A Nice Rambley Bit For My First Post of 2012 (I even talk about writing)

What?

It’s 2012 and nobody told me?

I was supposed to start preparing for the apocalypse. You know, stock up on canned food, Purell, and DVDs. Get my zombie survival kit together. Etc.

A hope everyone has had some happy holidayness in their lives. The great thing about Christmas is that it provides solid evidence of how the people in your family see you. As in: “Hey, these earrings are really weird. Just odd and strange and abnormal in every way. I bet Cacy'll love them!” Le sigh. It’s hard being the “artsty” one in the family. I'm not that weird, Mom. Really, I'm not.

But I do now boast a new favorite necklace:

(Made by this company.)

Freakin' awesome. And it matches this ring I got a few month ago:

(This guy also makes Lego jewelry.)

(Check him out.)

So sometimes they get it right. Even though, of course, Christmas is not about the presents. Is the lie we tell children.

In other topics, I finished the preliminary revision of my rewrite. (You know, when you go through and fix all the obviously bad stuff before you let anyone read it. There was this one scene in particular that was so bad that if it had been a published book I was reading I would have written the author an angry letter. Fortunately, no one shall ever have to see that scene EVER. Though I kinda want people to read it after they read the new and improved scene so that I can be like see, SEE what I saved you from…before I forced you to read it. Anyway…)

Tada!

Printed out for easy reading by people in my life who don’t like reading long stuff on the computer. (You gotta work those margins and font size to save some paper.)

I know there’s all kindsa fancy technological computery ways to breakdown the editing process, but this is how I revise when it comes to re-ordering half the scenes in the book:

First I type up a list of every scene in the manuscript and color-code them according to like characters or what part of the story it deals with or something. I don't know. I just like colors.

After cutting the list up, I re-order the scenes as needed.

Then tape 'em down to blank sheet of paper so I can easily refer to them when I go back to my computer to start moving things around in the actual document.

Who needs Scrivener? (Okay, I probably do. But it costs money, see. Plus, cutting stuff out and using tape is fun. Ask any four-year-old. Tape and scissors are the best things ever.)

The thing about finishing something and coming to the point where I’m waiting for other people to read it is that I’m left with a “What now?” feeling. What should I do with myself right now considering that if this were yesterday, I’d have been working on that thing I just finished.

I suppose I could read something. Maybe re-watch the fourth season of Buffy or all the episodes of “Life After People” I recorded. I should probably clean my mess of a room which I’m sure is a fitting reflection of my life in general. I could work on a blog post.

All of the above?

Well, I did all of the above. So what now?

In the bigger picture in which I’m always working on some writerly endeavor or another, what now?

Eh, I’ll figure it out.

But you know, going over my manuscript, setting is one of the changes I’m happiest with when it comes to all the decisions I made for the rewrite. Originally, I’d set the story in some made up middle of nowhere town. But for the re-write I thought, why don’t I bring them home. My hometown of Los Angeles, that is.

Because of this change, I’ve set some of my scenes in what I think are interesting parts of the city. I might not have thought to use some of these types of locations if I’d stuck with a made up town.

Which I guess means I'm not as creative as I lead people to think I am.

(The Venice Beach Canals is one of the interesting places in L.A. I do not use in my story.)

Besides, people talk trash about my city. Saying it’s a wasteland and the people are shallow (to which I respond, maybe that has something to do with the part of the city you hang around). But I love my sprawling town. According to popular music, it never rains here and we know how to party. And you can believe that because popular entertainment never lies to us. Ever.

(Now that I think about it, I didn't set any scenes in my book around water, which is kinda odd cause I love water-adjacent locales.)

So…that’s probably enough a ramblin’.

No, wait!

Doesn’t anybody finish their games on Droidwords? Or is it just nobody wants to finish the games they start with me? I’ve been waiting for my sister to make a move for like six months now! Some people!

Okay, now I’m done.

Have a Happy New Year anyone who made it to the bottom of this post. The rest of you…a plague upon your houses! (Not really, I give you permission to have happiness in your new year too.)

SUPER AWESOME BIG TIME REWRITE: Stop! Think About It…

Or better yet, just stop thinking about it.

I’m not one to stick too tightly to outlines. I do like having a plan of action, and that plan will be pretty specific - though not always followed - for the first half the book. But by the second half, I’m freeee. Free faaalliiiing. I might have my outline, but I forget to look at it. Probably because at this point all I have jotted down for the last few chapters is something like:

· Awesome stuff happens

and

· Even more awesomer stuff happens

I’m only half kidding.

So there I was in the murkiest part of my outline, the climax of the story, with one and a half chapters left to write. Just one. And a half. Friggin.’ More. Chapters! I knew basically what should happen (even more awesomer stuff) and in my mind, I could kinda generate a little bit of a picture of what that should like. And it’s the climax so it has to be better than EVERYTHING that has come before (as Michael pointed out in the comments section of my last post). And I’d given myself one week to finish this draft OR ELSE (though I don’t think I bought my threat. I know I’m a softy).

But mostly, all I was doing was banging my head against the wall and given myself brain damage. The ending was dragging itself out worse than a vampire Pee-wee Herman death scene.

Thusly, I decided to stop thinking about it.

I thought about a different story for a little bit. I read a bunch of excellent graphic novels. I worked on the skirt I’m sewing as a Christmas gift for my niece. I watched way too many episodes of The Millionaire Matchmaker and Cheaters.

Then one morning as I was brushing my teeth, I got it. I understood exactly how to resolve my conflict.

And it was so simple. Instead of trying to push forward into a new chapter, I needed to go back a couple of chapters and follow through on the action already in place. So obvious! Additionally, because of this change in my projected order of events, it meant I had my last two chapters already (basically) written.

Triple super awesome!

I couldn’t get over the incredible simplicity of my solution. So freakin’ simple that I couldn’t see it, and maybe never would have seen it if I hadn’t taken a step back and let the story spring forward at its own time.

Sometimes you have you have to do that butt-in-chair thing. If you never make yourself write when things get difficult you’ll never learn how to push yourself past your own expectations.

But sometimes it’s just as important to get up and go watch some reality TV.

So…yeah. I finished my rewrite.

Woot-woot!

(On to the revision!)

SUPER AWESOME BIG TIME REWRITE: In Which Funny Pictures Of Children Help Me Express My Angst

Aaaaarg!!! I'm so READY to be done with with this draft and move on to my revision...yeah, my revision of my rewrite. (Well you know, this rewrite feels much more like a "draft 1" one than a "draft 10" or whatever.)

Maybe I'm feeling all warm and fuzzy about the revision part of novel writing because I'm currently at the part of the writing process where I'm really angry at my manuscript for not writing itself for me. Like it's waaaay more fun to revise a draft than to write a first draft. Don't get me wrong, I do love revising. But I think I'm supposed to like just plain writing too. I mean, I must like just plain writing some of the time. Right?

Can't be too sure about that at the moment though (doubty face emoticon).

I know that there are times in writing when you can't or shouldn't rushing things, but goodness gracious, I feel like I should be done already! I've been just one or two chapters from finishing this rewrite for about...I don't know...a lifetime? And then when I finish a chapter, I realize that I'm going to have to add one more chapter than I thought I was going to need. So I'm STILL one or two chapters from the end. It's like trying to walk up a down escalator, except less fun. It's maddening!


Why would you do this to me, my manuscript? Don't you know I love you? I love you soooo muuuchboohoohooohooohooo!

(sniff, sniff)

The cool thing about revising a completed draft is that you've already made all your most basic decisions, you have your ending, and your characters have already done all the junk they need to do to get to said ending. The first draft may not be perfect, but since everything is basically already there, writing becomes akin to molding a figure from a chunk of clay. You're taking bits out and adding bits in and shaping details and bringing forth the figure that's already in the clay, waiting to be dug out. And making the decisions that accomplish that is a great (and fun) challenge.

It's decided.

I give myself another week. I can finish a chapter or two in a week, right? Well, I'd better.

Or else!

SUPER AWESOME BIG TIME REWRITE: Constructing Chapters

Here’s what I think about novel writing. You can read about it, you can talk about it, and you can think about it, and all that helps. Especially if you’re in a dialogue with other writers (whether in person or across the interwebs). But it’s the doing it that really teaches you how to make it happen.

Even writing and workshopping short stories, while educational when it comes to learning many of the mechanics of storytelling, doesn’t fully prepare you for the monumental undertaking of completing a novel. At least this has been my experience.

Chapters are one of those things I had to learn by doing. As I made my first attempts at writing a book, questions cluttered my head. What are chapters really? How long should they be? How much should happen in them? How do I know when I’ve done enough to end the chapter? None of these questions have one answer. If I pick up five books from my shelf at random, I’d find five different approaches to building chapters.

And that’s why we have to learn by doing. It’s the only real way to figure out what works for each of us and what works for each of the many stories we all have in us to tell.

With my SUPER AWESOME BIG TIME REWRITE, I’m approaching my chapters with a brand new philosophy. My previous approach was to keep putting stuff in until it looked like I had enough stuff in there to close that chapter, leaving enough stuff unresolved to warrant starting a new chapter. I didn’t always think about chapter goals or what I was accomplishing. The only rule I held myself accountable to was keeping in mind that it had to lead somewhere.

It was very scientific, and I even think that method worked pretty okay (for a first draft if nothing else).

This time around, just to shake things up, I'm thinking about each chapter as encapsulating a specific idea, concern or event and the actions and reactions surrounding that element. Interestingly, doing things this way has made for longer chapters with several section breaks in each and less chapters in the manuscript as a whole.

I’m really liking doing it this way. It’s put me in the mindset of not dragging things out for the sake of dragging things out, which maybe I might have perhaps have been guilty of once or possibly twice. That was back when I associated dragging things out with infusing a story with tension.

I’m not saying that there aren’t times when it’s necessary to delay gratification or a big climax. But it’s important to remember that by going ahead and throwing that big thing at your characters, it gives you the opportunity to raise the stakes, escalate the action, and throw your characters into an even bigger, more crazy climax that you might have never thought of otherwise.

So I guess what I’m saying is that my SUPER AWESOME BIG TIME REWRITE is going awesome (even though progress has slowed to a crawl these past few weeks because I’ve had to sluggishly and painfully chisel out these last few chapters with an ice pick) and I’m learning stuff from the process.

Yea, learning!

I’m curious. How do vous approach putting a chapter together and how did vous come to doing it that way?

SUPER AWESOME BIG TIME REWRITE: For realsies!

After my summer of arting it up, I return to writing! Okay, so I didn’t really stop writing this summer. More like I scaled backed my time commitment to it for a bit. But like Die Hard, I return with a vengeance. Four weeks ago, I started a SUPER AWESOME BIG TIME REWRITE (always all caps).

I'm talking a revamp as drastic as that DC Comics’ New 52 re-launch what got fan boys and girls all riled up this summer. (I’m mostly neutral in regards to all that, but I do think the new Harley Quinn costume sets a new bar for truly and gut-wrenchingly dreadful. Hopefully, in my rewrite, I’m making better changes than this.)

She used to be so adorably psychotic.

But I digress. Allow me to return to the point.

Contrary to the seemingly popular sentiment, I like rewriting. But this is my biggest rewrite yet (hence the all caps and use of the words “super” and “awesome” and “big time” to describe it). I thought I’d pulled off some major rewrites in the past. A couple of years ago I decided to switch a WIP from third person to first. Last year—or was it this year? It blurs!—I cut 26,000 words from another manuscript. And I thought, “Hey, that’s what I call some super awesome big time rewriting! Go, Cacy!”

Oh, how young and naive I was then.

Now I realize that I had no right to call snipping a few “just”s and “that”s from a manuscript a rewrite because this thing I’ve been working on is a stripped down, start from scratch, forget-everything-you’ve-already-written-and-re-written-(and-re-written-again), forget-that-full-length-manuscript-you-slaved-over-for-like-two-years-or-something-because-it’s-all-going-out-the-window type of rewrite.

Everything must go and anything that remains must change! The setting, the starting point, the relationships, shifting personal histories, adding a new major character, changing the sex of another. It’s chaos, chaos, chaos I’m telling you.

Chaos that has been mulled over and reasoned out before being implemented, that is.

It took me a long time to come to the point where I’m able to do this. I had to not look at and barely think about this particular story for five months. The changes I’m making come from ideas I’d had for good a long while, but I had been too close to the previous version. After all the work I had put into it, how could I entertain the idea of starting the whole process all over again. For the SAME story!

Do I look like a glutton for punishment?

What it really came down to was the fact that I love this story.

And no else one did. None of my readers. Not even my mom and she’s maternally obligated to love everything I write. The people I asked to read it liked it… Basically… In that, “Yeeeah…it was good” sort of way. But “Yeeeah…it was good” is not what I’m aiming for here. In fact, I’m pretty sure one reader didn’t even finish it.

I can take a hint.

Yes, I know. Opinions are subjective and they’re like armpits and all that, but when I really examined what I had completed (after not looking at it for months), I had to admit that it fell short for me too.

Dagnabit.

I remember one of my writing teachers saying, “Don’t be that guy who drags the same manuscript around to every conference for seven years trying to make it work. When it doesn’t work, let it go.”

That’s sound advice, but I just can’t let it go. Something about this manuscript compels me to keep at it. I return to it time after time. I really believe in these characters, I believe this story can be exciting and engaging, and I can’t give up on it.

And hey, if this rewrite turns out terribly, I still have all my old drafts on a flash drive.

SUPER AWESOME BIG TIME REWRITE: Do You Ever Get Freaked Out By What You're Writing?

I don't write horror. I barely read horror and probably only watch a horror movie every five years. I'm not a wimp. It's just that certain images, usually the unwanted ones, seem to stay in my head for. ev .er.

After watching The Ring (Yes, I know it's not as scary as the original Japanese version. That's why I haven't watched the original Japanese version) I didn't want to sleep in my own dorm room because my TV always glowed in the dark. (Seriously! It glowed!) So I spent the night at a friend's.


I don't think the scenes that I was working on at the end of last week are particularly scary. Mostly likely its a combination of the fact that A) when I write I often stay up into the wee small hours when the house and neighborhood are at its darkest and quietest and B) I recently read this creepy-ass Korean webcomic. (Crap! I just refreshed my memory of it when I looked up the link. I hope to appreciate the things I do for you! Also, read it at your own risk. Seriously.)

The first two nights after reading it, I stayed up until sunrise writing. I was really hungry but didn't go into the dark kitchen for food. I claim its because I was so very into those pages, but I know the truth. I didn't want the scary lady from the creepy-ass Korean webcomic sneaking up on me in the dark.

(cdcart.blogspot.com)

Kamsamnida, creepy-ass Korean webcomic creators. Kam-freaking-samnida.

But on the plus side, I wrote a combined 6,000 words those nights so maybe I really should thank whoever made that webcomic happen, and read/watch scary things more often whilst I'm at it.

Anyway, back to the scene was working on the other night. In it, my character deals with something really scary happening to her. As I writing, it's approaching 2 in the AM and I'm trying to get across how much the incident affected her (i.e. I'm writing about being scared) and I start remembering all the (few) creepy stuff I've read/seen in the last few years including the manga series featuring this subtle yet creepy tale. (Click on pic to read whole tale. P.S. Read it right to left, top to bottom.)


And pretty soon I'm too freaked to even read the words I'm writing. And let me tell you something, it's hard to type a scene with your eyes closed.

I was even freaked out by the cover of the Robert Johnson CD cover laying on my desk.

(Robert Johnson was an iconic blues man who, according to legend,
sold his soul to the devil in order to become an excellent musician.
This manga is a pretty excellent fictionalized account of his life.)

I decided to quit for the night and watch a slapstick 90s sitcom before I going to bed. Better to continue writing when the sun and people were up.

Maybe it's a sign of the writer doing something right when she's freaked out by her own words...or maybe I'm just a big wimp.

Probably the latter.