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Everyone has their own unique rituals when it comes to writing. Some start with a meticulous outline while others laugh in the face of a writer’s block while pantsing it all as they go. Some even lie somewhere in between.

My whole writing career and even when I was in school, I was a pantser. It was easy with the fact that I could sort of fracture my attention, write as I go while listening to lectures. Then when I was in the last few years of college I got an iPhone which I used to just record my lectures. Most of my professors were fine with this so I’d just spend the whole of the classes writing, going back later to listen and transcribe my lectures. I even made a good chunk of spending change by selling the transcribes for $5 a pop, $10 for that one professor that went on a lot of tangents. No one complained about that.

I didn’t need to plan anything out because, especially in my last three semesters where I was taking 7-9 classes a semester, I had hours of structured time to just write. I’d go back to figure out what I liked and rewrote what I didn’t. It was easy and exactly what I needed to do to get through classes. I have ADHD and sitting still just to listen to someone was out of the question most days. Especially since we had switched meds for me right before I went away to school. The new meds didn’t have as much of a punch as the others but also didn’t have the crash that made me grouchy and anti-social. The worst thing to be when going off to share a room for nine months with a stranger.

Then I graduated college and my structure was gone as well as my meds because I was an idiot. The meds I was on had to be built up in your bloodstream for a minimum of 14 days to work optimally and I had been horrible at taking them regularly yet I still succeeded. Got Dean’s List a few semesters in a row even. I hadn’t realized that the concrete structured schedules of my days were what allowed me to take 7-9 classes (course overload because I had 4 majors) and get As in all of them.

So, I graduated and started working. I worked changing shifts so my structure was gone. All except for NaNoWriMo, I barely wrote the rest of the year. It’s taken me years to figure out the factors that worked in my factors in college and the factors that have worked against me out of college. I realized that without structure, I needed to go back on meds. It took a while but I’ve not been back on ADHD meds for about 2 weeks and let me tell you. It’s helped a lot.

Now, for the structure, that I’m still working on. Slowly I’m building a support network but it’s not where I need it to be yet.

That all being said, even if in a very long-winded way, I can’t be a pantser anymore. I’m no longer forced to sit at a desk with no phone, no computer, no distraction, and just write and rewrite until the plot is what I want it to be. My writing rituals and methods need to evolve. It’s taken me up until this past month to realize that. I need to figure out how to plot. How to write up an outline in a way that works for me.

I tried, kind of, the snowflake method and I know I need to give it another shot but the first attempt failed. I got so hung up on fitting the exact structure of the snowflake method and burned myself out fast. It’s hard for me to write about a story without actually writing the story.

My writing rituals are constantly in flux as I’m trying to figure out the best method for myself. It’s frustrating, especially on days that I have the whole day to write and yet I don’t get anywhere near my word count goal. Or when I have no idea where I’ll be going next in my story. An outline would be amazing helpful at that point but instead, I start doing what I call ‘meandering writing’. Meandering writing is when you write in a way to get words on a page but nothing advances. No character development, no plotlines, nothing. It was a method I used in college to get through a block but again, I had the time to break through the block. Get to where I wanted and then rewrite the whole thing. Now, I have neither the time, the focus, nor the energy. Self-motivation is hard when one has executive dysfunction.

From here on out, I’ll be trying a slew of different techniques, programs, workshops, and whatever else I think could help to get me to where I need to be. Everything I try I’ll report back here. Some might find it helpful. Some might not because everyone is different but if there are even a few out there that are struggling like I am and have the same type of ADHD as I, maybe I can help them out as well.

So, next week, I’m planning on doing a deep dive into a program called Aeon which is supposed to help authors keep track of their timelines. Let’s see if it helps.

A quick update of my #onemillionwords projects. My total word count for the year is 140,529 words. I’m 111,551 words behind but my goal for April and Camp NaNoWriMo is to write 100k words this month so I can start trying to catch up. Wish me luck!

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Look at that, it’s an actual #onemillionword update posted on Friday and everything.

Two hands typing aware at a laptop, wearing black long sleeves. The laptop has a bunch of stickers on it and they are sitting at a marble grey and white table.

We are now at the end of week 8 which almost lines up with the end of February. A month that I am all too happy to say a proper farewell to. Over here in New England we’ve seen a lot of cold temps and a lot of snow which usually I’m fine with when I can also leave the house. This year with the quarantining, I don’t get any vitamin D during the week and I can’t wait for spring because of that. The ever so slightly warmer days that are slowly passing by have given me a little extra pep in my step in most aspects of my life. For one, I’ve already started our spring cleaning. The amount of tumbleweeds made out of cat hair my two make in a week is astounding.

Now, between the spurts of cleaning and trying to hit my word goal I’ve neglected a big part of my life; reading and video games. My husband and I haven’t been able to play WoW at all this winter which is when we usually hunker down for some good ol’ fashion raiding. This is because of my work and his plus homework. It’s been a busy pandemic.

As of right now, I am in the middle of four different books and three different video games with no progress made in any of them for weeks. What I’m getting at here is, I am horrible at the whole work/life balance thing. It’s not a horrible shock since I’ve been like this my whole life. Just comes with the territory of being ADHD. Though it did take me two months into the year to realize it too.

So the problem has been identified, now I need to fix it as much as I can. First, as of next week, I’ll be seeing an ADHD specialist which is great. I work best with structure and accountability. Regular check-ins to keep meds going does exactly that. Just being accountable to my husband doesn’t cut it, no matter how much he tries to be the hardass in the relationship.

From there I plan to try and write 6,000 words a day but only Monday through Thursday. Friday the goal is 4,000 words. Saturday and Sunday the goal is 500 words. Dividing it up like this should allow me to catch up as well as relax, regularly. If done correctly, I should have 29k new words a week which is 7k more than what I’d need just to stay afloat.

Some might ask, why write at all on the weekends? Shouldn’t I use those two days for a real day of relaxation? Especially since my husband works a regular 9-5. It’d give us more time to just hang out with each other. I’d 100% agree if I didn’t use a website called 4thewords.com to write and I have to keep my streak going. If you don’t know what 4thewords is, I’ll explain it below.

A cartoon colorful middle eastern style city.

4thewords.com is a website that is an infusion of a word processor and a flash video game. You start at level one with a basic avatar and level up by completing quests and ‘fighting’ monsters as you go. It has all the usual trappings of a fantasy video game so you may ask, where does the whole writing thing come into play? Well, to fight the monsters you have to beat them with word counts. Right now, I’m fighting a monster called a Nitana. Sort of looks like a toucan. To defeat the Nitana, I have to write 700 words in 130 minutes. How am I doing right now in this battle? I’m just under the two-hour mark and have written 289 words. Some battles are a lot tighter. For example, there’s an Assassin that you have to defeat by writing 1,400 words in 130 minutes. The largest monster I’ve encountered so far needs 2k words to defeat it.

There are probably bigger monsters in the newer areas but I haven’t done any quests there yet even though I’ve had those areas opened for months. The reason for this is because I’m a completist. I’ve slowly been going through and finishing up all the quests in the first 4 areas before moving on. Granted, right now I’m stuck in the desert area since I used up my last 20 coins to travel. I could wait ten minutes to slow travel for free but who has patience like that?

In addition to just writing, you can dress up your avatar in two different ways; aesthetic and battle gear. I used to raid ICC three times a week during the Lich King expansion so I am a huge fan of gear grinding. Feels nostalgic since no raid has lived up to ICC yet. Sorry, Blizzard. All battle gear has at least one of three stats; attack, defense, and luck. Attack gives you extra words. Having a +10 in attack will get you 1 extra word for every 10 you write. This lets you whittle away the monster’s health faster. Attack is a great stat to build up when going against the 2k monsters. Defense gives you more time. Not too sure about the ratio but with my attention span, more time is always good. Lastly, there’s Luck. Luck affects what items will drop when you defeat the monster. The higher your Luck means the more likely the monsters will drop rare items.

There’s even crafting and some great lore to round this all out. Not to mention the art is cute and well done. They’ve even introduced reaction emojis for the forums that use the same art style the monsters and world are in.

This all sounds wonderful, right? There is a catch. As you’ve probably guessed, it costs money. The good thing though it’s not that expensive, only $4 a month or less if you buy the crystals needed to get the subscription in bulk. It takes 44 crystals to buy one month. The largest bundle they offer is 2250 for $150. That makes it about .06 a crystal instead of the normal .09 cents. If you don’t have the money all the time, there are two ways to get a month or two free. One, they have a pool you can opt into that helps those without the means get subscription time donated to them. The other way is that there are quests that give you crystals. If you are smart and don’t spend them on some of the aesthetic items you can save those up easily to use on months that you don’t have the money.

Don’t be like me and waste them on boots and a kickass top the first minute of playing.

If you are at all interested in trying 4thewords, I’d really recommend it. They have a free trial is 30 days and allows you complete access to the game. If you decide not to pay after that then you can still access your work, you just can’t add or edit it on the site. You can copy and paste to another word processor.

Also, if you use my referral, we both get cool stuff; VNMLP95872.

Until I can find a better balance between work and play, this will probably be my only video gaming for the time for a little while.

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Climate change. The issue everyone is aware of but very few people ever mention outside of a political debate. C.D. Tavenor and other indie authors have started a project to change that. The World’s Revolution: A Climate Crisis Anthology was started with the goal to ‘inspire to explore the intersection of the human condition and the climate crisis… with a little bit of science fiction and fantasy thrown into the mix.” Quote taken directly from their Kickstarter that is set to finish next Thursday, March 4th at 5:30 pm EST. 

Their goal is only $2,000 which will go towards paying all the contributing authors fair pay for the first volume titled GAIA AWAKENS.

C.D. Tavenor, a fantasy author/editor by night and a public interest environmental attorney by day, with a dozen books under his belt was kind enough to sit down with us here at VeL publishing to talk about this project.

Tell us about The World’s Revolution and what it’s about? What role do you play in it all?

The World’s Revolution is a climate fiction project with a SciFi/Fantasy twist. I’m the project lead, which essentially means I first came up with the idea and somehow managed to convince a few other authors to pursue this crazy concept with me.

The World’s Revolution is a soon-to-open Climate Fiction market aiming to pay authors at least $0.01 per word. We launched on Kickstarter at the beginning of February! We’re excited to give authors the opportunity to translate their personal experience of the climate crisis into a compelling fiction narrative. We’re asking authors to consider: “What if the world began to fight back against the main cause of climate change… us?”

Plus, we’re designing the project so every story is technically in the “same” setting. It’s going to be a challenge to link stories together from a multitude of authors, but it’s going to create a unifying and cohesive anthology.

When’s the deadline and when can people start submitting?

The Kickstarter closes March 4; following the end of the Kickstarter, we’ll officially open the World’s Revolution’s submission window, taking submissions on a rolling basis.

What drew you to this?

Climate change and its impacts to present and future generations drives my career and much of my writing. I’ve wanted to design some sort of annual publication for a few years now, and given my interest in climate fiction, it was the perfect concept.

Climate change isn’t talked about often in literature, let alone having a whole anthology based around it. What made you decide to go this route to bring awareness to the topic?

I believe in the power of story to change the hearts and minds of readers. When we’re faced with the daunting scale of the climate crisis, the little things matter. Inclusion of climate change in fiction matters. By launching the World’s Revolution, we’re all-in on the idea that our project can impact people’s perceptions of the climate crisis. If we can push people to act in the real world as a response to our stories, then our job has been successful.

As mentioned before, your initial goal is only $2,000 USD. If that is funded, what would further success with this project look like to you?

In the long run, we would love to see The World’s Revolution become a market capable of paying $0.08 per word, the professional rate making stories eligible for SFWA.

Running a Kickstarter is a unique experience of both dread and excitement, with a great potential for even personal growth. What was the best thing you learned during this?

You can never do TOO MUCH Kickstarter marketing. Get creative. Make new connections. Badger your friends and family.

Now, what’s the worst?

The answer to the last question is the answer to this question.

Back to the Kickstart itself. What made you decide on the SciFi/Fantasy twist for this project?

I’m leaving a lot of those details up to writers to create, but the simple answer is… the Earth is fighting back against the causes of climate change, and in some cases, it uses people, creating environmental superheroes in the process.

Think Captain Planet!

What’s your plans for this anthology in the future?

We’ve got a lot of ideas! Nothing is set in stone yet, but we definitely want to make the anthology an annual project, and we might explore opening the setting for novels, novellas, and more!

There are so many amazing Kickstarters going at any one moment. Too much for one person to back but if you had someone out there on the fence about your project. What would you say to them to give them a good reason to support The World’s Revolution?

Because the book you receive for supporting the Kickstarter will be written by authors paid for their work, bringing into the world one more place where climate writers can tell stories inspired to cause people to act on the crisis.

That’s a good enough reason for us and the lowest pledge is only $5 USD which comes with a digital edition of book 1. The Kickstarter’s set to end in a little over a week’s time. What do you and your group plan to do once it’s over?

Once the Kickstarter ends on March 4, the submission window opens and we get to read everyone’s awesome stories!

For those that still aren’t sure about the genre or topic, they’ve released a free sneak peak to give writers and readers a lot a taste. Nothing beats free. If interested, click the link. Can’t donate? If you can, sharing this project would help just as much. The World Revolution project can be found on Twitter and Facebook as well as their website. 

C.D. Tavenor can be found on Twitter, Goodreads, and Amazon.