Mythologically Speaking

A reminder: This post courtesy of Julie Jarnagin’s 101 Blog Post Ideas for Writers.

46. Myths about writers

There are a hell of a lot of myths out there about writers and writing in general. Do a quick Google search and you’ll be bombarded by everything from stereotypes about people who write, to complete BS about how publishing “really” works. I’ve plucked out a few particular ones that I hear quite often and thus feel that I can comment on them.

1. All writers are insane.
Obviously this one is a generalization, but it does actually have some basis in truth. Writers do tend to be a little…off the deep end…but that’s just because of the overwhelming mixture of creativity and passion. Here me out: writers have all this creativity in them, all these stories that need to come out, and there’s a desperate passion to make that happen. But putting a story to paper is a lot more difficult and time-consuming than non-writers think. In order to put that story down you have to give up things…time, sleep, a social life…and you’ve got to be at least a little bit insane to do that.

2. If you’re talented, you’ll get published.
Nothing could be further from the truth. The only other myth that’s as far off the scale as this one is “you’ll never get published without natural talent”. In a perfect world the talented writers would get all the publishing contracts and the no-talent hacks would never get anywhere near a published book. But this isn’t a perfect world. Unfortunately wonderful stories will get overlooked for a number of reasons, the least of which is not a publisher’s desire to publish what is currently “popular”. Publishers are like any other business…they’re in it to make money, and if they get a wonderfully-written fantasy epic and a crudely-written vampire-porn, they’re probably going to publish the vampire-porn because that happens to be what’s “in” right now.

3. All you need is an idea: the rest will come easily
Oh my laughable lord, no. I don’t think anyone really understands the writing process until they’ve done it, but as with everything else in life people will always talk about what they don’t understand. Sure, getting an idea for a good story is definitely an important part of the equation, but it is hardly the only variable. For one thing, a plot is nothing without good characters, and good characters need subplots, conflict, and personalities that allow us to relate with them. And even with all that you need a multitude of scenes, tension and climaxes, and a reasonable conclusion, and that’s a lot more difficult to figure out than it sounds. Also, all that isn’t taking into account that you have to find the words, the proper words that make everything sound right. All I’m saying is, try it first, judge the difficulty later.

Hobbyist

A reminder: This post courtesy of Julie Jarnagin’s 101 Blog Post Ideas for Writers.

41. How a hobby has made you a better writer

I gave myself a night to think about this one, and when I woke up in the morning I had realized the truth: pretty much all of my hobbies have made me a better writer. No, I’m not joking or exaggerating. Seriously, almost all of my hobbies lend themselves to writing in one way or another.

Hobby #1: Reading
This one should be pretty self-explanatory. I love to read, and what better way to learn about pacing, sentence structure, spelling, grammar, setting, etc.

Hobby #2: Video Games
It sounds unlikely, and parents and teachers would probably baulk at the idea that playing video games can be excellent for improving one of the finer arts, but those parents and teachers would be closed-minded. Video games – even the older, significantly less advanced ones – can have rich worlds filled with action, adventure, romance, horror, mystery…you name it! Video games are excellent inspiration for ideas. They’ve even helped me practice my writing via fanfiction (I’ve written several chapters of a Final Fantasy 3/6 fanfiction and also started a Chrono Trigger one as well).

Hobby #3: Movies
This one is more my husband’s hobby than mine, but I guess it’s mine by proxy since I do, in fact, enjoy the movies. This falls under the same category as video games; movies are excellent for inspiration, and if it was a particularly good movie, the kind that gives you shivers and has you thinking about the plot line for days later, it can even be just plain motivational. In other words, experiencing such an amazing story makes you want to write one of your own.

Hobby #4: Writing
Seriously, you didn’t see this one coming? Writing has been one of my most predominant hobbies since I was in grade school. From little one-page scenes my best friend and I would write back and forth to one another during class, to a very powerful fanfiction obsession in college, to the manuscript I’m still working on editing, I’ve been writing for fun for the past 20 years or so. And isn’t that the most important part of being a writer? Actually putting in the effort to write? Or is this just my clever way of saying that I’ve already run out of hobbies to list? That’s up for you to decide.

“Shh…it’s not a video game, it’s research!”

A reminder: This post courtesy of Julie Jarnagin’s 101 Blog Post Ideas for Writers.

16. How you researched your last book

This prompt made me laugh a little. It was one of those, “Ha ha…seriously?” kind of laughs.

Research? Ha ha…seriously?

I’m not the researching type. I’m not really the “preparation of any kind” type, at least not when it comes to writing. I tend to just…go. I don’t do layouts or outlines, I don’t create character sheets or brainstorm scenes ahead of time. I just tend to…write. I get ideas, and I produce them in prose form. That’s about all there is to my process.

In my defense, most of what I write is original to my brain. I don’t really need to research much because I’m making it all up as I go along anyway.

I will admit, however, that every now I get ideas as a result of inadvertent research. For instance, the zombie book I’ve been working on, tentatively titled “Nowhere to Hide”, came into being because over the past few years I’ve been rather immersed in zombie media. I’ve watched a ton of zombie movies with my husband, read several zombie books and ‘survival guides’, and played a number of zombie-killin’ video games. Eventually all this lead to my deciding to write my own zombie story, and by extension all the watching/reading/playing I’d been doing became akin to research. I took things I liked and scraped things I didn’t.

Is that close enough? Am I any less a “real” writer because I don’t do “real” research? 😛

Screenshot

A reminder: This post courtesy of Julie Jarnagin’s 101 Blog Post Ideas for Writers.

7. Photos of your writing space

A bit of a cop-out, but for all intents and purposes, this is my writing space…Scrivener writing software on my laptop. I don’t have a room or even a desk where I do my writing, I just take my laptop wherever I need it to be. Scrivener is my program of choice because it allows me to separate chapters and scenes while still having everything technically be one file. There’s also a lot of organizational tools for research, notes, media, or whatever else you need to work on your project. This picture is a screen shot of my Final Fantasy fanfic project, in the corkboard screen, which shows little notes on each chapter. I strongly recommend this software to any writer. It’s paid software, but the price isn’t too shabby for good, professional software, at about $40.

I Write Like…

A while ago I stumbled upon this website, I Write Like, and just recently a fellow blogger linked to it and brought it back to my attention again. The idea, basically, is that you copy and paste an excerpt of your writing to the webpage and it analyzes it and tells you which author you write like. It analyzes based on word choices and writing style (which I’m assuming refers to sentence structure or some such); I can’t imagine that it’s terribly accurate, but it’s still interesting to see who you get. 🙂

For my zombie novel, Nowhere to Hide, I got Charles Dickens, even when I had the site analyze super-creepy and/or gory scenes. It has me very interested to actually read some Charles Dickens that isn’t Oliver Twist. o.o

For my Final Fantasy fanfic, I got Edgar Allan Poe, which just fathoms me. I could imagine getting Poe for my horror novel, but for a video game fan fiction? Wuh?

For my supernatural romance, tentatively titled Moonlight, I got David Foster Wallace. I have no idea who this is, so I’m going to have to do my research, but if his writing is anything like mine in this particular piece, I’m very interested already. lol

I analyzed several different scenes from my fantasy epic novel because it’s been written and re-written so many times that nothing fits together properly anymore. I got Jonathan Swift and Ursula K. Le Guin for two of the scenes, neither of whom I’ve heard of so again I must do my research. For another of the scenes I got Stephanie Meyer, which has prompted me to re-analzye my own writing stat.

The bits and pieces of what will someday be a space fantasy gave me Anne Rice. I know Anne Rice, of course, but I’ll have to read some more of her work to actually get an idea of whether this is accurate.

And finally, my Chrono Trigger fanfic gave me…J.R.R. Tolkien. o.O I, uh…totally can’t see it, but thanks for the compliment, I Write Like! lol

The thing that really amused me about this was that – with the exception of the aforementioned fantasy epic – I tried multiple scenes of each work and got the same results regardless, so there must be something there that the site is seeing. Very interesting. Now if only I could glean some of the success of these famous authors! lol

Strike one entry off the bucket list

Today is a very special day for me. June 7th, 2012, approximately 1:00 pm. Mark that date and time down.

What’s so special about this date? It’s not a holiday, nor is it someone’s birthday, or a special occasion like an anniversary. In fact, it’s a pretty normal, even boring day. I’m sitting on the loveseat in my living room, my husband is on his computer up in the bedroom, and the baby is out cold on her pile of pillows on the living room floor. When we three got up this morning we had breakfast (grapes and a granola bar for the baby, coffee for the parents), and we went to playgroup for a couple of hours. It’s windy and chilly outside and looks like it can’t decide whether or not it wants to rain.

So again, what is so special about this date?

I mentioned before, more than once I believe, that I’d never finished any story I ever set out to write, with the exception of one short fanfiction. Today, as of approximately 1 o’clock this afternoon, I can no longer make that claim. Today, I wrote the final words, an epilogue, to my zombie novel, Nowhere to Hide.

Don’t get me wrong…the manuscript is not complete. There is editing to be done, some discontinuities that need to be addressed, some scenes may be omitted completely, and new ones could very well be added. But for all intents and purposes, I have a finished novel. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end. It has lots of (I hope) interesting characters, and plenty of conflict, suspense, and emotion. It may have some errors and some scenes that don’t stand up to critique, but it is a complete story that, if read, will make sense. It concludes.

I cannot express the level of excitement this fills me with. Let me repeat this point once more: this is the first fully original story I have ever written, beginning to end. How freakin’ awesome is that? I know for a lot of people editing is the worst part of writing, but right now it seems like a happy daydream because I have a completed story to edit!

Look out, world! This novel is one major step closer to being published, and this writer is one immense step closer to earning the title of ‘author’.

Going from B to Y…huh?

I’ve heard it said by many authors that the beginning and end of a story are the easiest, and that it’s all the muck in the middle that makes everything so difficult. I’m the exact opposite. When I come up with a story idea it’s the middle bits that come to me first. Usually it’s a scene that pops into my brain, clear as day. For instance, when I first got it into my head that I was going to write a zombie apocalypse, the first thing that I imagined was my main character, a young adult woman, running through the streets during the chaos and coming across an empty baby stroller spattered in blood. That scene never made it into the story (at least not yet…) but if it had it would have been three or four chapters in. When I first starting working on my fantasy story I had this one scene in my brain that held all my attention; the two male characters, who are alternate world versions of each other, meet and nearly kill each over because of their mutual feelings for the main female character. That scene ended up being dead in the middle of the overall story. The same goes for fanfictions I’ve written. It always seems to be a scene right in the middle of the story that plays itself out in my mind first and demands itself to be written.

The beginning and end of the story are completely different issues. I have major problems with the ‘A’ and ‘Z’ of my stories.

My beginnings tend to be a mixture of bland and rushed. I seem to be awful at introducing my world and characters; whenever I read back through what I’ve written it sounds very methodical, like I’m simply handing my reader a character sheet that explains everything they’re going to need to know. Additionally, I tend to rush through openings because all I want to do is to get into the fun parts of the story. The fantasy story I mentioned is a great example of this one…I’ve rewritten the opening to that story at least a dozen times and it still sounds awful to me.

My endings…well that’s a tough one because I don’t have very many of them! The only stories I’ve really finished were fanfictions, and there’s only so many ways you can end a story based on a pre-existing world, assuming you want to keep continuity (which I do). The few times that I’ve managed to get to the end of one of my original stories, I’ve had a lot of problems. For example, I’m working on the end of my zombie novel right now, and I’m at a complete loss for what to do. I have a general idea; I have questions I’m going to answer and a scene or two I can already see in my mind. But I also have a hundred questions of my own, many of them concerning who is going to live and who is going to die, which is of paramount importance in a story like this. In my fantasy story I’ve spent literally years now trying to decide how the story ends because every possibility has connotations that bother me and I can’t decide which eventuality frustrates me the least.

I have to admit, this makes me feel a bit like an oddity in the author world. Everyone else always seems to know exactly how to begin and exactly how they want to finish, while I’m sitting here banging out all the central scenes that mean nothing unless I can enclose them properly. Tell me I’m not alone here, please? lol
As an afterthought for this post, I didn’t manage a second week in a row of my 1000-word-a-day challenge due to obvious reasons (see previous post), which is why I didn’t make a post about my progress. If anyone was wondering though, I managed to write just over 1000 words each day on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, and about 500 words on Wednesday. I’ve got a decent head-start on this week though, so wish me luck!