Hanging threads

What do you do when you're 70,000 words into a manuscript (okay actually 78,000 words, 8,000 of which I have deemed unworthy but can't seem to delete) and you just don't feel it coming together? I have all these little threads I've been setting out since the beginning, characters that I intend of having a great impact at the end and subtle little mini-plots worked in throughout. Trouble is, now I'm feeling the pinch. At 70,000 words the novel should be winding up, everything rolling together into a nice little package that will explode into a dramatic fireworks grand finale of climatic satisfaction and yet my threads are still hanging in a million different directions without a rubberband in sight to hold them in place.

I finally had to pin my husband down last night and give him the abbreviated plot version and beg him to help me out of my rubberbandless dilemma. It helped. A lot in fact. I was able to fix and finish the chapter I'd been wallowing through and even started on the next chapter. That put one thread in place, now I just need to work the other ones in. I have no doubt that everything will work out in the end, but just now I'm in writing purgatory. Right now there's not a lot of enjoyment in putting words down because I know they're bad and will need to be fixed later. The only thing that keeps me going is that whatever I'm writing, I have no doubt I will be able to improve on it--and I will. Yessiree. That's the good part about writing. Most of the time it can only get better. If you're already at good-better-best, you should probably be publishing.

I hate/love querying

It's true. I have such strong opposing feelings about querying it kinda turns me schizo.

Rage is on its second major round of querying. The first I'll call an abysmal failure mostly for two main reasons: First: looking back, I'm embarrassed by the query letters I sent. Honestly, they were just really bad. Confusing, bad writing, the works. Second: Obviously the first round of querying didn't render the results I wanted (landing an agent) although I did get a few partial requests.

Now we come to the second round of querying. Okay, the second round of querying I'm a few weeks into. After I finished the aforementioned rewrite, I refused to jump right back into the querying shark tank without that absolutely smashing query letter to match the work. So I wrote a query and edited it and researched before writing another query. Rinse and repeat. Up around query #8 I remember queryshark.blogspot.net, a website Brett happened on back when he was starting to query his novel House of Wind. So I revisited the site, thought it might be fun to submit to the brilliant, although rather frightening Janet Reid, aka query shark, for a query critique. First I read her requirements for submitting and found out that I had to read 160+ blog posts of query's she's already critiqued.

So I started reading thinking I'd get through a quarter of the posts and then send her mine. Then I discovered that I had ideas of how to correct (or restart) my query while I was reading so I made a habit of having the query up on my screen while reading the blog so it would be easy to make corrections.

I'll tell you, it wasn't easy and it took me well over a week to get through the entire archives but the result was query #14. Well darn it all if I don't feel pretty good about #14. In fact I've sent it out now to over a dozen agents and have already gotten a partial request and a, "I'm passing it on to a colleague who might like it". I didn't take that one as a rejection.

Now we come to the love/hate portion of querying. There is something downright thrilling about sending out that letter and knowing one of those people with connections to major publishing companies is looking at your precious baby and picturing it in hardback. I love getting on my computer and seeing a "re:query:12th Dimension R.A.G.E." in my inbox. My finger hovers over the mouse for a good 30-60 seconds before I'm able to click on it, preparing for the worst, although in at least two cases yesterday, punching my fist in the air and yelling "YES!" That would be the "love" portion of querying.

What I hate: Self doubt. Worry that R.A.G.E. is not good enough, concern that there's not way I can swim in the writing industry, fear that the next rejection will destroy my will to finish my next novel, terror that perhaps my ability to write will never be up to par with industry standards. Usually these fears are the worst in the evenings after the sun goes down and the ghosts come out. During the day things don't look so grim and I can hope, hope, hope for a brighter outcome for my dreams.

P.S. I did submit my query to queryshark. No posting yet but at least the site did its job in giving me a query that I'm not embarrassed by.

Major Overhaul

Finally after years of watching Stephan King inspired movies I took a leap and actually read one of his books. Starting off small with his book On Writing (fabulous) followed by Eyes of the Dragon, I managed to make it to one of his hard core horror novels and picked up It.

To say this novel inspired me would be an understatement. I was utterly amazed by the way he seemed to paint characters and scenery with such vividness and realism. So finishing the 400,000+ words in less than a month I had to go back and look at R.A.G.E.

Now my poor manuscript had been written, edited, edited, edited and edited, then queried, queried, queried, rejected, rejected, rejected and then finally shelved, but after reading It I was determined to have another look. Holy Flatness Batman!! No wonder it had been rejected 50+ times. While my plot wasn't lacking, my faceless characters revolved in little individual spheres that didn't extend past their little sections of dialogue and the most basic of descriptions. Ding, ding, ding. A bell went off in my head and I rolled my neck, cracked my knuckles and sat right down for a complete rewrite. That was about three months ago or whenever I posted last on my sad neglected blog.

Since then the story has taken on depth in regards to setting descriptions as well as character development in the tone of 30,000 words. That's right. My measly 75,000 word novel has been bulked up to 105,000 words of depth and character.

I wish this story had a happy ending and I could proudly put into print that since then twenty agents have asked for the manuscript and 15 have asked to sign me and a publisher is waiting in the wings to offer me a six figure three book deal. Unfortunately I'm once again standing of the brink of querying and I can't seem to put together an absolutely smashing query letter to match my newly absolutely smashing manuscript. I'll get there, I know I will. No one puts in that much time on their computer and that much effort into a manuscript without trying to introduce it to the world. Literary Agents, you've been warned. Watch for new and improved R.A.G.E. coming your way. ;)

TSTL

Writers have great power. Within the twenty-six letters of the alphabet are endless possibilities. Our fingers pound out word after word, weaving together a tale that we hope resonates with other people. Eventually we discover that there is no ceiling on our creativity, something that could not ever be possible in the real world is just a few words from reality within our works.

What's the phrase, "With great power comes great responsibility." Writer's always discover their power but often disregard their responsibility. We'll toss a character off a cliff and have them survive. We'll have a character act atrociously and then allow another character to forgive them without question. We'll create impossibilities with little or no explanation. Why? Because we can. Gravity won't stop us neither will social inhibitions. Unfortunately this leads to many unpublished authors, simply because if a reader can't wrap his head around our impossibilities, the work will never resonate.

This brings us to one of the greatest sin of an irresponsible author. The character that is TSTL. Remember that character that went off a cliff. Well suppose she walked off the cliff, even though she could see it, even though she didn't want to die and whistling the national anthem all the way. Stupid, eh? To Stupid To Live, perhaps? Someday I hope for R.A.G.E. to be my breakout novel but I had to acknowledge something during my most current major overhaul--my main character Rose was flirting with the label TSTL. Shameful. The trouble is, I knew this. I tried using the science fiction in my book to explain away her stupidity in following after the bad guys. Stupid, yes, but hey without it she doesn't go on the journey that makes up the majority of the book. So now you can imagine my relief as I am able to take Rose off the TSTL list. Thanks to a great deal of rewriting, Rose is able to follow the bad guys for a friggin' good reason that has only a little to do with sci-fi and hopefully people won't roll their eyes at her and say, "Honestly she doesn't deserve to live if she's going to be so dumb." and, "Hallelujah she finally got shot. I hope she dies." Neither phrase a very good thing to have directed at your MC.

I guess being TSTL is probably something to avoid in real life as well. Our society doesn't weed our the fittest as well as it used to. Just remember that laws apply, no matter whether you think you can create the impossible or not.

How our characters affect us

I really enjoy my main character in Risk and R.A.G.E. Kris Rose is an intense, optimistic, don't-take-no-crap-from-no-one individual who is often funny and horribly flawed. However, of late I have been rather annoyed with her. Granted, she's going through a rough patch and, as the story goes, being very progressive in a rather negative direction. Even though it's a part of the story and it's something she has to go through for the sake of tension and even though I know she'll be okay in the end, I can't help feeling dragged down with her. I've been walking around the house for several weeks with the weight of her despair in my head and not a whole lot of hope on the horizon. Honestly, this segment is taking way too long to write and if it keeps going on this way, it might just send me to the loony bin.

Well last night I went on a great run. I haven't run in months because, let's face it, I've been hibernating (the cold and I don't get along so well). So I braved the first snow storm in months and ran until I was sore and cold and quite exhilarated--down right cheery. Then I sat down at my computer and wrote poor, depressed Kris Rose a turning point. Talk about breathing a sigh of relief. Now her optimism is in my head and I've been walking around the house whistling and plotting happy things for this character.

Then I started wondering, was Kris Rose affecting me or was it the other way around? How often do I have horrible writer's block because I'm cheerful and my character's depressed? How often am I feeling mellow and content and my character needs to go beat people up? How often am I snarling mad and my character has to go and smooch her boyfriend? The best times for writing, I've found, are when my characters and I are in perfect harmony. Nothing satisfies me more than, in lieu of yelling at my kids, having Rose throw a few punches, or instead of wasting three hours in front of the TV, writing a quiet conversation between friends.

Therapy manuscript? I suppose so. Just don't think to ill of me when you read it and discover there's way more shooting and punching then there is hugging.

Oh the horrible things we do

I heard a quote once that went something like this, "It's the responsibility of authors to create interesting, likable characters and then do horrible things to them."

I am reminded of this quate almost every time I sit down with my laptop and punch a few letters that will undoubtedly having my poor characters begging for mercy. Writing had to go on hiatus during Christmas, not due to family activities or even the need to spend time shopping or wrapping. No, actually it was because I needed to do something horrible to a character that I absolutely adore, that would cause him no end to pain. I know I've said in the past that when you're stuck on a scene, violence is always the answer. Write something violent and you're sure to stir things up and make them interesting. In this case, however, the impending violence tore at my heartstrings and I agonized for days on a way to fix it, change it, or simply write around it to spare my poor character from having to go through it. I even imagined in my head what I would say to him if he ever confronted me about my bloody pen (or keyboard, as it were). Honestly, I have to say that I have a great answer for him having something to do with the fact that things were already heading in that direction when the story started and for crying out loud, I'm trying my best to write him out of it.

There are always going to be things we can't prevent. Do we ignore these situations and hope they go away? Do we try to fix it knowing that the end will be the same anyway or maybe scoot around it trying to find a different solution? Well, every situation is different and any one of those solutions could possibly work.

However, in this particular case there was no way around it. I had to do that horrible thing to that wonderful character and you know what? He's handling it fine. Coming right around despite what I put him through. You can often find a rainbow on the other side of the storm.

50K

As milestones go 50K words when you're writing a novel is a pretty good one as the average novel size is between 70K words and 100K words. Why am I spouting off about word counts again? Okay, okay, I'm sure you already guessed it. Yes, I hit and passed 50K words yesterday.

Thank you! Thank you very much!

I actually am not entirely sure how I feel about it. On one hand I'm ecstatic that I've written as much as that and gotten as far as I have in the story. On the other hand, I have been writing in a thousand different directions putting in so many deliberate inconsistencies simply to get the story down.

I say deliberate and I mean it, although I am not happy about it. The thing is, I have a general idea of where the story is going. Characters will go to location A and then leave for location B before dropping character X over into a ravine before moving onto location C. So far I have done just that, moved my characters to the locations I want them to be. The trouble is, I'm not at all clear about their end games or their motivations. Only the conclusion of the novel can clear that up for me but as that is yet unwritten I have locations A, B, and C accounted for but the reason character X was thrown into the ravine only makes sense in chapters 7 and 9 but not chapters 8, 12 and 13.

This happens to grieve me deeply and causes no end to problems with writers block and irritation with my characters because I'm not entirely sure what they want. I suppose if this were my first novel, I might be able to live with it simply because Stephan King said so in his novel on Writing (a new writer's bible on the craft). However, this is my second novel I am operating on an entirely different way of writing than I'm used to. R.A.G.E. was edited to the T throughout every step of writing. I always felt really good about whatever was written previously before I went onto the next section.

Both ways have their pros and cons, although I find myself increasingly more frustrated with Risk, and not at all certain it will ever come fully together. For now I'll continue along the path I sprinting down, (I say sprinting because sometimes I feel like I'm running so fast, I'm stubbing my toes and tripping over rocks whereas with R.A.G.E. I was tiptoeing ever so carefully for the 8 months it took me to write it).

The editing phase sometime in January or February (if I can continue at this pace) will probably be just as much work as the writing phase. However at least by that time I'll have the ending and hopefully know all the characters motivations. I might even be able to save character X from that ravine.