Saturday Is a Sunday

Or: I got a fever and my body tried to boil my brain.

Yesterday, I woke up with a sore throat, a killer migraine, body aches, and I couldn't warm up to save my life. Long story and Nyquil later, I'm feeling better but not better enough to write a post. Sorry guys!!

Happy Halloween,
Peace and cookies,
Laina

Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice.

Tim Burton is kind of a genius.

Since it's Halloween weekend, I thought I'd talk about one of my favorite horror flicks when I was a kid. I'm not necessarily sure why I liked this movie - I'm pretty sure I had no idea what it was about, since I watched it when I was, like, five or something - but I always, always watched it when it was on.

The plot is about a "bio-exorcist" who tries to scare away this couple who recently moved into a new house inhabited by ghosts. The ghosts aren't happy with the newcomers and hire the infamous Beetlejuice to do the job.

And this brings me to my topic today: plot. There are so many ways you can twist a conventional story into something new and unique. Instead of telling an average ghost story, where humans try to exorcise ghosts, Michael McDowell (the original script writer) decided the ghosts needed to exorcise the humans and Beetlejuice was born.

So say you get an idea that doesn't sound really original but you'd love to write. One that sticks in your head. It's happened to me several times, and I sat with that idea and talked to it. How can I make you scream, idea? How can I make you unique and witty and zany? And we discuss it over a cup of tea and decide on some key elements. There are a lot of things that can make an unoriginal idea original: writing, characters, the plotting itself, and setting.

So say you have an idea for a romance story. But it's just a romance story, you say to yourself. How is that original? Try setting. Make it in Alaska. Make it in Germany during World War 2. Make it in an entirely new world you create.

Say you want to write a horror story. But it's just a horror story, you say to yourself. Try something new with your writing. Write from the point of view of the horror creature itself. Beowulf's Grendel, written by John Gardner, probably came from this same idea of thinking. Take that monstrous thing and write through it's eyes.

Say you want to write a comedy. But it's just a comedy, you say to yourself. Tell the characters to stop being lazy and speak to the readers. Tell them to do something interesting, daring.

Don't ever not write a story idea that's eating at you because you think it's unoriginal. Make it your own. Spin it, weave it, write it.

WEDNESDAY IS HILARIOUS?

When I volunteered to do a post on TEH FUNNY I didn't quite realize that NOTHING I WRITE IS EVER COMEDY. Instead there's always an underlying current of tongue-in-cheek humor, little lines here and there to lighten the emotional load. Because the stories I write are about families torn apart, the death of a friend, alcoholism, and love stories that never quite go the way they're supposed to.

I'm not a comedy writer, but you have no idea how much I sometimes wish I were. I can spend hours watching shows like 30 Rock, Community, and The Office, and trying to figure out why the funny works as well as it does. So it's no surprise that, when doing a post on TEH FUNNIES, I'm going to be looking at both television and books.

Elements of Funny
Keep in mind, please, that there's no reason to use EVERY SINGLE ELEMENT unless you just want to. This is just a list of common funny things I've noticed that some hilarious works make use of, if that makes sense. And, because I didn't have a whole heap of time to write this post I only came up with three. SOZ BOUT THAT.

THE FUNNYMAN :
Ex:
Spencer, from Suite Scarlett
Alpha, from The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks (arguably)
Spencer, from iCarly
Tracy Jordan, from 30 Rock


This is the character that makes you laugh. You learn pretty quickly that this character is never going to have a not-funny scene. They just say the darndest things. Or do the darndest things. This is the character that you can always rely on to be funny. (For all you TV tropes fans, the funnyman can sometimes be the Cloudcuckoolander, but not always.)


In television it's fine to have a character whose sole purpose is to be funny, but one of the reasons that Spencer (the Suite Scarlett one) works so well is that not only is he the funnyman in pretty much every scene, but he's also one of the most important characters and has a very strong relationship with the protagonist. He's not the primary main character, but he's close.

OUTRAGEOUS SITUATIONS :
Ex:
Everything 30 Rock does
Most of Community
Everything Spencer from Suite Scarlett is ever involved in

These are the situations that, even on their own with no characters to support them, are completely insane. Things like putting on a Shakespeare play (complete with unicycles!) in your home, breaking into a KFC space shuttle simulation and being towed away. Those things. They just sound ridiculous, and if you can fit something that ridiculous into your completely-grounded (or even un-grounded) story, KUDOS TO YOU. It's funny.

WACKY NARRATOR/NARRATION :
The best example of this one is Serafina67, in which the entire book is told in blog format and there are whole chapters (including scenes and dialogue) written in... wait for it... LOLCAT. For serious. It's undoubtedly off-putting to some readers, but for others (like me) it's absolutely hilarious.

I'm not telling you to write your book in lolcat. But telling it in an interesting, offbeat way usually gives it some humor.

JOKES :
I absolutely love jokes. I wish I could write them into my stories, but I have no idea. I know nothing about them, but obviously they're hilarious.

Flashbacks

Traveling gives me weird dreams. I mean, I have weird dreams normally, but traveling gives me really. Strange. Nightmares. Which is awesome, because half of them are great story ideas, if I can remember them long enough.

I had one of those strange dreams Friday night, and I remember it quite vividly, as I had to wake up in the middle of it to get to the airport (you can only remember dreams you wake up during, right?). It was the perfect combination; crazy dream, vivid recollection, and lots of time sitting in moving vehicles to mull over it.

Needless to say, bam, new story idea. The characters and their relationships are already so clear in my head that I was itching to start writing. So, I did. (Not going to say in which class.) By the end of a surreptitious half hour, I had four pages written. Normally it's hard for me to write that fast, except when writing a flashback scene. Which I was.

Why is that? Almost every time I write flashback scenes, I write at least twice as fast as when writing present-moment scenes. Anyone else find that happens to them? Any thoughts why?

Kieryn
www.kierynnicolas.blogspot.com

Creating an Online Presence

Something I've been thinking about lately...unpublished writers, do you ever think about the online presence you're making? Do you blog because you just want to talk about writing or because you want to network or just hope that maybe an agent will stumble across your blog? Do you think about the part it'll play after you become published?

For me, it's a little bit of everything. I write about writing because I want to connect with other writers. I read tons of blogs on writing and I figure, why not share my opinion in case it can help someone else? But, I'm also creating another blog/website in the hopes of getting my name out there. I don't expect to get an agent based on a blog - that's crazy. I do think that it will be beneficial to me in the long run, though.

What about you?

Harmony

Saturday Says It’s Not You, It’s Her

Or: Saturday makes a big decision.

(Snort. That sounds so dramatic.)

When is it time to stop writing? Not permanently, obviously, not even at all. Don’t panic, I’m not suggesting that I’m going to stop writing completely. :P But the thing I’ve been wondering is… when is it time to stop writing a WIP? How do you know when you’re not just stuck, but you’ve run out of words?

See, whenever anyone asks how much I write (though this has only happened a couple times) I always answer, “Until the words stop.”

With #TheGenieBook, I think the words have stopped for good. My word count was fine, but nothing was coming right and it felt so forced. I've cleaned several rooms in my house, scheduled a dozen or so posts in Blogger and my Google Reader was pretty much empty for a time (these are the things I do when the words don’t come right).

I didn’t want to quit. I liked my characters, I liked the story, but… a break might be in order. Time to let it percolate and give myself some space so when I feel like going back to it, I can look at it more objectively.

I mean, I wrote… three? Three or four scenes for #Spyder while writing another book and then wrote the full thing when I was desperately bored and needing something else to write.

I'm really excited about my NaNo idea. I feel like I'm really connecting with the characters without even writing and the idea just feels good, so... I think this is right. Forcing myself to write something that I'm not as excited about... not so right.

The only problem now? I have nothing to write until November! And I'm bored :P

So how about you guys? When do you know when a story isn't working for you? When do you guys move on?

Peace and cookies,
Laina

How to Write Fast

The key to writing fast, which is a topic I picked today because I have half an hour before I have to leave for a 30 Seconds to Mars concert, is this: don't worry.

This all comes down to the whole "crappy first draft" thing, which I've talked about before. It's okay to write crappy. You can edit it all to a beautifully tight, flowing script (much unlike this one) later.

But to be able to write fast, to get everything in your brain onto the page, you have to not worry about what you're writing. You just have to go with it.

So say this or this or this or that or this and don't worry about how it sounds until later. Just get those words on the page.

So I have a challenge for you. Write for fifteen minutes solid. DO NOT stop. You can use Write or Die for this, which is an awesome program. Try to get as many words as you can without stopping. Don't think about what you're writing.

This is what I do when I need to figure out a plot problem. Just write it out. It might be crap, but your characters are still speaking to you and guiding you. And you can shape it later.

So don't make excuses. That bagel you were about to make or that book you're reading or that show you're watching can wait fifteen minutes. (Unless you're leaving for a 30 Seconds to Mars concert: then, it's a valid excuse.) Seriously, stop everything right now and write. You will thank me later. I love praise.

Let me know how you do and how many words you get. I'll be doing the exact same thing tonight when I get home from this crazy concert.

And I promise a more thought-out post next week.

On Titles

Life's been hectic for me - job, school, everything else in between. I'm sorry I didn't post last week. I am truly ashamed.

Anyway, this week my mind's been on titles. There's a manuscript I'm working on, and I'm coming up with nothing for it. Tossing around ideas, asking friends, poking around in songs and poems all seems to be fruitless. So my post this week is a little different in the fact that I'm not throwing out my own sad supply of wisdom at you guys. I'm just wondering... How do you come up with the perfect title?

Just an interesting tidbit. Apparently - at least I've read in some interviews and blogs - novels are often published with a different title than the one the author originally came up with. For instance, did you guys know that Stephenie Meyer titled Bella and Edward's famous story Forks, before someone else came up with Twilight? And Sarah Dessen's newest book, What Happened to Goodbye, she had originally named Cut and Run.

Just goes to show that even when we think of what we believe to be the perfect title... might not be so perfect after all.

WEDNESDAY LOOKS TO MUSIC FOR THE ANSWER.

I like stories. I've always liked stories. Literature, symbolism, meaning... just give me a good story, please. And books are fine, good, wonderful, but what I really love is a really good, really top-notch song. COUNTRY, PLEASE.

Because on the whole, country songs have some of the best writing and the best stories of any type of storytelling that I've come across. A love story, a tale of grief or redemption or heck, anything, is told in four minutes. And told well. I could probably think of about ten songs off the top of my head that fit the bill, but the one I've heard most recently is Rodney Atkin's new song, "Farmer's Daughter."

Storytelling Lesson #1 -

Start at the start. No offense to How I Met Your Mother, but we don't need FIVE YEARS OF BACKSTORY. The story begins when he takes a job that is the catalyst for him meeting the woman he later marries. Whether you like country music or not, there's a great lesson here in starting the story where it actually begins. Sometimes leaping headlong into the "action" of a story can confuse the reader/viewer (namely: me. I'm in a perpetual state of confusion.) At the same time though, you don't need THAT MUCH backstory. A little goes a long way, and this song strikes the perfect balance as far as beginnings go.


Also: the playlist for my current WIP can be found here. Sadly, no country songs except for one Taylor Swift song that is SORT OF country.

The Best Time to Write

I write at night. I mean, not to say that I don’t write at other times of the day sometimes—mornings, the rare weekend afternoon, et cetera—but usually, I write at night.

This is due to three reasons:

1) My overactive black cloud—you know that little black cloud that hovers over you reminding you of homework and chores and homework and training runs and homework and homework to do? Yeah, mine almost never lets me concentrate on anything ‘fun’ (unless it’s accidental procrastination) until I get homework—I mean, everything—done. Therefore, It’s usually late by the time the cloud dissipates.

2) My zone—when I am tired, I can slip into a ‘zone’ where my mind blocks out everything around me (or on the internet) and becomes consumed by my story. This is my prime writing mode, and it happens later at night.

3) Being the only one up—my parents are early to bed, early to rise-ers. I am not. By the time I sit down to write, my parents are asleep, my sister is either asleep or reading quietly, and the house is very still and not distracting.

When’s your best writing time?

Kieryn

www.kierynnicolas.com

Balancing Writing With Life

There's many things I'm terrible at and juggling multiple things in my life is one of them. Whenever things get busy, writing goes out the window. Some people will say "If you want to write, you have to find time to write!"

But is it more important to stay home and write than go out with friends? Isn't important to actually LIVE your life so you have experiences to write about, rather than stay home and writewritewrite?

Needless to say, I haven't been writing much lately. Why? Well, two weeks ago, there was a family emergency that resulted in me doing absolutely nothing for an entire week. That resulted in me being behind instead of ahead in school and everything kind of snowballed after that. I'm currently juggling 9 classes a day, some of which are honors and therefore require quite a bit of effort, PAYA, and all my projects, including the Brightly Woven Fan site. Add on the fact that oh, hey, homecoming is next weekend, I have chores, friends that want to hang out, emails that need to be answered, interview questions that should've been answered yesterday, and oh, those three manuscripts that should've been critiqued last month.

All of that has resulted in me doing very little writing these past few weeks and I don't honestly see that changing much for a while.

What do you do when life gets too crazy to handle? How do you still find time to write?

Saturday is Not Organized

Or: Saturday wants to clear something up

I am not organized. I lose everything. If I need to take something with me for some reason, I check it three times so I don’t forget and half the time I still forget. I make lists like crazy when I have to plan things. When I planned our Thanksgiving, I had three lists, I taped recipes to my cabinets, I didn’t sleep well for days and I had a stress headache for a week, not to mention the anxiety nightmares.
And don’t get me started on packing. Because if I pack on the fly, I forget things I really need. Like clean underwear. (Zomg, I’m totally the first person to say underwear on this blog!) And deodorant. And pens. I remember notebooks, but forget the pens.

I am not organized.

I’m stressing this because I have posts like this and this, and nights like the other night where I scheduled a dozen or so blog posts (so my blog won’t die when/if I attempt to NaNo). When I do things like that, people tell me I’m so organized. I’m not. And I feel like such a phony when people say things like that. Because if I appear organized, it’s only because I’m so disorganized that I need to be organized to function. You know?

Anyways, so my latest attempt at battling #TheGenieBook includes spreadsheets. I totally stole this idea from Justine Larbalestier and her post is far more brilliant than mine.

But here’s my take on it.
I have a column for the chapter number, an “events” column where I list pretty much anything I think is important to remember. Things like, “She got a drink of water,” not so important. Things like, “She found a frog in her shoe, kissed it, and it turned into a prince,” are important. Make sense?

I’m also keeping track of when I use a break, to see if I’m overusing them, as I tend to do that, the word counts of each chapter, and I will fill in the day column once I figure that out. (I currently have no idea what day it is in #TheGenieBook… or several characters’ last names… and a couple characters’ first names.)

I have another spreadsheet that’s just one fat column with my outline of things I plan on happening for me to incorporate as I write. Really, that could have been done in a document, on a piece of paper or pretty much anywhere, but the spreadsheet worked and the ideas came so I ran with it.

But I’m still not organized. Honest. I don’t even normally plot. I’m a pantser and a scene-sewer (thank you, Tina, for that AWESOME phrase). I (somehow) managed to come up with a 70 something K novel doing that, but #TheGenieBook is not so co-operative with my pantser style… so I’m adapting.

I’m still not organized. :P

Peace and cookies,
Laina

I Write Like

Have you seen the website I Write Like? You post a part of your WIP or anything you've written and it tells you what famous writer you write like.

I've done parts of several of the different books I'm working on or completed and have gotten Chuck Palahniuk several times, which I think is interesting...I've never really read any of his full books (I've really wanted to, though) so I don't know how accurate it is, but I'll roll with it. Fight Club is one of my favorite movies.

I'm probably going to borrow a book from a friend called Lullaby by him, which sounds fantastic. Kind of like The Ring but in poem form (these children all read the same poem before they died.) I'm really hoping he's a good writer or I'll totally dismiss these test results.

Head here and let me know what your results are!

WEDNESDAY PLANS A NOVEL.

Putting SPY CHICK on hold means working on a new novel, one that I've spent my writing time this past week planning. It's a revamp of the nano (NaNoWriMo) I did last year -- you know, the novel I wrote 36k of before realizing it was total crap and deleting it?
Yeah, well. It was horrible. It deserved to be deleted. But still, never delete things. It just makes picking the idea up again even more difficult. Although in this case I'm starting to think starting from scratch again was a really good idea.
For any of you who don't remember/know of last year's nano, I'll just say that it's YA contemporary (of course) about a girl whose nickname is Stalker. OOH, INTRIGUE!!

Anyway.

HOW TO JORDYN PLANS A NOVEL:

step one. THE INSPIRATION! it is shiny. it is new. it is all full of sparkles and rainbows and oh look! the rainbow is made of skittles! taste the rainbow! ta-dah! 

step two. OH CRAP HOW DO I WRITE THIS THING? time for panic.

step three. GIVE UP. *tear hair out* it is just so much easier to work on this other idea that i have had for ages and ages and is like a good old friend instead of this weird new thing. 

step four. TIME PASSES. weeks, months, years, whatever the case may be. what was once your shiny new idea is now sitting in the attic of you head, collecting dust and cobwebs and it is under three huge boxes of other ideas now and you can barely even FIND IT.

step five. OH HAI, REMEMBER ME?? you accidentally bump into the old idea again! maybe because you've just abandoned yet another new idea and now the first idea is the old one you're going back to. or, you know, maybe you're just driving your car or sitting in class or talking to someone and something they say reminds you of the old idea and it's like hellooo again.

step six. THIS TIME IT'S DIFFERENT. the first time around you were so excited!!! sooo excited!! and you wanted the idea to spring, fully-formed into your writing program. because it was JUST SO PERFECT. but now you're smarter. you've lost a few ideas along the way, you've given up a few times, written hideously bad prose, and this time you're not going to rush things. you are going to WRITE THIS BOOK, DAMMIT, even though it's going to take so long and there's so much to do and there will be fights and sometimes maybe you won't talk to each other for weeks. but, um, that's not the point. 


step seven. BABY NAMES!! or, erm, character names. from the beautiful wonderful amazing cool names for babies, which is one of those books that i love love love love thank you baby-naming-people for writing it. anyway, yeah. names. for characters. awesome names, i mean.

step eight. DANCE PARTY!! playlists, i mean. music. 

step nine. HELLO NOW FILL OUT THIS PAPERWORK. i do character bios but some people do outlines, summaries, whatever it is that helps plot the book. this takes way longer than it probably should, ending with me spending over an hour on each character's flimsy little character card. SO YEAH.

step ten. WORDS. finally i get to write something.

(i'm still in step nine, btw)

And yes, in case you're wondering... steps 2-5 happen for me in nearly every single novel I write. At least in all the ones that are any good and definitely in all of the novels I've queried or plan on querying. It generally takes over a year for me to figure out an idea well enough to really set out and write the novel. SO UH, HOW DOES YOUR PRE-NOVEL TIME GO LIKE?

How do you feel about parodies?

Books are usually the first items I notice in a room, so when I walked into the living room after school today I noticed Nightlight by the Harvard Lampoon lying on the table. My sister got it from the library the other day, and obviously I picked it up right away instead of doing my silly math homework. Nightlight is a parody of Twilight; I'm only a few pages into it and I'm already laughing. Which got me thinking about parodies.

I think I like parodies. I'm sure there are some exceptions--as in, parodies that are poorly done or overdone--but for the most part parodies and satire crack me up. The trailer for Vampires Suck had me in stitches. Weird Al songs make me grin. "Academy Award Winning Movie Trailer" on YouTube is hilarious. And did you know that Lord of the Flies is a parody of Coral Island?

Parodies for me are exceptionally funny when I really like or really dislike the original work. What about you guys? Do you find parodies funny, or demeaning, or ridiculous, or even all of the above?

Kieryn
www.kierynnicolas.com

New Book Inspiration Overload

This past week, I've come up with a bunch of book ideas that I'm really excited to write. I don't want to talk about them TOO much because I don't want to lose inspiration before I get them written, but I thought I'd talk a little about the inspiration behind them.

New Idea 1 was inspired by the song "War" by the Sick Puppies (which is currently one of my favorite songs.) It's going to be a fun, humorous upper-MG/lower-YA about what happens when the mathletes and cheerleaders go head-to-head in a dance off. I think this will probably be the just I write next.

New Idea 2 was inspired by the song "Mine" by Taylor Swift. More specifically, the line "you made a rebel out of a careless man's careful daughter". I actually know how this one is going to end, which is surprising, but it's going to be a regular/upper-YA and the characters will be older than me so I might hold off on it for a while.

New Idea 3 was inspired by an old story I wrote. Once upon a time, I had started writing a story about a vampire in a rock band. Then my computer died and I lost it. I wasn't really feeling those characters anymore but I was feeling a werewolf in a rock band and a journalist.

I'm *really* excited for all three of these - I wish I could write as fast as I come up with ideas!

Harmony

Saturday is Falling Apart

Or: Are you guys doing NaNoWriMo?

Just in case anyone doesn't know that, NaNoWriMo = National Novel Writing Month. You can find out more information here.

This is a pretty common question on twitter these days. My answer is: I don't know yet. I am currently 23K into #TheGenieBook. But a friend of mine REALLY wants me to do NaNo with her, so my "plan" (read this as: insane idea) is if I finish #TheGenieBook by the end of October, I'll do NaNo. I do have an idea for something I could write for it, but if I'm not finish #TheGenieBook, I don't want to stop in the middle and start something else, you know?

So, if you're keeping track, that will mean I'm trying to finish three books in less than six months.

AKA I'm trying to kill myself.

On top of that, tomorrow is Thanksgiving (technically Monday, but my mom works Monday) so I'm making a full turkey dinner for the first time ever. Which I'm mildly terrified of, but it'll be okay! Right?

So that's where I am right now and that's why this is all I'll be writing today. I'm a little exhausted right now :P I promise next week I'll have a better post.

But tell me now, are you guys going to do NaNo?

Peace and cookies,
Laina

Friday is a Failure

I didn't post last Friday because college is eating my life. Which is something I wanted to write about here.

I'm majoring in a broad genre of English. At community college, there's not really a need to specify under what category of "English" you're studying. But I'm transferring to a university for my junior and senior year, where I'll need to decide a more acute major.

And I have one of two choices that I'd like to consider: one being literature, which I'm really leaning towards, and the second being creative writing.

Really, I want to write for the rest of my life. The realistic side of things is that I'll have to get a steady job to support that. I considered teaching, but I honestly have absolutely no idea what I want to do other than write, write, write.

And so I'm going to school for it. I want to take other classes that will help me with my writing, and I am. Mythology, for one, has been a huge help. And studying books gives me a lot of inspiration. I've gotten more story ideas this semester than any other time period. There are just so many stories to pull from in history, mythology, etc.

And a reason I want to major in literature is A) because I love literature B) it gives me inspiration and C) it teaches me writing. You need to read to learn to write.

But you also need to write to learn to write, which is where the creative writing part comes in handy. But then again, I don't want to have assignments that seem like chores and uninspire me. I will always write, regardless of if I have writing classes, so I'm not sure if this major is fully for me.

Many authors have also said that creative writing kills your creativity, which seems like an oxymoron but I think there's truth in it. If you're being told what to write and how to write it, it takes the fun out of things. But if the teachers are good and have thoughts and experience that's worth learning, it would be interesting.

Anyway: thoughts? Have any of you taken a creative writing class? Are you in or have graduated from college - if so, what's your major? Or if not, what are you planning on majoring in or can you offer up some helpful advice?

Confused,

Chelsea

Starting: The Vicious Cycle

This post is more a rant than anything. Ever since I recently finished a novel, I've stumbled into the old habit of starting. Until I find that one story, that one plot, those few characters that I just fall in love with, that absolutely scream at me to finish their story, I start. Do any of you know what I mean?

Well, I'll tell you anyway. Since the beginning of time many writers have struggled with this horrible plague. We sit there at our computers, staring at the mocking white page (Or in centuries past, sat there staring down at a rock or a piece of goatskin). We think. We groan. We live and die, struggling to come up with some kind of inspiration. Then... Ah, an idea. We start writing. Time passes. We may or may not continue working on this new project we've begun.

... And that's when it happens. 99.9% of the time, this is what happens to all of us at one time or another. We either get bored with the new project, or think of a story that we get so much more excited about that we abandon the old story for the new one. We begin writing anew.

That, my friends, is what I call starting. It's a vicious cycle, a horrible pattern, and it's a burden that writers must bear. But I view it as an obstacle we need to overcome. In an old post, I talked about finishing a novel. This ties in with that. The same advice applies. So, yes, I may be blogging repetitively, but this is just something I myself struggle with so much that I felt it was worthy of a couple blog posts. We need to get over this mountain as writers, or we might miss out on a story that could've turned out to be great. Maybe it won't be, but if we don't keep going, we'll never find out, will we?

WEDNESDAY HAS A NEW PROJECT.

Yeah.
The Spy Book (SPY CHICK) is indefinitely on hold. I'm mostly positive I'll pick it up again sometime in the future, but I think right now it just needs some time to SIMMER.

So, uh, sorry that's all I have for now.

Dr. Seuss

What do you do once you finish a book in English class? Oh, that’s right…you write a paper on it. And holy cow, are there a lot of topic opportunities for Tale of Two Cities. Feminism Lenses, Character Analysis of Sydney Carton (!), Comparison of Foil Characters Like Miss Pross and Lucie, Why The Heck Does Lucie Choose Darnay and not Carton, Pick Some Symbolism Any Symbolism, Et Cetera.

Mine, though, doesn’t stem from any of those. My idea came from a random thought of vaguely avian creatures with Stars Upon Thars.

Yep, my in-progress paper compares Tale of Two Cities with The Sneetches by Dr. Seuss. And that got me thinking: yeah, Dr. Seuss writes about animals that look like Big Bird crossed with an emu and a teddybear named Sylvester McMonkey McBean. But he also writes about humans. In The Sneetches there’s a not-so-underlying lesson about how groundless and ridiculous discrimination is.

Once the ball of thought got rolling I looked at other stories by Dr. Seuss, and they’re riddled with commentary on human nature. The Butter Battle Book, for instance. Go read it, and then tell me it’s not a brilliant narrative about rising tension and danger rooted in something completely trivial and misunderstood. (Cold War?) And my English teacher mentioned that the Cat in the Hat and that Goldfish that’s always a downer are like Sigmund Freud’s id and ego.

So do your inner psychoanalyst slash sociologist a favor. Put down that vampire/fallen angel/heartbreak novel and go catch up on your Sneetches.

Kieryn

www.kierynnicolas.com

Harmony's Writing a Middle-Grade in a Week Fail

As I talked about here, my goal last week was to write a middle grade in a week. I failed. My goal was 25k and I made it to 11k.

On Monday and Tuesday, I was flying. On Monday, I had 5k written by noon and on Tuesday, even though the words came a little slower, I had 5k written by one in the afternoon.

Then, on Wednesday, I ended up getting grounded. That meant no writing on Wednesday or Thursday. By the time Friday rolled around, I just wasn't feeling it anymore. I managed to push out a few hundred words but that was it.

I think another problem that I had was that 25k was too high of a goal for this particular story. Yes, it has to be at least 25k in finished form but I write very short rough drafts. I summarize a lot of things and they're just messy. By trying to hit 25k, I was adding so much unneeded description that I'm just going to have to cut in the rewrite. The next time I attempt to write a middle-grade, I think I'll probably aim for 15-20k.

Those two things aside, I'm actually pretty proud of myself. Yes, I didn't make my goal but I proved to myself that I CAN do it. If I hadn't been unable to write those two days, this post would be completely different. And, either way, I also have over 11,000 words I can work with. That's a LOT more than I had the last time I posted.

My goal for this week is to finish it and then in a few weeks, I'll start revising!

Anyone else have a writing goal for this week?

Harmony

Saturday Gets a Little Bit Serious

Or: On people liking and not liking your work.

When you let people read your writing, not everyone will like it. Some people will, and that is the most awesome thing ever. Some people, who are even more of the most awesome thing ever, will love it, and these people will make everything you went through writing it, worth it.

But some people won’t like it. And that hurts, a lot. It is one of those things that I don’t know if you can ever get used to. It’s scary and painful and I do not like it – but it’s going to happen.

For leWIP1 (aka Spyder), so far I’ve had two betas* read for me and one critiquer**. One beta love it. My critiquer loved it.

One beta pretty much hated it.

This person (and I am sorry if you’re reading this and you recognize yourself, but I swear I won’t name you and, well, this is kinda what writers do when things happen to them and honestly, I need to talk about it, plus I kind of think it’s a valuable story so please keep reading because you might understand me a little bit better after I’m done), this person had read another story of mine and liked it, but she didn’t really like Spyder at all (or at least that’s how it felt). She didn’t like most of my characters, she didn’t like some of the choices they made, she just didn’t really like it.

This was not my fault.

Nor was it her fault.

While this person was harsh, at times harsher than she maybe should have been, I told her to be honest, and she was honest. Brutally honest, but honest nonetheless. She didn’t like it. She said so. I always found her to be a good beta, and a lot of what she suggested, even not liking the book, I did agree with.

In the end, though, she didn’t like my book. It wasn’t her type of book, which I understand and I don’t hold a grudge about it. I don’t blame her, I don’t immediately think of her as “the person who didn’t like my book” or anything when I see her name on Twitter, and I consider her to be a friend, I don’t want it to come off like I do.

I don’t know yet if I’ll ask her to beta for me again. She’s offered me valuable advice before and she’s always been super-supportive. But it is hard, when thinking about writing, to forget that she didn’t like something of mine, even though I think (hope) that #thegeniebook (as it’s currently known as Twitter) would be more to her taste.

That’s my issue, though, and it’s not even really about her. I knew while I was writing Spyder that some people wouldn’t like it. (To be honest, I didn’t expect anyone to like it.) But… it still hurts and I don’t know if that will ever change. I know I’ll have to deal with it… but I don’t think it’ll ever feel okay.

Okay, because this post was pretty serious and I think you guys might need a laugh right about now (I sure do), here’s a video of the puppy a friend of mine owns, and a video of “Soft Kitty” from The Big Bang Theory (which I can do by memory).

Peace and cookies,
Laina

*Writer vocabulary lesson! (Well, in Laina-speak, anyways.) A beta reader is someone who reads your writing and gives their opinion of it, helps you improve it. I’ve talked about this before. These people are awesome because they’re like your first fans and they make it all the not-sleeping and work worth it.

**A critiquer, sometimes known as a crit partner, is someone who takes your work, tears it to pieces, and somehow makes you make it better, all the while being awesome and supportive and generally making you feel really good about yourself while still helping you recognize the flaws and things that make your writing weaker and helping you fix them. *coughAshycough*