Decisions, Decisions; or How Do You Know When You're Doing It Right?

I'm about 3/4 of the way finished with my second draft of the first volume of the "Daughters of August Winterbourne" series. And in the course of editing, I've had to make some pretty tough decisions.

One decision I made just today was to delete a small section that was told from the POV of Nicholas Fletcher, the main character's love interest in the story. I really loved the section, and it ended with one of my favorite lines from the whole story:

As Sophie's Lightning sailed on through the night, Nicholas Fletcher tried to convince himself that it was the cold wind that brought tears to his eyes. He almost succeeded. Almost.

It's a great line, one that shows us a great deal about Nicholas' character, including the fact that he is not good at lying, even to himself.

However...at that point in the story, being in Nicholas' head would force me to reveal information that I was not yet prepared to reveal. It lessened the impact of a later reveal, one that is pivotal to the story. So in order for that bit to work, this bit had to go.

Editing is a difficult process, one that isn't made any easier by the fact that there are no signposts, no maps to point me in the right direction. Unlike the Sudoku game I have loaded on my computer, the text does not light up red to let me know when I've made an incorrect choice. It's all based on one of two things: My own instincts, and the advice of my critique group.

I'll write more on the second in a week or two, but let's talk about the first for a few minutes.

I found this quote today, and it really seemed to fit:

“Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words. “
--Mark Twain

How does one develop the instincts to know what changes to make, and which bits to leave alone? As with most skills, practice helps. I find that the more I edit, the easier it is to spot things that just don't belong in the story. For me, this happens on two levels: Whole scenes/subplots that aren't needed in order to tell the story, and lines or paragraphs within a scene. I may not get everything on the first pass--in fact, I'm guaranteed not to--but with each subsequent pass, I weed out a few more things.

For me, distance also helps. I don't know about anyone else, but when I finish a story, I'm convinced that if it's not the best thing ever written, then it's at least the best thing I've ever written. Every word is perfect. Nothing about it should ever be changed.

This is why I believe in letting things "settle" a bit before even attempting an edit. When I finish a story, I'm just too close to it. Depending on the story, I've spent the last several weeks or months eating, sleeping, and breathing this story. I've done my best to bring it to life, with characters and plots and consequences, oh my!

But after I've let it settle, it's easier to see that this bit of dialogue nearly duplicates that bit of dialogue over there, and that this scene is very cute and amusing, but does nothing to further the overall plot.

Sometimes, though, even after a story has had a chance to settle, it's not always easy to tell if the decisions I've made are the right ones. At the moment, I'm angsting about whether my story even starts in the right place. I currently begin the story with my main character, Celia Winterbourne, landing her father's airship on the eve of her departure for the Royal Academy of Science in Oxford. It's a great introduction to Celia and her father, August Winterbourne, and their airship, Sophie's Lightning. I've tweaked it such that it has at least some tension in it now. But is this really where the story begins? Or does it begin when she boards the train to Oxford the next morning? Or when she gets off the train a few hours later? Or is there some better place at which to begin the tale?

Sadly, I don't have the magical answer to that question. If I did, I would share, I promise.

In the meantime, the only advice I have to offer is this: Bits are cheap. If you are trying to decide between three possible points at which you could start your story, why not make three copies of it and try all three possibilities, then choose the one that works the best?

How do other people approach editing decisions?

In The Home Stretch; or Are We There Yet?

(I know, I know. This is actually last Thursday's posting, running a little late again. I'll try to do tomorrow's on time...)

So here I am, closing in on the end of my current Work In Progress, the second volume of the now four-volume Winterbourne trilogy. (I know. Shut up.) And, as usually happens at this point in a story, I just really really want to be done with it. I love these characters, love spending time with them, love making their lives ever-so-interesting. But even loving them as I do, there comes a time when I just want their story out of my head and down on paper (or at least in electronic bits), and to say that it is finished.

I want to spend a little time with some of my other stories and characters, and spend some time editing (because Inner Editor has been more-or-less on a leash since November, and she's getting REALLY cranky). So part of me is tempted to just get it done any old way, so I can set it aside for a while and use my few brain cells for other things for a few weeks.

But of course, the other part of me wants to get it right. I know it can (and will) be edited later, but I have to at least capture the essence of each scene, even if the details change. There are seeds I need to plant for later development, and I have to make sure I at least get them in there, even if I want to bury them a little deeper before the story sees the light of day. And one of the few remaining scenes I have to write is a confrontation between Celia Winterbourne and her father. There are reasons why the two sides are mutually incompatible, and no compromise can be reached. My challenge is to present it so that neither side appears to be totally unreasonable or overly emotional. Nor can either side appear to give in. (Yes, that "appear to" is very important.) At least not until the very final scene of the story.

So in some respects, I feel as though I still have a long way to go, while in others, I can almost reach out and touch the end of the long dark tunnel of this story. It makes me feel like a little kid in the back seat of my parents' station wagon again, asking every five minutes, "Are we there yet? Are we there yet?!"

And Mom keeps answering, "Five more minutes."

I just wish I could tell, at this point, whether it'll be worth the trip. Because, yes, I have also reached the point where I'm certain the entire story sucks and no one would ever want to read it. It happens. I'm aware that it happens. That doesn't keep it from happening.

What sorts of challenges do other people face in completing a story? Are endings easy or hard? Are we there yet?




(Anyone care to take a guess as to what the final word count for this story will be? Hint: > 150,000 words and < 200,000. Yes, really.)

Trust The Process; or, Sneaky Inner Editor Is Sneaky

Writing this week has been a bit of a struggle, and I think I've figured out why.

Now that the pressure of NaNoWriMo is off, I've slowed my pace a little, trying to avoid things like the 5,000 word info-dump airship description. I'm trying to be more analytical up front and figure out which scenes are really needed and which ones are not. I'm trying to be more careful in my word choices, in making sure to show not tell, in writing believable dialogue.

In other words, my Inner Editor has crept out of her box and taken over. And that spells disaster.

Why is this a problem, you ask? After all, if you're writing better stuff up front, that means less editing on the back end, right?

And that would be true...except that, in my case, the presence of Inner Editor during the writing phase usually stifles the story to such an extent that there might not ever be a back end, because I'll never get it finished. So that doesn't really help any, either.

Still, my first instinct is to try not to produce another 275,000 word behemoth. Those are just difficult to deal with. Especially when cutting them into two more reasonably-sized pieces simply doesn't work.

But then, on the same day, I found two articles that made me re-think that decision.

The first was an article in the Irish Times, where the author was privileged to sit in on a writing workshop with author Terry Pratchett. You really should go and read the whole thing, but I'll post the bit that got my attention here.

At the end of the workshop, Mr. Pratchett listed his three secrets of writing the perfect book. The third one was the one that caught my attention:


“First draft: let it run. Turn all the knobs up to 11. Second draft: hell. Cut it down and cut it into shape. Third draft: comb its nose and blow its hair. I usually find that most of the book will have handed itself to me on that first draft. I don’t know how. It has to do with my subconscious – the subconscious of someone who’s been doing it for a long time."

It sounds like good advice. Let it run, and turn all the knobs up to 11. Cutting into shape can happen later.

And then I found Delia Sherman's blog entry on "How To Survive A First Draft". It's another good read, and you should go and do just that. But this was the bit that seemed to be calling out to me:

"3) Bull on through regardless, throwing words at the wall in the hope that some will stick. One member of my writing group, when writing her first draft, writes scenes that seem to happen in Real Time, in which the characters sit around cooking dinner or mending harness while talking about the weather or the crops or their love lives for PAGES AND PAGES, which is fun for us to read, but not ultimately useful to the plot or the structure of the novel...She doesn't rewrite them until she's finished the draft, at which point they either disappear or get so completely rewritten that maybe only the setting and one line of dialogue survive from the original. She finds writing them immensely useful, though, however seemingly inefficient, for getting to know characters, for creating an atmosphere or details of her world."

Wow. Yes, that's actually what I seem to do, too. I write about things in nauseating detail, things I know aren't needed for the final draft. But writing scenes and details like these are what helps me to find the heart of the story. And therefore, practical or not, I need to just tell Inner Editor to sit down, shut up, and wait her turn.

(By the way, when you go read that blog entry, don't forget to scroll down and read the comments, because there is wisdom to be found there as well. Like this little gem from Ellen Kushner: "...we sometimes criticize books that are *too* tightly-written as being "only the Good Parts version" . . . . My friends, do not fear Dialogue! and Description! and Mood and Scene-Setting and.....!")

So what it all comes down to is that I need to keep reminding myself to Trust The Process. Write the draft now, edit it later. Give the characters room to breathe, and they will help me find the missing heart to the story. Editing can -- and will -- come later.

Do other people have trouble trusting the process? Is it possible to make changes to the process and still have it work?

NaNoWriMo, Week 1; or, The Battle Begins

This week finds me already deep in the throes of National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, or as some prefer to think of it, the time of year when tens of thousands of normally sane people abandon their grasp on reality and decide to do something irrational, like write a 50,000 word novel in thirty days.

I am, once again, among their numbers. I think I've reached the point where it would seem strange not to be pounding away at the keyboard while munching on the leftover Halloween candy, and trying to plan Thanksgiving so as to maximize the writing time I have available.

I love the first week of NaNoWriMo. I love crawling out of bed a little early each morning to try to get a scene written before work (though some days that goes better than others), and gulping down my lunch as quickly as I can so I can crack open the netbook and pound out a few more words, then stopping to grab supper on the way home so I can eat quickly and get back to the keyboard. All of those movies and TV shows in the To Be Watched pile will just have to wait until December. (Thank goodness we finished up The Man From U.N.C.L.E. last month!)

As I've mentioned previously, this year I'm working on the sequel to last year's story, "The Daughters of August Winterbourne." Until just a few hours ago, the title wasn't any more imaginative than "The Daughters of August Winterbourne, Book Two," but now I've added a subtitle: "The Skies of War." I think it's still more of a working title, and it may be that that is a more suitable title for the third book in the planned trilogy. And of course, it means I need to go back and come up with a subtitle for the first book at some point.

Book One was written mostly as a tight third-person POV around Celia Winterbourne, the main character of the story. There were a few digressions into other points of view here and there, but Celia carried the main body of the narrative.

This year, I'm trying something a little different. I'm planning to alternate between Celia's POV and that of her love interest, Nicholas Fletcher. I've rarely done a male POV character in the past, so I hope I can pull it off. Thus far, Nicholas appears to be an easy character to write, though he is a bit prone to info-dumping. I'm letting him have at it for the time being, but I've already earmarked a few passages for later trimming.

For example, does the audience really care that the Tarmanian language is a combination of Hungarian, various Slavic languages, all with a little Mongolian thrown in, and that it has two distinct dialects, High and Low Tarmanian? Nicholas seems to think so, but I'm not so certain. It does, at least, explain why anyone would have difficulty learning it, but perhaps that level of detail isn't necessary. Still, as they say, write now, edit later.

Which is always my biggest challenge with NaNoWriMo: Keeping my inner editor leashed and out of the way. It's especially difficult for me this year because I was working on edits to Book One right up until the beginning of November. Switching from "edit-head" to "writer-head" is always a challenge for me. After some discussion, we seem to have come to an uneasy truce: She's allowed to contribute to the process, but only if she adds to the word count, or at least does not cause it to decrease. If she really insists, we can highlight a section in yellow to indicate that it will be deleted later; and of course, if she thinks of something that really ought to be added, that's quite all right. We'll see how that works out.

Meanwhile, while I've done a pretty good job of keeping on pace so far, I've only written about 600 words today, so I have another thousand to go before I sleep. I'd better get with it.

Happy NaNoing!

It's October 14, Do You Know Where Your Plot Is; or, NaNoWriMo, Coming Soon

I looked at my calendar today and felt a rush of panic mingled with a dose of anticipation.

It's October 14.

Which means that NaNoWriMo is just over two weeks away.

And I don't know where my plot is.

Now, this is not as bad as it could be. For instance, on October 14, 2006, I hadn't even heard of National Novel Writing Month (a.k.a. NaNoWriMo). And yet, November 1 found me pounding away at the keyboard of my laptop. November 30 had me well over the 50,000 word "finish line," and before Christmas, I'd brought my first NaNoNovel in at right around 100,000 words.

The problem is that back then, I didn't really have a goal, other than writing a novel. But this year, my plan is to try to write the second book of the Celia Winterbourne trilogy. And I don't know what happens in this book.

All right. I know a few things. I know that it starts with Celia sitting high in a tree, looking down over a gypsy encampment, on what should have been her wedding day. And I'm pretty sure that it ends in an airship over the Atlantic Ocean. I even know a few of the things that need to happen in between. (For a look at those, check out my story synopsis on the NaNoWriMo website.)

What has me in a panic is that I'm not sure what the story arc needs to be for this middle book in the series. I have a much better idea of the story arc for the third book, but it's not time to write that yet -- especially since things that happen in the second book will affect the plot of the third. At the moment, I'm worried that this second book will end up feeling like nothing more than a placeholder, a place to kill time while waiting for the third book to happen. There needs to be a satisfying amount of action and character growth to make the story worth telling.

I suppose I just need to knuckle down, shove Inner Editor back into her dungeon for the month, and keep reminding myself to write first and edit later. But that's not always the easiest thing in the world to do.

I also don't want a repeat of NaNoWriMo 2008, where I decided to write the sequel to my 2006 NaNoNovel. That year, I didn't finish until March, and when I did, I was left with a 280,000 word behemoth that I still haven't figured out what to do with (except, perhaps, to print it up and use it as a really effective doorstop).

On the other hand, maybe if I have fewer story details going in, I'll have an easier time bringing the story in at a reasonable length. (I'm still trying to trim the first book down from its original 186,000 word length -- so far, I've cropped 11,000 words out of it!)

So is anyone else attempting NaNoWriMo this year? Or have you set some other writing goals for yourself?

(p.s. For anyone who is doing NaNoWriMo and hasn't already done so, my NaNo handle is arwensouth, if you'd like to add me to your buddies list.)

(p.p.s. Did anyone fall off their chair because I actually posted this on Thursday for a change?)

Finding The Path; or, Which Way From Here?

The Internet is a big and wonderful place, full of websites that are helpful, useful, or just plain strange. It's like a library that's hyped up on caffeine, speed, hallucinogens, and maybe a rum-and-coke, all at once. Anything you want to know how to do, just ask the Internet. Someone, somewhere, will have advice for you. Probably several someones.

So it's not surprising that when you're an aspiring author, the Internet has plenty of advice to offer. "Success will be yours," says site after site, "if you only do this one very important thing."

The problem is, no one can agree on what that one thing is. Some say, "Find your voice." Others say, "Write every day." Still others say things like, "Write only what you're passionate about," "Eschew adverbs and dialogue tags," and "There is no good writing; there is only bad writing and good rewriting."

Can all of these helpful, well-meaning, earnest advice givers be right? Well, yes, they can -- just not all of them, for everyone. Each one has found his or her golden rule, the one thing that works best for them. The problem is that what works fabulously well for one person can result in utter failure for another.

This is because, as I am finding, no two writers are alike. They don't work alike, they don't think alike, and they sure as heck don't write the same way. So one writer might swear by outlines, while another is stifled by them. One might write a nearly-perfect first draft, while another depends more on mad editing skills to turn a sloppy first draft into something magical.

So what I -- and every writer on the face of the Earth -- have to do is to winnow through the piles and heaps of writing advice out there on the Internet in an attempt to find the path that works for me. When I've done that, I can share what I've learned with others, all the while fully aware that my Holy Grail is another person's Sinkhole of Despair.

One of the things I'm learning about myself is that it is possible for me to read and try to follow too much advice all at once. The symptoms of that are pretty clear: Inner Editor picks the lock of that cage I keep her in and hovers over my keyboard, questioning every word choice, every punctuation mark. "Because if you write the first draft carefully enough," she murmurs seductively, "you don't have to go back and do as much editing. Look at all the time that will save!"

And yes, it's true. If it really did work that way, I could save a lot of time. But what is more likely to happen -- and is, in fact, what has happened with my current WIP -- is that the story stalls out, too self-conscious to continue. Inner Editor is trying to make me follow all of the advice at once. And it's just not working.

So maybe it's time to step back from all of those enticing Twitter feeds, the ones with siren-like links to article after article about how to better one's writing skills. Maybe it's time to lock the Inner Editor back into her clean, comfortable cage for the time being and get some writing done.

Maybe I need to focus on what works for me, for now.

Anyone else suffering from advice overload? Anyone else have an Inner Editor who's been getting a little too sassy lately?

Edit Head vs. Writer Head; or, Shifting Gears

One thing that I've discovered about myself is that it's very difficult for me to be editing one piece while writing another. I think it's because when I'm writing, I have to work so very hard to keep my inner editor leashed that when I finally let her out she wants to edit everything in sight. {sigh, yes, including this blog entry...}

I've been in "edit-head", as I call it, for the past couple of months, trying to trim some of the fat from a Regency romance I wrote a couple of years ago. The good news is that I snipped out about 42,000 words, which is a significant accomplishment. The bad news is that the story still stands at about 189,000 words -- which is, unfortunately, about 89,000 words too many for a historical romance. However, I'm told by someone who has read both versions that the new version is much improved. That's encouraging. Now if only I could find a publisher or agent who thinks a 750 page romance novel would work!

The past few weeks, however, I've been desperately trying to switch back to "writer head" so I can get to work on my summer writing challenge. So far, I've only had limited success, especially since my summer challenge involves writing short stories. It's much easier when I'm writing a novel to tell myself that I can wait until I've finished to go back and reread and start making changes. But when my current work-in-progress is only about twelve pages long, it's hard not to go back and tweak and tighten and question every single word. And that makes it hard to get more writing done.

To make matters more complicated, I'd really like to dive in and give my latest novel, The Daughters of August Winterbourne, a first edit before November rolls around and I get to work on the sequel. And I'm going to want to start on that before the end of summer. Which means I'll probably be trying to write and edit at the same time. I'm not entirely certain my head won't explode.

Incidentally (and perhaps not too surprisingly), moving from writer-head to edit-head usually isn't that much of a challenge. It's just going back that gives me fits.

So does anyone else have problems switching between editing and writing (or vice-versa)? What strategies (if any) have you developed to make it easier to shift gears?

Letting The Story Flow

Sometimes, I hate my inner editor.

Right now, she's giving me all kinds of grief, because she's reasonably certain that about 3/4 of the last 40,000 words I've written on my WIP, The Daughters of August Winterbourne, are totally unnecessary and should just be deleted now. Right now. Before I go any further.

She's probably right about the fact that they need to be deleted, or at least condensed, but the problem is this: Each of the sections she wants me to delete contains at least a small nugget of plot detail that's important. Some of these can be moved to or combined with other scenes, but until I've written the whole story, I won't know for sure which ones can be moved where, and which ones need to remain.

Part of the problem is that I did something totally out-of-character for me and posted a couple of chapters of my first draft to my WorldCon critique group. The feedback was overall very positive, with the biggest criticism being the story's pacing (which I've noted a couple of times is very lackadaisical and needs to be tightened up), so there weren't any surprises there.

The problem is that the sample I posted, while largely unedited (I did go through and correct spelling/grammar errors and take a stab at getting out the excess commas), was actually remarkably clean and tight for a first draft. So now Inner Editor keeps pointing at it and saying, "Don't you think the rest of the story should meet this standard?"

Well, that would be nice, but when I try to do that, it interrupts the flow of the story. Sometimes you just have to dare to suck. Sometimes you have to leave in the three-paragraph scene where nothing much really happens until you're sure you don't need it. Sometimes the dialogue in this Victorian-era story is going to sound way too twenty-first-century, at least on the first pass.

The point is to get the story down on paper (or at least, stored away in computer bits) first. It can be primped, tidied, pared and prettied later. But if I spend all of my brain power trying to do all of that as I go, I'll flail around forever and never get it done.

So:

Dear Inner Editor,

Please shut up. NOW. Your turn comes later. Thank you.

Sincerely,
Me

--:--:--:--:--:--:--:--:--:--

And since I found a good one on Twitter, I'm going to close with an inspirational quote, this one from Nancy Springer. If you're not familiar with her work, you should be; she has a way of writing a male lead that will make you fall heartbreakingly in love with him every time. I want to write like her when I grow up.

My two favorites of hers are Larque on the Wing and Metal Angel. Go find them and read them (you may have to hunt down used copies on abebooks.com). You won't be sorry. You should also be following her on Twitter (NancySpringer). Lots of good writing advice.

Anyway, today on Twitter, she writes:

"Don't let the success of others get you down; don't compare. Go where the joy is. Know what your writing means to YOU."

It's so simple, so obvious, yet so hard to do: Go where the joy is.

I'm going to try. How about you?