Tag Archives: Writing

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Three Ways to Manage Your Busy Schedule – Instead of Letting It Manage You

Laura's work desk 13/05/2008

Piles of Work (Photo credit: Laura Whitehead)

After substituting in kindergarten for the third time this week, I drove home with that relieved, TGIF feeling. I love teaching, especially the freedom of being a substitute, but it makes for a busy day, often with no breaks or time to think.

But the entire weekend stretched ahead of me, with plenty of time to decompress and do the things I wanted to do.

My little fantasy didn’t even survive the drive home. I knew there was a pile of laundry waiting to be washed, plants that needed to be watered, sippy cups to be washed and refilled, and I still had my daily bookkeeping duties for the family business that I’d put off in order to substitute.

When I walked in the door, I discovered more things to do: a book sitting on the kitchen table that I need to read for a class next week; a pair of pants that need to be re-hemmed; a looming trip to the store before my son’s t-ball game. Oh yes, and then the t-ball game itself.

I also took on a new project today that I have to finish before we go on our spring break vacation, plus a novella to read for Fiction Fix, not to mention my personal fiction projects. Sometimes it’s hard to figure out what to do first when there are so many tasks at hand. Better just to take a nap and ignore them all, right?

If your life follows a similar pattern, you may feel that you’re always behind and rarely or never get to do anything for yourself. And it’s all too easy to give in to a negative attitude.

When Peter started playing t-ball, I dreaded the practices and games. My time is already so limited that I didn’t know when I would ever get anything done.

I had two choices: succumb to despair and have a nervous breakdown, or adapt and make the most of my new schedule.

I chose the latter, and you know what? I’m still able to embrace all the new projects I’ve taken on, and I’m even finding that elusive “me” time. Here are three tips that have helped me, and I hope they’ll help you, too:

1. Use Technology to Your Advantage

I know of people who have gotten rid of their TVs and phones because of the distractions they cause. If this seems a little drastic to you, there are ways to turn your electronics into a boon rather than a procrastinator’s crutch.

Did you know that there are a plethora of apps and computer programs that can help you manage your time? Some, like SelfControl from Mac users or SelfRestraint for Windows, block the internet altogether for set amounts of time. Just search for “time management apps” to see lists of what’s available and which one best fits your needs and personality.

Some of you may be able to control your electronics use by sheer will power. I fall into this category. I used to check my email any time I woke in the middle of the night, and the result was that I always had a hard time getting back to sleep. I finally made a deal with myself: don’t check email at night. It was as simple as that. If someone texts me, I know it’s urgent. Otherwise, it can wait.

Another thing I love is my phone’s timer, which I use in conjunction with step number two.

2. Take Baby Steps

When I have enough projects to fill a mile-long to-do list, I tackle them a bit at a time, baby-step style, and there are two ways to do this. As mentioned above, you can use that handy timer on your phone and work in blocks of time, or you can set goals, like editing one chapter and then moving on to a different project.

I’m currently rotating five projects in this manner, employing whichever method makes sense for each project, whittling away until they’re done. At the end of a hard day, instead of feeling like I’ve fallen short by ignoring one project while spending all my time on another, I can see that each one is closer to completion, even if only by a little bit.

3. Schedule Recreational Activities

It is very discouraging to run into someone on a Monday and have to come up with an answer to the “What’d you do this weekend?” question. I often stand there in utter silence, knowing I was busy but not able to remember anything specific. “Oh yeah,” I might say after a few seconds, “I weeded the lawn all day Saturday.” Exciting stuff, right?

When piles of laundry, flowerbeds full of weeds, grad school projects, and your kids’ sports schedules hijack what could have been your spare time, you feel like you’re stuck in a rut. This is when you can get in trouble by either going off the deep-end and throwing all responsibility to the wind, or you can wallow in self-pity and start hating anyone who did manage to enjoy her weekend.

If, instead, you schedule regular periods of recreation, just as you would schedule all the work that you need to do, you will have something to look forward to every day.

This is easier said than done, I know. Part of my personal promise to myself was to leave work well enough alone after my kids were in bed every night. If I could just hold out until they were in bed, I could read or write whatever my heart desired. But sometimes there’s not enough time in the day to get all my work done, and there’s still quite a bit left to finish after the kiddos are down. But I still make sure that I read or write or watch the occasional movie because my brain craves that break. Afterward, it’s much easier to work.

You may have more time but feel guilty about using it. Don’t! Fit in the occasional golf game or fishing trip or cup of coffee with a friend, if that’s what floats your boat. If you ignore opportunities such as these in order to “save” your enjoyment for a blow-out, two-week vacation that eats up a quarter of your annual salary, think of all the misery you’re subjecting yourself to in the meantime. Wouldn’t it be a shame to turn something you used to love doing, such as being a freelance writer, into a task to which you feel enslaved? I would rather have a few minutes of rest or fun every day, and the vacations, although they aren’t many, are truly special.

However you choose to do it, find time to do something not work-related on a regular basis, and you will be able to attack your projects again with renewed vigor and enjoyment.

Oh, and by the way, your house is patient: it will wait for you to clean it. Wash you underwear, by all means, but I won’t look at your baseboards if you won’t look at mine.

Do you have too many things to do 24/7/365? How do you manage your own workload?

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The Surprise Lurking in My Playlist

IPod Nano

IPod Nano (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I’ve talked about the different forms of inspiration before (and it applies to me specifically as a writer, but I’m sure it applies to other forms of art as well), and today I especially want to focus on music.

I’m a musical person from a musical family (read more about that here and here), but it wasn’t until this past week that I was reminded again of how much it can influence my writing.

Back when I used to have a fantastical picture of what a full-time writing life would look like, I figured that my house would come equipped with a separate office just for me and all my journals and manuscripts, a computer dedicated to my writing, and of course a custom sound system, through which I could pipe Metallica while I wrote. Yes, Metallica.

I was thrilled one day when I read that Stephen King, my favorite American author at that time, listened to Metallica (among other groups) while he wrote. Of course, I thought that this was prophetic and pointed to the life that I would surely lead.

Fast forward twelve or thirteen years, and there’s no separate office. I type with my MacBook in my lap while my kids watch Disney and vie for my attention. So this certainly doesn’t allow me the seclusion necessary to listen to whatever I want at any volume.

I still do like Metallica, though, so that’s something.

Still, when I write, it’s not in the environment that I figured was conducive to creating brilliance. I’ve learned to adapt, and I actually embrace writing in the midst of chaos, but there are those times that I realize there’s something to at least a part of that idealistic setting – the music.

Years ago, while I was in the thick of writing one of the books in my middle grade series, I was driving along, listening to just another song on the latest CD my husband and I had bought. I did not at all expect the scene that suddenly popped into my head, evoked by that particular song.

Part of it had to do with the lyrics, which described what happened in the scene, but there’s also something about the tune. That combination brought this scene fully-formed into my mind. I saw one of my characters going through something that wrenched my heart. I didn’t want it to happen to him. I fought it with all my might, but every time I heard the song, the scene returned. My conclusion: it belonged in my book.

Now, there are other songs that I like because they energize me or put me in a calm mood for a scene that needs a little more finesse. But I can never predict when a song will give me a missing piece of my story puzzle.

It happened again this week. I was driving along, listening to the playlist that my husband put together for me, so it has a quite a few songs that I never would have thought to pick for myself. I suppose that’s why it was so unexpected.

Instead of the music just washing over me, as it had with the last few songs I’d listened to, I suddenly started listening to the lyrics, and the words immediately created a new scene, one I certainly never considered when I formed the loose plot of my series.

This is why I think it’s so important to allow myself freedom within my plot. Sure, I have a rough outline, since I do need to make sure that I introduce important clues at the right time and have a general idea of where the story is going. But I was surprised that, yet again, a key character was facing something unexpected, something I don’t think I ever would have come up with on my own.

Thank you, song, for both disturbing me and enriching my story. It actually kept me up for about an hour-and-a-half that night, as I tried to figure out where my story was going. And I realized that it made perfect sense; it allowed another of my characters to realize her full potential in a way that wouldn’t have been possible if I’d gone according to plan.

Have you experienced any storyline surprises, inspired by something that you thought was completely unrelated? You just never know when it will happen or what will bring it on, but I think that writers live for those moments.

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The Name Game

English: British versions of the Harry Potter ...

British Versions of the Harry Potter Series (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Every so often, I’ll meet someone who compliments my name with something like: “Oh, Sarah is my favorite girl name. If I’d had a daughter, she would have been Sarah.”

And then there are the times that I meet someone with a name that I like. Yes, there are a couple girl names that Thomas and I picked before we knew we would have boys, but more often, I’ll meet someone named Emma or Jake, and I’ll open my mouth and start to say they’re my favorites… then stop myself because I can’t say I ever would have given my children those names. You see, those names belong to my characters.

Maybe it’s just natural that I became a writer because I certainly couldn’t have enough children to use the dozens of names on my list. When I first started writing fiction, one of the perks was that my characters could have the names that I love – or just the opposite: I could give the antagonists names I didn’t like, therefore delivering a little poetic justice.

I never went much further than that with regard to naming, except when I started to write fantasy, I made up names, as well. And that’s when I got into trouble. I workshopped my middle grade fantasy with a number of other writers, and I realized that I should have been paying better attention. Two names in particular jumped out at the other writers. One made them think of a particular Disney cartoon character that I had forgotten existed, and the other made them think of Nazis. Whoops.

I happened to remember reading something about J.K. Rowling and how she chose names for the Harry Potter series. Harry was a name she had always loved, so it was natural that she give it to the main character. Other names, however, she carefully chose by reading Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. I immediately went to the nearest Barnes & Noble and bought a copy.

The Naming Books

The Naming Books

The book was almost 900 pages, and I read it cover-to-cover. I couldn’t use names that Rowling had already used, such as “Argus” (for Argus Filch), but I did find others that suited my needs – and their characters – much better than the names I originally chose. I also went to my favorite used bookstore Chamblin Bookmine and picked up German-to-English and Latin-to-English dictionaries. Then I discovered a great website www.behindthename.com, which has meanings of names from a vast number of cultures. Then I began the laborious process of renaming.

Whereas before, when I picked many names willy-nilly, now every single one had a purpose. I even carefully looked into the meanings of my favorites to make sure they were still appropriate. What I was somewhat surprised to learn was that two names in particular already had meanings (one of them strangely specific) that fit perfectly with those characters’ personalities and preferences. Other names didn’t fit at all, so I tossed them. And as for the ones that I just made up out of my head… well, I had to be a lot more careful not to make the book sound like Nazi Germany.

Since it was a fantasy, for the made up names I turned to my foreign language dictionaries (sometimes supplemented by information I found on the internet) to make new words that had a meaning for both me and the story. It took months, but once I found my method, it was much easier to assign new names.

I recently read an article in Authors Publish Magazine addressing this very issue. Give it a read to discover another author’s method behind assigning names (specifically for novels set in the United States).

When Thomas and I named our children, we didn’t just pick names out of thin air. We scoured the baby name book, looking for names and meanings that we liked. We knew that our children would have to live with their names for at least eighteen years, and we hoped that they would like the names we gave them and choose to go by them their whole lives. I even chose special middle names for them – names of two of my favorite characters, who also happen to be brothers.

Many authors are like me and have children of their own, but many don’t. Either way, our stories are our babies, in a very real sense, and the names we choose are important, even if that may seem laughable to someone who doesn’t write. So if I meet you, and you happen to be Stella or Michael or Lucian or Ingrid (I could keep going forever, I’m afraid), and I give a little smile upon hearing your name, know that it’s another of my favorites, and you may read it in one of my novels one day.

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When to Write in Reverse

Memento (film)

Memento (film) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Remember that Guy Pearce movie Memento? Before I ever knew what it was about, someone mentioned to me that the interesting thing about it is actually the structure of the movie. In case you haven’t seen it (and I’m really not giving much away here), it’s told in reverse. That is, the first scene you see is the last scene of the movie, chronologically. And each scene is just a few minutes before whichever scene you just watched.

This is an interesting technique, especially when you realize it puts the audience in a similar frame of mind as Pearce’s character, who has short-term memory loss. I’ve always loved movies and books that mess with time. The most recent book that comes to mind is Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus. I just can’t help but be drawn to stories like these; I think it’s in my blood.

Now, here’s the thing: when movies and books like these are still in the creation process, you wouldn’t want to watch or read them. That’s where the cutting room floor comes in; it’s the part of the creation process that is necessary but that the consumer doesn’t need to see. The final product isn’t messy but – if all goes well – seamless and sometimes mind-blowing in its intricacy.

Last week, I blogged about not being able to finish writing my novel on my own timeline because I got sick. But once I was well and able to get to work again, I realized that getting sick was merely a diversion from the ugly truth: I was stuck.

I hesitate to call this writer’s block because I still had plenty of ideas bouncing around my head, but the problem was how to write my way out of the current scene in which my character found herself. I realized that, even if I’d been perfectly healthy, I wouldn’t have been able to finish my book unless I could figure a way around my problem.

And then Memento popped into my head. Now, my story isn’t going to be told out of order, mainly because it’s narrated first person present. But Memento gave me an idea about the process of writing, and that was to write outside of the box. You see, I’d already written the end scene of the book weeks before. When scenes come to me, I get them down whether they’re in order or not because, otherwise, I’m likely to forget them. I knew where the story was going to end, but I’d lost my way. Unlike being lost on a road trip, however, I could jump right ahead to the end and forget the middle until I knew what to do with it.

All this week, I wrote in reverse. That doesn’t mean that I started with the last letters of each word but rather that I started with my last scene – the one I’d already written – and thought, What comes just before this? And I wrote it. The next day, I wrote the scene before that. And so on and so on, until today. Now, I’m writing right up to the scene where I left off. How could I not have known what my characters were up to?

It’s messy, full of repetitions, and I’m sure it will be a bear to edit. But it’s moving – even if it’s backward – to where it needs to go. My cutting room floor will be littered, but by the time I finish, the process of getting there will just be a cool story, not something someone can point to and say, “As you can see here, the author used the writing in reverse technique when her story stalled.”

I love writing by the seat of my pants. I know where I’m going, but the adventure is getting there, and it doesn’t have to be straightforward. I’ve had a lot of fun letting my story reveal itself in reverse. And even though it’s a little more than a week overdue, I am much closer to finishing (maybe tonight!) than I would have been if I had continued to plod forward.

So forget the rules. Drive in reverse for a while, and see where it takes you.

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When Life Happens

Goals

Goals (Photo credit: Celestine Chua)

People who know me know that I am a planner. And that’s really just a nice way of saying “control freak.”

I’ve gotten better about it. When things don’t go my way, I’m not as likely to flip out as I used to be. But still, as a self-motivated person, I set personal goals and stick to them for a reason. Even if those plans don’t mean anything to anyone else, they mean something to me.

So this weekend was going to be a full one. We would end the week with my husband visiting our kindergartener’s class and talking to them about his job, and later in the afternoon, I would take the boys on a quick trip to visit their grandparents.

As far as freelancing goes, I have certain tasks that I complete each day, and after the kids are in bed, I get to work on my own writing. A while ago, I devised a goal for the end of January: finish the first draft of my NaNoWriMo novel.

Yes, I did complete the 50,000-word goal before the end of November (actually, it was over 80,000 at that point), but the novel wasn’t done. One week out from the end of the month, my goal seemed almost too easy to attain. It was practically a sure thing.

Well, as you have most likely already figured out, things did not exactly go my way – or anyone else’s – this weekend. Life struck in a really awful way – in the form of that nasty fiend, the stomach bug. I can’t say I was totally unprepared because my younger son had it earlier in the week, but he got over it quickly, and no one else I knew had it.

But by Thursday evening, I had a bad feeling. My husband did the grocery shopping and took the kids to my son’s open house while I… well, let’s just say everyone involved is glad I decided not to tough it out and go with them.

After they got home, Thomas made some quick plans for how he would get the kids everywhere they needed to go and still talk to Peter’s class the next day. He would even take them with him to a meeting later in the afternoon to give me a break.

Then, when he was getting ready for bed, Peter woke up with the bug. Shortly after Thomas got done cleaning up Peter’s room, Ian awoke with it, too.

Not only were my own plans busted, but so were everyone else’s. On the plus side, I don’t have to feel bad about missing a day of exercise because I lost weight, anyway. But school and our trip and everything else I hoped to do were put on the back burner. I just wanted to make it through the night.

So my personal goal is shot. At times like this, it’s easy to give in and throw away goals all together. But the planner in me won’t let me give up so easily. I’m well enough to sit up and type, and maybe not quite being 100% will lend my story some really cool/trippy ending, even if it’s a few days later than planned.

And another plus: since I was so useless that I could do little more than sit around, I did some web surfing and found a short fiction contest with the deadline of January 31st. So I thought, What the heck? – might as well get something productive done, even if it wasn’t a part of the original plan – and revised a story and submitted it. At least there’s something positive coming out of my blown-to-bits weekend.

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The Risk of Not Taking Risks

Writing journal

Writing journal (Photo credit: avrdreamer)

Last week I wrote about letting go and allowing your characters to take the wheel, and I’d like to expand on that this week.

You see, I understand the problem with giving control to someone else. It’s why my dad and husband both hate being in the passenger seat: when you’re not the one driving, there’s a whole trust and safety issue.

Now, the driving analogy can only go so far (and I don’t like driving, anyway). After all, while it would be foolish to let a thirteen-year-old take the wheel, your story’s thirteen-year-old character could do wondrous and unimaginable things if you let him loose on the page.

But characters of all ages and types – even the ones that may, at first glance, seem quite ordinary, even boring, have the chance of surprising us, if only we let them. Or for stories that aren’t as character-driven, maybe it’s the story itself that takes over and twists in unexpected ways.

But it’s scary to let go, I’ll be the first to admit.

Like so many other good students of composition and the tried-and-true formula college paper, I swallowed all that stuff about a beginning, middle, and end. I was really good at it, too. I often joke that I majored in writing papers, but it’s sadly true. I could write and edit like nobody’s business, and I was especially good at figuring out what my professors wanted to read and tailoring my papers to whatever persuasion was necessary to get me an A. Selling out? I suppose so. But it got me out quickly and unscathed, so I could get down to the serious work that I had little time for in college: writing fiction.

The problem is that writing an A+ college paper does not a good fiction author make. I think that’s why, for the longest time, I figured I would have to settle with being an editor. That I can do. I can tell writers all day long what they need to do to fix their stories because it’s easier to critique a story when you’re not in the midst of creating it. And although I’ve edited a bunch of crap, sometimes I get a real gem that makes me have hope all over again. And I sometimes wonder: what makes this author different than all the others? I mean, aside from the obvious being a good story-teller part.

I think that, in large part, it goes back to what Stephen King says in On Writing: A Memoir Of The Craft, and (I’m majorly paraphrasing here) it’s that following an outline, plotting an entire novel to the point that it can no longer breathe on its own, is the best way to create a stiff, author-driven piece of fiction. The point is that the author needs to get out of the way, and that simply can’t happen without taking risks. Like letting the story go where it will. Like sometimes giving your audience an unexpected ending.

Now, before I go any further, let me say that creating any kind of ending simply for the sake of making a statement is the most blatant form of author-interference, and it drives me nuts. Anyone remember when Ian Malcolm dies in Jurassic Park: A Novel, only to be resurrected in The Lost World: A Novel? Well, of course you don’t, if you’ve only seen the movies. That’s because he doesn’t die in the first movie. I can only assume that someone approached Michael Crichton and said, “Hey, we need a sequel, but we kind of need Ian Malcolm to be the main character.” Whoops. He’s dead. So he’s really not dead after all – what a miracle – and we can all forget those tears we shed when we read the first book. Right. (Notice how there’s no third book, but they went ahead with a third movie, anyway?)

I love Michael Crichton, and I actually like the first movie, too, although the whole “based on the novel” part is a very loose interpretation. The point is that risk-taking on his part wasn’t quite what Hollywood wanted. Maybe other authors are afraid of this, so they go ahead and remove the risk – write the ending that they think people will want instead of how the story is supposed to end. Other authors go the opposite direction and just start killing people willy-nilly for effect, making their readers mad for no reason.

But what would happen if we just let the stories be themselves?

It’s harder than you think, of course. Sometimes, a Hollywood director will come along and screw everything up. Or after you die, another author will write the sequel that they feel answers the questions you intentionally left. (I touched on this in a post late in 2012.)

I thoroughly enjoyed reading Stephenie Meyers’s The Twilight Saga Collection. There are all kinds of twists and surprises, not to mention plenty of tension. But – spoiler alert – I’ve always felt a tiny bit cheated by the ending. I never did see the last movie because I was busy juggling a newborn baby and a preschooler at the time, but the previews told me enough: the big conflict that never really happens but just kind of fizzles out (at least in the book) had to be jazzed up a little for the movie. I mean, I’m glad that none of the good guys have to die, but at the same time, knowing how bad the bad guys are, it doesn’t quite seem realistic. (Okay, okay, what is realistic in a story full of vampires and werewolves? But I’m talking about suspending my disbelief to unbelievable proportions, here.) To me, it felt like Meyers actually interfered to keep something from hurting her characters, like she just missed something – maybe something monumental – at the end. I’m not saying to kill Edward or Jacob – or anyone. I’m just saying it’s a little too neat.

I faced the same thing with one of my own stories. I originally published “Stranded” when I was in college, and even back then, I fought with myself over the ending. The title being what it is, I could only do so much, unless I wanted to change that (and I didn’t). But one day, after a reader told me that she’d gotten to the end and wondered where the rest of it was, I considered following up with a sequel. Do people write sequels to short stories? Well, it’s a moot point because I haven’t done it and don’t think I ever will. That’s not to say I haven’t considered it, though. I have – a lot. I’ve read my story many times, trying to figure out what could possibly come next. But even though I created it, I could no more direct the next scene than I’ll be able to tell my children what they’re going to do for their livings when they’re adults.

Then in 2012, I decided to republish it. After all, the original publication was out of print, and I thought I could make a few tweaks to the text, which I did. I think the piece as a whole is improved, but… the ending remains the same. I still couldn’t change it. Why? Because I want to make readers unhappy? No. Because I want them to beg me to write more? No, and I won’t, even if they ask. Because the meat of the story is the same as it was in 2003 when I penned the first draft – that’s why. It just needed a little hair cut, some trimming of the fat. And it might have grown an inch or two since then. But it’s essentially the same story, and I’m glad that I let it be itself.

I took a risk once, and I am satisfied with the outcome. I only hope I can stick to my guns and keep taking those risks. After all, I owe it to the stories.

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Move Over and Let the Characters Drive

Dumbledore as portrayed by the late Richard Ha...

Dumbledore as portrayed by the late Richard Harris in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I love reading books that are so good that you just have to talk to someone else about them. My husband and I have read a few of those lately. After finishing the latest trilogy, Thomas Googled the author to see if there were any interviews about the series’ ending. Sure enough, he found one in which she talked about how her characters continually surprised her.

“It’s just like so many authors say,” he told me, looking somewhat bemused.

“It’s true,” I confirmed.

As crazy as it sounds, we authors don’t have the total control over our characters that we wished we did. Yet some authors insist on absolutely smothering the life out of their characters to make them bend to their wills. You’ll know these characters when you meet them because they’re inconsistent, like someone is forcing them to do things they weren’t meant to do.

Since I think it’s safe to talk about the Harry Potter books without fear of spoiling the ending (and if you haven’t read them, shame on you), I’d like to bring up something author J.K. Rowling said back in the days when all the fans were itching for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Book 7). Thomas and I checked her website on a daily basis, theorized with friends, skimmed the news for any possible updates, and any time J.K. Rowling came out with something – anything – new, we were beside ourselves with glee. And no, I am not exaggerating (although Thomas can suppress his glee a lot more than I can).

And one day, she said that she was having a particularly hard time with Dumbledore. Well, first of all, that made everyone scratch their heads because he died at the end of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Book 6) – or did he?

But more amusing to me, aside from this nugget, was the image of Jo Rowling fighting her characters to straighten up and fly right. Characters will be difficult, and although non-writers may think we authors crazy or schizophrenic or overly imaginative to say so, there is an element involved that defies explanation.

There are some people who feel compelled to write in order to create characters that fulfill unrequited wishes. These characters are forced into ill-fitting molds. The beautiful girl that said no to a date with the nerdy guy suddenly falls in love with him. The bully at school finally get his come-uppance. The evil boss sees the error of her ways and starts treating her employees like human beings. These characters feel flat. They don’t do much – except what the author designed them to do.

What is truly beautiful, however, is when these characters are allowed to take control of their existences, teaching the author a thing or two while living their stories. Harry was an absolute teenage brat in Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix. Sirius Black died laughing, in the thick of battle. Dumbledore gave his life, leaving a mess and a number of unanswered questions. Dobby – well, I don’t even want to mention him because I know it will start my mom crying. But the point is that J.K. Rowling could have made Harry a sweet fifteen-year-old, leaving everyone wondering if she remembered at all what teenagers are like. She could have let all of her characters live, eliminating the very important sacrifices that they made. Everyone would have hugged and been happy, and the story would have stalled and rung false. It would have cheapened their dear, fictional lives.

So next time you read a book and can’t believe that the author did something that you feel is the deepest betrayal, consider how you would feel if the author had taken the easy way out instead. I don’t know about you, but I don’t read in order to feel all warm and fuzzy inside. I read to suspend disbelief for a time, to form a relationship with characters, to have an absolutely amazing experience – that may hurt at times but will also deliver a great deal of truth in a fictional package. The stories that I love the most are the ones that leave me conflicted, that keep me up at night, that sometimes break my heart. Maybe things didn’t turn out the way they could have, but often, they turn out exactly as they should have.

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The Year of Writing Dangerously

Novel Motto

From the time I was thirteen, I knew I wanted to be an author, and at that age, it seemed like such a reasonable dream. It’s a hard one to obtain, though. I went to college as an English major, despite people encouraging me to take up journalism or something that might actually be useful. I was going to be an author – why would I need to pursue anything else? You know, anything practical.

Then somewhere around my junior year in college, reality set in. By then, I’d found my university’s writing program and an excellent fiction workshop, run by my friend Ari. I think, if it weren’t for Ari’s workshops, I never would have been able to see the level of improvement that I’ve noticed in my fiction. Yes, I have good proofreading and editing skills – inherited from my proofreader mother – but my fiction was not worth reading until I experienced some first-hand criticism.

One aspect of the workshop was getting a story publication-ready. And Ari made no bones about the difficulties of publishing. It’s a cruel world, where editors who have bad days arbitrarily consign authors to the slush pile, no matter the worth of their stories. That’s why a group of us started our own literary journal, Fiction Fix, which is still going strong today. But as much as my editing credentials with Fiction Fix have done for me, they haven’t done anything for me in the greater world of novel publication.

The real world impeded on my dream to the point that I all but forgot it at times. After having my first child, I not only took a long hiatus from Fiction Fix, but I basically quit caring about writing for a while. Three straight years of rejection from literary agents can do that to you, and falling in love with my newborn son made my career-of-choice pale in comparison.

But the dream did not die, and I returned to my stories, often becoming lost in them for weeks or months before getting burnt out again. And then I decided that I would branch out and just get whatever kind of freelance work I could find. As long as I could have some sort of income from writing, that’s what I always wanted, right? Well, not quite.

I enjoy writing and editing, and I’m good at what I do, but the problem with freelancing is that it’s easy to get wrapped up in the assignments and forget the joy that I initially had when I just wrote stories all the time. And I am spoiled by having a husband whose job allows me the flexibility to write what I want to write. So why haven’t I been doing just that?

When I participated in NaNoWriMo this year, forcing myself to almost write full-time – and on a project with no guaranteed paycheck at the end – I finally fulfilled a little bit of my teenage dream. Never have I spent so much concentrated time writing, and never have I enjoyed it so much. This is what I had in mind (although being paid to do it would certainly be ideal).

I also regained some of that hope of someday writing a novel that people would pay to read. I had a lot of that hope when I was in college, before the harshness of life and the publication world fully set in. But after a while, I started to wonder why I kept trying if no one wanted to give me the time of day. And I was frustrated that I got older and still had nothing to show for all the stories I’d written. But the problem is that if I don’t submit, if I don’t get up every time I’m rejected and try again, no one’s just going to knock on my door and ask if I have a book that I would like to publish.

This is not a New Year’s resolution, first of all because it’s been in the works since November. But more than that, I’m not changing my ways, only to revert back to old habits within a few weeks. Rather, I hope that my rediscovered passion will give me that push to make this year the most productive I’ve ever been, as far as writing fiction is concerned. I’m already looking at contests and searching for new agents. I’m still working on the first draft of the novel I started with NaNoWriMo. And I’m determined not to lose my enthusiasm this time.

One day you’ll see me in print. And maybe – just maybe – it will be sooner rather than later.

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Ditch the Prologue (For Now)

Writing

Writing (Photo credit: jjpacres)

In January, I wrote about my quandary over whether I should keep the prologue of my middle grade novel or scrap it. (Read that post here.) At the time, I decided it could stay. After all, the very literary agent and author who brought this issue to my attention read the opening of my book and said it was a strong start. I figured it would be silly to mess with a sure thing.

Content with my decision, I honed my query letter to a quirky perfection and sent it out to the masses. I received rejections, which I expected. What discouraged me, however, was the number of agents who did not respond at all. It’s normal to a point, even for agents to throw away SASE’s, but even the agents who invited writers to query again if there was no response didn’t respond to my reminders.

It’s hard to face the truth sometimes, especially when it meant that the book I’d poured myself into for ten-plus years didn’t even merit a “no, thank you.” And I did everything I was supposed to, following submission guidelines to a T, never sending attachments, the whole bit. The only thing that left was the story itself: something had to be wrong with it.

I mulled over this issue a lot but felt too discouraged to sit down and make any more changes. And I’ve been busy, too. But while I’ve gone about my life, the whole prologue or not issue has continued to percolate. You see, when I first wrote the book, there was no prologue, so I should be able to go back and just cut it out, right?   But the thing my readers liked when I added the prologue was that is answered some of their questions while still keeping the characters in the dark. My problem became: if I go back to starting with Chapter One, how will I keep my readers happy? I don’t want to bog the story down with too much background information up front. Prologues are great for plunging readers into the world of the story. On the flip side, they’re notorious for hiding very tedious first chapters.

I’ve considered my favorite books and the methods their authors employ. Michael Crichton’s books often have introductions as well as prologues, sometimes involving characters that don’t appear at all in the greater book. They do pack an early punch, but he had a knack for introducing facts in a way that don’t interrupt the story. Now, I am no Michael Crichton, so I should probably not write a prologue just because he did.

Stephenie Meyer, author of The Twilight Saga Collection, also uses prologues, and although I love her books, I can see how her prologues are literary devices, meant to pull readers in. To be honest, I read them but immediately forgot about them. They are poor teasers that really do not add to the story.

When put in that light, I suppose prologues are somewhat expendable. Or even if they’re not, people may read them as such. I don’t want to turn off an agent by having the word “Prologue” at the beginning of my novel.   Which is where Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (Book 1) comes in. Often, prologues pre-date the story with an important bit of backstory, so when this particular book opens ten years before the rest of the book, it could easily be labeled a prologue – yet author J.K. Rowling calls it “Chapter One” instead. This makes a difference, although it’s a subtle one: by calling it the first chapter, I think that Rowling makes a statement about how readers should approach the story. In essence, she says, “Listen up! The story is starting.”

Hmm… I wonder if this works on literary agents, too.

Of course, it doesn’t mean I’m going to simply change “Prologue” to “Chapter One” in my own book and have done with it. There are still some prologue-y things about it that need to change, which include making a smooth transition into the next chapter, along with spreading out any possible info dumping to make it more palatable. I have my work cut out for me. But after letting my novel sit so long, I think I am ready to make these difficult changes and send it out again. Maybe it will grab someone’s attention this time.

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What Comes After NaNoWriMo? (One Year Later)

Okay, Wrimos, did you finish? This time last year, I thought you all were crazy. Either that, or you had a lot of time on your hands, not to mention a good dose of stick-to-it-ive-ness. In fact, I blogged about it (read it here), asking for participants’ feedback, and what I heard was intriguing. Not enough to make me want to sign up but still intriguing.

If you had told me that I, too, would sign up this year, I would have laughed and thought, When? How could I possibly think I would have the time? Actually, I would have thought that two months ago. And even after I had my initial spark of inspiration and figured I might as well take the plunge – otherwise, when else would I ever have the courage? – I still didn’t think that I would finish. If you’re a regular reader, you know that I hit 50,000 words on day 14 (read about that here), and since then, I’ve continued plugging away.

Like I said last year, November is a busy month, and this year was no exception. Actually, I think it was a little busier. It’s been an emotional month, too. The thing about NaNo and how it intersects with life is that life will never stop and be turbulence-free just because you have something to do. Or maybe I’m just speaking for myself, but I have the feeling it’s like that for most everyone. I signed up, not because I thought that I would write the next bestseller (although I wouldn’t complain if I did) but because my life is not complete without writing fiction, and even though it can look very boring and passive to someone watching me while I work, it gives me an outlet – and makes me a happier person when I can pour my soul out through a fictional character. It can be lonely, but it can also be the safest way to meet and interact with new people, if you’re an introvert like me.

I know some non-writers will get done reading that and think, Yep, she’s crazy. She lost it somewhere back in October. I suppose I did, and I’m glad of it. To answer my own question from last year, what comes next is that I finish my book. My personal goal (after hitting 50,000 words) was to make it to 80,000 by the end of the month. I did, and I’m still nowhere close to the end. So my new goal is to write until it’s finished. It will be crap, I know, but then I can begin chipping or hacking away until something like the story it’s meant to be begins to take shape.

My biggest incentive for this is that CreateSpace is offering two free copies of every NaNoWriMo winner’s novel (check it out), and I have until the end of June to place my order. I think that’s enough time to finish it and edit – maybe even ask a couple of my awesome reader friends for some honest feedback.

Another thing that I didn’t know until I browsed nanowrimo.org is that there have been some pretty well-known novels that were published after the authors wrote them during NaNoWriMo. They include Sara Gruen’s Water for Elephants: A Novel, Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus, and Hugh Howey’s Wool. When I read The Night Circus earlier this year, I was impressed with how well the author handled the story jumping back and forth in time. I aspire to write like that, but I can promise you that her first draft wasn’t nearly so fluid. It seems like there could be some hope for me, after all.

So with November gone and another busy month ahead of me, I can not only say that I have absolutely no regrets, but it was the best writing decision I have ever made. I have no idea what next November will bring, but my writing high from the last 30 days could easily last until then, anyway.

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