On Novels and Self-Indulgent Essays

I wish I could report that I spent the last month diligently finishing the second draft of my novel.

No. Still working on that, but I have passed the 100,000 words mark. I have a feeling that I'll be up to at least 125 once I write the final chapter. I'm halfway through the third from the last right now, which is an incredibly scary place to be. In an ideal world, I could lock myself in my room for 36 hours, not sleeping, just writing, consuming candy and coffee for sustenance and peeing in a jar, until I finished up the final chapters. I feel like I've been in labor for six months, and I want the little bitch out of me already.

It's always the end, when you're finally wrapping up the "masterpiece", that you begin to see all the cracks and issues with the narrative, story, main character, everything. I reached the final descent on the rollercoaster, but I can see more than a few bits of track missing that might derail the whole thing. In order to deter me from declaring this venture a failure, setting myself on fire and dashing out into the street, I started a list of notes in another notebook, bits that need to be tucked in earlier in the narrative. Some say it's bad to dwell on the next draft while still writing the previous one, but I must do something to maintain a base level of sanity.

Writing Advice from Famous Authors

I did a massive Internet inquiry in an attempt to find the best writing advice popular authors could bestow on lowly amateurs such as myself. Believe me, if there's one thing authors love to do, besides write amazing books, it's tell other people how they should write books. I was nearly overwhelmed by the rules and regulations for compiling a truly "great" work of literature. Don't use adverbs, don't be descriptive, don't use a thesaurus, DO use a thesaurus...

Seconds before I gave up and closed all thirty tabs, I found a compilation published a couple years ago in The Guardian that offered some positive, tangible bits of advice that I quite enjoyed (along with the usual imposing do's and don'ts of style, structure and word selection). What follows is a list of my favorite tips, in no particular order. 


Diana Athill

• Read it aloud to yourself because that's the only way to be sure the rhythms of the sentences are OK (prose rhythms are too complex and subtle to be thought out – they can be got right only by ear).
• You don't always have to go so far as to murder your darlings – those turns of phrase or images of which you felt extra proud when they appeared on the page – but go back and look at them with a very beady eye. Almost always it turns out that they'd be better dead. (Not every little twinge of satisfaction is suspect – it's the ones which amount to a sort of smug glee you must watch out for.)

Back to the Deep End

It was my birthday on Wednesday, and I decided to take a much-needed break from writing (and living in the middle of nowhere) to celebrate the occasion. A lovely friend and I went to New Orleans and spent48 hours sticking to our jam-packed itinerary without any annoying people whining about our restaurant choices or our inability to be spontaneous. It was a wonderful two days, and I got to see parts of the city I'd never really explored before.

Now that I'm back home, slightly less stressed (and the proud owner of many cute animal photos) and more determined than ever to work on my word count, I'm finding it very difficult to slide back into my writing routine.

I completed a first draft of Chapter Ten the day before I left for my trip, and I was exceedingly proud that I had accomplished so much over the past few months. I have ten full-fledged chapters (out of twenty-two that I roughly outlined before I started) and nearly 45,000 words. I've let a few close friends and family read over what I have so far, with mixed to amicable feedback, and I'm really proud of the foundation of the story I have managed to construct so far.

Beginning again has provoked a nagging feeling that has been unshakable since I returned. You know that feeling when you're waist-deep in a novel, then you sit it down for a few days and there's a fifty-fifty chance you'll finish reading it or leave your bookmark wedged halfway through the story forever? That's where I'm at with writing. I'm more than ready to finish it, but it suddenly feels like a chore.

There's So Much Riding on First Impressions

I have spent the last week stalling to avoid finishing a chapter in my sci-fi novel. it's Chapter 8, quite a ways into the narrative, and it's the point where a lot of things change and many mysteries are finally revealed. It is also the first time the reader will meet one of the most important female characters in the entire series.

And I am terrible at introductions. It's such a challenge to find the right description and the right first words for a character who, in your head, is the one that holds down your entire narrative and the one that readers (especially female readers) should see as the heroine of the whole adventure.

That's a lot of weight on the shoulders of a character whose first scene involves her hurrying onto a train dressed like a bag lady. I want to avoid the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope that has gobbled and consumed most cinematic female characters and their on-screen development, but it's become such a huge part of the collective conscious. I'm beginning to think most readers expect some type of dream girl to come along and whisk away the male lead into a new frame of mind. To be fair, there is a character like that in the following chapters, but it's a male who's roughly 800 years old.

I want this female character to be dark. She's not manic. She's dark, intellectual, and probably hates the word twee and any creative manifestation that involves cute things. She's like Ripley from Alien in glasses, or a punk rock Hermione Granger who reads history books not to learn information, but because they're full of war, violence and death.

A Role to Remember

I suppose role playing is one of the oldest forms of nerd creativity. It conjures images of seventies geeks sitting around their Mom's kitchen table with a 12-sided die, waiting for the Dungeon Master to lay down the plot of adventure and danger.

I've tried my hand at fan fiction, a lesser and more solitary form of role playing, which has recently become a legitimate art form. I still can't believe a Twilight smut fic is a New York Times Bestseller. It seems the world really does want to read the ramblings of teenage girls and middle-aged women and listen to their romantic desires involving dominant bad boys, werewolves, time travelers anyone else who might one day soar into their bedrooms and sweep them away to a better life.

One of my friends has been in the role playing game for at least a decade. She's a master, and her character dedication (and Photoshop skills) are daunting. It makes me feel like I should spend more time developing my own characters and letting them play around with each other a bit before I squish them into the plot of my novels and stories.

I recently decided to join the ranks of her RP inner circle. I don't normally build my characters from the ground up, listing traits and their family history before I begin writing them. For me, it's all about the story I'm telling, and the type of person who would best fit the needs of the narrative. Example: I'm writing a novel about a young teenager who discovers he has a very strange power. Obviously, he needs to feel like an outsider who doesn't fit into the societal system, though he does have one or two close friends who understand him. Therefore, I need an intelligent, somewhat brooding, teenager who is smart enough to see that there's more beyond the safe paths of life walked by most citizens, but insecure enough to create conflicted thoughts and feelings about the road his new-found power will lead him down.