The Late 2008 - Shine in 2009

Like my cheesy title? *grin*

So, given it's what everyone else is doing*, I thought now would be a good time for my 2008 recap.

Raw stats first.

In 2008, I:

* wrote 161,207 words of fiction.
* finished a draft of TBAEO.
* did preliminary edits and replotting of TBAEO.
* worked on The Black Gates, then retired it at about chapter 5 - the plot Needs Work.
* started Logan. Wrote 10 chapters only to realise the story started at chapter 11. Put aside, as the MC was too boring.
* learned how to write short stories - hoorah! Total of 8 in various stages.
* edited my first 'proper' play. Wrote several others, including an 8 act one to be performed in a week's time.
* began The Project. Wrote half, outlined the rest, realised I hated the MC and put it aside.
* signed up to write a self-pubbed non-fic ebook, to be completed this month.
* began several MG novels for nano, none of which behaved, so they've been temporarily put aside.
* started Jesscapades, which I adore, and which at this point I'm planning to be my debut novel.

My main goals for the year were to make 10 submissions and have 3 complete manuscripts. Sadly, the year has been fraught with false starts, so I have only one :( As for submissions, I've done 12 :) So that's a success. Granted, a lot have been resubs, and I've had no bites yet though a couple of commendations and personalised rejections, but hey - I did more than 10 subs :) Rah!

Although on the one hand I feel like the year has been a bit of a failure - I haven't completed any novels that I'm happy with - on the other hand, my total word count is up by 60% on last year's count. And more importantly, I've learned a lot. Sure, I've had a lot of false starts - but I know why they were false starts, and each time, they've been for a different reason - which means I'm learning.

And now I've hit on a novel that I like, with a reasonably strong voice, a fun plot, a great MC... Mind you, I'm not halfway yet, so I'm hoping like mad that I like the book because it really is good (this is what the beta readers are saying) and not because I just haven't hit the wall yet (what my brain is saying).

So, this is what I've learned from each of my false starts this year:

1) TBAEO - not a false start, but something that DEFINITELY needs work before it can see the light of day. From this I learned perhaps my biggest lesson of the year - that I can finish a complete novel, and that I can dissect it and replot it to make it stronger.

2) The Black Gates - this is actually my first novel. I've been working on it off and on for years - and because of this, it's fraught with beginner mistakes - not least of which was a lack of original, interesting plot. I fixed that by introducing some great twists - but I'm yet to figure out how on earth it all goes together. It's not complex enough - but it's too complex. Gack.

3) Logan - heh. From this, I relearned the importance of having not only a strong MC, but one who has enough tension and internal conflict to drive the plot. Logan, the MC, was not strong enough to be a driving force - instead, he was someone who was driven, being forced and manipulated into making his decisions instead of reacting to the situation himself - and so he was boring. It was about now that I also realised that I didn't actually want to write traditional-style fantasy after all...

4) The Project. If TBAEO could be called an exercise in character development, then TP is its opposite: an exercise in plot. I set out to write this deliberately as a pot-boiler, simply to force myself to learn how to keep up the pace and tension, how to introduce stumbling blocks and small problems - in short, how to keep the middle from sagging. I succeeded pretty well, but unfortunately in doing so sacrificed character, and the MC turned into someone whom I didn't like, couldn't identify with, and just plain didn't want to write about.

5) The Edge and Gem series - I only made a tiny start on these at the beginning of Nano, but it reinforced for me the necessity of knowing your character's voice before writing the book.

6) Jesscapades. With luck, this one won't be a false start. So far (about 1/4 of the way in) it's got a great combination of character AND plot, and I'm excited to see just how much better this is than anything I've done before.

And that, my friends, was 2008. I know, I haven't talked about my goals for 2009 yet - but to be honest, I can't really get my head around the idea of new goals until this big camp (Jan 16-24) is over, and the dog book is written. I'll think about goals, and post them either in the final week of Jan, or in early Feb.

In the meantime - what's the biggest thing you learned in 2008?


* I was going to do it anyway. It just seemed like a good excuse O:)

Updatory Things: Changes of Direction

Two direction changes today. Firstly, I seem unable to resist the urge to give weekly updates, so my 'regularly scheduled' blogging will be thrice weekly: One serial piece, one Blog-Of-The-Week, and one update.

Two-thly. The Change of Direction. *sigh* Logan.

*shakes head and determines to cease being cryptic*

Logan. For those of you that have either been reading this blog for a while, or have access to my wips (critique circle...), you'll have heard of one of my wips, Logan. Logan is a prequel-by-several-hundred-years to the story variously termed (at different points in its life) Athara's Search, Search, Messiah, and The Black Gates.

And I've just realised: it's all wrong.

For quite some time now I've been having trouble getting enthused about it; in fact, pretty much since I read Lisa Shearin's Magic Lost, Trouble Found. MLTF is such a great, pacy book (more on that in this week's serial post) that I found myself thinking - boy, my stories are so boring. They drag. Nothing exciting actually happens.

A few days after this, I found myself writing The Project, an incredibly fun little potboiler that I decided to write as a potboiler as an exercise in Making Things Happen. So far the feedback has been extremely positive, so it seems to be working.

And I got thinking about Logan. The MC, oddly enough called Logan, bores me. The chapters bore me. And I developed this sneaking suspicion that the nine chapters I've written, which equate to nearly fourteen thousand words, were all backstory. The story doesn't actually start until chapter ten, when Logan... er, is dragged off to school. (See, no spoilers O:)).

And besides that - did I mention this? - Logan as a character bores me.

So, after some thought and discussion with a critting partner, I have come to a conclusion. Bran, Logan's 'villainous' elder brother is far more intriguing. This means I ought to write the story from his point of view.

I'm yet to get my head around how the story will start from Bran's POV, but I can already feel the tingly excitement at the prospect of getting inside Bran's head. It's one dark, twisty place to be, but at least it's interesting.

And so my change in direction. Let us hope it's for the better. %-)

Logan Appears

So, I appear to have officially decided that BG is on the back burner until it's been world-built better. It's going to be one big, complex story, and I'd like to have a more solid grasp on it going in than I currently do.

I say I appear to have decided, because while I didn't actually consciously decided, the first few lines of Logan (scheduled to be the next wip) appeared in my head tonight - and quickly turned into about 900 words. Nearly the first complete scene :) I intend to complete it after dinner (no, have not had dinner yet, was distracted by computer. Yes, am starving hungry!), and hopefully make a start on the second scene.

Teaser, anyone?

Logan looked up at the wall in front of him. In the nighttime gloom it seemed to stretch up forever, even though he knew it was only as tall as the nearby houses.
"Go on," said his brother, B, from behind.
"No way," said H, shaking his head. "There's no way we can go in there."
Logan glanced left and right to see how the other members of the group were reacting. T looked resonably interested, but the others seemed to be echoing H. He turned to his brother. "I don't know, B. It's asking for trouble."


Yes, the other characters aren't named yet. Deal with it ;)

Photos

Finally, I have located batteries, the camera AND the card reader, all in the appropriate sequence and at about the same time.

Hence, I can now present for your viewing pleasure, pictures of my lovely post-it notes.

First, the BG plotting:






























And photos of the TBAEO edit...












































In accordance with Holly Lisle's One Pass Revision technique, green scenes need editing for flow etc only; yellow have at least one major plot point that needs to be changed/added/deleted; orange scenes need major reconstruction; and bright pink scenes are brand new scenes that need to be written.
Pale pink ones are ones that are in the first draft but that I think won't make it to the revised version.

As you can see, there is a surprisingly high proportion of green and yellow post-its, which I find extremely pleasing :) And the little tags are notes to myself - dialogue to include in scenes, thoughts about changing the order of scenes, etc.

I must say, this whole process has been an absolute blast :D Things like structure appear so much more easily when I have the frame of the first draft to work with, and drawing out and adding in subplot that relate to the themes of the novel - primarily acceptance, in the case of TBAEO - well, it's dead easy to see how they slot in when I see it all there in front of me like this :) I likes muchly.

As a final note, some observant readers may notice the gap between the rest of the TBAEO post-its and the final three green ones - that's because there's another scene before those that I wasn't sure if I wanted to change or not. I've decided now, and once I'm allowed to play again (once uni work is done) I'll dig out the post-its and fix up that final scene :)

Well, that's it for now. I hope this has been interesting for you! :)
Why can't first drafts be this fun?!

Edit Update

:)

So, I went away this weekend expecting to get some work done. I did NOT expect to nearly complete the pre-edit work. But I did, and I'm so excited!

I have seven pages of A4 paper covered in pretty coloured post-it notes (since I felt I couldn't really post-it note other people's walls! And besides, my plotting is now transportable...) with scribbles and arrows and colour-coding and all. Much fun. AND it includes 12 new scenes, which means (based on average scene lengths for the book) another 19,200 words, bringing the word count up to about 75,000. Less the fat, of course. But a much more respectable length than 64k, at any rate :)

When I get home this evening I'll scrounge up some batteries for the camera and take photos. The notes look so bright and happy and colourful, it cheers me just thinking about them :)

Another tiny note of triumph - I managed to rewrite the first scene of BG which has been sticking me for ages, so hoorah :) Hopefully I can get back on track with that, provided uni doesn't become too hectic :)

Preparing to Edit

So, this afternoon I printed out my manuscript. Technically I'm not 'allowed' to work on it until I've (re)written the first two scenes of BG... Untechnically, I can't wait. And printing the manuscript was such a high! :)

I've also been reading through some articles on editing, in particular Holly Lisle's article on One-Pass Revision. I've also been checking out the Snowflake Method site, and combining bits of the two and some thoughts of my own - plus some thoughts from a dear friend over on Critique Circle.

I'm getting excited, and I'm really hoping editing will be as much as I anticipate - and I hope that the end result will be worthwhile.

I'll let you know how that goes... :D

Progress Report

Not much to report. BG is coming along... Not quite as fast as I'd like, but meh. I have to learn that any progress is better than none.

Word count is currently about 6500. If I'm good and spend the next hour editing the few scenes that need to be edited I can include them in my count, and it will jump to about 11,000. Which would put me a scant 3500 behind. Which is fine.

It's been an interesting experience, trying to integrate the scenes I had written for Search which are to be included in BG. Why? Because my writing, believe it or not, has actually visibly improved. It should hardly be surprising, I suppose, given I've written an entire sixty-two thousand word novel in the interim (inconsistent though it may be), and yet, somehow, it is surprising.

But it makes integrating the old scenes into the new quite tricky.

So. I should go edit, shouldn't I... O:)

'Black Gates' Wins Out in the Portalverse...

So, after all my fluffing around, it seems The Black Gates has finally won over Logan in the 'Which Book Gets Written Next' competition.

Why?

Simple. It may not have as complete an outline, but it does have that one thing that Logan sorely lacks - world-building. And now, also, a beginning, which came to me last night as I lay in bed struggling to sleep. Teaser, anyone?

Athara tensed under the blankets and strained her ears in the darkness. Was that the gate?

I'm horrified by the fact that it begins with the MC waking up, but at this stage, it'll just have to cope. Besides, it's not waking up so much as being woken up. And that's completely different, right? *sheepish grin* At least it has a beginning now.



In other news, my universe finally has a name. A nickname, anyway, something quick which I can use to refer to it. It came to me this morning as I was driving to work.

Yesterday, I spent a lot of time reading agent Kirsten Nelson's blog, and subsequently doing some actual agent research (cue scary music... dun dun dun...). It was interesting, though I bemoan the fact that so many more US agents make themselves accessible through the web - I'm yet to find a single Australian agency that even lists bios for its agents :\

ANYway. My universe.

Somewhere in the mountains of advice I read yesterday, an agent spoke of a story she'd taken on - to her suprise, a 'portal story'.

*shock* and *surprise* on my part. Prophecies? Chosen Ones? Sure, they're overdone in fantasy, that's a no-brainer.
But portals?

Well, yes. I suppose so.*

*cringes*

Any of you that know the background that ties my stories together will understand that this is crushing news for me. (Though I don't really care; see footnote below). In my universe, portals abound. They're pretty much a staple, you could say.

And all this rushed through my head this morning as I drove, distracting me from focussing on the on-coming traffic (O:) don't tell my father!)... and the perfect name appeared.

My universe is, officially, the Portalverse.

:D

*(A large part of me wants badly to argue that they're only as overdone in fantasy as space ships are in science fiction... People need to travel after all. But is this self-defence or logic at work here? Who's to say...)

P.S. Say hello to my hundredth post. Hoorah! Aren't I verbose *beams*

Sometimes It Comes... And It Isn't What You Expected

I know, I know, I'm spamming you this week. I'm sorry. Hopefully, you'll cope.

Sometimes, the book you plan to write isn't the one that wants to be written. I sat down tonight, prepared to force myself to begin outlining The Black Gates.

Instead, I now have a 1300+ word outline for (temporary title) Logan's Prize. Stupid title, since he doesn't have a prize. Maybe I'll just nickname it Logan.

This story is a bit of history for The Black Gates; I've known the general gist of it for months now, but the story just came to me, a few weeks ago, first act complete, just like that. I could see the scenes vividly in my mind, and I just knew it would work.

I typed it up...

And then I lost it. I've spend the last two days scouring my home computer, my work computer, my email accounts and my notebooks... All to no avail.

So tonight, instead of outlining The Black Gates, I sat down to write what I knew about Logan. And ended up with a complete, finished outline.

I think Logan's impatient to be written. Athara may just have to wait...

This Week, In Headlines...

Mostly, this is a post to let you all know that I'm going away tomorrow, and won't be returning until Sunday after lunch. So you probably won't hear from me until some time next week.

Secondarily, this is a post to complain about the painfulness of climaxes. Though whether or not it's the fact that these chapters are the climax that is the problem, or whether it's something else...

No, no, upon reflection I think it might be that it's the climax. See, climaxes have to be right-er than the rest of the book, because really, they're the whole point of it.

At least, that's what my stubborn muse is stubbornly protesting \:|

Lastly, this is a post about short-term plans. I will, I will, I WILL have TBAEO finished by the end of the month - some lovely people (read: suckers) have offered me bookcrits if I do - so I can start The Black Gates in Feb.

So this week, while I'm away, I want a scene from TBAEO done, and the beginnings of an outline for BG. Not too much to ask, really, given I'll have no internet. Oh, did I mention I'm going to summer camp for 10-17 year olds, where I'm one of two counselors for the 17-year-old girls? 60 kids total, four full days and two part days, activities all day, programs at night... Oh yeah, I'll be abounding in time to write. Right?

~Inky, the Hopeful One

PS I'm officially no longer labeling posts about Messiah and/or The Black Gates with the 'Search' label. Just in case you wondered.

Another Breakthrough

A long time ago, way back in highschool, I began a story. It was archaic and stilted - and had a horrible title - but I knew that somewhere, somewhere, there was something worth working on in it.

It was the first piece I ever submitted to Critique Circle; I chose it because I had no emotional attachment to it and so thought I wouldn't mind people telling me how horrible it was.

To my surprise, they didn't. My suspicions that there was something worthwhile in there was confirmed. So I worked on it.

The character that was supposed to be the villain became sympathetic, and eventually developed into a main character with his own story. I tried to weave his story in with the original main character in a story I temporarily titled Search... But it just didn't work.

And so, for months, I stalled. I couldn't figure out where to go with her story, and his story needed so much more worldbuilding to make it plausible.

But today...

Today I had a breakthrough. At work, scribbling away while I scanned, writing down my goals for the coming year, I began to think about this story, and what needed to happen.

And now I have at least two thirds of a semi-decent outline.

And I made an important discovery - once again, it was the muse balking that was holding me back. But this time the muse was balking for a good reason: the beginning was wrong.

All it took was a change from a slow, drawn-out and expected death to a quick accident, and voila! Beginning problem solved.

Now I can't wait to keep working on it :)

If only I could finish Evil Overlord first...