As for writing out of order: I get scenes, stories, character arcs–and I’ve learned to write them down. Often they’re short stories, sometimes they’re unusable snippets. Then I write something else and figure out that the unusable snippet from a month ago fits into that story or is the center of a novel with this other character. Sometimes at this point, I can write chronologically. Sometimes I get more snippets, until finally, I realize I have to shape the entire thing. Then I stop, figure out the order and write the linking chapters/scenes. And voila! I have a novel. Or a short story. Or a novella. Or, it seems, the Freelancer’s Guide.

Recently, I haven’t enjoyed writing as much as usual. Usually, I write and plan stories before work and have a good ol’ time, then go to work and can’t wait to get home and write some more. ( Insert obvious joke about me having no life here) Lately, that hasn’t been so. And I couldn’t figure out why.

Then I read through the last several posts and had a minor revelation. When I write speculative fiction, I tend to lean more towards fantasy and space opera and have a really hard time writing hard sf stories. On a whim I wrote a hard sf story. And thought it was terrible. It didn’t work at all. But I mailed it and went to work on another one out of stubbornness.

And another. And another. Rinse. Lather. Repeat. Well, here’s the problem: I don’t like hard sf very much (which is probably why I have such a hard time wiritng it. Duh.) I just wrote the original story because I had a random hard sf idea BUT because of my innate Irish stubborness and bit of a perfectionist streak (I’m a firstborn) I kept writing the dang stories.

Thank goodness for these posts because when I came up with my informal business plan and thought about my Goals and Dreams and Impossible Dream, I realized that nowhere in there was anything about being a hard sf writer. I had allowed my stubbornness to lead me off track. So thanks Kris for helping me get back on track and realizing an area I need to be mindful of.

Also, you mentioned that you tend to write out of order. I know that this is off topic, but would you be willing to comment on this? This is something that I’ve playing with while I work on a comedic sf novel and would be interested in seeing how you approach it.

Mega-Thanks,

Steve

CL, glad you found us here and are finding your way through the Guide. I like Facebook & Twitter as well, but as I mentioned in my post, my internet computer is two floors away from my writing computer, so when I’m tempted to look at anything online, I have to climb stairs. A good disincentive, which keeps my social networking time at a minimum.

Thanks, y’all.

I’m new to the Freelancer’s Guide following hearing about it from your husband at RadCon. To be honest I haven’t caught up on all the chapters. I am slowly working through them and spending time thinking about your advice. I am not a freelancer yet. I want to learn oh so much more before I take that step.

I have been on Facebook and connected with a lot of family and old friends. This has helped with sharing my personal successes. On Twitter I have connected primarily with others in the writing profession and I find the information and insights they share helpful. I have a personal blog that has few visitors to it as of yet but I am finding it useful for setting myself deadlines that I have to meet and for getting over the fear of putting myself out there for others to read.

Thank you for the information you are sharing in this guide. I am sure when I catch up on all of the chapters I will have a lot more questions.

For example, if you just pop into a random blog or forum which discusses your genre and post a comment promoing your upcoming book, that comment will be seen as spam and deleted, and the owner/mod will quite possibly block your IP address so you can never post there again. If you’re a regular participant there, though, you can post, “Hey, remember that book I submitted back when? It’s coming out in May, woohoo!” Now you’re a regular sharing good news and your comment will get a much more positive response. It takes time and effort to earn the status of “regular,” though, and if you don’t consider how much time it will take to be one of the regular gang, and compare it with the benefit of being able to post your news there, you can end up being a regular in fifty or a hundred different places and never having any news because you don’t have time to write.

LJ and the other journal services which use its base software have a peculiarity in that following someone else’s journal is called “friending.” Friending someone’s journal is really just setting a bookmark on something you want to read regularly, but because of the terminology friending — and unfriending, the horrors — can be fraught with drama and flaming and flouncing. When one is new, it’s tempting to friend back everyone who friends you, and there are social circles where this is expected. That’s fine when twenty people friend you, but when two hundred people do it, you have a pretty huge timesink if you friend them all back, especially if any significant number of them post every day, or multiple times per day. Some people create filters which let them friend everyone and their dog, but only read a subset. That can cause drama too, though, if a sensitive soul suspects that not everyone on their Flist is really reading them. The terminology is extremely unfortunate, but the network(s) within LJ can be very useful so it’s worth it, IMO, although I recommend caution.

If you’re collecting data, I’m on Livejournal (twice — my real-person journal and my writer pseud journal), I have a Blogger blog and a WordPress blog, I hang out on my publisher’s Yahoo lists (one locked for writers, one open for everybody), I have an author page on Goodreads and occasionally post there (that’s fairly new), I have a set of pages on the GLBT Bookshelf, I’m a regular on The Phade’s Manhole (forum focused on my genre), and I’m a member of a few other Yahoo groups but I only participate there when my publisher has a featured chat day because they’re just too busy to read regularly. I joined Critique Circle, an online workshop, mainly because I find I learn more, faster, by critiquing other people than by any other method. It was interesting and I met some cool people, but I went on hiatus to finish my novel (the one coming out in May) and haven’t been back in quite a while. :/ Timesinks again.

I hang out at a collection of blogs because they’re interesting or useful, read other journals on LJ for the same reason, and avoid a number of interesting blogs and journals because their owners post too darned often.

I don’t do MySpace or FaceBook because I’ve heard enough negatives about both that it doesn’t seem worth it to take on the timesink. Twitter seems like a huge timesink, and I’m frankly not a 140-character kind of person anyway. I’ve heard Second Life is good for writers to promo in, but I’ve done that sort of immersive online world before (in online RPGs) and they’re horribly addicting. Timesink cubed.

What it comes down to, really, is time spent networking versus time spent writing. Networking and promo time can easily consume all one’s writing time, and because social networks are social, it can be hard to cut back without hurt feelings once you’re caught up with a group of people.

Angie