Kate Larking's Blog: Anxiety Ink, page 55

On Finishing

Everyone has a favourite part of writing. For some it’s the research and brainstorming, then they just suffer through getting the words on the page. For some it’s the editing, the chance to make things right. For me, it’s the actual writing. My Type A little heart loves seeing a word meter fill up. It adores the satisfaction of recording in my agenda how much I did that day, and seeing the numbers add up. It loves the feeling of flying when I’m in the groove, deep in the characters, as I write.

I’ve been doing this writing thing a while. I wrote my first trunk novel for Nanowrimo 2005. I immediately put it away and began writing a better version (not an edit, mind you, I didn’t start doing that until my fifth manuscript). I’ve completed drafts of 2 science fiction novels, 2 fantasy novels, and written (because they’ve been edited) 1 steampunk novel, 1 YA fantasy, 1 YA urban fantasy, 1 women’s fiction, 1 YA magical realism (which got me my first agent and sold to Penguin), 1 literary magical realism (which got me my second agent), and over the weekend, my first YA contemporary with LGBT issues.

The last book I finished was at the end of 2012. That’s a long time to go without finishing anything. But I was in edits with Penguin and then after my contract got cancelled, I was in a self-doubt phase, and then working at Samhain, I was too busy and writing wasn’t a priority. But I had an idea spark that I couldn’t let go of. So I started writing. (To be fair, I have half a historical novel completed, and plan to finish it next, but I had to stop for more research and got hit by the LGBT YA idea in the meantime.)

I blew through the beginning of this book and then I got my concussion and couldn’t write for months. When I came back to the book it felt stale, off. I ended up revising my outline and when it clicked, I was back in the saddle. I wrote almost 17,000 words last week to finish. I had been unsure if I even could. The doubt didn’t last long, though, because I was determined. This book needed to be written; there are few YA’s featuring trans characters around. (That’s one of the reasons I think writers need to write stories they want to read, that they believe in, instead of say, writing to the market. You’re more likely to stick with it through stumbling blocks.)

How does it feel to finish a book? This is what you never think about. You’re chugging so hard on this thing, so intensely, and then suddenly, you’re not. It’s over. Every time I finish a book, I feel profound relief that I managed to, a very brief sense of elation that I did it, and mostly bemusing confusion. What am I supposed to be doing now? What do I do with my time? I guess I could send those emails to friends I’d been putting off so I could write? Hell, I don’t know, where is my kitten? No one talks about the post-book fog. Sometimes it’s a post-book crash, hard and painful. You know when you finish reading a really good book you’re invested in? How you feel a certain sense of loss when you end it? Writers feel that too. We live and breathe these characters; we’re connected in a way readers aren’t. Imagine how it feels to suddenly realize you don’t need to visit these friends anymore.

To be fair, as someone who has done this enough times, one reason the elation doesn’t last is because I recognize that now the real work begins, but there is a difference in mindset between revision and writing. For me, the former is work. The latter is not (usually). The first gives me the same high as reading a good book. So much awe and inspiration and joy. The latter is more ponderous, more delicate. It doesn’t help that when doing a first-draft I go into a “FINISH BOOK” mode where I eat a bunch of junk food and forget to do even basic things like shower. There’s this momentum and suddenly it just–stops. Revision doesn’t have that problem because I’m rarely going fast enough for the stop to be sudden.

Of course, the answer to this is to start work on the next thing while my CP’s and betas go over the manuscript. I’ll give it a polish before it goes to my agent, of course, but the remnants of momentum are still there, and they’ll propel me to the next project. I just wanted to explain the post-book crash because usually everyone is so excited– YOU DID IT! YOU DID IT!–and it’s hard to explain how I can not share quite so much enthusiasm.

 

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Cathartic Characters

I think all writers have a guilty pleasure. You’ve seen quotes like this one, right?

“Be careful what you say to a writer. You might end up killed in their book.”

Why, yes, I will eviscerate you in fiction. If you cross me, I will find a way to give your character a horrific and satisfying end. Cathartic characters are like therapy.

The first time I did it, I named a fantasy character Wratt after being aggravated by too many guys named Matt. A friend even delighted in the creation because she, too, had a Matt she wanted eviscerated in fiction. (A side note to any Matts I know: no, this is not you. This person has been out of my life for a very very long time).

But there is also the opposite.

I have had a set of characters named after friends. All siblings in the same family, their dynamics came into play as absurd and childish antics. I only managed to kill one of them–and the plot demanded it. Seriously. It wasn’t that I put this person in and then wanted to kill them off because the friendship soured or anything. The plot just arced that way O.o

Once upon a time, a coworker grated on me with just her presence. I could not stand her. Not could anyone else, honestly. But I had a thought that maybe I could have a character like this: overly polite to compensate for being quite dim–but given a kick-ass twist when all cards had to be in play. Kind of a wish fulfillment that I hoped that this person would live up to the potential that their backstory they provided offered my imagination.

What about you? Have you ever planned to slip someone into your narrative? Good intentions or bad intentions?

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The Little Things: More On Writing Spaces

One of my first posts here on Anxiety Ink was about .

Shut Your Characters Down: What I Learned by Locking Myself Out of My Bathroom

My title is fairly self-explanatory, however, I will explain how making an ass of myself links to writing. Or rather, I will explain how my mind automatically connects my humiliation to the characters I write.

Does wanting to humiliate my characters make me a bad person?

If it does I don’t care.

Last Wednesday my dad asked me to change the halogen bulbs in our kitchen light fixture. It’s a track light with six bulbs that have glass enclosures held on by three steel pins that screw in. In other words, the whole thing is a witch to play with. I didn’t want to make a project out of it so I used a little step stool. Because I’m short I was working with my arms fully extended above my head.

There was cursing. At the fixture. At my dad. At the fact that I had to do the job. The usual stuff.

When I was done I rolled my eyes and wondered why on earth I was the only one out of the three of us able to handle the job. Feeling superior, I went back to my own chores that I had started in the basement. I’d been bleaching the drains in my bathroom and needed to rinse them.

I shut the bathroom door behind me because I didn’t want the cats to get in. I must have hit the lock button as I left the room because I was most assuredly locked out.

Source

 

I trudged back up the stairs and asked my dad to help me. It would take me twice as long as him to get the door open so I swallowed my pride. Yes, he laughed at me. I would laugh at him. So.

Once able to re-enter the bathroom, I had a thought. In the course of writing my stories do I remember to shut my characters down like life seems to do to me? Karma is always keeping me well balanced.

Sometimes it seems like I get horrific tunnel vision while writing and just want to get my character from plot point A to plot point B without any interruption. I do this to the point that things get dull. Life for my characters, like life for me, should have those ridiculous moments where one is just put in their place perfectly.

I’m not saying anyone’s story should be riddled with such moments to the point that the plot/story line is railroaded, but life interrupts everyone. Life can’t be perfectly hellish or perfectly heavenly. Unhappy people need to be made to laugh even if just briefly. Happy people need to cry. Life’s bumps make this happen.

This is my reminder to myself that I need to step back when I’m editing and interrupt my characters’ journeys. Thoughts?

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Intentionality

I know we all posted about our writer goals like two weeks ago but better late than never–hey, if you’ve never said that in regards to YOUR resolutions, you are lying. Brain. Injury. (My go-to excuse for EVERYTHING now. Yes, it’s been thirteen weeks today, why do you ask? Sigh.)

I actually don’t do resolutions at all. I do a word of the year and I do small goals that I test over a smaller time period (a month, usually) and adapt from there. Pro tip: it’s WAY easier to do this than to suddenly alter your behavior for an entire year.

My goals for January are to read 3 hours a week and write 3k a week. One week or so in and I am NAILING IT. Not to brag or anything. For me, those are both fairly low-bar goals. I’m working myself back in to steady writing so I wanted something flexible–3k could be hard one week and easy the next, depending on what else I’m doing and how I feel, right now. And honestly, the reading goal is arbitrary (and low) just to make sure that on a regular basis I am prioritizing taking the time to sit down with a book.

Generally speaking, I want to finish GIRL, REALIZED by the beginning of February and also finish drafting a historical I’d begun last year. Anything else is gravy, and part two of this plan is flexible based on what happens with part one.

Now on to the main part of the post: intentionality. It’s my word of the year and it’s applicable to all parts of my life, but especially writing.

What do I want to write? Why? How do I want to write it? I can be *intentional* about all of my choices. I know a lot of pantsers are probably screaming at the idea of this, but I have found that whatever my original plot outline tends to be, the first ideas aren’t the ones that resonate. And that, to me, is intentionality. Not taking things at face value. I have this plot and it’s coherent, but is it The Best it can be right now? Am I sure?

That’s not to say you should second-guess everything (cue the edit loop nightmare) but that check-ins and self-reflection absolutely have a place in the creative process–even (especially?) if you’re a pantser. Am I writing this because I think it will sell or because I want to (or, ideally, both)? Do I even like dystopians? Am I taking the easy way out using a plot formula or dusty old trope without updating it? What am I saying? Is it what I want to be saying? These are all questions all writers should ask themselves. (Okay, maybe not if you like dystopians, but the genre you’re writing. ;))

I also find that intentionality is a good way around writer’s block and also creative anxiety. It gives you a focus and bite-size problems. Make a list of questions related to your work, and go through answering them. And the sense of doing what you can, on purpose, is peace-inducing in a way that flailing, well, isn’t.

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Don’t Think Too Much – Write It Down

I did the worst possible thing I could do when working on my story.

I have spent the last two weeks dreaming up plots and characters and arcs for my newest story (code named SP2M3 because SPPMMM got a little slurred verbally, lol). This book has so much room for potential, room of series growth, room for lots of characters to conflict and interact. The ideas have been flowing fast and furious. I’ve been gripping them, pondering them, and letting them go.

But the idea stream has been like the rush toward a waterfall. I wrote as much as I could when I had my outline open. I stayed awake late, dreaming up more and more. I thought I’d remember them, build on them, keep it moving forward.

And I didn’t write it all down.

When it was late at night and I was trying to get to sleep or I was on the bus then walking into work, dreaming up more and more, I thought I would remember the snippets I had imagined. And I let go.

But when I faced my outline document after a while, I realized I had missed a lot. There was a lot not on the page. And when I reached back to recall it, the ideas had washed over the edge of the waterfall, the brilliant (I’m biased) logic behind the decisions I had made for arcs and characters were now fuzzy. What I could recall wasn’t quite right–it wasn’t what I had realized in those times I hadn’t chosen to write down what I had just managed to conjure.

I turned around and, behind me, there were huge gaps. I was certain I had traversed them safely but I couldn’t recall them in their full detail.

And there is only one thing to say, to do, that summarizes what I’m feeling at this very moment at this point of discovery:

HEADDESK

Because a supernova just begins to cover my frustration. Source here.

So, please, learn from my colossal fuck up. Write it down. Write everything down. As soon as possible.

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Submissions: A Cautionary Tale

I’ve managed to overwhelm myself.

Every time I open up email, it seems I have a new message about a publication looking for submissions. And I want to keep them all. I read the theme and think, “That sounds like fun,” or, “I could write something for that.”

Invariably, I never do, but I keep the email to look at later (I never will), and maybe to serve as exercise-prompts when I can’t figure out what I want to be working on.

Right now, sitting down to write more than a few words is a chore all its own. (Only because I am between major projects and life is relatively slow and calm, so self-discipline has taken a vacation.) The idea of going through this backlog of emails just to find a prompt I feel like using? Not going to happen.

These emails, by the way, are primarily from the Coffintree Hill blog. (It’s a fantastic resource; check it out.)

So now my email inbox is overrun because I’ve never gotten around to doing anything with them. I have a bad habit of letting things pile up like that. Now it is time to read through the 20 or 30 I haven’t opened yet, delete the ones I don’t need or want and archive the rest. The hardest part – much like writing – is just sitting down to do it.

When something overwhelms me, I shut down. I bury my head in the metaphorical sand until the stress reaches a breaking point. Then I take care of it.

But weeding through these emails isn’t a huge ordeal for me. I know what I write and I have an idea of where that fits. I know what I’m looking for. A few years ago would have been a far different story.

There are a lot of markets out there. A lot. (A few more good resources: Ralan and The (Submission) Grinder; also Duotrope, though it’s no longer free. I like free. But $5 a month isn’t that bad.)

And it’s easy to get overwhelmed – that still happens to me, and that’s fine! – but learning what’s out there and submitting work is, for most of us, a necessary stop to become the writers we dream of being. So try to have patience with yourself. And be careful of your email subscriptions!

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New Project Excitement: Use It

We all know how it goes with anything new in our lives whether it’s a person, animal, or an object. It consumes most of our attention for at least a short while and pushes everything else to the periphery. The obsession may be short or long lived, either way, it’s exciting while it lasts.

If you’re a writer, there’s nothing more addicting than a new project, especially when you’re in the middle of fighting with an “old” one. It could just be me who reacts like this but I highly doubt it.

A few weeks ago I wrote about when characters get you down while writing. I was in complete avoidance mode with my work in progress for various reasons. Furthermore, I wasn’t getting any writing done at all aside from blog posts. In an attempt to maintain my focus I refused to move on to any other projects until I got my WIP where I wanted it to be –wholly drafted. I’d get sparks of ideas for other stories and write them down but I wouldn’t explore them at all.

Weeks and weeks and weeks of this went on to the point that I was getting annoyed about even drafting posts for Anxiety because I didn’t want to talk about writing when I couldn’t do it. I reached the end of my tolerance; I explained my conundrum and asked for advice.

Commenters told me to distract myself. Plain and simple. The suggestions ranged from working on other stories and returning when I regained my equilibrium to character head hopping to doing non-writer activities. I looked at their answers and thought, “But all the productivity lists out there tell you to slog through and focus.” Then my common sense kicked in, “Writing SOMETHING is better than writing NOTHING.”

Again: writing SOMETHING is better than writing NOTHING.

It’s seriously obvious when you realize it, not so much when you’re stuck. Since then, I succumbed and have written about 3500 words planning and starting a completely different project than my WIP. It was so liberating and exciting! I haven’t stayed up till 3 am to work on any piece in ages –I just couldn’t stop typing. I’d missed that feeling.

What’s more, I already have plans to get myself back into the WIP, which I do intend to focus more on than any of my “marginal” projects because I want to have a draft by the end of this year. I’m not terrified to set that goal again because I’m going to let my mind wander to the other projects when I get bogged down. I want to stay consistently on the writing course this year. If project hopping is the answer then I will do it without guilt.

So, moral of the story: use new project excitement if it helps you get words on the page. Focus is important but if you get stuck to the point that you’re standing still what the hell good does it do you in the end? Let your focus wander and then kindly pull it back when you’re ready.

Happy writing!

 

*Image source.

 

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Ask an Editor: The 10% Rule

Time once again for Ask an Editor, wherein I play the editor and write about whatever I want because no one ever asks me anything. Today we’re dealing with an old writer’s rule.

I heard once that when you revise you should always aim to cut 10% from your manuscript. Is it true? What am I supposed to cut?!

Yes. It is true. Now let me explain. Like pretty much every “rule” ever, there’s a spirit of the rule and a letter of the rule. The letter of the rule (you must cut 10%) is overly simplistic and rigid and, no, that’s not true. But the spirit of the rule? Totally.

But, you say, I write like Hemingway! I am the essence of not overwriting!

Which is great. So 10% is probably not going to apply to you. But cutting still is. Here’s the thing: Nobody writes a clean first draft. Especially when we’re in our grooves. We often throw in little writerly tics that we’ll need to trim. We write more like how we speak than we may intend. The spirit of this rule is in cleaning up your prose, not removing egregious beats or descriptions (though those happen pretty often.) You mean to tell me you’ve never been really hungry and suddenly found yourself describing a character’s lunch in agonizing detail? Oh, just me? Kudos, then.

Some major things to watch out for:

Unless you’re writing in omniscient point of view (and most people don’t even if they think they do), “realized” “understood” and similar are rarely needed. These phrases can be cut and the thought they’re attached to can stand on its own within the POV (even in 3rd person, since it’s probably close 3rd.) Own that sentence!

Along with those, “felt” and “seemed” usually indicate distancing or telling language (or both).

“There are” “It was” etc. can similarly meet the ax. Those are the subject and verb of your sentence. Snooze. Make it stronger. Utilitarian language has its place but “There were six stairs leading to the basement” can be utilitarianly written as, “Six stairs led to the basement.” See what I did there? Participles (-ing verbs) are GREAT clues that your sentence could potentially use some streamlining.

What about story filler?

Action and sex scenes often get used to bulk up manuscripts, and they can be used really effectively written out. But they have to actually accomplish something worth showing it. Is there a character moment? Do we learn important backstory during the combat? No? Sex for the sake of sex and fighting for the sake of fighting are snoozes and those can meet your scalpel, too.

When I first started writing, I could easily draft an 80-90k manuscript. Once I learned to tighten my prose, my manuscripts rarely clock in over 70k now. (Now I have to clean it up for different reasons. ;))

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Let It Go: Writer Edition

Last year, one of my primary goals was to finish working on my cyberpunk YA book and start querying it. In 2013, a professional butchered edited it. I learned so much about writing through that edit and I felt I was finally ready to push the book forward.

Halfway through the edit, I hit a snag in my world-building. It took me several months to think my way out. I dove back into the book and got a solid crit on what I had rewritten so far…only to realize that my pacing was off. I’ve blogged on Anxiety about running into these all through the process. The frustration was building, the sense of expectation I had placed on this tory being “the one” to put me onto the marketplace had become a crippling weight on my creativity.

Source

So I let it go.

An idea exploded onto the scene in November and begged me to take it and run. “Look! I’m a shine new idea!” it said. “I don’t have years of baggage, expectations, or multiple and alternate scene ideas that will make you struggle as you plot. You get to make all new characters, serve up new adventures, build in a world that will fit your style so much more than the story with antiquated ideas about technology that you are trying to modernize. Pick me!”

So I did.

I’m working on outlines and character profiles, building my backstory and science/magic systems that I want to be using. The ideas are flowing, ready to be formed into the overarching story. I haven’t felt this kind of freedom while writing in a very long time. I’m hoping it lasts long enough to allow me to meet my goal this year of publishing at least one installment of it.

Do you every find yourself as a writer weighed down by all the ideas you’ve had in the past for a story? Where all the scenes you had in the formative stages of planning are battling it out to get on top? How did you deal with it?

I want to return to my cyberpunk story some day. I love all my characters and their story arcs. The main plot struction and worldbuilding are still lagging, despite spending a year working on them. But, for now, I’m letting it rest and forgiving myself so I don’t drag the guilt into my future projects.

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