Starting from Scratch

My husband suggested to me that I might be writing the wrong story.

I have been writing on a novel that has been, simply, lackluster. I don’t like the main character well, it’s writing slow, and the drama comes too late. Everyone’s sitting around talking. There’s no love story. There’s no tension. Writing it is an exercise in tedium.

Richard suggested I’m writing from the view of the wrong main character. And he’s right. Much of the main story, which in the current novel is written as a side story, is the relationship between the human Alice Johnson and the Archetype William Morris. Alice is an anthropology grad student who is persistent in following her suspicions that William is not what he seems. William doesn’t want to be discovered, but he is falling for Alice. And they have a rocky relationship, given William’s trauma and Alice’s persistence. All this in the backdrop of beings that cannot afford to be discovered.

I still don’t know if there’s enough tension in this one other than William and Alice, who eventually have the daughter Anna Johnson, later to be adopted by Arthur Schmidt. She is the main character of Whose Hearts are Mountains, which explores the mystery of her birth. But there is something to hold onto, something that might keep me writing.

Stopping in the Middle

When you’re unhappy with your first draft

The good news is that I have been writing more on my latest novel, which makes me very happy.

The bad news is that I’m dissatisfied with what I have written. Such is the lot of writers.

Why am I dissatisfied? (This should be cathartic!):

Reveal of Leah’s talent too quick
Not enough of the relationship between the main characters
Overall, unremittingly dreary

The bones of the story seem sound, but some of the surrounding structures (the muscles?) aren’t holding up the promise of the story.

What to do now

Many writers at this point would tell one to keep plowing through and wait to revise until one has completed the first draft. I am ignoring this advice.

I am distracted by what is missing in my characters. I am bummed out with a story without laughter in-between the heavy stuff (and there’s plenty of heavy stuff in this one). If one’s feelings about the content impede the writing, I think rewriting those so many chapters is not only wise but necessary.

This means my progress will not be going forward, but rippling outward. I can accept this.

In the meantime, I’m trying to promote my work. It’s hard for me because I’m not the sort of person who feels comfortable with self-promotion. But here is my author’s website, which has a blog post about all the writing I have out there. Here’s the page.

Happy reading!

Progress (I think)

I think I’m through the edit of Prodigies — it’s going to my in-house reader now. The edit was about two things — emotions and plotting. I hope I have those in a better place.

I guess Prodigies will go out on my next querying round, and I’m hoping the beginning now brings agents in. They should get to know the main character now.

Now, I’m afraid, it’s time to go back to Gaia’s Hands. I would rather prune very prickly roses than go back to Gaia’s Hands, to be truthful. That book needs so much help, being the first one I wrote. It needs replotting and characterization and dilemmas and … I still don’t know if I want to start it from scratch.

I do worry because I haven’t had an idea for a new book for a while (but Whose Hearts are Mountains wasn’t that long ago, either). On the other hands, I want the existing works to be sharp, sparkly, and compelling. I hope I get closer to that.

All that’s left is the bones

That scream you just heard? That was my story after I gutted and flayed it.

I am revising Gaia’s Hands — or so I thought. I looked over the structure of my story and realized it needed … a lot. The bones are solid: the unlikely couple of Jeanne Beaumont and Josh Young, their struggle against a corporate-academic partnership that threatens Jeanne’s livelihood and more, the development of their relationship with the World-Soul Gaia and their talents. The flesh on the bones — the particulars, the pacing — all off.

In other words, the outline needs reshaping, and large amounts of it need to be completely rewritten knowing what I know now about writing.

I really don’t know if I’m up to rewriting this story.

Sigh.

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.

My routine is anything but.

Back from the conference, and back to my routine —

No. I have to go to Kansas City for intern visits on Wednesday and Thursday. Hope to find some time to hole up and write some more and —

OMG! I forgot to tell you! I figured out how to fix up what was wrong with Gaia’s Hands!

Interestingly, it was the same thing wrong with Apocalypse — not enough of a ramp-up. This time, however, there was too little going on at the beginning — a lull — rather than a too short ramp-up and there’s the battle. So there’s a long-overdue revision.

Richard and I laid out the revision of the first part of the book (other parts need revising but not whole chapter rewrites) and the challenge of course will be time, energy, and patience.

Wish me luck.

Rewriting another novel

I finished my rewrite of Apocalypse, and currently I don’t have enough distance from it to look at it objectively anymore, which is why it will go back to dev edit shortly.

So where does that leave me relative to writing? I can either start a new book, figure out what to do with the idea for Gods’ Seeds (I’m struggling with that — there’s so much I want to do that it could be two books, my usual problem) or I could look over the post dev edit on Gaia’s Hands and see if I can feel better about it.

I’ve decided to work on Gaia’s Hands. If (when?) I get Apocalypse published, Gaia’s Hands would be a prequel. As such, I’d like to get it polished while I have the time to and before I come up with any other bright ideas. Whose Hearts are Mountains, which still needs a developmental edit, would be the next novel after that.

Yes, I have a plan. All I need is for the stars to align so that I can actually get something published. If you pray, put in a good word for me.

Writing Retreat Goal Achieved!

My goal for writing on this two-day retreat was to complete the building/writing of the first third of Apocalypse, which went entirely too fast (and was a lot shorter) in the original product. This was the hardest item in the rewrite, because it required writing some 18,000 words from scratch that nonetheless segued into the rest of the book (which needs severe revision).

Other things I needed to do: not give away the secret identity of one of the leads, develop the antagonists so they weren’t so black and white, put some tension between the male-female main protagonist pair (and it’s going to get worse before it gets better).

I’m done with this part! My writing retreat kicked me into some creative thinking!

Make time

I need to start writing today!

I’ve spent the last couple of days prepping and planting in the garden (there will be more to come) and not touching the edit of Apocalypse. But I’m close to done with the beginning part, which is the part I had to add to the manuscript. I don’t know if rewriting the second part with its many faults (point of view confusion, dragging plot places) is going to be easier or harder.

I’m going on a writing retreat tomorrow afternoon through Thursday morning at Mozingo Lake. That will get me away from the many distractions here (including cats, which my husband will take care of before joining me).

I suppose the break was good for me, although I feel like if I don’t write today, I’ll find something else to do like making plant labels. Or shopping for more plants — stop it!

I still have to make myself a routine so I don’t spend the summer surfing. I’m going to have a TA to help me organize classes, so I need time for that. And my summer class next week …

I’m obviously an extrovert, because I’m thinking with my mouth open — or, more accurately, while typing. But there’s an important lesson here for writers: Make time.