Second Draft Complete

As of Sunday at four in the afternoon, I finished writing the second draft of First Draft B. These are the specs…

The goal was to write 85,000 words, thus cutting out what I suspected was 10k words of fluff from First Draft B. It came out to 85 182, and that wasn’t planned. Very pleased.

I wanted to complete this draft by December 19, 2008. I finished five days ahead of schedule, even though I’m in graduate school.

I wanted a tighter, cleaner draft. I’m feeling pretty good about this.

I need to put this draft away for a couple of months and work on a new project. Thank goodness I’m taking an advanced fiction writing course next semester.

I’m looking for beta readers who are willing to comment on the entire work. I use Microsoft Word 2007, so I can read the commenting feature from 2003/2007. Let me know if you’re interested, and we’ll work out the details. If you don’t read historical fiction or historical romance, please don’t contact me. You won’t know the genre cliches to help me make sure I don’t commit them.

How are your projects going?

What Happens to an Author When She Finishes Editing?

Last week, I finished the paper edits of First Draft B. Cue the fanfare, tears of happiness, and confetti. Now it’s time to pull off the gloves and re-type the entire thing with the new edits to see what we’ve got. And so begins the Second Draft.

Now, there are multiple things an author feels once she or he gets past another stage in the writing process…

• Fear that what you wrote stinks beyond belief.
• Elation that you finished it, you really finished it.
• Depressed that at some point, you’re going to have to let someone else read it and tell you exactly what they think about it.
• Proud that, upon reading over it, you like more than you hate.

I know some of you are reading this now because of my editing workshop, and I bet you’re wondering if I followed my own advice.

Yes, I did print it out, put it in a binder, and not look at it for a month.

The month I finished First Draft B, I graduated from my engineering program, moved back home for a summer internship between undergrad and graduate school, and visited with family for two weeks. So I didn’t have time to edit.

Lack of time didn’t stop me from lugging the binder everywhere in the desperate hope I’d sneak an edit in, though.

I was brutal with edits.

As soon as I had to read something twice, I either cut it out or re-wrote it. I cut an entire chapter because it dragged the plot and made Mary look whiny, which she isn’t. I re-wrote at least three chapters because they head-hopped, were disjointed, and didn’t make sense.

My biggest writing vice is that I tell too much.

This is a problem because I write historical fiction, and I know more information than will show up in the final product. I had paragraphs that sounded like I was channeling a history professor. Yikes.

To combat this, I read a number of books set in the same time period to see how other authors handled the problem.

I then went through a quick bout of depression because I felt like I couldn’t do it as well as the other authors. Turns out I needed more sleep, because once I got a good nine hours, I was ready to edit again.

I wrote First Draft B, a whopping 99,899 words, in present tense.

Yes, Trentwood’s Orphan is historical fiction. Yes, I know “history” implies “past.” No, I was not dropped on my head as a child.

I wrote in present tense because I couldn’t get into Mary’s head. She’s the opposite of my last heroine, Veronica, who was impetuous, a bit ditzy, funny, and determined to get her way. Mary, on the other hand, is quiet, cautious, analyzes everything, and does her accounting when she’s stressed. I’m more like Mary than Veronica, so Mary should have been easy to write. She was surprisingly harder. By writing in present tense, I felt the immediacy and was able to gauge Mary’s reactions much better.

I also wrote in present tense because it cleaned my writing. There is no “had had” syndrome in present tense. The action either happened, is happening, or will happen. But now that the experimentation phase is complete, I need to re-write the entire thing in past tense.

(Need help discovering passive writing? The Writer’s Technology Companion wrote a tutorial to highlight passive writing in Microsoft Word 2003.)

What are some of your writing rituals? Do you have a trick that you use to improve your writing? Are you finally convinced I’m insane? Let us know in the comments!

Stumbling Blocks, Workshops, and a Contest

“Nobody’s perfect, I gotta work it again and again ’til I get it right…”
Nobody’s Perfect sung by Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus

Well, Hannah Montana’s right on the money with this one. This song should be the theme for all writers in the editing phase.

I have been an editing machine, lately. That is, until I hit chapter 24, where the draft became muddy. Apparently I was experimenting when I wrote this chapter and the couple after it. The results from the experimentation are faulty at best.

Conclusion: I have to alter a major subplot of…oh, I guess I’d say the last third of the book.

This is a little frustrating. I don’t remember writing chapters clogged with internal dialogue, unnecessary angst, and way too much exposition. I’m cutting pages, chapters even, fighting through to get back to the essentials.

The Workshop

I’m holding an online editing workshop next week to contribute to Lynn Viehl’s Left Behind & Loving It (LB&LI) convention. I’ll tackle a different facet of editing each day:

1. Monday: Put that shitty first draft away
2. Tuesday: Be brutally honest
3. Wednesday: Show, don’t tell
4. Thursday: Tell, don’t show
5. Friday: Focus on those nitty gritty details

There will be links to worksheets, websites, and books that should help you edit your own work. I’m providing a lot of these links because I know people edit in different ways, and I want to help as many people as possible.

The Contest

At the end of the week, I’ll give a free critique of the first three chapters (or the first 50 pages, whichever is shorter) of one commenter whose name I will pull from a hat. To be eligible…

1. You must comment during the LB&LI week (July 28 to August 3).
2. Your comment must be on an LB&LI post, following the theme of the day.
3. You must comment here on the blog, http://blog.worderella.com. I can’t see your comment if you’re reading me on LiveJournal, for example.
4. Your chapters/excerpt must be prose. Double-spaced, twelve pt font, Times New Roman or something similar.

The winner will be announced on Tuesday, August 5. I read all genres, so don’t worry if you’re interested but don’t write historical fiction or romance. I’ll try to be as fair and as honest as possible to help you. Whether you accept my suggestions or not is your prerogative, of course.

I’ll provide my comments using the Microsoft Word comment feature. If you don’t have a Windows machine, or if you don’t have Microsoft Word, we can work something out.

Paper Evidence of a Writer’s Mind

All right, back on track this week with the posts!

So I briefly mentioned some time ago that I have a paper journal. This past year, my paper journal has been a lifesaver, especially when I had to cut back the number of hours I sat hunched over a computer, drastically. I mean, there was a time where sitting in one spot for ten minutes would cause pain. No good for programming or writing. So I turned to a paper journal, in which I could write while laying on my stomach, thus giving my back/legs a break. I’ve never been able to fill a paper journal, and I blame that on the awful journals I used to own. Really, I do. Because the journal I have now… well, just looking at it inspires me to write. The paper is smooth, with large lines so I can write new ideas between sentences. The cover has a magnetic seal, but lays flat when open. And, in the newest journal, I decided to draw a bit. Below are a couple of pictures.

I drew this one night when my
homework really frustrated me.

Close up of my pretty girl.
(“The cure for boredom is curiosity.
There is no cure for curiosity.” – Dorothy Parker)

Writing is a messy business.
The green strips are actually bits of a small square
PostIt that I cut up to use as place markers.

My plot outline, obviously re-worked a bit.
In fact, a lot of the plot doesn’t exist as
written here… it seemed a bit contrived.

Do you have a paper journal? If you do, do you take it everywhere with you? Or leave it at the bedside table for those midnight inspirations? If you don’t use a paper journal, why do you think that is?

First Draft B Complete

The title of this post says it all, but here are some details.

Saturday night, I couldn’t focus on homework. So instead, I daydreamed about my novel. At midnight, I decided I would tape the show I had been staying up to watch so I could write, instead. By three in the morning, I had a draft of the last chapter that I liked better than the six other half-starts I’d saved in the file, and the other almost fully-drafted chapter that I had in my paper journal.

Sunday morning, I woke up to re-read the chapter and found I still liked it. A good sign.

This morning, I woke up, re-read the chapter, still like it (with some slight tweaking), and have decided that at long last (a little over a year), First Draft B is complete at 99,896 words, 41 chapters.

Suffice to say that chapters will be cut and others fleshed a bit. I really want this book to be under 300 pages, as my previous book was a whopping 384 pages without any author notes or anything. This book, at 345 pages, has author notes, acknowledgements, and a selected bibliography… so I’m on the right track, at least.

I have the glow of triumph about me.

How are your works-in-progress coming along?

WIP: A New Beginning

A little over a week ago, I added a new scene to the beginning of the WIP. It shifts the moment when the reader joins the story from the original scene to fifteen minutes earlier. Amazing, what a quarter of an hour can do, right? This new scene completely changes the tone of the opening chapter, yet still is in keeping with the tone of the entire work. My problem is that I feel the original scene also sets the story and tone correctly. Which should I choose?

Original

Clouds, dark and thick, descend over Mary Winslow as she flees the manor house at Compton Beauchamp. Her throat is hoarse from shouting and her gloved hands shudder; her black walking skirts swirl around her rushing feet and she half-trips. The gravel drive crunches with each step until she slips through the high wrought-iron gate and out into the pale green English lane, where shriveled leaves spin and dance with a small eddy. Her lips press together against what she fears is a sob. There is a figure to her right and she jumps away, scratching her back along the brick wall that flanks the gate on either side. Ten minutes ago was bad enough; now is much worse.

“Took you long enough,” Trentwood says. It is windy, and there is a bite to the air, but he is without a coat and stands spinning the chain of his pocket watch, his black boots gleaming in the gray light.

Mary stares at Trentwood, taking in his sandy hair lined with gray, and his irritated expression. How he stands without needing her arm as a support. How he can watch her without forcing a smile through the ever-encroaching pain. I can’t do this again.

Above, boughs sway and whisper as Trentwood follows the silent Mary down the shadowed, tree-lined lane. “Now you’ll answer me. How could you have accepted that idiot?”

Shadows play across her face. If I ignore him…? Her low voice is raw and ragged when she finally speaks. “I felt alone.”

He tucks away his pocket watch. “In that house?”

Mary’s mouth twists. “Well… lonely, then.” She scrambles over a low opening in the hedgerow to walk across the farmer’s field. Her skirt catches on a grasping bramble, and she yanks it free.

“You’d rather be lonely and alone your entire life than marry that idiot.”

. . .

Update

Mary Winslow suspects today will be worse than most when she finds her fiancé seducing her scullery maid.

The point of coming to the scullery in the first place was to hunt down the cook, whose name Mary cannot remember at the moment, and ask what came of the smoked ham that should have been at breakfast. But when Mary entered the kitchen, she found the stoves untended, and the scullery door open. It was an innocent and natural assumption to think the cook—oh, what is her name?—was back there, already preparing for luncheon. The scraping, shuffling noises certainly corroborated Mary’s suspicion that someone, at least, was in the scullery and might have an answer to her question. After all, one does not pay for ham and then expect it to disappear.

Head tilted to the side, Mary gapes at the back of Mr Spencer’s blonde head, which nuzzles naughty words into the freckled neck of her giggling maid. His pants are undone; the girl’s short kitchen skirts hitched up.

In all fairness, the clandestine couple is only half-hidden in the back refuse closet of the scullery, paying no mind to the pile of vegetable peelings rotting on the floor beneath them. Even with the lamp dimmed, they are plainly visible. They are insulting by their carelessness. Mary’s lip curls, wondering how they can stand the rancid, greasy smell that comes from standing in—oh goodness, is that an actual pig’s snout, there? Does anyone do their cleaning duties anymore?

This is what comes of rash decisions. How many times did Mary warn Mr Spencer that if she heard so much as a murmur of his philandering, that she would end it?

This is more than a murmur.

. . .
 

So here is my question: Should I keep the old beginning, or continue with the new one? FYI, the original still exists, but happens later in the chapter (as in, about two pages later). I have my own opinion, but I’d love to hear yours. Which one grabs you more, as a reader? Does the new scene completely turn you off, or intrigue you?

WIP: Dragging my Feet

I have had two chapters left to write for First Draft B since the beginning of April, and I can’t seem to do it. Not because I don’t know what’s going to happen, but because these are the last two chapters. I’m terrified of a deus ex machina ending, I guess, even though that’s not going to happen as long as I follow my storyboard.

Am I the only one whose writing slows to a sluggish halt as the “finish line” approaches? I feel like I’m afraid of finishing. Which is silly, because we all know how I love editing. That, and I’ve already started plotting the sequel.

Tell me, how is your WIP going? Are you nearing the finish line? Have you hit a snag? I need some writing news to distract/urge me to continue.

WIP: A Writing Update

No April Fool’s today, just a quick shout-out to my mother (it’s her birthday!), an announcement, and a long-overdue post about my WIP.

First, the announcement: I’m switching back to posting once a week. Why the change? This final quarter of classes just might melt my brain. (If you didn’t notice my two-month-long trial of posting twice a week then I haven’t changed a thing, I swear. Pretend this paragraph doesn’t exist.)

If you visited the blog recently, you noticed that the WIP counter on my sidebar has suddenly changed from 82k, a mere 3% away from my 85k goal, to 87k. Admission time: I’ve been past the 85k goal since the beginning of March. I didn’t want to change my progress counter until I actually finished First Draft B, which is silly, but true. I haven’t finished it, but I can see the finish line.

In terms of writing, I’m squeaking by. I didn’t write a single word during my spring break, which is depressing. But the other night I stayed up writing an after-death scene which reveals how much Mary, the main character, has grown. As I wrote to Erica , Mary is an odd mixture of subtle sass, pervasive doubt, and sad resignation. With an imaginary friend who looks like her dead father. Oh, how I love the twist.

A departure from my first book, I have multiple people dying or dead in this book. This isn’t meant to be depressing, but more a reflection of the Victorian world. Based on my research, the fact that Mary dwells over her father’s death longer than “socially acceptable” causes all sorts of problems, least of which that people assume she’s spoiled. Shocking, but oh-so-true. Below is a re-working of my hook, which I still don’t like.

A grieving daughter encounters love and ghosts in Victorian England.

1887 English countryside: Mary Winslow is a 26-year-old viscount’s daughter trying to make amends for crippling her father in a London carriage accident years ago. When her father’s ghost appears after his death, Mary returns to London to face her past and convince her ex-fiancé, Mr Spencer, not to sue her for breach-of-promise in order to prove she will not spend the rest of her life as an unhappy countryside recluse.

I don’t like it because I still feel like it doesn’t represent the novel properly. This book is very internal, for all main characters involved. How do you make a book about a woman learning to let go of her father’s death and allowing herself to get hurt/fall in love sound like something worth reading? Or is that enough? I feel like it wouldn’t have enough “hook” to it. Have any suggestions/thoughts? Does this sound like something you would want to read? For a previous version with more details and less focus, see here.

As a side-note, Microsoft Word’s comment feature is my new best friend.* Instead of obsessing over details the way a proper Type A personality should, I make a note to myself. I have little red and blue comment bubbles all over the document, some saying things like, “Incorrect description. Reference green notebook, Victorian courtroom notes.” Or better yet, “Graham says Alex is a man’s man. Would a man’s man do this?”

Which is a perfect transition to recognize my awesome beta-reader, Graham, a Swindonian who found my blog by accident and has since become a fellow writer friend. Being that he is a British male, and half of my characters are British males, and he lives near my deliciously remote location in England (Compton Beauchamp), his insight is irreplaceable. Even the few paragraphs I posted earlier, along with the first chapter I sent him, gave enough details for him to say, “We don’t say it that way,” or “Actually, in the location you’re describing, it would be a hedgerow, not a low stone wall.” Did I mention he actually copied the February and August 1887 archives from the local newspapers to help me with local detailing?? He already has a proper place in my acknowledgment section because of the immense help he’s been.

Tell me, how is your WIP going? Read any good writing books lately? Chat me up!

Next week, a guest post from Blair Hurley on how to write on the go!

*See Refresh Your Writing for another nifty Microsoft Word trick to help you focus on your writing.

Plot Snafus and Hasty Research

snafu (adj) : situation normal – all fouled up

Things were going really well with the WIP until the middle of December, when in the middle of the night I woke up in a sweat with the awful realization that the beginning of the WIP is in February, during a rainstorm. Why an awful realization? It occurred to me that I don’t even know if it rains in February in England, let alone showers. It is winter, right? They’re on an island, so maybe I can just get by with the assumption that the ocean keeps the island from getting too cold, thus allowing and encouraging a healthy February shower?

After allowing an hour of feverish plot contemplation, I decided I had to have it rain. Which either meant more research to discover what the weather was like in the Wantage/Swindon area of England during February 1887, or, change the timeline of the story. Since the story has to start in February, research became my only option.

Do you know how hard it is to look up 120 year-old weather patterns for a relatively obscure location? I stretched my Google-fu to the limits, searching everything from “UK weather archive” to “Swindon almanac feb 1887.” (My location is actually a small community relatively near Swindon, but that community is so small you might as well say it doesn’t exist on the internet.) After searching for an hour, I found two sources saying there was a December 1886 snowstorm in southern England so fierce that school was canceled, overhead telegraph lines and trees around London were felled, and Kent received 30cm snow (11.8 inches). My community would have experienced that snowstorm, then. But what about February 1887? What happened then?

I don’t suppose I ever mentioned how I love the internet, but I do. I found the UK meteorological office which states it rains one out of three days a year on average, and more often in the winter. Snow occurs more over hilly areas than by the sea, which is handy to know because my town is right by the Berkshire downs and White Horse Vale. Hill fog is extensive over hills and potentially dangerous to walkers. But lo! and behold, I found the historical record from Oxford, which is also relatively close to my town (if you’re generous)! One of the many wonderful reasons to set a historical fiction novel in England…they like to keep records. So now I know that in Oxford, during February 1887, the average high temperature was 7.5C (45.5F, so no snow), the average low was 0.5C (32.9F, which could result in snow), there were 17 air frost days, and the rainfall for the month was 15.2cm (about 5 inches).

I don’t know if that’s enough to say a rain shower occurred by my town, since Oxford is about 40mi north of where my novel is set. But hey, I have a weather pattern! And it’s plausible, in any case, that there was a rain shower, which…as I’m writing historical fiction, it only needs to be plausible, right?

What do you think? Should I continue the search, or work from this plausible assumption that it rained in February 1887? And am I the only one who does frantic searches so my plot is sound?

The new year cometh

Happy new year, everyone! Here’s hoping your muse is kind. Mine favored me at the end of my break from school, the procrastinating little wretch that she is, and I’m now 76% complete with the WIP manuscript! I’ve done a lot of work-shopping on the tagline and the hook. Here’s what I came up with for my WIP, Trentwood’s Orphan…

A grieving daughter encounters love and ghosts in Victorian England.

A proposal on the anniversary of her father’s death is not Mary Winslow’s idea of romance, but as a 26-year-old maid in Victorian England, Mr Spencer is her last chance. When Mary catches Mr Spencer seducing her scullery maid, her regimented world falls apart, and her secret deathbed promise to her father comes back to haunt her…literally.

What do you think? Something worth reading, or do I need more edits?

From an administrative standpoint, there are new fun things here at the blog, mainly that I have a new plug-in that highlights posts related to the topic of the post you’re currently reading. I added blurbs about the books I’ve written, and I updated the About and Reading List pages. Fellow authors, if your website needs a new look, or if you haven’t looked into web marketing, check out the Siriomi Web Designs tab as an affordable solution to your problems.

My next post will be listing my most and least favorite books of 2007, how many pages I read, etc. What would you like to see in 2008? More information on publishing? Let me know.