TD: 632
Daily Goal: Not met
It was, however, about 4 times what I wrote last night, so that’s a definite improvement. Maybe tomorrow I’ll finally make it back to 1k. Hubby has to work an 8 hour shift on Saturday, so I ought to have some time to get a few things done then.
Point of view is a basic and crucial decision every writer has to make at the start of any project. The POV you choose has an enormous impact on the story you’re able to tell. Would Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum books be anywhere near as entertaining without that sassy, snarky, in-your-face first person perspective? Sure she could bring it out in dialogue and action, but we get so much more out of being in Stephanie’s head. Would Katie MacAlister’s books be anywhere near as funny without first person POV? I don’t think so. Would Tami Hoag’s thrillers be quite so thrilling without those extra perspectives? Probably not.
The list of options for perspective is, thankfully, a short one:
However, there are still a great many things to consider and weigh when choosing the perspective that will best serve your story. Back in the Dark Ages when I began the very first draft of HOC (then a different working title and a very different sort of story), it was in straight first person from the heroine’s POV. I was about 200 pages in when a critiquer suggested that it would be better served by third person. Those were the days I was still scared of a rewrite. So I held off a while. Eventually, I got frustrated by not being able to impart information from other characters, so I did some funky bastardized combination of POVs…most of the book was in the heroine’s first person POV, but there were scenes throughout in third person from the hero’s. Frankly I can only think of one author who has managed this sort of mix successfully–Diana Gabaldon in her Outlander series. Miss Gabaldon, I am not. Eventually I took the plunge and started a third person limited rewrite–of the rotating variety from scene to scene (each full scene was in only one person’s head). Turns out that critiquer was absolutely right. And as it turns out, this is the POV I choose for almost all of my work. I like the ability to use more than one character. At times I do miss the intimacy of first person, but for the most part, this serves me well.
And then I read a Nora. I can’t say whether she always did this or not, but all of her more current books are written in that tantalizing third person omniscient. To be perfectly honest, until my friend Jen pointed it out, it never actually occurred to me that she head hops. Jen can’t deal with head hopping. Drives her nuts. Me–I don’t even notice the head hopping because she does it well. She is, however, in the minority, I think. I’ve read a number of books that simply pulled me out of the story because the head hopping was poorly done (I shan’t name names, as we’ve all read some). The lure of head hopping for me is the fact that we get multiple perspectives on the same event at approximately the same time. So you get a love scene and you know what’s going on in both the hero and heroine’s heads. I like that. But I think it’s a real challenge to do well. It’s a perspective I always consider and never actually use. I don’t know if I’d be any good at it or not, since I haven’t really tried (not intentionally anyway–Pot occasionally busts me as the POV Police when I slip). One of these days maybe.
I noticed a post by Helen Kay Dimon from Monday where she was offering up suggestions about contest entries. Number 2 on her list:
2. Some of you are making point-of-view (POV) harder than it needs to be. I know you’ve read books where the POV bounces around. I know. Believe me, I know. Still, I think you need to go with the general plan of not doing that. Stick to one POV per scene. Do not get caught up with all of these characters you may want to use in future books you’re thinking about writing once you sell. Focus on selling this one first. Don’t get lost in telling us how every person and animal in a scene feels. I know you think it’s effective. You’re wrong. It’s confusing. More importantly, fair or not, bouncing POV suggests you don’t know the writing basics. That gives editors and agents one more reason to give your manuscript only a cursory look. Don’t make your job harder.
And I think this hits a lot of the high points about why a lot of people don’t do head hopping well. I confess, I avoid head hopping for many of these reasons. I don’t want to confuse my reader. And until I figure out how to make it work (yeah how am I going to do that without trying?), I hate to spend a lot of time writing a book that way that will wind up needing to be re-written in that third person limited, I’m more comfortable and familiar with. And there’s nothing wrong with having a particular POV that’s your preferred style. Do what you do and do it well and you’re more likely to get that representation and be published. One of these days I will step outside the box–but probably not until I’m published with an established name and can maybe get away with it!
TD: 159
Daily Goal: Not met
Never really got focused in on this, but I did some revamping of the end of the scene where I left off, so hopefully I’ll be able to pick back up tomorrow. I need to face the fact that the next couple of days of work isn’t going to be my best. I’ve been out for a while, and I’m rusty. But hey, any words is better than no words.
So as I said in the update to my previous post, I finally got ahold of The Hollow before lunch. And I finished about 20 minutes ago (prior to dishes and bedtime routine). Happy, Kettle! Looks like I’m getting to bed at a moderately reasonable hour (considering that I was fully prepared to be up until 2 or later). And I’m juiced! I’m feeling inspired and ready to write. Not happening tonight (do need to actually sleep), but I’m hoping the mood will carry over into tomorrow. I’ll be pouting in a day or two that I have to wait until December for the conclusion of this trilogy. I’m enjoying it. I usually do with Nora’s books. She hits all the high points with me–great friendships between women, big messy families, appealing dogs, romance, and (frequently) a dash (or more) of the supernatural. I’m about to pass out sleepy, so I’m not going to formally review (as I don’t do that), but it was an enjoyable read with an engaging hero and heroine. Go check it out.
Okay, I have been anticipating the release of The Hollow since I finished Blood Brothers last November. I had a countdown to May 6th, the official release date. I got up early to go buy it this morning before work. I hit Kroger first because, hey, I needed sour cream. They didn’t have it. Um, okay. Maybe they’re behind stocking their shelves? So I hit Walmart. They didn’t have it. WTF? We’re talking about NORA. A woman whose books tend to premier on, and usually at the TOP of the Best Seller List. And two major stores don’t HAVE it on RELEASE DAY? I want my book, damn it! If it is released May 6th, it should be available for purchase as soon as doors OPEN on May 6th. (Or actually I would have been perfectly content if they put them out yesterday like they did for Harry Potter). But this is unacceptable! It doesn’t MATTER that I don’t have time to read before lunch at the earliest and that I don’t dare bring said book to work because it will completely obliterate my productivity for the day. I wanted it THERE when I went home for lunch! So that I could eek out and plow through as much book as possible in 50 minutes. This is just NOT COOL. Will keep you posted.
And I still didn’t get my sour cream.
And crap, I just realized that Katie MacAlister’s latest, Playing With Fire, released today too! So many books, so little time…
Update–10:50 am: Just returned from B and N over on campus. They only had 4 copies. What’s up with that? FOUR? Of a brand new Nora? I swallowed the bile at paying full retail (which I NEVER do for books, as I’m on a budget and can buy more if I go with used and sale) and decided that it would wind up costing me that much in gas if I went back to Walmart later. I’m electing to wait on Playing With Fire until I can get it used. Which blows, but I have to exercise self restraint somewhere.
Some of you may remember from back in the fall–Novemberish–when my soft-hearted spouse brought home a puppy from band practice. One of the band members’ wife owns a dog spa and that’s where they practice. Anyway, someone had left this poor puppy at the spa in the middle of the night when it was in the 20s out. John and Meg had him for a few days, but they couldn’t keep him because they already have five dogs. So DH brings him home. Now this was some time after Shadow had died and this puppy appeared to be a Husky mix with these gorgeous blue eyes and I knew why DH was bringing him home. He was expecting me to cave exactly like I did when he brought home Angel (whom we obviously kept). What he didn’t take into account was that he was working nights, which left me to be the only one to let puppy out, and also meant that he didn’t get to sleep during the day because puppy was so small he fit through the gap between the gate and the fence. All was well that ended well on that front, as he wound up going to my father in law. Well Teal’c is now about 7 or 8 months old and gorgeous. Looks to be a husky/German shepherd mix. And Dad let him come home with us for a sleepover last night. He’s been a really well behaved house guest, and it’s been really good for DH. Teal’c has a lot of the same mannerisms that Angel did (some so similar that it’s trippy), and that’s been comforting to us both. We both feel a little like we’re coming out of a long (and not good) sleep. There’s stuff to deal with that didn’t go away during all the horrible aftermath this week. Work must be done. House must be cleaned. Bills must be paid.
There’s been no writing this week. Not that this is a shock. But I feel like my head is finally getting back into a place where I could write. So this morning I’m having tea and looking over where I left off with Til Death. We’re actually going down to Jackson today with the in-laws, but tomorrow I’ll have some time to get back to it (I hope).
On the puppy front, we’re going to be meeting the present owners in Memphis on the 24th to pick up our new daughter. We’ve decided to name her Callie (my turn–DH named Daisy and Angel). I’ve been making a list of expenses so that I can work them into the budget–the usual shots and worming, spaying, a Furminator (she’s going to have thick hair either way and shedding will be a problem–plus, we live in Mississippi where it’s really hot in the summer, so we HAVE to be able to thin out her coat–is it sad that I’m excited she’ll shed? We have been mourning the lack of Angel hair this week.), a pair of retractable leashes (we used to have one, but I have no idea what happened to it–I’ve discovered it’s much easier to train them to walk on a retractable), and a large supply of Puppy Chow. I’ve also been making a To Do List. There are all sorts of things we’ve been putting off that we will have to get done before we pick her up. There’s a big hole in the yard where an old stump rotted out forever ago. It’s covered with a lawn chair because Daisy and Angel never messed with it, but we can’t trust a puppy not to. So that has to be filled. We need to finally get the dog house moved from Allen’s parents. It’s custom built and friggin huge. And best of all (for me anyway), DH finally has to deal with the disaster area that is his office. He has to go through and pick up and clean out everything in his office because if it is in the floor, she’ll probably try to chew on it or play with it. Which, given that most of what’s in his office is computer equipment or music equipment, is bad.
There are so many other projects to do: make and install the new mailbox post, build the flowerbed around said mailbox post, pour the concrete slab for our shed (yeah, the one that’s been sitting in our garage since freaking SEPTEMBER)–and that’s just outside. At some point this year, we’re going to redo our bathroom, which will involve tearing out the current vanity, fitting in a new one (which will be this great refinished French Provincial dresser we got for $10! at a garage sale), putting up beadboard and chair rail, putting down new floors (found some great peel and stick vinyl tiles that look like Travertine), new baseboards, and painting everything. And we wanted to put up new kitchen cabinet doors and crown moulding in the kitchen. That last one may wind up waiting until next year’s budget.
Anyway, that’s the update.
Today was better. We’ve been trying to get into a routine, to help fill up the void. Now I take Daisy for a walk in the morning before work, then take her out to my in-laws’ house for doggy day care (they have 6 fenced acres and 2 dogs). That’s helped everybody I think. And it helps to be where Angel is, even though it’s not as we’d wish her. Daisy’s getting to where she’ll go out in our yard on her own for a little while anyway–which is better than the first few days when she wouldn’t leave the couch. I took the “Do Not Disturb” sign off my office door. Each day is getting a little bit easier. We still have hard moments–points when we’re sucker punched by the fact that Angel’s not here. But it’s not constant.
We hung out with my in laws last night and all their dogs and their neighbor’s puppies. And it was nice to get puppy love. So when we came home, DH and I spent some time looking at puppy pictures. And it made him smile, which was nice to see. His family always had Alaskan Malamutes, so that’s what he was looking at. Then today a friend suggested we check out Petfinder.com, which we did. And we found two puppies at rescues that we were interested in. One was a Mal puppy and the other was half Great Pyrenees and half Mal. By 1o’clock, DH had filled out an adoption application on the half pyr/half mal. And by 9:30 we’d heard that we were approved. Kind of unexpected. So in three weeks we’ll be bringing home a new baby. How cute is she? Hubby feels conflicted and that somehow it’s too soon. But we both know we’re not replacing her. We have a lot of love to give to animals, and we need another puppy in our life. Angel knew she was loved and that she was the center of our lives and that she can never possibly be replaced. Hubby and I feel very strongly about shelter and rescue dogs. There are so many animals out there that need good homes, and it helps us to be providing one. She’s gonna be a big girl!
It was supposed to be a nightmare. One of those horrible, nonsensical fever dreams that goes along with the flu–which is what I feel like I have at this point. I keep getting chilled and achy. But I woke this morning as I went to bed–sobbing. There was no instant of forgetting, no moment where I didn’t remember. Sleep was sporadic and poor. Probably will be for a while. My stomach won’t tolerate anything more than water. My husband took off work today, and he’ll probably spend the entire day sitting in his chair reliving the whole thing. I could see it on his face last night. I came on to work, mostly because if I stayed home, our grief would just feed off each other, and I have deadlines. Not that I’m really getting anything done here either. But at home there are reminders everywhere–only one where there should be two. She was so much a part of the fabric of our lives that all we can see are tatters and holes.
And all I keep hearing is the hysterical anguish in my husband’s voice when he called me yesterday.
I’m weeping as I write this–my heart so shattered I can hardly breathe.
My baby died today. Our youngest dog, Angel. She was four. And she was one of my greatest joys.
My husband called me at work around four, hysterical, saying that Angel had jumped out of the car and was gone. I thought she’d run off. After a lot of shouting of “Where are you?”, I finally got a coherent enough answer out of him and went racing out of my office without a word to anyone. But it was too late.
She liked to sniff on car rides, so my husband indulged her by leaving the windows down–something I never do (though that’s more from a preference to avoid what the wind does to my hair, I confess). He had some trash in the backseat, and the wind caught it, blew it up. And apparently it scared her because she jumped out.
We buried her with her favorite rope by her uncle Shadow, who passed last fall.
I’ve never lost a pet before. I didn’t have pets to lose until after I moved out for college. Daisy’s been with me for almost seven years. Angel came to us our first year of marriage. She was the sweetest dog to ever walk. She absolutely adored people and was the most loving animal. She liked to lean while you stroked her head. And her fur was so so soft. She shed like crazy, and I had the irrational thought that I was sorry we vacuumed yesterday because now there’s not Angel-hair everywhere. I’d rather have my dog and the shedding problem back.
I keep expecting her to poke her head around the corner. Or bark to be let inside. Or beg for more kitchen scraps. Everything in our house reminds me of her. I don’t know whether to put away her bowl and bed and leash or to leave them. I’m not sure what would be worse. The house feels so empty.
Our wonderful neighbors brought some dinner, but the idea of food is obscenely unappealing. I came home and immediately ordered a safety harness for Daisy.
My husband is devastated and blames himself. Nothing I can say is going to make it any better. Maybe at some point in the future we’ll think about getting another dog. But not for a while.
We love you Baby Bear. Wherever you are, I hope you catch that squirrel.
Til Death: 1132
Daily Goal: Met–hot diggity dog!
Actual progress to report! Who knew? This morning I finished what was, I think, my 3rd or 4th read through of the most recent draft of TD. I axed the bits I wasn’t keeping, and I cut about 20 pages to stick in later on when I build back up to them. Then I actually wrote! What a relief! It wasn’t fantastic, and at some points it was like pulling teeth, but I wrote! I think I’m finally back into this story enough to stick with it–for a while at least. Hopefully to the end. I’m taking a new tack with the plot here, so I”m not quite sure what all the ramifications are yet. But I’ve got enough to take me a ways. Time for bed.
One of my favorite procrastination methods during college was playing Text Twist. For those of you who don’t know, it’s a game that has jumbled letters and you’re supposed to see how many words you can come up with out of that series of letters. As a total Scrabble-geek, it’s a lot of fun for me. When you get stuck, you can click “scramble” or “jumble” or something to that effect, and it will mix up the letters.
I sort of feel like that’s what’s going on with my HOC plot right now. Tomorrow it will have been 2 weeks since I’ve written anything, 3 since I’ve written consistently. I keep trying to focus on TD since it comes first chronologically, but my brain won’t drop HOC. It keeps taking existing components of plot and throwing in new ones and jumbling them all up. It has now become my pattern that I have random ideas in the car or while out running errands. So far, I think they’ve been good ones in terms of the adjustments I’m having to make to the set up. One of the problems with the most recent version is that there were no real suspects. Well now I have suspects–and they’re a lot closer to home than either Collin or Kensie would like. I also came up with some additional conflict to throw in, as well as some thoughts on how to draw out the sexual tension in one of the scenes I know I’ll be writing. I’ve changed where, how, and by whom the first body will be found, which will ratchet up the immediacy and personalize the murder from the get go.
Even though I wish I were writing more consistently at the moment, I am content with my plotting progress and how things seem to be coming together. Taking time off is not a bad thing. My brain’s still working, and I think maybe recovering from some burnout. I’ll get back to it soon and keep plotting in the meantime.
I will be taking a couple of days off to plow through the 2nd in Nora’s Sign of 7 trilogy that’s coming out May 6th. My happy self will be leaving home EARLY before work to go pick it up that morning! Anyway, I want to reread the first one. Maybe I’ll go do that now.
Oh my dear holy God above, thank you thank you thank you.
I have just emerged from computer hell. So my 80 GB hard drive is too small. Has been for a long time. My father in law took my hard drive today and test cloned it to a spare he had (he’s the IT guy at his job among other things). I wanted to test the process to make sure it would work in my Dell before I went and bought something bigger. So I pick up the drives this afternoon, pop in the clone. Doesn’t boot. Okay, fine. Didn’t work. Was afraid of that. Popped in the original hard drive. Same problem. WTF? Call my FIL. He doesn’t know what the problem is and has no useful suggestions. My laptop went out of warranty 18 days ago. The computer is one of those that DOESN’T come with a Vista disk ([original expletive deleted] greedy jerks–and they expect you to be able to recover your system HOW when the computer won’t boot that far?). Well after a lot of gnashing of teeth and cursing the powers that be, we finally located the Vista disk for DH’s desktop and managed to run the repair feature and all is well. Everything boots on the clone. I didn’t lose anything. And I just went and bought a 250 GB hard drive off Ebay.
But GOD how stressful. I was terrified everything was screwed. Am going to back up all my documents immediately.
I think any of us who have been around the field of writing have heard the analogy that writing a book is like birthing a baby. Babies are something that keep coming up in my life over the last year or two. More than half my friends have started families. Several of them went through a period of baby fever where babies were all they could think about. No offense to all of them, but I think they’re insane. I am so far from ready to have a child. My husband and I have been married for five years and are starting to get the hint hint, wink wink, nudge nudge that maybe it’s time to start thinking about that. Um. No. All these well-meaning infant-toting moms keep telling me “baby fever is going to hit you!” Frankly…I don’t think so. We want kids. But neither my husband nor I actually likes babies. They are a necessary evil. And when I think of how little spare time I have to write NOW and factor in the time-vacuum that is a baby–yeah, I don’t think so. Not for a while.
But I’ve been wondering today if baby fever is manifesting itself differently in me. Because my brain has been running amok marrying off my characters and giving them kids. My lunchtime amusement today was the decision that Seth (formerly Collin’s best friend) is actually Collin’s little brother and the way I’m going to get him on site to hook him up with his match is that he flies in for the birth of his niece. And in my little fantasy world Marin and Wyatt have twins. WTH? I haven’t even finished their stories, and I’m already building their little HEAs? So maybe my baby fever is not for actual babies but for new fictional babies (books with happily ever afters). This fits in with my tendency to go off on tangents, creating new stories and continually jumping into that heady first love of new characters state.
I need to take a chill pill though. I haven’t gotten back to actual writing in almost 3 weeks, despite my prolific outlining and notebooking for TD and HOC. I want to jump back into TD since it comes first sequentially, but my brain keeps jumping back to Collin and Kensie. Tonight I may do yet ANOTHER read through of TD and some more work on my new outline. See if I can focus on how my new ideas are going to change stuff. I really want to get back to work!
Well as you all know, I’m always on the lookout for places where I can ask questions as research for my books. In the past I’ve used Crimespace, Crime Research, assorted professional forums, straight email to various folks in the organization I had questions about–all with varying success. Well yesterday I stumbled across a great website All Experts–more specifically the Law Enforcement section. They don’t currently have any FBI experts signed up (sadly, I am still on a hunt for someone to answer those questions), but there are a great many other LEOs to whom you can pose a question about…well, anything it looks like. I was trying to figure out exactly how long it would take Collin to become a detective given his military experience. A big thanks to Commander Chris Wagoner, who took the time to answer me! Anyway, the site itself seems to have sections for all sorts of stuff–so I would think it could be an excellent resource to ask about those things you don’t know–for example if your hero is an archaeologist, they have a section where you can pose questions to archaeologists to say “Hey how does blah work?” In any event, I’m adding the link to my Research section on my sidebar for anyone who is interested.
When I hear the term “worldbuilding” I automatically think of the science fiction and fantasy genres–stories set in worlds other than our own, be they other planets, other galaxies, other times, or even alternate realities. Generally places where the rules of our “normal” reality don’t apply. Middle Earth. The Neutral Zone. Shannara. Crydee. Hogwarts. Places where you can make up your own rules about things (and should in order to avoid contradicting yourself as you tell your tale). Consequently, it’s not something I ever gave much thought to actually doing.
But when I decided to create my fictional Mississippi county and town a la Faulkner, my brain began painting the setting on the canvas of my brain. And as I started thinking about the intersections between characters in various stories (because the crux of the whole thing is that in real life, Mississippi is one big small town), all these characters began showing up. Some with plots, some without. Ah well that was okay–brain dolls can add color and entertain me when I’m bored, right?
Well then yesterday I figured out the intersection between Collin and Kensie’s story and Marin and Wyatt’s story. And that made me happy on multiple fronts. Well back when I began TD, I had already been envisioning some spin off novels with various characters. Tate, Marin’s roommate will get her own story. And Detective Spence Whittaker who features in both TD and HOC will get his. And his cousin Jessie, who’s actually a character in A Home For The Holidays (that novella I started and went nowhere with because of lack of a plot) with another cousin, Livia. So today I finished the second reread of TD to get myself back in their heads (and hopefully do some real actual writing tonight–what a concept), I got to thinking about how Collin becomes interim Sheriff in HOC. I’d decided that he was the one who blew the lid off of some major corruption in the county that led to the sacking of a bunch of people. And that led to the thought that Jessie, who is in law school and whose story will involve her finding out information she shouldn’t at the law office where she works, might be involved in that too somehow. Which places another book earlier in the timeline before HOC (though I will write HOC before I figure out what the hell to do with Jessie). And then I got to thinking, well what was Collin doing before he gets elected interim Sheriff? I mean, he graduates college, enlists in the Marines as an officer for 6 years, gets out and becomes a cop/deputy. I was actually trying to figure out if he’s made detective by the time TD occurs. Because I need a deputy guarding Marin in the scene I need to write today, and I figured it would be a nice way to throw him in. It’s going to cause a big stink when he’s elected interim sheriff because he’s young and doesn’t have as much experience–but, well, it’s interim (they hold an emergency election), he was the one who blew the lid off the corruption, and he’s got experience leading from the military.
Anyway all this ridiculous convoluted plotting has led me to realize that I’ve been worldbuilding. It’s in our reality, our universe. But every time I imagine a local business, like Mississippi Mud, the coffee shop on Main Street; or Big Muddy’s, the local bar that Collin’s best friend Seth owns–I’m worldbuilding. When I start thinking about local politics and who has what position and how everybody knows everybody, I’m world building. And if I do my job as a writer, then readers will see it as every bit as real as their own.
