When Writing and Life Collide

I took this photo at 7:45pm last night, as I lay in a lawn chair, talking on the phone to a good friend. We'd been trying for a simultaneous voice chat (as opposed to non-simultaneous texting) for two full days. We had writing developments to discuss and we were both just crazy busy. I kind of tacked this on to the end of my day - which she did, too, an hour ahead of me in time zone - and it ended up being... just lovely. I relaxed in the chair, drinking wine and watching the sky change.

The topic in the bordello this week is "The world out there: when writing and life collide and conflict."

Boy, is it topical for me.

I've been running a packed schedule since the RT Convention, largely because I have a book due July 1 and, of course, it's coming out longer than I thought. I'm drafting at a grueling (for me) 2,500 words/day. It's difficult for me to do more and have brain capacity for the day job. (I work as an environmental consultant, so I am literally paid to think, which can be daunting.) I'm at 85,000 words on this book - the 4th in my Twelve Kingdoms series - with anywhere from 24,000 to 36,000 to go. Which means I'm headed into the final 25% of the book, which is the part that works me over the most. Not necessarily difficult, but the part that feels like it carves out a big piece of my soul, as if the book requires a chunk of my life energy to come alive.

Somewhere a portrait of me is aging five years, every time I finish a book.

To put a cherry topper on my Sundae of Superhuman effort, I fly today to Oklahoma City to spend a week there for the day job. I have no idea how well I'll do keeping up with writing, but I'm determined to try.

I saw a group of authors discussing this phase, how when writing a book they get totally absorbed in it, forget other things, leave food to burn, make mistakes at the day job. Some said they lock themselves in their offices for weeks at time, let their families cook for themselves, pay someone to come in and clean, check into a hotel for three nights to crank out 30,000 words. I don't go to these extremes for two reasons. 1) I write pretty steadily. I'm *always* working on a book at something like 1,500-2,000 words/day, so I never do the big crunch like that and 2) I can't afford to.

Literally. I have to have the day job as I'm the primary wage earner in our household and it still brings in more money than writing does. I don't want to devote any of that money to paying someone to clean. We divide the chores and I feel strongly about holding up my end of them.

Also...

Balance is important and keeps me sane. So, after Oklahoma City, we're visiting family in Denver. We'll spend the weekend with my folks, see our daughter and son-in-law, celebrate our grandson's birthday. It will be a few days of the equivalent of a breath in a lawn chair watching a sunset and connecting with a good friend.

The book will get done. It always does. 

Gratitude in Writing

Writing doesn't happen in a vacuum. If it does, all too often, it isn't much good. Ideas that are challenged grow wings - so long as the challenging is done with respect and love. Any of you who've looked at my books and taking any note of the huge list of acknowledgements in the front. know I thank the same people over and over again. That's for a reason. They're the people I can count on through thick and through thin to talk me down from whichever writing ledge I may be staring down. Fellow Word Whores Jeffe Kennedy and KAK and former Word Whore Carolyn Crane will all give me the straight skinny my stories and/or ideas.

I'm lucky in that I have a local critique group that meets in person. Lisa Wanttaja, Darcy Carson, DeeAnna Galbraith and Melinda Rucker Haynes work their backsides off combing whatever I'm writing to make sure I'm making sense and the stories hold together. The great thing about this group is that it's been meeting since before forever. These ladies know me and my writing. Sometimes, it means they know what I *meant* to say but failed to. Sometimes, it means they can nail me for taking the easy way out of a conflict conundrum. When I can't see the forest or the trees, they're terrific at prodding me out of my rut and help me think differently about what I'm doing.

I have some of the best editors on earth and I am grateful for each and every one of them. Even my copy editors - ask any of my crit partners. I complain about my CEs. I do. And then I get over myself and seriously evaluate everything my copy editors suggest because the entire point is change my brain about how the story went together. It's the old sales technique: If there's a better way to make your point, you'd want to know about, right? Damn it. NO. . . Eh. Yeah. Yeah, I do. But I'm gonna grumble about it! It's all in the name of building a better book.

My family. My parents. My husband. My cats. All of them. These are the people who haven't (and who still don't) kill me for getting lost in my stories. They're now my biggest cheerleaders. My mother would be knocking on your door to hand sell my books to you if she liked to fly more than she does.

But you know what I'm most grateful for? You guys. Readers. Thank you. Seriously, thank you.

Cover Reveal! Oh. And Maybe Sidekicks.

Look at what showed up in my in-box this week. The cover for Bound By Ink. Isn't it pretty? Creepy. Lovely. It makes me so happy. It's apropos that the cover showed up in time for this post, because it's in this book where I got the whole secondary character thing wrong.

 

Most heroes and heroines are pretty self-sufficient. So why do they even need a cast of supporting characters?

Well. How many of us exist in splendid isolation IRL? Sure. Depending on the day, any of us might *wish* we did, but the truth is we have family, friends, and coworkers no matter how dysfunctional. We’re social animals and we are products of our mostly shared human experience. (Yeah, okay, Dexter and Hannibal are notable exceptions…) There’s a psychological hypothesis that suggests most of us spend our lives building a family that cures the wounds acquired in our family of origin. No family of origin can be everything to each kid and that’s without any egregious dysfunction in said family. According to this theory, we come to our lives slightly injured. Winged and vulnerable. Searching for someone(s) enough like us to give us whatever acceptance we crave. We speak in terms of finding our tribe.

It is likely, then, that our characters are in the same situation. Either they are looking for a tribe that can bring them healing, or they are already surrounded by the people who can challenge them to become better.

All well and good, right? But why are these secondary characters necessary to the story at all? No matter the story-telling medium, secondary characters should be holding up mirrors to your MC. Each of those secondaries should show your MC some different aspect of him or herself. Secondary characters are forcing the MC to step up to whatever challenges need to be faced – they urge the MC to change – to acknowledge their shortcomings and overcome them.

Most of my stories are about alienated heroines searching for a place to belong. In the first two books, Ari and Jayleia each know that’s what they’re after. In their cases, they were each cast out of one tribe and are flailing while seeking another. Enemy Within and Enemy Games have big casts of secondary characters. Reasons: War. Five book series. Three cultures in conflict. Heroines expelled from family on one side, forced to cross political boundaries in order to find their places in the sun. The cast of secondary characters for those books are supplying the heroes and heroines for the rest of the series. There’s just a lot going on there and the cast of thousands really is necessary. Besides. War. People die. This requires that you have enough cast in place to accommodate the die offs.

In Nightmare Ink and Bound By Ink, Isa has no idea she’s seeking family. The whole family thing hasn’t worked out well for her and she’s frankly terrified of caring or being cared for. But when she ends up gravely wounded, she finds out she’s already surrounded by a group of friends who have made themselves her true family without her having realized it. Yet another group of unlikely allies orbit a little farther out, but they rely upon her. She finds out she can count on them, too, when the dying starts.

 

As for what I got wrong in Bound By Ink? How much is too much. My own tribe had to urge me to pull back on the extended posse appearances. So about the point that secondary characters are on the page simply because I needed to remind you they existed - that is posse gone wrong.

 

 

The Good, the Bad, and the High School

Full disclosure: If I'm writing -  actually getting story on virtual paper, there is no place, no matter how awful, that's totally bad. It's only when I'm trying and failing to write that I claim someplace is worst. I'm keeping a running list.

1. Onboard a moving boat while a cat is having a full blown panic attack and insists she'll only be okay if you hold her and never let her go. Though, to be honest, that can go much worse. Sometimes the cat gets seasick into the bargain.
2. Onboard a moving boat because getting lost in your own little fictional world and forgetting to look up at the horizon once in a while is a sure fire recipe for getting seasick yourself.
3. Family events of any kind  - they've put up with this writing shit for however many years old you are. When it's Mom's 70th birthday? No one understands the need to just get this awesome idea on paper.
4. In a moving car - again with the motion sickness thing. I'm fortunate that airplanes aren't usually a problem. Or maybe it's that I'm already drugged to the gills in order to fly in the first place.
5. Anyplace with an internet connection - seriously. The best and most progress I made on books ever has been when my internet connection was down. Easy to make fictional tracks when you're not being tempted away to glance at email. Or Twitter. Or Facebook.
6. In the company of my nearest and dearest. I love my family. I promise. But there's something about me wanting to sit down and make word count that turns my normally rational husband and standoffish cats into creatures who adore me and can't possibly live without me. And they must all off them tell me so the second my fingers make contact with my keyboard. Writing email? No one cares. Blog posts? Yawn. Open the WIP? It's like I opened a can of magical husband and cat luring scent - pizza for him, tuna for the felines.
   

This is why I'm going to say what I'm going to say: Public places are generally conducive to my getting a novel written. So long as I *like* the place, I have  my mp3 player, and a little bit of space. The trick is to carve a tiny bit of personal space out of that public place. Make your booth in the café into your own little world. My corner table at the tea shop I jokingly call my office allows me to spread out just enough to have a buffer between me and any potential neighbors. The headphones and soundtracks I've chosen close out the public to an even larger degree.

The place where I wrote that I hated the most? High school. Wasn't a happy kid, I grant you that. It's hard to claim it's the worst place I ever wrote, though, because writing in order to survive high school is what made it necessary for me to write to survive period. And as coping mechanisms go? This is a-okay. I make shit up and occasionally, someone pays me for it. What's not to like?