So about that NaNoWriMo novel…

Sorry for not being around. University is evil, etc.

I just finished my first edit of Deathwitch. It’s not as bad as I expected for having written it in less than a month. In fact, I’d wager it’s in better shape than Coldfire, which I’ve been working on for over four years (two of which were spent on the first draft). I guess it’s a sign I really have grown as a writer since opening that first Word document at fifteen years old and plunging into the madness. It also might mean I should spend more time planning novels before writing like I did with Deathwitch, while Coldfire was a mixed breed of pantsing and plotting a few chapters in advance.

I’m hoping to beat Deathwitch into shape and send it in to the Hot Key Books Young Writers Prize. I’m not sure how well it will do because the publisher is British and Deathwitch better suits an American audience (cheerleaders, anyone?), but it can’t hurt to give it a shot. I’d originally wanted to try with Coldfire but since I’m only a few chapters into the complete rewrite, that’s not really feasible. If I don’t win (and I probably won’t), maybe I can send Coldfire in next year if the prize is running and I don’t have a publishing contract. I doubt I’ll have a publishing contract since I first have to finish the book, get it accepted by an agent (which can take months or years) and then accepted by a publishing house. I have a feeling I’ll have plenty of time to wait it out for next year if I don’t win this time round.

Besides, what’s the worst that could happen? I get knocked out in the first round. That won’t kill me

YA Highway RTW: Who Do You Love?

This week’s YA Highway Road Trip Wednesday poses this question: Who has helped you on your reading/writing/publishing journey?

Be warned, ahead lie Harry Potter spoilers.

I’m probably going to miss people out here, but here goes anyway. To give an accurate answer to this question, I have to travel back more than ten years to creative writing classes taken as part of a gifted students program, because I’m awesome like that. I don’t remember much of the classes, but they did encourage to write me my first stories about Princess Flower and her unicorn called Rosie, who was later amended to Buttercup because I thought a golden unicorn was prettier than a pink one at that particular point in time.

After those classes ended, the next major influence in my writing is J.K. Rowling. I give Jo a lot of love on this blog, but let me rehash how she changed my life. Before Harry Potter, I read for school because it was expected of me, but all the books SUCKED. I’m not even kidding. Schools can have the worst taste in books sometimes, as I would continue to discover through the remainder of primary school and the entirety of my high school education. The first Harry Potter movie came out about eleven years ago and I immediately turned to the books upon leaving the movie theatre. My first lengthy works of fiction were Harry Potter fanfics where I was particularly inspired by Sirius’ death at the end of book five. Without J.K. Rowling’s wondrous books, I might not even be writing, or reading, or blogging. I would have never started writing Coldfire.

On the topic of fanfiction, some of my greatest helpers were moderators from the MuggleNet fanfiction website. This particular website has a set of guidelines fics have to satisfy to be displayed on the site, like decent grammar and plausible scenarios (of course “plausible” requirements depended on the section the fic belonged in). I distinctly remember one of the moderators teaching me how to write dialogue in a rejection email when I was twelve or thirteen. These moderators helped me improve my writing greatly. I no longer write Harry Potter fanfic and I never actually completed one, but I look back on it fondly, even though at the time the rejections were a little upsetting.

Closer to home, my parents have always encouraged my writing and supported me. A number of my friends were interested in my writing and the guy who later became my current boyfriend often let me use him as a sounding board for ideas. He was, and still is, a great audience and incredibly encouraging. I’m incredibly lucky to have all these people in my life who are so supportive, and I am also grateful for the strangers on the internet who helped me hone my craft and also for the gift that J.K. Rowling brought into the world.

Basically I’m just throwing out love to anybody who said nice (or sometimes no-so-nice but still helpful) things about my writing and have helped me get to where I am now, and to the people who continue to help me on my writing journey. To anyone who is reading this, I love you too. Feel free to share your own answer to the question in the comments here or on the YA Highway blog.

A Better Interpretation of “Write What You Know”

In the previous post, I wrote about the problem of taking “write what you know” literally and what you can do instead.

There is another interpretation that can help writing feel more visceral and realistic. “Write what you know” is practically useless when it comes to cold hard facts, but can be a useful tool if applied to our emotional experiences. Bear with me; I’ll try to stop this from becoming too wishy-washy. Remember that feeling of disappointment when you were passed over for an award or a promotion or a raise? How about when you discovered someone you liked already had a partner? How exactly did that feel? Was it a feeling of free fall or a weight in your stomach or a tightness in your throat or a heaviness in your limbs? Physical cues for emotions can be incredibly useful in fiction.

Let’s see an example of this in action. I will give you two (probably mediocre but hopefully you get the idea) pieces of text describing the same emotion:

He felt sad.

Next one:

His legs collapsed, sending him sprawling to the floor. A half-swallowed gasp squeezed its way out of his painfully tight throat.

The first one tells us very little. The second one, within the context of a story, tells us much more about the character himself, how he physically reacts to sadness. There are also different levels of sadness, which the first example doesn’t capture. The second one, however, tells us this is an extremely potent form. The first guy could just be sad there were no apples left at the supermarket, while the second guy could have just lost a loved one. Paying attention to our reactions to emotions is the best possible interpretation of “write what you know”. Watching other people can also help, but I’d advise you not to do this in, shall we say, socially unacceptable scenarios.

Bad novels (although readers have different interpretations of what is a bad novel) are often perceived to be so because they feel false to the reader. Something is off. The author doesn’t appear to have a clear grasp on human behaviour or emotion. This can happen if the characters don’t quite react realistically to what is being thrown at them, and is often a result of the author not paying enough attention to the nuances of how mind and matter interact to create emotion. We all run into this problem at some time or another with our own writing. It can be hard to perfectly capture how a character is feeling in a given moment. I suck at it myself.

Interpreting “write what you know” as an invitation to incorporate our own emotional experiences into our writing is far more helpful than taking the advice to mean knowledge of facts which, while important, generally aren’t that difficult to find. Emotional experience, however, when incorporated into a story, can make even the most outlandish tale feel real to the reader.

The Myth of “Write What You Know”

This post is primarily for less experienced writers who feel restricted by advice such as “write what you know”. This is one of the most common pieces of advice given to new writers. On the surface, it seems like a fairly logical and innocuous suggestion, but at the same time it can be restrictive. The problem doesn’t quite lie with the advice, but in the way many writers interpret it. A writer just starting out might have some grand ideas (mine were so ridiculously grand that I’m still trying to make them work four years later), but be put off by their lack of knowledge on a particular subject.

To use me as an example, my baby project, Coldfire, is a mess of former drug addicts, bureaucracy, possibly overused weapons and various random places to which I have never been. I don’t know much of anything on these subjects. If I had taken the “write what you know” advice literally, I would have just dumped the idea a long time ago and moved onto writing about white middle-class teenage girls in Australian suburbia. Yawn.

Here’s a better idea: instead of constraining yourself to a limited spectrum of experience, research what you don’t know. Hell, if you’re a speculative fiction (supernatural/horror/science fiction/fantasy/dystopian/etc.) writer, you can make some of it up. As many writers before me have said, advice should not be restrictive. If you feel limited by a specific piece of advice, toss it and find something better to put in its place.

In the next post, I will cover another interpretation of “write what you know”.

University is Eating My Life

I’m not going to be one of those lazy people who insists they have absolutely no time to write (because that’s hardly ever true of anyone), but I’m definitely feeling the squeeze.While I’m loving university (or college for my American readers), it’s mentally exhausting at times and the assignments tend to all come at once. I’m about to start my fifth week and have already had a test in Italian, two assignments due in the same week for Academic Writing and Literature respectively, and have an oral presentation due for Classical Mythology this coming Thursday as well as a written component due the same week. I’m also, possibly unwisely, taking part in the university’s choral society and, less unwisely, the creative writers’ club.

I know I’m at risk of sounding like an ungrateful white girl who doesn’t understand her privilege in going to university in the first place, but the truth is the workload is quite heavy (although, admittedly, not as heavy as it could be) and most of my time at home involves either food, homework, sleep or being a vegetable in front of the TV and computer. I plan to rectify this, but my writing is definitely going at a slower pace than before. I have not neglected the internet entirely, but you guys may see less of me while I’m trying to get my head on straight. Mid-semester break is coming up and I fully intend to get some crap done.

For the rest of the time, however, I’m going to look into techniques to increase my productivity, since writing is not the only thing showing the strain; I’ve also started to neglect my singing practise. I need to sort myself out soon, or I will collapse in a heap. Thanks for reading this ramble, which offered very little useful information.

So, in a last-ditch attempt to make this post useful, I shall ask a question: What techniques do you use to get writing (or anything) done when your time is limited?

What Patterns Do You See In Your Writing?

In our writing we often recognise patterns, be they repeated language or similar types of scenes that keep cropping up. In the underwater scene of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, J.K. Rowling uses the word weed once every paragraph (with a few exceptions, but it averages out). Most people know she is also incredibly fond of adverbs (see what I did there?) and Hermione wouldn’t be Hermione if she wasn’t telling the boys off for doing something she doesn’t approve of. Don’t mind all the Harry Potter references. I just started rereading the series.

Anyway, I’ve found a few common elements in my own work, which I shall present in a list:

• Characters drinking coffee This one happens all the time. All four main characters in Coldfire drink it religiously, although they do drink other stuff on occasion. I don’t even like coffee myself.
• Characters having trouble sleeping Maybe this has something to do with my own messed-up sleeping patterns, but I have a lot of characters who don’t sleep very well. For my protagonist of Coldfire, Darian, it’s a combination of recurring nightmares and the occasional paranoia.
• Conversations held during mealtimes All the time. Eating is generally a rather sedentary activity, so it can be useful for important dialogues but I overuse it.
• Dead parents I don’t even have an explanation for this one. A lot of my characters are orphans, or believe themselves to be.
• I have an affinity for adverbs I’m trying to cut down, but some adverbs are JUST. SO. BEAUTIFUL.
• Lots of dialogue Enough said. My characters are very chatty.
• Sadistic villains I really need to work on humanising my villains and antagonists. Some of them are just too evil to be realistic.

So what about you guys? What patterns do you see cropping up in your writing?

In Which I Come Up With Stupid Book Titles

I’m thinking about giving Coldfire a new title. Quite simply, I’m at a loss… so I took a leaf out of J.K. Rowling’s book and messed around with her favoured title format. Stupidity ensued.

Darian Talker and the Evil Scroll Thing That Makes Werewolves Go Gaga, and Can Control Human Minds Once the Bad Guys Find the Second Piece

Darian Talker and the Mysterious Illness which is Actually the Result of a Poison He Accidentally Discovered When He Was Ten

Darian Talker and the Flaming Pits of Hell

Darian Talker and His New Assassin Friends (Also Finding that Person He Thought Died at the End of the Previous Book)

Darian Talker and GIANT PEOPLE ARE COMING FROM THE SKY TO KILL US ALL

Some days I have serious things to say; other days I mash words together in seemingly random combinations to see what new horrors I can concoct. Today is most likely the latter.

Who is Your Character When Nobody’s Watching?

I’m sure it comes as no surprise that a person’s public face is not the same as who they are in private. The same should hold true for characters in fiction. Merciless crime-fighters are loving parents and spouses when in the comfort of their own homes. The bubbly socialite may prefer to curl up on the couch with a glass of red and a movie when they’re not out making friends with strangers. Often the starkest contrast between the public and private spheres (to borrow the terms from last year’s History class) is when a character is alone with his or her love interest.

A usually loud and brash character may become quiet and gentle, or a closed-off character may become cuddly and affectionate. I myself am a bit of the latter, as I’ve noticed in the past few days when with my boyfriend. The growth of a relationship in my own life has led to me thinking deeper about my characters’ relationships, how pre-existing personality traits will behave when combined with complimenting or clashing traits belonging to the love interest.

Darian, the protagonist of Coldfire (a novel which is also known as my incredibly ill-tempered yet lovable baby), is generally sarcastic and composed when around other people, but due to personal problems is rarely as controlled when alone. As his relationship with his love interest (Valora) grows, I need to think about how his private self is going to manifest when with her. As it currently stands, Darian is often not himself when around her. His sharp tongue loses its edge and he regularly feels wrong-footed. Valora is also incredibly sexual and physical while Darian is more of a thinker. Will he temper her, or will she drag him kicking and screaming out of his barbed shell?

It pays to put some thought into your character’s public and private personas, as they become more rounded and fascinating for it. Superheroes are the most extreme version of a separation between the two. Superman is brave and noble when he dons the underwear and tights, but he always the bespectacled, awkward Clark Kent during his off hours. So who is your character when nobody is watching? Who are they when the only person is watching is, quite often, the most important person in his or her life?

What is Your Most Vivid Teenage Memory?

A lot of YA fiction writers choose to write YA because of how vivid and new everything is to teenagers, how every minor letdown is the possible End of the World as We Know It. Exams will make or break you life, as will asking out that person you’ve liked for weeks. Many writers, myself included, have very defined memories of their adolescence. Tell us a particularly vivid one of yours in the comments if you like so I don’t feel like a complete fool sharing mine.

Here’s mine, originally posted on She Writes in the comments there:

I’m only just out of high school, so a lot of memories are pretty fresh for me. I was involved in every school musical for the entirety of my six years there (Australian school system). One year, when I was sixteen, our school put on a production of Beauty and the Beast. I was Cogsworth. Since I’m a rather petite female, the rented costume was slightly too big for me and I didn’t have the gut to force it into the box-like shape it was supposed to be, leaving it as a slightly squashed cowbell shape. In one particular scene I have to walk on stage with a turning key in my back. The thing was flimsy, made of cardboard covered in golden material and beads on the side. Because of my lacking height, it often fell out of the hole in my back, which had to be tied around my waist before I put the cowbell suit on over my head.

Most of the time, the turning key stayed in place well enough as long as I was careful with it. One performance, though, things didn’t go quite to plan. In this particular scene, Cogsworth is freaking out over discovering the key and is flailing around in circles trying to get a look at it while Lumiere the candlestick tries to calm him down. As I turned, as I had for a number of shows, the key popped out and clunked onto the floor. I had to improvise intense pain and put the thing back in before I could continue with the scene. Luckily, the girl playing Lumiere (we didn’t have many boys) was able to improvise with me with a bit of, “Are you all right?” Then we continued as normal.

But, of course, the key was not done with its machinations. During the final fight scene, Cogsworth screams “TALLY HO!” and starts a swordfight with two attackers. My line was a cue for all hell to break loose, essentially. Another show, after the Show of the Painful Key had occurred, I leapt forward, screaming my line (or as close to screaming as a British male played by a female can get). As I pulled my sword out from my pendulum compartment, I heard a thud and looked down to find the key had fallen out again. So I picked the thing up and used it similar to a scabbard being used to block attacks.

After that, we wrapped bubble wrap around the end of the key that the audience wasn’t supposed to see. It didn’t fall out again. Funny how one small object can cause so much trouble.

And for everyone’s amusement, here’s a picture of me as Cogsworth:

What Book Made You Want To Become A Writer?

This is a blogging prompt from Duolit, a two-person writing team who provide information about self-publishing, although a lot of their information is helpful for writers of all stripes.

I wrote a little as a kid but didn’t read a lot. Teachers just couldn’t get a handle on my tastes, which leaned more towards fantasy than the ridiculous “realistic” stories they tried to shove down my throat. I was more interested in magic and unicorns and princesses than about little boys who went on a journey to find their missing bikes. Reading and writing, while they interested me, were more of a curiosity than a real hobby. I still preferred to play elaborate make-believe games with friends rather than write the stories in my head.

And then, Harry Potter happened. The first movie came out when I was eight and I immediately turned my attention to the books. At this time, only the first four were out, but they sparked an insatiable thirst for the written word that to this day has not ceased. My mother dutifully lined up for hours on the release day of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, which was quite possibly my favourite of the books released up to that point. Harry’s struggles with a hostile learning environment, a government and media determined to discredit him, and his own psyche working against him made for a compelling story when Rowling wove in the magic.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was the book that really inspired me to write. My first lengthy works were terrible fanfictions that I wrote a few chapters in before abandoning. Keeping with the pattern of earlier years, the best parts of the story remained in my head. I just couldn’t force them onto the page. When I was about twelve, I started writing a particular fic with an original character stepping in as Harry’s love interest. I never completed the story, but I did come away from it with new knowledge and a lively character I couldn’t stop thinking about.

My brush with the Harry Potter fanfic community taught me some important aspects of writing, like how to correctly write dialogue and the importance of smooth transitioning as to not give the reader whiplash. Writing fanfiction, with the aid of a few moderators on the fanfic website I had chosen specifically for its guidelines, in essence, taught me how to write.

Later, when I was fifteen, I took that original character from my abandoned fanfiction and began to write my own story. Although I’m still working on it now (it’s the one I just had to start over), this book has me in a vice-like grip. I have to finish it, and I will. I’ve come too far to give up now.

So, that’s my story. What about yours?