Category: writing

1920s, editing, writing

Awesome First Drafts

elouisebates

I understood last week one of the main reasons why I dislike the insistence many people put upon the notion that “the first draft is crap,” and that one must always just get everything down first, and polish it later. Especially the firmness with which those people insist one must never, ever go back and edit in one’s first draft, that once one does that one will never finish.

One of the reasons, of course, that I dislike those statements is that I’m not a huge fan of dogmatism about a process that is deeply personal and individualistic. No two people write the same way, so why would you insist that everybody’s first drafts must all look alike?

The other, more personal, reason is that I am actually more likely to leave a story unfinished if I have a terrible first draft than if I’ve been tweaking it and polishing it as I go.

I had realized, while working on Magic in Disguise, that I was going to need to come up with another plot twist, that the story as it stood was both too straightforward (i.e. boring) and would not be long enough. Now, conventional wisdom would tell me to keep writing the first draft, and add in the plot twist/extra scenes in the second draft. But the more I kept trying to work on it that way, the more frustrated I got.

Why? Because every time I looked at how much I had already written, I grew discouraged. “Why get excited about hitting 30,000 words?” I muttered to myself (while sitting on a lawn chair outside the tent set up at my mother-in-law’s house, while we were camping there – I know, I lead a really rough life). “Even once I get to the end, there’s still going to be so much work to be done on this to get it in decent shape.” And then I started to get overwhelmed about how much still needed to be done on the book that I didn’t want to work on it at all.

Then an idea for the needed plot twist came to me, and first I started just writing it, then when I saw that it was working I took a quick break from the writing to adapt my outline to it, just to make sure it would fit, and then I went back to adapting my first draft, and suddenly feeling much more cheerful about the whole thing. Because now the second draft was looking like much less work, and so whatever progress I made on the first draft counted.

More work first, less work later. That’s my writing process, and I’m owning it. My first drafts are as close to the finished product as I can get them, and subsequent drafts just polish them and polish them until they’re ready. That’s how my brain works, and I don’t care if anyone tells me it’s the “wrong” way to craft a story.

It’s the right way for me.

Books, characters, fantasy, favorites, fiction, influences, research, world-building

Lloyd Alexander and Diversity

elouisebates

An incomplete (but pertinent) bibliography of Lloyd Alexander’s works for young people:

Time Cat, 1963. Takes place in ancient Egypt, Rome, Britain, Ireland, Japan, Italy, Peru, Isle of Man, Germany, and America, all extensively researched and handled with great respect and affection.

The First Two Lives of Lukas Kasha, 1978. Takes place in fantasy Persia, extensively researched.

The Remarkable Journey of Prince Jen, 1991. Takes place in fantasy China, patterned after Chinese folklore and fairy tales, extensively researched.

The Arkadians, 1995. Takes place in fantasy Greece and neighboring islands, patterned after Greek myths with very obvious affection.

The Iron Ring, 1997. Takes place in fantasy India. Patterned after Indian myths, incorporates traditional Indian caste systems and the importance of honor and karma, extensively researched. (Also the first Lloyd Alexander book I ever bought with my own money.)

Gypsy Rizka, 1999. Features a Romany heroine.

The Rope Trick, 2002. Takes place in fantasy Italy, pre-unification.

The Golden Dream of Carlo Chuchio, 2007. Takes place in Arabia.

In all the calls for the need for more culturally diverse books, I have not seen anyone mention Alexander’s works, and that’s a shame. Because I grew up enthralled with fairy tales and folklore of many different lands, and infused with the desire to immerse myself in and explore all sorts of “other” cultures in my writing, and I never considered that an odd way of thinking, and that is due almost entirely to Lloyd. To me, respectfully, excitedly, and lovingly exploring different cultures through fantasy was normal, and sticking with basic European traditions was weird.

We do need diverse books. So let’s not forget the man who was writing them long before any campaign for such notion began, the man who wrote diverse books solely because he loved the richness of them.

I would also like to note that all of the female characters in Alexander’s works are strong, no-nonsense (except for the ones who like nonsense), independent, intelligent, witty characters, at least if not more so as well-rounded as the male characters. And most of them are capable of physical fighting as well, though they tend to be clever enough that they avoid the need to fight much of the time.

(Lloyd Alexander has also written a few picture books which are beautifully illustrated and also culturally rich. The Fortune-Tellers, illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman, is set in Cameroon, and is witty and charming. Dream-of-Jade: The Emperor’s Cat I (sadly) have not yet read, but it is illustrated by D Brent Burkett and set in Ancient China and looks just as marvelous as all Alexander’s other works. The King’s Fountain, another I’ve not yet read, is illustrated by Ezra Jack Keats and set in the Middle East.)

TL;DR

Lloyd Alexander was awesome.

1920s, goals, writing

All Change

elouisebates

I finished the first round of revisions on the novella I mentioned a couple posts back. Which means, of course, that I am now firmly in the “This is terrible why do I even bother trying to write” stage of things.

Which, in turn, means it’s time to stop thinking about it (this is why I pawn it off onto beta readers, because I cannot be even remotely objective at this point in the game), which means I need to think about something else.

Ah-ha. Time to get back to Magic In Disguise! That’s been stuck at 20,000 words for way too long now. I claimed writer’s block when I first got stuck, decided to work on Wings of Song for a while, and when I hit a wall there (not a huge one: it’s Christmas in that story now, and I can’t bring myself to write winter when it’s so lovely outside and our winter was so long and miserable, so I’m waiting until my memory has faded a bit. I’ll probably get back to it in August when I’ve started to melt from heat) I took a break from writing all together until the novella demanded I write it.

The brick wall on Magic In Disguise hasn’t gotten any less solid, but I think I’m finally ready to bash away at it until it crumbles. (Don’t you like my elegant metaphors?) Plus I miss Maia and Len. And Becket. Every so often I feel guilty for not doing more to promote and market Magic Most Deadly, because I feel like I’m letting my characters down. Then I remind myself that the very best marketing/promotion plan is to just write more about them, and write well, and so I dive back once more into their world and determine to give them another chance to shine.

Come July or August or whenever, when I start to feel lonely for Julie &co. from Wings of Song, I’ll give Magic In Disguise a rest, and change once more.

I’m not sure it’s entirely healthy to be this attached to all my characters, but it certainly is the best motivation in the world.

goals, Life Talk, seasons, writing

Novellas, Laundry, and Revelations

elouisebates

I’m supposed to be cleaning the apartment right now. My parents, sister, and niece are coming out tomorrow evening for the week (not staying here, but still will be plenty of time spent here), and my mother-in-law is getting here on Friday for the weekend. Joy’s first ballet recital is on Saturday, hence the family. Hence the need to clean.

Which is why I’m blogging, naturally.

What I really (really, really) want to be be doing is editing the sci-fi novella I wrote in four days last week. Three points against that:

I wrote 29,000 words in four days and pretty much broke my brain; it needs a break from excessive wording.

I finished writing it yesterday morning right before church; it needs to sit for a while before I go back to edit, there’s no point in diving in now because it’s too fresh.

Because of all the mad writing last week, the apartment is a disaster, and even if I didn’t have family coming in this week I would need to clean. I need to trade in my writer hat for my real person hat this week.

So, I’m trying to be good. But I still don’t feel much like cleaning, and I drank too much coffee this morning so I’m wired, so I’m hoping blogging satisfies the writing desire and also calms me down enough to tackle the mountain of clothes teetering next to my bed, and the school papers that I need to grade (Joy  discovered the concept of grading recently thanks to Daddy’s papers and assignments, and now she begs me to grade all her school work, strange child) and sort, and scrub the tooth powder stains out of the sink.

And then bake some brownies for getting together with a friend this evening.

(I’m starting to convince myself to get started here.)

I have to say, as exhausting and overwhelming and bizarre as it was to write a 29,000 word novella in four days, it was also kind of amazing. The story grabbed me last Sunday, and I tried to ignore it, but it wouldn’t go away, so I tried to jot down the plot outline so I could write it later, but that didn’t work, and finally I started to write it thinking that I could just peck away at it whenever I needed a break from my two current “real” writing projects, and then the next thing I knew I was writing madly every spare moment (and a few not-spare ones – hence the pile-up of chores). Then, Sunday morning, I typed the last few hundred words about ten minutes before we left the house, and now I’m still trying to figure out how on earth that happened.

Exhausting and amazing and kind of encouraging to think that someday, in about thirteen years when Grace is off to college or whatever she chooses to do with her life and Carl’s no longer in school and we can share chores more equally, it might not take me two to four years to write one book.

And that, in turn, makes it easier now to put more focus on the everyday-life things, and ease up on my own internal pressure to do more writing, because the seasons will eventually change and things will be reversed, and I’m not missing out on my chances if I’m a slow writer now.

So all in all, an incredibly satisfying week last week.

And now I think I’m really done procrastinating.

Happy Monday, everyone!

1920s, editing, world-building, writing

Make Mistakes Great

elouisebates

I’ve mentioned here before that I’m working on Magic Most Deadly‘s sequel, right? (I know, I could look it up, but … who has the time?) I’ve hit a couple of snags with it, coming up against errors or “oops” moments from the previous book. One little thing was when I wanted to use Sophie and Owen from If This Be Magic, but I realized that I’d given Owen the same last name (Maddox) as Maia’s friend Constable Maddox from Magic Most Deadly. Uh-oh!

I came across a more egregious error when I remembered that I’d let Len use magic to dispel a hangover in Magic Most Deadly, but according to the rules of magic I laid out more clearly, any direct use of magic on a person, whether yourself or someone else, is evil and against the law. These rules play an enormous role in this current book, whereas in the first one they were only a side note, so I didn’t notice the mistake until I came to this one.

That was a big oops.

What to do? I couldn’t go back and change it – the book is already published. I could ignore it and hope that no readers picked up on, but that felt like cheating. Besides, even if nobody else ever caught the mistake, I would know about it, and it would bother me. Forever.

I wrestled with it on and off for a couple of weeks. Then, this morning, the answer came to me, laid out as a beautiful scene. Not only can I use that to add another layer of nuance to magic, laws, and Magical Intelligence work, but I can also use it to add further depth to Len’s character.

Even though I’m not at the point in this story where I can work the point in, I sat down and wrote the scene out as soon as it came together in my mind, so that now it’s ready to insert when I get to that part.

As a bonus? At the end of that scene, a little bit of romance snuck in! (I know some of you out there are Len/Maia ‘shippers!)

And that’s the story of how a mistake turned into something that made the characters, and the world, even better than they were before.

I hope all my human errors in these books turn out as well!

fantasy, goals, writing

Secret Project, Secret No More

elouisebates

You remember that post I wrote back in February, about the need to finish the first draft I was working on so I could get started on the first draft of the book I was supposed to be writing?

Well, I finished it. The first draft of a story that jumped into my mind sometime in … either November or December, I really don’t remember now … and I knew that I had to start writing it then and there. If all I did was outline it, I knew I wouldn’t come back to it later. The outline would just sit, and languish, and collect metaphoric dust in my documents.

It wasn’t supposed to be very long, only around 30,000 words, a short, fun, MG. Of course, me being me, that turned into 51,000 words, closer to YA than MG, and with some surprisingly deep themes woven in amidst the lighter-hearted bits. In fact, I need to make sure the light-hearted bits are as prominent as I want them to be when I go back for the second draft.

I couldn’t talk about it at all, to anyone, for fear of losing the momentum. I didn’t even tell anyone I was writing it until I was halfway through, and then I finally broke down and told Carl what I was writing – but I wouldn’t tell him what it was about. Only that it wasn’t what I “should” be writing. A few weeks ago a friend asked me on Twitter what I was writing currently, and all I could say was “A secret project.” It didn’t need to be secret for any outside reasons – but I was afraid talking about it would have the same effect as outlining it. Death to the story itself.

So. It’s the messiest first draft I’ve ever had the privilege of finishing, because most of my first drafts are more like third drafts by the time I’m done with them. I break The Rule, you see, of first drafts. I am a compulsive go-back-er. I can be three chapter ahead, realize a way to make that past chapter better, and if I don’t go back and fix it right then and there, it eats away at me until I get it right. If I introduce a character that later on doesn’t fit, I have to go back and take that character out immediately, instead of just dropping the character from then on and removing it entirely later. I write a few chapters, go back and fix a few chapters, write a few, go back and fix a few … which is why I always cringe when I hear someone declare that all first drafts, every time, are junk. Because mine aren’t. Usually.

This one is, though. I just needed to get it written. So I skipped the edit-as-I-go this time (and yes, it drove me nuts, but I did it, and I’m kind of proud of myself for going outside my comfort zone. And I don’t plan to ever do that again) and just got it all done. I’m not going back and immediately fixing anything now that it’s written, either.

I’m going to pretend it doesn’t exist for a while. Go back to working on Wings of Song and Magic in Disguise, the second Maia and Len book (it’s been six months since Magic Most Deadly published, and I think I’m finally ready to get back to their world). And then, once I’ve finished the initial drafts of both of those, I can drag this one back to life, tear it apart, and put it back together again better.

It’s been a fun interlude. And it was what I needed when the stories I was supposed to be writing (see previous paragraph) were not working, and I was feeling a considerable amount on ennui about my writing in general. Sure, it took me almost four months to write a draft I thought I would have done in six weeks, but hey. It’s there. It’s done. And it put the zest back in writing for me.

And now, it’s back to work.

TV, Watch, world-building

Not So Original

elouisebates

Last night, I half woke up from a dream, thinking it would be the perfect idea for a story someday … it featured a married couple in a medieval-fantasy world, where the woman was the warrior and the man was not, and he was always cracking jokes, and they were quite happy together …

I was horribly, terribly sad this morning when I woke up fully and realized that it was not, in fact, a brilliantly original idea which I could use for a fabulous story.

I had just taken Zoe and Wash from Firefly and inserted them into the Middle Ages.

Darn you, subconscious!

characters, children, favorites, heroines, world-building

Names and Naming

elouisebates

I realized, a few years back, that every single story I was writing had a main-ish character with some version of the name Katherine. Every one. The funny thing is, that name was never even on my list of favorite names, certainly not one I considered for either Joy or Grace (although if I had a third daughter …), and yet it kept cropping up in every one of my stories, until I had to consciously edit it out. Magic Most Deadly’s Julia was a Kate first, for example. As were the main protagonists in the two other stories I was writing/plotting at the same time as that. I kept one as was, changed MMD’s Kate to Julia, and abandoned the other story entirely, at least for a time.

Other names, or name-sounds, crop up with frequency, too. I adore Lloyd Alexander’s Princess Eilonwy (I think the E and the I look ugly next to each other, especially with that W showing up so soon after (W is just an ugly-looking letter anyway), which is one reason why I never considered Eilonwy as a name for Joy or Grace, but the sound of the name – Aye-LON-Wee – is pure music). I love JRR Tolkien’s Eowyn as well (though the E-O-W is even uglier to look at than E-I…W), and have found myself using very similar names in many of my stories. I have an Eilwen in one, her daughter Eirlys in another (plotted but not written). I’ve used Owen, Will, Gwen, in several of my non-fantasy stories. And I have yet to write this character, but I love the name Telyn and am eagerly waiting for the right story to put her in.

I sat down and analyzed Wings of Song the other day and realized it pretty much needed to be torn apart and begun again. Part of that tearing apart meant changing my main protagonist’s name. So much of her character was bound up in her name. If she needed a different personality, she needed a different name. I wanted this new heroine to be a combination of two previously-written protags: one named Meggie, one Gwen. At first I thought I wanted a name that preserved that middle “eh” sound, but in the end (and it was surprisingly difficult), I went with something entirely different.

And it’s working.

Poor Carl – I used to scare him half to death when we’d be driving along in the car, talking of something completely different, and I’d suddenly fire off: “What do you think of ___ for a name?” “Are you pregnant?” he’d howl.

He’s since learned to just roll with it. He married a person with an endless fascination for names, how they look, how they sound, what sort of associations they conjure up in people’s minds, all that. When I did get pregnant, and we finally did start talking names for real, I couldn’t settle down to think about anything in the pregnancy seriously until we had decided on names. (Joy and Grace, for newer readers, are not their real names. I decided when Joy was a baby that I could use photos OR real names, but not both, and at that point I went with photos. As they’re getting older and their faces are getting more recognizable, I’m starting to rethink even that policy. We’ll see.) And even though we didn’t use the boy name we had chosen for Joy, I couldn’t consider that name (Evan, by the way) for Grace. That was Joy’s-boy-name. Grace (of course, at the time we were discussing names, we didn’t know she was a girl) needed her own unique boy-name (she would have been Tristan, if you’re curious).

What about you? Are names something that fascinate you, or are they just convenient handles for keeping people and characters from getting confused? Do you find yourself drawn to similar-sounding names without even realizing it, or re-using one name across many different stories? And which is more important to you, a name that looks beautiful written, or sounds beautiful spoken?

Life Talk, seasons, TV, Watch, writing

I Do Not Make A Good Invalid

elouisebates

You would think that three straight days on the couch at the end of February would be a great chance to get caught up on my finish-first-draft-before-March goal, wouldn’t you?

Wrong.

Turns out three straight days on the couch is really good for re-watching Firefly, reading library books that don’t actually interest me very much, and fretting about the dishes and laundry.

Sigh.

I wasn’t really sick – just some weird hormonal imbalance stuff – so I also spent most of the time feeling guilty that I was doing nothing when I could, technically, have been up and around and Being Productive. Never mind that said productivity would have resulted in me getting sick, likely, and for much longer than three days. I’m not particularly good at taking care of myself.

Nor, it appears, am I particularly good at creativity when under (self) enforced rest.

I did manage to get a tiny bit more work done on Baby Niece’s quilt. With luck, she might get it in time for her first birthday next October.

On the bright side, I am doing much better today, and can even get off the couch long enough to wash a few dishes and fold a few pieces of laundry at a time, and maybe, just maybe (don’t jinx it, Louise!) get a few words scribbled in between.

Fingers crossed!

(Carl and the girls are heading out to get groceries this afternoon, and on the bottom of the list I included, in CAPS, a request for potted daffodils or crocuses or SOMETHING spring-like. I do love winter, but my eyes are craving color.)

Scrolling through last March's photos, apparently my desire for daffodils is not limited to this year.
Scrolling through last March’s photos, apparently my desire for daffodils is not limited to this year.
goals, humor, Life Talk, TV, Watch, writing

Olympic Writer-in-Training

elouisebates

Me, in December: I’ll have this first draft finished by the end of the month, and then I can start on the book I’m supposed to be writing!

Me, in January: Uh … I’ll have this draft finished by the end this month. Or … maybe February. Yup. No problem. And if I don’t, then it’ll have to be set aside until I’ve finished the first draft of the book I’m supposed to be writing. Pinky swear.

Me, partway through February: After all, the Olympics only come once every two years. Writing can take a back seat for a couple of weeks. I really need to watch this sport … what’s it called again?

Me, one week before the end of February: So … maybe I can squeeze in 20,000 words in eight days? How badly do the kids need schooling? And what’s wrong with frozen dinners? Who needs clean clothing anyway? Can I squeeze my self-imposed deadline into March? Why do I need a deadline, anyway? I’m an indie author! It’s not like I have a contract to fill! Maybe I can write three books at once. Sure. That’s not so hard, right?

Sigh.

I’m tired.

But the Olympics have been awesome. I just need to figure out how to apply half of the drive those athletes have to my own life, and I won’t have to wrestle with these sorts of problems anymore.

*Snort*