ieva melgalve » beginning

beginning boggle AGAIN

ieva — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 09:24:49 +0000

Now, cool. I’ve had a fine first scene, and today I struggled to get the second on page, but, while writing is still enjoyable, the forcing myself to write part is a horror. I suspect it’s because of two things: I’ve gotten darn lazy, and I’m still editing Vega (so for every scene write, I have those 93 scenes of Vega that will need to be redone, and thus it’s very hard to allow myself to write crap).
Also, my planning is running thin. Here’s the problem though: as I realized, I cannot conceivably plan characters before writing them, so it seems that I should write them (at least a bit) first, and make the plan right after that, before I swamp myself with loose, open-ended characters.

That, or take my Tarot cards out again. They’ve never failed me before regarding short-term setups, and they won’t do that now, I trust.

Dream-jerk reaction

ieva — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 14:36:40 +0000

Whenever I’m actively writing I am having those wild dreams that boggle my mind as much as actual writing does. So after having one of those horrible, guild-ridden dreams tonight, I woke up with a “I’m writing today” thought I didn’t even question. (Not that I really wanted to question it.)

So I did my 500+ words on a tram, with the right protagonist, with the right trouble in the first scene, and enough inner discomfort to keep writing. Actually, come to think of it, I need to know that the protagonist is the right amount of wrong. And the antagonist, whether it’s a person or, as in this case, a culture, has to be the right amount of right. After all, *I* am the worst antagonist the protagonist can imagine, since I am the one who’s giving her all of her trouble. Moreover, I can easily make her life easier, give her everything she needs and let her have it forever. So, well, I need to dislike her enough to be that mean to her. Me being a mean person, this means she needs just one crappy trait or two, and a couple of stupid illusions/assumptions.

Also, on a side note, on a frantic research session, I discovered that love can be, and is, quite different from the definition I have developed for my private use. The fact that I needed a wikipedia article to tell me this doesn’t sound good. But oh well. Luckily, wikipedia exists.

New Year’s Plan

ieva — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 20:21:39 +0000

Everybody must have some resolution, right? Well, mine isn’t really a resolution, it’s a not-too-ambitious plan of what I could accomplish without driving myself nuts (either with burn-out or lazy-crap-writer syndrome that kicks in whenever I don’t write much).

1. Edit Vega to the final, query-able version. (That’ll be the hardest, but I believe that with How To Revise Your Novel course I’ll be able to do that. And I’ll start working on that very soon, very likely tomorrow.)
2. Edit at least 12 stories to the final, submittable versions. That’s roughly one story a month, and totally doable if I apply myself to that.
3. Write a new novel (the one code-named Virgin perhaps?). I think I’ll start writing right now because basically, I don’t get the real “feel” or the scope of the novel yet. Sounds upside-down? Well, no. I reckon that the most painless and reliable way to get the “feel” of the novel is to write a chapter or two. That feel will determine whether it’s primarily an action-based stuff with weird magic or is it a psychological piece, or a cozy dealing-with-sexuality story, or a horror that would make me stay awake at nights. Or, if the first chapters feel wrong, well, then I’ll know it’s wrong and try the opposite approach. It’s not the scientific way but it’s a way to make sure I enjoy writing something I will very likely *not* enjoy writing.
(By the way: why writing if I have so much to edit? I think it’s necessary for me to write. I re-started writing because I’m hooked on that; if my editing will mess with my writing, I’ll drop them both as I actually did two weeks ago. So I’ll do both, in a sorta accomplishment-reward vicious circle.)

What I believe I’ll also do: write a handful of new stories and, most likely, participate in NaNoWriMo again (with a subsequent burn-out in December again), but I’m not putting it in my plan because I don’t want to allow myself to fail at my first two resolutions and excuse it with “oh, but I did the stories and the NaNo”.

That’s it. May you (whoever is reading this) have plans so cool that making them come true feels great and, well, not easy, but tremendously rewarding.
All else is luck and gifts from above, and I believe that these things will come to you on their own accord and in their own time, when they’re most needed.

holding back

ieva — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 06:21:57 +0000

My strategy on beginnings vs middles is like this:
(and a word of caution here, it doesn’t give for the best structure or story arc or whatever, but it does make writing interesting throughout the novel)
on beginnings, I hold back as much as I can, giving the minimum of what I know to readers and my characters. I lure them in, I let them reveal themselves in what they think are normal, everyday situations when they’re really not; I listen to their voices, I let them tell who they are, I give them a last-moment opportunity to become something more than they were scheduled for me.
Then, when things get a bit boring, I hurl everything I remember I had on them, I bomb them with information, disasters, problems, horrible dreams, and all-the-things-I-thought-sequel-should-cover. I believe firmly that you never can run out of disasters, not when you get in the spree. That’s the middles.
Oh, and then there’s endings when I carefully pick up the threads and tie them, careful as not to mess them up by brutality OR by being too respectful of the novel world as it is now.
But I have a long time till the ending.

short chapters

ieva — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 05:59:33 +0000

Now, when I finally started writing my NaNoWriMo novel, I found out that having short chapters is way more inspiring for accumulating wordcount. Telling to myself “I added wrote 1200+ words to a chapter that I’ll finish a day after tomorrow if all goes well” doesn’t sound as good as “I wrote chapter 9 today”.

Yesterday, I wrote two chapters, chapter 1 where Urchin (who isn’t called Urchin yet) leaves the hospital but her parents won’t leave the country (and she’s definitely not happy) and chapter 2 where she starts school and develops friendship, but it all goes off on the wrong foot.
I’ll definitely rewrite both chapters (or dispose of them) because I’m stumbling around horribly, blabbering on the side, trying to get the feel of my characters’ worldviews. That’s to be expected.

NaNoWriMo takes off

ieva — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 23:18:48 +0000

NaNoWriMo has started for me an hour ago.
Two hours ago, I didn’t have a clue what to do. I thought I knew the first scene, but after that, everything was blank.
Then, I sat down to sort my wordcount sheet and suddenly realized that I have to start earlier in the story, and suddenly, it all came together and I planned ten solid scenes ahead (which will be ~5 chapters), nailing down the key elements of exposition and having a forward momentum.
I wrote 1216 words in an hour and now I’m practically falling asleep on the keyboard. But it’s all right. I still have all the tomorrow for the first day.

To everybody else doing NaNo – good luck!