P.D. Workman's Blog, page 147

I came across this article yesterday about P.D. James:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainme...

I like P.D. James for several reasons:

1. She has really great initials.

2. She writes good mystery books!

But I don’t really know that much about P.D. James as a person.  This article filled me in on a couple more similarities between her and me, besides our initials:

1. She started writing in her childhood.

2. She didn’t publish until her early 40′s (her first book published at 42, mine at 41!)

If you’d like to find out some more about P.D. James and hear her top 10 writing tips, follow the link!  And, of course, check out her official website:

http://www.randomhouse.com/features/p...

Maybe one of these days I’ll write my top 10 writing tips.  Of course, they won’t hold the same weight as P.D. James, but it might be fun to compare notes.

Now, I think I’ll go see if the library has some Adam Dalgleish audiobooks.

 

As you can see from my counter over at the right, I have reached 50,000 words.  So I have officially “won” NaNo this year.  But, my goal is 100,000 words or the end of the book, so I am actually only halfway there.  ”By-Pass” is coming along nicely, but there is still some good stuff to work through.

I also got back my eBook cover designs for the series (3 books) yesterday and have to do some work to get the back cover copies ready.  So, time to get back to work here!

P.S. I also had to come back to post that I’ve earned all of my NaNo badges:

 

So I hear a lot during NaNoWriMo from people who would like to write, but don’t have time to do NaNoWriMo. Or other writers who would do NaNoWriMo, if only they had time. Or from other writers who are doing NaNoWriMo and want to know how I can get down the number of words that I do. Then there are the people who know how busy my life is and wonder where I manage to squeeze the writing in. So, for all of those who are trying to figure out how to fit writing (NaNo or other) into their lives, feel free to crib from me.  Here is my schedule.

Mon-Thu

- early morning workout (yes, I know, you don’t have time to exercise either, right?  I have trained for a half-marathon during NaNo/Script Frenzy/Camp Nano, so it is possible!  I have recently cut my workout down by a few minutes to allow a bit more time for writing in the morning) – this is also my time for listening to scriptures, meditation, and listening to audiobooks

- review newspaper for current events

- shower, dress for work, cycling clothes under office clothes, pack backpack for work

- queue up social networking if I didn’t do it the night before

- WRITE

- get together breakfast (due to celiac, multiple allergies, and other dietary restrictions, all cooking is from scratch.  No cold cereal. No packaged meals.  I know, you don’t have time to cook.  But there is no ordering out for pizza in this family!)  Also get together lunch (leftovers) and snacks for work, unload the dishwasher, etc.

- eat breakfast with family, homeschool discussion on current events

- off to work – hubby drives, this is our time for family scriptures/devotional, homeschool reading, etc.  One day this week I cycled in to work, since hubby was too sick to drive.  It was sort of… blizzardy at the time.

- day job!

- lunchtime – eat lunch and hopefully get a few minutes in to WRITE – I am still answering phones, signing for couriers, etc. during this time, paying bills, doing meal planning and writing grocery lists, checking e-mail and responding to anything urgent – and one of my bosses often shows up during the lunch hour and I need to put my writing aside to assist her

- day job!

- cycle home from work (my bike was on the back of the car on the way in to work) – more listening to audiobooks or touching base with hubby

- tidy house, laundry, cook supper (from scratch), eat supper, clean up

- homeschool (on nights when I don’t have other commitments, school is split up into two blocks, one now and one before bed)

- MON family time (this week helped kiddo prepare for teaching a lesson on Sunday) – TUE Scouts and shopping – WED meeting/free – THU meeting/free – yesterday I managed to squeeze 15 minutes of WRITING in between shopping and picking kiddo up from Scouts. I took my MacBook with me and wrote in the parking lot while I was waiting for him.  I have meetings both Wednesday and Thursday night this week for my church ministry, so I will not be home until late those nights

- unwind before bed – WRITING – if my brain burns out, queue up my social media posts for the next day

- go to sleep!

Fri/Sat

Friday I might work (same schedule as above), or have a more flexible telecommute schedule.  I find that on flex days and Saturdays, my schedule tends to be more crazy then on the scheduled days, and I often don’t get any WRITING done until mid afternoon.  I may also squeeze an hour in while kiddo is at homeschool Phys Ed. Or if he needs to be driven to an evening event (such as Magic or a dance) then usually I will drop him off, and when we pick him up, hubby will drive, so I take my computer along in the car and write on the way to pick kiddo up, and have family reading time on the way back home.  Because I have no time for any errands other than grocery shopping during the week, this is also when I have to fit in any doctor’s appointments, shopping, longer cooking/baking jobs, feeding our missionaries, housekeeping, etc. Saturday I also need to prep for teaching on Sunday, and any other church work that hasn’t been done.  Don’t forget a long run (up to 3.5 hours if I’m training) or a trip to the temple.

Sun

Sabbath, day of rest, no writing today.  Focus on God and family, hopefully get in some walking and reading.  Crockpot supper.

So there you have it.  Sometimes during NaNo/Script Frenzy/Camp NaNo I am also training for a race, preparing a booth for the Preparedness Fair (with food samples from scratch for 200 people), or taking a family vacation.  But I plan ahead and I squeeze it in where I can!  I love my new little MacBook Air, which is small enough to take with me when shopping, cycling, etc. and has more than 10 minutes of battery life like my last laptop!

And now I have to go… it’s time to NaNo!

 

NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) is only a week away.  For the uninitiated, this is a worldwide event in which thousands of people attempt to write a 50,000 word novel during the month of November.  Some of us have bigger goals (for example, I aim for 100,000 words during the month – eliminating writing on Sunday, that’s roughly 4,000 words per day), but to “win”, you must write 50,000.  It is supposed to be new work, not a revision or a continuation of a work in progress, and it is supposed to be a novel.  But of course, there are rebels who choose other goals instead.

Here are some of the things that I do as NaNoWriMo approaches:

1. Get an idea

Usually I have lots of ideas.  So rather than “get an idea”, it is probably more accurate to say “narrow down ideas to two or three”. One main idea.  A few others that might work with it.  Choose between competing ideas.  But get some idea of what you want to write.  I have on my list to do a blog on where to get ideas, but you’ll have to wait for that one.

2. Brainstorm

Write the ideas down in some form.  Longhand in a notebook.  A new note in Evernote.  Musings in your journal.  Add other ideas about the character, plotline, etc.  For me, a lot of this initial work is done during a long walk or run without any music or audio.  I have my phone handy, and whip it out every few minutes to add some more ideas.  Depending on your process, this might be a long list, or a short list.

3. Organize

You may or may not organize things at this stage.  Once I have a number of thoughts together on the story, I like to mindmap them in Freemind.  My novels are generally character based, so the protagonist goes in the middle, and all of his/her attributes, family, friends, antagonists, history, etc. radiate around him.

4. Research

Between my brainstorming and other ideas that came to me during mindmapping, I probably have some ideas that need further research.  My main tools are Google and the Evernote web clipper.  By this point, I need a notebook dedicated to the new novel set up in Evernote.  I look up details on character attributes, mental illness, hobbies, crimes, settings, weapons, medical conditions, jargon, culture, or other research that I may need more information on.  Highlight stuff in Evernote.  Follow rabbit trails.  Add more stuff to the mindmap.  Make new connections.  Start to get a fuller picture of my protagonist and his/her journey.

5. Cast Characters

This is something I have only started to do in the last year or so, and it has turned out to be a powerful tool for me.  I’m not good with faces.  I’m not good at recognizing them or picturing them without some sort of assistance.  So if I’m not careful, my characters end up as rather nebulous ghosts without any particular physical features.  But recently, I have started to get visual models for each of the main characters.  They may be actors, stock photos, photos that I found on Google search, etc.  Preferably, I will have several different pictures of the same person, and they aren’t photo-shoots where they are smiling happily all the time.  I want them to look like my character, and it can be incredibly annoying to find a person with the perfect physical characteristics who is smiling broadly in every picture.  My protagonist is generally a tortured soul, not smiling in most scenes. The bonus that comes with picking actors that I am familiar with is that they come with mannerisms, voice inflections, facial expressions, etc. that I am already familiar with, so those things are easy to add into the story when I am trying to write the action in a scene.  I tend toward lots of dialogue without much mention of what people are actually doing, so this is a big help.  Again, I clip the pictures of my characters into my Evernote notebook dedicated to the new book.  I create one note per person, with three or four pictures of the character and a notation to remind me the actor’s real name if I want to look them up again later.  Each of these notes will also come to contain a character sketch with important details about the character for my reference.

6. Enter the book on Nano

Sooner or later you have to go to the NaNoWriMo site and enter the details of the novel you are working on.  A title, short synopsis, and genre, to start with.  You can add more and make changes later.  Entering it before November means that you have fewer things to distract you from writing once November hits.

7. More ideas

If I need more ideas to add to my mindmap, whether at this point or earlier in the process, I will check out my “Story clip file” in Evernote.  This file is chock full of ideas for stories/books.  Some of them are brief one-line or one-phrase ideas that may have come from a dream, a phrase in a book, a wild idea while listening to a talk or lecture, etc.  The majority of the items in my clip file are news articles that I have come across and clipped using Evernote.  Interesting happenings, coincidences, criminal cases, social problems, etc.  You never know where you might come across a good idea.  It’s a good idea to have somewhere to put them for future reference.  If I have one I definitely want to use for the current novel, I’ll move the note to the appropriate notebook. If I think I might use it, or part of it, but I’m not sure, I’ll copy it to the appropriate notebook, retaining a copy in the clip file in case I want to use it later on in another book.

8. Cover art

The NaNoWriMo site gives you a place to upload cover art for your proposed book.  I am finding, as I have started to publish, that it is best to figure out what kind of image, title, and theme you want on your cover before diving into the writing of the story.  I want these aspects to be echoed throughout the text of the book, so it’s best to have them established in the beginning.  Easier than adding them in and reforming your text later.  And it’s fun.  Use whatever graphic program you have available to pull together a picture or two and throw a title on your cover.  Photoshop, Publisher, Gimp, even Paint.  Whatever you like.  It doesn’t have to be perfect, just a concept at this point.  Something to inspire you.  (That’s my concept cover for my NaNo book up top.)

9. Outlining

Outlining is something that I did not do for a lot of years.  My stories wandered around, and eventually resolved themselves.  I didn’t know what would happen next.  I didn’t know how it would end.  I still have some works in progress that have not been outlined.  It can be frustrating to try to figure out where the story was going.  But I had run into problems a couple of times when I had tried to outline a story, particularly a mystery.  Once I knew who did it or how, or how it ended, I wasn’t interested in writing the story any more.  But I have found compromises that still allow me to outline and to be surprised and keep my creative edge.

Snowflake

I use the Snowflake Method.  I have not yet bought the software or book, but I follow the method set out at http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com....  To an extent.  With all of the brainstorming and researching I have done up to this point, I have a pretty good idea of who the characters are and what the general theme of the book will be.  The Snowflake Method helps to pull together a synopsis and flesh out a rough outline of the three act structure, or however you want to define your storyboard.  I only do up to about step four of the Snowflake Method.  At that point, I go back to my mindmap, add anything else that has come up during the Snowflake Method drafting, and do a scene outline.

Scene Outline

I have done my Snowflake Method drafting in Evernote in the past and my scene outline in Excel.  But now that I have Scrivener for Mac, which will allow me to do my whole outline internally instead of in an Excel worksheet, I want to do as much of the drafting in Scrivener as possible.  So I have created my own novel template in Scrivener that includes a document template for each of the steps of the Snowflake Method, the Snowflake character sketch template, etc.

Then comes the outline.

In Scrivener you can look at your outline as index cards, a spreadsheet/table format, or notes (scenes) within folders (chapters).  Each is just a different view, you don’t have to rewrite anything to move from one to the other.  You can drag and drop scenes around to reorder them as you please.  Now that I have Scrivener for Mac, I can make use of custom metadata fields (which are not available in the Windows version).  So I have added fields for timeline date, setting, and point of view for each scene.  The timeline date will allow me to keep track of how much time has lapsed between each scene, and will allow me to sort scenes by date, even if in the book they are out of order (i.e. flashbacks, backstory, etc.)  Keeping track of setting and point of view just helps to keep things well structured, consistent where consistency is needed, and varied where variety is required.

Looking at my mindmap, I will start to make a list of all of the scenes that I foresee needing in the book. These will tend to be incredibly vague.  And that’s okay, because I need to be sure not to kill my creativity!  For example, in the outline for the book I wrote in July (“Stand Alone”), I have a card/scene descriptors such as:

nightmares/memories
scene developing character trait ___________
interview with psychologist
remembering Christian
hates ___________
hospital
predators
behavior shows she is _______________
the skaters

(Blanks replace the actual behaviors and traits to avoid spoilers! You don’t want to know the author’s intent behind building each scene.)  Some authors make long, detailed descriptions of each scene.  Mine are just things that need to be established to move the storyline from A to B, without a clear decision on exactly what action is going to occur.  A card that is labeled “anger issues” may end up being about pizza, loud music, and an argument over what the psychologist said.  While I know that a particular character dies before the beginning of the book, I may have only a vague idea about how, and the actual writing of the flashback to the character’s death is a creative venture I can really sink my teeth into, not knowing from one line to the next how it is going to end, other than in the death of the character.  Lots of tension, foreshadowing, etc. gets built into the scene because of what I know and what I don’t know.

I may also have only a vague idea of how the story is going to end at this point.  I had “Stand Alone” split into three parts.  The first part was to establish the character, conflict, general story line, etc. and was fairly detailed. The second part was about a major event/conflict, and had only three or four notes attached to it. The third part was the resolution, and when I started writing, I don’t think I even had one note attached to it.  I knew generally where my protagonist would end up, but not the events that would lead there.  As I worked through writing part one, I also added new notes and twists to part two and three, and as I wrote part two, added notes to part three.  One card/outline entry may be a simple, 500 word scene, or it may end up taking 5,000 words and multiple scenes to accomplish the purpose on the card.  It all depends.

10.       Write!

By the time I am halfway through the process, I am excited and raring to go!  When I have my characters cast, a concept cover drafted, and an outline (or partial outline) mapped out, I can barely contain myself.  As snippets of conversation, scene ideas, and various other twists and turns occur to me, leaking out of an overpressurized brain, I make quick notes in Evernote and wait for November 1 to roll around.  By the time it gets here, I am all revved up, straining on the chain, just waiting to be released.

In July (Camp Nano, when I write another book…) I was on a family vacation for half of the month, and I knew that working my writing in around travels and visits was going to be a challenge.  Since I needed to have my manuscript available on whatever device I could use while in the car, a mall, a library, a bedroom, or a hotel, I had my outline and manuscript all in Evernote ,with the scenes numbered for sorting.  Since I only had Evernote for Windows there was no way to synchronize my manuscript between Scrivener and my other devices (iPhone, iPad, etc.)  Evernote I could keep synchronized between all devices.  Then I imported into Scrivener when we were back from vacation.

Now that I have Evernote for Mac, I am taking advantage of the “sync to folder” function, and I sync text copies of my manuscript to Dropbox.  My iPad and iPhone use “Notebooks” to sync, view and edit the text documents while I am on the run, so whether I am on the bus, in the car, out for a run, or in the park, I can make a few quick changes, write a scene, etc. and stay up to date.  And since my new MacBook Air is small and has a battery life of longer than the five minute battery life of my old laptop, it is also easy to take with me to write in the car or at remote locations.

Happy writing!  Feel free to buddy with me at nanowrimo.org (search, profiles, pdw)

You never thought it would come, but here it is! “Looking Over Your Shoulder” has now been published in Kindle format on Amazon:

Very cool to see my own book up!

What you can do to help

This may seem obvious, but I’ll lay it out anyway.  All of these steps will help me to market “Looking Over Your Shoulder” and make it a success:

Share it – share this blog post or the Amazon link with your friends and social networks.  Tweet, post, share, plus, e-mail, or word of mouth.  All are important ways to get the word out.
Buy it – all sales on Amazon help to boost the books’ rankings so that it shows up higher on Amazon’s lists and recommendations.  And, you know, I’d like you to have a copy!  If you can’t afford the steep price tag ($3.99) then wait for a promo, or let me know that you would like to review it for me.  I’ll make sure you get a copy.
Read it – although the act of reading it won’t actually increase sales or visibility, reading it is sort of the whole point.  And you can’t do the next steps without first reading it.
Review it – post a review to Amazon.com, Shelfari, GoodReads, or whatever other book review site you participate in.  It doesn’t have to be a four or five star review.  Be honest.  Post whether you liked it or not and what you might have liked about it.  Reviews on Amazon.com help to increase its internal rankings.
Share it again – now that you’ve read it, you can say more than “my friend wrote this book”.  You can say “my friend wrote this awesome book and you have to read it!”

I’m looking forward to hearing from you after you have read “Looking Over Your Shoulder”!

I just wanted to get a quick post up to mention that my friend Sparrow has just published a book to Kindle:

Trust me, there will be some fascinating stuff in there.

And… have you seen my brilliant little hamster marketing assistant?

Is there a big hamster scene in my next book?  Well, no.  Various rodents have played bit parts in a few of my books, but sorry, no hamster protagonists.  ”Looking Over Your Shoulder” has a mention of a guinea pig… but no hamsters.

New Title: “Looking Over Your Shoulder”

Just because you’re paranoid, that doesn’t mean someone isn’t out to get you. 

A victim of late-onset paranoid schizophrenia, Abe is losing his family as well as his mind. In the wake of one of the largest successful jewel heists in history, Abe is certain the jewel thieves are out to get him.  But are they really, or is he just losing the battle against his inner demons?

76,000 words, Action

Status: I wrote this one in April for Camp Nano.  I am editing this novel, getting it ready to publish.  This will be the first book that I publish (first to Kindle and then trade paperback!)  It is out for editing, the ebook and trade paperback covers are just being turned around, and then… I publish!  So excited!

One of the projects that I mentioned I am working on in my last post, but don’t have a summary up for yet is “Don’t Forget Steven”.  So here is a concept cover and teaser for you!

Things never have been easy for Steven. He accepted that, and just made the best of things. He might not have parents or a happy home. Or enough to eat most days. But at least he has a couple of loyal friends who stand by him and help out when they can. At least he has school, someplace he can go to escape the abuse.

Just when Steven thought things couldn’t get much worse, they did.

Steven is accused of murder. But that isn’t the worst part. The really bad part is not even knowing if he did it.

55,000 words, Young Adult

Status: Just went through a major rewrite on this one.  With the amount of back story I already have down, I could easily write a prequel later.  It’s in pretty good shape for final edit and publication!  The current title has a double meaning.  I kind of like clever book titles, but I wonder what you think of it?

I have so much writing, re-writing, and editing that I want to do now.  Right now. Projects that are active right now include:

Looking Over Your Shoulder – settled on my new title, sent out to two people for editing, and engaged a cover artist to design an eBook cover for me.  Worked on reformatting for publication to Kindle.  Also looking at possibilities for publishing trade paperback and audiobook versions.  It feels like it’s taking too long.  I want to get it done and get onto the next book!

Ruby, Through the Cracks – I’m doing a read-through of this one right now.  It’s a good story, but in need of some rewriting and polish. The rewrite will take longer than my recent rewrite of Deception (below), as it’s about three times as long, and I’ll probably add another 20,000-30,000 words in the rewrite.  This one will probably be the first of a series (there is already one sequel and a lot of back story),  and I need to pick a name for the series.  The rewrite will take a couple of weeks, at least.

Deception – I just did a rewrite of Deception.  It’s a fairly short read, but engaging. Also the first of a series, and I need both a new name for the book, and a name for the series.  When I was only writing for myself, all of my books were just called by the name of the protagonist, and I didn’t have to worry about titles!  This one is pretty good and can probably go out for editing once Looking Over Your Shoulder is out.

Stand Alone – Stand Alone is my newest novel, and a very good one at that!  I wrote it in July, left it for a month, and picked it up for re-read over the weekend.  It is tight and well-plotted, and an enjoyable book.  It will need some editing, of course, but nothing negative jumped out on re-read.  I’m eager and excited to get this one published.

That may be all of the books that I’ve posted as projects on this website so for, but I have also been working the last few days on:

Tamara – an unfinished work about a girl (convicted murderer) who gets out of juvenile detention and tries to return to a normal life. So far I have more back story written than the actual story line, but I’m having some fun with exploring the character.  I have not plotted this one out yet, it is currently just character driven.  But it needs some proper structure if it’s going to go anywhere!

Steven – rewrote this one and ran through edits and a considerable amount of back story over the last month.  It is in pretty good shape, and I should work on some concept covers and titles next.  I need to develop a good description, hook, back cover, etc.  Steven is a teen who has been charged with killing his abusive father.  What is the only thing worse than being charged with murder?  Not knowing whether or not you did it…

The problem is, I don’t have time to do it all right now!  I’d like to get three of these books published before the end of the year.  And there are only three months left, if you take out November, when I’ll be writing my next book for NaNoWriMo.  In addition to the work I am doing on these projects, I need to work on marketing, blogging, and social networking.  Next week I re-start homeschooling.  That will take a good portion of my “free” time.  And my responsibilities at church have changed, resulting in a steep learning curve, even if they don’t take any more time than my previous responsibilities.  But you know what I’d like to do instead?  I want to write all day.  No marketing, no homeschooling, no day job, no other responsibilities.  Just write… all day… write all kinds of great stuff, and do nothing else…

I just wanna write…

[image: Flickr Creative Commons Dwayne Bent]

The results of my poll to title my new book are in.  The two  top picks (tied for first) are:

 

What do you think?  These are concept covers only, image from Flickr Creative Commons.  Would you pick it up if you saw it on the shelf at the bookstore or library?  Or click if you saw it on Amazon/Kindle?  Do you prefer one above the other?

I’d like to hear your thoughts!