No NaNoWriMo for Me…

I know. I haven’t been posting lately. Stress levels are high and I tend to shut down during those times.

I’ve been swamped with Cub Scout stuff lately. Not as insane as this time last year when the wildfires tossed everything up in the air, but almost. This is DS’s final year in the pack and he’ll move on to Boy Scouts in February. The problem? I’m ready for it to be February now and they still have no idea who’s going to be filling the three or four jobs I’ve been doing. Between popcorn and membership, September through November are hectic months here and I learned my lesson last year. I CAN do it, but I’m in high stress avoidance mode right now.

That being said, I do have a plan for November to get all my projects organized and laid out with what exactly needs done to complete them. So far, I have a short summary outline roughed out on one of them. Dont’ laugh, that’s actual progress! More than just organizing, what I’m doing could be more accurately called pre-writing. Of course I probably have 100k in pre-writing stacked up at this point if you combined all the projects together. This really shouldn’t surprise me.

I think I’m going to try to take these one project at a time, do the summary outline followed by a much more detailed checklist and then a detailed scene outline. If you’re curious as to how I came up with this plan it’s from the From First Draft To Finished Novel: A Writer’s Guide To Cohesive Story Building by Karen S. Wiesner.

The book is apparently a companion book to her book First Draft in 30 Days and while she says they can be used in conjunction, sometimes it feels like some of the information to do so slipped through an editing crack. But, since I don’t have that book, and I’m not exactly rushing out to buy it either, I’m going to plod along with the info I do have.

I love the way she presents the idea of layering through an analogy of building a house. You have to have a firm foundation, then a strong framing and then later you get to finish and decorate it. I think I’ve tried to start at the wrong end and haven’t exactly made sure my foundation and framing were the strongest before dashing ahead and picking out curtains and furniture. Basically, I’m still trying to figure out process while layering everything else along the way.

I also recently read Les Edgerton’s Hooked: Write Fiction That Grabs Readers at Page One & Never Lets Them Go which focuses on openings and spends a great deal on opening sentences. I’ve been thinking about that a lot too, but still find ideas coming to mind from Nancy Kress’ book Elements of Writing Fiction – Beginnings, Middles & Ends to reinforce the ideas about what makes a strong and successful hook that is integral to the story and can sustain it. I’m still having issues with finding where a given story starts, but I’m slowly being able to distinguish backstory from what makes an interesting beginning for me as a reader. Yes, I need to know all that info, but it doesn’t have to show up on page one of the story.

I know part of it is terminology, but this bit about inciting incident or story spark or turning point is also giving me fits. Start where the main character’s life changes. Ok. Sounds easy, right? But throw in wrenches like, “Oh, if (s)he doesn’t realize he’s life is changing yet, start later” or “Does it matter who’s life is changing because of this decision/action/etc? Who’s POV do you start out in first?”

I know, stop thinking and just do it. Hey, at least we get an extra hour tonight. I’m using mine to sleep!

Thursday Thirteen: LB&LI

13 Online Virtual Workshops

Romance Divas had their own Not-Going-To-Conference Conference last week during RWA Nationals and there was a lot of good information to be had, but I also found out Lynn Viehl hosts her own virtual workshop deal (Left Behind and Loving It) on her blog PaperBack Writer. Lots more to explore there! Here’s some of the highlights from the workshops that I enjoyed last week. Even more are listed at the end of the PWB workshop posts.

Lynn Viehl’s workshops:

1. VW#1: Power Plotting
2. VW#2: Eff the Editing
3. VW#3: World-Building I & VW#4: World-Building II
4. VW#5: Styling
5. VW#6: Brand Me
6. VW#7: Writing Life

Lynn Viehl’s LB&LI 2008 e-book containing her workshops from this year is available to read online, download and/or print on Scribd here.

Other Left Behind & Loving It workshops on the net included:

7. Worldbuilding with a Wiki by Sandra Barret — “Architecting your world using a free wiki.” This workshop explains how to use TiddlyWiki (the one I use as well) to keep track of interrelated links between information for your world.

8. The Anatomy Of Sex Scenes by Jaci Burton — “Writing sex can sometimes be the most uncomfortable part of writing the book. But it doesn’t have to be. A few key pointers that may help charge up your sex scenes and drag the writer out of their ‘discomfort’ zone.”
Part One – Part Two – Part Three – Part Four – Part Five – Q&A

9. Creating Great Beginnings – the Why and How by Sherryl Clark — “If your beginning works, the rest will follow. We’re going to look at why it’s crucial, what is the contract with the reader, Dos and Don’ts (and why/why not), story questions vs hooks, situating the reader, and writing backwards.” Sherryl also invited readers to send in their first 200 words for feedback.
Day One – Day Two – Day Three – Day Four – Day Five

10. Writing Effective Description by Karen Duvall — “A week of workshops on how to write vivid description using all the senses, covering one for each day of the week.”
Sight – Smell – Sound – Taste – Touch

11. WRITING PROCESS: Conceive, Develop, Write by Jamal W. Hankins — “An overview of my writing progress from story concept to actually writing a story.” — This one looks like it will continue at a slower pace over a longer time period. I’m definitely following this one with interest. I’ll try to remember to update with new links as they’re added.
Overview – Story Concept – Chapter Summaries – Character Development –
Organization Development

12. Balancing Motherhood and Writing by Dawn Montgomery, Kim Knox, and Michelle Hasker — “How to write a 1000 words in the zen of toddler meltdowns. Motherhood is a full time job and holding a family together is only half the battle. How do you find *your* time to write without losing your mind?” — I hope this one comes back. I really enjoyed it and it was down when I wrote it.
Day One – Day Two – Day Three – Day Four – Day Five

13. When Only the Right Word Will Do by Shannon Stacey — “Using word choices to add humor, help you show instead of tell, strengthen your voice and heighten characterization in deep POV in your second draft.”
Intro – Part One – Part Two – Part Three – Part Four

Links to other Thursday Thirteens!

1 Nicholas	2 On a limb with Claudia	3 SandyCarlson
4 Tempest Knight	5 Nina (Things in General)	6 marcia@joyismygoal
7 Jennifer McKenzie	8 Gwen Mitchell	9 Stephanie Sullivan

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Shakin’ Things Up

Yesterday’s earthquake that was in the Chino Hills/Diamond Bar area east of LA is old news by now. In the 20 minutes after it happened I got to calls. One from my mom on the east coast (who had been called by my uncle on this side of the Rockies) to find out if we’d felt it. And Dana Belfry who lives up that way also called me up. Thanks for checking on us!

Basically the house swayed but we didn’t even get any real rattling of knicknacks on the shelves this time. The kids didn’t really notice it and DH was “wobbling in his chair at work” when it happened. So anti-climatic. I’m always amazed when I look at those earthquake makes and lists, and realize just how much activity there is that we never notice around us. BTW, I’d like to keep it that way.

So,… if I’m not talking about the ground shaking… what am I shaking up? My writing. It’s the Divas Not Going to Conference Conference (NGTCC) week. Lots of workshops and such and there’s plenty more out on the net to read through Lynn Viehl’s Paperback Writer blog’s Left Behind and Loving It virtual workshop series.

I’ve been reading up on finding your voice and how plotting can be like a wiring diagram. I did manage to come up with what I think may be a working plot for the short story Bria wants me to submit with her for an anthology at the end of September. I just need to figure out the main characters a bit better now.

A couple of us have been talking about showing vs telling in a couple threads on the forums at Romance Divas. Jodi pointed out to me I’m not so much telling as synopsizing or summarizing actions. So the new focus is to show HOW things happen and to trust the characters in telling their story. I’m going to stop trying so hard, and see what happens.

And where the heck has summer gone? The kids go back to school in less than 3 weeks?! TOO much to do…eek.

Home Alone

San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge — San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge

Ok, not quite alone, but it seems like everyone’s gearing up for the RWA National convention in San Francisco this week. And I’m not actually going to be home all week either. We’re going camping with the Cub Scouts again this weekend — only two left! This is going to be more like “extreme picnicking” as we’re going to the Naval base on Coronado Island. It might be 90oF up here where we live, but it’ll be a balmy 70oF on the beach. Seems to easy to be camping.

So what am I doing between now and then? Taking advantage of all the online workshops that have sprung up. I know I’m going to be checking in on The Divas’ “Not Going to Conference Conference” and Lynn Viehl over at Paperback Writer is sponsoring a “Left Behind & Loving It” set of virtual conferences on the presenter’s blogs. Great week to be a craft geek.

So, other than my lame excuse of camping with my family, why am I not going and why haven’t I joined RWA after a year of being a writer wannabe?

Good question. I’ve learned so much this year, but I still feel I’m a long way off from doing this as more than a hobby. I don’t feel justified spending the money on myself that way yet. I regret that I can’t go to meet all the people who have been so great at RD (especially Bria, Jodi and Jen), but I’d rather focus on getting something finished to take in the future rather than to go empty handed.

Also, on Sunday, Suzanne Enoch and Teresa Medeiros are doing a joint signing in town. I don’t want to miss that either. Why does everything have to happen at the same time?

Onions & Ogres

Yup. Layers. Changing your way of thinking and looking at the world isn’t easy and it doesn’t shift overnight. Repeatedly banging your head against the same walls can help. Wait, I mean repeatedly exposing yourself to the same ideas in different venues, formats and states of mind. I decided to subject you to some snippets from my journal this week. The self-doubt isn’t as high today, honest.

Layers, must add more layers.

I need to think in layers and realize they’re a good and natural process. Nothing is wrong with getting the action down on the page and going back to add in what they’re thinking or experiencing. I do this with dialogue all the time. I need to expand the way I think to include other layers. An onion, or even an ogre, doesn’t have one or two layers. I need to dig deeper and add more little touches everywhere.

I don’t have a slick, clean, sparse voice like Janet Evanovich or Robert Parker. I can live with this. However, I need to be able to take my bland and boring basic sentences without any punch to them and ratchet them up to the next level.

Maybe I possess no real talent for this, or else I’m just doubting myself and questioning the effort to get through this phase. Perhaps I’m biased because I’ve seen DH and others make the art look so effortless. Painters don’t sit down and produce masterpieces. Layers and layers of paint are applied to reach the final image. Sculptors also work with layers. The armature is their rough draft. The form has to be built upon to reach the final stages.

Writing is no different. I need to get past this gestural phrase. Because honestly, that’s all it is. I’m making rough sketches toward what I want the final story to become. Some of my strokes are more confident and better delineate what I’m going for, but they’re still only rough guidelines of where I need to apply more effort later.

I think this is what’s most frustrating. I like seeing things done. Either that or I like to fiddle and play with them forever. However, none of my fiddling has amounted to a significant change. Nothing seems to change the existing functionality of previous versions.

I could be just fooling myself into thinking I can do this. Then again, I should question whether I do give my all or if I coast along, drifting and not pushing myself. That’s always a possibility. I’m wishy-washy on what my actual goals are and why I want to do this. I don’t have the drive to publish I see in other Divas. I don’t know if that’s a fear of success or laziness and lack of focus and ambition.

I don’t like to think I have no drive, no passion, no desire to make something of myself. I hate how I don’t mind shuffling along and ignoring how the world passes me by some days. I feel like I should do something, be someone, but most days, I’m not sure how to do that.

I’ve always been “adequate enough” at everything I attempt. I’d say the text game I worked on for a decade was probably one of the few places where I strove to do things better all the time. I don’t know if others would agree, because I did a hell of a lot of coasting too, but for a while, I was dedicated to bringing a deeper and better experience to the players in the areas I built and maintained.

I suspect that’s part of my problem with writing. I get the equivalent of the rooms and mobs done and think I have accomplished something. Either no ACTS exist to animate them or if there are, they’re sketchy and inconsistent. All of Janet Evanovich’s characters possess the equivalent of full libraries of ACTS behind them. Her settings are rich with revisited details. They’re familiar (some even say repetitive), but also resonant.

It’s likely I’m too close to what I’ve written still, but damn, I have trouble seeing where and how to improve what’s already on the page. I find it very difficult if the improvements require cutting something out. To my mind, that aspect is the most foreign.

Giant Blocks of Yellow!

Painting by Piet Mondrian It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything. I’ve been either busy writing, or not writing. Duh, right?

Ok. Lemme explain that a bit more clearly. I’ve been pounding out at least 2k words on the WIP on days I’ve planned to write. I’m doing the May RoDiWriMo (basically the Divas decided to do NaNo four times a year) and I needed that push to get off my tuckus and get writing on The Flower Queen’s Daughter. It’s coming along nicely. I have over 19k in the file now and I’m a bit over half way through my outline. There’s also some holes, where I know I haven’t spent enough time fleshing out a couple of scenes in particular, so I expect the word count for what my outline says I have done to increase by another 3500 words or so.

I’ve also had several planned non-writing days this month. The 3rd and 4th, we were in Hollywood for the dialogue workshop with Julia Quinn while DH took the kids to Universal Studios. I knew I wasn’t going to get anything done that weekend beyond my daily journal entries. I’m up to 22 consecutive days again. Go me! Also, this past weekend was Mother’s Day on Sunday, but it was also our 16th wedding anniversary on Saturday. So I knew nothing was going to be written this past weekend either.

I don’t know why I let Bria talk me into this class by Margie Lawson on Deep Editing when I knew I was going to be focusing on getting down a first draft this month. Ok. I know exactly why I let her talk me into it. I know very little about editing and what all it entails other than fixing basic typos and grammar corrections. I know don’t WHY something works when it does, it just feels right. Jodi says this is okay, but I’ve relied on my instincts too long in constructing sentences. I don’t trust them right now.

I also can feel when something is slightly off, but can’t really put my finger on why it drags or speeds by so fast my head spins. Anyway, this is where the EDITS system that I mentioned last post has come in handy. I may have two ms that resemble Mondrian paintings, but I can see where the problems are and where I’ll need to go back and work things in to make it more readable in the long run. BIG chunks of yellow and blue permeate my pages (that’s internalization and dialogue).

Also thanks to the Julia Quinn workshop, I’ve discovered another writer that’s new to me. Joanna Bourne. Ms Quinn recommended her book, The Spymaster’s Lady, when we were talking about accents. The book is amazingly done. The heroine is French and the hero is British. The depth and texture of the speech patterns changes with each POV shift. When you’re with the heroine, you don’t feel as if she’s thinking in English. Rich details all over the place. And boy am I glad to hear there are others forthcoming!

Imagine my delight when I discovered all the tidbits on craft and thinking about craft that Ms. Bourne has on her website! The best thing is the illustrative examples. Do this NOTthat. I can tell I’ll be a frequent visitor to read and reread her archives. Another happy thinking crafty writer. Just reading through her examples makes it easy to see why I’m not happy with my own rough drafts thus far.

The other thing I’m learning from the online-class is the pitfall of overwriting. If I want to make DH cringe, I just read him some examples. Although, today’s lesson has me interested… necessary backstory and befriending your internal editor. Shhh! Mine’s staying in the box until May 31st! Sorry, I need to finish this draft first, but I’m open to renegotiating our relationship in the future. 😉

So, what do you all do in first drafts? Do you dash down conversations as you hear them in your head and go back and fill in details around them? Do you write pages and pages of scene setting or do your characters waltz through white rooms that require you to go back and give them the decorating makeover your characters deserve? Do you find you write the emotionally charged lines the first time, or do you have to go back and find where your characters are feeling the rocks you throw at them?

Have you found that over time, this has changed for you and your first drafts become richer?

A little knowledge…

forms of knowledge … is a dangerous thing. Maybe this is what Andi and Bria were getting at when they asked if I thought too much craft info stuffed in my head was a bad thing<tm>.

I admit I was pretty bored with the workshop on Saturday as the nuts and bolts were gone over. It’s a good thing the personality of the speaker was engaging and funny. Also, I think Dana Belfry was highly amused by the little origami boxes I made out of Hershey’s Treasures wrappers during the talk.

In a way, I was appalled that the workshop was so nuts and bolts in its approach. Maybe I just assumed the audience for it should already have known the basics of having two of their characters speak to one another on the page? That doesn’t seem like that outlandish of an assumption.

On the other, maybe my expectations were just too high. Did I really expect the speaker to simply download her brain to ours? I don’t know, but I know there was a definite disconnect there. I don’t consider myself to be an expert on dialogue by any means, but the basic mechanics of it have been pretty obvious for a while now.

If you’re reading this and thinking to yourself, “Gah! What a snobbish bore!” you can relax, because I’m definitely running into my share of challenges in the Deep Editing class, Bria talked me into taking with her. I’ll be the first to admit that editing is brand spanking new to me. You mean there’s more to it than fiddling with a word choice here and there? Cool.

Anyway, I’m learning technical terms for all sorts of rhetorical devices I knew existed, but never played with on a conscious level. I can hear my DH yawning right about now. Yes, dear. Old hat for you, but I was taking econ and business classes instead.

I think my favorite quote from Saturday’s workshop will always be, “Do it well, but don’t do it often!” That seems to apply to these rhetorical devices. I think the do it well part means you have to make it blend in with the writing around it too. It can’t just stick out like a sore thumb on the page. Otherwise, it just looks a bit purple.

I do feel I am learning from the class (yes I just signed up yesterday), but the EDITS system and taking a highlighter and painting the different sections (dialogue, description, internalization, emotion, and blocking) different colors really lets me see why I like and dislike various sections. Clumps are bad. A nice smattering of everything reads much better.

In other news, I’m over 10k on the Flower Queen’s Daughter story!

Journal Query

Pen on journal page In my journal entry on Friday, I wrote a big whine about how my progress with The Flower Queen’s Daughter was going. It isn’t really relevant except I was asked in chat what I wrote about in my journal. I replied that I usually use it for ranting, whining, and thinking out loud about what I’m working on, how my process is working or not and ways I can improve as a writer.

Just the question sparked a tangent in the second part of the entry where I was still thinking about how I was approaching this story and writing in general. The following is excerpted from that entry with minimal editing.

It’s funny when people ask me what I write about in my journal and I come out with one of my “big think day topics” or even just say that I’m thinking out loud about my story and what’s working and what isn’t and I’m surprised by how impressed they sound. Don’t other writers think about what they’re doing? Maybe they don’t or maybe it’s just that they don’t write their thoughts down. I certainly didn’t do either when I tried this back in college. I just sat down and started writing words down. I didn’t think about things like conflict, or scenes or anything like that or even plot.

I know my writing has improved since then, but I often find myself paralyzed by insecurity and indecision. I need to push through that and not worry so much about getting things wrong, I just need to write something down. It’s much easier to fix something you can see, than something that’s just wisping around in your head.

Writing doesn’t exist until you put it on the page. This is not performance art we’re talking about where it’s only experienced once in the moment. This also isn’t sculpture in stone. This is malleable and evolving art form. Nothing’s written in stone until it’s in print and even then, small changes can be made in subsequent editions.

In any case, I need to stop worrying and just write. It really doesn’t matter if it sucks. It’s all a learning process. Everything can be improved until it’s released out into the world. I won’t be judged on the early drafts. DH will only send me back to rewrite it if it sucks, but he won’t think less of me because of it. I just need to keep on rollin’.

So, which side of the line do you fall? Do you feel you over-analyze everything or do you just write as it all comes to you never looking back? Or have you managed to find a happy medium?

Thanks and Possible Breakthrough

First off, I want to thank everyone for their birthday wishes yesterday!

I had a great day and we went out for Japanese for dinner for something different that the kids and I’d never had before: Shabu Shabu, which is named for the “swish” sound the meat makes when you drag it through the boiling water.

So what’s this have to do with a breakthrough? Not much, really. Except that I’ve been looking at this story as a single big chunk of meat plopped down on the counter. Wrong. It needs to be sliced thinly to bring out the marbling, the texture and flavor. It needs a variety of veggies on the side to season it. And most importantly, it needs that pot of boiling water to steep in, to meld everything together into something tasty and new.

Dare I hope that by forcing myself to face this story head-on this week (see boiling pot reference), I’ve managed to push through past the stale synopsis on Wikipedia to something interesting, fun, and that will qualify as a romance (see the something tasty and new reference)?

What I realized is that everything I’ve done so far has been solely for my benefit. The majority of what I’ve cluttered up my brain, blog and hard drive with regarding this story so far will never see the page in the final story. I don’t consider it wasted time at all because I had to know it and work through it to find the story that was hiding underneath.

Unfortunately, what I did realize is that I’ve mostly abandoned the approach I was trying to take. I still think it’s very puzzle-like in trying to determine what goes where, what A means for B, and why C has to happen before D can. But thinking about the “layout” and who and what need to populate the story have been pushed aside in my quest to find the story I want to write itself.

Now that I have an overview of what I want to do (and it might not look like it contains all the same plot points as before, but they’re still bouncing around my head and woven in and around what is there. The original folktale seems to be mostly backstory and supporting details for the hero’s storyline, but the heroine is taking over the show and what the story is about has changed because of the decisions I’ve forced the characters to make and the histories I’ve given them.

So, back to swishing these poor characters around. Mmm… it’s starting to look like soup… I mean a story! What do you think?

Alexander can’t help helping others and when he learns a woman has been kidnapped from the old gypsy woman he rescued from a ditch, things start to go wrong. He finds the woman, but Anthea refuses to leave before she can recover the key to her father’s breeding program that was stolen by her “captives”. Meanwhile, the matriarch plans to force Anthea into marriage with her eldest son because of her own impeccable bloodline. Eventually, Alex figures out that he needs a little outside help in order to help solve Anthea’s problems and that he likes her as she is. Alex and Anthea manage to escape with the key but the family pursues them. Will society’s notions of propriety trap her forever or will true love free her to be her self.

Oh, and you can expect to hear a lot more about a couple of my presents in the future: DH got me Robert McKee’s Story: Substance, Structure, Style and The Principles of Screenwriting and my mom got me a copy of Nancy Kress’s Beginnings, Middles & Ends.

KISS

I have been working on the Flower Queen’s Daughter story. I decided I needed to dig deeper and figure out the heroine’s storyline and what her own journey looks like. So far, I detailed conflicts and beats for the first four scenes. My real issue is with keeping things simple and preventing them from becoming overcomplicated.

Anthea is a bit of a tomboy, filling the role of the son her parents never had. She’s horse-mad and her mother is not pleased. Our heroine promised her father on his deathbed to oversee the family stables and continue his work on the breeding line.

Her mother wishes her daughter settled in a comfortable marriage, not dirty and smelling of horse. She doesn’t know about the promise and tries to forbid Anthea from spending her time in the stable.

While working with the steward, Anthea discovers one of their mares was pregnant when she was sold and this foal turns out to be a key part of the breeding program and must be recovered if her father’s goals are to be achieved.

Her mother is overjoyed by Anthea’s invitation to the Dragon Family’s House Party. Anthea agrees to go, but for much different reasons, she tracked the sale of the pregnant mare to them. However, neither realizes why Dragon Mother extended the invite.

Unfortunately, that’s as far as I’ve gotten. This week’s plan is to sit down and hammer on the heroine’s storyline some more. The general idea of where I want to take her exists, but I need to weave it into the original hero’s story.

I think my new mantra needs to be K.I.S.S. Keep it simple, stupid. Everything keeps getting tangled up and I end up chasing down rabbit holes after complications that are in most cases unnecessary. I rarely attempt to write short and don’t think I would be able to do so without problems. I read a couple articles on the topic, but my brain doesn’t understand the difference between dilemma and major conflict.

The ability to estimate word counts is currently beyond me. If someone asks how long a story will be, you got me. Not a clue. If I consider my difficulties in finishing what I start, this shouldn’t come as a surprise.

So here’s what I have for the heroine’s story so far:

Flora wants her daughter, Anthea, to be more ladylike because she knows a hoyden won’t land a suitable husband. However, on his deathbed, Anthea promised her father to carry on his breeding program at the family stables.

Anthea and the steward discover Dragon family stole foal when they bought a mare last season. She realizes this foal holds the key to her father’s breeding plan and vows to get it back.

Anthea wants to make her mother happy but can’t seem to do it when her mother asks for her promise not to search out the stolen foal and to think about her future.

She receives invitation to Dragon’s house party and sees it as a way to keep promise to both parents. Little does Anthea realize, she has been invited because the Dragon Mother wants to compromise her into marrying her eldest son.