Some may have been wondering why I’ve been putting out a bunch of short poems with the hashtag #TMMPoetry – well, nobody asked me, but I figured I’d let ya know anyway :) It comes from an NPR promotion from their Tell Me More program.
Here at TELL ME MORE, we will once again commemorate National Poetry Month with “Muses and Metaphor,” a series combining two of our passions, poetry and social media, and we need your help.
I don’t even know if this is still ongoing, but Baby Mama told me about it and I liked the idea. It gave me a reason to try some off-the-cuff short verse again. I notice some have just used snippets from larger poems, but I like to make mines up on the spot and see what I get. Most of the ones I write are in iambic heptameter or some form of fourteener, and some are just free verse.
Time glances once, upon itself It wonders what exists Outside it’s ever coiling noose It’s hoping to find bliss
@SilencioBarnes SilencioBarnesPro Aris| Somewhere in a desert/ A soldier bleeds not knowing why/ For God’s and Country’s lies/ He does not question why he dies #TMMPoetry Apr 22 via webFavoriteRetweetReply
Pro Aris
Somewhere in a desert A soldier bleeds not knowing why For God’s and Country’s lies He does not question why he dies
Moments have been contrasted With forevers mi amor And though this moment lasted I ask for a moment more
@SilencioBarnes SilencioBarnesWash these hands with yours,/ let the soiled water fall and drain/ Leave behind a pure/ cleanliness, that puts the gods to shame #TMMPoetry Apr 23 via webFavoriteRetweetReply
Wash these hands with yours, let the soiled water fall and drain Leave behind a pure cleanliness, that puts the gods to shame
I’ll add more as I write more, so stay tuned to this space :)
When I started, I was on a small vacation from work. Unfortunately, when I started back up at the 9 to 5, the writing stagnated. I did do a lot of thinking about my story, and that’s good. But thinking about it ain’t writing it.
It’s not just the regular job though. I heard several times that for writers, especially discovery writers, the story might not make itself apparent until you are several thousands of words in. I can attest to that and say it is absolutely true. Approaching the 30,000-word mark, I started to finally see the beginning of the shape of my story. That disturbed me…greatly.
30,000 words is a lot of words. I did not want to think that all of this writing was for nothing. Keep in mind that I said that I am only just STARTING to see the SHAPE of my story.
That means I have 30,000 words that are pretty much worthless. And it also means that I hit a stumbling block. Everything in me wants me to just start the whole thing over from the beginning with all of the changes I need to make. I need to make my main character more of a dick. I need to start further back in the timeline than I initially started with. I need to set up the situation in a completely different way than I originally intended. I need to start from scratch.
But all of the masters have told me that I need to keep going forward. I need to finish this rough draft.
Two things here: First is that statement about going back in the timeline and the other is the idea of a rough draft.
Timeline. A constant failure of mines is thinking too far back. Stories are supposed to begin when something changes. Unfortunately, I tend to think of everything in epic scale. For instance: I had an idea for an epic fantasy series. I started writing it as I do most things. No forethought, just sit down, start typing, and see what comes out. Well, once I started typing, I started thinking of all the things that happened to lead up to that current moment. I had a female protagonist, but then I thought about her parents. What was it about them that made her who and what she was? Well, thinking of her parents led me to conjuring up an entire epic fantasy series dealing with her father and his cousin. Yes…a whole trilogy.
Plotting out that series in my mind, I THEN had an idea for an epic fantasy SERIES that dealt with the progenitor of one of the secondary characters. This would be a series that took place in the far distant past. So I started thinking on that. Overwhelmed by it all, I just gave up altogether, but I never stopped thinking about all three epic storylines. But do you see the utter madness of it? That’s why in my previous post, I said I realized that I was not ready for the epic fantasy.
And this problem of mines has come back to haunt me. Once I started realizing the shape and path of my current story, my mind just started adding to it and adding to it. I wanted this to be a single book with a beginning, middle and end. But the more I think about it and the more I create, the more there is to add. I am already thinking about setting up things that will not bear any fruit until book 3 or 4. But I haven’t even made my way through book 1 yet! It makes me want to just stop altogether.
The other thing is the rough draft. From what I can see, the terms “first” and “rough” are interchangeable. But I’m starting to suspect that discovery writers always have the burden of writing at least one extra draft. I know that when I make it through this very rough draft, it is probably not going to be anything like a coherent story. This is my rough draft. When I’m done, I’ll have to turn it into my first draft. Once I do that, then I will be able to really dig into it and start the process of putting it together correctly.
And that’s ANOTHER thing that has me frozen like a deer in the headlights. I suppose for some, this must come easy. But to me, it’s one of the hardest things I have ever attempted.
So the writing has stagnated. I started writing this post a few days weeks ago. In the meantime, I’ve been doing some writing ABOUT my story, but no actual story writing. As I stated above, the problem is that the story has changed. I don’t know how to continue with the writing.
To give an example: I figured out a few things about my main two characters, which changes everything that I have written about them previously. Now, how do I continue with what I am writing when the things I am writing about are no longer true to the story? Do you see what I’m saying?
I had three ideas to try to make it through.
Continue writing, but just change the character interactions to match what they should be. The problem with that is, because the characters are drastically different, certain events that I have already written and ones that I am currently writing will also be drastically different. Some scenarios probably won’t happen at all. So it would be silly to just change up the character motivations, language, thought processes etc.
Just jump forward in the story to a scene that I know will happen and write from there. This idea appealed to me the most. It made the most logical sense. But it would still leave a lot of unwritten stuff that I would have to get to eventually anyway. I still want that stuff there so I can be more grounded in what comes later.
Outline, as best I can, all of the events from start up until the current point in the story. That way, I will have the skeleton of the story there for me to reference. With that in place, I can continue from where I left off just like idea #1.
I figure I could go with all three ideas. I can outline the new backstory and early chapters up until the point where I currently am, and then I can jump just a little bit forward in the story and just go from there. Of course, once I make it to the end, I can go back and rewrite the whole beginning.
Does any of that make sense? Even with my many split infinitives and sentences that begin with conjunctions? Well, it makes sense to me. And it’s for me that I’m writing this blog post…so there :P
Oh yea, in my last post I promised you people links! I’ll add them to the next post. I’ve been sitting on this post for so long, I figured I’d just get it out. I will add some audio like I promised though :)
I wrote an article about freenovel and fictionwriting software. If everything is working properly, you should have been automatically redirected to it…if not, here’s the link below :) It’s just a list of a few free programs that I personally use.
In the spirit of finishing all the old stuff and not starting new stuff, I have been working on a fiction story I started and then abandoned previously. It’s a piece of contemporary urban fantasy that I started for NaNoWriMo last year and then put to the side after only a few thousand words.
I spent years thinking about and coming up with ideas for an epic fantasy, but realized that I just wasn’t ready skillwise to write it, so I decided to get back to this story tentatively titled Rattle and Thump:) I figured it would be short, and good for practice.
Patricia T. O'Conner on First Drafts
The reason for this blog post is so that I can talk to myself about what it is I’m doing. This is my first serious attempt at writing a whole novel. I’m having some trouble with it and honestly, this shit is hard. I’m about 20,000 words in and I’m shooting for about 100,000 which I can probably chop down to 80-90,000 once it’s done.
So, like I was saying, this is just me talking to myself about what’s going on with this story. I wanted to keep a record. Maybe it can also help new writers figure out how to get started with their own stuff.
First off, I’m something of a discovery writer. That means I tend to not plot and outline ahead of time. I just write and see where it goes. The downside of this is that there’s a good chance that a large chunk of what I’m writing is going to disappear when I start the next draft. That is to say, a big chunk of the discovery process is…discovering. So that’s a lot of fruitless writing. However, I also do outline a little. I just do it as I go, as things change in the story. Once I can see where I’m headed, then I can start outlining more and plotting ahead more.
To put this in perspective, when I started writing, I had a definite ending in my mind and a start. However, I had no idea how I would get from one to the other. So I just started writing. After a few thousand words, I have a bunch of new ideas, and I know the material slightly better. Now I have several little scenarios that I know must happen to bridge the gap between beginning to end. So the challenge becomes how do I get from A to B in order to eventually reach Z.
This creates a new set of issues. I don’t even fully know what’s going on yet, and my characters haven’t become human yet, that is to say, I barely know them. The fantasy elements are also a problem. I’m not sure of what type of magic system or what types of beings populate this world. I’m 20k words in and I’m still not absolutely sure if I’ll have the vampires and werewolves and shit like everybody else.
But to go back to the A to B thing. In trying to get to B. In making that attempt, I learn a bunch of new things and the story moves much differently than I expected. Now that changes my pseudo outline and even my ending and also my beginning. I’m not sure, but I think this might be something that stops a lot of writers. Because now, the desire to go back and start over is really strong. You want to make the stuff you wrote previously match the stuff you’re writing now. However, all of the years of writing advice I ever heard tells me this one thing: Finish the rough/first draft!
That is the advice I’m following. I am going to finish this draft before I change anything at all. If I get caught up constantly going back and changing shit and rewriting things, then I’ll never finish. And I’ll also get bored with it, a problem that I am very, very prone to (hence the whole getting old stuff finished thing).
Ernest Hemingway on Writing the First Draft
On a more nuts and bolts level, I’m noticing that it is very, very easy for me to fall into passive voice. I use it all the time. And as somebody that writes articles and copy for others, I realize this is the 666. But I can’t help it. That means that when I go back to do the second draft, I’m sure it’s going to be a super tedious, sentence by sentence rewrite…and that scares me.
One thing that I didn’t realize, and a lot of writing books and writing podcasts don’t talk about it, is that I’m supposed to be writing in scenes. It seems obvious, but it came to me as something of an epiphany. I always thought of chapters flowing from one to the other with each chapter technically being something of a scene. But then I realized that each chapter itself is made up of a series of scenes. I came to understand that was the missing element preventing me from seeing how to segue from one point to another. I didn’t have to write everything between A and B, I just needed to write a series of individual scenes that steer the narrative that way.
This record is my attempt to tell myself that I’m serious this time. I can’t get better unless I write and I have to finish one of these stories. Besides, I may be gone before 2012 lets out. I want to at least make an attempt at doing something I love. Let’s see how it goes and how far we can take it. Unfortunately, working on this story and thinking about it constantly has stalled my work on a bunch of other, non-related stuff…but we’ll figure it out.
If you have any questions about this process, or want me to get into more detail about something particular, feel free to leave a message here or drop me a line and I’ll answer. Maybe we can figure this craziness out together! :)
In the next post, I’ll add a bunch of links to people more accomplished and talented than me talking about writing first and rough drafts. I may even add some audio.
This is just a quick recording I did on my phone. I wanted to create a test post but couldn’t think of anything. So tonight, while at work on a cigarette break I recorded this little thing about words and actions. It’s completely off the cuff and may even seem a bit incoherent. I was just rambling. I like the subject though and may revisit this theme in the future with something a bit more cohesive :)
Since I recorded it on a phone and I’m at work, I couldn’t really clean it up. I downloaded a free copy of Audacity just to do a quick noise reduction and I encoded the mp3 with LameXP – both very useful and very free tools.
What I’m talking about in the audio is the difference between words and actions. About how we tend to see the words as actions and not the real actions themselves. In fact, there’s a lot I’d like to say on the subject. Maybe I’ll get back to this sooner than later.
I wrote an article about this television series on another site. If everything is working properly, you should have been automatically redirected to it…if not, here’s the link below :)
I wrote an article about this televisionseries on another site. If everything is working properly, you should have been automatically redirected to it…if not, here’s the link below :)
The John Cleaver series is a trilogy of books by author Dan Wells. They are supernatural horror/thriller novels labeled as Young Adult fiction. Even though they feature the exploits of a fifteen-year-old kid, don’t let the YA designation fool you. These books are full of terrible things happening to people of all ages…for your entertainment.
I heard of these books while listening to the Writing Excuses podcast, of which Dan Wells is one of the cast. He often speaks about the writing process by referring to his first novel, I Am Not a Serial Killer. In fact, it’s probably the title of the book that made me want to read it more than anything else did.
These books are about John Cleaver, a fifteen-year-old kid in a small town with an obsession for serial killers. He lives over the mortuary where his mother and aunt works and even takes part in the embalming process with them. Diagnosed as a sociopath by both himself and his therapist, he tries to cope with being different.
Everything takes a turn when an actual serial killer shows up in town and starts murdering people. This excites John and sends him on the trail of the killer. At the same time, his own inner monster comes to life. He does not know if he wants to catch the killer, or participate.
One thing you need to know is that this is a “supernatural” horror/thriller. I only stress this because, apparently, people seem to become upset when the story goes from being pure thriller material to supernatural horror.
There is one thing about the series that I find a little unsettling. There seems to be an overall lack of emotion. This is understandable from them main character’s point of view. After all, he’s a sociopath. But over the course of three books, there are several serial killers killing and a multitude of suicides…all in less than a year. You would think that in a small town, these things would make people a little…edgy. The situation comes up a bit in the third book, but overall, it seems as if nobody really cares about all these atrocious murders happening. That’s only a small concern of mines. These books are fun, enjoyable, entertaining and very easy to read.
If possible, you should get all three books and read them back to back. Each novel takes place almost immediately after the last. And since they are all fast reads, you won’t have to wait to get right into the next installment.
And as usual, I must begin with apologizing for not posting anything for a while. Just had my first kid on December 16th and all the time leading up to it and all the time since, I’ve been trying to make money and do right, for the most part.
Well, you don’t wanna hear about the personal stuff. Here’s what’s gonna be happening around here for the O-12
I am cleaning out my closet. Yea, the whole thing if possible.
I have YEARS of unfinished projects hanging around. I’m talkin, lots…and lots of stuff. Poems, half-finished songs and lyrics, half-finished articles, file after file of ideas that I typed down, mad audio clips of half rhymes, ideas and thoughts; and so on and so on. There are notebooks, papers, and writing tablets FULL of more of the same.
I would like to spend all this year getting rid of that stuff, finishing the half-done projects no matter how I feel about them. If I feel it is hopeless, I’ll just get rid of em or release the ideas into the wild. I wanted to post most of what I do to this blog, but I figure that with so much stuff, I can put something here and something there. For instance, I started writing an article for a television show I watched. I was gonna post it here, but I didn’t like it. At the same time, I didn’t wanna just toss it neither, I spent time on it after all. So, I gave it up to an article site. I’ll probably write an article about content mills and article writing sites for those that may be interested, but I won’t post it here, it’ll be on another of my blogs.
But yes, 2012 is like my final hurrah. I figured 2012 is a good year to do this. It coincides with many other things that I hoped would happen for me this year (yup, been looking forward to 2012 since I was a teenager) – Hopefully, if all goes well, I’ll be starting up my creative juices again in 2013 (should civilization still be around:) a much better artist. What that means is, I will be trying hard not to start ANYTHING new this year. Gotta get this old shit outta here!
If you would like me to contribute any of this content to your projects, I’d be happy to do so. Verses, hooks, poetry whatever. I got words for ya! For ANY reason. And I love collaboration.
Anywho, that is all for now. I’m currently going through a folder with hundreds of .txt files in it, trying to make some sense of em and organize em…for YOU dammit, for you.
I also need to update the look of this site…desperately.
I wrote an article about this televisionseries on another site. If everything is working properly, you should have been automatically redirected to it…if not, here’s the link below :)
Here are 3 poems, written quickly and posted to either to my facebook page, or twitter stream. It seems that since I wrote my post on iambic heptameter, I’ve been stuck writing most my poetry in a sorta semi-rhyming, faux-blank verse version of it (I don’t know the term for it:)) I also learned that I naturally tend towards heavy usage of enjambment…who knew. Well, here they are, enjoy :)
@SilencioBarnes SilencioBarnes“I want to come inside you,” / said the handgun to the brain. // But the only thing that came / was the last gasp of his name. Nov 20 via CoTweetFavoriteRetweetReply
“I want to come inside you,” said the handgun to the brain.
But the only thing that came was the last gasp of his name.
Yes, I know I’m late with this. This post is just a quick note for people looking for info. I’m not going to get into all of the details of what NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) is all about, I’ll assume you know or at least have access to Wiki…which states:
National Novel Writing Month (also known as NaNoWriMo) is an annual internet-based creative writing project which challenges participants to write 50,000 words of a new novel between November 1 and November 30.
And yes, there are a few rules as well:
Participants’ novels can be on any theme and in any genre, and in any language. Everything from fanfiction, which uses trademarked characters, to novels in poem format, and even metafiction is allowed…Starting at midnight November 1, novels must reach a minimum of 50,000 words before 11:59:59 PM on November 30, local time. Planning and extensive notes are permitted, but no earlier written material can go into the body of the novel, nor is one allowed to start early and then finish 30 days from that start point.
Participants write either a complete novel of 50,000 words, or simply the first 50,000 words of a novel to be completed later…Some participants set higher goals for themselves, like writing upwards of 100,000 words, or completing two or more separate novels. To win NaNoWriMo, participants must write an average of approximately 1,667 words per day…There is no fee to participate in NaNoWriMo; registration is only required for novel verification.
No official prizes are awarded for length, quality, or speed. Anyone who reaches the 50,000 word mark is declared a winner.
Zabé has created some gorgeous November 2011 calendars with the accumulating word count for each day of writing. It goes up to 50,000 words, but she says that if you have a different goal, she’ll make one for ya :) http://zabe.net/blog/2011/10/nanowrimo-2011-calendars/
Dan also has some Calendars as well – His are more humorous in nature and more varied. He has some for just one week, as well as whole months – check them out here: http://surlymuse.com/2011-nanowrimo-wallpaper/
I always loved the word count trackers. Excel sheets preformatted and coded with all the nice little formulas to help you track your word count and your progress. There’s a lot of them out there and it’s easy to find an old one and update to 2011…but rest assured, that’s been done for ya already :)
I’m not going to get much deeper into it, just like the calendars, these spreadsheets can be found all over the place try this search
That’s it. I could add more, but like I said, I’m about 6 days late as is and all the information you could ever want or need is just a search away. I made this post because I noticed a lot of people were searching for nanowrimo and related info and finding my site. So I’m obliging them :) I like being helpful.
If you want more info, or would like to know about some free tools you can use that may help you with your writing, let me know and I’ll speak on that as well.
Finally, by the time this post is published, you should be damn near 10,000 words in! Get to it!
For working writers and amateurs alike, there are a lot of commercial products out there to help you along the way with your writing career. The problem is that many of them are very expensive or have some kind of unnecessarily steep learning curve...or both. Here is some free software you can use to write and help you along with your writing. I'm geari […]
People are concerned about a mysterious app showing up on their Android powered devices called "karoges" - This article should shed some light on what it is and what can be done about it. […]
Mr. Monster is a supernatural horror story by Dan Wells. It is the second book in the John Cleaver series with book one being, I Am Not a Serial Killer. […]
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