"Baby shoes for sale, never used."

Say what you will about Hemingway; I know he's far from my favorite author. In fact, I generally avoid his writings like the plague. But who else could write such a powerful story in under 7 words?

"Baby shoes for sale, never used."

What's your 7-word story?

Home Stretch

Well, I'm in the home stretch on Deception, the adult mystery/pseudo-suspense I've been writing for the last 2 1/2 months. I've got 10,000 words to go before I hit my 90k goal. I fell short on my TT draft; hit 52k when I was going for 60k. This one, I'll surpass. There's still too much wide open to wrap up in such a small number of words and I'm by no means interested in rushing through.

Exceeding my goal will mean I don't feel so bad cutting the crap out of it when I start revising. Which I'm absolutely going to need to do, because this book has been doing its own thing from somewhere around the 40k mark. Just went off on its own, weaving its own story and leaving me to try to figure it all out along with my characters.

I think I'm just about there. Miracle of miracles.

I've started writing an urban fantasy. Done a lot of planning and I've gone a few thousand words in on the story itself. That'll be my next project and I think it'll be a fun one. It's my first real exercise in worldbuilding and its really going to make me stretch my creative muscles. Also, my research abilities. I need to hit the library; I need to expand my reading repertoire into books about vampires and werewolves. I blame Rowling's lovely Remus Lupin for my sudden interest in such creatures. I also need to read up on the rest of the genre, especially UF-style detective stories/mysteries.

But, before I pick up on writing that again, I'm going to set aside some time for revision. I'm nowhere in revising the Taggert Twins book and I'm going to have to start revising Deception. The good thing is that I've got all the big plot problems that arose in writing TT resolved, I think; I just need to put them into the book now. That's going to require quite a bit of rewriting, I think, but the book will be so much better for it. I'm quite excited, actually.

And I know the title Deception sucks. It's only a working title until I can devote the hours necessary to figure out a decent title. Because I'm firmly convinced that titles are evil incarnate and put on this earth to drive me to drink. Excessively.

Conflict

I've discovered that the part of writing I struggle with the most (setting aside creating characters and the actual world in which I write) is layering conflict in a story. As I write I tend to forget that I need more than one single issue to hold the book together. I get caught up in the main plot and write to move that forward but I forget that in, say, a teen mystery the characters have other things going on. They have school. They have budding romances and unrequited love. They have rivalries and cliques and get pissed off at friends and relatives on a fairly regular basis.

I have a bad habit of letting all those other things fall away and without them, the work falls flat.

On any given day, I have a lot going on in my life. I have problems with work. I have problems with family and friends. I find myself, to paraphrase one of my senior managers, unable to get out of my own way. I get stressed out; I feel an overwhelming urge to curl up in a chair with a book and a hard drink.

And that's all without anyone trying to kill me, which is what my characters have to deal with on a daily basis.

But somehow, when I sit down in front of my computer and begin to type, I develop a one-track mind. Which, for me, is odd. Granted, I get hung up on various topics and I've been accused more than once of talking about work too much. But the way my brain works in general is that it jumps around. I can't just sit down and watch a TV show or movie. I have to read a book or surf the net or something like that. I can go to the movie theater and absolutely love the movie I'm watching but by the halfway point I'm checking my watch and trying to gauge how much longer it's going to last.

I get bored with things. Even when I go on a kick with a new TV show (MacGyver, at the moment), I can't just focus on that. I'll surf the net, read fic, and write all while watching the show. It keeps me engaged.

But when I write, I latch onto the one main plot and let everything else fall away. Yes, that main conflict is the driver of the story but if I want people to identify with my characters and be drawn into the book, it needs to have more.

So, while I can certainly fix this in revision (and I suspect that will be the case), my new writing goal is to consciously focus on all aspects of the story as I write, rather than leaving it to revision to repair. And I'm getting better at it. In my current book, my main character has an ex-husband who still wants to be in her life--and protect her from herself. She also has a boss who she'd like to push out her office window. She has two kids who are still reeling from her divorce. And she has the mystery.

And once a chapter or so I recall some (or, on a really good day) all of these. And I might even have a flash of insight as to how to work in one or more of them.

Have to start somewhere, I suppose.


x-posted to my LJ

Beloved characters

I've commented on part of this before. The fanfic debate aggravates me because I know firsthand that the reason we fanficcers write these stories is because the characters have reached us on some level. I'm currently slightly obsessed with Remus Lupin (okay, slightly may be a tad of an understatement), which I'm sure y'all have noticed. His character draws me in. He's complex and wounded and honest and inspiring and he just interests me so much, which is why I keep blathering about him.

I have a lot of wishes and dreams relating to writing. I want to get an agent. I want to get published. I want to see my book--my own book--on a shelf in Barnes & Noble. I want to make a bestseller list. I want to make enough writing that I can quit my day job and write for a living.

But more than anything else I want to create characters that will instill in my readers the type of attachment I've felt to Remus Lupin, Dennis Booker (21 Jump Street), Templeton Peck (The A-Team), Wedge Antilles and Tycho Celchu (Star Wars). It would mean, to me, that I've done my job as an author and made my audience care about my characters.

Hell, I'd even be happy to have my fans up in arms about something I'd done to my characters because it would mean that my audience had developed a relationship with these characters to the point that they felt they knew them, believed in them, understood how they functioned and why--and had developed their own opinions on these characters.

Cross-posted to my LJ

Know that point in a story ...

... where you're kind of grasping for something, anything, to just keep the book going forward until you get your momentum back and get the thing back on track and going in a direction its actually supposed to go?

Yeah, that's where I am right now with my current book, Deception.

I almost feel as if I've lost track of the story and just need to keep writing and things will start to fall into place again, and then I can get rid of the crappy stuff when revision comes around.

Altogether, though, knowing that writing the last word on the last page does not, in any way, shape, or form mean that this book is complete does not make me feel better about how lousy the story is right now. The writing itself isn't bad, I don't think, save for the fact that the story is just rambling along aimlessly and completely without direction.

This is why they say padding a story shows. It does. I'm not trying to make it longer at the moment; given that it seems to me that little has happened and I'm already halfway through, length is not a concern of mine. If anything I'm probably going to have to cut out a lot. But what I'm writing now is, really, filler. It's to fill in the blanks, get something down on paper, until I can pick up the action again and tie the story back together.

Does anyone else have this issue? (I'll refrain from linking yet again to Holly Lisle's piece on middles, which always makes me feel much better about my inability to write the middle of story coherently.

x-posted to my LJ

Crafting a character, part 2

So, going back to Friday's (I know I said I'd post this on Saturday... whoops) post for a second, the way I described those characters is what I meant by the narrative approach. It's the only way I can get anywhere with my characters, get an understanding of who they are and what's up with them, before I start writing the story. Those were lists in and of themselves, of course, but they were lists of the characters' experiences, the biggest events of their lives that made them who they came to be.

It's all well and good to say someone is quiet and reserved, or angry at the world, or very shy and jumps at his own shadow. To me, that's what that second method I mentioned, the sort of outline thing that I talked about, does. It lists attributes but it doesn't get into why they're like that. You certainly can take that approach with the list but it doesn't lend itself to it. You know?

Until we know why a character is quiet or angry or shy or easily frightened, we don't really know much about that character, do we? Maybe the quiet character was one of ten kids and just craved quiet as a child. Maybe she was yelled at every time she opened her mouth. Maybe the angry one lost both parents as a teenager. Maybe he poured everything he had into a business that just collapsed. Maybe the shy one was an acne-prone dork as a high-schooler. Maybe she... I dunno, but you get the picture. Writing a character description in terms of the character's life experiences is a great jump start, in my opinion, to get you thinking about the person your character has come to be.

I think character flaws are more likely to come out that way, too. We can see the places they haven't necessarily dealt with the events of their lives, the problems they've faced. We can see how they might have chosen to deal with those events in less than productive ways. What if Wedge, from my example the other day, had chosen to join his parents and put himself out of his misery? What if he'd chosen to drink away his problems? He'd be a very different character and the events that occurred surrounding him in Star Wars would have been very different as well. If they happened at all.

I really struggle with creating flaws for my characters but I've managed to come up with some very quickly for the book I'm plotting out right now (different than the one I've been writing for a few weeks) using this approach. Creating backgrounds for my characters amuses me and is, for me at least, a great tool. It doesn't mean I know everything there is to know about my characters before I type "-1-" at the top of my first chapter. But it gets me going, gets me thinking and gives me a direction to go.

What approach do the rest of you take? Has anyone else used the way I use?

Crafting a character, part 1

Okay, I've broken this up into two pieces because it was getting quite long.

There are a lot of different approaches to creating characters. There's the figure it out as you go along method, by which you more or less just write and the character unfolds and flourishes along with the story. There are the character sheets I've seen (in several different incarnations) with which you go through and give your character eye color, hair color, complexion, favorite book, most prized possession, education, profession, etc. Then there's a narrative approach, whereby you write as if doing a short bio of your character and see what you come up with. I'm sure there are more that I haven't heard of, other ways people use or combinations of the above. But for argument's sake ...

I've tried all three. I, personally, hate the first one because I like to have an understanding of my character before I jump in and this doesn't give me one. I feel lost, like I'm not developing my characters enough. Granted, by the time revision rolls around, I'm much more familiar and able to work in characterization better on the second time through. But still... it makes me feel lost.

The second one bores me. It's a good idea, in a way, because it gets you picturing your character, trying to come up with things about them to help you answer those questions. But usually when I'm doing that I don't have a clue what Mary's favorite book might be or what Chris's hobby is. And so I get bored and it's a sort of "green eyes--check. high cheekbones--check. skip that, skip that, I dunno, skip that too" list and then I give up and resume the seat-of-my-pants approach, so I'm back to step one.

I like the narrative bit. If you point to my favorite characters in a TV show or movie or book series, chances are that it won't take me long to tell you why I like them and chances are that it has to do with the fact that they are incredibly damaged. For instance:

Trent Malloy from Sons of Thunder and Walker, Texas Ranger. He's an ex-Army Special Forces hand-to-hand instructor. Dropped out of seminary to join the Army, fought with his father, never made up with his dad before his dad died, and then has to apply for a hardship discharge to help his mother pay the bills. Not only that, but when he was a kid, he was holding the gun that accidentally killed his younger brother/buddy (not quite clear). As a result, he refuses to touch a gun again, despite the fact that there's not a whole lot other than law enforcement that he's qualified to do. Becomes a PI but still will not arm himself and almost dies because of it.

Very interesting, very damaged, very lovable boy. And cute, too! Fangirlish moments aside... you can see throughout the series the ways in which is problems with his father impact him. And the unwillingness to carry a gun and all that goes along with that -- stubbornness, an almost death-wish mentality at times -- is ever-present and is just a huge part of the character.

Here's another.

Wedge Antilles from Star Wars. He was a family kid, really, helped his parents in their family-owned business. That was all he ever dreamed of. And then they were killed by space pirates. And this kid, this 15-year-old (I think he was 15; age escapes me at the moment), went off after the pirates and killed them. Cold-blooded revenge. And I wouldn't blame him a bit. He went on to become a galaxy-renowned hero but still a relatively simple man who wanted nothing more than to fly his fighter. He didn't want glory and recognition and public appearances. He wanted to make things right in the universe and if he stepped on a few toes on the way, so what. All owing to his roots.

Same thing. Wedge's case is particularly interesting to me because we have two very explicit characteristics almost juxtaposed against each other. Here is a man who will go out of his way, sacrifice everything he has to do the right thing. And yet he's a cold-blooded murderer. And you can see that his willingness to sacrifice everything comes from what he's experienced. He has a need for justice that drives him to the ends of the galaxy. It dictates everything he does and it paints his actions, for the reader (this is all explored more in the Star Wars books than in the movie) in a very different light. And it makes him a very, very 3-dimensional character.

Tomorrow's post will tell y'all where I was going with this...

The value of an agent

The Rejecter responded to a question from someone looking for a way to publish without having an agent, and the comments sparked a couple remarks about the value of agents and why (and whether) they're worth their 15%. Yeah, I suppose it kind of sucks sometimes to think that if you're going to get $10,000 for your book, you're only going to see $8,500 of that--not counting taxes. But I have to say, even as an unpublished author, I think it's more than worth it.

I wouldn't want to try to get published on my own. I don't like the idea of trying to find my way around the industry alone. I wouldn't want to try to decipher a contract or look at a royalty statement or plan my career without the help of someone who actually knows what they're talking about. I want someone there who can answer my questions, give me feedback on an idea before I write the book, give me advice from the perspective of someone in the industry. I want someone there whose job it is to guide me through, to know what has to be done and to do it, because they know how to.

I want someone who's going to help me out. Who knows what to look for in a contract and knows the ways publishing companies try to gear the contracts toward their own interests more than the writers' interests. Because, let's face it, this is a business and people are in it to make the most for themselves--even those legit publishers, the big guys, want to get the best bang for their buck and that's not always in the writer's best interest. An agent knows that.

An agent has the contacts. Knows what the book might be worth. Knows how to play the game. And, though this is coming from someone who hasn't even dealt with an agent, I'd much prefer to have someone who knows who to talk to and how to get things done in my corner, even if it means paying 15%. Gladly.

Reading as a writer

I used to love to read. When I was in middle school I would take books out of the library in stacks of ten or fifteen. (I lived in a small town and our library had no limits on borrowing, not like some of the bigger ones in other places I've lived.) I read constantly. I made friends at my earliest jobs because I was always sitting in the breakroom or office with a book. I spent lunch, breaks between classes, all my free time at home reading. Then I kind of overdosed on all the assigned reading, books that didn't interest me, in high school and college and lost touch with why I loved to read to begin with. And it's only recently that I've rediscovered it.

Part of why I got back into reading was because I told myself that if I want to write, I need to read. Especially once I started writing young adult and realized I was completely out of touch with what was being published in young adult fiction. And lately I'm just craving a book to read. I've read four books in the last month -- which, given that I have a full-time day job and spend a lot of my time researching, reading blogs, looking at agents, and writing -- is an accomplishment for me.

I started reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone a couple weeks ago. I've seen a couple of the movies but until I rediscovered why I love to read I had no interest in reading the books. Just didn't, for whatever reason. And it's not that I'm not into fantasy because I am. I grew up on Star Wars (call it what you want but I consider it a mix of sci fi and fantasy with a little bit of every other genre thrown in). I adore The Lord of the Rings films (though I have not yet read the books) and I love the thought of magic and witches and wizards and all that stuff. One of my dreams is to write an epic fantasy and I have all these ideas dancing in my head, though I don't feel I'm accomplished enough as a writer in general (and by accomplished I don't mean published; I just mean experienced enough with creating scenes and situations and characters of my own) to attempt it.

Okay, that was a massive tangent. The point I was heading towards was that, as I read the first few chapters of Sorcerer's Stone, I couldn't help but zone in on all the instances of passive voice, the list-like descriptions of characters, etc., in the book. Writing my own work has affected how I read. And even though, as a writer now, I feel like I'm much more forgiving of typos and little errors here and there (even though I'm still in the writing phase I feel like I have a fair grasp of what actually goes into getting a book on the shelves), I notice all these things more.

Not to say Rowling's writing is bad or anything. Her ability to tell a story, to create this world, astounds me. But the things that we, as novice writers, are told to avoid just jump off the page at me now. It makes me wonder what I'm going to notice when I sit down to edit my first draft. (Yikes!)

Enthusiasm

I was feeling kind of listless this weekend. I've missed three writing days this week, mainly due to the fact that I've been dragging myself out of bed at 5:20 a couple mornings (read: inhumanly early) to workout and promptly pass out on the couch by about 9 p.m. before I get my writing time in. I wasn't that inspired by my book for some reason and last night really struggled to make my daily goal. I'm still ahead of where I'd planned to be by this time but not by as much as I'd like to be. (Yes, currently, I measure my writing success by how far ahead of my goal I am. Writing to my goal? Bah. I may as well just extend my goal. But I don't. Why, I don't know.)

But this morning, for some reason, my enthusiasm has returned. Couldn't tell you why. Don't have a clue. But now I'm raring to go, just waiting to put my protagonist into deadly peril. Because it's fun to endanger fictional characters and see what they come up with to get themselves out of tough situations.

I wonder if all authors have those times where they don't feel like so much as looking at their text, never mind writing it, and then others where they can't get the story out of their head and just want to write, write, write. I bet they do.

Really, this is just a rambling post without much point to it, but it was just reassuring to me to see my enthusiasm for the story come back on its own. Had me a little worried there for a while ...

Also, random thought of the day: it's very cool to see animals with their natural maternal instinct. I got to see the kittens at my mom's place this weekend. Two weeks old. Momma cat watched us very closely to ensure we didn't hurt her babies. So cute!

Plotting

There seems to be an everlasting ... discourse on how people approach writing. Some fly completely by the seat of their pants with only the barest sketch of where the book is going to go -- or nothing but an idea. Some spend weeks writing a complete, detailed outline to guide them through the writing process. Some write linearly, everything in order, and some write whichever scenes their muses take them to in whichever order they happen to pop up.

I wonder if the people who swear by one particular approach have been doing it that way from day 1 or if they've grown into it over time. Because I don't have a particular method yet. Everything I write, I approach differently and my method is usually some mish-mash of everything.

There are times I start out with an outline. Then I get bored after I've reached chapter 4 (and mind you, my outline is the barest of bare: "opening scene is Sue being stalked through the cave by the mystery man. second scene is Greg in class.") and just start writing. With the book I just finished the rough draft of, I had no idea who the killer was or what their motivation might be until I was halfway through. And even once I had a killer, I changed it twice in the span of a week.

For my current book, though -- the one that was teasing me oh so much -- I had a pretty good idea of what was going on before I got started. I felt like I have an adequate grasp of the main character, at least. I knew the impetus for the novel and the underlying plot; I know what the protag is going to discover when she starts digging. I know who the supporting characters are -- bare-bones, at least -- and the basic roles they're going to play. I don't know the exact ending but I know where it's supposed to go. This is new for me.

I wonder if this will be my approach from now on. Perhaps limiting myself to planning a new book while I'm still writing a previous one will be good for my plotting and help me grasp my stories better before I start writing them.

So far, I'm sticking to the plan. But I'm only a couple chapters in and throwing all my plotting out the nearest window is definitely not outside the realm of possibility.

I'll keep you posted.

A blank slate

My blog name was stolen from the Hemingway quote I have at the top of the page. And I've adopted that quote because I think, ultimately, it's true for most writers. It's much easier, I think, to write when there's already something started on the page in front of you.

I forced myself to take a couple days off from writing after I wrapped up the Twins draft. But the whole time I just wanted to sit down and start writing this story that's been in my head for the last few weeks, beating me with whatever blunt objects it could get its little hands on.

I'm a few thousand words in but it's still, really, a new story. A blank slate, so to speak, even though it's got a few things scribbled on it. I'm getting to play with new friends, get a feel for who they are; only one of my major characters has been introduced so I'm looking forward to the opportunity to bring the next one center stage.

I haven't written myself into any corners yet; everything is going as planned (which, you know, means it's only a matter of time before something blows up in a big way). But I don't have a lot to work with anymore. Writing is about creating, that's true, but there's a big difference between being halfway through a story, having the characters and the groundwork and all that laid out before you, and being close to the beginning with everything still to unfold. It's intimidating, to start over with the new and unfamiliar.

But it's so much fun.

What if...

On the heels of my discovery post, it's interesting how thoroughly one small (in a manner of speaking) fact can significantly change/add to/recreate a story. I originally wasn't going to have my protagonist in my new book have children. But she insisted so I gave in. And within a day, that simple little decision had created a new subplot. It took a scene I already had in my head and turned it in a slightly different direction. With the same scene, it beefed up a conversation, added to characterization ....

Melissa Marr has talked quite a bit lately on her blog about extras to put on her site and such, and one of the things she was considering were alternates -- directions she opted not to go. Coming from fan fiction, I've seen firsthand how a little change can make a world of difference in a story. It can change how a character develops, who lives and who dies, whether someone spends his life an optimist or bitter at the world. We're well aware, I think, of the big differences -- i.e., what if Luke Skywalker had killed Vader at the end of Empire Strikes Back? But do we ignore the smaller differences? What if Han Solo hadn't been in that particular cantina? What if the Falcon had been caught by the Death Star a day later?

Even the smallest changes can make a huge differences. I know I, as I'm writing, don't give nearly enough thought to the directions I take. Maybe I need to start asking myself "What if..." a little more often.

Discovery

It's always interesting to see what you discover as you write a book. For instance, in starting my new novel I've learned that my protagonist has multiple children (exactly how many has yet to be determined, though I suspect there are two), has an aunt she isn't particularly fond of, and keeps a jar in her kitchen into which anyone who swears must put a nickel. I've also learned that her brother was older, she didn't do so hot in high school English, and she was relatively young when her father died.

I like her already.

The next book as inspiration

As I posted a couple weeks ago, I have some lovely new ideas that were just haunting my brain despite the fact that I was hard at work on my other book. I made a promise to myself not to write on them because I didn't want to distract myself from the work I was trying to finish the first draft of.

What I was, however, doing was using the idea as inspiration to get me through the other work. I wanted so badly to start writing it (and, I confess, I'd done some planning of it before I wrapped up the first Taggert Twins draft) that I was making myself focus harder on getting my current one done. And it worked. I wrote about 10,000 words a week the last couple weeks (and that's ignoring that 10k+ words in a single day on Monday). I was writing faster, spending more time at it, and writing more consistently. (Out of the last three weeks there have been three days I didn't write, and only one day when I wrote and didn't make my quota.) And I don't think the writing suffered with the pace.

Part of this is due, no doubt, to the fact that things had really started happening in the book -- the mystery had reached the point where the characters had real suspects and were searching for the evidence and a way to prove it. So I wasn't setting up the story anymore; it's was unfolding. And that was the fun part. It really was. Because when things get going it's so much easier for me to really get pulled into the book. My brain works faster; I type faster. I just get really drawn into the story and it's wonderful.

But the idea hanging over my head for the next book -- an adult mystery -- was definitely encouraging me to focus on the twins. And now that I'm done, I can write it, dammit. Go me!

Goal: Attained

My goal number of words for this book started out at 50,000 words, went to 60,000, and then dropped back down to 55,000. When I completed it today it clocked in at approximately 53,000 words.

Granted, this is a rough draft and God and le Muse only know what it will look like when complete. But I am quite pleased at having completed the draft. I'm happy with 53k, 208 manuscript pages at Times New Roman 12 pt font.

And . . . and . . . and it's completed 42 days ahead of schedule. 42!!! (Isn't that supposed to be the answer to the universe or something?)

My first original book has, in its roughest form, been completed. What a glorious day.

Now, if only I can make good on that whole "shove it in a drawer and not think about it for a month" thing.

The end is in sight

I have less than 3,000 words to go to hit my goal. Now, I realize that this goal is pretty arbitrary. (1) This is a rough draft and (2) The story will not necessarily end end at the 55,000 word goal that I've set for myself. It could end sooner; probably will. But it is a way of measuring my progress and I need that to keep myself going.

Just like at the gym. I track how many reps, how many sets, what weight I'm using. It keeps me motivated to see my progress, especially during those times when it doesn't feel like I'm actually getting anywhere.

Anyway, I'm 95% of the way to my goal and I wrote over 10,000 words just yesterday. (That, my friends, is a personal best which I may never manage to repeat.) I could have this draft finished in as little as a week. As little as a few days if I really work at it.

This is a huge deal for me because I've never really, really finished a work. I've technically got three long fanfics I've finished, at least one of which was longer than this book. But they were parts of series and I didn't wrap up the loose ends because there was another part yet to be written (that, incidentally, I haven't gotten to). Plus, they were just ... bad.

But this ... this is entirely my own work and I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Not to say that writing this has been some dark tunnel with no end in sight but ... you know what I mean.

Books have minds of their own

Writers often talk about their characters taking over, telling the story the way they want it to be told, resisting when the author tries to make them do things that they don't want to do. But, for me at least, it's not just the characters that do that. It's the book as a whole.

I've got a lot of false starts -- as, I think, most writers do. One I simply wrote myself into a corner on. There wasn't enough going on with the main plot to carry the book and I didn't know how to fix it. But the rest ... they just wouldn't come. And with writing the one I've been working on for the last couple months, I've realized why.

It's all well and good to have great ideas, full of conflict and intrigue, but sometimes they just won't work. You can't force a book. If it's resisting, there's a reason and it's up to you as a writer to figure out why. Sometimes it takes a little while to plot things out, depending especially on the type of novel you're writing. But if it just won't come, maybe there's something wrong with what you're trying to make it do.

I've come to believe that the book is going to be your first critic. If what you're doing isn't working, it's going to tell you even when you're writing it. You just have to listen.

"There are no good writers, just good re-writers."

I've noticed that as I've come to accept that my first draft is going to be lousy (this realization solidified by reading author blogs in which the author talks about the first draft being not right or, in some cases, just not good), my writing goes much quicker. I've taken the pressure off myself to get it right the first time and my ability to get the words out has benefited.

I think this is important to remember, especially in dealing with new characters. I'm hoping that most of what I write will be series/trilogies -- that's the way my current works are designed. But that first book may as well be a standalone for all the background you have with the characters.

At the beginning of the book I don't know my characters. I might "know" their backgrounds and identities -- age, gender, physical appearance, a few key characteristics, what high school and college they went to -- but I don't know who they are, their personalities, how they'll really react to something. (And, of course, even things as fundamental as gender can change ten pages in!) That comes with the writing. Maybe halfway through I'll have a better grasp; maybe it'll take until the end of the first draft. And that way, once I really know the people I'm writing about, I can go back and revise the book to include and reflect my newfound understanding.

There's also a problem I would run into when I wrote fanfiction. One of the hazards of posting something online as you go along is that you can realize halfway through that a particular plot line isn't working, or that you've written yourself into a corner, or that you simply can't figure out a realistic reason for something happening. I think this is inevitable, especially if you don't outline. (I can't outline very well because the events of the book are shaped by what I write. Even if I know where I want to go, I don't generally have a clue how I'm going to get there. And sometimes I don't actually know where I want to go.) Knowing that I'm going to revise takes off the pressure to make everything work the first time.

For instance, just last night I realized that I'm probably going to write out a character who's played a minor but still significant role in what I've written so far. And for the last few weeks I've been struggling with the fact that I have a whole subplot I'm not doing much with and how to work it in. But I'll figure all those things out in the revision stage. In the meantime I'm just going to write.

Don't let me do it!

With two books currently in progress, I just got another idea. Another young adult, this time suspense. I think. It's sketching itself out in my brain and slowly ... taking ... hold.

I absolutely cannot start writing it right now. I have to finish the ones I have. Have to. So, my friends, if I mention that I started anything else, you are to please beat me over the head with the manuscript to my current works. I will supply said manuscripts. (No, planning doesn't count because I have no control over when lovely ideas hit me. So there. :-P )

As Ally Carter said in a blog entry a while ago, if it's truly a good idea it'll still be with me when I reach the point when I can actually write it.

(But, oh, it's such a lovely idea... just sitting there... waiting)