I started this blog entry the night before last, after I had spent several hours looking for scfi-fi/fantasy places to be published and I still had part 4 of my book to go through. I felt good and I was so enthused that I named the blog post “Actual Hope” though I got nothing else written in it. I found eight places (mostly magazines) that pay and accept scfi-fi/fantasy stories. I’m excited about it and have already sent off one of my short stories for consideration. I have plans to work on four more and get those sent off as soon as possible. I’ll be so excited if just one of them gets accepted. What’s really neat is that most of them urge for novel excerpts so I’m already working on pulling some stories out of The Death of Eliana and I’m working on the same for Embraced by Darkness. For some reason all of this has made me feel pretty good. I’ve also bought some cheap back issues of most of the places; research is a must.
Meanwhile I also found seven different scfi-fi and fantasy publishing companies that accept unsolicited submissions. Woot! Though I know the reaction I’m probably going to get from all of them. “Your book’s too damn long. We can’t publish anything over 120 thousand words.” Still, knowing that those publishing houses are out there, looking for books like I want to write, and being willing to take unagented submissions is pretty fucking awesome.
And I have been working on my book. I said in the beginning of this post that the night before last I was down to Part 4 – the end of the book. If you can believe it, I’m feeling pretty good about how the whole thing is reading. There was some doubt throughout the beginning of the book and, of course, I need to work on those places. But, last night, I finished it.
I finished the first complete read-through after putting my book back together!
Without a doubt, the last half of my book is a better read than the first half. I’m hoping I can cut even more but as it stands the book is now down to 173,052 from 236,743 when I started this last push a few months ago. That’s sixty thousand words that I’ve managed to cut. My boyfriend has taken to teasing, “How much did you delete of all your hard work today? Did it go well?” And I’ll say, “Oh yeah, I just love slaughtering it!” But, the truth of the matter is, that I’m actually not deleting any real substance from the book. Any real writer will know that what I’m doing is just improving what’s already there.
I literally sit and think, “How can I say that in less words?”
The biggest hardship I ran into in this last read through is that, because Karalay’s story is shorter, things were happening for her way before they were spurred to happen for the other characters. I.E. Karalay was reacting to Osondrous becoming queen before she actually became queen. Now, I know a lot of books do that deliberately and there was a part of me that wanted to leave it because the book was so happy and organized as it was. But, I decided, that because of the scope and size of my book, I needed to help my readers out and keep my three characters as close to the same time line as I could. So I had to change my method in Part 1 of the book.
If you’ve been keeping up with my blog posts than you know that I decided to break the book into four parts and omit chapters all together. In each part of the book I ended up going from Osondrous to Karalay to Jezaline to Osondrous to Karalay to Jezaline and then moved on to the next part. But because of Karalay’s shorter story and the fact that she HAD to end my book and the fact that she was the main character in my Epilogue I decided to pull half of her story out of Part 1 and move all of her story down. So Part 1 is now going from Osondrous to Jezaline to Osondrous to Karalay to Jezaline and then moving on to Part 2. See diagram. None of the other Parts have changed but I feel this was necessary and the fact of the matter is, no one reading the book is going to care or notice.
I want to cut more.
It’s painful and it’s true. I need to cut more and I want to cut more. There are two places in the book I hope I can slice more of it out, maybe not more than a few thousand words but if I can get the book down into the hundred and sixty thousand word area I think it will look better. Really anything shorter than it is now will look better to publishers.
But I’m not going to start cutting rashly. I’m going to read through it, one more time, and cut as I go. I hate to say it, and it does pain me quite a bit, but the truth of the matter is the places I’m thinking of cutting are out of Jezaline and Karalay’s stories which is pretty frustrating because Osondrous has the most words in the book. But, as I’m typing this I am thinking of a place in Osondrous’ story too that I noticed. When I read through it again I really hope I can cut them down without mercy and maybe “crosses fingers” even cut another ten thousand words out of the book.
So, wish me luck!
Well, I said very apprehensively in my last post that my next post will be, hopefully, saying that I have finished Karalay’s part of the book and am starting the work of putting my good back together. Well..
It’s better than that!!
Yesterday I sat down at about 2 o’clock in the afternoon and at 9 thirty I finished going through Karalay’s portion of the book the second, and last, time. I was so excited I could barely hold myself back from putting the book together to spend time with my boyfriend and my mom. But I did. I took a break and didn’t go back to my book until nearly 11 thirty.
Than I got to it. And I’m just going to say it: it was fucking hard and stressful.
I wanted to put my book back together in an organized and thoughtful way. I had roughly the same amount of pages between Karalay and Jezaline but Osondrous had about 30 more than that. I wanted four part and to have about an equal amount of pages in each of the four parts of the book. I had already decided how far into the book the Epilogue would go (that was easy because I had already done that though this is the first time I’m calling it an Epilogue, I’m still not sure about that). And I decided to number the pauses in the book (where most people might put chapters) starting at 1 and going up through each of the parts and the epilogue too. I did not indent the epilogue though, I wanted it to look unique from the rest of the book and, though I know they are important, I hate the way paragraph indents look. I chose a Nimbus sans font for the whole book because it’s easy to read and really uses the line space. I used a Palantino for the Part, Epilogue and Title font. Not that any of that really matters. I’m a book designer, I can’t help it, so sue me.
Putting the Monster back together. Snout to Tail.
I wanted to remain consistent and organized while still having the book line up (you can imagine that some things happen in Osondrous’ story that can’t happen until other things happen in Karalay’s story etc.). At first I started Part 2 WAY too early and that helped me absolutely determine how the book was going to go. It would be Karalay, Osondrous/Constance, Jezaline and then all three of them one more time. So two parts from each of their stories for every part of the book.
The worst moment was when I realized I hadn’t been using enough of Osondrous’ story and well before she became queen Karalay was responding to the fact that she had become queen (a very vital happening in my book). So I had to take from Osondrou’s story in part four and add it in to part three and take from part three and add that in to part two to get her story to line up properly again. I knew people would be reading more from Osondrous’ part but, because I had to go back and shift her story around, I’m left anxious and worried on how the whole thing is going to read.
In the last rewrite of my book I broke entirely out of any system I had and just jumped between the girls as I saw fit. I like this way better. It feels stronger, I just hope it actually is.
So, happy new year to me!!
I am continuing in the last read through of my beast put all back together again. It is 330 eight and half by eleven pages and 181,000 words. At first I was down that it was still that high in word count but I just did the numbers and I ended up cutting over 55,000 words from the book! That’s a NaNoWriMo! So I am excited and feel good about the work I’ve done and about my monster. I have already read through the first ten pages and cut some and edited some. It read just fine and I can’t wait to get it printed in lulu and given to my aunt, my mom and my boyfriend.
Doubt
I’m terrified. I know that you can’t allow fear of failing to stop you from trying. But what if they don’t like my book when they read it? This is absolutely the best I can do right now. Period. This is as good a writer as I can be and if this isn’t this great, after all of this work, I will be devastated.
Keep it in perspective, Ta!
Of course, that is what I need to do. My book might not make anybody cry or even care much but I do believe it’s a fine book and it is so close to finished. I started this thing ten years ago and I’ve never felt this good about it before. I am truly entering the edit stage now and I will report back. I hope I will say in my next post, at least:
That it’s not too bad.
Other thoughts: I hate every word processor on the market. Hate. I have tried every program for writers in existance and none of them come close to what I actually need. I use Open Office and it is an absolutely fabulous text editor and it is free! But for putting a novel together none of them work for me. Most novel writing software forces you to save chapters separately etc. I hate that. (Yes, I’m going to be using the word hate a lot) So I’ve always ended up back in Open Office with my whole book in one massive document (like right now).
All I want, and I finally, truly, figured it out last night, is a tab system. I want down on side by the scroll bar there to be tabs that I can add that will jump me to certain parts of the book. I would like to create a tab for every part of my book so if I want to go to Part Four I just click the tab and I’m there (instead of scrolling for hours, that’s basically all I did last night scroll). I want to be able to create a tab for important moments, for all of Karalay, Osondrous and Jezaline’s parts of the story etc. Is this too much to ask??
One day I will design the perfect text editor for writers.
Well, I did get through it. If you read my last post I had come to a bit of a halt when I reached Constance in the midst of Osondrous’ story. I got so comfortable working on one at a time. That was why I split my book up in the beginning. Each story of my three main characters were standing on their own.
I got spoiled.
I finished Jezaline’s story adding things I had never considered before. It all came together in a way that it never could have without my full focused attention. I can’t believe I never did this before.
Every time I tried attacking this novel before it was one page at a time. Start to end. Moving back and forth between the characters as I went. And I have found out that I am not super woman. Some writers could absolutely do that: go back and forth without forgetting anything, without losing the acceleration and the attitude of the previous character.
I am not capable of that.
I know this now. I work much better with one focused task. Last week it was Jezaline, start to finish and I am elated to say that her story now has a richness that it never did before. Her childhood, her history her entire life became an element when before she was so one dimensional. She has a real ending now. Not just for the story but for her emotionally too.
Telling the emotional story.
I am becoming more and more aware as I go of the two separate stories that make up every book I have ever read. The emotional story and the physical story. I think I have mentioned this before in recent posts. But I’m going to spend some time now to elaborate on what it means to me, as a writer, right now.
I have struggled consistently with what I call my “A.D.D” I am the worst kind of reader, I am bored, I am skipping and scanning because I can’t stand needless diddling. Until a writer can prove to me that that shit they just wrote about the history of that tree matters to the story at all, I am not going to read it no matter how great that description might be.
I am obviously commercial fiction through and through. That I have never denied. It’s no wonder that my favourite book this year was written by Stephen King (It) and the book I’m reading (for the second time) right now (Lisey’s Story) was also written by Stephen King.
I don’t just read Stephen King because he appeals to my reader but also because he equally appeals to my writer. I am absolutely in awe at his genius. I have never read a writer who took “omit needless words” to such an exceptional level. If I could worship him as a God, I would, but I don’t think he’d give me the time of day and I wouldn’t blame him.
In the past, because of the reader in me, I was very very bad at just writing the physical story and letting the emotion story be nonexistent. My worst habit as a writer was that, in the very early beginning, I took “Do not tell. Show.” to the literal level.
Don’t do that.
“Don’t tell. Show.” does not mean to omit your narrator. What “Don’t tell. Show.” means is to give reason for the emotions of your characters. For the telling of the emotional/past story behind the physical story. You must link your physical to your emotional. Instead of just having her sad one day and a telling description of her past give her a link that makes her sad that reminds her of her past by planting something important in the physical. Why is she outside? Why don’t you link that. Don’t have her outside just wandering around for no apparent reason cause she likes trees for no apparent reason. Maybe she’s outside because she was driven there by her haunted past. Maybe trees have always been a place she can run because she climbed in the oaks behind the barn at the farm she grew up on. Think about it. Omit needless everything.
It isn’t just about sentence structure, about “the road to hell is paved in adverbs” this goes all the way down to the very bones of your story. If Stephen King can’t find an important reason for that very cloud to be in the book, it’s just not there. If that beautiful day has no relevance, than it shouldn’t be there.
And you say “But I do shit all of the time that has no apparent meaning!!” Yeah, and how long would you want to read about your life?
I tell myself again and again. I will not waste my readers’ time on insignificant shit. No matter how well it’s described.
Ten pages to go.
And that is it. Only ten more pages to go of 142. I have now cut Osondrous’ and Constance’s part of the book down from 92,567 words to 73,881. I am happy but a little apprehensive. I am disappointed in the place I am working on right now. It seems I rushed their ending a bit. I did not keep up their rhythm like I thought I had through the end. In fact I really reverted. I skipped whole days and recalled important events in scanty dialogue. I don’t really want to but I’m afraid I may have to add a bit more to their story though I was really hoping to hit a full twenty thousand words cut.
But I did break through the problems I was having. I did manage to find the heart of Constance. And even Osondrous seems to have taken on more layers. I have made her with more flaws now. They are both more realistic, I think. I still have to add though and I am apprehensive about it. I fear my doubt it showing again.
There will always be hard days. I went through the worst when I got through the re-write of my monster last time. But writing is work. Writing is practice. Writing is a talent. Writing is a desire. Writing is a process. All of those things mean to me tonight is that sometimes not all of them show up. No matter how late or early, how much time I’ve spent away from the beast; sometimes I’m lacking process. Practice. Work. Desire. Or, most importantly, I feel tonight like I am lacking talent. Doubt. But it isn’t actually doubt tonight. It’s plain and simple fact. I am working on my Osondrous piece of the story. And it is hard. Writing through Osondrous was the easy one. Not what I expected but now it does all make sense.
Osondrous was flowing from me. This is my warlord. This is my character who is more like me than any of the others. I can identify with Osondrous and in a thousand ways I have been writing her story my entire life. It was when Constance came into play when I find myself slipping.
When I had written so much for Osondrous, gone through so many words one night I was so tired. And I wanted to share with you the last sentence I wrote, then pressed save and finally quit. And when I opened the document the next day this was it:
As Osondrous entered it was filled with all many of peoples.
lol. Sometimes we do have to laugh at ourselves. Our own ridiculous persistence. That was only three days ago. Osondrous is now tucked into her bed and I am diving into Constance. I have come to a halt. I can force words. I’ve been an author a long time. I am experienced enough now I know how to write so regardless. No matter what. I can write. But I did not expect this of Constance.
Constance is an innocent in my book. Bad things happen to her. She is naive, beautiful and sickeningly young. And she is very happy. She has a suitor and it is with him that I am adding more to her story. Aerick is her man. Her man whose trying so hard for her. This is young love though Aerick is nothing like Constance. He is a soldier, a good solider, and there is nothing naive about him.
But that doesn’t matter. This is Constance’s story.
I am having a hard time slipping into her. I understand her needs and her wants. I know her past. But I don’t feel her. Her words are difficult. Her descriptions are like pulling teeth. I find myself awkward and at a loss.
This is obviously not what I wanted in this last effort into my monster. I fear my words are not flowing no matter what. If I’m not inspired, if I don’t know this character, I’m fucking positive, I won’t be able to give her clearly to a reader.
The truth is that Constance is shallow. She has no experience. No depth. She has so little history it’s sad. I can’t tell you how many times I refrain from typing, “she giggled” for the umpteenth time. I don’t want people to hear me tell them she’s giggling I want them to be giggling too. I want my readers to want to be squirming with glee because we were all there once. Weren’t we?
And I think this is where my child hood is showing. No, I can’t ever remember being like her. Bad days. Things I won’t talk about here. But I think we’ve all faced the fact that no matter how our writing should not be a part of us. It is us. Aunts call. Mom’s need us. Boyfriends urge us to come back to bed. Every moment of my life alters my writing. I have trouble writing Constance because I was never a Constance. In fact I’m afraid my descriptions of Constance will come off as mockery. And Constance deserves better.
So, here’s to having a bad writing day. Even though it was beautiful here. We got a fantastic thing done in our lives that makes everything shine. Regardless. This is a bad writing day.
I hope tomorrow, after I’ve worked on it in my sleep. After I work on it while I tape and bed the drywall upstairs and while I make dinner and we get groceries at the little store down the street. I will have found a heart for her. Where I can write unflinchingly and without judgment. Where I can honestly say not only do I understand her but that I also may have been her once, at least in my wildest dreams.
So I’m letting him call me to bed tonight. I’m allowing myself to be dragged away because I am accomplishing nothing here right now. Tomorrow will be better. It has to be. I have to believe that I am a good writer. I am an accomplished writer. Damn it, I can write Constance, and tomorrow I will.
I finished my book Embraced by Darkness… something like a year and a half ago. If you see the stats over there on the right, it’s massive. It is an epic, that’s easy enough to say I guess. I had decided after reading through it a few months ago that the entire book was worthy of nothing less then to being soaked in kerosene (in my back yard) and set on fire. I would then quietly sit beside my monster and watch it burn. It would be freeing. But I started to get the feeling, after a few of my closest friends had read the book, that maybe “freeing” wasn’t the right word. Instead, my wonderful boyfriend told me that of all the writing he had read of mine (and in my opinion writing a hell of a lot better then Embraced by Darkness) he said that my monster book made him want to read the sequel. With this unyielding encouragement over many months no matter how many times I screamed “It’s shit! Why can’t you see that?” I considered yesterday that maybe I was over reacting a little bit.
Maybe.
Maybe not.
But having tried to sit down to a blank page number one and trying to start the full and complete re-write of this massive thing time and time again, I am wearing down. No not “Wearing” I have been “Wore” down, and I have opened my mind to keeping the heart of my monster.
This is one of the most freeing, frustrating, wonderful, saddening, frightening decisions I have ever made about my writing life. I have spent more time writing the finished Embraced by Darkness then I have spent with anything else in my life even more time then I have spent in my six year relationship with Joseph.
It does shame me to say I wanted to burn it, wanted to step away and never go back. Essentially giving up, though with every intention of re-writing (oh god yes) there was always the intention of re-writing. This brings back to mind the eternal blank fucking page number one and how many times have I tried to re-write this thing? Too many to count. I will write a blog post someday about how the beginnings of things haunt me so completely. I hate writing beginnings, but because I believe the beginning pages are what keep you to the end of a book. I hold beginnings up as being the absolute decision maker on whether a book is worth reading or not. This is probably why they haunt me so. If there has ever been black, endless doubt it has always been about the beginning for me.
I am shamed to say that I have not decided to keep my monster (or salvage it might be a better term) because I think it’s good or because I think there is something there worth keeping. I am salvaging my monster because I simply do not have it in me to try to do this again. Two hundred thousand words is not much to some writers but the way I write (I am a cutter) it averages to about three times that of actual words that I have written though ultimately deleted. The task of filling up that first number one page yet again with a beginning that I will no doubt scrap is just too daunting.
So the decision has been made.
I will salvage my monster, I will attack it, I will make it work.
So where the fuck do I start? That’s easy. I open up the ancient file of my monster… if it were there. Oh No.
Turns out I had so completely been certain that the book had nothing in it worth salvaging that my file for Embraced by Darkness is gone. On all of my desktops and my laptop. GONE. At this point I have been reduced to a whimpering little brat, talking to my computer with, “No, it can’t be gone!” “How could I have lost it?” “This… this just can’t be!” Turns out maybe I value my time a little more then I thought and maybe, just maybe, my threatening to burn it all up was more show then I had thought. Thank God I remember lulu before I really panic. It seems the only digital file left of my monster in existence is a pdf on lulu.com.
So I do have my book now and the endless thing is before me. I have got to do something to make this a less daunting task. No longer a single blank page sure but what about seven hundred and thirty six pages of text? Okay, let us not be completely stupid. These are MY words dammit! Have some fucking dignity and suck it up. This will be better then the blank page number one if it kills me.
So, I have three main characters (I said it was an epic didn’t I?) and their chapters weave, usually in a pattern, one to Osondrous, one to Karalay, one to Jezaline, sometimes a few here and there etc. In the beginning of the book it was one to O, one to K, one to J as the book gets on it it becomes more like three-four to O then on down the line etc. Nearing the end it reduces back to one each, back and forth etc. Not rocket science, I let the book dictate me when I wrote it the first time, I never said any of it was a good idea did I? In fact I remember threatening to kerosene it in the back yard so let’s not say I’m proud of it, kay?
So, I need to make this attackable. At my elbow are three hand written notebooks full of my endless, only understandable to me, notes that I wrote after I read the book the last time. basically I have my hand written outline beside me. This outline alone took my a very long time, I wrote it on the idea that those notes, that outline, would be my only guide when I re-wrote this monster (you know that blank page again). It is beginning to occur to me that this work, these notes, this outline, is basically not going to do much for me now. What I need now is to get back to it, there is TOO much of this thing for me to be able to absorb it all, no matter how good my notes are anyway. This is an epic, there is so much information that I need to be in the book and working on it in my heart and head before I can touch it at all.
So, I need to make this attackable. My notes will not help me. I have decided to split it all up. I am taking out all of my chapters for Osondrous and putting them in consecutive order by themselves in a new document as well as the same for Jezaline and Karalay. Well, now I have three much smaller books before me and I simply work on each story from start to finish individually. Will this work forever? No. However, it will work for the majority of the job. Each story must stand alone anyway and though they do affect each other there is a major mistake I made when writing this thing the first time: I tried to write the book from start to finish.
Funny huh?
Seems obvious, wouldn’t you always write the book from start to finish?
I just can’t do that here. So often I would write five chapters devoted to one character then have to untangle myself from her and reintegrate myself into the other characters story, essentially losing my rhythm time and time again. From now on, I am going to write one story at a time, when they need to be put together is when I will begin the next arduous task of this book; weaving the characters/chapters together to create tension.
This begins with what must go. Two hundred thousand words is way too much, remember the kerosene idea? It’s not like it was a bad one. But let’s not talk about it again… I will try to refrain even though right now it was brilliant. let’s face it, I am a CUTTER. No, stop it. I am a writer, damn it. I’m a writer first and this is about words. Every single one of that monster’ words are mine. Isn’t that something?
So it begins. What to keep, what to throw. I’m starting with Jezaline, her story is the shortest right now. But I’m distracted… Can’t help it. I’m thinking about someone else. I’m thinking about Constace.
Who is Constance? Well, she’s a fourth “main” character who appeared from nowhere and made herself a very small niche somewhere in the heart of my monster. I want her to die. No, that would require words, I want her to evaporate. It’s the first cut I’m really considering. It would be a twenty thousand word save. She’s not a real main character though she gets some chapters of her own. I am trying to evaporate her… But I can’t. Damnit! My first big decision, the first good idea I thought I had. I can’t do it. Maybe this is the truly shitty writer in me pouting and saying “but… but… but…” and I hate all of that.
But, in the end, I have good reasons to keep her.
Constance stays because she is the humanity in my book. She is the only unpowerful main character that I’ve got. She is the one person the reader can truly relate to. She goes through a change and she proves that no matter who we are we are capable of standing up and doing what needs to be done; even if it means giving up. She was created for my book to be a main character in a sequel. She was destined to one day be very important. But I didn’t think she was important now. She is.
Constance gets to live and I will do my best to truly give her life along with all of the rest of it.
