Reboot

*sigh*

The inimitable Mighty Proctor, She of the Many Names (CS Harris, Candice Proctor, CS Graham, and many, many other aliases) was right: The godawful slowdown I've been suffering was in fact my subconscious trying to clue me in to certain, um, *problems* in my story.

Of course, the subconscious mind being the Creepy Wee Beastie that it is, the poor thing has trouble communicating with this thin skim of gray matter that walks in the light and believes it is all that exists. In short, I got bad sleep and bad dreams, bad writing and no writing, all of it getting worse and worse until finally I was at my wits' end and the Creepy Wee Beastie was able to speak clearly.

My problems were three. And they were important.

One. My protagonist was not outsider enough. Not by half.

Two. One of my subplots stank. Really, really stank. That is to say, it contributed nothing to the central thrust of the book, and if anything muddied the waters of the themes as I see them.

and Three. My Act I climax *needed* to hit A LOT sooner. Which meant collapsing some of the early 'action' (which, frankly, could afford to be collapsed), which led to old characters saying and doing different things, and to new characters coming in to make things happen.

Of course, fixing Problem #1 meant amplifying and creating problems, and fixing #2 meant writing out a character I was rather fond of anyway.

Needless to say, the result is a complete, from-page-one reboot of my manuscript.

I think I may be able to save a few paragraphs here and there.

So it goes.

Topsy Turvy

This is nuts. I can't say if it's the plotting, the stresses of month five of small-business ownership or those of life in general, but writing this novel is completely wonky.

Normally, I sweat and strain and shear gears loose in my head trying to handle sequels and quiet moments in general. It's a real effort to do my 1000+ a day, until I get to the fist fights, car chases, gun battles, etc. when the work simply flies along.

Not this time.

I've flown through these early stages. As this one's a mystery, I'm introducing suspects and red herrings, planting false leads, all that good stuff. I'm even, thanks to having a handle on my plot first, able to think about stuff like vision systems and imagery as I work.

Until I hit the Sequence 1 Climax. It's a small thing, a fist fight. It serves to:
a) establish the hero as at least somewhat tough (to qualify the later stompings he'll receive)
b) frustrate his Plan
c) show a few of his flaws and issues, and
d) wake up those readers who haven't had enough action in the last 5000 words.

Normally, I'd fly through a scene like that. Instead, it was a horrible, painful grind. Best I could manage was 200-300 words a day. For five days!

Once I got past it, I was back on 1000+. Freaking ridiculous.

At any rate, on Day, let's see.... Day 12, the New and Improved, Steam-Powered Daily Wordcount-o-Meter stands on 11,200 words. Not happy.

Stage the Second

Yup, it doesn't stop with 3x5 cards. Once those are filled out, shuffled, crossed-through and flipped over to reuse, shuffled and rearranged, a few thrown in the fire and fresh cards begrudgingly trotted out to take their place, I have the bones of my plot. No trying-to-piece-together-a-complete-cromagnon-from-a-scrap-of jawbone for me-- I've got a reasonably complete skellington here to work with!

Now to my lovely notebook. And it is lovely: the wee red beasty has nice creamy paper, hard covers, a pocket in back, an elastic band to hold it shut and one of those sweet ribbons to mark my place. I freely confess to a certain sartorial streak in matters of my stationery. :)

Right, the notebook. Sitting down with trusty, lovely, 50-odd year old fountain pen (that sartorial streak again), I flesh out each note card. Usually 50-100 words, just enough to describe what'll be happening, key points to hit when I finally sit down to write my draft.

At this point I found problems that didn't show up in the note cards: night scenes in the middle of the day, suspects cleared then re-interviewed, a few plot holes. So back to work, shuffling, scribbling, shuffling. The plot hole gets filled but now I'm *awful* long between my Big Midpoint and my Act II Climax. I've become flabby about the middle. Shuffle, scribble, tear up a couple more cards. Scribble scribble, shuffle, scribble.

If this sounds like a lot of work, please remember this is usually a stage I go through AFTER I've written the damn novel. In fact, I'm sometimes finding these problems after several drafts. Compared to that, this is a piece of cake.

One odd bonus I hadn't predicted: I'm writing faster. On the one hand, I'm able to angle language, imagery, etc. to foreshadow what's to come. On the other, these poor characters have been jumping up and down in that diary, scene after scene, mute and waving for my attention. Now that I'm finally letting them talk and act and do stuff, they're going hard.

At the end of Day 3, the New and Improved Daily Wordcountometer (shown on the right) stands at 5,400 words. Now if you'll excuse me, I gots me some writing to do...

Oh Dear... Overboard?

Longtime readers will remember my days as a fierce advocate for writing by the seat of my pants. Recently, I turned a new leaf, gave plotting-ahead a bit of a go.

And like any addictive personality, I took it too far.

Or have I? Those are 80 notecards, 20 for Act I, 40 for Act II, and so on. Roughly one per thousand words of story. Working with them, I've been able to work on pacing, juggle scenes and sequels, space out character appearances/subplots/etc. so that we never go *too* long without hearing from the Duchess of Maldorff and the Subplot to Blackmail her Third Underbutler. Plants and payoffs (the ones I know I need anyway) have been inserted appropriately.

In short, all the headaches I go through in the editing stage are now happening before I write a single line of dialogue or description. If this works, my subsequent drafts will hopefully go a bit easier.

Will it work for me? I don't know. Seem worth trying? Heck yeah. I'll do just about *anything* to get these damn stories out of my head quicker, smoother, and closer to what I see playing on that Private Theatre for One...

PS. Those note cards are all filled in now, but I just had to go with this photo. Just like his siblings, Buddy is much mended and now up to the task of helping me write!

Making Passes

Last night, the printer chugged out the first printed copy of BURIED. I started work in August, finished the first draft shortly before Halloween, and just now, *finally* am ready to turn the damn thing over to The Tiny Dynamo and the Beta Readers (they're down in the basement right now, practicing MoTown covers).

So what did I do in the last five months? Well, I moved house, made a couple of *very* drastic changes to my day job, and suffered the usual assortment of pains and ills to which all flesh is heir.

I also did something like eight drafts of my novel.

You see, the post One Leg at a Time No Longer marked a new direction for me in my approach to writing. I wanted to write more like the way I draw. So I started with a basic idea. Then I 'scribbled' my way through a rough outline. My big concern there was plots and subplots and their turning points.

Then I sat down and wrote the damn thing. Took ten, maybe eleven weeks. Freakin' paradise.

That was my first pass. To me, it was like moving from a loose sketch to tight pencils. And the same as I'll take my drawing, scrub the whole thing down with an eraser and go in again, I took my novel and started making pass after pass, tightening with every step.

They are, in order:

Just the Facts, Ma'am: I read through checking and correcting. What time *would* it be in France at that point? How *does* one say 'fuck off' in Thai? Is that character named Marjory or Mabel? Pick one!

Also at this point, I'm scanning along for weak spots, sore places, obvious bruising in the story. I'll be back for those later.

The Hero's Head: Two things about the way I write: I often don't know my characters very well when I start, and I like action. By the end of the book, I'll know my hero (heroine, in this case) much better than at the beginning, but I'll tend to be light on Sequel.

This pass, I hunted for things the hero wouldn't have said, things she wouldn't have done, etc. I also made sure I took the time to let the reader know where she was going and why.

Plant and Payoff: This pass really deserves its own blog post. It also might have been better done second instead of third, but I was just too itchy to go back and straighten out some of the hero's wrong steps early on. Basically, anything you need later in the book, you need to plant early. We've all heard that if there's a gun on the mantelpiece in Act I, it damn well better go off in Act III. Well, it works in reverse, too.

This pass is about realizing you had gunfire in Act III and going back to put the gun on the mantel...

Mustache Twirling: That's right, the villain gets his own pass, too. This meant going through the novel with an eye out for nothing but the villain. Sometimes I'd pretend I was a Famous Asshole Actor who cared nothing about the script as a whole, only about my part.

Writing this pass, I focused on the villain's introduction, motivations, what they're doing when I can't see them onstage, that kind of stuff. This needs to be done for each and every major character, and sometimes for the minor ones.

And since in this story the hero is surrounded by MANY hostile forces, each villain (and a few who seemed bad but weren't) got his own draft. I made five separate passes to give the devils their due.

Better, Faster, Stronger: Remember those weak spots, bruised places, dead areas I spotted in my second run-through? Last thing I did was to go through the work and take a long hard look at any that were left.

You see, by the time I'd focused on the hero, then the plants and payoffs, then all the villains and major characters, a great many of those 'bad areas' had been cleared up.

Of course, the ones that were left were thorny as hell. I kept at it every day, and it gradually came together. Might've gone faster with more hours spent, but I'm not complaining.

Now the readers will start in. I'll discover that Mabel is unexpectedly Marjorie (because the Find/Replace missed that one). That the hero oddly stood a moment in the moonlight in the middle of the afternoon. That I didn't do enough to explain why anyone would put a live snake down their pants.

Before Agent Anne gets it, there will be another pass...

One Leg at a Time No Longer

or, Oops, I'm doing it again.

I held off as long as I could, but frankly, I'm addicted. And it's time for the next fix.

I'm writing again.

This time, though, I'm not flying by the seat of my pants. I've got notes on the forces at work before the heroine shows up. As promised before, I've got my Golden Spine (also known as the premise or Story Question):

The loss of her brother forces Kera Slade to the one thing she swore she'd never do: return home. Can she find the truth about his death when two gangs of murderous thugs and a tough-as-nails sheriff all want to make sure the past stays buried?

I've even... I've even got an outline:

Those are my heroine's two plots (conscious goal and unconscious goal) and the main subplot on the left, Act climaxes and approximate word count along the line. Easy.

A new leaf? A strange experiment? The next 90 days will tell.

This time through, I'm writing 1000 words a day, and no internet access until I do. So far, so good.

I've even dusted off the trusty old Full Throttle Daily Wordcount-O-Meter.

At Day 3, we stand at 4200 words.

Aaaahhhhhh...

A lone figure wanders the vast and cavernous halls here at Secret Headquarters. A bitter southerly has blown for days now, howling Antarctic winds with needle-sharp teeth. Christchurch shudders under snow, sleet, frost and hail, sometimes in the same day.

In these dark and echoing chambers, a faint smile plays at the lone figure's lips. A faint tuneless sound teases the ear. Could it possibly be... whistling?

Yup, whistling. You see, winter it may be, but in my heart, summer reigns.

The lovely and talented Agent Anne has the latest manuscript. There are no revision notes yet, and no new project has been started. It's even too cold for oil painting. The Full-Throttle Lifestyle is as close as it gets to idle.

My to-be-read stack is dwindling. This...

is gradually becoming this:

With my time undivided, I'm reading whatever I want to, whenever I want to. It's bloody lovely.


Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to put my feet up by the fire with a small stack of favorites.

I'm hoping a few well-placed matches, a comfy chair and a big mug of hot cocoa should transform this...





into this:

Full Throttle Iconography

(A little homage to the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs, there! Sorry about the flash burn - the paint is still wet...)

Where y'at, you say? Well....

The hero is isolated and alone. The Main Bastard's implicit threat is increasingly manifest. Innocent and guilty alike are suffering at this man's hands.

The hero has just made a Bad Decision. Fear overruled his better judgement, and he picked up a weapon. Things are.... about to turn very, very, *very* ugly.

Today or tomorrow maybe, he'll see this situation through to its brutal, bloody end.

I had a bit of a peek around on the net for a work-icon to describe my progress. No dice. In the end, I used one of those 'thinking up what's next' moments to whip up my own...

Sometime soon: Simpsons fun!

Sweet as Pie...

(this was the pumpkin pie I made all by myself - without even canned pumpkin to help! Mmmmm....)




Right now I'm soooo close to the Final Showdown.



But.


But I've got all these notes about things that need to happen, and things that need to change.



I've got a couple of REALLY important plot points to change.



So I've gone back to the beginning and am doing a rapid rework. And I do mean rapid: roughly 10-20,000 words a day. My word count is staying about the same, mainly because I rip out almost as much as I put in.



Being so close to the end is the best place to see the beginning. And to tighten any flab from the middle. Also, tomorrow or the next day, when I *do* finally reach the Final Showdown again, I'll hit it with the momentum of a runaway bloody freight train!

Synchronicity: After staggering to bed at 1.30 last night (back up 5, but that was Butler's fault), I decided to 'chillax' with Joyce Carol Oates' Faith of a Writer. The essay I picked, Miss JCO talked about doing just the same thing I am, and for just the same reasons.

Oddly, that makes me feel better.

And for anyone who wonders about life with the Tiny Dynamo, I did do an 18"x48" painting on a break from writing yesterday!

8 Days Later....

Five pounds lighter...


Twenty hours of sleep total...


The work stands at 68,238 words.


Events took some unexpected turns. Things that baffled me (why is that girl Irish? Why is she in here at all? What's with the horses?) have become clear. An encounter I'd been expecting the whole book never materialized. There are notes scattered through the text telling me what I need to add earlier...


The final showdown is underway.


The end is so close I can taste it.


Oddly, the Minor Bastard is still alive. I'm starting to wonder if he'll make it through the whole book. For that matter, I'm kind of wondering about the Hero and the Main Bastard as well. Both are more resourceful than I would have thought, and nothing is as simple as it seems.


I'm not quite finished, but I *am* having the time of my life!


Of course, once I'm finally done, I do plan to sleep for a week. That too will be most enjoyable!



In other news, the birthday was much fun.


The Tiny Dynamo provided me with some very nice gifts and a truly ginormous chocolate cake!

After all, I do have some missing kilos to put back on....