A Failed Goal

September twenty-eighth, two-thousand and ten. 

I convert the date into letters because it seems so much more harmless when spelled out like that.  I can hear a young lady with a British accent speaking it aloud in my mind, and it sounds nice that way.  If I just blurt it out in numbers then the end of the month seems so much closer, and somewhere inside me a little writer cowers in terror. 

I told myself that I would have the rough draft of Evanescent Moonlight done by the end of September at the latest. 

And...

...it sits at 65,283 words, nowhere near done. 

So I am forced to re-evaluate my situation.  Very well, I don't have it done.  And I do know several reasons why it isn't done:

1. Procrastination.  (Might as well get that one out of the way first, no?)
2. My laptop still doesn't work, so I am sharing this desktop with two other people.
3. I have been reading a lot more.  (Yay!)
4. School.

But enough of making excuses to myself.  I have to face up to the fact that, little by little, I have become one of those 'writers' who talk and read and think about writing but never actually do it.  I know so much, but what have I done? 

I believe that if you truly love something, you will make time for it.  And I have made plenty of time for reading writing blogs, listening to writing podcasts, talking about writing, and writing blog posts about writing.  I have also spent much time thinking about writing, thinking about interesting character traits or story twists, stealing ideas straight from history, imagining how I could use fiction to convey the things I feel most passionate about. 

So I'm not sure I understand this stranglehold that apathy has on me. 

Is it just another form of my recurring struggle to get things out of my head and into the real world?  That I could very well believe.  The darn beasty came back.  It latches onto my human nature, trying to drown out the voice of reason that says that anything worth doing is bound to be hard. 

I have learned so much in the past six months.  So much!  I look back on the things I knew about writing a year ago, and the difference seems hard to comprehend.  But the gulf between what I know and what I can do has grown so vast that now I am afraid of trying. 

But I know that I can't stop here. 

So I extend my imaginary sword (you know, the one all writers carry, whether they know it or not), and cry that I will do hard things!  I will not stop!  I will remain fully aware of the difficulties facing me at all times, and I will not avoid them! 

And above all, I will not allow how little I have accomplished at this point to keep me from trying.  I am competing against my past self, and no one else.  Productiveness is not always measured by word count, and one cannot judge the success of a multifaceted life based on one single area. 

Writing Meme: Character Ages [5/30]

5.  By age, who is your youngest character? Oldest? How about “youngest” and “oldest” in terms of when you created them?


A lot of my youngest characters appeared in stories that I wrote before I started writing my ‘official’ novels – and since there are more than seventy of these stories that are only a couple of pages long each, I am not counting them.  


My youngest character is Sarie, the six- or seven-year-old girl who was an important character in Tears for the Silent Lands.  However, she is blessed with the gift of insight and is much more advanced mentally than a lot of girls her age, so writing her character was not exactly like writing a typical young child. 


Everlyse from Enchantress is next at fifteen.  She is the age I was when I wrote the story, and I based much of her character and circumstances in life off of my own.


As for my oldest characters, all of the Keeper characters in Evanescent Moonlight are multiple thousands of years old.  Aside from them, Mirriae from Tears for the Silent Lands is 500 years old by the end of the story.


Considering ‘youngest’ and ‘oldest’ by the time of creation, Byeron and Faeryn from The Prophet of Aenerowaye come first (they were both born about the same time).  Byeron is tall, broad-shouldered, and blonde, while Faeryn is a short, slender teenager with wavy hair down to her knees.  Yes, they both are about as Mary-Sue and Gary-Stu as they sound. 


And the most recent character… from an ‘established’ novel, Leiss from Evanescent Moonlight was the last character to have significant details finalized, and I’m still not sure about his name.  Now, there is the secret and rather embarrassing detail that I took a little break from EM and randomly started a different story about an evil sorceress named Estella and her crazy pregnant sister, but I’m sure it’s not going to last very long and for goodness’ sake don’t tell anyone about it! 

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Forums, Memes, and Writing Revelation

Yes, I confess that I am madly in love with numbered lists. 

1. Thank you so much to everyone who commented with advice about Inkpop.  I decided that instead of joining it, I would join Nathan Bransford's forums.  The experience has already been wonderful.  I have been able to talk with other teen writers who are completely serious (and who don't use chatspeak or internet slang!), and visit their awesome blogs.  So many of the discussions are helpful, and when I do end up participating, I feel like I'm practing for being a professional adult writer instead of languishing in the teen world. 

2. I've complained in recent posts about how poorly my writing was going.  Well, last night changed a lot of things.  I made my first attempt at drawing Joremn (the main character from Evanescent Moonlight), and it didn't turn out too bad, for a first attempt.  (I've decided that unless you're a genius, it's impossible to draw a picture of your characters that looks just like you imagined them to be.)  And then later that evening when I sat down to write, I wrote 700 words and enjoyed writing them!  

This is huge for me.  I had confessed to my journal that it felt like it had been months since I had actually enjoyed my writing.  For so long it has been a drudgery, merely cranking out words whenever I could work myself up to it because without a climbing word count, I could never finish the novel, and thus never be free.  But last night, I rediscovered the joy in it.  I walked away from the computer to get ready for bed, and found myself thinking about the next bit of dialogue and how to describe my character's eyes.  I had to dash back to the computer to get it down. 

I think three things contributed to this: one, I downloaded Q10 on sunday. 

(We interrupt this blog post for an impromptu promo:  Q10 is one of the most helpful writing programs I have found.  It takes up the entire screen so that you can focus on your writing alone, and it keeps constant track of your word count at the bottom of the screen.  The best part is that it is completely free!  Now, back to the post.)

Two, as soon as I sat down to write, my mom told me that she needed to use the computer, so I had ten minutes to write (as it turns out she got a phone call so I got to write for longer).  This gave me a time limit and motivated me to get my fingers moving whereas I might have just sat staring at the screen if I had all the time in the world.  And the third and most important thing was that I had been reflecting on the characters and how much I loved them.  It just goes to show that good fiction is all about characters: the more you try to write a story independant of characters you love, the harder it is. 

3. In other news, both Hannah and Mariella have both stolen the writing meme off of me (which I think is totally awesome -- if you want to read their answers, scroll down to the bottom of the writing meme page and you'll find the links to their posts).

I think it was Authorial Indecision, in the Closet, with a Bad Haircut.

And now, because I cannot think of a single topic worthy of an entire blog post, how about a bombardment? 

1. I would like to join Inkpop.  I need to ask permission of my parents before I can join any site (family rules), and I know that if I asked I would most likely get a yes, but I've put off posing the question. 

Why?  Whenever I visit the site and browse the forums, I wish I was a member. 

But at the same time, I don't feel ready yet.  For one, I don't have a story that's in good enough condition to post on there.  And for another, I want to be sure that I'm not jumping into something that ends up being a drain on my energy and doesn't add anything to my life.  I've had enough of those experiences, and I want to break away from my habit of over-committing myself.

On the other hand, I would like to be involved on a site where I could exchange reviews and work on refining my craft without worrying so much about running into evil adult writers.  (And no, I'm not talking about stalkers.  I'm talking about adults with trashy minds who write what's in their heads.)  At least with a teen-oriented site there might be a little more quality control than, say, FictionPress.  (I have an account on there and was looking at getting involved, but as soon as I started posting on one of the forums, I looked around and realized I'd thrown myself into a crowd that might say adult things at any moment.)  

So... I don't know.  I'm still debating. 

2. Meanwhile, I have my little Writing Conscience in the back of my mind jumping up and down and screaming, "FINISH EM!!!!"  So perhaps my struggles in coming up with a brand-spanking-new story for Inkpop are deserved, since I'm being unfaithful to the story that really deserves to be worked on. 

("Deserves," scoffs the inner editor -- or Inner Ed, as I like to call him.  "Bah.  What a misapplication of a perfectly good word.  Or have you forgotten about the poor characterization, lack of description, contradictions, structural faults, boring chapters, unrealistic dialogue..."  And on he goes.  I can't wait for NaNoWriMo when I get to tie him up and lock him in my Trunk of Things To Be Stringently Ignored.)

3. Oh yes, EM?  Going well, if you can say that about a story where the two main characters just lost their wits and got in a fight without my permission.  Since from certain points of view character rebellion is a good sign, I'm taking it as such -- even if the 'good sign' does involve me hanging on for dear life and wondering where this is going to end up... 

Writing Meme: Playing With Worlds [1/30]

I must confess to being a shameless copycat.  Instead of writing a brilliant and original post for you entertainment, I have stolen a writing meme from Onna.  I am going to borrow her method of doing it, too: instead of filling out all the questions at once, I will make each question into a blog post.  I have also created a handy directory of all the questions for those who wish to steal the meme. 

1. Tell us about your favorite writing project/universe that you've worked with and why.

I am so tempted to say ‘the one I haven’t worked with yet’, but that would be unfair. I’d be a fool to let discontentment color my view of the past.

Each novel that I’ve worked on has had its own charm and its own give-and-take. With each one, I would be justified in saying, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” Tears for the Silent Lands, which in my memory always feels bland and hopelessly riddled with errors, is the only novel I’ve finished. POE, my first attempt, had all the magic of a first love along with all the clichés. Enchantress, the novel that completely swept me away, I ended up abandoning because the premise went against my conscience and my faith. And now, two-thirds of the way through Evanescent Moonlight, one of my more stable works, all I can see is the lack of characterization and description, the inconsistencies, the chapters that need to be taken out, and the overall un-stellar-ness.

So really, I could almost say that my favorite universes are the ones I’ve stolen from other writers – namely, fanfiction. The time I spent writing for the Sherlock Holmes universe was an absolute blast. I loved being able to dive into a complete and fascinating character, along with the moody, nostalgic world he lived in. The experience taught me so much about what a true character is, and why we love some books and forget about others. Compared with such brilliant craftsmanship, all of my ‘children’ only seem more and more like cardboard cutouts.

Phase Outlines

Yesterday as I flipped through my expanding folder of writing papers, I came across a collection of papers that went with my NaNoWriMo 2008 novel, Tears for the Silent Lands. In it, I found something I’d nearly forgotten about – the phase outline. A phase outline is an outline that details every scene (or part of a scene) in a novel. It can be as short or as long as the author wants, but the longer it is, the more effective it is. It’s designed specifically to include the little details that the author sees in a scene ahead of time, but would be out of place in any other kind of outline. Here is an example of part of a phase outline:

34. Katharine turns the corner and finds a flight of stairs leading up to a door at the top. She is angry, and is determined to no longer feel fear. She climbs the stairs. Boards creaking like moaning ghosts.

35. She opens the door. As soon as she does, a bullet whizzes past her head. She screams, runs back down the stairs, and does not stop until she is out of the building.

36. Katharine sits at the base of one of the building’s brick walls, knees to her chest, and tries to figure out what to do. Wishes she hadn’t lost her cell phone. Wonders who she would call even if she did have it.

This type of outline is particularly useful during NaNoWriMo, because you can look to the outline to see what you’re going to write next, and then just elaborate on what’s already there. It helps you get through the slow days when you have no inspiration whatsoever. And if you think of something better than what’s on the outline, great!

As it turns out, this is exactly what I needed for outlining Part III of Evanescent Moonlight. I know what things the third part needs to accomplish, but I wasn’t sure of the sequence of events and I was afraid to try to plan. Now with the phase outline, I can give the ending a test-run, telling the story in condensed form to see if it works. For example, I’m only a page into the phase outline, but I’ve already discovered that I need to include a battle I was not anticipating. Going through the story beforehand gives me a chance to work out all the little problems that arise when you have as many characters as I do.

The one downside to the phase outline is that it takes time. My outline for Tears for the Silent Lands ended up being about 10,000 words long. But it was worth it, because what I spent in planning beforehand, I didn’t spend in headaches during November.

"I saw their souls rise up on the wings of a phoenix, and I cried, 'Let me follow!'..."

Before you read this blog post, you need to open up Onna’s musings on ‘writing what you know’ and Pip’s two-hundred-dollar response in a separate window. They covered the idea in such a thought-provoking and beautiful manner, showing where the idea was correct and where it was wildly misinterpreted.

I read what they said, and I remembered what I had forgotten. I had forgotten the passion of writing! I had forgotten what it felt like to pull a word from the depths of one’s very soul and throw it on the paper, leaving it to be admired or spat on. I had forgotten what it meant to be a mediator between What You Were Trying To Say and the blank page, finding the one language to great to comprehend, and the other woefully inadequate for a true translation. Of all the things for a writer to forget, to forget passion… that is a slow death.

It all makes sense now! All the hours spent wondering why I could make no progress on Evanescent Moonlight – how could I, when the very reason for progressing had become “word count, finish chapter, must finish …” That’s no way to write a novel about emotion. The joys and sorrows have to be your own. You can pretend, but no one will remember what you said afterward.

And here I am, on the brink of one of the most important scenes in the novel, and once again, God has given me the revelation I needed at the exact right moment.

I am off to write with passion.