Reflections posts from a woman who writes

For a while, I haven’t had the oomph to tackle first draft writing. I have a number of projects that I can polish, or tear apart and rewrite, but I ...

I’ve tried to avoid having flashbacks in my writing because I find them rather annoying when I’m reading. It seems to be a common technique to tell a story in two timelines at once, going back and forth. I suspect the author thinks it heightens suspense. I’ve found myself skipping the past storyline in some novels and enjoying the book more. 

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve started to think about how long it takes to do something. Is it worth it? It applies to taking my shoes off at the beach and let the water lap against my feet. It also applies to my writing.

When I’m at the beach, it’s easy to talk myself out of taking off my shoes. It’s not that warm. I’ll get sand in my socks and shoes. It’s better to walk with arch support at my age. I can talk myself out of writing with a whole range of excuses.

I discovered about ten years ago that I have Aphantasia which is where you don’t see images in your head. I always knew I couldn’t see images. I just didn’t realize other people actually saw stuff when they close their eyes. As a result, description has always been boring to me so I have to work extra hard to include it. But it’s kind of fun to try to capture something in words that will paint a picture even if you can’t see the picture that’s painted. I feel a little bit like Mozart composing after he went deaf.

It seems that most books I read lately, especially for book clubs, tells the story in two or more timelines at once. Sometimes it works, but often it feels like a crutch. It feels like the author didn’t bother coming up with interesting events or characters, so doles out information years apart to increase the tension.

I love to write at the beach. And I’ve had that opportunity off and on over the years. But I don’t live at the beach, so whenever I’m there, I also spend time staring at the waves, or walking in the sand.

When life imitates art, it can be difficult to work on a project. I remember years ago being surprised when friends stated that their dentist always checked their throat. “What for?”

Why outlines make sense.

As I was contemplating making things worse for one of my characters, I realized that I was making it not just bad, but impossible. I had too many complications. My most recently one moved the series along.

Inspiration comes in many forms. I enjoy traveling and often include places I’ve visited in my novels. I took my love of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and wrote four books about a couple of Americans who were performing at the Fringe. I wrote Yes, And … https://www.amazon.com/Yes-And-ebook/dp/B005ZKS2DM/ (And three other books that begin with yes.)

While I continue to work on my French series, my thoughts circle back to some of my earlier writing. I’m thinking about picking up one of those books—maybe after November. My idea for book four in the French series ended up being deferred as I wrote two more novels in the time period I was going to skip over. So now I may be ready to tackle the outline of book six. And November could be a good time to do it. It might be good to push myself, at least a little.

In reading through old hand-written journals, I came across a novel idea. While I have plenty of ideas for novels, it was fun to read the idea and some of the description that I had noted for the story. I started out writing mysteries because I enjoyed reading ones that didn’t have violent deaths and were more of a puzzle to solve. Also, I thought it was a good structure for fleshing out my writing skills. 

I’ve never self-published any of the mysteries although I did query many agents with several of them. Many of the stories are very dated—things could be resolved by having a cell phone, which is very difficult to explain not having. So I don’t know if I’ll ever do anything with the mysteries I wrote.

Sometimes the best routines get disrupted by life. In my case, it was hip surgery for the second time in just over a year. Which is where liking to edit can help since I find it easier to get back into revising writing than coming up with new stuff, especially when in pain from surgery. If I wanted to write about pain, that would be useful, but I don’t. Since I don’t like to read about painful times, there’s not much point in writing it all out.

Luckily, I can also draw on my strong habit of writing.  I thought my writing habit went back to childhood when I enjoyed putting stories down on paper. I recently re-read some journals from when my children were young, and I discovered that I very purposefully carved out time to write. It’s been a habit that I cultivated even when I was busy, so I should maintain it now that I have more free time.

I used to say that I wrote to have the last word, but that doesn’t seem as important these days. What does the last word mean when people skim articles, follow links to things they already agree with and ignore much that makes them uncomfortable? The last word isn’t possible, but it is nice to recall specific interactions. Sometimes I need to write about something in order to process it.

Writers are often advised to carry a small notebook to write down observations, bits of dialogue, etc.  With modern technology, many people just use their phones. But what to do with these little tidbits?

Sometimes I can go months before I start using some of my more creative writing ideas. I might think that they’re not that useful. But then I go through a period where I find value in many snippets of information that I’ve written. And I’m so glad that I’ve spent the energy on writing things that catch my eye. It might be an interaction with a friend that has brought out strong emotions. Or it could be a small incident that makes me think and reflect. The last few years I resumed recording lines when I was reading something that caught my eye. Then months later, I would rewrite this tidbit, using the style, or something in it as a prompt. Letting some more time go by, I then use this in my current project.

I was wondering why I was having difficulty spending energy on the next book in my french series. It’s partly because I have notes about it scattered around in different places. The skill required to consolidate notes aren’t the same as those required to come up with a decent outline, so I’m working on consolidating my notes and going through them. Some are my thoughts from two books ago and need to be revisited. Some of them honestly just need to be tossed but I don’t want to get carried away too quickly. I’m being deliberate about reviewing them, and putting them in order.

When I am in the middle of writing a book, I like to have bread crumbs scattered in my outline. Things that make a character deeper, or give them a conflict they can work on through the book. I often get these ideas from things that I don’t necessarily agree with. But something about the situation catches my eye. 

I dislike reading the back of novels because it often gives away too much. I dislike so-called prologues that are just a scene from the middle of the novel put at the beginning to fulfill the need to ‘start in the middle.’ Many of the blurbs give away too much information about stuff that happens well past the beginning of the book. Well, I recently read the worst hook I’ve ever seen. It was about something that happens at 85% of the way through the book. So, basically, the author gave away the beginning of the wrap-up. If I’d known that before I started the novel, I wouldn’t have read it, even though it was an interesting idea, but badly executed.

It’s hard to say when a writing project is finished, since words can be tweaked for a long, long time and each tweak seems to make an improvement. Even when writing a first-draft, you might think that the author is done when she/he writes ‘the end.’ But the ending often reveals a thread that needs to be strengthened earlier, or a twist that should be explored. So writing a book doesn’t usually end with a flourish, more with a shrug, I find.

I’m a morning person, so, of course I’m a morning writer. The words just come easier before noon than after. Most write-ins of my writing group are in the evening.  If I don’t set too high an expectation for myself, I can enjoy a late night write-in, especially when there is a virtual option. It’s much easier to join a zoom call than it is to go out to sit at a library in the evening.

When I was getting ready for NaNoWriMo this year, I enjoyed coming up with ideas for things to ‘write fast’ about. I know that I like to bounce from idea to idea when the words are flowing, so I wanted a wide variety of topics. My plan was to write 5,000 words on 8-10 days during November, not all at the beginning.

To NaNoWriMo or not to NaNo? While I often enjoy throwing myself into November writing craziness, that desire hasn’t been as strong lately. I have been making progress on my novel working at my own pace. And since I’m adding to an existing story, and writing the second half of the novel, I have to pay attention to what I’ve already written.

But as the daylight decreases day by day, I recall how gloomy November can be. Having a daily goal of writing 1667 words, and the occasional company of other writers online, can make the month go faster. 

When I decided to take a break from the novel I was in the middle of, I knew it might be difficult to pick it up again. It wasn’t. Turns out I had written much more of the beginning and the middle than I thought I had. And it wasn’t as rough as I expected. But, I don’t have the ending. And I usually know the ending when I start a book. It sometimes changes, but I always have some idea where I’m going.

I have a good routine at home that provides me ample opportunity to write and edit. Routines are severely disrupted by travel. It’s easy to let the details of travel preoccupy my mind, not to mention the increased tiredness. It can help to state to my partner that I’m having difficulty writing and may have to let my goals go. That was enough so that after saying that, the next morning, I resumed my work on French Fix. I sat on the deck at our airbnb and added material to chapter seventeen while my husband slept and the laundry dried. It was a very good use of all of our time.

During NaNoWriMo in 2021, I focused on ‘reading for writing’ including copying sentences that caught my eye. I don’t do this regularly anymore, just when a phrase really grabs my attention. That happened at a Thursday morning gathering that I attend. We read from ‘The Book of Awakening” by Mark Nepo. The phrase about choosing to “be a celebrity or celebrate being” is from June 23.

That line struck me as a good one to ponder and remember. The essay was about giving attention rather than striving to get as much as we can. June 23^rd is the anniversary of the person who suggested the reading which seemed appropriate. A good marriage has each partner giving attention to their partner.

Unlike many of my writing friends, I enjoy editing. Mainly because I write the type of novels that I like to read, so it’s not painful to read through them many, many times. And I enjoy making things better, so improving a chapter, a paragraph, or a sentence is rewarding.

For years, I’ve done the fine-tuning editing while walking. After hip surgery in early May, I needed to use a walker, and then a cane, and then to pay strict attention to where I was stepping, so I’ve been editing in the mornings before my shower.  Since I also needed to wait for my husband to be awake before I showered to ensure that I didn’t slip or to help with shampoo and soap in the very beginning, it gave me something to do while letting him sleep a bit longer.

There is a weekly coffee klatch in a nearby town on Thursday mornings where we talk about all sorts of things. Someone mentioned that it was three year’s since her father’s death and she was thinking about him. I suddenly remembered my journal-book, Remembering Our Fathers: Opportunity for Recollection and Reflection.  I wrote this after my father died twenty years ago, as part of my own grieving process.

Since going to the beach in South Carolina appears to be my winter routine, I want to be productive during that month, or two. But I also want to spend time refilling my creative well, and just enjoying looking for dolphins. So I write longhand while sitting near the water in a low beach chair, pausing often to stare at the waves. I’m trying to keep the habit of daily writing longhand that I amped up last November. To help, I bought the ‘right’ notebook. Turns out that I can’t use recycled paper and a fountain pen. Not only can I not write on the back of the page, but the next page will have ink marks. I don’t want too thin of a notebook. Unfortunately, I don’t like writing in ones that are small enough to fit in my pocket. It feels constricting and I don’t want constrict my writing flow. These are all good problems to have, I know.

I wasn’t going to do NaNoWriMo last year, so when I decided to go ahead and do it, I didn’t want a month of crazy writing to interfere with my steady progress on the fifth book in a series. Well, it’s been a couple of months and I’m back to my slow, and somewhat steady, pace and discovering that I don’t particularly like it. It’s not that I dislike my novel or my characters. It’s that I’d rather be editing than writing lots of new material.

It might seem that the whole point of NaNoWriMo is to create a novel in a month, or at least to write 50,000 words, and that is great to start. But after doing it for many years, what matters to me is focusing for a month on something writing related, while having fun, building community, as well as making progress on a project.

Last November, I was even more of a rebel than usual in that instead of having a goal of writing so many words per day, my goal was ‘reading for writing.’ I wasn’t going to track it, since I wasn’t writing, but it turns out that there is a ratio of time spent per word count, so I did that. It meant I read two hours a day, not the 20-30 minutes I had planned on originally. Also, I kept the habit of looking for sentences that grabbed my interest, although I’m not continuing any longer with the weekly goal of finding three inspiring sentences and rewriting them to be my thoughts. I figure I’ll do some of that going forward, but don’t have to be so deliberate about it.

This November I’m going back to having a writing goal, but not a novel.

While working on the outline for the next book in my series, I recognize that it was taking a fair amount of time for the story to move along. My initial thought was that I should combine several days into a chapter and skip over some of what was happening, to get my main character quicker to her hometown since I had some activities that were going to happen there. But I didn’t feel quite right with it so I took a break from working on the timeline as I thought about things and told myself not to rush. I’m glad I did that. Some of what I was rushing to get to, I think belongs in the next book in the series not this one. Since I am writing about two women and one of them has her baby in chapter 1 and there are many issues around this, I don’t want to compress the time in the story. And it turns out my other main character should have growth in an area that I was going to skim over.

I have decided to save myself the tedious task of producing a paper back version of my novels. I use the tool scrivener to write and edit my novels. This produces a kindle version with a table of contents. In the past I have converted this to an open source or word document so I could create a paperback version as well as other formats for Smashwords. I don’t have a lot of people buying kindle versions of my novels, I have even less buying paper back versions or buying them on Smashwords. This is a fairly liberating decision although perhaps it’s what I should have done ages ago. For a while, I used creating the paperback version to ensure that I removed as many errors as I could and to ensure the cover was good. But there are easier ways of doing it in an all digital release.

One year ago we flew to Madrid and on to Malaga. What a difference a year can make. We no longer intend to be nomads. It’s not always easy to be positive in outlook, but having a routine, producing stuff, feels good.  It is lovely to walk in the forest preserve in the morning, doing some editing of book four of the French series, then to come back and sit in the sun in the sunroom and make the changes, and read over the chapters, making any other changes that seem appropriate. One more read through and I’ll be ready to send it to a friend. And look at book 3 and release that in 2021. I’m pleased that I got book four written in 2020 with all that was going on. Also really pleased that I ignored my plan and outline for the next book in the series, and wrote about what I wanted, which was Morocco and Spain and family connections.

I’m a total rebel this year for NaNoWriMo, so am counting time spent, not words. I’m mainly reading, with a little writing, but deliberately don’t want to count my usual writing because my normal writing is going well and I don’t want NaNo to affect that. But, based on the discussion at the Naperville Region kick-off, I’m at 2,000 (2 hours) on day one because of NaNo. And, it’s going very well.

So much for my idea that I wouldn’t win this year. I can do 50 hours of reading to write, although it does take effort. I had intended to read for 20-30 minutes, and come up with one or two lines that were worth recording and writing based off of it. Now, I’m reading about 4 literature books at the same time, looking for stuff of note. I even skim-read a Steven King novel. (I dislike horror.)

I have an idea for doing nano this year and not spending my time just trying to get a huge word count full of things I don’t care about. I call it reading to write. Pick some good books and read them looking for how the author conveys information often description but possibly even plot. Maybe dedicate an hour a day to this with the goal being to write three sentences, but not to write the sentences until I’ve done some reading and write them one at a time maybe.

As happened to many people, our plans changed in 2020. It has influenced my writing in that I didn’t gather material as I had expected to, but I had plenty of material to work on. We were luckier than many in that our finances didn’t take a hit. Although I didn’t write about traveling as I had planned, I was able to focus on writing.

After having our house on the market (off and on) for almost two years, we listed with a new agent and had a few people looking at it before it was officially listed. Once it went live, we had two offers within days in March of 2020. Then the stay-at-home order was given for Illinois. While real estate was deemed essential business, we weren’t comfortable having people inside our house to look, let alone a moving company, or any of the rest of it. Plus, our plan had been to explore the world, but the world was locking down. So we temporarily pulled our listing. A month later, we unlisted ‘for a while.’ Our plan to be nomads doesn’t seem like a great one.

I struggle with writing the back of the book blurb for my novels. Mainly because I rarely read them myself since so many spoil the book. They often try to make you read the book by disclosing the most exciting part of the story, even if that part doesn’t happen until half way through the novel.

I’ve even seen book blurbs that describe what happens in book two of a series, spoiling not just one story, but two.

Once upon a time, I used to wake up at 4 a.m. on November 1^st to start writing a novel for NaNoWriMo. It was exciting, but often cold. Well, this November 1st I woke at 4:30, thought about starting writing and figured, no, there’s no need. Went back to sleep until 6:30, at which point I had time to shower and get dressed and grab a cup of coffee and write a few lines before heading to the beach for sunrise. I did bring my notes to think about the short story I’m working on. Even came up with the last line as I approached the beach. Good start to a sane month of writing.

After our house had been on the market for almost a year, we decided that it might well take another year to sell. We decided to live our lives as almost nomads, trying not to let the fact that we owned a nice house influence us unduly. So we agreed to housesit for a friend in Alabama in October for two weeks. Several years ago I established that I could work on my writing from anywhere, especially if I had the chance to get into a routine. Two weeks was enough time to get some writing done and still explore Birmingham and enjoy warmer weather.

When I mentioned that I was revising my Edinburgh series, and that book one took place in twenty-four hours, a friend said, “It must have a lot of flashbacks.” It doesn’t have any, but that might be a way to go deeper in this novel. I noticed that while I like happy novels, a little bit of darkness helps, so maybe the flashbacks could help with that.

After two readers commented that the second chapter had a sudden shift in location and point of view character, I swapped the third and second chapters. It required some revising, but that way the point of view characters followed naturally from one to the next. As the author, I could see a strong connection the way I had it, but the reader might not understand so early.

While I had made the decision to move from KatherineLato.com to LatoGlicklich.com several months ago, something was holding me back from going live. It was comforting to play around knowing that search engines weren’t going to find us, but staying in the shadows also made it difficult to put much time and energy into the site. After all, no one could see what I put on the site, so there was no rush.

I want to reflect on writing every so often, even if it’s just for me. But it’s not just for me. So time to go live. So, I’m going live, but I’m holding an umbrella. I’m pretty sure that symbolic of a lot.

When a friend who is interested in our travel plans asked if some places were better for my writing, I said not really. As long as I can get some kind of routine, I do fine with writing. Honestly, some of the hardest times are when my children are all around, but that’s not a time that I should be writing anyway. I need to focus on their being around, since that’s the important point. But, the rest of the time, all I need is some kind of routine and I can find time to write.

As I sorted through stuff that I had accumulated while living in the same house for over thirty years, I pondered what to do with my written journals. I mainly journal on the computer, but at various times, I’ve found value in writing things long-hand. It’s especially good when I want to go deeper, since I can think and write on a piece of paper without immediately editing it. And it’s great for morning pages, where I write without worrying about what I’m writing, just write for three or four pages. I’ve done them off-and-on for years.

As I was revising one of my novels two years ago, I realized that the name of a company that was up to no good was my future daughter-in-law’s last name. I wrote this years before my daughter met her wife. So I changed the name of the company.

Well, I just started editing Overbooked after a several year break, and realized that a character has part of my daughter-in-law’s given name. (My daughter-in-law has two first names–I’ve heard that is a southern thing.) Guess I’m changing another name.

While emailing on critiquecircle.com about how to add a scene to a written novel, I realized that I have a process. When I get stuck, I write an overview of what I need, often in present tense, in the broadest terms possible, just to get a few words written.

Like I know I need a scene with Gabe and another character’s toddler together. 

First pass, I wrote:

• Add scene
• Candice’s POV.
• Gabe with the toddler.

I use critiquecircle.com to improve my writing, but occasionally I encounter someone that I find rude. I don’t tolerate rudeness from strangers on the internet; life is too short for that nonsense. My answering a few of the questions one critiquer gave on my submission resulted in the reply that they weren’t looking for answers in an email, the questions were supposed to be answered in the chapter submitted. The reply struck me as rude and condescending, especially when they compared their amateur comments to a professional editor.

Four years later and I’m polishing up the novel where my main character visits this café/bar. It’s neat to see a place and think, ‘this would make a good venue for a scene in a novel’ and then to write that scene. I often put recipes in the back of books that mention cooking, maybe I should include pictures in books that are based on real places. Hmm. Maybe? (Expensive to do in a print copy, but easy to do on an ebook.)
Overbooked would be a good choice to include such pictures since it takes place in Amsterdam and in many cities in Italy. Only problem, I bet readers would expect a picture of the front-end loader going down a pile of mud and into a house. But I completely made that up so I don’t have any pictures.

While on a February trip to Texas, I made plans to visit the Ransom center. It required applying and watching an orientation video, then when I wanted to see the actual papers, I showed my ID, got a locker for my bag, but could keep my laptop and phone and got a short orientation. I had also made a request for a folder of David Foster Wallace’s notes on corrections. So they pulled that while someone was explaining how it worked to get and use material. One of the rules is that while you can take pictures (no flash, no noise), you can’t post them anywhere. I took a few to help my memory.

It is awesome to read the notes that DFW made to himself on a yellow notepad. Felt like I was connecting with him, author-to-author. Neat way to start looking at the collection. I struggled to figure out how to request more, but finally managed it.

The first time I did NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, I joined at the end of October, so didn’t have much time to prepare. Besides, the guy who started the whole thing was a big advocate of not planning, just write. I finished a novel that year. It’s the only one I’ve written during NaNo that isn’t a coherent enough story to edit into something reasonable. Since I enjoy editing, it’s not lack of willingness on my part. The story just doesn’t have enough of a point to be worth it. (I did use some of it as backstory for a character in my Edinburgh series.)
I already knew that I could finish a novel since I had been writing for years and had completed several mysteries as well as children’s novels. Before NaNo, I hadn’t published, or released (how I term self-published) a novel, but knew how to get to the end. So the next year I spent time on preparation before November, figuring out the major plot points, and sketching out scenes. That worked so well that every year I spent more and more time getting my outline ready. I determine what I’m writing about six months ahead of time, start writing down ideas and plot points, then around mid-September work daily on the outline for about half an hour.
That process has produced a new novel every November.

Having too much time to write might seem like an oxymoron, but there’s a chance that I’ll not have a paying job in November. The last time that happened, I thought, “Since I normally draft over 100,000 words and finish the first draft of a novel during months that I do work, without that distraction, I should be able to write the first drafts of  two novels.” I knew that I had to be careful to move my hands and wrists to avoid carpal tunnel problems. But, I was so busy being careful of them, and focusing on writing 200,000 words that I didn’t realize that intense writing while mostly sitting was a very bad idea. I no longer like cushions on chairs, for example.
So, the thought of having ‘too much’ time to write in November is not a good one. Especially since I was planning on working on the outline in November instead of in the several months before it and so was aiming for 50,000 words, not my usual 100,000.

When a chapter is slow, combine it with another chapter. I had revised both chapters several times, and they seemed fine. But fine doesn’t equate to interesting, exciting, or worth reading. As I imagined the critiquers on critiquecircle.com commenting on it, I could picture several of them asking, ‘What was the point?’ Well, part of it is to show the main character being effective at helping people solve problems. It takes a while to show something like that, which is why the general advice, ‘show, don’t tell’ is never meant to be used all the time. Part of effective story-telling is knowing when to summarize something.
I had so much fun combining chapters, that I got a bit carried away. Still, it’s a good way to see something fresh. And a lot of my chapters were too short.
With showing, it’s important not to drag something out. How do I show a boring meeting without boring the reader? Having the main character count the wrinkles on the speaker is one way. (Barry’s idea, actually.) But it made for a neat scene.

After years of using Scrivener, I’m finally looking up how to do certain things—like change the paragraph formatting within the editor windows. Turns out it’s easy to set the default configuration that you like—I like a paragraph indent with a large font. Preferences->Format. Since I have a Mac, I can highlight lots of text files at once and with Document->Convert->Convert formatting to default text style. Voila! It looks the way I want. Dang, why didn’t I Google that months, or even years ago?
Because it’s easy to tolerate things, even things that don’t fit quite right. Pretty sure there’s a life-lesson in there. Maybe something about tolerating living in the midwest in Winter. Then again, doesn’t Chicago look pretty on a nice day in February?

Because our daughter was in Paris, we visited her two and a half weeks the end of December, beginning of January. I’d just finished the third novel in my French series and planned to gather descriptions while in Paris, especially of restaurants.
We had some lovely meals, including at Michelin-starred restaurants.

I described some of the meals in books two and three since I’m still editing book two. Also managed to work in a museum visit or two.
Because I started this series before the Charlie Hebdo and other attacks in Paris in January of 2015, I wasn’t sure how to deal with this in my realistic novels. The November 13, 2015 attacks occurred while my daughter was living in Paris, making them feel more personal.

My goal for NaNoWriMo this year was to finish the first draft of book three in my French series and to write at least 50,000 words. Additionally, I wanted to NOT write 100,000 or more words. So I started with 12,000 words in September, and wrote 38,000 in October and 53,000 in November. I finished on November 22nd and haven’t written more since then. My first draft is 103,000 words.

My life has a lot of writing lately, which is great. But it does make it difficult to crank out five or six thousands words a day like I used to for NaNoWriMo. I originally planned on starting on October 1 with 1,000 words a day on average as the goal. Then I worried I’d still have too much left to write in November since my first drafts are around 100,000 words.
So I started in September with a goal of ‘writing some.’ That was 12,000 words and a very good pass on what was already a pretty good outline. On October 1, I wrote 600 words, then went to work and worked on paid writing and editing all day. Friday I wrote 1400, so I’m on-track for October. The plan is to write more on days I don’t have work, but to write every day, averaging 1,000 words a day.

I started writing the first draft of French Consequences, book three in my French series. I had planned on starting early on October 1st, but with all the writing I’m doing at work, and with PBDD, it seemed like it might make sense to start early.
My goal is 500 words a day, I think. Or maybe just a goal of working on it every day and see how it goes. I don’t need to get bogged down with word count.

This will be my tenth year of doing NaNoWriMo, the month-long frenzy of writing a first draft that officially requires writing 50,000 words on a new novel. I’ve always had the personal goal of completing the first draft of a novel even when that required 100,000 or 120,000 words. I always began writing on November 1st, and finished before the end of the month. I enjoyed pushing myself more each year, often passing 100,000 words even when I finished the first draft by adding material to another novel. Then a few years ago, I decided that if I could do one novel of 100,000 words in a month while balancing work, I could write two novels and 200,000 words since my only work was fiction writing at that point.

I did it, but at a cost to my glutes and neck muscles. Turns out 12+ hours of writing daily isn’t so good on a 50+ body. I was careful to give my wrists a break, but didn’t realize how hunched I was, particularly when the story was flowing. At the end of the month, I had two first drafts, but found sitting in a soft chair uncomfortable.
It got me thinking that it was time to either stop doing NaNoWriMo, or be more sane in my approach. But what I like most is completely a novel in November. Okay, I also enjoyed updating my daily word count, and competing with other fast writers to see who had the highest word count. Writing lots of words on a given day isn’t difficult for me. In fact, the very first time I participated in NaNoWriMo, I wrote 10,000 words the first day, and 8,000 the second.

Friday was a PBDD-intensive day (Partners Bridging the Digital Divide – a nonprofit where I’m the Vice-president of communications.) It makes me realize I’m juggling three different types of writing ‘jobs’: my writing, Fermilab, PBDD. I like being busy, which is good, because at times one of them seems to have an endless need. Which one varies. I try to give them all some time, especially my writing since I’m in the midst of outlining my novel for November, and need to stay focused to get a good middle figured out.
I finished tweaking the first book in the series, and updated both the paperback and Kindle versions. Book two is in the public queue at CritiqueCircle.com, and in a private queue, so I get feedback weekly on the current chapter – I’m ¾ of the way through posting chapters, and I get critiques on early or later chapters by the people who are reading it in the private queue. I can still find stuff to improve, but am trying to get input from other people as well.

I don’t know how other authors of series do it, but at the moment I’m working on three books in a series at once. It started when my book discussion group agreed to schedule the discussion of French Impression, book one of the series, in April. I took that as a good reason to revise book two so I’d be able to incorporate any suggestions they had that affected the characters’ arcs. Then it seemed a good idea to start outlining book three to write in November during NaNoWriMo since I was very involved in the characters day-to-day lives and had ideas about what happened after the end of book two.

My writing group has started a path based on the Writing Excuses podcast exercises for the year. The first exercise was coming up with five story ideas based on: a conversation, research, exploring space, a media, and a song. I’m late getting started—I was really focused on editing last month for the Editing Path I led—and I’m not really interested in writing a short story, which is the path’s goal. But, I am interested in coming up with good scenes for book three in my series, French Influences.
Yesterday, when I prepared to edit, I found myself wanting to go into work instead.

I’m leading an Editing Path for my writing group for the month of February, and the weather decided to cooperate. There’s something about editing, shoveling snow, editing, shoveling snow in a cycle that makes for a good start to accomplishing twenty-eight hours of editing.
So far I’ve done two hours of focused editing, and two turns at shoveling. It helps to have a partner who would rather shovel than edit, but is doing both.
It’s also nice that our kick-off was yesterday, before the snow started, so we had the opportunity to talk about what we wanted to accomplish, and share tips in how to gets things done.

Today I found three things to change in the first chapter of Sticky Note Empire. Two were improvements that the book could have managed without (but are better with the changes) and one was an actual error, and not an error that I added in on the last pass. (I’m great at doing that.) Maybe it’s all right that I’m not quite done with the novel yet. Getting close though. I often read several chapters without finding anything that would sound better if I changed it. Unless, of course, I’m in a picky mood. Then I could find things to change in anyone’s writing.
Getting close to having Overbooked done with the radical cutting of words I tend to overuse. Which is good, because at one point this week, I meant to be editing Overbooked, but I ended up in the Sticky Note Empire file, and cut two uses of ‘too much.’ Now, I need to make sure the sentences before and after my cuts still sound all right. I don’t worry about that with Overbooked, as I’m on an early pass through the book. But with Sticky, I’m almost done, so now is not the time to be deleting words or phrases throughout the book.
And, sometimes, too much is just right.

I finished the first draft of my novel at 94,040 words on the 29th of November, with another ten hours of driving time before we got home. It’s been a crazy month, having started the novel after midnight on the 1st as we were driving to my mother’s funeral. At no point did I feel like I wanted to write much more than 3,000 words, or even that many a day. I did manage a 7K day, but that was the all-day write-in. Sure hope that I regain my glee with NaNoWriMo next year. I missed it this year.
Surprised myself, though, by actually liking what I wrote at midnight. I was able to get into the character’s head, which felt good, actually.

A critiquer wondered what I was doing with the minor characters in Overbooked? I think I’ll have short stories for some, and others may be entire novels. Neat idea to tell their stories. I only had them so my MC would have other POVs telling the story, but some of them are rather fun.

I’m starting to run out of room for even tiny images of my novels on my business cards. This is a good problem to have, especially since I’m rather proud of all six of my released novels to date.
I have novels about dealing with loss, trying new things, the importance of family. All themes that I think are important.

My major writing goal for 2014 is to release two novels. Since Create Space offers two free copies for winning NaNo, I really wanted to do at least one of them in the first half of 2014.
Hierarchy is ready. In this dystopian world, all consumer products have a use-by date and corporations promote rivalry in everything. Celebrities serve as leaders, judges and rulers of taste.

The Guardian police force defends the status quo while ignoring lethal corporate competition. The average citizen struggles to replace clothing, appliances, and hundreds of items before they expire. Free time is spent watching celebrities, dreaming of the world of the elite.

I was thinking of outlining two novels for NaNoWriMo this year since I wanted to write about Lisbon, which I think may fit into my French series. But I also want to gather material while we’re in Edinburgh for the Edinburgh series. I don’t want to attempt two first drafts in November. I vowed I’d never do that again since I really hurt my body when I did that in 2012.
So I was thinking/planning to work on the outline of the Edinburgh book in July, then take notes on location and other things of interest when we visit Scotland in August, and make any tweaks to the outline, but not worry if it’s not as extensive as I usually do. I thought I’d write the French series book first with the goal of finishing the first draft during November, averaging 3,333 words per day, but front-loading by aiming for 5K for the first week or so.

I’ve thought for years that it would be fun to do writing/editing in a European city. Because I won’t just be a tourist all day—I’ll see some stuff, but I’ll be trying to get writing done, and not think I’m ‘wasting tourist time’ by writing. When the opportunity came up to join Barry on a business trip to Lisbon, I had the opportunity to see if I could really write anywhere.
I can. Especially with editing on my Kindle. I found paths where I can walk and read, so I could do editing while walking. Lisbon has tons of benches, so I often went out for several hours, and edited until I got in the busier areas of town.

I’m working on the final edits for French Impression, and as always, I struggle with the back of the book blurb. I dislike ones that give away too much of the story, or mislead. Any comments, improvements, on the following would be appreciated. (Or on the cover.)

Working in Paris for a year could help Miriam move on with life. She’s off to an exciting start when she has a romantic night with a charming Frenchman, until she discovers he’s married to her new boss, Estelle.
Estelle finds the recent merger with an American firm upsetting. Her non-French employees report to their former colleagues, and work is less fulfilling. Enduring her husband’s tales about his perfect dead wife was bad enough, now she has an employee, Miriam, who mourns a similar loss.
So much divides these two women. Will they discover what they have in common?

I proposed to my writing group a 6 Week Editing Path which requires people to commit to ‘getting together’ either virtually or in person with one or two other people several hours a week. The exact day/time/location is up to the group. At a minimum, critique the back of the book blurb, and the opening 100-150 words of six to ten chapters or scenes.
I’ve found that working on the first paragraph of a chapter with two other people (or even just one) helps. This can be done live at a coffee shop/restaurant/library, or online via an instant message chat. Since an entire chapter takes a long time to critique, and revise, focus on the opening paragraph of a chapter or a scene and work on that. Once that first paragraph is better, it’s easier to read the rest of the chapter, and make changes to it, on your own.

Now that NaNoWriMo is done, I return to my true love–editing. While it’s fun to see a story idea turn into reality, it’s only the beginning. Taking that first draft and ensuring that the threads of the plot weave together in the past way possible is fun. Cutting the excess words so the good ones can flow–I find real joy in doing that.
I’m currently working on Barry’s (my husband and coauthor) first draft of “Alternate Routes.” It’s a sequel to “The Shortest Route.” Barry picks up the story a few years after The Shortest Route ends. He has all sorts of things I wouldn’t have thought of. The way we write together is he writes the first draft. I do all the editing and rewriting. We often talk about characters and plot elements, but he doesn’t want to touch the book after finishing the first draft. He will add a rough draft of a new scene, but prefers not to write outside of November. (He claims he doesn’t like to write during November, but hey, I’m not the one who got up in the middle of the night to write four times in November.) So this isn’t a normal editing role–it’s a collaboration, and I write enough to justify my name on the cover of the book.

I think I’m doing pretty good at not writing too much–too much being so much that I cause pain in my body like I did last year. I said my goal was 3,333 per day, so that I could make 100,000 words by the end of the month, which is about what my first drafts usually run. But, I like to write more at the beginning of the month so I don’t have to be trying to make my word count on Thanksgiving, and because I’ve always liked to get things done early. I was under 5,000 words for the first day and when my daughter asked how NaNo was going and if I was under 10K for once in my life, I replied that I was a good way into day two and was still under 10K.

My husband pointed out that if I got to 10K today, I could take tomorrow off and be right on target. Interesting theory, but there’s no way I want the same word count at the end of tomorrow that I start the day with.

My outline for November is coming along very nicely. With a couple more passes on the second part, I might be close to done. Of course I can always work more, figure out more details, but I think I have enough to know where the story is going and how it’s getting there. It’s been hard bouncing back and forth between rain in New Jersey and sunny Rome, and keeping the time zone differences straight, but I’m hoping that my prep work pays off in November. And it’s been a lot of fun to set the novel in Amsterdam and Italy, places I spent time this summer. I didn’t go to Europe planning on using the setting in a new novel, but hoping that I’d be inspired. It worked very well.

Nothing like working on a story where a woman is trying to cope with life after losing her husband to make me appreciate that my husband is upstairs sleeping. Our youngest went to college yesterday so we are officially empty nesters, something we embrace with joy. We love our three children, but our goal all along has been to raise independent adults so it makes sense that they’d be off doing their own thing.

But, back to the story. It’s designed to be a stand-alone short story about how my main character in French Impressions came to be working and living in France. The beginning is sad as she mourns anew the loss of her husband.

I’ve found that I can do a lot of final polishing via my Kindle, which means I can do it at the forest preserve while walking (I can walk and read) and means that I’m not wasting paper, although I do write my corrections on paper, but I reuse printer cover sheets. I’ve thought about using my phone recorder to record the corrections, but figure that would take longer to fix, and then instead of walking, I’d be holding things. And I don’t want to lose the note on what to correct. I dislike seeing an error that I thought I already fixed.
But I love that I can update my document and resend it to the Kindle, and be looking at the latest version mere minutes later.

One problem with cutting things during revision is that with lines gone, what is left sometimes doesn’t flow as smoothly as it used to. Or two words are used too close together. So then there are more changes, and more, and more.
I like looking at it on the Kindle, since I only change stuff that really seems off, and it’s easier than reading the laptop screen for hours. I take notes on a piece of paper of what to change. After several passes to clean up minor issues, and then to clean up after cleaning up, I finally did my ‘last check.’ Which resulted in a page full of things to change. I somehow doubt I can ever read one of my novels and not find several things to change, but I’m taking a break from this one for now.

I just made my first post on the Amazon Kindle forums–it was one for help in improving book descriptions. Now, I hate book descriptions. Most of them tell too much about the novel, often by covering stuff that doesn’t happen until half way into the book, spoiling things that shouldn’t be spoiled. Since I hate reading them, it’s very difficult to write them.
I recently read someone’s first chapter on critiquecircle.com and it didn’t make sense. Then I went back and read the book description in the author notes and the first chapter made more sense. But, shouldn’t that information be in the book itself? That’s what I think.

I feared it would happen. Now that I’m making my own covers and uploading the PDF file, I’m wanting to do more complicated covers. I’m a writer, why am I designing the cover and getting complicated? Because like much of self-publishing, it can be fun. And it’s necessary to get a quality product.
One of the great things about writing full time is that there are so many different things to do on any given day. I’m certainly not bored.
Now, back to the task of representing Milwaukee, Ending Hunger, Connections, and whatever else seems capable of being represented. While making sure that the title of the novel, and the authors, are visible. It’s complicated.

I struggle to write the back of the book blurb, largely because I don’t like reading them myself. I find they often give away too much about the novel, spoiling some of the better moments of a novel. I decide what to read by opening the book and reading a few lines (or lately, downloading a sample to my Kindle.)
After struggling with the blurb for Making Family, I came up with a meta-blub.
Imagine a world in which readers determine what novel to read based on a two paragraph summary of the entire novel. Readers are enticed to read the novel without giving away too much information or fooled into expecting a different type of story than what is presented.
All of this can be avoided by opening the novel, or downloading a free sample. This author encourages you to do this now.

I started revising a novel that I haven’t looked at in almost two years and picking it up has been like looking at photographs. I can recall so many conversations about the characters and the situation that I had with my son who was twenty-one at the time. He helped shaped the world, and the characters. It feels almost like we’re having one of those conversations again by tweaking with the words.
The novel is ‘Hierarchy’ and is about a world where everything has a sell-by date and the power structure is enforced by Guardians for the whims of the Elevated–basically celebrities in Entertainment and Sports. Since neither of us were/are sports fans, we left that aspect as fillers for the weekends and mainly showed the characters during the week. We’re not big celebrity fans, but it’s easier to poke fun at an actress being a judge than a basketball player.

I’m one fifth of the way through the second draft of ‘Yes, Or?’ and have a chapter up on critique circle this week. I’m glad that I used Scrivener to write the first draft and it seems to be working all right for the second–I can do global replace which is what I like to do when I discover the fifth use of Still to start a sentence in one scene. At that point, I go through and get rid of all uses throughout the document, then have to put back a few. Quicker than deleting each individual one, and improves the quality of the writing overall.
I’m willing to have incomplete sentences in the second draft. Not the first. Not the third. But in the second draft that is better than overusing the same word, or phrase.

Recently, I’ve had the opportunity to meet people and when they ask what I do, I say, I’m a fiction writer. Often people try to tell me the ‘great idea’ they have for a story.
Ideas are all around.
The first year that Barry did NaNoWriMo around mid October, our youngest asked Barry what he was going to write about. He looked around, saw a notice from Peapod delivery on the counter and pointed. “I’m going to write about him.”
That’s the story Barry tells. But it’s so much more than that. His love of Milwaukee comes through, and his connection with his mother.
The ideas are easy. It’s the follow-through that takes time and effort. Lots of effort.

I think writing 10,000 words a day isn’t sustainable, and more than 10K a day is insane. I’ve done it for three days, and had hoped to continue for a week, but I may be making my vertigo act up. I do take frequent breaks, and have gotten exercise and am eating healthy foods, but I want to relax for an hour during the day, take a walk with my family and not talk about writing. I want to read something just for fun. I don’t know that my books are going to be 100K each. If one, or both, were only 80K, then I wouldn’t have to worry about not getting done by the end of the month, even with lower word count.
Then again, I have noticed that when I’m going full steam, I write stuff that I otherwise wouldn’t. I think of further complications for my characters, and I am making progress. I don’t write just to get word count. I write to get words down that capture my story. But it might be time to drop back to something more realistic like 5K a day, which is still 3x the amount needed to win NaNoWriMo.

Funny. Most of the advice about using social media discusses how important it is to comment on other people’s blogs with links back to your blog. This is how you rise in the Google rankings, so people find your blog, so you become popular, so more people read your writing. But after my experience with spam comments, I’m not inclined to give my blog address in a comment.
Despite putting in the recommended spam filters, all but one comment over the last month has been spam. Somebody trying to sell something. Often the same something but done with minor variations to get past the spam filters after I mark them as spam. There are programs that key on to a word in a blog and post a comment. Luckily, my comments all are moderated, but today I turned off commenting. I don’t have time or tolerance to deal with the spam.

As I sat in Descartes coffee shop on Michigan Avenue yesterday, sipping a spicy coffee drink that comes in a soup mug, I saw flower boxes, huge urns of flowers, and a collection of shrubs and flowers in the middle of the street. I overheard someone at World Con say, “In Chicago, I recognize where I am not by the buildings, but by the collections of flowers adorning the streets.”
Not a bad view to have of the city.

Before I started this blog site, I read a number of blogs and discussion about blogs and discovered that female bloggers are often trashed. Even ones who blog about knitting. So I decided to moderate all comments.
I’m glad I did.

In my life, I’m usually trying to minimize the conflict. But in my writing, I need to add more.

Someone gave feedback on the entire novel of ‘The Shortest Route’ and was very polite. She identified a number of typos, and said she had plot feedback as well but since it was a polished work, perhaps I didn’t want that feedback. I said, “Bring it on!” Bottom line, the first one hundred pages need more conflict. I agree. So, it needs two scenes near the beginning, written in such a way as to not mess up the rest of the book. Not an easy task.