On Working and Over-Working

Today, just this:

Well, not quite. I've been encouraged to blog about this. This being what's been going on lately on the writing front.

I woke up last Thursday morning experiencing the strangest jitters and shakes. I was tremble-y and weak all over. My body was warm, but my insides cold. It turned out to be a result of stress. I know, who would have thought I'd be stressed out, right? I mean, I may seem antsy and highly-strung most of the time and have no patience for the waiting game, but I also do things to help de-stress, like swim or listen to Joe Hisaishi and Nell, or play a musical instrument. I promise I'm chill! (Except it's usually the neurotic ones who proclaim that.)

But no, apparently I was having an allergic reaction to work. Not just work-work, but the other work I do after office hours. In short, my writing. I was stressing myself out because of the thing I love most.

Accomplished writers always tell us aspiring writers that in order to make it, we need to treat our writing as our second job, one of equal importance as our official one that pays the bills.

I don't dispute that - writing requires discipline and effort. The only way through is to devote the time and energy necessary to creating the best possible story you can pull out of yourself. So after the nine-to-five (so to speak), I dive straight into my manuscript the minute I get home. No time for dinner. Just munch on some fruits as I pound out the words. Keep going until my eyes can't stay open anymore. Next morning, wake up at the crack of dawn to swim before going to work.

This routine seemed to work just fine for a while. I mean, I was hitting word count, getting shit done, living and breathing my story, doing what was required of me at work, and staying healthy. Right?

But it seems I might have been going about this the wrong way, if the recent bout of adverse physical reaction is any indication. Insufficient sleep, for one thing. And an all-consuming obsession to squeeze that story out and hating myself whenever I couldn't get it going.

This led to general frustration and resentment and other unpleasant emotions that, needless to say, made the problem worse. The stories stalled, and ideas spluttered to a halt. I kept trying to crank up the engine, but it just groaned and refused to cooperate. I made note-cards, drew three-act structures, tore down each manuscript to its bare bones, rewrote synopses, trying to get to the root of the problem and understand where I went wrong so I can pick up from there again.

When I wasn't writing, I felt restless and guilty. (Even right now, as I'm writing this blog post, there's this voice in the back of my head nagging at me to stop procrastinating and return to the manuscript!) But when I was writing, I felt stuck. Nothing was working.

 

My dad remarked the other day that my modus operandi is unusual and not very efficient. "You work in sprints, two-hour bouts of manic energy and then you crash," he said. "Regular people work at a consistent pace so that they can last longer. A slow-burning flame will keep you going further."

This is in line with what I overheard a swimming instructor tell his student the other day in the pool: "No one is pressuring you; only you are pressuring yourself. You just need to try. Trying and failing is how you learn." The kid he was coaching tried and failed gloriously, but managed a perfect length of backstroke by the end of the session.

I didn't realise that I was creating my own problem until that moment. I was burning myself out because I was too impatient to get what I want. No one is pressuring me; I'm just hurrying myself to get the next book published. And the thing about publishing is that it takes a loooong period of time - years - from conception to publication. If there's ever one job you need patience for, it's writing.

We think that, because we're in our twenties, we need to make shit happen already. It's been almost four years since I graduated. Why haven't I achieved something yet? (Okay, yes I published a book, but what about the next one? And the next? And the one after that?) When am I actually going to start living the life I always dreamed of?

But maybe our twenties is the time we lay all the groundwork for the career - and the life - we want in our thirties and forties and beyond. Maybe we need to work at our craft now with consistency and devotion, and focus on putting one foot before the other instead of staring off into the distance and wishing we were at the finish line at this moment. (Where is the finish line anyway? Don't we just keep setting new goals for ourselves?)

Because like Rilke said,

And like Hermann Hesse preached:

And when all else fails, like Elizabeth Gilbert said at her TED talk, maybe all we really need to do is simply return to the one thing we love more than ourselves, "put our heads down and perform with diligence and devotion and respect and reverence whatever the task is that love is calling forth from us next".

For all the dream-chasers out there, are you sprinting towards your goals or running a slow and steady marathon? Do you occasionally feel burned out? How do you restore equilibrium in your life? I'd love to hear about your writing journey!

[Related Story: How Wanting Makes Us Want More]

5 Writing Lessons from Sound of the Desert

You know me. After watching a good show, I can't resist analysing it deeper to find out what worked so well for it so I can apply that to my own stories. (That fangirl-y post I wrote previously doesn't count as an analysis!) So here are some lessons about writing a swoon-worthy story Sound of the Desert has taught me:


1. Backstory give your characters depth

... and makes your readers/audience more empathetic to your characters.

All the main characters in the show - particularly Xin Yue and Wei Wuji - have fully fleshed out backstory that isn't served to the audience in huge doses (the equivalent of rambling expository passages in a novel).

Xin Yue herself is a very compelling protagonist. Her past is complicated - when we first meet her, she is living among wolves. Her adoptive father was killed, and she's roaming the desert, lonely and lost. It is only when she decides to travel to Jian An, of which her father had always told her wondrous stories, that she is filled with purpose.

You immediately want to root for this brave, free-spirited girl from the desert.

Wei Wuji, too, is an illegitimate child who rose quickly among the ranks of the military to become a general at a young age and win every battle he ever fought. As the emperor's favourite, he has to contend with gossip and people waiting for him to fail.



In a way, those two are similar in that they are outcasts, underdogs. They don't quite fit in where they are. Xin Yue neither fully belongs in the desert (she was roaming freely but aimlessly with her wolf pack), nor in the city with all its social hierarchy and rules and palace politics. Wuji distances himself from everyone because he doesn't know whom to trust, and focuses on winning every battle because that's the only way he can shut up the naysayers.

When two lonely souls meet, you know that's a love story waiting to blossom.




2. Everyone has a flaw

... and how they regard that flaw determines who they are and who they will become.

Xin Yue's most notable flaw is that she chooses to stubbornly turn a blind eye to Wuji's love, instead choosing to chase Jiu Ye and demean herself to the extent of begging him to love her and getting herself drunk when she is rejected over and over.



Many times, I wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shake her. Get over it, you idiot! But I'm sure we all know what it's like to to be in a one-sided relationship. Moving on is easier said than done, but we are SO MUCH happier once we decide and manage to - as Xin Yue is when she finally accepts Wuji and lets go of Jiu Ye.



And as mentioned earlier, Wuji has trust issues because he feels that everyone around him in court is a fucking two-face. As such, he appears cold, arrogant, and aloof. But it is only when he's around Xin Yue that he can be entirely himself and reveal his warm, romantic, playful nature. Even so, at the beginning, he is wary of her and didn't give her his real name, which would eventually become his biggest regret because Xin Yue couldn't find him when she reached the city and he thus couldn't be there for her in her time of need (Jiu Ye found her instead).



Jiu Ye is indecisive as hell. Which makes him one of the most frustrating characters to watch in the show. Make up your mind, for crying out loud! Here's a girl confessing to you time and again, and if you're going to reject her harshly then make a clean break and stop leading her on. Also, the fact that he keeps her at a distance and doesn't tell her the truth about why he's unable to accept her love is a recipe for heartbreak down the road. So we can all safely conclude that his wretched ending was entirely his own fault.




3. Supporting characters bring out different facets of the protagonists

Where would Xin Yue be without her sister-from-another-mother, Hong Gu, who first took her in when she entered the city and had no job or connections? And how would she come to appreciate her father's parting words for her to always look forward with hope in her eyes instead of remaining stuck in hatred in the past had she not met Qin Xiang, who enters the palace just to exact revenge on the royal family?

And if it weren't for Jiu Ye, she would not have grown into a strong, confident woman whom Wuji regards as her equal. She blossoms under his love, and is free to be herself unapologetically.

That look of longing hits a brick wall.

With Jiu Ye, she always has to second-guess herself, and is uncertain of what he's thinking even though she tries to read the books he reads and bond with him over flute-playing. Jiu Ye was a necessary part of her life that let her figure out what she needed and wanted to be.

For Wuji, his uncle plays the father figure in his life (after his actual father deserted him and his mom married another man), so a large part of his upright, loyal and honourable personality, unsullied by greed for power or money, is because of his uncle's upbringing. Meanwhile, his uncle's son is a snivelling little weasel who plays underhanded tricks and serves as a stark contrast to Wuji's character.

That powerful gaze! Eddie gives life to the character.

4. Scenes need to vary in intensity and length

Pacing is everything. Or at least, one of the most crucial factors that can make or break a story. A well-told story balances long, introspective or intimate scenes with punchy, high-octane ones expertly.

Between Xin Yue and Wuji's cute banter and Jiu Ye's mopey staring out the snowy window and flute-blowing, other subplots unfold. Scheming court officials, battles with the fierce nomadic Xiongnu tribe (Jolecole explains the history a bit more here, and also lays high praise on Eddie), et cetera.

Subplots are a great way to break up the main narrative, which can grow tedious on its own. If woven skillfully in, they can and should also further the main plot and add more dimensions to it while teasing out more character dynamics.


5. Character growth is one of the most gratifying journey

Xin Yue had been adamant about having Jiu Ye right from the start. She only had eyes for him, and didn't give a shit about Wuji always being there to comfort her when she gets her heart trampled upon by Jiu Ye, to protect her from the people from her past she is hiding from, or just there when she needs a friend in a new, foreign city.

Xin Yue is touched when Wuji told her she's not alone in Jian An.

It was only after she decided to let go of her past - her hatred for the people who killed her father and her unrequited affection for Jiu Ye - that she manages to bravely move on to a new chapter in her life.



As the audience, we grow together with her. We empathise with her predicament, understand the struggles she goes through to make her final decisions, and experience the same catharsis when she chooses to embrace a new life with Wuji.


And lastly, this lesson isn't about writing, but love.

6. Love is about timing

As Dreaming Snowflake said,

(Sound of the Desert) has always been a story that tells us that love is about timing, however, also that love favours the brave and those who fight for it and never give up and Wei Wuji is the epitome of never-say-die attitude be in it love or in war.



Gotta love a man who would fight valiantly for what he wants.


So while appreciating a mighty fine specimen like Eddie Peng, these truths are what I gleaned. Writing lessons can be derived from anywhere and everywhere, especially in the stories that move you. And the best lessons come unexpectedly, like from a drama like Sound of the Desert that I never thought I would ever watch.

What did you derive from Sound of the Desert, or any other stories that moved you?

The Write Life - Staying True to Your Craft

I've been hooked on TED talks by writers and creators lately. It was this particular one [Success, Failure and the Drive to Keep Creating] given by Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of Eat, Pray, Love that got me started. I come back to this speech every time I need a pick-me-up while lost in the wilderness of creation or in the pits of despair when things are out of my control.

In her speech, Gilbert talked about the struggles every writer faces: rejection, failure, feeling stuck in the same spot for years, being powerless in the publishing arena and facing things that are out of our control, like market forces and book sales.


On rejection and pushing through:

I failed at getting published for almost six years. So for almost six years, every single day, I had nothing but rejection letters waiting for me in my mailbox. And it was devastating every single time, and every single time, I had to ask myself if I should just quit while I was behind and give up and spare myself this pain. But then I would find my resolve, and always in the same way, by saying, "I'm not going to quit, I'm going home." 

And you have to understand that for me, going home did not mean returning to my family's farm. For me, going home meant returning to the work of writing because writing was my home, because I loved writing more than I hated failing at writing, which is to say that I loved writing more than I loved my own ego, which is ultimately to say that I loved writing more than I loved myself. And that's how I pushed through it.

On "going home":

... the remedy for self-restoration is that you have got to find your way back home again as swiftly and smoothly as you can, and if you're wondering what your home is, here's a hint: Your home is whatever in this world you love more than you love yourself. So that might be creativity, it might be family, it might be invention, adventure, faith, service, it might be raising corgis, I don't know, your home is that thing to which you can dedicate your energies with such singular devotion that the ultimate results become inconsequential.

On staying true to your craft:

The only trick is that you've got to identify the best, worthiest thing that you love most, and then build your house right on top of it and don't budge from it.And if you should someday, somehow get vaulted out of your home by either great failure or great success, then your job is to fight your way back to that home the only way that it has ever been done, by putting your head down and performing with diligence and devotion and respect and reverence whatever the task is that love is calling forth from you next.

I'm a born worrier. People around me always tell me to stop overthinking. So it's no surprise that I drive myself crazy going in circles in my head, thinking about potential outcomes (most of them not very pleasant) and obsessing over what I'm doing wrong to remain stuck where I am.

But I often find that losing myself in the story I want to tell not only takes my mind off these worries, it also reminds me of why I'm even doing this in the first place: because, like Gilbert, I love writing more than I love myself. It's something I would do even if I weren't getting paid for it; it's something I do when I'm happy or down or troubled or angry; it's something I will always do and can't help but doing because making up stories is already a part of me -- it's in my blood.

I think there are some people who wander in life for years, not knowing what their purpose is, and lucky the ones who find their calling early in life and therefore have years to work on it. So when you do find your calling, you need to hold on to it, nurture it, and keep in mind why you love it even when there are moments - many of them - when you feel like giving up.

So onward, storytellers. May you always manage find your way back home to what you love, and not waver in the face of failure.

mid-Jan - should we be worried now?!

Mid-month.

Two weeks into January, and things are taking shape.

Still too early to tell what that will finally settle into.

Still too early to be hopeful.

So baby steps. We'll get there.

Meanwhile on the writing front, I'm still plodding my way through Before I Remember You, and it is NOT PRETTY. Typically, I get about a third into a novel (about a hundred pages) before I start losing steam. But I'm only at page 30 and already I want to rewrite the whole thing. I probably should, right? Minimise opportunity cost and all that? Save it before it's too late? Or maybe I should just push through and emerge on the other side with a story actually figured out? I don't know! Where's the writing manual when you need it?!

But maybe this is the answer for everything in life:

Have a great weekend! :0)

Post-CNY Book Updates and Writing Links

Happy Lunar New Year! 

It's been a whole week (and more) of preparations (who knew one good meal with your family involved so much effort?) and spring cleaning and general merry-making that involves too much grilled honeyed meat jerkies (physically impossible to resist), pineapple tarts, cashew nut cookies, sashimi salads (I know I'm not doing the food much justice with these descriptions, but just know that they are basically the reason why the clean eating programme is going out the window this festive period), and mandarin oranges. Many, many mandarin oranges.

But it's Monday again, so here's an update on No Room in Neverland, and some great links to share:

1. Sophie Kinsella's advice for writing a book:

Everybody, no matter who they are gets to the middle of a book and thinks crikey, I've had enough of this. You get bored with your story and your characters, you hate them all, you can't think why you started this wretched story in the first place.

The truth is, every book is hard to write, everybody reaches a wall, whether it is a plot hole or a scene that you can't get past. So you've just got to get to the end. Even if it's not the greatest draft, if it needs rewriting fine, at least you have a book to rewrite.

Truth.

So this is me trying to put one word after another towards the end. I'm at page 220 now, which may not seem like much, but between Lunar New Year and spring-cleaning and hosting a party and trying to prolong reading Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta and watching this Korean drama called Pinocchio so they won't end so soon (which, of course, requires Herculean effort, because that book oh god that book and that drama oh god that drama I need to rave about them soon!), I think any progress is good progress.

At least what I've written so far for Neverland doesn't make me want to barf, which is more than I can say for the first draft.


2. How wild is it that Harper Lee is writing another novel, "a sequel of sorts" to her breakout To Kill a Mockingbird half a century after it was published? It's called Go Set a Watchman, and she wrote it in the 50s before setting it aside. Just goes to show that it is never too late to pick up that figurative pen and revisit a novel that didn't quite work out.

3. As you know, I've been caught up in this fantastic fantasy trilogy lately. The Grisha trilogy by Leigh Bardugo is set in ancient Russia, and the plot and characters and writing just gets better and better with each installment. I'm on the final book, Ruin and Rising, now and am trying as hard as I can to read as slowly as humanly possible.

Here's an interview she did with The Midnight Garden, a book review blog that features a gorgeous whimsical layout and thoughtful reviews on young adult books. In the interview, Leigh reveals her upcoming book, Six of Crows, which she describes as an "Oceans 11, Inglourious Basterds, ragtag band of misfits, impossible heist story" that stars a supporting character from the Grisha trilogy. Big yay for more stories in the Grishaverse!


4. Another old post from ex-literary agent Nathan Bransford, where he offers some advice for young writers:

Don't judge your writing success by whether you're able to find publication immediately. Instead, write to get better, write for catharsis and practice and fun. Your future self will be thankful for the time well spent.

I'll admit, it's easy to get caught up in the whole publishing game (not sure if game is the right word here, but let's go with it for now). It's easier to fire out query letters to literary agents than writing that book, but it just distracts from the whole point of writing a book in the first place. You end up worrying too much about whether the book will be worth the time and effort, and worrying about whether people will like it, and forget to enjoy the process of writing it, and forget to write the story that you will like.

quote by Timothy Zahn

5. And more great advice from the inimitable Laini Taylor:

Daydreaming, however awesome it is, is passive. It happens in your head. Learning to make dreams real is another matter, and I think it should be the work of your life.

Enough said, really.


Okay, back to working on Neverland now! For the first time since I started writing it in November/December 2013, I'm actually properly psyched about it. Because I see the end in sight and I'm making my way there, one word at a time.


Hope the year of the goat is kinder to you than the horse one! :0)

on pre-rejections and self-sabotaging

Chuck Wendig (yes, I realise I'm starting to quote him a lot) has something to say about pre-rejection today:

FUCK YOUR PRE-REJECTION, PENMONKEY

Pre-rejection, according to him, is what we do to ourselves before we have even begun a project. It's essentially self-sabotage, where we thwart our chances of succeeding right from the get-go, because we're too afraid of the actual rejection that MAY - and most probably will - come after putting our works out there as writers. It's easier to just not start and spare ourselves the angst and frustration, but then writing wouldn't be the same without the debilitating self-doubt and headbanging despair.

This is Chuck's solution to nixing the pre-rejection:

How do you defeat it?

Practice, for one. Stop thinking so much. Stop worrying. Start submitting. Editors need material. Agents need material. Readers need stories to read.

Let other people read the work. Let them send it out, if you must.

Don't worry about the things you can't control. Control what you can -- and no, that doesn't mean to pre-reject, it just means, write the best story, and find your feet with writing.

You didn't get published, you didn't win the award, you got a bad review.

Repeat after me:

That's all right. I can try again. I can get better.

But you have to give yourself the chance to try again.

You don't get better by just chucking manuscripts in a drawer. You need the agitation.

You need that fear, that uncertainty, that courage.

You need input from other human beings. Which means:

Fuck your pre-rejection.

You want to get rejected? Do it the old-fashioned way.

Let someone else reject you. Take your shot.

Look, the guy's a prolific best-selling author. So if he says get over yourself and just write, I'd say we all do just that if we're ever going to move ahead as writers, artists, and creators.

* 

An update on No Room in Neverland: I'm on page 205! Woohoo! Baby steps, that's how I'm going about with this. Plan three chapters ahead, and then writing two and a half, so I can pick up from where I left off the next day. It worked for Lambs For Dinner, so I'm hoping it will this time too.


What about you? Is pre-rejection something you put yourself through? :0)

Clocked 30K for NaNo - and that's okay

So we're done with NaNoWriMo! One crazy month of uncensored writing, manic word churning, and getting lost in the labyrinth of the world you created.

My word count stands at 30,300. But oh, who cares. I'm having too much fun right now to obsess over word count! With a structure I've never dared to try before but am experimenting with now because what the hell it's NaNoWriMo and there's no better time to write without fear or judgement.

Here is an excerpt from No Room in Neverland (it's a flashback from one of Gemma and Cole's imaginary adventures to Neverland when they were kids):

*

Captain Storm was one of those people who guarded their ship so zealously they barely ever made port. He believed that the sea was his one true home, and to be on land was as unnatural as the hooked metal arm of his nemesis, Captain Hook.

When he first caught sight of the two children, it was on the southern island of Almeta, where he had just gathered enough supplies for another voyage to the Silver Cape. He never stayed overnight on land, even in terrible storms that tore ships apart. But as his men loaded the ship with bags and bags of flour and potatoes, seasoned meat and produce, Captain Storm stepped off his ship.

His crew stared. But the captain’s attention was fixed on the pair of children. They shouldn’t look so out of place in Neverland, where Lost Children made their home. But the two weren’t inhabitants. No, they were just visitors. Port Almeta host vagrants and visitors alike, and these drifters were from the Otherworld.

They were hardy little things, the captain could tell right away even from afar, no more than a day older than eight years of age. Hand in hand, they approached Storm with a steely determination that was absent in the Lost Children around here.

“We would like to cross the Silver Sea with you,” were the girl’s first words to him. Storm could tell she was a lot more nervous than she sounded, mostly because she was plucking at a loose thread in her jeans. The boy nudged her, and she added, “Sir.”

“Captain,” the boy corrected, and the girl nodded.

The captain was being very un-captainlike so far. He cleared his throat and growled, “You want to cross the Silver Sea?”

The pair nodded, their dark eyes too grave for Almeta in daytime.

“Why?”

“We want to know what’s on the other shore.” Tourists, the captain thought irritably. There was no other way to the gilded Hinterlands but sea passage – flight was impossible because of the air sprites out for flesh. Many stubborn visitors have plunged into the watery depths of the tumultuous Silver Sea because of those greedy little bastards.

These children have no idea what they were in for.

“So hitch a ferry. I don’t take passengers,” Captain Storm said.

“You don’t understand. We’re on a mission,” the girl said with enough passion to make the captain’s brows slide up past the shadow cast by his hat. “To save Neverland.”

Storm narrowed his eyes. “Save it how?”

The children shared a brief look before the boy offered, “We know our way around. We’ve studied the maps and everything.”

“We’re not just visitors,” the girl added with an eye roll.

A procession of sailors traipsed by with more bags of ration, staring at their captain and the two children he was entertaining. In the time it took for his men to pass, Storm understood.

“You’re hunting the fool’s treasure, aren’t you? It’s a myth, kids. There is no treasure. Just an old cave and a treacherous jungle.”

“We won’t know for sure until we see it for ourselves.”

Yes, Otherworld children all right. Only they could be this stubborn.

“Neverland is not yours to save,” said Storm. There had been others who tried. Eventually, they gave up after failing too many times, moved on and left Neverland for good. The others ended up as Lost Children, drifting through the days for eternity.

“We don’t know until we try.” The girl possessed a sense of purposefulness and solemnity uncharacteristic of children her age. Not that Captain Storm would know, seeing how few children he came into actual contact with.

How then was he going to have two of them on his ship?

Yet, he looked at the pair of them standing before him now, and heard himself say, “Get on board, then. And try not to fall over. I won’t bother doubling back for either of you.”

*

There is so much to explore for Neverland! So many possibilities, and it reminds me of how fun writing can be if you don't second-guess yourself or let yourself stop writing. It's so easy to make excuses and get overly critical of your writing (and wonder if this is all worth the effort and heartache in the end), but this is exactly how stories end up discarded when all they need is a little more thought and an extra push.

And who cares if I'm having more fun writing the Neverland Chronicles than present day scenes. I'm just happy to go where the story takes me. Because like Chuck Wendig said, "a finished thing is imperfect - but fixable."

NaNo-ers, any retrospective thoughts about the experience? Hope NaNoWriMo 2014 was just as fulfilling for you! :0)

Halfway into NaNoWriMo!

 Writing advice from Kate Brauning:

Don’t get discouraged when you’re drafting if you’re not seeing magic happen. That magical touch and those insightful moments you see in great books aren’t magic at all. They’re the result of blood and sweat. First drafts are limp and flat and awkward—that’s normal. The depth and layers come as you revise. And revise. And revise.

Ugh, limp and flat and awkward first drafts. Too much experience with that. But it's true that it gets better with each draft. You kind of figure out more stuff the more you write - the mood, the tone, the characters, their voices, their backgrounds - and all that helps you see the end more clearly.

So how is NaNoWriMo going for all my writerly friends? 

Reading Siege and Storm, book #2 of the Grisha trilogy by Leigh Bardugo, is making me ache to write Indigo Tides.

It is so insanely good, much better than the first in terms of prose and pacing. I mean, it's got mythical monsters and fairy tales and an unorthodox (and callously funny) ship captain that is fast becoming my favourite character in the book. What's not to love? Plus, I love how Leigh doesn't go overboard with the sappiness between Mal and Alina - every scene, every exchange, every touch between them is significant and propels the story forward while leaving your emotions scattered everywhere.





But that's a review for another day. I will properly gush about it then. For now,

Off to Neverland! Have a good weekend, everyone :0)

It's NaNoWriMo!

National Novel Writing Month entails copious cups of green tea, manic pounding of the keyboard, dreaming up scenes, talking to your characters, considering what they'd do in your shoes as you go about your life, and basically being taken over by this snarling, squalling, blossoming thing called the Work In Progress. Anything that helps churn out that 50K-word manuscript in a month.



WIP is going relatively well so far, considering how it had bucked and stalled like a horse that needs to poop for the first couple of drafts before I decided to take a break from it (let it, um, poop, so to speak).

Page 198 was where it succeeded in boring the brains out of me, so now I'm giving it another try, this time with a structure I've never quite dared to attempt before. Narrative within a narrative. Flashbacks (always risky). Non-linear chronology. Something like what Karen Foxlee did with The Midnight Dress.

Once I decided on this structure, it's like things finally clicked into place. This is what gets me fired up and excited to write the story! This is what's missing in the first two attempts! This is what makes me dig deeper into my characters!

Okay. *cracks knuckles* *flexes fingers* Let's do this.



Just so we're clear, I'm probably not going to finish 50K in one month. I'm not going to embrace that kind of insanity. But I'll just try my best and log in the daily word count and see where this takes me.

For my fellow NaNo-ers, here's some wisdom from best-selling author Chuck Wendig on the writing process:

"We wish the best for our stories. We want them to be great. We want them to win awards and climb to the top of the bestseller mountain and maybe they’ll change somebody’s life and earn us a giant sack of cash which will allow us to buy a jet-boat or an oil drum full of that very rare civet-poop coffee. Maybe a jet boat fueled by civet-shit coffee."

Yup, that's Chuck.

"... go forth and write. 

Without pressure, without fear, without the expectation of doing anything but crossing the finish line."

And some civet shit-free wisdom from Laini Taylor (please update your blog, Laini - I'm dying for some snippet of your life!):

"Imagine you’re standing at the edge of a jungle in, let’s say, Borneo (because I have a fascination with Borneo). You have a rough idea of how big this jungle is -- you’ve flown over it in a helicopter and seen dense green treecover, and you know what’s on the other side. You know where you want to get to, and you have a very vague idea of what’s IN the jungle, but you have no map, and as of yet there is no trail. What you do have is a machete, a blank roll of paper, and a grease pencil.  

There’s only one way to get to the other side of the jungle: take out your machete and start whacking. Carve your way forward and forward, sometimes sideways and sometimes back, until you get to the other side. That first time through, you’re going to come across ravines, swamps, viper nests, rivers, all sorts of things you didn’t expect and you’ll deal with them and get around them, over them, through them, in all manner of resourceful ways. And when you step out of the jungle on the far side, what you’ll have in your hand is a sprawling, wrinkled, sweat-stained mess of a map of the territory you’ve just discovered. It might not look very pretty, but it is a glorious thing, a document of discovery. You clutch it to you, and after you’ve rested and healed for a while, you go back to the far side of the jungle and. . . you start again. 

This time, with your messy map in hand, you’ll know where to go and where not to go. Some of the things you discovered your first time in, you’ll want to avoid like the plague; others will be perfect, serendipitous things that make the journey richer than you could have imagined when you set out. You’ll know your jungle/story intimately, the good and the bad, from ground level. Outlines, I think, are kind of the equivalent of aerial photography -- you get some idea, but you can’t really see what it’s like down below -- not until you’re walking through it. And when you find things to be not exactly as they had seemed from the air, you have to adapt.  

Be nimble. 

The second time through, your passage will be much more elegant than the first, and it will also be less exciting. Nothing will ever be so miserable or so thrilling as that first bushwhack. . . that first exploratory draft. The misery and the thrill are intertwined -- that’s exploration for you, taking the leeches and fevers with the discovery and getting to name islands and swamps after yourself! The second time, you’ll know what to expect. You’ll be refining your map. It will get more perfect and less exciting with each pass, and then one day you’ll be done. Done with that jungle and ready for a new one."

Yes, this analogy is perfect.

Yes, Laini Taylor is perfect.

Yes, I wish I could write like her.

Speaking of whom, yay for more Laini goodness: her short story, which is collected in this anthology called My True Love Gave to Me, has just been released!

Image from GoodReads

Laini's in good company too: Holly Black, Kelly Link, Stephanie Perkins, Myra McEntire, and more!

And you guys, the UK version has HOT PINK pages:

SO grabbing this from the bookstore.

May the writing gods be with you this NaNoWriMo! :0)

you're either writing or you're not

"The writer writes. The writer writes! THE WRITER WRITES.
Hell with aspiring.
To aspire is to expire."

"... rejection is how you know you're doing the work. Rejection means you're putting words to paper and you're throwing them out there for all the world to see. Rejection is your battle scars: proof of your fight in the arena. Nobody wants to fall down and go boom but falling down and going boom is how you learn not to fall next time. Or at least fall differently."

"I want to be a writer, but.
Stop.
Stop there.
And start writing.
You're either writing, or you're not."

This is just the right kick in the butt I need for today.

12 favorite quotes on writing and stories

1. Jodi Picoult

2. Neil Gaiman

3. Guillermo Del Toro on monsters in fairy tales:

“In fairy tales, monsters exist to be a manifestation of something that we need to understand, not only a problem we need to overcome, but also they need to represent, much like angels represent the beautiful, pure, eternal side of the human spirit, monsters need to represent a more tangible, more mortal side of being human: aging, decay, darkness and so forth. And I believe that monsters originally, when we were cavemen and you know, sitting around a fire, we needed to explain the birth of the sun and the death of the moon and the phases of the moon and rain and thunder. And we invented creatures that made sense of the world: a serpent that ate the sun, a creature that ate the moon, a man in the moon living there, things like that. And as we became more and more sophisticated and created sort of a social structure, the real enigmas started not to be outside. The rain and the thunder were logical now. But the real enigmas became social. All those impulses that we were repressing: cannibalism, murder, these things needed an explanation. The sex drive, the need to hunt, the need to kill, these things then became personified in monsters. Werewolves, vampires, ogres, this and that. I feel that monsters are here in our world to help us understand it. They are an essential part of a fable.”

4. Laini Taylor

by Jim di Bartolo, Laini's illustrator husband

"Be an unstoppable force. Write with an imaginary machete strapped to your thigh. This is not wishy-washy, polite, drinking-tea-with-your-pinkie-sticking-out stuff. It’s who you want to be, your most powerful self. Write your books. Finish them, then make them better. Find the way. No one will make this dream come true for you but you."

(Read the full article here!)


5. Toni Morrison

6. George R. R. Martin

by Dan Elijah G. Fajardo

"Fantasy is silver and scarlet, indigo and azure, obsidian veined with gold and lapis lazuli. Reality is plywood and plastic, done up in mud brown and olive drab. Fantasy tastes of habaneros and honey, cinnamon and cloves, rare red meat and wines as sweet as summer. Reality is beans and tofu, and ashes at the end. Reality is the strip malls of Burbank, the smokestacks of Cleveland, a parking garage in Newark. Fantasy is the towers of Minas Tirith, the ancient stones of Gormenghast, the halls of Camelot. Fantasy flies on the wings of Icarus, reality on Southwest Airlines. Why do our dreams become so much smaller when they finally come true? 

"We read fantasy to find the colors again, I think. To taste strong spices and hear the songs the sirens sang. There is something old and true in fantasy that speaks to something deep within us, to the child who dreamt that one day he would hunt the forests of the night, and feast beneath the hollow hills, and find a love to last forever somewhere south of Oz and north of Shangri-La."

7. Rilke

8. And here's Snoopy, the voice of every aspiring writer.

9. Einstein

And finally,

10.

Any other brilliant quotes I missed out?