Sidetracked

The story of my life these days. Work, life, and a different (almost finished) project have taken my time since I finished the synopsis, and I’m both okay and not okay with that. What can I say, I’m a complicated creature.

The other, almost finished project, will feel like a weight off my shoulders when it’s done, so in that sense, I’m glad to be focusing on that at the moment. But my preference is always to be writing, and the fact that I haven’t done any work on either Book 1 revisions or Book 2 writing is stressful to me.

And then there’s work, of course. Ever present work. Thankfultohaveajob, thankfultohaveajob, thankfultohaveajob. My mantra these days, like anyone else who’s employed. My job may not be my preferred way to spend my time, but it does make other things possible that I rather like — food, shelter, the occassional trip to the coast.

Sigh. It’s a juggling act, like anything else.

Late night update

Synopsis is done, bitchez!!

Well, the first draft, anyway. Numbering 20 pages and over 7,500 words — because I am apparently genetically incapable of brevity — it will need to be trimmed down by at least a third, if possible. But not tonight. Tonight, I celebrate.

(And apparently, taking time out earlier today to post my random thoughts really did allow my poor little brain hamsters to concentrate. So…yay?)

The hills are alive with the sound of...

Working on the synopsis today — Eru bless the three-day vacation — but I have a random thought that’s been drifting about my wee brain and distracting the hamsters that run the little wheels up there. Where better to offload that randomness so I can buckle down and get to work?

I was thinking the other day about some of my favorite words and why I like them, and I started thinking about words that give me a visceral reaction and what about them makes me react that way. Like everyone, I have words I love and hate for varying reasons. But for some words, it’s the sound of the word that’s the cause of my strong reaction. In some cases, those are the best words because they’re so evocative and I love using them. Other words I hate the sound of so much that I’ll avoid using them if I can.

My strongest reaction-related word is “vulpine”. I have a love/hate relationship with that word. Love it, because it’s so deliciously descriptive and evil. (When describing people, obviously, not when describing foxes.) It’s such a wonderfully evil word that I reserve it for the really special occasions. You don’t even have to know what it means to be skeeved out by it. Just the sound of it makes a cold shiver run down my spine. When I think “vulpine”, I have a vision of a sharp, angular face, half-hidden in shadow, perhaps at the back of a poorly lit room. A half-smile that hints at unspoken horrors. Eyes bright and predatory. Maybe yellow or red, because those are my own personal squicks, or maybe solid black.

I first came across it in a description of a vampire-like character in a horror story when I was about 11, and I didn’t even have to look it up to immediately conjure a picture. It’s no coincidence, I’m sure, that it’s a vampire-ish image I associate with the word, but listen to the sound of it: the seductive, almost sensual nature of that first syllable, the undercurrent of danger, the similar sound to “voluptuous”; the abrupt edge of the second syllable, not a hard edge like a “k” sound would be, but rounded a bit, like a well-used blade that still cuts as fine as it did the first time. You hear the word “vulpine”, you run, run, run in the opposite direction because things are not going to end well for you otherwise.

Then there are the words whose sounds I detest so much that I avoid using them as much as possible. I don’t like the word “pregnant”* for that reason. It’s that “gn” sound that puts me off, like the sound you make in your throat when you’re trying not to hurl. Not a particularly charming sound, and other than the morning sickness, incongruous with the actual definition of the word. I mean, there’s a reason “malignant” sounds just like what it is, and yet that same “gn” combination is the identifying characteristic of “pregnant”. Heck, that whole “gnant” — so gutteral and back-of-the-throat — is completely repugnant.

I have others. In both categories. Squib. Babe. Guffaw. Puce. Most studies of loved and hated words list “moist” as the most oft-hated word, but “moist” doesn’t bother me. How about you?

*(Unfortunately, the alternatives aren’t any better. “Expecting”? It’s a baby, not a dinner party. “With child”? How very King James version. “In a family way”? Ugh, spoken by people who aren’t able to even whisper the word “sex”. “Preggers”? Barf. “Gestating”? Sounds like you’re hatching an egg. That, or an alien that’s going to pop out of your chest in the middle of dinner. No thanks.)

I am so smart, I am so smart, s-m-r-t...

HAHAHAHAHAHA AND SO ANYWAY YOU GUYS I AM A MORON.

No, really. I have been writing on this here blog for more than six months now, posting away and telling myself not to focus on the lack of comments. “It takes time to build an audience,” I tell myself, in my most mature and reasonable voice. “Blogs aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, and anyway hello! People have lives. Don’t be such a self-centered, neurotic git.” As one does.

Fast forward to today. My mom mentioned on the phone to the Chef today that she’d left me comments, but that they weren’t showing up because they hadn’t been approved yet by the webmistress. She just wanted me to know she’d been reading.

Turns out, even though I’d set all the settings to notify me for various and sundry, the setting I failed to adjust was email notifications of comments pending. So all this time, I’ve been thinking no one’s commenting, and thus wondering if anyone’s even reading, and it turns out…you are!

So I have now gone back and read all of your lovely comments (going back to the “official” launch date on February 8th!) — and APPROVED THEM omgwhatthehell — and teared up at your collective wonderfulness that you have taken the time to read and provide feedback, and to just have that lovely glow of, “They like me! They really like me!” I will reply back to each and every one, even if you decide not to go back through and read, and henceforth I will reply to comments, as well as check and double-triple-octuple check that I am aware of all comments awaiting approval.

In other news: I am a dumbass, news at eleven.

If these were dollars, it wouldn't be a problem

I posted awhile back about my concerns about the length of Matashara, and how its 250,000 word count might negatively impact my chances of getting a foot in the door with an agent and thus, negatively impacting my chances of getting published. I’ve had it in my mind that I need to do some serious cutting, with a goal of trimming it down to a tight 200,000 words.

So here I am, a quarter of the chapters edited, and not only is my word count not dropping, it’s actually gone up. By about 2,000 words. Oy.

I said before that I’m not going to trim anything just for the sake of trimming it. And I have been trimming things — a word here, a phrase there, an unnecessary sentence. But those edits aren’t going to drop 50,000 words, and some of the editing has necessitated adding narrative to make things clearer. Hence the net increase.

I have an idea that the section I’m coming up on can stand some judicious editing of plot, so we’ll see how far down it gets me once I’ve worked my way through it. Even if I removed the entire section — roughly 10 chapters — it still wouldn’t trim 50,000 words, and I’m obviously not going to do that anyway. There are two other sections I think I can do some copious trimming, as well, but they’re going to be trickier, and I’m not confident that the end result is going to necessarily lessen the word count when it’s all said and done.

So it may just be that I’m going to have to steel myself for that crazy high word count showing up on the upper right corner of my ms, and hoping for the best. But what I’m more afraid of than that crazy high word count is that it really does need some serious trimming, and that I’m not able to see it, not able to identify just where those cuts can and should be made. I suppose that’s why god invented editors, but if I can’t identify where the story can stand to be tightened up, then does that mean I’m not yet ready for prime time?

The joys of editing

I’m not being facetious with that title. Editing can be tedious, it’s true, but as I undergo my final edits on this manuscript to ready it for submission, I find I’m relating to the text in an even deeper way than before. Which is difficult to believe, frankly, given the fact that I, you know, wrote it. And that I’ve reread the whole thing so many times I can quote large portions verbatim.

A couple of weeks ago, I took the train up to Seattle to visit Cat for something we called a Writing Workshop and Retreat. Cat is a technical writing editor, you see, adn while that is a whole different sort of editing from fiction editing, her eye is still incredibly helpful when it comes to tightening up the manuscript. Beyond the obvious editing of grammar and spelling, she’s terrific at helping me excise all those pesky slippages like passive voice constructions, ambiguous pronoun references, and excessive run-on sentences.

So there’s that. Which is awesome. But another facet of awesomeness is the way it’s helped me feel confident that I will know when a change is necessary, when it’s a matter of preference, when it’s a matter of style, and when it’s something I feel strongly enough about to fight for it. Not to fight with her about, you understand*, but just to defend my own choices when it comes up with a future editor. And it will, inevitably, and that’s a good thing. But I don’t want to be the kind of author who thinks that every word is precious, and who doesn’t receive editing instructions well, who argues about every comma splice and incomplete sentence. The fact is, as much as writing is a solitary creation process, good writing is a collaborative creation process, and I want to be a good writer.

*Our process is very simple: she edits ahead of me in chapters , and I come along behind considering each change, deciding whether to accept or reject each change (god bless Word’s “Track Changes” feature, btw).

Getting back to the point I originally started with…

As I go through considering each proposed change, it’s made me consider each one in a larger context. Even something as simple as an apostrophe can have implications for the whole story. For example, early on, Cat was removing all contractions, including those in dialogue, with the idea that I may want a more formal tone not just to the narrative, but to the characters’ voices.

That’s true to some degree: I don’t want the narrative to have contractions, and though I did a pretty meticulous job of removing them previously, I’m obviously not going to catch them all. Dialogue, however, is another matter. I don’t want my characters to sound stilted and unbelievable. But some characters don’t use contractions, or don’t use them as frequently as others. (Older characters vs. younger, for example.) And in the case of the mind-voices used in the story, not all. And in the case of the Big Bad, he/it not only doesn’t use contractions, his/its voice is in all caps.

Now this is something I did very intentionally throughout, and that didn’t change in this editing process. But because she had flagged every contraction, I was rereading each sentence and phrasing anew, and in some cases, hearing it a little differently. In some cases, I even decided to rearrange a sentence to avoid a contraction or spelling it out, because neither one was the right choice for that scene/character/tone.

Our Writing Workshop and Retreat was an astounding success. We got a great deal of work done and we work very well together, I’m happy to say. We had lots of fun and laughs (and chatting and eating and watching movies and fun times). I felt reinvigorated from my new view of the text, and I’m excited about forging ahead on edits. We’ll be doing it again very soon, and I can’t/cannot wait!

Linger-ing effect

Maggie Stiefvater — author of the wonderful novel, Shiver — put together the most amazing book trailer for the next book in her Wolves of Mercy Falls series. She did the whole trailer herself — storyboarded, shot, and edited it, composed(!) and played the music, did all the artwork in the trailer itself (by hand!)…everything. And the end result is absolutely gorgeous.

Writer, artist, musician, filmmaker…it should be illegal to have that many talents.

Book 2 and the impact of real life

Boy, Book 2 is not coming easy. I know where it begins and ends and have a pretty good idea of at least some of the plot points I want to cover in between. I have a clearer idea of the themes and character arcs than I did at this point in Book 1 (or for at least half of Book 1, for that matter). I’ve known the opening scenes of this book for almost 2 years now. And I now know these characters better than I know some of my real life friends and family.

So what the hell, Book 2?

Aside from the aforementioned opening scenes — which I wrote more than a year ago — and a pretty steamy (though not explicit) and intensely passionate scene that was the result of a fantastic brainstorming idea while I was at the coast around New Years’…I have very little to show of Book 2 at the moment. It’s not for lack of ideas, either, or knowing where it needs to go. Or excitement, for that matter. I don’t know what this is that has me kind of piddly-dinking around.

Writer’s Block? No, I don’t think so. I’ve had writer’s block before, and this doesn’t feel the same. I can feel the story in there, percolating, and hamsters that run the little wheels inside my brain are scurrying around as much as ever. Oh, I still have that undercurrent of panic that I imagine many writers experience when you don’t yet know exactly where the story is going and every little plot point and character evolution hasn’t been nailed down. But in general, I have a good grip on this story and what I want it to look like when I finish it.

I’ve alluded on here before to the impact of some real life stuff on my creative life, and though that real life stuff has been getting the attention it needs in order to keep me from wanting to rub soup in people’s hair, it’s still been interfering with my creative life. Time is always an issue, of course —  it’s always an issue for anyone who has to fit their writing life in the small gaps between a full-time job and a regular life — but more with my inner creative life. There’s a lot processing through my brain, and the last year has required a lot more brain power than usual. I’ve had to switch on the auxiliary power, so to speak.

I’m realizing now that it’s been obvious why I couldn’t get back into my writing groove. There just isn’t a lot of energy left for my creative spirit to draw from, and hasn’t been for awhile. Considering that creativity really draws a lot of power all on its own (since I’m apparently going with the whole power station metaphor here), the necessity of diverting some mental energy to other stuff has meant a blackout — or maybe a brownout — on the Creativity Power Grid.

What’s frustrating, however, is that it was the ability to retreat into writing that oftentimes gave me relief in the past from the same kinds of Life Stuff that’s intruded so much now. In the past, I would’ve used some of the power generated by the Creativity Power Grid to get through some of the energy shortages on the Life Power Grid. Except in this case, power’s being diverted away from the Creativity Power Grid, so it’s a problem that compounds itself.

Aaaaaand now that the power station analogy has been thoroughly beaten into the ground….

The point is, I’m not really where I want to be with Book 2 but as with most things in life, I don’t think there’s any shortcut around the hurdle that stands between me and making progress on Book 2. I’m going to have to actually clear that hurdle, or dismantle it. It’s frustrating, but journey, destination, yada yada. And maybe this is what I have to go through to make Book 2 (and 3) the stories they need to be.

Another step in the right direction

Progress! My Writerly Pursuits week is underway, and I actually am making some sort of progress on writing-related tasks.

On my agenda for this week, as previously mentioned, are tackling my query letter and synopsis. The former is a single page introduction letter to a potential agent, in which a writer has one or two paragraphs (three at the very most!) to distill the essence of the story and convince the agent to read further (i.e., either the attached synopsis, if they take them in submission, or to request a synopsis or a partial or full manuscript). The query letter is much like the blurb on the back cover a book meant to excite a potential reader into wanting to read the book itself.

It is very intimidating.

So I decided today to help myself get into the groove by instead tackling the synopsis. My idea here is that immersing myself in the story and getting into the mode of distilling it down for a synopsis will help me drill down on the way to sell the story in an even shorter format. Familiarity with the material and alla that. (I mean, obviously I’m familiar with the material since I wrote it, and have read and reread it approximately fifty gajillion times, but you know how it is when you get on a roll working on something, and you you hit that sweet spot of everything just flowing right along…that’s what I’m after.)

The synopsis is, depending on where you look and who you trust, anywhere from a 1 page to a 25 page summary of the main story and characters, including main plot twists and the ending. Kind of a big range, there. (There’s all kinds of contradictory information out there as to how long it should be, in the absence of an express definition in a submission guideline. And submission guidelines vary widely from agent to agent. So.) I’m going to go ahead and write mine up and then edit it down, with a goal of hitting somewhere between 5 and 7 pages. For almost 500 pages of manuscript, that ought to be quite a trick….

But work has begun, and I’m already onto page 3 and feeling quite chuffed with myself. So, as I say, progress is being had. In the course of working today, I wanted to look up a couple of things I remembered saving about synopsis tips in my handy bookmarked “Writing Stuff” folder. Over the last couple of years, I’ve accumulated quite a collection of links on all facets of publishing and writing and whatnot. And I’m pathologically organizational by nature, but as I’ve accumulated more and more links, the initial structure I’d set up and later modified has gotten less and less manageable for all of those links. Finding those tips I wanted took far longer than it should’ve, and I thought to myself, as I have many times in the last few months, that I really need to go through and reorganize the folders I’d set up for them to better reflect the way I’m using that folder now. A bit of a project that I just haven’t had time for, even as I keep adding links and terrific information gets buried under the sheer multitude of what I’ve accumulated. And then I thought “AHA!” Because, after all, that is exactly what this week is all about — taking the time I need to focus strictly on doing things for my writerly pursuits. (No I’m not avoiding that scary query letter. Am not. Am not. Shut up.)

Two hours later, and my pathologically organized self is quite content with my newly restructured “Writing Stuff” folder, with renamed folders and rearranged subfolders and newly-added folders and subfolders and all the inevitable dead links weeded out. Oh, it’s enough to make my little OCD heart to go pitter pat.

Since I know that there are those among you who share either my writing passion or my OCD tendencies (or both!), I thought I’d share the end result. (Note that there are some duplications here, which were intentional, and that this doesn’t constitute everything in my writing universe; there are many blogs/sites that I follow with Bloglines or whatever, and so don’t need to keep bookmarked. And some that I do follow with those other methods that I also have bookmarked, because that’s just how I roll.)

Behold, for I am awesome!*  

*And for those of you asking yourselves, “Um…why didn’t she just share these via delicious/Google Bookmarks/etc.? Does she not realize this is soooooo Web 1.0**??” Well, boys and girls, doing so would require more than just a simple upload, would in fact require some sort of organizing or cleaning or whatever before and/or after doing so in order to make some sense of the wealth of information contained therein, and as I am currently doing my best to stay on task***, I am indeed opting for a less elegant, more brute force method.

**Also, when did Firefox start adding hidden gobbledygook code to their export bookmarks file? Because holy extraneous code, Batman!

***We will ignore the amount of time I already wasted doing both of those things before giving up realizing that it was going to take way more time than I wanted to spend. In other news, tagging is a great organizational method, but there is still something to be said for the tree system of organizing information. I AM LOOKING AT YOU DELICIOUS.

Evolution of design

I love, love, love this video of the making of a book cover design. I know firsthand just how hard it is to come up with the design at all, let alone trying to make it look something like what you imagined, and my own amateur attempt was much simpler than this one. Simply fascinating!

(note: takes some time to load)

I also love that this video is being used for book promotion, which is incredibly clever and smart. Got to envy that author for her very savvy agent and publisher’s marketing department…that kind of innovation and publisher push is, from everything I’ve read, not common.

via Agent Kristen @ Pub Rants