Up your word count in three easy (?) steps.

As indie writers we have a freedom that those novelists under contract to publishing houses do not.

We do not have deadlines to meet. No publishers are breathing down our necks, we can take as long as we like to write a novel. So, in our case, it becomes pretty important to impose self-discipline. If we don’t, we’ll never get that sequel out – you know, the one your new fans are baying for. The one you need to get out asap -  if you want to start reaping the benefits of the first one, that is. If you don’t want to be forgotten by the time you’ve finished it.

The indie world is pretty cut-throat and it moves fast. If you don’t get that sequel done – or the first part of a new series, or even just the next stand alone, there are loads of new authors out there just waiting to pounce and grab all your readers – maybe to be forgotten in their turn.

It’s a world of instant gratification. You know it, you can feel it. In your heart, you are aware that book 2, or 3 or whichever it is, needs to be done and it needs to be done now – before you drop out of sight.

Okay, that’s a pretty bleak scenario – but it is, at times at least, how we all feel.

But the word count – oh the dreaded word count! You want to get the book finished in let’s say three months, you want to keep ahead of the game, right? But you are busy, you have a day job, kids, housework, marketing, social networking and let’s face it, you need some “me time” too. You only have a few hours a day left to write, and you’re pulling maybe 1-2K a day, in that time. And the sequel feels like it’s just crawling along.

When I first wrote Djinnx’d (or as I called it then – untitled book about a Djinn) I wrote it at night, for hours on end, and it took me about 2 weeks to get the main draft done. Of course, it was rubbish, it needed fleshing out here and cutting back there. In the end I added maybe 30K to that first draft, so really it took me several months.

But, having done all that, having got to know my characters and my world, it seemed inevitable that the next one would be easier. I didn’t even think about word count in those days. Publishing was not on my agenda anyway. It’s different now. But, anyway, how wrong I was. It didn’t go any faster the second, or even the third time. And by now, I was publishing my work and feeling the pressure.  

It has taken me a while to learn, but having decided that I needed to sharpen up and set myself some deadlines to work to, this is what I came up with.

Before I go on I think it is worth mentioning:

There are many fine and successful writers out there who equate writing quickly with being a hack. I firmly disagree. The methods outlined below remove the dross, the time spent tooling around lost in your daily writing, instead of time spent making plot decisions or word choices. This is not a choice between meditating on art or churning out novels for gross commercialism. It’s about not wasting your time for whatever sort of novels you want to write..  

Drastically increasing your words per day is actually pretty easy, all it takes is a shift in perspective and the ability to be honest with yourself (which is the hardest part).  There are three core requirements: Knowledge, Time, and Enthusiasm. Any one of these can noticeably boost your daily output, but all three together can turn you into a word machine. I never start writing these days unless I can hit all three.

Knowledge (or Know What You're Writing Before You Write It)

The first big boost to my daily word count happened almost by accident. It used to be I would just pop open the laptop and start writing. Now, I wasn't a total make-it-up-as-you-go writer. I had a general plot outline, but my scene notes were things like "Denny and Tamar start quest" or "The scene with the old mad man" Not very useful, but I knew generally what direction I was writing in, and I liked to let the characters decide how the scene would go. (I still do this, but in a different way) Unfortunately, this meant I wasted a lot of time rewriting and backtracking when the scene veered off course.

As soon as I realized this, in the middle of a difficult scene that just would not come together, I stopped, closed my laptop and got out my pad of paper. Then, instead of trying to write the scene in the novel as I had been, I started scribbling a very short hand, truncated version the scene on the paper. I didn't describe anything, I didn't do transitions. I wasn't writing, I was simply noting down what I would write when the time came. It took me about five minutes and three pages of notebook paper to untangle a seemingly unfixable scene. Better still, after I'd worked everything out in shorthand I was able to dive back into the scene and finish it in record time. The words flew onto the screen, and at the end of that session I'd written 3000 words rather than 2000, most of them in that last hour.

 If you want to write faster, the first step is to know what you're writing before you write it. I'm not even talking about macro plot stuff, I mean working out the back and forth exchanges of an argument between characters, blocking out fights, writing up fast descriptions. Writing this stuff out in words you actually want other people to read, especially if you're making everything up as you go along, takes FOREVER. It's horribly inefficient and when you get yourself in a dead end, you end up trashing hundreds, sometimes thousands of words to get out. But jotting it down on a pad? Takes no time at all. If the scene you're sketching out starts to go the wrong way, you see it immediately, and all you have to do is cross out the parts that went sour and start again at the beginning. That's it. No words lost, no time wasted. It was beautiful. I now do this whenever I have an idea for a story arc or scene, even if it’s at 3 a.m.

Every writing session after this realization, I dedicated five minutes (sometimes more, never less) and wrote out a quick description of what I was going to write. Sometimes it wasn't even a paragraph, just a list of this happens then this then this. This simple change, these five simple minutes, boosted my word count enormously. I went from writing 2k a day to writing 5k a day within a week without increasing my 5 hour writing block. Some days I even finished early.

Of course, there are still times when I “write myself into a corner” but these are fewer than they used to be, and it in is these circumstances that this method really comes into its own.

Of the three core requirements, I consider knowledge to be the most important. This step alone more than doubled my word count. If you only want to try one change at a time, this is the one I recommend the most.

Time

Now that I'd had such a huge boost from one minor change, I started to wonder what else I could do to jack my numbers up even higher. But as I looked for other things I could tweak, I quickly realized that I knew embarrassingly little about how I actually wrote my novels. I'd kept no records of my progress, I couldn't even tell you how long it took me to write any of my previous three novels beyond broad guesstimations and vague memories of past word counts. It was like I started every book by throwing myself at the keyboard and praying for a novel to shoot out of my fingers. And keep in mind this is my business. Can you imagine a bakery or a freelance designer working this way? Never tracking hours or keeping a record of how long it took me to actually produce the thing I was selling? Yes, a pretty silly way to work.

If I was going to boost my output (or know how long it took me to actually write a blasted novel), I had to know what I was outputting in the first place. So, I started keeping records. Every day I had a writing session I would note the time I started, the time I stopped, how many words I wrote, and where I was writing on a spreadsheet. I did this for two months, and then I looked for patterns.

Several things were immediately clear. First, my productivity was at its highest when I was in a place other than my home. That is to say, a place without internet. The afternoons I wrote at the library with no wireless were twice as productive as the mornings when I wrote at home. I also saw that, while bum in chair time is the root of all writing, not all bum in chair time is equal. For example, those days where I only got one hour to write I never managed more than five hundred words in that hour. By contrast, those days I got five hours of solid writing I was clearing close to 1500 words an hour. The numbers were clear: the longer I wrote, the faster I wrote (and I believe the better I wrote, certainly the writing got easier the longer I went on). This corresponding rise of word count and writing hours only worked up to a point, though. There was a definite words per hour drop off around hour 7 when I was simply too brain fried to go on.

But these numbers are very personal, the point I'm trying to make is that by recording my progress every day I had the data I needed to start optimizing my daily writing. Once I had my data in hand, I rearranged my schedule to make sure my writing time was always in the afternoon (my most prolific time according to my sheet, which was a real discovery. I would have bet money I was better in the morning.) always somewhere with no internet, and always at least 4 hours long. Once I set my time, I guarded it viciously, and low and behold my words per day shot up again. This time to an average of 6k-7k per writing day, and all without adding any extra hours. All I had to do was discover what made good writing time for me and then make sure the good writing time was the time I fought hardest to get.

Even if you don't have the luxury of 4 uninterrupted hours at your prime time of day, I highly suggest measuring your writing in the times you do have to write. Even if you only have 1 free hour a day, trying that hour in the morning some days and the evening on others and tracking the results can make sure you aren't wasting your precious writing time on avoidable inefficiencies. Time really does matter.

Enthusiasm

I was flying high on my new discoveries. Over the course of two months I'd jacked my daily writing from 2k per day to 7k with just a few simple changes and was now actually running ahead of schedule for the first time  in my writing career. But I wasn't done yet. I was absolutely determined I was going to break the 10k a day barrier.

I'd actually broken it before. Using Knowledge and Time, I'd already managed a few 10k+ days, including one where I wrote 12,000 words in 7 hours. To be fair, I had been writing outside of my usual writing window in addition to my normal writing on those days, so it wasn't a total words-per-hour efficiency jump. But that's the great thing about going this fast, the novel starts to eat you and you find yourself writing any time you can just for the pure joy of it. Even better, on the days where I broke 10k, I was also pulling fantastic words-per-hour numbers, 1600 - 2000 words per hour as opposed to my usual 1500. It was clear these days were special, but I didn't know how. I did know that I wanted those days to become the norm rather than the exception, so I went back to my records (which I now kept meticulously) to find out what made the 10k days different.

The answer was resoundingly obvious when I found it. Those days I broke 10k were the days I was writing scenes I'd been dying to write since I planned the book. They were the candy bar scenes, the scenes I wrote all that other stuff to get to. By contrast, my slow days (days where I was struggling to break 5k) corresponded to the scenes I wasn't that crazy about.

This was a duh moment for me, but it also brought up a troubling new problem. If I had scenes that were boring enough that I didn't want to write them, then there was no way in hell anyone would want to read them. This was my novel, after all. If I didn't love it, no one would.

Fortunately, the solution turned out to be, yet again, ridiculously simple. Every day, while I was writing out my little description of what I was going to write, I would play the scene through in my mind and try to get excited about it. I'd look for all the little hooks, the parts that interested me most, and focus on those since they were obviously what made the scene interesting. If I couldn't find anything to get excited over, then I would change the scene, or get rid of it entirely. I decided then and there that, no matter how useful a scene might be for my plot, boring scenes had no place in my novels.

This discovery turned out to be a fantastic one for my writing. I trashed and rewrote several otherwise perfectly good scenes, and the effect on the novel was amazing. Plus, my daily word count numbers shot up again because I was always excited about my work. Double bonus!

I have also noticed that the beginnings of new novels take a while to get up and running. The first few chapters are the hardest and usually I start with a goal of 5000 words per day until I get going. Normally around chapter four or five. So if, you slow up again when you start a new project, don’t lose heart, it’ll come back.

Now I realise that 10K is the top end of the spectrum, but even if you just want to double your current word count or go from 1K to 5k per day – whatever your personal goal is, if you're looking to get more out of your writing time, I really hope you try these ideas. If you do, please let me know. Even if it doesn't work ( perhaps especially if it doesn't work) I'd love to hear about it. Also, if you find another efficiency hack for writing, let me know about that too! I'm always looking for a way to hit 15k a day :D.

Again, I really hope this helps you hit your goals. Good luck with your writing and remember, it’s like dieting, you’ll have bad days sometimes, days when it just doesn’t work no matter what. But as long as you get back on that keyboard the next day, you’ll be back on target in no time. Writing faster, better and enjoying it a whole lot more.

And don’t forget to take a day off occasionally. You deserve it. You’re a writing demon now, after all.

Love Nicola x

Next up – Editing for people who hate editing (like me) Watch this space.

Tutorial for converting your word files to mobi or epub files for Kindle or Nook

Boy!  That was a long title – well down to business.

 First, I guess you’ll need the program – download calibre onto your hard drive – it’s free and easy to use and includes an inbuilt e-reader so you can check your files.

 I tried using mobi-pocket for this, as Amazon recommends, but it refuses to work on my computer (and I understand that a lot of people are having this problem recently) in any case, calibre converts to epub files too.

This is an idiot’s guide ( for people like me)  so don’t be offended if some of it sounds a bit obvious – I needed to learn it all.

Format your word file

This is important – if you don’t the conversion will work, but will look a mess.

Firstly, if you have a word file with inserted page breaks between chapters, you will have to get rid of these.

Secondly, most of the file ought to be set as “Normal” style but the chapter headings, and any other headings you wish to be in your table of contents (such as “Part One” or “About The Author” need to be set as “Heading 1” style. You can then change the font style etc. to the way you want it to look.

DO NOT CREATE A TABLE OF CONTENTS IN WORD – this bit comes later.

Make sure your paragraphs are indented or blocked the way you want them to look in the finished file.

Only use inserted images, if you need them – do not copy and paste them in.

Save a copy of the file as html – just click “save as” and choose “web page” or “html” from the drop down list and save the file with a different name i.e. “my story html”.  Do not use “web page filtered”

Okay, you’re ready to convert.

Convert to mobi file – for Kindle

Open calibre and click “add book” from the top menu – choose the html file from its location on your computer.

Select your book and click “edit metadata” - a new window will open where you can fill in the details of your book and add your cover.

Close the window by clicking “OK”

Now click “convert individual files” – a new window will open. In the top left hand corner it should say “input format” – this needs to say “zip” and on the right “output format” should read “mobi” – change this if necessary.

On the left is a menu – click Look and Feel and check the box marked “smarten punctuation” and check the box marked “remove spacing between paragraphs” and set the indent size to 0.0em

Now click the box marked Structure Detection. In the box marked “detect chapters (atXpathexpression):” and the box marked “insert page breaks before (Xpathexpression):” replace the text with  //h:h1

Now click Table of Contents and replace the text with //h:h1 in the box marked “Level 1 TOC (Xpathexpression):”

Click Mobi Output and type “Table of Contents” in the box marked “Title for Table of Contents”

Click “OK” and your file will start to convert.  

At the foot of the page it will show you “jobs (1)” – when this goes back to 0 – your file is ready to be viewed.

Click MOBI under the cover picture on the right to open the reader. (note – your cover will look too wide – but don’t worry, it will look okay on the Kindle). Don’t forget to check the Table of Contents in the e-reader to make sure it’s all there.

 If you are happy with it – download the file using “save to disc” in the top menu.

Convert to epub file – for Nook

Open calibre and click “add book” from the top menu – choose the html file from its location on your computer.

Select your book and click “edit metadata” - a new window will open where you can fill in the details of your book and add your cover.

Close the window by clicking “OK”

Now click “convert individual files” – a new window will open. In the top left hand corner it should say “input format” – this needs to say “zip” and on the right “output format” should read “epub” – change this if necessary.

On the left is a menu – click look and feel and check the box marked “smarten punctuation” and check the box marked “remove spacing between paragraphs” and set the indent size to 0.0em

Now click the box marked structure detection. In the box marked “detect chapters (atXpathexpression):” and the box marked “insert page breaks before (Xpathexpression):” replace the text with //h:h1

Now click Table of Contents and replace the text with //h:h1 in the box marked “Level 1 TOC (Xpathexpression):”

Click epub output and check the box marked “preserve cover aspect ratio”

Click “OK” and your file will start to convert.  

At the foot of the page it will show you “jobs (1)” – when this goes back to 0 – your file is ready to be viewed.

Click EPUB under the cover picture on the right to open the reader. 

If you are happy with it – download the file using “save to disc” in the top menu. Don’t forget to check the Table of Contents in the e-reader to make sure it’s all there.

And that’s it really – see nothing to it.

I really hope this helps – any questions, just leave me a comment – but be aware, I am no expert.

Happy conversions!  

Deconstructing Djinnx'd

What is Djinnx'd really about? who is Tamar Black and who is Denny Sanger? 

Here are some of  my thoughts. 

WARNING - CONTAINS SPOILERS! 

Tamar Black is a girl with a problem. Five thousand years ago, she was a teenager with not much on her mind beyond boys and clothes. Now she is a five thousand year old Djinn bent on vengeance. Yet the years of captivity have given her a unique perspective on life and left her with an unlikely compassion for humanity and the distinct notion that the Djinn themselves, including her, are largely responsible for a great many of their problems. If Tamar ever regains her freedom, she knows what she intends to do. She’ll start by getting rid of them, all of them, beginning with the one who trapped her of course. Heroism is all very well, but vengeance must be served too.

She may not know it yet, but Tamar is a heroine in the making. She has the power, but she does not have the freedom to use it. And realistically, she doesn’t ever expect to get it.

Enter Denny, a man so boring he needs a charisma transplant just to be Clark Kent. But it is he who takes on Tamar’s challenge, find Askphrit and free Tamar – forever. Heroes are found in the strangest places.

But even as a slave of the bottle, the new master of Tamar finds that she is hard to handle, with tendencies toward vigilante justice and a view of the world that has been warped by many years of slavery, Tamar can be sharp tonged, cruel and even, on occasion, murderous in the name of morality. It takes all Denny’s patience and the example of his own gentle nature to temper Tamar’s bull-headed blundering and vicious temper. Sometimes he honestly wonders what he is about to unleash on the world if their quest is successful, and if he is really doing the right thing. But, in the end, his own sense of justice tells him that whatever the outcome, he has to go through with it. Five thousand years of slavery are enough.

Both characters change through each other. Denny finds he has more courage than he ever would have believed, he goes from being afraid of the local bullies, to single handedly fighting off a slew of far more dangerous enemies and Tamar, having finally found someone who wants to help her rather than himself, regains some of her faith in humanity and her perpetual simmering anger is subdued, if not completely doused.

Denny finds himself admiring of Tamar’s bloody minded violence at times, and even finds he has a fighter in him too. And she, in turn, learns from him that sometimes, you can catch more flies with honey and that it’s not always a good idea to go in kicking and biting. And that it is possible to be a gentle, diffident soul and still make a difference.

Another huge disparity in their personalities is Tamar’s massive ego and enormous personal vanity contrasted with Denny’s extreme diffidence and total lack of interest in his personal appearance. Denny is laid back and relaxed and Tamar is as tightly wound as a coiled spring. Yet it is ultimately, because of these differences that they find what they are looking for in each other.

Both have been alone in the world and both were trapped in their different ways Tamar by her own hand, by greed and Denny through fear and extreme self-consciousness. In freeing Tamar, Denny eventually frees himself too.

Because of their differing natures and their former lonely condition they bicker a lot,  Tamar, despite her fondness for Denny, is not above sharpening her wits at his expense on occasion, and he is often frustrated by her gung-ho attitude. But this is not a cause or an effect of underlying sexual tension, they both, from the start, know that they care about each other and openly admit it. The only problem is they can’t have what they want, not even if they succeed. Tamar is a fire spirit and as such has far too much raw power for a human to handle in close contact. But this problem is, for the most part, shelved rather than faced up to.

This story is written in a light-hearted, humourous way, it is first and foremost, a comedy with some serious points to be made. And it is an adventure tale, the personal journeys of the characters, for the most part, take second stage to the main quest, involving witches, mermaids, local deities, other Djinn and several other protagonists. Some of whom try to help them, and others who try to hinder as they try to battle their way through a complex maze of clues to get to the grail.

But the real battle takes place within themselves. Tamar wants to be free, but does not intend to give up her power in order to become so. And Denny – well Denny just wants to do the right thing, but is not always certain what that is.

Well, that’s my take on Djinnx’d – I’d love to hear yours. What do you think it’s about?

[The first five chapters of Djinnx’d can be read on this blog – or you can download the entire novel free on Smashwords.com]

 https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/11463

Frequently Asked Questions (an interview with myself)

Hello guys, 

 I was thinking, I get such a lot of people asking me about what I do that I have decided to write down some of them and answer them here.

Q. How/why did you start writing?

A. My first book,  Djinnx’d was written by hand on foolscap paper. I did not own a home computer, or even a typewriter. Yet the compulsion to write was so strong in me, I did it anyway.

Late at night usually, in the dark and the cold (oh what a sob story – but it’s true)

I still have those untidy leaves of paper somewhere in a folder. Nothing on Earth would convince me to throw them out. That was where it began.

I later “acquired” a computer (some kindly soul donated it to me) It was an ancient thing that was really only fit for the scrapheap, but it had Microsoft word on it and it seemed like a miracle to me. I typed up my book and discovered that it was too short for publication. Something that was not apparent without word count. So I set about adding to it. In the end Djinnx’d was re-written several times before I was happy with it. And then I set about a sequel. By that time my head was teeming with ideas. And compared to writing by hand, it was all so easy.

Djinnx’d began with a simple wish. I wanted a better life and could see no way of getting one. I had a brass genie lamp on my hearth and thought if I could only have three wishes, I would wish for the power to lift myself out of poverty and ill health. That seemed simple enough. The power to grant your own wishes (so to speak) for the rest of your life)

But of course, for a story it couldn’t be that simple. Wishes always have a catch, and so the story of Tamar and her three wishes was born.

After that, she became so real to me that her adventures couldn’t possibly stop there! My imagination had been let loose.

Q. How long does it take to write a book?

A. It depends, I can get a basic draft down in about a month, if I work steadily at it, but sometimes it can take me a lot longer. I have a serious problem with what I call “butterfly mind syndrome” whereby I have a tendency to start one book, then have another idea and literally “flit” over there and start another book. I have had as many as four on the go at one time, but I am trying to stop doing that. Now, I try to get down a basic premise for the new idea and leave it alone until the book I started first is finished. It’s not always easy.

Then, when the first draft is finished, I come to my favourite part, reading it through and making changes. It’s so much fun to be able to do this. You can’t do it with other people’s books, but you can with your own and it’s great.

Then the boring bit, the editing and formatting. All this can take at least another month – don’t believe me? Try it! It takes longer than you think it will.

So, the short answer is, it can take anything between two months and a year to write a book depending on how distracted I am.

Q. Where do you get your ideas?

A. Now there’s a question – one book often leads to another, hence the Tamar Black Octology – which is a good example of getting completely carried away with a series. Often, the characters become so real that I start carrying on imaginary conversations between them inside my head (I do this with the characters created by other authors too) and this can lead to some interesting storylines. Sometimes though, ideas just come to me, usually, I have to say, just as I am dropping off to sleep. I keep a notepad by the bed just in case. And sometimes the ideas flow from the writing itself. This happens a lot actually, I usually start a book with a basic premise and even I don’t know how it’s going to progress, let alone how it’s going to end. I find out the same way the readers do – when it happens.

One other way I get ideas is from dreams; I have had some pretty weird ideas this way.

Q. Are you influenced by other authors and if so, who?

A. Absolutely. I am inspired by many wonderful authors out there and I read voraciously. It’s hard to say whether I am consciously influenced by my favourite authors. I certainly don’t copy any ideas directly. However, on a subconscious level, I am sure that I, like many other writers, have taken on a certain style or method of writing that I have enjoyed reading myself.

My favourite Authors are Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman, Tolkien, Michael Crichton, Conan Doyle and  host of others. I’ll read practically anything and although I write fantasy, it’s by no means all that I read.  

In fact, I was once asked where I would like to be in five years’ time and I said  “I’d like to be Terry Pratchett” – that was six years ago, and I still have a way to go I guess.

Q. Is writing profitable?

A. Rarely. If you are in this to make a fortune, you are in the wrong business.  Most published authors, even those who have publishing contracts with big publishing houses, make very small profits. Some are lucky and become millionaires, but these are the fortunate few. My advice would be to write for the sheer joy of creation and if you strike gold – it’s a bonus.

Oh, and don’t give up the day job.

If you have any questions I haven't answered here (don't ask me about getting published though - I am not an expert) then pop them in the comments box and I'll get back to you. 

Love, Nicola Rhodes, Maker of Magic xx

Writer's Block

Writer’s block? Well, I don’t believe in it actually. What I do believe in is “not having anything like enough time or enough peace and quiet to get a single coherent word down”

I believe in that all right.

But to get back to my original point, I’ve never had writer’s block – not ever and I am inclined to think of it as an excuse for not having a story to write – that’s not writer’s block that’s “my imagination has temporarily run dry and I can’t be bothered anyway”

As long as I had my story, I always found that if I just kept going, the words always came to me. I have written myself into a corner so many times, but I always found a way out. In fact, I have come to love it when I do that to myself because it always takes some outrageous twist of imagination to get me out of it. That’s when I do my best work, and usually when the story goes skewing off at a tangent that I never visualized happening. If you believe that your characters are yours to command – think again. I never realized just how unmanageable some characters can be. Tamar is the worst – she is always doing and saying things that I never intended her to. I’ve learned to live with it.

I wonder what would happen if I wrote a story in the first person. I have every intention of trying it one day, but I suspect that with a character that is essentially being written as if it’s me, but it’s not me of course, but rather just me writing from the point of view of the character, if that character, who is me but not me, starts to misbehave and say things I don’t want to say even though it’s me saying it, this could turn out to be a metaphysical conundrum that might turn even my deranged brain inside out. And if you managed to follow all that, well done. Now explain it back to me please.

So, anyway, reaching out for some sanity, I don’t have writer’s block, but I am suffering with the aforementioned “not having anything like enough time or enough peace and quiet to get a single coherent word down”

But enough excuses. Maybe if a thing’s important enough to you, you make the time. So with that in mind – I’m off to see a wizard about a dragon. 

Hello

Welcome to "Making Magic". the following blogs will be about my views on what it's like to write, what's it's like to write a series of fantasy books (it's the best fun ever) and just generally what it's like to be me. I will also include excerpts of my books and probably pictures done by myself for the books. No hard sell. If you want to buy or download my ramblings just ask me.
I've called this blog "Making Magic" because that's what I consider all writing to be, particularly Fantasy and Sci Fi. Yes, I am a true nerd.
I started writing the Tamar Black Saga several years ago - at the time, I had only one book in mind, I never anticipated how it would grow and take over my life. I had no computer back then, the first draft was all written by hand on foolscap paper. I didn't mind. it was like a compulsion - it still is. However, after eight books on Tamar I finally got fed up with her. I was going to finish after four books but I got talked into another, which led to another and another and another. I started the SCI 'ON trilogy in the middle of all this and began to realize that I was going to get bogged down if I didn't pace myself, so I forced myself to finish the Tamar Books before going back to the others. Even now, I haven't really learned my lesson. I have several  random ideas jotted down in note form that I haven't got time to write, and the spin off series which I am currently writing is already set to run to four books all of which have the storylines ready and waiting - I just need to actually write them. And I still haven't finished my trilogy. Oh well, I expect it'll all turn out all right in the end.