Plotting. You either take it in the front, or in the rear.

So, plotting. Some people ‘pants’ their way through a novel, without an outline except what’s running through their heads. Some people religiously outline before starting a book. There’s really no wrong way to write a novel, but I know that a lot of people will tell you that if you are a pantser, you’d better learn how to plot once you get contracted! Or else! And I think I’ve even said that before myself.

But here’s the thing. It’s not like if you’re a pantser, you turn in this random mess of garbage to your editor. You don’t claim that 25 independent chapters are a book, and weird shit happens on page 3 and then we switch narrators on page 300. Or maybe we do. Anyhow. I’m a pantser. I shamelessly admit this. I don’t like to know where a novel is going until we’ve shaken hands and possibly gone out on a first date. This is about page 50 or so.

This post gets really, really long right about here (fair warning).

I digress – I did want to share plotting out book 2 for my succubus series. When we had editor interest, my agent said “Can you come up with a concept for book 2?” So I sent her back a paragraph blurb about what I thought book 2 would be about. My agent wanted more info, so I actually came up with an extended ‘back blurb’ pitch. I phrased it like the back of a book, got into a little more detail about who would be doing what, and included some plot points that were key and a few funny scenes I was interested in writing. The whole thing was about a page. Not an outline by any stretch of the imagination.

Still, it was all I had when we sold the two book deal and got the go ahead to write it. I wrote the entire novel in about a month and a half, did an edit pass, and returned it to my editor. Because my book got rescheduled, it took a while for me to get edits because I got bumped.

But! The day of glorious edits came, and my editor had only small tweaks. Things like, “You’re not showing us why this character is likeable” or “I like this plot! Can we see more of it?” and just general clean-up. So I read through the book again (and it had been a while since I’d even thought about this book) to see what I thought of it as a reader.

And wow. What a surprise. I’d dropped entire story threads and characters back and forth in the book, and so when they popped up again on the back end, *I* was surprised. I’m the author!

This is not good.

About this time, Caitlin Kittredge posted her plot board for The Witch’s Alphabet . This looked inspiring to me, and organized! So I created one of my own, which you can see here.

Wall of Notes - Before

Let me explain what you’re looking at. I broke the book up into chapters. For each chapter, there’s a white notecard and my main character’s interal conflict and external conflict. Mind you, since I’m a pantser, I had no idea what these conflicts were until I finished the book. So they needed tweaking as well.

At any rate, the white notecards are for the main character (Jackie). Since it’s 1st person POV, every chapter is in her POV so I don’t have to worry about her not being in the chapter. Each other color post-it is for someone else that interacts with her in the storyline, and each has their own motivation and subplot. One color post-it is actually for Jackie’s ‘growth’ arc. I wanted to make sure I built that across the story as well. This may look like a bunch of garbage, but if you pick apart the colors (like, say, pink), you’ll notice that there’s long spans of book where the character and their plotline doesn’t show up.

To me, this is bad. That means this character/plot isn’t even on the radar.

So I added notes to myself on how it should look when I’m done. I filled in notecards for the ‘missing’ plot holes and wrote such helpful things on the post-its like “ADD STUFF HERE STUPID”. Here’s the end board:

Wall of Notes - After!

The colors are much more even, aren’t they?

Too bad these boards didn’t help me. Well, not really.

I mean, I tried really, really hard to be organized. I took my changes from this plot board and wrote them all out on an outline. For Chapter 3, I needed to add more X! Sprinkle in Y! Set up the plot for Z! And I was going to go chapter by chapter. First the page edits (which I always do, cleaning up phrasing and tweaking reactions). And then my editor’s edits! And then my notecards! And then I could finally move on to the next chapter!

And this was freaking overwhelming, y’all, it really was. I was going back over the same chapter over and over and over again without looking at the entire story’s cohesiveness and it was driving me crazy. Took me a week to just do one chapter. Obviously this wasn’t working for me.

So I went back to my old method. I made a list of things I wanted to fix. Things like this:

1) Make X more sympathetic.
2) Give Y a subplot! What’s his/her motivation?
3) Foreshadow Z a lot more!

And I treated each one as a separate draft. For the first draft, I’d work on nothing but #1 on the list, and making X more sympathetic. That was my entire goal. This might take 5 minutes, or it might take 4 days and re-tweaking every page. But that was my goal. Once that was done, I flipped back to the beginning of the manuscript, and started with #2. Rinse and repeat until I hit all bulletpoints. There were about 15 on my list, of various sizes. So this meant I re-read my manuscript over and over again, but it was far easier for me to tackle one aspect of revisions at a time than 20 all at once.

And when that was done, I printed out the manuscript one more time and read to make sure that it flowed as seamlessly on paper as it did in my brain.

And I liked it. I’m very happy with it, and I felt confident about turning it in. It might have taken me a dozen drafts and far more reads than I preferred, but that was my method, and it worked for me. Everyone’s methods are going to be different. The trick is finding what works for you.

Here’s the thing. I could have saved myself a lot of time (a LOT) by outlining the book ahead of time. Right? It would help if I was organized and knew that by Chapter 4, L needed to show up and cause trouble. And to foreshadow something by Chapter 7. But I didn’t, because that’s not my method.

I guess what I’m trying to say here is that being a pantser does not make you WRONG on how you write your book. It does not make your book less ‘well thought out’ than a plotter’s book. It does not make your work shoddy. It makes you have to do your editing and plotting on the back end of the book, rather than the front. I can edit and build plot and give the character a redeeming arc, but I have to have the groundwork laid first.

Make sense?

(And you may be that rare unicorn that can pants out a book with zero edits in the end, but I am not a unicorn. More of a donkey.)

Holiday? What holiday?

So, last we heard from our intrepid heroine, she was working on two projects. One, she was hating (we’ll call those ‘the edits’) and one she was loving (we’ll call that one the ‘forbidden crackhead project’).  Torn between the one she really wanted to work on (FCP) and the one her agent thinks she’s working on (edits), our heroine was naturally torn.

(Boy, it’s really weird to talk about yourself in third person)

Anyhow. For a while there, I was working on both books. And you know when you split your time equally between two projects? That’s right, both end up moving really, really slowly. And I mean REALLY slowly.  So on Friday, I decided to work on the edits alone. If I got a large chunk of those, I’d switch to FCP. But instead, I started to get back into the story at the core of my manuscript, and spent all weekend working on the dreaded edits.

For those of you playing along at home, this is a different book. A spec project that I’m working on. My agent read the polished novel that I turned in (and had been edited a bajillion times before) and said “Whoa there” and gave me a ton of good things to fix.

I’m still fixing. I’m still fixing a lot, in fact. I got to the point where working off of page edits wasn’t doing it for me any longer, because I was making so many changes that the pages themselves were useless. So I’ve been going through the entire draft, word by word, changing characters’ descriptions, names, personalities, and giving others new roles.

In case you’ve never done this before, it’s really, really slow.

But! I can see the light at the end of the (very long) tunnel.  I’m at page 204/249 and still working. I think when I started this weekend, I was on page 50 or so. After a month. That’s how slow. Still a ton of heavy lifting to do, but I’m really enjoying what I’m getting. I’m hoping to be done in another week or so (which might be wishful thinking).

It’s been a while since I blogged – sorry! And I have a half-written post about editing-and-pantsers (since I am one), but I haven’t finished it yet. I will some time this week. And blog about my photography session, because it was a lot of fun. And um, some other stuff.

And since I’m a slacker, here’s a snippet from the edits I’m working on. The book is now called VANISHING ACT (thanks, Karen Duvall!).

This should tide everyone over for a few days, right?

##

I awoke to find another girl staring at me.

She was a cute, if you didn’t mind cute mixed with scary. Her face was round, her cheekbones arched and eyes tilted in the manner of someone with asian descent. But her hair was dyed a mix of punk pink and black streaks, and she had more hardware pierced to her face than I had on my entire body. She also wore a lot (a whole lot) of dark red lipstick, so much that her mouth seemed huge in her delicate face. She was dressed in a hooded black sweatshirt and a red plaid skirt, and gigantic buckled boots ran clear up to her knees.

She grinned at the sight of my straitjacket and leaned back in her chair across from me. “I take it you were a runner?”

I tried to sit up – near impossible with my legs bound together and my arms tied down. I ignored her question. “You’ve got to help me,” I said, lifting my arms in a lame gesture at my jacket. “I need to get away.”

“BZZZT. Wrong answer,” she said with a delighted grin, and parked one enormous boot on my leg. “This is your new home.”

I exhaled in frustration. “Whatever. Can you just help me get out of the damn jacket already? My arms are cramping up.”

Her head cocked to the side as she regarded me.

“What?” I frowned at her, shifting in the straight-jacket. “Do I have something on my nose?”

She smiled. “Just checking your aura to see if you were gonna run if I let you go.”

Great, she was crazy too. Just what I needed. I shifted in the jacket, trying to get comfortable. It was pinching the hell out of my side. “And am I?” I asked. “Going to run?”

The girl moved to my side and began undoing the laces of my jacket. “Yeah,” she said, that bright red mouth grinning. “But you won’t get far. And this thing looks dorky as shit.” Her fingers worked at the buckles, freeing me. “I’m Winter.”

I immediately darted for the door, shoving past her.

Only to stop once I opened the door, looking at the two heavily-muscled guards armed with guns just on the other side. Scratch that. I shut the door again and forced a smile to my lips, regarding Winter. “I’m Jolie.”

“I figured. Beauty queen, right?”

I stilled, uneasy. “How did you know about that?”

“I read the newspaper article.”

“Newspaper article?”

As if reading my mind, Winter moved to a nearby table, then handed me a newspaper. “Newspaper. It’s this cool thing where they print the news.” She leaned in and put her hand to her mouth like she was telling me a secret. “ON PAPER. Isn’t that wild?”

What. A. Jerk. I took the paper from her and shook it out, staring at the cover page.

PAGEANT HORROR, the headline proclaimed. SEVERAL INJURED, ONE DEAD. PRESIDENTIAL HOPEFUL’S SON INJURED. There was a gigantic picture of Lee with his clothes torn, his head bloody as he picked through the rubble of the stage. My pageant headshot was a tiny black and white photo in the corner, and it mentioned me as the victim.

I burst into tears. They’d proclaimed me dead.

##

Slackertown: Population 1

So this weekend I was going to blog about plotting, and process. And my first visit to a real live photographer to get an author-photo done (I got tired of the big blank grey dude on the S&S website). But Saturday I wrote all day, and Sunday involved visiting, baby cuddling (not my baby! yikes), laundry, and the Survivor season finale. And writing. So. Yeah.

The posts will just have to wait for now. I’m still deep in editing a spec project for my agent, and I started a new one (I guess because I wasn’t crazy enough). An idea for the ‘dangerous book’ I promised myself that I’d write showed up, and I took the opportunity. It will either be glorious or a total disaster, but I’m almost 6k in and the plot is unfolding like a great unfolding thing.

We’ll see.

Random stuff

I am sad that a certain someone has been voted off of Survivor. I loathed him, but he was entertaining. Now he can no longer lead his team with his eyes! Oh noes! Farewell to the strongest, most true warrior!!

Let’s see. What else. Oh. Supernatural’s season finale was good. Can’t wait for more Castiel next season.

Other than that, there’s been a little bit of writing, but it’s mostly idea scribbling. I have a really difficult time working on two projects at once, no matter what I do. So I told myself that I’d work on edits, and when I got enough to feel virtuous about spending my time, I’d switch to one of the projects burning at the back of my brain. Except…when I work on the edits, then I get caught up in the edits! And find it hard to switch.  Just not much of a multi-tasker.

Oh, and there is a dead possum in my back yard. Apparently it’s been dead for quite some time (like, months). And apparently I need to go into the back yard more often, because we never knew it was there until the Orkin man pointed it out.

Yeaaaah.

Oh oh oh!! And Succubi Like It Hot (Succubus Diaries, book 2) is now available on Amazon! You know you want to pre-order it. The book will be released on January 26th, 2010 — one month exactly after Gentlemen Prefer Succubi hits the shelves.

Yay!

Dropping off the face of the earth again

Just when I seem to have gotten a handle on my time again, it runs away from me once more. Sorry I haven’t posted! Now that I’ve turned in edits on Book 2, I’m…knee deep in edits for a project that my agent is helping me with. It never ends over here. But that’s a good thing, really, because I’m cranky and obnoxious when I’m not working on a project. Trust me. You do not want to be around me when I’m between books.

In other news, that crazy idea I told myself that I wouldn’t write keeps showing up, and it shows up better than ever every single time. Argh. Maybe I’ll write it. Just a little. Just to see how it goes.

(This is how they all start, isn’t it? Subversion.)

Close Talkers

So I’m waiting in line at the cafeteria during my lunch hour (well, more like lunch-10-minutes). There are several ‘bars’ of food choices set up – I was virtuous and went for turkey and steamed broccoli. The line was empty except for the man in front of me, and he was what I refer to as a close talker.

You know the type. If they come up to you to speak, they’re within two feet of your face. They brush up against you when on the walking path (even though there’s plenty of room otherwise).  They lean in uncomfortably close, and they proceed to shout in your face. Or stare at your boobs (though guys might not have this problem). They’re in your face so much that you can feel their breath touching your face, or (in really bad situations), the spit from when they are talking.

I’ll be honest – close talkers baffle me. Perhaps because I am intensely conscious of other people’s space, or just intensely conscious of others, period. So I don’t understand the mentality. WHY would you invade someone’s space like that? I have to assume they don’t know better, because the thought of someone doing it on purpose is a little, well, creepy.

This particular guy was leaning over the buffet windows to talk to the employee there. “I want the turkey,” he told her, and leaned his arm OVER the buffet windows so he could point at it (because, you know, no one can point at something on the other side of glass. Sigh).  The woman takes a step back (and so do I) and he continues to wave his hand on the other side of the glass, pointing out his vegetables. “I really like carrots,” he tells her, and he’s so close to the glass that I can see his breath fogging on it.

(Dude, that’s when you know you’re too close. Really.)

Anyway. He takes his lunch and disappears off into the cafeteria wilds, but I’m left wondering…how exactly does one become a close-talker? Is it in your genetics? Originally I thought he might be hard of hearing, but I’m half deaf (no lie) and while I talk loudly, I don’t close-talk. So that can’t be it every time. Are these people just born without a sense of space? Missing their conjoined twins? Or do they grow up in confined areas and thus don’t know how to use the full sidewalk? 

(I momentarily have a vision of children being raised in rows of cages, much like puppy mills. Close-talker mills?)

At any rate, I just thought this was a bit of weirdness I could share. That, and I’m probably going to put a close-talker in my next book. Just because it’s uncomfortable for my heroine.

Anyone have any bizarre quirks they’ve added to a book after seeing someone exhibit it in person?

Stuff.

My buddy Katiebabs is on vacation in the UK,  and asked me to guest blog. I decided to embarrass myself and my good taste by admitting to all those shameful romances storylines that I’m not supposed to love…but do anyway.

Also! Cindy Pon (she of the terribly awesome) is running a contest to celebrate the release of her new book:

It’s YA fantasy in an Asian setting. How awesome is that? I can’t wait to read it. And she also happens to have just the most gorgeous book trailer ever:

Seriously, isn’t it evocative and lovely?

Cindy is also holding a contest on her blog for original brush art (I *want*. Her bunnies look so cute). You should check it out.

Sticking with the tried and true.

I really, really want to write the story in my head.

It’s dark. Gritty. Urban. Unique. Possibly post-apocalyptic. With fantasy elements. It involves a harsh world for my heroine and a hero that is part savage beast and all alpha.

But I’m not going to write it. Some ideas are better in my mind than they are on paper, and the trick is figuring this out. You learn as you go along that just because the idea comes to you, it doesn’t mean that it’s a good idea for YOU to write. In the right hands? It would be awesome. In my hands? Perhaps not so much.

This isn’t to dog my own writing, of course. I have strengths – light, witty banter. Conversations. Sexiness. Twisting small storylines into something fun. First person.

But I also recognize my weaknesses: in-depth, massively detailed worldbuilding. Dark, gothic storytelling. Emotional angst out the wazoo. In other words, I can’t write like Meljean Brook. I wish to god that I could, but I can’t.

It doesn’t make me a bad writer. It just means that I recognize (finally) what I’m good at and will try to stick to that.

And I think that’s an important realization that all writers come to, at one point or another. Think of it as dressing for your body type. Just because that gorgeous sweater comes in your favorite color and happens to be in your size DOES NOT MEAN YOU SHOULD WEAR IT.

It might look awesome on the person next to you, but it can make you look like Humpty Dumpty. Is this the story’s fault? Nope. The trick is finding what is good for who you are, and wearing that one. In the right outfit, you can look awesome no matter your body type. In the wrong one? Everyone suffers.

Coworkers

On their youth:

Girl 1: Here’s a picture of my husband.
Girl 2: Oh he’s so cute and blonde! You know who he looks like? Those twins with the blonde hair…
Me: Nelson?
Girl 1: Who??? (Girl 1 is 20)
Girl 2: I meant Zack and Cody. Aren’t Nelson….OLD?
Me:… I’m going to go sit over here now.

On Weirdness:

Okay. So I work in a very large building with a cafeteria. The cafeteria has a large glass case with soda bottles in it. I go to get a soda, but someone is standing there in front of the Cokes, so I wait patiently for my turn.

As I wait, I notice that he’s doing something…weird. He takes a soda out, presses it to his cheek, then frowns and puts it back into the case. Then he grabs the next soda, presses it to his cheek…and returns it back to the counter.

After this happens five or six more times (no kidding), he finally selects one and goes on his way. I am left staring at the cabinet, wondering how many bottles have been pressed to his face.

And I’m also wondering why he can’t tell if they’re cold with his, you know, HAND.

Advice I Won’t Take

I have about a half hour commute from work, even though I work less than 10 miles from my house. Love the city, really. Usually I pass this time sitting in silence and mentally working on the next story, but I’m between books at the moment and taking a mental break.

So I turn on the radio. A new song by Nickelback is playing (easily distinguished by Chad Kroeger’s emo-riffic, growly voice). It starts with a phrase like ‘Each day is a blessing, not a right’. Wow. That’s a really nice way to look at things. I begin to think that Nickelback has gotten a little zen on me, and listen closer.

The main hook of the song? Live each day as your last.

And I’m afraid this is where Nickelback and I are going to have to agree to disagree.

You see, this started me thinking. What would I *do* if I only had one day left on earth? Nothing good for me, my friends, nothing good. I suppose I could be all introspective and spend it at the beach and walking up and down on the sand as the waves wash over my ankles, pondering life.

But the beach is 6 hours away from here, yo, and I’ve only got 24 to live. So that’s right out.

To be honest, I’d probably do all the things I’m not supposed to. I’d eat like a madwoman, and all the stuff I’m not supposed to. Fried twinkies? Fried Oreos? Fried anything? Ranch sauce on my pizza? Bring it on, b&tches! Someone’s only got 24 hours to live! Anything goes!

And then, I think I’d go gambling. Bet it all on black and see how far that takes me. Oh, oh, and I think I’d like to graffiti a wall. Or three. Because if I’m dead the next day? You are so getting some crudely painted words on the side of your house/car/office. I imagine I would be pretty terrible at graffiti too (I have a really bad artistic eye) but I think it would be fun.

What else? Oh, okay. If it was my last day on earth, I sure wouldn’t spend it at work. I’d probably tell them that I was never coming in again, and go out in a blaze of glory, throwing paper everywhere and knocking over fax machines in a rampage. That sounds nice.

But where does this get you, Nickelback? Because if that’s my last day on earth, it’s an orgy of hedonistic fun and burning bridges. But since it WON’T be my last day on earth, that would be bad. And the next day, I’d have all the ramifications. Except I’d be too busy living that day like it was my last as well.

I mean, if this cycle of destructive living continued, I’d end up weighing 500 pounds, broke, unemployed, and a criminal.

Sorry, Nickelback. I think I’m going to stick with my nice, conservative, occasionally-thinking-ahead lifestyle, as tempting as you make it sound.

(Speaking of thinking ahead, I’m probably going to update my website this weekend. Exciting, right? I know. It’s a wild, free-wheeling life I lead.)