Brick by Brick: Using Structure to Write and Revise

Instructor: Melissa Blue

Registration deadline: 6/6/10

Has writing or revising an entire novel ever felt like you were about to scale Mount Everest? The project too big, the problems too insurmountable? Well, the bad news is writing and revising a novel is never going to be easy. The process can be easier and less painful than banging your head on a wall. The structure of a scene and the structure of a novel can be used to not only create new material but to diagnose troublesome parts while revising.

What you’ll learn during the workshop:

The overall goal for your character and/or of your story
Simple structure of a scene
Three Act Structure of a novel
Four Turning Points—points in a novel where the character changes

Here’s the link and tell friends: http://www.yosemiteromancewriters.com/6.html

I want to say this is my moment. Both for writing and for what I want to do as a paralegal. I finally know know what I want. The difference between a fuzzy end goal and a clear end goal. Now that’s not saying the path won’t change, but that now I’m finally on a clear path. All the other times were false starts. Very much like the hundred different ways you begin a novel. Those other times weren’t wasted. You weren’t just putting in filler, you truly believed that was the beginning. Then one day it came to you and you just knew this is it.

And maybe that’s the riskiest choice of all. Tossing out all plans and starting anew. Sticking to ones that you know eventually will be fruitful. Hell, doing both. The riskiest thing is believing in that gut reaction. It’s not rational. You can’t look at it and see the pattern. But you just know when you follow it won’t be for naught damn the circumstances.

Have you taken risks this year?

*Sidenote: the next blog will be total shameless plugging.*

But this shit can be as complicated as filling out the 1040 forms. Though there are 4 staple forms there are 21 cubbies. Me and hundreds, (by next week maybe a thousand) of other people have to decide where those forms go. Literally a notation can change where to put a form.

Last night I went through over 700 pieces of mail. And I’m slow. Some people can go through 1200 (or more). And this is before the true peak season has started. Take a moment and imagine the post office on April 15th. All those people lined up doing their best to get their taxes in before midnight. That shit is the news every year no matter what city you live in. Now imagine all that mail from at least 10 states (to be truthful I think the office I work in covers more states) coming to me.

So for two weeks I’m pretty much guaranteed overtime for six days. Maybe a week or more of full eight hours. So in a manner of speaking I’m guaranteed a brain hemorrhage.

NANOWRIMO has nothing on this. So, I’ll see ya’ll in May if my body hasn’t been mummified by stacks of mail.

In my gut I knew some things had more weight than others. So on the day before my 9th birthday I played in the mud and made mud pies. With all my knowledge in my 8 years I believed 9 year old’s didn’t do such baby things. I should savor and enjoy the way the warm mud felt between my fingers, because one day doing this would be a “bad thing”. Definitely didn’t help that the only scripture I can remember from those days is “Put away those childish things.”

So every year I put away something. Some years have been more successful than others. Some things I’ve had to reach back and get because I shouldn’t have done away with them in the first place. *Yes, as a parent I poo-poo mud, especially when it comes to laundry day, but I understand it’s the cheapest, most fun a child can have.*

This year I’m redefining a lot of beliefs. I’m letting go of grudges and forgiving people. I’m accepting my own faults and realizing some of them aren’t as bad. By doing that I’m picking and choosing who I want around me. I’m letting the teenager in me die. Dear Lord was she full of drama.

Most importantly I’m living more moments in the now. That translates into more moments of me reveling in the happy moments without worrying about the *possible* bad coming like a freight train. Seriously it’s tiring to put a shouldn’t and could happen on every moment in my life. I mean, if it’s all going to turn into shit in the next moment I might as well have THIS ONE while it’s not splattered over my face.

I guess at 24, on the brink of 25, I’m willing to put away my pessimism. It served me well when I needed it to survive to the next day sane. Now it makes me feel icky like playing mud.

What childish things have you put away? What things have you reached back to get?

And I have to say, even though I poo-poo the network, the show has inspired me. It’s about digging through your genealogy. Of course the commercial breaks makes the entire process deceptively easy. Not to mention that these stars and shows have the means to cross the country (countries). (And have people doing the digging.)

But I’m deceptively stubborn.

I don’t know how many hours I’ve logged in already. The process is ten times harder because I’m doing it on my own and only through sites you don’t pay money for. Not to mention the brick wall of being African American. Yes, on t.v. you can see the first name, at least, but what’s more common is that you have the slave master’s name and how many slaves he owned. So there’s that gut-wrenching feeling of my ancestor was just a number. The idea that I’ll be lucky to find a name in a will along with “horse, saddle, forks”, because African Americans were property. This older lifestyle basically told generations of African Americans they didn’t matter.

Yet here I am 100, 200 years later wanting to know their name, where they lived, who they married. I care. They matter. Without them I wouldn’t even exist.

So whenever I’m steeped into a session and my daughter *always* asks “What year are in?” I keep looking. I don’t know. It just feels like I’m giving all my Greats a nod of recognition. Hell, when I hit a brick wall because of spelling or birth dates that are a few years off, I send out a little call for help. But it feels worth it every time I find another name. Yes, I’m looking at facts, but there they are and there I will be.

That point is brought home when I talk to someone like my grandmother, ask her about her father and his parents, and still I hear the catch in her voice. At one time these people were more than names, more than facts.

I don’t know when I’ll let this bone go. When there are no more records to search or when I’ve find them all. Until then I’ve got my teeth in this one.

Have you searched your genealogy? What was your experience like?

You will thank yourself later. For, if only a moment, you once again believe that you can string a sentence together. Plus, it plays as a cushion for when you roll up your sleeves for the hard work. You can do this, you’ve done it here, here and here.

2. Take a deep breathe.

3. Now read the other comments.

4. Take in all the comments.

5. Phone a friend just to say, “He/She didn’t understand my utter brilliance.” Make sure said friend will tell you what you want to hear. “You are brilliant, honey.”

6. By now it should be 24 hours later. Stop your whining and roll up your damn sleeves.

7. See if there is a consistent complaint. If you have a crap memory (like me) write it down.

8. Which problem is going to take the longest, and hardest to fix? Do that one last. By fixing the other problems first you will once again believe you can string a sentence together. “That wasn’t so bad, why did I whine in the first place?”

9. By now the story should be coming together with both your initial vision of the story THAT YOU HAVE KEPT TO and the things you needed to fix. Things you fixed with your ego locked soundly in a closet somewhere, I should add.

10. Brave another critique or beta read if you have the time. See if the consistent complaint is still a problem.

11. If not, go swim in a bathtub full of champagne you are DONE!

Well, of course until you start submitting or hear from your editor. *why did I want to write again?*

What’s your how to list?

Today, I feel like I knew more about writing when I didn’t know what I was doing. Yes, I suffered from headhopping, lack of sub-genre, the business of getting published, but I knew and believed in authentic storytelling. I didn’t put myself into the story and try to be clever, because there was this story to tell and it was bursting out of me and I couldn’t catch up to it.

Now it takes several hours logged into the story before the story gets ahead of me and then I spend the next few weeks trying to catch up to it. Before it was natural and in certain ways I was a better writer because of it. NOW I have to find that place again in order to write. NOW I spend hours editing to make the story seem like I was in the “place” to begin with.

I find this conundrum akeen to coloring. You really don’t know how to color, but you’ve got this crayon in your hand. You go berserk and the page looks like a massacre of color. Then someone comes along and says “You have to color within the lines.” For months or years you try to keep everything within those lines. You mentally berate yourself when you go outside of them. You stop thinking about coloring and only focus on staying within the lines. One day you can stay within the lines without really thinking about it. You once again start to color the picture. If you are one of those steady hand type of people you can jump into coloring. Or, like me, you outline the lines and then start to color within very carefully.

The sad thing is some people never re-learn how to color i.e. write with that abandon. Because it is re-learning. Once again you have to find that place were the stories are told even within the lines.

How have you found it? Are you still struggling?

But of course romance is about women. Yes, we have the heroes who we drool over. Yet it’s a genre about women. You can say Mrs. Giggles had me thinking when talking about men who never had a porno stash within the romance genre. *Reality* Even something so innocent as having a centerfold somewhere, anywhere.

So I had a thought, what about women and their bras? I know I’m not the first, nor the last who has come home, started to relax and whipped off their bra. When that final latch has come undone I sigh. Almost like “Oh, thank God!” Don’t get me started on under-wires that stab.

But where is that scene? Not the hero taking off the heroine’s bra, but the heroine taking off her bra after a long day *and that borderline orgasmic relief*? Does it exist? Is it something that goes without saying?

I know I’m not the only woman with a bra story…

Since I let my blogging anniversary pass by without notice I think I should showcase how I used to be funny.

Title: Just Lost My Bloggers-Virginity

Quote worthy-line: “[this]being my first time [,] this blog will be awkward and later when I read over it again I just might experience some pain.”

And since I had to scroll through years of posting I got to see the old me. I was so green.

What did you write in your first blog?

Then I’ll put the car in reverse.