Tag: writing

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NaNoWriWon’t, a.k.a. Why We Write

Anybody who knows about NaNoWriMo is now in the throes of writing feverishly, hoping to crank out the elusive 50,000 word novel in 30 days.

I’ve done it. It’s not all it’s cracked up to be. Cranking out 1,665 words a day takes me about 2 hours, give or take… and that doesn’t include breaks. The real question is, do I have two hours a day to devote to writing a book that I might have to go back and re-write anyway?

Well, no, I don’t have time to waste. And in the grand scheme of things, I have to stop and ask myself, “Self, do I really even need to write another book?” This is a question every writer should ask themselves, really. And sometimes, the answer might surprise you.

What it boils down to is, “Did God call me to write a book?” and if the answer is yes, then by all means, do what you have to do to write a book. Don’t stop until it’s finished! But if the answer is “I don’t know” then you’ve got some thinking to do.

Why do we write? Is it because we enjoy it? Is it because we’d like to make money at it? Do we write just because somebody once told us “Hey, you’re good at writing, you should write a book”? Or maybe, just maybe, it’s your calling. Maybe it’s what God has gifted you to do. You believe your story is going to change somebody’s life, and maybe (probably) change yours in the writing process. But after years of doing things, I’ve realized (i.e. God has shown me) that just because you’re good at something, doesn’t mean God has called you to do that thing.

This will come as a shock to many. It was a shock to me when I realized it. “Why would God give me a talent if He didn’t want me to use it?” That’s also a valid question, one I’ve asked myself countless times. He does want you to use it! But the answer to how we use it lies in where your life is going, and what God has called you to do with your life overall. You see, “writing” as a verb isn’t a calling. You can use writing to do something, to accomplish something for God. But the act of writing in itself isn’t a calling. It’s what you do with your writing that matters. And honestly, if God calls you to do something that requires writing, you don’t have to be the best at it for God to use you. But you need to use your talents to do the will of God.

Just let that sink in for a minute, okay?

So where do we look for motivation? Why are we writing? The only way to know for sure is to seek out what God wants for your life, and make sure you’re doing what God has put you here to do. How you accomplish that is up to you, but you need to find your motivation first. Only then, once you realize why you write, can you find writing freedom.

Are you ministering to people? Are you touching people’s lives? Are you bringing truth to them? Are you filling a need with your writing that you feel God has told you to conquer? Then by all means, get writing! I believe God has given me a reason to write, and so I will do what I can.

(by the way, this post is 580 words!)

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What Portal (And Breaking Bad) Taught Me About Writing

What does playing a video game have to do with writing a story? Well, if you’ve played any recent games, you’ve probably realized they’re becoming more and more story-driven. That’s because developers have realized that a good story will suck players in more than good gameplay alone. In fact, the best games have great gameplay and story.

And so, I discovered the game Portal. It’s a very non-traditional game, in that it’s a first-person 3D puzzle game. And your character never speaks. Even in the sequel, Portal 2, she doesn’t speak, despite being constantly accompanied by a talking sphere. And later on, a talking potato. Seriously.

The main things that stand out to me about Portal are how the story develops, and how the environment was designed to forward the story and the game without bogging players down. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about good writing, it’s that writers should “Show, don’t Tell.” Portal is a perfect example of how to do this: you start the game knowing nothing about your character, where you are, or what do to, and every level walks you through a little more of what you need to know without explicitly giving you directions.

When you play through the game with the designer’s commentary on, they stress the importance of how much they developed the game to teach players how to play the game. The whole idea was to shape the environment so that players would come to the right solutions, without just giving it away. That way players felt a sense of accomplishment, even though the entire game was designed to lead them down the right path, and entertain them along the way. Every single “discovery” was carefully crafted to elicit a certain response, and the player never even realizes it.

When writing a story, we need to stick to the same idea. Why have a massive deluge of information when it’s more fun for the readers to come to the same conclusion on their own? It takes a little more creativity to craft a story completely out of surroundings (as opposed to just spilling your guts) but when you do, the reader feels like they are in control of the story, and they figured it out on their own… even if you’re leading them by the hand behind the scenes. The tension, the curiosity, the sense of accomplishment. All these things come from not just reading the story, but experiencing it from the character’s eyes.

You need to lay out all the plot pieces as the character finds them. You have to make it so that the reader finds the story on their own, but doesn’t realize you were leading them there.

In television shows, they use what’s called a “Cold Opener.” This is basically an opening scene that the viewer is thrust into, without knowing anything in advance. In the cold opener for the show Breaking Bad, we see the main character standing next to a smoking RV in nothing but his undies and a shirt, and holding a gun behind his back.

Immediately, your brain is thinking “Why isn’t he wearing any pants? Who’s the other guy? Who is he afraid of? What’s all that stuff in the RV? Is that why they have gas masks? And what’s with the apron?” You’re trying to figure out what’s going to happen, but you only have a few visual clues to go on… there’s no narrator, no prologue, no back story. Just Walt in an apron. In Portal, you get nothing except Chell waking up from hibernation, a few visual clues, and the ramblings of a deranged computer (which you can’t really trust). Gradually, as the stories progress, you get pieces of the puzzle. Eventually, you put enough of the puzzle together to figure out what’s going on, and by then, the story’s almost over, and it’s time for the epiphany. By then, the reader/viewer/player is ready to engage, and that’s when the final action sequences have the most impact.

As a writer, don’t spill all the beans. Don’t be afraid to leave details out at first, and don’t be afraid to hint at things early on. Trust me, if your story is interesting at all, people will remember those tidbits, and make the connections. Our brains naturally file things away to use for later, even if they don’t make sense at first. At last, when the reader makes the connections, bam, they’re hooked. They’ve invested in the story, they’ve worked on figuring it out, and they will stick around to see how it ends up.

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How To Self-Publish an Ebook With Smashwords

This article was originally posted for Smashwords’ “How-To” post, located here. The original article I wrote has long since been erased to the world, so I decided to re-write it! EDIT: I found a copy of the original article!

For some people, one of the main things holding them back from writing a novel is the fear of “What do I do with it once I’ve written it?” Thankfully, in today’s web-enabled world, it’s no longer necessary to hawk yourself to publisher after publisher in hopes of making that elusive book deal. Also, for the first time ever, eBook sales have eclipsed print copies. This puts us in an interesting place! One of the largest independent e-book publishers is Smashwords, and once you’ve decided to publish a book, this is the perfect place to start. Smashwords is essentially a tool for distributing your e-book, and helping you get it accessible in as many formats as possible. Smashwords is NOT an editing service, a sales service, nor a sleazy print-on-demand retailer. I recommend them because I use them myself.

Of course, you have to have actually written a book first. (This should go without saying.) You will also need to be able to have the book edited, either by yourself, or preferably by someone else who knows how to do quality editing. Once the actual story is finished, you’re ready for formatting.

When publishing an e-book, formatting is the most critical part. When you take away the actual paper, formatting is all you have left! Without good formatting, a good book can be rendered nearly unreadable. Thankfully, Smashwords thought ahead on this, and offer several helpful documents on how to do it justice. First, you will want to download and read the Smashwords Style Guide and read it more than once. Yes, formatting is boring, but if you want the widest distribution and the best looking end result, you need to read it carefully! If you get stuck, check the FAQ and go back and read it again. Still, it’s a daunting task, but there’s plenty of info that may help you along. You will also want to read the e-book terminology guide, the Book Marketing Guide, and possibly check out the Smashwords Facebook group.

Once the actual content is in a usable state, you can then create a free account at Smashwords, and get started. The process is fairly straightforward. You upload your document, and it gets processed by the word grinder, which converts it into all the common e-book formats. Make sure all the output formats came out okay. I didn’t have any problems with it, but if you use any graphics, odd fonts, or whatever, you will want to check it.

Tips to good e-book formatting:

  • Read the Smashwords Style Guide.
  • Strip all existing page/paragraph formatting from your document, but not character formatting (otherwise all italics and bold text will revert to default)
  • Use either blank lines between paragraphs, or indents, but not both! 
  • Minimize empty carriage returns. Anything more than two or three blank lines in a row will fail when you put it through the Meatgrinder. In print copies it’s necessary to get the page to look right, but in e-books it’s not needed.
  • Save a fresh copy of your story with all formatting removed!! (The style guide explains how to do this.)
  • Read other stories similar to yours. You can learn a lot about what not to do by reading other examples!
  • Make sure to read through the entire finished formatted copy before you submit it.
  • Check for missing italics, misplaced page breaks, anything that doesn’t look right.
  • Try to stick with regular fonts. Many e-readers don’t work well with non-standard fonts.
  • Make sure your front matter and end pages are formatted per the style guide, otherwise you will end up doing it over.
  • If you have a cover graphic, make sure it gets included, and is the right DPI
  • If you are okay with listing Smashwords as the publisher, you can get your ISBN# assigned for free. If not, you will need to buy one.
  • If this copy of the book differs from any other versions (print too) then it needs a separate ISBN.
  • Preview the book in all formats to make sure there’s nothing wrong with the formatting! Even if you’ve done it before, it’s easy to miss something, and sometimes you just can’t see it unless you preview it in that format.
  • When in doubt, simpler is better. Your adoring fans will appreciate your hard work in making the book readable, but if the formatting is unusable, it doesn’t matter how good the writing is.
  • You don’t have to publish it right away. Make sure it’s right, and that you’re happy with the finished product.

Hopefully this will get you far enough along that you can start selling your very own e-book. These are just the ones I could think of, but they will keep you from making simple mistakes (some of which I made myself). It will take some time to format the book, so find a comfortable place to work, clear your desk and your mind, and do it in chunks of 30 minutes. I found that was about as long as I could concentrate without taking a break, but you may be able to knock it out in one sitting! Remember, you’re not trying to re-edit the book, you’re trying to make it look right.

Not to shamelessly plug my work, but if you want to see what a formatted book looks like, you can go to Smashwords and download any of their free offerings. If the book meets the highest standards of formatting, then it will be included in the Premium Catalog. Why do you want your book in the Premium Catalog? More online sellers to distribute it! More exposure and more sales, not to mention you’ll have a great-looking e-book.  It took 2 attempts to get my book in there, but they were simple mistakes I overlooked by not paying enough attention to the style guide.

That’s it! Just take your time, and you too can be an online self-published author!

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Change “I Want” to “I Will”

Recently, I was reading a Charlotte Mason book on homeschooling, and came across this quote:

Children should be taught to distinguish between “I want” and “I will”.

And it got me thinking. This is primarily directed towards teaching and training children, but it struck me how applicable this is to everybody, especially in today’s ridiculously backwards society.

How many times have we said to ourselves, “I just want….” or even “I’d really like it if…” when we really are saying “I wish things were different.” The truth is, we can’t change anything except ourselves, which includes our attitudes.

What if instead of saying “I want to know more about God” we say something like “I will spend twenty minutes a day reading my Bible.” Did you know you can read through the entire Bible in about 90 days if you read 20 minutes a day?

Instead of saying “I want to write a book” we say “I will spend an hour today writing.” Did you know if you can write 1500 words a day, you can write a novel in about a month?

Instead of saying “I want to save for retirement” we instead say “I will stop eating out and wasting money, and put that into my 401K.” Did you know you can retire early (and even be debt-free!) if you do simple things like this? It’s not as difficult as it sounds.

What if instead of “I want to lose weight and get in shape” we say “I will eat smaller meals, and get a little more exercise?” Did you know, just controlling your meal portions and getting a few hours of exercise a week is all it takes? Like 40 pounds in 3 months.

What it boils down to, then, is that we always want things to happen, but we’re not willing to take the first step. And truthfully, most things we want to accomplish are easily doable if we just take it one step at a time.

How do I know this? Because I’ve done all four of these things. I’m not a superhero, either. And they weren’t that hard if you break them down into manageable chunks. It’s not magic! It just takes the willingness to take the first step.

So… don’t just say “I want.” Nothing will change.

Get up and take the first step.

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Current Novel Project

I’ve been trying very hard to keep my writing momentum going, but being at home makes it very hard for me. There’s just too much going on, and people (kids and wife) that need my attention. This isn’t a bad thing, it just makes it hard to write without being interrupted.

The excerpt I posted recently is from the book I’m working on now. It’s basically a tech-thriller/drama/action/crime… well, heck, I don’t know exactly what you’d call it. All of the things I write are hard to nail down to one specific genre! I guess the most appropriate would be to class it by location or setting, which means it’s a modern action story. I’m finding more and more as I write that my ideas and stories really don’t fit narrow genres, and I guess that’s okay in that it appeals to a wide audience, but bad in that it makes the book hard to market!

Anyway, I’m up to around 51,000 words (before editing) so I’m definitely getting closer to my goal of around 75K or 80K. That seems to be a good length for the kind of story I’m doing, and I think it’ll come together nicely at the end.

The other side to it is I want to finish this book before I write the Prequel to Seeking The Heavens. That’s going to be an interesting book in and of itself, and I’ve got a couple chapters written already, but I need to outline it and work on key scenes before I can really say it’s a “work-in-progress.”

Okay, I guess that’s enough for now, back to work!

 

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Novel Excerpt, Scene from Chapter 11

The feeling that had settled in Mike’s gut was unlike anything he’d felt before. It sank into his stomach like a stone weight, almost to the point of dragging him down physically. Even though there was little chance the plan wouldn’t work, it did nothing to calm his nerves.

“Okay,” Mike said, drawing in a long breath and letting it out slowly. “Here’s what we’re going to do.” He tried to collect his thoughts, though the talk was really only a benefit to Bob. Petty already knew most of the plan, and Thad didn’t care as long as someone told him what to do.

“You’ve kept us waiting,” Bob said impatiently. “Could you get to it?”

“I know, I’m sorry. I guess it took me a while to figure out what we could actually get away with.”

“It’s fine,” Petty added. “Just walk us through it.”

“Right.” Mike cleared his throat for emphasis. “We’ve already got the tracker on Agent Simon’s car. Thad’s remote unit will allow us to disable it when necessary.”

Thad nodded in agreement.

“The easy part will be getting them to follow us to where the setup will happen. The hard part,” Mike said more slowly, “will be to get them to see what we want them to see. There will, of course, be a thorough police forensics investigation afterwards, but we’ve accounted for that.”

Petty shot him a wink, to which Mike smiled.

“Are you sure you’ve planned out the switch well enough?” Bob asked. “Do you have some sort of diagram or map? I don’t feel comfortable with this unless I can see how it works out on paper.”

“Fair enough,” Mike said. “For now, it’s going to simply be a fake accident, and nobody will be the wiser.”

“If you say so,” Bob said. “I still think it’s risky.”

“It is,” Mike said with some hesitation. “If we didn’t do it this way, there would be no way to get the feds off our tail for good.” His lip turned down in a half-frown. “There’s no other way.”

He placed a large folded sheet of paper on the table and grinned. “There you go,” he said to Bob, “I figured you’d want to see it. All the points are there, everything is accounted for.”

For a minute or two Bob examined the drawing, scrutinizing every line and number. Finally, he looked up at Mike and raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure you want to do it here?” He shook his head. “That’s a long ways, man.”

“I know,” Mike admitted. “It’s very risky. But I know we can do this.”

Bob chewed his lip in thought, until he finally threw up his hands. “Fine,” he said. “I don’t like it, though.”

“I figured you wouldn’t,” Petty said with a chuckle. “I know how much you hate water.”

“Absolutely!” Bob shot back. “You know I can’t stand swimming.”

Mike turned to Thad, who had remained unusually silent up to that point, and asked, “What do you think?”

A huge grin came over Thad’s face. “I say, mate, it’s bloody brilliant!”

“Thanks,” Mike said with a nod.

“I’m with Robert, though, I don’t think it’ll fool them.”

“Oh, come on!” Mike insisted. “It’ll work, trust me!”

“What makes you think so?” Bob asked.

“Because,” Petty interrupted, “we’ve got the feds on our side this time!”

It took a few seconds before the look of shock faded from Bob and Thad’s faces.

“Come again?” Thad asked.

“The feds know about it,” Mike answered. “In fact, they helped me come up with part of it.”

“Absolutely not!” Bob shouted as he stood up, knocking the table to the side. “You can’t trust them!”

“I know,” Mike said, holding his hands up. “Just hear me out.”

“Ah, you little devil, you!” Thad said, his grin returning. “You figured on that all along, didn’t you?”

“Absolutely,” Mike said with a nod. “I may be crazy, but I’m not stupid!”

“Well, then,” Petty said with an audible sigh of relief, “the only thing left to figure out is who’s vehicle we’ll use to make it happen.”

“The van would have room for all the equipment we’d need,” Bob observed.

“I know,” Mike answered. “That’s why we’re going to use Pettys’ Cuda instead.

The last thing Petty remembered was the room going dark and spinning, and then everything went black.