Conflict; or, Keeping Things Interesting

Posted on October 1, 2010 by sheilamcclune

(This posting originally appeared on The Melt-Ink Pot)

One of the things I struggle with in my writing is keeping enough conflict going to make the story interesting. I find that I often create friction between two characters, only to have them resolve it a chapter or two later and then everything is fine again. Life’s not like that; good characters aren’t like that; and frankly, it makes for boring reading.

The other thing I have to work to keep in mind is that emotional displays are not the same as conflict. So while it might be a natural reaction to have a character run off and have a crying fit when she gets some bad news, it’s more interesting if we see her struggling to come to terms with the bad news and figuring out what to do about it.

This week, I spent some time editing chapters of my WIP, The Daughters of August Winterbourne, so that I could submit them to my on-line critique group. The chapters are about a third of the way into the book, when my MC, Celia Winterbourne, learns that she is not her father’s only child, as she has been led to believe for all nineteen years of her life.

In my original draft, I had her running away to the neighboring cemetery to have a good cry, then returning to have yet another good cry with friends before actually confronting her father. While there were notes in the cemetery scene between Celia and her love interest that were rather sweet and helped develop that relationship further, after several readings (and some feedback on the previous chapters), I decided that rather than have her friends convince Celia to confront her father, it makes for a better story — and makes Celia more interesting as a character — for her to decide for herself that she needs to talk to her father. Showing that conflict within herself — the desire to run away vs. the logical decision to meet with her father — is much more interesting, at least to me.

But conflict doesn’t always have to be a big, loud confrontation. Once I’d made revisions to my chapters and sent them off, I decided to go back and look at the beginning of the story once again. The opening scene, while it does a good job of establishing who Celia is and shows us how she and her father relate to one another, always felt a little flat to me. In it, Celia lands her father’s airship. She and her father talk about how she will be leaving for the Academy of Science in a few days, one of the first female students to be admitted to the school. (Sadly, much of this comes across as an “As you know, Bob,” kind of scene, and I wasn’t terribly happy with that.) Then they get in a carriage and go back to London. Not very exciting.

So I revised. Celia still lands the airship, but this time, she and her father talk about how much he’s going to miss having her around, and how they won’t be able to just go off in the airship whenever they feel like it … but I never have them say why. (Astute readers might figure out that it’s because she’s going off to school, but we don’t know which school, or that there’s anything special about her being accepted to attend it.) That increases the tension, at least a little bit.

After they land, they learn that there are reporters waiting to talk to them, since Celia’s father is a well-known airship designer, and Celia is equally well known for her skill as an airship pilot. Celia doesn’t want to talk to them, but does anyway. And that gives the scene a tiny bit of conflict that makes it more interesting.

Over the course of the interview, we learn that Celia is off to the Academy, and that yes, she is excited to have been accepted and so on. Then one of the reporters asks her if she’s read a recent article stating that women are physiologically unsuited to the rigors of university life (the story is set in 1873), and what she thinks about that. Bingo! That’s the conflict the scene needed.

So restructuring the scene this way accomplished several goals:

1) Increased conflict/tension = more interesting reading.
2) Eliminated the former “As you know, Bob” info dump between Celia and her father to establish the fact that she will be off to the Academy soon. Yay!
3) Helps establish the fact that Celia is a minor –and somewhat reluctant — celebrity. Since this plays into some of the conflicts later in the story, I decided it was important to make more of a point of it up front.

I’m happy with the results.

So what have other people done to increase conflict in their stories?

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Happy Blogiversary!

Posted on September 24, 2010 by sheilamcclune

(This posting originally appeared on The Melt-Ink Pot)

Instead of my usual ramblings, this week I’d like to take the opportunity to wish my fellow Melt-Ink Potters a Happy Blogiversary. It was in September of last year that we decided to take the plunge and start this blog. I think we’ve shared some good and useful information here, and had the opportunity to do a few writing exercises as well.

So I’d like to take this opportunity to thank Andrea, Colleen, Katie, and Samantha for a great year together. I’ve enjoyed every minute of it — well, except perhaps for those few panicked moments every week when I stare with horror at my blank screen and wonder what in heck I’m going to write about this time — and I think the discipline of having to find a topic and do a weekly posting has been beneficial to me as a writer. It’s helped me to stretch myself a little and think about why and how I write in ways that I haven’t thought about them before.

In the coming year, I hope to be able to blog about topics like:

– Finally getting my website up and running;
– Actually writing a query letter and synopsis, and submitting a story for publication;
– Dealing with the inevitable rejections;
– Actually writing a novel that comes in at under 150,000 words

We all have to start somewhere, right?

For folks who have been following the blog (and I know there are at least a couple of you!), thanks for reading! Hopefully it’s been entertaining at the very least. If there are topics you’d like us to cover that we haven’t yet, or if you’d like us to revisit a topic, feel free to leave a comment, and we’ll do what we can to get it covered.

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The Zen of Editing; or Strategic Planning

Posted on September 17, 2010 by sheilamcclune

(This posting originally appeared on The Melt-Ink Pot)

 

(Sorry this post is late. I’ve been waging war against produce and an infection this week, and rather than stay up even later last night, I decided late was better than never.)

So this past week, I’ve been editing without actually making any changes.

No, really.

I’m re-reading my hardcopy version of The Daughters of August Winterbourne this week, trying to keep in mind some of the feedback I’ve had so far, as well as a few changes/additions that need to be made. I did a hands-on edit of about six chapters a couple of weeks ago so I could submit them to my WorldCon critique group. I took out one entire scene and parts of several others. When someone who had read both the before and after versions said that he couldn’t tell where I’d made the edits, I knew I was on the right track.

I realized when I wrote the story that it was slow and meandering, at least for the first three-quarters of its length. Now, after a couple of re-readings, I’m beginning to see places where I could tighten up the plot and move things along a little faster. I’ve even identified two “darlings” that I’m going to have to kill.

One happens about a third of the way into the book. In the scene, Celia and her sisters meet Johann Strauss II, who composes a waltz in their honor (as he was wont to do when touring and giving concerts).

It’s an adorable, warm, fuzzy little scene. And I like it a lot. Celia and Nicholas are very sweet together in it. We get some nice interactions between Celia and Emmy, and between Nicholas and Eudora. Plus I even did research for it, discovering that Strauss was indeed touring England that year. But in the end … absolutely no plot advancement takes place in the scene, and therefore, it must go. (Perhaps I’ll save it to a “deleted scenes” folder, and if the book is ever published, I can offer it as a “bonus feature” on my web site.)

The second one offers Nicholas defending Celia’s honor — with his fists. Which is also very sweet, but does nothing to advance the plot. We already know that he’s very much in love with her, and that he would go to just about any length to defend her. The only necessary plot point it establishes — which is to hint that Nicholas and Eudora once had a relationship that was more than just neighborly — can easily be moved to one of the other ballroom scenes in that section of the book.

Another scene just never worked. It involved Celia and Eudora returning to London after spending Christmas with Eudora’s mother and step-father. After about my eighth reading I figured out why it didn’t work: It’s boring and nothing happens. It just shows them on the train back to London and looking forward to being there. As I discovered later in the story, I don’t always have to show the characters journeying from place to place. I can just wave my magic wand and *poof*, they’re there!

So there are three chapters on the chopping block, which might get me 10K words closer to my goal of getting the story down to 120K (from 180K). All without actually doing any editing (yet).

Now to see what else can be trimmed out…

How do other folks approach these kinds of “macro” edits?

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How I Choose To Spend My Time; or, Why Should I Pay Money For That?

Posted on September 10, 2010 by sheilamcclune

(This posting originally appeared on The Melt-Ink Pot)

Okay, I haven’t actually gotten to bed yet, so it’s still Thursday, right? {grin}

A couple of weeks ago, we were at the Denver Dragon Boat Festival in Sloan’s Lake Park. The Dragon Boat Festival is a lot of fun — there are dragon-headed rowboats, and teams that race them, and all manner of oriental foods and goods for sale. We go every couple of years or so, if the weather’s not too awful (which, since the festival happens in the middle of July, means “as long as it’s not too hot and horrid”).

And, of course, there are other vendors with booths there as well. Like the local cable and satellite providers.

We have cable internet, but that’s all. No cable or satellite television. If we can’t watch it on broadcast or DVD, we just don’t watch it.

But for reasons known only to him, while I was shopping for trinkets, my Beloved Husband decided to go over to the satellite television booth and strike up a conversation with them. And of course, when I was ready to move along, I had to go over and drag him away from there.

The woman at the booth was very determined to make a sale, even when I told her that there was only one show I watched on a regular basis, and that show was available via broadcast. I don’t think she believed me.

“No, really,” I said. “It just wouldn’t be worth it to pay $35/month to watch the one show I already watch for free.”

“You don’t watch it for free,” Beloved Husband pointed out, helpfully. “You buy the DVDs when they come out every year.”

“Which is about the same cost as one month of satellite service, anyway. So we could still be saving the other eleven month’s worth. Besides, I’m too busy. I don’t have time to watch any more TV than I already do.”

“Oh, you’d be surprised,” said the saleslady. “You make the time.”

I could only stare at her, horrified. Because if I’m going to make time for more of anything in my life, watching television is waaaaaay far down on the list. Writing, spending more time with loved ones, and getting my darned house painted are all much higher priorities, as far as I am concerned.

That was when it hit me how much my priorities in life had changed over the last couple of years. I would rather write than watch TV.

Keep in mind that I grew up in a household where the television gets switched on first thing in the morning, and doesn’t get turned off again until after everyone has gone to bed. It’s a constant background to everything that happens in the house.

Apparently, I neither need nor want that in my life any more. I think that’s a good thing. More time for writing.

And sleeping.

(Which I should do very soon now.)

Suffice it to say that we did not sign up for satellite television that day.

So what can or have other people given up in order to make more time for writing?

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Writing Challenge; or, How I Did

Posted on September 3, 2010 by sheilamcclune

(This posting originally appeared on The Melt-Ink Pot)

So it’s September now, and my summer writing challenge has ended. I wrote 30,163 words of fiction over the summer. It’s not a spectacular amount, I’ll admit, but I think they’re mostly good words, and I enjoyed writing them.

What I ended up with was:

“Perceptions” — longish short story, complete. It’s the story of what happens when two tourist chicks who are more than they seem visit a small Nebraska town — that also turns out to be more than it seems. It was great fun to write, especially since I based it on the road trip my friend Rivka and I took to Kimball, Nebraska — including some of the actual sights we saw and things we did while we were there. 12,183 words.

“Faeries Living At The Bottom Of The Garden” — novella, in progress, about 50% complete. I was reading a piece on how urban fantasy is still really hot, and how rural fantasy might be the next big thing, and I thought, “What about suburban fantasy?” And almost instantly, the thought popped into my head: What would having a faerie ring in the garden do to the resale value of your house? The result is turning out to be a lot of fun, but also a lot longer than I expected. Looks like it’s headed for novella territory. 14,596 words so far.

Character Sketch, Philomena Kettlewell — RPG character sketch written in short story form, mostly complete. My character is an Englishwoman forced to travel for her health, who ends up in the Old West, after traveling across India and Australia. She’s a lot of fun. 1,346 words so far.

The Sturdy Princess — possible novella or novel, barely started. Talitha wants to be a tall, blonde, willowy sort of princess, but no matter what she does, she’s just … sturdy. I’m thinking of giving her an uncharming prince to hang out with. Could be a lot of fun. 300 words so far.

The Locked Door — Probable novel, perhaps one chapter written. This was my response to the story prompt posted here about a month ago. You can read it here. 1,738 words so far.

So … I wasn’t as productive as I hoped I’d be. I did meet the word count goal, but only completed one short story. I do still find writing short to be a challenge — it’s hard for me to find ideas that aren’t novel-length. I really thought at first that the faerie story would turn out to be a long short, but it just keeps getting more complicated as it goes along. I adore the main character, though, and I’ve given her an OCD sister who is driving me bonkers, because she keeps stopping in the middle of a scene to clean something up. I have to admit that she’s partly based on my mom, who would do something like washing a coffee cup that she broke the handle off of, because she wouldn’t want the garbageman to think she never washed her dishes. (Mom actually makes her bed in hotel rooms. Honest.) So I’m really hoping I can bring that one in as a novella, but it might turn out to be a short novel after all. Which, I guess, would still be an improvement over the 180,000+ word tomes I’ve been producing. Right?

How have other folks been doing with goal setting? Is it too early to start talking about NaNoWriMo yet?

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Merit Badges For Writers; or, How Do I Know If I’m Making Any Progress?

Posted on August 27, 2010 by sheilamcclune

(This posting originally appeared on The Melt-Ink Pot)

This week, I stumbled across a Web site that made me giggle: Merit Badges For Writers.* Yep, they’re basically electronic badges that you can download and post on your blog, your Facebook, or wherever you’d like. There aren’t a lot of them out there yet, but the ones they have are fun. I mean, don’t you think I need “Grammar Ninja” on my blog? And “Historical Fiction“? I am so there!

Sometimes, as a writer, it’s hard for me to tell whether I’m making any progress in furthering my writing abilities or not. I read a lot of advice, and have digested several books on writing technique, but I can’t always tell whether it’s having any impact on how I write, and if so, whether that impact is positive or negative. I think I’m making progress on “showing not telling,” and I’m struggling hard to resist the urge to head-hop. I’m making a conscious effort to use fewer dialogue tags (“he said,” “she asked,” etc.); I wrote a dialogue passage last week that didn’t contain a single one, yet it was always clear who was speaking, and the passage flowed naturally and easily. Shouldn’t something like that deserve at least a little recognition, if only just a good, loud “Attagirl!”?

There are other important milestones in a writer’s life, too, a lot of firsts: writing your first short story, your first novel, making your first submission to a critique group or a contest. Not to mention the big ticket items like querying agents or actually publishing something. I don’t know about anyone else, but there are times when I would just find it comforting to be able to see, visually, that I really am making forward progress. Wouldn’t a row of “merit badges” be a great way to remind yourself that your work is improving, and that the top of the mountain is getting nearer all the time?

I think I’m going to have to work on something like that. And yes, I know that it’s possible to collect all of the merit badges and still not reach the summit, but I’d still really like to look back and see the trail behind me, and know that I’ve overcome all of those obstacles. If I am mighty enough to do all of that, I’m mighty enough to keep pushing onward. Right?

How do other people track their writing achievements? Or do you? If not, do you think you should?

*Actually, they have Merit Badges For Readers as well. They’re having far too much fun.

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The Sex Scene That Wasn’t; or, When You Say Yes and the Characters Say No

Posted on August 20, 2010 by sheilamcclune

(This posting originally appeared on The Melt-Ink Pot)

Something amusing happened to me last weekend.

In one of the stories I’m currently writing, I had reached the point where the next thing in my mental outline was for the main male character to seduce the main female character. I had, in fact, been looking forward to writing the scene with (shall we say) a certain amount of anticipation.

Now, I’m not the sort of writer who goes around throwing gratuitous sex scenes into every story I write, just for the shock factor of it. When I do include them, it’s because there’s a reason they need to be there. They further the plot, or develop a relationship, or define a character.

In this particular instance, the MMC was supposed to seduce the MFC so that later, when he has to try to persuade her to do something, they’ve developed the closeness that would allow him to talk her over to his side more easily. So I created a setting, and got them into it, and gave them the space to let it happen…

And then I discovered that the MFC really wasn’t the kind of girl who would go hopping into a strange guy’s bed on the first date. No matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t see any way for him to persuade her to take that vital step with him.

The turning point was here:

Then his finger traced the neckline of my dress, and I remembered – for tonight, I was beautiful. I was sexy and voluptuous and wearing a low-cut dress. It seemed a shame to waste that. Would it be so wrong to give in to him?

Yes, said my conscience, in my mother’s voice.

Let’s face it. There are some things you just can’t argue with. Mom’s voice in your head when you’re trying to get it on with this hawt dude you just met? That’s definitely one of them.

So what do other people do when it’s time for your characters to hop into bed together, but they’re not inclined? What about the opposite situation, where characters aren’t supposed to hook up, but they do anyway?

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Turns of Phrase; or, I Never Thought Of It Like That

Posted on August 13, 2010 by sheilamcclune

(This posting originally appeared on The Melt-Ink Pot)

I’m toying with the idea of having a character in one of my stories who uses all sorts of colorful comparisons as one of his quirks. I think it could be a lot of fun, especially if I can figure out a way to work in some of my favorites.

I think my absolute all-time favorite has to be one I got from my father: “Slicker than snot on a glass doorknob.” When I was a kid, it never occurred to me to question how he would know about such a thing — after all I’d been to my grandparents’ house, and it did indeed have glass doorknobs. It wasn’t until later that I finally figured out that it wasn’t something he made up, but rather something he’d heard somewhere and just repeated. I should ask him about it sometime.

But it’s a very descriptive phrase. I mostly use it to describe icy roads. And once the people to whom you’ve said it get over the “ewww!” factor, they know exactly what you mean.

Another phrase to which I can relate is “Like a bull in a china shop”. I was a klutzy kid who grew up to be an only slightly less clumsy adult, and proximity to fragile things only makes the likelihood that I’ll break something much higher. So I have a great deal of empathy for that poor bull, surrounded by breakables, ones his horns might inadvertently knock off of a shelf, or that might be pulverized by an accidental twitch of his tail. I just want to tell him to get out of there, to run while he still can.

I like describing potentially unpopular ideas as being something that will go over “like a lead balloon.” I can just see that doomed balloon, smashing into the ground again and again and again regardless of how much helium you put in it. It also reminds me of one of my favorite lines from The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, in which Adams describes the Vogon spaceships by saying that they “hung in the air in much the same way that bricks don’t.” It’s wonderfully whimsical, and perfectly conveys the image of spacecraft that stay in the air even though they look as though they should plummet straight to the ground, do not pass “Go”, do not collect $200.

And finally, I do love the way of describing a person you find attractive as saying that you “wouldn’t kick him/her out of bed for eating crackers.” As in, “You know, Harrison {sigh} Ford isn’t as young as he used to be, but I still wouldn’t kick him out of bed for eating crackers.” Which sort of implies that there are people you would kick out of bed due to the presence of too many cracker crumbs — and that there was more than a snowball’s chance of finding Mr. Ford in your bed in the first place!

Of course, for the character I have in mind, it might be more fun to have him either mangle a common cliche so as to negate its meaning (“like a bull in a mattress shop”), or make up ones of his own that don’t quite work (“like a giraffe on an underground train”).

What are some colorful descriptions you’ve encountered? What twists on common ones have made you either laugh or scratch your head?

(p.s. Sorry I’m late with this week’s posting. I spent all of yesterday evening in Windows Update Hell, trying to get both of my computers to successfully download and install the last round of updates from Microsoft. Still have not succeeded. I’m about ready to scream…)

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This Week’s Prompt: My Response

Posted on August 6, 2010 by sheilamcclune

(This posting originally appeared on The Melt-Ink Pot)

Well, I didn’t quite get a whole story out of this one (or at least, not yet), but it was certainly worth a chapter or thereabouts (around 1,500 words). In order to keep from cluttering things up here, I’m going to post the entire snippet over on my story blog, but here’s a teaser for you with a link at the end:

The Locked Door
(c) Sheila McClune, 2010

The locked door puzzled and fascinated her. Why on earth, she wondered, would Gran have locked the door to her attic, when spells had always been sufficient to seal it before? And with a lock of cold iron, no less. Surely she’d have known that would make it impossible for Kintheriny to unlock it, key or no key? After all, Gran had been a spellcaster, too. She made a mental note to ask the solicitor about it tomorrow when they met to finalize arrangements. Perhaps Gran had left her some special instructions in a codicil to her will, or a sealed letter, or something. She’d read about such things happening in books, anyway.

She ran her fingers over the elaborately carved and painted surface of the door. Gran had been extraordinarily skilled in so many ways. The wood had been carved by hand, not through the use of magic, but its surface was still as smooth and as polished as glass. The colors were still as bright as Kintheriny remembered them from the earliest of her childhood visits, when she would sit on the landing and stare in awe at the intricate design. She especially loved the little red dragon down in the corner, the one with eyes as green as Kintheriny’s own. Sometimes she could have sworn that she saw it move…

(The rest is here…)

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Finding The Path; or, Which Way From Here?

Posted on July 30, 2010 by sheilamcclune

(This posting originally appeared on The Melt-Ink Pot)

The Internet is a big and wonderful place, full of websites that are helpful, useful, or just plain strange. It’s like a library that’s hyped up on caffeine, speed, hallucinogens, and maybe a rum-and-coke, all at once. Anything you want to know how to do, just ask the Internet. Someone, somewhere, will have advice for you. Probably several someones.

So it’s not surprising that when you’re an aspiring author, the Internet has plenty of advice to offer. “Success will be yours,” says site after site, “if you only do this one very important thing.”

The problem is, no one can agree on what that one thing is. Some say, “Find your voice.” Others say, “Write every day.” Still others say things like, “Write only what you’re passionate about,” “Eschew adverbs and dialogue tags,” and “There is no good writing; there is only bad writing and good rewriting.”

Can all of these helpful, well-meaning, earnest advice givers be right? Well, yes, they can — just not all of them, for everyone. Each one has found his or her golden rule, the one thing that works best for them. The problem is that what works fabulously well for one person can result in utter failure for another.

This is because, as I am finding, no two writers are alike. They don’t work alike, they don’t think alike, and they sure as heck don’t write the same way. So one writer might swear by outlines, while another is stifled by them. One might write a nearly-perfect first draft, while another depends more on mad editing skills to turn a sloppy first draft into something magical.

So what I — and every writer on the face of the Earth — have to do is to winnow through the piles and heaps of writing advice out there on the Internet in an attempt to find the path that works for me. When I’ve done that, I can share what I’ve learned with others, all the while fully aware that my Holy Grail is another person’s Sinkhole of Despair.

One of the things I’m learning about myself is that it is possible for me to read and try to follow too much advice all at once. The symptoms of that are pretty clear: Inner Editor picks the lock of that cage I keep her in and hovers over my keyboard, questioning every word choice, every punctuation mark. “Because if you write the first draft carefully enough,” she murmurs seductively, “you don’t have to go back and do as much editing. Look at all the time that will save!”

And yes, it’s true. If it really did work that way, I could save a lot of time. But what is more likely to happen — and is, in fact, what has happened with my current WIP — is that the story stalls out, too self-conscious to continue. Inner Editor is trying to make me follow all of the advice at once. And it’s just not working.

So maybe it’s time to step back from all of those enticing Twitter feeds, the ones with siren-like links to article after article about how to better one’s writing skills. Maybe it’s time to lock the Inner Editor back into her clean, comfortable cage for the time being and get some writing done.

Maybe I need to focus on what works for me, for now.

Anyone else suffering from advice overload? Anyone else have an Inner Editor who’s been getting a little too sassy lately?

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Homonym Traps; or, I Do Not Think That Word Means What You Think It Means

Posted on July 23, 2010 by sheilamcclune

(This posting originally appeared on The Melt-Ink Pot)

Homonyms. They’re sneaky little words, really, slinking their way into sentences where they don’t belong, hiding from the spell checker, and then, WHAM! There it is, glaring out at you from the text (usually right after whatever it is has gone to print), and you feel like the biggest doofus ever.

I had two different friends get caught in the same trap this week: the infamous “discrete/discreet” conundrum. Both used “discrete” (separate, individual), when what they really meant was “discreet” (tactful, confidential). They both knew better, but that didn’t stop them from picking the wrong member of a homonym pair for their sentences.

Sometimes you can’t help it. Your fingers are on autopilot, and they simply type the wrong word. (Mine often want to type “to” where I really mean “too”.)

Another homonym trap I saw someone get caught in today was illusive (deceptive, misleading, in the nature of an illusion)/elusive (evasive; hard to catch/grasp). They meant to say that someone was hard to catch up with; instead, what they said was that he was deceptive. Hmmm, that’s not quite the same.

Past/passed is an especially tricky one because the words can be used similarly. The train went past the station vs. The train passed the station. The trick to remember is that passed is the past tense of the verb pass, whereas past can be a noun, an adjective, an adverb, or a preposition — in short, anything but a verb.

A couple of others that I see fairly frequently:

reign: What a king does
rein: Leather strap used to control a horse

Populace: The inhabitants of a place
Populous: Densely populated

vice: A bad habit
vise: A device for clamping things

How can a humble writer stay out of homonym traps? I’m afraid there’s no easy answer. Sometimes a grammar checker will catch them, but not always. Spell checkers are definitely not helpful. About the only thing you can do is to just be aware that a word has a homonym, and when in doubt, pull out a dictionary to pick the right one. (Or you could check this list first, to see if the words are on it. It’s a pretty extensive list.) Having a second set of eyes to look at something often helps, too.

So which homonyms plot to trap you? How do you catch them?

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Stay On Target; or, Did I Set The Bar Too Low?

Posted on July 16, 2010 by sheilamcclune

(This posting originally appeared on The Melt-Ink Pot)

Okay, first things first:

If there’s anyone on the face of the planet who hasn’t yet seen the pictures (hard to believe because I’ve been babbling about it all over the place), my office is more-or-less finished. You can take a little tour of it over on my LiveJournal account (which in turn links to my Flickr account).

Yes, I am all squee over it. It’s a warm (okay, at the moment, a little TOO warm), welcoming space. If we ever get to turn off the fans(1) again, I’ll be able to hear the babbling of the water circulating in the fish pond outside the window. There are actually two windows and an exterior door, so there’s at least some airflow.

But frankly, I don’t care that it’s a little warm. It’s my space, and I’m happy in it.

Which is good, because I really need to find my Happy Writing Place. It’s now July 15, halfway through my summer writing challenge, and I’m just over halfway to my goal. The problem is that with my energies focused on finishing the office, I haven’t had much left to give to my writing. Last week’s word count was not even what I would put out during one day of NaNoWriMo; the week before was half of that, and this week is on target to be even less impressive. Granted, this is short story writing, which is harder for me, but I’m still feeling pathetic and unworthy.

I could say that I’m having writer’s block. Or I could say that the muse just isn’t inspiring me at the moment. But I know that’s not the problem. I know that I’m capable of putting out 1,500 words a day without much effort, muse or no muse.

I’m beginning to wonder if part of the problem was that I set the bar too low on my challenge. I have another 14,900 words to write by the end of August. I know — because I’ve done it — that I am capable of writing over 10,000 words in one day. If I had a couple of really good days of writing, I could blow past that goal and coast for the next month and a half.

Maybe I just need to up my goal. If I were to write just 500 words a day for the next 45 days, that would give me 22,500 words. Five hundred words a day is certainly do-able; if I would just quit spending my lunch hour catching up on Twitter and write, I can easily do 500 words at lunchtime.

I know that another part of my problem is that my brain has been mulling over The Daughters of August Winterbourne for the last month or so. I’ve had four beta readers finish it now (Beloved Husband finally finished it on Sunday), and I’ve gotten some constructive feedback from them. So I want to dig my fingers into it and start editing. Now.

Perhaps what I need to do is offer myself a reward of editing time once I get my 500 words per day written. That could work.

I’ll give it a shot and report back in a couple of weeks. As I’ve mentioned before, I have a hard time swapping back and forth between writer-head and edit-head, so this will be yet another challenge for me.

And now, time to go see if I can find 500 words to say about a fairy invasion of the garden…

(1) Our house does not have air conditioning. It used to have a big whole-house fan, but that stopped working last fall and we haven’t gotten it fixed yet. And daytime temps here in sunny Colorado have been in the mid-to-upper 90’s for the last couple of days…

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The Long And Short Of It; or, "Right-Sizing" Your Ideas

Posted on July 9, 2010 by sheilamcclune

(This posting originally appeared on The Melt-Ink Pot)

 

 

I’m challenging myself to write short (or at least, shorter) stories this summer. However, one of the things I’m struggling with is how to tell the short story ideas from the novel-length ones.

Two weeks ago, I started on a fairy story. I was pretty sure that was a short story. Until I started writing it. Now I’m thinking it might end up being a novel. I’m going to try to write it as a short story or novelette anyway, but I don’t hold out much hope.

I think one of my problems is that when I get story ideas, what I really get are characters and scenarios, and not complete plots. So my story idea looks something like, “A woman who is trying to sell her house discovers a fairy circle at the bottom of her garden, which is going to have a large negative impact on the sale of the house.” I may even know things like: The woman is a widow, in her fifties, and just got laid off from her job recently. Her sister has been living with her to try to help make ends meet. The woman’s name is Beryl and her sister’s name is Edna. The house is in Connecticut. Lots of good and useful details. I’m only missing one important thing.

I don’t know how the story gets resolved.

That’s not quite true. I’m beginning to have a glimmering of an idea. But when I look at the idea, I think to myself, “That’s gonna take more than 10,000 words to set up, percolate, and resolve.” Then I start thinking that maybe I should save this for a longer story after all.

The one “short” story I’ve completed so far this summer has been critiqued, and one of the questions some of the readers asked was, “Is this really a short story, or the start of something larger?” And I can’t honestly say that I wouldn’t come back and add more to the story at some point. (Actually, I think it reads like the pilot for a TV series, but I don’t know that it’s interesting enough to sell in that market, so perhaps I should consider alternative media. Web serialization, perhaps?)

I’m not short on story ideas. During a network outage at work today, I started writing yet another new story, about a princess who is “sturdy” … and I’m already wondering if it’s not a novel. Hmm, maybe it’s YA? Those are supposed to be shorter, aren’t they?

But what I do seem to be short on are short story ideas. Ones that can be told in fewer than 5,000 words.

Anybody have any suggestions for telling when an idea is suitable for a short story? (At this point, I’m beginning to think that “write porn” would be a valid option…)

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Oh, and for those who were wondering, no, I have not managed to move into my new office yet. The painting is done, though, and the curtain rods are hung in the other room that I am finishing. But the office is not yet done. Don’t worry, I’ll happily (giddily) post to let everyone know when it is. (I bought a rockin’ cool desk lamp for my big wooden desk, though. Very Victorian-looking.)

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Office Space; or Maybe, Finally…

Posted on July 1, 2010 by sheilamcclune

(This posting originally appeared on The Melt-Ink Pot)

Having a dedicated place to work on my writing has always sounded like a Fine And Wonderful Thing to me. In my house-buying fantasies, there would always be the perfect little nook that I could turn into A Writing Space Of My Very Own, with a big ol’ wooden desk and a big comfy desk chair and inspiring pictures on the wall and a stereo — or at least, a boom box — where I could play music. In a really ideal world, the place would come with windows I could open in order to hear the babbling of a nearby stream, or the wind soughing through pine boughs.

Then we bought our house. It was built in 1961 and is very … square. Four rooms on the ground floor. Four rooms upstairs. Unfinished basement. Sadly, no nooks of any kind, really.

So we started allocating rooms. There are five bedrooms in the house. The downstairs one is being allocated to bookcases and a daybed for occasional guest use, while its closets will be used to store games and, um, our Lego collection. Upstairs, we have an obvious master bedroom, check. Another room, one with two closets, we decided to dedicate to storage of our SCA and other costumes and accessories. There’ll be bookcases in there, too, for storage of historical reference books. A fourth room is obviously “the guest room” — there’s about room for a bedroom set in there and that’s it. Which leaves one room to be my cozy writing nook … except Beloved Husband wants office/computer desk space, too.

Sigh.

Obviously, compromise has to happen sometimes. So I (reluctantly) agreed that I would share the space with him. It will be a tight fit, but I decided that we could make it work. (Yes, I’m still a little pouty about it. But I’ll get over it.)

And then we moved into the house and started The Endless Painting Project. (We were at least smart enough to do the Long But Not Nearly So Endless Floor-Sanding-And-Refinishing Project before we moved in.) So here we are, more than two years after “moving in,” still camped out in the guest room and the dining room, with most of our stuff still in storage.

But now, at last, at looooooong last, the end is within reach, at least for two of the five rooms we’re still painting. The SCA room just needs touch-up paint on the new baseboards and quarter rounds we put down, to cover the nail holes. And the Office only needs a final coat of paint on the smutch I got on the ceiling when painting the walls, and a last check to make sure the nail holes in the new quarter-round are all covered there.

I’m thinking I can finish that up in about half an hour on Saturday morning. And then…and then…

I want to move into my new writing space.

It may not be exactly what I wanted. But I do have the big wooden desk, ready and waiting (a legacy from the house’s former owner). I have a reasonably comfy chair (donated by friends who were moving and didn’t have room for it). The walls are a soothing green color, and I have curtains that should match nicely. I have inspirational pictures all picked out for my side of the room. Thanks to modern technology, I don’t even need that boom box anymore, just a pair of speakers to plug into my computer so I can play music from our shared network drive. There’s even a door that opens out onto a lovely, tree-shaded deck.

But best of all … if I open the windows, I can hear the waterfall babbling into the fish pond below. And the wind soughs very nicely through the enormous pine trees just outside.

I can hardly wait.

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Summer Writing Challenge; or, How Am I Doing So Far?

Posted on June 25, 2010 by sheilamcclune

(This posting originally appeared on The Melt-Ink Pot)

Thought I’d take a few minutes this week and let everyone know how I’m doing with my summer writing challenge.

For those who were out of the room back in May when I announced it, I’m taking part in a summer writing challenge this year. The challenge runs from June 1 – August 31. Participants are allowed to set their own goals. I selected 30,000 words as my goal, which doesn’t seem like much for someone who has done NaNoWriMo (50,000 words in one month), but I added a twist: All words that count toward my goal must be in the form of shorter works of fiction. So, short stories, character sketches, even novelettes and novellas would count. Just nothing novel-length.

Earlier this week, I completed my first “short” story, which may actually be more of a novelette at 12,200 words. But still, for me to complete anything in less than 100,000 words is something of a triumph. This is in fact the second shorter work I’ve completed this year, the first being a short (7,000 word) piece I threw together in response to a writing prompt here back in April.

I experimented with a few things in this story. It’s written in first person, but the POV shifts between two different characters. I wanted the two POV characters to have distinctive voices, and I think I’ve succeeded for the most part. And I wanted the story to end with a twist; I think I achieved that as well. It is a bit longer than I’d planned (I was aiming for 8.000 words, so it’s only about half again too long — like everything else I write), but I don’t know how much it could be trimmed and still make sense.

I also made use of research I did on my recent field trip to Kimball, Nebraska, since I decided to set the story there. In fact, it’s sorta-kinda-but-not-really the story of my trip. Or rather, it’s my trip, but the way it would have been if someone else took it — someone with ulterior motives for visiting a small Nebraska town one day in late spring. (I feel as though I should be twirling my mustache here or something…)

However, because I want to try to submit this story for publication, I’m not going to post it on one of my blogs. I may run it past my critique pals, and of course I’m always looking for more beta readers. So if anyone who isn’t part of The Melt-Ink Pot or anticiworkshop wants to provide feedback on the story, drop me a comment here (or via LJ, Facebook or Twitter if that’s how you came to be here), and we’ll see if we can work something out.

What’s next? Well, I’ll tease you a little and post the first paragraph of my new WIP here:

Edna stomped into the kitchen and threw her gardening gloves onto the counter with more than her usual vehemence. “There are fairies,” she announced, her nose wrinkled in disgust. “Living at the bottom of the garden.”

Yeah. It’s a fairy tale. Of sorts.

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The Next Big Thing; or, What Shall I Write Today, Brain?

Posted on June 17, 2010 by sheilamcclune

(This posting originally appeared on The Melt-Ink Pot)

I saw an article today that made me laugh. It was about “The Next Big Thing In Publishing.”

(Of course, it comes from The Onion, so you have to consider the source…)

Wouldn’t it be great if we could predict The Next Big Thing? Don’t we all wish we’d been working on great vampire novels five or six years ago, so that when Twilight came out, we’d all be ready to jump on the vampire bandwagon? Or how about literature/monster mashups, like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies? Don’t we all wish we’d thought of it first? (Well, I know I do — I could have had a lot of fun writing that book…)

The problem is that nobody knows what The Next Big Thing is going to be until it happens. Even things that are predicted to be Big Things don’t always turn out that way. I read an article today that said that the movie Robin Hood, with Russell Crowe, had just passed the $100 million mark. Which, I’ll grant you, would be a lot of money to me, or to anyone I know, but in terms of what was supposed to be a summer blockbuster movie, that’s considered “disappointing.”

So what’s a writer to do? Especially when, as budgets grow tighter, big publishing houses (like the major Hollywood studios) seem to be ever less willing to take a chance on something that is new and different.

Yet everything I’ve read suggests that “writing to the market” is pointless — unless you’re a known factor whose work is being fast-tracked, there’s a long lead time between the day a book is accepted by a publisher and the day it appears on shelves. And that doesn’t even take into consideration the time it might take to find an agent, and for the agent to market the book. And even going from blank screen to finished novel — via multiple re-writes — is not generally a quick process. So by the time I could get my Great Vampire Novel out there, the fad will have passed. (Though if I wait just a little while longer, it will be time for another vampire revival, won’t it? After all, I’ve been seeing the vampire wave come and go since Dark Shadows. Now Barnabas Collins, there was a vampire! No sparkles on him!)

But wait, there may be hope yet. In yet another article that I read today (I know, I’ve turned into one big news synthesis machine this week), there are signs that maybe, just maybe, Hollywood is starting to figure out that the reason we’re staying away from the box office in droves this summer is because we’re tired of sequels and bad remakes of ’70’s shows and movies based on comic books — sorry, graphic novels.

So the best advice would seem to be to write to your passion. There’s always a market for good stories. I think I’ll go try to finish one up now, in fact. Now if I can just figure out how to work a minotaur and a labyrinth into it…

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Edit Head vs. Writer Head; or, Shifting Gears

Posted on June 11, 2010 by sheilamcclune

(This posting originally appeared on The Melt-Ink Pot)

One thing that I’ve discovered about myself is that it’s very difficult for me to be editing one piece while writing another. I think it’s because when I’m writing, I have to work so very hard to keep my inner editor leashed that when I finally let her out she wants to edit everything in sight. {sigh, yes, including this blog entry…}

I’ve been in “edit-head”, as I call it, for the past couple of months, trying to trim some of the fat from a Regency romance I wrote a couple of years ago. The good news is that I snipped out about 42,000 words, which is a significant accomplishment. The bad news is that the story still stands at about 189,000 words — which is, unfortunately, about 89,000 words too many for a historical romance. However, I’m told by someone who has read both versions that the new version is much improved. That’s encouraging. Now if only I could find a publisher or agent who thinks a 750 page romance novel would work!

The past few weeks, however, I’ve been desperately trying to switch back to “writer head” so I can get to work on my summer writing challenge. So far, I’ve only had limited success, especially since my summer challenge involves writing short stories. It’s much easier when I’m writing a novel to tell myself that I can wait until I’ve finished to go back and reread and start making changes. But when my current work-in-progress is only about twelve pages long, it’s hard not to go back and tweak and tighten and question every single word. And that makes it hard to get more writing done.

To make matters more complicated, I’d really like to dive in and give my latest novel, The Daughters of August Winterbourne, a first edit before November rolls around and I get to work on the sequel. And I’m going to want to start on that before the end of summer. Which means I’ll probably be trying to write and edit at the same time. I’m not entirely certain my head won’t explode.

Incidentally (and perhaps not too surprisingly), moving from writer-head to edit-head usually isn’t that much of a challenge. It’s just going back that gives me fits.

So does anyone else have problems switching between editing and writing (or vice-versa)? What strategies (if any) have you developed to make it easier to shift gears?

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Road Trippin’ For Research; or What I Learned

Posted on June 3, 2010 by sheilamcclune

(This posting originally appeared on The Melt-Ink Pot)

Last Thursday, my friend R. and I went to Kimball, Nebraska, to do research.

Of course, I did a little homework beforehand, so I knew that Kimball is a town of about 2,500 people, and that it is laid out on a grid centered around the intersections of Highway 71 (north-south) and Highway 30 (east-west). I knew from childhood trips that there is a Catholic church, and I looked up the location of the library and a list of restaurants (there aren’t dozens but we won’t starve) and shops (ooh, antique mall, yep, we’ll need to go there!). I discovered that there are two elementary schools and one combined junior/senior high school. There are even two grocery stores.

When I told my cubicle neighbor where I was headed, his Google-fu discovered that Kimball is home to a wind farm. Okay, good to know.

Those are the sorts of things you can learn from the Internet. And they’re good things to know about a town, if you’re setting a story there (or even just having a character that comes from there). Technically, there’s probably not a lot more that you need to know.

But there are lots of details you can only learn by going there.

DSCF0258For instance, you can see the wind farm from several miles away. It’s up on a hill to the north of the town, on the “wrong side” of the railroad tracks. (99% of town is south of the railroad tracks.) You have to drive on a dirt road, past the hill that they’re strip-mining for gravel, to get there. There’s no visitor’s center, just a sign telling about the project, and a locked gate. But the windmills are huge and majestic and graceful, spinning lackadaisically in the breeze. I don’t know why, but I’m drawn to them.

Depending on your timing, you might drive into town, see a lot of boarded-up windows and damaged siding, and think that the economic downturn has hit this little town especially hard. It’s not until you realize that only the windows on the south sides of buildings are either broken or boarded up (which has the unfortunate effect of making it appear as though the Super 8 Motel has completely gone out of business), and that a lot of cars either have plastic over their rear windows or lots of cracks in their windshields that you figure out that what you’re seeing is actually hail damage. The proprietor of the antique mall told us that the hailstorm happened three days ago, and that the tornado warning sirens went off, and that the hailstones were the size of golf balls.

DSCF0285The library was built in the 1950’s, and technologically-speaking, it hasn’t progressed much since then. You still check books out using paper cards, and there is still a card catalog. And a microfilm reader. And a microfiche reader. The few computers you can see look like they’re vintage 1995. Flatscreens? What are those? We didn’t check to see if there was WiFi, but I’m betting not.

But you’ll also see two display cases near the front door. One contains a collection of salt cellars, the other, cream pitchers. And there’s an ongoing used book sale, like just all libraries have these days. You have to walk through the staff room to get there (a bonus for me, since this is the library where Phoebe Caldicott supposedly works!), and when you do, you find all sorts of fun things, like a book on soapmaking.

DSCF0268In the ladies room, someone has left a sachet of cloves instead of a commercial air freshener, and it smells ever so much nicer than Glade in any scent.

You see churches on practically every other street corner, a lot of churches for a town this size. We counted twelve or thirteen, including two different flavors of Baptist (though one of those was for sale). [The picture is of the Catholic church.]

DSCF0264As you drive up and down the quiet streets, you see a lot of very cute houses, most in well-kept yards (though the hailstorm definitely hurt the early flower crop). You even find one that looks a bit like an old southern manse (though smaller). There are some less-attractive houses, too, and a share of trailers and even a few apartment buildings. But mostly, it’s a pretty little town. There’s a bowling alley, but no roller rink (that we could find) or movie theater (there probably used to be one). There is a country club on the outskirts of town, complete with golf course; the signs directing you to it are hand-lettered, not professionally done.

There are two parks, with the requisite playground equipment and tennis courts. But one of them also has a…ummm…feature we were unable to classify. Is it a rocket? A missile? A weather station? We don’t know. DSCF0306

When you talk to the lady in the antique mall (which consists of four small rooms and a hallway, and half of one of the rooms is given over to a display of cell phones, because it seems as though most businesses do double-duty in these parts), you find out that the humidity that you’ve been finding oppressive really is unusual for these parts. When you take a closer look at the items she has for sale, you also discover that not everything here is politically correct. DSCF0299

The food at Greg’s Grub is very good, but the service is … rather leisurely. (It took us an hour and a half to eat our late lunch). We could have tried the new restaurant in town, the one that went in where the Frontier used to be (which is rather obviously where the Burger King used to be), but it didn’t open until the next day. Timing is everything.

On the other hand, if you had a preconceived notion in your head that the grocery stores would be small, poorly stocked, and expensive, you would be wrong on all three counts. The local co-op market may not have had as much of any one item as my local supermarket, but they have a better selection of items, at prices that are competitive with what I’d be paying in Denver. (In fact, ground beef was cheaper.) They even carry a flavor of tea I’m not able to find anywhere in the greater Denver metro area. (Yes, I bought some.) And when you’re done shopping, they transfer your groceries to special two-wheeled carts and the bagboy takes them out to the car for you, just like they used to do at Steele’s Market in Fort Collins. No carts cluttering up the parking lot, and they’re providing entry-level employment to boot. Nice!

Everyone we met was easygoing and friendly. Even the ones like the librarian, who probably thought we were batty.

DSCF0308While we were there, I picked out a house that could have been the one Phoebe’s parents owned, and another that could have been the house she was renting (see picture) until she got swept away on her great adventure. It’s not really necessary to know that about a character, and I doubt it will ever come out in a story, but I found it very satisfying to have that kind of grounding for her.

And, as sometimes happens when you travel, you might even learn things about yourself. I learned, if I didn’t know it before, that I felt like a real dork slinking around trying to take surreptitious pictures in a small-town library. I’m also way too shy to walk up to the librarian and say, “Hi, I’m an author, and I’m doing character research for a book I’m writing. Would it be okay if we took some pictures?” (I mean, how pretentious would that be? Maybe once I’ve published something, it’ll be different.)

Still, it was a productive trip: not only did it provide character background for an existing work, but now I have the seeds for a couple of other stories kicking around in my head.

Anyone else up for a research road trip?

(Note: Click on any picture to link to a larger version on my Flickr account. Or click hereto see the whole series.)

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Research; or How To Justify A Road Trip

Posted on May 27, 2010 by sheilamcclune

(This posting originally appeared on The Melt-Ink Pot)

 

In the latest installment of my ongoing saga of how to use up my surplus PTO, today (later today, after I’ve slept, that is), I’m going off to do some research.

A friend of mine and I are heading off to Kimball, Nebraska, which is two and a half to three hours northeast of here. And it just happens to be the hometown of Phoebe Caldicott, the MC of my space pirate series. Phoebe’s a librarian who stayed behind in the comfortable security of her hometown, rather than venturing forth into the wild world (at least until the day she got on the wrong plane at the wrong time).

So I have plans to visit the library where she would have worked, and the store where she would have bought her groceries. With luck, I’ll find a house that could have been the one where she grew up, and an apartment or duplex where she lived up until that fateful plane crash. I might even cruise past her high school.

I’m hoping the trip will give me new insights into Phoebe’s character and provide the impetus I need to start working on the story again. I suppose if nothing else, I can also take notes and pictures to use for a setting for something else sometime.

In theory, I also have relatives in the town (which was one of the reasons I picked it), along the lines of second or third cousins. I wouldn’t know how to go about looking them up, though, and I doubt I’d recognize any of them if I saw them on the street. I have vague memories of going there as a child for the 50th wedding anniversary of an aunt and uncle of my father’s (which would make them my great-aunt and -uncle if they were still alive, but since that was back in the 70’s, I’d guess not).

I’ll be happy to report back on what I learn that I didn’t already know. It will be interesting to make comparisons between using the internet and Google Street View and actually going someplace to soak it all in. And I have to admit that I’m kind of excited by the idea of my first “real” research trip.

Has anyone else ever gone to research a location, or even made a trip to a library or museum to research a character or setting?

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Idea Shopping; or, My Day On The Mall

Posted on May 21, 2010 by sheilamcclune

(This posting originally appeared on The Melt-Ink Pot)

As I mentioned last week, my goal for this past Tuesday was to hang out somewhere besides my living room and do some brainstorming for story ideas. I ended up on the 16th Street Mall in downtown Denver, where I spent six or seven hours just wandering around, taking pictures, making notes, and enjoying the spring.

So how many story ideas did I come up with? Two that I’m adding to the queue, so far. But I also jotted down descriptions of numerous people, places, and sensations, all of which may appear in future stories. And after spending about an hour hanging about in Union Station, I now want to write a story involving trains, train travel, and train stations.

I also took a couple dozen photographs, at least some of which have the potential to spark more ideas: A girl, sitting alone on a bench near one of the light rail stations; the guy on the Mall who stood holding an alto recorder as if he were either just about to play or had just finished playing … for the entire twenty minutes I stood there; the lady who handed me a free bible verse … that read more like a fortune cookie (Romans 8:25: But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.).

I ate lunch in an Irish pub, and mused on how much better American football would be if it were played to a soundtrack of Irish fiddle music. (Also had a darned good pint of cider while I was there.) Later, I had cream tea and a cookie down at the Tattered Cover. What an amazing place to hang out and people-watch!

In all, I wound up with about eight pages of notes, character sketches, and random musings. Oh, and some photographs. Let’s not forget them.

And a bottle of verjuice. That’s very important.*

So … was it productive? I think so. Am I glad I did it? Heck, yeah! Would I do it again? In a heartbeat. This was one of the most refreshing days I’ve spent in a long time. I found it very freeing to give myself permission to just roam around and let my mind wander and take pictures of dorky things like racks of bicycles and train stations.

Has anyone else ever dedicated a day, or even part of a day, to brainstorming? What were your results?

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* For those who are wondering, verjuice is the juice of unripened grapes, a frequently-used ingredient in medieval and Renaissance cookery. Not easy to find nowadays, but I spotted it in a downtown market.

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