Apologies and Blogging

So I know better than anyone that I haven’t exactly kept this thing up. But the point is that I’m here to do exactly what I’m preaching against, so let’s get to that instead.

Yesterday I found a link to an article talking about how the new My Little Pony show is racist, homophobic, and condemns being smart. (Actually I was linked to the rebuttal, but I read the both of them.) The person linked to a couple other articles they had written and I soon ended up looking through their whole backlog.

As I did I, in addition to being annoyed that anyone could think MLP of all things has some sort of eeeevil intentions, noticed that they’re sensationalization continued into the other fields. They take as a personal affront every instance they can find against women or different ethnic groups.

I have no problem with people getting outraged at that sort of thing, it’s perfectly normal. The sort of people who watch with bated breath for the opportunity for outrage are a bit unnerving, but that’s their own choice in any case.

As I read the reason I started thinking of this was I took issue with their actual blogging practice. Most of the time their posts seem to just exude righteous indignation, but I don’t think they should. They can’t decide if they want to be professional, keeping themselves as objective as they can to fairly report everything, or more like a true blog. But if they are aiming for the latter I have to take issue there too. I read recently that the greatest strength of a blogger is voice, but they didn’t really have one. (A multitude of guest bloggers didn’t help to define these persons in my eyes.)

Either way, it felt to me like these women wrote only in anger at whatever fresh atrocity they’d uncovered, often just link-dropping to invite others to share in the outrage. This isn’t meant as an attack on them, and I tried to not just do the same thing, but once this whole blog reentered my consciousness I felt like I owed it to my own little slice of internet to give it some attention. Hopefully in the future I’ll be able to pay it some more.

(For those interested the people who inspired me to put this up were ‘Sociological Images’ at the Society Pages, though I think I first found them on a women-oriented blogging site.)

And again, not saying they don’t raised good points, only that they seem to eager to jump on the bad. If they’d put up a positive article once in a while (though I admit to only looking through four or five pages of backlog before writing this) I feel as if I’d be far more inclined to like them.

Outlining: Picking the Right Way

How important is outlining?

That depends entirely on who you ask. Since this is my blog I’m going to ask myself, and my answer is: Not too much at all.

To clarify, I do not outline. It doesn’t work out well for me. Way back when I would try to outline by pretty much writing down what plot I had so for in my head and brainstorming from there. Invariably I would end up getting more and more specific into what I want to include, like little pieces of dialogue or line fragments, until I devolve into just writing the story right there.

Nowadays I’ll write down the ideas I have as I have them when I write, but I just can’t do it. It’s tedious and too vague for my tastes. If I make it detailed that just takes the fun out of the actual writing. Going back to embellish little pieces I can do but an entire book is too much.

This isn’t to say it isn’t important! Most everyone will not be able to remember every detail of their work in their heads — I actually started ‘outlining’ (if you can call it that) because I would go back to look at my old pieces of work and have no clue at ALL what the plot I’d had in mind was. It was a pretty frustrating experience and I learned my lesson. (Believe me, just have a Notes section or something to write down all those ideas for the story’s direction, it’s worth it.)

The important thing to know about outlining is that there are two types of writers: Planners and Pantsers. (Or outliners and discovery writers or whatever name you give them.)

The Planners are those people who need to outline, Branderson* (for instance) is an ideal Planner in the sense that he must know the ending for his book before he can start writing it. You could say that the Planners are the ones who need to have the goals and milestones to do their work, and it pays off. If you’ve planned your novel, or even your entire series, out before you start writing it the story will be much tighter and there’s a higher chance of it being better on the first try.

Pantsers are those that fly by the seat of their pants — hence the name. I’m one definitely, Pantsers are the impatient people who get to thinking about their books and must dive in to the actual writing. Or they can’t focus on an outline because it doesn’t engage them like a story. Or they prefer to just build up the world and characters and then turn them loose. It’s hard, nigh impossible, to be a true Pantser. Really this is more like a line with these two types as the points at either end. The trick is figuring out where you are and how knowing that helps you.

Besides the obvious help of vastly improving the outlining process once you know your type you can look for helpful resources. There are tons of outlining workshops, or groups who will give con-crit on an outline. Resources for Planners abounds, but Pantsers not so much. So, sorry Planners but I’ll focus on the Pantsers now.

There’s the obvious tip about writing down your notes on everything. And I mean everything. Details about the story, characters, setting, everything. If you don’t lose those or have to drop a subplot because you just cannot remember where you meant for it to go than your story loses some of the depth it had before. Even if you aren’t writing, when you have an idea you should jot it down immediately — and that’s a hard habit to have. Just earlier I had a really good idea for a character dynamic, but I was complacent because my word processor was right there and can’t remember a bit about it now. In the words of everyone’s favorite professor, CONSTANT VIGILANCE! Since Pantsers are primarily defined as getting ideas during writing rather than before losing those is far more devastating.

At this stage you only have to find your sweet spot on the line. Bluntly put: Outline until you have to start writing — the real difference is in how long it takes for you to hit that spot. And you should try it both ways. I’d suggest, in short story or novella form, to try writing two stories. One you MUST plan completely before hand and the other you mustn’t plan at all. Whichever you’re more comfortable with should make it pretty apparent what type of writer you are.

The last problem is in world building, which adds a new dimension to this. A dimension that I’m going to get to tomorrow, since I’m already around eight hundred words and don’t want to seem too long-winded.

(I would still like to join that League of Fantasy Writers Whose Books Are Way Too Long that I keep hearing about though…)

*Because Brandon Sanderson is too long. And Branderson is a fun nickname.

2011: Thoughts and Declarations

I haven’t exactly updated much the last few days, besides a silent resolution to myself when I started this blog to not let it become some dead waste of space floating out in the blagosphere. Luckily I have the excuse of Christmas, but then I never much liked excuses anyway.

Twenty-eleven should be an exciting years. I will have numerous new things to stress out about and, should I be so lucky, I will have even more things to be excited about. :D But first the biggest part of any post right around January 1st… The question of how long can I still get delicious eggnog in stores without it being gross?

In a more serious note (though I think eggnog is pretty serious business myself)… New Year’s resolutions! I honestly haven’t thought much about these, and like many people don’t have too much faith in them since last years fairly simple tasks that I set for myself were completely torn to shreds. Lets just not get into that. The main problem is that I start hearing people talk about these just around Christmas time, idle chatter on Christmas eve maybe. But at that point I’m already focused on one holiday, anything else is obviously too far off to be considered so I ignore anything resembling resolving my thoughts in favor of ‘Christmas!!!’

Invariably, when Christmas is fading I realize that I’m suddenly only a few days away and have no clue what I’m going to do.

Luckily I don’t care that much about the things, but I thought I should share my hopefully-these-will-work resolutions. My declarations for the 2011 year are:

1. Write! I will finish at least the first draft on the three main noveling projects I have! …Or maybe not those ones specifically, but still. NaNo 09 MUST be done in a year, this is sort of my darling and I must do something with it. NaNo 10 really should be finished too, it isn’t half bad from what I remember and with some shaping up I think it could be lots of fun. Th third idea I have in mind I also like, but I’ve been noticing unnerving similarities in characterization between it and one of my favorite books so I may drop that potato until it cools off. Still, at least three. Even if one of them is my unnamed sort-of-a-joke idea. To do this I hope to write something, anything, story related everyday. No exceptions.

2. Be a part of WordPress’ write every day thing! As part of this fancy-shmancy community here I got mail from WordPress inviting me to make blogging a New Year’s resolution. They want us to resolve to blog every day, at least something, or every week (if you’re lazy you have a life). I don’t know if I’ll be able to do something every day but the original idea was an every other day/three times a week deal so I’ll at least try. If I can’t do once a week either than I really hope that means I’m working furiously on that first resolution. Otherwise I should stop being lazy having a life outside writing. I mean, really!
–As an aside I also want to spruce this place up. No more generic headers and boring pages for me! Not that I’ll go all flashy neon on you guys, that would be cruel.

3. Be a better person. Now I don’t mean that in the more general sense, though this is a really really general statement. In 2011 I want to do a lot of other things. Make money, be able to drive, make good grades, actually figure out what I want to do for college, read as many books as I can manage… Not to mention savoring all those wonderful teen moments that are constantly slipping away and taking every advantage I can of being young and not locked into as much of a schedule (or curriculum) and I know a lot of people are at this age.

4. (Because I always liked the number four best anyway.) These are more like wishful thinking rather than real declarations of what I want to do this year but I thought I’d put them up:
-* Go to some literary conventions, fantasy oriented ones if I can. This is made even harder by google refusing to understand that I don’t want conferences — those cost LOTS of money I don’t have. (And omitting pages that contain the word conference kills off just about all the lists of cons out there, which is annoying.)
-* Try to find a job/internship I could do in the book-world. This is VERY unlikely. Why must all my favorite publishing houses be located across the country? :(
-* Get an agent…? Not so sure but if I could at least start shipping around a novel this year I would be extraordinarily ecstatic.
-* Actually use what words I can from www.savethewords.org — I love this site (and murklins* will totally make a comeback, just you wait) and you all should too. Nepheliad** may be harder, but I’m trying and so should you.

So there you go, my obligatory start of the new year update on all my little hopes and dreams. Basically I want to build up who I am, on this blog especially, and if I can do that by being known as the awesome writer girl than that would be perfect. :) Here’s to all these thoughts that I’ve penned working out, and to all of my reader’s resolutions coming to fruition too!

*Murklins is an adjective that means ‘in the dark’.
**Nepheliad is an awesome word for cloud-nymph.

Like a Butterfly: A Writer’s Stages

I have a theory that there are three general stages for those who want to be writers, and since we’re talking in threes and stages obvious parallels to butterflies are sure to arise.

Caterpillar: The cutest stage, by far.

 

Aww... He's adorable.

This stage is where most of the writer’s get stuck. They are wannabes. Of course this isn’t always a bad thing, there are lots of people who are happy writing little stories and not going anywhere. Anyone who hates the caterpillars is only put off by the glut of wannabes who are convinced that they’re going to be (or even already are!) a beautiful butterfly. They’re dead wrong — this is the caterpillar stage remember? Not the beautiful butterfly one.

Caterpillars include most internet-only authors — though I could not tell you what percentage that is. It’s the little baby writer’s, still gumming at the newly found toys around them. And then some of them will want to get some real teeth and go looking for the next stage of their writing career.

And this is exactly what that looks like.

The second stage is, obviously, the pupa/cocoon/whatever. When the little larval writer realizes that they really do like writing, and that it’s something they really want to do, then they hit this. In their little cocoon the writer starts to talk to other writer’s, search out organizations or books on the subject, and they begin to seriously look at what they’ve written and evaluate it. ‘Could this actually make money? Would someone want to read this?’ they think to themselves.

 

It's the cocoon stage because most of this is done alone on the computer. Right? That's not just me, right!?

This stage has far more variation than the caterpillars, baby writers just realize they like writing. The second stagers are being serious, and some of them have no problems with saying “Yeah, I’m awesome! I’ll just go submit this to a bunch of editors then…” while most of the others are for too insecure about their work for that. (Or, as they may see it, realistic.)

Submitting your work is when you hit a sort of writing puberty. There’s no telling how long it’ll take between you seeing your work seriously and everyone else viewing it the same way. I think of this as breaking out of the cocoon and having to let your wings dry out, to continue the very handy metaphor I’ve got going. You just aren’t ready yet, but once you’re confident enough to submit (and, again, serious enough to really follow through on revisions and not give up) it’s only a matter of time before you’re all dried out.

Now, to everyone’s favorite part…

What a successful li'l bug!

Butterflies are the ‘real’ writers. They’ve made the big time, though the definition of that is different for each of them. If you’re living off your work I can assume that you have some very nice wings.

But if you make any money on published you could be called this, whether it’s by a massive book deal or a self-published POD poem collection. Writers who are happy with their career (and who have a real career) have earned a huge congrats for getting so far. :)

I’m still a cocoon myself, and I have no doubt that most everyone who ends up reading this is one too. It all comes down to follow through, something which I’m hoping that I have. And I’m sure that all my lovely readers do too — especially if you keep on being my readers.

 

* Thanks to the good people of Flickr for the pictures, if any of them have a particular interest I can try and find the original posters/takers of the pics.

Introductions and Overviews

I am the Celia in Celia Writes and, as I hope you’ve inferred, I write. Specifically fiction, and even more specifically stories with fantastical elements. Obviously I love me some fantasy, but that’s not what this blog will be about. (At least, not completely — I’m not going to cut out my personal preferences, that would be pretty silly.) I’m still a student, and not just in the sense that everyone is always learning. But I’ll try not to bore you with the details of my life.

Instead there will be two major categories on here — writing and reviewing. The reviewing should be simple enough, I’ll review books or movies or anything that I get my hands on. This isn’t only for you, dear reader, because this will force me to continue reading and watching and thinking of my thoughts. What a sacrifice, right?

This same sentiment is in my other reason for this blog: Writing. As my current wallpaper says “You can’t wait for inspiration, you have to go after it with a club.” (A Jack London quote.) If I’m on here talking about my writing, as best as I can without giving away my stories, then won’t that force me to spend more time on the writing? I won’t talk just about what I’m doing either, I’ll do my best to link in other resources as I find them and discuss what I find when looking for those resources. There’s a lot of great advice out there, and I’ll try to find it for you as well as condense down what can often be the same words said a hundred different ways.

I will give you thoughts on grammar, many more thoughts on story elements, and maybe even some rousing discussions centered around those very ideas. I also vow to update at least once a week, hopefully in each category.

Here’s hoping I get the readers to make everything I’ve said here succeed!

(As an aside: Another hope this blog may fulfill is making some money editing stories of all sizes, I’ll post information on this when I can but anyone who would be interested is welcome to comment or email me about editing work!)