Lucky 7 Meme

Yay, I was hoping I'd get a chance to do this one, and McKenzie McCann tagged me! The rules are:

1. Go to page 77 of your current MS
2. Go to line 7
3. Copy down the next 7 lines as they're written-- no cheating!
4. Tag 7 other writers
5. Let them know!

I'm going to use Rosetta because that part's already edited, and I'm pretty sure page 77 of Defenders is smack-dab in the middle of the absolute crapfest that is chapter 6 (it's not; I checked. But it was a slow part of chapter 8, so this is still better).

“We were razzing her a bit,” Nick said. “Jeez, it’s not a crime. It was just a joke.”

“It’s always just a joke!” Aly snapped, then looked away.

“You used to have a sense of humor,” Ben said. “You used to like it when we teased you.”

“Or at least you liked it when Luke teased you,” Nick said.

“Shut up!”

“Aly and Lu-uke, sitting in a tree,” Ben sang.

“Guys, knock it off,” I said. “It’s bothering her.”

Hm, I don't like that without context. It makes the boys sound mean.

And I'm tagging...

1. K.S. Lewis
2. Rebecca Belliston
3. JoLynne Lyon
4. Nick Wilford
5. Chantele Sedgwick
6. Erin Summerill

February Wrap Up

I figure the end of the month is a good time to take a look at how I'm doing towards my writing resolutions and see what I can do to improve, both as a writer and as a chronic procrastinator.

Just as a note: according to Blogger I had 400 page views for the month of February. From when this blog began in October 2011 through January 2012, I had 114. I also went from having only one follower (thank you, Kim!) to have over 30. So thank you to everyone who's been following my blog and tweets! I really appreciate each and every one of you.

Goals:

1. Write 1000 words per day, Monday through Friday. As of this morning, I had 970 words left to hit my monthly goal of 21,000 words (which is akin to that 1000 words/day goal). Barring some unforeseen circumstance, I expect to write that by tonight, thus accomplishing this goal. (Hey, it's nice to start on a high note.)
2. Begin Defenders. Yesterday I hit the 10,000 word mark for Defenders, so I'm well into it now. I also started/continued a story I'd originally intended to use for NaNoWriMo called Angels, but I'm only about two chapters into that and seem to be using it more for when I get writer's block, so we'll see what happens with that.
3. Finishing editing Rosetta. The wheels fall off the wagon here. Not only have I not finished my edits, but I've barely worked on them all month. I started out with about 70 pages edited, and now I'm up to about 90. Not good enough.
4. Submit short stories. This morning I submitted a short story to Penumbra eZine. I've also been submitting flash fiction stories to blog contests (and I must admit I'm getting kind of addicted to them). This is a fun way to hit my word count without agonizing over one novel the whole time, especially when that novel is as ornery as Defenders.

Three out of four isn't too bad, though I definitely wish I'd done better with Rosetta. If I ever want to start querying, I need to be, you know, complete. SO, with that in mind, here are my goals for March (I really like lists).

• Continue writing 1000 words/day. This seems to be a pretty good amount, enough that I don't feel like I'm not doing anything, but not so much that I can't handle that with my day job. This makes my March word count goal 22,000 words.
• Edit 50 pages of Rosetta per week. I honestly have no idea if this is feasible, but I need a stricter deadline for myself than, "Be done by the end of the month." I'm rewriting substantial parts of the book, but I'm still using quite a bit of the first draft, so hopefully this won't be completely unattainable.
• Get 50 followers on my blog and Twitter. I'm at about 30 for both, so I don't think this is out of reach.
• Continue to submit short stories and flash fiction.

I've discovered that I truly work better (read: I only work) when I have hard deadlines for myself with as little wiggle room as possible. If I can possibly find a way to put off doing the work, I will, even if I regret it later. I'm never going to be the kind of writer who only writes when they're inspired because I'll have nothing but a drawer of half-started manuscripts to show for it.

What about you guys? Does this kind of scheduling work for you, or do you work better with more flexibility?

Is It Getting Hot in Here?

I totally wasn't going to do this bloghop--mostly because Valentine's Day is the one day a year I take off from being a romantic--but, well, I couldn't resist. So here's a little scene I cooked up from my current wip:

I should have walked away then, said good night and gone back to Lucy’s room. But alcohol and my insecurities made me bolder than normal, and I moved closer to him, not letting him pass right away, making him slide past me.

Alec sucked in a breath. “Are you… staying over here?”

“Mhmm,” I answered, shooting for breathy and probably not succeeding. “In Lucy’s room.” I smiled at him, and judging by the look on his face I’d at least made it halfway to sexy. “Unless I get a better offer.”

“Quinn,” he groaned, taking an urgent step away from me. “You shouldn’t even start this.”

I stepped closer. “Why not?”

“Because… because…” He hesitated for a long, long time. “There’s a reason we broke up.”

“Sure,” I agreed amiably. “Because you were too chicken shit to put up with me. Are you still chicken shit, Alec?”

He was glaring now. “I wasn’t chicken shit,” he protested.

I laughed, but there was no humor in it. “Sure you were. Just a scared little boy who couldn’t take it when things got too intense. Just like now?”

“I wasn’t chicken shit,” he repeated. “And I’m not a scared little boy. Not then or now.”

I took another step closer, my chest touching his, looking directly up into his eyes with a challenge in mine. “Prove it.”

His lips slammed into mine, all fervor and no finesse for a minute before he eased back a little. He walked with me, pressing me back into a wall, lips moving against mine and tongue sliding into my mouth, tasting, caressing. His hands, tight against my shoulders at first, relaxed, sliding down my side to my waist, then up to just under my breasts. His fingers twitched against me.

I responded in kind, the kiss awakening the feelings that had never really gone dormant. My hands found the waistband of his pajama pants, hooking into them the same way I had a hundred times when we’d been together, and I pulled him closer. Heat fissured through me, settling in the pit of my stomach and lower, and I choked on the moan in my throat.

Then suddenly he was gone, and I shivered at the cold. His face was an almost comical mix of lust and horror which I’m sure mirrored my own expression perfectly. I tripped over my feet backing away.

“I, ah, I…”

Then I fled.

An Emotion for All Seasons

Alright, it's the last day of the I'm Hearing Voices blogfest, and today's theme is Emotion. I realized that throughout Rosetta I'd written Quinn as scared, nervous, concerned, depressed, drunk, tired, worried and contemplative, but I'd never written her as simply happy or content. Today I figured out why: because she's neurotic, and she worries about everything. It took three drafts for me to find a situation where she might not be worried about something for a few minutes. So hopefully you'll all enjoy this.

Trick lounged on the old, squishy couch in flannel pants and a worn T-shirt that may or may not have been his. Ben and Lucy were squabbling for space on the loveseat, while I put in the movie.

“What are we watching?” Ben asked as he pinned Lucy’s arms and slid back to take up as much room as possible. She elbowed him in the stomach, eliciting a groan. They’d wind up sharing the loveseat; they always did.

“A true gem this time,” I began, but Lucy cut me off.

“Not like Lobster Tale, right?”

“Ah… no,” I agreed. “That was a mistake. But this movie comes highly recommended by my best bad movie expert at the video store,” I rushed on. “It’s called Santa Claus Defeats the Aliens.”

They all stared at me incredulously. “That’s a real thing?” Ben demanded.

I grinned. “Prepare to be amazed.”

I hit the play button on the remote and the song that began to play over the title credits made us all laugh. I lifted Trick’s legs and settled onto the couch, draping his feet over my lap, the position as familiar to me as Lucy and Ben’s bickering. Ben threw popcorn at the screen when it got to be too bad, and Lucy and Trick took turns heckling him for his rotten aim. I propped stockinged feet on the coffee table and let my friends’ laughter wash away the hellish week.

Both those movies really exist. I watch Santa Claus every Christmas. It is a truly fantastic bad movie.

Also, keep an eye out for some changes to my blog this weekend (maybe... hopefully...). More on that in the next day or so.

Have a good weekend!

When Alec Met Quinn...

Thank you for all the great feedback from Quinn on the Couch! I really appreciate all your kind words.

And we're off to the races for the Dialogue Introduction portion of the I'm Hearing Voices blogfest. I decided to go back in time to when Quinn first met Alec. This takes place about ten years before the start of Rosetta and a lot happened in that time, so the Quinn you see here should be a little different from the Quinn who was on the couch on Monday (or, you know, the Quinn who actually shows up in Rosetta).

Without further ado: When Alec Met Quinn...

“Hi. I’m Alec.”

“Ah! Shit... uh, I mean crap… I mean, uh, sorry. Hi.”

“Are you… alright?”

“Yeah. Sorry. I, um, drop things a lot.”

“Well, that’s okay. I like to pick things up.”

“Hah! That was either the worst pickup line ever, or—”

“Actually, it was just a crappy comeback. I was… I’m not really… that good at meeting people.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

“No, it’s no problem.”

“So… Alec?”

“Yeah. Alec Hannigan. I’m… new, I guess.”

“A bitten wolf?”

“Yeah. Geoffrey just brought me here.”

“How long ago were you bitten?”

“Three weeks ago. Geoffrey found me right after and took me to a safe house until I… stopped trying to eat him.”

“Oh. Well, that’s… good.”

“So, uh, who’re you?”

“Right. Sorry. I’m Quinn. Dunlap. I was born a werewolf. Lived here my whole life.”

“All… seventeen years?”

“Hah! Good try. I’m fifteen. And I don’t look any older, so don’t bother lying to me.”

“You do! I thought you were at least my age.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“I did! Why would I lie about that?”

“Because you’re trying to impress me.”

“Why would I do that?”

“I don’t know! Because you’re a 17-year-old boy, and that’s what boys do.”

“Maybe I’m not like other boys.”

“Yeah, right. Maybe you’re just like other boys. But I’ll give you a chance to make it up to me.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Sure. I need someone to help me put these spiders in Carson’s bed anyway.”

Quinn on the Couch

OK, here goes. I need to get to know no character more than Quinn, my MC for Rosetta, so let's see what she has to say to these questions from the I'm Hearing Voices! Character Blogfest:

1. What is your biggest vulnerability? Do others know this or is it a secret?
   

   Oh, God, everything. I'm a lousy fighter, I'm too emotional, and I have a tendency to, you know, panic in the middle of a battle. And that's definitely not a secret. I wish it was, but, yeah.

2. What do people believe about you that is false?
   

   I guess people think that because I don't complain, I'm okay with everything that they do. I've just never seen the point in confronting every issue head on. But that doesn't mean I like what they're doing.

3. What would your best friend say is your fatal flaw? Why?
   

   She'd probably say that it's that I give people too many chances, and I don't learn from my mistakes. I guess that's true. I have trouble holding a grudge sometimes, and I want to trust people even though I've been burned before.

4. What would the same friend say is your one redeeming quality? Why?
   

   *laughs* Okay, let's be clear here. Her opinion and mine are very different on this subject. She'd say that my ability to approach any situation logically is my biggest redeeming quality. Which is all well and good when you have the time to sit there and make a pro-con list, but it doesn't help much in the heat of a fight, when you need to make decisions off the cuff.

5. What do you want most? What will you do to get it?
   

   Honestly? Not much. I want my brother and sister to come back to the Pack. I want to stop panicking every time I get pinned in a fight, and I want to stop feeling helpless all the time. And the only way I can think of to get is to become the best damn Pack Guardian and train until all that fear is gone.

Well. That was considerably more difficult than I expected it to be (not what I'd like to think after conversing with the main character of a novel I just spent seven months writing). Clearly, I have quite a bit more to learn about Quinn.

A Rose By Any Other Name

Kim and I were having a conversation about character names, when I had the thought that this might be an interesting blog post. Which I told Kim. And for some reason she's still willing to have conversations with me.

I love coming up with names for my characters. In fact, it may be my favorite part of writing. I really enjoy the way the right name combination feels when you say it out loud. I like that click you get when you have the perfect first and last name combination, like Harry Potter or Nicholas Nickleby or Ramona Quimby. Sometimes I agonize over the perfect name for a character, going to baby name generators to get just the right meaning, playing with the sound of it until I'm positive--positive--it's the right one.

And sometimes I wing it.

I changed Quinn's name three times when I was starting Rosetta. In fact, for half the first chapter she was Bailey, and in the plot summary, she's still Becky. I then had to consciously stop myself from changing it again (this time to Dakota) when I was a few chapters in. I don't know why I had so much trouble, but nothing ever felt right. I'd been reading all these urban fantasy series where the main characters had really excellent names (Rachel Vincent's Faythe and Liv, Patricia Briggs' Mercy, Carrie Vaughn's Kitty), and I kept feeling like my MC couldn't live up to it. Eventually she settled into the name Quinn, and I grew to like it, but it was a rough road there.

Sometimes a name just comes naturally. In my first novel, three of the four characters' names flew from my mind to the page with no effort. I thought them, and they were perfect. I find this happens a lot more often with minor characters though, whose names matter a little less.

And sometimes a character will develop around a name. In Rosetta, one of Quinn's friends is a guy named Trick. With a name like that, how the character be anything but a bit of a joker? Sure, he can get serious when he needs to, but he's mostly just a light-hearted, fun guy.

I'm thinking about this a lot now, since I'm just beginning Defenders. The naming process has been slightly more difficult for this book because, for some reason, I have a lot more trouble with girls' names than boys'. In Rosetta, Quinn's world is split fairly evenly between males and females, maybe a little heavier on the male side. If that's so, it's because I love coming up with names for boys. But Defenders follows a group of six girls, who interact primarily with other girls, at least until book 3. Sure, there are some scattered guys there, but not enough to use up the well of names I have stored.

And now that I've basically turned this into an ode to names, I turn it over to you. Have you ever heard a name that's really stood out to you (something you've written or someone else has)? Are there names you absolutely can't stand? Do your feelings about a name influence the character you create? Personally, I don't like the name John, so any Johns in my story are usually boring guys. And once I found out Donovan meant Dark One (or something like that), it became my fall-back name for every bad guy I wrote. Do you have names like that?

I Love the Smell of a New Month in the Morning

So today begins a new month in what I'm affectionately calling "The Year of Get Off Your Butt and Do More Than Talk About Writing" (or TYOGOYBADMTTAW, for short). With this new month begins a new project, a new goal, and a new deadline. February's goals are as follows:

• Write 1000 words per day, Monday through Friday. This adds up to a monthly goal of 21,000 words.
• Begin Defenders. This is my paranormal YA project, the first book in a five-book series. It centers on a city called Rafcate, which was attacked and nearly destroyed 150 years ago. To make sure that never happens again, every citizen is drafted into military service at the age of sixteen. The main character is a 16-year-old girl named Laurie, who is looking forward to serving, until the body of a teenage girl shows up on her doorstep with a message about treason and revolution.
• Finishing editing Rosetta. I'm about 70 pages into my edits, and I'm rewriting significant portions of the first draft, but my hope is that I can finish the first round of edits by the end of the month, after which I'll finally be able to allow other people to read it and offer critiques.
• Submit short stories. I'm also looking to write and submit some short stories to magazines and contests. I'm on Duotrope, but if anyone knows of any other websites like it, please let me know.

My writing goals for the year are fairly ambitious, but I'm slowly starting to learn that big goals and hard deadlines will keep me writing and moving forward better than anything else. How do you keep yourself motivated to write and edit?

Random Thoughts on Editing

• Editing is a much different process than I expected it to be. I guess I thought I'd just be able to jump to the sections that contained notes, do a few quick spruces and suddenly have a beautiful, perfect book that every agent and editor would be waiting to receive. But it turns out...
• I have a lot more insecurities than even I realized. I can't just be happy with the fact that I wrote a book for a few days. Instead, I dove into editing right away and was suddenly plagued by doubts. Is my book really good enough to compete with every other urban fantasy book out there? Do the characters and the plot develop in an organic way? Is it bad that nothing ever seems to happen directly to my main character? In case you were wondering, I'm pretty sure the answer to the last question is yes, which means that...
• "Rewrite" is not a dirty word. While I'm not rewriting the entire book per se, I am writing significant portions of it, far more than I expected. My first draft is, at this point, acting like the patches that will eventually be sewn into a quilt. I'll write a new scene, then find some old scenes that fit, but I'll rearrange them from the order in which they were initially written. All in all, the job is way more time-consuming than I expected it to be, so...
• My goal of having my initial edits done by 1/31 is a pipe dream. I have to let it go now, and set the slightly more realistic goal of having the first round of edits done by 2/29, so I can start sending the drafts to the friends and family members who so wonderfully offered to read and critique it. I don't think this will cause a change in the rest of my timeline, but I'm trying to learn to be more flexible.

This doesn't change the fact that I plan on starting Defenders on 2/1, as well as some short story projects and contest submissions. I want to get back to writing 1000 words/day, whether that be Defenders, submissions for magazines, short stories, blog posts, television reviews, or whatever.

What's your favorite/least favorite thing about editing?

The End

The first draft of Rosetta is done, clocking in at just over 75,000 words and almost 400 pages (double-spaced, Courier). That is all.

Light at the End

If any of you follow my word count meter (on the right), you might have been surprised to see it jump up dramatically, starting Monday. At some point over the weekend, I realized that I could see the end of Rosetta. Now, yes, in fairness, the end was still a long way off, but it was visible for the first time in the entire writing process. Not only that, but I'd finally gotten to several scenes that were already planned out (one was even already written).

There's nothing like knowing you're almost done to motivate you. In the past four days, I've written almost 7000 words, including today. I'm not even sure how many chapters that was, but at least five. I made it through the first of two critical scenes that will lead to the end of the book (and the entire plot of book 2), and yesterday I wrote the climax of the book.

I then reduced myself to tears in the middle of the office.

My goal is to have the first draft done no later than Sunday. There's one more pivotal scene, then a few lighter, though no less important, scenes. I can't imagine I have more than 5000 words left, but I thought I wouldn't have 10,000 more at the beginning of the month, and I've write over 13,000 so far, so clearly my judgment cannot be trusted.

After I finish, I want to dive right into edits, because I know there are notes all over the later chapters of things to fix in the beginning. There are major inconsistencies that I've been going back and forth on as I try to tailor the werewolf myths to suit my needs. I'd like to get most of those out of the way, along with my character inconsistencies, while it's still fresh in my head, before I let anyone else read it or take any time off.

Come February 1, I want to start working on another book, (very) tentatively titled Defenders, which I'm sure I'll post more about before then. I contemplated just diving into book 2 of Rosetta, but I'd like to have another independently marketable book by the end of the year. Plus, I've been stewing over Defenders for awhile now, and I'd like to see if I can't capitalize on my relatively new motivation to get some of it down on paper.

Then there's the fun process of querying agents. If anybody has some suggestions they'd like to offer up before I get started, I'd appreciate it. I'll probably look to start querying by June or July at the latest.

Resolutions

OK, so it's a new month and a new year, which means new goals for myself when it comes to my writing. So here are my 2012 Writing Resolutions:

1. Write 1000 words per day. I'm setting a goal each month that is equivalent to 1000 words/day. If I meet this goal before the end of the month, I can take a few days off before starting the next month's goal.
2. Finish the first draft of Rosetta by January 31. I don't think I have another 31,000 words left to it, so hopefully I'll meet this goal before the end of the month.
3. Finish editing Rosetta by June 1.
4. Be actively searching for agents by December 31. Ideally I'd like to have an agent by December 31, but I'm trying to restrict my resolutions to things I can control.

So with these new resolutions comes a new word meter. I didn't quite hit my 31,000 word goal for December due to the holidays and my general inability to write when I'm on vacation, but hope springs eternal for January.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Rosetta Update

So... odds are good that I won't be finishing Rosetta this month. Last night I sat down and, in a fit of writer's block about chapter 22, wrote a scene from the final battle. It really was just a small scene, but it lasted 1000 words. At the 1000-word per day rate I'm going, I have just over 10,000 words to go until I hit my target for the month. That's ten of those small scenes. I think I have more to say than that.

I'm okay with this though. I've set a new goal (end of January), a new writing challenge (1000 words/day for the month of January), and I'll keep trudging along. I don't think it'll take me all of January to finish, because I do think I'm starting to circle in for a landing.

Sort of.

This story has taken some seriously weird twists in the last month. Peppered throughout my chapters now are notes for me to go back and fix. Some of them are specific notes, like, "The Author will think of something clever for me to say here." But some are incredibly vague, like, "Make Alec a more likable character," or, "There will be more unrest in the Pack." Which means my editing process is going to rock.

I'm actually really looking forward to starting my edits. I like the direction the story's gone, and I like the things I've come up with to explain the anomalies I created in the beginning. I know there are several chapters that will need to be completely rewritten, as well as many things that will need to be cut or added, but it actually sounds nice not to have to create anything new. I just get to play in the world I've already created.

I've never edited any of my novels before. This is usually where the wheels fall off the wagon. I made some half-hearted attempts with my first novel, but none of them could wipe the undercurrent of, "I wrote this when I was in elementary school," from it, so I ultimately stuck it in a metaphorical drawer.

I've also never written a query letter for a novel or a synopsis, but those are both included in my new year's writing resolutions (I'll put up the list later). I'd like to have Rosetta edited by the beginning of summer, maybe May or June, of 2012, and I want to begin sending letters to agents soon after that. Ideally, I'd love to have an agent by the end of next year, but I'm going to attempt to dream somewhere in reality's neighborhood. I can't control whether someone picks up my book, but I can control whether I have feelers out, so I'll do as much as I can and hope the rest falls into place.

Celebration!

That's right, I did it. I completed my second National Novel Writing Month competition. And, perhaps even more unbelievably, I don't hate my novel after finishing it. I think that's because I didn't work on it exclusively this time. It gave me more time actually appreciate what I was writing.

And I'm not done. I finished on November 28, then I took a few days off (well, I severely decreased my writing amount at least. I think I wrote less than 500 words combined). Today I start my own personal mini-NaNo. My goal for the month of December is to write 31,000 more words. Hopefully most of them will be for Rosetta. My big goal is to have the first draft of Rosetta done by the end of the year, though that will take more than 31,000 words (it's currently at 35,000, so I need to double that at least). At the very least, I should be circling in for a landing by the time this month is over.

It's going pretty well, I think. The story's moving along. Kim and my mom both seem to like it. I think I'm finally figuring out how to go from where I am now to where I need the story to be. And I've even accepted that my characters are going to do things I don't like or approve of, and I'm learning to roll with the changes (except you, Ben. You need to stay in line).

This is the best I've felt about my writing in a long time. Here's hoping next month just gets better. You can track my progress (and mood) with the progress bar on the right side.

Congratulations to everyone else who participated in NaNoWriMo. Whether you won or not, embracing the desire to write is half the battle.

Word Wars and the Art of Speed Writing

As of this morning, I'm 5000 words from completing NaNoWriMo. In the last two days, I've written 6000 words, and I hope to write another 2000 or so tonight, which will hopefully lead to my finishing this weekend.

I accomplished this with a lot of help. For the last three Fridays, I met with a few other NaNo writers in my region. Together, we sat in Starbucks from 7:30 until close, writing away and occasionally pausing to chat and relieve some of the pressure. For all three of these days, I saw word counts at least over 2000. Yesterday, I wrote 4470 words.

And they weren't bad either. I know that, by its nature, NaNoWriMo encourages you to write a lot of crap in the hopes of finding something good amidst the wreckage. The idea is that putting something on the page, no matter how bad, is better than having nothing. But yesterday I wrote two short stories in the Rosetta universe which could, depending on how things fall into place, wind up at the end of book three (or maybe somewhere in four, if there is a four). They're certainly not ready-to-publish yet, but they're solid stories that are at least tangentially related to my main novel.

To spur each other on, we engaged in word wars. Basically, you set a time limit, and everyone writes as much as possible. Whoever writes the most words wins. We did three last night: two for 30 minutes and one for 20.

I strongly advocate word wars.

Nothing focuses me quite like a competition, especially when my competitor is sitting next to me, clacking away and making me think that she's racing along (turns out she was; I lost two of the three wars). So I just kept writing, never stopping, hardly thinking, and I wound up with something that can be trimmed down to something very nice. I already have the ideas. I just need the extra push to put them on paper.

I also strongly advocate writing in groups. I thought it would be distracting, that I'd want to talk more than type. And sometimes I did, but more often we egged each other on, scolding when we got too distracted. I worked harder on those days than any other, and I counted on them to help when I fell behind in the word count. As a result of last night's (and my increased motivation today) I'm currently 1700 words ahead of where I need to be. And this blog post will only add to that.

Anyway, the moral of this story is to consider writing with a buddy. Whether it's sending your chapters to a friend or getting together with other writers for a little good-natured competing. You might be surprised by the results you get.

Story Hints: How Much Is Too Much?

When I'm writing a novel, I often have many things about the ending planned in advance. I assume this is a common thing for writers, since ultimately the goal is to get to the end. In the case of Rosetta, I also have things planned for the next two books. Obviously, to get to these things, I need to build toward them gradually. In other words, I need to drop hints along the way, so it's not surprising when all of a sudden two characters sleep together in book two. But the question is: how big a hint is too big?

I have a tendency toward dropping too many hints too quickly. I don't want to leave the possibility that the reader might not pick up on it, or that it might be jarring. I have every intention of fixing this problem during editing. But I'm constantly worried that the reader, who is not inside my head and therefore has very little idea of what I'm thinking (though admittedly that problem may not be remedied if they were inside my head), will not understand the way my characters grow or change to fit the end game I have planned for them. So my hints tend to be heavy-handed, more of a smack in the face than a teasing caress.

On the other hand, my friend Kim trusts her readers much more, and she's very cautious about giving away too much. She relies on the reader to put the pieces together on their own, never wanting to give them too much information so they figure it out too early. She likes to give her readers more credit, believing they can reach the same conclusions she has. As a reader, I appreciate this quite a bit. As a writer, I find it incredibly difficult to do.

So maybe this is the question: is it better to err on the side of too much information or too little?

I've always liked those books where you don't pick up on the hints right away, but when you read them a second time (and I'm a chronic re-reader) you suddenly start to see them all for what they are. It's what I've aimed to do with Rosetta, especially with some of my main character's personality traits that I plan to develop more as the book and series go on. Yet I can't help feeling discouraged when I read a chapter back and realize I "casually mentioned" one such aspect four times in one chapter.

I have this problem when Quinn feels anxious about something as well. For example, in the first few chapters, she runs into her ex-boyfriend and spends the entire time thinking about how she acts like a lovesick teenager every time she sees him. Luckily, in the first round of edits, I sought and destroyed many instances of this, leaving just a few to acknowledge that she is, in fact, acting like a 13-year-old girl around him (a character trait that made me grind my teeth together and pray she grew out of it soon). It got so bad I actually broke the fourth wall and yelled at her through the page.

Now in chapters seven, eight and nine, she spends an unhealthy amount of time obsessing over a test she didn't believe she should have passed. This was done partly because I wanted to show her need to prove herself, but it exploded into her solitary focus for about 35 pages.

At what point do I start believing the reader will understand Quinn's insecurities without my harping on it any longer? At what point do I assume they'll understand a dropped hint or a secret smile that may show up several chapters later? And at what point do I trust that a few actions on her part will do more than a thousand long (internal) monologues? I'm just never sure.

Writing Prompts

So I spent the better part of this evening looking for ways to fill my NaNoWriMo word count. After running through my list of projects (Rosetta, Dash, YA, Long Live, and now my newest story Angels), I came up with... writing prompts. So I set about searching for writing prompts online to help get me started.

I have to tell you: they suck.

I don't know if it's just the websites I found, but there were a ton of one-word writing prompts (which can be fun when I'm in the mood for them) and a ton of prompts along the lines of, "Write about something you dislike about yourself." But there were very few longer prompts, containing things that might get your mind working if you're having trouble coming up with an idea of your own. It's all well and good to have the prompt, "Cinnamon," but if you're already a little burned out and not having luck coming up with a concept, sometimes you need a little more.

Maybe it was just the way I was searching. I typed "Writing prompt" into Google and went with the sites on the first page. Is there a better topic to search? Maybe "story starters" or something like that?

When I was in high school, I used to spend the first fifteen minutes of every morning doing free writing. Basically, I'd sit at my desk at 5:15 in the morning and write about whatever could possibly come to mind.

Needless to say, there were a lot of angry journal entries about how much I hated being awake that early.

I liked doing the free writing. I read about it in one of those "How to Be a Writer" books (maybe Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird), and the author talked about how it loosened up her mind for the rest of the day. I noticed a distinct uptick in my creativity whenever I did it. I felt more awake during the day (which was ironic because I woke up earlier), and I felt like my brain was firing on all synapses.

Unfortunately, like most things I did in high school, this faded away as I got older. Eventually, I valued the extra fifteen minutes of sleep more than the burst of energy and creativity I would get from free writing. Nowadays, I wake up and sit on my computer for a half hour before even attempting to move. I could use this time to write/free write.

Instead, I watch reruns of Boy Meets World or play games on Sporcle.

Part of the problem is that I'd rather write than free write, but I'm afraid whatever I wrote at six in the morning would be completely useless--and it probably would be. But I don't want to have to rewrite everything I do, and I don't want to waste time writing things that don't matter (aka stream-of-consciousness free writing), so instead I write nothing. And for some reason my brain is okay with this.

Anyway, at this point I'm just looking to fill my word count, but I will go back to the initial point and pose a question to all of you who are reading (so possibly just Kim): Does anyone out there have a tried-and-true writing prompt site they use?

NaNo Update

It's amazing. Ten days into National Novel Writing Month, and I'm still within spitting distance of being on schedule. In fact, until yesterday, I was actually over my word count, and I expect to get back to that level again this weekend. While I have actually managed to complete the challenge before (in 2009), this is still a minor miracle for me. What's even more important (and unbelievable) is that I'm still enjoying what I'm writing.

I've spoken at length already about the Novel-We-Speak-Not-Of and how, even though I technically won NaNoWriMo, I felt like I lost. Well, this year's been different so far. I'm doing a couple things differently. I already explained that I'm working on three different novels and possibly some short stories (I also count these blog posts... anything that involves words being written on a page). However, I've found myself focusing on Rosetta a lot in the past week, and I think this is still working because I've planned a lot more of this story than the NWSNO. Also, I don't expect to finish it this month. Removing the pressure is key.

This is actually doing something quite lovely for me: it's reminding me why I want to write in the first place. I know there are a lot of writers who have a love/hate relationship with the actual writing process. I think any task which asks you to put a piece of yourself into it can cause that type of reaction. But for awhile I was only writing because I felt like I ought to. Vaguely, I remembered it was something I liked to do, but it wasn't calling up the same feelings as before. It's been ages since I've reached anywhere near the middle of a story.

I just finished chapter 8 of Rosetta. This is maybe a little less than 1/4 of the book, and it's just now starting to get past the basic introduction and into the main plot. I just introduced Eli, a character whose very presence apparently makes all scenes flow better. And suddenly I went from really struggling to write anything coherent or worthwhile in chapters 5 and 6 to writing my favorite chapter to date in chapter 8.

I feel like I spend a lot of time talking about how I'm finally optimistic about my writing, but this seems to be more than that. I sit down every night to hit my word count and I'm not thinking about the millions of other things I could be doing. I don't turn on reruns of Boy Meets World to procrastinate. I don't even need to be on AIM with a few friends to break up the whole writing process. I wrote for a half hour while on my lunch break today just because I wanted to. It's a lot like being back in high school and carrying my notebook everywhere on the off-chance I had a few minutes to write... just because I liked it. Except now my notebook is Google Docs.

Anyway, this is a fairly meaningless blog post in the scheme of things, but I felt good about what I was doing so far and wanted to share. I hope NaNoWriMo is going well for everyone else, and I'm looking forward to seeing other's results.

Expectations

I'm currently in the process of writing chapter 8 of Rosetta, the chapter which will introduce Eli, a 24-year-old werewolf who will become quite important throughout the rest of the book and future ones. Eli was probably the second or third character I created, and the first one I had actual expectations for. I know what I want him to do by the end of the book, and while a whole host of other things need to fall into place to make it work, the thing that frightens me most is the Eli won't be the character I need him to be to make those things happen.

This happened to me once before. I started a novel with the intention of the main character getting together with this one guy. And when I got to the part of the outline where they were supposed to get together... nothing. No sparks, no chemistry, no conceivable reason why these two people would ever see each other in a romantic light. He was her sons' principal; she was his students' mother. Nothing more, nothing less.

Instead of rolling with it and changing the plan, I panicked and shut down. This was the concept I'd built my whole story around. If it wasn't going to work, what point was there in continuing it?

I'd like to think I've grown from this, and that I can readjust if Eli is not ready to do what I need him to do at the end of the book. I'd like to think I'm a better writer now than I was when I was 18. And I'd like to think I'm more flexible now. But the problem with having expectations for a character is that then they have the potential to disappoint you.

NaNoWriMo - Day 1

I don't think this will become a daily update on how NaNoWriMo is going, but I finished my word count early today, so I figured I'd throw this in too.

So I'm at 1908 words, which is technically 241 words over what I needed to do today. This will become important in the future, I think, when I have less time to write (or less inclination). I wrote 365 words of Rosetta by hand, then switched to my untitled YA novel (which will henceforth be referred to as simply YA), of which I wrote 1543 words. I made an Excel spreadsheet which breaks this all down for me. It's an incredibly complex Excel spreadsheet. There are charts. I'm very proud of it (kind of stupid proud actually. Perhaps I could have better used that time elsewhere).

I actually thought I'd write more of Rosetta. There are a couple problems with that though. First, Rosetta is handwritten. I carry my notebook with me everywhere and write whenever I get a chance. It's something I started doing in high school, when I was working on my second novel Merry-Go-Round. Back then, I did it so I could write in class (we weren't allowed to use personal laptops in school... probably so kids didn't do exactly what I was doing. Or surf the internet). Now, it's still easier to carry around than my computer. Unfortunately, this means I have to transfer everything to the computer intermittently so I know what my word count is. Plus, it's a slower process in general. Sometimes I like this. During NaNoWriMo, it can become somewhat of a hindrance.

The other problem is that Rosetta is my (current) baby. 1667 words (the target word count per day) is almost a complete chapter. To write a chapter a day, when I've been writing a chapter every two weeks so far, is a big step up. And since I so desperately don't want to screw it up, I'm taking it much more slowly. If I can write a few hundred words per day, I think that's enough for that. Which puts a little more pressure on YA and Dash (of which I wrote nothing today), but I'm less afraid of writing crap for those stories.

I have a short story, tentatively titled Long Live, that I'd like to work on/finish in the next day or two, and I wrote the first sentence of Dash but was too lazy to go upstairs while I was writing and get it. Those are tomorrow's projects. That could all change if I wake up tomorrow and feel like writing anything else. The nice thing about the multiple projects system is that if I ever get bored... I move on.