The Story Elusive

It's time once again for another blog entry that I didn't know I was going to write until I sat down to write it.  Brought to you by the letters W, T, and F, and the punctuation mark ?.

So, I have this story idea I'm trying to work on.  This is nothing new; anyone who's read more than a few entries here knows I spend way too much time going on about one plot or another.  But with most of the things I write about, I have a character or two to work with, some solid ideas about the plot, and a few definite locations.

This idea?  I have none of those.

What I have is a whole cluster of vague ideas and concepts, things I think should happen in a story where I don't know what the actual story is yet.  I have mental pictures of settings, locations that might or might not be part of the story, since I don't know how the main setting should be shaped but I know it's going to change, maybe a lot, over the course of the story.  I have vague hints of main characters and minor characters, without names or faces or personalities, just the knowledge that there needs to be People Doing Stuff, and that Stuff has to happen for the story to happen.

If this sounds difficult to understand, it's because I know that the story itself is supposed to be surreal and dreamlike and should be more than a little scary if you look deeper.  It's inspired by some fictions that have come to mean a lot to me, and might even be seen as a tribute as I try to put them all into one place and see if they'll blend.

It's the sort of thing I'd question my ability to write if I had any idea how it was supposed to go.

I know this is nothing new for we writers.  I'm not the first one to feel this way about a would-be story and I damn sure won't be the last.  It's just that plotting has been going really well for me recently; I have one plot ready for writing and another nearly so, with a third that's still in progress but going well.  So it's frustrating to me to have something I really want to write that's taunting me with vague glimpses and strange visuals, like the moon quite literally turning into a rose, when I can't figure out for the life of me what the story really is.

While I usually take a shot before plotting or writing, I don't believe in writing drunk, else I'd be trying that for this story.

Anyway.  I feel better after getting that off my chest.  Here's hoping I figure this out sometime soon.  A single named character would be nice, or an idea of the story's actual structure.  But I'm about to head off to DragonCon for the long weekend, so I'll try to spend five days not thinking about this.  Who knows?  Maybe I'll get inspired....

Contested.

For the record, this is the entry I was supposed to write last week.  Last week's entry demanded to be talked about sooner, and now I regret last week's entry almost entirely, because now I have people looking forward to a story that, assuming everything goes as well as possible and I don't hate the entire thing as soon as I've finished writing it, probably won't be reader-worthy until 2016.

Anyway.

Before I started this whole blogging thing, I hardly knew about the various "help you find an agent" writing contests.  I heard Rena mention them now and again when she was participating, and I had my doubts about them.

I've often seen agents described as the "gatekeepers" of the publishing world; they're the ones with the connections, so they decide who uses those connections.  Entering contests seemed like adding yet another gate, and that never seemed like a good thing to me - the whole publishing process is enough of a pain, why make it more complicated?

After participating in a few, though, I don't see it the same way.  I've received some good feedback from contests, and that helped me solve a few key issues with THE ACCIDENTAL WARLOCK's opening chapter.  Just reviewing that first chapter over and over for various contests has helped it as well.

Reviewing my query letter for Pitch Wars helped too, as I caught an errant 'and' that I'd somehow missed when I sent said query out to over twenty different agents.  >_<

Also, I think the agents participating in these contests are more likely to give better consideration to contest entries than the usual daily query letters.  Contest entries will, in theory, have had the hell polished out of them and be better for it, and I've heard a lot of success stories.  So it seems less like the contests are another gate, but something to give you a better chance of getting through the gate in the first place.

Yes, I'm stubborn enough that it took me a while to realize that.

On a personal note, back when I was working with SKYBORNE, I actually won a full request from a contest I entered.  I was beyond excited, for obvious reasons; the readers were from a quite successful small press.  Unfortunately, I didn't know that this small press only handled books with a heavy romance element, and the romance in that book was barely there.  Even now, I feel like that quasi-win hardly counts.  -_-  It's for the best, though.  That book would have been a horrible way to start a series.  I mean, when you not only save the entire world but quite literally put it back together in the first book, what the hell do you do for a sequel?

Next entry: umm.  Next Wednesday is the last day I'm here before leaving for DragonCon.  I can't promise a thing.  ^_^

Cracking the Magic Mirror

I never really thought I'd want to write something based off a fairy tale.  But I think we all know what it's like to have an idea that won't go away.

I've seen a lot about fairy tale rewritings or retellings or whatever you want to call them over the past few years.  From an abstract perspective, I can understand why they're popular - these stories have become such a huge part of our culture, they're tales that most people will recognize immediately, and there's just something about them that resonates.  The way they can freely change in the telling, the way they've been reinvented all across the world, and the fact that the original stories are often violent and brutal...  There's a lot to work with there.

Hell, if I hadn't already decided to work with this one, I might have talked myself into it with that last paragraph.

But until a few weeks ago, I'd never had an idea that lent itself to reimagining a fairy tale.  I've plotted enough stories, though, to know that my best plots tend to come from combining two different ideas.  A song I kept hearing at work gave me ideas toward one sort of story, just vague hints and images, so I did the usual note-scribbling, unsure if anything would come of it.  That same day, I explained the concept of apple spiders to a co-worker.  She said it reminded her of a particular fairy tale, and my brain made the connection.  I suddenly realized what the story I'd been taking down notes for was meant to be.

I'm still putting everything together - hell, I just figured out how the story starts today, right in the middle of my drive home.  (Getting story ideas on the freeway is all kinds of fun, believe me.)  But the way it's coming together now, I can tell this is one that will work.

I'll need to read the original tale to really make sure I get things straight, but there are all kinds of elements I'm already putting together into the plot.  The magic mirror, the glass coffin, blood and snow and ebony, so on and so forth.  A system of magic I thought of years ago will fit perfectly into this world, and it's something I've wanted to use for a long time.  This is why I write everything down and urge other writers to do the same - you never know when it'll be useful again.

Granted, I still don't have a full plot, and the standard number of characters for this tale means I have a lot of work ahead of me.  And as I said, this isn't a story I ever expected to tell.  But I'm excited about it.  With any luck, I'll hash out the plot this winter and have this ready to be my second book for 2015.

I'm well and truly glad I figured all this out, because it fulfills a story desire I've had for a long, long time: I just plain really want to do "Snow White and the Seven Samurai".

Next entry: Contested.

IWSG: What if I Fail?

This was originally going to be a much more depressing entry, but fortunately for all of us, I read some stuff that brightened my mood earlier today.  Seriously, it's much better that way.  I was going to open up with lyrics from Social Distortion's 'Ball and Chain' - "I'm born to lose, and destined to fail".  Aren't you glad I didn't do that?

....damn it.

I think a lot of us have realized that some people just don't know what to say to writers.  Someone recently told me that, even if I never make it as a writer, I'd have spent my life with an amazing hobby.  I laughed it off, because really, there was no other acceptable response.  I know they meant well, but seriously, a hobby?  No.  Keeping universes in my head is not a hobby.  Creating worlds is not a hobby.  Agonizing over the lives of fictional people is not a hobby.  It's an obsession.  :P

It's also the only thing I've ever well and truly wanted to do with my life.

I've talked about failure before.  I've accepted that I might fail, that I could spend my entire life writing stuff that nobody ever reads.  It's one of the few things that scares me on a gut-tightening, mouth-drying kind of level.  But there's a real difference between acknowledging that possibility to myself and having someone else bring it up.

Maybe it's just superstition - like not saying something aloud if you don't want it to happen.  Hearing someone else say that I could fail makes it more real.  And let's be honest here - I don't exactly have a great track record.  I had one short story published by a small-press magazine back in 2007.  Absolutely nothing since then, though part of that is because I hate writing short stories.  So while I might be obscure instead of completely unknown, that's not saying much, not in this business.

I know that self-publishing is an option, but I don't want to do that.  While I know that my duties as a published writer will be more than just writing and editing, I don't want to have to handle every single aspect of publishing - there are people who are much better at all of that than I am, and I'd rather they do their jobs via an actual publisher, not via me paying for their help as I fumble through the process.

So, yeah.  I'm 35 now.  I could die, in 30 or 40 or 65 years or anywhere before or in between or beyond, without getting anything published again ever.  I'm pretty sure I hit the million-word mark years ago, and I'm surely well on my way toward two million.  And with everything I write, with every plot I put together, with every project I finish and either set aside to edit later or abandon and lament, the question hangs over my head.  Every year, every month, every day, it hangs a little lower.

"What if I fail?"

For the record: I don't plan to find out.

No One's Bitches.

This is something that's been bugging me for a while: why do people feel like it's okay to tell authors to not do anything but write?

I had dinner with family last night, and I explained to them a concept that we should all be familiar with: George R. R. Martin is not your bitch.  (If you haven't read that, please do so.  I won't mind; you're better off reading Neil Gaiman than me anyway.  :P )  To my aunt's and uncle's and distant-relation-by-their-marriage's credit, they also thought there was something pretty wrong with a person's "fan" demanding they get back to work on what that "fan" wants them to work on.

So now I'm wondering: why do people do that?  And why only to authors?

Granted, I don't read everything on the internet; I lack the time and brain capacity and spare sanity for that.  But I've never seen someone tell an actor to stop tweeting and get back on stage or set.  I've never seen someone tell an artist to put their phone down and pick up their pencil or brush or stylus.  I've never seen someone ask a director or a photographer why they're not behind the camera, or a model why they're not in front of it.

But I've seen people respond to writers' tweets with the oh-so-cute "Shouldn't you be writing?"  I've seen people rage at authors for doing interviews or other press instead of writing.  And clearly not everyone got Mr. Gaiman's message, as shown by the jackass who responded to Mr. Martin's SDCC tweet with "GET BACK TO WORK!!!!"

And that was only one of three different responses that amounted to "You're doing something that's not writing, you shouldn't be."  One was supposedly from an editor, who should know better.

Writing is a job like any other.  And expecting someone to do their job every waking hour of their day is not only selfish, it's damn stupid.  People who ask authors why they're not writing clearly don't understand that downtime is necessary - for a lot of us, the best parts of creating come when we're out and about, when we're not staring at the screen or notebook, when we're doing something other than writing.  Why so many people seem incapable of realizing this, I don't know.

For the record, I still get some of my best ideas in the shower.  And I don't care how successful I might someday become, I'm not giving up showering.

I've written before about how the only thing the writer owes the reader is the best damn story they can tell.  I linked to Mr. Gaiman's phrase in that entry too, and I'll keep bringing it up until people get the idea.  If you want your favorite writers to do the best they can do, you don't tell them what to do.  You encourage them, you appreciate them, you tell others about them.  But you damn sure don't act like they're doing something wrong because they're not doing what you want.

We are, collectively, no one's bitches.  Deal with it.

The Relationship Talk.

Before I begin, a bit of a plotting update from last week's entry: two days ago, I cracked through the problems I was having with plotting the sequel to THE ACCIDENTAL WARLOCK.  I realized that things needed to start going wrong right from the beginning, not on a slow burn like I'd planned.  I have the plot roughed out, and yesterday's work went very well.  If all goes well, I'll start writing the book in September.

I've blogged about love triangles before, back in this blog's early days, and I still feel much the same about them.  But a book I'm plotting deals with three main characters, and even in these early stages, I can see how things are going to go for them, and how close they're going to become.

Before anyone asks, no, I'm not talking about the sequel to TAW.  I feel very sorry for anyone who tries to talk either Shiloh or Alexi into sharing.  O_o

This leads me into something I've never tried to write before: a very close relationship between three people.  I don't know if it'll be a sexual one, as I haven't plotted much beyond the first book, but it could happen.  But for now, it's more about the bond they share and how they support and depend upon each other.  It's more than just growing close under fire or spending lots of time together - as one character's culture defines it, it's a kind of deep bond between people who put their lives in each others’ hands on a regular basis.  It’s a kind of love that comes from surviving together.

It's one of those situations that I realized had to happen and then sat back and thought, damn, how the hell am I going to make this work?

"Write what you know" won't cover this - despite the myth that all guys want threesomes, I don't think for a second that I'd be able to handle a relationship with two women.  And not just because I've been single since dinosaurs roamed the Earth.  Close relationships complicate things, and that gets exponentially more so when there are three people involved.

This is one of those Weird Writer Situations (another blog title that could have been) where I'm just going to have to write it and see what happens.  I can tell already how some of the characters are going to react; let's just say there will be varying degrees of them being okay or not with it as things go on.  It's just that, after my various successes and failures at writing relationships, I know this one's going to be more difficult than most.  And I really want it to work out right.  I'm just going to have to trust the characters to work things out between them, and to not freak out and run when one character puts their arms around both the others.

Though I do know that one character will dictate a sleeping arrangement order so everyone gets a chance to be in the middle, and for some reason, I think that's hilarious.

And on a final note, if you haven't heard Weird Al's "Word Crimes", please go do so.  Right now, if possible.  It could be a theme song for so many of us.  ^_^

It's A Small World

The original title for this entry was "#PlotterProblems".  Then I realized that could be the title for this entire blog.  It's probably best that I wasn't in the habit of using hashtags when I started this thing.

So as I've talked about before, I'm plotting the sequel to THE ACCIDENTAL WARLOCK.  I'm not saying what the title is, both because that seems a little presumptuous and because everything else about this damn book has changed so far, so there's no reason to think the title won't too.  -_-  I've been hacking away at this plot on and off for months, and I've never been able to get it to be what I want it to be.  And I only recently realized what the problem was.

I started creating Abraxas, the world of TAW, over a decade ago.  That world had its seeds in the second novel I wrote, and also became the world of the D&D game I ran in college.  So I've been living in Abraxas for a long, long time.  When I sat down to write TAW, I made up new stuff and changed other things as necessary, but I knew the place and the people.  I knew where I was going and what I was doing.  And I expected writing another book in Abraxas to be much the same.

I was wrong.  Really, really wrong.

Although it's long for a YA book, TAW only covers a few different places.  All of those places were ones I'd developed long ago, places I'd seen in my head for years and knew well.  The sequel, as far as I know, will take place in only one location.  It's a new place, one only created while I was working on TAW - it didn't even exist until I made the changes at the end of the second draft.  And I didn't realize the problems this would cause.

To make a long story short (too late), I thought that just because this new place was part of Abraxas, I'd be able to dive into it and just go.  Yeah, not so much.  Funny thing about sequels: they're books too.

So I sat down and started hashing out everything about this one place, this small piece of the world, and everyone plot-relevant who lives there.  And once I set the place and its people firmly into my mind, the plot started coming together.  It's not there yet - I know how things start and how they end, and various bits in between, but how Shiloh gets from point A to point Z is still something of a mystery.  But at least now I truly know where it happens.

And if it all falls apart again, at least that won't be anything new.

Bit of an aside for the end of this: one of the characters in that D&D game was Rashad RiLeon, a fighter my then-roommate played.  I liked the name so much I brought him into Abraxas, along with Aerillion, a port city that was part of his journey.  Rashad himself appears briefly in TAW, but his sister Alexi plays a significantly more important role, one that truly starts when she and Shiloh arrive in Aerillion.