What Are Your Goals for Your Piles of Words?

Do you have huge piles of words in your computer?. More than what you just wrote for NanoWriMo or the last novel or short story you're drafting? Completed stories/novels you are submitting don't count. Stories you sold, especially don't count in your answer.

Just put my Half-Elven novella in the closet to ferment before I go back and tear it apart. Yeah, it's got flaws, major structural flaws. So, now I have two recent things festering in there which I need to rewrite, a MG novel [Emma Kloken] and the above novella, The Somant Troubles. Now, to organize time to do it amidst the seasonal baking and presents and clearing off my desk which has piled higher and deeper again.

Went to procrastinate by reading some blogs, and N. R. Williams slapped me up the side of the head with a blog reminding me about how inadequate my description was in The Somant Troubles. Her article on The Writing Craft: Description is worth studying. Actually, if I remember right, she's doing a series on writing craft.

Perhaps my most sizable pile of words, sitting like a lump in the web-cloud, comes from blogging. [So far, I haven't figured if I can do more with them than leave them here.] I've been blogging for, maybe, three years. A good question: can anyone have anything new to say after you've blogged for a month? Six months? A year? 

Roni Loren at Fiction Groupie wrote a neat little blog on blogging stages the life cycle of a blogger. You might've missed it in the NaNo madness so I decided to link to it here. Just loved the pics, and wish I knew how to do the mechanics to dress up my blog with free artwork.

I hope I've avoided the problem of boring myself by commenting on other blogs and doing fantasy book reviews. Blogging is like self-publishing. As long as someone reads the blog each week, guess this blog will continue.

As any NaNo writer knows your words need to be polished before they are worth reading. No one will read a formless pile -- other than you first readers/writing buddies. They need purpose. Chuck Wendig, who's published by Angry Robots, weighed in with a list of reasons why readers will stop reading. I took the blog to heart because I often quit reading a book when I get bored -- after the cover blurb, and opening intrigue me.

My goal is to organize my time so I can revise/edit/polish my word piles. I plan to spend evenings revising. For the new year, I'll be writing new stuff, including a short story a month. I plan to practice taking a character, giving her/him an introduction, problem, complication, and solution in a well-described world. 

In short, I'm setting the goal to polish my craft skills. Oh, I'll be finding some new words to finish my NaNoWriMo story. Have toooooo many words piled up in 1/3 draft to ignore. 

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Then, there's the ever-present need to promote your words after you can see your face in them. Came across a great way to promote: tattoo your book's url on your forehead.

For more ideas, check out Angela Scott's 10 Ways to Promote Your Book. The smiles are worth the time.

Dealing with Writer Envy

Writerly Fantasy Book Review:

Got Kevin Hearne's  Hexed read.  First, I want to say, I hate Hearne -- in the teenaged angst sort of way.  He only wrote for 19 years before he sold his trilogy.  --  [He deserves the success -- and makes my use of some of the same motifs look pedestrian.]

A second volume of a trilogy usually sags.  Hexed breaks that rule.  The plot arc flows as the gods, demons, witches, and dangling problems from the first book complicate things in the second volume.  The story?  Atticus O'Sullivan, the last remaining druid, survived an attack by gods and demons in Hounded, but one demon managed to escape and plot revenge.  Atticus must defend his southwestern US turf with the suspect help of the local Polish witch coven and the interference of religious fanatics seeking to destroy all magic workers.  The writing is fast and funny and totally deserving of envy.

I'm looking forward to Hammered, the third volume.  Del Rey Books has turned the trilogy into a series which should be a fun ride.  Hearne mix and matches a variety of the world's belief systems into one delightfully funny romp.

Social Networking and Other Web Stuff:

I don't know how Victoria Strauss of Writer Beware does it, but an awful lot of her blogs hit problems I'm facing on the nail head.  A recent blog on how to get out of contracts when a publisher goes belly up or some other reason is worth saving.  Guess I'm a disgustingly median writer.  

[Yeah, I got a contract dangling ...  but I've also got a book derived from it almost ready to submit.  Book trumps short story ... so guess which one I'm putting into play.  The short story can fester for the time being.  I also have another contract promised when the small publisher finishes their current project.  Have the draft for that one waiting for another revision.  So, I'm interested in contracts as well as marketing.]

Have just survived the cover wars with a cover I like [Cavern Between Worlds] so I found N. R. Williams blog at The Blood Red Pencil last week a relief.  Basically, she runs through the items your book cover should contain, a pertinent point now that so many writers are self-publishing.  As she puts it:  What Your Cover Should Not Do.  Even if you have a royalty publisher, the article will give you some arguing points.

[Now, excuse me while I dream of some famous author writing a cover blurb for my novel.  Of course, first I have to find a major publisher.]

Speaking of major publishers.  It's becoming more and more important to go over your contracts with a magnifying glass ... or is that a microscope?  The Passive Guy commented on Kristen Nelson's blog on Random Houses change to blanket e-royalties.  Seems to me the publisher changed the e-royalties without notifying anyone.  Also, I think I read something about one publisher reducing the royalty payout by contracting out to one of its subsidiaries.  --  Anyone taking bets on whether the authors on the messy end of the stick will sue?

For all you thinking of self-publishing, the Passive Guy also links to a self-publishing flow chart by the Self-Publishing coach.  If you don't know what good the old-style publisher does for an author, your eyes will open.  --  No wonder I don't have any time except for marketing.  When you self-publish you become the whole smeil.

My Writing Lessons:

My head's still spinning over my Half-Elven bible.  When Dark Solstice got rejected, yet again, I went back and looked at the mess of files I have on the world -- some seven crammed folders.  *rude noise*.  -- So, much for thinking I'll be writing something new.  Actually, I am -- another Half-Elven story set just after Taking Vengeance.  Something called book reviews.


Oh, the trailer is doing well, according to Big Burrito Media ... but I haven't seen any results in the sales figures for Taking Vengeance.

No.  That was not a criticism of the trailer.  The results won't be in for at least six months.   Mostly the lack of sales is my responsibility.  So far, I haven't lined up any reviewers for Taking Vengeance.

Trivia:
The couple generic friends' deaths didn't disrupt things much as my good friend's,
which is sad in its own way.   

Simplistic vs Tangled Plot Structures

Fiction Lessons:

Most of the books I read have linear plot lines.  Many consider such books simplistic even if the relationships among the primary and secondary characters are complicated.  Must say I rather prefer events to flow in one direction ...  with maybe some time outs for flashbacks.

Then, I read a book that a couple book-group friends praised:  New York Times Bestselling Author Kate Morton's The Forgotten Garden.  The book started out with a lovely hook -- a small, pre-school English girl stranded on a boat heading for Australia and the ensuing events when she tries to determine her origins after she grows up.  In other words, a what-happened book instead of a who-done-it.

Most writers would use a nice linear structure to solve this mystery piece by piece, and the character would live happily or unhappily ever after.  Morton hops around in time like a skitterbug.   The time line jumps from pre-WWI to the 70s to the mid 2000s and back again.  In the end, it's the granddaughter who solves the true identity of the abandoned little girl [after she dies] and the dysfunctional family relationships that sent her on her voyage. 

Different sections explore the motives of each of the major characters  How did the writer do it?  With chapters written in different viewpoints in different times and "hatches" [#] to indicate breaks in the action within the chapters.

This all may sound rather lame, but I found the book a satisfying read ... though I doubt if I'd ever write anything that jumbled events [in an organized way] so often.  One thing bothered me though -- the curriculum questions at the back of the book.

Web Promotion and Other Stuff:

Cliches:  Ideas to avoid while writing.  So, why do I have four of them in one book manuscript.  {There Be Demons}  Whatever, I picked up a blog on Twitter by Elizabeth Briggs on major YA/MG cliches.  You might be interested in looking at it since it also applies to adult SF/Fantasy.

Got a lecture recently on how e-self-publishing is the way to go.  Amanda Hocking was given as one of the arguments why.  So, when Writer Beware had a link on Facebook,  I had to look.  You might like to look at her blog too, so I've included a link to her recent blog on her thoughts about self-publishing -- after she just signed with St. Martin's Press, one of the big print boys.  Sounds like she's a writer instead of some icon.

Of course, if your going to promote you have to have something to market.  You have to create something real enough to engage the emotions of your reader.  Nancy Williams did a blog on the elements of Revenge recently.  It's not as simplistic as many writers construct it.  So, take a look at Nancy's comments and see if your characters measure up.

Last but not least, I just discovered why I get so confused about all the publishing possibilities.  Again thanks to Writer Beware, I found a link to a blog by Lynn Price, of Behler Publications, on how the various definitions in publishing are changing.  So, the next time you think writer's have it hard, publishers are in the same boat.  I don't think anyone really knows what's going to happen very far into the future.

Progress:

To add a discussion to e-publishing:  I've submitted "The Noticing One" to Untreed Reads.  Yeah, I totally expect a rejection.  The piece is probably too short [... even though they want short stuff ...] and maybe not written well enough.  It's been out only a couple of times ... and got a long explanation why the editor didn't buy it, so maybe there's hope of a sale. --  If so, that means I'll have two publications up in the e-o-shpere.  Why submit as a short story stand-alone?  Well, in the e-publishing it seems that if you have more than one offering, you get more sales.  [I assume that's if you've told some good stories.] 

Also got "Dark Solstice" out to Angry Robot books.  In case you hadn't heard, the British publisher was taking unagented manuscripts during the month of March.  Guess I'm sort of at the bottom of the heap.  Did re-edit the submitted chapters and was surprised at how well they stood up.  Made very few changes.  Maybe they'll ask for a full.  [That's the height of my ambition.] 

Can't wait to get back to revising Emma. [Psst.  I'll tell you my secret fault.  I downplay my VP characters' emotional reactions to the action, which means I add rather than delete.]

Trivia:

 Nothing much different is going on.  I'm just a little squirrel running in her wheel.

Finding Something to Read

The Read ...

Yeah.  I've been reading ... and putting the book down ... and reading ... and putting the book down.  Did I finish anything.  Well, yeah ... but the book I read puzzled the heck out of me.  What puzzled me more was the books I put down.  

I remember being an avid reader of Patricia Wentworth back in the day.  She had a British spinster sleuth in the Miss Marple vein.  She told a several good tales [it seemed from what I skimmed] about the vices of the gentry, but I couldn't get interested in them.  Maybe it was the amount of telling in the story line.  I'm guessing screen writing has had a greater influence on my reading than I thought.

What did I read?  C. S. Harris' When Gods Die which opens with Prinny [George the IV while his father was still alive] talking to and clutching a corpse.  The characterization was so sharply drawn, Harris drew me into her story of would-be revolutionaries capitalizing on the Napoleanic Wars, the main character/sleuth's discovery that his mother is still alive after he thought she'd died when he was a child, and other subplots that keep the action popping.  Harris really knows her Regency history, unlike a thousand other writers I can't name.  More interestingly, she gets her characters out of the drawing rooms and into the sewers ... literally. 

So why did this surprise me?  Well, I bought three books in the series on the basis of a review ... and put the first one on the to-trade pile without getting more than a couple chapters into the book.  Read the second that had been languishing at the bottom of the to-read pile.  Started to read the third, and it went on the trade pile.  There's a fourth where the MC solves a crime with the daughter of the MC's nemisis.  It looks intriguing, but I doubt if I'll go looking for it.  Stephanie Laurens did something vaguely similar in one of her later Cynster novels.  

Web and Other Stuff ...

A  Twitter link underlined one of the questions rotating in my mind.  What the heck should I blog about to interest people.  You might read Dawn Rae Miller's blog about:  you shouldn't be writing about writing.  Miller has some serious credentials on building platforms, so I think her opinion is worth thinking about.

If you've been pressed for time [like I have been], you might check out Brooke Favero over at The Writing Bug, the blog of the Northern Colorado Writers.  She's gleaned some good posts from the blogosphere from last week.

If you want a second opinion, you might also check out Patti Struble's blog, The Writer's Bump.  Patti offers her on take on the week in her Friday Mash-Up.

One last promotional thing:  N. R. Williams has been doing a blog book tour for her new fantasy book:  The Treasures of Carmelidrium.   You want an example of good promotion?  Go spend some time at Nancy's blog reading her posts and following her links.  She made me tired just twirling my mouse. 

Progress ...

The more I work, the behinder I get.  Or, at least it seems that way even though I finally figured out a framework and did the revision for another Renna's Tale.  Check it out.  It'll take you a lot less time to read it than it took me to figure out how to write it.

Had a 2000 word first chapter for Maren and was all set to jump into chapter two.  Only new ideas kept popping out of my brain.  Of course, I ended up making revisions as I inserted the new ideas into the text.  The chapter is now over 3,000 words long ... and I still have some scribbled notes for additions.
 

Trivia ...

Spent waaaaay too much time in nursing homes ... checking out the facilities.  At least, they let me out again.