The Biggest Problem is Between the Keyboard and the Chair

 

My greatest writing challenge. Hmm. How much time do you have? I've been through a list in my head. I thought about saying 'drafting' which is true, but it's a symptom. Not the root cause. Okay. So then I thought about claiming that carving time out to write was my greatest challenge but that leads to the fact that I'm stupidly slow to write. Which again, is a symptom, not the root cause. All of these lead back to one single factor and that's me. I'm the problem.

My brain is addicted to getting it right. No. I don't know what 'it' is. But my brain is wired to believe that there's  a Right and a Wrong way to put a story together. Can we all agree there are a million ways to tell the same story and none of them is wrong or right? Can we tell my brain? My head believes I'm a terrible person and will be haunted for the rest of my life if I get my story wrong. I wrote all that and I know it's not a rational way to live life. But there it is. My single greatest writing challenge: spending an hour over a single paragraph trying to get the words  and the feeling of it just right.

To top this nonsense off, I add in a day job, a house perpetually full of too many people, and a deeply introverted nature that gets zero true alone time. It's a recipe for a great big mess. Which is an apt description of the situation.

It did take some time for me to realize that writing requires me to unmask. I can't give over brain space to characters and conflict and still maintain a pleasant expression. Can't do it. I need to be able to be completely unmask the autism while I write and the utter lack of expression (or what gets taken as a mean expression) makes the fam SUPER uncomfortable.

I almost highlighted and deleted this whole blog post because my brain is telling me that this isn't what anyone wanted to know or read. I should just write a light, surface piece about how I find drafting to be difficult and what steps I take to work through it. I'm resisting that voice. Maybe what I'm posting is wrong. Or dull. Or too random or whiny or whatever else these synapses and electrical currents are trying to get me to buy. Fine. I'll be all those things.

To address the situation, I'm building fences around writing time - time when I can close and lock a door and everyone else can adult while I write. The next step is to close out distractions - for one hour of writing time, I have the work computer on, too, and that is not at all an ideal situation. That needs to be handled. I've made a bargain with myself to free write scenes a couple of different ways so I can pick the bits that hit just right from all of them. It's still slow - but it's faster than agonizing word by word and sentence by sentence. I'm slowly working for speed again. It'll take a bit before I actually talk about speed but at least there's a plan and a framework. I'm also working on allowing myself to feel my way through a scene rather than worrying about how it sounds. I have a long term goal of kicking the day job to the curb. It's barely a shine of a rising star on the horizon, but it is there. Step by step. Word by word. I'm following that star.

To Nap or Not To Nap

It’s fully summertime with its 90 degree Fahrenheit heat and activities! So it’s quite fortuitous that our topic of the week is to identify our greatest writing challenge. Are you aware of yours?

Do you struggle to get writing done during certain seasons or holidays? I know many authors who take off around the winter holidays—too much egg nog and twinkling lights to ignore! And I know some authors, like myself, who have kids home in the summer—which is a time demand to work around. 

The warmest season of the year is a tricky for me to carve out writing time, but I’ve come to rely on practices or tournaments that allow me to find a patio or bench for me and my laptop. But it’s not my greatest writing challenge. Energy is. 

I have a chronic disease and depending on where my iron levels are at, my energy tends to tank in the afternoons. Not merely a little run down, but a full on brain e-break stop. 

Energy dips are a known thing for me and if I’m going to be productive, for anything, I need to plan around my physical capabilities and make sure I’m eating and drinking what my body needs to ride that rollercoaster back up to the top. Some days my challenge wins out, and that’s okay. Because I know that there’ll be inverse days where I’m able to get more done than anticipated.

Having a writing challenge doesn’t have to mean you stop. Yes, it can be very difficult, but allow yourself grace and time to figure out how to work with it. 

May your weekend be filled with words!

Trusting the Creative Process

 Happy Summer Solstice, all!

This week at the SFF Seven, we're talking about our greatest writing challenge and how we manage it.

In some ways, this is a moving target for me, because it seems that - like clockwork - each book presents its own challenge. With 64 published titles under my belt, I feel like I should have this process down and there shouldn't be surprises.

No such luck.

What I have to constantly remind myself is that the creative process is its own creature. It's this connection to something beyond ourselves and thus is not within our control. Particularly for a writer like myself - I am incapable of pre-plotting and write for discovery, relying entirely on intuition - letting go of that desire to control is critical. It can also be difficult, especially when I'm trying to write to a particular idea or market.

For example, I recently wrote one-hundred pages of a book for my agent, according to a very particular comp. Let's call it Ghost meets Out of Africa. (That is NOT it, but that's one of my all-time favorite fictional comps. Points if you can name the movie it's from.) In thinking about this project, I consulted my friend, Melinda Snodgrass, incredibly talented novelist and screenwriter who counts among her credits the Star Trek: Next Generation episode The Measure of a Man. I asked her how closely I should follow the beats of Ghost, if at all. She gave me an incredulous look and asked why, when I had a hugely successful story blueprint right there, I would do anything but follow those beats?

So, I tried.

Turns out that, not only am I incapable of pre-plotting, I also can't follow an outline to save my life. I struggled to write that book. Having the story laid out in essence should have made it easier. Instead it made it 1,000x worse. For me. Because that's not my process. Once I abandoned that outline (sorry, Melinda) and followed my intuition, the words began flowing.

That's the major challenge for me: remembering to trust the process. Particulars change with every book. This principle endures.

Beginnings: The Hardest Necessity

 This Week's Topic: What is my greatest writing challenge and how do I manage it?

My greatest writing challenge, eh? {Ponders long list of difficulties and I-don't-wanna-have-to-do-its} Uhm. Hmm. For me, the hardest part of writing has to be...

Beginnings. 

Yep, you read that right. The beginning of the story damn near defeats me every time. Ya know, that really necessary, can't possibly be skipped, gotta-hunker-down-write-it start of the tale? Yep. That's my biggest challenge. Occasionally, the torment only lasts through Chapter One; but, more often than not, the entire first arc is a cluster of TMI fuckery. I'm info dumping, introducing more characters than died at the Red Wedding, blathering backstory blargle, and extending a 3k-5k chapter into 10k+ diatribe. Phil Collins is screaming about the Land of Confusion as I manically repeat, "just get the words on the page, you can fix this disastrophy later."

Word vomit. That's how I manage to overcome my biggest challenge. Pretty image, innit? Alas, there is nothing pretty--much less redeemable--in the early attempts of any of my stories' beginnings. I keep writing and rewriting them until I've become familiar enough with my characters and their GMCs to concisely tell--make that show--the reader the bare minimum of what they need to know to advance to the next chapter. Okay, okay, okay. "Bare minimum" is subjective, and viewed through the lens of my now thoroughly immersed experience of the fantastical world I'm creating. 

That's the catch. That's the root of the problem and the only way to address it. I have to become completely immersed in the world as seen through the POV character's mind in order to sift out the extraneous until I'm left with the salient. Only then am I certain of where, when, and how their journey starts. 

My opening chapters are in a constant state of revision until I've finished drafting the book. Making it to The End is how I know the evolution of my characters as shaped by the world I've created. Once I've experienced the protagonist's full story, I'm finally capable of extending a hand to the reader and asking them to come along on our adventure. 

For me, the first chapter written is the last chapter completed. 

Beginnings are hard. 

Pinch Points - Force of Change

 

Two nights ago, one of my cats alerted me to an interloper in our backyard. I caught a glimpse of this youngster at left. I grabbed my trap and had him within the hour. He's cute and terrified. He went into foster care today with someone who has no other pets and who doesn't have a day job, a book to write, and ill parents to tend. (The past two weeks have been a lot.) This guy - oh, yes. He's male. No doubt about that or the fact that he's intact - made up for some of the stress. He's a teenaged cat at that point where he looks like he's made from mismatched spare parts. His head is too big for his body. His legs are too long and skinny for the rest of him. It makes him adorable and a little comical at the same time. He will be looking for home the southeast region once I have him neutered and vaxxed.

 

On to the business of the blog! This week, you'll be able to divide us into two camps - the plotters and the pantsers - just based on our response to the Pinch Point question. As if you didn't already know.

Pinch Points are a structural device that gives an author an opportunity to bring an antagonist into direct opposition to the protagonist with the sole intent of showing up the protagonist's short comings. If we think about story and character arc forcing a protagonist to change, the pinch point is the place where the protagonist finds out *why* change is necessary: Throughout most of our novels, the protagonist doesn't have the skills to overcome the antagonist. If they did, we'd write mighty short stories. Our heroes need to grow into their roles. They need to become something more in order to best whatever obstacles are arrayed against them. Yet our heroes will fight stepping up at every turn.

Humans are weird animals. You'd think we'd be all about change given that adaptation and flexibility confers evolutionary advantage. If we can't adapt, we die. Yet we have to be dragged kicking and screaming to change. Our characters are no different. They must be forced to change. Pinch Points are one of the ways an author can force a character to transform in some way. 

All of this to say that no. I don't consciously use them, much less plan them. It depends entirely on what a story needs. Some stories are about the inevitable march of a character's choices and actions leading them, step by inexorable step into the climax of the story. There's a Sarah McLachlan song with a line that says "Where every step I took in faith betrayed me." I used that as my plotting device for a couple of books because it interested me - could I have characters who made the absolute right choices in the moment only to have those choices rip them to shreds?

Right now, in the current WIP, Pinch Points fell by accident into my lap. The antagonists have POVs, and in those cases, they do act as catalysts to my protagonists. So I guess those are a kind of Pinch Point? I suspect they are Pinch Points by the letter of the law rather than in the spirit of it. Long way of saying if I have Pinch Points in this book, it's a freaking accident, but after the fact if you ask me, I'll totally claim I meant to do that.

Pinch Points: WTF Are They??

Our topic at the SFF Seven this week is: Pinch Points or small turning points. We're asking each other if we plan them, use them as foreshadowing, or just let the story flow?

So, I read KAK's excellent post from yesterday explaining WTF "Pinch Points" are and how she uses them. Spoiler: yes, she plans them out.

Cannot possibly be a spoiler for anyone who knows anything about me: No, I plan them, I might use them? 

YES, I LET THE STORY FLOW.

I swear, I need to start adding topics like "when you're intuitively letting the story flow, how do you.... " Except then I get stuck because there's just not a whole hell of a lot to say about writing intuitively. Yep, here I am, letting things flow. Still flowing. How will it end? I have no idea!

LOL.

Amusingly enough, however, what KAK explained in her detailed analytical post is pretty much the exact scene I wrote yesterday in my current manuscript: ONEIRA.

(If you haven't been following the podcast, ONEIRA is a Totally New Thing - new world, new magic system, unrelated to anything I've written so far. I've been calling it the book I'm not supposed to be writing - it fell on me from out of the sky and insisted on being written - but all of my friends have finally convinced me that clearly I am supposed to be writing it, so I'm trying not to say that anymore.)

It's almost eerie, how the scene I wrote yesterday matches exactly what KAK says the pinch point with the villain is supposed to do. But I didn't plan it at all. In fact, this scene introduced a new POV character and a new plot element, totally unexpected. But this is how I write and how I write this book in particular. It's insisting on doing all sorts of things that I haven't done before and don't expect and I've just surrendered and am going with it. Which actually makes this project really fun, because I'm just letting it be whatever it is and not worrying about reader expectations or where it will fit in the marketplace.

All of this is to say that we all have our own process. My mantra: figure out what your process is and own it. 

KAK loves to geek out on analysis, minutely controlling her stories down to pinches.

My stories just go their own way and I try to cling to the saddle. 

It's all good.

(Except sometimes I end up writing something I'm not supposed to be writing....)

Pinch Points: Villains Being Villainous

This Week's Topic: Pinch Points 

Do I plan them/use them as foreshadowing, or do I just let the story flow?

Hello, skeletal plotter here. Do I plan Pinch Points? Ayup. Why? Let's start with defining Pinch Points in story structure (as opposed to engineering constructs that intentionally cause traffic jams anywhere there is a flow of people or processes). 

Pinch Points are scenes that show the antagonist being an obstacle to the hero's ultimate goal or demonstrating how they are the oppositional entity. A Pinch Point makes the reader feel the horribleness of the antagonistic force before the nefariousness directly affects the hero. That's right, the flexibility with a Pinch Point is the villain doesn't need to abuse the hero or someone hero-adjacent to serve its purpose. The antagonist can absolutely be wretched to their own minion or to a completely unknown person, place, or ideal. A really good Pinch Point will show either the villain's strength that will be used to defeat the hero at the Bleak Moment or the antagonist's weakness that will be used to defeat them in the Final Conflict. Yes, that means strong Pinch Points will foreshadow the pivotal conflicts. 

Example: The king is a despot. He's got an itchy, burning sitch below the waist. The imperial physician tells him he has an STD, but no worries, it's easily treated. What the king hears is that he can't get it up (which the physician never says), so the tyrant beheads the physician on the spot. The king then orders his wife, daughters, and all the palace maids to be executed immediately. The reaction of the courtiers to this behavior is a reflection of privileged sentiment that may or may not align with the hero's perception of the king, but it is important to allude to potential allies or further complications. 

Note: The hero isn't one of the women of the palace, neither are their kith/kin. This moment isn't the cliché of sacrificing female family to motivate the hero. In this example, the king's behavior doesn't directly affect the hero, but it does demonstrate the king's strengths (unquestioned power that will be used to subdue the hero at the Bleak Moment) and the king's weaknesses (there are a lot in that example that can be used to fell the despot in the Final Conflict).

The Pinch Point doesn't have to be complex nor require a large chunk of word count; however, it does need to be a moment that evokes an emotional response from the reader. There's assorted story structure guidance out there that recommends two Pinch Points per story, one around the 30% mark and another at the 75% mark. The Pinch Points come halfway-ish to the Mid-Story Crisis and again halfway between the Mid-Story Crisis and the Final Confrontation. 

Okay, now that we know that Pinch Points are more than engineering Fuck Yous, how do I use them when plotting and in the story? Beyond showing the antagonist flexing their villainy, I use Pinch Points to:

• Remind the reader of the price of the hero's failure
• Prevent the story's pacing from dragging
• Stop me from detouring down a plot-irrelevant tangent

Pinch Points are wonderful structural aspects that can help you, as the author, fight against saggy middles and lost plot threads while enhancing a reader's love-to-hate-the-villian investment in the story. 

Managing My Word Count

Over the years, my habits for managing my word count have changed. What works one season doesn't always work another. But, even so, there are a few things I keep in mind to keep myself on track.

Micro Goal

Writing every day is a part of my routine and part of what brings me calm. I also like the idea of having an easy win. It gets me in a good mood. And, even if it's a high pain day or a day when everything has gone wrong, I can count on getting this little bit of success.

That micro goal is just 200 words. 

If I get 200 words done, it counts as a win. 

Those 200 words can be on anything I want as long as I am writing. Most of the time, it's the story that I am most excited to write (which is rarely the story I am actually writing). If I'm feeling especially stagnant, I'll write by hand in one of my beautiful notebooks. 

The other advantage of these 200 words is that they give me a way to warm up. Most of the time, I work on this first thing in the morning over a cup of tea or coffee. 

Project Targets

I am always working on multiple projects. One is usually in editing and another is in drafting, at a minimum. I set aside time for both, and for the drafting, I decide how many words I need by looking at the target word count for my project and the number of days I have left before I need the draft done for revisions and editing. 

Now, because I am a planster (I plan but also change things as I go), I'm not always so good at knowing an accurate word count. This means that sometimes I have to adjust as I go along, and the needed word count goes up or down. 

At the end of each day, I see how many words I have drafted overall. I then break that down into the words that will be usable in the final draft versus those that wound up being more useful for understanding characters or might go into a future story (I don't always write chronologically). Then I look at my running total and compare it to where I need to be to figure out how much I need to write the following day. 

Sprinting for the Win

Perhaps one of the most helpful things in getting in the words is sprinting with friends. I absolutely love it, and it's so easy. You find a group, pick a time when at least one other person can show up, and you sprint for a time.

During this segment, your goal is to get the words down. No editing or critiquing. Just drafting.

At the end of your time, you all report in your word counts. Then, if you like, you go again. I have a couple friends I sprint with now almost every weekday. Sometimes for a couple hours at a time. It makes the drafting less lonely, and it also instills an added level of accountability. 

Ideal length of time varies. For me, 15 minutes is best. Anything longer than that, and I get antsy and need to stretch or move around.

Have Understanding for Delays and When Things Go Wrong

No matter what your goals are, make sure to give yourself some compassion in this journey. Don't chain yourself to those numbers, whatever they are. Yes, you may be in a time of tight deadlines in which you have to burn the candle at both ends and even in the middle. But that is not sustainable.

I know because I've been there and narrowly scraped through. And then it takes a long time to recover. 

So when making my plans for managing word counts, I now allow for things to go wrong. A friend loves to remind me that we never have to plan for things to go ideally. I'm still not certain how to factor delays in as well as I could because I am learning. But I try to only count on weekdays for writing (even though I do write on weekends) and lately I have been leaving at least two extra weeks for whatever needs to be done. 

The combination of micro and project goals allows me to meet the various deadlines, some of which are of my own creation and some of which are with other people. And they also help me to do it in a way that is sustainable and healthy while allowing me to reach my goals. 

What about you? How do you like to manage your word count and project goals?

 

Jessica M. Butler is a USA Today bestselling romantic fantasy author who never outgrew her love for telling stories and playing in imaginary worlds. She lives with her husband and law partner, James Fry, in rural Indiana where they are quite happy with their two cats and all of the wildlife and trees.