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Category Archives: Writing
Playing at Being Motivated: Habitica for Writers
One thing that was fascinating about this year’s Nebulas was the chance to meet so many people in the publishing industry, including a couple of the founders of Habitica.
Habitica is a motivational game. It lets you gamify your daily tasks and to-do list, turning them into challenges you face in the game. As you complete tasks, you gain levels and items in the game, giving you an extra push to get things done. You can also set it up so you lose points for doing things, if there’s habits you want to avoid. There’s a social aspect; you can join parties and guilds in order to share your progress with friends.
I am always on a quest for a method that will help me stay organized. Various systems have come and gone, some more successful than others, and I’ve learned a few things about how to make such systems more effective. As I share how I am using Habitica, I’ll include some insight into how that knowledge shapes that use. I’ve been logging into it consistently for two weeks now, and I believe it’s going to stick, because I’m finding it very effective for a) nudging me to do things, b) helping me remember stuff, and c) motivating me to use free time and options (like snacks) better.
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Posted in Writing
Tagged daily writing, habitica, how to get motivated, motivation, online classes, writing motivation
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Home Stretch For Hearts of Tabat
So my promise to myself is that the sequel to Beasts of Tabat, Hearts of Tabat, will be DONE by November 14th, which is my birthday, and which I plan to spend with Skyrim and a nice sativa (legal here in the marvelous land of WA) and not one ounce of work throughout the day as a thank you to me for working my butt off the last six weeks and getting this DONE.
The book is scheduled to be released at Emerald City Comicon next year, so you may see why the time pressure has stepped up in intensity. I told myself I’d get it done this year, and I have, along with a whole bunch of stories, not one but two collections, the update of Creating an Online Presence for Writers, a bajillion trips, and opening the Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers, including cool new classes from Rachel Swirsky and Juliette Wade, so I feel darn good about how much I got accomplished this year despite SFWA’s demanding maw chewing up my time on a consistent basis.
I thought, however, it would be useful perhaps to people to see what the last bits of work involve.
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Posted in Writing
Tagged #sfwapro, beasts of tabat, hearts of tabat, how to revise a novel, how to write a novel, Tabat, writing process
33 Comments
Finishing a Novel
Today I finished Hearts of Tabat. Sure, I’ll go back and do some smoothing before sending it off to beta readers on Monday, but the book is done, the scenes are there, and (roughly) in the order they should be. … Continue reading
Class Excerpt: On Story Basics and Ways into Stories
I’m finishing up the Moving from Idea to Draft class, or rather finishing up the writing phase and still need to shoot a couple dozen little videos, ugh. But I wanted to share this from the introduction to the class because I thought it might be useful for some people plus maybe tantalize a few into trying one of my on-demand or live classes.
I begin with some basics of story mechanics. Quite probably much of it will be familiar — feel free to skim if you feel like you’ve heard all of this before.
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Class Excerpt: On Creating a Story When You Have the Plot
I’m finishing up the year by trying to wrap up writing the on-demand version of my Moving from Idea to Draft class. This is a tough translation, because the live class depends heavily on what the students have brought: I try to help them go deeper into the idea each has brought to class and show them ways of fleshing it out.
For the on-demand class, what I’m doing is looking at each of the various ways I’ve seen stories develop and doing a section on each, looking at what it is, what it gives you to help with fleshing out the story, possible trouble spots, some ways to proceed with it, and then two or three exercises to refine skills with that, each with a basic and then an overachiever version, a model I used with the Description and Delivering Information class. There’s twenty-three sections altogether, but here’s the section on starting with a plot, minus the exercises.
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Posted in Uncategorized, Writing
Tagged fleshing out ideas, how to plot a story, plot, plotting
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Writing: Description, Details, and Delivering Information
I’m working on converting the Description and Delivering Information class to the on-demand version, along the same lines as the Character Building Workshop and the Literary Techniques for Genre Writers workshop, and hoping to finish it up over the next couple of days, which may be overly ambitious, because a) I am doing NaNoWriMo, b) life is complicated by Orycon and then a Thanksgiving trip on the 20th and c) this is my birthday weekend and I like to slack a little.
So, what’s the difference between taking one of my live online writing classes and the on-demand versions?
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Posted in Writing
Tagged delivering information, description, how to write description, online writing classes, orycon
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Nine Ways to Rev Up For NaNoWriMo 2015
November has come to represent something for many writers: a chance to participate in NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month. Participants pledge to write 50,000 words over the course of the month.
The main advantage of NaNoWriMo is the shared energy and impetus to get words onto the page, without worrying about whether they are genius or not. I’ve done it several times in the past, and always managed to either hit the 50,000 word mark or come within a few thousand words of it. While I don’t usually participate in local NaNoWriMo events, like the various write-ins at coffeeshops, libraries, and associated institutions, I do appreciate the feeling it brings of being part of a vast swell of words.
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