Day 4. The first 10,000 words.

Okay, the first 10k is in the bag on day four, which is much better than I hoped. It's weird because when I hit the daily goal there was part of me that wanted to say, "Fine, that's me done for the day," but as the 10k mark was right there for the taking, I couldn't resist the temptation to push on. 

I'm quite glad I did because I hit a major plot turning point. It's that moment when the reader should be thinking, "Oh, shit. Something bad is going on here." which is fab as a writer.

So, a quick look back. I haven't found it particularly difficult to Write Into the Dark so far, but I can really feel the pull of wanting to plot and plan. However, some of the things I've written wouldn't have been in a plan, so in a way it's working.

I'd love to write more on this but my fingertips are numb and I need to make chicken fajitas. 

10k in four days. I'm happy about that.

Until tomorrow!

Current word count: 10,075

Words to go: 59,925.

Writing Challenge Day 3 - Back to Scrivener

Sorry Scrivener, all is forgiven.

I've actually been using LibreOffice for about a month because I was using for a different project over the holiday period, and generally, everything was fine. But then today, right in the middle of a sprint, it started acting a little weird. I tried to undo a few things only to see it replace chunks of text with error messages. Then it crashed completely.

Thing is, this document is less than 5,000 words. That's not a lot for a word processor to handle. And while it autorecovered the file, it's still one too many crashes for me. 

Going to back to Scrivener, I suddenly remembered the Session Target tool. This makes life so much easier, as I can see, as I type, my progress. In LibreOffice I'd have to paste the word count into the spreadsheet I'd made. 

Project targets window

It also displays as a line bar at the top of the project with the Manuscript Target at the top, above the chapter title, and the Session Target below, so there's always something on show.

Top of Editor Window.

I'll live without a global undo and just ignore the bells and whistles. There are however, a few other advantages of Scrivener which I need to nail down here for when I go through this same thing again in the future. Colour labelling for files is gold. This is something I run through a whole project, going from orange for first drafts, yellow for revised and green for final. Simple, but very useful. I make use of the notes window in the Inspector too.

And I've got a plan for the compiler. Something I've never tried before. If I hit my wordcount today, I might have a play - at the time of writing this, I think I'm around 1,600 words. 

Later

Well, true to form, once I was back in Scrivener, I started messing around with the Compiler and lost about an hour. How can something designed to be used for writers be so insanely complicated to use? I'm from an IT background -- I used to build characters and VR environments for video games, so I'm not exactly wet behind the ears when it comes to using software, but this is just mental.

I gave up in the end and I've decided to just go with the standard formatting options. It's just easier that way.

But I did get some writing done too. I've just hit the word count. 2,314. But I've switched POV to 1st person as an experimental chapter. The chapter I wrote yesterday is from Alice's point of view. She's the wife, but she also has the potential for a big secret going on. And while the chapter is okay, it just isn't good enough. I think it would be much better told from the MC's perspective in conversation. But that's for a future edit.

This is why I find Writing Into the Dark so difficult. I feel like I need to know what is going to work before I write it. 

I'm going to keep going and simply experiment along the way. I heard a great piece of advice today about finishing the first draft and accept that it'll be terrible. But at the end, you'll have something you can mould.

This sounds so much less daunting than the Dean Wesley Smith approach.

Writing Challenge Day 2

Well, I hit the word count. In fact, I crossed the line just now at 2376 words, so I'm writing this quick before Only Connect comes on (love that show, but I never get a single thing right!)

Anyway, quick summary of the day. I'm off work for the Christmas break, so I managed to do most of the work during the day, but I'll hold my hands up and admit that I went into editing mode which ate up a good few hours. A little change in Chapter 2 had a bit of a knock-on effect which meant deleting quite a chunk of chapter 1. I also needed to write a new opening. 

This is something I was thinking about last night. The story kicks off with the MC looking at an old house, but the village where the main action takes place acts as a crucible. Therefore, I wanted to have a metaphor for crossing into the forbidden world. I liked the idea of the village being cut off by a flooded road. I went down a few false paths, but ended up with fairly clean copy.

Just a quick note on writing software. I'm writing this manuscript with LibreOffice. I've ditched Scrivener for this project for few reasons. First of all, too many distractions. I tend to play with other things, so I thought if I have just a single window, I might be able to focus better. I've got also made a spreadsheet in LibreOffice to keep track of word counts and daily targets. 

LibreOffice Writer is very much like Word. And I can use it in with a windows theme to make the screen dark grey with white text, much like Scrivener's Dark Mode.

Okay, the story so far. 

New words: 2376. 

Current word count: 4314

Words to go: 63,748  

New Year Writing Challenge - Folk Horror project.

source: laurieboris.com

The challenge

Rather than do Resolutions I can't keep, I thought I'd kick off the New Year with a little writing challenge. 

This challenge comes in three parts.

• Write an entire novel in January.
• Edit and clean up in February (possibly – see below)
• Submit to Agents in March.

Background

One of the surprises that came out of doing a degree in Creative Writing was finding that I have strengths in areas I thought were closed off. There was one story in particular that resonated, a short piece about the son of a grave robber. Dark fiction was something I found quite difficult after Matthew passed away, but this felt good. Unlike my Victorian vampire novel, which I had peppered with humour as a kind of safety net, this was pure, dark gothic fiction with an honest, earthy folk horror feel.

Gearing up

The genre of folk horror got under my skin and I found myself revisiting old classic movies like The Wicker Man (1973) and Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971) - a movie that scared the life out of me when I was nine. I rewatched modern movies in the same genre too: The Apostle (1997), The Wicker Man remake with Nicholas Cage (2006), The Ritual (2017) and the fabulous Midsommar (2019). In books, I went back to horror master, Adam Nevill, Bram Stoker (because, why wouldn't you?) and folk horror guru Andrew Michael Hurley.

At this point, I had an idea, but every time I tried to outline it, I ended up killing the idea stone dead and I couldn't work out why. But the idea was still there like a sore tooth you can't ignore...

write me... write me... write me...

How can I write something I can't plan?

Writing Into the Dark

And then yesterday, while walking the dog, I listened to a podcast interview with Dean Wesley Smith. I've mentioned Dean on this blog a few times in the past, and I'd heard of his writing process back when I used to read his blog (around the time he was Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing), but this was a nice refresher. 

Dean calls his tried and trusted method Writing Into the Dark (others refer to it as Pantsing or Discovery Writing) and it's where you write without a plan. You have a premise or a basic idea, but rather than focusing on beats and trying to saving a cat, you flesh out the characters and allow the story find its own path. 

And it isn't only Dean Wesley Smith that writes in this way. Writers who dive in without a plan include:

• Stephen King 
• Lee Child
• Dean Koontz
• Neil Gaiman
• George R.R. Martin
• Mark Twain
• Margret Atwood
• Isaac Asimov 

Photo by Haydn Golden on Unsplash

Maybe it's time to kick off these stabilisers and just ride. 😃

Loglines and Pitching

And so, rather than working on a plan, I sat down and thought about the kind of book I want to write. Nothing detailed, just a general flavour. To do this, I focused on writing a single logline. This is something I learned from Screenwriting, where you nail the basic premise first because you need that to pitch the idea. And in Screenwriting, you usually pitch the idea before writing the script.

So why not try that too?

So I did. I researched a few agents, found four that are a good fit – one of which I’ve worked with before, and has a taste for a bit of Folk Horror – and I wrote a query letter. That’s right, before I wrote a single word of the manuscript, I wrote a full query letter.

Why? 

Because I want to know, before I start: 

• Can I sell this book? 
• Is this a book an agent can sell? 
• Does the premise work? 
• Is the premise so engaging that you must read it?

Bear in mind that agents get a lot of submissions. If you can’t capture their interest in your pitch, it doesn’t matter how good you think the book is, or how clever the twist at the end is because if it doesn't cry out, "Read me. Read me now!" it might not get read at all. 

Writing a pitch is also a great way to focus on the tone of what you’re writing. If you’re writing a romcom, is the premise itself funny? Is the basic idea underpinning the whole project going to make your audience laugh? In my case, is the premise going to make you uneasy, uncomfortable? Because that’s exactly what the best folk horror does and does well.

It took a long, long time to get both the premise and the query letter done. But now that I have that, I have a real sense of the tone of the book I want to write. It's not a road map; it's more like a creased and stained picture postcard of a place that makes my skin crawl.

Cool.

Well, today is Day One. So I thought I'd just dive in and see what happens. 

I managed to write 1,938 words in one sitting. And that includes time to spend going back to clean up and polish. And it wasn't a chore. It wasn't hard and I didn't get stressed thinking about the big picture. I focused purely on scenes and this little teeny tiny piece of storytelling. It was fun. But it also shows that this is an achievable target for a daily word count. 

So, where would that get me in 31 days? 60,078 words. But I’m aiming for 70,000. That means I have 68,062 more to go and only 30 days left, which means I'm going to need to write 2,269 words per day. Minimum.

That’s not bad. That's possible. An hour before work instead of breakfast telly, an hour at night before bed. That's definitely achievable.

What about editing and backtracking?

This is my Achilles Heel. When I draft, I constantly go back to change things. I doubt myself, I swap the order of things, switch POV and even change tense and style. But in this experiment, if I want to keep to these goals, there won’t be time. However, the Dean Wesley Smith method does allow for something called Cycling.

Cycling involves writing about 500 words at a time, then going back to edit typos and polish that small chunk. But not to change. You can expand and add details, but you're not rewriting. And once that chunk is done, it's done. It's in the bank. Then you can move onto the next 500 words and so on. 

The idea is by the time the first draft is complete, it should be ready to send out. I don’t know if I’m that brave, though, so I’ve kept February as a safety net. We’ll see. You only get one chance to sub an agent – and I don’t want to send out anything that isn’t my best work. 

So... that’s the challenge. To write approximately 2,300 words per day of clean copy to complete a 70,000 word novel in a single month with no plan and no idea where it's going.

Maybe I should have just done a few simple resolutions instead 😂

Day 1 word count: 1,938.

68,062 words to go.

BA in Creative Writing - post mortem

Three years ago, I started out on a part-time BA in Creative Writing. This was an accelerated course, meaning a minimum of 37 hours of work per week and no summer break.

credit: Chris Spiegl, Unsplash

While that's a lot to take on when you work full-time, the course seemed to be exactly what I was after. It was structured for personal development as a writer and to explore subjects, genres and formats I would otherwise not consider. 

Some of the things I've written over the three years include:

• Fantasy
• Magical Realism
• Creative non-fiction
• Podcast scripts
• Evergreen blog posts
• Poetry for Performance (and performing it!)
• Comedy scripts
  
• Writing for theatre
• Interactive fiction
• RPG game
• Romantic Comedy
• Screenplay for an animated movie (partial)
• Screenplay for a sitcom (full).
• Screenplay for a drama (full).

One thing I did enjoy was writing for film and TV. Initially, the strict formatting and strange headings (INT. CAFE - DAY) were completely alien but once I realised the creative element of scriptwriting, I found them fascinating. 

I began reading scripts. Lots of scripts. Loads of scripts. And I started writing too - not just for Uni assignments, but for my own writing pleasure. I bought some decent screenwriting software (Fade In Pro) and dove in. I wrote a couple of sitcoms and some drama and decided to continue with Screenwriting for my final portfolio. 

The result was a 45 minute drama set in Sunderland. Along with that, part of the final assignment is Market Research and to write a query letter so that, at the end of the course, I've got something ready to go.

Looking back on the three years, was it worth it? Definitely. I feel like I've evolved as a writer and have a bunch of projects buzzing in the back of my mind to get going. This is where the course is a little odd, in that the point of the final project is to focus on what you want to do from this point on. But for me, I feel like I've only scratched the surface of a bunch of things that I want to explore further. Screenwriting is definitely on the list. I've loved that, but also RPG for interactive fiction (something I've got ticking away in the background), podcasting, scripting for YouTube and stand-up comedy. 

But I've also missed writing longer form work. Writing novels is something I've loved since I was a kid, and is something I'm definitely going to continue with. There is something about the complexities and depth and sheer fun of writing a novel that still gives me a buzz. I've also taken a much deeper dive into the world of Indie Publishing and have a road-map of what I would do if I was ever start again from scratch, because, let's face it. My current backlist is like a pick'n'mix shop.

But there was another aspect to doing this degree. Something I haven't shared just yet. I'm still thinking that one over.

But in the meantime, I'm going to sit back, enjoy the time not having to worry about citations and references and grades, read a lot more, watch a bit more TV, a bit more theatre and see what happens next.

Writing Round-up and a Look ahead to 2024

2023 was a busy year writing-wise because I rewrote my first romcom in 1st person and relaunched it under a new title, Trust Me, I'm a Liar, then got to straight to work on book 2. 

While this was going on, I was also working full-time and doing a part-time degree in Creative Writing. This is a fast-track degree, so it's a lot of work and there's no time off during the summer. Year 1 was a breeze and a lot of fun. Year 2 stepped it up a notch and then in September, I started my third and final year, which made writing Trust Me, I'm an Artist a big challenge to fit in. 

But, I did it. Yesterday, I uploaded the final manuscript to Amazon. This is the first book I've put up for pre-order, so it doesn't actually go live until the 5th of January 2024. I thought putting it up for pre-order might spur me along into finishing it, which worked a treat. Who doesn't love a bit of totally unnecessary pressure? 

Looking ahead to 2024, I've got a bit of a choice. I quite like the idea of continuing the Trust Me... series, but don't really know where to take it next. Usually, all it takes is a bit of downtime and a long walk. 

As for the series and sales and such, it's been a bit tricky to get the ball rolling. And so, having come to the conclusion that I know next to nothing about how to market and promote a business successfully, I have applied to Mark Dawson's SPF Foundation, which sponsors indie authors by giving them access to the two flagship SPF courses - LauchPad and Ads For Authors, plus a whole load of credit to spend on Reedsy services, such as professional covers and editorial services. 

2024 is also the year I'll graduate with my first degree. Creative Writing with Falmouth University is amazing. When I was first looking for something like this, all of the other courses that were called Creative Writing were really just a pick 'n' mix of humanities modules with only one or two relevant to what I was interested in. The Falmouth Course is designed with creativity at the heart. Modules covered so far have involved genre writing (from horror to romance and sci-fi), writing for the stage, for TV and cinema, video games, blogs, creative non-fiction, stand-up comedy and performance poetry. It is so incredibly involved that I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing for my final piece. The final piece (called The Masterpiece) is 8,000 words of creative writing with a 2,000 word supporting essay. This starts at the end of May with a hand-in date at the end of August - so that's my summer sorted out! 

Other things on the horizon are the same things I struggle with every year. Should I blog more? Should I write under a new name? Should I start a newsletter when I barely have time to look at Facebook?

Usually, those things always come down to the same solution. The best thing I can do as a writer is to write another book.

So I guess it's time to take the dog for a long walk. 

Happy New Year!

Writing on a Chromebook

I've been playing with a budget Chromebook for the past few months and have to say, a Chromebook is a pretty good choice for writing. I'm using an Acer CB314-1H which cost me a whopping £79 (thanks to a £100 cashback deal). It has a bright, crystal clear FHD screen, a fantastic keyboard (much better than my HP laptop) and it is super lightweight.

As far as the keyboard goes, on first impressions, it seems that the keyboard has no delete key or CAPS lock, but both are available with help from the ALT key. It also seems that there is no way to turn the Trackpad off. This takes about ten seconds on Google to enable debug shortcuts, but to be honest, even with the option available, I rarely use. I catch my laptop trackpad all of the time, but hardly ever on the Chromebook.

The next thing to consider is software. There's Google docs. You can waste time searching the internet for alternatives, but this means enabling Linux and playing about and it's really not worth it. I managed to get LibreOffice working but it was slow and couldn't access Drive, which is where all the files are. But Google Docs is seamless, and a lot more powerful than it looks, certainly good enough to create a manuscript for ebook or publication. It can get a bit slow with large documents, but I haven't encountered too many problems and I'm working at just over 60,000 words, but for ease of use, I chop the document into five chunks. I use headings for titles which gives me a Document Outline (same as a Navigation pane and similar to Scrivener's Binder). I also use the comment pane all of the time when editing (a recent update allows you hide comments). Getting the work out is a breeze compared to Scrivener - you just download it as the format you want.

The next advantage is the grammar checker. The grammar check in Google Docs is amazing and picks up things that other word processors miss. It is certainly infinitely better than Scrivener, so when I get to proofing, I'd have to export to Google Docs anyway. I do like Scrivener for drafting simply for the option of coloured labels, but I can live without it. The grammar checker trumps any bells and whistles every single time because I continually miss out words when writing. Even drafting, I tend to write cleaner, stronger copy in Google Docs than anything else. 

So there you go. Yes, you can definitely use a Chromebook for writing novels. It's not the best solution. Hey, given the choice, I'd love a Macbook Pro, but those are way out of my budget, and probably always will be. For now, I'm more than happy with my £79 Chrome-buddy.