Adventures in Drafting

Sometimes I wonder if I’m a writer, or a stenographer. More often than not, it doesn’t feel like I’m creating anything when I sit down at my keyboard; I just have a window into someone else’s life, and I’m recording it for posterity. It’s a strange, but slightly thrilling, sort of feeling. I’ve felt it before, but not for a while, now. I’ve missed it.

Image: officemuseum.com

I am almost 69,000 words into draft 1 of ‘Tider’, and the grand dénouement is not far away. I have plotted, and replotted, and replotted the ending, adjusting every few days as my characters get lairy and unpredictable and start doing things their own way, as they are wont; still, though, they are surprising me by taking the initiative. ‘Step back, puny author,’ they seem to say. ‘We’ve got this.’ Then, I can only watch as they roundhouse kick their way out of every sort of structure and narrative I’d tried to put them in, and my careful planning falls down in a heap around my ears. Really, I don’t know why I bother.

I had reckoned I’d be finished ‘Tider’ about 4,000 words ago, but the story has kept going and there’s a little more that needs to be told yet. I thought I had dispatched a ‘baddie’ quite thoroughly, too, but they reappeared in yesterday’s writing, determined to have one final moment in the limelight. I thought my heroine had faced all the challenges she was to face, but another decided to show up just at the most inopportune moment. Seriously, at times, I feel like I’m wrangling a bunch of monkeys, and they all live inside my head.

How are ya!?
Image: sodahead.com

My husband got a little worried when I told him ‘Tider’ was refusing to cooperate; I guess he was imagining another 150,000-word beast was about to come spewing out of my fingers again. I hastily reassured him that wasn’t the case. I’m pretty close to the end of this draft. I haven’t reached it yet, but I hope – really hope – that today might be the day. I know there’s huge work left to do on this first draft (it has more holes than a dairy full of Swiss cheese, and it needs more expansion and explanation at the beginning), but I think it’ll be pretty solid by the time I get to type ‘The End’. I’m looking forward to that moment.

I had always imagined ‘Tider’ as a duology, or a trilogy even. Now, I’m hoping it will be a stand-alone novel. In one way, I feel sad that my original dreams for this story are no longer going to come true, but in another I know that the way I’ve written ‘Tider’ now is the way it should have been from the start. This version feels more true, and more satisfying, and I’m much happier with it. I’m finally figuring out that a story doesn’t have to exhaustively detail how every tiny thread pans out; there has to be a satisfactory end to the plot, of course, but a little bit of mystery is okay, too, as is a hint of what might happen to the characters once we’ve finished reading about them. A book isn’t supposed to be a chronicle of a family’s history, a begat-list running to the end of time – it’s supposed to be an episode in that history, a snapshot taken at a crucial moment, or a turning point, or a time of crisis. Once the characters have passed that point of testing, and they’ve come through the crucible in whatever way they can, then the story can end without a reader feeling like they’ve been cheated. I’m not talking about leaving a cliffhanger ending, or deliberately holding back on explaining a plot point for the sake of it – what I mean is, a book can have a ragged, messy, organic ending, a true-to-life ending, and it can be the absolute best note to leave the story on.

That’s what I think, at least.

I also love it (despite all my complaints) when characters come to life and start dictating what they’re going to do. Not only does it make you feel like a real writer, who has created a bunch of ‘real’ people – i.e. characters with their own minds, motivations and aspirations – but it’s also an amazing thing to watch your plot twist and turn upon itself in a way of its own choosing. Of course, I can decide to completely undo it in a subsequent draft, but I feel it’s good to give a story the freedom to develop as it goes. If it’s taking me by surprise, I hope it will take a reader by surprise, too.

Anyway. I have a lot to do today, so I’d best push on and get cracking. The sooner I get this draft done, the sooner I can get to redrafting it, and the sooner I can usher it out into the world. Maybe, one day, other people will even get to read it…

Wouldn’t that be *wonderful*, Toto?
Image: songbook1.wordpress.com

Tider Tuesday

Today, I’m beginning a monumental task. What better day to do it than a Tuesday, yes? Yes.

Today, I am beginning a rewrite of ‘Tider’. I’m sure y’all will remember me talking about this poor, long-neglected novel of mine, which I started last year and thought I’d finished in January of this year. You may also remember the near meltdown that engulfed me in the latter stages of said novel, and you may (or, probably, may not) have been wondering why I’ve been so quiet about it ever since.

Well. The reason is this.

Writing ‘Eldritch’ has given me a huge insight into the kind of writer I want to be. Writing ‘Eldritch’ has shown me that I really truly do love children’s books, and that while I love reading YA books, I’m not terribly good at writing them – at least, not at the moment. In the current version of ‘Tider’, my main character is in her mid-teens, and there’s a love interest, and she’s awkwardly finding out about her feelings for this love interest while simultaneously trying to save her family, and quite possibly the world, from destruction; I realise now that the love interest was superfluous – at least, as far as I’m concerned. The important thing about the story was the character, her family, and her love for them. In short, ‘Tider’ – in its current form – is a children’s book trying to be a YA book.

My original idea for ‘Tider’ involved my main character and her best friend going off on an adventure in an attempt to save the life of the best friend’s father, and unwittingly getting involved in a situation much bigger than either of them could have imagined, which leaves the fate of the world at stake. In the course of the book, the characters would be faced with hard choices, about their families and also about their friendship, and my MC and her own father would be set on a collision course due to his unwillingness to help them in their quest. For some reason, this became a story about a girl rebelling against her father and wanting to find out the truth about her mother, getting involved in a vigilante group and falling in love with one of its ringleaders, who then go on to try to take her father out of business (because his ‘business’ is illegal and immoral and wrong, something the MC gradually comes to see.) You might also remember that ‘Tider’ was far too long – somewhere in the region of 150,000 words, which is lunacy – and the time and effort that would be involved in taking it as it is and editing it down to a manageable size would, I feel, be better spent in ‘simply’ rewriting the book completely.

I’m being very calm about this, all things considered.

I look a bit like this guy, but that’s irrelevant.
Image: creepypasta.wikia.com

Over the past few days and weeks, the idea for ‘Tider’ Mk. II has been taking shape in my head. I think I have a first page, and a first chapter, and a revised structure – basically, the plot is the same but without some of the more complicated subplots and, of course, the romance element – and, really, all I’m doing is going back to my original plan for the book. In a way, I feel it’s been a long, painful, but necessary process.

I do wish, sort of, that I’d been able to come to this conclusion without all the stress and sweat and panic and hard work, but then, that’s what learning is all about, isn’t it?

Things I have learned from this process:

If you’re struggling – to the point of tears – with a book, then take a step back and reassess it. If it’s not working, it may not be anything you’re doing wrong. It may just be not working.

If you’re panicking about your book, and plot twists or ‘patches’ or ideas are coming to you at a crazy pace, and when you work them into your book and they fix something for a while but cause you bigger problems later on, don’t just leave them there. Go back over what you’ve done, and calmly, rationally unpick it, and see if there’s something better you can do.

If you’re not enjoying the writing – with the caveat that, of course, writing is work, and hard work, and should be challenging – then something may be slightly off-kilter. Again, take some time to think and reassess and, perhaps, take a complete break from what you’re doing for a while.

Do not set yourself minimum word limits every day. Do not force yourself to reach 5,000 words, or 6,000 words, or 7,000 words… every day, just write the amount of words you can write, and be happy with that.

If you’re really not getting anywhere with a project, start something else; come back to the first project when you’re ready.

So. Wish me luck? And, I hope, if you’re having trouble with a piece you’re working on, that you’ll take heart from my struggle and realise nothing is too difficult to overcome.

Right. I’m setting phasers to ‘Write’. See you all tomorrow!

Diving Back In

Today, it’s the ninth of April.

Image: howmanyarethere.net
Edvard Munch, The Scream

You may remember me saying, some time ago, that I planned to get back into my novel(s) at the start of April, and get at least one of them ready to start doing the rounds of submissions before the end of the month. Well, you’d think I’d have started the process by now, then, wouldn’t you?

I haven’t, though. Partly, this is due to being quite busy so far during April, but mainly it’s due to something else entirely. Something to which I am no stranger.

My old nemesis: Fear.

I opened my computer file for ‘Eldritch’ the other day, and began to get that old familiar thrumming in the chest once more, the dead giveaway that all is not well within. I read through the first few pages and realised that there were 150 more to go, and my vision started to blur. I had to close the file and step away from the computer for a while – so far, ‘a while’ has been ‘a week, nearly’. My gaze fell upon my hard copy of ‘Tider’, complete with all its handwritten, sweated-over notations, yesterday, and I couldn’t bring myself to open up my box-file and just deal with it. I know I have to do this work, and I know (or, at least, I’m *fairly* sure) the stories contained in both these files are worth saving – at least, to me. But all of this logic and reason and sensible-ness tends to go out the window when you’re faced with the unenviable reality of writing: it’s hard work, and it may (and indeed probably will) be hard work which will come to nothing.

I know how it feels to put my heart, soul and kitchen sink into a project and watch it vanish without trace. I know how bad that felt at the time, and how it made me slide into a trough of depression that lasted the best part of a year. I don’t want to go through that again. I have no way of knowing for sure, of course, that the same thing will happen with my creative work, but the old fear is there, lurking, waiting to pounce.

But then, I have to realise that this fear isn’t what it seems. It’s definitely there, skulking about like a wolf in the woods, but it’s not necessarily a fear of failure in the eyes of other people. It’s not even a fear of success, as I’ve talked about before here on Blog Central. I have a feeling it’s more of a fear that I’ll fail myself, that I’ll let myself down, that I won’t do a proper job of this work, that I’ll do it ‘wrong’, that it won’t ever be good enough… Paradoxically, of course, the way this fear manifests itself is to paralyse me from taking positive action, and to stop me from opening up my files and getting stuck in. My fear of not doing the work properly is keeping me from doing the work properly. Analyse that!

Yeah, I don’t get it either.
Image: blogs.babble.com

I may not have said this before, but I tend to be a bit of a perfectionist. Like most people with this tendency, if something isn’t 100% correct and exact the first time it’s done, then it’s very difficult to deal with it.  Part of my brain wants to just shut away all my work, lock up all my files and never look at them again, and close the door on all the words that aren’t good enough, that don’t meet the (self-imposed) ‘required standard’. I also tend to be very impatient with myself, and if I can’t pick up a skill or learn something the first time I try it I often feel like a failure. I don’t necessarily give up trying, but somehow the enjoyment is taken out of it for me. So, once again, I find myself wondering why I’m drawn to the life of a writer, which is the sort of life in which tendencies like these are definitely not helpful. In fact, they are the very things you really need to overcome if you’re going to be able to live peacefully in a life which requires you to write, rewrite, draft, redraft, correct yourself, edit and undo lots of your own work, and learn that you can’t write a book perfectly the first time around.

Writing is rewriting. This I know. I don’t tend to write the sort of first drafts I’ve read about on writing websites, or on other writing blogs, which are basically ‘spews’ of emotion and feeling and characterisation and story without any structure or narrative; my first drafts are careful, tentative, over-written and over-complicated. So, necessarily, they aren’t good enough to be exposed to the world. But it’s almost like I’m trying, even from the first draft, to do my absolute best – to make the work ‘perfect’. But, of course, it never is perfect the first time around. This tends to hurt my head a bit. It’s amazing how you can know something with your rational mind, but your more irrational, emotional, instinctive side can be completely unaware of it. No matter how much I know the books I’m writing can’t be perfect the first time they’re written, I still try to do it. And by doing so, I set myself up for ‘failure’, which locks me into the fear, which means diving back into the work of fixing my words is ten times harder than it needs to be.

God, I am a complicated little person.

Perhaps this is why I want to be a writer. What better way is there to face up to these irrational tendencies and deal with my crippling perfectionism than by forcing myself to work through it? I managed to do it before – ‘Tider’ is in its sixth or seventh draft, let’s not forget, and it’s still not right – but because I’ve left it so long, picking it up again now and starting the work again is like starting from scratch.

It’s going to be difficult. Send me your good vibes. I will need them.

This isn’t just an excuse to use a picture of Westley. The point is, I’m attacking my problem. Just in case you were going to accuse me of being gratuitous.
Image: cinemagogue.com

‘Cinnamon Toast’ and a Book Review*

Behold the loveliness of this book cover:

Hypnotic, isn’t it?
Image: amazon.ca

I read this book over the long weekend, and it wasn’t a second before time. I’ve been waiting for it to come out for several months (it’s so hard to wait for books!), but it was more than worth it. It’s the kind of book which turns its reader into a really rude so-and-so, a person who’s unable to talk to anyone or take part in anything that doesn’t involve their faces being stuck into their book. So, apologies to anyone who might have tried to speak to me while this book was anywhere within grabbing distance. I probably didn’t hear you.

The book (Janet E. Cameron‘s debut novel, ‘Cinnamon Toast and the End of the World’) is set in 1987, in a small town in Nova Scotia. We meet Stephen Shulevitz, a boy who spends his early years living with his parents in a hippie commune, dealing with their unusual relationship with one another as well as with him. At the age of eight, he moves to small-town Riverside with his mother and begins to attend regular school, where he suffers due to his perceived ‘snottiness’, or superiority, over the other children. Of course, Stephen has no intention of elevating himself above his classmates. He simply sees the world differently, has been educated differently up to this point in his life, and finds it hard to adjust. His parents separate, and we read of the sometimes poignant relationship between Stephen and his mother. There is a lot of love between them, but on occasion it fails to find its way to the surface. The book basically takes us through Stephen’s life as he negotiates his family difficulties (including re-establishing a relationship with his estranged father), makes friends, makes mistakes, deals with his Ukrainian, Russian and Jewish heritage, and falls in love. And all this before he’s even finished school.

The book begins with a scene from Stephen’s teenage years on the night he realises he’s fallen in love with the ‘wrong’ person – this is the ‘End of the World’ of the title. The story flips gently back and forth between the pages of his life as he tries to explain to us how he got to this point, and why, exactly, he fell in love. The book is narrated by Stephen himself in a very effective ‘memoir’ style; at times, he feels he’s ‘left out too much’, and he’ll go back to fill in the gaps. We are brought from the ‘present day’ back to important scenes from his childhood – the day his father left, the day he meets his beloved (and the circumstances behind their becoming friends in the first place), among many others – which gives a very realistic feel to proceedings. Despite this, the story doesn’t flinch from telling us all about Stephen’s mistakes. When he messes up, he’s self-aware enough to tell us about it without attempting to explain it away. One particular episode, when he (almost without meaning to) betrays his best friend, had me in tears. I wasn’t sure if it was because I felt terrible for Stephen, or because I could relate so much to his friend (Lana); perhaps it was a bit of both. In any case, it was moving and real and completely believable. Despite the fact that it’s set in Canada (and there are significant differences between their ‘High School’ experience and ours here in Ireland), the emotions, insecurities and relationships were so effective that the story immersed me completely. For the length of time I spent reading this book, I was an awkward Canadian teenager in the 198os (despite the fact that the real me in 1987 was a greasy kid wearing glitter-boots, a sideways ponytail and a Jason Donovan t-shirt).

The characterisation in this book is excellent – even the minor characters are memorable. I found it interesting that the most fleshed-out and ‘real’ character in the story is the person with whom Stephen falls in love. This person’s failings and flaws, as well as their heroism, protectiveness and kindness are all described with such tender touches that by the end of the story I was a little bit in love with this character myself. It surprised me, because the love-interest is full of anger, and at times the hatred and darkness they exude oozes out of the pages. At one point, they hurt Stephen very badly and his life is put at risk, but despite this, Stephen’s love doesn’t waver and, as a result, neither did mine. I understood the character’s reactions, and I felt I knew where they were coming from – product of a broken home, left to take care of a much younger sister, overlooked by teachers and allowed to fall through the cracks at school – so their rage seems natural and even understandable. I was left feeling sympathetic and sorry for this character, as well as full of admiration for Janet Cameron, the book’s author – how right it is that the person into whose psyche we are given the most insight is the one with whom our narrator is in love. Who else does he know more deeply?

I enjoyed everything about this book, from its structure to its narrative voice to its evocation of a world at once totally alien, and completely familiar, to my experience. I have been the character of Lana, also in love with the ‘wrong’ person, feeling too large for comfort, not quite fitting in with the other girls; I felt such affinity with Stephen’s mother Maryna, dealing with her own memories of a hard childhood with an unforgiving father and the cultural baggage she carries, not because I’ve experienced this myself but because Ms. Cameron describes it so well. I admired Stephen for his bravery and constancy, and I hated his father, Stanley, for the way he treated his son. The book deals unflinchingly with drug use, AIDS (particularly the fear felt around the topic during the 1980s), sexuality, self-harm and suicidal thoughts, and rape – so in some ways, it may not be for the faint-hearted. But if you like books which touch your heart and make you think, books which evoke a time and place so skilfully that opening them feels like stepping into a time machine, and books which deal with the Great Universal of unrequited love, then this is a book worth reading.

Image: frontroomcinema.com

 

*In the interests of full disclosure, I feel I should say that the author of this book is someone with whom I communicate on Twitter; this has not affected the impartiality of my review, however.

Nothing For It…

I’m under pressure today.

I‘ve proven to myself that even a book which someone spends months on plotting, planning, preparing for and thinking about can still need so much work to bring it to a proper conclusion. I know all this, because it’s happening to me right now!

My brain is working overtime, thinking of better ways to structure scenes, and more efficient ways to structure the entire plot. I’m going to make some changes which will bring the character where she needs to be in a quicker, more exciting and less wordy fashion – ‘less wordy’ being the most important bit, of course! It’s not as bad as it sounds, really. I have everything I need already – I just need to change a few scenes around and lose one or two overly descriptive, overly obvious parts.

I’m a bit sorry that this breakthrough didn’t happen a bit earlier, but I think my brain needed to be in its current space – i.e. ready, willing and able to see my book not as a precious and treasured creation, but as a crazily long document that needs a serious prune – before it had the freedom to embark upon these changes.

As a result, I must fly! There’s nothing for it, but to knuckle under and get the work done, just like this lady. And then, hopefully, I’ll be able to do a bit of singing.

Image: starpulse.com

 

Aaaand We’re Back…

Happy Thursday!

I was taken away from my duties at the keyboard yesterday by a ‘real life’ issue, but today it should be business as usual. I hope this blog post finds you all well?

I had a bit of ‘thinking time’ yesterday, during which I was furiously plotting (of course) and amusing myself by writing ‘blurbs’ for the backs of my future novels. I only managed to do a few of these blurbs, but – as well as being a lot of fun – I realised that they had a wonderful and useful function, too. As I sat, trying to find the catchiest way to condense a plotline into 100 words or less, I realised: What a great way to focus your mind on the important bits of your story.

This is not my book shelf, but it *really* looks like it.

I’ve blogged before about blurbs in relation to other books, and how they can make or break your decision to pick up a book if you saw it on a shelf. Some people will be attracted to a particular blurb, while others will not; a good blurb can sometimes fool an unwary reader into buying a not-so-good book. (This, of course, has happened to me on several occasions – but I’m not going to name names, this time!) Blurbs are vital when it comes to selling a book, undoubtedly. But they’re also useful tools for those of us who like to create books. I’m going to start doing one for every idea I’m currently mulling over, just to see what I come up with.

Anyway, yesterday, I found myself writing blurbs for the book I’ve just written, and the sequel that I’m planning. I also wrote a blurb for the book I’m currently working on, and the sequels I’m planning for that one. And, as well as making me really think about the important, essential details of the plot, it also made me excited about what I’m doing. It made me realise what’s interesting and intriguing about the stories, and it got me to really investigate the ‘hook’ of the books I’m working on. Writing them filled me up with that particular sort of restless ‘fizz’ you get in your blood when you’ve really hit on something that you love to do. The blurbs I wrote may never grace the cover of anything – come to that, the books I’m writing may never grace a shelf, anywhere! – but that’s not even the point of writing them. It was just an exercise to help me, and as well as that, I really enjoyed it.

Does anyone else make out chapter plans when starting a novel, by the way? I did when writing ‘Tider’ (the old WiP) but I haven’t made out a chapter plan for my current WiP yet. I have a clear idea where I want the story to go, and so I didn’t feel the need to actually write down what I wanted to do in each chapter – I figured an overall plot structure would do. However, I do find myself stopping and re-reading what I’ve written a lot more regularly than I did with ‘Tider’. It’s like I tend to forget where I am in terms of the plot, and I have to remind myself every so often. With ‘Tider’, I had the written novel structure to refer to. I didn’t always stick to it, of course, and the story changed and morphed as I wrote it, but I did lean quite heavily on the chapter plan, and the story ended up exactly where I’d planned it. The plot of the current WiP, tentatively entitled ‘Eldritch’, is a lot less complicated than ‘Tider’, and I suppose this was the rationale behind not sketching out the contents of each chapter on paper first. However, I wonder how much further I’ll get with the book before I need to revisit that decision! I guess I’m the kind of person who needs a plan and a clear structure. It’s hard to write a detailed chapter plan for a book that doesn’t exist yet, but – just like writing a blurb – it really helps your brain to focus on what you’re doing and what you want to achieve, and it makes you sort the important details of the plot from the supporting structure.

I also started reading Laini Taylor’s ‘Daughter of Smoke and Bone’ yesterday – its blurb was just too intriguing to pass up. However, I sort of wish I’d waited to start reading it until I was finished with my current project, because the book is just… stupendous. Incredible. There aren’t enough superlatives! Reading something so good, when you’re trying to write yourself, is a bit overwhelming. It sort of makes you think ‘what do I think I’m playing at, trying to write books?’ I’m really enjoying it so far – it’s not really the kind of book I normally love, but the author is dealing with her subject matter in such a fresh way that it really appeals to me. Also, there’s the writing – the gorgeous, gorgeous writing! I have to stop talking about it, in case I swoon.

And, as for the blurbs I wrote yesterday? Here’s the one I wrote for ‘Eldritch’, my new WiP. See what you think:

” ‘Jeff Smith is such a boring name. Sometimes, I wish names could get passed down from your mum instead. I think I’d have a lot more luck with girls if I could introduce myself, Bond-style, as ‘Asotolat – Jeff Astolat.’ “

Ever since his mother’s death, Jeff’s life has just ticked over. He can’t remember the last time anything interesting happened to him, and his dad is as normal as dads get. That all starts to change as his thirteenth birthday approaches, and he gets three very weird gifts from three eccentric old relatives…

His Eldritch Test has begun, and Jeff’s life will never be the same again.