Balancing the character arc

I'm in the middle of revisions for Project X. For a little while, I've been struggling to figure out just what I needed to tweak to allow a couple of the main conflicts to fit together better. The primary victim of all this has been a minor character named Jesse, who has been eliminated from existence and then brought back to the storyline in a manner that he would be all too fragile to cope with, were he a real person.

But what I realized two days ago was that, in messing around with a couple of minor characters and even a major character or two, I was completely ignoring some changes that needed to be made to one of the two lead characters. I was coming to feel that there was something off about her, about the way she developed.

And then I realized--she didn't develop. She sprang into the book fully-formed, and continued from that point to wreak havoc on everybody she came into contact with. She was like Athena, leaping from the head of Zeus, only less mythical. This didn't make her particularly sympathetic, which I could live with--hey, very few of us feel sorry for absolutely every person we encounter--but it did leave her looking a little shallow.

So what did I do? I sanded her down a little. I took a fully-formed character and left her more vulnerable, with more to learn. This not only gives me a little more play as far as writing her into some of the earlier scenes, but it also gives her the potential for a little bit of understanding. Readers will get where she's coming from better than if she had been allowed to continue in her old incarnation.

After all, when you watch The Incredible Hulk, part of the fun is seeing the guy before he's the Hulk. If you don't know his pants ever fit, it doesn't seem quite as tragic that he outgrew them.

So I'm having a good time redrawing my own little Hulk from the ground up. And hoping that it helps the book evolve.

What made me think this was thinking, the other night, that I love writing about teens because everything they do is formative. Every conversation is important. Every encounter has the power to change your worldview. And my mind wandered to this character and wondered how her worldview had been changed in the narrative as it was.

Just some thoughts from the old noggin. Happy Thursday! The Office starts tonight! I am soooo excited.

Feet first.

I have been writing some gargantuan blog posts lately, so I'm going to try to rein it in a little. Good heavens. God bless all of you who have made it this far without a peep of complaint!

The first and most important order of business for the week is that Winston stepped on a thorn and had to go to the vet to have it removed. It was quite sad, and it got me thinking about how awful it is for animals when they're hurt. "Owwwww, my foot! This is terrible! My foot hurts so bad--WAIT, WHY WOULD YOU BRING ME TO THIS HORRIBLE PLACE?" It's sad to think that dogs will never see the vet's office as a place of caring. They just see it as the place with the cold thermometers.

Big W is fine, and I must say cuter than ever. We call him Thumper because of the sound his bandaged foot makes when he trots around the house: click click click thump click click click thump --

And so on.



In other news, I emailed the first draft of Project X to my Amazon Kindle, which I feel like I keep promising to blog about and not actually doing, and started reading. It seems rather smooth at the present time, although I know thar be rough waters ahead. In the book's defense, I am more overwhelmed than ever with how much of a crush I have on one of my characters, which I realize is kind of creepy.

And... scene.

Ultimate nerd confession bonanza!!! + a little rambling.

(Winston photos dedicated to Tom; please note that they do not reflect the tone or content of the preceding and successive paragraphs.)



First of all, I lied a little, inadvertantly. I did finish the draft yesterday, but then this morning I went back and re-finished it. I figured it doesn't break the two-week wait rule for revisions because it was the end. It turns out Tom was right, and less leprechauns needed to be squashed than I'd previously believed.



I ended up adding a thousand words, but seriously, don't ask me how. But now, it's done. For real. For real real.



The party last night was cool. The young woman being feted was turning 24, and being around a bunch of 24-year-olds reminds me how easy it is to feel old. Like, "when the timer runs out and the kitchen light goes out, everybody scream! AAAAHHHH!" I am young enough yet to appreciate the high-spiritedness that prompts this behavior, but too old to actually join in the screaming.



I ended up leaving rather early, mother-in-law in tow, which worked out nicely. Although it's so windy here! I hate this kind of wind. It feels spiteful. And Winston spent the night at daycare, because I had no idea I'd be such a party wuss. So I missed him. Apparently I am a pack animal.



Happily, the giant tree next to our bed didn't crash into the roof (it never does!) and the pieces of destroyed hot tub in the backyard did not fly through our neighbors' living room windows, so that's cool.



The husb had told someone I was late coming to the party because I'd finished another book, and the very kind recipient of this information congratulated me heartily, which made me feel like I was cheating. It kind of feels like I've finished clearing the rubble at a construction site. "Congratulations! You did it!" It's kind of like, well, I made this mess, I had to clean it up eventually.



But I do appreciate the sentiment, for sure.



Now I shall confess my ultimate nerd-dom, and for anyone who wonders what it takes to make someone complete a whole novel, I say: make yourself a chart.

What? A chart? Yes, a chart. Preferably with some graphs and some mathematical functions.

Be ready. Put on your pocket protectors.

Here is my chart.

Column A is the date.
Column B is total word count.
Column C is the number of words I wrote on any given day (Excel does the math for me)
Column D is the average number of words written at any point, based on the final daily average word count, which can be found at the top of Column C

The first graph reflects both actual words written and the average slope of words written (column D), and I still don't totally understand that violet line, but the husb wanted to see it. And I am nothing if not accommodating. The second graph is words by day.

Let me tell you, nothing will motivate you to write more words more effectively than seeing that your word count for the day looks like a ranch house next to a bunch of skyscrapers.

Okay, I'm feeling a little loopy, so I'm going to go now.

71,550

It's done, it's done, it's done... the draft is done.

And that's all she wrote.

(Because she was very late for a birthday party.)

But hey... they have to forgive me, because they're family.

The other near-the-end-of-the-first-draft fear.

What on earth am I going to do when I finish this draft? I'm a firm believer that things need at minimum a couple of weeks' cooling off period. Which is exactly how much time I have off from work. Which is bad news bears, because I'm going to make myself crazy feeling like I'm supposed to be writing something.

Now that Bad Girls Don't Die is out of copyedits (as of today! yay! and the notes were really minimal, so we did them over the phone), I don't have rushed revisions of that to work on. I could rush back into AW, the project I dumped to work on Project X. Or I could spend two blissful weeks sewing.

I'm feeling a little lost, to be honest. I guess I'll work it out when I get there. There's always laundry to do.

Breaking point?

This weekend is a marathon writing weekend. Project X and I are spending quite a bit of time together. I'm right on schedule to finish up by St. Patrick's Day. It's kind of all I think about. On the commute, I listen to the Project X playlist. At work, where things have been nuts (wrapping up another show), the little green notebook is never more than arm's-length away. This is that weird semi-hypnotic stage where everything around me seems to be in context of this book. And writing non-stop has been really fun.

But yesterday I hit a little wall.

Not a writer's block wall, but one that could easily translate to "I'm just going to put this aside a for a few (weeks/months)." Because I'm nearing 40,000 words (about 200 pages), and I suddenly thought, "Gee... what if it's no good?"

Not the idea. I love the idea. Nothing will ever make me not love the idea, which I'll share eventually (it's really high-concept and I feel a little protective).

The writing, though--what if the writing isn't any good?

But one fun thing about writing really fast is, hey, even if the whole thing is as useless as a basket of single socks, at least I didn't waste too much time on it.

I feel better this morning. Last night I hit a transition point, and the subsequent jump in narrative time is really fun and interesting to write.

Okay. I'm a bundle of nervous energy. I'd better go get some coffee.

Sorry I'm not around the blogosphere very much this week! I was all caught up and suddenly I look at my RSS feeds and I have hundreds of things to read. Bah!

We interrupt this Valentine's Day broadcast.

Yeah, that's right. I went there.  A shamrock. On V-Day.  

"But why?" you ask.

Because! St. Patrick's Day (March 17, for those who live under rocks) my goal date for a completed first draft of Project X. I predict a length of 65,000-70,000 words, and as of today, I'm at 15,500, which means I have to write 2,187 words a day to get to the goal. Which is a lot, but I do have a hiatus coming up, so instead of grabbing an hour in the morning before work and a half hour at the end of the day, I'll have the whole day to write. Not that I will spend the whole day writing. Because the second a hiatus hits, the sewing machine begins its siren song from downstairs.

"Come plaaaaaaay with me, Katie!" it purrs. "Come sew some skiiiiiiiiiirts!"

So anyway, it might be an uphill battle, but I'm going to try.

So far, so good. I think. I mean, it might be dreck, but it's getting on the page.

Happy Valentine's Day! This would be a great day to haul out those "Kiss me, I'm Irish!" shirts if you're single.

"Writerly things," she said.

The only thing I've been writing lately is the dog show. Which is fine, because I really like the dog show. Which is good, because it's only a week away and I have to work every day to be ready for it. And that part of the equation is a little tiring.

So what have I been doing while not writing?

Thinking hard about some new projects. I should say "new", because one of them ("7S") is 45,000 words strong right now. The other ("AW") is just roughly outlined. And the next one ("FB1") is only the vaguest jumble of characters and circumstances.

Having books lined up for future writing gives me the most wonderful, peaceful feeling. It's kind of like coming home from running errands on a rainy day and having a really excellent book that you're excited to read, just waiting for you. Only different. But seriously, there's something about it -- it's the opposite of a lonely feeling, but it's about writing. And the best part is that the ideas shuffle themselves around, and maybe at some point I'll come up with a strong idea that bumps one from the "Longform - Front Burner" folder to the "Longform - Back Burner" folder, which I think just happened last week with a new idea (the vague jumbly one). I feel like I can go somewhere with it. So I think I'm bumping my old number four ("TR") to the back burner, which is cool, because it's a little looser storyline, and it can simmer back there for a couple of years.

Also:

1. Updating my website. Finally a design that doesn't make the husb run out of the room gagging. For the first time ever.

2. Going out to dinner with friends and coming up with awesome new book ideas such as "Details B. Chapman" and "Dave's Bird-Dad Hike". Also threatening waiters with bodily harm if they touch my wine, and trying in my way to control the husb's behavior, and failing. And reminiscing with said friends about things that happened 8 years ago and realizing that we share all of the exact same memories. Which is a little creepy. Also, talking about Bonobos.

3. Working on the dog show (SURPRISE!).

I didn't go shopping yesterday, Black Friday, but it refreshes some old toy store employee memories. I had such a good time working there during the holidays! What a wonderful group of people that was. What ancient history.