Don’t Eat the Butt #3–Persistence Can Look a lot Like Stupid

Reblogged from Kristen Lamb's Blog:

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Thank you Parks Australia for the image. A couple of weeks ago, I started a new series that I called Don’t Eat the Butt. Why? Because typing “butt” makes me giggle. No, I think there are some important lessons here, so let me explain. I have always found the puffer fish fascinating. For those who choose to eat the puffer fish, there is only ONE TINY PART of the puffer fish that is not deadly. Oh, and if you don’t know how to cut a puffer fish correctly, you can unwittingly unleash deadly …

To Do: A List

To Do List Before I Leave China (In No Particular Order)

• Pack.
• Travel to Dandong. Wave hello to North Korea, go to the Hushan Great Wall, have some good Korean barbecue.
• Clean the apartment. Top to bottom.
• Take and print pictures of each of my classes. Write my e-mail on the back, give to students on the last day of their classes with me.
• Get the bulk of the timeline business of my novel done and out of the way. That part takes up a lot of floor space. Neither an airplane nor my parent’s house have that kind of room.
• Did I mention pack? This also includes sorting through all the crap I’ve amassed over the year (souvenirs, cheap books, silly tourist T-shirts) and deciding what comes home with me, what gets thrown out, what gets passed on to the next teacher.
• Write up detailed class descriptions for each of my classes and one one ones for the next teacher’s reference.
• Buy more chopsticks, little tchotchke things, and some of the non-perishable foodstuffs that I want to bring home (date flakes, tomato and egg convenient noodles, baijiu, sachima… I’m pretty sure there’s something missing from this list).
• Do laundry. My mother would kill me if I came back with dirty laundry. ETA1: S1 informed me that this is included in packing. Okay, then.
• ETA2: Did I mention WORK? Yes, I still have classes in between all of this. Sigh.

There’s too much to do! I have about two weeks left here, and traveling to Dandong is looking less and less likely. That’s upsetting because I really want to see North Korea (from the Chinese side of the Yalu River, but still) and the easternmost section of the Great Wall.

…Instead of sitting here writing this blogpost, I really should be writing these items on a piece of paper and start doing them.

Yeah.

Singin’ the Rough Draft Blues

When Dec. 1 came around, I promised myself I would give it until January to start the edits. The thing is a beast: it’s 237 pages and weighs about two pounds. It cost RMB100 to get it printed and bound, so about US$15. I have a feeling I would have paid a lot more at a Kinkos or an Office Max in the States, but it was still a shock when the printer told me RMB100. Yikes.

I settled in and started to read that night. My first reaction was, “Huh. This isn’t awful. It’s not good, but it’s not awful.” In other words, it can be made into something better, with a lot of work. There are some parts where I say to myself, “This is okay, this might work.” Then there are other parts where I hold my head in my hands and say, “Oh God, what were you thinking?” I try very hard not to draw a box around the block of offending text and black it out with a permanent marker.

As I read I tried to make notes, but I found that this took me out of the story and moved my train of thought from just reading, to actively looking for mistakes and plot holes.

My next pass will be for blocking and note-taking and judging. Lots of judging. Some things I noticed, though:

• There are a lot of subplots I set into motion but never followed through on. I suppose this comes with the territory of marathon novel writing; you forget what happened 10,000 words ago. I’ll make note of these on my second pass, pick the ones that seem worthy of expanding and go from there.
• The second half of the story makes a lot more sense than the first; it feels a lot more cohesive and there’s a definite voice. (Didn’t I read somewhere that the first chapters of a book are almost always the ones you have to rewrite to fit the ending of the story? Yeah.)
• I jump between what people are actually called, like if he’s a king or a lord, if he’s an uncle or a cousin. Also, my timeline seems to be a little wonky, so that will have to be established as well.

I blocked out all the scenes, and now have made a mess of my spare room floor. Every scene is on its own notecard so I can see how it flows together, and shuffle if I feel like it. It’s proven pretty useful so far, but that’s for another blog post.

I have a friend, who is also a co-worker, reading it over. She made notes as she read, but her she gave the whole thing a thumbs up. And said she wants to read it to her children. Whoa. I asked if she was absolutely sure she wanted to do that and she said yes.

I’m trying not to let myself get intimidated by the editing process. I suppose this is where a lot of amateur authors stop and convince themselves that there’s no way they can do this, it’s too big and demanding and sometimes gut-wrenching to carry on. But I’m going to power through, and try to build the best support system I can so I’m not tempted to throw in the towel.

Next week: notecard migration!

The Editing Games

I am trying so hard to resist cracking open the novel and plowing headfirst into it. I can feel it, calling out to me and tempting me with its misspellings and misplaced commas. It’s like the Sirens or something.

A friend of mine gave me some good advice: the longer you wait the better. It’s been two weeks, and I’m pretty fuzzy on about half of the thing, so I think another two weeks will do the trick.

Then the editing games begin.

There are articles and advice all over the Internet concerning editing. I’ve been doing some reading, just to see how other people go about it. I mentioned in my last post that yes, I’m a trained copy editor, but editing a 700 word news story is a different ballgame when you go about editing a 50,000 word novel. There are different things to worry about besides spelling, grammar, factualness, and coherency. Added to the mix are plot development, characters and character development, setting, and a whole laundry list of other elements that make a novel a novel.

Some methods I’ve researched:

• Notecards This method worked well for me when I was plotting out the story originally, and it might be worth re-visiting in the edits. Take every scene and put it on notecards, and lay them out in order. It gives you a visualization of your novel and makes it easier to see plot holes, or scenes that are just filler. You can also move as you please. Chris Baty (NaNoWriMo founder) advocates for this method in his book No Plot? No Problem!  and he makes a pretty good case for it. I’ll keep it on the list.
• Different Drafts I can’t remember where I read about this method, but your first draft is catching mistakes and correcting them, then a different draft for character development, a different draft for sensory details, a different draft for emotional things, etc. I think this would be useful if you’ve already seen to it that your story is complete and you’re satisfied with the arc.
• Lemony Snicket’s advice His advice is featured on the I Wrote A Novel, Now What? page on the NaNo website. “Put the book aside and listen, for the first time, to your insecurities. Do not pay attention to what they say but to where they are pointing.” I’m a very insecure writer anyway, so the ability to let myself listen to my doubts and the Inner Editor is freeing and encouraging.
• Holly Lisle’s One-Pass Revision I’m sorry, but I don’t think a whole novel can be edited in one pass. I know if you take your time with it and focus, it can work for some people, but definitely not for me. I’m wary of it, and I doubt I’ll ever try it.

I’m mostly positive I’ll be doing a step by step process, and it’s going to be difficult to resist fixing the little things before I fix the big things. A novel isn’t made just by deleting a few commas. I know that I’ll end up needing second opinions, and I plan on sharing with people who aren’t close friends or family first, but they’ll still be people that I’ve come to know and trust as writers.

In the meantime, while I wait for my novel to marinate, I’ve offered my services to fellow NaNo survivors as a second pair of eyes, using my copy editing skills on their novels. It’s a good way to pass the time until it’s time for me to work on my big, huge, scary novel.

And so, I leave you with these words from Oscar Wilde:

This morning I took out a comma and this afternoon I put it back in again.

“Victory is mine! Victory is mine…

…great day in the morning, people, victory is mine. I drink from the keg of glory, Donna. Bring me the finest muffins and bagels in all the land.” - Josh Lyman, The West Wing 102

I took some time to reflect on how November went before I started thinking about blogging again. The month ended in a rush that I wasn’t quite prepared for, which included an influx of social events, and unintentionally falling behind on my word count. Bottom line: I got it done, and I have a novel.

It was a tooth and nail fight to cross the finish line (with two hours to spare). I jumped tracks so many times I have to separate out the different things I started and didn’t finish. What I did end up doing though, is adding onto, and finishing, another NaNo novel, which is sort of against the rules, but if there are words for one project, I’m not going to force words that aren’t there. I feel like that’s the most valuable thing I’ve learned this month: if the words aren’t there, don’t force it. If the words come for something else, work on that for a while; inspiration might come afterwards.

I don’t have much else to say on the experience, except to say that I learned a lot abou the kind of writer I am, in terms of method and genre. I’m a mostly solitary writer, with fits of needing word wars and social interaction with others of my kind. It was an enormous help to unload on other Wrimos, and have a little friendly competition in the name of upping the word count. And I like to write fantasy…it cuts out the amount of research I have to do and I like to let my mind wander. I tried not writing it and I just ended up floundering in indecision and research and minutiae that I really didn’t want to deal with.

So now the completed novel sits patiently on my harddrive while I regain perspective and a set of fresh eyes. Then, in about two or three weeks, I’ll start slogging through the re-writes and the edits. And you better believe I’m going to share all of that with you.

Speaking of, I don’t even know how I’m going to tackle the edits. I’m a trained copy editor, but editing a novel is a whole different ball game to editing news articles. For one thing, the scale is completely different 700 word news article versus a 50000 word BEHEMOTH? It’s daunting to say the least.

Also, apparently my body gave out just as soon as the clock switched to Dec. 1: I’m now rocking an almighty cold that makes my head feel like it’s detached from my body, and has me hacking up a lung every half hour. I’m just happy my immune system waited until December to give up.

NaNoWriMo Week 2

I absolutely loathe Week 2 of NaNoWriMo. All the advice says to push through it, and so push through I shall endeavor to do.

At this point in the month I’m clueless: I have no idea where I’m going with the plot and with the characters ensconced in the plot. One thing I should probably do is step back and say, “Okay, I’ve come this far, where does this go next?” I know by this time next week I’ll feel a lot better about things and say to myself, “Now was that freak out necessary?”

I’m using any means to push through the awfulness that is always Week 2: Write or Die, writing longhand, closing my eyes and just writing whatever comes to mind concerning the scene.

Hopefully everything comes through in the edits and rewrites in January.

How are you all doing on your wordcounts? Are you just as frustrated with Week 2?

You Know It’s Serious When You Lose Sleep

I am a terrible blogger. And I completely failed the Post A Day challenge. I should just call it Post A Week (Until Further Notice).

You know, I had a feeling that when NaNo started, I would suddenly not have time to blog. It turns out I was right. Or I should budget my time better, but I see next to no chance of that happening. So.

I think I should explain what happened to me a few days ago. I posted in my wonderful NaNoWriMo Google+ circle that I was having some troubles writing (more trouble than usual a.k.a., I was losing sleep over it) and I got some great advice, from killing a character, to “relax,” to stepping away from it for a while. What happened instead was I started to write whatever I wanted to write, and my mind went back to an idea I’ve been toying with for a while. And guess what happened? The words just started to pour out of me. It was magical.

I distinctly remember my first NaNo, and how much fun I had writing it, because I knew how it began, and I knew how it ended, so I just wrote the middle with no idea how it was going to go. And I had a ball. Even my mother mentioned how much fun I had with the first one (and it’s the only one that’s complete!), and now I just stress out about my NaNo novels. Am I really a pantser at heart? This so goes against my nature, but I’m willing to try it, if it means writing is fun again and I actually finish instead of getting to the climax and stopping.

Considering the plot I started November with, I believe that I plotted myself into a box that I didn’t know how to get out of. So I’ve put the original idea on the back burner, to give it time to boil down to the idea it started as; go in fresh when it’s ready and when I’m ready.

But for now, I’m just going to work on the thing that’s actually working for me.

NaNo: Progress Report

Well, it’s heading towards 11 p.m., and I’d say I’ve had a pretty productive day! I’m not as far along as I wanted to be by the end of Day 1, but I’ll take when I can get. I’m stopping for now, because I have other things I need to do before a midnight deadline, namely 750words and a guest blog spot elsewhere on the Interwebz.

My goal this year is 80,000 words. I don’t know if this is a psychotic death wish, wishful thinking, or what, but I’m determined to do it.

OK, off I go again!

Hope your NaNo adventures are going well!

I’m Ready…I Think

OK, the countdown begins!  It’s 9:50 p.m. over here in China land, which means I am anxiously watching the minutes to midnight tick by.

I’ve done all the preparing I feel like I can do. I even braved the masses of gawking, Hello!-shouting, Chinese people and went to the supermarket to stock up on the necessities, a.k.a. chocolate. I even found instant coffee, which I guess is a good alternative to the regular thing.

Also, my apartment is the cleanest it has EVER been, which is saying a lot because roommate neglects to clean his sunflower seed shells most of the time.

The plot cards are laid out on their temporary home (my bed) for easy access and reference. The chocolate is handy for the first 1667 reached, an episode of the West Wing is lined up for the second 1667 reached, and the coffee is there should I need it.

80,000 words and a first draft, here I come! (Yep, I set my goal high this year. I have the free time, I might as well make use of it.)

The Kids Are All Right

I never thought that when I started this job I would be wiping away someone else’s child’s tears with such frequency. Whether a child is genuinely upset or just upset they didn’t get their way, it still manages to twist something in my gut. Sometimes it makes me laugh or roll my eyes when I know the tears are just because the child wants the attention, but the genuine tears really upset me.