Select Page

On NaNo: “That is One Big Pile of S***”

by | Oct 31, 2012 | Uncategorized

Wednesdays in this blog’s schedule are reserved for fiction pieces…but National Novel Writing Month is all about writing fiction, so it sort of fits.

To those writers attempting NaNo, whether for the first or fifth time: we’re going to need dedication to the story, support from families and friends, and lots of caffeine, energy drinks, or whatever your wakey-wakey consumption of choice may be.

Photo by: Andreas Gronski, 2004 [from Wikimedia]

The inspiration for HG Wells’ time machine?

We must write, write, write some more to reach that goal of 50,000 words in thirty days. NaNo buddies will smile and cheer us on, and we’ll commiserate with and congratulate each other. It’s a bonding experience we won’t soon forget.

And all along the way, we’ll be writing one big pile of crap.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JFfN5pKzFU?rel=0&w=420&h=315]

You know what, though? That’s okay. Because all first drafts are crap. (Many second and third drafts are crap, too, but that’s a post for another day.)

NaNo is about helping us see we can meet a deadline, write to (or past) a wordcount, and – in many cases – realize we can, in fact, tell a story. Most likely not a great one by November 30…but one that may just grab us by the shirtsleeves and make us keep going, to dip down into further drafts and deeper edits, and make a better story, one worth sharing with the world.

Or, maybe not. Maybe we’ll be satisfied with what we cranked out in those thirty days, and we’ll be inspired from there to take on another project, knowing now that we can do it. That’s okay, too.

So, let’s grab our pens and get comfortable behind our keyboards. We’ve got writing to do!

Are you participating in NaNo this year? Want to buddy up?

Realism v. Drama

by | Oct 20, 2012 | Process, Uncategorized

Part of what makes stories so much fun is the drama involved: Will the hero conquer the villain? Will the princess find her true love? Will the puppy make its way home? But, what happens when we find our characters strive more for realism than for drama?

Every story needs some kind of emotional resonance for it to have impact, whether it’s about war or heartbreak or family experience. Sometimes, though, our characters become so much their own people that they end up dictating where their own stories go. I’ve written scenes – necessary ones – for their dramatic effect…but I’ve also had to rewrite other scenes because the characters’ voices had developed so much since my initial plotting that their actions (or reactions) as I’d originally envisioned simply no longer held true to their natures.

What do you do in this situation? Do you let the character take over, possibly sacrificing the drama of the scene? Or, do you follow through with the original idea, possibly sacrificing believability for the character?

It’s okay to play Loosey Goosey in some instances: maybe the hero isn’t in his right mind at the moment and makes a snap judgment against character; maybe the heroine is torn by the conflict facing her and decides on one route over another because her values are confused. Written well, with the associating consequences, those options are totally valid. But, what do you do when your original big conflict becomes significantly less climactic than originally envisioned, because your darned MC has grown up too much over the course of the story?

I’m a big fan of sweeping epics, and last-minute, nerve-wracking climaxes where the audience is led to page after page to see what happens next. But I also believe in, well, believability in a story. The hero shouldn’t overcome the conflict just because the story needs a climax; he should do so because that’s what he has to do, to progress, grow, and change. It may make for less high drama, but it may also make for more realism.

But that’s just my opinion. Which do you prefer: realism or drama?

Never ask a lady her age

by | Sep 21, 2012 | Uncategorized

By Ardfern (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons

Taking the weekend off, to celebrate another year of health and happiness with my family.

I’ll be back (probably) on Monday.

Happy writing – and reading – to you all!

Scheduling with WordPress (WordPress Timey-Wimey)

by | Sep 1, 2012 | Uncategorized

Everybody knows how to schedule, right? You don’t? You mean, you sit at your computer and write all your posts “live”? You finish typing and you hit that “Publish” button right away? Well, have I got news for you: Scheduling is your friend.

Scheduling your WordPress posts allows you to coordinate your updates to be published and distributed automatically, at your convenience, without you having to sit there on a sunny Friday afternoon or whatever, just to meet a deadline. You can write up your posts well in advance (you can even keep a stash of posts ready to go), and keep your free time to yourself. Now, who doesn’t want that?

Don’t know how to Schedule? Don’t worry; we’ll go over it in a few very simple steps.

Step 1. Write your post as you normally would – proofread it, make it all nice and pretty, assign it to the right Categories and give it the proper Tags –  but don’t hit that nice blue Publish button quite yet. Instead, look where it says “Publish immediately Edit”:

Step 2. Click “Edit.” A box with the current date and time will open up:

As you can see, the “current” time corresponds to the “Publish immediately” command. If you were to press that “Publish” button right now, your post would be published at the current time (a.k.a., immediately).

But that’s not what we want to do.

Step 3. Change the date and/or time to your preferred Schedule update time. For example, I like to set my posts to publish at 5:00am (my local time, which happens to be Eastern Time, or GMT -4:00), on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays. For our example, I’ll change this publish Schedule to September 1, 2012, at 5:00 am:

Note: WordPress defaults to 24-hour time (sometimes referred to as “military time”). This won’t affect your scheduling if you want to publish between 1:00am and 12:59pm, but some people aren’t familiar with the 24-hour clock. For a quick reference guide and explanation, check out this simple conversion chart: http://www.mathsisfun.com/time.html

Step 4. Once you’re settled on your Scheduled date and time, click the “OK” button (do not click “Publish”).
Once you click “OK,” you’ll notice that, where the blue button used to say, “Publish”, it now says “Schedule”:

Step 5. Now, you can click “Schedule.” This will move your post from the Draft collection to the Scheduled (or to-be-published) bin.

WordPress will take care of the rest: my post is now Scheduled for publishing on 09-Sep 1, 2012 @ 05:00. (Rather, it was published on September 1, 2012, at 5:00am ET. But, since I wrote this in advance, more than a week before its publishing date, I’m talking about it in the future. Timey-wimey, you know.)

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vY_Ry8J_jdw&w=420&h=315]

Hopefully, you’ve found this guide to Scheduling with WordPress helpful. If you weren’t already a master scheduler, consider yourself one, now. 🙂

Linking with WordPress

by | Aug 11, 2012 | Uncategorized

Linking with WordPress is quite easy…once you know what to do.

If you’re familiar with HTML, you can use the “Text” option in the “Add New Post” window. But, most bloggers are likely just typing in the “Visual” tab. For those of you who don’t want to deal with href tags and the like, just follow these steps to add links to your blog posts. (You can click on any of the following example images to see a larger version in a new tab.)

Step 1: In your New Post window, highlight the text you want to link.

Step 2: Click the link icon in the New Post toolbar.

Clicking the link icon will open up a new dialog box:

You’ll see that there’s a space to type (or paste) the URL for your link.

Step 3: Insert the URL for your link.

Step 4: (This one is optional.) Click the “Open link in a new window/tab” if you want the new URL to open in a new browser window or tab. (This is the same as using target=”_blank” or target=”new” HTML code.)

Click “Add Link” – the blue box there at the bottom of the dialog box – to insert the code into your post.

Step 7: Voila! You’ve just made yourself a link! And there it is:

Depending on your Theme and Settings, the visual aesthetic of your link (color, weight) may be different, but the properties remain the same.

Hopefully, this helps you out. If you’d like to see more of these style/code tips, just let me know.

Happy writing!

The Hit

by | Jul 21, 2012 | Uncategorized

Back when I was writing fan stories, I was very concerned about hit statistics. I would check my hit meters every day, and, if I didn’t match my numbers from the day prior, I’d get a little depressed, or I’d worry about why I was “losing readers.” Was I not making them happy? Were they bored with my story? What had I done wrong? I’d wring my hands over this nonsense, even though – rationally – I knew the numbers meant nothing. I could get 150 hits in a day…but it’s not like anyone would ever leave me any feedback, which was what I really wanted.

A typical hit stats graph

I still check my hit statistics on posts and stories, but I’ve become so much less affected by them. If a story or post goes days without garnering any interest, I feel a little sad, mostly because I think of my stories as part of myself. And I don’t particularly enjoy feeling neglected. But then I’ll look at another piece that gets a lot of hits, but very little feedback, and I’ll be reminded that it’s not the numbers that make me feel fulfilled.

It’s not important how many people glance through a post or a story. What’s important to me is when I’ve made someone laugh, or cry, or reflect a little on their own lives, with my words. And if they take a moment to let me know that my story affected them in some way? That’s one of the best feelings in the world. I’d much rather have one person be genuinely touched by my story, than a hundred or even a thousand who just take a glance and feel nothing.

Some people will tell you that hits are valuable: essentially, they’re a measure of your success. Others will tell you that hits mean nothing. I’m here to tell you that – in my experience, at least – hits can represent popularity and how successful you are with reaching your audience…but they truly don’t matter, so long as you love what you’re doing.

Which would you rather: get the hits, or love what you do?

What are your feelings on hit statistics?