On Writing

Today's A-Z Blogging Challenge is dedicated to O for On Writing: A memoir of the Craft, written by Stephen King

I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with "How To" books, especially when they're written by people who haven't the goods to back up their words! That could never be said about Stephen King, however. He's an absolute master of his trade.

In the first of two sections in this book, he goes into quite personal detail about his life; about how he came to be the writer he is today. From writing Carrie in a laundry room with a child's desk balanced on his knees, to his alcohol and drug problem, with his struggles as a writer throughout. We all know how that turned out, though :)

The second part details how he writes. He admits it may not work for everyone, but if you're like me, you'll love reading this kind of stuff. His words are very inspiring. I'm fairly sure a person with no interest in becoming a writer would want to start their first novel after reading this!

When I'm feeling bogged down with my WIP, or losing direction, I just dip into this book and, magically, it won't be long before I'm inspired again. Therefore, I'd gladly recommend this to any writer in the hope that it does the same for them.

Some of his words of wisdom that ring true for me:

"The scariest moment is always just before you start.”

“You can, you should, and if you’re brave enough to start, you will.”

“In many cases when a reader puts a story aside because it 'got boring,' the boredom arose because the writer grew enchanted with his powers of description and lost sight of his priority, which is to keep the ball rolling.”

Today's O music video is for my favourite Oasis song: Slide Away. Enjoy!

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On Writing

Keeping It Simple

Well, here it is.

My first novel outline.  EVER.

It's just under 6000 words, split into "developments".  Not scenes, chapters, plots, or POVs.  Just... development thingys.  This is Novel Writing: Catherine Stylee. 

I did try to do the "Chapter 1 = This Happens" structure, but it was messing with the flow of my story.  I'm taking a leaf out of Stephen King's "On Writing" book and telling the story first.  I'll work on the craft later.

Years of novel-structure research has been cast into the fire, in favour of Lazette Gifford's advice in her booklet: NaNo for the New and The Insane - A Guide to Surviving NaNoWriMo:

"An easy outline is to list 30 points in your story which can be written in about 2,000 word clumps.  You only need 1,667 words per day to reach 50,000.  If you have 30 things and write one each day, you'll reach your goal. It's that simple."

So, my outline describes what happens, from start to finish, in very brief detail.  The different colours establish a new event, whether that be a change in perspective or new dilemma (but not restricted to such).  There are 34 "developments" in my outline.  My shoddy maths tells me that a 50k word target will boil that down to 1470 words per development. 

I'm confident that I can waffle on for more than 1470 words for each, so I might just get to that self-imposed 70k mark!  Fingers crossed...

I don't know if it will work; It's quite a haphazard approach for an organisational geek like me.  I've got no choice but to go with it, now that NaNoWriMo is 3 days (and 13 hours) away. Eeeeeeeeeeeeeek!

How are you all getting on? x

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Keeping It Simple