Shanna Swendson's Blog, page 127

Popping Back In

I survived the week of music and art camp. Actually, it wasn't that bad. The kids I had were pretty sweet. I had a couple of girls on Monday who looked like they might be problems -- they brought their own toys and refused to participate in any of the activities -- but one of them threw a hysterical hissy fit when her mom dropped her and her friend off the next day, and her mom gave up and took them home and they didn't come back. That made life much easier. I only had a few boys, and they were really into the stuff we were doing, so they were no trouble at all. It was just a tiring week because I had to get up early and then was on my feet and active all morning, including about half an hour outside on the playground when it was really hot. That was draining.

Now I need to finish the story revisions on the book (should get that done today) and then do all the stuff I need to do to get ready for my WorldCon trip next week. I've done the shopping and errands and I have most of my promo stuff ready (that's work I do while watching Olympics). I just need to figure out and practice what to do for a reading and then do all the laundry, packing, cleaning, and prep work.

If you're going to be at WorldCon in Kansas City, here's where I'll be. Yes, I'll be very busy.

Which means I'd better get to work and wrap up this book so I can do everything else.

Taking a Break

I'm gearing up for a birthday weekend that will mostly be spent working. I'm nearly halfway through this round of revisions, but I've hit the serious rewriting point, so it will slow down, and then next week I'll be out Monday through Thursday mornings, so my schedule will likely be off, and we start choir again next week.

I'm also going to take a brief blogging hiatus. Next week, I likely won't be posting Monday through Thursday. I'll pop back in on Friday for a pre-WorldCon post, and then I'm not sure what I'll do while I'm out of town for WorldCon. It's hard to keep up a regular schedule. I'll be doing more posts to Twitter and Facebook, I imagine. I think I'll take a longer break on writing posts, resuming those in September. I haven't taken that many blogging breaks in more than a decade, so it may be good to regroup and refresh myself, especially as I ponder the value of my various communication and marketing activities.

Meanwhile, it's Olympics time, and I'm not too excited. I feel like we just did this in London. How could that have been four years ago? I may watch part of the gymnastics. I don't know about even the opening ceremonies, since there's something else I want to watch opposite it. I just don't have the brain space to absorb all that stuff right now. I have too many fictional worlds competing for space in my head.

And watch me get caught up in all the hype as soon as it starts ...

Fixing the Story

I made it through the first quarter of the book in revisions yesterday. At this stage, I'm just fixing the story. I'll worry about the words later. So far, I've cut an entire chapter's worth of material. I cut a huge chunk of chapter two and a huge chunk of chapter three, and now what's left of both chapters is the new chapter two. I imagine I'll be adding at least a chapter's worth of new material in the middle to make up for it. There are a couple of characters I introduced, then forgot about, and then they became important at the end, so I need to incorporate them more throughout so they don't just reappear out of nowhere at the end.

Today starts the hard part. I don't think I'll make it through that many pages because a lot of it will be new writing, and that will require a lot of figuring things out. Still, if I can average about a couple of chapters a day, I'll get this round of rewrites done before WorldCon.

I've already made my Epic List of Stuff That Must Be Done Before WorldCon, with targeted dates. The list doesn't look as bad as I feared it would, but then there are a couple of items on there (like finishing revisions) that require several hours a day from now until then. And I keep adding items to the list as they occur to me (the reason I keep a list). The idea of making the list so soon is that I can start dealing with little things or make sure I'm on top of big things so that departure is as stress-free as possible. That's going to be tough when I'm working on a book at the same time. Someday, I'll get the hang of mixing life with writing books, but for now it seems like I'm all or nothing -- when I'm working on a book, nothing else happens.

For instance, my harp practice has really fallen by the wayside. I only seem to touch the harp when I have to go upstairs and reset the modem and wireless router for my daily Internet outage (funny, those AT&T Internet commercials about how terrible it is when the Internet is down are a fairly accurate representation of my experience with AT&T Internet. Either I have a bad modem or their service crashes at least once a day and requires rebooting everything). I play the harp while I'm waiting for everything to reset.

Now to start thinking of how to fix the rest of this book …

Magic Space Rollerblades

I read through the first half or so of the new book yesterday, and my instincts about what I'd likely need to cut were pretty much on target. I'll be cutting a lot of scenes out of the beginning and then beefing up the middle. In "hero's journey" terms, the Crossing the First Threshold part comes way too late in the book. I extended the "refusal of the call" for too long. It needs to be somewhat substantial because it's a big threshold to cross, but probably not five chapters worth. And I need to change the opening scene because it's kicked off by something that I thought would be important in the book but that I didn't end up using all that much.

After that much reading and thinking, my brain shut down. I guess I was still in convention recovery mode. So I took a shower, put on my pajamas and watched a brainless movie -- Jupiter Ascending. I'd recorded it off HBO a month or so ago, but there was a glitch in the recording that seemed to cut off the ending, and I knew it wasn't just the movie having an odd ending because it cut straight to the technical part of the credits, skipping the stuff about director, writer, and cast. Since I'd zoned out midway through the movie, I found another showing and had the DVR grab it.

And it still didn't make much sense. It was kind of like they found script pages from various other movies and stuck them together. The visuals were pretty spectacular, and the cast was full of "what are these people doing in this movie?" kind of actors, but the script was basically a stereotypical bad YA novel that borrows heavily from other films. It starts out as The Terminator, only our heroine is a maid instead of a waitress and she's being stalked by alien assassins instead of a killer robot from the future. And she faints and has to be carried away by the hot soldier sent to save her instead of running away with him. Actually, she gets carried around a lot. I guess it makes for a romantic visual with her in the arms of the beefy guy who has magic space rollerblades, but it really adds to the sense of the damsel in distress. There are some bits that make me think of Signs. Then we have the brief Princess Diaries interlude, followed by the segment right out of the movie Brazil (including a cameo by the director of that movie -- perhaps an attempt to avoid a lawsuit?), and then we have some Phantom Menace costuming, and then the part I never seem to manage to watch because at that point in the film I feel compelled to read Facebook, and then there's a dash of Revenge of the Sith mixed with The Empire Strikes Back, and then I don't even know. Maybe some Xanadu? It's a good thing I didn't see this in the theater because I was compelled to blurt out the obvious lines from the scenes that were being borrowed.

I can't really recommend this movie, but at the same time, you really kind of have to see it. Turn off the sound and play some good classical music and use it to facilitate daydreaming. It could be like a kind of meditation because it's certainly good for emptying your mind.

Unfortunately, I was too tired to use it for good brainstorming background, and I still need to come up with a new opening scene. Hmm, what other brainlessness does HBO have to offer?

A Between-Conventions Phase

A lot has happened since my last post. I finished the book (yay!!!!!). Today I start on revisions, which I hope to finish before WorldCon. I went to ArmadilloCon, which was a fun trip. I think this convention has become more of a writing-oriented convention rather than a fan-oriented one, which requires some adjusting of expectations. It isn't necessarily where you go to promote yourself to fans, but it is a good place to go to network with other writers and pick up new info about the industry. That networking can lead to promotional opportunities, but it's definitely not a "buy my book!" and meet with your fans kind of event.

I have two weeks before WorldCon, and next week is Music and Art Camp at church, so it will be a busy two weeks. I may take it somewhat easy today and focus on re-reading and making revision plans. I had to go out this morning to pick up my new glasses, so I went ahead and also got groceries. Now I can hibernate and rest for the remainder of the week, since this trip was rather exhausting.

The time while I was there was quite pleasant, though. I'm not sure quite how it happened that way, but I ended up with a corner room that had a balcony. I ate my breakfast out there in the mornings and spent a lot of time sitting out there in the afternoons and evenings. I'm now having to adjust to being back home and not being brought orange juice in the morning and ice and water in the evening. But it's not just me missing the hotel. They sent me an e-mail this morning saying they missed me. Aww, it's mutual.

But now it's back to my usual routine and work and getting ready for my next trip.

Writing Fast

I have about an hour's worth of work to go on this draft, and that means I'll have finished a full-length draft of an approximately 90,000 word novel in about a month. And I didn't even work every day. I had a few slack-off days in the middle. Because I love analysis, I figure it's worth thinking about what worked so I can replicate it. If I can do this kind of production, I can keep up a good, steady publication schedule. So, what did I do differently this time?

Oddly, I didn't outline. I had a few high points planned and I'd done research relating to some topics I used, but otherwise, this was pure pantsing like I've never really done before, making it up as I went and sometimes being surprised by where my imagination took me. It helps there that I'm working with very familiar characters in a world I've already developed, and I'm picking up bits and pieces of things I've already set up. I don't think I could do this sort of thing with a new series. But it's been a lot of fun just seeing where the story took me. I'll probably have to do a lot of revision to go back and set up the things that occurred to me later in the story, but I end up having to do a lot of revision no matter how much I outline, so I'm not sure that the obsessive plotting is a big timesaver for me.

Another odd thing was that I did this while having wi-fi at home. I resisted for years because I was afraid it would kill my productivity, and apparently it hasn't. I think in a sense it's helped because I can multitask my goofing off. If I can play around online while watching TV, then that's more time I have during working hours, and I'm less tempted then.

But I think another related thing that helped was that I've been forcing myself to be aware of my own bad habits. I have a tendency to put off starting to write or going back to writing when I've taken a break by doing what I think of as "doom looping." That's when I get caught in a cycle of checking e-mail, checking social media, then going back around to the things I just checked to see if there's anything new. But since there isn't much new in the two minutes since I last checked, I'm more inclined to read things I otherwise wouldn't and get lost in rabbit trails. The first time through, I skim through things friends have posted and only follow links that are business-related or of extremely high interest. The second time through, I'll read things that might be of interest but that aren't urgent, like "23 ways to organize your house." By the third or fourth loop, I'm so desperate for new content that I'll click on "You won't believe what happens when this baby sees this puppy." So, the moment I'm about to click on something that's not highly relevant to my work or major interests, I tell myself that I'm doom looping and get to work.

Something that's helped with that is starting my work session for the day with a sprint. I generally do my marketing and business stuff in the morning and write in the afternoon and evening, but my start time in the afternoon often gets delayed because I go online to check my e-mail, start doom looping, and then an hour or so later I still haven't done anything. So I've started setting a firm start time right after lunch, with no checking anything (unless maybe there's something I've been expecting and will need to deal with), and then working for about an hour/writing ten pages without a break. That means I get about half my daily minimum done (I aim for at least 20 pages a day) before I usually would have started work, and then I have some momentum going for getting the rest done. After that, I tend to work in half-hour bursts with breaks to get up and move in between. As a result, I've surpassed my usual daily minimums without feeling like I'm spending that much more actual time working. I am putting in more time writing, but it's in the same amount of time "in the office," so to speak.

Something that may or may not play a role in all this is that I've been watching what I eat during this time, mostly because there were summer clothes I got out this year that didn't quite fit right. So this summer I've been trying to avoid sweets and snacks and eating a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables and drinking a lot of water. I have a lot more energy and haven't needed a lot of caffeine, and that seems to have translated into me getting more done in the afternoon without the usual midday slump.

Now we'll see how revisions go, but I'd like to try this again and boost my output. More books published more frequently means not only more stuff available to sell, but more sustained visibility, and since I'm publishing most of this stuff myself, I can put out as many books a year as I can write.

Making Antagonists Interesting

I'm continuing the discussion on how to write interesting antagonists. In the previous post on this topic, I griped about the tendency to "woobify" villains -- giving them a sad backstory that excuses their villainy. But if you're not going fall into that trope, how do you make villains and antagonists interesting? Here are some things to try:

1) Do some research
Whether you're writing an antagonist who's an annoying co-worker or a supervillain who wants to take over the world, you can find relevant references that will help you depict this character in a three-dimensional, realistic way. The self-help, family relationships, and business sections of libraries and bookstores are full of books on dealing with difficult people. These books give examples of difficult behaviors and their impact on others, get into how and why these people behave that way, and give tips for how to deal with them. You can get a lot of great material on dealing with annoying family members, backstabbing co-workers, and manipulative frenemies. In the psychology section, you'll find books on more serious personality disorders that can manifest in evil ways. Can you think of a figure from history or current events who has a parallel to the character you're writing? Read a biography, autobiography, or memoir of that person. The parallel doesn't have to be an antagonist type. Even a person who has had a positive impact on the world can have personality aspects that could have turned things in a darker direction if the person had made different choices or had lived in different circumstances, or if you're looking at the situation from the perspective of this person's opponent. Doing this kind of research reading is a good way to break away from the more typical "villain" tropes, and getting close to real life, especially with more ordinary antagonists, makes readers more likely to identify with the protagonists' struggles with these people.

2) Create a more detailed backstory
You can think of past events in your antagonist's life without falling into the "woobie" villain trope. Don't hinge the character's evil on one pivotal event. There's usually a continuum of events that led this person down the path to where she is when your story starts. This is where your research might pay off, if in studying real people you've learned some of the things that might create a villain. You don't have to put all (or even any) of this into the book itself, but knowing this information will affect how you see and write the character. Also remember that it's not the events themselves that turn people down the wrong path. What's most important is the way the person responds to those events, the choices she makes when faced with traumas or obstacles. Another person faced with those same life events might make different choices and go in a different direction. And that brings me to …

3) Find a connection or parallel to your protagonist
This doesn't mean that every antagonist has to turn out to secretly be the hero's father, long-list sister, or former mentor. Sometimes that close connection can raise emotional stakes, but it's not a requirement and has become something of a cliche. But you can show how different choices can lead in different directions by giving your hero and villain a similar background with very different outcomes. The Harry Potter series did a good job of that by showing that Tom Riddle/Voldemort and Harry had very similar backgrounds as unloved and abused orphans who didn't discover that they were magical until they were invited to Hogwarts. But the way they responded to these events was very different. Voldemort craved power over others as a way of compensating for his powerless childhood, while Harry craved love and family and found that in Hogwarts. That gave them an interesting dynamic, as each had an opponent who probably understood him better than anyone else. Voldemort could manipulate Harry because he understood him on a certain level, but at the same time, there was a lot about Harry that he didn't understand at all because Harry had made such very different choices along the way.

4) Think of your antagonist as a character, not just as "the bad guy"
When you're researching your antagonist and coming up with that detailed backstory, don't just think about the "villain" aspects of the character. What else is going on in this person's life? Do the kind of character development you might for any other character. What kind of clothes does he wear? Does he have any traits or mannerisms? What kind of food does she like? What does she love? What kind of home does he live in? What does she do for fun when she's not villaining? Does she have friends? What do they think about her? What about pets? What does he do after a long day of villaining? Throw in one or two unexpected things that don't come from the usual list of villain tropes to keep things interesting. You don't necessarily have to show the villain coming home, changing into sweats, and curling up on the sofa to watch the Hallmark channel with a cup of cocoa (I'm totally going to have to write that), but the more vivid a picture you have of this character, the more vivid your writing of this person will be.

Procrastination Escapes

I got a good start on the week yesterday, getting in not only the pages I needed to stay on schedule, but also a few more, so I can do less on Thursday. Right now, I'm down to doing my normal quota on Thursday instead of a little extra, and I hope to go over a bit today so that Thursday I can do even less. Today I took care of most of my pre-trip errands, but I'll need time Thursday for last-minute errands, packing, and getting the house clean enough that I won't recoil in horror when I return home.

And I guess I need to find something to read at the con, and put together some promo stuff, and think my way through the panels I'm moderating.

But I will prevail! I'm at the fun part of the book, so it should go quickly from here on out. I already know I'm going to need to add more funny stuff in the next draft. That's one of the harder parts of this particular series. There's humor in everything I write because I can't help myself, but so far none of it but the Enchanted, Inc. series has been specifically labeled "humor" or "comedy." So if there's a funny line or two, then great, but I don't feel required to plan to include any comic set pieces or humorous riffs. In this series, though, it's kind of a requirement. Something laugh-out-loud funny needs to happen because that's one reason people read these books. That does usually come in a later draft when I can look at the scenes and see what I can do with them, so it's not time to panic yet.

I'll panic after I finish the first draft.

The latest procrastination method has been researching a hypothetical vacation. The other night, I was watching something on TV in which the characters were sitting on the outside deck of a restaurant, overlooking a river, having drinks. Suddenly that looked exactly like something I wanted to do. I got sidetracked looking up places I could go, checking airfares and hotel possibilities, etc. It would have to be a quick getaway, either Labor Day weekend or the weekend after, and since I could only do a couple of days, it wouldn't make sense to go very far away. I had it narrowed down between San Antonio and Chicago, and then I figured it might be wise to wait until after WorldCon because I might not want to travel again at that point. I could get some of that effect sipping tea on the patio outside the coffee shop adjacent to the library or there's a spot nearby in my city that I think has a waterside bar or two. Or I guess I could take a glass of wine to the end of my block and sit by the canal. Later in the year, when I wouldn't burst into flames upon stepping outside (I endure summer).

In the Home Stretch

I've reached the 3/4 mark of this book, with about 100 pages to go (if the plot cooperates). That means that if I write 25 pages a day this week, I can finish this draft before ArmadilloCon. Then the con weekend can be my between-drafts palate-cleansing break, and then when I get back I can dive into the major surgery revisions. I'd like to finish those in the two weeks before WorldCon, which can be my break before I do editing/polishing and proofreading. This may be the fastest first draft I've ever done for a book this length. I may have writtenone of my category romances in about that time, but it was only 50,000 words. Otherwise, I believe Once Upon Stilettos was done in something like 5-6 weeks. And then it took me months to revise. I haven't re-read what I've written, so I don't know how heavy the revisions on this one will be. I know of some tweaking I want to do, and there's a character who'll need to be better established to set up something I want to do with her. There are also some scenes I'll need to amp up or flesh out, and probably some scenes that need to be trimmed or cut entirely (I suspect I've got a lot of Plotting on Paper in this book, where the characters discuss possible things they could do so that I can figure out what they will do).

Then I'll spend September playing with a new idea to see if it's viable. In October, I'm hoping to dive into the next Rebel Mechanics book.

Speaking of which … the hardcover edition of Rebel Magisters is now available at both Amazon and Barnes & Noble (and through other places, like the Ingram catalog, for library purchases). It's part of the overall book listing, so if you click on the book, it will show the formats that are available. I'm hoping to have news of audio soon.

In other news … I saw the new Star Trek movie this weekend, and I think I liked it better than the other ones in the reboot series. I'm still iffy on the concept of the reboot, and there were a few lines and scenes that were on a fine line between "homage" and "parody," with a set of scenes that were straight out of fanfic. But in general, it felt a lot more like classic Star Trek than the previous two films did.

Though, to be honest, I was far more excited by the new trailer for Rogue One, the new Star Wars movie. That looks like it's going to be so much fun.

And now off to get my 25 pages written. I'm going to try to get more than that to lighten my load for Thursday so I can deal with packing and preparation and get to bed early.

The Geek Double Standard

I spent the morning buying new glasses. I've had more or less the same prescription -- not changing enough to make enough difference to bother with new glasses -- for about fifteen years, and have had the current glasses for almost 11 years. At my eye exam yesterday, my prescription changed the tiniest amount that it could change, and I figured that was a good excuse to update my glasses. That also gives me the chance to get bifocals, but with the reading part blank. I only wear glasses to drive or watch TV, or when I'm out of the house. I don't need them for anything else, but I've reached a point where I can't wear them to read. I've been taking them off to read, or else I've been looking under them, but that's kind of a pain, and my doctor suggested the bifocals as a way to get a similar benefit without having to take the glasses off (that's what she has). Now I have to wait about 10 days for them to come in.

But shopping for glasses, and realizing that the geek chic frames don't work on my face, made me think of another movie/TV trope involving women, in light of my earlier discussion about the creepy behavior. It's what I call the Geek Double Standard.

In movies/TV shows with a geeky male hero or major character, he's probably fallen madly in love with some beautiful supermodel type woman, often without her having anything in common with him, or with him not even knowing enough about her to know whether she has anything in common with him. This is portrayed as romantic, and we're supposed to cheer for him, even when he engages in creepy behavior in pursuit of her -- sabotaging or interrupting her dates with other men, stalking her, hacking into her online accounts to learn more about her, spying on her, etc. Often, she ends up finding this charming and falls in love with him. If she doesn't, she's portrayed as shallow and bitchy for rejecting him. The only reason given why she might possibly be rejecting him is his geeky appearance. Apparently, not being into stalkers or wanting a man to have something in common with her aren't even considered as possibilities. Even if she is rejecting him because of his geeky appearance, it's okay for him to be into her because she's beautiful, but it's terrible and shallow of her to not be into him because he's not conventionally attractive.

On the other hand, if a geeky female has any romantic interest in any man, it's played for laughs. She's depicted as a pathetic loser. It's especially bad if her interest is in an attractive, heroic type, but even if she's after a fellow geek who has a lot of things in common with her, she's shown to be an annoyance to him. She might get in the way of his pursuit of the supermodel, I guess. He's not depicted as being shallow for not being receptive to her advances because of her appearance. The only way she can get any man is to take off her glasses, let her hair down, wear makeup, and dress up in sexy clothes.

I will give the original Ghostbusters some credit in not falling into this trap. Sigourney Weaver's character was never portrayed as being an awful person for not being into her geeky neighbor or for initially resisting Bill Murray (they just forgot to show the transition between her not being impressed with him and her falling in love with him). Though they did sort of portray Janine's interest in Egon as pathetic, even though he was nerdier than she was.