What Color Is Your Quill

One of the side effects of taking such a long break from my writing, and, now, coming back to it, is that I've been giving a lot of thought to what kind of writer I want to be. Hence the terrible entry title. I know what I want to do, so I can skip the parachute books, but now I need to determine how I want to do it. 

I don't like heading into things without a plan, and I feel like that has been a major deterrent in my writing so far, that I am wandering around without a coherent map to follow. So before I started drawing one I started looking through my bookshelf to think about whose career I'd most like to have, and how knowing that can help me draw the map I want to follow. 

And aside from the JK Rowlings and the Stephanie Meyers of the shelf, I've chosen three authors whom I'd most like to be like when I grow up.

Richelle Mead, C.E. Murphy, and  Rachel Vincent. I mean, seriously, look at those backlists. Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of other authors who I admire. People who have written books that the prose will wishing I had written that or I could string sentences together in that way that can leave you breathless. 

But the ladies above, while their writing is lovely, would definitely fall into the commercial fiction side of things. And I love that about them. Some of my favorite authors telling damn good stories, action packed, and more importantly, full of characters that I adore. And that is what I want to do.

Before my break I spent a lot of time worrying that my writing wasn't enough of this or that. And really, if you boil it down, I was reading things that get described as lyrical. As literary fiction. And that was the light I was holding my own work up to and trying to figure out why I wasn't that. But I don't write literary fiction. My voice will never be described as lyrical. 

Comparing myself, my work, to those others was doing me a disservice. I writer commercial fiction. Most work will always be plot-driven stories centered around strong women who are either literally or metaphorically kicking butt. And I'm okay with that. Because looking at my bookshelf reminded me of something. So are most of my favorite books.

I would be ecstatic to have a career in writing half as successful as any of the ladies above. So now it's just a matter of deciding what to work on, and plowing through it until I find the right story at the right time and sell my first book. Now if I could teach myself to have the work ethic of Lynn Viehl or Lilith Saintcrow I'd be golden. Except for the fact that all I'm hearing lately is editors do not want anymore paranormal YA, and that covers about 80% of the ideas, and most of what I want to write. But ah well, that's another post for another time.

I Wrote A Book...Again

I finished writing my rough draft of Feral eight days ago. You'd think it would have been a bigger deal. I mean, I wrote a book. But finishing the book came and went in my life with little remark.

I think there were two main reasons for this. 1.) I was busy. O and I are at work 50 hours per week, we had scheduled our mandatory summer overtime, we had a baptism class, and we became Godparents. 2.) Even more likely why I didn't get super worked up about it, I knew in my gut I wasn't done.

I thought I knew myself as a writer. I write long and make lots of cuts during revisions. This was the case with the last novel I wrote, this has been the case with most short stories I've written. I thought it was just a given.

I was wrong.

When I finished the zero draft of Feral, it clocked in at 65,000 words. Don't get me wrong, I realize this is long enough to be a full YA for some writers, and not every story is the same. I was just a bit flabbergasted that I'd written something so short. So when I didn't jump and dance and celebrate at my zero draft being done, I thought it was just because I'd done this before, and I knew I had lots of revising and editing to do before it was ready to go out into the world.

Well, I've just finished doing my first read through and taking notes on what needs to be fixed. And I have a new theory. I didn't get super excited because in my gut, I knew a had more to write. After my first read-through, I now have a list of 29 scenes that need to be written or re-written. Which sounds very big and scary, but I'm more excited than anything.

29 scenes sounds like a lot. But looking over the list, it varies from an entirely new scene that needs to be written beginning to end from scratch, to a three paragraphs of a scene that have to be slightly re-written because something changed in the plot.

O asked me for an estimate of how long I think it will take to get through the list. Honestly, I'm not really sure. I don't think it will be very long, given how excited I am to get it done. But you never know what kink will pop up. But I do know one thing. It will get done faster if I get to work on it. So, hi-ho, hi-ho, it's off to work I go.

Tortoise vs the Hare

I had several false starts on my WIP. My current draft now stands at:

I've basically torn this thing apart so many times as I've gone, that I've removed nearly as many words from the file as I still have left in it. You'd think, that if I were a normal person, that would make me frustrated or sad. Lately it's been making me a little giddy. Yes, I know, well adjusted I am not.

But here's the thing. I recently had hit that part of the book where I hated it, couldn't stand it, was absolutely sure it was all crap. So far, for just about everything I've completed, that kicks in about a third of the way through and last until I hit the last third. I spend a third of the the thing I'm writing convinced I've spent countless hours typing useless drivel.

And I would have done so with this one too. Except! Except, I have all those wrong words to look back at. Which I did this weekend. And then I gave my current draft a once over. They may not all be the right words, but they're mostly in the right place. Which supplied me with a little pick me up that kept me from hating this book or thinking it's awful.

It may have taken me awhile, but this book is nearly halfway, and well on track to be done in late July or early August, in pretty decent shape. Don't get me wrong, I'll have my work cut out for me when I start revisions. Who doesn't? But I'm more confident about this book, than I have been anything else I've written, so far.

So here's crossing my fingers, plugging away--current goal is at least 1k/day--and hoping when I hand it over to some crit partners, they don't think it's a steaming pile.

Failure

Originally Posted 04/02/2010

There's such a stigma associated with failing that I think we often hold back, for fear of failing. You hesitate to try because you might fail. You don't set a goal, or you set it low so you won't fail. And I can't help but wonder, what's the point?

Yeah, failing sucks. But if you don't try, if you don't push yourself at whatever you're doing, why bother at all? I've come to realize lately, that as much as it sucks to try something and have it go wrong, to set a big goal and not meet it, it's worth it for the times when you set that goal way out of reach, and then do manage to make it.

Now, I'm not saying you should have unrealistic expectations of yourself or the world around you. Something more along the lines of:Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss it you will land among the stars. -Les Brown 

I set some pretty lofty goals for myself in March. I had a lot of work I wanted to complete, and I would have had to push really hard to complete it all. I failed. But, because I set that goal, I completed far more than I normally would have. And crossing those things off my to do list, even if I didn't cross them all off , felt pretty damn good. It's a new month, what goals can you set for yourself, what can you strive for if you just set aside that fear of failure?

Link Salad

Originally Posted 10/03/2010

After the last post I’m a little emotionally drained of new material. Thus: link salad.

This is in the oven right now. If you haven’t tried it, go do so. Your taste buds will thank you. It has quickly become one of my favorites.

This post is a month old, but rereading it in my starred folder of google reader, it held extra weight this month. Aspiring writer? Aspiring anything, really? Go read it. Sometimes you think it would make everything better if you just had an idea of what’s waiting, but this is a good reminder why you really shouldn’t know.

I’ve been floundering a bit with my writing lately. It’s a mini crisis of sorts. It feels like I’ve been pounded with back to back stuff from life for so long that I’ve reached this point of exhaustion. Sometimes I get so caught up in making sure everyone around me is taken care of that I tend to forget about me and the things that I want for myself.

Sometimes I forget the cost of writing. Or the cost to me of not writing. So I need to just take Lilith Saintcrow’s advice, take care of my needs, sit my ass in the chair, and write. And if I can’t seem to do it, Jenna Black has some good advice at keeping my ass there.

So, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go devour my enchiladas, watch an episode on my dvr, finish a good book, and get some sleep so I can get up in the morning and start chipping away at the WIP.

Recipes

I love cooking. I love that thrill of trying some new recipe, something you’ve never made before. I’m always a little disappointed when it doesn’t turn out or it’s just not to my tastes. But! When something new turns out well, when you take that first bite and you know this a new favorite, and OMG! how did I not know about this, I made something great today. That, my friends, is one of the best feelings in the world.

I bring this up because A: I made this last night. It was AMAZING! I’ve never had the dish at all, let alone made it at home. And, even though chicken and pasta are far from Oliver’s favorites (he complains loudly whenever I announce I’m making one or the other, let alone both), he was blown away by it. We stuffed our faces with it the last two nights. That’s how good it was, he ate leftovers without complaining. He still talked about how great it was. Go forth, make yourself some. Now. Well, not now, because it’s 9:30 at night now, but soon. You will not regret it. Unless you’re vegetarian. Then go make it with some eggplant slices dredged in egg and coated with panko  (japanese bread crumbs). You’ll still thank me.

And, finally, B: Because I’ve come to realize how similar writing and cooking are. Bear with me. You have a recipe for either. I know, I know, everyone hates formulaic fiction. But there’s still a recipe that’s followed in good fiction. You need characterization. Enough to make your characters feel real. And part of that is making sure their motivation is visible and understandable, even if the reader wouldn’t react in the same way. You need worldbuilding. Enough to suck the reader in and make them feel like they’re living in the pages of your book. You need a plot. Even if it’s about a person changing, there still has to be a plot. You need conflict to drive that plot, lest it fizzle out. Proper grammar allows the story you are trying to tell to be understood. There are a dozen more things.

Just like cooking, they can be combined in different quantities for different effects, but there is still a base formula to follow. And just like cooking, when you write something new and it falls flat there is the disappointment. Maybe you can fix it with a few tweaks, maybe the dish needs to be dumped out and remade from scratch (hello, completely rewriting the book), but at least you probably know where you went wrong and have an idea of how to fix it this time. You might not. It might take four or five tries. You might never get it right, or vow never to make it again. Much like me and pork chops until this last year.

But in both writing and cooking, maybe you should give it another shot later on. Don’t give up on something forever. Just because you don’t have the skill to make something now, doesn’t mean you’ll never have the skill needed. In the last five years both my writing and my cooking skills have steadily grown. Every time I do either of them a lot, when I get to the end of a big push I can look back and see how much better I am than I was before.

And just like cooking, when you get it right there’s that stupendous thrill when you take a bite/reread a section and realize, not only did it turn out, but it turned out really well. Especially when it’s something new, some new experiment you have tried before. Fried rice when you’ve never made asian food, or a science fiction short story when you’ve written few short stories and no sci-fi. Man, that feeling really is the best. So off I go, with a belly full of a delicious new recipe, to work on that sci-fi short story that’s turning out better than I ever would have expected.