Writing Routines

“If you write one story, it may be bad; if you write a hundred, you have the odds in your favor.” ~ Edgar Rice Burroughs

The age-old writing advice: write as often as you can. Where you can. When you can.

I was talking to my local writing group friends the other day and it dawned on me that I write in snatches. At the time, I hadn’t thought much about how and when I write.

But it is important, I realize now, to be aware of this, because then it is possible to improve the routine for a better quantity and quality of writing.

I wake up first thing in the morning and write for ten minutes before I freshen up. Dream journal, whatever.

I write while waiting for a cab I have called. Write while waiting for the pasta to boil. Write a post based on writing prompts.

I do sit down and write an hour or so every once in a while, a few times a week, and usually get an average of 4000 words written a week. So, I have learned not to complain.

I know I haven’t yet made it to the stage of discipline where I sit down and write every single day at a particular place. My favourite writing days are those when I get a lot done in snatches, finish a story, for example, or do a series of writing exercises.

I’m getting a few short stories published in Antologies here and there, but I wonder if my sort of writing routine would be any good for longer stretches of work. Since most of the girls on this blog are novel-writers, prolific ones at that, I’m curious. Is it possible to write a novel in snatches?

How do you write? How often? What is your writing routine?

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In reading words and sentences to pronounce them out loud, we use additional parts of our brains, and I think that’s what makes us more aware of the actual content of the sentences than when we’re reading silently. Necessarily, there’s a tighter focus, too, and less tendency to skim and skip.

As I mentioned, I hadn’t been in the practice of reading my stuff aloud. I now regret that I haven’t been. This epiphany is due to creating podcasts for my latest novel, The Vampire Kitty-cat Chronicles. The manuscript was copyedited by a reasonably sharp-eyed colleague who performs that function for the university where I work. It was read by my sharp-eyed English-major wife. And I read it again and again and again before publishing it, both in manuscript form and in book form.

Yet reading it aloud has uncovered at least a dozen typos and other linguistic mistakes. Argh! Despite all the care and attention, there they embarrassingly were. I’m almost finished with the podcasts, and will load a revised version into the POD supplier, Lightning Source, when I’m done. Because it costs $40 for me to make that change, current copies purchased will have glitches in them. (Maybe they’ll become collector’s items—get your copy from Amazon today!)

On the other hand, there’s a good chance the errors will go unnoticed. After all, they escaped the beady-eyed gazes of people who were on the alert for goofs. I also think that the nature of the narrative is a factor. There’s plenty of humor to distract you, not to mention seeing the world through a cat’s eyes, and fast-paced action that becomes quite involving. Readers (not all, it does have its critics) speed through the story, constantly racing forward to find out what’s going to happen next in the madcap tale. I like to think that, in a way, quality of storytelling is the culprit.

The goofs have primarily been just that—goofs. A typo now and then. A word out of place. Once a description that didn’t make a whole lot of sense.

Here’s an interesting sidebar: I use contractions in the narrative quite a lot, partly because it’s in first person. However, in reading it aloud for the podcast recording, I found that the rhythm and sense of the words play better when the contractions revert to whole words. I’m not going to change them in the typeset narrative, but, when I record, I find myself de-contracting the contractions more and more.

And guess what—I’m finding a word missing now and then, some hidden echoes, and other glitches that have not been seen by the same crew that missed those in vampire kitty-cat—the wife, the editor, and myself. Just this morning I found a line that had a character finishing a beer—only I’d cut the earlier reference to him having one! Argh!

(I’m still interested in finding beta readers for this book. Here’s ad copy I’ve composed about We the Enemy: “Madmen, madchildren, and criminals kill us with terrifying firepower. Revolving-door law spits felons back onto streets uncaught, unreformed. But maybe there are ways to change. A gripping ride in a unique speculative thriller that sparks thought.” If you’d like to give it a read and give me feedback, email me at ray at ftqpress dot com.)

On the positive side, I’m still confident of my narrative ability. I’m finding that the prose reads well and is involving, and doesn’t need much in the way of revision—but I am also seeing ways to clarify now and then, which means a better read. This reinforces the lesson I learned with the kitty-cat novel—storytelling and writing craft abilities aside, my ability to get it right is only 98 percent accurate. Read it aloud. A valuable and humbling lesson learned. I’m going to do it with the other WIP that’s been “finished” for years, Finding Magic.

I ignored this advice for years, to my detriment. So why not do this? Take a couple of chapters of something you feel is polished and tight, right now, and read them aloud. If you don’t discover anything, excellent. But it you do . . .

For what it’s worth.

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There are times when I write and the story or characters seem to get stuck deeper and deeper in a rut. I have written them into a corner that there is no way out of. So what do you do when this happens? Start over? Backtrack?

Generally, for me, I start over. I of course could probably solve some of these problems if I were better at outlining, but when a story is flowing, I’m not outlining, therefore I back up and rework it. And yes, this is often when I start the outline that might have saved me time if I’d just done it in the beginning.

So how do you dig yourself out? What skills do you use?

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Sarah is writer looking for an agent. She is currently working on novel # 4, editing novels 2 and 3, and querying novel # 1. For more insight to her work, visit: http://legendoftheprotectors.wordpress.com/ or http://legendoftheprotectors.blogspot.com/

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Last weekend, I participated in a workshop by Patrick Gale and Suchen Christine Lim.

Both of them were quite adamant about the use of pen and paper. Pen and paper, they said, would not let you edit as you draft, which is very important for first drafts.

Also, it slows down your thinking and writing, which, apparently, is a good thing. They even said something about writing by hand being an organic process as opposed to typing, closer to our hands and hearts.

This brought to mind my writing teacher and friend, who does not allow laptops in her creative writing classes for beginners. An year ago, I could not imagine putting pen to paper, it seemed an alien skill after years of typing.

But when I started off, I realised that with pen and paper I could access the creative side of my brain much easier. Thus far I had typed out all my articles, official letters, reports and so on. So, for me, the pen and paper became the starting point for all my first drafts, after which I typed them on to a document.

While typing I started editing automatically, my first draft virtually became my second draft. I printed this out, and started scribbling on it, adding in and deleting parts, then typing them in again.

This has become my de-facto drafting process for all my short stories. I have not managed a novel yet, so I don’t know what drafting an entire novel by hand would be like. As others have said, it could have its disadvantages.

Patrick Gale does all his first drafts in long hand on notebooks. As writers we have all have different processes, and I’m curious to know how other writers create their drafts. So how do you draft your work?

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I have done a few dialog-writing exercises, but the results are often dead, stilted.

But today I read some interesting bits about real-life conversation in a curious book called the 3 am Epiphany, which I’ve borrowed from a friend. They sort of made me realize that dialog does not have to be always clean, cut-and-dried, but can imitate life in various ways, all the while doing what I ask of it: advancing the plot and revealing character.

Without further ado, here are the pages I’m referring to:

3 am Epiphany on Conversations

Conversation examples

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It’s inevitable that as you start on your journey in creating a story, you don’t start at day one. So where do you start?

For me, when I first started writing, I started too early into the story. My friend Bethany helped the inexperienced me understand that the story starts often after the trauma, after the move, after the big change. That ridded me of my first two chapters of book one. Now, as I write, I try to start where the story actually begins, but I realize that often I still need someone to say, “Nope, here’s the start to your story.”

That leaves the backstory to be woven into the novel, not dumped in, but layered throughout.

Often, we tend to think that something can’t be cut because it’s important for the reader to know. So, my question is: How do you work it in without dumping it?

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Sarah is writer looking for an agent. She is currently working on novel # 4, editing novels 2 and 3, and querying novel # 1. For more insight to her work, visit: http://legendoftheprotectors.wordpress.com/ or http://legendoftheprotectors.blogspot.com/

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I have scanned them for you, in order to share. You can read few pages here. But I would urge any writer be it fiction, or non-fiction to go and buy the book. This would probably be a good investment for all writers and writer-wannabes out there, because it contains detailed info not only on writing a piece, but more importantly, on re-writing and editing it to perfection.

So here you go:

Excerpt from "Keys to Great Writing"

Second Excerpt from Keys to Great Writing

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“Why are you writing this novel?” I ask.

And every time, the answers are different. Some writers do not have an answer. But I’ll try and quote the others from memory:

“I want to be published. I have published a few short stories, but that just not have the same impact.”

“If I had a choice, I wouldn’t. But there’s this deadline…”

“Because I think I can write one…”

A scattered few say:

” Because I can’t help it. The characters in my head won’t stop talking….”

“I care about what happened here, and I want to write so that the truth is out, once and for all….”

” This issue is close to my heart, and I’ve carried this story within me a long, long time….

I’m a reader for some of these writers and when I get their manuscripts in my hand, it is always the work of the latter category that keeps me reading to the last page. They aren’t always technically perfect, these works driven by passion or even obsession, but that can be corrected with the help of an editor.

I have come to believe that passion, more than knowledge of the craft, is what carries a novel with a reader, and makes him or her want to read on.

I’m not writing my novel, yet, but I’m sure I’ll ask myself the same question when I get to writing it. I’ll be sure to come out with my first, most spontaneous, honest answer, and then take a long, hard look at it.

So, why are you writing your novel?

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Our very own JAMIE HARRINGTON HAS AN AGENT!

Yep, you read that correctly!

Jamie joined us not long after we started here, and has been an intricate part to our site. (She and her husband created it for us.) So we couldn’t be more thrilled to announce that:

Victoria Horn from Liza Dawson Associates

has signed on to be her agent!

Congratulations to Jamie and Victoria, I am sure they will make a great team!

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Sarah is writer looking for an agent. She is currently working on novel # 4, editing novels 2 and 3, and querying novel # 1. For more insight to her work, visit: http://legendoftheprotectors.wordpress.com/ or http://legendoftheprotectors.blogspot.com/

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At such times, though I’m not really adding to any long or short work, perhaps hurriedly scribbling down a few things before I go back to whatever has priority at that moment, I’m still writing in my head.

By “writing in my head” I mean I’m kind of sub-consciously working out a plot point in my head, or letting a turn of phrase buzz around my brain and inspire a scene, or letting my eye absorb details that would one day come handy. I empty my head of thoughts, and while a part of me is working at something (usually physical, like laundry, or going out on an errand), the other part is in a trance, dream-writing.

I have come to believe that a writer is a writer even when he or she is not writing at that moment. I have learned to make all my writing downtime into a preparatory for my regular writing, when all the dream-writing lights off sparks on my real page. Which is why I was very happy when I read Natalie Goldberg in Writing Down the Bones, because she describes exactly what I do:

“….right before you are planning to write, a good preparation is to become an animal. Move slowly, stalking your prey, which is whatever you plan to write about, no matter what else you might be doing at the moment–taking out the garbage, walking to the library, watering the garden. Get all your senses intent. Turn off your logical mind–empty, no thoughts. Let your words come from your belly. Bring your brain down to your stomach and digest your thoughts. let them give nourishment to your body. Have a round belly, like Buddha, breathing all the way inside. Don’t hold in your stomach. Be patient and measured. Let the writing percolate below the level of thought forms, in the subconscious and through your veins.”

Do you dream-write as a preparatory to your actual writing?

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