The Perils of Inspiration

Most of the time I love the way my brain works. The twists and turns, the way random conversations in my head will make me laugh for no reason. It's what makes me, me. It's why I create the stories I do. It's why I'm rarely bored. There's always some bad guy to thwart or battle to win in the stories I tell myself.

It's not so fun when my brain offers up a brilliant stroke of inspiration that if followed would require me to scrap a good portion of the work I've already crafted in Aileen 5. Nearly all of it, in fact.

I'm early enough in the process that this is doable. On the other hand, the last two books where I've tried to "fix" a beginning, I've screwed the book up more. It's left me in a bit of a quandary. I'm frozen in place until I make a decision one way or another.

Some people think writing a book is a straight shot from A to B. It can be. For most of my books, it largely is--but not always. Sometimes, it takes a few false starts and an odd tangent or two to find my way.

Decisions both large and small, especially at this stage, set the scene for the rest of the book. There's a reason my writing is slower at this stage; why I don't achieve the high word count I'm used to. I haven't built enough momentum for the story to carry itself forward. Making a wrong decision will make the middle and back half of the book torturous to write and lead to more extensive rewrites when it comes time to edit.

I don't quite know which direction I will go yet. Perhaps what I've already written can be re-purposed into a short story. Perhaps my brilliant idea only seems brilliant because I haven't started working with it yet. Only time will tell.

Discipline and Laziness

I admit it, at heart I'm an extremely lazy person. The kind of person who spends more time figuring out new and brilliant ways to luxuriate in doing nothing productive than it would take to finish a task. Unfortunately, this type of behavior isn't conducive to writing books. It can lead to whole tangents of distraction as my brain tries to escape the herculean task of putting words on paper. This is why I've developed a process designed to prevent or delay my worst trait from derailing my progress.

The first step in my process, and the one that I've finally managed to bring to a close today after two weeks of work, is rereading the previous book and taking notes on all the characters and world devices I created. You would think that as the writer I would remember every detail I put down, but that is far from reality. Many times I've come across passages or nuggets of information that I've totally forgotten about. Sometimes that forgotten passage lays the seeds for future plot threads. 

I do this by creating note cards of character sketches or details on the world and putting them up on my magnetic wall. Right now my wall is papered over with the notes that now need to be sorted through, and these are only for Pathfinder's Way. I can't even imagine what this wall is going to look like once I get a few books in the series.

Oh man, I just gave myself the chills thinking about it.

Welcome To The New Year

I can't believe it, but 2016 is here and has been for ten days.Where did the last year go? Somehow it sped past and was gone before I realized it. To be fair, last year was incredibly busy on both the personal and writing front.  I had a lot to be grateful for last year. The biggest accomplishment on the writing side is that I finished not one, but two books (I finished the second book's first draft on Christmas Day).

Right now I'm in the process of putting final touches to the first before sending to a copy editor. I forgot how much extra work is involved when readying a book for publishing. After sending to the editor, I'll need to make any changes they suggest, then either design a cover or reach out to a graphic designer to do that part for me.

The part I hate the most, though, is drafting the blurb for the book. It's one of those jobs I would love to farm out to someone because I'm never quite satisfied with what I create. What it is about coming up with two to three paragraphs that creates such frustration, I don't know. Especially when I just got finished writing a full length novel. It's the part I dread the most. At this point I've rewritten this blurb at least four times. I'm still not happy with it :-|.

Sigh, time to stop whining and take another crack at it. Hopefully, I'll finish that part today.

The end is near...

Of the current book I'm writing, anyway. I'm entering the end game and gearing up for the final confrontation between my characters. It's gets my adrenaline going to be this close, but at the same time I still have several weeks of writing left.

I'm about three quarters of the way through and have officially entered the stage of just wanting to be done. My brain is so fried that I don't even care whether what I'm writing makes sense. At this point, I've promised myself that all flaws and bad sentences will be caught and polished away in the editing and re-writing phase. All I can think is 'the end is in sight. Must get there as fast as possible before my brain deflates.'

So to give my brain a break and also entertain others, here is a photo of my cat. She's found a new toy. It's called tissue paper.

Enjoy.

To my frustration, I've discovered that taking a good photo of a black cat inside is nearly impossible. Her fur makes all her features just blend together until all you can see is a blob. I refuse to give up though, hence the photo :-|