Pinterest

If you're not familiar with Pinterest, you need to get familiar! j/k I think Pinterest can be a great tool for writers who are visually inspired and who like to organize their work visually (at least on occasion). Pinterest allows you to share and store images along with text that you can come back to again and again even if those images have been removed from the internet. The site allows you to make several boards for different interests or, for writers, different projects. 

I currently have a board for several of my books. I like being able to explore what the characters, scenery, and specific objects in the book look like. I also like sharing quotes that relate to the content of the book when possible. For my "No Rest" board [http://www.pinterest.com/innesjen/no-rest/]I have several images for each character, I have a lot of images for the scenery in the book and I've shared lots of quotes that set the mood of the world these characters live in. 

I'm also able to use Pinterest to drop hints about the story with seemingly random images such as the one below from my "No Rest" board:

Pinterest also gives you the opportunity to save images for books you haven't written yet but are in the back of your mind and you want to remember key things about. Or to potentially even explore the story through images prior to setting a specific plot. I have a few boards for books that I intend to write and I use the boards to keep myself excited about the project.

Pinterest is also a great way to engage with readers. By sharing your Pinterest boards with readers you can help them get excited about your books, the world they are set in and the characters that you've created. Below I've attached an image from my board for my book "Two Heads Are Better Than One" that represents a key object from the story. [http://www.pinterest.com/innesjen/two-heads-are-better-than-one/]

There is an added feature of creating hidden boards. These boards can be used for images you want to be able to see but you don't want others to see on your site. These boards can help you get excited about a project before sharing it with everyone else. They also can be used to only allow a select few people to see the images you've saved there. 

Lastly, Pinterest also allows you to explore your brand online and to share things that associate with your online persona, or at least to share some of your other interests with the public at large. For me, that means lots of cat photos [http://www.pinterest.com/innesjen/gabby-and-chewie/]:

Story Boarding

So while working on my current novel (which I'm co-writing with my friend Andrew (yes, that Andrew)), I've come to find that there's a bit of an order of events issue, or continuity issue. We plotted it out pretty thoroughly before we started writing but once you divide bits and work on them separately, things might pop up in the wrong order. So I sat down on Saturday and started plotting the order of events like this:

While I originally wanted to just read through the text and re-organize, my attempt to do that left me looking at all the edits I want to make and was ultimately too overwhelming. Making a list on Word or in a notebook was still not working for me (it was way too long and also overwhelming to look at). Finally I settled down with a folder and sticky notes and I wrote essential plot points down and put them in order. This way I can easily see what's what (instead of reading through a whole list) and I can easily re-organize when necessary. What I've got in the picture above isn't even the entire book, so I've got more to add but I feel like it won't be as overwhelming to look at as my other two options. Just figured I'd share it with other writers in case they get caught wanting to move scenes around but feel overwhelmed with long lists or reading through 20-30 pages of text.

My Writing Process. Pt.1

I know the title of this post suggests this subject will be merely egotistical, but knowing my writing process may be interesting and/or helpful.

For readers of fantasy, this may be interesting because your favorite authors may have similar processes when creating another amazing novel.

For writers, this may show you a way to conquer the ‘I don’t want to’s, to see a project to its fruition and to edit your work into (nearly) perfection.

To begin, let’s examine the first part of writing: the idea.
An original thought is hard to find, or at least I see my initial ideas in so many places. Just to vent: my current book awaiting some publisher, has a main theme of two people being stuck in one mind, Stephenie Meyer’s recent book The Host, also has this main concept. With these basic concepts are quite similar but they diverge severely after that point. Meyer’s book is a contemporary science fiction piece about an alien and a love triangle. My book is a fantasy piece about magic set in a medieval like world. I know what you’re thinking “Her book sounds better” and maybe it is, but my point is that no matter if you start with a similar idea, our own unique outlooks and imaginations allow us to take identical ideas to different places, establishing new novels out of similar concepts. Begin with a basic idea: give it plot, characters and conflict that take it someplace only you could create.

When I first get an idea, I roll it around in my head. Like a piece of clay, I warm it in my hands and shape it. Depending on how tough the clay is (how hard it is to mold your concept into something usable); it may take you a while to begin the shaping process. Depending on the complexity of my initial concept (sometimes it’s only a scene in a dream that I want to build on, sometimes I have 6 characters but don’t know what to do with them) this molding process can take a long time. If I don’t feel ready to begin a story, it can take me months before I begin a project. For me, this may also be a case of the ‘I don’t want to’s which is hard to explain since I do want to write in the grand scheme of things, but it can be hard to write in the moment. It has made sense to me, through the advice of others, that if you feel like you can’t write, you’re probably taking the work in the wrong direction. I find that if a project is taking too long to begin, it’s just my muse keeping me from making a big discouraging mistake.

Now that I’ve established a concept, gathered some characters, worked out some plot and conflict, I outline. At the beginning of a story I will do a basic outline, with a definite beginning and end and with a few points sketched out to carry the story from one end to the other. As I go along with writing, I will establish more in depth outlines to help carry me through important plot points.

I usually don’t work on expanding my characters until after I start writing and it hits me that my characters are a little flat/lame/boring/dull/crude. At that point I’ll have to do some character work (subject of a forthcoming post). This work often stalls my progress, but this is my writing process and if I don’t jump off the train when I’m excited (even if I am missing a few key elements) then I may never jump off and start a new novel.

Then, over the next who knows how long, I write and write and write and write. And since I just wrote and wrote and wrote all of this, I’ll save the rest of my process for another day…