Pro-cras-tin-ate!

It's been about a month since my beta readers and critique group have given me their feedback on the latest draft of The River Maiden. The general consensus is that the characters and writing are good, and the story is mostly good but there are too many questions left unanswered for a first book in a series. I had come to this conclusion on my own before many of the readers even got back to me, but it was nice to have that confirmed. So there appears to be a good deal of rearranging, revising and rewriting to go into the next draft before it's ready to be shown to potential agents/publishers.  Since I have already outlined the next book in the series, I have some timeline gymnastics to work on.  There is the question of what to reveal in the first book, without completely ruining the plot of the second.  Also, the question of how far the romance in the first book can/should progress and how that might change some of the tension in the next book. There are storylines to be dropped and others to be built up. Needless to say with almost 250 pages of content, this is a daunting prospect, and one that I've been chewing on in the back of my mind like a particularly tough piece of literary beef jerky.

Fear not! I have not been idle while gnawing away on my various writing dilemmas. In fact, I have been even more active than usual though just not in the area of writing. (I know terrible to get out of the habit of working every day, but there it is.) So here are some of the things that I've been up to instead of revising The River Maiden.

- Taken on an Instructional Design consulting client.

- Added a Clearance section to my etsy store and marked down a bunch of items to go in it.

- Organized/customized our closet in the master bedroom complete with drawers and shelves.

- Planted my vegetable garden, succulent garden, herb garden, shade garden, water garden (with fish) and fairy garden

- Completely revamped our deck from it's previous jumbled state into a gorgeous oasis including container gardens, a new gazebo, social area and even a workspace for writing/editing outside while the kids play.

- And last but certainly not least, binge watched 4 seasons of Dr. Who.

I know, I know. I should have been working on The River Maiden. The good news is that I am getting back to the grind. Even though, I'm working for my client during the hours of the day that I would have previously devoted to writing, I have a plan. This morning I got up at 5AM and came downstairs to work on some reading and editing. I know this has worked for other writers with day jobs and I have high hopes. My characters and my story are usually the last thing I think about as I'm going to sleep at night, so maybe getting up and getting to work before any of my other responsibilities intrude will be a good model for getting things done. It went pretty well this morning. We'll see how well it works when I get to writing some of the new material.

Oh! I should also mention that in honor of Stoddard-palooza (Our month long family festival from our anniversary to our birthday's) I will be giving away my historical fiction shorts this month, though not at the same time. Right now The White House is free on Smashwords. I'll keep it that way for a couple of weeks. Then it will go back to its regular price and A Fond Kiss will be free. I hope that Amazon and Barnes and Noble will be adjusting their pricing accordingly, but I don't really control that the way I can on Smashwords. So, if you haven't read them or have read one and not the other, check them out this month to get a free taste.

So, what's your book about?

The picture you're looking at is a picture of the complete first draft of my first novel. It's in need of some serious editing, as any first draft should be, but it's done. I actually managed to put all the action that's been going on in my head onto paper.

I know you're probably thinking, 'Wow, big deal. We all write books. Hell those NaNoWriMo people do it in a month." And maybe you're right. But, have been working on this book off and on since shortly after I married my husband. In the time that it's taken me to get this plot out of my head I have;

• had two babies
• changed jobs three times
• been laid off TWICE (1 company went out of business, 1 eliminated my department)
• bought a house
• started a small business
• survived postpartum depression
• wrote and self-pubbed two short ebooks
• and beat myself up about eighty gazillion times for not finishing the book sooner

It finally took my younger child going to school to give me enough hours in the day to actually move the needle on this thing more than a millimeter at a time.  Once I was able to treat it like a job, albeit a part time one, it only took me a little over a month to fill in the blanks on this outline I've been toting around for the last year or so. And now, I've finally done it. Now my head is filled with visions of possible covers and book trailers and marketing plans.

"So, what's your book about?"

I confess I am frequently flummoxed by this question. Seeing as I've lived with these characters in my head for over a decade, I really should be able to sum it up easily. But if I say what the whole series is about, then I'd give away some major spoilers. If I say what inspired it, that would probably just be confusing to people who aren't Scotia-phile  genealogy folklore and politics nerds like me. That would also totally skip over the spiritual aspects of the journey that the main character is on. If I described it from that purely academic standpoint, you would never get that at it's heart it's a romance but not the kind that most people think of when they hear romance. There's a mystery, but it's not a mystery. There's paranormal stuff and some romance, but it's not a paranormal romance (No vampires or werewolves. I promise). There's danger, but I don't know that I'd call it a thriller. There's a love story...sort of.

Clearly, if I'm ever going to market this thing, I'm going to have to get a lot better at the 30 second elevator speech. I'm hoping that the editing/rewriting process will help clarify things. And I might want to settle on a title.

In the meantime, you can find some excerpts here.

To outline or not to outline

I can't count the number of writers that I've heard in various forums saying that they just sit down and write and "let the story take me where it will" or something like that. These people often say that they don't know how a story will end when they start writing. Now, I'm not one to cast aspersions on anyone's process. I say do what works for you, as long as it's actually WORKING.  I however, have never been one to just sit and write with no end in mind, at least not for anything longer than a blog post. That method might work for poetry, flash fiction or even short stories, but anything longer than a few printed pages and I better have an outline. This could be the fault of my high school English teacher, Rita Mullins. Aside from Mrs. Mullins many gems of literary wisdom, one of the things that she taught us that I have used the most, is how to create and work from an outline.  I don't want to brag (Yes, I do.) but as a corporate trainer, I never missed a deadline for writing training material. That was entirely due to this habit of working from an outline. Where other trainers who weren't natural writers would sit and stare at blank screens trying to come up with a plan, I would schedule a plan allowing a specific amount of time for researching, brainstorming, outlining, writing and editing and I would work that plan. Voila! Training class on time with minimal stress.

Here are some of the key things that an outline provides for me:

1) Direction: Novel writing isn't a simple as writing training manuals. Sometimes I just feel a scene and it's better to write that when I'm feeling it or it might lose its emotional punch. But if I don't want to lose my way writing from point A to point Z then an outline is a necessity. There is always room for switching items around, changing order and scrapping scenes altogether. That's why I tend to do my outline on index cards, and nerdily color code them according to plot or sub-plot. For a large project like a novel, it's a way to get a bird's eye view of the whole story. Plus it's reminder of what needs to be written next. That doesn't mean that I write scenes in order. If I'm feeling one scene I might work on that. Likewise, if I'm not feeling one, then I can check what else needs to be written and try one of those.

2) Plot Check: Working without an outline is a bit like driving on back country roads with no map or GPS. It might be a lot of fun, in fact that's one of my favorite pastimes, but unless I have some set destination in mind, I'm likely to meander about with no direction take forever to get where I'm going. A book is not like that. If you meander about too much you risk losing the reader's interest. Lengthy passages about the beauty of barns on the back roads of central Virginia might be fun  for me to write, but they're not going to turn pages. Every scene should move the plot forward, and using an outline helps me make sure of that. I can ask myself if an item in my outline moves the plot forward and if it doesn't, I can chuck it. Likewise, I can ask myself if anything is missing. Do the events in my outline motivate my characters to do what they are supposed to do? If not, what else do I need?

3)Accomplishment: There's a reason why I don't knit blankets or sweaters. It's not that I don't like them, I just don't like big projects like that. I get impatient and want to move on to the next thing. I actually get a little depressed if I don't have that sense of accomplishment that comes with finishing something every now and then. So, a big writing project like a novel or (gasp!) a series of novels can be a daunting task. Working from an outline helps me break that down to smaller more manageable tasks. I  go act by act, scene by scene and check them off as I finish drafting each one. I even go so far as to print them out and put them into a notebook in the order of my outline right behind the relevant index card or cards for that scene. This way I can look at the manuscript and feel like I'm moving forward.

As I said before, I'm not disparaging anyone's process or lack thereof. I'm just saying that the old adage "Fail to plan, plan to fail" is famous for a reason. It takes a remarkably rare talent to just sit down and write a book without knowing the direction or having the end in mind. So if you're a writer, you might ask yourself. Am I that rare creative genius that can do that, or am I a classically trained samurai?