The Inspiration for Unraveling

I've mentioned this before, but the Unraveling was conceived primarily because I was in love and trying to make that work long distance. I started think about people who fall in love despite that fact that they're from different worlds, and with a little inspiration from things I love the story and the characters that are now Unraveling developed.

So, those inspirations are:

 how I felt

the original star crossed lovers

 

San Diego, one of the most beautiful cities I've ever lived

 

 poetry by Robert Frost

an awesome sci-fi show I loved as a teenager

 

 "Much Madness is Divinest Sense" by Emily Dickinson

two people I don't know but are the perfect Janelle and Ben

one of my favorite shows on television

I don't know who wrote this, but it's perfect

"Remember" by Christina Rossetti

Because all the good love stories need an epic end.

So those are my inspirations for the book that comes out in exactly one week! Tomorrow make sure you stop by Magic Urban Fantasy Reads to check out my interview and enter to win a signed copy of Unraveling.

The Revision Battle

I'm a perfectionist. I can't open a document on my laptop and do a read through without making some kind of revision. Every time I read something, I want to tinker with the words or the sentence structure, or I think of something else that should be happening in the scene.

And it's not just with things I've written myself. I'm that person that is always making edits to other people's writing too. At one point, I was a teacher, and I always turned back papers covered in green ink (green, because red ink apparently can hurt people's self esteem according to our principal).

I was sure that when the time came, I would rock at edits.

This is embarrassing but true: I didn't. Like at all.

My first reaction whenever I read anyone's revisions notes was that I couldn't possibly do what they were asking. Whether it was because "it would change the entire dynamic of the book!" or just because I had no idea how to implement them, my knee jerk reaction was that I couldn't do it.

Which was weird, because I've never been an "I can't" person.

So I did a couple weird things to get through edits.

1. I waited at least two full days after reading the edit letter before opening the manuscript on my computer. I wanted to really let those edit notes sink in and be committed to them before working on it.

2. I talked (and maybe whined a little) about them a lot. Writer friends and publishing industry friends had to hear me discuss edits and why I didn't think they'd work--or maybe they would--many times. Thankfully I had a good support system of people who knew when to tell me to shut up and just get it done.

3. I made a playlist of music which I blasted during revisions--the kind of music that just isn't about to let a person fail. Like this.

4. I took things one step at a time--and I rewarded myself with every step that I accomplished. And I reminded myself when I got frustrated that writing a book is never really a one person job.

And

5. I realized the trick for me was to print the manuscript out and edit on paper. It was a lot of work, a lot of writing in long hand (in green ink), and then a lot of typing everything back into the document. But it allowed me to distance myself from my own words, to view them more objectively, and it guaranteed that I going over everything at least twice (once on paper and once when I typed it in), which (hopefully) meant I wasn't going to miss things.

But of course the best thing about edits, is when they're done, and you can read the first pass pages and see the words laid out like a real book.

First, published on 10/16/2011, this post in its original form can be found on Brave New Words.

Getting to "The End"

I am a strict believer in writing through anything tough. Which is exactly what I do when I get to the dreaded middle.

When I first started writing, I would revise and revise and revise. I never finished anything because I was so busy revising things that I didn't like. And I didn't like everything.

And well, let's face it, not finishing anything is sort of problematic. But I was saved--by NaNoWriMo. I stumbled across a website forum of writers all taking about nanowrimo, and I had no idea what it was, but they all kept talking about it and asking each other if they were going to do, and I hate being left out, so I checked it out.

It taught me two very valuable lessons.

1. 200,000 words is not actually appropriate novel length. (I'm a little embarrassed to admit I'd written several very lengthy manuscripts--which were mostly character studies with no plot--and they were all over 200k words. I had no knowledge of word length until I got involved with NaNoWriMo.)

and

2. I needed to Just. Keep. Writing.

Word count is thankfully something I've made myself familiar with and kept in mind while writing in the future, but Nano challenged me to keep going, to forget how crappy the beginning was, or the deus ex machina plot disaster going on in the middle, or the flat characters and absent motivation. It taught me to push through all that, and get to The End.

Which was something I really needed to know how to do.

After I survived my first Nano and finished the first draft of a manuscript, I went through and read it. There was a lot to not like--there was a ton of stuff I threw out and rewrote, but I had a framework, and revising from there was so much easier for me.

So now, I'm working on a new project. It's a little different than things I've written before, and I've written some scenes that are way too rambly, dialogue that's way too stiff, and worldbuilding that borderlines the definition of info dump.

But if I stopped and revised now, I would get lost in the frustration of those scenes. I might even get stuck in a loop of rewriting the same scene time after time after time. (It's happened more times than I care to admit). Instead, I grab some kids--the sour patch kind--and I keep writing. I ignore the stuff that makes me want to groan, because when I finish and I reread the manuscript, there will be stuff I can keep too, scenes I love, even scenes that amaze me because they're good.

In my WIP, I'm almost 20k words in, and I know I'm going to rewrite a lot of the beginning so it flows more smoothly, but about 5k words ago, I hit a stride, and that makes all that grumbling through the beginning is worth it.

First published on 9/4/2011, this post can be seen in its original form at Brave New Words.

Five Surefire Ways to Get Me Plotting

Some writers just sit down and write--fly by the seat of their pants--and the story unfolds itself for them.

I'm not like that. At all.

I actually like to know exactly what I want to happen from the first to the last scene before I start writing.

So once I have a vague idea of something (usually a character or two and a situation), my writing/plotting rituals are:

1. Angsty Teen TV Shows
I specifically love the ones from the 80s and 90s that are up on the Netflix. I'll watch a string of episodes all back to back.

2. Specialized Playlist

I have playlists for certain projects, playlists for certain characters, and even playlists for certain scenes. I'll sit down with iTunes for a few hours and go through my music looking for the right songs for my characters and their relationships. And then hopefully those songs all together will inspire me.

3. The Long Walk

Before I lived in NYC, this would have been called The Long Drive, but now that I'm carless, I love grabbing my ipod and just setting out for a walk. The scenery of a park or even just the city and people watching can give me some great ideas, and sometimes when I'm thinking of nothing in particular, a plot point will come to me.

4. Brainstorming Sessions
I have a couple really talented and creative friends who thankfully don't mind helping me sort out plot details. We'll sometimes meet for coffee, and I'll tell them what I've got and we'll throw ideas back and forth. Other times, we'll brainstorm via text message or even email.

5. Research
io9 is the one website I follow religiously. I love their links, the articles, the sense of humor--all of it. And every time I've plotted myself into a corner, I'll click their links and something, even if it's just a word or a phrase, will sent me off on inspired research.

Each of my projects have started with the characters and then the plot has developed from there. UNRAVELING was conceived because of a guy I found pretty swoonworthy, a marathon of Roswell season one, "We Are Broken" by Paramore, walks through the financial district in Manhattan, late night emails, and a couple well worn copies of Scientifican American magazines.

After I had one lined journal, almost full with character descriptions, worldbuilding notes, scene ideas, and snippets of dialogue, I typed up a synopsis and went to work turning those ideas into an actual manuscript.

First published on 8/21/2011, this post in its original form can be seen at Brave New Words.

Becoming a "Writer"

When I was a kid, my goal never was to become a writer. I liked to write stories and especially draw accompanying pictures in elementary school, but I didn't ever say writer when someone asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up.

I wanted to be a surgeon, even though the sight of blood made me faint. I wanted to be a veterinarian at a zoo, even though, again, there was that whole blood problem, not to mention all the schooling. I wanted to be a flight attendant so I could travel the world for free. I even wanted to be a singer, never mind that I was tone deaf.

But I came from an abusive home. The environment creates a certain need for escapism. As a kid I was constantly daydreaming and envisioning my life as something different than it was. I watched movies and read books and imagined myself in that world as the heroine of my own adventure.

I also created a persona for who I was outside my house. Which means, I lied a lot. Like a lot. Before I even knew how awful it was. And my lies were elaborate with intricate details and safeguards. I told my kindergarten teacher my cat had eight kittens. (My family had a dog who was spayed). I described each kitten in major detail, gave each of them names, drew pictures of them for weeks, and when a parent of a fellow student asked if they could buy one of the kittens from my family, I told them we'd already promised them to people in our family.

Then of course, I grew up and got caught in a few lies and suffered the punishments, and realized that maybe wasn't the best way to go about life.

And I had an English teacher who saved me. Her name was Mrs. Hall, and she loved books with a ferocity that couldn't be anything but contagious. Every time she spoke, in class, in the hallway, to me or to someone else, I was captivated by how passionate she was. I wanted to be just like her.

So I read everything she recommended. I showed up at her classroom every day after school, even when she wasn't my teacher anymore. We discussed hundreds of books--the characters, the worlds, the language, the authors. Everything. 

She asked to read my stories, so I wrote them down. 

And she listened.

That encouragement drove me through high school, and writing itself became a staple in my life, something I did every time I had a free moment whether it was on my computer, in a notebook, on the back of a receipt or on a napkin. 

I tried to write the Great American Novel for a while, and then I read Elizabeth Haydon's Symphony of Ages series. The characters and world became so alive and so inspiring that I realized I had it all wrong. Most of the stories I loved most (excluding Gatsby) were all fantasy or science fiction.

So I changed my focus, and I embraced the inner science fiction/fantasy geek inside me and somewhere along the line, I wrote Unraveling. Then Brooks Sherman and Janet Reid and a lot of other people helped make things happen.

First published 10/2/2011, this post can be seen in its original form on Brave New Words.