Half a Year Check-in: Thinking Beyond the Words

This year, I did something I’d never done before with my writing: I set goals.  I had taken one of Bob Mayer’s classes, and he stressed the importance of goals.  Most writers start writing a novel with the goal of “get published” and never think beyond that.  I didn’t for a long time.

But this is the time of thinking beyond the words to what’s going to get me out there.

I started 2012 thinking that I would have my contemporary fantasy/thriller Miasma done by now, and I’d be working on a second book.  Then I ran across a local critique group, and well … my world building needed more world building.  What I thought was a lot of world building for me was not even enough to be adequate.  Too many indie writers toss their books out before they’re really ready, so I had to go back and revise.

My muse hated it.  It was bored, and it’s been a struggle to get through yet another revision of this story.  I had struggled through massive word count issues with this book, got it to completed draft, and submitted it to agents.  But when an agent gave me a personal response with comments, it hit me that everything I did to get the word count up had hurt the book a lot.  I wasn’t sure how to solve the problem, and I took the book through Holly Lisle’s How to Revise Your Novel.  Even with that, it still had problems that have been challenging to resolve.

After going to ConTemporal last month, it made me rethink what my actual goals are.  Originally, I’d started in short stories, but the market changed a lot.  I kept hearing that agents wanted to see writing credits that were in the same genre family, and none of the paying magazines were taking what I was writing.   At the time, I saw magazines that didn’t pay and made it sound like they were doing the writers a favor by publishing them at all.  I also thought some of the problems I was having making novels work were habits from short stories (some of which is true), and I was having trouble managing the time between short stories and novels.  So I put short stories on hold and haven’t really been published in years because I’ve been working on novels.

That didn’t set too well with me.  With novels taking so long to write, I still need to get visibility.  I decided to take a few weeks off the novel and do short stories and articles, some of the result of which has been Sand Dollar Wishes (my grandmother died the day after I wrote this story), a short story called Death Seer in submission to anthology, and Balancing Writing and Blogging, which was accepted at Vision.  A fourth is waiting to be critiqued and submitted by the end of the month.  As shocking as it sounds, I’m not going to worry if the magazine pays or not.  I want my stories to be out there.  Pay is nice, but being out there is more important to me.  I can either not be published and hoping for payment, or be published and be out there.

These are my revised goals for the rest of the year:

• Get stories and articles submitted where ever they fit.
• Go to at least one more science fiction convention this year.
• Try to figure out how to apply my revision successes with short stories to a novel so it can get done faster.
• Figure out how to balance writing a novel with getting out short stories and articles on a regular basis.
• Do more to promote myself — but in ways that are me and aren’t going to be the constant marketing that a lot of writers are doing.

For the last one, I’ve been making an effort to get one of my publications into my blog posts now that some are available for you to read.  I’ve also been changing up my signature line on some writing message boards to give visibility to these stories.  I’ve also included links to specific blog posts.

Where are you at in your half a year mark?  Has anyone done short stories and novels together?  How do you balance them?  Post your comments below.

 

2012 Goals

Since 2011 is coming to an end, here’s a list of my long-term goals and short-term goals for the coming year.  I’ve read about goals, both in business training and from my recent Self-Publishing class from Bob Mayer.  Goals should be measurable, so that it’s easy to tell if progress is being completed.

Long-Term Goal (5 Years)

• Sell a million copies of books.  I thought about “Be a best-selling writer,” but there isn’t a definition of what “best selling is.”  Each of the lists is calculated differently, and not always by any metrics.

2012 Goals

Overall goal:  Finish 3 books by the end of 2012 (Miasma, Hunger, and Hunted).  This is extremely aggressive because of problems I’ve had with getting the stories to work (Miasma was started in 2008).  To accomplish this goal, I have been rethinking both my creation and revision process.

Each of the books has the steps broken down:

1. General research on setting and major elements only before I started writing the book.  On Miasma, I spent a considerable amount of time researching auctions for one scene, and the scene was deleted in the final draft.  At the same time, I didn’t research the setting, and I ended up doing that in final draft.
2. Assemble list of at least 75 last names based on setting before I start writing.  During Miasma, if I needed a last name. I stopped writing to hunt for a name.  That took considerable time out of the story, and I ended up tossing a lot of characters in the final revision.  The last name list uses obituaries, so it can be done a little at a time over months and easily reused for a future story in the same setting.
3. Finish first draft.
4. Do a fast-pass edit of the first draft.   I don’t outline, and my creativity is a lot like throwing paint at the wall.  Ideas don’t always come in the right order, and sometimes what comes in obviously shouldn’t be there.  This was never more clear on Miasma where I had stubs for over 50 subplots (mostly a paragraph or a sentence), and it interfered with figuring out what was wrong with the story.  So a fast-pass editing is sort of like a quick dusting to clean up to make the revision easier.
5. Revise the novel in one draft.  I spent a lot of time in Holly Lisle’s How to Revise Your Novel Course learning new things to make this work.  I will also be taking Bob Mayer’s writing course in January for more take aways.
6. Do a fast-pass edit of the final revision.  The stuff still creeps in there!
7. Do a through edit.
8. Get professional edit done.
9. Proofread, proofread.

Attend four science fiction conventions by the end of 2012 to understand how to leverage for book promotion.  I’ve identified about ten, five of which are local.  The first is in mid-January.  The deciding factor has been cost and distance.

Identify three more books to be waiting in the dugout.  Have two already:  Aurora and A Soldier’s Diary.

What are you goals for 2012?

 

Word Count Goals and Stuff

Since it’s November and many writers are doing Nanowrite, there’s been a lot of discussion of daily word count goals.  Daily word counts always make me a bit queasy because years ago I was trying to break into Hollywood and burned myself out with such a goal.  Admittedly, the goal was too aggressive, and I also didn’t stop to recharge at all — but the goal helped contribute to the burn out.

But some form of goals are a necessary evil so the book actually gets written.   Bob Mayer has a great post on the topic:

I see people who do #nanowrimo (National Novel Writing Month) where they try to write a certain number of words each day, every day and I have two views of that:  it’s good they are getting words down.  But are they the type of writer who works that way?  I know writers who don’t write every day, but work in creative bursts.  They might not write for a week, then knock out 20,000 words in three days.  #nanowrimo doesn’t work for them.  Stephen King says he write 10 pages a day.  That’s great for him.  Does it work for you?

I honestly don’t know how someone can do ten pages a day.  I’d focus on getting ten pages done, instead of getting the scene done right.  So I’m thinking of using a time-based goal.  I have one on my revision of Miasma, which is to finish it by the end of December.

It’s been better for me than a traditional word count goal.  It’s revision, so it’s included a lot of times where I’ve had to take wordage out.  It’s a little demoralizing looking at Scrivener’s words for the day and discovering that it’s -1,302!  Yet, I did a lot of work, but the word count sure doesn’t show it.  How does a writer even meet a word count goal when removing words?

Have you faced these kinds of issues when writing your book?  What did you come up with?

 

My Writing Goals

I’m taking an online course from Bob Mayer and Jen Talty called Self-Publishing Options to explore and gain knowledge about whether indie publishing is right for me.   One of the things that we’ve had to do for the course is come up with our strategic goals.  When I worked with a cowriter, we both joked about being goal-less people.  I think some of that comes from being right-brained — there’s so many things to try that are fun that it’s hard to pin down one thing.

Anyway, here are the revised goals I came up with:

Overall strategic goal: I want a comfortable income coming in for my writing. I’d like to make enough money to live off of — I hear that a lot from writers — but I’m focusing on a more realistic goal.

To get to the above goal:

By the end of the year:

Finish Miasma.  I keep getting antsy to finish — it feels like it’s taking forever.  But, from the time I started the write-in after finshing Holly Lisle’s How to Revise Your Novel, it’s taken 8 months.

By the end of 2012:

Finish two more (shorter) books by the end of 2012.  That’s a very aggressive goal for me, considering my revisions have measured in years.  But I’ve tried to work very hard on learning the right things that will help cut that time down.  Plus, with indie publishing, I can hit 50-60K instead of battling up to 90K.  If I can do that goal, I’ll have not one but three books.

Get to 1,500 followers on Twitter.  I just popped over 300 now.  I’m not sure if 1,500 is too aggressive or not aggressive enough, so I might change that.

Annually:

Attend 4 science fiction conventions.  I used to go as a fan of TV shows, but stopped because the fans got kind of nutty.  But now I would go as a writer.  There are five in my area during the year, including Marscon (Williamsburg), Mysticon (Roanoke, lllooonnngg drive), Ravencon (Richmond), Shore Leave (Maryland), and  Balticon (guess where that is).

Take 2 writing/promotion classes a year.  It’s always important to keep learning new things.  I have a friend who has been acting for more than fifty years (semi-retired now), who was still taking acting classes.  I’m already ahead on that goal for this year, with 4 classes:

• How to Revise Your Novel with Holly Lisle (6 months)
• How to Think Sideways with Holly Lisle (6 months)
• How to Write Fight Scenes Masterclass with Alan Baxter (90 minutes)
• Self-Publishing Options (6 weeks)

This one is largely based on availability of useful courses within a reasonable price.  I’m considering taking one coming available early next year, but I’m also wary of taking any that just promotes “You must outline” and doesn’t provide something for me.

Do you have any goals?  What are they?

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I hope you’ll also drop in on my article “Organizing a Novel When You’re Right-Brained,” in Vision: A Resource for Writers.  I made a lot of discoveries about my organizational processes that turned out to be quite important.