Tonight we’re going to take a small break before getting to part six of Pushed to the Edge. I’m not usually big into poetry but I’ve been taking a creative writing class that is focusing on it. We were asked to write a sonnet and it’s the first chance I’ve had to write in the fantasy genre. I decided on a sonnet through the eyes of Alsalam as he’s watching the attack and defense of his village in last week’s episode. It peeks into a troubled and nervous mind. Of course, it has limitations by form alone, having only 14 lines to work with and only 10 syllables per lines. That really makes you consider each word carefully, a good writing lesson.

I think it worked in the end. I’m even a little impressed with what I came up with. Another fun twist was how David records the poem. The fun thing of poetry is that everyone interprets a piece differently. He really does a great job with the serious tone and it’s fun that his pauses come at different places than when I read it.

But enough of my rambling. I hope you enjoy it. Part six will be back next Tuesday!

Conflicts of Battle

Invading drums commence the steady beat
of a soldier’s march. The General calls
a charge, their avalanche of swords to meet
His own forest of spears. How many would fall?

Men shouted, men fought, men let out a call
of battle so sound it was heard around
Death’s field. Injured were forced to try and crawl
across hard packed dirt of striking red ground.

He watched the scene in a too common way,
A thought that wearied his soul. These brave men
wore masks of strategy, some would ever lay.
Tales would number those, rounding off to tens.

Yet to the man all fought at his command,
In time some might commend this brutal stand.

I never thought that I would really get into writing serialized fiction, my wife still can’t understand how I do it. I’ve always been a plotter, writing detailed outlines and world building a lot for my stories. I even write detailed notes about chapters before I write them. Suffice it to say, very little is just made up as I go through writing a novel.

Podcasting has offered me that completely different path though. Because I really don’t spend much time plotting out these stories, they just evolve from week to week based on things that happened, and where they might lead from there. It has been a wonderful experience to me as a writer. My skill has increased drastically since this all began. My confidence has as well.

It’s something I think all you writers should try at some point.

It has taught me to edit – If you really want to see your mistakes, read your stories out loud. Every little mistake will scream at you when you hear it. If you really, really want to see, have someone else read it aloud. David has taught me not to send him bad drafts!

It has taught me to adapt – I can’t count the number of times I felt the story was trapped and had to find a way out.

It has shown me characters – It’s the characters that drive these stories every week. Never before have I felt so confident about getting into the mind of a protagonist.

It has shown me limits – One of the first rules we decided on for TNS was that no story would last more than 9 episodes. I’ve learned that each episode really has to drive toward that necessary conclusion, there aren’t episodes to waste.

Has anyone else had experience with this? What have you thought about it?

We all know we’re doomed to re-live the mistakes we don’t learn from history, but for writers, history becomes so much more interesting. The mind of an artist often works differently than others. When we learn about the military battles that ended wars, we’re also figuring out how things might have gone different. While most people read about the back room deals that make and break nations, we look at the personality types in the room, and wonder how history might have changed had their backgrounds gone just a little different.

History has a great deal for us to build upon while we work out our plots and characterization. It offers endless settings, and hundreds of other details that don’t have to come from scratch. After all, nobody wants to reinvent the wheel.  There are civilizations all through time for the choosing: ones from forests, from deserts, from mountains. There are mysterious languages we still haven’t deciphered, calendars more accurate than what we use today, centuries old structures crafted based on advanced astronomical calculations. And for each of these things there are hundreds of “what ifs” we can ask.

For a writer, history doesn’t have to be accurate to be interesting. All those possible paths can lead us to another interesting story, another fun novel to write. We can drastically change history by giving a father to a leader who never knew his, a best friend to a woman who knew only hate and judgment. In some cases, the less accurate the better. To us history is just a large set building blocks waiting to be made and broken apart again.

Isn’t imagination great?

I’ve just started reading The Forest Awakens once again, preparing myself for its first real rewrite. I wrote a while back that based on reactions, both from agents and friends, I figured out areas the book was lacking. What I’ve noticed is that there is a difference between reading for enjoyment and to prepare for a new draft. I thought I’d share a few of the things I look for.

• Watch dialogue closely to make sure nobody is saying things that don’t make sense.
• Be honest about which parts seem slow to you, what can you do to liven them up?
• Prepare to scrap! I’m scrapping all of chapter one.
• Find places that are description driven instead of character driven. (keep consistent, whichever you are going for)
• Writing for pre-teen or teen? Make sure kids will connect with your protagonists. This is something I’m going to be paying a lot of attention to, people tend to think I wrote it more for adults.
• Make sure no names are too similar, same for locations, ages, etc.
• Also make sure places and people don’t change names in the middle!

Those are some of the things I pay the most attention to. Feel free to add your own if you’d like! I’ve enjoyed getting to read my book on my new kindle. It’s very fitting in a way that this is the first book I’m reading on it.

Sometimes I think all artists are born with this curse. Or perhaps we, as procrastinators, are drawn toward interests that are known to be sympathetic. If I wasn’t so bad about putting things off, would that mean I would write more, or would it mean I’d find something else to do with all my free time? I’ve often wondered these things. If you haven’t yet, you probably will at some point too.

The fact of the matter is, the answer doesn’t really matter at all? This is who I am and I rather like that person. So we learn to deal with our inadequacies instead. The internet, other than the devil-sent curse of any procrastinator, has thousands of positive tips for this little ailment. I thought I’d share some of the ones that work for me.

1. Minimum word counts – I do this like most other writers, but I’m not quite as brutal to myself as many seem to be. I think when you do sit down to write you need to have some idea of how much you want to get down. I try to get at least 700 words typed up whenever write. I’m also not big on the whole “you HAVE to write EVERY day” thing. If that works for you, rock it, but it rarely does for me. If you write 900 page books you may eventually HAVE to write every day, but most probably don’t.

2. Find a consistent time – Schedule a time block you can write in if you choose to. I’m a bit of a night owl, so my time is usually 10PM-12AM. If I want to write I know I can, since I’m not usually doing anything else. I have to set time aside to get anything else done, so why not writing?

3. Don’t read what you write – Early on I always read what I did for the day, then would get stuck into edit mode for days. There’s always time to edit later, just leave it alone! Forward, friends, move forward!

4. Don’t worry about names – Changing a characters name, even a main character, is easy to do in editing. If you can’t think of a cool name, just give him or her a crappy one and worry about it later. The same goes with places too! If you use Microsoft Word, the find/replace feature is quite nice for this.

I think I’ll stop there for now, I’m already thinking this will need a continuation post some time later! There are so many good ways to get around procrastination. Feel free to add some of your own to the comments!

As I’ve done more and more research of this insane industry that is publishing, I’ve discovered, quite by accident, that I’ve done pretty much everything people suggest. I can’t recall where I read it but there is this quote I like. The only difference between a writer and a published writer is persistence, or something close to that. This is seen nowhere more than in the arts. So many writers spend their whole lives hoping what they have to say will be worth reading by others. That, of course, requires talent, agents, publishers, an audience, etc, etc.

It could be said that I’m on the “right path” to publishing a book. That could mean nothing of course, but if you look at the writer checklist (didn’t know there was one? Muahaha welcome to the crazy) then the argument could be made that if I stick with it I’m bound to sell a book. Let’s examine then, shall we?

1. Write a book – Indeed, this is an important step toward publishing. You could add plotting, creating characters, and all that if you’d like, but this is more or less the start. You have a finished book, what to do with it? This was the first thing I got right. Woo!

2. Set aside said book – My book was terrible. I loved it, don’t get me wrong, it was a great feeling to read it. But it was terrible and I put it away in a folder (where it’s still sitting). Hurray, I completed step two.

3. Writer another book using skills learned the first time – I happened to have another story to tell. You know, it was one of those “What a GREAT idea!” moments. Well skipping all the juicy bits, I wrote another book. I was on the right track and didn’t even know it at the time.

4. Edit, edit, edit, then get someone better to edit – I have the supreme pleasure, and the slight terror, of having a wife that is far better at editing than I am. After 4 drafts there was no page of my manuscript that didn’t have marks from top to bottom. You don’t need to research publishing to guess this step is important!

5. Discriminate against agents and test the waters – Yup, you heard me. Choose your top 10 agents then send your query to 5 others. Or better yet, attend a conference and try those agents first (which is what I did). You keep your top 10 list, you’ll see why in a second.

Send out those first 5 queries, wait patiently for your rejections, and hope for some tidbits as to why. My responses were dead on (that’s why they’re agents). “The prose is good and you do a fine job setting the scene (always take the compliments where you get them!), but I felt a bit removed from your main character, Colby.” That’s a direct quote from one, the others said the same, but not as clear. One good, detailed response out of 5 is GOOD luck. Now you know what’s missing and you know what these agent’s were looking for. Fix these things, then fix up your query to show other agents that you’re strong in that area (note: that’s show NOT tell). Most agents want at least a few pages. Make them stronger.

6. Write another book and keep submitting – Here is where you wait, and show your persistence. Almost every single published author has stories of rejections. Your book very well may not find an agent. Maybe the market isn’t ready for it. Maybe it’s not very good. Maybe you just aren’t ready for it. Write because you want to tell stories and each book you write will be better than the last. Patience and Persistence.

What do you think, agree or disagree? I’ve found it to be pretty accurate in the fantasy genre.

I mentioned yesterday that I thought TNS might be postponed until tomorrow. Considering the time, it’s best to assume that it has been. I can say that it is completely finished and reviewed. It is, at least, partly recorded as well.

I think this next scene demonstrates how much I’ve grown as a writer. While it did take me too long to write it, that is something I can practice and improve with time. What is impressive to me is the level of depth that comes into the story just by introducing one new character. I knew the sort of man I wanted him to be, but you can’t create truly in depth characters on a whim, and wise characters doubly so. There has be a lot of history there, a lot of things that made this person wise.

I do not want to reveal anything of course, so perhaps I will talk more about it after this story is through. I do believe it is one of the most interesting characters I’ve written so far. That is why these podcasts are so fascinating to me. Books take a long time to write, and an even longer time to edit (in my rather minor experience). But the stories for the podcast are pretty short, and they let me explore so many worlds and characters. Being able to share them with you guys is just icing on the cake.