ieva melgalve » plans

a new year and all that stuff

ieva — Sun, 02 Jan 2011 10:14:49 +0000

I scheduled myself a “down-time” for December (which was a good thing because last year, I tried to dedicate myself to all kinds of writing/editing/whatnot, and burned myself out). Now, it’s January, and I’m back to do stuff.
This will be a boring year, mainly consisting of editing and just a bit of new writing done (and that only because there’s NaNoWriMo).
So, to list all my (as I said, very boring) resolutions.
1) Edit Vega. I have restarted working on that, and it seems that finally I understand what I was supposed to do in HTRYN. This is a complex plan which includes write-in in English, type-in in Latvian (which sounds slightly less crazy than it is… theoretically, I do have the skill to do that) and then getting back to English somehow.
2) Write a short story that I’ve promised to write, in Latvian. I’m feeling apprehensive about this, mainly because this requires me to change my thinking from writing-as-a-hobby to writing-as-a-job. However, I have a decent idea, and this seems like a good opportunity to change my thinking. (Temp title “Contused”.)
3) Write NaNoWriMo.
4) Participate in local writing group for beginning writers (I will be leading the crit sessions, with occasional advice on practical aspects of the writing–the heavy theoretical part will be covered by a guy who actually knows theory).

The editing is definitely the biggest project; big enough for me to dread it if I look at it as a whole. However, the separate bits of the project might just be doable. So that is what I’ll be doing, going step by step and looking out of snags.
The most important thing about editing, for me, is to realize that editing is not a punishment for bad writing. Editing is a brand new thing to do on the basis of the existing project. Of course, it is sort of horrible to look at my own writing and realize that 1) it is very rubbishy 2) I was actually very happy with it as I wrote it, but well. I guess that at least one thing will happen during editing: I will figure out the main shortcomings of my writing and probably work on fixing them.

i’m a hunter

ieva — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 09:05:22 +0000

Yesterday, I did a quick math about how much would I be able to accomplish if I worked slowly/fast/very fast over several years, played with my speed and varied the planning, writing and editing lengths and frequency to figure out how would I accomplish more without burning out. As a result, I got two years planned out (quite satisfactory) and I also felt incredibly bored by the prospect to write in that time frame.
“Writing isn’t fun,” I decided. “It doesn’t have to be fun. It hasn’t been fun for two months or so, and it probably never will. That’s fine. It doesn’t have to be fun, has it? Granted, I stopped writing when it stopped to be fun last time around, but I was not this determined then.”
Then I stumbled on this article in Seth Godin’s blog and realized that I’d been wrong and I’ve been hurting myself for two months. (Go ahead. Read that article. It’s good.)
It seems that I’m way more a hunter than a farmer.
This is why I like advertising (the life span of a single project is usually very short, and it’s all about hunting for that seemingly random idea that is just so cool). This is why I like weird stuff happening to me. This is why I do horrible (or beautiful) stuff because I’m so spontaneous.
This is why after making a two-year plan for writing (and arriving at really promising results) I thought, oh my God, this is hell–and some people even do that for living?
This is why after buying a small Moleskine Volante (they’re the most pocket-sized of their pocket-sized notebooks) and frantically noting a cool character name with a short description, and a magic system that comes along with the inherent conflict, I felt awesome.

I’ll keep thinking about that, to see which tools and technologies for writing are hunter-stuff and which are farmer-stuff, and which are both.
In the meanwhile–what do you think describes you better, farmer or hunter?
Also, listen to awesomely awesome “Hunter” by Björk. That’s the same thing.

January recap

ieva — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 21:41:35 +0000

On January I had one false start on Virgin. I got the protagonist wrong–she was one of those whiny creatures thinking that all the society had wronged her; and even though she was right, I hated her. So I stopped to regroup and figured out the right start in the last quarter in January. The 4K I have now seem to indicate that it’s more or less fine now (although I really should do some character sketches and planning!). Also, I’m doing fine with 250 word challenge. 250 words seem to be an amount I can easily write under almost any circumstances, so good for weekends too.

Editing is jumpy, some days I work like crazy, some days I’m not approaching my index cards at all. That’s something I intend to improve over February, or else the edits will take forever.

Plans for next month: I’m hoping to write (or edit to a good second draft) a short story, get Virgin to 10K and keep on editing. Since I will have a lot to do at work, no big plans yet, just not to lose whatever momentum I have now.

New Year’s Plan

ieva — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 20:21:39 +0000

Everybody must have some resolution, right? Well, mine isn’t really a resolution, it’s a not-too-ambitious plan of what I could accomplish without driving myself nuts (either with burn-out or lazy-crap-writer syndrome that kicks in whenever I don’t write much).

1. Edit Vega to the final, query-able version. (That’ll be the hardest, but I believe that with How To Revise Your Novel course I’ll be able to do that. And I’ll start working on that very soon, very likely tomorrow.)
2. Edit at least 12 stories to the final, submittable versions. That’s roughly one story a month, and totally doable if I apply myself to that.
3. Write a new novel (the one code-named Virgin perhaps?). I think I’ll start writing right now because basically, I don’t get the real “feel” or the scope of the novel yet. Sounds upside-down? Well, no. I reckon that the most painless and reliable way to get the “feel” of the novel is to write a chapter or two. That feel will determine whether it’s primarily an action-based stuff with weird magic or is it a psychological piece, or a cozy dealing-with-sexuality story, or a horror that would make me stay awake at nights. Or, if the first chapters feel wrong, well, then I’ll know it’s wrong and try the opposite approach. It’s not the scientific way but it’s a way to make sure I enjoy writing something I will very likely *not* enjoy writing.
(By the way: why writing if I have so much to edit? I think it’s necessary for me to write. I re-started writing because I’m hooked on that; if my editing will mess with my writing, I’ll drop them both as I actually did two weeks ago. So I’ll do both, in a sorta accomplishment-reward vicious circle.)

What I believe I’ll also do: write a handful of new stories and, most likely, participate in NaNoWriMo again (with a subsequent burn-out in December again), but I’m not putting it in my plan because I don’t want to allow myself to fail at my first two resolutions and excuse it with “oh, but I did the stories and the NaNo”.

That’s it. May you (whoever is reading this) have plans so cool that making them come true feels great and, well, not easy, but tremendously rewarding.
All else is luck and gifts from above, and I believe that these things will come to you on their own accord and in their own time, when they’re most needed.

plans of self-torture

ieva — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 11:48:58 +0000

So, I’m going to write a novel during NaNoWriMo. (Who isn’t?)
Also, I’m trying to plan my future somewhat (more a cold-shower exercise, not a snuggles-and-dreams one).
One thing that I’ve been avoiding is marking down “then, I’ll edit my NaNoWriMo novel to completion” point. The reasons are obvious: if I write something in that ungodly speed (approximately two times faster than I do on the good days, and doing it every day) it’s very likely to be crap and editing crap is worse than writing a different, non-crap novel to edit.
There are two drawbacks to this attitude (apart from that it’s messing with my neat novel-writing plans):
1) there’s hardly any value, at my present stage of development, in writing a first draft I won’t be looking at again, so I don’t give my NaNo thing full attention (and that makes it more useless),
2) at my present stage of development I need to focus on hard-core editing as a skill; something I can do on any draft, no matter how crappy it is, because, well, because it’s a part of being a writer. I know I detest it but damn if I care what I think of it.

So here’s my resolution: I will finish my NaNo novel and then I will schedule some time to edit it, and I will edit it to perfection. No matter how long it takes. No mater how much blood and snot and tears it’ll take.
Hear me roar.