The Past is the Past...or is it?

I can't clearly remember what day it was I decided I wanted to be a writer.  I don't know if it was rainy or sunny, warm or cold.  I don't remember when I went from wanting to write to wanting to have my work acknowledged by more than just myself.  Or when writing started to be so much a part of me, it felt wrong if a day passed and I didn't write something.

My first completed novel was called Ordinary People and centered around a girl named Sharon Smith.  It was written in third person.  Sharon's working a summer job and when she's returning papers to an office, she overhears her boss talking about something suspicious.  She's found out and runs away - conveniently running right into a guy who helps her out.  The guy is none other than the charming (and of course good looking) Johnny McKenna.  For those curious, this novel started at that ripe, mature age of fourteen.  And her name became Sharon far after I started.  Her name was originally Anna.  Johnny was the proud owner of...nope...wait for it...his own spaceship.  It was a small little thing with an interestingly lit interior and parts held together with duct tape.  Sharon ends up on a big spaceship (not the one Johnny owns) after walking through an unassuming doorway in an office Johnny took her too.  This ship was run by a rather unfriendly captain who informed Sharon of her reasons for being chosen to come aboard, reasons I can't remember but would probably cringe at if I dug through the graveyard of notebooks under my bed and unearthed the one with that story.

I had the trilogy planned.  The first book involved her finding her father who was the true captain of the spaceship.  The second would involve her training to become an agent with hopes that Johnny would join the crew. He was a freelancer with his own spaceship who didn't really want to be a part of the main ship after his initial helpfulness in bringing Sharon aboard.  At the end of the second book, Johnny was set to "die", thus leaving the heroine in a tough spot where she had to harden and get past the shock.  The third book, of course, would follow his miraculous recover and his memory loss.

I'm sure you've felt enlightened knowing all about this past book which exists only in notebook pages and which will never make a miraculous comeback Johnny style.  I'm bringing it up as an example to show a bit more about where I am now.  Johnny had some serious Doctor Who like aspects, Sharon was far too brave and yet too dumb for the circumstances, there was no good explanation as to why her dad was hanging out in a seedy part of town and had never contacted her, and biggest of all, no real reason why Sharon was worth anything more than the daughter of Echo-Star's captain (yes, that was the name.  Now stop laughing).  Just like my books started out as rewritings of Peter Pan and Robin Hood, my work was a bad rip off of things I'd watched and read.

Only Human started as a sproutling of an idea.  A question I'd read online about which super power I'd choose if I'd have a chance.  It made me start wondering about how bad it would be to have an ability that couldn't be controlled.  That would be a curse, not a blessing.  My first attempt was in a book about a girl named Alex who was dragged into a back alley and given drugs so she had super human strength.  That gem didn't make it past the first chapter.  I moved on to a new project; one about a girl named Abby Lee who had the ability to read minds.  That one did get past the first chapter.

If I'm being totally honest, I'm not the biggest fan of Only Human.  The story itself is fine but the characters read a bit flat and I'm always looking for a way to change that.  I've put several major edits into it and yet, I'm sure there will be more in the future.  Even so, I learned so much on that book and tried so many things that failed.  One of the things I liked the most about it was its originality.  Not that there aren't other books out there like it but that I came up with the ideas and figured out the story on my own.

It's a little harder to hold my head up about my current manuscript.  I did a lot to step away from the heavy influence of other books and movies for Only Human.  I read two books in two years while I was writing Only Human so I could keep the voices of other writers out of my head.  After coming all that way, I'm now taking someone else's story again.  I know that the King Arthur legend is open for interpretation and open for anyone to use but I can't help this little part of me that keeps saying its not my story.  That I'm twenty years old and still copying off someone else.  Maybe that's why this book is so important to me.  I want to get it right and I want to prove to myself that I've moved on from my Peter Pan days.

-Anna Leigh

75,000 Words

Over the weekend, I managed a contract some stomach bug that's kept me confined to the house.  Usually, my writing time takes a big hit when I'm sick since I tend more toward marathoning K-dramas than getting any work done.  This time has been the exception.

I was really under the weather yesterday but I still managed to get my chapter finished to send to my critique group.  Today, I managed to put 3,000 words into my manuscript which is a serious amount for me.  My daily goal is 1,000 words which I usually make but today, the weather was good and I pounded out another 2,000 while sitting on the swing.  This little word burst officially put me over 75,000 words!

I'm half excitement, half fear.  I already know there's a LOT of work to be done in edits and I haven't even finished the first draft!

I don't know if I've mentioned before but I'm thinking about turning this book into a two books.  I have a lot of info left to put into my manuscript and instead of making it an epic (anything over 110,000 words), I'd like it to be broken up a bit.  Of course, edits might make my current rapidly building word count less of a problem.

I also have a third book intended for this little series that is connected to Camelot but has a different heroine and plot altogether.  I'm super excited about it and can't wait to write some details about it on this blog.

Later,

Anna Leigh

Writing A Legend (Part II)

I've written a few times about the extreme fear that sets in whenever I get to parts of my story involving Arthur Pendragon.  Considering I've gotten into the meaty middle parts of my manuscript, those ugly fears are rearing their heads quite often.  Sometimes I'll be writing along okay and then it hits me I've had three lines of dialogue from Arthur and I'm not even sweating.

Good for me.  Learning to face one's fears is the first step to getting over them.

The legend of King Arthur means a lot of different things to different people.  Sure, it's a legend with very little basis in fact but it's been the root material for dozens of other legends, movies, books, and TV shows.  I even remember as a little kid listening to Richard Burton, Julie Andrews, and Robert Goulet singing the parts for the Camelot musical.

Little did I know, ten years later, I'd be taking it on as a book.

I've attempted to write this story for about five years now, even longer than Only Human was in the works.  It was around the time I first started watching Doctor Who (can't believe it's been that long!) that I considered time travel and all the elements it could add to my story(s).  Of course it meant a trip down memory lane to my favorite childhood stories and the idea that I could rewrite them with a modern twist.

I remember starting the Queen of Time for the first time.  I knew I wanted the girl's name to be Gwen and that through some magical or scientific explanation, I wanted her to end up in Camelot.  It's a bit fuzzy since it was five years ago but I'm pretty sure she followed some mysterious guy into the backwoods and stepped through some strange doorway to get to Camelot.  I was always an inventive teen :)

Gwen got to Camelot and then I had the terrifying realization that I'd have to actually write Arthur.  He wouldn't just appear in his kingly element with his perfect words and complete my story.  I couldn't borrow him from a movie or book.  I had to make his character.

My book never went further.  The notebook joined the graveyard under my bed of ideas from long ago (my first novel about a girl named Anna whose Dad lived in a spaceship) and I decided some day, when I was a good writer, I'd make it work.

Funnily enough, good writing doesn't just happen.  It takes hours of dedication and a love for stories and words that only the craziest have.  I've had the file on my computer for a while, complete with the name for almost that long.  I didn't know how I wanted it to end.  I didn't even know how I wanted the middle to go.  I just knew it had to happen.

And now it's really happening.  Probably part of the reason I can't stop the cold sweats and anxiety.

What if it's not good enough? What if the perfect idea in my mind falls flat on paper? I'm not a professional writer.  I barely know the legend.  I didn't even know what language they spoke until January '15.

The big question is, who is Arthur? A warrior? A hero straight out of a romance novel? An arrogant prince?  (Hint: my Arthur isn't the guy on the left. He's not Bradley James either.)

I have to throw away what anyone's done before me.  He's mine now.  I have the right to make him blue eyed, brown eyed, tall, short, warrior, poet, villain.

Every time I sit down, I have to remind myself.  He's mine.  I can do what I want.

Arthur is young in my story, barely into his twenties.  He's an aspiring king, always afraid to let his father and ultimately, his people down.  Unlike the legends, my story relies heavily on a mistake his grandfather or great grandfather made (I still don't have a hard timeline).  Because of that mistake, he lives in fear of letting his people down again.  He has an expectation of himself that he needs to be a king who'll not only make up for the mistakes his ancestors made but never make any himself. Despite the instability in the land resulting from his ancestors mistakes, he's mostly on an even keel in his life.  That is, until a girl from the 21st century shows up.

Gwen embodies the mistakes Arthur is trying to fix.

I've never been expected to rule a kingdom or fix my grandparents mistakes.  I don't get that kind of pressure.  The thing is, this is the kind of pressure Arthur lives with every day.  So I have to remember the balance.  Arthur expects a lot of himself but in the end, he's still a twenty-two year old guy.  He's lost his Mom, he doesn't really have any close friends due to his position, and his dad treats him like a project more than a son.  The guy has a lot of empty spots in his life even if he doesn't know it.

From a certain aspect, he could easily be an injured lonely prince but I don't want to go to far in that direction.  It can turn into a cheesy romance real fast.  Arthur's strong.  He has to be.  Gwen's got a lot of issues at the beginning of the book and he needs to have a background that can handle her.

Arthur's not an additional character.  He's as much of a main as Gwen even though the reader is never in his mind.

Interactions between Gwen and Arthur are easier as the book goes on.  It's not difficult for me to write newly developed friendships but starting them is like pulling teeth.  How would the future king react when a girl from the 21st century shows up? How would a girl from the 21st century react when she meets a legendary king who she thought never existed?

As a character, Arthur has to have some defining points.  In my first draft, Arthur is pretty blunt.  He asks tough questions and he's not afraid to offend people.  He's watched his father be a tough king and even though he wants to be kind to the people, he doesn't want to be soft like his grandfather, the man who let the evil ones in.

In QoT, Arthur has several difficult decisions to make, aside from how he's going to deal with 21st century girl.  He has an impending marriage, failing friendships, dangerous beasts, and a heavy crown which will soon be his.  He'll either have to step up in a big way or go home.

As the writer of his character, I have to do the same thing.

Until next time,

Anna Leigh

Short Stories and Flash Fiction

A while back, I suggested to my family members and a few friends that it might be fun to write some short stories.  I've participated and watched various competitions involving them and the idea to write something short but with a punch intrigues me.  I'm long winded (or worded) enough that once I start writing, that baby isn't going to be done until I've hit about 80,000 words or more. Probably the reason why I've only finished one novel in the nine years I've been writing.

But I digress.

A short story can range anywhere from 1,000 to 20,000 words.  20,000 may sound like a lot in theory but my current WIP which has just hit the middle portion, is sitting at fifty-eight odd thousand words.  So yeah, it's not very much to me.  I wrote a novella two winters back and was super happy with it.  I went back to do edits, started adding to the story, and promptly left it half finished.  Sweetheart Bakery is still sitting in my "To Be Edited" folder.  I got back to it a few months ago and realized I never saved the original and all my messy edits were muddying the book.  My final word count sat around 30,000 words.

My short story idea I suggested to my family was to find a picture and base a 3,000 word story off it.  The deadline is May 31st though it's subject to change.  I finished mine today but some trimming will be necessary to bring it down from 4,000 words. I did something with it I've never done before.  I gave it an open ending.  I don't like reading open endings but when I have to fit my great big story idea into a few pages, a tidy ending was almost the first sacrifice.

Recently, I've been reading about flash fiction.  Flash fiction purists want a story under 100 or even sometimes, 75 words!   More mainstream flash fiction writers tend to allow up to 1,000 words, still quite a small amount.  A few weeks ago I entered a little competition at Go Teen Writers for showing exhaustion in 100 words or less.  It was almost the hardest thing I've ever written.  One of the fascinating things about it is how every word counts.  Even deleting a three word dialogue tag would give me enough space to show something else.

Hopefully everyone has had time to work on their short stories.  I already pushed the deadline back from April 30.

The picture thing was much harder than I expected.  I started a secret board on Pinterest and looked under fantasy/fairy tale genres to find something I wanted.  My secret dream is to write fairy tales.  I don't even read fairy tales but looking at all the fun pictures made me want to write them so bad!

After we all submit  our stories, I'll post mine up on the blog under the short story tab.  If any of my family/friends are okay with it, I'll post theirs as well.  For any curious, the pictures on the side are a few I almost went with but that didn't end up making the cut.



-Anna Leigh

To Plot or Not

This week finds me in a much better spot writing wise then my post a few Sundays back.  I'm back on track (mostly) with my writing and besides one day last week in which I had to delete everything I'd written the previous day and try again, it's been an encouraging several days. Most of this I can owe to something new I tried - and will never write a book without doing again.  I made plot document and plotted out my entire story.  When I say entire, I mean a paragraph about every significant event and character building moment from page one to "the end".  It took me about two days to finish but it's been invaluable!

I've strayed more than once from what I originally wrote down.  Example: "Gwen confronts Sir so-and-so about what he said" might change to "Gwen runs away, pretending she didn't hear what Sir so-and-so said".  Just for those curious, I don't actually have any knights in my book named Sir so-and-so :)

Plotting has made for great reference material.  I'm a fast typer and once I have the idea in place, I can usually pound out a good chapter or so in about an hour.  The problem is, I sit down all the time at my computer and think "okay, what do I write now?" Plotting everything out has made it a lot easier.  It doesn't give me the knitty gritty of the scene but the essence.  The point of the scene is to show that Gwen is going to do whatever it takes to take the last piece of fruit on the table.  In the meantime, I can use Gwen's behavior to show more about her character and use the reactions of the others around her to establish their characters more.  If I'm doing well, I may even hint at a future plot twist which Gwen misses because she's so focused on the fruit.

Some of my problems this week have come from having to write the start of Gwen and Arthur's relationship as friends.  I don't have a problem with continuing an already existing friendship and showing the ins and outs but the start is always difficult.  Why are they attracted to each other as friends?  Do they have a lot similarities? Do they have a mutual feel sorry for each other attitude that attracts them to each other?

For the moment, I'm trying some different motives on both sides which both boil down to the same thing.  Arthur is interested by Gwen's ability to cross the rift into his world which hasn't been crossed in many years and certainly never by a young woman.  He's overall disappointed in the fact Gwen came to Camelot by mistake and can't save his people from the creature plaguing them.  His goal is to save his people.

Gwen doesn't know how to get back home.  She doesn't want to be stuck in Camelot forever and she doesn't want to change history anymore than the people before her already did.  She wants to save the people of Camelot as well as herself.

See? Their motives become the same thing even though their exterior motives may seem different.  Arthur has a strong sense of duty (even though at this point, he's still the prince, not the king), and Gwen doesn't want to make life any more difficult for the people she sees going through a hard time.  She also wants to get home as soon as possible.

Writing Arthur has become a bit more natural than when I first started.  I'm not quite so terrified when I write him speaking (though it's probably the constant thoughts of editing and revision that keep me grounded) and I'm feeling his character a bit more.  he's a loyal yet flawed person, a curious and very blunt one.  He's not going to offer a compliment unless he believes it or point out a problem unless he sees it.  Being a bit too blunt can be a problem for a man training to be a king but still under his father's rule.

Stay tuned for more!

- Anna Leigh

A Twist in the Tale

I don't like history.

There's not really a logical reason.  I'm not good at absorbing old facts and even worse at numbers.  I know history is important and it's not like I don't know anything about it, it was just always the hardest thing for me to do.  Numbers aren't my friends.  We have a mutual respect for each other and try not to interact anymore than humanly possibly. I've never been into math, I've always been into words.  

This being the case, it is complete craziness that I've taken on the book I'm writing

I'm writing a retelling of the Arthurian legend. Not a Arthurian legend, mind you.  The Arthurian legend.  It's a project I took out of love and one I'm living to regret.  I'm not a history buff.  My internet tab consist of Pinterest eye makeup tutorials and blogs written by history nerds.  Granted, my book has a sci-fi angle to it so I have some leeway but certainly not as much as I'd like.  For instance, if I was writing the true legend, my main character wouldn't even be able to understand what the people of Camelot were saying.  The English people in the six hundreds spoke an offshoot Celtic language, something no English speaking person today would ever understand. For those interested and wondering about the crest at the top, it's a concept drawing of the first known documented crest of Arthur Pendragon.

To add to the craziness, I have a main character who isn't a lot like me.  She doesn't talk a lot (I do!), she's a peacemaker, willing to be thought of badly as long as it means keeping others happy (definitely not me), and she's really smart.  I'm not a dummy but I won't even try to compete with the smarts of my main character.  I'm a writer who doesn't like history and numbers writing about a girl who loves them both. 

Along with these difficulties, I hit a bit of a snag. 

My main character was put in a situation which filled a few chapters of my manuscript and influenced the rest of the story.  The situation wasn't working out and it was limiting the places she needed to be.  For the last week I've laid awake in bed at night, trying to figure out how to make it work.  Yesterday morning (maybe a little closer to afternoon), I woke up knowing exactly what I had to do.  I needed to scrap it.  Last night I cut 12,000 words from my manuscript.  Might not sound like a lot but when I have a 40,000 word WIP, it's a chunk.  It needed to happen but it's leaving me a bit breathless moving forward.  I'm going to have to put in a lot of work to stay on schedule to finish, something I've let slip a bit this week.  Every two weeks I have to submit a chapter of this book to my critique group so I've been working overtime on getting it to a place where my critique partners can at least understand what I'm talking about!

Despite my fears, I can tell the story is already tighter.  I have to finish up this blog post to get back to it.  I'm in the middle of the scene where Gwen meets Guinevere for the first time!

- Anna Leigh

Writing a Legend

I've been faithfully working on my manuscript every day though unfortunately, due to the business of an average day, I'm only getting about 1,000 words written.  If I stick to a thousand words a day, I should be done with the first draft some time the end of April, beginning of June.

I took a break today though to write about one of my biggest problems.

If you've read any of my previous blog posts, you'll know my current WIP is a retelling of the Arthurian legend.  I'm not a historian or even a super fan, I just find the original legends interesting.  Several of the characters in Camelot come from the legends, with me throwing little tidbits of their original characters into the mix of my new creation.  It's worked out really well so far with one exception.  Arthur.

In lots of the retellings, I hate Arthur.  He's a creep of the major kind and not the saintly king he's made out to be in the original legends.  I didn't even want to read most of it.  Needless to say, with a teeny tiny bit of help from the original legend, I wanted to write Arthur my own way.  The thing is, the fear of drawing a historical hero is more daunting then I would've imagined.

I've written scenes with the other knights like Kay and Gawain.  I've even written scenes with Merlin.  It's a bit weird at times but when I get to Arthur, I freeze up.  I scrutinize every word he says, every action he does, every expression he gives.  I'm not making him my character, I'm trying to rewrite what someone else already did.

I've considered a few fixes.  Maybe giving him a different name until I'm done writing at which time I'll use the find and replace and replace "Bob" with "Arthur".  I know, it sounds silly, but I have to find the right names for my characters or I can't even write them.  Of course, Bob isn't very inspiring.  Don't think I could write a main character with that name.  Sorry to all the Bobs out there!

The most logical next step seems to be doing a really indepth character sheet on Arthur.  I may be including things from the original Arthur but this isn't the original Arthur.  This is my Arthur and I can do what I want with him.

I'll post on my progress in the next few weeks.  I've spent all morning trying to identify my problem and now I have to go do something about it!

-Anna Leigh