amwriting

No Right Way To Do It.

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As you may know if you’ve been perusing my (sadly infrequent) posts on this blog, I am in the midst of rewriting my first novel, Capacitance. It goes without saying that I have mixed feelings about this rewrite.

The first, by far, is confusion. Here is this story, that I wrote, that I identify with, but that I also know contains a lot of complete crap. When you write like I do, spontaneously, not from an outline, by default a lot of word vomit and stream of consciousness prose hits the page as you try to keep writing anything and everything. Now instead of filling pages, I am chopping things out, leaving myself with snippets of story that are still good and usable.

Now the question is, how do I use them? Do I construct a rewrite around these snippets from the first draft or do I go in cold and write a new book, referencing and using stuff from the first draft? Each sounds like it stands a chance to become a weird mash-up that doesn’t flow. Like when I wrote the first draft I will just go with the flow and see where that leads me, narrative-wise.

Finally, the worst, most frustrating thought is “should I have even started the second and third books before focusing on the first??” I have a large wave of panic roll through me at the thought that maybe I wrote almost 500 pages of text in the sequels for nothing. Plus my prose style gets better as the books go on. I want to save those interactions, or at least some of them. I’m hoping to find some common ground where I can keep most of the dynamic in the subsequent books, but not let them dictate the initial novel.

So while I would love to bestow some helpful advice on how to go about your rewrite, I’m afraid I can’t offer any that makes too much sense. The process will be different for each person. As with any writing project, persistence is key. Keep on trying until something sticks. Another goal would be to never give up. I was overzealous last year in my goals to be published, but even though I admit that, it doesn’t mean I’m giving up on the effort. With that in mind, I am finally going to commit to booking a spot at the Writers League of Texas conference this June. I am not confident that I will have my rewrite done by then, but I do hope to have a solid pitch nailed down for the rewrite that will show some agents how invested I am in making this book work.

Manic Creativity

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The title says it all. I had an extremely productive weekend working on all sorts of projects and releasing a lot of pent up creativity. I worked on an oil painting, started my new fashion blog (lunaelise.com for those interested), and wrote. The hours flew by in the creative zone that we artists know so well and strive for.

With my mind so stimulated by creating, Resistance was at the height of my consciousness. While out on a nice, long run, my mind tuned into my story instead of the usual jumble of everyday life situations and worries. I came up with a concept that I think is going to propel me to the ending of the trilogy. While I still don’t know the exact ending, I think this gives me another pivotal plot point to work to. I find I work better when I’m working up to some event. Actually I get frustrated at times because I want to just write that big scene I’m leading up to–and I want to write it now!!

This pacing might be the biggest lesson I have learned as a writer. In my writer’s block times, I would get frustrated plodding through these leading up moments, just wanting to get to the events already. Then I would lose patience with myself and my willpower went down the drain thinking of the at the time insurmountable amount of work I had to do to convey the exciting story in my head.

However, if this weekend is any example, I’m able to take on any task. Perhaps I just need to focus my creativity a bit more efficiently so I can balance all  these different endeavors. So I’m approaching this week with the goal of finding balance–I hope you all have a peaceful and balanced week as well.

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!

Holiday Magic

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I believe that magic truly happens sometimes, and when you’re a writer, that sometimes occurs on a more regular basis. I had one of these moments the other day when I was (finally) working on Chapter 17 of Resistance.

I won’t give any spoilers away, but my MC was thrown into an extremely trying scene unexpectedly. I puzzled for a lot longer than I should have about how he would handle the challenge. Finally, I sat down to write still not knowing what would come about but putting my mind to the task anyway.

What happened was something unexpected and great. A plot twist came flying out of my mind and onto the computer screen as if by…magic. It was a crazy turn of events, the kind of thing that makes a reader say, “Oh my gosh, what are the chances?? Yikes!” Plus it added depth to my MC. Thus, I overcame both the fear of the blank screen and my difficulty to implant truly larger than life twists or elements into my book for the sake of realism.

The twist got me excited about my book again. The product of my mind reminded me why I enjoy writing fiction–it pushes my mind to amazing limits and surpasses them. It also instilled a sense of peace about my inability to agent, sell and publish Capacitance as of yet–if I had a published book 1 in this series, the twist/element I just introduced would not be viable as it would contradict character development and history introduced in the first chapters of Capacitance. In fact it contradicts information that you all have already read if you’re keeping up with my chapter posts on here (don’t worry it doesn’t totally change the story, it’s just one of those minor details that isn’t vital but would be noticed if it didn’t match up).

True to my prediction, the holidays have put the printing press that is my mind to a standstill, but it feels good to think, “I can’t wait to write again.” If that’s not magic, I don’t know what is. Happy Holidays!