Tag: writing life

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technically speaking

In my day job, I write technical documentation. Well, that’s what the job description says anyway. A good chunk of what I actually do is editing, formatting and coding, and organizing information. To be fair, I get to do a decent amount of actual writing, especially when we’re getting ready to release new features.

I also spend a lot of time researching APIs, and documenting the attributes our software will be ingesting and making available (we’re a data technology company). Some weeks it feels like all I do is this part of the job.

Sometimes though, I get to wrap my hands around a nice juicy project like a complete docs redesign/reorganization. This week I am just wrapping up one of those. There is something so satisfying about pushing that Publish button at the end of something this large.

Of course, most of our users will never know the amount of work that goes into something like this, and only a few of my coworkers (mostly other writers) will get it either. But that’s okay. I don’t need recognition for these things. If I’ve done my job well, my reward comes in the form of no one reporting broken links or missing information.

I push that Publish button tomorrow on the last piece of this project tomorrow afternoon. I’ll have a little celebration on my own after, then I get to spend my weekend writing non-technical stuff again.

It’s not a bad way to live.

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tear stained alleys and sun drenched fields

Sometimes, when I feel stuck working on a book, I’ll sidestep to a short story or some poetry. Sometimes into one of the other books in some state of written languishing on my hard drive. This last week, I’ve been wading into the poetry waters again.

I have a deep and abiding love for poetry. I can spend hours on a single line some times, working and reworking it until it’s perfect. Other times the words just drip straight out of my soul and stain the page permanently.

I have an entire bin full of pages of poetry, some dating all the way back to the 1980s. And sure, some of it is truly suctackular, but I never do seem to be capable of throwing it out. Each piece is a part of who I am, or who I used to be.

If you were to lay it all out in chronological order, you’d be able to watch me grow up, follow me from the angsty teen years to the angsty adult years, hear the changes in my voice as I got to really know myself. It’s almost a biography in poetry, if you will. My life story told in emotions and ideas, images painted with words.

This past weekend I spent some time immersed in those paintings, wandering down tear stained alleys and into sun drenched fields, gathering wildflowers before carefully putting the past back to bed.

Soon, I hope to be able to share with you what I found.

Until then, Readers, it is time for more coffee and the day job.

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of noise and static

I’m that person who has trouble focusing on a single task at a time. I grew up with the need to be in constant motion, to always be doing something and “sitting” didn’t count as “something”. Even in high school, I had to have music or the television playing in order to focus my brain on my homework.

Today, I use a lot of documentaries to occupy that space in my mind while I work. When I write, there’s usually music playing, unless I’m writing poetry. That’s about the only thing I think I need silence for. Sometimes the music I play while writing is driven by what I’m writing.

For example, while working on the first book in the Blood Witch trilogy, I listened to a bunch of baroque music, driven by the fact that one of my characters was into that sort of sound. When working on Forever, there was a playlist that wound itself through time, like Amara did, starting with some tribal beats and working up through history.

Book 2 in the Blood Witch series didn’t have a decided playlist, it kind of moved around songs in my library and I’d just skip songs that didn’t fit what I was writing. As I’m working on Book 3, I’m having trouble finding the musical flow. The story is set in a culture roughly equating to 1880 London, but the music of the time is not resonating with the story telling.

Somewhat more effective is a random playlist of “sound” rather than set music. Think atmospheric, not quite meditative kind of sound. Lots of long single notes and gentle waves of sound. It also helps when I have a headache, like this morning.

My coffee is getting cold, and I have words to wrestle into place, so happy Sunday, Readers. May it be filled with kindness.

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of confidence and validation

I don’t know that I can pinpoint an exact catalyst for becoming a writer. It seems that I’ve been creating and telling stories my whole life. I do know that the idea that I could write actual books with my name on the covers came in my teens.

It didn’t start with books, obviously. First came poetry. Oh my, was it some terrible poetry! It was trite and sappy or it was trite and dark. I guess it was the primary outlet of my teenage angst.

From there, I dipped my toe into the ocean of short story writing. I was at least marginally better at that, as it was essentially what I’d already been doing without actually writing stuff down.

It was inevitable, however, that I would turn to full length novels. I wrote my first one longhand on notebook pages. It was awful. It was derivative of every movie I had ever seen and every book I had ever read and I tried to cram so very much plot into it that there were inevitably huge holes and forgotten lines. My characters were either stereotypes or wooden.

Still, this is the book that bit me. I let friends read it, and, friends being friends, they all loved it and clamored for more. It was my freshman year of high school, and my notebooks and pages got handed around school.

I got my first typewriter for Christmas that year. I banged away at that thing every single day for hours at a time. First, I typed up that first book. Then I got started on a sequel. During my sophomore year of high school, I would type up around ten pages or so each night. Those pages got clipped together and numbered, because in the morning I was passing the “chapters” around to those who were reading it, and I gathered them back together again at the end of the day.

It was my first real taste of what it was like to write for an audience. I still have some of those stories around here somewhere. That second was still awful, but it was awful in completely different ways than the first, so that was progress I suppose.

Today I’m still fairly sure some of my writing is awful and I struggle with imposter syndrome a great deal (as I’m sure all writers do at some point), but I try to hold onto the confidence of that teenager, handing out pages to her peers in search of any scrap of validation and the confirmation that this is what I was meant to be.

Happy Friday, Readers! I hope you have a grand weekend.

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the state of Thána

I finished a first edit pass on the second Blood Witch book not too long ago and have set it aside to start the third book. The idea for the third book came to me a few months ago, and has been building for a while.

I continue to love these characters with every fiber of my being!

Thána is like me in ways Amara never could have been. Writing in the first person allows me to immerse myself into the character. When I’m writing, I can lose myself in the narrative and shape the worlds she moves through.

Each book moves Thána into a new realm with new challenges and new characters to meet. Usually, when I start a new book, I have the basics of the world and an overarching view of the plot, though the details don’t ever come until I’m actually writing. My characters can surprise me, and often do.

I prefer to write straight through, making notes on things I will need to go back to add in or change, rather than stopping where a new plot point arrives and immediately build it in. So I usually have a file open with the story, one with notes and in the case of these books, one with spells and foreign words I use in the stories.

Then, when the zero draft is done, I take those notes, go back to the beginning and work all of those things into the bones. That’s what I consider my first edit pass. Then I usually put it away and work on something else…the next book or something new.

I give it at least a few weeks before I go back to edit again, focusing on smoothing out dialog, fleshing out descriptions, filling in scenes, etc. My third edit pass, I actually read the whole thing out loud to myself. This serves to point out missing words, clunky dialog and repetitive words.

But, for now, it’s time for the day job where I get to write other fun things! Have a great day, Readers!

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what a week

Like most Americans, my attention has been firmly on our nation’s capitol this week, as law enforcement investigates the uprising at the capitol and congress worked to hold the president responsible for inciting that violence.

I’ll admit that it has not been great for my creativity or productivity!

That said, I did finish the zero draft of the second Blood Witch book over the weekend. Up next will be an editing pass to flesh out a few scenes and retrofit some story points that developed near the end.

For as long as I have been writing, my characters can still surprise me. Going into this book, I knew the plot points I wanted to hit, at least in the beginning and middle. The ending changed multiple times while I was writing, and a relationship developed between two characters along the way, which I now have to go back through and lay the breadcrumbs in.

There’s a certain satisfaction that comes with reaching the end of the book, even though I know there is still work to do. It was a victory I needed this week.

Now though, I need to finish my coffee and get on with the day job. I hope you are all safe and well, Readers and that you manage to find joy in these chaotic and dangerous times.

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the writer’s brain

You know, sometimes I wonder what it would be like to not have a writer’s brain. How quiet would my head be if it wasn’t filled with characters telling stories, with worlds built from a scrap of an idea, with words spilling in torrents of creativity?

I may not always be actively writing, and have just this year gone through a dry spell, but even then, my head is full of activity, it just isn’t translating well enough to put on the page.

I love world building and crafting characters. I have a whole cast of characters that I have built in my head and never used (there’s a whole subsection of just talking animals). Unsurprisingly, this is also my favorite part of playing SIMs, building houses/lots and creating characters.

I wish I could paint so I could show people the rich, vibrant worlds that my head contains. I know ridiculously minute facts about these places. I know their mythology and history. I know the places where mythology and history cross paths. I have drawn maps and created languages.

Now, if my fingers could just keep up so I could get it all down on paper/computer screen, that would be lovely.

Hoping you are safe and well, Readers!

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what’s your name?

If you know me, you know I suck at names. Characters, places…it doesn’t matter. I have a default five or six names I use that I then have to go back and change. Usually I just use the placeholders while I’m actively writing because when I do name a person or thing for keeps, I usually end up falling down a rabbit hole of baby name sites and foreign language translators.

See, I like my names to have a meaning that corresponds to the character or place. In the Shades and Shadows series, each of the characters has a name that corresponds with their ethnic background and who they are. Every one of them started off with different names than they ended up with. Well, except Zero and Raven. I knew those names going in.

Cue working on the second Blood Witch. In the first book most of the names/people are of Greek or Irish heritage (sort of…it’s complicated). In this book, the people and places are entirely alien, so I’m stuck with making things up. For one race I am loosely basing their language/names on Germany (very, very loosely), the others though are “make it up as I go” and “keep a list for consistency” type of folks.

I can’t tell you how fast writing can come to a screeching halt when I need to name a person or a place. I freeze up. It’s ridiculous!

But now, it’s time to get working on the day job. Happy Monday, Readers! I hope you have a great week.

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when words flow like water

There is a particular spot when writing a book, at least for me, when I’ve found the path, and the plot is clear and my characters are feeling very chatty, and it just flows out of my fingers and into the keyboard.

I’ve recently hit that point with the second Blood Witch book.

The problem with that is, all I want to do is write, to get it all down and find the ending. It’s a glorious feeling, but it does tend to interfere with real life. I still have to work, and there’s other obligations to meet. I can’t actually sit my ass down at my computer and write all day, every day.

That said, I do have some vacation days coming, and I’m hoping that I can get my zero draft finished before the end of the year. I just have to get from here to December 24th, grabbing writing time where I can, then I have a whole week (plus a day or two) off to write.

I hope you are all well, and keeping yourself, and your families safe during this hell-fire of a year. Drink some water. Wash your hands. Wear your mask. Stay home as much as you can. I love you all, Readers!

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the writing part of writing

Being an author is an odd sort of thing, I suppose, especially to those who are not *people who write* and especially not for those who also do not read. I was a voracious reader as a child. I absorbed words like a sponge. Stories were vehicles that transported me out of my bedroom and into worlds larger than any one mind can conceive.

Maybe it was inevitable that I would pick up a pen and start writing. I wanted in on that magic! I loved creating new worlds, new characters. I wrote science fiction, fantasy, and poetry. I tried my hand at mystery and romance. I studied and tried to emulate my favorite authors. I wanted my prose to be lush and invigorating. I wanted the worlds in my stories to come to life.

For that to happen, I learned, the author needs to spend a good amount of time prior to words hitting the paper. There is world building to do. There are characters to build out so that they are realistic and not just cardboard cut outs. There is plot to invent, stretch, turn, twist and resolve. Inevitably, that plot has holes that need to be filled.

And all of that comes either before or during the actual writing part of the writing process. Okay, sometimes after the first draft is done.

I can spend months (or longer) doing all the stuff that happens in my head before I start writing. My muse loves world building more than anything, so the worlds I see in my head are amazing landscapes of complex societies that I can only hope I capture as I begin to write.

This last weekend saw over ten thousand new words in the second Blood Witch book, signaling an end of the mental block 2020 clamped on my muse and ushering in the period where the words begin to spill from my fingers. It’s the part of the writing process that wants to just devour my life. The story spins out in my head faster than my fingers can translate it to the page, and I am best able in this phase to tune out my inner editor and just get it down.

I maybe feel the most like myself when I’m doing the writing part of writing. Unfortunately for me, today is Monday…and that means a return to the day job, so more word craft will need to wait, though I am hoping to get through this scene before I open the work computer.

I hope you are safe and sane, Readers, and that your week is filled with magic and kindness.

Cover Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash