The Road Paved With Words

Prompt: Giving in vs. giving up.

            Ryan stood up.

            I stared at Maggie. “You started this.”

            Ryan started slowly. “There comes a time in all our lives when giving in seems a valid option. The right option. But that, that my friends is giving up. We cannot allow this.”

            “They’re really quite different,” Maggie started to try and make amends.

            I narrowed my eyes at her. “Oh no.  You’ve gotten him going.”

            “But the point of the fact is that giving in to Montezuma’s demands is giving up, and we as a steadfast group of –“

            I pointed at him, my eyes boring into Maggie. “You did this. It won’t end. It won’t ever end.”

            Antony quickly plugged his ears. Ryan continued to drone on.

            I stared unblinkingly into Maggie’s soul. She began to tremble.

            “….a noble quest….”

            C2EB began to whine.            

            “Never give in….”

            Tony strode over and slapped Ryan across the back of the head. Ryan promptly shut up, settling into a sulk.

            “Thank goodness,” Tony said. “He was about to kill me with all the hope and inspiration.” We fell into an uneasy silence.

            “Giving in to his demands is not giving up,” Maggie said after a moment. “I have a plan.”

Prompt: Feeling inadequate over something seemingly trivial. (Not going to be used, but fun!)

            I slowly lowered my head so that it rested in my hand. “Let me get this straight. You feel inadequate because of Tony.”

            “Well, yes,” Ryan said. “I can’t help it.”

            “You’re telling me that a dark prince of the UnSeelie Court who can fly, is an expert swordsman, and can burst into a pillar of flame whenever he so chooses, is jealous of a dog-man.” 

            “Fox,” Antony said, tongue sticking out between his sharp, white teeth.

            “Shut up, or it’s the muzzle for you,” I warned. I looked at Ryan. “Why?”

            “His fur is redder than mine.”

            Oh bother.

“Your Characters are Stuck on A Bus”

            We were stuck. Traffic was idling along. We’d moved about twenty feet in the past five minutes. The others were growing impatient.

            “What a lovely country this is,”Antony said mildly.

            “Yes. Quite,” Maggie said darkly. “There’s nothing like being on an urgent mission and being stuck on public transport.”

            “But we’re inGreece!” I reminded her cheerfully. “That has to count for something. Just think of it like the driver is showing us the sights.”

            “If the driver was pulling the bus.”

            I turned away from her. Ryan shot me a quick smile and squeezed my hand. “I think that man across from us is part gargoyle,” he said conspiratorially.

            The gargoyle in question glowered at him.

            I sighed. “What have I said about using your social filter?” Honestly. I’m surrounded by idiots. 

But seriously, my boyfriend doesn’t realize that you have to kill someone off in a young adult book to make it work. 

If I don’t kill someone, the story will never finish.

It’s my virgin sacrifice to the writing gods.

It has to be done. 

It has to be. 

As most of you know I’ve finished writing one novel and am working on my the next book in the series. While my first one still has some polishing up to do, the reviews have been so good that a friend of a friend who is an editor is going to polish it up for me. In the mean-time, between working two jobs and marketing and trying to get the first one off of the ground, I’m trying to write the second book, TRIAL BY FIRE. Here are some of the issues I’m facing.

PROCRASTINATION/EXHAUSTION.

This one is huge. I spend all my time to put money away or spend it on important things like food, rent, and bus tokens/passes that when it comes right down to it, I’m too tired and don’t want to write. I put it off. While sometimes this is necessary (I am, unfortunately, not an android, and need to sleep sometimes), it’s hard to fall out of this habit.

ALREADY KNOWING WHAT’S GOING TO HAPPEN

Trial by Fire has been story boarded, researched, and had character biographies written. All the voices are figured out, the plot is decided (though without a doubt it is constantly evolving, especially towards the end), and even some of the jokes/witty lines are written down. However, this seems to take a lot of the excitement of it out for me. When I get down to it, I’m really grateful that I have a storyline and that I’ve planned a lot of it out, because then I can shape it and evolve it past what I had, but sometimes knowing that you already have it makes it that much harder to sit down and do it. If I know it, why can’t my computer already know it?

NOT BEING IN A FUNNY MOOD

This doesn’t really work if you’re not writing a comedy, though I think it can apply to almost any genre as well. If I’m in a bad or cranky mood, it’s hard to make a scene funny. For sadness, anger, action, or romance scenes, it’s not hard to get into that mindset, especially if I already have a constructed playlist. Music influences my mood way too much, so it’s easy to get into moods to write those scenes with as much emotion as possible. However, it’s extremely hard to get into a funny mood, one where you’re brimming with small observations or sarcasm or wit. Listening to comedians doesn’t really help. Sometimes I can write without feeling funny, but by my nature I’m kind of quiet. It’s hard to slip into the sarcastic mind of my protagonist and see things as she sees things and respond as she would respond. Getting into that mood and that mindset is probably the biggest problems I face when trying to write Trial by Fire. 

HOW I FIX THIS

1. Reward System - If I finish this chapter, I’ll give myself a cookie. However, I usually end up getting frustrated and just getting the damn cookie anyways, because I’m an adult and who am I to restrict access to my own fucking cookies?!

2. Pep Talk - Now, I can’t pep talk myself up at all, so I get my sister or boyfriend to do it. Usually then I’m ready to sit down and write. Having a set of your own personal cheerleaders does a world of good. 

3. READING - Reading is probably the biggest thing that helps me to sit down and write. Sometimes, to help me get into the mood, I’ll read other sarcastic or funny novels. Sometimes I’ll read love stories, or sometimes I’ll read thrillers or crime. The whole point is that I’m doing the other key part of writing. Reading gets your mind going, your imagination flowing and your writing gears cranking. Intertextuality comes into play. Reading for an hour before I write always does wonders, since after finishing a good story, I’m compelled to work hard and finish my own. 

I don’t think I posted it here - but if you like the facebook page for TEMPERED BY FIRE, you get to read the first eight chapters free (as long as I can message you).

Please excuse the typos and grammatical errors - for the second printing they will be fixed, but I had a deadline to meet in order for everything to go through. It’s actually super nice - a friend of a friend of a friend is an editor, and when they read my reviews offered to review them for free, so that’ll just make the second printing more awesome. 

:D

http://www.facebook.com/TemperedByFire

When somebody gets legitimately angry at me because something bad happens to a character and doesn’t speak to me for several hours because they’re just going to yell at me, that’s when I know that I’ve done a good job in writing that character.

When somebody tells me they cried, or that the sympathized or saw themselves in that character, and that it evoked painful memories, that’s when I know I’ve done a good job in writing that character.

When somebody tells me they were snorting with laughter, or that they were in hysterics over something a character did, that’s when I know I’ve done a good job in writing that character.

This doesn’t always happen. It’s hard to write consistently good characters, ones that people can identify with or care about. It’s almost impossible. But when it does happen, it’s like gold. When my room-mate came in, threw my book down on my bed and told me she was angry at me before picking it up again and cradling it, I was thrilled. Because when readers stop viewing people as characters in a novel and start viewing them as actual people, I feel like I’ve won the writing jackpot.  I’ve managed to create believable characters, flawed characters, that people legitimately care about.

I won’t say that I don’t care if nobody reads my book, or that I won’t care if this this entire venture fails, because I will care. But knowing that I wrote characters that people care about is a huge victory that, even if this is a small stepping stone in my life and doesn’t have an impact on the rest of it, tells me I at least did something right.

My current sales rank on the kindle is #279,400. Considering I haven’t sold that much on the kindle, I’m a little surprised.

That being said, you should totally go buy the kindle edition.