Mary Kelaher tells a gritty story about life in the cast of a family's shadow.


Mary Kelaher

You're over the first hurdle as a writer and you're finally writing consistently. Now what?

Join me as I trawl my way through all the writing tips, promotion tips and publishing tips to try and find the diamonds in the bedrock.

Girl in a field of grass

Thursday, September 14, 2006

Tweaks and adjustments

I fell off the wagon again yesterday. My partner suggested going out to lunch so off I went. But today is another day.

Ok, rather than berate myself about what I didn't do, lets look at what I did do.

* Created a template for my action/reation cards
* Printed all the action/reaction sequences and updated the storyboard
* Updated my website with the latest story overview

I've decided to drop the character sheets from the daily task list for now. I'm developing the characters through the 1/2 topic specific writing. I pick one of the characters and write about the topic from their point of view. I'll schedule completing the character development sheets as a task after I finish the action/reaction sheets. The revised check in should be enough for now.

Check In

* Journal entry Yes
* 1 hour FF writing Yes
* 1/2 hour topic specific writing No
* 10 min. sensual detail topic No
* Action / Reaction Sheet Yes

Wednesday, September 13, 2006

But what if it does happen...

I had a busy day yesterday so I didn’t get most of my tasks done. I had to go into the city to see my doctor in the morning and I didn’t get back until 10 am and I had to go to see Gaye-Cheryl about some natural therapies at 1.30 am so that took up most of the afternoon.

So there I had it. While I did do a a couple of my tasks, I had my excuse for not getting the rest of them done.

But this morning as I prepared to write my journal, I started to wonder how yesterday’s events would have affected my progress if I had been working with a publisher through the editing process of my book. And came to the conclusion: badly.

Thus far, I’ve cocooned myself from this reality by using the rationale: It’s so far into the future and it probably won’t happen anyway, so it doesn't matter and I can just ignore it for now.

I then started to think: What if it does happen? What if a publisher does pick up my book and I have to start working to deadlines? And delivering. How am I going to manage the creative side of working to a hard deadline that could make or break my ambition of being a novelist?

The conclusion that I came to is that I can only achieve this if I have the right kind of attitude toward the task. But not just from the point of having my book accepted from a publisher, right from the beginning.

I don’t think your attitude toward something is something that can be changed easily. I think it’s sort of like an imprint. That maybe if you have the wrong attitude when you start a task, then you are going to have the wrong attitude all the way through it.

Thus, if it isn’t important enough to me to get the commitments I have made to myself done now when there is no pressure and when it is entirely my choice, then it will not be important enough to me when I have to start working under pressure from the commitment I have made to a publisher.

The attitude I have imprinted on the task right from the very beginning will shine through all the way through it. And when I’m working with an editor, they will see it.

Which means I will end up under more pressure because I will also have to deal with changing my attitude at a time when I need my creative stamina to be at its peak. When I am getting input from an external source and I have to balance the incorporation of it into my story.

I also see now that the tasks I have set myself are a good start, but I also need to set aside time to take the output of my idea generation tasks and turn them into prose. I think that waiting until I finish the plot would be a mistake because, for me, one seems to feed the other.

So really what I need to be doing now is building my creative stamina. I need to do all of the daily tasks I have set my self regardless of what else is going on in my life. And I need to mould the ideas I am generating through the daily tasks into the final product everyday. Just like I would if I was working for a client, but, for now, the client is me.

Check In:

* Journal entry Yes
* 1 hour FF writing Yes
* 1/2 hour topic specific writing Yes
* 10 min. sensual detail topic No
* Action / Reaction Sheet Yes
* Character development No

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

Getting through the tasks

I’m still not getting through all the tasks I’ve set myself, but I am having some great results from the tasks I am completing.

For freefall, I focus on the story before I start and write to see what comes up. Yesterday I had a great breakthrough with the argument between the mother and the father that is the catalyst. Rather than spell out the whole argument heard through the wall, all I need to do is to put in the key phrases the give the gist of what they are fighting about. The things they say to each other will set up state of the relationship between them now and the backstory without having to spell it out.

For the 1/2 hour topic specific, I write it from a characters point of view. I am getting a lot of material that I could use in the character development sheets, but I haven't entered it in yet. That's why I say I haven't done it on the check in.

I'm really pleased with the way things are going. The tasks setting has worked really well for me.

Check In:

* Journal entry Yes
* 1 hour FF writing Yes
* 1/2 hour topic specific writing Yes
* 10 min. sensual detail topic No
* Action / Reaction Sheet Yes
* Character development No

Monday, September 11, 2006

Accountability

The other aspect to my most prolific writing / creative periods was that I was working with a partner during the tasks that held me accountable. But thus far my efforts to find an ongoing writing partner have been disappointing. My experiences have shown me that a lot of people like the idea of a writing partner, but not the reality of actually doing the tasks required week in and week out and being held accountable for them. So I need to put tools in place that create that sense of accountability.

What I need is that same sense of a check in. Like daily tasks, a daily check in seemed to work best. I might set up a daily check in that recording whether I have achieved my daily tasks. I display a graph showing my progress toward my goals that I could update weekly. Sort of like a project plan.

The other aspect to my writing that I need to get a grip on is the effect that the topic is having on me. It is leaving me a bit down. Researching and creating a story about the inside of an abusers head can leave me feeling really bummed out. Which leads to the question: Would readers want to spend the time inside the head of an abuser?

I think it could sell because so many of the topics covered in Women's Fiction genre are depressing. And I got through Joyce Carol Oates book Zombie which is a walk around inside the head of a phsycopath. I also really do believe that this topic is worthwhile.

Time to post my first check in from yesterday.

* Journal entry Yes
* 1 hour FF writing Yes
* 1/2 hour topic specific writing Yes
* 10 min. sensual detail topic No
* Action / Reaction Sheet Yes
* Character development No

Sunday, September 10, 2006

A cork board

I found a corkboard yesterday large enough to cover the windows in my office. My partner mounted it on the wall and I pinned my first Action and Reaction section sheets up under Abandonment. And now it's looking a tad empty.

So today is the day that I begin to rectify the problem of the empty corkboard. There are a total of 58 characteristics of all the behaviours associated with the theme. If I complete an action/reaction sheet per weekday for 58 days I should have a basic outline of the plot of the book by the end of November. But I need to do more than that to get this book really going.

Upon reflection, I was my most prolific (after Nano month that is) when I was working through the exercise Discovering Your Creative Time in Linda Seger's book Making a Good Writer Great and applying the freefall rules of writing for one hour a day on what ever comes up for you and ten minutes a day about a topic designed to evoke "sensuous detail".

So I need a daily work schedule. And I really need to start setting some goals based on that schedule otherwise I can see this being a work in progress forever. So I need to define the minimum I should be doing each day to get me rolling again.

Goal: All the action/reaction sheets for each behaviour completed by 1 December.

Daily Tasks:

  • Journal entry
  • One hour freefall writing
  • Half hour topic specific writing
  • Ten minutes sensual detail topic
  • Action / Reaction Sheet
  • Character development

The exercise about discovering my most creative time revealed that my most productive freefall style writing time is in the morning. But my most productive time for writing specifically about the story Long Grass is in the afternoon. So, in theory this should work well. Journal entry, freefall, and half hour of topic specific writing in the morning and ten minute sensual detail topic, action/reaction sheet and character development in the afternoon.

Well time to get started on the second task of the day. One hour of freefall writing.