February 2, 2014

Oh, how I have been stalling!  I'm still procrastinating writing the end of the book and getting on with the editing.  I've read articles about editing, I posted an excerpt on Facebook, I read Lisa's book and offered suggestions, but not finished mine! 

I guess one good thing I did was rewrite the most recent scene.  I didn't know how I was going to end the book when I wrote it, and once I figured out the end I knew I needed that last scene to unfold to a different conclusion so the characters would have the right motivation to take us to the end. 

I should have probably saved it for the editing phase, but it was a big roadblock in my head.  I can't just leave huge things unresolved and go past them.  For my personal writing style I need the story to make sense as I go.  So I rewrote much of that last scene and now I'm ready to move on to the climax.  Hopefully I can do it justice.

Facebook excerpt

An author friend, Cassandra Davis ("Dremiks") posted a challenge to me on Facebook.  The challenge was to paste the text from page 7 of your novel into Facebook.

Although I've written quest content for computer games that thousands of players have read, this was so different.  I dithered around until I finally got up my nerve and posted it.  That particular page isn't even that interesting.  It's just Dee exploring in her grandpa's house.  I got a lot of encouraging responses though, and everyone was nice.  It gave me more confidence about the possibility of publishing.

I've thought I'd probably publish it, but it's hard to put something out there that people might hate.  Now I think there could be some people that might like it too.

December 5, 2013 (more spoilers!)

I talked to a bunch of people that came to Thanksgiving dinner and got some great ideas for how to end it.  I can include a sheriff station raid and a farm raid.  Plus now there's going to be a hibernating bear and a shotgun.  Pretty exciting! 

This week has been super busy because a friend is coming to visit and she's bringing some of her friends, so the book has to wait another week. 

I made some notes about how my ending should flow and which scenes I need to tweak.  I told [my husband] about the scene with Courtney and he said it was way too dark.  He said the mom would completely lose all his sympathy if she did that.  I personally don't lose sympathy for her, but I'm not sure what readers will think.  The whole scene is pretty pivotal to the rest of the story, so I'm keeping it.

It was one of those scenes that I knew far in advance was going to happen, and I'd given it a lot of thought as I knew it was approaching.  I write in order, and so on the day I got to that scene I made sure I was going to have some uninterrupted time and then I started.  It was the first time (and only time so far) that I'd cried when writing a scene.  I think I felt more about it than I managed to convey, but as a mom I can put myself in Courtney's shoes and feel a little bit of her pain at the impossible decision she makes.

November 28, 2013 (not technically cheating)

It's kind of a cop out, but I got to 50K words today by counting the words I had to cut from my original idea.  I figure if I hadn't been so edit-y I would still have them, and I wrote them this month so it's not technically cheating.  I also counted the words in these notes and in my outline.  They are all story related, and the rules allow me to count them, so I did.  I was just too stressed about finishing to 50 in time and I've got too much to do for the holiday.  I'm at Jiffy Lube right now, I baked cookies, colored my hair, actually got a shower.  I'm still picking up something for dinner though, lol.  I don't have much to go to finish the first draft, and I'm hoping to get it done in the next week.  Excited and relieved!

November 27, 2013

I am almost done!  But with Thanksgiving tomorrow and a trip to see friends on Friday and Saturday, I'm stressed about my word count.  I should be writing but I'm completely stuck on the final showdown between good guys and bad guys.  I want to catch them without killing them, but it needs to pack a punch because it's the climax.  I've gotten through a lot of hard scenes before by just sitting down and writing.  As I write, the characters suggest what they would do in that situation.  I know thinking about it is slowing me down, but I feel like I've got to have at least a framework.  I don't even know where they're going to have the show-down.  Feeling stressed, but hopeful to have come so far.

November 19, 2013 (Major spoilers)

I made it to the halfway point last night – 25,000 words, yay!  That's slightly behind pace, and I started off a little slow too so I've got some catching up to do, but overall I'm pleased to still be trucking along on this. 

I'm right in the middle of a place that's been giving me some trouble – rescuing Mason from town.  When I sent Hyrum and Dee in to get the truck I had no idea they were going to find Mason and that I was about to learn a whole lot more about his character.  What a surprise for me too.  I knew they'd find a little boy but I didn't know he'd be Mason's little brother.  And then, Mason's step-dad makes an appearance too??  That was a true ah-ha moment for me.  I had no idea who his step-dad was, and only had the vague idea that Mason came from an abusive home.  Making that connection really tightened up all of the motivations for Mason's actions (for me, anyway). 

Now I'm struggling trying to build up the suspense and the reveals of the scene at the church.  I probably just need to blast through it and then go back and deal with improvements in re-writes.  Since it's nanowrimo, I also consider word count a lot, which probably wouldn't normally be so important.

November 12, 2013

I hit 15,000 words today and I'm going to finish up chapter 6 tonight.  I'm trying to write about cows.  I've never milked one before, so I'm depending on the internetz to fill me in.  Writing a well researched book was such an amazing feat before the internet!  I'm happy to say that every time I think I don't have anything else to write about, a new conflict manifests and needs to be faced.  I haven't even planned most of them, they just occur to me as I have the characters moving from point A to point B.  My instinct in life is to avoid conflict and smooth over the ones that occur, so it goes against my nature to load problem after problem on this poor girl.  It definitely makes for a more interesting plot and better reading though.

Outage is born

When I started the Nanowrimo challenge in November of 2013, I had no idea I'd eventually end up with a book.  In fact, I wasn't even going to join the challenge because I hadn't done any research or planning.  I didn't think I had a story to tell.

But on November 1st I emailed a friend and told her I wanted to do it (accountability), and then I sat down in front of a blank Word doc and started a brainstorming session with myself.  I made a list of books that I admire and that I wished to emulate.  Then I made a list of what kind of story I wanted to tell (fairy tale or mystery, romance or sci-fi, etc).

I decided to write a book that I would want to read.  I've always loved post-apocalyptic fiction, and I read far more YA than anything else, so it was an easy decision to combine the two.  I decided to write about a solar flare that caused an EMP and what happened because of it.

Next I needed a setting.  I'd had a dream a few weeks earlier - one of those dreams that feels like you're watching a movie.  I told a friend that it would make a good zombie book, and he found a little corner of Washington that he thought would be a good place to start the story.  I figured I could use that for Outage, so now I had my setting.

Last I needed some characters.  I vague knew what I wanted:  

  • A troubled teen girl
  • A wise mentor
  • A love interest
  • A good friend 
  • A dog

I started writing.  I wrote 10,000 words before my research uncovered that a solar flare wouldn't do nearly the kind of damage I wanted.  Not enough to end of the world.  So I had to set aside a lot of those original words and try again.  Those were dark days because cutting so much really put me behind on my word count, and word count is everything in the NaNoWriMo challenge.  I almost quit.  (This was before I found out I shouldn't be editing, and I could count all of the words I wrote, even if I had to cut some later.)

I think the biggest reason I kept writing was that even I didn't know what was going to happen next.  I had a basic outline I will share in a later post, but it mainly said stuff like "plot twist" and "climax begins."  I was so motivated to write because I wanted to find out what my characters would do next!

Once I reached 15,000 words I knew I was going to finish the novel.  I would later run into more trouble, but by then I knew I needed to find out what happened to everyone.  I'd gotten to know the characters and they demanded I tell their story!