english majors

Year In Review

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This writing blog has been sorely neglected. For those of you that follow–I apologize! This absence of posts reflects the busy year and introspective change in my attitude as a writer. I suppose that statement requires an explanation that I’m afraid will be rather lengthy, but, luckily for me, it’s cold outside so there’s not much better to do than hole up indoors with a computer and read this missive. I’ve always been fond of lists as they organize my always disorganized thought process, so here follows a list of what I’ve done this past year in writing and life.

I Started Another Blog 

For those of you who follow me via Facebook, this is old news. For you exclusive WordPress followers, this will be new. In March 2016, at the urging of friends, I decided to take my fashion obsession to the Internet and begin a style blog called Luna Elise. I have been lucky enough to have several amazing shoots with friends and, through these talented photographers, I have met even more connections to collaborate and shoot with. Books and clothes are two of my favorite things in life, and I have definitely enjoyed extending some effort towards fashion. Since Luna Elise’s inception, I have come a long way. I’ve gained a decent following, become a more confident model, gotten a sponsorship with a well-known online boutique and even made the runway model roster for Kansas City Fashion Week! To learn more about my other blog, check it out at http://www.lunaelise.com!

I Traveled a LOT 

This past year has been crazy and amazing with the amount of traveling I’ve done. Aside from going to Cancun, Colorado and Austin, I also went on a once-in-a-lifetime road trip with my boyfriend. The exhaustive list of places visited–The Badlands, Mt. Rushmore, Devils Tower, Yellowstone, Glacier National Park, Crater Lake, Seattle, San Francisco, LA, Las Vegas, The Grand Canyon, Aspen–plus all the amazing highways and little gems along the way. The entire trip was a month long, then we immediately headed out to Colorado with my Dad for the annual mountain climbing trip. All this travel amounts to nearly two months of my year, which is a pretty ideal work:play ratio if you ask me. 🙂

I Did Writer’s League of Texas Conference Again

The travel wasn’t all play; I attended the WLT Conference in Austin in June. This was coming off of the huge realization that Capacitance needed a much more involved rewrite than I had envisioned. As I went back through the story (which I originally thought I would have rewritten for the conference and ready to pitch), I realized that the entire storyline needed work, needed depth. It was frustrating, but necessary to accept. Thus, I went into the conference ready to pitch ideas, not land a deal. I remember sitting in my hotel room right before pitching to an agent, brainstorming a plot that I would pitch on the fly in 10 minutes time! The plot I pitched was DRASTICALLY different from the original Capacitance. It still has the same characters, but the set-up is quite changed. I pitched to Jessica Papin at Dystel & Goderich (despite my former rejection there), and bluntly asked her if she thought the idea was salable and good. She said yes, and that she would like to see the rewrite. But here’s the thing–I have no idea whether to believe the agents at these conferences. Especially at the pitch sessions. We pay to pitch to them, so I am wary of their reactions. It is so much more comfortable to say something encouraging even when you’re thinking how much it sucks. Hurting someone’s feelings is uncomfortable. So, maybe this is just my perpetually hyper-critical brain being paranoid, or I’m onto something here. Almost all agents at conferences say they want to see material. Honestly, I think that’s just easier on them than saying no. What’s another email to just delete? All said and done, my experience at WLT was interesting, but it just added to my general frustration on the professional world of literature.

I Took A Break

Which leads me to my next point. My six weeks of traveling came hard on the heels of WLT, and I took that as a sign to pause and breathe. Jessica Papin wasn’t going to be sitting with bated breath at her computer waiting for my revamped version of Capacitance. She might not even really want it anyway. So, I decided to give my mind a break from my characters. It may not make sense to anyone but the writer, but your characters are always with you. The brain is always carving away at them, shaping them and trying to fit them together into this perfect story. Believe it or not, it’s rather difficult to make the mind stop doing this! However, as Johnny and I hiked mountains, walked beaches, and sipped poolside drinks, I was able to let the characters go and give my mind a much-needed respite from what had been a very high pressure journey of expectations that were too high on a timeline that was way too short.

I Moved 

After our travels, not wanting to cease our constant companionship of the past six weeks, Johnny and I moved in together. It was a very natural choice, especially since I no longer needed the secluded haven of living on my family’s farm. However, my delicate, over-thinking writer brain always needs time for the proverbial waters to settle after they are disturbed by any major change (thanks, brain), so during this transitory time, the characters in my mind continued to stay silent–or were drowned out by all the other noise. Until one day they spoke up again. Although this time it wasn’t Mara and Runey clamoring for my attention, it was a completely new story, inspired by this old, odd river town I’d moved into. A town where Victorian mansions march up and down the riverfront hills, shoulder to shoulder with a Catholic university and mystery fills the air (to romanticize it heavily). It’s always said to write what you know, and I think small town Kansas fits the bill and represents an unexplored potential for stories. Johnny and I aren’t in this small town by choice but rather by career moves, but I think this piece of our puzzle serves several purposes, one of them being major inspiration for a new novel. I am not going to say much more about this project I am working on. I’ve already said too much about it! This time around, there won’t be any jumping the gun. No aspirations of fame dancing in my mind after the first draft. But I will say, I am excited about this project and I’m approaching it in an entirely new way by doing more planning and structuring of the plot before I start writing. So now I appear more lazy than ever since much of this work has been contained to the old cranium thus far (HA).

In conclusion, no, I haven’t forgotten Mara and Runey’s story. I don’t think I ever will forget it. That statement makes it sound so final, and that’s not intentional. Truly, I plan to tackle that saga again in the future and implement new ideas–maybe even the ones I improvised 10 minutes before pitching! That being said, I am in no hurry to get back to Capacitance. I got severely burnt out on it and I want to make sure I am fully fresh and ready to be excited by the project before I start it again.

What’s in store for 2017? Already, I have a lot of travel planned. The Luna Elise blog is picking up steam. Thus, there will be distractions. However, I am going to go into full-on writing mode. Like, hide in the basement with notes all over the walls and a giant white board full of outlining writer-mode. The downside of going offline in my writing mind for so long is that it makes it VERY hard to get back into the habit of self-discipline and treating writing like a job. That is the ultimate struggle. So, 2017 is going to be a tough one. I welcome your encouragement and understanding of my very infrequent blog posts. 🙂

 

Organizing

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I just made a list of the key points I have to wrap up to finish the Capacitance trilogy. There are 14 of them (so far), the last one of which being “The state of the world.” So that’s intimidating; cue me running away from my computer, never to write again. Just kidding–maybe.

The other 13 points are a bit more doable. Most of them are comprised of characters. Obviously I will have to tie up Mara and Runey’s story lines as well as all the secondary characters. I listed some tertiary characters on the list as well. At this time, I am not sure how relevant they will end up being to the endgame of my story, but listing them was more of a device to remind me what tools I have in my toolbox, so to speak.

Time for a little writing secret. I didn’t figure this out until basically just now (embarrassingly enough). Employing characters you’ve already introduced to come into plot play down the road makes you look like a genius-level author. Look at J.K. Rowling–that tiara from the Sorcerer’s Stone comes out of nowhere as a horcrux in the last book. Was she planning this all along or did she come to a point in her story where she needed a horcrux so she plucked one out of the existing scenery she had created? We may never know, but in my case it would have been the latter situation. You should all know by now most of my writing is improvisational, so characters, settings, actions all spew out of their own accord. Now that I’m nearing the end of the trilogy, I have the luxury of flipping back through these characters and scenarios I have created and deciding how best to use them. That obscure character from midway through Capacitance? Maybe she will come back and play an intrinsic part in the resolution of the trilogy, leaving readers to wonder at my strategic placement and planning (ha!).

To summarize, I think using this strategy will help me organize my thoughts, discover new creative ideas and ultimately give a well-rounded feel to the trilogy as a whole. Time to go crank out some exciting installments!

Capping Off a Productive Week

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I posted earlier this week about being energized, so now I am happy to say I have had a good writing week as a result. Yesterday was a great writing session.  I had been working on Chapter 19, and it was the same old routine. I start it out, knowing everything that needs to happen and then it stagnates halfway through because I get bored with the writing. Typically this is because it is deciding action leading up to some exciting action that I can’t wait to write about. I’m impatient to get there and so I end up getting frustrated and letting it sit. This week is a victory because while this happened twice, I made myself go back each time and slog through it. Thus, I have two finished chapters here on Friday and that is something that hasn’t happened in a long time!

Yesterday, when I sat down to hammer out the rest of 19, one of these great moments occurred where your characters take over your brain and your fingers type out some crazy stuff you hadn’t planned on. For the first time, I was writing an entire chapter in the POV of one of my secondary characters. This refreshing change naturally leads to better character development, but the end of the chapter spelled out some feelings that I had never anticipated putting into words. So now there is another layer in my plot, and that was much needed. Now the reader will go into the big action scene coming up with yet another layer of dramatic tension in their mind. That’s always a good thing. There is still quite a ways to go, but I have mapped out a couple defining events that should propel things forward faster. And all the characters should be back in one general setting soon, so that is sure to provide some dramatic material.

Space in the Noise

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The world is a noisy busy place. Constantly, we are surrounded by facets of distraction. Our phone needs monitored for pivotal social media updates, our dogs need to go for a walk, that work project deadline is looming. It’s hard to find space to create in all this jumble. Being a writer, it is even more challenging as my canvas is attached to the prime agent of distraction–my computer/the internet. Some days I sit down and feel like I can’t have a coherent thought, let alone finish a sentence.

It’s easy to get caught up and find yourself at the end of the week with nothing of creative merit stacked up to your name, and then get funneled into the weekend hoping to just relax for a moment. When our minds are so busy like this, downtime and relaxation are important, but when you’re a creative, even vegging out in front of the TV can cause anxiety because you know you could be putting your mind to better use.

Or at least that’s how my brain functions. If yours is anything like mine, you know the feeling. But you also need to recognize the power of sub-cognitive functions. While you are lounging on the couch, stuffing your face with pizza and downing wine, perhaps the film you are watching will inspire you in ways you never would have thought. During those extra lazy hours of sleeping in on Sunday, you might have a dream which solidifies a loose end of a story line. Our brains are working all the time, and are naturally focused on matters most important to us. As creative souls, these matters tend to be our art.

If this still isn’t reassuring, and  your brain works like mine on twelve layers at once like some really magnificent cake, then consider this. Even when I am working on tax forms, balancing the books, planning a fashion blog, and playing fetch with my bulldogs in some chaotic ballet of working from home, my novel’s story is ALWAYS in the back of my mind. I don’t have to peel away many layers to discover the thread. My mind is continually churning away at it, waiting for that facet to be brought to the forefront when I finally close out of Facebook and open up Microsoft Word–even if that takes a couple days.

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Lately I have been experiencing a much-needed burst of energy in my life in general, but also in my writing. The ideas for the ending of my trilogy are still not quite there, but I have enough of an interesting fomentation of concepts that I am comfortable enough to continue blazing forward (hopefully into a sunset of glory that is a perfect ending to the trilogy).

Aside from my renewed motivation to work on Resistance, Capacitance has also sparked some interest in my mind again. I received an email from an agent who requested to see it at the WLT conference last June (yes, it sometimes takes them THAT long to respond). It was a very nice rejection email. Even though it was a rejection, the key statement I grabbed was, “I think this is a story with legs.” To me, after months of wallowing in the despair of the over-saturated dystopian lit market, this was music to my starving ears! This agent is looking for smart science fiction, and he sees potential in my story. He also saw my not-pub ready narration. If you are a first-time author reading this, I cannot stress this enough–DO NOT, DO NOT (SERIOUSLY DO NOT) SUBMIT YOUR WORK UNTIL YOU HAVE EDITED AND EDITED SOME MORE AND PROBABLY REWRITTEN IT!!! We all do it; we get into a frenzy thinking we are going to be the next Stephen King, our parents/grandparents/etc are telling us we ARE going to be the next Stephen King (actual thing my Grandpa said the other day. Sigh). This frenzy of foreseen fame inflates our egos and has us pressing send on a blind query email and attached sample work from a loosely edited first draft.

I’m being so scathing because I have been there. Despite reading several articles, blog posts, etc. which said the same thing I just vehemently exhorted above. For instance, this agent who just emailed me liked my story, but didn’t like my narration. If I had edited more carefully and spent some time curating a truly polished story would the outcome of that email have been different? Luckily with this agent, I had established a personal connection with him due to actually meeting him at the conference. He is a really nice guy who came off as a jerk when I asked him a question on day one of the conference. On the last day he came up, and apologized for his stand-offishness and asked me to send my work. So when I got his rejection email, I didn’t feel any qualms about sending him a follow up email. I kept it short (key to interaction with agents, by the way), told  him I now realized I had jumped the gun on submitting the story, then asked if he would be interested in seeing Capacitance again after a rewrite. The answer, which arrived a mere two days later–much better response time!–was “Sounds great Elise.” This may not amount to anything, but I am more energized to do a rewrite since I know this agent has an interest in my story and has agreed to have a look at it again upon rewrite (HUGE!!).

I put this out in the last blog post, and I will put the call out again. If any of my readers have free time or interest in reading Capacitance and providing me with critique that goes beyond just copy editing, but goes into the scope and feel of the story as a whole, please let me know! I have a few people (outside of my overly supportive nepotistic family) reading it right now and I have found that to be very helpful. After a couple months the sound of rewrite doesn’t sound so terrifying!

Classic Bestsellers

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When one hears the titles “A Farewell to Arms” or “Jane Eyre,” it is common to think of a literature course. However, these classics have another thing in common–they were both instant bestsellers when they were first released. A friend of mine sent me an email which raised the question, how does a novel go from the bestseller list to the reading list of the classics?

There is no question that Bronte’s classic bildungsroman (coming of age) story and Hemingway’s perfect, crisp prose are works of art. Only a true work of art would inspire the literally throw-the-book-across-the-room rage I felt upon finishing a Farewell to Arms. I can and have written essays on both the content and literary merits of both these novels. However, the question lingers when looking at today’s “popular” fiction. Bronte and Hemingway topped the charts in their respective days, but what about the bestselling books now? Will Twilight and The Hunger Games hit the college classrooms in the future?

This brings up the interesting dichotomy that has sprung up between commercial (think Stephen King, James Patterson) and literary fiction (Ian McEwan, Celeste Ng). Our bestseller lists now are topped with mostly books from the commercial fiction category. Sometimes a literary fiction title will cross over–for example, The Lovely Bones–but usually we are looking at quick reads. As an author and a lover of literature and words, I would be saddened to think that future generations will be studying the literary intricacies of The Hunger Games. I’ll be the first to admit I am a big fan of this series of books and the films, but do I see them as literary art–no.

However, there are valuable popular books that absolutely should end up being studied by posterity. For example, anything by J.K. Rowling is masterful in both her deceptively simple use of the language and her plot development. As an author myself, I try to incorporate a slightly elevated use of the English language into my decidedly commercial fiction novels. There’s no reason to dumb work down–I’m not producing novels for the sole purpose of the sale, the movie deal, the get rich quick dream that many strive for.

I can’t say what the future of literary education and the classics will entail, but one thing I know for certain–future students will almost certainly have a cinematic version of their material to view. Movie day in class is always fun, right?

Wrapping Things Up

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To end this drought of blog posts, I am exploring another kind of ending which has occupied my thoughts not just today, but for several months now. How do you end a series of novels? I am coming up on this with the Capacitance series as I am about halfway into the manuscript of the final book. It’s an issue that I have avoided since the first word I put on the page of the first novel. My characters came out onto the page and began their stories, got more developed and are all hurtling towards…something?

If you’ve read any of my previous blog posts, you know that my writing style is improvisational. There is no master outline in my office delineating each twist, turn and conclusion of the Capacitance series. My mind has continually surprised me as I go through the writing process by providing these different plot twists and basically showing me where the story is going next. However, here at the end of all things (to quote Frodo Baggins) my improvisational brain is not coming through for me.

As a writer, I go through a lot of self confidence issues with my writing. My mind must turn each idea over and over and go back and forth with an argument on whether these words or ideas are even fit for paper before I can sit down and write. Ending my series is like a giant combination of all these insecurities combined. Will readers like this ending? How the heck do I take so many big issues and solve them all in a satisfying way? Is this idea exciting enough? These are just some of the questions hindering my progress.

Unsurprisingly, I am thinking about it too much. WAY too much. I have half a book left to get it done, after all. The biggest challenge here is just sitting down and getting back to it. I know I have talked about getting into other genres, but I really want to at least take the plot in Resistance to the next step so that it doesn’t totally lose momentum.

If anyone out there is interested in CP’ing or just reading 2.5 manuscripts, I think something really helpful here would be having someone to bounce ideas off of for a potential ending. If this sounds like something you would be interested in doing, drop me a line! 🙂

New Year, New Horizons

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I promise this won’t be a stereotypical New Year’s resolution post–but with the coming of 2016, I have some different goals in mind for myself as a writer.

Last year, the goals were unrealistic. I think every writer goes through this–they’ve finished a novel, they can’t believe they actually wrote a novel, and naturally said novel will soon be famous. I definitely fell into this trap. There’s a fine line between believing in your book, and being blinded by your book. I’ve crossed this line, toed it, jumped back over it and fled back to the other side of it to huddle in scorn of my own art.

Looking at the big picture, this is a natural process. And it’s one to learn from. I have never been a good conceptual editor, so one of my goals for this year is to be less afraid to go back and make big changes to my work. Slogging through a rewrite is something I still haven’t worked myself up to a fever pitch of excitement about, but it’s something I need to do.

Last year, I had the big goal to finish three manuscripts in one year, all the while querying trying to sell my first book. This is too much. Not only was it jumping the gun on the query trail, it led to such burnout for the series in general. I need to set more realistic goals for myself. Aggressive writing goals, still, but not burnout inducing, one chapter a day or I’m in trouble type goals.

Finally–and this may be the biggest change–I had a comment on a previous blog post, which I unfortunately deleted by mistake because technology and I don’t get along at times, that talked about keeping multiple projects rolling at once. Different manuscripts that you can bounce back and forth between when you’re getting really sick of one or the other. I love this idea, and it especially speaks to me because I want to try my hand at other genres. I’ve been told over and over again, why not try romance/erotica? I never would have envisioned myself for this genre, but the more I think about it, the more I say “Why not?” Obviously, I picked a very hard sell genre to start out with–dystopian, over sold–so by branching out to see how other genres fit, I hope to grow as a writer and become more confident in all areas and find my niche.

Those are my writerly goals for the year. I will admit, it is going to be difficult to keep to them and make big moves this year as I have a whole lot of personal changes in the works for this year (think business start ups and a big out of state move). Stay posted, and I hope everyone is having a spectacular start to 2016!

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It is Wednesday, and on this Wednesday I am going to take the theme of a book that inspired me as a writer and twist it a little bit. Today I am going to talk about a book that didn’t exactly inspire me, but it definitely made me think as an author!

The book–or series, rather–that I am going to discuss is the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon. My unpopular opinion: it wasn’t that great. However, I did (eventually) feel compelled to read all 8 books that the series has so far. And it did inspire me to write an entire blog post on the series, so there is something to be said. Let’s dive into it.

First of all, I picked the first novel in the series up at an airport (on my way to the Vegas writing conference), and I nearly ditched it in the plane when I landed. The writing was slow and wordy, the plot didn’t catch me right away, for the first time in my life I was about to abandon a book! But I didn’t. However, it took me a long time to get through the first book for reasons I already named added to the fact that I found the story line implausible. Maybe this is my cynical side taking over, but who would stay in the 18th century over the 20th century simply for love? This isn’t very generous to more romantic sensibilities, but throughout the entire series I found this to be a hard hurdle to get past. If it were me, I don’t think I would give up present day safety and technology advances.

Secondly, the books made me angry and frustrated on my journey as a writer. Here I am all year desperately trying to get published while reading these books that have been wildly successful. Should have been an inspiration, right? It was not. While I got back letters from agents admonishing my use of adverbs and exposition, Gabaldon’s prose mocked me with its casual use of verb modifiers and excessive description of her characters’ hair color. Most pointedly in contrast–her characters used elevated language and highly eloquent word choice, while Capacitance was being criticized for characters “not talking like actual people.”

Essentially, it seemed that Gabaldon does not follow the so-called “rules” that are supposed to apply to aspiring authors. While I admire her intelligence and obviously vast knowledge of the historical periods about which she writes, I found her characters and her choices for the plot a little hard to swallow and, at times, to stay awake for (over 100 pages dedicated to the events of one day, hmm..).

Now to give Gabaldon credit, which I must do! I did read every one of the books, and I will read the subsequent books when they come out (I believe there are supposed to be 2 more). This speaks to her as an author because she has created a compelling story line (even though the plausibility doesn’t sit right with me at times). I want to know what happens to these characters and I will slog through the slow parts just to finally see what happens. At the end of the day, Gabaldon is a successful author and businesswoman because of this–she has created a marketable product and essentially has free range to “break the rules” and write however she wants, and isn’t that the ultimate goal?

Processes.

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I’ve been off my writing grind for awhile, caught up in a busy time for my other job (driving grain trucks for harvest, believe it or not). It has given me time to realize, in a much more prolonged way, the processes I go through as an author. It was nearly a year ago that I made the big step which started me on the transition to “someday I will do this” to “I will do this now.” Over the past year I have learned a lot–to say the least! A lot of this learning has been about the industry, but much more has had to do with myself.

I go in cycles with my work. It starts out in trepidation, a lot of doubt and not much self confidence. But the need to write builds up and eventually I put words out there and feel an immense sensation of mental release.

Then I go back and read the words. This is an essential part of my process. When I’m writing I get so involved in the flow that I scarcely remember all the details the story accumulates. Thus, when I go back not only does it remind me of the plot twists, but it also builds my self confidence. I read my own words and my mind allows a not so humble thought (“hey, this doesn’t suck!”) to emerge.

This gives me confidence to write more. In my most confident moments I will go on a writing spree, accomplishing a chapter a day. I am high on the feeling of actually accomplishing my goals, and doing them well. This is how I got two manuscripts (rough drafts admittedly!) done in only six months.

After the high necessarily comes the low. For me, this comes with the denials, and the frustration of being stuck in the plot. When the writing isn’t flowing, I feel like it never will. When denial after denial flows into my inbox, I despair that is the only response my work will ever get. This is a recipe for sluggishness, a part of the process where I shy away from my Word document.

Thus, I’m back to trepidation and lacking self-confidence. Square one of my process. However, it is fascinating to inspect this circular way I work, and it is heartening to know that the next step is one in the right direction. Happy Friday!