State of the Becky

Heyyyy, all! I hope everyone is doing well, and I hope the USians among you are staying safe amid this swath of summer storms.

Sorry it has been so quiet around here lately! I am still around, lurking and reading all your posts, but I have not had much to post lately. It seems I have finally reached the point in my publishing journey where it's better if I just keep my mouth shut about the specifics until I have something concrete to say - which is not a natural impulse for me, having blogged so heavily about my querying process, but I'm getting used to it! So all I'll say is: all is well, my soul remains uncrushed by this business, and perhaps someday in the future I will be running all over the blogosphere screaming news from the rooftops.

In the meantime, I have hammered out my writing schedule for the foreseeable future, and I am really excited about it. There was a significant period of time last year where I had a lot of half-formed ideas but wasn't truly excited about any of them, but now I'm really happy with my line-up and I can't wait to get to work. And, of course, this allows for the prospect of a new idea coming in and sweeping me off my feet, which is always fun.

Here's what I've got on tap, and the order in which I'll tackle them:

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Project #1: Revisionland! Once again. =P I would have thought that revising a single manuscript so many times would be a tad bit disheartening, but it's actually really fun. There's something really fascinating about working on something you know inside and out -just when you think you're done renovating, you find a whole new floor of the house you haven't even touched yet. Working on this one has really been a crash course in how to be a better writer. I'm just waiting on some notes, and then off I go again.

Project #2: Drafting overhaul. I generally don't do this, but Project #2 is a special case - the drafting process got pretty broken up amidst all my trips to Revisionland, and though I had 60k under my belt in the first draft, I realized I was going into Act Three without any of my usual momentum. And since this is probably one of the most heavily structured stories I've done, I need that momentum!

So once those Project #1 revisions are done, I'm going back to the beginning with Project #2. I won't be starting from scratch, but I can change the things I need to change, and keep the rest consistent. And that'll free me up to plow full speed ahead into the as-yet-unwritten denouement!

Project #3: Drafting! FINALLY. Project #3 has gone through two or three false starts since I came up with the idea a couple years ago, and it's finally ready to go. And I couldn't be happier. It'll take me back in a more surreal, fantastical direction (Project #2 is straight gothic horror), it takes place in one of my favorite cities in the world, and if I do it right, it will give people nightmares. So let's hope I do it right.

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So that's what I'm up to, loves. What are you working on this summer?

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?

Revisions. Revisions forever.

It is a very good thing that I had a relaxing holiday weekend, because I have gone right back to my 'office by day, revisions by night' schedule of unholy doom. And as if to prove a point, in the middle of writing that sentence I was dragged off to negotiate with florists. (Oh, day job. You give me such interesting life skills.)

I'm working very late tomorrow night, so I want to make sure to get lots done tonight. I've got four chapters left to mark up and make notes on, and my outlines and lists of new/extended scenes grow longer every day. Right now I am mainly focusing on the gaps where I can weave in the new material, and the areas that can be rewritten to strengthen voice. Making the exposition and worldbuilding richer is going to be tons of fun, but the real work will be giving this manuscript a beating heart.

And that all hinges on my protagonist, Kalinda. Oh, Kalinda. I know she's not the cold fish everyone thinks she is, and I know she wants to look that way because she thinks people will take her more seriously. I know how desperately she wants to be the hero, the knight in shining armor, and I know how deeply rooted her fears, doubts, and insecurities are. I know that she has a crush she emphatically does not want to have, and I know that she keeps her mouth shut because when she doesn't, all the awkwardness just pours right out.

But Kalinda? Just because you're reserved doesn't mean you can hold all these things back from me.

The challenge here is going to be to really break that character open and let the readers see her as she is, not how she wants to appear. That's the main focus of my reread right now. And I think that if I nail that in the rewrites, my MS is going to be so, so much better.

So, y'know. No pressure or anything.

On an unrelated note, I'm loving all the writing excerpts around here lately! I'd love to join in the fun, but I don't know what I'd post. Do y'all have any suggestions/things you're curious to see?

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!

Writing as catharsis

Hey there, everyone. Sorry to bring sadness to the blog today, but this is a good place to get things off my chest.

My beautiful, lovable, pain-in-the-ass family cat Holly passed away last week. I am doing better than I was, but it still hurts to think about her. I can distract myself for brief periods of time, but Holly is everywhere, in all my important memories. Every time I try to get away just for an hour or two, I always come back to her eventually.

But when it's too hard to confront things head-on, I have somewhere else to go: my fiction. I don't tend to base characters off of my own life, but when I reread my work, the emotions are recognizable as my own. I began Grandmaster Draw when I was living with a host family and forced to suppress who I was around them. I began The Hungry Ground when I was standing on the edge of adulthood and wondering if I was strong enough to do what I really loved. The situations are more thrilling and the stakes are always higher for my characters, but we both always come to a conclusion... even if it's not the same one.

About three or four years ago, I was working on updating one of my first story ideas from when I was younger: a fantasy/political intrigue type story in the vein of Megan Whalen Turner's books. I stopped midway when I realized the story needed another plot overhaul, but the main characters remain some of my favorite to work with ever.

One of the things I still do like a lot is the setting - a fictional country in the years following a bloody coup d'etat - and the effect it has on the characters. There's a constant undercurrent of longing for the things they've lost.

I've been thinking about that story a lot this week, and it's comforted me somewhat. Because when I was working on that story, it wasn't so much the tragic aspects that caught my attention. It was the ways in which the characters struggled to turn that tragedy into strength, and the way that someone's influence could echo long after they were gone.

I probably won't restart that story for a while - there's still a lot of plot to overhaul. But I think this week I'd like to write a few short stories with those characters.  I hope that in writing about it, I can exorcise some of those tangled-up emotions, and my memories can become comforting, not painful.

Thanks for letting me vent, guys. If you have a story about a time you used writing as catharsis, I'd love to hear it.