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Lost…

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I’m feeling lost. The ending is so close. I know what it is, but I cannot decide which path to take to get there. I know I need to just suck it up and write something, anything, so I can finish the first draft and then hammer out the details that either do or don’t work in the edits to follow, but I’m lost.

Part of the problem is my writing schedule does not coincide with my ideas schedule. Every morning I bike to work. I leave early enough that there’s no traffic or noise. It’s peaceful. And in this peace, I develop these wonderful ideas. I get to work and try so hard to keep them all in tact. By the time lunch rolls around and I go to pen them in, they’ve flown away.

The other part of the problem is the evolution of the story. It has been on-going for so long, there are plot elements that I want to hold on to despite the fact that they don’t really fit with the story anymore. But it’s more than that. I’ve had too much time to let the ideas simmer. Some simmering is good. Too much can become toxic. And now I cannot commit and I grow more and more lost as I try to work through the maze that has become my WIP.

This morning I forced myself to get up early and write. I told myself I was not allowed to think about all the problems, about all the possible things that could happen leading up to the end. I just needed to sit and write whatever logically followed the sentence before it. And you know what? I’m still lost, but I at least feel like I recognize my surroundings, like I can find my way out. Taking the time to sit down and write left me feeling refreshed. Even when you feel lost, just write. You will feel so much better getting it all out of your head. I know I do.

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New York, New York

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If you didn’t guess from the title, I’m in New York for the week. Sadly I’m here for work, not pleasure, but being a work trip and all, at least it’s a free trip. As a writer, you can never go wrong with free things.

New York is Where it’s at

I’ve read a lot of things recently, including an article in the newest Writer’s Digest, that New York is the place to be for writers. Of course, the plethora of publishing houses in New York is a big contributor is this notion, but walking around the city, I stumbled upon something else. New York is a great place for writers because there are so many characters. You step onto the street and you are surrounded by people from every walk of life. Not only that, but the ‘settings’ are equally as varied. Example: last night I ate dinner in an authentic southern BBQ place. Tonight I went to a very French fondue restaurant. In both cases, I felt like I had been transported out of New York to a southern town and a Paris restaurant respectively. Not only did the food leave me feeling this way, but the decor and overall ambiance also contributed. What better inspiration could you want?

Of course, that being said, when the Internet in my hotel was down for several hours today, I took a walk and then watched t.v. instead of writing. But that’s an entirely different issue.

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The ficklest of the fickle

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I’m fickle. There, I’ve admitted it. I’ve come clean. Of course, I am sure readers of this blog have already surmised this by the simple fact that I cannot seem to stick to a theme. For those of you not up to speed with the technology lingo, that means the background and overall design of my blog. But my fickleness translates itself into other aspects of my life as well. Most importantly, into my writing.

I’m a fickle writer. I can’t make up my mind about anything. It’s really a big problem. I can’t even make up my mind about which concepts to follow, let alone which paths to take once I’ve started working on something.

This is probably also the time to mention that, with the exception of undergrad and grad school, I’ve never finished anything. I mean, ANYTHING. I’ve never even beaten a video game. I stopped doing TaeKwonDo 1 stripe away from reaching black belt. I only made it through 3 chapters of a self-taught web design course. You name it, I haven’t finished it.

You may be asking yourself, as the boyfriend has been asking me for 3 years now, how I think I’m going to finish writing a book. Simple. Writing means more to me than anything else in my life. It always has. And, in my defense, I did write a 100 page thesis to get my master’s degree and I have stuck with the same overall concept for my WIP for 3 years. Certainly that must count for something, right?

So how is the fickle writer supposed to commit to an idea, commit to the various paths that evolve out of a book and finish the darn thing? The simple answer: sheer willpower.

I’m sure this isn’t the answer you were hoping for. I’m sure you were looking for some grand scheme. Sadly, there is no grand scheme that will get one over the hurdle of being fickle other than pushing through it and forcing yourself to make a decision. Another way is to try not to over-analyze, to go with your gut. I’ve more or less mastered the first solution by reminding myself that the only way to finish a book is to suck it up and make a decision. The second solution is something I work on everyday, and I think once I’ve mastered that, I will be a much more efficient writer.

Of course, I could just blame my fickleness on being a perfectionist and pretend I don’t have a problem.

How do you overcome fickle tendencies?

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Dreaming of NaNoWriMo…Literally

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I had a crazy dream last night. I blame it on my obsession with finishing my current book and the fact that I am still being haunted by The Hunger Games every time I close my eyes. So in the dream, you won NaNoWriMo by racing up these twisty, windy stairs. There could only be three winners. The winners would finish their books. The only challenge was that the person behind you could throw a knife in your back so they could move up in the ranks. At the beginning of the stairwell, I joined ranks with 3 other contestants. Only problem was, I was in 4th place. But in my dream, that was fine. I didn’t mind helping them get to the top. As we ran, I heard people dropping dead all around me, until finally I was almost at the top and someone came up behind me. The 3 winners had already made it. I convinced the person behind me not to stab me in the back. What was the point? Then I turned and left. The game was over. I did not win, but my teammates had.

I woke up at 3 in the morning and thought this was a pretty interesting dream. At 3 am, I ignored its connection to life in general and only saw the connection in regards to writing. There will always be people looking to stab you in the back to take what you potentially have. The struggle to the top will be long and exhausting. Getting to the top is not something you can do on your own. You need help. A support group goes a long way.

I guess my sub-conscious is trying to tell me its time to find a support group. To all you writers out there, how did you find your support group? Are you still looking for one? Do you think a support group is essential to success?

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Spunky Female Main Characters

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The other day I was having drinks with a friend and discussing writing and books (I’m a dork, I know). The journey my book has taken from day one to now came up and we got into a discussion about female MCs. My MC was originally a female. This changed about 1.5 years into the project. In discussing my reasons for making this change, we hit upon something common to female MCs. They all have a bit of spunk.

Think about a female MC from almost any book you loved, from any genre. We used Matilda as our initial example, but think about older literary characters, like Anna Karenina or Scarlett O’Hara. Think about more recent ones, like Katniss Everdeen or Lisbeth Salander. Now think about what all these characters have in common. They all reject societies conventions for what a woman should be; they all have spunk.

Now think about books you didn’t love that had a female MC. To be kind, I will refrain from giving examples, but I can think of several. And I can think of one thing all these MCs had in common. They whined. They moaned about lack of love and misfortune. They didn’t create their own destiny, at least not willingly. They lacked true spunk. Some of these tried to have spunk, but there was so much whining and too many fits of self-pity, it just didn’t work.

Now think of some books with great male MCs. Would they have worked as well with a female MC? The example my friend and I used was Harry Potter, but Frodo from Lord of the Rings works just as well, if not better. Had Harry or Frodo been a female, would we have loved them? Or would we have told them to suck it up and quit complaining (in all fairness, I did say that a few times to Frodo, but I kept it to a minimum)? Why is it that a male MC can get away with more moments of emotional weakness than a woman?

So what was the main reason I switched my MC to a male? As a female, she was just too whiny. She seemed to be suffering from too much self-pity. And so I made the switch, and suddenly it worked.

I read a post the other day by Justine Musk, Why You Need to Write Like a Bad Girl, and it got me thinking. If our writing is more honest by throwing away convention and writing honestly, and, as Justine puts it, like a bad girl, are our readers looking to embrace the bad girl in our characters and, by extension, themselves? Is this the appeal of the spunky female MC?

What do you think about this? Are you more likely to read a book with a male MC who has moments of weakness than you are a female? Are we more forgiving of male MCs? Are there any great books out there that give leniency to weaker female characters?

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September Status Update

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We are now 1 week into September, which means I have 3 weeks left to finish my first draft if I’m going to meet my deadline. As it stands, I have 30,057 words, or 105 pages. Can I make it to the finish line? I’d better.

This leaves me about 3 weeks to write 15,000 words. Considering NaNoWriMo participants write 50,000 words in 4 weeks, and my most successful year I wrote 40,000 (the basis for my current WIP), it should be doable. Of course, of those 40,000 words I wrote in those 4 weeks, I have only kept about 10,000, if that.

Why the push to finish my first draft by September 30?

There are a couple reasons:

  • To give me time to edit it and have it submission ready by the end of the year. I’m not sure how long edits will take, but I’m hoping this will be enough time. I plan on hiring an editor through Grub Street, so hopefully that will help speed up the process.
  • I have a YA book concept pulling at my creativity and I’m dying to start outlining. I’m already having trouble deciding which book to plot out in my head before bed – my WIP or this new concept I’m loving more and more each day
  • To gear up for NaNoWriMo – I plan on using my new YA concept for this years challenge, and I want to spend all of October hammering out a solid outline (I know, this sort of breaks the rules, but they never actually rule out outlines, they just dissuade you from using them). I’m hoping to finally complete my 50,000 words in 1 month and be well on my way to completing a second book. If this first book attempt has shown me anything, it’s the importance of writing from an outline. Going into my current WIP not knowing how it was going to end has really slowed things down.
  • I need to finish. Come November 1, I will have been working on this book for 3 years. I remember reading somewhere that it takes most first time authors about that long to write their first book. I didn’t believe it at the time. And now here I am, approaching my 3 year mark. It’s not so much about the time I’ve put into this, but it’s more about the emotional connection. I’ve been with this WIP longer than some divorces I know were married. The more emotionally connected I get to this book, the harder it will be to deal with criticism and edits. I need to be done.
    I need to move on.

My plan of action

I have to reach ~750 words a day. This is actually not that difficult. Most days I write during lunch. I can usually got 500-600 words in my 30 minute lunch period. That just means I will have to devote another 15-30 minutes each evening to writing, plus 30 minutes to entering everything into the computer (I write by hand during lunch and before bed).

Naturally, life will get in the way some days. I don’t want to blow all of my creative energy this month and have nothing left for November, so I would like to still have a life this month. But lucky for me, I already know of a few things that will help me out. Take next week. I will spend 3.5 hours on the Acela Monday morning. There’s nothing I love more than writing on trains, and isn’t that how J.K. Rowling outlined her entire series, on a train trip? I will then spend that entire week in New York, meaning a hotel room waiting for me every evening, full of few to no distractions and time for lots of writing. Then there are the weekends. If I stay focused, I can get a couple thousand words each weekend day. Piece of cake.

Of course, this means my creativity time will be extremely important. But who knows, maybe I’ll throw a celebration in October once the 1st draft is complete. And now that I’ve just written close to 700 non-WIP words, back to writing.

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YA? Tween? MG? W.D.I.A.M. (What does it all mean)?

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Life is all about cataloging. We are taught from a young age to sort things into groups. Apples go with bananas because they are fruit, or they go with firetrucks because both are red. Groups and order are integral to our daily lives. In my paid profession as an archaeologist, I do this on a daily basis. As authors, we too must catalog, only it is our writing that we must put into the appropriate box.

Playing the Genre Game

When I tell people I’m writing a book, the first question they ask is “what’s it about.” I find this to be a surprisingly hard question to answer, not because I don’t know what my plot is about, but because people are looking more for where your book falls in the grand scheme of the literary world. In my case, my category is not one that many people think of when they make their literary map.

I used to tell people that my book is a children’s fantasy. “How far along are you?” they would ask. Anything over 20 pages got me a weird look. “Isn’t that a bit long for a kid’s book?”

YA = Vampires, right?

So then I switched to telling people it was a young adult book, thinking the success of Twilight and other such books would have put this category on the map. Unfortunately, this almost always leads to the question “Are there vampires?”

So what am I writing? In the publishing world, its a middle grade fantasy book. But how many non-writers know what this means? How many writers know what this means? Or what any of the under-18 categories mean?

MG Defined

The basic difference in categories is the age group the book is intended for. Middle Grades tend to be aimed at the 8-12 year olds. Tween or Upper Middle Grade extends upwards to 13-14. Young Adult is intended for the 12-18 age group. And children’s books include everything below 8, and they in turn have their own sub-divisions including chapter book, picture book, etc. And of course, to correspond with these varying age groups, content and the age of the main character are also affected by the above categories.

To learn more, check out MG vs YA fiction: What’s the Difference?

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An online platform for Children's Writers

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I’m not quite sure why, but the thought of creating an online platform to draw in MG/child readers seems a bit strange to me. I think about when I was a kid and had to pay for Internet usage by the minute. If I was looking for a new book, I asked the school librarian or perused the shelves at my local bookstore. But oh, how the times do change.

In thinking about younger siblings of my friends, they were extremely active online, joining writing communities and list serves and engaging in online role playing games from 8th grade up. And this was 10+years ago. With the advances in technology and publishers such as Simon & Schuster launching online books (see my post from July 30), why wouldn’t you be able to build an online platform for children, middle grade readers, or young adults? Who knows, it may even be easier to capture these age groups online than it is to capture the 40+ readers who did not grow up surrounded by constant access to the Internet and technology.

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Overweight Characters in Children's Books

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Is it wrong to make my overweight characters evil and mean? Is this playing into stereotypes? Is this too much of a cliché? Does this teach children to view overweight people negatively? So often with writing it becomes difficult to see past the works of those whose footsteps we walk in so that we can forge our own path. I worry that I will inadvertently play into the stereotypes created by my predecessors, and that my work will suffer as a result.

Kids Come in Every Size

Certainly obesity is something that shouldn’t be encouraged in children, but children who are overweight, or those with body issues, may become more self-conscious about their weight if characters physically similar to them are villanized in stories. Equally, the kids who would pick on overweight children may feel their behavior is justified through the negative portrayal of overweight characters in books.

The Harry Potter series instantly jumps to mind when I think about negative portrayals of overweight people. Dudley is fat, unintelligent, and a bully. Malfoy, on the other hand, while evil, is intelligent and conniving. He is also thin.

Stereotyping Obesity

There are many other children’s books that also portray overweight characters in a negative light. Of course, overweight characters are equally portrayed as jovial, yet simple. Rarely do you see a normal, run-of-the-mill overweight character. Rarely do you see an overweight hero (one of the refreshing things about Disney-Pixar’s UP).

But would we want to write an overweight hero? Aren’t we trying to encourage weight loss and exercise? Do we want children to associate being overweight with being dimwitted and/or mean? Or are we inadvertently excluding an increasing population or readers? According to the CDC, 17% of children in 2006 were obese. This is double the amount found in 1980. With these numbers rising, maybe we should not treat obesity in such a negative way. Certainly we can show an overweight character struggling with their weight, or facing obstacles they would not face were they more fit (again to reference UP : Russell faced obstacles brought on by his lack of fitness), but to make every overweight character less than the fit characters may not be the best message to send children.

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