Writing My Way Out of the Maze by Jess Riley

Hi! So, this posting cycle’s topic is pretty timely for me: “Lost in the Cornfield Maze.” I actually feel like my work-in-progress has me somewhere in the middle of the hedge maze in The Shining and Jack’s on the loose, but on with the story.

Last summer I was laid off. It turned out to be temporary, but I immediately strapped myself into my office chair, rolled up my sleeves, and prepared to write my way out of dying in a Dickensian debtor’s prison.

So I wrote. And I wrote. By August, I had nearly a hundred pages of fairly decent material cobbled together. But at that point, three things happened: 1) I was offered three freelance editing jobs that I’d be crazy to pass up; 2) I was offered my old job back; and 3) the novel I’d worked on for more than a decade and released in July had sold barely enough copies to pay for my publicist.

So I stopped working on my novel, at least for the ten-month grant writing season ahead of me. I shelved those hundred pages. I needed a break from thinking about any of it, and I needed to focus on things that actually paid my bills and kept me out of that Dickensian debtor's prison. But over the last few months, I didn't forget about the story—I squirreled away ideas and notes as they came to me, anticipating the month of July when I could dust off my project and finish it.

This July arrived. And when I looked at my manuscript, I got a headache. What was I thinking, writing science fiction? Or featuring four—maybe more!—point-of-view characters? With myriad connections? And interwoven past lives? And a multi-state setting in the year 2060?!

I re-read the whole thing and was surprised that I liked it better than I remembered. But I knew I was lost. I needed to storyboard this beast—color-code characters, including their back stories (and past lives!) and physical appearances and motivations. I needed to outline whose chapter came next, and what would happen in it. I needed to remember what season it was, for crying out loud. There were so many loose ends and bits of incomprehensible nonsense it was like a knitting factory had exploded inside that horrible new Scarlett Johansson movie.

The big picture was overwhelming. So I lost most of July to procrastination. Reading. Gardening. Planning a kitchen and bath reno. Having fun with friends and family. You know, what most people would call living. It was fantastic.

But in the back of my head, I knew I needed to at least finish a decent chunk of the novel, plus a synopsis, if only so I can send it to my agent and see if this sucker has legs. It’s the hardest and strangest and most exciting thing I've ever written. I could have walked away, but it's speaking to me again, and I'm too curious to see what happens next.

So I am butt-in-chair. It’s the only way. I tell myself, Just two pages a day. Bit by bit. Finish your outline and map things visually near your desk. And write your way out of the damn maze.

PS: Do any of you use Scrivener? I have it, but I felt like I needed to storyboard the tutorial and then pour myself a huge glass of wine and play Plants vs. Zombies until my brain stopped buzzing.

~~~~~

Jess Riley is the author of Driving Sideways, All the Lonely People, and Mandatory Release. She is currently remodeling her kitchen, bathroom, and novel-in-progress all at once because she loves a challenge.

What Writing Tools and Software Do You Use?

by Wendy Tokunaga

I’ve written all of my novels using Microsoft Word. Before and during my writing I do extensive research on the Internet and print out articles and keep them in file folders. Occasionally I like to get away from the confines of my computer and desk. So, instead of heading out with a laptop, I print out my work-in-progress drafts and bring them and my research to a café. While sipping on a green tea matcha latte and trying to avoid purchasing that oversized chocolate chip cookie in the display case with my name on it, I’ll make corrections and notes on my drafts, brainstorm further, re-read articles, ponder and daydream. It’s important for my writing well being to sometimes get away from my home office and computer screen, my working-from-home husband and my demanding Siamese cat.

But lately I’ve been feeling stuck with a revision of a finished novel as well as the beginnings of two novels-in-progress (yes, I am a Gemini). Colleagues and students alike have been raving about Scrivener for years now and the questions come to mind, “What am I missing out on?” and “Is there something I could do differently with the help of tools that will enhance my creativity in ways I haven’t considered?”

It’s not that I haven’t tried a few programs before. But I’m famous for downloading them and then letting them rot on my desktop, saying I don’t have time to learn them and I’ll get to it once I start my next novel. Or I simply use them once, throw my hands up in the air and then forget all about them.

I finally did recently purchase and download Scrivener (very reasonably priced) as well as the Scrivener for Dummies book. Fellow writers told me that I may not need the book—that the online documentation was quite well done, but trust me, I do usually need how-to books as well. I’ve only just begun to explore Scrivener and I find that it seems best for help with becoming better organized and having research all in one place (though not easy to print out, which I guess isn’t the point). It also has a virtual corkboard and index cards for storyboarding, which was fun to play around with, but I couldn’t seem to print that out either or copy and paste the text and take it to the café unless I wanted to print it on actual Avery 3x5 cards.

Organization is not usually a challenge for me. I guess I’m looking also for help with plotting and brainstorming—something that will help me get the ball rolling. I know how to do this intellectually, but I feel that it’s good to have a jump-start and a way to bounce ideas around that will stimulate my creativity. There are other software packages designed with this in mind (The Marshall Plan, Dramatica, etc.) but I have heard these are difficult to learn and perhaps more complex than they need to be. So I guess it’s good to know up front what you want in a writing software and how it is actually meant to help.

Researching on the Internet I see that some writers like to use a variety of tools instead of one dedicated software package. There’s Pro Writing Aid, which is a writing improvement and editing software; Visual Thesaurus; and Evernote, which you can use for clipping scene ideas, notes, photos, etc. And there are many more.

I also see that Scrivener has a way to set a draft and session “target”—a total word count goal that plugs into a deadline. I think this could be useful, if I do indeed end up using Scrivener but it’s also something I could easily set up for myself.

So, girlfriends, what software and tools do you use, if any? Do you utilize any kind of plotting or story development software? What works for you? What doesn’t? And if you do use and like Scrivener, what are the features that you find the most helpful?

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