Writing–The Story Went “Boo!”

November 14, 2012January 22, 2016 ~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

It’s not unusual for me to fall asleep thinking about a story I’m working on, particularly if it’s a big project like a novel. Many a night I drift off thinking about what happens next or what scenes need to be revised or what plot problems need to be fixed.

Most of my short stories are firmly in the horror genre. To date, I’ve only written one straight horror novel manuscript prior to this year’s NaNo project and in the end, I revised it to fit more in the vein of my other novels (a mix of horror, comedy, supernatural/fantasy). Every night during that November that I worked on that first draft, I fell asleep thinking about it. Mostly I thought about how boring it was. Writing it as straight horror wasn’t working out so well for me. But I plowed through it and called it done knowing I could fix it later.

Of all the nights that I fell asleep thinking about my scary stories, never once did anything I came up with keep me awake.

Until last week.

I tend to have trouble falling asleep and sleeping in general on Sunday nights. I don’t know if it’s the anticipation of the 6:30 Monday morning wake-up call or what. Last Sunday, as is typical for my November nights, I got into bed and attempted to drift off while thinking about my NaNo project. I was trying to figure out how to get my two MCs out of the cabin in the woods and back to their car with the bad guy looking in the window.

My brain tumbled this prospect around as I fell asleep, leading me down a promising path until sleep snuck in and the path suddenly turned and I jerked to consciousness though I wasn’t quite asleep, scared out of my wits.

I’ve never had one of my own stories do that to me. Never. I never think what I write is very scary. I rely on other people to tell me that the notes I attempted to hit and thought I hit were the right ones. But my own story jerking me out of a near sleep like that is new.

It makes me think I might be on to something here.

It also wrecked my Sunday sleep, yet again.

Let’s hope it was worth it.

Writing–November Projects

November 7, 2012January 22, 2016 ~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

It’s NaNoWriMo time!

This year’s project is called Night of the Nothing Man. In addition to the challenges raised by not coming up with this novel idea until a week before the start, I’ve given myself some other guidelines that I’m going to try to follow as I write. I’ll reveal those at the end of the month.

If you recall, I wrote a novel manuscript this summer in a different fashion. I outlined a few chapters, wrote those chapters, and then revised those chapters before moving on. I’m going to be doing something similar with this NaNo project. I managed to get about six chapters outlined before the NaNo countdown clock wound down. This was partly by design. I do better during NaNo when I outline, but in the course of my writing, I end up changing or deviating from my outline that typically results in some frustrating revisions and rewrites. I liked the outlining and then writing of the summer novel experiment in that I stayed on track, but I could make changes. So I’m going to attempt to do NaNo in this fashion.

Dangerous business for me, but I like living on the edge.

Also during the month I’ll keep working on my Lucy and Jamie story. I’ve got a good idea where it’s going and I think it might be good for me to write a page or two of something else while working on NaNo. Kind of like a morning warm-up.

I may or may not start poking at The World (Saving) Series again. I’ve got an idea of some revisions I’d like to do and I’ve been kicking them around for the past couple of months. They wouldn’t be too taxing to do when I need an evening break from NaNo, but don’t want to be unproductive.

It should be a good month full of words.

Writing–Generating My NaNo Idea

October 31, 2012January 22, 2016 ~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

I wrote before how I was stuck on what to write for NaNo this year. I toyed with the idea of being a rebel and writing novellas instead, but even then I wasn’t too moved by the idea. I really wanted to stick to my November guns and go for my usual goal of 60,000 words before Thanksgiving. But I had nothing.

A NaNo buddy of mine whom I also follow on Twitter and also has a pretty rockin’ blog, Trinae Ross, told me that she was stuck for her NaNo idea, too, until she just started writing random words down on a piece of paper and then asking the usual questions of who, what, where, when, and why. It took her about four days for things to start to come together, but she ended up with something of substance that she could get to the point of outlining. She had a story.

At her suggestion, I decided to try it. Sitting and thinking wasn’t helping me any. The blank I was drawing was just getting blanker. So I grabbed one of my plentiful notebooks, flipped to a blank page, took pen in hand, and wrote down the first things that came to my mind.

“Guys like him aren’t very good at staying dead.” The 70’s. Nighttime. A face in a window. A room full of newspaper articles. A missing girl. An attempted abduction. Two teenagers.

And from there I started asking questions. Who is this guy? Why doesn’t he stay dead? Why this decade? Who is this face? Who are these kids? What do the articles say?

The page filled up pretty quickly with my answers and other scribblings. More importantly, I was pretty happy with what I was jotting down. Just like what happened with Trinae, my story started to come together.

Even at the eleventh hour going into NaNo I still have some work to do (I’ll get into the details next week), but I’m feeling so much better about this project than I was a week ago when I didn’t even have a project to work with. At least I have a place to start when the clock strikes midnight.

I am horrible at networking and socializing. I don’t work very hard at including myself in the writing community because there’s a still a chunk of me that doesn’t think I belong because I don’t have enough credits to my name. But through NaNo and through Twitter, I’ve met some pretty cool fellow writers that don’t hold me to the same high standards that I hold myself to when it comes to inclusion and for that I am grateful.

Without Trinae, I’d still be spinning my wheels.

Writing–A Morning Project

October 24, 2012January 22, 2016 ~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

Two or three days a week (depending on the week) I get up at 6:30 AM to supervise the neighbor boy before school and then I take him there. From 6:45 to about 8:10 every morning I sit at the table and let the boy know what time it is. Time for your shower. Time for breakfast. Time to go. In between this time monitoring, he plays his DS and I write.

I didn’t plan on writing during these mornings. When I first started the gig, I wasn’t sure exactly how much wrangling would be required. Turns out that there’s usually not much and since it is so early in the morning, Twitter isn’t exactly jumping. Once I’ve caught up on my timeline, taken my turn for SongPop and Words With Friends, and read a few blog or new articles on my phone, I still have quite a bit of time to fill.

So I started bringing a notebook with me so I could “scribble”. I didn’t really have anything in mind to work on that first morning, so to pass the time I decided to write Lucy and Jamie’s backstory. You might remember them from a previous blog entry about characters that pop up without a story. I had a pretty good idea who these to characters were, so I wrote about Lucy meeting Jamie for the first time, which began with Lucy talking to Jamie’s adoptive mother Lindy. It was a fun little thing with no expectations.

And from that bit of scribbling came an actual idea for a story.

That’s what I’ve been working on two or three mornings a week for the past month or so. I managed to get a page or two written while sitting at the table keeping track of the time. It’s a different approach for me, at least in terms of what I’ve been used to doing for the past few years.

First of all, I’m writing long hand, which isn’t that unusual when I’m writing short stories, but I sense that this will be longer (I’m thinking novella range). I usually don’t write longer stories longhand because what I write down, I must type up.

Second of all, when I am working on a project, I adhere to the write every day rule. For me, I feel like it’s important for me to get that first draft out as fast as possible. This first draft is only getting written a couple of pages at a time no more than three days a week.

Lastly, with my longer works I’ve fallen into the need for an outline. I prefer to know where I’m going when I start putting the story on the page. With this project, I’m just going one page at a time and not thinking any farther ahead than necessary. I’m just seeing where this story goes.

I have to admit, this is a fresh approach is rather freeing. It’s not quite so serious business. I’m not putting excessive demands on myself. I’m just supposed to write every morning while I wait for the boy to get ready for school. It’s just a way to pass the time.

It’s going back to a time when writing was just a hobby and not a career-in-the-making.

Call it a change of pace.

Writing–Gone Missing: Another Self-Published Experiment

October 17, 2012January 22, 2016 ~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

Gone Missing was a short story that went a longer than a normal short story and ended up becoming a novella. Once I was finished with it and had it revised and all polished up I went…”Okay, now what do I do with this?”

My first thought was to self-publish it as eBook, but then I decided against it. I thought I should at least give traditional publishing a try. So I looked into the possibilities, but couldn’t find anything that said to me it would be a comfortable fit. Remember, I’m that person that doesn’t want to waste anyone’s time so the criteria for a story has to match up damn near perfectly with what I’m trying to sell.

I debated on it for a bit and after an informal poll, I decided to bite the bullet and self-publish again.

My last self-publishing escapade, Rejected, was hardly a smashing success. It took nearly 10 months before I made the minimum through Lulu ($5) to get paid. I also ended up going through two different self-publishers (Lulu and Amazon) so I could get my book done in print and digital (Lulu covered everything but Kindle, which is why I had to go through Amazon). I still don’t think I’ve made $5 through Kindle sales. Self-publishing takes a lot of promotion and word of mouth and I’ll be honest, after about a month of it I felt like I was flogging a dead horse.

The idea of going at this all again was not an enticing one.

However, my ego driven need to be read proved too strong. Even without the informal poll of five people saying they’d read it if I published it, I knew that’s what was going to happen. Like going on the Tilt-A-Whirl after eating too much funnel cake. You know you’re going to puke, but you can’t resist the temptation to spin your car as fast as you can.

This time I chose to go through Smashwords. Several authors I follow on Twitter use it. It’s strictly eBooks and I wouldn’t have to go through more than one place for the novella to be available for different devices (distribution is a little different story). I felt like it would be a good fit.

So, we’ll see how this self-publishing run goes. I’m not expecting to make myself millions by this endeavor, but I’m curious to see if Gone Missing will be read more than Rejected just by going through a different self-publisher.

Don’t worry. Any downloads made after reading this blog entry will not be considered as tampering with the result.

Writing–NaNo?

October 10, 2012January 22, 2016 ~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

You may have noticed if you read my October Projects post that NaNoWriMo was left off of my To Do List. There’s a very good reason for that.

I have no idea what I’m going to do.

In past years I’ve gotten my NaNo idea in September, August, July. I once came up with my idea in March and held onto it until November.

But this year I’ve got nothing.

I’ve thought about going rogue this year. Instead of writing a 60K word novel like I usually do, I’d write two 25-30K word novellas. I’ve got a couple of ideas that I could use for it. They’re pretty good, but neither one I think would flesh out to be an entire novel. Doing them both as novellas would satisfy the word count even if it wasn’t exactly a novel.

I’m not completely sold on the idea though. I’m a bit of a traditionalist. Even though I’d really like to do those novellas (as they’d be part of the Outskirts Universe so they’d be useful to have done) and doing both would count, I’d still feel like I was cheating a little bit.

So if I don’t do the novellas, what do I do?

Logic tells me that I should do something in the Outskirts Universe. That’s my “thing”, after all. On the other hand, it might do me some good to break out and do something completely different.

I don’t know.

The good news is I’ve got about three weeks to figure something out and get it outlined. The bad news is I feel like right now, I’ll take all three of those weeks to come up with something and won’t start outlining anything until 10PM on October 31st.

No matter. I’m up for the challenge.

Writing–October Projects

October 3, 2012January 22, 2016 ~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

I’ve really only got two projects in mind for October.

The first is a freebie project. To celebrate my favorite holiday, Halloween, I’m going to post a new freebie horror story every Wednesday, the last coming out on Halloween and being directly related to my favorite movie related to the holiday (like “How the Night Haunts”). So check the freebie page every Wednesday for a new fix. I’m still in the process of selecting the other three stories.

And I have to write the fourth.

No worries. It’ll be fine.

The second project is self-publishing my novella “Gone Missing”. Five people on Twitter said they’d read it and that sealed it for me. Okay, maybe not. Maybe it’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while, but was on the fence because I thought I should give traditional publishing a shot at it first. And then I took a look at the market and went, “Yeah, okay, I’ll just do this myself.” My “not a fit” monster rises again.

I’m thinking it will be all digital unless there’s a sudden demand for print copies (I don’t think there will be). I just have to decide what venue to use.

The short story submitting continues. Battling my own insecurities about whether or not I should submit a story some place is rather tiresome, but it’s a very real obstacle that I’m dealing with. The finished stories are piling up.

It’s time to just bite the bullet and submit.

Writing–The Story of Four Stories

September 26, 2012January 22, 2016 ~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

I’ve got four short stories in various stages of revisions right now: “Whistle While You Work”, “Aftermath”, “Just Visiting”, and “Lady on the Stairs”. They were all written about the same time, but in pairs (“Whistle” and “Aftermath” together; “Visiting” and “Lady” together). They’re different stories, but it’s just interesting to see how different they are in terms of writing/revising them.

Of the four, “Lady” needs the most work. I was sure what it was when I started writing it, but when I got to the end, I figured it out. It’s going to take a few rewrites to get the tone just right and make sure I get across what I’m trying to say.

I knew what “Visiting” was when I started writing it, but it’s taken quite a bit of tweaking to get the right mood, more than I anticipated.

I knew, but I didn’t know what “Whistle” was about. I had the scene in my head, but I didn’t know the why of the whole thing until the very end. It started off pretty straight forward and then my brain gave me the twist. It was kind of like “Lady”, except I had a much better handle on what was going on when I started the story.

“Aftermath” is basically done. The story came out as it should be. It just needs a little tweaking.

People who aren’t writers often think that writing short stories is like working an assembly line. You’re doing basically the same thing every time. The process is the same. So therefore, the idea that one story might be easier or more difficult than another is baffling. You’re doing the same thing? Why is it so hard this time when it was so easy the last time? Or vice versa.

Sure, the process is the same. But every story is it’s own beast. Going back to the assembly line comparison, it would be like I’m putting on the headlights, but every car that comes down the line is different. So even though I’m doing the same job, it doesn’t get done exactly the same way because I’m dealing with a different vehicle ever time.

While I’m following the same basic writing process (first draft, rewrites, revisions, polishing), different stories require different amounts of each step.

Non-writers aren’t the only ones that need to be aware of this, though.

I need to remember that, too.

Writing–Oh, Those Characters!

September 19, 2012January 22, 2016 ~ Kiki Writes ~ 1 Comment

I’ve got two characters bouncing around in my brain right now. Lucy and Jamie. Lucy is Jamie’s biological mother. Lucy, being a 16 year old prostitute at the time, gave up Jamie for adoption and has only recently reconnected with her daughter. Jamie holds no bitterness or judgement towards Lucy for giving her up and is in actuality grateful for it. She had a good upbringing with her adoptive parents and it spared her from being named either Lacy or Crystal.

There’s no denying that Lucy and Jamie are related; their physical resemblance is striking. Lucy is reasonably sure who Jamie’s father is (a very nice young reverend who requested no birth control because it violated his religion) and says she sees a little bit of him in Jamie, but Jamie can’t see any resemblances anywhere. Lucy is more emotional, more bubbly, more optimistic. Jamie is more objective, more cynical, more realistic. Together, they’re a riot.

At least in my head.

As much as I like them both and as great as I think they are, I don’t have a story for them. I don’t know what their story is.

That happens quite a bit to me. Good characters walk into my head, but they don’t bring a story with them. I want to use them, so I try to find them one. It’s not always successful.

For example, I have two characters named Verity and Merit Breslin. They’re brother and sister. They’re loud, outspoken, smartasses and they crack me up with their craziness. So far they’ve been featured as secondary characters in not one, but two failed projects. The projects ended up abandoned, but I couldn’t leave those two behind. I may have another idea for them, but I haven’t done anything with it yet, so I can’t say anything for sure. I would imagine if it doesn’t work out, I’ll find something else for them.

I like them too well to let them go.

The same thing happened with another group of siblings I came up with, the Heller kids. Zeb, Zeke, Pru, Arlie, and Lev were originally created for a throwaway NaNo project I did one year. It wasn’t meant to be anything more than an experiment with outlining to see if I could finally get a NaNo win (it worked). The story was garbage, but I really got attached to those siblings. They ended up in a failed project (with Verity and Merit, no less) before landing in something solid (they’re now “hunters” in the Outskirts Universe).

I’ve got a thing for good characters. I always have. Even as a kid, my mother used to say that I only wrote so I could name people. That’s kind of true. I liked talking about the people in my head (I liked naming them, too; I’ve got a thing for names, but that’s another post). I still like talking about the people in my head, only now I want the story I tell about them to be worthwhile.

If characters drive a story, then I’d like to give them a nice one to vroom around in.

Until then, I’m going to keep listening to them jabber on in my head, getting to know them a little better.

Writing–The Reading Malaise

September 12, 2012January 22, 2016 ~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

I’m not a steady reader. I read in bursts. One month I might read four, five, six books. The next month the only thing I’ll read are online articles and my writing magazines. There’s no rhyme or reason to it. It’s just the way I roll.

I’m in one of those reading funks right now.

I have books. In fact, I just got a bunch from my mother because she’s cleaning out her bookcases (Mom does not reread anything, so after a while, she starts giving books away to make room for new ones). But nothing sounds good. It’s like going to the refrigerator and repeatedly opening the door and looking inside. You’re hungry, you know you’re hungry, but you don’t know what you want.

That’s exactly how I’m feeling right now, but with books.

Last night I had some extra time and I thought I should read something. I started looking around. I looked at the books I brought home from Mom’s. I looked through Papa’s books on my Kindle. I started rereading a book just for the sake of reading, but I wasn’t into it.

I want to read, but I don’t know what I want to read.

It’s frustrating. Reading isn’t only part of my job, but I also read because I enjoy it. And when I feel like this my enjoyment is kicked right in the sensitive parts. It’s not fair.

But like that nagging hunger feeling, I’ll eventually placate myself by reading something. It might not necessarily be what I’m craving, but since I don’t KNOW what I’m craving, it’ll be good enough.

At the very least it will help ease this malaise and give my brain a bit of a shake. By the time I’m done, there’s a good chance I’ll have an idea of what I want to read next.

Then I’ll be cured.

Until the next time.