I answer some questions about writing, quarantine, and–most importantly–knives. Love you all – stay safe!
(and this is unrelated, but I’m on TikTok now, thanks to quarantine! So if you want way more videos of questionable quality but definite quantity, you can follow me there @McRebecky)
Being an author or writer means committing yourself to deadlines, time management, and a life of stress… or does it? Here are some Questions and Answers all about time management and deadlines!
Holidays can bring family and joy and festivity, but it can also bring vacation time from day jobs and free time to yourself. This isn’t true for everyone every year. But when it is, *chef’s kiss*, it’s a beautiful time.
Here on December 28th, I’m in a wonderful position of being on vacation until the New Year. Not all of my friends, family, and coworkers are so lucky, and it wasn’t more than a couple years ago when I was a contractor still and didn’t get any paid vacation or holidays at all. So, I cherish this time! Time to be around family, sleep in, enjoy good food and company, panic about the 10-day countdown to my book’s release, and spend some quality time with the revisions of my second book.
I’m in yet another unique situation where I’m working on Draft 2 of my second book, but I’m doing so with a freelance editor—and we don’t have a deadline. This isn’t to say that I should (or could!) be taking my sweet time with it until the heat death of the universe. On the contrary, I am a self-starter in terms of deadlines, and I can’t abide a deadline-free life. That’s one of the reasons I have done National Novel Writing Month in the past, because it imposes a one-month, 50,000-word deadline.
But I also don’t want to run myself ragged in the week that I have to reboot before the start of 2020, when just as many things will be pulling me in just as many directions. January, my friends. January.
January itself heralds the release of my debut book, NAMELESS QUEEN, on the 7th of the month. It also marks the release of a project at my day job that I spent the last year on. It also will involve me going to places around lower Michigan to sign stock and indie bookstores, signing at least 500 copies of my book (FOR SECRET REASONS!), and pondering the fate of the new decade.
January. I will survive it. Everything will be fine.
What I’m really saying is that I believe in deadlines as a powerful form of motivation, and here are my deadlines for the end of this year, my “End of Year To Do list” prior to my “2020 TO DO LIST.”
It’s weird to be working on Draft 2 of Book 2 before my first book is published, but here we are! My first book, NAMELESS QUEEN, is out on January 7, 2020. And my second book is well underway in drafting! 🙂
If you’re researching what it’s like to be an author, the process of writing and revising, or just the publishing industry in general, you may have heard the term “edit letter.” But what does that mean? What does it entail?
Check out the above video to find out!
Bonus content here for the blog! Below are some EXTRA TIPS for which outline method to use when.
The 24-Chapter Breakout (Tabular Outline) is good if you like to move things around. You can do this in a table or with notecards or on a whiteboard! This method is really useful for early-stage outlining, such as when you know the BIG pieces, but you’re not sure how to connect them.
When I did this method for my Book 2, I started in excel but politely transferred it into Word before sending it to my freelance editor. She appreciated it! Then we graduated to the paragraph-level outline, which ended up being about a half page for each chapter. Sooo… if you feel like a 24-page document is your kind of outline, there’s even more riches to be won with this method!
The Verbal “Out-Loud” Outline is good if you’re having trouble getting a hold of the interesting points of your story. This method will have you talking through the problems and essentially working on a high level pitch! Communication is key! It can be scary, of course, to share your ideas with another person. But I promise it is SUCH a good way to start pulling the story out of your brain and putting it in the real world.
And you can always record yourself instead of talking to another person, if that suits you better. Me, I like talking to myself. I really do. Dictating has been a wonderful addition to my busy schedule. You know how some people listen to audiobooks and podcasts so they can make their commute more enjoyable and/or productive? That’s when I dictate! Sometimes I do it for drafting and other times I do it for brainstorming.
The Emoji Method (Symbolic Outline) is great when you have all the pieces (your characters, your places, any important objects), and you want to create an at-a-glance visual method for what happens in your book. For me, this was really really useful during revisions. I already had a good sense of my cast of characters, I already knew the major places and points.
Creating a symbol for each of them was a HIGHLY visual way of understanding who was involved and when. It forces you to think very linearly and very pragmatically. You only have so much room on the page, so many symbols, and so many ways for showing what is happening. ((When I was re-outlining Nameless Queen with emojis, that’s when I realized I had 1 too many characters being towed around and not doing much… so I cut the character!))
Thanks for reading and/or watching! I hope these strange and whacky methods that I came up with help you with your book! Keep writing!
I’ve recently received seven questions from a young writer about the process behind inspiration, writing a fantasy novel, and pursuing inspiration. Here are the answers!
Trade secrets for getting traditionally published:
The only real trade secret is to do your research. Understanding how it works is a big first step. A zillion people think about writing a book but never do, and even the people that do write one often want to rush into the process and get their book published ASAP. And that impulse is understandable, because it’s exciting! It’s an accomplishment! It’s awesome! But to be successful, writers need to be objective about their own work and put in the hard work of improving it before taking the next big steps. For as many steps as there are between wanting to write a book and actually doing it, there are even more steps to getting published: revising, querying, going on submission, revising again, selling rights, and more! So, getting to know the industry and writing what you love and improving your craft are my best pieces of advice.
Trade secrets for writing a fantasy novel:
Voice is queen. What I mean by this is that one of the most important things about writing a book that people will connect with is having a character with strong voice. The other mechanical pieces of a story also have to be good, but even an interesting story can be ruined if the main character doesn’t resonate with readers. There are two different types of voice. One is the voice of the author (this is why reading books by a particular author always feel like “that author’s writing”). The other is the voice of the main character. You want to have an interesting character that leaps off the page is memorable to readers. You want people to read it and want more.
You want to introduce magic organically into the story. That means introducing it as it is needed by the plot, but early enough in order to set the stage for the rest of the story. Magic can take so many forms inside of books. There can be external energy sources with rules (like Harry Potter’s wand) and creatures and hidden worlds (like Percy Jackson) and specific powers (like talking to animals or becoming invisible). What’s important is making sure the magic fits in the world being created and with the characters and plot.
Simpler is always better. You always want to start with a simple premise. This is true for the magic system and, more importantly, the stakes of the story. Not only will this make it easier to pitch when people are trying to sell the book, it will also make it easier for you when you want to build on it. As with all art, you have to learn the rules before you can break them, and this applies to the interior logic of stories as much as it does to the craft of writing itself. Create a solid and simple foundation for the magic system, and then start asking story-building questions like: who can do magic, who can’t do magic, what are the limits of the magic, what is the cost of doing the magic, and who wants magic?
There are a couple ways you could be asking this question: how much time is spent in summary vs. scene; and how much time is spent on backstory vs. present story.
For summary vs. scene, it’s really a balance. Summary is often used in montages and to give brief backstory or introduction, but scenes are really the lifeblood of a book.
For backstory vs. action: You want to spend as much time on action as you can. Reveal the world while things are happening in the story. Show how magic works while your main character is doing something interesting with magic in the first chapter. Scenes should always be doing double work. There’s some great advice from Maggie Stievfater on this.
Similar to the above question, worldbuilding should happen organically through the whole first third of the story. It isn’t something where you spend a couple paragraphs explaining before you start the story. That kind of writing is called “scaffolding,” and while it may help you envision the world better so that you can write it, it likely won’t have any place in the final manuscript. But if you need to write an intro so that you yourself understand the world enough to write it, go for it! You can always remove it or change it in revisions later.
I like that phrase “pursue inspiration.” Inspiration is often talked about like it’s a magical lightning strike that does the hard work for you. In fact, coming up with ideas and crafting a story is a lot of hard work. Inspiration is more like static electricity than lightning. You don’t get struck by it—you have to do work to generate the sparks.
There is no thunderbolt that brings you a fully-fleshed out idea, it’s the tough work of generating friction in order to make tiny static sparks. These sparks arise throughout the whole process, such as when you finally realize how to make the inciting incident compelling, or how to deliver your main character to the climax of the story with the right emotional overtones, or the logic that will make the magic system make sense. As far as designing a world and pursuing inspiration, I work with whatever feels like it’s going to give me the most friction–whether that’s worldbuilding or characterization or the magic system or the antagonist. Then you balance your way through developing all of these things together until a coherent story takes shape. Authors all do this work differently. Some start with their idea for a compelling main character or an interesting magic system or a even a scene or line of dialogue. And it can change from book to book as well as from author to author. Do whatever feels right!
Before I start writing a book, I often have a pretty good sense of the plot and the world, and it doesn’t take too long to get a grasp on the main character’s voice. So, sometimes things pretty clear, and sometimes I only have a vague idea certain pieces. In my earlier books especially, writing the book wasn’t just about getting the story down, it was an exploration of the story. A lot of my early writing was me trying to figure out how “story” works and how to make scenes and dialogue interesting or funny. That meant that my earlier work had a lot of room for improvement, but that’s how I learned! One thing to remember is that no matter how much planning you do before you start, there will always be changes when you’re in the thick of things. And no matter how good things are at the end, there will always be changes and revisions and improvements down the road. I know other authors who draw their main characters or who make maps of their worlds or who write throwaway scenes with characters who will never meet just so that they can build a better picture of the story in their head. There are no wrong paths or choices!
Happy writing!
-by Rebecca McLaughlin-
Vacation. I’m not good at it.
In my school days, I made it 1-1/2 weeks into summer vacation before I started doing silly things, like buying next year’s text books, writing partial drafts of new books, and/or getting hugely addicted to television shows.
I didn’t know it then, but I need things to do. All of this culminates in the fact that I’m not very great at vacation.
But here I am on my last day of a one-week vacation in Florida. Let’s put aside that it’s November and this is my first vacation all year, and let’s also ignore the fact that the morning of my last day of vacation is being spent writing this blog post. I’m waiting for laundry. Cut me some slack!
So, what does vacation look like for a workaholic? At its worst, it can look exactly like work. At best, it can look like a proper magical vacation. I went into this vacation with 3 expectations.
That third item came from a good friend, and it was a motivator for having a good vacation and for finding inspiration for pitch ideas. So I went into my vacation with these directions, and I said yes to every invitation and plan and event.
I spent my mornings on a balcony overlooking the ocean. I walked a mile down the beach to a lighthouse, where I then climbed to the very tippy top. I went shopping at a resale store and found some great deals. I went to a butterfly and vegetation sanctuary and learned an obnoxiously wonderful amount of information about palms. I let my distractions take hold of me and fell down research rabbit holes. I sat on the beach and scribbled out pages and pages of ideas and plans while listening to the ocean.
I did and tried new things. Ate a whole artichoke. Swam in the ocean out to where I couldn’t touch the ground (scary!). Ate stone crab (holy hell is it expensive). Saw wild manatees bobbing in the waves. Climbed narrow steps to the fogged-windows of a lighthouse where you know you’re at the highest point possible even though you can’t see a thing to prove it. You just know it even if you can’t see it.
I had to remind myself that part of being an author and part of being on vacation means that you can’t force your brain into a corner and make it work. Not all the time, anyway.
Work doesn’t have to be a constant dredge. It shouldn’t be! It should be interspersed with new experiences, relaxation, and time to think and innovate.
Okay, now I sound like a workplace time management specialist wannabe.
Long story short: if you take a vacation and you’re a workaholic, don’t stress out about working or not working. Put aside time to wander. Make an effort to enjoy yourself, and let yourself exist and thrive in whatever way brings you joy. If that means you check your work email once per day after drinking coffee on an oceanside balcony, you do you, friend.
Enjoy. Relax. Recharge. And, if it’s enjoyable, go ahead and work.
No one likes losing control. Or sharing control. Or thinking about losing or sharing control. But! Giving up some control is an important part of producing and sharing art.
Rebecca McLaughlin 