Tag Archives: writing process

Writing journey side trip

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Billabong Flats: The Big Race – Story and images by Ria Loader, copyright 2016

As we write, sometimes the journey sometimes takes a bit of a side trip; that happened to me about three months ago. I was writing the ‘how to kindle’ book and got side tracked by a creative adventure. It started when I was writing the chapter on formatting for kindle. I wanted to show the difference between unformatted text, and how it looks when you add a bit of structure such as Chapter Heading, first paragraph with no indent and subsequent body copy. It happened that I needed a couple paragraphs of story to use for that section. Out of nowhere, the start of a children’s story sprang to mind and I scribbled it down. That began a side journey that has involved a lot of steps.

Unformatted text
The Big Race
The wild bush animals gathered at Billabong Flats, a place where everyone has fun.They met in the shade of the big gum trees.They would race to the big hill and back. Emu was there, along with Magpie and Kangaroo. Wallaby and Cockatoo, Possum and Flying Fox were there too.
End of unformatted text

Didn’t mean to procrastinate finishing the kindle book, though that’s been on hold while I’ve been caught up in a whirlwind. Finishing the story fragment above has led to learning about kids books, taking up drawing again, and writing a dozen kids stories. Sometimes, as an author, it feels like you are just along for the ride.

The place?
Billabong Flats, an imaginary place in the Australian Bush.

The characters?
Australian animal friends – Kookaburra, Koala, Kangaroo, Echidna, Cockatoo and Flying Fox, Dingo and Brolga and all the critters that run, swim, jump and fly.

The idea?
A place where everyone gets along and has fun.

The challenges?
Those of friendship everywhere. Things are lost and found, curiosity leads to new discoveries, new homes need to be found, visitors become neighbors and scary monsters are avoided or defeated, friends are supported in times of loss, and adventures and fun is had along the way.

The images?
After searching through thousands of photographs, it came down to around 200 images as inspiration. From that. pen and ink drawings were embellished with watercolor and digital brush work.

The web site?
It felt like the stories needed their own web site, so I started one at BillabongFlats.com. When friends said they wanted images of the characters, I began to set up some materials for Billabong Flats Art on Cafepress. The first image, of KoalaDreaming is ready. I’ll be asking folks who join the Billabong Flats mailing list to vote on which story and which character I put up next on cafe press. I have images of many of the animals ready to go.

The first illustrated children’s book?
It is called Billabong Flats: The Big Race. It will be out on amazon in a couple of weeks.

An accidental novelist, or was I?

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You could say I became a novelist by accident. Sometimes the best things in life happen when you’re not quite paying attention.

CIRCUIT BREAKERS

Previous writing was non-fiction or articles, with the occasional interview or editorial thrown in for fun. However, NaNoWriMo, the national novel writing month, sneaked up on me and challenged me to have a go at it.

Along the way, I encouraged Raven to do the same thing. However, he already had one novel written. NaNoWriMo was his excuse to try a slightly different genre (murder mystery) while he kept me company.

Nowadays, I can hardly imagine life without plots in the background, characters whispering about new adventures, and the lure of words. I am quite caught by the writing bug and expect it will never again let me go. Every day, there is some new plot or sub plot that springs to mind. I have been parking the non-fiction for the while, however, over the summer I plan to get a couple of the how-to books out of the way. They’ve been calling to me from the back of my mind, demanding their own attention.

Time to dream, perchance to solve a plot or two whilst sleeping.

Cheers

Ria

Writing the last 25% of a novel

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We’ve all been there. The stage is set, the outline written, and the writing is flowing right along, all on schedule. The deadline comes and passes, and 2000 or so words a day are humming right along. Then the deadline, artificial or not, passes. Falling down from the state of focus, distraction settles in. The momentum of NaNoWriMo passes and that 50,000 words fails to become 75,000 and a finished novel. What now?

There are various strategies of course.

  • Finish the flow of scenes that you’ve outlined
  • Give up lunches or get up earlier in the day to write for an hour or so
  • Set up rewards, like chocolate, if you get two hours of actual writing done
  • Outline the next novel in the series so you’ll have something to look forward to
  • Get a writing buddy and set weekly meetings to hold each other to account
  • Set some more deadlines
  • Write blog posts like this instead – at least you are writing something, right?

I don’t know why the last set of drafting the novel seems more difficult than the first three quarters, but for me, that’s the way of it. I don’t even have the excuse of it being the first story. To be honest, the first one was hard in the home stretch too.

Some of the distractions come from the second novel in the series sparking ideas about how to make the first one better. Other distractions come from the business of writing and the need to update web sites, however, some of it is just procrastination to be sure. Bad me, right?

I wonder what other folks do to motivate themselves over the finishing line? Share ideas in the comments. Looking for inspiration my friends.

Creating vs Editing: a writer’s challenge

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When I’m in the creative flow, the words come easily, without hindrance. However, when I shift over to editing mode, to polish the words, the well seems to dry up. The hypercritical internal editor does not seem to be compatible with the internal novelist. I know, I know. It’s a little weird to call them out as separate characters, however, they’re so very different. They feel like different characters in a story.

It seems like the only way to balance the two ways of perceiving is to give them their own stage. For the most part, I am tending to schedule my time month by month – a month of outlining and writing, followed by a month of editing and polishing. When I’ve tried switching between the two on the same day, neither the writing nor the editing is any good.

This is in addition to the more normal challenges of switching between being in work mode for my full-time job and carving out that two hours a day to attend to the various aspects of being a writer.

I wonder if others have the same issue? Do you have trouble switching between editing and writing?

NaNoWriMo – In the belly of the beast

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No doubt about it. NaNoWriMo is a beast. I was caught up in the belly of it through the whole month of November, writing 2000 words a day for 30 days. The goal? To come out of it with a novel at the end.

(I did it. 51,000 words in 30 days. Not really a novel yet, but progress made)

It was exhilarating, surprising, challenging and a lot of work. But yes, it was wonderful this time around. I’ve done this for three years now and am finding it to be a great kick start for writing more regularly.

When inspiration fails

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What to do when inspiration fails? I have a deadline for a short story looming, with a character who doesn’t know how to get from here to there. To increase the beats, I need a challenge to throw at my protagonist that isn’t a trope. I suppose I could use a trope (evil family member, random attack by killer cyborg, getting in the way of an assassination/hacker attempt, love/hate interest) but that seems kind of lame in context of the story. What to do? I could go with the tried and true Vorkosigan method – full steam ahead and damn the torpedoes – but it’s an urban fantasy where there are no evil government agencies standing by to act as a backdrop. I have two days to go – ideas from the gallery gratefully accepted.

  • My main character is sixteen, a mage, and a web designer
  • She’s being asked to skin a web site and add some magic to it | someone else is doing the security
  • Some something gets thrown at her as a challenge (not the web site)

Maybe it’s the security person? Maybe there’s a cyber attack? Maybe I torment her with new magic waking up inside her? Security person ends up being a cute guy? Better yet – a cute girl.

Thoughts?

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