Fairy Revel

Just got back from a trip to see a niece graduate. A fun time was had by all, but I’m glad to be back home.

Before I left, something happened (a relationship thing) that left me devastated . . . yet somehow rekindled the creative fire at the same time. It’s as if letting go of this situation cleared away the distractions and sharpened my vision. The decision to stop pining for him and create solely because I need to, instead of in preparation for a future too far away to see, gave me a sense of purpose I didn’t have before. I still have the Dream, it’s just put away for now. I imagine I’ll take it out from time to time, when it helps more than it hurts.

I picked up Foxglove again before I left, and made some breakthroughs that I think will really open the story up and take it into unexpected avenues. The process I’m experimenting with is working beautifully so far; I printed out what I had of the manuscript (about 100 pages), sat down with it and cut up everything into scenes, did notecards for each, and took notes on where the story was pointing, and where I wanted it to go. I’ve got some subplots in development, and my Sentence finally seemed to come together in a way that it hadn’t before. So it’s going extremely well. I can’t wait to get back to work on it!

Right now I’m reading Whose Body by Dorothy L. Sayers for The Classics Circuit: The Golden Age of Detective Fiction on Tour, and still working at The Iliad. There’s something pleasant about reading it, even if it’s not exactly a book I’d choose to snuggle up with.

I’m working on Foxglove and another character is surprising me. I love it when this happens. I’ve never been the “my characters have minds of their own!” type of writer, but I can definitely see why people feel that way. This character, a Herald of Searoyal, is not only surprising the other charcters, but is a bit of a mystery to me. I know she’s more than she seems, but I’m not sure how or in what way.

The first character to really surprise me, a wizard, at first I just knew was doomed to dullness. It’s strange, but just one illuminating detail and one charged moment completely changed how I see him, and I can’t wait to work on his scenes. It’s fun to see the story and characters unfold like this; at the moment I’m pretty glad I made the decision to cut back on outlining. I think the outlines were making me feel restricted, made me unable to get new ideas once I started the draft. It does feel risky, though. Only time (and revision) will tell if this book will come together in the end.

At this point, I’m of the opinion that no book written with the basic building blocks of story in mind, even just barely in the back of one’s mind, is unsalvageable. I may turn out to be wrong about that, but for now, I’m sticking to the theory that anything can be saved in revision, unless there’s no story at all. And even vignettes without a story can be molded into something better.

The progress is a bit slower and more erratic than I’d hoped this time around, but so far I’ve been able to write at least a little each day, and I’m pleased with how it’s going. I think I can get it done by my (self-imposed) deadline.

I’m working on a “new” project, working title Foxglove, and it’s almost as if I’ve forgotten how to plan a story. (I put quotes around “new” because really, the idea is old, but I’m starting over with it.)

I did no planning for my NaNoWriMo manuscript, Dogwood, and even though it left my novel an unmitigated mess, it was freeing and helped me see that things don’t have be perfectly planned for the manuscript to get finished. In my case, over-planning is a detriment. It’s probably the reason why I’ve got so many unfinished stories in my files. It’s not that I feel like “I’ve told the story already”; it’s just that having all the scenes planned makes me feel committed to them, and saps all the joy out of writing them down.

In spite of that, I wanted to do a little planning this time around, and realized as I started that I’d forgotten how. I stared at my barely begun 7 1/2 Point Plan, wondering what should happen. I sat down for a few minutes with Orson Scott Card’s How to Write Science Fiction & Fantasy (a classic genre how-to, especially great for beginners), and he reminded me that story planning is all about those “what if” questions. A light went on. “Oh, yeah! Brainstorming!”

Brainstorming is something I’m good at, up to a point. After I get a certain amount of framework in my mind, however, I have to start being organized and sitting down with a pen and notebook to draw maps and do free association. I don’t know if it’s OCD or what, but I start circling around the same ideas over and over after awhile, broken record-like, and if I don’t start writing things down I can’t get past that point.

I’m feeling positive about Foxglove, which will be the first novel in my Searoyal setting. I have a much better understanding of my own process than I did before NaNoWriMo. While I plan out the 7 major plot points of my story, I’m also going to work on a setting bible, just so I can keep everything straight.