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The Darkness

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Currently I am knee deep in manuscript edits, which is a lovely blend of torture and fun. It’s wonderful to see that what I’ve written is not nearly as horrible as it seemed while I was frantically banging it out. 

However, going through this process highlights one of my biggest weaknesses as a writer (well perhaps also as an adult with responsibilities like raising kids). I seriously lack attention to detail skills. No matter how much I tried to proof my papers in school, I always got marked down for simple errors. I miss grammatical mistakes in my stories. I write so fast, I often make simple errors ( for example: it’s and its. Not because I don’t know the difference, but because I am not paying attention). Probably my favourite (yes, I spell it with a u, and it gets edited out of everything and makes everyone crazy but me) unexplainable error is my determination to spell against, agains’t. I have no idea why I do this. It’s so embarrassing (hey, consequently, a word I cannot remember how to spell no matter what I do) when I publish something only to find errors like this on a later read through. 

The editing process is a place when it can become all too easy to fall into that hole of self doubt where all you can see are your errors and weaknesses. Some, like the above, I am learning to find humor in (agains’t?!?! Really?). Others I really have to work not to focus on, because focus on those leads to The Darkness. 

The Darkness (as I shall now refer to self doubt) plagues me. I second guess almost everything, and often feel like I cannot trust my own interpretation of characters, motives, plot lines without someone there telling me it’s okay. 

I often wonder if I shouldn’t put a sticky note on my computer monitor reminding me that I am a good writer. I was raised in the school of Don’t Take Compliments. Figuring out how to honor my instincts as a writer often feels like wearing shoes that don’t fit — even acknowledging my strengths privately can feel like hubris that is unbecoming. 

Which honestly is a pile of crap. How on earth can I write and publish a book I believe in if I don’t trust that I am putting out something of worth? 

The truth, under The Darkness, is that I have been conditioning myself not to believe in something that is written deep in my bones — I would not have spent the last 20 odd years writing if I didn’t get something from it. And I certainly wouldn’t have taken risks with sharing what I write if I didn’t think what I was doing was worth it in some way, silly errors included.

Somehow, I feel like these posts always devolve into some form of believe in yourself, rah rah rah. Forgive me. Perhaps this is the only way I’ll prop myself up through the quagmire of finding it’s and its, against and agains’t, and figuring out what the hell notes like hey that word there that I need mean. I’ve also been completely consumed (and inspired) by Avian30‘s Do The Thing, which got my ass in gear hardcore when I was only half way done with a manuscript and had no idea how I would continue to climb that mountain. 

Luckily, as of right now, once I push The Darkness aside, the only mountain I have in front of me is editing pages and pages of smut. 

How I suffer 😀 

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When you start, it’s very cold, an impossible task. But then maybe the characters start to take on a little bit of life, or the story takes a turn that you don’t expect … With me that happens a lot because I don’t outline, I just have a vague notion. So it’s always felt like less of a made thing and more of a found thing. That’s exciting. That’s a thrill.

Stephen King (via writingquotes)

Harnessing a Tornado

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Last Saturday, I joyfully went to my local Kinkos (which wasn’t actually that local) and had them print out my first draft, all the while hoping they wouldn’t stop to read it and find some serious smut. Still, a few minutes after they got my file, I was holding 170 pages of fresh printed, warm papered story. 

Of course, I didn’t think ahead to things like a binder or a three hole punch. This means I am very carefully splitting the story into two as I go through it, and praying that my three year old will not get into them (which is a high hope, because my three year old is an adorable tornado of destruction).

I’ve improvised a crazy system involving sticky notes, colored index cards, regular index cards, and multiple kinds of pens. I’m reasonably sure there is probably a more streamlined way of doing this, but it probably wouldn’t be *me*. 

I’m a little tornado myself. In many ways, a lovely, chaotic, story telling tornado. With a destroyed house I am ignoring in favor of writing this book. Oh well. Sacrifices must be made, right? 

I referred in an earlier post to my character and plot development system and said I’d be talking about it in the future, and so I thought I’d begin here. 

I wrote my first novel participating in NaNo in 2007. I had no story idea. It was November 5th I believe, so I was already behind. I was working a soul sucking, mind numbing job with truly mean people. Except for one girl, who like me, dreaded each day of work. Unlike myself, she *had* a story idea that she’d always wanted to write, but never thought she could because she wasn’t a huge reader. 

I sent her a link to the NaNo website and encouraged her to be my writing buddy. As a nice side effect, it distracted us for a bit from the horror of our jobs. 

I went into NaNo with no plan, with no idea how to write a book, how to structure it, how to develop characters. So I just made things up. I started with a moment and thought to myself, “What happens after this?” I allowed the story and characters to fall into place like dominoes. After a while, my characters started doing things I didn’t expect, and some that I’d created for background moments started to step forward to carry parts of the plot. I told myself that this is what happens when you write at a breakneck speed. Next time I write a book, I told myself, I’ll plan it out, I’ll know the characters completely, I’ll work to flesh out a completely developed plot. 

Oh god, if only I could. 

The truth is that I am a chaotic writer. I write like a flash flood, fast and hard and messy as hell. I write *through* a story, and in doing, am slowly learning to accept that I have to let the characters talk to me. That I have to allow myself to let go of plans and to trust my intuition, because, as it turns out, I am a highly intuitive writer.  Although It is often hard to trust that I’m going to get *there*, that amorphous ending point (which, after writing that first mess of a novel, I started to do — that is have an idea of how it ends, at least), it’s just how I write. And I must be doing something right: I hope that that little Interlude Press logo confirms that, if only to myself. 

For the moment’ I’ll have to leave you with that. Stay tuned for more conversation regarding character development, small hints of what is happening and who they are and how I am attempting to harness the tornado of this whole experience. I must be off though, because my kids have decided to open my storage totes to make caves for themselves. I should create a superhero persona for myself: Mommy Writer, with the power to write romance and smut, but also corral active little boys who are stuck indoors due to rain. 

I am off to find a cape then. While I do so, I’ll encourage you all to attend Interlude’s 24 Launch Party. I’ll be speaking about writing original fiction with other 2015 authors. There will be sweet giveaways. And if you want, you can register here for chances to win a free copy of my ebook when it is published! 

 

Link

On July 22nd, Interlude Press will be hosting a 24 hour launch party. Interlude Press will be hosting live chats and Q&A’s throughout the day with authors, as well as title reveals. Join us on google+ the day of to listen in, as well as to enter to win various awesome swag. I’ll be talking at 6pm with some of the other 2015 authors who are writing original fiction. 

As a part of this awesome world wide launch celebration, if you enter here (and by here I mean the lovely green box you see above) you can win a copy of my debut novel, which is slated to be published in 2015 (eeeeee!).  I am so excited to share this story with you guys, I cannot wait. 

If you are interested in checking out raffles for other IP authors, including the Grand Prize (free books for a year), you can check out more information at the Interlude website. Here is a list of who is speaking when and about what! 

Hope to see you all there with party hats and PJ’s on! 

**apparently the links to the Facebook and Goodreads weren’t working. They’ve been fixed now :D**

Win a Free Copy of my Book!

Tiny Celebration Time!

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So there’s been an awful lot of silence here for a bit, for which I apologize. I’d love to set a goal to blog at least once a week as I start to gather steam. Right now, I must confess, all the steam I’ve managed to gather has been focused on finishing the first draft of my manuscript. 

I can proudly announce that my first draft is finished, and that I am now ready to move into the first editing phase of this process. My goal was to finish by July first and give myself well over a buffer of a month before my manuscript is due. 

As most of you have probably experienced in your life, however, life interfered — my youngest child was very sick, I had a family vacation during which I became really sick. Once I was home, I got even *more* sick and was down for the count for days. 

Once I managed to get out of bed and see straight, I booted up the old hunk of a machine I call my laptop (I generally blog and have fun on my Chromebook), and got to work. 

As I’ve mentioned before, I really developed my writing process through my involvement with NaNo. Here I learned to pound out 50k words in 30 days or less (my proudest and perhaps most painful accomplishment being writing that 50k in ten days when my oldest was 2 years old). 

I write fast and dirty, often with parenthetical notes that read something like: Cam said, (insert something witty here with a word that starts with a C that I can’t remember) or (use that word I like and can’t remember here). I generally write chronologically for reasons involving plot and character development I’ll be blogging about in the future. Writing this way often means I skip scenes I am not ready for at the time. I don’t go back to change spelling or grammatical errors at all because I drive forward so fast. 

All of which adds up to *Hot Mess* for a first draft. As I gird my loins in anticipation of diving in to this editing process (70k of *Hot Mess* feels terribly daunting), I ask for your positive juju vibes to help me along. I have a long family vacation the week before my manuscript is due (it is actually due the day I come home), so I’m going to hit the ground running as soon as the dust settles from an epic fandom journey I took this past weekend. 

I do hope to blog in this time, because I’d love to share my process and bits of how I developed these two boys I came to love so much. 

For now though, for those of you inclined to celebrate (it’s Wine O’Clock somewhere in the world), I hope you join me in raising a glass to myself in accomplishing something affirming, something I am so proud of: the completion of the first draft of the first published novel I’ve written.

Huzza!