Accept the Crapitude

So, invoking rule 2a didn't have an immediate impact. I chose to finished Bujold's CRYOBURN1 before getting back to work for a few reasons which I may or may not enumerate below2. Anyway, this morning was technically a writing day, but I quickly realized that rule 2a was unnecessary. The writing was crap, but it was a level of crapness that seemed appropriate for a first draft. To stop and revise 40,000 words would reestablish neither voice nor rhythm in a fashion conducive to continuing the work. It was a time sink, a trap. It is the very reason rule 2 exists to begin with.

So instead, I began spot checking. Spot checking being reading while correcting errors I might happen upon. Mostly I refamiliarized myself with the Nation's bad grammar, Jehovah's obsession with family, Sid's foul-mouthed excitability, and Three's lovable innocence. It reminds me how excited I was writing JH before I stopped to revise TTS. It makes me want to write the work again. This is what I needed. I needed to warm up the engine so I could drive in the snow.

It doesn't fix my immediate concern that there's something wrong near where I stopped. I hope that it will come to me soon and I can correct it. Otherwise I'll have to soldier on. And I won't say that I just needed to be inspired again. That's just crap. What I needed was to love JEHOVAH'S HITLIST more than THE TRIAD SOCIETY. That has proved much more difficult than normal (see footnote3 too for hypotheses). While my word count won't be going up today, it may start going up tomorrow, definitely by Friday. Absolutely by Monday or the warning sirens go off.

Either way, it's time for Jehovah to discover the ruins of the Nation's government, meet with racist Rori Schapp (that will eventually lead to the story's thesis statement later in the book when he's talking to Dominic Texas), confront the deputy that follows him, and move the plot along. I want to have this first draft finished by the new year.

The killer? When I get beta feedback for TTS, I'll have to stop again. While I think TTS was served wonderfully for taking a longer break to begin JH before revision, JH seems to be suffering now because of the repeated breaks.

1 The end of this book would have been crushing to a series fan if Bujold hadn't spoiled it a year ago on her MySpace blog. It's almost enough to cause an AYFKM moment. It's a half-AYFKM, which is why this is only a footnote and not its own post like it almost was yesterday when I read it. It would have been delicious heartache, the kind of thing that Liz would chide me about for months after reading it if I had written it. But I knew it was coming.

2 The hardest part of starting JH again was that I didn't want to stop revising TTS. Receiving beta feedback on the first three chapters so soon after finishing my own revision, and seeing how much the novel improved because of that feedback, I wanted to keep going. There are 30 more chapters that need this kind of polish. Let's get to it! But I have to actually let people read the manuscript. ...dammit.

I also think there's a problem somewhere. Maybe Jehovah accepted the Hanged Man's threats too readily. Perhaps he needed to know he was being followed sooner. Even though I understand how dangerous the Hanged Man is and that Jehovah with his obsession with family would absolutely kill five strangers to keep them all safe, I'm not sure if I've properly communicated all of that.

3 I've totally stolen Nate Wilson's footnote gimmick. I commented that it really freed up my writing from those pesky asides. This is proving much more true than I realized at the time. This makes blogging so much easier. Why doesn't everyone have footnotes? Look at how easily I can communicate side-information without obstructing the flow of the main thought. Genius! Pure genius!

4 You just went back and looked because you didn't remember there being a fourth footnote. Didn't you? ...I think the footnotes might have just jumped the shark. Shit.

Beware the AYRTD Bird and Invoking Rule 2a

This has been a reading week. I finished JULIET1. I'm almost half-way through CRYOBURN. I've finished the first disc of ARABIAN NIGHTS. I keep taking my Eee PC to work because I feel the need to write, but when I think of what to write next, it's not clicking. I know what I need to do, but because I've been enjoying reading, I haven't been stressing forcing myself back into things (60k and JH is complete, a mark I can hit in November if I want to posture for the NaNo writers2. What I need to do is invoke rule 2a.

I've done this once before and it proved incredibly effective. Going back to the beginning and revising the current WIP after stopping to revise a completed draft both improves the ms and gets you a feel for the voice and rhythm of the work you're continuing. It's the one time I let myself go back and revise before the entire thing is finished. I updated my first 250 words on Nathan Bransford's forum to JH given how old BM&BBQ is. It seemed a wasted opportunity to post content from that work since I am no longer actively querying it. Those new 250 words needed some serious revision. I overwrote JH's first chapter and couldn't even make it off the first page without scolding myself. (The new 250 words are derived from the original 500 words and are much better.)

So this will let me rebuild a rhythm, improve the existing work, and maybe think of some new ideas for what's still to come. This is only daunting because I don't usually have this much already complete on a novel when I invoke 2a. I have 40k words in JH. Normally I might only have 10. I don't want to get stuck at the beginning and never get to the end. That's the whole reason rule 2 exists!

1 Not as bad as the AYFKM moment, the AYRTD is when you look at the main character and shout, "Are you really that dumb?" I really enjoyed the first 350 pages of JULIET, but pages 351-400 are just one AYRTD moment after another. The entire climax is impossible if the main character didn't have the mental capacity of a bag full of hammers. She would have realized that everyone had something to gain from manipulating her and no one had been honest, and thus no decision could be made. Thankfully, she chose to mistrust people in a specific order, allowing each of them to shepherd her closer to the finale, leaving the humble reader to ask why he should care about someone unfit to produce offspring less the gene pool continue to be watered down.

Much like the entire plot dependent on the main characters miscommunicating, a plot driven by the protagonist not realizing clues that slap him/her across the face is enough to make me pull my hair out. It's one thing for clues to be cryptic, or riddles or double entendres or genuine intrigue. But when character A gives you a clue and then character B gives you a clue and they both wave the big Clue Flag and you still don't get it? I'm sorry, you're too stupid to have your own book. Go be a supporting character.

2 Really, I'm so hard on NaNo because my first experiences with it were from communities not dedicated to writing. I wasn't part of a group of writers that liked to participate. I was among the majority of NaNo participants, people who wanted to write but never found the time. The excuses were the same every year. They'd sign up to do it and then never start or only write for five days or use anything they write (like this blog post) as their word count. Whatever they could do not to do the one thing they said they really wanted to do. Sorry, but if you want to do something, do it.

The Rules (and their Subclauses)

1. One work in progress (WIP) at a time
    a. A work may be suspended to revise a draft of a previously completed manuscript or edit galleys of a manuscript being published

    b. A work may be abandoned if it is not salvageable and a new WIP begun

      i. If an abandoned WIP is resumed, this original work must be stripped for usable content and the manuscript begun anew

2. No revision until the first draft is complete
    a. Revision is permitted to re-establish rhythm if a WIP was suspended to revise the draft of another manuscript

3. Do not write a work that does not have a title
    a. This title can be changed at any time but may not be eliminated outright

4. Write a minimum of 10,000 words on those weeks that are designated "writing weeks."
    a. A non-writing week is a "reading week" wherein a book/books will be read to recharge creative batteries.

5. No more than two consecutive weeks may be designated as a non-writing week, barring extenuating circumstances (e.g. professional obligations, wife in the hospital, etc.)

6. Write chronologically
    a. If inspired, write only until this inspiration is spent and place this at the bottom of the WIP until the story reaches the point at which this inspiration can be assimilated
      i. If inspiration for a non-WIP work occurs, write a blog post tagged "ideas" to satisfy such inspiration then return to the WIP

7. Do not create a project folder for the WIP until the first draft is complete (this is bad luck).
    a. A project folder can be created to store supplementary files (scraps, maps, etc) but the manuscript file must remain in the general "novels" folder of your computer.

8. Copy the manuscript file to a flash drive and secondary storage device every two weeks (or more frequently) to prevent catastrophic data loss in the event of Eee PC theft or destruction

9. Do not show the manuscript to anyone else until it has been revised to second-draft status
    a. A second draft constitutes a minimum of one (but may include more) pass that reviews and revises every chapter of the manuscript

10. Do not query agents until the manuscript is revised to third-draft status
    a. A third draft constitutes the dissemination to qualified third-party reviewers and the application of their feedback to every chapter of the manuscript