Just begin...

So today I finally forced myself to sit still and write the first few pages of book II in my Young Adult (teen) dystopian series. I've been fiddling about and procrastinating and calling it plotting and thinking, but the time had come to put pen to paper. Literally! I find it much easier to slip into writing with a notebook (lined on the right, blank on the left) and a coloured felt-tip marker - what we on this side of the pond call a koki. Somehow it's not as intimidating as a blank screen with its mockingly winking cursor!

It's an act of such faith to sit down, pick up a pen and begin to write a book. You just assume it will come - the muse will descend, the characters will show you their story and you will take dictation. Every single time, I freak out. What is the muse is off eating baklava on Mount Olympus? What if the characters are sulking or AWOL, what if I have no more talent, no more stories, no more words? Gah! 

Then I make myself pick up my koki - preferably a green or purple one - and tell myself to write just 1000 words. I give myself permission for them to be utter crud. And I start...

And every time, it just comes. And before I know it, I'm in the flow of the story with more ideas starting to buzz and pop inside me.

The best writing advice I ever got was from my grade 11 English teacher, Sally-Anne Kok, who always said, as we stared, paralyzed, at the blank sheet in front of us with not an idea of what to write, "JUST BEGIN!" It's as true now as it was then, and as true for most of life's worthy enterprises as it is for writing.

Just begin.

Writing number two before number one is done!

Asphodel

I've always had supreme admiration for the divine Mz Jo (JK Rowling) 's plotting abilities, but I never truly appreciated her skill until now. Imagine plotting all the plot intricacies and character arcs of 7 books before the first is finished! I recently read an analysis of the moment Snape first speaks to Harry: ""Tell me, Potter, what would I get if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?" The answer, as any Potterhead knows, is the Draught of Living Death.

Turns out, Asphodel is a type of Lily and its meaning in the language of flowers is associated with the death of a loved own, and Wormwood is symbolically associated with bitter sorrow (like that of grief or regret).

Oh My Giddy Aunt!

So the whole story of Snape, Lily, death and his regret and his living death in the years after, and Harry's "living" death are compactly and elegantly foreshadowed in that first potions class in Philospher's/Sorcerer's Stone, even though we don't hear the full story until the end of the seventh book!

Well, I'm no Rowling (though I am a Jo), but I can say for sure: it's a tricksy thing, writing a series. 

I've written sequels before - in my eco-warriors series (Turtle Walk, Rock Steady) and in my Jemina Jones series - but in both those cases the books are very much stand-alone. While there is an overall character arc across the series, and many of the characters reappear in each book, each book has its own self-contained story and adventure.

It's very different when you try your hand at writing an overarching story across several books. Very different and very challenging. Now not only do I have to remember characters' hair and eye-colour, and a bit of their backstory and family set-up, I also have to think very long-term about how the story will develop, who will make what choices (for better or worse) down the line, what big revelations need to be foreshadowed in earlier books.

Also: I'm taking a fat chance by writing number two before number one is sold. Confidence or craziness?

Opinions differ wildly on whether this is good practice or not. I'm half afraid I'm jinxing things, tempting the fates, and investing a bunch of time and energy in a project which may never come to fruition. It's a supreme act of faith in one's own writing - but hey, if I don't have faith in my writing, then what am I doing here?

The good thing about doing it this way is that I still have the chance to tinker with number one while I'm writing number two in the series. As I think of things, I can go back and add details, clues, foreshadowing of plot and character, and useful little factoids that will become big (*HUGE*) in the following books. As soon as I started book II, I realised I'd written myself into a corner in the ending of book one. How the heck I would have gotten my protagonist out of that fix, I don't know. But luckily, I was able to go make and make a couple of minor tweaks, and now she's good to go for the opening scene of book II. Frankly, it's fun! 

I have no idea how other authors manage it when the first book is published and they start the next, without having plotted it down to the last detail - ala JKR.

I'd love to hear your thoughts and experiences - sound off in the comments below.

Asphodel and wormwood, man, asphodel and wormwood...

As with skinning cats...

There's more than one way to edit a manuscript!

(A page from my original manuscript of Rock Steady, with edits.)

I seem to have spent a lot of this year editing. I’m always fascinated to read blog posts that describe the three steps / nine essential elements / forty-two rungs in the editing ladder. I learn a lot from them, but mostly what I’ve learned is that, like with everything else, there isn’t one way.

I already know (know for sure, I’ll carve it into stone for you, if you like), that there isn’t one correct or even ideal way of writing. Part of the writer’s journey is discovering your own process or processes. I’ve plotted and written all my books in different ways, and I’m learning that my approach to editing varies from project to project, too. Here are some things that work for me. Which may not work for you. Know thyself!

1.      The order of things

Many approaches tell you to make the big edits – story, structure, plot, character – first, then work your way down on successive passes to writing style and finally line-edits. The one thing that seems to be relatively constant for me is that I work the other way around. Perhaps my brain is nit-picky and pedantic, but I can’t see past spelling or grammar errors and word repetition in order to focus on the big things. So I go for the quick win of fixing the trivialities, and then I can see the wood for the trees. Sometimes.

2.      Edit as you go along

Again, the common wisdom is to vomit the first draft rapidly and without looking back, in case you get stuck in endlessly editing chapter one and never finish your story. Or perhaps so as to avoid becoming stuck in salty tears, like Lot’s wife, in staring horror-struck at the Sodom and Gomorrah of your opening efforts. But I find that starting each writing session with rereading what I last wrote, fixing a couple of things as I go along, helps get me into the story so that by the time I finish reading, I’m into writing gear and ready to roll. I suspect it also helps keeps tone and characterization consistent, especially when I’m not writing every day.

3.      Make multiple passes

I know from my day job as a psychologist that the brain cannot focus well on detailed, analytical, sequential, left-brained aspects (spelling, grammar, whether to use affect or effect, were his eyes blue or grey) and creative, holistic, visual, right-brained aspects (characters, fixing plot-holes, amping up tension and emotion) at the same time. So I tackle these aspects separately. I write leanly, so I also add detail, red herrings, clues and descriptive elements in successive editing passes, like a 3D printer positioning layer after complex layer. Other writers might need to shave off excess words, like a carpenter with a lathe.

4.      One character, one voice

A really useful exercise for me is to use the search feature to find all the times one character speaks, and then check that her dialogue is consistent in tone, vocabulary, vocal tics, accent, expression, etc. I find this really helps to tighten characterization, too.

5.      Checklist

I once read a book where the author had a character “roll his shoulders”. The first time I read the expression, I thought, “Wow – what a neat way to describe a shrug.” But by the time I read it for the tenth time, I was just irritated. The more unusual a word or phrase is, the more it stands out and the less you get to use it. Every writer has expressions and words that they use too often. I keep an ever-growing list of mine and seek and destroy somewhere in the editing process.

As a therapist, I’ve learned to speak very gently and tentatively, so my first draft is usually full of words like maybe, perhaps, a little, somewhat, possibly, slightly, fairly. They’re on my pruning-list, too.

I also check for words/phrases like “I/the character saw, thought, wondered, noticed, looked (I use that one a lot), heard, knew, remembered”, etc. which usually have the effect of distancing the POV. (Compare, “Outside the cabin, the snow was falling fast and cold, but inside it was warm, uncomfortably so,” to “If I looked outside the window of the cabin, I would see snow falling fast, and I knew it would be cold, but inside I felt warm. I wondered if it was maybe too warm.”

6.      Fresh eyes

I approach my manuscript with fresh eyes by leaving it between writing and editing (and between successive edits) as long as I can bear without impatiently gnawing off my fingers (the nails are already gone). It’s amazing what you notice when you’ve gained some distance.

My fresh eyes also come in the form of my valuable beta-readers and editors – they teach me so much! But I do bear in mind that bit of wisdom (I think Neil Gaiman said it) which goes something like: believe your beta-readers when they say there’s a problem with some aspect of your manuscript, but don’t believe them when they tell you how to fix it.

7.      It never ends

I keep thinking of new details I want to add, even after the manuscript has gone to the printers. This is one of the reasons I’ve learned to be patient, to edit slowly, rather than to rush the process. I want my final product to be as finely-honed as I can make it, not a quick, rough-and-ready attempt.

Let me know your thoughts in Twitter (@JoanneMacg) or my facebook page.

Update - I've enabled comments on the blog, so let me know what you think :)

Joann(ie Oakley)!

I spent a crazy day shooting yesterday - a Glock handgun, lever-action and bolt-action rifles, a semi-automatic, even a shoulder-shaking shotgun - and all in the interest of research!

My latest manuscript features a fair bit of shooting and I want to be sure to get the technicalities right. So I met up with master firearms instructor, James Bristow (of Magnum-SA) who took me through different weapons, ammunition and ways of shooting. He was very patient with me (I jump at loud noises, call anything that fires "a gun", and ask all sorts of awkward writerly questions!), and stayed calm and encouraging all the way through. It's amazing to get first-hand experience and information from someone in a specialist field - beats internet researches any day!

I learned an amazing amount and am going to make another pass at the shooting and weapons sections in my manuscript. (Note to self: check you haven't used the word "gun" anywhere!).

The shots were incredibly loud, even with ear protection, and echoed back off the "wall" of an old gold minedump at the back of the shooting range. James introduced me to an amazing pair of electronic ear-protectors which somehow dull the sound of the shots, yet still allow you to hear voices and even the whisper of the wind in the leaves and grass. Like science-fiction, only real. (Stick it in the book!)

I did pretty well with the handgun, and then with a beautiful lever-action rifle, getting two sets of "snake-eyes" - that's when two shots touch or overlap each other on the target. My first response was writerly, telling my son to make a note of the term! For sure, it's going into the book :) I was less pleased with an enormous old 1903 rifle which I called the elephant gun, which was so heavy, I battled to hold it up long enough to take proper aim. I am reliably informed by one of the teenagers in my life, that this is because I don't have "gamer's wrists". You would think that holding up heavy hardcovers all these years would have counted for something!

Thanks, James, for a great day!

The Book Cellar

Erica, book blogger extraordinaire over at The Book Cellar, is currently

doing a feature on YA books. Today, Turtle Walk is under the spotlight.

Head over to her wonderful site for reviews, previews and giveaways, 

as well as some great YA recommendations.

Thanks, Erica!