The New Project Starter Kit

TGIF, Operation Awesome!

As those of you who know me know well, I like to stay... busy, to put it mildly. Even now, as I am powering through revisions on my current project, I am already getting excited about my next idea in the queue. And I have good reason to be excited - usually the end of one project prompts a Battle Royale between fledgling ideas for premium space in my brain, so it's a lovely change of pace to have a fully-formed idea ready to go!

Sometimes, going into that new idea, I don't have a lot to work with until I get into the rhythm of it. Sometimes it takes a couple chapters to figure out what I'm doing. But even when I'm flying blind, I like to make a new project survival kit of sorts. Here's what I take with me when exploring the uncharted project wilderness:

A proper soundtrack. I work full time and have a long commute, so I have to use those long commutes to my advantage and get some serious brainstorming in. And when I need to drown out the loud-laughers and the cell phone-talkers and get lost in my thoughts, I need something to set the right mood. Sometimes that means a full-fledged, 50+ song playlist. Occasionally, that means two songs I will listen to on repeat for weeks upon weeks and will never want to hear again when the project is over. Either way, music, for me, is a serious plotting aid.

A protagonist character sheet. Other characters, I can figure out along the way, but if I can't get the voice right off the bat, it's hard to get going on the project. I shared my character sheet here - help yourself!

Basic plot touchstones. I have done my share of plotting AND pantsing, but I rarely know exactly where I'm going right from the start. Instead, I have key scenes in mind when I start, just to give me and idea and get me excited about the story. A full outline tends to emerge after the first quarter or so of the manuscript.

A pitch letter. Yes, I used to hate them, too. But much like those touchstones, it's great to start out knowing my hook. And it's also great to have something to share with my critique partners to get their early take on it. (And I kind of love getting a little early excitement going, too!)

 

Have fun, OA, and happy writing!

What's your stamp?

Happy Friday, OAers! If you haven't seen it yet, the winners of the October Mystery Agent contest have been posted. Head on over to look at the results and take a look at our interview with this month's agent!

I have been plugging away at a new project lately, and whenever I work on that new-project-groove, I spend a lot of time thinking about the work-in-progress in relation to other things I've written. If a story idea has themes, characters or relationships that are too close to my last work, then that idea either needs to wait a while, or isn't developed enough to have a life of its own yet (and then it still needs to wait a while.)

But there are similarities that follow me from project to project, too. I have been writing for long enough now that I've identified many of my favorite tropes to use, though I'm recognizing more and more all the time. I love stories about negotiating power imbalances: both in relationships and in the character's station in life. I love old, unreliable legends coming to life. I love the consequences of a long-past action echoing into the present.

And there are littler character tropes I love, too: found families, tragically codependent best friends, characters whose lives depend on saying the right words, characters whose decisions are fueled by someone long gone. And recently, it was pointed out to me that my shy, socially awkward characters show their love to those they're comfortable with by getting snarky with them. (And that is totally true. I love that dynamic.)

These tropes are sort of my stamp, as it were - proof that you're reading a Becky Mahoney story. And the fun thing is, the more I play with my favorite tropes, the more they begin to evolve. And I can't wait to see where some of them take me next.

What are some tropes that tend to reoccur in your work? How do you think your readers would describe a quintessential 'you' story?

The Writing Project Love Quadrangle

I'm a committed woman right now. What with the end-of-the-school-year crunch at my day job, the precious few hours I have for writing have to go towards one project, and that project is currently elbow-deep in revisions. Until I get this manuscript polished to go out into the universe, in other words, it's going to have my full attention.

Once it does go out into the universe, however, I'm going to have a fight on my hands. There are currently three other projects trying to seduce me.

There's the project that waited: the one that I started a little fling with last summer, that has patiently waited for me to wrap up my current MS. There's the wildly ambitious project: a sexy genre-blender that I'm really excited about... if I can pull it off right. And there's the dark horse: a thoroughly random idea that came out of nowhere and swept me off my feet. How's a girl to choose?

I know people who can juggle multiple manuscripts at the same time, and I'd very much love for those people to teach me their secrets one of these days. But until they do, I will have to contend with the writing project love quadrangles. True, it's an excellent problem to have, and you can always come back to a project next time. It'll probably be better for the extra time it spent steeping in your head. But it's so hard to take a world and characters you're already in love with and say, "Sorry, not yet."

If you've found yourself caught in a love quadrangle, maybe you've found a way to consider the pros and cons: whether you weigh market concerns, write a little of each project to see what shakes out, or imagine each of your love interests wrestling in jello. But one way or another, you have to choose eventually.

Best of luck. ;)

How about you? What's your strategy?

Writing in a new place

Happy Friday, OAers! It is a glorious day in Beckyville, for I have Internet once more! Now granted, I still had Internet on my phone, and at work (I do not, I repeat, I do not condone Twittering at work... *wink*) but I am spoiled.

The reason I didn't have Internet for a while is because I moved! I am finally settled in my new apartment in my beloved New England, enjoying the cool night air by an open window and listening to what sounds like my upstairs neighbors bowling on the wooden floors. (No place is perfect, after all.)

But I'm finding, once again, that being in a new atmosphere does wonders for kickstarting your writing brain. I came up with many of my manuscript ideas on the cusp of starting something new in the non-fictional world: I powered through one manuscript while studying abroad in Japan, started another when I moved to a new city to start my first job, and accordingly, a couple weeks ago, I started up a shiny new WIP after coming here. Something about new scenery, new sounds and smells, and a new commute just lays the groundwork for a new world to be built in a different part of my brain.

Does a change of scenery mean a new WIP for you? Or are you more productive when you have a comfy writing routine?

How to Have Fun With the Crickets in Your Inbox

A good friend of mine has just started querying, and another close friend will be soon. I am currently on submission and waiting on responses from publishers, and I have a few other friends waiting on pub responses as well. Which means we are pretty much all basket cases.

Querying and submitting are tough. The hardest part, by far, is the inevitable rejection. However, the WAITING is a close second. How many obsessive email checkers are out there? Come on, raise your hands...you know who you are *she says as her own hand waves proudly* My writers buddies call that sad emptiness inside their inboxes Crickets...'cause that's all you hear when you open the box ;-)

Now, I queried my fiction for a long time. Not intentionally. But, every time I decided to shelve my book, another request would come in, and then some nice rejections with a few revision suggestions will squeak by...so I'd revise, send out a few more queries, get a few requests, get a few rejections, decide to shelve again, get some more suggestions.....well, you can see how this goes. And once I got an agent and we started submitting to publishers, well, the waiting got worse. Like REALLY worse :D Now I get to wait on my agent to send revision notes (or to pass on a book idea completely), and waiting on publishers to say yea or nay to buying your book is nerve wracking in the extreme...especially because it can take soooo lonnnng.

However...

I've been doing it long enough now that I've gotten pretty good at just ignoring the fact that I even have submissions out. The crickets can still get pretty irritating though. So I came up with a few ways to distract myself from them.

1. Spam Your Friends

Now this one is fun :D Especially if they are waiting on responses too. Because you know every time they get a message saying they have email, their heart jumps a little (wicked, ain't I?) ;-)

I dig up funny stories, pictures, etc to put a smile on their faces, so it's not a total evil past time :D I mean, it's fun to get mail, even if it's not from an agent or publisher.

Oh, and this ONLY works on very good friends. Never, NEVER spam an agent. They will not appreciate your message full of funnies. They have enough mail to read. If you send them more, it will just take that much longer to get to whatever query or submission you are waiting on, and that wouldn't be good.

2. LOLcats

Ah, what a wonderful distraction. I am pretty heavily addicted to LOLcats. The dogs, celebrities, political jokes, graphs, and FAILs are pretty hilarious as well. Not only can you spend hours reading (and emailing) these, you can also make your own. Tons of fun!

3. Research a New Project

Okay, this might only be fun for me. And maybe a few select others. So...moving on...

4. Blogs

Read them, write them, search them, comment on them, follow them....you get the picture ;-)

And, while there are many, many, MANY other things you could do to distract yourself from the pesky crickets, the single best way is...

5. WRITE

Pull out a new project and write. Focus on something besides the book you are querying or submitting. Lose yourself in the world of a new character. There is nothing like get swept away in a new story. Get excited about it, swim in it, devote all your available brain space and some that is not so available to it. Pretty soon you'll find that you don't even hear the crickets anymore :)

How do you distract yourself from those crickets?