Annie, Author at Annie Bellet

Author Archive

Editing and Bribes

I added an entire chapter today in the beginning part of the novel. It sets up a conspiracy that is alluded to later and ties the events of the first two chapters into the events later in the novel. What it means for the practical side of writing is that I now have a ton of inconsistencies to go in and fix as well a couple more threads to pick up and weave into the main part. Which means that for the moment, the novel gets even messier.

I want it done. I want to be able to print a few hard copies, stuff them in binders, and then disperse to the people who have offered to be my beta readers. I want to start on my new projects and get this whole stupid thing over with. It’s so easy to just ignore it, however, and work on other things. I’ve got books to read and two other novels in the works. So I arrived at a natural solution to trick myself into buckling down and just doing it.

Bribary. I wrote a sticky note and fixed it to the wall behind my monitor. It reads “When you finish editing your novel, you may spend 250 on things from your Amazon Wishlist. So do it! Now!” Thus not only will it be off my back in terms of needing to get done, but I’ll get real life rewards of things I want. It’s sort of like getting paid to do it. I think if I make a real effort and a big push, I can finish in two to three weeks. The more hours I spend on it, the faster I’ll get to reward myself. It’s a cheap trick. But if it works, I’ll use it.

The other bribe I’m debating offering myself is to go to World Con in Montreal in 2009. It would be awesome to get to vote in the Hugo awards and it would be a good networking opportunity since agents and editors go as well as some of my favorite authors. There are also workshops and such run. If I can get both novels done this year and edited up to a basically polished state, I think I’ll be ready to find an agent and launch myself into the world of rejections (err, I mean professional writing, really).

I’ve also joined the Online Writing Workshop. So far I’m just reviewing things since I don’t feel I have anything to post for reviews yet. Once I’ve finished the rewrite of my Monsters short story, I’ll probably post that. The quality of writing on the site is better than most and the reviews I’ve read so far are fairly detailed and helpful. I’m using my month long free trial to see if I could get enough out of it to be worth the 50 per year fee for access. So we’ll see how that goes.

Well, that is the news on the projects of doom so far. I’ll try to think up a more interesting or at least writing informative post later this week.

Ranty McRant

Please ignore the whining.

I’m having a terrible time editing this damn novel. It’s sad really. I want to burn it, delete it, throw it far far away. Unfortunately, I know it would sling back around like a bad joke to smack me in the face. One of the reasons it’s being such a pain in my ass is that the ‘fixes’ for it are actually pretty obvious but super time consuming. I’m pulling parts that didn’t make sense before together, which requires pages and pages of completely fresh material. I’m revamping the science and making it less fly by seat of pants (or seat of wikipedia), and I’m inserting a great deal more character interaction and hopefully motivation. I’m brimming with ideas about it. Ideas are never the issue.

Basically, I feel like a person who buys an old fixer-upper house and then sinks 10 years of time and money and effort to make it beautiful. I don’t want to find out my lovely house isn’t worth what I’ve paid for it. I’ve said before that I sort of hate this novel. It was a dare, a bit of a joke. But I also know that I’m often my own worst critic. I know that there are things worth exploring at least in this novel. I can see the possibilities in the ragged and ugly bones of my tale.

But the doubts linger. Would this time be better spent writing one or both of the other novels I’m working on this year? I don’t know. I’m not sure I’ll ever really know. I do know that I would love to just have this damn thing done already. Not to overuse a literary convention, but this novel is fast becoming my writing albatross. I know I need to just suck it up and git’er done. If only things were so easy.

In other news, no word yet about that job. I’m still on the fence. Meanwhile, I’ll just keep plugging away at the writing. Now if only I could banish thoughts of my Civil War Witches novel from my brain. That novel is at least a year or two away from being written. Grr.

Alright, /endrant.

Wrenches

Well, I’ve been offered a job in Technical and Marketing Writing. It’s sort of using my degree, at least one of them. The pay is low for the work, but not too low. It has benefits and such. It’s also full time. Which means no more days free for writing. I know me, if I have no me time, I don’t get to write. I can’t do it with distractions or too much structured time.

The pros are real experience in a field that actually pays reliable money. And it’s about double what I’m making part time now.

The cons are a commute, and no more free time.

So, do I choose fiction writing? Or money?

Forward at Last!

My computer is all set up and my writing rescued from the old, corrupt hard-drive. Which means I now have access to my novel. Which means no more excuses for not editing it.

I’m terrified of it not being good enough. I know it isn’t good enough right now. It’s not long enough, the writing is a complete mess in terms of grammar and consistency, and there is so much more telling than showing it’s sort of pathetic. I don’t know if I can fix it. If the bones aren’t good, what’s the point right? In the 2008 Writers’ Market for Novels and Short Stories there is an article about how to know when something is no good and when to move on to the next project. It’s where I first got the idea for the ten novels in ten years. And I know in my head that it isn’t done. There is a decent story here, there are characters I kind of like sometimes.

The problem is that this novel is my Frankenstein. Not the book, the monster. It’s the first. My original baby that I threw together from bits and pieces I could find laying around. A bit of a bad spy novel I read once, a couple characters from an old Shadowrun game, a villain right out of one my dreams, a mall fight scene because I thought it would be cool. It’s a patchwork novel, a strange creature built from cut corners and stolen inspirations. And to make it acceptable, to make it truly mine, I can’t just put a pretty dress on it and send it to the ball. That is why this rewrite is going to be so much work. I have to tear into the structure and rework the very marrow of the stuff. There will be carnage.

Time to get it out of the way, however. I have to do this. So for my two hours a day I’m going to be reworking a chapter at a time of Dangerous. (God do I wish I had a real title for this, sigh). It might take me longer than two hours per chapter, it might not. I don’t really care. One chapter per day. This will only take at most 20 days, and that’s if I add chapters. I can’t remember where it stood exactly, but I think it’s only about 17 chapters long at this point.

Things I want to do to this novel besides burn all copies:

1) Fill out character backstories and motivations. It’s third person omniscient, so this should be fairly easy.

2) Add about 100 pages to the novel. I don’t think this will be difficult either.

3) More world description. Make the setting matter more and feel more oppressive and dystopian. Include more news casts and more camera/police presence. (I should watch more Fox news to get more ideas, heh).
4) More peril. Things in the novel are entirely too much on the side of my protagonists. They should work harder. It’ll be more interesting.

5) Rework pretty much all the writing. It’s super sloppy right now due to me trying to cram words in for the word count. Contractions are a good thing.

Those are the main things. If I manage to fix all those things, I think the end product will be something more like a workable draft. Then I can finally inflict it on my friends and mother. They keep asking about it, silly fools. Well, by the end of March they will have learned the error of their ways. Oh yes.

Waxy Thoughts

After spending the majority of a 12 hour work shift putting together a reading wish list and trolling writing forums, I’m exhausted and full to brim with thoughts that won’t seem so deep tomorrow.

After reading a largish amount of amateur short fiction in the last few days, I’m yet amazed at ego involved. On the one hand, posting for reviews is good. Having others read one’s work is useful often. On the other hand, so many of these ‘reviews’ are fellow amateur writers who refuse to say anything more negative than making gentle comments about maybe looking into cleaning up grammar or spelling mistakes. It’s a lot of back patting and hand holding. For me, it’s very hard not to fire up the flamethrower and wade on in. For criticism to work, it has to be constructive. But it also has to be critical. “You’re story was nice.” or “I liked it.” doesn’t help. Even a little. And really, the illusions about their skills that 99% of these writers seem to harbor, well, it’s staggering. Half the time I’m tempted to leave truthful yet equally unhelpful reviews like “you really need to scrap this and start over” or “maybe your talents lie more in knitting, or cooking, or something that will never involve the English language or a keyboard.” Of course, this doesn’t tell them much. It doesn’t really help because such negativity is easy to ignore. So instead I try to offer real criticism that basically says these things in very long form. I tear tiredly into these little tidbits of drivel offered up by the writing virgins and hope that at least some part will sink in.

There’s a strange gap in writer ego, as far as I can tell. People who write amateur fiction seem to fall into two camps. There are the writers who think they are the next great ‘thing’, the undiscovered genius. Then there are those (of which I’m one, I must admit) who think that they’re pretty much doomed to remain unread and unloved because they’ll never be sure if anything they’ve written is any good at all. Sometimes I wish I could change camps. Having some measure of pride or at least misplaced glee in my work might spur me to actually get things done. Certainly some of my least favorite writers among the published masses manage to produce vast amounts of their mediocre fiction. Perhaps that thin illusion of potential would make a nice shield for my easily bruised writing ego.

Perhaps I should just stop reading good books. Every time I read a decent novel, I dig myself a little deeper into the trench of personal expectation. Sadly, reading bad novels just pisses me off instead of providing a ladder out of said conceit. Recently I’ve been reading Simon Green’s Hawk and Fisher stories. I’m disappointed. It’s amateur writing at its finest. The potential is there, but the stories so far feel like something churned out to meet a writing workshop first draft deadline. I pretty much hate reviewing things, so this should tell you how surprised I was at the quality of this work. I mean, it came recommended, damnit. Sigh. It should give me hope; this mediocre work by an author with plenty of published works to his name. Somehow this only makes me sad.

In the writing project news category: I’ve decided that while I’m not a daily writer sort of writer, I need to kickstart myself. I’ve taken on a lot more project than I intended to, which means my usual method of binge writing isn’t going to cut it. I can’t keep treating writing like a free bag of cookies that I eat half of before I realize I don’t really like these cookies, but then finish out of guilt. So I’m aiming for 2 hours a day of writing type activity. That’s ten hours a week. (weekends are full of work, and work is full of stupid which isn’t good for writing). We’ll see how Plan B goes. Plan C involves a blow torch, six white mice, a one way plane ticket, and pink silk stockings. Don’t ask.

(edit: also, I realize the irony of saying I write mediocre fiction vs my arrogant presumption that my critical reviews of other works are valid and useful. In my defense, I’m a pretty damn good editor. Also, I read more than pretty much anyone I know. It might be cliche to say that reading makes you better at writing, but it is true to an extent. I’ve spent years feeling out and learning what works or doesn’t as I read. )

Productivity Is Overrated

I haven’t written a single thing all week except to jot down a few notes here and there for my novels. In terms of life though, I’ve been very productive, so I suppose it’s a trade-off. I built my shelves, finally. All that remains for my office to be complete is for my old computer to get raided for its information (such as my first novel that needs edits) and for the new computer to be fully installed with the programs I need. I’d like this to get done by the end of next week. I’ve been using it as an excuse not to do much in the way of writing. It’s a poor excuse.

I’m a tomorrow person. I know this, and I do what I can to work around the constant desire to just “do it tomorrow”. Actually, I did get some writing-ish stuff done, since I managed to get some comic things sent off to my artist. However, it’s not really as much as I’d hoped. So for next week I’m setting some goals. I will meet these goals. They aren’t that lofty or interesting, but I have to get going. Once I have momentum, it will take care of itself, but I’ve been putting things off too long.

Weekend goals: Finish review of Cooking Mama for my friend’s website. Rework Predators plot outline (I’ve had some different ideas, so I’m going to rewrite it).

Next week’s goals: 10 pages of Predators. At least 10 pages of Chwedl written. Type up and edit first layer of Past Dark. Finish Bad Day comic (I can do this in one day, I just have to buckle down and do it).

I’d love to be doing a chapter of each book a week, but it isn’t going to happen. I should be realistic about things and put off Predators until I’ve got Chwedl done and ready for first round of readers. Then I could buckle down and get Predators done in time to be sent out once they’ve gotten back to me about Chwedl. I may do this. But I want to get the outline done at least. We’ll see. I may have too much project on my plate. Fortunately for me, it takes me far less time to write pages and pages of comic than it does for my poor artist to concept and draw the stuff up. I can get layers ahead of her in a day or two without a problem, so I’m not worried about her outpacing me in terms of the comic.

So that’s the story of this week. Exciting, isn’t it? I’ll be more productive. You know, tomorrow. But hey, shelves! My to-read shelf has 58 books on it.

Excuses and The Writer’s Space

So, I have two novel outlines. I have a brand new computer. I haven’t done anything in a week.

I’ve been using the “no access to my dead harddrive” excuse in order to not work on the ‘Dangerous’ editing/rewrite. It’s a problem I could fix just by poking the people who have computer know-how and making them boot my drive with their magic computer powers. Instead I keep letting them get distracted with things like work, school, and Jade Empire.

I’ve been using the excuse of not getting much sleep and then being out of town to avoid working on my novels. These excuses are poor and thin. I keep letting people distract me or making other plans and my writing time slowly disappears. I’ve used the same excuses to avoid writing on the two comics I’m working on.

Solution? I think I’m going to have to be a little more stubborn about writing time. Which means saying no to friends who want to do things during the day. And recognizing my own excuses for what they are. My plan for the rest of this week is to get my office set up again and get comic bits sent off to my artist so she has something to work on as well.

I have a lot of books. This means that my office, which is the place in my home I can go to close away the outside world and its distractions, is currently full of books with very little extra space. I went to Ikea and got new shelves for the rearranging of the office, so the books should get off the floor and where they belong soon. Having space is important. Having a working computer that isn’t shared is also important. I like to close myself away to write. I need to be able to put on music, lock the door, arrange my notebooks and research around myself, and turn the eyes inward towards the mindscape of my stories. It’s vital to my writing process. I don’t understand those people who can write in cafes or pizza parlours or bars. People are too interesting, I like to watch them too much. There is no way I can be around them and still interacting on a meaningful level with the things in my head.

I’ve only lost a week to excuses. Sometimes having no deadlines isn’t actually a blessing. Well, I suppose I do have a deadline, but it’s so far away, it feels unreal. If I don’t get on this now, however, December will have come all too quickly. I’ll post the first couple paragraphs of both novels by the end of next week. There, that’s sort of like a deadline. Time to get my room in order, both the real one and the one in my head.

On Research

One reason I was attracted to writing fiction at a young age was actually a mistaken thought I had about the process. The first time I wrote a fiction story I asked the teacher if she meant that I could just “make stuff up”. She said yes. I took this to the extreme, as do many starting writers. I wrote stories about flying horses on planets with continents that spanned a mile or two. I invented random plants and ecosystems that made no sense and were heavy on macrobiology and very light in the real of plausibility. Consistency was right out as well. Magic is magic, right? It can be used to explain anything. In my early stories if someone could do magic, they were essentially a god. My characters might get captured or hurt, but like cheesy action movie heroes they sprang back instantly, the same as ever. I didn’t build worlds or characters back then so much as weave impossible tapestries without regard towards consistency or comprehensibility.

And at one point early on I swung the other way. It took a couple years but suddenly I was obsessed with reality in my stories. My daydreams and fantasies suffered from the same problems. I’d begin with childish fancies of flying horses and start thinking about how that would leave horse poop falling out of the sky and all kinds of implications of that. I’d wonder what the weather was like, wonder where the bathrooms were in these castles, even wonder why characters weren’t in school or why everyone was literate and spoke the same language. A myriad of issues arose. I was stuck, there were too many facets to realistic writing, or so I thought.

I’m not sure I’ve solved the problem. There is a large no man’s land that writers must inhabit between reality and fantastical impossibility. Fortunately, we have a large toolbox available. Plausibility is foremost. This isn’t the same thing as “good enough” but it’s something like that. My favorite tool though is research. Even when creating a character or a world from scratch, it isn’t really from scratch. I pull bits and parts and ideas from everywhere. This character rock-climbs, so I should look into that because there might be terminology or habits or physical characteristics that are important. This world has a lot of swamps, so I need to read about swamps. Or visit some swamps to get a truly hands on research perspective. These are just examples, but they illustrate my point which is that the closer you can relate something to what is recognizable and already plausible, the easier it is for the reader to continue with the story. It’s the theory of heating up the water slowly, so that by the time the readers are boiling alive they don’t mind the fireballs and flying ponies. The best writing makes you cozy and comfortable with its premises in stages, it takes you inside itself, wherever or whatever that might entail.

So I research. Which is fun, actually. I get to learn about things I might never have learned on my own and I get to read, something that is easy and enjoyable. Here’s a breakdown of what I’ve researched or am reading for each novel project:

Dangerous: Pretty much internet research for this one due to my time constraints. I read about cold fusion, titanium production, rice production, closed environments, high oxygen environments, guns, Roman government, viruses, biological warfare, and probably other topics I’ve since forgotton.

Chwedl: On the internet I’ve researched Welsh given names and literary traditions. Since I have a degree in Medieval Studies and studied a lot of Welsh lit, I don’t have to do much reading there. I am currently reading a book called “Medieval Wales” by David Walker, mostly for the place names, maps, and social structures. I plan to research clothing in dark ages Europe a bit more as well, probably using the internet and perhaps my college library. I’m putting a heavy fantasy slant on the novel, so I’m going to pick and choose what I like or don’t from the historical basis.

Predators (or Werewolves in Space as I jokingly call it): So far just reading a book about astrobiology called “Life Everywhere” by David Darling. It’s totally fascinating. I intend to read Wayne Douglas Barlowe’s works, of which I have two sitting on my living room floor waiting for perusal. I don’t have his book “Expedition” at the moment, which I really want. Hopefully it will materialize soon. I intend to read about a host of things, most of which I probably haven’t even realized I need to know. Sci/fi is like that for me: it’s a journey of discovery and I never know where my novel or short story will take me until I’m writing it.

So basically, those are my thoughts on research. For now.

If Stories Were Wishes

The other night I had the coolest dream. It ended up that I was wide awake at 5am with a desperate need to write this stuff down. At first it seemed like this new idea would just be nice sci/fi short story. The premise is simple: a group of biologists on a new planet studying predatory fauna. It was going to be around 3500 words which makes it easy to write it up and give it to my friends who love to give me feedback on this stuff. Do a quick rewrite, then submit somewhere. Boom, done. Maybe a month or two.

If only it were that easy. Instead this story has expanded into a novel. I could probably keep it novella length, but those are especially hard to market. It’s sad really. Over 10,000 words and a story is too long for a short story. Under 60-70k words, and too short for a novel. And 60k words is still an awfully short novel. There is a gray zone, which my first novel currently occupies at 55k, between 10k and 70k. Now, mind you, I realize different genres have different typical lengths. A young adult novel doesn’t need to be more than 170-220 pages generally (about 45k-65k words). Likewise, a stock romance novel is often around that length as well. For mainstream fiction or genre fiction like sci/fi or fantasy, however, most books are 250 to 350 pages these days. Longer if it isn’t the first book from an author. Which is why with my novel projects I’m aiming for 75k-110k words.

So Novel Project 2 is apparently starting at the same time as Novel Project 1. That’s the fun of writing, I suppose. Can’t really plan anything. My brain is teeming with ideas for both novels, therefor it isn’t as though I can just ignore one and work on the other merely because one idea was first. With some of my ideas, I can do this. I have three other novel ideas, for example, that aren’t pressing themselves into my head as needing to be written right now. I know the basic plots of each of these, but the chars are staying quiet enough I can ignore them and write the others. The sci/fi novel isn’t staying quiet. This is a story that is demanding to be written.

I think the only way to possibly have hope of completing these projects is to break it up a little. Fortunately the projects are different enough that there won’t be crossover. One is somewhat hard Sci/Fi, the other very much Fantasy with some fairytale/historical elements. One is third person omniscient, the other is in first person. I’m going to handwrite the fantasy novel, which means it will take longer. That isn’t such a bad thing, however, because it will make the editing process easier and it will be something I can do on a longer time-line than the Sci/Fi novel. As much as it might make editing quicker to write both by hand, I’m not that much of a masochist. Handwriting stories is fun and I prefer it, but something that long is an exercise in endurance. I type about 70-90 words per minute when I’m on a real roll, which means I can do a page of story in about 3-5 mins if I know where I’m going with it. When I write by hand it takes longer to do the same amount of text unless I want my hand to cramp. (oh the memories of college lit exams where I had to write three essays by hand in 40 mins.)

So, to sum up:

By end of March: have Nano novel (working title Dangerous) edited and ready for second round of readers.

By end of June: have both novels (working titles are Chwedl for the fantasy and Predators for the Sci/fi) done in the first draft form and ready for first round of readers.

By end of September: have at least Chwedl ready for second round of readers and edits.

By end of December: submit Chwedl, have Predators ready for second round of readers and edits.

Of course, if I get into grad school, it could put a serious constraint on my writing times and needs. However, I don’t see this ten years ten novels project as being counter to getting my MA. At the least I can turn in parts of my novels for classes and hopefully turn one of my yearly novel projects into my thesis project. I doubt whatever adviser I end up with would mind the idea of the project, hopefully they will think it is interesting and worth helping me out with.

I know, too many ideas is probably the least of my problems. I read so many complaints from amateur writers about how they can’t find the ideas or they have writer’s block or something along those lines. This is never my problem. The problem for me with writing is that once you’ve written the story/novel, the work has just begun. Editing takes ten times the energy and time of actually writing. I’ll get the hang of it one of these days. I hope.

Stalling

The prelim work on my novel is done. All that remains now is to get writing. Beginnings are easy and hard. The first paragraph is always hard. After that, it comes on its own generally. I haven’t written that first paragraph.

On the other hand, I finally finished a story I’d been working on for four years. I’d gotten stuck at the halfway point, dreading a scene the story needed but that I wasn’t sure how to handle. After a friend lit a proverbial fire under me with a supportive but kicking my ass type of lecture this last weekend, I decided to just buckle down and finish it. It went pretty well, actually. Now I’ve got the fun task of editing it.

Speaking of editing, hopefully my new computer will be up and running soon so I can salvage my novel from the old one and get cracking on that. I’d like to have a comprehensive edit done by March. I’m not sure 28 days is reasonable but I need some sort of deadline or I’ll just keep putting it off forever.

And finally, I called the graduate program I applied to and they have everything they need. Which means now it really is the waiting game. Thankfully I have tons of projects to distract me. I hate wait.

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