A thousand words a day

An easy, manageable goal.

That's a thousand words of new fiction text; not including any revisions, queries, or any of the other business that comes along with writing books and short stories. And of course, not including any blog or forum posts!

It doesn't sound like much, especially for a NaNoWriMo veteran like myself. But it adds up fast if you stay committed.

1,000 words a day is 365,000 words a year - or four full length novels with 45K in change for short stories.

I have a whiteboard above my desk, and every morning, I write the total goal word count. Today's goal was to hit 18,000 words on Book #2. So I sat on the couch, with the cat curled up next to me, and after a while I checked and I was at 18133. Spiffy keen!

Getting to know the characters

I'm dealing with a few new characters I had to invent for the sake of progressing the plot. They're a little thin right now, but I'll flesh them out later.

Usually, I start with a real person I know. A friend, an old professor, someone I met once at a convention and never spoke to again . . . all fair game. That's just for physical looks though. If every character were based on how I envision people looking, they'd be too pretty. Real people aren't perfect.

Then I'll tailor them to fit the role the character is fulfilling. For example, the character of Huliol in Book #2 is meant to look a bit like my high school's valedictorian. She's quiet, thoughtful, nice - a marked contrast to the volatile and temperamental Vazeria. But she's also naive, a romantic, and an optimist.

What drives her? What is her goal in life? Where did she come from? All these things will tell themselves to me as I'm writing her parts in the story - eventually. They may take a while to unfold. She is a secondary character, after all.

I don't think I really get to know her until the first draft of this book is done. Then as I'm revising, I'll change her dialogue around until I have her voice firmly in place.

It's the way with all the characters in my stories. I have to get to know them as I write them. If I try to do the D&D "build a character" route, it will force them into stereotypes. And that's the last thing I want.

Fast Typer, Fast writer?

Something I've known for a while is that I am a faster than average typist. I think it was tested at 60 WPS last time I went through an employment agency, but I'm capable of short bursts closer to 70 or so (provided I don't make typos.)

I chalk it up to learning how to really type during my later teenage years in Compuserve's chat rooms. In the early heydays of the Internet, back when chat rooms were the only thing to do (before the advent of FB, Farmville, and every flavor of MMO imaginable), they were remarkably crowded, and sometimes they'd be completely full and you couldn't even enter your favorite room.

As a result, if you wanted to maintain a conversation, you had to 1. read very fast and 2. type very fast. If you were a laggard, your conversation would end up scrolled up too fast for anyone to bother trying to chat with you.

Now I'm able to touch-type with the "floating" style, and I even use most of the appropriate fingers for hitting keys (right-hand pinky being a stark exception; it curls up when I type. I don't know why.) I also read fast, especially juicy fiction from a favorite author. I can knock out a paperback novel in a few uninterrupted hours.

But typing quickly is not the same thing as writing quickly, or so I thought. During the chat 'n challenges with the Divas, in 20 minutes I'm able to crank out 500-700 words, while others are only putting out 100-200. I think this is a reflection primarily of my typing speed. But it's also a reflection of my writing speed. I have the scene planned out in my mind well before I start writing it, even if I'm not sure of the specifics. And if something is terrible, I can always change it later. Some writers simply prefer to get it "right" on the first go round. So they write slower, but they have to do less revising later on.

There's no "proper" way to write, so long as the final result is high quality. But it's a bit of an ego boost to have high short term numerical output, at least!

Best laid plans . . .

An annual treat for me for the last half a dozen years has been ACEN in Chicago. I've done a lot of things on the fanfiction circuit at that convention, from the fanfic panel to running a writing workshop with the late Kristine Batey. In the last few years I've switched to running the FFXI panel, since Square Enix pretends that the midwest does not exist when planning their fan festivals.

This year, the convention was considered a no-go because I quit my job to become a housewife/writer/stay-at-home-layabout, and my share of our tax refund went to 10 glorious days in the Bay Area. Well worth the trade-off to me.

Now, my husband, wonderful, talented, funny, creative, and above all, employed, moves in anime circles but strictly in the non-fiction writing sense of them. He gets invited to conventions as a guest in order to add a shiny Dr. to the guest list (great for colleges who need to have guest professors to add some legitimacy to their tiny parties.) This is why I was schmoozing in the green room at Dragon*Con last year, and that was when I made my vow that someday I was going to be the invited guest, not him.

Well, he's done it again. There's a possibility of him being invited to ACEN as a last minute VIP guest. If he goes, I go, since we'll probably drive. And here I planned on having May as a nice, predictable free month, in which to finish up my rough draft of book #2.

I'm still not sure whether I should be angry or happy.

My virus scan is an inverse alarm clock

It's three in the morning, and I've just finished the rough draft of a short story that's been kicking around my head these last few days. I'm only stopping because AVG has started running, telling me I've stayed up too late again.

Sometimes I'll do that. I'll write the story in my head, and then sit down, and spill it out from start to finish in one marathon session. It's rough; I'll probably change half of it during revision, but it's finished.

Long ago, the only thing that would produce such a profusion of writing would have been a paper due at 8AM the next day. Now I have no excuse, other than the muses have decided to visit me. (Perhaps appropriate, considering this particular story is set during Minoan and Mycenaean Greece.)

I love my friends

The wedding this weekend was beautiful, and we managed to avoid any confrontations with Certain People, who were gracious enough to ignore us (about all we wanted.) We had a lovely dinner, saw many old friends, and perhaps partook of too much excellent Wolf Mountain Vineyards wine. (Thank you, after dinner coffee bar.)

It was not a storybook wedding. It was raining, and later on, it was thunderstorming too. But the view from the vineyard was still spectacular, with misty mountains in the distance, and an impressive atmosphere during the reception.

The couple, Erin and Jon, switched up their vows to give the ceremony a great punch line: "Erin, you may now kiss your husband."

That line is so getting borrowed for a story someday.

Music

I need to have music in order to write.

Well, I don't so much need it, as I vastly prefer it. My musical tastes have changed much over the many years since I was forced to sit through my sister Carol's endless repetitions of Billy Idol albums, ranging from obsession over classical music to local indie stuff to where I am now: eclectic, ecumenical, and synthesized. I love music the way I love books - there are some artists I return to over and over again, but I am delighted by a good book or a good song even if it's outside of the bounds of my comfort zone.

The classical opening of DJ Tiësto's "Forever Today" forced me to stop writing and simply listen. Waves of a lush artificial orchestral drowned out my thoughts. I think I could cut it out of the greater song (which is firmly trance) and put it on an endless loop and never grow tired of it. There is a track from the video game Final Fantasy Tactics that is much the same; a room mate once left "Apoplexy" on loop all day, and not one of us complained because it is simply that fascinating.

That is where music and books differ. Music that is especially compelling can go on endlessly and we don't mind (for a time.) But when a story is finished, it is finished, often for months or years until a reader remembers just how amazing it was and wants to experience it all over again. No one finishes a book and jumps right back to the beginning for another re-read immediately afterward unless they're cramming for a test.

When I'm writing, I need to have a soundtrack. When I'm reading, I don't. I like to read in silence, just me and the book, the author's voice weaving a narrative thread through my mind. At that point, music becomes a distraction, not an aid.

Writing through the good and the bad

Husband said something upsetting to me this morning. We had one of our Not-Fights, in which I cry and in which he sits there and feels wretched because he made me cry, and within 15 minutes we're apologizing to each other and coming up with a solution to the issue. (The issue was whether he would go to a friend's wedding this weekend, since Certain People were going to be there that he cannot stand. The compromise? A tersely worded message from me to Certain People to be civil this weekend, for the sake of our friend.)

I'm going to make myself write this afternoon, despite this. I actually sometimes write better when I'm emotionally distraught. When my father passed away in 2004, I spilled out about 10,000 words over the course of three days. I won't be writing any happy scenes, but that's okay because the section I've been brooding over these last few days is sinister, with villains. It needs me to be cranky to get the mood right.

I am, however, going to do this writing holed up over in Barnes & Noble with a Frappucino.

Realistic Expectations

The querying process has begun today.

I'll probably get a dozen rejections, but that's the way this industry works. I haven't written The Great American Novel, I wrote a romance novel. I wrote a book I wanted to write, in the style of the books I like to read, and I can only hope that other people who like the sort of books I like to read might like to read mine too.

(That said, in another lifetime on the Internet - and a completely different user name - I wrote a lot of fanfiction stories, and those had a large readership. Many comments from those I admired and respected in those circles were very positive. Some were critical about minor things; usually for good reasons, sometimes for bad. I would have hoped that if I was going about the entire process of writing completely wrong that someone would have told me by now. )

I don't want to win awards for my writing. I'm still content with my 7th grade language arts achievement trophy. No Pulitzers for steam punk.

I don't want to get a ridiculously large advance for a book. I think it would jinx the process. I'd also get walloped with taxes next year all at once.

I don't want to be famous, or eFamous, or a household name. I don't want to be on Oprah.

What I want to do is get a book published, and have people who read the same sort of books I like to read say, "Oh, Catherine Blakeney? Yes, she's one of my favorite authors." That would be worth more to me than all the riches, fame, and accolades I could possibly earn writing in any other genre.

That reminds me: Susan Kearney? Teresa Medeiros? Mary Balogh? You're my favorite authors. Thank you.

If I actually do get a book published, maybe I'll tell Mrs. Slusher at Davidson Fine Arts about it too. She'll be tickled pink.

Newbie writer's homework

I've been building a database of agents.

Well, more like a spreadsheet, but still.

I made sure to check their websites, and discovered a few were not what I thought they were. Deleted. I don't want to waste my time, and they don't want me to waste theirs.

Each one has her own submission quirks, so I'm going to be careful to keep track of who requested what. See, my column with that section? And dates and email address and that sort of thing.

Even if every single agent rejects me, I want to make sure I didn't make a stupid mistake, like misspelling a name, or completely missing the genre they wanted.

Book #1 is still off at the beta readers. I haven't seen either of them online, which means they're either too busy to read it, or couldn't put it down. One can only hope it's the latter!

Mental Writing

I do my writing in my head, when I'm just waking up.

I once had an entire short story (fanfiction, unfortunately) play out in such a way in my mind, as if I was watching a movie in my head. I woke up, and wrote for four hours straight, until I petered out near the end - I had woken up by the time I reached that point.

So this morning, I'm snuggled under the covers with my cat sleeping on my head, kneading my hair, and I'm trying to imagine the next scenes in my current book. Trying to figure out what I need to do with the characters, what elements are missing. I decided to add in a scene with my villains, since they would otherwise not appear until the second half of the book. I decided to add another male character - a buddy, if you will. Truckers have buddies, right? Well, since much of the concept of one of the organizations in the story is "space truckers" they need to have all things trucker-esque. Including buddies.

I also need to return some books to the library. ACC Library was very nice and sent me an email reminder that I needed to return them.

Butt In Chair

I don't like to write when I'm sick.

I guess I should force myself, but when I'm coming down with something - like today, as my temperature has crept up to the 100 mark until I took some Excedrin to kill the approaching fever. I took a nap, I drank some EmergenC, and now I'm sitting at An Imperfect Destiny wondering why my muses have deserted me.

I'll make myself do it in dribbles, I think. A hundred words, then take a break for some hot cocoa. A hundred words, then go mess around in Farmville. A hundred words, and go play on Discover Blogs. A hundred words, and read a chapter in someone else's book.

A hundred words at a time, twenty times, until I've hit my goal for the day.

Ugh.

The iPad

I spent a lovely afternoon with my friend Andrea, who is a Macophile. I'm a PC girl myself; I have been ever since I was a junior volunteer at the National Science Center and learned to navigate Windows 3.X. So it is with a slight bias that I view all of the Mac offerings.

I own an iPod. It is not the favorite MP3 player I have ever owned. That went to a tiny generic $50 player in 2000 that was the size of a big pack of gum and ran off any size SD flash drive. Unfortunately, it was so tiny, it was lost on one of UGA's buses one day. I've mourned its loss ever since, and I consider the iPod and various other MP3 players I've owned to be inadequate substitutes. I'm slowly reconciling myself with iTunes, but I get miffed whenever I want to buy a song and I get told that it's not available for sale in my region. (It's as if they want me to pirate sometimes! Even when I try to be good.)

I have never owned any Mac product bigger than my iPod. My cell phone is an ancient Motorola V276 that I will use until it disintegrates. I'm too poor for Mac laptops and I instead have an Acer Aspire One netbook that cost me $250 last year.

So when I went to visit Andrea, and see her shiny new gadget, of which she is so immensely proud, I was prepared to Not Be Impressed In The Least. Much to my surprise, the iPad has some fairly respectable shinies to it. The most amazing thing is the nonexistent load times for movies from Netflix, and television programs. Beautiful HD resolution shows are beamed into the iPad faster than it takes Firefox to even load the website at Hulu on my PC. No lag, no stuttering.

As wonderful as this is, I can't think of it as justification for me to buy one - I rarely watch television or movies, preferring to consume my entertainment from the written word.

In that regard, the iPad is also quite nice. The eBook format used is clean. I could almost see myself reading a whole book start to finish using it. I still like the weight of an actual volume in my hand, and the smell of decaying wood pulp in the library, but I'm old fashioned.

What killed the iPad for me was the typing. Trying to type on the electrostatic keyboard felt awkward and unnatural. For a touch-typist like me, who is used to writing things into the computer while looking at the place they were originally written down, it was a bit humbling to be slowed down so much and being forced to actually look at the keypad. Andrea pointed out that it is compatible with any wireless Bluetooth keyboard, but if the idea is to replace my netbook, I shouldn't have to carry around a separate keyboard just to type comfortably.

My verdict: If you have a terrible cable company like Comcast or Dish Network, and you wish to ditch them while at the same time you want to watch TV shows and movies any time you like, on demand, in perfect HD resolution, then grab an iPad. Even if you're not usually a Macophile, you will love it to pieces.

But if you're not a visual medium person (like me), and you just want a portable laptop that you can write on (or play FFXI or WoW or Farmville on, since the iPad can't do any of those), then stick with a cheap netbook.

Today's Work

The MadCap Writer, Catherine Blakeney, has arrived! You may shower me with flower petals and book contracts now. (In a dream universe, book contracts would be hand delivered by hunky UPS men who then offer to mow the lawn.)

Today has been devoted mostly to Internet housekeeping - I have a functional website, but no links to content, so I've been fixing that. I now have a Twitter, and a Facebook page, and of course, this brand new blog.

I considered installing a word press directly on my website, but my URL is being hosted under another URL's directory (for my personal website) and I wasn't sure of the logistics of it all. Plus, I've already used more than my fair share of CMS databases, well beyond what I was allotted, and Maia Host (who has been wonderful!) has said nothing. I don't want to press my luck.

So, an external blog it is.

What is the point of this blog?

Well, I have a pretty heavy online identity already, under a nickname, that has a lot of this content on its own. I'm trying to separate myself from that online identity, and out of all my friends under that nickname, only one is also a writer. (Love you Rachel!) Rather than bore all my non-writer friends with the nuts and bolts of this crazy career change of mine, I've opted to keep things tidy. Those that care about what I'm doing may keep up with me here. Those that don't care don't have to bother.

Goals for today:

• Compiled list of ten agents to query: Done!
• Query letter composed: Done! Husband approved. Now this ages for a week before anyone sees it.
• Create online presence: Done!
• 2000 words on Book 2: . . . I'll get back to you on that
• Revision of Book 1: I'm going to add another scene near the end, I believe. I'm also way too "tell-ey" and not enough "show-ey" in the entire third half of the book, so there's still some revision to be done.
• Reading assignment: Another chunk of "Idiot's Guide to Getting Published" out of the way. Hey, it can't hurt. And as much as the blogs from the agent friends and editor friends have helped me so far, I still have a ton of stuff to learn!