5 Things I Learned Writing Chapter 1

I’ve officially reached my first checkpoint.  Chapter one is finished!  Well, the first draft of it is anyway.  Still, that’s super exciting.  I also have exceeded my word count goal for this two-week period.  As it stands right now, Chapter 1 is 2,950 words.   That roughly translates to 10-12 pages in a paperback.  So this first two weeks of writing has gone as well as I’d have hoped.  I’ve still got a long way to go, but the momentum is there, and I want to keep that going. 

On top of that, I managed to learn a few things about the book, my characters, and myself during the writing process.  This is another encouraging thing for me.  Take in mind that this is very much a rough draft.  After I finish the book I’ll be going back and fixing a lot of stuff that sucks or doesn’t make sense.  The fact that I was able to identify things I learned after writing just one chapter gives me more faith and confidence that things will continue to get better and that the revision process won’t be as humbling and terrible as I first imagined it would.  So here are the five things I learned that I’m going to take with me to keep making the book better and better.

1.  Setting a Scheduled Time to Write was a Great Idea

It was really hard for me to get back into writing after taking a couple years off after I got out of college.  It’s like lifting weights.  When you stop going to the gym for a while and suddenly decide one day that you’re going to get back in shape and start pumping iron again, you get super excited.  You’re getting back into something you really enjoy!  Then you go.  Then you go home, and you body feels like it’s been stretched out on a medieval torture rack.  You feel like garbage and wonder why you even bothered in the first place.

In college I wrote a lot of short stories.  Some for class, some just for myself.  It made it easy every time I took a new class to just jump right back in and start churning stories out.  Then real world stuff happened and other things that honestly are just excuses.  Bottom line is I stopped writing.  I would jot down ideas or even do some outlines for story ideas, but there was no actual writing going on.  When I would try to start a project, my writing muscles would hurt from not being used; I’d feel like I was wasting time and then stop the project.

The biggest thing I’ve done that has helped so far, is setting a schedule up for when to write on my days off.  Working 12-hour shifts, I made the decision to stick to writing when I’m off.  Anything I try to write after 12 hours in a bulletproof vest, 20-pound belt, and boots in summer heat wouldn’t be worth keeping anyway.  But for each of my days off I set aside a couple hours to be devoted to writing the book.  Then I made a nifty spreadsheet and printed it off so I would have to look at it each day off as a reminder.

An amazing thing happened then.  I sat down that first day and wrote.  Not very much, as you probably remember from a previous post, but I wrote.  The next day, I woke up, did some adult chores or something like that, then saw what time it was and sat down to write.  More words came out.  Work and training and being called in on days off took away a few writing days, but that’s something I knew would happen.  Then today, I woke up, watched some YouTube videos, then I noticed it was almost 10:30.  Time to write.  So I did.  More words came out and a chapter was completed.

There’s something magical about a spreadsheet telling you what you’re supposed to be doing.

2. I’m Really Digging this Discovery Writing Thing

I’ve mentioned before how my previous attempts at a big project have either died in the outlining stage or shortly after.  In my whole academic career I’ve been a huge proponent of outlining.  Well I fell into the same problem that a lot of writers who try outlining fall into.  When I finish the outline, I am bored with the story and feel like I’m done.

So I made the decision on this project to take more of a Discovery Writing approach.  For those unfamiliar with the term, it’s what you think of when you imagine a writer sitting down and just typing words that turn into wonderful stories.  Stephen King and Robert Jordan are very popular writers who use this method.  Other writers like Jim Butcher or Brandon Sanderson write these detailed outlines for their stories that provide a great framework for them to work off of.

Being a huge fan of both these writer’s and being an outliner in all my academic writings naturally led me to lean this way.  Well guess what?  It works great for them but not for me.  It was a little strange to think that my writing style possibly mirrors two writers whom I’m not a particularly big fan of and not two guys who I have a tendency to have silly fan boy moments over.

But it’s true.  I’ve had way more fun writing this chapter as a discovery writer than any other chapter I’ve attempted in other projects where I wrote a long detailed outline.

3. Naming Characters is Hard

I put some time into coming up with the name of my protagonist and a couple of side characters.  I thought of names that sounded natural, but also would stand out so the reader could easily remember them.  As I sit down and write along in the story, it becomes evident that there needs to be a new character here to accomplish a certain thing.  Coming up with cool names on the fly is really hard.

The solution is pretty simple though.  I just use my gut and come up with a potentially cool name, and remind myself that it is 100% okay to come back and change it later.

One of the harder parts about naming characters is keeping the names unique.  I’m not out to name every character after one of my friends, or come up with nasty villains for the sake of naming people I don’t like after them.  I want the names to be unique and not something someone can point at and say “Oh Sean named this person after his favorite character in a David Eddings book,” or “Oh this character is totally meant to be Sean’s boss.”  I want people to read it and think, “Whoa, Officer Baxter is kind of a bad ass,” and “I totally can’t blame Sergeant Andrade for wanting to punch the main character in the throat.” 

I want the readers to think about how much they like or hate the characters more than I want them thinking about where they got their names.

That being said…

4. Focus on Making the Characters Cool and Cool Names Can Come Later

As I previously mentioned, I can go back at anytime and change the names of characters.  So I have until the end of this book to come up with a super cool name.  If Sergeant Andrade later needs a cooler name, I just need to hit a couple keys and I can search and replace every Sergeant Andrade with Sergeant Väinämöinen.  Don’t worry.  I wont.  But I could if I needed to.

The important take away was just reminding myself to make the character cool and focus on that before wasting too much time on names.

5. Blogging About this was a Great Idea

This entire process has been very fun.  Writing the story has been fun.  Talking to friends about it has been fun.  Blogging about it has been fun.  Blogging about it being fun is fun.

It’s also been an interesting experience.  On my Blogger Dashboard I can see how many times different posts have been viewed.  My blog about actually getting the story started has gotten 82 views so far.  That still blows my mind.  Before that 40-something was the most viewed post I had, and even that was ridiculous to me.

I know I paste it all over Facebook when I put up a new post, but it’s a little humbling to see that people actually take the time to click the link and read this.  The feedback is always appreciated and the support of everyone reading provides another little boost to keep going.  

I guess that means you all are still stuck with me blowing up newsfeeds with blog posts for the foreseeable future.

The Creation Station

Today I was able to find an hour to sit down and bust out another 900ish words on the book today after lunch.  I came to a pretty good stopping stop and then decided it was time to go out and take care of a couple adultish responsibilities.  Groceries, book a hotel for an upcoming wedding, pre-order Skyrim for Xbox One (What?  I said ish).

Today when I sat down at my desk I noticed something.  It was a whole lot easier to sit down and get going than in past attempts.  I wrote the other day how on day one of the novel I wrote a less than impressive 84 words and on day two it jumped up into the 900s almost instantly.  There are several reasons for the boost in productivity.  One that I actually thought about as I was driving around taking care of those important adult responsibilities was my workspace.

Being a writer has some cool advantages that other jobs don’t have.  If a writer wanted to wake up at 6 am, make breakfast, put on a nice shirt, and pair of pants before sitting down at a fancy desk for work he can.  He can also totally decide to roll out of bed, pour a beer over his Cheerio’s and write a couple chapters in his underwear and Chewbacca snuggie at the kitchen table.  Both are completely viable options.

Part of the big planning period for this project was coming up with where I was going to do my writing.  I have a pretty nice desk that was covered in crap from the last couple months.  Ammo boxes, unread Ducks Unlimited Magazines, a guide to beginning a bicycle commuting advocacy group, and tons of old bills (that are paid and up to date I might add) covered the surface.  I decided that eventually I should probably get around to cleaning it up. 

Well on Monday when I kicked off the writing with the 84 disappointing words, I just so happened to be attempting to write from my overstuffed chair in the living room while my girlfriend played Nintendo 64.  Sitting on a comfy chair while watching my girlfriend controlling a sassy bird and a silly bear in her quest to thwart a witch was definitely distracting. 

The next day I finally cleaned up the desk and set up my workspace, and voila.  Magic happened.  Having a nice clean desk that was organized with what I needed was a big help.  Today it continued to be a nice writing experience.  That is what got me thinking today about what other writers have as a writing set up.

I got on the internet and managed to keep myself from getting too distracted and started looking around for different setups writers have.

A couple workspaces I particularly liked were Chuck Wendig’swriting shed and Neil Gaiman’s Garden office.  This was when I started going down a rabbit hole on the internet.  I found myself researching tiny houses that could be easily set up as writing offices, and wondering how much money I’d need to make from that first big fancy book deal to afford one of them.   I guess a positive way to look at it would be finding new long-term goals.

I really dig the idea of having a little space separate from the house to work.  The desk in my house is working great for now, but something just sounds cool about walking to my back yard office to create awesome stories and feel important and stuff. 

Maybe one day.  For now, however, I’m going to be completely happy typing away on my setup at home.  I’ve got plenty of surface area to set up my iPad next to my laptop, and have a couple notebooks with ideas open as well.  I’ve got a silly caricature of myself on the wall staring at me to keep the mood light, a Yoda picture telling me the “do or do not” line to keep me on track, an old Troll Knight that I got when I was six years old to keep me nostalgic, and a jackelope to keep me from taking myself too seriously.  Pretty good stuff to both keep me productive and in a good mood for writing.  Keeping the area clean is going to be important, but sticking with the writing schedule I’ve made should help with that.

What are some of your favorite examples of creative workspaces that were posted?  Got any cool ideas for one that wasn’t shown?  I’m particularly a fan of Wendig’s writing shed.  Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.

We Have Lift Off!

Ladies and gentlemen, my book officially has words written in it!  That means I am writing a book.  I’m no longer just planning a book, or talking about a book, or doing research for a book.  I.  Am.  Writing.  A.  Book.

Yesterday was day one of writing, and it did not go particularly well.  I sat through my Sanderson lecture, which was entertaining and informative like usual, and I had every intention of settling in for some hard-core writing as soon as it was over.

For a quick recap, the way the actual class is set up (with all the real people who take it) is a lecture followed by a workshop.  The workshop students are required to have 2000 words a week ready to submit to their writing groups.  Because of my schedule I’m watching one class every other week.  At the conclusion of the first episode he announced that no submissions were required for week two.  I took those two weeks to do some planning on what I want in the book, and how I want to approach it.  Now that lecture two is over, I’ll be aiming to get 2000 words written by the time I watch the next lecture. 

Well, yesterday I managed a measly 84 words.  There were lots of distractions going on with it being a holiday, but the main reason was just that I wasn’t sure how I wanted to get that first chapter moving.  I toyed around with a couple different intros and got some good notes down, but not much otherwise.

Today, I decided to jump right into it in the morning and see what happened.  The low word count on day one wasn’t ideal, but there was still a small victory in that there were actual words in the story now.  Plus, I reminded myself I needed 2000 by September 12, totally doable.

So I sat down today and was able to get things moving.  I’m now sitting at a nice 943 words.  I’m happy with that.  I’m almost half way to having my required word count for the next deadline, and I’ve got a pretty good idea where I want to go for the next couple chapters.  I’m hoping that as I get deeper and deeper into this story, the momentum can take over and I can have a couple nice marathon sessions where I can really go crazy.

I don’t foresee any problems easily reaching those 2000 words, and I hope to shoot right on past that mark.  However, if I manage to write 3000 words this time, it does not mean I’m only responsible to get 1000 the next couple weeks.  I’m still going to require myself to write 2000 words every session, averaging 1000 words a week.  If it gets to the point where I can easily bust out 2000 words a week, I’ll probably up my required word count for each session.

That said, I’m excited for the good start. 

Tweaking my Writing Approach

I’ve made some good progress during the prewriting stages of the story so far.  I’ve had some productive brainstorming sessions that have led to some pretty cool ideas that are going to stick around and probably play some prominent roles in the story.  Lots of things are getting accomplished in the prewriting phase (which is good), but at the same time I started noticing that my brainstorming file, was getting longer, and the cool things I was researching online were filling up my bookmark bar, but the actual story still had zero words written.  As of a couple days ago I could feel that sensation of becoming overwhelmed creeping back into my brain. 

Luckily, I was able to get that turned around pretty quickly after reminding myself that those little adventures in brainstorming and exploring the internet were going to make my book better in the long run.

Still, I needed to take a step back for a couple hours and jumpstart myself again and figure out what keeps getting in the way.  I realized that the root of that feeling of uncertainty and doubt had to be coming from somewhere.  But where?  I’ve got some cool ideas for characters, my magic system is starting to feel like something legitimately plausible (for a fantasy book of course), and I really like several of the plot idea’s I’ve brainstormed.  So why is the doubt trying to screw things up?

It actually didn’t take long to figure out.  I had my Writing Stuff folder open on my computer as I was watching a Story Board episode on YouTube with Patrick Rothfuss and Mary Robinette Kowal when I noticed the file for my brainstorming stuff and the actual file for my novel sitting next to each other.  One has been worked on several times over the last couple weeks, and the other was merely created to remind me that it needed to be worked on.

It was the prospect of finally starting the book that was playing with my mind.  Figuring that out was a big relief, which made paying attention to the video much easier.   I was able to sit back and watch a couple authors answer questions on…how to actually start your novel.  Holy crap.

It was one of those serendipitous moments in life where I was able to stumble across just what I need, just when I needed it.  They discussed various things a person needs to consider and have lined out before starting, and it actually helped me decided how I want to approach this book.

I’ve been debating whether or not to do a detailed outline or just sit down and discovery write the thing for a while now.  I’ve always outlined every major writing project I’ve done ever since high school.  I’ve outlined short stories I did for my college writing classes, I’ve outlined research papers, and I outlined my big ambitions NaNoWriMo project that failed a couple years ago.  Most of those went really well, with the exception of the NaNoWriMo story.  So why didn’t it work that time?  It seems that outlining is kind of my thing.

Rothfuss and Kowal brought up the fact that different approaches work for different people, and one of the things that could lead to an outline failing is that the writer gets so bored with the story after finishing the outline.  That made a lot of sense.  I did distinctly remember looking at one of the scenes I outlined and thinking, “Ugh, I don’t want to do this one right now.” 

So, I made a decision after that video was over to go with more of a discovery writing approach.  This whole journey is to do something I’ve never done before: finish a freaking book.  So, why not try something different?  It’s not like I’m breaking away from something that has proved to be successful for me for years and years.  I may decide part of the way through that it’s not helping me and take a break to outline.  Or I might write the next great American novel.  Either way, I’m going to get something finished.

So It Begins...

I kicked off my project Monday by sitting through the first lecture the Sanderson writing class.  Class number one was mostly a general overview.  He mentioned how writers are generally sorted into two groups, outliners and discovery writers, and that most writers actually use a combination of both approaches.  He touched on the three major aspects of a novel a writer needs to be cognizant of: character, setting and plot, and he talked about which writing approach typically lends itself pest to which major aspect.

So that may have seemed a bit rushed, but that is because I’ve actually watched other lecture series of his before and that is his typical Lecture 1 lesson plan.  So it was kind of expected.  Each year he covers those parts in Lecture 1 and then talks about expectations for the class and what the class goals are. 

These are the cool fresh parts each year.

He announces how long the writing project needs to be in this part.  One year it was a 50k word novel, one year it was a 25k word novelette, and a couple years he focused more on novella length works.  This year with the word count minimum being 35k words, he’s going for the novella again.  I was pretty excited because I was leaning toward a novella for this project anyway.

For those who aren’t entirely sure about what the difference between a novella and a novel is, it’s basically length and depth.  When I mention depth, I don’t mean it’s just a simple fluffy piece.  They generally just skip all the subplots that come in long novels and focus on really intensifying one plot.  There are also fewer characters, so the writer really focuses on making the few that do make the cut for the story as unforgettable as possible.

This is actually pretty perfect for newer writers in my opinion.  I’ve mentioned before that one of the biggest contributors to my massive failures in previous projects was that they got too big and ran away from me.  By doing a novella I can really knuckle down and get some decent practice while I’m working.

Sanderson also frequently compares writing to playing a piano or a sport, and the way he explains it makes total sense.  People don’t wake up and decide they’re going to play the piano and book a concert at Carnegie Hall, and Michael Jordan didn’t just decide he was going to play for the Bulls and be the best basketball player ever.  It takes work, and people sometimes forget that writing is a skill and a craft that needs to be honed.  Sanderson wrote 12 novels before he was ever published.  That’s a lot of practice that has paid off.  He’s pretty damn good.

He also gave a timeline of how long it typically takes a writer to develop enough to make a living writing.  There are “lottery winners” who can do it in less (Sanderson openly admitted he himself won the lottery), but the timetable he gave was 10 years.

It is important to realize that 10 years is 10 years of working at it.  Because I wrote a few blog posts in August of 2016 and started a novella derivative of The Dresden Files does not mean that 40-year-old Sean will be scheduling book tours in August 2026.  As cool as that would be, it’s not realistic.  Ten years sounds like a long time, and that may not be something I really wanted to hear, but it’s something I needed to hear.  Maybe because I started a blog and a fun urban fantasy novella and continued with the blog and continued writing and continued developing new ideas, might mean I hit it big when I turn 40.    I’d be totally cool with that.  And think!  You dedicated followers of the blog could be all hipster and tell everyone that you were reading Sean Schooley way back when he was a cop in Liberal, KS in 2016. 

He also gave the word count minimum for his select few students in his workshop.  They’re going to be responsible for finishing about 2000 words each week.  I’m watching these lectures -- from now on, I’m just going to refer to it as taking the class – every other week, so I’m going to shoot for 2000 words every two weeks for now for a very important reason.  The Day Job.  I still have 12-hour shifts to work, court to go to, on-call schedules and callouts, and other less glamorous work stuff I have to sincerely devote time to.  It’s a fun job and a very valuable resource for cool fiction stuff.  I love and respect my job and the people I work with, and it wouldn’t be fair to allow this project to hamper my performance and reliability.  The good news is, with long 12 hour shifts comes more days off.  And I have scheduled plenty of writing and research time on those days off.

So 2000 words to be completed every other week is totally doable. 

September 5^th is the next day I’ll be “attending” class, but don’t worry.  You won’t have to wait a week and a half for another blog post.  I’ll keep on working on other cool stuff to post along with these class and project updates.  And as the project proceeds I’ll have more to talk about concerning the story as opposed to just paraphrasing class.  Lots of cool things to come.

So What is the Book About? (Big Project Post #2)

Now that we know the content for the majority of the blog will be following along as I write a book, I’m sure you are thinking, “Gee, Sean, what is your book going to be about?”  Well, dear readers, I’m very excited to announce that I’ll be writing an urban fantasy book about a police officer who happens to be a necromancer.

As long as I’ve been making up stories, I’ve gravitated toward fantasy.  I remember being a little kid and sitting next to my older sister telling fantasy stories I made up as she practiced her typing skills and pretending to be a knight as I walked around our farm wielding an aluminum tent pole as a sword and a cardboard shield hunting for dragons.   (For those of you thinking, "But Sean, there are no dragons in the Oklahoma panhandle," you're welcome.)  Fantasy has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember, and I've always dreamed of writing a fantasy novel that I can share with others. 

I have attempted a bigger fantasy story in the past when I tried to do NaNoWriMo several years ago and was quickly overwhelmed by the immense scale of the project.  It was quite an ambitious project and I jumped into it without much planning.  Needless to say it didn’t get finished.

I’ve also done the outlining for an urban fantasy project about a police officer who dies and becomes a guardian angel who investigates demons and other nasty stuff.  I figured that as a police officer, I could bring some interesting things to the story to flesh out that side of the main character while adding the cool supernatural stuff along the way.  The most frequent response I got from friends when I told them that idea was, “Oh cool, so it’s like RIPD?”  I haven’t seen that movie but evidently it wasn’t the cool unique story I had envisioned.  My enthusiasm for that project deflated pretty quickly after that.

A little while later I was listening to a Writing Excuses podcast where several of the writers strongly advocated writing derivative stories when you’re starting out.  As fate would have it, I also just finished the fourth book in the Dresden Files series (which was awesome).  So I decided I’d take the idea of using a police officer as the main character and making him a necromancer.  It’s totally different than a private investigator who is a wizard right?

I was instantly excited about the possibilities that started flying out as I started brainstorming.  I particularly liked the idea that an officer of the law would have to deal with the moral dilemma of being someone who seeks justice and wants to protect people while also using a type of magic that is generally regarded to be unwholesome and evil.

The two main things I am focusing on most as I work on this is finishing the story and creating an engaging main character.  I’ll work on the magic system and world building as I go, but this round I’m really going to work on character creation.  My long-term goal is to actually make a trilogy with this character and focus on making significant improvements each time to different aspects of the writing process.   First, I’ve got to get this book finished, and I’m excited to bring you all along with me.

Big Project (Post #1)

Last post I mentioned a big project I am working on and promised to give more details in another post.  Well, friends, this is that post. 

I will be attempting (again) to write and finish my first novel/novella.  Right now the plan is to aim for a novella, but depending on how things progress I might get a little more ambitious with the project.  I’ve started two different novels and have gotten lost, and I have outlined and brainstormed many, many more stories.  However, I have never been able to put everything together and actually get a large project finished.  This was actually very discouraging and I allowed that feeling of disappointment to fuel excuses for why I haven’t written much in the last couple years.   There were other personal and professional reasons (both positive and negative) that also got in the way to a small degree, but ultimately it was the fact that I allowed myself to believe I wouldn’t finish a project to prevent me from pursuing any over the last couple years.

Well, I’ve told those silly negative voices that they are no longer needed, and the enthusiasm for writing was happy to return to the forefront of my creative mindset.  Now that I got the attitude and enthusiasm back, I needed to sit down and think about ways to set myself up for a more successful outcome.  That is where my favorite author Brandon Sanderson comes in.

If you have read through some of the earlier posts here, you probably noticed that I am a big Brandon Sanderson fan.  Whether it’s his writing or his lectures that are posted on YouTube, I tend to fan-boy out where he’s concerned.  A few weeks ago I noticed his newest semester of writing lectures have started to be posted.  I’ve noticed that each semester his class differs slightly with some new info being presented each time.  I have used incredible will power to keep from diving into that series of lectures.  The plan is to write my novel/novella along with his lectures as if I were a student in his class.

His classes tend to be about an hour’s worth of lecture that he posts online and then workshops with writing groups that are done off camera.  I’ll work on keeping up with his class and meeting the word count requirements that he requires for each lecture.  The plan is to watch the lecture on my Mondays off (every other Monday) and work toward the word count and focus on the content he covers in that lecture. 

That gives me two weeks to hit a very reasonable word count requirement before each new lecture.  Early on in the process that will give me time to get flustered and then recover, gather my thoughts, and power through.  Starting is always a little intimidating, so having time to build up momentum will help a lot.  As I progress with the book and get into a groove, that extra time can be used to go back and work on some revisions or to blaze ahead toward the final word count goal.

I’m planning on writing at least one blog per lecture period about how things go with the writing process.  I’ll give a brief synopsis of the lecture and list a few goals I hope to achieve over the next couple weeks.  The next blog will include the same info plus whether or not I was able to accomplish what I wanted to the previous couple weeks.

I’m excited for this plan.  By following along an actual class and by posting about it, I feel like I can keep myself accountable and also keep with the project all the way through without getting frustrated and stopping to plan a new project.  That typically is where I run into trouble. 

I'm Back...Again

It seems my blog is turning into a blog about restarting my blog.  Let's see if we can keep this one churning out content for a longer streak this time.  Who knows, maybe we'll keep it up indefinitely!

Last time seemed to go a little better than the previous attempts, so I've decided to keep a couple of those posts on the page.  The posts that survived the purge (if deleting two posts can be qualified as a purge) did so because they still fall into framework of what I want this blog to be.  I enjoy writing, and I enjoy sharing my passion with others.  So if I get to meet more cool writers, I'll share that experience.  If I read any books that really taught me something, I'll share my thoughts on those.

I probably won't be sharing any short stories or flash fiction samples this time around, but that is mostly because I'm currently working on one big project that is going to take me a while to do and I want to focus on that rather than stop any momentum I gain by shifting focus back and forth between short stories and the novel.  I will share updates on how the project is going and talk about what I feel is going well and what I feel is particularly weak.

Along with the cool miscellaneous writing/reading adventures I'll post about, the major focus will be sharing the process I go through as I attempt to write my first novella.  

I'll do another post later with some more details on the big project and how I'm going to be bringing you along with me on the journey.  I'm still fine tuning some of the logistics of it and doing some pre-writing, but I'm really excited for it.  I'm looking forward to learning a lot from the experience, and sharing my journey with you.