Happy New Year!

Since last we met, several exciting things have happened.  Haven’t you missed me?

First, I wrote THE END of my Vampire Story.  Again.  This is THE END of the Second Draft!  Not the final draft, I have a major revision to go, but it will be a revision not a re-write.  I’m planning to start revision at the beginning of February.  I got burnt out figuring out how to get to “the end” so I could move on to the next story bouncing around in my head, so I’m giving myself a good bit of distance before picking it up with my Editor Goggles on.  But any later than February seems like procrastination.

Second!  I started my next story!  This one has been bouncing around in my head for a couple of years, just as a vague idea for a fairy tale that ends (or maybe starts) with the fairies getting the upper hand.  Why is it that Rumpelstiltskin never wins the first-born child?  This is the story where he does.  Well, not Rumpelstiltskin himself, but some other fairy creature.  That was all I had, a bare premise.  I wrote a short story called “Wing Stop” a while back, which ends wrong but I couldn’t ever figure out why*.  A couple of months ago, I suddenly developed a plot and characters.  I don’t know where they came from**, except that I was given this fabulous poem called “Bad Day” by Kay Ryan about an elfin tailor.  And suddenly I knew how the child was taken, and a bit later I figured out what came next, and then–BLAMMO!–I had a whole*** novel-lengthed† story arc.

This has never happened to me before.

I suppose it still hasn’t quite happened.  I mean, the story was brewing in the back of my head for years.  Something must’ve been going on back there.

And eventually I discovered some characters and stuff, too.  So, I’ve started writing!  See?

Ok, I think that was only two things, even though I said “several”. You could invent a few more for me if you wanted.

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* Proof that I do and have finished things, despite the trash I talk about myself.  Just not “final draft”, “ready to be published” finished.  :-/

** Maybe from reluctance to find the end of my Vampire Story.  Funny how procrastination can have some fab fringe benefits.

*** Well, whole by my definition.  There are a whole lot of blurry details and not-so-details that I haven’t figured out.  And I do still have to write the whole thing.

† At least, I hope so.  What if it falls short?  Hrm.

I now* declare the first draft of my vampire story to be complete!

I wrote an ending** and I printed it out–20 pages, double-spaced.  Very exciting!  And then I had to reprint parts of it, because the printer ran out of ink and was printing too faintly.  *sigh*

There’s a lot left to fix.  There’s one scene that needs to be rewritten, because the wrong things happen in it, and I didn’t figure that out until after I wrote it.  And all of the other scenes need things that I haven’t identified yet.

In fact, there are several things about this story that aren’t quite right, aside from basic prose.  The main character is about as interesting as a cardboard box***, and I can’t figure out how to fix her.  The situation is really interesting, but on some level it could be happening to anyone.  So why her?  The setting–a high-tech future hospital–is relevant and important, I know it.  But I haven’t figured out how.  Or rather, I haven’t figured out how to emphasize it.

So today at the gas station I had a thought–what if the MC is just in the wrong position?  She’s flat and dull because she’s not where she needs to be… or maybe she’s just not the MC.  I have an idea for someone in a better role to be the MC.  But of course, that would mean rewriting quite a lot of it.  Possibly all of it.  If she ends up having a personality that would be a really good thing.  But… rewriting the whole story, from a whole new perspective. :-/  That sounds more complicated than my last crazy idea.

I’m going to sleep on it, and see what I think tomorrow.

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* Ok, I actually declared it last weekend.  I’m a little slow.

** I didn’t end up adding in the complications I was thinking of in my last post.  They didn’t make sense after all, and I decided to simplify and just finish the damn thing.  Also, I’m pretty certain it’s not the ending.  But … it’s better than no ending.

*** A friend in my writing group described her first version of a main character as having the personality of a coffee table.  Mine’s less solid than that.

So, I’ve been working on this story.  My goal is for it to be a novel, and I don’t want to give up on it until I’ve beaten it into one.  I figure, I’ve never actually finished a full-length story, so it’s probably not the *stories* that are lacking, but rather *me*.  So, no point in giving up on this one, as though the next one might be any better.  Nope, I hope to figure out my own process on this one, to learn how to write a novel.

I find writing to be very roller-coaster-y.  One day I’m flying high because a scene just wrote itself out of nowhere–I expected the scene to start about an hour later and with completely different characters.  But then I stop before I end the scene… I ran out of time during my writing group, in this case.  And since it was going so well, I figure I’ll just pick up where I left off and it’ll be great.

Then there’s the great loud THUD when I return and discover that I have no idea how to continue the scene.  The ideas that were in my head when I started the scene are now in a whole different place, and I can’t seem to corral them together in anything resembling like how it should go.  Instead my MC just sounds petulant, or whiny, or … just dumb.  Ugh.  So I say screw it, I’m going to bed.  Brushing teeth, I’m totally berating myself for having dropped the ball by not finishing the scene while I still remembered where it was going.  Climb into bed, and just lie there, staring up at the ceiling I can’t see, still berating myself.

And then, like a light switch, I realize this is the wrong mental state.  This line of thinking is just the right way to completely give up on the story forever.  And I already know I don’t want to do that. (Usually it takes me weeks to stop berating myself… or even if I do, then I still don’t get any good ideas for a while.)  I think, ok, so I don’t know how that scene was supposed to get where it should be going.  Fuck it, let’s go in this other direction and see where that leads.  Really simple way to do it, no fancy dialogue required.  And then I realize, oh, that will leave me with the MC in a room with this other woman, who I think is her confidante, so they can have a conversation about what all is going on.  Which I thought they should have, but I couldn’t work it into the flow of the story.

Woah, ok, so that makes sense.  And then… And then I start imagining what they say, what they might conclude.  And so finally I have to get up again to write it all down, or else I’ll *really* beat myself up in the morning when I can’t remember a single thing.

So, 450 new words in about 20 minutes.  Unfortunately, it *doesn’t* lead naturally into the scene that comes after it.  Does that mean I’m just not showing it, or that I’m not showing it from her PoV?

Oh, and I can’t think of anything resembling a title for it.  I hate calling stories after the characters in them, but so far I’ve been calling this one Allie & Fen.  If only I knew what the monsters are called, I might call it after them.  :-/

Happy New Year!

I had a wonderful New Year’s Eve with my favorite purpleleopard, my mom, my boyfriend, and mojitos, at my house.  I don’t have cable (or an antenna), and we couldn’t convince the Internets to give us the ball dropping at the appropriate (west coast) time.    I like watching the ball drop.  But with nice champagne, homemade pizzas, and good company, it was wonderful.

My bday is on Monday, which I’m planning on celebrating by staying home all day and not going anywhere.  (I took an extra day off for it.)

I’ve managed to *write* a bit this vacation.  Only a bit of actual story (just shy of 1500 words, which feels really pathetic), but also brainstorming and other bits of writing happened.  I’m trying out Scrivener, which is a (mac-only) text editing program for writing fiction.  So far I like it, but I’m worried that creating so much structure for myself will set myself up with too many expectations and I’ll stop wanting to use it.  So I’m trying it, and I like it, but I’m gonna wait 30 days before giving them money for it.  So far it has a lot of similar features as CopyWrite, which is the program I’ve been using, but it has more ways of looking at the same info.  This may or may not be helpful for me… we’ll see.

And my period started yesterday.  No cramps, no obvious mood-swings… it was a bit weird.  Today the cramps started.  I could feel them starting, and decided to take painkillers, which usually makes me feel better until next month.  And then Ben and I went for a nice long walk on the bluffs (the ocean was beautiful, it wasn’t too cold or too hot…), and I noticed that the cramps weren’t going away.  They still haven’t.  So now I’m home on the couch with hot tea, wishing I felt better.    I think TV (hulu–I’ve already mentioned my lack of cable) will have to be my solace.