Something in the Way She Moves...

A non-writing friend asked me what inspires my stories, or inspires me to write.

(I admit, I felt all AUTHOR for a moment and could imagine myself being asked this while standing in front of a group of fans at a reading.  Please forgive me my momentary plunge into fantasy!)

My answer came quickly; music, photos, great books, dreams and watching people interact.

She smiled and looked at me with humor in her eyes - a look I know well now.  I get a little, ummm, excited sometimes when I get going and it's highly amusing to some of my friends that, after never talking about it - I can't stop talking about it.  (That's what I chose to believe at least).

Music - although music inspires me WHEN I'm writing, it's often not the inspiration on what to write about.  It absolutely sets the mood and gets my mind in the right place. You can check out my playlists for NORMAL and BITE ME on the sidebar of their homepages.  This is music that I either write to or reminds me of my story - something that makes me want to write.

Photos - This is kind of a big one for me.  I love photography.  Something about how people see the same world so differently becomes clear in a photograph. My parents used to laugh when I used to take my oldest daughter to have her photo taken every month as a baby, because I fancy myself an amateur photographer and she was already the most photographed baby  - ever.  To me though, having her photo taken by another photographer allowed me to see her in a different way. 

This is probably the main reason that I do castings for my books.  Sometimes it is an actual celebrity in my head, sometime it's just how they look in one particular picture or a look they have on their face that makes me think of that character.  However.  I find a lot of inspiration from photography - settings, houses (UNTITLED actually has a whole architecturally rendered floorplan of the MC's house), faces, smiles - even the mood of a photo. 

For instance:  This photo of Joe Jonas and Demi Lovato, it's just freaking fantastic.  I believe that it is photoshopped (I do not take credit for it) and I don't know where it came from otherwise I'd give that person a big ole shout out.  This photo has inspired many a new scene in NORMAL. 

The rest is fairly self explanatory - seeing how people interact, listening to their speech... all inspire scenes and moods in my books.

The single most important one though - are my dreams.  Almost every single one of my SNIs started out as a vivid, movie-like dream.  Something that grabbed me and didn't let go.

Revival

I'm apparently not very good at killing people off - the first person I killed just got up and walked away.  I guess that's one way to avoid the dilemma of what a bunch of teen/twenty something girls do with the bodies of the evil-doers they slayed.   LAME.

I made it to 13K.  I failed hard at NaNoWriMo.  I'm okay with that.  Life got in the way.  Flu, Family, Food...  it's all good though.  Really.

Here is where I stand.  I love BITE ME.  I love Leigh and I have fallen in love with Natalie.  Hard.  Sophia was supposed to be my darling, but Natalie clawed her way into my heart.  I'm not giving up on them - but I do need to let them go for a while. 

Jacob, Andrew and Aly are plagueing me.  "Edit us" they cry from the dark recesses of my dreams.  I kid you not.  They stalk me in my dreams.  Maybe it's because Nick Jonas is going out on his own on a solo project that I feel all emo about my little characters right now.   My little Andrew set off on his own too, well, until this last draft anyway.  I'm seriously stressing about how Nick J will be received by the world.  Am I still talking about a Jonas brother?   Maybe it was the 37 hours I spent in the past week, in a mini-van with 3 obsessed Jonas fans.  Can I say Jonas anymore times?  Jonas??!!!

Something else surprised me this month (this month of epic NaNo failure).  I'm ready to edit my first novel, the one fantastically titled "UNTITLED."   It hit me, this last week in particular, that I'm ready.  Maybe it was being back in my old stomping grounds where the book was originally conceived and outlined over a decade ago.  Maybe it was the copious amounts of Tryptophan - or it could have been the beers.

So, BITE ME is trunked temporarily.  NORMAL is back on the hacking block to get redded up for betas and UNTITLED will see the light of day again.  SOON.

I am sad to announce my characters are down with the flu.  They are laying on the couch, whining and running fevers...

Let's just say my NaNoWriMo word count is at a stand still.  I wish one of their super hero powers was being able to heal... oooooooooooooooooh

RIP

I'm doing something I've never done in a book before.  I'm killing people off.  Good guys/bad guys... who knows.  What I do know is that everyone is at risk.  I had planned all along for one of my characters to die, but she wasn't going to go until later on in the "series."

In my very first novel the book starts with a recent death and the repercussions of that loss are felt through the book, but it's not like I killed her. 

I'm pretty sure people like me are not meant to have this kind of power.   Mwah haha ha ha ha ha!

It's coming....

Tonight I wrote a chapter that actually scared me.  Now, I'm a skeredy cat to begin with, but the suspense and fear in this chapter for Leigh had me jumping at every noise in the house. 

I don't particularly like weak female characters in writing (for the record, I haven't really met a "weak" female in my real life, however, many fiction female characters are), or at least I don't like writing them.  So the character of Leigh is more difficult for me than I thought it would be.  I don't like saying Leigh is weak.  She's not.  She is fairly helpless right now. 

Imagine being a little, sarcastic, moody teen who is fiercely independent.  Then you gain into these kick-ass new skills and talents, but your wobbly about learning to use them.  Not to mention that you are seriously out-matched by a whole host of baddies that want you dead before you can't well - be dead - or at least more dead.  Then enter your older sisters that have already cast long shadows on you for your entire life, and suddenly you have to allow them to fight your battles.

I thought it would be fun to write about this tough teen girl, who says the things I thought about saying back in the day.  What I'm finding is that I'm crying with her instead of roaring with her.  She needs some support because for once she can't fix this in her own head.  What is scarier for her - being stalked by people who want her dead, or admitting she's scared and having to reach out.

At 8,500 words in, I don't have that answer, but I'm getting excited to find out.

No plot, no problems

I'm gonna admit it.  I'm having a hard time getting from Point A to Point B and let's just forget Point C.  I thought I had this under control.  Between my characters running off on their own program and a terrible case of exposition - this is going down hard.

I had a great night of writing on Friday, but then took Saturday off to regroup.  I'll admit it - I'm stuck.

There is SO much going on in this novel that I'm struggling with not editing it as I go.  I need to drive the plot forward but I'm mired in details.  That's kind of the story of my life.  Details.... love details.  Love planning.  With NORMAL I loved writing it.  So far I'm torn with Bite Me.  I want to love writing it too.  So far it's been fun but I'm reaching that stage where I'm going to have to write while kicking and screaming.  Maybe that's what my characters need, more kicking and screaming???

So, before writing tonight my word count stands at a paltry 6,400 words.  Only 43,600 to go... almost 2K a day.  Okey dokey. 

Recharge the brain...

So - I took a day off and recharged.  Not from NaNo burn out but just life burn out.  Something had to give and so I didn't add anything.

They funny thing is - I couldn't get the story off my mind.  My dreams were filled from the characters from both books and they were fighting for attention.  This morning I woke up and could not stop writing.  It's a little stressful since I have all of this ground to cover in BITE ME - but I'm not able to really get the editing for NORMAL out of my head.  I think this where it would be nice to have a clone.  Although - I'm pretty sure I'd set my clone on other things - like laundry, dishes, cleaning... and keep the writing parts to myself. 

So, what I'm learning about Leigh in BITE ME is that she is much more fun that I thought.  I assumed I would struggle with keeping her from being too big of a brat, since her main life struggles until this point primarily include feeling like a misfit and a significant dose of sibling rivalry but I have found that she is snarky and although has a tinge of brat, it is entwined with a sarcastic sense of humor that is so much fun!  I think I love her.  I'm also drawn more to her sister Natalie than Sophia - which I didn't anticipate either. 

I had a whole scene carefully laid out since I was trying hard to avoid the verbal dump of information when Leigh finds out she's a vampire.  In the middle, Natalie just jumped in, tired of drama and laid it all out there for Leigh.  I sat back after I was done and said, "whoa - that wasn't the way that was supposed to go down." 

Just who is driving this bus?  

Fighting the urge...

It's a battle I'm losing, but I'm trying to write most of this without editing excessively as I go. I tend to write 10 pages and then spend a bunch of time editing and then continuing on. I'm trying to get the story out of my head and onto paper this time. Let it all hang out there on the paper. Then I can chop away and edit, edit, edit, but it's harder than it sounds.

I keep hearing, "watch the adjectives", "don't ask, don't tell" (oh wait, I think that one is 'show, don't tell'), "is that ANOTHER adverb?" "is there a plot here?"

My motto right now is that it is what it is. I write with an excessive amount of description, adjectives... adverbs and any other ad-things I can do that vividly bring to life my characters and the setting. Unfortunately I also know that is the trademark of a weak writer that doesn't trust their reader enough to visualize their own world. (Yes, I've been re-reading "Self-editing for fiction writers")

So, tonight my mind has too many other things on it to allow me to lose myself in my world. My MC is struggling to understand her new place in her family, the world and a fight for survival. In the mood I'm in she'd just go run out in front of a bus and end it. Except I know she's strong and she wouldn't ever do that right? hmmmmmmmmmmm.... I'm going to bed so that she may live to see another day (or night.. she is a vampire after all. Does she even do the day? What about that pesky sun... what happens to my MC in the sun? does she sparkle? smoke? catch ablaze? get sunburned? bloody hell!)

Oh 3,910 words.

Another day... another post... more words...

I love the beginning of a book. Everything flows so nicely and I don't have to worry about pesky things like plot continuity because hey, everything is new right? I figured this part of NaNo would be the easy part and so far I have been right, it would be wonderful if this novel just flew through me. I can dream!

A friend of mine expressed serious doubts about the quality of writing that happens from trying to spew 50K in 30 days. I say, I agree with him. I'm sure some of the NaNo writers are producing grade A, super polished, gorgeous writing. I'm more sure though that the majority of us are writing crap. That doesn't mean it shouldn't be done, it doesn't mean it's not a worthy endeavor. I think allowing the free flow of words and pushing them out on to paper/screen is critically important to both newbie writers and experienced, published authors. NaNo pushes us to write, in all it's craptastical goodness so that we have something to mold and shape into a pretty little package someday.

This is truly the best and worst of writing in one 30 day time frame. Some use NaNo as an excuse to write their very first novel, others do NaNo for inspiration, others for the pure challenge. Whatever the reason, I say it's about writing, and that's just plain good. In February or March of next year, it might turn into something great, once I hit my third, fourth, fifth revision. Maybe I won't bother to revise and just tuck it away. Who knows. Talk with me on December 1st and see what I think about it.

My count at the end of day two is 3,416 words. My characters continue to surprise me (I had no idea my MC's hearing would be so acute) and I love them all so far.

It's a done deal now, the secret is out and Leigh finally knows the truth. How on earth does someone, especially a 16 year old girl, deal with news like this.

I guess I'm about to find out.

BITE ME Dream Cast

Something I have done for all of my books is to try and create a visual of the cast of characters. This is the dream cast for the SNI for NaNoWriMo and is very much a rough draft - as I learn more about the characters through writing them - they often change. The other thing that WILL change are the names of my characters.

This is Leigh (Anna Sophia Robb) - my 16 year old MC, the youngest of five girls. She is tough, independent, snarky, but desperately looking to fit in somewhere. The M&M - tough candy shell, soft yummy chocolate center.

THE SISTERS

This is Katheryne (Lucy Hale), the oldest sister. Katheryne is 22 years old and the leader in every sense. She is focused on their task, dedicated and serious.

Natalie, (Demi Lovato) the twin sister to Sophia. Natalie and Sophia are 20 years old and have a strong bond. Natalie is athletic, strong, dark and powerful.

Sophia, Natalie's twin. Sophia is incredibly sensitive, caring and empathetic. She has the strongest gift and has been in love since she was 15 - but learned the secret at 16.

Elyse (Erin Sanders) is 18 and is the light of the family. She is joyful, and unburdened by her responsibilities. She is often the intermediary between Leigh and her sisters.
DA BOYS

Elyse's LI (Josh Hutcherson)

Natalie's best friend (Stephen Sraight)

Sophia's LI (William Mosely)
OH SO BAD... BUT LOOK SO GOOD...

Katheryne's LI (Mark Salling)

(Alex Davalo) Leader of the "created"

NaNoWriMo

Yep. I'm doing it. After drooling at the thought last year, I decided I really wanted to give it a shot this year. It doesn't hurt that I have a full on shiny new idea (SNI) that was just demanding to be written.

SNIP


Kick off is tomorrow.... I can't wait to start writing!