Becoming A Fiction Writer
One girl, one dream … and a whole lot of procrastination
January 29, 2009 by amanda

Taking the time line flaws out of my novel

Nearly a year ago, I took my initial draft of my first novel and decided to completely rearrange it, something I did with the help of a pack of orange cards and one of my cats. Moving scenes around to make the story more interesting, provide peaks of interest and hanging endings on chapters and to generally make the story flow better seemed to work quite well. Or so I thought.

Swimming in winter and other time line problems

During my recent “big read through” to start another major round of editing, I started making notes about the seasons and other timing elements throughout the story. When I had a chapter-by-chapter list of these notes in front of me, I realised I had my characters going to an outdoor water funpark in the middle of winter and going skiing in summer! I was truly annoyed at myself. Any reader paying even only half attention to the order of events would realise that the time line of my story had been completely messed up.

So some extra rearrangements became necessary. In some ways, this discovery was a good thing. I had already made some notes for a new scene that I wanted to insert somewhere, and using the new scene to extend the time line a bit and push the skiing into winter looks like it’s going to work out well. My other solution is a bit more drastic, and I’ve swapped some elements of two major scenes around so that the outdoor swimming fun now happens in summer – I had two scenes with a similar set of characters and have managed to have them get the same points across just with a different setting and events.

Other inconsistencies and hoping I haven’t missed any

I can see that it’s a big danger for writers that your novel can be inconsistent – the old problem of a character having dark hair in one chapter and fair hair in the next, with no visit to the hairdresser or the dye bottle in between. It’s really hard to be aware of such inconsistencies yourself, when you are so overly familiar with the characters or setting and so on, and it’s obviously one of the big reasons why you need an editor. But of course, before that stage I’m still hoping to make my novel as good as possible so I’m trying to find all the other odd clashes I could before it goes into another contest or agent.

So, another thing I’ve done during this edit is to make some character notes (now I understand why some people do this first – but I still think I couldn’t and won’t – they would just change as I wrote) so that I can be sure characters don’t get some characteristic that changes oddly halfway through the story. I also want to work on the arc of their development, but I’m struggling with that – that might be a whinge for another day. And I’ve also been double-checking on what facts are “assumed” at each stage, and checking that the reader should be aware of these things, or adding a quick detail that makes it clearer.

Help me again, please – are there are any other big traps I could be falling into? Leave me a note in the comments if you have experienced any strange flaws in your own writing (or reading!).

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Permalink | Posted in Writing Fiction, Writing Novels | 5 Comments »

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January 27, 2009 by amanda

Struggling with style for my novel

I can string words together well. I can make good sentences, I have a large enough vocabulary to make said sentences sound reasonably interesting, and I can even use apostrophes in the right place. All of this, however, is not enough to make me a good writer, or at least not a good novelist.

Has my writing got style?

With my novel rewrite, I’ve been trying to focus (among other things) on making the writing sound “beautiful”. I don’t have a good definition for what I mean by this, but I want it to sound like it could be written by nobody else but me, and it should flow and have rhythm and, well, beauty.

But what I get just sounds like one boring sentence after another. Okay, it’s not dead boring, but when I read my novel again (and again, and again), there doesn’t seem to be any special “zing” to the words. Is this because they are my words, so I can never really read them in a way that makes them sound special? Is that only possible when you’re reading something for the first time, something written by someone else in a style that’s different to yours?

Do I even have a style? Do I have something I “do” – short sentences, or long sentences, or something rhythmic within the sentence? How come pretty much every other novel I open up sounds different, and mine just sounds bland?

Convincing myself that I do have a style

Obviously, feedback from others is one way of figuring out if I my writing has a style of its own or not. I just looked up the feedback I received from the Writing Show’s first chapter makeover contest. I submitted the then-current version of the first chapter of this novel that I’m editing, and the judgment came back that (in my words) it wasn’t bad enough to need a makeover. In fact, part of the feedback included the phrase, “The writer has great style”. Hmm. Nice to hear, but I’m not yet convinced. Even feedback on my recent cry for help with my novel’s opening seemed to suggest that I have a style. But I think I’m still working on it.

Have you got style?

Fellow writers out there: Do you have the same problem? Does your writing seem “bland” to you, while everything else you read is beautiful? What do you do about it? All suggestions welcome.

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Permalink | Posted in Writing Fiction, Writing Novels | 2 Comments »

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January 25, 2009 by amanda

Will another 24-hour short story get written?

It’s that time again: the Writers Weekly 24-hour short story contest is happening today. Right now, as I type, in fact. Each time I seem to get just a little bit better at turning out a half-decent short story within a day; last time I wrote a story that I still actually like, a few months later.

I’m stuck! My story has no ending!

This time round the contest theme connected to a wedding in a small chapel. After a few paragraphs of brainstorming and free-writing, I found some interesting characters and got them on their way to the chapel. I’m really happy with the first 650 words of my story, considering it all came slithering out on a Sunday morning. Right now, somebody in the story needs to object to the marriage. The word limit for the contest this time is 950, so I’ve got plenty of room to get a great ending in. Because, as everybody knows, there’s no good story without a good ending.

But I’ve got stuck. I’ve tried walking away from the story for a couple of hours. Daydreaming about it while in the shower, which usually provides me with tonnes of ideas. Asking my husband. Googling the topic. (Who would’ve thought that “objecting at a wedding” would have been such a talked about topic on the web?) And so on.

So my only solution now, apart from giving up (I promise I won’t) is to open the file again and just keep typing and typing until something decent comes out. I’ve got my subconscious on the job, even my husband keeps popping into my room with new ideas, and somewhere, somehow, the right ending is waiting for me. I’ll let you know if I find it.

Update: The story has an ending!

Phew! This strategy worked. Random brainstorming and just writing more and more finally led me to an answer and an ending. I tried to follow last contest’s strategy of having some twists followed by more twists, and I hope I succeeded. I think the story ended up okay, although it’s not a topic I would usually write about. I’ve sent it off and that means it’s time to get back to working on my novel after this brief short fiction interlude. The bonus is that this means I’ve now submitted two short stories to markets or contests this year so according to my goals I just have 18 more to go.

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Permalink | Posted in Fiction Comps, Short Stories, Writing Contests | 1 Comment »

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January 24, 2009 by amanda

Opening my novel: I’m going crazy with bad possibilities

It’s a while ago that I looked at opening sentences, but since then I’ve paid a lot of attention to the first lines of novels. The problem is that all this concentration on “what works” doesn’t seem to have made me any better at writing my own. As part of my novel rewrite, I decided I hated the original opening line, one I came up with almost a year ago.

The thing is, I think that the topic of the opening chapter works for my story, and the right characters are introduced at the right time, and the content of this first chapter does give you enough hints about what is to come, and so on. In other words, it’s not altogether too bad. I think. But what I just can’t get happy about is the first line. I revised it again this week and moved a few paragraphs around and I think part of the problem is these are all words that I have seen and read far too many times now, and I don’t have any perspective.

Help me, please! You know I’m not good at sharing my fiction writing, but I’m going to show you all the first few sentences. Be brutally honest and tell me what impression they give you. Would you keep reading? What would you expect to read? What do you think the story will be about?

It was Yoko’s turn to share a prediction from the list she had written down in her notebook. “In 2050, I will walk down the street with my grandchildren.”

Lisa smiled at the simple answer, an honest one compared to other students who dreamt of becoming pop stars or astronauts. She turned to Takahiro, a middle-aged man who had introduced himself to the class as a salaryman.

“In 2050,” Takahiro said, with less than perfect pronunciation, “I will be the Prime Minister of Japan.”

Lisa compared the student’s hair with the Mozart locks of newly-elected Prime Minister Koizumi and concluded it possible. “That’s great, Takahiro! I’ll watch you on television and tell everyone that I knew you before you were famous.” The students giggled while Lisa glanced at the lesson plan in front of her. The title said “Future tense: Using ‘will’ for predictions,” and she’d borrowed the activity from her training the week before. Without even a day’s teaching experience in her life, a three-day crash course had given Lisa the basic skills for teaching English to foreigners, and she was now sitting in a classroom with four polite Japanese students.

Okay, there you have it. This makes me nervous. But don’t be kind, just tell me what you hate about this opening. I need to fix it, before it drives me insane!

Just for the record, the 15-day creation challenge is going along superbly – I’ve been spending at least an hour per day editing my novel and feel like I’m making great progress. Watch this space to see if I get finished before February 2.

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Permalink | Posted in Writing Fiction, Writing Novels | 5 Comments »

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January 23, 2009 by amanda

In shock that not everybody loves reading

It will come as no surprise to any regular reader to be reminded that I’m extraordinarily passionate about reading. And while I accept that I might tend to get a bit overexcited about a good book, I was still shocked this week to be shown, not once but twice, that there are millions of people out there who are not interested in picking up a book at all.

Reading problems from a blog post and my students

First off, I read a Zen Habits post on instilling the love of reading. It’s a great post giving useful ideas to get both children and adults to enjoy reading, both by making it a habit and finding ways to make it a real pleasure, but the fact that such a post needs to be written still puzzles me. I’m sorry, but don’t books just beat movies and TV series and computer games hands down? When you read a novel it’s all up to you – you conjure up your own mental picture of exactly how the characters and setting look, you can connect to the characters and feel empathy for them, you can’t wait to find out what happens in the end, and the words – they’re just beautiful.

But clearly not everybody thinks this way. The second incident this week happened in my ESL class. I’d talked to my students about having a “magic hour”, a concept that came in our textbook and asked you to think about what you would do if you magically had an extra hour in your week, one that was yours to enjoy exactly how you wanted. Two students near the front of the class described reading a book as the ultimate way to spend their magic hour, and while I nodded in agreement, the rest of the class practically booed them. Several of them protested that they absolutely *hated* reading and hadn’t picked up a book in years.

Can you teach people to love reading?

All this got me wondering about a love of reading – is it nature or nurture? I’m sure how you’re brought up as a lot to do with it – my parents surrounded with me books from before I can even remember. When she was a child, my mother would risk punishment by reading late at night with a torch under her blanket. In the future, I’ll be doing my utmost to make sure my children love books. Otherwise I’ll trade them in for new ones.

I have a vested interest in making sure the world continues to be full of readers. After all, writers need readers, otherwise we might as well stop writing. So don’t come near me saying you’re not a fan of books, or I’ll be bombarding you with books you can’t help but love until you change your mind.

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Permalink | Posted in Reading Fiction | 3 Comments »

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January 21, 2009 by amanda

Six random things and what they mean for my writing: German, Dr Phil and Lolcats

It might take me a while, but I do, eventually, get around to doing everything I promise to do. (Except perhaps mopping the kitchen floor. But even that will happen one day). Way back before Christmas, Kate over at Live Out of the Box tagged me for a meme with the topic of six random things you don’t know about me. That’s a curious challenge, because of course there are hundreds of things you people out there don’t know about me, but most of them are not too exciting. But perhaps a few little-known facts about me, along with how they affect my writing, will keep you entertained over your breakfast cereal:

Random Thing #1: Don’t Take Me to the Cinema

I regularly fall asleep in movies. In fact, I try to schedule all movie-watching to include regular breaks, or at the very least, an interval about an hour in. It rarely matters what the circumstances of my movie-watching are, the nap is a fairly consistent thing. At school, I sometimes show my students a movie in the afternoon, and I have to make sure I sit up the back of the classroom so that when I feel myself nodding off, I can stand up and walk around for a bit. In a cinema, I ration out snacks so that I’ll have some to keep myself busy when I’m getting sleepy.

And it should be said, this sleep problem seems unrelated to the quality of the movie. Obviously in a bad movie I’m more likely to nod off because I won’t even try to stay awake, but even in great movies I have serious problems. What does this mean for my writing? It means it’s a very good thing I’m a novel writer and not a screenplay writer. I don’t know much about what happens at the three-quarter point of a movie script. A novel? No problem. I could read for hours without getting sleepy.

Random Thing #2: LOLcats Have Me ROFLing

The blog I click on first in my reader is always, always, always the Lolcat’s I Can Has Cheezburger site. It’s got terrible weird slang English and sometimes corny jokes but I simply adore it. I’m a big cat lover and the Lolcat phenomenon totally impresses me. There isn’t enough praise I can give it. If you’ve been hiding under a rock and don’t know it, click on over, but beware: if you’re not a fan of cats and can’t be patient with the odd slang, you probably won’t get what I mean. And I can live with that.

I’ve been wondering what this means for my writing, and I’ve come up with a theory. Just before I read any blog posts about writing (because writing blogs are my second choice), I look at the Lolcat pictures, laugh at the captions, and get put into a great mood. So perhaps Lolcats are helping put me in the best frame of mind before I start reading about writing. Thanks cats!

Random Thing #3: Guten Morgen, I Mean, Good Morning

At home, I usually speak German. When I lived in Germany, I spoke English at home, but now that my German husband and I are living in Australia, German is definitely the dominate language. I’m keeping it that way so that our future children will be German speakers – I figure they’ll be growing up in Australia with English all around them but if home is a German zone (or mostly), then they won’t miss out. I hate the thought of them missing out on growing up bilingual.

Anyway, the problem with speaking German at home is I quite often find myself tongue-tied in English. Obviously, this is a bit of a problem for someone who works as an English teacher and a writer. My friends are now used to me spitting out odd German words now and again and searching around for the English equivalent, but my students still look at me strangely when I have a mental blank on an English word and just stare at them while I wait for it to come to me. However, you might be glad to know: this doesn’t seem to affect my writing. Perhaps because I rarely write in German, my brain is hardwired for English when my fingers hit the keyboard.

Random Thing #4: Getting Academic

I used to work as a university lecturer, and I haven’t lost that academic thirst for knowledge and, to be honest, qualifications. This year I’ll be studying the two more units I require to complete my Masters of Education and I’m pretty excited about it. Back when I used to work as an academic, I’d started my doctorate (the remnants of which are now turning into this MEd), and I still dream of doing a PhD – but now I dream of doing a PhD in creative writing. Don’t try to tell me that being a Dr will have little or no impact on my writing quality or my success as a writer, it’s just a personal achievement thing. I’d just like to do it. Okay?

Random Thing #5: Crushin’ on Daytime Psychobabble

I’m secretly keen on Dr Phil. This really grates against my intellectual pretensions, but on the days that I work from home I’ll often turn his show on – it’s screened here at midday, right when I usually sit down for lunch. And with the exception of the Oprah-like shows when he gives away gifts or money or some other razzle dazzle stuff, I often find I actually learn something. I mean, it seems like he actually has some psychologically useful things to say. Having said that, I just stayed with some friends who were reading his (unauthorised) biography and he didn’t sound quite like I’d imagined, but still, I actually find myself using some of his strategies to deal with my everyday life. But as I said, it’s a secret. Ssshhhh!

There is an impact of this on my writing. Most of my fiction and ideas for novels are fairly free from explosive action, and are more about getting into the heads of characters. So any psychology I pick up seems to get passed on to my characters. I hope that turns out to be a good thing.

Random Thing #6: Me and My Deformed Thumb

I have a strange lump on the inside joint of my right thumb. When I was growing up, I thought that this was a normal part of the human body, although I never questioned why my left thumb wasn’t the same. In fact, according to my mother, this lump is the result of a milk bottle accident when I was young – back in the days when milk came delivered to the doorstep in glass bottles, I was getting one out of the fridge, dropped it, and a shard of glass got wedged in this part of my thumb. A scar grew over it, I guess, and that’s what the lump is.

Now I can’t claim that this has a big impact on my writing, but it just seemed like a curious random thing to end with. And occasionally, just occasionally, when I type too fast, I hit this lump at just the right (or wrong) angle on the space bar key and it hurts and tingles for ages. Perhaps it’s telling me to slow down and actually think about what I write. Or perhaps, like so many things in life, it’s just random.  Now you know.

Rules of the 6 Random Things meme:

1. LINK TO THE PERSON WHO TAGGED YOU
2. POST THE RULES ON YOUR BLOG
3. WRITE SIX RANDOM THINGS ABOUT YOURSELF
4. TAG SIX PEOPLE AT THE END OF YOUR POST AND LINK TO THEM
5. LET EACH PERSON KNOW THEY ARE TAGGED AND LEAVE A COMMENT ON THEIR BLOG
6. LET THE TAGGER KNOW WHEN YOUR ENTRY IS UP

But I’m going to cheat a bit here and simply challenge all interested readers to do this. If you’re a writer, use it as a writing exercise. And other bloggers, use it on a slow blogging day to get some curious information about you out to your faithful readers. And let me know when you do – I’m the most curious of the lot.

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January 19, 2009 by amanda

Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award also has a February 2 deadline

I guess I should start getting less surprised that everything in my life seems to happen for a good reason, and often with great timing. It was just yesterday that I made a commitment to have a beautifully-edited version of my Japanese novel ready by February 2, as per the 15 day creation challenge set by Zoe Westhof.

This morning I sat down at my computer with the fresh eyes and stimulated brain of a Monday morning. (Oh, that might sound odd. My Monday morning, the first day of my working-from-home days, is probably different to yours, if you’re hitting the office for the first time for the week, bleary-eyed and unenthusiastic.) Anyway, I checked on my to-do list with the aim of getting this blog a bit more action, and saw that I had an overdue task to blog about the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award.

Perfect timing: My novel will be ready for Amazon Breakthrough

I’ve had my eye on this contest for ages, but let it drift off the radar recently. It seems that there is no entry fee, and the way it works is they accept only the first 10,000 entries starting from February 2. I have no idea how long it will take them to get 10,000 entries, but I remember reading a tip from Hope Clark at Funds for Writers which said we should have our manuscripts ready to go from the first day to be sure we didn’t miss out.

If you’ve been paying attention, you might have seen the lovely synergy here. According to the 15-day challenge, my novel will be ready on exactly the same day as the contest opens. That’s surely a sign, isn’t it? Now, since this is only the second year that the Amazon Breakthrough award has run, it’s hard to know too much about what they’re looking for – last year’s winner was a fairly thrilling-sounding mystery, but others that did well included quieter storylines that might match mine.

A good pitch gets you into Round 2

The key thing seems to be that the pitch must be fantastic. The first round of culling, from 10,000 down to “up to” 2,000, is based solely on the 300-word pitch that you send in. Three hundred words? To describe my 60,000-word novel? Eeeeek!

Amazon’s explanation of a pitch in their FAQ doesn’t make it sound any less daunting:

The pitch is more than just a summary, it needs to be a well written explanation of what the book is about.  Talk about your novel’s strengths with respect to how it is being evaluated; Think about the elements chosen on which to judge your novel for the purpose of this contest; its overall strength, plot development, character development, originality of idea, and writing style or prose.  Take the time to study your intended market and make sure your pitch demonstrates that you understand how your book fits within this market and how it will identify with your audience …  The Pitch should be a concise explanation of your book and why the reader would want to read your novel.

I’ll have to dig around the site a bit more, as there are two videos to watch about preparing your novel and about writing the pitch, plus a discussion forum to go with it. As you all know, I love working under pressure – or more accurately, I actually get work done under pressure, rather than when life is easy – so I’m hoping this contest and the 15-day challenge actually net me a beautiful, complete novel.

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Permalink | Posted in Fiction Comps, Writing Contests, Writing Novels | 2 Comments »

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January 18, 2009 by amanda

A 15-day creation challenge is a good kick up the bottom!

Not only did I start 2009 a lot later than others, I just can’t seem to get back into my fiction writing. I think being away from my computer over the holidays was something I quite enjoyed, so now that I’m back home I get my paid writing done – the “must” part of my writing life – and then get as far away from the keyboard as possible – often, I must admit, into the swimming pool.

Editing my Japan-based novel

Since an important goal of mine this year is to start getting my novel out to prospective agents and/or publishers, it’s going to need a very good edit. I’ve started this, worked on it in dribs and drabs (and even pulled it out twice this week for half an hour at a time) but I really need to devote some serious time to getting it done. Doing it over a long period of time is proving impossible. I quite often read things and am not sure if they’re consistent with something earlier in the story, or if a character has already been mentioned before, and so on, and because it’s been so long in between each editing attempt it takes me ages to look back and find out, or, more commonly, I’ve just been writing margin notes that I need to check it out later. It’s driving me crazy.

Essential Prose’s 15 Day Creation Challenge

And so, just a few hours after worrying about this, a great post came up from Zoe Westhoff: she proposed a 15 Day Creation Challenge to encourage people just like me to actually finish something they start. Zoe sounds like she’s not unlike me in having trouble getting down to the creative side of her writing work, even though, like me, it’s the part she really loves. Silly, isn’t it?

Anyway, I’ve decided to “enrol myself” in this 15-day challenge. My goal is, as per Zoe’s rules, to spend an hour per day working on editing this novel, so that by 2 February I should have a new version of my novel. Editing at least seems easier right now than actually writing something new so I hope that this will give me the creative kick up the bottom required to make some progress on my 2009 fiction writing goals. Stay tuned for a progress update.

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Permalink | Posted in Anti-Procrastination, Goals and Motivation, Writing Novels | 4 Comments »

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January 13, 2009 by amanda

Starting 2009 a little later than others

Of course, you know I have procrastination down to an art form – and what better way to prove it than to make my New Year’s Resolutions on January 13? Still, in our family we say that “13″ is a lucky number, so perhaps I’m doing it just right.

Anyhow, I’ve already hinted that 2009 will be a year of submissions and agent-hunting for me, as well as finishing another novel. I’m also revisiting some of my 2008 resolutions to guide what I plan for this year. So without, as they say, further ado, my fiction writing resolutions for 2009 are:

  1. To submit 20 short stories to contests or potential markets (as of today, I’ve already submitted one to Every Day Fiction. Just 19 to go!) I’m putting this resolution at the top of my list because short fiction is something I keep neglecting, even though I think there’s a lot of value in it for me – to practice the skill of writing and to get published outside of travel writing.
  2. To finish revising my novel Kanako’s Foreigner and submit it to agents. I’m having New Year angst about this one – is it still any good? Is there a decent novel in there worth saving? I hope so. I’ll have a good look at it this month and finish my new round of edits and hope I still believe in it.
  3. To finish my second novel and edit it ready to submit to the Australian/Vogel award in May. I’m confident I can do this, my only problem is deciding which is my second novel. Is it the Bratislava novel I’ve got three or four chapters into, or the NaNoWriMo attempt from November? I think it’s the Bratislava one, but I need to sit down and make a real decision. Am I a procrastinator or what?
  4. Increase readership of this blog, Becoming A Fiction Writer. Last year, my writing resolutions included travel writing goals too, but this year I’m focusing on fiction – the travel writing seems to more or less take care of itself.

To keep myself more accountable to these goals – and to get some support from you people too – I’ll be posting a monthly summary of how well I’m doing in regard to these resolutions. Those twelve checking-in spots throughout the year should keep me well on target. After all, last year I actually achieved the majority of my writing resolutions – and this year I’ve made less – so I can’t see any reason why I can’t do it all. Wish me luck.

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Permalink | Posted in Anti-Procrastination, Goals and Motivation | 6 Comments »

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