Category: Composition & Progress

Our Wide-Ranging Interests

Research is an important part of writing, even when you’re writing novels about ghosts. And it’s fun to absorb new knowledge. Beware, though: in this age of instant access, falling down a rabbit-hole and spending the whole day on “research” is a constant risk. That’s why it’s important that you develop the discipline to stay focused and only devote time to topics with legitimate relevance to your project.

It’s hard to imagine our list getting much zanier if we gave up all pretense of discipline. Believe it or not, legitimate research topics for the Ghost Series include all of the following:

  • blue roses
  • ice cream shops in Copenhagen
  • Jonestown

That’s not output from our prompt generator. That’s an actual sampling of what we’ve looked up so far.

A writing partner will be there for you, sometimes to pull you out of the rabbit-hole and sometimes to join you in taking the plunge.

Specter-Vision

Our WIP is a ghost story (perhaps we’ve mentioned that) and as it happens some of the scenes are ghost-character POV. Our take on being a ghost is that it has a definite effect on one’s outlook, and indeed upon the physical reality of one’s surroundings. Dying changes a person’s entire take on life.

Of course we always remember that when we’re doing their scenes. (Eye-roll)

Okay, there’ve only been a couple of times that we actually had to go back into the text and account for that. It tends to happen when the locale has been previous rendered in ordinary human terms, which would make another detailed description feel redundant (if the current POV character had ordinary human perceptions). It’s just one more aspect of “wearing the right head” to tackle a given character. Likewise if one member of the cast were a dog, meaning they can’t see what’s on the kitchen counters but they can smell and hear lots of stuff that the human characters can’t. So even though it’s the same house everyone’s living in, it can feel like a whole different world for certain characters. (Spoiler: the ghost POV character is not a dog.)

We don’t do real spoilers around here, so we can’t say anything too specific about what it’s like to be a ghost in our story. We asked one of the specters to sum it up for us, and here’s what we got back: “There’s some interesting scenery, but overall it’s kind of a hassle.”

A writing partner is someone whose point of view helps you express your characters’ POV.

A Small Leap In Productivity

It was fortuitous to get an extra day last month in which to do some writing, because it at least partially offset the multiple days when stuff came up and we got no writing done at all.

Let us take this moment to pause and wish a Happy Leap Day to all who celebrate.

Leap Day William

We’re making headway on As-Yet Untitled Ghost Novel #2 once again. Not as rapidly as we were hoping (it never is) but tangible, empirical progress all the same. Kent just wrapped up a scene and got a nice start on the next one, and Jen shipped another couple of stubs.

To help us keep up this momentum — hopefully even build on it — we’re instituting a revolutionary positive-reinforcement technology: sticker charts! Henceforth, our access to ice cream will be regulated by how many stickers we earn. That’ll definitely keep us motivated (at least until we find a black market for frozen dairy treats). So we look forward to cranking up our output!

One thing that we need to remind ourselves about is how much work we get done that’s not reflected in metrics like word count. We talk things out, which is real work but has no measurable substance. Recently, Jen detected a possible issue with repetition across several stubs, and now because of some productive conversations we no longer have that issue. The affected stubs haven’t all been completed, but what would have been the point of plowing through them only to end up scrapping and redoing half those scenes later? It’s unclear how the new stickers-and-ice-cream economy of the Writing Cave will take such scenarios into account.

A writing partner is someone who sticks by you 366 days of the year.

We’re Up!

Our critique group’s most recent meeting (which we hosted at our house) took us up to the finale of the other member’s manuscript that we’ve been discussing. So, now it’s our turn in the hot seat once again.

Critique sessions are a whole separate animal from having beta readers (which we do, also). There are lots of different ways to run a group, but here’s what works well for us.

  1. choose one manuscript to focus on
  2. the author provides a chunk of pages in advance, and whatever guidance they wish regarding the kind of feedback they’re looking for
  3. at the meeting, each member shares input and suggestions, asks questions, etc. about those pages
  4. avoid spending a lot of time on typos and other picky things

Note that this means no one can read ahead, so the author can gauge how well the clues are working, how readers feel about the protagonist at each stage, etc. It’s up to the author how much to reveal, which questions to answer, and so on. Rune Skelley tends to be very tight-lipped. We enjoy getting the rest of the group trying to guess what we’re up to.

Another thing that’s up to each author is whether to bring stuff in before the whole book is written. We’ve done it both ways, and found reasons not to share works-in-progress for critique anymore. For us, the feedback only muddied things at that stage. But some folks thrive on it, and use the requirement of handing out pages by the next meeting as a motivational tool. Do what works for you.

The best part of any critique group meeting is when members start debating what the pages mean and basically forget that the author is there. As the author, that provides a ton of insight into what’s working and why. It’s also nice when your fellow writers come right out and tell you what they thought was effective, or where they felt something needed more work. Just be sure not to settle for “it was good” — these are your colleagues, so they should be able to articulate their reasons for responding a certain way.

A writing partner is someone who kicks Kent under the table when he’s about to blurt out a major spoiler.

The Land-Speed Record Is Safe

Our recent output has been nil.

We got off a roaring start on Ghost Book 2, making good headway because we were doing a good job of sticking to our schedule. And then, well, stuff came up. Life intruded, which it does all the time, but for a couple of weeks now it’s been downright pushy. We’re fine, in fact it was mostly good news! It’s just a lot.

Not that we can claim that we were straining in the traces to put in more of those solid multi-hour work sessions that keep a project on track. Nah, we got a little lazy and took advantage of having some legitimate excuses.

This week we’re recommitting to the schedule, the lifestyle, the dream. Well, that first one mainly. That’s the key: having a schedule. We’re also dabbling with some ideas about carrots and sticks, and maybe shifting back to composing on the laptops for a change of scene. We have humongous desktop monitors, which can be a tremendous boon to productivity in a lot of ways but can also backfire. It’s too easy to leave scads of distractions open all the time.

A bit of archeology in the files for the previous manuscript suggests that these ups and downs are pretty normal for us, and that our net progress is basically right on track. Which is… good to know. Bit disappointing, though. Now that Kent’s retired, our pace was supposed to increase substantially. That hasn’t happened so far. But we’ll figure it out.

A writing partner is still your partner even when you’re not doing a lot of writing.

Getting Things Off the Ground

We’re pleased to report that productivity in the Writing Cave has seen an uptick lately.

As Kent’s retirement date drew near, we envisioned our novels flying to completion. All that writing time during the day! Plus an added bonus of getting to have evenings and weekends again!

The one part of the above that we achieved right away was the evenings and weekends. But, novels’ wings don’t flap on their own. Regular readers already know that we’ve struggled to stick to a schedule, and that we had some ideas as to why that is. Well, now things appear to be on track, and we don’t really have much of a theory about why. Perhaps there’s a natural ebb and flow to our motivational energies. Perhaps we just needed this long to adapt to the new normal. Maybe we got brain frostbite in the Arctic and now we’re finally thawing out.

Whatever the reason, we like how it feels to be accomplishing stuff as a team.

A writing partner is the wind under your wings.

With Both Hands, And…

A map is a very handy thing for a writer. It can help you gauge how long someone’s journey would take, or remind you of the river between points A and B. If you’re using a real-world locale, then you’ll want to keep your depiction in line with reality. If your locale is your own invention, then you’ll want to keep your depiction internally consistent.

Way back at the start of things for As-Yet-Untitled Ghost Novel #1, we created a map of the main setting, which is a place we made up. Over the course of actually writing that book, we annotated the map with a great many pencil marks showing adjustments and additions. It’s become sort of a mess.

So, as part of our preparations for diving into prose on As-Yet-Untitled Ghost Novel #2, Kent is updating the map so we have a clean version to work from. The more we write about the place, the more we learn about it ourselves, so we assume we’ll need to do more map updates when we get to books 3 and 4 as well.

A writing partner is someone who helps you keep your bearings.

The Stubulator Has Been Activated

Progress report: Jen has stubbed out the first six scenes for As-Yet-Untitled Ghost Novel #2. Typically we aim to have about a dozen stubs ready before writing any of the actual scenes, so we should reach that stage very soon!

Each phase of our process (brainstorming, rainbowing, the prose outline, the actual outline, the stubs, and then finally actual prose) requires a different kind of writing. And there’s always a little hill to climb when we revisit any of those phases after being away from it for a while, to relearn how to do that kind of writing.

Still, we trust the process. Each of those phases helps us understand our story from another angle, making things go a lot smoother during the prose phase and leading to an overall superior end result.

Also, we’ve learned the hard way that staying in any one phase for too long can lead to burnout. We ended up writing the prose for two entire novels back-to-back once. But only once. It’s nice being able to shift gears, use different muscles now and then. Keeps us sane.

A writing partner is someone who shares your faith in the process.

Boo!

We’ve been immersing ourselves in the supernatural as we work on our ghost story, but perhaps we took things a bit too far. Netherwordly manifestations sprang up at the HQ of Skelleyco Amalgamated Fiction Enterprises. But the creepiest part? Every child in the vicinity seemed impelled to approach. Impelled by a hunger, a hunger for… candy.

Last year we missed trick-or-treating because we were in freakin’ Transylvania on Halloween. So this year we brought our A game. Not that we merited anything better than honorable mention in our neighborhood. The bar is set crazy high. We did have a great time, as did Lady Marzipan and the Bandit Lord.

decorative tombstones

front door flanked by skeletal bats

a corgi and a golden retriever in bony costumes

What we did not do was get much writing done. Doorbell was kept pretty busy.

A writing partner is someone who holds your hand when things get scary.