Get It Together Blog Hop

Welcome to my little stop on the Get It Together Blog Hop!  

For my post, I thought I'd revisit something I wrote a few years back about self-referencing guides and had originally titled "Your Organization Is Touching My Chaos!" 

Getting It Together (So You Don't Have To Remember It All)

Continuity is a bug-a-boo of mine in a novel series. Be consistent with your history & descriptions of a particular character or place or event. This is something I strive for in my writing, especially in the large series I am working on. If an author chooses to change a character's description, change hair color or the like, I can accept that.- provided there is an explanation for the change in the books. Don't make him sandy blond in one book, and have him dark haired two books later, without giving a reason why.

TV shows and lesser movies often give no thought to continuity. This bothers me, but not nearly as it does in print. I've seen good and bad examples of continuity in published print.

The Bad: I once read a book (which suffered severely from bad editing, or none at all. Really, it was a train wreck) where the dog's name changed completely from one paragraph to the next. Not two dogs. One dog. Two names in two successive paragraphs. I keep this book as an example of what NOT to have printed with my name on the cover.

The Good: The various Star Wars novels that have come out over the last twenty+ years (well over a hundred, closer to two hundred) have shared an amazing consistency, given the fact that they are written by dozens of authors. Added to that are the 6+ movies, the tv series, and the video games the individual units of LucasFilms has released, it becomes an even more impressive feat.

I've seen problems in my own writing. When you've got parts of a dozen different novels (or more, I lost count), plus several short stories floating around that are all in the same shared universe (and across a large span of time) it gets to be too cumbersome to keep everything in your head AND keep it straight. I have one alien species that I kept flip-flopping the ending of the species name from -in to -inian. Planet names that were written -ax in one piece, -axia in another.

I don't have George Lucas' money to hire my own continuity editing staff. Yet. Until then, I have to do it the hard way- myself! To combat this, I started a document to track all the references, characters, ship names, locations, ect that were going into my series. This isn't an entirely new idea, other writers no doubt do the same, with character bibles, three-ring binders, and whatnot. I call mine a compendium, and I went a little more thorough with mine.

I included things like a list of sector names (important because I give a header block for each new chapter giving the location, ship name the characters may be on, ect), a time-line of the major events so I can keep the history straight, and a reference guide for me to remind myself which projects use a given character, or reference. I broke all my references down into alphabetical order for easier searching. Here's an example page from the X-Corps Compendium:

Rhinocerosi

A genetically engineered species. Rhinocerosi were two meters tall, bipedal and weighed approximately one ton each. Jailen Devorax took a rhinoceros DNA sample from ancient Terra, and had the DNA manipulated to grow himself a private body guard force. (RP)

Rowantree, Captain Rosina

Captain of the Starcorp vessel Starcorp Merchant. Barely 1.5 meters tall, with mousy brown hair tied up in an efficient if not exactly inventive bun, Rowantree had been moved over from the Starcorp Accountant fleet to command of the Starcorp Merchant shortly before the ship was raided by the Chorros de Corazón. (TAH)

RP Freight Line­

Render Paxon’s independent freight company. (RP)

- S -

Sánchez, Captain Ramón Juan Álvarez de la Vega

Captain of the privateer ship Chorros de Corazón. He was of Portuguese descent, with a darkly tanned skin that was a genetic gift from his ancient ancestors. He wore a goatee beard and a short pony tail of jet black hair that gave him a rakish, almost piratical air. A practical man, Sánchez operated on the principal that you never ruin that which you can raid again in the future. A stern but fair authority figure, Sánchez played no favorites and accepted no shirkers among his crew. (TAH)

Sanchez, House

Sanchez was the second smallest of the surviving houses to form from DrummondCo. Sanchez was named for Juan Raul Julio Sanchez, the head of the marketing division. House colors were white and orange. During Operation Telegraph the house was one of the major alliance members, pushing their spin-ward border well into former House Merker space, adding several systems to house control. (HSPP1,6,7)

Schwecshheimmer, Fregattenkapitän Fritz “Quicksilver”

Commanding officer of the Merker Navy aerospace fighter squadron Hell Hounds on board the carrier Cerberus during the first two years of the Fourth Border War between Merker and Donov. Fritz was killed in an ambush during a Merker attack on an unmanned border observation post in an uninhabited system. (HSPP1)

I broke it down this way: Entries are alphabetical (by last names for characters). Ship names are alphabetical by the name of the ship, omitting 'The' from a title. The (parenthetical) bit at the end of the entry is my project reference code, so I can track and update references. Some entries appear in more than one project. For example, House Sanchez is mentioned in books 1, 6, and 7 of the Hunt Starfire series.

I started this document for my own self-reference. It's grown into a document over12,000(!) words long at the moment. I'm sure that by the time I get all of these projects written, and hopefully published, the Compendium will be the size of a novel itself!

If you're deep into world building, or are writing a long series, organizing your references is a tremendous help.

Be sure to check out all of today's other Blog Hop authors as well!

Shari Slade --- "Hold On Loosely"

Julia Kelly --- "Getting It Together with Workflowy."

Karen Booth

Rebecca Grace Allen

Jodie Griffin --- "When You’re More Organ-ISH-ed Than Organized"

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Writing Survival Tips in the Post-October World

It's October. The kids are back in school and Fall is here in the northern Hemisphere. At least, the calenders say it's been Fall for a few weeks. Here in Louisiana we are just now feeling it. Something else is here at the end of the month, just a hop, skip, and a jump across October. No, I'm not talking about November. NaNoWriMo. That's the National Novel Writing Month.

If you're not familiar with NaNoWriMo, or you've maybe heard someone mention it but have no idea what it's about, then this post is for you. It's a month long contest to write a 50,000 word (or more!) novel in the month of November. From scratch. You can plan all year long, but the actual writing has to happen between 12:00am Nov 1st and 11:59pm local time Nov 30th.

Sounds impossible you say? 50,000 just too monolithic a number to comprehend writing in a month's time? Trust me, it's not. I type slow and I've won it. Four times. Broken down, 50K words is 1667 words/day for 30 days. It can easily be done, but you must prepare for it. Here's some tips on how to gird your loins for the 30 day battle with the word beast that is NaNoWriMo!

Stretch First

A couch slug does not simply buy new shoes and run the NYC marathon the next morning. Stretching is involved. If not, the slug will cramp up and be out of the race before the second mile. I know, because it happened to me. Not in the NYC marathon, but in NaNo one year. Had an idea, and 4 wins under my belt, a savvy veteran. I got this, right? Hadn't written all year, and fell flat on my face on day 2.

Work your way up to NaNoWrimo if you have the time by writing just a little bit, say 500 words. Then the next day, write just a little more. 550 on day two. 600 on day 3, and so on. Build yourself up to a NaNo pace (or even more than 1667/day, I'll tell you why in a bit).

Find A Jail Cell

You're going to hear this little voice in your head. It's going to whisper to you, second guessing your every decision. Casting doubts on your ability to write something that isn't complete crap. This is your inner editor. Find the deepest, darkest, dankest dungeon in your mind, and lock that little bastard away in solitary confinement for the month. NaNo isn't about perfection. It's about *WRITING*. Leave the editing for December.

Be A Thief

Steal writing time whenever you can find it. At your desk during lunch hour. While your kids are at swim/soccer/tae-kwon do/whatever practice. While riding the train/bus/carpool to/from work (Okay, not the car pool when it's your turn to drive). Carry a note pad to write on during these hidden minutes. You might only get 50 or 100 or 500 words written, but it's 50 or 100 or 500 more than you had.

Be A Hoarder

During NaNo, words are like gold coins. You need to hoard them like Smaug does treasure. Don't get to your 1667 and then think you have to quit for the day. If the Muse is riding you like a lathered up thoroughbred,  don't stop! The more you can write over the daily word count, the better. You can bank those extra words for day when you might not get to write as much. Or, the days you don't write at all and just want to curl up in a ball while your non-writing world goes to hell around you. Or your in-laws drop in unexpectedly. (Though you might still end up curled up in a ball on the floor)

Ignore Housework...

...Up to a point. When the dirty laundry pile is in danger of collapsing and burying your preteen, it's time to take a break. Stop writing, and start PLOTTING! This is especially good if you're facing a block and can't get passed it. Stop writing and do something else. Wash laundry, do dishes, vacuum, shovel snow off the drive way (if you're afflicted with such - snow, not drive ways). Mundane tasks that you don't have to really think about let your mind work in the background on your writing problems. Plot bunnies like to attack from the least likely corners!

More Stretching

Don't forget to stretch your physical muscles too! 30 days hunched over a laptop is not comfortable (but your chiropractor will laugh all the way to the bank). Remember to stand up and move around once in awhile. Rotational arm exercises to take the hunch out of your shoulders and arms are good too, and can be done in your seat.

Family Matters

Prepare your family for the month. Inform your family that Mom (or dad) isn't crazy because she/he is sitting there talking to him/herself- it's working out dialogue, or plotting. Tell them they may not see you as much for the month, and to be ready to eat lots of leftovers or take out. You'll eventually return, mostly sane. Mostly. Whether you're more sane after NaNo or less so is another discussion (Probably best had with your therapist) entirely!

Get Out

If you've joined a region, pay attention to regional forums. Often someone in your region will post information on something called a "write-in". Write-ins are a chance to meet your fellow WriMos in person, and write with others while socializing. Or socialize while writing. It often goes both ways. It helps to defeat that "I'm alone in the woods" feeling writing can give you, especially during NaNo. If you're not in a region with scheduled write-ins, or you are in an "Elsewhere" region, don't despair! Some Elsewhere regions have a chat room set up, for virtual write-ins. Poke around your forums.

In Conclusion

I could go on, but I'd likely not get this post ready before NaNo - 2014! (Procrastinatia is a monarchy, and it's good to be the king) I hope these tips help you have a successful November - if you write 50,000, 5,000 or even 5 words.

A little green muppet once said "Do, or do not. There is no try." In this case, Yoda is WRONG. There *is* a "try". Failure is always an option!  It's not whether you win or lose at NaNo, it's that you TRIED something you thought you might do "one day", or seemed scary and insurmountable.

That makes you a winner already.

If you're doing NaNo this year, leave your WriMo id in the comments and add me as a buddy (wrytersblock) and we can push/pull/poke/prod/drag/cajole each other along!

I'll be waiting at the finish with the champagne to celebrate with you - in victory or defeat! :)

And The Horses Are In The Starting Gate

Well, It's Jan 1, 2013. We survived the Mayan doomsday. The world kept turning on Dec 22nd, and the 23rd... Guess they got that one wrong. Since we're all still here, I might as well get traction on this year.

New year. New goals. To that end, I've decided I need to get better at a writing schedule and sticking to it. The vast majority of my new writing last year happened in November. In the first two days. At that point, I really hadn't written anything since Nov '11, and very much at all going back to July before that.

November rolled up, and with it the annual NaNoWriMo - the National Novel Writing Month Challenge. For those who haven't heard of NaNo before, it's a challenge to write a 50,000 (or more!) word novel in the 30 days of November. I'd won this 4 consecutive years, a veteran. I'd hit 50K words in as little as 15 days one year. I figured I'd grab an idea and run with it all month. Been there, done that, I'd have it in the bag. No sweat. I failed spectacularly.

A couch slug does not simply buy brand new sneakers and then run the New York Marathon.

To go from so much inactivity to trying to crank out 1667 words or better a day to keep the NaNo pace just wasn't going to happen. After 12hr door-to-door days at the day job (You know, that thing that pays for life's little niceties, like food and internet), I didn't have the mental energy to write my name much less 1667 words a night.

So, I'm going to stretch this year before running that November marathon. Here's how:
January - 500 words/day for 31 days = 15,500
February through July I intend to add 250 words/day each month, ending up with 2000/day in July.
August I'm dropping back to 1000 words/day, building up again 1750/day in November. Notice, this is ahead of NaNo pace. December I cut myself a break and drop back to 1000/day.

Grand total for this schedule as presented is 464,500 words.

I want to prove to myself I can win this thing with a full time day job, and if I stick to this schedule I'll be in shape to win that marathon. I also want this year to be one not of new beginnings, but of finishes. I have stacks and stacks of projects with notes attached, and maybe a few paragraphs, or  WIPS (Work In Progress) with 5-10K words and a few notes for later. I've even got one WIP that, if I'd had a child when I started it, the kid would turning 21 in July!

The only snafu I have with this whole grand scheme is this: which of my (many) unfinished projects do I work on first? I'm going to let you, the readers decide. I'll post a short synopsis of each contended and let you all vote until Sunday on which I should start on first.

1: Echo-13: From the Files of the X-Corps - the oldest horse in this race. Ultra-deep top secret special forces action with the fate of the galaxy hanging on their next move. Lots of gun battles, space fights and explosions everywhere. I've said for the last several new years that I would finally finish it. Will this be there year?

2: The Dytek Enterprises Field Agent Handbook - Urban Fantasy. One man simply trying to clear his name at work. Oh, he works as a regional field agent for Death.

3: Jameson Hewitt Airship Mysetery - A Steampunk-ish mystery thriller set on an airship crossing the Atlantic at the beginning of a worldwide war.

4: Hunt Starfire Saga - Scifi, chronicling the birth of a mercenary startfighter unit. Book 1 of a planned 6-7 book series.

There they are! Go vote in the comments. I'm looking forward to seeing which horse wins this race.

Pacing Yourself

Technology. It's the sci-fi writer's best friend, and biggest cheat. We use it in so many ways, as settings, plot devices, a convenience and eye/brain-candy. But who can guess what will actually be available when that future time actually comes around?

After Tuesday's blog, Leah Petersen and I were discussing about the difficulties of writers predicting technology far enough into the future to fit a story's setting. She mentioned that though her story is set 350 years in the future, most of her tech feels like something we could have in the next 20 years. This got me to thinking about some of the factors that affect tech development.

One of the biggest factors I see is the problem of stagnation. Sometimes a technological innovation will undergo a period of dormancy while waiting for component technologies to mature, or for a new break-thru to push the boundaries of what's possible. Airliners were built out of aluminum as far back as the 1930s, and it's only within the last decade that the carbon-fiber skinned 787 is changing that. It offers more strength for less weight. Carbon fiber isn't new, it's been used for years in Formula 1 racing cars and in certain parts for airliners, but it's only recently that the technology has matured enough to attempt it's use in an airliner the size of the 787.

And, sometimes what's possible isn't always practical or realistic for other reasons. Look at aviation again. We went from the Wright Brothers first flight, a 120 foot long journey at not much faster than a running pace, to the Concorde, an ocean spanning Mach 2 airliner, in a little over 70 years. However, Concorde ended up being too expensive and impractical, only carrying between 92 and 128 passengers at a time, while a 747 of the same period could typically carry up to 452 passengers in a little over twice the flight time.

The oil crisis of the 70s effectively killed off the supersonic airliner from wider-spread use. Jet fuel prices are tied almost directly to the price of oil. $2 a barrel for oil? Sure let's build supersonic airplanes. When the price jumped to $10 a barrel? Fuel's too expensive now, we have to charge customers ticket prices they won't want to pay. (This sound familiar to anyone with a gas tank in their car over the last few years?)

That's something that we writers should always take into consideration when designing tech (or trying to) for our stories: is it practical for the characters daily lives? Is it something that a character can do without, or is it something extremely vital for survival?

Ultimately, it comes down to doing research, the writer's discretion, and what feels right. No two writers are the same, and neither well they share a specific sense of what's right.

How do you handle technology in your sci-fi stories?
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Don't Panic!

...he also had a device that looked rather like a largish calculator. This had about a hundred tiny flat press buttons and a screen about four inches square on which any one of a million "pages" could be summoned at a moment's notice. It looked insanely complicated, and this was one of the reasons why the snug plastic cover it fitted into had the words DON'T PANIC printed in large friendly letters. The other reason was that this device was in fact the most remarkable of all books to ever come out of the great publishing corporations of Ursa Minor- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

                                               Chapter 3, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Douglas Adams was a genius and a prophet, but that's true of any good visionary sci-fi writer. Call it a Kindle, Nook, iPad, Netbook, tablet, or Smart phone, today some form of portable electronic device that let's us access the internet. (which is very convenient, as Adams says in relation to a printed-version of the Guide, "an interstellar hitchhiker would require several inconveniently large buildings to carry it around in.") Adams is just carrying on a long tradition of giving us glimpses into the future.

Jules Verne and H.G. Wells were famous and celebrated for this ability. Submarines that can travel thousands of miles under water without surfacing? Sounded far-fetched in Verne's time (the submarine as a viable war machine was it's infancy during the American Civil War), but only fifty years after Verne's death, nuclear powered submarines were  in operation, the first one appropriately named Nautilus.

More recently, tv and movies have led the way toward the future. Star Trek saw Kirk and Spock running around with flip-up communicators that allowed them to talk to the Enterprise from a planet's surface as clear as if both parties were in the same room. Now, people carry around cell phones that are not much bigger than a deck of playing cars, can reach around the world, and hold more computing power than all of NASA during the Apollo moon missions.

Star Wars hasn't been left out of the act either. TIE fighters were famous for mostly being Rebel target practice. However the TIE part (Twin Ion Engine) is now a viable engine technology for spacecraft, scooping up matter from the front end, and ejecting ions out the back end to propel the craft along. And, remember the tank of pink goo (Bacta) Luke floated in on Hoth while recovering from the Wampa attack? Now there is a gene therapy gel in testing that speeds up the natural healing functions of the body by as much as six times normal - no scuba mask needed.

Sci-fi writers are always looking forward, trying to imagine tomorrow, and the day after. Sure, there have been some miserable failures (I'm still waiting for my Jetson's car that folds up into a briefcase, personal jetpack, and my ticket on Pan Am's Lunar flights to the moon- thank you Stanley Kubrick & 2001: A space Odyssey) but there have been resounding successes. So, the next time you see some far-out concept in a book or movie, something seemingly impossible and outrageous, remember: DON'T PANIC! That just might be the future you see.

Thanks to @LeahPetersen for inspiring today's blog post. You can blame her for this drivel. :D
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Something In The Air

Stepped outside at 7am this morning and the temperature was about 62F. There was a slight nip in the air that felt soooo refreshing after the  blazing Texas Summer we've been having. There was something else in the air this morning. Anticipation of something that comes around once a year.

It felt like NaNoWriMo.

It's a good thing too. I've been drawing a blank as to what I was going to write for NaNo this year. It's really been hard to even think about November this year. Don't get me wrong, I have some ideas floating around in the back of my mind- I always do. I just don't know what I'm going to write.

I should do the responsible thing and work on one of the novels in the Hunt Starfire series. Or, finish the first one and start on the second on. Those seven novels won't write themselves. Or, one of my other partial  projects. I've only got several laying around waiting for a storm of writing to happen upon them.

I really keep thinking about a shiny I've been slowly putting notes down about, but I'm trying to behave and not start yet another new project until I get something finished.

So, I'll let you give me some input as to what I write for this year's NaNo.

1. A Hunt Starfire novel - the chronicles of a mercenary star-fighter unit.
2. Finish "Thieves at Heart" - space pirates. Enough said!
3. Finish "Jameson Hewitt Airship Mystery" - a steampunk mystery set on a transatlantic airship.
4. Finish "Hammerfist" - A tale of three bounty hunters.
5. Give in and  write the New Shiny Idea - lost science ship (this one needs a lot of planning first).

There's your options. I'll keep the voting open until the end of the month, and announce the winner in October. Go Vote!

8-3 Check-in

Well, the Streaks are over. Yesterday was a disaster - I picked up a 4hr temp job at a warehouse, and got too overheated. I felt drained, literally. Like you would after a sunburn, but I didn't have the pain or the heat coming out of me, just that same drained feeling. Very little writing happened. I tried to finish up this morning for yesterday and I'm still ..blah. I think my brain melted yesterday. The second WIP I wanted to write on just isn't coming. Maybe I need a break from word counts.

So, it got me thinking. I think I'm going to adjust my goals, and  focus less on writing and more on editing & revising the first WIP. I really want to get that put together and out for initial reads.

And this is the hidden beauty of ROW80 - it's flexible and can change when you need to.
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ROW80 Check-in

And ROW80 rolls on. I've been hitting all of my word counts, 1000/day this week. Since Sunday (750), with my ROW writing and the free writing I do after my ROW is finished, I've also hit my personal daily 1K for 365 days goal for a week straight. This beats my previous longest streak of 6 days. However, I'm still 164K behind on this goal. LOL On Monday the ROW goal goes to 1250, so I hope to extend that 1k/365d streak for the next two months. And catch up a bit!

DEFAH is growing. I'm ramping up to the big fight scene. Logan has just been escorted into the Big Bad's lair, and is now being informed on just how badly he's been tricked. In video game terms, Logan has already dispatched of on the minor bosses, and he's about to face off against two level bosses, and the villain. All at the same time. And he's essentially got three bullets left in his gun, so his aim has to be perfect.

What's in store for Logan today? That is yet to be written. It's time to gather all the loose threads together and thread the needle.

Row80 Sunday Check In And Experiment

I finally had my first daily goal failure on Friday. It just wasn't a good day for writing. 168/750 that day. However, I'm still ahead on total word count by 1400+ words, even with my failure. So, it's all still in the black.

---------------------------------------------

Now, I'd like to conduct an experiment and I need your help!

I'm trying to determine how many of my views are bots, and how many are actual humans.

Leave me a comment down below and tell me how you came to this post, via

• Me directly by a twitter or Google+ link
• Someone retweeted my link (Mention who so I can thank them)
• Or direct email notification.

Results will be posted with Wednesday's Round Of Words 80 check in.

Thanks!

Sunday Nothings and ROW80 Check in

So, it's Sunday today. I've got nothing profound or prophetic to say today. So sorry to disappoint you all.

Here's a few tidbits to tide you over until I come up with witty.

NYT's bestseller James Rollins tweeted my Friday post to his 15,000+ followers on twitter. This paltry, little, nothing rag of a blog. To say I was surprised and shocked doesn't cover it! Thank you sir, big shout out to you!

Speaking of Friday's post, I'm thinking about taking one of those random thoughts I shared and making a full entry on the subject. I need to do some research and hammer down all the nails first. Keep watching for it.

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My Round Of Words 80 Sunday check in:

I've hit my goals for Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. In fact, I've exceeded my daily goal (500 words) every day so far for this challenge. some days as by as little as 6 words, and by as many as 402 for last night! This last is encouraging, because on Monday the goal jumps from 500 to 750/daily.

I'm already seeing that what I've written this week is going to need massive editing/rewrites/details filled in. I have a vague idea of what the scenes should be and how they fit into the story, but I'm mostly pantsing them right now. What the heck, it's a first draft right?

Pantsing won't cut it next week with longer word goals. I need something a little more concrete to build on. I want to map out a route for the week this afternoon.

Comments always welcome.
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ROW80 Update 1

ROW80-3 Goal Update 1 - July 6, 2011

Day 1: Goal 500 Wrote 839

• Hit my ROW goal for the day, but fell short of my daily goal of 1K each for the year.

Day 2: Goal 500 Wrote 543

• See above, but missed daily goal by a wide margin. Need to do better on that.

(This is the first one of these I've done. If anyone has suggestions for making this less BORING of a goal update, let me know.)
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Round Of Words In 80 Days Goals

ROW80 is new to me. I've never tried it before, but I'm going to give it a shot. I've been woefully under-productive this year. So, I'm going to ambitious with my goals, and I need some or more of you to keep me accountable.

My goals are many:

• A progressive daily word goal- 500/day the first week, 750/day the next, 1000/day the third week of July and 1250/day the last week of July. August starts at 1000/day and progresses to 1750/day the last week. And for the rest of the challenge, I am aiming for a goal of 1500/day. An extra 250 words/day jump isn't big, but it adds up over time. I need to get better about being productive on a regular, daily basis. I can spew words out for NaNoWriMo, but the rest of the year, my productivity nose-dives. ROW80 may be the impetus I need to break that habit.

• Finish the full first drafts of at least two novels. I have too many projects that are languishing in the 50-60K area that are unfinished, lacking only 30-40K to be complete. This has to end.

• Fight the Curse of the Brand New Shiny. I CAN NOT write on anything new during ROW80-3. I can make notes, jot down character ideas, plot points, and the like, but I can not write a single word on a new shiny idea until Sept 23rd. (This is a hard one and is going to suck; I have ideas for 3 new novels in my head)

• Start the editing/revisions on one of those finished novels.

Can I really make these goals? We'll see.

Your Organization Is Touching My Chaos!

Continuity is a bug-a-boo of mine in a novel series. Be consistent with your history & descriptions of a particular character or place or event. This is something I strive for in my writing, especially in the large series I am working on. If an author chooses to change a character's description, change hair color or the like, I can accept that.- provided there is an explanation for the change in the books. Don't make him sandy blond in one book, and have him dark haired two books later, without giving a reason why.

TV shows and lesser movies often give no thought to continuity. This bothers me, but not nearly as it does in print. I've seen good and bad examples of continuity in published print.

The Bad: I once read a book (which suffered severely from bad editing, or none at all. Really, it was a train wreck.) where the dog's name changed completely from one paragraph to the next. Not two dogs. One dog. Two names in two successive paragraphs. I keep this book as an example of what NOT to have printed with my name on the cover.

The Good: The various Star Wars novels that have come out over the last twenty years (well over a hundred, closer to two hundred) have shared an amazing consistency, given the fact that they are written by dozens of authors. Added to that are the 6 movies, the tv series, and the video games the individual units of LucasFilms has released, it becomes an even more impressive feat.

I've seen problems in my own writing. When you've got parts of a dozen different novels (or more, I lost count), plus several short stories floating around that are all in the same shared universe (and across a large span of time) it gets to be too cumbersome to keep everything in your head AND keep it straight. I have one alien species that I kept flip-flopping the ending of the species name from -in to -inian. Planet names that were written -ax in one piece, -axia in another.

I don't have George Lucas' money to hire my own continuity editing staff. Yet. Until then, I have to do it the hard way- myself! To combat this, I started a document to track all the references, characters, ship names, locations, ect that were going into my series. This isn't an entirely new idea, other writers no doubt do the same, with character bibles, three-ring binders, and whatnot. I call mine a compendium, and I went a little more thorough with mine.

I included things like a list of sector names (important because I give a header block for each new chapter giving the location, ship name the characters may be on, ect), a time-line of the major events so I can keep the history straight, and a reference guide for me to remind myself which projects use a given character, or reference. I broke all my references down into alphabetical order for easier searching. Here's an example page from the X-Corps Compendium:

Rhinocerosi

A genetically engineered species. Rhinocerosi were two meters tall, bipedal and weighed approximately one ton each. Jailen Devorax took a rhinoceros DNA sample from ancient Terra, and had the DNA manipulated to grow himself a private body guard force. (RP)

Rowantree, Captain Rosina

Captain of the Starcorp vessel Starcorp Merchant. Barely 1.5 meters tall, with mousy brown hair tied up in an efficient if not exactly inventive bun, Rowantree had been moved over from the Starcorp Accountant fleet to command of the Starcorp Merchant shortly before the ship was raided by the Chorros de Corazón. (TAH)

RP Freight Line­

Render Paxon’s independent freight company. (RP)

- S -

Sánchez, Captain Ramón Juan Álvarez de la Vega

Captain of the privateer ship Chorros de Corazón. He was of Portuguese descent, with a darkly tanned skin that was a genetic gift from his ancient ancestors. He wore a goatee beard and a short pony tail of jet black hair that gave him a rakish, almost piratical air. A practical man, Sánchez operated on the principal that you never ruin that which you can raid again in the future. A stern but fair authority figure, Sánchez played no favorites and accepted no shirkers among his crew. (TAH)

Sanchez, House

Sanchez was the second smallest of the surviving houses to form from DrummondCo. Sanchez was named for Juan Raul Julio Sanchez, the head of the marketing division. House colors were white and orange. During Operation Telegraph the house was one of the major alliance members, pushing their spin-ward border well into former House Merker space, adding several systems to house control. (HSPP1,6,7)

Schwecshheimmer, Fregattenkapitän Fritz “Quicksilver”

Commanding officer of the Merker Navy aerospace fighter squadron Hell Hounds on board the carrier Cerberus during the first two years of the Fourth Border War between Merker and Donov. Fritz was killed in an ambush during a Merker attack on an unmanned border observation post in an uninhabited system. (HSPP1)

I broke it down this way: Entries are alphabetical (by last names for characters). Ship names are alphabetical by the name of the ship, omitting 'The' from a title. The (parenthetical) bit at the end of the entry is my project reference code, so I can track and update references. Some entries appear in more than one project. For example, House Sanchez is mentioned in books 1, 6, and 7 of the Hunt Starfire series.

I started this document for my own self-reference. It's grown into a document over12,000(!) words long at the moment. I'm sure that by the time I get all of these projects written, and hopefully published, the Compendium will be the size of a novel itself!

So, there it is. There's my organizational tip for anyone who's doing extensive world building or writing a series. If you have any tips, feel free to comment and share them!

Your Space

Space...the final frontier- No wait, that's a different blog post. I'm talking about space of a different kind.

Workspace is what I'm on about today. (And not your little plot in the cubicle farm Monday - Friday) Currently, my writing "workspace" is the end of the couch. In front of the tv. I don't have a dedicated writing space, and that's probably putting the brakes on my productivity. Some people can sit in an overpriced coffee dealership and work away, but that's not me. I work better in a more solitary environment. I've attended write-in events during NaNoWriMo, and they are great for socializing with other writers, but I get more accomplished when I'm at home.

Having a set space would keep me more organized, and I think I could focus better. Someplace where I can keep all my reference material in easy reach without having to get up and walk 10 feet to look something up. Somewhere I can set up two computers/laptops, one to write from, the other to pull reference documents without having to switch between windows Yes, I'm lazy like that.

My idea space would look something like this: Oversized bookcases would line the walls. A large desk top for the two computers/laptops, and room to spread hard-copy out for reference and editing. Small refrigerator for keeping tasty beverages cold. I haven't decided if I'd want a window or not. Without one I'd be forced to look through the windows of my imagination and describe what I see there. (Which is the whole point of this hypothetical room, right?) And, I may, or may NOT have internet in there. Certainly not on the laptop for writing.

There it is, my mythical, hypothetical, idealized workspace. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on your own spaces- dream, real, or otherwise.

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Programing Note: On June 23rd, Twitter's own @Jinxie_G (author N.L. Gervasio) drops by to share her new book "Nemesis" with Brain Drippings. Don't miss it!

The Muse vs The Motivational Fairy

As I'm found of saying -

"The Muse overburdens me with ideas. It's the Motivational Fairy that's giving me the cold shoulder."

It's true too. Over the last few weeks, I've received ideas for two different novels,  a character description that fits neither of these novel ideas, and a piece of dialogue for that character (maybe?) in a possible sex scene - which is outside my norm. The idea locker is full to bursting. I've got more ideas than I could reasonably write out to completion.

What I am sorely lacking in is motivation. I haven't written anything in three weeks. I think part of it comes down to my inefficiency as a writer; I'm not getting the story out as fast as I want it to be. That's frustrating to me. If I could hook my brain directly into my word processing program and think the story onto the page, I'd be off like a shot!

How do you keep your ideas under control, and what keeps you motivated?