My current work in progress is one I’ve been struggling with for almost two years. Given that the first two books took a collective thirteen months and the third only two months, this has been a source of constant frustration for me. However, I am nearing the end now, with almost 70,000 words down (and a rough target of 90,000 to finish this draft) I begin to see why it has been so tough.
Category: Behind the Curtain (Page 2 of 4)
In the flurry of stress and activity that has been the pulling together of the second Oslo Writers’ League anthology, I almost forgot to contribute a piece myself. In the end, I ran so short on time I had to dig through my short story stock and find something already written, then repurpose it. In this case, where the themes were “Identity” and “Crossroads”, I decided the best fit was a non-fiction piece I wrote under pressure from a former colleague who was fascinated by my discomfort with all things Australian. Being homeless—in the sense of never having really felt “at home” anywhere—is a sensitive subject for me, and writing the piece was both unsettling and revealing. Even when it was complete, I didn’t know what to do with it. I couldn’t very well submit it to Australian journals, not when, to my mind at least, it was unpatriotic to the point of being insulting. But would foreign journals understand it? Or, more importantly, care what it was saying? I doubted it (as I often doubt myself—it’s a writer’s prerogative). So I put it away and tried not to think about it.
My participation in the My Writing Process Blog Tour is thanks to Djerassi YA Workshop pal, Susan Crispell, who writes magical realism for both young adults and the adult market. Her book, Love and Cupcakes came out in January this year from Swoon Romance, and I had the pleasure of reading and critiquing the opening her very recently completed new YA novel, How to Take a Life. I loved what I read of her work, and am sure the new book is destined for big things. I also have to thank Susan for tagging me in this tour, because my blog has been sadly neglected since my return from Djerassi, and it’s high time I got back to it.
This particular blog tour is a really good way to find out about new authors and their books; you can follow the blog tour on Twitter via the #mywritingprocess hashtag.
And now for my answers to the questions…
It’s been almost a week since I left the soft, rolling hills of northern California and returned to a fresh sprinkling of damp snow in a Norway finally graced with an acceptable number of daylight hours. I should feel relaxed, inspired, happy, and ready to tackle all the problems I found ways to solve while I was away. And I did find solutions…but I found something else, too, something I never expected. And it has broken me, just a little bit.
Now, before I get all soul-barey, let me preface by saying I’m not an outwardly emotional person. And living for eight years in a country filled with stoics has only taught me to further fortify the walls I build around myself. But in the course of seven short days, like water seeping through cracks I didn’t even know were there, the spirit of artistic peace and freedom that takes hold at Djerassi crept into me and changed me forever.
Melodramatic? Maybe. True? Definitely. I’ve read it’s normal to feel a sense of loss after a retreat, but the usual residency period is four times as long as the one from which I’ve just returned. The difference, perhaps, is in the company of the people I spent that week with—people I will never forget. These eleven women, all writers of middle grade and young adult fiction, were strangers to me at the beginning of the week—all I knew of them was in their writing, and that might even have been enough; it was strong, beautiful, intimidating, inspiring…I already admired their talent. Then I met the women themselves. Individually, they were friendly, funny, quirky…all good things, but as a group, they formed that soft, secure place so rare in a brand new critique group; amongst these women, I felt immediately confident there would be no moment of attack, no nasty revelation that the writing I feared was terrible was, indeed, terrible. Yet, there was no dishonesty, no saccharin platitudes, only honest, thoughtful critique that came from a place of genuine enthusiasm for the work and what it took to produce it. This is rare and valuable to a writer at the best of times, but when these people are writing in your own genre, and are at various points along the same journey, the immediate kinship makes them nothing short of family.
Dear Pedants,
(Hey, everyone’s writing open letters these days, why not me, right?)
When I became a freelance editor, I worried that I’d become one of those insufferable pedants, or “Grammar Nazis” as they are affectionately known, who cannot stop themselves from picking on everyone’s mistakes, no matter how tiny or how accidental. Admittedly, I was already a serial-corrector—pretty much from the day I learned to speak, yeah, one of those kids—so I figured as soon as I started deliberately focusing on picking out errors in people’s work, I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from finding abhorrent grammatical mistakes everywhere, and worse, correcting them whether people wanted me to or not.
However, I have found that the opposite has become true, and thank goodness. It’s not to say that horrific misuse of language doesn’t still grate with me—of course it does—but as a professional editor, I’ve learned to adapt myself to that beautiful thing writers use to make the language their own: style. Sometimes this means that a semicolon does not, in fact, join two independent but related sentences. Yes, I can hear your horrified gasps from here, but if I were to get out my little red pen and make the page bleed every single time I spotted a technical misuse simply because it was “incorrect”, I would be stripping the writer of their voice, and that is the biggest no-no in the editing profession, bar none. In my opinion, at least.
What I think makes a good editor, and it is something I strive for in every project I work on, is someone who recognises what makes the writer’s voice unique, and works hard both to preserve and enhance it. Sometimes this means cutting back, much like pruning a rose bush will bring forth bigger, more beautiful flowers; sometimes it means encouraging further exploration of a character or story arc; sometimes it means helping a writer to find, and refine, their voice. And sometimes it means ignoring a grammatical niggle because the piece would lose something were it to be corrected: in these cases, the misuse makes the voice.
However, editing a manuscript for publication is a far cry from reading blog posts, Facebook statuses, tweets, and other informal pieces of writing. It was in this arena I worried the most about keeping my big fat keyboard quiet. And I can’t pretend I don’t cringe a little when I see “your beautiful” or “Look! The kittys eating it’s food!”, but do I struggle to stop myself from posting an unsolicited corrective comment? No. Not anymore. I let it be. Why? Because everyone makes mistakes. Everyone. And Muphry’s Law is sure to come back and bite you when you’re snarky comment has a mistake in it. (See what I did there?)
Whether we like it or not, language changes, develops, incorporates new words (and new usage of old words), and whether or not you want words like “transition” to be used as verbs, or “literally” to mean “figuratively”, there’s nothing you can do to stop the evolution of language. So why not embrace it? Use it, add your voice to the cacophony, no matter how discordant you find it at first, and make it your own. Be bold, be brave, and deny the urge to be a pompous jackass. You will never be happy as long as you are trying to correct others, because all anyone sees is your effort to stifle their voice and look smart (when what you actually look like is a douchebag), and that’s not going to make them change their ways.
November is over, the Christmas decorations are going up, and the sun is going down earlier and earlier in the day here in Norway. But, for the first time since I moved here almost eight years ago, I wasn’t as focused on the light (and lack of it) this year, I was focused on a goal, a daily word count target, and on winning NaNoWriMo in my first attempt. If you’re following me on Twitter, or my author page on Facebook, you will have seen that I not only hit the goal of 50,000 words nine days early, but that by the end of the month I had written close to 71,000 words. I find those two facts astounding enough, but what has surprised me the most is what I learned from what I originally thought of as a gimmicky type of thing that no real writers take very seriously.
When I started seriously working on Amaranth back in 2011, I dedicated one day a week to writing, and I would write the entire day, then let the ideas sink in over the following week so I’d know exactly where to start when I sat down in front of the screen again. That was one of the things that made me the most nervous about NaNo: there was no time to let ideas settle! What if I dried up every time I sat down to write? Or what if I wrote crap just to meet the word count target, only to discover I was running my story off in a ditch? This is why I decided to write my fourth Eidolon novel for NaNo, rather than the book I’ve been planning to write when the series is over. I knew The Eidolon Cycle would be fine with or without this fourth book, and if it turned out to be terrible, it wouldn’t hurt the series to simply dump it. The other book is one I’ve been planning for years and didn’t want to risk not doing it properly.
However, as it turned out my fears were groundless. There was never a day when I sat down with nothing to write, and although I only needed to write around 1700 words a day to meet the 50k goal, most days I ended up with between two and three thousand words. I only missed one day, and that was a Sunday where I spent all day with my daughter, then all evening working on a book release. The zero on my calendar is still mocking me, despite the fact that I got down a mammoth 4300 words the following day to make up for it—but that’s just me; I can’t stand to have broken the chain. But what kept me in fresh material was the idea suggested by my motivational NaNo writer friend, Audrey, who quoted Hemingway as having said he never drained the well. In other words, I left myself an idea or two to pick up the thread of the following day. And the more I wrote, the more I could see these characters and their world, and the more I knew what they were going to do or say next. So that gave me:
Lesson number one: Creativity is a muscle. The more you use it, the more it gives you to work with.
BUT! Back when I was writing once a week, I would usually finish up the day with three to four thousand words, and I never stopped writing until I had completed the chapter I was working on. It felt nice and neat to complete a chapter each writing session, and it made the overall structure of the novel pretty clean, meaning there wasn’t a lot of major rearranging to do when editing time came. During NaNo, I couldn’t afford to spend the entire day writing, and if I was to follow lesson number one above, I couldn’t use up all my ideas or I’d risk writer’s block the next day. With that in mind, I had to do something which was (to me) pretty drastic: I had to forget about chapters and neat little literary packages, and just write scenes. And sometimes [GASP!] leave them unfinished. That was hard.
Lesson number two: A first draft is allowed to be messy, and should be about the story, not about neat chapter packages.
I have said before that one of my main issues when I write is that I forget to paint the scenery. I write what my characters are saying, thinking, feeling and doing, often forgetting to paint an adequate picture of where and when they’re doing all these things. During NaNo, I embraced this about myself, and really let myself go into full first draft mode. Get the story out, put the detail in later. This proved to be a strangely valuable lesson; not only could I allow myself to write the way I naturally write, but it means that when I come back during editing to describe the sights, sounds and smells my character is experiencing, I will know her so well that it will be much easier to do it in her voice.
Lesson number three: Set free your natural drafting instincts; everything else can be fixed during editing.
The fourth, final, and most important lesson I have taken away from my NaNo experience is the one that will change my writing life forever. I have always claimed that I need a large chunk of uninterrupted time in order to write. NaNo blew that theory to pieces: most days I started at 9am and had written two or three thousand words before 11am. Given that I made a life choice to become a freelancer so I would have more flexibility to write, it’s frustrating to know that I’ve only just learned what that really means. I can apparently write whole novels in a matter of weeks if I only give myself the space and time to do it. This was never more clear to me than on Day 14 when I hit 33,963 words. On that day, I just happened to check the word count of book three (which, as of that day, I had been working on for two weeks shy of one year) and its word count was ONE WORD LESS! So, in fourteen days, I had surpassed my own word count for the previous eleven and a half MONTHS by one word. This is the kind of moment that one might call an epiphany.
Lesson number four: It is possible to write every day. You just have to make it a priority.
Those are my lessons, and what I started as an exercise in “let’s see if I can do this” turned into “Oh my God! I could do this every day for as long as I want to!” And I want to. I have printed out a new calendar page for December and started marking in my word counts each day, putting another big red cross through each day I write, and I will do it until I run out of words, may that be many, many words from now.
A few months ago I saw a tweet from acclaimed YA author, Nova Ren Suma, announcing that she would be running a YA writing workshop at the Djerassi Resident Artists’ Retreat in California next February. I replied to her tweet asking if something walking the line between YA and NA (New Adult) would be okay, and she responded with interest, and encouraged me to apply. So I did. Only eleven places were available, and I was informed on applying that there were many more applicants than places available. I put thoughts of it aside, and focused on other things until about a week ago, when I got an email telling me I’d been accepted into the program!
So next February I will be trekking all the way from frosty Norway to the ranch, which lies about an hour south of San Francisco, for a week of workshopping my first draft NaNoWriMo novel, and spending peaceful days on a secluded property purpose-built for encouraging the creative juices to flow. Now that I’ve been informed someone will meet me at the airport and I won’t have to rent a car and drive all the way to Bear Gulch Road alone, I’ve stopped quaking with fear and allowed myself to get excited. Yes, I know, I’m a wuss. Side note: I also hear the on-site chef is amazing!
I have looked at various residency programs around the US, Australia and Europe, and have yearned to apply and win one, but with a three-year-old daughter in my life, it hasn’t so far been a viable option to spend one to three months away from her should I be accepted. But this opportunity was the perfect compromise, offering a week of isolation to work uninterrupted, be inspired by the beautiful location, recharge my creative batteries at the end of another cold, dark Norwegian winter, as well as make the most of the opportunity to workshop with a seasoned YA author and a focused group of other writers.
One day, when my daughter can cope with my absence for longer, I’ll begin applying for the regular-length residencies, but for now, this is the best opportunity I could imagine, and I couldn’t be more excited.
Amidst the flurry of activity that is NaNoWriMo, I am taking a moment to talk about the other project that has been keeping me busy in the last couple of months, and to introduce you to a writer friend of mine by the name of Selina Carr. Hi! She’s me. I’m her. And we’ve written a fairytale that is about to be published in a stunning hardback book at the end of November by Tenebris Books (if you’ve read my other posts, you’ll know about my connection there). Willow, Weep No More is a book of traditionally-inspired fairytales and fables that aim to capture the magic of classic fairytales while exploring the themes of inner beauty, wisdom and strength.
Yesterday was the cover reveal, and as you can see, it’s a thing of beauty. As is the rest of the book—believe me, I’ve read it many times already, given that I am the editor. But why would I credit some non-existent person with writing the story I contributed? There are lots of reasons writers adopt a nom de plume, but my reasons were two-fold:
- I have some ideas floating around in my (very full) brain, and some of them are for readers much younger than those I currently write for under my own name. The Eidolon Cycle contains a lot of death, some fairly horrific violence, and as such I would never recommend it for anyone under the age of fifteen or sixteen. So, if I later wrote something intended for ten year olds, and a ten year old loved it and went looking online for something else Zoë Harris had written, he or she would find titles intended for a much older reader. If I ever do write something for younger readers, I will do it under the name “Selina Carr”, and the story in Willow, Weep No More under that name would be fine for someone of that age to read.
- The second reason is ego. No, not to promote it, to deemphasize it. This book is very important to me, and I want it to be viewed by potential readers for what it is, and that is not a platform for me to publish my own work. I was torn about whether to contribute anything at all for exactly this reason, but I love fairytales so much I just couldn’t not write something for it. So, while it is a great thing to put my name to something I’m incredibly proud of, I didn’t want to do it at the expense of the other authors and illustrators who have contributed so much wonderful work. It is my imprint’s first publication, and I want it to be taken seriously, and judged on the merit of its contents. It can’t be “The Zoë Book and other stories”.
So, if I don’t want to confuse my readers, and I’m not about ego, why am I telling everyone who reads my blog? For starters, anyone who knows me personally will crack my code in seconds (Selina is my middle name, and Carr is my partner’s surname). But really, it’s not a secret meant to be kept under lock and key. It’s a branding distinction in the first instance, and an exercise in humility in the second. I truly do want my friends, family, and anyone who is interested in what I do to know about this book, not only because I want to hear their thoughts on my own contribution, but because I want them to read the other stories in the book—stories that are beautiful, poignant, enchanting and full of all the wonder one would expect from a classic fairytale anthology.
There’s nothing quite like a real-time widget or two to show the world my progress, pride and/or shame. So you can come back to this post any time and see how my NaNoWriMo effort is going. (NOTE: Comments, messages, cheers and flowers are all great ways of keeping my motivation levels up. Just sayin’.)
How I’m doing so far:
How the month is going, on a graph. Just because I like graphs >
And how I stack up against my writing buddies:
It’s the last day of October, and tomorrow begins the flurry of writing that will be my first NaNoWriMo. I am about as unprepared as I could hope not to be, but I do have backup in the form of writer-friend, Audrey Camp. We have agreed to do our writing first thing in the morning each day, and text each other when we’ve hit the day’s target word count. Audrey is one of the more competitive people I know, so that should keep us both on track.
As for planning what I’m actually going to write . . . well, that’s a whole ‘nother story. This is probably the least planned of any of the books in my series, in that all I have so far is a basic premise and some ideas of stuff I want to get in there somewhere. This is the first time I’ve started without knowing where it’s supposed to end, and that’s scaring me, to be honest. I don’t mind not knowing the path the journey will take, but I need to know the destination. So maybe I should stop writing blog posts and get planning. I’ll see you guys in a month.
(Oh, and just to make November scarier, I am also doing a self-imposed No-Snack-November. Yes, I know, I’m a masochist.)