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Revisit, re-assess
I just looked at the date of the last post I made here, and I’m fairly embarrassed. I’d love to say I’ve been wonderfully busy and productive and just haven’t had the time to update… Read more…
Like!Goals
Recently I’ve been trying to come up with a way to organize which projects I work on, and how much time I spend working. The problem with me, I’ve found, is that when I try to concentrate solely on one project at a time, I inevitably work myself into a bind that I can’t get out of. Not wanting to “break my focus”, however, I don’t allow myself to work on anything else…and thus, nothing gets worked on. Plainly this is, ah, not a good system for me. The other problem I have is allowing myself to get completely derailed, spending a month or two enthusiastically pouring energy into Amphitere’s Vision or one of my minor story ideas when I really, really wanted to be working on Shades. Also, there are days when I get bitten by the art bug, and need to work on something visual. So…what seems to work best for me is having a variety of projects to work on at a time, but only certain ones.
I’ve come up with the idea of organizing every project, including the artistic ones unconnected with my writing and my wands, into what I’ll call “cycles”. Every cycle includes at least one series novel (like Shades or Briar Rose), one stand-alone novel, various shorter writing projects, bits of Amphitere’s Vision, and art projects. It gives me options, but confines those options enough so that I actually make progress on things.
What’s also helped is finally sitting down and deciding exactly what still needs to be done for Amphiptere’s Vision, which was kind of a huge, sprawling mess. The project folder is a jumbled mess of Excel spreadsheets, Notepad notes, and drawings of characters, dragons, and maps in various stages of completion. I asked myself: “If I was going to hand a folder to, oh say a game producer, what all would I need to include so that they would understand the vision of the game? What might they want to see?” and made a list. So now I have, like, actual goals to work towards.
Each “cycle” is supposed to take 1-2 years to complete, though I think that will vary. The way I broke things down, I already have 12 cycles planned. *cough* Yeah, I have a lot of projects. Although the last two or three are just Tindaari (I know I’ll be filling those up). I ran some numbers, and calculated that if I wrote 400 words a day, I could write a 96,000 word novel in a year’s time. Double that to 800 words a day, and I could write two novels in a year’s time. That’s not bad. 400 words doesn’t sound like a whole lot, but I’ve been surprised how often it’s difficult to manage even that much in a day. (Ever try writing with Inspector Gadget, Rugrats, or Pixar playing in the background? Meh.) That will get better after school starts, I think, and I have some hours to myself.
One of my biggest problems in productivity is guilt. Much of the time I feel like I’m not making enough progress. Of if I am making progress, I feel like it’s coming at the expense of doing the laundry, or making sure my son isn’t just sitting around all day watching TV. I know guilt motivates some people, but it paralyzes me. I get even more disinclined to work, and thus feel more guilt, and so on. The 400 words a day is really helping with that, because it’s such an easy goal to meet and yet I know it will still get me somewhere. And when I write more I can pat myself on the back even more. 
So that’s where I am, and why I haven’t been updating much.
Epics
I just finished the Winds of the Forelands series by David B. Coe, and as fantasy epics go, it was pretty good. It’s rare that I pick up a series at random and have it be unique enough to hold my interest. Although it had many of the classic tropes of epics, they were combined and re-imagined in such ways that I couldn’t sit there and say “Ah, so it’s this kind of magic system”, etc. Read more…
Inexcusable
Posted by nightphoenix on Mar 10, 2011 in News
I just realized I haven’t updated this blog in about a month. That’s both irresponsible and inexcusable of me.
I’ve been productive, which I suppose is part of the updating problem. Have plotted out the Waters story, and decided to give it an actual title: This Chosen Fate. Have also written nearly a full chapter of Promises, Like Tears. I’m getting a much better handle on Naeth’s character this time around. He’s actually supposed to be sort of annoying and not really all that likable when you first meet him, which will make his later improvements stand out all the more. I’ve been debating theology with friends, which easily turns into a time-sucker with me.
Also, one of the blogs I follow regularly, Slacktivist, moved to a new internet home last week, which sparked a…ruckus. Very quick sum-up: Within the community of commenters and lurkers that follow Slacktivist, many people had objections to the content of the new home site, Patheos, and felt that they could not in good conscience support such a site. The community seemed ready to split over the move. This is the type of situation that moves at internet speed and can only be kept up with if one is willing to follow 1000+ comments or so across the space of about 5 separate threads on two different websites. However, the community seems to have settled on a compromise: Fred will stay at Patheos to be a sort of light in the darkness, per se, but he’s handed the old space over to a few of the regulars from the community as a safe space for those who don’t want to or cannot bear to deal with the vile stuff on Patheos. Which, I have to say, is pretty awesome of him. But…following all the drama has taken up a lot of time this week.
Have also been cleaning the apartment, which is of course a never-ending job.
However, the truth is…I’m not sure where to take this blog. I definitely want it to remain about the writing, but really what it’s become is a sort of “update on me and my writing” space. Which is great (if a bit narcissistic) for me…but how interesting is that for other people? I’d like to give this place more of a direction, so people can come here and know more or less the sort of topics to expect.
I have two sort of hazy ideas. One, have the main theme be “the creative process”. The process of getting ideas. Turning those ideas into stories (or art, or…well, those are my two areas). Brainstorming. Worldbuilding. I could get even more specific, like: The Creative Process for Fantasy Writers. Or something. This could also incorporate the “real life meets writing” and “how such-and-such impacted me as a writer” posts that I do every so often.
The other idea would be to focus on the more nuts and bolts aspects of writing, like GMC and problematic plots and such. And how certain books and movies either succeed or fail based on these things. That’s kind of what Writing Excuses is, which makes it really interesting to me…but it’d essentially make this into a how-to blog. Dunno if I like that.
Anyway, I’ll be giving this more thought over the next few days. Just wanted to check in and say, no, I haven’t fallen off the face of the planet. 
The dreaded second act, and other business
This week I started shopping Hands, Like Secrets around to some agents, and believe it or not, I’ve already had a request for a partial! I actually heard from this agent the day after I queried them. In case you aren’t familiar with the publishing business, such a response is jaw-droppingly fast. Of course, I’ve also already received my first “form” rejection from a difference agency, so I guess it all balances out. But again, fast.
Interestingly, the agent who requested the partial was one who requires a writing sample with a query. The agency I got a rejection from only wanted the query itself. This means that the one who was interested saw some of the writing itself, and the one that wasn’t, didn’t. If this pattern keeps up, that will tell me that my writing is compelling and my query is not…meaning I’ll need to revise the query letter. But I’ll climb that ladder when I get there, I guess. I’m cautiously optimistic at this point.
Meanwhile, I’ve begun the process of revisiting the first draft of the second and third books. The first thing I noticed was that the writing isn’t as bad as I was afraid it was. Having said that, yeah…it needs a whole lot of work. Second realization was, man, how this story has evolved since I wrote this draft. Still using mage and cleric as terms, still third person, still working out kinks in Raphel’s character, for instance. Most of my scenes don’t have nearly enough conflict. Stakes don’t feel high enough. Motivation feel very contrived in places. Things work out too neatly.
Having said that, general pacing is okay. Secondary characters are believable and generally deep enough…no major tweaks needed. Scenes are more or less in the right order. My main tasks are going to be raising stakes, revising Naeth’s character, and revising the Keeper’s character. I will also need to weave bits of Caosgi in when my characters are on Dheu, and bits of Dheu in when they are on Caosgi…otherwise, it’s going to feel like two smaller books smashed together. I need to weave some flashbacks or dreams about Saeli’s Aschamon days in there, too, so the second book will connect back to the first. Tie Saeli’s feelings about Brendan to her feelings about Naeth.
It feels like a lot of work, but I think once I really get going, it won’t be so bad. Been working on this story long enough that I have a pretty good handle on where it needs to go.
I’m also going to start brainstorming and plotting The Waters, so I have something else in the works if the trilogy doesn’t get picked up right away. I chose that one because of the ones I’m really itching to do next, it’s the most straightforward. I love Raphel to death, but he makes me want to write an awesome “bad boy” who actually is the hero…not just masquerading as one. Alex Merrett is that character. Then I’ll do Windwaker, or maybe by that time I’ll be ready to work on Mask of Eldarmarch again. Dragon Singer is so complex and will require so much research that this is not the time to tackle it. Like Briar Rose, it needs to percolate for a while longer.
Again, apologies for the sparseness of posts. I’m going to make an effort to post something at least once a week, but I’m not promising anything. I’m not one for “check-in” posts…I only post when I have something to blather about.
Now…back to work.
Edit update
Well, the editing has begun. The bird edit is going to take two passes, I realize. The first will involve going back and putting in the birds, lizards, ambiance, etc, and also marking passages that I think could be deleted or need to be changed. Some, I’m just going ahead and fixing. I’m already about 3/4 of the way through that first pass, as I’m mostly adding, and not reading every word.
The second pass will be in more detail. I’m actually going to go through and look at my verb and adjective choices, and see where those can be tweaked to suggest a culture where birds are so common that people actually think in terms of them. I’ll also be checking the consistency of all the idioms and phrases unique to that world, and making sure I haven’t used any cliches from this world. I’ll also fix and/or delete my highlighted spots, and do another word count to see where I’m at.
Then I’ll start the line edit as a new save.
This is not taking me as long as I feared. Of course this is a third draft, and I have this tendency to edit as I go, so a lot of what I’ve written is pretty polished already. I’m setting my completion goal for the end of December. I don’t know that it will take me that long, but with the holidays and everything I have to do for that, it very well might. Then I can take January and work on deciding who to submit to, and the dreaded query letter.
My blogging may be sparse for a while.
Update: Smell of November revisit
This month I’m making it a goal to revisit The Smell of November. I think that story always suffered from the word limit needed to enter it in the WD contest. So I’m lengthening it, and tweaking the storyline a bit. I’m making it more ambiguous, so that the reader never really knows if Alan Hunter is truly a wolf-faced escapee of Arcadia, or if he’s just plain crazy. Going to try and get it in shape to submit to the Realms of Fantasy magazine.
If they take it, I may turn it into a serial thing. Alan Hunter’s story makes a nice lead-in to the overall Grimms storyline, something I’ve wanted to get started on. One of the Grimms, on a rescue mission, meets Alan after he’s been recaptured. They all escape. The Alan/November romantic tragedy will be wrapped in as a subplot to the whole Grimm tale. I don’t think Alan will ever actually be a Grimm; he’ll function more as a solitary ally. He may not be the only one; the Grimms will probably acquire a network of allies as the story fleshes out. Rescued kids who make it back to their families, but still know. Faerie enthusiasts who are in on the truth. Maybe even a rogue Fae or two.
I’m still working on Shades. In the process of spreading out and raising stakes on an already tense scene. I think I’m approaching the point where I won’t have to change much more. I’m also pretty sure I’ve said that before. *sigh* On the upside, I get to burn some mansions down. What’s the point of having a cabal of Cowls in a Mantle city if they never wreak any havoc? Let’s just say it’s high time for some chaos.
Stretching a deadline
I have decided to extend my personal deadline for having the first book finished to the end of April, since the end of March is upon me and I’m still plugging away on that last chapter. The hard drive crash cost me, mostly in terms of getting off track and not being able to get back on than in actual content lost. (Though there is that. And I’ve been especially missing my lost outline this week.)
Back from the SCWG conference, back to the world of the living
It was a long weekend. It was also an excellent, inspiring weekend. I imagine it will take a number of weeks before I even get through all the notes I took there, although I already have plans to implement some of what I learned into Shades right away. (Note to self- I must find some index cards.)
I did get the program done in time, by the way, and it turned out quite nice. Being me, I noticed one or two little mistakes I made…transparency inconsistencies, spacing a little off in places…but I doubt anyone else would see them. Of course, by the end of Friday, I was asking myself why we bother to place people in rooms beforehand at all, as the schedule of the day never actually matched what was in the program. Ah, well. I think everyone managed to get where they needed to go.
Part of me actually does not want to rehash the whole conference blow by blow, because I’d feel the urge to make a clever, witty narrative of the event and I’m too tired to do that. I met some great people this time around (not that I didn’t last year), and was actually able to have some lengthy chats with them. Denise Little and Debra Dixon were especially great…just all around fun gals to hang around with. I had my editor appointment with Denise, and she gave me some names of people to target and good advice. Katherine Sands was there again (I remembered her from last year); another great gal. I also got to see Susan Hubbard for a few minutes (she writes some of the best vampire books I’ve ever read), and I talked bad literature and bad movies with a gal my own age for about an hour on Friday night.
One of the things that I’ve taken away from this weekend is the urge to really start making use of this blog. You may notice that I’ve added a blogroll and a whole bunch of links. I tried to stick to writing and fantasy related sites, but one or two political ones may have crept in there. (By the way, if you read this and you have a blog, shoot me an email and I’ll go check it out.) One of the perks of reading and writing mostly YA is that most of the current authors are hip with the times and keep blogs, or at least have an online presence of some sort.
I want to start posting something in here every day. I’m also quite sure I’ve said that at least four or five times before, on various online blogs I’ve kept, and it just never happens. The problem is, I don’t necessarily have something to say every single day, and I’m the type of person where if I don’t feel I have something useful to contribute to a conversation, I keep my mouth shut. Given that tendency, what I may do is give myself a topic for every day of the week. That way, if I can’t think of anything else, I can at least post a song, or movie quote, or something. No issues, though! I do not want this to turn into a political blog. There are enough of those out there already, and I really don’t like talking about hot topics. I also have a hard time making myself stop once I do start thinking about them, which distracts me from things I’d rather be thinking about, like my stories.
So, look for that.
What else. The Goal, Motivation, Conflict workshop that Debra Dixon gave has really inspired me to go back through Shades and make sure every scene is pulling its weight. The most encouraging thing I took away from that talk was that I do GMC with all my characters pretty instinctively. I’m a character-driven writer. When I start to write a story, or when I go to turn a conceit or dream into a viable story, I usually start with one, maybe two characters. I ask myself what they want within the context of the conceit, and give them a bare bones reason why they want it. Then I make up another character who wants something that puts him or her in direct conflict with the first characters. Then I mentally plop those characters into the conceit and happily watch them create problems for themselves. Backstory arises from plot and motivation problems that come up (as in, I need this character to do something, therefore I must give them a damn good reason to do it). If I make the characters vivid enough, the plot writes itself. For instance, three or four years ago I had this vague milieu for a story and one really, really strong character, and decided to sit myself down and construct a basic plot. Two hours later the first initial outline of Shades was done. Two days later I had four chapters written. (Can you guess who that character was? *shakes a fist at a certain copper-haired Cowl*)
Instincts being what they may, I can already see how going though this process consciously will help me on initial plotting, and on rewrites. And I now have a much better grasp on Mask of Eldarmarch (that was the story I chose to work on during the workshop itself). It was interesting trying to work out goals and motivation for a character that I have to essentially treat as two different people in the story itself. But the split between Dustin and the Piper is the emotional crux of the story; they really do have different goals at the beginning, and are very different men. Only towards the end do those goals start to align…and once they merge, the mask becomes the symbol of that united purpose (instead of the symbol of living a lie). I’m not sure I would have ever been able to pin that down in such plain terms, had I not done that workshop.
Today, I’m going to get some writing done on Shades. Haven’t been able to do that for most of January. I’m also wallowing through a slow spot, which doesn’t help. My goal (!) is to have the first book of Shades finished by the end of March. It took me about two months to get halfway, so I’m figuring another two to complete it. At worst, mid or late April. I may need that extra month to polish. My bigger goal is to have the whole trilogy finished by the end of the year. As I’m hoping the later chapters won’t need as much work as the earlier chapters did, I think that goal is doable. But as always, we’ll see.
So, to sum up: Links! Blog goals. Writing goals. Here’s to productiveness.
Me, Briefly
Mariah Dennison, fantasy writer and artist. I have finished the first book in a trilogy, and am currently working on the second.
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