accept that. He would still get hurt. They’d still think they could make him tell them more than he had. They were going to try and force that last bit of information from his dying breath, and what good would it do anyone? He couldn’t change their mind—and he was not going to last long enough for any of it to matter.

He was just a delaying tactic—he’d known that from the moment he got the assignment. He’d never really be in charge of this thing, but they wanted people to think he was. He was, simply put, expendable. He could make it all go away if he held out long enough for them to think that what he finally gave them was the truth, and then they’d chase after wild geese, right off into the sunset. He liked that idea, liked it a lot.

“You could make this pain stop.”

“It tickles, actually.”

“You do not impress me with your false bravado, Agent. It has come time for the truth. Only that location will allow you to live. If you do not give it to me, I will kill you.”

He knew that. He was fully expecting to die when this was all said and done. It was a waste, but if he was going to believe in a greater cause, in the greater good, he would have to believe that what he was doing was worth his life. The sacrifice was not that great. He would be okay with it. He wasn’t that great of a resource in the first place—lousy agent, lousy human being. “Sorry, I’ll pass.”

The interrogator grabbed him by the hair and jerked his head back. “You cannot hold out forever. You will see the need to end your suffering, and when you have, you will give me the answer I seek.”

“Yeah, sure. And I’ll tell you I gave it to my girlfriend.”

“Your girlfriend?”

“Real piece of work. Kind of crazy. Touched in the head, I think. Makes for an interesting relationship,” he said, laughing. He didn’t have a girlfriend, but they were clearly desperate enough to hold onto anything he might say as a possibility. They’d go looking for a woman in his life, and they’d find only the old woman next door with all the cats.

“Give me her name.”

“Come on. I don’t have a girlfriend. I can’t believe you fell for that. Who has time to date in our business? Hmm? Or do you have a wife and kids back home?”

The blow that followed that remark almost knocked him out of the chair he was strapped to. They’d started with the drugs, but when that didn’t work, they’d gone for pain. It wasn’t working, either. He’d had worse, though they probably didn’t know that.

The man stepped on his fingers, and he heard them snap as he looked up. Nice. Well, he’d be dead soon enough, so fingers weren’t that important. “I still don’t know where it is. Can we just get this over with already?”

“Give us the name of the woman.”

“Weren’t you listening? There is no woman.”

They unstrapped him from the chair, took him to the middle of the room and chained his hands above his head. He stared at the bindings, aware that he was probably going to get very familiar with a horse whip soon. Lovely.

He lost count of the blows against his back, but they only barely outnumbered the amount of times that he was asked the same questions over and over again. He still couldn’t tell them where it was. He couldn’t give them a name. The woman didn’t exist. He really didn’t have a girlfriend. He should never have made that joke, clearly.

“You still refuse to cooperate?”

“You could get to the merciful part already and kill me. That would be fine. I keep telling you—I don’t know where it is. I don’t have it. And there is no woman.”

“Give me a name, and I will give you the mercy of a quick death.”

“Oh?” he considered for a moment. That had some appeal; he had to admit. He thought about it for a minute. “Okay. I can give you a name.”

“You will?”

He nodded. “Yeah. I will. And it’s a good one. Really.”

“Tell us.”

“Effie Lincoln,” he answered, giving them the name of a scandalous and long dead actress with a laugh. The blackness came almost before the next blow.

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Working Titles

I was preparing a little entry for the Kabobbles Sing Along section about the song that inspired my choice for the working title for The Lady in Black’s sequel. Working titles are what I call the story while I’m writing it. Not all of them come with the right title instantly. Some do. Others refuse to be pinned down right away.

 

Some titles were easy. In the Family was always In the Family from the moment it was begun on my phone. Any Other Reality was that from the beginning as well. I don’t know what else The Monster in My Garden Shed or The Memory Collector could be. The same goes for The Not-So-Super Superhero. He is that. His story could be told under no other name. As soon as I started typing it, I had the title for The Consultant and the Cat. The Lady in Black had a working title years ago that was abandoned before typing began.

 

On the other hand, other titles have not come so readily. Some don’t even feel right now. That would be the case with The Geek and the Fed and Unexpected Gifts. Each of them took on a new name from their working title, “Geek” and “Obligation” respectively, but they haven’t entirely settled on them. Criss-Crossed Paths started out using its first chapter title, and then it became “Tempest and Lonely Hearts” after the nicknames of two of the characters. The new title is still being debated.

 

Other titles come along as the story progress.

 

Just a Whim, believe it or not, started out as “The Crankening,” owing to the other half of Kabobbles Publishing’s daughter, who was extremely cranky when I began the story. Matched Set started out as “Favor,” but once the figurine set started to feature so heavily in it, the matched set made perfect sense.

 

All the Men in My Life began as “Old Love Best Unseen” which completely doesn’t fit it. The new title owes from a line that Franklin says to Mira, “All the men in your life piss me off.” She responds with, “Franklin, you’re one of the men in my life.”

 

The series that starts with Nickel and Dime each had their own working title. Nickel and Dime was “Change Your Identity.” Until the end of it, Variety Store was just “Nickel and Dime the Second.” The third one, however, was Five and Ten from the beginning. The secondhand store owned by Effie Lincoln could be called a “nickel and dime” or “five and ten” or even “variety store,” so all the stories have that theme to their titles.

 

Last night, I named a story “Lollipop.” Funny how names go, right?

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The Necessity of Computers

A writer’s most important tool is the computer.

Oh, don’t get me wrong. You don’t have to have a computer to write. You can picture scenes in your mind, perfecting the dialogue and the characters’ movements. You can use any phone that has note taking capabilities to make notes. You can record scenes like you’re dictating to yourself. You can also use the old tried and true method of a pen or pencil and paper. You don’t even need large sheets of paper or notebooks. A few small scraps, and you can still continue your writing no matter where you are.

For a long time, I didn’t have a computer, and certainly not one of my own. Did that mean I wasn’t writing?

Absolutely not. I’ve got stacks of notebooks, folders, and loose sheets of paper that show just how much I was writing when I didn’t have a computer. I have shelves full of these stacks. Drawers of them.

So why is the computer so important?

Because it allows the stories to be shared.

Oh, don’t get me wrong. People can, assuming they can get past my unique handwriting, read the stuff I write by hand. They just have to be here, in person, to do so.

So the paper part limits things considerably, especially when the bulk of people who give me comments on my stories are not here in person. They’re across the country or across the world. Without a convenient way to type them up and share them, it’s harder to make progress.

Transferring the handwritten notes to typed documents is not something I’ve been all that good at in the past, as the years worth of untyped stories would attest.

It used to be that I was extremely against the idea of typing. I did not write anything on the computer. I didn’t like the way things looked on a computer screen. It didn’t seem the same, not like “writing” when it wasn’t done by hand. In fact, I used to say that it was only “writing” if I did it by hand. If I was on the computer, that was “typing.”

I must, I think, credit my change in attitude to the years I spent writing fanfiction. Say what you will about it, the experience I gained there helped me in a lot of ways (giving me a place to share my stories and receive criticism, that sort of thing) but also in the fact that I actually had to overcome my stubbornness when it came to typing.

Now, typing is the same as writing, and the computer is essential. It is as much of a necessity as coffee.

Naturally, this makes my laptop’s recent issues with “oh, look, I have a loose connection so I shall pretend to die” very distressing. I’d say I have fallen behind schedule, particularly with the editing, as the computer becomes inaccessible for days at a time. I still write, but it’s not as easy to do when borrowing a computer. Then I get mine working again, and it suddenly quits again. This has been rather a technological nightmare, and the ups and downs of it are extremely stressful. Picture me, ready to curl up in a ball and cry because my computer will not turn on.

It was only because I’d been in the middle of a scene. I swear.

It is working now, by the way. We shall see how long this lasts.

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Not a Journalist

At times in my life, I have given consideration to putting my love of writing to work as a journalist.

In fact, one of the first things I ever did as a writer that wasn’t for school was mock up a fake newsletter on the computers in my elementary school’s old IBM lab.

That was fun, at the time, but then people thought it was real, and reality isn’t something I like dealing with all that much. I’m not found of nonfiction. I like stories, not articles.

Not that long ago, I did give journalism another try. I was able to get a position with a locally oriented online news site, got hired to write about video games.

I thought it was right up my alley.

The thing is, though, I was not current on most video games. I also have a distinct preference for role-playing games, not so much the platform or first/third person shooters that are far more popular. Add in being broke at the time and unable to afford new games, there wasn’t a lot for me to write about. I just didn’t have access.

Oh, and it was locally focused. So not only did I need to report on a game, I needed to make it connect to my region.

That was kind of… difficult.

I also had issues with their site, couldn’t take pictures of my games easily on my Xbox 360 because I didn’t have a modded one, and I had issues with converting the videos I made from my computer games to upload them. I never got any notification for comments on my articles or anything like that, and their interface made connecting the articles frustrating and near impossible.

Strangely enough, I still get emails like they expect me to post articles, even though I haven’t been on there in over a year. I don’t understand that, and I admit, when Star Wars the Old Republic came out, I was tempted to write an article.

Of course, at the time, I was also working on two novels and posting a bit of The Not-So-Super Superhero every day. Fiction writing is my writing of choice, and that is never going to change.

I do blog these days, making me a sort of journalist, but at heart, I’m a novel writer, and I always will be.