Craft of Writing: Pocket Notebook or not?

Dear Reader,

Among the various tools I have used to capture ideas that pop up at random is a notebook that is the size of my palm that fits in my purse. I have used a pocket notebook (which I think is the actual name of the product) for years to record prompts, snippets of dialog that I want to put into a scene, and random facts that interest me. To anyone else looking at it, it is a jumble of hastily scrawled randomness. For me, however, it is a record of ideas that I draw on as I sit down to a writing session.

Now for some people, this is an idea that isn't going to work well. I have tried (back in the days of cassette tapes) recording ideas and playing them back. That was awkward for me. I discovered that I didn't particularly enjoy my speaking voice. It was also a challenge to replay details multiple times so that I got them right in my projects. I suspect that it is easier with digital recording opportunities with your phone. I am not that great with tech and I still don't understand all the functions of my phone, hence the notebook.

The goal with whatever method you are comfortable with is to record ideas and inspiration as they strike. I have done this with the pocket notebook and with a bullet journal. The bullet journal got jumbled up pretty quickly with things from different projects mixing together. One would think that would have been the fate of the pocket notebook. Because the bullet journal was larger, I was putting more than a few ideas on a single page and it turned complicated pretty quick.

What tools do you use to capture ideas and corral plot bunnies?

Craft of Writing: Primary Sources

Dear Reader,

If you are writing something that requires you to do research, it can be challenging to sort through the material you find. It can be especially hard to dig down through the layers of source material until you have reached a primary source document. Primary sources are your best tool for accurate facts. In some cases, the primary source has been lost (i.e. the bible) and in other cases it is so obscured that you can't access it (i.e. posts on social media). If you can track down the primary source of material you have found quoted, you can put the quote into proper context.

This can be a frustrating pursuit in this day of digital everything. Especially if you have to go off-line to search material and you're not sure of your access to it. I highly recommend getting to know your local library staff because they can do a world of good. They can help you locate books within their library system and via interlibrary loan that are useful to your research. They can also assist you in tracking down books related to the ones you sign out.

If you are fortunate enough to live near a college or university, the library staff there can help you locate academic papers on the subject of your research. Often times, the academic papers serve as primary sources for non-academic work in a given topic. News material can share things that are happening in the field but it is a fickle source. Given the abundance of digital sources and how quickly they change, it can be difficult to find an article that you initially read. Screen captures are your friend in this case.

It is important to remember, however, news material can be a secondary or tertiary hand source. Check the articles you read carefully to determine if they are quoting another source. Always hold in doubt sources like chatbot search results and many websites that fail to give attribution to the primary source. Chatbots and AI search results have been found to outright make up material that is inaccurate. As tempting of a short cut these seem, they can literally make you hours more work in the long run.

The worst plan in the world.

Dear Reader,

When you have a book to write, no money coming in for it, and a ton of other responsibilities, it is the worst plan in the world to devote all your available time to it. Dishes pile up in the sink, you find yourself having weird food combination for your meals (peanut butter and onion sandwiches, anyone?), and the laundry will eventually form a militia and start demanding rights. This is why you have to pace yourself, especially if you are super excited about the idea that you are working with.

You can't let that excitement overrun your responsibilities. A schedule that is detailed may help you get everything done, with writing time as a reward for when you complete crucial tasks. If that doesn't work for you, try out logging tasks and writing time. For an example of what I am describing look up the Bullet Journal format invented by Ryder Carroll. (I may have misspelled his name, but the system is definitely called the Bullet Journal.) Or you can mash the two together as I have to stay on top of things. Pictured below are my planning pages. Every Thursday, I reconcile calendars and plan my next week. (Some how I have become the scheduling maven of the household.)

Let me explain what you see in this picture. The header has space for me to mark down the liturgical date of a kinda obscure religion I follow. That is the short line on the left. The larger line in the middle is for me to write down the Julian calendar date that everyone else follows. And the final short line on the right is for me to note the day of the week.

The column of boxes on the right side are for health tracking stuff. Because I am diabetic and I have some pretty serious mental health problems I'm being treated for, I made some trackers. The first one under the day of the week is tracking how much water I am drinking. The next one below is to track my medication compliance. Following that is my mood scale to help me track my bipolar mood states. In a similar format is the anxiety scale to help me track my CPTSD and general anxiety states. The tracker below that monitors my fasting morning blood sugar.

On the left there is a column of boxes and lines associated with each box. This is where I write tasks, appointments, and important information. I have been using a modified version of the Bullet Journal's symbol code to note appointments, tasks, high priority items, critical priority items, and similar things. The last line of this side of the page is for noting what I am cooking for dinner that night. It works better than having a menu hanging on the blackboard in the kitchen. (It's not a very good blackboard but it's pretty.)

On the back of the page is a series of ruled lines that I use to log major activities and notes of the day. It is basically my mini-journal that talks about important information in a bulleted series of notes.

This system of organization works really well when I remember to use it. But when I get sick or depressed, I forget all about it and everything turns into a mess. Why? Because all my time to do things gets eaten up by being sick or brain fog. I'm still working on finding a way to resolve that challenge.

Handwritten or typed: which do you prefer?

 Dear Reader,

I have a question for you to consider. The authors and creative folks in my readership, I wonder when you are at the beginning of the creative process and organizing your thoughts, what do you prefer: writing ideas out by hand and drawing diagrams or typing up detailed outlines and bullet point reference notes to go along side that outline? It's two very different styles of organization. It seems like the working method of doing things by hand is falling by the wayside since computers have become ubiquitous. 

For my part, I do a mixed combination of the two since I have my own personal computer. When I didn't have a computer that was strictly my own, I did everything out on paper. Now, I have a hodgepodge of paper and digital notes. Alas, they're all painfully disorganized and I have difficulty sorting it all out because of what my Beloved calls 'shiny object syndrome'. I'll be going through a stack of papers and find outlines for books, notes for instructional essays, and a plethora more all around me. It's hard to focus on one project when you are stuck for how to describe the next scene and something else is glittering with promise of being easier and more organized.

I suppose I live in a state of chaos that I am struggling to fix. Because once I get all these ideas and notes organized, I'll be off to the races. Or staring at the screen until drops of blood form on my forehead. Who knows.

Let's do a Free Writing Exercise!

 Dear Reader,

Let's do a Free Writing Exercise. Here's your Prompt to build off of: What is the most legendary cooking disaster that you have ever had? Set a timer for 10 minutes and here we go!

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The most legendary cooking disaster that I had was while I was pregnant with my first son. I woke up out of a dead sleep craving popcorn. We didn't have microwave popcorn so I had to cook it the old fashioned way. Pregnancy brain being what it was, I forgot some important steps. Next thing we know, smoke is billowing out of the covered pot. I move the pot to a cool burner on the electric stove and smoke continues. Pretty soon all of the fire detectors in the apartment and in the apartment above us are going off. 

This is three in the morning. I started sobbing about the time we had everything aired out, because I was craving popcorn and I screwed it up. Beloved, who is a night owl and was up working on a project, calmed me down. I think, but I'm not longer sure, if the neighbor upstairs was laughing at my blubbering over popcorn like a toddler. This was pre-Covid era, so the stores were open 24 hours. He went over to the next town's all night grocery store and picked up some popcorn. The clerk advised him for his safety to get pickles and ice cream. When Beloved got home, the smoke detectors (all of them) were off.

He gave me my microwave popcorn and I started crying again, with relief. I had my popcorn and went to bed. When I woke up in the morning, I had forgotten about everything until I saw the pot I attempted to make old fashioned popcorn in. I debated writing the neighbor a letter of apology. When I opened the door to go do some errands, the neighbor had left a bag of microwave popcorn on the doorstep.

Craft of Writing: Bringing it Back to Basics.

 Dear Reader,

First, I wish to apologize for my lack of posts. My life has been hectic and I have been dealing with a fair amount of off-line trouble that has kept me from posting. Instead of writing inspirational bits for you, I am going to share with you what I am working on with my son as I am tutoring him this summer to get him ready for 11th grade. (Where the hell did the time go? It seems like yesterday he could barely scribble with a crayon. Now he's working on writing his own novel by hand.)

I will be breaking things down to a point that you may feel like it's a review of elementary school material. There is a purpose for this process. Writing anything is like making a building and you must know the fundamental tools and materials of your process in order to succeed. A special focus will be placed on figurative language's relationship to the rest of English. My sons both have difficulty with figurative language and I notice that there are others who have trouble with it as well as I am out and about. 

Before we get to figurative language, however, we're going to be looking at sentence construction and paragraph construction next week.

Grinding your way forward does not match well with sickness.

 Dear Reader,

I was pretty seriously sick for most of the period that I wasn't updating here. I kept starting blog posts and then giving up because I couldn't think clearly to put together a sentence. Then I caught Covid. At first, I vainly thought that it was going to be a mild case because I'm vaccinated and I got my booster shot. Then came the dizzy spells that threatened to knock me down. There was a laundry list of symptoms that showed up over the first few days that I had it which made it harder and harder to function. No matter how strong your desire and will to do things, they're no match to dizzy spells that make you feel like you're on a tilt-a-whirl. And the exhaustion, oh good grief, I still have some of that fun lingering. (My go to solution for being tired in the morning did not work. I was drinking coffee because it soothed my sore throat it was odd.)

Sometimes, you just can't grind your way forward. The situation will force you to stop and rest. It will thwart your desires and possibly shake your confidence. In these moments, attack in the opposite direction and take cover. Rest, stay hydrated, and let the hellishness pass over you. Your work will still be waiting for you as you wait for the hallucinations stop. And, you never know, somewhere in the midst of the misery that you thole, you may find gold that you can use somewhere else, if you can remember it.

If you're not well, take care of yourself. The great work can wait until you're back on your feet.

Craft of Writing: Let Your Past Antagonists Be the Villains.

 Dear Reader,

First, I'd like to apologize for my lack of posting. I have been unwell and it has everything topsy-turvy. I'm trying to get back into the swing of things but it is proving difficult. Which, in a round-about way brings me to the subject line of this post and the main theme. As authors and artists, we are told to work with what we know. At the same time, we are cautioned not to let our 'real' lives bleed into our work unless we are writing an autobiography or a memoir.

To use a bit of strong language, that second bit of advice is bullshit. Now, I'm not saying that you name names or doxx the person who bullied you relentlessly in eighth grade. But you can take their character traits, their personality traits, and the various qualities that made them who you knew them to be and use that to create a villain that you can avenge yourself by proxy upon that old bully. Your experiences are your own to do with as you please. If people don't like it, they should have treated you better. Especially when you are writing a memoir or an autobiography. That's where the kid gloves come off and you lay bare all the ugly facts and unburden yourself of horrors that you have lived through. 

Turning an old nemesis into a fictional villain can be a cathartic experience. Nearly every villain that's died in my books have had some elements of people who've done evil things to me in them. A few are full on reproductions of the person, but you would have to exactly who I was describing down to the intimate details that I am aware of about them to have a hope of identifying them.

Sometimes there are people who will actually threaten to sue you for defamation after they learn you are a writer and they've done you wrong. All it takes is some strategic fictionalization of qualities and exaggeration of other qualities for those people to be unable to have a legal foothold in such a lawsuit. Remember, always note that your characters are 'incidental' in their resemblance of real people, living or dead.

Craft of Writing: Keep a Book Bible or Not?

 Dear Reader,

I've been experimenting with trying to get all of my notes in order and creating a 'book bible'. This is the ultimate notebook of source material for your novel or series. I'd like to report that I've had some success with this but, honestly, I have so much material scattered over so many places that the act of collating it into one spot is hazardous. It is an exhaustive, labor intensive process to transcribe material that is in other places into one book. I simply don't have the spoons for it at this juncture to do so. It's a great concept but I am left digging through notebooks for snippets that I remember putting down and discovering more that I had forgotten about.

The closest thing I have to a book bible is a notebook that I filled with ideas back in 1998 when I had the first version of the first book come back to me from a shady company's contest shredded and discovered that the file for the book had gotten deleted because a certain someone decided that my book was definitely going to win a publishing contract and we didn't need the manuscript anymore. (Book one of the Umbrel Chronicles of Evandar has been rewritten three times before it reached its current form. Each rewrite was a result of nonsense like that.) I still reference that little notebook. But I simply have too much material scattered around to put it into a notebook and organize it.

I was disappointed when I realized I simply couldn't do this. Because the premise of having all of your material in one place to reference is fantastic. I am going to attempt to do this with other projects, but the Umbrel Chronicles of Evandar simply can't have a book bible. I'm too disabled to take the work out of approximately fifteen notebooks and jam it into one and then organize it. I am highly frustrated with this fact. At the same time, I have those notebooks in approximately the same space so I can find what I need after a few minutes of searching.

As it stands, anyways, those original plans and how the books are evolving are very different. Things took a hard left in book six and I'm not entirely sure how to fit the story back into the container that I had formed for it. But, I think the books are stronger and more interesting for deviating from the plan. This is also something that I can't go backwards and cram into a single notebook. The closest thing I could do is keep a plot log as I was writing. I tried that once. It was an awful experience.

So, if you're going to keep a book bible, start it at the baby stages of your project. Trying to go backwards and cram it all in later is madness.

Craft of writing: Just Keep Pushing Forward.

 Dear Reader,

Last week, I said that I was going to share my most helpful resource from my library on writing but there's been a bit of a change of plans. I realized that really was going to be a rather trite and rote type of post. There are a lot of books about writing out there that give a great deal of good (and not so good) advice. So, please forgive this hard left in topic. It's still focused on writing more effectively, but looking at the emotional element of writing.

Way back when I was working on book one of the Umbrel Chronicles series, I had a rape scene I was writing. It was not excessively graphic, but it was enough to trigger my c-ptsd from being raped myself. It took me a solid two weeks to write a scene that was less than one page. At one point in the process, I was ready to abandon the whole story because I just couldn't get the words out because of how upset I was. I pressed forward despite my discomfort and wound up writing a realistic and gut wrenching scene.

How? I took my despair, grief, and horror over what had happened to me and channeled it into the scene I was writing. It was painful to write. It was probably one of the most painful scenes that I had to write in that book. (There were others that were difficult, but this scene ranks number one.) Sometimes, you have to push through the pain to write something that will evoke a true response in your reader.

The trick is to remember that all forms of writing is a conversation with your wonderful friend, the Reader. Some of what you are going to share is going to probably fall flat, not every scene is going to be perfect. But, if you take what you are working with in the struggle of writing that scene and turn it into fuel for the scene, your scene will go to a whole new level of empathetic realism. You will successfully communicate the concept and evoke the feelings that you want from your reader by pouring your feelings into your writing.

Right now, I'm struggling with pretty low confidence about my writing. I feel like I'm a hack. It's kind of bitter irony that I am writing a blog post that is encouraging others in their writing when I feel like I'm not good enough. But, this is where I'm practicing that 'just keep pushing forward' exercise. It's making this post rather grueling to write, especially this last bit. When the brain weasels are telling you to just delete everything and focus on your houseplants and knitting, it's a tough writing day regardless of topic, genre, or length. Hell, even a grocery list is challenging on days like today. 

But, the fact that I didn't give up and I kept pushing forward is a victory. The fact that I have bared my heart to you in all honesty is in keeping with what I was taught is one of the core principles of writing: Write the truest sentence you can. I know I've done that. And if I can do that in the midst of being depressed, anxious, and very distracted by the neighbor's dogs going bananas over the wind blowing, I know that you can do it too. It may be one word at a time over a length of time. That's ok. We're not in a race, you and I. We're just doing our best with what we have. Sometimes, our best doesn't look magnificent and polished on the first try. But that's what editing is for, right?

Craft of Writing: Working through Illness.

 Dear Reader,

I am a person with multiple chronic conditions. I am technically disabled due to them (but Social Security disagrees with my psychiatrist on this, screw them /rant). On a good day, I can pass for someone who is perfectly fine, albeit a bit weird. But the weird part has always been there, long before I became disabled. A creative mind is often one misunderstood by others and labeled weird. (Again, I could go off on a tear on this topic, but I digress.) It's really hard to work when you are ill, regardless of weather or not it is a chronic condition or not. Feeling rotten is often the enemy of productivity more than mere procrastination.

Currently, I am in a depressive episode and dealing with some c-PTSD fun. (If only there was a sarcasm font.) I struggle to keep up with my household tasks and my two very active children. When they're at school is my ideal time for writing but with this rotten feeling rattling around in my brain, I find I want to sleep until I feel better. (It doesn't work out that great for depression. 0 stars.) I also find myself struggling with executive function.

Now that's a term that might have thrown a few of you for a loop. Executive function is your ability to decide to do a thing and carry through on getting it done. Problems with executive function vary widely for many different reasons, like if you're so feverish that you have the focus of a goldfish then you're having executive function problems. Depending on the severity of your executive function difficulties, you may want to just put down the pen and step away from the word processor. If you have the focus of a goldfish, you are going to struggle to be coherent in your writing, to use that earlier example.

You have to know your limitations and work within the boundaries set by them. This can be maddening when you're literally months behind on work. When all you can manage is about fifteen minutes of work before your brain turns to mush on that front, just do the fifteen minutes of work. You can come back to it later when your brain is functioning a bit better (like after a nap for the poor soul with that fictitious fever). Pace yourself. 

Recognize that if you push yourself too hard when you are unwell, it only makes things worse. Your brain being mush will last longer the harder you push because you're not allowing yourself to rest when you need it. Take breaks, stay hydrated, and be patient. Even chronic illnesses will eventually get to a point where you can work at a rate that you're used to if given enough time. Let me give you an example from my own life as a disabled person. Because of my depression problems, I have about six months out of the year that I can work like a demon. The other six, I can barely string a sentence together and I suffer from dread of past trauma happening all over again despite the fact that it's been decades since the incidents in question.  This post is a bit of me pushing myself to write despite the fact that I am not doing well.

When Spring hits, the amount of sunlight my region gets up to a level that my Seasonal Affective Disorder (I hate it and I think it has the worst acronym ever.) goes into remission. From Spring until Autumn, I can work at a much higher rate. I have clearer thinking and more creativity. It's generally a much better time for me. Right now, I'm in the middle of SAD related misery and that triggers me c-PTSD. It makes everything a bucket of suck. So, I try to grind my way forward. I'm not a good example to follow on the front of taking breaks. I get mad at being ill and then try to force the situation to my will. It typically has mixed results for the task and I wind up feeling worse afterwards. I'm still learning to pace myself.

Craft of Writing: It's not retreat, it's attacking in another direction.

 Dear Reader,

Life's been hard and complicated due to health reasons for me. It has lead me to doing a new form of journaling that is hard for me. As I have been working very hard on this stuff to try and glue my head together, I am reminded of a military expression that's been thrown around in my family for a long time.

It's not retreat, it's attacking in another direction.

I'm not sure if this came from the Marines in the family or from the Army soldiers. It's one of the things that I try to apply in my life when I have to stop, step back, or otherwise change direction on a project (or pretty much anything else in my life). You're not giving up when you have to change position, you are simply changing position and approaching your problem/enemy from a different front. This little military bit of wit has been a profound source of comfort when things get hard. (Sounds strange, comfort from the military?) I haven't been defeated or failed because I had to change what I was doing. I just had to change and attack from another direction. That direction might be back forty yards from where I was initially standing, but it doesn't mean that I'm not still fighting.

Doing anything as a disabled person can be exhausting. You get a limited amount of energy to do things. The way I try to work around this is scheduling my day extensively. The fairly rigid structure of my day is somedays exactly what I need to carry me through when I'm not doing well. On other days, it is oppressive and it makes things harder. Those days, I back off and try things from a different angle. And on the days that I just can't do things, like when I had migraines for three days in a row last week, I rest secure in the knowledge that hiding behind a shieldwall for a moment to catch your breath doesn't mean that you're out of the fight. It's making a tactical maneuver to reserve your energy for when you can strike.

Craft of Writing: Being honest in your prose.

 Dear Reader,

First, I owe you an apology for this post being two days late. Life has been exceedingly hectic here and I've been struggling to keep up with everything. I find myself thinking that I am turning into a curmudgeon regarding the holidays because of all the stress and general stuff that needs to be done. That rant aside, let's take a look at honesty in your prose.

Honesty in poetry is relatively simple. Especially with blank verse. You can just spit out idea after idea and call it done. In prose, we're tempted to edit as we work. We are tempted to change the phrasing so that it isn't quite as raw and that can weaken your work. Now, I am not saying that you should not edit your work. Proper grammar and such are important. Making sure that your work flows in a reasonable way that makes it easy for your reader to get through is vital. But when in the editing process, take care on what you cut out of your work.

Emotional and psychological vulnerability is a rare thing in fiction and virtually non-existent outside of the genre of autobiography when it comes to non-fiction. Thus, when you write a scene that moves yourself to emotional response, no matter how much it may squick you, don't delete it. Rephrase it for clarity and polish it up for presentation. But do not remove the essence of the scene. You want your readers to feel that connection with your characters. This is part of the essential process of suspension of disbelief.

All great books manage to suspend disbelief. Usually, it is by way of gut wrenching emotional train wrecks and soaring beauty that makes the reader feel like they're part of the story. Keeping the emotional content in there keeps your readers hooked. The psychological component can give your readers empathy for your characters as they develop, suffer, and grow through the story arc. These two buttons for your readers' brains are excellent tools for you to deploy. Just keep the tension in the story even as you work through it all this way your tale doesn't drift apart before you're ready to end it.

Craft of Writing: Using heated emotions to make a cool piece of work.

 Dear Reader,

We all have emotions. Some of them can get pretty intense. Instead of bottling those feelings up, grab a pen and a scrap of paper. Write down what comes to mind until you feel calm. By the end you might have a really gripping scene for a story, a powerful poem, or a pile or word vomit that you can just burn and feel better about. In any case, it's nifty to do this with these feelings because you're engaged in transmuting something that is purely in your head/heart into something physical.

You don't have to limit yourself to words. There are countless ways to express intense feelings through art. Some of my most active and intense paintings have come out of my trying to create my way out of a depressive funk and process psychological trauma. If your medium is clay, you can make some awesome sculptures. Heck, you could create a sculpture that represents the cause of your vexation and then destroy it. It's really cathartic to be honest.

The best thing about taking your emotions and creating things out of them is the fact that it's a safe way to express some things that society in general are squicked by. Intense anger is probably the biggest squick factor for a lot of people. Making art out of your feelings is cathartic and you end up with something pretty cool that you get to choose what happens with it. People can look at what you've made and have no idea what inspired it. They can debate until the cows come home just what your painting means, when all you were doing was throwing paint on the canvas until the urge to throw something finally went away. You don't have to tell them that was what was going on. You can just smile and keep it as your little secret.

Craft of Writing: Stolen Moments.

 Dear Reader,

It's a busy time of year right now. It's hard to find time to write, make art, or otherwise create something. This is where you have to get sneaky. Keep a mini-notebook with you to put down your ideas. Get a mini-sketchbook and one of those awesome pens that are 4 colors in one. (They make a 10 color variety but the barrel of the pen is HUGE.) When you have those odd idle moments that you are not working on something very important, indulge your creativity and sketch out a stick figure picture or write a silly limerick. Do things on a small scale in those stolen moment. Eventually, life will calm down and you can get back to your Great Work. You may find that the random bits you came up with in the stolen moments are useful and can be incorporated into it.

Craft of Writing: Timed Free Writing.

 Dear Reader,

I've moved the Craft of Writing segment to Mondays because the weekends are just too full of family business for me to find time to type much of anything up. The best I manage is a grocery list most weekends. I'm trying to carve out time to get other things going but it's not working so well. Preamble made, let's move on to the planned elements of this post.

Free writing is a big thing for me. Some people call it a 'brain dump' and use it as a time to put down all the things running around in their mind. Other people don't exactly have a name for it but they use free writing to lay the ground work of future projects and develop nuggets of gold that will be dropped into future stories. It's a combination of the two in my case.

It is pretty easy to get caught up in the process and lose about an hour of time to just rambling on the page. To prevent that, I bought myself a little sand timer. It's got bright pink sand in it (why not get the one with my favorite color in it, right?) and the time it runs for is ten minutes. I'm still getting the hang of writing out things like blog posts in ten minutes. My typing speed is slowly creeping up. So is the number of typos that I have to edit out. But, using the sand timer to keep me on task really helps.

I force myself to keep working as much as I may want to dive into a research rabbit hole to learn everything the internet has to offer about some obscure thing. It restricts how long I have to work and, as such, opens up time for me to get other writing projects done or at least making some headway on them. It also helps me get a bit more control over my schedule. Timed free writing is some days the easiest bit of timed writing. Other days, I feel like I should just write "I hate this." for the entire time limit because I can't think of anything. (Usually, those days, I'm not fully awake and am still on my first cup of coffee.)

On the whole, I highly recommend free writing as a tool to get ideas out on the page. And I really strongly encourage timed free writing (it doesn't have to be ten minutes) to help you focus on what you're working on and avoid losing time for other projects and responsibilities. After all, you don't want to be in the position I was last week when I wasn't using my timer and the kids were asking me when I was going to do the dishes. That was a little awkward.

Craft of Writing: Custom musical playlists for projects vs. generalized playlists for writing.

 Dear Reader,

You have lots of musical options to accompany your writing session. You can create custom playlists for each project. (Here is the newest playlist for The Umbrel Chronicles of Evandar, the old one that I had on my old computer vanished when everything transferred over to the new laptop. I have since taken to making them on Spotify so I can access them on different devices than just the laptop.) This allows you to set a given track on repeat as you write scenes choreographed to it. Or, you can pick a playlist that is just random music for writing to, such as this one. You could easily open up any music streaming app and put the word 'writing' in to the search feature and find literally anything to suit your genre of music. 

In my experience, the custom playlist is helpful for staying on topic and visualizing what I am writing when I am working on a fiction piece. Thanks to my nifty headphones, I can put a single song on endless repeat as I am working out a scene with out disturbing anyone in the room. Generalize playlists of music that just hits me as interesting to write to are more effective as background noise filters when I am working on non-fiction. By searching through other people's general writing playlists, I have found more interesting music to put into my project related custom playlists. 

Or a song will come on the radio and I'll look it up to add it to a custom playlist. Either way, I will let generalized writing oriented playlists run in the background as I am doing journal work, blogging, or working on a non-fiction project and occasionally have something novel catch my attention.

Craft of Writing: Audio Noise Filtration Is Your Friend

 Dear Reader,

If you're in a situation like I am, you have a young person in the room with you digging through a bin of blocks, Legos, or something equally obnoxiously noisy despite their very efforts to be quiet. Now, Beloved bought me a pair of noise cancelling headphones. They work alright except for the fact that the sound of my youngest son digging into a bin of Legos manages to be at a pitch that it cuts right through the noise cancelling effect of the headphones by themselves. This is where coming up with some kind of audio noise filtration is vital.

White noise is a popular method. I find it gives me a headache if I listen to it for too long. I use the sound of rain falling on a tin roof at about 85% volume. It gives the effect of sitting on a porch listening to one hell of a rainstorm as someone is doing stuff inside with a window open. There are a ton of playlists that work for background noise to filter out ambient sound. Beloved finds Lo-Fi Hip Hop music playlists to be really helpful at work to cut down on the audio distractions of his environment. There are other writers I know who put on classical music.

There are free resources on the internet that allow you to play an ambient atmosphere on loop that can act as your audio filter. I like www.ambient-mixer.com. That link takes you to the atmosphere that I use the most and find to be the most helpful for keeping me focused. (I confess, I am currently using it because there is the construction of a Great Work in progress by the master builder of the household.) Music streaming services also offer ambient playlists that can help mitigate the noise of the environment. You can stay in the same room as your noise factory and work with the help of the right sound-scape. Just remember to take the headphones off from time to time to check on your environment to prevent you missing something important happening, like the announcement of your child's latest building masterpiece.

Craft of Writing: Building a Playlist of Music for Worldbuilding.

 Dear Reader,

Music can be a powerful muse. I have multiple playlists and different albums I listen to depending on what projects I am working on. This one, for example, was for my NaNoWriMo projects last year. When I am in a position where I am stuck on a scene, I go to music to figure out how to get out of the corner I have painted myself into. Sometimes the lyrics are helpful. Often it is the atmosphere of the music that gets my creative juices going. 

I tend to recycle playlists when I am working on multiple books of the same theme. It helps to keep the undercurrent of the stories the same. At the same time, music can prove a distraction from writing. This is why it is important to carefully curate your playlist and album collection to be tailored towards your work. After all, most people would probably find The Prodigy difficult to reconcile with writing medieval fantasy. While I find their work highly inspiring for science fiction, it is too distracting for writing work that is set in a a medieval fantasy setting.

My goal in building playlists is to create a musical version of the world that I am working in. Some of it lends itself to scenes and the tracks get played on repeat for however long it takes to write the scene. Some of it just lends itself to a sense of what the characters would be hearing in their setting, like at a tavern or at a cloister. In either case, the music helps set the tone of my writing session and lends me a bit of inspiration when I get stuck. I build playlists when I am not writing but thinking about the work that I am going to be handling later on in the day/week.

This is as much a part of my writing process as keeping a notebook where I write down snippets of dialogue that will be used in scenes later and I put down drafts of scenes. I have taken to writing down what musical inspiration has helped me with the science fiction that I've slapped up here to help give you a peek into my writing process. What inspires me to write a scene, however, may not work for you. You might look at the story of Angel and say, "This needs some classical music." That's entirely up to how you interpret what I've put on the page. That's the beautiful thing about music and writing. You can mix and match the genres to come up with your own experience and create your own version of the scene.

Craft of Writing: Book Bibles (part 2)

 Dear Reader,

In a past post, I mentioned the concept of a Book Bible. It's basically a book with all of your notes, ideas, and plot work complied within it. It is supposed to make it easier to cross reference material and keep plot lines organized. I am in the process of attempting to compile a Book Bible for the Umbrel Chronicles series. 

It's been nightmarish going. My stack of notebooks are completely disorganized. I am attempting to organize the Book Bible with a section for book synopsis of each part of the series, character sketches of major players, and my notes for various key scenes in future books. It's just ugly, friends. I am struggling to make progress but it is just not happening. 

I have book bibles for other books I've written. They're organized and after flipping through a few pages, I can find the information that I need to work on a project or refresh my memory of what I was doing with a given section. My advice to you is keep a project notebook that is organized. That project notebook will become your 'book bible' as the project grows and evolves.

If you just have a mass of notes and snippets of dialogue kicking around, be ready to invest in wigs because you're going to pull your hair out trying to make sense of the mess. Especially if it is stuff you haven't looked at in literally years. So, start your book bible early and update it frequently.