It’s Drafting Time!

Posted on January 19, 2014 by mickisclark

I don’t know why, but in my head, I just heard Boxing Announcer Guy doing the intro for this entry.  You know, “Luh-het’s get rrrrrreaaaaaaaady to wriiiiiiiiiiiiiiii-hite!”  Yes.  Ahem.  Sorry.  Apparently my brain is really pumped for this WIP.  It happens.  🙂  Anyway, the topic of the day is drafting.  Another conversation I have a lot with students is that they have difficulty doing the writing.  They have the idea, but getting it to paper is nigh on impossible.  Okay.  Challenge accepted.  It’s drafting time. Continue reading →

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My Outlining Strategy

Posted on January 18, 2014 by mickisclark

In a post earlier today, I mentioned my outlining strategy.  In case you’re curious about my mystical poster board, I thought I’d share the way I like to outline my plot.

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The “Write” Way to Write?

Posted on January 18, 2014 by mickisclark

I bet one of the things I discuss most often with my students and the students in the young writers’ club I sponsor is the writing process.  What they all basically want to know:  “Is there one right way to write?”

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Protect Yourself.

Posted on January 17, 2014 by mickisclark

Seriously.  In just the last few days, I have been absolutely flabbergasted by the number of people I’ve seen online offering “editing services” for novice writers.  Don’t.  Waste.  Your.   Money.

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It’s time for the honeymoon again.

Posted on January 14, 2014 by mickisclark

It’s time for the honeymoon!  You know, that phase of your writing where you’re still so in love with your new idea that you’re willing to do anything for it because you just love it so much. Continue reading →

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Location is (apparently) everything.

Posted on January 12, 2014 by mickisclark

I purposefully took a giant step back from my NaNoWriMo 2012 project for two big reasons:  first, it was still too fresh for a fair revision.  Second, I was really struggling with the blend of reality in my fiction.  What I came to realize is that all of those people blathering about “location, location, location” are so right–location is everything.

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Camp NaNoWriMo – April 2013

Posted on March 30, 2013 by mickisclark

I haven’t visited this blog much since finishing November’s NaNoWriMo.  I am beyond flattered that it still continues to get hits and follows.  Thank you so much.

I still like this story, but I need some time off from it before going back and revising it to make it into a finished product.  Aside from the obvious first draft quality of the manuscript, there are several issues I’m just not happy with.  I’m also afraid that it’s a bit too close to home.  I should have set it in a different town–I don’t want people to get the wrong idea and think that this is about specific people in my past, because it’s not.

If you’re interested in reading other things that I’ve written, I’d like to invite you to visit my Camp NaNoWriMo project blog.  Camp NaNo begins on April 1, and I’m so excited to begin.

Next month, I will be writing a young adult fantasy novel.  The idea is actually one I had for a short story that I wrote in high school (let’s pretend that wasn’t that long ago, mmmmkay?) and just decided to flesh out recently.  I’m very excited about the plot and the concept and am really looking forward to having a completed draft ready to revise and share with the world.  I feel like this project might be The One–you know, the one that finally gives me the gumption to find The Agent and attempt to become a Real Live Published Writer.

Hope to see you there!  Thanks again for the follows–they really do mean so much to me.

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The Miller Farm

Posted on December 5, 2012 by mickisclark

The Miller Farm

All right, I’m aware that many of you may be raising an eyebrow, but specific physical locations are often just as much characters as the people that inhabit them.

The Farmhouse (Exterior)

farmhouseThis is not a great picture for what I’m visualizing, especially since it’s backwards (I want the wraparound porch on the other side, and I’m thinking a detached garage. However, I want the house to have two full floors and a half basement, more of a storm cellar than a finished basement (Nadine uses it for storage). I also want the porch to be a bit higher up than that is, so you have to take maybe four steps to go up the porch.

The house needs to be white, with black shutters and shingles. The trim on the porch is painted white. The only splash of color is the red front door, painted by Nadine a few years ago. The porch has white wooden furnishings, including a porch swing at one end (the left–the right side will wrap around). In front of the porch is plenty of landscaping and several red rosebushes.

The Farmhouse (My Sketches)

The exterior of the home.

The exterior of the home.

Ground floor.

Ground floor.

Second floor

Second floor

These sketches don’t show a half basement, because honestly, I’m not sure where to put it. I don’t have room for another flight of stairs, really.

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When Your Characters Are Smarter Than You…

Posted on December 2, 2012 by mickisclark

…you should really hand over the keyboard and let them write for awhile.

As I’m rethinking what I wrote during NaNoWriMo, I’m finding a lot of decisions that I forced upon my characters that just don’t fit.  Some of them are minor, some of them are massive.

For example, David’s twin brother should be named Daniel, not Dennis.  And it’s not very realistic for his fiancee to be from California.  He wouldn’t go that far from his family and then move right back home.  She wouldn’t consent to lower herself to the small-town life if she was accustomed to LA.  So she’s got to be from a different state, which means he’s not going to UCLA–and they’ll meet somewhere else.

It’s really not that big a deal to rethink those details.  It’s actually somewhat fun to figure out who your characters actually are.

What frustrates me is the amount of popular fiction out there that’s very forced.  We need an element of romance here, so let’s force in a character and force them to fall in love, even though they are polar opposites.  And then let’s have them get married, because we need them to, never mind that they’ve never even kissed.  <<insert eye roll here>>

I understand the concept of formulaic fiction.  I do.  I teach the hero’s journey in class.

And it’s not that I have a problem with formulaic fiction.  It’s formulaic fiction that attempts to be rigidly aligned to the formula on the one hand while being super innovative on the other that turns me off.  You can’t do it.

I think that’s why I hate reality TV, actually.  It’s pretty obvious that people are forced into situations and given a “script” for how to handle them.  It’s why they look so stiff.  Guess what?  Real life isn’t all that interesting 24/7.  The producers have to force the plotline on the characters, and that just doesn’t work.

So as you revise your NaNo, please keep in mind that your characters may actually be smarter than you are.  They know who they are and who they want to become.  They know what sort of things they’d actually do and which they’d never even dream of attempting.

If that means you have to scrap a large portion of what you’ve written, don’t lose heart.  Don’t delete it.  Maybe you can recycle some of the sentences, maybe you can’t.  But if you end up with a stronger plot and more realistic characters out of it, the gain should outweigh the loss.

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Ch-ch-ch-changes…

Posted on November 28, 2012 by mickisclark

I appreciate NaNoWriMo for helping me force the majority of this story out of my brain, but WOW, is it refreshing to take some time off to refine and reconsider.  🙂

Among the major changes:  Dennis is now Daniel.  No major reason, really, just that it occurred to me that if one twin had a Biblical name, considering all else, the other would, too.

I’m also taking some time off to do some character sketches before I write the final chapters of the novel, so I can more accurately portray those characters in those chapters.  Their personality’s pretty important if they’re going to fall in love, you know. 😉

I think one thing I’ve learned about myself from this NaNo experience is that I do really well with the deadline (I’m a competitive personality), but if I do it again, I need to have a stronger outline and character sketches in place.  I’ve kind of met these characters as I’ve gone along, and there are things I don’t really like about the way I wrote them (based on my outline, anyway).

For example, if Nadine is Naomi, and Rachel is Ruth, why does Beau have to be Boaz?  Why couldn’t he be Brian?  Or Bradley?  Or Brent?  Or any of a host of other names I like better than Beau?  I didn’t have a last name for his character until I started doing the character sketches, because I couldn’t think of a last name I liked with Beau.  I’m now thinking the problem is that I don’t really like Beau.  So…that’s probably going to change too.  Thank goodness for find + replace.

It has been fun trying to visualize my characters for the character sketches.  I really think I should have done that first.  It would have saved me a lot of revision that I now see is necessary.  However I’m not *that* upset about it, because I’m going to be changing so much about those first chapters anyway.  I still like the story, and still want to tell it, but I think I am going to redo the beginning and start a bit earlier.

I also think I want to reconsider the way Beau’s character is introduced.  I think he needs to be closer to Nadine than he is now, which I kind of intended originally and sort of forgot.

Oh well.

I’m working on an outline for the final chapters now, to give me a more definitive “progress toward the end”, and I will probably start working on those this weekend.  After that, I plan to get a manuscript printed so I can have a print copy next to my screen and revise it.

I won’t be posting the complete revisions on this blog (sorry), but I will still be using this blog to bounce ideas off someone in cyberspace (even if it’s just my own echo as I reread what I’ve posted) or share occasional excerpts for opinions.

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