Writing Game: Seven Minutes In (Writing) Heaven

     This is a little writing game designed to get your mind working and the juices flowing.  You can use it as a warm-up for before you start the brunt of the day's writing, or as a pass-time when you've got down-time and want to keep your writing skills sharp.  Whatever you want to use it for, here's how to play Seven Minutes In (Writing) Heaven.
   
Note:  Closet neither included nor required

What You'll Need:

3 containers of a reasonable size
Paper
At least one die
Writing materials
A stop watch or other time-telling device

Set-Up:

1.  Get all your things together in one place (always useful)
2.  Tear your pieces of paper into small slips
3.  Separate your slips into three piles
4.  Take the first pile; on these slips of paper, write the names of all the characters you might be using.  In the second pile, write down a number of locations, real, fictional, inside, outside--whatever you can think of.  In the third pile, write out a number of events or conflicts that you might want to use.
5.  Put each pile into a separate pile; shake and mix liberally

Game Play:

1.  Roll your dice.
2.  Whatever number you come up with, that's the number of characters to pick from the first container
3.  Pick one slip from each of the remaining containers
4.  Set your timer/observe the clock; you now have exactly seven minutes to write a short story using the criteria you've gathered.  With any luck, you'll produce something you can use either as a scene in a story, or at least learn a little bit more about your characters, their motivations, and relationships.

Word Count Hangman

     It can be hard to meet your word count goal.  Whether you're writing a novel, a poem, or a short story, sometimes we get hung up or frustrated, or (most insidious of all) we convince ourselves that we can "just do it tomorrow," which as many writers know is how books end up six feet under.
     To help with this process, you can check out a tricks-and-tips article here OR you can play this nifty little game I made up called Word Count Hangman.  It's like regular Hangman, only word count-ier

The Set Up:

     Print out a picture of one of the following:

          ~You
          ~Someone you love
          ~A beloved character from your current project

     I recommend option three if you're dealing in fiction, but they all work.  Just make sure that it's a full-body image, and not the original.  Cut off each of the limbs and set up a piece of cork board (or a piece of construction paper, etc.) above your writing space and get some tape or tacks together; set up the gallows, decide on your word count, and get to work!

The Game Play:

     If you miss your word count for the day, a body part goes up.  If all the body parts go up, you lose and your character/loved one is dead!  You can add your own consequences for a loss, or go up against another writing buddy to see who is the last to miss all X# of writing days (or hang the other one first, if that's what gets those fingers tapping!).
     If you have no one to compete against and want to make the game a little more interesting, add a second board; one for heroes and one for villains.  For every word count goal you MISS, your protagonist comes one step closer to their untimely demise, but for every goal met your ANTAGONIST comes another step closer to death.
     The game resets every so often, depending on your expertise: once a week for beginners, once a month for experts, and once a year for those of you who really want to murder something you love.

The Rules:

1.  Be honest.  The only person you hurt by giving yourself slack is you; if this isn't motivating enough a game for you, maybe you should give something else a try.
2.  If you're competing with someone else, make sure to discuss things like resets and limb numbers beforehand to level the playing field.
4. Possibly the most important rule of all, have fun!  What is the purpose of writing if not to enjoy oneself?

If you have any suggestions to spice up the game, just let me know!  Maybe they'll make it into version 2.0 ;)

A Few Ways To Elevate Wordcount

     Camp NaNoWriMo has come, and if you're anything like me, you may be throwing yourself whole-heartedly into the fray.  Also like me, you may, at any time of the year, have some trouble meeting your daily word count goals.  But never fear!  TheSpiderWriter is here, and with a few different methods to help you reach them!


1. Hold yourself accountable.

     Yes, yes, this seems fairly self-evident, but for some people it works really well!  Just set a goal for yourself, and take something you enjoy doing, then don't allow yourself to do it until you finish.        Conversely, you can take something you dislike doing, and force yourself to do it if you don't meet your goal--like drinking straight vinegar or (if you're a vinegar-loving freak like me) playing the game you most hate with your most insufferable family member at least once through.
     But if that doesn't work, you can always....


2. Have someone ELSE hold you accountable.

    Sometimes asking yourself to not give in to temptation is just too much; how can you resist the siren song of white chocolate chip cookies?  How can you say no to a dip in your jacuzzi (u successful author superhero u)?  Why would you stick your paper-cut hand into a vat of lemon juice?  In cases like this, sometimes a little external motivation is necessary, which means that it's time to bring in a partner in crime.  Ask someone close to you to do the "holding accountable" for you--give them the key to your DVD chest and ask them never to allow you into it if you can't show them a verified word count first, or have them wake you by dousing you in ice cold water if you didn't meet your goal the night before.
     As long as it gets you working, then it's a success!


3. Pit yourself against someone

     For some people, rewards and punishments just don't work.  Maybe you don't have the resources available to you to make the reward/punishment system feasible, or perhaps you find the rules a little too arbitrary to follow.  Whatever the case, there are alternatives.
     Competition is part of nature, and some of us are more competitive than others; writers are usually very self-competitive, so you could do something like try to beat your record for most words in a month; to make it real, set up a winner's wall where you record your score every time you push the envelope, or a shame space where you record each new low.
     If that doesn't work, ask your friends and family.  There are bound to be other writers in the thick of the it who are looking for the same upper you are.  If there's no one around, hit up Twitter or Tumblr or (spirit of the season!) sign up for Camp NaNoWriMo and spend time competing with strangers.  You never know who might turn out to be a true fiend at the end of the experience, either.
     It's worth a shot!

4. Stay in your lane

     It seems like a silly thing, but make sure you stay within your range.  I mean, it seems obvious if you tend toward high counts not to pick a battle with someone too low, but don't reach too high, either.  Yes, you want someone who's going to challenge you, but not someone who's going to smother you!  I've been the person leagues ahead of another, and as much as I try to encourage my friends, it only seems to hurt them.  You become daunted by the task ahead and give up, feeling that you'll never catch up to the giants around you.
     If your nightly word count is 150, you might want to try to befriend someone whose count is around 200; the competition is more fair and the two of you will be more able to help each other grow and pick up speed.  The same is true of the 4.5--6k range, or the 1--2.5k range; the more equally skilled the players, the fiercer and more beneficial the competition.

     But above all, my wonderful witticising writers, don't forget to keep your expectations of yourself realistic.  You can set all the 100,000 words-a-night goals you want, with all the rewards and punishments and support systems you think appropriate, but all you're going to do is kill yourself.
     Unless that goal is somehow realistic for you, in which case please share with me your secrets, as I, too, would like to exchange this mortal coil for the eternal rewards of deification, and would be happy to offer my companionship as compensation.
     And the rest of you mortals out there, let me know about all your down-and-dirty tricks--it's bound to help someone!

Writer's Resources; Family Echo (Digital Family Tree Maker)

     Family ties can be really important to a novel--and also really hard to keep track of.  For years I've been trying to find a digital family tree maker that didn't make me share my results with the rest of the world.  I needed a place to store my FICTIONAL families, not the real one, and just a couple days ago I discovered Family Echo, a, you guess it!  digital family tree maker!  *Insert generic powerpoint applause here*

     Now all software has its ups and downs, so before you rush out to go find this beautiful invention, here are some pros and cons.

PRO:

     You can make a multi-generational family that stretches in all directions.

     On-screen you can see my MC's parents, great-uncle, cousins (and second cousins) once removed, siblings, and grandparents, which is all super nifty, especially since it's a pain trying to find ways to squeeze indirect family members into the margins of family tree scaffolds.  On most family trees, if you're allowed siblings at all it's almost invariably ONLY on the final rung, and when you have complicated families like this one that just simply won't do.  

     You go Family Echo; Four for you, Family Echo.

CON:

     You see those little gray lines shooting off into space?  Those are actually continuations of the family line.  Unfortunately, Family Echo doesn't allow you to view the entire tree at once--instead, you can only see the direct blood relations to any selected individual, spouses included.  Here I've selected one of the unnamed great-grandparents at the time, and as such I can see all the way down to the Striders and Joneses--but not the Dexters or Abernathys.  I'm not sure if there's a program out there that lets you see everything at once, but if there was, it would be very very useful when you're trying to see the entire scope of a family.

PROS:

     There are a few more neat things you can do off to the side.

     Most noticeably (in this image and the last), you can add a picture that shows up over here and in the family tree, which can be super useful--who doesn't like visual aides?  It can be a symbol, a photograph, a drawing, anything you need it to be.    

     Under that, as in the first image, you can edit the character's personal details--name, gender, birth date, and (if applicable) death date; and in the second image you see before you a rough biography that you too can complete at your leisure.  Birth place, profession, company, interests, activities, and bio notes are all open to list, so this can serve not just as a family tree, but as a complete character compendium!  

     And if you have contact information for your character that you don't want to lose track of (an address you don't want to forget, a phone number you need to keep consistent, etc.) you can type it on down under the contacts section, as in the third image.

     AND, if there's anyone you want to show this to, be it a partner or friend or what have you, there's an option to share the tree with someone else (button pictured at the top of the image below).

CONS:

     This is a multi-image job right here.  Now, these are minor set-backs (as all the drawbacks of this site are), but they exist.  Firstly, step-relationships:

     I understand that genetics are, by and large, the law of the land as far as family trees go, but the brotherly relationship between the above characters, blood ties or no, is fairly important to their development, and it's inconvenient that when I click on one brother (like so)

I can't see the other.  It's not a big deal for this tree, since it's very small and self-contained, but it could be frustrating for larger trees where step-siblings are more rule than exception.  You could just pretend that they ARE biologically linked, for the sake of ease, but that doesn't quite work if your alternate parental units are characters you'd wish to include in the tree.  Like I said, it's minor, but it's still an inconvenience.  

     There's also the matter of, *ahem,* deviant families.

     This family, from a completely different work (since the other one doesn't have any families that could illustrate the point), seems fairly typical, but that's because Family Echoes (like many other family tree makers) doesn't allow for incestuous ties.  

     It's not a common thing to think about, so it makes sense, but incest is a real part of a lot of peoples' actual family trees (not that they'd like to talk about it, I'm sure), it happens in fiction, and it's the basic stuff of mythology--and this family happens to be a family of Gods, demons, angels, and hybrids.  Because of the whacked-out stuff that this family's gotten into over the course of their several-billion-year history, there should be a third generation consisting of one boy and one girl, belonging, respectively, to Darac & Bristallar and [insert unpronounceable name of madness] & Genesis.  

     Again, I don't hold these things AGAINST the makers, but they are a little inconvenient if your trees need to be unorthodox.  To get around this you can always make a second family tree consisting only of those characters and their children, but it's probably easier just to keep track on paper at that point.  

     Overall, I'd give Family Echoes four pens out of five (which is a rating system that I'm positive will catch on immediately because it is just so great and original).  It's simple, easy to use, fairly comprehensive, and has only a few minor inconveniences to side-step around.  

     Unless I find something that can manage a full five pens (and feel free to submit other programs for consideration or give me the low-down on your own findings with this one!), this is definitely the family tree maker I'll be writing with from now on.

Dual-Household Children

     Many children with separated or divorced parents experience visitation.  Sometimes the visitation is set up as a a visit paid to the child's house by the non-custodial parent, and other times the children will visit the other parent's household for a set period of time.  The latter's the one this article is designed to get you thinking about.  Forgive the slightly scattered format.


     1.          How your character feels about the situation will depend on, like everything else, the characters and situation.  Do they like the secondary parent?  More than the primary?  Or do they hate them?  Do they hate both parents?  Is there anyone living with their secondary or primary parent that they might want to spend more/less time with?  Spend some time figuring out how your characters feel about everyone involved.  Write it down and keep it in mind as you go forward.

     2.          How frequent is the visitation?  If they only see their secondary parent a few times a year, then they might be excited to get away/spend time with Parent Number 2, or they may dread the Christmas visits that they're forced into since they barely know the person at the other end of the trip.

    Some parents are very strict about visitation, and it can cause major issues if the kids can't/won't make it, but others are fairly loosey-goosey.  If the two parents in question have different outlooks, it can cause a lot of conflict.  Maybe Mom thinks Dad should be spending more time with his children, but Dad has a crazy job and doesn't think it's a big deal if he only misses two weekends a month, or maybe Dad is trying to keep the kids on track with their extracurriculars but Mom would rather have them in her house than at practice.  If the visitation is court-mandated, things can get even more tense, and whether or not the children have a say in what goes on can lessen or increase the conflict exponentially.

     When the visits are more frequent, feelings about visits might be more inconsistent and dependent on the Mood of the Week.  My brother and I are supposed to visit my father biweekly, but it switches up sometimes as our weekends fill up with extracurricular activities, two weeks on, two weeks off, week on, week off, week on, three weeks off....  (our family, you might say, is full of loose geese.)

     Sometimes we look forward to going, sometimes we feel like it's a chore.  How things are going in our heads and on the calendar impact the feelings greatly; during the school year, it can feel like an opportunity to get homework done or like a draw FROM homework (they don't have internet, which makes certain projects difficult--though perhaps your character's visitation parent is the only one WITH internet, which could certainly be a reason to enjoy/tolerate going), and in the summer it can feel like time well-spent with family out by the grill, or it can seem like time I could be spending doing something with more lasting effects.

     3.          Parents who are separated can have a myriad of different relationships--there are the unhealthy he-said-she-said types, the hateful don't-listen-to-them types, the laid back it-just-didn't-work types, the exasperated we're-so-done-I-don't-even-care-anymore types, etc. etc.

     My own parents get along pretty well--better than they ever did while they were married--but there's still friction from time-to-time.  My father can get paranoid, and he's very susceptible to the suggestions of his live-in brother and mother (disclosure: my uncle is not the best person) so sometimes there are misunderstandings and hang-ups that leave my brother and I in the middle and angry.

     4.          But by no means does this have to be the dynamic between the parents in your book!  By all means, experiment, change things up!  I get a little tired of the very cut-and-dry "I hate/love this parent and love/hate this other parent."  A lot of the time it's a lot more complicated than that, and I think it's important to make that complication more evident.

     Try drawing from your own experiences, or the experiences of your friends or family members (your own children, if the shoe fits).  It's a pretty safe bet that some individual in your life is or has been in a dual-household situation.  Ask around!  Unless their experience is particularly painful, most people won't be too hesitant to talk about it.  Hell, you could ask me, or someone else on the internet.  It's worth a shot!


     If you have any thoughts, tips, advice, or input on the subject, let me know!  The more experiences shared, the better!

Poem: Blame, Published in 2011

Note:  I've decided to start posting bits of my writing every so often (I'm kind of hoping it'll prompt me to start blogging more consistently since I Have A Problem).  This is the first poem I ever published, from way back when I was 13.  Enjoy!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hey,
What would you say
If one day
I sat you down and let you know
That all my insecurities,
Those ones I can't let go—
You are the one for whom they show?
What if I said
That the reason my soul is almost dead
Is because you shot it twice in the head
Then rolled it out of bed
Just to put it to rest
And put my body to the test?
Hey,
What would you say,
If one day
I took you aside
And said you were the reason I hide,
The reason I'm dying inside?
How would you react
If I said it was you who forced me to make the pact
That would sign over my soul?
Memories don't fade
Even when light is tossed in the shade
Of darkness, I've turned renegade,
My honesty shattered by way of grenade.
Memories will never die,
No matter how hard we try,
I'll always be spitting out a lie,
Maybe a sigh,
And the truth is I'll never touch the sky—
And I can blame you all I like,
From the failure of the hike
To the puncture of the spike,
But I'm just running from the truth.
I'm running from the veracity
Of how in everything I see,
No matter how much I peg you with this culpability,
I always have to live with hefty self-affixed fee
Of anger and frustration, and the responsibility
Of the knowledge that the culpability
Can only be affixed to me.

7 Things To Consider When Contemplating Your First NaNoWriMo

     There's a lot to learn every time you put pen to paper.  When you put fingers to keyboard 50,000+ times in a single month, you're sure to learn a thing or two.  My brain's a little fuzzy from all the wordage so I'm probably not including everything I figured out during NaNo, but here are seven things I do remember!
     Fair warning:  Most of it has more to do with the actual NaNoing than the writing itself.

1. November is the best month to write a novel.
   
        November is a perfect month to write a novel.  It's the only month I know of in which hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world are all working hard to accomplish the exact same goal in the exact same frame of time, and writers are everywhere!  Online, IRL, even your relatives become writers during NaNoWriMo!  It's a great time to dive into the writing community, because everyone has something to say, everyone's ears are wide open for advice, and everyone is looking to both support and be supported.
        Really, November is the only month out of the year where writing becomes a truly social event, and it's glorious.
   
   
   
   
2. November is the worst month to write a novel.
   
        Yeah, everyone is writing in November, but everything happens in November.  There are birthdays galore pouring in from the yearly Valentines-day procreation vapors, there are deaths to mourn, Thanksgivings to plan, Black Friday sales to either murder people over or altogether avoid, plans you have to make to see family members you don't want to see (and a lot of exercises in self-control undertaken in order to not to get in any major arguments), long stretches of time where you may not have access to the internet (which, if you're using an online word processor, can be a major set-back), plans to make to talk to family members you do want to see, etc. etc. etc.
        The point is, November is chock-full of Stuff To Do, and it's a real challenge to be able to fit it all in and then pound out roughly two thousand words a day on top.  Like adding sprinkles, only they're made of keyboard keys and make your head hurt.
        (Really, feel free to vent about all your set-back events in the comments.  It can be a tough month to get through, and I know how much it helps to just complain every so often.)
   
3. Fast drafting is like cocaine
        Not that I've ever used cocaine (that stuff on the table's just sugar, I promise), but I've heard some stories and I think the analogy holds up.
        Trying to Fast-Draft like that makes you feel like that guy from Owl City, blending up rainbows and shooting them right through your veins (or your eyeballs, but that's heroin, I guess.  So, Fast-Drafting is like... um.  Don't laugh at me, it's drugs.  Cocaine, Crack, Heroin, Ecstasy, the difference doesn't matter if you're a clean-as-a-whistle word junkie like me wink wonk).
        You're on high, forcing yourself through fifty-thousand tiers of excitement, frustration, bliss, and exhaustion.  You're screaming words into the void, doing your damnedest to make them sound pretty but not really caring as long as they're /out,/ and that feeling of progress is pretty fucking intoxicating.  You want to punch dragons and piss on ogres, and when you're on a roll you feel invincible!... but when you crash, you feel like you fell into a bespiked pit of shit from which there is no exit.  The more you touch that high, the more you crave it--but the longer you go without it the closer you get to being clean; once you reach that point it's easy to give up, get a nice respectable job as a shit-sweeper, and stop dreaming about that old silly notion that you could be a pen jockey.
        I um.  I forgot where I was going with this.  I blame fast-drafting.  *Snorts the sugar on the table and rides away on a horse-sized fountain pen*
        I guess the point is, it's not always easy to tell what's up and what's down once you get in the zone.  You're so focused on the words that nothing else seems to matter, and you want more--which makes it feel so unsatisfactory and so much like drudgery when things get hard.  You really have to either push to make everything come out, or skip around to the parts that make you feel like you're flying.
   
4. There's burn-out
   
        I finished my draft in the very extremely early morning of the twenty-ninth of November (it was like one, maybe two AM, which I still count as the twenty-eighth since I hadn't yet slept), and with 50K under my belt I was ready to see what else I could accomplish.
        "Another ten thousand before November ends!" I said to myself, riding the final wave of endorphins from accomplishing my goal.  "I want this monster finished by mid-December so that I have time to put it away before Edit January begins!"
        December fifteenth is still my goal for finishing.  My goal per day is probably going to continue to be two thousand words a day, but this blog entry is the first real piece I've been able to write since finishing Nano.  "But Maggie, it's only been two days!" you say, and yes, that's very true, my treasured reader.  Insanely true.
        But it's more than that--I can feel this exhaustion looming in the word parts of my brain.  Putting my fingers back to the keys for Captive Stars feels like an overwhelming task right now.  I may need a few days to get back into it--the hope is that spending a few days away will give me plenty of time to turn my gears back to the story.  I've tired of stories before, I've had periods of time when I didn't want to write, but it's been a few years since I've been in a space where the prospect of writing was mentally and physically repulsive.
        The best thing I can suggest for anyone else suffering from burn-out (and I'm sure there's a lot of you; writing a novel is a task of extreme exertion, and our brains can only take so much at a time) is rest.  Put on some nice music, maybe read a book or veg out on TV, take plenty of naps, and try to just let your mind recover.  It did a lot this month, and it deserves a little pampering.
   
5. Other responsibilities will suffer
   
        I'm in line to be valedictorian of my class this year.  Since it's senior year, that's kind of a big deal.  I've been working really hard to keep my grades up, especially important since I'm only taking three academic classes, but I was resolved this year to put NaNoWriMo first--it'll be a lot harder to put those words in once I'm in college, after all.
        So the second marking period ended and, as it turns out, my grades have certainly suffered.  I'm still doing great, just not ME-great.  More like, classmate-great (said the perfectionist to the happy kids).  It got harder to find time to study when I was trying to make time for NaNo.
        It was also difficult to make time for family and friends--I know my mother was disappointed that I wasn't able to help with a lot of Christmas preparations because I was either writing or sleeping (to make brain-room for more writing).
        Was it worth it?  Yeah, I think so.
   
6. After all that goal-holding, it can be hard to continue the novel
   
        Maybe it's all that burn-out, but it feels almost like a drag to keep going now that the rush is gone.  I'm really going to have to find a way to keep myself motivated if I want to be able to edit in January.  It's a little easier to hold yourself accountable for word count when you're competing against an outside goal and there's an ABSOLUTE deadline. At least for me.  I tend to give myself too much lee-way with deadlines.
   
7. Don't go back for information
   
        During NaNo I became very good at just writing and writing and writing--without going back to check for accuracy.  It really helps you to push on through the narrative, resolving to fix it in the editing process; speed's the key and 50K is the lock!  Or something like that.
        Toward the end there (the last three days or so) it almost felt like momentum was the only thing keeping me going.  This ties back into the above--the more momentum I gained, the higher I felt.
   
   

     I wish I had more to share with you, especially after my very long, very sudden hiatus, but my brain is all tapped out.  Maybe I'll have more NaNo tips after Camp NaNoWriMo (which I hope to see you all at in the summer).  

     Fare thee well!