Tally: 2020 writing (and other) progress

 It's that time of the year when we're all making our new year's resolutions and some of us are tallying up what we did in 2020 to see whether we're happy with it. (ok, fine, it's actually a week or two after that time of the year, but what can I say? I had to perfect my Lebkuchen and Challah habits before anything else).

Things I did in 2020 that weren't very productive:

* fudge around too much with old stories (seriously. I'm trying to ONCE AGAIN edit my first ever novel series and I wrote that in 2015 so... probably not the best idea to re-paint something you did as a child).

There were probably a lot more but I don't tend to dwell on stuff that doesn't go well.

Things that did go well in 2020:

* My Master's degree from the University of Glasgow. There were some disappointing things about the program (about half of the lectures we paid for cancelled due to strikes and some would have been cheaper if I just googled) but there were good things as well. I wrote a story I'm quite proud of. It's good. I like it. I even had it edited by Justina Robson and handed it in as my Master thesis. This was good. I would not have written this story without the program. The idea came to me there and I ran with it because it was rad.

* hiked all across the Southern German Alps. I mean, I live in the Netherlands and travel was shut down for a lot of the year, so I went into the mountains where I was (mostly) alone and no one could get hurt from my germs. This was when it was ok to travel during the summer months.

Do you think there's actually a path in the picture below? BECAUSE THERE IS A FUDGING PATH. It just means your behind is sticking out over a 3000m drop while you climb!

*wrote some more short stories I like. The total number is 4. I am not finished editing all of them yet though. They'll still count as 2020 works when they're done.

The one I did finish is called 'When the Moon Was Still Young' and it's about a book mage who travels through different dimensions to collect/help/aid strange beasts. I really enjoyed the character and his assistant. The story is written by the assistant. I even (poorly) drew one of the beasts he encounters - a ghostly octopus-human maid!

 (Let's not talk about her enormous head though. Please let's not.)

* I queried 1 story (When the Moon Was Still Young actually) to a magazine in 2020

This is worse than 2018 (9 queries) and better than the 0 of 2019. (I suppose getting a new day job did that.) I've already queried 6 in the last few days so I'm off to a good start.

 

* I'm on track with my fitness regimen.

I started squats at 15kg and can now do 50kg.

Deadlifts ~20kg to now 50kg. 

Pullups are difficult to measure. I'm doing differently every day. I started at around 2-3 (which left me absolutely unable to do any for the next three weeks) and can now do 3-5 almost daily. Closer to 3 if I do them daily. Closer to 5 if I wait half a week and don't do any other lifts (pushups) in the meantime.

Pushups have seen great growth. I'm proud of this. I used to not be able to do ANY (ok maybe 2-3) in the beginning of the year. I can now regularly do ~14 difficult ones where my feet are up on the sofa/bed/other sofa. My max is 16 before collapse. I call that a win!

 

*I signed on buying a house. I'm not sure this is an achievement. I don't like the house that much in hindsight. However, there'll be a room just for me, so there's that.

I might edit this list once other things came to mind.

2020: projects, deadlines, reading list

It's taken me a month to write this blog post (I'm terrible!). There are several reasons for that. At first I was busy with the day job (within one month I had to travel three times!) and then got caught up with coursework for my MLitt. And recently I've started tinkering with an old project again and got somewhere until I got stuck.

Fun times.

Let's talk about my MLitt course project instead. It's supposed to be about editing and publication so I decided to make it fun.

I've asked several of my favourite authors and editors to work with me on this and they've (almost) all agreed to interviews. (Yay!)

There will be another post shortly to introduce THE HOST. (The host as in the host of characters I've interviewed for the project). After all you already know the Hive Princess.

The project theme is writing fears and I was able to ask some juicy questions about it. The project itself will take the shape of blog posts: essays combined with answers from the interviews.

What are my favourite authors afraid of? What gives them gray hairs the most? Those questions and more will be tackled in the upcoming project. The hype logline: A series of blog posts that de-mystifies writing and gets rid of the blank-page fear! So stay tuned!


There's a few other things (but by no means all) I'll be working on this year:

1. getting a short story published. I think it's high time for this. As vain as it sounds my writing has gotten quite good over the years and if I don't start to attempt getting published I never will. There's no time like today!

2. being more deliberate in my use of 'spare time'. I've managed to read 50 books despite getting a new day job and played plenty of League of Legends (I got to Gold II so beat it!). So there's no excuse of 'having no time to write' for example. As I see it, reading is fun, but ultimately, it's writing and publication that I want. That means reading will have to take a backseat and become less of a coping mechanism for my fear of the blank page (plus, we're debunking those fears in my upcoming project anyway, so I'm hoping to get some amazing results this year!).

3. The website. Capital The. The website needs an overhaul. I still like the way it looks but I'm unhappy with its contents. For one, Amazon removed one of my books from KDP for some reason (? dude, I've read worse on there!) so this will go up on the website instead. For another, for the website of a writer, there's suspiciously few stories, and that'll have to change. Henceforth (Ok, as soon as I can get to it) there shall be stories on the website itself.

    
4. And last here is my reading list: https://locusmag.com/2020/02/2019-locus-recommended-reading-list/
That's right. I'll be reading all the novels on this list.

Hive Princess/WriteBot/Your Overlord out.

On Reading Goals

Hey folks!

As the title says today's post will deal with reading goals! (2018 and 2019!)

I've read 65 books this year and am going to start reading the 66th (probably) tomorrow. That's approximately twice as much as I managed in the years before that for various reasons. A bit less than a third of the 65 books (20) were non-fiction.

A few of my 2018 favourites were:

The Watchmaker of Filigree Street by Natasha Pulley (definitely my number one favourite this year)

The Wrong Stars by Tim Pratt (love Tim Pratt! You must read his books! And he's such a chill and approachable guy.) 

Medusa Uploaded by Emily Devenport

Flame in the Mist by Renee Ahdieh (surprisingly awesome YA romance set in a fantasy version of feudal Japan)

Planetfall by Emma Newman (also surprising considering the main character was actually a complete mess)

Thoraiya Dyer's Titan's Forest novels (these are such great fun!)

The Tangled Lands by Paolo Bacigalupi and Tobias Buckell (a short story collection with interconnected stories)

Witchmark by C.L. Polk

Semiosis by Sue Burke

The Kraken Wakes by John Wyndham

I had a vague goal in mind at the beginning of 2018 to read 52 books this year (one book a week). In the first third of the year (January to April) I didn't have a lot of time because of work and wasn't able to read much. In the second third (April-August) I did most of my reading. I then started to do a degree... and had absolutely no time to read at all. All the carefully selected books that I'd bought to read (way too many!) started collecting dust on the shelves. BUT fast forward to mid-November and I've decided to quit the degree in favour of focusing on things that matter to me (including my health).

I've read about 5-6 books since then.

If everything goes well the plan is to read 2-5 more books this year. As always depending on how much time I have to read (in addition to writing and planning) and how my depression is doing day to day. I'd actually love to hit 70 books this year. That'd be an achievement! Almost twice as much as I've read in the years before.

If this goal is achieved then next year's goal is obviously to top it. 70 books this year = at least 71 books next year. Or more. I'd like to get to the 100 books a year mark at some point, but 60 is the absolute minimum.

The list of books for next year (up to 60) is almost complete... However, I've actually already started reading from it so might need more suggestions. These are easy to come by apparently. Just yesterday I thought 'I'll never be able read all the books on my (other, huge, ongoing) list' and yet kept adding more and more to them. Today, too. I've found approximately 5 new books that definitely need to go on some reading list.

This means 2019's Reading List (the beginnings of which can be found here) has had a few books added. (And a few subtracted that I've already read. Soulbinder by Sebastien de Castell, The Kraken Wakes by John Wyndham, and The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy - although the last one will require a quick re-read considering I only had it on audio and audio is not ideal for me to retain information).

The new books are these (and I have no doubt the list will be even longer tomorrow...):

44. China Mountain Zhang
45. The Shattered Gates (Rifter)

46. Journey to the Center of the Earth

47. The Skeleton Tree (maybe)

48. For One More Day
49 Total Focus by Brandon Web
50. Nightflyers by G.R.R.M.
51. Spellslinger 5 (Absolutely love Spellslinger! You should definitely read it if you're into YA-ish fantasy Westerns)

52. Focal Point

53. Among Others by Jo Walton

54. The Chrysalids by John Wyndham

55. The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham

How about you guys? How's the reading goal going this year? It's almost time to tally up! How many books do you still hope to read this year?

All the best with your goals from WriteBot! Have a good night/day!

How and why to cut words

Hi folks!

This will be a post about how and why you should cut words. I have the perfect example because it happened to me only two days ago.

Let's see.

I've been working on this story the last two weeks. The story's goal/theme was 'character treated poorly by his surroundings wants to be free'. I wrote about 10k words. Then more themes crept in. Why did he want to be free? What did that mean for the rest of his people? What would happen then? How could he solve this? Does he need to free his whole community or only himself? What if he only frees himself?

The story got BIGGER. I did the thing you're not supposed to (always IGNORE 'supposed to' when someone says it to you! Even when you 'supposed-to' yourself!) and started incorporating MORE and BIGGER/BETTER themes into my story. I got to 40k words.

This adding themes is one of the best decisions you can make. Don't stick with a story that's too small. Keep trying to make it bigger. Make it better. Because if you think it's too small (read: boring) when you're writing it (symptoms include boredom and not knowing what to write - also called 'block') it will be sheer agony to finish it (and if you're like me and don't like excruciating pain you won't finish it anyway). At the same time, if it already bores you after 10-20k words, why would anyone else want to read it? And if it bores you after 50k words the same applies.

And if you do add themes and set your sights higher then your story will become better for it. It will surpass your initial 'manageable' goal and grow on its own. It will grow into an amazing story like a rosebud grows into a rose.

Back to my WIP. I am also no longer writing on this document. Why? Because the story outgrew its initial beginnings so much that editing it would NEVER truly work out. The time I would have to invest into editing it is enormous. In truth the whole story would have to be rewritten.

So I had to think about it. It took me two days. There was never a question in my mind about not finishing it. HOWEVER. In order to finish it I have to cut a lot. I have to cut 40k words. The first 40k words. Is that hard? Yes, yes, we've talked about this already, it's hard. But at the same time, it's worth it. I needed to write 40k words to figure out what I wanted my story to be and what I wanted to talk about in it. (Other people by the way call this 'planning'.)


This is the how and why to cut words. There's also a whole post about WHY IT IS SO IMPORTANT TO TAKE BREAKS to follow this up. That will be out tomorrow.

Let me say for now: CUT your words even if it cuts your heart. It's the ONLY way you can find your story's soul and make it what it needs to be for you to be satisfied with it.

WriteBot shall return!

What value does your fiction give to your readers? On theme.

Hi folks!

It's been a long day and I've finally finished preparing meals for the rest of the week (yes. This is meal prep Monday instead of Sunday!). In any case, here are some thoughts about theme, and the value of stories to readers.

So.

There are a lot of questions out there on the internet about 'What is theme?'. They usually come with the follow up question 'How can I put theme into my book?'. It's not easy to answer this and yet it's not impossible either.

Theme by itself is an ethereal thing. It's intangible (except it isn't really). It feels mythical. A lot of question marks pop up in people's heads when they hear 'theme' (or maybe those are just the literary students). Theme is a bit like a unicorn. It's beautiful but it's also shy. It's rare. It's difficult to find in most mainstream books. Has anyone seen it? Does anyone even really know what it is? Does it even exist? (Well - it should.)

A simple way to include theme in your own fiction is to ask yourself a single question before you write.

This question is:

What do your readers get out of your book once they're reading it/have read it?

It can be paraphrased into 'What do you want to show/teach people with this story?'. Hold on. I said 'teach'. But that doesn't mean 'preach'. There is no excuse for preaching and no one wants to read it, neither in fiction nor non-fiction (pay heed non-fiction authors who write textbooks!). The entire jig of theme is that it's subtle. When done well it should sink into your readers' minds (subconscious) WITHOUT them realizing that 'OH THAT IS THE POINT AUTHOR WANTED TO MAKE'. If they know it and they're not a literary student then that's usually a bad sign. Don't suffocate your reader with your opinion/theme.

All right. Back to What do your readers get out of your book once they're reading it/have read it?

This is one of the most important questions you should be thinking about as soon as you start your first draft.

The answers might be varied (and this is where theme comes in).

Your own unique answer to the question will be - or at least tie in - with your book's theme. The question can be answered in many different ways. A few examples:

When my readers read this book they gain/learn...
... an understanding of love!
... a sense of security in their life!
... how to trust!
... how to become selfless!

If you consider this well before you write the ideas that come into your mind (such as 'I want my readers to learn the value of friendship!') will automatically colour the text while you compose it. The theme will usually wind itself into the story without your being aware of it. It's how I wrote Hourglass (in which I wanted to show a greedy and selfish boy learning the value of friendship and loyalty over shiny trinkets) and Hourglass's theme is coherent throughout the five book series. And I did not plan these books. I simply wrote with that sole idea about selfish to selfless (valuing his friends more than the artifacts he wants to collect) in mind and it worked out beautifully.

There are however two caveats.

The first one is that sometimes it's HARD to know your theme before you've written the story. It can be really excruciating to FIND the answer to the question and determine what exactly it is you want your readers to experience/learn while reading your book.

The second one concerns the writing itself. If you have no idea about the characters and the rest of the plot this method of weaving in theme subconsciously might not work. And if you're still trying out your characters you might not be aware immediately what they want/what you can teach your readers through them.

It might even take one or more drafts to know your theme - and then it might be necessary to do a re-write of the whole book. But that shouldn't scare you. The more you learn about your characters and story the better it will be. There's no need to rush.

So the next time you write something try to get the basics down: the characters and what happens to them. Then think about what this teaches your readers. Or do it the other way around. What would you like your readers to know? What do you think is so valuable it must be written down for everyone to read? Then build on that with your characters.

Does this blog post help you in any way? What do you think about this approach to theme? WriteBot would love to read your thoughts in the comment section below!

Happy evening!

10X WIP (How to manage all your works in progress)

Hi folks.

It's been a while but here is your one and only WriteBot!

I am currently working on 10 WIPs. They're not all books or short stories but include my marketing plans as well. I've been making many plans and trying to out more writing in the last few days (since having a complete meltdown and deciding to go ALL IN).

Here's a list of what I'm working on:

• editing the fairy tale Catching Fireflies. CF will be getting another part approximately twice its length to enhance the story. It's by far my most sold story and it will be even better with the new edit!
• editing Of One Mind. This is a story inspired by psychology and the question of what will happen when people try to join themselves directly to each others' minds. It's grisly (BUT AWESOME!)
• editing Eye in the Sky (A bit of cosmic horror because that's one of my favourite genres and our Lord Cthulu has to be praised).
• editing Hourglass. This one is hard. I've been working on it for about five years by now and it's a huge project. I have written three (actually four but the fourth is a spin off) novels in this series and plan to finish the fourth main story novel within this year. It is one of the best stories I've ever written but needs much help so it'll go to another two of my beta readers on Monday!
• hand in hand with the above: finishing all of Simon Walker's adventure in the ancient world! Hourglass is the first book. There are three more (The Tower of Fear, WIP novel three, and WIP novel four.) It's such a great adventure story!
• finishing Ris's story. You remember the leshy story I posted a year (Oh My! A year!) ago? It wasn't complete then and it still isn't. But I plan to complete it still.
• writing the NEW STORY. It doesn't have a title yet but it's... already really amazing. It makes my skin tingle just thinking about it (but that might just be the mid-writing panic). This new story is pure sci-fi. It's set in a dystopian cyberpunk town called Clockwork City. It has androids, cyborgs, humans, pretty clockwork girls, and war.
  

This is the point where we switch from actual craft to publishing - something that absolutely has to be done!

• publishing short story collections. I am currently working on three of them: Into the Deep (mostly mysterious water-related stories such as Catching Fireflies), Xenos (weird cosmic alien stories - a bit like Solaris by Stanislaw Lem), and a new collection which doesn't have a title yet but will have mostly nice magical stories. (PS: this is the best one if you just want to read something relaxing and sweet. But it'll still make you think and consider your life.)
• publishing Elegy of the Stars. This is another story very dear to me. Very. (But then again, they all are...) It's a story that was excruciatingly hard on me if I'm completely honest. It was very emotionally taxing and I cried every time I picked it up and tried to work on it. That's probably why it took me about five years to finish even though it's a novel and doesn't have anywhere near as many words as my great epic Hourglass.
• publishing Warlike/The Torn Earth. This is a bit more YA than the rest of my stories. It's also kick-ass and you should definitely check it out once it's out. I'm currently fixing the title/name on the cover.

Last but not least we'll talk about marketing:  

We all know we'd rather be writing than marketing - right? But what if you can be creative while doing it? What if you can make it actually fun with little giveaways and promotional posters as well as CUSTOM BOOKMARKS?

The plan includes:

• intelligent twitter pieces
• artwork (posters/bookmarks) to hand out on the streets
• 'free book day' giveaways on KDP (including the necessary promotion by handing out flyers and posting it on twitter)
• an appearance at ComicCon in March (that's the Dutch comic con because I live there)
• a few panels of comic for Hourglass (I'd love to fully make Hourglass a comic as well as book, but it's a huge project. That goal has to wait a bit still.)
• frequent blog posts (at least twice a week with useful content for readers and writers. By the way, this includes my dusty book review blog, WriteBotWins!)

All right! These are my plans for the rest of the year and beyond. I want to keep adding targets to work towards and really make this work. It's been a wake-up call when I (shamefully admitted) spiraled into depression even after doing very well in the last few weeks in real life. But that's a topic for another day. My goals at this point are as they stand.

It can only get better!

Remember: WriteBot Always Wins! And WriteBot will win THIS too. (PS: You can become WriteBot as well! Do it. Write, and become WriteBot! Practice your backside off! Practice some more. Push when you feel like you're being destructed at the seams like some lowly scrap bot! Keep pushing even while your partner's already watching the telly or gaming on their PC. Keep pushing towards those goals!)

WriteBot off to publish Elegy of the Stars (Jollyroger, I'm scared.).