Category: Bumps & Bruises

Things don’t always go as planned.

Squirrel!

r-avatarThings have been very slow in the writing cave recently. Ever since our triumphant return from our European tour we’ve struggled to get back into our routine.

It’s easy to come up with excuses. There were birthdays in the extended family. Our son plays in approximately a dozen different bands and orchestras, and they all have concerts this time of year. Spring finally arrived, and yard work along with it. Our puppy Lady Marzipan is an unholy terror if she doesn’t get two long walks a day. The TiVo’s getting full so we had to watch a movie (or two). Kent’s car gave up, so we’ve been shopping for a replacement. The teenager had tickets to a concert in Philly, so of course we both had to go along. I mean, there’s an IKEA!

What it comes down to is we’ve reached the stage with the music novel where we’re looking for any excuse to look away (have you seen this thing on youtube?). It’s a terrible feeling because we are so close (so close!) to being done. We’re each in the midst of a pass through the manuscript, looking for places to beef up certain aspects. If we can chain ourselves to our desks long enough to finish that, then I think we’ll turn a corner. The next step will be a read through, which (if we’ve done our jobs correctly) will be enjoyable. It will prove that all of this work was worth it.

Having a writing partner can make dealing with these slow times easier. We sympathize with each other when it’s frustrating. When one of us has a productive day it can inspire the other. And, with Lady Marzipan enforcing our walking conferences, we have someone to talk to about how little we’ve been getting done.

Goal: By next week’s collaboration post, we will have finished this round of edits.

Odds of success: It’s a longshot.

Marketing… We got nuthin

r-avatarAt our last critique group meeting, one of our colleagues told us about his experiences so far working with a professional editor (overwhelmingly positive). He now has an editor as well as an agent, and the conversation at our meeting delved into all the business-of-writing stuff that we just basically suck at.

There’s a rant that wants to get started, but we’ll try to keep our cool.

It prompted us to face that we need to get back into some kind of habit of trying to sell our work. We’ve sent out queries in the past, and we’ve gone to conferences and pitched agents at the slam, but for several years now we’ve done very little marketing of any kind.

Why is it so hard for us? (Not just for us, we know.)

  1. it takes time, time that’s already in short supply, so it cuts into our “real” writing
  2. querying is a different kind of writing, so those mental muscles need a separate warm-up
  3. the fact that it’s different from writing fiction makes it feel a bit perverse that it’s the package by which we are trying to attract representation for said fiction
  4. it’s frustrating; we do get tired of hearing “thanks anyway”

That wasn’t too ranty, right?

Why don’t we self-publish then, if we’re so bothered by the traditional process? We’ve been asking ourselves that very question with increasing frequency. Of course, we already are self-publishing some stuff — you’re reading it right now. But we know that the amount of work involved with publishing a novel ourselves is enormous. Sending a batch of queries feels like a major effort, so it’s probably wishful thinking that we could solve that problem by taking on the entire workflow.

What we know for sure is that our current approach — waiting for psychic vibrations between us and an influential publishing magnate to generate a contract out of thin air — isn’t going to work. We need to carve out the time and follow some kind of strategy.

Size Matters

r-avatarWe’ve been harping on and on lately about how big our current project is, which raises the question of why we don’t make it two books.

Two books is something we thought about early in the editing process, after all, we’d have two 90,000-word novels. That’s damn respectable. Turns out there are a host of reasons we’ve opted to not go that way.

First, it feels lazy. We want a good book, not an easy book. That means we need to work hard to craft something beautiful and meaningful, no matter what the size. If all we did was lop it in half, it would feel like cheating, and we’d have two not-great books.

Second, even though it’s long enough to be two books, the plot is not really structured in a way that makes it easy to bisect. As originally written, the story proper took place over one week. We had a large amount of backstory that was told through flashbacks. There was (in our opinion) a really clever structure to the flashbacks that, at the time, we felt justified the use of so many. Our readers, though, did not agree. We had six, and none of them picked up on the clever part, which begs the question of how clever it really was. Since our original vision was a bust, we decided to just tell the story in order. Radical, right? But the scenes that were flashbacks in the first draft weren’t enough to carry the first half of the novel. They were a few isolated incidents, but they weren’t close enough together to be easily connected with a line. Now we’ve written new material to close up the gaps and make the line clear, which is what makes it so damn long. In theory we could chop it at a big tentpole moment and give it a cliffhanger ending. But we don’t wanna. That’s not the way the story is meant to be told. We also don’t want to pad out the first half with artificial plot complications just to make it seem like it deserves to be its own story. That’s not how we roll.

And third, we have ideas for another book, ideas that work well as a sequel but not as the third in a series. When there’s only one point of reference, the second point can go anywhere. But when you have two references, anything further really ought to follow a predictable pattern.

Jen and Kent are very happy that they each have a writing partner they can talk about this kind of thing with. They pity the poor solo authors who have to figure it all out on their own.

Words Count – And We’re Using All of Them!

Edits on Novel #4 (the music novel) are coming along nicely. It’s a huge undertaking, and right now it’s only getting huger. The first draft that we presented to our critique group was 155,000 words (!), which we know full well is long. We gave ourselves a pass on the expansive word count, though, because 20,000 of those words were in the service of supplementary material. Sure, the fancy extras were meant to appear in the finished product, but they weren’t actually part of the narrative, exactly, so they didn’t really count. Right? That’s what we told ourselves in order to be able to sleep at night.

Well, now that we’re deep into the edits, our baby has bloated up to over 180,000 (!!!). Yes, that still includes the supplemental material, and, yes, we’re planning to keep that aspect. In fact, we’ll probably need even more of it, for reasons too complicated to go into right now.

We’ve added something like 35,000 words of new material, and we’ve already removed somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000. It’s hard to keep track of exactly what’s going on, because some scenes have been snipped in one place and expanded in another.

Word count is not the best way to track your progress, and it’s not at all an indication of quality. We know this, and we’re trying really hard not to worry about it. But come on! It’s 180,000 words! We know that’s ridiculous. We know!

The good news is that we still have half of the manuscript to edit, and (fingers crossed) most of those edits should involve removing material that’s now superfluous because it’s covered in all the new material that comes earlier.

I guess this is one potential downside to having a coauthor. One writer working alone would need twice as long to dig a hole this deep.

We got into this situation together, and we’ll help each other get out of it, too.

A writing partner is invaluable for talking through the problems in a manuscript, and making a plan to fix them. A writing partner is a wonderful resource to rely on when faced with a daunting project, like editing an entire novel. And a writing partner makes the best drinking companion when you look at that insane word count and just need a minute to, you know, lose your mind.

Kill Your Partner’s Darlings

r-avatarEvery writer has heard the advice Kill Your Darlings. The theory is that the good of the story is paramount, and takes priority over all. No matter how deeply you love and adore a scene, a character, a turn of phrase, if it doesn’t better the story it gets the axe. It’s good advice, but often difficult to follow.

A writing partner can make the process easier, and also more difficult.

Killing your own darlings is a heartbreaking process; killing someone else’s is less so. When you have a scene that you know needs trimming, but you can’t bear to do the work yourself, your coauthor should step in with more objectivity and kill the darlings that need to be killed.

The problems arise when your collaborator is particularly bloodthirsty. When the red ink flows like blood it can be traumatic. Not only do you mourn your dead darlings, you can sometimes feel personally attacked. If someone in your critique group, or a professional editor, suggests striking something you particularly love, you can console yourself with the knowledge that they are idiots and obviously don’t understand your vision. When it’s your partner…

Right after Thanksgiving we finished the read through of the music novel. It had been resting for a long time, so we found we could see it with relatively clear eyes. We saw  a novel with love handles. It really is too long, just like our critiquers said. Right now there are certain love handles that we like and aren’t ready to lop off. We’re exploring ways to restructure the novel so that they’re less noticeable. We’re also making plans to whittle them down. If they do some crunches and wear Spanx, nobody will notice, right?

While we wrestle with the fate of those darlings, there is one section that we both agree needs serious work. Kent wrote most of it, and he has very bravely handed it to Jen, even though she’s holding a butcher knife and has a mad glint in her eye.

Let’s hope she uses the knife more like a scalpel than a cleaver, and that when it’s her turn to hand her darlings over to the slaughterhouse she’s able to trust Kent to do the same.

 

Slower Traffic Keep Right

r-avatarEverybody gets blocked once in a while. Maybe it’s due to burnout, maybe a plot tangle has you stumped, or maybe it’s just one of those days when the muse has fallen silent. It never feels good, whatever the cause.

It’d be great to be able to say there’s a sure-fire way to get past a blockage, but different things work for different people. Maybe working on another project for a while, or maybe just taking a stroll for some fresh air. You’ll need to try stuff and see what works.

Lately, Kent has been struggling to find his game face. The words are there, but they won’t do as he commands. (No one who’s met him believes a word of this, yet it’s true.) Meanwhile, Jen is on a roll. By working together, we greatly reduce the chances of the project getting stalled out completely. Oh, that happens. It happens a fair bit, actually. But either of us on our own would get stuck much more often.

With a partner who’s in a good place productivity-wise, you can be less stressed out over an occasional off day. It can also mean that while you’re stewing in frustration over your inability to write anything, you’ll have a partner in the room with you making it all look so easy. But don’t take it personally. Be glad someone’s got your back, and give yourself the time you need to get limbered up again.

Sunshine and Roses

r-avatarMost of the time, our process works really well. We might have mentioned it, in fact I’m sure we sometimes come across a little boastfully about it. “Watch how we make everything look easy.” Well, usually it is pretty easy. We mesh, so we can devote our energies to coming up with nifty concepts and stellar prose. (Modesty isn’t one of our strengths.)

There are some bumps in the road now and then, we must confess. Right now we’re revising a first draft, which in our case means we’re working in different parts of it and then synching up. How we sync up is that we dictate our changes to each other. It’s a good system, even if not the most efficient in terms of time. The benefit is that all the new stuff gets read aloud, and we have the opportunity to critique it while it’s fresh. The problem that came up recently was that we got out of sync with the synching up.

Kent’s engines sometimes take longer to warm up than Jen’s, and his powers of concentration can be iffy at certain times of day. So it has happened, rarely, that Jen went on a tear with numerous small edits while Kent scowled at his screen for a while. Jen had good stuff to share, but the repeated sharing broke Kent’s fragile grip on the changes he was trying to make.

Those bumpy stretches are few and far between on our writing-collaboration journey. But they do happen. Working solo, you never have to worry about distracting your partner, because there is no partner to distract. But you do have to avoid other sources of distraction, and there’s no one to give you a gentle nudge in the third hour of reading web comics when you’re supposedly writing. The plusses of teamwork far, far outweigh the occasional minuses.

Taking Ownership

r-avatarAs we’ve mentioned before, Jen has felt a bit disconnected from the process of writing our current novel, due largely to the higher hard scifi content. Not that it’s actually hard scifi, it’s just harder than our usual soft serve.

Now that we’re into edits, though, Jen is feeling much more connected. We’ve determined that some of our characters need to be fleshed out, and this is where Jen excels. She’s wild-eyed with glee over creating backstory, and Kent is staying out of her way.

We have found that a good way to produce a consistent narrative voice when working with a partner is to have each member edit the other’s work. Each collaborator’s stronger personality quirks gets smoothed out and the whole thing blends together seamlessly. Jen’s current backstorypalooza is the same thing on a somewhat larger scale. If left unattended, Kent would make the whole story a wiring diagram in narrative form. Jen is adding the human element for balance. If you left Jen unattended, the story would become a family tree in narrative form, told backwards, with no end, so it’s a good thing she has Kent to reign her in.

This novel has been an excellent lesson in the upside of working with a writing partner. Neither of us could tell this story on our own. We each have strengths that come into play, even if it’s not in the composition of the first draft. We know each other’s proclivities and strong suits, and how we compliment each other. If one of us seems to be dominating a certain stage of the process, we know that it will all even out in the end.

As one of our characters sagely said, it’s not a competition, it’s a collaboration.

Tables Turned

r-avatarIn the middle part of the writing of this novel, Jen was feeling a little disconnected from the subject matter. As we’ve mentioned before, this one’s more hard science fiction than the others have been, and the hard scifi is Kent’s bailiwick. That left the majority of the writing for him while Jen cheered from the sidelines (she did find ways to keep herself useful).

We’re over that hump (and past the 100,000 word mark), closing in on the ending, and a lot of the technical stuff has been written. We’re into the emotional fallout section, where our characters are dealing (or failing to deal) with the repercussions of all that crazy science stuff, and suddenly Kent is the one feeling a little lost.

It seems that he got so invested in the research, and the writing of the technical stuff, that he lost touch a bit with the emotional life of the characters.

If he were writing this book alone, that would be a cause for major concern, just as Jen would have been floundering to write the earlier part on her own. But since we work as a team, we cover for each other and it all comes together beautifully.

Collaborating with a writing partner can allow you to explore a genre and tell a story that you would struggle with on your own.

Make Critique Work With Your Process

r-avatarWe never bring our works-in-progress to critique group until the first draft is done, and it has at least one polishing edit applied. The experience with our second novel taught us not to. The plot got twisted into a writhing tangle of second-guesses as we tried to alleviate our readers’ confusion. Eventually we decoded the feedback and realized that the problem really had nothing to do with plot. The issue was characterization, things we were forgetting to put on the page because we knew the character so well.

Readers don’t know what you have up your sleeve, so their comments are sometimes out of proportion. We found that when our upcoming pages were still hypothetical, it was all too easy to lose our own sense of proportion.

It was just one way the critique process can go haywire when you bring in material that’s not ready. The wheels can come off in other ways, too. You should at least not treat your critiquers like proofreaders; make sure to read over your own draft looking for mechanical problems before you send it around.

There are times when you’re stuck, and you can’t finish the first draft for that very reason, and then you should bring it to your group in whatever shape it’s in. They can help you prod and twist your ideas and maybe provide the inspiration you need.

Writing with a partner gives you an extra set of eyes, which makes it much easier to spot little things like dropped words. It also gives you someone to discuss deeper story structure with while it’s being written, someone to help keep the ideas bouncing so you don’t get too stuck. A good collaborator will challenge you to make your scenes even more awesome, and when asked if something works will occasionally say, “Not really.” You might be able to do that much just by talking to yourself, but the magic of flesh-and-blood writing partners is that they often offer constructive suggestions along with their blunt honesty.

All of this means Rune Skelley’s first drafts aren’t really first drafts, not once they’re ready for the group. By serving up something that’s clean and debugged, we clear the way for our fellow writers to let us know how they’re connecting with the characters, and how the story makes them feel.