Making That Goal!
031 / 31 100% Done!
Annnnnnd… Done! At 11:20 PM on January 9th, I crossed the finish line on Darkmore’s first round of revisions. Of course, now it’s January 12th that I’m making this post. Things have been a little on the crazy side on this end. You understand.
On the morning of January 9th, I was three and a half chapters in the hole. Class started on the 10th. And pressure, I’ve come to realize, is an excellent motivator. I didn’t want Darkmore hanging over my head when class started. So, by a lot of willpower, and maybe a few bottles of Mio Energy mixed into a metric ton of water, the ending to Darkmore came out of my brain and onto the page.
Is it the right ending? Maybe. Is it a better ending? No doubt. The new interpretation of the ending was based on comments from my critique group and made me realize, Sevon and Jack made it out of their ordeal much too easily initially. Now, everyone has been touched, changed, altered, or has a whole new outlook based on the outcome. Even the social classes of the kingdom of Darkmore ends up forever changed.
I made the executive decision to mostly close off the story to the opportunity of a sequel. There is a possibility for one but it will more or less be a story within the same universe and not necessarily the same characters. There’s a few breadcrumbs dropped in here and there of those that could have stories. Sevon’s parents Anna Maria and Louis is a potential story I’m seriously considering. How did they meet? What adversities did they face? How did Sevon get in the picture? Jack’s brother and sister-in-law, Kaltag and Mirabelle, have a story of how they got to such a level of mutual adoration of one another. What did they face? Bianca and Chaney, the captain and second of Sevon’s royal guard, have their own remarkable history.There’s potential for three interlinking prequels right there. That’s not counting potential future trials and tribulations for Jack and Sevon down the road.
I feel I’ve learned a lot more with this round of revision. I’ve learned more about the characters and about my writing. I’ve picked up a few new methods along the way. Such as jotting down beats to scenes as suggested by Rachel Aaron on her blog. Still figuring out how to work in a 10k word day without killing my life. But jotting down a loose road map to the final battle really saved my bacon when it came to crunch time!
I’ve also experimented with eliminating thought verbs as Chuck Palahniuk explained here via la vie boheme and according to the critique group, while my work wasn’t shabby before, it’s definitely had quite a bit of a power-up.
Now, all that’s on the menu is tweaking the ending and making sure that my sentences aren’t total gibberish. You try avoiding ‘was’ and ‘is’ usage and watch your sentences go pear-shaped. Or sentences that turn… how shall we say… A little too abstract and expressionistic? Or better yet, too freaking obtuse when you’re trying to choreograph a final battle. 
And then I get to go for round two with this thing, and a final round three. I’m giving myself only three times with this and then I’m shipping it out. I don’t want to be trapped in revision hell for the rest of my life.
In two weeks, I dust 10-9 off and take a look at it again. I already have some pretty drastic measures planned. The thing is 91k at current. That’s a bit unwieldy for a romance novel. Some things are going to have to get cut and cut hard.
Anyway. My class is about to start and I’ve got ten minutes to edit and post this. Whee~
The End And The New Year
024 / 31 77.42% Done!
Once again, I grossly miscalculated. This time the miscalculation worked out in my favor! I’m so much closer to the end of the book than I thought! While exciting, it’s going to take some elbow grease on my part. I have to write the last seven chapters from scratch, and unlike when I wrote the final 7k the first time, I don’t intend doing it in a day.
College is back in session on the 10th, and I intend finishing the first round of revisions on the 5th. It’ll be great having it out of the way! By my initial calculations the revisions would take eight months. I’m pleased that I’m finishing three months ahead of schedule! Once I bucked up and resolved to revise 7k a week things really got going!
My critique group, provided nothing comes up between now and then, will finish going through it around February 14th. Accidental perfect timing on my part because it’s the exact date of the 20 year anniversary. I might need a cupcake. ;D
Overall, I like the new direction Darkmore went in. I’ve said before the first draft wasn’t bad it just wasn’t the right. Of course, that’s just conjecture on my part. Darkmore has drifted from straight up romance and naughtiness all the time to a bit more of a action-romance still with the same naughtiness. ;D Instead of things concluding with a mere whisper of a warm fuzzy, I’m hoping that the new conclusion reads with the same emotional punch I’m visualizing. I want people cheering with the new ending instead of settling down with a ‘oh isn’t that nice….’
I’m also kind of tired of being totally spoiler-free with talking about my stuff. I want to tell the world with all the tasty bits! I realize in the game of publishing that’s not a good idea. Alas!
Also, I’ve busted out my calendar and blocked out my writing schedule for the new year. The table breaks down as follows:
| January 5th | Darkmore Revision 1 |
| January 19 | Darkmore Sequel Synopsis |
| January – End of April | 10-9 Revision 4 |
| May 12th | 10-9 Sequel Synopsis |
| May – July | Draft Grow |
| June 6th | Submit Darkmore |
| End of July – Mid September | Expand Pawn Takes Rook |
| October – First Week of December | Revise Americana Fairytale |
| December 5 | Submit 10-9 |
| December 22 | Americana Fairytale Sequel Synopsis |
Posting it here for accountability sake, plus I’ll stick it up on its own page so I can have a check off list as I go. I’m happy about it. I’ve managed to fit everything in I wanted to do in 2012. I guess it’ll be the Year of Revision and I can only imagine 2013 will be the Year of Writing.
Happy New Year everyone! May you accomplish all of your goals!
When It Becomes Real
020 / 45 44.44% Done!
I think I need to commemorate this because I will never see 44.44% ever again. That’s awesome. Darkmore is a teensy bit shy of halfway into the editing process and I’m four chapters away of completely running out of material I salvaged and wander into Make The New Ending Land. Considering I started this in oooh… August I can only cross my fingers I’ll be through it by end of February. I’m giving myself till March 10th as a final due date for the first round of revisions. I’m thankful for my Critique Group because I’ve been able to make more sweeping changes sooner instead of whittling at it layer by layer on my own. It’s because of the questions raised by the Critique Group that I’ve decided to completely rewrite the ending. Likewise, it’s because of the Critique Group, I have to go back to the earlier chapters and work in new details, alter certain character attitudes, and add more to the worldbuilding.
Overall, I’m happy just to be mostly back on my feet. Editing Darkmore has been utterly peppered with starts and stops from my sudden cases of death. I’ve had the flu twice, I’ve had crippling days of acid reflux twice, and now that my wisdom teeth are gone I dealt with developing dry socket and unwittingly near overdosing on ibuprofen. I’m happy to report my dry socket packings are out as of yesterday and while I’m still a bit tender it’s nowhere near as bad. I’m trying to tough it out a bit and let the clots form but eating is still a bit of an adventurous chore. Right now, I have a delicious brownie from Firehouse Subs sitting in front of me and I’ve only managed eating a quarter of it. Normally, this thing is in my gut in under a minute, but I can barely open my mouth wide enough to bite it. So, I nibble.
Nonetheless, I am committed to getting this friggin’ book done. It’s become the principle of the thing now, and when it gets to that point it’s time to put on your asbestos lined boots and march into that hell. School’s back in session come January 10th and I’ve got a lot of ground to cover between now and then. The more I make a dent the better off everything will be.
It’s getting closer to the point of writing a synopsis and query letter, and then it’ll be all the more real. The day Darkmore gets sent off into the submission works is the day it stops being a story I created as an angsty 13-year-old and traded chapters with friends to being something more. It stops being this nebulous thing that lived in my head for two decades and starts being a thing that perfect strangers can see, touch, hold, and read.
It’s terrifying… And at the same time, absolutely liberating. Honestly, I think seeing Darkmore in print is far more personally monumental for me than 10-9. Trust me when I say that’s saying a lot from the kid that put her nightmares on paper and turned them into heroes so they wouldn’t scare her anymore.
Crossing That Finish Line
0
Remember that anthology story I said I was starting way back in this post? Yeah. After dealing with school work and a bit of beating my head into the wall, it’s done.
The only problem is I overshot my goal of 12k and ended up with close to 15k. Unless there’s three thousand words I can just dump, which hopefully there is, my chances of making the anthology have become slim to none. On the bright side, the potential for publication as a stand alone novella has increased exponentially.
The lovely little tale I call Pawn Takes Rook and stars a first person POV by a guy that’s had way too much caffeine and too little sleep. The prose kind of bounces all over the place like a kid without his Ritalin….
For fifteen thousand words. Also no chapter or section breaks because it reads like one long, long, long stream of consciousness rant only with an actual plot.
Overall, I’ve created characters I feel proud of. The protagonist and resident spaz-monkey is a young hipster fellow by the name of Hogarth Dawson. I chose the name as a reference to Burne Hogarth, the guy responsible for the Dynamic Figure Drawing books. And honestly, I can’t imagine Hogarth with any other name. It’s one of those things that just fits him. He’s very peppy, a bit nerdy, and for a technopath has no idea what Deloreans are but loves giant robots. He’s definitely more than meets the eye. Oh a pun~
His partner in crime is a near seven-foot tall, blond and brawny Viking by the name of Memphis Rook. When it comes to Rook, let it be known I never throw anything out. His first name was recycled from Memphis Archer, the self-esteem lacking protagonist in my failed culinary-student-in-love story Doughboy. Once again, it was just a name that clicked in and worked. In writing Rook, I realized I had tapped into the very first superhero I had ever created as a small child, D Westbaylen.
Westbaylen to this day is a username I practically use everywhere because the chances of it being used is absolutely zero. I’m even the variation Westiebee on Twitter. I haven’t written the character in nineteen years because I hated what he had become. He went from being a sarcastic and likeable badboy to being a completely deplorable anti-hero bordering on being a villain. Writing him in those days since I had changed him up never put me in a good place in my head and usually left me depressed for days.
Rook I realized is what Westie started out as. Sarcastic, likeable, and with just enough sexy badboy mojo. I was never at a loss for a zinger, or a one liner, or a pun when writing his dialogue. He never felt stiff. Like I was trying to create something that just wasn’t there. He flowed easily, and his motivations were always clear in my mind. His fondness for 80s trends and gadgets was a charming quirk that pretty much materialized out of thin air.
Whether Pawn Takes Rook makes the grade in the submission process or not, I’m going to make the vow not to beat myself up over it if it doesn’t. While the usual Five Guys Burger and Fries of Rejection is delicious, I need to find healthier avenues of dealing with my moping. Like going to the gym and turning the moping into positivity.
Still, hey, I wrote a friggin’ novella with an all new world, new style, and new characters… That’s nothing to sneeze at.
And now I will sip my Coffee of Victory. Cheers!
Singing The Melody Of My Greatest Hit
0The melody of my greatest hit in question is ‘I’m So Far Off My Outline.’ I’m up to Chapter 15 and while events are occurring at their appointed time, I’ve made such a gigantic mess I’ve chosen to plow through and not backpedal.
In a moment of brilliance, I’ve discovered a light at the end of the tunnel. You see, Darkmore has six different outlines. And I kept all of them. The outline I have been working off is called Outline 5-A. Because Outline 5 wasn’t doing it for me. In pretty much ignoring everything Outline 5-A said at this current point in the story but remembering it sounded vaguely like another outline I had done, I went digging.
And I found the file called Outline 6. And everything I had reworked was all there as well as a road map on what to do next. Halle-freaking-lujah!
Problem: In initially keeping 60% of the book, which honestly is kind of unheard of anyway, I’m now basically keeping about 20%. But that small smidgeon I kept has been reordered and all the dialogue rewritten.
And I’m actually okay with this. I realize I’m forging it into something stronger and less… wimpy. I’ve raised the stakes exponentially for all sides because it makes no sense for a battle to be largely one sided. It makes no sense for Sevon to magically outwit the villain and the villain to accept his fate like a placid sheep. It has to be a fight. It has to leave a mark. Sevon, Jack, and everyone else that assists them have to be forever changed by the enormity of what they’ve done. They can’t just pull out a roll of Mentos, smile, and that makes everything All Okay™.
Editing is not about playing it safe. It’s not about correcting the spelling, adding a comma, and calling it a day. It’s about killing your darlings and forging their corpses in the literary bellows into a weapon that cleaves the imagination into thousands of possibilities.
I have Ace of Cakes Rock Star Duff Goldman in my head that says “Never play it carefully and safe. Dumb and dangerous is the way to go.”
Let’s get dangerous. Rock on.
Finally! A Dent!
0I had forgotten I used to post progress meters of editing as well. It’s back! And I like that I can actually see some honest to goodness progress instead of the bleak grind of my Word Doc. When all is said and done, 45 chapters of Darkmore’s first round of revision is only an estimate. I have 36 planned but it depends what I split up, what I combine, and what I cut all together.
I’ve made myself the goal to edit 7k a week, 1k a day. Similar to my writing habits of writing 7k a week from scratch. I haven’t been able to write consistently for about a month and it’s been making me pretty batshit. I’ve decided that if I’m going to keep the pace I need to get up earlier before my day gets bogged down with other necessities like school, homework, and going to the gym. Because at the end of the day, my brain is too scattered to concentrate. Monday through Friday I’m up at 8:30 and my butt is in my chair till noon. Saturday and Sunday I ‘sleep in’ until 9 and pretty much play things by ear. I still have time for all prior commitments and it’s done wonders for the cantankerous mood that had me by the throat for the last month.
Considering with Darkmore, I had to redraft the first quarter of the book and it was a hell of a grind. I’m finally at the chapters of the story that I’m keeping largely intact and just editing for context to fit into the revamped beginning. A lot of dialogue’s been cut, rewritten, or had other characters say a different character’s lines. A lot of Sevon’s opinions or decisions were flopped around at this point in the story to make sense with the whole.
The best part about it is I don’t hate it anymore. When I was writing the beginning I was like ‘My God! I’m such a useless hack! I don’t know what I’m doing! I need a tub of Haggen-Daz STAT.‘ Now… Thanks to my beloved crit group of The Traveling Gypsy Writers on Facebook, I realize no really I don’t suck that bad. Hurray! 
And NaNoWriMo is only nine days away aaaaauuuugh. I’ve decided to suck it up and just edit Darkmore for it. Cheating? No. Why do you say that? I’m not cheating. Noooooo… But I’m going to vow to myself next book I’m doing is Grow. That bastard is getting written one way or another!
You heard it here first! Tune in next time!
Piling Things On My Plate
0NaNoWriMo is six weeks away and I am the first to admit I am completely unprepared. I have notes on a dry erase board of telling me to check into X, Y, and Z that have been there since the summer. The book I’m doing this time called Grow, is an idea I’ve had in my head for four years, and it was initially meant as a gift for my mother. I had a false start with it back then, well, in all fairness I had come up with the idea two hours before NaNoWriMo 2008 kicked off at midnight November 1st. I was full of false bravado of “Oh hey, I can do that!” A little easier said than done back then.
My mother and I still once in a while discuss Grow. It’s kind of a once in a blue moon thing. When I had started school this semester she said to me point-blank “When are you going to finish Grow?” and I said confidently “This Fall.”
Grow is similar to 10-9 in the years from Conception to Completion. 10-9 was the famous six years of false starts, rewrites, lack of confidence, and then just finally getting down to it. 10-9′s completion was also fueled by a friend’s comment that said “Let’s face it. You’ll never finish it. It’s your life.” Filled with righteous indignation I immediately thought, “Oh I’ll show you, Mr. Smarty Pants!”
I spit out 10-9 from December 2009 to May 2010. I held up the box of the draft to my friend and he grinned. “Gotcha,” he said. And thus began my long history of writing things on dares. Because I can do it. And I will win.
Grow began humbly, but it was the first flash of my mother discovering I could tell stories. In a way, Grow molded into something that brought us together. Somehow, the impetus of wanting to share this with my mother should be the thing that makes me bust ass on it. But it isn’t. I have yet to be dared to finish it. I have yet to have the gauntlet thrown in my direction.
Thus, I’m unprepared. But isn’t that how NaNo goes anyway? It’s like surfing. You body surf the waves to learn the tides. Polite company calls that drowning. So NaNo you pretty much drown for a while until you figure out how to get on your surfboard of plot and claim the half-pipe.
As for 10-9, who’s still sitting on a shelf after Awesome Rejection Critique… I know what must be done. I was struck with a fit of temporary insanity and just sending it on to the next publishing house without any revisions suggested by the critique made hoping they would take it as-is. Here’s the kicker. The Awesome Rejection Critique came from a company I had sent it to them twice. They did express that they could be interested in 10-9 down the road once I had clarified some bits and they had another look at it. Key word is could. Not a promise of acceptance.
So my master plan is to do the edits, and ship it back in for three times the charm. Maybe lucky number three will be what does it.
On top of that… I’m creeping bit by bit through editing Darkmore which is also for the same company. I’ve revised nearly 20k. That’s progress I suppose. I need a magical Time Management Fairy. Or 100-hour days would be spiffy.
SIGNAL BOOST: SAY YES TO GAY YA
0Originally posted by
(click the link for the full article)
Our novel Stranger has five viewpoint characters; one, Yuki Nakamura, is
gay and has a boyfriend. Yuki's romance, like the heterosexual ones in
the novel, involves nothing more explicit than kissing.An agent from a major agency, one which represents a bestselling YA novel in the same genre as ours, called us.
The agent offered to sign us on the condition that we make the gay
character straight, or else remove his viewpoint and all references to
his sexual orientation.This isn't about that specific agent; we'd gotten other rewrite requests before this one. Previous agents had also offered to take a second look if we did rewrites… including cutting the viewpoint of Yuki, the gay character.
It's time to stand up and demand change. Spread the word everywhere if you are just as angry and outraged by this.
Can You See The Light?
0
I'm Gunna Make You Cry HURRAY
When I feel disheartened in the revision process, I look at my little five-minute caricature doodle of Sevon and all is well.
Revision is actually not moving at a glacial pace like I figured it would. I’ve joined a critique group and we’re actually quite awesome with a good vibe. I pretty much revise a chapter a week, hand it in, get comments, and have another go. With thirty-two chapters to wade through, I will be done in eight months at this rate. Eeeer. Maybe it still is a bit of a glacial pace.
Honestly, when I look at it in terms of wordcount I’ve already revised 10k of words. So that’s no small feat. Thankfully, Chapter Two AKA The Former Chapter Fourteen largely survived unscathed and contextually actually fit rather nice and snug in its new place.
I think it’s because I’m tackling the hard stuff first. I know for fact I have to rewrite the beginning. That’s just a lot of ‘beginning’ to waddle through. Okay. Not the beginning per se, but the first quarter is a more apt description.
I’m starting to face similar challenges again. Darkmore is coming across too ‘young-ish’ sounding and not ‘dark and adult-ish’ enough. It’s like the darker scenes read perfectly dark and adult, but they’re scattered in a lighter sounding prose. If that makes sense. The crit group reports the dark vs. light ratio is a little askew. Possibly too light, and needs more grunge and nasty vibes. The book’s about vampires you know. My intent is to show sexy vampires, but show they’re still monsters that eat people and think nothing of it.
I want it accessible to those that read the adult romance genre, but not be too seedy, violent, or repulsive. Perhaps, playing it safe is where I’m going wrong. As Former Ace of Cakes star Duff Goldman says, “Don’t be smart and safe. Be dumb and dangerous.”
The world the story came from much darker roots and was from a place of hurt, self-loathing, and anger. When you look at the world itself and the concepts, it’s fairly rock solid. So I chose to lighten it up a bit. Mostly for my sanity.
When I used to write stories in the Darkmore universe as a child, I’d feel emotionally drained. If I remember correctly with the stories from my childhood… The bad guys won, several of the good guys died, and the anti-hero who was so desperately trying to escape his father’s influence caved to his father’s wishes.
If I remember, the thing was kind of this crackpot statement of it didn’t matter your upbringing, nurturing, or education of life, you are going to end up being exactly who you were meant to be. There was no evolution of character, no changing you fate. At birth, no matter what came after, at the end of the road, you were who your destiny foreordained. I basically took the concept of Free Will out of the equation back then.
Back then I was a moody high school goth that was misunderstood by everyone and had no faith in myself. Back then, I was hurting and I wanted to express my hurt.
Now, my self-esteem has improved and my self-respect has grown with it. My favorite color now is green instead of black. Now… Darkmore is about true love when it’s least expected, it’s about meeting someone you just click with, and it’s about when you hit rock bottom, you gotta pick yourself back up and try harder. It’s about being a better person and having a person that inspires you to be a better person.
With sexy, bloodsucking, people-eating vampires.
What makes a monster and what makes man?
