Prequel pre-squee!

Star Trek is out! Star Trek is out!! STAR TREK IS OUT!!!

Maybe it’s not technically a TOS prequel. I don’t know. It just sounded cool.

Is there anyone out there that is going to see it tonight, opening night? Me, I just have to wait; the opening night crowd is too much for me. I’ve learned some patience over the years. BUT…I’ll try to see it on the ginormous Ultrascreen just as soon as it comes there.

Enjoy! (squeee!!)

The problem of too many ideas

Too much of a cute thing!

Hey, this doesn’t sound like a bad thing, does it? It totally sounds like anti-writer’s block. So, why do I call it a problem? 

Most of us are probably geeks and know the Star Trek universe better than our own, right? Well, remember The Trouble With Tribbles? Here are all these cute fluffy tribbles. People are petting them. Tribbles are cooing. So cute! Until they start multiplying, that is. Suddenly, there are so many of them that they start to cause dangerous problems.

All those ideas flooding your head, my friend, are tribbles. They look great, they sound great, you like to pet them in the interior parts of your brain. But…before you know it, there are so many of them you don’t know what to do with them. Where do you start? You become paralyzed and unable to act on all these thoughts. Burdened with the task of remembering them all, you don’t write anything! It’s the anti-anti-writer’s block! 

Most of us who are weighed down with TMI (Too Many Ideas) go to the despicable extreme of leaning on them like a crutch. “I have so many ideas, I just don’t know where to start,” we whine. All those tribbles clogging up the warp vents. No warp speed.

Enough mixing metaphors! You get the idea, right? And we should be ashamed of ourselves. There’s no making excuses for our actions. We should be writing awesome stories. What can we do?

Enter the first of our GTD concepts: ubiquitous capture. This hefty term refers to a method whereby all your tribbles are jettisoned and put to good work. Or, at least, put somewhere where they won’t cause any more damage.

It’s simple.  A brilliant idea pops into your head. It is so brilliant that you wince. Instead of keeping it up there, you get it out of your head and into/onto some other media. You store it for future use.  What kind of external media do you use? Anything you want: notepad, text file, voice recorder. You can Twitter it, email it to yourself, shave it into you dog’s fur. Anything at all, with the following caveat: that this external media is available to you at all times. It must always be within reach no matter where you are. (So, I guess the dog is not a good idea, go fig.) When you get the idea, it goes straight from head to media. After which you can forget all about it, at least until when you need to use it.

Why does this work? By comparison, recall the last time you cleaned your house, and in particular that one room that defies order. Remember the feeling of relief and empowerment? That’s what ubiquitous capture does for us. It clears the mind (literally!) of things that bog it down. It gives you a feeling of empowerment. You CAN write! You can write NOW!

I have a notebook that I keep in my messenger bag. I’m not too good at ubiquitous capture just yet, but that is my tool of choice. Give it a try yourself. Maybe TMI is a curable disease.

(Image from http://www.trekcore.com)

The Big Idea: Edward Willett

The Big Idea: Edward Willett. This just in from John Scalzi’s blog. A brilliant description of how a small one-paragraph image can explode into 2 books. I recommend reading this, and Edward Willett’s books Terra Insegura and Marseguro look like interesting reads.

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Why ‘Cranking Plot’?

Those of us who have been on the Internets for any amount of time have heard of Dave Allen, and his book Getting Things Done. That book and the methods inspired by it are the key to cranking plot.

The name of my blog comes from one of Dave Allen’s own terms, cranking widgets. This is his basic unit of productivity. It is a very low-level concept. Instead of seeing a project from the 10,000 feet high level-that is, everything at once-we drill down and look at the project in terms of the individual movements (the ‘cranks’), the next steps toward the finished product. It suggests daily action.

That’s the idea behind my blog. Who gets anything done if they pick it up, work on it a little while, and put it back down for months? Writing a short story or a novel is a long process, and it involves multiple steps. Regular work is the only thing that will get the job done.

This whole regular work thing…I’m terrible at it. I’m just the guy that will set down a project and leave it to grow cold. That’s a bad thing, a very, very bad thing! 

Cranking Plot is about plugging away. It’s about not letting the momentum slow. It’s thinking about writing in terms of project. It’s getting down to the putting-one-word-on-the-page-at-a-time level of work, that is, the work that actually produces. It’s Getting Story Done.

FYI, there are some things about Dave Allen’s methods that won’t work for me, with all due respect to this productivity guru who has changed the concept of organization for many. Chances are people who read this blog will either agree with me or disagree. Some will say “Wow, GTD is the best thing ever!” while some will say “I like this and this, but not this.” And that’s OK. Check out all the Internet links about GTD and you’ll see that opinions vary all over the place. That’s while I will be periodically posting about different flavors of productivity and how they may be usable in your writing carreer. It’s a way of educating myself about all the different methods out there, keeping it real!

So, how do I crank plot? That will be the subject of a post in the near future, and I’ll also reflect on the myriad ways in which to crank.

The current project is beating me up

I am trying to revise a short story that came back rejected. I got a personal reply from the editor, which I didn’t expect. Is it because the magazine in question is an online mag? Anyways, the editor said it had some interesting bits, but that one or two things confused him. SO…I’m working on clearing up the confusion. I see where he is coming from when I read the story again.

Trouble is: I am having a hard time subtracting words to tighten up the prose. The word count is 6000+ words. I have a feeling that I will add another 500 words to clarify the plot, but I don’t know if there is any fat to cut out.

How does one objectively decide if he or she has cut enough or if more cutting is possible?

Brilliant first draft advice

I just read a great article about the first draft. Janice Hardy at The Other Side of the Story goes into some detail about how she approaches her first draft, and it’s a nice to see  that a soon-to-be published author will share some nuts-and-bolts advice about her writing process.

Among the many useful tidbits are the now-ubiquitous words “It’s totally okay to write a [terrible] first draft.” Those words, friends, is our carte blanche to write our hearts out. The first draft is not to see the light of day. You may deny its existence or you may speak of it in whispered tones. Others may hear rumors of it, but it is safely secured in a concrete bunker under Area 51 sandwiched between the Lost Ark and Bigfoot’s toenail clippings.

The whole point is: make sure there is a first draft to spread rumors about. Get it done by whatever means necessary. This is what cranking plot is all about.

What am I reading?

Just this last year I got back into reading again. Tech school and the day-to-day distractions of life kept me from reading for fun. But as a writer, reading is an essential part of the craft. We need it to understand what writing is, good and bad, and to focus on writing.

Without neglecting important things (and I’ll be writing about balance in a later post), I think I’ve found a way to get more reading into my life. The key is being prepared to seize all opportunities. Princess and I had an international flight in June; I read Stranger in a Strange Land on the plane. I try to work out every morning on the stationary bike; I am rereading the Foundation trilogy. I have a half-hour for lunch at work; I read I Am Legend, reread Feersum Endjinn, and have started Ringworld. Compared to the past few years, I’m doing pretty good the past year!

So, periodically I will post what I am reading and when I start a new book. I also hope to post a ‘retro review’ of any books I have re-read, or that are old enough to count as retro.

What am I reading now? Second Foundation by Isaac Asimov, and Ringworld by Larry Niven. The former is part of a bound trilogy that I started to read late last year, and so it’s a little awkward to carry around. I’m almost done with it. The latter is a paperback that fits nicely into my messenger bag and so is portable. That’s probably the only reason I’m reading two stories at once. But, it’s a relief to be reading again!

Progress report

Sunday nights I’ll try to wrap up everything that happened during the week with regards to my writing. Actually, most of the writing I did was for this blog, getting it started and hopefully building some traffic. I also had to write a talk for my congregation. So, technically I did write this week, but not so much fiction!

Part of my progress report will be looking ahead to the next week, an attempt at planning next week’s work. Here’s what I hope to be accomplishing:

• More blog posts. Posts Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday, with Sunday being the progress report.
• Spontaneous blog posts. Non-article posts about things that just come up.
• In connection with a future post, a list of all my projects.
• Begin revisions of a short story that just got rejected. I see where I can tighten it up. Any insights I get out of the process I’ll work up into a article for the blog.

So, it looks like will have a lot to do this week. I’ll keep you posted!

Hey, shouldn’t a professional be writing about writing?

The short answer is Yes. And No.

I love reading advice from published authors. They give me something to hope for, you know? This author is telling me ‘there is something you can do that will work because it worked for me.’ A published author has succeeded, has gained wisdom and insight. Reading his book or blog is like sitting in that person’s study and having his full attention. Awesome.

I also love reading the rest of us who have not become successful published authors. Their posts are ones of struggle and the process of gaining insight. Their experience is bleeding edge experience. Many of them are trying new things to get their work out for people to read.

So, why am I adding my signal to the background noise of writing blogs? I am one of the latter types of writers, and I care a great deal about finally getting my work out there. I would love to make my living with words. Mostly I want to write for the joy of it. So, though I am not by any means an experienced writer, what I have to say will be valuable to me. Maybe it will be valuable to you. At least it will be out there. And hopefully I can add to my experience as a writer.