Writerly update

I've been a bad blogger lately.

I've actually been a pretty bad writer lately, which is to say up until the last few days I really haven't done much work on my sequel at all. I've been very busy with work, and have had more writing to do in that department, less free time, and therefore less inclination to write in my free time. Add to that that I've been doing more reading lately (I finally got around to charging my Kindle - hooray!) and it makes for a bad writing mix.

I've made up for it over the last day or two, though, banging out over 3000 words even while being distracted by EVERYTHING IN THE WORLD. Seriously, Jane Austen had it easy. Apart from lots of tea and dances, she must have had bags of free time and nothing to distract her except, I don't know, news of more tea and dances. If she had had a smart phone, it is quite possible she would never have written a thing. I bet she would have been a prolific tweeter, though.

So, anyway, I am still waiting and seeing with Chase. I've had two 'no's from agents, neither of whom feel passionately about my story. That's ok. People like different things. It's not the end of the world. I'm waiting on responses from two others, but I'm not holding out much hope for a positive. I really need to get my arse in gear and 'reach out' (I hate that expression) to more agents, but it is just such a faff and I am so ridiculously lazy. I'll get around to it.

In the meantime, though, I have had some really wonderful feedback from my friend's cousin, who I have met once but basically do not know and therefore she has no reason to be nice to me. She's 17, the perfect age for Chase, and she was so wonderfully generous with her praise that I did a little happy dance around my living room and was actually fizzing with excitement, especially over her comments about my main characters and my ending. It's so amazing to see that what you've written has actually had the desired effect, you know? My friend text me the comments as screenshots so I will keep them forever more. (I may even print them and put them up around my writing space as inspiration. Too much? Don't care.)

So here I am, basically soldiering on with the second book. I'm at almost 11 000 words. I remember that at the start of nanowrimo last year I had already written 13 000 of book 1. If I can get ahead of that now, there is a (small) chance that I will have finished my first draft of book 2 by Christmas. Do you think it's better to approach an agent with two parts of a three-part story already written? Who even are 'you', random person that could potentially happen upon this blog?

Oh, hi mum, it's you :)

The road to 30...

Something other than books

I tried to make a cake yesterday. This happened.

Rejection

I am an incredibly lucky person. I met my husband when I was 18 years old. We've been together for more than 11 years now and in all that time we haven't ever broken up. Without delving into the intricacies of my personal life, prior to meeting my husband, there wasn't really anyone else. I had crushes, sure. Who doesn't. But I didn't do much to act on these. (Ok, yes, there was some embarrassing incidents of pseudo-stalking including one instance where I actually texted a boy pretending that I'd meant the text for someone else just so that he would text me back and we could hopefully start a conversation - *sigh/blush/ick*) So anyway, though I often felt rejected, a lot of that was to do with not really putting myself out there. I wanted them to notice me. I didn't really give them the opportunity to reject me as fully as they could have done. I wasn't ever truly heartbroken.

There have been other things in my life that left me feeling pretty blue. Family issues offer their own relationship trauma, so there's that. And then there was that time I applied for English with Creative Writing and got rejected by 3 out of the 6 universities I applied for, despite being a straight A student. That still stings. (And if you're really at a loose end and interested in laughing at the teenage angst version of me, please do stop by poets2000.com/katspoems/default1.htm for some insight into just how rejected I felt and also why I didn't get onto that creative writing course...If they'd had a special module specifically on awful angsty teenage crap I probably would have aced it!)

But generally I am a lucky person. I am loved. I have food and shelter, a good job and great friends. What I'm trying to tell you is that I feel ill-prepared for rejection. So that's probably why I have been putting off sending out my query letters. I had an incredibly strong fear of reverting to that angsty version of me.

Well sometimes, as they say, you have to feel the fear and do it anyway. So last week I sent out two queries. This week I will send out two more. I guess I'll keep going until I run out of people to send them to. Because I believe in my book. I believe in my story. I believe in myself.

*Fingers crossed someone else believes in all that too!*

I'm not sure that I'll keep you posted on all that. Just assume it's going on in the background and if I have any insights to share then I'll post them instead. Meanwhile, it's time to really start thinking about Book 2. Camp Nanowrimo's coming up...who's with me?

 

Rutsville, People's Republic of Rut Land

People, I am stuck in a rut.

I had one of those nights last night where I was so bored, but I could not find the motivation to do more than watch Thursday night TV, and I think we all know that is by no means the best TV night of the week.

I used to drive my mum insane when I was younger, going into her bedroom at ten o'clock at night saying "I'm bored!" over and over again, like even the act of saying it was something to do. She'd say, "You can't be bored, it's bedtime," but it was more like a build up of ennui throughout the day that culminates in the realisation that I have wasted the day and now it's night and going to bed is boring and not going to be bed is boring and I AM SOOO BORED.

15-odd years later and I am annoying my husband in exactly the same way. (He's such a lucky guy.)

I think the problem right now is I'm not writing and I'm not running. Those two things together make me more of a person. (Because, you know, a bored person is a boring person.)

I'm not writing because I am killing my brain endlessly researching query letters, agents and publishing. I know it's important that the query letter is, like the novel, the best it can possibly be. I know it's important to find the agent that is actually open to submissions and representing your genre. I know it's essential to make sure you follow the submission guidelines down to the letter. I know all this, but I can't help but think I may have left bits of my soul scattered over the various agency websites, twitter feeds and blogs I've been obsessing over. I haven't even sent a single query yet.

I'm not running because I've not been feeling 100% lately (cue the violins) and the last time I went was just before I got ill and I felt so sick after running that I was put off doing it again. But running (like waxing, incidentally) hurts less if you do it more often. With running I guess it's a question of fitness. With waxing, it's supposedly to do with the roots of the hair (ew), but I think it basically comes down to expectations - once you know how much it's going to hurt, you can prepare yourself for the pain. With writing, it's maybe a little of both.

Anyway, I've bored you guys enough with my boring tales of being bored. Time to go figure out what to do with my evening/life.

Rearranging the furniture

I was saying to someone the other day that redrafting a book is a lot like rearranging your bedroom.

This came about because I walked into my room the other day and thought 'Wow, this just doesn't work'. Obviously there are things I need in my room, like the bed, the wardrobe, the chest of drawers. But there are maybe some things I could do without, and there are other things I could put in the room that would make it more interesting.

Sound familiar?

When I was looking at my first draft and trying to figure out what worked and what didn't, I knew there were things I needed to keep in. The bare bones that make my story, my story (the furniture that makes my bedroom, my bedroom). But there were also things in the story that were the literary equivalent of clothes strewn across my bedroom floor. And there was kind of a lack of personal style in places that made parts of the book a little bland. And then there were things that worked, but would have worked better in a different place.

Hopefully by the third draft I managed to rearrange all this and I've ended up with a room I'm pretty happy with. Now it's time to show it off.

 

Eek - nerves

Well I just finished going over the changes to my third draft, and rather than do the sensible thing - take a night to think about it, read it through again, let it settle - I just sent it out to four people who haven't read it up until now. That could work out to be a huge mistake. If they hate it...I don't know what happens. My confidence takes a knock? Honestly I have to be at the point now where I have faith in Chase and in my writing so that I can recognise the distinction between personal opinion and constructive criticism. Is there a little part of me that only sends my work out to people so that I can get some positive feedback...? Yes. It's probably bigger than a little part. I could do with having that part knocked out of me, but the idea of it is painful.

Note to self: must learn to embrace rejection.

(Embrace is maybe too strong a word.)

Sigh. I have given over my entire weekend to this novel, and now I feel completely burnt out. My brain is fried. My eyes are glazed. I've started laughing in a maniacal way that my husband seems to find frightening. I told the dog that Jesus was on the phone for her. Basically, the situation here is not good. Think of this blog as a cry for help. *Send chocolate*

*Alternatively, send Gosling*

On the up side, that's the third draft, done. The feedback I get from my new round of readers will determine whether or not there needs to be a fourth. I suspect there probably does. I hope there doesn't. I have limited time, remember? The countdown to 30 continues.

Meanwhile, what I really need to work on is my pitch. Anybody got any ideas? Helpful comments? Resources? Please, please help me. I can barely synopsise the story in basic conversation, let alone in, what, 250 words? I also need to get to work on making that list of potential agents.

Let's call that next weekend's job so I can give myself a week off to read books. By which, I mean, of course, research my genre.


 

Third draft's the charm?

I just finished reading through my third draft. Or actually, I suppose it's my second. It feels like third. Anyway, whatever. The good news is, I didn't hate it. There were times I was reading it and I was genuinely enjoying it. Other times it was only ok. On occasion it was horrible... But mostly, I'd like to say I think it's not bad.

The first time I did this - and by this I mean print, bind, read through and make notes on a draft - I changed an entire section of the novel and I definitely felt, this time around, that that was for the best. It improved the flow of the story and it intensified the drama. Reading this draft I found another scene I'm not entirely happy with. It puts two people together who need to be together and it allows for the discovery of something that needs to be discovered, but everything else about it is distinctly average. My notes for this chapter look something like this:

In case you can't read that, it says 'What's the point of this house? Why is it empty? What's the point of this chapter?'

If you were to ask me for one piece of editing advice, this would be mine: examine your work honestly. Don't get too attached to places or words. Be attached to your story. Get to the heart of it. Look at your motives.

I was talking to someone about Chase the other day. We were discussing why a particular character acts in the way he does, and she said 'But then your story doesn't make sense. Why wouldn't they just do x - that would be so much simpler.' Thankfully her husband chimed in to remind us that Tolkien could have had the Army of the Dead escort Sam and Frodo all the way to Mount Doom - or the eagles for that matter - but where's the fun in that? I don't believe that stories have to be logical or rational or reasoned, but when a reader calls for that you have to be able to insert logic, rationality or reason. No doubt the Army of the Dead would not have been able to be around the One Ring without being corrupted (further corrupted, I should say) by its powers. I don't know if Eagles are corruptible, but I imagine the nazgul could probably take them out. In my story, I have to know why the characters act the way they do. I need to be ready for that future Q&A session when someone cares enough about my characters to question them. I need to know the characters motives, and my motives, for every scene.

Under the eyes of no one

I think the idea of 'what do we do when we think no one is watching' is an interesting one. In Gone, the series I was talking about the other day, the absence of adults and any kind of authority means the kids must create their own judgement system. Some of them find power in the new situation, while our main character, Sam, spends a lot of his time worrying about the consequences of his actions - what will happen when the dome comes down? How will the outside world judge him for what he's done? But when a time comes when the outside world can see inside, he continues to act in the same way because all along he has only been trying to do what is right.

When I read Nothing to Envy, the book about life in North Korea, it became apparent that the government there is getting away with a lot because, for the most part - threats of nuclear war aside, no one is watching North Korea. Our eyes are elsewhere, the media is kept out. They have privacy and isolation. We do not intervene.

When I started writing Chase, I thought the idea of having Britain cut off from the rest of the world - I call it the Disassociation - would be interesting. Part of what keeps us in line is knowing that other people are watching and judging. If, right now, Britain introduced, say, the death penalty - let's say, death by stoning - the rest of Europe would be up in arms. There would be protests. There would be economic and social consequences. Support (financial and political) would be withdrawn, and we're very reliant on the support of other nations. But in the world of Chase, Britain has opted out of all of that international network of social, political and financial support. It no longer concerns itself with other countries' problems, and likewise the rest of the world has left it to its own devices. That leaves the government more or less free to do what it likes. So if it wants to put orphans in a work camp, it can. And if it wants to Black List an entire population of rebels and leave them starving at the edges of the country, it can. And if a democracy turns into a dictatorship, well who's going to know, or care? So that's the world in which Chase finds herself. Captured by Listers, a child of the Honours, with no idea how the rest of the world lives.

Gone

I haven't ever taken drugs. I'm too much of a scaredy-Kat, too much of a goody-goody, and too much of a control freak to get involved in any of that. And I'm past the point of caring whether or not that makes me a nerd. I've actually always thought it was a good thing I was never tempted because I have a completely addictive personality and zero will power. I started reading the 'Gone' series by Michael Grant the week before I went to the US. In the space of about five days, I read the first three books. Then it was time to go to the US for work. A 9 hour flight, I thought. I could probably read book 4 in that time. But then, I know myself. I would be thinking about book 5 the whole time I was meant to be working. I would make excuses to get away from the conference and associated activities just so I could go up to my hotel room and read the next book. Just one more chapter. Just one more. One more. Until I was done with that book and on to the next. So I left my Kindle at home (and incidentally watched some good films on the plane and used my free time to work on my third draft). I'd already downloaded the rest of the books, so they were waiting for me when I got home. I picked my Kindle up on Monday and had finished the final book four days later.
I think I've said before that I'm a greedy reader. I gobble books up. But even for me, this was extreme. I was staying up until ridiculous o'clock, despite the fact that I was on deadline and having to get up early to put in extra time at the office. But I couldn't put the books down. They were just so good. So, so good.
In case you're not familiar with the stories, they are set in a small town in California that the inhabitants nickname the FAYZ. One day, a dome goes up for no apparent reason and everyone over the age of 14 disappears. Suddenly some 380 kids are trapped in an area 20 miles across with no access to the outside world. No one's coming in. No one's watching. And weird stuff is happening. Some of the kids have developed supernatural powers. Some of them are evil. Over the course of the six books, battles are fought, your favourite characters face death again and again, alliances are formed and broken and formed again, and of course there are some complicated romantic relationships.
If you've read Stephen King's Under the Dome (and if you haven't you absolutely should), you might be thinking this all sounds a little familiar. Truthfully, there are a lot of similarities, but being that the Gone series is all about kids, it is different. Some of the problems are the same, but the reactions are different. It's hard to explain - hey I never claimed to be good at reviewing books - but they're both worth reading. I was gripped. Utterly. I don't want to give anything away so just take my word on this one.
Another blog coming up on what happens to a society when there are no outsiders to judge or intervene...As for the writing exercise, I realise now I have never in my life written a short story and I'm not sure how to go about it. But it's definitely on the to-do list. Meanwhile, I am still working on the third draft. Wish me luck guys!

I'm back, baby

So...long time no post, right? Apologies guys, I've been busy - and sadly not with writing. I have completely failed Camp Nanowrimo - even with another 6 days to go, there's no way I'm going to have time to write any more. It was crazy to sign up for it, really, given how busy I am this month, not to mention the fact that I should be spending my spare time working on the first book before I race ahead with the second! Plenty of time for that later. If I manage to meet my deadline on book 1, maybe I'll sign up again in July.

I saw my brother again at the weekend. I like how direct he is with me.
"How's the book going?"
"It's kind of stalled at the moment. I've been really busy." (To be fair, I'd just got back from a week in America.)
"So what are you going to do about it?"
"I don't know. It's like the more I read it, the worse it seems."
"So what are you going to do about that?"
"I don't know. Maybe take a break from it for a while."
"Maybe you should try writing something else. Maybe a short story for your blog."

He's so wise. I do need to rebuild some of my confidence, gain some momentum, fall in love with writing again. A blog-sized short story sounds like a good idea. I'll try and make that my next post. It won't be well crafted, more like a writing exercise - which is probably the kind of thing I'd know about if I'd actually taken the creative writing course I applied for all those years ago!

(Flashback: I'm 18, it's time to apply for university. I want to do English with Creative Writing. I apply to six universities and get rejected by three. Ouch. Rejection stings. I get accepted by one, but when it comes to it, I'm too afraid to pursue it. What if we sit around reading out our work and everyone thinks mine is bad? I switch to English with Film Studies and put my writing on hold for...oh, about 8 years. End of flashback.)

I'm typing this and watching MTV. Sometimes music can be so perfect. You know, when it just fits, and it's like a soundtrack to your life? "Everyone's a kid that no one cares about. You've just got to keep screaming 'til they hear you out." I have to keep screaming if I want to be heard. The softly, softly approach will get me nowhere with this.

The epilogue blog (The Epiblog?)

You guys, I've almost finished the second draft of my novel! Hooray! It has taken for-actual-ever and it has definitely felt a lot more like pain than gain, but I am nearly there. That's not to say there won't be a third draft. I will be repeating the print, bind, read, scrawl, edit process, but I'm hoping - nay, begging - that it will be less arduous than it has been this time around. In the third draft I hope to add in the small details that make the world seem more complete, while the second draft has been more about making sure the plot adds up and there are no glaring inconsistencies. Also, I would take sentences like that and reverse them so that the second clause (or whatever that's called) goes first, because that just reads better.

A while back, not long after I began the second draft, I decided I needed to add an epilogue. The entire book is written from Chase's perspective, which is cool, but doesn't give me much of an opportunity to say what other people feel about her, for realz. (I don't know why I said that, but it's late and I've pretty much been typing the whole weekend, so deal with it, ok?) So I decided the epilogue would be from Steel's perspective (that's potential crush numero uno aka the first boy to save her life) and would give the reader a little insight into how he feels about her and a good strong nudge in the direction of Team Steel, so to speak, having spent most of the book sorting out their feelings for crush numero dos (is that Spanish?) aka the second boy to save her life, aka Will.

So I was all, "Hey girl," (remember that part about my inner self sounding like feminist Ryan Gosling?) "The epilogue is going to be super easy and fun to write. Why don't you do the hard stuff first and save writing the epilogue as a treat for the end?". Ryan Gosling is never wrong, so I sweated the hard slog and edited the darned book. (And you know I don't really mean darned.) Then, today, I got to the last word of the last chapter and It Was Time. I typed the word 'Epilogue' and then I changed it to the Heading 1 font, which makes it all seem more real. Then I typed about six versions of the first sentence. Maybe more. Then I made a good five attempts at the second sentence. Then I deleted those two sentences and wrote them again. "Hang on RyGo," I thought. "Isn't this supposed to be the easy part?" But then I remembered how hard it was, in draft one, to figure out how to end the book. I knew the ending, but I didn't know how I wanted to write it. Books with sequels have to leave you wanting more, but at the same time I knew it needed a degree of resolution. And by adding an epilogue I am adding another ending. And by making it from someone else's perspective - and someone we haven't heard from in a while - I'm effectively starting and ending a story in the space of a few paragraphs. "Holy crap, RyGo, you set me up!"

I've written some words. Maybe 750. I reckon I can go to 1500, tops. But I'm doubting myself - and Ryan Gosling, which is never good. Is this epilogue necessary or am I just writing it to make sure everyone understands how lovable my characters are? Am I doubting myself because it's hard, or because it's wrong? Am I struggling because I'm stupid and unsure or because it's 11pm on a Sunday night and I have been at this all weekend?

When my inner dialogue (oh how I wish it were a monologue!) starts getting all swing-ball-y I know it's time for bed. So goodnight, sweet dreams...and if anyone has any insights on epilogues I'd be grateful!

Out on the water

Have you noticed how hard it is to take a screen break these days? Don't want to watch TV? Why not read - oh wait, my Kindle doesn't count as a screenbreak. Go on the computer, then? No...that's not going to work. Text my friends? No, that won't cut it either. So what am I meant to do? Stare into space? Well, on a beautiful spring day like today, I should probably head out for a run, but I have 30 000 words to write this month and a novel to edit and pitch before July. So back to work it is - except here I am, not working, but blogging.

I have written almost 2000 words today on my Camp Nanowrimo project, so I won't call it a complete failure. If I manage to get to 3000 I might even call it a success.

Meanwhile, in actual blog-worthy news, I went out on the water yesterday with my husband and my brother as one of my field trips. In Chase, my main character is escaping captivity in the drowned fens, and so she and her companion, Will, go part of the way by boat. I have been canoeing before, but not for a long time. As my brother works at an activity centre where they have such things, and because he is acting as my mentor/sponsor, he offered to take me out on the water so I could get a feel for what it's actually like. Well, it was beautiful.

You can't really tell from this picture, but it was actually a really nice day yesterday. Bright, but cold. At one point it started to snow (are you kidding me, 1st April??), which was fine because it's freezing cold in my book, so it was all good research. Actually, the effort of paddling kept me warm enough - well that and the thermal undies.

It really is a beautiful way to travel - the water was still and clear, the reeds were making a nice gentle shushing sound, and it's fairly companionable - as long as your companion can steer ok. (No comment.) At one point we just stopped for about 5 minutes and watched a barn owl swooping and hovering, obviously looking for something to eat. Just beautiful. And if it weren't for the few solitary people walking along the river we would have been completely alone. There's also that feeling - a little bit Thelma and Louisey without the suicide - that we could just keep going. What if we just followed the river all the way to its source, or all the way to the sea?

My brother gave me some useful pointers about the technical elements of canoeing, and I got a feeling for what it's like to paddle for any length of time, and the way the wind makes your eyes stream and how you have to work together to get the boat to move how you want it to move. None of this is especially eloquent, but I'm hoping it will make that part of the book more descriptive when I go back to redraft. *Sigh* I do not enjoy redrafting. Anyway, I will leave you with some pictures of us enjoying the canoe. Happy writing, people!

 

 

 

 

 

Being your own cheerleader

I wrote a little tweet last week about how, sometimes in life, you have to be your own cheerleader. You can't expect other people to understand your goals and your successes in the same way that you understand them. That tweet was in response to the fact that I'd just completed a 10 k run in the freezing cold and knocked a few minutes off my time. I got home, jubilant, sweaty and cold (an odd combination) and my husband was like 'Oh yeah, nice one' and then went about his business. I sort of wanted a confetti explosion, perhaps some applause - at the very least a high five. But as far as hubby is concerned, I've run 10 k before, so what was different about this time? He didn't know how I'd struggled up those hills, or how many times I'd thought about stopping or just walking, or considered taking a short cut just to get home earlier. How could he know that?

Similarly, when it comes to writing, you can't expect other people (non-writers, especially) to understand how some days are so much harder than others, or how some times it feels like you're never going to finish, and then other days it's like you've won. So at times like this you have to be your own cheerleader. You have to push through the tough days, and revel in the good days, and pat yourself on the back for even attempting to write a novel. No one else in the entire world - and this includes other writers - is going to know what this effort costs you.

But...a caveat. Sometimes we self-cheerleaders can be guilty of going too easy on ourselves. For example, for the past week or so I have been giving myself a break. No good reason, really, except a hard couple of weeks at work and a tough weekend. There hasn't been time to get really stuck into it, I've told myself, so I may as well take some time off, have a break, and return to it refreshed. But when? When will I return to it? I could be doing it right now, but I'm writing this. I could have done it yesterday but I spent much of the day distracting myself with You Tube. On Friday - a perfect bank holiday opportunity - I actually cleaned the oven, rather than write. Not just the oven, I actually took a toothbrush to the window frames. I mean, that's some quality procrastination. My house looks better, my novel does not.

And now, to add some extra pressure, I have signed up for Camp Nanowrimo. I've decided I am going to write 30 000 words in April, and that will form the beginning of the sequel to Chase. Have I finished Chase? No. No, I haven't. So why am I starting on the sequel? I honestly don't know. Probably because I want to feel good about writing again, whereas my feelings towards editing are mixed at best. I'm going to have to dig deep, find those pom poms, and work bloody hard in the next few months to start the sequel and finish the original and start approaching agents before my self-appointed deadline of my 30th birthday this July.

So I need to stop giving myself a break and sart working, right now.

Accidental almost plagiarism

So the other day I started reading a book - the third in a trilogy I started some time ago. I wasn't that far into the book when I came across a word I recognised - a word I realised with horror I have been using in my own story without realising I had stolen it. To clarify, it's more than a word, it's a concept. I suppose this post isn't going to make any sense without a little more info. Ok...but don't judge me, alright?

The book I'm reading is Requiem, the third in the Delirium series by Lauren Oliver. (So far it's pretty good. Not my favourite series, but worth a read if you're a fan of the genre.) The word is 'Pairing'. These books, in case you weren't aware, are set in a dystopian future where love is considered a disease and a cure is compulsory. Lots of other stuff is going on, I don't want to go into too much detail, but part of this society is that people are paired according to their interests and characteristics, so marriages still exist but they're purely functional. In my book, matches are made for similarly functional reasons - to promote unity and encourage (enforce) reproduction within the small rebel community that is holding my main character, Chase, hostage. The wider society is very different than the one in Lauren Oliver's series, but obviously they're both YA and they're both dystopian. I can't go on using 'pairing'. I have to find another word. 'Matched' is also out thanks to the Ally Condie series...I will be checking the online thesaurus and continuing to edit my book.

This accidental almost plagiarism is worrying. One of my major fears with this book is that people will read it and say they've read it all before. I think it's fairly original (I'm not going to go so far as to say groundbreaking, but it's a concept that I think is pretty interesting, and something that's been making the news a lot lately), but saying something is unoriginal is a well used critique. I have a strong female main character, two potential love interests, a dystopian future, a controlling government of sorts...I know those are well used plot points. I just have to hope that the way I've threaded it all together is different enough to be special!

I'm thinking about making my next blog post an excerpt from the book...Thoughts? Comments? Ideas? Anyone want to pick a page number between 1 and 250 for me to start at?

Taylor Markham

The other day I promised you a post on Taylor Markham of 'On the Jellicoe Road', so here that is.

I have to begin by saying that, I suppose, my understanding of Taylor grew with my understanding of what was actually going on in the book. It's one of those that goes straight in without explaining a whole lot, leaving you kind of wondering for the first I don't know how many pages* whether I really cared what was going on. But I don't often give up on a book, so I persevered and it was worth it. By the time I had a grasp for the story, I was gripped by Taylor and her struggle to build relationships with people based on her feelings of loss and abandonment.

I don't want to talk too much about the actual plot, but I think it's worth trying to identify a few of the things that I loved about this character.

1) Her pain.
I don't know if you guys know David Farland, but he does this great newsletter called 'David Farland's Daily Kick in the Pants' where he doles out bitesize advice for novelists. They're free. You should sign up for them. Anyway, one of his constant pieces of advice is to put your characters through the ringer. Your reader will always be drawn to the character in the most pain. And it doesn't have to be physical. (He explains it way better than I do. You should sign up.) Taylor's pain is evident from the often detached style of writing, the way she shies away from any intimacy with any of her schoolmates or even the one person she looks to as a mother. You can tell she's pushing people away because she fears rejection, and it makes you - the reader - feel pain just to witness it. She's so lost.

2) Her weaknesses.
This ties in with the above, really. Her main weakness is her tendency to push away the people she needs the most. But there's also a physical weakness - asthma - which seems to affect her in times of emotional trauma rather than from actual physical activity, which just shows how deeply - how physically - the psychological stress is getting to her.

3) Her strength.
In spite of her difficult upringing and the fact that she hasn't formed a great connection with the kids in her school, Taylor is loyal to the core and does whatever is necessary to make sure these kids are protected. She also has the courage to face up to her past, even though it's a past most would rather forget.

So, in a completely different setting, she has the qualities that I have also admired in the likes of Katniss Everdeen and Tris Prior and all our other YA heroines. They have pain; they have questions; they have uncertainties that make it difficult for them to proceed with courage, but they do it anyway. This, I hope, is what Chase will have.




*Because I was reading it on a Kindle, which annoyingly has no page numbers. It's one of the disappointing things about Kindles, together with the lack of covers, and the way you can't easily flick back and forth between pages to check things. Or how I read the entire Game of Thrones series without seeing the maps or being able to refer to the family tree whatsits at the back. On the other hand, not having GoT books does save an awful lot of room on my bookshelves.

#amediting

Editing can be soooo boring. When the kind of editing you're doing is limited to correcting punctuation, rewording a sentence here and there, and generally just making sure everything is clear, it can be laborious and uninspiring. *Big, yawny emoticon.*

On the other hand, one of the really great things I've found about working on the second draft of my novel is the possibilities it offers. When I was writing the first draft - and especially when I was rushing through 50 000 words in November - I had only the loosest idea of where the story was going. I knew my beginning, parts of my middle, and a rough cut of my ending, but navigating between all those moments was tricky. I think at one point I whined 'I hate journeys. I like A and I like B, I just don't like getting from one to the other'. But now, I can go back and make those journeys more interesting.

The action scene I added in the other day actually gave me an opportunity to weave together two other elements of the story that I was dissatisfied with. Yes, it's still a pain in the arse (or ass, if you'd prefer) to go through and thread it into the rest of the story, but it's going to make the whole thing better in the long run. I'm looking at it as a very complicated braid (or plait, if you'd prefer) - and if you've looked at my pinterest page, you'll know I love braids. Now I just need the patience to go through and bring in the rest of the narrative threads, twist them together and - ta da! - plait/braid/novel finished.

Meanwhile, I went to Jane Austen's house today. Here is a photo from the exhibition, which sums up exactly why I love Jane Austen, besides the obvious brilliance of her books. Hope you can read it, and that it reminds you why you need to go and re-read her entire collection.

 

The YA romantic lead

I just read 'On the Jellicoe Road' by Melina Marchetta (cool name, by the way). I saw EpicReads banging on about it on Twitter, so I thought I'd give it a go, see what all the fuss was about. It took a bit of getting into, but once I was in, I was so in that I'd devoured the whole thing in around 24 hours. (I am a greedy reader. I gobble up books. If I am into reading something, there is very little that's going to get in my way.)

The general consenus on Twitter seemed to be that Jonah Griggs was the hottest YA crush of all time. It's funny, he was crush-worthy, but I don't think I feel for him like I fell for some of the others. I love a bit of YA romance, and it's not unusual for me to crush hard on a totally made up character - probably with a hard exterior, a soft interior, and a lot going on in his head. Oh and soft lips that seem to be constantly brushing against parts of the female lead's head. Twilight obsessed over the jaw line. Others go straight for the lips.Personally, I love when the boy does that tucking hair behind the ear thing some of them do. *Sigh*

Where was I?

Oh right, Jonah Griggs. 'Built like a tank' is not my idea of hot, but how important is describing the way a character looks to how you relate to that character? It's not uncommon, for example, for a description to focus on one particular aspect of a character. Edward's crooked smile, or bloody golden eyes (ugh), Four's hook nose (uh - anyone else picturing Snape with this?), Peeta's blonde curls...And equally, when your female lead is telling the story, she can hardly go around talking about how hot she is. She can do the humblebrag about, I don't know, the colour of her eyes, or how she's always been lanky (read: leggy and gorgeous), but she can't really say anything complimentary about her appearance without coming off arrogant. So I suppose what I'm trying to say is that, in the end, the reader will see what the reader wants to see. No matter how often Veronica Roth told me Four had a hook nose, I just kept choosing to ignore it. Likewise, one of the friends who's read my book told me that, even though I describe on a number of occasions how Chase has a shaved head, they still keep picturing her with gorgeous long curly hair.

I feel like I could write a whole other post about how complex a character Taylor Markham is (that's back to 'On the Jellicoe Road' again, for those who haven't read it). So maybe I'll save that for another day. Could someone please remind me I need to stop procrastinating and actually start editing this book? Thanks.

Balancing fact and fiction

This blog comes from a place of exhaustion. After a full day in Switzerland on Thursday, I had a late night on Friday making this:

It's a cupcake bouquet.

Then, I was up early yesterday for a weekend in London where I went on a massive walking tour - again - for more research. I wanted to go and see the Thames Barrier Information Centre. I'm no good at buses, so I got a train up to North Greenwich and then walked. It's far. I have blisters on blisters. The information centre was relatively informative. I was basically trying to work out whether or not London would be flooded in the future I've invented where much of the east of England is under water. Having read what I read, I decided that the government probably invested significantly in London's flood defences at the expense of the rest of the country.

This is the Thames Barrier.

I feel like I'm trying to find a balance right now between something that is believable and the story I want to tell. What's frustrating about some of the YA lit - or in fact, any books - is that sometimes they start the story at a convenient point where whatever the situation is, it's been that way for a long while and so the characters no longer dwell on the 'why'. Why, in The Hunger Games, is the rest of the world allowing Panem to get away with treating its people like that? Who, in the world of Divergent, originally thought 'You know what we should do? Let's split people up into Factions and assume that the majority of people slot nicely into one specific Faction'. I love both those books - have read them multiple times - so this isn't a criticism; it's just an observation. I'm sure the authors know the answers - and possibly, in the case of Divergent, all will be revealed in the end - but it was something I puzzled over after I'd read the books. In Chase, I would like to be able to reveal enough of the background to my dystopia that the 'why' can be understood. Probably overly ambitious, given I don't want it to be ridiculously long, but that's the reason for all the field trips. And now, all the blisters. Ouch.

Here's a gratuitous shot of London at night, just because it's pretty.

Picture this with no traffic, no tourists, no lights...That's the London Chase is looking at.

Method writing?

Yesterday I had to go to Switzerland for work. Whilst waiting for my (delayed) flight in the airport, I wrote you a lovely little blog post about making the most of your travels. I was almost all done when my wifi connection ran out, and sadly it didn't save. Don't you hate it when that happens? Makes you realise the importance of backing up your work!

Anyway, I talked about not only going out and seeking inspiration (like on my field trips), but also soaking up the inspiration from all around. I've got a little bit Dawson's Creek about the whole thing, tending to over analyse everything I'm thinking and feeling, physically and emotionally. So now when I go for a run, I imagine what it would be like to run for long periods of time for the sake of a journey - how the air feels in my lungs, the way the ground blurs past, how the day sounds compared to the evening, how long there is between sunset and dusk, that sort of thing. And then I push myself into a sprint and try to feel what it would be like to be running away. How long can I sustain the speed? What does it do to my body? How does it affect my other senses?

It makes running more interesting, anyway.

Yesterday after I'd done what I went to Zurich to do, I walked for hours in heels and a pencil skirt, while carrying my 'luggage' of sorts. It's a world away from the experiences of my main character, Chase (hence the name of the book), and yet by the end of the day I was exhausted and my feet were so, so painful. In fact, they still hurt now. It feels like the soles are bruised. Chase is on the run from her captors throughout much of this novel, so even while I'm moaning about the state of my feet, I'm thinking - I can use this.

Is there such a thing as method writing?

So anyway, here is a picture of what I walked miles to find: a post-work tourist snap of Zurich for your viewing pleasure. Quite the relief to come across this after getting lost in the seedier part of town. Let's hope Chase has a better sense of direction than I do!

 

Re-re-write

In the spirit of trying to make this the best book ever, I have been attempting to edit the beep out of it. I decided that I needed to add an action sequence in the earlyish stages of the book and, well, crap, if this action doesn't have an ongoing reaction. It's messing with my mind. It's necessary because it brings two characters together in a way that your average boat ride just wouldn't do, but if I'm being truthful - which I have to be - it's going to have ramifications for both characters beyond the boundaries of the additional chapter I was hoping to just slot in.

At this point, editing feels a lot like rewriting.

It's pretty disheartening to carve out great chunks of text and then spend ages trying to work out how to replace it with something better. And I need to make sure that every reference going forward to the scene I have decided to replace with this new more action-packed sequence is also edited in line with the changes.

I'm lazy. I knew this wasn't going to be easy, but it really doesn't stop you kind of hoping that it will be. (Just like I know at some point this book is going to be rejected by tens or possibly hundreds - depending how desperate I get - of agents, but at the same time I kind of hope it won't be, you know?)

And it makes me think about all the other changes I wanted to make, and how they're going to affect the rest of the book, and how much time they will take to rewrite...and then sigh huge despair-laden sighs that make my cat jump up off my lap (hooray!) because they're so enormous. 

What is it that Coldplay say? 'Nobody said it was easy. No one ever said it would be this hard. I'm going back to the start.'

Except, hopefully, the start's ok, in which case I'm going back to around chapter 18. Or maybe I'll just just keep checking Twitter and Facebook to see what's happening, and then google image Ryan Gosling.

Write place, write time

When do you write?

Where do you write?

For me, since forever, my favourite time of day for writing is pretty much the time of day when I should be sleeping. I don't know what it is. Maybe it's that I have to collect together all of the experiences of the day before I can manage to coagulate all that into something worth writing down. Or maybe it's just that writing can be hard, and so I put it off. In any case, it's rare for me to be all that productive before about 9pm. My best work is probably more of a midnight thing. Then I get up for work in the morning feeling like I've been hit by a train, and strangely, I'm way more productive in the first three hours there than in the remaining five.

Where...? Again, for me, that's always been bed. Now don't get all Rudey McCrudey about it. I'm fully dressed. I'm alone. Nothing dodgy is going on here. I just happen to be always cold, so bed, and usually under blankets and/or duvet is my preferred writing location. Desks are for work, and my work is not creative. Besides there's only one desk in my house and it's in the man cave - ergo, occupado.

So this weekend I straightened out the spare room (Spare Oom) and so here is the view from my new writing place, aka the girl cave:

You probably can't exactly make out what's going on here. So to the left is my new wardrobe (hence the straightening out of Spare Oom), in centre is Cisco - my husband's pet snake (don't ask) and around to the right, which you can't actually see at all, is a window, looking out over rooftops to a smallish nature reserve. It's a happy space. The light in the vivarium is actually pretty nice, and I put a few pics on top that make me smile. The rest of the clutter up there does not make me happy, but I figure once it's been there a while I'll probably stop noticing, as has happened with the rest of the junk in my house. (Oh and in case you're wondering, the little towl thing on my wardrobe is a hair turban - such a genius invention, but not at all relevant to the sanctuary of the writer's workshop aka Spare Oom aka girl cave.)

So when and where do you guys write? And share your blogs with me - I've been trying to search for them but either I'm stupid or Blogger is as complicated as Google+ (which is the most confusing thing ever).

Inspiration

I've always been a meganormous fan of YA lit. Specifically, YA lit with more pain than gain - something where all the responsibility falls to the teenagers, the world (or at least, life as they know it) must be saved, and there's a little romance along the way. Nothing wrong with taking a break from saving the world for a quick smooch, right? In this world, adults are generally either a) useless or b) evil or c) altogether gone. Imagine my surprise when I realised that I am an actual adult now and therefore fall into one of the categories above? I'd like to hope I'd make a brief cameo as 'well-intentioned adult most likely to die in the course of duty'.

Seriously, though, as a kid I think I had serious problems. I would virtually bookmark the passages where my favourite characters came close to death and read them over and over again. The pain - emotional or physical - was my favourite part. I don't know what this says about me, so let's move on.

This is a snapshot of my bookshelf:

Pretty random assortment. Ok, so the bottom shelf is mostly my husband's (except the cookery books and the thesaurus), but the other shelves are all mine. We have a little YA, a little chick lit, some classics and some more random stuff. If you can make out Nothing to Envy on the top shelf, well that's a book about life in North Korea that gave me a lot of inspiration when it came to the setting for Chase. There's a country that's pretty much cut itself off from the rest of the world, right? Delirium, Matched, The Host, all good YA. Love me some Phillip Pullman - that's more than good YA. That's more of the 'everybody should read this - as in right now' genre. Seriously, if you haven't read His Dark Materials, turn off your computer and go read it. So, so good.

I should also point out that I haven't read everything on my shelves - yet - and that they're double stacked. What you can't see there is John Marsden's Tomorrow When the War Began series, which is another must read. I read them when I was a teenager and loved them. They're about these kids in Australia who go off on a camping trip, and while they're away the country is invaded. So then they become, like, guerilla fighters, and blow heaps of stuff up. And they have seriously incestuous romances (not actually incestuous, you understand, just a little wife-swappy) and some of them die, and it's amazing. They made a film of the first one a few years ago, and it was so disappointing. I think a TV series would've been better. I digress.

Anyway, I am thoroughly in agreement with all those who say that to be a good writer, you have to be a good reader. Know what's out there, what you like, what you don't like, which ideas have been overdone and what could be developed into something that's truly yours.

And while you're reading, why not indulge in a little of this

Maybe one of these:

And make it the best damned day of your life. Because what's better than reading, writing and eating?

Field trips

Chase is set in a dystopian version of the UK at a time about 40 years after the Disassociation, when the country decided to cease all contact with the outside world. I can't really research what that would be like, since we seem to have been connected with the outside world since the dawn of ships, but I have been on a couple of field trips to get a sense for some of the places mentioned in the book. First up, the drowned fens:



Beautiful in a desolate sort of way. I wish I knew how to attach the sound recording I made so you could hear the reeds. When I say they were 'rush'ing in the wind, I mean it in the most onomatopaeic way possible. Ruuuussssssssssssssssssshhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

 

 

Next, a visit to the capital to take a look at Canary Wharf:

 

 

I mean, maybe it's the weather, but don't these places just look dystopian to you? Look at these guys -

Miserable bankers.

Anyway, so it turns out field trips can be fun. And useful. I'd already finished the first draft when I visited Canary Wharf, so seeing how huge it is has really made me think about the way I've written it. Definitely need to make some changes. Of course, in my vision of the future, the whole place has been destroyed by riots, but I think that part will have to be left to my imagination...

Next field trip: my brother has agreed to take me out on the water for a two-man canoe lesson. Should be interesting. Quality time out on the water with my bro could lead to some quality fratricide.



#amwriting

It has always been my ambition to be an author. I think at some point I must have nudged that dream into the category of 'fantasy', together with my other lifelong ambition to be besties with Kirsten Dunst circa. Bring It On. It's only relatively recently that I've thought, 'Hey, I could actually do this!' (Be an author, that is. I feel like Kirsten just isn't the same anymore. That ship has sailed.) So I wrote a book. It's called Half a World Away. It's a romance of the Katie Fforde variety, perhaps for a slightly younger generation (no offence Katie, I totally read your books, but I'm not sure many other people my age do). Of the several people I gave it to for general feedback, I think maybe three people actually finished it. No, four. And the feedback I received was not overwhelmingly positive. I was broken. I didn't actually do Dawson Leery crying, but I felt like I could. It was a punch in the gut.

Picture that bit in the second Twilight movie where Bella stares out of a window for four months.
That was me.

Anyway, despite all of that, the fact remained that I had written a novel. A 104 000 word novel, no less, proving - if nothing else - that I could sit and write 104 000 words, something I never knew about myself. And then an idea came for a new book, something completely different, and although I had a wedding to plan (did I mention I'm not the wedding planning type? That's not exclusive to weddings, actually. I am not good at planning), I couldn't help it. I started to write again.

The idea took root...I wrote the first few lines in an email to a colleague at work in June. I tried to put it off and focus on the wedding, but it was constantly niggling at me, like it wanted to be written. So when I got back from honeymoon, I started putting pen to paper. By 1 November, I had written 13 000 words. Then came Nanowrimo, and another 50 000. By January, the first draft was done at around 95 000 words. When I put the title at the top of the first page, I felt pretty good about myself. 'Hey girl,' I thought (my inner self sounds a little bit like feminist Ryan Gosling), 'You just wrote your second book. Congrats!'

Except this time around I knew I wasn't finished. I'd even saved the file on my computer with the file name '1st draft'. This time around, I was going to edit the beep out of this beep until it became the best beeping book you ever read in your whole beeped up life.

And so that's where you find me right now.

#amediting

Introducing...me

I'm not going to lie, this isn't the first time I've attempted a blog. I think I started one when we first got our dog a few years ago. That lasted for....one whole post. Then when we got engaged, I thought 'Yes! I will be one of those people who blogs about wedding planning!' But that only lasted for one post, too. (Turns out I'm not really the wedding planning type.) So now I am hoping that third time's the charm. Here I go.

My name is Kat. This is me.

Actually this is my cat, Indy. But that's me underneath - you might be able to just make out legs and super attractive slippers? Indy likes to sit on my lap pretty much any time I'm trying to write or use my laptop or whatever. Attention-seeker. On this occasion I was trying to edit - that big ol' manuscript you can see in the background is the first draft of my book. It's called Chase. Here's a snippet:

Anyway, so I thought I'd try again with the blogging thing. Any tips gratefully received - I'm hoping to get this book published at some point, so your thoughts and advice as to how to go about that would be appreciated!