Writing and a Snippet

Well, peeps, I'm writing.

Not NaNo speed, but I am writing . . . on two stories, with a goal to finish them by the end of the year.

The first one is DRAGON DAYS OF SUMMER, the fourth book in The Goblin's Apprentice series. I'm currently at 20,414 words, and I expect to hit 65,000-75,000 words at the finish. It's a little long for MG (middle grade), but that word length isn't too hideous. TROLL (book three) came in at 66,000 words.

And only JK and her editing team knows how long the Deathly Hallows is . . . well, lookie there, Answer has the answer to everything. Book 1 Sorcerer's stone--76,944 words, compared to book 6 Deathly Hallows--204,796, but the longest was Order of the Phoenix at 257,046.

Who knew, right?

I was slightly stuck in this story, and to be perfectly truthful, I don't like how I wrote through this particular scene, but the story is almost to the point where I know exactly how I want to write it. Oh, that doesn't mean there won't be misbehaving scenes, but hopefully they won't stop me cold.

The other story is called FIRE WITHIN. It's under the Mystic Elements tab on my blog's home page. It's technically a "New" adult urban fantasy.

What is "new" adult?

It's one of those catch words that editors and agents toss around. Basically it's not YA (young adult), which is usually considered a high schooler, mid- to late- teens, though sometimes it can go a little younger or a little older. I consider the age of the character to be in their early twenties. Out of high school, but still unrealistic as to what life is all about.

This was the story I worked on the most this week. It's a lot more hard hitting with nasty language to boot. Sorry, but that's the way the character needs it to be. She's at a hard place in her life.
This is a rough draft, so there might be mistakes, booboos, and errors.

Please forgive, but there is a reason it's called "the writing process".

If you have any kids (12 and under) who read my blog, then you might want to keep them from reading this little excerpt.

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The Fire Within

 

Chapter One

Footsteps echoed down the metal corridor. Quincy Jones’s eyes opened as she listened to the cadence of two pairs of heavy steps. To her knowledge, her cell was the only one occupied at this end of the hallway. They were coming for her. She would have company in three, two, one . . .

The small metal window in the steel door scraped open. “Warden wants to see you, firestarter.”

God, she hated that name almost as much as she hated the asswipe who used it—Cunningham. “I don’t suppose Warden thought to provide me with some clothes, did he?” In first two days she was imprisoned, she had burned up five sets of scrubs, the mattress covering the bare springs that formed her bed, and she had blistered the paint off two-thirds of the cell walls. Other than acquiring a fire retardant blanket, nothing else had been replaced.

“You’re in luck today. He didn’t want to see your lily white ass traipsing down the halls disturbing the other patients.” Cunningham gave a greasy chuckle.

Patients, my ass, this place was more like the Hannibal Lector wing for criminally insane psychopathic murderers, she thought, as a set of gray scrubs were shoved through the hole. At least it wasn’t one of the bright orange jumpsuits that the total loser whackjobs wore—besides orange would have clashed with her maroon hair. “You have exactly two minutes to get dressed. If you aren’t ready, then too bad, you can walk the gauntlet naked.”

The metal springs on the bed squeaked as she rolled off the frame and padded over to the door in her bare feet. Long ago, or was it just days?  She tried to hide her nudity, but soon gave up. Cameras watched her every move. Cunningham called it ‘suicide watch’. Maybe it had been valid when she first arrived, but not any longer. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to suspect they watched her just to jacked off in the control room.

Perverts.

Writing is like Gardening

This seems to be an odd statement, but a couple of days ago I had an epiphany.

"Lightbulb." (name the movie!)

As I've been posting some pictures of my backyard, I've come to realize how similar writing and gardening are.

When a writer first gets the germ of an idea, he lets it roll around in his head, thinking about all sorts of "what if's" before he puts his fingers on a keyboard.

When we first bought this house, the yard was sodded. No trees, no pool, no plants, no nothing, just grass. But as I found out when I mowed the yard, there were numerous 'microclimates' within the yard. There were stripes that were constantly green without the aid of above ground watering. Other areas were seriously hot from the western sun baking the earth. Some areas were very shady or only received morning sun. And so on and so forth.

The writer constructs an outline, deciding on characters and plot. The story picture is becoming a little more concrete. The writer has an idea of the beginning, the middle and the end. Perhaps the writer follows the three act structure or the snowflake method. But the story is beginning to take shape. This is the backbone of the story.

before

after new hardscape

The gardener plans the hardscape (the walkways, paths, stone), the location of trees (for shade, privacy, noise control), and the foundation plants (shrubs). This part of the work creates the backbone structure of the yard.

The writer writes the story, inserting dialogue, discovering subplots, works on characterization and adds emotion. The writer thinks about character arcs and overall story arc.

The gardener adds perennials, moves plants that aren't succeeding even though the "criteria" was appropriate when first planted. Remember, gardens grow, they aren't static. The gardener also thinks about seasonal flowering. You don't want the plants to only flower in the spring, that would make for a very boring summer and autumn.

Once the story is written, the work isn't finished. The writer will edit, delete scenes, words, rewriting entire sections of the story and rearrange story.

Trees grow, microclimates change, shrubs get too large. What used to be hours of sunlight, might now have reverted to only a few hours a day. The gardener will adjust his garden according to what he imagines as his final, albeit changing, garden.

During the last stage of writing, the writer will tweak sentences, find stronger words, and polish the final product for viewing.

The gardener adds colorful annuals--those plants that will only survive the season, but add bursts of happiness into a yard. The gardener will also weed, trim, deadhead and sculpt trees, shrubs and flowers.

A writer might tweak and change his story, but must eventually give up control if he wants to give readers the enjoyment of his words.

But the gardener is always able to tinker and change the look of his yard.

You might think that I'm exaggerating, but I feel that I've found a comparison that both writers and gardeners will understand.

What do you think?

Oh, the movie?

Despicable Me.

Minions RULE!!

Later, Peeps!

How to Buckle down to Edit?

At the beginning of August, I opened TROLL with the intentions of editing and publishing it by October 1.

I read the first ten pages and closed the manuscript. What a mess! I proceeded to go on vacation. Disney World and Universal Florida were more fun than thinking about TROLL.

After vacation at the end of August, I opened the manuscript, read the first ten pages, went 'uh-oh' and closed the manuscript before I sent an SOS out to a writer friend: 

Please read and tell me what's wrong.

Sept 7: I opened the manuscript and FREAKED when I read the first ten pages.  Something was very, very wrong. I phoned my friend. She was gone . . . of course.

*sheesh* Who does she think she is? What do you mean I'm not the center of her universe?  Aren't MY needs more important than hers?? Some people . . .

The next day she emailed me, asking what's up.

My response:

. . . I need your help, and you shoot straight from the hip (like me), no sugar coating for you. You helped so much with GNOME by simply pointing out that the story didn’t start until 10K into it, resulting in my cutting those words and reworking them.

Anyhoo, I started going over TROLL—AND IT’S WRONG, VERY, VERY WRONG!

The beginning totally sucks. And something is missing. I don’t know what it could be other than the voice and I’m simply ‘telling’ stuff. I need to get to the real beginning of the story, but I’m mired in how to ‘fix’ things. I’m debating on scraping the whole damn story right now, since I can’t read far enough into it to know if there is any redeeming qualities about it.

I need your help, Obi Wan Meg. You’re my only hope!

PS: I’ve already mentally scraped my Oct 1 deadline to publish it. I’d still like to get it up this year, but I want it to be of the quality of the other ones.

Okay, now, my friend actually HAS a life, unlike me, so it's been a few days before she can get around to reading my story. During this time, I'm thinking about the beginning of my story while I'm walking.

--This is the biggest reason why I don't walk with a buddy--all they do is talk, talk, talk. Mindless jibber-jabber about 'stuff' when I need to be thinking about my characters.

Again, *sheesh*!

So on Sept. 12, I have ants in my pants about this story and send her an email:

Okay, tell me the truth.

I can handle it. Even if you haven’t read the damn thing yet, tell me what I expect to hear.

The rhythm of the story is off. The pacing sucks. Kyte’s voice is off. It needs serious slicing and dicing and condensing.

I think that’s it.

Sept. 13, here's a partial response from my friend:

Mags--

The pacing in the first few pages is off. While I like the sword play, it goes on a bit long. Where the blue stars are, that got my attention. You are so good about layering what you need.

You do have to put what happened to Mike as well as Rhan's back story.

What is the one thing that would motivate both an adult and a kid? Threaten family, and if she cares for Mike or her mother, that is powerful motivation.

Okay. So what do I do?

I proceed to write 2282 words on ANOTHER story.  Yeah . . .talk about my avoidance issues.

So how does this whining episode help me edit TROLL?

This is my process.  Yeah, it's lame, but sorry, it is what it is.

--I go through the 'don't look at it and it will disappear' stage, then the freaking out stage, then the whole story stinks phase,then the 'okay, I know I have  story issues but how do I start' phase. This is where my brain juices kick in and I start thinking about what I can do to make it better.

I'm not quite ready to jump in with edits, but I'm almost there.

Today, along with writing 2282 words on a new story, I wrote down the chapter titles of TROLL. The chapter numbers are off. Some of the chapter lengths are off (too long or too short). Some chapter don't even have titles.

So how does this help me?

1) I tend to get bogged down in the minutia. Tweaking isn't going to work for this story. This calls for dumping the first few chapters and rewriting them. Big stuff.

2) It familiarized me with the story line again.

3) I also glanced at the writing at the beginning of each chapter. It isn't too bad. Kyte's voice and style are there--just not in the first few chapters.

The story isn't a lost cause. Oh, I'll probably cut most of the first two or three chapters and rework the beginning.

This is what a writer does. We rewrite. We rewrite to make the story the best it can possibly be. We rewrite because we do not want to disappoint our readers.

It's just that some of our processes are a little whinier than others. Okay, I think mine is pretty whiny.

But I must stop blogging, because I have a story to rewrite!

Later, Peeps