Craft

Posts about things I’m learning about the craft of writing

How to Move Forward with Your Writing Even If in Fractional Increments

by Cindy Rae

Experts talk about writing every day, or having a writing goal per week, or even praise writers who work the job as close to full-time as they can get.

Yet, so many of us struggling as writers fit our writing into fractions of time throughout a season of life, around kids, chores, full-time jobs, crises, tragedy, and trauma.

Is it possible to become a successful writer when your time spent writing is scattered over various minutes stolen here and there in a demanding life?

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Plotting vs. Pantsing: The Tension Between Overkill with Moving Forward

by Cindy Rae

Certain writers fall securely into the plotter camp, while others write off-the-cuff. I jump back and forth between camps. And, at times, it’s wearying.

With Salvage, I’m really trying to plan my scenes more than before. I’m using a free airtable account to track my scene data, but it’s possible that it’s moving from useful planning to overkill.

So, just to dive in and write new scenes seems a little like wandering in a field of corn on a dark night (I come from a long line of Iowa corn farmers, and I live in Nebraska; the simile works for me).

Yet, after a certain level of planning and scene data, it’s like wandering through a very crowded cereal aisle, trying to figure out what take off the shelf.

So, I’m spending too much time trying to get the scene data just as I want it, and too little time moving Salvage forward.

What’s the right balance?

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Writing a Novel and Writing Code Share…

by Cindy Rae

…an astounding ambiguity with terminology.  You’d think, as long as writing has been around, those in the publishing industry would have agreed to standard definitions, a standard vocabulary.  Not so.

And, surprisingly, neither has the software industry.  Software being considered more of a science, one would expect practitioners to have agreed on common terms.  Yet, even what title you call one who codes, develops, and engineers software varies: software engineer, programmer, software developer, systems engineer, systems analyst, and many more.

So, with those who read a book in draft form one can have critiquers, alpha-readers, beta-readers, writing partners, mentors, development editors, line-by-line editors, and more.

One might argue that each of these titles connotes a different flavor of responsibility, but the lines are definitely blurred.

Quick Tips from the Writing Notes

by Cindy Rae

Hopefully these one-liners I’ve collected on the craft of writing will help you, and perhaps not just in writing.

  • DON’T TAKE YOURSELF TOO SERIOUSLY
  • Be true to your I.Q.
  • Embrace idiosyncrasies
  • Make them laugh and/or make them cry
  • “…a lot of times if you’re finding that you’re having to describe things with a lot of adverbs, find a stronger verb instead” – CJ Lyons interview
  • Go beyond the five senses
  • Forget about being pretty
  • Don’t fall into stereotypes
  • “Verbs are the foot soldiers of action-based description”

 

What’s in My Notes on Writing?

by Cindy Rae

I keep a separate Word file that I reference often when I write, especially when revising.  It contains a rather eclectic mix: scene checklists, story structure advice, lists of conjunctions, and much more that I would like to remember.  I do add endnotes for the sources of most of the information.

Here’s the current Table of Contents:

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Developing Writing Skills

by Cindy Rae

Spend a chunk of your time as a writer developing your writing skills.

An author gave that advice in one of the writing podcasts I listened to recently.  I’ve taken this advice to heart, allocating time and researching how to hone my skills (thank you, Writer’s Digest).

So, this month, I’m going to spend some time on word choice, sentence structure, and setting.  As usual, I’ll continue writing in the journal, writing for social media, and fitting in some work on completing some works in progress.