Monthly Archives: February 2011

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I don’t pre-plan. I don’t pre-write. I don’t outline.

It just never works for me, and the few times I have attempted a written outline have managed to sap any enthusiasm I had for a project before I even started.

That said, a writerly friend, Carolyn, over at Minted Words wrote not too long ago that she knew that she needed an outline, if she were ever to complete a long-form story. Outlines do work for some people. I am not one of those people.

But then, thinking about it, I had to admit to myself that I have my own pre-writing system, even if I never apply that pre-writing or outlining to paper.  I do plan my stories. It just tends to take place entirely in my brain on the long drives to and from work, or to and from the Boyfriend’s house.  I usually have an idea of the plot arcs I want my stories to travel before I ever start the story, and while I’m driving, the characters that live up there in my brain get to doing their things, so that when I sit down to Do The Thing, the next scene or the next chapter is already planned out without my ever having had a written outline of any sort.

This was also how I would generally write most of my academic papers.  I’d get all of my research done, pour over the sources, and muse over the subject while going about my daily life.  By the time I sat down to write my paper, it was already mostly formed in my mind.

It may not be a technique used by anyone else in the literary profession. It may even be frowned upon by writing professors. That doesn’t matter. It’s the one that works for me.  I imagine there are as many writing processes as there are writers, and that each one has to find the one that works for them.  Some, like J. K. Rowling, are obsessive planners. Others, like Stephen King, treat their story as a fossil in the earth, revealed to them a tiny bit at a time.  I think I’m probably somewhere in the middle – though perhaps leaning a bit towards those who don’t know how their story will go until they get there.

Both are valid writing styles. It just depends on the personality of the writer. Even so, I’ve often been hesitant to admit that I do not write out outlines, that I do not do any formal pre-planning.

But to be perfectly honest, like Carolyn, I’ve never experienced true Writer’s Block, where I’d be sitting staring at a blank page unable to come up with words to fill it.  I’ve never had problems due to a lack of pre-planning. The difficulties I have experienced in completing projects seem to all boil down to one specific problem: I have the attention span of a ferret on meth. I am easily distracted.

Therefore, much of my writing process actually consists of cutting out those distractions. Disconnect from the internet. Use Low-Powered Gaming-Incapable Netbook. Put on music.

But above all: Put Arse in Chair and Words on Paper and actually Do The Thing.

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A:N: I’ve decided to start participating in #FridayFlash, a Flash Fiction community on Twitter.  Flash Fiction, of course, consists of a short, usually unedited, vignette written to exercise the creative muscles.

Alice woke up and turned over, blinking at the buzzing alarm clock. A few extra seconds were required for the source of the sound to register before she threw a hand over at it to silence it, her other hand gripping at the back of her neck. Bernie had stolen the pillow again. Alice absently scratched him behind the ears, earning herself one barely opened eye and a soft purr.

With a yawn, she stumbled into the kitchen and poured coffee into her travel mug, taking a gulp with the desperation of an addict as she stared out the window.

“Bugger,” she said, with no real force. The garbage collectors had left the bin on its side again, lid open, lying across the driveway.

Alice sighed and shook her head, then returned to her room to get dressed. Her hair was limp (Damn the humidity), her clothes didn’t fit (She knew she shouldn’t have had that slice of cheesecake), and Bernie had coughed up a hairball in her shoe.  Her car barely had enough gas to get to work, but somehow she made it, even if she was ten minutes late.

Ten minutes late or not, she was the first one to arrive at work. She frowned and settled down in front of her computer, booting up and immediately going to check her email and Facebook.

Thirty-six minutes later, no one else had come in. Alice only noticed the time when she happened to glance at the clock – she’d been deep into her attempt to beat her high score in Bejeweled.

Forehead wrinkling, Alice got up from her seat and took a turn around the room, checking cubicles and offices.  There was no one here.  Thinking about it, she noted that there had hardly been any traffic on the road that morning, and no crowd at the elevators in the lobby. Not one client had come in, though she knew that there were several on the schedule.

Alice picked up the phone and dialed her boss’s cell phone, something she usually avoided doing.  She waited through three verses of “Yellow Submarine” before the phone switched over to voicemail. She tried her friend, Janet, who usually sat at the cubicle beside hers. Nothing.

Walking over to the window, she looked down onto the street below. Normally, by now, it would be filled with people. There was no one there.  The only movement came from a dog nosing about a dumpster in an alley across the street.

Alice sat back down at her computer. She pinched herself once, then again. It hurt.  She tugged a strand of hair out of her head. That hurt too.  Her neck still ached. This wasn’t a dream.

Alice sighed and turned back to her computer, pulling Bejeweled back up.  She would beat her score, today. She knew it.

© 2011 – Jennifer L. Davis – All Rights Reserved.

As I sit editing my first (I hope!) sales-worthy novel, I am faced with a quandary. It’s something I have to decide before I start sending queries to publishers. To pseudonym or not to pseudonym?

You see, I have a ridiculously common name.  A quick Google search will give you plenty of people I share a name with. There is the Jennifer Davis who is a reporter for Faux News (BLECH). There is the Jennifer Davis who is a quite talented artist. Apparently there is also a Jennifer Davis who was recently arrested in Florida for marijuana possession.  And, there is the Jennifer Davis who writes children’s books.  The old guy at the local pet store also apparently went to the senior prom with a Jennifer Davis long before I was born.

Most of my published work before this has consisted of short stories in obscure genre magazines or academic papers in scholarly journals.  I used my real name, most of the time.  But much of being successful as a writer relies on treating your writing like a business, and part of that business is branding.

Can you really successfully create your own personal “brand” if there are already tons of people out there wearing identical generic logos? Especially if some of those people are in the same field in which you are attempting to succeed? This is a case when a name too common can be akin to anonymity, when the last thing you want is to be anonymous.

The obvious solution, of course, is to use a pseudonym. I even have one ready-made that is already heavily associated with me, the handle I have used on the internet for bordering on two decades.  It’s a name that I answer to as readily as I answer to Jennifer. It’s my twitter handle, my forum name, even the name of the character I play most often in video games.  It is as much my name as the name on my birth certificate at this point.  Googling that name, in fact, will turn up links that are almost exclusively me.

But part of the dream of being a writer is seeing your name on that cover. Right now, I haven’t decided whether I’d rather that name be the name I was given, or the name I have chosen for myself.  Perhaps some variation thereon would be better: J. L. Davis, or Jenny, or M. Dhommnail. I have heard that gender-neutral author names can help sell books in male-dominated genres.  J. K. Rowling, I have heard, decided to use only her initials so that she wouldn’t put boys off.

Perhaps this is something I should wait to discuss with an agent, once I secure one.  It is a puzzle, though, and one that will have to be solved.

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So, anyone who is a regular reader knows that I have four indoor cats.

The oldest of these, Pippin, has just gone on a diet.  You see, Pippin is a Dog-Sized Cat, even without his now verging on bowling-ball-sized belly.  Even when he was young and spry and in good shape, the only collars I could get to fit him were dog collars, and I had to buy dog beds because he was too big for cat beds. His paws are enormous. His claws are so long and he is so strong that he has been known to maim me completely by accident, simply by walking across my foot.  This is a Big Cat. And in recent years, as playfulness gave way to laziness, he has become a Big Fat Cat.

I have another cat who requires a special diet as well – Sistermew, who has to have medicine mixed into her breakfast because of recurring UTIs.  At this point we are well accustomed to her having a separate breakfast, to the point that she runs into the bathroom when the alarm goes off and waits for me to shut her in.

But now having two cats who need to be fed separately can make for some complicated mornings.  It goes like this:

• Wake up. Give all my surrounding kitties a good snuggle and try to convince them to let me out of the bed. This doesn’t always work. Wiggle enough to dislodge the cat that is on top of me (usually Evilmew).
• Shut Sistermew in master bath, with her can of special food and medicine.  Turn on trickle of water in tub so that she’ll actually bloody drink something.
• Shut Pippin in other bathroom with his carefully measured low-fat morning munchies.
• Feed Outdoor Cats.
• Feed Brothermew and Evilmew in kitchen together. Since they get along fairly well, Evilmew doesn’t get bullied away from the food bowl. This is good, because Evilmew is far too skinny, and I often wonder if that is why she sold her fluff to the Basement Cat.
• Scoop Boxes.
• Eat Breakfast. Get Dressed.
• Go around house to let cats out of their respective breakfast prisons. If the other cats haven’t finished their meals, take them up, because Pippin Will Eat It All.

It’s been a week since Pippin’s been on his diet. So far, Pippin is grumpy, and the other cats are very confused as to why there’s not always food in the bowl in the kitchen, and as to why Pippin is treating them like they have severely offended him.

I have gathered up anything that could at all possibly be shredded and put it up out of his way. Paperbacks, cookbooks, magazines, cardboard boxes given to the cats as toys, etc., since Pippin’s favorite way to express anxiety and/or annoyance with me is to shred something and scatter the bits all over the house…

Unfortunately, I forgot the toilet paper.

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The fact that books as horribly written as the Twilight series were even published makes me despair for the fate of the publishing industry. The fact that these books espouse anti-women, pro-abuse, anti-choice , your-man-is-your-god-and-your-boss rhetoric couched as supernatural romance, and yet millions of women and girls read and love them, makes me despair for the fate of women. The fact that Stephanie Meyer gets rich while other, much more talented writers are having trouble putting food on the table bothers me, too, and not just because I’m one of those writers.

But I have to give Twilight thanks for at least one thing. Thanks to Twilight pushing the supernatural romance genre into the mega blockbuster range, a number of other excellent authors have gotten published who may not have, and have found success on the lists when their books might otherwise have disappeared into obscurity.

The best of these is Gail Carriger, who is like a modern day Jane Austen, with vampires, werewolves, and ghosts added for a little extra spice. Her Parasol Protectorate series is set in a steampunk version of Victorian England. This is the series that I gave to my younger cousin for Christmas this last year with the note that I wanted her to read a well written supernatural romance, for a change. (So far, she tells me, she loves it.)  I would not have known about her if not for a couple of my friends going into raptures over her books, and as they have done, I have tried to spread the word everywhere I could too.

The other is Cassandra Clare, a familiar name to fandom before she ever signed her own book contract. She was one of the biggest names in fanfiction, particularly in the Harry Potter fandom, and her original stories prove that her talent isn’t just for adaptation.  Her Mortal Instruments series is wonderful, but I, with my love of Victoriana, am particularly fascinated with her Infernal Devices series.

So yes, I hate Twilight for a myriad of reasons, but I do have to give it my gratitude for paving the way for better books in the genre to gain the attention and praise they deserve.

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