It’s been a few thousand words since I last confessed….

It’s almost midnight. Almost two weeks left of NaNo. I have to commend authors who spend their lives writing one novel. Those authors who go back and edit and edit before going on to the next scene, chapter–and the first draft still isn’t complete. I say this with the deepest sincerity, I couldn’t do what you do.

I’m the author who needs that Mary Poppins way of writing. I need to write my first draft with a spoonful of sugar i.e. I need to write it fast, without thought. It could be I’m too insecure to write a novel slowly, where I have to think about the next scene instead of jumping into it. Maybe I need that quantity before I can achieve quality that comes out of editing. But I’m going to put my money on lack of patience i.e. short attention span.

Because I’m 40k in with 35k more to go and I’m ready to abandon this story to start and finish a novella. Not because I don’t have more scenes. I’ve plotted this novel out until the very last period. It’s because I feel like I don’t have the stamina left to keep going.

Yet I know I’ve found IT–that indescribable part of myself to finish a book–time and time again. I’m banking on that innate stubbornness to push through and get to the end of the novel. But at the end will I have a To Kill A Mocking Bird?

Doubt it, but I’ve got to get to the place to where I don’t care. I have to accept the ‘hack’ that writes entertaining books in hopes of making a killing, because this novel is the ONE. (we all have lies we tell ourselves.)

Yet I keep thinking, 35k that’s nothing. I’ve done that before. I know I can do it. I keep breaking it down in my head 15k of substance and 8k of ‘moral of the story’ and 1,998 words of wrapping it all in a nice bow one plot thread at a time.

Two words after that–The End.

Gotta go, the hack in me is calling.

It’s been a few days since I last confessed.

I’ve reached the middle. Did I ever mention how I hate the middle? It’s so full of details that it’s hard for me to keep up or be creative enough to pull something out of my life experiences to put on the page. Which leads me to…

Bleeding onto the page. The beginning of a novel is the greeting. No matter the circumstances it’s fluff. No matter if you open with a character dying or a character having a bad day. Either way, you have a character on the very cusp of their life changing–it’s fluff. It doesn’t hit to the heart of the story. The beginning/ending means nothing if you don’t have a decent middle.

It’s the part of the story where the author has to bleed even if it’s through the character. It’s why the story means so much. It’s not until now that I realize bleeding is so hard for me to do. The character may be imaginary, but the emotions you have to portray are very real.

I find the middle forces me to not necessarily throw away what I believe but to test it.

Love is all you need.
Prove it.

Life is worth living.
Show it.

Needless to say I’m attacking themes. With actions, dialouge, and narration I, as the author, have to make my argument.

It’s very much like trying to find an anecdotal to prove your point. You can say in the big picture sense love conquers all or good will always triumph over evil, but it doesn’t have the same impact if you don’t have a testimonial.

The middle is that testimonial and it requires blood. It requires that bone deep belief, those raw, unguarded words. If I survive it I can get to the ending that is easy as pie in comparison.

33, 218 words and bleeding all over the place.

How is your month going? *NaNo or not* How do you survive middles? Hell, how do you survive every day life? *which I consider one big middle*

It’s been two days since I last confessed.

Um, I should have warned you that most of my posts for the next thirty days are going to be fuzzy thoughts. ‘Cause outside of writing my book I don’t make sense. *Then again I probably never make sense, but it’s only clear during NaNo.

My heroine has hit the anger phase, you know in the process of dying. I’ve noticed that her curses are starting to fly. It is so fun. It’s also hard because who wants to be around someone who is angry, but doesn’t even want to admit it. Innocent bystanders, beware.

Do not. I repeat do not re-read any work.

Maybe it’s the subject matter I’m writing–death-but I’ve been calling and talking to a lot of people. I’ve been searching for stories that underlining message is life either in the news or in novels. I really like it. It’s strange because one should be a little bit more morbid when dealing with this subject matter. But I’m not.

Halloween candy is the secret to any sucessful NaNo.

In the same vein…I can forgive M&Ms for the peanut, but not the Dark Chocolate. They went a step too far.

I write in two sessions. No surprise the morning is the most productive, but painful.

Yesterday I banned my kids from the room. DD came in to show me a ‘flesh wound’. I told her and her brother that if you are not bleeding to death or the house isn’t on fire, stay out of my room for the next hour.

Of course ten minutes later my son tried to come in. I could hear my daughter saying, “You’re not bleeding to death. Don’t bother her.”  I was so proud.

I can’t get Spider Pig out of my head.

Speaking of youtube and writing I leave you with this video. Sums up my writing pretty well. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1R828rFd2aI

It’s been so long since I last confessed.

Some of you might remember I did NaNo last year. The first day was awesome. The broken link was a video of Push It by Salt and Peppa. No theme song for today’s writing session, but it rocked nonetheless.

But here are a few fuzzy thoughts…

*Melissa Blue should never drink coffee at 10 p.m. It shall be a rule followed in order to keep herself safe. Because if Melissa Blue drinks coffee at 10 p.m. she turns into a Gremlin. Melissa Blue COULDN’T sleep even after hitting her goal of 2500 words. So she kept going and going until she could looked out her window and could see dawn approaching.

Sidenote: I’m convinced that coffee had super writing powers.

Another Sidenote: Writing about yourself in third person is creepy. Even when it’s an author bio or in jest.

*The first 1,000 words are still the hardest to write. Not only are they the hardest, but they are likely to face the delete key later on.

* Dear Friends:

Don’t be alarmed. There is no brain leakage to speak of. I promise to not let NaNo kill me this year.

Sincerely, Melissa Blue

* Shhh. Don’t tell my friends, but I wrote 7,000 words in one day. They might get the white jacket ready.

* I think from now on I’m going to daydream about a novel for months in advance before writing it. ‘Cause really it speaks to the part of me that hates keeping a secret. I can keep one, but it’s wanting to burst out of me to relieve the pressure of holding it in.

*Naps in the middle of the day are the best. Best.

* To follow tradition I plan to overdose on Halloween candy. I think I did that last year.

* In the middle of night, hyped up on coffee I came up with a slogan for my NaNo journey this year. Brace yourself…Making NaNoWriMo my beoytch one word at a time.

*It may not have been Super Writing Powers in the coffee, but caffeine and crazy.

Ok, that’s all I have for the first day of NaNo. How is yours going? Or did you do the smart thing and not sign up?

I keep my plotting efforts simple. I hate placing demands on the journey I’m going to take with my character. As in this has to happen. It has a lot to do with growing up with my mother and trying to talk her into doing something she didn’t really want to do. I still haven’t found a quip or argument to “The only thing I HAVE to do is stay black and die.”

And, characters can be just as stubborn. With NaNo you really don’t have the time. So what do I use that’s flexible and doesn’t give me the itch of setting anything in stone?

The lovely and very smart CJ Barry aka Samantha Graves has a ZIP file on the Will Write for Wine website. It has all sorts of goodies inside. One of them is called WWFdetails. At the top of a spreedsheet it has these columns:

Scene Number
Done (Which I love because there is nothing better than to check it off)
Short Description
Location
Parties Involved
Date/Time
POV character
Key Points, Message
Emotional Points

I used this sheet religiously when I did NaNo last year. I didn’t necessarily use all the columns, but asking myself these implied questions about what happens next and why, helped put me in the frame of mind I needed to be in. The great thing is if I’m in the middle of a scene and I get an idea of where to go next I could just jump right into it. When I come back to the work the next day and have no idea what I can write next I can look at the spreedsheet.

Mainly there was never a blank period because I had that column Done dangled in front of me to check off.

You can download your own here. It’s under Sam’s Charts. Click and save and I’m sure you’ll find uses for the other goodies in that file.

You can find more plot like things here courtesy of Lynn Viehl. You should also check out all of her posts talking about NaNo. She has other links that are priceless. For example. Check out her Paperback writer blog.

I promised a picture of The Reaper in my story. Her (yes, I made The Reaper a she) image was much clearer in my mind, because you know The Reaper deals with Death. She’s dealt with death for centuries. She wouldn’t exactly be warm and fuzzy. But I didn’t want her too ghoulish looking either. Might as well make her attractive. And you know make her look like she could take you in a fight. There shouldn’t be a surprise in the person I chose…

Here’s the Catch-22: I want to know as much as I need to know in order to write the story AND not get stuck in chapter three for five months. But if I know too much I don’t NEED to write the story. The magic of finding things out when the characters themselves find out keeps me writing to the end.

I like to think of this process of the story as writing foreplay.  What I know about the heroine is closely related to the plot points I have at the moment.

1. The story opens at her job.

2. Her life is dismal and I’ll show all the ways.

3. Of course I’ll want to see the hero before the big catalyst.

Now the best part of my job is daydreaming. No really it is work. I don’t close my eyes or anything. It’s mainly staring off into space and thinking Who Is This Person? Since the plot is firm in my mind I also ask myself What Type of Person Would Be In This Situation? on a deeper level I wonder What Would This Person’s Life Look Like? The devil is in the details.

I know she’s not unemployed, neither is she rich. She works for a living. Like a little squirrel before the winter, but she never experiences summer. Not sure what she does, but it’ll be something a step above entry-level. Though it won’t be something with full responsibilities. It’s what she dreams of having but never demanded. I also know the step up is really a step on paper. Her boss, the one with the dream job, dumps all of her work on Desi’s desk. And then there’s big Supervisor who she’ll have to demand this job from. He’s probably not even intimidating,  just prefers the status quo. He’ll fight for the status quo.

Also, she’s been working at this place since graduating from college, 28 now, so  she should be somewhere important in her career. And you know how mother’s can be so Desi can be avoiding a phone call from her mother.

But why would her mother call her during business hours?

Ah, her parent’s 30th anniversary. Her mother needs to know what she’ll be wearing. And of course smoothly asks “are you bringing a date”. Not exactly the type of call you want to take while at work.

Would she be the type to eat lunch at work, socialize with co-workers?

Pfft. Hell no. Even if it means walking a few blocks and only having 15 minutes to eat lunch she’s getting out of that office. *So she has to live nearby*

Daydreaming. Is. Work.

Now that I’ve got a sense of her life and I know the catalyst and plot I can write a blurb. Even if it sucks big ones.

Here are a few questions that can give you a loose one just for you.

1. Who is the main character?

2. What does she/he want?

3. Why can’t they get it?

At 28 years old Desi Vines leads a dreary life. A life she doesn’t know is about to end abruptly.  For a second chance she has to get it right. But ‘right’ in whose eyes?  She’ll be forced to take stock of her life, because really what doesn’t make her stronger, kills her.

So I know the conflict: She can’t get it right and really ‘right’ is in the eye of the beholder. The obstacle is pleasing The Grim Reaper. A cheery individual , who is easily impressed. Snerk. So pretty much I’m going to be following this character around while she tries everything so that she doesn’t have to die at the end of the day. I have plenty of fodder to go by in this day and age of “Live Your Life To The Fullest”.

I.E. I can write my synopsis. If I get it down now I won’t have to worry about the details of the story. I can always add them in after the story is done. That way I won’t end up writing a 20 pager that I need to cut down to five. And then 2.

But I need to know just a little bit more about the character if I’m going to dedicate 30 days and countless hours to this story. I can’t STOP to go over something I missed, because if I stop I’ll lose momentum.

What does my character look like? Now, this part of the process is all gut. It goes back to the process that makes me twitch. I have to find the character out of thousands of photos. She has to be cast RIGHT.  The problem is I don’t know what Desi looks like, at first.  I scanned through pictures and with each one I was one step closer, because Desi isn’t exactly powerful. She wouldn’t walk into a room and command it. She’s the one who wins you over. She’s the one you would think is soft in the beginning, but like an onion she has layers.

I came across the above photo and finally latched onto the word I was searching for–understated. Another one is vulnerable. The thing is she could be all those things I stated above that I didn’t want, but Desi isn’t there yet.

Desi doesn’t have the secret yet, she doesn’t have the ‘right’ way to live. This second picture has what Desi is missing, but still has the capabilities to be vulnerable, understated.

WARNING: THIS IS GOING TO BE A LONG, LONG POST. I’M TALKING FROM GERM OF THE IDEA TO THE FIRST HINT OF CHARACTERS. ALSO THIS IS MY PROCESS. YOUR MILEAGE MAY VARY.

Most times the little goodies the Girls in the Basement send you isn’t exactly marked on the calendar. So around the same time I decided to only write contemporary romance, I got an idea for a Women’s Fiction. It was one of those prettily wrapped nuggets of an idea. I could see the catalyst and the plot. This story would be funny, but dark.

That’s just it though, the story wasn’t a story, but a seed of an idea, a glimmer of plot. You can write a story with this much, but I put it away to see what would happen. Kind of like taking the seed and burying it in rich soil where it’ll get just enough nourishment. If it survived those harsh conditions–Me, not writing the idea and nugget down. Leaving it all up to my memory–then I’d come back to it.

Every month I’d see something, hear something and it’d make me think of that Women’s Fiction idea–watering it and giving it a little bit of sunlight–You know the Women’s Fiction idea that gets me excited every time I let myself think about it.

What I didn’t realize when I planted that seed was that stupid seed was really a vine. One that needed something to hold onto, but I was letting it go wild. And trust me it was getting everywhere. Writing the first draft of Lynne’s story, here goes a pesky tentacle of the vine from that Women’s Fiction. Editing Everything You Need, oh, there’s another one.

So, last week I gave in and created a wall where this stupid vine could grow. The inevitable next step was to get bits of dialogue. This is where my process of writing a book truly begins. I don’t know who my characters are until they talk to other characters. Now they can talk to me for months prior to this point and still I can ignore them on some level. They are only figments of my imagination. But when they start to grab other people and start talking…well, I love to eavesdrop.

So who did this nameless character talk to? The Grim Reaper. Yeah, from the initial seed I knew this story would have a hint of paranormal to it. But The Grim Reaper. Oy. And because of this, and the fact I like to make a secret joke when it comes to character names, I dubbed this character Desi as in Desdemona the character fated for Death in Othello. Oh, and there’s a hero who at this point hasn’t been named, but I can see him from my heroine’s POV. I don’t even think she really talks to him, but lust after him. But I’m leaning towards neighbor instead of co-worker…

And this is when those pesky vines start to climb up that wall, because I now have character. Or at least a sense of one. Most people get character first, then plot. This route, to me of course, is equivalent to putting out an audition for a play. You get a cast of people together who you get a good sense of and they somehow fit together. Then you go write the script for said play. *twitch, twitch* Instead I already have the script and I know I’m looking for someone who is squandering their life away on a misguided belief of eventually.

I’ll eventually go on that trip to Paris I’ve always dreamed of. I’ll eventually fall in love when the time is right. I will appreciate this person in my life eventually because they will always be there.

So from finding my plot first I knew I could weed out all the characters who are adventurous, but might need to settle down. Characters who don’t let their vacation hours stack up like stock chips to be cashed in at “some point”, but who still aren’t complete. The characters who have loved and loved deeply no matter the outcome. I know they are wrong for this role. Plus it’s NANO. I don’t have time to meander around for thousands of words exploring what would be the worst thing to happen to this character. I have the plot and catalyst I KNOW dying is the worst thing to happen to this character. And I know that truly living that no holds bar type of life is even more scary than death.

Did I mention this story has The Grim Reaper?

Anyway, I know have a general idea of what’s going to happen within the story. Even though CHARACTER comes last in this post, doesn’t mean I’m anywhere finished with finding out more about them. I’ll talk about the next step tomorrow. There might even be a list. Stay tuned.

Questions about any part of the process so far? How do you prepare for NaNo?

Remember that plant I was waxing poetic about? Yeah, that one. Look at it.  On that same stem two more buds of leaves are sprouting. One I can already see is going to have a branch of it’s own.

If I’d known a stupid plant would give me hope like this I would have gotten one a long time ago. *happy*

And National Novel Writing Month starts in about a week. Are you ready? Starting Monday I’ll take you through my process of how I prepare for crazy making time. Make sure to come back.

Amazing how 1/4 of a novel can change your mind about a character. My hero had tendencies that were borderline pigheaded male. This was balanced with him being the good guy, the one with his heart in the right place, his heart being somewhat on his sleeve. He wasn’t a deep down, look really hard good guy, but on the surface and deep down good guy. And then the black moment happened. Slowly a tail sprouted from his rear, he turned all hairy, his ears grew and he started to bray.

Prince Charming meet Jackass.

Now I haven’t read this story in a year. I remembered vaguely he needed to grovel a bit more. He had acted like a heartless cad because he was hurting, but all would be well with a few tweaks. I began to read the scenes that had bothered me slighting.

Um, no little tweaks.

I’m going to have to delete and rewrite 80 percent of the last few chapters. I will then act as if his transformation from Prince to asshat never happened. And then I’m going to add about 18k to wipe this lapse into Neanderthal from my memory.

Have you read a book where this happened?