Author Archives: Amy Jane

NaNoWriMo 2010 Day 2

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My goal (unless I fall too far behind) is to pull 2,000 words a day.

I am still scrapping for a structure I can shoehorn my plot into– primarily because of the issues I’ve had with Lindorm and trying to decide what kind of story it is.  I was hoping to avoid that angst at the end, and the result is angst now as I (literally) lay out the plot-point cards and see how clearly my action cards* deal between them.

Nothing really clear yet, but now that I know my story better than I did two days ago I’m going to try again.

*I’m doing a card system this year and I really like it.

It didn’t make sense last time (Lindorm) since I had the whole story from beginning to end and there was no question about the sequence of action.  This time I am extending the story past the traditional ending and I am distressingly distracted and patchy in my thinking.

By putting random thoughts on a collection of 3×5 cards and adding them to the box I relieve the fear I’m going to forget something important and cut down on possible focus points.

Current word count: 4,165

I’m Not the Reader You’re Writing For

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Readers read to worry. They want to be lost in the intense emotional anticipation over the plight of a character in trouble.

–The Kill Zone

This is only the latest place I’ve read this analysis/assertion. And this has never been true of me.

(I don’t think it’s a small thing to observe that I’ve only heard this assertion either from men or women quoting men.  Men think knocking heads together is funny — this is science, not sexism– so the concept of pain = entertainment is already established. And should not be heresy for me to question.)

Just this weekend I put down another book because for me, the writer was too good at her job of conveying intense emotional distress.

I opened a novel that was play for the Jane Eyre governess/romance genre published by Bethany House, which gave me the hope of a clean play on the theme (in general I’m afraid to invest in such stories, so a Christian publishing house is a nice safety net).

The prologue (yes, there was a prologue) opened with the heroine at age 12 hanging out with her drunken papa at the local pub.  She’s done this all her life, whiling away the hours by counting, which grew into a precocity at math.  On this particular day a Rich Man and his Son enter and Drunken Papa sees an easy mark, challenging Rich Man to set his boarding school educated son against a village Girl in a test of mathematics.

The emotionally astute Girl recognizes the Son’s agony at the prospect, interpreting it both as his lacking in that subject, and the familiar fear of losing a demanding father’s approval.  Drunken Papa offers a 10-guinea wager on 3 math problems (“Best two out of three.”) and Rich Man construes it as 30 guinea, which 12-year-old Girl knows her father cannot afford.

I got through her first (and correct) response to the first question, and her interpreting its affect on the stricken boy before I put the book away.

There just was no way for that to end well.

I gave that much to my husband the same night I read those pages, and he was really annoyed I couldn’t even remember the name of the book.  Said he was ready to go back to the store so I could track down the book and he could know how it ends.

I was *grabbed* emotionally, even intensely, but I wasn’t invested enough to feel these characters where worth the angst I would share for a few hundred pages.  I assumed that the inevitably agonizing ending wouldn’t be fully salved until the happy ending of the whole novel, and I couldn’t see enduring the knot that long.

Really, it was a brilliant opening.  Everything I’ve ever believed an author was supposed to do (not the least of which being establishing an *observant* POV character, which will be very useful in the course of the longer story).

But it was nothing I can feel peace about.

I’m not that kind of writer, and I’m not that kind of reader, either.

This is not the first, or second, time this has happened to me.

Can I learn from this?

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Words are a part of my identity. Even when I get them wrong.

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I self-identified as a novelist today– for kinda the first time, and it was totally natural.

I’ve bemoaned before that I’m a compulsive explainer, seeing it as a character defect: why do I have to explain/justify my existence/choices?

Well, it turns out I’m just assuming others are as shallow as me.  That is,  I’ve been shown I revise my opinion of someone based on increased information, and by giving more information I’m hoping to project a more accurate image of myself.

If they still don’t like me, I don’t care, but I can’t stand someone being mad at what they think I am/have done.

So I ran into this woman I haven’t spoken with in years, and we did a quick catch-up on kids, ages and church.  And I corrected her “Oh yeah, I know where that is,” before I even asked her what she thought she knew.

You see, no one in our town knows what church I go to unless they have personally visited it.  It’s that invisible.

I was right, but that’s small consolation if it destroys a relationship so I jumped into damage-control, blaming it, very naturally on being a writer. (For the record, she was totally cool with being corrected.  Not offended at all.)

What entertained me so much was my explanation (this is part of why I write: it’s insanely easy for me to entertain myself).

It went something like this:

Sorry, I’m not really trying to be rude, but after years of thinking in terms of conveyed information versus received information I’m constantly thinking on multiple levels of communication. Miscommunication is a useful literary device, but nothing to tolerate in real life.

Not that I always have a choice, but we can set our own standards, right?

~

I am calling my 2010 NaNoWriMo effort Shaddow.

Yeah, with 2ds.  It’s a nod to when I was starting the first version of this book (Shadow Swan) and was trying to track down the novel Shadow Spinner and could not figure out why the book never showed on any search.

Yeah, because I spelled shadow phonetically. That’s a short-a, folks.

Sort of like the counter intuitive desert/dessert weirdness.  I love English.  I really do.

Notwithstanding the one semester I started German and a guy studying Spanish asked in horror, “Why would you do that? It’s, like, the one language in the world uglier than English!”

In the end I’ve simply returned to English, and find it beautiful.  Not the least because I understand it, and it submits to me.

~

Along those lines, it’s fun to say I’ve built a bit of a reputation in my church.

This was a rough week for me.  I came to church thinking about genuineness, and how what some people disparage as “masks” might more accurately be communicated as an effort to encourage other people or focus less on oneself.

I knew I was going to be asked how I was, and that I wouldn’t lie, but I hated thinking of the exchanges that would be likely to follow.  So mostly I positioned myself where the flow-pattern kept people moving faster than to expect a detailed answer.

One of the neatest things about these people is that they only rarely ask empty how-are-yous.  In that place I stood I got lots of acknowledging smiles and nods, but nobody pretended to inquire after what couldn’t be answered in the space of 18-inches.

By the end of the sermon I’d forgotten my initial goal, and got cornered in the kitchen while making my double hot chocolate.

One of the best smilers in our congregation walked in as I was stirring cocoa and asked a genuine, How are you today, Amy?

I felt my throat close and my chin wobble before I got out my one word.

“Wonky.”

And that resulted in a spirit- and esteem-soothing glowfest from the two other women about how I always have the perfect words to say exactly the right thing.  And the sweet smiler asked, “Can wonkies appreciate hugs?” and I gratefully accepted the other best form of love and care she could have offered at that moment.

NaNo 2010

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Barring other changes, I’m planning to go for it this year.  For real.

I haven’t seriously tried NaNoWriMo (as in, a fully new work from page one) since I began the Lindorm in 2006.

Now I am in a critique group and getting serious help (and pushing!) on my novel, I realize I haven’t created for a long time.

I am committed to finishing the Lindorm novel (and eventually coming up with a brilliant and applicable title), but for these last couple weeks of October (prep) and the 30 days of November, I’m going to dive back into creating.

I’m excited. And now I have to choose which story to build: One based on the Grimms’ tale, The Water of Life (sort of like last year’s play-around, but more traditional) or a time-bending take on the Russian epic poem Tsar Saltan.

Technically I’ve already started the Russian one, and that’s the only reason I’m not convinced that’s the one to do: I might be too vested in it.

But, despite the fact I have 14,000 words on the old story, I have a whole new take on it that is a beautifully inspiring muddle of Saltan + Arabian Nights (no djinn this time, though) + Enchantment (a la O.S. Card).

That already feels like I’ve given away too much, but I’m really excited right now.

One tool I’m looking at to prepare is a post on the 5 most-important things to know about your novel before you start. Fascinating concept.

Musical Profiles

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I’ve been benefiting lately from the extra perspectives that outsiders can provide to my story.

One of the more painful realizations was that I don’t love all my characters equally.  Or maybe that I don’t know them enough.

Now, I’m not the sort of writer who feels the need to have a year-by-year scrapbook for every major character, but I do think I need to know more about them than anyone else– including themselves.

~ ~ ~

Rather than “interviewing” my characters (so far) my method has been to collect an emotional profile.

I’ve given advice before that recording details of a significant event isn’t as useful as doing anything you can to root the emotions connected to the event.

My reasoning is that a writer’s skill will only increase, and if all you have is notes of a happening you will always be limited by what you’ve written down.

If, by contrast (or in addition), you can access a deep emotional core, you can use that as building material.

With this as a sort of guiding principle, rather than interview my major characters about childhood nicknames and how that made them feel, I’ve collected songs.

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A Mouse on Tiptoe

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Told to me as a true story.

Once upon a time there was a young married couple (no it wasn’t us) who realized they had a mouse problem.  So they set a trap and caught the mouse, but it was still alive.  They couldn’t decide how to kill it, and eventually settled on drowning it.  So they put the mouse in a bucket of water and went out to dinner, expecting everything to be over when they returned.

When they got home they went to see the little carcass in the bucket, and instead found the mouse was still alive. It balanced on the tip of its longest toe with just enough height for the tip of its pink nose to stay above the glassy water.

After that performance they couldn’t bear to kill it and turned it loose.

I have often thought of that mouse in the last three months, as I’ve been striving to have food ready before we’re hungry.  I’ve seen myself so near drowning I can hardly believe I’ve got even a nostril above water.

What I saw for the first time today was the need for stillness in the midst of the real fear.  Thrashing would have created the final waves to overwhelm the creature’s last chance at air.

Theology in my novel.

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“What a writer is intellectually, morally, spiritually, emotionally will radiate through the work, like the light on an overcast day in which there is no visible sun, so that all things appear illuminated equally.”

–Joyce Carol Oates

Started a new devotional this morning, and a quote from the first lesson brought me back to my novel:

“Man’s perennial efforts to take himself in hand, however he attempts it, lead to the greatest bondage in which man misses what he was meant to be…. He only gains this as he denies himself. Paradoxically, the free man does not belong to himself. He belongs to him who has set him free. “

–J. Blunck in The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology

This quote so intrigues me because for a long time it has been established that the djinn (by their nature) are bound in obedience to their parent(s), until such time as they owe someone else more.  In my story it is exactly true that each individual belongs to the one who freed him or her.

And it can be argued the result is not race-specific. As in (at first blush), this affect seems to hold true for humans as well.  (Does that count as a spoiler?)

Reality Check

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I’ve sometimes many times imagined the reason my book is taking years to write has something to do with it being one of four children.

This month’s opportunity to write for days uninterrupted by reality (other than hunger and the occasional dog) made it clear that imagination was a fantasy. Not only have I learned things over these four years (personally and skill-wise) that have made Lindorm a better book, but it really does take a lot of time to go through this many words.

And, um, No

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In case you’re wondering, I did not get to the end of my manuscript before the family returned. But I made peace with that.

I did get just over half way, and am almost done with a second pass through those chapters. Why? Because a formatting glitch in Word removed all the tab-indents.

While at first I was going to search for a mass cure, I found that the high-speed cruise was turning up some embarrassing useful things to fix, so I stopped fighting it and treated it as an opportunity.

~ ~  ~

I am delighted by the maturing I see with each revision, and correspondingly frustrated at my own blindness to the remaining immaturities that I see so plainly later.

But maybe I can just categorize that as regular living, and not something unique to the Writer’s Burden.