T is for Tools

My beloved Mac Book Air is going into the shop today - and I won't have her for at least five days. I don't have a 'back up' computer, though I'm trying to borrow an iPad. I digress. The thought of not having my laptop got me thinking about a writer's tools. Not the 'toolbox' in the sense that Stephen King writes about in On Writing (the grammar, the style, the voice) but the actual tools writer's use to organize and produce.






Here's what I use:
Writing
Laptop, small bedside notebook, 4 whiteboards mounted on my office wall for untangling plot muddles, notes for iphone, itunes for music, post it notes (also on my wall, also for untangling plots and motives) stickie notes on laptop

Revising
All of the above plus: stickie tabs, highlighters (at least 4 colors) pad of paper for drawing diagrams, Breakout Novel Workbook, Solitare (when I hit a wall, I do something else with my conscious mind to let the unconscious have a go.) prayer beads. Kidding about that last one, but it's not a bad idea....

What tools do you use?

Hiatus OR The First Cut Won't Hurt At All

Three things are happening in the next week that are cause for hiatus.

All three are painful and involve knives.

1) I'm having surgery
2) Thanksgiving
3) I'm (still) revising like crazy. (What, you don't use a cleaver to revise? Hmm, Maybe that's what I'm doing wrong.)

Guess which one is going to hurt the most?

Yes, Thanksgiving.
For some families, turkey day is a huge orgy of football, eating and running around in the leaves. I know this because I've seen many Hallmark commercials and Lifetime movies. For me, Thanksgiving is just the first salvo in the family vs. family war that gets staged every year. It's not pretty and no one really wins, we just survive.

Makes the minor surgery I have to have a cake walk in comparison.

The revisions however, will likely be a close second to Thanksgiving in the painful-olympics. I'm still struggling, struggling. I haven't given up, which is the only positive thing I can say about it.

So what I want to know, as I take some time off to play with knives, is what do the holidays do for your writing? Inspire it? Derail it? Slow it down, speed it up?

See you in December and Happy Thanksgiving.

Being Stupid...On Purpose

So, I'm going to open myself up for criticism here. Some of  you guys might know that I've had a partial request (first 100 pages) for my book by an agent. Woot. I've been polishing and revising for three months since then and now, in the deadline I've created in my mind, I've got another month before I have to submit.

Why, when everyone, even the awesome and extremely published Jonathan Maberry, has told me not to submit until it's ready, am I going to risk it?

Well, one concrete and one ephemeral reason. And a caveat.

Caveat - The same way I believe I'm not short, I believe the book will be ready.

Concrete - the agent who requested my partial is closed to submissions until August 1st. On August 1st, the floodgates (again, in my imagination) will open and the slushpile will become slushier. I want to take advantage of being allowed to submit while she's on hiatus (a conference request).

Ephemeral - If I don't give myself a deadline - a real, on fire, deadline, I'll choke. I'll sputter and stop. I'll just sort of peter out. I am not one of those writers who feels they have to write or they will die. And I can easily see my life slipping into more practical, household concerns once my kids start school again. In fact, I'm afraid that will happen, unless I have that deadline.

So, I'm revising like a maniac. And I will (unless I change my mind, of course) be pushing the send button at the end of July.

Want to talk me out of it?

Oh, I'll be guest posting on Misha's Blog Sylmion on August 19th, so watch out for that.

Deep Revising Means Letting the Little Bastard out of the Cage

The first couple of days of revising was easy. Not exactly fun, not fun like writing, but pain free. I went through comments, marked up a master ms., went to town using post its and flags. I figured out big problems with my text, things that had to be tightened up and things that needed to be included. I realized that the number of times my MC says "I realize" makes him sound like a jackass. These are all things that I needed to know. Doing that first revising pass through felt like I'd accomplished something neat and clean, like creating a 3-D pie chart or finally putting the sodding mulch down by the hostas.

Now I have to go in and do the deep revising and this is not going well.

It's mostly the Inner Editor's fault, or, as I have named her, the Little Bastard. I call her that because she's small as a mustard seed and has a big mouth. Also, she's unfailingly unkind and evil. Just like everyone recommends, I manage to stuff her into a cage while writing. After all, I reasoned, it's only writing. Me in my little writing shed, no biggie. 

But now that I'm revising, and will be sending the ms out, I've had to let the bitch out of the box. 

A little while ago, Betsy Lerner had a post that started with the words "I want to vomit on myself." I know the feeling. It was basically a rant about how awful and useless you feel when you look at your own work. OK, maybe there's a writer or two out there that don't feel like that, but I haven't met any of them*. Everyone I know who writes goes through varying degrees of self-loathing while writing, regardless of experience, or success, and completely separate from any objective appraisal of the work.

For me, the self-loathing starts now. Fun.

Any ideas, suggestions and distracting techniques on how to get through this that doesn't include YouTube or eonline?

*And whether it's fair or not, I'm highly suspicious of anyone who doesn't hate their own work, at least some of the time.

K is for Kill Your Darlings

And for Kristin Hersh

It's revision time. And it's come much sooner than I thought it would. I thought I'd be finished with the first draft before I had to revise. Silly me. I got as far as I could with my cast of misfits before screeching to a halt (as I've mentioned, on the road to Damascus) within spitting distance of the end. I couldn't go forward because I had to go back. There's a lot of advice out there on when to revise, how to revise, etc. And it's all good advice, but I think it varies depending on what's going on with your WIP. I'd been able to hurtle along without really developing a key aspect of my MC because I had PLOT. I had shite going down! But the crucible for my MC, the place where he has to pony up and show what he's made of, well. Let's just say that what I wanted him to do and what he could do -seeing how he was written - the twain could not meet.

So I got out the shears and, like Inigo, I went back to the beginning.

Revising isn't fun, not at all. But it is satisfying. It's like saving money at a shop or fixing something you thought was so broken you'd have to go out and get a new one. It's the satisfaction of saving the day.

I'll be revising for the next month at least. I plan to revise while at the Pennwriters Conference in May. I will be sporting this shirt, available from cafepress, during the revision process. It helps me remember to slaughter the sacred cows of my prose.

What do you do to keep revising till it hurts?

Count Back From 100....Exploratory Surgery for a WIP

Instead of writing during the four minutes my youngest was attentively watching Mr. Noodle attempt to tie his shoes, I  read Chuck Lorre's vanity card page. It's funnier and not as sad as Charlie Sheen.

I promise I won't digress into CS territory again unless either Chuck produces either the Holy Grail or Jimmy Hoffa. Sorry.

So, in an effort to jump start my writing again, I'm going to dissect it. That's not to say it's dead and needs a post mortem. I guess I could say I'll be doing exploratory surgery instead, but I don't have enough anesthesia for that. Get double gloved and start up the Stryker saw, here we go:

Problem: I'm standing with my protagonist, Fin, on the Road to Damascus. We're literally on the road. I mean, we're walking toward the Big Effing Climax. All will be revealed, except what won't and Fin will or won't accomplish what he needs to. This is IT.

Only, he's not moving. And I can't make him move. I've tried to put him on a horse, I've tried having him go on his own and with others. I've had people talk to him while (I swear this is true) he's peeing against a tree, angrily telling him that he's just not getting it, man. All of this I've deleted, which leaves Fin where we started more than a week ago. On the Road to Damascus, or more accurately, on the road to the Village.

Possible Reasons for Fin's immovability:
1) I'm scared. Now that the 'set up' is over, now that all possibilities lead to one road, I'm drying up, afraid I've made the wrong choices.

2) I don't know what Fin will do so he doesn't do anything. This isn't as daft as it sounds. If I haven't developed him deeply enough, even I might be unsure of what he will do.

2b) Subset of above, I have made Fin too much of a waffler - meaning, he himself hasn't come to terms with the world he's in and he's not achieved that moment of resolve, that moment of determination that enables the hero to GO.

3) I haven't developed the rebellion enough. I've alluded to it and explained it, but have I shown it? Is it making itself felt to the reader, or does it seem tacked on? If it isn't felt, then what Fin is walking towards won't feel like the 'big' moment.

Of course, I suspect that all of the above are true, which I guess is better than not knowing what ails you, but CRUMBS, I don't want to go back before I've finished. It feels like when you leave your house and walk down the street and remember that you've left something you need behind and you have to go back the way you came. Wait. Does that not freak anyone else out but me? I always try to go back home a different way...Anyway...

How do you know when pushing through is the right answer or if stopping and going back is the right answer? Hurry up with the answers, please. The patient is on the table and I've got him open from chin to chops!

Writing Tip Thursday #2 - What to do with Criticism.

Nothing. Don't do anything.
When I get feedback from anyone who has read my WIP, whether positive or negative, I don't act on it - at least not for a while.

During our first crit group meeting, while I was shoving cookies in my mouth to keep myself from talking and/or bursting into tears, I was taking it all in. Listening and automatically sorting the feedback into categories: a) WHAT? That's not what I meant! b) OH! that makes it sound better than I meant, followed quickly by c) UGH! That's much worse than I meant. and finally d) I don't agree with that at all.

So, suggestions are made, places highlighted where I should revise. I take notes, Greg and Laura give me notes and I think about it all on the drive home while listening to Ultra Vivid Scene.

Then I put all the notes and annotated handouts in my drawer and stop thinking about it.

This is a riff on what Stephen King, in On Writing, says to do once you finish the first draft of a novel - put it in a drawer and leave it the eff alone. Let it marinate, let it simmer, let it percolate - whatever Food Network-ism you want to use. Just don't DO ANYTHING. Because at this point (either after a crit or after you finish your first draft ) you are vulnerable. And you don't want to make changes from a place of weakness, when you're sore from hearing things you don't want to hear or exhausted from finally finishing the effing thing.

After I finish my first draft, in about 20K words, I'll go back and consider the feedback. In fact, since I probably won't finish it before our next crit in three weeks, the next submission Greg and Laura get will have all the lovely and unlovely things (and some new ones) that they encountered in the first 4k words. But I'll be looking forward to their insights all the same. Soon they'll help me make my book better.