To catch you up, I had started work on my urban fantasy piece and almost immediately hit a stumbling block. I still like the concept for the story, but was having problems getting the characters to come to life for me (even if one was a vampire, but that's not important yet.) I did some character development but was struggling with starting and couldn't figure out why, until I realized I wasn't at all sure the tone I wanted to take with it. Yes, vampires are usually rather dark and ominous but I wasn't 100% certain that was the direction I wanted to go; in fact, I was pretty sure it was not. But then what was my tone? I could go humorous or just straight, but without that, I didn't know how to move my story forward, what sort of events would or would not be appropriate, etc. So I put it aside.
Instead, I decided to tackle a project that would (hopefully) give me a lot of experience in arcs - both plot and character - things I know I need to learn, but struggle with. The project? A fantasy quest-type story, serialized over a number of novelettes. This would give me the opportunity to plot out the entire arc of the story, track the development of the cast of five main characters as well as the mini arcs in each of the individual novelettes. This would also give me lots of bite size pieces to edit and polish, rather than having to finish some mammoth 90k thing. Plus, then my very kind writing buddies would have something to read, as I've given then nothing since we started! Oh, and bonus, I would have something to show to readers, that I could spin out over time. Perfect, right? Yea, except that I had no idea what I was doing with the whole plot thing, which was sort of the point, but also the problem. I needed to learn plot, but that's kind of like saying, I want to learn to bake bread and then going into the kitchen and throwing things into a bowl that I thought was in bread, doing stuff to it and hoping it turned into bread. Not a great plan for baking, for those of you who aren't familiar, just sayin'. So I did what any good retired librarian would, I took to the web and did some research. Normally a good plan, until it's not. I was DROWNING in approaches to plotting and outlining and planning, each with it's own set of terms and definitions that while defined, weren't explained in a way I could use. So many blog posts, how-to books and YouTube videos later and I was frustrated, like really frustrated. While examples were helpful in getting the ideas across, those were all backwards-facing; here's a fully formed story, start to end, let's identify the various points. But looking forward, at a blank page, from the start of an idea, putting those plots on the map in front of me was an impossible task. What to do next? Ask the tribe. Social media, for all it's ills and bad press and rabbit holes, has an incredible cross-section of the world and if you can find the right group for the right task, you have a gold mine. So I crafted a simple cry for help, posted it on a few writers groups I was in that seemed the most appropriate, apologizing in advance if someone happened to see it more than once as I acknowledged I was posting wide and went to bed, hoping for some gold. I was not disappointed. Well, I was a little, but not entirely. Yes, I got lots and lots of suggestions on books and blogs - about half I'd already read and while informative, weren't what I needed. For the rest, I put them in a to-do list and fully intend to watch/read all of them. But what was really great, were the handful of people who offered to help me work through it, because that was what I'd asked for. Some kind soul to help walk me through MY story, of trying to identify potential points for my yet-nonexistent story. And while I haven't made much progress in this arena yet, I am so much more confident in my capabilities with a safety net of kind and knowledgeable people at my back. I do want to give a couple of shout outs for resources that I found helpful just in the 36 hours I was looking into things. While I've watched a ton of videos (and my to watch list is longer than ever) I found Dan Wells's talk on the Seven-Plot points VERY helpful. If you decide to watch, I warn you, the opening and closing music is OBNOXIOUS, but at least the video poster acknowledges that in the info. Just skip through the intro and get to the meat. What I think was most helpful for me was not how he defined the points or even what the points were - they match up with most of the info I've found on the standard 3-act structure with a little of the Hero's Journey thrown in for good measure - but rather than he didn't think about them in order they were read. First was the end, then then beginning, then the middle, then various points throughout; as well as why this works. Now, this approach may very well not work for every story or every writer, but for this fantasy piece I'm trying to write, it resonated. But the proof is in the pudding as they say (not sure who says this or why exactly, but they say it dammit!) and I'll have a better handle on if it worked for me in coming days. Oh, and bonus for me - this lecture came out of an event called Life, the Universe and Everything (yes, a riff on Douglas Adams) that's hosted by BYU in Provo, UT every year. They have some incredible videos out there on various topics and one of these years I'm going to watch through them all. Also put this on my calendar for next year to try and attend - I mean, who doesn't want to go to Provo in February! LOL Aaaaand of course this led me down another rabbit hole - we've got events here locally, why not check them out? Why indeed! So I did a little googling and lo and behold, yup, not only do the local sci-fi/fantasy cons have writers tracks, many of them have workshops! Yay! That have very limited spots and require an application including submission. Crap. The first of which has a deadline of mid-July. Oh shit! Guess I have a deadline for the first chapter now. So what am I doing sitting here talking to you?? I gotta go write!
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As crazy as it is to say this, my very first draft of my very first novel is done. I wrapped up the story last Sunday evening right at 85k words. Is it any good? Well, no, to be honest, it's not. But I think it does have some interesting things going on and some potential so we will see what I can make of it. For the time being, I've put it aside - it's been double-triple saved and spell-checked but that's all I'm doing until I'm ready to start editing in a few weeks. When will that be exactly? When my brain has finally stopped obsessing about it - an idea or twist or something still pops in my head from time to time, and I dutifully note it down for my future edits, but until those stop, I'm not going to pick it up again.
Why am I doing this? Excellent question, not sure I have a good answer though. My knee-jerk reaction is that it is so I have enough distance from it to read it as a reader who's reading what's on the page, rather than as the writer who knows what I wanted to convey. Having gone back and read things I've written in the past, I know that the distancing makes it easier for me to be objective in what is working and what is not; almost as if I'm reading someone else's work. The hope is that this distance and clarity will make the editing that much more effective. In the meantime, I've had some great revelations in terms of what I'm working on going forward. I HAD intended to jump into my urban fantasy piece, but while I've got some ideas on the overall plot and a few of the characters, I wasn't particularly excited about the project. I have been struggling to settle on a tone and voice for the whole thing - is it straight urban fantasy? Darker? Comedic? It changes a lot of things depending on which direction I want to go so don't want to start down the wrong path. I still think the project has merit, but I don't think now is the time for me to tackle it. I think it'll keep. Instead, I'm going to work on a serialized fantasy epic based on a game we did ages and ages ago, called the Queen's Hunt. This will give me the opportunity to work on a strong plot-driven story, with a smaller story arc in each release and developing character arcs over the whole thing. I'm leaning towards having each chapter/release told exclusively from the point of view of one character, then changing to another in the next release, so that should be fun. Right now, I'm working on brainstorming the characters I want in my group, the tasks they are going to have to take on in each novelette and how I want them to grow over the course. I'm going to TRY and have a over-arching outline for the series, the first novelette outline, plus rough character sketches for each by the end of June. That's plenty of time, even with five protagonists, plus a couple antagonists, and twelves tasks to complete. Plus, throughout that time, I have to do a lot of world building and come up with the text for the challenge they are going to be tasked with. Whew! Finally, in searching for notes from yesteryear for this new project, I stumbled across a NaNo urban fantasy piece that I really wanted to return to and had thought I'd lost. Nope, it was buried in my Google Drive (which I strangely never look in - I use Dropbox for personal stuff). I haven't read over anything, but am looking forward to seeing what is worthwhile from there in the future. In the meantime, I've started posted weekly goals in a couple of my social media groups to try to keep me focused on not only writing, but also on my education as a writer on any number of topics (writing, editing, publishing, marketing, etc) and yet not get overwhelmed by books to read, webinars to watch, conversations to follow and emails to open. It's been both helpful and stressful - helpful in that it's kept me from diving too deep down a rabbit hole; stressful in that twelve goals in seven days, while still working full-time might have been a bit much to chew; and generally educational as I ended up forgetting to put the fact that I'm listening to a rather long audio book on writing on the list, and then started a few other projects that weren't on the list at all. Hopefully, all this means that I'll have a little better idea of how to craft my goals this next Monday when it rolls around. I'm not going to meet all of my goals for the week, but I think that's ok, as long as I keep striving forward. Happily, this post checks another off my list so, Yea me! Less than 24 hours ago, I didn't know what a Twitter pitch was - today, I've already tweeted once, with a second on deck for lunch time.
So, if you are like me, I'll give you what (little) I now know about Twitter Pitches. These are scheduled events, happening in a very short amount of time - frequently less than 12 hours. Authors use a selected hashtag to indicate participation (#CarinaPitch in this case) and frequently other tags like genre, age category, format, etc. During that time, people following that event's hashtags look for works that interest them - particularly agents and editors. In this case, CarinaPitch is being run by the Carina arm of Harlequin books. If an editor likes your tweet, you can message them for information on submitting a full query. Most Twitter pitches are looking for unpublished but completed manuscripts; Carina, this year, was looking for concept forward so it was very timely for me. In true me fashion, after I found out about this, I went out and did a ton of research into other twitter pitch events, created a spreadsheet to track details, etc. All of the others I found require completed, ready for print, manuscripts, so it will be a while before I go there, but I'll definitely be following the hashtags as the events roll around. First, shout out to Gwynne Jackson from All the Kissing Facebook page for making me aware of the event in the first place. Second, BIG thank you to Marcie McEachern, also from ATK, for coaching so many of us last night on crafting a good pitch tweet. So what did I learn (or think I learned) from this. First, this shit is hard!! 90k is way easier than 280 characters!! But for the real stuff -
So what did I finally end up with? Check them out here: https://twitter.com/KikiDVil/status/1260560163800518657 https://twitter.com/KikiDVil/status/1260617682518454272 Not expecting anything to come of this, but beyond publishing the work they are pitching, some people have found agents through these, and within the first few minutes, I had a retweet and a new follower, so that's fun. Of course, now, I have to keep tweeting, so there is that as a downside too! Want to know more about all the Twitter Pitch events I found? #CarinaPitch #PitMad #SFFPitch (for Sci-Fi & Fantasy) #DVPitch (focusing on diversity in both author and character) In a FB conversation recently, someone asked about self-doubt, and when does it go away? A lot of people, particularly new writers, talk about imposter-syndrome and want to know when they will feel like real writers, when will they quit hating what they are producing?
I commented, but I wanted to talk about it here as well - for my own sake, to look back on when I'm frustrated, as well as anyone else who might stumble across it. I've felt this way forever, probably why it's taken me this long to get serious about writing. And I'm not sure it goes away, ever. Strangely, what has helped me is hearing so many writers, many of them VERY successful talk about how first drafts suck, by their very nature. And that's fine. I try to think of the process of writing like throwing pottery (not that I know anything about it, but it works in my mind) First you get your ideas and tools together (basically story concept) - that's the sketch of the vase or pot or whatever you want to make, plus the wheel and clay and slip and whatever else potters use - can you tell I know zero about pottery yet? Then you throw a big mass of clay on the wheel and start spinning and shaping until it looks like one of those crappy coil ashtrays we all made in art class - This is your first draft! Then you (or I do anyway) let it sit for a while and rest (this is where the analogy devolves into my new quarantine-inspired bread baking obsession, you have to walk away and let the dough rest and rise) Then you come back and start smoothing the edges and rounding the corners and honing the shape = Second draft. And you keep doing this until it's the shape you like = 3rd through infinite drafts. Then you paint it or whatever, fire it and sell it. But you have to make that shitty coil ashtray first. I'm still a ways off from needing them (only half way through my word goal for my novel), I've been looking at tools to help with my initial rounds of edits. I had been toying with doing an initial round of edits after the first half of the novel was done, starting in May - this was because I had initially planned to do both rounds of Camp NaNoWriMo, with half the novel in April and half in June so had a month between to do something else.
However, while I know there are some serious structural edits I need to make and a myriad of copy edits, I've decided to keep working on the work in progress through May and then, after some very rough work, put it away for a few months before tackling serious edits. Either way, I was going to have to get a mental handle on HOW to do edits sooner or later. To that end, I've been using some of my precious writing time (when the words just would not flow) to look for some best practices in editing a manuscript. I found a number of services that would do it for me (for fees of course, which is fine, but not what I'm looknig for), a number of blog posts about how to tackle self-edits, which I will certainly use when the time comes and thus will talk about then. In trolling through the interwebs, I did find a few tools that I found interesting and will put through their paces at the end of writing, before I put the book away to ferment for a while. The first of these is a website called ProWritingAid. It's an interesting series of tools that analyzes text for things like grammar and punctuation, but also for passive verbs, "sticky" aka filler words, sentence length and complexity and so on. For now, I think I'm going to work with their free trial but imagine if I get any sort of good results, I will go ahead and drop the cash for the subscription. The only feature that I think I'll be missing in the free version is the fact that it will only analyze the first 500 words of any upload and since all of my scenes are a minimum of 1000+, this will certainly become annoying rather quickly. Pricing isn't terrible, starting around $55 per year as of this writing (there's a 25% quarantine discount so may jump on that) and if I love it I may go ahead and get the lifetime subscription. It's about the equivalent of 4-5 years at the 1-year price, but then after that... guess it depends how long I think I'll stick with writing, doesn't it? The optimist says go for it, as I'll be doing this for a few decades! The second is a downloadable app called Ginger that is a grammar checker. As I mentioned, ProWritingAid also has a grammar check, but just like with beta readers and doctors, I want to get a second opinion since not all grammar rules are created equal. Again, this one is free, and while it does have a paid upgrade, the features that offers don't interest me so I doubt I'll be investing there. Currently, the plan is to finish the WIP by the end of May; find and replace all my XXXs (I use this when I need a name for a minor character that needs zero background, just a name); run it through both ProWritingAid and Ginger, correcting any glaring errors, make notes on any suggestions that would take more than a quick word change, and then put the thing in a drawer some place to percolate. On that note, at least for the time being, percolate currently defined as: the Scrivener file saved on Dropbox, as per usual; plus a word/txt doc emailed to myself; plus a hard copy print out in a drawer since I'm sure this is how I'll start my revisions when the time finally comes. Of course, all of this is just over a month away and things are definitely going to change. Once I get to that point, I'll post updates on just exactly how that went, what worked and what didn't, any additional tools I found along the way, and next steps. So I hit not only my minimum word goal (45k) for April this week, I hit my stretch goal of 50k which was great, right? Yea, except the last two scenes I wrote were atrocious, I was stumbling in all aspects - plot, characterization, voice, pacing, you name it. So frustrating! I've been pushing to keep writing, recognizing the problems in the scenes, but vowing to keep "failing forward" and fix them all in post (aka edits) which has always been the plan. But when the scenes are such a mess, you don't even know where you are going or how to get there, when the plot holes are like black holes and everything is painful, what's a girl to do? It's hard to commit to keep writing to the end when you know that you are running on four flat tires and an engine blowing smoke. CUT SCENE I'm on a number of FB groups for writing and writers and recently had a number of requests/opportunities to serve as accountability/writing buddy all pop up at once. I reached out to a few of these, not because I was looking for help, but it's nice to get out of my own head and read over someone else's work for a while, with the hopes of them returning the favor in the future. So I initiated the standard getting-to-know-you sorts of conversations on messenger; one was a "Hey, nice to meet you" and done so we will see where that goes. Two others were more, "hey, i've got an issue, you mind talking me through it." But I didn't expect was, after talking through some things with Michelle (last name omitted until she says otherwise), she asked me how I was doing and admitted I had some struggles and a plot hole or two. She foolishly offered to help and so I spewed basically the whole of the plot down in FB Messenger, because the problem was with the ending feeling to contrived (very deus ex machina). First, let me say how clarifying it was to summarize, in writing, my own work to this point. It's one thing when it's all messy up in your head, or full of so much detail on the pages; but to try and distill it down to maybe not a synopsis but at least a handful of paragraphs, it makes you really look at the whole thing in a new way. We then chatted through the issues I was having and she asked a few good questions which I answered and made a few suggestions that I'd previously had in the original idea but had then strayed from during drafting. Now I'm looking at returning to a lot of these ideas, but with a slightly altered perspective from the original and have gone from frustrated to excited again. Thank you Michelle!! Of course, now the problem is to find ways to integrate these ideas, some of which go all the way back to the first few scenes without breaking down and editing - I know me, and that's a rabbit hole for sure. I'd start editing and never finish the damn book! I'm actually considering doing a second version of one of the earliest scenes, using just these new ideas and the original outline (I'm thinking like a Director's cut/alternate ending) and keeping it side-by-side with the original scene until I get to the editing stage later in the year, then see what works and what doesn't, keep what I like and toss the rest. Yes, I realize this is a ton of words that won't get used, but I like the idea of starting the scene fresh from this new perspective (without deleting anything from the original! NEVER delete anything!!) I think it will get me what I need for going forward and still won't be editing. Only downside is that those words won't count towards my total novel word count but I still think it's worth it. For now, I've printed out my scene outline and am going back through to figure out where I can add some of the elements Michelle and I discussed and maybe even add a scene or two! Fingers crossed this helps. |
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