What’s In A Name; or Does The Shoe Fit?

Posted on December 10, 2009 by sheilamcclune

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

We’ve had a couple of good postings here about book titles. But when you’re writing a novel, the book isn’t the only thing for which you have to find a name.

You also have to name your characters. And sometimes that can be a painful process.

There are so many factors to consider:

1) The time and place in which your story is set. If your story takes place in the past, this requires research into the kinds of names in use at the time of your story. One of my stories, set in 1873, has a character in it by the name of Grant Tomlinson. It sounded like a good Victorian English name to me. “Tomlinson” is just fine, but only later did I find out that “Grant” wasn’t commonly used as a first name until the 1860’s (twenty years after the character would have been born), and then mostly in America. Oops.

That’s fairly obscure, of course, and unless you happened to have the misfortune of having a large number of people among your readership who are fanatical about the origins and meanings of names, it probably wouldn’t be a problem. But your characters’ names should all be suitable for the story’s time and place, or it will jar readers out of the world you are building in their minds (imagine a samurai warrior named Ezekiel or an Indian princess named Heather).

2) On the other hand, if your story is set in the future, or in outer space, or in some fantasy setting, you have free rein, right? Well, not necessarily. If you’re setting your story in a bronze-age village on a fantasy world with unicorns and dragons, and most of your characters have names like Tar’jil and Kun’axa and Rog’min, when your readers come across the character Nixelthorpmoojman, you’ll almost be able to hear them humming that song about how one of these things is not like the others. So unless you’re prepared to explain how poor Nixelthorpmoojman washed up on the beach after a really bad storm, and even he can’t explain where he’s really from, you’ll want to have some consistency in naming practices.

Also, your names should be pronounceable and preferably not too unwieldy — Larry Niven’s The Ringworld Engineers, as I recall, had a section where all of the people had nearly-unpronounceable five-syllable names, which was at least consistent, but it made that part of the book very tedious to read.

3) One problem I’ve run into is having names for my space pirates that are almost too familiar. I wanted them to be accessible, strange without being too strange. Instead, I’ve received comments that they’re not alien enough. So people have asked why Shon Braca is named Shon and not just Shawn (they sound the same, don’t they? … well, not quite, but the difference is *very* subtle). But these are space pirates. Shouldn’t they have more interesting names?

4) And then, once you’ve addressed all of those questions, you have to make sure that you don’t have characters whose names sound (or even are) too much alike. We all know that in Real Life, everyone you meet doesn’t have a unique name. The company I work for, for example, has had two Beccas and three Wendys all at once, and a Sean and two Shawns (one of whom was female). But in a story, you probably want to avoid having more than one character with the same name, or even two names that sound too much alike. Geoffrey and Gregory are two that will make me struggle every time, but I also have problems with names that have the same cadence and vowel sounds — Julian and Lucien, for instance.

5) Sometimes you also want the name to have a meaning that’s important to the character. Would Severus Snape have been the same kind of character if he’d been named George Smith? How about Ebenezer Scrooge? Luke Skywalker?

6) Finally — and perhaps most importantly of all — the name needs to fit the character. It’s true that when parents name their children, they don’t really have much of an inkling of what the child’s personality will eventually be. So occasionally in Real Life, you’ll see a Marigold whose blonde curls have darkened and who grew up to be a hard-bitten police detective, but unless you want that kind of irony to be a part of your story, your characters should have names that fit them. If they’re to be evil wizards or cold-blooded killers, their names should not evoke bright sunshine. If they’re to be heroes, they should have strong, bold names. And if they’re to be involved in a romance, they ought to have a name their loved one can sigh, well, romantically.

I’ve run into just such a situation in my current work-in-progress, set in 1870’s England. My main character, Celia Winterbourne, seems reasonably happy with her name. However, when I went to name her Romantic Interest, I decided upon Bartholomew Fletcher. Fletcher is a good British surname, no problems there. And I thought Bartholomew was a good choice, too … right up until I wrote the first scene that has Celia whispering her beloved’s name in his ear, along with a profession of her love.

Yeah. Mr. Fletcher did not hesitate to inform me that “Bartholomew” is not a name one can murmur lovingly in anyone’s ear. Nor, he was quite certain, did “Bart” suit him. Not in the least.

In fact, he and I have been having a series of discussions as to what his name should be. Those can be found over at my LiveJournal, starting here (including the poll I ran). As of this writing, we have yet to make a final decision, but I think we’re homing in on it. I’ll keep y’all posted.

(And we’re not even going to talk about the story I wrote in high school, where I decided it would be funny to give my Romantic Interest the most unromantic name I could come up with, so the poor fellow got stuck with the name “Glunk”. Yeah.)

What challenges have other people found when naming characters? How did you solve them?

By the way, here are a couple of my favorite sites for finding names:

The Fantasy Random Name Generator
English Census Results for 1881
The Random Name Generator(uses U. S. Census data)

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Welcome to December; or, The Post-NaNoWriMo Hangover

Posted on December 3, 2009 by sheilamcclune

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

Wow, what a ride!

November was great. Despite a couple of days when I got almost nothing written — my worst day was something like 300 words — I still ended the month with over 75,000 official, duly-counted and verified words, and a third winner’s certificate to hang on my wall. (Which, I now realize, I completely forgot to buy a frame for when I was out shopping last night. Dang.) About 10,000 of that came from a single-day marathon session on the 29th. That surprised me. I didn’t know I had it in me, but the story was apparently in a hurry to get out.

For the most part, the words seemed to flow effortlessly from my brain to the screen. A little too effortlessly, in some cases; I know that much of what I’ve written this month is wordy and more than a little bloated. However, I’m forcing myself to finish the story before I go back and start trimming. Inner Editor is just going to have to sit on her hands for another month or so. (She hates that, she does…) It was a good feeling, though, to have the story practically telling itself.

So what did I learn last month?

  • Writing an average of 1,667 words per day doesn’t seem nearly as difficult as it did the first time I did NaNo in 2006. At no point did I fall behind the average pace for the month. So maybe that is something that improves with practice.
  • The resources available to authors today are astounding even compared to my first NaNo in 2006. Thanks to Google Street View, I took a virtual tour of Oxford and saw some of the same buildings my characters interact with. It helped me visualize my setting in a way I’ve never been able to do before.
  • Having supportive family members and friends is important. My Beloved Husband was behind me all the way (thanks, dear!), and many of my other friends, old and new, cheered me along as well. Thank you all!
  • It’s good to know that if I ever needed to write 10K in a day, I could, but I did pay the price for it in sore wrists and hands for the next three days. (Mmmm, nothing like the smell of BenGay in the morning!) If I ever do that again, I will dig out the wrist braces before I start, rather than after I finish.
  • I think I still have a lot to learn about pacing. I feel as though I’ve spent far too much time on the setup for this story, and wonder if the payoff will go by too quickly. But that’s what editing is for, and it’s not Inner Editor’s turn. Yet.
  • I’m also learning to spot when I’m telling and not showing, at least some of the time. I’ve already left myself notes in the manuscript that say things like, “Find a way to show that Adja is being stubborn, rather than telling us that she is”, and “Go back and illustrate this through examples.”

So overall, I think the experience helped me continue my growth as a writer, which means that it was worth doing. It also means I’ll probably do it again next year.

Most important of all, though, this year’s NaNo got me back into the habit of writing on a daily basis again. (Things kinda fell apart after I finished last year’s behemoth.) Ideas are flowing, plot bunnies are scampering madly through my brain, and all is well and happy with the world.

So for everyone reading this who completed a writing challenge last month, congratulations! For those who tried but did not reach their goals, also congratulations. At least you wrote something, and hopefully more than you would have otherwise. Either way, I hope the experience helped you learn more about the craft of writing.

(Oh, and for those who were wondering … yes, I did take a day off from writing the current WIP yesterday to write notes and sketch outlines for the rest of this book, plus books two and three of the trilogy. That was also very satisfying.)

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Getting Ahead Of Myself; or, What Happens When A Story Really Comes To Life

Posted on November 27, 2009 by sheilamcclune

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

 

(Brought to you by the “Better Late Than Never” department, since turkey coma took over my brain last night…)

Well, my NaNoWriMo project is currently sitting at roughly 61,000 words, and I’m not quite halfway into the story. Which means that this one, like last year’s, is probably going to run a lot longer than it should.

I’m not terribly worried about it at this point, because I can already see lots of places where the story can be trimmed and condensed. There’s a lot of what I’ve seen referred to as “tea drinking” in it. By that, I mean the stretches of story where the characters are drinking tea, and we get the excruciating details of how each takes his/her tea, and how many times they stir it, and how many sips they take of it, and so on. While a certain amount of that is necessary to help flesh out a story’s world, too much of it can really bog down a narrative. So that’s something I’m definitely going to keep in mind come the editing phase.

The story is also set in the Victorian era, so a lot of the descriptions and conversations are far more wordy than they really need to be. But my goal for this draft is to get down all of the images and nuances that are essential to how I want to tell the story; I can go back later and pare out a lot of the excess verbiage while still (hopefully) keeping in the flavor of the era.

I can see that there’s a lot of repetition in it, too. There are three separate places, for instance, where my MC’s father thinks about or discusses her relationship with The Love Interest. I’m pretty sure I can lose at least one of them, and I can shorten up one or both of the others (though frankly, I’m very pleased with the scene where The Father confronts The Love Interest directly and don’t want to pare it down too much).

Finally, I can look back at what I’ve written so far and identify a lot of stuff that is really part of the backstory/worldbuilding phase that I, as the author, need to know about, but that you, as the reader, really don’t, or at least not in quite so much detail. I can trim that out pretty easily, I think, and it will make for a better story that way.

But what pleases me most of all is that this story finally seems to have found its voice. (I know, a mere 60K words in!) The characters are beginning to come alive for me at last, and the tone is finally starting to even out. I have a fair idea of the arc for the rest of this book. I know where I want to go, and I mostly know how I want to get there. There are still a few fuzzy plot patches, but that’s really not a bad thing. Discovering what goes in them will help keep the project fresh and alive for me.

That’s not the problem.

The problem is that, in the shower* yesterday morning, I got a very clear vision of where the rest of this trilogy (yes, trilogy) is headed. In particular, a number of the plot points for Book Three have become clear to me, and one scene in particular presented itself to me almost fully-formed.

Now I’m in a quandary. I really don’t want to lose momentum on my current story, but on the other hand, I want to make sure to capture these ideas while they are still fresh in my head. I’m not sure how to handle this, though at the moment I’m leaning toward making Book Three wait until December 1, at least. Then I’ll take a day or two to jot down outlines and notes for what I want to make sure to do when I get there before I go back and finish the current story.

How do other people handle it when a story wants to run away with you? Do you run off after the plot bunnies, or do you make them wait their turns?

* Have I mentioned that many of my best story ideas come to me in the shower? Why is that, I wonder?

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Being Creative NOW; or What Are We Waiting For?

Posted on November 19, 2009 by sheilamcclune

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

Wil Wheaton* had an excellent post on his blog this week titled, “Get Excited and Make Things!” If you consider yourself a creative person at all (and why would you be here if you don’t?), you really should go read it. Yes, now. I’ll wait.

You back? Okay.

Anyway, it really got me to thinking about just how easy it is to be creative in the first decade of the twenty-first century. As pre-published authors, we have access to resources our predecessors could only have dreamed of. Let’s start with the computer you’re using to read this, and the internet connection that delivered it to you. But that’s just the beginning. Stuck on a research point? Open an new Google tab in your browser window, type in a few key terms, and whoosh! Need to get a feel for your location? Google Street View. Don’t know the names for the various parts of an airship? Wikipedia! And — the bit that amazes me most of all — you can do all of this on a laptop with no physical connection to anything.

Know what I did last night? I decided I needed to create a map of a college campus for my WIP. So I went to Google and called up a map of Oxford, England. No, not just a map. A satellite view. And I found a spot where I could squeeze in my imaginary campus (it’s on Longwall street, back between Magdalen College and Holywell Cemetery, with the canal there as the eastern border). I took a screen shot of this spot, pasted it into Paint, and — using the satellite views of other campuses in the area for inspiration — drew my campus map on top of it. Voila! One Royal Academy of Science, to order. Even geekier? I can link you to the base map that I used, and if I’d thought of it last night, I could have uploaded the final map to Flickr and linked to it here. (I may come back and do that tonight from home, so check back!)

[Aha! And I did. Here is my map of the Royal Academy of Science!]

RoyalAcademyMap-annotated

Things like this boggle my mind. Even as little as ten years ago, I would not have been able to do something like this, or at least not as quickly and easily. I might have been able to come up with a street-level map of Oxford, but not one that would show the buildings and the detail I needed to get a feel for what a college campus in Oxford would look like. I could have made a black and white photocopy of the map and drawn on it by hand. I might have even been able to scan it in to the computer and used Paint like I did last night. But sharing it with my friends would have involved more steps, and taken a lot longer. (Ten years ago, I was still using a dial-up connection, after all.)

The point is, it’s easier than ever to be creative. The only difference, as far as I can tell, between people who create and people who do not is simply motivation.

So what kinds of projects — writing or otherwise — are people working on? What motivation do you need in order to make them happen?

*Yes, I’m a geek. I read Wil Wheaton’s blog. And I admit it. In public. So there.

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Finding Your Voice; or, What’s That Under The Sofa Cushion?

Posted on November 13, 2009 by sheilamcclune

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

Ah, the elusive “voice”. It is the one thing we pre-published authors are often told is the most crucial aspect of our writing, but no one can tell us where to find it or how to develop it, or even how to tell when we’ve got it, other than to just keep writing.

This past week, I submitted a couple of chapters of my space-pirate adventure to an on-line writers group formed by some of the people who took part in the Writer’s Workshop at Anticipation (a.k.a. the World Science Fiction Convention) this past summer. Discussion of the chapters got lively, but in a friendly, constructive, helpful way. I got some very good ideas out of it, and I think I can see what I need to do with the story next. (Less death and destruction, more humor. Check.)

Which is all very cool, but that’s not the only thing I got out of it.

The next day, one of my commenters posted this on his blog. I’ll quote part of it here, but you really should go read it all, because it’s good (and also short):

“I recently gave a critique to someone about their story – which was a relatively funny piece – and then I got an email reply to my comments that was loads lighter than the story they’d written. Why was this? Because in the email they were relaxed. They were just trying to get back to me, not trying to entertain or write something important.”

Wow. Obviously, he was referring to our discussion about my chapters, but it really hit home for me.

Sometimes, as writers, I think we try too hard. We read endless style guides and how-to books and author blogs, and we go to conventions where we listen to advice from authors and editors and agents and even publishers. And after we’ve done all of that, we’re lucky if we can write our grocery lists without stopping to ponder whether the dramatic tension could be increased if we put the milk ahead of the cheese, or worrying ourselves to death trying to decide if it should be “a dozen eggs” or “12 eggs.”

Yes, style and grammar and even spelling are important, but those can be tweaked later. What we need to learn to do in order to find our “voice” is to relax and just tell the story.

For me, that’s part of what NaNoWriMo is all about. (Aha! You knew I’d get back to that, didn’t you?) It’s not about proving to myself that I can write 50,000 words in a month. I already know I can do that, since I’ve done it twice before. It’s a chance to focus more on the story and less on the style. That doesn’t mean that I don’t pay attention to style at all — I’m a bit OCD that way, if you haven’t already guessed — but if stray commas or adverbs sneak in, they can be weeded out later. I’m just having fun telling the story. And that’s how to find your voice.

Oh, and for those who are paying attention, I’m currently at just a little shy of 29,000 words. In other words, just past halfway and well on my way to the 5oK goal, though maybe only about 1/5 of the way into the story. I’m still aiming at 100-120K words total, but looking back on what I’ve written so far, there’s a lot I could take out and tighten up, so even if I end up around 140-150K, I’m probably doing all right. Heck, as long as it ends up shorter than last year’s, I’ll be happy.

So my challenge to my fellow writers is this: Spend some time this next week just having fun with your writing. Relax, let the words flow, and let’s see what happens!

I love it when I can serve as an object lesson!

(If you want to become NaNoWriMo buddies, or even if you just want to follow my word count progress, I’m arwensouth on the NaNoWriMo Web site.)

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Finding The Time; or How To Fit NaNoWriMo Into Your Life

Posted on November 5, 2009 by sheilamcclune

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

November is upon us, and I, like a lot of my friends, am involved in the frenzy that is NaNoWriMo.

This year’s story is going well. I’m already about 4K words ahead of the minimum pace needed to “win”, and while I know that at least some of what I’ve written during the past couple of days will eventually be edited out, I still feel pretty good about my progress. I definitely recommend writing Victorian-era stories for NaNoWriMo. All those long-winded descriptions, all that wordy dialogue … they really help pile up the word count. Heck, every new character you bring in is worth about 400 words just to make all the appropriate introductions! I’m feeling pretty confident about my chances for success this year.

The first time I did it, though, I was full of doubt. Where could I possibly come up with the time to churn out 1,667 words per day?

I soon learned that there are little bits of time scattered all through your day. The trick is finding them and using them.

Here are some of the places I found spare bits of time:

——–

1) Watch less TV. In fact, give it up altogether if you can. At least for this month.

After all, isn’t that why God gave us TiVo?

I’ll be honest. My Beloved Husband and I don’t watch much television anyway. We’re too cheap to pay for cable, and for years we lived in a canyon of apartment buildings where, while we were less than three miles from downtown Denver, we couldn’t even get most of the Denver stations. So it was pretty easy for us to all but give up television. We mostly use our TV as a device on which to watch DVDs, but I’m even cutting back on that for November. (Season 2 of Rome notwithstanding.) So other than my one hour per week of network television viewing (Supernatural), I’ll mostly be staying away from my TV.

2) Cut back on social media.

Between this blog, two on-line critique groups, LJ, Facebook, and Twitter, it would be easy for me to spend hours on-line just being sociable. While I’m not cutting those things out altogether, I am making a conscious effort to scale back (though you probably couldn’t tell from my Tweet-fest last night…). Just check in once in a while and remind people that you’ve not dropped off the face of the Earth, and that you’ll be more sociable … later.

3) Be prepared to write anywhere, anytime.

I have a netbook, which is great as far as being able to pop it open and start pounding away on the keys at the drop of a hat. Other folks I know use their laptops and AlphaSmarts for the same purpose. But if you can’t afford any of those things, at least carry a little notebook and pencil along with you to capture those nifty turns of phrase that run through your head, or plot bunnies that crop up with new suggestions, or character sketches, or…

I write at work, at lunchtime (with varying degrees of success; my co-workers seem to have difficulty understanding “I’m at lunch right now,” and there is no break room to which I can retreat to show them that really, I’m NOT doing work stuff right now!). On a good day, I can grind out 500-700 words in 30 minutes; yesterday, it was more like 350 in a very scattered fifteen minutes.

Any time I think I will have more than five minutes of sitting still with nothing to do, I whip out the netbook. Waiting for take out pizza. Waiting for (and riding on) the bus. Waiting for the optician’s office to open so they can put the lens that fell out of my glasses last night back in place. Anywhere. Anytime.

4) Stretch the days.

Biological need usually wakes me up about an hour before the alarm goes off. And once I’ve gotten up and tended to that, I’m awake. So why not spend that time writing?

Having trouble falling asleep? Work on your NaNo for half an hour, then try again. Usually works for me, and with the added benefit of piling up a word count while fixing the insomnia problem.

5) Pre-visualize.

All those boring meetings you attend at work, all that time spent in line at the DMV, all the minutes wasted listening to your mother-in-law catalogue your shortcomings* … these all used to frustrate me during November, because I could be using that time to write, dammit! Then I figured out how to use the time to my advantage: Spend those stray minutes setting up your next scene in your head. Rehearse bits of dialogue, toy with different ways to describe your hero’s tumbling brown locks, plan the logistics of exactly how SuperSpy will steal those top secret plans from the underground bunker. Then when you *do* get to sit down and write, you have a far better idea of where you want to go.

6) Strategic Eating:

Now, I’m not saying that you have to eat out for the entire month. But sometimes, grabbing burgers on the way home really is the answer. Quick, cheap, fills the gap, keep going.

Alternatively, plan your meals out so that you can squeeze in a little writing while you’re waiting — like my take-out pizza example above. The guys at our favorite pizza joint are used to me coming in and ordering pizza to go and a Fat Tire for here, then plopping myself and my bottle at a table and working away for fifteen or twenty minutes.

If you really can’t afford to eat out, plan your meals so as to get the most bang for your buck. That big pot of chicken soup I made for Halloween is still feeding us; I just finished the leftover spaghetti that was also good for three meals.

Alternatively, look for good sales on microwaveable dinners, canned soups, and other prepared foods. Don’t neglect good nutrition, but save the gourmet cook-fests for December.

—–

“But,” I can already hear you saying, “I can’t write in just five or ten minutes! I need an hour, maybe two, just to get warmed up!”

Actually, you’d be surprised. First, see #5 above. If you already have part of a scene pre-visualized and waiting to be written, you can usually get it down pretty quickly.

Another trick: Don’t stop at the end of a scene. Finish a scene, then force yourself to write the first couple of lines to the next scene. Then you’ll be in the middle of the action, and it’ll be easier to pick up again.

If all else fails, and you only have five minutes and are certain you can’t get anything done in that time, that’s an excellent time to read back over the last page or two that you wrote and see if there are any places you need to add in a description or clarify the action. At least, that way, when you have a few more minutes, you’ll be better organized.

So those are my tips — at least the ones I can think of right now. How do you squeeze more writing time into your day?

* No, my m-i-l doesn’t actually do this.

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The Latest Revision, Revised; or, Another Form of Writer’s Block

Posted on October 30, 2009 by sheilamcclune

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

One of the things that has been on my writing “to do” list since mid-August has been the overhaul of the first two chapters of my space pirate adventure, The Vedia Gamble. This overhaul is the result of my having participated in the writer’s workshop at this year’s World Science Fiction Convention in Montreal.

The workshop consisted of groups of two professional authors and three amateurs. Each of the three amateurs submitted the first couple of chapters of their work (along with a synopsis), for a total of up to 10,000 words. The work was then critiqued by both the professional authors and the other amateurs.

I have to admit that I approached the experience with perhaps a little more confidence than I should have. So it came as a major crushing blow to learn that the foundation of my little story had some major flaws, and that I had what were perceived as some inconsistencies in tone between the first and second chapters. (It also appears that I can’t write a synopsis to save my life, but that’s a topic for another time.)

I didn’t actually cry. But my spirit was somewhat … daunted, shall we say. Yes, I think daunted is a good word to describe how I felt.

Enough so that I set the work aside and didn’t even look at it for the next two and a half months. The problems pointed out were such that I couldn’t see any way to solve them. And if I couldn’t solve them, there was no point in working on revisions to the book, let alone its monster-sized sequel, or in starting the third book to the series. Nor could I seem to interest myself in working on much of anything else, truth be told. I was afflicted with a form of writer’s block the likes of which I had never encountered before.

Was this a sign that I was not destined to be a writer? After all, I’d been told time and again that one sign of a true writer is that you can’t not write. And yet, here I was, not writing.

Except, of course, that I was. During that time, I’ve still been composing and posting entries here. I’ve also been working on my Web site (here’s hoping I can get that up and running sometime soon!). I even dabbled a little on the beginning of the third book in the space pirate series. But more importantly, I wrote some things for actual publication — two magazine articles that will appear in periodicals published by my employer.

You see, I figured it was just a matter of time before I found a way to solve the problems with my story. But I also knew that I might just have to let my brain percolate for a while before the solution became apparent.

Lo and behold, the week before last, some ideas began to suggest themselves for how to solve my story’s problems. And last weekend, at MileHiCon, I actually sat down during a free hour between panels and started hacking away at the chapters and making revisions.

I won’t say that the fact that one of the guests of honor at MileHiCon was one of the professionals who had critiqued my work was a motivating factor. But I won’t say that it wasn’t, either. I mean, after all, what if I ran into her and she recognized me and asked what I’d done with the story since WorldCon? (For the record, she did not.)

Another motivating factor is that all of the participants in the WorldCon workshops have grouped together to form an on-line workshop group. I’m scheduled to post something there the second week in November, and I was really hoping it could be my revised chapters.

Be that as it may, I’ve now hacked the first two chapters of a novel into bits, stirred them around a bit, picked out the pieces I want to save, and added in some new bits where needed. In other words, extensive revision happened. It was difficult to do, because there were some parts that I really liked that needed extensive changes, and others that just needed to be jettisoned altogether. I made myself feel better about the whole thing by saving a copy of the manuscript prior to making any changes. That way, if I really hated the way the changes came out, I could always revert to the prior version.

Overall, I’m pleased with the results. Or I will be, until the workshoppers and my other critiquers get a chance to read it and tell me everything that’s wrong with it!

So how do other folks approach revision?

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Consulting The Oracle, or How I Decide What To Write Next

Posted on October 23, 2009 by sheilamcclune

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

As we’ve mentioned several times in the last week, November is rapidly approaching, and with it, NaNoWriMo. One of the most pertinent and troubling questions in my mind these past few weeks has been, “What shall I write this year?”

At last count, my Ideas And Works In Progress list had 34 different ideas on it. Any one of them could prove to be entertaining. But I’ve discovered that with NaNoWriMo, one of the key success factors for me is picking a story that really wants to be written — one where I have a fair idea of the characters and at least some of the key plot points, and most importantly, one I’m passionate about.

So, okay. I went through the list and managed, with great difficulty, to narrow it down to the seven about which I was most passionate this month. The problem was that I liked them all, and wanted to write them all next. Obviously, that was not going to work, so I consulted The Oracle.

No, not the one at Delphi.

In this case, I refer to my friends list on LiveJournal as “The Oracle”. They helped me pick my first NaNo project, and that mostly worked out okay. (Well, except the part where the beginning needs a bit of re-working.) So I was willing to return to them for advice this time around.

The overwhelming majority selected this one:

——————————————————————————————-
Story Title: The Daughters of August Winterbourne

Genre: Victorian/Steampunk Fantasy

Quick Synopsis: Celia Winterborne is anxious to prove herself as one of the first female students admitted to the Royal Academy. But when her airship-designer father is kidnapped by the evil Tarmanian Empire, she and the half-sisters she never knew she had must join forces to fly to his rescue.

Description: Celia Winterbourne wants nothing more than to go to the Royal Academy and study airship design, like her famous father August Winterbourne. And this year, for the first time, the Academy is admitting females into its hallowed halls — five of them.

Celia applies and is accepted; for her it is a dream come true. At least, it is until she meets the four other finalists … who are also daughters of August Winterbourne. It seems Papa had an eventful final term at the Academy…

But when Papa is abducted by Tarmanian forces trying to build an airship program of their own, only the five daughters together have the information needed to complete his latest project and fly to his rescue.
——————————————————————————————-

So I have no doubt that you’ll be hearing more about this project as November progresses.

However, outside of NaNoWriMo, I was looking for another project. You’ll recall that I blogged last week about creating a Web site for myself? Well, one of the ideas I had was to create an ongoing story that could be posted as a serial to the Web site, to build readership and give people a reason to keep coming back. However, none of my existing ideas seemed quite right for this project. I wanted to do … well … something with dragons in it. But nothing was springing to mind.

Or rather, nothing did until Wednesday evening, when I was showering before bed. (I get a lot of my best writing ideas in the shower. Not in the bath, mind you, but specifically in the shower. My water bill will likely go up next month thanks to NaNoWriMo.) Then a plot bunny up and bit me, and presented me with a universe to write in, and no fewer than four ideas to set in it. I picked the one that engaged my passion the most, and before I knew it, I had written almost 2,000 words on it. (My goal is to have the Web site up and running before November, and I will have a short synopsis of the new story posted there, but will probably wait until after NaNoWriMo is over to begin posting the serial.)

So the answer to the question is: Sometimes I do a bit of market research, and sometimes I just go where my passions lead me.

How do other people decide?

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A Space Of My Own

Posted on October 15, 2009 by sheilamcclune

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

Andrea has been blogging lately about setting up a “writer’s retreat,” a place where she can go when she wants to get some writing done. I’ve been devoting a lot of thought to a different kind of place for my deepest, most thinky writing thoughts: a Web site.

I’ve been told that authors, even aspiring ones, should have a Web site. So a couple of days ago, I took my first step in that direction. I bought a domain name of my very own.

Literally. I bought the domain name sheilamcclune.com.

No, don’t go there yet. I haven’t started building it, so all you’ll see is a parking page from Register4Less, which is really boring. But I have it. It’s mine, all mine.

Once I had that part settled, I started to do some research as to what should go on an aspiring author’s Web site. And the number one most important thing everyone agrees on is: content.

Um, okay, duh? It’s a Web site. I know I need content. But what kind of content?

Different Web sites recommended things such as:

  • An author bio. Okay, check. Got one of those, from when I did the NaNoWriMo panel at WorldCon two years ago. Even have a halfway decent picture of myself to put with it.
  • Links. Well, this blog seems like an obvious target. I’ve got some other writers’ blogs I follow — I could ask if it would be okay to link to those. Maybe links to some of the resources I’ve found on the Web. Okay, check.
  • Excerpts from upcoming or published works. Um. Not so much. I can’t really say anything is coming soon, since I haven’t gotten any contracts yet. Okay, I haven’t even submitted anything yet. Details.
  • A way to buy your books. Also a moot point just now.
  • Lists of upcoming appearances. Moot at the moment, but maybe I can talk to the folks at COSine and see if they would be willing to put an aspiring author and multiple-time NaNoWriMo winner on a panel or two? Otherwise, yeah, moot.

Hmm, that doesn’t leave me much. A bio and some links. Not very exciting. What could I add to it? I can certainly talk about NaNoWriMo next month and do daily word count updates. Is it worth dusting off some of the short stories I wrote back in college? Maybe I need to work on some Web only content, like a serial story that gets posted a couple of pages at a time. That could be a lot of fun.

It’s a bit of a puzzle, I’ll admit, but one I’d like to tackle successfully.

What would you like to see on an aspiring author’s Web site? What are some of your favorite author Web sites, and what do you like about them? What would you prefer not to see on an author’s Web site?

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How My Netbook Changed The Way I Write

Posted on October 8, 2009 by sheilamcclune

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

When I first started writing, back in high school (during the pen-and-spiral-notebook days), I tried to keep the fact that I wrote a secret, at least from my family. I was pretty sure my older brother, at least, would have made fun of me. My younger brother knew I wrote, but he was always cooler about such things. On the other hand, I was pretty sure my mom wouldn’t have understood at all. She’d want to know why I was wasting time on things like writing when I could be doing things like cleaning or yardwork.

So most of my writing in those days (and on into college, since I lived in my parents’ house until I got married) took place either during free periods at school (and sometimes, I blush to admit, during the less-interesting of my classes), or late in the evening, between the hours of 10:00 pm and 2:00 am. I’d usually curl up in my bed or my beanbag chair with my notebook and scribble away until I just couldn’t stay awake any longer.

Once I got married, I struggled through years of writing on various desktop, portable, and laptop computers. I found it easier to write on a computer — once I stopped feeling silly about it — but it was never as handy as that spiral notebook that I could carry with me and curl up with anywhere. The laptops made it better, but it still wasn’t quite the same.

Then this past January, my Beloved Husband and I decided to treat ourselves to netbooks for Christmas. Mine didn’t actually arrive until February (there was a problem with the first one they sent), but when it did, it was love at first touch. I’d worried that I’d find the 3/4 size keyboard difficult to use, but that turned out to be a non-issue — after about two hours, my fingers adjusted, and I can now type just as fast on the netbook as on any other keyboard.

In many ways, I feel like I’ve returned to my spiral notebook days. The netbook is small and light enough that I can carry it with me almost anywhere — and I do! Which means that any time there are a few free minutes, I can write: first thing in the morning; at lunchtime, at work; while waiting for the take-out pizza; curled up in bed at night.

I’ve listened to a lot of writers speak about how to find the time to write, and one thing I hear over and over again is that if you wait for a free three-hour block of time before you even consider writing anything, you’ll almost never get any writing done. But if you take advantage of the little bits of time you can create here and there, the next thing you know, you’ve got a novel on your hands. I’ll talk more about how I manage those little snippets of time later, but I think my netbook is helping me to find them, at least!

Oh, and the one big disadvantage of a netbook? When I whip it out in a crowded room, I inevitably have to spend a few minutes responding to all the cries of, “Oh, what a cute little computer!” The fact that it’s pink probably contributes to the problem…it really is cute!

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Getting Organized and NaNoWriMo

Posted on October 1, 2009 by sheilamcclune

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

As Andrea mentioned earlier this week, we’re just a month away from the start of National Novel Writing Month. I’ve done NaNoWriMo twice now, in 2006 and 2008, and “won” both times. (I skipped 2007 because we were refinishing all the wood floors in our house and I just didn’t have time.) Though I have to be honest and admit that neither story was “finished” in 30 days and 50,000 words; the first one (The Vedia Gamble) came in at 120K words and took me until December 20th to finish, and the second one (The Serendipity Caper) took me until May 31, 2009 to wrap up — at a whopping 280K words. Both are set in what I call my “Phoebe-verse,” in which Nebraska librarian Phoebe Caldicott accidentally gets swept away by a crew of space pirates and becomes their captain.

Both books were great fun to write, and I think the process of putting out an average of 1,667 words every day for an entire month is incredibly freeing. When I don’t stop to edit each and every sentence to death before moving on to the next, I get a lot more writing done. Actually finishing my writing projects was something of a challenge for me before I met NaNoWriMo (though I did complete two books and a couple of short stories before then). But now that I’ve seen the value of just telling the story first and worrying about the fine points later, I’m hooked. After all, no first draft is ever pretty. Right?

And I have to admit … the endorphine rush of actually finishing a novel is pretty darned heady. I could easily get addicted to it!

I think both are good stories (and my alpha readers actually seemed to enjoy them), but both require a bit of work in order to get them ready for submission to publishers and agents. In the meantime … November is approaching, and I’m not ready to dip back into the “Phoebe-verse” for a third helping until I have the first two books in a more final state. So I’m obviously going to have to look elsewhere for inspiration this year. The question is, where?

Like my friends here, I get lots of story ideas. Sometimes it’s a whole story, and sometimes it’s just a character or a setting or a plot point. And they can come from almost anywhere — a photograph, a line from a song, a mis-read headline, an overheard snippet of conversation, or a fragment of a dream. At one point, back in college, I actually kept a paper journal where I jotted these thoughts and ideas down. Sadly, I’m no longer that disciplined.

I do keep a file called “Story Ideas” on my netbook, and at least some of my ideas have made it in there. The problem is that I also kept one on my old laptop, and on the laptop before that, so now I have idea files all over the place. Not only that, but since an idea can jump out at me from just about anywhere, I often have them when I don’t have my netbook handy. So then what?

I did get a small notebook to keep in my purse, where I can jot down ideas. Sadly, I don’t use it much, though sometimes my steno pad at work serves that purpose too. I have a feeling both will see more use when November rolls around.

Interestingly, the tool I’ve found most useful recently is my LiveJournal. I can access it from anywhere there’s an Internet connection, and it’s an easy matter to jot myself a private entry that I can then pull up later. Tagging these entries with “story idea” makes it easy to pull them all together in one spot for easy reference.

So now I’m considering moving all of my story ideas onto my LJ, using a standard format that looks something like this:

——————————————————–
Title: The Vedia Gamble
Genre: SF/Adventure
Status: Editing

Quick Synopsis (1-2 sentences): A middle-aged spinster from Nebraska is inadvertently abducted by space pirates, accidentally becoming their captain.

Jacket Blurb*: Phoebe Caldicott didn’t think her life could get any worse. Not only was she trapped in a dead-end job that she hated passionately, but she was in debt, single, rapidly approaching forty, and still a virgin to boot. And now she was on her way home from her sister’s funeral, on an overcrowded airplane that was running late and out of peanuts – of course. How could her life get any worse?

The pirate spaceship The Damned Strumpet was just dipping into the Earth’s atmosphere to replenish her oxygen supplies when she accidentally scooped up part of one of the planet’s primitive aircraft. And wouldn’t you know, the craft’s only survivor — Phoebe — somehow managed to kill The Strumpet’s captain – which meant that she was now the captain!

No doubt about it, Phoebe “Ace” Caldicott was in for one hell of a ride!

Notes: There are one or more saboteurs aboard the ship, and Phoebe needs to find them and stop them. (etc.)
——————————————————–

*Note that most of my story ideas get written up first as the copy from the book’s (as yet imaginary) back cover. I figure if I can’t get the basic idea down in one or two snappy-sounding paragraphs, I’m not ready to write it up yet.

So I’m going to give this a try. My goal is to get my ideas organized by next week, so I can pick my NaNoWriMo project. I’ll let you know how it works out!

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Happy Punctuation Day!

Posted on September 24, 2009 by sheilamcclune

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

I had an entry all planned out that would follow along with the themes Samantha and Andrea posted earlier this week, about planning work and organizing ideas. But I think I will hold that thought until next week because I’ve just discovered that today is:

As authors, punctuation is important to us. Without it, how would we know where a sentence ends? Would we be able to tell the difference between a question and an imperative? And what about all those clauses that have to be strung together somehow?

My personal punctuational nemesis is the comma. I tend to massively over-use them, to the point where I’ve dubbed myself “the Queen Of Excess Commas.” When I was editing my first NaNoWriMo entry, I removed 347 that really weren’t needed. (Yes, I kept track.) I’m not sure why I do it, except that I seem to think in more-or-less complete phrases, and of course you need commas after phrases. Don’t you? Well, obviously not always.

At least I’m getting better at recognizing them when they happen. Mostly*.

But the placement of a comma can completely change the meaning of a sentence. Consider these musical examples:

No Woman No Cry, by Blues Traveler (on Rhapsody.com)

No Woman No Cry, by Boney M (on Rhapsody.com)

The first is sung as, “No Woman, No Cry”; the second as, “No, Woman No Cry.” See the difference?

My other favorite example of how punctuation can change the meaning of a sentence is the (possibly apocryphal) tale of an English professor who wrote the phrase “Woman without her man is nothing” on the chalkboard and asked the class to punctuate it properly. According to the legend, the men responded, “Woman, without her man, is nothing.” And the women answered, “Woman! Without her, man is nothing.”

Over on her blog, Prose From The Pros, author Bonnie Doran has been discussing quotes from Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss. Several of her more recent posts have been about my new favorite punctuation mark (and therefore the one I’m currently trying hardest not to over-use), the semicolon. The semicolon is a useful critter; it’s a great way to splice two thoughts together. Each of these thoughts could stand on their own, but together they’re stronger. Which is great until I look at a paragraph I’ve just written and discover that all three sentences contain a semicolon!

What are your favorite punctuation marks? Which ones do you find yourself over- and under-using?

And who’s planning to go home tonight and bake a meatloaf in the shape of a question mark?

(* Excess commas removed from this post before sending: 5)

Posted in Writing | Tagged | 2 Comments

This Must Be Thursday. I Never Could Get The Hang Of Thursdays…

Posted on September 17, 2009 by sheilamcclune

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

It somehow seems apropos that I start with a quote from The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, since Douglas Adams was a major influence on my writing style during my formative years, and remains so to this day.

Hi. I’m Sheila, and I’ll be blathering expostulating sharing my trials and tribulations as an aspiring author with you on Thursdays here at The Melt-Ink Pot. I have never lived in either Washington or Maine (though I have visited both and loved them). I’m a native Denverite currently living in the Denver metro area, a fairly rare species in these parts. Colorado is an amazing mix of city and country, of mountains and plains, and I haven’t yet found anywhere I’d rather live.

I’ve been a voracious and omnivorous reader since about the age of four and a half, when my father accidentally taught me to read (he had a bad habit of following along with his finger when he read to us). But it took me until I was in high school to figure out that I could write stories, too. That was when I went out and bought some spiral notebooks and some ball-point pens (because back in those days your only other option was this thing called a “typewriter”, and if you think your old laptop is heavy and hard to lug around, you should try hauling one of these babies along for a day) and started scribbling.

Like many writers, I then spent a number of years in the “I can start novels but can’t finish them” stage of my career. However, in the last few years (thanks in part to National Novel Writing Month, which I discovered in 2006), I’ve since moved on to the “I can finish novels but I can’t edit them” stage. (Turns out I’m a bit verbose. Who knew?)

Thus far I’ve completed two historical romances and two fairly fluffy space pirate adventures, all of which are in need of substantial revision (okay, and word-count reduction) before they’re ready to see the light of day. My other works in progress include a couple of fantasies, a paranormal romance, and some sci-fi comedies. I’m currently editing my Regency romance while sorting through my file of story ideas trying to decide on my next writing project.

Favorite authors include Anne McCaffrey, Larry Niven, Connie Willis, Diane Mott Davidson, Monica Ferris, Barbara Metzger, Gene Stratton Porter, and of course, Douglas Adams. (I’ll probably think of a whole bunch more as soon as I post this, of course.)

Trivia facts about me: I nearly always have music stuck in my head; I write and fence with my left hand but bowl and use knives with my right; I don’t have cable television; and I collect rubber duckies.

That’s probably plenty to go on with for now. I’m really looking forward to good times with my fellow bloggers here, and I hope you all enjoy the ride!

Posted in Writing | Tagged | 1 Comment