Critters Beware
Some people are born with a certain degree of self-confidence. Others, not so much. It may come as a surprise that I’m one of the latter. As such, my greatest challenge as someone who hopes one day to be a published author is having the courage to show people my writing.
I’ve been working on that lately. To start with, I’ve been venturing into the world of critiquing. For the uninitiated, that’s where you get people with no familial obligation to at least pretend to like your work to have a look at something you’ve written and point out its flaws. With short stories not being a particular strength of mine, it was an unnerving proposition.
I survived though, and feel better for it. Not only that, the story is better for it. By no means perfect of course, but greatly improved.
One thing which has become obvious to me is that attitude is everything. I want to improve my writing (and desensitise myself) so I got a great deal out of it. So much so, I’m planning to branch out and look at joining one of the local writer’s groups. But one step at a time.
For now, I have some more editing to do.
Mistakes I Make
While I ease back into the writing, I decided to have a second look at something I tossed out a while back. It was meant to be the prologue to my first project until I had a draft reader take a look at it. His feedback was amazing and if anyone out there thinks their words are precious and must not be tampered with by others, think again. Draft readers are a godsend, whether you believe in a god or not. The changes suggested brought on a whole new round of inspiration in their wake and I ended up with a much stronger piece of writing.
Therein lay the problem. That draft reader very much wanted to know what happened next to the people in the prologue. It had only ever been intended as a glimpse of the origin of the conflict. It was a history lesson, nothing more.
Looking at that prologue today, I thought I saw how it could be expanded on to make a full, stand-alone book. Curious, and that always seems to end well for me, I sat down and scribbled out what I thought of as being the basic outline of that unborn book. Sure enough, I had a plot. I decided to expand on that outline.
Now I’m doomed. The book I’m supposed to be working on is 34,000 words of story I’m half as enthusiastic about as I am this new idea. I have no real commitment to complete that book, beyond Brendan wanting to read it, but I feel like I should finish what I started.
My break has done me no favours. I’ve lost my momentum. Now I guess I have a decision to make. Damn it.
Week 4
Brief post this week. Still not on good terms with computer screens. Logic therefore dictates very little progress has been made.
Week 3
So I’m on my third week in. I have a confession to make. While I have made progress, I haven’t made as much as I would like. Towards the end of the week I suffered a sharp decline in word counts. I’m just lacking a little inspiration.
The story is in a kind of twilight zone at the moment, an in-between space where the start has ended but the end has yet to begin. I’m struggling to figure out how to get it through this little rough patch.
Even though the daily word count dropped off, the overall word count is still on target so far. I’m taking heart in that. Hopefully this coming week will bring some sort of divine revelation and things will pick up again.
What’s in a Name?
Character names are something I struggle with, especially because I gravitate towards genres where Frank and Bob are less likely to be common names. My weapon of choice in my little war on names is to make up a partial language and naming structure. By doing it that way, if I need to name someone or something, I can just check the language and pick something which fits.
Even that can have its drawbacks. There are only so many combinations of syllables available. Character names often tend to exist, in some variety, in the real world. Not always directly recognisable but the sharp-eyed reader will notice similarities. Ordinarily that wouldn’t be an issue but sometimes I find things in the story line up in accordance with the real-world associations with the names.
One character needs a definite rename. He shares a name with a lesser-known classic deity (so, not Zeus) and has started taking on the characteristics of that deity as the story progresses. I’ve got two options there. I can rewrite him and put him back on his originally intended path. That’s fine, he was only ever intended as a minor character anyway. So that leaves me with plan B — rename him.
I keep asking myself, would he have taken this path if I had named him Bob? Was his evolution a function of the needs of the story or was it a subconscious decision I made based upon his name? To paraphrase Shakespeare, would a character by any other name still act as duplicitous?
Following naturally on from that is my next dilemma. If I rename my problem character will he continue on his current path or will he return to his place in the background? I do rather like the direction the story took when he made his shift. I don’t want to be one of those writers who obviously names their characters based on their intentions for those characters. That’s a technique which can be a nice little quirk when done right but if it’s too heavy-handed it ends in a book-shaped dent in the nearest wall. But I don’t want to change his name if it means losing this new path. I feel I’m walking a fine line.
I know, stop worrying about that and just write the bloody book. But God I hate coming up with character names.
Week 2
Week 2 has reached its end and it’s time for me to report in. As word counts go, I’m keeping up nicely. I don’t think that’s a mark of any particular cleverness on my part, I think it’s just a sign I may have somehow managed to set an attainable target for myself.
I’m wondering whether I’ve caused myself unnecessary problems by giving myself such a small cast of characters. Compared to my last little project, where I had a whole continent’s worth of people to draw on if need be, now I only have five, six if you count the somewhat split personality of one. I question my ability to build a whole book out of so few people. But I persist.
The story itself is taking shape as I had hoped. Unlike the last project, I gave myself a rough outline of what I wanted to achieve, more of a guideline than anything else. It’s helped much more than I expected. I am, at heart, still fond of winging it but I can definitely see the advantage of giving myself an idea of what the point of the story is.
So all in all, I’m still ticking along smoothly.
Week 1
I’ve decided to keep myself honest by adding an all new feature to Neurosis Central, the weekly progress report. I may put my own spin on events at times but I would think twice before all-out lying, so it seems like a good plan. We’ll see how long it lasts, shall we?
Right, so, the progress report. I started on Monday with my plan to have my first draft finished by mid-September. To do that I want a minimum of 2,000 words per day. I’m pleased to say I achieved that every day other than Friday. It all balanced out because I had gone over on Monday and Wednesday.
The characters’ personalities are already starting to come through. Later on, when I’m editing, I’ll have to take a serious look at how much description I’ve put in though because I know I can gloss over that a little in favour of more action. It’s a fine balance because you don’t want to slow things down too much but at the same time I can’t stand books without a clear setting.
That said, I’m loving the story which is important. As I’ve said, if you don’t like the story there’s no point in writing it. I’ve set out to write the book I want to read and go from there.
Also on Friday I started work on a short story. I’m not much of a short story writer to be honest. I’ve got too much of a habit of thinking, “oh, wouldn’t that be cool” and next thing you know, the damned thing has exploded out beyond even the most generous idea of a short story. That little project is pretty fun. I’m indulging my taste for noir and even if it’s the worst story ever it was a good way to end the week.
So all up, I’m on track so far.
Disciplinary Action
I’m an expert time-waster. If I don’t have some sort of deadline I can throw away whole weeks. That’s a problem when you’re pursuing a career where you don’t have a boss standing over you, arms crossed and glowering. What I need to do is re-train myself.
My affinity for scooby snacks is sadly lacking so those are out as training tools. Instead I decided to try an approach whereby if I fail to achieve my word count for the day the evidence is right there in front of me. In the spirit of that self-flagellation I printed out a form with dates, goals and a space to put in what I actually wrote.
I set myself a deadline. I want to have this draft finished by September 12. That gives me a daily word count of 3000. (For the maths whizzes out there thinking, is she trying to write War and Peace? that excludes weekends and I’m aiming high so when I start carving out great chunks during the editing process I don’t end up with a short story.) That’s manageable. It’s not like I’ve got much else to do during the day, right?
So Monday is day one and I’m already nervous. But if nothing else, I’ll give it my best shot.
Making Headway
I find it hard to write with Brendan in the house. I’m too accustomed to having the place to myself during “work hours”. So I’d pretty much written off the past two weeks. He’s got the time off work, may as well forget about writing for the duration.
It turns out the laptop wasn’t such a frivolous idea after all. Last night I took it out into the living room and tapped out a rough draft of my opening chapter (it’s been through a lot of iterations but this one is the last). All that with Brendan sitting in the corner, yelling at his computer.
All I need to do now is flesh it out and write 30-some more and voilà! A book!
Quality Control
I’ve been hesitant to post this because as an aspiring writer I could come off as a little self-serving. But something has been playing on my mind lately and that’s book quality. You hear a lot (if you know where to listen) about the decline in quality from a writer (or band). Often the first release is touted as their greatest work and it all just slides downhill from there.
Up-and-coming writers have to work so hard on their debut novels. There’s so much blood, sweat and tears in a single draft the faint of heart simply never make their way through. These debut novels can take years to perfect and get published. Then the pressure is on to release another, and another, and another… The quality is bound to slide when you turn an artist into a production line.
Take Monster-Blood Tattoo (D.M. Cornish) as an example. Two years elapsed between the release of book one (Foundling) and book two (Lamplighter). I’ll confess, I was a little impatient. I wanted to get my hands on book two as soon as I was done with book one, if not sooner. But I had to wait, just like the rest of the world and guess what? Book two was brilliant. It was well worth the wait. If it had been churned out in half the time it would have been less than half as good. So I’m waiting for book three (Factotum) as patiently as I can.
Another part of the problem is the big-name effect. Publishers will pounce on a new title by the big-name, established writers and I can understand why. They have a track record. They are established as guaranteed sellers.
Set aside, for a moment, the fact I’m a person who would very much like to be published.
As a reader, I end up disappointed. Some of the best books I’ve read have been from new writers, people who have been required to earn that shelf space.
Do you know what I think would be awesome? Hold every manuscript to the same standard you would require from a debut author. Yes, that would mean writers have to work harder. Some may burn out after only a few books. But others will thrive and do you know what else? The books we read will improve tremendously.