Tag: projects

I Wrote Myself a Fairy Tale

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

A light brown and light red pen lying on a sheet of lined notebook paper.Almost 30 years ago at my first legit paycheck job, I entertained my coworker’s toddler daughter by telling her a story. I told her to pick five words and I’d make a story out of them. And I did. I told her a wild fairy tale using all of her words, which kept her preoccupied while her mom was able to finish what she needed to do without worrying about her kid. All I remember about that story is that it had a gasoline fairy in it. My coworker at the time was impressed with my talent to come up with a story on the fly, but honestly, for me it wasn’t hard. I’d been telling myself stories all my life.

Decades later, I’m still telling myself stories.

I have insomnia. I had it bad when I was a teenager. It got better in my twenties and thirties. It has returned in my forties, thanks in part to perimenopause. Sleeping through the night without getting up to pee at least once is now a luxury that I’m not often afforded. Getting back to sleep after that bathroom trip is also no longer a given. It’s not uncommon for me to toss and turn for an hour or two before falling back to sleep, if I’m lucky. Some nights, there is no more sleep. Even though my brain and body are tired, it’s like I’ve forgotten how to sleep, never mind that I was just doing it before I got up to pee.

A couple of weeks ago, I found myself in the familiar situation of trying to get back to sleep after a middle of the night bathroom trip and I was failing. I’d already been awake for an hour and I was starting to get frustrated. For whatever reason, the memory of telling my coworker’s daughter a story came back to me. I found myself thinking about what kind of story I’d tell my current coworker’s daughter, who is about the same age as the old coworker’s little girl was then.

So, I started telling myself the story I thought she might like.

I fell asleep telling myself a fairy tale.

When I woke up the next morning, I still had much of the story lodged in my brain and I thought, “You know, I’m on vacation. I have time. I should write this down.” So, I did. For the first time in months, I wrote the first draft of a short story. It took a few days over the course of a week because things happened, but I got it done. It clocked in at a little over 3,000 words and it’s actually pretty decent for a first draft, especially when you consider I’ve never written anything like this before. Well, if you don’t count that first story I told, which I don’t since I didn’t write it down.

Aside from revising it, I have no real plan for what I’m going to do with it. It was just a fun thing that I did, a reminder of how much I can enjoy writing. I think not writing with any expectation of what I’m writing helped me get it written. There was no objective here, no goal in mind. It wasn’t a have to. It was just a story that I wanted to write.

It’s been a long time since I’ve done that. Since I’ve allowed myself to do that.

Maybe that’s how I get back into writing regularly again. Find my way back to the joy and desire I’ve lost. I take off the pressure and the have, the need to be published, to try to make it into a career.

Maybe it’s time to just go back to telling myself stories.

I can always tell them to other people later.

Unofficial NaNo 2024 Failure…Or Was It?

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

As I explained at the beginning of the month, I was prepared to do an unofficial NaNo for reasons, using it as an opportunity to put Stateline into its third form. Everything was on track to do the thing.

And then life went pear-shaped.

I’m not talking about the election fallout, though that did dampen my motivation somewhat. I was able to write through it back in 2016, though I admit my final first draft is one hell of a mess that I should revise, but don’t want to wade into because I know how much rewriting awaits me.

Anyway, no, this “make plans and God laughs” insult was leveled at me on a personal level. Eventually, I’ll get to the point where I can recap it, but until then, I need you to accept on blind faith that everything went to hell.

My initial reaction was to flail, to find a way to keep my word count up at all costs, forgo sleep and run myself into the ground to make it happen. That’s what good writers do. They persevere no matter what.

Blessedly, in the nick of time I remembered I’m not a good writer.

I also took a critical look at my motivations and circumstances. I had to ask myself why I was so intent on winning an unofficial NaNo, especially when I had nothing left to prove. I’d done twenty NaNos prior to this and won most of them. Without bragging, I can honestly say that I know how to write 50,000 words in a month and that I can do it. What do I gain by making myself write all of those words during an incredibly stressful period of my existence? More stress? When I already have too much? No thank you.

This led to a surprisingly mature and intelligent decision from myself. I know. I was shocked, too.

I decided that I was not going to write 1,700 words a day in order to ensure I wrote 50,000 words this month. Instead, I decided that I was going to write a manageable number of words every day this month. I thought it was going to be 500 words a day, and I managed that for a week, but then ended up reducing that to a minimum of 100 words a day. If I could write more than that, great. Otherwise, I wasn’t going to be beat myself up for slow progress.

So, I may not get 50,000 words written this month, but I will at least finish thirty days with some words written and I need to learn how to be happy with that when life decides to take it sideways.

In a curious, unexpected twist, there was also a poem-a-day challenge going on this month, which I decided to participate in because it would be easy to catch up if I missed a day or two. Once everything went tits up, I found that writing a poem to fit the day’s theme was a bright spot in all of the stress. It was something I looked forward to and made writing my words a lot easier.

It turns out that the challenges of November weren’t really of the writing kind at all.

Lessons Learned from a First Draft

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

I finished the first draft of That’s Punk at the end of October. I started it in June of 2022 (I think). The story idea seized upon me while I was working on other things and I couldn’t get it out of my head. I ended up blasting out the outline for it one night, thinking that might get it out of my system enough that I could concentrate on my other projects again.

It didn’t work.

I ended up coming to sort of compromise with the story eating my brain. I would write it on Sundays, writing as much or as little as I wanted and revising as I went along. This was new for me. I usually write a first draft as fast as I can and deal with the carnage later during the revisions.

This was how I proceeded for over a year. I took my time. At one point, I even went back to the beginning and revised everything I had written. I’d never done that with any other first draft.

After the big revision, I realized that it was time to start wrapping it up, but doing it quickly would not happen. I had too much left to write and too many other projects going on. For much of 2024, I was working on four podcasts as well as revising What Happened to the Man in the Cabin?, which needed a lot of work. Months of work. I didn’t have a lot of time to commit to a big daily word count. I settled on at least 500 words a week. It didn’t matter when I wrote them or how much I wrote at one time, as long as I hit at least 500 words a week. It wasn’t a lot, but it was consistent progress and that had to be good enough while I was busy.

The small, but mighty steady progress paid off. By the time I finished revising What Happened to the Man in the Cabin?, I was in a good position to made a real push towards the finish line. I went from at least 500 words a week to at least 500 words a day, usually more than that. The 2,500+ words I wrote a week rushed me along. I had given myself until the end of 2024. One final push had typing “the end” before the end of October.

The one concession I made in my bid to get the first draft wrapped up before the end of the year was that I stopped revising as I went along. Once I started making a set word count, I stopped looking back. It was full steam ahead. This may or may not hurt me when it comes time to revise the whole thing, but I’m not going to worry about that until I get there.

What I ended up with by writing a first draft this way was the longest thing I’ve ever written. That’s Punk clocked in at over 145,000 words. I never thought I’d ever write anything this long. I also learned something about trying new methods of writing. That fast as lightning brain dump of a first draft works, but so does slow and methodical. Some projects I can afford to have the patience on. Maybe next time, I’ll actually give myself a chance to do the revise-as-I-go thing for the whole trip. Or maybe I’ll try a whole new approach to getting a first draft done.

Even if nothing ever comes of That’s Punk in the long run, I’ve learned some valuable lessons that I can apply to future projects.

And maybe something will come from one of them.

Unofficial NaNo 2024

~ Kiki Writes ~ 1 Comment

As I mentioned previously, I’m still planning to write 50,000 words this month, but I’m not officially participating in NaNo.

This year’s project is called Stateline. And it’s actually been something I’ve been working on for over a decade (probably closer to two) in one form or another.

Stateline began its life as a short story that I wrote in my late 20’s. Three cousins -Julian, Silas, and Amelia- take a midnight trip to ditch the body of Julian’s neighbor and nemesis, Glen, across the the state line after Julian kills him in self-defense. This version of the story featured the protagonists being in their late 20’s and only scratched the surface of their issues, both with each other and with themselves.

In my 30’s, I reworked Stateline as a script. Or at least, a script treatment with only fifteen pages and a synopsis submitted to a contest, which placed fifth. This version aged the characters along with me, putting them in their 30’s and 40’s, creating more of an age difference and more of an affectionately antagonistic relationship between the cousins. The treatment also better defined the cousins’ issues and the bullying/harassment that led to Glen’s demise.

And now here I am in my 40’s, reworking Stateline as a novel. The characters are getting another age-up, putting them in their 40’s and 50’s, in part to keep them in line with me since that’s become something of a tradition now, but also because I find something intriguing and fun about middle-aged fuck-ups. Their issues have evolved and the trip to the state line has gotten longer. After all, bladders are different over 40.

I’m looking forward to seeing how this project translates to a novel form. I’m anticipating the first draft to be a short one, most likely finished in 30 days and not much beyond 50,000 words, but we’ll see. I may just surprise myself.

I think spending my November on a road trip with these three will be a good time.

Holy Shit, I Haven’t Published Anything in Five Years

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

You may have noticed that the latest release on the site hasn’t changed in a while. A little over five years, actually. I had this realization late one night while my brain was doing its mental gymnastics before it finally shut up and let me sleep.

Holy shit, I haven’t published anything in five years.

It should go without saying that I’m not counting the freebies here or the Patreon projects I’ve done. I’m talking about self-publishing or in the very rare case traditional publishing. Haven’t published a damn thing in five years.

There was a period of time between 2013 and 2019 that I had something published at least once a year, and in many case, multiple things. Those were the boon years, I suppose. I had a ton of ideas, a ton of projects, a ton of time and dedication to getting things written, revised, polished, and published for the masses.

Now, by no means was I successful. I think my best-selling title has sold a little over 500 copies in its entire existence. But I was productive. I always had something going. I felt like as long as I kept churning out stories, something would eventually catch. I’d build that mythological platform that agents and publishers look for and I’d be able to take the next step in my writing career.

Instead, the bottom fell out.

Writing became hard. The ideas dried up. I shifted focus to just getting through Murderville for Patreon because everything was so difficult. I had nothing going. Nothing to publish. It all dried up. I think unconsciously I decided that I was done. Not necessarily writing because I don’t know how to be done writing even when it’s hard. But I was done publishing. I was never going to write anything that anyone would want to read and it was too hard to write anything for myself that I’d want anyone to read for a price. I was just kinda done.

Then by some miracle writing stopped being hard.

But the urge to publish hasn’t exactly returned. At least it’s not exactly like it used to be.

While I am looking to get back into the game and reacquaint myself with the business of submitting short stories while also keeping my eyes open for agents that might be a good fit for me if I ever manage to finish a book that wouldn’t be a waste of their time to read, the drive to be focused on producing and publishing as much as possible hasn’t returned. That frantic urge that pushed me to publish multiple novellas and short story collections in a year is nowhere to be found. And honestly, I’m kind of glad for that.

It’s been nice to write without it feeling like I’m sucking out my own bone marrow with a crazy straw. I want to enjoy it. And I want to take my time reintroducing myself to getting published, be it traditionally or self-done. Why be balls to the wall when I don’t have to be? There’s plenty of time for me to go full-tilt when I’m ready.

So I guess that latest release will just remain unchanged.

For now.

NaNo 2023

~ Kiki Writes ~ 1 Comment

Ah, yes. It’s that time of year again. The time when I drive myself to the brink of insanity by writing a 50,000 word novel in a month.

Okay, that’s pretty dramatic considering this will be my 19th NaNo and I long ago mastered the art of writing those 50,000 words in 30 days, though I do admit that sometimes it can be stressful.

Last year, I actually wrote a novel, a real change of pace from some of the NaNo shenanigans I’ve pulled in previous years. This year, I’m back to my shenanigans. Sort of. I’m still working on a novel, it’s just that I’m adding to an existing story rather than writing a novel from scratch.

My goal for this year is to add 50,000 words to the story What Happened to the Man in the Cabin?.

When I initially wrote what turned out to be a longer short story, I thought it had the potential to be a novella or maybe a novel, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to go through with adding words. I also had other projects going, so I didn’t really have the time, focus or energy to really explore that option. But, having thought about it for months and having come up with a reasonable expansion plan, I think NaNo is the time to do it.

This will be something of an adventure for me. The original story dealt with two different timelines -the present, where Newly Lowell is being interrogated by Sheriff Adam Joe about an incident that happened thirty years prior; and the past, the incident that took place when Newly and her brothers Thad and Quint were twelve. The expansion plan intends to shift the viewpoint of the past from Newly’s to a more general one, allowing for the past to be expanded more, and to add in the viewpoint of Sheriff Adam Joe, but from the recent past, starting when he finds the Lowell triplets’ father dead and knows they’ll be headed back to town, which will be his opportunity to get answers.

Ambitious? Absolutely. Am I good enough to pull it off? Probably not. But, I think the doing will be very educational and I might end up with something that I can work with in rewrites.

I will also still be working on That’s Punk while I do NaNo, which should make for a fun warm-up if I stick to doing at least 100 words a day on it like I have been. And I’ll be working on podcasting and other audio projects during the month because I failed to appropriately plan ahead this year, so that should be fun and stressful.

This year I plan to keep my daily word count to about 1,700 words a day, just above minimum, writing every day of the month. I think the lower word count will help to counteract the stress of doing something difficult during a busier schedule.

At least that’s what I’m telling myself.

We’ll see how I feel at the end of the month.

What I Did at Camp

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

No, this is not about the time I went to Girl Scout Camp when I was in junior high (I think? Memory is a fuzzy thing) and ended up being put in charge of showing the younger girls how to make bracelets and then later in the week had to show them how to make “fishing poles” out of string and paperclips.

This is about my first time participating in Camp NaNoWriMo.

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, then the concept of NaNoWriMo is familiar to you. The goal is to write a 50,000 word novel during the month of November. I’ve done it 19 years in a row (damn) and by now I’ve won more often than not.

Camp NaNo is a similar concept except it takes place a couple of times a year (I think April and July) and you set the goal. It’s not just for new projects; it can be used to add on to existing projects. Though the input is still words written, there are ways to approximate if your goal for the month is revising a project.

I decided to use Camp NaNo as a way to make significant progress on That’s Punk, which has been my Sunday story for like a year now. As much as I’ve enjoyed the leisurely, no pressure pace I’ve been taking with the story –a real departure from the way I normally write longer manuscripts- I was ready to put some real time and words into it. I felt that setting a reasonable Camp NaNo goal would be the perfect way to make that happen. After all, I’m terribly competitive with myself and I don’t like to lose.

Going into July, I had about 30,000 words in on That’s Punk, so I decided that a good goal was to hit 50,000 words total. After years of writing 50,000-60,000 words in a month, a little over 20,000 would be easy. The daily bar was set at about 655 words. Perfect. This was what I needed.

One thing I wondered about was how this would affect the way I’d been writing That’s Punk, going slowly and revising as I went. I was concerned that I might fall back into old NaNo habits and just try to get my words down as fast as I could and worry about it all later. As it turns out, with the lower daily goal, I gave myself time to look over what I’d written before and revise it before moving on to my new words for the day. I feel like this is a habit that I’d like to try to keep even for NaNo. It might be more of a challenge with a higher word count, but I’m willing to try.

I admit that my schedule also helped me tackle this goal in the way that I wanted to. Because I work ahead on Book ’em, Danno, I’m able to take July off from my podcast. However, this year, after months of working on a video project for work, I ended up taking July off from all of my non-writing projects, putting Here, Watch This on hold for the month. Camp NaNo was the only thing going for the entire month of July and I’ll be honest, after months of juggling multiple projects, it was glorious. But I admit that the singular focus probably aided in my ability to not only achieve my goal, but also exceed it, all while revising as I went along like I wanted, and not stressing myself out to get it done. I won’t have this luxury during NaNo in November. Podcast things will be happening while I’m trying to hit my daily word count goal of easily over 1,000 more words a day.

If anything, Camp NaNo reminded me how much I like writing, a joy I thought I’d lost for a long time before being revived in the last couple of years, and how much I want to spend my time doing just that. It’s not that I don’t enjoy podcasting. I do. But writing is clearly my first love and I need to find a way to spend more time doing that.

Something else I learned at Camp.

A little writing a day keeps the blues away.

I’m Starting the New Year the Same Way I Ended the Old One–Softly

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

I think it was my cousin Alex who posted a meme in her Instagram stories about why we go on about ending the year strong when we should be ending the year softly -resting, recuperating, relaxing. I’m paraphrasing it badly, but it still spoke to my soul.

When I saw this I was in the homestretch of a brutal marathon of projects. I was doing Book ’em, Danno, Here, Watch This with Shann, and covering three shows on Eventually Supertrain with Dan. I also had Five Minutes to do for Patreon. I was finishing up the prep for my program that I’ll be giving later this month at work. I was also working on a couple of library podcast episodes so I could have the comp time to cover my traditional birthday week vacation. And then there was NaNo, the page-a-day, the Sunday story, and blogging. Full disclosure: I did this to myself and I regret none of it. I could have said “no” to most of these things, but I chose to say “yes” and I’m glad I did. It’s just that I once again overestimated myself and as a result their were consequences.

I burned myself out. Oops.

By the time I saw this random message, I was more than ready to embrace it.

I decided to end 2022 as softly as I could.

Deadlines and schedules being what they were, there was only so much I could control. I made the executive decision not to do any blog posts for the month of December. That gave me a little less stress and a little more time to do other things. I also finished as much of my audio work as I could before December. Another thing that freed up some time and lowered the stress levels.

After that, it was all about scheduling, balancing work with rest, which to be honest, is something I suck at and should be doing anyway.

For my part, I think I did well. Even with the Grinchmas shopping, crafting, shipping, and baking, I did not end the year feeling frazzled, completely bereft of energy, patience, and will to live. I ended the year somewhat softly and it made a huge difference in how I entered 2023.

I chose to enter the new year softly as well.

I tend to ease into January anyway. After all, I’m usually exhausted and dragging myself into a new calendar. This year I’m purposely going in softly. I am continuing my practice of being mindful about my schedule. I’m taking it easy, but being productive. What are my deadlines? What is my schedule? What can I control? Where can I be soft?

After doing so much audio last year, I plan to scale back this year. I still have projects with deadlines that will get done, but it’s a matter of not letting my schedule become so overwhelmed with it. I need to pace myself better and this means saying “no” or “not right now” sometimes, even if it’s something I really want to do. I need to let myself be booked sometimes.

It was in the latter portion of 2022 that I realized how much I miss writing. After years of creativity and productivity issues, I hit a sweet spot last year that I haven’t experienced in a long time and my schedule was so crowded that I felt like I had no time to indulge in it.

This month, my birthday vacation is also going to be a writing vacation. No library work and no audio projects. Just me and writing words. No deadlines or productivity goals. Just me writing.

And if it goes the way I think it will go, that is to say well, then I play to making writing vacations a thing for the year. Find those weeks were I can just write without expectation or interruption.

I’m hoping that ending the old year and beginning the new year softly will teach me something about how I approach my scheduling and my projects and maybe help me figure out a better work/rest balance.

Let this not be one of the times I insist on learning the hard way.

2022 NaNo Winner!

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

Number 19 officially went into the books on November 23rd and that’s when the story was finished, too. I pushed a little to get it finished before Thanksgiving, but for the most part, kept a constant 2,000 words a day word count. I tended to make the most productive progress doing 500 word sprints in between playing rounds of a puzzle game. It just seemed easier to write that way when I was giving my brain little breaks rather than trying to push straight through. It’s not the first time I’ve used this distraction/sprinting technique. I do whatever I need to do in order to make the words happen.

Thanks to me being less than smart with my scheduling, I ended up writing most often after work. Or at work, in some cases. I’m a dedicated employee. Anyway. That was different from previous years as my goal was always to get as much, if not all, of my writing before my shift. But since I had a few other projects going on, I had to rearrange my priorities. I will readily admit that this was one of the more stressful Novembers I’ve had in a while. I got through it, but I’m in no hurry to do something like that again.

The final first draft of Leave Well Enough Alone is something of a mess, naturally. Maybe it wouldn’t be if I’d done a slightly more solid outline. And by slightly more, I mean anything better than the vague game plan I went in with. But that’s not how I live my life.

I realized about two-thirds of the way into the first draft that I borked my timeline. Not long afterwards, I realized that I probably should have written the story differently. As I mentioned, I wrote alternating timelines. I think I might have been better off writing the 1976 timeline first in its entirety and then tailored the present day timeline to better fit it. Also, neither timeline turned out the way I thought it would, but that tends to happen when I don’t have a more robust and solid outline.

It was also about the time I realized I borked my timeline that I realized that Trix and Miggy should have had different jobs and objectives, but whatever. That’s what revisions and rewrites are for.

And when I get around to them, there will be a lot. Most likely starting with writing the 1976 timeline out in full so I know better how to make the present day timeline work.

But that’s future me’s problem.

Right now, present me is savoring yet another NaNo victory.

Page-A-Day and Sunday

~ Kiki Writes ~ 1 Comment

As I mentioned, I’m currently writing a page-a-day novel as well as something I’ve come to think of as my Sunday novel. I’ve been doing them both for a few months now, long enough that I’m ready to talk a little bit about each project, but more importantly talk about how different the processes have been for me, particularly in light of working on a NaNo novel at the same time.

NaNo, of course, is NaNo. I’ve finished it in 12 days, I’ve finished it in 30 days, I’ve totally failed it. My goal is to write 50,000-60,000 words in a month, about 2,000 words a day. After years of this, I’ve found a happy medium between outlining and pantsing, giving myself a basic blueprint of the story with room to wild out and surprise myself. It’s been a winning formula for quite some time (when I’m not cheating, obviously). The resulting first drafts vary from needing a lot of rewrites to just needing a few rounds of revisions.

Blasting out that first draft as fast as possible has been my way of writing for a majority of my writing career and it’s how I’ve done most of my projects.

Defending The L is not my first page-a-day project. A few years ago, I decided to shake up my creativity by writing one page a day every day for a year because as the adage goes, if you write a page a day, by the end of the year, you have a 365 page novel. At the time, I was looking for some kind of creative productivity boost. I had a general idea of the story, a few scenes I knew I was writing towards, and I just sort of let it unfold, day by day, page by page.

My current page-a-day is a little different. I started writing Defending The L this way because I wanted to write this story, but didn’t have time to devote to it to do it NaNo-style, nor did I want to wait until NaNo. I also don’t have the goal of writing a page a day for a year, just until the story is done. As of this post, it’s right around NaNo length of about 50,000 words and into the third act of the story, which takes a bit of a horror turn.

Defending The L also has the dual purpose of being a bit of a catharsis piece. It’s set in a library, so I’ve been able to vent some of my frustrations with the job through the story.

Like the previous page-a-day (which still doesn’t have a title and I haven’t looked at since I wrote it) and much of my NaNo work, this one is going to need some revising, but more than likely not any heavy re-writing. Of course, I’m not finished yet, so fingers crossed.

My Sunday story, That’s Punk, is an entirely different beast and honestly, it’s a little scary.

First of all, there’s nothing horror or fantasy or otherwise genre about it. It’s straight contemporary fiction, which for me is way out of my comfort zone.

Second of all, instead of writing this first draft as fast as I possibly can and getting it all out in one hunk I can shape through rewrites and/or revising, I’ve only been able to work on this story on Sundays. And when I do work on it, I go back and re-read what I wrote the previous week, revising anything I’ve decided needed changing while it’s simmered in my brain since the last time I looked at it, and then I add new material. There’s also no goal before I call my day on That’s Punk done. No word or page counts. Once I do my rewind and revise, I decide how much I want to get done that day. Usually, it’s a scene, or maybe not even that. I stop where it feels good. I’ve been working on this story since the end of August and I’ve only got about thirty pages written.

It’s so weird on so many levels for me. I’m writing something I don’t normally write in a way I don’t normally write. And you know what? I think I like it. There’s something indulgent about being able to take my time with a story, revise it as I go, and keep my goals fluid. There’s something luxurious about having this dedicated time to work on something on a day with no other expectations. I’m not rushing to get anything done because I have to go to work or I have errands to run or dinner to make. I don’t do anything on Sundays by design. Writing this story on my lazy day has turned into a form of relaxation for me, as strange as that sounds.

November has been an interesting writing month for me for years thanks to NaNo and the challenge of writing a 50,000 word novel around daily life. But this November, writing three different novels, three different ways…it’s been eye-opening.

One thing about being a writer…I never get bored exploring and developing my craft.