The blog of fantasy fiction author and writer Tarah L. Wolff

Sitting beside me on the desk is the product that I have created over the last few days. A little note pad with five pages, fronts and backs, covered with my bedtime scrawl that only I can understand. Notes written down, trying to cover everything in as few a words as possible without losing what I thought, at the time, had to be changed in Embraced by Darkness. I’m reading my book now you know.

I almost announced it when I got the book from lulu a couple of weeks ago. I bought two copies, the next step toward the book being almost finished. It’s over six hundred pages in pocket size. It cost more but I wanted desperately to see my book in the form of the paperback size that fills up every book store. It’s bigger then the uncut version of The Stand, but seeing it like this is really a wonderful thing.

I started reading it at night.

I started reading it every night, keeping a notepad beside me to write changes and things I couldn’t forget. At first glance I was disappointed. There are missing words, misspelled words, old sentences I meant to delete starting new sentences here and there. Not a lot, I would say I caught maybe thirty of the above in the first four hundred pages. Which, of course, means there’s a lot more.

I’m surprised at how much I miss while reading it on the computer screen day after day. Then taking a break. Then reading it on hard copy. It’s like two completely different books. I see them entirely differently after two weeks and in two different formats. Stephen King wrote in his book On Writing that after the book is written a writer needs to put it away for a minimum of two weeks before working on it again. It is the soundest writing advice I have ever heard.

I took the break.

I took the break while waiting for my lulu book to arrive. I read something that wasn’t going to get me thinking while I was waiting. A teen book The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Book 1) by Rick Riordan that I know you’ve heard of. But, let’s face it, Twilight included, these books aren’t going to keep you up with their incredible depth at night. Neither are they going to inspire you as writers. So, that’s what I read while I waited and that is generally the type of book I choose to read if I don’t want a distraction from my own work. Normally, it doesn’t matter, but my head needed a break. At that pointed I had spent over two hundred hours on my book in little less than two weeks. My boyfriend (Joseph Crawford) suggested I start keeping track of my time. I’m not doing that anymore, it was too shocking and upsetting.

Thoughts on my book.

I was a little disappointed in the first hundred and fifty pages or so. Not the writing, not the characters, not even the sad editing job that I did. I was disappointed and worried that it seemed to jump around so much. In my push to get the reader right into the action I’m afraid I might have pushed too hard. As it is, my book is in four parts and within the four parts I switch between my three characters twice. I think it’s too much for the beginning of my book. I’m considering, in part one and maybe part two as well, scaling it back so instead of jumping back and forth six times in each part, I think I may combine my girls’ parts down to one instead of two separate pieces. So the jump would only be three times and the reader would stay with one main character twice as long. I’m going to keep thinking about it. God knows I’m going to be reading the book again and seeing whether or not my thoughts are justified.

Almost there.

I have about a hundred and fifty pages left to read. I’ve found some more places I’m going to be cutting. Most of it is left over scenes from when I first re-wrote the book a couple of years ago. The writer I am today is sitting there reading them and going “What the hell? That doesn’t make any sense at all, why don’t I just do this and save five thousand words!?” The first major one is where Karalay really comes into the book in part two. The second one is what really feels like a ridiculous amount of words that I devoted to Jezaline. After that, I’m actually pleased with Osondrous, but her stripping down I did right away when I started this last push (again, the last push, how many last pushes can I have?). For both Karalay and Jezaline I need to find better words for some longer arrays of dialogue between them and the men they are with. Karalay with the man she has been with for ages but only now developed an awkward love life with and Jezaline with the gigantic prince of the Draegoone who is very interested in her. Both women are very intelligent. The dialogue is going to have to be the tie that binds it all together and brings the readers to a place where they can understand Jezaline’s attraction to the prince and Karalay’s attraction to the Darkhalk.

It seems like I used to be better at Dialogue.

Or at least I thought I was pretty good at dialogue a couple of years ago. I’ve cut out so much of what I wrote in the last rewrite. Dialogue, that when I wrote it then, seemed drippy and amazing with unsaid layers. Dialogue that I read now and wonder what the fuck it was even in the book for.

My last complaint about my book.

I’m a cutter. I don’t know if I’ve told you that yet. I’ve taken first draft fiction to writers meetings and had people tell me that it felt like I had “cut too much” when I edited it. Everyone is always stunned when I tell them it’s first draft and I haven’t edited it yet. This is my a-typical first draft: an almost bones only, no adjectives with a subtle or nonexistent narrator. I am pleased to say that I have finally cut my book down to where it almost reads like a first draft of my own writing today. Actually more like a second draft. It’s all good news because before the book read like I hadn’t wrote fiction before. Now, I need to add back. I have so much dialogue missing description and I have many characters and places missing the first and most important description of them. I won’t add many words, but I do feel it is time to dress my beast.

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.

I swore in my last post that the next post I wrote I would be proclaiming a finish of the final going-through and line-editing of Osondrous’ and Constance’s story of Embraced by Darkness. (Wow that was a mouthful.) I did it. I took the day off from everything else in my life (my wonderful boyfriend even made supper for me when I stopped once to eat) and I got through it. I even managed to cut it down to just under 70 thousand words and that had been my crossed fingers hope that I had completely give up on. But going through it again I was able to cut even more and where I had been a little hesitant when I worked through it to start with I was able to be more fierce with this last edit.

Osondrous’ and Constance’s part of the book started at around 93,000 and ended up at just under 69,000. WOOHOO! It was tough and this last push took me eight hours. Jezaline’s story was nowhere near so tedious. The only thing I can come up with as why is just because of word count. I watched the pages slowly trickle by today. Osondrous was sitting at 133 (81/2 by 11 page size) and when I finished with Jezaline she was in the 80s. That’s less than I thought would make such a difference. But I finally got through it and I am so relieved.

New Decisions

As you might already have noticed I am an avid Stephen King fan. He is my number one. Simply put. Judge me as you will I don’t give a rat’s ass. In my opinion he is the best commercial fiction writer in existence. Something Stephen King is very fond of doing with his books is omitting chapters all together.

I am immediately drawn back to conversations with other writers (not novelists) about how important chapters are. And “how chapters should each be there own complete story” Are you kidding? What the hell. The book is the story, it should never pause for any reason besides itself. Chapters are formalities that are forced that the story of the book must pause around. And the minute novelists start altering chapters, to make them stories in their own right, is the minute the real story, the book itself, is lost.

I am dropping the chapter thing and have settled into the notion that I will be granting my book pauses numbers. Each story will have it’s own start and end with it’s numbering. Otherwise the book will have four main parts.

No more chapters. I am boycotting.

It just killed me tonight to not start numbering as I went. It makes so much more sense. Where the book pauses but where it would never been correct to start a new chapter, now I have the next number. Each of my stories (Osondrous, Karalay and Jezaline) will start at 1 and end where they end. I will force nothing. No more chapters.

Moving on to Karalay

I will have a formal post when I really start work on her story but I’m damn near delirious. Karalay is at 71,000 words right now, 20,000 less than where Osondrous started. This will be less of a heart ache than the last push to finish this Osondrous. Though I am both looking forward to her story, I am also apprehensive. I have as many add-ons to Karalay’s story as I did for Jezaline’s and just as much to cut. As always I am doubting my ability to do it right. But I also know that this kind of work moves faster than Osondrous’ story did. I had little to add to Osondrous, her story was just edit work. That is tedious as hell.

Karalay’s story I am hoping will be fun and I will ride a happy wave on my way through it.

A little lofty and dreamy? Sure. But I’ll take anything I can get.

Thoughts on the finishing touches

I’m thinking a lot about how this book is going to get put back together. I’m afraid this is going to be a major, final headache, to finish this monster. I have notes made in my brain where each story needs to end and start the next portion of the other story beside it. I’m terrified. Strictly speaking. Absolutely terrified I’m going to have to read, line for line and even rewrite to get this book to fit again. This is where I can’t let my momentum fail me. The instant I finish Karalay I need to start putting this thing back together while Osondrous and Jezaline are still fresh.

I can’t stress this more

No amount of notes can get you back to knowing every nook and cranny of your book. If you walk away, expect to have to read everything again and forget a lot. Write everything down and don’t walk away until at least some kind of outline, with all of your thoughts, is down on paper. I’m speaking from tragic experience here. I know that I’ve lost a lot.

Short story site

I’m also working on a 7,000 word short story for a site I was forwarded from my writers’ group http://www.one-story.com. Writers’ group can be great things. Wish me luck! I’ll be submitting sometime soon. I sent my story off to my writers’ group for critique (I have not yet considered asking any of them to read my novel I will post soon on what I think, truly, about writers’ groups) and I’m hoping for some good edits.

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.

I put in my last post that I didn’t know if I was going to go through Jezaline’s story one more time or just move on now that I had added and subtracted from her story to the point of near completion. Well, I went through it again. This wasn’t a “writers” decision. This was my decision. I just wasn’t done yet. Now I can say I am as close to done with Jezaline’s story than I have ever been in the last ten yeas working on my monster. One third of Embraced by Darkness is truly done, even for me now.

Reading back through all the words I had added and all that I had edited I realized some more things to add to give her more emotional impact. I believe I did right by Jezaline and I am elated to say now that I believe her story even stands on its own. Imagine that? Now I am sending the story to my mom. Jezaline reached 64,672 (give or take) at one point than I clipped her all the way down to 52,259 words. That makes about a hundred 8 1/2 by 11 pages. I am tentatively hopeful. I hope she has the time to read it soon. Of all of my writing I have learned not to expect folks to drop everything to read what I give them. Even moms and boyfriends. I may be willing to drop all else to write this thing but I can’t expect other people to do the same. But I am dying to know what she’ll say about it.

I already know that she’ll say one thing for certain, “There’s a lot of sex!” Hopefully my reassurances that the rest of the book will be stripped of sex will help my mother cope. lol. We’ll see. I’m a sexual creature and I believe women to be capable of being strong sexual creatures. It is a part of life and I will, above all other things, write unflinchingly and as realistically as I can. But the truth is anyone who doesn’t believe sex is a part of life just won’t like my book.

I can live with that.

I struggled with whose story I was going to work on next. Osondrous or Karalay? Osondrous is the heart of my book. I chimped out by choosing to work on Jezaline’s story first. I picked the easiest start. Where Jezaline was sitting at 50,000 to begin with Osondrous right now is at 93,000. Karalay is somewhere between those two but I fear I need to get myself through Osondrous as soon as possible, if only to prove that I can. She is techincally the start of my book while Karalay is techincally my end. There is a lot of setting up to do for Osy and her story is also connected through and through with my partial main character Constace. So it’s really two main characters’ stories that I am attacking. If I choose to work on Osondrous next.

Just working on it last night for a couple of hours I have already cut two chapters and need to re-write them completely. As always I am laden with doubt. Will I forget something? I need to do Osy justice above all of the other characters. Like I said, Osondrous is the heart and start of my book. I find I identify with her on a deeper level than the rest of the characters and I do not struggle with her dialogue but, instead, it just falls out of me like it’s my own. On the other hand she is the most energetic, talkative and moving character in my book. She practically sprints from one event to another and I fear I let that sprinting dictate my writing. I tend to lose focus on meaningful descriptions of surroundings because Osondrous could give a rats ass where she’s at at any given moment.

I fear that my writing loses depth.

That my readers will be standing there wondering, “Where the hell are we?” While meanwhile Osondrous is ripping the throat out of some poor bastard. I cannot let this happen and I am left staring at what needs to be written aprehensively because this feels like my last shot at this book. I have tried starting this book so many damn times and failed over doubt. I cannot let it rule me. On the other hand I can’t help but think caution is not so bad a thing.

Damn it. No. I will not be cautious because of doubt.  I will not let it rule me. I will not delay I have already spent so much time on this book. If there is any semblance of forward movement that I have. Of hope that I have from finishing Jezaline’s story. I will not let that disappear over doubt. No, I am going to try. What’s there to lose accept more time?

I pull out my outline, the one I wrote a while back when I decided that there was nothing worth keeping. I am surprised, turns out I’m going to need it. The support of it beside me is reassuring. At least I have something that makes me feel as though I may not miss anything.

So it begins. Right now, after some cutting in the beginning, Osy sits at 90,521 words. I can do this.

I think.

I hope.

I will not allow myself to lose this little glimmer of hope. It took me two weeks to get through Jezaline’s story and I hope you know that I do have a life outside of this and if I hadn’t been working to support myself I think it would have only been a few days. But being able to focus largely on just a piece of writing, with no distraction (I have learned) is largely over rated. A writer gets tired. Mundane chores: dealing with family, cooking supper, continuing renovations on a house that includes taping and bedding sheetrock, playing guitar hero with the man that I love, sleeping, eating, working to support myself besides. I need these things. As much as I am a one minded person who likes to sit down and focus on nothing else until I am finished. That is simply not practical in this case nor is it even possible. It has taken me literaly years of adjustment to learn how to work on my book in short starts and stutters. And I have learned, more then ever these days, that I cannot simply just write and write and write.

Without getting my writer tired.

At some point along the way I lose my creativity and my descriptions and I know to stand back when I just want to write, “She walked through the god damned forest and like really hated it.” If you are a writer, remember that your writer needs breaks too.

I dive in to Osondrous’ story tonight. Wish me luck.

I started at 1:30 this afternoon and added ten thousand words by 6:30 this evening. I took a break for dinner. Started writing again at 9:00 and now I am writing this post to say I got through Jezaline’s story at 5:03 this morning.  That is twelve hours of writing; I’m numb from the chin up. I edited and cut over twenty thousand words and added over ten thousand. I wish I were a faster writer, I am a very fast typist but my thinker only moved so quickly. I want to exclaim, “C’mon I’m making this up as I go along!” This is a good day but at the end of all of my writing marathons I am plagued by two things, Elation and Doubt.

A great large part of me thinks, “I did good” The rest of me thinks, “We’ve been here before. It’ll be shit like everything else and you know it.” I went through three sex scenes tonight, added one, cut down two to being what I hope even my mother would consider tasteful. We’ll see about that one I guess.

The more reading that I do the more I realize that the very best fiction writers actually are telling two stories at once. The actual physical story (she goes here than there and then gets shot) and then the emotional story (she cries when she gets there, she goes here to salvage her pride and then she is glad when she gets shot). The key is to never forget the emotional story. This is my biggest flaw as a commercial fiction writer. I am a terrible emotional story teller. And on a night like tonight, numb from the chin up, I know I missed the emotional impact of Jezaline’s last ten thousand words (at least). But I hope, “crosses fingers” that maybe I have something to ADD to the next run through it. I don’t know, now that I’ve finally got through it, if I’m going to go back through, start to finish, one more time while it’s still fresh or if I will move on to the next main character’s story in my novel. This is a hard choice but I feel myself leaning to staying here, while it’s fresh, and going back through the writing I did tonight. Maybe I’ll be surprised, maybe some of it I’ll even like.

I am leaving you with my favorite scene that I have added to Jezaline’s story. Take note this has NOT been edited. This is first draft directly off the press. There is sex and it is graphic so be warned:

EXCERPT FROM EMBRACED BY DARKNESS: JEZALINE’S STORY

Copyright Tarah L. Wolff All Rights Reserved.

By the time he reaches the bed his hands are quivering. He has not eaten a human in over a decade and then that had been a very ugly, very old man; nothing worthy of raping. Not that he turned his nose up to men it had just been so long since he had tasted a woman.
He moved up and on to the bed like water running up stones. She whimpers and Waltruk grabs himself, gasps and barely keeps himself from climaxing. He laughs into the empty darkness of his chamber as she lays beneath him, a white swath of fabric, silk, against black hides.
Jezaline grips the blanket in her fists, he turns her over and she stares into his face. His eyes are black beacons beneath, long fine brows. The room fills with the desert sun and the king before her changes into the man made of fire from her past.
And Waltruk is struck still, his own past suddenly called upon. A past centuries older than Jezaline’s but as fresh in his heart as she is beneath his fingers.
She rises up to him, feeling the blessed desert heat again, lost in the warmth. The fire in her past that was once her entire life, the sand, the sun. Jezaline reaches out, tries to touch the red man’s face and the illusion evaporates. She tries to say Red man, but nothing comes out of her swollen throat. Before her is the Vamepire king but so confused, for an instant, she is unable to feel the terror that he paralyzed her moments before.
Her hand on his cheek. The memory of the molten end of her child hood fades and his cheek is very cold. The ache in her has grown into a culvert across her chest. The forgotten, ignored emptiness that red man had left. And no matter the men she had had in her life, inside of her, filling her up, they never touched the ache.
He whispers, “Red lady.” His eyes clear, he blinks and stares.
He said, “Who are you?”
“Jezaline. Who are you?”
“I am Waltruk, king of the Vamepire. You are the red…?”
She shook her head, finds herself unable to move away. He is tall, strong chested, clothed in leathers and furs. There is too little light. He is nothing else but a figment in the darkness. Her terror returns slowly, as though she is still trying to wake from a nightmare.
He reached for her and she pulls back to try and stop it. But the Vamepire king clasps his fingers around her wrist.
“How do you know of the red lady?”
She said, “No lady, a red man in my past.”
His cold fingers lay a line down her cheek and she winces but is unable to pull away again. The ache in her is wide, deep and shockingly empty.
He grabs her head, pulls her face to him, “What do you know!”
“I don’t know who they are!”
“This thing, this woman, has controlled me for three centuries. Now fucking tell me what you know.”
Jezaline got it out, in sputters and gasps, her story, without editing. Too terrified to not tell this creature every last detail. With his fingers digging in to the back of her head she recounted the red man. How fear had turned to need.
“I was desperate for him. What was my getting raped… I demanded him to enter… me.”
Her voice fell to a whisper and she finally struggled out of his grip, fell to her knees and held her face.
“What did he do to you?”
“I am a Ward.”
Waltruck’s eyes widened, “A Ward of high power. What are you doing here.”
She said nothing, having dissolved into a soft crying. His hand swept down her back and she winced away.
“Do you feel it?”
“What?”
“The empty hole inside of you?”
She pressed her hands to the place between her breasts and her belly.
She whispered, “Yes.”
“You were never able to fill it?”
She shook her head, “Never.”
Waltruk sunk down to his knees on the bed before her, put his head in his hands. His hair was jet black, it lay in tatters down his cheeks.
“If I had known,” he said, than shook his head, “I couldn’t have stopped myself.”
“What?” She looked up His skin was smooth as glass but it did not shine in the light. His fingers were long and ended in sharp, black hooks that grew in severity down his hand until the claws curved long and blackest at his thumbs. She rubbed the back of her head.
He said, “I am king because of her, but, if I had known what this would feel like. I would have tried to stop.”
She shook her head, “I couldn’t have stopped… What is all of this?”
“Something changed our paths.”
“Are there others?”
“Not that I’ve known.”
He looked into her face and she stared into his.
“I think it’s Grim.”
She frowned, “No, he doesn’t exist.”
“Grim is on the move right now… why are you in the Krept, Jezaline?”
She felt herself standing on the blade of a knife. She had no idea what this thing wanted of her. What this king wanted her to do or say or what she could do for him. But there was something guiding her. Something dark, something empty. As the moments passed between them, where she could smell his body and his breath, where her own body reacted to the presence of his, she felt herself longing to touch him. She was revolted by herself, appalled but without control. She looked his jaw and face, down his lean neck and strong shoulders. His clawed hands looked powerful and she could almost feel on her again, feel him against her. Jezaline swallowed hard, forced herself to look away.
“Talk to me now.”
“Or you will kill me?” she talked to the candle across the bed, the little flame that did not flicker. The stillness of the room made it feel like a tomb.
“What are you doing in the Krept?”
“The prophet Tarick asked for me, said that if I did not come that I would die. I was looking for the Draegoone. Not the Vamepire.”
The sound of Tarick’s name sent a jolt through Waltruk. He climbed off the bed and began to pace. His body faded in and out of darkness, the wings on his back jutted out of his clothes and looked impossible, like they were something he must have put on that morning.
Jezaline sat cross legged with her face in her hands, she fought the urge to curl into herself. She hated herself viciously no matter how she closed her eyes or the tears threatened her throat, she wished a little bit that the king of the Vamepire would come back to bed.
She screamed, “Are you going to kill me?” It erupted out of her ravaged throat like an animal tearing free.
He stopped before her and stood in the darkness, alone but not alone, as though the darkness was a part of who he was.
He said, “I think killing you would be very stupid.”
She was beyond tears now, Jezaline’s heart was pounding, she shook her head, asking the question without speaking.
“Your destiny was changed by a prophet, now another prophet is trying to interfere. That much I can deduct… if I killed you now. Fuck all, I don’t think it would be handled happily by fate. You are important somehow.”
“What do you know for certain.”
“You and I Jezaline, never should have met. This is another prophet that got you here. I know of Tarick, he is the second youngest brother of Draegoone royalty.”
He hissed it out in a long fluid jolt of pure despise. She watched him pace without speaking, sensing he would continue. He pressed his fists into his temples and his face contorted with anger.
“We are at war with those cold-blooded things. I will kill them all, that was not changed by the red lady, that I will do before I die.”
She said, “What will you do with me?”
“I want to drink you and then fuck your corpse for three days!”
Jezaline knew that that was not going to happen now. Away from him, thinking about the ache and the red man, she made no effort to make sense of any of it. If Waltruk was right, which she seriously believed he probably was, it all still left her here, in the highest room of the tallest Vamepire tower. Surrounded by creatures she knew to be dark, wicked and unmerciful. But there was clear intelligence in his eyes, it was there in Blondie’s eyes too. These were not stupid brutes as she had been made to believe and that scared her more deeply than anything she had ever known. These were conniving, brilliant creatures.
He came at her in three long strides, evolving out of the dark. His fingers moved up her face, pushed her to the bed. His weight bowed it beside her and he stretched out his body beside her, touching her throat, her collar bone and lips. His hot breath begged for her. She heard the grinding of his teeth in her ear.
Jezaline squeezed her eyes shut. Her entire body was rigid and trembling.
She was overcome by two polar opposites. The desperate, primal need to throw him off of her, run until she was overcome and die by hysteria; her heart finally bursting in terror. And the other to pull him against her. Embrace the darkness that was this king. Hold him between her legs, pull her skirt up so he could enter that hot place that was the ache the red man had left in her. Give this king the opportunity to fill it as no man had ever been able to.
He pressed his face beneath her breasts and his hot breath steamed her skin through her dress.
He whispered, “Right here.”
“Yes, right there.”
“it has not yet engulfed you in the void. But it will someday.”
“Like you.”
He sighed and she felt his head relax on her body. The weight of his hands rested, one on her chest, one on her thigh. She stared up at the ceiling, though the darkness made it impossible for her to see anything.
“Prove something!” She cried out and her voice carried up and up until it was gone. “Anything, end this or something. Don’t let me just be here in the dark. How has it engulfed you? How much does it hurt?”
His fingers slipped up beneath her and she felt them untying the back of her dress. She could not see his face.
His hands slipped the dress off of her shoulders and she murmured in need and in absolute abhorrent. His claws curled over the neck of her dress and with his face beside hers he pulled it down off of her breasts. Than down, revealing her ribs, her belly, her hips and then the place that made her a woman. The dress hit the floor. She was naked before him, her breasts leaning back in their weight, her nipples dark perfections in the light. Waltruk could see in the dark and she lay the shadow of him. He ran his fingers so lightly across her nipples. They grew hard.
Waltruk had never had another creature touch him in want. When her hands raised he waited for her to struggle, to hit him, to scream. Her fingers landed against the side of his throat, slipped under the collar of his shirt, pressed against his hard shoulder.
She gasped, shocked that his body was putting off heat. Her heart beat doubled and she bit her lip to keep from moaning. She rose before him, found laces with her fingers and began to tear his clothes from his body.
Having never known this Waltruk froze. Jezaline was unstoppable the ache filled her entire mind as it began to scream. The blood pumped through her in dangerous currents. Revulsion, fear, primal sense, it was all forgotten. Jezaline was who the red man had made her.
Her fingers splayed over his chest, worked down to the soft black hair that pointed her in the direction she wanted to go.
He almost wanted to stop her but he was taken with watching her body work, her strong back pucker and move, her breasts hang and bounce. She ripped off his belt and when Waltruk was naked she curved her fingers around his hard shaft and she gasped.
The moan was nothing he had heard before, the same sound of pain filled with a want. A desire so infinite he knew she would get exactly what she wanted, whatever it took.
Her legs parted and she lay him back, eased herself over him. His face was by the candle now and she could see his eyes. Jezaline stared, perfect lips opening. He saw her tongue and his teeth grit. The muscles down his cheeks worked. They both shook and trembled until finally, she pushed him inside of her.
She came down to him and pressed her mouth against his. She forced him to learn how to kiss her, how to press his tongue against hers. He had never kissed anything before without the intention of eating it but tasting her blood now was the farthest thing from his mind. He had never seen such beauty.
She had him, ground herself against him and he watched her be transformed by the act that he had never known existed. Watched a human woman find something in a Vamepire. This was what she wanted and she writhed. All the while, the ache in them both reached a piercing volume. They were hearing their own emptiness and the others. It grew and grew with her until they were deaf to all but it.
Jezaline threw back her head and cried out as her climax finally unleashed and it was beyond anything she had ever felt before. She succumbed entirely, fell before his chest, clawed at his body as it took her. He felt the waves around his shaft, felt the hard pleasure that took her and could not stop himself.
Waltruk roared and it was more animal the human, they grabbed each other. Jezaline embraced the darkness. Felt his wings around her arms and momentarily lost all awareness. Her eyes filled with the site of the red man.
As fast and hard as it came, it evaporated, and silence left them listening to their frantic breathing. The ache in them each was not gone, but silenced. She was holding on to him like he was a raft and she was adrift in a storm, at night, at sea. He rolled her unto her back but did not break their hold. He held himself inside of her incredible heat. Her legs clutched him to her.
Waltruk leaned back, pushed the hair off of her face and looked into her eyes.
“It is so quiet,” she whispered.

Right now I am working on Jezaline’s story. I am literary reading through and cutting, cutting, cutting and adding, adding, adding as I go. To some extent I am doing this with the eye of an editor, on the other side the adding is with my entire heart as a writer. I have added now more words than I have cut from her story, not much, but a few. It is rightfully so, Jezaline’s story was spars and one dimensional. Interesting things happen – heart wrenching things – but I don’t think I ever gave the reader any reason to give a rats ass about her. She was never my favorite character and it shows.

It always bothered me that she had so little substance. On the other hand she is actually in a far more unique and interesting situation than my other characters even before the book started. Her entire life is changed by a moment in the past when the bad guy in my book (Grim) gives her the power to become a ruler. The bad guy in my book is a prophet and he changes who Jezaline is to completely change the outcome of her future because Grim saw that it would be Jezaline who would finally manage to kill him. He changes her so completely by giving her power that there is absolutely no way she could ever become who she was to be able to kill him.

This is where things go wrong for Grim. In my book another prophet intervenes and manages to get Jezaline to where she was SUPPOSED to be in time. But the problem is the obvious one, Jezaline is not who she should have been, getting her back to where she would have been is simply impossible. She is someone else now and Jezaline winds up doing far greater damage in the long run, even though she does manage to kill Grim. Grim’s influence lasts far on past this book and, in the end, Grim destroys who she was supposed to be and essentially, destroys her. Jezaline goes on to betray the people she had once loved and become a ruler, not of humans, but of Vamepire.

As a person she is strong-willed, raised a horseman on a breeding farm of the gorgeous, black-skinned horses of the desert. She had a very specific moment of her past that I completely failed to elaborate in the book as it is. I knew it was time to bring in her past, to give people a taste of who she was and of the betrayals that led to her choices now. Her father had promised her to a man for a huge price. Essentially sold his own daughter. Jezaline fled into the dunes and there Grim came to her. I spent last night describing this moment in detail. I hope I did it justice. The words did flow.

I was able to integrate a good portion of the old book here and move right along editing, clipping and adding bits and pieces. I move, hopefully seamlessly, between her past and her present to reveal her. I actually feel good about all of this now. Is there doubt? Always… But I feel better about this because I have finally found a place for Jezaline in my interest. I like her and I want to do her justice; that has got to be a step in the right direction. Initially, in the version of the book now I had Jezaline’s betrayal a total secret almost entirely to the readers too. Now I am going to write in every detail of her time with the Vamepire king. I am bringing in a past for this Vamepire too. It is a meeting between them that no prophet or person or thing in my entire book could have foresaw. Just as the king of the Vampire moves in to kill her they both realize they are looking at another being whose life had been violently changed by Grim. The Vampire king feins that he wants to make her his queen and, though he does, he wants to use her first. And this is the beginning of Jezaline’s dip into darkness from which she will not surface.

She does what the king wants her to do and it is to get close to another species in my book, the Draegoone. Essentially, she will be the instrument that unleashes the Vamepire plague upon the world, her betrayal to the human race will be felt for centuries to come. And this is what she does after having been a kind ruler of the human people. Grim’s influence is so dark she is incapable of doing anything else. I hope I can give the meeting between Jezaline and the vampire king enough of a fucked-up scary vibe. We’ll see.

I look forward to the other two main stories of my book with daunted reverence. I am going to have a alot more adding to do for Karalay but I think the majority of Osondrous/Constance’s story will but cut, cut, cut and edit. The writing is the fun part but it’s also the most time consuming so I both loathe and look forward to adding to all of it.

I write in a very clipped up style, so often people ask me how many times I have edited and re-written a piece because they suspect it’s alot. When I tell them, “that’s first draft” I’m usually met with gawking. A good thing? I have no idea but I do now have a good idea for another blog post, it will be called “Cutters” and “Adders” what kind of writer are you?

I will leave this post with one of my all time favorite songs by one of my all time favorite bands:

“The start of a journey is every bit worth it I can’t let you down anymore. The sky is still clearing we’re never afraid and the consequence opens the door. I never stopped trying, I never stopped feeling like family is much more than blood. Don’t go on without me. The piece that I represent compliments each and everyone. Til we die.” Written by Slipknot

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.