short bursts and time to think

Last night I sent off my first paper manuscript. I decided to send my Arizona story to Cricket, since they're a good paying market. I'm still poking around to see if my Rumpelstiltskin story could be sellable to any market other than the magazine I wrote it for (initially, I was going to send it to Cricket, since they'll take fairy tale retellings, but I decided I like my Arizona story better, so I sent it in first). I brought Willow with me when I went to the post office at about 4 am, and after seeing no signs prohibiting pets, let her ride on my shoulder while I poked at the machine to weigh and print postage for my package.


I was sad to see the big old stamp machine was gone, switched out for a (slow) electronic system. I loved that stamp machine when I was a kid. My parents used to send out all the Nebula ballots for SFWA, so I remember going to the post office late at night with them and buying thousands of stamps from that machine. It always looked so cool, like a giant expensive vending machine for stickers (which is, after all, what it was), and I remember thinking that one day I'd be sending off my manuscripts and buying stamps from that machine to do so. So to have it be gone kind of wrecks that whole image for me.

Anyway, I really was going to talk about something else, which is that I thought of another reason why I like doing a small amount of daily words rather than a crazy NaNo outpouring. Nothing against crazy outpourings--I know better than most that they rock for purely generating words and moving along in your story through those words. However, when I work on my story in short bursts every day, I'm able to write a scene and stop with some ideas left, rather than exhausting all of them hoping for 3000 words and having to start up again from scratch the next day.

I now usually end my writing day by detailing a brief synopsis of what I want to do next with my story, and then I have all the time I'm not writing to think about and develop what's going to happen next. This means that when I actually sit down to type the next day, I generally have a better idea of what I'm going to do. I still have my days where I just stare at the screen or avoid writing for hours, but generally the words I finally manage to write are inspired by my last day's work being able to percolate in my brain all day.

So there are really two important factors in this: writing just enough to move the plot along, but not entirely exhaust yourself (i.e. leave enough food for your brain to keep working on the story); and writing every day, so you never have a chance to stop thinking about your story. This may not work for everyone, but this is how I've so far found that it works best for me.


And one more writing related note: make sure to backup your work! When I write on my computer everything's saved in dropbox, and I periodically email copies to myself, but as I was writing in the My Writing Spot app last night I had to force close the program after it froze up while syncing, and I lost nearly 900 words. Thankfully it was just fanfic, and I was able to rewrite the scene without too much struggle, but it's still the worst most devastating thing that can happen to a writer, and this experience plus the others I've had in the past really makes me want to avoid tasting it again.


I think I need to do something that isn't writing, knitting, or watching Stargate on Netflix. Something exciting. Because constant blog posts about writing have to be pretty boring after a while. Hmm, well yesterday was white day, and so I got pocky, ramune, and a truly awesome pair of steampunk goggles from my Teigue. I also had most of a huge tea drink for breakfast then played on the swings for a while and got motion sick--that wasn't fun. Not doing that again. Breakfast first, then acting crazy like a kid!


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Listening to: The Art of Suicide by Emilie Autumn. Hmm, lovely lovely song, though kind of melancholy; I'll call it depressing in a calm way. Good thing my manic mood has been mostly holding the past few days, or at least, I've gone from up to normal without falling to low. Yay Spring Break!