December Sum-Uption

Well, I managed to do a large scale revision on the Cass book to give the CWCers an updated draft. Since I had already worked on revising the first half or so, and since my revision plan was focused on rearranging/adding fairly big chunks vs. fine tuning, I thought it'd go quickly. Ha!

But, the good news is that I got almost everything I wanted to change changed. The last twenty-ish pages still have a detail I'm going to axe, but I ran out of time. On the whole, however, I'm satisfied that the novel is more cohesive. We'll see what the gang thinks.

This month flew by, and I did some over-reaching, but I got a lot done. Now for about a week and a half of break, then it's back into the trenches with the beginning of spring semester. Whew.

Small, Slow Edits

I'm making slow, but steady, progress on my big revision expedition. Right now I'm still going through the first part, which I went through once already a few months ago. The edits right now are small, but my pace is not as quick as one would think.

The funny thing about these minor edits is that you lose time on the scavenger hunt part of it. A little bit here, a little bit there, and you have to find the spots first. Up to a certain limit, big edits go faster 'cause it's just a matter of taking out a certain page and re-writing it. You're honed in, focusing on just that certain scene.

Small edits, tweaking edits, are more all over and they creep up on you unexpectedly, like when I was doing one edit and realized I had to pause to do a find & replace jobbie on two characters' names that changed over the course of drafting.

Once I get further into the pages, I expect my pace will quicken as I run into the parts that need bigger chunks revised. Or, maybe there'll be so much in those big chunks that I'll slow down. Hard to say right now. I'll find out soon enough, though.

What about you? What kinds of edits can you do the most quickly? What kinds of editing take you the longest?

The Not-So-Restful Break

Boy did I ever pick the wrong month to submit a whole novel to the CWC bunch. Between defending my thesis, finishing up a semester, and picking up some seasonal work, I've been going pretty much flat-out for weeks. I've had too much other stuff going on to focus on Cass, and now I've got a week to finish editing and make copies for our next meeting.

Gosh, where does the time go? But, time's not going to slow down just for me, so I've got to speed up. I'm at the coffee shop right now, doing some out of the house pages. I'm making decent time, thank goodness, but I haven't gotten to the parts that are going to be pretty labor-intensive. Instead, I'm starting at the beginning and working through in order.

Right now I've got about 27 pages down out of a 203 page manuscript. However, I have some additions to make, so my final draft this go-around is going to be closer to 225 or more. The advantage, though, to doing all of this at once is that there's no down time for me to forget details/plot points/etc.

I tell you what, though, come December 29th, all I'm doing all day is sitting at home in my PJs and watching TV.

Pedal to the Metal

And Bam! December is upon us. I'm glad Jenny's up to submit tonight at CWC, because I didn't make any progress on revising Cass at all. This past month was a classic case of over-reach and I took on more than I should have. Whoops.

The good news is that December means Christmas break, and some time for me to put my nose to the grindstone and focus, focus, focus on revision without the responsibilities of teaching.

So, my overall goal for December is awfully simple: get stuff done. I foresee a lot of time spent at coffee shops with my laptop in my future. I've already got a pretty clear idea of what my revisions are going to focus on, so I'm hoping that will help speed things along. That, and, of course, the caffeine from all that coffee ;)

For you this month, I'm putting forth the challenge to push on. Take big bites, keep up your NaNo momentum, etc. Finish 2009 with a roar.

Character Thoughts, Revision, and Guiding Principles

There's another good post over at Edittorrent. This one looks at character, which I'm all about this month, and I've started thinking about it in relation to Cass. I have a pretty good idea about her first principle and how it gets her into trouble. As I work on revision, I'm thinking about ways I can draw that out a little more to help solidify her character and especially to make her more sympathetic, which is a struggle I'm having.

At the last meeting, Jenny commented on a few portions of the sub which I had missed when I was switching a scene over to 3rd person from 1st. Believe it or not, Jenny liked the 1st person better. Even though I've changed things over so the reader isn't in Cass's head, it seems I need to get them in there anyway. Jenny, ever helpful, suggested I re-write the whole thing to 1st person, and do it in two months. She smiled when she said it, too. How evil is that?

Think Globally

Hey look, October's over. Deb and Jenny have already got their November's plotted out. Me, I'm trying to think of a worthy goal for the month. NaNo? No way. It's tempting, but I've got too much revision on my plate, because I'm on the block for CWC in December. We're talking a completely revised Cass, with some overall adjustments to characters & plots. I've got a pretty solid idea of where I'm going, it's just a matter of actually going there. It'll also entail adding a couple thousand words. So, yeah, no NaNo for me.

Though, that leads me to a perfecto November goal. When I talk with my comp. students about revision, I always emphasize big-picture revision (global) over proofreading (local), because if the ideas aren't there, nobody cares about your commas.

Global revision is what I need with Cass. Ergo, this month's challenge is to look at the grander scheme. Details are good, details are wonderful, but you've got to have the bones before you can flesh them out. Whatever project you're working on, now's a good time to take a step back and ask the big questions:

1. What's the point of writing this thing? What am I trying to express?
2. If my reader gets nothing but one thing out of this, what's that one thing? How do I make sure that's what they walk away with?
3. Do all my parts - characters, scenes, complications, sub-plots - somehow serve my grander scheme?
4. What's the best order in which to put all these parts together?
5. Are readers responding to my characters the way I want them to? If not, how can I change that?
6. Am I making things hard enough for my characters? Are their challenges difficult enough?
7. Why today? Why is this plot happening now?

There are plenty more that could get added to the list, but those are some examples of big picture questions I'll be working on during my big Cass revision. Some of the questions - like #5 - come right from critique comments I've gotten. Others - like #1 - are more all-purpose. All of them are good to know the answers to.

How about you, do you have any good questions/ways of focusing on the big picture?

World Building & Bibles

This past Sunday, the UGWP group got talking about the issue of world building. There was debate about the best way to do it: if you over-plan, there's the danger of getting stuck in the planning phase without moving on to the writing phase; if you don't plan enough, there's the danger of having to wing it as you write, which leads to the danger of inconsistencies & confusion.
Me, I'm finding that it helps to do a Bible. The Bible starts off with me plugging in everything I already know about the story/characters/world, things like main characters, places, etc. This part came together with Cass after I had written a couple of Cass stories but before I started the novel. So, I had a good idea of certain things, but fuzzy idea on others.

Then, as I wrote and figured out details, I added them to the Bible. This worked pretty well.

Today I finally got a chance to put together my Oracle Bible. This came together a little differently than the Cass Bible, because I've worked on Oracle before, and because different things are important to remember in the world. Overall, though, both have a character section, a section for places, and a section, or two, devoted to relevant mythology. For Oracle, specifically, here's what's in the binder: a map; character sheets; location sheets; info sheets on the four major gods; notes on the world itself, like what their technology looks like; and I also added a sheet for all the names of all the characters to make sure I'm not naming everybody the same things - for instance I seem to really like male characters with names that end in "in" or "an."

As a side note, during my first go at Oracle I put together a sort-of Bible which was a small stack of index cards that I kept in an envelope I glued on the inside cover of the notebook I was writing Oracle in. It worked decent, but is kind of inefficient once I got a certain amount of notes to remember. The binder's more streamlined and keeps things from getting shuffled.

So, now we come to the audience participation part of the show. When you're working on a project/world building, what's your system?

Ta-Da!

The Cass book now officially has a beginning, middle, and end. I just finished my first complete novel. It's a cool feeling.

Ending, and Beginning Again

So, sometime tomorrow, or maybe the next day, there's a very real possibility that I'll have a completed draft of the Cass novel. I'm talking whole she-bang, people. It's an impressive thought. Of course, said draft will be far from perfect, and there's plenty of messiness to clean up, but I'll have a beginning, middle, and end. Whoo-doggie.

But, the contest doesn't end tomorrow, or the next day. That means I'm going to have to dive right into the next project. I've been thinking about going back to Oracle for a while now, (like what, a year and a half?) and it looks like the contest will necessitate this happening ASAP. It's exciting. (Not to mention exhausting. Trying to keep up with Boudreau is tough.)

The Long and Short of It

Yay! I've just hit the 10,000 word mark for my contest word count. Boudreau's still in the lead, but I'm staying ahead of Deb and Jenny, (until they read this, get fired up, and blow by me).

Today is also interesting for the sake of where I am in the Cass book. For a while, I've been thinking I was at a certain point in the plot, a point that I figured was about half way. But, as I've been doing the contest, having to keep up the pace made me rethink. Basically, I was thinking how certain other things needed to happen before I got going on the final show-down, except I couldn't figure out what those other things were. All I could think of was that I needed more "stuff" because I needed more pages before the big fight. Getting stuck on figuring out that "stuff" brought up a question that I might not have asked myself if I had lots of time to ponder and come up with "stuff." That question: "But, why?"

What's the purpose of waiting? Yeah, the fight itself is going to be kind of short, but there's still plenty of lead up to the fight. Characters need to do certain things, a certain set of actions need to happen. So, why not jump right in? I had an "aha!" moment, which was cool. The biggest problem I was having was second guessing myself - I've started a couple of novels, and even gotten to the end of the middle of one, but this is the first one I'm getting to the end of, and I was worried I was doing it wrong. Bah. Enough of that. Right now is the part where I just write it. Later, if it turns out I actually do need more stuff, I can add it in. It's a very freeing thought.

This morning, I deleted a couple of paragraphs of "stuff" so that instead of spacing out certain events, they were happening on top of each other. It's a lot more fun to write this way.

Okay, back to writing, it's time to beat the tar out of some characters.

As I Go Writing

I have discovered that my word processor does not recognize the word "lych." Nor does my web browser, or anything else. More's the pity. It's a good word.

In other news: It's nice to see the contest folk doing so well, though I admit I wouldn't mind a few of them doing a little less well. Punks.

Problem Solving

Today feels like a good day for a piggy back post, so I'm going to go off of Deb's post about last night's CWC meeting. One of the best things about a critique group that works is that problems get solved. There are always problems in drafts, whether it's a character, a scene, or bit of dialogue, there are things that need fixing. That's why it's called a draft, right?

Last night I was on the chopping block for the 2nd submission of the Cass book, and I knew the gang was going to comment on one particular thing. As part of getting people where they needed to be, I had to figure out a reason for them to be at a funeral, despite it being dangerous for one of the characters to be out in public. I thought about it, and played around with it, and tried so hard to figure out a good reason to get them all there. The best I could come up with wasn't really a good reason, but I couldn't figure anything else out.

When it came to my turn to get critiqued, Jenny started. Basically, she said, "Yeah, this part... it's not working."

I said, "Tell me about it."

Then Shane said, "Well, what if..." And there it was, exactly what I needed. It was simple, it was perfect, and I never even got close to figuring it out on my own. Writers groups can be a beautiful, beautiful thing.

Under the Chopping Block

A while back, I announced they were doing line edits over at Edittorrent, and today they did mine. It feels pretty cool to have gotten a once-over by a pro, even if it's just a paragraph. ^_^

Filling Up

May is proving blurry. Today I realized that the next CWC meeting is this coming Monday already. That's only four days away. Holy cow. I've been working on some edits on the 1st 50 pages of Cass from the last critique, but now I've got to push through to do a quick edit on the next 50 pages to submit it to the gang.

I'm working on coffee shop pages now, then later Katherine should have her thesis comments ready for me, then I've got to print out another copy of my thesis for mom and dad, then I'm off to the gym, then I'm aiming for some more time on Cass or working on CWC critiques.

Nothing like deadlines to shake off that restless feeling.

It's All Jungian

This week, as the first week of my summer vacation, has been fun. It has also been difficult to keep track of which day is which and I only recently realized it's actually Thursday.

So, I'm currently reading Touch the Dark by Karen Chance. It's an excellent example of why researching your genre is a wonderful thing. I've only just started reading the novel, but it's already making me sad. Chance has two characters within the first couple of chapters that bother me because of a couple of characters I have in Crossroads Promise.

Chance: Female protagonist named Cassandra whose parents were killed by a vampire. Me: Female protagonist named Cass whose parents were killed by a vampire. Chance: Vampire named Rafe. Me: Vampire named Rafe.

It's irksome. I've never read Karen Chance's work, so there's no way I'm subconsciously borrowing from her. Yet, there are the similarities. It's eerie. The Cass/Cassandra thing I get, it's hard not to go with the mythological reference. The orphan thing is even understandable. It's the overlap with the vampire bits that are a tad unsettling. I think I'm going to have to find a new name for my baddie. Dang.

Bar Pages, Post-CWC

One of the fun things about having the laptop is being able to do OOTH pages I don't have to transcribe later. It does wonders for getting pages pounded out. And then I can do a blog post at the same time :)

Last night, the gang talked about the first 50 pages of Cass. They had some good comments about things that need to be fixed, as usual, but the best part was that they're into it. I was concerned that I was going to hand over this thing that I'd been goofing off with, entertaining myself with, and they'd say I should go ahead and keep it to myself. But, it was a good reminder that a lot of the time, there are reasons why we like the stories that are our favorites to tell.

I can sum it up with a cool thing Deb said, "I can tell you had fun writing it, because I had fun reading it."

Now I'm sitting at the bar, drinking a green cocktail, and playing a bit with a scene that needed to be expanded. It's a scene that takes place in a bar which I loosely modeled after the one I'm sitting in, so it all seems very fitting.

CWC Ambush

This month has been busy, and this past week or so busiest of all. Between revving up for finals week, socializing, pounding out an introduction for my thesis, and miscellaneous other things, it was yesterday before I really realized that the CWC meeting is tonight. Yeesh.

I'm kind of hesitant about the meeting, which is unusual for me. I think it's because I'm trying something totally new and I'm not sure exactly how the gang are going to respond. Though, from a couple comments at dinner last night, I'm a little reassured that at least Jenny & Deb don't hate it.

Jenny is pretty happy because now she has a concrete reason for me to finally read Harry Potter - research for Cass. It's funny, in all my thinking of and looking for similar books, I never once thought about Harry, but once she mentioned it, yeah, I see the overlap. Dang it.

And, along with having Jenny & I on the chopping block, we're going to have some official CWC business to sort out tonight as well. Fleur is currently too busy working on a big (and paying) project and working on her novel with an agent, so she has had to go on hiatus. We'll miss her, but it's the best possible reason for someone to have to pull out of the group. Yay Fleur! On the logistical end, Fleur's leaving means reshuffling the submission schedule and possibly adding a new member. It's bound to be an especially interesting meeting tonight.

Log Line Exercise

A couple of posts ago, I posted a link to a neat exercise to help work up a log line. Here are a couple of possbilities I've come up with for the Cass book by doing the worksheet:

• When the stubborn spell maker Cass McKade does Papa Legba a favor, she expects a favor back. Instead, she gets a monster-hunting ex-boyfriend who needs her help protecting a twelve-year-old girl from the same vampire that killed Cass's parents.
• Papa Legba owes Cass a favor, but he's got his own plans for repaying it. So, when her monster hunting ex-boyfriend shows up on the anniversary of her parents' deaths with a young girl in tow, Cass finds out that a nemesis from her past is up to his old tricks. In order to protect the girl, Cass has to face the vampire who killed her parents and finally come to terms with her past.
• Crafting spells and making deals with a voodoo spirit is nothing strange for Cass McKade, but admitting that she cares about someone is. When her monster hunting ex-boyfriend returns to town to ask Cass for help protecting a twelve-year-old girl, she will have to do all three in order to face down the girl's attacker and come to terms with the deaths of her own parents.

Wow, even with a "cheat sheet" it's still pretty tough. I'm not sure if I completely like any of them, but it's a start.

How about you? What have you got?

Out Like a Lamb? March Summation.

The new laptop is working a treat. Definitely my favorite toy for the year. My Cass word count is around 33,000 right now, which makes me happy.

My weekly three-tiered to do list plan was useful in that it jarred me out of an unproductive rut, but I never got to the point of being fully engaged in it. The most helpful part of it was having specific, measurable goals each day. That's the part I'm going to keep up with.

New plan - scrap the printed out weekly calendar in favor of a whiteboard on the fridge that's more easily modifiable and interactive.

My productivity plan for March ultimately had partial success and while the results aren't wildly amazing, the overall results aren't too shabby. How'd your month go?

Ripening

It's been a while since I've put up a piggy-back post, and I think Jenny's latest deserves some piggy-backing. She's thinking about process these days, it would seem. Dickens wrote things out, Jenny sort of writes things out, and then she asks how the rest of us do it.

When I think about it, it seems like the projects I've outlined/pre-written the most, are those I've been least successful with. I'm not sure what the correlation is, but there's something about either why I pre-write, or the pre-writing itself, that trips me up. With the bar novel I started a while back, I did a lot of outlining & pre-writing. The novel never really got off the ground.

With Cass, I've been making notes in the Cass Bible, but those are all reference to make sure technical details - like the color of a character's hair - stay consistent. There's no plot involved. CRP is going smoothly. I'm not writing it linearly at all, I keep skipping around from one scene to another, then back again, but each time I finish one piece, I know which piece to work on next.

A few days ago, while I was re-reading and revising, I came across a scene that I knew I needed to make a little bigger, but wasn't ready to tackle. I inserted the note, "make bigger here, they need to have a fight," and moved on. Yesterday, I went back and wrote the fight. That's as close as I've gotten to outlining.

I think maybe the reason I dislike outlining and have little success with it is because once I make an outline, it feels like the ideas are all on the page and out of my head. When I don't write it down, I keep tossing the ideas around in my mind until I'm ready to write them out in full. It's like outlining for me is picking the fruit before it's ripe.