A.J. Race's Blog, page 9

Hallow-WriMo

It’s hard to believe that another year has come and gone and tomorrow starts Halloween, and with it, the beginning of NaNoWriMo. For those of you who know nothing else about NaNoWriMo, know that it’s a month long writing exercise to attempt to write 50k words in 30 days. It’s actually a lot of fun, but like most fun things, there are those who have maligned NaNoWriMo as some sort of conspiracy to destroy literature. Don’t believe me? Google it, the opinions on NaNoWriMo are not pretty.

To be fair, NaNo does inspire some craziness, but what is writing if not craziness right?

It’s just writing… why do you have to take it so seriously? I know this probably sounds odd coming from me, but what I mean is… writing is about craziness, it’s about fun, it’s about following the story where it takes you and letting your characters lead the way. It’s not supposed to be serious nor should it be. Publishing is the business, and publishing is where you have to get serious and you have to be realistic and that’s where you have to look at the story for what it is, which if it’s a first draft could mean a steaming pile of shit. But writing itself is supposed to be fun. Somewhere along the way some of the writers who are anti-WriMo have forgotten that. Perhaps because they’ve been publishing so long, writing has become a chore, and that’s rather a depressing thought. Writing should always be enjoyable to you, because otherwise why do it? It doesn’t pay like being a doctor (although I for one think it ought to)*, so it’s not like you’re doing it just for the money are you?

Sure some people will think their book is gold and send it to agents, and sure there are agents who hate life during the post-NaNo season, but I’d like to hope that those writers are in the minority and that more NaNo-ers realize that it’s going to take time. The NaNoWriMo website itself often discusses post-NaNo life, editing and where to go with your novel.

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* yes, I am suggesting that a writer’s work is just as important as a doctors. If you don’t believe me, think of how much better you feel when you read your favorite book when you’re sick. Also consider this statistic: Doctor errors are the third leading cause of death in the U.S. This is probably as much of an issue of patient communication, as it is plain doctor accidents, but my point is… authors, teachers, and artists definitely deserve more money than do athletes.

Not the End

There’s an unfortunate idea that has been around for decades now that somehow literature and books and the whole of art is somehow dying. The reality is… that’s just not true. Books are changing. The way in which readers consume books, the way in which we tell stories and really a lot in the art world is evolving with the times. But we are not at a loss for writers and we are certainly not at a loss for readers. It’s just that readers appetites are changing. Most readers are not easily impressed by large tomes that seem to go on without an end in sight. Most readers are not interested in great endless exposition and little dialogue between characters. Readers would rather follow characters than plot, and that isn’t a bad thing. It isn’t the death of literature. It’s change, change that writers have to adapt too. I think the reason that the ‘literature is dying’ myth has prevailed is because it’s an easy excuse for older writers who are set in their ways and don’t wish to change how they operate.

Maybe it’s ‘literary’ novels, that are dying out. The concept of the Great American novel, as if somehow such a novel would be more important to literature than a novel from any other country, perhaps this is something that’s dying out. But literature itself, books, and all that they are are not going anywhere. Authors and pessimists (which often seem to go hand in hand) have decried the death of literature and culture since the beginning of time. Somewhere, modernist authors, decried the death of literature at the post-modernist period, and so again in the current era of literature. And onwards throughout history. Somehow I do not doubt with the birth of the novel, Sophocles cried. This, is the death of literature. 

Now A Major Motion Picture!

Yesterday on her Facebook page, Jordanna East shared a rant that we as writers often have. Why is it when a book becomes a movie, suddenly the cover has to be changed to feature the actors from said movie? Actually there is an answer: Money.

Here’s a true story for you.

Back in 2010/2011 before the release of the English version of the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo the Millennium Trilogy (on which the film was based) was $7.99 at my local Barnes and Noble. Millennium was at the height of it’s popularity at the time and though everyone seemed to be obsessed I still wasn’t sure and so I never got around to purchasing them. Flash-forward, several months later the movies came out, I returned to Barnes and Noble, with the intention of purchasing the first book only to find a special movie tie-in cover and a special movie tie-in price. $9.99. Now two dollars isn’t as much as it could have been, and other films have made it much higher. The second and third books were about $12.99 and $14.99 (and that was just for an ebook which we can discuss later) but $2.00 just for this special cover? Why? In addition to the new cover featuring the actors one can almost always find the headline plastered over the cover: NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE!

I think one of the hopes (besides money) is that the film cover will entice movie watchers to pick up the books. Think about Twilight. How many of the obsessed fangirls read the book versus saw the movie? I’m betting a higher ratio saw the movie. From a marketing standpoint re-issuing the books to feature the movie posters is actually kind of genius. Interestingly and admittedly curiously, one of the few current books for whom this was never true has been the Harry Potter series. Whether this is Arthur A. Levine’s doing or a WB decision I’m not sure if anyone knows, but I will say this, I’m glad for it. Even for the 15th Anniversary covers they didn’t use the film movie poster for it. Why this is, I cannot say, and no matter how annoying you may find this practice, for both film and books it’s actually smart money.

NaNoWriMo 2013

Ah October, the month of Halloween and (for Nevada residents) Nevada day, which is basically the same day as Halloween and the day we were ratified as a state. October is also NaNoWriMo prep month. The month wherein those planning to participate in November’s National Novel Writing Month prepare themselves for the great fifty thousand words in 30 days challenge. For some October is a rather hectic month of ripping your hair out as you attempt to get ready for November, for me, October is a month of ripping my hair out because I need it to be November already.

For those of you who don’t follow my Facebook, I’ve been writing a lot about my current work-in-progress over there. Technically it’s a re-work in progress but that’s not really important. Initially I wanted it to clock in around 95,000 words which at my current 70k I had less than 24k left to write. Exciting if I do say so myself but not helpful if I wanted to compete in NaNoWriMo which I am determined to do. Initially I was going to try for starting up the sequel during NaNoWriMo, but while I have the basic idea of what’s going to happen there, I’m definitely not ready to jump into book 2 just yet. So, I figured out how to lengthen the book up just enough to get me to my 50k word goal for NaNoWriMo bringing me to a grand total of 120,452. Just shy of the 125k cap that agents seem to universally agree is the limit for an unknown author. 120k words is sort of a lofty goal for me, I’ve never written anything close to that, and in truth before now I had never even written 95,000 either.

It took a bit of work but I have a pretty good outline of a story that I think will get me to my fifty thousand word goal. I know it’s not technically in the rules the way I’m doing it, because you’re supposed to do a novel that hasn’t been started, but really fifty thousand words in 30 days is fifty thousand words. I don’t plan to include anything of what I had previously written so I won’t be starting off automatically with 70k. I’m only showing what I work on during NaNoWriMo, so if I clock in in 30 days with 40k, then I clock in with 40k.

The trick now is waiting the 23 days we have left until October 31st and the midnight head start which I highly recommend. A lot of how I even managed NaNo back in 2011 was that I wrote 1,666 words at night and another 1,666 words the next day. I managed to finish a week early which was impressive to me considering that as a member for nearly 7 years now I had really only managed to win but once.

It’s Never Quite Like You Remembered

This weekend, as a late birthday gift I decided to purchase the first four Harry Potter novels via ebook from the Pottermore shop. Sometime between my move to Seattle and back again I lost my entire Harry Potter collection and devastated though I was, I knew that it was time to move on. As much as I would like the print collection again, ebooks right now are just more sound for me.

As such, I decided to start reading them again, for the first time in eleven years. I can already hear the screams of ‘true’ Harry Potter fans: How could I, of all people, who claims to be so in love with J.K.Rowling and all she does, not have read the books since the very first time I read them all those years ago? 

I don’t really have a good answer for this. The truth is, not reading the books has allowed me to have a sort of idealized memory of what they were actually like, I remembered them as coming to me at a very important and often difficult time in my life and they’ve stayed in that context. Re-reading them again as an adult… I won’t say that I’m disappointed, I still love the books and I’m still as addicted as ever, but it isn’t the same. I didn’t realize how much of the story I had actually forgotten until I was reading the words on the page and thought… That seems new. I had completely forgotten how much the films had really changed (though it was always something I read other bloggers ranting about). I don’t think I fully realized how much her writing evolved over those ten years, as one’s writing does.

Writers evolve as we grow, our writing gets better and sometimes looking back it’s almost hard to believe that we actually wrote something like that. I’ve noticed that over the years, looking back on old work sometimes it’s pretty terrifying, and I’m proud of myself for how much I’ve accomplished and how far I’ve come as a writer. Don’t get me wrong, whatever spell Harry Potter managed to cast on me all those years ago is still alive and well, it is still one of the few books I have ever known that was able to enrapture me so completely and so quickly, and it will always remain the book that made me want to become a writer. No matter how different it feels now, or how much has changed in the eleven years since I first picked up the first Harry Potter and my life was changed forever. 

the Almost Epilogues (Repost)

Remember how a few weeks ago I wrote a blogpost about how I had come up with the outlines for 5 different novels, but I’ve kept them pretty hush hush?

The reason for this is, that two of the novels, were the bare bones for what would have been a fourth and a fifth Secrets of Witches novel. Part of the reason I kept this information to myself was the obvious that I wanted it to be a surprise, but also because I needed to make sure I even had the ideas to make two more books. And as it turns out… I did and I didn’t. The truth is, I had the bare bones of an idea that could have encompassed a fourth and a fifth but I didn’t allow myself to explore the storyline enough to figure out what exactly would go into making these last two novels. At first I tried to tell myself it was because I wanted to work on book 3, that I didn’t want to take the time away to make up a whole new storyline for the final two novels, but they both would have effected book 3 significantly. Not to mention the fact that I had already written the outline for the other three books that were (and are) unrelated to Secrets of Witches so why not these two?

I’m not sure what possessed me to think that I would want to do another two books, the storyline that I was going to use and pray would stretch to two books, is still useful, thankfully, but I never wanted to write past three. Don’t get me wrong, I have loved writing these stories, even with as much as I’ve bitched about book 3… but I don’t believe I could have actually made a fourth and a fifth and frankly, I’m glad. I have a thousand and one ideas in my head, and if I don’t put Secrets of Witches to rest eventually, it will do what I always feared it would and consume my soul forever, never letting me rest, and never letting me work on anything new. Needless to say, I’m happy I’ve finally got a solid outline down (color coated and all) and I think I’m happy with where it’s headed. Still hoping for a fall release. Wish me luck there.

Evolution of a Novel (repost)

One of the most exciting parts about letting my ideas sit and bake for a while is how much of an evolution they’ve made since their inception. In a post a few months ago I wrote about the evolution of the Secrets of Witches storyline and the characters, but Secrets isn’t the only story that’s evolved, in fact of the six novels I have planned over the course of the next few years, almost all of them have definitely grown from the original storyline I had for them in my head into the outlines I’ve created for them so far.

Part of what makes this evolution so exciting is knowing that the stories have become even more amazing over time than I ever imagined they would be, and that makes them exciting to write and even more exciting to look back on how far it’s come from where it started. This probably isn’t true for all stories, and maybe this feeling isn’t true for all stories, nor should it be. Maybe it’s because I’ve grown as a writer more in the last few years, or maybe it’s because there needed to be time between when I came up with the idea to when I actually felt it was finished and ready for the idea to mature and perhaps even me to mature with it.

I am always loathe to say that I am a more mature person now than I was when I first started writing, because when I was younger (and even now) there’s nothing more annoying than having someone tell you you’ll understand when you’re older or you’ll do x when you’re older. Am I more mature than I was back then? Of course, but I was pretty mature even then. The point I’m trying to get at is… my ideas needed time to mature as did my writing, and while I hope I never stop growing as an author, perhaps my ideas will need a little less time to mature in the future.

Smirk, Grin, or Smile (repost)

The English language is filled with multiple words that all mean about the same thing, but can’t quite be used interchangeably, and yet are used quite interchangeably nonetheless. Chief among these is the use of the word smirk instead of grin or smile by authors. Truthfully I had never quite seen the problem with this until a few months ago when I read an article by my favorite editor Jamie Chavez in which she expressed the fact that a smirk is sort of a sarcastic sort of smile, whereas a smile is… just that. A smile.

I think part of the problem is, as writers we have this desire to use other (sometimes more complex) words in an effort to both sound more intelligent, while simultaneously being less repetitive in the way we describe what our characters are doing. If a character is particularly happy and always smiling it might be nice to describe them as beaming from ear to ear rather than just simply smiling.

The great thing and sometimes the frustrating thing about English is that a lot of words mean virtually the same thing and a lot of readers probably won’t notice the subtly of it, but if they don’t know what a word means and were to look it up in the dictionary, occasionally you’ll come up with some interesting and perhaps unintentionally misleading results. Unless your character is (like Madam Schemptra) naturally sarcastic on a nearly constant basis, a smirk probably isn’t the same as the sort of beaming pride one might find at seeing their child for the first time. Or even, grinning like an idiot when in love. A smirk is just, slightly more snide, the look you might give someone when you’re trying very hard to come off agreeable when really you know the other person is an idiot.

Artistic Burnout (Repost)

“I’m really kind of over it,” as soon as the words left my mouth, a small part of me wondered how horrible that would actually sound to anyone who was listening to the premier episode of our podcast. How could an author be so sick and tired of writing a novel? Especially the last in a trilogy… is that even a thing? Of course, a quick conversation with a fellow artist quickly proved that it wasn’t just me.

I think it has to do with creativity in general. There’s something about the creative energy that seems to make us get bored with things more easily than other people. It’s probably why teleplay writers (pretty sure that’s what you call people who write t.v. scripts isn’t it?), write multiple television shows at a time. There’s this artistic burnout that you get from doing the same thing day in and day out month after month. It isn’t to say you don’t still love it, but after a certain point it’s almost rather tedious, and at least for me, I don’t like routine. In fact I don’t think I know many artists who do. It’s not in our nature. Writers probably more than any other artists are forced to walk the fine line between multiple worlds, left and right brained, adventurous and needing routine, and of course genius and insanity. We need to balance all of these things in order to function as creative people on the whole.

I think a major part of the reason that book 3 continues to be a royal pain in my ass is because I’ve been writing the trilogy off and on for ten years now. In some form or another I’ve always managed to get at least the first book finished and I had written at least one or two other drafts of book 2 many years ago, but the third book has never actually been finished before now. If I’m going to have any hope of completing it without losing my mind I’m going to have to write some other things in the meantime. I’ve got plenty of other books in the works, so maybe that’s the answer, if Shonda Rhimes can juggle three shows at once, I think I can manage writing two books at once.

Good Tension (Repost)

If there’s one thing reality television does well, it’s tension. This week, actually yesterday, one of my favorite reality shows RuPaul’s Drag Race crowned it’s sixth drag superstar, and while it wasn’t the exact queen I wanted, I would still say I’m happy with the choice. Personally I would have been happy with any of the top three, but I was especially on one queen’s team in particular, (I don’t want to spoil it for you).

One of the things that I’ve noticed Drag Race in particular is good at, is going to commercial just before the bottom two contestants lip sync for their lives. It’s frustrating as all hell and yet you can’t stop watching. Then you have the finale which has for the last two seasons been separated into two weeks to allow for the fans to make their voices heard. It might not be so bad, but if you’re as invested as I am, the tension is maddening. On the night in question, conveniently also the night of the reunion, you have to sit through the entire reunion, then at least five minutes of Ru just saying the following line. “The winner. Of RuPaul’s Drag Race. America’s Next Drag Superstar is….”

It seems like a quick enough line, but they have found a way to drag it on so long that by the time she’s finished that part of the sentence, you’re so excited and a little bit exhausted that you’re on the edge of your seat.

There’s a lesson here for writers, tension can be everything, the question is… how exactly do you create honest to goodness tension with words? You can’t really draw out what someone says. If you read the aforementioned quote by Ru, it probably took you what? Less than five seconds, if even? The trick is finding a way to create tension that makes your readers excited for more, not ready to throw your book at the wall and never read it again. A slow steady build to the grand finale that they’ve waited the better part of several hundred pages for.

The best way to create tension is… not going to be announced in this blog post, because I’ve written far too much as it is. But, I would like to hear from you, what do you think are some good ways to create a lot of good tension in a novel that wouldn’t annoy your reader? Comment below, or sound off on my Facebook, Twitter or Tumblr pages.