Category: My Failings As A Proper Novelist Page 2 of 3

Sequel Sorrows

I got myself all set up to start writing the next book in my series today, and already I find myself stymied. How much explanation do I have to give of the previous book’s events at the beginning of this one? Do I assume that readers have read the first installation and skip all the details, or do I have to give a blow-by-blow recounting of everything in The Unravelling? I mean, people don’t just jump straight to the second book in a series, do they? And writing in the first person complicates it further, for me anyway. I don’t want it to feel like Callie’s saying, “now sit down, little reader, and let me tell you about everything that just happened. We’ll get to the exciting new parts in a bit.”

I suppose the best thing to do is to go back and have a look at the first chapters of books beyond the first in some of my favourite series, and see how they handle it. I have a bit of reading to do. And I was all psyched up to start writing today too!

*facepalm*

I’m working on my rough outline for the final book of my trilogy tonight. Which is great, right? All my ducks in a row and all that. Only as I’m building the climax I’m realizing that two of my most important elements, resolutions to questions that go all the way back to the first book, kind of conflict with each other. And seriously, I need to have them both in there. All kinds of other things depend on them. I really need to put my brain to work on this one and find a creative solution that will allow me to have both in harmony with each other, because as it stands right now, the reader’s going to get to that point and basically go, “but… you just said that…” *headscratch* “that doesn’t make any sense…” and it will all be a giant letdown.

It’s funny how you don’t really realize stuff like that when it’s all just in your head, but then you put it down on paper and immediately see that there’s a problem. So I guess thank god for outlining, or freenoting really since this is just a jumbled mess of ideas right now.

Now I’m going to go ponder the immensity of what the true definition of humanity is, because it’s no smaller problem than that. Sigh.

Stick A Fork In Me

Oh my GOD so many things about this book are driving me around the bend right now. Everything is wrong. My first chapter which I thought two days ago was much improved is awful again. My hook isn’t hooky at all. It’s a sharp pin that pokes and stabs and says “don’t read me! don’t read me!” Some of my characters are shockingly one-dimensional and way underdeveloped. The song lyrics I struggled all day to write today are at best amateurish. And the formatting! The formatting is all wrong.

Revising it into what I want it to be is like trying to stuff a live octopus into a lunchbox.

Last week we were such good friends. I loved you. What happened? Where did we go wrong?

I’m ready to walk away.

You Would Think…

…that a person who worked as a researcher for years would look something up for accuracy ahead of time before making it an important plot point. Right? That would be the sensible thing to do.

Yeah, not so much, if you’re me. And it was one of those stupid little takes-five-seconds-to-verify things. Two words to type into Google Translate. I’ve been meaning to do it for months. Turns out my knowledge of foreign languages isn’t quite as good as I thought it was and I made a mistake that puts me in a bit of a quandry. Shitfuckdamn. Time to dig myself out of another hole.

Oh, Shit

I spent my evening hunting around for tips on first-draft editing, and found some stuff – mostly blog posts – that I think will be really helpful. Whereas I’ve been approaching revision with a sense of dread, now I was getting excited about it. So, yay about that.

Then a search engine result caught my eye and I clicked it. It was about standard word counts for various genres of novels. Whether you call what I’m doing urban fantasy or paranormal romance, the standard for both is apparently 90,000-100,000 words. Deviating from the standard can equal automatic rejection for unpublished authors (and I’m assuming I’m considered unpublished because I’ve never published fiction, only journalism).

I’m sitting at 88,000 and am nowhere close to the end.

So now I’m not all that excited about revising anymore. Because chances are good I’m going to be looking to cut around 20,000+ words.

I’m fucked.

Umm, Whoops

I realized randomly today that I forgot to include a fairly important detail somewhere around chapter 8 or 9. It’s not going to change what I’ve written since significantly, but now I’m stuck with the task of finding the right spot to include it after the fact, in a way that seems natural and without disrupting the narrative flow I’ve already established. And no, I can’t add it into what I’m about to write – it’s time-sensitive and should’ve have happened a couple story-days ago.

Again, this is where outlining might have aided me. That’s two strikes against me – one more and I might have to actually write one out.

Anyway, I have a couple ideas. Might as well get that done now, instead of waiting until I’m revising. It’ll only be a couple paragraphs I think. But it definitely falls under the category of Really Important Later so I can’t leave it out.

In other news, at around the 63,000 word-count mark, I’m starting to wonder if maybe this isn’t the halfway point, not 50,000. There’s still so, so much to happen. So much. Holy crap.

Chapter Breaks

Something that I’m not so great at is where to end one chapter and start a new one. I like to cut them off at a point where there’s a little bit of suspense, to create a bit of incentive to turn the page – the best books for me are the ones that I can’t just stop reading and put down when I reach the end of the chapter, as I so often promise to do when it’s very late at night, because that chapter ending totally leaves me hanging and wondering what the hell is going to happen. So then I just read one more page… and the next thing I know it’s 4 a.m. and I’ve just read an entire book in a day.

But I’m off track now.

A lot of times I have a preconceived notion of where a chapter should end before I’ve actually written it. I don’t know if that’s a good idea when it comes to plotting or not, but that’s the direction my thoughts usually go when I’m thinking about structure (which is seldom). But then I’ll check my word count and realize my one chapter is actually about 12,000 words, which is just way too long any way you look at it. A 40 page chapter is just not reasonable in my mind. So then I have to split it into two smaller ones. My orginal ‘chapter 3’ was actually close to 24,000 words. True story. It ended up splitting into four. But then it’s kind of cool, because it’s way better to be able to say “I’ve finished six chapters so far” instead of a fairly measly three, and you feel like you’ve accomplished so much more. Anyway, I’ve been looking forward to getting to be able to write “Chapter 10” because, hey, double-digits, that’s kind of a neat milestone, right? And then when I checked my word count for chapter 9 I saw it was around 11,000 words, because once again I had this idea stuck in my head of where it had to end. Oops. I bisected it rather successfully, I think, and got to write both “Chapter 10” and “Chapter 11” tonight. See? I didn’t even know I was that far along.

I wonder if it would be better to just write the whole thing without worrying about where the chapters end, and add that all in afterwards, when it’s done?

And now for a musical interlude. The overly large section of the book formerly known as Chapter 9 was brought to you by the following songs, which have given me some inspiration and/or insight into a few of my characters’ motivations and emotions. One’s newer, and one’s an oldie but a goodie:

Thanks, iPod. Once again you have served me well.

Chapter 11 is going to be SO MUCH FUN to write.

It’s Not Even Funny Anymore

Uh-oh. Guess which one mine is.

I cannot believe how indifferent I am to writing these days. I have free time most evenings, but I’m not using it at all. I have ideas, I know what I want to write, I just.don’t.feel.like.it. And I feel guilty about it, because I’ve already taken so much time, time that I could have chosen to spend with my family or friends or doing other, productive things, but I didn’t because I felt like this all needed to get out of my head. Now that I’m halfway my momentum has completely stalled and I feel like if I’m not going to continue, then all that time could have been put to better use. Yesterday I had every intention of writing – I had almost three hours set aside – but I kept putting it off, putting it off. Even the threat of having my pie taken away if I didn’t write something wasn’t enough to get me going. I just went pieless. Now I’m sitting here again, in my writing spot, with my writing blanket and my writing laptop perched on my writing legs (okay I don’t have special legs just for writing) I’m procrastinating. First I had bills to pay, then I had some very important facebook things to look at, and now I’m blogging about my failure to progress, despite the fact that everything is in order for me to ACTUALLY WRITE except my brain. My brain wants to check today’s Wimbledon scores and read DYAC. What’s going on, brain? Why haven’t you wanted to write for the past two weeks? Don’t you want pie? Is this a normal thing everyone goes through sometimes, or should I start getting worried? I want to finish. I WANT TO FINISH. Just… not now.

I’m going to open my doc and stare at it until it shames me into writing something, even if it’s only 200 words. Maybe a tiny nudge will get the ball rolling again.

This Is What I Was Afraid Of

I should’ve made an outline. I should’ve used those cue cards I bought months ago to write my stray thoughts for scenes or characters on. I should’ve done SOMETHING to keep track of all the many threads of this story straight since it’s all jumbled out of order in my head.

I’m about to start chapter 9. Yay, right? Chapter 8 ended on a nice little cliffhanger, ensuring the reader will turn the page, only I don’t remember what happens next. See, these two characters, they’re supposed to meet again, and something REALLY IMPORTANT was supposed to be revealed here. And for the life of me I can’t remember what it is. I had this tight little scene plotted out weeks ago, and now where it once resided in my brain, there’s only this:

Goddammit, I say. Now I feel like I’m entering this scene without a plan for it, and it’s just going to be 1,500 words of rambling pointlessness. I’m just going to start writing anyway and hope that one of two things happens: a) I remember what my original thought was and proceed with that; b) I come up with something even more awesome.

Argh.

And yet I’m willing to bet that even after this, I still won’t write out that outline or fill out those cue cards, because I’m always telling myself I’m too busy with the actual writing to take time to do the planning. I need to learn a lesson the hard way at least three times before I’ll actually change my habits.

*headdesk*

Why Didn’t I Think Of This Four Months Ago?

Fact: When I write, I’m often distracted by other things online, switching back and forth between my doc and various browser tabs that have nothing to do with research.

Fact: My usual output is anywhere from 300 to 700 words an hour.

Fact: This week I’ve had very limited internet access because I’ve been away from home, out in the sticks, but I’ve still managed to snag the rocket stick when I wanted to write.

Fact: This afternoon I couldn’t get the rocket stick but I decided to write without it anyway, figuring I’d give up quickly after I couldn’t research some tiny point.

Fact: I actually wrote 1,300 words in an hour. That’s probably a speed record for me.

Fact: From now on when it’s time to write I’m going to turn off the wifi capability on my laptop and only turn it on in cases when I actually need to. Facebook doesn’t count as a need.

Fact: It took me about 100,000 words over two novels to discover this about my writing routine.

Fact: I’m a little slow on the uptake sometimes.

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