Writing software vs. doing the hard work

I’ve been deep in the throes of editing my NaNoWriMo novel. It’s such a muddle to wade through, 50,000-plus words, and I do understand that that’s on the short end for a novel. In the end, being a cozy, it will be at least 60,000.

But whether 50,000 or 100,000, that’s a lot of words to edit!

I have three murder incidents in my book, as most mysteries do, and I realized after I’d written it in that crazy month that numbers two and three needed to be swapped. It just made more sense that way, and allowed the main character to get to know beforehand the person who’s killed last.

But, oh, dear — that means rewriting and rearranging fully two-thirds of the stupid thing. Even those wonderful, witty conversations I was so proud of will now have to fall, because the characters will all be talking about something else now.

But as someone on the NaNoWriMo boards consoled (and I can’t remember who it was now — sorry), you can’t edit nothing. At least I have a truckload of words to edit!

I thought there might be some computing help out there to make my life easier. Microsoft Word is dismal when it comes to the demands of fiction writing. There’s no easy way to outline or to rearrange whole sections.

I started researching writing software for the Mac, reading reviews and comparing demo videos, and I settled on two that sounded promising — Scrivener and Copywrite — before a review for one of those led me to a third possibility — StoryMill. I looked at other options as well, but those three sounded like the best fit for the kind of writing I do, which is to say, novel-length fiction. Some other programs seemed to have more use for non-fiction writers or technical writing.

Intriguing features of these types of fiction-writing word processors (not available in all of them) are the ability to create timelines that link to your scenes, chapter views, the ability to save multiple revisions and revert to an earlier one if necessary, character description files, virtual corkboard for rearranging index cards that contain parts of the story, multiple windows to see various drafts simultaneously, inherent outlining, etc., and everything’s theoretically linked to everything else — so if you, say, moved a section on your corkboard, it would move that section in your novel as well, no tedious searching, cutting, and pasting necessary.



I have links from Amazon just for StoryMill, so I went ahead and put up screen shots that were available to give a general idea of the sort of experience you’d have with one of these writers’ word processors.

If you want to find out more about the programs, feel free to click on the software site links above or read some reviews for them here: CopyWrite reviews, Scrivener reviews, StoryMill reviews.

I won’t go into the details of each one, because ultimately I decided to hold off. It was when I was reading StoryMill reviews and one reviewer’s words really spoke to me:

May 15 2008 MSWWSM —

I can’t give this product any kind of fair review as I can’t quite figure out what it’s for. If I had to guess, I’d say this — and the similar Scrivener — are for writers who may indeed have the prose chops to get the job done but can’t get a handle on how to organize longer manuscripts in their heads …

Foremost, StoryMill and Scrivener are not models for how novelists I know actually work. We have various loose “processes”, we keep notes, we do research — not too little research on-the-fly, so to speak — and we may rough out in a notebook, on an index card, or on the back of the power bill, overarching plot lines, concepts, perhaps brief character sketches, snippets of especially pithy dialogue or metaphor we just have to use, that sort of thing. But everyone I know merely takes something that’s been stewing, sits down one morning, or evening, or dead in the middle of night, and begins writing; then we go back and eradicate, illuminate and, well, prevaricate, as required to make the story whole. …

As for aspiring novelists, screenwriters, playwrights, etc., I can’t help but advise you’d be far better off just sitting down and writing, ignoring the confusing disorganized mess you may create — because you CAN — and WILL, if you stick at it — develop a process for sorting things out, making sense of disparate parts and gluing them together into a coherent story. The bottom line is, called upon to take 60,000 - 120,000 words or more, vet this draft for grammar, style, continuity errors, etc., it’s never going to just wrap up nicely, and it’s always going to degrade into a brutal grind at times, whether you write on legal pads with a blunt pencil or with these sorts of computerized writers toolkits. It’s never easy, no matter what.

Emphasis mine, because man, oh, man.

Here’s a portion of the response from someone who liked the above review as much as I did:

although i am trying to write a novel with various timelines and therefore became interested in any computerized help i could get, i now am convinced that a dry erase board or a yellow pad with lots of revisions/erasures, as mswwsm notes, will work better.

a writer i admire once told an audience that when she teaches creative writing, she emphasizes B.I.C = butt in chair! there is no substitute and most of these apps are probably - at least for me - more of a distraction and an ill-fitted crutch than the solution and will probably never accomplish what mswwsm suggests. — rich ratzan

So, butt in chair, I have been doing the hard work.

I figured that spending any more energy than I already have on these software apps would just distract me from the task at hand. I would spend so much time copying my scenes into each demo version, then editing in each one to see how it works. I would type in character descriptions and obsess about details. It’s probably best just to use what I have and try to figure out a process for myself.

I think next time I write a novel, I will start off in one of these software options, to see if it helps. Ideally, I’ll start three novels simultaneously, so I can see which of the three options makes things easiest!

But for now — I have an outline of my original draft in OmniOutliner. I’ve rearranged it in the same app, checking my timeline by sketching it out with purple pen (hey, it was around) on the back of an envelope and drawing arrows to show which parts I wanted to change around or add.

I have another file in OmniOutliner for notes and revisions, which includes my character descriptions, painstakingly copied every time a character came up. Then I can make sure haircolor and age and the like don’t change throughout the story by referring back to my notes. I have listed things I want to add and things I want to change. I have ideas for place names and poisons. (Hey, it’s a murder mystery!) I chose OmniOutliner for this file, because I can indent subtopics to show that they relate to an above main topic, but also primarily because OmniOutliner offers little checkboxes all down the side. Whenever I’ve completed a revision task, I can check it off and stop worrying about it. Most of the boxes remain unchecked, but at least I know that they will get done, and I don’t have to keep it all in my head.

I’ve saved multiple drafts now in Word, and I’m going to start the annoyance of cutting and pasting according to my outline, and then … it’s rewrite time. I’ll just have to go in, read it through, and change what doesn’t make sense anymore. Which I’m assuming will be most of it. Sigh.

Butt in chair. I’ll get there.

How not to respond to readers

This is hilarious:

Dear Author: Top Ten Things Authors Should Not Do at Amazon

It reports on a flame war between an author and her reviewers on Amazon.com.

Note: Do not be this author.

Immortalize your rejection

How many rejection letters have you amassed? Do you view them as a mark of shame, or a badge of honor? Do you rip them up and toss them in the recycling with the other shredded junk mail, do you let your gerbils poop and chew on them, do you hang them up to inspire you to keep going, or do you pass them around to other writers and loved ones to commiserate, laugh, and moan in community?

If it's the last, here's your chance to get one into book form so that even more people can read how much you suck!

Bill Shapiro, the editor of Other People's Love Letters: 150 Letters You Were Never Meant to See is coming Other People's Rejection Letters. He's collecting submissions right now.

They don't have to be writing related, but all writers have one or two or a gazillion tucked away, right? They could also be Dear John letters or disinheritances, credit denials or a critique of an audition. They can be sent or received by you, and anonymity is available. Considering the imaginative layout of the last book, I'd say creativity counts.

So if you have a rejection letter or two tucked back there in the closet (or if you've written any) that you'd be willing to share, now's your chance to be part of the book.

You can send them to 1000rejectionletters@gmail.com.

If you're looking for something more immediate, there are always online forums to let it all out. There, now, won't that feel better?

Thank you to Brian at There Are No Rules for the heads up

The genre fiction ghetto

I came across this review in The Curator for a fantasy book, Cyndere's Midnight. The book is by Jeffrey Overstreet, and the article is by Annie Young Frisbie, titled "On Fantasy Fiction; Or, You Should Read Cyndere's Midnight."

Frisbie (or can I call her Annie? she sounds personable) talks about her history as a closet fantasy fan, her coming out, and now her advocacy for non-fans of the genre to lay aside their snarkiness and give a really good book a try. She declares: "I'm tired of seeing fantasy ghettoized. Genre was made to be transcended."

I'm one of those people who don't...quite...get fantasy. It's just not my thing. I love C.S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia and the Harry Potter books, and I hear true fantasy fans disparage them as bad examples of the genre, so...I guess I'm just not a fan, although this glowing review might inspire me to give it another chance. Truly, no offense intended; I think I just get tripped up by names I don't know how to pronounce.

Because in any case, I totally understand feeling marginalized for enjoying commercial fiction that's not considered prestigious, in my case romance and mystery novels, and in fact enjoying them so much that I write my own.

When Frisbie (and/or Annie) mocks people who read "to pad your Goodreads feed with Booker nominees in order to impress your Facebook friends," I remember when I signed up for Goodreads at a friend's request and then feeling twinges of...oh, no, was that embarrassment?...when I listed recent books I'd truly enjoyed but were nothing like what my other friends were sharing with the world.

I didn't and don't want to fill this blog with apologetics and justifications and rants about how I feel ashamed or victimized by my preferences. I know other people just like me are out there, in large numbers, and I choose not to dwell on the naysayers' snootiness.

But I don't mind bringing it up once in awhile, just to discuss the phenomenon of creating a divide between "literary" and "commercial" fiction. (Isn't that a funny distinction all in itself? Literary meaning it's like literature, and commercial meaning it sells -- shouldn't both strive to be both? Kind of reminds me of "Republican" and "Democrat" -- shouldn't all Americans embrace the basics of both those words?)

I've been skulking agent blogs and writer forums whenever I need a break from revising my WIP (work in progress to those who don't skulk -- I've discovered all new terminology from all this procrastinating), and I found this uplifting A from a Q & A by the Evil Editor:

Authors don't get to declare what kind of prose they write. ... That's a job for critics, agents, and the people who make up the lies that go on the backs of books. Apparently you're unhappy with calling your book literary fiction. Don't be. Literary doesn't mean it's literature; it just means it's boring. My advice: add some sharks and a wolfman, and call it commercial fiction.

That made me laugh. I love that we have professional advocates out there to override any sneering voices.

I'll end with a great quote from Annie (I'm going for it -- I just read her bio and she loves LLL and cloth diapers [just like me, swoon]. Seriously, read her article; it's great, and here's a similar blog post she wrote):

Don’t let signs at Barnes and Noble or tags on Amazon.com tell you what kind of books you like to read. You’ll miss out on countless worlds of beauty.

Enjoy novels that tell a story! Enjoy characters you'd want to be friends with! Enjoy an adventure you'd like to go on! Embrace your chosen genre, and be happy.

Image courtesy of Julia Freeman-Woolpert from stock.xchng

I'm a novelist!

I have officially finished one full novel and won NaNoWriMo08!

It's only a first draft, but I've planned out my edits and will get to work revising. I know, for instance, that I need to add scenes and descriptions, red herrings and clues, to get my novel up to the ~70,000 words expected of a cozy.

I've already put books on querying agents on hold at the library and will let you know how the process goes. I've been reading agent blogs to dip my toe in the water, and for once I don't feel like I'm just procrastinating from writing by doing that!

Right now I'm too excited to do much other than celebrate, but soon it will be time to work, work, work, and start writing the next in the series! For genre fiction like mysteries and romance, it's common to think in terms of series, and I am definitely on that train.

I highly recommend that you try out NaNoWriMo next year if you haven't done it already. Write 2,000 words a day, in little chunks if needed, and you'll have a whole fricking novel by the end of the month! What could be better?

Getting your characters in trouble

NaNoWriMo very kindly and wisely provides emailed pep talks each week, some from regional liaisons, and some from published authors. Here's an excerpt from Week Three's pep talk from Janet Fitch, author of White Oleander and Paint It Black:

When in doubt, make trouble for your character. Don't let her stand on the edge of the pool, dipping her toe. Come up behind her and give her a good hard shove. ... In life we try to avoid trouble. We chew on our choices endlessly. We go to shrinks, we talk to our friends. In fiction, this is deadly. Protagonists need to screw up, act impulsively, have enemies, get into TROUBLE.

The difficulty is that we create protagonists we love. And we love them like our children. We want to protect them from harm, keep them safe, make sure they won't get hurt, or not so bad. Maybe a skinned knee. Certainly not a car wreck. But the essence of fiction writing is creating a character you love and, frankly, torturing him. You are both sadist and savior. Find the thing he loves most and take it away from him. Find the thing he fears and shove him shoulder deep into it. Find the person who is absolutely worst for him and have him delivered into that character's hands. Have him make a choice which is absolutely wrong.

When I started writing my romance novel, I knew I wanted my hero to suspect the heroine was lying, to manufacture plot trouble for them. But I was cheating the system. I wanted my heroine not to be a liar. I wanted her to remain pure and blameless.

And then I came to my senses. A perfect protagonist is boring (look at Fanny in Mansfield Park -- sorry, Jane!).

I had to throw my characters into trouble. I had to make them flawed so they had somewhere to progress to during the course of the novel. It's frustrating when the novel starts out with an ideal relationship and situation that has problems thrown at it. It's less frustrating and more suspenseful when there's just a vision of an ideal relationship and situation that the characters need to move toward.

In my current novel, I made sure to place my heroine in danger. She needs to have the possibility of failing and even dying to create tension, to create a story. Along the same lines, she has to take steps and try things out that I would never have the gumption to, because it would be really boring to read about me!

It's similar to being afraid to kill off characters, as in my other post. Sometimes being a writer feels like too much power, but we have to learn not to be afraid to use it.

How have you hesitated in creating trouble for your characters? How have you convinced yourself to throw them into danger and face the consequences?

Scary dinosaur courtesy of Rodolfo Clix from stock.xchng

Pushing through to the finish line

It's coming down to the wire for NaNoWriMo08, and I'm on track with 41,561 words so far. If I write up to 42,000 before bed tonight, I can keep writing 2,000 a day and, assuming I get them in by midnight the last day, finish at exactly 50,000 on Nov. 30. I was feeling really discouraged a couple days ago, but I'm energized now and have a vision of the plot going forward to the end. Now it's just putting it on paper (or screen, in this case).

My husband, Sam, has been making remarks like, "It's ok if you go over by a few days. What's the difference?"

"No, because then you don't win," I told him.

"What do you win?" he asked, rightfully skeptical.

"A PDF certificate," I said sheepishly, "and a widget. And the satisfaction of knowing you're a winner."

Sam laughed at me. "So it doesn't matter," he said.

No! It does matter. Finishing a novel in a month, a specific month, is the whole point of NaNoWriMo. If you could write in anytime, you would. If you can go over by a few days, why not a few months, a few years?

Like all the other times. Like with all the other half-manuscripts in drawers and hastily typed ideas in forgotten files, languishing. Like all the other projects and passions and ambitions you've set aside till the perfect moment, only you never quite find it.

Back during the first season of Survivor, there was an endurance test toward the end where the remaining contestants had to keep their hand on a pole. That was the only rule. One of the contestants, good old Rudy, absentmindedly removed his hand from the pole to scracth his nose or something, and then tried to play it off, but was deservedly disqualified.

As The Daily Show mocked when replaying the clip, "What's the first rule of Keep Your Hand on the Pole Game?"

What's the first rule of NaNoWriMo? Write a novel in a month.

Anything else isn't NaNoWriMo.

Keep your hand on the pole.

See you at the finish line in just a few days!