Tag: writing

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Forgive me writers for I have sinned.

I, after a lot of soul-searching, decided to shelve a work in progress, at least for the time being.

One of the most common rules in the deep and muddy mire that is writing advice is to finish what you start. While I am on board with this statement in theory, I’ve found myself unable, or more accurately, unwilling to follow it.

I was 40,000+ words into a novel that I’m very proud of. The concepts, characters and world I’ve built mean a lot to me. Within what I had written, I felt I had developed something that has to potential to be great. The problem was that I’d spent way too long trying to write the story in a way that lives up to what I know it could be. The foundation was solid and the tangled web of intrigue was well tangled but every time I tried to untangle those knots, my own reactions to those resolutions were lackluster. What would my readers think if I couldn’t even wow myself?

My motivation to write fell to near nothing. To top it all off, I had another story idea that kept begging to be written like a little annoying brain baby fussing for attention. The story planning  for this brain baby was such that I could start at any time but I was holding off until I finished my struggling novel. I was supposed to finish what I started. It’s the writer’s way.

Yet, another golden rule of writing is that you have to write… and I wasn’t.  I couldn’t motivate myself to lay down line after line of bullshit when I knew I would have to scrape it all back off when I finally found inspiration. I was frozen.

“Finish what thou start-eth”  was blocking “writer, thou shalt write” and I was left with a decision. Stick with the current project and continue to break both rules or sacrifice one to save the other. I chose sacrifice.

Here’s hoping it was the right decision. It feels right…so far.

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Sometimes you have to let your creation get the shit kicked out of it just to see what it’s made of.

You have to put on your tiny knit hat, heather gray sweatshirt, and scowly face and yell, “you’re a bum Rock, you’re a bum!” at your own work, even if the title has nothing to do with rocks.

You have to put your work into the ring with other people just to see how it performs. If it does well then you can scream “Adrian I did it!” but most people will probably just look at you funny. If it gets knocked to the mat, it’s back to the gym  keyboard to keep training to be a champion.

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So a few months ago I got all excited and filled an entire wall of my apartment with multicolored sticky notes. It was beautiful and oh so satisfying to step back and see all of the planning I had just done. The problem was that there was no way I could make that process sustainable. It required too much paper, too much wall space, and too much time.

Sticky note wall

As I usually do, I wrote to my good friend, author of The Stars Were Right and Old Broken Road, K.M. Alexander to show off my masterwork. As he usually does, he gave me a great suggestion for a better tool. We both use Scrivener  as our primary word processor and the company who makes it also makes a helpful little gem called Scapple. It’s essentially a digital sticky note wall but with so many more great features.

Scapple Example

Sorry about obscuring the notes but I can’t go and give away my secrets now can I?

Anyway, this is just a small example of what you can do with Scapple. I’ve got the main characters on the left and I use lines to track their appearances throughout the scenes. The dark rectangles represent chapters and the stickies inside detail the general actions of each character that shows up in that chapter. I’ve also got some things going on with arrows but they are hard to see in the picture so we’ll just ignore that part.

I’m still somewhat new to the program so there is a lot I have yet to learn. Also, if you aren’t a fan of my green background, don’t worry, the default is white and you can either choose solid colors or use photos as a backdrop.

I’m not going to go into too much detail about the program as its website does a great job describing its many functions.

Scapple is available from good people at Literature and Latte. It’s affordable and you can download a free 30-day trial. In this case, each day you open the program counts as one of your thirty days so conceivably you can stretch the free trial out for much more than just a month.

 

I’m not working for Literature and Latte nor am I endorsed by them. This isn’t meant to be a commercial. Their products just kick ass and have made my writing life much easier so I thought I’d spread the word. Give it a try. Or don’t.