So Many Projects

So I've been toying with the idea of an episodic blog. There are a number of blogs out there that are written in character by some creation of the author. I'm looking to do something entirely different (and it's been done to some degree before - at least as far as I'm aware, though I can't seem to find any examples). I have the notion to write a story in episodes and post it on a blog: easy enough, right? Let's hope.

I also have a few short stories to finish. Those shouldn't be too tough. I also have the rest of the steampunk piece I've been working on. After that, it gets a little hazy, but there are some other things, too. My wife says it shouldn't matter that I have so many projects going "as long as I'm writing". I suppose in a way that it's ok; however, I tend to get distracted and lose site of what the story is doing at the moment if I don't stay on it. Then it wanders - as I mentioned last time - and it comes out at the other end with no plot and little resolution. I'm hoping that by plotting things out it'll help that.

On a completely different note, it snowed here last night (and still is a bit). It's the first real snow of the year, and it makes me want to bundle up and just stay inside. Only, most of the time I don't really want to write because that makes my fingers cold. But the fan in our heater was just replaced, so we won't have to worry about it getting cold in the apartment, which means I should be ok. :-)

My challenges this winter, I think, will be to keep on task and to keep to as few projects as possible to get at least some of them done. I did get my contract for "Affections Between Space", though, and that will be up on www.bigpulp.com on January 12. I'm excited for that.

Thanksgiving Day Thoughts

I'm sitting in Chicago with my wife's family. It's cold out. Winter always reminds me of being unproductive - hunkered down in your house, wishing the cold away, and keeping yourself occupied until spring. The food is good: Ashley's grandmother is a great cook.

I'm not writing, though. I haven't in a few days honestly. It's disappointing, but I had a productive day the other day going through and plotting out my stories. After the other day (when I posted about my stories lacking plot), I realized that my stories are driven by characters and concepts. Many times they lack in a cohesive, linear plot. Sometimes that's not a bad thing, but as a standard, I don't like it. So I'm working on some more linear thoughts and seeing about
making my stories more functional. It's one thing to have conceptually- founded stories - indeed I quite like them - but to have stories with only a concept and no plot to drive the story just doesn't work.

So I've been debating doing something with my writing that I've never done: outline. I have never really thought of outlining as a good method for my writing, because I like to produce things very environmentally: that is, I like to write what comes to me and polish it later. What I've discovered, however, is that my mind wanders and when it wanders, so does the story. I don't always know how I want to the story to end, so I don't entirely know how to write the story to get to that point - especially if I'm going on the fly. Writing up an outline for a story might help alleviate some of my frustrations with not being able to produce those cohesive stories I desire.

No Plot, No Story

So it's 10:00 AM on day 12 of NaNo. I'm nearly 800 words ahead of where I needed to be yesterday, which means my job will be easier today. However, as I write this story, I'm realizing something very dramatic: there's very little plot. It's disappointing, really; throughout the story I have a pretty distinct theme, and there's certainly setting, but there's not much of a plot.

Chris Baty - founder of National Novel Writing Month - says "No plot, no problem". Outwardly, the message of that seems uplifting: just write. Don't worry about the little things as you push through NaNo; just write. At the end of the month, though, if you've pumped out fifty thousand words, and you have no plot, you're going to have the biggest editing headache imaginable. No plot? Great, now you have to go through your entire story and make everything fit to the plot that you decide to stick into it. It's gonna be messy, and you're not going to like it.

That's where my beef with NaNo comes in. The good points: 1) it gets me writing every November in a way that I should be writing every day, all year long; 2) I meet new writers from around the city and sometimes around the world; 3) I'm writing, and I love the feeling I get when I'm writing and when I've accomplished something. However, NaNo does one thing very well. It pulls in all of the people who call themselves writers, who spend very little time at their craft, who don't study the classics or the contemporaries or even the critics. They write because they think it's fun (and believe me, I do, too), and they have grandiose ideas about getting published. I work very hard at what I do; I study, and I write, and I rewrite, and I learn from my fellow writers. One thing I've learned over the years is that if you've got no story, then you have no readers; and if you have no plot, then you have no story.

Now, I'm not dissing NaNo. In fact, I commend its ability to pull writers out of the woodwork. I'm all about creative education, and NaNo is a great example of that. What I'm criticizing are the people who treat my profession like a hobby and think challenging themselves to silly things like adding gnomes into their story at some point where the main character will freak out. Why? What does that add to the story?

I'm sorry, now I'm ranting. And I still don't have much of a plot. At least my main character is a likable guy.