Tag: writing

Musings

[Blog] Goals and Roadmaps 2023

Faith Hakimian

Seeing as it’s January of brand new year (how did that happen?) it seems like as good a time as any– and perhaps better than average, even– to give an update on the blog in general, the status of All The Writing Projects, and also to give a general idea of what my hopes are for the site in the coming year, if only because actually stating it outright means I have that extra layer of accountability. Yay!

So, first! The blog. Last June marked the five year mark of the site going online, and so the fact that I’ve managed to keep it updated relatively steadily for all that time is definitely a point of pride for me. Particularly since my other attempt(s) at something similar have generally petered out with a rather embarrassing rapidity. And the plan is to keep at it!

In fact, after entirely too long spent on a reduced schedule, I’m switching back to the once-a-week posting schedule I started out with. Because I’m out of excuses, and what was originally intended to be a temporary rest while I used my limited brain power on more pressing things has become something a bit more like laziness. The brain power is still severely limited (isn’t it always?) but I’m at the point where my routine is stable enough and I’ve got enough to work with that the discipline of blogging every week is going to be more beneficial than eking out a few extra hours of spare time.

Which leads me to the next thing I want to mention/use-you-all-to-keep-me-honest-about. Way back in 2017 when I started this thing, I was actually putting up short stories every month. Two a month, actually, for a short stretch. I’m comfortable enough with my own limitations at this point to say there’s no way I can do two short stories every month right now. Not if I want them to be any good or to be able to keep up with it for any length of time without burning right out. But one a month? That I think I can do. So, consider this the official announcement that there will be a new short story going up on the blog on the last Monday of every month. Starting this month, so keep an eye out for that!

Speaking of writing, despite how quiet it’s been on that front, I have been picking away at some stuff behind the scenes. Picking is, unfortunately, about as much as it’s been, but it’s certainly better than nothing. Tanner and Miranda are at the top of the list, of course. I’m a little stuck with how I want to move the action along in the second of the nine stories that are going to make up the first collection, but the latest bits I’ve put together are feeling a little closer to the mark. The other projects (NaNo21 and NaNo22) are mostly stuck in the more conceptual stage as I work out what I liked about them when working on them and what just didn’t come together the way I’d hoped. What I really need to do is just sit down and hash some things out until I get stuck again and it can simmer in the back of my mind for another few months and see what comes of it.

I’m also thinking the site itself might need some tweaking, but that might just be some proactive procrastination talking. We’ll have to see. Heh.

With all this talk of plans, I feel obligated to note that it could all change; as they say: man plans, God laughs. Last year was full of so much change, including that big interstate move and everything it entailed, but there’s every chance this new one will be just as protean it in its own right. If nothing else, I suspect that time is going to become an even more precious resource than it is now, which means I’m going to have to get really good at managing it if I want to even have half a chance of keeping up with any of this. Good thing I’m a sucker for a challenge.

But for now, that’s the state of things! I’m really excited for the possibilities this year, not to mention looking forward to getting back into a more stable writing routine.

Musings

[Blog] Reading Retrospective 2022

Faith Hakimian

Well! According to Goodreads, I did it! As of yesterday, my official read count for the year of 2022 is sitting right at seventy five books. (And honestly, there’s every chance I’m going to finish at least one more before the year’s completely out, if only so that I feel less like I’ve cheated by including one that’s technically a short story.)

And now, because I’m a sucker for this sort of thing, a few statistics.

Of those seventy five:

  • 21 were rereads
  • 9 were non-fiction
  • 48 were SF/F (surprise, surprise)
  • 7 were audiobooks/read out loud
  • 51 were ebooks*
  • 9 were library books

Now, for my favorite part. Or rather, my favorite books from the year in several categories because overall favorites are for people who, unlike me, can make that kind of decision. New read just means new to me. No reviews this time, but I’m more than happy to get into discussions about them in the comments. Ha!

Favorite New Reads (Fantasy):
The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch
Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

Favorite New Read (Science Fiction):
Blackout/All Clear by Connie Willis

Favorite New Read (Classic)
Persuasion by Jane Austen

Favorite New Read (Bonus!)
A Single Swallow by Zhang Ling

Favorite Re-read:
The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

Favorite Non-fiction:
The Puma Years by Laura Coleman

What about the rest of you? Any books you particularly enjoyed reading this past year? Any you’re looking forward to next year? Me, the next book of Pierce Brown’s Red Rising series is due out later this year, and I can’t wait to get my hands on it. If the last one is any indication, it’s going to absolutely wreck me, but that’s the price we pay, no?

Keep an eye out for another blog post in the next few days– now that my real life schedule is settling down into something fairly stable I’m looking forward to putting a bit more time an attention into writing. Details to come! Until then, I hope you’ve all been having a wonderful holiday season.

* Ebooks are convenient. I have never denied this. And despite the fact that more than two thirds of my reading this year was done in that format, that should in no way be taken to mean that I think they’re “better” than their physical counterparts. And no, moving halfway across the country with more than a dozen boxes of the aforementioned physical books stuffed into my car did nothing to change my mind. Harrumph.

Musings

[Blog] Takeaways from NaNo2022

Faith Hakimian

Well, look at that. Another November has come and gone, and a whole bunch of writers have emerged once more from their caves and coffee shops to blink owlishly and try to remember what life is like without an aggressively looming deadline. And, if they’re anything like me, they’re also feeling a heady mix of relief and something a little like sadness that it’s all over.

According to the NaNoWriMo website, this was my thirteenth time participating and my twelfth time reaching the 50K goal, so there’s clearly something about this event that keeps me coming back. Mostly, it’s probably the fact that it gives you “permission” to write some truly terrible prose in an effort to get enough words down on the page to do something with them later, which is something that I struggle with during the rest of the year. Also, the look on people’s faces when I cackle softly to myself and mutter something about writing alllll the words is pretty fun, too.

Generally speaking, I’ve tended pretty strongly towards pantsing it that whole time, too, with last year being the notable exception/paradigm shift in my writing strategy generally. So, naturally, I’d hoped to plan again this year; I even had my beautiful blank outlines all set up!

And then I ran out of time. And the first day of November was here. And my outline was most emphatically not.

Which leads me to the rest of this post and what new things I’ve learned about myself as a writer.

Now that I’ve tried it, I much prefer working with a plan than without one.

This one surprises me a bit. Because for years, I gleefully embraced the chaos of writing with No Plan and only the faintest inkling of where to go. Characters made decisions and caused trouble. Plots spiraled and careened and dead-ended and reappeared out of nowhere like squirrels that got into a big bag of espresso beans. I felt free to write whatever the heck I wanted with absolutely no concern as to whether it made sense or not.

If pressed, I can still do that. That’s basically what I did this year, though with admittedly a bit more of a roadmap to go off of than some of my other projects. I knew the themes I want for this particular story, and I had several solid scene ideas that I wanted to get down. But the overarching movement of the story? Not so much. Which, on a related note, is probably why my 50K devolved very quickly into a bunch of random scenes and descriptions with little to no linear cohesion.

But for the whole month, I had to fight the feeling that I didn’t have a story so much as a setting. NaNo always feels like something that gets you a Draft Zero– something that’s such a wild jumble that other rough drafts look at it and squeak in dismay. After having my last project at least follow some semblance of a plot, that feeling was even stronger for this one, which was actually rather disheartening.

Frustrating as it was, it was also helpful to write without a plan.

The biggest trouble/pitfall/danger of writing with a careful outline is that it can be really, really easy to lean into a bunch of lazy clichés in order to tick off all the boxes that You’re Supposed To. And if you’re coming at it from the outline first, before you even start writing, the temptation is only going to be stronger. At least, that’s what I’ve found for myself: “Ah, yes, it’s the end of Act II and time for the all-is-lost moment. Clearly I must kill off my main character’s best friend.”

But what I found when I had to just write without having those pivotal plot points already mapped out was that some of the ideas that fell out onto the screen were better than anything I was going to come up with while staring at a blank outline that needed filling in. They still need tweaking and a lot of work (and probably a ruthless editor) to get them as good as I want them to be, but the bones are good, I think. Really good. Good enough that I’m really excited about the possibilities.

I’m not burned out on the story.

This one. Huh. I can’t remember ever getting to the end of November and not just wanting to set the document (and all its backups) on fire. Or at least to close it and pretend it doesn’t exist for a month or two. And really, I don’t know if this is a side effect of free-styling it or just where my head is at the moment, but the fact remains that I am legitimately excited to go back now that I have the luxury of time and work on fitting the raw material I wrote in November into the outline I didn’t manage to make beforehand.

Because I think there’s a chance that it’s going to be even better than if I did it the other way ’round.

Outlining last year changed the way I write without an outline.

I think the best way to explain this is to say that planning or outlining or whatever you want to call it is another tool in the writing chest, and I can get at least some of the benefits even without going whole hog on it. The exercise of writing and (more or less) sticking to an outline last year got me thinking about structure and writing in a way I hadn’t practiced, and that’s made it easier to see where the random scenes that spilled out last month might fit into a cohesive whole.

I think– I hope– that that means I’m a better writer. A more focused one, at least. More experienced. And that’s pretty cool.

Anyway.

If you participated, how did your NaNo projects go? Really well? Not so well? Really… different? Feel free to drop a line in the comments! In the meantime, I’m gonna go try to get some work done on any of my at least half a dozen neglected writing projects. Like Tanner and Miranda.

Happy December, y’all!

Musings

[Blog] November check-in

Faith Hakimian

Hello friends! Not much to report this time around. It’s November 9 and I am, predictably, knee-deep (or possibly neck-deep) in NaNoWriMo. It’s going well so far! Well. As well as NaNo ever does, which is to say the words that are gushing into my document are disjointed and confused but occasionally good enough that I can convince myself that I might, actually, know what I’m doing. I am regretting the fact that I didn’t have time to plan this one out like I did last year’s project, as I suspect it would be making a number of things significantly easier, but the little bit I had structured out in my head is holding pretty steady, and I’m liking a lot of the possibilities with this project. So yay!

Musings

[Blog] Where does the time go?

Faith Hakimian

So, apparently, November begins in less than a week. Goodness.

Naturally (read: Faith is addicted and can’t really help herself), this means that I have less than a week to get herself in a passable headspace for NaNoWriMo. The good news is that I do know what project I will be working on, and I have at least a modicum of planning done to help me through. The bad(?) news is that between… everything, but especially starting a new job in a new state and all that, I haven’t done nearly the amount of planning I did for last year’s NaNo.

Which maybe isn’t entirely bad?

I still love what planning out a novel in advance can bring to the table. And it’s not like I’m going into this completely blind– in fact, I’ve got a decent idea what I want the main beats for the story to look like. But aside from that? It’s all a blank page. And that’s an excitement all its own.

Musings

[Blog] Detours

Faith Hakimian

Anyone in the business of storytelling will tell you that conflict is what makes a story a story. It drives the action. It moves the characters and makes them fight for what they want. It makes them grow as (fictional) people. It’s what gives us the compelling stories that capture our imaginations.

And while it’s not a perfect correlation, a lot of us could also tell you that when those bumps appear in our own lives, they’re opportunities for us just like they are for our characters. Trouble is, knowing that doesn’t always make it any easier emotionally to handle those disappointments. Not when something takes you in a different direction than you expected to be going. Not when it feels like your slow, steady climb towards your goal has taken a sudden turn to the left. Not when you start questioning whether you made some mistake along the way that will delay you terribly if not prevent you entirely from reaching where you thought you were going.

Is this melodramatic? At least a little. (I write fiction for fun; what were you expecting?) Do I have a marginally unhealthy expectation that my life will follow a roughly sensible character arc, with obvious steps forwards and backwards, all moving towards a single concrete goal? Possibly. Oops. But can I still take advice from my favorite characters? Absolutely. Especially when all of them keep pushing through when there’s no easy way to get where they want to be.

Musings

[Blog] The Science in Sci-fi

Faith Hakimian

For those of you who have been following this blog/reading the stories that show up here every now and again, you’ve probably noticed that, despite the fact that I’m more than happy to use the shorthand of “science fiction” for the genre of number of them, even though it would usually be far more accurate to go with “space opera” instead.

And that’s okay! A perfectly valid choice. I love space opera, and despite the distinction I made above, I have no problem throwing it under the broad umbrella of sci-fi, if only because the popular understanding of the term often boils down to “adventure in space”. Overly simplistic? Definitely. Helpful enough? Yes.

All this to say that I’m lately finding a ton of enjoyment in actually reading up on various topics pertinent to the worlds I enjoy creation. Like, for example, The Case For Mars by Robert Zubrin, a book that presents the argument that we could actually put human beings on Mars within ten years using technology that already exists or could be developed in that time period. Aside from being a fascinating read all on its own, the number of ideas the book is giving me for the Tanner and Miranda stories is nothing to sniff at. From a general history of how humans made it out to colonize other planets to the infrastructure that they would have set up on all their colonies, including Verdant, it’s giving me the tools to help fill out the universe of the stories.

AND IT’S SO MUCH FUN.

Does this mean I want to turn the Tanner and Miranda stories into hard science fiction? Heck no. I’d be the first person to tell you my favorite part of writing about their shenanigans is exactly that: the shenanigans. But if drawing from the real world science (ish) that relates to the setting I’ve created helps me create a more immersive fictional world, gives me more ideas and, forces me to come up with interesting and different answers to the questions raised by the plot, then I am all for it.

Musings

[Blog] Settling In

Faith Hakimian

Slowly but surely, I’m settling in. This last week in particular has seen me neck deep in boxes, with the end result being a (mostly) unpacked room. After all the chaos of moving, it’s so nice to have a space that’s starting to feel more like my own.

I’ve also been managing more writing! It’s a slow slog back to where I want to be, but it’s definitely progress. So far, most of the words have been more a random scattering of ideas than anything connected to a specific project, but it’s proving to be a decent way to get myself back into the practice of regular writing, so I’m more than happy to go with it.

Also! Since deadlines and I seem to get along so well, and since September is starting tomorrow, it seems like the perfect time to give myself a wordcount goal for Tanner and Miranda. If all goes to plan, expect to see snippets from my work on their next adventure in the coming weeks. Until then, all the best!

Musings

[Blog] I return!

Faith Hakimian

In truth, I should have known better. Than to think I would manage even my reduced blog schedule while in the process of moving. Or, in other words, I did not intentionally skip posting for the entire month of July, yet here we are. In August.

Weird.

Unsurprisingly, this also means I haven’t really managed much in the way of fiction writing, either, though I’m gearing back up with that (and even pumped out several hundred words for Tanner and Miranda just last week!) and am eagerly looking forward to settling into a stable writing schedule once again.

In the meantime, some highlights from the past month:

  • My first visit to Yosemite, complete with a hike up El Capitan
  • Spending over a week with my family back in my hometown
  • A grand roadtrip comprising of more than 4500 miles, epic scenery, and all the summer storms I’d forgotten about because they don’t happen in California
  • Opportunities to catch up with various friends I hadn’t seen in Way Too Long

At some point I’ll definitely upload some of the pictures I took in Yosemite before the smoke descended; with absolutely no exaggeration, that park is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen. But that will have to come a different day. Today, I’m just going to have to be satisfied with a quick post to infuse a little life back into this blog– and the fact that I’ve actually got the energy to do some writing tonight.

Warmups

[Warmup] “forever protector”

Faith Hakimian

So, it seems like I’ve slipped down unofficially from weekly posts to biweekly, mostly because life is busy being Busy and my braincells are spinning around in all the different places (wheeeeee!). That being said, I’m going to go ahead and make that unofficial schedule official for the next couple of months: at least until my move is finished and I’m a little more settled in in a new state.

I am still here, and still writing (always!) just at a slower pace than I had been. And as proof, let me share one of my recent warmups/writing prompts that I enjoyed! Ten minutes, based off of an AI generated image (how’s that for futuristic?), and lots of fun. If you’re interested, I’ve included the picture the computer came up with down below, too!

So, without further ado and absolutely no editing, enjoy a peek at what happens when I get a time limit and a fun prompt.

The noose was closing. Inch by inch. Moment by moment. It wouldn’t happen today, might not happen tomorrow, but the end was coming. The game was coming to a close, and when it did, Saava would have lost.

Someone else might have used the inevitable end as an excuse to indulge in angst and terror. Or maybe they wouldn’t have had a choice. Others might have turned and used what very little agency remained to them to face their looming death with what the stories called pride and honor.

Not Saava. It would have been easier if she could. But as long as she still drew breath her mind refused to admit defeat. Not even when every logical part of her knew that the end was coming and the horrors it would bring. Not even when she knew she was nothing more than a dead woman walking. Not even when she knew her continued flight would mean greater pain and vicious punishment when they finally caught her.

And it wouldn’t be long now. There were only so many hiding places aboard Citrion Station, and she’d already used most of them. And she had already lasted longer than anyone thought she would. Had thought anyone could. And against some other Hunters, maybe it would have been enough.

Just.

Not for her.

Not against Foliak’s Bloodhounds.

Alien bastard.

Outside, she heard footsteps. And she froze. Even when every cell in her body shrieked that she had to run, she held still. Held steady. Held onto the mantra that had been the only thing to keep her alive these past five months.

Don’t run. Always hide. Let them pass you by.

But the day would come when they wouldn’t pass. Because there would be nowhere further for them to go. Or for her. And then the bloody end would come.

The footsteps receded. She opened her eyes again. And looked up. And she could have laughed. Because the game wasn’t over after all. There was another player. And he was on her side. Or else she read that familiar, fresh white symbol on the bulkhead all wrong.