Revisions (Writing Update 7.13.14)

Just a quick note today. (And many apologies for the radio silence. We're in the midst of a rapid-and-unexpected move so the peripheral stuff is going to be a little hit or miss for the next few months.)

On Wednesday (July 16th) I have a guest blog over at Enchanted Spark. You may remember Melinda Moore guested over here a couple of months ago and is graciously hosting me as well. You should be sure to check it out - I talk about writing Brass Stars and dealing with hard characters.

It seems that The Beast Within 4: Gears and Growls may be coming out in October. It's been a little delayed, but I think everyone's excited to see it come out. Edited by Jennifer Brozek, this anthology includes my own steampunk-werecreature-Southern-Gothic story - "Legacy". And some other authors who you are more likely to recognize. (Like Ken Liu.)

A few weeks ago I finished up The Spider Thief and The Assassin King. This short novel started out as a short story and rapidly turned into the-project-that-wouldn't-quit. I've had a lovely talk with my agent, scribbled down a page full of notes, and now have a six week deadline to add some more polish to the MS. There is a fair amount of "Yay!" involved here. And also a bit of "OMG!" because... moving. Then again, who needs sleep?

Lessons Learned from Writing A Sunset Finish

Thanks to A.G. for letting me guest blog today. My first novella A Sunset Finish came out a little before A.G.'s novella Brass Stars did last year. It's thrilling to get something longer than a short story published, and not quite as daunting as writing a novel. She asked if I'd do a Lessons Learned theme for the guest post. It was a great idea since I learned quite a bit writing A Sunset Finish.

1. Research pays off. I've lived all of my life in New Mexico and near many Pueblo Indian reservations, but I didn't know enough pueblo folklore to write A Sunset Finish off the top of my head. I was somewhat fortunate when it came to the music and dance aspects of the story because I had studied some local Native American music in college. But even my music experience was limited. To make up for the gap in my knowledge, I took trips to ruined pueblos, attended dances at the Pueblo Cultural Center and visited the libraries frequently. My favorite book for study was Dancing Gods by Erna Fergusson. While gleaning the information from it about pueblo ceremonies, I also found myself thinking up different short stories and a possible alternative history book. Two of the short stories I thought of during that time of research have already been published and another one is on the way this summer.

2. Watch out for repetition in longer stories. I sent A Sunset Finish to three places before it found a home. One of the editors who rejected it told me that it was well written except for being so repetitive. I had no idea what she was talking about. So I boohooed to my best friend who said, “Well, I thought that too, but a lot of published stories are so I didn't say anything.” After that, I read it with a different eye. Indeed, I had several chapters in there that were rehashing the same emotions or the same mysteries. I cut most of the scenes where Bruce's dad appeared and about half the dates between Stephanie and Bruce. It was accepted at the next spot I sent it to: Jupiter Gardens Press. Looking back on stories I've read, I now believe several novels would be better as novellas if the repetitious scenes were cut out :)

3. Don't waste time watching rankings. After A Sunset Finish was released, I was introduced to the world of rankings, which I had largely ignored. I made it to my publisher's best seller list, and then I was addicted. Watching rankings cuts into precious writing time and can be depressing. This month I've made a huge effort to not look so often and only focus on new stories. My production has gone up, even though I find myself looking more than I should.

4. Self-promotion is hard. I think most writers are introverts; I know I am. But now we are expected to tweet and blog and Facebook all the time. I really enjoy swapping blog posts with people like A.G. where we talk about the craft. I see it as a definite benefit to growing as a writer. But time blogging is also time not writing new stories. There needs to be a balance. I see some writers promoting every day, and I honestly don't know how they do it and still get their next novel out on time. I admire them, but for me, I need time to let my head settle on a story and crank out the words until it's done.

Thanks again for having me here, and please come and check out A.G.'s post on my blog at enchantedspark.com coming in June.  

The Oxford Comma Can Kiss My Arse (But Details Matter)

I am not Oscar Wilde. I do not deliberate for hours over comma placement. Nor do I stress over whether I need more or fewer commas. I know that I tend to under-use the comma, but it's not something I lose sleep over.

Before BRASS STARS was released there was a round of copy edits. Not really an arduous task, but one thing was immediately clear. The copy-editor knew the proper use of the Oxford comma and he wielded it mightily.


Changes were made with only minor grumbling on my part. (Mostly to the tune of "Maybe I should have done this when I wrote it." and a small chorus of "Fucking hell I do hate commas.")


But (and this is the important thing) it made the book better.


Currently, I'm revising a longer novel. Not a novella of a mere 90 someodd pages, but a full on novel that pushes 500+ pages. And by revising, I mean retyping from a paper copy while making notated changes and adding content where necessary. It's... tedious. But I'm more aware of the commas left out of the last pass. Commas I would normally not stress over. But, having just done this sort of tweak for publication, it's on my mind. So, as I see them (and certainly there are still some that I miss) I have been fixing them and, in future, I will likely try and put them where they belong in the first place.

Sometimes I see young writers (and by this I mean folks new to the craft, not young people) referring with some disdain to "the rules" of writing. Not "Don't start with a prologue rules" but things like "Pick a tense and stick with it". Story, I've heard it said, is more important than clean writing.

There is a smidgen of truth to that assessment. Clean writing will not save a dull story. But messy writing will kill even the most interesting tale.

So. Why do I say the Oxford comma can kiss my butt? Because when I start a story, I don't worry about the minutiae of the writing. I use fragments and drop in semicolons where they plain don't belong because I'm writing a draft and the only thing I'm worried about is the story.

BUT, once I start revisions, the details matter. Not just the details of the story or the characters, but also the details of the writing. The basic mechanics of the sentences and paragraphs and chapters. Do not make the mistake of thinking that the bigger picture of a story can survive a death of a thousand little errors. It cannot.

Write your story however you feel necessary. And then polish that baby 'til every little comma shines. 

Goals

Last December I proposed the following goals for myself during 2013.


1: Find an Agent Who Can Sell The Steampunk Novel
2: Finish the Novellas I started This Year but HAVEN'T FINISHED
3: Write another Novel or Two
4: Sell my Short Stories

Two of those (#2 and #3) were things I could control. And with that thought in mind I finished up BRASS STARS and put some good effort into ALL THAT IS PRECIOUS and SURVIVOR. I've also revised The Steampunk Novel (and am currently delving into another revision round) and started work on the rewrite of THINGBREAKER (a magic-punk thriller).

#4 was one that required a combination of doing the work I could to ensure I met the goal, and waiting for the alignment of the stars that ensured my story hit the right desk at the right time. (Remember, the best way for that to happen is to make sure that a story is on someone's desk to be read, rather than sitting in a drawer gathering dust.) I used the fantastic Submission Grinder over at Diabolical Plots to help me tackle the short stories, sending each one out to a new market as soon as it got booted from the previous one.

In addition to a handful of short stories I wanted to find homes for, I was still trying to meet the goal of selling a longer work (novel or novella) that I had set for myself in 2012. So, I did pitch contests on Twitter, summarizing both The Steampunk Novel and BRASS STARS in a microscopic 130 characters. I got requests for both, but ultimately they turned into rejections.  

I dug in deeper, researching publishers that took novella length, speculative fiction and submitted the MS for BRASS STARS to Eggplant Literary Productions.

In the meantime, I was having some success with the shorter work. I placed "Love Like Dysphoria" with New Lit Salon Press in their Southern Gothic anthology. And later in the year, I sold "The Spider-thief and The Sorcerer" to Crowded Magazine. (And last week I sold "Vessels for Destruction" to Nature Magazine's "Futures" column.)

I'd also been working hard at goal #1. Starting in December of last year, I'd been querying agents with The Steampunk Novel. Dozens and dozens of queries sent out over nearly eight months. Hours worth of mindnumbing research on AgentQuery and QueryTracker trying to find every single agent who might be a good fit for my alternate history/fantasy/steampunk/murder mystery mashup.

I got requests to see more. And a lot of rejections - most from the initial query and some after partial or full requests. A lot of rejections.

Then I got a letter from Raechel Henderson of Eggplant Literary saying "Yes! I love this and here's a contract." (Okay. She didn't quite say that, but it's close.) And suddenly BRASS STARS was scheduled for publication. Only a few days later I got a phone call from an agent who'd been looking at the full MS of The Steampunk Novel. He was interested and wanted to know if I could do some more revisions.  

Hell, yes, I could do some more revisions. So we talked and brainstormed and I started in on those just this past weekend. Along with still working on The Magic-punk Thriller. And all the "OMG! I have a book coming out Monday!" madness that precedes a release day.

"And this is all great, but what is the point here?" you say.

The point is this. I'm sitting here, realizing that I have successfully accomplished one of the things on my List of Things To-Do. (Admittedly, the Sell a Novella goal was for 2012 so I'm almost two years behind, but it has been done.) I'm also realizing that the list never gets any smaller.

Writing goals are not destinations, they are mile-markers. It's not like saying "I want to visit Australia" and then going and being like "Well that was hot and those koalas sure were cute but now I've DONE that so cross it off the list." Every goal I reach reveals a new one. 

Every story written makes room for a new one. Every sale is a step up to the next. Every goal achieved gives way to another one down the road.

The list never gets any smaller. It just gets different.  

P.S. My SF Western novella, BRASS STARS, is available now from Eggplant Literary Productions: http://eggplantproductions.com/e-books/brass-stars-g-carpenter/

Keeping Your Butt In Chair and Fingers on Keyboard After the First Draft

Two weeks ago I finished a round of revisions on The Steampunk Novel. They were changes I feel made the book stronger. Changes an agent had requested to see. But there were still days it was difficult to stick with my plan of attack.

"Maybe this is good enough." That thought crossed my mind a lot. Especially while I was trying to brainstorm how to keep a chapter I knew was weakening the whole second act. (It wasn't a bad chapter, it was just slow. And very little happened and then only by accident.) "Maybe I should just leave the rest alone. It's pretty good."

And it was "pretty good". But I don't want just "pretty good". I want "really good" and "the best I can do".

Eventually I cut out the chapter I had and wrote a new one. And it was better than "pretty good".

But it made me think about the challenge of keeping the excitement in a project after the first draft. First drafts have their own pitfalls. The whole "Where the hell is this story going?" and "OMG! Why does every word look stupid!" problems. And let's not forget "I'm so sick of this story". But with first drafts the excitement usually comes back. We remind ourselves that we want to see how it all turns out (even for those of us who outline the ending is not always a guarantee), that we want to mark "Write First Draft of Project X" off our to-do list, we want to write those magical words "THE END" and throw up our hands and say "Yes! Done!"

And then we realize we aren't done and there's another draft waiting to be done and maybe one (or four) after that. And that's about the time I start thinking "This is pretty good. Maybe I should just leave it alone."

So, how do I keep my butt in the chair and my fingers on the keyboard while revising? Well, not every day is the same but here are some things that work for me.

1. Set page goals. I think the most I've done was 80 pages in a day. (And that included writing about 40 of them from scratch.) Most days I try for 10 pages.

2. Schedule breaks. Revising (for me) requires more analysis of what's one the page and that means making sure I'm not getting foggy headed or blurry eyed from too much done at once. I try and stop about every 30-45 minutes and do something else for a little bit. (Refill coffee, get a snack, use the bathroom, check my email, whatever.)

3. Trust your gut. If something seems off, it probably is. While your inner editor may be screaming for you to set the whole manuscript on fire, that's a little extreme. But when a chapter seems clunky or slow or incomplete, I stop and pay special attention because that's usually a spot that needs more than just a few whacks with the editing machete and/or revision bat.

4. Take your time. Sometimes you just have to wait for your brain to sort out the issues that have you stumped. Having deadlines (real or self-imposed) may be pushing you to hurryhurryhurry, but don't be afraid to walk away for an afternoon and let the dust settle. You'd be surprised at what you'll see when you come back.

5. Trust your gut. I know, I already said that. But in this case I'm talking about NOT fiddling with stuff. It's hard to stop tweaking a manuscript once you start, but you'll reach a point where you'll start to think "This is ready". For me that thought is usually followed by a loud mental voice that says "No it's not. You suck at writing. This can't be finished." In which case, the revision bat serves a different purpose. But, trust your gut and don't overthink the revisions.   

Fear

Every now and then I find myself saying "I love pretty much everything about writing except for *insert dreaded thing here*." Usually that "dreaded thing" has to do with selling a project. 

FREX: I hate research markets.
I hate finding new markets.
I hate writing log-lines.
I hate writing query letters.
I hate writing synopsis.

I think you get my drift.

Yesterday I was working on a synopsis for The Steampunk Novel. I'd written one a few months ago and it sucked. I mean, it was okay, but with the recent revisions it needed changes and I'd thought from the start it seemed a little bit long so I figured I'd grit my teeth and write a new one. With much complaining. Because, you know, I hate writing a synopsis.

As I worked on it this little thing in the back of my brain started to ponder my dislike of this part of the process. It reminded me I'd done a similar round of teeth-gnashing and complaining both when writing a log-line and while trying to draft a query letter. Why was that?

I told the little thing to shut up. I was busy.
I finished the synopsis - totally and completely certain that it sucked in a very unpleasant way - and took a break to eat dinner. (IMPORTANT NOTE: Trying to write anything while hungry and tired is probably not one's best idea.) I got something to eat. Spent some time with my family, then came back to the synopsis.

Amazement of amazements, it didn't suck. It needed a few tweaks (which I made) but it was nowhere near as horrible as I had thought whilst writing it.

And then something clicked.
My hatred of log-lines/synopsis/query letters/market research grew out of a very quiet sense of fear.
Sure, there was the fear that all my hard work writing The Steampunk Novel would be lost if I didn't have a killer query with which to pitch it. The fear that the synopsis would not reflect the really interesting aspects or voice of the book. But beyond that was a deeper, more personal fear.

Suppose the query worked? Suppose I got a request for a partial?*** Suppose an agent read my first chapters/150 pages/whatever and DIDN'T LIKE THE WRITING? What if my wordcraft was bad? What if the thing I'd loved so much and put so much energy into... sucked?

I've spent four years trying to get over the idea that what I write isn't worth much. Four years focused on practicing my craft in the hopes that I would get better. That I would gain confidence. That I would get good at writing.

Along the way I'd conquered a series of things that I "hated". (Finishing stories. Editing stories. Finding a market. Dealing with rejections. And so on.) One by one I'd put them behind me until the only things that stood between me and selling my novel (well, finding representation for my novel and THEN selling it) were the query letter and synopsis.

I hated them. I doubted my ability to make the book sound interesting. I doubted my ability to be succinct.
I doubted the value of the story I had told. I doubted my ability to tell a story, period.

That, you see, was the whole problem. Doubt.
FEAR.
The gut-wrenching, mouth-drying, palm-sweating fear that after all this time I still wouldn't be any good at this thing that I love so much.

And that's when I realized I don't have to "hate" any of it. All of that angst and blather about "hating " was just a smoke screen for my insecurity. And there was only one thing to do. 

DO IT ANYWAY.

I wrote a lot of short stories before I discovered Write 1, Sub 1 and used that as an excuse to start sending things out. I started a lot (A LOT!) of novels before I found NaNoWriMo and used that as an excuse to write the first draft of The Steampunk Novel. The only thing that changed between the short stories I wrote and shelved and the ones I submitted was that I submitted them anyway. Even when I was CERTAIN they sucked. (And the ones I thought sucked the most, sold the fastest.)

The only thing that changed between the dozens (yes, dozens) of novels I started and never got past the first 50 pages and the two that I've finished is that I didn't stop when I thought the book sucked. And then I went back and fixed the parts that weren't good. Even when I was CERTAIN it was a waste of time.

So, my (very long) piece of advice for today is: DO IT ANYWAY.
Whatever that writing related thing is that you "hate" (drafting/editing/querying/outlining/writing)... DO IT ANYWAY. 

DO IT ANYWAY.

*** Which, incidentally, I have. So much for thinking my query letters are shite.

Goals 2013

About this time last year I posted my goals for 2012.


1: To finish and submit Gaslyte - the novel-in-progress I've been working on since 2008 - by the end of the year.

2: To finish and submit at least one longer length project - 15k or more - by the end of the year.

3: To polish and submit the handful of stories I wrote this year but have languished in my pile of "to edit" projects.

4: To write a minimum of 15k per month.

I can safely say I've failed at all of those. (Well, there's a sliver of hope for #1 still. Maybe.)  

Here's what I did accomplish this year.

WROTE:
Damsel
The Spider-Thief and the Sorcerer
Legacy

SOLD:
The Collections Agent
Caught
Happy After All
In the Cool of the Day
Legacy

I also made serious revisions to The Steampunk Novel that have brought me to the brink of querying it. (See? There's still hope.) And in June and August I wrote nearly 40k words (combined). It has been a productive year. It has not been productive in the way that I envisioned it. And that's okay.

But I'm back in that same spot; asking myself "What do I want to accomplish next year?" After much thought (and too much coffee) my goals for 2013 look like this.

1: Find an Agent Who Can Sell The Steampunk Novel
2: Finish the Novellas I started This Year but HAVEN'T FINISHED
3: Write another Novel or Two
4: Sell my Short Stories

Notice how open-ended those are? Last year I tried making specific goals, laying out a plan of attack, and I did very little that I set out to do. (Again. It was a productive year, but not in the way I had planned.) This year I'll try something new and different. And, most importantly, I will not do what I did this year which was to waste time on personal lamentation about how I wasn't meeting those goals. 

Here's to a fresh start! And, hopefully, a fresh attitude. 

NaNoWriMo 2012

The National Novel Writing Month begins on Thursday. I do not have aspirations to win this year. I mean, I'd like to win. I'll try to win. But due to a new writing schedule I only write on Sundays. While there are four Sundays in November, I would have to write 12.5k words per Sunday in order to reach 50k by the end of the month. Somehow, I doubt that will happen.

However, I'm still going to write as much as I can once I finish the last edits on The Steampunk Novel. (Which is moving along smoothly, but still has some work to be done.)

The new project is another genre-masher. A little bit of space-opera, a healthy dose of steampunk, a pinch of super-hero epic, a sprinkle of romance with a hint of sociological speculation. I'm really excited about it.

I'm also trying out the method proposed in Save The Cat of starting with a logline as the basis of any outline and subsequent pages. (Since loglines are basically "hooky" short synopses, it's a pretty solid idea. Start from a short summary and expand as you go.)

Here's what I have so far: When Delian, a disgraced warrior with psionic abilities, crashes on the steam-age planet of Ossia all she wants is to let her mind and body heal. But Jakob Halter – the crippled mechanic who rescued her from death - has different aspirations for the physically and mentally extraordinary woman from the stars.

It's not a perfect logline, but it's certainly enough to get me started. (The ideas have already been poking their heads in and I'm having to beat them away with a stick 'til November 1st gets here.)

So, here's to new projects and working my arse off!

Lessons Learned (Re)Writing a Novel

1.Nothing is as Bad or Good as You First Thought

Rereading a first draft of a novel (or a second or third draft for that matter) is an adventure. I discover brilliant scenes I'd forgotten, unearth little threads of subplot that I don't remember weaving, find little gems of dialogue that make me all happy inside.

I also find a fair number of turds: descriptions that are not as clever as I thought they were when I first put them down on paper, plot holes I can throw a cat through, characters who seem cut from cardboard. Some of it is ugly. And some of it beautiful.

The point is, early drafts are allowed to be a mess, but chances are they are not as bad as you first thought when you typed "The End". That's what revising and editing are for - making the bad better and the good really good.

2. Trust Your Gut

Revisions are hard. There's that constant feeling of "But what if I make it worse?" There's the nagging suspicion that you won't have improved while writing the first draft and the second one will be more of the same drivel. There's the fear that if you try and change things you'll lose the thread of what you loved about the story in the first place.

But beneath all that is a sense of what needs to be fixed. It's the voice that says "That character doesn't serve a purpose here, get rid of her." It's the tingle of intuition that says that your MC's flaws are more interesting than her strengths. It's the whisper that tells you "That person has to die if the danger is real." This is your gut, the muscley side of your subconscious. It is always right.

3. Take Small Bites

Novels are hard to rewrite/revise/edit because they are so much longer than a short story. (Duh, right?) Take small bites, work on it consistently, and don't give up. Much like writing a first draft the middle will probably seem like The Middle from Hades or The Second Act That Ate Chicago. The difference here is that you already know how things end. You can stop to fiddle with an ornery scene that sets up the final conflict. You can take the time to develop that subplot with the romantic secondary character.

Where writing the first draft was a necessary push to get the whole story out on paper, the second (or eighth) draft is about fine tuning all the moving parts. Take it one step at a time. If it takes a week to revise one chapter and only five minutes to revise the next... that's okay. Mashed potatoes take less effort to chew than ciabatta.

4. Set Goals and Celebrate Accomplishments

Aim for a certain number of pages edited/revised at each session. Be honest about what you can accomplish, but give yourself a little challenge too. Just like with word count goals you may miss the mark sometimes. And sometimes you'll go way beyond what you intended to do. But without a goal it's easy to fall into the trap of moving commas around. Really easy.

Goals help you keep in mind that this is not the only chapter that needs work. And don't forget to celebrate when you make progress. That may mean an extra piece of shortbread at tea time or taking the evening off to something fun (or to veg). Whatever you choose to do, don't forget to recognize that you are making progress. Even if it's slower than you'd hoped.

Persistence

Back in 2009 before Write 1, Sub 1 had been initiated (probably not even concieved) I submitted a little story titled "In the Cool of the Day" to Weird Tales. (This being when Ann Vandermeer was the editor.) After four months I received a polite rejection.

Because I was new to the short story game I spent a few weeks moping about it. Then I tried a few more places (Clarkesworld, Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show, GUD Magazine, AGNI, Boston Review and Glimmer Train). All rejections. I began to think short stories must not be my strength and I put the story aside for a while.

A year or so later I looked at the story again. I liked it, but felt it was missing something. So I revised and turned a rather short story (2.1k words) into a rather longish one (6.7k words). It was better. I got feedback from the SYW critters on the Absolute Write forums. Made further revisions. Had a beta-reader look at it. (She said "A little too perfect.") Revised again.

Submitted to Daily Science Fiction where the story was passed to the second round, but ultimately declined.
Submitted to Lightspeed. Rejected.
Submitted to Strange Horizons. Rejected.

Made a few more small revisions.

Submitted to Asimov's Science Fiction. Rejected.
Submitted to Abyss & Apex. And then... ACCEPTANCE.

And all in a little more than three years from the first submission, subsequent revisions and submissions to other markets to a final acceptance.

It's easy to get discouraged. In fact, I do it all the time. (Get discouraged, I mean.) But I am a firm believer that there is always a home for my stories. Persistence is key in this game.

Don't give up. Don't give up. Don't give up.

Focus

I've mentioned before that I like to work on multiple projects at once. Multi-tasking you might call it. Or scatterbrained. But it's worked pretty well for me.


Until it hasn't.


After several months of turmoil (both internal and external) I have come to a decision: I will not work on anything other than The Novel until it is finished and in the hands of an agent. (That could, admittedly, be a while, but all the more reason to go at it hard.)


There are a couple of exceptions to this rule.

1) I have been working very hard on a story for The Beast Within 4 anthology. My story might suck, but I've been working hard. And I will edit and submit it and let the rest handle itself.


2) I will also continue to sub/resub everything currently on rotation. I might (if I get really stuck on The Novel) edit a couple of things that were in sub rotation but were pulled because I felt they needed more work. MIGHT. But that's a little unlikely.


In the meantime, The Novel is a little over half-way finished and the rest of it is more or less outlined. All I have to do is: Write It. Edit for the numerous typos that have grown over the past months I've been working on it haphazardly. Find agents that interest me. Query the hell out of The Novel until I find someone as excited about it as I am.


Simple yes? (That's what I keep telling myself so it must be true.)

Lessons Learned Making Sweet Pickle Relish

1. Start with a Recipe...


I like outlines. They give me a chance to see if the mechanics of a story will work. It's in the outline that I usually see (and try to fix) the biggest issues with plot. Depending on the story I may have a very detailed outline or a very vague outline. But I've never written a story that I didn't have some idea from the get-go where I wanted it to end. Know what you're trying to accomplish before you start.


2. ...But Don't Be Afraid to Improvise


Even when I pre-plan a story, even when I outline in minute detail, I always hit a point where I just start making shit up. Maybe it's adding a scene I hadn't anticipated. Or turning the entire plot in a different direction because my Main Character turned out to be more of a coward than I had anticipated. Even when I think I know where things are headed, there is always room for change. Don't be afraid to put The Plan to one side and go with your gut.



3. No Matter How You Slice Them, The Onions Will Make You Cry


Every author enjoys some part of the writing process and HATES some other part. For some of us it's trying to finish that all important First Draft. For some of us it's looking at that messy First Draft and figuring out how to make it better. For some of us (me) it's the nit-picky line-editing stage. (Typos are the bane of my existence. And commas. And making sure that every word that should be in a sentence actually is.) For some it's the process of selling a story. But no matter which part you dread, if you want a readable, sellable and published story you have to wipe the tears off your cheeks and muscle through.


4. Even If You Don't LOVE Something, You Can Still Make it Well


I'm a big believer in writing what you love. But (BUT!) I do think it's possible to write a story that you are not completely enamored with and still produce a solid piece of fiction. I say this for two reasons. 1) You may - at some future point - be asked to edit or rewrite something in a way that was not how you first envisioned it. Have faith. You are capable of making changes to suit the needs of someone else. Even if it's not how you would do it. (Of course, whether you want the sale badly enough to do this is a whole 'nother discussion.) 2) You will - if not now, then later - have a story or two that you just don't like as well as the others you have written. This doesn't mean they aren't any good or that they aren't sellable. Trust your skills and submit that puppy 'til it's published. (So far, three of my five sales were stories I wasn't "sure" about.)

5. Getting It Right Takes Time

Some things you just can't rush. I'd like to say that as I've improved as a writer, my ability to turn out stories every week/month has gotten smoother, more dependable. Alas, that is not the case. My ability to tell stories has improved. So has my ability to sit down and write when I say it's time to write. (No more hanging around waiting on that damned muse to strike.) But writing is still work. It still takes effort. Finishing a story can still take weeks. (Or months.) That's okay. Some things come together quickly and others require a more elaborate process, but getting it right is worth the effort.

Plan of Attack

A few days ago I posted my goals for the coming year. Then the group sponsoring the Write 1, Sub 1 Novel Challenge suggested doing a blog chain discussing our plan of attack for the coming year.


Making goals and figuring out how to meet them are two different animals. Making goals is easy. Two years ago I wanted to write 500k in a year. Saying that was easy. Doing it? Not so easy. (In fact, I failed to meet that goal.)


I have my list of goals for the year, now I have to figure out how I'll meet them.


Let's start with the basics. When it comes to meeting writing goals the biggest step forward is to write. Every day. That's one reason why I made goal number four: Write 15k each month. Because when words are going down on paper, that's always a good thing. Setting a specific amount helps me. (I've tried the whole "chapters" or "pages" goals and they don't work as well. I wind up with short chapters and pages of dialogue. Well, that happens anyway but it gets worse if I'm trying to write five chapters a week instead of 3.5k words.)


The next challenge is producing words that are all in order. By that I mean, working toward the end of a single project. That's where goals two and three come into play (Write and submit a longer length project and Polish and submit the unfinished/unedited shorter work from this year). I suffered from a ten year stretch of Shiny-New-Idea-itis, jumping from one project to the next without finishing much and not even attempting to sell the few things I did complete.


If I were simply writing for fun that wouldn't matter. But I'm not. I want to get paid. That means writing. Every day. Then revising and editing. Then hitting up every editor with the finished story until they cry mercy and publish my story.


That just leaves goal number one: Finish and submit the novel-in-progress. This is a huge deal. I've finished drafts of novels before. I've finished four drafts of this particular novel already and they were not up to par. Not for the publishers I want to query. But polishing a 70k manuscript is a big task. (Again, see goal number four.) And once the novel's done, I still have to write the other submission material - query letter, synopsis, etc.


These are all brand new territory for me. And I'm terrified. But I still have a plan. I will write. Every day. Then revise and edit as necessary (this includes the query letter, etc). Then send that sucker out to every publisher (in order since most don't allow sim-sub) until they cry mercy and publish my novel.


If there's one thing I've learned this past year, writing short stories and submitting them over and over again 'til they find a home, it's to never take "no" for an answer. There is a home for my work. There's a home for your work. All you have to do is find it.


In the meantime, write. Every day. Then revise and edit until your story is as good as you can make it. Finally, submit it to any editor who publishes your genre/content and don't stop until they cry mercy and publish your story.


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If you want to read more about planning an attack on the publishing world check out Alex Shvartsman's blog post HERE. Up next is Michael Haynes with his own take on making a plan of attack.

Sweating the Small Stuff - The Creative Process: Part Eleven

Revising means more that looking for spelling errors and misplaced commas. It's more complicated than simply fixing a rough plot. Revising means polishing characters and finding (and keeping) a consistent voice for the whole novel.

Everyone always wants to know how to edit for voice. I can't tell you exactly how I do it. But I can give you some examples and maybe a few pointers.

Here's a line from a short story I'm working on. First, the rough draft version. Dust and heat hit like a wall as I take my first steps on Malachee.

After a bit of thinking about how that "hit" confuses the tense (which is first person present), I came up with the following solution. Dust hits like a fist as I take my first steps on Malachee; heat is a sucker punch behind.

Not necessarily the perfect (or permanent) solution but now I'm thinking along a better train of thought. And I have more creative options about how to expand or diversify that opening.

Here's a bit from a sketch for a potential novel. Centurion was about ten hours ahead of her internal clock which meant she’d be coming on duty about the time she normally went to sleep.

And the revised version. Stretching and pretending to yawn didn’t trigger any feelings of sleepiness. Her internal clock was not in synch with life on the ship. Yet. In the meantime she would have to deal with a duty shift that coincided with her normal sleep cycle.

Again, it's not necessarily a perfect solution but it certainly has more movement, more in common with the POV character, than the first version. (And let's remember that, for better or worse, I work through several drafts before I'm satisfied.)

I like to write my narrative as close to the POV characters "voice" as possible. I've been told that narrative voice (in third person) can never exactly match a character's voice. But I'll be damned if I don't try. That means that every description, every observation, every word choice is informed by the POV character. If they are poorly educated, I don't use big words and may even opt for less smooth sentence construction to stick more closely in their head.

This is not a choice that every author will want to make. I find it works well for me. In part because once I find the main character's "voice" I've also found the book's voice. Learning how far to push it... that's an ongoing process.

For me, the small details are really what holds the story together. A character describing something a particular way. An image that is beyond typical. Making sure those details come through is part of the revision process. It doesn't matter how brilliant the plot is if the characters seem flat or the action is stilted by failing to show those little nuances that say "This is someone you've not met before."

Right now I'm in the middle of a fourth draft of a novel. There's a lot of fiddling with little things. But less now than there was in the previous draft. And that's the way it should be.

What about you? Do you have a method for finding voice? Or a way to compare one chapter to the next as you aim for consistency? Or maybe your "small details" are something else entirely? How do you polish the little things in your novel?

Begin at the Beginning - The Creative Process: Part Ten

Once I get a better idea of what needs to be fixed plot-wise in my rough draft, I start rewriting. Usually I have a stack of scribbled-over, post-it splattered pages, a new outline, and a bunch of pages in the trash. This is because A) I like to work from an actual paper copy when I make revisions, B) the original story/outline has undergone major reconstructive surgery, and C) a lot of the rough draft turned out to be useless. (At least for the moment.)

When I start rewriting I start from scratch. Using my outline to keep me on track and my scribbled-over pages to give me something to work with I open up a brand spanking new document, label it "Big Shiny Idea - Draft Two ver 1". Then I begin with sentence one (even if for some miracle I decided to keep it the way it was in the rough draft) and start typing. All of it. From scratch.

I can type 2k in an hour if I absolutely have to. If you are a slow typist you might want to consider improving your typing speed or use an alternate method for revisions.

Before you say "Screw that. I'm not retyping the whole damn book." let me explain my madness.

I noticed a while back that when I went through and made revisions (especially in longer - novel length - work) that I could tell which sections had been in the rough draft and which were revised. Sometimes it was just a shift in voice or tone. But most of the time the revised sections simply did flow with the rest.

Maybe I'm the only one with this issue. Maybe every other writer on the face of the planet has no trouble in making revisions flow seamlessly into the rest of the story. But I, apparently, struggle with this.

After a bit of flailing trying to rectify the problem I discovered a simple solution. Write it all as one piece. When I started at the beginning and wrote through to the end (not all in one sitting if we're talking about a novel) my brain ironed out the seams and tweaked the notes I had made so that everything actually fit together.

I'm not sure why it works like that for me, but it does. And I always recommend that you try and actually retype as much as possible when you revise a draft. This also helps smooth out changes in voice or writing skill that may have developed over the course of writing the novel.

Whether I'm rewriting everything or filling in chunks I do find it works best to start at the beginning and work through to the end. It just helps me keep the story moving forward, the character arcs arcing and the tension moving gradually toward the climax.

What about you? Do you revise beginning to end or hop around until it's all finished?

Trimming Back the Shrubbery - The Creative Process: Part Nine

Once my rough draft is done it's time to start revising and editing. Those two words do not mean the same thing. (At least, not in my world.)

Revising is the work of tightening up plots, fleshing out characters, cutting out dead chapters, filling in the gaps and rewriting those passages that spewed forth at the end of a caffeine binge. It is the process of polishing "the big picture" of your novel.

Editing is the nuts and bolts of your writing. Checking spelling, punctuation, grammar, formatting. Editing should only be done once the revisions are done. (This doesn't mean ignore glaring errors. But don't waste time angsting over whether a comma is needed in a particular sentence until you are damn certain that sentence will be going out to agents/publishers.)

I point this out because it seems to be a common mistake among beginning writers that the purpose of a second draft is to clean up the minor errors (spelling, grammar, etc) that occurred in the rough draft and that once the editing is done the manuscript will be ready to submit. First, let me take a moment to laugh hysterically.

All right, now let's talk about the basics of revising your rough draft.

It's very important to be able to look at a story with "fresh eyes". This means you shouldn't remember every twist and turn, every plot point or all the clever dialogue. This will help you recognize the dead stuff. It will also enable you a few moments of pleasant surprise. Many will suggest (and I will repeat as well) setting aside a manuscript for a period of time in order to gain some perspective. For some that means putting something aside for a week. For others it may take several years. From what I've read the average is usually 6 - 8 weeks.

Once you've let your manuscript age or percolate or however you want to think about it, you need to print it out. "But that's expensive. And what about the environment?"

Screw the environment, you're writing a masterpiece. Dig that change out of the couch cushions, buy a ream of paper and print that sucker out.

I actually despise proper manuscript formatting and never print my stuff that way until it's ready to send off. I like 11 point, Times New Roman/Courier, single spaced with normal margins. Personally, that's plenty of room to make correction marks and I use post-its for any detailed notes about revisions. (And the margins. My manuscripts get kind of messy when I'm revising.)

The point is, figure out how you like to read your MS and then print it out that way. Now that you have the whole thing in your hot little hands read it through from beginning to end. Do not stop to correct spelling errors. Do not make notes about how to change Villain B into Antagonist H. Do not change the lame dialogue into something witty. Just read through from beginning to end.

After you've finished it's okay to cry a little. Or hit something. You are not allowed to throw away said manuscript, shred it, burn it or otherwise destroy it. (That's what the revision process is for.)

Trust me. When I read through a rough draft again for the first time I walk away thinking "What the hell? I wasted a month writing that shite?" Then I eat something and drink a cup of coffee and resolve to rip the guts out of the thing and put something better in it's place.

Which brings us to step two of the revision process: figuring out where to start. The beginning is always a good place, but if you're having doubts about whether the story starts in the right place then you should start somewhere else.

I begin by taking a red pen and drawing brackets in the margins with the words "fix this" next to every section I think needs to be fixed. Anything that seems to be not working at all I mark through and put "Cut" in the margin. And any place where I think I have an idea about how to expand or fix a section I either scribble it in the margin or on a post-it. At this point I'm trying to think about the story as a whole. Is the beginning too rushed? Is the final confrontation half the book? Does the romantic subplot help or hinder the story?

Once I've gone through the whole thing again, I open a new document, label it "Big Shiny Idea draft 2" and start making revisions.

"But what," you say, "do you revise? How exactly do you turn that pile of poo into a golden masterpiece?"

That, my little lollipop is the next blog entry.

In the meantime, think about your current WIP and try to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the plot and pacing.