9 Questions to Examine Your Writing Habits

Becoming a writer is simple: Start writing. There is nothing more elaborate to it than that. So, it's not surprising how events like NaNoWriMo attract so many participants. It's all about getting your butt in the chair—and writing.

I'm a fan of NaNoWriMo myself, taking part every year since 2014, becoming a municipal liaison (NaNoWriMo's representative for my region) in 2015. In that time, I've noticed a few habits that writers have during this season.

It's common for writers to decide that the best approach to getting more writing done is by ignoring everything else that might be going on in their lives—including the family. I've been there. I've done it. And let me tell you that it's not sustainable.

Whatever schedule writers come up for the NaNoWriMo season works in the beginning, but as life carries on—interrupting us—things start to fall apart, and we start to fall behind in our daily goals.

"I'll just make it up tomorrow."

Yeah, I've said this to myself too, countless times. But again, I've noticed that when we struggle to meet our daily goals as it is, adding yesterday's goal to today's goal only makes things worse, adding unnecessary pressure—and making us cranky and a nightmare to live with.

So much for working our writing life into our family life.

Writing using Dragon Dictation (Guest Blog)

Writing using Dragon Dictation

by Ann Bell Feinstein

A few months ago, I decided to invest in dictation software. A brief search led me, of course, to Dragon Dictation. After agonizing over the cost of the purchase, I finally added Dragon to my list of writing tools.

Whether it’s due to my accent or style of speaking, Dragon worked for me right out of the box. I did have a few issues that with audio settings; however, that was mostly due to the complicated audio set up I have on my computer.

I decided to share with you some things I’ve learned about using Dragon. And yes, I’m actually using Dragon to dictate this blog post.

9 Questions to Focus on Your Hopes and Dreams

The last month was a whirlwind dose in reality for me. There are parts of my psyche still wishing I could wake up from the nightmare. No matter how I look at it, life in my little corner of the world changed forever. But that's not necessarily a bad thing.

When life-changing events happen, we often step back and review our lives and priorities, realigning our paths with what really matters. Are we on the path we originally set out on? If so, is it still the right path? If not, is this new path the right path, or have we deviated so far from the dream that we need to shift our focus?

That's what the last month turned out to be for me. That's really what the last few months have been about for me. And this is what I want my readers to do today.

Sit back and examine the path you're on. Are you still working towards your hopes and dreams? Or did life take an unexpected turn? Do you need to adjust things to get yourself back on track? Or do you prefer this new path better? Be honest with yourself.

It's time to assess how far from the dream your current path has taken you.

For NaNoWriMo, word counts or daily habits?

I took part in my first NaNoWriMo challenge in 2014. I was still finding my feet as a fiction writer, even though I had been writing fiction since 2008. But that first NaNoWriMo, I was determined to develop my daily writing routine. Challenging myself to produce a decent word count every day seemed like a good idea.

During NaNoWriMo 2014, I hit the required 50,000 words by day 11. I had finished drafting that novel by day 16, and it clocked in at over 65,000 words—still missing all the action scenes. By the end of that month, I had written in the order of 95,000 words, scenes that formed the guts to three different novels in my high fantasy series (which is still sitting in the metaphorical drawer).

Since then, I have taken part in every single NaNoWriMo and CampNaNoWriMo event, and I am now the municipal liaison for both the Christchurch, New Zealand and the New Zealand Elsewhere regions.

Yes, I am a fan of NaNoWriMo.

But as I've become more comfortable with my writing habits, I've noticed an ethos that seems to accompany many NaNoWriMo participants that can actually be damaging to a long-term writing career.

There are some writers who take the 50,000-word-count challenge to extremes, trying to write 50,000 words in one night. No joke. In my home region of Christchurch, New Zealand, there is always at least one who forgoes sleep to achieve such a crazy feat.

In my opinion, the writers who do this are not simply crazy, but are missing the point.

The focus of NaNoWriMo has become so wrapped up in word counts that many participants seem to have lost sight of the original intention behind NaNoWriMo—to write the first draft of a novel.

It's time to shake up the word-count mindset and give renewed life to the original idea by changing the measurable goal.

Are you with me?

James Scott Bell paints a true picture of publishing!

I would hope by now that my readers know that I'm a big fan of knowing exactly what you're getting yourself into. If you can understand all the pros and cons—and the hidden traps—of a particular path, then you are prepared for whatever might come your way.

The book How to Make a Living as a Writer by James Scott Bell is one of those books that lays it all out for the world to see. It's the harsh realities of the mindset that you need to develop when it comes to your writing practices. It's a discussion about the pros and cons of BOTH traditional and self-publications roads. And there is even a discussion about working with editors and book cover designers.

It doesn't matter which path you're taking in your writing career. I would suggest that you get your hands on a copy of this book and keep it on hand for when you are moving in to various stages of your careers for that little dose of reality.

Time to become prosperous with your creation

Every so often, a writer needs to take a step back and reassess their writing habits, their productivity, and their motivations for writing. This is particularly important when struck down by a bout of self-doubt.

No writer is immune to the self-doubt monster. Anyone who tries to tell you otherwise is deluding themselves. But how you deal with that self-doubt is the difference between a writer who gives up and a writer who has turned their writing into a career.

It was during my recent reevaluation that I encountered the book Prosperous Creation by Monica Leonelle. The book discusses the various steps universal to every writing career, starting with the mindset and craft through to marketing tactics. But it's not a book with magic answers. Instead, it's a roadmap that forces you to ask yourself the hard questions.

The hardest question: Am I ready for the next step?

It doesn't matter how good of a marketer you are, your sales will be short-lived if you don't have the craft skills necessary to generate a high-quality product. But generating a high-quality product takes more than just the ability to write. It is also important to understand who is part of your publishing team. And with how often writers suffer from self-doubt, a vital, foundation step includes having the right mindset and building a strong support network.

Prosperous Creation has exercises to help you every step along the way.

The Occupation Thesaurus (A Book Review by Ann Bell Feinstein)

Many writers are familiar with the mantra of Show, Don’t Tell. Exactly what it means is a subject that is up for debate, and not what this post is about. Nope. This post is looking at a brand new resource for writers designed to help writers show their stories.

Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi have just release The Occupation Thesaurus, and one of our regular readers and friend to Black Wolf, Ann Bell Feinstein, decided to share with us her thoughts about the new book in the Thesaurus series.

The Story Grid by Shawn Coyne: The idea is good, but the book is confusing.

A few months back, I was part of a discussion on Facebook about books that are specific to developmental editing. Being a developmental editor, I watched the thread like a hawk. I wanted to know what books are out there and what was high on the recommended lists. Many of the books discussed I already had, but there was one that came highly recommended by several on the thread.

The book in question: The Story Grid by Shawn Coyne.

So, I ordered a copy of the book myself. It took approximately 6 weeks to arrive (shipping to New Zealand is always a long, drawn out wait), and when it got here, I sat down and started reading. And instantly regretted buying the paper version of the book.

Don't get me wrong: the technique presented in the book is gold. The book itself…

The editor NEEDED an editor. It takes forever to get to the crux of the methodology, and when you finally get to the end, there is no discussion on what to do with the full Story Grid, or how to even generate those pretty graphs that Coyne often talks about. At one point, the book became a political statement against Trump, which actually left a sour taste in my mouth. I'm sorry, folks, but a book about editing books is NOT the place to discuss your political views, whatever they are.

Political discussions aside, what really got to me was the word count taken to discuss certain concepts. Waffle! He spent forever circling the drain.

Let's just say that I WILL NOT be adding this book to my list of recommended books for writers. BUT… As a developmental editor myself, I could see the beauty in the method he presented. He tracks the upbeats and the downbeats, and marks the points of transitions within his detailed spreadsheets—spreadsheets that take days if not weeks to compile. Pretty graphs seem to magically come out of it (the magic of which was not explained, unless that was something that I missed entirely, which wouldn't surprise me). But the idea of understanding the rise and fall of tension is something that is incredibly important. It's for this reason alone that I think many writers keep pointing other writers to this book.

However, much of the details in the book could be compressed into a more concise format and rewritten so it's understandable by all writers.

So, that's what I'm going to do. It's a tall ask for a single post, and I'll likely fail, but if I don't try, then the knowledge that I've gleaned from this book will likely be lost in the filing cabinet that is my brain.

The “Must Have” References for Every Writer, Regardless of Genre

There are many resources out there for writers, each looking at a different aspect of writing. Some will go into the nitty-gritty about how to structure a story or build a character. Others will go into narrative voice and points of view. And of course, you have the countless number of resources about punctuation and grammar.

Then you have all the genre specific materials that you might pick up along the way. For me, these include books about weaponry, criminal investigations, herbology, and, probably the most odd edition on my shelf, improvised munitions (complete with actual, functional recipes—thank you, U.S. Army).

If you're anything like me, most of the writing resources you have sitting on your shelf are books that you refer to occasionally. They're useful to have, but they aren't something that are an instant GO-TO for most things you write. Perhaps you've read them through cover to cover once, but they tend to sit on the shelf collecting dust.

But, there will be those books that you just can't do without. You love them so much that you seem to have accumulated multiple copies of them along the way. They are books that are so well loved that your paper copies (if you have paper copies of them) have little tabs added everywhere, marking important pages that you keep going back to. Or the electronic copies are annotated to the point of exhaustion.

And if someone asks to borrow that book... NO WAY! Get your own.

The following list of books is like that for me. These books are volumes that live within arms reach of my desk. For a few of them, I have both paper and digital formats, that way I can always have them with me when I'm writing. Regardless of the fiction genre you write, these books are beyond valuable.

Is my story too short?

Normally, when I have a conversation with someone about story length, it's because the writer has written an opus that needs to be trimmed down. This is often the result of too much backstory or unnecessary word building and character description that only distracts from the story as a whole. Trimming a story down is where I'm the queen. (Okay, I'll admit it... I overwrite my own stories in early drafts. I've developed the skills and techniques needed to trim word counts quickly, bringing a story back in line with where it should be.)

However, occasionally, I find myself having a conversation about how a story is actually too short based on the elements presented. There might be too many named characters. Or the setting plays too big of a role for the word real estate available. Or perhaps, there were too many twists and turns and not all the threads were adequately explored.

This is more often seen in shorter story forms, like short stories and novellas, and trying to explain the minimum word count needed to do a story justice is not an easy concept to fathom.

In episode 12.27 of the podcast Writing Excuses, Mary Robinette Kowal introduced an equation that she uses to work out how long a story should be based on the number of characters, number of locations and the number of MICE elements (and NO, I'm not talking about those little things that go squeak, squeak, or those devices that we click repeatedly when the computer refuses to respond). So, let's get to it and break the mathematics down.