Writer's Groups
The novel has reached ten chapters and over 60k words, or about 180 pages. I'm now estimating that I will need another ten chapters to finish. I am strongly tempted to begin editing because this far into the book I'm starting to feel like I'm losing the connection with the earliest chapters. I'm trying to resist that because I think it best to keep moving forward and fix the disconnects later. But I don't really know for sure what the right approach is. I've never written anything this long before.
I think it's time for me to find some help. Of course, I've read innumerable things on the web, and gotten many good tips there. One of the things most often recommended is to join a writer's group. I did some research, and there are many writer's groups that meet in the San Diego area. There are two large organizations: the San Diego Writer's Group, and San Diego Writers, Ink. Frankly, neither got me excited. In an organization of that size, my natural inclination to stay in the background would restrict my participation. SD Writers, Ink, in particular, seems to appeal to writer's who are professionals and already publishing. Again, I would feel pretty lost.
Many of the smaller writer's groups were pretty eclectic (one called themselves the "anti-social" writers group) or had a narrow focus, such as poetry groups, or housewives only, etc, which slimmed down the list. Others looked good on their web site, but had no meeting schedule and did not seem to be active.
Then I came across a writer's group called Go, Be, Write! The group's founder had a long list of Do's and Don'ts (mostly don'ts) on what type of writer or wannabe writer she was looking for to be in the group. The most obvious difference between this group and nearly every other group is that the group does not do readings. "Readings" are when writers get to together and read their work out loud in order to get comments and critiques. This is a common method for making improvements and learning techniques. Go, Be, Write! does not like that method. Instead, the approach taken is more like a classroom, at least that's how I interpret it. The founder is a former teacher, and her group focuses on learning not only how to write better, but how to get published, find an agent, contracts, costs, getting paid, etc. These are all things I know very little about. Especially the getting paid part.
Many groups use an online service called Meetup. Most of the writer's groups I checked on use this service to arrange meetings. Go, Be, Write! (GBW) uses it, too. After I had set up an account with Meetup, I clicked the "Join Us" on the GBW website and was given some questions to fill out. There was the general questions about background, personal and professional, and some yes/no questions to make sure I had read the rules and that I was committed to attending the twice per month meetings. I also had to find a picture of me to post. No pictures of pets, sunsets, etc. A real picture, or no deal. The group's tag line does say "A Tough Love Writing Community."
I'm not sure what I'm getting myself into, but I know I need help if I want to continue to improve. I hope this is a good first step, and I'm excited about it.
Sunday, March 24, 2013
Thursday, March 7, 2013
New Beginnings (2013/03/07)
New Beginnings (2013/03/07)
It's been awhile since I last posted, and a lot has been happening. The news is good.
As previously reported, I have completed thirteen chapters. In Chapter Thirteen I introduced the character of Taint, who is to be a significant figure in the novel. At this stage of writing I ran into plot problems. I attempted to fit a number of not very well fitting pieces together in Chapter 14, but that didn't work very well. I finally had to admit that there were some pretty fundamental flaws.
The biggest issue was that I used content from my World of Warcraft (WoW) blog as a way to get started with writing the novel. The title itself, "The Plum, the Rose, and the Fist" comes from the name I gave to my most advanced character in WoW, Plumrosefist. As a long time player of the game, I had embellished and extended this game world with my own stories, giving my game characters their own personalities and history. I used pieces of that as my starting point and anchor for the novel.
It worked very well, for awhile. However, the world's of Chord and Spark that I wanted to bring to life didn't look much like the world of Warcraft, and the further I got into the novel the greater the disparity between what I started with compared to where I was going. None of that Warcraft stuff fit anymore. I had to make a decision. I could scrub the Warcraft content and try to fill in the holes. Or ...
I decided to start over. My two writing buddies could see the problems, and in fact helped me identify many of them. They, too, agreed that the Warcraft influences had to be purged and rooted out so that the worlds I intended to create could flourish.
In addition to the content, I also had a technical issue to address. On average, the size of the completed chapters was under 2,000 words each. I had written thirteen chapters, but only 25,039 words. The reason for that was pretty simple. I wanted to advance the storyline, and with every new idea I kept moving it forward. What those chapters lacked was detail. I had a skeleton with no meat on it. That also caused broken and dead ended plotlines. My skeleton was misshapen. So, as a forcing function to help me slow down and add content to bring my novel to life, I set a minimum of 5,000 words per chapter. Chapters could be longer, but not shorter.
The revised/new Chapter One was finished on New Year's Eve, 2012. It contained 5,132 words. It was a hard chapter to write. I kept thinking of the 25,000 words I had set aside. Not discarded, though, I told myself. Some if it could be salvaged, but only if it truly belonged in the story.
The first sentence in the original story starts out as "Jaundice was thinking about names as she carefully and thoroughly swept the floors. . ." The new first sentence begins as "Jaundice was thinking about her contented life and the many friends she had . . ." A seemingly small change, but it carried the story off in a new, better direction.
Since that new beginning I have finished eight chapters. I now have three writing buddies helping me out, and that keeps me focused on producing content. I am much more aware of the many pieces of the novel and keep extensive notes about plot lines so I minimize the contradictions and dead ends that seem to inevitably crop up. Chapter Eight was a particularly difficult chapter as I reintroduced a character from the earlier version that I liked a lot, the fiend Kee, but it's intro had created a terrible snarl that for awhile I could not pick apart. I got it straightened out.
The novel is now at 48,148 words. I am averaging 6,000 words per chapter. With the exception of one period of 32 days when I did little writing on the novel, I've been producing chapters on an average of every six days. For me, that's pretty good.
I have also set a modest writing goal for myself. I don't really know at what point the story will end. Nor do I know how it will end, though I do have a few ideas in mind. I have already defined the three major sections, but there isn't enough of the story fleshed out for me to know just how big that will be. It will end when it ends, I guess. As a goal, though, I am planning on thirty chapters. At 5,000 words per chapter, that would make my novel 150,000 words.
I am a third of the way there.
It's been awhile since I last posted, and a lot has been happening. The news is good.
As previously reported, I have completed thirteen chapters. In Chapter Thirteen I introduced the character of Taint, who is to be a significant figure in the novel. At this stage of writing I ran into plot problems. I attempted to fit a number of not very well fitting pieces together in Chapter 14, but that didn't work very well. I finally had to admit that there were some pretty fundamental flaws.
The biggest issue was that I used content from my World of Warcraft (WoW) blog as a way to get started with writing the novel. The title itself, "The Plum, the Rose, and the Fist" comes from the name I gave to my most advanced character in WoW, Plumrosefist. As a long time player of the game, I had embellished and extended this game world with my own stories, giving my game characters their own personalities and history. I used pieces of that as my starting point and anchor for the novel.
It worked very well, for awhile. However, the world's of Chord and Spark that I wanted to bring to life didn't look much like the world of Warcraft, and the further I got into the novel the greater the disparity between what I started with compared to where I was going. None of that Warcraft stuff fit anymore. I had to make a decision. I could scrub the Warcraft content and try to fill in the holes. Or ...
I decided to start over. My two writing buddies could see the problems, and in fact helped me identify many of them. They, too, agreed that the Warcraft influences had to be purged and rooted out so that the worlds I intended to create could flourish.
In addition to the content, I also had a technical issue to address. On average, the size of the completed chapters was under 2,000 words each. I had written thirteen chapters, but only 25,039 words. The reason for that was pretty simple. I wanted to advance the storyline, and with every new idea I kept moving it forward. What those chapters lacked was detail. I had a skeleton with no meat on it. That also caused broken and dead ended plotlines. My skeleton was misshapen. So, as a forcing function to help me slow down and add content to bring my novel to life, I set a minimum of 5,000 words per chapter. Chapters could be longer, but not shorter.
The revised/new Chapter One was finished on New Year's Eve, 2012. It contained 5,132 words. It was a hard chapter to write. I kept thinking of the 25,000 words I had set aside. Not discarded, though, I told myself. Some if it could be salvaged, but only if it truly belonged in the story.
The first sentence in the original story starts out as "Jaundice was thinking about names as she carefully and thoroughly swept the floors. . ." The new first sentence begins as "Jaundice was thinking about her contented life and the many friends she had . . ." A seemingly small change, but it carried the story off in a new, better direction.
Since that new beginning I have finished eight chapters. I now have three writing buddies helping me out, and that keeps me focused on producing content. I am much more aware of the many pieces of the novel and keep extensive notes about plot lines so I minimize the contradictions and dead ends that seem to inevitably crop up. Chapter Eight was a particularly difficult chapter as I reintroduced a character from the earlier version that I liked a lot, the fiend Kee, but it's intro had created a terrible snarl that for awhile I could not pick apart. I got it straightened out.
The novel is now at 48,148 words. I am averaging 6,000 words per chapter. With the exception of one period of 32 days when I did little writing on the novel, I've been producing chapters on an average of every six days. For me, that's pretty good.
I have also set a modest writing goal for myself. I don't really know at what point the story will end. Nor do I know how it will end, though I do have a few ideas in mind. I have already defined the three major sections, but there isn't enough of the story fleshed out for me to know just how big that will be. It will end when it ends, I guess. As a goal, though, I am planning on thirty chapters. At 5,000 words per chapter, that would make my novel 150,000 words.
I am a third of the way there.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)