A to Z Challenge: P is for Polyandry

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).

P is for Polyandry 

Confession time: I wrote today's post well before yesterday's, which is why this seems a little anticlimactic. View it then as more of an explanation than anything else...

Yesterday, I mentioned that Choden is engaged to Tashi and his two older brothers - yes, all three of them! This isn't a form of feminist matriarchal society, though; it's an adaptation to life in a place with limited fertile land, designed to prevent family land and wealth from being split between multiple sons, and it's called polyandry.

Yes, I did post about this once a while ago, but this post is different, I promise. Plus, it might perhaps be said that I was groping blindly for a topic for the letter 'P'. It's possible.

So, anyway, for all you newcomers, what is polyandry? I'm so glad you asked! As Wikipedia says, it's "a form of polygamy whereby a woman takes two or more husbands at the same time." And it just so happens that Tibet, which is where one of the lifetimes in my WIP takes place, is one of the very few areas in the world where it was widely practiced.

And that means that I get to write about what might happen when a woman is betrothed to three brothers, one of whom she's been secretly in love with since she was a young girl. Thank you, research!

A to Z Challenge: I is for India

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).

I is for India

...well, maybe. Yes, I'm doing that again. But that 'maybe' is looking more and more like a 'yes', because the basic plot I'm working out for this lifetime, if it is in India around 1890 (although I may change the year), is looking like more and more fun. So E very likely is going to be for Emma, and I really might be going to India. Metaphorically speaking only, unfortunately. I really need to find that rich, generous patron one of these days...

Anyway, my concerns about researching and accurately writing about India - and Indian people - during the British Colonial Era haven't gone away, but the plot is getting...well...too delicious to ignore. Yes, Ava, you were totally right - the whole situation is rife with conflict. Emma, I think, will be engaged to a proper British gent, chosen for her by her beloved dad, and although she's not in love with this fiance, she's happy to be a dutiful daughter, and he seems like a nice enough bloke, and everyone keeps telling her she'll fall in love with him over time, and so on and so forth.

Yes, it's the perfect engagement, and the wedding plans are so lovely and everyone is so happy, and then along into Emma's house comes this strange, compelling, mysterious Indian servant-woman, who doesn't act like a servant at all, is far too beautiful, and who seems much more interested in Emma's father's military plans than she does in cleaning the house.

And poof, now we have all the makings for a truly complicated forbidden love story, between two people who absolutely should not and cannot and must not fall in love - for every conceivable reason you can think of, and then some - and yet who find themselves inexplicably and inexorably drawn to each other, almost as if they'd known and loved each other in a previous life, or even lives...

Now come on, how fun is that?

Writing Love Stories For Dummies (Like Me)

This week's blog-post-brainstorming started with a good, old-fashioned dither. I'm still researching Tibet, you see, so - hmm, how to say this nicely - my current process is REALLY EFFING BORING.

Not that the research is boring; not at all. As I've mentioned, I love research (most of the time). It's just that telling you about that process is rather akin to forcing you to sit through a dull lecture by a professor who sounds like the teacher from Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

So, I dithered. And then I thought: WAIT! I'm not just researching Tibet; I've also been researching love stories!

Why? Well, part of my advice to people when they're struggling with plot (besides go back to your characters, of course) is to look for some way to frame the plot; some plot-skeleton to hang your story-flesh off of, if you'll excuse the unsettling metaphor. This can be literal - when I was writing Cloudland, I used Joseph Campbell's monomyth - or it can be thematic. You know, some kind of writing prompt, or jumping-off point, like, in the month of April I'll write blog posts for every letter of the alphabet. Or something.

For this WIP, since a) it's about love, and b) it follows souls through multiple lifetimes, I thought I might be able to structure each lifetime around one of the Great Love Story Plots.

Except, erm, I didn't know what they were. What?? I've never claimed to be an expert on writing romance. Far from it, actually. This is where all of you romance writers point at me, and laugh, as well you should. But I really did do some research on it.

So, for all of you non-romance writers, who, like me, freeze in panic when they have to write a love story, I want to share the most helpful thing I found in my research thus far: a fantastic old blog post by one Margo Berendson, listing her idea of the 13 standard love story plots, with examples for each.

For those who don't have time to click on the link, here's a little user's guide to the love plots I'm going to mention, quoted from her blog:

• Reluctant love: "where two people are forced by circumstances into a betrothal or marriage. Sometimes both are reluctant partners; sometimes one is willing, the other reluctant. As the reluctant one comes to know her partner better, they genuinely fall in love"
• Love Torn Apart: "the opposite of a happily-ever after, where love reigns for a while, but then is torn apart by circumstances" 
• Love Forsaken: "a pair of lovers where one rejects the other (usually because of unequal status or to honor the family), and then regrets it"
• You're the Last Person I'd Ever Love: "two characters start out disliking each other, often quite intensely, and then fall in love as they get to know each other better"
• Forbidden Love: "Romeo and Juliet, Lancelot and Guinevere, Paris and Helen" and so on. 

If you found those helpful, I highly recommend checking out the original post. Just sayin'.

Anyway, thanks to that post, I'm off and running, and GOD does it feel good to have a sense of the overall structure of this monstrosity that I'm working on. And because I'm me, and I am incapable of doing anything simply, I want to combine these plots to make new stories. Yes, one lover might be headed towards an arranged marriage, and therefore a reluctant love plot, but suddenly another character arrives in the story, of the wrong race or gender or social class (or all of the above), and now we have a forbidden love story, with a dash of love triangle and great potential for love torn apart. And THAT is fun to write.

For example, I'm thinking my Ancient Greek story will combine jealous love and love torn apart (yes, I made the first one up, but I like it. Think crazy jealousy ruining everything, like in Othello), and my modern London story will be an amalgamation of you're the last person I'd ever love and love forsaken, with a possible, unusual, modern twist on forbidden love.

Silly? Maybe, but it's working, and I'll take that over dignity any time.

Insecure Writers: Writing the Unknown

NOTE: It's the first Wednesday of the month, so it's time for The Insecure Writers! For those who don't remember, it's an online group created by Alex J. Cavanaugh for writers. You, too, can join us anytime!

Before I get started, I just wanted to say that I'll be doing my first-ever guest post this week, on Friday. So, stop by on Friday for the link and info!

First I just have to say, thank goodness for Shell Flower. I logged on today to write my blog post, and would have totally missed the fact that it was IWSG day if I hadn't seen her post, first. So, thank you, Shell, for dragging my brain out of Ancient Tibet, and into March 2014!

For any newcomers (and hello and welcome to my neurotic ramblings), my current WIP is a journey through Ancient Greece, Tibet, South America, India, London, and Australia. Which means I need to heavily research all of these places (yes, I am insane. As I said, welcome to my neurotic ramblings.)

So, I've had my nose buried in Tibet all week. I'm reading a book called, appropriately enough, Tibet: Its History, Religion, and People, by Thubten Jigme Norbu, a Tibetan monk who also happens to be the older brother of the current Dalai Lama. It's a lovely, if rather dry, read, full of actually useful information (something new for me) about the daily life and religion and outlook of normal Tibetans - not just kings and gurus, but peasants and nomads, too - and I'm very grateful to my local librarian for pulling it off of the shelf and pressing it into my desperate little hands.

It's also a lot. I mean, it's a lot to take in. I'm attempting to understand the world view of a character that's vastly different from my own, and whose culture I am mostly ignorant of - and let me tell you, Tibetan culture, history, and religion are not simple. The country is thousands of years old, with a complex animist religion at the time my character was living (500-600 CE); I've never met a single Tibetan person or been to Tibet; and unlike Ancient Greece, whose culture and mythology form the foundation for much of our own, Ancient Tibet is something I've only barely touched on in my life's learnings so far.

Now, I would never say that writers should only write about their own culture, race, gender, sexual orientation, and religion. Because really, if I did that, I'd be writing novels full of me, talking to me, interacting with more me. How BORING (not to mention alarmingly self-involved.) I think it's important to go outside of what is familiar; to reach into the unknown, and hope to bring back something to share; something that illuminates, even in the smallest way, what it means to be human. To find not only what makes us different, but also what unites us.

I do believe that. But I'm also nervous. What if I really mess this up? What if I offend an entire nation, for God's sake?

This insecurity, I know, is understandable, but I have to find a way past it. Because right now, it's stifling. Part of what I'm trying to do is find my characters and plot through this research, and the fear is totally stopping me. I have no ideas. I am blank, blank, blank. Every time I try to come up with an idea, my brain starts going, oh my god no I can't make the character a jerk because then people will think I'm RACIST, and all creativity comes to a screeching halt.

So that's my insecurity for the month (year; decade; all known time; whatever.) Next week, I hope I can report back on my plot progress... but at this rate, I may just end up sharing some interesting facts on Tibet. Le sigh. 

Inspiration for an Interlude

This is a strange thing for me to say, since my problem is usually verbosity and not brevity, but I don't actually have a whole lot to say today.

I know, I know; peel yourselves off of the floor, dear readers. Miracles can happen.

This unusual pithiness - although I'm not sure anyone who uses the word 'pithiness' should be allowed to call herself pithy - is a direct result of the transitional state I'm in in my Work In Progress, aka WIP. I've settled on the bare bones of a plot for my Ancient Greek lifetime; I have lengthy and detailed psychological treatises on my three main characters; and I have a very, very general idea of where this lifetime might fit into the action of the book as a whole.

All of which means...it's time to leave Greece. I'm having a difficult time tearing myself away - this is what happens when you sink yourself into the slippery sand-trap of character, time, and setting - but I'm managing it. I cracked open a book on Tibet.

And...I'm reading. Yup. Researching. Very preliminary. Fascinating, huh? I could go off for a while about the obvious imbalance in the amount of time American schools spend teaching about Ancient Greece vs. Ancient Tibet, and hence my own sad lack of knowledge of Tibet's religion, culture, and history, but I'll hold myself back, and just read about it for now.

So in the meantime, for this week, I'll just give you one of my favorite inspire-me-to-write quotes, in the hopes that it helps you get to your own work today, whatever that work may be:

“Creative fantasy, because it is mainly trying to do something else... may open your hoard and let all the locked things fly away like cage-birds.”

- J.R.R.Tolkien

That might seem like a strange inspirational quote for someone who mostly writes literary fiction, but I love fantasy. I always end up with little whiffs of it in my writing, anyway, no matter what my genre may be. And that quote above is one of the big reasons why.

Have a great week, all.

Images Instead of Words

Quick one today - and yes, I really mean that this time, because I have a lot of other stuff to do. For one, all of your comments were so helpful (seriously) that I've been off and running with my plotting, and two, the Olympics are on. And political controversy and human rights concerns aside, I love the Olympics. There's something about watching athletes stretch and challenge the limits of what the human body can do, and excel with such determination and grace, that just utterly captures my imagination and my heart.

There. I said it. I'm a sucker.

Anyway, I'm still working on Ancient Greece, banging out the details of the plot, which means that I don't have a whole of new thoughts to write about here yet. So I thought I'd share a little piece of what I do when I'm developing a novel: I get heavily involved with Google image search.

Now, I don't often do this for my characters, because I usually can't find anything that captures the way they look in my head; most searches leave me feeling disappointed and irritated. For example, an image search for "Apollo Greek god" will turn up a wide variety of pictures, from the classical to the artistic to the romantic, but none of them come close to how I see him: tall and athletic, with short curling blond hair, serious but bright eyes, and a body that a male model would kill for. Not a bad mental picture, huh?

Where I do find a lot of inspiration, and a lot of success, is when I search for images about a place. I need to be able to describe how any given setting looks, but a really good image will fire also my imagination, and give me a little flash of an idea that I can work on. I've got a bunch of these for Ancient Greece.

First, Mount Olympus:

There are a ton of images out there of Olympus, but I love this one because it's mysterious and otherworldly - a place I imagine the gods might live. Plus, it's often described as wreathed in clouds, which is a fantastic image. This one led me to wonder about how Apollo's mortal lover might see the mountain in its veil of clouds, and what he might think about the beings who live there - which gave me great insight into his character.

Then there's this one of the same mountain:

Very different, yes? I often imagine the Greek slopes like this: bare, desolate, and ancient. I imagined Damon, Apollo's lover (yes, I changed his name), herding his flocks of sheep on slopes like this, and this lead to my idea for the scene where Apollo first sees him.

Finally, there's this very modern picture of one of Apollo's temples:

Yes, I know, it's rather bare. There are artistic reconstructions of what the temple might have looked like, but like the images of Apollo, they're too specific for me: they don't leave room for my imagination to work. This one, on the other hand, has just enough structure for me to build a mental picture around it, all gleaming white marble and soaring grace, and I love how blue the sky is, and the sense of enormous, wide open space.

Ok, I know this post looks long, but it's also got a bunch of images. For me, this is actually short. Sad but true.

Putting the 'Stuck' Back in Process

This blog is about the process of writing a novel. It says so, right up at the top of the page. And I'm writing a novel. Yup, I sure am. Sometimes when I write about writing, it's informative; sometimes it's neurotic; sometimes it's inspirational in intent; sometimes it's a little bit crazy; and sometimes it's just plain stuck.

Yes. I admit it: I'm stuck. I've been bashing my own motto to death and doing major character development as well as runaway research in the hopes of someday, maybe, unearthing a PLOT, but to not much avail.

Or, to no avail.

I'm still in Ancient Greece - Tibet, India, Australia, London, and New York are just gonna have to wait. Here's the set-up of the Greek plot thus far, in a little nutshell:

Boy loves god. God isn't into it. Boy convinces god to be into it. They begin a love affair. 

I'm very happy with this so far. A reluctant god who has sworn off love affairs, plus a smitten and utterly determined (and mildly narcissistic) mortal, makes for good fun conflict.

So the mortal wins, and they get together.... And then what??

I know it's not going to work out (sorry, but it's not). First of all, Greek gods are about as capable of fidelity in love affairs as - as - well, crap, my metaphors are failing me, but let's just say THEY'RE NOT CAPABLE AT ALL. Second, as I've mentioned before, despite their own major failings in the monogamy department, Greek gods don't deal well with lovers who cheat on them. Third, neither one of these people is really emotionally capable of true intimacy.

This is all good, right? Lots of potential conflicts, right? I KNOW! I read that and I think, "so what's the problem?"

The problem is that I can't for the life of me figure out exactly how things get messed up, or why. Does Apollo cheat on his mortal? Does the mortal cheat on him? Why? And if so, with who, and then what? Does Artemis somehow get involved? She keeps popping up in my brainstorming, but won't tell me why. It's annoying.

I was expounding on this on Twitter today - ok, fine, I was complaining - and the wise and very smart L.G. Smith advised me to "Time to take something precious from them [my characters]. If they have nothing to fight against, they're too comfortable."

This tickled something in my head... but I'm not yet sure what it is. I think she's putting me on the right track. Maybe. I hope. Certainly a love affair wouldn't be comfortable for either one of them - in fact, my instinct is that it's the intimacy itself that takes something away from them, even though they both thought it was what they wanted. I just don't quite have it yet. You know - the thing that gets taken away, and what they do in response.

Is this a case of the thing a person wants the most is the thing that frightens them the most? Or a case of the thing a person wants the most is the worst thing for them?

I don't know yet.

I know. I know. I presented an irritating problem, complained about it for a while, and then neglected to resolve it. This is not what I would call satisfying writing.

And yet, it's precisely the kind of grind that constitutes 'daily work' for a writer. You bang your head against your desk; the banging jars loose a brilliant idea; you follow that idea only to find out it's bunk; you bang your head some more and pull your hair, and problem-solve out loud, and write lots and lots of brainstorming ideas that start with "what if" and end in question marks. Rinse, wash, repeat.

I'm not complaining - or, well, I'm complaining only a little. I love this work. I just love it more when I have solutions to my problems, rather than just large stubborn problems that sit on my desk and taunt me.

So, that's where I am today. Not much of a thrilling inside look, perhaps, but a true one. Thanks for sticking with me.

And suggestions, of course, are more than welcome.

Seriously.

When Research Changes Plot, Or What To Do With A Vengeful God

I've been digging into Edith Hamilton's Mythology this week. No, I'm not indulging some bizarre nostalgia for my early teenage school years (I am not one of those insane quirky people who wishes she could go back to the halcyon days of high school, probably because I would never even think to call them 'halcyon' days, not that I hated them, because I didn't, I just found them full of growing pains and awkwardness and I'm going to stop this run-on sentence now); I'm doing research.

Granted, I'm supposed to be looking into (to quote myself, here) "Day-to-day life in the Classical Period of Ancient Greece, including specifics on the worship and temples and priests of Apollo", so technically I suppose I'm also procrastinating. See, I do have a book on the "Daily Life of the Ancient Greeks", but 1) it's duuuulllll, 2) it's written for teens, and is therefore a bit oversimplified, and 3) while it's absolutely chock-freaking-full of information about the daily life of Athenians, it's got all of about two wee paragraphs on the daily life of goatherds and/or shepherds and also priests of Apollo, which is what I really need. What I'm saying is that the book has a misleading title and it's irritating. Not to worry, I do have a list of other books to look into (thanks to a certain brilliant and generous librarian friend of mine); I just don't have them in my possession. Yet.

So I'm taking a break from said irritation, and reading Hamilton instead. And happily, like other research, it's a useful and fascinating procrastination. I've got this little story planned out for a brief, possibly violent, and certainly tumultuous love affair between Apollo and a mortal youth, so this particular reading is actually part of my character development for Apollo. And like most research, it's changing my story.

The thing is, since Apollo does exist as a well-known mythological figure, I need to walk a fine line between meeting certain expectations for his behavior, and also crafting my own version of him. I did start some development for him, which mostly entailed combining what I remembered about Greek mythology with what I needed for the story I'm creating. I then used that combination to help me come up with a basic plot structure for this particular lifetime.

Well, it turns out I missed a few important things.

As I've said before, research is character is plot. In this case, I forgot a few things: namely, that the Greek gods can often be cruel bastards with a marked indifference to human suffering. Not all of the time, of course, and actually Hamilton points out that Apollo is one of the more beautiful and less crude of the pantheon, but he stills does stuff like have his sister kill his unfaithful lover, and rabidly pursue an unwilling maiden until she begs for mercy and gets turned into a tree (one that's sacred to Apollo, just to add insult to injury).

I also learned - and this I don't think I ever knew - that Apollo is the God of Truth and Light. Hamilton puts this quite beautifully, actually, saying that "he is the god of Light, in whom is no darkness at all, and so he is the God of Truth. No false word ever falls from his lips." Apollo really cannot tell a lie, nor can anyone lie to him.

Both of these things are important facets of his character, and they change what I'd been planning. I was thinking about having Apollo's mortal lover be unfaithful to him, and get away with it. Well, now I need to reconsider. I can disregard parts of his mythology that don't suit my purpose (thank you, artistic license), but these pieces are so interesting and so full of potential for great conflict that I don't really want to discard them. Now, if his lover is unfaithful, I need to think about how Apollo finds out (because he always finds out), how he reacts, and whether or not he tries to have this lover killed - or even whether he kills him himself.

I'm not sure yet what exactly is going to happen, but I won't be giving much away if I say that both Apollo and his lover will die somehow. After all, I'm writing a book about the various lifetimes of two souls, so in order to move on to another lifetime, the current one has to end.

This is one of the great things about research: when you find something that really does shift the story. What could be better than figuring out what a vengeful, all-powerful god might do to punish his faithless lover? I'm rubbing my hands together gleefully even as I write this...

Research is Character is Plot

Ok, first: THANK YOU INTERNET!! (And by "internet", I mean all of you beautiful people who came, read my plea, and left a comment last week with fantastic research tips.) I got a heretofore unimagined wealth of great, helpful information, which I am now using. Like, right now. Right this very second. Oh yeah, I'm a multitasker-extraordinaire.

Ok, fine. Not really. BUT I've been using your ideas already, and I'm spending a day at my local library this week, so that sort of counts.

I want to take a step back, though, and answer a question no one has asked. Why? Because I need a lead-in to the body of this post, obviously. Duh.

Last week, I wrote out a veritable laundry list of research needs for my new book, and explained that I needed these items for, well, really important writing stuff. Which begs the question, Ancient Greece and Tibet and the British Raj and Australian sheep and my good God what the heck is wrong with you?? Are you trying to give yourself a brain aneurysm???

Oh no, wait. That's not the question I was going to answer. Sorry. It was this one: Why exactly do you need this research to create a plot? You say character is plot; why can't you just use the characters instead of doing this utterly psychotic amount of research?

Ahhh, sneaky me, using my own words against myself! Well, smarty-pants, let me give you an example.

So, I had this idea to have one of the lifetimes for my souls take place in a remote village in Tibet, around 500-600 CE. When I came up with the idea, I thought of writing it from the POV of an old man on the day his next door neighbor, an old woman, lies dying. Without giving away too much, this little story revolved around the idea that he was supposed to marry this woman - as in an arranged marriage - but instead, he married someone else.

Cool. Workable idea. Then I did some very preliminary research into Tibetan culture...and found out that Tibet is one of the very few areas in the world where polyandry was widely practiced. For those of you who don't want to click on that Wikipedia link (and really, you should; the article is freaking fascinating), polyandry is "a form of polygamy whereby a woman takes two or more husbands at the same time."

Yes, you read that right. One lady, many husbands.

No, this isn't some form of ancient feminism. I had to read quite a bit more to wrap my head around this concept, but the basic idea is this: in a place like Himalayan Tibet, where there is very little arable land, it becomes critical to keep a family's land intact and not divide it up among all of the children (or, ok, sons) into small, unsustainable plots. To that end, the eldest son is considered the head of the family, and the heir. So this lucky guy finds a gal who is absolutely NOT from his clan, and marries her, and then, by proxy, all of his brothers are automatically married to this lady, too. Whatever children she bears, no matter which brother is the actual father, are considered the children of the eldest brother. And all of these people - wife, multiple brother/husbands, children, and any remaining members of the previous generation - live together, usually in one large house. (And thus you can see why people aren't allowed to marry within their clans; they really are all related to each other.)

It's a creative solution to some difficult problems, when you think about it. In addition to dealing with issues of inheritance, polyandry was also thought to help control population - again, important in a place with limited resources - as well as increase the likelihood of children surviving to adulthood. Really cool, from an anthropological standpoint, but a major problem for me and my cute little idea.

As you can guess, this information threw my seed of an idea on its tiny, undeveloped head. Maybe I do have an old guy with a wife, but are there other husbands, too? Or did he go off on his own and break all acceptable tradition, and marry one lady for himself, thereby losing all right to his family's land?

And anyway, what is the concept of a village in ancient Tibet? Is there even such a thing as a next-door neighbor, or are there just these clans living together in isolated pockets? If so, can our old man even have a neighbor who is dying? And are these marriages arranged, or not?

So, you see, in this case, the research informs everything. This is often the case with a society and culture that I'm unfamiliar with. I can come up with some nice ideas, but until I learn something about the time period and place, those ideas are fairly useless.

Which means... that I really do have to do all of that research. I know, I'm crazy. But if I can pull it off, it might just make a really effing cool book.

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! 

Thoughts from the Reject Pile: Tips on Brainstorming

I know I've written about this topic before, but the last time, I wrote about it in retrospect, remembering how it had worked for Cloudland, with that lovely rosy tint of memory coloring my thoughts (ok, fine, it was more like the sludgy brown film of frustration, but whatever.) Now that I'm freshly enmeshed in brainstorming my new idea, I find that I have some new ideas to offer.

To be entirely honest, I found that out because I kept cutting sections about brainstorming out of other posts. Once I had collected a bunch of rejected paragraphs, I decided I could shmush them all together into a brand spanking new post. And here we are - the reject pile!!! Isn't that exciting??

So what I realized is that brainstorming takes a very specific shape for me. Yes, sometimes I do write out ideas, and explore them, via a sort of stream-of-consciousness conversation with myself. But more often than not, I just write.

I know this seems self-evident, since, y'know, I'm a writer, but that's how I brainstorm best: by writing. Not by freewriting, although that's the catalyst, but by actually writing out scenes.

When I'm brainstorming, ideas often occur to me as fragments of prose or dialogue. So, when I'm developing each, I write out a brief scene-let that's built around that fragment. I then end up with lots of little bits of writing, which I call "freewriting". Right now, I have at least two or two bits for each of my ideas of lives for my two souls. Then once I have a fragment of a scene written out, I can see how the idea works, and where my characters want to take it. More often than not, these fragments don't end up in the finished manuscript, but sometimes they do. The first chapter of Cloudland came directly from one of my freewrites.

So, how does this actually work?

Well, I know I want one of the stories in this new book to involve a love affair between a Greek god and a mortal. When I was first brainstorming that idea, I was trying to work out a bunch of different things: which god, what kind of affair, how they meet, who they are, etc. I settled on Apollo as the god, and then I had a flash of an idea, a fragment of prose, really, about how they might first meet. It appeared in my brain as "The first time Apollo saw him... The second time Apollo saw him..." and so on, with each "time" being a new paragraph briefly detailing each sighting, following a rising arc of action that begins with the first sighting and ends with Apollo actually meeting this person. I then thought of the myth that Apollo, as the god of the sun, rides a chariot that pulls the sun across the sky, and decided to use that: the sightings happen when Apollo is in his chariot, making the sun rise.

(Yes, I know that it was actually Helios who pulled the sun, and that it was only later that this became associated with Apollo, but this is all part of the glorious freedom of artistic license.) 

So, I wrote that flash of an idea out. I have no idea if this will end up in the finished book, but it helped me figure out some things about Apollo and this unnamed to-be lover of his - for example, that at the time of the first sighting too many of Apollo's lovers have suddenly died or been transformed (thank you, Greek mythology), and, heartbroken, he's committed himself to celibacy; that this new to-be lover has been determined to seduce Apollo since childhood, and may actually have orchestrated all of these sightings, setting up a nice little conflict very early on; and so on.

Since I swore to myself that I would never, EVER share any of these brainstorming bits in this blog, because they consist of unfinished, unedited, weird writing that is for my eyes only, I naturally decided to post a little bit of this example here today! Hooray for self-humiliation!!

Remember, this is TOTALLY UNFINISHED. It might really, really suck. Here's that first paragraph, anyway:

The first time Apollo saw him, it was in a curving glance of golden light: his limbs bending up the long grass, each fine thread of muscle and sinew coiling with life; his hair black and wind-blown in the first drawn breaths of dawn. Swift and easy he raced up the shadowed slope, chasing after the flickering white tails of his herd. The god stilled his hand on the chariot and the horses reared back in plumes of flame, and the sun settled its burning arms low on the rim of the world, and so the day began with wildfire and black smoke instead of the rushing stream of rose Apollo had intended. 

And that, my friends, is what I call brainstorming.

Inspiration Is SO Not Standard

That Chrysler slogan drives me a little crazy. You know, the "inspiration comes standard" nonsense that they tag smugly onto the end of every commercial, to reassure us not to worry, because while we might not be able to afford things like built-in babysitters, we don't have to pay extra for the intangible joy of knowing that the factory was especially enthused when it made our car.

Why do I bring this particular example of marketing inanity to light today?

Well, I was banging away at my new novel idea all day yesterday, torturing myself brainstorming to try to come up with something resembling a plot, and in general working hard to dig up some inspiration. And despite my best efforts, it turns out that it does not, in fact, come standard to me.

Which is normal, I know. But boy, is it hard not to get discouraged when I'm sitting at my computer, staring at the screen, and thinking, "Ok, plot. Yup. Need a plot. Yes indeed. Gotta getta plot. And - GO! GO PLOT! GO NOW! Plot? Anyone? Plot?"

Needless to say, I didn't get anywhere for quite a while. Other people might call this writer's block; I call it PJS, or Plot Just Sucks. Ask me to brainstorm about characters or setting or theme and I can prattle on and on for pages. But ask me to come up with a story arc and I'm useless.

Clearly, I needed to find some inspiration, and it wasn't coming from inside me. Not yesterday, anyway. (Incidentally, my fellow blogger Adrienne Reiter wrote a post on this last week, about where creativity and inspiration come from. Check it out.)

My own sources of inspiration change from day to day, but there are a few good wells I always turn to, and one of them usually helps me get to work. Yesterday, I needed a bunch of them.

First, I turned on some music. I have a lot of playlists, but when I'm desperate for help, I turn to Sigur Ros.

Second, I created a new Word document, and gave myself license to write whatever came into my head, without censure or editing. The only rule was that I had to keep writing.

Third, I read. In this case tips on how to write romances, and some love-themed short stories.

No, I'm not writing a romance novel. But I am writing an overly complex version of a love story, and the romance genre has some well-established guidelines that it's good for me, as someone who doesn't read a lot of romances, to know about.

And finally, finally, it came: inspiration. At one point, I found myself writing in the first person POV - something I almost never do - as one of the main characters, talking about all the ways these two souls keep finding to lose each other. (If you have no idea what the hell I'm talking about, read this post.) And then I found myself writing out a small scene-let as a possible way to end of the book. Which is very, very hopeful.

I don't have a plot yet (sigh), but I did get some productive ideas. So for now, I'll just keep making my own inspiration, and plugging away. I'll find the story someday.

Why New York Doesn't Like You, and Never Write Alone

This post really is going to be about the process of writing a novel. I promise. It's just going to take a wee tangent to get there. "Trust me, I'm telling you stories."

Real stories make their way into fiction in strange ways sometimes.

So, I used to live in New York City. Brooklyn, to be precise, and Windsor Terrace to be really precise. I visit NYC a few times a year, most recently this past weekend. Now that I'm a visitor and not a resident, I periodically forget the Truth - yes, capital T - about New York. You see, when I visit, it's a whirlwind of nostalgia and friendship and art and food and wine (a lot of wine). The city lulls me into a false sense of security, and I start feeling pretty great, looking at the concrete jungle all lit up and vibrant, like the city itself is celebrating my return.

I was striding along Greenwich Avenue in the West Village on Monday, delighting in the crisp autumn air, the streaming bright sunshine, the hustle and noise and life of the city, when I failed to notice the neon orange construction cone standing in front of me on the sidewalk. I was too busy being confident, you see, to notice petty things like physical obstacles. So naturally, I stepped on the cone, whacked my arms against the nearest telephone pole to try to get my balance back, failed, and took a lovely swan dive across the concrete and landed flat on my face.

At least four people were standing within two feet of me when this happened. I imagine a couple of them probably had to jump out of the way to allow enough room for the full length of my swan dive, for which I am very grateful (it was an impressive dive). When I scraped my face off of the sidewalk, muttering something wise and witty, like "unngghhhh... my head....", I saw that every single one of these people was studiously watching the traffic light, and ignoring me. No one turned around. No one said a thing.

And then I remembered: oh right, this is New York City. It doesn't give a crap. New York won't celebrate my return. What it will do is stick a foot in front of me and trip me, then look at its nails and pretend it didn't see me go flying, just to remind me that it's way, way cooler than I am.

Well, truthfully, it is way cooler than I am, so that's OK.

I picked myself up, brushed myself off (uninjured, thankfully), had a good laugh at my own expense, and went back to Boston a humbler if slightly more irritated woman.

This is not to say that I didn't have a great weekend. I did. I was visiting one of my best friends, a fierce and fabulous force of nature who I'll call The New Messiah (and no harm or offense intended to anyone of any religion. It's just an old nickname). The New Messiah is one of my best critics. She gets the dubious honor of reading the first drafts of my writing, the ones that really should be chucked into a dark corner and hidden from all eyes except my own. She reads through the dreck, anyway, putting up with my worst habits, and gives me honest and constructive feedback.

She didn't read anything this weekend - I have no first drafts right now - but she did listen patiently as I fumbled through an explanation of my newest idea. We were standing on a subway platform in Brooklyn - the G train platform, which, for those of you uninitiated into the joys of the G, means that we had a nice, long, extended time to wait, and talk.

When I finished talking, she looked right at me, and said, "That sounds like a great idea. I'd read that book."

Now, whether or not this is true (and it is; the New Messiah is many things, but she is not a liar. If she hated the idea, she would tell me. This is another reason why she gets to read my first drafts), this a great thing to say to an insecure writer.

And then, she did the next great thing you can do for a writer: she talked through my idea with me, ad nauseum. She asked excellent questions, gave thought-provoking suggestions, and by the time the G showed up (only 17 hours later, no biggie), I felt like it might actually be possible to pull this damn idea off.

I know it seems roundabout, but this whole story really is central to the process of writing a novel.

You see, there's a great myth that writers are solitary creatures. We are, to some extent; we do work alone. But very few of us write alone. For me, my friends are essential and much-valued parts of my process. They act as sounding-boards and collaborators; they edit and proofread and cheerlead and tell me the awful truth when no one else will. And I love them for it, and I never get through the outlining process without them.

Oh, yeah - the part about face-planting on the sidewalk? Yeah, that's not about my friends or my process. Sorry. BUT, I will almost definitely be putting a scene like that - with that feeling, equal parts irritation and humor, and that memory of being ignored by the giant, ever-turning city - into a book. So you see, it really all is related.

To NaNoWriMo, or Not to NaNoWriMo?

NOTE: Largely thanks to the IWSG, I have amazing writers leaving comments on my posts. I LOVE THAT. However, there have been a few whispers from non-writers who feel unsure about commenting, since they don't write. Well, don' worry aboudit. Seriously, this blog is for readers as well as writers. Writers read, but so do lots of other people. At least, I hope so, despite the grim gloom-and-doom research about Americans' growing lack of interest in literature. Which is just a long-winded (of course; this is me, here) way of saying that all readers' comments are more than welcome!

A while back, I mentioned that while I've been editing and polishing Cloudland, I've also been working on my second novel. Now, at the time, that may have been true. At this point (to borrow from Star Trek VI), that's either an omission, an error, or a choice... or ok FINE, Spock. It's a lie.

I didn't intend for that to be the case. The thing is, editing and getting ready to query agents are just a wee bit of a time-suck, not to mention a truly all-engrossing head-space. So, I'm going to use this blog this week to help me get back into developing this new idea. It's a group effort now. Thanks, everyone!!

This new novel a bit past the seed stage, thankfully...but not by much. It's a seed-ling. It has little shoots and maybe a couple of bitty green sprouts that are rapidly shriveling and turning brown because I keep forgetting to water them.

What is it? Well, the original seed was that I wanted to write about the intersection of fear, desire, and faith, and (because I love the genre), I wanted it to be more fully magical realism than I managed with Cloudland, which really turned out to be literary fiction with some fantastical stuff mixed in (and yes, for all non-writers, that classification in particular has always seemed snobby to me, too, but it's widely accepted in the publishing world. So I have to use it and I just hold my nose when I do.) 

I decided that I wanted gods and magic in this new novel, and - because really, how better to talk about fear, desire, and faith? - I wanted to involve religion and spirituality.

Right now, because I seem to be a masochist, my idea is to have the two main characters in this book be souls with innumerable lives and experiences, instead of normal, reliable, easier-to-write people with one solid story each. I have this thought of having the book follow them from life to life, in the form of short or even flash fiction style stories, so that the plot progresses as they succeed or fail in each life.

I have the beginning character analyses for these two souls (and let me tell you, it is challenging to write a psychological analysis for a soul. I mean, do souls go to therapy??), and I have a few settings I know I want to explore, which at this point revolve around love affairs. You know, desire and fear and all that. I've got ideas for a love affair between a Greek god and a mortal in Ancient Greece, a la Mary Renault; a Hindi goddess and a modern atheist; and a Christian reverend and a secular scientist. I also have ideas for two young brothers, a recurring encounter (NOT a creepy one) between a man and a dog, and a story about a young female shaman-ish character and a hunter from a different region (occuring pre-Columbus).

And that's about it. Not really a plot yet, eh? A ton of work yet to do, eh?? (Am I Canadian now, eh?) So I have this equally masochistic thought that to get a jump start on this damn thing, maybe I should participate in NaNoWriMo this year. NaNoWriMo, which is short for National Novel Writing Month, is, to quote their website, "a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing on November 1. The goal is to write a 50,000 word, (approximately 175 page) novel by 11:59:59, November 30."

Yeah. That means I'd need to have an outline by November 1st. Or at least a rough sketch of one.

YIKES.

Is this even possible?? I have no idea. Historically, outlines take me forever. I still don't even know the damn story, yet. I mean, two souls, magic and fear and stuff, OK, all well and good, but what happens? How do they change, grow, fail, succeed?

So this is what I'm wrestling with.

Yup.

It seems like it might be a good idea, and that it might speed my rather slow process up... but it also seems CRAZY.

To NaNoWriMo, or not to NaNoWriMo? That is definitely today's question.

To Pants or To Plot: That Is The Question

A little while ago (ok, fine, like a month ago, but as I noted shortly thereafter, I've stopped making promises about what I write about next on this blog, because I have the attention span of a drugged, concussed goldfish when it comes to planning my blog posts) I promised that I would talk some more about this theme that's been popping in some comments: pantsers vs. plotters. For those crafty readers who are keeping track of the subjects of my posts (and why would you do such a foolish thing?), you'll notice that this is my way of digging myself out of the pit of editing - also known as being certifiably crazypants, or wallowing in massive insecurity - and emerge back into the world of crafting a novel. You know, the stuff you do long before editors appear with giant red markers and destroy your darling words help you make your work better.

A pantser, by the way, is a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants writer. In short, that's someone who does the polar opposite of what I do when I'm writing. The writer L.G. Smith describes the pantser process on her blog (which is fantastic, and which you should follow like I do): "I'm mostly a pantser, meaning I don't plan out my novels in advance of writing them. I tend to jump in the deep end and see how long it takes me to either drown or swim. Knock on wood, I've managed to swim back to shore with my last two novels."

Essentially, what this means is that a pantser writer doesn't need an outline or need help with a plot skeleton, because she doesn't have a skeleton at all. She has a big glommy viscous mass of ideas, sort of like a giant jellyfish, that she plops onto a page, and plucks words and scenes and characters out of with magic elf-fingers and crafts into a beautiful story with a few waves of her mysterious magic elf-wand, and if by some small, weird chance there are problems with the story or basic things that just don't make sense, she pushes on through her jellyfish-idea-pile and sorts that little unimportant stuff out later.

At least, this is how I imagine it works.

I used to write this way, so you would think that I would know how it works, but considering the fact that I always ended up sobbing on the floor by my computer, banging my head against giant unsolvable plot problems and begging my characters to cooperate, I think it's safe to say that I have no freaking clue.

I do not understand how people use this non-process and make it work; or, to continue with L.G. Smith's metaphor, how they don't end up drowning in an immense confusing ocean of a plot hole.

But they do. They write novels and get them published, and the novels are pretty amazing, and I'm willing to bet that they don't sob through the entire process. I admire these writers the way I would admire a pink fairy armadillo: with a lot of amazement and disbelief, and also a big dose of jealousy, because who doesn't want a cute little pink shell of their very own???

And then there are people like me: the plotters (a word which looks and sounds suspiciously like "plodders"). The anal-retentive, neurotic, process-driven people who make outlines for fun and derive great satisfaction from organizing their books by subject matter, then alphabetical order by author within each subject.

Am I just describing myself? Oh...

I've already detailed how my process works in a series of posts, but here's an overview: 1) get a seed, 2) develop and research it, 3) psychoanalyze the hell out of your characters, 4) develop a basic story based on those characters, 5) create a plot skeleton, 6) flesh out the skeleton, 7) write each scene on the outline until you have a complete draft, 8) REJOICE AND DO GREAT DANCES OF CELEBRATION TO THE GODS OF WRITING, and then 9) edit and edit and edit and edit and edit and....

You know, I'm really glad I wrote out my process like that, in a mini-outline, because now I see at least two or three things I haven't written blogs posts about yet! Now I have new ideas! And I know what to write! Let me just jot down my ideas so I don't forget about them -

See how that works?

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).

Plot, And Other Four-Letter Words

I have a new favorite blog. Now, before you click the link, just be warned that it is NSFW. At all. And if you're offended by curse words, you should skip it. And if you don't like fantasy or sci-fi (and if you don't, why not??), you should perhaps avoid it. It's called Terrible Minds, and it's by rather prolific author Chuck Wendig, who does not at all need my help to market him because his blog is hopping with comments, but I don't care, because it's a great resource for writers, and it's hilarious, and thought-provoking, and well-written.

Why do I bring this up? Well, I'm supposed to be writing a blog that gives you an inside look into the process of writing a novel (I am, really; it says so in big bold letters at the top of the page!!!), and I have yet to even bring up that huge, nasty, complicated four-letter word. Oh yes, that's right: PLOT. Before I can talk about the complex process of creating it, I need to talk about what it is. In a blog post yesterday about stakes, Chuck has this to say about plot:

"Plot is people. Or, more specifically, plot is the result of characters making choices and acting on those choices. Or, even more specifically, plot is the expression of characters aware of the stakes and who form goals in response to those stakes (correctly or incorrectly) and who attempt to overcome conflicts in service to those goals." 

This is a fantastic way to define that nasty four-letter word. I like it because it puts characters front and center, instead of somewhere off to the side, which is something I've been harping on about for a while. The action in the story should directly come from who the characters are: what makes them tick, what drives them batty, and what they really, really want. In fact, one of the well-known ways to come up with a story idea in the first place is to think of a character, figure out what he wants most in life, and then prevent him from having it. Voila - conflict, tension, high stakes. There's the beginning of your story.

It's also, however, an extremely writer-ly way to define it, so for the sake of clarity I'll just quote Wikipedia, here, and say that plot "is a literary term defined as the events that make up a story". In other words, it's what happens in your story.

It's also way, way, way harder to create than it sounds like it should be.

Let's go back in time, shall we? I'm working on Cloudland. I have a seed, and I've tortured myself into developing it and fleshing it out. I have some non-robotic, seriously psychoanalyzed, lengthily discussed characters. So, ummm... now what?

Now, of course, they DO STUFF! Really interesting, compelling, conflict-filled STUFF! And all that stuff happens in a well-conceived order, with carefully crafted building of tension, until we hit a thrilling, nail-biting climax that leads us right into a satisfying, moving, perhaps even thought-provoking resolution. And it all gets created in one lovely blue-y purple-y poof of MAGIC!

Right?

Riiiiiiight.

Even though characters, seed, and theme are essential, they don't create your plot for you, alas. I think I spent more time working on the plot than on anything else in the whole long brainstorming process, and that was a loooooong time. I had a few things to start with (after a great deal of brainstorming): 1) Jake and Sara were the main characters, and they were both going to lose a parent; 2) They were going to end up looking for their lost parents in a magical land in the clouds; and 3) They were going to have to confront, and deal with, the reality of their losses before the story could be resolved.

Awesome. So once again, now what? Besides extreme procrastination, of course. That's a given.

First: answer some questions.

1) Which parents, and how do they die?
- Jake's mom, and she dies in a car accident on a bridge over the Charles River, so that her body ends up in the water and is never recovered. This was important, because Jake is six, and therefore extremely literal. If there's no body, how can she be dead? And if she isn't dead, where is she, and how does he go about finding her? That's the entire impetus for the book - the inciting incident, if you want to use the technical term.
- Sara's dad, who dies after a battle with brain cancer that Sara's parents hid from her until about two weeks before his death. I came up with this specific death because I wanted a few things: a death very different from Jake's mom's (so no more accidents or sudden violence); a death that was sudden and unexpected enough that Sara would still have to deal with shock and denial; and finally, a death that involved some inherent tension and conflict with Sara's parents, because, well, honestly, because that would set her off and make a more interesting story.

2) and 3) What is the land in the clouds, what happens there, and how do Jake and Sara end up confronting the reality of their losses?
- If you think these three questions are enormous ones, you'd be right. The first question was a lot easier to answer. I spent quite a bit of time spinning my wheels and pulling at my hair as I tried to answer them, and in the end I wound up having to ask for help, from a very smart, fascinating, wise dead guy.

And you know what? He really helped me. I wouldn't have a plot if he hadn't.

More on that....next week.

(see: cliffhangers and other manipulative plot devices)