3
Dec
Sorry, guys, I know I promised a book recommendation, but I received some news this week that I’m anxious to share.
My A&D project, The Vessel, is a finalist in the 2012 Emily Contest!
This was a hard-fought victory for The Vessel. I’d entered it in three other contests since 2009 (including the Fire & Ice last year where it was up against–and lost to–Red), but it had never gone beyond the first round. After receiving essentially the same feedback from the judges in all three contests, I finally swallowed my pride and revised the beginning. It was tough, but it really was a lot more powerful once I’d jettisoned about 20 pages of the original opening. I guess it paid off.
(Note: This is the same project that I’ve spent quite a lot of time editing in between other projects, eventually cutting about 30,000 words from the entire manuscript to make it a lot tighter. Here’s hoping all this time and effort will eventually pay off as well!)
So, now the waiting begins anew. The final results will be announced in February. I’ll keep you all posted!
3
Dec
While several of my friends were participating in the NaNoWriMo challenge last month, I didn’t do jack.
Okay, well, that’s not completely true. I spent the first couple of weeks working on some more edits to Red (check back in January for more on that) and then started editing a previous project that needs to have about 100 pages hacked out of it. I managed to get about three chapters into that project–which I decided to take an entirely new direction–and completely stalled out.
I ran out of steam.
After having written four complete novels over the last couple of years, I simply needed to recharge a bit. So I took a break.
I spent some time getting my house ready for the holidays by cleaning out clothes and toys to take to various charities around town, I moved furniture, caught up on some of my favorite TV shows that were bogging down our DVR, read a Lara Adrian novel I’d been saving until I could sit down and savor every word, and generally vegged out for a couple of weeks.
It felt great!
Of course, even though I wasn’t actively writing (or rewriting) anything, my mind was still churning with ideas and dialogue and plot twists. I did my best to jot things down as they came to me, sure, but I wasn’t sitting in front my laptop pounding out a 1,000 words per day, and so guilt is starting to set in.
I feel like such a slacker!
Unfortunately, with the holidays just around the corner, I’ll probably spend most of December doing much of the same–simply because to try to stick to a daily goal in December is just setting myself up for frustration. But come January, I fully intend to immerse myself in my projects once again and maybe even start on my next novel. 
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a few episodes of Ghost Hunters and Supernatural that are calling my name…
26
Oct
Well, I’ve finished yet another round of revisions on my angels and demons project!
I set it aside last February while I finished Red, knowing that I needed to cut the word count quite a bit and flesh out a couple of plot points that were still nagging me. Turns out this was a wise move. After having set it aside for a few months, I was able to go back in and give the manuscript the tough love it needed to tighten it up and make the story more solid. Sadly, that meant cutting some of my favorite scenes–and even a couple of characters. But it was all for a greater good, so it was worth it. (And, who knows? Maybe these scenes will get a second chance at life in a manuscript later down the road.)
Unfortunately, I still need to cut about 4,000 words before I can start seriously shopping it to agents and am at a loss as to where else to trim. So, I’m shipping it off to one of my Beta readers in hopes that she can point out some additional deadweight that can be jettisoned for the good of the story.
I was thrilled with the way this story turned out when I first wrote it, and am even happier with it now. Here’s hoping an agent feels the same way when I start shopping it!
I’ll keep you posted.
I had a rough moment a couple of weeks ago when I realized the ending to my story sucked.
Yep, that’s right — sucked. A big one.
While going through my second pass of revisions, I experienced a horrible sinking feeling deep in my gut as it suddenly hit me that the ending completely lacked the emotional punch I was going for. It was drab, blase, and anti-climactic. Now, in all honesty, it probably would have been okay, but I’ve never been satisfied with anything I do being just okay, so I grabbed my metaphorical hatchet and got busy hacking away at the last four chapters.
Don’t get me wrong, tearing apart what I’d written wasn’t easy. It was heart-breaking, really. The epilogue was one of the first scenes I’d envisioned and had been in the back of my mind the entire time I was writing the first draft. Unfortunately, I had a sentimental attachment to the final few pages that was getting in the way of the story.
And I’d broken one of my own cardinal rules of writing — I rushed the ending. There’s nothing I hate more as a reader than when I feel like the writer suddenly realizes she’s over her intended word count and has to hurry up and wrap up the story in 10 pages or less. It pisses me off, frankly, to invest that kind of time reading 350 pages (or more) only to have the end rush by too quickly. I want the full realization of the Happily Ever After — even if it’s only a Happily Ever After For Now.
The good news is that I noticed the problem and did what was necessary to fix it. Basically, I rewrote the parts that didn’t work and strengthened the parts worth saving. And my much beloved epilogue was scrapped entirely. As tough as it was to make such drastic edits, the ending is much more solid and action-packed and captures the essence of the central romantic relationship a lot better that what I had originally written.
The lesson I’d like to impart is this: Sometimes, for the good of the story, you have to discard what you’ve got and start over. Of course, recognizing this fact and actually acting on it is another matter. It takes a certain amount of courage and faith to make revisions this extreme, courage to throw out your hard work and faith in the belief that you can do better.
Is it easy? Hell, no! It’s hard. It’s painful. But, alas, sometimes it’s necessary.
9
Dec
I am happy to report that the revision process for my current project is going great! Of course, I have to admit that this time around I had an additional leg up on the editing process — professional feedback.
A few months ago, I took a chance and entered excerpts from my manuscript in two separate contests just to kind of test the waters and get a little constructive criticism. I say this nonchalantly, but make no mistake — writing contests are nerve-wracking, ego-crushing affairs, that are not for the faint of heart. No matter how professional and constructive the criticism (and it was!), having your work torn apart is never easy. So, if humble pie has never really been your favorite dessert, get over your aversion and grab a fork ’cause the humble pie is going to get served up piping hot.
That being said, feedback is essential if you want to make your writing stronger and your story tighter. If you can’t make it to a conference or workshop and haven’t yet joined your local writers group, contests are a great way to get a little honest criticism from professionals. Plus, there’s the added benefit of not having to look the judge in the eye when she tells you that the character you thought leapt off the page is actually one-dimensional and lacking in motivation. (*Sigh*)
Granted, like criticism of any kind, there is some subjectivity involved, so you have to take the comments for what they are — educated and professional opinions. In my case, there were a few comments that made me say, “Wha-huh?” But, for the most part, the judges’ comments confirmed what I thought to be my weaknesses and knew to be my strengths and helped direct my revision process.
And, honestly, it wasn’t all bad! On a bright note, the judges described my excerpts as action-packed, fast-paced, and exciting, and even the judge who gave me the lowest score thought my manuscript showed a lot of promise and would be publishable with another round of editing. Considering the work I submitted was still technically in first draft form, I find this extremely encouraging!
Yay, me!
(Now, let’s just hope an agent or editor feels the same way!)
Moral of the story? As hard as it is to put yourself out there and invite someone to point out your every flaw, get the feedback — it’s invaluable! And you never know, you just might make it to the next round…
30
Nov
The first draft of my current project is officially finished! Woo-hoo!
Now on to the revision process…
Call me crazy, but I actually enjoy this part almost as much as the initial writing process. In fact, in some ways I enjoy it even more — the story is written, so the threat of writer’s block and the frustration of trying to work out all the facets of the plot have vanished. Now, I get to just have some fun fleshing things out, developing my characters more fully, digging deeper into their motivations, tightening the writing and making it even more fast-paced and action-packed.
I’m getting excited just thinking about it!
Of course, check back with me in about a month and I might have a different attitude…
(Originally posted Oct 28)
30
Nov
I’m procrastinating.
I should be finishing my current manuscript, but for some reason I’m experiencing an annoying case of writer’s block. It’s not nearly as severe as the case I suffered through a couple of weeks ago when I despaired of ever writing another word. Irrational and melodramatic, perhaps, but when you sit staring at a blank screen long enough and no words come to you — not one — you start to fear the worst. (Ironically, in the first scene in which my heroine appears she is suffering from writer’s block. Don’t think I’ll use that scenario again.)
I think part of the problem is that I’m literally pages away from finishing the project. Normally this would be a cause for celebration, but I have already written the ending in my head and am so anxious to get to that point that I’m having difficulty focusing on the scenes that are necessary in order to get there.
Sure, I could skip to the end and just write that part and fill in the rest later, but somehow that feels like cheating. It’s one thing to write scenes out of order when I’m jotting them down in my journal, but when it comes to actually crafting a rough draft, I like to write the scenes in order so that I can chart the progress of the plot and let the story unfold as I go. And, frankly, part of my love for writing involves going through each stage of the Aristotelian plot structure as my readers would — agonizing over the crisis, fearing for the happiness of my romantic couple, experiencing the joy of their eventual happily-ever-after. Besides, there’s just something about the incredible sense of accomplishment and pride I feel when I type the very last word of my manuscript that would be lost if I fell back on a work-around.
Now, if only I could get there…
Another contributing factor to this obstinate blockage is that I’ve been pages away from finishing the first draft for about a month. As I write, my stories have a tendency to take on a life of their own and evolve in ways that I hadn’t anticipated. This has particularly been the case with this manuscript. The fringe benefit is that the story is far richer and more intricate now in the telling than when I originally plotted it out. Unfortunately, it also means that what I thought would be just another chapter or two has morphed into five chapters with at least one more and an epilogue to go.
When I hit a wall last month and felt like my writing career was screeching to a halt before it even began, I forced myself to keep writing — even if just a paragraph each day and eventually wrote myself out of it. Granted, pretty much everything I wrote during that time was complete and utter crap, but after a lot of editing, it turned out okay. So, I imagine I’ll do the same now, chiseling away one word at a time until I break through the blockage. With any luck, the wall will crumble sooner rather than later and the floodgates of creativity will once more open wide, releasing a torrent of ideas that will sweep me swiftly to the resolution I envisioned.
And so, if you’ll excuse me, I need to grab my sledgehammer and get busy breaking down that wall…
(Originally posted Oct 11)
