#amwriting

I'm still working for Inkitt, though they are making some changes that may lead to my not being able to do that anymore. Hopefully at worst that's six months away, though. At best they'll alter course just enough that it doesn't come to pass. I really like this job and the way it is now, it fits really well for me and for my family.

It's been interesting, doing my own writing these days. I wonder if people in MFA programs and who write for TV have a similar experience...when you're in an environment where a lot of what and how you write is assigned. Because now when I approach my own writing, I'm not really sure how to go about it. The lessons I'm learning writing for Galatea are interfering (possibly in a good way in the end) with my own natural inclinations, and that means that I find myself staring at my screen, unsure of how to move forward, a lot of the time.

One reason I started making time for my own writing again, after the first few months of writing for Galatea, was that I wanted to be able to have more freedom with it. Galatea has a specific format. Each episode has to be between 1600-1900 words, for instance. This often creates a situation where I just don't get to include the details I want to include. So I went into my own story promising myself to wax on as long as I wanted and...I can't. I mean, I do probably add more detail than I would in a Galatea story, but not much. Because now it feels like it's slowing the story down.

Even before I took the Galatea job I entered a phase of my writing in which I started reading books on plotting and other writing topics, and watching talks, and my husband even got me a subscription to Masterclass, which I loved and no longer have any time for (keep meaning to pick it back up though). So I've really been loading my brain with a lot of rules about how to approach a story. I've gone from being a pantser (for decades!) to a dedicated plotter. And I feel like the current result (I don't think it's in any way permanent) is that my writing is in this awkward growth spurt where I no longer have a strong sense of character or of what I really want to see happen. I'm trying to think of all the rules and structures and such that I've read about and that have resonated with me.

Finding a balance is hard. My short novel, Wild Wild Witch, is a really good example of me privileging structure over character. I think it's a fun story but I'm also pretty sure that the characters, while likeable, aren't especially well-developed. In my new WiP, The Tower of Doors, I've tasked myself with continuing to use everything I've learned, but to also really digging into the characters. And... I'm finding it hard. Characters (mine anyway) that are well-developed tend to want to go off script. And I'm not comfortable with that right now. And yet, I think characters are what's most important to me, especially if you include setting as a character.

Anyway, if you want to support my writing in a really substantial way, you can FOR FREE, by going to Inkitt and reading The River and the Roses. I have a tentative plan with my supervisor at Galatea that if I get enough reads (measured by people clicking on "next chapter"), they'll develop River on the app. Which would mean royalties, y'all. It would be really, really exciting.

I also always appreciate honest reviews.

What's new for you?
Have you ever felt like you were in an awkward growing phase of your writing?
What do you think is most important (if you had to choose), character or structure?

Wow, it's been a year!

Jeez, guys! I'm sorry I've been so MIA. I didn't realize so much time had passed.

Last year was busy and in many ways a great year. I really enjoyed my teaching job and got to do a *lot* of new projects which is probably one of the main reasons I let this blog sleep for so long. Then this summer several not-so-great things happened which definitely cramped my writing style both in terms of any blogging that might have happened and any novel writing. But that led to an amazing new chapter in my life: we moved to Hawai'i--the Garden Isle of Kaua'i, to be precise.

There's been a bumpy adjustment period. Many things have changed. For one thing, I'm now teaching middle school math! I really enjoy it, but it is very different from what I was doing before (one of the bad things that happened is that the district closed my school--I'm heartbroken about that). I've started a blog where I'm going to explain how to teach certain math lessons. It's mainly for the parents of my students to use, but you can check it out here, if you're curious.

There's a writer's conference locally in November and I really want to go! One of my goals for this new WiP, which is not set in any of my previous universes, is to attempt to go the traditional publishing route. I make no promises. I may lose patience with that very quickly. One of the reasons I indie publish is that I am a control freak so it really suits me to do everything myself. But I've decided I want to give it a shot, just to see what happens.

I'm snatching little moments here and there to work on the WiP. Like, sometimes only 15 minutes. It's better than nothing. And honestly I'm totally out of the habit of writing for long stints. I stayed home from work one day and could have written for hours and could only manage an hour or so.

For the current WiP I've been doing a lot more planning, outlining, etc. than ever before. I used to be such a pantser. But it's been a gradual process over the last few years propelled by the challenge of not having regular time to write. Now with my writing time in ever more brief snippets, the outline and brainstorms and character descriptions and everything are absolutely essential. There is no way I'd keep track of anything without them.

I have 29K words done and I wish I thought I could do NaNo this year. Maybe I'll try to set myself a more attainable goal and go for it.

How about you, where are you at with your creative projects? How have things changed for you over the years? Let me know in the comments!

Here we go, NaNoWriMo 2014!

Well, I'm giving it a shot! So far, I have something in the neighborhood of 2200 words written, so I'm on track to achieve my 50K in something like February. But some writing is better than no writing! And I'm hoping my husband will be able to take the three year old to the park or something for longer this weekend, and I can maybe get a bit more caught up.

I deliberated a lot about what to write. I had a dream with this awesome setting. I can really see it working for a Harry Potter-esque young YA fantasy novel in a steampunk/early dieselpunk setting--you know, 1920s again, maybe with more of an art nouveau feel than The City Darkens. The trouble is, it really hasn't had enough time to percolate, so I'm going to put it on hold.

I decided to go with another idea I've been chewing on for the last year or so, which is more of a sort-of cyberpunk, futuristic urban fantasy dystopia story. I still haven't fully decided if I'm going for YA or New Adult in terms of my target audience... the difference is how much sex there'll be in it. I'm being vague about my MC's age for the time being (2200 words in, it's not hard to be vague about that) and I guess when I get to the first scene where sex is an option, I'll see how I feel about it. Oh the joys of NaNo, where you really don't know quite what you're writing until you get to like, the 30K mark.

That said, I did create an outline for this novel, which is unheard of for me. I figure with how little time I have in each sitting, I need a road map or I'm going to get lost. However, yesterday I was looking at it and I'm not sure what I meant by half of what I wrote. So there's that.

I'm a pantser at heart.

How about you? Are you doing NaNoWriMo this year? How well is it going, if so? What kind of story are you writing? Are you a plotter or a pantser?

Wrangling Fictional Characters

I've begun to write the sequel to The City Darkens, and I won't say very much about that specifically, since it is one my rules never to talk about a story before it's finished. But what I will say is that I decided to go with a different narrator than Myadar. Ginna has lived most of her life in the Undergrunnsby--I felt like Myadar's story really only showed one perspective on the city, and that I needed to have the next story flip that and look at it from a completely different angle. So this has presented two unexpected challenges.

First, Ginna has a distinct voice, which is great, in a distinct dialect, which I can hear clearly in my head most of the time. At first, I had a real struggle because Ginna kept insisting on switching tenses and telling her story sometimes in present tense and sometimes in past tense. Eventually I figured out how to handle this: she'd tell the events of the story in past tense, and anything she considered to be a constant truth she'd tell in present tense. Now the only trouble I'm having is with some of her to-be verbs, which I can't seem to find a consistent way of conjugating. I'm going to have to study up on existing dialects. The nice thing about creating your own fantasy world is that you can take liberties when you invent a dialect. You're not required to represent how real people talk in a certain region of the real world. But you do have to be consistent.

The second unexpected challenge is that Ginna is such a strong personality right from the get-go. I feel like she's just using me to get her story out. (Stephen King attributed an idea to Native Americans--I don't think he was specific about the tribe and I don't remember where I read this--that stories stalk the writer until the writer is ready to tell them, or some such. It's like that.) Actually, a few times it's been like she slapped me upside the head and said, "Hey! What kind of ninny do you think I am? I'm doing this instead." And sometimes I don't really like what she does, but there's no way around it. She's going to do things that way, because that's who she is. For one thing she can be incredibly and remorselessly violent. Not all of the time, but basically she's got a lot of rage from some of the experiences she's been through. I've written before about violence, and how ambivalent I am about representing it in fiction. I look at George R. R. Martin's stories, which granted I've only experienced through the show, Game of Thrones, and I think he goes too far. Don't get me wrong, I'm addicted to the show. But I really could do without some of the images it has put in my head, and it disturbs me when people come to the defense of its violence with reasons like, "It's historically accurate." Westeros doesn't exist, people. It never did. There can be no historical accuracy there. And if you're referring to a depiction of medieval England, let me tell you that the ways in which GoT is historically inaccurate far outweigh the ways in which is may be accurate--for instance, there's no Catholic Church, and you really can't talk about the history of England without including the Catholic Church.

Not exactly a Catholic priest.

Okay, end history-nerd side rant.

Anyway, the point I was actually trying to get to is that since I've begun dealing with Ginna, it's caused me to wonder if GRRM might actually not have really planned to be quite so brutal when he started writing. Maybe his characters slapped him upside the head and said, "HEY. WE ARE JUST THAT EVIL." Or something. Then again, one of the people I watch GoT with claims that when GRRM was a kid, he had pet turtles, and used to write stories about the turtles torturing each other and plotting to murder each other. So quite possibly he's just that much of a sadist. Who knows?

I'm actually not complaining about Ginna's domination over the story. It's quite wonderful when characters take over and the story grows from them. I'm a pantser, though. I can see how if you had a whole outline written, characters slapping you upside the head and demanding that the story go in a direction you never intended might become a problem. You'd get quite lost without your map.

Have you ever experienced a character running loose from your control? What was that like for you? Did you enjoy it, or were they a royal pain in the ass? How did that story turn out?

STOP THE PRESSES!

STOP THE PRESSES! 

Is that just one of those phrases you've always wanted to scream at the top of your lungs? And isn't it just tragic that most of us will never get to do that?

Sigh.

Anyway, the title refers to my realization that I have to reorganize how I'm publishing the parts of The City Darkens. I will explain, and I will try to be concise. (I'm hearing Inigo Montoya in my head: "Let me 'splain. [pause] No, there is too much. Let me sum up.")

Twice now, people I do not know (one, a snarky employee at Smashwords, the other, a member of a book group I'm in on Goodreads) have pointed out that if people buy every installment of The City Darkens once all twelve are available, they will pay almost $12 for what is essentially one book.

I wouldn't pay $12 for a novel, even if it is 150K words. Which The City Darkens is, altogether.

So while I initially dismissed what the Smashwords guy said, because he was a condescending, unreasonable peon (harsh, perhaps--I'm a little bitter still), when this other very nice guy who was giving me feedback in general made the same comment, I realized I had a perception problem. Both these guys thought I was splitting my novel into 12 parts in order to make more money, I surmised.

Now, it's true that on Smashwords, that may have been the case (although to be perfectly honest it's been a long time since I read the SW rules on royalties). However, because of the way Amazon does royalties, I would make more on one book priced at $5.99 than twelve priced at $0.99. Amazon requires that you price between 2.99 and 9.99 to earn 70% royalties. Anything above or below earns 35%.

I intended (and still do) to offer a version with parts 2-12 and a version with all 12 parts for sale as well as the individual parts, for less than $12 (I was thinking in the neighborhood of $7), actually hoping that people would opt for one of those instead of buying all the parts, because ultimately, that's going to mean better royalties for me. The trouble is, I'm not ready to publish everything yet. It's all written, it's been revised a couple of times, but I just know I still have typos to catch, and my beta reader is still working through 5-12. And she's bound to have advice for how to improve things. So part of what happened here is that my impatience, which is epic, got the better of me.

Another thing that happened is that I originally projected 8 parts. This is what comes of being a pantser. I had no idea the story would take so many words, and parts, to come to fruition. So my original plan to publish the novel as a serial meant people would pay about $8 if they bought the parts separately, and $7 for the whole thing. I just failed to alter my plan when it came out to 12 parts instead.

I wrestled with what to do for a few hours today. I drove my husband up a wall fretting over the pros and cons of a few different possibilities. I won't go into them here, because I've decided to just group parts 1 and 2, then parts 3 and 4, and so on, into larger parts. So there will be 6 instead of 12.

This means that if you have downloaded part 1 on my free book page, you will need part 2 in order to have the complete part one in this new version.

I'll be posting the original part 2 to the free page soon. Download it!!!

In other words, the titles of parts 1 and 2 are currently:
Myadar's Snare
Myadar's Revelry

And they will now both be part of Myadar's Snare. Myadar's Revelry will no longer be separate.

This is good, because I was never comfortable with the title Myadar's Revelry, but I couldn't think of anything that worked better.

The current parts 3 and 4 are:
Myadar's Secret
Myadar's Betrayal

And I think I'll just call the two of them Myadar's Betrayal. Unless people tell me they like the title Myadar's Secret more.

And so on.

So this represents a chunk of work, since I've decided to edit and format the 3&4 combo before changing Myadar's Snare to include 2.

Does that make sense?

Do you like the title Myadar's Betrayal or Myadar's Secret better for part 2?

Would you have handled my dilemma differently?

Just a quick update on the goal...

Last week I announced my goal to write 10,000 words by tomorrow, March 16. I just wanted to check in and say, got there! The difficulty is I promised myself See's Candy or Trader Joe's chocolate-covered pretzels and I will probably not be able to fulfill that, at least at the moment. We live in the boonies and either treat requires a drive of at least an hour, and we're trying to save money.

But next week we're probably driving down to the Bay Area for a few days, so I'll just consider this a postponement, not a cancellation. I will have a scotchmallow, dammit.

The serious upside is that the story is moving along a lot better now, and really, that's the reward I wanted most of all. I didn't get to write today because I had homework to do for the MA program (although technically that's writing too, although it's for history), but tomorrow I'll dive back in. I'm almost to the end of a first section. I'm not really sure how many sections there will be--I'm a weird hybrid of pantser and plotter where I outline some parts and have little idea where I'm going with other parts. But I have been considering releasing the novel in parts as a serial... priced at 99 cents each, and then several parts together for some lower amount (like 4 parts for $3 or something). I do think I'll need to have the first few parts done before I release anything, though, as I'm likely to go back and make changes to part one as I move along.

Am I crazy, as a partial-pantser, to consider doing a serial?

Have you ever written a serial? Do you like reading serials?