Stuck (pt. 1)

21 Jan 2015 Leave a comment

by Tiffany M. Davis in Blogging, Book Releases, Brain Droppings, Fantasy, My Stuff, NaNoWriMo, Speculative Fiction, The Craft, The Process Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

I haven’t blogged in quite some time. An emergency hospitalization of my grandmother (for whom I’m a caretaker) which required me to spend both nights there; followed by week-long bout with the flu (which I probably picked up from the hospital, but I digress) doesn’t bode well for the creative process. Even as my full recovery drew nearer, and I did my usual “write it in your head” part of my process, I faced a crisis that strikes fear in the heart of every creative:

I got stuck.

Once I was able to stop sleeping for long periods of time, and managed to stop coughing up a lung, I tried to work on the rewrite of next book in my Bastille Family Chronicle series, which is Dominic’s story. I made major changes to his love interest, which required more research (shoutout to Cynthia and Ekaterina for the gamer info!)–which required a recalibration of the plot, especially after I added some different tension points to the love interest. But the flow still wouldn’t come.

Then I pulled up the first draft of the novel I started for National Novel Writing Month 2012. This was a more serious book (the BFC series are contemporary romances), which take longer for me to write. Tinkered with that some, made some progress. But I felt guilty because I wasn’t working on the BFC book, which my readers are looking for by spring.

Then I managed to write a science/speculative fiction/fantasy (SFF) short story for submission to a magazine. The story was based on an SFF book I started back in…2006, or somewhere around there. Anyway, that was kind of fun, and made me think about revisiting that book again. And the guilt over writing another BFC book took over.

I had to ask myself why I felt so guilty. Was the thrill gone from the series already (I’ve only published the first one, and have five more to go)? If so, why? I’ve gotten positive word-of-mouth feedback from readers so far, and the excerpt seemed to work toward introducing me to a broader audience of fans. My readers are looking forward to the next five books, as well as a stand-alone spinoff. The book is selling, again via word-of-mouth. So what’s the problem?

I thought long and hard about it, and my conclusion wasn’t pretty. And I have The Ninja to thank for it.

More on this in a later post. Thanks for stopping by.

From the back to the middle & around again (NaNoWriMo/NaBloPoMo: Day 3)

02 Nov 2014 1 Comment

by Tiffany M. Davis in My Stuff, NaBloPoMo, NaNoWriMo, Suspense/Thriller/Mystery, The Craft, The Process Tags: , , , , ,

Total word count goal: 50,000

Total blog post goal: 30

Today’s word count: 1,828

Today’s blog count: 3

Total words written: 6,772

Total blog posts: 3

Today, I barely got in my designated word count: after walking almost seven miles (I’d been slacking on my exercise lately) and a glass of wine with dinner after a long, hot, shower, I had to really push myself to get my writing in today. Or rather, to get it down on paper/screen/keyboard.

[sidebar: when I do these videos, they are no filter: this is how I look when I am writing at home, and more appropriate for the nature of NaNoWriMo/NaBloPoMo. I am not glamorous during the writing process. Thanks in advance for your cooperation. :D]

Today was a patchwork kind of writing day: I was all over the plot. I wrote some of the end, some of the middle, some of the beginning–a new beginning, since my old beginning was the prologue, and is now chapter one. It was a bit disconcerting, jumping around like that, because I’m a pretty linear person: from point A to point B to point C. But if there is one thing that I’ve learned in the years of doing NaNoWriMo and also writing in general, is that you don’t have to write the book in a linear fashion from start to finish. It’s okay to write the beginning, or start in the middle, write some of the end, jump back to the end of the beginning or the beginning of the middle (or the beginning of the end). You will have a chance to knit all of the edges together into a cohesive novel when you do your rewrites. And you will rewrite it, more than once (I usually do 2-3, and sometimes four, drafts per book), if you are serious about your writing.

Still, I made pretty good progress; as always, there is the caveat of seeing how the rest of the month will progress as well. I made notes on where I want the plot to go next, which will be interesting.

I’m tired from my long exercise excursion today, and the wine didn’t help; I may nod off during tonight’s basketball game like I did last night (shoutout to the NBA League Pass archives!). I hope you all are making progress on your books, or blogs, or both.

Thanks for stopping by.