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Posts Tagged ‘novel’

Thank You Fruit Tree

Six false starts and as many days later and I’ve finally moved into chapter 2.  Apparently it takes techno, sharp cheese (Razors of flavor…sounds like a bad punk band), and giant glorious bing cherries.  As William Carlos Williams put it,

“Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold”

So today I have 3.5 pages of decent progression.  I’ve decided to tell foreshadowing to take a hike, it’ll work itself in or it won’t, but the plot bus is leaving.  Foreshadowing is something I can write in later if needs be.  I’m still annoyed with myself for getting stuck in the first place.  And for it taking a mental pumping session akin to psyching myself up for athletic performance to get me working again.  Not that I believe brilliant gems should fall onto my screen without any effort, but it is always frustrating when you can see the story in the periphery of the mind but not quite make the leap to reach it.

Onward! Tomorrow, I finish the chapter and perhaps start the next one.

I have failed short story Monday, however. I might write one this week, but frankly, I’m thrilled enough to be writing novel again that I might just go with the momentum of that. We’ll see.

Perfectionists Ate My Baby

I’m stuck. Yes, again.  I think in some ways the first draft of this novel has broken me.  It is such a mess (hence the total rewrite instead of just editing) that I’m terrified to let the second draft be anything less than perfect.  So I agonize over every word, every concept, until builds into a huge pile of stagnated nothing.

I think I know where I want to go from here. I think I see how to start doing it.  But I can see the little problems that will crop up later, the complications of plot and character that I’m not sure how to write myself free from.  I’m suffering from a desire to get it right the first time, amusingly enough because I didn’t get it right the first time.  I don’t know if I have another total rewrite in me.  I don’t know if I love this story that much.  I feel I owe my first novel a better chance at life than just that one messy draft.  I’m terrified that it will come out just as ugly and misshapen, another monstrosity to expose on the hillside as I tell myself “oh, there there, you’ll have more children.”  What if they are all monsters?

So, I’m stuck.  What’s my plan of attack?

To write.

As they say: here goes nothing.

Thoughts on Rewriting

I’m one chapter into the rewrite of my first novel.  I’m glad I decided to start anew rather than continue trying to fix what came before.  I doubt I’ll use much of the old material beyond the plot, characters, and some ideas.  There are particular challenges, however.  In rewriting I’m essentially constructing another novel from scratch.  This means I have to do most of the work over again.  It would be very easy to overwhelm myself with the concept of “Too Much Work.”

To combat this, I’ve decided on the major large changes and then have narrowed my focus.  I outlined with the major changes.  For this rewrite, however, I’m mainly working on getting the characters motivated.  Looking at the first draft I don’t really feel connected to anyone in the novel.  I feel like I could, maybe, like a couple of the characters, but they aren’t quite there yet for me.  They feel flat.   This is not acceptable.  I read novels 70-80% for the people in them.  I want to write novels that have the same draw.

To do this, I’m plunging in and going (perhaps) a bit overboard.  I’ve done a lot of hand written background brainstorming for everyone.  I’ve made RPG character profiles for a couple of them.  I’ve given them disorders, quirks, interests.  Essentially, I’ve thrown the kitchen sink of character building at my people.  I was in the bath when I realized that I needed to do this.  Before a day or two ago, they weren’t talking to me.  I couldn’t really see the characters as more than wooden dolls in a nice set I’d created.  I don’t want to play with dolls (dolls are creepy. Seriously creepy).

With this focus, now I can continue the rewrite.  Plot and setting can be tweaked.  If I can manage a few compelling, interesting, dare I say memorable characters, the rest can follow.  The rest will follow.

Here’s a list of the changes between drafts one and two.  (In no particular order).

The Dude is now named Ryg.  He’s also agoraphobic and OCD.

Sif talks less.  In fact, she pretty much only talks to Hex.  She’s also far more psychotic and less moral than before.

Sif and Hex are already in a relationship.

Hex is not the jealous type anymore.  He’s now the type to hide his insecurities with sarcasm.  He’s also more accepting of Sif and her issues.

Kadin is a more major character who contributes to a twist.

The setting is quite a bit different.  There are no cars now, just small electric vehicles  and personal transportation.  Stuff is transported on the electric rail system under the city or via carts hooked to the personal vehicles.  I’ve refined and altered the food system as well as government.  The city only has one main street now, the whole thing is a spiral.  The districts are more defined (and in fact can be closed off from each other if necessary).  The setting is much more complex, but also I hope more unique and interesting.  Since I’m focusing on character, not setting as much, I will definitely have to flesh some things out later I think.  That’s what the next bit of editing is for.

The plot is essentially the same, but with some more challenges and complexities tossed in.  I’ve removed the secret society and am working on making everyone motivated due to character desires rather than using the GM Stick.

On another note: sometimes I think I definitely bit off more than I really should have for this first novel.  I’m writing what boils down to a Political Cyberpunk Adventure/Thriller with medical and fantastical elements.  Couldn’t I have just started out with a nice straightforward quest fantasy or something?  It feels like learning to walk by running a marathon.

Tidbit of a Beginning

So… I started the rewrite.

I’m calling it Casimir Hypogean until further notice.

And now, for your enjoyment, here are the first few lines:

“…. Mist, pervasive and cloying, settled in between the tall buildings of Casimir’s spiral streets. The fog dimmed the bright advertisements pasted on screens, blurred the shining lamps and ever searching eyes of the security drones. On the far outskirts of the shell, beneath the conical towers of the aeroponic gardens, two shadows were up to no good.  ….”

(Now, to get things going properly, because I got two pages into the first chapter and realized it would work better as the second chapter.  So I restarted the first chapter.  I like it okay so far.)

Into the Dark

All right.  The (final, maybe? hopefully?) outline of Dangerous is done.  I’ve tweaked it as much as I can without actually starting to write the damn thing.  Writing begins tomorrow.  I’m terrified.  However, I can already see the shape of things to come.  Even the outline has more tension and peril than the rough draft.  I’ve removed extraneous plot bits and jammed it full of character conflict.  Will it be enough to make a story I like out of this mess?  No way to tell except to write and see what happens.

By my calculations I need to write about 6 pages a day to have the novel done by the time classes start.  I’d like to have a draft I can hand to people by then.  I’m not sure how feasible having a manuscript worthy of trying to sell by December is at this point, but I’ve got nothing to lose in trying to get it done.  Hopefully if my readers can get me comments within a month (and if the novel isn’t totally broken again), I can power through some mad editing and get a semblance of a decent book ready for queries.  It’s bad that I still don’t have any idea how I’d sum up the plot in a couple sentences, isn’t it?  Oh well, maybe by end of this draft I’ll have that nailed.  And a decent title.  Because “Dangerous” is a stupid title.  I suppose I could call it “Casimir” (the name of the city it takes place in) or some variation on that.  “Casimir Conflict”?  “Casimir Hypogean”?  I don’t know.  Any ideas?

I’m aiming for 18 pages this week, then 30 each week after.  And I’m taking weekends off, damnit. I will not burn out.  This is do or die time now.  It’s unlikely I’m ever going to have as much free time ever again as I do now.  Plus it will give me a decent feel for how well this whole writing for a living thing might work someday if I’m fortunate (and persistent) enough to be able to do it full time.

Accepting the Reality of Dangerous

It’s time.  Time to accept that no matter how many iron-on patches and crazyglue fixes I try with my first novel, it’s over.  This edit isn’t happening.  Yeah, I’m halfway through.  Sure, I’ve hit the 200 page mark. Woohoo.

It sucks. End of story.  My ears bleed when I read the text aloud.  The writing barely feels like it’s mine.  I don’t really care about the story, the characters are flat and noncommittal, the action without actual peril, the setting half-assed.  I can fix all these things.  But not if I’m stuck in the framework of the original novel.  It is time not to revise, but to rewrite.

I’m making a list right now.  On the list go all the things I like about the original text.  These are things I’ll keep.  I might end up with a wholly different novel than I had before. I don’t know.  I’m going to keep the basics of the plot, the setting, and most of the characters.  I can rebuild it, better, faster, stronger.

If I can’t write a whole new novel, then I don’t belong writing novels.  This is going to be a lot more work than ironing on patches and debugging the original.  I think I’ll be lucky if I’m done by July (my tentative goal). I want the novel to feel like I wrote it though.  I want to write characters I’m interested in, and I want the time to find their voices, to weave their cares and conflicts into the story.

It also means that my other two novels are going on the back burner.  I think this is good.  They can percolate in my head for a while longer.

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.

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.

Presents! (To myself)

The last couple days have been surprisingly productive.  I’ve gotten the bones for my novel project number one, which from here on out will be titled Chwedl.  I’m part way through scripting a comic.  And I think I really am going to rewrite my other novel in the first person. (Working title of that novel is Dangerous, btw).

The comic I should be working on is Past Dark, but this other one leapt into my head and wants to get written.  I must obey.  My writing is like that.  Things sort of get worked on in their own time.  And if I don’t obey the impulse to work on something, I often get stuck in a limbo state where nothing seems to come together clearly.  So I’ve learned to not force the process (although occasionally kicking it does seem to have some effect).  This comic is tentatively titled Bad Day.  And yes, it’s about a girl having a very very bad day.  I think when finished it will only be about 75-80 pages.  Perfect length for a graphic novel, right?  Hopefully my artist will want to draw it.

Beginnings are hard.  They make or break a story for me.  The twins in the novel are fairly clear personality-wise.  I can picture them easily.  The main girl, Aine, I can’t picture as clearly.  I know I want her to be resourceful, funny, and fearless (all the good things a heroine needs, right?).  I can see what she looks like, that part is easy.  She’s a foundling child of the fair folk, so her appearance is dictated by that.  But I can’t really hear her voice yet.  She still is just an instrument of the plot.  Makes it hard to begin the novel.  But I’m outlining, and hopefully once the actual process has started, she’ll be more talkative.  So the first words have yet to be written.  My goal is to have the handwritten draft done by May.  Then the first revision and typed version done by August.  At that point I’ll be making friends read it so I can get a polished version done by December.  At which point, well, hopefully it will be ready for queries and suchlike.

And then I’ll rinse, repeat the process.  Oh, and of course write up two comics, another novel revision/rewrite on Dangerous, and hopefully have gotten in to Grad School.

So much to do, might as well go to sleep. Or back to outlining book.  Maybe my next post I’ll go through the whole starting process for me writing a novel.  Not that I have the process totally nailed down, having only gone through it one whole time now.  But I know I’m always interested in different people’s approaches to writing, so it is only fair I share mine.

5am + 2 hours sleep

It seems I can now perhaps add my comic back to the list of writing projects. Years ago I did a webcomic that made it a year before crashing and burning. Someone has camped our website (curse you!). But my artist has decided that she can indeed fit comic back into her life despite a full plate of law-school and hunting down Harry Dresden for lunch. (To have lunch with, not eat. Important distinction. And yes, we both know he’s fictional. Geez). Past Dark will live again. Although perhaps not in web form. We, and by that I mean me, have a crazy plan to finish the thing into a nice 200 or so page graphic novel or three and try for publication. Her art is awesome, the story is beautifully improbably and steeped in mythology, and we share a brain cell.

This project will be separate from my novel project, but it’s still writing related, therefore, it gets mention. I may even post a few preview panels once we have some art going again. I’ve got to dig out my notebooks and re-acquaint myself with the characters and plan I had for the plot(s). I think it will also require doing a side story for a character I really liked, but that doesn’t have a place in the main story anymore.

Which segues nicely into my issues with stories sometimes. It’s funny how once I’m in the middle of something I realize that I’m more interested in a side character than the main ones. Like in my first novel, for example. One of the main characters and definitely the most developed of my flat sad peoples was a bit character I’d considered killing early on. But then a love story started to happen with chemistry between him and a main character. And then it ended up that he had two small children. I didn’t have the heart to off him. Also, he’s kind of funny in a stereotypical sarcastic manly way. I like him enough that I’ve considered trying to rewrite the novel from first person with his point of view, even though the structure I have for it won’t work at all without the omniscient perspective. It’d be a good exercise, however. I’m beginning to forgive authors like Robin McKinley for being so damn slow with writing novels. (Envy me, I have the reading copy of her latest because having a mother who works in a bookstore is superhandy.)

Sorry, tired. My point though, I think, is that characters always seem to rule my stories. And not the ones I necessarily think will do so. I have another story I’ve been working on for years, which began as being about a woman and is now looking like it’s going to be more about her husband. Or my new novel, which I had thought was mainly going to be about the twins, but will likely mostly involve the girl’s quest.

But this is my writing process. Disjointed. An investigation into my own headmeat more than a guided journey. Perhaps when I’m 50 I’ll have some sort of set way of creating. But I hope I won’t. Even if it means trashing a story and starting over. Even if it means trashing hundreds of pages and diving into a voice cries out over the others, “follow me. I’m the tale.”

Also, to be fair, Hex is the only character who doesn’t die or fall unconscious at any point in the novel. So he’s sort of the natural choice there. Or something. I just wrote my way into a whole huge project, didn’t I? I need to learn to sleep more. Seriously.

(Spell check hates superhandy and headmeat. I’m going to single-handedly bring kennings back into style. You’ll see.)

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