Busy Like A Bee

BEE-attitudes – Bee kind to one another.

This is me, busy like a bee… I’ve been going pretty much non-stop for the last few weeks that it’s nice enough to sit down and write a simple blogpost.

So what am I up to?

• Storytime Blog Hop resumes in October, and you’ll find a link to the latest 1000-word flash fiction installments when they’re ready. The date is slated to be 26 OCT 2023, but I’ll let you know for sure closer to go time.
• COVERS! If you joined my free newsletter then you know that voting is going on for the covers of Waking Dread (Book One of Eater of Dreams). After I’ve announced the winning cover there, it will show up here, along with a link to preorder. The date of the announcement here will be 17 OCT 2023. The book releases on 31 OCT 2023
• Books in progress: I’ve written quite a few novels, though I have published relatively few. Well, that’s changing as I put my rear in gear and revise. I’m in the middle of revision now of a “cyberpunk noir” and will provide more updates on progress in my newsletter. The story takes place in the same “universe” (worldbuilding-wise and literally, seeing that it’s science fiction) as Clones Are People Two. It’s on Kindle Unlimited, so you can read it for “free” if you take advantage of the program. The novel won’t be on KU, at least not right away.
• Speaking of which, there’s also a cover for that story too, which will be released closer to when it publishes.
• I also opened a survey to my newsletter readers on which of the stories they would like to see after I publish the cyberpunk noir, and the answer was overwhelmingly the sequel to Umbra: Shadows Over Hinge (originally published as Umbra: A Post-Apocalyptic Mystery). That revision commencing depends on the progress of the cyberpunk noir, which, barring any kind of emergency, should be done by the end of November, and a date of publication will be chosen before then.
• Totally unrelated to the books, I have to shore up my chickens’ coop before the weather gets too cold. It’s great that it’s more math/geometry/non-word hands-on, something to do when my brain gets rut-bound on parts of the revision. An hour or two with a saw and measuring tape and paintbrush can loosen up the old muse.

So that’s it for now (as if that is not enough).

Not-So-NaNoWriMo Day 5

Day Five and I’m just trucking along with my progress in the “Tentatively Vorsky” story, which takes place in the same universe as Clones Are People Two.

In case you were wondering, DLYSS is Daily Sessions, each of them being 30 minutes to the timer. I added the TTLSSN or Total Sessions so I could do some calculations off to the side to see how long my outline would clock in and how fast I could be done with the 50K word draft. As of today, its 18NOV2022.

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If you’re interested in the process of writing as many words per session as I do:

When they say anyone can write the novel, they really aren’t kidding. To the timer of 30 minutes a session, I can knock out an average of 1037 words, as you can see in the first table, which makes the 50k words in 30 days challenge a breeze.*

I’ve altered things a bit how I approach writing the first drafts of my stories, regardless of whether its a short or a novel.

The first thing I do is plot-card everything, by writing my ideas for the scenes and a few details on index cards (I use 4″ x 6″ cut into four). To be fair, I DID start this before November, but it’s just putzing around with the idea for the story at that point, playing out scenes in my head to see if it would work as a story, and what size** it should be.

Then I use a sheet of 18″ x 24″ drawing paper that I divided into four parts and drew on blocks roughly corresponding to the Save the Cat formula. I don’t write exclusively to that form, but it does help for me to see where the pacing may be a little thin or slow in some areas, but it’s a novel, not a screenplay, so I can play the long game a little bit. Yes, yes, I know I can use Scrivener to do this, but when I am first getting started, nothing replaces the tactile cards for moving ideas around.

When it comes time to start typing it in, I don’t worry about the formatting and making it look pretty. In fact, I use bullet points and keep each one less than three lines long. This serves a two-fold purpose for me: it divorces me from the idea that I have to “pretty up” whatever I’m putting on the paper in rough draft, since it’s really just an “outline” and it also makes it easier to find certain lines on a visual scan in case I want to move ideas around within a scene. My words come a whole lot faster when I’m not worried about picking the perfect word. (I also, if I know it’s not right and I will want to choose another one, I just capitalize it and move on. I’ll pick better in revision).

Later, after everything is filled in and the first draft is complete, I can go back and edit this bullet-point rather than prose. This also has a dual purpose: I’m not married to words I spent a whole lot of time perfecting, so if lines or scenes have to go, I can chuck them without remorse. Editing an outline is a whole lot less painful. At that rate, I get about 500-750 words of revised story done per day. And I go back after everything is written out and re-read again, so technically it’s going through a second revision but that one is a lot faster. It’s a relatively new process for me, but I’ve gotten quite a few stories completed this way. Now I just have to finish the bundles and find covers for them before I’m tempted to go back re-read and re-revise…

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* Revision is the hard part. Ask me why I have literally sixteen 50k words+ novels done (one of them 130k+ words), but only one revised and published as of now. Go on, ask… I’ll also invoke the Holly Lisle course here on How to Revise Your Novel, which is helping immensely to get my revision skills up to par. DISCLAIMER: I was an affiliate at one point but this link won’t earn me anything. I still recommend it, however, if you are trying to whip your own book into shape.

**That’s one of my huge weaknesses there–I have a lot of trouble keeping stories short. With a few exceptions, all the stories I’ve written in the last two years came in too long for any submissions to magazines.