Je ne sais quoi

Good morning, everyone! Are y'all as stressed out as I am right now? :) I have quite a few balls in the air, so to speak, so it's been a bit hard to relax lately.

Though my R&R has kept me out of the querying trenches for the past year (!) or so, I've been thinking about that rejection I'm sure we've all received once: "I just didn't fall in love the way I'd hoped." It's a frustrating one, for sure, because maybe there's nothing wrong with the manuscript. Maybe it just didn't cross over from like to love.

It got me thinking about my own reactions to fiction. As I said on Twitter a while ago, I basically have four possible responses to a movie, TV show, or book:

1. Ugh - This is not only bad, it's offensive or problematic in some way, and thinking about it annoys me.

2. Ehhh - Most bad or mediocre fiction falls into this category, and I won't waste energy hating it.

3. I like this! - Fiction in this category ranges from good to excellent. If it's a movie or TV show, it's something I enjoy having on in the background while I do line-edits or work out, and if it's a book, I'll usually spend a nice weekend afternoon reading it. Sometimes I forget it as soon as I'm done, and other times I will idly ponder plot points and relationships on my commute.

4. LYING ON THE FLOOR, INCAPACITATED BY EMOTIONS - I love it so much I cannot actually deal.

Gif is from this album.

Being in love with a piece of fiction is a wonderful thing. I giggle incessantly at the funny moments, I bawl my eyes out at the emotional moments, and I make giant heart eyes at all the characters. Sometimes I'm able to write long, loving reviews about why it's so good, but as a rule, the more I love something, the less coherent I will be about it. My insightful commentary generally adds up to "OMG, [CHARACTER NAME]."

The difference between 3 and 4 is so, so small, but most things I like don't make it to that 'love' stage. And that has nothing to do with quality. Sometimes I will read or watch something, and intellectually I will recognize how well-crafted it is, but it's a solid 3. Then I will read or watch something silly and fluffy and absolutely fall in love with it. It might be a trope that falls into one of my narrative kinks, or a character I completely and utterly fall for, but most of the time, it isn't something I can articulate. The spark was just there for me - and yet, for someone else, that same work of fiction might be a 3. 

Or even a 2.Which I respect. Even if it makes me sad. ;)

So just because your manuscript was a 3 with one agent, don't give up! There might be someone else out there who thinks you wrote a very, very emphatic 4.

What separates like from love for you? Any recent examples?

A lesson on dramatic scenes from the JSA

Good morning, blogosphere! Today, we are flashing back to collegiate Becky and my time as a budding bilingual in the JSA. The JSA, or Japanese Student Association, had a vague enough name that both students from Japan and students of the Japanese language were welcome therein. During our heyday, we had all kinds of great activities: the Spring Festival, Iron Chef night, and, of course, the dances.

In this video, we are performing a yosakoi dance, a subset of dances performed at Japanese street festivals and characterized by lots of dynamic arm movements and yelling. This is also not a perfect run, because SOMEBODY ignored our instructions to wait for us to get into the opening pose before starting the music - okay, sorry, I will never get over that.

(And yes, I am right there toward the front, powering through the sore throat from hell and coming in a liiiiittle too early on some of those wave movements.)

Anyway! The point is, to our fearless leader - the gentleman front and center - the worst thing you could do was halfass the moves. The temptation was certainly there, if only because some of them were a little silly, and if you were self-conscious, the temptation to make the moves as little as possible was strong. The problem with that was, if you make the moves tiny and halfhearted, they will look ridiculous. We had to come in there bellowing and punching and swinging for the fences, because unless we did, it just wouldn't look that impressive to the audience.

While I was idly plotting the denouement of my WIP last night, Fearless Leader's advice popped into my head again. I have always had some trouble with the big dramatic scenes, because that self-consciousness is still there. I worry about making it too big, too melodramatic, and having the scene come off silly because of it. My initial instinct is to shrink back, to make the details vague, to use as little exclamation points as humanly possible.

But when I started revisions on THE HUNGRY GROUND and read through Secret Agent Man's notes, I realized how problematic that was. Even if you like your dramatic scenes on the subtler side - and I do - there's a difference between halfassing the scene and very deliberately dialing back the volume, while still keeping that powerhouse of emotion in play. And sometimes, it's okay if that scene is loud. Sometimes you have to come in swinging for the fences just to match the high intensity of the conflict.

It's still not something that comes naturally to me, for sure. But it's definitely better for me, on my first draft, to try as hard as I can to pour everything on the page. Then after that, I always have my CPs and my betas to help me refine it!

Do high emotion scenes come naturally to you? What's your approach to writing them?

Seasonal atmosphere

I love this weather. I mean, it's awful, but I love it. There's something so rich about a summer setting, in real life and in fiction. Sometimes I just spend the day lying on the floor moaning "I'm so hooot, let me diiiie," but other days, the summer weather is very inspiring.

Summer, for me, means telling stories. Of course, everything for me means telling stories, but as a lover of all things creepy and fantastical, my 24-summers-and-counting have been informed by some wonderfully rich settings.  My childhood summers in New England meant nights on the lake, games of hide-and-seek and flashlight tag in the thick, dark woods. When I moved to the Deep South, summer meant oppressive heat, massive insects, and towering clouds signaling the impending storms.

And then there was Tokyo. Japanese summers typically mean three things: fireworks, festivals, and boiling to death. (Okay, no, the last one is only partially true - despite my initial skepticism, a midsummer trip to the hot springs actually is very refreshing, in a weird way.) But because a Tokyo summer day is typically filled with heat and humidity, if not torrential rainfall, you save your energy for the nighttime. You strap on your yukata, a cotton summer kimono, and make a picnic on the city streets to watch the fireworks.

The only thing better than the fireworks are the gorgeous nighttime festivals. O-bon, which will take place at the end of this week, is a Buddhist festival originally established to send off their ancestral spirits, who visit the living every July. Now, it is mostly for visiting family and celebrating.

So while spring and autumn may be my favorite seasons to actually, y'know, exist in, summer has to be one of my favorite seasons for writing. It provides such a wonderful canvas, no matter where I am!

What does summer mean to you as a writer? What kind of summer stories do you gravitate to?

Distractions

Hello all!

Sorry this blog has been far too quiet lately. That whole sequence of "work on revisions, send revisions to beta, implement beta's changes, send revisions to Secret Agent Man, spend next two weeks terrified about revisions while re-watching episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer" takes up a surprising amount of brainpower.

So I am trying to distract myself. Sadly I am all out of Buffy episodes to watch, but there are other things! Planning my two WIPs. Looking at cute accessories on the internet. Stockpiling tasty-looking recipes. Entering this giveaway for THE NIGHTMARE AFFAIR by Mindee Arnett (and click the link to look at her awesomely creepy cover.) Watching this adorable video of debut author Susan Dennard receiving a copy of her book (okay, yes, that brings me back to publishing again, but in a good way!) Adding upcoming books to my Amazon Wist List, then trying to devise a method of time-travel so I can read them before everyone else. Job-hunting -- oh no, wait, now we're back at terror again.

But you get the idea! As realistic as I am about my chances in the publishing world, it's hard not to daydream - about what my cover would look like, or my first signing, or the fabulous outfits I would wear to BEA (of which I have several!) Sometimes those daydreams are good to have around. And other times, I just need to put them out of my mind. It's much better for my blood pressure.

What do you do when you need to distract yourself?

R&R&R&R

As I do believe I've mentioned before, I don't believe in fairy tales.

One of these days, I may have to alter that statement, but though I am an unflinching optimist in most other walks of life, my realism is my armor when it comes to submitting my work. I started querying my first novel in February 2010, and I had visions of signing my contract before my 22nd birthday in late March. It's been over two years since that first query, and since then I have learned how to take a more measured approach. The submission process is full of rejections and disappointments, after all.

But once in a while, a girl just has to celebrate. It is somewhat hard to celebrate when my work computer keeps crashing every time I try to load a .gif, but I will substitute wacky colors instead.

~*I GOT ANOTHER EDITORIAL LETTER YESTERDAY*~

Whew. Okay. Now that I got THAT out of my system...

We all know about the R&R, or 'revise and resubmit.' This is an R&R&R&R, or a 'revise and resubmit and revise and resubmit.' And you guys, editorial letter #2 is awesome. I wish I had taken a video of my reactions while reading it to put on YouTube; I was sort of worried that someone would come over to my desk and ask what I was doing! In any case, I am beyond thrilled with Secret Agent Man's feedback, and ready to get back to work.

In any case, a huge thank you to all of you for your support, and stay tuned for the continued saga...

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?

Boring Invincible Heroes and Heroines

I watch a lot of TV. Mostly because I like having the background noise while I'm working, but occasionally I will pull my attention away from whatever I'm doing and watch whatever's on. My weakness tends to be the procedural-type shows, because I'm a sucker for a good mystery.

There's one thing I've noticed, though. The writers really, really don't like it when their characters lose. Their typical protagonist will casually go about their business with gaping bullet wounds and broken bones. They're abrasive, but their boss doesn't care, because they gets RESULTS, dammit. They easily outsmart the murderers and their convoluted plans - and if this is an amateur sleuth or a brilliant consultant, the actual police will just look on with their mouths agape. And if it seems like the antagonist HAS gotten one over on our hero, it will secretly be part of the master plan, and it will be revealed in the last ten minutes that the hero was only pretending to be vexed.

This is your garden variety Boring Invincible Hero - and while the example above is from your typical TV procedural, you'll find iterations in every genre. These characters can be fun to watch sometimes, but I can't think of the last time I ever really related to one of them. I think it's definitely possible to write a larger than life hero who the audience can get invested in, and there are great examples out there (my overpowering love for Sherlock Holmes is well-documented), but that aspect alone isn't what makes a character appealing.

I always joke that I can't fully fall in love with a character until they fail at life a little, but there's a lot of truth to that. If there's one thing that the Boring Invincible Hero illustrates, it's how important it is for the audience to see a protagonist really struggle, both physically and emotionally. Without that struggle, the character just sort of glides through the conflict without truly becoming a part of it. If we can't get into their heads and see how terrified or furious or insecure they are, there's no real weight to their victory.

So no matter how much you love your protagonist, don't let them become a Boring Invincible Hero. Let their flaws get them into trouble, and don't let them get out of it easily. Let their relationships be brutally difficult once in a while. If you give them an injury, let it weigh them down. And show us what they care about the hard way. To paraphrase Donald Maass a bit, think of the experience you want to avoid putting your character through. What would happen if you put them through it?

That's all from me today. Happy writing, everyone!