A.J. Race's Blog, page 7

In Summary

The summary/back book blurb is perhaps one of the most difficult aspects of writing a novel, it is the point at which you must describe your entire novel using generally less than five hundred words. A proper summary, which is occasionally requested by literary agents which includes giving away all the dirty details is generally a bit longer, spanning an entire page in length but is no less difficult to do.

What elements are important enough for inclusion in this back of the book blurb, what will make the most amount of people want to read it, and more importantly what’s going to convince a literary agent to pick me over the next person?

These are the questions that plague authors facing this particular part of the writing process. I’ve still got quite a bit of work to go before I’ve completed this current draft and can start on draft 3, but I know where the book is going so I figured it would be better to get a jump on this part of the process now, and not put it off until the very end.

In general I keep a summarized version of the novel on hand when I start the initial writing process, all of the important details of what should be included in the completed version, but this is usually a rough draft version of a summary. More often than not it’s full of more questions than answers, things I need to figure out before I begin writing and things that can afford to wait until later. While the information contained in this initial summary could be ultimately beneficial to be, it’s not exactly what you’d want to give to a literary agent hoping to see a summary of what happens throughout the book.

Ultimately what should make the cut in what you put on the back cover blurb should be only the most interesting bits. The bits that would draw readers in. I suggest for this part you run your back cover blurb with as many people as you can. Trusted friends and family members, people you know are going to tell you the truth, because it’s important that they find it interesting. All the better if you can interest someone who’s a self proclaimed ‘non-reader’ or someone who admits they don’t read all that much. If you can pique their interest, you might just be able to pique an agents.

Caution Slump Ahead!

Authors Note: I wrote this way back in July, but am only just now publishing it, I’m not sure why I didn’t publish this at the time, but suffice it to say I felt it was interesting enough for my promised second post of the day. 

There are moments in the writing process in which it seems as though everything is going great. The story is flowing faster than your fingers can type (or write if you still prefer handwritten things as I occasionally do), the characters are communicating with you and you start to feel as though you might actually be able to knock out a few chapters in a matter of days. And then it hits you. Slowly, like a cold front moving in, unexpected, and lingering. The slump. That horrible moment when nothing seems to go right and the story refuses to budge.

As I attempt my edits of my current work-in-progress, I found myself forced to rewrite nearly six chapters in which my story had been suffering from the sagging middle syndrome. The six chapters in question felt… uninteresting and unimportant. I’d been trying to solve a problem within this story for the better part of the last few months. When you build up a setting to be almost like a character in itself, how do you deal with the agonizing realization that the scene at hand in your shiny new setting is really a let down. For the better part of six chapters.

If the phrase kill your darlings refers to pulling the plug on anything that seems extraneous or otherwise does not pull the story along then I definitely felt that I had done the job. Literally within the context of the story. I had recussatated a chapter by burning the scene to the ground.

The Final Six

At long last, and after much rewriting I am finally down to the final six chapters and 35,502 words of my current work-in-progress. It’s been a long time coming, and thought I technically still have quite a bit of work to do before my September 20th deadline, I’m excited for the road ahead and I’m confident that I’ll be able to finish in time.

So what’s next in this process? I think, in spite of myself I’d like to give myself a little break. If and when I hit my 20th deadline it’ll be on a Saturday, the Saturday before my birthday in fact, so I’d like to take my birthday week and really just give myself a little break from my work-in-progress which isn’t something I commonly want.

I realize that between your ‘first draft’ and the editing phase one is supposed to take several weeks to several months, but I’m not sure I want to take that long in between this second draft and my next editing phase so instead I’m going to just take the week, then start the long and arduous process of editing. I haven’t fully committed myself to what form of editing I’m going to do, whether I’m going to read through the book to get a feel for the plot as a whole or I’m just going to dive right in, but I do know that I’m excited to enter the next phase of the writing process and my official third draft.

I hope to have the third draft completed before November/December, leaving me January to put the final touches on the novel. My goal is to start sending query letters out to agents in roughly February which means I’ll need to start working on my query letters soon. It’s admittedly been quite awhile since I’ve sent out a query letter, but if the cover letters I’ve created for job applications are any indication I hopefully have not forgotten this all important skill.

Good Omens: A Review

Ok so I confess, four days into my plan to write everyday in September and I’ve kind of hit a block. I’ve got almost five hundred posts in my drafts and yet none of them look appealing to retool and try and publish (either for the first time or as an updated version), so I thought instead of trying to figure out what to write about I would instead write a review of a book I finished a few weeks ago that I’m still absolutely obsessed with, and mentioned in my post the Ones that Stay With you. Good Omens.

Good Omens was one of the first books that I can remember in a very long time, that I devoured almost as quickly as I did Harry Potter all those years ago. Even J.K.Rowling’s books post Harry Potter have not quite caught my attention like this, to the point at which, I’m contemplating re-reading the book after only a few weeks. Which is a lot for me, because there are few books I’ve ever contemplated re-reading and only two others that I’ve actually re-read and those were several years after the first time I had read them.

I really can’t say what it was specifically about this book that I loved so much, perhaps it was the vaguely Supernatural vibe the story had, or perhaps it was something else entirely, I can’t quite put my finger on it, but for a book about the coming apocalypse it was really enjoyable and surprisingly funny.

This was my first introduction to either author, what little I knew of Terry Pratchett before was that my creative writing teacher in college had read a lot of his work, and that she had highly recommended it. I had watched and loved Coraline when it came out but I had no idea that it had started as a Neil Gaiman book, and though I had this book and American Gods (which I’m going to be reading shortly) I had never actually read anything of his either.

I think I had downloaded a sample of Good Omens onto my iPad a few months ago mostly because I liked the cover, but I think also because it sounded like an interesting story. Like most samples that I download however, it ended up being something that I forgot about almost immediately after and never got around to even looking at until several weeks ago when I decided to give it a shot. I read the entire 30 or so page sample in less than an hour and I was instantly hooked. I knew I needed to read more, but I decided that I needed this in paperback form. The next day I went to the Barnes and Noble which is (fortunately and unfortunately) in walking distance from my house, and picked up a copy. Three days later, I had finished, and I could hardly believe I had finished it so quickly. I can’t remember the last time I finished a book so fast. Nor can I say I honestly remember the last book that I seemed to talk about nonstop with friends and pretty much anyone who would listen.

All in all I give it 5 out of 5 broomsticks*

*which I’ve now decided is my official rating system.

PS: Do you have any ideas of things I should write about in the future?

Reading for Inspiration

When all else fails, there’s nothing like a book to help you get back on the right track.

Writing is… tricky, it’s a beautiful amazing thing at the best of times, and it’s impossible at the worst, thankfully however all hope is never lost, and inspiration is only a page away. Books provide for us the inspiration to keep going, we read them, at times for enjoyment, and at other times for the strength to keep doing what we love. Because we know, no matter how easy other authors make it look, that chances are, they had as much trouble with their novel as we may be having now. Writing novels isn’t a smooth operation, it isn’t an exact science and sometimes there are bumps, and hurdles, oceans we must travel across to get to the other side. Sometimes it feels impossible, but we know in the end that we can cross any ocean because others have done it before us. That doesn’t mean that there won’t be times when we feel like we’re drowning, nor does it mean that we necessarily won’t want to turn back, the difference is and what makes–to my mind a true writer, is the drive to move forward against all odds. It doesn’t matter how much you want to turn back, as long as you keep pushing forward, that makes you an author. You keep going, keep writing, and let nothing stand in your way. And don’t let anyone tell you differently.

 

Insecurities & Perfectionism #AuthorProblems

The other day I posted about the pleasure I get at the tactile act of handwriting pages of my novel, it’s an enjoyable experience and one that I haven’t done in a while, and lately I’m starting to remember why.

In the early morning hours of my first work break, having written maybe a few pages or even a few paragraphs everything feels shiny and interesting. By lunch time maybe a few more pages can be written, and even then it still feels like the story is going good. You’re getting writing done and it’s all going to be worth it. And then… you get home. You’ve had time to settle, and as you sit typing up the pages you wrote from the morning you start to realize… what the hell is this? This isn’t what I wrote. This is dreck, and half of it isn’t even words. What the hell happened to my shiny interesting pages? Maybe it isn’t as dramatic as they aren’t really words, it’s just they’re not the words you thought they were. They aren’t as exciting and interesting as they seemed several hours before and you start to second guess yourself. You begin to wonder (as so many authors do) if you still have it, or perhaps even if you ever had it to begin with? Am I crazy to think I could ever hope to be a writer? Sure I’m writing, there are words on the page, but they’re not the words I thought they would be, there not what they were supposed to be. Suddenly you’re drowning in a sea of self doubt and there is no life preserver, because no matter how many nice things people say to you, no matter how many compliments you get, or no matter how much someone may try to drag you out of it, it’s all in your mind, and there is no escaping that until you’re ready. It’s a dark and terrifying place to be, made worse by this constant perfectionist tendency. No matter how many times we tell ourselves that perfection is an illusion, that there is no such thing as perfect, it doesn’t change how we feel. It doesn’t change how I feel. It doesn’t end the self doubt, it just frustrates me more.

So where do we go from here? Where do you go when giving up is not an option but all you want to do is scrap everything you’ve ever written and start over? How do you power through the dark times of self doubt and an obsession with perfectionism?

I’m genuinely asking, because I just don’t know where to go from here. Do I push through it, can I push through it, or should I maybe give the story a rest? Work on something else for a while. Where do you go when it feels like everything you’ve worked towards is just falling apart midway through? I don’t want to give up on this story, even if it would probably be better for me if I did. So I’m asking… how do you get through the dark times of self doubt? How do you push forward when all you want to do is crawl up in a ball under the covers and sleep?

The Ones That Stay With You

Back on my personal Facebook page, a friend of mine tagged me in a post to list ten books that have stayed with me in some way, and I thought this might be an interesting chance to discuss books that have stayed with me, and ask tag some of my favorite blog authors to discuss some of theirs.

1. Harry Potter by J.K.Rowling– This one seems obvious, J.K.Rowling and Harry Potter are half the reason I became a writer to begin with.

2. Holes by Louis Sachar– Holes was the first full length chapter novel I ever read as a kid. In a way it cemented in me the desire to read.

Redefining Realness: my path to womanhood, Identity, love and so much more by Janet Mock– For those of you who don’t already know, I’m kind of obsessed with memoirs, and Janet Mock’s doesn’t disappoint. Redefining Realness is a beautifully written look into the life of a trans icon. I plan to write a full review of the book once I’ve finished it.

Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire– I’ve always had a special obsession with the Wicked Witch of the West ever since I was little, so naturally when I learned there was an entire book dedicated to her younger years I didn’t hesitate to pick it up. It’s an interesting story with multifaceted concepts that delve well beyond the world of Oz that many of us may remember from the Wizard of Oz, but it’s definitely worth a read.

Nancy Drew by Carolyn Keene– My elementary school library had probably every Nancy Drew book that existed, and so I made it a point to read as many as I can. I was a little disappointed to learn later that several authors under the name Carolyn Keene were the real voice behind this iconic series.

6. Drift by Rachel Maddow– Okay so I haven’t strictly finished this book yet. But among my memoir obsession, I’m also obsessed with political nonfiction and Rachel Maddow, so naturally I couldn’t wait to read this book when it came out.

7. Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin– Unlike (in my opinion) far too many, in the LGBTQIA community, I have a rich appreciation for our history, and Tales of the City offers a look into San Francisco during the 1970’s. I can’t say for sure how I came across this book but I know I loved it almost instantaneously.

8. The Millennium Trilogy by Steig Larrson– I resisted reading this trilogy for a long time, but when the film came out I couldn’t help my curiosity, I ended up reading the second novel and a good portion of the third. I still need to get around to reading the first at some point.

Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett– Ok so I’m a little–or a lot late to this party. In fact the novel itself is 24 years old, so i don’t really know why I just sort of found it this year. There haven’t been many books that I’ve enjoyed so much that I was able to read them in a few days, but this one I couldn’t put down and I’ve been recommending to literally everyone, which I rarely do.

A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket– I think I only ever got to book 3 of this admittedly long series, and it was one of the first non-Harry Potter related books I read as a kid, but I loved it from the ‘bad’ beginning.

I tag: Jordanna East, Joanne Phillips, Michelle Proulx, Morgen Bailey, and Bridget Straub. You don’t have to go as in-depth as I did on why I love so many of these books, in fact you can easily just say the 10 books that impacted you in some way, I just wanted an excuse to discuss books.

 

Getting Into the Habit

For as long as I have been a writer, I don’t think I’ve ever consciously gotten into the habit of writing every single day. Even when I was blogging everyday, (which for myself, I don’t really consider “writing”—as it does not further my work-in-progress), I often would write several posts in a single sitting and simply schedule them for the rest of the week.  The idea of having writing days and having to schedule writing seemed, and still does seem, so foreign to me. Writing is, and always has been for me, something that has felt very natural. It’s not like a job that you have to just sit down and do, it isn’t scheduled it just… happens. Sure, I’d feel guilty when I wasn’t writing because I felt as though I wasn’t really working, but it never ever felt like work, because I love it.

This month however, as the clock ticks down towards my deadline, I’ve come to realize that if I don’t teach myself to find time to write every day, even if only a little bit, I’m never going to get the rest of this draft finished in time.

It’s a tricky thing, getting yourself to write a little everyday, but I’ve sort of given myself a system wherein, I write the sentence I left off on in my notebook in the morning before work, then I write as much as I can on my break, then I write a little more at lunch, and then I try to type everything up that afternoon when I get home. I try whenever possible to write more during those times, and obviously my days off I try to devote  as much time to writing as possible, but sometimes you need a break to keep your sanity. This break, can occasionally lead to unintentional hours spent on Netflix, or surfing my favorite Apple blogs. I rarely get bogged down on Twitter like I used too, and yet again I can’t remember my StumbleUpon login info which I think is for the best.

If your anything like me, my advice would be, hide your browser window, turn off your wifi if you can (I like to listen to my writing playlist on Spotify, and occasionally RainyMood which makes this impossible) and just write. Try and make a routine for yourself that you can stick too. If you have extra time in the morning, write then, the evening, the afternoon, whatever it takes, just… write a little bit sporadically throughout the day and you’d be surprised how much you’ll have written when you’re actually at home typing it all up. I’ve actually grown a renewed appreciation for writing longhand. My penmanship hasn’t really improved, in fact the faster the ideas come the worse my handwriting gets, however, there’s something pleasurable in the tactile act of writing by hand.

The Flexible Outline

Over the course of writing and rewriting my current work-in-progress, I’ve come to try something new for myself in the hopes of making life a little bit easier in the future. Early on in my editing I decided to change some things in the first half of my novel which at the time seemed simple enough. They didn’t feel all that life changing for the story until you realize that the entire latter half of the novel is forever changed because of events in the beginning which has forced me to retool the second half of the novel as well. Effectively rewriting 60k words. This proved to be trickier than I thought, and I realized midway through all of this that had I bothered to give myself an outline I might have avoided all of this. But not just a traditional outline. See, outlining the traditional way has never really worked for me. Sure it could work for about three or four chapters, but then something would happen at the end of the third chapter that would make it impossible for me to begin chapter four where I had initially planned too because the character therein was usually dead. Or maimed. Which led me to consider a new option, what I like to think of as a flexible outline.

Keep in mind, I’ve only done this with a draft completed and at least half the novel already written, so I’m not sure how this is going to work when I try it for book 2 with nothing written, but the process is thus.

Step 0: (If you’re starting your novel from scratch) Write a summary of the entire novel: This should be a little more lengthy than what would be on the back of the book. You really want to have a good idea of major plot points if you can. It’s important you have a good idea of the story you want to write.

Step 1: Write a chapter summary: This summary should be roughly a paragraph in length and give you a good idea of where the chapter is going. Important plot details, everything that should happen in this chapter, should be written here.

Step 2: Expand into a scene by scene outline: After you’ve come up with a plan of action, now you have to expand that a bit into a scene by scene outline. Each scene should have their own paragraph (or a little more if necessary) of important information including important dialogue (if that comes up).

Step 3: Write the chapter: This is very important. In normal outlining you’d outline the entire book then start writing, but in order for your outline to be flexible you need to write the chapter after you’ve finished outlining before going on to outline the next chapter.

Step 4: Repeat steps one and two keeping in mind everything that’s happened in the previous chapters.

After you’ve completed these steps comes the editing phase. This is where you really solidify the plot and storyline. There are a few ways in which you can do this, and millions of blog articles written on the subject. How many drafts you write, how much editing is needed depends entirely on you. I recommend doing something that I’ve actually never done, but that has been highly recommended by other writers… give your story an actual read through. No red pen, no blue pen, no pens of any kind. Just read it through, beginning to end. It might be painful, but more importantly it’ll give you an idea of what’s working, and what isn’t working. Make a mental note of things that are particularly good or particularly bad (or if you need too, write it down). Then when you sit down to do your edits you’ll know what needs to be fixed. Does the story need a great deal of rewriting to realign with the initial vision you had in your head? Now would be a good time for a dual outline of what actually happens, chapter by chapter. Versus what you want or need to happen chapter by chapter. With each draft it’s important to really give your book a read through, so that by the fourth draft (which is almost universally accepted as the number of drafts it takes to complete a novel) you’ll know it backwards and forwards and likely be sick of it. After the fourth draft, hand it over to beta readers, or an editor if you have one. Chances are there are things that will still need to be tweaked, and that’s okay. If you’re getting the same notes from different people you know this is going to be a larger problem that needs to be fixed, if you get conflicting notes, go with your gut.

Then and only then would you either a) attempt to find a publisher/agent or b) find a professional editor to help you with the finishing touches for self-publication. I strongly recommend that in both cases you have a clear plan of action for what comes after publication. All book tours, blog tours, reading events, book signings, marketing in general should be planned out as best as possible. Because going into this blindly is a nightmare, trust me, I’ve lived it.

Recognizing Accomplishments

 

After a long hiatus on this blog, I’ve been working hard to pick up the pieces and get back to blogging, I’ve some how managed to keep the followers who I am incredibly grateful for sticking with me all this time, and even gain a few new ones. But as I struggle through month eight of edits, I’ve begun to feel as though I haven’t really accomplished much of anything this year. Seven months now into the new year and my promise to get back to being a daily blog or at least a weekly blog has failed on numerous occasions and the fact that I’m still only on my second draft of my novel which was finished back in November does little to make me feel as though I’ve accomplished very much in these past eight months.

But then… I stop. I actually think about it, and I realize that while it doesn’t seem like it, I’ve managed to accomplish a bit more than I give myself credit for. I wrote the better part of my first draft in two months, then I spent the next 22 weeks preparing for graduation. In the quarter before my final quarter I had an internship which was both exciting and terrifying in equal measure (at least at first). I created a portfolio and a thirty-two page magazine from start to finish in which I did all of the design work, typography, and writing work, and even the vast majority of the photography in the magazine. And somewhere throughout all of that I also managed to graduate. I got to talk to a lot of amazing people at portfolio show and I really actually enjoyed myself more than I ever could have imagined. Now I’m off to new adventures. I’ve been applying for jobs all over the country, and in the meantime I’ve been trying to work on finishing the rest of this draft and hopefully being able to have a finished manuscript by September. By which I mean ready for beta readers.

Sometimes when you’re in the thick of it, it’s hard to recognize just how much you’ve actually accomplished. The small, seemingly innocuous accomplishments get pushed aside and all you can think about is everything you haven’t done.

So this one’s for you. This article is for all my fellow writers, bloggers, readers, designers, or what ever you do, who don’t feel you’ve accomplished anything.

Really think about it.

I bet you’ve done more than you realize.

PS: I can’t really promise that I’m going to be able to do daily again. I miss it believe me, I miss the structure and the sense of accomplishment that I felt when I did it, but it may take me a while. I’m still trying to get back into the swing of things, particularly not having school anymore.