Re-Entry Problems, and A Cloudland Excerpt

I'm having one of those days.

You know the ones. You have a vacation, you tear yourself away from writing and blogging and work and chores and everything screaming for your attention - not without some effort, mind you - you immerse yourself in the joy of doing nothing, and then, eventually, you have to come back to the real world. But in the process of coming back you find you're moving about 3 gears slower than usual, and you're not really getting all that much done...

...and this is where I am. I'm fully back in the real world by now, but last week was one of those slooooow re-entry weeks. Meaning I have nothing new to report in the world of writing. Except re-entry. Which is boring.

SO, I will report OLD things instead. Those of you who've been following along since the A-Z Challenge know I have a novel-in-progress that's now on hold, but I also have a finished novel that's on hold from querying. It's called Cloudland, And Other Stories, and it's about a little boy named Jake who loses his mother; the social worker assigned to his case, who recently lost her father; and the strange, wild journey they end up on together as they try to find their parents.

I blogged about it quite a bit when I first started posting, but it's been a very long time since then, so I thought I would post an excerpt from it. This bit is the beginning of the book. I hope you enjoy it:

Jake settled himself deeper into the cloud-nest of his bed, top-bunk, high and lofted, closer to the sky and the Stories. When mom came in, she would have to climb up the ladder to reach him, and he would have time to watch the darkness under her eyes crinkle up and break apart, and there would be humor and soft pillows to lean on instead of the edged cliffs her face had earthquaked into, ever since she started school. School and work and him and dad and church and still somehow the quiet spaces she needed to fit herself into, he knew, were too many things pushing together. It was like the tech tonal plate things under the ground they’d talked about once in school, that made big earthquakes where houses scrunched up like people who are too cold, and roads flew up in the air, to the sky, to nowhere, toward the Stories. He didn't like either kind of earthquake; he liked the windy open sky, the soft pillowed clouds, both here on the earth, and in the smooth light brown of her face. That’s where the Stories were.

How's your re-entry going? Better than mine, I hope? What are you working on?

Writing Process and...COME BACK!

No, that's not a totally desperate plea to you all, visitors; it's an announcement that Melissa Maygrove's debut novel, Come Back, is now available!! I'll have more on that shortly, but first -

The lovely and talented Kristin Smith tagged me in a writing process meme last week - yes, last week; I know that's like a decade in internet time, but I've been very busy recovering - so I'm going to respond with my own process today. Better late than never, right?

And no, I haven't forgotten that I promised to write a post about public speaking. I will, but thanks to so much busyness in the blogosphere, it's going to have to wait til June's IWSG post. It'll be there, I promise!

Now, on to my writing process:


What am I working on now?

Well, gee, I dunno if I should answer this. I mean, I never, ever, ever talk about it, and I'm just not sure I'm ready to start. I've heard that some people post about their WIPs every single day in one month, but I just don't think I can't do that (did I get to 26 links yet? Hmm...) Well, if I must...

As you all know, probably long past the point of curiosity, I'm currently researching, brainstorming, and plotting out a novel about two souls. The book will follow them through six different lifetimes, all the way from Ancient Greece to the London of the future, in one seriously long and epic love story. You can read the little blurb I created for it here. I'm also querying my first novel, Cloudland, and Other Stories.


How does my book differ from other within its genre?

Hmm. Good question. I've been having trouble fitting this one (and Cloudland) into one specific genre, because I tend to write literary fiction plus something else. Cloudland is literary fiction with elements of fantasy, and my current WIP is literary fiction plus some romance plus magical realism. I hope that works in my favor instead of against me, but honestly, even if it doesn't, it's what I love to read, so of course it's how I write, too.


Why do I write what I do?

Yikes, that is not an easy question. I suppose I write about topics that challenge me, inspire me, trouble me, hurt me, and drive me crazy. I wrote Cloudland because I wanted to talk about grief; about how it can tear you apart if you don't face it; about how universal and yet specific it can be; about the possibility of redemption and growth and peace inside all of that unbearable pain. I'm writing my current WIP because I wanted to dive into that terrifying, thrilling, messy place where love, faith, and fear intersect; because I wanted to raise big questions about souls, and how we love, and who we love; because I wanted to explore all of the ways we can sabotage ourselves and our own happiness, and how the world can sabotage us, and yet we can still hope for - and perhaps even get - a second, a third, a five-thousandth chance at joy.

I couldn't tell you why I write literary fiction; it's just the way it comes out. I have my own frustrations about that genre, anyway, because the name is so inherently snobby. But that's apparently what I write, so there it is. I write magical realism because I desperately needed magic to be real when I was young, and I never got over that acute wish; and because now, as an adult, I do find magic in the strangest places, and that's one of my favorite things about being alive.


How does my writing process work?

Well, I've written this to death on this blog, too; may I point you to my post about plotting as a good starting point? In a nutshell, here it is: I get an idea. I worry the idea is stupid. I brainstorm and develop and research that idea, anyway, in the hopes that it's not. In the process, I get excited about it, and brainstorm and develop and research some more. I write extensive, deeply psychological, insanely long character analyses. I outline and re-outline and outline some more (I will never be mistaken for a panster). In between, I worry and fret and write brainstorming snippets that help me develop character and scene, and worry and fret some more. Once I have a finished outline, I write and write and write, then read and read and read, and edit and edit and edit, and wash, rinse, and repeat.


So...what's YOUR writing process like? Tell me! I'm also going to tag Mason Matchak and Anna Soliveres to continue on with this writing process tour.


And now, on to Come Back, at long last!! Happy Release, Melissa! Seriously, I've been so excited to post about this. Melissa is a great blogger, writer, and friend, and I'm so happy for her...not mention psyched to read this book! It's NA Historical Romance, for those who are wondering. Melissa is also running a giveaway on her blog this week, so after you finish reading this, go over there and enter!

Come Back, by Melissa Maygrove
Sometimes a single choice alters the course of a person's life forever.

Left behind by everyone she loves...

Rebecca Garvey had the promise of a California future dreams are made of, until the wagon train her family was traveling with left her behind. Now she’s slowly dying in the wilderness, abandoned and stripped of her self-worth. Once the shock of her desertion turns to embittered despair, she doesn’t want to be found. Then a handsome stranger challenges her convictions and changes her mind.

Headed for Texas, chased by the demons of his past...

Seth Emerson knows exactly what he wants. Working to save for a cattle ranch of his own keeps him busy and keeps his pain buried. Rescuing a stubborn woman from the hills of New Mexico Territory isn't part of his plan—but she’s exactly what he needs.

Making greater sacrifices than either of them could foresee...


Seth and Rebecca set off on a risky journey and a quest for truth, each healing the other’s love-starved soul along the way. Will they give in to their growing attraction?  Or will they honor their commitments when Seth returns Rebecca to civilization... and her betrothed?

Where to buy:

Amazon / Kindle / Barnes & Noble / Nook / Kobo

About Melissa:

Native Texan Melissa Maygrove is a wife, mother, nurse, freelance editor, and romance writer. When she's not busy caring for her tiny nursery patients or shuttling teenagers back and forth to after-school activities, she's hunched over her laptop, complicating the lives of her imaginary friends and playing matchmaker. Melissa loves books with unpretentious characters and unforgettable romance, and she strives to create those same kinds of stories for her readers.

www.melissamaygrove.com

Blog: www.melissamaygrove.blogspot.com

Twitter @MelissaMaygrove: https://twitter.com/MelissaMaygrove

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MelissaMaygrove?ref=hl

Google+: https://plus.google.com/u/0/106752837827430594401/posts

Goodreads author page: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/8103285.Melissa_Maygrove

A to Z Challenge: G is for Gods

This year, I'm participating in the insane awesome A to Z blogging challenge, which entails posting EVERY SINGLE DAY during the month of April, except for Sundays. Each day's theme corresponds to a different day of the alphabet: 26 days, 26 posts. I'll be blogging each day this month on some aspect of my current work in progress (WIP).

G is for Gods

I'm going to tell a very, very brief story (no, really, all evidence to the contrary, I promise it'll be short): Once upon a time, I set out to write a magical realism novel, and instead, I wrote Cloudland. Which has some magic in it, yes, but really isn't magical realism at all.

See? SUPER short story. I'm getting better at this brevity thing. Anyway, when I started my current WIP, I thought, "OK, this time I'm really doing magical realism." And as soon as I thought that, I decided that meant that I could have gods as characters. Readers of this blog won't be too surprised by that; I already mentioned both god characters I'll have in previous A to Z posts.

Why? Well, the better question is, why the heck not? This is magical realism: I get to play with reality! I get to have these incredibly powerful beings waltz around Earth, wreaking havoc, breaking hearts, and generally acting like normal human beings who just happen to also be (almost) omnipotent and (nearly) immortal. Oh yes, and incredibly gorgeous.

Now what isn't fun about that?! The only small issue was that I wanted to have each soul reincarnate as a god in one lifetime...which meant that the gods also had to die. Hence the parenthetical modifiers in the previous paragraph. This bothered me for a little while, until I remembered that I'm the writer, and I get to make up the rules. So, in my world, gods can die. It's not easy to kill them, and they won't ever age or die of a disease, but they can (and will) die.

I really love being the writer sometimes...

Snapshots From My Brain

I'm doing something I rarely do on this blog: I'm sitting down to post with zero idea of what I want to write about today. I usually have some framework in mind, or at least a theme, but this morning... not so much.

Excited yet???

Me too!!!

So, I think what I'll do is brainstorm right here. You know, just freewrite, like flipping through my brain's current photo album, and see what comes out. It'll be a little experiment. And I'll do it in list form, because lists make me feel happy and safe. So, without further ado...

• NaNoWriMo. I'm not so much doing it as I am finding new and creative ways to work around doing it. You see, I thought at first that I might leap headlong into the fray of NaNo, throwing caution to the wind, and - gasp - write without a plot or an outline or anything but a vague sort of idea-thingy-dingy. You'll be shocked to learn that this lasted about ten minutes, before I looked in dumb dismay at my computer screen, and said (maybe out loud. I'm not telling), "I have no idea what the f*&$ I'm trying to write about." Yes, I confirmed once and for all that I am not a pantser, because no matter how hard I try, my brain just doesn't work that way. I can't write without at least a brief sketch of a road map, it turns out, and I can't make that map without knowing my characters.
• Not worry! I haven't stopped trying; I've just changed tactics. I may not be able to write a 50,000 word novel in a month, but I might be able to write 50,000 words of character analysis, free-writing, and outlines in a month. That's what I'm doing now. Perhaps some people might call that "cheating"; I call it "changing the goals so I don't get ridiculously frustrated and unnecessarily upset with myself and actually manage to get something done."
• Guess what? It's working! I don't have anything close to 50,000 words, and I might not hit that target (thank you, life, people, day job, and so on), but I am churning out my brainstorming quite a bit faster than usual. And since I LOVE brainstorming so, so, so much, anything I can do to speed the damn process up is a big fat WIN in my book.
• For those following this new book of mine, Sam's name is now Taylor. I took a brief and entirely unscientific poll, and people seem to have much fewer immediate gender associations about "Taylor". So that's what I'm going with. 
• Taylor is, yes, still very keen on getting me to tell their damn story (I'm going with 'they' instead of 'he' or 'she' on the excellent advice of Mr. M.L. Swift. Thanks, Mike!) Thanks in large part to all of your great advice, I'm now enjoying it rather than wondering if I've truly lost my marbles. 
• I'm also working on a few new sections/lifetimes, involving an old man in ancient Tibet, and a nomad in pre-Columbus South America. The amount of research I'm going to have to do for this thing is starting to get a bit alarming. 
• No, I haven't forgotten about Cloudland. Editing is truly done. I've queried a few agents and am now waiting, quite calmly and patiently, to hear back on this first round of queries. I do not, of course, refresh my inbox 75,000 times per minute, nor do I do anything foolish like jump out of my skin every time I have a new email notification. Of course not. Ha, ha, ha.... UGH. As a side note, how the hell do people stay sane doing this????? 
• I also entered Cloudland into some contests. Some results are encouraging, but far from finished. I'll keep quiet about that for now, but will hopefully have news.... later. Things are brewing.

Hey... that wasn't so bad! I guess I can write without an outline, as long as what I'm writing - is an outline! 

The Last Gasps of Editing

It's going to be a quickie today (in the purely PG sense of the word. Please, people. There are children out there! None of whom read this blog, but that's beside the point.) I'm just about done with my FOURTH draft of Cloudland [insert loud clapping and whistling here] and I've set myself a deadline of, well, now, to get it done. Which means that today's bloggery must remain brief. And brevity is a major challenge for me, so this is also a personal growth day. Or something.

On this last, final, ending, all-over, done-with and every other word I can think of that means NO MORE EDITING pass, my editor pointed out two little gems that I'll share today. Because, you know, self-humiliation is super fun. And yes, these quotes are real.

She circled one of my favorite darlings, and wrote in the margin, "If you delete this, will you cry?"

Well, of course the answer is YES BUCKETS AND BUCKETS, but unfortunately, she was right. As she usually is. I had rewritten and significantly trimmed down a scene near the end of the book, and as a result I had a piece of exposition that stuck out like a giant, throbbing, possibly infected sore thumb. But I had kept it there because it was really really cool exposition!!! It was all about the Day of the Dead and how the Michoacán people believe that the monarchs that migrate there are the winged spirits of their ancestors and families, who come once a year to visit and bless them. And that was so, so perfect for Cloudland that I just about jumped out of my chair when I read about it, and I couldn't wait to get it into the book somehow. Which I did. By sounding like Professor Liz Blocker, and lecturing on monarch butterflies, their migratory patterns, and their cultural significance to the people of Mexico.

Right. It got cut. Sigh.

But that wasn't all. My editor  underlined a couple of modifier words in another section and noted that the "hyperbole might not be necessary here."

Hyperbole?

Who, me? Exaggerate in my writing? NEVER IN A MILLION YEARS!

This made me laugh, because really, she should just emblazon that note in giant blinking neon print on the cover page of the book. Or on every page. Otherwise I might forget about it.

Ok, folks, I'm off to finish my rewrites. And this post clocked in at mildly long, instead of really really long, so I must be making progress in the brevity department!

The Number One Best Way to Procrastinate. Ever.

This week, as I was perusing my blog (yes, I sometimes reread my own posts. After I've published them. Navel-gazing, what?), I realized that I've drifted a wee bit from my stated purpose, which is to provide an inside look into the process of writing a novel. Now, this is understandable, and I did warn you at the very beginning that I might stray from time to time, but it's time to get back to the main road. The novel-process road, anyway. 

Also, I wrote that purpose down at the very top of the blog, under my header picture, in big bold letters. It's like having a small elf standing on my shoulder and continuously yelling at me to get my butt back in gear.

So. A couple of weeks ago, while expounding on the pantsing vs. plotting writing styles, I made a nice, neat little outline of my process, because I outline everything. (No, really, I do. Including my insecurities.) And as I was doing that, and linking each item back to a post I'd written, I found a big, gaping hole in the very beginning: research.

Now, I imagine that different writers feel very differently about research, so I can only speak for myself when I say that I FREAKING LOVE IT. Call me a dork, but I'm laughing all the way to the bank. Er, the computer. Researching is a time-honored, perfectly acceptable, even necessary method of procrastination. See, you need to research; it's essential for a rich, believable, interesting story, so when you're doing it, you're working. Except, you're not writing. You're avoiding that. See how that works? Genius.

When I was working on Cloudland, I had a few areas that I knew I'd need to research. As I am not a) a public school social worker (like Sara), b) a child psychologist, or c) an expert on children's grief and grieving, I knew right away that I'd need to find out just a little bit more about all three subjects.

First: social work. I started by interviewing a grade school guidance counselor, which was the right age group but the wrong job, but close enough to a school social worker that it was very relevant. Then, I interviewed a high school social worker - the right job but the wrong age. Between the two of them, plus some research and reading of my own into social work in public schools, I got a wealth of information about their jobs, their training, their methods, expectations and daily work, and much more, and was able to piece together what the life and job of a grade school social worker might be like. I am very, very grateful to both women for their time and help. (And yes, I would have loved to interview an actual grade school social worker, but for a variety of reasons I couldn't easily find one. So I improvised.)

Second: child psychology. Maybe this seems strange, since I wasn't writing a book about the way a child's mind develops. But one of my main characters, Jake, is a six-year-old boy, and I needed some insight into how a six-year-old perceives the world. How does a first grader see and understand his parents? Religion? God? Death? I spoke at length with the guidance counselor about these topics. Then I read some work by Jean Piaget and other renowned child psychologists, until I thought my head might explode, which took about ten minutes. Tops. 

Luckily, my wife teaches first and second grade. Jackpot! She rescued me from dense, dry psychology books and gave me a bunch of articles, plus her own extensive knowledge. I then found a few helpful books at the Boston Public Library, including one absolute goldmine called The Spiritual Life of Children by Robert Coles, which is a fascinating and moving look into how children from different cultures perceive God. It was beyond helpful; it was inspiring. It gave me huge insight into Jake's character and provided the basis for the opening chapters, as well as the thinking behind Jake's decision to try to find his mom. 

Third: how a child grieves, which is wrapped up in how a child understands death. This one was difficult, but again, I spoke with my wife and the guidance counselor, I read books from the library, and finally, best of all, I read through a folder my wife gave me, which contained resources and information for teachers of young kids to use when someone in their class had suffered a loss.

This all took a very long time, as you might imagine. Again, that's part of the glorious procrastinating power of research! In all seriousness, though, besides the enormous insights you get, one of the best parts of researching is when you stumble across an idea, or a piece of information, that captures your imagination and beckons you to follow it. When you listen, and walk down the path that idea offers, it can often lead to surprising, inspiring, and even revelatory changes to the story. During the process of my research, I stumbled on some information about djinn, or genies, as well as the Mexican holiday El Dia De Los Muertos, or the Day of the Dead. Both of these ideas helped to shape Cloudland in unexpected ways. 

How?

Well, gee. You might have to wait until it's published to find out.

Which might be a while. Sorry about that. 

Insecure Writers: Outlines Are My Binky

NOTE: It's the first Wednesday of the month, so it's time for The Insecure Writers! For those who don't remember from last month, it's an online group for writers. Most of whom are insecure. So we support each other from the safety and comfort of our desks. It's perfect.

Happy Wednesday and IWSG, everyone! In honor of the two-year anniversary of IWSG, I'm taking a brave, massive step outside of my comfort zone, and writing about feeling neurotic and insecure as a writer today. Because, you know, I never do that here. Ever.

I'm taking a numbered, outline-ish approach to today's post, because yes, I'm a plodder plotter through-and-through, and numbered lists make me feel safe and warm and happy and reassure me that all is right with the world. Just like a binky. Also, I just can't help myself. So, without further ado, here's my List of Current Worries While Attempting to Write (Note: this list will probably change by tomorrow. Or later today. I make no promises that I will not have an entirely different list of worries in about ten minutes):

1. New Ideas: Yes, I'm still wading through piles of slain paragraphs as I edit Cloudland, but I'm also working on a new idea (more on that later). Every time I come up with a new seed for a book, I wrestle with the same thought process. It goes something like this: Oh... oh WOW. This is fantastic. This is genius. I'M a genius! Wait til this gets out into the world!! Oh god, wait. People - real, live people - will see this? WILL people see this? Will anyone WANT to read this??? Is this actually a good idea, or is it instead a truly STUPID INSANE ASININE IDEA THAT EVERYONE WILL HATE? Ok. Deep breaths, deep breaths. Yes, this IS smart. I'm smart! Wait. Am I too smart?? Am I even CAPABLE of writing this? Oh god... And so on and so forth. 
2. Actual WRITING: I spend a lot of time talking about process, but not a whole lot about the actual act of writing. Which is really - note to self - an entire other blog post or ten. But for the purposes of this list, let's just say that on the good days, generating text is FUN. I feel like a superhero streaming words from my awesome Spidey wrist web-shooters. On the bad days, every single word is up for intense, microscopic examination. You know: Is this really the word I want to use? Why isn't this sentence FLOWING correctly? NOTHING SOUNDS RIGHT KEEP GOING DON'T BE A SISSY. Fun stuff like that.
3. Time: Oh yes, this is a huge one. I'm always juggling life demands with writing, and always worrying that I'll never actually manage to finish anything. Now, I do have a finished third draft (HALLELUJAH!!!) of Cloudland, so this concern might be slightly overblown and unrealistic, but really, since when does insecurity rely on reality? However, I do have a day job. Blessedly, I am busy at my day job, and therefore am making money and eating and paying my mortgage and buying too many books. But that damn job keeps interfering with writing. Strangely, people don't want to pay for a massage unless I actually show up and give them one. Weird, right?
4. Agents and the Long-Feared Query Letter: I am fast approaching the point where I'll be sending query letters to agents and trying to convince them to a) open the email, b) actually read it, c) ask me to read some pages of my novel, and d) represent me. This is making me very, very nervous. People often ask me why I don't just try to get a publisher, and the quick answer is that even if I'm lucky enough to find one who wants to publish my book, I'm going to need an agent to help me negotiate a contract. So, that means I have to try to sell myself. Which I am so, so, SO very good it. Or not.

I know, only four items today! Not so bad, right?

Well, truthfully, #3 is giving me a headache and lighting a fire under my butt, which hurts, so my brain decided to stop coming up with worries and start telling me to get the hell to work. Which is my plan. As long as I can get over #s 1 and 2.

You know what, though? I feel a little better now that I've gotten all of that out. Huh.

So, IWSG folks, as well as non-writers, what are your worries today? Writing related or not - all are welcome. Leave 'em here on this blog, and walk away a little lighter and less insecure for the day. See? IWSG For All.

Deep and Plotty Thoughts

Ok, plot: step two! At least, that's what I was planning to write about this week. I kind of ended up with something different. Or not. Never mind, just keep reading - you'll see what I mean.

So, it's ironic: I chose to talk about plot last week using Chuck Wendig's excellent definition, which says (in essence) that plot comes directly from the characters. And I meant that. I really did. It's just that when it was time for me to figure out what the hell was actually going to happen in Cloudland, I got a little bit lost.

Ok, fine. I got a lot lost. Like, wandering aimlessly around the woods on a cloudy, moonless night with no compass or map, lost (and I should point out here that I am really terrible at directions, even when I DO have a map. I'm the person who has to turn maps around so that they face the way I'm heading, because otherwise I can't read them.)

Yeah, I knew who my characters were, and I knew what they wanted, but I didn't know how to turn that into real, actual events. So, my plot didn't so much come from my characters...at least not directly. As I said last week, I asked for help from a dead guy. And it was the best thing I could have done.

No, I didn't learn how to commune with ghosts (although that would have been a lot cooler); I started re-reading Joseph Campbell's The Power of Myth.

For those who aren't familiar with his work, Joseph Campbell was "an American mythologist, writer and lecturer, best known for his work in comparative mythology and comparative religion" (thanks, Wikipedia). He developed the theory that myths from all around the world share the same basic structure, which he called the monomyth, or the Hero's Journey. In his book The Hero With A Thousand Faces, Campbell lays out the structure of this monomyth, and illustrates how a vast majority of ancient and modern stories fit this structure. It's way too much to lay out in this post, but suffice it to say that if you were to look at Campbell's structure, and compare it to a hell of a lot of books, movies, and myths, you'd be able to see that they pretty much follow it, with a few changes here and there. The most commonly cited example of this is Star Wars, but there are a ton more.

Before I continue, I should note that there are some people out there who don't like Joseph Campbell or his theories very much. Since I'm not writing a blog about comparative mythology or Mr. Campbell, I'm not going to delve too much into the criticism; if you're interested, you can check out a summary of it here. Essentially, the critiques say that making myths 'universal' destroys the uniqueness and the intended lessons of each myth; that defining and following a specified structure leads to way too many predictable, cookie-cutter books and movies (see: all blockbuster Hollywood movies and the three-act structure); and so on.

I don't disagree with any of this. I just think it all misses the central message and value of Campbell's work, which is why I ignored the criticism and used the Hero's Journey as a jumping-off point when I was trying to come up with a structure for Cloudland.

Yep, I used it, because I love it. I'll just admit that outright. I love Joseph Campbell, and I'm inspired by him, because he lays bare this essential commonality in the human unconscious: for reasons we don't know, and can't explain, there are motifs, symbols, and metaphors that appear over and over again in myths from all over the world. The people creating these myths didn't collaborate with each other, or read up on each other's Creation Myths, before making their own. They stumbled, seemingly by chance, on themes that are universal, that access something buried deeply within all of us. And that's freaking amazing. I love that. So I wanted to think about and find and access those common unconscious associations - I was writing a book about death, after all, and what is more universally human than the struggle to comprehend death?

Notice that I said I used his theories "as a jumping-off point". I was lost in the woods without a map (see? Human metaphors from the collective unconscious. Oh yeah, that's how I roll), and I needed a refresher on basic story structures, so I re-read some of Campbell's work and took off from there. Am I indebted to and inspired by his work? Absolutely. Did I follow the structure of the Hero's Journey to the letter, and use it as the exact skeleton for my book? Nope, not at all.

I studied the structure - which you can see all laid out and summed up here - and I thought about what it was accomplishing, and why it was used, and then I took the bits I liked and got rid of the ones I didn't, or that I didn't think would serve my story, and made up my own version of it. And then bam, just like that, I had the skeleton for my book.

The problem with skeletons, of course, is that they're made of bones. No muscle, no nerve, no skin; nothing meaty to sink your teeth into, and enjoy (unless you like bones without anything on them, in which case, have at it. I'll be over by the deli and salad bars, trying to find some real food).

What I'm saying is that plot isn't just structure; it's also the all of the details of that structure. Adding flesh to the skeleton, if you will.

Which I'll talk about.... next week.

Also next week - a few brief notes on what it means to be a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants writer, and why those writers probably think I'm completely out of my mind (which I might be).

We Interrupt This Program To EMBARRASS THE HECK OUT OF ME

Hi, folks. I'm sorry about the unannounced radio silence last week. I fully intended to put up a blog post, but my birthday happened, and then my wife and I took off for heretofore unexplored regions of Western Massachusetts, where, it turns out, there are gorgeous views to look at and bountiful waterfalls and rivers to swim in and Bridges of Flowers (which, by the way, was a hell of a lot cooler and more lovely than it sounds) to cross, and very little in the way of cell phone or Internet service. So, I took a week off. Without really meaning to. Whoops.

But I'm back! And I am, as promised going to talk about plot this week - except - well, actually - if you don't mind -

I'm really not going to at all.

Nope. Sorry. Why? Because my editor has been tearing through great gobby sections of my manuscript with  unrestrained glee, and thanks to my unplanned week off, I'm now fighting to come up for air from beneath piles of marked-up pages and poor, dead, murdered paragraphs. Yes, that's right, it's time once again for small children and psychopathic criminals and abandoned puppies (look here for a key to that last sentence).

EDITING! HURRAH!

So, I'm once again wading like a lunatic through the seemingly endless pages of Cloudland, scythe in hand, slashing and burning and generally having a grand old time. Today, because I can't think about anything else at the moment, I'm going to treat you to an inside look at Liz's Bad Writing Habits, a.k.a. Stuff My Editor Is Constantly Cutting, a.k.a. Willing and Conscious Self-Humiliation In Seven Parts:

1. I've already mentioned one of them: a tendency to bash my readers over the head with over-explanation. Repeatedly. Ad nauseum. Just like I'm doing here. Oh boy.

2. I like the words 'long' and 'slow'. A lot. A whole, whole lot. I also really like them together, as in a 'long, slow moment'. There are (or rather, there were, before my editor's pen went hog-wild) a large number of 'long, slow moments' in my manuscript. I also really like it when people do things that are 'long' and/or 'slow': 'a long silence', 'a slow nod', 'a long, slow smile'. This is problematic, because, funny enough, readers seem to get bored with LONG, SLOW BOOKS.

3. One of my main characters, Sara, seems to like to avoid declarative sentences. For an example, see the sentence I just wrote. Does she seem to like to avoid them, or does she, in fact, just like to avoid them? As Shakespeare has Hamlet point out, '"Seems," madam? Nay, it is; I know not "seems."' 

4. I have a problem with pairing actions and body parts. Before your imagination runs wild, let me explain: I like to point out that characters nod their heads, and cross their arms over their chests. Because, you know, why just say that someone nodded, without saying what they nodded? I mean, that could be chaos! What body part did they nod?? There are so many choices! How will we ever know if I don't say it?!

5. I am a specific word addict. Once I find a word I like, I use it over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. And then I use it some more. My editor and I are compiling a growing list of Words I Am No Longer Allowed To Use in Cloudland. They include: fierce, wild, shift/shifting, murmur, quiver/quivering, long, and slow (see #2 above).

6. Emotions don't just happen; they happen in specific body parts. Or at least, they do when I write about them. I have a whole lot of instances of guilt rising in throats, and anger surging in stomachs, and grief filling lungs. I think at some point, someone told me that emotions should be visceral for the reader, and I, erm, took them rather seriously.

7. I love words. I really do. I love the way they taste, sound, look, smell, and feel (and yes, some words do have smells). This is not a bad thing, actually; it's just part of who I am, and a large part of why I love to read and write. The problem comes when I love them so much that I just keep piling 'em on. Hence, the collections of mass graves for my poor dead paragraphs.

I'm sure there are more Bad Habits I could name, but if you'll excuse me, I really need to get back to excising mine from my manuscript now.

Plot next week!! No, really!