What do you do when the book you're writing is no good?

I'm writing a book. It's not any good. I don't know what to do.

The thing is, I planned it all out in advance - not the way I usually do things - and even now I can see how that story would work, how exciting it would be, what potential it has.

But I'm almost 10 000 words into the story and it's no good. It's actually really boring. And I'm not sure if I can fix it.

The thing is, which I'm not sure whether people who don't write books actually understand - the thing is, the characters aren't playing ball. They don't fit into the plot. They're not who I intended them to be, but they are who they are and I'm damned if I can change that. (I'm not sure that actually makes sense, by the way - I'm unlikely to be more or less damned whether I can or can't change their minds!) Anyway, I don't know what to do.

Plenty of people have told me to give up. Unusual advice, but what they really mean is - write the story you want to write. If you google 'should I write a story that I think will be successful' the answer will be a resounding no. Write the story you have in you to write. Everything else will be crap. I'm paraphrasing, obviously, but it turns out it's true. This, what I'm writing now, is crap. The story will do what it does and the characters will trail along after, miserable, like kids being dragged around a museum. God knows what the readers would make of that. If there's anything worse than being dragged around a boring museum, it's probably watching kids being dragged around a boring museum, whining and fidgeting and spoiling it for everyone else.

The thing is, I always knew this was going to be hard. Writing to a plan is so not me. I understand why the plan was necessary - you see, someone important was interested in this book and they wanted to see how it would work out. But I knew from day one that writing a plan would take all the fun out of it for me - because in writing, as in reading, the thrill is in finding out what's going to happen next. In seeing characters develop and plots unfold. All that's gone when you know the ending from the start. It's much worse than reading the last page before you've finished chapter one - I've been known to do that sometimes and I can't say it's ever spoiled a book for me because the joy is finding out how someone got from A to B. I know all that with this book and it's officially spoiled. All the dramatic bits, like the big battle scene on the beach, our heroine wearing her wedding dress and blowing monsters to bits, are completely undone by the fact that none of it is a surprise - not her strength, or the wedding, or the arrival of the monsters in the first place.

But this felt like my big chance. Like, if I turn it down, there won't be another opportunity. Like I'm saying 'thanks, but no thanks', which is not at all what I'm trying to say. And so that's the thing.

A long break

I think I stopped writing this blog because I was doubly afraid - one, that someone would read it and two, that nobody would. I imagine that's a common fear for writers. That feeling of wanting to be read but not wanting to be judged. That fear of rejection.

I thought of you while I was away. I wrote this for you. I hope you like it.

I haven’t blogged in ages, for a number of reasons. But I’m in India right now for work and I wanted to make a record of my trip in case I don’t come here again. I wanted to tell you about the drive up from Chandigarh into the Himalayas around 180 degree bends on roads that were paved in a single track down the middle. I wanted to tell you about the different sounds of the driver’s horn, which said alternately, ‘toot toot’ (watch out, I’m right behind you!), ‘toot toot’ (I want to come past), ‘tooooot tooot’ (Move out of the way), ‘toot toooot toot tooot’ (get the hell out of my way!). I wanted to tell you how the houses up there weren’t nestled or perched or any of those adjectives people use to describe mountain living. They were slapped on the side of the mountain, fixed with all the permanency of prit stick, looking almost like someone who’s standing on a ledge, gripping the wall but leaning forward dangerously just to see how far there is to fall.

I wanted to tell you what it feels like to be foreign, to have no idea where you’re going or what you’re doing and to be completely in someone else’s hands. To be stared at for the colour of your skin, or your hair, or your eyes. To be unsure what people are thinking when they look at you. To have your head so full of preconceptions that it’s hard to sort reality from the stories you’ve heard.

I wanted to describe to you what it’s like to sit in Delhi traffic, putting your life in the hands of your taxi driver and watching kids on motorbikes wind in and out of the cars and buses that sit, horns blaring, exhausts blowing, creeping forward inch by delicate inch. To be idling next to a bus crammed full of people of all ages, lines of what – at best – looks like sick, trailing from the windows, and to catch the eye of a shy toddler, who smiles toothily and waves. Or to have small children knocking on the window of your taxi begging for food or money when you have a grubby thousand rupee bill in your hands, waiting to pay the driver.

 

I wanted to tell you about the taste of real naan bread and the special kind of anxiety that comes with eating a meal that tastes delicious, but in surroundings that look to be on first name terms with e coli. If I could describe the texture of the air in the spice market, how it caught in the back of my throat and burned in my chest...but it's not the kind of description I can do justice.

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.