NaNoWriMo

Kate Forsyth – plotting a novel

March 8, 2016 by Karen Comer 18 Comments

My current definition of intense – spending a day with Kate Forsyth while she teaches the finer points of plotting a novel. I flew to Sydney (blue skies, warm weather, gorgeous friends) for the weekend to do a writing course at the Australian Writers’ Centre. Kate was equal parts inspiration and practicality – I finished the day feeling like I had new tools for my writing and was inspired to try this new way of planning a novel.

I have completed many writing courses over the past five years but never one on planning or plotting a novel before. I have always been a got-a-vague-idea-let’s-see-where-this-goes kind of writer. And it never felt quite right but when I did try to plan out a novel I became stuck, and would just write it out, rather than plan it out. And I wondered whether I was really procrastinating by writing lists and moving scenes around … surely that wasn’t moving my story forward?

It also seemed at odds with the way I usually organise myself in life – I am a write a list kind of girl – for groceries, daily tasks, Christmas presents, etc.

I read a fantastic book on planning a book – C.S. Lakin’s The twelve key pillars of novel construction but it has taken Kate’s workshop to really understand the benefits of planning.

For a little while, I have been wondering about the connection for writers between the left and right sides of the brain, the analytical and the intuitive sides. When Kate defined the four stages of writing as daydreaming, plotting, writing and editing, I could see that both sides of the brain are equally important for writing. Obviously, you need intuition for daydreaming, and analysis for plotting and editing. I would have thought that writing relies more on intuition but Kate said that analysis is just as important because you need to make decisions on what you are writing.

There were so many other lightbulb moments:

that writing a novel is like doing a jigsaw – you start with the foundations – the corners, the edges
that all the incidents in a plot must be inextricably bound
that the pacing must quicken with shorter chapters, even shorter sentences, towards the end of the book
that planning a book is like following a recipe – you can adjust it once you have followed the recipe a few times
that if you are stuck, it means you don’t know enough about your characters or your story.

Kate gave us a ten point detailed explanation of her process for planning a book. I am going to use this on the first draft of my NaNoWriMo book – even though I have already written the first draft. There are only three weeks until the Easter school holidays but I want to apply Kate’s process in reverse before I start the second draft.

And Kate did tell us that it was ok to change your plan and that she did so frequently!

So I’m making up my mind to be an organised, planned writer, just like I am organised and planned (somewhat!) in the rest of my life. Are you a planning sort of person for most of your life’s details or just some of them? And if you are a creative type, with a flair for cooking or sketching or sewing or writing, are you organised or a free spirit with your art?

March writing

March 1, 2016 by Karen Comer 8 Comments

It may seem as if I’m justifying my time here – but I worked really hard in February! I worked on the last draft of the first children’s book in my series this month. I’m nearly ready to send it off by the end of the week to a publisher’s competition. I feel as if I have another daughter, twelve-year-old Freya, the protagonist of my story. I am spending so much time in her head at the moment. I am always asking – what would Freya do here? Would Freya be friends with that girl? How would Freya walk if she were sad? What is the first thing Freya would do when she came home from school? I’ll probably be setting a plate and cutlery for her at the table tonight!

I also entered a short story into a competition, and I have an idea for another short story. I don’t want to spend too much time on it but it is haunting me, so I need to put some of it down on paper.

I’m going to a writing workshop in Sydney next weekend. The presenter is Kate Forsythe, author of so many wonderful books I can only type in a few – Wild girl, The beast’s garden, Bitter greens and many, many books for children. The workshop is about plotting and planning a novel. Authors are usually either a plotter (plans everything first, then writes) or a pantser (writes by the seat of their pants, has a rough idea and starts writing). Allison Tait and Valerie Khoo, who host the Australian Writers’ Centre podcast ‘So you want to be a writer?’, usually ask their guest authors whether they are a plotter or pantser. So interesting to hear the many and varied ways authors write their books. Of course, it is a sliding scale, and I sit closer to the pantser side. I start with a bit of a plan and write from there but I am someone who needs to write many, many drafts. I’m hoping to try out Kate’s detailed planning with my next novel, to see if it cuts down on the number of drafts. I am a pretty organised sort of person for my non-writing life, so I want to carry that across into my writing – that seems logical, doesn’t it? It’s worth a shot anyway – maybe I’ll convert to the planning style of writing or I might come back from Sydney feeling too constrained by all the details and go back to my old pantser ways.

And I also want to redraft the second book of my children’s series, which I wrote in November for NaNoWriMo. It has been sitting patiently on my computer, waiting for me to see it with fresh eyes. Second drafts are fabulous, because I know that the first draft is so terrible that anything I do to it will improve it enormously! And because it’s still big picture stage, there’s no pressure to make it perfect. So I’m looking forward to seeing the world through my twelve-year-old street artist’s eyes.

Thank you so much to everyone who reads my posts and comments. I love having conversations about books online – and in ‘real’ life. I would be grateful if you would forward on my posts to your bookclub group, or friends/family who like reading, or want to find some great books for their kids. Thank you!

November writing

December 1, 2015 by Karen Comer 18 Comments

This month, my one and only writing goal was to start and finish the second novel in my children’s series. I signed up for NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, where participants are encouraged to write 50,000 words of a novel. And I am happy to report I did it! 55,638 words in November!

I am tired and my house looks like a bomb has hit it – you see, I am so out of words that I am resorting to cliches! But despite a messy home and a month with more takeaway dinners than usual, I now have a messy first draft that I can work with in February after the kids go back to school. There’s no point in touching the thing now – it has plot holes so large you could build a freeway through them. There are minor characters who have three names each because I decided during chapter 23 not to go back to chapter 14 to find out their name. The ending definitely needs work and will probably change. I expect I will delete at least a third of my first draft, and add another two thirds in. I have written myself some notes so I know where to start in February.

But, I now know I am capable of writing almost 2,000 words in an hour. If you write quickly enough, you can’t hear the inner critic, telling you your work isn’t good enough. And I’ve learnt that I can live with the uncertainty of knowing what my characters are going to do next. And it’s ok to type in the password on my laptop and not know what I are going to write until a minute later. One of the minor characters took off and demanded a bigger space on the page, and I’m glad she did. I loved the forward momentum of a month’s deadline – there’s no time to go back, the only way is forward. Next time I would try and plan out the whole book more – I did try to do that in September and October and it wasn’t enough time to do it properly. And I’m glad I didn’t do much research before I started writing – otherwise the plot would have been influenced by facts rather than my imagination. Never let truth get in the way of a good story.

The accountability and support of my NaNo facebook group was extraordinarily helpful. Knowing that there were other writers out there, staying up late, getting up early, writing around work and family commitments, made the process seem less lonely. Showing up day after day to write a story that might not be publishable is not an easy thing to do. Knowing that there were others out there facing the same demons and inner critics was a huge boost.

Thank you so much to all my friends and family who have supported me this month, with words of encouragement, asking me how my writing is going, lovely comments on Facebook and looking after my kids to give me extra writing time. I could not have made it without you! I really appreciate your support with my writing and my blog.

This month, I also applied for a mentorship program and worked on an editing project, a non-fiction marketing book.

December will be a non-writing month. I need to finish up my editing job – and buy a few Christmas presents. And birthday presents – there are five family members with birthdays in December. Writing is cyclical – after such an intense month, I need some time to plan how I’m going to finalise my first book, and then redraft this second book.

I will be posting Christmas book lists over the next few weeks – for adults and kids. Let me know if there’s a particular age group or area you’d like me to consider.

The NaNoWriMo writerly haze

November 20, 2015 by Karen Comer 2 Comments

I’m two thirds of the way into NaNoWriMo, the international program where you sign up to write 50,000 words of your novel. First time, and it’s intense. I’m sitting at 34,159 words, to be precise. Eleven days left to write 15,841 words. The numbers are very important, both the one going up and the one going down.

I like writing this way – I like knowing that I only have a month to write it and I like fully immersing myself in it. I’ve written two other books this way, in a couple of months. I’d rather do a little bit of thinking and planning, and then dive in, without going back to think things through. There’s no editing, no rewriting, no going back – just typing the next word, and the next sentence and the next paragraph.

What I don’t like is the uncertainty. It’s like living in a fog for a month, not being able to see clearly, not knowing where you’re going. One of my favourite writing quotes is from E. L. Doctorow:

‘Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.’

There are times when I type my password into my laptop and open up my file and think, I have no idea what to write next. So I sit for a minute, and try to find one sliver of the next part of the story. I try to find one fragment of a conversation or a feeling from my protagonist. It’s the first 400 or 500 words every day that are the hardest, until I get into the flow.

If you write 1,667 words a day, seven days a week during November, you will reach your target of 50,000 words at the end of the month. I started off with that target, but when I realised I could reach it, and would then stop, I decided to increase it to 1800. So now I’m about a day or two ahead of where I need to be, and that is a very reassuring feeling.

This week, I’ve sat in my favourite local cafe every day, ordered a chai latte from the lovely baristas and told myself I can’t leave until I write the 1800 words. And I also reminded myself of the editing job with the looming deadline waiting on my desktop at home. I have surprised myself that I can write 1800 words in an hour – I thought I was capable of about 600 words per half hour.

I’ve joined a NaNo Facebook group with writers Allison Tait and Allison Rushby. There’s almost a hundred of us, and it’s so interesting to see how everyone writes. There are excellent links, stimulating conversations and lots of encouragement. It is so incredibly motivating to know that there are others out there, writing when they don’t feel like it, fitting writing in around work and family, getting up early to write, staying up late to finish. And we’re all cheering each other on.

And now I’m starting to feel on solid ground, I know all the plotlines are starting to merge – although some of them are still pretty loose! I know I’m working up to the climax of the novel, I know the pace is going to pick up and I know I have only eleven more days of living in this writerly haze with dimming headlights.

I’ve discovered that I am a don’t-break-the-chain sort of person. In other words, I have written at least 1,667 words every day and I am terrified that if I miss a day, I will find it too hard to pick up again. Others in the group have written 3,000 words on one day, then 400 words the next, skipped two days, and then written 2,000. I need the non-negotiable type of habit to keep writing.

And the writing is full of holes, and I know I’ve named the same character two different names and not a lot happened in the second third of the book and I haven’t described the setting very well and my characters seem to be talking more than doing and there are inconsistencies everywhere you look. But I know that I can fix some of those things up in the next few drafts. Once you have 50,000 words, you can edit 50,000 words and make it better. But if you don’t have those words, you can’t edit a blank page.

So for the next eleven days, I’ll be inching my way one word at a time, headlights on, closer to the finish line of 50,000 words.