my best advice is either try to find something you are excited to write, or force it for a while.
it's really amazing once you get in a routine how much easier the words can come out.
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WritersEra |OT| Publish before you die, writing writer writes
- Thread starter weemadarthur
- Start date
- OT
it's really amazing once you get in a routine how much easier the words can come out.
Hello all! I used to lurk the former site a fair bit, but I'm a first-time poster. Looking forward to discussing the everyday pains of writing!
Right now I have an ebook out with a small local publisher that is struggling along in sales, and I'm trying to put together a formal pitch for some work that might actually pay (at least, pay more than the pennies I'm currently making)
Right now I have an ebook out with a small local publisher that is struggling along in sales, and I'm trying to put together a formal pitch for some work that might actually pay (at least, pay more than the pennies I'm currently making)
Welcome! I look forward to seeing what you decide to pursue. When you say formal pitch, do you mean that you are querying for a new project you haven't written yet or are looking for wider exposure for your currently published book?
Thanks! I'm querying for a new project. Though the pitch has involved writing several thousand words of it already, so I'm going to be a little disappointed if it doesn't come to anything.
My current book could certainly use exposure - I'm presently trying to get various bloggers to review it.
I have found that many agents only want to be queried for completed works. At least from newer authors. How much reception are you getting for your pitch? Are you able to leverage the fact that you already have a completed work to get more attention from agents?
Xagarath’s Published Works list
I've actually been invited to pitch the project (which isn't strictly a novel) by a company based on my having an already-published book, though I had to send them a bunch of concepts first.
Certainly I can!
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B075WYP57W/?tag=era0f0-20
Or on goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36317772-lamplight
OP
OP
I am assuming that Writers wants to be listed in the Table of Contents once available, and also to be part of the Spotlight Rotation. If anyone disagrees, please reply so.
I am really enjoying being in this world I'm writing in. I setup this scene, expecting it to be about introducing a new character and there being a bit of a fight (in a training setup). But before I can even get there, Brennan says something stupid to the monk, who takes offense, and the next thing you know I'm 600 words into how the monk has Brennan on his knees shouting out Our Father's as penance for wronging him.
I'll get to the fight scene tomorrow, I guess.
I'll get to the fight scene tomorrow, I guess.
New place for me to cry about my life, yay!
I love writing but my job sucks the life out of me. It's not a time thing, though as I say that I'm gearing up for an all-nighter. Writing is mentally engaging, and my job is mentally draining. It's like finding the energy for a 10k fun run if your job was to run marathons every day. The heart is willing, but the brain is spongy and bruised. . .
I didn't really pick my career path. . . this is what happens if you don't fight the current.
Sorry, I know this is supposed to be about writing. But I would be writing, if. . . well, sorry.
I am working on a gaming system, that very much counts as writing in my mind. The progress never really stops, so there's hope I might finish it before I die.
I love writing but my job sucks the life out of me. It's not a time thing, though as I say that I'm gearing up for an all-nighter. Writing is mentally engaging, and my job is mentally draining. It's like finding the energy for a 10k fun run if your job was to run marathons every day. The heart is willing, but the brain is spongy and bruised. . .
I didn't really pick my career path. . . this is what happens if you don't fight the current.
Sorry, I know this is supposed to be about writing. But I would be writing, if. . . well, sorry.
I am working on a gaming system, that very much counts as writing in my mind. The progress never really stops, so there's hope I might finish it before I die.
Have you ever tried writing first thing in the morning instead? It worked for Anthony Trollope (although I doubt most of us could match his work ethic)
Either way, the work/wirting/life balance thing sucks sometimes. I can barely find half an hour a day during the week.
Unfortunately I work an early shift; I'm up at 5AM as it is. I'm a night owl by nature, so that's a small part of the problem. . .
Ahh, gotcha. That's a difficult position to be stuck in.
I sometimes used to write (on paper, the old fashioned way) on my commute or during lunchbreaks? Managed to turn out half a manuscript that way. Though it's less an option if you drive.
I sometimes used to write (on paper, the old fashioned way) on my commute or during lunchbreaks? Managed to turn out half a manuscript that way. Though it's less an option if you drive.
I had a really good writing day yesterday. Had some free time, so I went to the library and hunkered down with a chapter rewrite that's been giving me trouble. And out of nowhere it all fit together, and I actually managed to resolve a character motivation issue that's been bothering me. Must be all that early November nanowrimo magic that's in the air!
It's not easy. David Mitchell had some advice on carving out time for writing:
He also says for him in life he's "only got time to be a halfway decent parent, plus one other thing." I can see that being true also.
I gave it a read and I have a lot of mixed feelings about it even of it does cover my general opinion of the topic (A writer is someone who writes, not necessarily frequently, but still writes). Overall, i think it misreads the audience who usually asks this question because this is a sort of doubt I hear a lot from people who are starting out writing. To which, again, i think the better advice is to give that little push to sit down and write. Telling people that they're actually writing in all the freetime when they're not writing feels too enabling of bad habbits to me.
But Im also a no name with little to no success so I'm not in a good position to argue against
no name, but I thought your name was Flowers, and you happen to be British.
terrible jokes aside, I don't consider myself a writer, I consider myself someone who just writes from time to time.
OP
OP
But the name clearly says FlowersISbritish.
:P
regardless, when ever they make fun of me I will always hear it in a British accent :P
I think I read the advice from the perspective of the person asking the question - someone who has been published and has seriously engaged in the practice, but faltering in terms of keeping it up and feeling guilty about it. You're right, it's probably not the best advice for someone looking to make the jump into writing. The advice resonates with me because I can relate to many facets of that answer - the part where people say "just sit and write" and it being a positive thing (NaNoWriMo helped instill discipline in me when I was starting out) and a negative thing (I work full-time and my tired brain writes garbage under strain). I've done it long enough now where I have a sense of when I should push myself and when I should relax, but it wasn't always like that.
Yeah after taking some time to think about it after I posted that, you're right. I have kind of a clouded view of writing advice and what people should do both from my own personal inexperience and the admittedly harsh standards I put myself under. Though I always thought the question of "Am I or Am I Not a Writer?" to be always a bit odd. Nice thing about oversimplifications, they make nebulous gray choices super easy to do. I have never had a qualm about decisions in RPGs (which usually means slaughtering villages but no ones perfect.)
I got an interview to write for TheSenpaiProject on Sunday. I'm not sure how much they pay, but journalism seems like the only thing I can write lately.
Currently trying to get through the first draft of my novel and I'm wondering: How do you all feel about describing environments and characters? Do you go in depth with it or do you prefer to spout some basics out there and leave the rest to the reader's imagination?
I think it really depends on both where you are in the story and how central those environments or characters are.
As a general rule, you can get away with more description in the first half of a story while you're still establishing things for the reader. Once the plot kicks into higher gear, I don't want to test the reader's patience with descriptions they're only going to skim over.
This is probably a bit obvious to say, but I also only linger on details for characters or environments that are either central to the story or somehow noteworthy to the character who happens to be seeing them. If the point-of-view character wouldn't linger on the details of something, why should the reader?
All that said, though, I think I prefer slightly more description to sparse, Elmore Leonard-type prose. There's only a very limited number of moods you can set without at least some detail.
I'd say the choice of setting and theme goes a long way to deciding how much description you need. If it is familiar you can probably paint a very good picture with a simple character action. For example a generic fantasy theme might just need "he walked in and spat on the dirt floor of the inn" and you are pretty much picturing the serving wenches and guy with an eye missing at the bar.
There is a stunning amount of advice and help for aspiring novelists out there. I've noticed because whenever I try to find articles and advice on writing non-fiction I feel like I am buried in this flood of, "So you want to be a writer, eh?" Does anyone have any good resources for more academic-style writing? Or maybe even something closer to the style of reviews and analysis?
My personal writing style (and reading preferences) skew more towards the minimalist. I'd much rather read more dialogue, more action, more plot than description most of the time. And if something even nudges towards sounding purple it's likely to turn me off completely.
I like (and write) a style where tertiary characters don't always need names. Sometimes a person can just be "a man" or "a woman," etc. Of course, this can be done to the extent of Cormac McCarthy, where even the main characters might be nameless, to great effect.
Description should, in my opinion, be something you use sparingly to elicit an effect or an emotion. You can use it to paint a specific scene in a way that makes it more effective. When every single environment is described in detail, people skim over it. When it's rare, it can be extremely engaging.
Regardless of your personal preferences, I feel strongly that the description in your writing should match the narrator. If I'm reading from the POV of a busy Wall Street executive, there better not be a page and a half describing the flowers in Central Park unless there's a damn good reason. If I'm reading from the POV of a painter considering a landscape, it's going to feel very wrong if the description is sparse.
For example, in the book I just finished one of the POV characters is a narcissistic, womanizing asshole. When he meets men, they get no description at all, whereas when he encounters a woman the reader gets a brief description because the character is actually paying attention to them.
This is also related to the trope of main characters staring in the mirror to describe themselves to the reader. You shouldn't write an extended description of something the character has no reason to examine at length. Most of my characters' descriptions come from the POV of others meeting them, not from their own chapters.
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Hey folks, wanted to let you know that it looks like the Neogaf OT threads, including all of the writing challenge threads, did get moved back to where we can access them again. Which means anyone who wanted to save down any of their work, comments, etc should do so now! Seriously, I strongly encourage you to assume that they will at some point disappear again, and act accordingly.
Search function doesn't appear to be seeing the challenge threads, but you can use these links to track things down:
Challenges 1-100: http://www./forum/showpost.php?p=70864271&postcount=12
Challenges 101-200: http://www./forum/showpost.php?p=225770160&postcount=13
Challenges 201-217: http://www./forum/showpost.php?p=36942622&postcount=14
(I hadn't updated in a while so 218-223 are missing. You should be able to find them by going to the last page of 217 and moving forward from there, since the new challenges were always linked to from the old ones.)
Also might be useful, compilations of links to the actual stories, from the anniversary threads (these links go to the posts rather than to dropbox etc):
All Stories, 1-50: http://www./forum/showthread.php?p=20955767#post20955767
51-100: http://www./forum/showthread.php?p=39057692#post39057692
101-150: http://www./forum/showthread.php?p=125219354#post125219354
151-200: http://www./forum/showthread.php?p=225769884#post225769884
We never reached 250 so it doesn't go that far. ;_;
Search function doesn't appear to be seeing the challenge threads, but you can use these links to track things down:
Challenges 1-100: http://www./forum/showpost.php?p=70864271&postcount=12
Challenges 101-200: http://www./forum/showpost.php?p=225770160&postcount=13
Challenges 201-217: http://www./forum/showpost.php?p=36942622&postcount=14
(I hadn't updated in a while so 218-223 are missing. You should be able to find them by going to the last page of 217 and moving forward from there, since the new challenges were always linked to from the old ones.)
Also might be useful, compilations of links to the actual stories, from the anniversary threads (these links go to the posts rather than to dropbox etc):
All Stories, 1-50: http://www./forum/showthread.php?p=20955767#post20955767
51-100: http://www./forum/showthread.php?p=39057692#post39057692
101-150: http://www./forum/showthread.php?p=125219354#post125219354
151-200: http://www./forum/showthread.php?p=225769884#post225769884
We never reached 250 so it doesn't go that far. ;_;
OP
OP
OneNote helps me out a lot. I have scrivener but rarely use it. I tried Ulysses which was cool. Need to rebuy it.
all this is on the iPad Pro. The Apple Pencil is a godsend.
I sketch and draw ideas in both OneNote and the notes app.
Fade In is cool for screenplays. I use that on my iPhone.
The director of the latest Star Wars movie endorses that.
i've had writer's block but I'll start writing again and update which apps I've settled with.
all this is on the iPad Pro. The Apple Pencil is a godsend.
I sketch and draw ideas in both OneNote and the notes app.
Fade In is cool for screenplays. I use that on my iPhone.
The director of the latest Star Wars movie endorses that.
i've had writer's block but I'll start writing again and update which apps I've settled with.
Yeah, I don't go quite that low-tech but I taught myself to resist the urge to format before I was done editing. You can always copypasta the text into something more sophisticated once the writing and editing parts are done.
I was using Scrivener for the sequel to my first book, but honestly I wasn't using it the way it was intended but more or less as a word editor. Wasn't using the outline function, etc.
For the novella/month challenge, I'm using Google Docs and it's working just fine. No fuss. You can save files as .epub or .docx depending on whether you're building a Kindle or paperback.
For the novella/month challenge, I'm using Google Docs and it's working just fine. No fuss. You can save files as .epub or .docx depending on whether you're building a Kindle or paperback.
I've never quite figured out how to use Scrivener in a way that's comfortable for me. I really need to do research into workflow.
It's not a huge deal as I've been working on short fiction for the last few years, but I have plans to start on my novel in the next few months...
Wordpad? Pssssh. Notepad is where it's at. .txt files or bust!
There is a lot of good information in the OP! Thank you for creating this and all of the information you provided. I'm currently writing a novel and am at 65k words. Had no idea where to go next, but thanks to this thread, I now have a much better idea.
I like to have any kinds of descriptions build an atmosphere or a feeling. It can get quite boring if you just have plain unconnected descriptions of objects or characters and I find that it's usually better when you try to a) add impressions to that (if you're writing the story from the POV of a specific character, don't write what they see but how they see it, what they think about it/how it makes them feel) or b) somehow connect separate descriptions together, for example by using interesting metaphors, similes, etc. or by making each part of the description a clue that, when combined with the other parts, leads the reader and/or character to a conclusion/epiphany/... It's just good to tie descriptions to something else and make them feel relevant to the characters and/or the story so they don't jump out at you as random lists of adjectives (unless, of course, that's precisely what you're going for - if that's the way your protagonist would see their surroundings, for example, maybe because they're very no-nonsense or emotionally underdeveloped or sth). And make sure to not just focus on visual stuff but also include smells, sounds, feelings, temperature, etc.
I also love Scrivener but don't use many of its features. I like how I can chunk up chapters and section and shuffle them around.
TheSenpaiProject doesn't pay. First of all there's a 60 day trial period and after that they pay you only $10 an article and you're only allowed to write three articles a week. Not worth it for me.
On a vaguely related note, is anyone planning on submitting to the Angry Robot call this year?
https://www.angryrobotbooks.com/2017/09/open-door-2017-send-us-your-novel/
https://www.angryrobotbooks.com/2017/09/open-door-2017-send-us-your-novel/
Oh shit! Yeah I might as well kick em Grim. Urban fantasy but close enough. Or I could go TNL but I haven't read that in years and dunno if it's good :P
Edit: Nope. No YA so no Grim
SEcond edit: TNL is too long :( By like 1200 words
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