Pants-ing Your Way Through an Edit

Posted by Joanne Huspek

If you’re a writer, you fall into one of two categories: Plotter or Pantser. People who know or follow me, know I lean heavily into Pantser status.

Oh, I’ve learned (sort of) how to have more than “no idea” when I sit down to write. I’ve had to develop this technique through the many NaNoWriMos I have participated in. That’s because my first couple of tries, I actually had NO IDEA what my story was going to be or where it was going. I’d spend the first two weeks of November trying out different characters, situations, even locales before I could concentrate on something that made sense, and even then it didn’t make much sense.

This is a waste of time and effort. While I love going where the wind blows me, it’s difficult to get anything accomplished using this severe pants-ing technique. So I decided I would at the very minimum have characters assembled, what the story would be, where it would take place, and a general idea of how long this story would take place. It’s an outline, but not really an outline, as it’s basically in my head.

That way, when November rolled around, I could “write as fast as I could” — therefore, I was able to achieve the 50,000 words in a month.

My current WIP that I’m editing (a NaNoWriMo creation from 2017) is fraught with holes. I know this because in addition to editing the work, I make copious handwritten notes in a notebook, kind of in a spreadsheet format, listing the characters, the scenes, the page counts, etc. I know, I know, I should use something in computer format, but my eyes can’t do a lot of close work, plus I tend to lose my way on the computer. (This notebook also contains hand drawn maps and other layouts, character descriptions with each person’s motivations, fears, etc., and other notes that come to mind.)

When I write a first draft, especially in NaNo mode, I sometimes veer off the linear path and write scenes I hope to insert in the work…somewhere. I got this habit from my online classes with Michelle Richmond and other authors. As an exercise, sometimes we would write an ending, sometimes something in the middle, sometimes a climactic scene. It might seem like a dumb thing to do, but I found these types of exercises released a part of my brain that was jammed up. A lot of times, I’d reread a scene I’d written and was amazed that such words came out of my head. Surprising in many ways.

My mode of operation is to skip over what is giving me a problem. I don’t have time to get bogged down, so I make a note (in my notebook, indicating page number in the document and what I want to achieve there) and continue on.

I let this entire edit sit for a few months, which was a good thing. Plus, in fall, I have other concerns, mostly harvesting my garden, canning what I have to, and preparing the ground for winter. Life throws you all kinds of things to achieve, not just writing, and you have to do other things; I think it’s necessary. My head is in a different place now, my eyes too. If you’re struggling to find the right words, put the work away for a while. Don’t beat yourself up while you’re doing it. You likely needed the rest and diversion before tackling the work. And to be clear, writing IS work. It’s the hardest work you’ll ever do.

I need about 30,000 words, which isn’t much. The bones are there. The story is there. I just have to sit down and let my mind wander. I can’t wait to see where it takes me.

Random photo of an angel trumpet blossom that is not like the others on the same plant. It’s super fluffy. And yes, they are blooming inside, in mid-January.

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Hard Goals Vs. Continuous Goals

Posted by Joanne Huspek

Getting my 2025 journal ready for the New Year. Looking over the old in the process.

Working out today (on my iFit incline trainer), the trainers are constantly talking. (It was bitter cold today. I’m glad I have equipment at home for days like today.) I find some of discourse repetitive and annoying. After all, if I’m climbing mountain trails, I want to be in a zone where it’s silent. But today, as he was talking about goals, he said something that resonated.

Becoming fit isn’t a one-time goal that you achieve and then move on to something else. Fitness is a lifetime goal.

Much like writing.

Writers set goals all the time. My perennial goal is to journal every day. I start out with best intentions, hot and heavy. Plus, you know, it’s not an unachievable goal. A page out of the Hobonichi takes about 15 minutes of my time, either by writing some prose or poetry, sketching, etc. (However, if you notice the above photo, there were some lost years. We’ll refer to them as owning the b&b years.)

As with NaNoWriMo, the National November Writing Month, the goal is to complete 50,000 words in November. Participating in NaNoWriMo is a commitment. After all, nearly 1500 words a day isn’t anything to sniff at. My first years at it, it would take me hours to complete each daily goal. With many years of practice, it became much easier.

I always set editing goals (fix this novel in three months, etc.), but then Real Life gets in the way. I rarely if ever accomplish my editing goals. This is on me, I know. I have to plant my butt into the chair and stay there. I have to concentrate. Modern life is fraught with all kinds of diversions that are hard to ignore.

However, I have never given up. I haven’t resorted to using ghost writers or AI. I prefer to struggle through on my own. In fact, I think it is necessary to struggle. I want people to critique my work and show me where I might try something different, or where I might have taken the wrong path. Writing (or any art) takes years and years to hone. You don’t just write a novel, type “The End” on the last page, and call it a day. You don’t just publish your work and rest on your accomplishment. Writing is a day after day, lifetime pursuit.

Yes, there are small writing goals. Small, easily achievable goals make the work seem not as daunting.

Basically what I’m saying is keep pushing on, keep pushing through. Pat yourself on the back at times, take a break at times. Don’t beat yourself up any time.

If this is your journey, make it a lifetime one.

Oh. And Happy New Year!

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Merry Christmas Book Ideas for Writers

Posted by Joanne Huspek

This might seem like an antique post for old writers, because who buys books these days?

Well, I AM an antique. I also love books, although I don’t buy them quite so willy-nilly these days. And I especially love the “how-to” books when it comes to the subject of writing, even though I also think reading the types of novels you enjoy from the authors you love will teach you just about the same thing as a how-to.

Some of my writing books.

In a world where everything is AI, or a meme, or soundbite, it’s hard to get into the technical aspects of writing. If you are not part of a critique group, or if you’re an introvert, live in a rural area, or don’t have the luxury of beta readers, you’ll need some feedback. There are definitely trusted ways of writing a novel. I don’t care what some people (mostly younger people) say: Rules matter. From typing your manuscript double spaced on the page with 1″ borders all around to no double spaces at the end of the sentence, to character arcs, genre formulas, etc., there are reasons for adhering to rules. You want to look as professional as you can from the start.

Break the rules all you want after you’ve sold a million dollars worth of books. Before that, listen to the masters.

There are a few writing books I pull of the shelf continuously.

One is not a book at all, but the workbooks that came with the writing classes I took with Michelle Richmond. It doesn’t hurt that she’s a favorite, I love her style, and I learned so much taking her classes. If you’re shopping for a loved one who writes fiction, give that person a gift certificate to one of her classes.

Of course, The Chicago Manual of Style and The Elements of Style by Strunk and White are great to have in your arsenal. (They must really seem like antiques, but I still use them.)

Blockbuster Plots by Martha Alderson is a good choice too, as well as The Emotion Thesaurus will take your story to a new level.

If you’re experiencing writer’s block, a workbook like 642 Things to Write About (San Francisco Writers’ Grotto) is a great resource for shaking loose some ideas. Force yourself to do one of the exercises and you’ll be blocked no more.

These are only a few ideas from my bookshelf. In short, you can’t go wrong buying a writer any book about writing. It doesn’t matter if it’s good or bad or just blah. You’ll learn something if you concentrate. It may change nothing about your writing, or it may change everything.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all, no matter what you celebrate. Joy and peace to us all.

Now I will return to my baking duties, which include persimmon cookies and pumpkin pie.

See you on the other side.

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Sometimes Evil Is Just Evil

Posted by Joanne Huspek

I’m in the process of editing one of my manuscripts and have come up on a snag.

One of my characters is a spoiled, narcissistic, narrow minded, quick to temper woman — let’s just say she’s a downright bitch. However, as in any story, you need a good guy and a bad guy, and she happens to be my bad guy. We need her to be bad in order the explore the dysfunction in the rest of her family.

In the past, I’ve had several editors explain to me that the antagonist, while being unpleasant and mean, can’t be unpleasant and mean all the time. Most real people aren’t that way all the time. (?! They aren’t?) Writing a villain as being 100% villain is kind of a stereotype. I’ve been told you must show a human side, even a tiny sliver of redemption, in the bad guy.

This is where my problem lies. This character is 100% evil. Yes, EVIL! There is NO redemption!

Actually, in my first draft, I wrote her as a soft, sympathetic, desperately broken woman. All the characters in this family are broken. Someone has to be super hard and callous, in order to make the distinction between her and everyone else. (Oh, none of these characters are perfect. They’ve all got flaws, only different ones, and they are mostly forgiving.) But during the second draft (according to my notes), I designated specific personality traits to each person. The other four characters have a point of view in the writing, as they each get to share their own story. The EVIL one, though, has no point of view. We see her through the other characters’ eyes. I think I made her this way because I personally can’t understand how people can be evil. It seems like a colossal waste of time and energy to be rotten all the time. Also, wouldn’t it eat at your stomach and give you headaches? That’s not the life for me, nosireebob. You need conflict, true, but I just can’t get into the space where I understand it.

And so I have been playing a tug of war with myself. Should I follow convention? Or should I write her filled with venom and hard as steel?

(I should mention that this very evil-good dichotomy was pointed out when I was editing my first novel, Finding Cadence. I really wanted to make the Sloane character as nasty as I could. He’s still nasty. He’s just toned down.)

Sometimes evil is just evil and you can’t do anything about it.

Geranium petals. I’m trying to nurse them inside this winter. Only five more months of winter to go!

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And So The Seasons Turn

Posted by Joanne Huspek

Garden Update:

We’ve had a long summer, an incredibly mild fall (seemed like summer-lite), but of course, pleasantness rarely lasts forever. We’ve had our eyes on the weather since mid-October, when we usually get a first hard frost. Not this year, kiddies. Finally, it looked like last week was the week.

I think of gardening in long range terms. You have to when you’re my age. A lot of unexpectedness can pop up and ruin short term plans. So I have been preparing my houseplants for their return to the interior of the house. This prep includes trimming leaves and branches, treating the soil and leaves for bugs, and preparing room inside the house for the “jungle’s” return.

I have a LOT of large houseplants. Most of them are angel trumpets (native to NorCal). I started growing angel trumpets in Michigan because I was told they don’t grow there. (During the summer, yes. Outside. But they can’t withstand freezing temperatures.) The growing conditions in Colorado are even more severe. There’s too much light, not enough oxygen, and humidity doesn’t exist here. Also, we deal with wide swings in temperatures. Nighttime lows could be in the 20s and the next day’s highs in the 60’s. A lot of people can’t tolerate it, although as with everything, you can survive quite nicely on proper planning.

I am also growing a lot of plumeria (best grown in Florida or Hawaii). I have a couple that are more than 10 years old (yes, I dragged them here from Michigan, where they began their lives), and a few that are going on year 2. The two older plants are taller than I am. Even in this harsh weather, I’ve gotten one to bloom a couple of times. Here! In Colorado. That tells you something about my persistence.

It seems like a lot of work for plants that don’t belong here, are difficult to maintain, and in the case of one plumeria, the trunk of the plant has been eaten by a squirrel or similar critter. It is. But it’s a labor of love.

Last week, I pulled up all the tomatoes, after picking the biggest green ones. They’ll eventually turn red and I won’t have to buy any at the grocery store. We have a fairly small yard, but the vegetable garden takes up about 1/3 of it, and you can grow a lot of produce if you plan it right. Those of you that have followed me as the Urban Guerilla Gardener know that you can plant edibles anyplace (and I do). I ended up with more large pumpkins than I wanted, just enough pie pumpkins for Thanksgiving and Christmas, way, way, WAY too many acorn squash, lots of potatoes, onions, and chard. Unfortunately, something ate the tops of my cabbages off (raccoons?) so there’s no sauerkraut in our immediate future. But life has been good, and the garden has been plentiful. I’ve been canning and canning, but thankfully, I’m finished now.

The end of it.

To put the icing on the cake, it snowed last night, the official turn of the season. It’s all over now.

And so with the turn of the seasons, it might be time to turn to back to the creative. It’s just too cold outside to do anything else.

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Back to Our Regularly Scheduled Programming…

Posted by Joanne Huspek

Too much is happening around here these days, making editing a real salty one! Amazingly, summer has dragged on a lot longer than it should have. It’s now October 21, and we have yet to have a hard frost. That means my vegetable garden is still in production mode. I guess I could deconstruct it now, but then I’d miss out on fresh veggies, some of which actually enjoy the cooler temperatures, like lettuce and spinach and chard. There seems to be no end to this mild weather, at least that’s what my phone tells me. It’s unreliable, yes, but I need it.

Finally, we are moving forward on getting the roof repaired (hopefully before the first snow). A huge tree bounced off it May 5 during a night of wind gusts into 96 mph. I didn’t write about it, too busy in the aftermath. This isn’t the first time a tree fell on our house, and unless the neighbors remove the last one standing, it won’t be the last time. Fighting with the insurance company is no fun. I don’t get the reluctance to pay off; we pay premiums, a monster tree fell on our house. We have photographic and video evidence that it’s not in our imaginations.

The tree after my husband sawed off the smaller stuff.

Actually, we filed a claim for roof damage on our rental house (different insurance) – much later, mind you, in August – and ta-da! as of Friday, we have a new roof on that house! What a difference a company makes!

(Side note: Nationwide is NOT on your side.)

So now that Real Life complications have finally settled down (somewhat), I’m able to go back to the manuscript. Unfortunately, after taking a two week break, I’ve got to start at the beginning.

This is where taking copious handwritten notes are a good idea. After reading the handwritten notes (doesn’t take much time), I can get back to the work a lot easier.

I can’t remember when I started writing reference notes. It might have been when I was re-writing Finding Cadence, and the first time it was to get the timeline straight. That story takes place between February and October. I find that using a monthly calendar (with space for each day) and inserting it into my notebook to write notes works well for me. I’ve done it with each story I’ve written, whether it takes place in a week, or 30 days, or longer. I log which characters have a major scene, page numbers, on specific days.

The notebook also records each character’s personality traits. You might not want the reader to absorb all of that information in the finished book, but it’s important for the author to know their characters inside and out. (I want to insert here that writing isn’t just about writing. A lot of major thought has to be put into what exactly you’re going to do, and how you’re going to achieve your goals.)

I also clip photos to insert in my notebook, draw maps, draw house layouts, etc. I suppose I could use Pinterest. I have a Pinterest page and have used it for writing before, but at this stage I’m all about having a tactile reference that is not connected to the Internet.

Oh yes, I’m a pantser. I couldn’t outline my story before writing it, no way! I could maybe come up with a vague outline once the first draft is written. However, it does help to have some idea of what you’re doing, and taking notes, whether you do it with pen and ink (or pencil) or on your computer is a must!

So far, on the current edit (the story takes place during seven days), I’ve completed Days 1-3. A quick read, and I’ll be able to start on Day 4, maybe by this afternoon.

Happy reading, writing, and editing to you!

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When The Clueless Lends a Helping Hand

Posted by Joanne Huspek

I didn’t do a lot of editing last week.

Too many things going on. One, winter could rear her angry head at any time. It’s already nearly the middle of October and we haven’t had a first frost yet. This is unprecedented and weird. Temperatures have been in the 70s and 80s with an occasional 90 degree day, and there hasn’t been rain in over two months. (Not that it “rains” here, just ask my husband.) I’ve been picking tomatoes and the zucchini has been so prolific, I’m running out of people to pawn them off on. Luckily (maybe), the weather people (who are more wrong than right) are claiming that Thursday is the magic day for a first freeze. Maybe. They change their minds daily.

October 13, 2024 This angel thinks it’s summer.

So I really haven’t cleaned up the garden (too soon) and my houseplants are still outside soaking up the waning sunlight, although I’ve been trimming, cleaning, and debugging them. Take my word for it, you do not want dirty pots and insect infestation to follow you indoors for six months or more! I’ve been positioning them for a quick return to the warmth of the house, which entails rearranging the house. (How I wish I had a greenhouse!) Once they’re in the house, you can’t really move them around. They’re HUGE. I can only drag them around twice a year. Once to put them inside in fall, once to take them out in spring.

(Why do we do this? I don’t know. We’ve always done this. Insert *shrug* here.)

We also found out that the work on repairing our roof will begin as soon as the contractor gets our fancy-schmancy Decra tiles. FINALLY. Maybe before the snow flies? It was May 5 when that huge tree bounced off our roof (and was removed, and then the fighting with insurance began). The commencement of this work is all too close to winter for my liking, but c’est la vie.

Then I offered to beta read a manuscript. Written by someone I went to high school with, it was interesting and held my attention. It was also a memoir, and it was also very long, but I persevered. I liked it.

This was the second manuscript I offered to read this year, that was a memoir written by someone who attended my high school. I guess I’m feeling generous. Widefield High School – rah, rah, rah.

I don’t often read non-fiction, not even for fun. Maybe my past choices have something to do with it. Like all good writing, no matter what the genre, the story must be engaging, and told with skill and panache. It must make you want to turn the page. Most of the memoir I’ve attempted to read is pretty dry. I can’t think of the titles; they’re relegated to the Goodwill pile as soon as I give up.

I don’t know how I can help this up-and-coming writer. I know very little about writing non-fiction (I’ve tried it, it’s just not in my wheelhouse), and I definitely know NOTHING about memoir. I wouldn’t even attempt writing memoir, mostly because my life is just not that interesting. It’s infinitely more fun (for me) to write fiction.

However, this story was an easy read, the story grabs you. Maybe someday you’ll find this book at your local book seller.

I’ll spend the rest of the day trying to come up with a constructive critique. Which means I won’t be editing my own work until I’ve finished.

Oh, well…

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