Subdued Intrinsic

Personal Note: I am nagging you again. That poor SocialVibe badge to your left has been stuck at 57 minutes for a long time. Do another acitivy, if you don't mind taking three minutes. I think I'd actually rather you do the activity than read this post.

Today, after this post I’m going to write a post about how I see villains. And tension. But you won’t see this post until tomorrow, because I’m telling Blogger not to release it into the wild until then. Yeah, I know; I’m diabolical and crap*, as my friend Matt might say.

But first! An update about what’s going on here in Amethyst is Learning to be a Writer Land.

Top of the list, I have two extra humans to guide through homework and such in the afternoons, bringing my total to four students (and a toddler). The toddler isn’t slacking on needing my attention, though. He’s learning to use a potty, so he requires my attention every fifteen minutes or so. It almost killed me yesterday. Mondays generally have a lot of homework for all four older children, and this one was true to form.

Next, I’ve been reading. A lot. Because when the aforementioned favorite cousin came to visit, we (oh, unwise, unwise we) went into a bookstore (on a side note, if cash is a little tighter, but you have to see to your book thirst, I suggest heading into the Middle Grade section of your bookstore. Most paperbacks are under ten bucks there, and either those MG authors have stepped it up or the world at large has realized people in their early teens aren’t just elementary kids with things budding and sprouting—in other words, not idiots—and there are some really fantastic MG stand-alones and series to choose from). So far I've loved Lisa McMann’s Fade (have a total crush on her character "Cabel"), am having a little trouble getting into Pride and Predjudice and Zombies, not because I don't like it, or it isn't good, but because I am such a cannon loyalist. The book is different, and interesting, sure, but it's not catching me. I also really like Terry Pratchett's A Hat Full of Sky, sequel to his The Wee Free Men.

But. The cake-takers so far have been Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games, and Catching Fire. These books are the first two in a trilogy, and I've been putting off reading them because I knew even before I bought one, after I'd read them, I'd be hit in the face just how much work I have to do on plot, tension points, and cliffhangers. Collins is a pro when it comes to these things. I can't say how surprised I've been while I read the books, because I knew so much going in, but even knowing what would happen I found myself flipping pages like crazy just to get the answers I needed. On the surface it all seems simple, when you describe it. Post-apocalyptic girl, fighting for her life and the lives of her loved ones. Easy, right? Noooo. Not easy, because Collins has made us all wonder just how girl is going to pull it off. We're all pretty sure we know where we're ending up, but getting there is just so amazing.

Anyway, I am once again convicted of my need to think ahead. I, too, am writing a trilogy. I'm studying writers who have totally nailed cliff-hangers, taking notes when I catch my breath, asking myself what about a certain feature or passage makes my brain go, "No! No, don't stop there, I have to know what happens!". Yes, the project feels enormous again. I knew it would. That's okay. I've got time. It's like I tell all those boys while I'm overseeing their homework: I'd rather take a little time and do it right now, than have to waste all that time having to RE-do it because it wasn't right in the first place.

Get ready to hold your breath. I plan on taking it away.

*Okay, so technically Matt would probably not use the word 'crap', but I'm editing his language in this hypothetical situation.

Personal Note: I think it's one of the coolest things in the worlds that I'm Twitter/Aspiring Writer friends with a video game developer/programmer/whatever exactly that I wouldn't understand.

I'll admit it. I'd kind of given up. Burn out was approaching nuclear levels and any time I thought of editing this book again--especially an edit this extensive, where practically the entire novel is reimagined--part of me curled up in a little ball and meweled pitiably. I avoided it. I gave myself plenty of highly plausible excuses why I hadn't made any progress, like taking on the care of two extra boys in the afternoons, bringing my total to five between the ages of two and nine (that's four sets of homework, people. Four different math assignments on any given evening!).

I rustily churned out ten, fifteen pages, not really happy with the end products, but at least being able to call it progress. Just enough to say I was working so that nagging little voice didn't get too loud when it chirped at me.

And then I got the flu. You remember my last post. You remember the drugged energy bursts. Did I mention that one of them forced me into reorganizing the entire scene index/timeline? Yes? No? Well, it did. And that, heroes and heroines, was a game changer.

Ever since, I've been editing like mad. I blew through another four scenes yesterday and today, and retweaked others I'd already been over once this time. It's insane how much everything is opening up, how every character seems to be doing exactly what I need him or her to do, and it all feels natural.

As for the title of this post, well, you may have already read this on Twitter (I was really proud of it), but today my girl, my main character and narrator (first person love, y'all!), called someone a bloated wart-sack, and that, to me, is just about as fabulous as when Rory Gilmore called Logan Huntzberger a butt-faced miscreant, which is my favorite insult in the HISTORY of insults.




Ladies and gentleman, I AM BACK!

Personal Note: My husband’s pretty freakin’ awesome.  Just sayin’. Also, I finally got around to organizing all my playlists by the character(s) each song applies to. I had all my very favorites kind of grouped together for a little while, and now they’re in different lists. I told N. it was like sending off my babies to different foster homes. He laughed at me and called me weird. Because he knows he’s cute enough to get away with it.

I’ve decided my writing style is a lot like my hair; there’s a lot of it, but it’s very long and thin, and it takes many, many steps to get it anywhere near manageable. Now, with my hair, this means anywhere from two to four hours (are we coloring it, because if we are . . . well, you know). With a book, my experience is that it takes closer to two years.  I’m not sure this will always be the case; I dealt with quite a learning curve for the first one.  The point is:

Step One: Grow it. Either several inches or several thousand words, this part takes a large chunk of your time. For some people it’s not the step with the longest span, but it can be. I can’t get my hair to grow quickly to save my life, but I can pound out 135K words in two and a half months.

Step Two: Wash it. Get all the yuck out of it. Scrub it for hairspray, over-used phrases, conditioner build-up, adverbs, oils, and typos.

Step Three: Rinse and repeat. Once, for you Michael Kelso fans.

Step Four: if you’re not coloring, Condition. Put a good timed repair creme on there and wait. Put your manuscript in a safe, child-proof, moisture-proof, plagiarism-proof drawer and wait. You’ll gain softness. You’ll gain subtlety.

Step Four B. If you are coloring (*ahem* picture books), do that first, and then move on to Step Four.

Step Five: Cut. Everyone needs at least a little trim to kill split ends, or perhaps split infinitives. Besides, whatever you had before Step Four, probably a good quarter (inch?) of it looks ripe for the shearing.  Be bold.  You could find just the right look, the right book, for you under there somewhere.

Step Six: Apply heat. Curling iron, flattening wand, crimper, or just a blow-out, you still need to go back and smooth out all those rough edges. Also, this is your chance to really make your style, the verve that’s uniquely you, shine through. Take it to the max!

Step Seven: The Consult. Call up your most honest, most loyal friend (critique group), and have them come over and check out the results. They will tell you if you have lost your ever-loving mind. Listen to them; they love you, and want what’s best for you(r book), just like you do.

Step Eight*: Assuming you’ve gotten the thumbs-up from your pals, add in whatever styling products you need to keep that hot mess in its hot messiness. You want to SAVE, SAVE, SAVE the end result. Sometimes this takes more than one gel, spray, mouse, act of nuclear illegality. For me, it takes a minimum of four (2 Hard drives, one flash drive, and an email record—Or mousse, spray, prayer, and a local de-humidifier).

And that’s why writing a book is like messing with my hair.

*Step Eight should actually be broken up into many fragments over the course of the entire proposition. As in, EVERY FIVE SECONDS.

I haven't a had a bowl, yet. I'm kind of starving. But it's okay, because I know where I keep the breakfast food.

The Holidays are a questionable time to start major revisions. "Go ahead and put them aside until all the triptophan and Santa cookies are out of your system," you suggest, and normally I'd agree with you. Hades, it might even be good from a "process" stand-point, give me that edge of a little more objectivity when I tackle it. But the this is, there's a ton of stuff to change, and even though I've written quite a bit of it down, shared with other people, using them as human flash drives, and even organized a rough timeline/changes synopsis. And yet, I'm still worried I'll forget it all. I'll forget the "why?" of a lot of it, as in why someone does what they do, or why something unfolds the way it does. If you didn't gather yet, the "why" of things is second only to well-developed characters to me. So, it's important.

*sigh*

When I buckle in (I do have a family to take care of/hang out with), it seems to be working out, though, so there's goodness in that. And I'm okay knowing it will take at least two, possibly three drafts, like writing a whole new book (my ego smarts at that a little, but the rest of me has sucked it up).

Okay, I need my coffee and other sustenence. We can't all be only Maxwell House's slave.

Personal Note: When I was a little girl we played this imagination game (I dunno, maybe little kids are still playing it?). I really liked it, especially when it worked right. One kid balled up her fist as tight as she possibly could for at least a whole minute while another kid rubbed the clenched fist (now that I'm an adult I understand this has to do with circulation and nerve-endings, but you don't know that when you're a kid . . . probably). After the minute passed, the fist-clencher was advised to AsSlowlyAsPossibleOpenYourFingers! and then the other kid would pinch each of the clencher's fingertips, finally pinching a little skin in the center of the former fist. It was supposed to feel like he or she was drawing a spiderweb--connected to each of your fingers--away from your palm. As a side note, if you're planning on trying it, I suggest cutting your nails first, because, um, ow.

I know me. I know I will passive-aggressively hide from something like there's no tomorrow if I'm afraid of failing at it. I know that's a bigger hurdle to my writing than anything else. It's not the many, many time-consuming needs of my small children, or my slightly taller husband. It's not a lack of knowing what should happen (trust me on this one, my characters are all about blabbing, and giving me WHAT FOR if I fail to write them the way they'd like). Okay, sometimes it's that, a little, but not often. Nope, my biggest creative juice evaporator is fear of failure.

I am a pro at failure, and I specialize in the Half Off variety. As in, I get a project halfway done, and then I'm off it. And I'm flighty like you would not believe. Just a few minutes ago I angrily whispered a four-letter word because I somehow read my eldest kid's basketball form wrong and missed the evaluations (don't worry, he'll still play) this morning. Because I am just that talented. I'm familiar enough with failure to have learned every once in a while you just have to salvage what you can and move on from there.

But what do you do when your failure becomes paralytic? When your fear makes you too scared to move? What combats the fear?

When I was about nine our pastor, a tiny German man named John Lamb who I'm pretty sure endured some rather heinous things, preached a sermon about fear. He asked the congregation, "What do you think the opposite of fear is?" As is my usual answer, I said "love". I'm big on love, if you didn't know. He said good answer, but not the one he was looking for.

The answer was, the opposite of fear is faith. Fear is the power that whispers in our ear of consequences we're not sure we can survive, while faith is the belief we can always get back up again. Faith conquers fear because it takes away fear's power to end us. Or our dreams.

My Sunday school teacher likes to quote John Ortberg when we talk about fear. Here's a Biblical fact, and even if you're more scared of Christians than you are of the bogeyman (or maybe to you we ARE the bogeyman, whichever), it's still kind of cool. There are 366 mentions of fear (and suggestions for combating it) in the Bible, one for every day of the year, and then an extra, for that really bad day . . . like when the very first Full request you ever got comes back as a No.

Personal Note: When I was about four years old my mother put out a dish of milk for our cat, Cherry Kitty (ironically a straight black and white mix), during a very hot summer. Afraid the milk would spoil and make Cherry sick, I put the dish in the fridge . . . but then Cherry couldn't get to it, so what to do?

Four hours later I remember I'd left the cat in the fridge as well. Because I'd put her in to be close to the milk. That I didn't want spoiling.

The cat turned out fine and in a grand example of Nature stumping me once again, after that I was just about the ONLY person she wouldn't bite or scratch.

So kids, just proof we all do stupid, crazy crap and it can always turn out okay. Don't let it get you down.

Hi, my name is Amethyst and I am writing my first novel series, collectively (tentatively?)known as The Guardian Trilogy. If you've been following along you know I am on the final 'hand it off to smarter people than me' polish of Silver, the first novel, and have just begun the first draft of book two (so far I think I'm following all the advice).

But! While I'm not a linear thinker (at all) I am a linear plotter, which just means I can't plan these things out of order. I can't do as some people do and write the last bits first or write the last book second or whatever. I write the first book. I edit the first book. I write the second book, etc. And I plot that way. When I wrote the first book I wasn't entirely sure what would happen in the second book and even less in the third. I mean, I had some ideas, I wasn't going blind, but nothing so organized as a proper outline or anything. Even my concept of 'outline' is a fuzzy, blotchy, sometimes-bulleted page of factoids, and that works for me, but it isn't particularly mainstream.

So! How excited was I this past week when first I woke up just knowing (in a very un-Nick Cage kind of way) who was doing what and whyfore in book two (commonly known as Golden), and then yesterday characters in book three (Bronze) kept whispering conclusions in my ear, tying up loose ends and basically blowing my mind (let me tell you, one of them is a real hag, too!) as Nathanael and I drove to see Transformers: Rise of the Fallen? I actually had to sit down and write a Fact Sheet/Things We Know about Bronze today to make sure I didn't lose any of it.

It's really wild just how much . . . firmer everything feels now. It's like the little plot bunnies I knew about hooked up and birthed enough other plot-bunnies to fill in all the gaps and now I know what all's going to happen, it is on like DONKEY KONG, BABY!!