Book club and Serial Killers

I seriously have the most awesome book club in the universe. This month was our annual book club retreat which took place at the Silver King resort in Park city. Imagine spending the entire night (ahem, okay only until 5 am or so) talking with your best buds about reading, writing and everything in between (and eating lots of snacks of the sugar and doughnut variety). Now add that our fearless book club leader managed to secure the author of our book as a guest for the evening and you have the most FRAWSOME book club ever!! (Yes we are attempting to kill each other with kitchen utensils. Last one standing got an ARC of Mr. Monster--yeah, I'm reading it right now.)

The book choice this month was I Am Not A Serial Killer by Dan Wells, a local Utah author. Now not only is this book amazing (no really, the protag is the most interesting and complex protagonist I've ever read) but the author is likewise amazing. The very fact that he took an entire evening to discuss not only his novel with us, but also talk writing and publishing with the few writers in our club says a lot about a person.

Okay, enough gushing (I'm not a gusher by nature but every once in a while I get the urge). One of the things Dan said really stuck with me. I'll have to paraphrase since I wasn't taking notes.

"Anyone can make a living as an artist. If you put as much time and energy as a doctor does in building a career, you can be just as successful. Unfortunately there are not programs designed to guide an author step by step into the industry as there are in other fields but if you consider yourself a writer and work everyday toward making it a career, you can't lose."

Well, I've decided I'm an author. Of course I must be a mother first, but as a sanity-saving supplement to my life, I will be putting in the hours as if it were a career, not just a hobby. Good things are coming my way, I can feel it.

It's too dang crowded, I can't see the end . . .

Today my two youngest children (2 and 4) dragged out an old toy kitchen set that's been residing in our basement since their older sister outgrew it four years ago. Seeing an opening for quiet writing time while they played with their "new" toy, I put it in the two-year-old's room, listening to them play quietly with the single piece of plastic pizza that had survived the four years of abandonment. Hoping for more than ten minutes of writing time, I scavenged around the house for other toy dishes, toy utensils and plastic food. I was very pleased with myself as I set out the toys for them and then settled down with my laptop to do some serious writing. Not more than ten seconds later, without a single new word to my name, I hear the screaming and wailing telling me the kidlets are engaged in an all out war over the new items. So I settled it, found a couple more things and pulled out my laptop again. Screams, followed by some pushing and if I were to gauge by the the strange crescent-shaped mark on the four-year-old's arm, there was some biting as well.

So what happened between the twenty or so minutes they played happily with the single piece of pizza and the ten seconds they played with everything else. I guess things just got too crowded--too many cool things were put into play.

This got me thinking about my current writing quandary. There I was happily typing along a singular plot line, excited about my dear protag going from point A to point B with this motivation and that problem. Then I start working on the climax and the winding up and realize that things have become too crowded. I've seriously thought of screaming, pushing and biting but being a mature adult have restrained myself (ahem, those aren't bite marks on the screen, I swear!).

I kinda feel like perhaps Stephan King felt when he got somewhere toward the end of The Stand and realized things had gotten too crowded with too many story lines going in a too many directions. What did he do? Apparently he blew up half his characters (I'm only halfway through so I'm going to take his word for it until I get there).

Now blowing up half my characters isn't going to work for me, first of all, I like them way too much and have worked in hints throughout the novel that their lives are vital to the climax, and second of all, I simply don't much care for killing characters (not that you'd know it if you read it).

I did come to a conclusion today that since moving forward is proving impossible, I need to go back and untangle the first draft rats nest, working out all the character's wants and motivations. Hopefully then, I'll be able to see the climax come together in the way I want with all the loose ends tied up.

Before I do that, however, I should probably go and untangle the children from that kitchen set and remove everything except that single piece of plastic pizza.

This'n that

So first off, I'd like to thank all my new followers of this blog. It's been wonderful thinking that I'm posting something and someone is actually reading it. *sniffles and blows nose with stunning self-deprecation*

There has been a great deal going on in the writers community in the last week. My poor google reader is struggling to keep up with the wealth of information. I can't help but sit back and enjoy every article, letting it feed my obsession with the written and soon-to-be-written word. First of all http://writeoncon.com/ is in full swing filling my little brain with so very much knowledge, I feel like I should be handed a quiz soon just to prove I'm learning stuff. Second, I finally got the hang of twitter, sending out my first tweet just yesterday after cyberstalking agents and writers via their tweets and clicking on every link they offered, sending me into yet another maelstrom information. Thirdly, I discovered a rather new publishing company in Utah http://widopublishing.com/ which is playing a part in hosting a wonderful contest if a person were to perhaps, I don't know, have a manuscript they've been querying that they'd love feedback from an editor on. That link is here http://karenjonesgowen.blogspot.com/2010/08/lettuce-write-and-get-your-chapters.html

So there you have it. It's only Wednesday (at least I think it's Wednesday, seems like it should be Friday since I finally get to see Inception then) and as you can see I've been busy sitting on my butt while my mind has been running in a million directions.

....oh and I'm potty-training my youngest child so my butt and my computer have spent a lot of time on the bathroom floor. 'Nuff said.

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.