Difficulty Moving Forward

There are many things that make moving forward with your story difficult. Fear, lack of energy, a chapter that simply wont come, and more recently, a flash of genius for an earlier chapter.

I haven't yet found fear to be a strong factor in my dream to become a published author. When I had completed my first version of this book and revised it many times, I felt incredibly nervous as I sent it off to my friends to critique it. It was the first time someone other than myself was reading it, and what would they think?! Then I felt that sickening feeling in my stomach after I had sent my query letters off to agents, and that lasted for a good week or so until I realized how to rewrite it to make it a million times better. Then, all the rejection emails didn't sting so much since I had already found a different route to take with the story that will improve it tremendously. So, while the fear is there, it has yet to hinder the words getting on the page.

I am a big fan of sticker charts for myself. They help motivate me to reach my goals, and I was just noticing one from a year ago. There was proof that one year ago, I was writing almost every day. Not so these days. I've been watching two of my nephews this school year, and while I have shifted it back to three days a week from five, those three days still take an awful lot out of me. It's impossible to write in the evenings on the days when I'm exhausted from the day's activities. So, until the end of this school year, I my goal is to write twice a week, on the days I have no boys and just my sweet daughters wearing me out. Which they do, but only half as much as four of them! So far, my twice a week goal is going fairly well, and I'm pleased with it.

I have had many instances when I couldn't progress my story and I struggled to figure out why. I would close my eyes and try and make the picture appear of what should happen next, and it simply didn't work. And then I found that it was not the next chapter that was the problem, but the previous one. After reworking what I had already written, the story progressed as it should and all was well.

This morning, I had a new struggle to contend with. I have known for some time that I'm changing the world from having both witchcraft and sorcery to having sorcery alone. In making that decision, some major things need to change in the first chapter. From previously sharing that chapter with the wonderful people in my writer's group, I knew I wanted to make some changes to that chapter anyway to liven it up and make it more captivating. While I was dropping my youngest off at preschool this morning, I had a wave of understanding about how that chapter should go. What should happen, who the main character should talk to, everything. It played out in my head as I sat in the waiting room at my chiropractor, and continued polishing itself up as I drove across town to run some errands.

I had decided to come home and write it out right away, and then I, with some difficulty, decided not to. I have jotted it all down in an outline, and I will write it up once I have finished my first draft, but not right now.

When I first began writing the first version of this story a year and a half ago, I would reread the previous chapters and edit them before continuing on. I did this until there was too much written for it to be reasonable, and then I stopped. I'm glad I did, for two reasons. The obvious time restraint was one. Clearly, I cannot reread and edit the entire 80,000 word novel each time I sit down, or there will never be any time for the writing itself.

Secondly, and this is something I was not expecting when I sat down at my keyboard with my completed outline, the story changes. It moves and adapts all on its own, and I look down with some surprise at what has occurred so unexpectedly in the story. Unexpected, but very welcome. I know now that my story will change, and I will write countless new outlines to incorporate the new gems that appear without warning. Editing the previous chapters when I have yet to determine exactly where the story will end up is foolish. My notes of what needs to be edited change as the story changes, and it saves me so much time to not put them into practice until the story has finished telling itself.

So, I have half a page of detailed notes on what should happen, as of now, in the first chapter of my story. Part of me is disappointed not to get them on the page immediately, but the rest of me is filled with a renewed drive to complete the remaining half of the story so I can return and rewrite and perfect how this novel begins.

Fiction Inspiration from Nonfiction Sources

It's interesting to see where story ideas come from. I can't tell you what spurred the inspiration for the book I'm writing. It just suddenly hit me, and there you go.

While writing this book over the last year and a half, I have figured out ideas for three completely different books as well as a huge mess of half-ideas and notions.

The first book I figured out as being something to write down the road (when this book is done, assuming it wins over the other two book ideas plus however many others spring up during the writing process) came to me when I was watching "That 70's Show". Just a conversation they were having about whether Samantha from "Bewitched" was better than the genie from a different show whose name is eluding me. And suddenly, there was a book idea. Yes, there is a genie in it, but it is far from the nature of their discussion on that show. And now, I have almost the entire book outlined. All from watching "That 70's Show."

I am a fantasy/science fiction writer. Mainly fantasy, but one of those book ideas is a science fiction novel. Or will be some day. And while I do get book ideas out of the blue and from television shows, I get an incredible amount of the random book notions from non-fiction.

I love watching Nova documentaries. I do enjoy documentaries in general, but Nova makes just exceptional ones. There are certainly topics I have zero interest in. My DVR records Novas off PBS, and there will be a few in a row that just get deleted because I simply do not find the topics compelling. But there are so many that I absolutely adore.

And I will watch it and suddenly, I will get a wave of genius. I have to use some piece of information in a book in some way, some day. So I quickly write it down, and accept that some day I will have to actually buy the documentary so I can rewatch it over and over when I weave that little glimmer of inspiration into a book.

I recently subscribed to the "National Geographic" magazine. I have received three of them so far, and haven't had the time to finish even one, but I have torn out (carefully) two or three articles that I feel can inspire future books. I really enjoy having the physical articles to file away for future use. It seems a lot easier than having to look up a documentary, and when I do weave it into a story, I can tape it up on my office wall and be able to glance at it as I write.

I love looking at the real world and seeing the fictional stories come to life. It's amazing that I spent so many years of my life blind to those stories, and now they are everywhere!

"Failing" your Writing Goals

I am blessed to know some other aspiring authors and be able to share this journey with them. I made a Facebook group for us, so we can share the disappointments, excitement, and everything in between that trying to become a published author causes, and all in the safety of a private group of people who understand the deeply personal nature of writing. When I started the group, I knew I wanted a place where I could share my journey without announcing it to the world in general. It is rare to get the first book you write published, and knowing that, I was unwilling to share my hope of doing just that with everyone.

This year, we have started telling each other what our writing goals are for each month. So far, we have only January finished, and out of the three of us who ventured forth our writing goals, I was the only one to complete them.

I could just feel the sighs from the other two ladies when they said that they had not completed their writing goals. One of them actually wrote that she had "failed" both of her goals.

Now I don't know exactly how driven they are to complete their goals right now. I know one of them is traveling, and the other is in the very early stages of resurrecting a book she started writing years ago.

But I do know that there are times when our writing goals don't get completed in the time allotted to them.

Writing is so different from anything else I have done in my life. With most things, when you set a goal, they are easily achievable. If I plan to exercise three days a week, I know exactly how to complete that goal. If I want to spend an hour cleaning a week, I know how to do that. If I don't succeed at those goals, it's because I didn't put the time in to finish them.

Writing isn't like that. Yes, you can certainly fail to put the time in. But there are times when writing comes slowly. There are times when you need to spend time mulling over the plot or the characters, and sitting down to write that day will come to nothing because you're not ready yet to put it down on paper. There are times when you sit down to write and it comes at a trickle. Each sentence seems difficult, and you may delete the entire scene when you return to it on a day when inspiration hits. Other times, the words come out in a torrent, and your fingers struggle to put keep up on the keyboard.

This month, I had an entire chapter that I wrote that didn't sit right with me. I was unable to keep writing until I figured out what was wrong with it. At that point, I deleted it and wrote an entirely different chapter in its place, which works much better. Now the story can continue, but it was unable to before because that chapter was wrong.

I think you can "fail" your writing goals if you don't attempt to achieve them. But I think that sometimes, even with putting in the time and the effort, our goals may remain unreached for the simple fact of how writing works.

Editing is Hard

When I wrote the first version of my novel, the main difficulty of getting the words on the page was being able to find the time to write. Once I had the time, it was always fairly easy to sit down and let the story flow out.

Editing that version was perfectly straightforward as well. I had a sheet of paper where I had each chapter written along with a short description, and as I wrote the story, I would jot down by a certain chapter something that needed to be added or changed as the story developed. I didn't have any major points that needed to be changed, and a good deal of my editing was noticing that I used the one word too frequently in such and such a paragraph and changing it so it was no longer repetitive.

Now I'm doing a major, enormous edit. Creating my novel 2.0 is a lot harder than making it the first time.

I'm changing it from being a dual perspective book to being only from the grown-up's point of view. It makes for a much better book.

I am still including a good chunk of the other perspective, at least that was my plan. Yet I just finished writing the first chapter incorporating that perspective and I've been mulling it over ever since.

I have an entire half a book's worth of writing from this other point of view, and I had been aware that I would of course have to cut out parts of it to make it work. But now that I've written this one chapter incorporating the previous story line, it just isn't going to work. I don't mean the entire notion, but how I had pictured it.

If I include as much from this point of view as I had planned to, it is going to be too much. There won't be enough time for the main character to figure things out without it weighing down the plot.

So I'm going to have to really sit down and figure out how to do this. I'm going to have to cut out a lot of things I had planned to include, and I'm going to have to find a way for it to flow well with this new change. A lot more is going to have to change than the half a story I had originally thought.

And I'm not sure where it'll end up. I don't know how this book is going to end, now. The last chapter was from the child's perspective, and I can't find a good way to wrap that up. Not that I'm anywhere near the end of the story.

Editing is a lot harder when it's a huge shift like this. I just need to remember that this will make my book so much better. It may be a struggle to work though it at times, but this new version will be a great improvement on the old.

It's just hard to throw out so much that I've put my heart into, even with the knowledge that I'm making it better.

Forced Writing

I've been making a point at trying to write my book, even at times when I'm not feeling it. I took my car in to get some button fixed so it wouldn't randomly start a fire, and I brought my laptop along. I sat in the waiting area, writing my book, only to come home and delete everything I had written. Once I was actually in the frame of mind where writing came easily, the writing I had tried to force wasn't what I wanted on the page.

I know that even trying to get the scenes out when they don't want to come is a good thing, and that sometimes I can get where I need to go, even if I need to go back though it completely redo scenes when I'm editing it. It just makes it hard to feel like trying to write if the words are struggling to come.

Still, I think trying to find the words and think about the story, even if it ends up being redone later, is a good thing because it's making me continue to think about my book. I have weeks when I don't sit down to write because my mind is busy on other things, and at least when I'm writing sub par things, I'm still writing and thinking about the story.

So I'm going to consider it a success, and accept that some things will need to be thrown out when my mind is in proper writing mode.

A New Year

I haven't blogged for quite some time. My eldest started school, I've been sick with a constant cycle of colds, and I've been watching two of my nephews during the week. So my life has become very busy with non-writing things.

However, writing things are happening as well.

So back in October, I read what little response I got from the people who agreed to read through my book (I gave them a month and one hadn't even looked at it and the other two had read only a small portion). In the future, I may try to find less busy people to give me feedback, although the feedback I did get was greatly appreciated.

Anyway, in October I finished my edits, wrote my query, and emailed a bunch of agents. A week after sending them all out, I had an epiphany about how to make my book a thousand times better.

Which is good, since I've received lots of polite rejections as the months have gone by.

I'm drastically changing my novel. It used to be a two perspective story, and now it is only from one point of view. I think it will work a lot better, and hopefully agents will think so too when I'm ready to query them all once more.

I now have three solid book ideas outside of what I'm working on, so that's exciting. And frustrating, since I'll be doing some mundane task like taking a shower or folding laundry, and I'll picture an entire, wonderful scene in my head for one of these books that I'm not currently working on. But I'm forcing myself to simply outline the ideas, and stay on task with writing the one I've started.

I got stuck at the beginning of December. I knew I wanted this chapter from the previous version, and I had added it into the book and it just wasn't sitting right. I finally figured out what was wrong and have added two chapters before it, and now all is well again. I'm about to begin the chapters that are incorporating the point of view I've eliminated from this version, so that will be fun. Although I expect it will be difficult to eliminate so much of what I had written, but I recognize that I need to cut it down significantly for it to work from the other character's point of view.

I wrote the first version of this book from October 2013 until October 2014. So I'm hoping to complete this version at the same rate, and hopefully have the first draft and perhaps some other drafts finished by the time 2015 ends.

I'm looking forward to another year of writing!

Waiting

I completed my fourth draft on Saturday. I actually left the house and spent a good eight hours reading through it from start to finish and polishing it up.

Now it is off in the hands of the wonderful people who have agreed to critique it for me. I'm looking forward to hearing what they have to say, but it is so very scary!

This is the first time anyone will have read my book. I have spent almost a year of my life working on it, and while I think it's a wonderful book, I am aware that others may not agree.

So now I'm just anxiously waiting. I don't know how long the critiquing will last. I haven't really given them a time when I'd like it back, although I am hoping by the end of September. I started the book in October of last year, and it seems kind of nice to polish it up all wonderfully and start looking for an agent in October of this year. Of course, I may have a lot more editing to do after I hear their feedback, so there's a decent chance it will be later than then. Still, that's my hope.

I don't really know what to do with myself. I've spent so much of this last month reading and editing and reading and editing some more.

The obvious thing would be to start my next book, but that will vary a great deal depending on if this one gets published or not. If it does, it is the first book in a trilogy, and I would begin book two. I have that book outlined and ready to begin, but I am hesitant to do so. This first book may not be good enough to get me an agent and get published, and even if it does, there may be great changes that need to be made to it that would impact the content of the second book.

If it isn't publishable, I have a couple books pretty well planned out to start writing, but again, I don't really want to start writing one and then have to stop if my book does get published. It seems jarring to stop writing a book in the middle, and it also makes it harder to really consider starting.

So I'm working on my query letter to help me find an agent. I'm doing some research for the two books I will choose between writing if this book doesn't get published. I think I will start planning out some of the prophecies that will have a big impact on the rest of the trilogy if this book does get published.

It's kind of strange to be aimless and very anxious at the same time!

Although, I expect this is nothing compared to the nerves I will feel when I'm actively trying to find an agent.