Epic Plains

Well I am pretty happy with my writing this week.  Writing a short story proved to be a little more difficult than I planned.  I remember first looking at the word cap of 4,000 words and thinking – wow that is going to be quick and easy to hit.  Just a little cleanup and I will be done.  I mentioned it back in December when I first had the idea for this story and made some notes.

After writing the initial scene, I realized all of the plot elements I kicked off were impossible in a short story.   It was a decent start to a novella or a full novel, but not a short.  It was interesting trying to focus more on just a section since there wouldn’t be time or space for a full.

Now it’s off to editing and revisions but the core is there.  This is decently in front of the end of April deadline I gave myself.  So I am looking forward to revising it and polishing it up.

I find myself having difficulty writing short stories. At first this kind of surprised me. Why when I am managing to write a 80k novel am I having difficulty getting a decent story mapped out that is around 6k words long?

I think the difficulty I am having is that I am spending too much time planning it out. The more I plan, the more plot/characters I think of. I then find I have something more in the novella range than in the short story range. So I think I am just going to strip all of the planning I have done on one short story into a very basic premise and just start writing it. Once I get it written there should be plenty of time to edit and revise and get just the right amount of story in it.

Anyone else have difficulty trying to write different lengths?

I am currently trying out TextBrokers.com.  The site came up on a freelance writing site that I subscribe to and I looked like it might be worth giving a shot.

First impression is that while it is possible to make some additional income from writing, the volume one would have to do at the relatively low pay rate seems prohibitive for making it into a viable revenue stream.  That is while working a day job, blogging, writing, editing, and somewhere in there spending time with the family.

The other difficulty that I ran into with the one article I wrote and sold via the site was that it took me longer to write a 320 word article than I thought it would.  When you have no interest in the subject mater it takes quite a bit more time to research and produce the content.  Now with a little practice, I suspect that will get easier.  Though knowing you are essentially ghost writing is somewhat disheartening as well.

However, difficulties aside, it does seem possible to make the occasional extra few dollars writing a piece every now and then.  So I don’t think I am going to give up trying out that site.  I am just going to make sure it doesn’t take away from blogging or writing since both of those are more important to me.

KoD stands for The Kingdom of Dragmar. KoD is the fantasy novel I am working on. While it is technically a NaNo novel (meaning the bulk of it was written during a NaNoWriMo event), I am taking the time with it that it deserves. I have actually had the story in mind for at least a couple of years and it took trying to write the bulk of it in a single month to finally get most of it on paper.

One of the reasons behind this site is to chronicle my own writing work. So I will also be updating the site with updates on how my offline writing projects are going. KoD is my biggest one at the moment, though as I mentioned in my Writing Goals for 2010 post, I am starting other projects as well.

Currently it is in what I am calling “Pre-Edit 1” phase. What that translates to is that I am planning on at least 2 rounds of editing (though as many as are needed will happen), with a peer edit/review between Edit 1 and Edit 2. “Pre-Edit 1” phase translates to being the roughest a draft can get. It is currently somewhere around 51,000 words, so still a bit shy yet of my 80,000 word goal. While it might end up with more or a little less, it currently is missing some plot elements, has consistency issues, and other fun stuff that comes out of mass producing text to meet word count goals.

The editing process is going a little rougher than I hoped, though about as well as I expected. A lot of folks say that the editing and revising process is the hardest part of writing and right now I am inclined to agree with them. However, I will never get this thing published if I don’t put in the time to get it polished up to the level I want it. (Much less a level where an agent/publisher will want it.)

My friend Shane has set up a new writing site called “Novelnaut.“  It looks like he has similar goals with his site to what I have for Epic Plains.  He is intending it to be his “Writer’s Blog.”

In his own words:

A blog where I can ponder the life of a writer, review the books that I read, and maybe learn a thing or two about the writing, editing, and publishing worlds

He actually has first first book review up already.  He reviewed Ghengis: Lords of the Bow.  (A book I intend to borrow from him sometime soon.) Head on over and check it out.

Pimp my Novel has been a great discovery of mine.  I always find interesting posts popping up in Google Reader from that site.

This morning is no exception.  It is actually a guest post on the blog, but it is well written and worth checking out.  The topic is “Books on Writing” and it is split into two sections: Before [still writing your novel] and After [finishing your novel.]  If you are a writer or striving to go further with your writing (as I am) then stop over and check out this post.  Once you are finished, poke around the site.  Look at previous articles and see if the site is of interest to you.  (I suspect it will be.)  If so – be sure to subscribe to the feed.  It is frequently updated with all sorts of good posts.

Some of the recommendations given in this mornings article I have seen or read before, others are new to me and have now joined my list of resources to check out.  Either way it is a post worth going through.  Randy Susan Meyers (the guest author) clearly did her homework for the post.

I have started a resources page. There are a number of online resources I have found interesting or useful that I wanted to share. They are a mix of literary sites, publishers, agent blogs, author blogs, and more. Wow – there is a lot of information about the industry out there.

So that is why I started a page for these links as opposed to putting them all in a single post. However, I will list a few of my favorite ones below.

Agent Blogs: Nathan Bransford. Recently redid his site and added forums. A *lot* of information can be found on his site relating to getting published and the industry in general. The new forums have sections for industry discussion, Query Letter assistance, and much more. Hands down the best publishing industry resource I have found.

Author Blogs: Patrick Rothfuss and Brandon Sanderson. If you have read any of their works, follow them on their blogs. I enjoy reading both. Patrick is the author of one of the best debut fantasy novels I have read in a long time. Name of the Wind is a book I highly recommend. (Still waiting for book two Pat!  Though now working on my own I am inclined to give a bit more slack in the sequel area.) Brandon wrote the incredible Mistborn trilogy along with being selected to finish Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series.

There are *many* other sites I have found and subscribed to their news feeds. Such sites as Fantasy Book Critic, the NaNoWriMo blog, and Query Shark all have a different purpose but make for an informative (and often also enjoyable) read.

Check out the page and see if there are any you like.  As it says on the page, feel free to send me any additional sites you think might add to this list.  I am sure there are others I don’t yet know about!

I did a general post on Olorinpc.com about my goals for the new year.  Here on EP, I wanted to expand a little bit about my writing goals for the new year.  I have actually managed to lay out for myself pretty well what I want to accomplish this year with my writing.  By setting goals, it gives me a mark to aim for and a reason to keep pressing on.

One of the reasons I started this site was to help myself focus on writing in general.  Participating in NaNoWriMo this year really helped me bring that into perspective.  I discovered that I wanted to keep writing – and go further with it.  Hence the “2010 Progress Meter” I now have on the site.  I did a rough cut guess and came up with a figure of how much writing I want to accomplish in the next year: 255,000 words.  That is like doing NaNoWriMo 5 times.  Sounds crazy, but breaks down to around 700 words a day.

How the heck am I going to accomplish that???  Well to be honest, I might not.  Yet if I get anywhere close, I will be much further than I am today.  This is a totally new approach to writing for me, so I have no idea how reasonable my goals are.  However, before November I also had no idea it was possible for me to write 50,000 words in a single month.

Here is how I have broken it down:

1)  Novel writing: Finish editing my first novel, bringing up the wordcount by 30,000 to a total of 80,000.  Write my second novel and lay out a third.  (Possibly writing the third during NaNoWriMo 2010.)

2) Short Stories: I plan on writing a few of these.  Most trade publications call a short story something in the 5,000-10,000 word range.

3) Blogging: I bounce back and forth from writing a lot, to not writing much at all for months in a time.  I think I have figured out why that is.  That will be expanded on below.

To expand on #3, that is why I started Epic Plains.  If I am ever going to get my novel finished (and hopefully find an agent to get published) I need to get serious about writing.  To provide some separation for readers, and myself, I decided to have a site just for my writing endeavors.  Also with blogging, I pretty much annually get back on the horse, post a lot, then get burned out.  I have tried to structure it better, but tend to have to short of a time frame.  This year I am going to be approaching it more like a writing project – planning far longer in advance.  I am currently working on 50 posts between this blog and Olorinpc.com for publication between Jan. 1, 2010 and the end of February.  The concept being if I am working at least 1 month ahead then I shouldn’t get as rushed and behind as I have in the past.  Plus, this also gives me a platform to publicize my work.  (Hopefully being able to promote publications that have published my work beyond my own websites.)

We will see how well it works.  I also don’t want to let blogging take over and get me behind on the writing projects.  So it should be interesting to find a balance between all of those projects, work, home, and the fire department.  Even so, I am excited.  My writing projects are going better than I expected and hope to start sending out my first short story in a month or two, finishing edit 1 of my novel by the end of January, and kick off my scheduled posts during this time as well.

It is going to be an exciting next year!