How Do I Plan My Book?

This week, 25 Ways to Beat Writer's Block is free on the Kindle. To celebrate that fact, we're going to look at some of the basic questions new writers ask. Previously, we looked at whether you should plan your book. If you're going to, let's now look at how you might do that.

How do I plan my book?

While I have a whole book on this topic - I'm that much of a fan of planning a book before writing it - this post can serve as a short master class for beginners. This practice works for more than just novels, too. All we're going to do is break down your book into scenes.

Step 1, figure out some key events in your book. These are the ones you most likely thought of when you were thinking about your book. Before I plan a book, I can already see some scenes in my head, like two characters meeting for the first time, or (as is the case with many short stories I write) a setting that sticks out because of how unusual it is.

How many key events you can imagine depends on how many ideas you've had for your book before this point. Don't worry, we're going to fill in the gaps soon. What we need before we do that, though, are a beginning, and an ending.

Your book will fill in the events between what happens at the very start, and what happens at the very end. If you're planning to write a series, it helps to know how the whole thing will end before you begin, and how many books you want to write. 

Say, for example, you're writing a trilogy. You need three powerful scenes to end each of your books on, that are natural endings to each part of the story, as well as concluding the individual tale contained in the book.

When you have your beginning and your ending(s), then we can move on to Step 2: filling in the gaps. Start with the scenes you have already. What needs to happen for your story to progress from one scene to another. For example, in the first Harry Potter book, we begin at Privet Drive, and later find Harry at Hogwarts. If we took those two key events/scenes to begin with, we then need to figure out what happens between each point.

Do that with each scene or idea you have, jotting down briefly what sort of event would lead to the next scene. Harry needs to get his invite to the school, so that has to happen. But, because we know the Dursleys don't want him to be a wizard, they'll try to keep the letter from him. To deal with that, the invitations keep coming, pushing the family away from the house, to the cabin where we meet Hagrid. You get the idea: each time you decide what needs to happen next, figure out what other steps need to be taken to keep the story moving from one scene to the next.

By the time you reach the end of your book, you should have a lot to work with. Break it up into chapters - use the larger events as a guide to where the chapter breaks will be.

Step 3: write it out neatly, and add in more detail if needed. I usually write out a paragraph for each scene in the book, but that's up to you.

If you want more information on planning a book, you can check out my ebook Planning Before Writing.

You can also find 25 Ways to Beat Writer's Block on Amazon, currently available for free download while the promotion lasts. Read more about it below.

Have you ever struggled with writer’s block? Have you sat at your desk, looking at your work in progress, wondering what to do with a character who just won’t budge, or a poem that just won’t take form, or an article that just won’t work for you? Have you ever joined thousands of authors in the search for a way to beat writer’s block?

From the author of Planning Before Writing comes a solution to the problem of writer’s block: 25 ways to tackle one of the biggest issues facing writers, each with an exercise to help you to develop as an author and improve your writing skills.

With exercises to suit every writer, and drawing on over ten years’ experience in the craft, 25 Ways to Beat Writer’s Block is a must-have reference for your collection.

Available on Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HYMVZJ2
and Amazon.co.uk: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00HYMVZJ2

Should I Plan My Book?

This week, 25 Ways to Beat Writer's Block is free on the Kindle. To celebrate that fact, we're going to look at some of the basic questions new writers ask. Let's start off at the beginning:

Should I plan my book?

This comes down to the individual author. Some people never plan a book before writing, and others don't write a word without a plan. Personally speaking, I have to have a plan. Sometimes it'll be a mind map. Other times it'll just be a list of chapter titles. But I have to go in with a plan.

There are a couple of reasons for this. The first is that I like having a guide to keep me going even when I start to lose my focus. The plan is done in a moment of inspiration - or drawn up from ideas that came to me in a moment of inspiration - and it's enough for me to know that what I'm going to write had some basis to it beyond "I need to keep writing."

The second reason I write with a plan is because I live in a house full of distractions and interruptions. Unless you have an ideal set-up that allows for a lot of peace and quiet, you can't guarantee that no one will burst in on a writing session.

Alternatively, you can write when, and only when, you feel the inspiration to write without a guide. Plenty of authors do that, especially when working on their first ever book, because they find it much more enjoyable. I did the same thing when I wrote my first novel nine years ago, but through a combination of only average writing ability at the time, a lack of focus in the book, and a lack of interest in the existing draft, that book won't see the light of day without a complete re-write.

At the time, however, it felt right. That's what you need to think about when deciding whether or not you're going to plan your book: does it feel right to use a plan, or do you feel better writing without one? For a first-time novelist, that's the only thing that should determine whether or not you should plan your book.

That said, and this is important, if you want to write a series of books, you need a plan. A series should have a longer story than any one book can tell. If you don't plan for the earlier clues as to what the rest of the series is about from book one, you'll struggle to sell your manuscript.

Think of it like a television show. Each episode is a story in itself, but they build upon each other towards the series climax and finale, when all the little pieces come together and make sense. Trying to write a series of books without a plan, without anything in mind for how to tie the whole thing together, is like a television show consisting solely of stand-alone episodes that aren't related to each other enough to keep an audience interested. Those shows get cancelled.

Keep that in mind if you want to write a series, but otherwise the decision of whether or not to plan is down to you. (For the record, I'm so pro-planning that I wrote a whole book on the matter. If you disagree with this blog post, it's probably because I focus so much on why it's important.)

About 25 Ways to Beat Writer's Block:

Have you ever struggled with writer’s block? Have you sat at your desk, looking at your work in progress, wondering what to do with a character who just won’t budge, or a poem that just won’t take form, or an article that just won’t work for you? Have you ever joined thousands of authors in the search for a way to beat writer’s block? 

From the author of Planning Before Writing comes a solution to the problem of writer’s block: 25 ways to tackle one of the biggest issues facing writers, each with an exercise to help you to develop as an author and improve your writing skills. 

With exercises to suit every writer, and drawing on over ten years’ experience in the craft, 25 Ways to Beat Writer’s Block is a must-have reference for your collection.

Available on Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HYMVZJ2
and Amazon.co.uk: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00HYMVZJ2

The Process of Writing a Book

I have seven books available on Amazon. Seven. While each is different - though, obviously, Balor Reborn and The Hounds of Hell are somewhat similar since they're part of a series - there's a process that comes with writing them. Even when I wrote a book in a week, I stuck to this process. It just so happened to be on fast-forward. Here's how I do things.

Step 1: The Idea

I start with an idea. For the Modern Irish Myth books, it was simple. I wanted to write a series of books about the return of gods and fairies to Ireland, and I wanted to start with one of my favourite villains from Irish mythology: Balor of the Evil Eye. For Planning Before Writing and 25 Ways to Beat Writer's Block, the ideas came from wanting to write about writing. I wanted to share what I knew, and from a list of topics that I thought I could feasibly write something about, they stuck out off the page.

Step 2: Planning

Not every book I've written has been planned in the same way. The Modern Irish Myth books have a chapter-by-chapter summary written as the plan. They're usually 7-10 pages long, typed, and go into quite a bit of detail.

Planning Before Writing was planned with a mind map on a small piece of paper. I literally just wrote down different ways to plan a book, and different reasons for planning.

25 Ways to Beat Writer's Block was simply a list of chapters before it was written. I decided upon an order for them to appear in, but after that I was writing what was necessary for each chapter, as it came. I didn't necessarily have to write the book in order, but I did.

My other books fell into similar patterns, either a list of a detailed description of each part of the book. The important thing, for me, was to get together even a small document about the book that I could work from.

Step 3: Time Management

This doesn't always happen for me, but it certainly helps. Balor Reborn was written in a week. I needed to  have the time set aside to do it. Planning Before Writing was written while I was on Teaching Placement. I had to have time in the evening to write a chapter, but after my preparation for lessons the next day. 25 Ways to Beat Writer's Block was written, largely, during my niece's nap times while I was minding her, or in the evenings. It was affected by Christmas and a suddenly increase in working hours.

When I really get going properly, I have a system in place for writing a book regarding time management. I give it priority over anything else I have to write that day. If I need to have a story written for the next day, it means I have to write the book without distraction. I write every day, without exception, and I make sure I have the time to do so. No excuses, no exceptions.

Step 4: Writing the First Draft

I write rather quickly. This is due to a combination of the previous three steps - the idea keeping me interested, the plan helping me go without stopping, and the time management allowing me to work uninterrupted by other duties - and my ability to type fairly quickly without error. I picked up the latter skill over the years when I was writing my first book. Between the ages of 12 and 15, I started the same book four times. We didn't have an Internet connection in the house, we didn't have USB keys, and we didn't have a way of transferring old files over to a new computer. The final first draft I wrote had to be written from scratch, but that allowed me to develop my typing abilities while doing something that interested me.

With that to back me up, writing the first draft of a book is relatively simple. I could, if I had the inclination, write a full length novel in two weeks. I would need to have the time away from other responsibilities like child minding or bookselling, but I think it could be done. (The maths involved in this speculation: 90000 words, divided by 14 days = 6430 words per day, which is less than 6 hours work at a rate of 1200 words per hour. That's my rough average, taking tiredness into consideration for longer writing periods.)

I follow my plan for the first draft, deviating only if I think the book could do with some padding out and I have an idea beforehand. The last thing I ever want is to expand a book for the sake of it, so any additional extras are there for a reason.

Step 5: Editing the First Draft

For me, editing is an annoying process. I don't like changing my book too much. I always do a proof edit, to make sure there are no typing errors, but when I have my doubts over a story I have to get someone else to read it. Since 2012, I've relied on a friend who reads spectacularly fast. He read and commented on Balor Reborn in an hour. I attempt to remove as much necessity to change a story as possible by working on my plan in detail, sticking to it, and playing out questionable scenes in my head before writing them. (If you ever see me talking to myself walking down the road, that's probably what I'm doing. I can't help myself sometimes, and other times I just like the sound of my own voice...)

Step 6: The Cover

I always need a cover. Since the days of self-publishing technology becoming available to me, I've needed to know what my book would look like with a cover. I've even done covers for books I don't plan on releasing. I just enjoy making them.

Step 7: Formatting the Book

When the editing has been done - and you can include rewrites in there - I also format my book. This involves either preparing it for publication, or just readying it for when I print it off for myself. I like the book to look neat, and to read easily. I even print the cover onto a sheet of photo paper for a nice glossy effect. (Seriously. Even if I don't keep a printed copy of the book nearby, I print the cover. Right now, I have the cover for 25 Ways to Beat Writer's Block beside me at my desk.)

Step 8: Celebrate

I have a ritual when I finish a book of getting a cup of tea. I leave my tablet in my room. I don't watch the television. I just sit at the kitchen table and enjoy my cup of tea, and maybe tell a couple of people via text message that I finished the book. That's it. That's how I celebrate. It's not the spuds-and-beer stereotype we Irish are known for, but it'll have to do!

When everything else is done and I've got this new book written and ready for me to do what I will with it, I can start all over again. I'll pick another idea, maybe even a different genre, and I'll write another book. It's my favourite past-time. (Publishing is a different matter. That's business. The writing is for fun.) If I could, I'd just write all the time. Someday, I hope that'll be the reality for me. For now, though, I'll just have to stick with my 8-step process and enjoy writing for the sake of it when life allows.

My Tools of Organisation

I'm a big fan of organisation. Looking at my bedroom, that might not be immediately obvious. At the time of writing this, there are two big bags full of CDs that should be on shelves. There's a coat that should be hanging up in my wardrobe. There are notebooks on the end of my bed that don't belong there. To make matters worse, there are wrappers from bars on my desk. I'm excusing myself of all of these things, because I've just moved into the box room again, without any of the functional shelving and storage space I actually need.

What I do have, however, is a FiloFax, a page-a-day diary, and more ring binders than most people consider sane. These are my tools of organisation, the things that keep me focused on different areas of my life. Mainly they're writing based. What can I say, my life is a lot less complicated than I sometimes let on. (Though, if I told you about every writing project I haven't considered "dead", the ones that are in folders and binders and notebooks in my bedroom, it would become increasingly complicated.)

So, let's leave it at "writing" and leave out the specifics of what I'm actually writing for now. I already talk about that enough.

My FiloFax was a present from my niece. Well, technically it was from my brother and his girlfriend, but it was given on behalf of my niece. I had wanted one for a while, but I didn't mention that to anyone. Now that I have one, I had to figure out what to use it for. So, I used the six tabs within it to designate different areas of interest.

Part 1: To-Do. This one is simple. It has note pages and to-do list pages alternating. I have a general list of things I need to do at the front of the section, but I imagine that when it comes down to the specifics of one or another, I'll use another page dedicated to it.

Part 2: Writing Notes. Anything I need to take a note of for a book or an article or anything like that will go on the note pages in this section. It's simple.

Part 3: Ideas and Inspiration. I've used it precisely once, so far. I got the idea to write a weekly diary series for a character from a series of books I plan on publishing, beginning this year. He's a cynical git, and it's a fun little series to have started. The first part, Dear Whatever went up on Monday on ParagraVerse. You can read it here: http://paragraverse.wordpress.com/2014/01/06/dear-whatever/

That's right out of my FiloFax. See how helpful my organisation is?

Part 4: Books to Read. I have three in here so far, but it's actually missing quite a few. They're books I don't currently own, though I'm considering writing the list of books I want to read that I already own in it, too. That'll certainly make choosing the next one easier. (At the moment I'm reading The Curve by Nicholas Lovell, but I'm nearly done, so I'll need a new one soon.) It's a thinner section than the previous two. It's just titles, after all.

Part 5: Travel. So far, it's empty. Why? Because I don't have the budget to travel yet. However, when I do find a way to travel, I'll be using this section to organise everything I want to do. I'll begin filling it in soon, anyway, with the things I'd like to do on the first trip I want to go on: London. The shows I want to go to, the touristy things I want to do, the people I'd like to meet if this were an ideal universe. Not every city will have one of those lists, but London definitely has one. People who know my little niche interests (you know, something more specific than books or writing) might be able to guess who a couple of them are from London.

Part 6: Contacts. So far, it has one thing in it: a business card. However, I plan on bringing the FiloFax with me everywhere, and having somewhere to put people's contact information and business cards is important. In the end, who you know is as important as what you know. This is the world we live in, now.

Obviously, my FiloFax also has the diary section that all FiloFaxes come with, and that's helpful. I use it record what I need to do in a day, and record what I did do, in terms of writing or publishing. I have a year planner that pulls out, too, but until I have my room sorted and can access my estimated publication dates for different projects, I can't really fill anything in.

Complimenting my FiloFax is my A4 page-a-day diary. Two things about it: it was cheaper, and it's not going to be carried around with me whenever I go somewhere. It's just too impractical for that. However, I'm using it plan out things like articles and stories, on the day on which they are due. This leaves me with a full page with which to work, and means I have every plan recorded in a nice hardback for protection, too. I used that diary to plan my first article of the year, and I used it to determine the possibility of even beginning the weekly diary series that I mentioned above.

Alongside this, and the oldest of my organisational tools, is an A4, green ring binder. It's basically my CV. Except that it also contains my CV, so that's a CV within a CV. It also has my first published article in a national magazine; the poster for The Rest is Silence and the letter from the charity we supported with it; printed records of monthly book sales from Amazon; and my notes from Brendon Burchard's The Millionaire Messenger, which I'm using as a template for planning various aspects of my life.

All in all, these three things focus on future planning and organisation. The binder is the long-term plan. The diary is the mid-term plan; nothing in it will be planned more than three weeks' in advance in full detail. The FiloFax is more short-term, updated at most a week in advance. It's also the one I'll address a lot more often than the others, because some days I'll need to record that I have successfully written a number of different things across different projects.

Does it  all work? Well, on the day I wrote this blog post - Monday - I also wrote four short chapters for an upcoming ebook. This was between doing various things around the house, checking in on people online, and spending a bit of time playing games online. I watched YouTube videos, I spent some time with my niece, and I arranged the bits and pieces within my new bedside locker. I had a productive,stress-free day, while managing to accomplish an awful lot. So yes, my tools of organisation work.

What about you? How do you stay on top of the various things life requires of you? Does anyone have an interesting App for that?

Day 14: Late Start, Awesome Result

Today, it took me some time to actually get to writing. Not to worry, though, because I managed to write over 2,400 words tonight. This has brought me through chapter four of The Blood of Leap, in a second day of writing quite a bit, and has resulted in the second change of plans.

This is a direct result of not planning enough content for the books, but also seeing an opportunity to dedicate chapter four to something special. It's shorter than most chapters in the book, but the most significant chapter in terms of world building and plot development for the series, with the possible exception of the final chapter if memory serves.

I still only have two more chapters planned in the book, though, which means I may be facing some word count troubled in the near future. I need to write at least 12,000 words more...in the next two chapters.

Can you see my problem?

There just isn't enough in the plan to make that happen. Yet. Reading over my plan as I began writing this, I noticed a couple of areas I could expand upon. One of them is going to be sweet and gentle, albeit slightly creepy. The other is going to be much bloodier.

With a title like the one I have, is that really a surprise?

Even still, I worry that I won't have enough to go with. It's a good thing I have a month until I actually planned on publishing it, but haven't actually announced an official release date. I get to finish the book before I do that, I reckon. That's something I plan on doing this month, anyway.

Still, I'm quite happy with how the book is turning out so far. I think I might need to go back over some notes I have for the book, though, to make sure I really tell the story I've been wanting to.

Tomorrow, though, I'll have to focus on the final edits for The Hounds of Hell, to make sure the book is ready for Tuesday. I also need to write the first flash fiction story, format the book, and get things ready for the publication. I'm lucky I'm not working on Tuesday to get a lot of this managed, and to get back to writing The Blood of Leap.

This is a fun month. Hashtag stress, wha'?

A Good Idea?

Back during my Teaching Practice in January, I wrote a book. This time around, my idea to write an awful lot seems to be happening during exams.

Creatively speaking, it's where my mind is finding itself. I've written four pieces of over a thousand words each over the past week. It's for a future project, specifically that website/blog thing I've mentioned recently. Again, no name reveal yet, on account of the fact that I need to own the domain name first. I need some degree of security.

Is it a good idea to take on such large projects during my exams? Probably not. I mean, with Teaching Practice I could easily finish my work for the evening before moving on to my own writing. With exams, I have to focus a lot on the content that's due to come up on the paper in some way shape or form. Not only is there a lot more work involved, it's a lot more necessary to actually remember it all as I go to sleep (or at least when I sit down to answer the question.)

On the other hand, exams seem to be a great time to channel creative energy into projects that I don't necessarily have to do all the work on now.

I'm planning a day out with some friends, planning a project with a friend, planning my website/blog, and trying to sort out my life. Nothing too big, obviously.

This time of the year is ideal for making decisions about what to do in the immediate future, in most cases. In previous years, I've know how the summer would turn out. Usually, I would be alone for long periods of time, what with friends' work schedules and re-locations back into the countryside of Ireland, or beyond into the world. This year, things are less certain for me, but not in a scary way.

If I find full-time employment, I'll still have weekends to do work and hang out with friends. And evenings. I won't lose them.

And if I remain on my part-time hours in the bookshop, I'll have a lot more time to explore massive projects that will consume much of my time between getting out into the world to socialise and see new places (on some imaginary extra money...)

Basically, I don't see the summer as being a hollowed out block of time this year, which is usually how it ends up by September each year. I suppose the big difference this year is that September won't necessarily end whatever break I find myself with by the end of exams. It won't do to settle into a routine of doing nothing, because it'll be difficult to get out of.

I suppose that's why I've been planning so many different projects. I want to make sure I'm not idle. While it's probably not a good idea to write a few thousand words per week during exams, I can still do some planning. Planning has never hurt me. Right now, my plans are obviously subject to change (even the date I have in mind for my day out as mentioned above is subject to change), but it's not a bad thing.

Life is moving on, and I've been taking the steps I need to that'll make it less terrifying no matter what state of employment I find myself in after exams (as in full-time or part-time). Plus, knowing I can churn out a thousand words per night is something of a comfort, even when the pressure is on with college. Yes, I should be putting my time to good use for my studies, but the simple fact of the matter is this: studying is boring when it's with exams in mind. (Learning for the sake of learning is genuinely more fun. Stay in school kids.)

Good idea or not, I'm going to keep going as I have been. And I definitely won't give up writing something every day.

A Writing Schedule

College is coming to an end. Once exams are over, unless I find myself a full-time job, there'll be no more timetable controlling my life. Weird, right? No more lectures, no more designated lunch times, no more designated breaks in the year that I grew so accustomed to, that became part of my annual cycle.

Today, I was looking through different publications and writing competitions, and a thought occurred to me: a whole year could be planned out to respond to every single call for submissions, every opportunity to enter a competition, every poetry night and book signing and reading, weekly meet-ups with other writers...

The list could go on.

Realistically speaking, if I'm not employed the moment I leave college (and that's not speaking realistically), I could set up my own writing schedule, to follow the written word through the week.

An evening a week could go to talking to other writers online (Google has made that very easy to do; we don't even have to leave the comfort of our own homes). This evening, maybe two or three hours, could be used to talk about stories and books and poems in the works. It would, in essence, be a Feedback Forum, like in college, and the easiest thing in the world to do.

Saturday night seems to be poetry night. At least, so far it has been. Let's say I find something every week. That's another evening gone to writing, to performance poetry. That's an evening well spent, in my mind.

Book signings and readings are less frequent, but it's possible to keep track of them. Twitter helps with that, and Google, and simply looking up bookshops online. Many list the upcoming events for the month ahead. Or visit author websites and see if/when they're on tour, and if it's possible to make an event. The Dublin Writers Festival is coming again soon. That's just one season of events that hits during the summer months.

Realistically, we're looking at three evenings/afternoons taken up with these events, per week. What about the mornings?

Once a week, I could search websites and Twitter for calls for submissions, for competitions. Make up a list, cross out anything that's not suitable or that doesn't interest me. See what's left. A couple of hours per day, respond to these items. Simple, right? In theory.

Say I have four more hours to write, without really pushing myself. Two hours for Fiction, two for Non-Fiction. I always have something to write.

Still a couple of hours left. More if I don't have an event that evening. Write a blog post. Record a video. Track sales figures. Contact authors. There's always some small job that needs doing, right? Graphs to make, tweets to send.

But that's a good point: what do I do about social media while doing all of these things? Silence? Auto-tweeting is an option. It's not ideal. It can be very annoying, especially if it's the same things being posted all the time, with no interjections from the tweeter. Worse still if it's just links. That always annoys me. But I could tweet interesting quotations. And short poems. Imagine spending an hour a day writing short poems and haiku for tweeting throughout the rest of the day. Maybe even writing enough for the week. It doesn't have to be automated, either, if I'm home and on the laptop.

I have become convinced, in writing this, that it's entirely possible. Is it a good idea?

I would say yes. Not only would it mean writing a lot every day, it would mean having some structure in my day. I wouldn't just be sitting at home doing nothing, especially not if I gave myself tasks to do every day. It means that when I enter full-time employment, it won't be a culture shock to have to do work between the hours of 9 and 5, and likely beyond.

I've even gotten the ball rolling on the publications. I have a list in a group on Facebook that I'm updating at the moment, making it longer and helpful to more people than just the poets.

So... I think I'm setting myself up for a life of writing. Once the Dreaded Exams are out of the way, I won't have much left to fear. I'll actually be in a position to decide what I want to do with my time, whether or not I find employment (aside from the bookshop). Suddenly, life doesn't look so terrifying.

Preparations

Every year, I seem to blog about made plans for the summer. This is usually a list of books I want to write and books I want to read and all the adventures I plan on going on and all that sort of stuff. The problem with that is that it all seems to only be intentions. I never actually go through with most of it.

Last summer, I planned to do one thing: write and publish Balor Reborn in a week. I did that, I was happy. This year, I have more plans. I've had them for a while. It's possible they will be derailed by unexpected but not unwelcome changes in my life, but for now I have plans for the future.

With that in mind, I have been preparing.

A large part of this has been gathering books and resources, though there's also just been some planning of novellas. Aside from that, I've been looking at tax info and business info and marketing techniques and how to do particular things online and in "real life", and while a lot of it has been overwhelming, it's made it all seem very real in a good way.

That was the thing that made Balor Reborn a success in its publication: it's planning and preparation was real. I made it so I couldn't back out by sending a press release out, not just to local press but to major newspapers and magazines and television stations. People even responded. How bad would it have looked if, after those responses, I'd pulled out?

You don't have to answer that question.

Doing something concrete makes the plans and preparations easier to stick to, in my mind. Not just writing them on paper, but giving myself a reason for doing them and making it so I can't pull out. Sure it will be scary to make big announcements to the world about projects I've been working on (or haven't completed), but life has taught me time and again that the things most worth doing are often the things that scare me the most.

Last night proved that, Balor Reborn proved that. I think I can deal with being scared again for the sake of the rest of my life and all the madness that's bound to happen. The worst that can happen is that I fail, and damn that's not the worst thing that can ever happen.

And I'm not just saying that because of the Dreaded Exams.

What I'm taking from all of this is that in making preparations for something, it helps to actually make preparations. Like, sorting out tax information to make it so I really have to earn back the money it costs to file the paperwork. Or buying an absurd amount of books on a topic that has no real practical application without a further degree. Or getting other people involved, because other people like their time and you don't want to annoy them.

I have a lot going on after college. That's kind of scary, like leaving college is kind of scary, and I know that that's only because I haven't been anything but a student for eighteen years. But scary is good. Scary means it might be worth it. But scary can be hard to deal with, so I make preparations, real-world semi-adult preparations and scary becomes manageable.

Hopefully I'll have a better idea of what I can announce soon. All these preparations are leading to something that could take twice as long as I'd like to follow through with if things change, and I don't want life to suddenly become a terrifying prospect of not meeting deadlines, ever. So, for the sake of my sanity, I'm keeping quiet. Just know that I'm working on something (albeit more slowly than I'd like, thanks to college), and it will happen in the future (most likely this year, hopefully by September). It's scary, but scary-good, like reading poetry at a book launch, not scary-bad, like seeing a spider and wishing to burn it to death with a flamethrower.

Let's pretend I never said that.

Stepping Forward into Hell

This weekend, possibly because it was a long one and I wasn't getting drunk in commemoration of St Patrick, I put together a few different things for the coming months of my writing life. It was a fun weekend for me because of that. (Hey, look at that - I enjoy productivity!)

Aside from writing a ton from my topic cards, I put together a cover for a book and planned another, Stepping Forward and the sequel to Balor Reborn respectively.

You might have noticed that Stepping Forward stopped being available for free last year. This was in preparation for the more serious aspect of my writing career; I didn't want to just share my writing for fun, as I had done when I initially made Stepping Forward available. I'm making publishing my books a business, as it should be.

However, I loved Stepping Forward too much to just let it disappear forever. It will be coming back, edited and revised and with a new cover. I had plans for this cover late last year, but I didn't follow through with them until this weekend past. I'm not a graphic designer, but I enjoy putting together covers. Thankfully I receive some feedback from people, so I don't end up with the first thing that comes to mind. As a result, I've ended up with the cover below for Stepping Forward. I'll have to have a look at the manuscript again to determine how much I need to rewrite to improve the book. After that, I'll have a (re)release date for Stepping Forward.

As for the sequel to Balor Reborn, it's finally planned! Entitled The Hounds of Hell, it takes us out to the West of Ireland to the Murray household, where the neighbourhood dogs are running wild and a strange sickness has fallen over the locals. I'll be planning the sequel before I start writing it, but with my track record in mind it shouldn't take long to actually write the book.

That sounds like bragging. It's not. (Okay, it's not just bragging.)

But with that in mind, it should be made clear that once I'm free of college and seminars and exams, I'll be able to crank out the rest of this series within the space of a few months. If I plan the remaining books before the end of my exams, I'll probably be able to write the rest of them by September.

And by saying that, I've probably jinxed it.

I suppose I should make it clear that I am not just working on the Modern Irish Myth books. I've got a couple of big projects for the summer, which you'll hear more about soon. I can confirm that they are not novels, though that doesn't mean I don't have novels to work on (the sequels to my two favourite NaNoWriMo books - Meet Sam and Bliss, for a start!). Again, both of these need to be planned completely before I start writing them.

But yes... I'm planning my future writing in a major way, with publication in mind. This is a business, after all, and I'd be made to ignore that fact.

Unexpected Results

It is with some excitement that I find myself writing a book on planning. That seems weird, mainly because planning can so often seem like a boring process. 

Oddly, I don't think so. I think it's an applicable process that can save time and effort in the long run, especially when the plan is detailed enough to cover all major areas of a project. In my case, my plan almost doubled in size from when I first drew it up, so that rather than write ten articles on planning (which was initially supposed to be one), I'm now working towards eighteen short chapters of an ebook.

I'm pretty damn happy with it. Obviously it'll need some editing before it's ready for publication, not just to change the word article to plan, but to make sure the whole thing flows correctly. However, I am confident that what I am creating, while sticking to my New Year's Resolution, is a book that can be used by writers no matter what project they are picking up.

Even better, the book looks to be ready by mid-February. It's not the quickest turnaround, but with my teaching placement taking up most of my time, I'm happy with it.

How did I manage this? Simple: I wrote every day this year so far. Half of this time was granted to the planning book, and the other half to poetry and blog posts. The end result is that I have been able to keep in touch with the online world to some extent, get creative with my poetry and still manage to produce something I think is worth selling.

It's also helping to make writing something more manageable in the process. Because I'm writing the book on planning, I'm having to think about my own plans. I'll need to get the sequel to Balor Reborn out soon, obviously, and keep working on that series, but now I'm in a position where I can easily keep up with my various projects by using my own advice on planning. Planned project: unexpected results.

So, excited. I have lots of other stuff in the pipeline, too, though I haven't yet announced most of it. I literally told my Unofficial Board of Directors about my next big announcement, the one that will change my life, I think. Them, and my brother. But not my parents or any of my friends, or anyone else for that matter. I've kept most people in the dark, because I'm excited about this, but partially afraid of what will happen when I actually go public with the details.

I'm waiting until placement is over before I do much more else with it, so I at least know where my head is at for the project, and I have some time to put in some serious work on it ahead of public intentions being announced. I have a lot of background work to do on it.

I guess I had better start planning it all properly soon. But then, I should be used to that at this point.

How's That New Year Coming?

We're on Day 7 of this great fabrication known as the New Year. Personally, I love it. It's not so much that the concept of a New Year's Resolution is so revolutionary that it shouldn't be ignored, so much as I love the idea of so many people deciding to make a positive change in their lives. Naturally, I join in, and it's one of the few times in my life I will consciously conform to a particular standard (I'm okay with conforming if it happens by accident!).

My aim to write every day is going quite well. It has, so far, produced half of what may well become a short ebook. That, or a section of a longer book. It's all on planning, which fit in nicely with my teaching placement and the need to produce 80 lesson plans in four weeks. Surprise surprise, that's not as much fun as it sounds.

Okay, I jest. I don't mind actually having to do it, and I'd be screwed in class without a lesson plan, but that doesn't mean 80 of them are a lot of fun, when you throw in resources for every lesson, too.

Anyway, back on track. That planning craic. So far, it's five connected articles that need to be drawn together and reworded, but they're essentially half an ebook focusing on some considerations for planning. The other half of the book or section would consist of methods of planning. If there's one thing teaching college has taught me it's that everyone learns and thinks in different ways, so no one method will suit every person who could potentially read the book.

So, there's that. I've also managed to write myself a couple of poems. One has seen the light of day, the other hasn't, but I loved doing them both an awful lot. I consider poetry a project, because every one I've written recently has been accompanied by an image, an audio track and, eventually, a video. This has meant that rather than simply writing the words and posting them online, there's a whole added experience of performance and mood-setting music and the search to find a new means to share an ancient art form.

I don't suppose I will ever grow tired of writing this way. The articles are refreshing every time I come back to them, the poems always requiring a bit more work than just writing, and I've got an unreal amount of fiction to write my way through over the next year.

Would I have done it without the New Year? Possibly, I would have begun. But the social dimension of New Year provides the additional kick everyone needs when tired or busy to ensure they stick to a change in their lives.

Of course, writing isn't the only thing I'm doing. Every day, I keep note of something good that has happened, and writing them on a little piece of paper, I store them in a jar on my bedside locker. Why? Because New Year's Eve has been reserved for false bitterness for far too long, and at least this time I'll have something positive to do: 364 positive messages to look at from things that happened throughout the day.

Could I ask for anything better on New Year's Eve 2013?

Any Plan But a Lesson Plan

The one thing they don't warn us about in college is that lesson plans, being detrimental to banter, craic and "LOLs", can sometimes lead to this horrible form of procrastination in which the sufferer begins to plan everything. Except, of course, for the lessons. The psychosis is known to lead to planning away your youth until you're a withered old man or woman. More commonly, of course, the sufferer is left in a panic.

This, of course, leads to a number of stress related illnesses. Stress is known to lead to insomnia, lack of focus and a number of bowel movements that don't do well to describe. Add this to a classroom situation, and a student teacher may find him- or herself with a nasty case of God-knows-what, and failing to live up to their potential.

And why? Because, as a basic requirement, lesson plans cannot be done too far in advance of the class. However, given the nature of a teaching placement, designed to educate a student teacher in the ways of teaching, but not quite putting them into a full classroom experience in that we never truly know the pupils by the end of the period, it is impossible for the very basics of lesson plans to help.

How can a student teacher be expected to write up a number of lesson plans, never too far in advance, and still hope to maintain a shred of the necessary sanity to qualify teaching in a classroom? While it is capable to keep up with the workload, the real problem is starting.

Is there is a solution to this? Most likely. It would certainly help if one didn't ask so many questions. A proposed solution, of course, is to allow for a period of time, supervised and monitored, in which student teachers must draw up the first three lesson plans for each of their classes. In a supervised environment, with the lesson plans inspected and given construction criticism well in advance of the lessons, the student teacher - a strange specimen, half-way between qualified and stupefied - would be able to relieve some of the pressure.

For this to work, the environment in which the student teacher is being prepared ought to be made less stressful. While it is, of course, acceptable to assume that a degree of education must still take place, the way in which the student teacher is taught and assessed can be changed to allow for a different type of workload.

Back to my original point: planning. Lesson plans, being nigh-impossible to get to work on initially, lead to excessive planning. Holidays are booked, drink plans - a high risk social event so close to the teaching placement - are made and, in an extreme case, narrative plans are drawn out extending some years into the future. With so many plans being made - youth being wished away, while placement in a school situation wastes it away - it is not surprising that, given the insomnia and associated symptoms of stress, the student teacher suffers.

Consequently, the student teacher is not graded as they would be if they were to be inspected with pre-prepared lesson plans and a less stressful lead-up to the teaching experience. No longer in even a relative state of ease, the results of teaching placement, unless in monitoring an especially helpful class group and stress-free lesson, are subsequently inaccurate. The best they can hope to achieve is to monitor the implications of stress on a student teacher and the way in which he or she deals with this stress and still manages to cope.

There is, of course, a nugget of helpful advice within these words: de-stress, stay calm, and pretend there's nothing wrong with you. You might even believe it.

Scheming, the Boring Kind

They don't tell you, before you sign up for teacher training, that the workload is both too high for a social life, and too boring to make you want to stay in college. Over the past few days, I've had to produce four detailed lesson plans and five schemes of work. This isn't the fun kind of scheming like EDGI. This is more like doing a whole lot of work that you then have to get even more specific about later, that doesn't really make much sense by itself.

Consider this a warning for those thinking of being teacher: the paperwork is really boring. Really, really boring. I mean, I think my lessons will actually be fairly enjoyable. Some of them, anyway. Others are the stuff I need to pretend is interesting to stop pupils falling sleep.

But I look at the schemes and I think to myself, I would not like to sit through a lesson like this. Because if all you do is look at the four lines about a lesson on a scheme, you don't get a good idea of what it will be like.

It's like planning a novel, only less creative. When I plan a novel, I get to think about all think fun things that will happen, all the meaningful things, all the in-between parts that have to carry some significance... when I think of schemes, I have to think of the content and how best to teach it so that pupils will remember, only I can't be very specific about it because of character limits.

What this boils down to is making something far too vague to really work with in a month's time. This means that when I do my lesson plans, I'll have to rethink every lesson all over again. That would be more difficult, but at least more fun. I would get to think of the different ways to show the same info so that the listeners and the observers both learned, and give tasks that would allow the active learners to still be included. And none of that is possible when doing so many schemes of work in one go, because with all the other work we're expected to do, we literally do not have the time to get all of this done.

This is the flaw with my college's Education department. They gave us a lot of work to do over a three week period, ignoring the fact that some modules required us to have work during this three weeks, too. I had to make a video for last Monday, and while it only took a couple of hours, it meant I wasn't able to work on my lesson for Tuesday. I have to do a project for Monday, which has been messed up by having to do nine assignments for the Education department. I will have gotten everything out of the way by Wednesday with the Education department... only to have a massive journal due in on Friday. Worth 50% of a module.

So, if I die and/or remove someone's limbs over the next week, you know why. It'll be boredom, stress or both. Best leave me to my shame corner in college and approach slowly with tea and chocolate if you really want to talk to me.