Progress: The Plot Thickens

Here I thought I'd written three books in 4 months.

Now that I'm finished typing up book one of the fantasy trilogy, I've been working on book two. I already knew it was longer than the first book. As I typed, I looked for things I could cut.

Instead, I found myself adding to the story. When I write my first drafts, I'm often in a hurry just to get the story down before I forget, so my second drafts involve expanding and clarifying. This one is no exception. I realized, as I reached the 2/3rds point of what I'd written of book two, I could easily split them without losing anything. In fact, it gives me room to explore some of the aspects of the world I glossed over to wrap up the book. There were several distinct points where I made the decision to leave a plot seed alone because it would've made the book that much longer.

And so, the fantasy trilogy is now a tetralogy. Or a quartet. I like quartet better. People actually know what that means.

It takes a lot longer to write new material than it does to type up a draft that's already written. My progress has slowed to a crawl. My hands are grateful for the respite, but I'm impatient to get back to typing up what's in my little notebooks. There's a weird kind of thrill in pulling apart what I wrote to form it into something better. I'm rarely in a better mood than when I solve a plot puzzle I've written myself into.

Meanwhile, my crit partner is going through book two of the urban fantasy trilogy, and she has a lot of good feedback. I should be working on editing, but I just like the dragon books more.

In my little snatches of between-time, I'm writing book three of the urban fantasy trilogy. It has the opposite of the above problem. I feel like I've run out of plot, and it's only just past the halfway point. I have a few ideas, but I won't know until I write them if they feel like padding. It's not like I'm writing very fast. I have time to figure out how to fill those pages.

Progress: Milestone

I finished typing up the first draft of my dragon story. It took longer than I thought, because I reworked as I went. More tension here, less bickering there, shortened rambling conversations, those sort of fixes. I don't think my beta readers will believe me that I cut about half the sex from the original draft.

I also had to write a prologue and an epilogue. Well, I didn't have to. I could've thrown the reader in without preamble. But parts of it are really hard to depict without slipping out of my first-person narrator for a bit.

The first time I tried to write this, I tried to alternate interludes with the story, but it killed the pacing, and I ran out of things for the other characters to do.

The story is currently 123,915 words, which is a respectable length for the genre. I already know the next one is longer, but who knows how much of that can go?

I'm looking forward to typing up book two. I enjoy this story.

Progress: The Fun Part

I finished editing the first two books of the urban fantasy trilogy. The second book wound up needing a major rewrite to tighten up the plot and add tension and give some of my characters something to do. I'd meant to kill off a character, who survived in the previous draft. I fixed that.

It was not a fun change to make. I was morose for a whole day. I hope that helped me capture the fallout. We'll see. I have a crit partner reading it now. I realized after I'd sent it that I overwrote the ending, but I'll fix it.

Finishing that means I get to go back to the dragon story. I spent most of the holiday weekend typing the first book, and editing as I went. I got to know and understand the characters while writing all three books, so there are aspects I have to make sure I include from the start. I can also see holes where I neglect one or another of my ensemble cast, so I know I'll have to go back and give them something to do. I've slowed down the development of one plot point, cleaned up some of the redundancy and rambling, and spaced apart the reveals more.

Last night, I had to delete about five (double-spaced, rewritten) pages, because I was trying to resolve a conflict too soon. Characters needed space to ponder ramifications and illustrate their sincerity and make amends. Solving it too soon would let a character off the hook, and stunt development. The conflict wasn't even there in the first draft, but it became an essential turning point. I know it'll need more tweaking in later drafts, but I'm pleased with its addition.

I think that reflects my biggest writing weakness. I'm always in such a hurry to get to the good parts that I don't give enough narrative space to the buildup. An awful lot of my rewrites involve delaying plot points or leaving loose ends hanging a while longer. Maybe I can put a patch on my pantster ways by writing myself notes about scenes I'm excited to write or factoids I need to drop casually into the narrative. It's worth a shot.

When I wrapped up last night (okay, early this morning - I don't sleep well in summertime, so I might as well make my insomnia productive), I was at 64,250 words, with about half of my handwritten draft typed out. So, yup. It's an epic fantasy. Among other genres.

What I didn't expect was that I'm really enjoying what I've written. I'm looking at the words with a critical eye, but I keep running across turns of phrase that crack me up. My main character couldn't be more different from me, and has a quirky way of viewing the world. I hope the character's voice makes the series's concept easier to stomach. It's not fully revealed until the end of book one.

I'm actually excited at the idea of people reading this book. A little embarrassed about all the sex, but I've managed to pare it down to a less embarrassing degree. This is a story I could share with the people who've asked to read it without disclaimer.

Well, maybe not all of them. My co-workers may have to wait for it on store shelves. I don't want to know that people I know in a professional capacity have read it.

That's not all I'm working on. In my between times, I've been writing the third book of the urban fantasy trilogy. I've only ever written one draft of that book (as opposed to dozens of the first, and a handful of book two), and what I wrote isn't worth preserving. There's been a major thematic and world-building overhaul since I wrote it. Plus, it's tedious as hell. I feel a lot better about how this draft is turning out. In my typical fashion, I'm not completely sure how it'll pan out, but I have a lot of things to keep the characters occupied in the meantime.

Progress: Following the Path I've Set

I finished typing up the first draft of the second book in my urban fantasy trilogy. (I really need working titles for these, don't I?) As anticipated, I did some editing as I went. It's 83,064 words.

So that catches me up to . . . last November? I think? As in, I think I finished handwriting those pages in November 2013.

I didn't track my time to the minute, but I'd estimate I spent about 12 hours typing up the loose-leaf pages and one of my little notebooks. It was easier typing from the notebook, as I expected. But it does still take time.

I'm doing an editing pass for consistency on book one now, and then I'll edit book two for sending off to my crit partner(s). I was supposed to read something one of them sent a couple of months ago, and I really have no excuse about why I haven't. I can offer a few dozen transparent justifications, though.

I will get to it. I'll start tonight.

On a completely different note, yesterday I ran across someone offering writing advice. She suggested (rightly) that reading is important. But she said that audiobooks don't count as reading.

As you may know, I feel differently. I've been listening to audiobooks regularly for the last three years. In that time, I've seen a marked improvement in my flow and word choice. I don't think it's entirely explained by getting better with practice. I think audiobooks are training me to think about language differently.

It ties into the advice for reading aloud when you're editing. The auditory value of words on a page are important. I know I'm not the only reader who hears the words in her head as she's taking them in. Why, then, is it that much different if I hear them through my ears instead of my eyes?

I'm not going to go so far as to suggest every writer should listen to audiobooks. Some can't, and they get expensive if you don't have access to a good library system. But if you haven't tried it and your library has a digital collection, it might be worth trying some downloads. Audiobooks can make a lot of household chores less of a grind, and they certainly pass the time with all the driving I do for work. The worst that'll happen is that you'll find you can't concentrate on the book and something else. At best, you'll be able to read that many more books in the between times that take up so much of your day.

Progress: Checking In

I don't even know when I wrote my last progress post on here. Hmm . . . June? Really? Wow. So, I'm way

overdue.

Most of that is because my productivity slowed to a trickle. I was getting some writing done, but in fits and starts, and most of it handwritten. I've actually taken to carrying around a notebook small enough to fit in my purse so I can scribble out some lines whenever I have down time.

Some of that I blame on picking up a new hobby. Turns out, you can't knit and write. I can watch TV, listen to podcasts, or just zone out while I'm knitting, but it uses both my hands. There's very little I can do at the same time as I'm writing, actually. Usually I just listen to music. Knitting is so tempting, though, because it produces an immediate thing that doesn't need fixing up before I can share it with others, and my progress is obvious. Word count just isn't the same as a pair of wrist warmers.

Nonetheless, despite my setbacks, I did manage to finish book two. It snuck up on me, too; one minute I'm happily writing out a narrow escape, the next I'm realizing that was the cue for book three.

I have only the thinnest of ideas about what happens in book three at this time, as is common for those with my writing style. But I need a few more plot hooks to hang the story on, so I've put it on the back burner until after I've done an editing pass at books one and two.

Whew. Is that enough mixed metaphors for you?

What I'm currently working on is a story I've been pondering for years. Once upon a time, I ran a game using Hero System. It was a fantasy setting with a twist. It deliberately played into a lot of clichés, contained logical inconsistencies, and had backgrounds that required mental gymnastics to justify. The players had a lot of fun in it, and I thought it would be a fun setting to reuse for a novel, or perhaps a series of them. My perspective character is a dragon, hiding her true nature.

I tried to write the story several years ago, but it fizzled. The pace was plodding, and the dragon's curiosity only brought her so far into the plot. I made it something like 50 pages without introducing the main plot, and gave up.

This time, though, I've tapped into the character's voice. Cyl is snarky, egotistical, hedonistic, and has no problem rolling her eyes and wandering away from the plot when it seems tedious to her. Just because it's epic fantasy doesn't mean I have to relate every mile trekked in loving detail. The whole point of the story is to subvert some of the tropes, and this version of Cyl is letting me do that quite nicely. It's also great fun coming up with things that'll challenge and change her.

I'm having so much fun writing the story, when I needed to stay awake on a long car trip, I pulled over at a rest stop to write.

Other than that, I also have handwritten pages to type up, and I've given myself the goal of cataloging the books I own on Goodreads so they're all on my to-read list. Thanks to a snow day last week, I'm a good way through that project, and my to-read list is now 701 items long. Yikes.

Editing Drunk

Photo of empty bottles found here

There's a piece of writing advice, commonly attributed to Ernest Hemingway, that goes: "Write drunk; edit sober." In other words, do what you can to get your words down, but go about polishing and perfecting them in an orderly and serious way.

It's not terrible advice, but I realized recently that I was going against it. Not because I was editing drunk, or writing sober (though there were a few times when I'd hit the wine a little harder than others). I was getting the bulk of my editing done when I was almost too tired to keep my eyes open. A couple of times, I fell asleep in the middle of editing, and woke up with evidence the cat had taken a stroll across my keyboard while I napped.

Tiredness isn't quite the same thing as being drunk, though apparently it's just as dangerous behind the wheel.  It does lead to a change in perspective, though. For me, it slows my thoughts down, makes me more suggestible, confuses me more easily, and my attention wanders.

In other words, it turns me into a low-comprehension reader who's unfamiliar with my story. Had I been polishing the story on a sentence level or checking for grammar errors, I would've made a greater effort to edit when I felt better. But, because I was looking for overall readability and whether I could understand the story, it was the next best thing to crawling into a stranger's head to read his or her mind while he or she read my story. Passages I hadn't connected stood out as needing better transitions. Character motivations I hadn't spelled out confused me, and so I had to stop and give more insight in the text. Weak metaphors didn't make as much sense as when I'd written them, and those sentences that made perfect sense when I put them down were ripe for deletion.

Had I waited to feel better before I worked on edits, I wouldn't have finished them until far more recently. I'm glad I didn't wait. I learned something. There are edit passes that require a certain level of sobriety. But sometimes, there's an advantage in reading something you've written while you're not at your best. It's not the same as reading it with fresh eyes, but it'll certainly lend a new perspective.

Progress Post: Writing Again

I think the last time I wrote a progress post was back in August, or maybe July. It's been a while, for various reasons.

When I resumed my blog, I mentioned I had some handwritten stuff to type up in the haunted house story I'd been working on. I'm not done with that. I've set that project aside, because I'm not in the head space to work on it. The story is, in part, about putting one's life back together and learning to trust people, and that is so not something I can wrap my head around.

What I am in the head space for is the trilogy I keep poking at, much to my former writing group's frustration. That's about betrayal and lies and the damage done when you leave out the whole story, which is much closer to my current mind set. Also, I've been working on it so long, the characters are like old friends. Even the homicidal ones. Especially the homicidal ones.

I've rewritten several scenes, and brought it up to modern day. Characters have cellphones now, and some communication is dealt with much faster. I also had to give my main character a reason to turn hers off, which made for a better story. I'm near the end now (page 239 of 293), and I keep wanting to start off each section with my characters swearing a blue streak, because of the situations I've dropped them into. I've been holding off, because, while entertaining, it wouldn't help the narrative.

It's also leading better into the second book, which may have to be rewritten from scratch. I'll read through what I have, and see if any of it's worth saving.

So, I'm writing again. That obstacle is past me. Now, if I could just get some discipline about it, I'd be content. This is not a good time for my willpower, though. I'll take what I can get.

When Critique Is Good

I have a lot of negativity about critique on this blog, and it's come to my attention that it isn't entirely helpful for people sifting through a plethora of critique comments. Sometimes a critique won't be bad. It will seem helpful, even constructive. If you turn your head and squint, you can even see where taking that comment might improve your manuscript.

The problem is, you have 8 comments like that, or 20, or a few hundred. If you make all those changes, it won't even be the same story. How do you know which ones to follow?

Good comments are the ones you agree with. I'm not talking about immediately. Immediately, at least if you're half as thin-skinned as I am, you'll want to say, "Nuh-uh! You're stupid!" and lock yourself in your room to pout. When that impulse has passed, though, and you've given the comments some space (over the course of days, not hours), you'll read them and realize they have a point, and that you can work with this.

Good comments are the ones about which there is a consensus. Not all those offering critique will have the same, exact observations. But, if the majority of them say your plot is based on a cliché, it's time to think more creatively. If people are supposed to like Handsome McAlpha and half the comments are that he comes across as a jerk, you'll need to bring out his likable traits earlier in the story. If most of the comments fixate on one scene, even if they don't agree what's wrong with the scene, they've noticed something is off, and you'll need to look more closely at that part.

Good comments are the ones that inspire you. Maybe the comment gets you thinking about the story in a way you hadn't, before. Maybe a critique comment points out some foreshadowing you hadn't noticed you'd slipped in, and now you want to fulfill that promise. Maybe you weren't married to your ending, and a piece of feedback gives you a better one. If a comment makes you want to change your story, even if it's not in the way the person commenting intended, use it, and see what happens.

Of course, you don't have to listen to a single comment anyone writes or says about your manuscript. If you think it's perfect the way it is, feel free to ignore them. But, write down the comments, or save them somewhere they won't be staring you in the face all the time, and go back to them when they don't sting as badly. The news that you're not pouring sheer perfection into your keyboard will always sting, but it'll hurt less as you reconcile yourself with the idea that writing isn't about the first draft, or even the third or eighth. It's as much about polishing and recognizing when it's done as it is about generating ideas and writing them down.

Remember, while you may be a part of your reading audience, so, too, are those critiquing your work. They're a much better reflection of your manuscript's reception, out there in the big, cold world than the perfection you believe it to be. Critique partners, writing groups, and those who critique online are an invaluable resource. More often than not, they'll offer good comments, and help your story put its best face forward.

Thinking Critically about Critique

Image from Free Stock Photos.com

I posted briefly on critiques before, but the post rather buried one of the most important points newer writers need to know about critiques.

Take everything you hear in a critique with a grain of salt.

There could be hundreds of reasons why someone's critique remarks aren't valid. Maybe that person has bad reading comprehension. Maybe the person doing the critique is having a bad day. Maybe that person doesn't read the genre you're writing to, and therefore doesn't understand the conventions. Maybe that person secretly dislikes you and wants to hurt you.

If you were to hand me a romance novel with an alpha male you wanted me to critique, I wouldn't just hate the alpha male. I'd be more critical of the heroine for liking him, and probably more picky about the writing, too. I do try to be fair in my critiques, but I have my biases.

When you're in a writing group, you can learn your group's biases. If the person who writes about animals urges you to give your heroine a cat, you can nod and pretend you're writing that down as a suggestion, knowing that writer's biases are informing her opinion. If the one who writes in flowery description tells you to describe more in a scene, you know that the writers telling you they could picture the scene just fine probably have a point.

Not all of you have the good fortune to live near other writers, though. There are ways to interact with other writers online to get critiques, and there are workshops you can attend, either of which I'd recommend. But, I would caution you, don't take everything people write or say about your work as gospel. Even if it's coming from an instructor, a published author, or a professional editor, you'll want to think about the utility of the remarks. Throw out any comments which meet any of the following:

1. Does it change a major character trait for a main character?
2. Does it change the genre of the book to one you don't want to write?
3. Does the alter the plot significantly?
4. Does it stifle your voice or tone?
5. Is it heavy-handed?
6. Is it insulting of your manuscript without offering constructive, concrete feedback?

Don't throw out a person's comments in their entirety if they meet the above criteria; they may have something constructive and useful in there, too. 

Now, if your manuscript is being edited professionally for publication, an editor's remarks may seem stifling or heavy-handed, but you'll have to give them leeway. That editor has a lot more experience than you in what readers buy. You'll probably still find points where you disagree with your editor, and you think you should stand your ground. If you've had practice at sifting through critique comments and finding which ones work and which don't, you're going to be far better equipped to handle it than you would be if you'd been either taking or rejecting everything you've heard so far.

Feel free to add your own examples of useless critique remarks in the comments.

Editing vs. Rewriting

I have a guest post up at Roof Beam Reader for the Austen in August reading event. I read and reviewed Persuasion, Sense and Sensibility, Mansfield Park, and Lady Susan, one of Austen's unfinished novels, for the event, in addition to writing my guest post. The post is about what you can learn from Austen's dialogue to be a better writer, and I was pretty proud of how it came out.

And now, onto my own post.

I wrote on Tuesday about how you can ignore as many rules and conventions of writing as you want, but then you have to edit what you've written. Editing is essential, whether you're a pantster or plotter. The first draft will never come out perfectly.

Image courtesy of the Library of Congress

I've already posted about how to preserve the tone when you edit, and why you need to give your words some space before you edit. I also discussed where to start, and how to prioritize your edits.

Tonight, though, I want to run a question past you that only you can answer: should you edit your manuscript, or should you rewrite it?

The answer will depend on your manuscript, and your approach. Before you answer that question, though, I want you to do one thing. Read through your entire manuscript. Go ahead and fix typos if they bother you, and touch up anything that stands out. But I want you to jot down the big-picture edits you need.

Do you need to add a character? Squeeze in a few extra scenes? Delete a character? Fix inconsistencies? Go back to a scene after you've done some research? Those are all examples of a need to edit your manuscript, rather than rewrite it from scratch. Even if the answer is "Yes" to all of the above, you can fix it through editing, and your story is salvageable.

If, however, you have a main character who's blatantly inconsistent, your plot is all over the place, or your ending totally changes everything you thought you were setting up from scratch, you might want to scrap it and start over. You can keep whatever sections work with the new book, so perhaps "from scratch" is a misnomer. But, if the vast majority of what you've written doesn't work with the ending you decided was the ending this book needed, you have to start a new draft.

Personally, when I start rewriting, I keep all of the words I have so far. I hit the enter key some 10 or 12 times, so that all I have to do to refer to what I might want to keep is scroll down. Then I start writing, and I delete the old manuscript as I go. Whenever I find a section I can keep, I delete the blank spaces, then scroll down in the old manuscript until I get to the next section I need to scrap.

That doesn't mean that's the perfect way to go about it. I can hear some of my writing group friends tearing their hair out from here. It's what works for me, though.

The most important thing to remember, when you're considering whether to edit or to rewrite, is to keep a sense of perspective. It can certainly feel like, "I AM THE WORST WRITER EVER" when I'm rereading a draft of something I thought I'd written well. But I have to keep in mind that some mistakes can be patched over.

If I don't remember that, I could be rewriting forever.

Throwing Out the Rules

Photo obtained from Free Stock Photos.biz

Every week, I read the PostSecret blog when it updates. It's partly because it gives me story seeds and character traits, and because the speculation and back-and-forth on the LJ community devoted to it gives me some outside perspective. Mostly, though, it's because I'm fascinated with people's secrets, and I like to know what people aren't telling those around them.

This week, the last secret was a picture of a bear, with the text, "When you tried to teach me the technicalities, You killed my love for photography." The secret, itself, didn't stand out in my mind, but then a thread cropped up comparing the sentiment with that toward writing. One person noted feeling bogged down by all the rules, and others wrote of writing technicalities killing their love of writing, or hampering their creativity.

I didn't address it there, because I don't like to be confrontational, and I don't think I could've gotten it across without the context of my blog. I talk mechanics here. I talk technicalities. I talk grammar. I talk building blocks. Obviously, I think these things are important.

And I think it's essential that a story be written well. There should be a cohesive theme. The dialogue should ring true. The story's tone should remain consistent. The characters should be fleshed out and believable. There should be research put into your story. And so on.

Knowing all that doesn't negate that you have permission to suck, though. Getting your first draft down is a lot more important than that it's perfect the first time around. It'll never be perfect on your first try. That's why I have my sometime series on editing.

As you get more familiar with what you have to edit in, you'll write it correctly the first time, but there will always be something to fix the next time around. You'll realize you have to research something that'll take some digging, or you haven't yet figured out the ending to know what to foreshadow.

There are several ways of marking your text to go back to later. Some people put remarks in double brackets [[like this]], then do a Ctrl+F for the double bracket to find the remarks. This works just as well with any mark of punctuation you wouldn't expect to see doubled up. Others jot notes in their document. I use Open Office on my computer, but Word also has this capability; Scrivener does not.

Technical aspects of writing are important. Yes, writing is creative, and creativity can be stifled by too many rules and restrictions. Thousands of authors have managed, though, while following those rules and mechanics. If it's truly getting in your way, you have my permission to ignore every last rule. Misspell every other word in your first draft. Refuse to use punctuation. Throw words out onto the page as they occur to you, if that's what makes you finish that draft.

You're the one who has to edit it when you're done.

Editing: Taking that Tone

I've posted about editing before, and hinted it's a sometime series. This is the third in the series, on preserving the tone when you're editing your story.

The tone is the overall feel of a story. A story can be funny, gritty, light, dark, satiric or earnest, pessimistic, optimistic, fun, sad, or some shade in between. Many tones blend those elements.

The tone isn't necessarily in the individual words, though the words you choose to employ can affect the tone. Tone is an overall picture within the book, the lens you're showing your world through.

In your early drafts, you're probably not even aware of the tone you're writing in, especially if you're a pantster. If you don't know whether the ending is going to be uplifting, bittersweet, or sad, you don't know which details to highlight or how well the words need to trip across the page.

At some point in your macro edits, though, you do need to figure out what tone the story needs. Don't settle on a tone before you've figured out an ending. Everything about the story will have to lead to that ending, but the tone will make the ending inevitable, so that it's the only ending that works for the story.

Once you've figured out how light or dark, humorous or serious, hopeful or cranky your story is, then you need to tweak the story to reflect that tone. Pick details that support the tone. Pick language that implies the tone you're writing toward. Weather, the colors your perspective character notices, the events you highlight in depth, all lend themselves to the tone.

You'll probably find that a lot of scenes don't need much work, because you knew all along what tone you were writing. Those scenes are fine to leave as they are. It's the ones where you lost the thread, maybe thought too much about what you were writing, that you'll need to fix the tone.

Tone can tie together a whole story, connecting even seemingly disjointed vignettes. A reader can be carried through a rather confusing start if they feel it's all part of the same picture.

Similarly, though, if you switch the tone around, indicating carefree happiness in one scene, then following that up with a grisly murder, for instance, no matter how good your transition, you're likely to lose the reader.

5 Ways Fanfic Can Make You a Better Writer

I posted earlier this week about what I think of fanfic. I promised then that I would talk about the edge fanfic writers have over their literary peers. So, here's my list of 5 ways fanfic can help you be a better author. Please bear in mind, I'm not saying that fanfic writers aren't "real" writers, only that it can lend an edge to those seeking traditional publishing routes.

1. You learn to take criticism. Within the fanfic community, there's a system of receiving and giving feedback. Most are paired up with a beta reader, or they have a whole slew of them. The betas will help make it a better story. Additionally, when you post a fanfic online, people will post their responses. This is good preparation for changing a story in response to editorial comments.

However, the fanfic community also tends to foster more of a positive attitude than the reading public in general. Those coming from a fanfic background may react more strongly to a negative review than one elsewhere, because they've become accustomed to comments directed at them. Some have surmised that the recent backlashes against reviewers has come about from those "graduating" from fanfic. I don't think that's a fair assessment, but I do think that fanfic writers need to remember that not everyone will be as nice as the people leaving comments on your fics.

2. You learn to give constructive criticism. As I mentioned above, fanfic writers are frequently paired with beta readers. That means that they, too, must serve as a beta reader, and give useful feedback without upsetting the person they're critiquing. This is a good skill to have, and often works to make the people offering critique better at spotting problems in their own works.

3. You can experiment. Fanfic writers are working in someone else's world, with someone else's characters. That leaves them free to break any and every other rule, and to see how it works. It might not make for a readable fic, but it does make for a fun diversion for the writer. It also lets them think outside established literary techniques to find something else that works.

4. You get immediate feedback. If a fanfic writer is normally getting a dozen or so comments per installment, and suddenly that writer gets 100, that indicates she's doing something right. If she normally gets hundreds of comments but the response to her latest is only a dozen or so unenthusiastic remarks, clearly there was some misstep. It might not always be logical or obvious, but, if a pattern emerges, that writer can quickly figure out what her weaknesses might be, and work on them.

5. It's fun. Writers will tell you how writing is hard work, it's a slog, and it's not always fun and games. But, if they didn't enjoy some part of it, they wouldn't do it. There are plenty of terrible, joyless, difficult jobs that pay more. Writers write because it's fun. If you're having fun while you're learning the ropes, then you're well ahead of your degree-earning peers, who are slogging their way through classes meant to teach them how hard writing is.

If you're a fanfic writer, you may not benefit from any of these. You may not want to. But, if you are interested in traditional publication on an original work, all of your writing practice may serve you well, for the above reasons.

I would advise against submitting your fanfic for publication, though, for various reasons. Most of the spinoff series you see on the shelves were specifically commissioned by the publisher by authors who were already established as publishable, by their own original works. And don't approach the authors themselves; they'll refuse to look at your fanfic for legal reasons.

Instead, you're best off sharing your fanfic with the fanfic community, and working on your original fiction on the side as you hone your skills. Nothing says you can't borrow elements after you file the serial numbers off, but there is a difference between an element here and there and a recognizable story and characters.

There is one notable exception, and I won't invoke its name. I'm sure you all know what I'm talking about.

Editing: Give Space

I started posting about the editing process a couple of weeks ago, and I mentioned then that I had a whole series about it. This is the second post in that series.

When you first write a story, you've just poured hours and days and weeks and months into crafting that tale, and getting it right. Even if you know, objectively, that some of the scenes were slapdash, and you left marks within the text to denote where you should expand or truncate or otherwise fix, you're going to feel like you're killing your own flesh and blood if you change any of the words.

As you gain distance from those words, though, the more objective you are about them. If you leave them be for a couple of weeks, you may find places where the writing is uneven, or some of the word choices were wrong. Leave the draft for a few months, though, and, if you're anything like me, you'll be wondering who the heck wrote it when you next pick it up.

Better writers than me have advised putting the manuscript into a drawer, or a trunk, or otherwise putting it away where you can't see it. Nowadays, though, few of us print out our first drafts. We're talking about electronic copy. What I would advise would be to put it in a folder you don't look at every single day, and mark on your calendar when it's safe to look at.

Then, go work on something else. Forget about your first draft for a while. You'll need to do some trial and error before you'll know exactly how long you need, but I started with six months, the first time I took this advice. My trial and error yielded a minimum of two months. There is no maximum; I've picked up things I wrote a decade ago and had no idea what stranger was writing such terrible stories in my voice.

Generally speaking, though, by the time I've finished whatever I picked up to make me forget my last project, I'm ready to face that last project and can handle editing it. If I stop my "distraction" project too soon, though, and pick up the first one too soon, I'll be too attached to what I find, and I won't want to edit or cut anything. Once I've talked myself into letting something stay, it stays, often to the detriment of the manuscript.

You should never bank all of your writing success on one story, and you should never work on one thing to the exclusion of all else. That you'll need time to let go of your first-draft words is part of the reason why.

So, when you think you're ready to edit a first draft, make sure you've given it enough space that you'll be able to.

Editing: Where to Start

I blog a lot about the writing process, while I allude fairly frequently to the importance of edits. I mentioned several months ago I was thinking about a series on editing, which is arguably a more important skill than writing.

Don't get me wrong; having a finished manuscript is important, and it's an accomplishment. But, if you want to submit for publication, or self-publish a polished story, you'll want to edit. Nothing comes out perfectly in its first draft, no matter whether you're a plotter or pantster, or how perfect it seemed when you were typing madly at 3 AM.

The trouble is, no matter how inspired you felt, you'll always write the fastest when you turn off your inner editor. Sometimes, you have to admit to yourself that what you're writing is less than inspired so you can move on to the next scene, then the next, until you've finished. Permission to suck may be the only way you'll ever get the whole story down.

And that's okay. Like I wrote in that last link, it's when I'm convinced I don't need to fix anything that I'm in trouble. There's always room for improvement, no matter how well you thought you wrote something.

There is no right or wrong way to edit, unless you don't change anything. But I've had a lot of trial and error with how I approach editing, and I've found that the top-down approach works best for me.

Top-down means that I take care of the big things, first, and move down into the smaller and pickier elements with each pass of edits. So, in my initial read-through, I'm looking at the overall plot and character development, noting plot developments that need more foreshadowing, or making note of the passages I really, really want to keep. I also note scenes that might have gone on too long, dialogue that rambled for pages without revealing anything to the reader, or where I might insert description without breaking the flow. I know to look out for these because I know my limits. What you focus on is highly likely to be different from what I look for.

After I've gone through the manuscript and written myself notes, then I go back and actually make changes. It's important to look at the piece as a whole before I start my editing, because an early scene may work just fine with one ending, but completely ruin another story. I'm looking for consistency, resonance, and for the scenes to build toward the ending I decided on. I'm also evaluating characters' roles, figuring out whether I have enough or too many, and if I need to give them more to do.

The first set of edits, then, looks at everything as a whole, and brings it together. The second set is scene-by-scene, figuring out if they need to be cut or expanded or moved around. The third brings it in more, going paragraph by paragraph. I trim redundancy on that level, tighten scenes by removing dead weight, clarify or expand on concepts that are tossed out seemingly at random, give more insight into POV characters' motivations, and rewrite passages that make no sense.

After that is sentence by sentence, or a line edit, as real writers call it. That's where I evaluate each sentence's value, and trim or expand as needed.

Grammar edits are the very last step, and they're the pickiest. They're where I might read backwards to remove the context so I can tell if I used the right spelling of a word, where I'm looking for commas that don't belong or extra semicolons. A grammar and spelling edit is the last step because it doesn't matter if I misspelled a word if it's going to be cut, nor does a sentence's syntax matter if it's part of a scene that has to go.

If there are other methods of editing, I don't know what they are. This is what works for me, as I've discovered thanks to practice and talking to my writing group.

I'll have some more posts about the editing process, but it's always good to know where to start, isn't it?

Grammar Peeves: Homonyms

A pair of pears

Until I run across something new, this is all I have in the queue for grammar peeves. If there's a grammar issue you struggle with, feel free to post about it in the comments, and I'll post about it at some future date.

Homonyms are more of a spelling issue than grammar, but they're just as distracting as poorly constructed sentences, and they do contribute to writing mechanics issues. Homonyms may also be called homophones. They're when words that sound the same are spelled differently, depending on meaning.

Here are a few commonly confused homonyms:

Affect = Verb, as in to affect the outcome
Effect = Noun, as in to have an effect

Buy = To purchase
By = A preposition, meaning "near"
Bye = Short for "goodbye" 

Cite = To quote
Sight = Vision
Site = A location

Hear = To perceive with the ear
Here = In this location 

Lose = Opposite of win
Loose = Opposite of tight 

Than = Used when comparing two things
Then = Used to indicate a point in time

They're = They are
Their = Belonging to them
There = At a point in space

To = Preposition, meaning "toward"
Too = Additionally
Two = The number 2

Whose = Belonging to who
Who's = Who is

Your = Belonging to you
You're = You are

I've already written about when to use an apostrophe, so, if that's all you need to stop using the wrong word, that post is there for your use. If you'd like a more comprehensive list, this is the longest list of homonyms I've ever seen.


I can't say I've never written the wrong word. Sometimes, I didn't even pick one that sounds similar, leaving me to puzzle over what I possibly might have been aiming for when I go back to edit. So I do know how this happens. You get caught up in how the words sound in your head, and, because your inner editor is off, you're not paying attention to whether they're correct.


In the first draft, that's perfectly normal, and to be expected. But if, in later drafts, you don't catch it, and your editor doesn't, either, you're going to look mighty foolish when the reviews come out.


And, if you don't know to look for these in the first place, you're going to have some difficulty ever leaving the slush pile. If you don't know if you're confusing any homonyms, let a picky friend read a few chapters of your manuscript, and he or she should give you a good idea.


Once you know which homophones to look out for, you can do a Ctrl+F (if you're using Windows—Mac is Cmd F), and check each usage to determine if you wrote the correct one. Taking homonyms out of context, or even reading your manuscript backwards will illuminate a lot of this problem, but only once you're aware of it.

Audience

I've read several contradictory blog posts in the last couple of years about whether a writer should write to an audience or not. Some blogs will tell you to write for yourself, while others will tell you that's unlikely to sell your work. Here's my take on it.

Write to your audience, but know that you're a member of it. Other people who grew up in the same time and place as you will have similar influences. They watched the same TV shows, they read the same books, they talked about the same current events. The segment of the market you're writing to is more like you than you might realize.

In a lot of critiques I've participated in, the writer has been criticized for making the protagonist too general, too bland, not fleshed out enough. This happened especially with the creative writing classes I took. These young writers were trying so hard for universal appeal that they wound up alienating all of their potential readers.

This is where that old piece of advice, to "write what you know" comes in. As I outline in the post, that's not permission to not do your research, or to write all your stories about the same, exact people doing the same, exact things. Rather, it's about emotional verity. Add in bits and pieces of things you've actually experienced, people you've actually met, places you've actually been. Even if you're writing an epic fantasy about a medieval land that never did and never will exist, you can add details from history, or from some of the places you've visited where people aren't glued to a computer screen all day. And even if you're writing a character who's your exact opposite, give that character emotions you can understand and relate to.

Especially in an early draft, one of the quickest way to paralyze yourself is to think about who you're appealing to with what you're writing. You're not going to please all readers all of the time, and you'll burn yourself out trying. It does help to figure out who you're writing for when you're editing for submission, and then your editors will help you hone your story better for the market they want to sell it to, but early drafts can and should appeal to you. If you're not enjoying the writing part, who'll like reading it?

When I write, I'm not thinking about making what I'm writing appealing. I'm thinking only of what the characters will choose to do, what the antagonist will do to stop them. I like to read interesting books with fleshed-out characters and a touch of humor, so that's what I try to write, because I can't imagine that many readers don't want the same thing out of the books they read.

Pantster Pitfalls

I've already mentioned a few of the drawbacks for being a pantster. After yesterday's post, though, I thought it might be a good idea to collect them all in one place, so you have some reasons for not taking the easy road to your writing style.

1. The Rewriting—I may well be an extraordinary case with my constant rewrites, but I don't think so. When I start a new draft, I don't know how the story will end. I don't know which characters will be the most important, which settings will require further description, or what I'll have to research as I go. That means that the first draft needs a lot of work after it's done. I can't deliberately foreshadow an ending I don't know (though often the ending will come from foreshadowing I've already slipped in). I can't write to a theme I don't yet recognize. My writing could very well be the best it's ever been, but the draft will be a useless mess before I've done some heavy rewriting.
2. The Waste of Time—I have typed out huge swaths of dialogue that have gone nowhere. Entire scenes served no narrative purpose, and had to be scrapped. I imagine this happens to all writers, pantster or outliner, but I bet it happens with far more regularity if you don't know, as you're writing, whether something will be important or not. I can't consult my outline as I'm going along to make sure I'm on track. And, if I realize halfway through that the story isn't what I thought it was, all I can do is swear and write to what the story is really about, then fix the first half later.
3. The Difficulty of Planning—I can't set aside a longer period of time to write a difficult scene, because they sneak up on me. One minute my characters are having a grand old time, then I realize this is the perfect moment for my baddie to catch my protagonist unawares. Next thing I know, it's 3 AM, and the cat's given up on miaowing at me and fallen asleep. (Yes, my cat nags me to go to bed. No, it's no more effective than you'd imagine.)
4. The Forgetting—Just because I write by the seat of my pants doesn't mean there's no planning that goes into what I write. Often, I'll get a flash of inspiration for a scene I have to write, and then I write the characters toward that scene. But sometimes, I forget that awesome line I wanted to put into my character's mouth. Or, I forget the great scene I mentally plotted for a side character that makes it worth his inclusion in the story. I don't have this stuff written down, unless I've happened to jot it down in a note that I haven't subsequently lost. (Pantsters, disorganized? Gasp.) I have no idea how many good ideas I've lost to the black hole of my memory, or whether they were any good, but it's more than one or two. The good part about this is, it motivates me to keep writing, at least to "the good part," so I don't forget.
5. The Finishing—As I mentioned yesterday, if you're a pantster, you're at your happiest when you're following your characters to find out what happens next. When you do figure out the ending, though, things can get dangerous. You're no longer wondering what happens next, because now you know, and the fun part is over. Now you have to knuckle down and write it. So there's all that work ahead of you, and none of the reward of getting to find something new. It can be difficult to feel like writing then, and the lure of new projects will be strong, because the fun part still remains in those stories. It can be overcome with some willpower and finding things to discover about the ending, and looking forward to tightening up the story, but it is a hurdle.

I'm sure I've forgotten something, and it is possible outliners share some of the same issues. Every person's method is going to have its drawbacks; there's no One True Way to Write. I just know pantsters, and how my chosen method has gotten in my way. Overall, though, it works for me, and I can usually find a way to work around things, or turn them to my advantage. The trick is to find the method you'll enjoy enough that it'll be worth the pitfalls.

Herc, the nagging cat.

Progress Post: Stalled

It's been a while since my last progress post (and why do I think there should be a priest listening to me narrate this post, and assigning me a word count?). Sadly, I have very little to report since my April 23rd post. I still haven't finished "Reincarnation." I won't have it finished by the next writing group meeting, as I said I would. I've been poking at it, but it's not done, nor is it close to done.

What I have accomplished is driving to Tennessee and back, arriving in the wee hours on each leg. (There is no good time of day to start a 16-hour drive if you're not stopping in the middle, by the way.) I was there for my little sister's graduation, where she introduced me to her professors as the grammar prescriptivist, and the reason why she thinks she can't write.

It's good to know one had an impact on a young life, isn't it?

Seriously, though, it's difficult to write when you're driving, and just as much so when you're exhausted from the drive. The exhaustion also lowered my defenses so that, despite my overloading on vitamin C, I caught some kind of Tennessee death plague. It flattened me for nearly a week after my return. I couldn't eat, and could barely move, for three of those days.

That brings us up to last Sunday. I'd been working on my paid editing work whenever I wasn't lying about moaning that I was dying, and so I got to step up my editing work and see all the things I missed in my delirium. It wasn't a lot, but it was enough that I'm never going to discount the importance of alertness when editing ever again.

I did get around to the edits on "Awaken," the first book in the trilogy. I pondered the ending at length, and finally decided the problem was all the rambling. So I lopped it off and left some more questions open for book 2. Not that they're pressing questions, or anything, which is why I don't feel so much as a smidgen of guilt.

I posted the resulting draft to the writing group, not for critique, but so they can crit book 2 without having book 1 spoiled. If they don't care, they don't need to read it. Mostly, I'm hoping to hear that I'm crazy if I don't send my nice, polished manuscript to a publisher and/or agent, but I have no idea what kind of reception it'll actually get.

Grammar: Hypen Use

Because I'm back to editing, as I mentioned last night, I'm noticing more grammar rules I take for granted. I learned and absorbed them so long ago that, in order to outline what I know, I had to look it up all over again.

Hyphens have become second nature to me, to the point where I'll type out a multi-adjective sentence without thinking twice about whether to hyphenate, or where. I know you use a hyphen when there's more than one adjective, but I had no idea how to differentiate a comma and a hyphen, except just to do it.

So, after some perusing, here's how you tell the difference: if the adjectives are supposed to be joined into a single modifier, hyphenate. For instance, if a kid is three years old, and you want to differentiate him from his older sibling, you'll write "the three-year-old boy." The kid isn't year or old, and calling him "the three boy" would confuse your readers. Because the modifiers only make sense together, you hyphenate them.

There is an exception to the above, and that's when the first word ends in -ly. The newly painted wall doesn't get a hyphen, because the reader will be looking for the adjective "newly" modifies. However, the just-installed door in the wall does get a hyphen, because the door isn't just.

For another example, let's say your protagonist went on a number of dates, and uses one major feature to describe each to her friend over drinks. The well-dressed one may well have made the best initial impression, and less if he were merely "well" or "dressed," both of which are a minimum requirement for dates. The tall and skinny one needs no hyphen, because both of these features can exist on their own. The Shakespeare-quoting man is indeed quoting, but what? And he's certainly not Shakespeare, unless that's the story you're writing. But would you really want to give it away so soon?

Basically, if you can remove either adjective, and it would still make sense, the most you'll need to do is a comma. If it doesn't make sense with any of the words removed, hyphenate.

If you're using a hyphen to separate, though, you're doing it wrong. The mark of punctuation you want to show you're about to introduce a concept is a colon ( : ). If you want to separate out part of the sentence in an aside, use an em-dash ( — ), which most word programs will automatically format from two hyphens put together ( -- ). If you're using Windows, you can also hold down the Alt key and type 0151 on your number pad. When you lift your finger from the Alt key, an em-dash will appear.

I've put spaces before and after the colon and em-dash, above, to make their appearance clearer. But when you use an em-dash, you don't put a space before or after it. As an example:

One might assume—correctly so—that I use em-dashes fairly often, if I have Alt+0151 memorized.

I hope that cleared up a few things, and that I've managed to make hyphens not boring and easier to understand.