This Close...

Well hello fellow writer/readers, long time no see. I took a break from blogging after finishing my Writing Tips series. But now I'm back to your regular Wednesday updates.

So what have I been working on lately? I'm still trying to finish Moon Dragons. As of this blog, I am 3 scenes away from completing the first draft. 3 freaking scenes, and I still have a hard time writing. I realized yesterday as I was writing the climax that there is a lot of stuff I missed writing earlier on.

But that's okay. It happens in the first draft. You might get to the end and realize that you have not done a good job of setting up your epic conclusion. And that is what editing and rewriting are for. Make notes as you go and then fix them on your next go around.

I'm pretty sure I'll get this draft finished by the end of the week. And what happens then, you ask? Well, I'm going to let it sit and mellow like a fine wine for a month or so. Got to step away from the project so that I can approach it with fresh eyes.

And in the mean time, I'm going to start real work on my New Crow project. I'm calling it the New Crow, because I had a Crow project a couple years ago and about the only similar thing between these two projects is the main character and a nightclub. I'm pretty excited about this project and I can't wait to jump fully into it.

So the next time we see each other, I will have Moon Dragons draft one complete and I'll be able to tell you what's up with New Crow.

What are you working on right now? Something new, something old? Are you on a first draft or within the rounds of rewrites and editing? Leave a comment!

Thanks for reading! Have a great day and Go Write Something!

The First Draft: It Sucks

Now that's we've talked about some of the pre-writing basics, discovering why and what you write, figuring out where and when you'll write, as well as setting achievable writing goals. We can now move on to the actual writing.

Everything starts with the first draft. I don't care if you outline or not. If you meticulously plan every moment of your story/essay/whatever you write or if you just pull crap out of your head and throw it on the page. No matter what you do, your first draft is going to be god awful. A poopy diaper is going to look better than your first draft. This is a proven fact. I have seen many poopy diapers and many first drafts. The diapers caused me less pain.

As a writer, you need to accept this. Embrace the fact that the first draft is going to be terrible. Seriously, give it a hug.* You'll feel better. The sooner you acknowledge that your initial word vomit is going to be that, word vomit, the sooner you can move on to finishing the first draft and then going back and fixing it.

Because the second most important thing about first drafts is that you have to finish it. No matter how horrid it is and how much you hate it by the end, you have to finish that thing. If you never finish that first draft you'll never know how awesome it could be. And you'll also never learn.

You'll learn more about writing by completing the first draft than you can learn in every creative writing class on the planet. You can read every text book, study every grammar manual and you'll still learn the most by writing and finishing what you write.

So go forth dear Reader/Writer and pour your soul on to the page. Crack open your head and just plop your brain down on your project like an egg onto a skillet. Because until you write those first words down, you can't really call your self a Writer, now can you?

Thanks for reading! Please comment and/or share this if you liked it. And Happy New Year, may it bring you awesome plot bunnies and lots of writing motivation.

Part One: Writing Mojo

Part Two: Your Routine

Part Three: Goals
Part Five: Writer's Block

*I feel I should note that I got Chuck Wendig's new book The Kick Ass Writer, for Christmas, so if my writing style seems to emulate his today, I'm sorry. BTW, it's an awesome book and he's smarter than me, so you should read it too.

I Did It! And New Things

Holy Freaking Cow, I actually did it. I finished NaNoWriMo. And my final word count was 57,091. I pumped a lot of words out the last couple days of November. I've done this thing off and on for about 5 years now and this is the first time I've come anywhere close to 50K. So you know, I'm pretty thrilled. :)

Of course, Moon Dragons isn't quiet done yet. I still have 20 scenes to write, but I'm in the home stretch and about 75% done with this sucker. I figure I can finish this first draft by sometime in January, so that's the new goal.

And now, moving on to some exciting announcements! If you turn your attention to the top of the screen, you will notice a new tab called "Writing Resources". In it you will find links to some useful writing related web sites and I'm in the process of compiling a list of writing books that I have found useful.

In the vein of useful writing help, I am also going to be launching a new series here called Kricket's Writing Tips For Beginners. I've been wanting to do something like this for a long time, but just didn't know how.

So, I want to start this series by introducing myself (for those of you who don't know me yet), because I know when I'm looking at someone giving writing advice, I want to know their credentials and their experience, to see if I deem them qualified to give me advice.

I have been writing since I was 13. I have two completed manuscripts under my belt. I worked on the school newspaper in high school. I'm an avid reader of fantasy and science fiction and I'm fascinated with the publishing process. No, I have not published anything, haven't even tried. I'm not at that step in the process, yet. So what am I qualified to tell you about?

Next to nothing.

Honestly. I'm not going to sit here and pretend I know everything because I feel I'm just at the beginning of the path to becoming a serious writer. BUT, I do feel like I've learned a few things on my journey so far and I want to share them, and that's what I intend to do.

So here's a layout of how this series is going to go. I'm going to post every Wednesday and here's a brief overview of what I'm going to talk about.

• Writing Mojo: The Why, What, Where, When and How of Writing.
• Your Routine: How to Make Writing A Part of Your Daily Life
• Goals: Setting And Meeting Writing Goals, Big And Small.
• The First Draft: It Sucks.
• Writer's Block: A Few Thoughts.

As this series goes on, please, please feel free to comment with your thoughts and suggestions. Also, if you know of any other resources out there for writers that I haven't mentioned, please share! You can either leave a comment or email me, there's a form just to the left.

Thank you for reading and I hope you come by again in the weeks to come! Happy Wednesday! Go Write Something!

WUW: Where the Real Writing Begins

This week I have begun working on my Official Real First Draft. The only difference between this and what I've written before is that I have the complete story all planned out. No big missing spaces filled with "SOMETHING HAPPENS HERE BUT I DON'T KNOW WHAT YET". It's a good feeling.

Also, I now get to focus more on the words since I have the story all figured out. Of course, I still stare at the screen blankly a lot because in stead of thinking "What happens now?" I'm thinking, "What's the best way to describe this?"

So my word count out put has been a little bit low. Only 4082 for the past week. But I did get my first scene/chapter done. Opening chapters are the hardest. You have to make sure you're capturing your reader and making them excited for the story ahead as well as giving them all the information they need in a not boring or info dumping manner. It's a lot to think about.

What do you find hard to write, openings, endings, or something in between? Leave a comment!

Thanks for reading and have a Wednesday full of Writing Win!

What's Up Wednesday? Not Much

Well I'm late, but that's okay. I honestly don't have much to say. I've been very productive this week, but I'm still working with the note cards. I'm almost done outlining the 70,000+ words I have so far and I've come up with 12 new scenes to be inserted into those 70K words. I'm rough guesstimating (that's an actual word?) that those 12 scenes will get me about 16,000 more words. This story is definitely going to be 90K, if not 100K, words long. *passes out* That's a lot of words.

So, yeah, I'm still plugging away. I'd really like to have this whole story plotted out and begin working on the real first draft by the end of July. It would be kind of nice to have the first draft finished and resting by November so that I can do NaNoWriMo this year. But we'll see. My writing plans and deadlines almost never work out. :)

And of course, before I go, I'll share some more Chuck Wendig gold. If you're not following his blog already then you need to fix that. 50 RANTYPANTS SNIDBITS OF RANDOM WRITING & STORYTELLING ADVICE  My favorites are #1, 3, 6, 10, 14, 16, 34, 45, 49 & 50. So, like, all of them. :D

WUW: Organic Outlining

Outlining my story onto note cards is going really well. I'm coming up with new scenes, filling in plot holes, finding and fixing little inconsistencies, and diving deeper into my characters. I'm anxious to get back to actual writing and have a complete first draft.

While doing all of this I think I've come up with a term for my writing process. I'm an Organic Outliner. I come up with a story idea and then I'll start writing it. That goes for a while until I realize how shallow and weak the story is. Then I'll stop and do some world building and outlining until I'm ready to go back to writing. This spurt of writing goes longer, but it too will eventually grind to a halt and that's when I get out the note cards and break the story down scene by scene. Once I have all the scenes plotted out, I rearrange them and modify them and make sure everything flows well. Then I can get down to actually writing a first draft.

So, see, there's a lot of outlining and planning involved, but I can't really get to know my story, it's characters and the world until I'm writing it. So many awesome things have come up while writing that I could have never thought of while outlining. Most of it is character stuff. I don't get to know them until I have to write as them.

And once that first draft is complete, with Once Upon A Time..... Awesomely Cool Stuff Happens... The End, then I can start the editing process. But we'll save that for another post, *coughbecauseI'mnotreallysurehowthatworksyetcough*.

In the mean time, I have some stuff to share. :)

• Chuck Wendig is kind of a genius and always has awesome writing advice. So here's Ten Stupid Writer Tricks (That Might Actually Work) 
• This one is for my fellow writing moms. How Do You Find Time To Write? 6 Tips for Moms (And Everyone Else, Too)
• And even though I talked a lot about outlining today, I know there's a lot of people who just can't do it. So this one is for you, On Writing Despair (Juicebox Mix)

People like using parentheses in their titles don't they?

Anyway, where do you fall in the outlining vs. pantsing debate? Leave a comment down below and let's have a conversation!

Happy Wednesday!

Snoopy is wise, listen to him.

WUW: Glorified Outlines

You said it Snoopy!

Just the other night I passed 70,000 total words on this first draft of Moon Dragons. But let's be honest here people, this isn't a first draft, it's a glorified outline that I spat out onto the screen. There are soooo many missing bits. Scenes I skipped so I could get to the more "exciting" bits and such. And then, my brain is not happy with a simple plot line told from the point of view of a single character, no! It wants to know what this character is doing over here and it wants to go take a peek at the bad guys over there. And don't even get me started on sub plots. I know they're there, waiting for me to trip over them.

*big deep breaths*

So, here's my plan, I've done this before and it worked pretty well. I'm going to stop where I am and go back to the beginning and do a more formal outline of my story. Find the scenes that I'm missing and write everything out so that I know what the heck I'm doing for my ending.

I've realized over the past couple of days that I've begun to meander in my story and I kind of lost my direction. I know where the end destination is, kind of, it's all kind of foggy. So I figure that if I go back and re-chart my course, maybe explore a few paths I ignored before, I'll have a better idea of how this all ends up.

And so, as it stands right now, I have a 70,000 word, glorified outline that I'm stuck on. Once I get a few more scenes figured out, maybe I can get to the real business of writing this thing.

Do you ever get like this when you write? Have to stop in the middle somewhere and go back to figure out where you were trying to go to begin with? Or do you just press forward and damn the consequences?

Deadline overdue.

Yeah... I didn't meet that July 9th deadline. Life and stuff got in the way. Plus I ended up adding a couple new scenes so it would have taken longer anyway. BUT, I do have just 3 scenes left of this first draft. So I will finish it this weekend! I swear!

Then I get to start the fun revising part, which I really don't know how to do. :) I've never finished the first draft of a manuscript before so now I'll be swimming through all new waters and that's a little bit scary. I've got an idea of how I'll go about it, so we'll try that and see how it goes.

So writer type people, what's your process for revising/editing?

Thanks for reading! Love you all!

Finished the First Draft?

Yeah.... technically, not really. So I had set my self a deadline of completing my first draft of my current WIP, A White Crow Novel (working lame title), on May 26th. Did I make it? Kind of. Let me explain.

When I first came up with this story I thought I could do the whole thing in third person limited with just one voice. I got about half way through and realized that wouldn't work. So I did a few experimental chapters in another character's voice. Then I thought, "Okay, 2 voices, I can do that." So then I decided to skip some random character building stuff that would happen in the middle of the story and jumped straight to the end.

I finished that ending by May 26th. Then I went and talked to a trusted person who I've mentioned way too many times in my blogs from Absolute Write Forums and he helped me to realize that I have a third and maybe even a fourth voice I should consider using.

So in the end, did I finish the first draft? If by first draft you mean I have a full skeleton of a story with some juicy bits of flesh clinging to it, then yes. But if you mean, do I have a fully fleshed out body that just needs some hair, make up and nice clothes, then no. (by the way, I'm planning on some post in the future that talk more about that fun imagery I just gave you).

Anyway, because of some vacation plans that involved parents visiting and an early celebration of Daniel and mine's third wedding anniversary, I have not looked at my WIP in close to two weeks. I plan on picking it back up again on Monday and starting to revise what I have and add some more juicy flesh to this body of work.

So now's it's time for a new deadline! I will give my self a full month to revise and add what is needed so that I can call this a first real draft. So, I will have a completed first draft done by Saturday, July 9, 2011! Wish me luck!