I Love It When A Plot Comes Together!

So back to NaNoWriMo...Anyone old enough to get the title reference?
I had such a crush on Face.
Anyway.

About half way through week three my Nano-novel rebelled on me. If you read my blog semi-regularly, you'll know that's not a terribly rare occurrence. I'm a firm believer in a loose rein with my characters, plot, etc. and I love the happy little surprises that I find in my manuscripts without any memory of putting them there.

I don't do drugs, I swear. I may have early onset Alzheimer's, but that's a different topic.

Back to week three. Around Wednesday I caught a bad case of I-don't-want-to-write-anymore-itis. I farted around and did anything I could think of to avoid my gleaming, tooth gnashing laptop. I even did dishes--it was that bad.
I whined, I stomped my feet, I called my friends and then ignored their advice. Classic symptoms. I had it bad. And I wasn't writing a single word. Not Wednesday, no way.

If I were prone to panic (not anymore, been there, done the Zoloft) I might have let the mini-bout of writer's block snowball into something more dangerous. Thankfully, I'm too lazy to have anxiety anymore, and when I woke up Thursday, I was so over it.

And when I sat down at the shiny, much more domesticated laptop, the miraculous thing happened. The thing I live for. The magickal, unexpected snapping into place of all the ridiculous, disjointed, dead-end, confusing plot meanderings. They behaved. They lined up and made sense--beautiful, coherent, page turning, sense.
My characters revealed deeper motivations, my conflict took a serious turn, and suddenly, I could see it--there at the end of the tunnel--the key to unraveling and tying up a great, cohesive ending.

Bliss.
And so I remembered that show...and that ridiculous line. "I love it when..."

I hope your NaNos are going remarkably well.
~Frances

Is it all in Vain?

Here's the latest buzz about Harlequin romance and their new self-publishing business:
http://www.examiner.com/x-21358-Fort-Worth-Writing-Examiner~y2009m11d20-Harlequin-regresses-to-vanity-press

While it's worth a read, let me tell you...I'm not sure where I stand on this, and I'm willing to bet I haven't gotten enough information from the above article to formulate any sort of educated opinion.

What I do get from it is that self-publishing is still very much mis-understood. There is a distinction between a Vanity Press and Self-publishing. Granted, there can be a very narrow gap in that distinction, but they are not inter-changable. It's back to the square and the rectangle guys. Vanity Presses are about self-publishing, but not all self-publishing has anything to do with a Vanity Press.

Self-publishing can range from posting a blog...a-hem...to getting sucked in by a Vanity Press, to actually hiring a: book designer, editor, printer, distributor, etc. on your own.

Not all self-pubbing is a scam. Now, it's also not really a big credit on your resume' either. But I still think the important part is whether it's done upfront and honestly, or ran as some kind of get rich and famous quick dodge.

So, Harlequin's getting desperate and they've stuck their toe into a very dirty puddle. :-) I find it hard to believe they'll run their self-pub service as shadily and crooked as someone like Publish America.
But before I bank on that, I'd better do some research. lol

You guys decide for yourselves.

~Off to google it,
Frances

Does This Novel Make My Butt Look Bigger?

While the madness of NaNo is well underway, and my novel is cooperating for once--even a few days ahead of schedule still--I can't help but begin to notice the encroachment of the standard, November Novel side-effects.

Aside from the sleep deprived hallucinations, which don't bother me. My house has started to fray around the edges...the edges that fall under the: dishes, laundry and dusting categories. The eye rolling from family members at dinner time, when I plop four nuked frozen dinners on the table, give a friendly wave and disappear behind the computer, has increased at an exponential rate. Seven layers of deodorant has stopped helping mask the fact that I haven't showered, and my pants are shrinking.

Yes they are.

I haven't exercised in 14 days. My trampoline has converted into a dirty clothes hamper, my cardio glide is caked with dust, and my diet...don't get me started. Wasabi peas count as a veggie serving, right? Coffee is technically a bean, and eating leftover Halloween candy is less wasteful than throwing it away. Think of the starving children in....

But my pants are definitely shrinking, and I have a theory about it. I believe, after much empirical research and experience, that it is NaNoWriMo and not: turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, three helpings of sticky, bread stuffing and an assortment of sugary pies that is responsible for holiday weight gain. Run with me on that, okay?

I keep telling myself I'll drink water next month. I'll do the sit-ups. I will...but holiday hors d'oeuvre trays loom like a tasty beacon just around the corner. It's a double whammie. A month of sedentary typing and snacking followed by the two richest, fattiest food festivals of the year. Nobody could win against those odds.

I don't stand a chance.
Maybe I could pursue litigation against the NaNoWriMo coordinators...maybe they should buy me new pants... Maybe I'll do sit-ups in January.

Don't hold your breath.

Rapidly expanding!
~Frances

NaNo Me This, NaNo Me That...

NaNo me at a write-in in a really great hat...

My brain is gone, sorry. Well, technically it's not gone--it's just full. My NaNo novel has taken over every available cerebral function. All primary life-support systems have been put on hold. It's okay, I like it that way. The book must be written.


Like every year before, this first week has whipped by in a blur of introductory clauses, dry characterization, dull dialog and longwinded, low action plot. . . then, just about 9:15pm yesterday, It started to get good--really good. Also like every previous year, I let myself get excited about this. Even though I know that week two is just around the corner. Week two. sigh.

Week two sucks. Week two is when your motivation flags, your enthusiasm takes a hike, the nap you've been putting off for a week so you can make your daily count looks suddenly far more tempting than literary success. You inevitably fall behind.

Maybe not this year, I tell myself. I've managed to build up nearly a 5000 word buffer cushion just with week two in mind. Maybe I'll keep my momentum, maybe the cushion will keeep me up to date. Maybe the flying monkeys on my porch are real.
Maybe not.

Oh well. Like I need new pets. I will trudge onward into week two, and fall behind. I really want to take that nap. Anyway, I have week three to look forward to on the other side. We love week three.
I'll see you there,

Imagining what a flying monkey eats,
~Frances

The Pitter Patter of Little Keys

In the wake of a quiet early evening, walking the busy street amidst the mobs of cleverly disquised children searching for the next piece of sugary goodness, I delivered my precious, sugar enhanced toddlers into the arms of a patient and experienced guardian (my Mother) for the evening, and shot home as fast as my 2005 Malibu Maxx could manage without turning the afore mentioned street meandering children into speed bumps.

How many words is that?

My writers' group had a date later that evening, and I was anxious for it to start. I'd waited 12 months, after all. I'd done my parental duty early, cleaned my house, and put on a huge pot of pumpkin soup. Now, it was my time. Not, halloween, formerly reverved for parties, candy and general witchiness--No. It was NaNo-Eve...my favorite masochistic holiday of the year.

It went something like this:
8:00-12:00 Distract ourselves with eating, games, eating, contests, eating, partying, and other irrelevant nonsense.
12:00 GO! No wait, really GO GO GO...
The clicking of keyboard keys rumbled through my double wide....and they're off!
12:02 Check word count (Dammit!)
12:30 Coffee refill. Don't look at the clock...you're not tired.
1:30 I'm a little tired. If I hit my daily quota, can I go to bed?
1:35 I'm really tired. I'm close to my quota, I'm going to go to bed...Is that a bottle of wine?
2:00 I'm really going to bed now. Hey! It's one o'clock again. (go back and repeat)
2:30 or is it 3:00? Let's extrapolate on the difference between chronological time and technical time...where'd the wine go?
2:35 Why do I do this to myself? I just wanted to try it once, just prove to myself one time that I could write the bloody thing in a month. Why do I come back, year after year?
3:00????? Dream about reaching 50K by thanksgiving.
6:35AM or maybe 7:35 depending on how you look at the clock. Yawn. Is it morning? Where's my laptop, I've got a great idea.

:-)
Happy NaNo everyone.
Cheers,

~Frances

What Works.

You hear a lot of talk in author/writing circles about finding your voice. It's sort of an abstract, literary way of saying, be yourself. While I agree on the importance of voice, I think there should be equal discussion going on about finding your own rythm.

While voice may be summed up as "how do you write" rythm comes more from the angle of "how do you write well." Are you an outliner? A Panster? Those are the two I hear the most on the boards. Organized, detailed approach with tons of planning to your novel, or chaotic dive into uncharted waters? Any guesses where I fall in that?

Panster. What can I say? For one thing I don't have time to outline--I have children. For another, organization gives me hives. I spent a lot of years as an artist, folks. I ran through the halls with purple oil paint spattered across my forehead and didn't know or care. I painted standing in my living room for an hour and never could figure out how my ankle, or the ceiling, got black on it. Chaos, lovely, sweet, creativity freeing chaos. Sign me up.

So when my friend Michael came over for writing group one day, and announced that she'd found the ultimate, sure-fire, complete system for pre-planning and formulating your novel, to say I balked would be a gross understatement.
They had to drag me out from under the couch like a Labrador on the Fourth of July.

"Nooooooooooooooooo!" I squealed. My four year old laughed hysterically.

"Just look at them," My friend said. She slammed down a stack of forms onto my kitchen table that thunked louder than my last manuscript. I stared at the ceiling and shook my head.

"I don't want your bad medicine!"

"These are great."

"No."

"Just look at this one little form..."

"It BURNS! It FREEZES!"

Needless to say, she was a liitle bit miffed at me. I can understand that. She'd found something that worked for her. It did--for her. She wanted to share with me and I acted like my four year old at the doctor's office. Maybe worse. (I waited to sprinkle the table with salt and shout, "Demons Begone!" until after she'd left)

Order and I shall never be friends.

:-)

Okay, the point... We have a mutual friend who we adore, and who makes a "mild case of OCD into an art-form." She has always been a chronic, get a story idea write two pages and put it away forever, style writer. Now, Michael has shared her pile of demonic forms with her and the universe went supernova. She's outlined, she's plotted, she's formulated her scenes, her characters, her boxes and lines and check marks. She has a whole book now, she does. And I know that she's going to write it--probably like the wind. The forms, for her, were heaven sent.
Because we love her, this will be a beautiful thing to watch. I forgive the evil forms...almost.

Just keep em out of my house. ;-)

Humor aside, my rythm is not Michael's rythm, is not our Dear Emily's rythm. It's not yours. The key is to know, without a doubt, what works for you. That doesn't mean you can't try new things. (Here, I'll make you a copy of this one form...Nooooooooooooo) It's good to stretch now and then, but finding your unique, system of working, it also a glorious thing. Know thyself. Write on.

Sweet Chaos,

~Frances

Heroes in Friction

Hi, all:

I'm off to guest blog again on Monday the 19th. You can come by and read about "creating heroes" at:

http://www.star-crossedromance.blogspot.com/

Hope to see you there!

~Frances

Flash in the Pan

Flash friction, er...fiction describes the interesting and challenging endeavor to create a complete story using as few words as possible. Not a character sketch, mind you, not a snippet, or scene, but a complete story with all (almost) the assorted components.

Madness. But then, so is writing a 5o thousand word novel in 30 days, and I love doing that.

Most flash comes in at under 1000 words. The die-hards shoot for less, 500, 100, etc. In order to succeed at such an unfathomable task (to a novelist) every word has to count for more than its weight in gold.

To say the writing must be tight is a gross understatement. It has to be hermetically sealed. Flash fiction has little room for flourishes, non-vital ingredients, or poetic dalliances. It has to zip, zing and pow straight to the finish. As such, it's a pretty great exercise in control...absolute, iron-like control. Want tighter writing? Play around with flash for awhile.

You're not interested in writing short-short fiction? Well, neither am I, really, but as an exercise in flexibility, I love it. It makes me pull my hair out in frustration, but that's a good thing, right?

So in the tradition of taking an extreme thing to an even more extreme level, I've been playing around with these Twitter contests held by Book View Cafe. Twitteriffic, I think they call them. The gist is, you get a theme and instructions and then you write a complete story on theme in like 126 characters. Not words, characters--as in including: spaces, punctuation marks, letters...126.

It rocks. I think I'm becoming addicted. My on-theme ideas always require at least four more characters than allowed. Usually ten to 13 more. So, I have to reword, trim, chisel and fidget until I craft something that fits into that blessed Tweet. (doesn't go over the count)

It's like a puzzle.

I love the challenge, the knuckle biting, the ocular bleeding. Well, maybe not the bleeding. Still, writing in 126 characters illustrates just how many of our carefully chosen, beloved, words are completely expendable....oh how we do fluff.

I love words and I won't be undertaking a career writing flash fiction any time soon. But, every time I tweet my entry it reminds me that my fiction could be tighter, and hopefully I can take that with me into the next book.
Thanks, Book View Cafe.

Tweet,
~Frances

Dentists Again?

How do I keep coming back to dentistry? The relationship between my writing and a root canal, isn't really a correlation I care to examine too closely. Still, I found myself reclining in that oh so comfortable chair and I'll be damned if I didn't find something writing related to talk about.

You know I'm a big fan of criticism. I tout the wonders of critical feedback repeatedly. But I'm going to spin the tables here a touch and talk about the dark, ugly, un-helpful side of critique. . . and dentistry.

So while my hygienist is torturing...er cleaning my teeth. She engages in the classic dental industry chit-chat. But when she asks what I've been doing since our last session, I mention the writing. Silence. I realize my mouth is enjoying a sweet reprieve and I look questioningly at her.

She's taken the tools out and set them down, and she's staring at me.

Weird, I think. I broke her. But she starts to talk again, apparently forgetting the cleaning. What do I write, am I published, really????

Okay, so they train them to act interested, I understand that, but my hygienist was more than interested, she was excited. Turns out, she's always wanted to write a novel....hmmmmmmmm. You see, you never know who's a closet author.

I encourage her. You should definitely write one. She reveals to me, in hushed whispers that she already has the stories, lots of stories, more than twenty. I'm starting to feel a kinship when she breaks the trance.

She shakes her head and gives me a self-conscious laugh. But, no. I can't write. I tell her anybody can write. (should I be making it sound more elitist? Ah, what the heck. Anyone can do it.) Then she tells me that she showed her work to someone once, (little warning bells jingle in my head)and they told her she wrote like a Dental Hygienist.

Game over. She wasn't writing anymore.

I didn't get it at first. I thought, that's too bad. But it didn't take me long to think, HEY, you ARE a dental hygienist. Who the hell else are you supposed to write like?

When she started reaching for the tools again, I began to babble. Wait! You shouldn't let one comment stop you, write, write, WRITE!!
No good. I was getting that cleaning. sigh.

But seriously, now I not only have anxiety over all the stories I'M not getting to, I have anxiety for all the ones she's not writing. (It's all right, I have more than my share of anxiety.) So, this one, off-handed comment has basically killed the stories before they were even born. (I'm not going there.)

So, maybe we should be more responsible with feedback. Or maybe, she needs a thicker skin to make it as a writer. Maybe she'd never get past the idea of that first rejection letter. But Maybe she would. Maybe she'd wet her feet with friends' comments, build up confidence, find my blog and read all about the joys of having your work trashed...maybe.

It doesn't matter does it? Because even if she didn't ever show those stories to ANYONE. . . she wants to write them. She should write them. There was love in the whispered words, "I already have the stories." It was a secret, a treasured confession...She should write them.

I came home yesterday and my copy of Chris Baty's book, No Plot, No Problem had arrived in my mailbox. He'd signed it (or some wonderful mimic had) with two words. . .Write It!

Amen,
~Frances

Sterile Procedure

I’m a tattoo artist. Did I mention that? Just run with me. Tattoo artists understand the importance of sterile procedure. (Hopefully!) So do doctors, and god willing, those who prepare our food. Don’t get me started. But, at the moment, I’m a little frustrated, and I’m going to rant a bit about the cons of sterile procedure. Confused?

Never mind. Let’s talk about critique and editing. I’ve always stressed the importance of critique and feedback, and I still do. But I’ve noticed a huge difference between the critique you get from readers—even critical ones, and the feedback you get from other authors. As both, I have to admit that the way I read has become a lot more nit-picky than it was before I started all this editing and crafting business. Writers reading a manuscript are looking for something wrong. They’re looking for all the mistakes they have learned not to make, and they’re looking for a whole slew of new ones too.

This isn’t a bad thing. Really. I still believe wholeheartedly that an author should get feedback from other authors and non-author readers as well. But, I do think some of the feedback I’m seeing from other authors may be taking things a tiny bit too far. Maybe, an author feels the need to find something to correct? Maybe then want very much to show what they’ve learned. I understand that. I do it too. But I’m concerned about sucking the life from a manuscript by over-correcting the thing until it reads like a manual for assembling your VCR.

Okay, I have something specific in mind. Because I love critique, right? I crave the feedback, and I’m fine with the “this sucks and you have to re-write it.” So long as I agree with it. :-)

Here’s what I don’t love. I found it on another blog, but I’ve seen it on my online crit. site too. The feedback looks something like this: “She rolled her eyes…” How did she roll them? On the floor? Has she taken them out and tossed them across the table….etc. SIGH.

I bought this at first. I believe in clear, concise writing. There is such a thing as over-using metaphor and such. So I went along for awhile. “Her gaze dropped…” How does a gaze drop? “His eyes danced” really? Did they do a Tango or a Waltz? I’ve thought about it, and I don’t buy it anymore.

I don’t buy it because it sucks. Not just as in it stinks, which it does, but as in it sucks the life and poetry and beauty out of prose. Some of you are about to argue with me. Go ahead. I really don’t mind. It may even be that I’m totally off the mark. And like I said, over-using this can really kill a manuscript. I hate flowery, sympathetic, vague writing as much as the next reader. The reader must understand clearly what is going on and it is the author’s job to make that happen.

BUT. I refuse to believe that readers are morons. After all, I’m a reader and I refuse to believe that I’m a moron. I’ve read a lot of fiction. I’ve read “she rolled her eyes,” before. You have too. Have you ever, ever ,ever been confused about the physics involved? Be honest.

Do you know why you didn’t envision her popping out her eyeballs and pushing them along the tabletop? Because you’ve rolled your damned eyes before, haven’t you? Eye rolling is part of the common vernacular. It’s how we talk, and so part of our voice. We understand what it means. We honestly do. We understand that gazes drop to the rug and examine the design. We understand that eyes dance. (But that one’s a little foofy for me.)

I think these critiques are well intentioned, because we all know that writers screw this up. I do, especially when I’m writing fast. “Her eyes swiveled…” trying to be fancy, eh? Cut it out. “The furniture danced”? Okay, THAT one, I’m confused about. And if every look is darting, I’m darting back to the bookstore for a refund. So the rule is sound…but maybe it should be balanced with some common sense?

“She stepped three paces to the northeast and bent at the waist and knees so that her posterior sat on the couch. She turned her head and both of her eyes focused on the man. They were still in her head, (phew) but looking at him. The table existed in the center of the room where it had been placed by the designer. (It didn’t stand in the center of the room, because it doesn’t have two proper legs) The central processing region of her brain sent the chemical message through her nervous system to feel an attraction for the man, and blood moved into the area of her cheeks, causing them to appear pinker than the rest of her face. . .”

Ugh. Don’t sterilize your prose. Please. Until my editor tells me that my characters can’t roll their eyes, I’m not buying it. When she does, I’ll change it…because I want the stuff in print. And yes, I’ll edit out the swiveling, and darting, and off the wall wording that screws up clarity. I don’t know how that crap got into the text in the first place.

I just rolled my eyes.

~Frances