Experimental (Mental?) Speed Writing

I’m about to embark on an experiment (woo, sounds ominous!) I am literally on the brink of finishing my new novel, Jinn Nation; and with other projects looming and real life annoyances threatening to consume my time in the next week, I’m going to try and push myself to complete it in the next couple of days. The grand finale chapter may or may not get written – I don’t want to rush this part and my ideas about how it will play out are still fuzzy – but I want to at least reach this point. I’m three chapters and roughly 10, 000 words away from my goal. 5, 000 words a day doesn’t seem impossible, especially because I plan to use Write or Die (see my last blog post if you don’t know what this is).

I’ll be starting this today and continuing on Monday – Follow my progress on Twitter!

But what the hell is this novel about? I hear you ask…

Jinn Nation picks up the story of the vampire Dylan, right where I left him at the end of Dunraven Road, ostracised from his kin and witness to their demise. Dylan takes immense joy in immortality and delights in freshly-let blood; using his tall, toned physique and mesmerising azure eyes to lure countless unsuspecting mortals to untimely deaths.

Having never been alone in his long unlife, he becomes obsessed with the idea of belonging – an obsession that leads him to a preternatural race of creatures called the jinn. The jinn were human once, just like vampires. Unlike vampires however, they need to eat the gleaming, still-warm organs of unwitting victims in order to maintain their incredible strength and agility.

Dylan joins the jinn and for a time he revels in this new companionship, never telling them the secret of his vampiric origins. Then he meets Christa – a strangely childlike woman with the power to control minds and read thoughts; and is instantly intrigued. Together they set out on a blood-soaked road trip that crosses the United States and the Atlantic Ocean; finally leading them beyond the thinly veiled doorway to the mysterious Inbetween.

…Wish me luck

Maddening Mental Lethargy – Part Two

As promised, I have dutifully tried out Write or Die, a web-based programme designed by the aptly named Dr Wicked that claims to put “the ‘prod’ in productivity”. The verdict is… I rather love it, actually

The programme is really easy to use. You simply input how many words you want to write and in which length of time (I selected 2000 words in 2 hours), and choose from a selection of increasingly fiendish modes which include Kamikaze and Electric Shock. Kamikaze Mode is particularly evil as once the screen glows red, if you still haven’t typed any new words it starts to delete what you’ve already written. I used Normal Mode and a Strict grace period, which still makes the screen flash red if you stop typing but plays Rick Astley’s Never Gonna Give You Up over and over if you don’t continue – which in many ways is even worse than deleting your work (does this mean I’ve been Rickrolled?!). My husband hated it anyway, so much so that after the fourth or fifth blast of Rick’s dulcet tones, he had to leave the room (oops! Heh, heh, heh).

Write or Die really worked for me. Of course, I did discover it’s very easy to cheat just by pressing the space bar and making the programme believe you’re typing real words… but why would you want to do that, hmmm? The only downsides are you can’t properly format your work as you go, and you have to remember to copy and paste it into Word (or whatever you’re using) before closing the page down because it doesn’t do it for you (and I’d imagine if you lost everything you’d written after listening to Rick Astley multiple times, you’d seriously consider some form of self harm). But it’s free

Sooo… I promised to share more ways of overcoming maddening mental lethargy (or lazy blocked writerism). Some of these are things I’ve devised myself. Others are little tipettes I’ve discovered on my internet travels. Enjoy! And if you’re currently suffering from a crippling mental malaise, I sincerely hope one of these works for you.

* Spend some time writing something completely different, like a blog post or an article – if only to remind yourself that you can write. It’s also amazing what ideas can be shaken loose just by putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard), whether you’re working on your novel/story or not.

* Put your novel down and read someone else’s. This might sound silly, but sometimes when you become focussed on finishing your own novel, you stop reading regularly. There’s a reason that the standard answer to the question “how do I become a writer?” is to read a lot and write a lot. Reading helps to inform our ideas about the world as well as about literature. It can inspire us and widen our vocabulary, thus making you a better writer (or at least a writer with more ideas and enough drive to finish their own damn novel).

* I like the idea of lucid writing – of sitting down for half an hour before you begin work on your current novel and scribbling down the first things that come to mind, just to warm up your writing muscles. I’ve always thought it’s a great shame to waste anything though, least of all something creative, whether or not it’s barely legible scribbling (if you haven’t noticed yet, I can be hideously anal). So why not take this idea and start a diary, instead? Write in it every day, or before every writing session, and get the words flowing ready to transfer to your novel.

* Don’t force yourself to be a certain type of writer, everybody does things differently. Some can write a consistent 3000 words a day and turn out two or three books a year. Some take lots of time out in-between projects to think about their story, to plan and research and take intricate notes. It takes time and lots of practice before you find out what sort of writer you are. Try different methods – write at different times of the day, set word limit goals and see if you can stick to them, make timelines and plans, interview your characters – find out what works for you and then be proud of your personal method, don’t listen to others if they try to tell you it’s wrong. If you write 500 good words a day, you’ll still end up with a completed novel eventually.

* Any fellow knitting geek will know the difference between an epic project and a mindless project. Epic projects take lots of time and concentration, often involving cables, intarsia or unusual stitch patterns. Mindless projects, on the other hand, can be completed in front of a book or the TV. They are simple, easy to remember patterns that can reignite the simple joy of knitting, of pulling one loop through another, when an epic project begins to feel impossible or endless. This same theory can be applied to writing. If your epic project (or novel) begins to feel like a never-ending odyssey, start writing something fun, even ridiculous. I took time off from writing my first novel, Dunraven Road, to start a novella about zombies in love called The Undead Alliance. I wrote it quickly because I enjoyed every minute of it, and I was able to remind myself why I had wanted to be a writer in the first place. Consequently, Dunraven Road was finished soon afterwards and The Undead Alliance was published by Twisted Tongue magazine.

Does anyone have any tips of their own they’d like to share? What gives you a mental kick up your back side?

Maddening Mental Lethargy – Part One

I once wrote on this blog that I wished someone would invent… “a machine that could download the stories in my brain, bypassing the agonising process of eeking it out line by line and criticising it as I go…” Well, I’ve been wondering about this. Not about the existence of such a machine (come on, they still haven’t invented those Back to the Future hoverboards they promised us!), but why I feel the need for one. After all, isn’t writing (and having that writing published) a vocation that millions of people around the world would love to be in a position to do? Why then, is it sometimes so hard to sit down and actually do it?!

You might have guessed that I’m currently in this same uncomfortable position – I have the ideas and the notes but I’m struggling to find the will to assemble them into something resembling the last part of my new novel. Which is annoying to say the least, if only because it is the last part; the portion of a novel where the author should be hurtling towards the finish line with a clear idea of how it will end, desperate to see the final sentence laid down. I wouldn’t call this predicament writers’ block. That would suggest I simply have no idea what happens next and that isn’t true. So what exactly is this malaise?; this maddening mental lethargy? In a quest to overcome it once and for all, I decided to rake through the net and see if I could come up with a solution. Interestingly, I found several Hence, in an effort to actually finish my bloody novel (I had planned to have the first draft completed by the end of October after all…) I’ll be trialling some of them. If nothing else, it will give me something else to blog about (you wouldn’t believe how boring my life actually is!)

The National Novel Writing Month website seemed a good place to start my search for a mental lethargy cure. I think most people will have heard of NaNoWriMo, but just in case you haven’t… It’s a yearly challenge to write a 50,000-word novel from start to finish in the space of just a month. Some people participate and complete their 50,000-word goal every year, which I find highly commendable because I tried it once while I was still at university and flaked out somewhere around the 15,000-word mark. Anyway, this type of pressure-intense writing has obviously led to the sharing of tips on the NaNoWriMo forums in order to help others achieve their word quotas. Here are some of my favourites (I haven’t included any names. I hope the very helpful WriMos whose words I’ve pinched don’t mind my reproducing them here…):

“Do something crazy to change up your novel and get it going again. Have a…a…fairy! Have a fairy come to your protagnoist (sic) and give them a gift of great courage so that they can…save…the fairy princess?”

This is a really good idea Now, what weird and crazy thing can I have happen to darling Dylan? (heh, heh, heh…)

“I find writing in longhand about a page (if you’re writing on a computer like I am) when my eyes are tired or can’t access a computer, then I type it out, but adding in stuff. You can double what you’ve written, but keeping on task!”

I actually do this sometimes when my brain’s being particularly stubborn. I think it helps because I can change my location and move away from the PC screen. I never write as much in longhand as I do when I type (my hand starts to cramp!), but it gives me a jumping-off point for the next time I sit down to write.

“I believe my saviour will be the Write or Die application. If you haen’t (sic) come across this it’s brilliant. You can set it to normal or kamikaze (I choose the latter because I like to think of myself as hardcore, hmm). You enter your desired word count for the session and how long the session will last then type like buggery. If you are on normal setting and you stop typing for too long the screen goes red and then an excrutiaingly (sic) annoying noise of your choice (choose from such wonders as babies crying, devil’s violins or an air raid siren) blasts from your computer until you start typing again. On kamikaze the screen goes red then it starts deleting what you’ve written one word at a time. Also you can’t access anything else on your computer whilst it’s open. I find it motivates me enough to blast out upt (sic) to 2000 words an hour.”

Okay, this I have to try.

“What I’d suggest is picking out a day, when (if you work) you have the day off – be it Sunday or whenever – and (if you ave (sic) other commitments) you either have none or they are not compulsory. Set that day aside, clear it completely. Set out a timetable. An hour of writing, have an hour procrastinating, and hour of writing… And so on! (please, please, leave time for food and drink and toilet breaks. We don’t want to be too drastic) It really helps, believe me.”

Planning time for procrastination… Genius!

So, after much perusal of the NaNoWriMo forums (yes, when I should have been writing!), I’ve decided to give the Write or Die method a go. As a bonus, the noise of an air raid siren blaring out when I stop typing will startle my poor unsuspecting husband and thus amuse me endlessly. I’ve checked out the website and you can either use the free web based version, or download the desktop edition for a rather nominal $10.

Wish me luck! A review of this imminent insanity will follow shortly