Archives: Writing

Hard Writing Lessons 4 — Word Count

I’ve been busy drafting the new novel but not very busy blogging. When things are going smoothly it’s easy to whip up a quick blog post and still get an 2000 words, but when things are a little more challenging — or when there are a bunch of errands to take care of over the course of the day — getting that 2000 words in AND a blog post becomes an either/or, in which case the blog post always comes in last. You understand. The blog is for fun. The writing is supposed to be fun too, but it’s also the job.

I’m often asked how many words I try to get in a day, or how many pages. 5000 words is about 20 typewritten double-spaced pages, and 2k is approximately 8. If I’m really on a roll and know exactly what my characters are doing (and I have NO interruptions) I can get 5k. I have trained myself to be okay with 2k, and even the occasional 1k if it’s a tough day or one with interruptions.

Full Tilt Wednesday

Drafting this new, eh, draft, is going so well I didn’t want to take too much time out to create a post for the day, but I did want to stop and thank all of you who joined in the Conan re-read. Bill and I enjoyed sharing our thoughts with all of you, and exchanging opinions.

I also want to thank Bill, who’s simply a brilliant writer. His insightful comments were a huge factor in the success of this re-read. But then he’s a brilliant guy and it’s a pleasure to name him my friend. He’s been talking about getting back to fiction writing, and I’ve been trying to encourage him in that route. The rest of you should as well. The problem with being named “Bill Ward” is that there are apparently a whole lot of creative folks with the same name, which makes it hard to launch your writing career. If you perform a search for his work, you’re apt to turn up someone else. He may have to start drafting under a pseudonym.

The New Year Begins

Bill Ward and I will return next Friday with a look at one of the most famous Conan stories of all, “Beyond the Black River.”

For now, here’s hoping that we have a good New Year lying before us.

A week or so back, fellow writers Chris Jackson, Jeff Grubb, Stephan Sullivan and myself joined Dave Gross to discuss Heroic Fantasy. I hope you’ll swing by and take a look!

Link Day & Hard Writing Lessons

I’ve gotten a late start today so I’m going to have to keep things short. That doesn’t mean I’ll waste your time, though. I have a couple of writing links I thought would be of use.

First, Mary Robinette Kowal has a doubly interesting post. First, it breaks down that whole “why am I not writing” question and then diagnoses it by symptom. It’s dead-on accurate, including solution.

And then she goes on to discuss diagnosing depression. Seeing as how it’s a common problem amongst us artistic types, this, too, bears a close look.

Second, J.H. Moncrieff take a look at the problems behind the simple saying “Writer’s Write.” Well, yeah, if you’re going to be a writer, you have to write. Except sometimes you don’t. Even as enormously prolific a writer as Robert E. Howard didn’t write ALL the time, as much as it seems like he must have, given the tremendous amount of stories he wrote in his short life time. Every now and then he’d stop writing and read or research voraciously, or go off and do other things. He called this “filling the well” because he knew writers didn’t create in a vacuum. The well has to be replenished.

Moncrieff suggests that we need to be kind to ourselves when we’re not meeting our own impossible expectations. Here’s to that.

 

Hard Writing Lessons 3

I’m moving some older posts over from my original LiveJournal blog to this one, and ran across a long list of Hard Writing Lessons from 2007! Apparently I’d just turned over a manuscript to some beta readers and came back from the experience slapping my forehead. They found all kinds of problems. I don’t remember what they were, but I remember my profound sense of shame.

I THINK it was probably a novel that’s no longer in circulation, because 2007 pre-dates The Desert of Souls. Anyway, here’s a long note from younger Howard that still reads like good advice. I was pretty disappointed in myself when I wrote it! Clearly I hadn’t learned that other lesson yet, which is to be kind to yourself.

I’ve included a little bit of the preamble:

… I realize that all writers have different strengths and weaknesses, so a lot of this may not apply to you. It’s a list I wrote for me, and the issues I’m dealing with in my novel-in-progress at this time. I’ll post it here in the hope someone else can find my hard lessons instructive. I hope that I have the wisdom to do so myself! 

Hard Writing Lessons 2

If it bores you, it’s probably going to bore your readers.

While this is absolutely true in my experience, I’ve only recently developed a good strategy to fight this particular problem. (And no, I don’t usually hear that my books are stuffed full of boring scenes — I’ve just cut them, painfully, after lavishing attention on them.)

The trick is knowing when you’re having trouble because you just don’t feel like writing and when you’re having trouble because you’re bored with the scene. Unfortunately, when I was just beginning to develop the discipline to write I sometimes had to force myself to work even when I didn’t feel like it.

Hard Writing Lessons 1

This being the first full week of National Novel Writing Month, I thought I’d start posting some of my hard learned writing lessons. One of these years I hope to join in, but once again I’m actually wrapping one up (last year I was feverishly revising one, and I think that was the case for the two years prior).

Regular visitors to the site, or any who’ve heard me speak in public, know that I like to repeat the lesson I found hardest to learn: know what every character wants before you start writing the scene. I still remind myself of that before I ever get to work.

The Perfect Writing Notebook: Review 7

This is probably my last writing notebook review, mostly because I’ve found my favorite. If you see me at GenCon this week I’m liable to be carting it around, and I think I’ll be carrying one by the same manufacturer for the next little while.

This week I’m taking a look at Sigel’s Conceptium. If you’re interested in seeing other reviews, or finding out what my judging criteria are (including what standard features I prefer) click here.

Pricing: $12.00 and up

Dialogue Cheats

I was sending some advice along to a young writer friend last night, and I thought (I hope) that it might be of use to other writers, so I’m pasting it below.

I suppose I should make clear that I’m not one of those writers who feels you can only use “said” to indicate when someone is speaking, or that you have to avoid using adjectives with “said.” Sometimes I run across reviews that criticize an author for employing descriptive modifiers to “said.” I find that kind of criticism misguided.

I understand that almost any writing technique used to excess can be ridiculous, and this avoidance of using anything apart from said probably stems from having read fiction that’s tortuously laden with adjectives. (Have you ever read those books where the writer goes so far out of the way to NOT use said that it’s cringe inducing?). Using ONLY said isn’t the fix, though. It’s like killing the patient to stop the disease. Said isn’t completely invisible, and leaning only upon it is likewise overuse. A writer should use every trick he or she has to convey their story.

With that preamble out of the way, here are some dialogue cheats.

Love Your Character

I guess it should probably go without saying that if you want to write fiction well you have to be in love with your characters. I don’t mean the creepy, smoochy Pygmalion kind of love. I’m talking about finding them fascinating, interesting, compelling and simply fun to work with.

If you’re familiar with my writing mistakes list then you know my caveat that if you have to invent scenes to give a character something to do that character may not belong in the narrative anymore. All fiction writing is inventing scenes for characters to act in, of course, so what I mean by that is that if the character doesn’t fit into the narrative well, or you’re repeatedly stumped finding things for that character to do in the story, maybe the character doesn’t belong.