Others have said: Writing is more than work.

Writing is a job, a talent, but it's also the place to go in your head. It is the imaginary friend you drink your tea with in the afternoon.

Ann Patchett (Truth and Beauty: A Friendship)

I sometimes forget how privileged I am to have the talent to write.  It's just that, with my time now so severely constrained, I feel like I have to use every free moment that I have to write. Those two words "have to" become a problem to me. Because they turn writing into work. A chore.

While writing does take some heavy commitment in order to achieve something with it, I don't think it's supposed to become a chore most of the time I write.

Rather, I need to focus on the fact that writing is my friend too. Writing always listens when I want to rant, or when I'm sad. It celebrates with me when I'm happy.

I miss writing when I don't spend time on it for a while. But like most friends, I get a little tired if I force myself to be with it all the time. Sometimes, although writing might be my sanity's saviour, I need to see other friends too.

But the fact remains that when I'm not writing, I feel trapped in my life. As if I can't breathe. Writing frees me.

I need to remember that the next time writing starts to feel like a chore.

Do you sometimes feel as if writing is a chore/too much work? How do you remind yourself of why you write?

Enriching Characters

Hi all! Today I want to welcome my crit partner supreme, M Pax, here on a stop on her blogtour for her new release: The Backworlds. Take it away, M!

Enriching Characters

I confess character is something I was light on, something I struggled with more than other things in writing. They were great in my head, but they didn’t come off as great on paper. They were so two dimensional.

It’s something I had to practice. Going deeper, deeper, deeper, enriching my character’s lives. Writing their stories before my books begin was a huge help. I make sure the connections matter and have an impact. Real life isn’t quite that neat, but fiction isn’t real life, and everything we construct should matter and impact our stories.

My critique partners, who are better at character, constantly pushing me was another help. Eventually, it began to sink in and I made steps in the right direction. Steps became strides. Strides now become habit, and I still push myself to go farther.

Then I found this quick and dirty tool to help me add more depth and more details at an RWA (Romance Writers of America) meeting in January. It’s basically a Glasser analysis for characters. You can get more information and the worksheets at http://www.judithashleyromance.com/ Maybe I don’t use all the details, but they’re there and they help add. 

The last piece of the puzzle was taking a dvd course called Building Great Sentences: Exploring the Writers Craft. From GreatCourses.com. I borrowed the dvds from a crit partner. Writing lengthy sentences isn’t always the answer, but how it taught to let the reader in on our thought process and how to add emphasis and more and bigger and richer, was very useful. 

The benefit of all this practice, listening, and learning is my writing. The Backworlds was a definite beneficiary. The characters in this first book in my new space opera series are among my favorites I’ve invented so far.

What tools and resources have helped you to create better characters?


The Backworlds

After the war with Earth, bioengineered humans scatter across the Backworlds. Competition is fierce and pickings are scant. Scant enough that Craze’s father decides to hoard his fortune by destroying his son. Cut off from family and friends, with little money, and even less knowledge of the worlds beyond his own, Craze heads into an uncertain future. Boarding the transport to Elstwhere, he vows to make his father regret this day.

Available as an ebook from: Amazon / AmazonUK / Smashwords / Feedbooks
Free on Smashwords & Feedbooks. Will be free on Amazon in a few weeks.

Sign up for M. Pax’s newsletter to be notified the moment The Backworlds goes FREE on Amazon, and when it becomes available from other retailers.

About the author:

M. Pax’s inspiration comes from the wilds of Oregon, especially the high desert where she shares her home with two cats and a husband unit. Creative sparks also come from Pine Mountain Observatory where she spend her summers working as a star guide. She writes mostly science fiction and fantasy, but confesses to an obsession with Jane Austen. She blogs at her website, http://www.mpaxauthor.com/ and at Wistful Nebulae. You’ll find links there to connect on Twitter, Goodread, FB and other sites.





Thank you very much for stopping by, M! All the best for The Backworlds.

If you'd like to do a GPF post, please check out how it works here and contact me. I'm looking for guests in June. Theme: Querying and Submission.

Playing Reading Catch-Up



Credit

So... it's not enough that I have 23 hours accounted for - and it's not for writing. I also still have books upon books upon books that I want to read this year.

That I wanted to read last year already.

So far, I have been getting along, but with my writing time almost down to nothing, my reading time is in the red-zone.

Which makes me wonder... Should I just be reading when my muse isn't prodding me to write? I mean, if I write without being inspired, aren't I just wasting time? And besides, it's so important for writer's to read. But at the cost of precious writing time?

Choices... Choices...

What do you suggest?

Key-Word Cavalry: Revisions vs. Edits

Welcome to another Key-Word Cavalry day!

For all my new bloggy friends (and those who missed it before), every Wednesday except the first of the month, I answer some writing/editing etc. related questions.

I do this in two ways. I either go through the lists of key-phrases that brought hits to my blog, but that I don't feel have been addressed enough by my posts, or I answer questions asked in the comments.

So... today is the latter.

Mina asked me on 27 April: 'These are really terrific tips, some of which I've already been following. I'm not sure I quite grasp what you mean by #vi, though - would you please elaborate on the difference between "revising" and "editing"?'

My answer:

Credit

Although people use the terms revisions and edits interchangeably, they're not in fact the same thing.

Revisions involve making big changes to a manuscript. Structurally: Adding or deleting chapters and all changes that need to happen as a result. Or in the story: Getting rid of or adding characters. Redoing important plot points that will require extensive changes to the rest of the work. Or other changes for example: changes in narrative like past tense to present tense, or first person to third person point of view.

Editing involves smaller, more localized changes. Editing can be subdivided further, but I'm not going to go into that too deeply. Examples of editing: replacing words with better ones, re-organizing paragraphs (although this can fall on the revision side of the line, depending on the amount of re-organizing you plan to do), fixing spelling and grammatical errors.

So when I say start with the biggest changes, I am suggesting that you start with structure (revising), then changing things within the story (revisions), then changes in narrative (revisions). Once that's done: I suggest that you go through changes to paragraphs (as edits), then improving writing flow (edits), then replacing words (edits) and finally spelling and grammatical errors (edits).

The reason why I suggested this was simply as a way to save time. If you get stuck on small edits first and then discover that you need significant rewrites or deletions, you would have wasted lots of time fixing things that won't even make it to the next draft.

Of course, no one follows the above to the letter, but I don't think I've ever met anyone who finished edits by mixing them with revision.

Hope this helped. :-)


So! Do you agree on my somewhat short explanation of revisions vs. edits? Do you have any questions that you'd like for me to answer for Key-Word Cavalry?

Time Issues

I feel so guilty that I haven't been writing a YATT post in such a long time. And it's rather stupid, because a lot of my Tuesday posts were YA related. Sigh.

Still, going back and adding the badge feels like cheating, so... here I am, still feeling guilty.

AAAAAAaaaaanyway.

I'm really starting to miss when I was still in high school. Wow. There was a phrase that I never thought I'd use.

But no, this isn't an attack of nostalgia on my part. I'm not missing the hanging with friends, or all the other things that people miss about that time of their life.

No. I miss that I had A LOT of writing time. I mean, six hours at school? With me finishing the homework before the class was finished? Yeah... writing.... writing... writing... writing.

Nothing to do in the afternoon? Pht. Write.

I almost want to cry at the amount of writing time I wasted.

Especially now, when my writing time has taken a huge hit. See, my quiet working days aren't quiet any more. So there goes eight hours out of every work day. And then there's the fact that I'm exhausted when I'm done working. Two hours more. Six to eight for sleeping... Three for eating with the family. Two a night for random non-writing activities... That adds up to 23 hours. I have one freaking hour to write. Per day.

That is unacceptable.

Un. Ac. Ceptable.

I am going to crack.

And soon.

Where do you create time to write? I'm already at the point of changing my sleeping patterns to fit it in. I'm even *shudder* pre-writing my blog posts. I really don't want to dump non-writing activities because that will make me a hermit, but I already dropped one because it was wasting writing time. Any suggestions?  

A to Z Challenge Reflections

If you want to see the overview, I wrote it on my other blog, since doing two identical ones just felt a little... silly.



Yep. I successfully completed the A to Z Challenge for BOTH my blogs. So I'm pretty chuffed with myself.

Here are some stats for April:

Posts written: 54
Blogs visited: about 700. I know I said I'd hit 1000, but I had to start working regular hours.
New Bloggy Friends: about 200 total for both blogs.
Number of times late: 2. Both on Saturdays.

Thanks so much for everyone who visited either/both my blogs and for supporting my efforts. And thanks for my old visitors who were patient with me. I will be dropping by soon!

Did you do the Challenge? How did you do?

What the Avengers Can Teach Us About Character

This Friday The Avengers, Marvel's ultimate superhero team, comes out in theaters in the US (if you're in the UK it's already opened and it was called Avengers Assemble.)

So today I want to talk about what the Avengers can teach us about character.

What makes the Avengers unique as a superhero team?

Joss Whedon described it as "these people shouldn't be in the same room let alone on the same team—and that is the definition of family."

These guys are all heroes. They're all used to saving the day on their own. They've all got big egos. I mean, one of them's the god of thunder, not to mention the supersoldier, the incredibly strong green monster and the genius who invented the Iron Man suit "in a cave, with a box of scraps."

If any story ever adhered to the rule that "everyone is their own hero," it's the Avengers.

So what can this teach us about character?

The Avengers is a prime example of every character doing something. They tease each other and fight with other each other and snap at each other and work with each other because they each have their own agenda.

Superheroes are larger-than-life characters. And if you want larger-than-life characters - not necessarily characters with superpowers, but characters that walk off the page - you need to follow the example set by the Avengers.

Every single one of your characters must have an agenda. Every character is a hero in their own mind. Your main character, your secondary character, your villains, your minions, your female lead - even the janitor is the hero of his own individual story.

But that doesn't mean you must write a backstory for every character who appears in your story.

Take Hawkeye, for example. He has no previous movie in the Marvel universe like Thor, Iron Man, Cap, and Hulk have. He only appeared once in Thor, and then only for a three-minute cameo. But does that mean he doesn't have an agenda?

No! In his three minutes of screen time he showed us that he clearly had a goal. He was alive, he knew what he wanted and how he felt about things. He can hold his own against the other Avengers, even backstory-less as he is in the movie, because he has an agenda.

Of course, Hawkeye does have a backstory in comic book history. I'm not saying a secondary character can necessarily thrive without one. But we didn't need it revealed in the movie in order to make Hawkeye a well-rounded character.

Your characters should be pushing at each other, each struggling to get what they want.

People don't really get along with each other. They stand each other, certainly, and sometimes even like each other. But real, flawed, sinful human beings don't live in harmony. They just don't.

I mean, think about it. How many people do you get along with? Really get along with? How many people want the exact same thing that you want?

I'm guessing the answer is not many. It should be the same for your story. If your characters live in perfect harmony, they're not real.

Look at your current WIP. Which of your characters get along best? When do they fight or differ in opinion or think bad or selfish thoughts about each other?

If the answer is never, then either you meant to create perfect people, or one of your characters doesn't have his own agenda.

That doesn't mean you should sprinkle flaws like confetti all over your characters and have them bickering in every single scene. 

That would get annoying pretty fast, as Misha covers in this post.

But do realize that tension comes from character, from the way that characters respond to other characters.

No two people can ever perfectly get along. They'll fight and be at odds at some point in their lives, because they each have their own agendas.

The real heroism comes when they resolve their differences and reconcile their agendas because there is something better that they must work towards. The Avengers always come together at the end, as a team, because they know that saving the world is more important than their own selfish desires.

So take a look at your own writing. Be sure that each character has their own agenda, their own fears and hopes and desires.

And if you go to see The Avengers today, or sometime in the future, be looking for the ways in which the characters conflict. Try to find each character's agenda. Look for the ways conflict is handled. Learn from it.

Make your characters struggle and strive, and soon they'll be living and breathing and walking off the page, whether it be the page of a novel, short story, script, or comic book.

'Nuff said!

Do all of your characters have an agenda? A backstory? Do any of your characters get along perfectly? Have you seen The Avengers?

Lauren is an aspiring authoress with a love of words and too many story ideas to count. In her spare time between completing her BA, reading, and having a life, she works on her novel and blogs bi-weekly over at her writing blog, Word Art.

Insecure Writer's Support Group

I know that today is insecure writer's support group day, but since I didn't get much writing done, I don't have anything to be insecure about.

Next month, on the other hand, might have oodles and oodles of insecurity, so be sure to come back. ;-)

Happy May Day!

And now, the Challenge is officially done.

But I'm bushed and finding myself oddly unable to think out of the alphabet, so I'm taking tonight off. Sorry.

Will be back with something better tomorrow.

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