Weaving Delicious Nightmares
Writing Advice
Scheduling Your Work
11 years
Steven Raichlen’s advice to new writers includes this gem: “Set concrete goals with realistic timetables. Write a mission statement.”
Yeah, that’s what you got into the arts for, isn’t it? Mission statements. Timetables. Mmm. Yeah. Gonna need you to finish a chapter over the weekend.
I once lived on the dream that a creative life meant waiting for grand flashes of inspiration that would result in feverish, week-long sprints of productivity, followed by three weeks of absinthe and the company of actresses.
Since then, the life I chose in the meantime has moved me into project management. I’ve had to fill out endless reams of paperwork, schedules, statements and lifecycles.
Guess what?
They’ve helped me.
Schedules aren’t poison Kool-Aid. Deadlines aren’t disasters.
Raichlen continues: “When I started Island Apart, my mission was to use the skills I had acquired writing food stories and cookbooks over the years to start, write, and finish a publishable novel within a year.”
Here, he sets out his goals – to start, to finish, a publishable novel, within a year. They’re good goals! Achievable. Admirable.
For most people, completely likely to slip.
It’s still a grandiose vision with no solid dates or schemes other than “by the end of the year.” I can only tell you from my own experiences, but when I made plans like that, somehow December rolled around every year with no motion at all on the dream.
When I started FAMISHED: THE FARM, I knew I’d have to do better. I sketched out a plan that gave me space but kept the momentum going. In this post I discussed the broad timeline, but to be more specific:
With a deadline six months away, I took one month to re-read the rough draft in its entirety.
The second month, I worked on broad edits, cutting away the scenes that I knew wouldn’t translate.
In the third month, I focused on filling in the gaps left by those edits.
Month four was detailed edits, looking for places where characters’ hair changed color or they referenced events cut in month two.
Month five was dedicated to character voice: Spending hours on each character’s lines to make sure they sounded like themselves throughout the book, and, more importantly, didn’t sound like any of the other characters.
And in month six, I went through a chapter a day to tighten prose, lose adverbs, etc.
When my editors at Apocalypse Ink asked me to line up alpha readers, I gave them a firm deadline of one month. They’re my friends, yes; but I needed help in a specific time frame. In week four I planned to reach out to all of them to check on their progress, but that wasn’t’ necessary in the end.
After that I had only one month to implement their edits. I worked through those, keeping character voices and consistency issues foremost in my mind.
Was this all planned? Yes, absolutely. That planning, that schedule, let me meet my deadlines, reach my goals, and satisfy my editors. That planning got me published. It made my dream come true.
I’m still waiting on the absinthe and actresses, though.
Side Note: I read through most of the following interview with a routine level of interest before the name rang a bell … Steven Raichlen! The guy who literally started me grilling! A fellow writer-chef!
I was so excited I had to go make some ribs.
Steven. Read my book, then call me. Together we’ll make a killing.
Tracking Your Time
11 years
The winter holidays are on us. For me, that generally means two things: Assisting in art shows for Triskele Moon Studios jewelry, and the inevitable full-court press of the day job insisting on the arbitrary January 1 release of … well, whatever the big thing is this year. There’s not a lot of spare time that isn’t being put into keeping the house in order, packing and packaging, and keeping tabs on who’s going on vacation when.
That’s not to say there aren’t places here and there, quiet times when the darkness of winter lets us pour ourselves into a chair and allow a little relaxation. That relaxation, for many of us, comes in the form of consumption. Catching up on Hell on Wheels, reading the latest from our fellow authors, surfing Pinterest or sipping the second eggnog of the evening.
More than any other time of year, it’s difficult to make the time to sit down and create. The darkness saps us, the cold drives us to sit at other people’s fires rather than rekindle our own. It’s more important than ever to figure out which river our time has rushed down, and where we would rather it pooled.
People other than I have discussed the usefulness of tracking our spent minutes. On the one hand, it’s filling out yet another punchcard – and isn’t that why we wanted to write for a living? On the other … it really, really works. Realizing that over the course of three days I’ve had ten hours in which I *could* have been writing is sobering, and guess what? It’s led directly to this post.
If writing is what you love, there’s always time in which to do it. It’s time that’s easy to lose track of, though, so make a point of watching where your attention goes.
The Impact of an Author’s Mythology
11 years
The Enchanted Inkpot has asked other writers, “What’s Your Inner Mythology?”
It’s the grey and bleak time of year in the upper Midwest, when you leave the house in darkness and come home under the same. There are teeth in the wind, the trees are skeletal and bare. Nothing and nobody moves around unless they absolutely must. In days of old, I imagine you’d see the warm glow of fires from within your neighbors’ homes, but now we’ve got the cold blue flash of monitors casting them into greater solitude and darkness.
Every year at this time, I curl up and re-read the old Norse myths.
Now while Nancy Marie Brown has been blogging recently about her new book, Song of the Viking: Snorri and the Making of Norse Myths – which is being added to my holiday wishlist immediately – I go back to Kevin Crossley-Holland’s The Norse Myths every year around this time. As a child, the roaring tales of Odin, Loki and Thor were no more than another fantasy. I knew they were myths, but didn’t take many lessons from them.
As I grew older, I found more and more to take away from these myths. They talked of the end of the world, the end of all light, the twilight of the Gods – and also, they talked of its rebirth. Winter may be coming, but it doesn’t last forever. Everything you love will die, but new things rise to fill the world anew. There’s no endless night.
There’s just … every night.
FAMISHED: THE FARM is set just after Christmas for a few reasons, but all those reasons are tied to a single fact: The land I’ve grown up in speaks more in winter than summer. It can’t hide behind lush prairie grasses and dazzling green growth. It’s broad, and flat, and grey, and … well, seemingly endless. It’ll strip you down, just as it does to my protagonists.
Add Lovecraft’s uncaring universe to this bleak Scandinavian blend, and you’ll get an example of how a writer’s inner mythology can and will impact the things they write. I don’t think of myself as a depressive or downcast person (though I’ll cop to moodiness) – and yet, the colorless blend of fatalism and optimism in those stories fill my own stories as “the honey-wave fills our fortresses of poetry”.*
* – Well, I can’t discuss Norse Myths without just a little kenning.
Q & A on FAMISHED: THE FARM
11 years
Q & A at the October 2012 Launch Party
At the book signing, I answered a few questions I’d fielded from others in the past …
How long did FAMISHED: THE FARM take to write?
Since it started as a web serial, I spent three years on the very first draft – but that was only around 2000 words a month. I took my time for most of those sprints, though deadlines caught up to me more than once.
When Jennifer Brozek at Apocalypse Ink Productions asked me to turn the three years of Vorare into a novel, I took another six months to gather that material, weed through it, and collate it into a rough draft. After that it went to my alpha readers for a month, and for a month after that I was in editing / rewriting mode.
Apocalypse Ink took it in hand then, for a first read which resulted in another month’s edits* , followed by a second read for technical mistakes and a final proof by the editor herself. So all told, realistically – call it four years, with three years slow going and a quick one years’ of edits.
* – (my time, not theirs. AIP has always had a very swift turnaround to requests.)
You seem nice. Normal. Where did you get this idea?
As I’ve mentioned over at BookLife Now, horror isn’t always my genre. The request for Vorare was for a dark piece, though; and that set me to thinking about what frightened me the most. What had I seen, or read, that really disturbed me?
I was in grade school when my father took me into his library, pointed to a row of yellowing paperbacks that were placed within easy reach, and warned me: “These books here? They’re pretty scary. Stay away from them until you’re older.” Then he walked out and didn’t look back.
I had a flashlight and a book in bed with me that night, and I read The Picture in the House **. The full text is available at HP Lovecraft.com for those who are interested, but dad was right – it was nightmare fuel. The slow, easy start made it easy for me to get lured in, and by the time the old man reveals his cravings, I was shaking in the sheets.
That story kicked off the core idea for FAMISHED: THE FARM, and my other fears took it from there.
** – I’m not claiming I understood all the words Lovecraft enjoys at that age, mind. Precocious, yes; freak genius, no.
Have you lost any friends over this book?
Not that they’ve told me! I do have some thoughts on those people who support the work vs. those who relish it, but that’s a post for another day.
Got questions of your own? Email me at ivan@ivanewert.com and we’ll talk them over.
On Reading
12 years
I was an actor long before I started writing. I worked – unsuccessfully – to make it on the Chicago scene. I’d abandoned that dream, but lately I’ve signed up with a program called “Get Lit(erary),” bringing readings of fiction, drama and music to local establishments. I’ve been able to watch the most common mistakes of novice readers, and would like to address them here.
Reading is a very public performance for people who often work privately. Below are some basic tips for making the most of your readings.
1. Speak Up and Slow Down. Most people on stage feel that they’re speaking much more slowly than they actually are. You should aim for a measured pace that keeps the audience with you, not stuck behind and straining to understand. By the same token, the person you want to hear your words is the one in the back of the house. If that means raising your voice in a large venue – within reason – then be sure to do so.
2. Breathe. Allow yourself to take space to breathe between sentences, unless your scene’s at a breakneck pace. Breathe through your nose if you can (especially if you’re on a microphone), and breathe into your diaphragm, not just your chest. This is where speech originates – just above the navel.
3. Engage the Audience. There’s nothing worse than a reader who keeps their nose stuck in the book they’re reading from. You know the lines, so make a point of delivering them to the crowd. Make eye contact. Look up from the script as often as you can. The audience is here to see you, to connect with you, not just to hear what you wrote. Engaging with the crowd is the biggest thing you can do to keep them entertained, involved – and more likely to buy your book.
4. Use your Voice. When you come to a tense section of the reading, slow down and lower your voice – or speed up slightly, and raise the pitch. Which you do is a function of the scene (a lurking killer in the house vs. a race through the Ardennes), but by modifying the way you speak, you present the audience with a chance to be caught up in the action. Coming to a romantic scene? Soften your tone and draw the words out. Speak as if you were reading to a crush, or to a committed partner. Again, you know the scene – use a voice that enhances your words.
5. Always a Full House. It doesn’t matter if the hall is packed or the bookstore has only three chairs filled with the manager, a cashier and a cat. These people are here to see you. You owe them your best. It can be hard to smile through disappointment; but hey – you’re acting now, and this is all part of the act.
Have you had reading experiences, bad or good? Trade a tip in the comments section and you’ll be entered into a drawing to win a signed copy of FAMISHED: THE FARM on its October release!
