Sixty Thousand Words

Like every Wednesday, we took a family trip to our local comic store to pick up this week's offerings from my husband's pull list.  The guys that work there greet us with "Hello, Rahamans!" and "How's the littlest Rahaman?"  They know that instead of following characters, my husband follows creative teams, like Matt Fraction and Kieron Gillen and Nick Spencer.  They know I was burned getting too involved in the X-Men during the 90s and then reading too much manga to fill the Fullmetal Alchemist shaped hole in my heart, and so they don't seem to mind that I never buy anything.

"Do you want paper or plastic?" James asked.

My husband said, "We really like the new paper bags you've got."  They're very nice bags.  Plain brown paper and just the right size to fit too many comic books. 

Then, because my husband likes to brag: "Carolyn's using one to hold the manuscript for her novel."

I actually need a new one, because mine has a tear in it, I've been carrying it around for so long.

"Oh really?" James asked.  "How long's your novel?" 

I appreciated this question, because it's kind of like we were still talking about the paper bags and how much paper could fit in one.  This was a professional question about packaging material instead of asking about my novel.  "Only sixty thousand words right now."

He scoffed.  "Only sixty thousand."

I didn't tell him the second draft would probably double, then the third would be something manageable, or that it was sixty thousand words of garbage that I regularly want to light on fire, amazing paper bag and all.

Sam slipped into the conversation. "You should dedicate it to us, since we gave you the bag that you use to carry it around."

"You'll be in the acknowledgements for sure."

My husband had that anxious bouncing, his mouth open like he wanted to say more about my novel or wanted me to take a more active part in this conversation.  Make friends.  Talk about my interests.  Stuff that I assume those mysterious normal people do.  But no.  The conversation was over and I shuffled him and the stroller out of the store before anyone could ask, "What's it about?"

Because then I'd have two choices then.  I'd either have to say something vague and by extension boring.  "There's a dog?  There's this magician guy, who's under a curse that makes him have anger management issues.  He brings people back to life?  He's got a not-girlfriend.  She's a monster.  And then there's a second dog.  And a serial killer."  Or, I'd have to tell the truth. "I don't know.  It's a first draft.  I'm still feeling it out."

Which is kind of like admitting what I didn't say earlier: I have sixty thousand words, but they're garbage.  Someday it'll be better, but now it's a mess without definite themes or purpose.  And there's no way I've thought about my pitch enough to express succinctly what it's about.

This week's reading gave me some vocabulary to think about this interaction (or lack of interaction).  Since my story is still in the fetal stages, I have the door closed and I don't want to talk about it.  In the next draft, I'm going to bring out the themes and find my story's purpose.  I'm going to find what it's about.

On Writing Review

We haven't seen a book about writing in a while on here, so this week's book is On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King.

The first half of the book is, indeed, a memoir of Stephen King's life as it relates to the writer he became.  It's interesting and his anecdotes are sometimes funny, but the kicker is that he's showing how he got to where he is, because that's what he knows how to explain.  How you get there may be different.  The second half is what he calls "a toolbox" of writing.  It goes from nuts and bolts like vocabulary, grammar, and a hatred for adverbs to theme and symbolism to process.  

The way it's presented works well because not only is each piece of advice put in an anecdote, but the whole thing is couched in this idea from the introduction of "where do I get off talking about writing?"  He admits that even though he hates adverbs, they still crop up in his work and he shows that successful, beloved writers hit a lot of his pet peeves that he just said to never do, and yet they are still successful, beloved authors.  It worked for me because I got it that this is what works for him, and I can take it or leave it.  I feel assured that I'm not going to be forever judged by Stephen King for not doing things his way.  And why would I even care about that?  I shouldn't care about that.  Good thing this bypassed the irrationally defensive and easily bruised part of my brain. 

His big take away is to be a writer you have to read a lot and write a lot.  "If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write."  You may notice, I completely embrace this idea.  I learn what I like, what I don't like, and what I need to stop doing by reading, by observing the language and thinking critically.  So, yes, I am 100% on board with this.  In fact, I think I'm going to change the tag since I've pretty much settled on only talking about books and not movies and TV shows and comics.

The other key point that stuck out to me was about the first draft, the second draft, and moving from one to the next.  This is probably because I just finished the first draft of the Firebird story and I've just started the long process of editing it.  I tried Anne Lamont's idea and wrote the most terrible first draft in existence.  I'm going to clean it up, remold it, and the second (or third) draft will be ready for a few readers and some good, hard outside criticism.  Then another draft before I even start thinking about it being good to go.

King says a lot of things that almost match up with this.  He says you should write your first draft with the door shut.   That means you don't think about what everyone will say, or whether your research is accurate.  You close the door, download your story from your brain onto paper, and make yourself a first draft.  He talks a lot during this about "uncovering the fossil" of the story, or finding it as you go, meaning he's of the school of thought that you never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip.  He also says you shouldn't tell anyone about your story during this time, because you don't need anyone else's opinion.

This sounds a lot like Lamont's shitty first draft.  Don't worry about it, just get it down.  However, King then says that when you're done with that draft, it's time to open the door and let a few select readers have a go at it.  And that's where the methods differ, because there's no way I'd let someone read this terrible draft until I've gone through it.  My door is still shut, thanks.  And that's the real difference here.  It sounds like King only writes two or three drafts, so his process is condensed.  But, if I adjust this advice in my head, I can replace "third draft" every time he says "second draft" and it works for me.

Aside from the input of readers and whatever research needs to be done, King also gives the advice that the second draft should be 10% shorter than the first.  When you're writing the second draft, you can really hone in on the story and remove all the excess flailing in the beginning that he wrote not knowing where the story was headed.  (I did this decimation with my dragon book.  It worked.)  He also says that when you read through your first draft, themes will start popping out.  The second draft is for leaning into those themes and making them clearer.  He advises not to write your first draft with those themes in mind, but rather to write and then see what comes out.  That's some quality advice.  I have a list on the back of the first page on my first draft with a list of things that need to come through more.  When I heard this explanation, I thought, "Oh.  That's what I'm doing."

***

Next week: The Darkest Part of the Forest by Holly Black

Dust Review

This week's book is the final installment of Hugh Howey's Silo series: Dust.  (For a refresher, here's my review of Wool, and Shift.)  This review's going to have spoilers for Wool and Shift.  No way around it.

This book deals with the aftermath of the events from the last two books.  Things looked hopeful at the end of both of those stories, but when the afterglow fades, things aren't as great as they seemed and everything goes horribly wrong.  Juliette's return from outside and announcement that there are other silos is met with push back.  The silo doesn't trust her and fears the changes she brings.  Uniting silos 17 and 18 causes more problems than it solves when Jimmy and the kids have trouble integrating.  And meanwhile, Donald and Charlotte run into trouble trying to disrupt the program from the inside when security starts to put the pieces together.

Like the first installment, and unlike the second book, this one ramped the action back up to thrilling levels.  It might have even surpassed Wool in places, because the stakes where higher.  Everything goes to hell in a hand basket, and it's gripping.

Part of this is that the characterization was so well done.  I complained about characterization in the second book, but the series redeemed it self here.  During action scenes and catastrophes, the focus is zoomed in so emotional reactions took center stage.  It humanized those situations, made them relatable despite how they later felt confusing and nonsensical.  People screamed and raged, they ran and shoved and sobbed, and the utter chaos pressed in on my chest until I couldn't stop reading because I could feel their pain.  I could feel their world crumbling.

Juliette was especially good here.  Her flaws came out in force.  She showed a selfishness and disregard for her silo's wishes and eventually their safety.  But it was understandable because she never asked to lead and didn't have the skill set or motivation to do so successfully.  Lucas also felt more well rounded than he did in Wool.  His youth came through, his inexperience and his hesitancy to act against Juliette.  Once they started a normal relationship, it immediately began to strain as their personalities rubbed against each other.  Instead of the blissful happily ever after that was hinted at in Wool, it started to feel like they were incompatible outside of completely dire situations.

It was great. 

However, once I took a break and stepped back, once I was no longer swept along by the story, those confusing and nonsensical aspects chewed their way into my enjoyment.  (You could even say, when the afterglow faded, things weren't as great as they seemed.)  This book suffered from Third Book World Building Syndrome, where the world building that worked so well in a single, self-contained story spiraled out of control as more and more was added.  Previous world building was retconned and added world building was confused and less neatly tied together.  It didn't work in part because when a new discovery was made that contradicted something from an earlier book, it undermined my positive reaction to the previous reveal.  Added to this was that the shocking moments when some nefarious workings of the universe were revealed missed the mark and fell flat.  Most of these were about what Anna was up to, and instead of the previous "Evidence!  Dun dun dun!" their presentation was along the lines of "I think Anna might have done a thing to help these people, but then that's a guess, and there's no way to verify that she did, and now it's been reversed anyway."  Where the reveals used to be definite signs of villainy, these left me confused as to what had happened at all and had me questioning my reading comprehension.

Wait.  So.  Was the world destroyed? 
 
The story crumbled when I finished and tried to make sense of it logically, but I'm not sure I care because it was an emotionally satisfying conclusion to the series. 


***

Next week it's time for another book about writing.  On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King.

Cultural Appropriation

Today I'm thinking about cultural appropriation.    

If you're unaware, cultural appropriation is when you take something from a culture that's not your own (usually an oppressed or minority culture) and strip it of its intended meaning to use it for your own devices because it looks cool.  Like fashion designers that put fake Apache headdresses on their models.

I'm afraid it's snuck its way into my story.  I'm not saying this to condemn myself, but rather to tell you that I'm checking myself, I'm sitting back and having a think, asking, "Is what I'm doing completely obnoxious?"  So now I have this great opportunity to correct myself before I embarrass myself and hurt people.  At the point I'm at in the process for this story (I've just finished the horrible first draft and I'm going through a first round of editing) it's okay.  I can fix it before anyone sees it.  I can stifle my obnoxiousness before the words get loose.  

If I didn't write this blog post, you'd never even know.  But I think it's good to talk about these things.  I'm not perfect.  I'm learning.  And I'm trying to be respectful.  Part of that is being aware, catching myself, correcting, and doing better next time.

It's pretty easy to get caught up in questioning "well, is this really appropriation, or is it inspired by X or an homage to X?"  Maybe some of my issues with this draft aren't appropriation and I'm being hard on myself and overly cautious, but the issues are close enough to make me uncomfortable and with this train of thought I feel like I'm just trying to justify myself. I'd rather err on the side of not offending people.

There are two instances I've come across in this story and I can track how they both got there.  For both of them, I did research, learned all about them, then when I went to write I got swept away in what my characters needed and what my story needed, which ended up shifting the meaning.  One is a spell out of the Wiccan tradition.  (And when I looked into "appropriation of Wiccan traditions" I got back results about Wiccans appropriating other people's traditions into their own.  I don't think this even remotely puts me in the clear.)  The idea behind the spell is so interesting: to remove a darkness inside you, ask it to leave.  Just ask!  Brilliant!  But when I started writing the spell, the cadence and emotion turned it from a request to a command.  That stripped away the meaning that I found so interesting to begin with.  Appropriation.

So I have two options.  I can put the meaning back and change the spell to a request, or I can pull the initial spell out completely and replace it with something I make up where there are commands.


These are some of the rewrites I'll be doing in coming weeks.  What about you?  How often do you check yourself and what do you do about your missteps?

The Fill-in Boyfriend Review

This week's book is The Fill-in Boyfriend by Kasie West.  This was one of Goodreads' best young adult books of 2015.

Gia's friends didn't believe she had a boyfriend, so when he dumped her in the parking lot on the way into prom right before meeting her friends, she grabs a random guy to pretend to be him to prove said boyfriend exists. 

Fake dating trope!  You already know how you feel about the fake dating trope, so you already know if you'll like this or not.  Personally, I like it best when the couple fight crime.

The main theme of The Fill-in Boyfriend is living for appearances vs living for yourself.  West gets at this in a couple of different ways.  First there's the main plot of Gia insisting her boyfriend exists to the point of lying when she could have just walked into prom with no date and let her friends think whatever they wanted.  She would know she was telling the truth. But then she's in these toxic friendships that make her feel like she has to be perfect all the time, where she has to lie or lose her friends.

 

There's then a subplot about social media and living for validation that falls a bit flat.  Gia did not seem to overuse social media, and even though she was overly concerned with what people thought of her, this didn't feel like a strong example of that.  

But the theme hit its emotional stride when it turned to Gia's home life.  Her parents repeatedly say, "I don't want to fight about this," and so the family never fights about anything.  They bury their anger and disappointment, and the way this has emotionally stunted Gia feels realistic and intrinsic.  It was conveyed without being too on the nose, with Gia slowly realizing that this lifestyle isn't good for her.   It also felt real in that this is a problem that real people face.  Seeing it portrayed accurately was refreshing.

This book also did a good job of conveying the teenage frustration when all your friends are taking everything way too seriously and perpetuating their own drama and there's no way to get out of it.  Why did her friends think she was lying about her boyfriend when she wasn't?  Shrug.  Because.  Why were they so offended when they find out she was lying about the fill-in boyfriend, to the point of ending their friendship with Gia?  Shrug.  Because high schoolers do things like that.  The reason doesn't need any more flushing out.  Gia couldn't have won and I could feel her frustration.

***

Next week: we finish off the Silo books with Dust by Hugh Howey

Edit Check In

Editing check in time!  Here's an incomplete list of some of the goofy things I've written on the print out of my first draft. 

• "fiancé" is French.  Is there a masculine and feminine version? Does it matter?
• Is there a way to make it clear that "fiancé" is pronounced with an amazing Texan accent?
• Then I have written "More accents!"  By which I mean embracing the spirit rather than writing things phonetically.  Not that there's anything wrong with that, but that's it's own blog post.
  
• Find the origin of "the jig is up."  It sounds like something you don't realize is racist.
• How do you bake fruit pie from scratch?
• hands on research is important
• also chicken with mushrooms in cheese sauce?  Is that a thing?
• there's a word for cheese sauce.  Find it.
• Research muscles 
• suck it up and just don't look at the gross pictures.
• Research knots
• and braiding
• in the margin is written "friendship bracelets made by sailors."

 Stay tuned for answers to obvious questions and more than you ever wanted to know about pie!

The Martian Review

This week, we're looking at The Martian by Andy Weir.  This one was recommended by my friend, Tom.  I also enjoyed the movie.

When NASA's Ares 3 mission has to be evacuated due to a dust storm, astronaut Mark Watney gets separated from the team, presumed dead, and left on Mars. He has to survive with only the materials he brought with him, some ingenuity, and ~science~!

The science was front and center in this book, and I enjoyed that.  Watney goes on lengthy explanations of the math he's doing and the chemistry involved and the procedure he has to do to cut strips off a tarp.  I'm sure your mileage may vary, but I found it engaging and easy to follow, which is saying something for paragraphs getting into the nitty gritty of the calorie counts of potatoes.  It worked because it gave Watney validity.  He was a scientist explaining science.  He knew what he was talking about and I believed he was intelligent and qualified.  It also worked because his life depended on him doing the science correctly.  I was rooting for him, so I wasn't going to begrudge him talking it out.

On the other hand, the presentation was strange.  Most of Watney's story is told through his log entries where he explains what his problem is, what he's going to do about it, and later how his attempts went.  But I kept wondering about the intended audience of his log.  The tone was strange for it to be an official or scientific log.  He told jokes an explained science and downplayed his peril.  The closest thing it felt like was if Ares 3 had a YouTube channel where they told people what they were up to in a "Look how cool space is, kids!" kind of way, then Watney just kept it going even without an internet connection.  The log wasn't for future NASA astronauts who might find his site or for sending to NASA if he ever got a chance to tell them what he's been up to, because he over explained things that they would take as common knowledge.  He explains acronyms and that the hab is the tent where they live.  That's information the reader needs, but that someone from NASA would already know.  For the same reason, it didn't feel like he was talking to himself.  I think that's the most likely answer: that he was making the log not for anyone in particular, but to keep himself sane.  But the tone was so strange, I'm not sure what to make of it.

The other weird part about the log was that it sucked out most of the emotion.  All the dramatic events happened off camera and the reader is told about it later.  By then, Watney had apparently calmed enough to make a log entry and we heard the event through his analytical lens of assessing what went wrong.  The result is that Watney comes off as overly plucky in situations where it feels inappropriate.  There are very few signs of his deteriorating mental state and no signs that he fears or doubts. 

In this way, I think the log did the story a disservice.  It was able to convey loads of exposition about scientific processes and the capabilities of devices, but chopped into the emotional aspects of the story, making it less thrilling.

***

Next week we're back to our young adult roots with The Fill-in Boyfriend by Kasie West.

The Big Edit

I relieved to tell you that I started editing this week.  It was grating on me how bad it was and how I could fix it if I did this, that, and the other.  So now I'm going in and fixing things and it's like a bad note easing into tune.

Actually, I haven't fixed anything yet.  I printed off the whole thing, and now I'm going through it and making notes on what needs fixing.  Purple pen is for line edits--typos or things that should be crossed out or easy additions.  It's for things I know right this second how to fix. 

Pink is for global issues--how to deal with back story, characterization issues, relationships that need flushing out, strands I picked up then forgot.  This is where I've put the most thought as I've been writing.  It's the stuff that's been eating at me and that I'm dying to fix.  It's what I'm most excited about and what's going to take the most time.

Orange pen is for awkwardness.  When pumping out this draft, I didn't check my thesaurus or sit and glare, thinking "that's not quite the right word.  The one I want is more...angry and means...organized. Organized, but in an angry way?  What's that word?" I'd just write orangranized and move on with my life.  but now it's time to find out what that word is.  Orange is also for paragraphs that could flow better, that could have rhythm, that could scan, but are right now just a horrible mess.

Green is my proper noun color.  It's for all the places I didn't name a spell and glazed over hinting at the vast history behind the magic.  It's where I didn't name a side character or where I hate the name I gave.  Green is also known as my John Hodgman color.  John Hodgman says that "specificity is the soul of wit," which matches pretty closely with how I think about world building.  I try to do this in my writing, but I'm still working on not being too vague on this blog.

Now, what you haves to understand is it is ones of my life goals to be frenemies with John Hodgman, so whenever I talk about my John Hodgman pen, you have to imagine I'm doing it with an affected sneer. 

I should note that I have no idea why I want this.  It seems like something that would fit with my vision of the person I want to be.  It also implies that I would regularly interact with John Hodgman and we would be friends, just friends who show affection through rudeness.  We'd bicker on twitter, and write insulting blurbs for each other's books ("better than expected" "pretty good if you're into that kind of thing").  I have no idea how as to make this happen, since picking stupid fights with him on twitter with our current relationship just makes me a troll.  In my head, one day we'll meet at an important authors party (which exist in my fantasy, thanks) and we'll get into an argument over the mini quiches and how I'm not specific enough when writing blog entries.