Writerly Goals

As writers, we usually have a career dream, that end goal that makes it worthwhile and keeps us churning out page after page, day after day. Sometimes we lose sight of that goal in the rush of everyday life, but in the end, it always resurfaces. My question for all you writers out there – where do you see yourself and your craft in ten years? What are your long-term goals?

As for myself – I hope to have a doctorate in English, enabling me to teach at a university while still devoting plenty of time to writing. Getting published is a pretty big goal too. My secret wish is to eventually support myself on my work alone – but that will probably take longer than ten years, haha.

Share your success stories, fails, and end goals – we want to hear them!

Dan: This is a great topic! I think a single or handful of goals is tough, because as you unlock each new achievement in a writer's career, your goals change. For me, at least, there's never a point where I'd say "this is good enough" and just call the rest in. When I started writing, it wasn't really for the money. If you forced me to call out a single goal, I'd say walking into a bookstore and finding a book with my name on it. That's the moment I'm really waiting for. Trouble is, once I do that, what's next?

I decided to capture several of my writing goals with a "Writing Career Bingo Card." I heard about this from some writer friends last year, and made one of my own. You basically make an Excel file that's 5 rows and 5 columns. In each of the 25 squares, you put a writing achievement. Some of mine are: get a book deal, pro short story sale, anthology sale, first 5-star review, first 1-star review. Then you fill out the squares as you accomplish each one.

My writing career bingo card is 7x7 (I'm ambitious like that) and I only have six squares filled in, so I've got a long way to go.

Lisa: Success story - Support myself with nonfiction writing - achieved.
Fails - Starting and continuing a print newspaper in a small town for at least ten years (I blame the recession). Hey, I still have the news website though.
End goal - In ten years I want to support myself with fiction writing.

Caitlin: I agree with Dan that goals are tricky, because, sometimes you actually achieve them! ;-)  My original goal was just to write a book, so, I remind myself often that I already achieved said goal and all the rest is just gravy. That said, I don't always listen to that positive take on it. When I was in the query trenches, I realized that I was too caught up in the single goal of getting an agent and I made myself think about what I really wanted from this. I wrote a "writing mission." I won't post the whole thing because 1. it's long, 2.  it's embarrassing, but the main themes were to continue finding joy in writing and to connect with other people in a positive way through what I write. Yes, these are both a bit abstract, but I like that they are things I can achieve on my own by simply writing and putting my work out there (in whatever form). There are so many writing goals that are dependent on external factors that are completely out of my control, it's nice to focus on what I can control.

Time to Write

I don't personally know any authors yet whose "real" job is writing, meaning it's not your sole source of income. So you have a job that isn't writing. You work a lot of hours at it. That takes time away from writing. You have kids? Those take away time from writing. Have a significant other? You guessed it - time away from writing.

Here's how the conversation goes:
Significant other: You're on your computer every night.
You: And?
Significant other: Don't you want to spend time with me?
You: Uh....

It seems like there are 1,000 things trying to pull me away from the time I spend writing. How do people do it?

Karlie: I can definitely relate to this…between summer classes and holding down a job, I only have a few stolen minutes every day to write. It's very tempting to watch a movie or curl up with a book instead, but I try to spend at least twenty minutes writing - operative word here being try. For me, it's all about keeping my eyes on the goal. This is what I want to do with my life, so it's time well-spent, no matter how tired I am at the end of the day.

Caitlin:  I think the best way to find time to write is to make it fun. Be sure you're working on something you really are enjoying. How many times do you hear people say they don't have time to watch TV or play games on their phones or check Facebook. Don't get me wrong, I do hear that sometimes (sometimes I'm the one saying it ;-) ). But, most of the time those activities just kind of happen because they are fun, we enjoy them. If you realize writing is a fun outlet, like playing a game, then it isn't just one more chore to add to your to do list.

As for the other demands, my husband and I make deals sometimes. For example, I can write for an hour as long as after that we do something he wants to do. He is supportive of my writing, but he also likes hanging out with me (heh), so, like with all things, there needs to be a balance. And that's okay. 

Dan: This is a good topic, because it is hard. Especially for those of us with full-time jobs and spouses and little kids. I basically fit my writing in around the edges: in the morning before work (rare) or at night after the kids are in bed (more common). It's harder in spring and summer, when the good weather usually takes us places where a laptop would be... less than welcome.

I'm not complaining, though, because I love and need my family, just as I love and need my job. Something tells me that if I had none of those things, and could write full-time, I'd still have the same level of productivity. Luckily, my family's pretty forgiving about the writing stuff when I'm up against a deadline. They know I'll make it up to them.

Visuals

Caitlin here. One of my favorite novel writing tasks (or, perhaps, procrastinating tasks) is looking online for images to help inspire and drive my process. I try to have a few images, which I usually find on Istock, of actual people who are close to how I “see” each prominent character. These images aren’t just for coloring and facial features, because the best pictures show the model doing something and/or having an expression that resonates with the character. 

I’m less into looking up images for my settings but, as I’m writing my first fantasy in a new world that isn’t too dissimilar from our own, I’m starting to find myself seeking out images in order to craft the cities and other places that will flesh out my world. 

How do you use images as part of your process? Where are the best sources for images?

Dan: I like having visuals to help plan things, and to keep me motivated while writing that first draft. For my most recent writing project, I created this Pinterest board to collect images from Google Image Search, DeviantArt, Wikipedia, and other places.

I also keep world maps and/or landscape images in view while I'm writing. I import them into Scrivener, and display them in the top panel (while I write in the bottom panel). The map is not only a time-honored tradition for fantasy writers, but actually quite useful in reminding me where my characters are and what's around them.

Lisa: I'm not a visual person. Images tend to mess up the idea I have of my characters in my head. So, it's more about a feeling to me. What feels right. That's why I'm not too fond of covers with faces. I skirt around that by only having partial faces on my covers, or else faces with the picture altered so much that the faces are obscure. For both MOMENTS and TRICOLOR covers, I just wanted get the point across that there's a boy and a girl. That's it. As far as setting, I do visit my locations, but it's not so that I can "see" my setting so much as to treat my other senses. I need to hear the sounds, experience the pace of the town, and feel the tone - try to put my finger on the pulse of the community, what's important to them, their activities/festivals, what they hold sacred.

If I were writing a fantasy, I'd consider creating the setting in the "image" of a town that would work for my plot. Say you're writing a steampunk. St. Augustine, Florida would be a great town to mimic your steam punk town. It's dark, steamy/humid, the body count from violent deaths is high, so it even has the haunting/dreadful feel to it at night.

Karlie: I tend to use Pinterest a lot here - it's amazing what you can find. I created one entirely for Kismet and another for Forsaken, collecting little things like tavern stools and larger ones like setting. It really helps me to immerse myself in the mood of the place I'm writing - so I use images a lot. Every now and then I'll use one for a character visual - but like you, Lisa, I'd rather keep them in my mind. :) Great post, Caitlin!

Defining Complex Human Emotions

It's Dan writing today, and I wanted to tackle the complexity of human emotions and life in general. In particular, how to recreate some of the deep, powerful feelings that we have at certain moments when it's hard to put words to them. Recently, I stumbled across a wonderful and entertaining resource called The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, a compendium of rare but widely-understood emotions described in lovely depressing form. For example:

vemödalen
n. the frustration of photographing something amazing when thousands of identical photos already exist—the same sunset, the same waterfall, the same curve of a hip, the same closeup of an eye—which can turn a unique subject into something hollow and pulpy and cheap, like a mass-produced piece of furniture you happen to have assembled yourself.

I read that and just thought yes, I've had that. It is not an easy thing to describe, but the author of this dictionary somehow nails it. I started perusing the site and found there are over a hundred entries like this. The words themselves are made up, but the feelings are not. Here some of my favorites:

lachesism
n. the desire to be struck by disaster—to survive a plane crash, to lose everything in a fire, to plunge over a waterfall—which would put a kink in the smooth arc of your life, and forge it into something hardened and flexible and sharp, not just a stiff prefabricated beam that barely covers the gap between one end of your life and the other.

occhiolism
n. the awareness of the smallness of your perspective, by which you couldn’t possibly draw any meaningful conclusions at all, about the world or the past or the complexities of culture, because although your life is an epic and unrepeatable anecdote, it still only has a sample size of one, and may end up being the control for a much wilder experiment happening in the next room.

opia
n. the ambiguous intensity of looking someone in the eye, which can feel simultaneously invasive and vulnerable—their pupils glittering, bottomless and opaque—as if you were peering through a hole in the door of a house, able to tell that there’s someone standing there, but unable to tell if you’re looking in or looking out.

vellichor
n. the strange wistfulness of used bookstores, which are somehow infused with the passage of time—filled with thousands of old books you’ll never have time to read, each of which is itself locked in its own era, bound and dated and papered over like an old room the author abandoned years ago, a hidden annex littered with thoughts left just as they were on the day they were captured.

dead reckoning
n. to find yourself bothered by someone’s death more than you would have expected, as if you assumed they would always be part of the landscape, like a lighthouse you could pass by for years until the night it suddenly goes dark, leaving you with one less landmark to navigate by—still able to find your bearings, but feeling all that much more adrift.

gnossienne
n. a moment of awareness that someone you’ve known for years still has a private and mysterious inner life, and somewhere in the hallways of their personality is a door locked from the inside, a stairway leading to a wing of the house that you’ve never fully explored—an unfinished attic that will remain maddeningly unknowable to you, because ultimately neither of you has a map, or a master key, or any way of knowing exactly where you stand.

adronitis
n. frustration with how long it takes to get to know someone—spending the first few weeks chatting in their psychological entryway, with each subsequent conversation like entering a different anteroom, each a little closer to the center of the house—wishing instead that you could start there and work your way out, exchanging your deepest secrets first, before easing into casualness, until you’ve built up enough mystery over the years to ask them where they’re from, and what they do for a living.

What I admire about this dictionary is that the author gives us a simile for each term that's usually as hilarious as it is descriptive. It leads me to two questions that I'd like you to answer:

1. What are your favorite obscure sorrows? Bonus points if you make one up.
2. How do you go about trying to write such complex feelings into your fiction?

Go forth and be sorrowful!


Caitlin: Perhaps this sounds weird, but I don't find these depressing. Instead, when I first read some, I actually felt a bit of a weight off  of me. It's a really nice reminder that I'm not alone in some of my weirder feelings. :) Meaning, it helps ease my monachopsis. But, I'd also like to add, that as writers, we need to stare vemodalen, the fear that everything has already been done before, straight in the eye (and bring on that opia feeling). It can be a really depressing feeling until you, well, just accept it. A writing teacher told me once that everything had already been done, so that's never a reason not to do something. It's actually kind of freeing if you think about it that way. Just write what you want to write, knowing it's unlikely to be a truly, earth-shatteringly new idea. And that's okay.

Lisa: I love this! So, I might sound insane and like I need to knock on 50 tons of wood for saying this but what about lachesism, n. the desire to be struck by disaster? Not that I want something horrific and terrible to happen to me. But there are times that I sit and think: I'd like to totally change my life, new career, move to a new town, get new friends/coworkers/car/pet. Even live in a different country. But I'm too scared. To do something like that I'd have to be forced and a disaster would do that. As far as writing lachesism, that's what I did in my book that'll be out this month TRICOLOR. I wanted to make a character make an entirely new life for herself. Though, I don't think I wrote it in the spirit of the above definition. My character didn't want that big change...or maybe subconsciously she did. How did I write it? Kicking and screaming. When a character doesn't want something like this, that's what they do. Kicking and screaming makes for great drama :)g

Karlie: Lisa. Yes!! I've had that same thought before.

Scenes: Are They Making Your Story…Or Breaking It?

Karlie with you today, and I want to talk about scenes - those little stepping stones, the individual parts that work together to make a whole story. If, that is, you're using them correctly.

Here are some things to ask yourself as you move through your book, scene by scene:

1. Is this scene helping move the story along through action and conflict…or is it just pointless fluff?

• Even if it's the best writing you've ever done, even if you're sure it's going to singlehandedly win you a Pulitzer Prize one day, if it doesn't contribute to the story - you guessed it. Cut! Don't let your ego blind you. If the story could do just as well without it, leave it out. No exceptions.

2. Is there a beginning, middle, and an end?

• Scenes are really just miniature stories at heart. No matter how long or short they are, every scene has a plot. See it through to the finish.

3. Does something change?

• Large, small, or somewhere in between - it doesn't matter. But change of some sort must take place at some point. If it doesn't, something's wrong.

If you're like me - a free-faller - you'll probably end up with a lot of work when it comes time to revise your book. Outliners tend to have a map of what scenes are needed, and can fill in the gaps as they go. I choose to be constantly surprised along with the characters (I'll let you know when I figure out whether that's a good thing or a bad thing), and I usually end up killing more of my darlings than is emotionally healthy. But whether you're a plotter or a pantser, logical scenes are crucial. They need to crackle with tension, desire and conflict, move the story along, and keep the reader surprised as they change the course of the character's life.

Writers, what are your "scene secrets?" Do you have anything to add?

Caitlin: You know, I was just rethinking my "scene audit" checklist, so, Karlie, you and I are on the same wavelength today!  I ditto the part about how each scene needs tension. A good way to figure out if it does is to ask yourself 1. Does your character wants something? 2. Is there something in the way of them getting it? 3. Will something bad happen if the character doesn't get it (i.e., stakes). If the answer isn't "yes" to each of these, strongly consider revising or cutting it.

Lisa: I don't have a scene secret...but I have a chapter secret that could pertain to scenes as well. Your story/character has an over-arching goal, or plot, if you will. Each chapter also needs to establish a smaller goal (of course, it can pertain to the overarching goal) for each character. Yes, even the "co-actors" need a chapter/scene goal. Establish that goal and by the end of the chapter/scene, that character must either obtain said goal or clearly fail at that goal. It's not left hanging. Of course, there are exceptions, but as a whole, this works.

I have another chapter secret that could pertain to scenes. When I'm CPing, I ask my partner to rate my chapters on a scale of 1-10, one being the worst, and so on. Little notes are welcome about why the score was so low such as: no forward motion, or why it is so high such as: really sweet and unique scenes, but those little notes aren't necessary. If you've done this for ages like I have, you've already wondered about that chapter/scene and your CP just confirmed your fears with a low number. No explanation needed. So, that's my other secret. Have your CPs rate your scenes as they go.

Dan: I think these are excellent points, particularly that the scenes should move the plot forward and that something should change during a scene. As for the structure of scenes, I'm inclined to agree with Lisa that the beginning-middle-end is more of a guidepost for long scenes or chapters. In our modern, ADD-driven world, many readers prefer shorter segments of text with lots of white space. Often it's possible to hit one or two of the guidelines above, but not all three.

Another good bit of advice: make sure that the emotion conveyed by your scenes has some variety. You check for this by assigning a single emotion/feeling to each scene, and then looking at a high-level outline to find spots where you have too many of the same emotions in a row. It's much like varying the length of sentences and words throughout the manuscript: it adds complexity and cadence to the prose.

What the POV?!?

I'm not talking about 3rd person or past/present tense. I'm talking about who's telling us the story. Male, female, or cat - we all have our favorite perspectives. Who would you rather tell the story? Say you like seeing the story through a female's eyes - do you turn away from the story when it's coming from the brain of a male? Or do you keep reading with a suspicious feeling that something just isn't write...ahem...right?

Writers, which one are you most comfortable writing?

Everyone, what are your thoughts on dual POV? Alternating chapters? The first half of the book in one POV and the next half in a different one?

Tell the world (or our few subscribers) your opinions on POV. Inquiring minds want to know.

Dan: First of all, I can't get into a book with an animal protagonist unless it's something I'm reading to my kids. As a reader, I don't have a preference for male or female protagonists. As a writer, however, I've not yet been brave enough to write a book from an entirely female POV. That's largely because I put a lot of myself into my protagonists, and I'm a guy. But I think it's important to have well-rounded female characters to balance that out, and I certainly try to do so.

Lisa: About a year ago, I picked up a book from a campground "free" bookshelf and took it back to my camper thinking I had a nice vacation book. Imagine my surprise when I realized it was told through the eyes of a cat - a suspense novel. I think they're called cozy mysteries. My lack of reading options forced me to read the book anyway. Now, I'm not ready to shout from the rooftops how great books from an animal's POV are. But it was a whole lot better than I thought it would be. Seeing the story from a four-legged creature also allowed me to see a glimpse of the world through a very different perspective. I saw how silly humans might appear to animals. Since then, I don't seek out novels told from the perspective of an animal, but I don't turn away from an interesting plotline because of how many legs the storyteller has anymore.

As far as gender - I love writing from a male's perspective, but I'm beginning to realize a lot of young adults would rather have a female storyteller. Someone tell me I'm wrong, please.
I've also been told that young adults don't mind a male POV as long as it shifts between his and a girl's - dual POV. What do you think?

Karlie: Like Dan, I generally veer away from the books with animal protagonists, but if I found something that looked interesting enough, I'd definitely dive in! And I guess I'm an odd duck - for some reason, I can get into the male's head way better than I can the female's. Everyone tells me my male characters are their favorites! I don't know if I'm wired wrong or what. :) But I've been working on making my female characters more relatable and rounded - in fact, my novel Kismet is told entirely from a female perspective, with the exception of about five chapters.

As far as reading goes, I don't really care - either gender is fine with me. I do prefer dual POV, but in some cases, telling it in only one POV preserves some of the mystery. It all depends on the story, in the end. Great topic!

Caitlin: For me, this definitely brings to mind The Art of Racing in the Rain.  I had really mixed feelings on that book, but I was completely fine with the dog narrating it. I also like both male and female POVs, but, like Dan, I'm not quite brave enough yet to push myself to write a long work from a male perspective. The project I'm working on now has two POVs, two sisters. But I'm thinking of adding in the voices of two male characters. We'll see...

Where the Action Happens

As technology has advanced, writers have changed how they write. With the advent of the typewriter, writers could decide whether they preferred clicking away at first drafts or scrawling them out by hand. When the computer came along, some purists still preferred the typewriter. Indeed, some writers have strong, and strange, relationships with theirs. (For example, Hunter S. Thompson used to shoot his in the snow.)  But even for those who ventured into the new digital age, word processers, such as Word Perfect and Microsoft Word, still ruled.

But, these days, we have an abundance of tools to get those words on the “page”! From Scrivener, to yWriter, to Writer’s Cafe, to Get Yarney, to Gingko, to….well, I could go on and on.

However, even with all those options, I still work in Microsoft Word. I’m the equivalent of the writer who clanks away at the typewriter while everyone else has personal computers. But Word seems to work for me. I use the headings and the comments to organize my scenes, random thoughts, and research. I’ve written three novels this way.

And yet, I constantly think, there has to be a better way. I love task managers (like Toodledo and Trello) and I’d love a platform that combines a good writing interface, organization/outlining, and a task system. Ideally, I’d open it up, and there would be a little message for me saying here are the four things you need to get done today. (e.g., write a first draft of scene 5, jot down thoughts on this character, swipe/revise scene 2, etc.) And, it must work easily across computers. But, alas, I haven’t found something like that yet. 

Maybe I need to come around to the fact that there isn’t a dream tool for me. Maybe I’m just looking for a platform that will make writing “easier,” when I have to just suck it up and realize sometimes writing is hard, regardless of where it happens? 

What are your thoughts? Where does the action happen for you? Have you found your dream writing tool? (And, most importantly, do you know of a tool that’s “in the cloud” that combines writing, outlining, and tasks…if so, tell me about it! :))

Dan: There do seem to be a lot of writing tools out there, and more crop up every day. It would be completely feasible for me to do almost everything in Word, particularly because that's how most people in publishing exchange documents and the Track Changes features are unparalleled. However, I've found a few other tools to be useful:

• Scrivener is my main writing/editing tool. I keep my projects in a Dropbox folder so that they're backed up and accessible on all my devices.
• Google Drive is useful for keeping shared documents in the cloud. I use the spreadsheets more than any other feature, to track things like submissions and deadlines.
• TextWrangler is a plain-text editor. I'm a huge note-taker, and I keep all my notes in Dropbox folders, too. It's also useful to strip the formatting from text before pasting elsewhere.
• Google Tasks lets me maintain checklists and sync them across devices. I love a good to-do list!
• Scapple is a mind-mapping tool from the makers of Scrivener for jotting down and connecting ideas. It's fun to use, but has yet to become critical for me.

I'dd add to the wishlist for a perfect writing tool that it should leverage the cloud, but also maintain functionality even if you don't have an internet connection.

Lisa: You've stumped me. I don't have a "tool" that helps me with writing as far as programs, etc. goes. I outline on MS Word and write on MS word as well. Different stories have different folders for the various needs - character interviews, research notes, outlines, etc. I write and outline in a notebook too. So, I may be behind the times, but it keeps me afloat.

Karlie: I use mainly Microsoft word as well. I tried Scrivener for awhile, but found it didn't work as well for me as I had hoped. Caitlin, when you find a tool like the one you described, please let me know! :) I've tried several things but always ended up coming back to Word. I tend to do all my outlining, story planning, and character interviews on paper (such cave-like behavior, I know), but that's the way my thought processes work.