The most useful technique I've learnt so far from Holly Lisle's How To Think Sideways and How To Revise Your Novel courses is the idea of the scene sentence.  Essentially, it's one line that describes the key things which happen in a scene. I'm not talking details here, obviously - it's about focusing on the things that really matter. Since everything I write is done in scenes, this has been really helpful for me. It seems like a simple thing, but I've found that it really helps me to focus, at every stage of the novel writing process.

Holly has a great formula for actually writing the sentences, but essentially it's about these questions: what's happening in this scene that's really important? Who does it affect? And how does it move the story forward? You just write one sentence per scene. And the really key thing about it for me has been finding out whether 'scenes' really are scenes or whether they're actually just drivel. I'm recalling this off the top of my head, so apologies if I'm misquoting, but this line from the lessons sums it up perfectly: You have written a scene when something important changes. So if I write my scene sentence and find that there's nothing important going on there, it isn't a scene. This was crucial for the major edits on The Amulet of Sìochàin - there were quite a few 'scenes' that I didn't even try to rework - I just deleted them, because they didn't add anything to the story.

The idea is to end up with one sentence per scene. But sometimes, lots of important things have to happen at once, and in the plotting stages when I'm trying to make sure I remember everything that has to take place, I sometimes end up with several sentences for each scene. (It's either that or one sentence plus lots of notes, and I prefer it all in one place.) When it comes to edits though, those scene synopses will be cut down to one simple sentence (I think Holly recommends 30 words) per scene.

So today I've spent an hour or so writing out scene sentences for the rest of my WIP, which I started for NaNoWriMo. I'd done a bit before I started writing in November, and when I started to run out I'd plan the next few scenes ahead, but that started to get more difficult as I realised that I didn't really know what was going to happen next. So a few mindmaps and helpful lists later, I'd worked out most of the important things which still need to happen in this story. Then it was just a matter of fitting them together into scene-sized chunks and writing my sentences. I've put them in a logical order, but now that all of the important plot points are written down I can easily rearrange them if necessary, particularly with the storyboard feature in Storybox.

As of tomorrow, then, it's back to the first draft. And now that I know where I'm going, I'm excited again. And I used to call myself a pantser...!

Where do you fall on the plotting scale? Any tips for getting scene ideas down?

June was an utterly insane month, as we moved house and juggled some of our biggest jobs ever, and as a result I didn't do very well in SocNoc at all. I wasn't really expecting to win, but I only managed 12,336 words, which was less than satisfying. Still, I'm up to 25K in the new manuscript and really enjoying the story, so I won't complain too much.

Blogging, of course, dropped off my to do list entirely, for which I can only apologise. Actually, I think double apologies are in order, since I should have posted a couple of weeks ago when we finally managed to stop in our new house for more than two days at a time. The problem with that was that I wanted to post about my new writing room, and in particular put some photos up, but the truth is I haven't got round to taking a single picture of the house yet. (I did, however, manage to write an article about Using Writing Spaces and Rituals to Your Advantage, if you're at all interested.)

Another thing that was rather ignored during the madness of June (and most of July, obviously) was my How To Think Sideways lessons. I nearly have all the lessons now, but I'm only half way through what I have (I'm on lesson 11 of 22). When I've had the chance to work on it, it's continuing to be very useful indeed, but lately that's not been very often.

As a result of the last couple of months, I've changed my routine a bit. I missed so many writing sessions that I got quite grouchy about it, so I've lowered my sights a little. I'm setting myself a weekly word goal of 4000 words and giving myself weekends off. That works out at 800 words a day, which is usually quite manageable, and if I hit my word goal earlier in the week, I can have an extra day free. (I'm also considering an Amazon reward system, but I'm not sure that's entirely wise.) It's an odd way to do it, but it seems to be working - it's not that I don't want to be writing on weekends, it's just that we're still so busy at the moment that I need to let myself off the hook a bit.

I'm really only working on the novel in the mornings now, although I'm trying to make a point of doing something writing-related in the evenings - whether that be blogging, writing an article, or working on an HTTS lesson. Assuming that I manage to stick to that, I hope it won't be quite so long before my next post.

So... the May Marathon over at Will Write for Wine went pretty well for me, all things considered. I'm pretty sure I met all my goals - it surprised me, but I'm pretty pleased with myself.

May's Achievements:
- Wrote, edited and submitted a 2500 word short story - two rejections so far, waiting to hear from the third market.
- Typed up all of my handwritten edits for my NaNo 2008, making further changes as I went alone, and sent that off to be beta'd by my sister.
- Using Lessons 7 & 8 of Holly Lisle's How to Think Sideways course, I actually did some serious plotting and produced about 35 scene cards for my new story idea, creating a full story skeleton.

June's Goals:
- It's SocNoc, so my main goal for June is simple: write 50,000 words. Hopefully on this new story idea that I've got all plotted out.
- As far as short story stuff goes, I'm hoping that the market I'm currently submitting to will give me some helpful feedback. I already have a couple of things in mind I'd like to take another look at with this short story, so before submitting it elsewhere I think I'd like to do one last pass on it. I was so excited about my first submission that I think I may have sent it out before it was really ready to go. Or perhaps I'm just being paranoid. Either way, I'll at least check it through once more before resubmitting.
- Lessons 10 and 11 of the How to Think Sideways course. I'm on the six month version, which means I get a sent a new lesson each week, and I was hoping to get through them faster than I am - but being able to take it at my own pace is going to prove very useful this month as we're in the process of moving.

So that's that. We'll see how we do. The whole moving thing may cause a few hiccups this month, but I think it should be okay. I'm aiming for 50K, but honestly, I'd be happy with 25.

Have a good month!

Just over a week ago I set myself some goals for May as part of our May Challenge over at Will Write for Wine. Here's how I'm getting on - completed tasks have a line through them, my comments and additions are in bold:

- Write a 3000 word short story - it's pretty much all planned out now, and even has a working title (which is more than I can say for my NaNo), so I hope to get started on that in the next couple of days. - I had a first draft before the 1st May was over. It turned out that it wasn't quite going to make it to 3000 words - there wasn't enough story for that - but I was pretty pleased with it.

- Work through Lesson 8 of the How to Think Sideways course, Planning. - Haven't done this yet - seems silly to start it when I haven't finished the previous lesson's exercises yet!

- Type up all my handwritten edits for my NaNo story and send it to my sister to read. Will also probably get my husband to read it, although he's insisting that he wants me to read it aloud to him! Try and line up another writer to take a look at it, terrifying thought though that is. - Nothing yet.

- Put the pre-plan modules from Lesson 7 of HTTS into practice for my new novel idea. - I've started this - I've done character sheets for my protagonist and antagonist. Hoping to get some more done over the weekend.

- Edit the short story. - Done - I'm on the third edit now. First I showed it to my husband, who was very helpful, and followed his suggestions. Then I asked a couple of the people in my HTTS workshop to take a look at it, and have taken their comments into account. I'm waiting for their feedback on the changes now, and then I think it's about ready.

- Put Lesson 8 into practice for new idea. - Nope.

- Further research into possible markets for short story. - Done - I've found six I like and put them in the order I'm planning submit to them. I'm not expecting miracles - these are pretty difficult markets to crack and I am after all entirely new at this - but I'm kind of looking forward to that first rejection. Also a couple of them seem pretty good at personalising rejections, so that should be useful.

- Submit short story.

At the suggestion of the lovely Karen Pinco, we're holding a May writing challenge over at Will Write for Wine. I have quite a few things going on right now (at least in my head!) so I thought it might be a good idea to write down my goals for the month.

- Write a 3000 word short story - it's pretty much all planned out now, and even has a working title (which is more than I can say for my NaNo), so I hope to get started on that in the next couple of days.

- Work through Lesson 8 of the How to Think Sideways course, Planning.

- Type up all my handwritten edits for my NaNo story and send it to my sister to read. Will also probably get my husband to read it, although he's insisting that he wants me to read it aloud to him! Try and line up another writer to take a look at it, terrifying thought though that is.

- Put the pre-plan modules from Lesson 7 of HTTS into practice for my new novel idea.

- Edit the short story.

- Put Lesson 8 into practice for new idea.

- Further research into possible markets for short story.

And if I manage all that, maybe I'll even get to start writing that new story!

I have seven chapters left to edit. Fifty-four pages. And three days to do it if I want to reach my self-imposed deadline.

I've been averaging a chapter in the morning and a chapter in the evening, so in theory if I do one extra chapter in a session (and I know a couple of them are quite short) then I don't need to make any real extra time for it. Of course that doesn't allow for any additional scenes I might need to write in. So far I've added an extra ten or so - well, sort of. Some of them are really extensive rewrites rather than actual new scenes.

Anyway, one way or another I think I should be able to make it. It would be nice to be able to just say I'll take a morning, an afternoon, even a day and get it done, but unfortunately work is rather hectic at the moment so that's not really practical.

Once I'm done with this bit, of course, I'll have to figure out the best way to process the changes - I can't decide on the practicalities. On one hand, working in yWriter 5 is amazing - I love the way I can move scenes around and so on. On the other, though, I don't want to overwrite the original draft in that form, and it doesn't seem to come with a Save As button! If I were to work from an exported file, I'd have to do all the scrolling that comes with a long Word document, but I wouldn't be making any changes to the original. Decisions, decisions.

I decided a while ago that I wanted to try my hand at writing a short story, and with some considerable help from Thinking Sideways I've come up with an idea I really like. I've done some work on the idea and I think I have it pretty well mapped out, so before I start transferring all the edits I think I'm going to try and write that. It should mean that when I get back to it I'm a little more distanced again too, which will hopefully help.

As an extra bonus of the How To Think Sideways course (and yes, I know I'm linking to it a lot, but really, it's wonderful) I had the chance to submit up to 500 words to Holly Lisle for a new concept she's starting, the Writer Crash Test. Essentially, if she picks mine I'll get a free crit - but in video form, on the internet. If you visit the site you'll see that the first crit is up - and even if mine isn't used, I think it's going to prove to be quite a useful resource.

I'm currently on Lesson 7 of the course, which is to do with getting everything you need together before you start writing - pre-planning, if you will. It's not plotting, exactly, more getting particular ideas and conflicts in place. I'm just working through the theory at the moment but it will be interesting to apply it to both the short story and the novel idea I've had recently.

And I think that about wraps it up for now.

The past week has been fairly slow for edits, what with being away and Easter get togethers and so on. Still, I'm half-way through now, and although the really bad bit is still to come (that would be the bit before I completely changed the villian's story) I still think I can reach the end before the 1st May. I think there will still be some tidying up to do after that - mostly making sure that I've actually followed up on all the notes I've made during this process - but to my surprise I'm finding that there's less actual rewriting to do than I expected. I've only got about five A4 pages of completely new material, although of course that's on top of all the bits I've written directly onto the manuscript.

I had a bit of a breakthrough the other day when I finally got a handle on my single sentence blurb (thank you, Thinking Sideways course!), quickly followed by figuring out my theme. So my sentence is as follows, although I'm sure I'll rework it a few times:

With powers so great they scare even the Guild of Magic, a naive new witch is dragged into a struggle with the ambitious King of the Elves for control of magic itself...

And it turns out that my theme is all about how people deal with the pressure of expectations. I suddenly realised that this affects all of my four main characters in pretty significant ways, but I'd completely missed it until now.

So all in all, I'm feeling fairly positive about things at the moment. I am definitely thinking that this WIP may be veering to YA, but that's okay - my younger sister ought to be able to tell me if that is the case. She loved my sentence and kept trying to steal my manuscript when I went to visit this weekend, so at least I know she's willing to test drive it!

I haven't yet completed another Thinking Sideways lesson, but the next one is all about figuring out your market, so it should be fairly appropriate.

One last thing - a fabulous quote from Dennis Lehane printed in my Writers' News magazine last month:

"It's good not only to realise that you can't please all of the people all of the time, but that you don't want to. There's a certain type of reader that you don't ever want to write for. And that really helps."

I'm more than a quarter of the way through with my edits now and I think it's going quite well. I've scrapped a lot, but rather than being disheartened by that I'm finding it quite exciting. I can't remember where I heard this metaphor, nor indeed exactly what it was - but it's like I've got the rough wood or clay into a vague shape and I'm now smoothing out the bumps, chipping away the bits I don't need and adding the extra details. There are a lot of people who say they hate editing - but the process of refining this is proving rather enjoyable for me. Of course, I haven't got to the really bad bit yet. I've also got back into working on it morning and night, which is much better for me. It means it sort of tops and tails my day very nicely, and I get an extra chapter done each day. Although I'm letting myself off the evenings at weekends!

The only problem I'm considering at the moment is one particular scene. A couple of days ago I decided I should bring it forward, reworking it to fit in before one of the key moments. I was all set to do that this morning, and then I looked at the chapter and a half that would end up happening after it and realised that actually they're pretty key to making that scene happen. So now I'm sort of stuck. On one hand, I was convinced that putting the scene earlier would give a particular decision the extra kick I thought it was missing. On the other hand, this is going to mean a lot of rewriting - and so far, I haven't done more than a paragraph at a time of that since I started edits. (Which is probably why it seems so much easier than I expected.)

So really, I guess this is the bit where it gets difficult. Essentially I'm going to have to rewrite two, maybe three chapters, changing the location and various points which feed in and out of this particular scene. I think I'll have to condense them a bit, since I don't want to push this key moment any further back if possible, and then add some extra bits afterward to fill the void. This morning I almost convinced myself that I didn't need to, but thinking about it now... yes, I do need to. The practicalities are interesting - up til now I've been making my corrections, additions and deletions on the MS itself, and adding notes for clarification in the spiral bound notebook I bought for this very purpose. I think I'll need to use separate lined paper for this though - I don't want to start using the notebook differently as I've got a decent system in place that I'm happy with, and there's going to be too much to write it onto the MS itself.

Right, there's that decision made then. I'll let you know how I get on.

As for Thinking Sideways... ohhhh, I'm loving every minute. The last lesson I did was Lesson Five, which looks at how much you should develop your story idea before you start to write it - how much background information you need, how much worldbuilding you should do, etc. I got some great story development from it for my favourite of the three ideas I mentioned last week and I'm starting to get really excited about the story. It's all about looking for the extraordinary in your ideas and making it unique, and to my surprise I'm getting on really well with Holly's rather unconventional methods. So far, I wholeheartedly recommend the course.

I have started on my edits - and despite all my apprehension, I'm really enjoying it. I don't know if I'm doing it 'right' as such, but it feels pretty satisfying all the same.

To help me get an idea of a good process, I looked over on the NaNoEdMo site for some recommendations, and that was useful. But what really helped was Holly Lisle's article on How to Revise a Novel.

Pause for a serious *duh moment*. I just realised as I went to find the article that although that link is the article I've used so far (and has proved useful as such), it's actually not the one I was intending to use. I was planning to use the One-Pass Manuscript Revision. So, um, I'm going to go over that one tomorrow... I'll let you know how that turns out...

Anyway, with the How to Revise a Novel link, editing has been fairly simple so far. (Looking at the second one, though, I think things may be about to change slightly.) I'm finding that although there's a lot of stuff that needs changing, cutting out completely or bringing into line with the rest of the book, what I've got is actually okay stuff. This makes me both nervous and excited about how things will change as I get further into it - I thought the second half was probably a lot better than the first, and I'm a bit worried that perhaps I was wrong and actually the second half is dreadful!

I was expecting it to be harder to cut things out, if for no other reason than losing precious word count, but actually, there's something quite satisfying about it. I'm only five chapters in to the edit (and I will probably go over those again once I've worked through that article) but I feel like I'm really getting rid of the weeds. I am however very much aware that I will probably end up completely scrapping most of the first half of the book - so maybe I'm being unconsciously easy on myself?

As for the Thinking Sideways course - I'm very much enjoying that too. Repeating Lesson Three helped a bit, and after a week I had the three ideas I needed. Lesson Four was all about refining them, and so today I did that with two of them. It was very satisfying, really helping me to get a grasp of what the stories could actually be about. I tried with the third one as well, but it turned out to be a fairly terrible idea that I wouldn't have enjoyed working on at all, so I scrapped it instead. I think the last part of this lesson is about making good ideas great, and I hope to get on to that tomorrow.

My current goal is to finish the first round of edits by May 1st. I'll have to pick up my pace to do that as I'm averaging a chapter a day and I'm on Chapter 5 of about 50 - but I think I can manage that. I'm only writing in the morning at the moment, and if I get back into the habit of working at night too then that ought to solve the problem.

Also, I think I've finally settled on a name for my hero. Hurray!

I finished the first draft on the 8th March, coming in at 106K. Since then, I haven't written a word. Nor have I started editing.

When I wrote the last line, I was surprised to find that I actually knew it was the last line. For about half of the novel, I'd worried that I wouldn't know when I hit the end, and that I'd go on and on about nothing interesting until the whole point was lost. I was very pleased to find that wasn't the case. The last line couldn't have been anything else.

Since this was the first time I'd completed anything of this sort of length, I didn't know what to expect, and when I reached the end, I didn't know how to react. I was slightly stunned, slightly jubilant, and also slightly lost. I've been writing this since November 1st. Since the 26th January, I've even known what was going to happen. Suddenly this thing I'd been creating for over four months had a beginning and an end, and the initial writing was - well, over. It was exciting, but also bewildering.

I'd told myself I wanted to take a couple of weeks away from the MS (manuscript!) once I finished the first draft, partly just because I've heard so many people recommend that. But there's more to it than that. The fact is, I just don't know how to start on the edits.

I can do proof-reading. Thanks to Critters, I think I'm okay on short story critiques. And I can just about do reviews - at least, I try, at Pondering Around. But while editing seems to me like it must be a combination of those, actually sitting down with MY manuscript to start on it is an incredibly daunting task. Should I read it through once first, from beginning to end, without making any notes? Or should I plunge straight in with a red pen? And was the two weeks off really a mistake? It seems very distant now, but I guess that's a good thing.

Holly Lisle's How To Think Sideways course is going quite well for me. At least, it was. Lesson Two was all about getting to know your muse and what you really want to write, and I quite enjoyed that. Lesson Three is causing me more problems, since my muse is being rather contrary and not coming up with the ideas I need, but I think that was partly my own fault as I was rather caught up in Karen Miller's Godspeaker trilogy when I tried to 'call down lightning' as Holly calls it. I think being absorbed in someone else's story while trying to generate new ideas for yourself is possibly not the way to go. So tonight I intend to go over that lesson again, and we'll see how it goes.

Tomorrow, it's on to the editing. I think I may start by reading through some of the articles over at NaNoEdMo. I've given up all hope of reaching any decent editing count for March, but April, I hope, will be a better month for that. And I still have eight days to get as much in as I can.

Of course, the biggest problem I have is that I still haven't settled on a final name for my hero. But let's not dwell on the negative...

I hit 100K today and I am very definitely on the downhill slope now. I know exactly what has to happen from here on out - there may be a few tweaks as I go along, but I can see the path in front of me and it's both exciting and frustrating. Mainly, it's thrilling, because I know I can finish this now. But the fact that the end is in sight isn't actually making it any easier to reach. Every day I'll write a thousand words, maybe two, and although I've written a decent scene that had to be there the end doesn't actually feel any closer. I know I'm going to get there, and that's great, but I really just want to be there now. Knowing you will do something isn't the same as knowing you've done it.

Oh, yeah. I didn't finish by the end of February. Which means hitting 50 hours of editing for NaNoEdMo is fairly impossible. When I do get to the end, I'm going to put it down for a while - maybe a couple of weeks, possibly even longer. This story's been in my head since the beginning of November (although I was rather distracted for most of December) and I think I'm going to need to let it breathe for a while. I already know a lot of things that will need editing, and there are notes on most of my scenes for things to check and change - particularly for the second half. Although in fairness a lot of them are things that have changed halfway through, so the changes will actually be mostly for the first half! The second half though is full of brackets and sidenotes for me to make sure that names and descriptions match up.

I know I haven't finished this yet, but I've learned so much about how to approach writing a novel next time. The main thing is that while I am at heart a pantser*, life is actually far, far easier if you know where you're going. It's not necessarily faster, but I've found that since my plot revelations in January writing has been a lot less stressful. To my delight, I've also found that it doesn't ruin the excitement for me either, because I plotted in quite a general way - they need to get here, she needs to show up, there needs to be a confrontation, etc. That's meant that there's still plenty of room for inspiration to strike and for my elusive muse to take me off down some unexpected road.

There's still so much to learn, but I'm looking forward to that. I know that I've learned loads of tips and tricks as I've been writing this, mainly picked up from podcasts (e.g., Will Write For Wine, I Should Be Writing, The Secrets, The Writing Show), and I'm quite excited about reading back through the manuscript to see how my writing's developed over the last four months. I've also been following a lot of blogs relating to the publishing industry - writers, agents, editors. Some of my favourites are A Newbie's Guide to Publishing, Karen Miller, Editorial Ass, BookEnd Lit Agency and Erica Orloff. There are numerous others, but those just happen to be near the top of my RSS feeds right now!

I'm also just starting Holly Lisle's How To Think Sideways writing course. I'd been eyeing it up for a while, but then it got to the end of February and it was the last chance for new members to get the Charter member benefits, which included free access to a special forum when you graduate and various other bits, so I decided to take the plunge. I've followed through the first lesson, which is very much a mind-orientated one, and it's very interesting so far, looking at some of the mental barriers we can put up which stop us from achieving things. I'm looking forward to seeing some of the more practical exercises.

You know, I think I'm all blogged out. Time to settle down with one of those podcasts and my knitting I think. (Knitting, incidentally, is my most recent pastime. My mother taught me to knit, purl and rib at the weekend and somehow I am now in the process of making a jumper.)

Oh, and my current word count? So glad you asked. 100,963 words and counting down to the end.


* What's a pantser, you ask? The term comes from 'flying by the seat of your pants' and, in writing terms, refers to someone who doesn't plan. Someone who does plan is referred to as a plotter. There are of course many, many people who fall somewhere in between.