CornerScribe

Why the word count doesn’t matter

We’re almost half finished with NaNoWriMo. Are you at your 25,000 word count yet?

No? Well me neither. Feeling awful, depressed, discouraged? Ready to call it quits and give it a go again next year? Don’t do that!

Or maybe the answer is yes. You’re sitting there having a cup of coffee, feet up, basking in the glory. You may be tempted to take a little writing vacation. Don’t do that either!

First, stop focusing on the word count and start focusing on spending time writing. Every time you check your word count, calculate how many words you’ll need to write a day to finish, etc., you’re taking away time you could spend on your writing. Even worse, you can get so worked up about “failing” to get your word count, you stop writing altogether. That is definitely not what NaNo is all about.

Yes, you want to hit that 50k mark. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t have signed up for this month of madness in the first place. However, remember that hitting the word count isn’t, or shouldn’t be, the ultimate goal. Take a step back and think about why you wanted to do NaNo in the first place. I’m betting that for many, the goal isn’t just to get down 50k words. The goal is really to write a novel.

Hitting 50k words isn’t a magic potion for finishing a novel. Sitting your butt down to write every day (or nearly every day) is. So, whether you’re way behind or you’ve already hit your 50k goal, I want to put out another challenge.

Vow to still be writing on November 30.

Vow to keep writing beyond November 30 and beyond 50k words, until the novel is FINISHED.

So whether you’re way behind or way ahead, shouldn’t you be writing?

Book Review: Personal Development for Smart People

If you head over to Steve Pavlina’s site, you’ll see plenty of reviews of his book, Personal Development for Smart People. I want to take a little different route here. I want to focus on what this book can do for you as a writer.

What makes this book different is that he doesn’t focus on one aspect of your life to improve. This isn’t a book about making more money, improving your career, finding better relationships, or improving your health. It’s not a book about writing, becoming a writer or becoming successful at it.

Yet the book is about all those things, and more. In short, it’s a manual for improving whatever aspect of your life you choose to work on. That may sound overly ambitious, and maybe it is. However, I think he does a good job of presenting the material and giving readers the tools needed to walk away and use what he’s put forward.

Will you get a to-do list to fix your life? No. That isn’t what this book is about. What you will get are some tools that you can use to reframe you current situation and make decisions about where you want to go and how you’ll get there.

Part I

In part one, Steve discusses what he calls the fundamental principles. You’ll use these principles later in part two, when you focus on specific aspects of your life you’d like to change.

The three primary principles are truth, love and power, and they’re covered in the first three chapters. I found these chapters a bit abstract, but I read Steve’s blog, so I’m used to his approach. He might take a while to give you the background you need, but rest assured, he’ll get to the practical application.

Truth

For those of you who think of the truth as being a big nebulous and subjective, you might be better served to think of this chapter as “fact.” One of the most important things you can do is learn to take an honest assessment of your current state and use that to predict what your future will be like. Of course, if you don’t like the prediction, changing it is what this book is all about.

• Think about your writing habits. Where can you honestly expect your writing career to be in five, ten, twenty years given what you’re doing now? Be honest.

• If you asked a colleague or family member for an honest assessment of your writing future, what would he/she say?

• What is your honest assessment of your talent, drive, commitment? Would people who are familiar with your work answer these questions the same as you would?

Love

Love isn’t, in this book, really about romantic love, although it does encompass that concept. Think of love as being connected to others, and you’ll have a good idea of what Steve is getting at.

You may ask yourself why this is important to writing. After all, writing is a solitary activity, and it would seem that truth and power would be the dominant forces in making you successful.

I’d argue that writing that leaves out the emphasis on love, on being truly connected to others, tends to be the sterile, plot-driven writing that tends to lack depth. Don’t send me hate mail if you’re a writer who focuses on plot! That isn’t what I’m getting at.

Most of us have read books or stories that leaned too heavily on plot. The characters are wooden, almost indistinguishable from one another. The author moves the story along through plot devices that are more daring with each turn, but the story still leaves you cold. Why is that?

It’s because you don’t care about the characters. You don’t care because the author didn’t care.

Power

Power includes concepts like self-discipline, focus, and effort. Obviously, writing is work, like anything else, and no matter how much you enjoy it, it will still demand a certain amount of commitment and focus in order to succeed.

Think about your current level of commitment to your writing and ask yourself if it’s enough to get you where you want to be.

Part II

Here is where we get to the “meat” of the book. Resist any temptation to skip ahead to this half; you’re not likely to be able to follow it unless you know what Steve means by his principles discussed in part one.

Here Steve talks about practical things you can do to improve specific areas of your life. He covers habits, career, money, health, relationships, and spirituality. However, you’ll find techniques within these chapters that will help you evaluate where you are and work on changing your life into what you want it to be.

As a writer, I enjoyed his discussion of career and choosing one “with a heart.” I also found the chapter covering habits very useful. If you’re a writer, you know how powerful simple habits can be in getting words on the page and getting submissions out the door.

I’m not a big fan of personal development books in general. I think many just rehash old ideas and make suggestions that just about anyone with a bit of common sense could have come up with. This book has the advantage of taking a unique approach.

Preparing for National Novel Writing Month

National Novel Writing Month begins November 1. Here are some links that provide useful tools and tips as you’re getting ready to go. Happy writing!

Names

1. Don’t worry too much about making names sound evil or menacing. If your bad guy is names somthing like Dirk Beastly, you’ve got problems.
2. Don’t make names too similar. Jen and Jan will be tough for readers to keep track of. Use global search and replace if you need to.
3. Make names pronouncable, even if you’re writing fantasy. It’s distracting to read about someone named Xytrlnsqr.

Character Name Generator

Seventh Sanctum Name Generators

Characters

1. No one is all good or all bad. Good guys to bad things; bad guys do good things. Keep it realistic.
2. Real characters have entire lives. That means family, friends, jobs, hobbies, money problems, baggage, etc.
3. Don’t give me minute descriptions of what the charcter looks like.

My Character Creation Worksheets

Holly Lisle: How to Create a Character

Plotting

I don’t pre-plot, but I won’t tell you not to if that’s your thing.

The snowflake model is the only one I’ve had any success with.

Editing

Don’t.

If you’re tempted to re-read a small section and rework it. Don’t.

The whole idea is to free yourself from your internal editor. Force yourself to keep moving; you’ll be glad you did.

Word Count

Write as much as you can as early as you can. You’ll likely have plenty of steam during the first week, so take advantage of it and exceed your daily goals if you can. Over time, the daily goal will be harder to reach. You’ll appreciate having a bit of a cushion.

Time Management

This is just as important in getting through NaNo as all the writing advice anyone can give you.

See my post on Getting Through NaNo

1. If you plan on getting up early to write, start that now. You don’t want to try writing foggy-headed from too little sleep.
2. Delegate as much as you can now. Ask your family to help out more.
3. Find a quiet place you can go to write. Make sure it has a door, and don’t be afraid to shut it.

keywords: writing, novel, fiction, national novel writing month

Markets: Write yourself some extra cash

Photo courtesy of stopnlook

Paperback Writer has a great post today listing some writing opportunities.

That reminded me that I haven’t done a market post in a while, so here’s some tips and market information that you might find helpful. With the holidays approaching and higher gas and food prices, earning a few bucks from your writing sounds pretty good, huh?

1. Don’t forget about online sites like Constant Content or Associated Content. Neither will make you rich, but they can be a good way to build a portfolio.
2. Online freelancing sites like elance, guru, getafreelancer are options if you’re willing to take the time to join, put together a portfolio, bid, etc. Be careful not to get caught up in the process and underbid yourself.
3. Many large blogs that focus on freelancing or blogging also have job boards. Freelance Switch and Problogger are two to check out.
4. Ralan.com is a fantastic resource for where to sell and publish your stories.
5. StoryPilot is a good resource for fantasy, science fiction and horror writers. There’s a search feature that lets you narrow down by many factors: genre, writer’s experience, pay, length, etc.
6. Duotrope is another search site for markets, but it includes most genres, not just the few that StoryPilot does.
7. Writer’s Market is a for-pay site that provides market listings and tools to track your submissions.
8. If you have a Christmas story or article, then you’d better get it out now. It may already be too late for many markets.
9. Now is a good time to think about Valentine’s Day stories or articles.
10. Writers Weekly is a good place for market listings. They also offer something many sites don’t — a listing of markets that are a little questionable and to be avoided.
11. Literary Markets offers some listings for both online and paper publications. Unfortunately, the site is a bit out of date, but it’s still useful.

Upcoming Steve Pavlina Book Review

I’m going to be one of the reviewers for Steve Pavlina’s new book. You can see a discussion of its release here.

I’m expecting my review copy any day now, so look for my review soon. I’ll keep you updated.

Books that change you

Photo courtesy of austinevan

Have you ever read something that changed the way you look at things, work, write, interact with people, etc.? It doesn’t have to be a classic or even something terribly well-written. Here are a couple from my list, what’s yours?

Eugene O’Neill’s early plays

O’Neill is arguable one of the United States’ greatest playwrights, and he was the subject of my Master’s thesis. So, I read pretty much everything he’d ever written. Let me tell you, some of his early stuff is bad. Really. Incredibly. Bad.

How did this influence me? I figured that if someone could start out writing so badly and turn out so great, then I shouldn’t kick myself when I turn out something awful. It was a concrete reminder that even great writers churn out their fair share of garbage.

Elizabeth Zimmermann

I’m a knitter, and Elizabeth Zimmermann is a bit of a guru in many knitting circles. If I had to sum up her philosophy, then it would be to do what you want and not worry about rules, should’s, ought-to’s, etc.

What better advice can there be for a writer?

Write what you feel compelled to write, how you want to write it. Don’t worry about all the naysayers, those who tell you what you really should be writing and how it ought to be done.

While these may seem a bit odd, I think it’s testament that we often find inspiration in strange places.

Getting Things Done

Yes, a productivity book. In general, I think productivity books are a huge source of procrastination. Isn’t it fun to make lists and plans? It absolves us from actually getting down to work.

I like this because it gave me a simple way of keeping track of what I need to do and knowing exactly where I am in a project. Once I started thinking about my work as a project that’s divisible into small, manageable parts, I had a much easier time getting started.

StevePavlina.com

Okay, so this one isn’t a book. The site is full of advice on personal development, but I particularly like his discussions of polarity. To summarize, people operate from either a polarity of love or of fear. It’s a useful way to examine others’ behavior, or my own.

So, I can understand a competitive coworker when I understand that he’s operating from a fear polarity. If nothing else, it helps me not take his snide comments personally.

Writer Reactions, Responses

In my last post I asked about how people react to you when you tell them you’re a writer. Below are the responses I got. I was surprised that no one gets the odd responses that I seem to, but maybe it’s just me.

Moneybites

When I say I’m a writer the response is usually, one of surprise but then one of interest.

DebMc

Most people think it is a cool profession. I’m already known as an artsy creative type from my former career as a photographer. A few people, very few when I think of it, ask me what kind of writing I do. Those that do, also write in some form or fashion.Fun question. Now that you’ve asked it, I’ll be paying more attention in the future.

Abhishek 

I don’t think I am a writer just expressing my words, not a pro B. Well people found my blogpost useful/ Entertaining. few say I go rude in case of linking to officials but well that’s something subject to Officials popularity !!

Les Becker 

They are impressed… until they realize I’m not making my living at it. Then, I can almost see myself being slotted into the “deadbeat” category of their minds. LOL! Thankfully, I’ve grown a thicker skin of late.

Simon 

I’ve revealed my blog to several of my friends and family and they were all shocked.

They often say:
“Wow, you do not seem like the author behind this blog”
“You write more than you do for your classes!”
“I don’t believe someone like you can write this professionally”

I often say, “Yeah, right??”. It seems as if I don’t even believe I can write like I did.

It is a great hobby and very productive. I have found myself to procrastinate much less when it comes to writing papers for class.

Michele 

I’m not a writer. I’m a librarian. We love writers.

Me

• Blank stares. I think sometimes people just don’t know how to react, so they just don’t.
• “Romances, right?” First off, I have nothing against romances or romance writers. It’s not the comment, it’s the tone that puts me off. This one tends to come from guys. I’m not sure why they assume a woman writer does romance, but that seems to be the case. The fact that they usually say it with a little sneer gets my goat though.
• “You mean like….” (insert whatever movie is popular at the time). This comes from people who know that I do speculative fiction, so they’ll plug in anything from Harry Potter to a Stephen King.
• And then they’re the diggers. “What do you write about?” “What’s your novel about now?” “Can I read something?” I don’t talk about a novel in progress, and some people just can’t seem to accept that. They push like a gossiping teenager.

I think being a writer is exotic enough to elicit oddball responses, and I’m sure other artistic jobs are more or less the same.

Writer Reactions

I’m putting together a post on how people react when they learn that you’re a writer. Leave a comment here, or send me a twitter– cornerscribe. Whether the comments are funny, dumb or absolutely rude, I want to hear them, and I’ll share a couple stories of my own.

I’ll link to your blog and/or twitter profile and post the results later this week.

Goal Update

Write 1000 words on the novel daily

I missed a couple days of writing, but I ended up with about 6000 words for the week. Right now, the novel is my top priority. I’m about 35,000 words in, and I think it’s good. I’m hoping to have it finished and ready to “rest” for a month while I do NaNoWriMo.

Write 3 blog posts for each blog

I so missed this one. I should have done nine posts; I did four.

Go through my email

I did manage to do this one, off and on through the week. That was only because I installed Digsby and was able to check my email when I’m updating twitter.

Leave 40 comments on others’ blogs

This one was way too ambitious I’m afraid. I’m not one to leave useless comments, so finding someting useful to say on forty posts is a bit much. I think I left about a dozen comments through the week on various blogs.

Spend 2 hours visiting Entrecard blogs and dropping cards

I did about an hour of Entrecard promotions this week.

• Spend one hour on the Zombie short story I have going
• Buy some ad campaigns for the blogs
• Check elance for projects I might like to bid on
• Write two articles to sell on Constant Content

I didn’t get to any of this work this week. Oh well… better luck next time.

For next week, I think I’ll keep the goals the same and see what happens.

Review

Setting goals isn’t very useful unless you review how you’re doing in meeting the goals. That’s why I post my goals publicly, and review how I’m doing publicly as well.

Even more so for me, it’s important to think about why I’m “hitting” or “missing” my goals. I think I’m simply over-scheduling myself. I work full time and have a life outside my work and writing, like everyone does. And, (gasp!) I do give myself a night off from my writing from time to time.

So why do I set such lofty goals? Part of the reason is that I believe that if I push myself, I’ll get more completed than if I don’t. If my goal were something doable, like writing 7000 words/week only, then I’d almost certainy meet the goal, but how far beyond that would I go? Honestly, I’m afraid not that far. However, if I push myself to do more than I can reasonably expect to accomplish, I do more than I originally expected to.

I realize that logic may seem odd to some people. I’m accustomed to working like that though. When I was in college, I also held down a job. I remember one of my instructors would try to talk me into quitting one each time I’d see her for registration. I couldn’t afford to quit my job, so I was frustrated that she kept pushing me to, essentially, postpone college until I could be a full-time student. I think that was when I began to push myself to do more than I might reasonably expect.

In my “real” job, I work in the IT field, which is notorious for high work loads. It’s common for me to have much more work to do than I can expect to finish in the next few days, or even couple weeks.

I think I’ve simply gotten accustomed to pushing myself to do more, and even more. The good news is that I can get a lot accomplished sometimes. The bad news is that I tend to get stressed because of the pressure I put on myself.

Anyone else have issues like these?

My new toy

I got one of these. The Dell Mini is an ultra-small laptop, about 9 inches by 7 inches and only 2 pounds. I chose the Ubuntu version — I have no particular desire to put windows on such a small laptop. Besides, I’m a linux fan anyway. I also passed up on the upgrades and webcam. I think the base configuration is plenty for what I’ll do.

I’ve been looking for something like this for a while, so I was really excited when these were announced back in May. Dell took a while getting them out, but here they are. Unfortunately, I won’t have an update or pics of it for a while; it doesn’t ship until mid-October! On the bright side, it’s going to get here before NaNoWriMo.

I hope to use this for an on-the-go writing and blogging computer. The keyboard is small (obviously), so it will take some getting used to, but I think I’ll really enjoy using it. I’ll keep you updated.