Progress!

The last time I wrote about my WIP, I was stuck in the quagmire of writer's block. I just couldn't see where to go next: how to add complexity and higher stakes. It was a frustrating, scary place to be.

Now, I'm pleased to report I have pushed through, but not in the way I expected. I thought my quirky minor characters would fuel the sub-plots I needed to add layers to my main characters' journeys. I thought and thought and got nowhere.

The key is the villain
Image: Salvatore Vuono / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Then, I was reading this article about mirroring your plot points, and a lightbulb went off. The section entitled "the bad guys close in" could be taken as a metaphor, but it got me thinking. I have some shady characters, and there is one in particular that causes trouble. His main action had impacted on a minor character (albeit a quite important one), and this action then ricocheted into the main characters' worlds. But then I thought - what if? What if this guy is actually a proper villain, who seeks to disrupt my hero's path whenever possible, and to use my heroine as an unwilling accomplice? What could he do, what would be the worst he could do, to destroy my hero's hopes?


Progress
Image: renjith krishnan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The answer popped into my head, and then I was off, adding quite a few scenes to the second half of the novel, as well as a few pointers to lay the foundation in the first half. It sounds quite simple, to increase the antagonist's role, but I had thought that the book would be almost solely driven by the characters' internal journeys, with the external happenings just driving home their development. Instead, I can push them into increasingly desperate situations using intentional evil.

Plus, it's fun to write a villain... and doubly fun to see him get his just deserts.

So now, my novel has blossomed from 46,000 words to just over 60,000 words. I still have about 20,000 to go, but it feels good to be 3/4 of the way through. I know it still needs plot development, with tidbits that are yet to drop into my brain. But I feel like I will get there; no longer lost in the "what if I never finish" doldrums.

Here's what my structure looks like now (see the first version here). I've increased from 43 to 75 scenes. Act 3 is still looking a little bereft, but some of those scenes will be long.


My scenes, 3/4 way through

Have you experienced such a breakthrough, and how did you achieve it? Perhaps by studying the craft as I did?

It's My Bloggiversary!

Image: Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

My blog is one year old. And what a year it's been. As well as quite a bit happening in my personal and work life (most of which I have not shared), I feel as if I have grown immensely as a writer.

When I started off of course no-one was reading my posts, but as I reached out to others I've started to form some rewarding writer friendships. It's lovely to get comments on my thoughts; to know that others share the same struggles and triumphs. A recent highlight for me is having actual authors comments on my posts.

I started the blog when I'd finished a draft. Since then that MS was edited, critiqued, edited again, queried, submitted and now put out to pasture. Along the way I've continued to study the craft and I've had some real "a-ha" moments. Now as I work to complete the next draft of a very different book, I'm more confident in my abilities and even more excited about the future ahead.

Thanks everyone for reading :-)

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Fancy Becoming a Professional Hermit?

I'm reading a delightful book at the moment, "In the Garden with Jane Austen" by Kim Wilson. Not only is it beautiful and fascinating in its own right, the book is giving me little tidbits I can use in my writing.

I came across something today which I had to share. In a chapter about mansions and manor house gardens, there is a section entitled "Temples, Gothic Seats, Grottoes and Hermitages". The author discusses how certain garden features were supposed to conjure particular emotions according to the romantic tendencies of the eighteenth century.

Hermitages are discussed last, and I have to admit I have never heard of this as a garden feature before. To quote from the book:

The Bennets in Pride and Prejudice have a hermitage in their wilderness walk. Mrs Bennet wants to show if off to the visit Lady Catherine de Bourgh: 'Go, my dear', she cries, 'and show her ladyship about the different walks. I think she will be pleased with the hermitage.' A hermitage, meant to resemble the hut of a religious recluse and to inspire melancholy associations, ought properly to be located in a secluded wooded area, so the Bennets hermitage is sited correctly, though perhaps too close to the house for the best taste.

Estate owners occasionally advertised for hermits to fill their hermitages. Employers asked such men to let their hair and fingernails grow, wear simple clothing, live in the hermitage and interact with any passing visitors in the character of the religious ascetic. Some contracts promised large payments at the end of specified terms, because it was so hard to keep a good hermit. Eventually, the notion of hiring a hermit was considered so ridiculous that a play called The London Hermit lampooned it, and indeed it's hard to imagine even Mrs Bennet going so far. 

That's right everyone, it's hard to keep a good hermit. Can you believe that was actually a profession? You could pretend to be like a monk, living a solitary religious life in the garden - but you were just faking it! I'm trying to imagine what kind of performance a hermit would give for the privileged few strolling in these gardens. Perhaps this novel might shed some light.

Sharing the Love

Thanks to Jen for passing the Kreativ Blogger Award on to me this week :-)

Apparently I need to pass the award onto 6 bloggers, and tell you ten things about myself. Ten! I don't think I can think of ten interesting things to say. Well, here goes...

Never again

1. I am the youngest of two daughters, my mother is the youngest of two daughters... and my grandmother is the youngest of two daughters.

2. I didn't venture overseas until I was twenty, and it was a full-on 100 day backpacking adventure through UK/Europe with my best friend.

3. I prefer potatoes over meat.

Totally crystals

4. Once I had a long-standing argument discussion with a friend over whether the sparkles in the ocean were more like diamonds or crystals.

5. I have naturally curly hair - that is, hair with random waves all over the place and a permanent halo of frizz. I've worn it straight for the last five years and it's been a revelation. Such freedom in being able to run your hands through your hair without them getting stuck!

Bella

6. I have owned two female ginger cats (most gingers are toms). They are/were very special girls.

7. I like spotting and identifying transporty stuff - like planes and cruise ships, and I love reading maps.

8. My grandparents were all Scottish, so I grew up with bagpipes and tartan in my blood.

Yum yum

9. I cook a mean spaghetti carbonara (no, it shouldn't be swimming in cream).

10. I like being in high places - like on mountains, up towers and look-out points... anywhere with a view. Maybe being vertically challenged has something to do with it. I hate the feeling of falling though.

And now for your bonus semi-interesting fact...

11. I believe I just may be the only person in the world with my (first and last) name.

I've also sort of been remiss in not passing on the Liebster award I got ages ago, because at the time I didn't have enough blogging friends to pass it on to. Thanks again to Loree for giving it to me, and congrats again for recently landing an agent!

Now to share the love for the Kreativ Blogger award...

1. Anne Gallagher
2. Glynis Smy
3. Lynda R.Young
4. Sierra Gardner
5. Jen Daiker
6. Susan Bergen

You all rock :-)

Shiny-New-Idea-Itis

Image: Danilo Rizzuti / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I was in the bathroom at work, when suddenly a rather ordinary thought began to cascade into a string of increasingly interesting ideas, and suddenly I had a premise for a cosy mystery. Just out of the blue. I am focused on historical romance right now, have written contemporary in the past, and have never given mysteries a second thought - except that I read the blogs of some authors like Elizabeth Spann Craig, and as a tween I loved Nancy Drew. But I LOVE this idea and my excited writer's brain can't wait to think more about it, to start fleshing out characters and detailing plots.

Of course it does. It's no coincidence that this happens when I've told my brain it must sort out my WIP at all costs. Instead of grappling with the hard work, my brain just wants to play, to get back to the juicy stuff of planning and early drafting. Telling it that there's more fun to come with my WIP once we get over this hump in the draft is, apparently, not enough bait. It must distract me and tease me with the possibility of something new and exciting that might be THE BEST THING I'VE EVER DONE AND SURE TO GET PUBLISHED.

This disease, SNII, always strikes right at the moment when you can little afford to be distracted - right? (or is it just me) The temptation is so great to stop persevering through the hard yards of getting a draft done, and to enjoy playing. So I do what I always do - take notes, save them in my writing file, and wait for the excitement of the moment to wear off so I can concentrate again. My current WIP was one of those SNIs a couple of years ago, and I did dip into it every now and again (usually late at night when my brain was tired of the WIP-du-jour) before pursuing it earnestly for NaNoWriMo.

It's at times like this when I think: "I must be a writer". Surely only a writer's mind behaves this way. This time around I'm finding it really amusing that this genre flowed so organically from my mind. I find myself wanting to Google the title I came up with, to see if someone else has had the exact same brain wave before me - but that would just ruin the joy of these few minutes, and I can do that later. It reminds me of the time I thought of a book with magical elements which is also yet to be written - tremendous fun, but will take a lot of serious work when it actually comes to be written.

It does make me worry about defining a genre for myself if I do actually cross the hurdle of publication, but only a little. The right book will get me there - and I wonder what it will be?

Pushing Through

Image: Salvatore Vuono / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

So... long time, no blog. What with working through, and spending the statutory holidays with family or spring-cleaning, there hasn't been much writing going on either. But those excuses aren't really true. What I am experiencing amounts to a serious case of...

WRITER'S BLOCK

There, I admitted it.

Generally I've had no problem filling a first draft with potential scenes. I get almost to the goal word count, then have to fill in some stuff, which gets me past the word count, and then I trim some stuff.

This time it's different. My muse left the building sometime around November 25th, and it hasn't come back, except for a few small spurts. I'm writing a historical romance. I have the romantic plot down, basically. But my characters don't exist in a vacuum, and their world needs serious fleshing out. This is not supposed to be a category romance. I already have one sub-plot which seriously impacts the main one, but I was hoping for another (which will mainly affect my hero's journey). I know what type of thing I want it to be, but I don't know what it is. I have spent many hours wracking my brain. I have expected solutions to start dropping in my head the way they usually do (i.e. when I'm not at my computer), but nothing.

My brain has also been crammed full of travel research and planning, as we are off on a big trip in just over six weeks. That's real life - it must take priority. The fantasy world seems to have fallen off the margins of my brain.

This is why I only have 46,000 words, when I had intended to have 60,000 by the end of 2011. I am still striving to finish the first draft before we leave for our trip at the end of February. That's 5,000/week, including this one.

And how do I plan to get there? Purely by writing something... anything. I finished NaNo with just over 40k, and I have inched my way up to 46k a few hundred words at a time - fleshing out existing scenes, adding bits and pieces and occasionally thinking of whole new scenes. There are a couple of scenes I have scant notes for that I can expand on, but beyond that, it's all unknown territory.

I have to have faith in the process. Even just by working through some early scenes where we meet key minor characters, I have learned more about these people and gained some inklings as to what role they could play. No major insights yet, but I just have to keep going, keep pushing, until I can literally not squeeze out any more words.

I could just give up, but that would be heart-breaking. I know I've only devoted a few months to writing this project, but it's been an idea in some form for years, and I just adore some of the scenes I've written. Plus I think the hero and heroine I've created are pretty special (my humble opinion!). I really really want someone else to get to know them and root for them as I do.

Even just writing this blog has made me feel a bit better. Onwards!

Happy New Year, by the way. I have a good feeling about this one.

Bits and Bobs: NaNo Numbers, My Scene Layout and a Kiwi Christmas

First, I forgot to comment last time on the NaNoWriMo wrap up stats. It was a boost to my confidence to find out that the average word count per writer was only 12,000, and only 14% of participants got to 50,000. Suddenly my 40,000 seems pretty good. So take heart, fellow NaNa-not-quite-winners, we still did well!

It's interesting looking at their map - it's mainly only English speaking countries, with basically no-one from Asia, Africa or South America. It would be cool to see NaNoWriMo grow into other languages in the future, don't you think?

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After my last post about writing on my scenes on notecards, I laid them out on the floor to see how many scenes are in each act. And here's how it's playing out so far...

So Act 3 needs a little work! And Act 1 is only supposed to be 1/4 of the total, so that speaks my need to build in more plot complications in the middle. It will be interesting (for me anyway!) to see how this looks when I'm done.

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And for my followers in the northern hemisphere, here's a fun little video which illustrates what it's like to enjoy Christmas in this part of the world.

Surf and sand by day... Christmas lights by night!



The only downside is that you have to be seen in your swimming attire after eating all the yummy seasonal food!

I will probably take a break from posting over this period, so Merry Christmas everyone! Remember the things that matter.