Is it that time again?

I ache.  I'm trying to see it as a good thing since it's keeping me in when I'm supposed to be at a party.  How anti-social does that sound?  Fact is, I do tend to be hermit-like, but this is a kid's party for the nephew I see five or so days a week, and who assures me that I won't be missed tonight. At all.  (I was not too sick to throw pennies at him while he giggled at me.)

Anyhoo, this means I've got a little bit of time alone to write.  What should be recorded about the past week?

~I spent some time working from the villian's point of view; didn't get far.
~Itching to get started, I let someone talk me into doing sprints; discovered that is not my preferred way to begin a story, but it was still good to actually begin.
~It's possible to plot and "pants".  I think.  We'll see if I succeed.  But I need a solid knowledge of the first act--to actually see how it unfolds and what the details are, before I can outline the second act.  I'm thinking a little combination of technique is what I need.

Mostly, I need to get back to it.  Parting thoughts...

From my notes:
John Grisham's Ten Commandments:

(rumored to be sitting beside his typewriter)

Start with action. Explain it later.


Make it tough for your protagonist.


Plant it early. Pay it off later.


Give the protagonist the initiative.


Give the protagonist a personal stake.


Give the protagonist a short time list. Then shorten it again.


Choose your character according to your own capacities as well as his/hers.


Know your destination before you set out.


Don't rush in where angels fear to tread.


Don't write anything you wouldn't want to read.

pre-coffee process post

OK, I wrote the title then made a cup of coffee.  I couldn't take it.  I'm only a few sips in, so forgive me if I'm foggy.

I stayed up late working on the outline until it became staying up late not working on the outline, or at least hitting a certain block in the road and not making anymore progress.  Maybe my erstwhile title of Queen of the First Chapter should have been Queen of the First Act (all right, sure, maybe I was just a princess).  Up in the wee hours, I finally realized that I've stumbled in this same spot again and again; maybe it wasn't obvious before because I have managed to move a bit past in a story or two, only to hit the middle and stall out (even if I kept writing to the end).

Here's a wiki on Three Act Structure for anyone not familiar.  There are unboubtably better ones or ones more directed toward printed fiction, but again, first cuppa.

So I hit the end of Act One....and I got nothin'.  Zip.  Nada.  While outlining (rather than writing by the seat of my pants) leaves me a little vague on the opening scene--I know what should happen with none of my usual vision on just how it happens--at least I have something to go on.  I get to the end Act One...surely there's an organic "something" that'll rise out of the story....

...That until now has focused solely on the reactions and actions of my main character while the antagonist has sat thumb twittling in my notebook with just a wee bit of diabolical masterminding to get the ball rolling.

Good thing yah can't see me blush. 

The rest of Week 3..and a vampire!

Gotta be quick, 'cause I've been a bad, bad girl.  I cheated.  I should have studied more and rested more and done more story background.  It wasn't all naughtiness; I've been sick and dealing with sick child (who seems determined to defy gravity when my back is turned).  But I kept peeking at a book until I ended up reading it, so I feel like I've committed adultry against my school work, the books that were already in the queu to be read and reviewed, and my own story waiting to be born.

I'd hesitated getting Raphael, and not just because each of my classes demands an uber amount of reading.  The author and I had a...disagreement about a character in someone else's novel.  We were both speaking (well, writing) English, but her words made no sense to me...Until I realized that I was reading the urban fantasy the story's creator meant it to be but she was reading a paranormal romance.  Made me worry about how I would react to her characters.

No need for a genre rant (I've sworn off them, really) because I loved them.  Cynthia Leighton is an ex-cop P.I.--I know, I know, been there done that.  BUT she's her own character, not a rip-off of any P.I.'s we've seen before.  She's "smart, tough, and sexy" without crossing the line into obnoxious.  When a certain powerful vampire (and yes, he's a hottie alpha male) hires her, she holds her own against the creatures of the night with her brain and a few high calibur weapons, and without losing her humanity. 

Check it out.  Urban fantasy fans will find that the heat between Cyn and Raphael doesn't overpower the investigative plot, paranormal fans will find that the heat is worthy of their time.  Readers of either genre, or not hung up on genre at all, will find great character establishment and worldbuilding--a win for everyone.

Now I'm going to go peek at her web site for info on the next book before I finish plotting out my own act one.  See?  I'm still workin'.

Week 3, part of it anyway

Day One--
I woke to news of an earthquake in Chile.  One of my very best friends is in Chile, so I spent the morning...and afternoon...and early evening hovering about Facebook waiting for news.  I cursed her husband for dragging her down there for a season every year.  I cursed myself for not being psycho enough of a friend to have gotten in the way of that.  I prayed.  Now I'm writing this, not so that she'll read it someday and want to kick my ass, but because reading this someday might bring back that sense of moving from task to task, tearing up, coming back to the computer in case there's news...

What are those lines in the U2 song?  "Every artist is a cannibal/every poet is a thief/all kill their inspiration/and sing about their grief."  I don't know about killing my inspiration, but now that the news has reached me that my girl is okay, I'll all right with mining those feelings later.

During my aimless wandering about the house, I turned on the TV (catching up on Past Lives via Hulu might have distracted too much from Facebook hovering).  There was an old episode of Grey's Anatomy playing a song that clicked...


One of my attempts at writing Wade happened during NaNo.  In those early hours of the month, recreating the story by the seat of my pants, I found her falling for the most inappropriate hero.  (As a total aside, that scene/storyline was surely born of the earlier mentioned best friend and I walking down a stone paved street in Austria and falling hopelessly for a gorgeous priest/monk as only teen-aged girls can do.  Almost 20 years later, it just appears in my writing.)  I'd been considering dropping it; it had been fun, but...That woman's voice and those lyrics told me keep that bit.  And that led to a few things that will have to happen...so plotting and the start of a soundtrack where I least expected it.

Day Two--I started off with some story work, but, knowing that I was clueless on a paper due Tuesday.  I wish I were still clueless.  It ate my whole day, and I still don't feel prepared to write the thing.  Or, to be more honest, I expect As out of my papers, and this material makes me feel like I'll produce a C.  I want to fight Andy Warhol, mostly because he's dead growling at him is less dangerous than growling at the man who will grade my assignment. 

I hear Nathan Fillion's voice in the other room, so I'll cut my bitching short and move on to...

Day Three--I've got many hours left on this day, but I stumbled on a post about a guy who has 11,000 rejection letters, and if that's not worth sharing, I don't know what is.  If nothing else, THIS is the guy I need to track down to teach me about organization.  How does he find the time?!  Sure the message is supposed to be "keep at it!", but I'm finishing my bachelors almost 20 years late, with nothing ready to send to be rejected, while he's gotten seven degrees and that many rejections plus 100 shorts published.  Damn.

These distractions aside, I've been itching to actually write the fiction I've been working on.  I'm off to create that infernal paper so I can get to it.

Week 2--Can dreaming dangeriously be scheduled?

Day Zero--
Wade has always been pretty kick-ass, both in actual game play and in my attempts at novelization.  As I focused on reworking her story, I found myself longing for the urban fantasy that was less kick-ass and more mythic.  Sleeping in the 'tween time between weeks, my subconscious said, "Why not have both?"  And it played "Landslide" on a mental loop--Billy Corgan singing.  Maybe that last bit is neither here nor there, but I woke up with a new challenge and theme song for Wade's softer side.

Day One--
I worked on the "what if", or in this case the, "wait! why?"  Basic to the background of this character is her being one of three, separated at birth and hidden away.  This should be more than background!  Babies are adopted everyday, but there was a great mystery aound these triplets that has never been solved.  I got a few basic ideas on that, and jotted down a few thoughts about themes.

Days Two-Six--
Classwork, motherhood, and a wee bit of writing group moderation.  Two weeks in and the picture is already forming.  I've got to find a way to organize my life so I can be a good wife/mother/student without disengaging from writing for days at a time.  Other people manage it, so I know it's not some unreachable goal.  BUT, my life has been categorized by disorganization for so long, I have no idea where to begin.

For now, I'm going to shower and get back to working on characters.  Another failure in my past has been devotion to primary characters and near ignoring everyone else.  So...shower, characters, more on setting, plot, fold laundry, clean daughter's room, and give some attention to the texts that I'm more than a hundred pages behind on.  (Food and sex will happen without any lists.)

Week 1

Free of "The Hidden" by way of a kindly beta reader, I began posting "Becoming" for critique.  Written as a NaNo novel one November, "Becoming" has a lot of promise, and I know just where it went wrong--written in haste, I left out a lot of the background that made the world as interesting to me as the characters.  Unfortunately, I discovered that this was not the only way I screwed up.  Aware of how many times computer crashes have wiped out my work, I saved it on both a hard and a flash drive...I thought.  You know how when you "save as", a file will continue to save that way until you do it again?  I forgot. 

Yeah, that sucked. 

With most of the story lost, I didn't have the heart to pick right up.  I decided to work on another old story that has (for me a least) enjoyable characters amid a mess of plot.  A zillion years ago, I played in an online story (shout out to Phoenix by Night!) with great potential for novel translation.  I've explored it a little bit, recreating the characters since I technically only had the right to my own, fleshing out her story...and setting it down because her story was too interwoven with the other characters and the game's storyteller had pretty much just ripped off Clive Barker.

Still, Wade persists as one of my favorite characters.  So...

DAY ONE-- I decided that I would, indeed, write Wade's story.
DAY TWO-- I got a notebook and started writing down everything I know about Wade.  Decided to do the same for the other characters and the setting...and didn't.
"I didn't" pretty much covers the rest of the week.  I revised an English paper, completed by Pre-1877 assignments, and still failed to catch up to my 1960s reading, but I didn't do any work on the story.

I did decide to blog about it.  I need to get a clear view of what works for me and what doesn't.  And you, dear few gentle readers, might be able to say, "Wow, look how An crashed and burned.  I can think of a better way to get my novel written."

a little encouragement

No, I didn't throw away my keyboard--or forget about the blog--after my last post.  I have been too wrapped up in Columbus, not focused enough on the '60s (if I want to stay on the Dean's List), and just caught up enough in maps and changing perspectives.  My inner writer needs feeding.  I went through my old notes and found a wonderful Ray Bradbury quote:

To sum it all up, if you want to write, if you want to create, you must be the most sublime fool that God ever turned out and sent rambling.

You must write every single day of your life.

You must read dreadful dumb books and glorious books, and let them wrestle in beautiful fights inside your head, vulgar one moment, brilliant the next.

You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads.

I wish you a wrestling match with your Creative Muse that will last a lifetime.

I wish craziness and foolishness and madness upon you.

May you live with hysteria, and out of it make fine stories - science fiction or otherwise.

Which finally means, may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world.

I love that!  Before my wrestling match commences, my inner reader wants to encourage you to try Seanan McGuire's Rosemary and Rue.  Rather than trying to sum it up, I'll give you one of the author blurbs on the back: "...everything you'd ever need in an urban fantasy.  It's a smart story, cleanly told, that allows both humor and heartbreak to take their turn on stage, but more importantly, the 'urban' and the 'fantasy' are of equal importance."

It struck me as a fantastic blend of the "old" urban fantasy with its emphasis on the mythic and the "new" hard-boiled/kick-ass urban fantasy.