I've been working on writing pretty regularly lately, however, I decided against doing NaNoWriMo this year. Usually, I set aside whatever I'm working on to throw myself into a new (or in-progress) draft and get some good, solid work done on it in November. That's worked pretty well towards me getting a bunch of drafts finished, but since I haven't been as productive in other months, it hasn't done a whole lot towards me getting anything edited.

That doesn't mean I don't want to work on my draft, but I had a more compelling reason to keep it in the drawer for now - I've been asked for a full manuscript of OtherWhere by an agent. So instead of working on new words, I've been working on getting the last few changes done on that manuscript so I can submit it.

This past week, while my beta readers read the manuscript, I've been reading it out loud. It's a piece of advice I've heard a lot, but have never had the courage to actually implement. And you know what? It's working.

There are a lot of small changes I'm definitely making that I never had noticed before. Word repetition and run-on sentences are big ones. I'm also noticing some issues with character voice - people sounding very similar to one another - that I'm trying to work on a bit more.

All in all, it's been a great exercise. I expect to be finished it within the next few days, and to get my manuscript submitted to the agent by the end of November.

It's nearly here! After several months of work and a few data crashes, the Motivation course is going to go live on my website tomorrow.

I know that I've said that I think this course will help you, no matter who you are. Let me tell you why.

I have known as long as I can remember that I wanted to be a writer. I remember being in high school, and writing reams and reams of paper. The very first novel I ever wrote and completed was a Star Trek: DS9 fanfic - I figured I could get it published as a novel tie-in, if I could just polish it up enough. A friend of mine read it for me, and my next novel, which was a truly horrific vampire novel. And the next. I think that one had aliens in it. It was also terrible.

Then I hit university and my focus shifted to fanfiction. And somewhere along the line, I stopped writing completely. I knew I still wanted to write. I spent hours roleplaying online, writing shared stories with other people, but I felt totally unmotivated to actually write. It felt like work. I still had my passion, but any time it came time to write something down without working from the prompt of another person, I just never seemed to get around to it.

I tried NaNoWriMo a few times, and fizzled out after a few days every time. After five years of basically nothing, I was facing down the death of my dream, and wondering if maybe writing was just too hard for me. I wondered if I just couldn't do it.

Then I started learning and applying the kinds of techniques that I've put in the course. Most of all, I applied the technique that I mentioned in my last post - I remembered what I loved about writing, what I wanted out of life, and I focused on that rather than my fear.

I started writing, and I've never looked back. That was 10 years ago, and I am more sure than ever that writing is what I want to do, what I can do, and what I will do full time, someday.

That's why I know these techniques are good. Because they ended my 5 years of writer's block, and they have stood the test of time.

Now it's your turn, and I'm looking forward to having you come along with me on this journey.

But I have over 26,000 words. Halfway there and it's only the 11th. Woo!

Tip: celebrate your successes.

Also, get more sleep.

No, really. I honestly forgot. I also wrote a lot of words.

I have 17,083 words, which I'm proud of! Nyla has finally figured out she has superpowers, and is pretty sure she knows how they work, however crazy and illogical it might be. Time to ruin her life! But that'll wait until tomorrow.

Today's tip: When you screw up, strikeout is your friend.

I try not to go back and revise, but sometimes you have a really amazing idea for a better way for a scene to go. It does take a while to edit, and I strongly discourage people from spending much time doing this. You can spend an hour going over a scene and only add a few words, or even lose them. That's an hour you could have been adding to your wordcount.

But sometimes you just have to. In cases like that, don't ever delete words you wrote. Strike through them (It's ctrl-shift-minus sign in Scrivener) and write the new thing. Of course, you might find bits of what you wrote before that you want to keep and fiddle around with, which is fine, but at least you won't lose the bits you actually don't want to keep.

They still count for your NaNoWriMo words, so don't rob yourself by using the delete key.

Today I wrote chapter two of my new novel, and added another 2200 words to my pile.



I've learned something about myself already, and it's only the second day: I believe I'm an outliner when it comes to plot, but I'm a pantser when it comes to characters. This is a thing that's possible! I think the only reason I didn't realize it before is because I've always heard of planner vs. pantser as being an all or nothing thing. Sure, some people are more organized, more pantsy than others, but I've never heard anyone say they divide things up this way.

Here's why I believe it's true: I've been planning The Geek Club for about a year, at least. Some aspects I've been working on for longer. It has been through two major incarnations, and I have incorporated an entirely different novel (which I trunked halfway through the planning process).

The planning process had been halted for a while, but in July I had a flash of inspiration to take the book in a whole different direction. At that point I had a general idea for plot, and several characters. Since July I've completed a full plot outline and written a tonne of worldbuilding notes.

Three days before NaNoWriMo started, I was still cudgelling my brain, trying to come up with villains.

I had one villain who wasn't going to be important until probably the third novel. I had several sub-plots that suggested antagonists I needed to come up with, and I couldn't come up with anything.

Over the years, I've tried lots of different methods for developing characters. I would try questionnaires, write pages and pages of great info, and nearly all of it would get thrown out when I started the book. Whenever I was writing, I'd either completely forget about things I came up with in the questionnaire, or I would find it confining.

Today and yesterday, after a week of struggling to come up with something, anything that would constitute an antagonist for my story (other than faceless organizations), three living, breathing characters walked onto the page to interact with my main characters without any effort at all. I don't know everything about them, but they're great characters and I'm excited about them. And I feel like now that they exist I can flesh them out.

So my tip today is: Everyone does it differently. Figure out what works for you, and do that. Keep an open mind, and don't assume that what works for other people is the only way to do it.

I'm not really able to give a proper sum-up, because too many awesome things. All I can say is that three agents asked me for manuscript samples. My goal is to get those out before I start NaNoWriMo, which doesn't give me a tonne of time.

I got a flat tire on Saturday night, which sort of messed up my evening... I hadn't made it out of Surrey yet, when someone started gesturing at me to tell me I had a flat. Of course, none of the tire places were open yet, so I faced the options of driving home on my doughnut...and back the next day, or to stay at the hotel, which is what I decided to do.

I went into my hotel room, only to find a note addressed to "Mr. R. Thompson" and a bag of Halloween candy. The note welcomed Mr. Thompson to Surrey and hoped he'd have a pleasant stay.

I put the chain on the door and enjoyed the mysterious Mr. Thompson's candy thoroughly.

It's the last day of May, and I'm exhausted after a very long week at work, so I thought I'd do a recap.

This month, I edited, formatted, and released two stories for 99c. I designed the covers for both of them, though I did have help from friends. One of them is a book of writing tips, and the other is a short story. The latter is actually selling quite well, especially considering I've done almost zero promotion.

I worked on my edit of OtherWhere. I'll be doing more posts about my editing process in the future, but right now I'm in the middle of a long slog that's not much fun. I'm about a quarter of the way through this particular slog. Once I finish it, I'll probably do another set of tips about what I did. So... hang onto your seat.

Most of my work this month was involved in finishing a 20,000 word novella that will be released...at some point. I've also written a bit of fanfiction this month.

Now wish me luck. June is coming, and it's going to involve me clinging to sanity by the fingernails.

Okay, I wasn't going to double up and instead was just going to finish on May 1st, but then I just decided to go for it and get this finished.

One of the things that I've always struggled with is names. Names of characters in particular. Now, I've already talked about language formation, and there is definitely some information in there that is helpful for making alien names. But what about the rest of the names?

Firstly, I try to think about what sort of name I want. I think about the feeling of the name - should it be short or long, smooth or harsh? Should the name evoke any particular ideas, or feelings? Is there any particular ethnicity or nationality that the character should come from? Do you want to reference anything with the name, such as a particular meaning or historical figure? The choices I make are helpful in settling on a name in the end.

For example, when I named the main character of Dreaming - Prescott Samuel Cox - I was naming a lawyer, from a family of lawyers. I wanted the name to sort of sound like that. I also wanted Sam to be embarrassed of his first name, because it was so traditional and old-fashioned, and so he goes by his middle name. In the Dream world, everyone calls him by his true name, Prescott. It's one way that I differentiate the book between when Sam is in the real world, or in the dream world.

Once I've figured out a few criteria, then I mine various sources for actual names to use. I get names from a couple sources. Sometimes I'll steal a first or last name from a person I know (A few characters' last or first names are the same as one of my clients - but never both!!)

Mostly all I do is google for baby names. There are a tonne of websites with first names that you can choose from. There are also a tonne of websites with lists of surnames by nationality. There are websites that allow you to search by letter, by nationality, by meaning. When you start scanning lists, you will probably find something you like.

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I hope you've enjoyed this month and all of my tips. I'll be putting all of these posts together, editing them and fleshing them out, and putting out a book. If you've liked the information in these posts, I hope you like the final version.

We're in the home stretch! I seem to be a tiny bit further behind than I thought, so I might go a bit beyond the end of April.

Today I'm going to be talking about worldbuilding. I have two main tips for this post.

1. Don't over-do it. Leave spaces in your world for things to grow. If you map out every street, building, and flower in a town, and it's vitally important that the heroes be able to run down the street and find an abandoned building to hide in, but you've already established that the nearest abandoned building is four streets away, and it's impossible to get there before the bad guy catch them, you're going to feel hemmed in and stuck. The reader won't know the difference if you make something up on the fly, so long as it makes sense.

Allow your world the room to shift and reshape itself to be the way it needs to, for the purposes of your story, without letting continuity errors creep in.

If you make up too many details before you begin writing, you may have the urge to reveal them all. Make up 15 different religions, and you'll want a representative of everyone in the story. Come up with 30 countries and you'll want to travel through every one, to justify all the work you did. You want to have enough to make the world seem full, without spending the rest of your life doing background work you'll never use.

2. Don't under-do it. You don't necessarily want to just begin with a blank page, either. If you don't expand out your world beyond the borders of where the characters are, then it'll feel like there's nothing beyond those borders and the characters are living on an island. You can include throwaway references, or minor characters, which will show that there's more to the world than what's needed for the purposes of the story. Preparing more than what you're planning to directly use in the story will give your story richness that it otherwise wouldn't have.

Knowing where to begin and where to stop is a very individual decision. Every world and every author is different. All I can say is that when it feels like enough, stop, and if you are writing and feel like you need more, then spend some time expanding your world.

I can't necessarily say that a novel has to have a particular structure, nor that it even needs a structure at all. This isn't something I've made a specific study of, but I can tell you that I tend to follow the Three Act Structure. And that's what I'm going to talk about a little bit more today.

The main thing that this structure does is to space out the most profound points of change or disasters. Now, a novel doesn't actually have to have three acts. Some novels will have two acts, and some have four. It might even be possible to have five acts. Maybe some readers will be able to point out examples. A particularly epic novel will have more such disasters, and so that determines how many acts you actually have, but generally you'll have three main acts.

The First Act

In the first act, the characters and the main problem of the story are introduced. The characters are thrust into the events of the story. A change takes place (usually as close as possible to the very beginning) from which there is no going back. They can no longer ignore the important conflict going on and must do something about it.

At the end of the first act, something takes place that is a major turning point. The work that the characters have made towards achieving their goal and making the world go back to normal is thwarted in a way that truly changes the perception of the problem itself.

The Second Act

Throughout the second act, which is the main bulk of the story, the characters strive to solve the problem they're faced with. They may still be trying to avoid facing the great sacrifices they will have to make in order to solve the problem. They generally still want to go back to the way things were, and not want to face the fact that the world has irrevocably changed. There should be multiple turning points, keeping the action moving.

Many books get heavy and bloated in the second act. It is often helpful to have another major disaster right around the middle of the book, to help hold up the middle and keep it from seeming too long.

The Third Act

In the third act, the characters are totally committed and they have made firm decisions to solve the problem. They have accepted that they only way out of the mess that's been created is forward. The story moves and builds to the climax, and the main problem is solved, though the characters' world will never be the same.

Making all this happen

Generally what I do before I start is identify the four main turning points - the one that launches the characters into the action, the two disasters at the end of acts 1 and 2, and the climax. Once I identify them, I place them as anchor points in my outline, and build the book around them.