Category Archives: Writing

Draft two

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I’ve been whittling away at a rewrite, in preparation for my March writers’ group meeting. On this particular project, revisions have meant three things:

  • Differentiating between my two main female characters. Because the protagonist is a guy with less-than-acute emotional intelligence, and I’m limited to describing things through his eyes, it’s been a challenge to get beyond hair colour and breast size and include some scenes which thoroughly illustrate the girls’ characters. Getting Into Character has been a helpful source — a book recommended in one of Alex Van Tol’s blog posts.
  • Ensuring my main character has a goal in each scene, and that he’s driving the action, not sitting in the backseat like a passive wuss. Well… sometimes his hormones drive the action, but he’s 17. He thinks it’s his brain doing the work.
  • Expanding and clarifying the ending. I’m guessing that I shouldn’t wrap everything up in the same four or five paragraphs. I think I got a little impatient to finish draft one. And for this one, I’m afraid I have to rely on my own lazy-ass brain.

Cross your fingers that the girls in the writing group like it! Then, I may have to find some male beta readers. The whole manuscript’s been sitting on the back of the toilet for weeks waiting for Min to read it, and no luck so far…

Dear self…

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Rachelle asks, what do wish someone had told you when you began considering a writing career?

How about this: Do not take a communications job at a government agency thinking you’ll write the next great Canadian novel on the side, because the government job will make your brains turn to goo and start glopping out your ears whenever you accidentally tip your head. And that’s not good for anyone.

Hmmm… too bitter? Maybe this instead:

Your poem that just won the school contest and is going to get printed in the yearbook? Don’t show ANYONE. In ten years, you will be horrified by this poem.

Or:

Do not pursue novel ideas that involve a mysterious and all powerful druid, talking trees, or weeping and pregnant teenage girls about to shift dimensions.

Well, okay, maybe that last one. But definitely not the first two.

Percolating

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A few months ago, my friend Rachelle Delaney blogged about writing in coffee shops, and the importance of finding the balance between good coffee and anonymity.

I’ve been thinking about this ever since. I completely agree on the need for anonymity. For the same reason I can’t work at a computer when my back’s to the door, I can’t work when people are wondering what I’m writing. I can feel the pressure building like a mudslide waiting to happen. I mean, maybe I’m writing crap, okay? OKAY? I understand that! There’s absolutely no need for you to go POINTING IT OUT!

Whew. That settles it. If someone asked what I was working on… I’d have to switch coffee shops. Immediately.

To add to Rachelle’s list, two of my favourite haunts are: My Local Cafe on West 10th and Highbury, where they are much too cool to take an interest in your work; and Caffe Artigiano on Broadway, where they are much too busy to care.


The addiction kicks in

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Writing books, writing courses, writing blogs, they all say the same thing: writers have to write.

To me, this means that writers are always furtively scribbling in notebooks and journals, or writing poems on the backs of cocktail napkins.

However, it turns out that having to write might also mean that while I’m taking a 72-hour break from my fiction manuscript, I am struck by panic, wondering things like:

  • Once I finish this, what in the world am I going to work on?
  • What if I never, ever have a good idea again?
  • If I worked at Starbucks, how many lattés could I drink before getting fired?

And so, I spend said 72 hours immersed in researching, writing, and submitting a non-fiction proposal.

“I thought you were taking a break,” my publisher said.

“Yes,” I said. “I fell off the non-non-fiction wagon.”

She thought that was funny.

Just add water

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In the category of “things that should have gone in the underwear book,” comes this link, courtesy of Eileen Cook (who must have a deadline to procrastinate about, in order to have found this on the web).

Instant underpants packed into a tin. You carry them in your purse. Then, in case of underwear emergency, you add water. The thing I don’t understand is… if it’s an emergency, who’s going to have time to wave the reconstituted panties in the wind until they dry?

Alas, it’s too late for inclusion in 50 Underwear Questions. My readers will just have to survive without emergency back-up.

Baby steps

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Now that my kids are 4 and 6, life is much easier than it was a couple years ago. I have a little writing time, mommy-brain isn’t quite so debilitating, and I even have time for a few fun things. Last week, for example, I went to see August: Osage Country at the Stanley (which was great).

See? Time to myself.

On the other hand, I was probably the only one in the audience with her hair in a clip because I somehow FORGOT to rinse the conditioner out that morning and hadn’t had time to shower again the entire day.

My fallow state

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I finished the first draft.

I was dying to finish it, because I had many, many potential revisions swirling around in my brain. I was so eager to write that last sentence, scroll back to the beginning, and start making changes. And then I finished, and I had tons of time to write over the weekend, and I…

did nothing.

Nothing.

Except watch Project Runway and not one, but two, episodes of Love It or List It.

Ah, well. Let’s focus on the positive and go back to the finished first draft.

What not to do while finishing the first draft

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  1. Decide that now would be a good time to dust the baseboards.
  2. Experiment with various sleep aids.
  3. Search real estate listings for forested lots only accessible by water.
  4. Download a Motley Crue song, to reconnect you with your youth.
  5. Take up scrapbooking, macrame, interpretive dance, or any combination of the three.
  6. Read Jane Austen, so that all your characters start saying things like, “he has not, perhaps, a more sorrowing heart than I have.”
  7. Wonder what your next novel will be, and why you have no ideas, and what it will be like to no longer write.
  8. Work on your acceptance speeches for various awards.
  9. Keep chocolate in the house so that when you finish the novel, you will weigh 600 pounds.
  10. Feel resentment towards your family when they make unreasonable demands on your time (such as “can I have a peanut butter sandwich?”).