Nature tracks for writing

For a while now I've been listening to a few nature tracks while I write. Sometimes I can't listen to music while I write but I don't like silence either (usually because it ends up not so silent in this apartment) so a track of the ocean or a thunderstorm is a great alternative. It also helps get me in a writing mood. I love writing while it's raining. Yesterday I discovered this awesome website where you can actually mix your own nature tracks using the site's library of sounds. So far I've made nine. Here they are:

Cricket River Campfire - It's a clear summer evening and you're writing or reading beside the campfire to the tune of the cricket's chirping.

Evergreen Falls - Somewhere in the Pacific Northwest you sit among the evergreens writing to the sounds of a river and its falls.

A Spring Storm - It's stormy spring evening and you write with the window open to the chorus of spring peepers.

Stormy Cabin Hearth - You're fireside in a cozy little cabin, reading or writing through the rain and thunder.

Snowy Cabin Hearth - You're in a cozy little cabin, writing or reading by the fire while the snow flurries outside the window.

Rainstorm Chimes - The rain is pouring outside. The wind makes the  windchimes sing while you write.

Seaside Cabin - Writing on the porch of your seaside cabin listening to the wind in the chimes and the seagulls call.

Seaside Bonfire - Quiet evening on the beach writing by the bonfire.

Simple Rainy Day - No-frills rainy day to help your writing concentration.



What do you think? Do you like writing to nature tracks? Did you try out making your own? :)

Drawing and Writing Inspiration - on Kat Ellis's blog

I am on Kat Ellis's blog today talking about how my art helps my writing go check it out!

Being Michelangelo

Today Taliesin and I were discussing our impending doom, aka how in just ten days we have to begin writing our novels. After I read a Frankenstein analogy retweeted by Jenny, we got to talking about the steps to creating a novel and came up with our own analogy: Being Michelangelo. I've never been much of a sculptor, but I know what it's like to turn a rough sketch into a finished drawing. But Taliesin mentioned chiseling out a statue and I found it fitting because, a perfect slab of marble looks pretty (the swirly mist stage where you haven't made any firm decisions and your idea looks great), then you have to make it all ugly by breaking into it (the decisions), then you start seeing a human figure but it's all wonky and ugly (the first draft), then it improves (the following drafts) and so forth until hopefully you've polished it so well you're left with your masterpiece. Even Michelangelo has to make a crappy statue before he makes a perfect statue.

This should have already been obvious to me, but for some reason imagining it out is helping me cope with my feelings of "ruining" my pristine marble slab by hitting it with those initial hammer strokes, cutting away the areas I won't need when I start the first draft of the body. It's giving me new courage.

Beat sheets

Today I saw this post by Francesca Zappia. It contains a link to a beat sheet spreadsheet which I found fascinating. I had heard of beat sheets for screenplays before but had never really looked at one or tried to use one for noveling. I did some digging around and found an INCEPTION beat sheet on the website of the guy who designed the beat sheet spreadsheet. I also found a THE HUNGER GAMES (novel) beat sheet on there too. Between the two of them, I got a pretty good idea of how it works, and I think I understand something of what made the pacing in INCEPTION and THE HUNGER GAMES so well done and satisfying. Also, neither one adhered specifically to the number formula used in the spreadsheet, I imagine there's a lot of flexibility to be had there, so I'm not planning to use it as some kind of paint by numbers worksheet but more as a guide.

Reward

Today I was reading Leigh Ann's post about rewards and decided that I need to promise myself a good reward for following through on this draft. As I was typing out my comment on her post, I realized just how long it's been since I've finished a rough draft. The vast majority of the novels I've started over the years have been just that, started. Most of them (that even get from outline stage to first draft stage) just sort of fizzle out after 20 to 40k and I decide I need to move on because I have a better idea. But consequently I've been robbing myself of the experiences of finishing and polishing manuscripts. So, no matter what I end up thinking about my current novel idea when I hit 20 or 40k, this time I'm going to keep going, I'm going to finish the plot, and I'm going to revise it at least once before I let myself think about trunking it.

The reward for a finished first draft shall be a Kindle Fire, I really want one!

Writing friends

KazNo may have been a bust, but through it I made a writing friend in Jani.Between doing some beta work for Jani and hitting the gym hard, I haven't spent toooo much of my free time on the outline between yesterday and today, but now that Jani is set for the moment, it's back to the outline for me. One thing that's been inspiring me to outline is this post by Rachel Aaron, who is very much in the plotter camp. I'm taking some advice from her method, and between that and the awesome features of Scrivener, my writing process is evolving into something that should work well for me.