Blog Archives
Round and Round the Mulberry Bush
I was doing quite well at posting every day for most of September. Then the wedding happened, and now it’s mid-October, and a lot of my posts daily have been from The 25. That’s not a bad thing, but I feel like the last few have made me talk around in circles and saying a lot of the same things over and over. So today, I will just give a blurb on the topic and move on to greener pastures so as not to send you monkeys chasing a weasel indefinitely.
Here’s today’s:
10. Rhythm is the subliminal soundtrack in writing. To explore options for moving a reader along, choose a dramatic passage from a published piece you admire. How do you feel when you read it? (Notice your breathing, heart rate, posture and emotions.) How did the writer provoke this response? How do word pairings and sentence and paragraph structures contribute to its momentum? How do these rhythmic choices serve the piece’s meaning?
Now, write a passage that echoes the patterns you’ve discovered. If the first sentence is three short words, yours should be, too. Where a descriptive image blossoms for a paragraph, let yours do the same. Communicate emotion through your rhythm. You might let rage stutter through the syncopation of words and halting punctuation, or stream through run-on sentences. Notice how these choices support or squelch the surrounding narrative. Just as a musician practices scales until they become second nature, your attention to the mechanics of rhythm will help you improvise over time.
—Cohen
You can probably see how I feel I’ve covered this already. Between pace and my post on sentence structure, I think I’ve about beaten that horse to death. Hurrah.
So let’s take that half-dead horse to a nice green pasture and talk about something else, no?
I have to admit, I’m a wee bit stuck on my novel revision. Part of it is because I feel overwhelmed with just how much I need to fix. Draft two is so close to the end, yet I have this litany of stuff going through my head every time I think about sitting down with it. (Cut chapters from the end-where the hell is Lily-texture Cam’s character-scene with John McLeroy-pacing, pacing, pacing) Not to mention all the tiny things, the polishing things like buffing out the adverbs and passive voice. It’s a daunting task sometimes, revision.
(Half-dead horse agrees. I think she likes her green pasture.)
What do you do, gentle viewers? When revision gets painful, how do you bust down that wall? I might have to bite my fist and just take out some of the more complex plot details, but I like my story having depth and texture. I don’t think they take away from the pacing; they just don’t come to fruition till the second or third book sometimes. I blame Robert Jordan for that — stuff he mentioned in books two or three of the Wheel of Time has come up in books eleven or twelve. Anyway. I’m curious to hear how you fellow writers work on revision in longer works when the going gets tough. Any comments or thoughts or advice?
Like this:
Go With the Flow
In the spirit of the 25 Ways to Improve Your Writing (henceforth to be referred to as “the 25″ for the sake of brevity), I’m going to go for it. The structure of these posts will probably consist of me rambling on a bit about how a certain tip relates to my revision process. So here’s the first one!
1. Flow
A piece of writing is a living thing. Our goal should be to serve it and do what it wants, to be its instrument. The flow of words from our mind to the page is impeded in two main ways—if we try to make the story do something that it doesn’t want to do, or if something in us isn’t ready to face the full implications of the work’s theme and emotions.
I’m going to diverge a bit from the implications of writers’ block that exist in this tip, because that’s not something that I’m dealing with during this rewrite. The flow of the text and the flow of narration are entwined in my view. I agree wholeheartedly that when I am having trouble, it’s usually because I’m forcing it, but for the purpose of relating this wisdom to the second draft of my novel, I’m going to talk about the narrative flow.
One of the overarching themes in my story that I noticed glimmering through both books and know it will continue into the third is a sense of connectivity, a belief that the earth connects us all and links everything together. People, places, everything. Magic is the essence of nature, the elements — the responsive and breathing energies that my supernatural characters tap into. One of the big turning points in the first book is when my protagonist visits a reservation after being called there in one of her visions. This challenges the long-held beliefs of the supernaturals that magic is confined to their people — one character in particular has an issue believing that humans (Muggles, if you will) have access to it. It’s a theme that will be explored much more in the later books.
What I am having a few issues with is streamlining the little field trips my character takes with the narrative flow. They need to feel integral to the reader, not gratuitous. I think the best way to convey that sense of immediacy and necessity is to focus on bringing the scenes to life, using language that can be repeated as a sort of key throughout that clues the reader in to that connectedness. I think for the most part it achieves that already, but there are a few rough spots that should come out in the polishing phase after this second draft is done.
It’s getting so close. It’s unbelievable to me to see this coming together and to feel so confident about it. I think it’s a good, salable novel that would appeal to a lot of people. I even think the timing is okay — if I can get it published, it would hit shelves a couple years down the road, which would be post Twilight and enough post that I could catch my target audience — which is the urban fantasy lovers and Twilight fans who have grown up a little. There’s still a lot to do before the query stage officially begins, but it’s coming. By November, I want to be ready. That gives me six weeks to get this thing all prettied up with bows in its hair and a minimal amount of blood spatter.
Wish me luck!
“Slightly” and Other Topics
The power I feel when I pick up a pen is incomparable. The simplicity of pen and ink has brought nations to heel and toppled kings. Words have power.
When I pick up a pen to write, for a moment I feel connected to that power. Sometimes when I go back to revise, I think that power blew a fuse.
In the writing of my second draft, I have come across several little foibles and idiosyncrasies that befell my vomit draft. I suppose that’s why it’s called a vomit draft. (Technical term.) One of the most far-reaching and intrepid of these is the adverb. To be specific, the word “slightly.”
I’m not sure why that particular word has been so insidious in my story. And yet there it is, hiding behind compound verbs and sneaking around in front of adjectives. As I rewrite, I’m hacking at them with a scythe every time they crop up.
“Aaaaah!” My brain screeches every time a new one appears. “Go away! You’re not welcome in the second draft!”
It’s like weevils in multigrain bread. You might think it looks fine and dandy until you get an unwelcome crunch that wormed its way into your food. So here I am, picking out the “slightly” weevils and filled with dismay.
In spite of the small army of obnoxious adverbs peppering my vomit draft, most of it still does what it’s supposed to. That pen channeled whatever force it uses into building a world.
Most of the time when I pick up a pen, I’m not vying for world domination. I’m striving to forge a connection. I’m trying to send sweeping tendrils of creeping words into someone’s psyche, searching until they kindle that spark that makes fingers turn pages into the wee hours of the morning.
I want to take my characters from the bare bones of basic structure and add sinew, muscle, layers of fat, and skin. Flesh and blood and beating heart. I want to tie them with bonds of paper and ink to readers hearts so that when my paper-crafted people laugh, readers laugh. When the characters hurt, readers feel it. So readers can feel that my ink flows through the veins of my characters, pumped by their paper hearts.
That is the power of pen and ink. Halfway done with my second draft, I can feel it crackling. It’s up to my little network of readers to help me make it sizzle.
Like this:
An Ode to Revision
I spent a long time dreading the task of revising my novel. I think every writer has at some point dreamed of creating a flawless first draft that will liberate her from criticism and have a Pulitzer waiting as she types the final keystrokes (or scrawls the final words with aplomb).
No one really likes criticism. It never feels good for someone to point out flaws, even if they’re being constructive about it. In all the writing groups I’ve been to thus far, there has been this structure of “point out something you like so you can say what you don’t like.” I don’t think I’m alone when I say that after a while of living in that structure, the compliments all start to ring a wee bit hollow. The old ego can really take a bashing when people start digging through your words, picking some out, and tackling others with sledgehammers.
All that said, I’m fixing to add a big however.
However.
(There it is.)
Criticism is how we grow. Even if it’s put rather unkindly, the meat of what’s there could make you a better writer. I have a huge issue using the word “stare.” Why, I don’t know. So-and-so stared at other-character. A stared at B. Asswipe and Poo stared at each other. I also struggle with passive voice and that wormy little creature, the adverb. Sometimes I’m oblivious to my quirks as a storyteller, and I need someone to just say, “Dude. Knock it off with the staring contests already.” Or, “FIND A MORE DYNAMIC VERB!”
If you want to be published, you need all sorts of readers. You need the Parental Figure. They’re the one who loves whatever you wrote simply because you wrote it, and you’re the obvious choice for Best Writer Ever because you are you. They’re the ones in your corner, picking you up when someone bloodies your nose or knocks you out, telling you to get your ass back out there and write. You also need the Eagle Eye, who will go through your work with a fine-toothed comb and circle all your comma splices and thoughtless typos with a fat red pen. You need the Arrogant Richard. That’s the guy or gal who knows better than any Nobel Prize winner what makes good writing. The one who will tell you what sucks and why. Who won’t pull a single punch because they are so damned sure they know better than you do. And you need the First Fanbase — they might be the most important of all, because they read it, get to know it, tell you what works and what doesn’t, and ultimately will tell their friends to buy it off the shelves.
You also need yourself. Stephen King likes to put his manuscripts away for weeks or months after he finishes them, then goes back to read them with fresh eyes. It works. It’s shocking how it can make you exclaim, “Oh my god! I wrote that!” or “Oh. My. God. I…wrote……………that?”
The point of all of this is that revision is a great way to find out what your skill set needs as a writer, whether that’s a crash course in plot or pacing or a return to constructive dialogue and exposition. Let’s face it: that perfect first draft is the writer’s version of finding a winning lottery ticket in a gutter. Part of what makes writers great is the ability to push themselves to make their work better all the time.
So get your vomit drafts. Read them. Revise them, and love what you’re doing.
(Sidenote: I am now 180 pages into the first rewrite of Primeval. And loving it all over again.)
Late Night Rewrite
At long last, a rewarding post appears. Due to an ill-timed evening nap of three hours in duration, I found myself wide awake around the witching hour. After watching Face/Off and walking the dog we are sitting, I settled down at my trusty iBook dinosaur to work on revising the first draft of my novel. I got a solid twenty pages or so done. What that accomplished is more than just rewriting — I recently rewrote the beginning in its entirety, and today I got the new bit woven into the original, ironing out that seam a bit. It flows the way I wanted it to. I might need some cutting done, because it’s a little exposition-heavy, but that can wait. Because you know what?
HUZZAH!
I got something done!
Do you have any idea how good that feels, gentle viewers? I’ll give you a clue. AWESOME.
My character is getting where I want her. The tone is closer to what I was trying to achieve. There’s some quirk and some wit, and some grit. I smoothed out a few bumps. Filled in a few holes. All in all, I am tremendously happy with what transpired this evening. It may be almost 4:30 a.m., but by golly, I feel accomplished. If I can keep this up (When! When, Emmie!), I should be on track to start officially agent fishing this fall. Trundling right along. Thank you, gorse bush in the bum.
It doesn’t hurt that my day job (night job?) is slinging beers at a brewery, and it has been painfully slow lately. The money has not been seeking me out much. July and August are our slowest months of the year, and I’ve been feeling it. My bank is broke. As Louis C.K. says, “I’m so broke that if it’s free I can’t afford it.” Nothing like financial trouble to start pushing you in the right direction for your dreams. I will make writing my career, dang nab it.
Cheers to a night where I got some work done. Today was a progress-laden day. Hour and a half workout, finished reading Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, and tackled my second draft with renewed vigor. I think this calls for a second HUZZAH!
Aaaaaaugh! End of Year Stress!
So much for that peaceful sail on the coast. More like plunging through a raging river of death. Okay, slightly melodramatic there, but a little melodrama never hurt anyone.
My poor WordPress bloggity. I’ve been neglecting you. My sincerest apologies. I’ve been rather sick. And busy with that whole raging river of death thing. The silver lining is that all of this junque is almost over, and I shall be free to flit about as I see fit.
This week has been not so good for actually producing anything, but I did go to my writing group on Monday and got some really helpful and awesome feedback on the chapter I submitted. I am going to use their suggestions for fixing my chapter. They also asked me to post more, which, as I’ve already discussed, is the highest compliment anyone can give to a writer. So much work to do…egad, Brain.
I’m hoping — possibly in vain — to get more done this weekend. However, my boyo’s dad is in town, so that may not happen. But who knows? We shall see…
Love and kisses.
Working Out
Turns out, it’s actually a bit of a workout. Go figure.
After literally six weeks of laying around on my arse, I decided it was about time to get off it and try to lose some of the weight that made itself known to me as I attempted to pour it into a pair of shorts yesterday. This pair of shorts was a size bigger than what I wore last summer. Needless to say, the swells of flesh that so stubbornly prohibited my arse from fitting into the denim made their point. They’ve made themselves at home, and I think I need to evict them.
Hence the workout.
I have been a bit scarce for the last few days. At least I think I have. Time has gone all wonky. I really think there is some sort of rift in the space-time continuum, but that’s neither here nor there. It is Memorial Day weekend, I suppose, which may excuse any of my scarcity (but would not excuse a rift in the space-time continuum).
I’ma go to the beach! It’s for a whole two days, but still. Beach. Me. Go. Picture me, the whitest white girl in white-onia, slathered in SPF 100 so as to look even whiter, lounging in an olive green bikini, feeling self-conscious whilst squishing my toes in very hot sand and trying to think of ways to get my boyfriend to make out with me under the boardwalk. Yep. That’ll be me tomorrow. And I’m serious about that boardwalk thing. I’ve wanted to do that ever since I heard Bette Midler pound out that song in Beaches. My boyfriend’s plans consist of eating lots of pizza and…sandwiches. (If you are a How I Met Your Mother fan, you will know precisely to what I am referring by the latter.) I have only a few things on my agenda:
1. Play a round of mini-golf.
2. Eat some Dippin’ Dots and see if they are as good as I always hoped they would be as a child — I was never allowed to get them.
3. Make out under the boardwalk.
4. Walk. A lot. Preferably on the beach. This is part of my whole fat eviction scheme.
As you can see, Item 1 has suffered a setback. The setback is that I am broke, and mini-golf is seldom cheap, particularly in a high-frequency, high-tourist area such as Bethany Beach. (Why, yes, gentle viewers! You now know where I will be this weekend.)
I don’t think I will have the money to eat, which is okay because of that whole fat eviction thing. It’s only two days, anyway.
On that note, I am off to be a nerd and play Fable 2 whilst pondering my story and waiting for the boyo to get off work.
When You Think You’re Done, You’re Just Getting Started
Oh, Rewrites. You are like that cat that kept coming back the very next day. Just when I think you’re gone and I’m done with you, I hear you meowing. Sure, you look cute and cuddly. You might even purr as you’re drooling on my shoulder and digging your little retractable razors into my flesh. But you see, you won’t go away.
It’s only after a very long time spent with you that I realize that you’re actually one of my most valuable friends. While my first draft may seem like a shining achievement — and don’t get me wrong; it is — it’s like a kid building her first tower of blocks. An accomplishment to be sure, but not quite the Empire State Building. To get to that level, it takes a lot more practice. And math classes. That too.
I’m getting to the end of my first draft of my second novel, and that means that I’m starting to hear little mewling sounds at my front door. The sounds of the Rewrite Cat come to tell me that it’s time to go back to Primeval and fix it. I used to approach rewriting with a huge sense of trepidation. Even a little anxiety. I thought that if I had to rewrite and revise, it meant that I wasn’t a good writer. Silly, silly, amateur me. No matter how good a first draft is, it can always get better, which is the point of revision.
In contemplation of this little kitty peering through my windows now, snaking her tail along the borders between window panes, it’s clear that she just wants the best for my story. She wants to make sure that everything is told the way it will resonate with readers best. I have said this before, but I’ll say it again: a vomit draft is when we tell our story to ourselves. In a vomit draft, we can spew out all the back story and little random details because it’s important that we know that when we move forward. When we polish it up, though, we choose the most economical route between points A and B. We want our readers to grab the rope, jump off the ledge, and swing right to the other side without getting hit in the face with tree branches. If they’re going to take a risk on our book, we need them to want to grab the rope.
I know my first draft of Primeval has its issues. There are a lot of things I want to tighten up, streamline. Some things I need to flesh out a bit more. So as soon as I finish my first draft of Elemental, I will let this scratching little kitty in, pet her a bit, and give her a bowl of cream that she can get in her whiskers. She’s going to be my constant companion until this story gleams like a stone straight out of the tumbler.
A Whole New World
Allow me to recommend a book for all you writers out there floating around in cyberspace. Or don’t, but I’m going to do it anyway, so there.
How to Get a Literary Agent, by Michael Larsen, AAR.
In spite of that somewhat prosaic title, the book itself is a veritable goldmine of information that until now, I had missed in all my sheer ignorance. The book details the process of getting an agent, what goes through an agent’s mind, what publishers are looking for, and a whole lot more. I am convinced that reading this book prior to starting the process of agent-fishing will save me a dramatic amount of time and effort, if not a large number of rejections. In fact, I am sure that this book will take a machete to the number of rejections looming in my future*. And here is why.
1. The average fledgling writer, when searching for representation, knows little to nothing about the publishing industry or what agents are looking for, and thus commits any number of small but fatal mistakes. Larsen tackles a plethora of these head on and addresses how to avoid making them.
2. The average fledgling writer does not know how to write a successful, professional-sounding, hook of a query letter. Larsen describes how to do that, as well.
3. Agents get an overwhelming number of poorly thought out queries and submissions. This makes the really good ones stand out like a Yankees fan in Boston.
4. Many (if not most) fledgling writers don’t take the time to ensure that their manuscripts have been edited and proofread prior to submission. This is to say that they don’t have them proofread or edited by people other than themselves much of the time. A good revision probably saves ten rejections in and of itself.
5. People seem to have a problem finding appropriate agents for their type of work — or they don’t make the effort to check at all and simply send out queries addressed to “Agent.” Hm. I wonder why that doesn’t work.
6. Many writers (myself included before I read this book) would never think to include any ideas about promotion, their financial and personal goals in regards to their writing career, or any rationale about why their book will sell.
Reading this book has completely altered my outlook on this entire journey. Instead of simply polishing up Primeval and Elemental this summer, I am going to extend my goal to some new and intimidating territory. I am going to start treating my writing like a business. This means that I am going to sit down and clarify what my personal, financial, and craft goals are. I’m then going to draft a business plan and sketch out the steps I will begin putting in place for the promotion of my books. I’ve already purchased my domain names, so that’s a heaving sigh I can officially allow to escape.
Anyway, Monsieur Larsen has given me a new perspective from which to work, and a concrete game plan I can use to solidify the foundations of this journey and get it off on the right foot. I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me.
It’s going to pay off.
*This is not to say that I will not be awash in a sea of rejection; I’m certain I will be. It’s inevitable. Like the cockroaches of my building that are rapidly encroaching on my living space. (Shudder.)
Emmie Mears, Author
Ted Mosby….Architect.
Both of those have a certain ring to them. 
Imagine my surprise and warm fuzzy feelings when I discovered (thanks to WordPress’s handy-dandy stats box) that someone had searched for “Emmie Mears author” somewhere. How lovely! Now I only feel bad that I don’t have a book published yet…woe.
Bear with me, gentle viewers. I will do everything in my power to get Primeval and Elemental into your hot little hands as soon as humanly possible. If only it was as simple as willing them onto the shelves….and the bestseller lists.
To the illustrious personage who hath made my day brighter by their curious search-capades: thank you!
This process is a long one, but I have a sneaking suspicion that it will be worth it in the end. I have a good friend who is going to help me edit Primeval and Elemental before I begin to query agents, and because I am committed to making this my career, I want to get everything in tip-top shape before I start. I can’t wait for the rejection letters to come pouring in.
Sometimes I feel like this blog takes place under water. The surface of the water is smooth and unbroken until someone lets out a “Yop!” and creates some ripples — then I know I’m not alone out here. If you find yourself puttering around these pages, know that you’re appreciated.
Seeing as how once I do get an agent and get this ball rolling faster, this blog will remain my conduit into the world and make its nest on my website, I rather want to nurture it. I’m not sure if it’s a baby bird or a fish. Either way. I’ll leave you to ponder the philosophical ramifications of my blog’s species taxonomy. I am going to snuggle down and take a nap.
