Overcoming the Story Blues

I hate this.

Starting a new story is as conflicting as having a new baby with the older one crying for attention.  But worse:  my story offspring are not yet equally loved.  I have to force myself to ignore the older and nurture the new. 

There are a few good side effects.  I'm not obsessed with taking care of it. I sleep better.  I'm diligently reading, planning, writing--but find time to do other things.

It's a good thing our bodies take care of the first nine months of creating a baby.  If my mind had to develop a baby, I'd probably forget where I left it.

To shock me into a relationship with this story, I've put the first chapter up for critique. We'll see if readers stimulate any maternal instincts and if the story wants to breathe.  This is risky.  The story (The Legacy of Lucie Bosell) should be available March 28 on critiquecircle.com unless I come to my senses and pull it back to the womb.

Good idea?  Bad idea?  Death wish?

What do you know about the story blues?

Wanda, the sidekick who nearly stole the show

When I was told several times that my main character's sidekick was stealing the show, I decided to make her the main character of the next story.  In the first one (The Girl on the Mountain) Wanda is 13, abused and homeless, but resilient, wise, and strong-willed.  In that story she's a contrast to the older, somewhat naive main character (May Rose), who gives her a home and is inspired by her.

I like starting a new project with a character I know so well.  But almost immediately I'm confronted by the problem of maturity and change.  The new story takes place fifteen years later, and rough little Wanda has become a rough grownup. 

As an adult, Wanda can continue to be independent and outspoken.  Those traits can help as well as hinder the accomplishment of her goals in the new story.  But she can't retain the reactions of a child, or she will be neither loved nor a good main character.  I'm also wondering if her ungrammatical speech will make her less acceptable as a grown-up main character.  People do tend to associate ungrammatical speech with ignorance--not an accurate association, but true of our prejudices.

So help me out.  What do you know of "rough" main characters, especially female ones?  Main characters with poor speech?  What makes them lovable? 

Write Better: Get Another View

Another view.  We must have other eyes on our manuscripts no matter how painful the corrections and comments.  It's too easy to write alone, get lost in our own words, not see ambiguity, sentence weaknesses, lack of clarity.  We have to seek constructive criticism.  Without it, we can't possibly get better.

I hope someone reading this post is a high school or college student who's angry or disillusioned by a harsh review of a beloved composition.  Maybe even a middle-aged new writer who has submitted a story to a publisher or a writing group like CritiqueCircle.com and been disappointed by a lack of enthusiastic response.  It's always a shock to discover our words did not reach a reader as we intended.

Get help.  Like other people devoted to their craft, writers all over the world willingly help each other. CritiqueCircle.com is a terrific (and free) mutual-help community.  Members can also learn by seeing mistakes and problems in the writing of others.

Don't accept every critique as golden.  There are as many different reading tastes as food preferences and varieties of dogs.  Take a look at the writing style and reading habits of the person critiquing you (found on the site in CC member profiles).  See what that person said about stories you also critiqued.  Critiques on a story often vary widely--many readers sense something wrong but don't know what it is or how to fix it.  Realize that the best they've told you may be that something doesn't quite work. Occasionally someone does not know how to give opinions in a kind or helpful manner, but I think those instances on Critique Circle are rare. Members on the site gain experience in critiquing.  In most cases writers can find the reactions they need (though not always what they want), often by knowledgeable people.  

Before you show your manuscript to someone else, give yourself a different perspective.   Look at it in a different format. Widen the margins so the page looks like the page of a book. Don't rely on the grammar and spelling checker--PRINT a proof copy. Mistakes jump out--typos, unnecessary repetitions, poor transitions, and so on. To save paper, look at the document in your word processor's two-page view. This view allows you to see across paragraphs and pages and spot all kinds of weaknesses. (After I edit in normal screen view, I go to the two-page view and spend time tweaking.  I love the two-page view.)

Finally, if you're going to show the manuscript to anyone--a friend or someone online--never say "I haven't had time to edit this but I just wanted to get your opinion."  I hope you see the problem in that.

Author branding: I am, I love, I believe (and I write)

In a guest post on BookBuzzr.com, Laurel Marshfield (Blue Horizons Communications) describes authors' brands as messages they put out about themselves.  Marshfield says "Your brand is your author story ... you need to consciously make use of the intersection between your personal life story and the story your books tell. And then, you need to use that intersection to dialogue with interested readers."  She cites author Jodi Picoult’s webside as an example of effective branding.

This may not be the ultimate definition of "branding," but it's one I think I understand.  So I ask myself, do I have a brand?  Maybe so.  My two novels-in-progress share some characteristics, and they do reflect who I am, what I love, and what I believe.  (Also the kind of books I like to read). Here's a partial list.

1. Appreciation for ordinary people in a distinct cultural setting--in my case, wilderness, rural, and small-town.  In my reading, this shows up in preference for books set in other cultures:  A Fine Balance (Mistry), Brick Street (Ali), Cutting for Stone (Verghese), State of Wonder (Patchett).

 My two WIPs, The Girl on the Mountain and Ridgetop are set 100 years apart in the same Appalachian region. 

2. Fascination with the mountain wilderness, maybe because much of West Virginnia's terrain and flora present challenges and difficulties to overcome as well as spectacular views.  I never tire of the view from my windows. 

3. Love of history, especially the history of industry and everyday implements used by our great-grandparents.  I love old things.

4. Respect for people, because all creation is precious.  I think this means I will never have a villain who isn't partly sympathetic. 

Enough about me.  How about you?  What's the connection between you and your stories?  What's your brand?

See Laura Marshfield's full post:
What's an Author Brand?

Breakup: When to divorce your project

Do you have at least one novel, short story or poem you've been editing for years?

Do you find tweaking words easier than starting something new?

If so, you may need to divorce that project.

Breaking up is hard to do.  Describing gamers' addiction to FarmVille in a Wired Magazine article ("Gamed," July 2011), Dan Ariely explains why it's hard to stop working on our creations.  "Once people take all the little steps to build a farm, they become invested in it--and thereby value it more highly.  The more complex and difficult and time-consuming a process is, the more we fall in love with our creation and the more we become interested in the game."

Complex, difficult, time-consuming, and hard to give up. Sounds like my addiction.  Does it sound like yours?

It's great to be invested and to love what we do.  But attachment to an old project keeps us from going forward.

Nine months ago, burned out from working too intensely on Wacky Road, I divorced that sucker and embarked on painful weeks of brainstorming a new story, The Girl on the Mountain, something very different.  I blogged about this earlier in Writing from Scratch.

Now Girl is undergoing the critique process, and I've transitioned to something new, inspired by John Locke's How I Sold 1 Million ebooks in 5 Months!   Locke says that a reader who enjoys your first book is likely to look for another of your books right away.  Therefore, bringing out two or more at the same time can give you a bump in sales.

Everybody acknowledges that generating ebook sales is tough, maybe next to impossible for those of us who don't write in highly popular, sensational genres.   We need all the help we can get.  But here's something encouraging:  Joe Konrath, in his blog A Newbie's Guide to Publishing mentions that ebooks will last forever.  Forget shelf-life.  Your ebook has a chance to sell over time, or at least until popular tastes change.

So now I'm happily romancing a story I divorced almost ten years ago.

Separation from your story doesn't have to be permanent.  You can fall in love again, and write better, the second time around.

Write chapter summaries as you draft

I've always hated to write summaries, but in working on my current project,  I actually found them useful. 

Instead of waiting till the final draft to tackle the dreaded task, I started writing a summary as I finished each chapter.  But I didn't begin to do this until I was more than half way through the first draft, so I had to catch myself up, reviewing and writing summaries for all the chapters up to that point.

The first good thing about it was the way it ended my confusion about what was happening at particular points in the story.  That's why I did it.  I was lost.

The second, unexpected good thing was how the summaries showed problems, contradictions, and inconsistencies.  I found chapters where there was nothing much happening, or too much.  Plot threads I'd forgotten about and hadn't carried forward.  

I still hate this kind of writing, but heartily recommend you write summaries as you go along.  It's easier when everything's fresh. Use the summaries as a reference to keep yourself straight.  When you write the next draft, revise them as necessary.  When someday a publisher asks to see your first fifty pages and your chapter summaries, the summaries will be seasoned veterans.

The pause before the end

Here's the current problem.  Come to think of it, it's my typical old problem.  I'm near the end of a first draft, and reluctant to write the finish.   Instead of plowing ahead, I decided to explore why, maybe do a better job when I get back to it.

It's not burnout.  I know what that feels like.  This pause feels more like fear that I've missed something.  It feels like staying up late because the day was boring, like checking the house before going on vacation. 

The story may not be ready to end.

Even if it is, there's good reason to pause.  Readers expect something satisfactory to emerge from the situation, conflict, or chaos, so there's a responsibility to deliver it.  Just not as usual, and not as might be expected. 

A good ending comes as something of a surprise to the characters as well as to the readers, yet it illuminates the beginning and middle of the story.  Seeds of the ending are present in the very first page.  If a WINNER emerges in a BIG SCENE, the ending helps us understand what winning means.

Occasionally I read an ending so perfect that I am reluctant to close the book.  I hold it a short while, admiring and getting used to the fact that it's over.  Darn.

The movie "The Taking of Pelham One Two Three" ends with a great symbol: the Denzel Washington character bringing home milk, as instructed by his wife earlier in the day.  The ending works because it's so ordinary, a contrast with his extraordinary action throughout the story.  It says, "Life has been restored." 

In a satisfactory ending, someone we care about goes on. 

The End.

Not to be taken lightly.