Word Slinging & Life Wrangling

Then the campaign launches, and the real work begins!

Our project for this campaign is Grey Area: 13 Ghost Stories. It’s a collection of ghost stories (obviously), all by authors from Cape Breton or with a substantial connection to Cape Breton. Of course, one doesn’ t have to be from here to appreciate the stories; most of them are not even set here geographically. There’s a wide mix of tales, from scary to spooky to funny. And everyone loves a good ghost story, right?

So, you might be wondering, if the stories have little, if anything, to actually do with Cape Breton, why do we make a point of noting the connection of the authors?

Partly it’s because of our mandate at Third Person Press: we strive to provide a voice and venue for regional fiction and authors in the speculative fiction genres. You may not know it, but there’s a bit of a stereotype that Cape Breton authors (indeed, maybe even Atlantic Canadian authors) all write about farming and fishing and coal mining, with a little bit of historical fiction thrown in for good measure. And while there’s not a thing wrong with those stories, they’re certainly not representative of the whole of our regional fiction!

If you’re familiar with our other titles, you’ll know that we like a broad range of types of stories, and Grey Area is no different. We think they’ll have wide appeal, so if you’re even slightly interested, please check out the campaign and consider supporting us and this project.

Originally published at Sherry D. Ramsey. You can comment here or there.

Clock on the wall ticks

Fingers dart, flash over keys

Write faster, writer

Photo credit: giggs

Originally published at Sherry D. Ramsey. You can comment here or there.

“Yeah, right,” I can hear you saying. “Deadlines are horrible. Deadlines are stressful. Nobody likes deadlines, let alone loves them!”

Well, I can see your point. Even the name is kind of scary, isn’t it? Deadline. Obviously there are going to be dire consequences if such a thing arrives and you are not prepared.

For writers, though (as well as others, but on this blog, we mainly talk writers, right?), having a deadline can be a positive experience—if you look at it in the right light. Here are eleven* reasons that a deadline can actually be your friend.

1. Deadlines force you to plan your time realistically. You’re always trying to get more organized and use your time better, right? Well, a deadline will make you look at how you’re spending your time and how much time it actually takes you to accomplish something. If you take that knowledge with you beyond the deadline, that time-planning can spill over into your other work and help your productivity beyond this one project.

2. Deadlines make you take control of your work instead of letting it control you. This is a common pitfall for writers; let me give you an example. If you are going to have this eight-thousand-word short story ready to submit before the submission period closes, you don’t have the luxury of following every whimsy of subplot and character idiosyncrasy that your brain comes up with. You have to write this story in a good tight first draft, edit it judiciously, and call it done. You have to take control. Bring that kind of control to other projects, and you’ll end up more productive overall.

3. Deadlines force you to be focused and efficient. Here’s another example. You have five days to finish this manuscript. It shouldn’t take you more than one of those five days to figure out, for instance, that you work most productively in the mornings and are essentially useless after dinner. The next four days, you’re going to make sure you spend time on your deadline project in the mornings. Take this knowledge with you to the next project, and stop doing email and blogging in the mornings instead of writing. Let deadlines teach you skills that go beyond a single project.

4. Deadlines force you to re-evaluate your level of perfectionism. If you have too many manuscripts sitting around on your hard drive because they’re just “not quite ready yet,” this one is for you. Yes, you may end up with a less-than-perfect manuscript if you set a deadline to finish it. But the perfect manuscript is something of a mirage, anyway. Better to have a finished one in submission than a never-done one languishing in a drawer.

5. Deadlines make you develop strategies to bypass procrastination. This one doesn’t need much explanation. You may have the cleanest house on the block or be the best Angry Birds player in town, but if you’re going to meet deadlines, you have to learn to recognize and bypass your own procrastination strategies. One way to do this is to make your procrastination tasks reward tasks instead. You can play ten minutes of Angry Birds or switch your laundry loads along after you work on your project for an hour (be sure to set timers for both!). You may find such things less appealing as rewards. If so, swap them out for something that really appeals to you–as a reward.

6. Deadlines make you realize what it is actually possible for you to achieve. Anyone who’s participated successfully in NaNoWriMo understands this one. Deadlines take all the skills we’re talking about here and let you smoosh them into a big ball of I-can-do-this. And once you know what’s possible…well, you’re likely to take on, and accomplish, more.

7. Deadlines allow you to plan for what’s beyond the deadline. If you have a deadline to meet, it means you’re actually going to finish this project and be able to move on to something else. No-one really wants to edit the same novel manuscript for the rest of their lives, do they? Of course not! You want to finish something so you can get to the Next Big Thing. But neither do you want to drop half-finished projects just to get to the next one. Deadlines let you set parameters to work on things, finish them, and then move ahead.

8. Deadlines help you figure out what your real priorities are. This is sort of related to #7. Sometimes you’ll have to choose between projects because of conflicting deadlines. If you’ve been dithering, trying to work on two or more projects but not really making satisfying progress on anything, a deadline can make you choose what’s important and focus on that.

9. Deadlines make you stop wasting time and actually complete something. Maybe you’re one of those people who’s always talking about writing but not really writing. Maybe you’ve been working on the same damn manuscript for so long that even you’re sick of it. Maybe you’re really trying to write, but something is holding you back—fear of failure, fear of success, yada, yada, you know the list as well as I do. A deadline can make you, er, produce—or get off the pot.

10. Deadlines let you cross something off your project list. Ah, the list. Don’t tell me you don’t have one, and that you don’t know the sweet, sweet satisfaction of crossing something off it. And if you don’t, you should make one. Really. Because there’s nothing as lovely as “Finish X by DD/MM/YYYY” with a big fat strikethrough running across it.  Unless it’s writing “The End.”

Off to try and meet a big deadline of my own.

*Why eleven? Because everyone does lists of ten. I’m trying to think outside the box, here, people.

Photo credit: stockarch

Originally published at Sherry D. Ramsey. You can comment here or there.

Be Your Own Random Generator

Okay, think of this as a bonus idea if you’re feeling skeptical about the whole idea of using ideas generated by someone else. The germ of this idea comes from the Working Writer’s Daily Planner.

Try to have a quiet block of time when you’re not likely to face many interruptions. Sit down at the computer or grab pen and paper. Now, as quickly as you can, write fifty first lines. You don’t have to know anything about the story they might start. Don’t stop to think too much–if you must, set a timer for twenty minutes and see how many you can do in this amount of time This is just to see what your brain comes up with.

Got that? Good. That’s the part that came from the WWDP. Here’s my expansion on the exercise:

Now start a new list and invent fifty characters. They can be names or short descriptions: “Ludwig Thimbledown” or “a fastidious undertaker” or “a college student with a secret.” They can be archetypes or atypical and unusual. It doesn’t matter. Fifty, as fast as you can.

Getting tired? One more part. A new list, and this time you’re going to write down fifty problems, conflicts, or themes–or any mix of the three. They’re going to be short snappers, like “stolen inheritance” or “demon possession” or “physical loss leads to emotional loss” or “destruction of the natural world.” Whatever pops into your head, jot it down.

Whew! By now your brain is reeling and exhausted, I’m sure. So put your lists away for a little while; an hour or an afternoon or a day. Then when you’re ready, take them out, line them up, and see what happens.

Chances are, there will be some things from each list that you really have no interest in writing about, but others will jump out at you as intriguing. Don’t be afraid to cross some out, highlight others, or put what you feel are the best ones into a separate file or mind map. Play with combinations, try writing a few first paragraphs starting with the lines you like best, put characters and conflicts together, and chances are that story ideas will be sprouting in no time. Sometimes the brain just needs a metaphorical kick in the pants, but the raw material is all in there, just waiting for the right opportunity to make it into the light. Or a chance to mix its metaphors. Or whatever. Just go write!

Image credit: By Filosofias filosoficas (Own work) [CC-BY-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Our writing group (The Story Forge) has been running continuously for (and I can’t believe I’m about to type this) twelve years.  It began after I, my sister, and a writing friend took a creative writing course together at the local community college, and enjoyed it so much that we wanted to keep that writerly cameraderie and inspiration going in some form or another.  We talked to a local library branch about holding meetings in their program room, put the word out by way of flyers at libraries and grocery store bulletin boards, and we were off.

We didn’t make a whole lot of decisions or lay a lot of ground rules to start, which was a bit of an oversight.  We knew that we did not want to pressure members to produce new work for every meeting, as several of us had young kids and writing time was at a premium.  We did want to support and encourage each other, share our accumulated writing knowledge, and foster some creativity.  This took the form of freewriting exercises we’d do during the meetings, sharing the results when we were through.  We also have always been ready to critique each others’ work, and we keep a “committment sheet” where members make note of what they’d like to accomplish by the next meeting.  Sometimes we just spend an entire meeting talking about nothing but writing.  Sometimes we spend the entire time talking about everything else *but* writing.  :)  We have a very diverse group of writers in terms of age, writing interests, and writing goals, and while that may not work for all groups, we’ve always enjoyed the various perspectives that diversity brought to the group.

Our membership has ranged from a high of twenty+ to a low of about six regular members, but we usually hover somewhere in the middle of those extremes.  Although many faces have come and gone over the twelve years, much of our core group has remained and grown.  The group has hosted readings at the library, organized weekend retreats, and gone on “field trips” to book launches and other literary events.  We’ve advised each other on submissions, commiserated on rejections, and rejoiced over acceptances.  I think it’s safe to say the group is an important part of our writing lives.

As for advice to those forming a new group, I’d say:

>  Decide what kind of group you want to have.  Is it primarily for critiques?  To encourage members to produce new work?  To jump-start creativity?  To share knowledge and experience? Different people have different expectations of a writing group, and it’s best to know what yours will have to offer when someone asks.

>  If your group is going to have a very specific focus (like romance writing, speculative fiction, non-fiction) make sure that’s clear to anyone who expresses an interest in joining.

>  Decide whether your group will be focused on writers aiming for publication, or will be open to writers with other personal or self-publishing goals. 

>  If you are going to do critiques, have a set format.  That way members will know what’s expected of them, and what they can expect in return.  Also make sure that everyone receives some instruction in the fine art of critiquing.

>  Realize that someone has to “be in charge”, even if that responsibility is a rotating one.  Groups without leadership can be hijacked by a newcomer with a strong personality.  Also, if there are members who don’t see eye-to-eye, it’s a good idea to have a “referee” ready to step in and change the subject when necessary.

>  Think at least a little bit about how you will deal with the situation if a troublesome member has to be asked to leave the group.  It’s not fun to contemplate, but it happens, and it’s better to be prepared.

>  Make sure that you have contact information from members and a way to get in touch in case a meeting has to be changed or cancelled.  Make sure someone is in charge of getting the word out in case of schedule changes.

>  If your group of writers has diverse writing interests, try to make sure that everyone is included and made to feel welcome and valued.