Ghostwriter's hell

Here's the story. I hired a ghostwriter for a side project, and after we agreed on payment he got started. After I recieved the first scene he asked for my thoughts and said I still had $200 left for him to work with. All's good, so far..

I asked for revisions.

He didn't understand them (according to his wife), but instead of writing me himself, asking what I meant and how I wanted it done, he had his wife write me.

She explained that my ideas for MY story didn't make sense to her. That I somehow OWE them something for work they've taken it upon themselves to do. I DIDN'T ask them to do more than I paid for. She also accused me of trying to teach her husband how to write. Which, as you can see in my email, I didn't. 

Apparently asking a writer you hire to do revisions is a BAD thing.

I told them that Dan's writing didn't suite me, and ended the collaboration.

I then asked for a refund, since it was clearly stated that I had $200 unused still in their possession. And got this in reply.

Now. I told them I wanted my money back, and as she states. She won't answer because of my "shocking" emails. I fail to see how it can be a shock, that I don't want to pay for work I didn't ask for, or that I want to end a collaboration with someone who doesn't respect my opinion about MY story. If I hire a painter to paint my house white, and he paints it black. Should I be forced to pay him?

So this is my way of reaching them both, letting them know I've contacted authorities regarding this scam.

Be careful when hiring ghostwriters like Laura and Dan Sherman. They may seem nice at first, but I ended up paying for work I didn't ask for. 

-Izzy

Running out of 'Ohmpf'

What to do, what do do?

I hit points where I have the scene in my head, but the translation from thought to written word just doesn't work. I stare at the page, re-read what I've written before, look for inspiration in my pictures, but still... Nothing.

My Ohmpf has left the building.

Now all the writers say: Keep writing."

My answer. "Shut up."

I love writing. Anything, anywhere, anytime. If I could 'keep writing' I would. But I haven't written a word in three days. This is the first I've written. And it's taking me frickin forever to get these words down.

Just keep writing, feels like a slap in the face when I hit these lows.

Don't get me wrong. I appreciate the push I get from fellow writers, published or not. It's a strong community with great love for each other. I adore them all, and the way they pull you through pretty much anything. So it's not them. It's me.

At certain times in my life I hit the bottom. I relapse into depression first, and then I hit emotional flat-line. I feel nothing, I want nothing.

Writing at this point is impossible. I'm one of the lucky ones though, because it doesn't last long. A week, or a month. During my deepest low I saw a psychiatrist for about a year, and learned some tricks to pull myself out.

So now I'm back. I've gotten no-where on my shared project, but have done some edits on another one. An untitled project, that might be ready for release this year. I say might because... Well, I'm me, and I'm still fighting the fear of finishing something.

So what do I do when I hit these dark moments, where I don't, can't, want to write? Mostly I binge watch anime, play otome games and read. All of this is also done without enthusiasm. So I fast forward through any series I watch, I cheat on the games, and I only read about five pages of all the free books I download from Amazon. But it's something. Eventually I find that one thing. A sentence, a scene, a picture. Pretty much any small thing. And that kicks me back to barely functioning. After that it's fight, fight, fight.

I'm now at the fighting stage. Pulling my ass out of the dark abyss, and writing a few random sentences on index cards every night. Not much, I know. But I have to give myself some time. Everyone needs to. Writing is for me right now, so if I turn it into something painful and anxiety driven, then what's the point?

I can give you a little sneak peek of my, not so polished, first sentence of one of my many WIP's Turns out I have 18 of those, and only one is a full draft, being edited at the moment. Talk about shattered mind, and cluttered head. Soooooooo many characters running around in my mind wanting their story to be told.

Anyway. Here you go. First sentence.

 "Standing on the roof of the ragged brick building my eyes search the crowd leaving the club."

MindMeister

For anyone who hasn't used this, it's quite amazing.
MindMeister is easy to use and I recommend it to anyone who likes the "let's brainstorm" way of writing.
This is my Effulgent project.

If you're able to read, remember that it contains spoilers.

I'm using the free version of this online helper, but I feel it's all I need. The color settings help keep track of what I'm writing, and the little icons help link things together in different arcs. Imagine if I put as much work into writing as I did to planning, I'd be done with the book already. Talking of which, anyone know any good, but not too expensive Ghostwriters or anyone wanting to co-write a book?
I've talked to a few and they all say the same thing. Write it yourself or be ready to pay up to $3000 for a fairly good co-author/ghostwriter. Yikes! My first question is, of course, why do they charge by word, and not by hour? Had a guy talking about $75/h, and you can write a lot of words in an hour, if you're good, so is it to make more money they charge by word? Or is it so that we don't pay for time when their not writing? Which would be really nice of them. What about all those filler words? Do we have to pay for those? Cause I don't know if I want to pay for two "the" after each other. Or glue words? What about those?
Don't get me wrong, ghostwriters are amazing, and I haven't run across a single one that's been rude or condescending. Most of them, in fact, have become really dear friends, but I digress.

Let's get back to MindMeister. This one is my Before Limbo project. Another series I'm currently working on.

As you can see, it's laid out differently. I can change that whenever I want, making this so fun to work with. If it's not clear, I have quite the steady base laid out for my series, but I'm struggling with finishing a draft. This is why I continue to write here, cause even if I don't write a single word in any of my projects, I'm still writing.
I've tried to figure out WHY I don't write more than a couple hundred words every other day, when I can put down 15k words on a fan fiction during a weekend. If anyone feels like hacking my brain and explaining it, I would be ever so grateful.

On the plus side. I do build on the story every day, my outline at least. Have noticed Mystery is quite the tough genre. I have to figure out a way to fool myself constantly. If I can see it coming, so can the reader. Might have to dive into some more mystery books before I get the lay of the land.

Is there something you absolutely DON'T want to see in a mystery novel? Let me know in the comments.

Where am I going

Sometimes you hit that bump in the road, where you have to ask yourself how, and when, you lost the 405 and ended up in hillbilly outback territory. For me, it happened yesterday. I was trudging along the scene, moving characters like you would chess pieces, figuring out my next move, and BAM! I swerved off the main road, slammed into a tree, skidded along the edge of the ditch, and finally, a not so graceful face plant in the dirt. Not that a face plant is ever graceful, but I'm a master at making everything look just a tad more awkward than most of my friends.

So here I am, stopped dead in my tracks by a simple sentence. Words, connected in the easiest of ways, turns my YAY! into NAY! I was stuck. I'd forgotten where the story was supposed to take me.

My only option was to back away. I closed the document and spent a few hours playing games before bed. Woke up this morning and went to work. And now I'm here, writing to you.

I thought this would be a "Got any tips" but as I'm writing I remember that I have yet to use my Mindmeister to do an appropriate outline. Which has gotten my tummy bubbling with joy (or it's the milk I drank earlier)

I apologize, but I have to cut this short and take advantage of the surge of "Omg, I love pinning notes on that board" energy.

I'll give you a peek on the board in my next post.

Ta ta

Books on Writing

I've read so many books on how to write a novel, how to improve writing, how to build characters, and so on.

It started with a book about writing from the middle of your story. There were a lot of helpful tricks in that one, but most of them didn't work for me. I then moved on to the next book, this went on for a while. Me, buying books on writing, filling up my ebook reader. Jumping from one helpful tip to the next. Searching the web for blogs on writing, absorbing everything I could get my hands on.

It ruined me. It killed my creativity. I used to LOVE to write, but all the rules mentioned in those books, ripped out my love and replaced it with dread. It's come to the point where I fall asleep every time I open the document of my "closed to finished" draft. This is literal, I've tried to finish that draft for over 6 months, but as soon as I see the first word, my eyes grow heavy, my brain shuts down and I can't stay awake. So I gave up.

A dear friend made me promise to not read any more books on writing, and just write. That's why I started this project. I changed my writing process. I turned off spellcheck. I forced myself to just write the bare bones of the story, and not try to "show" everything. Getting that draft down is so important. From start to finish I have to be a runaway train or it won't get done. I have to not care about Deep POV, or filler words, or arcs, or adverbs. There are an abundance of rules surrounding writing, and the best authors don't care.

One of my favorite authors used three adverbs in the first page of her NYT bestseller. So why do I care about these things? Why should I,who's just writing a draft, even care about pacing?

This mindblock is being dealt with. It takes time, but I'm stubborn. I've given myself some exeptions. I'm allowed to use Autocrit, but only after I've finished my revision. I'm allowed to use The Emotion Thesaurus and it's sibling books. And last, but not least, I'm allowed to use One Stop For Writers. That's it. No more reading about acts, or "how to's".

You can't edit an empty page. Someone really smart said that, and I'm slowly learning to live by it.

As Always

As always in writing, there are times you get sidetracked. I did the mistake of re-reading my SWTOR -KotFE fanfic, and it led to me writing a few pages on that one. But... I'm back now.

Where was I? Oh, yes. The story and my writing process.

Let's have a look at my writing process. Note: This is what works for me, it can be concidered messy and confusing to some. Writing is about finding your way.

Okay. I start by making a quick outline in Word.

In other words: First I write ACT ONE and make that a heading.

Then I make THREE chapters. Name them whatever you like. I usually go for a word that explains the chapters, but to make it easy I'll name them One, Two and Three

I use Heading 2 for those chapters. I repeat the steps for Act Two and Three, but in ACT TWO I add NINE chapters. "Why?" You ask. I'll get to that shortly.

So this is what it looks like when I'm done. Note the red circle. This is where I keep all my "need to know" things. Like Characters, The Summary, The How's and The Why's.
Fair warning. You might be able to read the draft of the first page of the book (if you have good eyes). So SPOILER ALERT, 

Since I already have characters I add them in the right place. 

I've blocked out the backstory bits. But the questions I keep in the document are:

Name:  Age: Height:  Weight:  Role in Story:  Eye color:  Hair color:  Skin tone: Habits: Identifying feature:  Past:  Present:  Future:  Theme Song:

NOTES: 

Writing a Scene:

I always insert pictures to help me with the setting. In the opening scene we're in the woods, it's cold. So I had this picture follow me as I wrote. It's always at the bottom of the scene, just below what I'm writing. If I can find videos on Youtube with sound that match the mood, I keep them playing in the background. 

Now to the thing that changed writing for me. Nothing big, but for me it was earth shattering.

I NEVER ever, write more than a page per chapter in one sitting. 
This means that even if I'm in the middle of a flow, in the zone, I still end a sentence before I hit the next page, and then jump to another chapter. This keeps me interested in my work, it keeps me on my toes. 
Now this can be really confusing for some, but I've noticed that I don't struggle to write as often as I did before. I don't get as distracted (it does happen) by other ideas. 
I'm not saying this works for everyone. I'm just giving you my five cents about this. 

My next post will be about everything I've learned through Books On Writing. 

Now what?

At the moment I had this to work with.

The Heroine

The Love Interest

Who ever this turns out to be

A place

and...

A Genre

So who's the villain? Well, I found one, but that would be a spoiler, so I'm leaving it out of this blog. =P

All that was left was to figure out the story. What kind of story would this girl be a part off, willingly or otherwise? So I sat down and made a "why, what, when, who and how" list. 

It took me a little over a week to get all the kinks worked out, but this is where I like to spend the most time. Thinking up the improbable, and sometimes even the impossible. I've struggled with this part before. Having my brain go "That's not logical, that would never happen", or more often than not "That sucks, you suck, stop trying". I encurage anyone who runs into this mind troll to take it out back and shoot it. Point blank in the head. It might take a few tries, but if you start every writing session by closing your eyes and picturing it in your head, vividly, you will eventually put that troll to rest. This list should never bend to any laws, or rules. This list should be the beast you let out of a cage just before a feeding frenzy. Go on, shove some chocolate tasting, alligator looking unicorns into that beast's tentacle and watch it grow. 

Then I wrote a quick summary using the picture below as a guide. Putting the most weight in the middle section. The second act, for me, is always the hardest. Mostly becasue it needs so much action. I'm not talking about bang bang action, I mean the climb, the constant escalating towards the climax. So I crammed as much of my ideas into the middle as I could, and then some more. Knowing the summary will change as the story grows on paper, I refused to hold back. 

After that was done I took a well needed break. Finding short stories in the mystery genre to read, to get better acquainted with the new genre. This is just as important as writing for me. If I don't read, I don't write. There are writers out there (one of my favorite as an example) who hasn't read any books outside of school. She's written over 150 books and I've loved almost every one of them, so the read to write thing is a very personal preference.

In my next post I'll show you how I started putting my work into Word, and how I, by changing my way of writing, keep myself from getting bored. 

- Izzy