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.

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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.

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I will be updating Writing Projects over time, as stories develop and I create newer and better pitches for them. In Contacts, you will find my Lj, Twitter, and Facebook pages, among other things. You’ll only be able to view the Writing Projects page if you are registered and logged in.

Some of the CSS on the blog is still wonky, but that will get fixed as we experiement.

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