Writing a Book
Writing isn't the hardest part of writing a book despite the struggle you are facing right now. Ideas are rapid, ever changing and evolving. Organizing your thoughts, that is probably the most complicated part of it all. I will tell you right now, I don't have a perfect system. I barely have a system, of course talk to me in a year or 3 from now and hopefully I'll have some fabulous writers plan for you to follow and it'll be like that staples "easy button" for writers.
My current system involves notebooks, pens and pencils. Seriously. 5 subject notebooks divided into well...five. Each one is a different character or topic or train of thoughts. Each characters journey or their timelines, details of the places they travel or are living in, languages and phrases I plan on using during the story. If i am creating a new chunk of world or realm, then there is a notebook for that. My system has so many issues but its what is working for me. I believe in the written word being actually written before it gets typed. Typing feels artificial and forced. Thoughts flow freer when they aren't confined to straight lines of perfectly formed letters and shapes. If I want to doodle, I doodle. I write in margins and upside down. Don't get me wrong, I clearly use the computer and fall prey to the grasp of facebook's power to suck you into the petty world of internet lives, but I feel more like a writer, more like an artist of some sort with a pencil or pen in my hand. Granted, my drawing skills are the level of an unskilled 3rd grader, but artist regardless. The immediate relief washing over me as I scribble out a word or sentence that was absolute shit the first go around can not be fulfilled by the pressing of the backspace button. The backspace button has got nothing on the scribble. Even the eraser falling apart as you scratch it along the evidence of a lesson learned the hard way is more satisfactory than the delete key. Of course, you may find that typing is just more time efficient (it definitely is), or find that you like sticky notes and voice to text works best for you. The important thing is, having something that works for you.
Only after I have written a good chunk of my story can I begin typing-editing and reforming the story as I go. I personally use OneNote to keep track of everything. storys broken down into characters and chapters and notes. I LOVE onenote.
The Timeline
Resources to take note of
While writing this article I took some time to look up tools to make things easier for you and me. I figured there is a need and I am sure someone out there thought to fill it. Of course, there are some really cool and bad ass tools out for your writing pleasure.
Really in depth timeline tool called Plotist. Its new and still in beta so you can play with it for FREE (free is for me! and you too I am sure) You can include pictures and events and add them to your time line. This tool has a ton of great potential, I am checking this out myself now, and I think you might find it very useful!
Another nifty tool to help you along for free, though keeps it pretty basic can be found here at ReadWritethink.org This tool while its goal is for children to be able to use (that explains while it is so simple to use,) will be a great tool to take advantage of for time-lining your stories and you can email them to yourself and print them out!
Scivener is a really useful tool for a lot of people, very popular in the writers world. Just by looking at it i felt over whelmed, and I didn't want to have to learn something new. Still on the fence, maybe after Nanowrimo is over I'll delve into it. It does coast a few bucks to purchase but the reviews say its awesome-so check it out. Figure out what works for you and get to writing!
The advice that worked for me and stuck with me, even though I struggle to listen (as I do with everything anyone tells me. Defiance runs strong in my veins.) Is to simply, finish. Just write. It doesn't have to sound good or look good or even fully make sense. It is a first draft! Get it done. Once it is finished, now you start going through yourself and fixing things. When you think its good. give it to someone else to read. maybe your love or a best friend. Print it out and give it to them-along with a red pen and tell them to go at it! When you get your thoroughly red inked manuscript back, try not to cry. Fix what makes sense and delve into what they had to say and make it make sense, then repeat-with a different friend or hire an editor. Then when you get the next one back with a few less red marks, your skin will have thickened and determination will set in. Read it aloud to yourself-yep, the whole thing. You will notice how things flow or don't and if they make sense or not by doing this. Its a great exercise. Make notes yourself on a copy and then make changes. Only after you get back a non red inked copy, would I suggest really printing it. I just started reading a novel by a kindle unlimited author that had promises to be a great story. Despite the slow beginning, I was determined to push through, because any reader knows, sometimes the beginnings are slow and painful but they end up being great stories and plot lines. There were so many editing errors and misspellings that at 9% in, i started marking them...then by 15% I gave up. I was too frustrated with all the many many errors that I couldn't finish the book. I have only not finished a book I started once previous. So this was a big deal. I don't expect every book to be perfect, I am sure mine won't be either, but when you are marking 1-2 errors on every page or trying to figure out what the word that should have been there instead of the misspelled one, well it just gets to be too much. If you can't edit it yourself, which a lot of us have a hard time doing, Hire and Editor. use Fiverr.com or look for help in a local writers group. This will prove priceless in the long run!
After you are all done writing and editing is finished and you are totally confident in putting it out there you will start to go into the publishing process. In one of my next posts I will go over all the lessons I learned in publishing my own book, and tools I used (tried to use) and how it finally worked out.
Have specific questions? Email me or comment below and I'll do my best to answer them in the next post! Thanks for making it all the way to the bottom!
