Inspirations to Get in Your Character's Head

     In case you missed it, I finished the 1st draft of the WIP.   You get to go on this journey with me as I move to this next phase, the rewriting phase.


     I have two main POV characters, and they are as different as night and day.  For the first pass I've decided that I am going to go back through and stay with one character's story line to the end of the book just to stay in their head and get their voice right and try to tighten up their perspective.  I have a little helper to get me in the right mindset -- it's called music.  =)

Structure and Style

     I have something to share before I get into this week's topic.  It happened!  I finished my first draft on the 31st of July!  It was a bit anticlimactic, and I was starting to wonder when I was going to be finished.  It seemed like I was paragraphs away from finishing and the finish line keep moving away from me.  I think I wrote another 11k words when I thought I had less than 500 to go.  I had the most productive week ever, with multiple days of 5 and 6 thousand words.  But it's actually done at 597 pages and 131,464 words.  That was quite a bit more than I originally planned, but with hope it will slim down, as now come the rewrites.  I am going to try to let it breath for a bit, but I'll likely be breaking out the scalpel and duct tape sooner rather than later.

Potpouri

I managed to get my next test in the AWC block taken in 6 weeks instead of 3 months, but it still hasn't been graded,and its been a week since I submitted it.  That means my timeline is in the toilet.  There is now no way I can finish it with several weeks between tests.  Not before October.  But the good news is I don't have to devote so much of my time to it.  I have an extra year tacked on now till the next board meets, so I can focus more energy on my writing.

To Pay, or Not to Pay? That is the Question ...to the editor I mean.

I've been thinking a lot about editing lately.  I can't judge how good my own writing is, I'm too close to it and have read it so many times I can't evaluate it objectively.  I also want to know where the glaring problems are so that I can fix them.  Thankfully I have a writing partner, but even after that process I might want to have a "Real" editor take a whack at it (no offense meant Stacy).  Looking at the average cost for a novel of 500 pages or 120,000ish words it runs around $1500.  It can vary up and down from that several hundred dollars, but let's use that as a baseline figure.  In order to recoup that cost I have to sell books.  If I put it up on Amazon for $3.99 I get to keep 70% of that or $2.79.  That would require me to sell 536 books to hit the break even point and that is not even counting the cost of getting it published.  If I choose to sell it at $2.99, I get  $2.09 and have to sell 718 copies.  If I choose the $.99 pricepoint many new authors are using I get $.35 a copy and that requires 4286 books to sell to hit the break even point.

The Life Cycle of an Idea

     Kids are able to make up stuff on the fly, but as adults we have a really hard time with people changing stuff on us. Why is that? Do you remember when you were a kid and the world was full of wonder and nothing seemed impossible? We could dream big. One of my dreams was to be an astronaut -- I really wanted to be Han Solo, truth be told. We could tell outlandish stories to our friends that made no sense, but we told them anyway because it was fun! Remember fun? I see my kids do it all the time. They take a simple idea and run it over and then back over it and run it over several more times, making it different each time and laughing all the way.

Respond!?!

I've been wondering what makes people respond to blogs. There are several that I check almost daily, and some gets hundreds of responses and some get almost none. One of my favorites is Charlie Stross. He has a robust and regular posting that is usually thought provoking on purpose and he has a very intellectual group of followers that love to mix it up. I don’t feel smart enough to even post on his site, but I love to lurk. Another of my favorites is new author Mary Robinette Kowal, who is also very regular in her postings, but I don’t think I‘ve ever seen more than a handful of responses to her posts. She isn’t fishing for responses and it doesn’t seem to matter to her. I have no idea how many hits she is getting, but whoever they are rarely engage with her. I think she’s fascinating.

More Cowbell!

If you haven’t seen the classic skit on Saturday Night live, here is a link.  I think it’s apropos to what I want to talk about this week.  It’s all about adding the right components to your story as you go along.  Maybe not quite that much cowbell, but definitely more.   It may not be quite as important on the first draft, but it really needs to be paid attention to in the rewrite phases.   If you’re an aspiring writer you really should be listening to Writing Excuses.  They have a real knack for presenting material in a way that is easy to understand and provides some great instruction.   They just added the wonderful Mary Robinette Kowal to their permanent team and this week’s episode was about Internal Motivations.  She is a great add and she has a fascinating take on how to write and is very good at clearly describing how she thinks about it. 

Father's Day

      I love my family! They give me purpose and fill me with joy (most of the time). I was thinking about writing something up about my father and what he means to me, but this year I'm going to focus on being the father.

      

These pictures are from the card my youngest daughter made for me, it bled through on the scanner a little.

       I read stories of father's that never loose their temper and always know what to say. That's not me. I wish I could keep my cool, but I get mad when the don't do what their told and at times seem like they would rather argue with me than help me. I'm pretty easy going most of the time. People at work wouldn't recognize the "yeller" that I am at home sometimes, but at work people generally don't argue with me for the sake of it.