Catherine Fitzsimmons's Blog: Jinxed, page 20

December sketches

Thank you to everyone who signed up for the Goodreads book giveaway. If you’re still interested in a copy of Halcyon, ebooks are available from Amazon and most major ebook retailers for $2.99, or you can pick it up direct from Smashwords. (Or better still, print copies are available through Brain Lag for $12.99.)

Without NaNoWriMo looming over my head anymore, I’ve actually been inspired enough to pick up pencil and paper lately and try to get some drawings out of my mind. Alas, I forget how much work it is to draw specific scenes – or how overambitious my ideas tend to be – and I’ve not yet found the motivation or patience to flesh out these rough sketches more.

Still, because I have enjoyed drawing them, here’s what I have been working on lately. I apologize for the poor photo quality – as well as the poor drawing quality – but spontaneity is of the essence in this case. (And perhaps some public shaming will help me gain enough interest to put the work into improving them.)

Halcyon giveaway on Goodreads

I’m giving away a copy of my latest book Halcyon on Goodreads. Enter now for your chance to win. Hurry, the contest ends Saturday! For more information on Halcyon, check out the novels section in the menu bar above.

Goodreads Book Giveaway


Halcyon
by Catherine Fitzsimmons

Giveaway ends December 08, 2012.

See the giveaway details

at Goodreads.

Enter to win

 

Some changes around here

Finally overcoming my procrastination, I’ve updated this website in ways that should have been done shortly after reappropriating my old domain name for my publishing business. The “portfolio” section has been separated into shorts, art, and photography, each of which has been populated with all the examples of each I am not ashamed to show off at this point. (Hint: my art collection has been severely trimmed down.)

Also as notably, I’ve added a “connect with me” widget to the side bar with links to the various forms of social media and instant messaging I use, including my new Facebook page, Goodreads author page, and About the Author page on Amazon. Please feel free to add/follow/talk to me on any of those.

I still have an enormous backlog of photos to go through in search of more to share, as well as possibly one more section to add. But, one step at a time.

Day Twenty-Nine: Yes, I did

And for the fifth time, I have won NaNoWriMo. No matter how many times I win this challenge, or how many books I write to and past 50,000 words, or how little an accomplishment it may seem given how much of the story might be left after 50,000 words, NaNoWriMo always makes winning feel very gratifying.

And it is, of course. I may have learned how to write without the pressure of NaNoWriMo looming over my head, but I still don’t write that much at any other time of the year. And sitting here on the other side of the finish line, it feels good to have abandoned perfectionism, linear storylines, and preconceived notions of things like abrupt setting changes or character shifts, and just written what I wanted to write.

Not all of it was so smooth or so easy, of course. There were days it was forced, when I met my 1,667 words and felt an immense relief that I didn’t have to write any more, but there were also days when 2,500 words wasn’t enough for what I wanted to do. I had no 4,000-or-more-word days this year, but I wasn’t expecting any. I made it to 50,000 words and that’s the important part.

My process and my patterns remained pretty much the same this year, though I did step outside my comfort zone a little and wrote some later scenes long before they appeared in the story. Given the nature of these scenes, I think that disconnection actually helped them. (The character involved suffers some memory loss as the result of a concussion, so not knowing precisely what happened prior to these scenes helped give them distance.)

I also experimented with some new technology in the form of my new Android-powered .mp3 player. I did a little writing using the memo function, but what ended up being more useful was the voice recorder. Much as I hate the sound of my own voice, it was an effective way of dictating the story while I was out walking and had only one hand free, or else when typing on the display screen keyboard was too slow.

As for what happens now, truth be told this novel is going straight to the back burner, without even so much as finishing the scene I was in the midst of writing when I hit 50,000 words. Even had it been better planned out and not come out so sloppy, exploratory, and in desperate need of serious revision if not outright rewriting, it is a book 2, and book 1 must be polished and completed before I can give it more serious attention. It won’t be there long, because book 1 is planned for release next year, but these 50,000 words must wait until then at least.

That said, I will leave you with the excerpt I shared on my NaNoWriMo profile. Good luck to my fellow WriMo-ers in this final push.

–

Ashik could only stand and stare down at the carnage at his feet, a weary look in his eyes.

One of the others jogged over the hill and back down toward the rest of them. “The goats and horses fled fast long ago. Their tracks are faint and fading quickly. We would be hard pressed to find them again.”

Ashik said nothing, his eyes fixed on the body before him. Little remained of it, but there was enough to recognize the tattoos. In the time it took him to climb up the hill after stumbling, his entire family had been slaughtered.

The warriors milled about, picking what valuables they could recover from the fallen, or weapons from the wagons that had been destroyed, with some simply standing around uncertainly.

“What should we do?”

The silence that followed the question weighed heavily on Ashik until finally, he raised his gaze. The eyes of all the warriors that accompanied him, all that remained of the horde, fixed on him.

He narrowed his eyes a little. “Why are you all looking at me?”

The largest warrior, the grizzled man from Ais Ainlan’s clan, lifted his chin. “Burqabas was your uncle. By rights, that makes you the next chieftain.”

Ashik frowned. “You are the eldest among us, and the mightiest warrior. You should lead us.”

The large man snorted. “I am a hunter, boy. Not a leader. The Uniter chose us to join with your clan because we would follow your uncle faithfully.”

“It’s true, Ashik,” Ais Ainlan added, stepping forward. “The spirit talkers choose the leaders of our clan. It is our duty and our honor to follow them. We would not even know how to lead.”

Ashik glanced around at the others accompanying them. They all watched him steadily, none of them objecting to Ais Ainlan and the old warrior’s claims. Under the new day’s sunlight, he had seen that only one person of his village had survived the attack, with a handful of others of his clan accompanying them, though they hailed from different villages in other parts of the mountains. Most of the survivors came from Ais Ainlan’s clan, and all looked to him for guidance.

Setting his shoulders back, he inhaled deeply. “Gather the bodies. We must guide their spirits back to the earth.”

Though a few of the warriors paled a little, they all nodded and set to work collecting what they could of their horde. Ashik bent down to help as well, though his attempts led him up the hill where the demon man still lay.

He paused, glancing down at the armored man. Up close, he looked like any common man, a little lighter built and perhaps even younger than Ashik. His impact against the earth had created a jagged crater as wide as Ashik’s spread arms. Ashik had seen wild mountain goats plummet off cliffs with half the force this man had struck the ground, landing on soft loam, and even their huge, curving horns barely left a dent in the earth. How the demon man even remained whole, Ashik couldn’t imagine.

Lenara, the sole survivor from his village, around the age of his youngest aunt, strode up to him and looked down at the demon man while the clean up continued below. “Does he live?”

“He still breathes.”

She shook her head. “Incredible.” For a moment, they stared at him, but aside from the slight shifting of the mail beneath his deformed plate armor, he didn’t move. “What shall we do with him?”

“He is of the Sunset Lands, and is therefore our enemy, and his might is unparalleled.” Turning, he began walking back down the hill toward the growing pile of bodies. “But it would be shameful to strike him now. Let us leave him.” Nodding, Lenara followed him back down the hill.

Soon, the bodies of their fallen had been piled up at the base of the hills. They piled bundles of grass around its base and set it ablaze.

As the flames licked up over the people Ashik had known all his life, he began the traditional chant for the dead among his clan. Lenara and the others from his clan soon joined in, and those of Ais Ainlan’s clan added their own voices and their own words to it. Their chant lifted up into the air with the smoke and the stench of burning bodies, both of them stinging Ashik’s eyes and bringing up tears that ran over his war paint.

The warriors ended their chant in near unison, and he stared up at the pile of burning corpses, not yet any smaller. Ais Ainlan sidled over to him as he stood there, her voice low.

“What will we do now?”

He let out a sigh, still staring at the huge flames.

“Ashik. I know you wish to feed the fire until the bodies are all burned to ash and taken by the wind spirits, but we cannot linger here that long. Our supplies are gone.”

Closing his eyes, he bowed his head. “I know.” He raised his head, facing the warriors that gathered around him, and strengthened his voice. “We must find food.” He turned to the runner who had found the tracks of the horses and goats earlier. “Take us to the tracks. We will follow the clearest trail as long as we can. Perhaps some bags fell off the animals as they fled.”

Nodding, the runner turned and darted away back up one of the hills.

“The rest of you, keep watch for any game or edible plants you can find. And be on the lookout for that fox headed woman.” The rest of the warriors nodded in response. With one last look over his shoulder at the remains of the people of his village and the rest of his clan, buried among those warriors who had accompanied Ais Ainlan into these forsaken lands, he followed the runner, the rest of the group marching after him.

Day Nineteen: Hills and valleys

NaNoWriMo is never a smooth slope for me. Real life intervenes, and writing on the weekends has a tendency to fall by the wayside at least a little, with weekday writing making up for it. And, of course, on the other end, some days I simply get into the story and end up writing far more than I need to.

The former, of course, is more the issue at this point this year. The last two weekends I have barely managed a couple hundred words. I did not build up enough of a buffer before the first weekend and only just caught up before last weekend, meaning I am now behind by about 1,500 words after the 2,500 I managed today.

Not that I really regret the lack of writing in either case. Two weeks ago I ran a convention table and last weekend family visited. Though I don’t have plans for next weekend, I still don’t expect a particularly strong couple days for writing. It is far from hopeless or too late, however – according to NaNoWriMo I only need to write a scant additional 100 words per day to still finish on time – as long as I can keep myself writing.

The writing has felt different this year. Every time I have set out to participate in NaNoWriMo, my goal has been to write the best book I can, not just to pound out words just to meet the daily word count recommendations. And the two books I have written during NaNoWriMo that have now been published retained a fair portion of the writing done during the challenge, if not a little polished since then.

This year’s novel, on the other hand, feels less like a rough but workable first draft and more like exploration for what will be a stronger book. I have learned a lot about the characters and setting through writing it, and truthfully my last NaNoWriMo has ended up almost entirely rewritten to its current state, but this is still not what I usually get out of the challenge.

Sadly, it’s also making me reconsider continuing to join NaNoWriMo. I have taken a lot out of it. I now have the discipline to write a book without having a recommended daily word count deadline looming over me, and being forced to churn out that many words this month has resulted in a lot of very rough writing, as opposed to the better considered work I tend to do outside of November. Perhaps this is what this particular book needed, further exploration in the form of writing rather than trying to plan everything out beforehand, but it still feels a little like I’m spending all this time writing and not really getting usable material out of it.

Not all of it is unusable, of course, and perhaps more of it can be worked with than I’m realizing right now; I haven’t reread much of what I’ve written in the past almost three weeks, after all. And perhaps the problem really is that I didn’t have the story and characters planned out so well beforehand and a better plotted out novel would work with the word-churning, rather than the method itself being flawed for me.

It’s still hard to quell that inner perfectionist that has me hesitating before the beginning of every scene wondering where to start. But accepting that I’m using this draft more for the purpose of exploring and expanding on characters and story makes it a bit easier. And no matter what I end up with, good or bad, this month, all I need are words.

Day Seven: A learning process

One of the most basic pieces of advice you will find for aspiring authors is to show, not tell. Portray a character’s feelings and personality through their dialogue and reactions, rather than by simply narrating to the reader.

It’s a good strategy. It is, in fact, far more telling of a character for a reader to be given insight into their mind through what they do. Certainly, one can build strong characters through telling; done well, it can help give the reader a better idea of the character’s motivations, or at least expand on what is portrayed through their actions, and it can be written fluidly, in a way that is pleasing to read. But it is far more effective, and more memorable, to show instead.

However, it’s not always the easiest thing to do. In fact, this is an issue that has come up numerous times in my NaNoWriMo novel already. Character reactions are getting more intricate; characters were already established in the first book, and weren’t necessarily simple then either, and now the events of that book are affecting what they do in this one. The level of complexity is rising and figuring out how to show what the characters are feeling and thinking has been a challenge.

Two major characters are surrounded by people with whom they’re not comfortable talking about their problems. Both are dealing with history too familiar to the people they speak with for it to come up in conversation. One is avoiding another character for fear of being rejected. The other is an outsider in a small, enclosed society and rarely converses much with the others in this group, or anyone else.

How does one show such delicate – yet important – feelings without it sounding forced or contrived? It’s easy to simply present these issues to the reader as a narrator, as background for the conversations and reactions the characters do have, and that’s what I’ve been doing so far.

However, it does feel like something of a cop-out. For the sake of increasing word count, I have decided not to worry about it this month, but I will need to address and put serious thought into this issue when I get around to editing the novel. In the meantime, I am learning things about the characters and what they are feeling right now, and it allows me room to expand on their thoughts without carefully plotting out each line of dialogue and each movement before I write it to ensure it’s showing exactly what I want to say about the character.

It’s a bit refreshing, as I feel like I’ve truly accepted the spirit of NaNoWriMo in continuing to write even knowing that I am getting little more than a framework of a novel out of this attempt, rather than a rough but more or less finalized first draft as I tend to do with NaNoWriMo.

The writing has picked up a bit this week as well. Since Monday, I have made my personal goal of writing 2,000 words each day to build up a buffer for this coming weekend, during which I don’t expect I shall be able to write much. I keep getting drawn to a part about halfway through the story that I have been looking forward to writing for months, rather than working on the linear story as I usually do, but I’ve managed to keep the latter going as well.

As for tomorrow? Well, I’m sure I’ll learn something else new about this novel then.

Day Five: On track, for a change

I would be lying if I said I missed NaNoWriMo last year. I had plenty else on my mind, what with a tiny helpless person to care for, and I had my own writing project to occupy my mind, editing my second book Halcyon.

However, I did miss this feeling. This camaraderie from knowing that other people, a lot of other people, are fighting the same fight. Writing is a solitary journey for me. Most of the people I know, particularly family, don’t really understand my passion for writing, and especially not for writing fantasy.

I have long accepted this truth, as I have been writing fantasy since before I even really read any fantasy. In fact, the idea that writing is strictly a solitary journey is so ingrained into me that the thought of writing together with others seems intimidating.

And yet I am doing exactly that. As my (comparatively) smaller town doesn’t have its own region in NaNoWriMo and the large region nearby doesn’t really cater to those of us living a little outside the big city, I have taken it upon myself to organize write-ins with others in my area. The first of these begins tomorrow. I am anything but a social butterfly and have never successfully attended a NaNoWriMo event, so it will be an interesting experience.

Not to say that I have never done any writing with others. In fact, the first draft of Enduring Chaos was written for a shared world for which a few dozen authors contributed. Earlier still, back in high school or junior high I wrote an entire novel together with a friend. And of course, these days my husband provides a constant source of inspiration, encouragement, and idea-bouncing. It is always nice to know that others share one’s passion.

But perhaps I do write best alone. Today was my most successful day for writing yet. Not only did I write the 600 words I fell short yesterday, and not only did I make my suggested daily word count of 1,667, but in fact I reached my personal goal of writing over 2,000 words on top of what I needed to catch up.

Why was today so much more successful? Perhaps something clicked with the story at last, but as far as I can tell the reason is far more basic than that. The little one went down for an early nap today, before I was prepared to have one as I usually do, and I spent the time writing instead. Without interruption from anything more distracting than the cat – who uncharacteristically snuggled in pretty close while I wrote – I was able to focus on the story as I have not yet this month and just write.

In a way, it doesn’t bode well, because sadly, I usually need that nap to get me through the day. At the moment, though, I’m feeling better about my progress today.

Day Three: Tenuous progress

I did a lot of writing in the past few months to finish up Enduring Chaos. In fact, I don’t doubt that if you take all the writing I did in the time I wrote it, it would average out to the same pace expected during NaNoWriMo. It’s not the amount of writing that I find to be a challenge with NaNoWriMo, but the consistency. The idea that one should write every day, no matter how one’s feeling or what issues one might be having with the story, or even if one happens to be ahead in word count.

When I was working on Enduring Chaos, I wasn’t forced to write every day. If something wasn’t working or I wasn’t feeling the scene I was writing, I took a few days off, stepped back, and returned to it when I had mulled it over and figured out what the scene needed, and often ended up writing enough to make up for the days I didn’t write anything. NaNoWriMo still spurred me on in the writing, as I wanted to finish the story before November, but I wasn’t required to write every day whether I wanted to or not.

This has, however, been a requirement and an issue with its sequel, which I’m now writing. It’s a challenging opening to begin with; as I have previously mentioned, this is the first time I’ve ever reached a book two, and it’s presenting challenges entirely new to me. I have to walk the fine line between reiterating enough of the first book to make certain readers understand what’s going on and not going so in depth with it so as to bog down the story. I’m also trying to find the same line for revealing a major character’s backstory which was kept hidden throughout book one, but not too much to completely lose the effect.

Many writers I know tend to at least occasionally jump around as they write; they may take sudden inspiration for a future scene and need to write it out, if not needing that future scene to help kick-start the present one. I have tried to write this way, but it never truly succeeds for me. No matter how well planned out I have a story or even how much I want to write an upcoming scene, I just can’t seem to get into a scene until I know how it gets there.

There is some leeway for this, particularly with different point of view characters who are in different places at the same time, but largely, even if I desperately want to write a future scene, it doesn’t work out if I skip ahead to write it first. I have to write the story in order.

It does help me keep consistency as I’m writing, but of course, this poses a problem during NaNoWriMo if I have trouble writing a scene. I have not yet found my stride with this story. I have managed to make my required daily word count each day of the month so far, but it has been an uphill battle each day.

But then, it has been a while since I last participated in NaNoWriMo, and perhaps I just don’t remember how it works. The success I had finishing Enduring Chaos has made it difficult to truly get into the spirit of NaNoWriMo.

Quantity, not quality. Quantity can become quality later, but I’m out just to put words down.

Today, I think I finally started understanding it again. I had to give up on the scene I was trying to write yesterday. It’s a very delicate scene that requires a lot of forethought before each line of conversation, and I just don’t have the time to devote to it right now.

I have three abandoned scenes in the story now. I was struggling with each and don’t have the time to figure out what needs to be done with them, so I gave up and moved on. Upon further reflection, I realized that another character’s point of view would serve the story better and began writing that.

Then, midway through, I suddenly realized the setting didn’t work and needed to change it. Here is where I truly feel like I got it. My first instinct was to go back and change what I had just written to correlate with the change in scenery.

Only I didn’t. The ticking clock and the number of words I had yet to write for today weighed down on me, and I remembered that I can always correct this passage later. So I left it and simply continued writing with the sudden scenery change. This even affects a scene in the first book, but I’m not worrying about that now.

This story may teeter on unreadable when I reach the end of November. But I’m getting the words out. That’s the important part.

Day One: A perhaps unremarkable beginning

After having successfully participated in NaNoWriMo four times now, I have come to see some patterns in my progress.

For one thing, I always tend to start strong. 2,000 words is usually a slow start for me. In 2008, I wrote 10,000 words in the first two days of November – and even deleted about 1,000 words before ending up with that much. In 2010, the last time I participated, I even threw out silly ideas like ‘it’s not as much fun because it doesn’t seem like a challenge’ and ‘maybe I’ll try writing two novels to make it a real challenge.’

Spoiler: four times out of five, I have managed to reach 50,000 words on at earliest the last 2-3 days of the month.

I also suffer the mid-month slip. I always come up with excuses for it – it’s just this story, not the writing – but it happens and I usually if not always fall behind before the sobering final week arrives and a last push gets me across the finish line.

This year is going to be different. I knew that from the start. I do, after all, have a 15-month-old to take care of, though that shouldn’t be too much an excuse given that she goes to bed by 7:00. I know it will cause some lagging, though, and I should mentally prepare myself for the fact that I may not quite make 50,000 words this month.

Not that I’m setting myself up for failure; I’m in this to win it. In fact, the mere thought of not reaching 50,000 words for the first time since I seriously started participating in NaNoWriMo is a difficult pill to swallow. After so much success with this challenge, it’s hard to prepare myself to accept defeat if it should happen, no matter the reason.

Of course, right now, that’s a long way away. The month has only just begun. But I am breaking my pattern already. Instead of pushing myself to churn out as many words as possible on opening day, I wrote perhaps more like many participants, doing a word count every paragraph or two until I just broke the goal of 1,667 words and called it a day.

It’s the beginning of the month, I’m still out to write not just whatever drivel I might force onto the page but the foundations of a good book, and I’m content to keep a leisurely pace to start with. I know I should build a buffer, as I have a convention next weekend during which I will most likely not be able to write at all, and there’s no telling if any other plans might come up this month and impede progress, let alone the potential bad day with the little one making it difficult to write during the day.

For today, though, I won’t push myself beyond the minimum requirement. There is still plenty of month left in which to write, and the last couple hundred words dragged a little tonight.

Another pattern I am starting to recognize is how long it takes to write a scene at NaNoWriMo pace. The thought that this second scene of my book will quite possibly take a few days to write is an interesting thought.

Widget has been added to the sidebar. Now let’s see how consistent I can be with writing the book itself… and updating here about it.

Polishing the words

Editing is a journey just as long if not longer than writing.

I’ve tried to write a lot of novels over the years. I wouldn’t be surprised if one went through all my old files, including ones I can no longer access, and found 30 if not 50 attempted novels. Some have been well planned, some have started writing spur of the moment, many fall somewhere in between, and a number are different attempts at writing the same book. Yet I have only managed to write five to completion.

I don’t know how most people go about writing novels, at least those that can finish them. For me, while the first book I wrote to its end was before I gave it an earnest effort, NaNoWriMo has been a transformative experience. Speed, in fact, seems to be the key. What has mainly bogged down and ultimately destroyed those many attempted novels – aside from those thoroughly unplanned ones in which I didn’t even know where it was going – was dissatisfaction with what I wrote, which made it too difficult to continue writing rather than wanting to go back and improve what I wrote already.

NaNoWriMo’s philosophy of quantity over quality, however, changed the way I wrote. Momentum built on itself and I learned to ignore the editing I know I would need to do even if I wrote a really good first draft. In fact, all of the novels I have written to completion since I started participating in NaNoWriMo have been started during the challenge, in one form or another.

Now as I sit with a new completed draft of my latest book, that other vital part of writing looms before me: editing.

It is perhaps a drawback of this style of writing, that forcing oneself to continue even when one has issues with parts of the manuscript results in a rougher work than if one takes more time to create the initial draft. I still prefer it, as I still get it written that way, but it does make editing a bigger task.

In any case, I’m not certain more time taken to craft this draft would have improved this particular book, as I’ve only recently accepted a fairly significant – though quite fixable – issue this story has. My opinion of this work is somewhat interesting; usually I either love a story and get admittedly rigid if not defensive in the face of criticism – true as it might be – or I recognize that the book needs so much work that I hardly even want to touch it afterward.

With Enduring Chaos, I do believe I have a strong story, largely pretty strong characters, and overall fairly good writing. However, I have realized an issue that was pointed out even in the previous draft of the book, that the star is somewhat weak. On the bright side, this should be fairly easy to fix without affecting any of those parts I thought did come out well.

I went over the comments from my husband, my first reader and collaborator, which is always a lesson in humility. I’ll admit it; even when I feel iffy about a story it’s hard for me to accept criticism, to draw the line between criticism on a story and criticism on me. (Fortunately, he understands this and inserted some positive comments as well to soften the blow.)

With Chaos, however, I found that his initial comments on the story were very insightful and accurate, and there was little he commented on that I’m reluctant to change. Perhaps it’s simply the state of mind I was in when I read them – I never know what’s going on in there – but it was a lot easier to accept his critiques and suggestions this time. Actually, I find them almost nothing but helpful in getting the story to what I want it to be.

Maybe I’m maturing as a writer, or maybe I’m just lucky this time. And I still have a big task ahead of me in editing this book. And, of course, I need to turn my focus to book 2, which I will start writing Thursday.

But overall, I’m feeling optimistic about the next step for this book.