Divorce

I've given up on this writing group I joined a couple of months ago.  It did nothing for me, just people sitting around and locking themselves up in their own little world for a couple of hours.  Plus, because of my tutoring schedule, I'd find myself available for just the last half-hour of each session.

I'm not saying it's bad people in a writing group to focus on the work.  I mean, that's the primary point.  What I am saying is that the silence is not golden.

I like getting to know other writers and shooting the breeze.  It makes the work feel less like work.  It's a chance to exchange tips, give encouragement, and occasionally play a round or two of professional one-upmanship.

Oh, fuck me!  My grad school experience is really biting me in the ass now!  Antioch's sense of community, you truly have infested my bone marrow and wormed your way into my brain meats!  *Shakes fist at no one*

But yeah, I just couldn't stick with the group any longer.  Some might say the silence has a serene church-like quality.  I say, when's the last time I've gone to church?  I still want to be in a writing group.  I know I can't hide in my own corner forever.  It'll drive me nuts.  The long hours.  The mounting doubt.  I need a way to cope with that.  Writing is a lonely career, but manageable with group therapy.

I'm hoping to find another group to join soon, or I might get in touch with some writer friends who live in the area and see if we can do a hangout every other week; order up some pizzas, bitch about how the first draft is kicking our asses, and then plow ahead regardless. 

And Now...A Little Sunshine...

I don't really have anything to post about writing today.  It's been a slightly slow week as one story is on break and I'm plotting another.  Okay, maybe it's a little weird to say plotting is a slow activity.  It's slow on the writing front, but fast and intense on the brain-meats.

So I guess today I have little in the way of literary pearls of wisdom...

...but I do have an observation about crappy soap operas.  Oh, yes.  I do.  Don't snicker.  Soap operas are a great way to learn what NOT to do in storytelling.

So there I am cooking up lunch, and the TV is on in the kitchen.  And General Hospital was on.  I've caught a little of the show while channel surfing before, so I've gathered enough to assume a few things:

• There is no hospital, just rich people with problems.
• If a character has a thick, phony German accent, she's evil.
• Apparently, you're still allowed to breathe if you're dead.
• While we're at it, you can blink while laying in the casket at your own funeral too.
• There is no hospital.
• Everyone's screwing someone.
• Everyone's cheating on someone.
• There is no hospital.
• Even little kids can be scheming sons of bitches.

Sorry, folks.  I know Wayne Gretsky and Rick Springfield are fans, but yikes!  You could bit into the melodrama and think concrete were as soft as butter.

Here's what I don't understand, and I'm hoping someone out there might be able to answer: why do melodramas stay on the air for so long?  As the World Turns and All My Children have gone, but what makes shows like Days of Our Lives or General Hospital go on for almost half a century?

Plowing On

This last week was a really good one.  I got quite a bit of progress done on this new short story I'm working on and brainstorming a new piece for Carpe Nocturne.  I kind of dragged my feet a bit on script reading.  I was sent a pretty beefy novel that took a while to get through.  The week was tiring but I didn't lose my optimism.

The weekend felt completely different.  I had a script that seemed to take forever for me to get through; it really didn't take any longer than usual.  I signed up for a new class at UCLA on television writing that cost a pretty penny or two.  All in all, I just felt like I was in a total funky state.  I still got some writing to do and a little reading, but that's pretty much it for tonight.

Roar Shack got rejected from Penumbra a few days ago, but I didn't check my email and get the news until yesterday.  A writer friend of mine, Wendy Fontaine, kept telling me a while ago that for each rejection I ought to send a story out to two other publications.  I ended up sending Roar Shack to three magazines.

I've heard that editors don't really like simultaneous submissions, and I can understand their reasons why, but the taboo be damned!  I remember submitting a story to Tor once.  It took them a year to get back to me.  There's no way I'm sitting on ass waiting for anyone to get to me.  I'm not saying that to come off like a prima dona.  I'm saying it because I could wake up dead tomorrow.

However, if it really does bother you to send a piece to a publication that's against simultaneous submissions, you can search Duotrope for places that allow it.  There are a surprisingly large number that do.

Just Five Minutes

This has been a busy week, so busy that I didn't get a chance to get any writing done until yesterday.  Even then, it wasn't much.  I feel pretty lucky that I got in fifteen minutes.  So far, I've written for fifteen minutes today, and I've got my fingers crossed that I'll get more in.

This is one of those "write whenever you can" kind of weeks.  Life outside of writing keeps going, especially my script-reading internship.  I won't get to the script until tonight, but when I do, I think I can allow myself a five-minute break every quarter of it.  During that time, I'll write my with all my cold, black heart.

It feels a little weird explaining that, but basically, I'm rewarding myself with writing time.  Each time I get through part of the script or the following coverage, in the back of my head, I say, "Congrats!  You did it!  Take a quick breath before moving on."  Plus, I figure it'll give me an hour of writing between the reading and the major sections of a coverage.

In Parks an Recreations lingo, taking little writing breaks is a way to treat yo self.

Being a Better Tweeter

Someone on my grad school's Facebook page posted today about Cosmopolitan's fiction opening.  And yes, I did consider applying, but the deadline is in a few days; too short a time for me to plan out a year-long project.

Something in particular about the posting caught my eye: it included three Twitter posts per day from the protagonist's point of view.  It got me thinking about how could better manage their Twitter.

Consider this: Twitter, like all social media, requires that you actually use it.  But there are extremes to this.  On the one hand, you could say nothing and have a pointless platform that ultimately serves no purpose of any kind.  On the other, you could inundate the world with meaningless gibberish about every little thing you're doing.  In polite society, the latter are known as Twitter whores.

So I don't recommend being on Twitter every minute of the day, because, uhhhh, you should really have a life beyond that quirky little bluebird.

Daily, I would suggest a minimum of three to four posts: one bit of advice, one bit of encouragement to others in your field (writing or otherwise), one bit of randomness to jazz things up a little, and one work-related update perhaps every other day at least.

Furthermore, I would also suggest tagging someone once a week in a post.  For example, letting your followers (that sounds cult-ish) know about a friend's new publication in case they'd like to follow that person, or promoting another friend's upcoming reading.

In the end, I think going this route helps a writer stay active enough on their social media to keep others updated while also giving them some distance in order to get back to work.

Does Hemingway Work?

Not long ago, I heard about this app called Hemingway.  It's an algorithm designed to make a writer's style more like that of Ernest Hemingway.  You copy and paste a piece of writing, and the program will tell you which sentences are hard to read, which sentences are really confusing, where you have too many adjectives and adverbs, and where you're using the passive rather than active voice.

Turns out it doesn't always work so well.  There was a news article about how the program found errors when faced with samples of Hemingway's own writing.

Is the Hemingway app trustworthy at all?  I say yes, with some fine print.  Hemingway is not designed to make you a better storyteller.  Sorry, folks, but you still have to provide the brain sweat.  What the program will do is help economize your writing.  Its creators stress that the program isn't designed to know when you intentionally break the rules, when you really do want that adjective.

I've used Hemingway since I first heard about it in February.  It's helped me trim the fat on projects that have a specific word count such as reviews and short stories.  I've also noticed that it's got me thinking more about active than passive sentences, though passive ones still slip through from time to time.

It is just a tool, and it's feedback is no different than suggestions you'd get from the spell-check on your word processor.  You have the luxury of using it or ignoring it.

Word Trackers

We need to talk word trackers because I think they will help keep you on target with your projects.

Between tutoring and internship, I had the idea this weekend that all I really need to get my work done is to keep an eye on how many hours I need to spend weekly on writing.  The words would just fall into place, right?  Wrong.  See, I tried that this morning and found myself writing only about a hundred words in the span of an hour.

Time doesn't make a story.  Words make a story.

Word trackers are a great tool to have because they compare your target quota and progress and compare them to your deadline.  That's key because even if you don't have a set-in-stone deadline by an outside client, you still need one if you're doing freelance work.  For example, I wrote my new short story Roar Shack for Penumbra Magazine, which had an April 1st submission deadline.  The editors weren't hammering at my door for my own material, but I imagined that they were.  In turn, that motivated me to hurry up with the story.

Even if you don't have a market in mind - if you want to write a story and submit it to wherever - you still need a deadline to keep you on task.  Think of it this way: markets pay on acceptance or publication, which means they need to get your work to make a call on it, which means you need to get that work written and in their hot little hands.

I think Svenja Liv has the best word trackers, and you can find TONS of them on her website.  All the formulas are programmed into the spreadsheet so you don't need to waste hours on them.

Personally, I think her 2012 spreadsheet for NaNoWriMo was the best of the best.  It's very user friendly, easy to customize, and has all kinds of extra features to help with plot and character developments.  I mainly use the word tracker and progress chart to keep taps on my deadline.  The novel info tab is good if you've got multiple projects and need to refresh your memory on which story you're working on, and you can adapt the chapter page into a beat sheet if you wish.  I also hold onto the character list just in chase I need a quick glance at who's who.