Thursday, March 7, 2019

How Not to Write a Book (or Do, If You Must; Whatever Gets You Through) by Jane Kindred

It’s been a full year since I turned in the final manuscript for Kindling the Darkness to Harlequin, and with the close of the Nocturne line, I no longer had a contract with deadlines to meet, so I was a bit up in the air about what to do next. When I finally started writing again in June, I thought I could do it at my usual speed, which is three months for a first draft, but September came and went, and by the end of October, I was only at the halfway mark. That’s when I decided to force myself to finish by doing NaNoWriMo and getting the second 50,000 words written in one month. And I did (just barely, with literal minutes to spare.) But then I was left with a disjointed mess.

December was spent doing a read-through to fix typos and glaring errors and adding comments on everything that needed work, and it took the first three weeks of January to get through all the blanks I’d allowed myself to leave so that I could keep moving forward.

To give you an idea of how that phase goes, here’s a sample I posted on Facebook one night:

Things I have googled in the last few hours while going through stand-in text in my manuscript (this covers approximately 20 pages and doesn’t include the numerous thesaurus lookups):

What it’s called when you put an arrow in a bow
How to nock an arrow
How to describe drawing a bow
How to draw a longbow
How to string a bow
Term for shooting an arrow
How fast an arrow flies when shot from a longbow
Average speed of a thrown stone
Average running speed for a human
How the weights on a cuckoo clock work
Origin and first use of the word “tornado”
Types of flowers that grew in Pompeii
Kinds of wild lilies
Where wild lilies grow
The parts of a door
The difference between a sill and a threshold
Classical architecture terms
Military unit names
Military ranks
Victorian-era military uniforms
Herbs for a glamour
Victorian undergarments
History of the corset
Images of shifts
First use of the term “beck and call”
Victorian women’s shoes
Swarming behavior of bees

That last one’s my favorite—it was for a single metaphor.

And those were just what I looked up over the course of a few hours one night. I did this for three weeks, because there were some 1,600 “check this later” placeholders. Imagine the confusion of the FBI agent who almost certainly has to monitor my internet surfing thanks to some of the even odder things I’ve googled for research in the past. Combined with my personal lookups for various diseases I’m certain I’m dying of at any given moment, including Ebola, it must keep them amused.

Once all the blanks were filled in or corrected, the real work started. I took all my comments and made a list of every continuity problem and every scene that didn’t work and went through it one by one. There were 56 items on the list. Here are a few of them:

The title sucks.
Fix garbage scenes with the Keepers.
Decide whether it’s highwaywoman, female highwayman, or just highwayman.
Change name of Yliastr?
Do any of the other spells mentioned come up again? If not, why mention?
Fix references to what Aoife recalls about the glamouring—was she enchanted or not at the time they did it?
Determine topography of Mount Öde.
Is magic an Undine thing? Or just Keepers? Are Keepers sorcerers? Did Aoife become a Keeper because of her interest in magical practice?
Uhhh…where are the rest of the Sylph?
Track timeline and make consistent.


Now, that last one, OMG. I had to stop and make another list just to figure out what I’d screwed up and how to get myself out of it. Here’s how that looked for the first three chapters:

Prologue
Some years ago, who knows how long
Aoife and Ismene sneak into a men’s club. The spell begins to fall.

Chapter 1
Day 1, after dark
Ygraine up to no good, meets Aoife on patrol.

Chapter 2
Same night
Aoife performs ritual, pretends she’s still under the spell to keep Eris from suspecting.

Chapter 3
Day 2
Supply convoy to depart in the morning.
Day 3, evening
Highwaymen jump the convoy and are detained.
Arrive in Farstone, Eris delivers payload while Aoife watches prisoners.

So far so good. There are a few glitches here and there over the next dozen or so chapters—but then we get to Chapter 26. And here’s where things really went wrong (the red is everything that’s essentially impossible given the timeline):

Chapter 26
Day 54 (should be day 59 and 60)
Ygraine and Eris set out for Goblin country with the two conscripts. (Make it clear that it’s been a week before the expedition was approved; add a day to the trip, and have them camp overnight.)

Timing goes haywire here. Hopelessly f****d.

Chapter 27
Day 60
Aoife meets Severin again.
“Days” pass. A ball is announced. (Delete)
Day 63 (should be 60)
Aoife finds out Arania is pregnant on the morning of the ball.
Day 54 (should be 60)
Ygraine and Eris head back to where they left the boys, and only half a day has passed. (Make it night, so this can come after scene above.) They camp that night on the way back to the front.
Day 63 (should be 60)
On the night of the ball, Aoife leaves early after receiving a message from Severin and meets Maebh. (Need to revise this scene since previous Severin scene has been deleted.)
Day 64 (should be 61)
The following day, the blood court is announced.


And it’s pretty much like that for the next five chapters. This resulted in a list of 18 major time discrepancies that needed to be worked out. (And this is also the sort of thing I could have avoided if I’d kept a calendar of the book or even better, actually outlined.) <pause here for laughter> I gave myself permission to leave all of these things until after the first draft was finished, because I knew I’d never get through it otherwise, but I think I’ve pretty much cured myself of ever working this way again. I’m not a plotter, by any means, but I usually have some kind of structure to what I’m doing. I’m honestly amazed I managed to make any of this stuff come together in the end.

It took me eight months, but it’s done at last. Now it’s with my agent. Just waiting to find out whether I’ve been way too hard on myself in suspecting this is the worst thing I’ve ever written or whether I should change my name and run away to Costa Rica and live on a beach.

5 comments:

Nancy Gideon said...

When I went from a publishing contract to self-pubbing, I went through the same thing. No deadline - no worries, no hurry. From three books a year down to one. And this latest will probably take a decade at the rate it's going with focus shifting (not in a paranormal fun way)to changes in the 9-to-5 force. Seasons, I'm thinking. Every one has its own focus and for the first time in 30 years, writing isn't mine. Not a bad thing, just a frustrating thing. Trust in your talent and your passion for the written word and you'll get the rhythm back!

Maureen said...

Oops_ _ I wrote a long post but not sure what happened to it.
I have similar struggles- I let stories fester and then forget what I wanted to do with them.
Good luck with your story! Sounds like you have it under control. :)

Jane Kindred said...

Thanks, Nancy and Maureen. :) I wrote a long(er) reply, too, and it disappeared. Weird. Hope this one shows up. (And the reCAPTCHA thing just made me go through 10 screens of buses, cars, and crosswalks to prove I’m human.)

Nightingale said...

Quite a tale of the struggles of writers. I'm under a deadline and I still can't get to my rewrites!

Diane Burton said...

Been there, Jane. Maybe not as extensively as you. I use xxx for a word I can't think, hoping when I read it through later the word will pop into my mind. I make notes of things to look up (like you) because I don't want to stop writing. I've never done NaNo, but I've heard people end up with a hot mess to fix. As an indie, I set my own deadlines. Then change them as needed. Hey, I'm "retired" and have grandkiddies. I'll take that Costa Rican beach any day after the Polar Vortex.