Silk & Shadows

One of the reasons I love cats is that they never make mistakes. If they’re prancing along the window ledge, misstep and do a belly flop to the floor, they pretend that they meant to do that, dammit. They pick themselves up, lick a paw, and sashay off to the next adventure. As an approach to life, I’ve met worse.

In writing, one has to decide when a mistake is a mistake. I’m not talking about grammar/spelling/punctuation, because when two or more copyeditors are gathered together, there shall be clashing opinions, none of which coincide with mine. The real blunders come on a much larger scale, such as when the plot goes to pieces. I often have a terrific scene in mind and will commit all sorts of logic errors just to get there. Or, I write the book how I see fit and find afterward that the result appeals to me and no one else. Most often, I commit the error of overcomplicating things. I do like my subsubsubplots. I also like shades of grey. I don’t always care about how conventionally sympathetic a character is. I’ll take “interesting” over “nice” every time.

Hence, I do a lot of rewriting.

Why do these things happen? Pull up a chair, would-be writers, and learn from the error of my ways:
1. Think through a scene (and a book) before committing it to paper.
2. Remember your audience. Who are you writing for?

With regard to #1, an outline can look better in a notebook than it does in action. Once you’re into a story, it can become evident that your brilliant plot twist was the product of that third glass of Shiraz. Unfortunately, backing out of a bad idea and slashing gobs of pages is sometimes necessary. Or, you can take the cat’s approach and act like you meant it. After all, stories are all about the motivation. Convince yourself, convince the characters, and sometimes it all works out.

With regard to #2, know the expectations of your genre. I struggle with this because I dislike the entire concept of slotting books into pigeon holes, and yet that’s the reality of the marketplace. Trying to be innovative can work, but it can also mean rewriting the entire book back inside the genre boundaries to make it marketable.

A lot of this stuff I don’t regard as mistakes per se, but as choices. An author can choose to be commercially accessible or not. He or she can choose to adhere to today’s favoured structure of story writing–or not. That doesn’t make it bad writing. Much literary fiction goes in the opposite direction and is well-respected.

The down side of there being so many “how to” resources for writers is that the concept of right and wrong storytelling techniques has become firmly entrenched in the hearts and minds of the commercial writing and reading community. The debate over accepting first person point of view is a typical example. It’s not exactly radical stuff, but it’s been a hard sell with many readers. Experimentation is rare. Have we, as writers, followed “the rules” to the point where we’ve trapped ourselves?

An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.

–Niels Bohr, Danish scientist

I love this quote, because it keeps me humble. I’m not an expert yet, but I’m working at it.

Mistakes can be a hugely valuable learning tool. I embrace that philosophy now, but for the longest time, I sought perfection instead of allowing myself to fail with forgiveness. I sought the ‘silver bullet’ of writing. I took every course, read every writing self-help book, and absorbed the words of every lecturer believing that I simply needed to find the right piece of wisdom and success would be mine.

I’ll let you in on a secret—it doesn’t work that way. There is no silver bullet of writing, no miraculous writing technique that will take you over the bridge into publication.

That’s not to say that writers don’t need to know their craft. They do. None of the time I spent seeking the silver bullet and learning to write was wasted. There’s always more you can learn, always more you can do to improve your craft. BUT…in my fear of making mistakes, in my single-minded drive for perfection, I ignored my role in the writing process. I spent little or no time assessing my own style and my own voice.

Yet, if I could name one thing that I believe took me from unpublished to published, it would be voice. Once I stopped trying to write the perfect book and focused instead on writing a book only I could write, I sold. Once I stopped aiming for perfection and gave myself permission to make all sorts of errors—as long as they my errors—my writing developed its own identity.

Because of that, I’d list this quote as one of my favorites:

If I had to live my life again, I’d make the same mistakes, only sooner.

–Tallulah Bankhead, American actress

The path from my head to the written page is more like a wild animal trail through the jungle than an actual path. Sometimes it’s so indistinct that I get lost and miss the watering hole by a continent. Other times, my verbal machete is sharp and I cut through the wandering prose vines with a purpose that makes my imagination sigh with contentment.

Unfortunately, my sense of direction sucks. I’m not one of those writers who can dive into the jungle, follow only gut instinct, and miraculously end up at the long lost city of Eldorado. Nope, when I’m writing I need a guide post. Sometimes I can get by with just a compass in hand and an end point. Most times, though, I need a map. A rough sketch of the major landmarks (or plot points) and roughly how far I must travel.

So, I create a basic plot outline.

Once I have my map, I feel comfortable wandering into the mysterious world of my imagination. I know I won’t stray too far from my ultimate goal and end up writing myself into a place I can’t get out of. And yet, I don’t feel I need to stay on the defined path either. As long as I don’t lose track of my landmarks, I’m free to take whatever new trail comes along.

I don’t find my outline stifles my imagination.

When I create my map, it’s from 30,000 feet and the details aren’t clear. The map is mostly about direction. When I’m writing, the jungle is right there in my face. I can smell it, taste it, feel it—and the sensory detail changes everything about the story. The pacing changes, the characters change, and the conflict changes. And I go with it. The map didn’t show me that big black jaguar crouched in that kapok tree, so I couldn’t possibly have planned for an attack. I didn’t know my main character would be forced to drag himself to Eldorado with an injured leg. But I do now.

I find the outline keeps my second and third draft edits to a manageable size. Yes, the plot sometimes needs to be modified to suit the conflict and character changes. But the big pieces tend to remain the same, which keeps me on target. I may take the long way to Eldorado, but at least I get there.

So, let’s get a show of hands. Who likes to travel wild and free with just an airplane ticket and a knapsack? Who prefers to book a tour? Who falls somewhere in between—with an airplane ticket, a hotel reservation, and a guidebook?

Currently working on: Judging RITA books, the Romance Writers of America award of excellence in romance fiction
Mood: Awed by some great talent

There’s a lot going on in a writer’s head, I swear, even though a lot of time it looks like I’m staring off into space.  While I’m staring, I’m plotting, testing out lines of dialogue, thinking about whom to kill.

And more often than I’d wish, I’m just afraid to start.

See, while the stories in my head are endlessly entertaining to me (hence the long periods of blank-eyed staring) getting what’s in my head onto the page can be a maddening proposition.  In fact, I often feel like my writing sessions are a bit like the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party, where too many conflicting (and crazy) voices have been invited to the table.

The White Rabbit of Overwhelm
He’s the one always chanting “I’m late, I’m late” in my head (because, really, aren’t we always late for something?) which doesn’t much get things off to a convivial start.  Trust me, if you go chasing rabbits, you know you’re going to fall.

The Mad Hatter Muse
Yes, even when not played by Johnny “I’m too sexy to <fill in the blank>” Depp, everybody swoons for the Muse, so he must be invited to the party even though he’s — you know — psychotic, encouraging everyone to run amok and constantly asking silly questions like “How is a raven like a writing desk?” when everybody knows we needn’t answer that question until Chapter 23.

The March Hare Moment
He’s best friends with the Mad Muse… and equally crackers.  He comes around holding out inspiration like a big cup of tea… Only to jerk it away at the last moment.  Emphasis on jerk.  At best, I’ll be left with a little spill of inspiration that I try to mop up and ring out over my pages.

The Queen of (Broken) Hearts Internal Editor
Everybody has to tip toe around her for fear of coming under her gimlet eye.  She’s always deflating the mood with her muttered “Off with her adverbs!”  Heads and hearts are constantly at risk around her, and yet she has a chair of her own because somebody has to be in charge of cutting words and killing our darlings.

The dormouse
He’s already asleep, curled up at the keyboard with his head on ZZZZZZZZ, even though we still have a thousand words to go.

And there, at the far end of the table — she’s lucky she even got a seat — is poor Alice, who just wants a story that makes sense.

Well, forget it, Alice.

It’s impossible to get all those voices to speak one at a time, much less use their napkins instead of their sleeves.  So I’ll take what they spew out and try to capture it for you in all its mad glory.

Maybe a raven is like a writing desk because, with the wind under their wings, they can both take flight.

Anybody else looking forward to Tim Burton’s vision of Alice In Wonderland?  He’s one of my heroes, because if he doesn’t get everything that’s on his head down on paper, I can’t even imagine what else is in there!

Currently working on: Replotting Book 3
Mood: Annoyed (who plotted Book 3 the first time ’round?)

I love a good story.  I am less enthused about “real life.”  Real life is too often poorly plotted, with slow pacing, wimpy motivation and murky conflict.  And a lot of times there are too many coincidences.  And not enough sex.

For those reasons, I don’t read a lot of biographies.  They just aren’t as engaging to me as a well-crafted, entirely fictional story.  The parts I like of the “based on the true story” movies are the not-true parts.  Although I make a few exceptions.

The movie GRIZZLY MAN is one of those exceptions.  Not only is Werner Herzog an intriguing storyteller, his subject — an obsessed man and the unrelenting power of nature — was too engrossing to need fictionalizing.

But as anyone who has tried to convince a 9-year-0ld why he has to do his American history homework can tell you, history poorly told can be dry, disconnected and booooring.  So I don’t usually feature a lot of real-life historical events or people in my stories.

Which was a bit of a problem when I decided to have immortal heroes in my Marked Souls series, many of whom were born in long-gone eras. 

Even in a contemporary story, characters are influenced by historical events, whether from their own personal history or the times through which they lived.  Having characters who have existed for a couple hundred years — experiencing times outside my personal knowledge and, really, my interest — was daunting.

And kind of fascinating.  I started poking around in past events, looking for times when circumstances might have been such that the demons of my storyworld — repentant and otherwise — would have found plenty of vulnerable souls to possess.

Ferris Archer, the hero of SEDUCED BY SHADOWS (October 2009), was merely a farmer’s son — but a Southern farmer during the Civil War.  One of the heartbreaking aspects of that particular war was the way it pitted brother against brother.  Obviously, when better to rebirth a man pitted against himself?

In Book 2 of the series, FORGED OF SHADOWS (June 2010), Liam Niall’s soul was winnowed down to rotting pulp during the Irish Potato Famine.  Though he has honed himself to a fighting edge when we meet him, that hunger is still inside and makes him vulnerable not just to the demon that took him but — decades later — to his heroine.

All through history, we’ve had times when men were challenged… and found wanting.  I like this oppportunity to give them a second chance in my stories.   Not that it’ll be easy, of course.  It never is.  And that’s true of fiction and real life both.

Which time period in history do you think created the most lost souls?

I’m going to join the ranks of those talking about software programs …

Like everything else, writing has fads. Books come out telling us about archetypes, or conflict boxes (when I was a kid, that was called the back seat of the car) or how to Save the Cat. We have stampedes of Alphasmarts, marketing cure-alls, and how to write a book in an afternoon. I’m not knocking these ideas: most of this stuff is useful to many people. The only problem is that none of these books or products actually does the work for me. I mean, what kind of a sales promise is that? I want a full-service gizmo that will take care of business while I go for a walk on the beach. However, if I have to figure out said product, I’m too apathetic to do it.

I’m happy to say that one of my critique partners answered my prayers. No, she didn’t write my book for me. If only. Instead, she shared her discovery of a fabulous piece of freeware called yWriter. It doesn’t quite write the book, but it comes darned close. Plus, if you’re like me and tend to write in bits and snatches, this is the cat’s meow for keeping track of your work in progress. Perfect for people writing around their family’s schedules, a day job, or an erratic muse. It’s also dynamite for checking pacing.

Nifty things it does:
- You can write directly into the program or cut and paste
- It keeps track of the word count of each scene
- It tracks characters and locations and you can upload pictures if desired.
- It tracks points of view, time and date, and duration of scene
- It tracks elements such as action, romantic tension, or whatever else you like
- It tells you what draft you’re on for each scene
- It makes printable index cards of your scenes if you want to work on your book that way
- It makes other graphs and flow charts
- You can shuffle the scenes with a click and drag

There’s other stuff, too, but you get the picture. I’m sure there are other products that will do similar tasks and probably look a lot better while doing it, but this is simple, straightforward, and the price is right. I’ve only just started using it, but it’s already saved me tons of time. My plots tend to sprawl like a squid dropped from an airliner. Most of my efforts are spent making something logical out of the morass. Anything that will help me do that quickly has my stamp of approval.

Check out this site. There’s also a product on the site I like called yTimer that’s good for marking free-writing sessions. Or baking cookies out of that big old bucket of dough in the fridge, if that’s what fuels your muse!

Anyone else have some good freeware sites?

When it comes to snacking while I’m writing, I take my guidance from the food pyramid. It’s simple to follow and I think it’s important to put all the right nutrients into your body to spur the creative process. I tried to find a picture of the food pyramid I use on the internet, but strangely I couldn’t find one. So, I took the liberty of drawing one.

The pyramid shape is an indication of the quantity of each major food group you should ingest. Although my pyramid doesn’t have a dairy section, you’ll note that there is milk in both the chocolate food group, and in my case, in the coffee food group. Not everyone puts milk in their coffee, however, and those that prefer black should up their intake of choco-heaven to make up for the lost dairy.

Tea or cola can be substituted for coffee. Although not specifically addressed in the pyramid, it’s recommended that you switch from caffeinated to decaf after two cups. Unless you’re on deadline. In that case, you may also support your coffee food group with shots of Red Bull.

The necessity of including choco-heaven in your diet is tri-fold. At different times it can provide soothing calm, inspiration, and emotional connection. No dedicated snacker should skip this vital section of the pyramid. Unless you’re allergic. Then all we can say is “Long live the carob bean”.

Popcorn provides all the dietary fiber you could ask for. The only disadvantage of the popcorn food group is the smears it can leave on your keyboard. On the other hand, butter is easier to clean than chocolate, which is why we recommend eating the chocolate straight from the wrapper.

I know what you’re going to say—there doesn’t appear to be any protein in this food program. That’s actually not true. This food pyramid recommends putting large quantities of cheddar powder on the popcorn to accommodate the full range of nutritional requirements.

It also recommends including exercise in your snacking life—stretches while seated and regular marches to the fridge, coffee pot and ladies room. If you’re so inclined, putting a load of laundry in the machine while you’re up will give an extra workout to those biceps.

Happy snacking!

Currently working on: Two more days of Book 2 revisions — Argh!
Mood: Wondering if I use “argh” too much

Since most of us are lifelong readers, I suspect we all agree that learning is a joy that never ends.  Oh, maybe not calculus, true, but even quantum physics can be compelling when someone like Brian Greene writes THE ELEGANT UNIVERSE with cool pictures.

I’ve recently been asked to become a workshop leader for a paranormal writing community.  The Fantasy, Futuristic & Paranormal Chapter of  Romance Writers of America is hosting an online conference called “60 Days to Pro” which is meant to help serious writers make the transition to professional writers.  If you’re a writer — especially a paranormal writer — I think this is a great program.

So this back-to-school season, I’ll be going back as a teacher, presenting a workshop on plotting for “60 Days to Pro) and a chat on the shadow side of writing.

I’m nervous about it.  I don’t consider myself a natural teacher.  I’ve had the luck to score many good teachers in junior high (a social studies teacher who had us build our own economy), high school (a chemistry teacher who — with great zest — set stuff on fire) and college (a comparative religion professor who taught us the proper pronunciation of YHWH, aka God).  So I know good teaching when I experience it.  But giving it back…  Trickier.

Deeply understanding the topic isn’t enough.  Even feeling the topic won’t do by itself.  I have to make someone else understand and feel it.  Kind of like writing, I suppose.  But writing is easy compared to being a preschool teacher standing up in front of 35 youngsters and feeling in control.  Eesh. 

Not that teaching at FF&P will be like teaching preschool.  Or maybe it will be like teaching preschool to toddlers who drink blood, zip through time, play with swords, and shapeshift into large carnivores (see blood drinking referenced above).

My plan is to prepare, practice, present and be patient.  Be patient with myself, I mean, since this is a relatively new skill for me.  Hopefully the class will be patient with me too.  Because under my nervousness, I’m excited about this opportunity.  Thinking about writing and how I’ll present it to others is giving me more insight into my stories, and after I send my Book 2 revision on Tuesday (YHWH willing) I get to start Book 3 using everything I’ll have learned from teaching.

Did you have a teacher who inspired your love of learning, even if the topic (like economics, chemistry and religion) wasn’t one you would’ve normally pursued?  What was it about that person that made you pay attention?

Currently working on: Sleep
Mood: Exhausted

Having just returned from the Romance Writers of American national conference in Washington DC, I have nothing to say.  I won’t have anything to say for several days while I refill the well of words emptied from me in a week of talking, talking, talking writing with friends and colleagues.

And yet I find myself able to write a few words :)  The topic here at Silk And Shadows this week is reading and writing series.  Despite the fact I am writing what I hope will be a series, I’m torn about whether I truly like series.  No, that’s not true, I LOVE a good series.  I just finished Patricia Briggs’ Mercy Thompson books and am fidgeting for the next one.  But it’s hard to do a series well.  As a reader, here’s why I shy away from some series:

1. The author dies.
Or sells the series to a lesser writer.  Obviously, the first one isn’t the author’s fault (probably) and the storyworld shouldn’t have to die just because its creator did.  But so often something of my enjoyment is lost along with the voice of the original writer.

2. I’m already too far behind.
I loved Star Trek fiction as a kid, but I didn’t have time for it in high school and college.  By the time I came back to it, entire universes had changed.  The canon had grown so large and diverse, I was hopelessly intimidated.

3. I have a mind less like a steel trap and more like a rusty sieve.
Even when I love a series, if somebody does pull my head out from under a rock and then smack me lightly on both cheeks a few times to bring me around, I often forget that I’m supposed to be waiting for book next.  Honestly, this is one of my favorite things about social networking like Facebook and Twitter; I can finally stay current with my favorite authors! 

Oh, but a well-done series with enough books to immerse me for days…  That is a thing of wonder.   My next trick is trying to write one…  Here’s what I will be attempting:

1. Tie every book to the overarching storyline.
Because that’s so simple.

2. Make every book strong enough to stand alone.
Oh, is that all?

3. Deliver a knock-out punch at the end of every book and keep ‘em coming back for more.
But of course.

I’ll check back in five years and let you know how I did.

Do you seek out new series, or do you shy away?  If you shied away — without bashing anyone — what scared you off?  If you download countdown clock widgets from your favorite author to remind yourself when her next book is out, what draws you to a series?

I used to think I was pretty eclectic in my musical tastes, but after reading Sharon’s post yesterday, now I’m thinking not so much. Still, depending on my mood you might catch me listening to Chant, with the Monks of Santo Domingo, or Ray Charles or Floggy Molly or Renaissance music or Mozart or the Beatles or Caruso or Los Lonely Boys. At the moment, the Cranberries are singing “Ode to My Family.” Love the vocals. I’m not by nature a meditator — just can’t turn those thoughts off — but certain music, like Chant or Live The Legend by the New World Renaissance Band, gives me a temporary vacation that some days helps save my sanity. Like a sedative for the soul, this is my form of Xanax. So soooooothing.

For writing, I especially like music with a strong emotional message, and that’s why I also tend to find inspiration in movie soundtracks, as Jessa talked about on Monday. There’s a really good reason for that. Soundtracks, whether compiled or written specifically for the movie, are designed to highlight the rising tension of the story, arcing from the inciting moment to the resolution. It’s an emotional journey in sound following the emotional journey of the characters, and whether you realize it or not you are swept along. My favorite movie composers are James Horner - Braveheart, Zorro, Titanic, to name a few (I love the Celtic touches) and Patrick Doyle, who did all the Kenneth Brannagh Shakespeare movies among other things.

One of my favorite compiled soundtracks is Garden State, a movie about learning to accept and find joy in the dysfunctional nature of life. It’s quirky and sweet and poignant, and the music reflects that. When my daughter downloaded the songs onto my Ipod (because I am categorically incapable of doing so for myself), they somehow loaded in reverse order. I said, “Can’t you fix it?” and she said, “What difference does it make? You have all the songs.” Whereupon I demanded, “How do you expect me to embark upon an emotional journey backwards? Huh? I’ll end up all neurotic.” She just looked at me and shook her head. But I had a valid point.

Oddly though, I don’t hear every bit of the music playing in my head while I write. My own thoughts take precedence and I find myself in a kind of cocoon - just me and my characters with all their angsty adventures. The rest of the world could blow up for all I’d care. Yet at the same time, and mostly on a subconscious level I guess, the emotional content of the songs does find its way into my psyche and translate onto the page, occasionally veering a scene into territory I hadn’t originally intended — in a good way. I like those kinds of surprises, when characters are suddenly inspired to take matters into their own hands. Maybe it’s because they can hear the music too.

So if not music, what do you do to stay focused at work…or to keep your sanity intact?