comicbooks-and-tea-blog

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“Continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection.”

— Mark Twain

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“Turn up for work. Discipline allows creative freedom. No discipline equals no freedom.”

— Jeanette Winterson

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#55: Pacing Yourself

Welcome to another Writing Update—a weekly journal where I document the ups and downs of my writing life. This week went better than expected. I edited three full chapters and was happy with with the results. So I took the weekend off. That doesn’t happen often at all. I don’t really mind because I like writing and working on things in general. But it was cool.

With actual free time on my hands, I started working on my writing website. I was thinking about setting one up for ages, and yes, it’s finally happening! I designed a simple template this weekend, but I’ll be writing the code gradually over a longer period of time. As you may know, I’m a software engineer by day, so this quickly became my pet project. I need to be careful not to spend too much time on it. It’s one of those things that feels deceptively productive while you may be actually procrastinating by endlessly tweaking the margins around your logo.

Nothing will change here on the blog. I’ll be sticking to the same posting schedule. The purpose of the site will be to make older posts from here more accessible. Anyway, I’m excited, and I can’t wait to share with you!

Hustle

Even though I finished three chapters already, I could’ve buckled down and pushed harder. Do one more? Or a short story? I was contemplating precisely that early on Saturday morning and decided to take easy instead. Why?

There are diminishing returns to hustle.

Challenging yourself is important, but if you’re on the grind constantly, every day and night, you will tire out and have difficulties focusing. You’re putting in 10, 12, 15-hour days, but are you getting more done than if you slept for two hours longer? Working many hours is another way of feeling deceptively productive.

Many writers (Ernest Hemingway, Haruki Murakami, Stephen King) stop writing every day when they reach their word count goal even if they could keep going. Some go as far as saying that it’s essential to stop before they run out of things to write.

It makes sense. If you sprint the first 2km of a 10km race, you will be in for some difficult times towards the end. Writing a book is a particularly long race.

I could really see this when editing the middle of my current WIP. Those were the chapters that I drafted the last during particularly gruelling months where I was doing everything I possibly could to hit a deadline. I ended up throwing most of that copy away.

That’s also why many NaNoWriMo drafts end up being exceptionally bad. If you’re not used to writing 1,666 words every day and are freaking out the entire month, what can you expect? (Not saying that NaNo is useless. You learn a lot by writing terrible words too.)

So find your sweet-spot and pace yourself. That’s what I wanted to say today.

What I am reading

I’m still on Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash this week. I was reading it on the Tube the other day and came across one of Neal’s jokes. Breathing became difficult. I was struggling for the full 10 minutes until the train reached my stop. Pretty sure people thought I was having a stroke.

All I can say is that I’ve never had a book make me laugh so hard. Check it out if you haven’t read it!

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Past Editions

#54: Getting Fancy, September 2018

#53: How to write a classic?, August 2018

#52: More of the same, August 2018

#51: Ebb and flow, August 2018

#50: A novel in the making, August 2018

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How to write your book step 225

Do what you must 

Do whatever you can to keep yourself interested in your writing. 

Storytime: Recently I went to a Supanova comic convention, in Sydney. I went there to meet some actresses and actors from some TV shows that I like. When I got there and looked at the program I found we had some spare time that lined up with an author’s talk. So I went. I’d heard of the illustrious Raymond E. Feist  and I have his Magician on my shelves, not yet read. That talk, inspired the crap out of me. I remembered that I am a writer. He gave out a lot of advice in a very short panel. The most heart-string pulling, relatable thing he mentioned was that ‘to get rid of your writer’s block you have to do what is significant first.’ 

The idea is that you must go to author panels, or talk to your sister, or wash up, or shower, or quit your job, or enter that competition… whatever it is that you are procrastinating about. Go do that. THEN try write your book. This reminds me of STEP ONE the first, satirical piece of advice I ever wrote. 

Keep writing your book, but don’t diminish the rest your life to do so. 

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#44: Too little time or too many excuses?

Welcome to another Writing Update — a weekly journal where I document the ups and downs of my writing life. This week was one of the quieter ones where I could devote pretty much all my free time to reading and writing. And I did.

I often complain about not having enough time to write. If I didn’t have to go to work, I could’ve finished the blimmin’ book months ago. Stuff like that.

Once in a while, there comes a period when things are quiet. I objectively have enough time to write every day. I should be dancing around celebrating, or perhaps let my fingers dance over the keyboard and celebrate by producing thousands upon thousands of words. I wish it were that easy.

These are the moments when my dedication really comes to the test. When the usual excuses get out of the way, there nothing to hide behind anymore. Despite having enough space to write, the process still doesn’t get any easier. The blank page is still blank. First drafting still sucks. You still have to make the same hard decision during revisions. The resistance doesn’t go away.

Writing is just as hard whether you have 15 minutes or 15 hours a day to do it.

The only way to get better is to trust the process, to learn to love the grind because that’s all that there ever is. Another scene to be written. Another chapter to be revised. Day in, day out.

If you tend to blame your insufficient creative output on the lack of time, try taking some time off from whatever keeps you from writing. See what happens. You might realise that your creative output isn’t a function of time, energy or any other single variable. It’s a complex process that takes practice — a lot of practice to build up momentum over time.

Want to get to the top faster than others? There’s only one shortcut: write every day.

By the way, my dear wife unpacked her suitcase about midway through the week :). It that doesn’t make any sense, you should probably read last week’s post!

For the last month, I’ve been working through the second draft of my novel, rewriting some chapters and revising the rest. I’ve never really got this far with a book, and I have to say it surprised me how hard the revision process is.

I might discard anywhere between 30% and 80% of the copy. But I can see the chapters literally come alive through the rewrites. Things start to make sense. I absolutely couldn’t do this without having written the first draft, though. Even when I discard all, each word was an important stepping stone to the shape of the final story.

I’m about a third of the way into the draft, and what scares me most right now is that it will still take twice as long to get through the rest. If everything goes well, I’m looking at at least two more months of hard labour. And that second draft isn’t the final draft either. So wish me luck! :)

What I am reading?

Skin in the Game, which I started reading last week, turned out to be a pretty quick read. Quick and enjoyable. I used up almost a whole pack of highlighting strips to mark everything I wanted to remember. I can’t recommend this book highly enough (or any other from Taleb’s Incerto).

Then I randomly picked up a memoir by Tom Marcus called Soldier Spy. I rarely read biographies so this was a bit random, but I’m very much enjoying this first-hand account of several spy operations through the eyes of an elite undercover agent with the MI5. If you’re into spooks and those sorts of things, check it out!

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Past Editions

#43: Unpacking your suitcases, June 2018

#42: Space and time, June 2018

#41: Meditation, June 2018

#40: Journaling, May 2018

#39: Weekly planning for creatives, May 2018

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Helpful things for action writers to remember

Sticking a landing will royally fuck up your joints and possibly shatter your ankles, depending on how high you’re jumping/falling from. There’s a very good reason free-runners dive and roll. 

Hand-to-hand fights usually only last a matter of seconds, sometimes a few minutes. It’s exhausting work and unless you have a lot of training and history with hand-to-hand combat, you’re going to tire out really fast. 

Arrows are very effective and you can’t just yank them out without doing a lot of damage. Most of the time the head of the arrow will break off inside the body if you try pulling it out, and arrows are built to pierce deep. An arrow wound demands medical attention. 

Throwing your opponent across the room is really not all that smart. You’re giving them the chance to get up and run away. Unless you’re trying to put distance between you so you can shoot them or something, don’t throw them. 

Everyone has something called a “flinch response” when they fight. This is pretty much the brain’s way of telling you “get the fuck out of here or we’re gonna die.” Experienced fighters have trained to suppress this. Think about how long your character has been fighting. A character in a fist fight for the first time is going to take a few hits before their survival instinct kicks in and they start hitting back. A character in a fist fight for the eighth time that week is going to respond a little differently. 

ADRENALINE WORKS AGAINST YOU WHEN YOU FIGHT. THIS IS IMPORTANT. A lot of times people think that adrenaline will kick in and give you some badass fighting skills, but it’s actually the opposite. Adrenaline is what tires you out in a battle and it also affects the fighter’s efficacy - meaning it makes them shaky and inaccurate, and overall they lose about 60% of their fighting skill because their brain is focusing on not dying. Adrenaline keeps you alive, it doesn’t give you the skill to pull off a perfect roundhouse kick to the opponent’s face. 

Swords WILL bend or break if you hit something hard enough. They also dull easily and take a lot of maintenance. In reality, someone who fights with a sword would have to have to repair or replace it constantly.

Fights get messy. There’s blood and sweat everywhere, and that will make it hard to hold your weapon or get a good grip on someone. 

A serious battle also smells horrible. There’s lots of sweat, but also the smell of urine and feces. After someone dies, their bowels and bladder empty. There might also be some questionable things on the ground which can be very psychologically traumatizing. Remember to think about all of the character’s senses when they’re in a fight. Everything WILL affect them in some way. 

If your sword is sharpened down to a fine edge, the rest of the blade can’t go through the cut you make. You’ll just end up putting a tiny, shallow scratch in the surface of whatever you strike, and you could probably break your sword. 

ARCHERS ARE STRONG TOO. Have you ever drawn a bow? It takes a lot of strength, especially when you’re shooting a bow with a higher draw weight. Draw weight basically means “the amount of force you have to use to pull this sucker back enough to fire it.” To give you an idea of how that works, here’s a helpful link to tell you about finding bow sizes and draw weights for your characters.  (CLICK ME)

If an archer has to use a bow they’re not used to, it will probably throw them off a little until they’ve done a few practice shots with it and figured out its draw weight and stability. 

People bleed. If they get punched in the face, they’ll probably get a bloody nose. If they get stabbed or cut somehow, they’ll bleed accordingly. And if they’ve been fighting for a while, they’ve got a LOT of blood rushing around to provide them with oxygen. They’re going to bleed a lot. 

Here’s a link to a chart to show you how much blood a person can lose without dying. (CLICK ME) 

If you want a more in-depth medical chart, try this one. (CLICK ME)

Hopefully this helps someone out there. If you reblog, feel free to add more tips for writers or correct anything I’ve gotten wrong here. 

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Tips on keeping your scenes engaging

So I’ve been getting a few messages lately to the effect of “I’m not sure how to keep my descriptions interesting” or “I don’t know how to make this scene sound more interesting.” So while I could answer each of them one by one, it’s been a while since I’ve personally made a post on this blog and it’s a common problem anyway, so here’s some advice on constructing an engaging scene that I find to be helpful in my writing.

Learn how to juggle dialogue and descriptions. One of the biggest problems I see in beginning writers is they don’t yet know how to simultaneously describe a scene (what it looks like, what the characters are doing, etc.) and also keep dialogue between characters going. The trick here is not to lump all of your description in one big long paragraph and then have a long stretch of dialogue; instead, make the two weave in together so that you’re doing both at the same time and cutting out any unnecessary rambling.

Make sure you’re not adding unnecessary dialogue or details. If a scene drags, it might be because you’re spending too long on one bit of the story that doesn’t really matter. A scene where your characters are learning about the country they’re going to is fine, but don’t bog the reader down with a bunch of superfluous information about their economic structure or what the trees look like in autumn. Similarly, writing dialogue can be fun, but having your characters ramble at each other and not really get anywhere is just as boring. Everything you write needs to be moving the plot forward and be absolutely necessary for the reader’s understanding of the book.

If the content is what’s boring, try introducing a major event. Again, every scene needs to exist for a specific reason. If you feel like your prose isn’t what’s the problem, maybe ask yourself if the scene itself is dragging because it doesn’t really seem to be going anywhere. A scene in which all of your characters sit around and talk can be good for character development, but it may not feel like enough action is going on to justify it. Try adding in some sort of major event, or even ending the scene sooner so you can get to the major event that it necessitates.

If the scene isn’t working out, kill your darlings. Following up on that last point, if you’ve tried that and can’t figure out how to work an event into the scene or how to make it better, sometimes you just have to let it go. This is especially true if you’re only keeping the scene around because you really like it, even if you can’t figure out how to make it work. If I’m on the brink of deleting an entire scene from my project, usually I’ll copy/paste it into a new file, save it separately, and then cut it from my project. That way, if I decide I need to keep it, I can always pull it back up without having to worry.

Helpful links:

Writer’s Digest’s 10 Ways to Launch Strong Scenes

Writer’s Edit’s 6 Quick Tips For Writing Gripping Scenes

8 Steps to Writing a Perfect Scene—Every Time

How to write a scene: Purpose and structure

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Ostatnio zafundowałem sobie nostalgiczną podróż w czasy dziecięcej niewinności. Siedmioletnią przygodę Harrego, Rona i Hermiony, ja i Stephen Fry (czytający audiobooki J. K. Rowling) odbyliśmy w jakieś 3 tygodnie. Po latach zwracam większą uwagę na pewne nieścisłości, a niektóre zachowania bohaterów wydawały mi się wręcz niedorzeczne, jednak mimo to bawiłem się niemal równie dobrze jak za pierwszym razem. #harrypotter #jkrowling #book #audiobook #fantasy #storytel #ripfred #nostalgia