The Process of Writing a Novel by Elizabeth Seckman

Today Elizabeth Seckman is taking over as part of her Healing summer blog tour. Check out her blog here. I absolutely love reading up on Liz and what she's doing, so go check it out, you will not be disappointed. Liz recently released the second book in her Coulter men series, Healing Summer, and as part of her blog tour, she decided to stop here! (I'm so excited!)

 I’m sure you have all figured out by now that I’m absolutely obsessed with the process of writing a novel. I think it’s because I’m hoping that someone can tell me, “No, no, no, if you just do it like this you’ll write a perfect novel on the first go round!” Admittedly, I’d probably tell such a person to stick it in their tax file (you know, where the sun don’t shine…) and keep writing just the way I like. In the meantime I love listening to other authors talk about how they craft novels, and this is what Liz said when I asked her about how she crafts her novels.

My writing process is probably much like most other writers. It starts with an idea, which I allow to grow on its own. I don’t usually write anything at this point. I just ponder on it while mowing the lawn or doing the dishes. Once it starts to jell into something that resembles a plot, I write down a quick synopsis: the story in a nutshell. 

Then I make a timeline. I want the story to start here and end there. I decide what I want the characters to learn…you know that theme teachers hounded us to find in stories? Well, I like to decide early on what that will be.  

So, now I know what my story is about and I have an outline. I’m almost ready to write.

For each new story, I get a spiral notebook, a folder, and a coupon holder. In the notebook, I make notes and ideas for scenes…maybe bits of conversation. In the folder, I keep research and other tidbits that might be useful later. In the coupon holder, I keep note cards with character sketches and details (I got this tip from a fellow blogger and it’s genius!). No more forgetting a minor characters name, viola…at my finger-tips!

Now I write. The first draft is done without edits. I go straight through. Beginning to end. At times, an idea I think would work great in an earlier chapter will strike… I’ll scribble that in my notebook…”need to add back story for twist in chapter ten in chapter two”, or something like that, but I don’t go back. It’s the forward progress rule. All things move forward. 

Then I’m done, all but the twists. Add those and I’m really done.

I put it away and go on to another manuscript.

After about three months, or when I’m certain the story is good and cold, I read back over it. Not to edit, but to read. What parts of the story are good…what has to go. Here is where I cut and chop and get the plot the way I want it. I squeeze in my red herrings, my foreshadowing, and other literary mumbo jumbo I hope makes me look smart.

Then I put it away again.

Once it’s again cooled, I start to edit. This time, in my notebook I write a summary of each chapter and make a note of anything that needs researched or fact checked.

Then when I think it makes sense. I send it to readers. Not Betas. Readers. You know those non-writer types who just read for fun? I want to check the plot before I worry about the style. Do readers like the characters enough to care what happens to them? Are the plot lines believable or are they trite? I ask readers to note all the places they stop reading and why. I only want them to put it down because their kitchen caught on fire.

Once I have their feedback. I tweak the story. 

Then I send it to my Betas. Then I edit it again. And again and again.

I admit, this is the process I strive for, but I find I still do ninja edits, you know where you go back in during the hands off phase and tweak things. Thanks to Liz for coming over to talk about her process! Healing Summer is now available here and here, and don’t forget to check out Elizabeth at her blog and on facebook. Thanks again for stopping by!

Healing Summer

Maybe Love, Not Time, Heals All Wounds

Ditched at the altar…biopsied for cancer…Mollie Hinkle is having a bona fide bitch of a summer. When life sucks so hard it takes your breath away, what's a girl to do? Pack a bag, grab a few friends, and leave the past and the worry in the rear view mirror. What wounds can’t be healed by a drive across the Heartland, where quarter flips at cross roads determine the route and the future? All roads lead to Craig, the second son and bad boy of the haughty Coulter line. Has fate brought her to the miniscule Montana town to find happily ever after or will it just break her heart?

“Healing Summer” is the second book in the Coulter Men Series.

Found here on Amazon and Goodreads  

Healing Summer Blog Tour 

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Birth of a novel, or Why Rewriting Sucks

Today is another installment of Birth of a Novel. If you haven't heard of this, hop on over to Charity's Blog, and sign up on the linky. 

I try not to talk about my troubles, but let’s face it, I’m TMI waiting to happen. So when I found myself full of free time I thought, “Oh hey, I’ll crank out the rest of this novel in like a week.” That was pretty much three weeks ago now. Yeah. That’s not really going the way I’d planned.

At first I thought, Oh, this is just the usual writer anxiety, it comes and it goes. In the mean time, I’ll just watch Dance Academy (a surprisingly good Australian Ballet drama). And when I’d plowed through those, I thought, “Oh, well, I’m just redefining myself as a person rather than a job.” That’s when I started watching Glee.

And still, no writing. I blogged. I talked with people, I cleaned house, anything to not write. What was killing my words?

Then it hit me, I was avoiding my novel.

Writing a novel is full of ups and downs. The ups sound like “Oh my galena, this is the greatest story, and I wish I could ship it off to agents Right NOW so it can hit the New York Times bestseller list sooner.” The downs: “Well, that was a complete waste of time. I wonder if I should even finish drafting it. I mean really, who’s ever going to pay money for this trite POS?”

But when you’re rewriting, it’s worse. With a rewrite, there are no really big surprises, you’ve already done that. You’ve already been there. You’ve already explored all the original (well, original to you) points that made you think you had the novel of pure awesome. In a rewrite, you see that not only has it been done before (by you) it’s been done before by like fifty other people over the last ten years. Yikes. It seems old, worn out, and you start to doubt.

Why am I even rewriting this novel? It wasn’t that good to begin with, and now that I’m rewriting, I know that it sucks. I’ve had vacuums with less suction than this novel.

And it’s not nearly as exciting because you’ve already done it.

So I started writing again. I gave myself permission to suck, because even though this is a rewrite, so much has changed that it’s back to a first draft. And first drafts suck. Sure this first draft might be a little more focused, you know, with the whole actually knowing the plot and the point of view (both aspects I’d screwed up the first time).

Now if I can just keep that Shiny New Idea at bay and finish...

So what about you, do you hate rewriting as much as I do? Or do you view rewriting as an opportunity to sweep all those mistakes under the revision rug?

Goals:

* Finish the rewrite of PRINCESS SINGULARITY by next week (this should be less than 10,000 words, so this shouldn’t be a problem).

* Make a decision about revising the super hero novel

* Draw more maps for the Shiny New Idea, more on that one later

The problem with Glee

I’ve been pretty disconnected from the rest of the world, particularly pop culture, so I’ve taking some time to catch up on the rest of the world.

During my absence from the real world some really great TV shows have cropped up, notably So You Think You Can Dance, and Glee. But there’s a problem with Glee.

Before I watched Glee, I could walk through the aisles of the grocery store in relative peace. Now, I have to resist the urge to belt out a song. **Sigh** Am I the only one? Does Glee have this affect on everyone?

Regardless, recharging is important, and sometimes, even I need a break. What do you do to recharge?

My precious.

Oh, and since some people asked, here’s a picture of those black pearl earrings.

Tales from ancient history: Magic is real

I’ve been lucky enough to go to Hawaii a couple times. On the first trip, I spent some time in Oahu. If you’ve never been to Hawaii, I can warn you, Oahu can seem like any other big city with one extra feature: miles of beach. Having lived in or around a number of cities with beaches attached, I didn’t swoon over Oahu, and I was starting to wish we hadn’t booked time there. The locals scowled, and we were solicited at every opportunity. I wanted to move on, get to the big island and see a real, breathing volcano. I wanted to go to Kauai so I could hike the Nepali coast, I wanted more than the tourist trap in a beautiful land. I’d already done that.

But being stuck in a city, we made the most of it. We walked the streets, poked our heads in the shops, and, of course, we found ourselves walking along a street where people were selling their wares from carts. One stall was a pick-a-pearl shop. If you’ve never encountered one of these, let me warn you, they are interesting, addictive, and anyone working such a stall will try to upsell you. They make their money selling jewelry for pearls that are really fake pearls shoved into a real oyster long enough to get a real pearl layer. Sometimes the pearls are nice, sometimes… not so much.

By accident, we’d stopped right in front of this stall while we tried to figure out where we were headed. Of course, the cute Hawaiian (and this is a guess, but he really looked Polynesian, so I’m going with native Hawaiian here) saw us, and called out to us. “Come on, pick an oyster, take a chance. There’s a pearl here with your name on it.”

Jokingly, I leaned away from the group and said, “Oh no, I couldn’t. I wouldn’t want to ruin you like that.” I’d been barked at a lot by people trying to sell me something. I wanted to turn the tables.

“How would you ruin me?” he asked. Clearly, I wasn’t playing by the script.

“If I pick out an oyster, it’ll have two perfectly matched, black pearls, and you’ll never be able to convince anyone it was true.” Now my group was interested. I didn’t normally engage the vendors in chit chat, and I never made predictions about what would happen. Who does? What was more, I knew it down to my bones. I knew I would. It was like the world had opened and I could see into the future just a short distance. It was a strange thing to know, but I had no doubt. None.

Complete madness. But I was completely willing to walk away, never having cashed in on it. Well, the vendor had other plans. I’d somehow presented him with a challenge, so he egged me on some more. I gave him one last warning. “I’m not kidding, you’ll never convince anyone this was real.”

Undaunted, he passed me the little tongs to pick an oyster out of the bucket. “This I’ve got to see.”

Now I had an audience, and everyone in my group was going to play. We all picked out our oysters, but the vendor kept a careful watch on me to see the trick. There wasn’t one. If we’d been bad people, we would have used that opportunity to maybe steal something, but we were all those goody-two-shoes types. When everyone had picked their silly oyster (at this point ensuring a pretty lucrative sale in the very near future), we all did the silly aloha welcoming for the pearl.

He took my oyster first. Can you blame him? I was a bit anxious myself. It was all bravado fuelled by a gut feeling, but my gut has led me astray before, would it this time?

He cut it open and out popped a black pearl. Then he hunted around in the oyster with his knife, and out popped a second black pearl, perfectly matching the first.

He jumped and yelled “Oh my god! How did you do that?” He shook his head in disbelief. He had watched every step of it. He’d initiated it. He’d called out to me, so how could he have been taken for a ride?

“Magic.”

I had the pearls set into earrings.

Insecure Writer's Support Group: Failure is not what you think

Today is the first Wednesday of the month which means it’s time for another installment of Insecure Writer’s Support Group. If you haven’t seen one of these in action, then hop on over to the Ninja Captain and his Co-hosts Tyrean and Jamie then hop onto Mr. Linky and read up.

I know that it’s a brand new year and all, but I’m not going to talk about the normal beginning of the year thing. I’m going to talk about failure: it’s not what you think. It’s been one full year since I joined the ISWG bloghop. My first post was about putting myself out there and trying as hard as I could. I did. I followed through, and you know what? It wasn’t enough. Feel free to go read those posts so you know what I’m talking about, but sometimes even your A+ game doesn’t cut it, and something happens: you fail.

People don’t talk about failure the same way they talk about success. When you talk about success you’re either talking about it from the standpoint of one who has just succeeded or someone who hopes to succeed. When you talk about failure, you either talk about it as one who has failed or someone who’s afraid of it. Bitterness and fear overshadow the truth: failure can be a gift. No really, hear me out.

When I failed—and I mean grade A, standing on a pile of smoking ash that had once been my dreams failure—the world became clear. I don’t know if there’s something magical in the smoke of burning dreams, but it made me fearless. It’s hard to be scared of anything when the thing you feared the most has just happened. Then it felt like every door in the universe opened up. Without the fear, I could try anything, so everything suddenly became an option, every path. That's ridiculous; my failure didn’t create new opportunities, it only let me see the ones I’d already had. But I would have never even considered those other futures if I hadn’t failed. I’d focused so hard on that one thing that I couldn’t even see all the other possibilities of the world.

Sure, this is that strange afterglow of a break up, and maybe it’ll wear off after years and years of piled on failure, but I doubt it. It was like that dying dream was an anchor, and I was swimming across the ocean of my life. When that dream died, I was cut free. I’d always feared it, thought I’d drown without it. All that time I’d been clinging to the thing that was drowning me. Failure gave me freedom.

I was too scared to see past this one thing. And I think so many writers find themselves in this place. We fall in love with a manuscript. It becomes our dreams. We put these manuscripts out into the world, and then we find ourselves having to make a decision: to trunk or not to trunk.

There’s a lot of conflicting advice on this one. Accept the failure and move on to the next project, or fight for the novel in your hands. I have no answers to this conundrum, but Miss Snark had a great set of guidelines. She said to query 100 agents before giving up on a manuscript. Which is great, but I saw someone get an offer after 127 queries for a single manuscript. Yikes! How to decide?

When a book doesn’t get you an agent, or worse, gets you an agent but doesn’t get you published it is NOT the end of the world. There are other books. Other ideas. Some of those ideas are going to be better than the one you’ve just spent the last 18 months/18 years slaving over. So if you’re on the verge of trunking a novel, it is not the end. 

I know this sounds sappy, but it's 100% true: Failure is not the end. It is the beginning of a journey you couldn’t see. All you have to do is decide what to write next.