WiP Wednesday 4/20/14 to 4/26/14

Crazy busy week last week, but I did manage to get a little bit of work in.

I wrote and revised and rewrote my query for Woven several times in the last week. (I even got a critique on it by an awesomely nice real-live agent.) That'll get revised a couple more times in May before I start querying Woven in June.

Character sheets for the superhero short story I'm working on were created this last week. Those are mostly done. I'll still continue to tweak them and expand them as the days go by. However, I have also started writing the short story. I think you're going to like these characters, friends. Keep your fingers crossed it gets accepted for the anthology I'm submitting it to.

The short story stands just shy of 850 words right now. The first draft is due at the end of the week. (Deadline I set for myself.) I should make it there piece of cake.

First round of revisions are nearly done on the first superhero novella (hereon referred to as RotWR). I'm rewriting the ending so it's more action-packed and stuff which is why it's going a bit slower than it should.

How are your WiPs going?

WiP Wednesday 1/12/14-1/18/14: Goals Update

Another week of the month, gone. How are your WiPs going?

Mine are going swimmingly. As are my 2014 Writing Goals

Goal #2 states to finish my Woven rewrite by the end of February at the latest. Well, when I wrote that goal I didn't realize just how close to the end I was. Or how smoothly the last bit would go.

I officially finished the rewrite last Friday. It's been sent off to a trusted beta for critique and I'm well on my way to meeting my goals for the year.

2014 Goals and Hopes

Happy New Year everyone!

I seem to recall not setting any goals this time last year. That's probably why it feels so much like this last year was without accomplishment.

Goals:

1- Finish the superhero book before mid-January

2- Finish my Woven rewrite before February's end at latest

3- Edit Woven to its most polished by mid-April

4- Elevator pitch, query, and synopsis for Woven by mid-April

5- Write at least one other book this year

6- Edit at least one other book this year

Happenings During My Absence

Wow. Sorry it's been so long. I fear blogging may be losing its steam and edge when it comes to usefulness.

I know I certainly seem to have run out of things to talk about here. But on to the updates.

So, a while back I decided I was through writing. I'd lost the joy in something I'd always loved– reading. I want to reclaim that joy and I'm working on it. But the truth is, ever since I turned to writing as a serious venture, I have found my love of reading waning.

That decision, however, was short-lived. I'm writing again. But the hiatus from writing caused me to lose momentum on the rewrite of Woven. It's still sitting there, asking to be finished. But I've utterly lost interest in the rewrite beyond changing the pronouns to make the book 1st Person POV and to write out the horses. (I realized having my characters travel on horseback was going to become a big hassle as the plot developed in future books in the trilogy.)

I'm writing a superhero story. It's pretty awesome, I'm not gonna lie. (I may be biased. But I love my characters and their story.) I'm about 11K into the story and things are coming along nicely. There's a lot more romance in this book. At least, it's more in the fore when compared to Woven. It's a nice experiment, seeing if I can manage to write a convincing romance that features so prominently.

I joined Tumblr (again). You can find me there at smwriter.tumblr.com. Over there it's all about anything that tickles my writer fancy, which includes geeky stuff like video games and shipping my OTPs. If you're on Tumblr let me know.

The Hobbit comes out today! Terribly exciting. I'm looking forward to seeing it.

This could very well be my last post before Christmas so I hope you all have a merry Christmas.

If you have a question you're dying to ask me, something you want me to address here on my site, or an interview or other similar request, send it to info(at)stephanie-mcgee(dot)com

General email can be sent to stephanie(at)stephanie-mcgee(dot)com

Writing Goals: Now to 2013's End

All right. I didn't post writing goals at the beginning of the year. Now, I'm posting this list to keep myself accountable.

1- Finish my rewrite of Woven by October's end.
2- Spend October world-building and plotting on a new idea
3- Write said new idea in November (First-ever participation in NaNoWriMo here I come)
4- Revise Woven in December and have it ready for betas in the new year
5- Plot and world-build another book somewhere in there

Forgive me if blogging becomes a scarcity. I'm beginning a new job in a week and my schedule is going to be in flux.

What are your goals?

WiP Wednesday First In September

Yeesh. Sorry for the lack of updates on the rewrite. It's been a crazy couple of weeks.

A crazy couple of weeks with zero writing progress. As of this writing (which I'm writing this most recent Sunday), I haven't written since Labor Day.

On Labor Day, I finished up the first draft of a short story I want to sub, but I'm not sure the sub call is still open. I have to check on that (as of writing this post, not it's posting, I haven't). It's about 5500 words that I still have to revise and title. It's set 180 or so years before Heirs of the Seven Realms begins and is the story of how the first fairy's parents met.

I am buckling down this week on the Woven rewrite since I'll be starting a new job soon and won't get much writing done during the crazy transition period. New schedules will take some getting used to but I'll get there and back in the swing of things with writing.

How are your WiPs going?

WiP Wednesday 8/26/13-9/1/13

Oh, progress, you elusive beast.

Admittedly, I could and should have done better this week at writing. I forgot to keep track of my progress in word count and only accounted for one day of my writing. That one day I wrote a mere 536 words. I have no recollection of writing any other day of the week but last Monday. At least not on my rewrite of Woven.

I'm working on a short story and hoping to sub it to an anthology. While I traditionally avoid writing on Sundays, this short story smacked me over the head with a plot and it had to be written down before I lost it entirely. The story's not finished but it should be finished this week. Then it's on to revisions.

The story is set in the same world as Woven but it takes place roughly 180 years in the past from the start of Woven. Events that are referenced and have direct consequence on the events of Heirs of the Seven Realms are explored a tiny bit in this short story.

How are your WiPs going?

WiP Wednesday: 8/12/13-8/19/13

Wow, what a week it was in the world of my writing. I have really striven with this rewrite to be sure I write as much anew as possible, rather than copying and pasting from the old drafts. That said, this week I reached a point in the story where some important reveals had to happen and I needed the details perfect. Which means I had a couple of large portions to copy-paste from the old manuscriipt.

All this led to a whopping week's word count of 16,915 words.

It surprised me when I tallied that up.

How are your WiPs going?

WiP Wednesday 8/4/13-8/11/13

As is often the case, the best-laid plans often go awry. My goal this week was to get back on track to my 1K a day goal. And I did.

Until I didn't.

As of 11 or so Saturday morning, I was fully on track. I had written just over 7200 words. About half an hour later, I'd deleted about 3K of those words.

The story had gone far astray and needed a course correction. Of course I had a plan (as my mom asked me when I told her this). It just went awry.

I'd been trying to play up an element of tension between two characters that ran pretty subtly through the original few drafts. I'm now working to make it more subtle and yet more present now. And that required a wholesale deletion of almost two days' worth of work.

How are your WiPs going?

WiP Wednesday 7/28/13-8/3/13

Well, this rewrite is coming along swimmingly, much to my surprise.  I'm revamping some aspects of character and one little "surprise you can do this too" element that risked turning my MC into a Mary Sue.

I've changed the dynamic of a character interaction/relationship. It's a lot more adversarial now and I think I like it a bit more.

The flow of reveals, of how and what and when my MC learns some things about her heritage is changing, too. And I think it's more sensical now than before.

All in all, last week I added 7072 words to the manuscript (after some cuts/reworkings of a previous scene or two.)

How are your WiPs going?

WiP Wednesday 7/22/13-7/28/13

Well, this rewrite is going swimmingly. Slowly, but swimmingly. Last week, despite houseguest for an extended weekend, I managed to add just over 5500 words to the rewrite.

I've changed up an initial relationship a bit. It's a little more adversarial and I think makes it a little more lively. It also (I hope) helps add to the tension and mystery surrounding this character. (Things which will be revealed over the course of the trilogy.)

I do think this draft is a lot smoother than the previous versions. I've moved things around, changed the order of reveals, and just generally improved the pacing of the world-building in this book. Mostly it's in regards to the fae and their mythology.

How are your WiPs going?

WiP Wednesday 7/14/13-7/20/13

Another work week gone by. And this one was way more productive than the last couple had been.

I'm writing most of the words anew for this version of the book. But I'm finding that where I had a particular description of a setting or person, I can copy-paste it and change anything necessary to making the POV switch. With that added bonus, I added about 5500 words to the manuscript this last week. Maybe half of that was copy-pasted and the rest new. I'm really not certain on the ratio there.

I really do think this version is a lot smoother than the last. There are changes to the pacing of my MC's gleaning of knowledge that I think make more sense than in the last versions of the book.

Overall, I'm glad I made the choice to rewrite the book, even if it does kill me that I made it so late in the process.

How are your WiPs going?

WiP Wednesday 7/1/13-7/7/13

Time for me to face the music. I only wrote about 1400 words total last week. I have this bad habit of escaping into video games when reality starts to weigh on me too heavily. There's some stuff in my reality that's thrown me into a funky head space when it comes to writing. I get these depressive moods when I look at my reality and when they get really bad, I just have to go let time erase itself while I stare at a screen.

It's probably not healthy, I know. But it's how I cope/deal with things. No, it's nothing serious or life threatening. Just stuff I can't really talk about online. It's got me really not in a good head space for writing which is why last week's progress was so pathetic.

How are your WiPs going?

WiP Wednesday 6/24/13-6/30/13

I started the rewrite of Woven last week. And it's going amazingly well. I think the manuscript is already a lot smoother and stronger than before.

Which makes me just kick myself over and over. Oh well.

I got about 5K in last week which doesn't seem like much but it felt like it took no time at all to get that far. This week should be awesome for word count, assuming the rewrite continues to go smoothly.

How are your WiPs going?

That Dreaded Rewrite

When it came time to sitting down and beginning my rewrite on Woven, I was very apprehensive. There's so much work in drafting a novel. To do that work twice over seems that much more daunting.

Honestly, it's been easier than I anticipated. There are a lot of pros (and maybe some cons) to rewriting the novel from word one.

Pros:
~ After drafting and revising several times, I know the story and characters much better and thus the rewrite is stronger.
~ Rewriting from word one eliminates a lot of baggage, like being overly attached to adverbs and certain sentences.
~ Knowing the story and characters so well actually makes the writing go faster.
~ Voice is stronger on the rewrite because I know the characters so well. I already have a feel of who they are and how they'd talk.
~ Any revisions to character or voice that need to be made are easier to make in a logical way and without seams than in revising.

Cons:
~ Revisions to character are harder to make because I know the characters so well.
~ Remembering that perfect turn of phrase or little world-building detail and wanting to just copy-paste it wholesale into the manuscript but can't.
~ Knowing the characters and story so well you suddenly can't remember if you wrote that crucial scene in the rewrite or are just remembering it written in the old drafts.
~ Paranoia that the voice is weaker than before.

Are rewrites easier for you or harder?

WiP Wednesday 11/14/12

This should have been a short post seeing as how I'm taking November and December off from writing.

Theoretically.

You see, telling the universe you're taking a hiatus from something like writing is just giving the universe a big reason to say, "I dare you to try."

I'm going to confess to not entirely taking the two months off so far. I'm not doing anything with urgency, but I am continuing every so often to type up more of Curse of Life and also get everything set for the next book I want to write.

Also, there's that pesky thing called a query that I'm trying to perfect for continuing rounds of querying on Woven.

In the meantime, the universe is enjoying toying with me. I have another snippet of dialogue for the book I want to start in January. It's currently titled Soul Eater, but that's just a filler until I actually start writing. My brain keeps trying to switch things around in the MC's backstory for that book as well.

And where the universe Woven is set in is concerned, I've now got a timeline idea for how the world evolves about 1800 years into the future from all the books that take place in Woven's time and all its related books. Which is an interesting concept to have running in my head. It's now just waiting for the right story to convince me to make it a reality.

But these two months are supposed to be about tackling my TBR pile and finally getting them read. Some of these have been on the TBR shelf for a year or more. Which is sad because I've now realized that if I don't read the book within a reasonable time frame (a month perhaps, not sure) I struggle to get up the motivation to actually read it.

How are your WiPs going?

If you have a question you're dying to ask me, something you want me to address either here on my site or over at the Dojo, send it to info(at)stephanie-mcgee(dot)com

Comments and other fun stuff can be sent to stephanie(at)stephanie-mcgee(dot)com

Pacing and Plotting

For me, I think pacing is probably the second-hardest element of writing. (Voice being hardest. It's so nebulous.)

But pacing and plotting go hand-in-hand. Maybe that's why I consider pacing so difficult. I lean heavily toward the pantsing end of the plotter-pantser spectrum.

One element of pacing is the reveal of motivations/reasons/logic bits of worldbuilding. (I write fantasy so that last bit really comes into play.)

This new season on television, I've culled quite a few shows but I've added one (two) shows to my lineup. The CW's Arrow is one of them. Love this show. (And no, not just because Captain Jack has appeared and is now back on my TV.)

It's a solid show, in my opinion. Of course it has all the standard comic book/superhero tropes. That's a given, considering it's based off a DC comic.

One of the biggest tropes is that no one puts two and two together to figure out the real-life identity of our superhero/vigilante.

At least, in the comics it's a trope. And it's one Arrow has attacked head on really early in the season. For those not familiar with the show or the comic (definitely me on the latter), the MC was shipwrecked and lived on a remote island for five years. He was found and returned home and now he's a bow-and-arrow wielding vigilante by night, rich playboy by day.

The obvious question here is when is someone going to figure out they both showed up at the same time? We're only five episodes into the season and they've already confronted that issue, even going so far as to have the MC state to his lone confidant that he expected people to start suspecting the truth. And that he's got a contingency plan for when that happens.

To connect it with writing, I encountered a similar situation with Woven. After it came back from betas, I thought hard about some of the issues underlying some of the comments. And I realized that I needed to move up a couple of reveals. Specifically the MC's father's absence. The MC refers quite often to the deaths of her parents and the grandmother who raised her from the time she was a baby. She has a lot of resentment over her father's absence, which is something I wanted to reveal slowly.

But the snail's pace I originally set for it was causing a bit of hangup in understanding the MC. I had originally written the reveal into one scene, with one of the three love interests, then cut it. Then I added it back into the book, in a different scene and with another love interest. It works better now and it helps with some character development without slowing down the pacing. I just lengthened a conversation the two characters were having in a quiet moment to add it in, but the scene was already there.

Do you struggle with pacing? Do you agree with me that it's a very difficult part of writing?


If you have a question you're dying to ask me, something you want me to address either here on my site or over at the Dojo, send it to info(at)stephanie-mcgee(dot)com

Comments and other fun stuff can be sent to stephanie(at)stephanie-mcgee(dot)com

WiP Wednesday

So, for some reason, I've gone back to a MWF schedule. Not sure how that happened, but it works I guess.

Woven is fully line-edited and those edits are in the manuscript. This week I've got to get on my mom's computer and work on the formatting in Word. I don't write with Word on my computer. I use a different program that lets me export to Word, but formatting gets eaten quite often when exporting. So I'll have to work on that and create files that are not allowed to be opened on my computer for the querying process. I'm working on the synopsis and query at the moment, as well.

Curse of Life is nearing completion. It's so close I can taste it. I'm hoping to have it done this week. I left off at the end of last week with my MC preparing to give her rally the troops speech. I'm aiming for President Mitchell in Independence Day but it might end up, in first draft, more Snow White in Snow White and the Huntsman. That's what revisions are for, right?

All right, I have to go ahead and add in the full update. I was going to wait for next week, but I couldn't. I FINISHED CURSE OF LIFE!!!!!!

Such a relief to finally have this book drafted after several months of inconsistent writing. Now starts the laborious process of typing up the manuscript. I wrote this one longhand, and it's a long one. This book was also an interesting experience for me. Which I'll blog more about on Friday. Or next Monday. I have to sort my brain a bit.

I worked some on the background for another book set in the same universe as Woven, but occurring about 15 years after the end of Heirs of the Seven Realms ends. It is currently tiled Raven.

How are your WiPs going?

If you have a question you're dying to ask me, something you want me to address either here on my site or over at the Dojo, send it to info(at)stephanie-mcgee(dot)com

Comments and other fun stuff can be sent to stephanie(at)stephanie-mcgee(dot)com

The Downside of Traditional or Epic Fantasy

In re-evaluating the self-imposed deadlines I set for myself, I started thinking about the wisdom of writing the books sitting in my brain.

On the one hand, I feel like there are so many characters and stories in there right now there isn't room for more, for different. That's the biggest factor that makes writing these stories right now so appealing.

On the other hand, all these books hinge on Woven and its trilogy getting published. Events that are the crux of the story in Heirs of the Seven Realms inform the events of pretty much everything else. Characters sometimes cross over from book to book, and sometimes one story's book will have a side or tertiary character whose offspring appears later.

Someone remind me not to ever come up with and entertain so many stories that cross each other again, okay?


If you have a question you're dying to ask me, something you want me to address either here on my site or over at the Dojo, send it to info(at)stephanie-mcgee(dot)com 

Comments and other fun stuff can be sent to stephanie(at)stephanie-mcgee(dot)com

WiP Wednesday 9/23-9/29

By last Friday, I'd finished my on-paper line edits of Woven. I say on-paper because I actually had the book printed and coil-bound. Until this point, everything I had done with the book, every draft (save the rough because I wrote that by hand) was done on the computer. I need a format change after six rounds of edits on the computer. It helps me catch things and is more easily navigable than a word processing file if I need to flip back to the previous page for a moment.

After that it was time to input all those line edits into the computer. As I'm doing this, I'm also following a process for synopsis writing which I outlined a while back, probably about a year or so ago. So when I get done inputting the line edits for a chapter, I add that chapter to my synopsis.

How in the world do you make a synopsis only two pages long? Really? Two chapters took up an entire page. And I have 29 chapters!

As for Curse of Life that one's chugging along. But I was still a ways from finishing as of last Friday. No way was I going to make my deadline of end of day Sunday. Not unless I took Sunday as a writing day instead of a relaxing day.

So, needless to say, I've missed two more self-imposed deadlines. I think, though, I set myself up for failure with the deadlines I set. I think it would take a superhuman or a time traveler to work at the pace I tried to set for myself. So I'm currently in the process of reevaluating my deadlines and pushing timelines back.

How are your WiPs going?