Tag: Rough Draft

Author’s Note: The Runner

Tarahumara man with headband and pole, running on a brown dirt road with green trees in the background.
Image Source: https://ultrarunninghistory.com/tarahumara/

It’s been a while since I was able to update everyone on my writing journey. However, I am happy to announce that I finished another story this year! The story is titled, The Runner, and it was formerly known as “Project Runner.” I’ve added it to my list of projects finished at the bottom of my “Signature” line. It is currently under consideration to a market. While I will talk a little more about the inspiration, drafting, and deadline for this piece, I just want to say that I’m fairly proud of myself for meeting the deadline for this work under some fairly trying circumstances. Even if it doesn’t manage to do all that I hope that it can accomplish–i.e., the compromises that I had to make due to time– I still think that I like the piece and how it ultimately turned out.

Inspiration

This piece has a number of inspirations and no one inspiration was more important than another. They all sorta’ blended together to help me come up with the story. There are too many to mention here, but I did want to talk about a couple of the more interesting ones.

The first one is the idea of a “Spear-Bearer.” I’ve always been interested in the “bo staff” and I was intrigued with the way Brandon Sanderson essentially takes a master of the bo staff and turned Kaladin into a spear-bearer in his Way of Kings novel. I, too, wanted to have a hero who was a master of the staff and created a female character (islander) who was good at the staff. However, being an islander, she would most definitely use a spear and not a staff due to the fishing community that her people would have started as in their history on the island, so I made my hero a spear-bearer as well.

Another one is the idea of a “Runner.” I knew that this hero would run the length of the island. I was already creating a running character when I happened across the development of a video game that described a Mexican culture (Tarahumara) that actually has “runners” as their warriors. The video game, Mulaka, had a developer’s diary video on the Playstation channel that helped me figure out that my “runners” weren’t warriors, per se, but more like “police/ambassadors.” They kept the peace between the human tribes and the fractious non-human “gods and demons.”

Finally, the major inspiration for this story was a tourism video on Vimeo about the island of Bali. Bali is actually known as the “island of gods and demons” and as a history minor (and some one who knows quite a bit about the world’s mythologies, I’d not heard that and was super curious to find out more. After I read about Bali a little more (I’d known of it, but not in a major way–my parents were meticulous on social studies as were my elementary school’s textbooks–while I can’t tell you exactly where every country is, I can generally point out on a map the general location of most countries in the world). I remember thinking that about the phrase “gods and demons” and taking it into my “Dungeons and Dragons” experiences and wondered what if these “gods and demons” were actually just fantasy races that were thought to be “gods and demons” because of their influence on the island. This really kicked the formation of the story into high gear and it was my need for a way to have the humans come to understand that these other races weren’t really “gods and demons” that drove me to create my hero and the story itself. I don’t have access to the original video, but here is a representative video from YouTube that shows the beauty and majesty of the island.

Drafting the Story

So, this was one of the stories that I worked on over the summer with my new way of working/writing. I took the summer to do all of the “Pre-writing” for this story. I worked on my story outlines, I worked on my character sketches, I worked on writing down a “rough draft” in my notebook (hand-written). I then transferred that hand-written rough draft to my computer. And I wrote a “possible” first paragraph for the story.

I set it aside and then I did the same for several other stories this summer. I then saw a “submission call” in which a TV personality was teaming up with a magazine to do a competition for stories that dealt with several subjects, with “gods” being one of those subjects. I decided that this would be a perfect time to go ahead and complete this project and try for this particular competition.

The deadline was fairly tight (August 31), but I was helped by the shortness of the piece. I’d wanted to make it more elaborate, but I didn’t have the time, so I stuck with three sections, a beginning section that worked as exposition and inciting incident, a second section that worked as raising the stakes, and a third section that worked as climax and resolution. I didn’t really have problems drafting the story, except that I found that I needed to add a section “3.5” in order to get to the resolution and anti-climax. I’d envisioned a much grander (cinematic) fight scene, but I just didn’t have the time. Instead of “war” between the three factions (gods, demons, and humans), I had to settle for a fairly terse personal challenge between three representatives of the factions. Still, I think that it worked out well.

Deadline

The deadline for the story was submission no later than 11:59pm on August 31st. I’d written approximately 800 words or so before I saw the listing–most of the first section. I devoted several days throughout the middle of August working on section 2. It was here that I realized that I was going to have to scale down the story I had in my mind and eliminate a couple of the longer scenes (running from village to village) in order to meet the deadline.

I promised a draft to one of the Writing Center consultants who wanted to read the story and who offered to give me feedback. Since the 31st was on a Tuesday, I worked most of the weekend on Section 3 and finished it and sent it to her so that she could give me feedback. I integrated the feedback on Tuesday afternoon and sent it off. I probably won’t hear anything back until late Sept. (if I didn’t make the 1st round), or mid-October, if I did make it to the 2nd round (2nd round are the “winners”–3 stories, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place).

Overall

Overall, I have to say that even if the story isn’t chosen, I’m happy with it. It may get a 2022 “revision” (I plan to read over all my stories that haven’t sold and revise as necessary), but mostly I’m happy that I was able to write and finish the story in a reasonable amount of time (about two months, give or take a week or two) and get it off in time to meet the deadline. I’m working on “Project Wall” now, but that is going much slower because I’m devoting more writing time to the dissertation and teaching my classes. I’ve not yet figured out how to “re-intergrate” creative writing with dissertation writing. It seems to be either one or the other (The Runner was written during the time when my director was looking over my Introduction and while I was doing the edits for the intro). My mind seems to only want to focus on one project or the other, so maybe when I finish Chapter 1 of my dissertation, I can move to “Project Wall” and make progress on it as I did with The Runner.

Anyway, there’s a look at my process for this story! I hope that it might be helpful to other writers out there! Have a great day!

Sidney

Please consider supporting these fine small press publishers where my work has appeared:

Currently Working On (September 2021):

  • The Runner (Fantasy Story–4000 words)
    Completed: 2021; Out to Market.
  • Unhallowed (Weird Western Story–6600 words)
    2021 Revision: Completed; Out to Market.
  • The Independent (Science Fiction Story–4800 words)
    2021 Revision: Completed; Out to Market.
  • Starlight, Starbright (Science Fiction Story–3500 words)
    2021 Revision: Completed.
  • To Dance the Sea of Storms (Fantasy Story)
    Prewrite: Completed, Plan & Outline: Completed, Write a first draft: Completed, Revision: In Progress

Having Summer Fun: The Writing Way

Be a Summer Writing Ninja Earn Your Black Belt by Writing Throughout the Summer. Pow! I'm going to write my way to a black belt. Cartoon karate figure with pencil and post it notes around him.
Image Source: https://twowritingteachers.org/2017/05/05/keep-the-learning-going/

In America, summer doesn’t actually correspond to the dates indicated by the calendar, or at least, not the “official” dates. Rather, like a story, summer in America has a traditional beginning, middle, and end, and those dates are marked by holidays. Here in America, Memorial Day, the day when we celebrate the fallen military heroes and veterans who have served in the Armed Forces, is actually our start to summer. This is mandated by federal law as the last Monday of the Month of May and is often called, “the unofficial start to summer,” especially in order news media. Independence Day, on July 4th, basically acts as a mid-point to the summer season in America, while Labor Day, the day set aside to honor the contributions of workers and laborers in the US, acts as our ending date (as most schools, K-12 along with college are back in session either before, by, or right after this holiday).

I set all that up to let you know what I’m terming as “summer” for this blog. Summer, to me, has always been one of my favorite times of year. Yes, the insects are often ferocious and the summer heat and humidity are legendary here in the southern US, but it is a time where both my body and mind truly feel alive. I have, in the past, done a fair bit of writing in the summer (my first published short story and article were written in the Tennessee summer heat). So, whenever possible, I also try to figure out strategies of maximizing my summer writing output.

And I’m back at it again this summer!

Rough Draft (1993)–Rough Drafting by Hand in a Legal Pad

My first ever published short story begin its life in a yellow legal pad at the old, decommissioned library at U.T. Knoxville one winter day during the Spring semester way back in 1993. I was taking a creative writing class and we did multiple genres: poems, plays (scripting), short stories, etc. I needed to turn in a draft in about a couple of days, but couldn’t think of anything, so I went to the building, which I’d just found about 2-3 week prior and started drafting. Anime had just become a thing and I’d seen an Americanized episode of DragonQuest (animated show?) that had an incredible magic duel between two wizards/magic-using characters and I wanted to write something similar.

So, my first draft, written in my yellow legal pad and in red ink (an affectation I had at the time), was written in a night (approximately an hour or so), with very little description, and mostly dialogue. I was probably less than 250 words in total. A couple of days later (or maybe the next day, I can’t recall), I went to the “real” library (the current one with all the glass and right angles), and typed up my story. While I added a little, here and there, especially in dialogue and description, the story itself was essentially the same that I’d wrote in my legal pad–just typed up and expanded slightly. I’d estimate it was approximately 450-500 words in total.

I turned it in and it was workshopped, and low and behold, I got an A- on it! The professor’s main objection was the “neatly tied-up” ending, which she would have preferred to be a little more ambiguous to reflect real life. I was over the moon! However, with the demands of the class and other classes and other assignments, I didn’t really do anything with the story.

But I did get an A in the class!

Rough Draft (2021 Edition)–Rough Drafting By Hand in a Journal

Although this approached worked, I went away from it, moving more and more to writing on the computer. Sometimes I wouldn’t even do a rough draft, but just start on the draft. I was moving away from writing with a journal and rough drafting altogether, but I wasn’t really happy with the quality of my drafts. It wasn’t until I started rough drafting more that I began to see the quality go up and I began to publish more often.

And that brings me to Summer 2021. I’m actually back to writing in journals (I’ve been buying them for a couple of years now, but not really using them for creative writing, more as a more compact to take class notes rather than the unwieldy legal pads which don’t seem to have the same quality and sturdiness of the ones I was able to buy in the mid 90s-mid 2000s). Over this summer, however, I’ve written in them pretty consistently most of the year, even if my creative writing output is less than I’d like.

However, over this summer, I’m actively writing in them creatively by trying to break my stories into 3 discrete parts and then, writing each one of those parts down in the notebook. I’m just handwriting them with any old pen that I have handy (I prefer pencil, but pen shows up better when I photocopy the notes to put in the project’s folder). Then, over the weekend, I’m transferring the handwritten drafts to the computer (much like I did in the summer of 93). Like my first story, I have permission to lightly edit, add in material, and shape it, but I can’t go crazy, more like an “adjustment” than straight on “revising.” I’m allowing myself two (2) notebook pages of handwritten material (front and back of the page for around 250 or so handwritten words). When typing, I’m allowing myself even more room, but I’d like a rough draft of anywhere between 750-1000 words. Nothing major, just enough to flesh out plot and dialogue with a hint of characterization.

So far, I’ve completed 2 rough drafts of stories this way (well, 3 if you count To Sail the Sea of Storms which wasn’t written in exactly this fashion, but was close enough that it could count), so far. I hope to write many more before the Labor Day holiday.

It’s 8pm. Do You Know Where Your Stories Are?

My preferred writing time in the summers (especially this summer) is 8pm. In the winter, I’m usually playing video games at this time as it is already dark, and usually has been for at least an hour or so. However, in the summer it is still light as the sun’s light is visible until around 9pm until summer solstice and then it is still light up until 8pm where I live well past the Labor Day holiday.

While it’s a bummer to stop playing early, I generally feel the most productive creatively in that general time frame of right after dinner, but sometime before bedtime (when tiredness and general fatigue from the day set in). For the past two weeks, I’ve been fairly consistent about the 8pm time slot and making sure to grab my notebook and put down 1-2 handwritten pages from a story that I want to do at random.

I would love to sit outside and draft as I would often sit out on the porch at that time period during my childhood, but the mosquitos are ferocious at that time of day and I’d spend more time dodging them than actually getting any writing done (they were pretty bad when I was a kid, but as a kid, you just shrug that off put up with the mosquito bites and the “itchies” they’d bring in order to play and have fun 🤩).

I’d love to get to a place where I could have a gazebo or screened patio/deck area to write in the fading summer light, but I guess that’s a dream for when I can support myself as a writer/when writing actually pays the bills. For this summer, sitting inside and actually writing is a blissful experience unto itself.

It’s 8pm. Do I know where my stories are? Yes, I do. They’re getting transferred out of my head and on to the paper, and I’m back to having fun in the summer sun!

Sidney

Please consider supporting these fine small press publishers where my work has appeared:

Currently Working On (June 2021):

  • Unhallowed (Weird Western Story)
    2021 Revision: Completed; Out to Market.
  • Starlight, Starbright (Science Fiction Story)
    2021 Revision: Completed.
  • The Independent (Science Fiction Story)
    2021 Revision: Completed; Out to Market.
  • To Dance the Sea of Storms (Fantasy Story)
    Prewrite: Completed, Plan & Outline: Completed, Write a first draft: Completed, Revision: In Progress.

Writing Log: July 2020 (7/2020)

A Bullet Journal that shows a bar graph and a smaller set of boxes that indicate days/acts written with the boxes colored in when done.
Image Source: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/365776800984668476/

Wrap-up for June 2020 (6/2020)

Before I move into new projects for July 2020, I wanted to take a moment to wrap-up what I’ve done for June 2020 to both tell you, the reader, what I’ve accomplished on a monthly basis, but also to hold myself accountable for the goals that I’ve set for myself during this time-period with the hope of becoming more professional over time and finishing more (and longer) projects as time goes on.

The Independent: Finished my revision of the project for a goal of submitting it to a market by June 30th. I originally revised it with help from the MTSU University Writing Center, but then I saw a short segment by Neil Degrasse Tyson in which he explained what a “flatlander” in two dimensions might interpret someone like us who live in three dimensions if they tried to interact with them. I tried to do the same, but with time. We live in space (three dimensional space-height, width, depth), but there is also a time component that we aren’t privy to (except to note its passing). I tried to take that idea a little further–what if there was a race who lived in a “curled” up region that we can’t interact with because it is mostly a region of time–what would that look like, how would that act, etc.? The I tried to have my “space truckers interact with this “dimension” in the story briefly. I think it came off moderately well. I don’t feel that I necessarily hit it out of the park, but I don’t feel that it is particularly bad or without merit. I feel that if I had more time, I might have been able to handle it better, but the story (from seed to this revision) is already 3+ years in the making, so I really need to get it out there. Maybe feedback (if I get any) will help me push the story into a stronger position if it doesn’t sell.

Project Arizona: Although I started on this one late (well into the month of June), I still have almost finished the 1st Draft of the story. This is where the power of working on the story consistently has helped. This is the story I will be working on for July.

Project Wall: This is the one next story will be working on. While I won’t draft it until next month, I will be working on character sketches, world history, politics, and other “Bible” documents for it all through July.

Prospectus (School): Finished my prospectus (hurray!). Even though I need to get “official” approval from my graduate director and my graduate committee, I’m going to start putting together a tentative dissertation outline and begin preliminary work on the dissertation with the books that I have available to me. I probably won’t get to work on it “formally”/”officially” until September at the earliest, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t still put together a draft so that it isn’t a burdensome to do in the Fall and Spring of next year.

What’s on tap for July 2020?

Well, there are several goals that I’m hoping to do, however I only want to talk about a couple of them in-depth here:

  • Work on 2nd Draft (and officially unveil the title) for Project Arizona. I don’t think I will dive right into a 2nd draft of this story immediately as I think I will do another project in the interim. Hopefully, though by the 2nd week of July I will be ready to start drafting a second draft. I actually like the way much of the 1st draft turned out, so I will try to begin turning those places where I’m “telling” the story into places where I’m “showing” the story (dramatizing). It will be a beginning to end look at the draft, where I rewrite as necessary. I also have a title in mind for the story and I intend to start using it once I unveil it officially.
  • Plan Project Wall: Now that I have a “rough draft” down on paper, I’m going to do what Hollywood would call “pre-production.” I’m going to try to nail down the elements of the story that may not necessarily appear in the story, but are crucial to the reason the story exists. Basically, answering a lot of What, Why, Where, When, and How questions that I still have about the story. It also has a title, but I’ll wait to unveil it.
  • Lastly, I really want to get back into the “graphic novel”/comic book writer mode. That’s a place where I feel I can grow. Eagle-eyed blog readers will notice that the “Ship of Shadows” line under What I’m Working On” hasn’t changed in a while. Now, whether the graphic novel actually is me working on that or another project altogether, I want to put together a script that I can try to market by the end of the year at the latest, so I’m planning on working on it starting this month.

Well, that’s it for now. I hope that this month will be a productive one as last month was. Have a great weekend, and if you’re in the U.S., have a safe and fun July 4th Holiday weekend!

Sidney

Please consider supporting these fine small press publishers where my work has appeared:

Currently Working On (6/2020):

  • The Independent  (Sci-Fi Short-Story)–
    Finished: Revision 1

Rating: 5 out of 5.
  • “Project Arizona” (Weird Western Story)
    Drafting: First Draft

Rating: 4 out of 5.
  • Ship of Shadows Graphic Novel 
    Finished: Script, Issue #1
    Next: Script, Issue #2

Rating: 1 out of 5.
  • “Project Wall” (Science Fiction Story)
    Finished: Rough Draft

Rating: 5 out of 5.

NaNoWriMo 2019

NaNoWriMo Calendar--Calendar with checkboxes and word count.
Image Source: https://writerswrite.co.za/perennial-nanowrimo-calendar/

So, I’ve discussed National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) on the blog before, so I won’t belabor the point too much. For those who might not have heard about it, it is a way of tracking your progress through the month (in terms of Word Count) for a novel. I believe that the Word Count is 50,000 words produced in the month of November in order to count towards getting recognition that you’ve completed NaNoWriMo for that year.

While admirable, I’ll likely never “complete” NaNoWriMo because, as I’ve pointed it out in previous blogs on the subject–November is the exact wrong month for me to try to accomplish such a lofty goal (at least while I’m in school). I have far too many school-related activities to do to even begin to work on a 50,000 word draft. Just this week, in addition to prepping a class, I need to grade 38 Annotated Bibliographies and Daily Writings, I need to research and write my own Final Project Proposal and Annotated Bibliography for the class I’m taking to turn in by Nov. 3, and I need to take care of the several school-related things (like applying for an Honor Society by deadline) that I’ve slacked on doing while prepping for Friday’s exam.

So I don’t have time to do NaNoWriMo, right?

NaNoWriMo 2019–Well, Sort Of . . .

While I don’t have time to really invest in writing the full draft of a novel, I do have time to sit down and jot down a handwritten “rough draft” of a novel. As this is, for me, “Year of the Shadow” where I write long projects based on my short story, “Ship of Shadows,” I have a strong idea for a novel featuring many of the characters from the short story. I began writing out the skeletal form of the story, but stopped at Chapter 5. I was just jotting down 2-3 sentences per paragraph, but I wanted something more substantial. What I didn’t realize is that what I was doing was developing a “plot outline” where I was emphasizing the events, but I was also creating character “hooks” that I could use to start discussing the characters.

In beginning of November, I plan to write out this plot outline again, this time going all the way to the finish of the novel. Then I plan to do the same for the Screenplay and the Graphic Novel. As a matter of fact, I think that’s why I’ve stalled on the Graphic Novel. I really want to get Tana’s “backstory” in the graphic novel, but I didn’t structure it that way and now I think I need to go back to issue #2 and rewrite it, so that it is a flashback scene, so that when she actually tries to save a fellow crewperson, we see the motivations behind the actions rather than me trying to tell it through “captions” above the panel.

Summertime and the Writing is Easy

The perfect time for NaNoWriMo, for me, would be the summer. In the summer, I have much more “free” time and I can use that for writing (even if it is in shorter bursts than I’d like). Even though NaNoWriMo doesn’t work so much for me in November, I can use it to get a “Rough Draft” of the novel together (and the same for a screenplay and the graphic novel).

Even though in January, I plan to “switch” to a different project for my “Year of . . .,” that only means that I plan to start thinking about a new story that I’ve published and how I might be able to expand them out and touch on the backstory of characters and figuring out the sequel for the story. However, that doesn’t mean that I can’t actually be working on a 1st draft for the longer pieces. My mind is good at doing “2 things” really well. As I mentioned in the gaming post, I can really do well in manipulating two different modes/registers at the same time. Any more than that, then my mind says too much, don’t want to do it.

This is what I want to avoid–getting too many projects going at any one time (& not finishing any of them). It would be awesome if I can get to next November and have what NaNoWriMo promises: a finished 1st Draft of a novel (and other projects). Once there’s a 1st draft, then 1) I’m invested and am much more likely to see the project to the end and 2) it is far easier to critique a product rather than an idea. Write now, all my longer projects have been just “ideas,” and you can’t critique ideas because you can always change it to make better–to match your vision.

So, to sum up, my goal for this NaNoWriMo is to, instead of using it as month for novel (and other longer writing projects), it is a time to “plan” out those projects and set those plans down on paper and to use the next 12 months, until next November to get those 50,000 words written.

So this is MY 2019 NaNoWriMo Challenge: 1) Rough Draft of Novel “Ship of Shadows,” 2) Rough Draft of Graphic Novel “Ship of Shadows,” and 3) Rough Draft of Screenplay of “Ship of Shadows.” If, at the end of the month, I’m able to get these done, then I’ll report back on the progress. If you never hear anything else about this until next year, then you’ll know that I didn’t get it done.

Hey, at least I’m honest! 😉

Sidney

Please consider supporting these fine small press publishers where my work has appeared:

  • The Independent  (Sci-Fi Short-Story)–
    3rd Draft of 3 Drafts 
    Drafting Section 2 (of 3)
    Mythic Mag. Deadline = January 31, 2020
  • I, Mage (Fantasy Short Story)
    Pre-Production Phase (Planning)
    Pre-Writing on Rough Draft & Character Sketch
    Mythic Mag. Deadline = July 31, 2020
  • Current Longer Work-in-Progress: Ship of Shadows Graphic Novel 
    (Sci-Fi) Issue # 2, Currently on Script Page 32
    Personal Deadline = December 30, 2019

Game Day: The Confluence of Gaming and Writing

Man typing outside at a table with his laptop, coffee, plant, water, and writing journal
Image Source: https://medium.com/read-watch-write-repeat/pursue-your-writing-projects-on-the-weekend-6fcee00848dc

Fall is here and I’m back. I’m in the midst of a flurry of last minute reading for my test on Friday. I don’t really feel all that confident about it, but it is what it is. I wish that I had perfect recall–at least on names. I really want to mention theorists and scholars as a lot of the test depends on “name dropping,” but, except for the biggest names in the field, most names are gone the moment I close/put down the book. Sigh.

Anyway, I’m back after a nearly two week drought. It isn’t that I haven’t wanted to write, but between grading and reading, I just don’t seem to find an hour in the day anymore to write. However, I get discourage when my favorite YouTubers don’t post on time, or go long periods without putting up new videos, and here I am, doing the same. So, not to be hypocritical, I thought I’d take a quick “study break” and dash out a blog post before reading some more and then going to bed.

Saturday is “Game Day”

So, Americans will get this pun as, I feel, will a lot of Europeans. In both countries, Saturday is a prime “sports day.” For Americans, at this time of year, it is “college football,” which is American football played among various university teams in which there are long-standing rivalries. In Europe, a lot of “football” matches (soccer) takes place, again with long-standing rivalries.

However, for me, Saturdays are my primary “gaming” days. Friday evenings are usually too draining, so I don’t usually start my gaming until Saturdays. While I use to bounce from game to game, what I’ve been doing these past couple of years is really investing in one game every week and really digging into it and making myself a “master” at the game (Assassin’s Creed Origins, Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands, and Gravel are all games in which I earned the maximum achievement for–the Platinum Trophy–in terms of achievement.

My “backlog” of games to be finished, however, continues to grow, so much so that I’ve come to despair of ever finishing them all before the next “generation” of consoles (i.e., the PS5) arrives Holiday 2020. Recently, however, I found myself switching between two games (God of War and Rise of the Tomb Raider, 20th Anniversary Edition) on a biweekly basis–one week I play GoW and the next week I play RotTR. One game is a Physical game and the other is a Digital Game. When I finish either of these two games, my plan is to simply pick another in the respective genre and start playing. In this manner, I hope to bring my “backlog” down to a reasonable size.

Saturday Morning = Needs to be “Writing Game Day”

My goal is to get to where I can do the same on Saturdays for my writing. Usually Saturday mornings are when I’m just starting to recover from the week, and while I don’t feel fully creative (that’s actually Saturday evenings when I’m usually watching a movie), I do feel much more more creative.

While I can “write” during that time (draft), what I’d like to be able to do is to work on Rough Drafts during that time. I feel that I can probably write (draft) on the current story that I’m working on during the week by creating scenic “milestones” to get to for that week. However, like my gaming, I’d like to have a second project in the wings that I could write out (longhand with a pen/pencil) every weekend and then when I finish the “weekday” draft, I’d move the weekend draft to that spot, start writing (drafting) it, and then move in new Rough Draft during the weekend spot.

I wanted to start that this previous weekend, but was enamored with “cleaning,” that I, of course, procrastinated until it was too late. I’m going to try it again this upcoming weekend and I hope by putting it up on the blog, I will be able to hold myself accountable for actually getting it done. I’m pretty sure two projects in writing, just like gaming, is probably going to be my limit, but, just like gaming, my goal is to shrink my “backlog” of games and writing projects down and get them finished, so any strategy that I find that I can use to do that successfully is one that I plan to implement (& hopefully use it to thrive as a writer).

Sidney

Please consider supporting these fine small press publishers where my work has appeared:

  • The Independent  (Sci-Fi Short-Story)–
    3rd Draft of 3 Drafts 
    Drafting Section 2 (of 3)
    Mythic Mag. Deadline = January 31, 2020
  • I, Mage (Fantasy Short Story)
    Pre-Production Phase (Planning)
    Pre-Writing on Rough Draft & Character Sketch
    Mythic Mag. Deadline = July 31, 2020
  • Current Longer Work-in-Progress: Ship of Shadows Graphic Novel 
    (Sci-Fi) Issue # 2, Currently on Script Page 32
    Personal Deadline = December 30, 2019

Finished Rough Draft for Project Star

the-sun
Image Source: https://www.pulseheadlines.com/stars-including-sun-born-pairs/64267/

Yay!  I finally finished something!  Last week I managed to finish the rough draft for Project Star, a Science Fiction project that has been in the back of my mind for quite a while.  Even though it isn’t ready for me to show anyone (the main character doesn’t even have a NAME yet), it still feels good to get all of the plot down on paper.

Character Over Plot

Now, I’m a HUGE plot guy, but as I reread The Belgariad and The Mallorean to keep myself sane with all the work that I have to do, I find that now that I know the story so well, I’m skipping over the plot elements and just focusing on the character elements and reliving (vicariously) through the characters the same type of fun serious-comedic dynamic that I used to have with my family before they passed away.  The point I’m trying to make is that even though I read it at first for the story (characters and plot), I keep coming back to it over and over again for the characters.  I knew this instinctively, but I figured my characters were strong enough to overcome my tendency to focus on plot over characters, but that’s not the case.

Balance in the Force

Today, I stumbled across this YouTube video that describes one writer’s preference for characters over plot (I’m adding it at the end of this entry).  While I think that he may push the needle too far in the characters camp, I still found his argument compelling.  I think I’d like to use his ideas to “balance” my writing.  By trying to get the Rough Draft done and focusing on plot, I think now it is time to stop, reflect on the character, and really dig in and give the character a history, some motivation, traits, and a real personality.

Oh, yes, and a name would be nice as well. 😉

Sidney

  • Current Work-in-Progress: The Independent (Sci-Fi Short-Story – 2nd Draft)
  • Current Work-in-Progress: Ship of Shadows (Sci-Fi Graphic Novel – Script, Issue #2, Currently on Script Page 30)

Writing It All: Roughing It, Writing It, Revising It, Submitting It

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The Writing Process. Image Source: Teachers Pay Teachers – https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Circular-Writing-Process-Chart-3304077

 

Word Count (What I’m Writing); Updated every 2-3 Days (mostly)

  • Project Ship of Shadows (Graphic Novel) Page Count: 17 (+1)
  • Whale Song Revision (Fantasy Short Story) (2nd Draft) (Researched Article, No Writing so far)

Goal = 5 Pages a week.
Actual = 1/5 Pages done so far this week. I added a page to the 1st issue last night.

Currently Reading (What I’m Reading); Updated Weekly (mostly)

  • For Fun:
    Transhuman edited by Mark L. Van Name and T. F. K. Weisskopf
    Just started this anthology – it was given to me at a LibertyCon some years ago, but I’ve just now gotten around to reading it. I may not finish it/read all the stories, but so far, I’ve read the first story and liked it.
    Traveller RPG: FINISHED!
  • For School:
    Afrofuturism (by Ytasha Womack): This book describes the academic genre of Afrofuturism (essentially African American Science Fiction that deals with social issues in culture).  I just finished Chapter 3 today and I’m at the beginning of Chapter 4 (this book has 10 chapters).
    Here is a summary from Amazon: “In this hip, accessible primer to the music, literature, and art of Afrofuturism, author Ytasha Womack introduces readers to the burgeoning community of artists creating Afrofuturist works, the innovators from the past, and the wide range of subjects they explore. From the sci-fi literature of Samuel Delany, Octavia Butler, and N. K. Jemisin to the musical cosmos of Sun Ra, George Clinton, and the Black Eyed Peas’ will.i.am, to the visual and multimedia artists inspired by African Dogon myths and Egyptian deities, the book’s topics range from the “alien” experience of blacks in America to the “wake up” cry that peppers sci-fi literature, sermons, and activism. With a twofold aim to entertain and enlighten, Afrofuturists strive to break down racial, ethnic, and social limitations to empower and free individuals to be themselves.”
  • For Research/Personal Development:
    Great Aircraft of WWII by Alfred Price and Mike Spick (for Project Skye)
    Great Aircraft of WWII is a book that I’ve had in my collection for sometime–I’ve glanced at it periodically, but never read it cover-to-cover.  Now, with Project Skye, I intend to do just that.

Writing It All

This year is all about trying different things to jump-start my writing career. Yes, I said career, as I would like to grow myself to become a novelist in addition to a scholar, but right now, one thing at a time.  I realize that I simply don’t have the time (at the moment) to devote all my energies and resources to writing, but I’m really good at focused work on 1 project at a time. My goal then is to rough draft a story, write a story, edit a story, and submit a story once per month (1 X 12).  I’ve come to the realization that I’m slow in terms of writing speed and the level of detail that I want in my writing takes time. Even these blog entries take a while to develop–the writing/drafting isn’t bad, but “tagging” it, slotting in categories, finding an image, sometimes linking to YouTube or Amazon, and well, I can sometimes spend an hour to hour and a half creating one blog post.

Roughing It

For me, this is probably the easiest part of the writing process. I can come up with tons of amazing ideas. Two Saturdays ago, I came up with 4 separate ideas that could become projects later on down the line (of course, I only wrote down 1 of these, so the other 3 still exist in the nebulous realm of my mind taking up space and brain power–note to self: need to jot them down , put them on paper, and out of my mind’s eye). My goal is to formally “rough draft” a project monthly which means that I simply write down a (possible) beginning, middle, and end for a project that month.

Drafting It

This is where my focus has been for most of the Spring and Summer. I’ve really concentrated hard on trying to get WORDS ON A PAGE. I’ve worked diligently on this and have completed 2 First Drafts and I’m working on the script of a graphic novel (1st issue in comic book terms). I’m working on getting it more consistent by doing it “daily.”  Right now, I write for four days a week (M-Th) and I try for 250 words in a session = 1000 weekly.  Now 600 words is about where I top out at in one session, so my goal is to try to slowly increase over my time in grad school to 500 words and maybe boost that to 5-6 days a week, but that’s an aspirational goal–I’m not there yet.

Revising It (“Re-visioning”)

This one is where I’m really up to snuff yet. I’ve done some preliminary research on a story that I’ve wanted to rewrite for while (every since I received feedback on it at MTSU’s Writing Center), but I haven’t had the time in the past two weeks due to the large paper that I had to write. I find myself wondering if it is even worth “saving” or if it is beyond hope and to put it away as a learning exercise and move on to revising a different story?

Submitting It

This too has been a weak area for me. Now that I understand that I’ve probably been submitting my stories too soon in the writing process, I’ve decided to slow down in my submissions. I currently have 0 stories out at the moment. This is probably too harsh. The way I’m presently writing, this is going to take me months to create a story with the level of polish that I hope (keyword = hope) will make me 1000% more competitive in the writing market while other stories that I’ve written will languish until I can get to them. I need to find one place a month and just submit a story that I feel good about and that matches the guidelines of the market. If I submit more than one, great, but you can’t be a published writer if you never send anything out to publishers.

Well, that’s all that I wanted to highlight today: showing some of places where I’m strong in the writing process and some places that need work.  Reflecting minds want to know how well they’re doing and what strategies that they can use to improve and if there’s anything that I love reflecting on, its the writing process.

Have a good day

Sidney

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I earn a small commission on the purchase of these items.

1 Little, 2 Little, 3 Little Drafts

First-Draft-Is-Just-You-Terry-Pratchett
“The First Draft is Just You Telling Yourself the Story”–Terry Pratchett.  Image Source: The Salonniere’s Apartments

Word Count (What I’m Writing); Updated every 2-3 Days (mostly)

  • Project Ship of Shadows (Graphic Novel) Page Count: 12
  • Whale Song Revision (Fantasy Short Story) (2nd Draft)

Goal = 3 Pages a week.  Working on Rough Drafting a Graphic Novel Page on one day and then writing the page on an alternate day.  250 Words a day on the Whale Song Revision–focusing on the characters this time.

Currently Reading (What I’m Reading); Updated Weekly (mostly)

  • For Fun:
    Transhuman edited by Mark L. Van Name and T. F. K. Weisskopf
    Just started this anthology – it was given to me at a LibertyCon some years ago, but I’ve just now gotten around to reading it. I may not finish it/read all the stories, but so far, I’ve read the first story and liked it.
    Traveller RPG: I started this a while ago as a book that I was reading just before bedtime, but I didn’t really make much headway.  I restarted it and I’ve just finished the introductory character generation section and I’m now moving on to the skills section and will be soon moving into the “lore” section.  This is a revamp (rules 2.0) of an old school British RPG from the 1980s.  Updated for modern times, this fairly short book still gives a great set of rules, game system, and lore that I hope will serve as inspiration for new sci-fi works in my own writing life.
  • For School:
    Ancient Rhetorics, Digital Networks: A book that combines New Media (digital rhetorics) and combines them with ideas and theories of the Ancient Rhetorics.
  • For Research/Personal Development:
    Great Aircraft of WWII by Alfred Price and Mike Spick (for Project Skye)
    Great Aircraft of WWII is a book that I’ve had in my collection for sometime–I’ve glanced at it periodically, but never read it cover-to-cover.  Now, with Project Skye, I intend to do just that.

1 Little Draft

I finished a First Draft on Friday for my newest story.  I’m really hoping that working this way will help my stories to be more competitive in the marketplace (if I’m honest, I know it won’t–too many want people want the nihilism of a Game of Thrones/Breaking Bad/Walking Dead–but at least if, and when, the stories are rejected, I’ll at least know that I’ve truly done the best that I could with them and I was just born/came of age as a writer in the wrong time).

To be succinct, my First Drafts are to tell MYSELF the story.  Yes, I do Outline and Rough Draft, but those are mainly dealing with plot.  I’m more interested in the “story map” in those two stages than I am in anything else.  The First Draft is my 1st attempt to put all those ideas into a tangible story.  And usually, I edit this draft and start submitting it.

2 Little Drafts

So, I’m not going to submit my First Drafts anymore.  Well, what am I going to do?  I’m going to work on revising other works while my “alpha” readers read the story and give me feedback on it.  Once I receive the feedback, I’m going to take those notes and try to incorporate them into a new draft that deals with characterization.  Characters are the most important part of the story and I’ve not really been focusing on them.  I’ve been making them to reflect my personal character which is fairly reserved where they need to be a little “larger than life.”  While I do intend to focus on other aspects, my primary focus on this draft will be characterization and character backstory and ways to show my characters in the best light.

3 Little Drafts

So, I’ll submit it after this draft, right?  Not planning on it.  I’d like to do one more draft that deals primarily with setting.  In the stories that I’ve published, my setting feels like a definable place where the setting in my unpublished stories feels generic and unoriginal.  I’m using this draft to make sure that I really punch up my worlds and make them something special.

Anyway, I hope to exemplify the writing process for my students and hey, if it makes my stories better at the same, well, I’m all for that as well.

Have a great day!

Sidney

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I earn a small commission on the purchase of these items.

Reorganizing My Writing Space/Process

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A messy writing desk.  Image Source: WriteOnSisters.com

Word Count (What I’m Writing); Updated Daily (mostly)

  • Project Independence Word Count: @4000 words (+203 words)
  • Project Ship of Shadows Graphic Novel Page Count: 12

Goal = 167 words (5000 words by July 1).
Actual = Rebounded after a day with no words and was able to hit Scrivener’s goal of 167 words, but fell a bit short of my own 250 word (personal) goal.   203 words written last night. 

Currently Reading (What I’m Reading); Updated Daily (mostly)

  • For Fun:
    Oathbringer by Brandon Sanderson (Fantasy Novel, Stormlight Archive Book 3) (somewhere in 850s in terms of page count–more than ¾th of the way through.  Will post a non-spoiler mini-review when I finish.
  • For School:
    Ancient Rhetorics, Digital Networks: A book that combines New Media (digital rhetorics) and combines them with ideas and theories of the Ancient Rhetorics.
    Lingua Fractal: A Rhetoric book that details the convergence of Rhetoric and Technology and how they interact in today’s world.
  • For Research/Personal Development:
    Great Aircraft of WWII by Alfred Price and Mike Spick (for Project Skye)

Reading two or three chapters in Oathbringer every day.  I really shouldn’t be, but it is so good, that I generally read it while eating dinner (and then I go back out to the library to do reading for school).   Great Aircraft of WWII is a book that I’ve had in my collection for sometime–I’ve glanced at it periodically, but never read it cover-to-cover.  Now, with Project Skye, I intend to do just that.

Game Mode On (What I’m Playing); Updated Weekly (Mondays)

  • Moving Game Mode On to its own (Mostly) Weekly Post

Reorganizing My Writing Space

I’m in the process of switching rooms–well, actually, that’s not true as I’ve already switched bedrooms.  To be more accurate, I’m in the process of cleaning up the disaster that resulted from me switching furniture from one room to another.  This process has been slowed by the fact that school has taken up time (reading, working on papers, etc.) that I would have normally used to put things into some kind of order, meaning that the house is still in a mess even though I’ve already completed the switching of rooms.  However, this has given me time to be more reflective about how I’m positioning (or not positioning) my writing files/projects.  So, I’ve tried to simplify and streamline my files.  I’ve added a simple system in my room (my bedroom) and I’ve added a more elaborate system in my guest bedroom/study.

Reorganizing My Writing Process

A while back, I bought a simple plastic divider that has five slots for holding various folders/notebooks.  I struggled with finding a use for it until recently.  I’m now using it to hold the projects that I’m actively working on.  I’ve decided to put my projects through a more rigorous drafting process: 1) Rough Draft, 2) First (1st) Draft, 3) Second (2nd) Draft, 4) Third (3rd) Draft and 5) Edited Draft.  Each slot corresponds to where my draft is in the process.  For instance, once I finish this draft for Project Independence I will place it in the second slot for the 1st Draft.  I’ll let it lie “fallow” for month or two and then write another draft of the story and concentrate on a different major focus for each successive draft.  As I complete these drafts, I’ll move them up into each successive slot until it is time for them to be submitted.  In many ways, this is just the physical version of gameification of my writing that I’m slowly developing to help me finish consistently finish high quality drafts.

Focusing on Different Aspects of the Process in Successive Drafts: The Art of Win-Win

So, for me, I build on each successive draft so it makes sense (again, for me) to use m strengths and focus on different elements of the story at each stage of the drafting process.  For me, the first thing that slots in is the plot/sequence of events in the story (& sometimes character), character (motivations, backstory, conflicts) usually comes next with a bit of setting, and then finally setting (concrete) along with elements of story telling (in media res, themes, imagery, etc).  Letting me writing space provide both a way to show definite progress as each project moves up through the divider and gets closer and closer to being ready to be submitted as well choosing different aspects of the story focus on during these new drafts is something that I hope will make my writing better as well.  I don’t really like the phrase “Win-Win” as I think that there are always downsides to something (here, it is the limited number of projects that I can realistically focus on at a time given my fairly pokey writing speed), but this is as close to a “Win-Win” situation as I can make it (and it gets those pesky folders off the floor as well, which is, a major bonus as well!)

Thanks for reading!

Sidney

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I earn a small commission on the purchase of these items.

 

Submitting Drafts Too Soon?

Terry Pratchett_First Draft_Pinterest
“The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.” Terry Pratchett (Freedom With Writing).  Image Source: Pinterest

  • Project Paradise Word Count: 357 (+244)
  • Project Skye Word Count: 1084 
  • Project Independence Word Count: 1723 
  • Project Ship of Shadows Graphic Novel Page Count: 12 

I came within 6 words of my Daily 250 word count, so I feel like this was a successful writing day.  I would have liked to have gotten to 250 words, but the place where I stopped seemed like a natural “break” in the flow of the story.

Am I Submitting Drafts too Soon?

So, working on Project Skye has been an eye-opening experience.  I’ve discovered some interesting things about my drafting process as a fiction writer.  One of the things I’ve discovered is that I need to “Tell, Don’t Show” first.  I need to tell myself the story first before I try to show it to the audience.  The second thing is that I may be submitting drafts one or maybe even two/three versions too early, and this may have to do with the terminology that I use when describing where I am in the writing process.

“Working” Draft

So, after I outline and write a Rough Draft (sometimes these are separate, sometimes not–although, lately, I’ve taken to outlining using the “Story Map” handout that I’ve mentioned before in a previous blog post, and then write the Rough Draft in the Notes App on my phone) which looks a lot like a “Treatment” for a Hollywood script.  I let that sit for a week or more and then start on the next draft, the “Working” Draft.

To me, “Working” implies that it is a “Work-in-Progress” Draft of the story.  It is, as close as I can make it, the story that I see in my mind.  After the “Working” draft is finished, I compare it to the outline and the vision that I have in my head.  If I’m satisfied with it, I’ll edit it and begin submitting.  If I’m not, it will go through another “pass” to see if I can improve on it.

“Intermediate” Draft

This process did not work with Project Skye.  What I’ve done is created “Intermediate” drafts along the way with each successive draft getting closer and closer to the story/vision in my head.  Unlike, 99% of my stories so far, I’m only on the first major scene, and already I think I’m going to need at least one more major pass at it to get it right.  I’m doing a lot of world-building and characterization in this draft, but other techniques like building excitement by starting the story In Media Res (“in the middle of things”) and cutting of extraneous details that I need, but that the audience doesn’t won’t be addressed in this draft (although I have ideas on how I might accomplish these things in the next draft).

However, normally when I finished the draft that I’m on right now for Project Skye, it would go out to various markets, so I’m wondering, if I haven’t been simply submitting my stories too early in the process by not thinking of these drafts as “intermediary” steps to getting to a more “dramatic” story that does what all good writing should do: “show, don’t tell.”

Food for thought for me on this Wednesday afternoon.  Happy writing and reading!

Sidney

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I earn a small commission on the purchase of these items.

 

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