No Excuses Today

I can’t avoid writing any more.

I had excuses the past couple days — “I’m tired from writing my final”; “I’m tired from driving down to Kansas City and back to visit my intern” — good excuses, both of them, But, honestly, I need to get back into the scheme of things.

Another excuse I’ve made to myself is that I’m used to working at the cafe, because it’s out of the house, it’s novel yet familiar, and there’s coffee (admittedly there’s coffee at home, but it takes work). I haven’t been able to work at the cafe lately because of the need for two screens at this point in editing. I need one screen to look at the marked-up Word copy of Prodigies and the other to make changes to the Scrivener copy (I keep my work on Scrivener because I can print out manuscripts and the like as needed.) We have an office, a claustrophobic affair with two big screens, but it’s easier to avoid working there because I can quit right after I’ve started without having to pack up, pay my tab, and drive home. (Those items are disincentives to leaving, believe me.)

Richard got the idea to utilize my old (and unused) iPad as a second screen for mobile editing. It’s a great idea, as it turns out — even though the screen is small, it will show enough information for me to work with. The software to do this, which must be installed on both the iPad and the PC, is called Duet Display and the details are here: Duet Display.

So I have no excuses today. I only have a meeting in the morning, and then I’m free. I have a system to work with to help with the dual display need, and I have a place to go.

Now to steel myself to the fact that I need to stack all chances against the poor residents of Barn Swallows’ Dance and kill a few.

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Note: I have gotten a couple of rejections since yesterday, but I’m okay with it. They weren’t big things, and one of them was hastily written to meet a theme. I’m still waiting on big stuff.

Riding the Struggle Bus with my Novel

I’m struggling with Gaia’s Hands again.

I just don’t get a feeling of cohesiveness. I feel like I’m blobbing paint on a sculpture randomly and it’s not smoothing out. I’m not sure what to do about it.

If ever a novel needed to be burned in a bonfire, this is the one. Or is it?

Sometimes, my negative notions of a book I’m writing are based more on how I’m feeling at the moment than the book itself. So I have to ask myself if the book is really as bad as I think it is, or whether I’m just feeling discouraged. Conversely, I have to ask if the book is as good as I think it is, or whether my opinion is being buoyed up by a bubble of optimism. I don’t come up with many answers, which frustrates me.

My husband is not much help. No matter what I write, he says it’s good. First draft, good. Twenty-times edited manuscript, good. Never great, never bad.

So I have to go back to that beast of a novel and try to smooth the random lumps:

Does the relationship between Jeanne and Josh (given the 25-year age difference) make sense? (This is a fantasy novel; suspend your disbelief.)
Are their connections with Gaia developing at a reasonable pace and/or precipitated by plot factors?
Is the plot with Growesta/her department (the bad guys) developing?
Does anything feel just “stuck in there” for no reason except to pad out the word count?

I didn’t understand what editing was all about for the longest time. I copy-edited (proofread) and considered it editing. Now that I know what real editing is like, I understand why editing takes longer than writing the book. It’s challenging, and often bereft of hope.

Wish me luck, folks. I’m considering building that bonfire.

How I started writing novels

Well, I finally wrote/revised for three and a half hours yesterday, fueled by copious amounts of coffee. I didn’t accomplish that much word-wise — maybe 1500 words at most. But I think I’m getting closer with Gaia’s Hands. Lots of work to go, though.

Gaia’s Hands is my first novel. It’s always been a problem child of a story. When I wrote it, I had no intention of writing a novel. I had written a short story based on a dream I had about an encounter between myself and a younger man. (If you think the dream had to do with the fact I was approaching my 50th birthday, you’d be right. And the dream was far more bizarre than anything I wrote from it.)

I wanted to know more about the dream, so I started doing a Gestalt dream analysis method where one tells the story from the viewpoint of the different characters, and even the important inanimate objects of the story. (I didn’t go that far). During this set of writing exercises, a story developed. And then another.

After the third story that developed from the dream, my husband Richard looked at me and said, “You’ve got all these stories. Why don’t you write a novel?”

I had never written a novel before because I think in terms of short stories — small plots with big twists, big themes. Novels have big twisty plots, and I wasn’t sure I knew how to plot those. I wrote Gaia’s Hands anyhow. Its original name was Magic and Realism, and it was heavy in theme and extremely light in plot. It was basically a love story, and although I have nothing against love stories, the characters did little more than hang out together.

And then I wrote more novels, some of which collapsed into each other (For example, Magic and Realism became Gaia’s Hands, and then it subsumed another novel during the same time period called Gaia’s Eyes and that’s the novel I’m currently re-editing) and somehow I got better at writing big twisty plots.

It’s been a lot of hard work editing and re-editing, and then getting help editing from a developmental editor and re-editing, but I’ve learned my goal has shifted from getting published to getting good, then getting published. I don’t want to grow to regret anything I’ve published.

I guess now I can call myself not only a writer, but an author, because I have devoted myself to growth. And it literally, cliche notwithstanding, started with a dream.

Questions I ask myself

Questions I ask myself while writing:

Do my characters ring true?

Do their emotions and actions fit their character?
Does their trajectory make sense?
Do I care about my characters?

Does the plot deliver?

Does the plot build in suspense?
Does the action make sense as it unfolds?
Do consequences logically follow actions?

Does the story flow?

Is the time and scene progression clear?
Does it avoid getting bogged down?
Is too much going on at once?

I feel discouraged looking at all these questions — how can I manage to do all this? Much of this happens subconsciously, or by trial and error. Sometimes it’s hard, because I don’t (obviously) write the whole book at once, but by bits and pieces. A lot of this I miss with my own tired eyes, which is why I have a dev editor and I let others read my stories.

So in actuality, it’s a matter of trusting myself, trusting the process, and just writing.

Growing as a Writer

Gaia’s Hands, the novel I’ve gone back to revise, was my first novel, and it’s been a problem child since its conception. I have amended it, added to it, subtracted from it, tried it as a novella, and still it’s been not quite enough.

It’s always seemed like a small novel, one in which not much happened, even though a lot happened. A novel in which a relationship developed and then, after a few chapters, Jeanne’s getting persecuted by her department, and then …

Almost like there were two halves of the book — first half relationship and second half disaster.

Why didn’t I figure this out sooner?

I’ve been growing as a writer. Those rejections from agents and publishers have helped me to seek out improvement. My dev editor, Chelsea Harper, has helped me to see where I can improve. The rewrites have helped me to see what I can become.

I don’t know that I would have gone through this process of improvement if I’d gone straight to self-publishing. I’m glad I have to work hard for my dream.

Excited about Editing

I really want to get done with my work today (readings for online class, taking the Introduction to National Incident Management System course and exam, driving to Kansas City, visiting an intern). I REALLY want to get done with my work today.

I’m very excited about where Gaia’s Hands is going.

I knew there was something wrong with it before, but I didn’t know what. But after editing Apocalypse and understanding that it got into the plot too quickly, I realized that Gaia’s Hands needed buildup in the early chapters as well, but in its case, the beginning meandered and the plot appeared out of nowhere.

So I’m excited about the editing. I’m excited about seeing what is possible for the book now that I have a handle on editing. There’s going to be a bit of editing.

But I’m looking forward to editing.

Powered by Science and Coffee

I need coffee.

I’m still at the conference; I will be presenting my poster on “Do Euphemisms Influence Car Buying?” (The answer is No) this morning and maybe get to the zoo this afternoon.

I’m getting everything done except my writing/editing but that’s to be expected. Not enough brain cells for the writing.

But at least I’m getting this out today.

My Brain is FULL!

I need to get back to regular journaling. It’s been tough lately, what with planting the garden (Asian vegetables! Weeding! Cherokee purple tomato and lots of basil!), editing Apocalypse to make my dev editor proud (and to be ready for another edit), taking my online class (with a 187-page reading for the first assignment), getting ready for professional conference travel, fielding emails from interns …

My brain has been quite full. And it’s summer! It’s not supposed to be this full!

It’s a good thing. I don’t like sitting still. I like making things happen. And I have time to do it. Do I have the energy? Not so sure, but …

I have edited Apocalypse down to 70k words. Not that I want it to have fewer words, but I did have to cut out things that meandered (and as this document had been written five-six years ago and squished together from two different novels and — you get it. I will try to add some back.

I go from feeling really good about the document to wallowing in despair. I wish I could get more words in it, but I (and my dev editor) would rather it be tight than verbose (and I excel at verbose, my friends.)

So today’s tasks: I’ve already written a response to Assignment #1 (#2 is due Thursday) and written this blog entry; other tasks include writing for a while (starting at 11) and a little planting (this evening).

Wheeeeeee!

A Productive Day

I spent a productive day yesterday editing Apocalypse.

My task was to take away all the filler (of which there was quite a bit, because I wrote the originals about three years ago when I didn’t know as much as I do now) and to get rid of some of the gazillion points of view, because my dev editor said it’s not a good thing to follow that many characters, even in third person omniscient. So I guess third person omniscient isn’t that omniscient?

I’m not done yet. I need to ratchet up some of the suspense. I need to add back a couple things I took out. I need to see if I’m going to put back the Amarel/Batarel/Natalie subplot. (I’m not. No matter that it completely guts another novel I wrote. It isn’t a good turn of plot, although it made a good philosophical point.)

So I’ll be busy writing, in-between bringing the dead bat to Public Health and writing to my new teaching assistant.

The joys of rejection

I am beginning to like rejection.

No, honestly, I don’t like rejection. After all, who likes rejection? Who gets up in the morning and says, “I’m so looking forward to getting rejected!”?

I like improving my work, honing my craft (although that latter phrase sounds so pretentious to me and nothing like the actual process with all its sweat and tears and cutting savage chunks out of a work in progress).

I like looking at an old draft and wondering how I thought that was the book as it should be.

I like the image of myself as someone who cares enough about their work to seek out a developmental editor. Who cares enough about their readers to not put out a rough version of that book.

I also like the idea of getting published, so wish me luck.