New Beginnings and Older Works

Somehow, my schedule has fallen apart.  January of 2015, I was the picture of organization, the reason I was able to produce a 140,000 word book in eight months.  This year, I'm losing it.  After an initial strong start with Darling, I've had a lot of road blocks, in my personal life and in my writing one.  Besides the soul searching of wondering if I should really be a writer, if this is really the right thing to be writing, and what on earth I'm going to do with a story that is far better than the writer writing it, I'm three months into my year without much book to show for it.

Queen of Time is riddled with problems, so many that I sometimes want to just scrap it and start over.  Wanting to finish Darling before embroiling myself in editing, I keep on pushing it to the back burner.  Today, on an impulse, I grabbed a chapter that has a lot of transitional, important material, and a notebook and started over with the chapter.  Different things happening, different questions being asked, different character development.  If it works out, I will continue.

It's amazing how much of my story hinges on King Uther's reaction to Gwen coming to Camelot.  For any who don't know, Gwen, through a series of events, ends up time traveling from the twenty-first century into Camelot.  This being the case, one of the first things I had to plot out was the reaction people would have.  First, I set up a history with the Crossers (she is not the first one) and the people of Camelot.  I made her what they viewed as the fulfillment of a prophesy, a YA cliche that is tired and old at the moment.  I'm hoping I can remedy that particular story line at some point.  Secondly, I had to picture how the people in Camelot who have been waiting for this fulfillment would view Gwen, a short bespectacled teen who doesn't seem to have a stitch of confidence and a whole lot of fear.  This reaction has morphed three different ways as I've disliked each one after fleshing it out over a few chapters.  My latest take (as of today), is the likelihood that if King Uther doesn't feel she is the one they are waiting for, he would likely not want his people to know who she was because of the Crosser's history of bad blood with the people of Camelot.  This means he would keep Gwen at the castle under outwardly false pretenses.  Gwen, being the girl who refuses to lie, would obviously have difficulty with this.  And thus, a different story than I had this morning is a born.  A lie she has to maintain, a life she is trying to get back to out of her strong sense of not wanting to change the past, and a possible link to someone she doesn't want to be linked with (spoilers!!!).

As I said though, King Uther's decision makes all the difference in the book.  If he forced her to try and go back through the Doorway, she would die.  If he gave her over to the people out of anger, she would die.  If he put her in prison, she would die.  If he sold her off as a slave to another kingdom, she would probably, well, die.

After the king, how Gwen reacts to what happens becomes just as important.  With some of the characteristics shown at the beginning of the book, she could be the kind of person who would just hide in her room and never come out.  Then, she wouldn't meet the people she meets, form the relationships she does, go through the life changing events that she does, and ultimately, bring about the things that bring the book to the climax.

The story is going to need work.  A lot of it.  And it might not pan out at all.  The good news is, I was able to put my story in a whole new perspective today which is not an easy thing.  I was able to write a questioning, logically deducting Gwen like I haven't written before, a shier girl than I'm used to but one who actually felt likable.

Hopefully, this means I can get back to my long overdue edits for Queen of Time.  I think it has the potential to be an awesome story.  I'm just going to have to become the writer to fulfill that potential.

Being the goal oriented person that I am, I came up with some goals of what I want for Queen of Time more than anything else, mostly things I haven't been able to accomplish to my satisfaction in other stories.

• Gwen to be a very different heroine than I normally write but still likable and relate-able. 
• The world building to feel rich and visible.  Being able to take readers to my picture of Camelot would be awesome!
• Having a cast of different and believeable guys
• Having good chemistry between my female and male main character
• A complicated enough storyline to keep the reader guessing but not confused.

Seeing my goals here makes it sound like my book should be so easy.  Unfortunately, I am not good at writing anything on this list.  There's no good way for me to ease into it with a book of this caliber.  I'm just going to write, and rewrite until I'm done!

-Anna Leigh

End of the Road, Bottom of a Hill

Sitting at 139,456 words, my first draft is finished!

It's amazing, exhausting, and exhilarating.

And I've barely scratched the surface.

When I started this book on January 18, 2015, I had no idea what I was getting myself into.  I also didn't know I was going to write to date the longest book I've ever written.  I've spent a few days this last week printing it out and now my entire manuscript is filling a ringed binder.  I read through the first twelve chapters today and did some marking up in spots that need fixing.

The good news is, I'm really excited about the story and how things shook out.  The bad news? I'm going to have a lot of chipping away to do before this thing shines.

There are obvious things, like the fact Gwen has a constantly changing guard when it is only supposed to be one because I couldn't figure out which knight I wanted to have by her side (I think I've figured it out but you never know when that might change), or a character that was more of a main and is now a side character, or a character I am writing out all together.  I had two bad guys and when I was flipping through the pages today (291 gloriously printed ones :), I realized it would be much more logical if my two bad guys were merged into one.  Then there were some awesome moments I read today where she went from not knowing the guy's name to magically knowing it.

I'm proud of Gwen, even though every move she's made and every thought she's experienced have come from me.  She really grew up by the end of the book and doesn't need the people around her to live a happy life.  Arthur hasn't quite reached his awesomeness peak potential but that's more because I was focused on Gwen in my first draft.  I'll be discovering Arthur a bit more in my second though he's in like every one of my favorite scenes.  I haven't had detachment syndrome from her or Arthur yet but I think it's because I know I'm not truly finished yet.  I've jumped the first hurdle, now I have a few more to go.

I've read a ton of people talk about editing and how much they hate it.  I have only really gone through it twice, once with Only Human and then my novella, but this will be way different.  I've learned a lot since I worked on Only Human last year (seems like a lot longer than that) and this manuscript is twenty-five thousand words longer.  All that to say, I'm really excited about the editing.  Yes, it's monotonous and hard and you have to cut scenes that you love and go over and over paragraphs that aren't working out (and weasel words.  I have a love/hate relationship with those babies) but everything comes together.  All through writing a first draft, every time something doesn't work out, I just keep telling myself "I'll fix this in editing." Then, when I get to editing, my biggest fear isn't the time spent but how it will end up.  Will the hours and hours be worth it? Will I love this book as much as I want to?

I'm not sure if people ever feel their work is perfect and I don't expect to.  Actually, it would be awesome if I could tell people "I wrote a book" and not cringe when they ask if they can read it. *cough* Only Human *cough*.

I'm glad to be making progress and really excited for Monday when I'll be starting the next book.  New characters, new setting, new challenge.

So. Ready.

-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