What's my plot?

I have this nasty habit of starting way too many things and not finishing any of them. Cases-in-point: Isaac's Eyes. Vaampyr. Providence.

But that doesn't stop me from having ideas, and what's an idea without at least some brainstorming around it?

I've had two short stories published this summer with Pill Hill Press - "Last Rites," in Haunted, and "Evergreen", in Fem Fangs (find them here: http://www.pillhillpress.com/books.html). And these two stories were not sitting around on my hard-drive, waiting for a publisher to find them. No, I wrote them because I saw an call for submissions with vague enough (yet specific enough) theme descriptions that I decided to drum up some ideas then plot them out. And I'm glad I did, obviously. So, I can't completely discount my ideas just because I'm working on something else (or several "something elses") right?

Which brings me to my thought.

I have an idea, one that's been churning for a while, and Pill Hill is accepting submissions for an anthology that fits the bill of my idea.

The problem is, my idea is vague. It's a world, and character, and a few specific scenes throughout, and the beginnings of an idea for a plot. But I have no idea what kind of supernatural beings will take over my setting, whether they will be peacefully (somewhat, because they can never completely be peaceful!) co-exist with the humans or just decimate them all, how my MC runs into hem, or basically anything else that helps me get the ball rolling.

So at the moment I have snow in July and a woman with a cool name in an indescript job. Sounds like I have my work cut out for me!

A friend of mine linked me today to Holly Lisle's mini plot clinic, which is free, and I've actually done it before (on a very basic level, as in: lesson 1), and it was helpful. So, I think I'll give it a whirl with Unnamed Urban Fantasy story (which I'll call UUF for now!) in mind. On a side-note, I was thinking that my NaNoWriMo novel this year will be Providence 2 (with a much cooler name) but maybe it'll be UUF... hmmm...

I can't reproduce anything from the plot clinic. It says so on the first page ☺ But it's full of exercises and ideas so basic I can't believe I never thought of a story that way before - and I think it might help. The whole (as in, not-mini) plot clinic book has a quote that really struck me today as I'm staring at my poorly outlined story, and I thought it was a simple enough idea I can post it.

For all you writers out there, remember this (courtesy of Holly Lisle):

Content is not logic’s strong point. Logic will not give you passion. It will not give you heart. It will not give you magic.

That's it. Passion, heart, magic - that's a plot. There's more to it than that, of course, but that's where it starts. So with that in mind, I'm going to do a few exercises and see if I can make some magic.

PS -- the weather's awesome, so I might do this outside. Gotta love early October!! ♥

Thoughts

I just had a slight freak-out moment. I was sitting on campus, revising some short stories for my creative writing class, when I remembered the slew of campus-related short story contests with deadlines in February. This caused the following train of thought:

Speaking of February, Amazon's annual Breakout Novel Award contest is in February.

Holy shit! February! That's two months!!

I wanted to have IE ready for it in February 2009 but I wasn't ready in time. I swore to myself I'd be ready in 2010.

Holy shit, I won't be ready in 2010! This time last year I was at the same point in my first draft as I am right now in my 2nd draft. I thought I could do it, but I couldn't. There's no way I can polish it by February.

Another year. ANOTHER. YEAR. that I haven't met any of my writing goals. Another year that I have sworn to myself I'd meet a deadline and I haven't.

Another year IE isn't done, when the 1st draft was 75% done in 3 months. The other 25% and 50% of the 2nd draft I have done now have taken about 16 months to finish. And I still have the rest of d2 and at least another draft.

Why can't I meet my goals? Will IE ever get finished?

I love IE. I want to finish it!!

Arrrgggghhhhh!!!!!!!

.... and those were my thoughts. It's finals time, can you tell?

Finals and Writing

I'm making a small amount of headway toward finishing Providence. But to be honest, getting sick the first week of December and having finals the second and third weeks makes finishing a new novel tough. But I'm trying to work on it a little at a time so I don't lose momentum. Hopefully after my last final (A&P at 6pm on the 16th) I will get to finish it by the 31st!!

Finals... ugg. Any college student out there knows I don't even need to say anymore. But I will. Finals are actually going quite well. I have a portfolio for creative writing, a presentation and paper for linguistics, a non-cumulative test for A&P, and a website for web-writing. The website is due tomorrow so after I turn it in I can concentrate on Monday's presentation for linguistics then Wednesday's papers and exam. I'm loving web design, though I wish I had more graphics to work with from the company.

I'm also trying to finish my application to the University of Floriday graduate program and compile some pieces to send to IUPUI's literary magazine, Genesis. I'm working on a poem I'm calling Sophia's Song, which fans of IE will appreciate, and revising a short story I wrote two years ago that has been rejected by numerous magazines.

I'm getting caught up on bills since Mike made a fat paycheck on the 11th, but it'll still take us a bit to dig all the way out of the trenches of debt. It's hard keeping my head up, but I'm managing.

So that's the third week of December, 2009 in a nutshell. Wow, the year's gone by fast!!!

Blah-ness

Today is "blah."

I couldn't sleep last night; around midnight, after finishing my book -- which was the only reason I had managed to stay up as long as I had since I was dreadfully tired -- I had the realization that the end of October is near. I'm one of those people who hates when time seems to fly by so quickly I feel unaccomplished, so I started thinking of the goals I had set for this year. Namely, I had wanted to complete the 2nd and 3rd drafts of IE. I figured I would aim for 10/31 (so I could concentrate fully on NaNo in November) and whatever I didn't manage to get finished I could finish up by 12/31. This is exactly what happened last year during the first draft. I started in April and wanted to finish by 10/31. I didn't, but from 12/1 to 12/31 I did finish. I really didn't think I would be only 6 chapters into the 2nd draft at this point in this year. Blah.

So, the point is: up all night. Extremely tired. I get VERY cranky when I'm tired. I think I'm low on iron, which would explain the excessive tiredness for the past few weeks. Blech.

Anyhow, shopping went well today -- bought 3 pairs of pants and a pair of boots. This is a HUUUUUGE deal for me, as I wear a large size pants in tall, and when I can find the width/style that fits, I inevitably can't find them tall enough. I feel like I'm fighting floods all year. And, I wear a size 13W shoe, which makes it impossible to find comfortable shoes. Thus, I wear sandals most of the year. It sucks when it snows. But today, I managed to find not one, not even two, but THREE pairs of boots in my size!!! I bought the black ones because they made my feet look the smallest, and called it a day. Very exciting. Very exhausting.

Now I'm home. Psych isn't on (sad face), I can't seem to concentrate on endochondral ossification so save my life, I'm extremely anxious about my failure to finish IE, and all I want to do is go to sleep but I have midterms next week. Double blah.

It's gonna be one of those weekends, I think....

Disenchantment

The high of ripping through several d2 chapters of IE is wearing off. Slowly but surely. A huge part of that is posting chapter 1 for fellow writers/readers to critique. Apparently, so far the vote is unanimous that some of the changes I made between d1 and d2 are not welcome.

Ollie is too lecture-y.
Sophia is too whiny.
Trent is too cold.
The conversations aren't age-appropriate.
There's too much dialogue.
The characters don't have original voices.
The new POV/tense is jarring.

Sigh.

I really shouldn't have posted that for crits yet, I don't think.

But I won't give up. I just might slow down a bit, even though I'm going to try not to.

Someone remind me again why I chose this hobby/future profession? It's mind-boggling!!

Rewriting

Rewriting Isaac's Eyes is going SO much better after I let it simmer for a while. Just this month, I have rewritten/revised 6.5 chapters. Since finishing the first draft on New Years' Eve of 2008, I had gotten exactly 3 chapters revised before now. And I had to re-revise those this week. So, it's been pretty productive! I just hope I can keep up this momentum and get the whole 2nd draft of the book done by the end of the year. I never wanted it to take this long to get finished in the first place.

After d2 (draft 2) is done, I plan to let IE sit for another month or two and then work on d3. Hopefully (fingers crossed!) I'll only need to get to d4 before I can start working on the dreaded query/synopsis/praying to God someone in the publishing field even remotely likes my work. The way I see it, d1 is for writing, d2 is for rewriting/revising, and d3 is for editing. Of course, there will be many half-drafts in between, and probably a few more editing drafts. In the case of IE, d2 is mostly for reWRITING, instead of reVISING, because I have added so much to the plot, characters, and overall complexity of the story since d1. So, what I'm doing right now is more rewriting than anything. In some cases -- like chapters 4, 5, and 6 -- completely re-writing the entire chapters... which is nice. It's back to the ole' blank canvas of d1 that inspires me to keep writing. I like it.

Stephen King and Elizabeth Lyons didn't have much to say to me about rewriting, but I have a feeling I'll be using much of their wisdom -- and that of many others -- to finish this draft. Especially if I want to make headway before school starts on August 26th (senior year!!! for real this time!).

Off to write some more. I'm adding a new series of flashbacks to the story, told backward from chapter 2 throughout the story (which is a basic forward-chronological structure, no tricks), and this flash is all new. And exciting. And hopefully gives some of my critters (those who critique my work, not small animals ☺) a taste of what they've asked for. Just a taste.

On Writing

I'm reading Stephen King's writing guide, appropriately titled, On Writing. I am also reading Elizabeth Lyon's revision guide, also appropriately titled, Manuscript Makeover. They are both very interesting, and very, very different.

I thought I'd give out some details of what I've found interesting from King's book, since I've shared a little of Lyon's already. But not too much, because what fun would that be? If you like what I post, you can go buy the book yourself ☺

On Writing

The first piece of advice marked with a green and brown sticky-note in my copy is:

"When you write a story, you're telling yourself the story. When you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not in the story." (page 57)

This may sound simple enough, but sometimes I think we writers forget this. We get so caught up in the grammar (How many adverbs do I have on this page? Should I use "said" or an alternative? How many times in this chapter did I use the word "she"?) and the worry that someone (anyone, just one person, who happens to live under a rock across the world) won't like this particular word/line/phrase, that we lose sight of our mission. Our mission is to write, to tell a story the best we can, and hope, nay, pray, that someone (anyone, just one person, who may or may not happen to live under a rock across the world) gets it. That's it. That's all we have to do. Simple, right?

The second piece I noted from this book is on page 134. Yes, there is plenty of wisdom between pages 57 and 134, but I'm sharing the ones I felt important enough to mark with the green-and-brown striped sticky-note. It really falls into what I was just saying, so apparently there is a theme here:

"The object of fiction isn't grammatical correctness but to make the reader welcome and then tell them a story... to make him/her forget, whenever possible, that h/she is reading a story at all. ... Writing is seduction.* Good talk is part of seduction..."

*Did you like that? Writing is "seduction." How 'bout them apples? I feel pretty damn good already. So if I ever become a professional writer, can I say that my job is "professional seductress?"... does that sound too... street-corner-worthy?

Ya know what, that's all I'm going to share today. I think I've found a theme and I like it. To go along with these professional words of wisdom, I'd like to share one more thing. I read a forum post on CC (www.critiquecircle.com) that has stayed with me for a few days. This forum was about Dean Koontz, but I found something that really interested me along these same lines. I have no idea how to make a pretty little link to the forum, but it doesn't matter much anyhow because only members of CC can read it. But, if you are already a member, or are thinking of becoming one (CC is the best writers' group on the Internet, I swear it. If you're not a member, you should be one. It's free. Go sign up. I'll wait.), just plug in some strategic search words and you can find the original post. Here's what I liked:

CC'ers are forever wailing the bad writing of successful authors. And I don't think it is that only once you've sold tons of books you can do that, because if you go back to the first book of these authors, they are just as bad, usually worse. I've read tons of Koontz, and his strength is definitely not his prose.
What I really think is going on is that the 'rules', the 'writing no-nos', aren't nearly as important as we think they are, at least not to the reader. In fact, I think we are handicapping ourselves beyond our ability to be productive and successful. It is as if we are in a race, but have decided that the only way to go about it is with a backpack full of bricks across our shoulders and three china teacups balanced on our heads.
And there go Koontz, King, Rowling, et al, running blithely along miles ahead of us.
Meanwhile, we keep checking with each other to see how well packed our bricks are.

That just amazed me. How true is that, fellow writers? Instead of doing our business -- our telling... our seducing -- we worry WAY too much about the technicalities of the craft. (PS, that's what CC is for, to help with those technicalities once you've told your story. So, here's another chance to go sign up. No, I don't get squat for plugging the website, but I like it, and you will too.)

That's about all I have for now. I am revising my 2nd draft of IE currently. I'm taking a break from Illusive Truths (tentative title, I just don't know how I feel about it yet), my SuNoWriMos project (bust! I only wrote 20K when my goal was 60K in two months...) to do some heavy rewriting. More on that later. I have to get back to work.

Now, back to your regularly scheduled program...

Where does the time go?

Not only has it been two months (ok, 2 days shy...) since I've posted on here, but it's already almost the SEVENTH month of 2009!! I can't believe how quickly time has FLOWN.

I still have a gazillion things to do before winter hits. Namely, finish the Christmas stockings, teach Austin to ride a bike, work my ass off in school so I only have 3 classes left by the time 2010 starts, lose some weight, and get a job. That's a lot of big things, and I can't do a lot of the little things on my list until some of the bigger ones are taken care of. So, I guess I'd better get crackin'.

A couple other MUCHO IMPORTANTE things to add to my list: finish the 2nd draft/total revision of IE!!!! Finish the first draft of Vaampyr/A&G. Finish the first draft of Sawyer (untitled works tend to take on the heroine's name, in this case, Sawyer Jackson, Ph.D.).

Speaking of Sawyer, SuNoMriMos is not going too well. School is CraZy and I only have about 6K done so far; my goal is 60K by July 31. This could get ugly. Luckily, finals are tomorrow (woot!) so I will have almost 3 whole weeks of peace, where I'll only have one online class to deal with. I plan on getting LOTS of writing done, LOTS of working out in, and even working on my Christmas stockings ☺ Then, July 20, I'm going to be in class M-F from 1:30-5:45pm. Could be worse, but 4 hours a day sucks big-time. Oh, well. I'll get the class over with and be ready to apply for graduation!!

In other news.... no, that's about it. Life is dull. I'm watching my high school classmates post pictures from around the world, where they're living the single life or having a blast with their spouses, many of them having children, most of them loving their jobs (or at least having one)... and I feel left out. Gotta get on that, but not quite sure how. My bro is in jail, so I haven't been able to see Lillie in a while, which makes me SOOOOOO sad. I miss her so much :( She's getting huge, walking, and her hair is so curly it makes me want to just play with it all day. Hopefully I'll get to spend more time with her soon. That alone would make up for the left-out-edness.

That's it. Life is boring. Not much to say. If I get around to it, I may post an excerpt or two from my revisions. That could be fun.

Curls and More

So I got a perm yesterday. I can’t decide if I like it or not, but for the money I spent on it, I want to force myself to like it. My hope had been that my in-between hair (not curly, not straight, but mostly messy-wavy) would finally have a purpose if I permed it. My hairstylist is really nice and I love her (so, of course, Friday’s her last day!) but I’m not as happy with my curls as I would like. I feel like my hair is flat, possibly even flatter than when it was straight. Sad day.

Here are the first pictures of said perm. Look at them now, because they’re probably the only one’s you’ll see unless I learn to love it. Of course, I’m giving it a few days because right now, I can’t even wash it or put product in it. So we’ll see.

BEFORE:

AFTER (in bad lighting, ugg):

In other news… well, not much is going on. I’m getting DSL today so my Internet connection will finally be stable (fingers crossed!). School starts on Monday and I’m SO excited!!! But, my financial aid is still being a pain in the ass, so there’s a chance I won’t be able to go L I’m stuck on chapter 5 of IE in the 2nd draft. It’s more tedious than I thought it would be, and my first 4 chapters aren’t as polished as I thought they would be, given the amount of time I spent on them. I still don’t have a job, but I won’t feel quite so bad about it once school starts. Though I really need to get one so I can continue to pay bills. Arg.

That’s about it. 2009 seems just like any other year, so far. Hopefully it turns out to be a good year!!

90K... and Some Other Stuff ☺

In writing:

I hit 90K last night on IE. I only have 5-10K left and I'm DONE with the shitty first draft!! I've written between 3200 and 4200 words each day the last couple of days, and I hope to hit at least 3K again today. It's been slow because my last few chapters all have some stuff already written, which means when I go to finish each scene, I have to redo the old past tense, 3rd person voice since I'm not writing all new stuff in present tense, 1st person. I also added a whole new chapter that was over 3K words, so even though I love it and I feel accomplished, I don't feel any closer to my goal since it didn't cross anything off my to-do list.

My fMC (female main character) is suddenly a bit spunkier than before, thanks to my 30 day forray into a fantasy world where my fMC was a bad ass vaampyr. And me 2nd mMC (duh, male main character) has wisened up a bit and now they have spent the last 3 chapters fighting. The 1st mMC is doing his own thing, heating up my screen, and at this very moment all hell is breaking loose.

It's wonderful. ☺

In life:

I have a job interview for Tuesday! A company I interviewed for back in August just called me back. They want me to come in for another interview for a different position. Maybe I'll like it better than I liked the first position. They gave that one to someone else, so hopefully this one will be a better fit for me. It's just down the road from my house, so it's very convenient. Keep your fingers crossed for me!

Christmas is coming up. Big duh. Shopping is not going well since we have no money. Maybe I'll get this job and get a paycheck right before Christmas? Yeah, that's pushing my luck. We'll see.

My neck has been killing me lately, giving me a really bad headache in one certain spot. So I'm sitting here with one of those ThermaCare heat wraps on it and Icy Hot (mmm my favorite smell!) on my jaw and every place in my neck that isn't covered by the wrap. It sucks and I can't turn my neck. Grrr.

That's about it for now. I was really just excited to share my word count.

While I'm here, I'll share my favorite line that I wrote last night. I literally punched the air and went "Bow!" (or something similar to that) after I typed it. It was just. That. Good.

Standing just outside the bathroom door with tears in his grey eyes is my husband. And it looks like he heard every word I didn’t say.

Now, out of context, it probably sounds weird. How can he hear what she doesn't say? ......
You'll just have to read it to find out ☺

NaNo's Over -- Now what??

Well, I did it. I wrote over 50,000 words in 30 short days. It was tough, but I loved it. But now I have this nagging question.... What do I do now?

I picked IE back up and made some drastic decisions about it. Instead of 3rd person, past tense, which has ALWAYS been my preferred writing style, I've decided to switch to 1st person, present tense. I feel like the whole thing flows more smoothly, and readers can connect with the MC much better this way. My opinion was backed up by my loyal reader, Mandy... and I *will* make her pay for the 80,000+ words I now have to revise!!!

So, here's my goal. I want to have IE finished by the new year, the rough draft that is. Then, I'm going to spend January revising her. And revising her. And revising still. And Mandy's going to help. And then I'll revise again.

THEN... my goal, as crazy as it sounds, is to have it revised to the point where I'm not ashamed to show it to people... and submit it on February 2, 2009, to the Amazon Breakthrough Novel contest, found here: http://www.amazon.com/abna . I know it's a really long shot that I'll have anything actually finished by then, and this contest was part of the reason I wanted the first draft done by Halloween. But it's at least a goal that will keep me moving towards finishing the first draft by 12/31. Even if she doesn't get polished enough to submit by 2/2/09, she'll still be pretty damn close. Case in point: Since NaNo ended, I've already written 5,038 words on IE and done some revision on the tenses that I mentioned earlier. That's pretty good, considering I took the first two days of the month off from writing.

So, there are my writing goals for the forseeable future. I'd love to including finishing Vaampyr in there, but I want to focus on IE first. I WILL work on Vaampyr whenever possible, like when I get burnt out on IE for the day. But IE is much closer to being done than Vaampyr, so it's my main concentration right now.

In the new year, I'd like to finish IE (totally), finish Vaampyr totally and give her a name, start my next novel (hopefully to be a series of novels), and complete at least one polished short story per month. Plus, shop those shorts around. Oh, and I'd like to revise the small stack of shorts I have ready right now, and shop them. AND, I'd like to get the rough drafts of my two Unfinisheds done.... it'll be a busy year, but I'm really getting into writing mojo lately so I think I can do it. Especially since I can't afford to be in school right now, so I have a lot more free time than I have in the last several years.

Nothing new besides all that. Still job-less, still school-less, still Lillie-less... and still pretty upset about all of that. But I'm writing, and that's really important to me right now.

Missing Lillie, Seeing Saw, and 8 Days Til NaNo

Due to a really bad Internet connection, I haven’t been able to post my progress on... well, anything, regularly. So, here’s the sitch:

IE is ALMOST DONE!!!! The first draft, anyhow, which Anne Lamott calls the “shitty first draft,” pardon my French. I’m at 76K words out of an estimated 90-95K. This is the longest I’ve ever stuck with a novel. I hope to finish it by Halloween, and some days I get a killer word count in. But others are pretty bland (91, anyone?!). So we’ll see. Either way, I’ll be really close to finished by the time November starts.

Speaking of November… 8 days til NaNo! (As if you didn’t already know that…) I’m PSYCHED!!! My good ole’ reading dummy and I have been going over the plot. It’s gonna be CrAzY! I keep getting tempted to start writing but I’m not a cheater. So, I think I’ll hatch a plan to take a long nap on Halloween so I can wake up and start writing at 12:01am. It sounds good in theory, anyhow. J

My region’s NaNo Kick-Off party is tomorrow evening. It sucks that I can’t go. But I have good reason – it’s my 3rd wedding anniversary!! I’d show you a wedding pic, but well, when you elope at the courthouse… you don’t really have any. I don’t think we have plans but it would still be pretty rude of me to go chill with strangers during the dinner hour.

In other news, my beautiful niece Lillie spent 6 days with us recently. We just took her home yesterday. I cried so hard when I was packing her stuff up to go, and again after we dropped her off. I’d keep her forever if I could. The way things are looking with her parents, maybe I have a chance… Anyhow, the point is, I miss her terribly. She lives a little over an hour away, and after dropped her off, hubby and I went and had some Mexican food. Then on the way home I wanted to stop in and see her again. But I figured that would make me even sadder, so we didn’t. BTW, Lillie’s 6 month’s old (on 11/5) and the best baby ever personality-wise. I love her to pieces. We took her to get her 6-month pics this week, and I can’t wait to get them back on the 6th. They’re SO adorable!! Lillie’s named after my grandma, who died a year and a half ago. Not a day goes by when I don’t miss her. I need at least one Lillie in my life!!

I saw Saw V last night... stayed up late (I’m getting old!) for the midnight showing. It was SO not worth it. Scott Patterson had a bad toupee, or real hair that looked like a bad toupee… the entire movie was flashbacks, and the ending that Myspace said I wouldn’t believe – it was cheap and not at all the “OMG!” ending I had hoped for. Everyone I went with felt the same way. Man, what a waste of prime sleeping time!!!

I guess that’s it for now. I’m really trying to write a pivotal scene in IE and I’m hitting brainfreeze like crazy. I’ve been avoiding this scene for that reason – it’s been ½ written for a while but I can’t seem to find a way to end it. I freakin’ hate that. Maybe I’ll let my reading dummy help….

Adios, Amigos! Until we meet again – which will hopefully be soon because NaNo starts in 8 days!!


Books I’m reading:
No Plot? No Problem! -- Chris Baty (the NaNo book, but it’s really inspring. Pick it up!)
Will Write for Shoes: How to Write a Chick Lit Novel – Cathy Yardley (IE isn’t exactly chick lit but it’s close enough that for $5 the book was worth it. There’s some valuable advice in there!)
Night Embrace – Sherrilyn Kenyon (just for shiggles!)