Imagine my dismay

When I last spoke to you all about my time in revisionland for FAIRY TAIL (where I still reside except for the occasional foray into SNI land which I allow myself ONLY after I've made some substantial progress), I had finally rectified the whole motivation thing for one of my characters and was feeling fairly confident about moving forward. I managed to revise the first third of the novel to my satisfaction, and then moved on to see how the rest stood.

Imagine my dismay upon discovering that the final two thirds of the novel were an even bigger mess, with more characters doing things that didn't serve the purpose at hand, scenes that didn't move the plot forward an inch, and descriptions (many, many paragraphs full) that were there just so the author could describe something lovely and the reader would be suitably impressed.

The good news is that while there's a big mess I have to fix and a whole lot of words that will not make it to the next round, the novel IS essentially complete, which means I have something to work with. Better yet, I have my chapter by chapter outline so I can actually see which chapters aren't working and what I can salvage from them. Hence the value of this outline, written mostly during during and after (because I pants first, then plot - although obviously in this case I did very little plotting).

The bad news is I have no more Supernatural to watch until the next season is released and I'm all caught up on GOT, which leaves me nothing to watch - unless perhaps you have a suggestion? Preferably something that doesn't take place in the world as we know it.

Anyway. That's where I'm at. I'll leave you with a few late summer pics taken on my road...

Great Blue Heron, aka GBH. Wish I had a zoom lens. He was pretty.

Have an awesome week and I'll be back on Friday with a review of Did You Ever Have a Family? for the Cephalopod Coffee House.

Revisionland and Supernatural

In my writing world, I last told you I was playing with fan fiction. That lasted about a week so I pulled up my second draft of Fairy Tail, which I mentioned recently in regard to character motivation. Having pulled myself through the mire of the first third of the tale, I decided to read the rest (again) quickly, and finish my chapter by chapter outline (which will eventually turn into a synopsis). This led to the realization that the final two thirds of the tale were in an even bigger mess than the first. Which prompted a lot of notes in my outline, highlighted in blue like this:

Ch. 1 Bubble, Bubble, Toil and Trouble

In which the fates observe the changing of the guard in Faerie: for a year the Unseelie Court will hold sway… [this could be deleted as this info could be inserted elsewhere]

Ch. 10 Into the Woods This chapter still needs reworking. Maybe Mag could show Lyra something rather than tell her

Ch. 18 p. A Secret

Matisse makes an unexpected trip to Faerie (don’t we get to see this? Who does Matisse go to? What information or advice does she get?) 

Or, my favorite:

Ch. 20 Summer Solstice... which Matisse, as planned, interrupts. What’s the point of that? 

Suffice it to say, I have my work cut out for me, which means, I need a reward...

Which leads to Supernatural.

Anyone else watch this show? I admit it took the whole first season before I was sufficiently engaged, but now, 8 seasons later, I'm pretty invested in the lives of Sam and Dean Winchester. Like their father before them, they're hunters of the supernatural, mostly creatures to start, but then demons (I adore Crowley), and angels*, who aren't always as nice as you think they should be, except for Castiel, who's pretty awesome. But all this hunting and killing the bad thing wouldn't be near as much fun if it weren't for Sam and Dean themselves, because they are definitely characters to root for, and their relationship is...very complicated. Which keeps it interesting. 

 

Currently reading Did You Ever Have a Family by Bill Clegg.

What's new, interesting, or old in your life?

* interestingly, the angel Naomi was played by Amanda Tapping of SG1 fame

Flicker

As some of you know, my son likes birds, which means I like birds. Here's a few pics he took of a Northern Flicker, a member of the Woodpecker family, who came to visit -

He's a handsome fellow, isn't he?

Meanwhile, I'm in the land of revisions which first involves me reading through the entire manuscript with minimal editing (that's the hard part) as I make notes on what needs fixing. The second pass will address all those issues. Currently I have 27 (!!!) items I need to check off before this manuscript is fit go anywhere.

So. What are you doing? Seen any pretty birds lately?

Oh! And the winner of The Eighth Day is Liz! Congrats :)

So...revisions

Has anyone else substantially revised a work you thought was finished? That's what I've been doing, and I have to tell you it isn't easy. Not only did I write an almost entirely new part two, but I also had to completely re-arrange the last third of the book, add all the necessary transitions, adjust for time and the new route my characters are taking, AND write a new ending. All in the hopes of making this story better than just good. Sometimes I ask myself why I spend so much time on one story, one set of characters? But I don't have a good answer, unless it's that I believe in them - for now.

How do you feel about revisions?


Oh, and for anyone who's interested, my new header is courtesy of my son, picture taker extraordinaire. He took the lighthouse, too :)

Monday pics - Pelican

As I mentioned before, my son is a birder, a hobby/interest/obsession I would never have guessed he'd acquire. He's also a fairly proficient musician (guitar), loves SLAYER, and has tattoos; in other words, not who you picture out in the woods with a pair of binoculars trying to spy the Wood Thrush he just heard.

Anyway. We're talking about the Pelican today, as pictured above. My soon took that one in Florida back in 2011 I think. He's a Brown Pelican, and one of only two kinds of pelicans that dive into the water to feed. From Wikipedia: "When foraging, pelicans may fly a few feet or a considerable height over a school of fish and dive at high speed into the water, often submerging completely below the surface momentarily as they snap up prey. Upon surfacing they spill the water from the throat pouch before swallowing their catch"

Is that crazy or what? This pic is from Wiki.

Meanwhile, I'm busy revising THE UNSOLVED CASE OF KASSANDRA DYER, completely changing one of my character arcs, and waiting for my second round of edits to come back to me on my soon-to-be- actual-book that I can hold in my hands. One of these days I may even have an actual title to share with you guys...

Oh, and the lobster bake was fabulous. More on that Friday - have a wicked good week :)

the very latest

well, now that you've all heard about my latest dating scare*, I thought I'd fill you in on something far more interesting. That being my latest wip, whose first page you may remember from this post, in which Dianne and I shared our first pages with you. She has since moved on to something else (which I absolutely love, btw) while I am down to my last three chapters (have you noticed my word count rising every few days?). Yep, three more chapters and I am done - with the first draft.

After which I get to move on to draft #2, in which I will add sensory details, check for continuity, pacing, motivation, and a host of other things Dianne has suggested. Needless to say,  I've already purple penned myself.

At this point, I'll be looking for a couple of beta readers and once they've given me their opinion I'll go to draft #3, then back to my cp's for a final read through before beginning the query process - again. 

At least that's the plan. 

What's yours? 
  
  
  
* I've decided that if he makes any further attempts to engage my attention I shall simply be honest and say, I'm so sorry, I'm writing a book and am much too busy to give you the attention you deserve (aka time of day).

meanwhile...

I've been reading Pandora's Star by Peter Hamilton, scifi set way in the future after the development of wormholes and FTL (faster than light) travel. Everyone undergoes 'rejuvenation' every 40-50 years, basically downloading themselves into a newly cloned body that looks like a teenager. People are classified as first-lifer (usually indicating naive), second-lifer, third, have multiple careers, spouses, children...lives. There are aliens, good and bad, strange civilizations, and awesome characters to care about. I'm at the part where spoiled Mellanie has just made an interesting alliance, Ozzie - one of the original wormhole creators - is traveling the Silfen (benign but strange aliens) paths, and the ship sent to investigate the Dyson Pair (stars) runs home, leaving two of its crew at the mercy of the attacking (new/not nice) aliens. Yeah, pretty exciting!

I've read this book before, along with its sequel, Judas Unchained, and loved them both. And I have to thank Rusty over at The Blutonian Death Egg for reminding me. Thanks Rusty!

Oh, and I've now cut The Way to Dendara from 164K to 133K. Yee Ha!!!

What are you doing this weekend?

a change of heart

I've decided I don't hate revisions as much as I used to. They're still tough, because when I finish something I want to be done with it for good. Except writing isn't like that. We're never done. We always think we can improve a piece. And most times we can.

For example, even though I know I'm done revising Grimoire for now (remember Arlen and her imp, Vathek?), I may well be revising it again in the future. It all depends on how well I revised it this time. The good new is my premier cp still loved the story which made me feel happy - even if she did find a number of trouble spots. I think I got them all.

meanwhile, if you don't know about it, Ellie is having a super fun blogfest and if you like Star Trek you have to sign up. I'm adding a link on my side bar so go sign up.

today

I have nothing - unless you want to hear about my revisions, which, I'm guessing not. I mean, we all know how it goes, right? It's simply a matter of reading your own story a million times and finding every word that isn't needed, every misspelling, every wrong tense, every passive sentence, every spot where you have to read the sentence again to understand what you obviously didn't make clear in the first place, and every place where one or more of your characters just isn't acting like themselves, or maybe isn't acting at all, you know, like Hayden Christiansen in those awful Star Wars movies with the even more awful Jar Jar (what the heck was George Lucas thinking?) Binks. C'mon, George, can't I please kill him?

But if you absolutely have to have something I'm over at unicorn bell today.

making it work

here's how I think I solved a problem chapter (I say think because I haven't heard back from my crit partner on it yet...).

What I had was a three page prologue that I really liked except for two things. One it was a dream and we all know what a no no it is to start off with a dream. The second was that altho it mentioned the mc's name it wasn't about the mc and I felt pretty strongly about starting out with my main character.

So I decided to try to merge the prologue with ch4, which had too much telling about how things were, how they got that way, and what happened before, blah, blah, blah. But then it got all jumbled together (read: chaos) so in order to figure out what needed to stay and what didn't, I made a list of everything that happens:

1.remembers Castle Serilde/happiness
2.sees things as they are now
3.wonders why he has suddenly noticed
4.what's going on
5.why has Zhora's hold loosened
6.notices signs of travel; the car
7.remembers that day

I stared at that list and my screen for a long time before finally giving up and playing a few fruitless games of spider solitaire. Then I came back to it last night and changed the dream to a memory, and incorporated #7, (which is what my friend Carol likes to call 'an inciting incident.'), like so:

    " I remember the way it began, so perfectly with cloudless blue skies and a light breeze off the bay. It was hot, sticky hot, but we didn’t care, we had been given permission to go sail and though I knew next to nothing about boats Collis assured me he knew enough for two and off we went."

After that scene I jumped straight to the present (using #3-6) and ended with a realization. I cut the first two because I can use #1s description at a later point and I don't need #2 since he's about to leave so who cares what it looks like. right?

Interesting how we work things out, eh?


ps the sun came out here today. It was glorious.

namesake

ah yes, my latest work in progress. I’m not sure if I’m making progress. I started with 30,000 words, all written last year around this time and abandoned in favor of Grimoire. Now I have 27,600, I cut an entire chapter, and I made chapter two chapter one instead. Basically, all I’ve done is revise.

This stemmed from a writing session in which I gave myself a brief history lesson on what’s happened between Grimoire and namesake, who’s who now, and what exactly does everyone want. I also made Louis’ arrival a surprise rather than expected and I completely cut the chapter on the bad guys. It just felt like I needed to be clearer (with myself) about the story before moving forward.

Meanwhile, I finished Perilous and overall, I liked it. But I sure hope there’s a sequel because it felt unresolved to me, like maybe there should be one more chapter to wrap things up. I did stay up too late reading it Sunday, ‘til after midnight! But I just had to…

the hard way

I heard someone post recently about feeling envious of those who had gotten published without much effort. You know, famous model, actress, singer, whatever, turned author. Or the person who just decided to write a book, did so, sent a few queries out, got the agent they wanted, and voila. And I’ll be the first to admit I get a little twinge of envy when I hear these stories. But it isn’t just jealousy. It’s the part of me that likes a good story and a good story means a challenge, a good story has obstacles and conflict, difficulties and failures along the way toward that goal. So when I hear how easy it was for someone to get published it feels a little like a cheat. I’d rather hear the story where someone has the talent but maybe they don’t apply themselves so it takes them longer, or maybe their efforts are derailed by some event that takes precedence over writing. Or maybe they’ve just been unlucky and they’re down to the last minutes on their cell phone. Maybe they’re starting to doubt themselves. And then they get the call.


This is the kind of story I want to hear. It satisfies my need for a proper tale with a hero who kills the beast and gets what he/she wanted. It isn’t the easy way. But I wonder if it isn’t more satisfying to get what you hoped for rather than what you expected.

Meanwhile, sunny and brisk here, very little snow, and I’m on chapter 29 in my revision of Grimoire. 23 remaining. Oh, and I finally got a tree which will definitely cheer me up a little. If I can get it decorated tonight I may take a pic and share it with you tomorrow.

What are you doing this weekend?

revisions

So, it’s taken me this long to finally organize my revisions for Grimoire onto two 3 x 5 cards, a total of 21 things I need to add before I can consider the tale 'complete.' Then it’s back to Dianne for another read through, see if it’s wrapped tighter, prettier.

Among the items to add are these:

· introduce Joselyn, Leda, and Charity (Arlen’s servants)
· add a little luck before the unfortunate event
· explain the history behind the curse on the Howards
· show the various talents that certain people possess, like Darcy’s ability to feel the emotions of others
· have Vathek (Arlen’s imp) tell her the story of Grace, Lettie, and Yvette’s relationship
· describe in greater detail the ceremony at the end
· send Cato home? (I’m still not sure about this one)

I'd tell you all 21 but there'd be some spoilers so you'll just have to believe me when I tell you I've got some work ahead of me. I am glad I made myself a little list so I can check off each item as I accomplish it. I think it will help me feel like I’m making progress, which is a lot harder now that I’ve finished the first draft. I just have to keep telling myself it’s all going to be worth it in the end. Right? Right.

How do you get through revisions? Do you have a system or do you just wing it?