Dear Contest Entrant

So here I am, writing the millionth blog entry about What Judges Want In Contests. Mine probably won’t be much more helpful than the other 999,999, but after reading a few recent contest entries, I feel the need to get something off my chest. So herewith I provide some items for all contest entrants to keep in mind.

1. Spell check exists for a reason. Having used a word processor for over twenty years now, I can tell you that today’s spell checkers are a lot easier to use and a lot more automatic than their predecessors. Mine (MS Word for Mac) puts a helpful little red line under any word not in its fairly extensive dictionary. That means if I’m paying attention, I can usually catch misspelled words with a quick review of my MS before I send it out to other readers. All of which boils down to this: there’s no excuse for misspelled words in your contest entry. None. As for homophones, those pesky words that sound the same but mean something different (e.g., bare and bear), if you can’t catch them on your own, find a critique partner who can. Trust me on this, nothing makes you look worse faster than having lots of obviously misspelled words sprinkled throughout your MS.

2. The same thing goes for misused words. I frequently judge historicals because, well, I like to read historicals. That means I frequently run across writers who are struggling with a vocabulary from a different time and place. The most insidious of these struggles involve words that sound like the word you want, but that mean something quite different.  “Parameter” is not the same as “perimeter”; “sensibility” is not the same as “sensitivity.” “Simplistic” is definitely not interchangeable with “simplified.” And so on, and so on. Okay, I’m an ex-English teacher and copy editor so I recognize these things. Okay, some readers may not. But here’s the thing—editors at major presses definitely will. Once again, misused words make you look like you don’t really know what you’re doing.

3. Basic grammar and sentence structure have to be correct. They have to be! Most of us like to believe that it’s the story that matters, and it’s true that if you have no story, no amount of proper English will save your butt. But most of us in this business have stories to tell, some better than others. And it’s a rare story that’s so wonderful you’re willing to overlook a lot of really elementary grammar mistakes.

Okay, so none of this advice is magical. None of it will make you run right out and start that Breakthrough Novel. Most of it refers to that phase of writing known as scut work. And most of us, with the possible exception of a few anal retentives,  would just as soon skip over it as quickly as possible. But you’re in a contest here. You’re up against a lot of other writers, most of whom have worked pretty hard on what they’re sending in. You want to blow the judge away, to make her believe she’s stumbled across the Next Big Thing. If you send in an entry without going over it with a fine tooth comb (and preferably running it through a critique group or two), you probably won’t be the one who does that. Please believe me, the Next Big Thing knows how to spell.

The Writing Process

I used to be a writing teacher in my other life. I never taught creative writing but I did teach freshman composition, technical writing, and writing for the Web. One of the most useful things I picked up in my years on the front lines was an introduction to the writing process.

A little background here: back in the old days (i.e., before 1970), nobody ever talked about how people actually wrote. They just told you what to come up with—for example, a “description essay” (and how many people outside of freshman comp classes ever write essays that do nothing but describe?). Then some composition researchers started looking at the way people actually went about writing. They found that the process went in phases that they divided into, roughly, prewriting, drafting, and revising.

Prewriting involves all the things you go through before you actually start writing—if you’re a planner like me, it means brainstorming, charting, maybe using the kind of question and answer structure you get in a software program like Dramatica, and so on. If you’re a pantser, it probably means doing a lot of thinking, both conscious and un-, about what you’re going to do and how it’s going to work.

The drafting phase is pretty straightforward—it’s getting the words on the page. And revising means going back and making those words say what you really want them to say. It’s those last two phases I want to talk about. I think a lot of beginning writers run into grief because they get these two phases confused.

Let me give you an example. I know a writer, a very talented writer, who can never seem to finish any of her manuscripts. She writes a couple of chapters, takes them to her critique group, lets the others in the group look at what she’s written, and then goes home and tries to make it perfect. And that’s where she freezes up. It’s not perfect and she can’t go on writing that particular book.

Now my finished stuff is far from perfect, I know. But believe me when I’m drafting it’s even more imperfect than the finished version! That’s because when I’m drafting, I’m drafting. I spend all my time getting words down on the page—not always the right words, or the words I’ll ultimately end up with, but words nonetheless. And I don’t really go over them from one day to the next. I’ll read what I wrote yesterday, and maybe I’ll fiddle with it a little, but for the most part I’ll move pretty quickly on to the next scene I’m going to work with. It usually takes me a couple of months to do a complete draft because I write longer books (around 90,000 words), but I don’t stop moving forward during those months unless something seems catastrophically off. Whenever I’m tempted to go back and clean things up, I end up muttering “Just get it down, just get it down.”

And that’s the point I’d make here. In writing more than in some other pursuits, the perfect can be the enemy of the good. Nobody starts off with a perfect draft, trust me. Some writers, like Edgar Allan Poe, have claimed that their masterpieces came to them fully formed. They’re lying. The first time through, the words in the dialogue won’t be quite right for everybody. You may not have enough detail in the descriptions. The action may seem too abrupt or too drawn-out. But here’s the point: IT DOESN’T MATTER.

Think of your writing as a party (maybe that will make it less painful!). You get the house set up before the guests arrive, but once the guests are there you just let ‘er rip. Maybe you’ve got a few things planned, like a meal or a TV marathon you want to watch. Or maybe you’re somebody who just likes to let the party develop the way it’s going to develop. Anyway, as long as the party’s going, you’re going with it, just letting the whole thing flow along. You wouldn’t stop a good party to run the vacuum sweeper just because somebody spilled a little popcorn on the rug. You might gather up some dirty glasses, and you’d probably refill the chip and dip bowls, but you’ll save the major clean-up until after the party’s over.

The main thing here is, don’t let yourself get hung up on revising before you’re ready. Don’t keep rewriting that paragraph to get it absolutely right. Get it good enough and then keep going. The great thing about the writing process is that you’ve always got a chance to clean it up later. Let the guests go home, let yourself put your feet up and take a rest, let your brain relax.

And then get out that vacuum sweeper and go to work.

On Workshops

You can always tell when a critique partner or a contest judge has just come from a good writing workshop. Whatever they learned there will show up in their comments on your work. Take the workshop on using all your senses when you write. If your critique partner has been to one of these, you’ll start getting comments about how you need to include the sense of taste and smell in each scene. Never mind that this is a tense dialogue scene between the hero and heroine where neither one is even vaguely considering food. You need to find a way to make them taste something.
The problem is, in the real world of writing, very few descriptions use all five senses equally (or at all). Check it out. Go to a writer you really admire (Eloisa James, say, or Susan Elizabeth Phillips). See how many senses they use in their descriptions. Now they’ll probably involve more senses than just sight. But one sense will probably be dominant—sight or hearing or (if it’s a seduction taking place at a midnight supper) taste, for example—with the other senses coming in as needed. And I’d be willing to bet they won’t pull in all five senses in that description.
Moreover, I’d be willing to bet that the workshop leader didn’t tell the participants to use all five senses in every scene. She probably said to use all five senses where it was appropriate, to not rely so much on sight, etc., etc., etc. Your critique partner or your contest judge, however, simplified that advice to “use all five sense all the time.” It’s easier to remember, after all. It’s also pretty much guaranteed to sink a lot of scenes and eventually reduce the writer to gibbering.
I like workshops. I go to them, and I get useful advice from them. But you have to go to them with the right frame of mind, which means, basically, don’t look for magic bullets or holy grails in the workshop advice.
Too many times people go to workshops looking for the One True Thing that will take care of all their writing problems. Believe me, if there was a magic bullet that would take care of everybody’s writing problems, everybody would be doing it by now. A good workshop leader knows that. She or he will tell you flat out that whatever technique they’re talking about is a tool, something you can use to help you generate ideas or revise your writing or plot your next novel. But in no way will it be a magic charm to make your writing perfect.
In the last analysis, workshops are good for getting you pointed in the right direction—and they’re great for camaraderie. I’ve gone to lots of plotting bootcamps, not because I always need help plotting my books but because I enjoy the process of brainstorming through plots with other people. If nothing else, workshops remind you that you’re not alone.
And sometimes, that alone is worth the price of admission.

Regency Sex

I’m a big fan of regency romances, although I’ll probably never try to write one (the research involved is mind-boggling). I’m obviously not alone in this, given the sales of people like Julia Quinn, Mary Balogh, and Eloisa James (to mention some of my favorites). Incidentally, let me be clear on this: when I say “regency romances,” I’m talking about romances set in England during the early part of the nineteenth century. I know some people have used “regency romance” to designate a particular style of historical romance that involves little or no sex and a lot of heavy breathing. While I’ve read some of those (Loretta Chase’s early series romances fall into that category—so do Stephanie Laurens’s), that’s not what I’m talking about here.
One of the things I love about regencies is the way the authors have to work through the social conventions of the time without letting them stifle the romantic aspects of the story. Basically, they have to develop people with somewhat modern sensibilities but not too modern—they also have to at least pay lip service to the social conventions of the period. So you can have a hero and heroine who chafe at the restrictions placed on them by society, but who still play more or less by the rules. Or you can have a hero and heroine who don’t play by the rules and end up paying the consequences.
Thus, for example, in Quinn’s An Offer From a Gentleman, the gentleman in question can offer an arrangement to a woman who is basically a ladies maid, but he can’t marry her. Even his mother, who’s very sympathetic to his feelings, points out the social disaster that would ensue if he did. Now Quinn sidesteps this issue in typical romance fashion by coming up with an Oliver-Twistish plot turn, but she doesn’t have the hero say, “These social conventions are asinine and I’m going to ignore them.” In Mary Balogh’s Indiscreet, the heroine does defy a social convention and ends up in virtual exile. She’s placed in an impossible position by the somewhat callous hero and ends up having to follow convention only because her other choice is starvation (don’t worry—it’s a romance and has a relatively happy ending).
Which brings me to my subject—sex. To me, the best regency authors realize that they can’t bring totally modern sensibilities to the subject of sex. Characters can’t fall into sexual relationships just because they’re attracted to each other; they live in a society where that kind of behavior has serious consequences, particularly for unmarried women. Which isn’t to say that the characters can’t have sex: Hey, these are romances, right? It just means that the characters have to wrestle with their consciences and their fear of ostracism before they finally, inevitably give in. And once they’ve given in, they have to deal with consequences great and small (e.g., the requisite marriage proposal from the hero after he “ruins” the heroine). One of the things that makes regency romances fun to read is this struggle the characters go through when trying to decide whether to follow their inclinations or to toe the line and follow social convention. Granted, they almost always follow their inclinations, but it’s a lot of fun watching them work through the problems.

Unless they don’t. This is my major complaint about some regencies—they ignore the whole issue of social conventions. Their heroines, even the unmarried ones, hop into sexual relationships without a thought beyond “yummy!” In other words, they behave like modern heroines wearing empire gowns. For me, that’s cheating. If you want a heroine who behaves like a modern woman, write a contemporary romance. But if you’re going to set your romance in the regency, at least make a stab at showing a regency sensibility. Maybe the struggle with conscience doesn’t take all that long, but you at least need to have a struggle to begin with.
In the end, that’s the whole point of a historical romance, at least for me. They show how you can use romance conventions in societies where it’s not as easy to have a romantic relationship as it is here and now. And that’s a good thing, both for romances and readers.

Contest Is Over

Okay, everybody, thanks so much for being part of my first contest. Congrats to Stephanie, who won the drawing for the free copy of Wedding Bell Blues.

Wedding Bell Blues and Songs

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a blog post for Nikki Duncan about how I can’t listen to music while I write, and about how I really wish I could. To make up for the fact that I can’t, I try to put some songs into my books, usually sung by artists I like a lot. Wedding Bell Blues is no exception, and the fact that it’s about a wedding gives me more song possibilities than ever (my older son gave everybody a custom CD of favorite songs—both his and his wife’s—as a wedding favor, so it’s probably genetic).
So here are the songs from Wedding Bell Blues:
In the first chapter, the characters toss out a few wisecracks about wedding music. Wonder suggests ZZ Top, while Cal, the groom, says he’d prefer Ray Wylie Hubbard. I can’t help much on ZZ Top songs, but Ray Wylie himself says he played “Without Love (We’re Both Just Wasting Time)” at a wedding where they paid him $100 and fed him dinner. Whether that’s actually an appropriate wedding song remains to be seen.
In a later chapter, Billy Kent, the father of the bride, throws a big-time barbeque to celebrate, and he plays Willie Nelson’s “Yesterday’s Wine” for waltzing. Frankly, if you’re a lousy dancer (like me), Willie’s waltzes are great since they have very definite downbeats that are hard to miss. Cal learned to waltz in Venus in Blue Jeans by dancing to Willie’s “Mamas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys,” among other songs.
The main song at that barbeque, however, is James McMurtry’s “Red Dress,” and if I could sell one song from the book, that would be it. It’s one of those incredible songs that make it almost impossible to sit still, thanks to its seductive bass line. It always struck me as the kind of song that would lead to a lot of dirty dancing for people who’d been imbibing. McMurtry calls it his tribute to Winston Churchill, by the way, because one line is a quote from a famous Churchill putdown.
My hero Pete (the best man), like his brother Cal (the groom), is pretty much a non-dancer, so when he discovers he’s expected to lead off with the maid of honor, Janie Dupree, he comes close to panic. Janie helps him out with a late night dancing lesson in the moonlight. She starts off with Lyle Lovett’s beautiful version of “If I Needed You,” which isn’t a waltz but helps Pete get into the spirit of things. Then they really get going with Emmylou Harris’s version of “Cattle Call.” This is another one of those waltzes, like Willie’s songs, that has a very strong downbeat and is so much fun to listen to that it seems like a great possibility for teaching a reluctant dancer how to just let go.
Some other moments in the book don’t have songs but probably should have, like the bachelorette party that the bridesmaids throw for Docia. Since it’s a pretty raucous occasion, the music would have to be raucous, too. I’d go with a couple of possibilities myself, keeping in step with the whole “Texas Music” theme here. My first choice would be Joe Ely’s “Cool Rockin’ Loretta,” one of those long, rockin’ rave-ups that usually has the audience on its feet and screaming at Joe Ely shows. You might also play the Band of Heathens’ “Cornbread” (one of those great double entendre songs that would probably have the bachlorettes in stitches) or “Walking and Talking,” another rave-up like “Cool Rockin’ Loretta.”
Reba keeps the wedding ceremony itself sedate with a string quartet, but the reception would be another matter, or I’m guessing it would be. Pete and Janie don’t make it to the dancing part of things until late in the evening since they have, ahem, Better Things To Do. So you can think of your own reception soundtrack for a kick-ass Texas Hill Country wedding.
So that’s it. You can take my suggestions for music from the book or you can supply the names of songs you’d like to download yourself. Everyone who makes a comment on this post will be entered in a drawing for free iTunes downloads, and for a separate drawing for a free copy of Wedding Bell Blues. Let the comments begin, y’all, go for it!

Texas vs. Colorado

Okay, I don’t usually do too much personal stuff on this blog (other than my personal reading tastes ☺), but a couple of months ago I made a huge change in my personal life: My husband and I moved from Texas to Colorado. I’ve been here long enough now that I can begin to process the changes and I thought I’d talk about them here from time to time.
What do I like about my new home state? Well, given that Texas is currently experiencing temperatures over 100 degrees, while Colorado (my part of it anyway) hits highs in the low eighties, that’s a no-brainer. Yes, I know we’ll pay for it with winter cold, but that doesn’t bother me much. I kind of like cool weather. Then there’s the jaw-dropping beauty of the landscape that never gets old. And the way everybody treats physical activity as if it were just a given rather than a huge pain (I know, I know, I need to do more of it myself). What do I dislike? Well, our Home Owner’s Association just threatened to fine us over a dry spot on the lawn. I can’t help thinking what my neighbors in Texas would have done (possibly involving firearms).
What do I miss about Texas (besides friends and family, which is sort of a given)? The Hill Country. The wineries. The music. Most of all, the music. I never appreciated the ease of driving up I-35 to Gruene Hall to hear Joe Ely or the Belleville Outfit or Audrey Auld or Guy Forsythe. Or heading over to Floore’s for James McMurtry or (occasionally) Willie Nelson if you don’t mind standing up for three hours. I even remember seeing Robert Earl Keen at the place where they hold the Kerrville Folk Festival, along with Todd Snider and Trish Murphy. It doesn’t get much better. I don’t know why people in the Denver area aren’t big on Americana, but boy do I miss it.
I don’t miss Texas politics, which almost goes without saying. I hope they get rid of Governor Goodhair and let some grown-ups run the state for a while. I don’t know enough about Colorado politicians yet to know what’s up exactly, but they don’t seem to have as many nutcases to deal with.
So anyway, here I am and likely here I’ll stay—at least for a while. If Coloradoans want to talk to me about things I don’t know, I’d be glad to hear from them. If Texans want to bash me for not loving Governor Goodhair, I’m less glad but I guess I’ll put up with it. Anyway, somebody head up to Texas Hills Winery this weekend and have a glass of syrah for me.

On Critique Groups

I’m a real critique groupie and have been ever since I joined my first RWA chapter. In fact, the critique group was the biggest attraction of the chapter, at least initially—I desperately wanted somebody to read my stuff and tell me if I was headed in the right direction. For those of you who haven’t gone the critique group route before, this is how it works: each member of the group submits something they’ve written (usually with a page limit and some formatting instructions). Then other members of the group read the submissions and make comments, preferably in writing. Then the writers get their manuscripts back with comments and decide which revisions they want to make.
There are variations in the way the groups are run, of course. Some groups meet in person and discuss each submission as a group. Some groups are on line and the manuscripts are only read by a few people. I’ve been a member of both types, and they both have their advantages. In-person groups give you the ability to ask questions and make comments as people dissect your work, e.g., “Well, what I was trying to do there was. . .” or “Would it work better if I. . .” On the other hand, in-person groups can also be hijacked by strong personalities, so you end up with one person’s opinion rather than everybody’s. And in-person groups can take a long time, depending on how many people are involved. On-line groups are faster, but you get less feedback since all you have are written comments. In addition, you don’t have any opportunity to ask questions as people work their way through the manuscript. So if someone makes a mistake in reading (e.g., if they miss a character), all their comments may be useless (on the other hand, you may find out you have a problem if people are missing something vital).
I’ve heard writers say that critique groups aren’t worth much if the other people in the group aren’t at the same level of experience as you are. That’s a problem, I agree. If you’re an experienced writer and you’re in a group with newbies, you may feel as if they’re straining to find something to say and nitpicking because they really don’t know how to critique you. I’ve had this happen in contest entries where a judge seems obsessed with something like adverbs, or where they insist that you’re supposed to include all five senses in every scene (not always necessary or, indeed, possible) because that’s what they were told in the last workshop they attended. Nonetheless, it’s possible to get something valuable even from an inexperienced writer, and to some extent you’re paying your dues here. Experienced writers helped me out when I was clueless, and I figure I can repay the favor.
Do I always agree with critique partners? Of course not. There are times when I find myself snarling or making sarcastic comments to the computer screen. But I’ve sometimes found that the comments that annoy me are the ones I most need to see. Arthur Quiller-Couch once said that the first rule of revising was “Kill all your darlings,” and that’s what happens in critique. You see that beautiful little turn of phrase, the one you washed and brushed and dressed with a bow, through other people’s eyes. And you may realize that you were washing and brushing a piece of crap (to put it politely). Now you may feel defensive about it, but you do need to hear it because, in my experience, agents and editors are a lot less concerned about your feelings than your critique partners.
So my first rule for aspiring writers is this: find someone to read your stuff who doesn’t love you. That’s what critiquing is all about. At some point, if you’re lucky, some stranger will be reading your book. It helps to know what they’re likely to say before you send that book out on its own.

Christine Duncan – Do You Give Contests?

 

Safe House by Christine Duncan

Today I’m delighted to welcome my first guest blogger–Christine Duncan.

 

Christine is an Arvada, Colorado mystery writer. She got her start in writing for the Christian market, writing for Sunday School magazines.  Her credits include Accent Books and Regular Baptist Press.

     Although the Kaye Berreano mystery series is set in a battered women’s shelter, Ms. Duncan’s husband wants the world to know it’s not because of anything he did!

   Come visit Christine at Http://www.ChristineDuncan.com

Or at her blog Http://www.globalwrite.wordpress.com

Here are Christine’s thoughts on author contests. Feel free to jump in and give her your comments.

Do You Give Contests?

   There is a lot of talk on author’s e-lists about promotion.  Much of the discussion centers on contests and giveaways.  How do you attract entrants for your contests?  How do you  decide how much to spend on a prize?  Do you give away nail files or note pads?  Is Vista Print better than National Pen or Oriental Trading Company for buying things to give away?

    As an author promoting my books, I have given contests, and giveaways, ordered my share from the online novelty places and participated with other authors in an e-cookbook that we all could offer to people. I still have that one on my website as a download. Having done all that, here’s what I really think:  Don’t bother.

    Don’t misunderstand me.  Whenever I have done these things, they have attracted a little attention. But people troll the web for contests.  It doesn’t mean that they read.  It just means they like prizes. I can’t honestly say I have gotten a sale from them.  I do occasionally get a thank you e-mail for the e-cookbook.

     As to the giveaways?  I like to have a bowl of chocolate pieces at my table when I am doing a signing but it is more likely to attract little kids.  Their moms are all on a diet and don’t want the kids sugared up.  So I eat it.  But I like chocolate.  A friend of mine keeps water bottles on her signing table. It seems to attract a lot of thirsty people.  But I think they’re way too heavy to want to lug them in and my friend’s books seem to sell even after the bottles are gone.

       Pens and pencils are rumored to be great giveaways because people can always use them.  I agree.  After one Bouchercon, I had a lot of pens and pencils.  Oh, and a Loren D.Estleman notepad–it advertised his latest at the time.  I can’t say I bought any of those authors’ books. (Sorry, Loren!)  I did however, also pick up a bunch of first chapters in booklet form from a table there.  I know for a fact that some of those chapters led to sales for those authors. And I wasn’t the only one who bought because of that.

       So here is my strategy for promotion this time around.  I’m writing.  I’ll write blogs (that’s why I’m here.) I’ll write articles for other places–I’ve got one that’s been running for about a year on MapMyRun and I’ll do others.  I’ll keep the first chapter up on my website so people can get a taste of the books and I’ll get it printed up in booklet form to give away at events.  It just makes sense to me that people will buy my writing if they like the way I write.

Planners and “Pantsers”

By now, most people who read writing blogs and attend writing workshops have heard about the split between planners and pantsers. Planners are, obviously, writers who like to plan out their work before they write. Pantsers are writers who like to work by the seat of their pants, making things up as they go along.

Many of the articles about this opposition are written by pantsers, and sometimes they sound a little, well, defensive. Pantsers claim that they work this way because they have to. They’ve tried planning and it doesn’t work for them. Let me go on record here as saying that’s fine with me. I know some pantsers and I believe them when they say they have to work the way they work. But I’d say in response that I have to work the way I work, too.

The problem with this planners vs. pantsers opposition is that planners sometimes get hit with the charge that they don’t experience “inspiration” when they write. That somehow planning everything out in advance takes all the zing out of their writing, leaving them with something pedestrian and dull. I think perhaps pantsers feel this way because when they tried to plan, that’s what happened to them.

Now leaving aside for a moment the point that a lot of great writers were planners, based on the notes they left behind, this seems to me to miss the main point: inspiration can happen at any point in the writing process. Some people have it when they’re thinking about the story, some people have it when they’re outlining the plot, and some people have it when they actually sit down and start writing. And inspiration can hit you more than once, so that even though you’ve planned where you’re going, you end up taking some delightful detours. The idea that you can only be inspired if your muse whispers to you while you work on that paragraph is not only incorrect, it’s dangerous.

In my experience, people who wait for inspiration are asking for disaster. Sometimes it happens, but frequently it doesn’t. And if you’re sitting there waiting for your muse to speak to you, you may well find she’s gone on an extended trip to Outer Mongolia. My pantser friends claim that once they have the basic idea, the writing always comes, and in their case that may well be true. They’ve got a process that works for them. However, for those just starting out, I’d argue that you need to try a variety of processes before you decide that you’ve found The Way.

Although I’m fundamentally a planner now, I’ve tried doing my stuff in other ways. The first couple of books I wrote, back when I was first trying the “I want to write fiction” thing, I did as a pantser. I’d begin each day’s writing by asking myself “What happens next?” and then I’d write whatever I came up with. After a while, though, I found that process nerve-wracking. I kept wondering what would happen if I couldn’t think of any “next.” Or if the “next” I came up with was really lame. Or if a “next” led me in a direction where, I discovered later, I really didn’t want to go. Going back and starting again might be like ripping out knitting when you miss a stitch, only I was afraid once I ripped it out, I wouldn’t be able to get started again and I’d end up with nothing but a pile of used yarn.

Planning took that pressure off me, or rather it put it in another place. Now I get all the “what happens next” out of the way at once. It’s not a whole lot of fun, and it involves a lot of different charts, but when I finish I’ve got the skeleton of the book worked out. Then after that, all I have to do is check back to my plotting charts when I’m ready to write and go from there. My inspiration, such as it is, comes when I’m actually writing the book and centers around the way people talk to each other rather than the way the plot works.

My point here isn’t to argue that planning it the “best” way to do your project. My point is that we planners aren’t necessarily unimaginative grinds. We write the way we write because it works for us. And that’s what everybody should be trying to find—what works.