September #wipmadness – Week Two

So how was your first week of September?

Mine was okay. I cashed in a bunch of loose change that I've earmarked for the purchase of an updated version of Syd Field’s Screenplay and other writing-related books. I also brainstormed ideas for one of my TV pilots. I even know the line of dialogue that ends the first act of the pilot episode. Now I just need to actually write these ideas down instead of keeping it in my head.

I think what I need most is to reestablish a writing routine.

Now I've never quite had the best writing routine. I tend to write in long spurts under tight deadlines. Paper due tomorrow afternoon? By all means, let’s start it at 10 the night before. Supposed to submit a story for fiction workshop on Tuesday night? It’s only Saturday, I can watch one more episode (or six) of Friends and still have something to pass out. Draft of thesis project? Um, let’s not go there. J

I’m not sure why I’m so reluctant to committing myself to a routine. Perhaps it’s because I’m so busy planning the forest and the surrounding areas; including the castle and the river, that I run into trees and shrubs that trip me up. Or I spend time constructing metaphors for the simple fact that I keep ignoring: To be a writer means you have to WRITE.

It’s such a novel idea. Writers write.

So my goal for this week is to:

1. Take a few minutes and write down the ideas.

2. Set up a mini routine for the week. Pick a time and write for at least ten minutes each day at that time. Start rebuilding the muscle memory of writing.

My question for you this week is:

What is your writing routine? When do you write? Where do you write? How long do you write for? Are you aiming for a certain number of words, pages, or minutes?

Do you have any advice for establishing a writing routine? What works? What doesn't work?

And what’s the best excuse you've used or heard for avoiding writing?

I have some very cool ideas for giveaway items including a WRITE bracelet and cool bookmarks. I’ll post pictures of the prototypes next week. My friend and sometimes writing partner, Jenn has graciously agreed to make these items.

Hope you have a great week full of fantastic writing sessions and amazing reads. I just finished reading my fifth Andrew Smith novel: 100 Sideways Miles.

Even though it’s been more than 1.7 million miles since I read the final line of the book, I’m still lost in its world, and wish there was an additional chapter hiding beyond the final blank page. I love it when books stick with you for hours, days, and even years after you read it. I hope someday a reader will feel that way about my own book or screenplay. 

Welcome to September #WIPMADNESS

Hello and welcome to my blog, Shortstop in the Sourdough. I’m honored to be your host for the September 2014 edition of #wipmadness.

I've always liked it when a new month begins on a Sunday or a Monday as it gives a double fresh start to the week as well as the month. And today being Labor Day in the U.S. (and Labour Day in Canada) makes today a triple fresh start to this month’s wipmadness. 

As you can tell from my older posts, I’m not the most prolific blogger, I’m pretty much the opposite of prolific. Let’s go with having a major case of being a blocked blogger slash writer. But a new month means a new start and this month I am jumpstarting my love and commitment to writing and to blogging.

My goal for this month is to select a writing project (or two) and actually make progress on it. I keep waffling (yum, waffles) between a few screenplay ideas, two TV pilot ideas, a short story, and a YA novel. So I figure I want to commit myself to working at least on one of the screenplay or pilot ideas as well as working on the novel.

So my question to you this week is:

What is your goal for this month?

Plus:

When you have several ideas, how do you choose which idea to work on first? If you have more than one WIP, how do you balance them?

                                 

I’m working on a bribing, I mean motivational giveaway of sorts. I just got my car back from its second major service of the summer, so money is a little tight, but I’ll figure something out. I’ll announce the bribes giveaways next week.

Hope you have an awesome week full of writing and discovery. And chocolate. Chocolate is good. And so are waffles.  

March Madness Goals 2013

Wipes off a year's worth of dust, hey, I do have a blog! Cool!

So it's that time of year again when the almond trees start blooming and my eyes start watering. The best time of the year since Saint Patrick's Day and my birthday are just around the corner. And it's time for March Madness, both the basketball version and the ubercool being accountable for your writing goals one started by Denise Jaden. 

This is my third year attempting March Madness, and this year I plan to make it past the first round. I posted my goals there, but am reposting them here for my own sake. 

Goals

1. With my writing partner, Jenn B; complete a rough draft of our screenplay. The hope is to have a rough draft by month’s end, revise in April, and submit to a few contests by May 1^st.

2. Examine TV pilot ideas and see if anything worth pursuing. Depending on my writing partner’s time and energy, we may tackle one together and try to submit a pilot script to a few contests by June 1. I figure we can use March as to prewrite and then start a draft in April. That way we aren’t in the same stage of two projects at once and can broaden our scope.

3. Create and maintain a master document including notes, research, and other information for the screenplay and possible TV pilot. Once I find a template that works, I plan to apply it to all other works in progress. I tend to get a little carried away with folders, subfolders, and sub sub folders.

4. Design a writing schedule for the rest of the year including daily, weekly, monthly and so on goals and deadlines. And implement said plan. I even have a special planner for keeping myself accountable.

5. Work on other writing. I have a long neglected novel to give some way overdue tender loving care to. I also should work on another TV spec, but I’m waiting for the network upfronts so I know if the shows I’m considering writing for will be renewed.

6. Remember to enjoy writing and not allow myself to be overwhelmed by deadlines.

7. Read, blog, and exercise. I mean a writer has to do something besides write, right?

So it looks like March is going to be a good writing month. I just need to figure out some rewards to offer myself so I don't get off track or distracted....

Look something shiny. :-)

March Madness Goals 2012

It's that time of the year again for March Madness, but instead of hoops this March Madness is all about writing and reading and blogging. Thank you Denise for continuing to support writing and writers everywhere. I hope this is the year I actually achieve a goal or two. It's time to dust off my WIP and start working on my ultimate goal to be published (or under contract to be published) by the time I'm 40. (Which so happens to be a lot closer than I really want to admit, but that's a topic for a whole other blog entry.)

My Official March Madness 2012 Goals

Although this March is turning into one crazy busy month, I've decided to set some manageable goals for March Madness. So here goes:

1. Design a writing schedule for the rest of the year including daily, weekly, monthly and so on goals and deadlines.

2. Plan out structural bones of WIP novel and April’s Script Frenzy project. As a dedicated pantser I loath outlines, but I’ve found that if left to the ways of the pants I tend to not write. Decide if want to try more than these two projects. I’m leaning toward working on two screenplays at once – one with my writing partner and one solo effort.

3. Revisit the current draft of my WIP and see if there is anything salvageable. Thanks to my awesome writing partner and best friend, I was able to make the existing pages print out in book form.

4. Rein in my tendency to spend more time (okay most of my time) prewriting and filling in questionnaires about my characters and actual work on writing. And to that end, compile all my prewriting, research, and information into a single master document. I will try to not organize it in twenty different ways.

5. Try to blog at least once a week for the last three weeks of March, check in at least seven times at each check-in blog, and to make a decent dent in my to-read list. I’ve been meaning to read Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief for the last six years. (And this might just be my  manageable March Madness goal.



March Madness - Thanks Denise Jaden!



CEDA - Take Two

So CEDA (Create Every Day in April) was pretty much an epic fail, so let’s try CEDA v.2: Create Every Day in August.*

This CEDA is special in part because I can totally take part in Laurie Halse Anderson’s annual WFMAD in which one simply writes for fifteen minutes a day. I also like Laurie’s prompts so I plan to write on those in addition to dedicating fifteen minutes a day to one or more of my goals.

My goals for CEDA, v. 2

Write 1-2 chapters in my YA WIP.

Compile the bible for my YA WIP as well as the screenplay that Jenn and I started during Script Frenzy. (Just as soon as Jenn is done with her thesis, we plan on working on it as well as another screenplay.)

Work on prewriting of above two screenplays.

Write a short story. (Or a short film.) The goal is to write something from premise to a completed first draft.

Revisit previous story ideas and/or starts. See if there is anything that I want to work on now in addition to my YA WIP, the two screenplays, and the new short story. I probably should select a solo screenplay idea to work on in addition to the ones I’m co-writing with Jenn. Develop a writing plan for the rest of 2011 and perhaps for the next year or so. I’m still trying to figure out the ideal number of projects to be working on at any given time.

Respond to Laurie Halse Anderson’s daily prompts during her WFMAD challenge.

Write and post 10-15 blog entries.

Work on my new freelance writing career. (I suppose that means I need to finish working on the actual applications. I hate applications. (Note if you’re a fan of Left 4 Dead and Francis, you know he’d agree.))

And obviously writing for at least 15 minutes a day.

*Except for August 1^st, 2^nd, and most of the 3^rd, because my time machine is in the shop. Silly intergalactic travel—all planets need to agree to the Universal Driving Codes. And don’t get me started about the effects of wormholes, black holes, and solar storms, if you thought rush hour in LA was bad, you haven’t tried traveling in time and space during the Galaxy Games.

CEDA

Sorry, fellow Left 4 Dead fans, but this isn’t a post about the Civil Emergency and Defense Agency in the game. But eventually I’ll probably blog about the awesomeness that is Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2.

CEDA (Create Every Day in April) is simply my version of BEDA (Blog Every Day in April) that the awesome YA author Maureen Johnson started in 2009. You can check out Maureen’s initial post here.

Why Create and not Blog?

For starters, I’m still getting used to not cringing every time I see blog used as a verb. But I’m not the grammar police, because if I was I’d have already been picked up by Internal Affairs for my past abuse and misuse of commas.

Midway through the writing version of March Madness, I realized that I seriously needed to work on changing my writing habits. I’ve been a longtime spurter*, and it’s way past time for a change. Or at least, time to try a new approach.

By calling it CEDA instead of BEDA, I can continue my March Madness goals to keep working on my writing by actually writing; be it my YA WIP, the Script Frenzy project that I’m working on with my friend and writing partner, Jenn, my blog, or something else that just can’t wait to be written. (My characters from other works seem to like to make sudden appearances when I’m trying to fall asleep and rattle off epically awesome pieces of inner monologue, description, etc. I think I need to put new batteries in my tape recorder, because by the time I grab my cell or notebook, the words don’t appear so epically awesome. Well, most of the time they are still epically awesome, just epically awesome piles of crap.)

CEDA’s focus is to allow myself to focus on daily writing while not limiting myself to just one project. After all, writers actually write instead of just talking about writing. And I am a writer. I will write every day. I will get the words on paper. I will, in the words of the great Nike slogan; Just do it.

My goals for CEDA:

Write 1-2 chapters in my YA WIP.

Complete a 100 page screenplay with Jenn for Script Frenzy

Write and post 10-15 blog entries.

And because I'm such a geek for statistics, I made a spreadsheet to keep track of my total words/pages. Based on previous chapters, screenplays, and blogs; I estimate I'll see about 35,000 words. Now just to find someone willing to give me a dollar a word. I'd even settle for a penny a word.

* I should really get off my high horse about blog as a verb, because here I am using a rare noun form of the word spurt.

March Madness Goals

So a few days ago, on March 9th to be exact, I signed up for Denise Jaden's Awesome March Madness, I mean it's not the March Madness of basketball fame, but still it is very very cool. Plus it allowed me to set some goals:

So without further ado, here are my goals for March Madness:

1. Write at least one chapter in my current YA WIP.

2. Write and post at least 5 blog entries in my poor neglected Livejournal.

3. Write at least 500 words a day. So by the end of March I will have 15,500 new words. Of course, they'll be spread across a few different projects, but they'll still be new words.

4. Prepare for Script Frenzy. Get to know my characters - who they are and what do they want. Unless, of course, this is cheating.

5. Try to read at least half my current to-read pile.

6. Try to avoid overusing the phrase "at least."

7. Also I'm working on limiting my Pepsi intake to three can a day. (So far today, I've only had one.)

So without counting this sentence I am at 267 words. (Yes, I am ignoring the fact that I signed up for it on March 9, so I have eight days or 4,000 words to make up for.)

267 down, 15,233 to go.