ieva melgalve

I spent, well, most of last 27 hours playing board games (I lost miserably, but that’s not the point here, ok?).
During a light six hour sleep this morning, I suddenly realized that while it is next to impossible to create a good novel out of a board game (at least the occasions when I’ve seen this happen are, well, of dubious value–except Carroll’s Alice, I guess), it could be possible to create a board game out of a novel. A board game of dubious value, of course. But this could take care of the basic flaws I have in Vega right now–ie lack of inner structure, balance and realization of what is important in situations, locations and characters, and what isn’t. It would force me to get magic in line, not through the “OK, how could this happen, according to the laws of physics?” method that fails every time, but through “here are the special skills and moves, and you have to make sure that they are consistent within the game while individually shaped for each character”. Also, the game-for-edits would have clear conditions of “winning” for each side, something that I, surprisingly, lost somewhere down the line.

So, well, NO, there won’t be a “Vega: the board game”, I’ll spare you that. However, I think there will be a board and a rulebook, and characters, locations and moves. Let’s see what this approach will give to me.

Last week, I was miserably behind my scene edits for Vega. Partly it was because I decided to recharge my batteries (by playing computer games) on weekend, partly because it is almost impossible to work on edits the way I want to in my usual tram commute time. That means two things.
First, I will edit Vega “my way”, which won’t necessarily be the best, but at least that will be better than doing next to nothing. I’ll still use HTRYN course as a guide and help, just the work process will be different. If I fail, well, then at least I’ll know that my way doesn’t work. For now, I am going to concentrate on scene read-through and edits on the level of conflict and logical flow of events, as well as proper character story archs (which is the biggest problem anyway, since it seems that I had written Vega with no logic at all involved). Then, I’ll concentrate on details and stuff. The main objective is to find a way to do it all on my netbook, with possibly a notepad and some index cards involved. It will look more like a complete rewrite than an edit, but a rewrite is really what I need at this point. I’m feeling rather enthusiastic about it all.
Second, right now my top priority is that commisioned story that I have to write. I am still not happy about it, but this morning, I got it started, and I sort of like the main characters and the main problems they will be facing. Still, this will be one of the hardest writing jobs I’ve ever done, and a major test for my career as a pro writer (yeah, I know… but come on, everybody has to have something to motivate themselves to go to day job in Monday mornings, and my motivation is “right now, I will work hard and learn, and if I’m really really good, I will be a pro writer at some point and won’t have to do all that crap”… which is, by the way, wrong on several levels, but my Monday-morning-mind usually isn’t alert enough to point that out).

There’s this funny difference between notes I write on computer and notes I write by hand.
The ones that are on the computer is something that will, at some point, evolve to a text intended for others (I’ve never been able to keep a private diary on a computer, I just can’t see the point). I delete a lot. I rephrase a lot. I am always dissatisfied with the result (ie I’m certain this is NOT coherent by any means). And I work on them till I make them into a kind of “end product”, or dismiss them entirely. For me, computer is a tool for work, or communication. I think that this is why I’ve never used a plotting software more than for a month or so (and I’ve always abandoned those half-plotted things in favor of a notebook).
And there are notes I write in notebooks, or just about anywhere. They are barely legible, disjointed, disorganized (more than once, I’ve spent ten minutes trying to figure out What The Heck Is This, then realizing that it is, for example, a sacred language idea I developed for Newil and never used), and very creative (since it is easier to keep writing than to backtrack and scratch out all the inconsistencies). Writing longhand is a record of a thought process, not an end result. (I must admit that I very rarely use the notes I make.)
Editing is mostly longhand, while writing is mostly on computer, which very much complies with this trend.
I wonder, does it work similarly for others? Or are there other differences between writing longand vs. computer? (I refuse to believe that, for anybody, it could be the same.)

Last night, I don’t know why, editing finally opened up my imagination.
Just like in childhood (well… let’s admit it, just like from the childhood till today), when watching TV series or reading adventure books, I always imagined myself as one of the characters, always slightly disappointed that the world didn’t go exactly as I wanted it to go…
Right now, I’m doing the same thing with Vega, only I’m now allowed to tweak the rules if I wish. And that’s liberating and fun, and a bit distracting (I couldn’t go to sleep because I was too immersed in the basics of jewelry-magic, which, as it suddenly occured to me, should exist in Vega’s world, even if in a half-forgotten state).

Also, this state of heightened imagination is awesome. I missed it a lot during December.

I scheduled myself a “down-time” for December (which was a good thing because last year, I tried to dedicate myself to all kinds of writing/editing/whatnot, and burned myself out). Now, it’s January, and I’m back to do stuff.
This will be a boring year, mainly consisting of editing and just a bit of new writing done (and that only because there’s NaNoWriMo).
So, to list all my (as I said, very boring) resolutions.
1) Edit Vega. I have restarted working on that, and it seems that finally I understand what I was supposed to do in HTRYN. This is a complex plan which includes write-in in English, type-in in Latvian (which sounds slightly less crazy than it is… theoretically, I do have the skill to do that) and then getting back to English somehow.
2) Write a short story that I’ve promised to write, in Latvian. I’m feeling apprehensive about this, mainly because this requires me to change my thinking from writing-as-a-hobby to writing-as-a-job. However, I have a decent idea, and this seems like a good opportunity to change my thinking. (Temp title “Contused”.)
3) Write NaNoWriMo.
4) Participate in local writing group for beginning writers (I will be leading the crit sessions, with occasional advice on practical aspects of the writing–the heavy theoretical part will be covered by a guy who actually knows theory).

The editing is definitely the biggest project; big enough for me to dread it if I look at it as a whole. However, the separate bits of the project might just be doable. So that is what I’ll be doing, going step by step and looking out of snags.
The most important thing about editing, for me, is to realize that editing is not a punishment for bad writing. Editing is a brand new thing to do on the basis of the existing project. Of course, it is sort of horrible to look at my own writing and realize that 1) it is very rubbishy 2) I was actually very happy with it as I wrote it, but well. I guess that at least one thing will happen during editing: I will figure out the main shortcomings of my writing and probably work on fixing them.

The ending of Newil is approaching. There are several problems with that.
1. My Muse is now really, really easy sidetracked. Yeah, you. Look at me, babe, not at that next project you want to be starting.
2. I have no idea what sort of ending do I have (although just yesterday I added one of those “obvious” pieces of information that I hadn’t bothered to explain to my characters). That’s a problem also because the ending needs to be on the grimmy side. (Yes, I am absolutely certain that is the correct way of forming adjective from “grim”, since “grimy” isn’t what I’m looking for. Me, the English guru.) And it being on the grimmy side means I will try to find a cop-out of “all ends well and everybody lives” as much as I can, even though it’s so wrong on the promise level.
3. The end of November is approaching, and I need to have at least some of the vacation.

So my solution is to have a little writing experiment.
Namely, I marked down all the scenes that I want to write, and that I have sort of promised to write.
Like “x meets y” and “z tries to eliminate x” etc..
They are in no special order. I will try not to kill any x’es before y’s meet them, but whatever; these scenes will have to be shuffled around anyway since there will be no particular order in them. I’ll just write whichever looks best to me at the point.
That should give me the necessary 13 K words, and some shape of the possible endings. And a lot of headache in the edits, too.

Finally, I realized that I couldn’t take work any more and took a 2-week long vacation. This resulted in the mental equivalent of having my head smacked with a hammer (Tom&Jerry style): I suddenly lost half of my mental capacity because I figured I don’t need to think any more.
I’m fine now, I think, and the vacation has just begun. I just hit almost 50 K words, and am at the point where I figured it is necessary to figure out possible endings, see which ones I like, and move towards them, slowly but steadily. As it is, Newil is still stuck light years away from the place where the action was supposed to happen (but he has a lot to do in where he is); and I have to bring him home slowly, while everything I need to happen to my main characters, happens. (I guess that this is what I still have to work on: to brainstorm on many things that need to (or may) happen with my main characters before the end. Finally, I’ll have the time to write properly, without this mad rushing forward. (But then again, most of my ideas came during wordsprints, so probably having them trumps slow and smart writing.)

But now, cookies and cakes and everything else my family expects from me on Sunday.

I just hit a slow few days in my NaNo novel (normally, I would have stopped writing altogether at this point, but not with NaNo). So at first I tried some tricks and then realized what it was really about.
So the tips part.
1. Figure out whether everything is too easy, then change it (backtrack a scene if you want).
2. Focus on what’s important for you to tell in the story (let the theme drag you out).
3. If something must happen by the rules of the story and not by your plans, follow the story, not the plan.
4. Sometimes, you want to hold back. Sometimes, you want to spill the beans. See whether revealing that dark secret now could help.
5. What’s the thing your characters would be most uncomfortable about? Dump it on them.
And the conclusion part:
it seems that I write this novel (and probably all novels) like chess game, with the opening, middle and endgame. In the opening, there are lots of bold moves and lots of seemingly less important moves, but what happens is that all the characters must be developed to the point where they can act on their own in unexpected situations, and in the right places (“looking at” something, either friend or foe). Revealing the game plan in the opening is not necessary, and sometimes you don’t have the plan. But you must develop the main pieces anyway, and the more potential they have, the better.
Now I’d reached middle game, where there is no more stalling. Every piece moves steadily to its goal, and if I have to reveal its secret on the way, so be it. If I have to sacrifice a figure, that’s fine as well. But the necessity to put something new on the table means, mostly, that I’ve developed the game too poorly.

So I hope that this will help me in the next few days, unless a hit another snag.

The benefits of NaNoWriMo

Not surprisingly, every November somebody (a lot of somebodies, actually) starts sniggering and/or demeaning the whole event. Sometimes, it’s fun and to the point (I just set this as my desktop background), sometimes it’s plain mean and condescending. So that got me thinking, not really about stopping writing but about the benefits of NaNo for me personally.

My first NaNo novel, two years ago, was largely unreadable. A really good idea, completely wasted by, well, horrible plotting, overabundance of meaningless characters and figuring out what this was really about around the end of the thing.
What I got from this:
- after finishing the thing I started looking around to figure out what does it need to be published. I realized it lacked virtually everything. And I started learning to write (instead of thinking “I can write a novel easy-peasy”),
- since it was the first novel I wrote in English, I got enormous kicks from being able to do it,
- and I learned that I do need some better plotting, and try to write simpler to learn stuff.

The next year, I wrote stuff, and learned a lot of stuff as well. I think that I wrote Vega then, at least most of it.

Then, next NaNoWriMo. Far better plotted, far better paced (amounted to something you could actually read without killing yourself in the first two chapters). Fell apart in the middle though.
What I learned:
- that writing a novel takes more than “writing that you know” and “writing what you’re suited to write” (I started with a high-school-in-Latvia plot with multicultural twist and switched to “stranded on an alien planet with no way of knowing their language and no meds to cure a terminal illness” plot. Take a wild guess which one I thought was more familiar, and more useful in the grand scheme of things. Take a wild guess which one was more fun to write),
- that I *still* need to learn. A lot. Especially about endings. And self-discipline,
- that I can’t go on forever. I burned out horribly after that and spent two months in frustration, basically because I didn’t understand I need a down-time too.

Then, I wrote some more. And participated in Script Frenzy (which went too well for me to say it didn’t go well, even if nobody really needs a 180-page comic that is virtually un-drawable. Damn, I still love the thing).

This year, well, it’s too early to judge. But right now, I feel that writing 3K non-crap words a day is a manageable thing for me. And I’ve learned some things that I should anticipate about my plotting (mainly that it never turns out the way I imagined it, but that it still helps, even if it’s only to eliminate the first, painfully obvious ideas). I’ve learned some things about the discipline of writing. And (yawns) about my necessity to sleep sometimes.

All in all, I’d say it is a good experience for me.

I have been doing well, this far, on Newil. It took a lucky combination of my night owl nature and lil one’s kindergarten that started on November 1st, so now she goes to sleep at a more predictable time, and I have an hour to write after both kids are asleep. It doesn’t sit well with the “8 hours of sleep per day” math, but I guess I’ll have to catch up on weekend.
My personal wordcount goal is 2500 words per day, something I think I’m able to do unless something goes terribly wrong.

I also posted Newil excerpt on NaNoWriMo site, but for those of you for whom the site is lagging, here it goes (and forgive my mangled English, this is a first draft). Also, if you, for some unfathomable reason, want to pass this around, please don’t (the first draft excuse again).

I am giving a wave and a nod to a lot of people and influences in here. It seems that when I’m typing fast, I’m just grabbing a handful of images from the nearby basket of memories and impressions without much consideration about whether it really fits.
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