How to Write Something New

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There would appear to be three major 'versus' debates going on in publishing these days. You've got Self-publishing versus Traditional Models, there's Work for Free versus Alternate Income Stream, and Pants versus Plotting. I'm not going into the first two, but the third is one with which I've wrestled for some time.

The key pros and cons of Pants versus Plotting are quite straightforward. Writing by the seat of your pants lets you enjoy the creative process, going where the story takes you, and essentially 'making it up as you go along', but you can end up with dozens of dead ends, characters you don't even need, or endings that just flat out don't work because they don't make sense when compared to the beginning.

By contrast, plotting allows you to map out the work before you start, so you never sit down to write without knowing where the story is going, and you can work out story kinks before you even finish the book/story - it's much easier to rearrange elements in an outline than it is in the finished piece. Unfortunately, it can feel restrictive, and remove some of the 'surprises' that pop up when you're pantsing.

For most of my works, I've used a combination of the two. I've known the major points of the beginning, middle and end, and my writing process has been simply joining the dots, making it up as I go along to get from A to B. It lets me keep an ending in mind, but gives me enough freedom to give my imagination room to gambol about.

I came across Story Engineering by Larry Brooks and while it's a fascinating book with a lot going for it, I got sucked into the mindset of "You must outline to the very last detail", and it completely derailed my creativity. I wrote The Necromancer's Apprentice using his method, but I only started to enjoy it when I'd finished my first draft, and went back to insert scenes that I felt would give the story life. I've got another novella I want to write, and I've fully outlined it, but I find I can't start it - weirdly enough, I know what needs to happen where, but I don't know where to start, and I have that ever present worry that I can't do the outline justice.

A while ago, I wrote a post on The Magic of 500, and I decided to revisit it to see if it would help. For a long time, I've been using the 750words.com website, and I suddenly realised that while I've thought I don't have much time to write, I've been putting in 15-20 minutes every day to write 750 words of crap. I worked out that by writing 750 words a day, a 30k word novella could be written in just forty days. So I could use those twenty minutes to do something productive, leaving my longer bouts of time free to edit The Necromancer's Apprentice. Interesting...

I wrote a Friday flash a couple of weeks ago called Contagion, and I had a few calls to turn it into a novella. I dashed out an idea for the beginning, middle and end, and just started writing. Earlier today it passed the 6.5k mark. It's going to need a lot of editing but the important thing is that I'm writing again. Aside from Friday flashes, I haven't written anything new in a long time.

So long may it continue...

Track Your Writing Progress

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Last week, I posted an entry about making your own motivation to write. I feel like I possibly left things hanging, as I missed out two of the Internet-based tools for helping you to write, for both keeping you motivated and keeping track of your progress. How remiss of me! So here I am, on my vacation, but still blogging to pass on what I know in the hope it may be of some use.

http://750words.com
Have you signed in to this service yet? It's very easy - I personally sign in using the Google ID I already have, although you can also sign in using Facebook, Yahoo or OpenID, as well as creating an account. The idea behind the site came from the famous notion of "morning pages" in The Artist's Way. I've never read the book, but I do know that author Julia Cameron recommends writing three pages, ideally longhand, in the morning. The idea is to purge the mind of random nonsense, to get it ready for creating. I've seen this described elsewhere as being akin to clearing the rubbish out of an attic before you can redecorate.

Well three pages equates to roughly 750 words, hence this site! You can use it for whatever you want - writing your novel in progress, keeping a journal, doing a brain dump...whatever! It saves your work as you go but beware, it won't save it beyond your current session, so if you're writing a novel, you'll need to copy and paste into Word (or similar). Personally, I use it as a brain dump of whatever is bothering me, so instead of keeping a journal or ranting at my loved ones, I let off steam and write about the things on my mind, thus clearing my brain and getting me ready for creative endeavours!

Now, I've managed to write on five days in August, and in that time, I've written 3,987 words. When you've written your 750 words (or more), you get to check out your stats for that day. Some of my most frequently used words for today's words were "because, done, first, know, people and write". Most of it was written about the present, and the primary sense used is sight! Beyond these somewhat random stats, you get a little scorecard, which is a neat little way to keep your motivation up. After all, you've written for four days straight - you don't want to break your streak, do you?

Write or Die
This is my other favourite tool. People need deadlines - it's so easy to find an excuse not to write if you think it isn't required or expected. As the About page says, "Many people find themselves unable to write consistently. I believe that this is because their reason to write is intangible. For instance, I want to write and finish a book because I want to be published and make a living as a writer. That goal is a long way away so I often find it difficult to sit down to the task of writing. Conversely, I'm in a creative writing class for which I manage to consistently write and finish projects (albeit at the last minute). I therefore draw the conclusion: A tangible consequence is more effective than an intangible reward."

If you want to use the application, just select either your word goal or time goal (handy if you only have ten minutes to spare), along with the consequences for not writing (four different modes that range from a pop up box reminder to the application actually 'un-writing' your writing) and the grace period (three options depending on how quickly you want the consequences to kick in) and away you go.

The idea is not to edit, so when you're finished writing, you have to copy and paste your text into an editor. The concept is based on doing your writing in a burst, and then editing later, at a more leisurely pace. Write or Die just wants you to get the words down - after all, you can't edit what you haven't written.

Which will you choose?
So there you go. Two tools to help you keep track of how much you write, or to make sure you keep writing! Go on, give them a go, or why don't you let me know how you've managed with either of them?