(Work-in-) Progress Reports: Bonnie and Clyde

Word count (to the nearest thousand): 64,000 for Bonnie, 43,000 for Clyde
Status: Wrapping up Clyde’s latest round of revisions and Bonnie’s first draft
Attitude: Focused

It occurred to me a few weeks ago that, in the seven-plus months since I signed with Kate, I’ve written well over 100,000 new words and (almost) completely revised one full manuscript. That’s the most writing I’ve ever produced in a seven-month period BY FAR.

I suspect the reasons for this are twofold. First, I had two ideas come to me at about the same time. I feel pretty strongly about releasing a debut and a follow-up that will appeal to roughly the same readership, so I already knew I wanted to write another MG. But not long after I started Clyde, another shimmering idea came to me that simply refused to be set aside. So I started Bonnie, and I’ve been juggling both ever since. (At least they’re both contemporaries, right?)

Second, now that I have an agent, I kind of feel like I have this obligation to write that I didn’t have before. Don’t get me wrong--Kate is supportive and chill and never makes me feel like I have to work harder. But I WANT to work harder because I know I’m not the only one relying on my efforts anymore. And because this lifelong goal seems so close I can practically touch it. I just want to get there, get there, get there!

Besides, I’m in this for the long haul; I want to sell many, many manuscripts over the course of my lifetime. And if that’s going to happen, someday I’ll have deadlines and multiple books under contract, so I figure this is good practice:)

How go your works-in-progress? Anyone out there juggling more than one project, too?

(Work-in-) Progress Reports: Bonnie and Clyde

Word count (to the nearest thousand): 41,000 for Bonnie, 45,000 for Clyde
Status: Bouncing back to Bonnie after wrapping up Clyde’s latest draft
Attitude: Meh

Here’s how my month went down: I added almost 30,000 words to Bonnie in the first few weeks of August, then turned my attention back to Clyde once my readers’ notes came in. They gave me some great big-picture stuff to fix, so I spent about a week and a half working through their suggestions. Since I was a little ahead of schedule, I thought I’d give the manuscript one last read-through and start cleaning up the prose.

Worst. Idea. Ever.

I don’t know why I think that last read-through will make me like the story more, because it never does. Nothing short of silky smoothness will satisfy me when it comes to wordsmithing, and that’s a hard standard to meet over the course of an entire manuscript. Mind you, no manuscript--and not even any published book--is perfect, but I usually feel pretty good about ninety-five percent of the sentences by the time I’m finally done.

Clyde’s hovering somewhere around fifty percent at the moment. Yuck.

Anyway, I’m trying not to think about it while I wait to hear back from Amy and Jeni (and Kelly, too, of course!). Instead, I’m devoting all my subconscious thought to Bonnie. I wasn’t quite sure where to go with her a few weeks ago, but now the gears are churning again. I’ve already had a few ideas that should give me more to write, so that’s something, at least.

How are things going for you?

(Work-in-) Progress Reports: Bonnie and Clyde

Word count (to the nearest thousand): 13,000 for Bonnie, 44,000 for Clyde

Status: Collecting my reward:)

Attitude: Relaxed and optimistic

I finished Clyde’s second draft about two weeks ago, took a week to mull things over, and dove back into Bonnie last Thursday or Friday. True to my word from May’s report, I didn’t let myself go back to her until Clyde was out of my hands.

So Clyde’s with beta readers (hi, Ben, Liesl, and Myrna!), and Bonnie’s coming along. And my streak of firsts continues. This is the first time I’ve ever worked on two projects simultaneously, and it’s also the first time I’ve ever bounced around while writing a first draft. I tend to write very linearly, from page one to page whatever, without skipping a single scene, but I’m not doing that with Bonnie. In fact, I’ve given up on numbering the chapters altogether, since I can’t tell right now exactly where they’re going to fall.

I suppose it makes at least a little bit of sense, since Bonnie isn’t a linear story, anyway. I’m telling the front story going forward and the back story going backward from two similar events, interweaving related scenes as I go along. But therein lies the problem. Right now, all of the ideas my subconscious is spinning out are related to the front story, so I’m running with those. Surprisingly, this jumping-around isn’t driving me crazy. I’m (mostly) going with the flow and letting things happen as they will--which, if you know anything about me, runs directly counter to my usual MO:)

I don’t know how long this carefree productivity will last, but I’m definitely enjoying it while it’s here. If this keeps up, I may have to move the family to Hawaii so my location will match my mood…

What about you? How are your projects coming along, and how do you feel about them at the moment?

(Work-in-) Progress Reports: Bonnie and Clyde

Word count (to the nearest thousand): 3,000 for Bonnie, 24,000 for Clyde
Status: Chugging through the first drafts
Attitude: Excited

Look, a (work-in-) progress report! It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these. I’m happy to report that my new project, who shall be known from this day forth as Clyde, is coming along at a nice pace. I’m not writing him quite as quickly as I wrote Steve, but then, I have been a bit distracted, what with “The Writer’s Voice” and all. Still, I’m hoping to finish the first draft sometime within the next month. We’ll see how I do.

Clyde is a straight-up MG contemporary, with no fantastical elements or funny business. He’s a cute, quirky little manuscript who’s forced me to get in touch with my inner nerd:) But mostly, he’s just forced me to admit that I might really be a writer of realism and not a writer of fantasy.

I started to suspect this while I was writing Steve. Sure, Steve has a few less-than-plausible plot points, but I truly believe that, at his core, he’s a genuine historical, with period characters making period decisions according to the standards and mores of their day. Steve is about real life, and so is Clyde. Real life, apparently, is what I write about.

To further cement this theory, my other Shiny New Idea is also for a contemporary, this one a YA. Since I kind of think of these two manuscripts in the same thought, I’m naming this one Bonnie. She’s going to be my pet project for the time being, my experiment, and as such, I’ve only written a little more than her first chapter. Once I get my buddy Clyde into the hands of beta readers, I’ll reward myself by writing Bonnie:)

I’ve wanted to write a book set in two different timeframes for a few years now, so I’m going to try that with this one. I’ll tell the front story moving forward from a particularly significant day for the MC and the back story moving backward from another equally important day. This will also give me a chance to try my hand at present tense. In truth, I’ve never been a huge fan of present tense--it often feels like a gimmick to me--but in this case, I think it will help me keep the front and back stories straight.

Yep, these two projects have definitely forced me to reevaluate my own writerly self. I’ve always considered myself to be a writer of big, bold fantasy and science fiction, with lots of explosions and action scenes. But the truth is, I think I’m better at writing the quieter, more intimate moments between characters, and for the first time in, well, ever, I feel like I’m playing to my strengths.

So how are your projects coming along, and have they ever forced you to think about your writer-self differently?

(Work-in-) Progress Report: Steve

Word count (to the nearest thousand): 55,000
Status: FINISHED WITH THE FIRST DRAFT!
Attitude: Pumped

Well, Steve’s first draft came in a bit longer than I’d originally anticipated (by about 10,000 words), and yet I finished him much faster than I was expecting to. All told, it took me a little more than a month to crank out this first draft (a week back in February and three or four weeks this summer). A little more than a month! That’s crazy fast, at least for me.

I don’t know why this project came together so quickly. Maybe it was the character. (Of all the main characters I’ve written, Ella Mae is quite possibly my favorite. She’s smart and spunky but still twelve years old. Her black-and-white view of the world--at least at first--is one of the things that makes her so interesting.) Maybe it was the story. (Steve essentially grew out of two questions: “What if you dropped a Japanese man in the middle of small-town America in the early 1950s? And what if that Japanese man weren’t entirely…natural?”) Or maybe it had something to do with the tough rejection I received at the end of July. (Based on a series of e-mails I exchanged with that agent, I really thought that rejection was going to be an offer. So when the rejection came in, I threw myself back into Steve. I believe I wrote 2,000 words that first day.)

But whatever the reason, I’m not going to complain:) As much as I’ve enjoyed watching the pages fly by while working on this first draft, I can’t wait to revise. My editing skills just continue to improve, and I already have a list of changes, big and small, that I need to make. Bring on the revisions!

A few more tidbits about Steve: He’s an MG historical with a dash of science fiction. If I had to compare him to two classic titles, I’d go with FRANKENSTEIN and TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, two of my all-time favorites. Those comparisons are a little audacious, I know, and I don’t plan to use them in an actual query letter. Not that I have anything resembling a query letter yet. I like to let the story develop a bit before I try to tackle one of those...

(I have been tinkering with a logline over the past couple of weeks, though. You can find it over there in my sidebar. If you’re a logline king/queen--or still just trying to figure them out, like I am--feel free to give me your thoughts in the comments!)

So what about you? How has your latest work-in-progress been coming along?

A Few Lessons Bob Has Taught Me

And is still teaching me, I might add. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but it’ll give you an idea of some of the ah-ha moments I’ve had lately.

First drafts are made to be destroyed. The first way I write something down is never the only way, and rarely the best. I’d be embarrassed to show you the first draft and query draft of some of my other projects, because they are remarkably similar. Sure, I streamlined the prose, even shuffled some scenes around, but in the end, chapter one is chapter one is chapter one. And I’m pretty sure there’s a better way to write it now.

Good writing is all about good decision-making. And when I say good decision-making, I mean making A decision, any decision, about every scene, every character action and reaction, every word. It doesn’t matter when I make those decisions (now that I’m an outliner, I make more decisions earlier, but pantsers tend to make their decisions later and everything works out all right), but sooner or later, I should be able to justify every word on the page.

Which is not to say you can artificially control your story or your characters. Even though I have to make decisions as a writer, they shouldn’t come across as manufactured. They should grow naturally out of the story world I’ve created.

Case in point: In one of Bob’s closing scenes, I thought it would be really sweet if my MC, Seth, picked up my secondary MC, Adair, and carried her back to her (hospital) bed. It sounded like a good idea in my outline, but when I got to the actual writing of the scene, it just didn’t work. Seth is way too geeky/awkward/clumsy to pull off all that knight-in-shining-armor stuff. So he puts his arm around her waist and helps her hobble across the room instead.

Every project will have its low points, but those points do NOT define the project. A few weeks ago, I was stuck. (And a few months ago, same thing.) My second draft was foundering/floundering (I never know which of those words to use), I was only getting through about six hundred words a day, and every night I went to bed feeling like I’d spent the past hour and a half reworking the same stupid sentence over, and over, and over again. I didn’t want to quit, but I didn’t want to keep going, either. I thought about switching over to my other project and coming back to Bob.

But I didn’t. I forced myself to stick it out. And now I’m back up on my board and feeling good about where this wave is taking me. (Not that I know what I’m talking about, at all, because I don’t surf, at all. But I still stand behind the principle.) I fully expect to hit another dip, and I fully expect to climb back out of that one. Writing, like life, has its ups and downs--the trick is not to take myself too seriously, especially during those downs.

Well, that’s all I’ve got, but I’m sure you have a few more. What lessons have your projects taught you lately?

(Work-in-) Progress Report: Bob

Word count (to the nearest thousand): 59,000
Status: Doing a happy dance, a holy-crap-I-finally-finished-the-first-draft happy dance
Attitude: Can you be anything but happy when you’re doing a happy dance?

*Gasps* Can’t write--right now. Too busy--doing--happy dance. See you--tomorrow.

(Work-in-) Progress Report: Bob

Word count (to the nearest thousand): 46,000 (yay!)
Status: Just starting the climax
Attitude: Enthused

I did it, I did it, I did it, I did it! I made the (small) goal I set for myself last week: I beefed Bob up by another 5,000 words, and I even did it a few days faster than I was planning to. It’s a small victory, no doubt, but a victory, nonetheless.

Along the way, I noticed two small points/ah-ha moments I wanted to share with you. First, you’re not the only one surprised to see me entering the climactic sequence at a slim 46,000 words. I suspected Bob would turn out to be my shortest post-college novel from about the second or third chapter, but I had no idea just how much shorter. My shortest manuscript so far, my first post-college novel and the first book I ever queried, still topped 80,000 words; Bob could very well end up 10,000 words--or more--below that figure. Actually, this first first draft will probably come in somewhere in the 60,000-word range, but I expect that number to go up by at least several thousand words by the time I finish filling in all his tiny holes (random words in random places that just wouldn’t come to me on the first write, a few passages of pseudo-scientific explanation that I merrily glossed over, and so forth).

Speaking of holes, I've introduced a couple of gaping ones to Bob these past few days--and I’m loving them:) I’ve always been a sequential writer, for the most part: start with chapter one, go on to chapter two, and so on, and so on. But in an effort to squeeze those last 5,000 words out of my blog-addled brain, I decided to just write whatever I felt like writing. And it worked.

I suspected it might, since I have my trusty outline now, but still, I don’t plan to change my entire methodology just yet. This hit-and-run technique will work well as I’m coming to the end of a first draft (since I always get a little restless to start the second right about this time), but I imagine I’ll still write the earlier chapters in much the same way I always have.

Okay, your turn. How are your fledgling works-in-progress coming along? And what writing ah-ha moments have you had lately?

(Work-in-) Progress Report: Bob

Word count (to the nearest thousand): 31,000
Status: Still working on the first draft
Attitude: Upbeat

Considering that I’ve been writing Bob for more than three months now, 31,000 words (11,000 more than last time) really isn’t all that much. But the thing is, I spent a solid half, maybe two-thirds, of the past month on vacation and/or stuck. And when I say stuck, I mean fingers-dead-over-the-keyboard, spit-dribbling-down-my-chin, writer’s-block-the-size-of-the-polar-ice-cap stuck. So 31,000 words is an accomplishment. Heck, 31,000 words is enough to throw a party over.

Rest assured, Bob is still very much Not Perfect Yet. But being able to put words and sentences and whole chapters behind me has left me in a sparkling mood these past few weeks. And the farther into this one I get, the more I love the characters and the storyline and just the world I’m (slowly) building. Yes, my excitement for this project is actually increasing, which is unusual. What’s even more unusual is that my excitement is increasing even as it’s taking longer to write. And when I say longer, I mean MONTHS longer; at this rate, I expect to finish Bob’s first draft in about twice the time it took me to produce my others. But that’s all right. Someday, he’ll be finished.

A few more notes on Bob. He’s young adult science fiction (have I mentioned that already?), set about thirty-five years in the future. His MC’s name is Seth Tucker. And he’s set in Las Vegas, which, I might add, is no longer the city of sin but the biomedia capital of the universe.

So how about you? I’d love to hear more about your works-in-progress. Genres, word counts, current status--fill us in.

Not Perfect Yet

We're going home for Christmas this week. (A nice thing about marrying your high school sweetheart is that his hometown is your hometown, so you get to spend every holiday at home. An un-nice thing about marrying your high school sweetheart is that his hometown is your hometown, so you spend all those holidays bouncing back and forth from one house to the other, with the relatives constantly chorusing, “Hey, where you going?”) So I’ll be leaving Bob behind for a while. And that’s kind of scary, because I’m letting him be something I’ve never let another manuscript be: Not Perfect Yet.

Not Perfect Yet is much more than In Need of a Line Edit. Not Perfect Yet is even more than Will Tweak This Scene Later. Not Perfect Yet is what a manuscript becomes when you write with the full realization that you don’t intend to keep some, maybe most, of the words you’re writing. When you write for the sake of getting something, anything, up on the screen.

For this reason, letting Bob be Not Perfect Yet has been…liberating. I don’t get bogged down in a chapter, a scene, or even a sentence. I put something down and move on. So I know Bob has problems. One scene (the one I’m STILL writing) has been dragging on for eternity and will need to be tightened. One character’s dialogue (Mr. Jenks’s) always sounds not quite right and will need to be fixed. I’ve fleshed out the back stories of a few other characters and will have to go back and rewrite the scenes in which they appear from this new perspective. Like I said, problems.

When I’ve discovered a problem in previous manuscripts, I’ve fixed it right then--or convinced myself it wasn’t REALLY a problem, for this and this and this reasons. Because my manuscripts had to be Perfect at every possible moment, or at least as perfect as I could make them before I started the next draft. I had to be content with the state of my manuscripts every time I left the computer, and (I thought) that meant they had to be Perfect. Now that I’m letting Bob be Not Perfect Yet, I’m discovering not-perfect is okay.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I’m committed to making Bob amazingly, stupendously, super-fantastically great--I might even go so far as to say perfect--and letting him be not-perfect right now could be, might be, a necessary step in that process. I’m sure you figured this out a long time ago, but it’s been a revelation for me. I guess I shouldn’t be so surprised. This is the season of miracles, after all.

(Work-in-) Progress Report: Bob

Word count (to the nearest thousand): 20,000
Status: Slogging through the first draft
Attitude: Determined

I’m calling him Bob until I can come up with an official title, which, at this rate, will likely be the last words I type. I’ve really been struggling with titles lately…

Anyway, this is the first book I’ve worked on since I started blogging, the second I’ve written since I started outlining, and I must admit, it isn’t progressing as quickly as I’d like. I would have expected my word count to be double or even triple what it is by now, based on the rate at which I wrote my other first drafts, but it is what it is, I suppose. I suspect the paltry word count has to do with my second child, who isn’t nearly so, er, content as her older brother. And the fact that life, no matter who you are or what your circumstance is, tends to get busier and busier as it goes along.

Still, I love this concept, and I love how the characters are starting to emerge. I’m trying to be a little more purposeful with my characterization in this novel, but they still have to develop page by page, line by line, grimace by grin. Of the unplanned characters, my favorite so far is Ms. Mahoney: She’s pretty large and likes to be in charge:)

No matter how long it takes, I’m committed to making Bob everything he can be--because I really think he could be, might be, really great. Amazingly, stupendously, super-fantastically great. (Not that the project I’m currently querying isn’t great; I’m just easily excitable, I guess.) And to take a little of fellow writer Natalie Whipple’s advice, I’m not going to settle for anything less than that.

Well, I’d better be getting back to it, but that doesn’t mean you can’t hang around for a minute and chat. So what projects are you excited about, and how are they coming along?

Krista (Heart) First Drafts

As I mentioned in this post, I love first drafts--and now I have a new one! I started it a few days ago, and now I just want to wave it in the air and dance around the Christmas tree a few times. But my excitement about this first draft is really probably due to my outline.

This new work-in-progress, which I will affectionately refer to as Bob, first came about as an offshoot of another (failed) idea; that was four weeks ago. So for four weeks now, I’ve been giving Bob the once-over, putting scene ideas down on paper, building up new characters and the world they will inhabit. Since I’ve been thinking about Bob for weeks, when I finally sat down to construct those first few sentences, I was pleasantly surprised at how smoothly they came together. At how effortless the tiny details were.

Perhaps I should clarify: The characterization and world building came together smoothly; the actual words and sentences themselves, not so much. I must be out of practice; it’s now been nearly four months since I wrote anything longer than a blog post. Still, I’m confident that the ease of writing will return, and I’m ecstatic that the story elements are so cemented in my brain.

So thank you, noble outline. I’m certain it will change, adapt, over the next weeks and months, but it’s given me something concrete and constructive to work on these past four weeks--so that I haven’t been tempted to jump right into the chapters.

What do you think, O wise blog surfer? Are outlines worth the trouble? And how long do you let a story germinate in your imagination before you start to give it life?