Buckets, Kleenex & Never Again (Maybe)

Last week, I cried so much that I couldn't see straight. Oh wait - I couldn't see straight because I didn't have my glasses. Scratch that. Let's just say I cried buckets.

Not because I had to start over with the narrative for my new story.  Though with 10K words already written, having to go back to the beginning was certainly sob-worthy. I drowned myself in tears to examine and experience the emotions of sadness and anger evoked by tragic and unresolved loss.

In my new story, there is a murder. Someone was taken away too soon. Lives were changed; futures were damaged. The novel has to capture not only the events leading up to and after the murder, but also the emotions that trigger the actions causing those events. I needed to emerse myself in gut-wrenching, gone-before-I-could-do-anything pain so that I could accurately portray the thoughts and feelings of my characters.

So in spite of the promise I made myself to never watch them again and instead, love them from a distance, I revisited a few three-Kleenex-box favorite old movies that never fail to dredge up those difficult and painful emotions. Unfortunately, letting go of those feelings hasn't been easy. I'm still suffering through the consequences of self-imposed dispair.

Enough is enough. Time to go overdose on HAPPY!!

Story Killers

My new work in progress (wip) is on a hit list. In the story, the heroine chases and pins down especially slippery pieces of information. I know who the assassins are - search engines. They have become so ubiquitous that the name of one of them is now the verb for using them all ("Google it on Bing.").

 Because of search engines, the missing information my heroine is spazzing over musn't be accessible on the public web, or the deep web (sites requiring subscriptions). Since almost everything is on the internet, the information must be purposely hidden. Anything less than that won't be believable. The last thing I want is for a reader to ask, "Why didn't she just Google it?", and then in exasperation, throw the book aside.

 Since I hadn't given enough thought to the plot for my new story, I have to rework the inciting incident. Also, prior knowledge and motivations of several major characters have to change. Who am I kidding? The whole narrative has to change. Luckily, I've only gotten about 10K words into it. On the plus side, the adjustment makes the story far stronger and is a natural source of dramatic irony.

 Surprisingly, the outline will only change by the inciting incident sentence. The scene table is just an empty structure - except for scene names and characters - so it won't change at all. Looks like I started my artifacts at the right level.

 As much as I want to vent about it, starting over really isn't that bad.

 *headdesk*

 *headdesk*

 *headwall headwall headwall*

 Excedrin. Headache #541...

Get My Pantz (Or Game?) On!

I started to share another rant about my characters, but Zzzz.... - boring! They're still misbehaving, but so what? They're revealing a number of sources of conflict and forcing dramatic irony to materialize.


After eighteen months of learning that I needed to rewrite, then learning how to rewrite and finally - actually doing it, I had forgotten the year it took to produce a first draft. To remind myself, I revisited my very first completed narrative of Sparks. It was well worth the laugh. The narrative has no resemblance to the novel - or even the finished first draft. Outlining or using a scene table for it would have been a complete waste of time.


For this second novel, I'm confident enough in the rough version of the story to have set up a preliminary scene table. Folly? Time will tell. In any event, it's now time to just let the words flow. I promised myself I wouldn't pantz this time, but I have to break that promise. It was a foolish one, made before I had reminded myself of what it takes to write a first draft - time in the chair. Lots of it, while I suffer through the fits and starts of the story revealing itself.


I now know that my stories require a balance of pantzing - mostly during the first draft, and plotting - mostly during rewriting. While I have to accept that the journey for every book will be different, I still must use what worked for me in the past. I've been so anxious to get to the rewriting stage that I was short-changing myself on the material I'll need when I get there. Bad idea.


Now that I've figured that out and gathered up all of my snippets, my full first pantzed narrative is - finally - under way. Game on!

Mad, Mad... Or Murder?

Hmmm... I'm having a hard time choosing the fate of a particular character. It isn't that I'm overly fond of him; it's just that I'm unsure which scenario best suits the story. If I murder him, then the heroine is left with an item she's never seen before and a quest to unlock the mystery. If he lives, events build to a confrontation between the two.

Talking - or writing - through it, I can say that the heroine is already on one quest and the one created by the death of the character confuses the story with another one. Or if I'm very clever, I can use it to extend her main quest.

On the other hand, confrontation forces each of them to be honest with the other about the emotional root of their actions. The down side is that when I write dialogue, the characters take over the tale, and I may find the story going in a direction other than the one I've outlined. I promised myself not to pantz this time.

But story rules! So if the characters do pull it in a different direction, the outline will just have to go with it. A post blogged; a decision made. Thanks for listening... er, reading!

Giving It Up My All

After struggling with the structure for my new book, I gave up. Yep - I did. Me, the incurable optimist. I waved the white flag, threw in the towel, and <insert any other cliched expression of defeat here>. Then I red read. Lots. And I'm the better for it. I have learned that I was having so much trouble with this new novel because I had been trying to harmonize several independent linear lines of story.

The past and the present, the different perspectives of the action plot, and those of the romantic plot must travel along their respective paths until they combine to drive the novel to its climax; then to the denouement beyond. For me to get it right, I have to impose structure from the very beginning - no pantsing a first draft this time.

Now that I've studied and practiced the technique of counterpoint, I can compose the novel with purpose and confidence; boldly going where, just a short time ago, I had feared to tread. (How's that for mixing cliched metaphors?) That I am pushing the boundaries of what I know I can do is an understatement. Still, with eye firmly cocked, I'm optimistic that I can pull it off. I hope my musician friend would be proud. This is going to be fun!

I took the first step that led me down this path when I discovered that one of the main characters is lost in a fugue... ;-D

Corralling Snip Pets

'Snippet'. Snip pet. Such a funny word. I could have used 'fragment', but it's not nearly as much fun, and 'scrap' is just plain boring.

My snip pets are the paragraphs and pages of unconnected writing I've been accumulating over the past couple of months. They all relate to the new novel, but don't form a cohesive story. So now, I have to catalog them. Do they belong to the present, or to the past? Which character has the POV? Is it part of the thriller plot, the love story plot, or OMG ANOTHER PLOT? Just kidding. :)

I should have created a folder structure to hold them as I wrote them. Since I didn't, I have to do it now. I had an epiphany this past weekend, revealing the chaper structure. I can now create my artifacts document with its plots, subplots, outline, scene table, and the map that connects them all now that I have story to work with. No time like the present...

Oops... Dropped One

Time to share how well I've stuck to the project list I made last November. The good news is that I haven't added any more projects. Yay! The bad news is that I had to drop one. Ouch...

Updating my web presence: Cathrynlouis.com is live on Posterous, and all the links (yes, even on cathrynlouis.blogspot.com) are fixed. All that's left is for the new relationships to ripple through Google, replacing the old ones. On the new site, the entries pop, each standing out as if on it's own separate page. That's what I wanted, so I'm calling it done. I love the new low maintenance SocialFollow Follow Me widget. I just update it once in my SocialFollow account, and the changes ripple out to all the places I use it.

Publishing Sparks: Hmmm... I envy everyone for whom learning is a smooth curve. For me, learning about publishing started off rather noisily, and then it settled down into a quieter, but still disruptive, bumper car ride. I've... finally... learned... enough... for... somewhat... smooth driving, and hopeful I can use my new knowledge when interacting with the industry. Though I wish it hadn't taken so long, at least, I can say that I now know a whole lot more than when I started. Most importantly, I've found that giving voice to my desire to create an inter-related body of novels isn't arrogance, but a definition of purpose. There is a thematic environment in which I'm choosing to build my stories, and I should say so. So am I closer to getting Sparks published? Let's just say I've left the bumper cars behind. I'm hoping that riding the smoother curve isn't as scary as the one I've shared once before.

Reviving novelTwo: Hit the ground running, and was thrilled with how well things were going for this next multi-year project. Got the plot and narrative structure figured out, butted heads with my antagonist; and now...grounded. Not blocked, just writing aimlessly, looking for the threads with which I can weave it all together. Sparks had two. For this new novel, I have to be patient and trust that I will recognize them when they leave my (virtual) pen. There's progress, just unstructured.

Short stories: Not on a particular schedule, the stories are just written as they occur to me. Each day, what happens during my allotted writing time is a discovery and a joy. Sometimes it's novelTwo, sometimes I work on a story. The stories are posted to my website rather than submitted for publishing because I'm trying to keep focus on my novels. I've already posted one this year, and there's another circulating in my brain trying to get out.

eBook: It would have been fun to take the revision posts on my blog, add my personal notes to each one, pretty them up with pictures and create an eBook. The eBook occurred to me because I refer to those posts so often, I very much want them on my ereader. Once I put together the initial structure, I saw that doing it properly was a major project that would eat up my novel writing time for at least the next few months. I'm trying to keep focus on my novels, so I had to drop it.

Weekly blogging: Still at it - see you next week!

Pre POSTerous!

Simplicity. That's what it came down to. In the end, my love of writing won out over my love of tinkering. I threw out all the wow-look-at-me colors, fancy widgets, and look-what-I-can-do ego boosters that I started with and went for the high-contrast look of a book. After all, I am an author. When I log in, I want to be welcomed to share my news, thoughts and stories; not have to spend time validating an ever-growing collection of widgets and add-ons. I'm so happy that I reined in my inner geek. Otherwise, I tend to go overboard. Look out below!!!

That aside, Posterous with its spaces is a wonderful service, enabling me to simultaneously post on other services. That's right, I only have to post once - to Posterous - and it autoposts to the others that I've chosen. Of course if there are intra-post links, I have to fix them, but that's a far cry from having to individually manage multiple blogs. So I'm not giving up Blogger - in fact, I've added a new blog - on Tumblr. All the blogs email me when comments are made, so I can easily interact with everyone on the service they like best. One can also post to WordPress with Posterous. I decided not to because Blogger was my original long blog platform, and I want to have only one non-Posterous one. Again, for me - simplicity.

I also love that Posterous allows me to have different spaces, and I have made them subdomains of cathrynlouis.com.  I have one each for my journal, Sparks, short and flash stories, and Guest Authors, all of which also post to Blogger. The new space, Retweet of the Day, posts to Facebook and Tumblr. My Posterous site is still under construction, as there are intra-post links to fix. When I've fixed them all, I'll redirect cathrynlouis.com to Posterous, and my Blogger site will become cathrynlouis.blogspot.com again. Search engine results will be broken for a while, but for me, it's worth it. I now have a platform that extends my reach and will grow with me. Since what I have to do now is equivalent to low-level maintenance, I can strike this off my major project list. Woo hoo! One down...

Antagonistic

There's no other word for it. But after all, that's what an antagonist is supposed to be. The one in my new novel certainly lives up to his label. Naturally, by the end of the book, he is to be found out and get his comeuppance. But so far, he isn't cooperating. Taking him down isn't supposed to be easy, but he's making it next to impossible.

Almost since the day this character was born, he's had everything his own way. Most of what he wanted came easily and those things that didn't...well he took them - heedless of the irrevocable damage he caused. Today, he stands by the large bay window in his study, hands resting easily in the pockets of his morning trousers, certain that he is above incrimination. Blocking every bit of information, each sliver of an opening, anything that has the slightest chance of provoking his downfall; he regards me disdainfully and says, "You have nothing."  Whenever I start to close in on the fatal flaw that can expose him, he morphs into a subtlely different persona, hiding his weakness under yet another layer. Almost feels as though I'm writing a paranormal story. But I'm not. Scary.

Above all, I can't allow him to get married - not to her. I have to end his travesty and expose the monster that lives behind that smooth, urbane facade. Wish me luck. Better yet - has anyone got a silver dagger?