Drafting and story playlists

Hey guys! So I sort of have news on Secret Agent Man? Or rather, I have been told that I will have news before long? So watch this space! Hopefully I will have some HUNGRY GROUND news to share with you soon!

In the meantime, though, I have finally gotten back to drafting in these recent months, after repeatedly running into a brick wall with the project I was originally going to work with. (You know how some stories just have to percolate in your head for years before they get to a place where you can write them? Yeahhh. Every time I try to start that story I get closer, but I'm not there yet. Next time, for sure!)

In any case, though I have a long list of story ideas on the back-burner, I decided I wanted to start completely from scratch, and after working out some initial kinks, I decided on my new project: a YA mashup of gothic horror and period drama, set in pre-WW1 Massachusetts. The working title is TICK TOCK, but who knows if that'll change later!

When I started, though, I didn't even realize how long I'd been in editing mode, to the point where I had to get used to the process of drafting again. I eventually re-learned to embrace the fact that I was going to fix everything later (and I hit 16K yesterday!) but I've been doing a lot more tweaking and trimming as I go.

It's also been interesting to switch gears between projects this time around, especially since I know that more HG revisions are on the horizon, but a big part of that is my brainstorming playlist. My playlists tend to expand the longer I'm working on the project, but it all pretty much starts with two or three songs I listen to on repeat as I'm planning the project. So far, my new playlist is mostly comprised of my standard horror-writing songs, like Haunted by Poe, but the two big ones have both been from Florence + the Machine's most recent album: Seven Devils and No Light, No Light. (Incidentally, the two big ones for HG are Howl and Rabbit Heart from Florence's previous album. Clearly she needs to come out with something new every time I write a new project?)

How about you guys? How do you get in the mood for a new project?

A good dilemma to have, I suppose

Good morning, all!

I have been trying to relax lately - I needed to recharge my brain and just spend some quality time reading other people's awesome writing. But now I'm too fired up to relax. I'm ready to charge ahead. Every time I think about the revisions on the horizon, I get a rush of nervousness and excitement. What new directions will I get to take the MS in? Do I have the talent to pull it off? Can I measure up to this agent's other clients?

It doesn't help that there aren't a lot of places to channel that energy. Work has been a lot of the same lately. I usually would compensate for that by working on another MS, but I don't want to start anything new when I know I'm going to revisit THE HUNGRY GROUND so soon. I like to keep a steady momentum going with my WIPs. Once I start a project, I really throw myself into it.

But I have a confession to make. Even before, when I was querying, I was having a lot of trouble starting a new project. Not because I didn't have any ideas. Because I have too freaking many.

There are a total of five projects I can tackle, all YA. Three are new - one is urban fantasy, one is horror, and one is straight-up fantasy with dark fairy tale undertones - and the other two are reboots of older fantasy projects. No one project really has an edge on the other, because there are things that draw me to each one, and there are parts of each one that I still need to figure out. And this is, of course, assuming that a new project doesn't suddenly appear and sweep me off my feet. Sigh. 

Since my revisions have not quite started in earnest yet, I want to take this time to fill in some of the gaps. I have some exercises I can do, but I'm curious: what would you all advise? Questionnaires? Flow-charts? Some kind of cage-match between all the protagonists? I'm welcome to all suggestions!

Getting started

Good morning! I feel like there needs to be a manual on managing a writer-blog. Tonight I need to find myself a suitable profile picture, and I think a little customization wouldn't go amiss, either. My tech-savviness does not extend to HTML, sadly, so we'll see what happens with that.

There are plenty of beginnings to go around lately. Yesterday I got some significant work done on a new story - I want to say it's my new big project, but I'm still leaving things open. It's been harder than usual to decide this time around. The querying process is filled with so much uncertainty (and so many mood-swings) that it can be hard to make myself commit to something. It was easier last time, when there was one story idea that was so much more developed than the others. This time, I had several ideas competing with each other. Sometimes I wanted to write them all, and sometimes I was sure that none of them were good enough.

But the thing about getting started is that my brain doesn't really start firing until I get going on something. Once I start writing, things start clicking into place faster than I can keep track. And I hit a point yesterday where everything was suddenly so much easier, all because I started to write a scene involving the core group.

I've been told that you can tell a lot about a person by the company they choose, so I guess it makes sense that my characters only start making sense when I delve into their relationships. On my last project, I actually took a trio of supporting characters and turned them into the protagonists just because I loved their group dynamic so much. The same goes for most of my other projects, really: the story only took off when I realized who was important to the protagonist and why. It gives me so much to work with in terms of the characters' personalities and interactions, which fills in so many blanks for me.

What about you guys? Is there an element that's important for you to understand before you really dive in?