Monday, November 26, 2012

Deleted Scenes

When writing and editing a novel, things have a tendency to get cut. And if the process of Book 1 is any indication, there are a LOT of cuts, entire scenes cut and pasted in a dump file that right now is too much of a mess for me to even consider going through.

But it got me thinking, what if there were deleted scenes for books? When movies come out on DVD they love to tout their bonus features: deleted scenes, commentary, blooper reels. Stuff that you can only see if you actually buy the DVD (or if you get Netflix). I don't know if most people care to watch these things, but if it's a movie (or tv show) that I love, I'll watch them. I'll watch the heck out of them. It's interesting to hear a funny director or favorite actress talk about a movie as it's playing, to get an idea of what it was like for them to create and film it.

That particular idea probably wouldn't work for books. I suppose I could include footnotes that said something like "this is the scene that was so difficult I literally fell to the floor and had a temper tantrum." Or "this is the part where I binged on cookies for three days and gained ten pounds." I suppose that might be interesting to some people, but it would really take away from the book.

Deleted scenes, on the other hand, could  totally work. Some things are cut just because they disrupt the flow of the story, or because they don't move the story line forward. But they usually still have something of value in them, some line or thought that made them difficult to delete in the first place. By tacking them on at the end, the reader has extra stuff to read if they enjoyed the book, and the author can feel less guilty for excluding them from the main piece.

Obviously, there are reasons why this hasn't been done. Printing out extra scenes means higher production costs. There doesn't even need to be a reason beyond that: money is just what things come down to these days.

Maybe these scenes can be put on an author's website then? Actually, what would really be great for me is to be able to continue writing things for these characters, to continue their story beyond the ending of the book. I can't envision coming up with a sequel for the book but it also depresses me that I'm nearly done working with these characters (which might explain why I keep coming up with new things to add in to the book - I don't want to let go). I wonder if some authors do this, put special content on their websites to attract readers and please fans. I could research it, but since I mentioned the cookies I've gotten hungry.

Thing I Don't Understand:
I feel like I'm always either 1) getting ready for work, 2) at work 3) going to bed because I have to go to work the next day. The free hours every evening barely seem to exist. It's criminal.

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Little Bits of Me

I decided today that my main character of book 1, Alex, is obsessed with peanut butter and chick lit. Peanut butter because it's delicious, obviously, and chick lit because it's an interesting thing for someone who is otherwise dark and angry to love. I think it will be fun to mess with that. I was tempted to be super meta and have her be obsessed with YA books, but that would be just slightly overkill, I think. Still, it's nice to have these things figured out about her. It only took three drafts, though I fear at this rate I'll never stop adding things to this book. It will go on forever until someone shows an interest in it.

I often find that I want to give my characters some of my traits. Like someone needs to be addicted to Mountain Dew right? And someone needs to make sure everyone knows that Parks and Recreation is the greatest television show, and that Brandi Carlile is an amazing musician. And maybe this character is also a night person and takes corners too sharply when walking so they have bruised elbows. Maybe they get the Three's Company theme song stuck in their head once a week and still walk tightrope style along a curb, even at 24 years old. Maybe they give into peer pressure on the highway and drive faster than they want, just because everyone else is doing it. And frankly, not enough characters in books - nay, the world - are showing the proper love for baseball. There needs to be a character who is or does all of these things right? Because obviously, these are the makings of an awesome person.

And honestly, I do throw in bits and pieces of me into characters. Some of my insecurities, some of my interests, some of the qualities that I wish I had. It's a way to see things from a different perspective, to see how it feels if I were to act on the anger I sometimes feel, like Alex does, instead of bottling it up, like I do (mostly in the interest of keeping my job).

But it's tricky, because you don't want people to read your book and think to themselves "oh my gosh, this is how Lindsey feels. She needs a hug or a shrink, I'm not sure which." A character's opinion on things like marriage or race might appear like a reflection of your own opinion, even when it's far from it. A character's view on parents or best friends might seem like how you feel about your actual parents or friends, even when all you're really doing is trying to throw as many shitty people and situations at your character as possible, for the sake of conflict.

So I guess what I end up doing is this: I cut out small parts of real life and stick them onto huge bits of my imagination. I  might be influenced by a real life experience, but since most of my real life experiences have been pretty tame, I'll exaggerate the crap out of it until it's barely recognizable. Eventually I come up with something filled with people that are simply not me, people that some days I'm sure must be out there going about their day just like I am, completely independent. Which would be really cool, I think. But alas, I am not living in the world of Ruby Sparks.

Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Nano 14

My Nano project is so lame. I now know this about myself: I cannot rush into a writing project. Everything is scattered, ideas had and forgotten, changes made midway through only to be hated the next day. I may not need to completely outline a project, but I need to have bullet points. Things seem a lot easier to achieve when they are on a bullet point list, is all I'm saying.

I'm conflicted on whether I'll continue with Nano or not. If I don't, it wouldn't mean the end of this story. It would mean slowing down, figuring things out, probably starting from scratch. Those are all things I'll have to do anyway, even if I reach the arbitrary goal of 50,000 words. Seems silly to waste my time writing more crap that I just have to wade through later. It also doesn't help that I'm just over 20,000 words, and I think I'm supposed to be around 23,300 or something. Oops.

If you could see my main character right now, you would understand this hesitance to continue. She's all over the place as the struggle to maintain her lies becomes too much. I didn't really intend for the lying to become the main point of the novel. I wanted the character arc to be more like this: at the beginning she finds herself to be a complete bore and wants to break through whatever keeps her that way and become more lively. She makes this rash decision to not really go to school (but lies to her family). For the first time she has no idea what she's supposed to do, has no expectations to live up to, and with the help of some new friends she begins to break out a bit and enjoy life. (I hope this isn't repetitive from other posts; I sometimes have short term memory loss, it seems). Having her be pregnant complicates the story arc, certainly, which is a reason why I've considered having her not really be pregnant. But there are advantages to that option as well...

At any rate, right now she is a bit insufferable with the lies and covering up of said lies. It's not going the way I wanted. I may just start a new chapter of the way I want it to be and pretend the rest of it doesn't exist. Could work.

Thing I Don't Understand:
Why do artists write really great songs and then after two minutes decide "Ok, that's a wrap!" And then these same artists will write a bunch of songs that are a perfectly acceptable length but they are LESS GOOD. Perhaps this is an indication of lingering pop love from my teens, but I say when in doubt, do the chorus again. When only 1:55, do the chorus again. Recent examples of this: Regina Spektor's "Ballad of a Politician," Tegan & Sara's "Soil, Soil," and M. Ward "Vincent O'Brien." Oh my gosh and Cult's "You Know What I Mean." That song kills me at the end and masochistically, I would like it to kill me longer. Do better next time, music people. Please and thank you.

Monday, November 12, 2012

Panic at the Laptop

Here's a new thing that is happening to me. I call it Panic Statue Syndrome. Actually, I just made that up, but from now on that's what I'll call it. As someone with a degree in Psychology, I have the authority to create disorders. It seems only fair to me.

Anyway, PSS is this: I research agents I want to send query letters to, or maybe I prepare a query letter, and suddenly my heart starts beating fast and I can't move. I'm staring at this suddenly terrible letter, probably rife with grammatical errors even though I've read it 100 times, and all I'm seeing is my future teeter tottering over the fiscal cliff (at least, my personal finances are at stake). I'm basically sending my heart out to COMPLETE STRANGERS who live in NY who are probably perfectly nice but maybe not and now they have the most important thing I have to offer and can stomp all over it. They may just glance over the letter, skim the sample pages they ask for and then that's it, dismissed. There's no way for me to properly convey how important this is to me, or how deeply I feel the need for this story to be out there.

And even if there were, thousands of other people no doubt feel just the same, want the same or similar things that I do. How can I expect a few random people to give us all the attention we so desperately want?

It's terrifying, really, thus the breathing issues that come about, and the minutes that pass with me sitting like a statue, swallowed up in fear that this publishing thing may never happen.

Luckily, I snap out of it, and I send the letter and mark it down and hope. Some people do this for years and years, the sending and waiting, and I've only been doing it for a month and a half. That's hardly anything, in the grand scheme of things. Basically any book you read on publishing will tell you that it's a slow, slow process. But I guess I'm just in a hurry to get to where I'm going. Or even to have a sign that I might be going somewhere.

It could happen tomorrow. It could happen next year. Meanwhile, I'll just be sitting here with my brown paper bag, trying to overcome PSS as gallantly as one can. (There is currently no cure, please feel free to donate.)

Saturday, November 10, 2012

Nano Day 9/10 - To Be Pregnant Or Not To Be...Pregnant


Here's the thing with this novel. I have no idea where I'm going with it. The furthest I've gotten in my mind is that the main character meets these people, works with them, befriends them, and then just, funny things happen? Until the end, of course, where MC will get caught in all the lies that she's been telling. But I feel like most of the ideas I've had, beyond those, are just the characters hanging out. It's like a comedy on TV where once you like all the characters, you don't need something to happen in the episode. The story doesn't really need to progress with plot development because it's enjoyable just to be spending that half hour laughing or smiling with an inner chuckle.

I'm not sure that will work for this book.

The main issue, though, is I can't decide if the main character, Sydney, should really be pregnant or not. While she's no longer in high school, it would still be tough to find out your pregnant on the cusp of college, where you expected to finally find freedom. Maybe I'm being a chicken, but I don't want to write about a character with these fears of motherhood and the unknown hanging over her head, of adding yet another character to the world whose experiencing morning sickness and weird cravings and everything else that has been beaten to death in movies and TV. Speaking of beatings, I really don't want to do a birth scene, especially since there's another character in the novel who's pregnant who will be giving birth in the novel. I'm already trying to figure out how to reduce that section to something like "*20 hours later* oh my gosh, there's a baby here!" It's easier to avoid when it's a minor character, at least.

What may be interesting though is for her to think she's pregnant, for one of her new friends to also think she's pregnant, only for Sydney to find out she's not. But because she's kind of become the pathological liar of all pathological liars, she doesn't tell this person she's not really pregnant, and eventually get's to the point where she has to start faking the symptoms, where she's contemplating how she's going to make herself look rounder and full in the face.

I've already chosen a path for the purpose of this nano draft (if you read that correctly, it rhymes), but that doesn't mean I can't totally change it in the future. I'll just have to see how this works out.

THING I DON'T UNDERSTAND:
Why I wait until 11 pm to be productive with writing. I am my own worst enemy.

Monday, November 5, 2012

Nano Day 5

I hit a road block in writing. Or to be more exact, I hit a Monday. Mondays are truly terrible days and I would endure hours of political ads and be the first at the polls if someone would just pledge to abolish Mondays. (Mentioning the election is the topical portion of this blog post. Also, for a while this year Santa Claus was running for President, but sadly he had to drop out. Something with the elves, I think. http://www.santaclausforpresident.com/ .)

Anyway, here I am, after working 9 hours today where I was sitting in a cubicle, staring at a computer, talking to people I had to be nice to, just so that I can sit here at my desk, stare at the computer, and talk to myself because music distracts me when writing.

I'm rambling because I haven't really written anything today. I fear my main character is a bit of a moron. I want to blame it on the present tense thing where I have to detail things as they happen, making her seem a bit all over the place when she talks about things in the past. I've written in past tense basically my entire life so it's kind of difficult for me to write this way. And I guess it's also possible that she's just a moron. She's not supposed to be though. She was salutatorian at her high school, narrowly losing to her best friend. She could've spent her weekends partying and shopping, but she stayed home studying. I wanted to make her seem and feel very boring so that she'll have a She's All That* makeover by the end. But instead of just losing her glasses and caring about her hair, she'll have realized something sappy and important on the inside and just feel more confident in herself, be more happy with who she is. I think that something too many of us do is watch other people and try to be happy the way that they're happy, liking what they like, doing what they do, instead of figuring out what makes us happy and being ourselves. Or something.

* Not sure I've actually seen this movie.

Here's the debut of a new special feature called "Things I Don't Understand." Today's thing is...
Justin Bieber. Brought to you by the strange picture that I saw of him on ew.com.
I suppose this alienates the very people that I want to like me and my book but I can't hide my confusion any longer. It's weighing me down. Truth is, I don't mind his music. It's no worse than anything else on mainstream radio. And I think he's a very talented dancer. But how on earth do so many girls find him so attractive? Especially now when his hair is sticking up like he stuck his fork in an electrical socket? Plus, ladies, you want a man that can defend you in an attack, not one that can't be seen when he stands behind you. His producted hair will be peeking over the top of your head, but that won't help you.

But anyway. I'll try to churn out a few hundred words tonight. Who knows, I might get into a groove and get all my words for the day done.

Saturday, November 3, 2012

Nano Day 3

I just read over what I've written in the past few days. If this wasn't being written as part of a word count competition, I'd likely cut a few pages. I went into the character's past way too often when what was happening in the present was much more interesting. The main character, Sydney, is finding out she's pregnant. Yet for some reason, I have her mentally ramble on about how good of a student she was (she's just graduated high school), how obedient she is, how her family is more interesting than she is, how she competes with her best friend, how her brother is a drop out. All of these will be true for her, but why I felt the need to chuck each bit at the reader, one after the other, I'm not sure. That's probably info I'll spread around after she finds out she's pregnant when I begin to rewrite.

The actual scene of her finding out she's pregnant is interesting though. Her personality comes to focus a lot better. And though I unconsciously chose to write in present tense, I think it works really well for this scene, whereas past tense might take away some of the anxiety the character feels.

Now I need to decide if I really want to write chapters in alternating points of view or not. Those are usually my favorite books, and it's always so impressive to read an author who can make each voice so distinct, and even change their writing styles a little for each person. I'm not sure I can do that, though i guess I can have someone else be written in past tense to make things a little different.

The only issue is how exactly I would start this other person's chapter. Only one other person was in the first chapter and I wouldn't be writing from that person's POV. I would have to come up with something, some kind of incident to start off another person. And then later on, of course, their paths will cross. But I don't know. I may just write everything from Sydney's POV and then after November, when time is not of the essence, I can see about sticking in chapters from someone else.

Thursday, November 1, 2012

NaNo Day 1

It's strange how you can look forward to something for weeks and then, when it's finally time to do that thing, it's suddenly less interesting. I've been looking forward to starting Book 2 for awhile, but now that I have, I'm already in that "oh look, something shiny" mood, and have been distracted for much of the evening. I've written a thousand words or so and while that's less than the daily average, I'm okay with it.

I'm not okay with how much those words suck, however. I know, I know. That's supposed to be the beauty of NaNoWriMo. I'm supposed to just go full hog into this project, my inner editor squashed in the name of churning out words and chapters at a ridiculous pace. The idea of having something finished by the end of the month is so sweet. Before I know it, I could have two novels to try to get published!

But if what I write is terrible, what's the point? Rewriting is a tedious process, as I've learned over the last few months. What's more, I seem to have this perfection issue. I can (and have) read my book 1 over and over again and still find things I want to change, things I want to add. Just looking over what I've written so far for Book 2, it's going to need a lot of work. Am I better off just taking this slow and forgetting this challenge? It's not like 50,000 is even a full novel, really. Book 1 is nearly twice that, and I feel I would at least want to hit the 60,000 mark (arbitrary number but it feels right).

Then again, there's more to this novel writing month than writing the novel. What I really have been looking forward to is interacting with other writers, something I haven't really done before (and something I haven't been able to do today thanks to the nano website bugging). It would be cool to become a part of a network of writers, even if I end up only interacting with a few. It would also be fun to join up with local NaNo folks, though how people are able to write with other people around is beyond me.

So I guess I'll stick with it, at least through the weekend to gauge where I am. Work is about to get crazy and tortuous (hello overtime, you foul monster) so I may be fooling myself to even think this is possible. But the only thing that will get hurt is my sleep schedule and that's already an issue so here I go!

Book 1 and Book 2

I finished the book. I finished it three times and will probably finish it once more before I get an agent, and then perhaps a few more times before it is ever published. For all I know, I will have finished my twenties by then. Such is the way of publishing, or so I hear. The working title of the book is Reasons to Hold On, which sounds like a book that would make good use of lists but sadly there are no lists in it. Yet. Hmm.

But at any rate, Reasons is about a girl named Alex who has had a rough summer, only to have it made worse when she accidentally cuts her arm. Her parents take this as a suicide attempt and send her off to an estranged relative, seemingly giving up any hope of fixing her themselves. Alex is, of course, pretty peeved and has no problems expressing her anger to just about anyone. But eventually, as she makes friends and begins to feel comfortable around people again, she realizes the decision was a good one. She sees that she doesn't have to hide herself or her secrets because now there are people around to support her. Of course, the book wouldn't be interesting if Alex wasn't miserable most of the time so don't worry, she is.

I also managed to avoid the boy and girl get together, have an argument likely over a misunderstanding or poor communication, break up, spend a chapter or so away from each other, but come back together in the end because they found the words that somehow didn't exist before. I understand why this happens in almost every YA book I read; I definitely wanted the point where everyone was mad at Alex and she was feeling completely alone. It just makes things more tense and terrible, just the way we humans like it. But I also keenly remember the aggravation each time I read it in a book - which is a lot because I've been reading YA nonstop. There may be things to find annoying but it won't be that, sir!

I've begun querying the book; we'll see if and when I hear back. But it's exciting to be in that part of the process at least.

Thanks to NaNoWriMo (I think I got the capitalization right there), I am beginning my 2nd book tomorrow. I've been having ideas for it nonstop; hopefully that keeps going. I think having written a book already I'm a bit more prepared for this. I'm ready to let sections and even chapters suck in the name of getting to the end. I know already that I'll likely have to rewrite the book three more times or so. I'm not nearly as prepared as I like to be, but that's part of the fun/stress/terror. 

This post has gone on too long so I guess I'll give the synopsis of book 2 in my next post. See you in 2 months or so! (hopefully that's a joke.)