Beth Alvarez - Author of Epic Fantasy

  • Day Eight: Five Quick Fixes for the Stalled Story

    In my meandering path to becoming an author, I’ve discovered that nobody reads quite the same way that writers do. We read for pleasure, but we also read to improve our craft, gain inspiration to create our own stories, learn more about genres and themes we aren’t yet familiar with, discover tropes and trends… the list goes on and on.

    So with people who are both readers and writers on my mind, since April is Read Self-Published month, I thought I’d use today to share a few tricks I’ve used in writing to jumpstart a story when it feels like it’s flagging. I’ve been using it to resuscitate my current WIP, so it’s a good time to do it. These suggestions have been culled from dozens of things I’ve tried, so they may not work for you the way they have for me–but they’re always worth a try!

    1. The quick recharge

    When you’re slogging through a story and you can’t seem to make headway, it’s important to evaluate what the problem is. Is the problem the story, or is the problem you? The first step is making sure you’re present and focused, ready to work. And the first step in doing that is… walking away from your WIP for a few minutes. No, really! If you can’t focus on your work, there’s obviously something else nagging for your attention, whether you know it or not. So if you can’t get going, back up and restart by taking a few minutes to clear your head.

    Take a quick inventory of how you feel, both physically and emotionally. Have you eaten? Have you had enough water to drink? Are you tired? Have a headache? Worried about someone? Still stressed after work? Address any of these that need to be solved before you try to work. If you’re just feeling scatterbrained, there are a few things that can replenish your focus. A short walk is a great option if the weather is nice, especially since the job of writing requires us to be unpleasantly sedentary.

    Otherwise, consider doing a few stretches, breathing exercises, or meditate for a few minutes before you sit down to write. Audio always helps me focus, so consider something soothing like MyNoise.net or even binaural beats, like what’s available on brain.fm. It may light a fire under you to set a timer for 15 minutes and just plan to write until the timer goes off. Or you might just need to establish a ritual to help you sink into your work; I try to make myself a cup of tea before writing sessions. Plus, the caffeine is always great for an extra little kick of motivation.

     

    2. If a scene (or book) is boring to write, it’s not vital to the story being told.

    I’m not talking about difficult scenes; every story has those. The one you dread, the one that puts your stomach in knots, the one that challenges and drains you to write. In some ways, these are worse. They’re not difficult–they’re just bland.

    If you’re in love with the story you’re writing, you should be excited to sit down and write. If it just feels like a slog, the best thing you can do is sit back and figure out what exactly went wrong. One solid way to do this is to ask one question: What does this scene do to help me reach the ending?

    If you can’t answer that question, you’ve found your problem.

    Regardless of content, every scene helps propel us toward the story’s end. If you’re bored writing it, people will be bored reading it. If the scene doesn’t have a meaning, inject one. It’s okay to have slow parts and it’s okay to have fluff scenes like a character learning to cook, so long as they’re achieving something. But if it’s not helping your character grow, helping them form connections, or pushing them toward the story’s ultimate goal, it’s time to back up and revise… or consider cutting the scene entirely.

     

    3. Take a shower.

    The internet loves “shower thoughts” – those poignant realizations we only seem to have when we’re alone under the shower head with no one to voice them to and no way to write them down. Showers are soothing and restorative, and feeling refreshed can make it easier for you to tackle your next piece of writing.

    Whenever I find myself stuck in a story, there’s no faster way for me to solve the problem than to get in the shower while I’m thinking about writing. As soon as I can’t commit anything to paper, solutions just start spilling out, and the plot problems I’m trying to solve dissolve faster than the fancy bath bombs a dear friend sent me. The mental exercise of trying to remember everything I come up with until I can reach a pad of paper is good for me, too, even though it can be a tad frustrating.

     

    4. When you’re out of ideas, bring in a guy with a gun.

    This is an old piece of advice from the days of pulp fiction and it’s still incredibly valuable. If your project is flagging, there’s a very real chance it’s because the stakes aren’t high enough. If you hit a lull, it’s time for a guy with a gun to walk in the door.

    This doesn’t have to be literal, of course, but it’s reflective of something true of every story: The stakes are always death. Sometimes it’s the death of a romance or relationship, or the death of a dream or career. Others, it’s actual, literal death for your character. Whatever the case is, figure out what blow will push your characters to the next level of struggle within the story. Then write it, right where you are, dropping it into the story with no warning. You can iron out the transition later, but it creates a pivotal moment in your story that will put your readers on their toes–and you, too.

    If that doesn’t work, consider the George R. R. Martin approach. Story stalled out? Just pick someone and kill them off.

     

    5. If all else fails, shelve it.

    Sometimes you just can’t escape it. If nothing you do breathes life back into the story, it’s a good indicator it wasn’t ready to be told yet. It’s still only half-baked, so the best thing you can do is put it back in the oven and let it cook a while longer.

    Ideas don’t have expiration dates. The story I’m working on right now has been shelved for years. The first time I tried to write it, it tanked immediately. Nothing I did could get it going, so I put it away. Now that it’s had time to bake longer, I’m better prepared. After all, I’ve had the problems in the story slowly working themselves out in the back of my head for years. So now, it’s actually moving; not well, but for different reasons. The story itself is ready, but as I work through it and discover the changes I have to make to the original plan, I’m calling the previous four solutions into play.

    Yesterday’s word count was 665, done in two ten-minute sprints, so I’d take that as a clear indicator it’s working.

  • Day Seven: Back in That Cycle

    On the plus side, I had a nice little ten-minute sprint right after lunch yesterday. The downside is that after shifting everything else aside to make ten minutes of writing after lunch, everything else on yesterday’s agenda fell apart and I didn’t end up getting anything else written at all. My total word count for yesterday was 282, so here we go–the second go-round of having an unproductive day I’ll now have to make up for.

    The good news is we’re to the weekend now, so I should be able to make up those lost words tomorrow… assuming I don’t fall any farther behind.
    Another piece of good news is that I don’t think it’ll take me quite so many words to finish the story as I originally estimated; I planned for 10,000 words, but I think it’ll end closer to 8,000. I only have two chapters left to write, though I may split the last one, depending on how long it gets. Even if I do split it into three chapters, it won’t be much longer than 8,000 words. I’m tempted to lower my overall word count goal on the Pacemaker project to reflect the lower number, but I may wait until I’m just a bit closer to finishing this project.

    I still feel like me being sick is the biggest hurdle I need to overcome. On days when I’m well, falling behind means I can fit in a little extra work before bed if I need to, but doing that while I’m ill seems to be greatly detrimental to my recovery. I’m into my third week of being sick, though, and I don’t know what else I can do. I’ve had days where I can write up to five thousand words if I really need to, but those only happen when I’m feeling my best, so they’re few and far between. As cool as it would be to practically knock this story out in one day like that, it’s just not what’s best for me right now.

    I’m trying to make slow and steady my mantra for this project; I can always try to go faster on the next one, whenever I’m feeling better.

  • Day Six: Setting Schedules

    As much as I love plans and planning, I’ll be honest… I don’t really like schedules. Rigid timeframes aren’t kind to creativity, rest, and sometimes, not even kind to productivity. But they are a necessary evil. They can help motivate, setting deadlines and landmarks along a roadmap for each project.

    Basically, yesterday wasn’t great for writing and I need to take a critical look at working writing into my day a little better. I did reach my goal–I aimed for 550 words and ended up with 599. The problem is I didn’t reach it until about an hour after my bedtime, when I crawled back out of bed, overwhelmed with guilt at not reaching my target word count.

    The day started with great intentions. I planned to break my writing up into a few small sprints scattered through the afternoon, so I could free up some time in the evening to spend with my family. Needless to say, it didn’t happen. Since I’m still sick (and may be sick forever, feels like) I’m moving a lot slower than I’m used to, so everything on my to-do list took longer than anticipated. Couple that with an extra-needy four-year-old and a labor-intensive dinner on the menu, and I didn’t sit down to write until around 7:45. From 7 to 8 in the evening is the hour I usually have set aside for a chunk of writing or writing-related work, so you can see I got an awfully late start! Sprint one happened then, before getting the little one ready to go to bed… sprint two happened after she was finally asleep, and sprint three happened long after I should have been asleep, but wasn’t.

    I have to get better about fitting this in. I don’t know where or how I’ll fit it in, though. Blog posts are easy; they don’t take a lot of brain power and can be assembled in chunks by talking at my phone while I wash dishes and correcting Siri’s mistakes and whatever my four-year-old assistant added whenever I can spare a second to look.

    I wish dictating fiction were so easy. I’ve looked into it before and I really want to try dictation as a writing aid, but something about trying to dictate a story instead of something like this–where I speak to my blog as if I’m speaking directly to you, the reader–just makes my tongue seize up. So I suppose I’ll stick to the old-fashioned keyboard or pen method for now, and just try to get better at scheduling writing blocks. Today, I’ll try my first sprint immediately after lunch.

    After struggling yesterday, I’m hesitant to up the goal just yet. I’m shooting for 550 again today, but I’m also setting the goal of finding a couple times through the day I can carve out specifically for writing.

  • Day Five: Back on Track

    Yesterday’s catch-up efforts went well. I logged a total of 1,026 words, which put me right where I needed to be. Now that I’m back on track, I can hopefully start inching a little higher–instead of 500 today, I’ll aim for 550. If that goes well, maybe I’ll shoot for 600 tomorrow.

    In some ways, the work I got done was also a bit frustrating. My catch-up 500 words happened earlier in the afternoon, written in two ten-minute sessions spaced a couple hours apart. The latter 500 was done in one sitting but ended up taking an entire hour.

    So what’s with the big discrepancy in productivity? The longer I write, the more I find that’s just the way I work best. Big breaks between writing sessions let me recharge, puzzle through action and dialogue, work out plot problems and find ways around roadblocks as I get to them. There’s less need to plan ahead when I’m doing little chunks at a time, which means when I go back to the project, I’ve got stuff sitting in the forefront of my mind, just waiting for me to write it down.

    On the other hand, When I sit down for a solid chunk of writing, I have to do all that problem-solving while I’m sitting there, and it slows me down considerably.

    If I ever became a full-time writer, I’d probably want to work in small chunks, flittering to and from my laptop as I work through things. It’s beneficial in multiple ways, because I sometimes work better at other things in small chunks, too. Folding the laundry? Just do one basket, then take a break to write a paragraph. Then we’ll get to the second basketful. Weeding the garden? Fifteen minutes in this section, then take a lemonade break.

    This method works well for lots of people, too–not just those with flighty attention spans like me. My mom struggles with chronic illness, but working in little 15-minute sessions once an hour gives her plenty of time to rest between jobs, as well as letting her regain her focus so she can stay on task.

    I haven’t figured out how to work writing spurts into my normal schedule just yet, but I’ll continue to puzzle over that and see where I can squeeze it in. After all, if I could get to where I write 1,000 words a day in four ten-minute bursts scattered through the whole day, I’d get through this project a lot faster.

    For today, I’ll try to break my 550 words into three ten-minute chunks and see if I can scatter them through the afternoon to free up my evening for other work. We’ll see how that goes.

  • Day Four: Playing Catch-up

    Yesterday’s word count fared a little better at 525, but it wasn’t enough to make significant headway into making up for Sunday’s lost time. Catching up is hard, especially if you’re someone who doesn’t handle pressure very well. But I set a deadline for myself, so I need to see it through.

    Aside from this cold I can’t seem to shake, the biggest obstacle I’ve encountered is that I just don’t feel like working on this story. I’ll talk more about that another time, though–maybe tomorrow, depending on how well my efforts today work out.

    Today I’m going to try to work on catching up. My little helper came to get us out of bed at 6 this morning, so our day’s gotten a slightly earlier start than usual. I’m hoping to use that to my advantage and make up for Sunday’s lost words. We’ll take care of all our responsibilities first, freeing up the afternoon for work. Or, that’s the plan, anyway. We had a rainy day yesterday, but it’s supposed to clear up today. If I know for sure it’s going to be clear and dry, I might take my laptop out to the backyard with me to squeeze in a little work while she plays. Otherwise, a notebook is a safer bet, if considerably slower.

    One thing I’ve learned about myself is that I can’t bunch catch-up work right against regular work, or I get tired, burned out, or just plain overwhelmed and can’t make any real progress. I tend to work best in short sprints of 5-10 minutes anyway, so breaking up the word count through the day is a better way for me to work. I’d prefer to do all my work that way eventually, but I haven’t been able to work it out just yet.

    Of course, it’d probably be easier if this was a project I was excited to be working on. When I was finishing the first draft of the last book in the (yet-unpublished) Snakesblood Saga, I was consistently able to pound out 200-300 words in my 5-10 minute sprints, so my daily word counts were much higher. This project has been a struggle since the beginning, but I’m sure I’ll feel better about it once I get the first draft done.

    12% done so far; hopefully we’ll reach 20% before the end of the day.

  • Day Three: Sick Days

    33 words.

    That was all I got done yesterday; nowhere near my goal of 500. Pretty discouraging for a start, but I’m trying to give myself a little leeway. I’ve been sick for weeks, and though I felt better over the weekend, I did a serious crash and burn last night, curling up on the couch and almost falling asleep before dinner even though I basically never nap. I tried to make myself work anyway, but the Ny-Quil got the better of me before I could get very far, so 33 words is all I managed to write.

    Like many who take this path, I daydream about reaching a point where I can consider writing a full-time job and earn enough doing it to feel like it’s a real job, too. But the problem is, unlike a decent full-time job I could get elsewhere, writing doesn’t come with paid sick days.

    One of the great appeals of self-employment is setting your own schedule. Unfortunately, this also usually means your schedule is set with many more hours than what you’d be working at a typical job. I have friends doing it full-time and it’s not uncommon for them to work 10-14 hours a day. Every day, including weekends. I have friends doing it as a side gig to their day jobs, and they usually log 8-9 hours at the day job and then come home to spend 5-6 hours working on their writing.

    Writing is work. Writing is hard work, and until you treat it like a job, you’re really just a hobbyist. People get mad when other writers say that, but to be a writer, you must write. And for writing books to be your full-time job, you have to treat it like it is.

    This is a place I personally struggle. I’m a parent first and foremost, the primary caregiver to my daughter, who is quite a busybody. I have other interests and hobbies, plenty of responsibilities, and dozens of other things that call for my attention. Right now, a couple hours a day is really all I can manage–which is why I’m really just a part-time writer at this point in my life.

    Like most part-time jobs, calling out because I’m sick means forfeiting compensation and struggling to catch up later. It’s just that at this point in time, the only compensation I get is words on paper, rather than monetary gain. Unlike a real part-time job, I can call out as often as I need to without fearing my job will be lost. I can pick it up again any time I want. But each day I step away from it is another loss, so I can’t keep putting it aside. I’ll be trying to make up for lost time over the next few days, but I might stick to daytime cold medicine for the rest of this cold–or this project, whichever lasts longer. Right now, it’s seeming like the cold.

  • Day Two: Keeping Track

    Since I started keeping a planner, one of the things I’ve used it for is tracking my daily writing. I do well with a physical calendar to keep track of my work. The problem is that if I move my work between computers, or if I dictate pieces into my phone, it gets harder to keep accurate track of my word counts. Last year, there was an enormous discrepancy between the words logged in my planner’s calendar and the word counts in the actual projects I wrote. I’m hoping to avoid that this year.

    I still plan to keep everything written in my planner, if only because I like the act of actually writing down the numbers. But I’m also experimenting with logging them in a different way. I’ve encountered lots of authors who use phone apps to track their word counts, but the pickings are slim for iOS. Instead, I’m giving a site a try.

    Pacemaker (http://pacemaker.press) might work, so it’s what I’m using for now. Since I can access it from any computer (and my phone) I should be a bit more accurate about logging word counts–I’ll be able to save my counts from anywhere, so long as I have an internet or data connection. I’m still working out how to use the site, and some features are only available to paid accounts, but I’ll write up a full post with my thoughts on the site once this project is complete and I have a better feel for things.

    In any event, I wrote 602 words last night. It’s a small number compared to what I’m used to, but that’s why I set my daily goal as 500 words for now. It gives me a chance to ease into it and get things rolling again. I had hoped to get a higher count today, but I doubt it’s going to happen. I was excited about feeling better yesterday, but ha-ha, April Fool’s, I’m back to being sick today. If I can still make it to 500, I’ll be happy enough with that. We’ll start pushing upwards later.

    In the meantime, here’s a widget showing my progress for my WIP. I’ll try to remember to include this in each post so it’s easy to reference, but we’ll see how well that works. For now, I’m off to try to write.

  • Day One of a New Project

    I suppose technically, it’s not day one. I started this project at the beginning of the year, but life happened and got in the way. It’s been shelved for several months while I get things in order, but now it’s a new month, and that means a good time to start working on it again.

    But getting started again isn’t as easy as I thought it would be.

    I work best when I have momentum behind me. It’s easier to muster the will to sit down and write something every day when I’ve been doing it for every day, and I’m pushing three months without writing anything of importance at all. It’s been there in the back of my head since this morning, but I haven’t been able to sit down and make myself concentrate. Getting back into the groove is going to be tough.

    Partly to help hold me accountable while I’m getting back into the swing of things, I’ll be posting something short to my blog every day while I get this short story done, most likely just a brain-spill of the difficulties I had in writing, or getting to writing, or something along those lines.

    The trouble of getting back into the groove is one of the reasons I picked a small project to get rolling with. I’m shooting for just 10,000 words and giving myself a bit over two weeks to do it. If the story finishes before that, then great! I’ll be aiming for 500 words a day for the first week or so, working my way up to 1,000 words a day to finish the project. That should give me enough momentum rolling into the next project that I’ll be able to hit my goals for it fairly easily.

    And who knows–maybe if the blogging-about-it-every-day works out for me, I might blog my way through the next project, too.
    Until then, I have a story to write, so I’d better get cracking.

    Rusty or not, 500 words should be easy, right?

  • Splitting projects to help them grow

    New names. More words. New plans.

    It’s been a frustrating few months, but now that I’m getting a clear vision of what’s still to come, I’m finally feeling a little better about everything going on.

    If you haven’t guessed, I’m talking about my epic fantasy series, the Snakesblood Saga.

    Different books have different needs. I’ve always felt like my paranormal stories are better served by an indie path, which is why I’m still planning to release my upcoming paranormal series on my own. There’s not as deep or wide of a traditional market for paranormal books, which means anything that breaks from the current ideal market isn’t going anywhere traditionally. The ones that get turned down aren’t bad books… they just aren’t the “hot now” category. YA and shifter stories are the big sellers in the past year. Next year, who knows what it’ll be.

    From the time I started working on the Snakesblood Saga, I always envisioned it working best as a traditionally published series. Now that I’m older and have more experience–not just with writing, but with the different facets of the indie world–I’m not married to the idea, but I do want to give it another shake before I look at alternate venues.

    In the past, this has been a difficult subject for me to discuss. I’ve had a lot of people ask me why? or why not? when it comes to my choices to pursue traditional publication over an indie route for this particular series. The difficulty has nothing to do with my feelings on the state of publishing and everything to do with that I don’t know how to explain it to people who don’t already have intimate knowledge of the series.

    I am not rejecting the idea of an indie route, and indie publication is not “less” in any way. It’s not the last resort, it’s not vanity press, it’s not a sign of failure for an author to pursue it. Mind you, I’ve chosen the indie route for my upcoming paranormal series despite interest from traditional publishers, simply because it’s what’s best for the series. In some ways, this whole situation has everything turned upside down. Indie authors are used to having to defend themselves and their decision to self-publish, but this is the first time I’ve ever had to defend my choices to pursue traditional publication!

    The thing is, regardless of what you know about the series, traditional publishing offers me a few small advantages I may not have otherwise. I’ve made headway into identifying branding and design for paranormal books, but I don’t have familiarity with what sort of covers and descriptions will sell epic fantasy. They also have a wide range of distribution, and fantasy readers tend to love the weight of a beefy paperback book in their hands. These aren’t insurmountable obstacles for the indie author, but when I’d rather be spending my time writing the next book instead of researching covers and colors and whatnot, it’d be nice to have someone else in my corner.

    But traditional publishing has its downfalls, too. For one, though I’ve gotten positive reactions to the overall quality of my writing, the main response I’ve gotten from traditional agents is that for an unknown author, my fantasy books are just too long. A good story will sell itself, but let’s be real. Publishing houses are concerned with one thing: profits. The bigger a book is, the more expensive it is to edit and have printed, cutting into their overheads. After spending several years querying and getting that response time and time again, it means it’s time to suck it up and try something different.

    Each of the books in the Snakesblood Saga will have to be split and revised.

    In some ways, this may be a blessing; I originally cut a great deal of content from the series for fear of the books getting too big. They got too big anyway. So when I cut the first book into two volumes, that gives me a little leeway to go back and put in everything I’d originally removed. This means a richer world, a deeper story, and lots more little intricate details weaving everything together. I’m excited about that, if not excited about all the heavy editing and rewriting to put this lost content back in place.

    In the long run, I think this will be best for the series. It’s not how I planned things, but it gives me room to grow, while also getting each volume down below the recommended word count per book in this genre. It just means a little more work, plus more time before queries can resume.

    The least thrilling part of the whole situation as been coming to terms with the fact that splitting the books means finding more titles.

    Titles are my bane. For me, the worst part of writing is coming up with a name for a book. This particular situation makes it even worse; the 3 current titles come from events that happen late in each book, so they’re going to have to become the titles of books 2, 4, and 6. That means new names for the first volumes. Names for 3 and 5 came pretty easily, but I’ve spent several weeks warring with myself over a title for the first book. I didn’t understand why it was so hard until my awesome friend Megan laid it out for me: nothing was going to sound right because I’ve been calling the first book Serpent’s Tears for the past fifteen years.

    And it’s true. I reached that title for the series when I first began writing it, years and years ago. Shifting it from book one to book two has been difficult and awkward, even if it’s still technically being used for the volume it’s relevant to. It also leaves a big void to fill. The new title for the first volume has to be relevant not only to the first volume, but to the entire series. No small feat!

    It took a while, but I did finally settle on a title for book one yesterday. Serpent’s Tears will now be the name of book two, and volume one–the first book in the soon-to-be six-book series–will be called Serpent’s Mark.

    I’ve been giving my site a slow overhaul, so I’ll be changing the information on the project overview page soon… I’m just not sure when.

    In the meantime, that new laptop is calling me. We have a lot of work to do. bringing these books to life.

  • After Undeath: Books One and Two Box Set Now Available!

    After Undeath: Books One and Two Box Set Now Available!

    After Undeath box setIt was a long time coming, but the two books that constitute the After Undeath series are now available together as a box set!

    It’s available from Amazon for $4.99 (which is cheaper than the two books separately, of course) or you can read the whole thing for free with Kindle Unlimited.

    If you’re a new reader, this is a great opportunity to get started!

    You can pick up your copy here:

    After Undeath: Books One and Two Box Set

    I’ll have more writing news to share soon, but I’m going to keep it under wraps a bit longer.

    Happy reading!

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