Roughing it

Ah, the excitement and the anxiety of a rough draft. I'm a mess when I'm writing a rough draft, because my inner editor is constantly breathing down my neck. Fix that, it's crap, she says. I tell her to shut it and try to keep writing...but it's hard! I'm a perfectionist when it comes to my own work, right down to each sentence. If it doesn't sit right I'll rewrite it and rewrite it and rewrite it some more. Sometimes it becomes the victim of the delete button. The most difficult thing about writing a rough draft is stifling the urge to edit as I go along.

The one thing I do LOVE about writing a rough draft is the thrill of discovery. I'm not much of a planner when it comes to writing fiction. I usually get an idea and dive in and start writing. Sure, I'll have a basic idea where I want it to go. I'll know who my main characters are, plop them in a compromising situation and make them find their way out. But I don't really know for sure how it will turn out. I work out all the kinks along the way and sometimes the things I thought would happen end up not happening at all.

Then, when I'm away from my writing, I'll daydream about my characters. (Did I mention I love daydreaming? Hey, it beats the monotony of my job, and I might as well put my brain to good use...)  I'll imagine what their personalities are and how they'd react in certain situations. They'll act out a scene in my head and get me excited about  typing the words into my computer.

Then words flow into my computer keyboard as fast as my fingers can type them and my inner editor is waiting on my shoulder, saying nope, nope, that's not what you envisioned. She'll tell me I suck and that maybe I should just go have a glass of wine and zone out in front of the television and/or read through some crazy internet message boards. So I cover her mouth with duct tape and lock her in a closet. (No, she's not a real person !)

And the cycle continues until that first draft is finished... 

Dialogue-ing

Dialogue has always been one of my stronger points in fiction writing. (wow, that sounded really conceited...) I like to keep it as organic as possible (within reason, of course), and it's been easy, because my stories tend to take place in modern American settings. Hells yeah, I know how people talk!! So as I delve into writing a fantasy type piece, this is in the back of my mind: how much will I need to differentiate/change the language without the dialogue coming across as stiff and unnatural?

So far, in the rough draft, I'm keeping it informal as usual for most of the characters, just omitting modern day expressions and words. I mean, a girl living in an alternative magical world is unlikely to use the word douchebag. Right? Right. :P I think this will work fine. I suppose I could always tweak things that don't sound good.

Then there will be a point where the girl travels to 'our world'. She may be human, but because she was raised in the magical otherworld, that life is all she knows. So imagine when she steps out into one of our modern day cities. I will then have the opportunity to contrast the dialects and expose her to modern day slang (as well as modern day inventions and conveniences), which will be just a bit confusing to her. Poor, sheltered girl.

 

Happy Fourth!

Been a pretty low key kind of day for me. Too hot! It makes me feel lazy. Ah well. I did get some writing done, though. It's funny, I've been driving myself nuts trying to crank out the first draft of RM, but my heart hasn't been in it it lately. I mean, book one pretty much wrote itself. This one, not so much. I wondered if maybe I needed to step away from the characters for a while. So I started a new project in the mean time, something to take the pressure off so I can set Reaper Madness aside and look at it with fresh eyes.

This one is actually an idea I came up with a long time ago, but hadn't bothered with it because I felt like everyone was writing about this type of thing. But you know what? Fark it. I'm writing it anyway. Worst case scenario I either don't finish it or I do and it sucks. So bring it on...

 It starts like this: Meet Flora, an eighteen-year-old human girl who was taken by a changeling as an infant and adopted by a fae healer woman named Brighid. She ventures into the forest to collect medicinal plants when she happens upon a handsome young man with gaping wounds all over his abdomen who is still alive, but unconscious. She drags him back home and heals him... 

Of course there's much more to it than that, but I'm keeping the summary under wraps for now. It's completely unrelated to my other works. Instead of paranormal type stuff it's more fantasy type stuff: changelings, wyvern, tuatha de danaan, other realms...all that.  Not sure if it will be novel or novella material yet--yup, that's that panster in me talking--but so far I'm enjoying the ride. Cranked out 3K words in an afternoon without batting an eyelash, so I'd say it's a good start.

I'll Rearrange Your Face!

I've noticed that my characters tend to do a lot of grinning and eyebrow raising and eye-narrowing and good old generic frowning. What gives? On one hand, I don't think it's always a bad thing. I mean, after all, people do these things in real life. And if I'm trying to give life to a figment of my imagination, they need to be doing something real people actually do. But still, how many grins are too many? Will they get stuck there? Are they just really happy people? Or is it just an easy, convenient action to fixate on? Sigh.

 File under: the things that are running through my mind as I read through the first few pages of my current rough draft.

Going to Hell? Let me Draw you a Map...

This isn't something that I've thought too much about in the past, because the majority of my writing takes place in the real world. The book I'm currently querying takes place in Providence, Rhode Island. I lived there for four years (college) and still visit frequently, so it is a very familiar place to me. In my story, I used a combination of real places and fictionalized businesses.

My current WIP is a bit different. It takes place in the 'Underworld', which is a mishmash of various mythologies, religions and beliefs about the afterlife/what happens after death. I've approached it as a geographical place that exists on a different plane from our own and twisted some of the traditional beliefs. It is an alternate life from the one lived on earth.

 Purgatory, for example, is the 'Hub' of the Underworld. It is a crossroads, the place where souls first arrive. Death, the deity responsible to bringing souls to the afterlife, has his headquarters there. There is not a single Grim Reaper, it is a profession and there are many of them. All reapers settle in Purgatory.

 Heaven and Hell are the other 'main' locations, and they contain various kingdoms, cities, landmarks-- like Hades or Valhalla.  I'd also like to incorporate mythological creatures and deities as characters. Charon, for example, ferries two of the characters down the river Lethe in exchange for a share in the goods they're smuggling in from earth.

Putting it all together is a daunting task, to say the least. I want to make it my own, and mold the mythologies to fit my story, but I also want readers to pull something familiar from it. I'm working on something that really interests me--I've always been fascinated by mythology, folk tales, and everything in between. At the same time, it has really taken me out of my comfort zone and writing has been slow. It will be interesting to see where this leads...

Labels, genres, blah blah blah

As I finish tightening and tweaking my novel, I am also trying to figure out who to target when I submit. Reading through submission guidelines for various agents and adhering to them is a project in itself. THIS is the one part I didn't miss in the whole process. I HATE self promotion! It feels icky (<--I know, genius, right?) and goes against everything in my nature. Worse yet, my story doesn't really fit into a specific genre.

On my crit site, Scribophile, I have it tagged as "paranormal romance".A love story is central, but I'd hesitate to call it a romance. The story is more about the MC and how this 'love' has affected her life...and death...and the choices she's made. And the ending isn't quite happily ever after, either. It seems almost too dark for your typical romance...the paranormal kind or not.

Paranormal? Well, yeah. MC dies, she meets a grim reaper, hangs out as a ghost for a while,then she comes back as a zombie. Lots of paranormal stuff going on. But that's not really a 'genre'.

Zombies? Ghosts? Doesn't that make it horror?! Hmmm...I don't know? It's not really scary, and it's not really meant to be scary. It's a little morbid. The humor is dark and ironic and sometimes just silly. But scary? I think if you compared it to a zombie movie 'tone-wise'  it would be more 'Zombieland' than 'Night of the Living Dead'. And I'm not sure I'd call that horror.

Of course, while there is a sense of humor to it, the entire book isn't funny. There are lots of dramatic scenes. Tough choices. Inner reflections. You know, serious stuff.

So I'm left wondering...do I just NOT categorize it and hope for the best? I can't think of an author I've read that I could compare it to as being similiar (though that is kind of a no-no in pitching, but I think it would be helpful to figure out where a piece fits). Ah well...my brain is fried.

You gotta wonder if there's something wrong

Just poking around my Netflix account. These are the categories that showed up on the home page:

1. Scary supernatural TV series
2. Raunchy dysfunctional animated Family TV Series
3. Dark suspenseful ghost-story movies
4. Cult serial killer horror movies
5. Gory supernatural horror movies
6. Critically acclaimed gory horror movies
7. Violent revenge movies based on a book

So...yeah.