Hello Overwhelm, my old friend!

I don’t know what it is about this part of the year but it always seems to be completely insanely busy for me — right when I’m feeling the need to draw inward and rest and relax.

You already know about Pronoun folding, putting a bunch of work on my desk right in time for the holidays. I’m ALSO trying to get our books up on Ingram Spark so they can be sold to libraries — which has a deadline of Nov. 30th, because that’s when the Indie Fringe code expires that makes set up free and we can’t afford 50 bucks per book right now.

As well, I am working my ass off trying to make enough money to a) pay rent, b) pay my super overdue phone bill that is about to be cut off, and c) cover some school costs while I wait on word of whether or not I’m getting a loan. Oh, and I have to jump through a thousand hoops to get that loan, because between the time of my last student loan and now I CHANGED MY BLOODY NAME LIKE A FREAKING IDIOT.

(My mom- and dad-in-law helped me out with school a LOT by paying my tuition as a Christmas gift, but I still need to cover a shit ton of costs for the Winter Semester.)

Seriously, if you’re ever going to go through the legal process of changing your whole name, be prepared for the incredible amount of work in front of you. Also be prepared — at least if you’re a person who gets socially classed as female — for people to completely not understand anything when you try to get your paperwork sorted because you didn’t get your name changed as a part of marriage. Like, dear gods, the amount of times I’ve had people look at me like I’d grown an extra head because I explained it wasn’t marriage that changed my name and just a desire to live more authentically as myself…for Hera’s sake.

Anyway, I digress. I’m crazy-busy right now and obviously it’s driving me crazy (er). On top of work I’ve been doing Nanowrimo — it’s looking very unlikely I’ll hit word count (though I’m rebelling, so it wouldn’t be a “true” win in the spirit of Nano anyway — at this point, this month is sort of like a devotion of sorts; I’m less concerned with following the “rules” and more concerned with just making sure I write) — but it wasn’t that so much I was concerned with as it was just FINISHING MY BOOK.

I have been trying to finish first draft of this book for…I don’t even know anymore. A long time. I have even rewrote it from scratch once and gotten about as far in as the first time before stalling out. I really need to put my ass to the grindstone (I know it’s nose, but my nose is so perfect in shape, and my ass won’t miss it if some of it gets ground off) and just type out the rest of the story even if it’s pure unmitigated crap. But that is so much easier to say than it is to do — especially when I’m focusing on trying to make money so I don’t lose my phone or my home or anything else.

This poverty thing is fun!

I’ve also been knitting, which I’ve been trying to blog about at my knitting/planning/crocheting/messy lifestyle stuff blog but I’m really bad at blogging on a regular schedule at all, let’s face it, so. Some of the things I’m making are for gifts and others are for sale (because again, trying to hustle up that end of year cash).

Anyway, in the turmoil of all this overwhelm, I wanted to blog here again because I kind of miss blogging, I’m realizing, and want to be better about doing it more often. I don’t know how well that’s going to work, but I’m going to try for at least once a month for the next few months, and if I can keep to that schedule, up it to once every 2 weeks or so. No idea what I’m going to be blogging about, because I’m having issues finding my own life interesting right now so it’s hard for me to write about it as if anyone else would be interested. But I’m going to try to figure it out.

Also, here’s some book news:

All my books are on sale for the rest of the year. It was just going to be a Black Friday/Cyber Monday sale, but I figured, eh, why not, I’ll keep the prices low until the end of December. Bellica is still free, of course, but right now you can get The Jade Star of Athering, Stranger Skies, or glasstown for $0.99 each.

Currently only Bellica and glasstown are up at all retailers, but Jade Star and Stranger Skies have been uploaded to Draft2Digital and are getting pushed to other retailers as we speak. They’re both on Kobo and Jade Star is also on Apple right now. I’ll be giving you the universal book link from Draft2Digital so it will take you to your preferred retailer.

Here are some links (again, my Amazon links are affiliate links, which means I get an extra commission if you buy my books or something else after using these links, but you don’t pay any extra):

Bellica: Amazon | Amazon.ca | Universal Book Link from Draft2Digital

The Jade Star of Athering: Amazon | Amazon.ca | Universal Book Link from Draft2Digital

Stranger Skies: Amazon | Amazon.ca | Universal Book Link from Draft2Digital

glasstown: Amazon | Amazon.ca | Universal Book Link from Draft2Digital

They are also available through our Ecwid store, and from my Gumroad store, as well as our Payhip store, if you prefer to go super indie with retailers.

I think there was more I was wanting to say in this blog post, but I’ve run out of steam in the several hours it’s taken me to write this. (I started writing it last night while cooking dinner, then took a huge break, and now it’s 7am the next day and I’m still not done with it.)

So, yup. I’m loonier than usual right now, but all my books are on sale so you should tell your friends. Or get them ebooks for Xmas. Or whatever; I’m not your supervisor. (Or AM I?)

Until next time, fellow loons!

-Katje

Beware of Ergot-Poisoned Writing Advice

Bumper Crops of Fungus

It’s Nanowrimo! Holy gods where has the year gone? I feel like just yesterday I was saying Happy New Year to folks.

Ok, so, it’s November and I’ve apparently been abducted by aliens this year because that’s the only way to explain all the missing time. I’m also recovering from seriously heavy burnout. Slowly feeling more like myself, but trying not to push it. Pushing it leads to more burnout.

And because it’s Nanowrimo, we have a new crop to harvest! A new crop of writing advice!

Like all harvests, some of it is good, some of it is bad, and some of it is of dubious quality. Be careful before you dig in; you don’t want ergot poisoning. (Actually…ergot is a hallucinogen, so it might help you come up with things to write. GO FOR IT! No, don’t, don’t ever take advice from me. Or do, whatever, I’m not your supervisor.)

Floating out there in cyberspace, I saw one particular part of writing advice that I needed to comment on. (I don’t remember where I saw it; I just know I saw it. Also it’s not an uncommon piece of advice to get tossed around.)

It said something along the lines of “it’s no good writing a bunch of words if you have to toss most of them out.”

Hoo boy.

Yeah, so, this is wrong. I mean, in my not so humble opinion, obviously, your mileage may vary, but so, so wrong.

Continue reading “Beware of Ergot-Poisoned Writing Advice”

I’m failing Nanowrimo this year (and considering it a success)

I know what you’re about to say.

You can’t fail Nanowrimo, so long as you get some writing done!

If that’s the criterion, I have failed this year, because I have written 0 words. Zero. Look:

there's a kind of purity to this. it's so empty, so clean. — there’s a kind of purity to this. it’s so empty, so clean.

Nothing. No words on Anala, no words on From the Ashes; just a smattering of words on blogs and some rants on Facebook.

And yet I’m counting this month as a success. Why?

Simple. Even though I planned to write this month and failed, I managed to not beat myself up about it once. I managed to not feel shame. I managed to be okay with not writing for a month.

I didn’t write anything this month, but the fact that I didn’t rip myself apart for it means I can go into December with a clean slate, free of shame, and not let the failure of November weigh me down. If anything, the failure is lifting me up, because for the first time I’m okay with failing at writing.

(What helped was reading this blog post by Mary Robinette Kowal, which helped me realize my inability to write at the moment is depression, not lack of will. It made it okay for me to be gentle on myself, and to take steps towards digging myself out of the depression hole.)

So I am going to spend the rest of today getting ready for the new month and maybe cleaning my kitchen a bit, and letting the end of Nanowrimo pass me by without a word written. (Assuming the fumes from the renovations upstairs don’t suffocate me first.)

See you in December.

Embracing Quitting

No one is every any good at anything until they practice, yet I’m the worst sort of drill sergeant in my own head, screaming at me, calling me a maggot, because I wasn’t perfect the first time — or because I THOUGHT about quitting.

Gods know how I ever got to a point where I not only finished but published two novels. I think I have, entirely, my outside support system to thank for that.

I’m a perfectionist. Type A personality. I don’t quit things. I finish them, and they’re always perfect. If they’re not I need to take anti-anxiety meds and hide in my closet.

Very rarely this can be a positive thing — makes me get things done right the first time — but mostly it’s the fucking worst. I mean, generally this attitude makes me unable to deal with failure of any sort, which basically makes me unable to function because being human means failing at something on almost a daily basis. No one is every any good at anything until they practice, yet I’m the worst sort of drill sergeant in my own head, screaming at me, calling me a maggot, because I wasn’t perfect the first time — or because I THOUGHT about quitting.

Gods know how I ever got to a point where I not only finished but published two novels. I think I have, entirely, my outside support system to thank for that.

This year I signed up for Nanowrimo. Again. I do it every year, it seems (except 2010 — can’t remember why not, now, but likely I was just under unholy amounts of stress and made the smart decision) — Nanowrimo is like a drug I cannot resist. Its siren call urges me on to the greatest heights of success…or the lowest depths of failure.

Often I beat myself up for not finishing Nano. Even last year, when I reached 60,000 words two weeks before the end of November — I was upset because I hadn’t actually finished the story, which was what I had set out to do. Give me a chance and I’ll always find a way to be hard on myself.

Which is silly — a year later and that book, the one I started for Nano 2012, is published. Obviously I’m not a failure. My brain is a liar.

So this year I decided I wanted not only to write my ID — that is, write whatever the hell I wanted and not worry about story mechanics or whether my main character was too Mary Sueish or not — but also publish as I finished chapters. I felt it would give me…some sort of accountability, if only to myself.

I then decided to pants writing a story set in a world that needed extensive worldbuilding. Not my best decision.

At the beginning of November I was still deceiving myself into thinking I could do this, even without any portable writing tool — my laptop is on the fritz and experiments with the iPad have revealed it’s quite impossible to use it to write away from home. At least until Scrivener has an app for it.

And then came the editing and formatting delays with Stranger Skies, which I’ve mentioned here before. And I got so caught up with the work of publishing that I had to put writing aside.

I stressed about this for a while. How could I not? I was failing again.

And then at some point the stress just…melted away. The stress regarding Nano, at least. I got to the end of the formatting and editing work and…just never got back to Nano.

It’s not that I’m dissatisfied with what I’ve written so far; far from it. I think I have the beginnings of a good story there. I just don’t have the energy to write in the constraints of Nano this year. And, honestly, I should really be focusing on some WiPs before I go starting new projects to get halfway through before dropping.

So I’m embracing quitting this year. I’m not winning Nano; I’m not even going to up my word count any higher than where it is — a piddly 3,763. I’m letting it sit and I’m going to be okay with that.

Even if I need a little help from my good friend chocolate.

I just finished a novel, no big deal

You read that right. I just finished Stranger Skies, the NaNoWriMo novel I’ve been posting snippets from for SFFSat.

First draft clocks in at just over 70,000 words. Definitely shorter than Bellica‘s ~250,000 words, but then Bellica was meant to be a standalone (ha ha) and Stranger Skies is going to be the first in what’s looking like at least a 4-book series. Perhaps six. I’m not sure yet, because the rest of the plot is pretty damn hazy.

No, I didn’t intend a series when I started it. As I was writing, I realized there were too many plot threads to keep in one book, and I had to choose one plot thread for this book and continue the others in the rest of the series. It’s staying fair to the story, that way — it’s a big one and doesn’t deserve to be shoved into one book. It needs space to tell itself.

At this moment I’m filled with elation and a bit of gratitude for my school and the bullshit they pulled — had I been enrolled in SFU this semester, I most certainly would not have finished the book this soon. Yesterday I sat down and wrote over 4K words, and knew I’d finish it by Friday. Today I wrote 3500 words and unexpectedly reached the end.

I now have revisions to make, as well as some additions to threadbare places earlier on in the story — I’m glad that it’s only 70K right now, because it gives me room to add more in those places. I’ll also be working on making the series story bible more fleshed out (if you want to read a great guide on building a story bible, RJ Blain has a tutorial in three blog posts: The Basics, World-Building, Characters), as well as cementing a timeline for events not only in this book but for the next one. After revisions, I start work on the second book by drafting a plot outline.

Oh, hey, at some point I became a sort of professional author. How did that happen?

Stranger Skies will be released sometime this year. I also have plans to release Bellica‘s sequel, The Jade Star of Athering. Which means finishing it, of course. That’s February’s writing goal. (Or rather, my writing goal for February. February does not have a writing goal. It is a month. It has days.)

I’m also currently suffering from a bit of “MY BOOK IS FINISHED WHAT DO I DO WITH MY LIFE????”-itis. It’ll pass shortly. I hope.

Too long; didn’t read: I’m awesome and amazing and am off to go celebrate now. See you after the weekend! (Yes, SFFSat post still happening, but scheduled ahead of time. I likely won’t be back on the blog till Monday.)

SFFSat, November 10th: the agony of living

This week we’re veering away from The Jade Star of Athering snippets so I can share with you a bit from my NaNoWriMo novel, Stranger Skies. The first two chapters of Stranger Skies is available on Smashwords for free, by the way, so I’ll be sharing the first few sentences of Chapter Three: Flesh Prison.

Silva woke to alien smells and sounds. Her hearing was duller than a wolf’s, but sharper than a Terran’s. The sounds of a fire crackling, bacon sizzling, people outside chopping wood, talking, laughing — all the sounds of a morning on a farm — assaulted her.

There were too many hearts. The rhythms were off. She was used to one heart per body; now she had…two? Three? They thrummed in her ears; she could not escape the beat of them. Her chest felt as if it would explode.

Stranger Skies is the story of the goddess Silva, Lady of the True Woods and Queen of the Deep Furs, Wild Goddess of Wolves, and how she falls to a different planet and becomes mortal. Trapped in her new mortal body and life, she has to discover her destiny in this new world and find a way to reclaim her godhood.

Thanks for reading, and be sure to check out the other great offerings for SFFSat here!

Eight Days In, Halfway Through — the magic of planning my NaNo-novel

You read that right. I’ve already hit 25K in my NaNoWriMo project, Stranger Skies.

The story is fleshing itself out nicely, and I’ve gone ahead and done the Smashwords NaNoWriMo promotion — you can read chapters 1 and 2 for free. Curious as to what it’s about? Here’s a short description:

Silva, Lady of the True Woods, Goddess of the Deep Furs, falls through a portal during her search for her missing friend, Etan. She lands on the planet below, suddenly mortal.

On an alien planet, she must navigate her new and strange mortal life. Soon she discovers there’s a reason for everything, and her coming to this new world was not by accident.

As war brews on the horizon, Silva goes on a journey to reclaim her godhood, find Etan, and save the wolves of Min.

I’m experimenting with several different things for this story. I’ve named chapters with things like Falling to the Future, Flesh Prison, or The Wolf in the Woods — instead of my usual practice of naming chapters with the name of the character who’s telling that particular part. (I say ‘usual practice’, but truth is I’ve only done that for one book — Bellica. The Jade Star of Athering is, so far, simply divided up by numbered chapters. So is Islands of Fire and Water. That may change.) Another, I’m not writing about Terrans, or Terra, or Terran colonies at all. The main character is original from Terra, yes, but she’s also originally a goddess — it’s not exactly the same as, say, writing about a Terran mortal traveling to a new planet. So that’s interesting.

The big experiment is that I actually planned out the story. Not every scene was decided ahead of time (and a lot in the latest chapters have changed), but the big ones were. I decided, ahead of time, what my First Plot Point was, my Second Plot Point, my pinch points, my resolution. I have Larry Brooks to thank for that — while I don’t agree with him wholly on his philosophy that planning is superior to pantsing or percolating, I do concede that planning my Nano novel is leading to an infinitely better first draft, and a higher likelihood of my hitting 50K well before the month is over. And I wouldn’t have been able to plan if I hadn’t read the majority of his posts on how to plan your Nano novel.

If you’re a pantser or percolator and you want to give planning a try, I recommend reading Larry’s posts for some ideas as to where to start.

Now, full disclosure, while planning has yielded higher word counts and better writing for me, I don’t fully like it. It’s contrary to my nature, so I may never fully like it. But I find that when I do a beat sheet and figure out the big five scenes ahead of time, I get sort of bored with the story early on. I wasn’t able to do a complete beat sheet, and I found myself wanting to skip ahead to where I’d quit planning out scenes — I wanted to “get to the good stuff”.

Which tells me something important about myself. As much as I dislike having my routine changed unexpectedly, I love the unknown when it comes to writing. I like getting stuck and having to think about it for a few weeks until it suddenly hits me, a flash of inspiration while I sit in the bath, getting pruney. Running naked down the street shouting EUREKA! appeals to me.

I also find that I’m not always sure what will take a full scene, or more than one. Some things that I had planned out as one scene took three; other things that were planned as four scenes only took two. I’m having to adjust as I get through these bits, re-numbering scenes and re-structuring chapters.

Which is fine. It’s a learning experience. I’m not knocking it. It works.

But I don’t think I’ll be planning all my stories. The NaNo ones, yes. Possibly short stories, as well. The other novels?

I’m going to keep on percolating, I think.

This, of course, means that The Jade Star of Athering will probably not be done until the end of December, and released at some point in early 2013. I’m aiming for April. Cross your fingers that that will happen (and let me know if you’re interested in being a beta reader).

What about you? If you write, do you pants, plan, or percolate? Some combo of the three? No idea what I’m talking about? Wondering where the pie you ordered is? I love hearing from my readers — leave me a comment below!

Day one of Nanowrimo

I stayed up late on Hallonanoween so I could start writing at midnight. I didn’t start writing until 12:30 or so, because my Samhain ritual ran a bit late. Kept writing till 4 am.

Totals

Longhand: 7.5 pages.

Typed: 3,814 words.

Those are about equivalent with each other — I typed up almost all I handwrote. My goal for the rest of today is to do another 28 pages longhand. Tomorrow I’ll start the day off with doing another 7.5 pages longhand and then typing up 3,666 words.

I’m doing the NaNoWriMo Rewards System this year, with a few modifications. Every Wednesday I’ll be working on The Jade Star of Athering instead of Stranger Skies. This gives my percolating writer’s brain a break, too, from the NaNo story. I’ve got most of it planned out, but the details in the last two parts are pretty hazy and probably will be until I write some more. This is the first time I’ve ever really planned a NaNo story and so far it’s going really well. Sending my thanks to Larry Brooks at StoryFix for his tips and tricks (even if I don’t agree with everything he says, he does know his way around story mechanics and beat sheets).

I’ve got a beat sheet mostly worked out (missing some details between the second plot point and the ending), some maps drawn, character profiles done up, chapter titles written.

So far, so good, though I’m running desperately low on junk food. (No, I didn’t stock up. Silly me.)

I’m going to share with you the opening lines to Stranger Skies. This month expect me to be pretty sparse on the blog entries — I’ll be doing SFFSat and regular progress reports for NaNo, to map the decline of my sanity. Probably won’t be doing much else.

Without further ado, a bit of Stranger Skies:

Chapter 1: Falling to the Future

She was falling so fast, so hard, plummeting like a dying Ice Crown Starling.

Yes. The bird. Desperately she tried to change shape — her humanoid figure stretched like elastic, briefly, then bounced back into its shape.

She was falling faster, hurtling to the ground below, and she was stuck in the form of a bipedal ape. Her powers weren’t working.

How did this happen to me?

SFFSat January 7th: Adra visits Harbourtown

From my Nanowrimo novel, Dead Transgressions.

Adrasteia, the half-Atherian, half-Ixilean hero, is currently visiting Harbourtown with Duke Leandros of Aeril, the brother of the woman she’s sworn to protect from a plot by the Children of IxChel, intent on reclaiming their people’s Jade Star. The Duke has taken Adra on a small tour of the countryside while she recovers from her wound. And by countryside, I mean various cities around Athering, as there are no wilds left.

Soon they reached Harbourtown, and Adra was glad for the chance to stretch her legs. The air smelled strongly of brine and seagulls rent the sky with their harsh cries. She and Leandros went down to the seawall, where they took a leisurely stroll, watching the waves come in and out. It was a sunny day but there was a chill in the air — each breath left Adra’s nostrils and lungs feeling awakened. She was glad she had her jacket with her; since her injury she found herself getting cold with more ease.

Harbourtown was a slow city. More a town, really — the streets were cobblestone, a throwback to a simpler time, and the buildings were still made of wood. Really old wood, she supposed; at some point they’d no doubt have to rebuild in stronger synthetic materials. Until that time came, however, Harbourtown clung to the past. It was almost quaint.

State of the Nano

As you can no doubt tell by the handy dandy widget to the right, I have 7K words to go before I win Nano. I won’t be done with the novel — hells, I’ll be lucky if I make it to the mid-plot point — but I will have won Nano.

Considering I’ve spent the past three days working on getting Bellica ready for print (and will spend the next few days getting it ready for ebook) and have not slept overmuch, this will be awesome and worth much cheering.

So I am off to write some exciting Nano story. Mostly with lots of sexual tension — it’s increased after the first kiss and “just friends” talk, you know. 😉

7K in 24 hours: GO.