Inspiration

It's been a while since I posted! Sorry about that. I've been on two (yes, two!!) trips already this month, with another one looming, and I am absolutely swamped with stuff to do. 

I am ALSO hard at work on my new novel (which is yet unnamed, but I am working on that!), and I thought I'd post a few inspiration pics to whet your appetites. This WIP has lots of shadowy forests, crumbling ruins, and magic. Loads of magic. :)

Here are today's inspirational pictures:

(c) Roberto Verzo

(c) erwlas

(c) thomas.clarkey

(c) my_urban_life

Happy Monday, everyone!

Finding the Right Balance

For me, writing is about finding the right tension between planning and pantsing, between the willpower to write no matter how much I don't want to and the burning desire to tell a story, between knowing enough about my characters that I can render them accurately from the beginning, and leaving enough to be discovered so they surprise me.

For instance, take planning vs. pantsing. If I plan everything, it has the effect of a wet blanket on a fire. Sizzle, and not in a good way. On the other hand, the idea of pantsing a NOVEL scares the crap out of me. With my (much neglected) current WIP, I discovered halfway through the first draft that I really needed to plan every beat of the story because it was a bit of a thriller/mystery, with betrayals, twists, and reveals coming right and left in the last act. I needed to know everything I was going to do so I could set things in motion early on and have them pay off at the end. But when I sat down and made myself a thorough outline, the desire to write the thing tapered off.

This, naturally, ties into the second point. Willpower vs. desire. I can't write a good story when I literally force myself to write every step of the way. They always turn out flat and stale. There's something about my own eagerness for the story that breathes spark into the words. But I am fully aware that few books are written on burning desire alone. Everyone has days (many many days) when they don't feel like writing and they must sit down, grit their teeth, and do it anyway. So the balance for me is finding that spark and then nurturing it and yes, sometimes going on without it. But I need it somewhere.

And with the third point--characters that have no mystery to them are boring. Boring kills the spark. It's a vicious cycle.

Anyway, I made a discovery with this WIP. I think I can have my ice cream cake cake and eat it too.

Here's what I did. I planned out the entire story and journey for my main character, Shana. There's lots of mystery and intrigue, and I needed to know who was the villain and who betrayed whom and all the major twists and hints dropped beforehand and all my red herrings. BUT then I compromised with my creative self and added the viewpoint of a second character, who previously didn't have a POV in the narrative. His story is largely unknown to me, and I still don't understand him fully as a character. Suddenly, the story is breathing again. I feel the itch to write it, to explore it. But I still have my outline and IT STILL WORKS.

Huzzah!

I am PRAYING this plan is successful.

So what about you? Do you ever have to play games with your brain? Is your creative self a needy, demanding diva like mine?

Work In Progress Wednesday

Well, I'm a fan of disorganized structure.

"The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say." ~Anaïs Nin

I am a great fan of structure (probably because I impose very little upon myself in everyday life). So I am attempting to give this blog some structure. So I’m declaring Wednesdays to be focused on my WIPs, whatever they may be at the moment. If you follow me on Twitter you might have seen some of my whining about the 5 WIPs I have been working on lately. I know. Bad idea. Don’t do it, kids!!

At any rate, I’ve gone back to just one for now because I JUST CAN’T LIVE THAT WAY. But the single MS I’ve chosen to focus on is giving me fits. FITS.

It occurs to me—the subtitle of this post really ought to be In Which I Moan About This Book I’m Writing. Cuz that’s what I’m going to do.

Writing is hard even when you know exactly what you’re doing. But right now, trying to write this particular story feels like trying to select the perfect mother’s day gift at a jewelry store in complete and utter darkness while wearing boxing gloves and trying to hold an agitated howler monkey under one arm.

 In other words, darn near impossible.

"I want to write books that unlock the traffic jam in everybody's head." ~John Updike

Me too, John, but first I need to figure out the snarl in my own.

I guess this is part of the process. And also, to some degree, I feel like I never learn. If any of you haven’t read Hyberbole and a Half’s amazing post on this subject, do so now.

Anyway, I say I never learn because I’ve been here before. The last MS I completed, which is currently in a stalled state of revision (hey, DaVinci hardly ever finished anything either!), gave me the same sort of trouble.

Ultimately my biggest problem wasn’t plot (I figured that out partly on the fly and partly through an agonizing process of outlining).

It wasn’t the matter of writing itself, although you know my thoughts on that subject (I’m looking at you, dead elephant carcass).

It was the characters.                                                           

I have a whole blog post cooking on this subject (maybe I’ll post it soon). But basically the characters weren’t coming together right. It was mostly a matter of motivation. What was driving them? What were they trying to do? I didn’t have it figured out at the time, and until I knew what I was doing I was just spinning my proverbial wheels in the mud.

“Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.” ~ Kurt Vonnegut

So I guess that’s what I’m doing now. I sit and I write a little bit and then I read it and grimace and then I eat ice cream cake. It’s a deadly spiral, folks. So right now I’m mulling the story over. I’m thinking about the characters and their wants and needs. What is driving them? What needs to be driving them?  I’m on a quest to figure out exactly who my MC Shana is, and exactly what she wants. Some of this I will discover as I write the book, and some of it I already have.

I was going to post a small bit of the current MS since this is WIP Wednesday and I want to do more than just complain about it, but I can’t find a single segment that doesn’t need hefty editing.