Transforming the Back Bedroom

All right guys. I did it. Well, I almost did it.
What I mean is the back bedroom is almost ready to be my very own writing space. My sister came over yesterday to help me clean out and clean up our back bedroom. This is the rom we put things we don't want to deal with. This is the room that old Christmas boxes or wrapping paper go to collect dust. When I have packaging to a small appliance or similar object, the paperwork and container go to live here until the next time I clean out the room.
As such the room becomes a disaster area. I probably last cleaned out that room at Christmas? So we are 10 months into operation look like a hoarder.
My sister and I took a box of large trash bags and threw away junk we didn't need or that was broken. We also sorted many things into a garage sale pile. Goodwill or another thrift store will also be receiving a hefty donation.
Also, last summer my parents' basement flooded and some boxes of keepsakes were thrust upon me. I guess I can't store my stuff at my parents' house forever. Those items finally found homes and were stored properly.
Here is what the room looked like as a disaster zone. Please don't judge me.

 Half of this was empty boxes. The other half were clothes that needed donating. Some of it was also three or four very large items surrounded by empty boxes and clothese that needed donating.
Several hours later we were left with a space that looked more like humans live there.

As you can see the space is much, much better. I still need to oragnize my desk (the cream colored one in the corner) and our printer cart. My husband's desk is the wood one against the wall next to the closet. It's a hopeless mess of Transformers figurines and Mustang magazines. I am not even going to bother with it. But now I can access all of my pretty books (not pictured ona a huge floor to ceiling bookcase on the opposite wall) and soon I will have my writing space ready to go! Bring on NaNoWriMo 2016

What do you think of my progress? Please don't judge my pre-cleaning disaster area photos!

Gearing up for NaNoWriMo

The first day of autumn is this Thursday and all of the changing leaves, Halloween candy and clear blue skies make me think of NaNoWriMo. I am erally excited about this year's novel. It's probably the most prepared I have ever felt for a NaNo event. I haven't planned too much about the plot yet, but I have lots of ideas jotted down in journals and Google sheets and documents full of links, names and stray thoughts. 

There is other prep work happening too. When NaNo comes around I tend to get too busy to eat correctly or do important things like laundry and dishes. I am slowly making the time and effort to clean out the fridge and cupboards to stock with easy to make foods, snacks and fresh new tupperware containers just waiting for my leftovers. 

Don't ask me about the back room, however.

It still looks exactly like it did three weeks ago when I declared I would spend the next 60 days cleaning it out and organizing it.

That will hopefully happen in September.

Yours truly,

The Procrastinating Hufflepuff Writer

When Your Writing Doesn't Cut It

Hello fellow writers! If you have ever written creatively, or for a living in less creative outlets, then you know where there are some days when your writing just doesn't make the cut. When none of the words come easy and none of it is very good.

I have those days when I'm writing creatively. I usually just mark it up to writer's block. But sometimes it's just me fighting where the story is taking me. When it happens in my content writing, however, it's a whole other issue. Writer's block typically doesn't affect my content writer because the company I work for provides the topics. What does happen, however, is writing fatigue.

When I spend eight or nine hours in a day writing articles that all feel the same, it's can be difficult to  keep my writing up to standard. My hands start to hurt. My eyes start to hurt. My back begins to ache and I'm usually hungry. None of this is conducive to quality writing. Sometimes what I write is boring and mundane, but that doesn't always bother me.

This week it bothered me. And my writing scores showed that it bothered me. It's frustrating, but it's understandable and it happens to everyone and anyone who writes for a living. If you lose focus and get bored, you make mistakes or miss important steps.

So here are some tips for avoiding fatigue that I need to do a better job of following too:

Take a break at least once every hour.

This is important because it's good to give your eyes, wrists and back a break when you're sitting at a computer. Even if it's just five minutes of standing and stretching or going to the kitchen for a glass of water.

Stay hydrated.

Writing might not be a sport, but you would do well to take a page out of an athlete's book. Staying hydrated while writing is important because it is a) good for you and b) helps you avoid cramps. It's easy to fall into a rhythm and forget to drink any water while you're writing for an hour, two hours or eight hours.

Change up what you're writing.

This can be a tough one when you write content like me. So write a couple similar articles then move on to one of a different length, with a different tone or on a different topic. This breaks up the monotony and helps you see mistakes later on when your eyes are more fresh.

I know I need to be better about following these tips myself when I'm writing for work. It can be easy to ignore my growling stomach or throbbing head when I have "just one more article to write."

What are some things you do to avoid writing fatigue when you're writing boring stuff for work?

Content Until My Fingers Go Numb

So I do most of my writing on my laptop. It's a Toshiba with a wide screen and full keyboard with number pad. It's nice and I love it. But using a laptop also means I spend most of my time writing while sitting in my couch recliner seat. One thing a laptop keyboard is not is ergonomic. We type most words with our left hand...but my ring ring finger and pinky get very sore after many hours of typing at the computer.

Yet another reason to get the spare bedroom cleaned out and to reclaim my desk. It might not change my keyboard into a finger-friendly ergonomic delight, but it will elevate my hands, take pressure off my writsts and maybe keep my fingers from dying a slow painful death.

In fact, after 8-plus hours of writing today (content writing, not creative writing) I'm ready for a break. Let's keep this short and sweet. What do you do to keep your hands, fingers, writs and arms from aching after hours at a keyboard?

And Then I Fell Down a Research Rabbit Hole

So remember last week when I was all like "hey I'm going to write a fantasy novel in 30 days and use this master outline as a template as an insane cool, fun experiment"?

Yeah. About that. As I've mentioned before, I've never written fantasy or sci-fi that wasn't a fan fic of some kind. I love reading the stuff, but I don't have much confidence in my world-building skills. Or my ability to weave an amazing plot. I am hopeful that using the master outline will help somewhat.

When I'm anxious about something or I want and need to build confidence, I research. I probably over-research in some cases. So I took to the interwebs. Pinterest came first. I pinned images that reminded me of my dragon-owning princess warrior. There were also resources on there about writing fantasy, dialogue prompts and how to make your magic realistic. Then I found the fantasy name generator.

Guys.

I loved my name generator I listed one as part of my writing and story resources top 10 list. That one is pretty basic. It gives you real, normal-sounding, non-generic names. This one has that too, if you want or need it. But it also has a data base to give you randomized names that 100 percent sound like they come out of a fantasy world. You can use it to generate dragon names, warrior names, names for your knight or royalty names. Have a cave you need named? Got it. Want a great sounding name for your kingdom or country? Yep that too.

I started generating lists of names. And then I could not stop. For three hours. Three. And then again for four more.

So now I have between three and seven names in about a dozen different categories. I have my kingdom and related countries. Neighboring kingdoms. My king. My princess. My dragon. A few yet-unamed creatures. A few castles and a forest or six.

It's gotten a tad out of hand. That's what happens when you fall down a research rabbit hole. Or into research worm hole? Whatever you call them...you find yourself on the other side of them tired, yet excited. I myself looked at the clock, saw it was 3 a.m., realized I never ate dinner. Oops.

All in the name of art, I guess!

That Time I Read Harry Potter to My Newphew

My blog domain should give you some indication about how much I love Harry Potter. I couldn't tell you the number of times I've read the series. I listen to several Harry Potter/wizarding world based podcasts. I write fan fiction. If my husband and I got married all over again I would want to go to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter on our honeymoon.

I don't have any children (yet) with whom to share my love of Harry Potter. But I have the next best thing. Other people's children. More specifically I have my husband's nephew Ethan. He is six months old...so he just doesn't know yet how much he loves Harry Potter. But he does guys. I know he does.

Case in point. When he was about two weeks old and was finally home from his extended stay at the hospital, I went over to my sister-in-law's house to give her a bit of a break one night. I stayed up throughout the night feeding, changing and cuddling little Ethan. We listened to Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire on audible and he calmed down and went to sleep. He also enjoys watching Harry Potter and Doctor Who on TV with me, so the evidence is there.

One thing I have most been looking forward to with little ones of my own is reading the stories out loud to them w hen they are young. Ethan recently became very interested in books with pictures. The new illustrated edition of Harry Potter is the perfect thing for this. While he sat next to me on the couch I read him the first three pages of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. He loved the beautiful images and found my voices quite silly. It took about 10 minutes and then he was done with it, but guys...I got to read Hary Potter to a baby.

And I loved it!

Scared to Write? Try Fan Fiction First

If you're not a writer this might sound strange: sometimes I'm scared to write. If you are a writer, then you have probably experienced this at one point or another. For me it's usually a fear the plot isn't good enough, the characters aren't fun or the world I'm building is boring or doesn't make sense. This is especially true when I'm writing longer pieces of fiction. I can usually hold a story-line together for a short story, but plots get muddled the longer a story gets.

One way I have battled my fear of writing is to go play in someone else's world. It's almost like playing Role Playing Games online. When I'm having trouble thinking of plots and characters of my own, I hop on over to the Wizarding World and jot down some Harry Potter fan fiction. J.K. Rowling has an intricate world already set up for me and her characters are already fully formed. I can come up with new scenarios and settings for them, use old stand-by's and have them interact with characters both old and new. There's also no pressure when writing fan fiction, or at least there shouldn't be. You can't pubhslih Harry Potter fan fiction anyway, so it doesn't need to be perfect. You can write it just for fun while honing your craft.

I have found writing, and writing well, becomes easier the more you do it. The more times you sit down in front of your computer or with a pen and paper the easier it becomes to write something. It's almost like working out, but it doesn't make me sweaty and short of breath or give me a stich in my side.

There are also a multitude of websites out there that welcome fan fiction. People even get friends or other online writers to beta-read and edit their works of fan fiction. It's really kind of cool. I only have experience writing Harry Potter fan fiction, so I don't have a lot of examples of other fan fiction websites for other book series, movies and TV shows. Figment, however, is a good writing resource for youth and young adults and there are entire sections of the forums and tags for fan fiction specific pieces of writing.

My favorite Harry Potter exclusive fan fiction website is www.harrypotterfanfiction.com. It gives you a place to post your writing, get feedback and read really, really good Harry Potter-themed stuff. Founder's Era, Marauder's Era, Post-Hogwarts, Next Generation...everything!

So the next time you find yourself scared to write or if you are new to writing novel-length stories, try some fan fiction first. It works for me!

Finding My Narrative Voice: Part Two

My first time writing for National Novel Writing Month was in 2009. My aunt discovered this annual novel-writing marathon of sorts and knew I loved to write, so she sent the information my way and I jumped in a few days late. Fun fact: my aunt's first book in a three book series came out earlier this month. She wrote the first draft for that very book during NaNoWriMo.

As my first attempt at a full length novel, I couldn't decide how to tackle third person. I also didn't have a story. Then my mom called and told me about my brother's recent Halloween escapades. He was in high school, there was a big party and chaotic fun ensued. She gave me the very long run down of the night and said "it would make a fun story."

I didn't have my own plot, so why not borrow one from my brother's real life? It wouldn't take too much research and it would be fun to write. The only problem is I didn't know how I would fill 50,000 words with the events from his 4-5 hours of fun. I was still grappling with the best way to tell this story when an idea occured to me: write the story in first person but tell it from multiple perspectives.

I lovingly dubbed this idea a "round robin first person" but it's called many things including rotating first person narrative and other similar phrases. I chose the perspective of four characters. Each chapter covered approximately one hour of the evening. Each hour was told from four separate points of view. So the reader (and me as the writer) relives each hour four times over. It was fun to write it this way because I could show what happened in four places at once without one character's needed presence at each location. So Nate, Julia, Louie and Officer Sloane got to tell the story from their perspectives. Then at the end I added one chapter with a fifth, first person narrative: Nate's mom.

The story is fun and cute and unpublishable. The round robin helped boost word counts but there were still times I struggled to meet the 1,667 daily word count (even higher for me since I started a few days late). So I did things like have a character sing kareoke and wrote out all the lyrics. I chose Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody because that's a very, very long song and it's a popular kareoke choice.

Since 2009 most of my NaNoWriMo projects have been told in third person, but I struggle with the perspective. During my recent re-read of the yet-unfinished "The Librarian's Assistant" I found I jump from one character's point of view to another's...all while staying in the third person. That's easily fixed in most cases. One cool thing I did in this story is I write from a first person poitn of view when the MC's granddaughter is questioning her grandmother on her past and the family history. When the grandmother tells the story and jumps back in time, the narrative is from her perspective but in the third person (or should be - I still have to fix the perspective mistakes).

Last year's proejct is told completely in third person and all from my MC's ponit of view the story is relatively simple and there's not a lot of subplot so it was easier to stick with one perspective.

Now if I could just choose a tense and stay in it...

Make sure you read Part One of "Finding My Narrative Voice."

Finding My Narrative Voice: Part One

One thing I've struggled with while writing is finding the right voice for whatever piece I'm working on at the time. Do I use first person? Third person? Then there's the question third person with an omniscient viewpoint vs. third person with a limited viewpoint. One of my favorite book series is Harry Potter. In most chapters, with a few notable exceptions, J.K. Rowling chose to make the narrative in the third person but from Harry's view only. He didn't know what was happening in the rest of the school when he wasn't there. There are a handful of scenes scattered throughout the last half of the book that Harry isn't present for. JKR makes this break from her normal narrative voice to make show that the war is bigger than Harry himself and to remind us that while he is fighting Voldemort from on the ground and in his head, others are fighting too.

One of my favorite examples of a change in narrative voice while not cutting away from the main character's point of view is Patricia Briggs use of this story telling mechanism in her book Frost Burned. This story is the 7th in her Mercy Thompson series. The story is told in the first person from Mercy's point of view. Partway through Frost Burned Mercy encounters a magical artifact that is intended to steal her will. She doesn't notice it happening. The reader doesn't either until a secondary character picks up on her odd behavior. During the time that Mercy isn't herself and does whatever anyone tells her to do, Briggs changes over to the third person point of view. Mercy is still there but we aren't really inside her head. Mercy's encountered will-power stealing magic before and during those times we were still right inside her head with her thoughts in the first person. But she realized it was happening last time. This time it was more subtle, so we weren't aware of it either until someone tells us. This works especially well since Briggs makes the change in voice from one chapter to the next. The reader doesn't see the new third person narrative bump up against the normal first person narrative. I should have noticed because the chapter with the narrative break is titled "Adam" (the name of Mercy's husband) and none of the other chapters have titles. But the typface is simple and understated. It doesn't draw attention to itself until it's pointed out to the reader more blatantly. Then we go back and re-read the passage and go "wow she even changed the point of view without us knowing."

It was pretty cool and really effective, especially when Mercy breaks the magic with the help of her friends and we see it go back to first person.

First person isn't my favorite tense to write in and it's not always my favorite to read, unless it actually works for the story. It works in the Mercy Thompson series because she is literally our guide in her supernatural world. She's a shapeshifter herself so it makes sense for her to tell us about the world in her own words. In Harry Potter we learn about the world along side Harry. He isn't the one guiding us. Ron, Hagrid, Dumbledore and Hermione guide us with their knowledge.

So when I attempted my first novel-length piece of writing I had to make a tough decision: first person or third? Limited perspective or an all-knowing narrator? I'll explain what I chose and why in part two of this blog post.