Systems and Dealing with Overwhelm

Since I returned home from the Readers Studio last Monday, I’ve had so much to write about. Namely, my experiences at the convention. In between writing those posts, comes all the other stuff that wants my attention. And while I “should be working” on those things, what’s caught my attention right now, is this post on how I deal with “overwhelm” and how I knock things off my list.

TL;DR version: I’m not sure if what I write below is a system, but I do have a daily order to getting things done. Breathing helps, so does focusing the attention on where the passion lies and then working on one thing at a time.

Simplifying the Writing Notebook

I’ve been keeping a writer’s journal/notebook/thing for years now. At first, I used a simple bound notebooks where I’d scribble stories, ideas for stories, freewriting, dialog snippets, and character descriptions. Later, I tracked submissions and notes on stories, freewriting, character descriptions, etc. as well as submission tracking and various odds and ends of my work. A few years ago, I switched to a Circa binding system. Lofty goals of keeping an orderly and organized notebook ran through my head. I had tabs for Submissions, Work in Progress (WIPs), Characters, Settings, and Quotes. I made fancy labels and had a fancy case to set this all in. And guess what? I never used it.

Recently I dusted off that notebook and revisited the idea of keeping a usable writer’s notebook. Having done NaNoWriMo for a decade and relearning how to do scene tracking helped spur this decision as I needed to figure out how to collect all the new data.

NaNo 2010: Write In Motion

Word Count: 13289 for a total of 53,607

I originally wanted to post this recap of Saturday’s awesomeness on Saturday or Sunday but my brain was feeling a bit too fried. Doing it today also gave me the distance I needed for perspective. One of the fun events that our Vancouver region does during NaNoWriMo is to do an all day writing event. Known as Write in Motion, this year we wrote across the town at various spots.

To summarize the event, We had a blast! Our ML, nancy, and I discovered that together we wrote one half of a novel in just one day with our combined word counts! As you recall, Kender dared me to wrap up my novel Saturday. And I’m happy to report that I beat that challenge and wrote 13289 words.

NaNo 2010 Day Ten

Word Count: 2833 for a total of 25871
Revised Words: 5971 for a total of 29009

I’ve done it! I’m now on the backside of 50k words. I’m not sure if it’s all downhill from here but it does feel good. Julien has returned to the Earthborn plane and has been mirroring Tracy around. He’s trying to get a feel for what is going on and observing her activities throughout the day. He has yet to contact her directly through dreams but that will come soon enough. I did get Julien in trouble by first attempting to shift Tracy’s aura so that it’s more relaxed. Then I had him use her computer to try and uncover what happened after he died. As there was no info on it, he got frustrated and acted out. Which drew attention from those in the house. Julien has fled back to SGI HQ and tomorrow we’ll see what that does for him.

NaNo 2010 Days 5-8

Word Count: 2973 words today, for a total of 20353

Hooboy. What a weekend. I didn’t post anything mainly because I was busy with a Tarot Intensive that my friend Katrina Wynne was putting on. Pretty much ate most of my waking time over the weekend. But I did manage to write just above the normal daily word count all three days.

So what is going on? Well, I graduated Julien and introduced Tracy and her plight. What a plight she has going on. Things are just getting worse and worse for her and finally she called out to have help from “the powers that be.” Julien is now briefed on her case and he’ll be sent Earthbound to observe and see what he can do for her.

My goal is to try and keep writing 3000 words a day and to wrap this up by Thanksgiving. Then it’s time to switch gears and work on some other things that have been neglected.

NaNo 2010 Day Two

Word Count: 3077 for a total of 5644

Today I took the plunge and badly wrote a car race and wreck for my MC Julien. Basically, the goal was to kill him off so the real story starts. A friend of mine remarked about why I did two days of “prewriting”, and I basically told her that I wanted to have a pre-living and death scene in the story so that the reader has a small chance to connect to the MC. This way we can watch him develop from a jock teen to a spirit guide in training. Tomorrow the fun part starts as I get to figure out the ins and outs of SGI, Inc and introduce both Julien and the readers to this new world I’m trying to create.

NaNo 2010 Day One

Word Count: 2567

In 2008, while I went crazy and wrote a novel in a month by hand, instead of posting the whole thing live, I wrote about my writing experiences. This was partially based off a fellow writer (and friend) Jamie Grove. I didn’t do this sort of coverage last year but due to the whole social network thing getting tied into the site and all, I think I’ll bring it back. Click the more button to read on!

Story ideas come from the strangest places

This year’s NaNoWriMo novel is based off an experience I had this past July. I was driving my car in town and speaking to my spirit guide. I was musing how such a guide ended up with me as their charge. I’m always wondering if my guides and totems think I’m a major pain in the ass, so I pictured this guide in particular shaking his head and rolling his eyes a lot at me. What can I say, my guides are probably just as smart assy as I am.

In any case, as soon as I asked the question, “How did you get assigned to me?” the seed of a story idea flooded into my mind. I then said, “Never mind. I guess this sort of answers it.” And thus, Spirit Guides, Inc. My novel in-progress for 2010 was born.

Story Soundtracks

The first year I participated in NaNoWriMo, I created a soundtrack to write by because I thought it’d be fun and help motivate me to greatness. I’m a writer who writes to music and it did spur me on. Over the years, I’ve created more playlists and soundscapes for my works. I’ve found that when I set up a list of songs, carefully crafting the way the sounds play and match images in my head that it does something more than creating something fun and tangible to share with my friends and cohorts.

Creating a playlist of songs, helps me set my story pace. There are fast songs and slow songs and I find that I have to have a certain pace or beat to fill the gaps between each major plot point. So, behold… here’s the playlist for my 2010 NaNoWriMo novel. Enjoy!

The Value of Tracking Scenes

Last night I attended a NaNoWriMo Plot Party where we discussed various techniques on plotting and drafting stories. One of the things that stuck with me was a small discussion revolving around the idea of scenes in novels. Taken from Book in a Month the idea is that a narrative should only contain between 10-20 scenes total. If you look at current blockbuster movies, they have very little scene changes as they try and do more inside each setting than usual.

Today I pulled out one of my writing notebooks and decided to put my own writing to the scene test. I broke open a new pack of Circa storyboarding sheets (sadly, Levenger does not make these anymore) and sat down to practice this process using the past four years worth of NaNo novels. I sat down with each novel’s plot outline and started unraveling the story into scenes.