Enough

Well, yesterday was not the most stellar writing day and today was worse.

Yesterday I wrote 700 words in a rush only to accidentally hit the off button on my netbook and lose it all. Then Cyclone Yasi's tail decided to drop about a month's rain on Melbourne in a day and I had more pressing issues to deal with like bailing out my backyard. I did eventually write another 1000 words or so but only by staying up too late.

After waking up every few hours to listen to what the rain was doing last night, I'm tired today and have been trying to get some heroine POV onto the page on and off all day. So far I've crawled up to 300 words or so but she's being unco-operative. So I'm going to give myself a pass for the day by saying an extra 700 yesterday counts. Or else I'll do 1700 tomorrow but either way I'm done for now!

Fumbling

1011 words tonight. So goal is met. This book is proving interesting so far. Usually I'm pretty clear on my first scene and write it quickly. But this book, well, I've had about four different starts now and keep having to pull back and change tack. I started with the hero, thought perhaps maybe it should be the heroine, changed my mind again and went back to the hero in two different situations. Nothing felt quite right but today I think I might have cracked it. We'll see. Of course, that probably means juggling around some of the words I've fought for so far and going backwards in word count at some point but we'll deal with that when it happens.

Two things helped.

One, this post by Jenny Crusie is brilliant and made me realise I was trying to smooth out my hero too much instead of letting him be his acid tongued messed up self.

Two, I realised I didn't really know what his initial goal was. Some poking and prodding at the muse with pointy sticks at lunch today gave me a glimmer of an idea on that one and so far it seems to be working. Now I just have to figure out the heroine. Oh and how to wrap up all the pesky plot threads I've set in motion in the last two books. Why did I think writing a trilogy would be a good idea again? If there was a magic potion I could take right now to turn me from pantser to plotter I'd be on that thing faster than Neo and his little red pill. But given I'm pretty much stuck with my own brain and my own crazy process, I guess I'm just going to have to screw up my gumption and remember that it will all come to me eventually if I just keep writing and letting the weird storyteller part of my brain do its thing.

In other words, I need to remember to look at this which I have perched on my noticeboard near my desk!



(Get your own here)

And now, time for enjoying the results of some other poor writer's self torture aka curling up with a good book before I go to sleep! Catch you tomorrow when maybe I'll go crazy and write more than 1000 words!

Wednesday

Was very busy but 1155 words were achieved, so all is good.

Back tomorrow, no brain left for blogging tonight.

It's a start

1003 words achieved. Using the time honoured, write bits that spring to mind method. This is going to be one of those teeth pulling jigsaw puzzle books unless the muse and the girls come up with something brilliant in short order.

Preparing

Okay world, I am having a night off tonight but tomorrow am attempting a three day deathmarch to finish this draft of Book 2. One of us will emerge victorious!


see more Lolcats and funny pictures

I shall report my progress. I shall attempt to do this without eating chocolate. It could get ugly. You have been warned!

Just keep reminding me that I can buy an e-reader when I hand this book in!

Home stretch

September has been the month of very busy all the time. I have one more week of the crazy to go and then I will be officially entering the writing hermit cave until the book is done. Which is getting close. Have basically three sequences left then the climax and resolution. So hopefully it will come together fast! Ideally I want to be done mid October so I have time for a quick fine tune the prose pass before it heads off to my editor.

Then there will be pondering of book three's plot. I know the start, I'm looking forward to throwing my hero and heroine together but the rest is a vague foggy blur. Hopefully fog lamps will appear and illuminate it all when I get there!

Also after the book is done, I get to learn to use a spinning wheel. Hey, the girls in the basement think it's cool, so I'm going with it. More about that over on the crafty blog (see the link at the side). The girls like colour a LOT so I think that's part of the appeal. Plus I find watching a wheel soothing somehow. Hopefully it's as soothing when I'm the one feeding it fibre!

So blogging may be a bit scarce for the next four weeks or so but I'll try and catch up while I can!

A note to me

Next time, do try and write a first draft that's less like a jigsaw puzzle. There will be less headbanging involved in the revision!

Ta

Love

Me

Slippery little suckers

One piece of advice writers often get is to understand their process. Good plan. Trouble is, processes shift and change with each book. I've had books that have roared onto the page like a freight train, books that have come at a steady slog, books that have fought me, books that have come in bits and pieces like a mixed up jigsaw. Whenever I think I have a vague idea how my stories will work, they shift.

The current wip has mostly been coming in bits and pieces and not really showing me its hand. I knew something wasn't quite right as I could never quite see the last scene but figured I'd get to the end and work it out from there. In the background, I've been turning it over in my mind, trying to see a different angle. Seems that worked, because last night, the story woke me up at 1.30am, telling me the last four scenes and a whole lot about what I needed to tweak. So I wrote for a while in the middle of the night then got back to sleep. And now the muse seems to be saying that the discovery draft is done, we have enough of an idea and onwards to the next. Never done that before...I mean my first drafts are horribly talking head-ish and there are often some unfinished scenes and chunks but this is more like that than ever before. Plus I haven't actually written a few of the last scenes. But what the muse wants, the muse gets so onwards to the next draft we go. She's even kindly provided a rough synopsis.

Stories. They're slippery little suckers. So are writer's brains. You've just gotta hang on for the ride!

All very familiar

Ladies and gentlemen of the internet, yes, we have reached that time again, the time when Mel needs to pull out the progress stats to keep her inner taskmaster happy and get the darn draft finished. Today I decided to write twenty pages. No idea why. It was a little bit nutty. But I did it. So that seems like as good a time as any to start this again. Technically, I'm in the last quarter of this book. Maybe I'll figure out what it's about soon. Though possibly not. That's why the powers that be invented second drafts, after all! Weirdly, usually I know the last scene of my books. This time, I think the scene I have in mind is more like third or fourth last...the muse, she is secretive at times!

Progress - Holly

New pages - Twenty
Intriguing things - Sneakiness. Things I thought would happen earlier, happening later.
Annoyances - Not many. More arms would sometimes be nice.
Linear/non-linear - Non
Music - Various from the soundtrack.
Location - Desk. Write or Die and Think.
Taking care of Mel - Chiro. Exercises. Tulsi Tea.
Muse food - Notting Hill about to be watched!

In other news, I am going to see Joss Whedon next Friday (woot and squee) and also going along to AussieCon 4 for a day the week after! Having never been to a SF con before, it should be fun!

Happy

I feel like I've got hold of the new shape of this book now. The weight of it is sitting right in my head and I can tilt it and turn it and see the whole picture nearly.

Sometimes writing feels like hiking up a heavily wooded trail. You get glimpses of the destination now and then but mostly you can only see what's right in front of you, the twists and turns hiding the next part of the path. And like, hiking, sometimes it's damn hard work and you doubt you'll ever get there and your mental feet hurt and you want to kick the next damn fallen log that gets in your way and everything you're carrying rubs the wrong way and all you want to do is sit down and not move and let someone else do it while you drink something and pass out.

Then you reach the top and the view spreads out before you and it's kind of gorgeous and well worth the blood, sweat and tears and it all falls away. Not sure there's a good analogy for the feeling like the end of book (or even nearing the end and feeling like it's all working out) but that one's kind of close.

And even though I'm not quite there yet, I think that's deserving of a glass of wine or two tonight while I'm out with the girls.

Almost

Heading into the home run of the structural part of my revision. A few scenes to reslant to make sure all the new threads are lining up, a few new bits to write and then it will be done.

I think it works but I'm at the point right now where I have no idea whether it does or not. I guess I'll find out once I hand it in. But first, I have to make it to the end then another pass to polish things up one last time....then it will start all over again with book 2.

Chopping and changing

Sorry for blog silence, between busy day job days and revisions, I am Mel of boringness right now.

Currently working my way through the part of revisions which is the most amount of changing order of scenes and what happens so the going has been a little slow while I think it through. But so far it seems to be working. After this bit, the next few chapters are more tweaking so hopefully they'll go faster. Then there's a whole new bit to write. Which means I can boot up Write or Die and get my speed on. Yay! Drafting for the win. All this should result in a better book at the end (crosses fingers!) Trying to do a structural pass at the moment then I'll go back and do a (hopefully) much faster polishing/language pass.

Finding it hard to actually work out how much progress I'm making right now as I'm cutting things and moving things and writing new things and the chapters are a bit messed up. Usually I track my page count and word count for the day but page count isn't necessarily a good indicator when you're chopping and replacing chunks and word count isn't either. Which makes my Virgo side a bit edgy as that side of me likes to see progress meters etc zooming along. Sadly, that side of me just needs to chill out during this part!

Shall have to apply knitting and exercise to achieve said calming down. See if I can distract Virgo brain with watching socks grow or something ; ) Any other good tips for chill out diversions?

Re-visioning

Given that I have revisions on the brain right now, I thought I'd talk a bit about them. I've probably done so before but hey, I can't remember right now (revision brain strikes!).

In general, I think writers fall into two camps. There are those who hate writing first drafts but love all the polishing and revision that comes afterwards and there are those who love writing first drafts but find revising harder work.

I tend to fall into the latter group. I love the freedom and fun of finding out what my story is in the first draft. A first draft that's flowing and working is pure joy to me. Then, when I get to the end, it's always a bit sad to realise "oh man, I just wrote x amount and now I have to go back and fix it all".

But given I write short first drafts with a severe lack of description and narration and er, lots of other things, I don't think I'm ever going to get away from having to do several drafts of my books. Even more so now I have an editor adding her brilliant insights after I've slogged away for a couple already.

Revision for me, consists of two main things:

1. Editing which is polishing and tweaking language and fixing up continuity and layering in some details and making character voices distinct etc. It's detail, small picture, word by word stuff.

2. Actual revising which is structure and plot and arcs and all that stuff that generally requires big picture thinking. This is the stuff that makes your book actually hang together as a whole. It's easy to write a lot of good polished scenes that don't work together if you don't spend time on the big picture.

So once I come to the end of my first draft, I put the book away for a bit but when I pull it out again, I need to do both types of editing. For me, I usually sit down and work out what I think the book needs right now. What's working, what isn't. What stuff appeared at the end that needs to be taken back and pulled through the book. What threads did I drop? How did the story change from what my initial idea? Am I happy with how it changed or did I lose my way? To help with this I might write the synopsis, or do scene lists. I definitely re-read the notes I made for myself throughout the manuscript as I was writing.

This stuff for me, is hard work, to force myself to be very analytical about the story but I've realised in the last little while as I've thought about this particular story that I do enjoy this part. It's not 'revising' which, to me, sounds boring. It's re-visioning. Redefining what the story is, what it can be. Finding where it needs to bloom or shrink. Working out how to make it shine. Giving myself a vision of it to work too. Of course, actually doing the work is still hard but I think I can get behind the concept that I'm re-visioning rather than revising. Which might just be a strange writer brain quirk but as in all things process, whatever gets you through the night (or draft).

Anyway after, I do my thinking, I sit down and do another draft. I do a reasonable amount of detail work (otherwise my betas and critique partners would likely be asking if I was on drugs) but it's mostly about fleshing out and making the big picture changes I've needed at this point. My draft usually grows by about 25 to 30 percent. This is the draft I send out to my betas and critique partners and agent for comments.

When I get those back, I do another draft to fix the stuff I've inevitably missed and make the story better still. And then probably do some quick passes through to really tweak language or world stuff (stuff like searching for US vs Aussie language, overused words, etc etc). I focus on one thing at a time and each pass might only take a few hours (the "find" feature in Word and speed reading are very very useful at this poitn). This sounds like a lot of drafts but I tend to revise fast because that's what works for me, so it's not months of work. Um, unless I've stuffed something up majorly.

After that, it goes back to my agent for submission (or I guess, from now on, to my editor!) What happens after that point depends on the editorial process. Most likely another draft then line edits then copyedits. At which point I will be thoroughly sick of the book and probably thinking it's complete dreck. Because that is also inevitable for me. Once you've read a book over and over, you lose all perspective (which is why you need betas and crit partners and agents and editors).

During all of this I'll also be working on drafting something new and then the whole darn process will just start over again. That's the glamourous writing life for you!

She lives

Yes, I am indeed alive. Bad blogger. But I have been suffering from a horrible cold which decided it should bring its friend razorblade throat and consequently have done little worthy of blogging for a week. Catalogues of pills and potions and tissue count are not very exciting. I haven't even read a lot due to foggy brain. I have watched a fair amount of DVD (Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip and most of Glee if you care) and slept a lot. Perhaps I'm turning into a TV watching cat.

But today I am starting to feel human again and have managed ten pages. Yay. The muse is throwing up disconnected random snippets but at least they're snippets that are flowing easily. So given book has decided to talk again, I'm figuring Murphy's Law will dictate that my revisions will hit any second now and I'll have to switch tracks. But oh well, nice problem to have : )

Still marooned

Still without home adsl. Apparently it's meant to be fixed tomorrow. At this point I'm sceptical but fingers crossed. On Thursday I got sick of trying to keep up with everything online via the iPhone (not to mention was getting concerned about my data allowance for the month) so I decided to go buy a prepaid mobile wireless internet modem. Have to say, so far it works pretty well. Pity that we get so severely ripped off for mobile data in this country. But it will come in handy for travels within Australia in the future plus I guess is tax deductible, so not a complete loss.

In other news I have given myself a week to ponder my plot and the best the girls can come up with is "it's mostly right but we don't know much more than that" so I'm going to just keep writing while I'm waiting for my revision letter (eeek!) and see what happens. (The joys of pantsing!) In the meantime the muse has wanted to watch Gossip Girl and Bones and read J.D. Robb. No idea what that combination is likely to produce in the brain but should be interesting.

Yesterday was the first ballet of the year - The Silver Rose - which was interesting but not the world's best music I have to admit. The costumes were gorgeous (all art nouveau inspired) and the dancing was fab but the music was just a bit meh which spoils some of the drama. And it's a very "operatic" (as Terry Pratchett would say) plot. Given it's inspired by Der Rosenkavalier this makes sense but the plot doesn't, really. Never big on the "man dresses as woman and another man falls for him instantly" plot. Still, well worth a look if you're ballet inclined and in Australia.

The awkward stage

If my wip were a person right now it would be a teenager. A slightly sullen, earphone wearing, far-more-interested-in-texting-their-best-friends-than-talking-to-someone-as boring-as-the-person-writing-it teenager. It's at that awkward stage. It happens every book.

I'm not a plotter, so I tend to plunge into a book with a shiny crunchy idea and see what happens. What usually happens is that the shiny crunchy idea and initial book rush gives me enough momentum to get about a bit less than a third of the rough draft in (around 100 pages for one of my long books) and it gets tricky. I start to realise I have no idea what's happening, feel like there's no plot and can't really remember what was exciting or interesting about the idea in the first place. It all feels flat and dull. The words come more or less (though there will be a point where I'm just stuck for a bit and have to keep circling back through what I've written while I think) but they feel off kilter (even though when I come back to revise they'll be no better or worse than the rest of it). It's the bit where my analytical side starts to try and take over and say "we NEED to know what's going on. you NEED a plot. The sky is falling etc etc".

Depending on the book, this means brainstorming or whining to my crit partners or just ignoring it and plowing on or skipping ahead to some of the bits further on in the book that I do know and getting those down in the hopes of shaking something that will pull it together loose. This particular book, I have only the vaguest idea of later scenes. I don't even have a very good idea about the last scene (and I usually know that) though I'm starting to get glimpses. And I've done some brainstorming but haven't yet had the lightning bolt idea. So I'm thinking that I just have to put my head down and keep writing.

Of course, for this book, for the first time, I know that in a few weeks it will have to be put on hold for a bit while I do revisions on Shadow Kin. And I know that what changes in SK will have an impact on this book. But that's really just going to be situation normal from now on. I will be interrupted to do revisions or copy edits or whatever publishing throws up. I will have to chop and change. So I'm using this as an opportunity to learn how to do it. Learning how to plot in advance might be more useful but I've been doing this for eight odd years now and have never really managed to find a way of plotting that doesn't send the muse screaming from the room...I know I'll probably have to do outlines or proposals in the future but I'm not under the illusion that the books will end up much like those proposals. Or that I will enjoy doing them.

So for now, it's much like dealing with a teenager, stay positive and just keep moving forward. My goal for the next four days is to get to 40k. Should be do-able. I might even get the blinding flash of inspiration.

So what about everyone else? Do your books have awkward stages? Are you pantsers who sometimes wish desperately for an industrial strength flashlight to show you the way like me or do you wrestle with the story in advance while you plot and then just write your way through? Any tips or tricks for coaxing a story out to play?

PS Don't forget: comment on any of my posts this month and you're in the running to win a copy of Robin McKinley's Sunshine (details here).

Spinning around

Sorry, I've been awol. Last week I got unexpectedly sick (does one ever get expectedly sick?) in the middle of the week then spent the rest of the week trying to catch up. This week a combination of hot hot hot days and horribly humid nights, looming deadlines at the day job and some unexpected night time activities (plus one late day job call with the UK) has meant I've been officially frantic, knackered and just plain not around much to exercise, write or blog!

Tomorrow I head down to the folks to dog sit for a night while they go on an Antarctic sight-seeing flight (how cool is that? Australia is actually close to somewhere after all : ) ) but given it will be just me and the big black pooch, I'm hoping for some uninterrupted writing time. Unlike the orange cat, the big black pooch does not try and sit on one's lap while at the computer.

Despite the general life craziness, I have spent a lot of time thinking about the book, especially last weekend, because I was getting that words-coming-like-sludge feeling that generally means something is not quite right still. So I've been poking and prodding the muse and the girls in the basement and think I now have an idea that raises the stakes. I often do this circling through the first 100 pages or so a couple of times until I feel like I have the push the book needs. Although, every time it happens, I forget and go "Argh, why stuck? why? Nice shiny idea should work easy peasy". Today starts the process of working through what I've got to weave the new idea in and see where that gets me. I'm hoping I can get through most of it this weekend and start charging forward again.

PS Happy birthday for yesterday to this little man who is now one (and where the heck did that year go??), much bigger than he was a year ago, ridiculously cute and out to conquer the world any day now.

A pause to ponder

After my big push over my five day weekend, I took Wednesday and Thursday to think about where I was taking the story and Friday to do a bit more brainstorming and working out what I needed to nail down a bit more in the 20k or so I've written before moving on. The upshot is that I think the direction is okay but I'm taking the next few days to take a pass back over that 20k and flesh a few things out so I can move forward from a more solid base. This often happens to me about this stage, but this time because I've been sprinting and not going back over what I'd written, I do need the pause and a fast loop back. I'm not aiming to make what I've written perfect, just make sure I've got the bones of everything I need in place. We'll see if I need a few more pauses as I go given that I intend to keep using Write or Die as much as possible to get through this zero draft.

Today I spent most of the day at a patchwork class but then I came home and made it through Chapter One (and added some pages so technically, I'm still making progress). Tomorrow hopefully I'm get through a couple more chapters and add some more pages. It would be nice to finish the month with 100 pages done! Still aiming for zero draft done by the end of March.

In other news, it's hot, I've been doing pretty well with the diet and exercise portion of my goals for the year and niggly shoulder keeps on improving. Woot all round!

Slowly slowly

The brain is starting to recover from post book-ness. Have taken a few days off writing and lolled around but am now starting to circle back to the wips. The one I think I want to write first is a bit of a mystery at the moment. I know the hero and heroine. I know the world. I just don't know what the big external plot thing is. And even, though I rarely know that when I start a book, I always get to the point where I think I should know and then I freak out. It just seems to be happening early this time.

It doesn't help that I'm also getting snippets from the book after this one...but that one definitely is after this one in time and I can't imagine how stuck I'd get trying to head into that one without knowing what happens in this one lol

So I will sit down later and do some brain dumping and see what happens. Which will most likely be followed by more scratching of the head. Until then, I shall just keep circling the story in my head and listening to the scene snippets it's telling me and let things brew. And try not to freak out.

Post book brain

Finishing a book does strange things to your brain.

I tend to write the ends of books fast and prefer, where possible, to revise fairly fast too (though there are multiple passes at this).

For the first draft the endgame speed comes from the part where I finally see the shape of the ending, how everything is going to come together and I just want to get it down on the page. It's like the weight of the whole story gathers in my brain and kind of pushes (which will sound weird to anyone who doesn't write...the closest analogy I have, having seen two babies born, is that you get to a point where you've just got to push and get through to the end and you really don't have any choice in the matter). I often know the very final scene early in a book but, being a pantser, have little clue about how I'll end up at that point. For my revisions, I need to hold the whole story in my head and look at it from various angles and stitch together more firmly. And having that same sense of the weight of the whole book needs a certain kind of focus that works best if I can do it fast while I can sort of sense all the connections.

My process has changed over time and with changing from writing 240 page to 400 page books. My first drafts are shorter and that makes the revision that much more work. I wrote 90 new pages in two weeks for this revision plus made multiple changes to every single one of the original 338 or so I had at the end of draft one. Yesterday I wrote for close to ten hours to finish the second draft. And then I wrote for a few more hours on another wip because sometimes the writing just can't come to a full stop immediately.

And today I have post book brain, where I'm coming off the adrenalin jag of all that focus and pushing myself to write. My brain has a space in it where the book used to be and it feels like everything else is shifting around to settle back to where it belongs. It's hard to concentrate on any one thing for more than thirty minutes or so. I want to nap but can't quite relax enough. I want to write something new but also don't want to let this story go entirely because I know in another few weeks I'll have comments from my agent and crit buddies and will need to plunge back into it for round three. Plus there's the inevitable "oh my god is anyone going to like this or is it completely terrible" writer paranoia while I wait for said comments *g*.

It's a combination of satisfaction of being done (and of having actually finished a book this year after struggling to write at times and writing less than I would usually), of being tired, of not entirely wanting to relax and take a few days off because the writing is working again and writer paranoia imagines that it could just vamoose once more and of not being sure what to work on next anyway. It's frustration with feeling this way even though I know it happens every time I finish a draft. It's not helped right now by the fact that my exercise options are somewhat hamstrung by my dodgy shoulder. But tomorrow I shall do something to move the butt or the whole process is just going to take that much longer.

It's hard to explain how something that's almost entirely a mental exercise can leave you feeling so steamrollered.

I wonder if this is what bands feel like when they finish a tour? Probably fifty times worse because writers at least, don't have the crowd high to come down from as well (distracts self with somewhat amusing mental image of the writer in glamourous faded trackies and t-shirt typing on stage while the audience screams).

Anyway, that's as coherent as I get today and for the non-writers, don't feel bad when your writer buddies zone out, stumble around and forget minor details like the outside world when they've just finished a book, it's not you, it's them and post book brain.