A Change in Perspective

I wrote my novel over the course of a year, edited it, sent it out to agents, realized how to make it a million times better by rewriting over half of it (much, much more than half of it I realize as I'm writing it), and started over.

I wrote about half of the book, realized I was trying to incorporate too much of the first version into the second, and have just this week gotten past the revision of that change and back to the actual writing of the novel.

And I'm noticing a big difference in how I'm writing.

When I wrote the book the first time, I actually started out each day of writing rereading the previous chapters and editing before continuing on. I did that until I had written enough that it simply wasn't feasible, and gave that up. But I did worry about each chapter. As I wrote, I would reread each paragraph and swap out words, rephrase sentences, and just generally try to polish it up as I was writing it. Which makes sense from my writing experiences before that. I am someone who never actually did the three drafts of my school essays, because they were only, what, five pages long or so, and I could easily write it polished and save myself some time.

Writing books is not like that. And that first version of this story was written with that point of view.

This time around, it isn't.

The last chapter I finished, I know is going to need a lot of polishing. I feel like there may have been too much description and not enough dialogue. I know there were times when I used the same word too many times too close together. I feel like I had the main character rushing around seeing too many people in the last few paragraphs.

And I am not going to give it a second thought. Not while I'm writing my first draft.

Because books change as you write them. Stories have a life of their own, and you can be writing away and then look back in surprise at what the characters just did because that is not what you had planned on them doing. But of course, it is what they should have done, so you shrug and move on.

There is a lot of revision that goes into writing a novel. Like, an unbelievable amount. You finish your first draft and have a merry celebration, and then you have to buckle down and make it perfect. And perfect is a whole lot of work.

With my first version, I had my second draft, which consisted of my going through the first one and changing all the parts that had wandered off on their own later on and made earlier passage nonsensical. I had made a list of chapters as I wrote, with a brief description of each one, which I later returned to to make sure that this person picked up this apparently inconsequential item, or this building was described in a way that would make the changes in chapter thirty make sense. And there were a lot of those.

My third draft was me going through and just reading the second draft and checking things like grammar and flow and seeing how it felt to read through it, bit by bit.

My fourth draft was me actually setting aside an entire day to spend eight hours reading the thing through from start to finish, finding inconsistencies and fixing them.

Then I handed the book off to kind and loving people to read through and give me their feedback. Which I only got on probably less than a third of the book if at all, but still, feedback is feedback (I have a couple of different people lined up for feedback this time around, so hopefully they'll manage to complete this version so I can know what the entire book is like).

Then I revised again based on their feedback. I can't remember if I revised twice after hearing from them or if it was just the one time, but I certainly had five or six drafts by the time I felt it was good enough to try to get published.

So this time around, I understand that it really doesn't matter if chapter twenty-three needs a lot of polishing. Because each and every chapter will undergo so many drafts before it is actually a completed, polished work. A few relatively minor issues in one chapter is nothing.

The important thing is to keep at it and complete the first draft, so I can move on to the next ones.

Settling into the New School Year

My eldest started first grade yesterday, and therefore, we are all getting up much earlier than we did over the summer. During those summer months, I always had a plan of getting up early so I could get a couple of hours of writing in each day, but it very rarely happened. Which I'm okay with, since I had an unbelievably difficult morning sickness this pregnancy and I was very fatigued from growing that baby and, unfortunately, losing so much weight from the frequent vomiting.

I am now in a very pleasant stage of the pregnancy where I'm not throwing up constantly, nor am I incredibly tired all the time. Although, the first two days this week of waking up at six were very, very tiring. But I've passed that now, and I'm feeling myself again, even with being awake so much earlier.

It also means I have much more day at my disposal. I am constantly surprised at what time it is, since surely it must be far later!

That being said, I have not found a nice little niche of time each day to sit down and write. Part of that, I'm sure, is that my family is not into its normal school schedule yet, since my youngest won't start preschool for another week and a half. Part of it is also that I finally have some energy and can actually make a start at making my house less of a disaster area. Yesterday I cleaned and organized one of our bathrooms, shifted things around, and made the necessary space to put in the dresser that will act as a diaper changing station when the baby comes. So it was a good, productive day, but no writing got done.

So today I'm going to sit down and do my writing first, before beginning to tackle the house as a whole. I would really like to get my living room cleaned and sorted, but I also really want to work on my book.

I made a sticker chart the other day, as I do. And I decided that I would see if I could extend it all the way until the week the baby will be born. And I did it. I have fifteen weeks before I become a mother of three, and I have all the workdays between now and then written out, awaiting stickers awarded for sitting my butt down and writing.

I would really like to have my novel finished, edited, peer reviewed, edited again, and agents queried before the baby comes. Because life will get a lot more complicated after the baby arrives. Fifteen weeks does not seem like enough time to do it, but I think it is doable. I just need to make writing a priority and stick to it.

Which will be easier to do when I can have some childfree time. My mind is happiest in the mornings, but I concede that writing while my four year old is at preschool in the afternoons will work best. It will also help when she adjusts to not having her big sister around the whole day. Right now, she's been told that I'm going to go do some writing and she can only be in my office if she's silent. And I have certainly not found that to be the case so far. She's forgotten how to play on her own, since she's had the entire summer of not having to.

Still, right now I am going to go and do some frequently interrupted writing, because it's still better than no writing at all. And hopefully we'll soon settle into a schedule where my writing is a given every day and I don't even have to think about it.

Rejection

I was recently reading an article that showed rejection letters submitted to artists of various kinds (writing, painting, singing, etc) who have since gone on to be very famous and successful. The article talks a lot about how foolish these people were who sent these rejections, and I'm sure, looking back, they may be kicking themselves for not getting to be a part of that success.

As anyone completes their first (or seventh) novel and sends it out in hopes of getting published, there are going to be rejection letters. I have a friend who saw firsthand how seemingly random poems were chosen to be published in a magazine, and she, as a poet, found it disheartening.

I, however, choose to see it as encouraging.

The article from above shows how these people were rejected but didn't give up. They kept on developing their gifts and continued searching for the person who would see their vision of their art, and eventually they found it.

There will always be rejection letters. I have been in many book clubs, and I can read a book and adore it while someone else could barely get through it. Or it can be someone's favorite book, and I truly didn't care for it. The same way that there are drastic tastes in readers, there are drastic tastes in agents and publishers.

I recently found a wonderful author. She has written three different series of mystery novels. I completely adore one of them, and don't care for the second. The mystery in the second was perfectly good, but I didn't care for the dialogue between characters or perhaps didn't care for the characters themselves. I have, only this morning, checked out the first book in her third series, and we'll see how I like that one. But that is drastic differences myself within mystery novels by the same person!

And yes, I assume agents and publishers look beyond their own personal enjoyment and can see the books from a business point of view. Perhaps they have some issues with some of the characters, but can see past that to how well received they can see the general public will find it. I don't know: I'm neither an agent nor a publisher.

But I think the main thing to take away from it is that you don't give up. Perhaps this book of yours gets rejected fifty times over. That doesn't mean that you turn your back on your dream of being a published author.

But it also doesn't mean that you don't look hard at your story. It might be a great idea, but maybe you're writing needs to continue to grow and improve before anyone will be intrigued enough to read it all the way through.

I completed the first version of my novel a little over a year ago. I sent off whatever sections agents asked for, and started to wait. And before a week was up, I suddenly realized how to make my book unbelievably better. It meant throwing out over half the story and starting over, but it was improve the book dramatically.

Which means, that that first version was in need of improvement. It had flaws that I didn't notice until I saw how to fix them.

And I have gotten so many rejection letters from those agents I did query before realizing how to improve. They didn't sting though, since I had already realized these flaws that needed to change.

However, I'm sure that when I do sent it out to be queried whenever this new version is done, I will get rejection letters. And I expect they will hurt a lot more than the ones I've already received, since I will (hopefully) have it polished to the brightest sheen my book can be at.

But you don't need fifty acceptance letters. You just need one. And maybe this novel won't be the one to do it, but you just keep writing until you write the story that finds that perfect person who sees the beauty in it.

Even the most successful novelists get rejected. They just never gave up.

Admitting Defeat

I have been adamant as I've been writing this novel. I will not start editing my manuscript until I have completed the first draft. Will NOT. Nope. Not going to happen. Oh, I'll take copious notes about the changes I need to make, but I will not sit down to make them until I've finished with the story. Stories change and mutate all on their own as you write them, so something I feel needs to be adjusted in chapter fifteen while still only on chapter twenty might need to change in a very different way by the time the story has ended.

"How foolish to start editing when you haven't even finished!" I scoffed.

Except... I need to.

You see, this is my second version of this novel. I spent a year writing the first version, with the copious notes being all I needed to do all the editing at the end. But that version had two points of view, and after completing it and sending out my query letters, I realized how to make it into a novel from a single point of view, which would make the story infinitely better.

Now, in this version, there are glimpses of the other point of view. I have a row of notecards taped up on the wall of my office outlining those glimpses. I found a way to double up the events to make them take up less time in this version. I thought it was good and wonderful.

Then it hit me that it is too much. That other point of view, and her story, are taking up too much room in this version. It's making it a more difficult read, a more garbled storyline. In other words, it's causing the book to be worse, and not good and wonderful as I had hoped.

I need to fix it. I've figured out how: instead of two events throughout a myriad of glimpses, I need to cut it down to three glimpses, one event each.

Which means I need to move away from the story that happened in that first version and make something new. I need to combine events to make newer ones, more refined and smoother.

Which is a great big edit.

"Oh, do it at the end." I thought to myself.

But no. Because stories change and mutate and become something else entirely as you write them. And this is a big part of what is already written that needs to change. Who knows the path the characters will take to reach the end after this edit has escaped onto the paper?

If I don't redo it now, I'll have far more work to do redoing not only this first part, but also everything that follows.

So, I admit defeat. I will begin editing the first part of my book before the end is completed.

And going forth, I will check my superiority at the door. Yes, I have successfully completed a novel before, and while that is a wonderful feat and something I'm deeply proud of, I still have a lot to learn.

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.