The Evolution of a Story

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Most of you are already aware, which makes this post slightly anticlimactic, but...

The first draft of Tempus Regina is now officially, unofficially, and every other type of finished. 

I have been writing this novel for about nine months, not taking into account the 14,000 words written before I began NaNo last year.  Nine months.  It seems like a week compared to the laborious year and a half spent on the two novels of the Sea Fever series.  Joy commented on Facebook that it feels like I only announced the story's beginning yesterday - which for Scribbles' readers is more nearly true, since I was late in mentioning it.  It appears that since then I've talked about and around it a good deal, but not having posted many snippets, it feels somehow more private than The White Sail's Shaking.  That may, however, just be Me.

At any rate, as I contemplated which question from the Curiosity series to answer this week, I thought I would go ahead and do Joy's on Christianity in Tempus Regina.  But that demands a great deal of organization and care and thinking, and at any rate, it didn't seem to be an appropriate way of announcing the first draft's completion.  Instead, I decided to take up Bree's questions and trace Tempus Regina's evolution from that date in - what was it?  September? - when I put down the first words of the first chapter, to this past Saturday when I put down the last words of the last chapter.

what originally inspired Tempus Regina? 

is the current TR anything like what the original was to be? 

was it one of those books that other younger works...sort of worked up to, or does it stand on its own?

 [bree h.]

What inspired Tempus Regina?  Well!  That is the question, and I'm not positive of the answer.  I've mentioned before that Jenny began a story many years ago about lost kingdoms that sparked my imagination - and annoyance, because she never did finish it.  I don't think that consciously affected me, but I'm sure it did underneath the surface.  As far as a clear knowledge of Tempus Regina's origins goes, I am fairly certain that the title came to me first of all, and then maybe pocket watches, and after that I had to fit together many disjointed pieces like a jigsaw puzzle.  

Like The White Sail's Shaking, Tempus Regina is very much its own story.  I can't remember writing even a slightly similar idea years ago; I typically don't write anything down unless I am set on spinning it into a proper novel.  Wordcrafter is the only one, as far as I can recall, that departed from this norm (which it seems to have done a great deal): Justin and Ethan were characters whose origins go back long before the day I jotted down a scene for Wordcrafter on a church bulletin.  Regina and the Assassin, the White Demon and the Fisherman and Morgaine, were much more spontaneous, as it were.  Only the Time King might have ties to a character from a story that never got off the ground, but even then, I'm not sure how conscious I was of the relationship.

In point of fact, so much of this story developed during the actual writing process that it is difficult now to remember what I had in mind at the start; that is probably a common feeling.  However, I do know that the finished draft has a more marked similarity to the original than the Sea Fever books did when I put the last touches on them.  Certain parts of the book were very clear in my mind: the very first chapter (despite beginnings being absolutely loathsome); the end; and elements of the climax. For the most part, though, a mere comparison of the excerpt posted way back when and this draft's version will show the evolution this novel has undergone.  

"Evolution" is, actually, perhaps the best term for it.  It has gotten bigger and bigger, and complicated and more complicated, until I feel as though I can hardly keep the threads from flying out of my hands and the whole tapestry from going kaput on the floor.  Beginning early on in the writing there have been occasional flashes of despairing horror at the size of this thing.  Not that the book itself is terrifically huge: a mere 177,000 words, sure to be trimmed in the editing.  But, confound it, time travel is complex!  

do you set daily writing goals for yourself, or do you just write, write, write, until you feel sufficiently expended?

[bree h.]

I have this vague idea that I used to write a lot more in a sitting than I do now.  I'm pretty sure 2,000 was once a good day for me.  Now 1,000 is a splendid day, and 2,000 is out of this world.  I am, comparatively speaking, a slow writer, and since I get headaches and achy wrists if I push myself too hard, I don't tend to set hard and fast goals.  Except during NaNo.  But that's another beast entirely.  

Nowadays, I tend to shoot for a page or so when I sit down to write.  The way my documents are formatted, two pages is roughly 1,000 words - and getting there can take an entire (interrupted) morning.  I do this only rarely, but I can sit down for an hour or so nearly every day and write, which is much more than many people manage in their busy schedules.  Also, since I write each chapter individually (unless they go together so intimately that splitting them into separate documents breaks my train of thought), I have a half-formed goal of finishing one every week - or every other week.  

So you see, my goals aren't terribly coherent.  But one way or another, I do seem to get the thing done! 

A November Recap

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November is over - has been for a while, as a matter of fact - which means the close of the blog party giveaway as well as the close of NaNo.  For the former, it's high time the winners were announced.  Jenny and I gathered up all the names and points earned, shuffled them up in that wonderful thing called the Random Name Generator, and were informed that the winners are...

Elizabeth Rose & Lynette

Congratulations, gals!  Each of you will receive a copy of The Soldier's Cross and a copy of The Shadow Things.  You will be receiving emails or Facebook messages shortly to confirm your win (and to get mailing addresses for you both).  Thank you all for participating!

Secondly, let me just repeat: NaNo is over.  I know a lot of fellow participants are practically in tears as that thought begins to sink in, but I, for one, couldn't rejoice enough when I scraped and scrambled my way over the 50,000 word mark and into December.  It wasn't that I didn't manage to keep up or maintain a steady pace.  On the contrary, early on I got a day ahead of my goal and kept that lead all but one day out of the month.  It was tiring, at times overwhelming, but by no means undoable.  And yet I had a hard time.

The first reason is simply that it has become harder for me to write a great number of words in a day.  That might be because I've been plodding along at White Sail's and Running Tide for so long that 1,000 words a day now looks like a glorious achievement.  I wouldn't chalk it up to any increase in the weight of other responsibilities; relatively speaking, I have few.  But my writing and my approach to writing has evolved.

Some people believe that every novel a writer pens is a little easier than the one before.  I laugh at this foolish notion; every novel I have written since The Soldier's Cross has gotten a little harder in a slightly different respect.  Somebody - Neil Gaiman, I think; he's apparently a quotable chap - remarked that you never learn how to write a novel: you only learn how to write the novel you're currently writing.  I do not know, necessarily, that this is true for everyone, but I've found it to be the case with Wordcrafter, The White Sail's Shaking and The Running Tide, and now with Tempus Regina.  Each has taken a little more out of me.  But I found Wordcrafter more rewarding in the end than The Soldier's Cross, the Sea Fever books than Wordcrafter, and I'm (sometimes) optimistic that Tempus Regina will be still more rewarding than either of its two predecessors.

At the moment, however, Tempus Regina is being quite difficult indeed.  It might be in the terrible two's period of story-telling; I couldn't say.  It goes right now in fits and starts and bursts of inspiration and clouds of brainstorming, and I warn you all that I might be a bit oysterish about it for a little while.  Don't say I didn't tell you ahead of time.

None of this to say that I didn't enjoy NaNo!  I did.  Mostly.  But every time I finish a round of madcap writing, I fall back into my mental chair and vow never to put myself through it again.  I'll never be so foolish - I'll never be so insane.  I shall be wise!  I shall tell myself no!  I shall be PRUDENT!

But I don't doubt that come next NaNo, or perhaps the one after that, I'll be itching to join in once more.  Because I just don't know what is good for me.

Fun Facts and The Soldier's Cross

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Yesterday Jenny shared with you some fun facts behind the writing of The Shadow Things: rewriting, map-making, contract-signing facts.  Now it is my turn to conjure up for you some trifling tidbits from behind the publication of The Soldier's Cross.  Did you know...

1. I had a great, detailed, intricate outline when I began writing, and ditched it almost before I had used it.  So sad, really; I spent such a deal of time over that outline...  Incidentally, I wrote it in a large pink-and-white spiral-bound notebook during our annual beach trip.  I still have the notebook, and somewhere around here, the outline also exists.

2. The Soldier's Cross was not my first, but my second attempt at NaNoWriMo.  In 2008, caught up in the charm of this newly-discovered challenge, I launched proudly into a story just as the founders would have wanted me to: no plot, no theme, no ending in mind.  It was about a modern-day idiot of a magician.  Bad idea right there: I can't write modern-day setting worth a hoot.  Anyhow, I think I got about 17,000 words total.  Yeah...

3.  Coming up with designs to show the cover designer approximately what I wanted for The Soldier's Cross was hard.  And fun.  I got to trawl through shelves at Barnes & Noble, writing down the titles of covers that caught my eye.  I also found that I'm particularly fond of covers with a "watered" technique, where different aspects run together.

4.  I went with my father to sign the contract for my novel, and when Jenny signed hers, I went along with her and her husband.  After that we went to Chick-fil-a, despite Jenny's cold.  Good times.

5.  I listened to a great deal of music while writing The Soldier's Cross; apparently something about me has greatly changed, because I can't listen to music and write now.  I recall large doses of Mannheim Steamroller (The Holly and the Ivy is a favorite), Fernando Ortega (Noonday Devil especially), and Twila Paris (Daughter of Grace is really the theme song for the novel).  When I picture the winter scenes, particularly in the convent, my mind goes to The Holly and the Ivy.

6. I still can't make a pretty signature, and it pains me to look at books from the 1800s with beautiful signatures in calligraphic font.  Enough said.

7.  My clearest memory of plotting The Soldier's Cross is of the scene with the Duke of Gloucester and the slobbering dog.  How charming.

8. Although I finished out NaNo 2009 with 62,000 words, I put the novel aside for a month or so because I could not bring myself to kill a character who most certainly had to die.  I believe it was my dad who at last informed me that I needed to buckle down and write the stupid scene.  (Well, I hope it's not stupid, and he wouldn't have said it in this terms anyhow, but you get the idea.)  That makes it very difficult to say exactly how long it took me to write the book.

9. I finished writing on a Sunday afternoon, and made the mistake of immediately calling up Jenny to tell her all about it.  I say this was a mistake because I happened to wake her up from a nap, and that's just not something you do if you value your skin.  She didn't flay me (hard to do through the phone), but she was not terribly excited.  Finishing novels on Sundays is not recommended.

A Novel Month

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It's still September, but with Fall in the air many of us are already looking ahead to this year's round of National Novel Writing Month, the challenge to write the first 50,000 words of a novel in thirty days.  Some of the old-timers are looking forward to it with excitement; some of the newcomers are rather more nervous.  Although I've done NaNo (successfully!) twice, I have to say I'm in the latter category this year, for a number of reasons.

In 2011 I forwent joining in, simply because I was in the midst of The White Sail's Shaking - possibly The Running Tide at that point - and couldn't spare the brain power for another story.  Therefore I'm a bit out of practice.  My writing has slowed - improved, I like to think, but definitely slowed.  Writing a thousand words in a day is a highlight.  The prospect of churning out exactly 1,667 words every day is, needless to say, a little bit alarming.

There are other reasons as well, having more to do with the story itself than my writing deficiencies.  I've already begun Tempus Regina (naughty of me, but I didn't think at the time that I would be doing NaNo) and have had trouble with it, though perhaps no more trouble than the beginnings of stories generally give me.  I can't remember: it's been nearly two years since I started my last "book," White Sail's.  I don't remember what it was like, so the experience is - pardon the really bad pun - novel.  Is this what having children is like?  Women say that if they remembered how agonizing their first child was, they wouldn't have any others.  Tongue-in-cheek, but I, at least, cry a weary, "Hear! hear!"

On the other hand, nerve-wracking as NaNo seems, it is at once helpful, enjoyable, and surprisingly doable.  It helps the author to break the ice - to get to know this new set of characters, to watch the story develop, to be struck all at once with a slew of ideas that might or might not appear in the final draft.  Maybe part of that is just the autumn atmosphere; who doesn't feel inspired when Fall rolls around?  But it is helpful, too, in that it doesn't give you much time to stop and bemoan future difficulties.  You've got a plot (they say it's optional, but I say not) and a goal, and now you've got to make something of them.  In a month.  So there.

I don't know about other writers' reasons for participating in NaNo, but that is my reason this year.  That impetus, that relentless whip-cracking, is just what I need for completing what I find to be the most difficult part of a novel: the beginning.  I don't know that I'll necessarily reach 50,000 words, although I have every intention of trying.  I don't expect that what I churn out will be earth-shatteringly beautiful - the first 50,000 words of The White Sail's Shaking were absolute and total rubbish.  But I think it will help, nonetheless.

NaNo being fun is, I think, pretty self-explanatory, but the "doable" bit is harder to accept.  I'm finding it hard to accept.  But I know from experience that once you get going, the daily goal starts to seem smaller and smaller.  However, several people asked about ways to stay on target and make time for NaNo, so here are a few suggestions.

bite-sized chunks

Not all of us can sit down and have 1,667 words pour through the keyboard onto a document.  If you would rather take it in smaller portions, perhaps you could work out a schedule.   Sit down three times in a day and write 556 words each time, or twice and write 834.  It all works out to the same amount in the end.

use time wisely

This is something my mother used to say frequently, and I think the only reason she stopped is that she knows it's been engrained into our psyche - not that we always do it, but we have her teaching somewhere in our heads at all times.  It is never not important to use time wisely, of course; I'll never forget the passage in The Phantom Tollbooth where Tock the Watch Dog is decrying the practice of "killing time."  Time is important and ought always to be used well.  For NaNo, this might mean getting up earlier or staying up later, or merely rearranging your time table to make writing easier.  Procrastination is by no means allowed, if you intend to make the goal.

keep calm and drink tea

The purpose of NaNo is not first and foremost to write 50,000 words.  The purpose, according to the founders themselves, is to make people put aside their excuses, get their rear ends in their chairs, and write.  If 50,000 words is not possible with your other responsibilities (and I do believe in other responsibilities), do your best simply to write as much as you can.  By the end, you'll still have more than you began with.  The sun will go on rising and setting whether your progress bar turns purple by November 30 or not.

...Yeah, I have a hard time with that one.  I tried to tell myself that in 2010, and everyone else told me.  I still fretted and agonized and panicked and crawled my weary way to 50,000 words.  My life can't go on if the progress bar doesn't turn purple...!

After the War

It's December 1. That apparently simple statement has a world of significance behind it; it means that you NaNoers have survived one whole month of frenzied writing, and that I have survived one whole month of not participating in said frenzied writing. Whatever your wordcount may be, I hope you had a fun time.

The war is over. What now? You've got 50,000 words, maybe more, of a story that may or may not be worthwhile. I know the feeling of getting to December only to look back over those words and think, "Uuuuuugh. I wrote that?" or, if your story isn't complete: "I wrote that much, and I still have this much plot left? You're kidding, right?" Come NaNo's end in both 2009 and 2010, I was terribly burned out; both times, however, I tried to keep going. Bad idea. When the wordcount closed and December rolled around, I was tired and all my inspiration was toasted, while in the back of my mind lurked the knowledge that those 50,000 words would have to be seriously revised. December and January produced a whole lot of groans and whines, and maybe some tears and sweat (no blood), but not many words.

Probably the best thing to do when you reach the end is to take a break, at least from that particular story. Give yourself time to recharge. You might go back and look at the story you were working on before NaNo; if it is completed you can work on editing it, or if it isn't you can return to writing it. Time away might bring to light new inspiration or reveal things you want to tweak. In December 2010 I worked on editing Wordcrafter, getting my mind off the big problem that was The White Sail's Shaking, and didn't spend a whole lot of brain power on straight "writing". This isn't laziness. Editing and marketing are just as important as writing itself is; manuscripts once completed shouldn't just be discarded. So don't feel bad if you need to take a break and spend time on another story.

When I had gone through the initial edit of Wordcrafter, I returned with more vigor to the writing of The White Sail's Shaking. It's now too long ago (a whole year - dear me!) for me to recall exactly what my sensations were, but they were not pleasant. The rubbish that was the first 50,000 words tortured me until at last I gave in and started editing much of what I had written in November. Filling in holes, straightening out characters, and fixing botched details helped get me back in the feel of the novel, and when I had finished with the first few chapters, I was ready to return to actually writing again.

But what if you wrote your story just for fun and don't intend for it to go anywhere? I know some people approach NaNo as a time to just let the rules fly out the window and allow themselves to write whatever occurs to them, not worrying about whether or not the result is any good. I tried this in 2008 and it went splat at about 17,000 words, but hey, it works for some writers. Even if this is your perspective on NaNoWriMo, you can still glean things from those 50,000 words. Let the story sit for a while, then return to it, read over it, and make your assessment. If you find that it's actually not that bad, you might want to spin it out and make a proper novel out of it after all. If you decide that the plot is just as nonsensical as you thought at the end of November, then perhaps you can focus on picking out those bits of your writing that you still like - a description or a turn of phrase, a scrap of dialogue, a character. You may be surprised how many diamonds you find.

what was your wordcount this year? do you hope to make something of the story?

November

Those of you who have done or are planning on doing NaNoWriMo this year will have already observed, probably with an impending sense of doom, that there is less than a month left until November. (Actually, even those of you who are not doing NaNo will have noticed that there is less than a month until November...) And if your mind is as obsessed with the fact as I daresay it is, you may have noticed that there has not yet been a single mention of the 2011 NaNoWriMo on this blog. The reason being that

I won't be doing NaNo this year.

Horrifying, I know. I feel a bit like a traitor even mentioning it. For those of you who don't know what on earth I'm talking about, National Novel Writing Month is an online organization where participants attempt to write 50,000 words of a novel in the month of November. That is, from 1:00 am on November 1 to 12:00 pm on November 30, when you cannot submit anymore wordcount updates to your account. You are not allowed to start the novel before November 1, although you can do outlines, character sketches, and the like, and the goal is quantity, not necessarily quality.

It sounds painful, but in reality it works out to 1,667 words a day, which is not as huge a number as it might appear. I've done it two years in a row (three, actually, but the first year was a failure, so we'll just forget about that), in 2009 with The Soldier's Cross and in 2010 with The White Sail's Shaking. I enjoyed both immensely, even though the results from last year were mostly horrendous and I barely squeaked by with 52,000 words on November 30. In fact, I'm so used to getting ready for NaNo that now that the weather is cooling down, the leaves are turning, and I'm pulling out my autumn clothes, I'm starting to get that expectant thrill as the countdown to November begins.

But I won't be doing NaNo this year. There are a number of reasons, none of which would likely be accepted by the organizers of NaNo but all of which I consider to be very good. The first is that I'm still labouring to complete the first draft of White Sail's, the trouble child that I have been attempting to get into shape since last November (although considering what bare scraps of plot I began with, I have to say that this story is in surprisingly good form). I am not one of those people who can juggle several stories at once; though I may write bits and pieces of a Tempus Regina or a Sunshine and Gossamer as I approach the end of my main work in progress, I have to give at least 98% of my energy to one novel at a time.

True, some writers do participate in the NaNo Rebellion and work on stories that they have already begun or that do not fit into the broad guidelines of the normal NaNo, so I could do that with White Sail's. But I'm near enough to the end of the story that I don't think I have 50,000 words left in it, and at any rate, last November taught me that this novel is not the sort that can be written quickly in a single month. The characters are all pig-headed to one degree or another, the history takes almost daily in-depth research, and my inspiration likes to up and desert me without warning. It's just not a good sport where NaNo is concerned. This is not an excuse acknowledged by the founders of National Novel Writing Month, but I think it is a valid one; some stories won't be rushed. They are the ones that are more like poetry:

"Poetry and Hums aren't things which you get, they're things which get you.
And all you can do is go where they can find you."
(a. a. milne, winnie-the-pooh)

I learned this after thirty days and 52,000 words, and I intend to learn from my mistakes and never ever do that again. There are novels that can be NaNo'ed, and there are novels that can't. And that is the way things are.

The second, not so grand or philosophical reason is that I just don't have the time this year. Of course the whole point of NaNo is to get people to stop saying that, but in this case I am going to stick my tongue out at the wisdom of NaNo and declare again that I haven't got the time. It's a combination of Geometry and...Geometry.

And the third reason is that after doing NaNo about three years in a row, I think that, little as I might be inclined to do so, it would be good for me to take a break. All things in moderation, after all.

But for those of you who are doing NaNoWriMo this year, whether for the first time or the fifth, I hope that the month will go splendidly and that you won't imbibe too much caffeine. If you are getting geared up for the fight, how are the battle plans coming along? Do tell!

...And I'll try not to be jealous.

That Necessary Evil

The necessary evil. The one that is almost always a little more evil than the villain of the story. It's called Editing.

Editing can be fun at first. There's something exhilarating about brandishing the red pen at your story - something exhilarating about cleaning it up, or about the concept of it being cleaned up. But then you settle down for the long, hard haul and things don't look so fun anymore, especially when your novel is over two hundred thousand words long. (Just ask Jenny, although you might regret it afterward.) This is when editing becomes the necessary evil.

Now I know some people think that editing is fun, but I personally consider them to be in a state of hopeless denial. However, I am sure it is a blissful one, and if you happen to be in it I have no desire to shake you back to reality. I regard you with envy. I personally have not seen or tried a method of editing that is "fun," but, like just about all writers, I do have a process that I use and it helps me complete the task. So in case any of you are looking for ideas to make the editing process go more smoothly, I thought I would share mine.

the overwhelming heap of awful

Some people wait to edit their manuscript until they are done with the rough draft. Others swear by doing an edit every time they reach a fifty-page mark. Still others edit by chapter. I don't hold to any of these choices exclusively, as they all have merit and have been useful in editing one novel or another. In general, I do edit as I go, clipping sentences and taking out words here and there as I write each chapter. This makes the actual drawn-out process of editing somewhat easier. Apart from those minor edits, however, I can use either the complete-novel edit or the fifty-page edit. In the case of Wordcrafter, for instance, I waited almost exclusively to edit until I had finished the first draft. This worked because Wordcrafter flowed, and at the beginning I knew essentially where I was going. I knew the characters at the start; I didn't have to turn around at the half-way mark and realize that those fellows at the beginning were imposters. The things I changed when I was done with the rough draft were relatively minor - an added scene here, a tweak there, a change of voice in one scene or another, a bit of foreshadowing in this chapter or that.

With The White Sail's Shaking, it was - and is - a different story. Literally. I began writing it for NaNo last year, and the fact that I barely managed to squeak by at 52,000 words, as opposed to The Soldier's Cross' 62,000 the year before, will give a very slight indication of the troubles the novel caused me. On October 31 I had some vague ideas about the plot, no villain, an elusive main character, no supporting characters, and an outline that I had discarded several days before. It sounds like a typical NaNo novel, right? But that's not how I operate, so my little writing self was in shambles on November 1 when I plopped down at my computer and opened a new, white, terrifying Word document.

To cut a long story short, although I managed to get through NaNo without killing either myself or my novel, the first sixty or seventy pages were pretty much rubbish. I gamely ignored them, trudging on with the story in a valiant attempt to finish before I turned my attention to editing. But it was so awful that I finally had to stop and edit the first fifty pages - and I am very glad I did.

So complete-manuscript edit or fifty-page edit? It depends entirely on you and your story. If you're the kind of person who gets bogged down with edits and then never completes the story, wait to draw the red pen until you've hit that last page. If you need to keep your story flowing as you go, try for the fifty-page edit.

checking it twice (or thrice)

When I finally decided to edit White Sail's, I was overwhelmed by the feeling of disgust for those miserable pages written during November and by the impression that everything and its cousin needed to be changed. So I turned to what I had done on a much small scale for The Soldier's Cross, when I was thrown into a whirl of edits that had to be completed on a deadine: I made a list of the things that needed to be changed. I made the points broad so as not to overwhelm myself yet again and put check boxes beside each (because there is something immensely satisfying in checking off things on a list). In the end, I had only nine major points. Nine isn't too bad, right? Well, at the very least it doesn't seem so bad as the vague and unnumbered things that had been gathering over me, and it gave me a place to start.

the red pen of doom, death, and the like

If you go around our house, you will find a lot of notebooks. If you look inside those notebooks, the chances are high that you'll find one edition of Wordcrafter or another. A thoroughly red-blotted one, a copy full of colored tabs, a copy with miscellaneous notes in black ink - I was pretty thorough in printing out that one. For White Sail's, I had so much trouble printing out a single copy that I haven't dared trying to do another full one.

After printing out a copy, I go through the laborious process of punching holes in it, round up a ring-binder, and enclose the manuscript in it. Then I pull out the red pen that is, miraculously, still alive and get to work. For sections that must be thoroughly rewritten, I don't bother applying the red pen; I just put a note up at the top to say "Rewrite," plus some insult to the scene. Elsewhere, I will dash through sentences and rewrite them in red pen until whole pages seem to be bleeding. Occasionally I put notes for myself to keep in mind, such as "Add such-and-such scene" or a historical note that I did not know when I wrote the chapter the first time and need to incorporate. As the story progresses, the huge amounts of red ink begin to drop off (I'm pretty sure there's a dramatic change from November 30 to December 1).

you mean I have to do this again?

At the end of the tiring business of blotting all over the printed pages, I get to work transferring the edits to the Word document. At this point I tackle the big issues that I could not easily address in pen, such as adding scenes and completely redoing whole chapters. Then, when everything is typed in and cleaned up, I go about something else. With Wordcrafter, I sent out queries; with White Sail's, I returned to the actual writing process. But then after awhile I will print out another copy and go through it again for things that I know I tend to do, like flogging semicolons to within an inch of their lives. This invariably results in a pretty thorough edit in itself, and so the process is repeated on a smaller scale.

A story is never done until it's published - that's the cold, hard truth. And writers should take advantage of the chance to make changes while they can, because even when the book is out and under the public eye, you'll probably still see things you wish you could alter. At some time, however, it is necessary to let it go, because even the agony of editing becomes strangely addictive after awhile. There comes a time to move on - but you shouldn't move on too soon.

December Book Signings

November and NaNoWriMo are over, introducing the month of December, which is promising to be still more eventful. Jenny and I have three book signings coming up in one weekend and a TV interview with Your Carolina as well, so the schedule looks like this -

FRIDAY DECEMBER 17TH 7-9PM SIGNING
Barnes and Noble
The Shops at Greenridge
1125 Woodruff Road Suite 1810,
Greenville, SC 29607

SATURDAY DECEMBER 18TH 5-6PM LAUNCH/SIGNING EVENT
Spill The Beans (coffee shop)
531 South Main Street
Greenville, SC 29601
Spill The Beans is also offering free regular coffee to those who buy books - a plus for all caffeine-lovers who want to stay up late reading the novels!

MONDAY DECEMBER 20TH 6-8PM SIGNING
BOOKS-A-MILLION
2465 Laurens Road
Greenville, SC 29607

December is looking very interesting right now, between these events, editing and sending out queries for Wordcrafter, and working on White Sail's Shaking. Not to mention Christmas. NaNo seems tame in comparison!

NaNo: Pros, Cons, and News From the Front

Photo by vonslatt, Flickr.

National Novel Writing Month is the incredibly fun, incredibly insane time of year where writers attempt to bang out 50,000 words of a novel from day one of November to day thirty, hoping to get something good from their efforts. This is my third year participating in it and watching others participate in it, and the pros and cons of it become pretty apparent the first or second year; a home-school curriculum that my family once used listed in its catalog who would benefit from using their material, but also who wouldn't. And it is true that while NaNo is very fun, it may not help everyone with their writing. So here are some of the pros and cons that I've noticed while doing NaNo myself.

Pro: The primary goal of National Novel Writing Month is to get people to just write - to sit down and finally bang out whatever story has been itching in their brains. This is very helpful for those who want to write but believe that they don't have the time; it will amaze you how much time you realize you actually have when you've got a deadline.

Con: What you bang out may be abominable. I know the organizers of NaNo would probably say that this isn't the point, but it's true: what you write may be riddled with grammatical flaws, plot holes, and characters who appear to have schizophrenia. You may cringe at the thought of editing the thing.

Pro: But chances are, you'll come out with something good, even if it's a diamond in the rough. You're at least writing the outline of a story that can be expanded and revised after November comes to a close, and if nothing else, it's at least good practice for people just starting to stretch their wings in writing.

Pro: The goal is reasonable. It's not like the Write-Or-Die program that threatens to delete your document if you don't type like a rabid squirrel. 50,000 words sounds very daunting when taken as a whole, but once you break it down and realize that the daily count only has to be 1,667 words, it doesn't seem so large anymore. Plus, you have the encouragement of watching your wordcount rise.

Con: Targeting a certain amount of words in a certain amount of time does lend itself to manuscripts full of what is called "adjective-padding," "adverb abuse," and what my friend calls "blargh-spackling" - the making up of nonsense words to boost one's wordcount. This really isn't a decent way to do NaNo, especially when even the creators of NaNo try to make it clear that the wordcount isn't the purpose of the organization. If you end up with 50,006 words, 35,629 of which do not aid the plot and 1,885 of which border on blargh-spackling, your month of typing was in vain. What you've ended up with is fluff, not a story. Don't. Blargh-Spackle.

Con: After you get through that month-long rush of creativity in November, you may hit a slump. It's easy to lose interest and set your partially-finished novel aside, especially if you feel like what you wrote is rubbish. Many people squeak by 50,000 during November or even get a larger wordcount, but stop writing on December 1. Since that date is outside the jurisdiction of NaNo, technically this is an acceptable way of doing it; however, if you won't stick to it and make something of what you've been wrestling with for a month, NaNo has been a failure and a waste of time. Don't do NaNo if you don't have some reason for writing that will keep you going.

And now, news from the front.

Novel in Progress: The White Sail's Shaking

Genre: Historical Fiction

Time Period: 1803-1804, set during America's First Barbary War

Favourite Theme: The Chariot Race, Prince of Egypt Soundtrack

Wordcount as of 10:45 am November 8: 17,010

National Novel Writing Month

We're still a little over a month away from November and NaNoWriMo - or what non-NaNoers call "insanity." The basics of National Novel Writing Month aren't difficult to explain, even to the uninitiated; you commit to writing 50,000 words of a novel in 30 days. You may not start writing before 1:00 am November 1, though you may do outlines, character sketches, and such before hand.

50,000 words. It is, surprisingly, not as hard as it sounds, since that number comes out to about 1,667 words per day when divided by 30 days. Still, I failed my first attempt in 2008, mainly due to the fact that I rushed into the fray at the last minute because it seemed like a good idea at the time. They say you can do NaNo without a plot and without a purpose, but I fail to see the logistics of that; I'm sure it works for some, but I have to go in with a storyline to sail through the month on. I believe I ended 2008 with about 17,000 words, which is extremely pitiful when compared to that 50,000 I was striving for.

2009 was much better. I did not, as several of my friends were crazy enough to do, reach 100k in two weeks, but I did manage to finish out the month with 62,000 words of my novel The Soldier's Cross; I completed it in the following months and it is, of course, being published by the Christian publishing house Ambassador-Emerald this October. So this year I'm returning to NaNo with The White Sail's Shaking, a sea-novel set in the United States' First Barbary War. My sister, Jenny, and my sister-in-law, Deb, are both doing NaNo as well this year, so we're spending most of our spare time getting ready for November 1. For Deb that means doing an outline and ironing out plot problems; for Jenny it means putting together a list of chapters and collecting massive amounts of books; for me it's a combination of all of those and completing my work in progress, Wordcrafter. I should be finishing the last chapter of that a few days before November. No rest for the weary.