sometimes, even I’m amazed at how weird I am

Okay, so I didn’t hit my word count target today… but I made a spreadsheet.

I have many, many issues. And I’m going to let you in on a few of them. First, I know I’ve mentioned this before, but I like to be ridiculously organized. Second, I can’t function properly if I’m not organized. Third, my brand of procrastination always feels disturbingly productive and justifiable in the middle of a procrastination attack.

This is going to be a very short post. As I said, today I made a spreadsheet because I couldn’t find one that was pretty AND that had the things I wanted on it. Most specifically (because I’m crazy) I wanted a scatter plot where I could map my coffee intake against my morale and see if I could zero in on the amount of coffee that makes me productive. Even as I’m typing this out, I’m questioning my sanity. But there you have it.

And if you actually want to have it, you can grab it here:

NaNoReportCard-31DayMonth-ashleycliston

and the tea version: 🙂

NaNoReportCard-31DayMonth-TeaVersion-ashleycliston

Ashley Goes To Camp

In fourth grade, I went to church camp (which is very much like actual summer camp, only with bible study twice a day). I thought I was ready for it. Day one was fine – I was high on the excitement of being away from home for the first time. The air smelled clean, there were so many kids to play with, and it was back-to-back summer fun: swimming, sports, and arts & crafts. It wasn’t my church; even thought I went to catholic school, and this was a Christian camp, my family wasn’t all that religious. But my best friend (this was her church group) promised that the bible studies weren’t that long, that the lake was always cool, and that there were bonfires every night. All of those things were true.

What she didn’t tell me was how far I would have to walk in dark, scary woods to get to the bathroom at night. Or that the girls in the sixth grade cabins were really mean. Or that we would have to get in a rickety boat and row into a pitch-black, tiny little cave for a field trip. My biggest fears: deep water, the freaking dark, and confined spaces. But the most important thing she didn’t tell me (probably because her sister was there and her father was a counselor, so she didn’t realize) was how homesick I would be. During the day, I was fine. Better than fine, even. During the day, I was having the time of my life. At night, I curled up in my sleeping bag, buried my face in my pillow to muffle the sound, and cried. From lights out until I passed out, the only thing in the world I wanted was my mom. I wrote many a heartbreaking letter that month – but I never mailed them. I was too determined to put on a brave face. I was a tough little pixie, after all – and I had a reputation to uphold.

A few months ago, my mom and I were talking about my summer at camp – and all I could remember were the fun things. But my mom had a confession to make. I’d forgotten to throw out the letters I wrote, and she’d found them when she unpacked my laundry. She told me that she’d read them all and cried the entire time – but never once did she mention them when I was bragging about my bravery and regaling her with stories of how much fun I had.

photo credit: cafemama via photopin cc

This month, I’m tackling camp of a different kind – and although the walk from my desk to my bathroom is short and brightly lit, this camp is more frightening. Not because it’s far away, or because I’ll be away from home (this camping trip is taking place at my desk). It’s intimidating – frightening, even – because it’s an opportunity to kick-start my dream. This month, I could finish the first draft/zero draft of a novel I believe in. It might not be the novel that gets me published, I know that. But every day spent writing is a step closer, a new learning opportunity. And I don’t want to waste another day. Seeing my words on paper, seeing my story unfold, watching my writing evolve over time – there aren’t words to describe it. If you’re a writer, though, I don’t have to. You get it.

But baring your soul, even into a word-document or Scrivener file, is tough stuff. There’s some part of me, no matter how small, in every character I write. Fears and insecurities, manias, phobias… passions. Fantasies. Dark and light, good and bad; My heroes are full of things I wish I was, my villains are full of the things I wish I wasn’t.  Someday, in the best case scenario at least, someone will see those things. And for better or worse, they’ll know – they came from my heart to my mind to my pen.

This time, though, I know that when the road gets a little scary, I can go curl up at my mom’s with a blanket, a cup of cocoa and one of her many cozy cats. Maybe we’ll even make s’mores while we watch bad reality TV. And for a while, life will be good and I won’t be afraid.

The Problem with Heroines (a.k.a. Defining Worth by Virginity)

photo credit: Pat>Rick via photopin cc

There seem to be two camps among the romance-reading public: those who are enraged by the endless sea of virginal heroines, and those disgusted by experienced heroines (or will “tolerate” a heroine with sexual experience – as long as it’s kept quiet/barely mentioned/swept under the rug). I’m not in either camp, really. I’m in the “why does her sexual history (or lack thereof) even matter?” camp. Anyone with me?

Like most writers, I’m an avid reader. I mainly read within the genres I write, but not exclusively. I’ve had a lifelong love-affair with romance novels (I probably started reading them way too early in life, but that’s another post entirely). When I was a teenager, the virgin heroine thing never bothered me – I actually liked reading from the POV of someone as inexperienced as I was, and I never gave it a second thought. Reading as a woman, I feel differently.

I don’t mean that I automatically dislike any book where the heroine is a virgin. I don’t even mean that I prefer experienced heroines over virgin heroines – it all depends on the character and the setting. In fact, if you’re writing a historical, I almost expect the heroine to be a virgin. That’s the political climate. If I’m reading a regency and somehow the high-society heroine has managed to have numerous sexual escapades without repercussions, I might not be able to suspend my disbelief.

But if you’re writing about a contemporary heroine who has been engaged for over two years, living with her fiancé and sleeping in his bed – and she’s still a virgin… come on. And if it’s all so that you can make a plot point for the Hero (her new husband, not the previously mentioned fiancé) to think her reticence to sleep with him is because she’s cheating, all so that you can have him practically rape her – all so that you can have him experience shock and remorse and tenderness when she bleeds? I’m sorry, but this does not make sense in my head. And this example, by the way – it’s from one of my favorite authors. A New York Times Bestseller.

It makes me wonder why it was so important for the heroine to be a virgin, especially when it did not make sense with the character’s personality or backstory. I just googled, and the book was first published in 1999 – I’m not sure what the publishing climate was like in those days (I wasn’t even in middle school yet), but could it have been a demand made by the publisher? I don’t know, because the rest of the series spans about a decade, and all of her heroines are virgins.

photo credit: ~Brenda-Starr~ via photopin cc

I feel like this is one of the flaws in our society. As it is now, women may have the right to say ‘no’, but they don’t have the right to say ‘yes’. Our romance novels still, to this day, reflect that fact. I understand the 1970’s romance novels are a product of the time they were written in, but we are still (by the choices we make in writing) denying that a woman has the right (yes, the fucking right) to take charge of her own sexuality. And I hate that. Every once in a while, please, give me a heroine who is as comfortable in her sexuality as the hero.

A sexual history does not make a woman less, and an intact hymen does not a heroine make.

ALSO

A lack of sexual history does not make a woman less, and a virgin heroine should not be solely defined by, or desired for, her perceived “purity.”

I think of how this reflects on our society as a whole. In some ways, we address (and attempt to ‘educate’) men as if we’re training dogs, as if they’re somehow lesser beings incapable of holding two opposing thoughts in their heads and we need to speak slowly and focus on one trick at a time so that ‘the poor things’ don’t get confused (I hate this). So we focus on the view we find more important – that women have the right to say no. In the current environment of our world, it’s an important statement to make. But we’re neglecting the other side of the coin, the fact that women also have the right to say yes – without being judged. Without being shamed.

And we’re perpetuating this in romance novels – and for little girls like me, that’s the first real glimpse we get into the world of relationships. Don’t we owe it to those little girls to empower our female characters – not because of their sexual history, but regardless of it?

Which camp do you fall in? Do you prefer your heroines to be virgins when they meet the hero? Why or why not?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Falling In Love with Your Villain

Every piece of writing advice I’ve ever read says to create a well-rounded villain. Give him goals and motivations. Give him a life, and a believable reason to be ‘the villain.’ So I’m doing that – or at least, trying to the best of my ability.

I’ve worked on my villain with as much depth as my hero and heroine. I know his life story, I know his timeline, I know just about everything about his heart and soul and inner workings. This might seem like a good thing. The problem is, I think I’m falling in love with him (as a character, of course). I realized that if I changed the end of my novel and switched POV, he could very well be the hero of his own story.

Before I got quite to the end of my ‘redemption fantasy,’ I realized that I have a disturbing trend of rooting for the villain. And if not the actual villain, the anti-hero. In Lost, I would have taken Sawyer (arguably the anti-hero) or Ben Linus (arguably the villain for at least a season) over Jack, any day. In Justified, even though I love Raylan (and Timothy Olyphant), I’m always more interested in Boyd Crowder (Walton Goggins).

I struggled through Law Abiding Citizen. I was completely uncomfortable through most of the movie, because the darkest, primal part of me couldn’t firmly place Clyde (Gerard Butler’s character) into the role of villain even as he was acting out one of the most gruesome torture scenes I’ve watched. I understood – it made me sick, but I understood.  I’m even getting confused as I type this, because I’m checking out the movie’s IMDB page, and some of the reviews refer to Clyde as the hero (I think that might have more to do with the fact that the movie’s actual hero, Jamie Foxx’s character, wasn’t someone I wanted to root for). It was the last half of the film that, for me, through him into a full-on villain role. Up to a certain point, Clyde could have been redeemable.

Source: IMBD | © The Film Department, Warp Films, and Evil Twin

I started to think about my own story, and the stories that I hope will come after it. Can my villain be redeemed? Maybe I’m just naïve, or overly idealistic, but… Can I write Carved in Stone in a way that will open a door to another novel in which my villain can evolve into the role of the hero (or, at least the anti-hero) of his own story?

Who is your favorite villian (TV, book, movie)? What makes you love him/her?

Writing, Environment, and Productivity (How you get ‘in the mood.’)

Callanish Standing Stones
photo credit: clnmac via photopin cc

I’m back after a complete Windows re-install (it couldn’t be helped – but I suppose I needed it anyway), and thanks to Dropbox, Evernote, and a mini-organization session, I didn’t lose anything important. But since I have a perfectly clean, empty laptop at my fingertips, I thought I would be the perfect time to truly get organized and set up my laptop in a way the aids my productivity.

I rarely use the screen on my laptop because it has issues with going black at the most inopportune times, which then prevents me from saving my work because the screen won’t come back on until I restart. When I’m writing, I just hook my laptop up to my flat-screen via HDMI cord and use my television as a monitor.  That way I can also have a mini slide-show of images saved from my pinterest inspiration boards up next to Scrivener as I write (one of my biggest issues in first drafts is that, if left to my own devices, I’ll write every scene in an ‘empty white room’ because setting descriptions are something I usually skim over when I’m reading – so I forget to even work in the small details among the “action”).

I’m a firm believer in Writing Playlists (wanna see mine?); mood music or even just an hour-long loop of night-time sounds (crickets, owls, wolves, and wind through the trees) or rainfall/thunderstorms. I write in hour-long “sprints” that follow a 15-20 minute outlining session where I detail the scenes I’ll be working on – so to keep myself in check, I’ll plug noise-reducing headphones that block out the world around me so that I can stay deeper inside the world in my head.

my screen, so far… show me yours? :]

As I was setting up my computer today, I wondered how many of us (writers) do things like this, or if I’m the odd girl out in that I need to actually take measures to keep myself in the story. Do other writers just sit down amidst the chaos and produce – something I have trouble with? Filtering out distractions is not something I excel at – my attention span leaves much to be desired.

How do you write? Do you have writing “rituals,” like me? Playlists, slideshows, etc? Do you set up your desktop in a certain way because it helps you bring your story, world or characters to the front of your mind? Do you listen to music as your novel, or do you prefer silence?

Staying Organized In A Disorganized World

Something you probably don’t know about me:
I can’t stand being disorganized.

Something you might not know about about the writing process:
It is, at the very core, a messy endeavor.

I always start out the same way – with a beautifully empty project folder and a brand new, blank Scrivener file. For the first few hours (sometimes days), things go swimmingly. I have all of my research in themed folders, my images and documents are perfectly labeled, and all of my plot ideas are in one easy to browse spreadsheet.

Somewhere into week two all Hell breaks loose.

photo credit: greg westfall. via photopin cc

Images, maps and documents start accidentally saving into my ‘Downloads’ folder instead of my ‘Research bible’ folder. My plot ideas end up in random .txt files or OpenOffice folders that I can’t manage to track down once I (accidentally) close them. My Scrivener label tab is filled with 65 arbitrary label colors and I’m out of different shades to use. I have several drafts of character profiles, but I can’t find the most current version (that just happens to be a 180 degree shift from the last version), and I know I made some note, some where about this wonderful plot thread – only I have no idea where it is and I can’t remember what it said.

This is the point where I want to tear my hair out – and also the point where I have to organize my life.
I’m at that point. Right now, as I’m typing this.
(I’m also a goddess of procrastination in my spare time).

Anyway. I’m about to try to get organized – everything has a place, and before camp starts, everything will be in said place.

That being said: Who out there has a good system for staying organized? What are your tips for either organizing the clutter or keeping it organized once you get it that way?

Writing The Story You Want To Read

For those of you who don’t know (I’m addressing my non-existent audience and my grandmother, by the way), I’m tackling Camp Nano this July. So, the past few months have been spent on world-building. This month I started on my character development and plot. I do a lot of research, and not all of it has to do with setting or psychology of characters. I like to read what other authors and readers have to say. I eat up posts of story structure, or what others think makes a story great (even if it’s subjective).

And sometimes, in the midst of all of this advice, I get insecure. I often wonder if other writers feel this way – if we’re somehow wired to go deep into the minds of the people we create and the effect that empathetic nature has on our own mental state (that’s another blog post entirely). But the fact is, I often second-guess myself – I get so lost in the maze because I’m trying to avoid tropes, or cliches, or whatever… And sometimes in the midst of trying to be a better writer, I lose sight of the part of myself I should be trying to please: the part of me that is a reader. In the search to find/create/write a story that will please others, I forget that I need to please myself first.

I like dark themes in fiction. The exploration of sexuality, the dark side of human nature, the parts of my own mind that I hide from the world (and sometimes, from myself). I like to watch someone (a hero, a heroine…) have to adapt to survive, to be pushed to their limits and have to evolve or die. I’ll chose an anti-hero over a hero any day of the week. My favorite series heroine is a damaged, insecure drug addict who lives in the bleakest, most hopeless world imaginable and only keeps going because the afterlife is far bleaker than her reality.

My mind isn’t filled with sunshine and rainbows and happy endings. When I’m alone and curled up with a book, I don’t have to pretend that it is.

I just need to allow myself the same freedom when I write.

So, if you’re doing Nano this month, and you’re in the mood to take advice from the likes of me, let it be this:

Don’t let marketing trends dictate your story. Don’t let negative reviews dictate your brainstorming. Don’t listen to the snarky know-it-alls that want to convince you that everything under the sun is wrong, that what you like is wrong, that your idea is bad… Don’t get discouraged.

photo credit: madamepsychosis via photopin cc

Find an idea you love, put ass in chair, and write the story you want to read. 

Anyone else doing Camp Nano this year?

How do you deal with insecurity when writing?

Scrivener Discoveries: Name Generator

Okay, so here’s the thing.
I love Scrivener down to the depths of my very soul. However, sometimes I fall into the habit of sticking to the same features because I find them useful. I use label colors, keywords, note-cards, and collections to study character arc. I use it for world-building. I use it for outlining. I use it for character development – but it’s always been purely a place to organize what I find.

So, last night, a feature of Scrivener that I’d previously overlooked was brought to my attention: The Name Generator.

I’d always blown it off – thinking it was just something to pop in a placeholder until you had time to research a name (which, if you’re me, can take hours and look suspiciously like procrastination). Like, you give your hulking, evil villain some moniker that identifies him as big and bad: Brutus, Butch, Bruce, etc.

Well, a friend of mine in my writing group / camp cabin was telling me a bit about her characters – and I commented on her naming conventions (which are beautiful). So she tells me about Scrivener’s Name Generator. I suspiciously pull up the generator (Tools > Name Generator), and I see a very small list of names that look like bad Sims characters: Lannie Sanner, Humbert Obier, Cook Butters… Which is probably why I clicked off the name thingie in the first place. But I kept exploring this time and stumbled through the wardrobe into Name Narnia.

My initial assumption was that it wouldn’t have any use in my current WIP, which is a 5th century historical. I was wrong. You can sort by name origin, and it ranges from Ancient Egyptian, Ancient Greek to Basque, Swahili and Teutonic. There’s even an Arthurian Legend category which made me do the silliest happy dance imaginable. You can also import your own names lists (I intend to do that very soon with my big list of names – I’ll post my findings).

Scrivener screenshot | Name Generator.

But she kept the hard sell for the very end. You can search the entire database by name meaning. So if I want a name that means “wolf” or “warrior” or “bright,” I just type that in and it will give me a list of possible names. I can do all of this name-finding while I’m disconnected from the internet.

Let me re-iterate.
I can find an appropriate name without re-connecting to the internet and the World Wide Web of Distraction.

Which means my procrastination disguised as name-hunting is a thing of the past. I don’t have to be tempted by pinterest or tumblr or pictures of my cousin’s baby on facebook. I’m free to stay disconnected, and more importantly – I can just keep writing.

ETA: 8 Days Out

I love deadlines.

No, I’m not being sarcastic. I love having an end-date, a reason not to put something off or procrastinate – and a tangible goal that I can see on a calendar.

Camp NaNo (a summer NaNoWriMo spin-off) starts a week from tomorrow. Or, if you’re an obsessive planner, like me, you’ve been preparing for it since mid-April. I started this blog a while ago – I just didn’t post, because I didn’t quite know how to begin (I always have trouble with the first line/page of a new story, too). But with the planning stage in the final stretch, and me awake at 7AM on a strung-out coffee high, today seemed like a good day. And a to-do list seemed like the perfect place to start. In a way, it’s the best representation of myself I can give you. I live my life by lists, and charts, and research – everything must be meticulously planned before embarking.

So here’s my to-do list for July:

• 90-95K words on CARVED IN STONE. (3000-3065 words per day)
• A blog entry a day, even if I’m exhausted.
• Walk/Jog 3-5 miles per day to stretch my tired, achy I-sat-too-long-at-my-desk muscles.
• Smoke a half a pack or less per day, dammit.
• Stop instagram-ing pictures of my food. Seriously. And my cat. And my mom’s cat. And the stray cats.

Yes, I’m really exhausted, and trying to keep myself awake until 10 when my writing group is having a pre-camp planning chat. Also, I’m trying not to drink any more coffee until after I sleep…

AMC’s The Walking Dead; S01E01

 …because walkers can’t write novels.