…and I got no privacy…ooo uuu ooo

I used to think that song was a touch on the creepy side, but these days, you don’t know just who is watching you.  (more…)

Before I get distracted (again) by emails, promo, and my latest book, I thought I’d tell you about my new office away from home.
 
Ever since my DH lost his job, I lost my peace and quiet, not to mention time in my home office. He follows me everywhere out of boredom when he’s not actively looking for work. Needless to say, my writing has slowed to a crawl despite my ever-increasing “talks” with him about leaving me alone for a few hours.
 
Desperation began to seep into my brain. Crazy schemes like drugging him into somnolence, killing him and burying him under the vegetable garden, and booting him out of the house were hatched and discarded.
 
More viable plans like getting up early (my best bio-rhythm is for morning hours and working late at night is hopeless, trust me) failed. He’d awaken, feel the empty place next to him, and come find me!
 
I don’t know about anyone else, but my income has been affected by the sluggish economy. I have to work to pay some of the bills. I can’t just take time off. I have deadlines to make, but can’t afford a leased office space, not even a shared one. (more…)

A lot of fiction writers are rejected for simple things.  I’ll be posting here little tidbits to help you improve your chances of receiving an acceptance letter.

If you want to improve your writing you really, really need to nail this skill:

Keep a scene to one point of view, view the action through one set of eyes. (more…)

Character emotions remain some of the trickiest writing there is.  All too often authors fall prey to cliche phrases and dilute their writing by telling us what emotion we are supposed to be experiencing, rather than showing us what the character is going through.

In Creating Character Emotions by Ann Hood, authors are provided with a new way of expressing character emotions.  How?  Ms. Hood gives practical exercises drawing upon the author’s memories of experiencing the emotion being discussed.

The book is organized by emotions and then three poor examples are given with an explanation of why they are poor.  The author then follows up with three good examples and explanation.  Finally, she provides the reader with three exercises to write so the reader can create fresh writing for the emotion. (more…)

From time to time things happen that irk us in regards to our jobs/careers/professions.  We’ve all been there, probably more times that any of us would like to count.

Sometimes we really need to blow off steam, vent our frustrations, and just get our irritation off our chests.  There are right ways and wrong ways to go about getting this release. (more…)

Every writer finds it.  It’s rare, but it happens.  Once in a while, a story takes hold of you and forces you to keep writing.  You let things slide; dishes pile up in the sink, the house gets a little dusty, the cats and the kids have to whine at you to remind you they need to be fed.  But nothing supersedes the story. You’re compelled to keep working on it. You lock the door to your office and huddle there over your keyboard while the story forces its way from your imagination onto the paper.

Momentum.

That’s what every professional writer wants. Momentum. The kind of drive that pushes you to lose sleep, miss meals, forget appointments or snarl at any mortal foolish enough to interrupt you. Once momentum gains hold of your life, it’s hard to let go of it. Why, you may ask?

 Because a writer’s greatest fear is losing momentum.

There is a way to have your cake and eat it too.  Writers need to learn how to ride their momentum.  What I mean by this is very simple–scheduling. I’m a firm believer in scheduling. If I could schedule every second of my day,I would.  Right now, for example, I’m riding a huge wave of momentum.  I’ve got three projects cranking along at top speed.  However, I also have two projects (of mine) in edits plus I have to edit projects professionally for other writers.  How in the world am I going to accomplish it all?

Let’s start off with your schedule.  What suits you best? Do you write better in the morning, when you’ve had your first cup of coffee?  Or, like me, do you write better once the sun goes down and the house gets quiet? Your priority as a writer is to determine your peak time of day for work.  For me, it’s night.  The morning is the worst.  So, when I wake up I take care of the non-writing things: cleaning the house, feeding the critters, running errands.  Then, I look to my second priority–which is editing.  I take my editing seriously. I’m dealing with another writer’s work and it’s my responsibility to help them produce the best work possible.  So, I block out a two hour section in the late morning when I work on the editing projects I have on my desk.  My mind is alert–after all, I’ve already cleaned the cat boxes–and I can concentrate on the technical aspects of someone else’s work.  One thing I’ve learned is that since I’ve started editing, my own writing has improved immeasurably.

You may not edit professionally, but you still edit.  Rewriting is the most important part of the writing process, whether you revamp a story five times or thirty.  No matter who you are, there is no such thing as a perfect first draft.  So block out some time to rework your stories every day.  Even just sitting back and reading them without a red pencil in sight can give you insight into how your story flows. If not that, it’s a good time to blog. Stretch your writing muscles. Do a little world building. Do something writing related that will help your mind to expand and relax.

Then, whatever else you do, take some time for yourself. Have some coffee, watch some TV or read a good book for a while.  Me time is more important to a writer than you may think.

Now, finally, it’s time to catch that wave.  The momentum has been pushing against you all day.  The story is excited; it’s ready to come to life.  Shut yourself away in your writing space and pick up the story where you left it off yesterday.  You may be asking yourself why it’s important to take time away from that momentum.  Why not just get up and start writing first thing and go the whole day pounding out the story and to hell with the rest of it?  The answer is simple: the more focused your mind is upon the project at hand, the better the result.  Just as with musicians, authors have to practice. We have to exercise our minds, stretch them out a bit, before we turn to the project at hand.  There have been mornings when I ignored my schedule and went straight into writing.  Trust me; that’s usually where I have to rewrite the most. If I follow my schedule, I can ride that momentum with a clearer mind and a deeper focus on the story I’m working on.  But, to get the greatest benefit from that momentum, you have to learn how to channel it so that it works best for you.

You may find that your writing world is the direct opposite of mine.  I’ve always been jealous of those people who wake up at 5 a.m. and immediately sit down to write with clear minds and absolute focus.  I’m just not that kind of girl. What I can tell you is that if you find yourself in the grip of overwhelming momentum, there are ways to channel that energy and make every word you write count in the end.

Happy writing!

Okay, so it’s been about ten days.  How are you doing on your goals?

Not so good? Okay?  Still at it?

It doesn’t matter where you are.  Today is a new day.  Every new day is an opportunity for a new start.  Don’t make yourself feel bad because you missed a day on moving forward on your goals. 

Take a look at your written goals.  Evaluate them.  Are they truly realistic?  If so, remind yourself just like Scarlet O’Hara…Tomorrow is another day.

If you’re reading this, you’re one of those people who, like me, make goals every year. Did you make goals last year? I did and they were based on a total word count for the year. This was the first time I’d ever set out to do something like that, and I didn’t reach my goals. It wasn’t a complete catastrophe, but I realized a few things. So I’d love to share those with you if you’re feeling the need to arm yourself with new goals for the year.

1. Goals must be attainable.  I’m a last minute gal when it comes to most things. It’s something I struggle with constantly, but when I give myself an annual goal I’ll happily shoot for the moon and figure I’ve got plenty of time to get it done. Real life and burn out are factors most of us don’t include in our race to the stars. So make sure your goals are within reach.

For instance, if you can comfortably write 500 words a day, don’t make 1K a day your goal for the year. Why not set the goal for 500-650 words a day, every day for the year? That’s more realistic. Besides, the end results are fabulous. 182.5K-237.3K total words. Break that down in novellas, novels and short stories and you’ve had a heckuva year!

Also, you can reach for the stars, but focus on what you can achieve. Having a goal of “Agent X accepts my work and all my future works” is not something you control. Sending two submissions to Agent X by July 2009, however, is.

On a side note, if you’re going in for surgery, or planning a big move, or looking for a new job, don’t count on your “down time” as writing time. Stress is a very real vice on creativity. Remember, real life is going to interfere. It’s how you adjust that makes all the difference.

2. Goals must be measurable. Have you ever ran/walked a race? I ran a 10K (6.2 mile) once in my life and do you know what the best part of that race was? The mile markers that told me I was getting somewhere…gave me a point of reference (especially when I had one or two miles to go!). One of the reasons I didn’t meet my goals for 2008 was a lack of reference. My goal last year was 390K words! I could have done that, had I been smart about it.

Now, you learned in the first step that I’m a procrastinator. So guess what happened in September when I realized I’d only written 160K of that goal? I lost my mind in a race with myself to get to 390K by December 31st. By the time December rolled around I’d reached 300K of my goal. In less than three months I’d written almost the same amount from the previous eight months. Guess what happened in December? Burn out and illness. The body can only take so much stress and I’d heaped a ton of it on myself. So what is a writer to do then?

Set mile markers.

I’ve set this year up with quarterly goals and word count focus. I can comfortably write 1200-1400 words a day. So that’s my daily goal. I’m a weekend catch-up writer when I wake up before the rest of the household. So that will sit nicely with me for the year. I’ve also set up a goal of submitting to one publisher a month. Incidentally, the word count goal has given me wiggle room to write outside my current publishing obligations on a project of my heart so I don’t suffer from burn out again.

And, if I miss out on a goal for the quarter, I’ll be able to begin again the next quarter. Accountability will come at the end of the year, where I’ll re-evaluate my goals for next year.

3. Goals must mean something to YOU. My goals are not yours. Yours are not mine. That may seem obvious, but think about it. I can’t tell you how many times my girlfriends and I went on diets together. We were all going to lose 10 pounds, whether we needed it or not. And together we struggled and cried and got frustrated when the pounds melted off one person and accumulated on another (We called that the fat transference theory).

Over the years I’ve tried several goal road maps and none of them did it for me. I’d get frustrated and angry, ready to throw in the towel without another thought. When my Irish temper cooled, I’d re-evaluate and realize that goal set just wasn’t a good fit for me.

Goals that mean something to me: Submitting one book a quarter to each of my publishers, submitting one novel this year, reminding myself why I wrote in the first place (because it’s fun and keeps me SANE!). Those goals work for me. What goals work for you?

And one last tip: Write your goals down and put them in front of you. Post them on the wall in front of you, or on your fridge or some other place within your line of sight. 

I hope this helps you in your goal quest of 2009. Let us know, in comments, what your goals are this coming year.

Happy writing,

Dawn Montgomery

http://www.dawnmontgomery.com/blog

Other posts like this:

Creating Smart Goals

Setting Effective Writing Goals

An amazingly brilliant man, Cal Newport, wrote a book some time ago called How to be a Straight A Student.  Cal wasn’t interested in surviving college, he wanted to excel at college, and the school he attended was a high brow Ivy League school…Princeton.  Searching for help books on the topic of succeeding at school frustrated Cal and he ended up writing his own.

Since that time, Cal has started a blog, appropriatedly called Study Hacks.  But in reading through some of the posts, I’ve discovered with a tiny bit of tweaking, Study Hacks can apply to anyone’s life.  Take for instance the following tidbit from Cal’s post on November 11th:

• Our brains are terrible at remembering everything we have to do, which is why good capture and organizations systems are necessary.
• Our brains are wonderful, by contrast, at coming up with short-term plans that balance the subtle demands we face in the near future. Trying to force a one-size fits all action plan to our lives constrains this natural ability.

Haven’t we all experienced just such a thing?  It doesn’t matter if you’re 18 or 50.  Our minds are incredibly flexible and able to organize all sorts of information that is astonishingly fast.  Think about how quickly you assimilate a doctor’s appointment into an already busy week, and juggle that with picking up the kids from school or soccer, getting dinner on the table, and balancing that all with work responsibilities.  Yet, how hard is it for some of us to find the time to work on our current WIP?

I invite you to visit Study Hacks and other life hacking blogs to see what tidbits you can pick up and perhaps apply to your life.

As a fantasy writer, I spend a great deal of time building the worlds that I write about.  It’s a unique tool of the speculative fiction writer and one of the most difficult things to do. How do you create a world that is completely credible? What elements do you need?  How much work is it really?

It’s a lot of work.  I’ve always approached world building with a single goal in mind: if someone asks me a question about my world, I already have to know the answer. The world of Asphodel, which I write about in my fantasy series The Asphodel Cycle, is complex and huge.  As a matter of fact, my world building file is as large as the first book. It’s crammed full of history, short stories that take place outside of the Asphodel plot, character profiles, maps, religous procedures and rituals and a long mythology.

But I’ve been developing Asphodel for years.  Recently, I got an email from a young writer still in high school, asking me how he could learn to build a world as complex as mine.  That was when I developed this short list for him to start off with.

World Creation For the Beginner

1. Physical - maps, climate, topography(Is your main town in the mountains? A port city? On the plains? Is it warm? Cool?  What are the borders? And always remember that rivers can NOT flow uphill–you’d be surprised at how many people forget that

2. History-this means government, military background, currency, the biggest trade product, anything that would have an effect upon the characters (Democracy or dictatorship? Standing army? Navy?  Agricultural or industrial nation?  Gold-based currency or paper?)

3. Mythology-gods, worship practices, temples, magic( Is this a monotheistic society or is there a pantheon? What rituals are used in worship? Big white marble temples or humble outdoor shrines? How does magic work?)

4.Time - calendar, units of measurement (Solar year or lunar year?  How long?  How long is a month?  Clocks? Sundials?  Hours, minutes, or some other sort of measurement?)

5.The current situation. Every world has a here and now.  What makes this time so unique?  Is the change to come or is it already here?  Who affects it and how?

and the most important….

6.How this world affects the protagonist–and how the protagonist reacts to it.

These basics can get anyone started. A quick note about magic for fantasy writers–

Magic is hard to write.  You have to make something that is inherently incredible into a believable action.  Wouldn’t it be nice if your protagonist could just wave his hand and change the world?  Unfortunately, that makes for boring fantasy, even if your protagonist is a god. There have to be limits established from the beginning: who can work it, how they work it, when they work it, what they need to work it, and what the consequences of working it might be.  Be careful when you’re writing about magic, folks–poorly defined magic can ruin the credibility of your ENTIRE story.

A quick caveat for sci-fi writers: your science had better be accurate.  Although you may love the spectacular explosions in space when you’re watching Star Wars, there’s not only no fire in space (no oxygen to feed it) but there’s no sound in space. Keep your science facts straight so that you can build your science fiction with credibility.

World building is the skeleton upon which you hang the flesh of your speculative fiction story. There is no such thing as too much world building.  Allow me to repeat that: there is no such thing as too much world building. However, for the fledgling writer these basic starting points should help you to kick off your own fantastic journey through the imaginary worlds that live in your mind.

The Asphodel Cycle is my baby and I’m very proud of it.  With the first two books already released and doing well (The Reckoning of Asphodel and The Gift of Redemption) the world I’ve created is thriving. This holiday season, Temptation of Asphodel will expand that world even more.  Although the world of Asphodel is immense, it all began with these six points and exploded from there.

Hopefully, these will help you as much as they have me.  Good luck and happy writing!