Monthly Archives: December 2015

Blocked

So far, knock on wood, I don’t really have writer’s block. I have writer’s apathy.

With Iron Butterfly, I’ve written two scenes that I know are going to get tossed. They’re not important to the story, they’re not propelling the story at all. Because of that, I’m depressed.

Right now, I don’t want to bother writing anything. Something is  blocking traffic, I know what I need to write, it’s just getting it down.   Once I get past it, everything should flow. I have a couple of stories in mind for my Champions Online fans,  an Iron Butterfly scene, editing for War Mage (book 2), and getting the gumption to go take pictures to sell my car.

I don’t know what is blocking the traffic, but all four of those things are what I need to do, and I have to find which one is in the way.

Hello, Mary Sue…

I’m so proud of myself, writing this great romance story. It’s not original, still following a template, but it’s a great idea.

Then I took the Mary Sue test.

Oh, dear.  The male lead is a definite Mary Sue, but the female one I’m trying really hard (intentionally) to make her not one. In the romances that I’ve read/skimmed (3, okay?) the girl’s a ditz, the guy’s a hero, and when they meet, sparks fly.

I’m following the rules, here!  I’m trying to get into the market, not become a literary giant. I consider my name to be the trashy romance/erotica author. Jake is the gay urban fantasy guy. That’s how i’m going to introduce myself.

Homecoming is on its 3rd edit. I have a feeling I’m going to have to describe EVERYONE in detail, not just the three main characters. However, when I read books, I don’t notice the description there. I’m trying to look to see how people are described, and I don’t even notice it. Are they that good that I’m missing it, or do they not put it in?

I described a lot in this romance. I’m up to 10K words right now. I’m going to keep going with it. It’s a good idea. It’s fun.

So what if it’s a waste of time.

“Sometimes the story isn’t there”

I finally put away the romance novel. I tried sitting down to write it, but it was so boring, that I put it away.

Following a template was a good idea, in theory. The story had written itself. I outlined like I did with NaNo, I started putting together the backstories for each of the characters. I decided to start with my vegetables first–the female lead.

All I knew about Marina was that she was scared. Of everything. Overly cautious. I wanted her to get over her fears during the course of the book. However, according to the template, the hero has to help her get over her fears. I wanted her to grow up on her own.

That’s where I realized I really can’t do this. I can’t believe women eat up this crap.

I’m starting to read books on description. I have an issue with not describing enough. I don’t describe with long passages, but I think I describe with a minimal amount of words. However, looking through book 2 of War Mage, there’s a lot  “in my head” as the Paper Angel Press editor put it. I read it, I can picture it; why don’t others? Do I need to show them everything?

I guess it’s expected.  To be a novel, you have to present a world. I can’t assume that a contemporary world is easily pictured. Especially in Afghanistan, I suppose.

Description is through all the senses. Description can be through a different point of view. Description is often compared to other things. Description is concrete, particular words. Thanks to Wordpainting by Rebecca McClanahan for clarifying that.

I’m also starting to read books with an eye to see how the author uses description. I have a boatload of trashy romance novels to do just that with. I get to see how they do it, or how badly they do it.

I don’t do romance

Writing a romance is hard.

I read a book about writing romance, that basically gave out a boiler template of how to plot your romance. Fill in the blanks and off you go.

I actually used tarot cards to figure out a plot and characters. It came up as a romance. Good, romance is good because that’s a very hot market. Paranormal romance is a really big market too, so yeah, I can see this. And YA romance? It has its own shelf in B&N. I’m in for this.

So the plot is that a girl, who doesn’t know she’s part mermaid, spends a summer in a seaside fishing town, gets in the ocean, changes into a mermaid, is seduced by the mer-prince, refuses for the human that she left on land, and comes back to land to spend the rest of her summer with the landlubber.

Beautiful.

But I can’t get the MC to get beyond a bundle of nerves and fear. She’s acting like Bella. But then, from what i’ve skimmed, most of the YA girls are either feisty bitches or dingbats. Making her feisty would overshadow the hero. Making her a dingbat would just be a Twilight ripoff.

How difficult it is to be original. I was thinking of giving it up but I haven’t gotten any other ideas.

Yet.

Make backups!

Finished Edit 2. Then my Windows computer crashed.  It’s stuck on the Administrator screen, and I’ve tried safe mode, all sorts of fixes I found on the net.

Luckily, Homecoming is on my Mac (which is what I’m typing from right now). The good news is that I saved Blood From A Stone on a flash drive; the bad news is that it’s in .doc format, not Scrivener.

I have a feeling that my computer guy is just going to wipe the drive and start new. I have not realized how boring my life is without my computer. At least I have the Mac and my iPad/iPhone if necessary.

Luckily, I made backups of my novels; however, I redid Brothers of the Zodiac and have lost all that information.  Unfortunately, due to xmas and budgetary constraints, I can’t fix it until after xmas.

I’ll be going to bed a lot earlier.

I had an idea for a story, which I outlined and did beats for. Part of me wants to do it, but part of me doesn’t really care; my heart’s not into it. I need another neat story to get into. Maybe War Mage’s rewrite?

Edit…2

Survived the vacation. Received my batch of second edits to Homecoming. The editor wants more description. In this, I must disagree.

I hate, hate, HATE, text blocks of description. I write like a journalist. I write dialogue, short paragraphs, rapid-fire sentences. I don’t describe in my storytelling because I feel that it drags down the story. Setting, yeah, maybe I need to describe that more, but people? I’m really not good at describing faces in detail, and I’m not good with describing people, either. My strength is the dialogue.

While I was on vacation, I came up with a pretty romance that I might do under my real name. It’s about a mermaid that doesn’t know she’s a mermaid because her father has kept her from the sea all her life. She lives in land-locked Nebraska where there is no salt water. She gets a hankering to go to the ocean and heads east, finds the son of a fishing trawler off the South Carolina coast, and they fall in love, until she falls into the ocean and becomes a mermaid. The mer-people find her and the really handsome mer-prince wants her to stay, but she feels obligated to go back to the sea captain’s son…

It’s written to a formula from a book I read. If I become a paranormal/YA romance writer, I know I can make money off that (romance readers are insatiable!). I went to the Barnes & Noble store in Florida and saw five book cases of Sci/Fi, and six book cases of YA, two with YA/Romance only. Three bookcases of magick, and I couldn’t find the writing books anywhere (Good thing. I don’t need any more of those.)

I want to write Toxicon’s story, too, flesh it out into a better short story and put it out there to introduce the Teen Guardians in a novel or novella. That would be under Jake’s name.

Well, I’m off to see what the second batch of edits is going to be.

PS, finished NaNo before I left, 50,068 words. I’ll clean it up and probably do something with it, because it’s actually pretty good.