Writing Momentum vs Wasted Time

Something a lot of writers don’t talk about, so a lot of non-writers don’t understand, is the momentum around writing.  I’ve spoken previously about breaking theinertia, but I wanted to revisit the topic since it’s such an important part of writing.

As most of you know, I’ve begin writing a new novel, but I haven’t been near as consistent at it as I’d have liked to have been in actually creating content.  I know that if I’d simply written 100 words a day, rather than waiting for a stretch where I could get at least 500-100 words, I’d be much further along.  However, it’s more difficult than it seems.

Although there is obviously a greater investment in time when writing 1000 words than when writing just 100, but, in a way, it’s harder to write just 100 words.  The reason is because, and most writers will recognize this, it takes about 50-100 words to find your writing groove, so it’s easy to keep going.  However, setting a goal of only 100 makes the writing choppy.  It also sets an artificial barrier that inhibits good writing, because you tend to “watch the clock,” retarding the ideas and words you are looking for.  That can create a lot of wasted time as you look back at your choppy writing and scrap loads of stuff that could have been avoided if you’d simply spent an extra 20 minutes working your effort into something more productive.

The balance is finding enough time to get something on paper so you can progress rather than waiting for the ideal time.  I’m not real sure where that balance lies, and I’ve bene doing this for more than 12 years now.  Maybe I’ll find it by the time I retire.

Title Discovery

I know I’ve written on this before, but one of the most challenging aspects of writing a novel is figuring out what the title should be.  Sometimes I’ve gone in with a decent idea what the title should be, but that’s the exception rather than the rule.  Most of the time the novel is long past the writing process before I can figure something out.

I’m running into that right now regarding my newest novel.  As a reminder, it’s a sci-fi/fantasy mashup where a starship from Earth(far in the future) goes to find a colony world and discovers a world populated by humans, elves, dwarves, and an assortment of monsters, all run by magic.  A title should capture the essence of a story, but how to fit everything into the title so it is still enticing without being cumbersome.  Basically, be enough of a tease to draw folks in without giving away the store.

Titles also create attention as a marketing tool, so they have to be created in accordance with the desire to attract new readers.  I’m hoping that sci-fi and fantasy fans will want to come along, so how do I package that?  I’m sure I’ll spend the next year or more(the timeline I think it will take to write given my current pace) figuring that out.

Truly Award Winning?

On the right side of this blog, my “About Me” section says I’m an award-winning author.  Technically that’s true given my award for Best Paranormal Fiction from IndieReader in2018, but is that more boast without substance than it is a hook to hang my hat on?

Let’s be honest – there are writers out there who’ve won far more than I have.  There are The Hugos, TheDragon Awards, The Nebulas, The Franz Kafka Prize, and so on.  The most famous and successful authors have won multiple awards in multiple years, so I’ve started wondering if I’m giving anyone a misleading impression.  Sure, I won, but it’s not on the scale of a Nobel or Pulitzer.

Basically, I use the moniker as a point of pride and marketing tactic.  I’m proud of it, but it feels a little dodgy around other writers, much like telling someone I’m Airborne Qualified, which has different connotations depending on whether you’re talking to a civilian or a soldier.  Don’t get me wrong – I’m going to continue to use the title(I did, after all, earn the award), but there’s a touch of insecurity surrounding it when I look at other writers and their accomplishments.

What's Next?

One of the biggest questions in a writer’s life is figuring out what to work on or release next.  As shown on the page detailing the novels I have in progress,/1^st draft complete, I’ve written a fair number that have yet to see the light of day.  This is universally because they’re not ready and require extensive re-writes since I haven’t completed a fresh novel recently.

However, I’ve begin writing a new novel that I’ve mentioned previously, and I’m more excited about it than I am about wading back into the stuff that still needs work.  I find myself wondering if that’s a normal part of being an author, or if most folks are more disciplined than I and can focus on what they’ve already written before being drawn into a new project.

So that’s my struggle – rework what I’ve already written so I can release it, or concentrate on this new novel which, while still forming(and looking like it may be Game of Thrones lengthy), has me more excited than any other idea in a few years.  My gut is telling me to stay on what I’ve started working on since it’ll gnaw at me if I stop to focus on less thrilling(at the moment) projects.  Given how challenging it can be to break the inertia of rework, it seems certain that at least finishing this new novel(still unnamed) is the most likely course of action.

Talent vs Training

How much talent do you need, and how much can training hone that talent?  This is the quintessential question regarding what makes a good writer, similar to questions about whether talent for chess is rooted in intuitive play or the memorization of various movement patterns.

I think the obvious answer is that there is a combination of the two that is required.  However, I also tend to believe that a certain level of talent is necessary or no amount of training and practice can achieve greatness.  As a comparison, I can practice basketball all day long for years, and I’ll never reach the level of a Steph Curry or James Hardin(I intentionally selected those players and not someone like LeBron because LeBron is a physical freak, whereas Curry and Hardin could be mistaken for “regular guys” if they weren’t in the NBA).  Therefore, innate talent must be a part of any great writer.  Good writers may be able to be produced through training, but practice will not overcome a dearth of talent and create greatness.

Of course, there are lots of decent writers out there who don’t get that training and practice are necessary components.  Raw talent undeveloped will similarly not reach greatness.  Sure, there might be the occasional Mozart or Akiane Kramarik, but those are rare indeed.  To reach greatness, most folks of talent will need to find ways to hone their craft.  Unfortunately, there can be a stubbornness to getting better since such people usually were able to get by and stand out among their peers simply by being born with more talent.

Now here’s where you’re going to say I’m contradicting myself – you can overtrain.  There can come a point where you change technique through training so much that your natural talent is subsumed.  Is this a contradiction?  I don’t think so – what I’m calling for is balance, not elimination.  The sweet spot of great writing is figuring out how to balance talent and training, how to balance ego and humility.  When you figure that out, you can achieve greatness.

Character Life

Any writer worth his or her salt has found themselves surprised by their characters.  Yes, this sounds haughty to the non-writer, but it’s no less true.  There have been characters in my previous works(Gary from Salvation Day comes to mind) who have grown and taken on a larger role than originally envisioned, and it is happening again with my newest foray into the writing world.

My new sci-fi/fantasy mashup has a character who was initially intended as a throwaway.  He’s a security chief meant to provide a sounding board for the more cultured commander, and he wasn’t intended for longevity.  He was envisioned as gruff and a throwback to a less civilized era.  However, even this early on in the writing process(I’m finishing up chapter four), he has become a much larger part of the story than I thought he would.  He was integral in the first minor conflict between the folks from Earth and those from the world of magic, and as I finish up the latest chapter, he is about to become much more prominent due to circumstance.  It has me wondering if there are others I’ve overlooked, or even haven’t come up with yet, who will make a greater impact than I thought.

The advice here is to never write off your characters completely, casting them off into irrelevance without due consideration.  The story can make their inclusion and growth inevitable.

Sci-fi Quirks

I love science fiction.  Despite my first few novels being more paranormal than sci-fi, and my best seller being a political thriller, my heart has always been in science fiction.  I grew up in the genre, and if given a choice of topics to read in, I’ll choose sci-fi nine times out of ten.

That’s not to say it’s always an easy genre.  For starters, bad sci-fi is worse than the worst “mainstream” writing.  It can be super-cheesy and make you want to wretch.  But beyond that, there’s a great deal of science fiction that is either too sciencey or too weird.  Some sci-fi writers want to show you how smart they are by going into great detail about the technical aspects of the ships they design or the equipment they use.  It’s like reading a technical manual, and I don’t know about you, but I rarely pick up books hoping to find a set of schematics inside.

Science fiction can also be super-weird.  I get that things are different by design.  After all, we’re usually talking about a speculative future we know nothing about and are trying to figure out what might be there, both from a technological standpoint and an alien standpoint.  In reality, it’s almost certain that alien races and worlds won’t be like Earth or have two legs and two arms attached to a torso.  There could be worlds covered in intelligent fungus, or giant creatures that fly through clouds of hydrogen gas, or even species that are nothing but a series of electrical impulses that exist around the accretion disk around black holes.  There could even be stuff weirder than that in actuality, but very rarely does that stuff translate well to a story.  And then there’s the weird way some sci-fi writers write their stuff.  Again, different is sometimes necessary to convey how different the world is, but there are times it goes too far(I’ve tried several times, for instance, to get into Earthclan by David Brin, and its strangeness trips me up every time).

Whether it’s technical stuff or weird stuff, these things should be vehicles to move the story along rather than be the focus of the story to begin with.  I get it – we spend lots of time coming up with this great background, and we want people to share in our brilliance, but they didn’t come to understand how the FTL drive works or to read about the way a globula interacts with a festoon during mating season on Ytron IV.  They want those things to make sense within the worlds in which they exist, but they’re not the reason the reader came along.  Some science fiction writers need to understand that better than they do so we can have good stories instead of car manuals or science textbooks.

Other Writing Pursuit Desires

I lamented earlier that my “real job” takes time away from the writing I’d like to do(which, honestly, is an issue for most writers).  Well, I thought I’d elucidate what else I’d like to be doing with my time.  Writing is the most obvious choice, but there are other writing related things I’d like to engage in beyond just writing novels.

There are a bevy of writers’ boards out there, and I’d like to engage on them.  These boards can be fascinating places where quirky folks like me share tips and techniques.  There is some garbage there, as with any online board, but there are also jewels that take time to uncover.  Engaging in a substantive and time-relevant way takes time and effort, something that can be in short supply when normal jobs require time too.

Marketing is another area I’d like to be able to devote time to.  I know there’s a misperception out there that publishing houses will advertise their books, but that’s mostly bullshit unless your name is King, Rowling, or Patterson.  Those authors are proven best-sellers, so publishing houses tend to focus their efforts on what they think has the best chance to make them money.  Now I know that you’re thinking, “But Russ, you’re an indie writer, so why are you talking about traditional publishing houses and their advertisements?”  I use that to point out that if most traditional authors have to do their own marketing, then we indie folks have the same(or a bigger) burden.  And marketing requires time(and money), so that’s an area where I need more focus.

The last thing, but not the only remaining thing, I’d like to mention is going to writers’ conventions/conferences.  This may sound dorky, but going to one of these events has been a dream of mine for a while now.  Watching panels, finding critique groups, and networking is something I think all writers should do, but I have neither the time nor money(although, honestly, I could scrape together the cash if I had the time).  But it’s not just the day or two(some longer) time commitments of the conventions/conferences themselves, there’s also the travel and preparation, which impinges more on time.

Does this all mean I’m not committed?  No.  I stay as involved as possible, but I also value the security that money brings, and I won’t sacrifice that security.  If it was just me, I might be willing to consider it, but having a family makes that sacrifice apply to more than yourself.  The way to solve this is the paradox that I need to sell more so I can have more time to sell more.  Basically, that means I need all of you to get off your asses and buy more of my books.  😊

Real World vs Writing

Every writer’s dream is to wake up when the sun is warm and spend all day either outlining or writing their latest tome.  You know…take our time, meticulously pour over every plot point and line of dialogue, and figure out the lines of connection between the characters and the story.  And a few writers are able to do this.

Most of us are not.

I have a “regular” job with a large corporation that consumes me during the day.  It pays pretty well and lets me live a lifestyle the way I would like for my family and I.  It also limits my writing time to a few hundred words per day(when I get around to it), as evidenced by the time it is taking to write my most recent novel.

This is the balance most of us have to make until we (ever?) make it.  And in those of us who have to work outside of writing, there’s always a sense of guilt that we’re not devoting the time to writing that we need to in order to break through.  It requires real time sacrifice, which sounds cliché but involves very real trade-offs.  My job time is pretty non-negotiable, so how much of my lunchtime do I give and still eat?  After the clock runs out, do I write or spend time with my kids?  When does the yardwork ever get done?  How about dates with my wife?

Point is that a non-writing job, which most of us have to have to not starve or freeze, severely limits our time to write, which limits our ability to put out new stuff, which limits our ability to break through.  Am I just bitching in general?  Sure, to an extent…but, and I know this will piss off some of those who are full-time writers, I believe it’s harder being a part-time writer due to the need for another job.  Why?  Simply because time is a finite resource.  Without an unlimited supply of it, you cannot meet the writing goals of those who do nothing but write.

I don’t mean to start a writers’ war, because each of us have nuances that others don’t.  I just would like it recognized that those who cry, “Just write full time!” don’t have the full context always.  Like I said, I’d like to have the dream stated in the first paragraph, but as long as we’re wishing, I’d also kinda like to have a pony…

Blogs vs Novels

Allow me to state the obvious – blogs and novels are different.  I know…shocking!

Although one must be at least a decent writer to do one or the other well, each type of writing requires different skills.  When I write a blog post, it’s a stream of consciousness.  Yes, I have a topic I’m looking to write about, but I don’t plan it out all that much, and I certainly don’t spend an inordinate amount of time on it.  Instead, I use the topic as a guide and write whatever happens to come into my tiny little brain regarding it.  Occasionally something will spin off like a stray electron spinning off into space.  Lots of times, the final product may not even look anything like what I originally thought I was going to write about.  Beyond that, there are extraneous words, especially in the use of adjectives and adverbs that I’d shy away from in writing a novel, mostly because, while I check to make sure everything is spelled properly and makes a modicum of sense, I don’t spend the time editing and shaping a blog post the way I do a novel.

Novels, on the other hand, are deliberate and planned out.  I craft an outline and know basically where it’s headed.  In my outline, I may have very specific action sequences or bits of dialogue I’m looking to use for the effect they create.  After writing a novel, instead of publishing it right away, I’ll put it aside for a bit so I can look at it with fresh eyes, and I do that so I can better edit it and remove those words that don’t directly contribute to the story. 

Of course, novel writing and blogging are different animals, even though both involve writing.  I liken it to playing speed chess versus regular match play.  I was reminded of this while watching The Queen’s Gambit recently, although I should’ve thought of it on my own since I spent a lot of time in my teenage years at chess tournaments and hanging out in chess clubs(yup, I was cool…and still am).  Speed chess is like blogging in that it’s a quick stream of consciousness.  You don’t have time to think through a great deal of strategy, so you just react.  In match play, you plan out your attack in greater detail, and you might spend five minutes(the usual allotted time for your side in a speed chess match) or more on a single move.

So why am I rambling on about this?  Because I don’t want folks to think that the skills are the same, or that every good blogger is capable of being a good novelist(or vice versa).  I think I can both write a good novel and good blog post, but I have to shift mindsets between the two, and any writer worth his or her salt has to do the same.

Why Not Everyday?

Some have asked me why I don’t blog every day?  Obviously I put out a decent amount of content, so why not do it every day?  Well, there are three reasons.

First, I’m pretty busy.  In addition to trying to write novels and blog posts, I have a “regular” job since writing ain’t paying the bills.  I’d love it to, but it doesn’t, and I need to put food on the table and a roof over my head, so any writing is done in my limited spare time.

Second, I don’t want to saturate the net with my stuff.  Three days a week is plenty given the limited availability of topics, and folks can bore easily if they get too much.  Back during the Monday NightWrestling Wars, Monday Night Nitro would give just enough to keep folks interested and yearning to come back for more.  However, when they expanded and started wrapping up storylines in the course of the show, to say nothing of how stupid the storylines became, people got tired of it.  It was just too much, and I don’t want people to tire of my writing.

Finally, and not to put too fine a point on it, I don’t get paid to blog.  I’m doing this for free.  Yes, I enjoy it, but not enough to do it full time without adding coins to my bank account.  Maybe petty and shallow, but still true.  😉

Nasty Spam

I’ve spoken previously about the negatives associated with engaging nasty comments.  There’s usually no upside.  However, I don’t know that I include spam comments in those rules of engagement.

I despise spam comment.  Do the folks generating these things really think they work?  At all?

I’ve debated whether or not to engage with them.  And by engage, I mean tell them to go the hell away.  Nastily.  I know I appear as sweet as a comb of honey, but I have a mean streak when I get pissed, and I’ve been known to revel in using it.  When I put my mind to it, I can make people feel tiny and stupid.

Of course, that’s not the best trait from a perspective of humanity, and it could draw even more spam comments, despite making me feel (temporarily) better.  Still, the temptation is ever-present.

What do you do regarding spam comments?  Any suggestions?

Dropping Blogs

As I’ve said before, I like debate.  I want to encourage dissent.  Without those kinds of things, life gets boring(one of my favorite authors even made this point in his book A Call ToArms when the main character was engaging with a newspaper editor, and the editor said, “I like editors and writers who disagree with me.  Keeps things lively.  I don’t know that I’d care for a homogenized world.”).  Take a look at the blogroll to the right, and you’ll see a mish-mash of varying points of view, from Sarah Hoyt to Hugh Howey.  I don’t drop any of them because they may express a point of view I don’t always care for.

That said, I’ve dropped blogs in the past for the way they’ve treated others.  Alternate points of view are fine – and, in fact, welcomed – but don’t get abusive.  A blog I used to enjoy a while back took umbrage at another writer and directed his followers to spam on over and loudly make their displeasure known.  The blog directed against wasn’t even one I was familiar with, but apparently they made an un-PC point, and the blog I used to have on my page thought unleashing the mob would be a good idea.  So yeah, I dropped them like a bad habit.

I’m always on the lookout for good blogs to add to my blogroll, but I’ve also found I have to be careful since so many folks can get abusive quickly in today’s polarized climate.  Encourage discussions; don’t encourage self-righteous mobbings.