Too Many Books

I'm still world building. Well typing and revising the world building stuff. I got a really great idea that makes me want to change the book. I won't. My mentor, Les Edgerton has drilled a lot of good things in my head. One of them was to write only one book at a time. I'm finding myself trying to cram a good three books into this one. I just got it down to one book recently.

I've gotten out of the habit of writing daily. Having some weirdo health things again. Of course it seems all artists have to endure some measure of suffering. This is mine. I'm not even pressed about it...much.

I haven't been reading STORY lately and I'm just getting back into reading the novels I mentioned in the last post.

Well I have to answer my body's pressing need for sleep.

Public Image, STORY

So the post I deleted was not something I want on a public blog about my writing. I've since changed my mind on some aspects of it. All I know is that I want to be encouraging and an inspiration on my blog whether I have readers or not. I don't want to come off as mean-spirited or arrogant. That's not my personality at all.

Now that that air is cleared...

I've been reading a book that was "highly recommended" way back in 2007 by a former teacher and now a mentor. It's called STORY: Substance, Structure, Style and The Principles of Screenwriting by Robert McKee. Now I'm not a screenwriter. I do intend to try it out, but not right now. I'm not that far into it since I've been marking it up with notes, reminders, and speculations, but I'm having trouble being open-minded with it.

It has really good information don't get me wrong. I just feel a little lost when he mentions movies that I've never seen. He does that a lot. I'm not a movie buff by any stretch of the imagination, so there's my dilemma. My taste in movies is a bit odd.

I thought I had more to say on this book. Hmmm. Maybe I will once I get more into it.

As for my writing, I need to take the time to really work on my ending. It's outlined. I think. I just need to flesh it out. I figure I should have the entire book crispy enough by the time May rolls around to hopefully start looking at agents. I say
hopefully because I'm currently working on typing up and tweaking some world-building things. I realize that's kind of a waste of time considering I can be working on the ending and be done by my loose deadline, and THEN do the world-building, but...well...it's fun.

Procrastination aside, I started reading a new series. Well new for me. It's called Crossroads and it's by Kate Elliot. The first one is called Spirit Gate. I like it so far. Her protagonist reminds me of mine only hers is more crude at times. I almost want to change my guy's personality somewhat, but I like him the way he is. But enough about me. She wrote the beginning to where you know (or think you know) who the "bad guy" is and I'm reading and wanting to shake the characters and yell at them to suspect the one guy. (I do this in movies incidentally, which is why I don't go to them or watch them with people who get annoyed when you yell at the screen.) I'm enjoying the book so far. I'm a little over halfway through it.

Oh and I want to explain the "highly recommended" thing up there. When I worked in a biology lab (don't ask) we used to say that to each other for things we didn't really want to do. Most of the time we were glad we did it. And I'm glad I'm reading the book.

And thus we end on a happy note.

Inspiration abounds...

While I sit here waiting for my ferret, Judah, to come out from hiding, I figured I'd post. It's been a while since my last one.

School is going as fine as it can go considering it's just the end of the second week.

My French translation class is pretty interesting. I'm hoping to translate a book of French fairy tales. I'm not sure whether or not my teacher wanted to approve our choices first, but I sent the link to him anyway. I still have yet to get the book for his class.

As for my other class...the teacher's been overseas. Last I heard, he was delayed, so class was cancelled for a second week. (Yay!) Well sort of a yay. The class is about experimental literature. I have no idea what that's about. What I looked up only told me about the authors who are considered experimental. There was no definition. Now I have mad search engine skillz, but I'm not sure the so-called experts can define it or if they can, they can't agree on a defintion.

Reminds me of language in respect to linguistics, but you don't want to get me started on that. It rocks my socks, but I'm a nerd like that.

Just wanted to update about skool first.

Now onto the title. Inspiration!

I know books will ruin my sword eye, but I've been reading them again. I'm addicted. So here are the books I'm into right now:

Kate Elliot: Crown of Stars series
Erin Kellison: Shadowman series (not sure if that's the right title though)
N.K. Jemison: Inheritance series
Nnedi Okorafor: Who Fears Death
George R.R. Martin: A Song of Ice and Fire series
John Scalzi: Old Man's War (I don't know what this series is called either)
Christopher Moore: A Dirty Job

Okay, so the last two seem out of place. My dad insisted that I read John Scalzi. I did so to humor him and now I'm annoyed with my dad for being a slow reader so I can borrow book two. Christopher Moore is just plain silly and I love it. Anyone who can make a book about death cause belly laughs so strong, you get cramp is all right in my book.

Basically all of these books are inspiring me and have inspired me at some point. I actually posted on N.K. Jemison's Facebook wall after finishing her first book. I started reading it earlier this week when I couldn't sleep. Pretty soon I was fighting sleep to keep reading it. I finished it the next day. Anyway, I wrote to her that the book helped me stitch up a plot hole at the end of my book and told her thanks.

Any time art, be it a painting, spoken word, some poetry, movies, anime, video games, TV shows, and, of course, books, help me get through something in my book or make me want to write, I'm an automatic fan.

Well no. I won't say that. I read one book that had so many grammatical errors, that I had to write just to get the errors out of my head. Now I'm no longer a member of the Grammar Police--they fired me for saying things like 'gooder' and writing 'skool' and 'skillz'--but some things are just unforgivable in a published book. I can't remember all of the errors, but one was getting 'road' and 'rode' mixed up. They meant 'rode' in this case. After recovering from being violently blasted out of the story, I stared at it in shock for a moment or two and tried to keep reading. Then I found like three more instances of homophone chaos. All within the same two pages. I think the author or editor (I suspect they were the same person as the book was self-published) just threw in the towel or did the editing with a fifth of scotch nearby. Needless to say, I stopped reading and shudder to look back.

But I was talking about inspiration. I recently saw Tangled at the cinema. I'd been asking and asking to see it and finally got the chance. I was nearly reduced to finding a bootleg...What? Like you don't do it. And trust me, Disney is not missing any meals or bills. Another tangent aside, I loved the movie. I didn't care for the sunshine and kittens ending, but it is Disney.

I noticed a lot of good things in the movie...from my limited, biased writer "expertise" that is. Spoilers, yo.

-It took place around a major event. In this case, Rapunzel's birthday
-She chose to rebel against her mother's wishes that she stay in her tower
-She went from her place of familiarity to a new place entirely
-She matures and begins to take charge
-Her new world is shattered. Back to the now unwelcome familiarity
-She realizes who she really is and fights to take back her freedom.

Okay I mentioned that the ending was sunshine and kittens (and it still is) but there actually was a win and a loss. Her hair was magical. It could heal people and make them young. If her hair was cut, it was useless. Well...her hair got cut. That was a loss. The win is that she lived happily ever after. :P

What I didn't care for, aside from the fact that she NEVER wore shoes...I mean seriously. They eventually got to the kingdom. Somebody had to sell some shoes. If they can buy food and lanterns, they can buy some shoes, dammit. I can't imagine walking around forests, on rocks, and wood all barefoot. Mind you, she'd never been outside her tower so it's not like she had callouses or something. Her feet should've been all bloody and blistered. Nope. Sweet l'il tootsies the whole time. I guess blood and blisters isn't every Disney.

Yeah, tangent. So her healing hair was crucial to the plot. When her boo got stabbed, she went to heal him and he cut her hair. (Must've been a sharp knife) so he dies and she's holding him and crying. I guess her eyelashes were still magical because when she cried and the tear dropped on his face, he was magically healed.

Now I'm a closet cynical romantic, so that made me roll my eyes, blow a raspberry, and go "Aww." But seriously. If true love could raise the dead, I'm not sure how the world would be.

So yes, in my circular, incoherent explanation, the movie inspired me. I still love it despite the things that bug me about it.

And that being all said and done, I need to work on my thesis, which isn't so bad now that I've started it. I'd rather work on my book, which is bugging me because I still have to rewrite it with all the loose ends tied. So the thesis is actually easier believe it or not.

Long post. Sorry. And if you TL;DR'd...don't tell me.

School

You know...I love school. I love learning. It just annoys me that it gets in the way of writing. I could have the most severe case of writer's constipation (I don't believe in writer's block. I'm never out of ideas. They just need a little motivation to get moving out to the page.) and the moment I have homework or a major project...or my thesis...that I haven't started. At all. Ahem.

I could have the most severe case of writer's constipation, but the moment I have to actually do something for school, the only thing on my mind is writing.

Guess what starts tomorrow? Oh and I already have fifty pages to read. In French. And then I have to translate them. That's not due tomorrow. I think it's due on the 24th. Then I have to find a piece of experimental literature. I'm not really sure what that means exactly since I haven't checked my email to get the syllabus.

Well...here's to a new semester.

I hope I get to write.

Back from outer space

I haven't been here since last year.

Book progress is as follows:

-Most loose ends are tied
-What isn't tied is being tied


Tying what's left involves answering an extensive list of questions. Printed with very little text shrinking and space shrinking, it's thrity-six pages. Generally because each question has at least two or more within it that need answering. The good thing is that it forces me to still be creative as I answer, so it's still technically writing. I think. Another good thing is that a lot of questions repeat. A whole lot. I think with everything I cross off that didn't apply or were repeats it's about thirty-five questions. Maybe thirty-four.

Either way, I'm having some marginal fun working on it. I'll also be honest and admit that I have no idea where I left off in the revision I'd been working on while tying the loose ends I could tie.

One thing that's giving me the blues (and alternative, jazz, pop, rock, metal, gospel, country-western, punk, R&B, and bluegrass) is my ending chapters. There's this semi-anti-climatic scene that makes me want to scream until I lose my voice. It's hard for ME to suspend disbelief and when you call bullshit on your own writing, that's saying something. So here I am about ready to cut that part out entirely.

Wow. Did I just solve the problem? But if I cut it out, what do I do with the ending chapters then? Hmmm.

Two steps forward. Three steps back.

Well it's not the first time that's happened.

Lo, life stirs...

So my 10/10/10 goal has some and passed. Needless to say, it didn't work out. Events out of my control happened. Then I had fun with some odd illnesses. School. Life. Procrastination. Just tons of things happened to prevent me from actually doing the synopsis and looking at agents. Then there was a death in the family. I also have a job now. Third shift.

But failing to do look at agents and do the synopsis only ended up as a learning experience, which is how I view failure anyway. I don't think I've ever seen it as a bad thing. More like a mirror, but moving on.

Since I had to sit on my precious baby, I went through and found some glaring errors. Weird stuff like sentences I was clearly trying to edit and somehow got distracted, so the sentence was half written and entire sections made no sense. I went through the book, making sure it all made sense. Just when I thought I was good, I met an author doing a book signing last weekend and saw that, while he had a series, each book stood alone. When I asked how he managed to pull that off, he said to refer to past events very briefly. My brain ran with that. So here's what I came up with for my series:

-Tie up as many loose ends as you can
-Protagonist's story-worthy problem should be resolved
-The surface problem (plot, as I understand it) should be resolved
-Each character should show growth and change if they're important enough
-Referring to past books can be like an inside joke and every loves being included in those
-New story-worthy problems and surface problems in each book
-No more than two protagonists (I tend to want everyone to be a protagonist)
-The series plot is always looming.

So that's what's working for me at the moment. Not sure if it's a correct way of going about making each book in a series stand alone, but it seems to be a logical course of action from what I've observed in the other series...es...s...how do you make 'series' plural? Or would it be serials? Moving on...that's what I've seen in the others I've read.

Related to other series and protagonists, I beginning to see that Fantasy and Sci-fi are allowed more...rope...to play with so-called established rules. Instead of one protagonist, George R. R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire series has...quite a few. More than I can count at the moment. I know there are at least ten in each book. What he does it goes to the characters who are moving the plot forward. Each character has their own chapter and they all relate to whatever major plot point going on where that character happens to be. Or if they're in the same place, the shift involves an event that only that character can describe. Each book stands alone...or will when he finishes the series. Patiently waiting. :)

Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman do the same in the Dragonlance Chronicles and Legends. Instead of a new chapter, they jump in and out of heads easily. And it's not hard (at least not for me) to sense the change. They did eventually split the party into bite-sized pieces, but overall, the whole was reached. Each book stands alone.

Kate Elliot does a combination of Martin and Weis and Hickman. She jumps in and out of heads, but not to the degree that W+H do it and instead of chapters devoted only to a character, she'll use a line break when she switches. Again, each book stands alone.

At the other end of the spectrum, you have Erin Kellison and J.K. Rowling. They generally stick with their protagonists. Every once in awhile, you see events from a different point of view. I think Stephen King's Dark Tower series falls here too, but I haven't finished that series yet and I need to get Kellison's second book now that I'm thinking about it. In all three cases mentioned above, the books stand alone.

So that's what I'm currently going from. I read on websites and in writing books and hear in classes all the time to read in your genre. Granted I'm pretty picky on what I read.

Looking all of these, I have to think I'm doing something right in revising one last time. I hope. Yes, I realize this is still a form of procrastination, but at least it's more likely to help the book get published. Rather than say...changing a character's name, which I did yesterday incidentally.

Some of the terms I used above, 'story-worthy problem, surface problem' come from a teacher of mine, Les Edgerton.

The incoherence comes from working third shift.

Synopsis

I have to wonder if writing the synopsis is one way to help writers (especially beginning or novice ones) figure out where to trim the fat. It's going surprisingly well. Like lifting my eyebrow and looking at it askance well. It also makes me wonder, for my book specifically, if I should just go on and combine the second book with this one since there are some loose ends that need tying. As a reader, it'd make me wonder why certain characters and scenes were in the book if they don't get properly explained. At the same time, I wonder if it's my old nemesis, Fear, trying to keep me from moving forward with the book.

I'll put it this way. If the book gets rejected because of the loose ends, then I'll just go on and combine books. If it gets rejected for other things, I'll make the changes needed and keep sending it out. There's no sense in being scared of rejection. I'm sure they'll always sting, but the best writers still get rejections...unless they're a brand name. You know, authors who could sign a napkin in a diner and sell a million copies.

At any rate, I'll work more on the synopsis now.