I wrote a contemporary inspirational romance novel a few years ago, for NaNo 2005. I promptly pushed it off to the side and proceeded on my merry way playing with fantasy novels and ideas again, but the story resurfaced about a year ago when I was chatting with my friend Jean. I snippeted her a few bits and then she read the whole thing. The first draft, scary thought. And said nice things. (Not ONLY nice things, mind, but included them).
Through that the idea of revising and shaping up this story took hold, though certainly not to the exclusion of anything else, lol. I played with it a bit at the time, but soon came to realize the problems were deeper than I'd thought at first and set it aside again.
So, the other day I printed out the whole thing and began to read through, making brief notes on every scene. Along about fifty pages in, the note for one scene was simply a large X and "delete." And for the next scene, I scrawled across the page, "Seriously?" I'd found a few really good bits (the ones I'd first shared with Jean!) but way more dross. A LOT of dross.
I sat back in my chair and thought about the characters, their kids, their issues. She's too nice, I thought. She takes monumental stuff totally in stride. Superwoman! Okay, so it's official. She needs a makeover. I began mulling over *logical* makeovers that would tweak things but not necessitate ALL new scenes!
After a few minutes, I turned my attention to the hero. Also a pretty good guy. Slightly less perfect than the heroine, but nothing that really qualifies as a character flaw. A little case of temper, perhaps, would go a long way. Or maybe...
In just over three years, my writing style has changed a lot. I've learned to characterize much better (even my stupid whiny hero from Tempest has more personal issues than these folks). And I've learned to get much deeper into point-of-view. Quite a bit I've done since then has been in first person, which helps with the deeper, but the potential markets for this romance novel want third.
Even in third, this main character thinks too much! So the first thing is to bring someone directly into that opening paragraph/scene so she can TALK about stuff instead of THINK about it. The meeting with the hero later in the scene is reasonably okay as is. She shouldn't tell him all this stuff yet. But she needs a new best friend to bounce issues off of.
I've set aside the month of February to hit this novel and bring it into line. I'd like to think I could do it all in one month--after all, I wrote the entire 52K in one November!--but I'm thinking it may take a little longer. Hopefully not a lot longer, though. Maybe six weeks? Two months tops.
I'm reworking character profiles as we speak, and I still need to mine the previous manuscript for more good stuff to carry over. It's in there. The bones are decent, and worth rebuilding from.
If you're wondering why I'm not writing either Tempest or Dottie these days, the answer simply is that I'm not. Though I've been poking at Dottie recently and getting good ideas of how things need to proceed. One thing her story does not suffer from is weak characterization. The novel is populated with true individuals and they agree on very little. Lots of fun sparks. I'm stopping short of calling Tempest dead. But she's on life support, which is sad as it is some of my strongest writing thus far. One day the answers to my questions about her will erupt in my mind and she'll hit the road running again. I hope.
Showing posts with label nano. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nano. Show all posts
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Saturday, January 17, 2009
2009 plans
Well, here it is the 17th day of the new year. You'd think I could post up some goals for it at some point, eh? Perhaps my first goal should be...
1. Blogging more. Aiming for at least once a week might be a good idea.
2. Getting my website completely redone and the blog integrated. Hopefully within the next month.
Most of the things in my life that I have *some* measure of control over are writing related. While many of the highlights of last year (and previous years) are in family areas, those aren't areas where public goals make sense. So here goes on writing ones:
3. Novel Submissions: Keep Majai's Fury in submission. (I've sent queries out twice already this year, and it's been rejected once. So I'm succeeding in this goal, thus far.)
4. Writing: Finish Dottie and Tempest. (It looks like Dottie is going to move forward and be the first for concentration. I'm taking her story through the How to Think Sideways course as we speak.) I'll consider doing NaNo this year, if these are complete and nothing else seems to be more pressing.
5. Contests: I plan to submit at least two entries into the Genesis. Of course I would like to increase my *streak* of finaling and increase my standing. *If* I final again this year, I'd like to try to get to conference in September. But that's not quite a goal.
6. Revising: I'm not sure what will hit the front burner on this one. It depends on how long the writing from Goal 4 takes. At the moment it's a toss-up between Quest to Be Queen and Chloe. I wish I revised faster is the real truth!
7. Critiquing: I'll take on up to four novels this year for crit, though I'm not sure right now which of my partners will have something ready. So this goal is a bit vague.
8. Forward Motion: Continue with moderator duties at FM, including writing and facilitating one new workshop this year. Other things may come up.
9. Book Tours: I'm committed still to touring at least a dozen new books on this blog this year. Maybe it's cheating to stick it in my goals when there will be two next week!
1. Blogging more. Aiming for at least once a week might be a good idea.
2. Getting my website completely redone and the blog integrated. Hopefully within the next month.
Most of the things in my life that I have *some* measure of control over are writing related. While many of the highlights of last year (and previous years) are in family areas, those aren't areas where public goals make sense. So here goes on writing ones:
3. Novel Submissions: Keep Majai's Fury in submission. (I've sent queries out twice already this year, and it's been rejected once. So I'm succeeding in this goal, thus far.)
4. Writing: Finish Dottie and Tempest. (It looks like Dottie is going to move forward and be the first for concentration. I'm taking her story through the How to Think Sideways course as we speak.) I'll consider doing NaNo this year, if these are complete and nothing else seems to be more pressing.
5. Contests: I plan to submit at least two entries into the Genesis. Of course I would like to increase my *streak* of finaling and increase my standing. *If* I final again this year, I'd like to try to get to conference in September. But that's not quite a goal.
6. Revising: I'm not sure what will hit the front burner on this one. It depends on how long the writing from Goal 4 takes. At the moment it's a toss-up between Quest to Be Queen and Chloe. I wish I revised faster is the real truth!
7. Critiquing: I'll take on up to four novels this year for crit, though I'm not sure right now which of my partners will have something ready. So this goal is a bit vague.
8. Forward Motion: Continue with moderator duties at FM, including writing and facilitating one new workshop this year. Other things may come up.
9. Book Tours: I'm committed still to touring at least a dozen new books on this blog this year. Maybe it's cheating to stick it in my goals when there will be two next week!
Monday, October 27, 2008
Multi-tasking
This is something I'm really good at in Real Life, and not so good at in writing. Why? I'm guessing because each story I work on requires a certain depth of thought immersion. It's not easy to dip in lightly and then off to something else, at least not if I want to make progress. And of course I do! Also there's the idea that each project takes so very long that if you mix two or more of them, it'll take twice as long to get anywhere.
The only time I've tried two first drafts was about four years ago when I did NaNo for the first time. I hadn't finished my previous novel when NaNo started, so I dropped everything for the new novel (to officially participate in NaNo, you need to begin and write a novel you haven't previously started). At the end of November I had two partially completed novels and then spent several months alternating between the two to finish both first drafts. It was difficult and I vowed never to do it again.
Even playing with world-building or revising one while writing on another is difficult for me. All of these areas require a real depth of focus that makes it hard to shift gears from one to the other. I've been trying to learn how to do this better, especially in the last couple of years where I've been spending so much more time revising and therefore feeling stifled without the *rush* of creating that a first draft brings.
I started writing Tempest in July, thinking that once I got rolling on it, I'd pull out one of my older novels to revise. I tend to write in the mornings (my best time), then, the idea was, spend the afternoon on revising. I haven't started a revision project, though. Instead I started taking the Thinking Sideways class and bounced some new ideas around for that, then resurrected an old partial first draft--Dottie.
And now I'm finding myself doing the unthinkable and actually enjoying it: having two first drafts on the go at once. It helps, I think, that they're quite opposite stories. Tempest is fantasy set in a harsh environment. Dottie is contemporary women's fiction and quite humorous at times. So when I find that Tempest depresses me, I can switch gears and work on something fluffier.
This has been working well for the past couple weeks. I'm making steadier progress on Tempest and plan to keep it the higher priority until the draft is done. At this rate, that should be sometime in December, but if it takes longer, so be it.
I guess this means that I'm not revising anything more until next year. Two projects is ample to keep me out of trouble!
The only time I've tried two first drafts was about four years ago when I did NaNo for the first time. I hadn't finished my previous novel when NaNo started, so I dropped everything for the new novel (to officially participate in NaNo, you need to begin and write a novel you haven't previously started). At the end of November I had two partially completed novels and then spent several months alternating between the two to finish both first drafts. It was difficult and I vowed never to do it again.
Even playing with world-building or revising one while writing on another is difficult for me. All of these areas require a real depth of focus that makes it hard to shift gears from one to the other. I've been trying to learn how to do this better, especially in the last couple of years where I've been spending so much more time revising and therefore feeling stifled without the *rush* of creating that a first draft brings.
I started writing Tempest in July, thinking that once I got rolling on it, I'd pull out one of my older novels to revise. I tend to write in the mornings (my best time), then, the idea was, spend the afternoon on revising. I haven't started a revision project, though. Instead I started taking the Thinking Sideways class and bounced some new ideas around for that, then resurrected an old partial first draft--Dottie.
And now I'm finding myself doing the unthinkable and actually enjoying it: having two first drafts on the go at once. It helps, I think, that they're quite opposite stories. Tempest is fantasy set in a harsh environment. Dottie is contemporary women's fiction and quite humorous at times. So when I find that Tempest depresses me, I can switch gears and work on something fluffier.
This has been working well for the past couple weeks. I'm making steadier progress on Tempest and plan to keep it the higher priority until the draft is done. At this rate, that should be sometime in December, but if it takes longer, so be it.
I guess this means that I'm not revising anything more until next year. Two projects is ample to keep me out of trouble!
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Tempest
I'm making reasonably steady progress on Tempest, though not as rapid as I'd have liked. Still, it seems that it's better to think a bit here and there than to rewrite/rewrite/rewrite. Of course I'll probably still have to! It might be that this story just didn't have as long to percolate, so there wasn't a huge build-up of words just waiting for the starting gate to open (think the rush of the first hour of Nano!). It might be that my muse is a bit reluctant, being as this is definitely a bit darker story than anything I've written previously. Or it might be that this is just the perfect pace for this story!
I'm doing in the neighborhood of a chapter a week, and they're averaging over 4K each. So if I can just keep the wheels turning, it will get itself done in a few months. That's fine.
I'd been thinking that I'd go on another round of revisions of some of my older stuff once I got rolling with this story, but it's not happening yet. I'm teaching another workshop at Forward Motion in August, and I've recently signed up for a six-month writing course put on by author Holly Lisle, How to Think Sideways. Even after only one week, I'm beginning to see that this investment is quite likely to pay off in a practical sense.
So it'll be at least September before I start revising again, and it's a toss-up still whether it will be Joy Comes in the Morning or Off Beat. Off Beat (aka Squid) has finaled in the Genesis contest, but I won't have the results of that until mid September. I'd hoped to enter Joy in the 08 contest as well, but didn't have time to revise the opening pages to my satisfaction, so I'd like to enter it in '09. A whole new category for me: romance!
And if I'm going to get chapter five written this week, I'd better get rolling!
I'm doing in the neighborhood of a chapter a week, and they're averaging over 4K each. So if I can just keep the wheels turning, it will get itself done in a few months. That's fine.
I'd been thinking that I'd go on another round of revisions of some of my older stuff once I got rolling with this story, but it's not happening yet. I'm teaching another workshop at Forward Motion in August, and I've recently signed up for a six-month writing course put on by author Holly Lisle, How to Think Sideways. Even after only one week, I'm beginning to see that this investment is quite likely to pay off in a practical sense.
So it'll be at least September before I start revising again, and it's a toss-up still whether it will be Joy Comes in the Morning or Off Beat. Off Beat (aka Squid) has finaled in the Genesis contest, but I won't have the results of that until mid September. I'd hoped to enter Joy in the 08 contest as well, but didn't have time to revise the opening pages to my satisfaction, so I'd like to enter it in '09. A whole new category for me: romance!
And if I'm going to get chapter five written this week, I'd better get rolling!
Monday, January 14, 2008
Point of View Issues
I've begun prepping a workshop for Forward Motion about the issues writers face with viewpoint characters: how to pick them and how to choose the point of view style that best suits the story. In February we'll be exploring possibilities with a variety of hands-on exercises.
Meanwhile, I've been reading on the topic to prime the pump. Two renowned how-to books are Characters & Viewpoint by Orson Scott Card and Characters, Emotion & Viewpoint by Nancy Kress. I've also found a few articles on the internet. One of these is Time and First Person by Holly Lisle.
I read Holly's article for the first time last week and found it mildly interesting. She speaks in it of some of the issues she faced writing Talyn in first person. She talks about making a choice as to when in the future Talyn is telling her story from. When I first read this contemplation, I admit I didn't *get it*. I decided that Holly was over-thinking the problem but that obviously she'd done a fine job with her choices, because I loved the novel and the way she told it (alternative first person from Talyn and third person from Gair).
Today I edited the first scene of my 2006 nano novel, The Girl Who Cried Squid, which is the only novel I've written in first person. And today I *got* Holly's article.
Krin is telling her story in past tense, telling us what she did and thought and said on the day the story started. And all of a sudden--a couple of pages in--I noticed that she describes her village in present tense. I frowned. Point of view slippage? I'm usually pretty tight. I thought about it for a few minutes and decided that in the *when* Krin was telling the story from, the village was just the same as it had been the night her adventures began. It hadn't changed significantly. So it's accurate for her to tell us where Bevedar IS, for example, not where it WAS.
Suddenly Holly's article made a great deal more sense! I hadn't made a conscious decision to blend tenses. In the heat of nano Day One I just wrote the thing how it came out. But now I see that Krin isn't telling us this story from a rocking chair in her old age. She's telling it to us from a point not far in the future from the end of the novel.
Once I had contemplated the description of her village, I decided to leave it in present tense and moved on to another paragraph. Lo and behold. That description was not an isolated issue! I went back to the very first paragraph which in unedited first draft read like this:
Notice that everything is in past tense except I can't dance. Why? When she tells this story later on, she still can't. It's important to the story, and it doesn't change.
There were several other instances in the opening scene of about 1700 words where I *slipped* tense. I changed a couple of them, reworded some sentences so they blended better, and left a few standing. It's possible I may have to defend my choice to critters down the line--perhaps even to an agent or editor. But thanks to Holly's article and the fact that I'm writing up this workshop and thus analyzing pov issues, I understand now what my subconscious was doing in November 2006.
Meanwhile, I've been reading on the topic to prime the pump. Two renowned how-to books are Characters & Viewpoint by Orson Scott Card and Characters, Emotion & Viewpoint by Nancy Kress. I've also found a few articles on the internet. One of these is Time and First Person by Holly Lisle.
I read Holly's article for the first time last week and found it mildly interesting. She speaks in it of some of the issues she faced writing Talyn in first person. She talks about making a choice as to when in the future Talyn is telling her story from. When I first read this contemplation, I admit I didn't *get it*. I decided that Holly was over-thinking the problem but that obviously she'd done a fine job with her choices, because I loved the novel and the way she told it (alternative first person from Talyn and third person from Gair).
Today I edited the first scene of my 2006 nano novel, The Girl Who Cried Squid, which is the only novel I've written in first person. And today I *got* Holly's article.
Krin is telling her story in past tense, telling us what she did and thought and said on the day the story started. And all of a sudden--a couple of pages in--I noticed that she describes her village in present tense. I frowned. Point of view slippage? I'm usually pretty tight. I thought about it for a few minutes and decided that in the *when* Krin was telling the story from, the village was just the same as it had been the night her adventures began. It hadn't changed significantly. So it's accurate for her to tell us where Bevedar IS, for example, not where it WAS.
Suddenly Holly's article made a great deal more sense! I hadn't made a conscious decision to blend tenses. In the heat of nano Day One I just wrote the thing how it came out. But now I see that Krin isn't telling us this story from a rocking chair in her old age. She's telling it to us from a point not far in the future from the end of the novel.
Once I had contemplated the description of her village, I decided to leave it in present tense and moved on to another paragraph. Lo and behold. That description was not an isolated issue! I went back to the very first paragraph which in unedited first draft read like this:
Mama and Papa were of two minds about the dance, which is why I went. Besides, everyone who mattered would be there and even though I can't dance worth a seashell, I couldn't very well skip it, could I?
Notice that everything is in past tense except I can't dance. Why? When she tells this story later on, she still can't. It's important to the story, and it doesn't change.
There were several other instances in the opening scene of about 1700 words where I *slipped* tense. I changed a couple of them, reworded some sentences so they blended better, and left a few standing. It's possible I may have to defend my choice to critters down the line--perhaps even to an agent or editor. But thanks to Holly's article and the fact that I'm writing up this workshop and thus analyzing pov issues, I understand now what my subconscious was doing in November 2006.
Wednesday, January 09, 2008
Methods of Revision
My friend Margaret is running an intensive workshop at Forward Motion this month about the use of an outline for revising a novel (or short story).
I decided to begin work on my 2006 Nano, The Girl Who Cried Squid to take advantage of the workshop, so I've been spending time beginning the analysis of the novel's structure and how the subplots tie into the main plot. This kind of thinking hurts my head. I'm not sure why. I don't know if the whole story comes into my mind with such a whoosh (don't I wish!) that it doesn't seem to have parts, or if I'm just darn good at weaving in the subplots so well that the main plot can't stand up without them. Either way, it's hard to separate out the parts and look at them objectively.
After the revision of Marks took me the majority of last year, it occurs to me that there might be an easier way to do things. Or at least a way that keeps better track of where I've been and where I'm going. So this time around I'm trying Mar's way. I suppose it would be an improvement if I got most of the headaches out of the way at the beginning!
That's not to say I'm ignoring Quest to be Queen. That edit remains my top current priority, and I've processed nearly 7K so far this week.
I'm curious. How do you revise things? How much do you analyze and plan? Or do you just jump in and hope for the best? And how does that relate to how you wrote the story in the first place?
I decided to begin work on my 2006 Nano, The Girl Who Cried Squid to take advantage of the workshop, so I've been spending time beginning the analysis of the novel's structure and how the subplots tie into the main plot. This kind of thinking hurts my head. I'm not sure why. I don't know if the whole story comes into my mind with such a whoosh (don't I wish!) that it doesn't seem to have parts, or if I'm just darn good at weaving in the subplots so well that the main plot can't stand up without them. Either way, it's hard to separate out the parts and look at them objectively.
After the revision of Marks took me the majority of last year, it occurs to me that there might be an easier way to do things. Or at least a way that keeps better track of where I've been and where I'm going. So this time around I'm trying Mar's way. I suppose it would be an improvement if I got most of the headaches out of the way at the beginning!
That's not to say I'm ignoring Quest to be Queen. That edit remains my top current priority, and I've processed nearly 7K so far this week.
I'm curious. How do you revise things? How much do you analyze and plan? Or do you just jump in and hope for the best? And how does that relate to how you wrote the story in the first place?
Thursday, October 25, 2007
NaNoWriMo
November is almost upon us and with that comes NaNoWriMo, more commonly known as Nano and actually short for National Novel Writing Month. Never mind that it's international, not national, and that the actual goal is to write 50,000 words of a brand-new novel in the month of November. Which doesn't usually complete a novel unless it is Young Adult or an unfleshed-out draft.
Nano is great fun. Zillions of people sign up and egg each other on. Lots of people don't make it to 50K. But then again, a lot of them do. I have, three times. In 2004 I got 50K into the first draft of a fantasy spoof, Quest to be Queen, which I completed in March of '05. That's the next novel I'm planning to revise because I'm needing lots of good laughs, and Quest will provide those.
In 2005 I decided to try my hand at writing an inspirational romance, which is still unnamed though I did make it through 54K. It has a few really good scenes in it and, I suppose, some potential. If I ever decide to seriously aim for a career in writing romance I'll certainly dust this one off. However, in the meanwhile, I'm not feelin' it calling to me.
In 2006 I wrote a 57K YA fantasy dubbed The Girl Who Cried Squid. I had a great time with this novel, also, and it's on the list for revision right behind Quest.
So, 2007...and I'm not doing Nano this year. Why not? Three of my seven first drafts were written during Nano! It seems as though the process works! Well, it does and it doesn't. I was going stir crazy this summer and wrote a bunch of words on a contemporary women's novel, Connect the Dot. I totally did this just for fun and because I really really needed to be creating something. The revision of Marks of Repentance was taking waaaaay too long.
So what have I learned? I think I need to have a writing project on the go: something I can work on a little at a time and that it's okay if it takes a year to finish a draft instead of a month. Because every novel I write needs at least two more full passes, maybe more. So truly, my first drafting should be taking up (approximately) a quarter to a third of my writing time. Jamming that into one month in the fall, with overflow, isn't cutting it for me. It makes it too long between creative times. If I could write one, revise one it would probably work, but then the first drafts would start building up and it would take forever to get something ready for market.
So this is my new plan. Not sure if it will work or not, but I need to try something new. I'm one of those people that, upon proving to myself that I can accomplish something difficult--and 50,000 words in a month is not a walk in the park--doesn't feel compelled to keep proving that I can do it.
Lots of my writing pals are signed up and raring to go: Mar, Jean, Bonnie, Erin...maybe others. I'm happy to cheer them on! But I'm sitting out this one.
Nano is great fun. Zillions of people sign up and egg each other on. Lots of people don't make it to 50K. But then again, a lot of them do. I have, three times. In 2004 I got 50K into the first draft of a fantasy spoof, Quest to be Queen, which I completed in March of '05. That's the next novel I'm planning to revise because I'm needing lots of good laughs, and Quest will provide those.
In 2005 I decided to try my hand at writing an inspirational romance, which is still unnamed though I did make it through 54K. It has a few really good scenes in it and, I suppose, some potential. If I ever decide to seriously aim for a career in writing romance I'll certainly dust this one off. However, in the meanwhile, I'm not feelin' it calling to me.
In 2006 I wrote a 57K YA fantasy dubbed The Girl Who Cried Squid. I had a great time with this novel, also, and it's on the list for revision right behind Quest.
So, 2007...and I'm not doing Nano this year. Why not? Three of my seven first drafts were written during Nano! It seems as though the process works! Well, it does and it doesn't. I was going stir crazy this summer and wrote a bunch of words on a contemporary women's novel, Connect the Dot. I totally did this just for fun and because I really really needed to be creating something. The revision of Marks of Repentance was taking waaaaay too long.
So what have I learned? I think I need to have a writing project on the go: something I can work on a little at a time and that it's okay if it takes a year to finish a draft instead of a month. Because every novel I write needs at least two more full passes, maybe more. So truly, my first drafting should be taking up (approximately) a quarter to a third of my writing time. Jamming that into one month in the fall, with overflow, isn't cutting it for me. It makes it too long between creative times. If I could write one, revise one it would probably work, but then the first drafts would start building up and it would take forever to get something ready for market.
So this is my new plan. Not sure if it will work or not, but I need to try something new. I'm one of those people that, upon proving to myself that I can accomplish something difficult--and 50,000 words in a month is not a walk in the park--doesn't feel compelled to keep proving that I can do it.
Lots of my writing pals are signed up and raring to go: Mar, Jean, Bonnie, Erin...maybe others. I'm happy to cheer them on! But I'm sitting out this one.
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