Tag: Nikki

On Saturday afternoon I allowed myself to be persuaded to go to the Washington County Fair with my girlfriends instead of staying home and cleaning. It doesn’t sound like such a hardship to spend time with my friends, I realize, but after being laptop-free for over a week I had this plan that I would get all the cleaning done on Saturday and then be free to write all day on Sunday and it was hard to give that up.

We used to go to the Fair every year, but it’s been a really long time since I went. And one of my friends hadn’t actually been to this kind of fair before, with cows and crafts along with the rides. It ended up being the perfect mix of resurrecting old memories and making new ones. All of the usual food booths right where they should be, the familiar smells of the barns, the blues band on stage next to the covered picnic tables – if Johnny Limbo and the Lugnuts had been the closing band in the grass amphitheater it could easily have been 1990 instead of 2010.

But this time we actually went on the rides, too, testing our stomachs on the Spider and the Tilt-a-Whirl, and the silver one whose name I don’t remember. And despite her lack of confidence in her own skill, one friend managed to earn 150 points on the last round of Skee Ball so all three of us walked out with a plush toy to remember the day.

It was wonderful. I have no regrets about going.

Of course, I also don’t regret ending my day with my friends after the fair instead of continuing on to happy hour and the movies. They’re very good friends, but for some reason on this particular day I had to repeat several times that I wanted to get some writing done and wasn’t free all day.

For a variety of reasons I didn’t actually get any writing done (although I did get the cleaning and laundry taken care of), and I admit that’s a little frustrating, but what I’m really taking away from the weekend is that it doesn’t have to be and either/or, all-or-nothing kind of thing. If we’re open to it, there is almost always some kind of balance that can be struck, so you can have the little purple unicorn with a silver horn sitting in a place of honor on the bookshelf, and a clean house, and maybe some word count to go with it.

The important thing, I think, is to take a deep breath and listen to your instincts when the calendar tries to get crowded. Don’t be afraid to tell someone you’ll get back to them, rather than giving them an answer on the spot. Give yourself time to think it through. Decide where your priorities are, and make sure that, whatever you do, it works for you.

Today is July 4th, Independence Day here in the US. This is a holiday that carries strong images and memories with it, one that can carry a lot of expectations about how the day should be celebrated. For one friend it’s watermelon and barbecued hot dogs. For another it’s Will Smith movies. For me it’s usually a freaked out cat and whatever fireworks I can see from my patio. Whatever the details, everyone seems to have some specific idea of how to the holiday is supposed to be spent.

It occurred to me today that it’s easy to have some of the same expectations and preconceived ideas about writing and writers.  Maybe we think of writers as very easily inspired to write and cast ourselves in an unfavorable light when we struggle to find the next idea. Maybe we think writers are successful because they have hours and hours of uninterrupted time with their muse, and wonder how we will ever make that kind of time in our busy lives. It’s even possible that we think good writers receive nothing but praise from their editors and never ever get rejection letters.

The truth is, just as there are all kinds of ways to celebrate Independence Day, there are all kinds of writers and all kinds of writing processes. There is no one formula that works. Writers write in the morning, they write at night. They write in spiral notebooks, on zippy little netbooks, or a Starbucks napkin. They might have one beta, they might have seven or eight critique partners targeted at different stages of the finished work. Some writers jump around in their manuscript, some write a straight chronological line from start to finish. Some outline down to the chapter and paragraph, some write entirely by the seat of their pants.

The one common thread is that writers write. How much they write, how often, and by what means are just details. Certainly there are some great habits to be learned from successful writers, but they should be guidelines, not an absolute yardstick we measure our own process against. The important thing is to be open to what works for you. Even if you have a regular writing routine, remember that our lives are in constant flux and every story is different. What works today may not work for you tomorrow. Be flexible, both with the story and with your process, follow your instincts, and write!

What about you? Do you have a special way of celebrating Independence Day? Do you have a regular routine when you’re writing?

An opportunity came up the other week to develop characters we were working on by writing stories with them based on specific prompt scenarios. At first the initial prompt did not seem to apply to my characters at all, but eventually inspiration struck.

I don’t know that I learned anything new about my existing characters from working on that prompt, but it did allow me to play out a scene that had previously been a little hazy in my mind. That is a very good thing.

What surprised me about the prompt fic is how this one scene ended up spawning ideas not just for later on in the existing characters’ lives, but for the next generation of characters, as well. All of a sudden Maddox and Kieran’s children are living in my head, and I don’t even have a definite outline for Maddox and Kieran’s own story. So I find myself genuinely torn at the moment between being thrilled at how Phallon and Connor’s story seems to be playing out, and being frustrated that I seem to be getting farther away from Maddox and Kieran.

When I very first started writing a little over ten years ago, I had one, maybe two ideas at a time. I wrote from start to finish on one and then worked on the next. Once in a while, if a story idea was particularly short I might pause a current work in progress to get the new story down on paper, but it really didn’t happen very often.

In the last year I find myself almost completely at the mercy of the muse at times. I started out ignoring new ideas, only to find myself irritated when I could not recapture them later. Then I would write down new ideas, whatever pieces came to me the most strongly – just notes, so that I would remember the substance of the idea later on. As I continue to be carried along on the wave of whatever comes to me, though, I can’t help wondering if what I’m making is progress, or just word count.

Not that word count is a bad thing, but part of the goal is to actually finish stories, right?

So I guess what I would like to know is what happens for everyone else? Do you have a pretty linear writing process, or do you have multiple ideas going at once? If you do have more than one, then how do you balance them? What happens if a new idea starts beating you over the head?