Teaser Tuesday: #WIPfire: COULD BE WORSE

Yesterday's Links: The In Case You Missed it Edition

Tuesday seems like as good a day as any to do some #WIPfire-ing. A little self-indulgent, perhaps, but I feel like sharing today. It's a wedding and a funeral. More specifically, a wedding with a funeral flashback courtesy our protagonist, Graylyn Stephens.

Mock-up cover, for fun and inspiration

For reference, here's the twitter pitch for my unpublished manuscript, COULD BE WORSE:

An unlucky quality assurance rep, tired of landing in pot holes & hospital beds, turns to x-sports to prove her bad luck is gone for good.

Amyson is nothing if not a hopelessly corny romantic. The snow-draped conifers wear white just for her. She makes her entrance up the milky walkway as guests sit in fabric-covered metal chairs on either side, open to the biting breezes. Natural pine fragrance tickles my nose, and fresh air fills my thirsty lungs. I almost forget the cold.

A sweet bridal smile graces Amyson’s face. Completing the moment, two men on either side of her release ivory-winged doves, which I am fairly certain are taking the opportunity to escape their handlers and fly south for the winter. They rise up, up, up, vanishing into the last snowfall of the season.

Standing fourth down in a line of bridesmaids, I shiver through the organ music. (Really, how did they get that pipe organ out here?) But when the vows begin, I listen faithfully and force my bare arms to stay still at my sides. Amyson holds the lily bouquet to her heart, frail arms covered in white gloves up to her bicep, white faux fur trimming the sleeves so that no space remains exposed. The same trim curves round her neck, topped with pearls that glow in the winter sun. She is the princess of the forest. A dark, snow-covered veil of trees spreads out at her back forever. I won’t say I feel like one of her subjects. I mean, at least I am not sitting on the metal chairs. At the very least I am a member of her inner circle.

Jeff does sit, squirming on a metal chair in the fifth row back. I find his eyes and lift my eyebrows to him. My unspoken question is answered with a wrinkle of his nose and a wink. He’s taking his discomfort with good humor.

As Henderson and my sister exchange magical, binding words on this March morning, I wish I could say my heart flutters or that I suddenly become open again to adventure and romance. In spite of the adventures I’ve already had in the past two days, my heart feels tighter than ever. I can feel myself cocooning.

Jeff came to the wedding on a whim, almost on a dare. I see it in his eyes sometimes, this playfulness that promises only reckless endangerment. What have I gotten myself into? When we go back to Chicago, him to his busy law firm and me to the Classifieds, will I be forgotten? Am I his vacation from a life he means to continue without me?

This is why my mom said never to attend a wedding with a casual date. It brings up thoughts and feelings of commitment prematurely. And that can ruin a good thing before it has a chance to get off the ground.

Get off the ground. Perhaps that’s a bad metaphor for a couple who jumped out of an airplane on their first date.

I have to remind myself I barely know Jeff, all our talk of years-in-a-day notwithstanding.

The expression of peace and wholeness on Amyson’s face tugs at my tightly closed heart. Shivers run up my arms. Her breezy happiness touches parts of my soul that haven’t been aired out in a decade.


The luncheon passes in a blur of old friends and distant relatives whom I haven’t seen since my parents’ funeral. Just seeing their faces brings back the darkness of that week:

Amyson has locked herself in her room again, refusing to see anybody but me. It’s more than awkward facing my great aunt and uncle, strangers to me, and answering their questions, bearing their unsolicited advice as they judge every action I take on my parents’ behalf. I know I’m doing something wrong, forgetting some crucial bit of etiquette in funeral planning. To own the truth, I don’t care a bit.

“You need to have the flowers sent to the reception hall after the graveside service, so people can take them home,” Aunt Lisa says.

“Okay,” I say, wiping cracker crumbs from the kitchen counter. I’ve already seen the out-of-date will and my parents’ accounts, and I know this will be our last week living in our house. Funeral flowers are the last thing on my mind.

“Leave the poor girl alone, Lisa,” Uncle Fate tells her. “We’re here to help in any way you need it, Gray.”

“It’s Lyn,” I snap. “And we’re fine. I can take care of everything.” I know he’s trying to be kind, but I can’t bear sympathy from strangers who seem to think they have a say in what happens to my parents’ bodies. Bodies. Ashes.

“You don’t have to do everything, child,” Uncle Fate protests. “That’s why we’re here. You’re young. You’ve barely begun school. We can take Amy in until she’s an adult.”

“No!” My forehead feels hot. I wipe it with the back of my hand and shake the crumbs from the rag into a spotless sink. I’ve been cleaning nonstop since…

“Maybe this isn’t the best time to talk about this,” Aunt Lisa says. “We can come back in a week.”

“We won’t be here in a week,” I say. “I’m taking Amyson to my apartment in the city. We can’t afford to keep the house, and I already have the apartment anyway. Amyson needs me right now, not…” I trail off. It’s a miracle my frazzled mind retains any semblance of courtesy, but I stop myself before I say outright what I’m thinking. WE DON’T NEED YOU. GO AWAY.

Despite my restraint, my great aunt and uncle get the point. They’re gone the day after the funeral, flowers in hand. I hate them for leaving my parents’ funeral with a souvenir, a memento, like we were a stop on their tour of the Great Lakes. I hate them for offering to help when nothing anybody could do would ever make it right. I hate them for abandoning me to go it alone. Totally alone.

I knock on Amyson’s door. “Sweetie, please open up. Everybody’s gone. I need to see your face. Please.”

Her sniffles pause, and for a moment I think she might just open the door and let me in. Then a whimper takes over where the sniffles left off, and she’s muffling her sobs into the pillow once more. I turn around and sink to the floor, the door at my back.

Whipping out my cell phone, I dial the only number I know will bring my baby sister back to me. I call Charlie.

Jinx: The Hazard of Writing about Bad Luck

Source, to buy

On my way back from checking the mail, I tripped and fell down on the asphalt while holding my baby. It was a scary half-second, but instead of falling on my baby and crushing him, my mom superpowers kicked in and I rolled, arching my arm around his little head as we fell. It happened so fast, though.

Totally rattling. I was rattled.

And then when I had time to process what had happened, I thought (a) Yay for maternal instinct! (baby didn't get a scratch, though I lost some skin), and (b) man, what rotten luck!

Rotten luck. It's the curse of Graylyn Stephens, my MC in COULD BE WORSE. But why am I suddenly seized with it? Is bad luck contagious? Did I jinx myself by daring to write about forces I can't possibly hope to understand?

*knock on wood*

What do you think? Have you ever felt jinxed? And should I keep writing COULD BE WORSE? (I'm 19k words into it.)

Checking In 2-5-13

Here's my progress with the three major writing projects I've got going. To some of you, this looks like a walk in the park. Maybe others think it looks like too much to be doing at once. The nice thing about the middle one is that I'm sharing the fun with my sister/co-writer, Aubrey. She doesn't have a writing blog yet, but if/when she gets one, you can bet I'll be sending you in her direction regularly. She's awesome.

So I probably end up writing on the joint project (time travel YA) about once a week, if that. Even so, our progress has been steady and I'm proud of where we are now. Halfway point! Woot!

The MG Superhero rewrite has been a challenge. I'm enjoying it, but I'm also worrying over it a fair bit. See, I've already written this novel once -- it turned out all lighthearted and cute (until the end). This time I'm writing post-WRITING THE BREAKOUT NOVEL, and I think I know what it needs to make it truly awesome:

Worldbuilding. I'm focusing on that part much more this time around, giving my characters' towns history, larger conflict, and fun details. The trick with worldbuilding for me is consistency. It's so easy for me to forget about some little detail I once mentioned and meander my way into a plot hole. Right now I'm working on the fuzzy middle bit. Well, to be clear, it's the beginning of the fuzzy middle bit, so I've quite a ways to go. Once I solve the problem I'm facing right now (like building a bridge from one side to another), I'll be able to get back on track in my outline.

The NA Contemp piece is kind of my writer candy right now. I've never written anything strictly contemporary - no paranormal elements at all. Well, unless you count bad luck. But I don't. So this is new for me, and I'm being a bit self-indulgent with it, actually including some of my own life experiences (fictionalized beyond recognition, of course). I haven't hit an 'oh, crud' moment in this one yet, so it's all Cloud 9 beautiful.

What are you working on today? 

Just for fun, here's a clip of my newest project:

I wake up in a tangle of smelly sheets with tiny pink flowers on a sea of white. I lift my head a quarter of an inch, but the shooting scream running up the back of my neck drops it back to the stiff pillow. I know exactly where I am. It's the Joyce Mercy Medical Center on 9th street. It's the closest one to Spencer's building, and the one I came to when I slipped on ice at the soup shop down the block and got a concussion. That was when we first got together -- maybe the third date. And that was when it all started downhill. Perhaps it was my bad luck that turned him off. Or maybe it was the sex thing even then. Most guys seem to think third dates are some kind of magic number. Sometime somebody told them a fairy tale about a guy who propositioned a girl three times and on the third time she turned into a sex goddess and gave him everything he wanted. And we females just go along with the fairy tale instead of telling our boyfriends that Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Sex Fairy Goddess don't really exist. The fact that I can't even lift my head to find a clock aggravates me. And I want Spencer to come running through the door, apologize for being a dickhead (almost literally), and say he didn't mean it. Just so I can have the pleasure of dumping him. That's how much my neck hurts. 

Blog Chain: Writing Project WIP's

It was my turn to think of a question, and I was curious about everybody's writing life:

Write about your next writing project. What is the genre? Is is one you've written before or is it a new venture? Do you have it all figured out or is it just a germ of an idea? What did you learn from your latest writing project that will make this one even better?

My next writing projects:

• co-writing a YA time travel novel that's more of a coming of age with sci-fi elements
• re-drafting an MG radioactive mutant hero novel about war and the quest for peace
• beginning a first draft of a YA paranormal romance containing themes of societal stigma, death, and resurrection

After working on two YA paranormal romances, one more playful, the other darker, I hit sort of a wall in my writing. Why? Revision time! I hate it. 

Well, hated, past tense. 

The New Year's Revisions Conference was exactly what I needed. I got so many great ideas, including the fabulous Save the Cat 15 beats for screenwriters which Christine Fonseca recommended. 

On goodreads

Bought the e-book of Save the Cat, skipped ahead to the chapter on beats, and never looked back. In one night, I re-outlined my MG radioactive mutant hero novel so that even I can't wait to see what happens. It's going to be fun to write! 

The reason revision always kicked my butt before was my lack of structure. I was just sort of reading and rereading over and over again, looking for things to fix. Sometimes I'd read a blog post by another writer about one particular aspect of story and I'd revise for that. But there was no order to it. I just kept hoping this round of revision would make my story shiny enough, whatever that meant. Christine's post on revision was eye-opening for me. Human beings love our freedom, but we also crave structure. 

It's only when we have boundaries to push against that we can truly be creative.  

I learned from my last few novels that I'm ready. I've been working on my voice, my style, my wordsmithing for years now. I'm ready to implement a solid structure in my novels, and I've chosen the screenwriting structure by Blake Snyder to do that.

So here is the status of each of my three projects right now:

1) YA time travel I'm co-writing with my sister: about a third of the way done with the rough draft. It's still exciting. It's still fun. And we're just getting into the Fun and Games beat.

2) MG radioactive mutant hero novel: I've got a killer new outline to which I need to add specific scenes, then buckle down and write. My excitement for this one has been rekindled by the New Year's Revisions Conference and Save the Cat.

3) YA Paranormal Romance: These tend to come from dreams I've had. I often start them and then let them sit for a while. That might be the fate of this one as I've already got a lot on my plate. But I'm fleshing it out whenever a new idea comes to mind, and I hope I'll get to write it as soon as I'm done with the first drafts of 1 and 2.

My challenge as an artist is to focus long enough to get a job done. I've done it six times before, so I know I can do it again.

What are you writing today?

Read all about Christine Fonseca's upcoming projects and don't miss out on her FREE LACRIMOSA and MEA CULPA deal on amazon (only today and tomorrow). 

Tomorrow check out Lisa Amowitz's blog for her works-in-progress/upcoming writing projects. 

Teaser Tuesday: LOVE ME OR LET ME DIE

I know it's a bit self-indulgent to post clips of your own work. But I'm excited about this story, have spent many late nights writing it, and I'm feeling self-indulgent. So here's a taste of the dark paranormal romance I'm writing with a few holes in the narrative for which I hope you'll forgive me. My main character Lucy is eighteen in the summer after graduation. I'm still trying to decide if that makes it YA or the mythical beast called New Adult. I think the rest is self-explanatory. 

Lucy decided her stupid empath abilities were to blame for the kiss with Chase. He was feeling attracted. Ergot, she was feeling it, too, secondhand. But it wasn't real. Not like what she had with Nick.

She sighed into her pillow and swore not to think about Chase for another second. Saturdays were for Nick. Every day was for Nick.

.... {removed spoilers}

She'd sworn not to think about Chase, and she totally wasn't. She was thinking about herself—her abilities. Just because he shared those abilities didn't mean she had to think about what he did with them.

"Gah!" She buried her head underneath the pillow. It was like Mac's mean trick one day on set when she was bored. "I dare you not to think of a giant, flashing red number twenty-four." Then he'd walked away, and Lucy had tried really hard not to think of that stupid flashing number. She still saw it sometimes when she closed her eyes. The forbidden thought that wouldn't leave.

That was Chase Gillan. 

She called Nick on the drive over to the costume shop. She only wanted to hear his voice, to remember why she'd fallen head over heels for him. To forget the red flashing twenty-four in her mental rear-view mirror.  

"Good morning, my light," his sleepy voice purred.

If there was anything Nick was made for, it was making Lucy forget. She almost ran a stop sign. "Hey, sexy," she answered. "I miss you. Thanks for the flowers."

"Of course." She could hear his smile through the phone.

... {spoilers removed}

She'd been tossing in bed last night for another reason besides Chase and his confusing kiss. No matter how she figured things, Nick had something to do with her burgeoning sensitivity to the paranormal. So could she trust him with her secrets? Did he already know?

Lucy could really use some of that famous lucent clarity about now. 


Thanks for the shout-out, Tiffany!

I'll Show You Mine if You... BLOGFEST!

BLOGFEST! I almost forgot, but better late than never. :)

January 3rd: post 500 words of your Nano novel.

Join the blogfest here.

Setting: Central Park

The sun went down in a splash of color that freckled the horizon. Normally, it would have been romantic, but I wasn’t feeling it tonight, even with Travis’ hand clasped around my own. It felt strangely delicious, being close to them this way—the dust of the Earth once made the brightest stars. People didn’t see themselves that way, but that was just because they couldn’t. They didn’t see what I saw when I closed my eyes. They didn’t see what my third eye revealed: the truth of their origins.

“What are you thinking about?” Travis asked me, brushing the blunt cut bangs from my face, a futile gesture, but a romantic one.

“I’m thinking about you,” I lied. But it wasn’t a lie, really. I was thinking about him. His kind.

His big, country boy hand squeezed mine, and a wholesome, toothy grin made his aura swell a brilliant royal blue. “It’s incredible,” he said. “How do your eyes change so quickly? It’s almost like you’re from another planet.”

I didn’t laugh. I didn’t even chuckle. I cried. I know—wuss, right? I’m a total wuss. But if you’d said goodbye as many times as I had in the past three hundred years, you’d know the salty taste of tears by heart. I’d have loved to taste that salt just once, but tears weren’t part of my makeup. The Earth and I were only passing friends. And Travis…

“Oh, Travis.” I looked at our hands with so much longing, my heart chakra threatened to explode.

“What’s wrong? You haven’t been yourself since Carnegie Hall. Are you really so put off by fame and fortune?”

I smiled at his nervous chuckle, grateful for once that I couldn’t produce tears. “You know I have no use for those things.”

“Well…” he squeezed my hand again and wrapped a burly arm around me. Stronger and bigger than most of my chosen ones, he was the softest of them all on the inside. That’s what made this so hard. “Every girl likes to have nice things, right?”

“Not this girl,” I told him, letting my face go slack. “This girl wants peace and quiet and retirement.” And there it was—the first whole truth I had ever told him.

“Why push us so hard, then? Why push me?” For the first time since the purple pink hues of the horizon faded to white, Travis frowned. “You don’t want fame, but you want me to be famous. What do you really want, Azalea?”

Right then, I wished I could zap out—reveal my nature in my escape—a clean break. At least for me. “I want to say goodbye,” I whispered, finally looking him full in the face. “And I want you to understand that it’s not because of anything you did.”

The look of shock—the tense open jaw, the round, lovely eyes—yanked at my soul. I’m sure my eyes turned navy blue, like his aura.

He couldn’t speak. He never could when it came to goodbyes.

Happy Monday! (The Masochistic Joy of Taming that Story)

So happy this morning! Why? Well, there are lots of reasons.

First, I woke up this morning to find these awesome links in my blog reader (okay, a few are oldie goodies):

• Creating Compelling Characters by Amparo Ortiz
• Safe and Somewhere in Between by Kiersten White (about sex in YA)
• Sleep Brain by Lindsay Scott (aka Isabella Morgan) (about plot and characters keeping you awake)
• Across the Universe Epic Contest of Epic by Beth Revis (you still have a week to enter this awesome Christmas contest!)
• 52 Books in 52 Weeks Challenge by Michelle McLean (summing up the past year of reading like a mad woman)
• December's Mystery Agent contest winners were announced, in case you were absent that day. :)
• The Token Geek and Grabthar's Hammer on The Best Damn Creative Writing Blog by Yours Truly (Yes, I am specially qualified to write about geek characters, thank you for asking.)
• Ooh, this just in: CRITTER IS UP FOR AUCTION! If you don't know yet about Critter, check out my interview with his current owner, Christy Evers.

And the other reason I'm so happy this morning is that my Work-In-Progress is finally going someplace again!

Yay!

This is my top secret, high concept, epic urban fantasy story that's been kicking my butt since I started thinking about writing it. I've started it eight total times (seriously, eight drafts of first chapters in my folder). Each time, it felt off. A few times, I thought I'd finally found the MC's voice, or decided whose POV to narrate from, but something always happened that made me feel wrong about it (like an agent tweeting that dual POV was hard to do and newbie writers shouldn't attempt it, which led me to wonder if I'm still a newbie writer if I don't have an MFA). Or sometimes I'd get a wake up call from a CP or family member who'd tell me the voice changed drastically from chapter 1 to chapter 2, or that the MC wasn't likable. 

Doh!

After several false starts, I decided to tackle this one for Nanowrimo. (ahem. That didn't quite work out.) I made important progress, but eventually resigned myself to the fact that this story isn't the writes-itself kind.

It's not even the write-in-a-month kind. (I love that kind and have written two such books, so I can feel the difference.) This book is the labor-until-you-bleed kind, the hold-my-calls-and-call-a-babysitter-because-this-is-going-to-take-a-while kind. You get the idea.

Even though it would be easier to dump this story and pick up one of my other ideas that just might be a writes-itself story, I can't let this one go. There's something SO satisfying about taming a difficult story. Each conquered plot twist and revealed character quirk or strength is cause for celebration. 

So today I'm celebrating! Because I'm 91 pages into it after months of struggle, and even though it is still far from perfect (or complete), it's getting there! 

Yep. I'm taming this story, one heart-wrenching scene at a time. 

Have you ever tamed a story? Or do you find yourself gravitating toward the stories that tell themselves? Any advice for me?

Don't forget to join us for a New Year's Revisions Blog Party on January 1st. Sign up today. :)

Use Your Failures

(Apple II) Use your boxy original to craft a shiny, sleek next generation

I'm currently writing my fifth novel. That blows my mind when I actually sit down and think about it.

FIVE NOVELS!

Of all the crazy things I've done in my life (and there have been a few), writing five books since 2008 is probably the one I'm second-most proud of. Childbearing being the shiny, uncontested first.

But writing books is second to that because it's similar to childbearing in many ways-- a long labor of love that results in something entirely unique, a new creation with its own fingerprints and innate personality.

Because each novel is born of a labor of love, we never really let them go completely, even if we delete them from our hard drive or scrap and start completely over. No matter how many novels we may write, we never really move on.

It's kind of like in X-Men when Rogue explains to Wolverine about the first boy she ever kissed (and sucked the life force from):

"I can still feel him... and it's the same way with you."

My early novels are far from perfect. Seven rounds of edits each would likely not repair what's wrong with them. But I'll always love them, always compare my new characters to my old ones and marvel at how much they've grown. I'll always wish I could have raised 'em right and sent them out into the world properly, instead of keeping them on memory sticks in various locations all over my house.

People say you've got to move on and keep writing and all that, and they're totally right. We can't spend all our time revising sub-par work when our writing style has grown so far beyond it that a total rewrite is the only sure course. We'd spend so much time and energy re-working something that might work better *gasp* scrapped for parts and incorporated into an entirely new story.

But that doesn't mean we can't still love our babies, and feel giddy when somebody recognizes the talent behind the newbie mistakes. And who knows? Maybe someday, you'll dust off that old MS and have a stroke of revision genius that makes your little baby into a full-grown salable book.

In the meantime, use what you've learned from your past work to make your WIP as shiny as possible. Never forget how flat characterization stifled your last book, or how a floppy plot arc made the book before that one fizzle out at the end. Use the pain of failure to succeed this time. And  don't worry if your WIP lets you down.

There's always the next book.  

Amparo's on Operation Awesome giving out inspiration: Why You Should Keep Going When the Going Sucks

Drowning in a Sea of Words

Aivazovsky, Ivan - The Ninth Wave

Oh, but what a way to go!

I've been uber-busy. Hence the lack of daily posts. So to my dear readers (there are 33 of you now! I'm so honored!) I must apologize. I promise I've been doing good things with my time and now I will share them with you:

• Writing for other people (generally causing a ruckus). I recently joined a collaborative blog you simply must check out. It's The Best Damn Creative Writing Blog...Period. I try to write fun, thoughtful pieces for them, but my latest ended up spurring quite the discussion in the comments. No matter how busy you are, you should always take time for a ruckus! Also, I recently wrote my first reader's report (summing up the strengths and weaknesses of someone else's MS in a page and a half), definitely an educational experience!
• Reading other people's pre-published work. I've mentioned this before and it is a fabulous use of anyone's time! You learn from others' beautiful prose as well as from their mistakes--or things that just don't jive with you as a reader. It's something like watching other people's kids. It teaches you what you DON'T want your kids to be like, if you can help it. (Unless you're watching your perfect neighbor's kids, in which case you are taking notes like mad!)
• Reading  published novels. Oh the joy of it. These are the words in which I could blissfully drown, relishing every moment of their suffocating....Okay, that metaphor isn't working for me anymore. But if you're a bibliophile like me, then reading is the way you relax. For my hubz, it's curling up on the couch or in bed and flipping on old seasons of Scrubs. He could quote JD and Turk all day long. ("Do you see what you get when you mess with the warrior?!") For me, it's the next book in The Immortals series, or Pride and Prejudice for the hundredth time. I can open that book up to the middle and get trapped in Austen's world. Same with any of the Twilight books. Riveting social conflicts! 
• Writing my own stuff: I'm working on an urban fantasy for YA that is definitely fresh, though I can't vouch for the writing yet. I'm 25% through the first draft. I'm sure it will take a few drafts before I can justifiably call it a masterpiece (maybe not even then).
• Raising a family. This is one thing that cannot drop from my priorities, no matter what happens, because childhood only happens once per person. And babyhood is as fleeting as Spring flowers, as every poet knows. My 3yo is now 3 and a HALF! My baby is almost a year old, and walking all over the place. Between reading/writing lessons for the former and care and feeding of the latter, I'm very lucky to have any time at all for my favorite self-indulgences (see above).   

As you can see, I've been drowning in a sea of words, and loving every minute of it. Even though I've been busy, I've still thoroughly enjoyed reading other people's blogs. I learn so much from you guys--and am extremely entertained in the process. 

Thank you for reading, but thank you even more for writing! Keep it up! The world needs your unique view!

WIP it good: share your reading and writing adventures

WIP it good! Or not.

What are you all working on? What's your WIP (Work-in-progress, for the uninitiated)?

Our brand-spanking-new critique group, aptly named Operation Awesome, just kicked off yesterday. I'm really enjoying reading the work of some fabulous upcoming writers. It's a breath of fresh air to read somebody else's imagination! I think it's something that benefits all writers, no matter our career stage. Reading somebody else's stuff does three things for me:

• Cleanses my palate from my own stuff, which is all starting to sound like peanut-butter-mouth.
• Teaches me skills others have mastered, like twisty, layered plotting or vivid characterization.
• Allows me to join society, whether it's the community of aspiring authors or the collective voice of the reading world. This is one of the biggest things for me. In a critique group, I have a chance to give back. If I'm reading a published novel, I have a chance to participate in the discussion, both in spontaneous book chats with friends, and on the blogosphere. 

So what are you working on? If the answer is "umm, I'm sort of working on [ ] but I've been busy," I suggest you take a break from writing (as you might already be doing) and do some fun reading instead. 

Read that manuscript you promised to beta but never got around to. 

Read the sequels to WINGS and EVERMORE, if you haven't. 

Read LITTLE WOMEN or ANNE OF GREEN GABLES for the umpteenth time.  

Read OF HUMAN BONDAGE just to make your 11th-grade self honest at last (getting an A doesn't justify not reading a classic, I'm told).

And then, get back to work-in-progress.

Please post your WIPs and TBRs in the comments. I'll start:

WIP:

I'm writing a young adult paranormal romance about a boy whose personality changes after his first heartbreak, and the girl who's tasked with saving him. 

I'm also re-reading and playing with an old science fiction manuscript of mine (see Movies That One-Up Me: Inception).

Critiquing for three other truly gifted authors.

To-Be-Read or Currently Reading: 

SOULLESS by Gail Carriger

SPELLS (sequel to WINGS) by Aprilynne Pike

BLUE MOON (sequel to EVERMORE) by Alyson Noel

LITTLE WOMEN by Louisa May Alcott

THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN by Mark Twain

PARANORMALCY (okay, so it's not out yet, but I'm dreaming about it) by Kiersten White

Movies that One-up Me: Inception

I wrote a book in 2008 during Nanowrimo, right after I finished reading the Twilight Saga. It wasn't the first book I'd written (actually, the third), but it was my first attempt at a stand-alone science fiction novel. And it was my first attempt at 1st person storytelling, which is really a whole other animal.

I loved my premise! It was a fresh take on something that had been done: dream walking.

I loved my protagonist. He was an anti-social, comic book-obsessed, novel-writing savant with crippling anxieties and a brilliant imagination: the key to his unique position for saving the world.

But my plot was weak. At 27, I still consider myself a new novelist, one learning the craft. I think I've written some interesting books, but I'm not one of those writers who thinks everything she writes is perfect genius. I know it is not. So a book I wrote two years ago is bound to have plenty of story flaws, and this one definitely does.

I recently printed it out so I could read it straight through and figure out just what it needs. It's been sitting on my computer desk, a huge mound of literary fail, for a couple of weeks now as I work on other things: my latest YA paranormal romance, social networking, blogging, raising kids. I've been meaning to get to it, but there are too many good uses of my time competing against it.

A few nights ago, my husband called over to me from the couch: "When you have a minute, you should watch this trailer for Inception. It reminds me of your Neurosurfer book."

From that statement alone, I knew.

"Oh great," I said. "There goes another great idea." (great, great, great) The book I've been sitting on for years has just been one-up-ed by the movie world. After watching the trailer, I knew it even more:

My plot-weak, high-concept book has just been trumped. And that means that if I ever try to get it published, I'll have to compete--not just with other books about mental travel, but with a universally-loved, mind-titillating thriller.

Fan-freaking-tastic! :-)

I'm not bitter. Seriously, I'm not. It's just one of those facts of life I've come to accept. If I sit on a high-concept idea too long, it will be done...and better than I can presently do it. There are only so many ideas floating around in the universe. As a child, I thought it was insane that an animator could have thought up the exact same idea as me about the mud-crack world of ants and other bugs.

Now it makes perfect sense.

High concepts are meant to be twisted, redone, and shared with the world. Sitting on them is not an option. The universe's collective creativity is far greater than any one man or woman! Which is wonderful, really! But now I have a daunting decision to make. Do I ditch the 80,000 words I've slaved and anguished over for so long? Or do I read through it one more time to see if I can make it something wholly fresh? After all, my writing has grown by leaps and bounds since its first writing. It is possible to save this novel. But with Inception creating a new bar for mental thrillers, can my more literary science fiction offering really compete?

I give the conundrum to you, my faithful readers. I'm too close to it to decide. Please send your advice in the comments.

Heartbreak: a glimpse at my WIP

Gabe

Sweet Sixteen

The park gazebo sparkled with strings of icicle lights, white light against white paint. In fading daylight, the effect was charming. I wiped the sweat off my nose, scrambling off the ladder to reach my phone in time. Suits and summer don’t mix well. Sara’s “Never Without You” ringtone was almost through, and I ached to hear her voice again.

“Hey birthday girl, where are you?” I smiled into my phone.

“Hi babe, we’re at Prue’s house. She just finished my hair for tonight.”

A five-foot string of lights slipped off its nail and sagged, breaking my concentration. “Great, sweetie. I’m just about done with your surprise. Can I pick you up in fifteen minutes?”

“Umm, sure.” Even distracted by faulty decorations, I heard the waver in her voice.

“Is everything alright, Starlight?”

“Yeah,” she said, too fast, her voice higher than usual.

I chalked it up to nerves. It’d been two years since we first saw each other at the Fall Fair—a cheesy first meeting in line at the Ferris wheel. To be honest, I was only standing there because of a stupid dare. Brody bet I wouldn’t toss my drink from the top. Juvenile, I know, but we were fifteen back then. Sara was a year younger, but always more sophisticated.

Brody got his ten bucks, and I got Sara.

Two years later we still hadn’t kissed…I mean, not really kissed. Her parents were super strict. She wasn’t even allowed to date, technically, but we found ways around that. Tonight the sneaking ended. She was sixteen now, old enough to hold hands in public, go on full-fledged dates, and call me boyfriend—even in front of her regimented parents.

“Don’t worry,” I almost whispered. “Everything will be perfect. First, your surprise. Then, the party will really start. Can’t wait to see you.”

“Me, too,” she said. The line went dead.

That was sudden. Maybe I’m making her nervous with all the build-up to her surprise. I shrugged it off and got back to work. The errant lights back in place, I stood back to survey my art.

Several of the swooping lights looped lower than the rest.

I’m a musician, not an artist.

It still looked awesome against the coming darkness. Sara will be blown away.

After a quick call to Brody to check on the status of the rock band we hired, I stopped by my house to pick up my clarinet. Dorky, I know, but Sara thought it was cool. Granted, her reasoning was a little off (“It sounds just like a saxophone.”), but at least she didn’t think I was a dork for playing in the woodwinds section.

Prue’s house was the only purple house on the block.

“It’s lavender, Gabe,” she insisted when I pointed this out years ago.

“Okay, Prue. Whatever floats your boat.”

Prue never liked me much, but Brody wasn’t bonkers about Sara, either. We weren’t dating each other’s friends, so it wasn’t usually an issue.

Before I could knock, the door swung open. Prue, Tara, and Sara stood waiting in Three-Musketeers formation, smiling except for Sara.

“Hello, ladies. Might I borrow fair Sara for an hour?” I winked at her friends, who rolled their eyes at my sentence structure.

Cheerleaders. Sara was one of them, but I didn’t hold it against her. She, at least, knew charm when she heard it.

She took my arm and looked back at her friends with a strange mixture of regret and excitement. “See you guys at the party.”

“Good luck,” Tara called after her. Prue elbowed her in the shoulder. “What?” Tara whined, rubbing her arm.

I didn’t comment to Sara about her bizarre choice in friends. Tonight was all about making her feel like a goddess.

“So what’s my surprise?” she asked once we were on the road.

I shook my head. “Like I’m going to blow it when we’re two blocks away.”

“That close?” Her blue eyes widened just a little, and I could almost see her stomach flutter. I couldn’t imagine what made her so nervous, but I guessed the sixteenth birthday was kind of like the wedding day—anticipated from childhood, played out with Barbies, all that weird girl stuff.

I reached over the gear stick and squeezed her manicured hands. “You look beautiful tonight, Starlight. You always look beautiful. Tonight I’m gonna make you feel like a princess.”

She smiled. “Gabe, I have to talk to you about something.”

“Shoot, kid. I’m all ears.”

Her hand weaseled out of mine, and she stared at the dim road ahead.

“What’s wrong, Sara?” She used to love it when I called her kid, but maybe turning sixteen changed that.

For a long minute, she said nothing, but her face bent in earnest concentration over something. “Uh, nothing,” she finally muttered. “Just nervous about the party.”

“Well, hey, it’s just gonna be close friends. Your parents are even coming. I guess they don’t hate me as much as I thought.” I grinned, trying to quell her anxieties with a look. If only it were that easy.

“My parents?” she sputtered. “What possessed you to invite them?”

I pulled into the parking lot, trying to think of some way to answer this sudden hostility. Sara had never yelled at me before.

“Obviously, I made a mistake,” I apologized immediately. My eyes darted up again at the sound of her gasp.

“Oh my gosh, Gabe. You didn’t have to…”

My smile returned as I watched her take in the sight of the lit gazebo. “Starlight for my Starlight,” I whispered, then got out to open her door.    

My extended hand went unnoticed for what felt like forever. “Sara?”

When she looked up at me, her face streaked with tears. Black makeup ran from her eyes across her perfect skin, threatening the white dress.

I retrieved some Kleenex from the glove box and gently dabbed the stains from her cheeks.

“I hope those are tears of joy.”

But then there was a sob from her lips that didn’t go away. It kept building. I reached for her, guiding her to the benches, my clarinet clasped firmly in my other hand. There was absolutely nothing I could do about her tears. They were coming too fast.

Stick to the plan. It was all I could do. The low, slow melody of “Never Without You” waltzed from my instrument as she sat beside me, quieting.

My eyes closed as the sweetest part of the song played through my mind. I knew she was thinking of those words, too, feeling what I felt.

Never far,

We dance on

Holding tight

To this song

Stars twinkle

Celebrate

We become

One heartbeat.

Never far,

We become

One heartbeat.

At the end of the last long note, I opened my eyes, setting the instrument down beside me on the bench. But my smile evaporated as my gaze came to rest on Sara’s face.  

She glared at me.

“Why do you have to make this so difficult?” she asked, every word tense through her teeth. There was nothing lovely about the way her reddened, black-smeared eyes flashed now.

The stupid faulty light strand slipped off its nail again, an echo of my heart’s downward motion, and I gulped at thin air, struggling to reconcile her reaction with my actions. “I’m sorry. I-I-I thought this was what you wanted. What did I do wrong?”

Eyes closed and head bowed, her frame trembled with emotion, and even I could tell it wasn’t the good kind. There were a million ways I imagined her responding to my song: smiles, kisses. Nostalgic tears, maybe. Anger and disgust were nowhere on my list.

Her eyes continued to avoid mine. “It’s over, Gabe.”

The light in the gazebo dimmed. The air held stock-still. The easy breeze that played with Sara’s hair two seconds ago vanished.

I sat still, too stunned to speak.

Her voice filled the empty air instead. “Look, don’t…I can’t stay chained to one person anymore. My parents expect me to date other people. I mean, we’ve been together so long, I don’t even know who I am anymore. With Tara and Prue, I’m one person. With you, I’m just Starlight, this perfect picture of a girlfriend you made up sometime between the Ferris Wheel and this godforsaken gazebo. I’m sorry, but we’re not soul mates. And I can’t waste anymore of my teen years acting the part somebody else made up for me.”

I’m sure my jaw dropped, but I don’t recall exactly what my face did after that. All I knew was Sara dumped me. Her scripted break-up speech crashed into the lingering glow of my love song, and by the time the band showed up—and our friends started arriving at the park—I was long gone.

My tie and suit jacket lay balled up in the corner behind my bedroom door, atop my sealed clarinet case.

“Gabriel? Home so soon?”

I slammed the door before my mom’s feet hit the stairs. No way was she going see me like this. Nobody would. Not now, and not ever. 

Thynopthith Thursday: All About Tension and Plot

(Photo courtesy Photos8.com)

Okay, so I'm stretching the days-of-the-week alliteration. :-)

But I was up late last night formulating the SYNOPSIS for my favorite (right this minute) WIP, and I just had to blog about it today. As @KayCassidy taught me (get THE CINDERELLA SOCIETY here), I'm using Michael Hauge's six-point plot structure on all my story ideas.

And it's making all the difference in the world!

I can't stop myself writing the first few pages of a burning new idea, but after that, I do start to wander unless I have a very clear idea where I want the story to go. Therefore, I've become a plotter/pantser combination, which I think most of us probably are. Currently, I lean toward plotter.

My goal with this YA Paranormal Romance is to keep tension throughout. I watched TWELVE ANGRY MEN for the first time a few nights ago and was blown away by the genius of it--so much tension and conflict/high stakes, all shot in that one little room. Masterful! I decided I needed to at least try to infuse my stories with that type of tension.

There are plenty of ideas about how a story should begin. Lots and lots of experts say to start with loads of action. 

Reginald froze. The icy ring of the gun barrel chilled his neck, sending waves of panic through his nervous system. But there was a sense of familiar inevitability in the weapon's cold pressure. Nobody can run forever.


I think this can be a useful way to start a story, as long as you don't find yourself adding in tons of flashback exposition. There's nothing more distracting to me as a reader than when I'm reading an action scene, and the character stops to think about how he got there. Yeah right, I'm thinking. Like anybody thinks this eloquently when there's a gun to his throat. 


Not that there's anything wrong with flashback (especially if you're writing an experimental backwards plot novel), but it kind of defeats the purpose of starting with action, which is to keep a high level of tension throughout.

So what I prefer to begin with is internal conflict. Publishing pros are always talking about how important it is for them to love the voice and the main character, and it needs to happen right away--a sort of literary love at first sight. I believe that revealing the hero's inner struggle from page 1 solves both problems: 1) create tension and 2) establish an emotional connection to the reader.


A smudge of gooey ink from the hotel pen marred the page as Reginald's fingers trembled. It was done. His wife was certain to find the five pages in her mailbox at the conclusion of her writers conference. He half-hoped she wouldn't go home at all. She could do him the courtesy of leaving, at least. In any case, she wouldn't find him in their little tudor house. 


It was time for him to check out. His only regret was leaving the dog behind. 


Okay, not the best writing, but you get where I'm going. Nobody is in fatal peril. Still, plenty of conflict and tension. And since I've started with his internal conflict, I can move on to the external conflict without it seeming forced. The character is established as a nervous man whose wife doesn't love him and he knows it. We know he regrets having to leave everything that's familiar to him, but that he's willing to do it. Now I can have a desperate addict walk into his cheap hotel room and put a gun to his throat. OR I can send him to Tennessee where he'll meet a saucy waitress who brings out his inner rogue. His flirtations thereafter incur the wrath of her wannabe gangster boyfriend who puts a gun to Reginald's throat, and we come full circle.

The goal is a steady supply of tension.

Don't forget the comic relief, though. Personally, I can't read or watch something that has no break in the tension. 

*The story samples above are completely made up on the spur of the moment, having nothing whatsoever to do with my WIP, but I'm not ready to share my premise with the world yet. You know when you have the perfect baby name for your future tikes and you just know that if you say it out loud, it will become the most popular baby name of 2010? That's how I feel about my premise. And I'm really not paranoid because it's happened the last two times I started writing something fun, first with mermaids and then with super villains, so forgive my superstition.

Also, a plug for using the six-point plotting technique for your synopsis:

This is the second project for which I've started plotting only to discover that my villain didn't have a believable motive, or didn't have the chops to be that bad. In both cases, a secondary character stepped forward as the true villain. I love it when this happens, and it probably would have taken many rewrites to figure this out had I not done the difficult thinking beforehand. I'm now very excited to get going on this story, which already has twenty-eight pages.

Feedback-man Saves My Novel: Prepare to be Repaired!

Okay, that last part of the title is an inside joke for those of you who have read my manuscript. :-) But the rest of you can easily understand the first part, right?

I am just floored by how helpful the feedback has been on my recently finished middle grade novel. And I haven't had access to a bunch of professional readers, either. It's mostly been family and friends, with a few near-strangers I met through www.absolutewrite.com/forums. 

But their suggestions and comments have been invaluable to me! After all the tweaking, revising, and proof-reading you do of your own work, there comes a moment in time when you can't see the trees for the forest anymore. Seriously, your WIP becomes this massive muddy forest that feels completely uncrossable. There's no path, no distinct tree-line. It's just words. Words that sound good to you...or not. But you've been looking at them that way for so long, you have no idea how to change them to sound better. 

At least this is the way it is for me. 

So when somebody says, "Hey, this part confused me. Is it meant to be a miniature rocket, a bomb, or a rocket-ship?" that's when I finally realize that they didn't get my "clever" ending AT ALL! 

Time to rewrite.

When Tall Bright & Handsome points out a logistical discrepancy in a fight-scene, my palm meets my forehead. Duh! Why didn't I notice that? 

But there are also those golden moments, like when my sister says there were passages she couldn't believe I wrote. Or when a complete stranger says they would give it to their twelve-year-old friend/cousin/nephew because they loved it and think he will, too. 

Those are the moments that make my head feel like it's filled with glitter. 

It's the criticism, however, that really saves a novel. Tonight, I'll go back into my word document, which has had about a week to rest now, and I'll implement the suggestions I've received so far. This won't be the end. (I feel like Boneclaw, spewing out catch-phrases: "You haven't seen the last of me, Repairman!)

There will be more work ahead, but I know that each step will only make the novel better. And that's exciting.   

I can almost hear Robert--see him winking: "Prepare to be Repaired!" You, Typos and Plot Holes, are no match for the Repairman. 

On Age Genre Crossovers MG-YA-NA

Is your latest project middle grade? Is it young adult? Is it new adult (new title for 20-somethings who like to read YA)?

This topic is of particular importance to me, as somebody who once wrote a YA novel with a 23-year-old protagonist. (And now has a MG book with a 17-year-old protagonist.) I know, I know. You're thinking: Why can't you just make your character the right age?

And the answer isn't that I'm a rebel without a cause, or that I am doing it on principle to stick it to the man (though I do sometimes like to stick it to the man). I'm doing it because that's the age the character is. Cop-out much? Yeah. Yeah, I do. But here's my justification:

23-year-old Eric is a boy-man who witnessed his father's death at age 5, bought his first house at age 13 and never completely grew up.

17-year-old Robert is a naive, innocent teenage boy who doesn't fit in at his school for villains, and has to deal with his evil twin, Rupert, slashing his tires every day after school.

If I made Eric younger, he wouldn't be the savant sci-fi novelist who never grew up. He'd just be another kid. His "advanced" age doesn't change the fact that this book is about coming of age, which is a YA theme.

If Robert were younger, he would still be trying his darndest (and failing miserably) to be a villain, without ruffling too many evil feathers. He wouldn't be growing at all as a character, which kills the MG theme of finding one's place in the world.

Writing this, I realize something. I have a new WIP that's also about a late bloomer. *Update: Point of clarification, she's the right age for the genre this time.

I write books about late bloomers. Hah. Well, that explains it.

Now if I could only convince agents and publishers that kids don't only pick up novels about somebody their own age. :-}

Seriously, people. Crossover appeal is not as rare as some people seem to think. Here's some more fascinating reading material on this subject.

Links:

On New Adult Fiction -an interesting beginning to a discussion about 20-somethings and their reading preferences.

Dude Looks Like a YA -wherein Nathan Bransford says, in 2007, that these categories are more about voice and pacing than they are about age or theme.


The Difference Between MG and YA -wherein themes are discussed as the divergence between the genres.

In my defense, my word counts are spot-on.

Naked Words! Put Something Decent On!

So we've all had that naked dream, right?

Actually, I don't remember having a naked dream, but I'm sure it happened and I just blocked it out to protect my delicate psyche. I have, however, had plenty of dreams wherein I felt completely humiliated for one reason or another. Which is basically the same thing as a naked dream, in principle.

At the crux of the naked dream is the uncomfortable feeling of being exposed--warts and all--against our will. It is characterized by embarrassment, stage fright, and perhaps some jiggly running (I apologize for the mental image, but hopefully you were only picturing yourself, right?).

Stephenie Meyer, acclaimed author of the Twilight Saga and The Host, talks about her own stage fright here: STEPHENIE MEYER ON SEQUELS. (Spoiler alert, but really, WHO hasn't read these yet?)

I'll quote her here for those of you who don't want to spoil the fun of reading New Moon on your golden anniversary:

It's hard to explain how joyous the writing process was for me when I was creating Twilight. It was something I did for fun and excitement, with no concern for what anyone else might think, because no one else was ever going to read it. With New Moon, I knew people were going to read it. And some of those people were going to have bright red pens in hand while reading. I knew enough about the editing process to know that there were painful changes ahead; the parts I loved now might not make the final cut. I was going to have to rethink and revise and rework. This made it very hard to put the words down, and I had a horrible feeling much like stage fright the whole time I was writing.

Last night I got to thinking about my own stage fright and how it affects my writing, which it does...a lot. Of course, I can't claim any special reason for this. I'm not Stephenie Meyer writing sequels to the beloved Twilight. Nobody knows who I am, except for Mandy Hubbard (hee hee), and even fewer people have actually read my long form work, like the 3 novels gathering giga-dust on my hard drive. I can count the person who's read all of my work on one finger. By the way,

THANK YOU, MOM!

But after reading countless blogs, books, and author interviews about 'how NOT to write a novel', I'm suffering from a mild case of Faux Pas Phobia. Of the writerly variety.

The symptoms of Writerly Faux Pas Phobia are as follows:

• inability to reread anything you've written without gagging
• crippling anxiety over: sentence structure; overuse of adverbs, adjectives, pronouns, proper nouns
• WRITER'S BLOCK, or the feeling of being stuck in the mud whenever you try to write more than a sentence.
• reading the classics ad nauseam and comparing your writing to the likes of Austen and Poe.
• talking to dead authors about your writing, even if in whispers
• snapping at family members who call your writing just "good"
• typing with one hand on your forehead

Basically, like me, you've read too many how-to's and now feel like nothing you ever write will ever be good enough for the market. Or maybe you've had a little bit of success, and now feel compelled to keep up with that success in everything you write.

I've thought of three ways to get over this fear, which is really just insecurity. *I cannot vouch for the effectiveness of these methods.

• Pretend your audience is naked. (Okay, this has never really worked for me.)
• Write a story for your kids, nephews and nieces, cousin's kids (and not for publication). In short, write something for fun. That is why you started writing, right? 
• Say it with me: "It's only a first draft. It's only a first draft. It's only a first draft."

Wooh. Well, I don't know about you, but I feel much better! 

No? Well, maybe more wisdom from Stephenie will help:

The good news is that I got over—or rather got used to—the stage fright. Book three was much easier in a multitude of ways. I learned a lot through the New Moon experience, and I grew as a writer. Even better, my characters grew and matured in interesting ways that gave me so much to work with throughout the rest of the series!

 In closing, there is no published author in the history of time who has received only positive reviews--not even God himself. Art thou greater than He? (We'll discuss the God complexes of writers in another post.)

So go tell your WIP (work in progress) to GO PUT SOMETHING DECENT ON! And get on with the joy and the pain that is writing. See you in the query trenches.

Oh, and tell me: how do you get past Faux Pas Phobia?