A wonderful resource for writers has emerged in the last few years: the audio podcast.
A podcast (for those of you living in caves to escape the zombie apocalypse) is a downloadable radio show you can listen to on an ipod or other mp3 player. Writing podcasts have interviews with authors, advice on technique and other topics that are talked about by the host or cast. They’re a good way to hear how other people do things and to learn about careers, ongoing projects and tricks used by your favorite authors.
The nice thing about a podcast (vs. a book, video or web-site) is that you can take it with you anywhere, and you can listen to it while doing other things. I listen to podcasts when I workout, when I drive, while shopping and when I’m doing busywork at the day job. This squeezes dead-space out of my day, allowing me to think about writing and learn during times that are otherwise wasted.
As far as content goes, you can find just about anything, from fiction markets (Escape Pod, Drabblecast), to author interviews (AISFP), to grammar (Grammar Girl), to insane rants by total egomainiacs(unlisted to protect the innocent).
My two favorites, are Adventures in Sci-Fi Publishing and I Should be Writing. Both are well produced, interesting, informative and motivating.
Adventures in Sci-Fi Publishing focuses on author and editor interviews with some commentary from the hosts. Shaun Farrell puts it together and it is cohosted by Sam Wynns. They have a good mix of big names and on-the-rise authors and some interesting interviews with editors.
I Should be Writing is a bit more personal, with the host, Mur Lafferty, focusing on her writing. She spices it up with author interviews and seems to be doing more interviews. She also spends a lot of time on listener feedback and questions, which is nice if have a question about something. It is also inspiring to listen to her progress as she started the show as a beginner and just last year had her first book come out.
There are dozens of writing podcasts to check out, but these two are the best I have found.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Monday, January 12, 2009
Weekly Status -- January 12, 2009
Lame week. Near the end of the draft, focusing more and more on revision. Not motivated to crank out the last few scenes. Still enjoying the story and characters, but writing it is starting to feel like work and every random side-project I think of seems more appealing than working on the book.
Almost everyone I’ve talked to hits this rough mid-point. And most people rediscover the joy when they work past it. So, I’ll press ahead.
Decided to spend a week of vacation on the book to keep the momentum going, so I plan to write full time next week. It seems like the best opportunity to do this--it should get me past the rough spot and there might not be another chance to do this later in the year because the day job looks like it will have a busy summer, busy fall and hectic winter.
The plan is to take 4-5 days this week to work on the book full time. No family. No day job.
The goal:
1) Complete the rough draft.
2) Read-through and assess the whole book.
3) Identify major changes and gaps.
4) Start 1st draft.
This should position me to work the rest of the 1st draft in daily dribbles (the 1 & 2 hour writing sessions that can be squeezed out of any day).
Here are the vital statistics (from Sunday Jan 3rd):
Rough Draft 55593 words
1st Draft 22264 words
2nd Draft 15314 words
Total: 93171 words
And some stats on the support files:
Outline: 25898 words
Brainstorming: 22887 words
Continuous days writing: 137
Almost everyone I’ve talked to hits this rough mid-point. And most people rediscover the joy when they work past it. So, I’ll press ahead.
Decided to spend a week of vacation on the book to keep the momentum going, so I plan to write full time next week. It seems like the best opportunity to do this--it should get me past the rough spot and there might not be another chance to do this later in the year because the day job looks like it will have a busy summer, busy fall and hectic winter.
The plan is to take 4-5 days this week to work on the book full time. No family. No day job.
The goal:
1) Complete the rough draft.
2) Read-through and assess the whole book.
3) Identify major changes and gaps.
4) Start 1st draft.
This should position me to work the rest of the 1st draft in daily dribbles (the 1 & 2 hour writing sessions that can be squeezed out of any day).
Here are the vital statistics (from Sunday Jan 3rd):
Rough Draft 55593 words
1st Draft 22264 words
2nd Draft 15314 words
Total: 93171 words
And some stats on the support files:
Outline: 25898 words
Brainstorming: 22887 words
Continuous days writing: 137
Sunday, January 4, 2009
Status: January 4, 2009
Good in the sense I wrote a lot of new material. But the writing is dragging. This is Week 21 working on this book. That is longer than I expected the initial draft to take (I was thinking short book, ~16 weeks). I have lost my enthusiasm and I am starting to think more and more about revision and marketing.
Took two days off to work on a flash-fiction piece. Set in the same world, but exploring different characters. It goes to the writing group...an exercise we do periodically. I’m curious to see how it is received.
Had one short story rejection come in. Not sure how the short fiction will turn out. I wrote and, more importantly, submitted a lot last year. With my head buried in the book like a big fat zombie tick, I’m not sure when or how much I will be able to focus on short fiction. Sigh.
Here are the vital statistics (from Sunday Jan 3rd):
Rough Draft 53659 words
1st Draft 22264 words
2nd Draft 15314 words
Total: 91237 words
And some stats on the support files:
Outline: 25898 words
Brainstorming: 22621 words
Continuous days writing: 130
Took two days off to work on a flash-fiction piece. Set in the same world, but exploring different characters. It goes to the writing group...an exercise we do periodically. I’m curious to see how it is received.
Had one short story rejection come in. Not sure how the short fiction will turn out. I wrote and, more importantly, submitted a lot last year. With my head buried in the book like a big fat zombie tick, I’m not sure when or how much I will be able to focus on short fiction. Sigh.
Here are the vital statistics (from Sunday Jan 3rd):
Rough Draft 53659 words
1st Draft 22264 words
2nd Draft 15314 words
Total: 91237 words
And some stats on the support files:
Outline: 25898 words
Brainstorming: 22621 words
Continuous days writing: 130
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Why a Zombie Proof Fence?
Because you need one--at least if you expect to survive a zombie apocalypse. I personally recommend one that will stand up to zombies in ones and twos and threes and dozens and hundreds. This actually needs to be a wall unless you already live inside a walled compound, in which case an actual fence will work (in case a few strays slip inside the wall).
I got to thinking about this one day, for no particular reason, and started wondering about the design of such a fence (or wall). At the time, I was thinking more along the lines of how to protect my house from a few zombies and eventually started wondering how to protect larger areas--and how to cope with vast mobs...in the hundreds, even thousands.
The mobs are the real problem--if you have a wall or other passive obstacle, the mob will clump up until it makes living ramp of flesh allowing zombies to just walk right over the top a-la- Castle Roogna (though that may have been goblins, I forget). Once inside, these super mobs are nigh impossible to stop--you probably won’t have the kind of heavy weapons that would quickly stop them, and most people won’t have enough ammunition to make more than a dent in a super-mob. If you hole up, they can rip through barricades, pile up to reach second, even third stories of buildings and well, you get the idea: a fence just won’t do. Neither will a wall that’s just sitting there.
What you need is a high wall, carefully constructed, manned and maintained by an active security force. Integrated zombie disposal systems will make it even better by preventing the super mobs from building up. Such a wall could hold back hundreds, even thousands of the nasty things. This protection creates a zombie free area, a safe zone, a green zone where ordinary people can work and play.
As I whittled away at the engineering, another thought drifted into my head--wouldn’t it be easy to live with zombies? Not quite as carefree as what we have now, but certainly not as bad as most zombie movies make it out to be. In fact, it would be so easy that even little kids would be safe. To children who grew up like this, it would feel normal to live behind a wall while flesh-eating zombies roamed free and hungry on the other side. They would probably think it odd for dead to stay dead. This line of thinking led me to the principle characters in the story--kids who take zombies for granted, accepting them as a normal part of their lives.
This idea ultimately led to a novel, but I kept fence in the title since Zombie Proof Wall just doesn’t sound as good.
In scouring the web for other references to a zombie proof fence I found a miniatures game that looks pretty good: All Things Zombie by Two Hour Games. Also found Shelldrake, a guy here on blogger who does some great miniatures work. Here is a household/block kind of fence Shelldrake put together for the miniatures game: zombie proof fence.
-M
I got to thinking about this one day, for no particular reason, and started wondering about the design of such a fence (or wall). At the time, I was thinking more along the lines of how to protect my house from a few zombies and eventually started wondering how to protect larger areas--and how to cope with vast mobs...in the hundreds, even thousands.
The mobs are the real problem--if you have a wall or other passive obstacle, the mob will clump up until it makes living ramp of flesh allowing zombies to just walk right over the top a-la- Castle Roogna (though that may have been goblins, I forget). Once inside, these super mobs are nigh impossible to stop--you probably won’t have the kind of heavy weapons that would quickly stop them, and most people won’t have enough ammunition to make more than a dent in a super-mob. If you hole up, they can rip through barricades, pile up to reach second, even third stories of buildings and well, you get the idea: a fence just won’t do. Neither will a wall that’s just sitting there.
What you need is a high wall, carefully constructed, manned and maintained by an active security force. Integrated zombie disposal systems will make it even better by preventing the super mobs from building up. Such a wall could hold back hundreds, even thousands of the nasty things. This protection creates a zombie free area, a safe zone, a green zone where ordinary people can work and play.
As I whittled away at the engineering, another thought drifted into my head--wouldn’t it be easy to live with zombies? Not quite as carefree as what we have now, but certainly not as bad as most zombie movies make it out to be. In fact, it would be so easy that even little kids would be safe. To children who grew up like this, it would feel normal to live behind a wall while flesh-eating zombies roamed free and hungry on the other side. They would probably think it odd for dead to stay dead. This line of thinking led me to the principle characters in the story--kids who take zombies for granted, accepting them as a normal part of their lives.
This idea ultimately led to a novel, but I kept fence in the title since Zombie Proof Wall just doesn’t sound as good.
In scouring the web for other references to a zombie proof fence I found a miniatures game that looks pretty good: All Things Zombie by Two Hour Games. Also found Shelldrake, a guy here on blogger who does some great miniatures work. Here is a household/block kind of fence Shelldrake put together for the miniatures game: zombie proof fence.
-M
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Bi-Weekly Status -- December 28th
Looks like a bi-weekly status is more realistic, so that is what I will shoot for going forward.
Had some time off during the holiday so made quite a bit of progress, burned through about 7K words. However, there has been some strain on the family as I try to get more done and they want me to spend more time with them. Sadly, that means I need to throttle it back a little. This is after all a marathon, not a sprint and although I want to cut loose and dash for the finish line, the family does come first (just barely).
Made it to the last big twist and wrote a painfully long dialogue sequence (4500 words of talking). It contains info vital to the remainder of the story, establishes key relationships, but it is currently staged as six characters sitting in a room talking. That does the job, but it’s really boring. I’m already brainstorming ways to work around this--introducing a little more action and conflict into this area.
With the truncated ending, I can reasonably expect to have the rough draft finished in January, a readable draft finished in March and a marketable draft finished in May, though I plan to start querying in March (yes, I am that excited).
Here are the vital statistics (from Sunday Dec 14th):
Rough Draft 46211 words
1st Draft 22264 words
2nd Draft 15314 words
Total: 83789 words
And some stats on the support files:
Outline: 25331 words
Brainstorming: 22240 words
Had some time off during the holiday so made quite a bit of progress, burned through about 7K words. However, there has been some strain on the family as I try to get more done and they want me to spend more time with them. Sadly, that means I need to throttle it back a little. This is after all a marathon, not a sprint and although I want to cut loose and dash for the finish line, the family does come first (just barely).
Made it to the last big twist and wrote a painfully long dialogue sequence (4500 words of talking). It contains info vital to the remainder of the story, establishes key relationships, but it is currently staged as six characters sitting in a room talking. That does the job, but it’s really boring. I’m already brainstorming ways to work around this--introducing a little more action and conflict into this area.
With the truncated ending, I can reasonably expect to have the rough draft finished in January, a readable draft finished in March and a marketable draft finished in May, though I plan to start querying in March (yes, I am that excited).
Here are the vital statistics (from Sunday Dec 14th):
Rough Draft 46211 words
1st Draft 22264 words
2nd Draft 15314 words
Total: 83789 words
And some stats on the support files:
Outline: 25331 words
Brainstorming: 22240 words
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Character vs. Plot
I was listening to a writing podcast today and heard these guys arguing about what is more important to a story...character or plot. Not going to say which podcast since I am about to rip on them, but this is a debate that seems to come up a lot among very inexperienced writers and frankly, it is a stupid question.
Let me ask another question that has the same syntactic value in order to illustrate why it is a stupid question: which is more important to a coin, heads or tails?
Think about it.
Can you have a coin with just one side? Even if the sides look the same, there are still two of them. There is no dichotomy here, there is only a coin: a single, discrete object.
Stories are the same: a singular, discrete thing whose parts can be labeled, but whose parts have no meaning when separated from the whole.
If a story has a lame character, no one will believe or care what happens to that person. If Joe Papolitsky, my neighborhood State Farm rep were to captain the Millennium Falcon in Star Wars, the story would fail. Joe is nice enough, but he’s a terribly boring man and doesn’t get on well with wookies (the believability part).
If a story has an amazing character, but nothing happens, no one will be interested enough to read on. Miss Marple sitting on the beach in Cozumel, eating some nachos, sipping a margarita then flying home with no conflict, crisis or drama is not a story; it’s just the diary of another crotchety retiree and no one cares, not even her four children who read her blog just to be polite.
So, rather than debating stupid questions, create interesting people and place them in interesting situations. If either one is boring or incoherent, go back to the drawing board before you waste time writing a whole story about it.
As for which starts the creative process (plot or character), it does not appear to matter. Of the writers I admire, almost all have stated that they will use either one depending on the story (though some have a preference for one or the other).
It's just a stupid question.
Let me ask another question that has the same syntactic value in order to illustrate why it is a stupid question: which is more important to a coin, heads or tails?
Think about it.
Can you have a coin with just one side? Even if the sides look the same, there are still two of them. There is no dichotomy here, there is only a coin: a single, discrete object.
Stories are the same: a singular, discrete thing whose parts can be labeled, but whose parts have no meaning when separated from the whole.
If a story has a lame character, no one will believe or care what happens to that person. If Joe Papolitsky, my neighborhood State Farm rep were to captain the Millennium Falcon in Star Wars, the story would fail. Joe is nice enough, but he’s a terribly boring man and doesn’t get on well with wookies (the believability part).
If a story has an amazing character, but nothing happens, no one will be interested enough to read on. Miss Marple sitting on the beach in Cozumel, eating some nachos, sipping a margarita then flying home with no conflict, crisis or drama is not a story; it’s just the diary of another crotchety retiree and no one cares, not even her four children who read her blog just to be polite.
So, rather than debating stupid questions, create interesting people and place them in interesting situations. If either one is boring or incoherent, go back to the drawing board before you waste time writing a whole story about it.
As for which starts the creative process (plot or character), it does not appear to matter. Of the writers I admire, almost all have stated that they will use either one depending on the story (though some have a preference for one or the other).
It's just a stupid question.
Weekly Status -- December 18th
Picked up the pace this week. Close to 5K new material. Running a week behind ‘schedule’, but things are progressing nicely. Also have greatly expanded outlines of the next major sequence.
Chapters 8 and 9 went through the Writer’s Block for critiques. Well received, but there are some issues I need to think about.
Good news--may have solved the ending problem and the length problem. This morning I outlined an ending that will chop off the last 3rd of the current structure and still give a very satisfying ending. This is great news because at the current expansion rate (outline to prose) the book will be WAY too long. This ending doesn’t impact the sequence I would cut...it leaves the section intact for the opening of a second book. Best of all, this will probably shave 6-8 weeks off the total writing time.
Wahoo...
Here are the vital statistics (from Sunday Dec 14th):
Rough Draft 35363 words
1st Draft 22264 words
2nd Draft 15314 words
Total: 72941 words
And some stats on the support files:
Outline: 22579 words
Brainstorming: 21975 words
Chapters 8 and 9 went through the Writer’s Block for critiques. Well received, but there are some issues I need to think about.
Good news--may have solved the ending problem and the length problem. This morning I outlined an ending that will chop off the last 3rd of the current structure and still give a very satisfying ending. This is great news because at the current expansion rate (outline to prose) the book will be WAY too long. This ending doesn’t impact the sequence I would cut...it leaves the section intact for the opening of a second book. Best of all, this will probably shave 6-8 weeks off the total writing time.
Wahoo...
Here are the vital statistics (from Sunday Dec 14th):
Rough Draft 35363 words
1st Draft 22264 words
2nd Draft 15314 words
Total: 72941 words
And some stats on the support files:
Outline: 22579 words
Brainstorming: 21975 words
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