Category: Writing

Writing–May Projects

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

pinkflowerThe final polish of A Tale of Two Lady Killers is done. The contest essay is submitted. The slog to get projects completed continues.

Next up will be the final polish of Spirited in Spite.

And then I will be back to revising.

I probably should get back to The Timeless Man, but I haven’t quite worked out everything that needs to be fixed yet, so I don’t want to start it until I know the solutions to all of the problems. It can sit another month or so while I work the last few kinks out in my head.

Instead, I’m going to take another hack (pun intended!) at Hatchets and Hearts and maybe try to get in another round of revisions done on “She’s Not Here Anymore”. Of course, the latter will depend on how well the revisions of the former go. If they turn out to be a big struggle, then I’m not going to add to my pain. I anticipate the revisions on both of these projects, even though they’ve each been revised/rewritten before, to be rough.

But if by some miracle, they both end up being easier than I anticipated, there’s plenty of things left of my To Do List to fill my time.

Writing–Creating a Series

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

Rainbow paperAt some point after one of the heavy revisions of Cheaters and Chupacabras (long before it was titled, of course, because that didn’t happen until the last minute), I realized that Ivy and her friends could host a series of novellas. I’d even had an idea at the time for what the next novella would be.

But creating a series is new to me. Sure, I’ve read a few, but I’ve never actually given it a try by my own writing hand.

When I was writing The Timeless Man, my idea for Ivy novella number two, I came up against several difficulties in the first draft, one of which was keeping track of the details from the first novella. There needs to be continuity in a series, otherwise people can be moved to lose their interest and/or shit. This is the sort of thing that plagues TV shows. And now I found it plaguing me.

What was Michelle’s married name? What did Candy look like? What was Ivy’s hometown? Did I even name it? Was Art a bachelor or divorced or a widower? Did I say?

Little things like that. While writing The Timeless Man I saw that I need a way to keep track of all of these things. Character names and places and descriptions and relationships –that whole scene. After all, I’ve got ideas for two more novellas after The Timeless Man. I need to get the established stuff straight because I’m only going to be adding to it.

For now everything is scribbles and scratches while I try to figure out the best way to go about organizing these things. I’m going to need to do the first round of revising/rewriting on The Timeless Man soon. I’d like to have my ducks in a row by then.

Or at least all in the same pond where I can see them.

Writing–Shelving It

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

Rainbow paperYou remember that untitled novella I was writing at the same time I was writing The Timeless Man? The one that was so insistent on being written that I decided to humor it and write it? Yeah, well, I didn’t finish it. I only wrote about seventeen pages, then made notes on what the rest of the first draft was about, and then shelved it.

I shelved the first draft of a short story I wrote earlier this year, too.

I’ve got plenty of stories on the shelf.

It’s not an easy decision for me to shelve a story. Usually, it’s a finished draft of something that I look at and go “no”. Rarely is the draft unfinished, but that happens on occasion. I don’t like to do it it, but it’s usually for the best.

When stories end up on the shelf, it’s usually because of how I feel about the story. There’s something about it that makes me realize the story isn’t meant to be worked on. It’s not to be done. I don’t hate the story. Worse than that. I don’t feel anything for it. Whatever burning need I had to get it out of my head and down on paper is long gone and I’m left with nothing but a sense of meh. That apathy is pretty much what dooms a story to the shelf. I can get past hating a story to get it done to completion. But if I have no feelings at all then I’m not going to force it. No good story comes from no feeling.

It’s not necessarily the end of the story, though. It’s on the shelf, not in the trash.

There’s always a chance that I might need that story later, that the initial feeling of urgency and NEED to write that story can return. And when it does, it’ll be right where I left it and I’ll be ready. It’s a win.

Sometimes being a pack rat can have its advantages.

Writing–Bestseller, Baby

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

Rainbow paperI am not what you’d call a bestseller in the strictest sense of the word. You wouldn’t even call me that in the very loosest sense of the word. If you add up all of the copies I’ve sold, it wouldn’t come even close to one hundred. It wouldn’t even break fifty.

I am definitely not a bestseller.

But, I feel like one.

See, I published Yearly at the beginning of February. I sold  twelve copies that month. Twelve! It took me months to see that many copies of Gone Missing. I haven’t even come close to that with anything else (Night of the Nothing Man has sold a grand total of three; Cheaters and Chupacabras has sold 8). So, to me, selling twelve of one thing in one month is huge.

And then last month, Yearly sold nineteen. Nineteen! Amazing!

It’s hard to explain to people familiar with the sales of Stephen King, Stephanie Meyer, Nicholas Sparks, Nora Roberts, and the like how successful selling less than twenty copies of something can feel. But when you’ve gone your career until this point selling mostly nothing, when selling four copies of all total of every thing you’ve published in one month feels huge, selling nineteen of ONE thing in one month feels like some kind of arrival.

Okay, maybe that sounds overly dramatic, but like I said, it’s hard to explain.

I’m not the best self-promoter. I don’t have a very strong word-of-mouth existence. I’m not exactly clamored for. I usually know everyone who buys my stuff. when I hit the point that I don’t know who bought it, when I hit the point that it’s possible that strangers might be buying my work, I can’t help but get excited. It makes me feel like a real writer. It makes me feel validated.

It makes me want to write more.

Writing–April Projects

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

Yellow flowersRevising. That’s all I’m going to do in April. Just revising. My To Do list is filled with revising.

My essay for a contest is going to be revised and polished this month. The deadline is next month and it needs to be done and ready to go with time to spare. It has top priority.

Also getting revised this month is Spirited in Spite. I actually don’t think it needs much in the way of revisions, but I’m going to comb through it one more time just to be safe.

After that, anything is up for grabs. I’ve got one short story, one novel, and four novellas that need revisions. I guess whatever I feel like working on will get worked on.

It’s going to be a while before I write anything new, I think, which is fine. I’ve found it’s sort of hard for me to think about writing a first draft of a new project when I have all these other drafts of these other projects hanging out patiently on my list.

So starting now, my focus is totally on eliminating what I can from this To Do List. That means revising. Revising, revising, revising. Then polishing.

Now watch me get another brilliant idea that I can’t pass up and I end up writing that instead.

Writing–Do You Ever Feel Like…?

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

Rainbow paperDo you ever feel like something you wrote three years ago is better than what you’re writing now?

I don’t mean because it’s been revised within an inch of its life within the those three years and this is still fresh and new and hasn’t felt the repeated sting of the red pen. I mean that overall it seems like the story you wrote three years ago is better than the one you’re writing right now.

Okay, maybe it’s just me, but hear me out anyway just in case it happens to you.

I’m doing the final revisions before the final polish of A Tale of Two Lady Killers. In the course of my work, I’m finding moments of brilliance that I don’t seem to remember reading in anything I’ve written in the past year or two. Certain turns of phrase and word choices and descriptions that are more creative and just plain better than anything I’ve put out lately, characters that seem more well-rounded and real.

Now in theory, a writer should get better the more they write, so it sort of disturbs me that I seem to have regressed, at least in my opinion. It bugs me that I’m not seeing those tiny brilliant flashes in anything I’ve written recently. Shouldn’t I be seeing MORE of those flashes?

This could be completely subjective. I admit that. There could be brilliant flashes that I’m blind to. And I know that some of those brilliant flashes I’m seeing now in this almost-final version of the novel weren’t there in the first or second drafts of this manuscript. It took plenty of work to come up with and insert those brilliant flashes.

So why am I not seeing those brilliant flashes now? Am I being lazy? Am I just calling things “good enough” so I can be done with them? Have I run out of brilliant flashes? Are they a finite thing and I already used up all of mine? Is it all in my head and I’m just being my own worst critic once again?

I don’t know.

Part of me thinks that I’m being overly-critical and probably more than a little paranoid because that is my nature. Part of me thinks, though, that it is possible that I’ve been a little lax in my work lately and it might do me some good to put a little more effort into my stories.

A little more effort certainly won’t hurt anything.

Writing–And Then I Changed My Mind

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

Rainbow paperOne thing that really plagues me and my less-than-successful writing career is my adept ability to change my mind.

I decide to do something and then a few months later I decided that nope, that’s not what I want to do, and I do something else.

For example, I thought I wanted to put the first chapter of my novels in progress up on the blog. Nope! That lasted a few months and then I decided it was dumb and pointless and I took the only one I put up down (because I didn’t have much to show off to begin with).

That’s part of what spurs my change of mind. I come up with an idea that sounds great at the time and I jump on it, which doesn’t sound too bad. Until I go through with the idea and realize that, you know what, this might not be the best idea in the world because it turns out that, hey, I’m not as involved/invested/prepared as I need to be.

This has cropped up again with The World (Saving) Series. At first I thought I wanted to go ahead and self-publish it, which would require numerous changes so I don’t get sued for using trademarks without permission. In considering this, I thought it might actually work out because it could be these specific changes that could set apart my little Outskirts Universe from everything else that I write. It truly did sound like a good idea and I started doing some preliminary brainstorming in regards to the changes.

But then as I went along, I realized just how much needed to be changed and how much work that was going to be and was it going to be worth it in the long run? Would it just be easier to sit on this manuscript or maybe actually try to get it published traditionally so someone else could take care of any possible legal things that needed to be dealt with?

Here I sit at the crossroad of indecision, wondering which path to take.

So I’ve decided not to do anything. I’m not going to make changes and I’m not going to start flogging it about to agents on the off-chance that someone might want to represent it because they think they can sell it (I don’t think anyone is up to that sort of challenge; it’s not what one would call a hot ticket). Instead, it’s going on a shelf, to be referred to in other stories, but not to be seen.

Unless, of course, I change my mind.

Writing–March Projects

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

cloverThe main project for March is to finish writing the first draft of The Timeless Man. It’s more than half-way done and boring as hell, but I can fix that later. I just need to get it done. This is a project that I want to have completely done by the end of the year and the way I’m struggling with the first draft, I might already be in trouble.

The other novella that I’m working on, remember it? The one that was so insistent on my brain last month? Well, it’s not as insistent now. I’ll still be working on it throughout the month, but more as a distraction from The Timeless Man, a break from the blahs I’m having about that first draft.

So, The Timeless Man is the biggest priority this month.

However, I’ve been trying to come up with story for a contest open to various genres and essays. I think I’ve actually hit on an essay idea that might work for it and I think I’m going to give it a go and see what I can make of it. I’ve only written one other and it was pretty much garbage, but I’d like give it a go so I can feel like I’m doing something towards this deadline.

Last month I read through A Tale of Two Lady Killers, but didn’t get around to doing any of the little revisions that need to be done. I also realized that if I want to self-publish The World (Saving) Series, as I’ve been thinking about doing, then I’m going to make some changes to the manuscript. Maybe this month I’ll get around to doing those two things.

But like I said, first draft’s first.

Writing–Sophomore Slump?

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

Rainbow paperI’ve spent the month working on the next Ivy Russell novella, The Timeless Man. It’s been sort of a slow-go due to a bit of a crazy work schedule. Most days I can only get a page or two done, though I try to get more than that in on the weekends and the days I’m only working one job.

But the day jobs aren’t the only thing slowing me up.

So far I’ve spent the entire first draft (which isn’t yet finished) comparing The Timeless Man to Cheaters and Chupacabras. It’s an unfair comparison because I’m comparing a finished project with a first draft. That’s like comparing a gold medal skier to a guy who just put on skis for the first time. It’s not right.

But I’m doing it anyway.

Every time I pull up the first draft to work on it and start typing, in my head I’m asking myself, “Does it have the same tone as the first one? Is it as much fun? Are the characters consistent? Is it enough like the first one?”

The only valid question is about the characters. They should be consistent at their core from novella to novella, and since I have two more novellas in the idea stage, that’s pretty important. It’s something I should definitely keep in mind for the first draft, but I don’t have to be a nag about it.

The rest of it, I can’t ask those questions now. I’m not even sure if I should ask those questions at all. Since this is going to be a series of novellas, I realize there should be a certain feel to the stories that is similar between novellas, but that’s really something I shouldn’t be thinking about in the first draft stage.

I’m hoping I can file those questions for later. I can look at them again when I get to revising.

Right now, I just need to be writing.

I won’t be able to answer them if I don’t get this first draft done.

Writing–Redoing Rejected

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

RejectedNow that I’ve released my second self-published anthology, I guess I should point out that my first self-published anthology is no longer for sale (so if you managed to be one of the six people that bought it, congratulations, you got yourself a collector’s item now).

I made the executive decision to pull Rejected. I actually did it late last year. I didn’t think anyone would notice.

It was my first go in self-publishing and I’m still proud of it. It helped me get over my self-publishing fears and take the plunge, and I’m glad for that. And it felt good to get those stories off my board and out to be read. It was a real accomplishment on several levels.

But.

It definitely shows that it was my first shot at not only putting together an anthology, but also doing a self-published project. I’m not a pro at this now or anything, but I feel like I’ve improved. And I want that anthology to reflect it.

You see, I still love the stories and I want them to be read, but they deserve better presentation.

I plan on redoing the anthology. Maybe not as a redux of Rejected, exactly (which makes the title of this post somewhat misleading), but definitely as something better, maybe with a few new stories thrown in. I’ve been thinking about it for a while now. By taking it off the market, I’ve kind of taken that first step.

If I don’t eventually follow through, I’m gonna look like a dick.

And the stories deserve better than a trip to oblivion because I’m a dick.

That’s what started this in the first place.