Reluctance

Getting back into the writing groove is, well…mostly not really happening this week. I’ve been irritated at myself, which doesn’t help my productivity level at all. But I think I’ve finally put my finger on what the problem is.

I’m reluctant to produce any new writing right now, because I think I’m afraid of it disappearing in another drive crash, or some other technical crisis I haven’t thought of. Part of my mind is sitting there going, “What’s the point if you’re just going to lose it again, and have to rewrite it over and over?” Then there’s another part of my mind that is still hoping there’s a chance of rescuing the stuff I lost. I feel like I’m stuck in stasis, unable to mentally move on because I’m still hoping for a computer miracle. Moving on in my writing would be tantamount to officially declaring that hard drive as a loss…and I just don’t want to do that. But I really need to, because the chances of coming up with an affordable way to save that drive are next to nil.

I discovered that among the stuff that hadn’t been backed up was all my conference notes. Including the names given to me as potential agents and editors that might be interested in my stuff, once I’m ready to query. That’s probably the biggest overall loss I’m looking at right now, and it bothers me more than the missing chapter. There’s no way I can get all those notes back, and there was a lot of good information. Also all my GMC work I’d done on the Mask of Eldarmarch is gone, though honestly I’ll probably be able to put that back together without much difficulty. It’s still a pain, though, you know? To redo something you know you’ve already done.

So I’ve been doing what I tend to do when I can’t write, which is read. I picked up several YA books and have proceeded to gobble my way through them in a matter of days. Yeah, I can tell myself that’s at least semi-productive, but it’s not what I need to be doing right now.

It is times like these when I wonder if I’m really cut out to be a professional writer. I don’t deal with setbacks very well, for one thing. Also, I cannot seem to keep my nose to the grindstone for more than a few weeks at a time. After that, I will inevitably hit a point where I just cannot work on my current writing project for several days. I haven’t found a working rhythm yet, because inevitably once I do start to establish one, something happens and I am thrown off. And I know that once I have editorial deadlines to contend with, I won’t be able to take days and weeks to get back on track. I need to figure out something that works for me, NOW, while I still have the luxury of flexible time.

The hubby and I discussed this a little during supper. I decided that I needed to find some sort of ritual, something I can do when disruptions happen, that will allow my mind to get past the setback and move on. The “just get over it” school of coping obviously doesn’t work very well on its own, as I’ve been trying to “get over it” for a week now. The hubby suggested that maybe what I’m dealing with here is a kind of grief, and that going through the stages of grieving would benefit me.

I think he’s right. My stories are my babies; even losing a chapter is hard for me. I cannot even begin to imagine what my reaction would be if I lost all of Shades, for example. *shudder* At least I know I have the ability to recreate what I lose. I guess the next step for me, at this point, is to do a little research on the stages of grieving, and see if I can find some tips on how to get my creativity back on track.

Tags: business of writing, Shades

Computer fail

So I’m sitting on the hubby’s computer right now, because my hard drive crashed yesterday. And of course, hard drives only fail when you haven’t backed up in a while.

Wednesday’s Wisdom: Back up your stuff. Often.

Luckily, I had just sent a copy of the second draft out to my critique group, so if worse comes to worse, I’ve only lost a chapter (and some pictures). I’m not looking forward to the prospect of rewriting an entire chapter, especially since I was almost freaking done with the story. The hubby thinks the drive may just have a bad head, which means the data is probably okay. Replace the head, and we can get my stuff back. However, we don’t know how expensive this endeavor would be. It has to be done by a professional, so it could be prohibitively so.

In happier news, I finished the bird decal I’d been working on for the lid of my computer. I’d post pictures, as it’s Thursday, except for the whole not being on my own computer problem.

I’m a bit irritated because I’m really not going to be able to write until we get my drive fixed, or call it a loss and put in the other drive. Seriously, yesterday I was ready to swear off digital storage and just start printing hard copies of my chapters as I finish them. I mean, we’ve only had that drive 5 months, and I haven’t been that hard on it. But apparently hard drives, even the best ones, can literally fail at any moment for no reason at all. No matter how long (or not long) you’ve had them. That kind of makes you nervous, you know? At least paper is relatively permanent, unless your house floods or burns down (a much less likely occurrence).

So we’ll see how things go.

Tags: advice, business of writing

Why not

I found an interesting blog written by another mommy, which I will have to poke around in a little more. But I thought her aspiring writers pledge was a good idea. I mean, hey, I’m already working on it, right?

I, Nightphoenix, take The Aspiring Writers Pledge to write a book in 2010 with the intent of publishing. I promise to update my progress weekly, ask when I need support and encourage others to complete the task at hand.

http://www.writingmommy.com/

Tags: business of writing

Progress today

Last Friday I used the last of my Barnes & Noble gift card money (you know, the cards that my New Years thief didn’t steal because thieves apparently don’t read…), and bought myself a book entitled: First Draft in 30 Days, by Karen S. Wiesner. I initially picked up the book because the title intrigued me. “30 days? Yeah, right. Maybe if you don’t have a life.”

Well, the book is actually a very comprehensive system for outlining a story before you start writing it. This is something I could use. I immediately saw how one could combine the system with the principles of GMC that I learned at the conference, and do most of the legwork beforehand. Well, there’s a section for outlining a manuscript that’s already in progress, so I’ve spend most of today working the first book of Shades into an outline form. The reason for this is that I’ve reached a point in the rewrite where I feel like I’m running the story into the ground trying to get from point A to point B. I need to reestablish the whole picture in my head.

I’ve really been concentrating on turning what was the first section of the story into a complete book…determining the logical order of escalating stakes, figuring out where the downtime is, where the black moment is, where the resolution is. The good news is, there really aren’t any gaping holes…maybe little minor potholes. I haven’t even had to change the order of any scenes…I’ve just had to occasionally clarify what’s going on. There are a few places where I’m going to tweak little things, and make character motivation more clear, but other than that, outlining has been relatively easy.

Which proves that I have a pretty intuitive grasp of story arc, and I can apparently do GMC without knowing what the heck that is. Good for me! Now with my half a stick and my highly evolved brain *pokes self in the eye with the stick* ouch, I shall make fi-yah! Oh wait, wrong movie. Now I have the tools to do these things deliberately, without it taking several years per story. *cough*

The goal is still to finish the first book of Shades by the end of March. Mid-March, if I must.

I did a little agent research tonight…looking up some of the names I was given at the conference and adding them to my list of possibilities. Added another blog to the blogroll as well…an agent named Jennifer Jackson.

Tags: books, business of writing, revisions, Shades

The writer’s library, thus far

Thought I’d share the list of writing books that I own, and personally found very helpful. (Obviously, if I hadn’t found them helpful, I wouldn’t own them…)

Stein on Writing – Sol Stein

A standard. Anyone who wants to write good fiction should read this book at least once. Better yet, attack it with sticky tabs and a highlighter.

Writing the Breakout Novel - Donald Maass

Same as above. Really, if you were going to buy just two writing books, this one and the one above are probably your best bet.

Spunk and Bite – Arthur Plotnik

Remember Strunk and White, and their little book full of rules for style? This book shows you how to bend those rules.

Dynamic Characters: How to Create Personalities That Keep Readers Captivated- Nancy Kress

This was actually my first writing book. It was a required text for the only creative writing course I ever took (and subsequently had to drop, because I couldn’t keep up with that and two art classes in the same semester). It’s a good solid guide to how to build character, come up with backstory, etc…I didn’t find it particularly useful at the time, because character is the one thing that I’m naturally good at.

Bullies, Bastards, and Bitches: How to Write the Bad Guys of Fiction – Jessica Morrell

I saw the title of this and just had to open it. I loved it immediately, because I like my characters to be, for the most part, a little bit on the edgy side. She covers everything from villains, sociopaths, and monsters to dark heroes, anti-heroes and even unreliable narrators.

Writing Great Books for Young Adults – Regina Brooks

Good solid book if you write YA fiction. I’d really like to find a book that deals specifically with YA fantasy fiction, but this was a good place to start.

On Writing Romance: How to Craft a Novel That Sells – Leigh Michaels

This book covers a lot of ground, and although it deals primarily with romance novels and the romance genre, a lot of the principles are things that carry over into general fiction writing. Most of my stories have a love story in them somewhere, even if they don’t fit specifically within the romance genre guidelines.

Tags: books, business of writing

Splitting Shades

Once again, I am contemplating splitting Shades across more than one book. I’ve thought about this before, and talked about it on LiveJournal. I decided then that the segments of the story weren’t complete enough to stand alone, and abandoned the idea. But now that pesky YA word count problem is cropping up again. I’m honestly not sure I can keep Shades even under 150,000 words without sacrificing story elements, stuff that I want to be in there. Yeah, maybe the story could be told without some of that stuff…maybe it’s not absolutely, positively, vitally necessary stuff…but it just wouldn’t be the same story. Not to me. I don’t believe in sacrificing story just because the publishing industry doesn’t think 16-18 year-olds won’t read long books. (Maybe they should try it sometime!)

While doing this rewrite, I’ve been raising stakes wherever I can: on Saeli, on Raphel, on Aschamon. In doing so, however, I’ve made the buildup to the portal scene much more intense. At this point, that scene is going to function like a climax, whether I want it to or not. And having a climactic scene in the middle of this book is risky, cause I will have established a level of tension that I probably won’t be able to maintain for the rest of the story. This first part could function as its own story now…not a stand-alone, but it has a beginning, middle, and end, and the ending does resolve what the characters set out to do (successfully portal onto another world).

If I combine Dheu and Caosgi into a second book, and have the ending complete the trilogy, it could work. Right now the first section of the second draft stands at 60,499 words…once I get it done, it will probably be somewhere in the 80,000 range (which is the recommended top end for YA). The Dheu and Caosgi stories together come out to 99,478 words, but that’s still including a whole section of Dheu that I’m planning to nix. With a good rewrite, I could probably make it about the same length as the first section. The ending has 35,422 at present, but it’s not done. I doubt it will be as long as the other two sections, but if I can get it up to 50,000 words, it will fall within YA guidelines.

The first book, then would tell the story of Saeli’s falling in with Raphel, her subsequent falling away from and eventual exile from her school (symbolized, specifically, by her relationship with Brendan), and her departure from Verre. The second book would pick up on Dheu, and chronicle Raphel’s quest and his rise to immortality. The third book would then be about Saeli’s quest to bring Raphel down. Each of these is its own story, and though they ought to be read in order to really get the whole picture, I think I could write them in such a way that one could still follow the bare bones of each story without having read the others. Robin Hobb’s Assassins, Liveship, and Tawny Man trilogies are like that…you get the gist of the characters and where you are in the story even if you haven’t read the others. In fact, I broke my own rule with the Tawny Man trilogy, and read the second book first (I couldn’t find a copy of the first, and I really, really wanted to read it). And yeah, there was a lot of odd stuff mentioned that I figured had happened in the first book, but I was never lost, per se.

There is, however, the whole “no one will buy a trilogy from an unknown author” problem. Well, Shades is just going to be one of those difficult stories, isn’t it? It’s either too long for its intended audience, or it’s a trilogy. Both situations compound the already inherent difficulty of breaking into the publishing industry. Right now, I honestly think that Shades is compelling enough to sell as a trilogy….and I think it has a better chance of being read as three average-length books than it does as one uber-long book. And this way, I can start pitching Book 1 to agents sooner rather than later. The first draft is pretty much written, and rewriting (while taking longer than I would like) does not take me as long as writing. I’m also hoping that the latter sections of the story won’t need full rewrites…just trimming and polishing.

And meanwhile, I can start working on Mask of Eldarmarch and Dragon Singer. I’m actually more enthused about Dragon Singer right now…Mask is such an easy, straighforward story, and most of it is already pretty well thought out, that my adventuresome writer’s bone is going “meh”. But it’s a solid story, and it raises some interesting questions about loyalty, trust, and love. I’m sure I’ll get more excited once I reacquaint myself with the material (it happened with Shades, heh).

I even picked a starting place for Dragon Singer and started writing the other day, just a few paragraphs. Got Rane, Zeke (his griffin), and Avie all on paper (Avie = A.V. = “audio-visual”…she’s in charge of all the speaker equipment). In just a few lines of dialogue, Rane has established himself as careful, methodical, and someone who sticks to the rules. Within that context, however, he’s an extraordinarily brave individual (tell him to go face a dragon and he will, without hesitation…but only after he’s double and triple-checked his griffin saddle-strap). I can already sense the shape of Rane’s internal journey. His personality is easy-going, and his soul is wide open to the world…Rane doesn’t have anything to hide, and he probably isn’t very good at hiding things anyway. I’ll bet he’s a horrible liar, which will make his eventual goal to bring down F.a.N.G down all the harder for him. (This will immediately separate Dragon Singer from Prison Break, where the Corrupt Corporation plotline was lifted from. Michael Scofield was also one of those heart of gold guys, but he had such a closed, mysterious air that you never really knew WHAT he was thinking about).  It will be interesting to see how Miriam does on paper, because she’s a whole lot more secretive in general, and she’s walking into this story with skeletons in her closet.

It just means they’re a good match for each other.

Over the next few days, I’m going to be working on the conference program like a madwoman. Most of the layout and artwork is basically going to be lifted from the registration bulletin I did, so it won’t be so bad. Just plugging in new content.

I also will be working on a pitch for Shades…which I’ve got to rethink, now that I’m going to split it. The first three sentences from my Writing Projects page will probably do well enough for a Book 1 pitch…maybe alter the last line to mention the portal form.

Tags: business of writing, Dragon Singer, Mask of Eldarmarch, revisions, Shades