S.M. Butler's Blog, page 14

Ending books is really hard for me. I almost always want to go right back to the beginning and start fixing the things I know need to be fixed while they’re fresh in my head.

I almost always need to force myself not to just start the next phase of the project. I make notes of the things I want to consider in revisions. And then I close the project file.

I know myself pretty well, and I know that I have a tendency to rush from project to project because that’s how my brain works. But I also know that I get tired and burnt out like everyone else.

So I force myself to take a full 24 hours to not work on anything. To read, watch Netflix, take a shower… Self-care is just as important as pushing on to the next project, so you shouldn’t ever feel guilty about taking a day for you.

Then after the 24 hours, I might even poke at the serial for a bit. Or maybe just brainstorm on the next project.

I just don’t know yet.

How to Not End a Book.

That’s kind of a weird title.

But also fitting at the same time. Yesterday, I was talking about how I was getting into the flow and I was on the downswing of the book. I was, and I finished the zero draft. I’m not at the 70,000 word mark though. But I kind of expected that. These early drafts are a little more than glorified outlines with action tags and dialogue. They require a lot more work if they’re ever going to see the light of day.

But at the same time, I finished the story. It’s complete: Beginning, Middle, and End. Even though there’s a lot more work to do to it, I feel a sense of accomplishment. It’s the first book I’ve finished in two years. Right now, I can’t grasp the amount of Suckitude in that book. It meanders, it skips around, it jumps the shark in more than one place. It’s got white room syndrome and talking heads.

But it’s complete. It’s not finished, really. But it’s a complete story, and you know, I think that’s a cause for celebration. So I’m not writing today. I’m taking the day, and I’m going to celebrate with coffee and friends, and probably some Netflix binge watching.

Tomorrow… I kinda want to do it again. This was fun.

TOTAL WORDCOUNT: 40,222 words

I love this part of the book. It’s when I hit that tipping point at the end of the Murky Middle, when the events I created start knitting themselves together into some cohesive form of story. The words get easier, the light at the end of the story tunnel gets brighter, lighting the way to the inevitable conclusion.

I spent most of Day 4 fighting through that Murky Middle, trying to get into that state where the words are easy and fun. Of course, writing is always fun for me, but that middle does test my non-existent patience sometimes. But then I hit that point where suddenly it just gels and the words pour from me.

It’s amazing.

It makes that struggle through the middle so worth the time and effort that I put into it. To see the story I created take on a life of its own, and practically tell itself. It makes it all worthwhile for me.

And yes, you’ll notice I’m barely halfway through my original word count goal. I always run short of how long I want a book to be the first time around. My zero drafts are a little more than glorified outlines with action tags and dialogue. I’ll have a lot more fleshing out to do. But it’s the point of getting the story down, because revisions can always be done. But not if I don’t write the book first.

Yesterday, I wrote 9,351 words. It was hard. I nearly gave up halfway through the day. But right there near the end of the day, I started seeing my story for what it really had become, so much more complex and beautiful than I had originally imagined. I am excited and I’m ready to push through to the final conflict or battle that awaits my characters.

TOTAL WORDCOUNT: 35,760 words

I’ve always struggled with middles. It’s why a lot of my stories stop at the 25-35k mark. Maybe it’s my pantserly ways, since I usually have no plan to get from where I’m at in the middle to the end that I have in my head. Even when I finish a book, I usually rewrite the last half in revisions because it falls flat.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how to fix that, but maybe that’s just my process.

In the 7,019 words I wrote yesterday, this is what I started thinking about. I’m the thick of the book. I’m in that state where even when I’m not writing, I think about that book, about where the characters are going and where they will be, and what’s going to happen to them. I go through a dozen different scenarios.

When I was a kid, I used to act out these stories, and I think even though now I don’t put the sheet cape on, or use the sword from my Halloween costume, part of me still does act it out in my head. Part of me feels the realness of these characters that I create, and every one of them is part of my soul. Maybe that sounds a little weird. It made sense in my head.

I’m at the point of the book where things slow down. The characters are adjusting to the action of the beginning, and they’re not ready for the action of the end. They’re in limbo, and I’m sitting here trying to figure out just how I’m going to get them ready to deal with what’s coming for them. I think in a way, maybe I’m not ready for them to deal with their end. Maybe I’m tempted to leave them like this, because I know things are going to get bad for them if I keep going, and somewhere inside, I don’t want them to.

This is a large part of why I write romance. Because I need to know as much as the characters need to experience it, that things are going to be okay for them. They’re going to get their happily ever after.

Right now though, these characters I’m writing are in trouble, and while I’ve seen authors write about the glee they have putting their characters in that position and torturing them, I kind of feel like I’m torturing myself along with them. Maybe this is why I have such trouble with the middle, because that’s when everything goes wrong.

Despite all this, I managed 7,019 words yesterday. Not quite where I wanted to be at this point in the week, but I’m making forward progress, and that’s good for everyone. But especially me.

TOTAL WORDCOUNT: 28,749 words

I love starting new challenges off on a good note, but I’m always afraid that if it’s too good on day one, I may fizzle out before I finish it. I didn’t beat my word count from yesterday, nor did I make my word count goal, but 7,305 words for the day isn’t so bad either.

The very first writing challenge I ever participated in was NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, for those of you that may not have heard of it. I won my first year, by clawing and grasping at that 50,000 word goal at a mere 50, 234 words. Not too shabby for someone who never wrote so consistently and dedicated to finishing a goal like that. It sparked something in me that year. It created this literary monster who never loved writing so much as she did that November. I’ve done NaNoWriMo every year since, with the exception of one year that I made the decision that I just wasn’t in the right headspace. I wasn’t, but I still regret not trying that year.

Challenges aren’t for everyone but they do work for me. My toughest competition is myself. I choose the challenges because it forces me to do better, to be better than I was before. And I’m never as competitive with others as I am with myself. Some people need others to compete against, but I found that, for me, it led to me comparing myself to others I was competing against, and sometimes, that can be more detrimental than helpful.

I don’t always win my challenges. I’ve done NaNoWriMo for almost two decades now, and I’ve probably finished about about half of them. Am I happy with that? Not really. I want to be better than that. As much as I compete with myself, I’m also hard as hell on myself. Guilt, shame, and a lot of other negative feelings bring me down, and make it difficult to continue when I’m not doing well.

I push through it as much as I can, but some days it’s harder than others. Some days, I can push through it. Other days, I curl up on the couch with a pint of ice cream and self-pity and binge watch shows on Netflix. But I always come back to the challenge at hand. Because in the end, I want to be better than I am. And I can’t do that sitting on the couch with a pint of ice cream…

Though sometimes I still take the ice cream to my desk, because well, ice cream.

TOTAL FAST DRAFT WORDCOUNT: 21,971 words.

I completely forgot to post here that I was attempting Fast Draft this week. If you’re not familiar with Fast Draft, the basic principle is cutting out the distractions and writing a novel in two weeks. It’s a concept from a course by Candace Havens that I highly recommend to help you finish your book. Of course, I’m an overachiever and decided to do a one week Fast Draft. I don’t recommend this, BTW. I’m gonna be tired af.

Anyway, I took Sunday and prepped myself for the week. Took care of all the errands I had to do, and made some food for the week I could keep in the fridge or freezer, and started writing on Monday. My first day of fast draft went really well. I ended up with 9645 words, for a total word count of 14671 words. Yeah, this book had a little bit of wordage on it when I started, but you know what, that’s okay. My whole point of this exercise is to finish the book. It didn’t really matter to me that I’d already had a little bit of a start on it.

After I hit my word count, I rewarded myself by watching DC’s Legends of Tomorrow on Netflix.

Because, yes, I work well in a reward-based system.

I’m going to post my progress through the week, probably morning posts for the day before like this one, and hopefully, maybe y’all can get something out of my rambling, and I get a finished draft out of this project.

See you guys tomorrow for the Day Two update. I’m gonna go get All The Words.

I have this problem with jumping between projects. It’s not always a problem, really. I think it’s a good thing when I get stuck on a project, and can switch gears to clear my head on the original project. BUT… you knew there was a but, right? But… I sometimes use it to get away from a project that is getting serious.

I did this yesterday, took out the New Shiny Idea for a test drive, and realized though I know a lot of the backstory, I don’t know enough to write the actual story.

There’s a lesson in here somewhere. When you’re in the hard part of the project that is just making you have to slog through it, the New Shiny Idea sounds amazing compared to what you’re already working on. But if you keep dropping the old project to work on new ideas, you’re never going to finish the thing you’re working on, or you may hit the same snag in the New Shiny as you did in the original project.

Not saying you should ignore the New Shiny Idea. Actually, give it a day to play with, get the idea out of you. Then you’ll see it’s not a fully developed little plotbunny, and you’ve gotten enough out on paper in your notes that you can focus on your original project.

I say this because I’ve fallen prey to the plotbunny barrage before. It’s hard, and those little bunnies are vicious, swinging new shiny after new shiny at you.

YOU WANT TO WRITE ALL THE THINGS.

But I have faith in you. You can resist. You can prevail.

Show those cute little terrors who’s boss.

There are people who write far more books than you have, and you’ll never catch up.

There are people who read far more books than you have, and you’ll never catch up.

There are people who do ALL THE THINGS and you certainly will never catch up.

Your website has lousy traffic. Should you even bother?

That course you’re taking… You’re a few lessons behind. Time to quit?

Quitting because you’re not where everyone else has gotten to is a form of hiding. It’s your mind telling you that you’re playing it safe, except it isn’t safe. Because when you switch to something else, you’ll be behind other people there too.

Your life is not a race. It’s a journey. So what if that author has a few more books than you have. So what if that girl is reading a book a day and you can barely find time to read one a week, or even a month.

Your journey is different from theirs. Just because they’re further along where you want to be doesn’t mean that they win your journey.

It’s your journey. Not theirs.

Holy cow! It’s been an insanely busy couple of months in the Butler household. Moving took up so much time I didn’t even have time to blog here. I finally got internet at the new place, so it’s been a little easier to get online now that I’m not blowing through my high speed mobile data so fast. I’m gonna tell you guys… trying to crawl the web at lower data speeds is sooo annoying.

Now, I’m trying to figure out a new routine that works. I fell off my bullet journal because I was so tired, so I’m going to be getting back into that soon to get myself and my life back into some kind of less chaotic order. My biggest problem I’m having is time management, because sometimes I feel like there’s not enough hours in a day to do things I need to do, but then I realize I’m probably just not utilizing my time well.

I thought about getting one of those hourly planners, but honestly, they’re made for folks that are awake during the day, and my Sucky Day Job is actually an overnight position so most of the time those hours in those planners are pretty much my sleeping time. Maybe I’ll just figure out my own spread.

Anyway, so writing. Moving sucked a lot of time away from writing these last couple months, but I’ve maintained a somewhat semi-regular schedule, though I’ve split the time between two different projects. It’s probably smarter to concentrate on one, but honestly, I’ve never worked well that way. Might say I have commitment issues when it comes to focusing on one project. Haha.

But there has been forward motion, albeit small steps.

The biggest thing I’ve had to do in relation to finding time to write is realizing that it’s a slower process now that I’m working full time as well. I was feeling like a failure because I wasn’t working as fast as I was before I took that writing hiatus, but I realize now that I had to transition from that mindset. Writing 5000 words a day as a full time writer is one thing. Writing 5000 words a day while working 46 hours a week is a ridiculously hard goal. I’m a fast writer, but I never took into account how physically and mentally exhausted working full time made me. Some days, I just didn’t want to write. Others, I was too tired to concentrate.

So it’s been a real learning process these last few months, figuring out how to do this writing gig with a full-time job and not burn myself out. I think that I’m doing okay with it now, even though it’s been way slower than I’m used to. Starting up Section Five again has been good for me for this, as in I’ve been teaching myself better habits, and how to be more regular with posts. The best part is that I’m getting great emails from you guys about it, and that’s more motivating than anything else.

Section Five is teaching me how to be a writer again, and that’s amazing to me, considering when I came back after my two year hiatus, I didn’t know where to start or how to pick up the pieces of the mess I’d left. I mean, I’d even let my website expire at that point. Basically, everything was broken and it made me want to crawl back into the dark hole I’d been in and never come out.

Okay, it’s time for me to stop rambling and get a little writing done before I need to head to work. Before I forget to tell you, don’t forget to check out this week’s Section Five post. If you like it, share the link with a friend. Y’all have a fantastic week, and don’t forget to check out new Section Five every Friday, and new posts here (mostly) every Tuesday, except when I’m traveling or moving, apparently. Haha.

Oh, and if you guys have any ideas about writing topics you’d like me to talk about, feel free to send them to me, or just drop a comment. I mostly just talk about what’s going on in my writing, and what’s on my mind, but I’m happy to address anything you might want to talk about, too.

Alright, I’m really out of here now. Love you guys!

I took a couple weeks off from blogging to take care of the whole moving thing, and now I’m sitting in my excessively messy and half-moved-in office typing this post to you. I planned on scheduling a couple posts so it wouldn’t be like I disappeared, but the best laid plans… Sigh.

Anyway, I’m kind of back, and I’m getting back into the swing of online life again. Even though I haven’t been online, I have been writing. I’m about halfway done with the mess that is the second installment of the Section Five serial. I decided to try something new, since I have multiple POVs and multiple story lines going on, and I decided to write one POV all the way through and then go back and add in the others.

Sigh.

That didn’t work out well. Turns out I need to know what’s going on with the other POVs in order to write one POV. And while I had a basic idea and notes of what was happening, I hadn’t written from those POVs so I really didn’t know how they’d reacted and trying to guess just wasn’t cutting it.

So now I’m going back and adding the POVs that I need to flesh out the first POV I haven’t been able to finish yet so I can finish up this installment.

Strangely enough, this crazy random story does have a point. I’m back to the beginning at this point, adding in another character’s story arc, and trying to figure out how I want to open each scene. So of course, I’m thinking about opening lines. Beginnings. First chapters.

I’m probably just freaking myself out about it, honestly. But beginnings are hard. A weak beginning could tank any book. Today I’m thinking about the parts of a beginning. Because yeah, the first chapter is important, but it’s not just one part. It’s a collection of parts that completes the whole. While I’m focusing on the first chapter here, this can be applied to just about anything you need a beginning to. A chapter. A scene. A bio.

So what makes a good beginning?

A killer opening line.
A sense of place and happening, yet not all questions are answered. In fact, it raises more questions. If you think about it  as a science, it’s the protagonist’s potential energy. You see how the character needs to grow and change, but it hasn’t happened yet, or maybe you’re wondering if it will happen at all. Maybe that potential energy might never manifest into kinetic.
The beginning contains the story question, the base of all potential energy in a book. I got this idea from Jim Butcher’s LiveJournal years ago, and it’s always stuck with me. It’s the whole “will the hero beat the villain/complete his quest/save the girl (or boy)?”
And finally, the beginning also in some small way shows the stakes if our hero were to fail in his quest.

So how do we do all that without boring the reader?

Ah, dear Reader, this is the trick. The lovely thing about writing a novel is that you don’t have to get it right the first time. So, maybe your beginning is weak the first time you write it (or in my case, the second/third/fourth/fifth time you write it). You can always go back when you know the story better to revise it and make it stronger. I know that I write very lean in my early drafts, and I always have to add a lot of words in revision. In fact, I joke all the time that my first drafts are glorified outlines with action tags and dialogue. That means that my drafts are more like exploratory writing, and I usually change how I start the story a few times.

But you know what? That’s okay. The deeper I get into the story, the more I learn about the characters I’ve built, so by the time it comes time to revise that first chapter, I know exactly what needs to be in that first chapter. Knowing the end allows me to hint at the beginning certain things to raise those questions by the reader that we so desperately need to stay interesting.

I’m saying this as much to myself as I am to you, dear Readers.

Don’t fret about the beginning. You can always rewrite it. But… you have to write it in order to rewrite it. So let’s both of us take my own advice here and go write the damn book.