Yesterday (Saturday) I read an interesting post on how to write engaging query letters. Naturally that’s a topic near and dear to my heart, as I hope to begin querying this book in the next few months or so. Therefore, though the novel’s not nearly finished yet, I worked up a bit of query copy:
For thirteen years, eccentric outcast Addie Allen has shared her head with an invisible friend: the brilliant and devoted spirit she calls Julian. Julian is everything she could wish for in a companion: wise, charming, and fiercely protective of her. Every night they meet in a vast and complex dreamworld, where they have adventures the waking world could never compete with.
When an old enemy starts persecuting Addie at school, Julian reveals a disturbing new talent: he can possess the bodies of other people. Unfortunately, sharp-eyed Hector Reed is watching him, and guesses immediately that Addie’s not alone in her mind.
No one has ever guessed the truth about Julian before, so Addie is instantly intrigued. She can’t get him out of her mind, and Julian quickly grows jealous. He imprisons Hector’s spirit somewhere in the dreamworld, then takes over his body. With Hector’s life at stake, Addie is forced to follow Julian to an abandoned house deep in the forest. Now her dearest friend has become her nemesis, and she must fight with everything she has to save a boy she barely knows.
The title should come next, of course, but unfortunately that’s an element I’m still stuck on. As you may remember if you’ve been following for a while, the original title of this project was CREATURES OF THE MIND. It was a very different story then, and the name was appropriate, but since then the novel’s undergone some drastic changes. I thought about ANIMUS, but it didn’t seem quite right. Then I hit on INCARNATE, but it turns out that one’s already been taken. (It looks like a great book, though, and I definitely want to read it!)
So the title is still a blank. Nevertheless, the story is definitely taking shape-- which is good, since depending on how you count it this is either the third or the fourth time I’ve written it.
It’s kind of funny, this book. I hadn’t meant to be working on it at all. When I came back from Korea this past August, I was actually working on another project that has since been shelved. I’d meant to go right on with it, but the second I stepped off the plane my old laptop went on strike, and I wasn’t able to get much typing done for the next week or so.
Naturally, I didn’t want to sit around idle, so I found a notebook and started writing at random. I do that during NaNoWriMo-- it’s a great way to churn out rough drafts quickly-- and, having nothing to do, I was able to bring this meandering tale around into a relatively complete narrative in the space of about three months.
This was where I had my first big learning experience. I always like to try and convince myself that this will be the time I can write a story all the way through, start to finish, and have it so complete and so... appropriately written, I guess, that it will need only minor edits before it’s finished. Again and again, I’m proved wrong: my stories develop massive holes, or grow top-heavy side plots that turn into main narratives, or characters atrophy to the point where they need to be cut, and there I am facing another massive rewrite.
I think it’s why I’ve never finished a manuscript before this one: I could never resign myself before to the concept of rewriting completely. So this time, I told myself I’d do whatever it took to get the story finished. If what it took was a massive rewrite, then by gum I’d do one.
The course of CREATURES OF THE MIND did not run smooth, and after the climax and denouement I ended up reworking and adding a lot of strange little scenes and passages that hadn’t featured in the original story. I had to make a lot of mental readjustments, as well: the story was a regular fantasy novel to begin with, and the decision to set it during Addie’s high school years (and to make Julian... what he is) meant that a lot of what I’d written would have almost nothing to do with the final version of the novel.
So I gritted my teeth and started on the second draft. That was early November, and I will add here that I do participate in NaNoWriMo pretty much without fail. I did actually win this year, and got my 50% coupon for Scrivener-- which, as it turned out, was destined to Change My Life.
The second draft took another three months. Okay, that’s a lot, but please do remember that I was hand-writing all of this. I’d gotten into the habit, and I kept convincing myself that “no, this will be the final draft.” The advantage to writing longhand, in my opinion, is that you’re forced to be much more careful with your sentences: it takes a lot more time and energy to write with a pen than with a keyboard, and so you’re much less likely to waste words when you do it. In the future, I definitely plan to type the rough drafts, since they’re just so much brain-spillage anyway, but hand-writing the “proper” draft of the story is still really nice.
The second draft could have been the final one, if I’d known then what I know now: that Scrivener can Change Your Life. I got around to downloading it just as I finished the second draft, and immediately wished that I’d been typing up my notes in these lovely little sidebars the whole time I’d been writing. There are character sheets! Setting sheets! Project folders! Customizable meta-data! I can keep track of dates, times, important objects, crucial developments, and even theme music if I want to. I immediately became convinced that my second draft had not been done properly, and decided to start over once more, using Scrivener this time.
As I write this, I can see evidence of a weakness I thought I’d stomped out: my tendency to give something up and start over if I discover a better way I could be doing something. In retrospect, I probably could have typed up and edited the second draft and made a pretty good book with it. I’m on the third draft now, though, and I’m so pleased with the chapters I have done that at this point I can’t see going back to the earlier version. In the future, I hope and plan to do only one full rewrite.
What I’m doing now:
- Write a scene, longhand, in a composition notebook.
- Type the scene into Scrivener. Make note (in the “Notes” section) of anything that needs fixing.
- Add data sheets for any new characters and settings. Type up Meta-Data (time, date, location, crucial developments, theme music if any, etc.)
- Go through the to-do list in the Notes section and fix all the obvious problems.
- Save, pick up the composition book and start working on the next scene.
- When a full chapter has been finished, edit each scene intensively before moving on to the next one.
It takes forever. That’s the downside. The upside is that I feel like I’m fixing a lot of structural weaknesses-- and creating a much more complete and compelling picture of the action in each scene-- then I was when I was just writing start to finish. The time for that-- if you’re me-- is in the rough-drafting free-for-all at the beginning.
Already this has been an enormously educational process. By the time I finish this novel, it will probably be June or July-- a total writing time of almost a year. In the future, though, I would hope and expect to have a rough draft done inside of two months, and the rewrite... oh, I don’t know. My pace so far seems to be about 10,000 words per month, so it would depend on the length of the story. But it should improve.
The other things I’m having to work on are patience and dedication. My problem before (one of many!) has been that I’ve always treated writing like a hobby-- something to do if I feel like it, and to put off for later if I’m not in the mood. The more I treat this job like a job, the more work I get done and the more I learn.
Anyway, that’s the State of the Book as of March 25, 2012. Sorry this was so long. In the future, I should only be giving you a week’s worth of updates (instead of eight months’ worth), so the posts should be shorter. If you’ve read this far, thanks so much for doing so! Have a great week!
<3Kate
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