Monday Happened
Published January 31, 2012 | 
Yesterday I posted on Trash Day – the day that I spent cutting out oodles of sentences that made up paragraphs that comprised pages of my new manuscript, The Ruin of Souls. It was a hard day, though by far not the hardest I’ve faced in my writing life. Still, any time you’re forced to slice and dice your darlings until what were once beautifully formatted pages look like expired credit cards cut to ribbons is not the best day.
I should have shut up. I should have taken my lumps and just rolled with it. But no, I thought I’d blog. I thought I’d share some of the miseries that writers encounter because it’s something that isn’t often discussed outside the Seventh Circle of Hell (a/k/a Revisions Road). Did I take my own advice? Nope. Am I taking it now and just moving on? Nope. “Why?” you ask in desperation? Because if I can help even one writer realize that what they’re struggling with is normal, or if I can help one reader appreciate the book they hold in their hands just a little more, it’s worth it.
So what happened? Monday happened. It began as a rather innocuous day, nothing to set off the Paranoid Writer’s Alarm System (PWAS™). Then came this sentence: “I banged on the trailer door with the side of my fist, barely stepping clear of the door’s sweep when it was flung open.” This shall forever be known as The Sentence That Changed It All. It marked the change in the manuscript from where I distinctly knew the manuscript was working to the point I wanted it to work when I knew it didn’t. I tried to use older sections of the manuscript–stuff that was written before the complete rewrite of Raising Cain was complete. It was a bad, Bad, BAD choice.
I fought with the manuscript, wrestled with rewriting paragraphs and pages, struggled with keeping the characters true to form and the world rich and engaging. By struggled, I mean I sweated blood and cried pink tears. It was ugly, people. U-g-l-y. I spent four hours of my life, four hours I’ll never get back, trying to salvage about three thousand words. In the end, I cut them all–right back to that fateful pounding of fist to door–and I started again.
This time, when I focused on the true plot points and the character arcs, characterizations and world development, I found that the words were slower to materialize. I learned that the words that take time to produce typical matter more, because you’re thinking them through. You’re assigning them value. You’re making sure they fit in your overall plan. It’s like building a puzzle with all the right pieces versus building a puzzle where 30% of your pieces aren’t quite right. If you know that going into the puzzle build, do you waste your time? Of course not. We call that wisdom. Wisdom comes for learning and let me tell you, I’m wiser after today’s little self-induced lesson.
I came away with about 1,800 words I could keep and far more which I couldn’t. The discarded words are never far because I keep them all in a cut file. You never know when you’ll be able to use them; you never know when you’ll be able to recycle them or even find inspiration in them. I’m primed and ready for today, convinced I’m on a better path with this story than I was yesterday. I’ll stay true to the arc and characterizations no matter what. And I’ll be wiser, and far happier, for the effort.
Revisions, Dead Darlings and Trash Day
Published January 30, 2012 | 
Man, I have a real love/hate relationship with days like yesterday. I re-read the beginning of The Ruin of Souls, the sequel to Raising Cain. I’d been worried that maybe, just maybe, I’d lose my character voices, my voice, the flow, the pacing, the arc…something. But it’s all there. Hallelujah! But it’s not all good news. Because Raising Cain went through such a massive re-write, there was a good chunk of The Ruin of Souls that was no longer relevant. What does that mean? Trash day. Time to get rid of some of my best words and let them rest in a cut file until they can be used or are permanently deleted. Ouch. It stung particularly bad because it wasn’t so long ago that I shredded…er…re-wrote Raising Cain. The memory of the pain involved in slashing that manuscript is still with me.
There’s not much I hate worse than having to cut words. A lot of writers I know are like this. We don’t want to believe that we’ve invested all this time and energy into creation–adhering to story arc, plotting, structure, character development, pacing and the like–only to have to cut it out and discard it because it’s wrong. I mean, who knows this story? Who owns it? The answer should be me, but when I have to deconstruct it and redo it to get it right? It leaves me wondering how competent I really am . Besides, some of my best one-liners are often in the sections I find I need to cut. It annoys the crap out of me. I want to scream and pull out my hair. But going bald isn’t going to help my cause or solve my problems, so we’ll talk about it here.
But it’s critical to the integrity of the story that a writer learn what works and what doesn’t, and that the writer is willing to do what it takes to get it right. And if that means adding to the trash pile? You add to the trash pile. The admirable Stephen King talks in his book “On Writing” about the necessity of sometimes killing your darlings. What does that mean? It means your favorite passages, pages and even one-liners sometimes must make their way to the trash in order for the story to be what it was mean to be. Writers can become enamored with their own words and not be willing to make changes–necessary changes that make the manuscript better. When that happens, objectivity is lost and you get so close to the story that a number of things happen. First, you lose the ability to see what’s good and what’s not. Second, you lose the ability to cull the bad passages and polish the better ones. And third, it means you lose the ability to be effectively critiqued and/or edited, whether it’s by a crit partner or a professional editor. You become so defensive of your words that they become more important, individually, than they do as a whole.
It’s important to maintain objectivity in your writing, no matter how hard. When I queried Deidre Knight, she responded that she loved the story but it had taken a wrong turn for her. She wanted to know if I’d be open to edits. I said I would and she sent me her suggestions. We worked together in November, December and half of January on a total rewrite of the story. What emerged under her guidance was a story to fantastic I was sure I’d been possessed when I wrote it because no way could I have managed to write this. And you know what? In a way, my thinking was right. I hadn’t done it; she had pointed me in the right direction the entire time.
What it all comes down to is this: never doubt that there will be words to cull, passages to delete and pages to make bleed. It’s a miserable truth of writing. But you can rest assured that when you take the brave stand of doing the right thing for your story you’ll end up with a wild sense of satisfaction and, hopefully, a sense of wicked pride that you wrote a killer manuscript.
Oh — you may be asking yourself if it was worth it to take Deidre’s suggestions and work with her to get the manuscript rewritten, first page to last. Deidre offered representation and is now my agent. Was it worth it? Hell yes. I’d do it all over again.
Happy writing!
Posted in Agents, Critiques, Editing, Editors, Miscellaneous, Random Ramblings, Writing | 
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3 CommentsMythology, Death and Play-Doh
Published January 22, 2012 | 
My latest manuscript, a fast-paced urban fantasy that deals with the theme of the good of the one vs. the good of the many, deals directly with death. It means I’ve had to really dig through mythology and religious texts to create a modified hybrid of rules, histories and myths that work for several characters directly and the world in general. Why? Because frankly, death isn’t something anyone seems to be able to agree on. It’s like every mythology, religion, sect or civilization found different ways to define and deal with it, creating rituals, parameters and societal rules to make death manageable. The sad reality? Death isn’t manageable, and it never will be.
Given this truth, it conversely fascinates me to find that, globally, we all grieve with similar basic reactions, regardless of our belief system. It only goes to reinforce my repeated assertion (read here: soap box ramblings) that, as human beings, we’re more similar than some care to acknowledge. That’s a post for another time, though.
Back to death and my story. So what is it about fiction that requires a writer to research specific mythologies, religions, etc. if all she’s going to do is mix it all up and create new rules anyway? Here’s the thing: even if what we’re writing is fiction (created), it has to be grounded enough that the reader accepts what we establish as truth. What, exactly, does this mean? Basically, even the stuff we make up has to be carefully crafted so that it makes sense, fits into the world we’ve created and can be examined from a variety of directions without its armor of creation displaying transparent spots. Face it: no one wants to write the proverbial Emperor’s New Clothes. Great kids’ story, horrible thing to have happen because you didn’t do your homework. (My personal armor would undoubtedly display transparencies of the ass. It’s the way my dice roll.) One of the easiest ways to make sure your story’s bare bum isn’t left showing is to take facts from different areas of established reality and meld them together to make something new. It’s sort of like taking six different colors of Play-Doh and squishing them together really, really well. You end up with a new, unique color that’s offers a cohesive surface, interesting striations, and is larger than all the pieces you started with. See? You’ve created something unique that serves a, um, purpose. What you intend to do with that Play-Doh is totally up to you. I was just using it as an example.
Hopefully you see how important it is to create something that withstands the scrutiny of readers and reviewers. But the questions still remains — why pull from reality? Let me tell you that there’s no right answer here, just what works for me and my writing, combined with my own experiences in writing multiple series. Here’s a simple fact: if you “borrow” facts from a pre-established source (i.e. the Book of Revelation in the Bible), you are using information that is pre-established and, therefore, can be validated, or authenticated, by the reader. It can help lend a type of immediate believability to your world. (Sidenote: this isn’t a religious lesson or debate. You may not believe the Book of Revelation but it exists and can be referenced.)
If you create your own realities (or mythologies) entirely, which is completely reasonable, you must enable the reader to slip into your story and accept rules, creatures, characters, etc. as absolute. You must create concrete points of reference and anchor your reader in the story. Keep in mind, I’m not promoting one approach over another here. I really only want to stress the author’s responsibilities to readers regardless of the approach you take. I’ve approached storytelling both ways, creating and borrowing established mythologies, but you must commit to providing your reader with a structurally solid foundation for their suspension of disbelief. Regardless of which method you pursue, make sure you keep notes and are consistent in your application of facts — both established and those you establish — so that readers are able to develop absolute faith in you that you’ll take care of them. Nothing ejects a reader from a story more thoroughly than an author who mixes up his/her own facts.
What it all comes down to is this: choose the method of approach that works best for you. And what about me? If you read any of my stuff you’find I just tweak the color of the Play-Doh a little lot.
Drop the Fire, Dumbass
Published January 19, 2012 | 
Drop the fire, dumbass.
Seems like it would be sound advice, right? You’re holding something that’s going to burn you, leave you with blistered skin and scars for life.
So put it down.
But what if it’s not that simple? What if it’s not a matter of just letting go? Because you know what happens when you let go, right? The law of gravity is unavoidable. It’s impossible to defy without strapping rockets to your ass and, well, that’s just a bad idea.
Yet what if it’s something that’s so important to you, you can’t figure out how to let it go…and still hang on? Because letting go just isn’t an option. You can’t afford to watch it fall, crash, burn itself out and go still and quiet, leaving a charred lump of “oops” in its wake. You’ve worked too hard. You’ve wanted it too much. What is this thing, the thing that’s on fire and threatening to burn you to the ground?
It’s your writing career.
I know, I know. You look at this and think, “Huh?” But it’s true. And it doesn’t just apply to writing, but let’s start there. Writing is a generally solitary endeavor. You create imaginary friends and build worlds to play in, and people sometimes pay you for it. How could this get any better, right? How could this possibly go wrong? It happens when you aren’t looking, when you’re so focused in another direction that you never see it coming. You get caught up in the momentum of creativity and you forget, quite innocently at first, that there’s life outside the worlds you create, real life. You find writer friends and pull them into your sphere. They are, after all, people who understand you and can validate your mania. And they fit in so well. Already, the balance beam of your writing has been lit, at both ends, and you’re too enamored to see the growing flames.
After a while, you get so wrapped up in what is going on that you ignore the flames that are creeping toward you. I mean, the heat feels pretty nice. It’s January, after all. Consider it a free cosmic utility.
And then the fire’s there. It’s nipping at the tender pads of your fingers and you’re dancing around, blowing on the flames to try to chase them back. You can’t figure out how you didn’t see this happen, how those closest to you didn’t encourage you to tamp the all-consuming flames into a manageable, sustained burn. But you know what? It’s not their responsibility.
Writing is like anything in that too much of a good thing is, well, too much. Authors are required to do so much for their careers, whether they self-pub, e-pub or traditionally publish their works. There are different mindsets on this, that author sales aren’t influenced at all by exerting the time and effort to those who pour everything they have into their work, spending every waking moment pushing forward with the hope that the wall separating them from elusive success will move, even an inch. You know what I’m going to say, right? Both approaches are wrong. Both. Are. Wrong. If you aren’t willing to invest at least something, don’t expect anything in return. This is true in life, love, friendship, pet ownership, cooking, hell – even breathing. Nothing comes without some effort. You can’t take a single breath and expect that to be all the effort required of you any more than you can write a story and expect it to carry itself to the NYT List. Yes, it happens — to vampires and other oddities. Most of us don’t fall into that category.
It’s equally wrong, though, to become so involved in writing that all else ceases to exist. It is remarkably unhealthy to eat only one type of food (hello, Little Debbie) or to think one singular thought (hello, uh…never mind but Sam Bond? It’s totally about you.). You have to experience the rich and abundant offerings of life or you become monochromatic and unbalanced (infer what you will). There are experiences to be had, some that are even like ripe, low-hanging fruit — there for the taking. But you can miss them if you’re busy burning up your talent in one grand gesture of crazy effort. And you know what? Whether you want to believe it or not, your writing will suffer for such a narrow viewpoint of life. How can you think to give a richness of life to your characters if you don’t step out and live it?
So how do you achieve balance like this? There are three key ideas here.
1. Manage the Fire: You need to have a certain level of burning passion for your writing, whether it’s a hobby or a career. But notice I say ”a certain level.” I’m never going to endorse someone dousing their creative mind in lighter fluid and reaching for a match. Uh, hell no. You’ve got to do what firefighters call a Controlled Burn. You direct the flames, you control what they have access to as far as fuel and you never let it get out of control. If you don’t control it, it will control you. Simple matter of fact, my friends.
2. Develop Support Networks: Have friends around you who are brave enough to tell you when the flames are beginning to singe hair. I have one friend in particular who said this to me last week. I balked and shook my head, backing away from the crazy lady. Turns out you can’t run from yourself: I was the crazy lady. She was right. I’d delved too far into the flames and was losing myself. Surrounds yourself with people who will help fan the flames of creativity, but are also will to help you keep from burning alive. It’s a fine balance, yes, but it’s possible to achieve.
3. Live: Seems simple, doesn’t it? If you’re burning out of control, it’s not. You’ve got to remember that there is life outside of your writing. I am the absolute worst at remembering this, so don’t feel like I’m pointing fingers. I get wrapped up in my word count and deadlines and begin to live, eat and breathe writing. My life has suffered for it. I’m remarkably fortunate that I have a husband who is totally supportive and patient, friends and fellow writers who encourage me to get out and absorb a little vitamin D and a family who loves me despite my obsessive quirks. Make time for yourself. Make time for those who are important to you. Don’t ever put yourself in the position where you look up and find yourself alone. Nothing, not even writing, is worth losing the most precious of your relationships over. The flip side is that the people who are most precious to you will understand and not ask you to give writing up. Find a way to invite them to roast marshmallows near the flames of your passion; involve them.
Never forget to live, my friends.
Your stories will be richer
for your own experiences.
One Small Voice in the SOPA / PIPA / ASSHAT Debates
Published January 18, 2012 | I never, ever take to my blog to rant, but this whole SOPA/PIPA thing is bugging me. Bear with me. Regular programming will return tomorrow. 
This will be short and sweet. Why? Because I’m not an expert about the entire SOPA/PIPA debate or the complexity of the issues at hand. I am, however, a literate adult and don’t at all care for what I’ve read about the proposed changes the government is interested in employing. Frankly, the idea of my internet being censored and my content being reviewed is absolutely disturbing. I mean, c’mon. Seriously? If we allow this to pass, where will be draw future lines? Where will we be able to draw future lines? The answer is disturbing in its simplicity: we’ll draw those lines wherever we’re told we can draw them.
I’m a huge proponent of free speech. Granted, not everyone makes the most of this First Amendment right without ending up looking like a real dumbass. But that’s alright. We’re a fair and equitable country and we allow our citizens the choice to be either knowledgeable or ignorant and to rant with enthusiasm on either side of that fence. (Thank you, YouTube, for verifying that more and more people are idiots — and filmed — than ever before. Anyway…) We allow people to say what they think under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. This is one of the first planks in our nation’s platform. To see our current elected officials getting in there and chiseling at the floor with glee is beyond my paltry comprehension skills. I mean, what the hell? Do they not realize they’re exercising their own First Amendment right to bitch and moan about the lack of censorship across the web? Yeah, you’re right. I’m sure they do. The problem is, we’ve empowered these people to make, and amend, laws. If my dad was involved in this conversation, this is where he’d pipe up and say, “Looks like someone’s gotten too big for their britches.”
He’s right.
We’ve created a sense of near indifference to Washington because their actions are so ludicrous half the time, their verbal promises not worth the cost of the toilet seat covers in the Congressional bathrooms, and their pandering to the masses so commonplace that we…well…we’re numb. We know that whatever they’re promising, whether it’s healthcare for everyone or ponies for all children or rainbows on alternate Fridays if your income range is between A and B, it’s all crap. They don’t mean it. Unless it directly affects them, they don’t care. By “directly affects,” I mean to say it doesn’t take money out of their pockets. But if it takes it out of ours? Well, we’re the cost of doing business, or we’re the unfortunate byproducts of a balanced whatever, or…or…or…
I’m disillusioned. I’m indifferent. I’m also building toward indignant. The First Amendment was ratified on December 15, 1791. I would triple-dog dare any modern day politician to go up against one of the Founding Fathers in a debate, because those men knew what it was they were talking about. They knew what the purpose of the laws were. Today? Clearly I need to be censored.
Snorkeling in Your Cereal Bowl
Published January 3, 2012 | 
I’m tired. I’m that kind of tired where I’m not sure what I’m doing or why. I look around and wonder how my house exploded into piles of mail and dirty dishes. I wonder who authorized the purchase of dust bunnies in bulk, because I’m sure it wasn’t me. My inbox? I don’t even want to contemplate my inbox because the email has piled up in there like a monster crash on an icy, east-bound interstate. It all culminated this morning when I decided I’d snorkel in my cereal bowl. Not my best idea, but there you have it.
Some people say it’s just the consequence of surviving the holiday season. I have a hard time accepting that since I’ve lived through a range of holiday seasons prior to 2011 and survived them all. I personally believe it comes down to the writer’s lifestyle combined with the madness that defines the holidays. So what is the “writer’s lifestyle”? I’m not sure since it’s a seen-from-the-corner-of-the-eye kind of beast, but I’ll give defining it my very best shot.
The Writer’s Lifestyle (let’s capitalize, shall we?) is a vague and hungry beast that stalks a generous handful of people in the world, tagging them as functionally and openly as a blue ear tag on a bovine does. Seriously. I can look around a writers’ convention and see opaque ear tags on about 70% of the participants. Groups move in herds, their ear tags helping as you watch the different levels of experience, dedication, intensity, genres and more break into small, self-segregated groups. It’s sort of funny to watch different tags interact, to see how they size each other up and try to figure out character motivations in real people.
The Writer’s Lifestyle is all-encompassing. Once that ear tag is on, it doesn’t come off easily. You find yourself working to accommodate it and all it stands for in an effort to convince yourself you’re on the right path. We tend to orbit our laptops and tablets and PCs as if they were the center of the world. Truth? They sort of are. Because without those things, our worlds would come to a crashing halt. We’re driven by, and wholly dependent on, technology. We watch our inboxes with rabid, unwavering focus…even if we aren’t expecting anything. One eye is always there. We carry writing materials with us more often than not and will gladly improvise if an idea hits us and we’re without paper–backs of envelopes, blank walls and bald heads are all fair game. It’s like an illness we can’t seem to kick though, in truth, few of us would want to.
What is it about the Writer’s Lifestyle that keeps us enthralled? What is it that that feeds the beast so we cling to the madness like wrestlers cling to spandex and face paint? Truly, it’s not our collective (or individual) fault.
It’s yours.
We write for you as much as, if not more than, we write for ourselves. Our stories are always rolling around in our minds and we’re always thinking of ways to pluck out the most appropriate story for the moment and get it out to the reader. You influence our choices based on your feedback, fan mail, requests, love of one character over another, and more. You push us to give you something better, stronger, more engrossing than we did last time. You, the reader, make it all worthwhile. We can handle the milk up the nose from cereal bowl snorkeling because of you. We know that, in the end, you’re what matters to us and our characters and our stories. Without you? We’d just be spinning our wheels.
So thank you, dear reader, for making it possible for those of us proudly sporting opaque ear tags and milk face to do what we love to do. Never doubt that we know just how important you are.
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Coming 04/03/12
