write every day

Write Every Day: Camp NaNoWriMo

/ Kristi / Leave a comment

dream plan writenanowrimo logoIf you don’t know what NaNoWriMo is, let me introduce you to a world of creativity, productivity, and caffeine. In November, when NaNo proper takes place, you will find me a drooling, tired, ecstatic mess. It’s harrowing, exciting, and so much fun. I am rarely happier than when I’m writing, as opposed to my current revision nightmare. Every year I learn something new about NaNo, writing, or myself. I love it and never want to miss another year.

But November is a long way away (especially in December, when I’m usually worn out, yet already looking forward to the next NaNo).

Camp-Participant-2015-Web-Banner During the months of April and July, the folks who run NaNoWriMo hold two sessions of Camp NaNo. Essentially, that just means extra sessions for people who want the experience, fun, or push of NaNo more than once a year. Or an alternative time for those who can’t participate in November.

I am a huge NaNo geek, though I know at least one person who’s even more crazy about it than I am. However, I do strongly prefer the November event to Camp. I’m sure when November approaches I’ll write enough about NaNo to annoy most people. But there’s still something to be said for Camp, and since the July session starts soon, it seemed like a good topic for my first “Write Every Day” post.

Camp NaNo has more differences from proper NaNo than just warmer temps. For example, as more people participate in November, the social aspect is much bigger then. During Camp, there aren’t likely to be regional events (though some bigger regions may still have stuff going on). The forums that are busy and crowded during the fall are still available, but the focus is on camp cabins–smaller groups of Wrimos urging each other on throughout the month.

Another big difference is that during Camp, you can set your own word count goal. While that can include raising your goal beyond 50,000 words, the real benefit is being able to attempt a smaller amount. For me, November is a month of intense creative output, during which I shirk a lot of other responsibilities. My husband and kids are warned up front that I’ll be hiding away a lot, chores are neglected, and I even go into work less (I work for my dad and have a lot of flexibility in my schedule). I can get away with all of that for one month out of the year, but wouldn’t want to push it past that. So for Camp, I set myself a lower goal that still forces me to work more than my average amount when left to my own devices.

There is also one more difference between Camp and proper NaNoWriMo, but I’ll admit this one is probably only from my perspective. There are rules for NaNoWriMo, but not everyone strictly follows them. Some people rebel, writing several short stories, two books at once, nonfiction, screenplays, or even comic books. I know someone who during NaNo wrote the script for a computer game she was making with a friend. I’m a complete traditionalist during November, attempting to write at least 50,000 words of a new, single work of fiction. Camp is when I let myself rebel. I’ve participated in four sessions of Camp, and each one was used for revision. A big push forward on the work I’ve been dragging my feet through for over a year. That’s how you’ll find me again come July, though I do plan to change it up a little this time.

Write for yourself: Okay, so the obvious thing to say here is, “Participate in Camp NaNo!” And yes, that was obviously the point of this post. Camp starts in ten days, and it can be difficult to jump into an event like that with little warning. (Though plenty of people, myself included, have joined NaNo after only hearing about it in October, sometimes days before, and survived.) Just remember, you can set your goal to whatever you want, to give it a try with less stress, or if you’re not sure you could write enough on this short notice, or whatever else excuse you may have. As I understand it, they’ve recently changed cabin formation so that you can actually set up a cabin with a group of people of your choosing (it used to be largely random). If you decide to sign up, or if you’re already a participant and have no cabin yet, we can form our own. Just let me know your username, and we can spend the month encouraging each other!

Then, at summer’s end, consider turning your mind toward NaNo proper. You wouldn’t believe the fun, community, and productivity you can get out of the event. I’ll be back to this topic in a few months.

If you’re not a fiction writer, or simply have other creative pursuits you wouldn’t mind the same kind of push for, look around for something more up your alley. As I understand it, there are events like this for a lot of areas (FAWM for musicians, VEDA for video blogging, PiBoIdMo for picture book writers, and all sorts of others. Seriously, just do some research, you may find an event for your creative output).

What are your thoughts on events like these? Do you participate, stay away, or simply have no opinion? I know they’ve become a fad and some people are thoroughly against them. Let me know what you think.

Plan Every Day: Our Frenemy, the Outline

/ Kristi / 4 Comments

dream plan write

Something else I learned in my high school creative writing class is that planning (or pre-writing) can be your friend. Thinking solely about research projects and essays, as much as I disliked doing them, writing an outline first always made the actual writing easier.

Cut to now, when I have no classroom to work in, no teacher to force me to do every tedious step of pre-writing, and no grade for my effort, or lack thereof. And you know what? I still do pre-writing, at least to some degree.

The debate of whether it’s better to be a plotter or a “pantser” rages on out there in cyber space. I’ve seen more than one comment of, “I’m not much of a planner. I write out broad plot points, but I have to give room for my story to go where it wants to go.” I have a response to that, but I’ve already ranted (jump to point 3) a little on that topic.

Planning might just help more than you expect. Don’t ever think that pre-writing locks you into anything. Very rarely do I even outline an entire story. Often, I outline to somewhere in the middle, then start writing. Sometimes when I get to the end of the outline, I’m on track. But more often than not, I derail before that point. Then I either just keep going or stop, regroup, and outline from there. Various sites call that a downside to being a planner, but is it really that big of a deal? Most likely, if your story has gone off-track from your plans for it, then there’s a reason, and you’ll likely be happier following the new path. Yes, you might have to write a new outline, or you might just pants the rest of the story (it’s okay to be a hybrid planner/pantser).

Have you ever had a story or scene rolling around in your head, maybe even playing itself out? There have been times that I feel like I’ve written half of the story before I ever put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard). But when I do sit down to write it out, one of the following things happens: I’ve forgotten many of the important parts; what was playing through quickly in my mind takes a lot longer to write out and I can’t get it all done in one, two, or even several sessions, leaving me again in danger of forgetting what I don’t get to for a while; or I simply can’t figure out how to start.

So instead of going directly to writing, I make an outline. Then I can get a lot of story out before I forget it. Even aside from potential forgetfulness, outlining a lot of the story at once can let you see how it will go from a distance, which sometimes lets you catch mistakes or fill in plot holes before they happen.

One last note I want to be clear about–don’t think that in order to make an outline, you have to use the formal format.

outline

You know the kind, with the Roman numerals and all the indentation.

That’s great if it works for you. I tried it once, but I didn’t care for it. Normally I just write broad plot points one line after another, sticking in details when I think of them and want to remember. Here is an example:

outline

Plan for yourself: It’s not easy to practice or try out planning or writing outlines, but I do have a few ideas. And keep in mind, I’m not trying to convince you that planning is better than pantsing. If you already know you work better without an outline or much forethought, then you should feel free to skip this whole thing. However, if you’ve never really given it a try, now’s your chance. If you’re like me, you have at least one story idea rattling around in your brain, waiting to be given form. Take some time now, even if you weren’t planning to write that story now or even soon, to start planning that story. Write out the key plot points, make a sketchy outline, and get it out on paper before it disappears into the void.

Another option, if you’ve written a story (or part of one), have characters you’ve created, and don’t have other ideas just now, is to take those characters and the world they live in and just think up a new situation for them. Something unrelated to the story they’re already in (or it can be related too), even something crazy that you know wouldn’t happen. Outline a scenario, long or short, and see how it feels. The idea is just to see how outlining can feel, with just a random scenario that doesn’t have to have any further purpose. Though who knows, maybe this will spark a more solid idea simply because you’re pushing yourself for a new idea. But even if not, get a feel for the outlining and see what you think. You may like it, you may not.

Of course, if you do write an outline for a story that interests you, the next step would be writing from that outline. You can’t fully evaluate whether you’re a planner, pantser, or hybrid, without going past the outline. But the actual writing is a subject for another post.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the great debate, or anything you produce from the above ideas that you’d like to share.

Dream Every Day: Revisiting High School

/ Kristi / 5 Comments

 dream plan write

When I was in high school, I took a creative writing class. It’s the only one I’ve ever taken, and I couldn’t tell you how alike or different it was from other such classes. There was a process we went through before we ever started writing for the short story part of class that has stuck with me for fifteen years. It was a process of coming up with multiple story seeds, before then choosing the one we wanted to develop into a story. One day we were instructed to come up with a setting and character that didn’t really go together. For example, I chose a British soldier at a Minnesota lake. Under that, it says:
“Why–the queen of England decided she wanted a vacation in a secluded spot and he was assigned to guard the family.
Conflict–the people who live around there are secretive, don’t know why he’s there, and don’t want him there.”

The scenario sounds ridiculous to me now, and I never wrote any further with that idea. However, for some reason, this exercise has stuck with me for a long time.

On the other hand, what is just an innocuous picture–a field of wildflowers–became the short story I turned in for that class. A short story the teacher loved and helped me to remember that I enjoy writing (I had written a lot in elementary school, then abandoned it for poetry). In an essay in that class, though, I apparently wrote that I didn’t think I’d have much reason to write fiction again in the future. That was fun to dig up from my past.

flowers prompt

This colorful, foggy field became the setting of a frenzied, fear-filled search for a briefcase and a race against time for the protagonist in the story I wrote from it.

At the same time I was taking this creative writing class, I had the same teacher for English class. In English, we would get vocabulary lists, and for every list, one assignment was always to write some sort of paragraph or short story that incorporated at least 5 of the vocab words. A few of those ended up being great sources of creativity for me. One, a one-page short story, my teacher said was written well enough and had good enough character development that I could have turned it in for my short story in creative writing.

The point of all of this is to say that, while inspiration can certainly come from anywhere and sometimes nowhere, it is possible to create ideas using various methods and stimuli. Images, sounds, prompts, word lists, outlandish character/setting combos, even story scenarios provided by someone else, can produce seeds that may or may not be worth developing. The key is to keep all of the potential seeds somewhere that can be referenced later. One important rule of writing–never throw anything out. You never know if you’ll want to be able to look back at it 15 years later and write a blog post about it.

Dream for yourself: If anyone reading this wants to try their hand at some of these story seed starters, I encourage you to look at the image above, describe it in vivid detail, and use it as a setting for a scene. Then see where that takes you. Or, use the following list of words to create a paragraph or two–it can be a setting, a short story, or even a scene from something larger. (Remember, it’s from a school vocab list. If you don’t know the words, look them up! Expanding your vocabulary can always help with writing too.) It doesn’t have to produce a full story–just spark an idea. If anyone does write anything from my suggestions, feel free to share with me! I’d love to see what others come up with.

noxious
sub rosa
tete-a-tete
parvenu
a capella
postprandial
minatory
venal
quid pro quo

Continue reading below to read the short story I created with the words above (if you’re considering writing from the list yourself, don’t read mine yet; it’ll skew your ideas).

Continue reading →

Dream, plan, write…

/ Kristi / Leave a comment

dream plan write

This has been my motto for the last year. I have tried to make sure every day contains at least a little writing work. For me, this can take more than one form:

Dream – This is the part where you ask, “What if…?” and “Why?” What if space were filled with vampires? What if the guy was the one who needed rescuing? Why would a British royal guard be camping in the woods of Montana? How different would the world be without shrimp? There are ways to force these ideas out of your head, but just as often, they just come on their own. When you’re driving, washing dishes, showering, even sleeping.

Plan – This is where you take that idea, that seed, and run with it. Meet and flesh out the characters. Decide on the right time and place. Start plotting. Not everyone does this step; some skip right from dreaming to writing. That’s okay too. But for the rest of us, it’s important to spend some time in the planning stage.

Write – This is the most self-explanatory stage, but often the most difficult to do. It is helpful to set goals along the way. Also important is saving the editing for later.

Revise – This is my absolute least favorite stage, but it has to be done. The question, though, is how to do it and how much to revise. My own mindset on revising has changed a lot in the last year, and I think I’m hating it less than I used to.

These different stages are often mixed up. Currently, on any given day, I may be working on revising one of two books, plotting another one, writing for a shorter bit that has no real plans, or who knows what else. And I’m always dreaming.

I’ve come to realize recently that, though I am not a published author, I have a lot of experience as a writer. I’ve been writing with some seriousness for 10 years and have grown a lot in both knowledge and skill. I’ve finished the first draft of two novels, which I’m told is an accomplishment in itself. And just in the last two years, I have learned a lot about all of these stages of writing. This blog has always been focused on my writing progress, but I have decided it’s time to branch out. I want to start sharing some of what I’ve learned, even extending to areas outside of those I mentioned above (like finding the right writing atmosphere). Hopefully someone will find some usefulness in my words.

I won’t try to say when or how often these posts might come out, because my family life is too unpredictable. The first post, about the “Dream” stage, will be shortly following this introductory post though.