SUNDAY LINK LOVE

• David Powers King writes incisively on the subject of prologues. If you’re struggling with a prologue, I highly suggest you check it out. Also, he recommends the Mistborn Trilogy – an opinion I have come to share.

• An amusing loop of TV shows referencing each other:

• Okay, I know we’re past Valentine’s Day – and that there has been an endless saturation of fandom-themed Valentine cards. But I can’t help myself – these Game of Thrones Valentines cards are pretty boss. From io9.

• More Valentine’s day shenanigans! I like to imagine that this was cut for a significant other:

ROW 80 UPDATE

My ROW 80 goal is to write 750 words a day on 750words.com.

So I missed the last check-in. Sorry about that. That was a somewhat hectic travel day…but I probably still could have posted if I’d mustered up the energy to do so. Despite the fact that I missed the check-in, I’ve been successful with my goal: written 750 words every day since the last check-in.

Previously, I posted about plotholes. I’m glad that I worked out the kinks in my plot, even though it involved some backtracking and scrapping of what I’d already written. I’d been scraping the bottom of the barrel for scenes to write, feeling at loose ends, but now I feel like I have a definite direction. It’s a good feeling.

How was your week, fellow ROWers?

If you want to support/find out about ROW 80, check it out here.

SUNDAY LINK LOVE

• Doctor Mew.

Found through io9; art by Jenny Parks

• Doctor Hoot.

Source

• More Doctor Hoot.

Art by Terry Fan

• 40 Best Blog Postings for Writers by Kathy Temean.

• I’m kind of addicted to Sarah Reees Brennan’s Tumblr and Livejournal, so I enjoyed this duel interview with her and Justine Larbalestier, partially because they’re talking about how different their respective writing processes are. Always great to hear the message that every writer is different and that’s okay, as opposed to the message that there’s only one “right” way to write.

• This is a great, sensitive article about how to write lesbians when you’re not a lesbian. Personally, I think that  writers (by and large, not as a rule) need to write identities other than their own in order to increase diversity representation in fiction. But it’s also important to be smart with your portrayals. And sometimes that involves research.

• A little dispiriting, but Kristen Nelson did an interesting thing this week where she posted the rave reviews – and the editor’s rejections – concerning the debut novel Firelight. If you’re looking for more evidence about the inherent subjectivity in writing, then this is the post for you.

• Great article from Kristen Lamb about training to be a career author.

• Ghenet Myrthil posted some excellent tips that she picked up from the Writer’s Digest 2012 conference.

• Shadow art? Did you know this was a thing? I did not. It’s freaking amazing. Michael Offut posted many freaking amazing pictures of freaking amazing shadow art, and I grabbed one of the pics, but there’s tons more on his blog, so head over and check it out.

ROW 80 UPDATE

My ROW 80 goal is to write 750 words a week on 750words.com.

I cheated a little this week. Technically I wrote 750 words every day, making my current word count for the week 5401 – and I still have tomorrow’s writing to do. However, it becomes a lot less impressive when you realize that a lot of that word count was retyping words into the 750 words site, not to mention writing outlines.

On Wednesday, I worked on my short story Rainbow Days and sent part of it to my critique group, but I didn’t generate any new content; I just organized my mixed-up scenes, meaning that there’s now an entire coherent, chronological beginning. Actually, I was pleasantly surprised at how well it came together. Maybe there’s a method to my madness after all. And I’m remembering how much I love to write short stories – someday I would like to publish a short story collection titled These Stories are Not True.

It was good that the short story work was relaxing, because otherwise this week was spent freaking out about KtLO.

You see, I do this thing when I write. This horrible, horrible, horrible thing.

I come up with a million ideas, fall in love with all of them, and refuse to recognize when they just. do. not. fit together. Ladies and gentleman, this is how plot holes form, why characters suddenly start acting out of character. For the most part, I’ve ignored the plot holes and associated problems while drafting, because hey, I’m drafting, and I can go back later and plug in the holes, right? (While we’re on the subject – problems go away when you close your eyes and put your fingers in your ears, right?)

Except that on Friday, I found a mother of a plot hole and it risked collapsing the entire story. I won’t go into details, but basically a potential love interest had some information that completely erased the main character’s major conflict in the story, which happened because the conflict was present in an earlier vision of the story and the love interest was not. And I just sort of came up with both ideas without realizing that they were water and oil to each other. And they were both major THIS IS WHY I’M WRITING THIS STORY ideas.

Anyway, I fixed that.

It should work now, but it involved spending today outlining rather than ‘writing writing’ so I have about 600 words in my word count that are definitely words I typed out, but not words that actually attribute to a page count.

Still, I don’t feel bad. It was necessary.

And that outline looks hella good.

It’s only gonna get worse next week in the fake-word-count department, because I’m going to just focus on the beginning of the story on the while, which means retyping some scenes in order to reorganize them and add some important details. I’m gonna try not to write out of order again until I can get the beginning – my foundation – down. Don’t get me wrong; I think writing out of order is effective, and I highly recommend it. But right now I need to do the writing equivalent of gathering my thoughts.

How was your week, fellow ROWers?

If you’re curious about ROW 80, and/or want to support the participants, check it out here.

SUNDAY LINK LOVE

• Kait Nolan makes an argument for deeper explorations of more interesting villains. I agree a lot with what she says here, maybe ’cause I’m studying psychology.

• Nicole Basaraba gives us an an excellent post about longhand, and the writers (some famous) who use it.

• Ari Susu-Mago gives me another gem on Twitter:

Can you find Wall-E?

• I’ve seen the Ira Glass on Storytelling meme circulating on Tumblr ad nauseam, but that’s usually via poster. I love the video version, which you can find here.

• I thought Kiersten White’s post about a night in the life was hilarious.

• Need some inspiration and encouragement, fellow writers? Saundra Mitchell’s post You Can Always Walk Away is one of the best of its ilk.

• Remember how Chuck Wendig wrote about 25 things writers should stop doing? Well, here are 25 things writers should start doing. Also by Chuck Wendig.

• I loved (emphasis *loved*) Claire Legrand’s post on first drafts and the wordiness they inspire, and how that’s okay. Definitely what I need right now, as I draft the heck out of my WIP.

STYLISH BLOG AWARD

ROW 80 UPDATE

• Goal recap: write 750 words a day on 750words.com.

This week was great! So far, I’ve plowed through 4739 words. Not bad, if I do say so myself. (And I do.) There’s no reason I won’t make my 750 quota today.

I’m starting to wonder if I’m weird, though. Because I’m so not writing in order. Not even a little. I’m not just talking about jumping between chapters, but jumping between scenes. And I’m… not sure that this is the best way to write a novel? Probably not. It’s working, sort of, I’m drafting at least, but it’s also kind of terrifying because scenes keep going in completely different directions than I originally intended (they’re telling the outline to talk to the hand, basically), and when you’re spending half your time writing future scenes that are dependent on earlier scenes working out a certain way…it’s um, well…unnerving.

Which has made me think a lot about Claire Legrand’s post that I included in the Sunday Link Love. Because while I might not be sure that I’m keeping all of these scenes – or that they’re even going to make sense once I organize them into chapters – they’re not completely meaningless either. No! I’m glad I wrote them. These scenes are helping me flesh out important story qualities such as character, emotion, theme, stakes, ect. They’re useful.

And for the most part, they’re viable places for the story to go. Writers often compare writing stories to childbirth, and in that vein, I feel like I’m telling my future novel (aka prospective child): “You can grow up to be this, or this, or this.”

Anyway. Those are my thoughts for today. How did your week go, fellow ROWers?