IWSG: Jaded

It’s the first Wednesday of the month, time for

Alex J. Cavanaugh’s Insecure Writer’s Support Group.  

First off, congrats and thanks to Alex and his admins—Joy Campbell, Michelle Wallace, Joylene Nowell Butler, Susan Gourley/Kelley, L. Diane Wolfe, and Lynda Young—for putting the new IWSG blog page together.  It looks great!  And it reminds me how grateful I am to have so many writer friends in the blogosphere, even if I haven’t been around much lately.

Truth is, I would never have enjoyed the success I’ve been gifted with had it not been for my many, many virtual friends.  More than anything, I love when I have the occasion to actually meet one of those who’ve previously been contained within the boundaries of my computer monitor. 

 Such was yesterday, when I finally met an author friend of mine, someone I’d connected with over the summer via Facebook.  And after much cajoling, she finally gave me permission to read her book.  Yeah, long story, but it comes down to…well…insecurity.  After reading my book, she’d put me on an absurdly high pedestal and feared I might not like her debut novel, a self-published contemporary romance and a step away from my usual go-to genre.

This got me thinking about how critical I’ve become lately.  It’s certainly not intentional, more like a hazard of my new professions, writing and editing, and something I’m working hard to rein in so I can just sit back and enjoy reading books like everyone else.  Granted, I’m still of the mind that every author, no matter how they find their way to publication, should do their research and work hard to hone their craft before hitting that final button.  But what’s most important—and what I’ve lost sight of—about any story is the…well…the story, not the grammar or punctuation or any of those things that have been distracting me lately.  It all goes back to the story.

 So I’m vowing to get back to my reader roots and just…you know…read!

What about you, my writer friends, have you found yourself more critical since venturing down the path toward publication?  If so, dontcha just hate that?!

 

Oh yeah, one last thing…  I was recently invited to join a remarkable group of authors on Facebook and here on Blogger, where we’ve launched a brand new blog.  We are called Dauntless, and I invite you all to drop on by and say hello.  I think you might recognize an old friend or two lurking about!

How Do You Measure Your Own Success?

Last week, in response to my post for the Insecure Writer’s Support Group, many commenters spoke of how a writer’s focus often changes once he or she is agented, signs a book deal, and/or gets published.  It only makes sense that this would happen.  Just as our dreams and careers are not static, neither should our blogs remain fixed. 

The purpose to my blog was to chronicle my journey toward publication.  In the beginning, though I had a book, I had no idea if it was saleable or if I could even consider myself an actual writer.  I met others along the way who were exactly where I was on the journey and many others who were farther along—agented and hoping beyond all hope for a publishing contract.  And still others who had their contract or were even already published. 

I enjoy reading each writer’s contribution, studying their progress, and partaking of their generous advice and experience.  I’ve never felt any jealousy but rather a sense of encouragement that it is all, in fact, possible somehow, if I just work hard enough.  But even having said that, there has to be some measurement of success along the way, some way that we, in our own right, encourage ourselves to continue, to not give up. 

For each of us, I imagine, it’s quite different.  I know when I started blogging, I was excited if one person read and commented on my posts.  Then it became all about the number of followers I had and how many I was adding each month.  After my numbers increased, I measured my success by the number of comments I had for each post.  I still do both of these to some extent, but I’ve become less obsessed with the overall numbers.

In the past few months, it’s been more about my book and who’s added it to their Goodreads TBR pile, but that seems rather shortsighted of me.  Now, all I can think about—the one true way in which I can gauge my own success—is by my writing.  That means I have to write another book. 

Over the last two-plus years, I’ve often wondered if this whole experience is not just some kind of fluke.  I’ve asked myself if I could ever duplicate it, if I could ever do it again.  So that’s how I’ll be calculating my success now.  Can I do it again?  Can I plot and write another novel worth publishing? 

I have my doubts.  Serious ones, too.  I’m working on another story, a sequel to The Mistaken.  In fact, I was flying along in the outline phase until my edits came in from my publisher for the first book.  Then I came to a screeching halt.  Afterwards, one of my dogs died and the other got very sick.  I know once my son goes off to college out-of-state in a little less than two weeks, I’ll have all the time in the world to focus on my new WIP and move it along again.  Still, there’s that part of me that thinks I’ll never be able to do it again.  But I’ve always been of the mind that if I did it once, I can do it again.  God, I sure hope so.

So what about you—how do you measure your own success?    

            

The Origins Blogfest

Yeah, yeah, I know, I’m such a party girl, but I couldn’t resist this particular blogfest.  Co-hosted by DL Hammons, Creepy Query Girl KatieMills, Alex J. Cavanaugh and Matthew MacNish, the Origins Blogfest is the perfect place to share how my writing dreams began.

Unlike so many of the talented writers I’ve met here in the blogosphere, my writing dream is a fairly new concept.  I’ve always loved to write, but I never once thought about making it a career or pursuing publication.  For me, it was more about helping my son in school and not appearing the idiot when I emailed friends and family. 

I’ve always loved to read, but I’ve never read something and thought, gee, I could do that.  Well, maybe after reading Twilight, but that’s another post altogether.  Anyway, my journey began rather abruptly. 

In March of 2010, I downloaded a new CD onto my iPod.  It was 30 Seconds to Mars’ This Is War CD.  On it was a song called Hurricane.  It was a breathtakingly clear and warm day here in Seattle—in other words, a minor miracle—and I decided to take my little convertible out for a spin around Lake Sammamish, ‘cause, you know, when the sun comes out, the top goes down. 

(Mine is dark blue!)

So there I am, driving with the sun in my face and my tunes blaring when this new song starts playing.  The tune really struck me, but it was the lyrics that hit me hardest.  They said:

Tell me would you kill to save a life

Tell me would you kill to prove you’re right…

Do you really want me dead or alive

To torture for my sins

It made me wonder:  What could make a man do something really bad, something completely against his nature, and could he ever find redemption, find his way back to the man he once was?  That was a pretty powerful concept for me, and, after having yet another recurring nightmare of something terrible that had once happened to me, I decided I would try to make sense of it all and answer my own question.  Hence, THE MISTAKEN was born.  Or the idea of it anyway. 

The strangest part of writing this novel is that it came to me whole, like all in one moment.  I just had to write it all down in an outline first, then type it all up.  And as I was doing all this, it was like there was someone or something possessing me, or at the very least, standing over my shoulder, whispering into my ear, telling me exactly what to write. 

I simply cannot explain it in any other way.  I mean, surely it wasn’t me.  I’ve never written much of anything.  I have no training, no idea what components go into writing a novel or creating a cohesive plot.  Yet there was, a real story, and a compelling one at that.  And it was a fast read, too, lots of action, lots of emotion, everything I like in a book. 

Now, it was so far from perfect as to be laughable, but, over time, and with the help of many, many talented critique partners, most notably Lisa L. Regan, Tara Rendall, and Jeff O’Handley, The Mistaken took on a polished gleam worthy of querying, and, I hope, even publication.  Someday.  Fingers crossed. 

So now I’ve found a new passion in writing, in creating characters and plot.  I’ve learned a great deal in the last 22 months, and I plan on putting that all to good use.  Yep, that’s right, I just started writing my second novel, tentatively title Parasite. 

Writing has changed my life in so many fantastic and unexpected ways.  It’s given me a new purpose, a dream of my very own.  And it’s brought people into my life, wonderful, talented, loving people whom I now call my friends.  That alone is worth more that gold.

So what’s your story?  How did your writing dreams begin? 

Oh, and by the way, I just won a SECOND round entry in Cupid's Literary Connection Blind Speed Dating Contest.  My entry here went up today and judging will go through Wednesday.  Feel free to comment!  I'd love to hear what you think.  Fingers crossed I make it to round 3!

The Déjà Vu Blogfest

Today, I am participating in DL Hammon’s Déjà Vu Blogfest cohosted by Creepy Query Girl’s, Katie Mills, The World is my Oyster’s, Lydia Kang, and Nicole Ducleroir of One Significant Moment at aTime.  This blogfest gives participants the chance to resubmit their best posts for the benefit of all those who might have missed it the first time around.  I look forward to reading as many of the participants’entries as physically possible, and maybe make a few new friends in the process. 

The posts I’m most proud of are those I wrote on craft:  One on setting and another tension.  But the one I’ve chosen to enter for this bloghop has received the most hits and continues to do so every week.  I first posted this on July 13, 2011, and while my perspective has changed slightly, I still believe in the message.

Stories Don’t Happen in a Vacuum

I knew I would have to come up with something to post about today, but when I woke up, I still hadn’t thought of anything new, that is until I read today’s post at BookEnds Lit Agency.  Today is Workshop Wednesday at BookEnds, the day agent Jessica Faust posts one of the queries she’s received for critiquing, kind of like Janet Reid does at Query Shark.

I love query critiques.  I think it is the single most effective way to know what does and doesn’t work in a query.  Now, I don’t always agree with Ms. Faust’s opinion.  Case in point, a few weeks ago, she critiqued this query and loved it.  I thought the query was vague, at best, and had many of the qualities that agents advise writers not to include.  But she loved the “southern rhythm” of the voice.  Yeah, I didn’t get that at all, and I lived in the south for awhile, but whatever, just like books, it’s subjective and if she liked it then kudos to the author.  Well done!

But this week’s critique struck a nerve with me because Ms. Faust alluded to something I hear over and over again when agents are critiquing queries.  After reading the first two paragraphs of the query, she more or less said, this is all backstory; the real story starts here.  In other words, cut all this crap out and get to the meat of the story.  While I agree the query needs a lot of work, I find issue with the fact that the agent automatically thinks the first two-thirds of the query, and therefore the book, is all backstory.

In my opinion, this is the story, at least part of it.  It is how the author wrote it to give it structure and body, a reference point from which to contrast the conflict.  It bothers me that the agent thinks that everything that came before what she considers the core of the story is somehow irrelevant or that the story goes off track.  Yes, the author should have written the query differently to show the progression of the story and the importance of that progression. 

She implied subtly that the story might be about something else, or perhaps that was just the agent inferring that idea.  But even still, that doesn’t mean all those points the writer thought important enough to include in her query are not crucial to the story.  Some of the commenters, in fact, seemed very interested in the writer’s story, calling out the fact that those first two paragraphs were simply acts one and two.

My point is that agents toss aside stories based on assumptions that the reader doesn’t want to know all that happened before, that they simply want to get to the meat of the story.  Well, okay, I don’t need to know everything that happened to the nineteen-year-old protagonist during her first seventeen or eighteen years unless it’s relevant to the story, but from age nineteen on, all the things that happen to her forge her into the woman she becomes and adds dimension to her reasoning, to how she handles the conflict.  Stories don’t happen in a vacuum.  We need to care about the protagonist and her journey and we do this through knowing and understanding their history. 

I often wonder why everyone is always in such a hurry to get to the end.  It’s all about instant gratification so we can move on to the next thing.  Why not savor the time spent with a story and let yourself get immersed in the simmering heat of the layers as they buildup?  I’m not saying that everything the query writer put in her query is essential.  Personally, it comes off more like historical romance, not historical fiction, and so definitely not my thing, but I get that those details are important to understanding why there even is a conflict. 

Could you imagine if Winston Groom had to query Forrest Gump in today’s market?  Some agents would likely say to cut all that backstory about Forrest as a small child or in high school, but it is those details in the early chapters that show how Forrest changes later in life, how he manages to deal with all the drama that’s thrown his way.  How can we know if we weren’t privy to the backstory?

All this relates to me personally because last week I rewrote my query, for what must be the fifteenth time, based on advice from Stephanie DeVita in her post last week titled Slow Summer, where she says, “In most of the queries that I read, the writer isn’t giving me the most thrilling aspect of their book, the crucial element that should make me desperate to ask for more pages. In other cases, it’s unclear if that pivotal element is even there.” 

So I cut all the “backstory” out of my query and just alluded to it, then got right into the major point of the conflict.  But now I worry that any agent who requests pages will think the first third of my novel is all backstory when, in fact, it is the story, or part of it anyway.  Since the story is all about a man who changes, who becomes a different man due to some pretty terrible things that happen to him, that first third of the book is the setup.  It determines what he was like at first and how those events twisted him into a different man, made him act a certain way and do that one awful thing that drives the story.  The rest of the book is how he deals with the repercussions of those decisions.  Why would any reader care about how he changed and what he did if they didn’t know his “backstory?”

And by the way, I hate that word, backstory.  It makes it feel like all those early words are somehow illegitimate, a bastard to be cast aside.  Yes, it matters how that information is presented, that we feel it is part of the actual story and not simply dumped there in a lazy attempt to give context, but I like to think of it as the ice cream in my sundae.  It’s all those yummy bits on top that make it special, but you can’t just eat the yummy bits.  You have to savor it properly with the ice cream set below.  Otherwise, it’s not a sundae.

_______

As an aside to this original post, I’d like to say that backstory in a query, while important, should only amount to a few words in a single line, and only if the content is of the utmost importance to the heart of the story. 

Notes on Craft: Setting

Yesterday, I was reading Natalie Whipple’s post on World Building where she discusses how to write about setting in a novel.  She suggests focusing on the most important details, those that have immediate relevancy, that matter most to the character, what stands out to them, or what might foreshadow later events.  I think her approach is right on the money, but I also think she left out an important factor:  Emotion.

Setting in a novel is more than just the physical surroundings.  It is the social and cultural aspects of the period, the fashions people wear and why they wear them, the ideas the characters draw upon, and the historical and spiritual perspective or lens through which they view the world.

Most importantly, setting not just the place or even the time, it’s how the characters of a novel are affected by it, how they feel about their surroundings.  They must have a functioning affiliation with it.  The writer should permit the character to both discover those emotions then infuse them into the story.  That is what makes the setting important, to have immediate relevancy.  It is also what makes the character’s world come alive for the reader. 

A writer can spend pages describing what the countryside looks like on a breezy fall afternoon, but unless I know exactly how the character feels about all those details, how those details are affecting them at that moment or relates to their past, it will fall flat.  Because while I do want to know where the character lives, I don’t truly care unless I know the character does.

I’m not the greatest writer of setting.  In fact, when it comes to description, I’m probably mediocre, at best.  The first few drafts of my novel had very little detail in regard to place, and virtually none on time.  But as I progressed, I kept adding layers, including details about San Francisco, where the majority of story takes place.  Yet I never really describe what The City looks like.  What I did do was infuse the protagonist’s feelings about the place in which he lives.  From that was borne a symbol that repeatedly popped up when the character was frustrated, melancholy, or facing disaster.  That symbol is fog.  It is a legendary pillar of San Francisco’s lore.  It is also cold and oppressive.

My protagonist is a Brit, a native Londoner whose parents transplanted him and his toddler brother to Melbourne, Australia when he was twelve.  As a young adult, he yearns to return to London, but is distracted by a beauty with whom he falls in love while traveling through San Francisco.  He also falls for with The City, whose climate reminds him of London, where his fondest childhood memories are grounded.

He revels in his new-found freedom, his emancipation from his family overseas.  San Francisco becomes a symbol of his liberty.  But that independence is curtailed when his brother follows him to the States.  He becomes saddled with the chore of caring for his irresponsible sibling.  The fog becomes a symbol of his loss of autonomy.  And when his brother’s life is jeopardized by poor choices, forcing the protagonist into a life and death struggle to save him, the fog evolves to symbolize his battle.  It’s not until the end of the story that fog burns off, allowing the sun to return to his life.

The setting in my novel evolved into a character, rich with emotion.  This is the only way I know how to write setting.  The steep streets, the cable cars, the sparkling Bay, the vibrant cultures, none of that means anything until it means something to the characters.

So what does setting mean to you as a writer?  How do you infuse the character of a time and place into your stories?             

      

IWSG: What Gives?

It’s the first Wednesday of the month, time for Alex Cavanaugh’s Insecure Writer’s Support Group.  I’ve been participating in this group since its inception, and have written of my many frustrations and insecurities.  After last month’s post, I asked myself, “Do I complain too much?”  I thought I probably did and planned on writing about that today, but once again, I found myself discouraged by events, or the lack thereof.  So if you’ll be so kind as to indulge me, I’d like to get something off my chest.

As a writer with a novel ready to go, I’ve been busy polishing my query.  It’s been a while since I actually queried any agents, but that’s because I still have a few requests pending.  But even though I’ve emailed the agents who are currently reading my novel, I haven’t heard back.  And that’s discouraging.

I figure it’s because my story is not quite ready yet, not quite there.  If it was, wouldn’t they have called me by now?  So, since sending out those requests, I’ve further revised my manuscript based on feedback from other agents.  I feel pretty confident now, because I’ve been busy reading and studying books on craft.  The most recent two, The Fire in Fiction and Writing the Breakout Novel, were written by literary agent Donald Maass.  After reading them, I noted all the important factors that make a novel great, and I can honestly say, I’ve included most of those, at least the ones appropriate for my genre.  But even though I’ve made some important revisions, those factors were already in there, before my last round of requests.  So what’s the problem then?

I have a premise and plot that are plausible with inherent conflict and gut emotional appeal, and with my unusual twist, it’s pretty original.  It has high personal stakes that continually escalate, and I believe the reader can sympathize with the strong protagonist, who while is sometimes dark, he also has inner conflict, self-regard, and strong relationships with the other characters.  The voice is authoritative, clearly articulating a personal belief system through dialogue that snaps with tension and immediacy, and the setting is linked with emotional details.  And most importantly, from the word go, it’s filled with constant tension.

So what gives?  I can only surmise it’s the writing, though I’ve been told by my critique partners that it’s pretty darn good.  But is that enough?  Hmm, I wonder.  Maybe it’s just the timing and the fact that adult thrillers aren’t selling like they used to.  I keep thinking, if I just had more agents reading it, someone is bound to love it as much as I do, as much as my beloved and talented critique partner, Lisa Regan does. 

But to do that, I have to have a kickass query.  After Matthew MacNish critiqued my query last week, I worked every day to fine tune those points he and his followers commented on.  I feel I clarified those key questions and am now ready to go.  Of course, now it the holiday season, so I’d be crazy to start querying before New Year’s.  It’s just one more thing to frustrate me.  But I suppose, if I’ve learned one thing in the last twenty months, it’s patience. 

What about you?  What frustrates you about writing, querying, and publishing?  And what have you learned from your frustrations?                

Notes on Craft: Tension

I love stories, whether they’re told by mouth, expressed through song, or acted out on film.  But more than anything, I love books.  I suppose the one feature that makes books different from these other genres is the pace at which the story unfolds.  I can read a book at whatever pace I choose.  Some books are only good enough for short bathroom breaks, while others are so well written I can barely put it down long enough to get my chores done.  So what’s the difference between them?  What makes a book a page-turner?

There are many elements that make up a good story.  While characters may or may not be likeable, they must be vivid and dynamic.  Dialogue must snap with electricity and be free of accompanying actions that bog down the pace.  Every scene must crackle with both inner and outer conflict conveyed through specific and identifiable turning points.  Setting must come alive not through eloquent writing, but through how the characters wrestle with their emotional ties to it.  The voice, more than just syntax, should sing clearly in detail and delivery, articulating a belief system and personal perspective while overwhelming the reader with authority and relieving us of skepticism.  So how does a writer accomplish each of these?  That’s easy.  Through tension.

As writers, we understand that a story has ebb and flow, a cycle of ups and downs.  But you cannot construct a story that is always on the upswing.  A reader cannot appreciate such an upswing unless there is a downswing with which to contrast it to.  And in order to keep the reader’s attention through a downswing, you must maintain tension.  Literary agent, Donald Maass, calls this micro-tension in his book “The Fire in Fiction.”  In it he says:

“Micro-tension is the moment-by-moment tension that keeps the reader in a constant state of suspense over what will happen, not in the story, but in the next few seconds.”

Maass portends that micro-tension is vital in all aspects of a novel, whether it be in dialogue, in action sequences, or in exposition.  And more importantly, “micro-tension...comes from emotions, and not just any old emotions, but conflicting emotions.” 

Donald Maass of the Maass Agency

Dialogue in a novel should never be truly natural, which is often stilted with interruptions.  If dialogue in a novel were written naturally, we would all be bored to death, wondering if the speaker was ever going to get around to his or her point.  Maass writes, “In dialogue, it’s not the information itself, but the doubt about the facts and the skepticism of the deliverer.”  It is “emotional, not intellectual,” that as readers, “we don’t want to know if the debate will settle the point of contention, but whether the debaters will reconcile.”   Also important, dumping information via dialogue only works “if it is infused with tension, and even then, it must be a tug-of-war.”  

This element of emotion is equally important in action.  Emotion, especially contrasting emotion, is what provides energy for each scene.  The same can be said for exposition, where the use of conflicting emotion keeps the reader involved.  They want and need to know if the characters will resolve their conflict.  This is where we learn of their “contradictions, dilemmas, opposing impulses, and clashing ideas…It puts the character’s heart and mind in peril,” explains Maass.

One area in a novel that frequently looses steam due to a lack of tension is backstory.  This is at its worst when backstory is used up front, before the story even has a chance to get started.  We lose interest simply because we don’t care about all those bits the author thinks we need to know in order for the story to make sense.  James Scott Bell calls this a first page mistake and warns never to front load with backstory, noting it will only serve to stall instead.  Maass contends that backstory may be added as long as it is not the point.  The point, he says, “is to set up the conflict of emotions and inner tension.”  He suggests using the past to create present conflict, that this will “stir curiosity to find out what will happen.”

So while tension is not the only aspect of a successful page-turner, it is of primary importance.  After reading “The Fire in Fiction,” I read through my own manuscript.  For the most part, I did have tension is every paragraph, but I where it lagged, I pumped it up using the techniques described in Maass’s book.  I highly recommend it as a necessary tool on craft for every writer. 

Read through your own manuscript.  Is tension present in every chapter, paragraph, or sentence? 

Giving Thanks!

            I had another post planned for today, but since it’s a short week, I thought I’d take this time to share what I’m most thankful for instead, aside from my family. 

First off, thank you to all those who offered me advice on last week’s post.  It has helped me a great deal.  Even more thanks to Lora Rivera for suggesting The Poisonwood Bible in her comment, and to Julie Musil for her post on the book, Hate List.  Both recommendations have helped me decide on how to proceed with my WIP.

Then there’s you, my followers and fellow writer-bloggers.  As writers, we know this is a rather lonely avocation, but we feel pulled toward it regardless.  Lucky for our generation, we have the Internet and Blogger, or whatever service you use, to connect with folks you’d normally never have the opportunity to connect with.  But just because they’re there, doesn’t mean there is automatically a connection.  You have to work at it.  And it’s not always easy either.  So for what it’s worth, I’d like to say how grateful I am that you’ve all allowed me to make that connection with you.  I feel blessed to have so many other writers who are willing to share, teach, advise, or just talk with me.  What would have been lonely is now anything but.  So thank you!  I really don’t think I could do this without you.

            Within my group of online acquaintances, I’ve made quite a few honest-to-God friends, people who exchange manuscripts with me and others who enjoy exchanging emails.  There’s even one writer I get to interact with in person!  *GASP*  Her name is Jennifer Hillier.  I won a signed copy of her book, Creep, last summer and quickly became a fan, but what’s even more remarkable is that we actually became friends.

She lives an hour away, so from time to time, we meet up somewhere in the middle and have lunch and chat about all things writing.  Since the Seattle Puget Sound Area is not exactly the friendliest place on earth, I was grateful just to have a new friend, but even more so since she was a fellow writer, and even more because we write in the same genre, so we understand each other in ways others may not.  But alas, as is my luck, Jenny is moving back to her home town and country, Toronto, Canada.  This saddens me more than I can say, but I’m grateful just to have met her and feel privileged to call her my friend.  That won’t change just because she’s moving away.

(God, I wish I had a picture of us together!)

            Last, but certainly not least, I am eternally grateful to God for bringing Lisa Regan  into my life.  Sure, she is a fellow writer, and even writes in the same genre, but what we share is so much more intense and profound than just our writing.  We share our lives, the nitty gritty, the happiest of moments, and everything in between.  Yes, it began as a critiquing partnership and I can honestly say we have helped each other become better writers, but even though we’ve never actually met in person, Lisa knows me better than just about any human being on the face of the earth, save my husband.  Then again, she knows things even he does not.  *Shhh*  I know I couldn’t have survived the insanity that is my life without her.  I love her like an identical twin sister.

            So for you, my followers and fellow writers, for Jenny and for Lisa, I am incredibly thankful and I want the world, or anyone who is interested anyway, to know just how much.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING, MY FRIENDS!

              

In Search of a Little Writerly Advice

So I’m super busy this week and don’t have much time to write or visit until later, but I wanted to ask you all for a little advice.  When you’re starting on a new project, a new book, how do you choose the point of view?  What’s your process?  I know a lot of you write YA and so first person is the preferable choice.  I feel the same way and greatly enjoy those adult thrillers written in the first person. That’s why I wrote my first novel in first person.  But now that I’m starting out on my second book, the choice isn’t nearly as clear. 

My first book was primarily about two people, so I chose to write in their voices.  This time around, however, it’s proving a little more difficult.  I really want to write about the whole family involved in this story, not just because I need all their POVs to tell the story, but rather because they each play a distinct role in how the story plays out, yet they are each unaware of the other’s role.  So they’ll each be holding onto their own pieces of the puzzle and will play each one according to who does what before them. 

So my question is this, because this story is such an emotional one, I wanted to tell it in first person, but I worry about having four voices and hopping back and forth between them.  Not that I haven’t seen this done, because I have, but I worry that it will be difficult for me as a still-unpublished-author to get this story publish.

Since the story starts out with one of the four main characters—the antagonist— having a mental and emotional breakdown and being hospitalized, I thought of just having the story unfold during therapy, but not just for him—for all of his family, since his problem is related to the family dynamic.  This can be supplemented through journaling, as well, and all the details are revealed to the therapist treating her patient and his family as a whole.  But once the main conflict is revealed, the action will be in real-time, so to speak.  Not in flashbacks, memories, or recollections. 

Or I can use the old standby and write in the third person from all four POVs.  But then again, I worry about all that head-hopping.  And since the conflict originates years in the past, I don’t want to tell the story in a purely linear fashion, but rather slightly out of sequence so the details can build until the story reaches the present day and the reader learns how the sins of the past have affected those living in the present.  

So I know most of you don’t write or perhaps even read adult thrillers, but I’d be interested in what you think.  How would you tackle it?  What is your process for choosing POV and revealing a series of events over a very long period of time while trying to keep everything in the moment?  Have you ever had to tackle a story like this?  

IWSG: Dreams vs. Expectations

Today is another entry in

Alex J. Cavanaugh’s Insecure Writer’s Support Group

            I’ve been following a common thread lately in some of my favorite blogs.  It expands on an ideal most writers postulate:  Getting published will make me happy.  What’s not to believe about this statement?  This is our ultimate goal, is it not?  We write.  We edit.  We query.  We submit.  We get published…maybe.  We know the road is laced with potholes of disappointment, but we believe in ourselves and our stories, so we carry on. 

Keep the dream alive!  Yeah!!

            But what if the dream is not what we expect it to be?  I first pondered this a few weeks ago after having lunch with my friend, Jennifer Hillier, author of Creep.  Not only do I hold Jenny in high esteem for her talent and skill, she is someone I relate to on a personal level.  We’re both women writers who write similar stories in the same genre, and we live near each other, so we chat about writing and blogging and books and all that sort of thing. 

            At the time of our most recent lunch date, Jenny was in the final throes of her last edit before sending her latest manuscript, Freak, off to her agent and editor.  She expressed what a brutally difficult experience it was, nothing like the first time when she wrote Creep.  She lamented that it would never be as enjoyable as it was that first time around.  She was under contract now and had deadlines and expectations to meet.  As I listened to her, I couldn’t help but think of that old adage, “Be careful what you wish for.  You just might get it!”

            Then on October 17^th, Natalie Whipple wrote a blog post she called Smelling the Roses. Or Whatever wherein she bemoaned how obsessed she had been over the last five years with getting published.  More than merely driven, but rather “maybe more like desperate,” she wrote.  She said she had put all her “feelings of self-worth into publishing” and she “would never, ever be happy if I didn't sell a book.”  Then, almost immediately, Natalie said that selling her book, Transparent, didn’t make her happy after all.  It seems that publishing wasn’t all she had expected it to be, that in the end, it’s really all about the writing—the book itself—not the publishing of it. 

            On Tuesday (November 1^st), Rachelle Gardner wrote a post called Writing Ain’t Easy.  In it, she wrote about one of her less-experienced writer friends who wondered if her “lack of confidence would dissipate as she gets more experienced in writing,” to which another, more experienced writer friend replied, “The complete lack of confidence will likely persist and even become worse as you progress.”

So, in other words, unlike most jobs where people become better and more comfortable the longer they perform their tasks, writing will always be difficult.  It will always be rife with insecurities and self-doubt.  Even my blogger friend Joylene Nowell Butler commented on my Bad News Isn’t Always a Bad Thing post last week, saying, “One day there is that sale, and while you believe wholeheartedly that your life is about to change forever, it's not in the way you think.” 

I’m getting the message that having my book published might not live up to my lofty expectations.  It might not make me feel any better as a writer.  It might not make me feel successful.  And, in and of itself, it might not be what makes me happy.  Writers who have had the same dreams that I have, and who have achieved them, now tell me it only gets harder, and I might not ever feel what it is I want to feel when I’m done.

But I suppose writing is like anything else.  When we reach our goal, we bask in our success for a short time then move on to something else, a new thing that will challenge us, that we can enjoy for the sheer effort.  Being totally satisfied means not having the need to accomplish something else.  Well, that’s not me.  I am many things, but static is not one of them.  So maybe I’m a bit jaded now, but at least I know what to expect.  Or what not to expect anyway.          

Bad News Isn't Always a Bad Thing

Being a writer is a tough gig.  There’s very little payback and we generally work alone.  Yes, it’s true, this new age of blogging has allowed us to reach out and connect with others, more so than we would have been able to at any other time.  But still, we are pretty much alone, stuck in our own heads, making up strange tales set in strange lands with strange people. 

            We experience minor victories from time to time.  We string together coherent sentences, then paragraphs and chapters, plots and subplots, until, finally, we have a book.  We are so proud.  Not many people even attempt to write a book let alone finish one.  Afterwards, we read and revise, edit and add content.  We scrub and buff until it shines like an uncut diamond.  Then, if we’re lucky, we find amazing critique partners who help us polish our gem until its sparkles like Edward Cullen on a sunny day. 

            When we’re ready, we go through the whole process again with our query letter.  Scribble, scratch, buff and shine.  We are not daunted by the research necessary to find the appropriate agents to send our query.  We compile our list and format our submissions, cringing with raw nerves when we hit the send button.

            Then we wait.  And wait some more—more and more and more and more.  Every time we get a new email, we wonder if it could be the one.  And when it’s not, when it’s nothing more than another rejection, we shrink a little lower in our seats, lose a little more confidence.  We may even cry. 

            But then we get one, maybe even two or three, or—good God almighty—four:  a request for pages, a partial or the whole damn thing.  A happy dance ensues, perhaps a bit of screaming and raising of one’s arms towards God in heaven. 

But not for long.  Gotta get those pages out.   

            Then we wait.  And wait some more—more and more and more and more.  We thought we were tense before, but now with our baby out in the big, bad world, we’re ready to spin like a top we’re so wound up.  Again, every time a new email arrives, we wonder.  But it’s been so long, we almost forget.  Until we see that agent’s name above the subject line with our book title right below.  Our hands shake, our breathing gets shorter and more labored as we open it.

Then the world comes crashing down around our ears.  Utter devastation.  That first rejection of our full manuscript is unbearably painful, but eventually, after days of tears and heartbreak, we brush ourselves off and move forward.

            The next rejection hurts, as well, but there’s nothing really to glean from it because, once again, it’s just a simple no thanks, but good luck to you.  Nothing to tell us we’re on the right track or not.  So, though our pride is stinging and our confidence is waning, we trudge onward, perhaps making a revision or two, just a tweak here and there to make us feel like we’re improving it somehow.  And out go more queries in sporadic bursts. 

            Then we wait.  Again.  But this time, we’re a bit numb.  Our skin is definitely getting thicker.  We’ve learned to put those queries out of mind and get on with life.  And so, when another request comes in, we’re excited, but wary, especially since we know this is likely just a favor from our friend’s agent.  But it’s a request nonetheless.  So out go those pages, one more time.  We sigh, thinking of the long wait before us, cringing at that stupid typo in the very first paragraph on the very first page that we didn’t notice until after we’d already sent it.    

            But then another request comes in.  Hope!  Pages go out.  Another long sigh.  Another long wait.  And then another request.  Even more hope!  Sigh.  Wait.  And wait some more.  And more and more and more.

            Then something remarkable happens.  It’s not a good thing, mind you, but neither is it entirely bad.  Yeah, it’s a rejection and so it hurts a little, but the skin is pretty tough now and the pain is just a tingle of disappointment rather than a ripping out of the heart.  It was improbable anyway.  This was, after all, that favor request.  But this time the email is not a one line denial of interest.  And while the agent is “just short of enthusiastic enough to take it on and fight for it,” she says “there’s a lot of wonderful stuff in there” and “goodness knows, it was very close.”  So even though she suggests a change in the protagonist’s name, it’s cool.  It’s an easy fix.  And if that’s the worst thing she can think of, there’s reason to feel good.  That’s the best rejection letter ever!

            My point here is that we get a lot more bad news than good, but bad news is not always a bad thing.  Sometimes it lifts our sagging confidence, offers a push back onto the road, granted with a little coarse correction.  We know we’re getting closer to our destination.  We can feel it.  The trick is to not give up, even when the bad news is really bad.  You never know when a little ray of sunshine will come along and brighten your otherwise dreary day.  And hey, there are still a few requested pages out there.  And after that, there are always more agents to query.  It’s not the end game yet.           

                                             

IWSG: Making Progress

           I am ashamed.  Deeply so.  I used to read the blog posts about other writers who just couldn’t seem to push through that wall, who weren’t inspired, who struggled with their plot, who wailed about not being able to create dimensional characters.  And you know what?  I just didn’t get it.  My experience, up ‘til now at least, was so easy breezy.  The words never failed to come.  The plot was clear as a sunny Seattle day.  (Yes, the sun does occasionally shine here and when it does, oh boy!)  And my characters were so alive, I cried over their tragedies on a daily basis. 

            Of course, I didn’t know any better at the time.  I didn’t write to be published.  I didn’t write for any other reason than I had this story in my head and it needed to be released for my sanity’s sake.  And then when I did decide to seek the road to publication, I muddled along and weathered the trials all writers stumble with.  But I never fell down without being able to get back up.  And I never doubted myself either.  I was too naïve.  For whatever reason, I felt there was someone or something outside of myself that wanted this done, who put me on this path with the notion that I would succeed.  A sort of divine intervention. 

            I finished my book and wrote my query and I’m doing pretty well, all things considered.  So now it’s time to move on from that project.  Time to prove it wasn’t just some fluke, that I do have another book in me.  As I was finishing up the first, I had a few decent ideas, one of which I picked because it was intriguing and I’d never read a story like it before.  But all the while, I was worried because, unlike the first time, those words weren’t coming, the plot was elusive, and the characters foggy. 

            Here was the doubt all those other writers wrote about, the kind I never had any understanding of.  I panicked.  I was desperate to prove I was, in fact, a writer with more than one story.  And I know the story is there, but I just can’t see the details clearly.  When I read that one writer I follow took four or five years to write his novel, I cringed.  How can anyone have the tenacity to work on something for that long and not give up, to not lose interest?  It seemed unreal.  Improbable.  The fact that nothing was clicking into place made me question if I could do it again.  Did I have that stubbornness to work through the difficulties month after month, possibly year after year?

            Well, what I have discovered is that, although the story hasn’t been dropped into my lap whole, as was the case the first time around, I do have small details that take shape a few times each day.  I write them down on my virtual “Brainstorming” notepad on my iPhone.  I scribble in my notebooks.  I keep reading in my genre, reading books on craft.  I keep blogging and making connections.  And I keep in mind that the process this time is the same, only slower, much, much slower, that this challenge is what will actually make me a writer, what will prove that I do have it in me. 

            It’s the difficult times that prove our true mettle.  If it was always easy, it wouldn’t be much of an accomplishment.  Am I insecure now?  You bet.  Do I doubt if I can really do this again.  Every single day.  Until the first draft is complete, I will always doubt whether I am a real writer or not.  But I don’t think there is a writer out there who hasn’t had the same doubts.  It’s a battle scar, proof of a hard-won personal war.  I guess I no longer feel like an untested rookie.  It might just take me a few years this time instead of a few months, but as long as I continue to make the slightest bit of progress each day or week, I’m good with that.  At least, I hope so.

            How ‘bout you?  You good with that?                  

We Interrupt This Program...

            Monday is my normal day to post here, but I’m holding out ‘til Wednesday so I can participate in Alex Cavanaugh’s.Insecure Writers Support Group.  Today I just wanted to go over a few brief items.

            First off, did anyone catch Rachelle Gardner’s post today About Author Platform?  If not, I suggest you go check it out.  Then take a gander at those benchmark statistics for Facebook and blog followers and visits.  Yikes!  Really?  We should shoot for 500 Facebook fans and 15,000 monthly pageviews to our blogs?  Well, that all sounds good, and I’d certainly love to have those stats, but they seem a tad unrealistic for the majority of writers who blog, most of whom are still unpublished.  I’m jumping for joy to have 700 pageviews a month.  And maybe someday, when I am agented and on the road to being published, I will have an author page on Facebook, but right now I’m keeping my friends limited to around 125 or so.  Personally, I can’t manage much more than that and I won’t simply collect friends for the benefit of …well, collecting friends.  That seems a bit insincere to me.  All right, you can clearly see the insecure writer in me, huh?     

            Anyway, moving on…Alex Cavanaugh, along with Matthew MacNish at QQQE, have a new blogfest called the Pay It Forward Blogfest scheduled for October 14^th.  This blogfest is designed to help introduce us to the many other bloggers out there.  Here’s how Alex and Matthew describe it:  

“We want this to be an easy post that allows you to meet and follow as many other bloggers as you can. In your post, we would like you to please list, describe, and link to three blogs that you enjoy reading, but that you suspect may fly under the radar of a lot of other bloggers. Or they can be famous blogs, as long as they're awesome.

But don't stop there! Certainly visit and follow all the blogs that are featured in people's posts the day of the blogfest, but those don't have to be the only blogs you visit. You can visit everyone who enters in on the fun, and signs up on the linky list. In the interest of time you don't even have to leave comment. You can just follow, and come back another time.”    

            So go to either Matthew or Alex’s blogs linked above and sign up on the Linky List to get your blog listed in the blogfest then participate on October 14th.  This should be another good one!

            Lastly, I would love to thank all of my followers who commented on my post last week about blogging vs. writing vs. life.  It seems I really struck a chord common among writers who blog.  I know it’s helped me just to know I am not alone and that others feel the exact same way.  Well, that’s it for today.  I’ll be back on Wednesday with a post for Alex Cavanaugh’s.Insecure Writers Support Group

Blogging vs. Writing vs. Life

            I’ve been noticing a trend of late.  Quite a few of my Blogger friends, and others I follow, have cut back in their blogging.  Some were prolific bloggers who just couldn’t (or didn’t want to) keep up with posting every day.  Others were being forced into the meat grinder of nasty email replies and mean-spirited comments thus diminishing their spirit and prior enthusiasm for blogging.  A couple had book deals and deadlines that loomed overhead and so blogging was the furthest thing from their mind.  And still others were so absorbed into posting, and more importantly, commenting on their follower’s blogs that it left them little time to write themselves.  I fall into this last category.

            I’ve said quite a few times that I often find blogging tiresome.  It’s hard for me to find a unique topic that hasn’t been covered a thousand times in other writer blogs, and I’m pretty inexperienced so I don’t imagine that I would have enough to say of an educated nature when it came to writing or publishing.

It’s been nearly a year since I started my blog and in that time I’ve usually written about my own experiences and opinions about writing, querying, and trying to get published.  I’ve chosen not to write about my personal life or family unless it somehow related directly to my writing or blogging.  This makes the material I want to write about limited.  I’ve cut down my posting to once a week, but even that seems difficult at times.  And all during the week, I worry about what I should post about next.  It’s sucking the life and enjoyment I experience when writing.    

            Right now, I’m in the process of starting my next project, my new novel.  When I wrote my first novel, The Mistaken, I had no distractions whatsoever.  I wasn’t writing to get published.  I didn’t know I even wanted to write an entire novel, let alone try to get published.  I just knew I had this story that wanted to get out.  So I wrote.  Everyday.  For three months.  First on my outline then the story itself.  It was intensely pleasurable.  And when I was done, I was excited to take the next step.  That’s when I read that writers need to have a platform.

I wasn’t even sure what that meant, but I started my blog as a means of creating a presence, but it immediately started to feel like a popularity contest.  I felt like I was back in my all-girls Catholic high school filled with rich kids who drove BMWs and Mercedes while I tooled around in my mother’s thirteen-year-old faux-wood-paneled station wagon. 

I kept at it though and I made some great friends and even garnered a few followers of my own.  That felt good.  But part of having a presence, building a platform, is assembling an army of followers who are both interested in what you have to say and might even buy your book someday if you ever manage to get an agent who can sell it to a publisher. 

This army building takes time.  A lot of time.  And a lot effort.  You have to troll through all the blogs and make friends and leave comments.  I do this sporadically and when I do, I tend to gain a few followers here and there.  I love that, seeing my follower count blip upward.  I love reading all the interesting things my friends have to say, and they say it all so much more eloquently than I.  But all this worrying and reading and commenting has taken away time from what I really want to do:  write another novel. 

I want to go back to the days when I couldn’t wait to get up in the morning and sit at my computer and type.  I want to allow myself time to focus on my idea, to transform my premise into a plot with struggle and conflict.  Most all of my Blogger friends have regular day jobs and families to care for.  I don’t how they do it, work all day, come home and take care of the family then find time to develop an idea and write about it. 

Now, I have my own design company, but because of the economy, work has been limited.  Lately, however, I have had a near-constant stream of work to see to, deadlines to meet, clients to make happy.  I also have a sixteen-year-old son who is preparing for his last SAT this Saturday, which is also the day when all the college applications open up for Fall admission.  Yes, I know this is something that he should be doing on his own, but I will help him in every way possible. 

Trying to fit in time to write on my new project has fallen victim to all of this:  to querying agents, to keeping up with my friend’s blogs, to helping my son with his college preparation, to work.  It’s a difficult distraction and I’m frustrated that I can’t find the time to do it all, especially write my novel. 

Though I do understand how important it is to build a platform, I think it’s even more important to focus on the work, the writing.  If, by some miracle, I do land an agent, I want to show that I have more than one book in me, that I’m serious about this new career.  If that agent happens to get a publisher’s interest, I want to show that I’m worthy of a two-book deal or better.  And I don’t want to worry about that second book.  I want to know that it’s well developed and coming along before I have to focus back on revising the first book. 

Most importantly, though I love my first book and think (and hope) it’s good enough to publish, it seems that most writers don’t publish their first novel.  They chalk it up to time well spent learning the craft and gaining experience.  So I have to have another in the pipeline.  I can’t imagine ever being so in love with any other characters as I am with those in my first novel, but I am hoping to have a similar experience with this second one, so who knows, maybe it will be better and I will fall even more in love with them. 

I think most of the writers I’ve come to love have only gotten better as they’ve written more.  I certainly know all the rules now, whereas I didn’t the first time around.  But I know my limitations, and in order for me to write the best story possible, I need to focus.  This might mean I don’t come around as often to comment.  It certainly means I might not be posting as often.  And I know I won’t likely be recruiting any new followers. 

Something’s gotta give.  It can’t be my son, and I need the money so it won’t be the occasional work.  But what am I gonna do?  I gotta write.

So I ask you, how do you mange to write your WIP, work your day job, take care of the family, and still have the time, energy, and commitment to blog?