Music Magic: I'll Be Good

"I'll be good, I'll be good. For all of the times that I never could." I think it's trying to send me a message. Like how lazy I've been with my writing. Ugh.

So, I recently came across the song I'll Be Good by Jaymes Young. The melancholy feel combined with brilliant lyrics explains why I have it on repeat (also, it's great writing music). All I can say is this guy is exceptionally good. Enjoy :)

If you haven't heard of him yet (somehow), go check him out! NOW. What are you still doing here? Go go go. Shoo.

It's Been Awhile...

I feel like I've abandoned this blog. I should be charged with gross blog neglect. So, where was I?

Right. I've been in a huge writing slump since the beginning of the year (since last year actually). And I've tried to motivate myself. Tried is the keyword here.

To start with, I created a "Working" notebook for my current novel (yes, it's the same one since I started this blog back in the mid-2012, so...gulp?) to generally organize my ideas about the novel and jot down new ideas as they occur to me, including bits and pieces of conversations between characters. It's helpful, it is. It helps me figure out the story little by little. But I still don't have a complete novel. So, my guess is it only works partially?

Then, I created a "Writing Journal" on my laptop to track my progress on said current novel . And I gave myself pep talks in each entry before each writing session. The pep talks didn't last very long and weren't very effective.

Next, I created a "Story Ideas" notebook, which works great for generating ideas, but not for THIS novel because it hates me (more on the aforementioned notebook in a future post - Sidenote: Dear Future Me, if you don't write that post, I will kick your ass.)

Finally, I created an "On Writing" notebook, which contains the greatest writing quotes EVER by authors I love, to motivate me to write. I know, I do love my notebooks (I know what you're thinking right now because I can read your mind). But again, maybe this isn't enough.

So, I have to ask myself: what in this world is enough?!

The answer may be simpler than all the stuff I've tried. It's simply sitting down and writing the damn book. I know this works. I know this works dammit.

And now, I'm actually doing NaNoWriMo in an effort to FINISH this godforsaken novel (I chickened out at the last minute and instead of starting something fresh and new, I decided to give said current novel a go because dammit).

I actually kind of know what happens next now that almost all the major characters (almost all) have made their spectacular (or not-so-spectacular) entry and I'm getting a handle on their motivation and stuff. So, onward (I actually typed "onword" before editing, so maybe that's a sign?).

It's just occurred to me that maybe what I've been trying to do with my notebooks is simply searching for inspiration and I know for a fact that inspiration lies in actually just doing the work (because it likes to find us working when it comes).

That's all for now, folks! I'll go and try to slightly raise my pathetic word count so far.

Music Magic: I See Fire

Last year in April (wow! it's been a year already), I wrote this post about listening to music while writing. Around that time I'd decided to stop doing both things at the same time because I felt the music was artificially influencing the stuff I was writing, and I wasn't comfortable with it.

But SO MUCH has changed since I wrote that post, including me as a person as well as my taste in music. And recently I've started listening to music again while writing. Without feeling that it's leading my story away from the path I'm hoping it will take.

In the past year, I discovered that my "writing music" needs to be the kind that makes me want to conjure worlds into being. That makes me dream relentlessly. And most importantly that suits the mood of the story I want to create.

And that is the kind of music I've been listening to lately. I hear that wordless writing music helps too (it actually does). I might be posting links to some of them from time to time.

Lately, the song I See Fire by Ed Sheeran won't leave me alone.

I've been humming it over and over (and currently have it on repeat). There's just something about it. It moves me, tugs at something inside of me. And indeed, I see fire.

It turns out that my alter ego* was right all along. She suggested that on the contrary the fact that music might influence my writing could be a good thing. And it is. I just had to start listening to the right kind of music.

* Last year, I met someone on the wilds of the Internet and tend to think of her as my alter ego because we sometimes get into each other's heads (that is not creepy at all). She's totally real and not a figment of my imagination. I just haven't met her in person, 'kay? 

P.S. Sara, if you're reading this, please don't shoot me.

How To Not Plot A Novel

I’m basically writing a novel where I don’t know what happens next as I write each scene. For anyone writing seriously, this is terrifying. I touched on this before in this rambling post about finding the story.

Why don’t I just plot beforehand, you ask? Plotting just doesn’t work for me. I attempted it painstakingly before (on a very different version of the current novel) and the storyline in question became so contrived and ARTIFICIAL that I just lost interest in it and chucked it. I don't regret the wasted words though, because they taught me how not to write this story.

As hard as I try to plot my current novel from start to finish or even the next few chapters, it just WON’T HAPPEN. But wait. Stop. Do I need to plot at all?

“Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” – E.L. Doctorow

Here’s the thing. I find that plot germinates from scene to scene. This means that with each decision I make on the page concerning my characters and important story elements, this impacts how the story will unfold later on.

Though I don’t outline my chapters before writing them, I do outline them afterwards so I can keep track of what has happened so far in the story. An outline is just life-saving when you temporarily stop working on a story to focus on something else and then decide to come back to it months later.

Also, when I’m in the middle of writing a scene, I tend to get ideas of things that may happen in future scenes and I make a point to jot them down so I can explore them later. And Mr. Picasso makes a very important point here:

“Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.” – Pablo Picasso

When I’m working on a story, I’m always thinking about it even during the time when I’m not actually writing the story. And this is when I tend to get revelations about so-and-so character and discover plot holes.

Sometimes, I find that there are several possible pathways down which my story could develop. In that case, I try out a couple of experimental versions (even if there is a chance that I might not keep it) until I find one that works for the story. And I never know where each version could lead me, but all I know is that it could lead me to someplace I never expected to find (Sparta! Or you know. Someplace cool).

Even discarded scenes are not a complete waste of words (and time) because maybe there are elements, bits of descriptions or even entire characters that might be worth keeping. In fact, an important character from my current novel emerged that way (from an experimental storyline that I’m not keeping).

At some point, it occurred to me that the only way to finish writing this book is to keep writing it until it's done.

Recently, I came across invaluable writing advice by the brilliant Timothy Hallinan and apparently, he doesn't outline.

Also, here's a hilarious post about writing a novel: The Nine Stages of Dating a Novel by Tahereh Mafi (a guest post on Nathan Bransford's blog).

P.S. I'm in the grovelling stage right now. Hundred more Word pages to go, before I finish some semblance of a first draft (or should I say "experimental" draft? O_o).

The Right Word

We, as writers, sometimes lose so much time looking for the right word. Most of the time, it is right under our unsuspecting noses. Sometimes, we look down on it because it looks too simple and we are ashamed to use it because we think "we can do better". But that's because we forget that there is beauty in the humblest of words. I just wanted to share a couple of quotes to begin this new year.

"The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug." – Mark Twain

"Remember that the basic rule of vocabulary is use the first word that comes to your mind, if it is appropriate and colorful. If you hesitate and cogitate, you will come up with another word – of course you will, there’s always another word – but it probably won’t be as good as your first one, or as close to what you really mean." – Stephen King (On Writing)

So, on this day, let us make the solemn promise to leave our shame behind and dare to use the right word. And speaking of lightning bugs, here's a short story by Sara Seay.

My Fear Of Failure

I'm an idiot. I just had this sudden realization around an hour and a half back. Today I've had this big uneasy feeling. Last night (or rather very early this morning) I went to sleep uneasy. I woke up uneasy. I spent the day uneasy.

I went for a run after I woke up today morning (something I NEVER do), because I felt I needed it. I thought maybe it would clear my mind. I woke up one hour before my alarm clock, despite clocking in less than six hours of sleep.

I couldn't put my finger on what was up with me the whole day until that light bulb moment. I know I've been avoiding writing for the past few days. Always making excuses. My resolution to write everyday if only for ten minutes hasn't lasted more than a few days. I've been ignoring it. Pretending it doesn't exist because I told myself I have more pressing matters at hand. Then I stopped and asked myself: what the hell am I doing?

Then, more questions. What is my passion? The written word - writing and reading! But why am I doing everything I can to avoid those two things? Am I lying to myself? Maybe my true passion is something else. Then, I thought: no. These two things have always brought me joy. What changed then?

My perspective, I think. Before last year, I never thought of these two things as anything less than an active hobby and they were nothing but pure pleasure. Writing was something that I was doing for myself. From the minute I started to consider writing as a possible career, it increasingly became a chore. Why?

Because there was this new pressure to succeed (pressure that wasn't there before - pressure I put on myself, I have to add). However, the pressure kept rising and rising. It rose so much in fact that writing became so stressful at one point last year that I had to stop for more than two months before I gathered myself again.

I think this whole situation originates from this: my fear of failure. As difficult as it is to admit to myself, I'm afraid to fail at writing, so I constantly delay writing and even when I do write, I feel that it's not good enough. But by losing so much time being scared, I'm losing the opportunity to follow my dreams and my heart. The thing is, I realize I'm the only person holding myself back. And by doing so, I'm whittling my life away little by little. I'm sabotaging myself, like someone I know likes to say.

I watched a great movie today. It basically had this one line that I find so liberating: "Don't run after success. Run after excellence. Then, success will come running after you on its own."

So, I've decided I'm going to be afraid no more. Even if I fail at writing, at least I will still have the satisfaction of knowing that I gave it my everything. And I'm determined to make writing stories fun again. Even if no one wants to read them.

And as Robin Sharma says in this blog post, the antidote to fear is action. I'm going to post my next short story. It's not perfect. It's not even pretty (and I'm pretty sure it's badly written). But it is what it is. And by posting this short story, I will be battling my fear actively.

Story Magic

When you’ve been writing a particular story for a very long time, sometimes it’s hard to continue. So hard in fact, that even before you sit down to type, you want to drop it and do anything else. ANYTHING ELSE. In short, it becomes an absolute chore to continue.

I think writing is so hard because we pour so much of ourselves into it and sometimes, a story will only take you so far before the only thing left to do is to set it aside and carry on to the next story. But eventually there comes a story that won’t leave you alone no matter what. It keeps nagging at you to write it, to finish it. But you’re terrified to write it because you’re afraid you’ll botch it up (and when I say "you", I mean me). And it lies lingering there like that ghost you pretend you don't see.

So, how do you find your way back to the magic that drew you to this story again? Is it even possible, you ask?

You daydream. You let your mind wander about the story ideas and its characters. You imagine the scenes that you were once beyond excited to write. And you keep feeding your imagination with stories of all kinds by reading as much as you can.

But most importantly, I think spending regular time with the story becomes crucial. Stories, like relationships, are high-maintenance because when you neglect them, you start to lose them, their threads and what made them special to you in the first place.

Schedule regular alone time with the story if only to stare off into blank space and daydream about it like it’s some long-lost crush. Hopefully, you will be flooded with a rain of ideas (to self: that's a horrible metaphor) or you know just think of a couple of things that can help move it forward.

Finding The Story

Stories are found things...relics...

Once upon a time, I started a novel, dumped it after sometime and started all over again...only to dump the second version (pretty much permanently) and rewind to the original version. Why? Because the original story elements wouldn't leave me alone. Why again? Because there is a reason behind this (which I didn't realize only until recently).

After returning to the original version of said novel, I've been struggling A LOT with it from Chapter 4 onward. Let me decrypt that. By "struggling", I mean that I wrote scenes that did practically nothing to move the story forward, only to chop them off, backtrack and then do it all over again.

It's like doing a step dance from writer-hell (wait, a céilidh dance?), where I go two steps forward but one and a half steps backward. Then after a while of doing that dance, I took a step back from the novel and asked myself: what the hell* are you trying to do? And this was when I had something of a light bulb moment: I'm trying to find the story.

More specifically, I'm trying to find the true form of the story, not just a phantom of that story. And for that, I have to be willing to explore uncertain avenues and dig in unlikely places.

As of now, I don't know the whole story. I know what kind of story I want to tell (or at least I think I know) and I know some of its core elements. But I don't know all of its core elements. And this is what I'm really trying to do: find the missing elements so that I can connect the dots and draw the whole picture.

And lo and behold, the brilliant Laini Taylor just did a fantastic post about her writing process, which she likens to a dance between the known and the unknown. This woman. She must be divine or something. In her post, she talks about how she doesn't outline her stories before writing them simply because she doesn't know what's going to happen beforehand and she also mentions the terror that accompanies her process.

Musings about Music and Writing

Ever since I heard this piece in the Game of Thrones Season 3 trailer, I haven't been able to stop listening to it. It's called Bones by MS MR and pretty much won't leave me alone.

My favorite bits are: "Midnight hours, cobble street passages, forgotten savages...forgotten savages.." and
"These are hard times, these are hard times..for dreamers.."

I swear, it gets better every time I listen to it. There's a mix of dreaminess, bitterness and darkness in it that makes me obsess over it appeals to me on a very visceral level. Sometimes, music triggers powerful emotions that I can't quite explain and this song is one of those.

To me as a writer, music is powerful and beautiful and inspiring and a very essential part of the creative process. It is a muse of sorts, if you will. I generally tend to associate songs (some quite strongly so) with a particular story or a particular character or one character's relationship with another character. So, music helps to inspire me while I think about the story, the characters as well as the mood I'm trying to create. But when I'm actually writing and listening to music at the same time, that's a different kettle of fish.