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.

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?

#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.

 

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.

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.

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!