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JWTroemner.com

Tag: 31 Day Blogging Challenge

  • Keeping on track

    jwtroemner

    If there’s one thing that far too many of us have in common these days, it’s the simple words: “I am busy”.

    At the moment I’m going to school to pursue a Masters of Library Science, I’m running a freelance editing service, I’m trying to fix up my own manuscript, I’m participating in the Speculative Fiction Critiquing Marathon on Agent Query Connect, I’m trying to keep on top of the cooking and cleaning and yard work…

    My pumpkin patch is currently trying to declare its independence
    My pumpkin patch is currently trying to declare its independence

    And in a few days, I’ll be caring for and training our brand new puppy. (Yes, I’ll post pictures when I bring him in.)

    These days, it feels like my catchphrase is “Give me one second!” as I’m scrambling to get everything done.

    People are going to give you a billion tips and strategies for ways to streamline your life and make things more manageable. There are thousands of options and methods out there.

    Me, though, I like keeping a list.20130731_224615

    I like to consider myself a master procrastinator. If something’s making me anxious, then I’ll put off doing it until the last minute. That’s what makes a simple pen-and-paper to-do list so effective for me: usually, I don’t have to do the tasks in any particular order.

    If I don’t want to do my homework, I can jump to something else on the list. I can procrastinate all I want with less intimidating tasks, and still feel like I’m being productive. Often, by the time I’ve gotten a bunch of other stuff done, I feel confident enough to tackle the scarier projects.

    When the project is particularly big, I can divide it into smaller tasks, each of which I can check off when I get done with it. After all, there’s a feeling of satisfaction that comes when you cross an item off, even if it’s a small one.

    If you like technology, here are some free digital to-do lists that I’ve found:

    • Subtask divides larger projects up into smaller tasks and tells you how far along you are as you check things off
    • Remember the Milk is a to-do list app that can connect to your phone and computer, and it can send you reminders via text and Skype messages
    • Astrid was an awesome program, but it has since shut down.
    • ToDo.ly — I haven’t tried this one yet… but I’m sure I’ll get around to it…
    • To Do (Tomorrow) advertises itself as a To-Do list for procrastinators. It’s Apple-based, but has options for Android as well.

    Do to-do lists work for you? Why or why not? And do you have any software that you’re especially fond of for keeping productive? 

  • Writing Exercise: Gender Bender

    jwtroemner
    marilyn
    Marilyn’s traditional poses are given a whole new perspective. (Photo credit: bionicteaching)

    I’ve heard a lot of people say gender doesn’t matter– that we are all equal in soul and under the skin– and I’m not arguing that, with or against. But it’s undeniable that society changes our expectations of how men and women look, think and behave, and how they should be portrayed– at least on some level. The Hawkeye Initiative plays with this concept a lot, pointing out that what we consider acceptable poses for female comic book characters are just plain ridiculous when you make a male character try to pull them off.

    Even in my own writing, gender plays a big role in how my characters behave. My first finished manuscript began as an idea for a character, but without a sex to go with it. After consulting with my little sister, I decided the name was more feminine than masculine, and the rest of the story fell into place. I can guarantee that it wouldn’t be the same story if Chicago was a teenage boy being stalked by his childhood maybe-girlfriend. In another manuscript, I’ve got a very powerful and confident woman… who, when genderflipped, stops seeming powerful and starts looking like a sexual predator.

    ZurJagdSaison

    I’m not saying all traditional gender-based behaviors and actions are necessarily bad, but they do open the doors for us to gain some new perspective.

    If you’re having trouble writing a scene, try flipping it– all the dudes are now chicks, all the chicks are now dudes, all the MtF are now FtM, etc– and write it from that perspective. What are they saying that they weren’t saying before? What are they suddenly hiding? Pay attention to the changes in their body language, changes in vocabulary.

    Once you’ve written it gender-bent, go back and turn it right-side-up (or maybe you’ll find it works better that way, and change the rest of the story to match it). If you decide to keep your initial gender roles, rewrite that scene back in the old style, but still pay attention to the body language, the vocabulary, the taboos and secrets and posturing. You’ll be amazed what you find.

  • Feeling the strain

    jwtroemner

    “It does not do to dwell in dreams and forget to live.”

    –Albus Dumbledore, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

    It’s been a rough summer for me. I recently started grad school, and between that, blogging, and the annual Spec Fic Marathon, I’ve ended up getting cloistered inside my office. I’ve gone weeks without seeing anybody besides my husband, and rarely left the house for anything but food and grocery shopping. Sometimes, Boxy got hit hard by work assignments, I’d go a couple of days without seeing him for more than a few minutes, too.

    This isn’t healthy.

    No matter what your venture, be it writing, school, starting a small business, what have you, isolation isn’t good for it. No matter how much you study theories and abstractions, there is so much to be learned and gained from simply going out and living life. Every time we interact with another human being, we’re picking up new variables, new insights, new perspectives.

    And over the last month and a half, I’ve been neglecting to pick those up.

    I’ll still be blogging daily until the end of July, but after that point I’ll be slowing down.

  • Writer Woes: An abundance of details

    jwtroemner
    Sorry, needlessly complicated subplot. We're gonna have to let you go.
    Sorry, needlessly complicated subplot. We’re gonna have to let you go. (creative commons, source: wikipedia)

    This is the second part of my response to this blog post, asking about writing woes.

    I write fantasy. And because it isn’t rooted in our world, that means I have spent a whole lot of time worldbuilding.

    My current WIP deals with the interaction of three separate countries, as well as the influence of a fourth country that’s only mentioned in passing. Each of those countries has a dominant religion (or in Tarlam’s case, several dozen religions vying for dominance), creation myths, geography, technology, primary imports and exports, unique social structures, languages, taboos, dominant attitudes toward gender and sexuality, histories, virtues, vices, etc, etc, etc.

    Each of the characters has their own backstory which shapes his or her attitudes and behaviors– and these actions have consequences. Some of those backstories overlap and influence other characters.

    What’s frustrating is that many of these details will never see the light of day. I’ll know them, but they’re not relevant to the plot, so often they will sink beneath the surface, becoming little more than currents and subtexts. Sometimes one of the biggest writer woes is the struggle to know what to cut, especially when you really liked it.

    Here’s an example from DREAMKEEPER:

    Twenty years ago, one of the major characters helped send a ship full of refugees to a neutral country. While some of those refugees went into hiding, others banded together to form a resistance against the forces that drove them from their homes. The son of one of those resistance fighters grew up to become a spy, and planted himself as a footman in the same house as Aren, the protagonist. For years now, Aren’s been mistaking his attention for a crush, when in reality he’s been doing surveillance on her.

    He’s still in her household, keeping watch– but in more than 100k words, he gets mentioned maybe twice. He doesn’t even have any lines. Because while he and the resistance are effective elsewhere, they don’t actually influence Aren’s story. And that means they got the ax.

    Me, I like to think his story was interesting. But that’s what they’re talking about when they say to murder your darlings.

    What about you? Have you had to cut any characters or subplots like these? Here’s a chance to share the darlings that might not get to see the light of day!

  • Writer Woes: The right path up the mountain

    jwtroemner
    Zugspitze von der Alpspitze aus gesehen. Links...
    (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

    I was reading this blog post, which asked, “what are your biggest writer woes?”

    One of my biggest– the one that’s currently got me beating my head against a wall– is what I like to think of as finding the right path up the mountain.

    Our Hero has made her grand journey across perils unnumbered, and needs to find the next clue. It’s at the top of that ol’ mountain over there. I know it is. Seriously, it’s right there.

    The problem is, I can’t figure out how to get my Hero up that slope. She could just skip on up there, but that rings false and shallow. She could go through endless harrowing experiences, dealing with avalanches and close encounters with cliffs… but this mountain is just one tiny obstacle, not the subject of the entire book. In the end, I just want my Hero to get up the damn thing so she can move on to the next plot point, but do so without it seeming too trite or too over-the-top.

    There are a lot of ways to handle this, and each situation usually requires three or four coping mechanisms to chug through:

    • Rewrite the trek up the mountain. And then rewrite it again. And then rewrite it again. I have a single minor transition scene that has nearly a dozen completely different incarnations for this reason exactly, and my final draft ended up being a combination of several of them.
    • Talk to someone who’s unfamiliar with the story, or only passingly familiar. Kya is my go-to with this sort of thing, but there’s only one of her and I’ve got dibs. Sometimes just the act of explaining the problem is enough to get you thinking in the right direction.
    • Read a book. Watch some good TV (or hell, watch SharkNado). Take a break from your own efforts and try to absorb how other people handle story.
    • Act it out. It’ll look silly, but you and your best friends are going to have a grand ol’ time, and you’ll be amazed at what you find.
    • Ask a professional. If your character is trying to climb a mountain, then locate a mountaineer and interview them. If you’re trying to get through a cave, find yourself a spelunker, and so forth. They’ll have insights you couldn’t even dream of.
    • Crowdsource. Ask a whole group of people about the problem and see what they come up with.

    Do you ever struggle with this sort of thing? What do you do to find your way up that mountain?