WiP Wednesday: NaNoWriMo 2022

For those of you who don’t know, NaNoWriMo is short for National Novel Writing Month. Every year in November, the organization challenges writers (be they published or aspiring authors) from all over the world to create a 50,000 word novel in just thirty days. If you’re curious to learn more about this challenge or sign up for an account, the website is NaNoWriMo.org

WiP Wednesday: Character Hobbies

One of the things you should know about a character is their hobbies. What do they like to do in their spare time, to relax or to let off steam? What a character likes to do will give the reader some insight into who they are as a person. Someone who races cars when they are upset will generally come across as quite different than someone who crochets on their lunch break.

WiP Wednesday: Character Development

All of the major characters in a book should be fully developed. You need to know the various aspects of their lives, past and present, to properly depict how they will act and speak in the future. Not everything that you come up with will make it in the book, and it shouldn’t because most of it is useless to the reader and bogs down the current story. Yet every move a character makes, every step they take, will be influenced by their history.

Readers are smart and, if your character acts out in an unexpected way, they want to know what caused such a reaction. They also pick up on anything that contradicts earlier behaviour and will call you on it. In real life, people change their minds all the time and grow as humans but a book’s characters need to have some consistency even if they transform to become their true selves.

Yet, that isn’t the only reason why character development is so important. You also want to ensure the reader can tell your characters apart. No one wants to be reading about a bunch of clones unless you are writing science fiction. Small things like appearance and speech patterns and behavioural ticks will keep a reader from being confused. The reader needs to be able to keep everyone straight in their head in order to enjoy a story.

WiP Wednesday: Writing Inspiration

I mentioned in a previous post that during my book shlump I became addicted to Kdramas. They weren’t something I ever considered getting into, but my streaming subscription kept recommending I watch one called Cinderella and the Four Knights until I finally gave in. The fact I am a sucker for anything inspired by fairytales probably had something to do with it, and the fact it was based on a book is probably why I liked it. I watched more international shows after that.

Then, when a classmate discovered we had similar taste in television programs, she suggested I try another show called Boys Over Flowers. This one is based on the Hana Yori Dango manga series. I have never read any sort of graphic novel before, unless you count those old Archie comics from the nineties, let alone one from another culture so I had no idea what to expect.

WiP Wednesday: Finding Your Why Not

Every year I say I will write a novel and every year I do not write a novel.

I will plan to write it and even create a schedule to add a block of time for writing in my daily or weekly routine. I may even start to write my latest literary genius. However, before long, my life gets overwhelming, my schedule goes out the window, my creative energy is sapped, and I do not make time for writing.

Once again, I made the new year’s resolution to write a novel. It was going well for two months and then a repeat of all the other years happened: my seasonal depression hit, even harder than usual, and everything around me went haywire shortly thereafter… such as finding out my mother’s tumor came back and she required another surgery. This meant my mother would need care and someone to take over her role as caretaker for my grandfather. Not hard to guess who got both jobs.

The story I had been working on up until then that had once filled me with excitement now held no interest for me. I thought if I just got back to it, reread what I’d written so far and sat down to continue writing, I’d get that old feeling of enthusiasm back. But I couldn’t work up the energy to so much as open the document on my computer.  

WiP Wednesday: Self-Doubt

After that first writing session something else was also happening in my mind. When I first started writing KT three or four years ago I had been incredibly proud of how amazing it was and how accomplished I felt for finishing it. But in beginning the second draft I am disappointed and discouraged; my story is simply not as good as I remembered.

I understand the first draft always kind of sucks and will need a lot of fixes, but I was beginning to wonder if my WiP worth the time and effort of doing rewrites at all. I did not even get through ten pages because I was cutting paragraphs and rewriting scenes galore. Basically, I spent my hour feeling like no one would ever want to read this and I am fooling myself for ever thinking they would.

WIP Wednesday: Monday Motivation

As a student I wrote all the time. A couple friends and I were always telling each other about the stories we were writing —mine original, them fanfic about their favourite band— back when we were teens. Then in university, I kept it up… sometimes to the detriment of my grades, as I chose personal creative writing over required essay writing. It was simply a major part of my life.

Then as I got older and got a job I lost motivation. After a long day at work I barely had energy to read, let along get creative. My priority was decompressing so I could begin again the next day, not churning out pages of a novel. It was like the creative spark in me had died from the tedium of my every day. I actually hated my life so much I literally ran away to start over in another country.

WiP Wednesday: Writing Amnesia

This month a friend and I decided to set up weekly writing sessions. We both want to add creativity to our lives, making time to write, but never actually sit down to do it. Clearly procrastination is an issue and we needed to be held accountable. Now at seven o’clock every Thursday evening we are going to write. Even without the pandemic we would not be able to get together in person as I am in Canada and he lives in the States, so we check in with each other online.

Our first session was this past Thursday and I chose to get on those KT rewrites I had been meaning to do for the past couple of years. I did start working on it in the spring, when the pandemic first shut everything down, but soon allowed myself to get distracted by other things. Such has been the case since I wrote the first draft for NaNoWriMo while I was still living in the UK. It is long past time I do a second draft, wouldn’t you say?

WiP Wednesday: It’s All About Style

Writing is such a long process it is really easy to forget the details. I have read a novel in a series where a family’s last name changed from one book to the next. I have edited a manuscript where the spelling of the main character’s hometown was altered throughout. I have had my hands on an essay that could not decide whether to have periods between the letters of an acronym or not.

It was clear a style sheet had not been made.

WiP Wednesday: Flip It And Reverse It

Every student has to write an essay at some point. It is simply a fact of life. Not only do we have to write about some incredibly boring topic, but then we also have to edit the thing too. We all know even the smallest mistake will cause us to lose marks, and we don’t want anything dragging down our GPA. But while we do learn the basics of spelling and grammar in school, we are never really taught how to edit something properly after it has been written.

Despite actually going to college, specifically taking a program where I am taught about various aspects of editing a manuscript, I still wasn’t taught all the tips and tricks of editing. At least not in a way that will help you as an aspiring author. I plan to start sharing some of the advice — both for writing and editing— that I have learned over the years so you can polish your manuscript (or essay) until it shines.