Anticipation

It's almost that time of year again.  The weather may be getting colder, wetter, and windier, but I'm warming up to start one of my biggest exercises of the year.

No, not Christmas shopping.  That doesn't start for another month at the earliest.

Not "No Shave November," although I've been known to participate in that, too.

What I'm excited about today is National Novel Writing Month, commonly known as NaNoWriMo.  Every year hundreds of thousands of people commit to writing a 50,000-word novel during the month of November.  Is it an impossible task?  By no means!  I have successfully written more than 50,000 words three separate years.

Amy's NaNoWriMo Timeline:  

2004 - Untitled Romance Novel:  I set this one in the town where I now live, although at the time I lived in Portland.  It's actually a satire of romance novels, and I like to think it's great comedy, but it probably sucked.  This one will never see the light of day.

2005-2008 (also known as "The Dark Years") - I didn't do NaNoWriMo, but I did raise two toddlers to school age while going back to school and becoming a CPA.

2009 - Ravenswood:  This paranormal young adult novel has been revised and critiqued to death.  Some of you have read it at one point or other.  It has been shopped about, but not lately because it has no ending thanks to my latest, unfinished revision.  I know how it'll end, but I have to actually write it.

2010 - I did start a novel this year, but not only did I have sinus surgery during the competition, but I also had a difficult plot idea involving Russian spies.  I know very little about Russians and even less about spies.  It's not the 1980s, anyway, so Russian spies don't sell.  Had I finished it, this novel also would not have seen the light of day.

2011 - Blue:  Despite having major surgery and being mostly unconscious for a week of NaNoWriMo, I fought through and succeeded!  This book remains completely unedited.  I haven't even read through it.  Isaac, on the other hand, has already read it twice, and he and Jacob maintain that it is my best book yet.  It starts as a dystopian novel (I've never claimed to be original), but then I send my characters off-planet and it gets a little Anne McCaffrey-esque.  Eventually I turn the main character into a superheroine because that's how you get to 50,000 words in just a few weeks.  Now that I think about it, I loved writing this one more than any other.  I really need to read through it and start the revisions.

But I can't start revisions now because it is almost time for 2012 NaNoWriMo, and this year is going to blow all prior years out of the water!

2012 - Untitled: This year's book is also going to be a young adult novel, this time set in an imaginary post-war society.  I could tell you lots more about it because I have characters and setting and even major plot points, but I'm not going to tell you.

Do you feel the excitement?  NaNoWriMo is loads of fun, and at the end, if all goes well, you have a book that you wrote.  That's pretty cool even if the book is lousy.

Who is with me this year?

Where's the plot twist?

Last night I was watching Sherlock with the family, and I was thinking about how sublimely perfect the show is.  I really think they've done a marvelous job both in the writing and the casting of that show.  I mean, how can someone as pasty and odd-looking as Benedict Cumberbatch be so utterly compelling?

(Yes, I know there's some pot-kettle action in me calling anyone pasty.)

Oh, have you not seen Sherlock?  Then by all means hit the couch and watch it.  The first season, three 90-minute episodes, is available on Netflix, and the second season I was able to check out from the library.  They are relatively clean.  I felt okay with Isaac watching them, and Mindy just ignores it or runs away in protest of television in general.

The third season of Sherlock starts filming in January.  It's going to be a long wait.  I may have to start watching Dr. Who.

One of the strengths of Sherlock - of any mystery - is the plot twists.  How I wish I could write mysteries or at least throw some decent plot twists into my novels.  Even as I fell asleep last night I was wracking my brain, hunting for a plot twist for Ravenswood.  Nope.  Nothing there.

Then this morning at breakfast we were discussing the novel Divergent by Veronica Roth.  We've all read the novel.  Jacob had anticipated the first major plot twist, while Isaac and I had both been appropriately surprised.  We discussed the clues the author had given that Jacob had caught.

(Yes, our family does discuss novels over breakfast.  Don't you?)

As we were cleaning the kitchen Jacob brought up Ravenswood.  "I know you want me to give you some specific advice, but I don't have any ideas.  There is something that's missing, though.  You need a good plot twist."

Yep.  There it was.  Even though I didn't anticipate what Caleb was going to do at the beginning of Divergent, I did totally see Jacob's comment coming.  I bet you did, too.

"You're just too honest," Jacob went on.  "You don't lie enough and your characters don't, either."

Who knew that being such an open person would rub off on my characters?  So now I've got to figure out how to be more devious and deceitful.  I'm assuming sneaking three Oreos and then admitting it on my blog a few minutes later doesn't count.

If only I could just throw in some ninja pirates.

So if you find that I'm being sneaky and dishonest, you'll know that I'm just trying to come up with ideas for how to strengthen my novel.  It's nothing personal.

Now go watch some Sherlock.  It's way more interesting than me.

Taking a break from torture

Some of you are probably wondering how the torture of Piper is going in Ravenswood.

What?  Is this a food blog?  No, but isn't that
 the prettiest breakfast you've seen in a while?

Well . . .

Um . . .

I haven't been working on Ravenswood!

>ducks as virtual rotten tomatoes are thrown at her<

See, I was torturing her, and doing a great job of it.  Then I rescued her from the worst of it and now she's sitting in a motel room, freshly showered and looking forward to a nap.  I think she deserves the rest, so I'm letting her have it.

Mindy watering the geraniums.

Okay, that's only half of the truth.  The other half is that I don't know how to end the book.  I emailed my latest draft to Isaac and Jacob and begged them to help me.  Isaac the Speed-Reading Demon finished it in a few minutes and his main input was that I didn't torture Piper enough.

I've raised a very bloodthirsty boy.

So what have I been doing with my time if I'm not working on Ravenswood?  I obviously haven't been posting to my blog for a few days (sorry about that).  I haven't returned to work since I still have healing to do.

Mindy showing off the kale in her secret garden.

What I am doing is having fun with my family.   Mindy and I sewed together a quilt top out of old jeans and together we built a lattice for our Cinderella pumpkins.  She and Isaac both have helped me make at least twenty pints of strawberry jam. Today the whole family sat around and tied the jean quilt together.

So no great novel is being written at the moment.  However, I'm taking long walks with my family on sunny days and listening to the rain on dark days.  We're having french toast for breakfast and home-grown kale chips at dinner.  Bread is being baked, quilts are being assembled, pumpkins are growing, and hopefully my kids are building some memories and learning a little bit from mom while she's home with too much time on her hands.

So Piper can have a break from being tortured.  I'll eventually figure out what to do with her.  In the meantime, I don't feel the least bit guilty for taking some time to focus on my family because I think my kids are the best novels I could write.

The family gathered around to tie Mindy's new quilt.

A day of Norman Rockwell & torture

As you know, yesterday I posted sweet pictures of my children and the childhood memories we shared over the breakfast table.  It was all very Norman Rockwell.  We ate scrambled eggs and homemade banana bread.

Then I spent the rest of the morning torturing Piper in Ravenswood, since the novel is suddenly no longer complete and I have to try to write a new climax and ending for it . . . again.

As I was telling my kids over lunch (yes, we talk a lot at meals), the way you make fictional characters do things is to torture them.  If you don't torture them, then they act a lot like real people do.  They read books and watch TV and surreptitiously pick their noses - none of which makes for great literature or even a fun read.

You know how when you read a good book you get to the end and kind of wake up and think, "Whoa!  Where am I?" because you've been so sucked into that world?  Well, the same thing happens when I'm writing, which means I really felt like I'd spent the morning, to some extent, torturing Piper in my selfish attempt to get a full-length novel out of her.  The poor girl took it all quite well, I must say.

The most heartbreaking thing about yesterday's efforts, for me, is that I again have all this first-draft stuff that will need several revisions before it rises above crap, let alone blends seamlessly into the rest of the novel.  For one thing, I managed to drop ninjas in there.  I've mentioned in my blog before that Meagan saved me during last year's NaNoWriMo by suggesting ninja pirates to me, thus freeing my novel Blue from a heroine who was content to wander in a blissful meadow all day (I wish I were kidding).  The ninja pirates were awesome, and I got a new favorite character, Sebastian, out of the deal.

However, I can't have ninjas in all my books.  If I ever do become a bestselling author or even (fingers-crossed) a respected one, I don't want someone writing their dissertation on the meaning of ninjas in Amy Moran's novels.  I want them instead to write about my use of food as a reflection of family dysfunction.  It's a consistent theme, and would make a great thesis.  

I love it when a plan comes together

I mentioned in my blog post yesterday that I was considering deleting chapter seventeen of Ravenswood.  While reading through the novel again I get to that chapter and it is so boring and stupid that I can't even make myself read it, so pointless that I think I can delete it and have the rest of the book make perfect sense.  It's kind of like when you watch the deleted scenes on a DVD and think, "Well, duh.  Why did you shoot that scene in the first place?"

Unfortunately, if I remove that chapter then the novel, which was already on the short side, officially becomes a novella.  I don't want a novella.  I want a novel.

So I've been taking advantage of the insomnia due to oxycodone withdrawal (fun times!) to try to come up with some way to fill out the novel without just stuffing it full of rice like a cheap burrito.  I can't get around the fact that I'm going to have to make more happen.

Some of you have read a draft of the whole novel.  Although there have been lots of positive comments,  everyone has also made it clear that I do not end the novel well.  I improved it some, but it still leaves you hanging (sorry).  Some of you also know that I already started a sequel to Ravenswood.  It seemed like a priority since I ended the first one so unsatisfactorily.

This morning I came up with the solution to my dilemma, which suddenly seemed so obvious that I can't believe it took me this long.  I'm going to tighten the remaining chapters of the first book (except chapter seventeen which is going into the garbage because I never want to see it again) and continue into what I've written on the sequel, which is pretty exciting, if I do say so myself.  If I can get the conflict in the sequel to blend well into what was the end of the first novel, it will actually do a better job of completing the story arc.  I even have a spreadsheet of the major conflicts and their resolutions so I can check that I'm following each through every act of the novel.  (I am, after all, an accountant.  I know how to make things tie out.)

What's funny to me (and probably only to me) is that the original climax to the novel is currently in the middle, and now what was, to me, the new climax of the novel is going to be in the middle, as well.  This sucker just keeps growing.

What is less funny is that I now have another 25,000 to 30,000 words to write and a lot of reorganizing to do.  It's kind of like thinking you finished building the shed and deciding instead to make it the entry of a nice vacation cabin.

Another thing I've realized is that after Piper cuts her own bangs in chapter two that she really looks pretty emo.  This was unintentional, but now that she looks like that I can't get her to change back.  So annoying.

Incorporating the sequel is also going to bring in a guy who wears vintage clothes and skinny pants and probably a scarf.  Believe it or not, I really don't have anything to do with these decisions.

I'd better get back to writing.  I have a LOT of work to do.

It would be smarter not to write

When I was eight years old I wrote what was probably my first complete story.  My mom worked at my school, and in the afternoons I'd hang out in her room, waiting for a ride home.  Her room was full of fun things like two doves in a cage, lots of computers, and a binding machine.

I think it was the binding machine that really did it for me.  I wrote "Lindsey of Asia," cut pictures out of magazines to illustrate it, and bound it neatly.  I probably still have that thing in a box in the garage somewhere.

My mom was torn between delight and horror, since the incorrigible Miss Lindsey ended up in Asia when she ran away from home because her father (the president of the United States) was mean and neglectful.  I don't think I even gave my heroine a mother.  After reading it, my mom wondered where she'd gone wrong.

We had a poetry contest in third grade.  The theme was careers, and I wrote about being an inventor (more a mad scientist, really) and having my toes blown off.  I won the contest, and my teacher carefully copied the somewhat gruesome poem out in calligraphy.

I won more writing competitions over the years, including one for a short story in college, and one about ten years ago for compiling the worst paragraph possible.  Looking back, I think that awful paragraph I wrote was some of my best work.

Which brings me to my thought for the day: do I write simply because I was encouraged at a young age?  If I hadn't had that silly inventor poem copied into calligraphy, if I hadn't been stuck in a classroom for hours with a binding machine, if I hadn't been forced, like all children my age, to keep a journal in class, would I have this unfortunate writing addiction?

Yes, I do mean unfortunate.

Because writing sucks up time and attention.

Because writing reveals too much of what's inside my head (and even when it doesn't, my mother assumes it does).

Because writing exposes me to rejection and generous quantities of self-doubt.

This week I've been revising Ravenswood for the bazillionth time, and it rips me apart.  On one hand, I love the thing.  I get sucked into that world and want to stay and wander around.  On the other hand, there are parts of it I hate. For instance, some of the characters are flat as flounders (I despise them), and I think I might need to delete chapter 17 entirely.

I doubt there will ever be a point at which I can say, "I'm done.  This is my best work."

Which is why on days like this I think it would be smarter not to write.

This post is not about money

Like all good unpublished writers in this day of modern technology, I'm strongly considering self-publishing.  Even though I still dream of seeing my glossy cover on the bookshelf, I also like the idea of just getting the sucker out there.

On the one hand, traditional publishing does the marketing and finish work for you.  However, I may rot and die before I manage to get anywhere near a traditional publisher.  I also really like the idea of publishing my work electronically or print-on-demand so there aren't cases and cases of books being printed and then sitting around languishing in a warehouse somewhere.  That is so wasteful!

Although self-publishing could get my work out there faster, I wouldn't have the comfort of an editor and would have to do so much work!  Any of you who have an e-reader of any kind know that electronic books can have absolutely appalling formatting.  I don't want to put out a product that looks like crap, which means learning how to do a quality formatting job for a variety of e-readers.

That is almost as boring to me as funding my kids' college education.

So while I argue with myself about whether to self-publish or not, you can read the first chapter of Ravenswood.  My father-in-law thought I should post some of my writing on my blog, and I thought that was a great idea.  The best part is that it forced me to read it over again, and I made quite a lot of changes.  (Really, an editor would be a nice thing to have.)   Perhaps by the end of the summer I'll put the whole novel through it's tenth revision and get the Kindle version up on Amazon.com.

I hope you enjoy!