What They Don’t Understand

What no wife of a writer can ever understand is that a writer is working when
he’s staring out of the window.  ~Burton Rascoe

The same is true of the husband of a writer as well. I told this to my love and he laughed, but I didn’t know what that laugh was supposed to mean.  Coming from my point of view though, it is the truth, unless you are married to another author.

“Why don’t you just work on one book at a time?” He asked me last night, emphasizing the word ‘one’ when I said I am working on two.  He doesn’t like that my main manuscript has sat in a file on my computer, unfinished, for a year and a half now while I continue to work on something else.

The truth is that I am working on it.  I am continually thinking of how to end it in the right way, what trials to put my main characters through so that they will grow into what I need them to be by the final page of my book.  I need to tie up the loose ends that I created months ago without making them look sloppy and quick.  My book needs time to sit and age like a good wine.

He doesn’t understand that I can write no matter where I am at.  That I will pull out my cellphone, or scribble out passages onto a napkin. When I tell him what I am doing he looks at me like I am crazy and goes back to what he was doing.  But inspiration hits anywhere – someday we will be laying in bed and it will come and I will have to roll over and flip the light on to start scribbling away even at the risk of waking him up.

Sometimes, he doesn’t understand my need to write all the way through, without hardly stopping for sleep, even when the writing’s bad.  But creative flow, whether bad or good, shouldn’t be stopped because after a break it will be difficult to get back into that moment.  Besides, the editing process will cut out those long, unneccessary ramblings about a table.

When I write a scene of emotions as I am feelilng them in my own life, or write something cathartic, he may not understand why I am putting myself through that.  Even though it makes the writing more real and vivid and releases the emotions pent up in my breast, giving me a sweet release. It may bring back the pain of a hurtful memory, but at the same time it calms me and heals me in a way that a non-writer may not be able to comprehend.  If I spill my inner secrets and mask them as someone elses in my writing, that too, is a form of release. It may not even be a concious effort to do so.

What people who don’t write will never understand: that the writing we create is a part and an expression, not just of the life we live, but of our very soul.

NaNoWriMo With Austine Decker

 Austine Decker

http://austine-decker.livejournal.com/

Years Done NaNoWriMo: 2 (2009 & 2010)
Did You Finish This Year? Yes

What Kind Of Experience Did You Have? This year, I thought it wouldn’t be so stressful since I did NaNo last year and finished. But, honestly, I think it was even worse because I knew what November would be like. Always trying to reach the daily goal of 1,667 words. Not always having the time or accessibility to do so. Wondering if you’re going to finish on time or get cut off at the very last minute. I’d like to say my experience this year was horrible (and what I just said would back that up) but I found NaNo 2010 exhilarating. After 30 days of terror and stress, the end result is you wrote 50,000 words. You. It’s the greatest feeling in the world and made this year’s NaNoWriMo a fond memory to add to the collection.

What Impact Did NaNo Have On Your Life/Writing Overall? NaNoWriMo taught me (in the words of Mur Lafferty from the podcast I Should Be Writing) “You’re allowed to suck.” Before NaNo 2009, I’d been struggling to get past 30k, never knowing my full potential. Now, here I am, a year later, with a finished trunk novel almost 60k and another WiP already at 64k. Without NaNo, I wouldn’t have reached my goal of writing a novel. It doesn’t matter if it’s good or not; it’s the fact that I realized I could. And that revelation is what keeps me going with writing each day.

Any Weird Habits You Started? Well, for starters, I never used to drink coffee and now find it to be very good with cinnamon toast in the mornings. I wake up in the middle of the night, still on my NaNo schedule, to write down ideas. Oh, and there’s that habit that I can’t sit down and write without writing at least 1,667 words anymore. Used to be I could barely get 500/day. You can always find me with a writing utensil and paper of some kind, no matter where I am (I took a notebook to Olive Garden once and my sister took a picture). I guess for all this, I should say, “Thank you, NaNoWriMo!?”

If You Could Give Some Advice to New NaNoers What Would It Be? Don’t give up. I know I felt like I wanted to each and every day. But you know what? NaNoWriMo is about personal success. Even if you don’t make it to the 50k, there’s always next year. Whether you finish or not, you wrote words. Your story may be one huge rant about pie, but you wrote them and should take pride in them. I didn’t do that my first year, even though I finished, and you know what? I came back and finished NaNoWriMo again and listened to my own advice. Take pride in your work. It will be your greatest motivator of all.

Do You Have Plans for Next Year? As next year will be my senior year in high school, I’m not sure how my schedule will play out and if NaNo will be an option but I’m going to try to do it. A little extra stress never hurt anyone, right?

Right?

What ‘got you interested’ in writing? Or, why do you write?  Well, I’ve always been a big reader, ever since I was little. One day I just decided I wanted to write my own novel (it was 26 pages long, handwritten in all different colored sharpie). I was working on a short story for English class and I started wondering what would happen next. It was an epic failure, but a good learning experience. After that, I realized writing wasn’t so easy but the desire to see my name on a bookshelf in Barnes & Noble became all-consuming. But now I’ve realized how much I love to write. I don’t care about publishing so much as I used to. There’s just… something about writing, about being able to think through actual issues and situations in fiction where no one will judge you. It’s also an escape for me from reality when things get a little crazy. But, for the most part, I write for the love of it.

Beautiful Cover by Skarlette Knox

Hey everyone, I just had to share. I got the cover art for my next CreateSpace proof copy.  My NaNo from this year wasn’t ready so I decided to honor my first novel ever by getting a copy of it! I’m still working on editing so it may be a month or so still before I order it in.

Skarlette Knox is a very talented grafic designer who offered to make covers for those getting CS proofs and after seeing her work I knew she’d do an amazing job.  The result wasn’t what I had in my head, even though she followed what I originally planned the details were much better than I ever imagined.

Take a look at her deviantArt account for more of her work.

Here it is:

NaNoWriMo with Jennifer K. Sights

NaNo has been over over a month now and I have asked some of the participants for interviews to put up here for everyone to (hopefully) learn from for next year.

 Jennifer K. Sights

Years Done NaNoWriMo: 3 – 2008 (win) 2009 (win) 2010 (fail)
Did You Finish This Year? no

2010 was my first year being co-ML for St. Louis. I was really excited to be helping out, and had a ton of ideas (though I knew we wouldn’t have time for all of them.) I was also aiming for 100,000 words, since my first 2 years I reached 50K by Nov. 15. I was pretty much on track (a little behind, but nothing I couldn’t catch up with), but on Nov. 6 there was a fire in my apartment building. It was in the unit next to mine, so all we had was smoke and water damage. It was enough that we had to move to a different unit, and it was a really emotional experience for me. (You can read all about it on my blog.) Dealing with all that left me exhausted, and pretty much killed my desire to write. I kept going to write-ins and did my ML duties, but stalled out at 30K words. I hated my novel, and didn’t want to waste time and energy writing something I hated, so I didn’t.

What Impact Did NaNo Have On Your Life/Writing Overall? This year it taught me that I don’t have the perserverance I thought/hoped I did. I always thought I’d be able to write through anything, but that just didn’t happen with the fire. It was disappointing to realize that, but gives me something to work on and improve. The first year I did NaNo I discovered the thrill of having characters take over and hijack your story. It was exciting to see where they led me, and the novel that started with just a 1-line basic idea gave birth to characters that insisted had more adventures than this one story, and that the novel would be an ongoing urban fantasy series. I’m currently revising that novel, and hope to find an agent and get it published.

Any Weird Habits You Started? Not really. The only thing is when I really get engrossed in writing I forget to eat, but that’s any time, not just during NaNo.

If You Could Give Some Advice to New NaNoers What Would It Be? Don’t beat yourself up if you don’t reach 50K. Write every day, but be nice to yourself. (I need to take this advice to heart.) Don’t let anyone tell you you’re crazy and can’t do this. You CAN do it. Believe in yourself.

Do You Have Plans for Next Year? I will be co-ML again next year, but will only aim for 50K as opposed to trying to be an overachiever. It’s going to be crazy again, though, as I’m getting married October 15. So the first half of October will likely be spent with last minute wedding details, and the second half I’ll be on my honeymoon. We’re planning on a 2 week honeymoon in the Northeast, so I’ll return just in time for NaNo kickoff. I’ll have to be sure to do any novel planning (and co-ML duties) BEFORE October…my fiance supports me during NaNo, but I imagine he wouldn’t be too thrilled if I spent the entire honeymoon planning my novel!

 Congratulations on getting married next year! That must be so exciting. Could you tell me a little about being a ML and what that entails? It’s always something that I’ve been interested, but I don’t know that I’ll ever have the time But after you saying you’re doing it directly after your wedding and honeymoon I’m impressed.



I’m not sure I could handle it with the wedding if I was the only ML. Thankfully the other ML has been doing this for…3 year? 5? A while. I probably won’t be able to attend the pre-kickoff party, which is disappointing, but she’ll be there. I suppose if I was the only ML I’d ask someone to stand in for me.

You can do as much or as little as you want as an ML. This year, we:
-made goodie bags for everyone (which cost a bit of money, but it’s not a requirement)
-planned the pre-kickoff party – planning entails finding and reserving a venue, then making sure the regions knows about it
-gathering prizes for a raffle at the pre-kickoff party
-moderating the regional forum (which is easy in my region, thankfully everyone plays nicely)
-planning weekly write-ins – find venue, make sure venue is ok with us taking over for a few hours.
-plan the regional Night of Writing Dangerously – we called it the Evening of Scribing Recklessly.
-the other ML hosted a midnight kickoff party at her house. You could also find a 24hour diner or such at which to hold this if you aren’t comfortable with strangers knowing where you live
-plan the TGIO party
-encourage people to donate (this is the hardest part, IMO)

Thankfully my region is awesome. Besides me and the other ML, we have a “word wrangler” who helps us out and encourages people to keep writing, and an as-yet-untitled donation encourager, who keeps on people’s cases about donating to this fine cause.

If your region already has an ML, talk to her and see if she’d like some help. explain you’re not sure you’ll have a ton of time, but would like to help out as much as you can. If it doesn’t, well, I’m sure they’ll appreciate any bit of effort you can put into it. An ML without loads of time is better than no ML at all. Some things you can do far ahead of time. If you choose to do goodie bags, you can prepare those in advance. Pep talks – you can write in advance.

Let me know if you have more questions. I had a lot of fun being co-ML this year.

Type Anatomy

I love fonts, so when I came across this I found it interesting.  Take a look: http://www.brainfuel.tv/type-anatomy

Blogroll/Writing Sites Updating

While I’ve been working on editing some of my novels I’ve found some nifty writing sites that I’ve added to my favorites bar.  Then I was going over this blog and realized that I have nothing when it comes to a blogroll.

So starting today I’m going to work on compiling one as I go through my internet favorites and following the bunny trails they lead me on and I’ll post some of the great things I find on here to share with everyone.

If you know of any great sites (someone else’s or your own) then let me know by commenting here or emailing me at princessofliterature[at]gmail[dot]com.

Figment.com

Hey everyone, I came across a new site through a writing group on dA. It’s a site for writers to post their works – even entire books with chapters.  It has the features to leave both comments and critiques, forums,  and a ‘library’ where you can read other’s works.  You can check my profile out here. 

Just a note though – remember if you’re planning on publishing through a traditional publishing house do not post your work online.  Excerpts are usually okay, but be careful as to how much you post.

Formatting for CreateSpace – Part 2

For part 1 click here. It went over setting up the initial pages of your novel as well as the general formatting.

After your dedication you are going to want to insert a two page breaks. Insert one normally and then when you go to insert the next one you need to make sure that you change the style to ‘first page’ and check the ‘change page number’ then make sure that the new page number is set at ‘1’.

Now we’re going to have to slightly change the formatting for just this page.  In the upper left there should be a place with the formatting for the page.

Click on that.

Make sure that you’re on the page tab and click the ‘add’ button, the little plus sign on the paper and type the name of your new style. ‘Chapter Start’ or something would be good – I just named mine ‘Main’. Right click on that and then click ‘Modify’.

All we’re doing here is turning the footer on and leaving everything else the same – don’t change anything more than that.

NOTE: Page numbers are on the bottom of the first page of a chapter and are on the top on the rest of the pages.

So now click in your footer and center it then go to Insert > Fields > Page Count and you should she the number ‘1’ in the center there.

Now that you have done this the next time you need to change chapters just add a break, but change the style to ‘Main’ or whatever you set up and it will automatically set that up.

On this page I usually put the Chapter name/number whatever, about seven or so spaces down the page.  Continue on to the next page where we’re going to click on Insert > Header because now we want the footer OFF and the header ON.

 

In this section we want to make sure that we uncheck the ‘Same content left/right’.  This will allow us to have the author’s name on one side and the title of the book on the other side.

Notice that the first pages as well as the Chapter 1 page do not have headers! That’s because the page formatting on those we already set to EMPTY and MAIN/NEW CHAPTER.

Clicking inside the header click Insert > Field > Page Number. The number ‘2’ will appear. Now in the center of the header you want to put your name as it appears on the cover of the book.

Now on the next page you will see that the header is empty again.  This time insert the word count on the opposite side of the page and put the title of the novel in the center.  From now on out the header will automatically alternate the two headers.

Just remember that every time you change to a new chapter to insert a page break with your new chapter format in the ‘style’ box so that the header is gone and the page count appears in the footer.

I generally leave the last page of the book blank as well, so just format that to EMPTY.

I hope that these two parts helped you get your book ready – I’d love to see pictures of everyone’s proof copies so comment with a link to them when you can!

JennaChristine

 

Formatting for CreateSpace – Part 1

Nanowrimo has finally come to an end. Okay, so it came to an end several weeks ago now, but I’ve been recovering and getting busier with other things. If you’re a winner and are planning on getting your proof copy (or if you didn’t win or even participate and want to buy a proof copy of some of your writings) then this post is for you.

Last year was the first year that I got a free proof copy and I was so completely happy with the results of it.  However when it came time to format it I was a little lost at what I was doing and went through lots of confusion and old message board posts on the CS website so I wanted to save others some of the hassle.

If you are using your Nanowrimo promo code then let me tell you that it is absolutely FREE.  Just set it up and they will send it to you.

NOTES:

• I use Open Office to format all of my novels so if your using a different program then these directions may be slightly different.  I really like OO for this though because it easily exports to a PDF which is the file format you need to upload to CreateSpace.
• I like to go with a 5.25′”x8” book and that is what I have formatted all of this for.
• I am not a professional at this and therefore will not be held responsible if this doesn’t work for you
• I don’t use a table of contents in my novels so I don’t have instructions for that here. Just take a look in your favorite novels for how and where they lay theirs out and use that.  I figured the layout for mine out by looking at some of my favorite books. (A Barnes & Noble Classicswas one).

The first thing you need to do is to set up your overall page formatting.  (Format > Page…)

In this screenshot I already have my setting for a 5.25”x8” book set up.  The next thing to do is to set up your margins.  These should be:

Inner: 0.75”
Outer: 0.50”
Top: 0.70”
Bottom: 0.50”

The only other thing you need to change here is the page layout which should be set as ‘mirrored’. You can go ahead and make sure that all of the other settings look the same as in my screenshot, but they should.

Above you can see that the footer is turned on.  However for default formatting do not have either header or footer on.  We will get to that later.

Now things may get a little confusing when you are looking at your pages in a mirrored set up, especially since that’s going to affect your books entire layout so let me explain. When you look at this picture

it is NOT a spread (though in the bottom right corner of OO I can change how this is displayed, I guess I just got used to the confusing way so that’s what you all have to live with).  What you are looking at now is really the front and back of a SINGLE piece of paper.  So the page the title page is really on the right and the copyright information is on the back or the left of the next spread. If that makes sense. See this post on CS for another explanation.

Before we do anything we need to create a new format – I named mine blank. Just so the first few pages before the actual novel are marked as different than the rest.

In the upper left there should be a place with the formatting for the page.

Click on that.

Make sure that you’re on the page tab and click the ‘add’ button, the little plus sign on the paper and type the name of your new style (This is a screenshot before I created EMPTY, that’s why it’s not there).  Right click your format and apply it to that page.

Now the first sheet of paper in a book is usually white on both sides so you want to skip ahead to what your word processor says is page 3. (The best way to do this is to use Insert > Manual Break > Page Break as it keeps a page between the text you wrote and what you write after the break even if you go to the previous page and add onto it later.  Then the text on the next page won’t move. When you get to the page break though, make sure that you click on EMPTY so that it sets all the pages to that format until I tell you otherwise).

Page 3 will be the title page of your book. Remember that it’s really going to be on the right hand side of your printed book.  Odd numbered pages are always on the right.

About 11 or so lines down I typed the name of my novel – this is where you can do fancy font or whatever.  Last year I put a decorative separator underneath. Leave page 4 blank.

Pages 5 and 6 are what I copied in the screenshot above. The plain title page and the copyright page.  The plain title page should just be your plain title.

Now it was suggested to me that Georgia would be the best font to use so that is what I did last year and I am very happy with how it turned out. (I used 12 on the title above, 11 on the main content of the book, 10.5 on the copyright information).

The phraseology for the copyright was taken from some of the books on my shelf. Don’t forget to use a page break between it and the plain title page.

After another page break we come to the dedication page (page 7) the back of which is again blank.

Part two will contain information on how to format your chapter.

NaNoWriMo Thus Far

Well…I’m behind…but that’s alright because I’ve been catching up.  I’ve broken the fourth wall at least once and I have a novel I wrote when I was like 13 that is pressuring me into rewriting it, but I’ve stuck with Hearts in the Snow, okay I reread this other novel in it’s pitiful 20k entirety last night when I didn’t feel like writing  was procrastinating. Oh and yeah, I read most every other short story (uh oh! Someone just walked by and yelled at me for procrastinating right now!) I’ve ever started. Maybe that explains why I wasn’t in the mood. 

Throughout this novel writing process I haven’t been happy with my character’s name being ‘Ava’ it just didn’t fit.  So I’m sitting here and listening to a song that really fits the mood of my novel, but the youtube video paused and I went to turn it back to the beginning.  It was paused on a picture of a girl and I was like, “That’s my character!”  (Yes, outloud.) Well without a pause my sister who was sitting behind and above me looks up at the picture and just says. “She looks like an Ashton.”

Then it clicked.  The name fit perfectly.  Ashton.  Jake and Ashton.  Totally awesome.