Chapter 14 - What's Next?

"So, Elle," you ask.  "What are you going to do now that you've written your novel?"

Well, do it again.  What did you think?

The manuscript I'm working on is actually the product of a very cool tradition that occurs every year.  I'd encourage young writers everywhere to get on board and become part of the celebration.

NaNoWriMo.  Or, National Novel Writing Month.

Hosted each November by the nonprofit Office of Letters and Light, NaNoWriMo is a creative effort where participants pledge to write a novel in a month (50,000 words).  There's a handy dandy website to get you started.  You'll get daily word count goals, graphs to show if you're on target, emails with pep talks to get you through, and an online community with forums ranging from plot tips and character development to music playlists for writing and procrastination stations.

It's a month long sprint to the finish.  50,000 words works out to 1,667 words per day or a little over three pages single spaced.  Last year, I cheated a little because I'd written the first chapter or two of Momentum in October, but I wrote the meat and potatoes of the plot during NaNo.  Someone turned me on to the program a week into November and I was side-tracked by Thanksgiving (the big get together holiday in my family) so I did not reach my goal of 50,000 words.  I wrote somewhere around 30,000 which ended up being nearly half of the book.  That's a pretty good stretch for one month!

NaNo is not about writing the best thing ever put on paper (though some manuscripts have gone on to do well); it's about sitting down and doing it.  It's about turning off your inner editor.  It's about creating an online community of young writers who want to cultivate their talents.  It's about connecting minds.

This year, I will be starting something completely new.  It's an idea that's been in my head for a while but I recently had the catalyst thought that made it come together.  Is my plot thought out and outlined? No.  Do I know where I want to end it?  Not at all.  But that is the beauty of NaNo.  You don't have to know.  You just have to start.

Now, writing that much in a month doesn't lend itself to works of art.  Momentum was a hot mess by the end of the month.  That's what the rest of the year is spent doing.  Revision, revision, revision.  But I like to use NaNo to learn to write fearlessly.  Write without a care in the world.  Write knowing there are others out there who are struggling with you and no matter what, don't give up.

That's not all I've got up my sleeve for this coming month.  I've been quiet on this because I've been busy elsewhere.  I am in the middle of Momentum's revision.  I've written first drafts of three new short stories for my writing classes.  They'll need to be revised this month too.  I'm flirting with the idea of going for my MFA in the next year.  I am picking out literary magazines I hope to submit stories to.

November will definitely be a busy month but I'm feeling very clear headed, as clear as I've felt in a long time.

One thing I've taken away from my classes with all my critiques, both good and bad, is that I am in the right place.  Now it is about making it happen.

-E

Chapter 13 - Announcement

I suppose it's unlucky to reveal good news with a number thirteen, but so be it!

So you know that novel I started working on last November?  The one I've been blogging about since I started this thing?  Momentum?  

Um, I finished it.

Cue confetti cannons and streamers!  

Granted, this is a first draft which means no one in the world is going to be allowed to read it (I have to give you my best, not my first go at it!), but for all intensive purposes, the book is written.  Right now it clocks in at about 70,000 words which in page terms, means about 275 pages.  Short, I know.  I wanted to get everything written first before going back to do a serious revision.  I'm sure it will expand as I already have ideas that I want to add to it.  

I'm really excited though and nervous.  This is different than the first manuscript I finished.  There was less of a defining moment where I typed the last sentence, sat back, and cracked my knuckles with a sigh.  This one has been a fight.  It's been like an exorcism trying to find my main character's voice and to give it the authenticity it needs, but I know I have something.  Now I need to fine tune and polish it so it will be presentable to the masses.  

It feels nice.  As a writer and an unpublished one at that, I felt a sense that I would only be able to do this once and when my first manuscript didn't explode like I wanted it to, I was discouraged.  I had to learn to take an idea I'd nursed in my mind for years and set it aside to become enamored with something else.  And to be honest, this feels better.  I can tell my writing is stronger, I was less attached to certain scenes or phrases, and more able to see my work objectively.  As a result, I have a more coherent story with characters who I feel are deeply layered and work with minds of their own.  They are complex and I hope the reader takes away something from each of them.  I want Momentum to be a novel that you finish, but have to take time to process later.  

At the same time, I am definitely scared.  Finishing means I am one step closer to putting this thing I've created out into the world and letting my audience do with it what they will.  They will form opinions, they will not like what I've said, and they will criticize.  However, one thing I am learning is that unless you are writing a journal, you aren't writing for yourself.  You have an audience in mind and at some point, you have to give them what they've waited for.  My writing classes are helping me overcome the anxiety I get when having someone else read my work.  We're all learning.  We all have something to offer and we are going to give each other good ideas and criticism.  You have to take the bad with the good.  You need fresh eyes to look at what you've done because you can't see the mistakes you're making or where you're being so dense, your reader cannot understand what is happening.  

When I told my parents, the first thing they asked was when do they get a copy.  Well, despite my excitement over finishing, this project is not done.  A first draft is only the beginning.  A first draft is throwing all the words you need down on paper.  It doesn't mean I have a packaged product ready for publication.  No one has read the whole thing.  I would be an idiot to try and publish without getting even one other person to give me input.  What it does mean is that I have my foundation.  What I wrote may not necessarily be what I intended, but this is what revising is for.  

My plan now?  

I want to go through and change all of the things I have been neglecting and add in the ideas I had along the way.  I need to cut out the parts that aren't finished at the end or that don't matter.  And I need to get fresh eyes on this thing.  Literary eyes.  I hope to get some connections in the English Department where I am taking classes.  Really, I want a mentor.  Someone to help guide and mold my work and someone who understands the message I am trying to convey.  And that's like dating.  You have to find the right partner.  Until then, I'll be on my own, putting my all into the manuscript and trying to create the best draft I can.

Then and only then, once I have something that I feel is worthy of publication, will I begin the querying process again.  Before, my problem was that I queried too early.  I was too eager and ready to see my name on a shelf in Barnes and Noble and what I had to bring to the table was not up to par.  I won't make that mistake again.  Querying takes research.  It takes time and clever writing.  I need to take what I've done and summarize it into something that people will want to read.  I need to figure out how I want to present it.  

So, in other words, I am far from done.  Writing the book is actually the easy part.  Turning it into something that people want to read (and getting an agent to feel the same way) is where the real work is.  

All that said, I feel really proud that I've completed my second novel (even if the first one is still sitting at my desk collecting dust).  

-E 

And I appreciate everyone's support and enthusiasm.  It's those people who ask me, "How is the book going?" that keep me motivated every day.  

Chapter 12 - Updates

I promise, I am trying to get on a better blogging schedule.  I know I've been pretty sporadic here, but now that I'm actively working on improving my craft, I'll hopefully have more to say.  Some little words of wisdom here and there.  I want to aim for a post a week here.

Here's my most recent Barnes and Noble haul:

From top to bottom:
Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein - I started reading this last week.  My schedule's been pretty full, but I've been sucked into this thing.  Everyone on the blogosphere has raved about it and I see why.  So glad I started it.
Different Seasons by Stephen King - Confession time: I haven't read everything King's written.  Shocker, I know!  Until now I've had a strange aversion to short stories and novellas, but my writing classes have opened my eyes.  I'm also writing some short stuff now so I need to do my homework.  This one includes the inspiration for the Shawshank Redemption.  Can't be half bad.
The Iron King by Julie Kagawa - It's my first fey book!  I've heard about this series over and over so I thought I'd give it a try.  From what I read last night, I like.  The faeries so far aren't your typical winged creatures flinging glitter everywhere.  They have teeth, literally.
Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor - Finally!  It came out in paper back and I bought it yesterday.  As much as I love a good hardback, they're expensive.  And I'm back in school paying for supplies.  Gotta be thrifty.
Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn - I'll admit, I bought it because of the hype.  Everyone has been raving about it and it's at the top of the best sellers lists, so how bad could it be?  Plus Barnes and Noble had it for 40% off.

So what have I been doing all this time, you ask?

Well I went back to school!  That's what I did.  After much pushing and shoving and calling the registrar's office (because NC State has the most asinine advising system on the planet), I forced myself into two writing classes.

First I have Fiction Writing, which I love.  My professor (I don't know if it's appropriate to call him that because he's a MFA student at State and he's also probably only a couple years my senior and I feel weird calling someone who could be considered a peer Mr. So and So) is great.  He reminds me of one of my long time friends, if she were a dude.  He's a science fiction writer (yeah, I googled him and found his blog, whatevs) so I'll probably try to hunt down the stories he's had published.  The class is great.  Granted, I'm the oldest person there, but everyone is excited and ready to go.  They start talking about our readings and discuss them before class even starts.

Last week we finished our first drafts of our stories to workshop.  We have two due during the semester consisting of 2,000 to 10,000 words.  I've never written short stories before (aside from that pretentious allegory I tried to write in high school), so this is new territory for me to squeeze my ideas into that word range.  I think I did well on my first go around.  I wrote about two kids spying on their strange new neighbor.  My own neighbor was the inspiration.  Life imitates art, right?  My workshop group receives its critiques next Wednesday so I'm excited to see what the class's response is.

Second I have Creative Writing.  This class focuses on more forms: drama, poetry, and short stories.  Right now, we're smack in the middle of our poetry third.  My professor is another MFA student who specializes in poetry.  She's exactly what I would picture: soft spoken, well dressed but without make up, often wears only one earring, and she must have art class before she teaches us because she never wears her shoes and her toes are covered in either plaster or white paint.  This class has a different feel to it.  The students are quieter, less prone to blurting out their opinions, but now that we've begun critiquing each other's work, they are starting to become more animated.

It's a funny thing being back in school but not working toward a degree. For one, I feel old.  Most of my classmates are five years younger than me.  They can't buy alcohol and have really only just graduated high school.  They're concerned about Rush and football games and intro Biology exams.  They don't know what their majors are, but they have ideas.  I feel like a fish out of water sometimes.  I say things like, when I was in college, or my old college roommate, or when I was a senior.  I don't have an answer when they ask me what year I am or what my major is.  I don't have either.

But I see that bright-eyed ambition that I've been missing.  Out in the real world, it's an easy thing to lose.  Young minds like these are always clicking and turning, looking for new ways to make better grades, how they can update their resumes, what they can do over the summer to show they didn't waste their time.  They're busy and tired.  Each semester, their lives change with their classes.  They are surrounded by their friends, free from the watchful eyes of their parents for the first time.  They have the world at their fingertips.  It is refreshing to see that again.  It makes me want to move, to do more.  These are people who will stay up the night before, toiling until the task is done.  I've become lazy.  If I don't finish something by bedtime, I push it off until morning.  Not these people.

So in a way, I am different, but I am the same.  They are different, but they are the same.  We're all a little bit mad but we are all determined.

Chapter 11 - Write Without Fear

Again, I apologize for the long lapses between posts.  August has been filled with weddings and trips and classes and work.

Last time, I wrote about having writer's block.  And I am first to say: I was wrong (Hear that, Mom?).  Writer's block is another one of the convenient excuses I can hide behind like lack of time or inspiration.

It is fear.  Plain and simple.

Fear of ending.  Fear of not living up to the grandiose expectations that I have built up in my head for how I want my writing to be.  Fear of actually having to put this thing out into the world one day.  This is Step One.  Write it.  If I finish, it's been written, and if I have a first draft, soon I'll have a second and then people will be putting it in front of them and the judgments will come.

It is an old notion: if I don't try, I won't fail.  It is a cowardly move, for sure.  I am slowly learning to let my writing stand on its own two feet.  I can't cripple it from the get-go by never finishing.  Let me let you in on a little secret:

Everyone writes crappy first drafts.  Professionals and amateurs.  Everybody.  (And if there is someone who writes a perfect first draft, we don't talk to her anyway.)

The beauty of a first draft is no one else has to see it.  A first draft is a diary; a first draft is your dirty little secret.  You take your first draft and you mark the hell out of it.  You massacre it and the final product looks nothing like that awful piece of prose you put down.  If you're lucky, in the end, what you have is something that comes close to what you imagined in your mind.

Every writer wants to do a story justice.  But what about the characters? we moan and cry.  We aren't painting them in just the right light.  

So what?

Keep writing and it will come.  The important thing with a story is 1. starting and 2. having the courage to finish it.  I can pretty much guarantee that perfect little snippet you've written a thousand times in your head will not match up to what ends up on the paper.  The beauty is that with time and careful inspection of your work, the final product is exactly what it needs to be.

My advice?

Write.  Just write.  Don't comb over the details looking for out of place commas or even plot holes.  Put a bandaid on it and let that little bit of magic come.  Writing is something like channeling for me.  It's a groove, often like running.  You have to warm up and stretch.  You have to give yourself time to let your strides lengthen until you reach a sustainable pace.  Sure, it's painful.  You have moments where you feel like you are constantly running uphill.  You are battling to get the next word down, to find the right detail.  You have to remember no one else is watching.  If it's shit, toss it.  However, you may find that upon revision there are some good kernels in there you can tease out.

I am still guilty of these things, but I am learning to write without fear.  I had a moment the other morning while reading some of my Fiction Writing class's assigned essays and I thought, Good Lord, I am not this good.  I will never be this good.  I pulled up the manuscript and started looking at it, hating all the parts I'd once loved.

Then I made myself stop.  I'll never finish anything if I let myself be paralyzed by fear.  I may have to humble myself a little bit (I am not Hemingway and I am not Steinbeck; I don't aim to be), but that doesn't mean that what I'm doing doesn't have value.

Honor it.  Block out the negativity and let the words come.  Free write.  Associate.  Observe.  Ask questions of your characters.  Challenge them.  Make them grow.

As a young writer, it can be a lot to take in.  There are so many rules, but if you write a lot and you read a lot (the two most basic rules for becoming a successful writer), you will find that you already know a lot of them.  You see examples of what to do and what not to do every day in what you read.

Writing can be a lonely road.  You lay bare parts of yourself normally kept hidden and you offer them up to the world on a platter, asking for acceptance.  Many times, you won't get it.  But I believe with talent and perseverance, one day, it will come.

-E

And if you can't write, like they say at NaNoWriMo, just add ninjas! 

Chapter 10 - Writer's Block

Some say it's a myth.  Others write through it.  Mine has seasons, different phases like the moon.  I am currently in a waning phase.

I am almost done* with the first draft of Momentum.  Sara, my roommate of nearly 5 years, has moved out.  I've lost the boy.  I'm losing money.  I am fighting to be even considered for writing classes.

I have a lot of empty space and a lot of echoes to contend with right now.  Writing has been like bashing my head repeatedly against a wall.

Not the right tone.  Not the same magic vein I tapped into before.  Inspiration has been fleeting and I've grasped at the little wisps of it like I used to chase after lightning bugs as a kid.

It's also summer and the story's climax is...at odds with pool days and sunshine.  I have to get dark.  I have to walk in rainstorms (literally) just to feel the way I need to.  Thankfully, fall is coming!  In high school, my friends and I called it the Autumn Effect.  It is the casual winding down of summer, the installation of the school year routine.  Back to the grind.  The days grow shorter and the nights cooler. Suddenly, it's easier to be sad.  More acceptable.

I have finished a manuscript before.  It is sitting beside me right now gathering dust, waiting for the right time.  I remember the exact day I finished.  It was in April and I was hunched over solo at a table meant for two in those Starbucks they put in Barnes and Noble.  Apparently, books and coffee go together.  I remember typing the last sentence and I, appropriately, announced that little victorious word count on my Facebook status.  Fast forward two years and it doesn't matter much how my heart pounded in my chest, shooting my blood through with adrenaline (I had done it!  I finished something!).  Not much came from it.

Maybe that's what I'm afraid of, why I feel a brick wall when I try to finish.  I know where to go and slowly, I have figured out how to get there.  I just can't start moving.  I trip, sprint a hundred feet, back track, edit, stumble, and finally stop.

I am not giving up though.  I suppose that is growth.  My problem used to be I would never finish.  As soon as things got rocky, I would let whatever project I was working on putter out and instead go with the lightning strike of inspiration.  I'd answer the seductive call of the next best thing.

I am not done yet.  This story isn't done yet.  It is far from perfect and it deserves all of me.  So that is what I will give it.

-E

*'Done' is a relative term.  A first draft is always awful and while I have combed out the tangles of the first few chapters (when I really should be ignoring my inner editor and simply writing), the rest is, for lack of a better term, a hot mess.  Cheers!

Chapter 9 - What I Know

The late day sunlight sent little leaf shaped shadows across the wrinkles in the creek.  Her feet stood on the edge, dipping the toes in, and she watched the water pass silently.  The water here was magical somehow, some sort of soothing essence which always calmed her.  

She remembered summer mornings racing through the fresh cut wet grass barefoot to the creek where the rope swing hung from a high branch.  She thought of the tree bridge downstream where she was convinced for several months fairies had lived . Upstream was the "waterfall", as they had always called it, and farther up from that was the fort her father built between two trees.  

The creek held many memories, and she watched it flow down and away from her.  In her hands, she clasped delicate white flowers like gardenia whose petals she periodically plucked.  She would drop a petal into the stream and watch it glide on the surface of the water over unseen rocks and past exposed tree roots until it disappeared from sight.  Then she would drop another.  The sunlight twinkled in little pockets and she forlornly wondered if it would be the last time she ever saw this place again.

Normally, the sounds of splashing and laughing children filled the creek where the embankments hid them from the watchful eyes of their parents, but for now, she was alone.  A soft breeze rustled through the leaves overhead and the rope swing with the knot at its end waved back and forth like a cat’s tail. 

Her mother would be calling soon.  She was always calling her up from the creek, telling her to wash up in the mudroom, and for goodness sakes’, would you please put some shoes on.  But this time the calling would be different.  It would be to a car where they had packed all their things, all the things that made up their life crammed into a car, and they would leave the creek behind.  

It is an old adage - one argued and endorsed by many writers.  

Write what you know.  

Sometimes it is helpful.  A lot of my writing, whether I want it to or not, centers around my experience growing up in the South.  It's a flavor, a feeling, that certain magic of the first fireflies coming out at dusk while murmured voices from the porch carry across the yard.  

Also, it begs the question: how do sci-fi writers get anything done at all?  

Chapter 8 - The Devil's in the Details

Details, details, details. 

For me as a writer, it's a blessing.  Something can catch my eye and instantly, words start flowing in my head.  Inspiration sometimes strikes as a dinky trickle or a ragging river.  For me as a person and particularly as a girl, it can be frustrasting.  I'd like to use a personal story to illustrate this. 

I remember a lot about my (only) ex-boyfriend.  And yes, I believe first loves always stick with you, occupying a place in your heart you can never truly erase them from.  It doesn't have to be a bad thing.  Years later, I'm sure I could pass him on the street, we would acknowledge each other, and I would walk away knowing we are now strangers.  That's what happens when a broken heart heals; it bounces back strong and resilient, ready to throw itself headfirst into the next promising relationship. 

But when it's still mending, every single detail of a relationship can be agonizing.  As someone very concerned with details, I romanticized him.  Instead of remembering how he made me feel, I knew the small things and I cherished the stolen moments.  Even now, I could paint him like a picture.

He had sandy hair which grew long and curled right behind his ears and eyes the color of the ocean.  He had brown freckles in them too, more on one side than the other, always slightly off-balance, his symmetry just to the left.  When he was drunk, which was often, his slight lisp became more pronounced.  A childhood spent growing up at the beach and surfing made him tan and lean, almost like he'd been hardened by the waves.  On his chest where his ribs came together in the center, he had a little divet like an upside-down V and I remember sitting on my bed when we were breaking up, pressing my crying face into him and feeling my nose butt up against that spot I'd traced lovingly so many times before. 

Over the summer when he went home to his parents' and to work at the beach, I would visit on the weekends.  We'd drive around without shoes on with the windows down in his beat up green car, listening to songs with eight minute guitar solos and trying not to knock over the buckets of cleaning solution and chlorine tablets in the backseat.  When he was working his pool cleaning job, I'd tag along.  We'd visit beach houses and mansions and pretend we were as rich, jumping into hot tubs and pools of all shapes and sizes when no one was home.  I remember popcorn shrimp and french fries from a little shack on the beach road and the 4th of July where I sat cross-legged drawing circles in the sand with my back molded against him, watching fireworks explode over the water and shower the breaking waves in fantastic colors.  Red and blue and gold and green.    

When his father, the commercial pilot, suggested we take their four seater for a ride, he gave me his crooked smile and slipped into the front seat.  We'd been together for months and I never knew he had his pilot's license until then, but that was how he was.  Humble and surprising.  We flew low over the coastline all the way to Cape Hatteras, watching the cars and people scurry about their lives below us like ants.    

See?  It's very easy to look at the past and see it in shades of black and white.  After the ashes settle in the wake of a break up and the heart mends, you only remember the good times.  It's hard to gain perspective on what it was really like because all I can remember are the details. 

For relationships, it may not be the best habit I have.  For writing, this hypersensitivity can be a blessing.  The details and little moments are the vehicles I use to create an emotion, tell a story, or construct a scene.  In the editting process, I go back to what I've created and parse out the pieces that count, that really say something, but for the writing process as a whole, it helps give shape to what I'm trying to do.  It makes my story concrete and full. 

This may be a very roundabout way of saying "show, don't tell", but it's how my brain works when I'm writing.  Typically in a story, I know the beginning and the end.  I know the characters and maybe some of what happens in the middle, but fleshing out the rest of it is all about the details.