Well, that was a time sink! Albeit a fun one. At long last I created a Facebook page. And although my Facebook ignorance is astounding, I have to admit it’s a lot of fun. (For example, I had to sign up as Robin L LaFevers because they wouldn’t let me use my initials, but I also saw that J. R. R. Tolkien was allowed to use his initials…and periods, which they said I had too many of. So clearly some research is in order!) But if any of you are on there and are looking for friends, I can be found here. I think. And no, I have no idea what I'm going to do with a Facebook page, but I was tired of being the only author left on the planet who didn't have one.

I also did some cyber de-cluttering today, de-coupling myself from a lot of old yahoo groups and chat thingeys that I no longer actively participate in. Streamlining is good, it helps me focus.

I also had a great writing morning, which was a bit of a surprise, When I woke up I wasn’t feeling the writing love, at all, and thought I’d give myself a day’s break. But before I took the break, I just wanted to write down this one transition sentence so I’d remember where I was going to insert this new scene chunk. One sentence led to two, which led to my 1,000 words in about an hour. Love that. The scene was sitting in my subconscious where it had been steeping for a couple of days and just needed me to get my butt in the chair and get my head out of the way.

Kind of the story of my life, really.

That Magpie Stage

Okay, so here's a tip: Never leave a complexly plotted book for a year and a half without leaving yourself very detailed, explicit notes. Jeez. I feel like I've been wandering for years, lost in the Labyrinth like Theseus, only I don't have Ariadne to help me. More's the pity.

However, I have finally become fully emerged in the book. How can I tell? Because I am now officially in The Magpie Stage. It's that stage of writing when everything feeds the book. Wherever I turn, there's an image or the perfect word, or a glimmer of human nature, that is just exactly what I need for the book so I snatch it and quickly store it in my waiting nest. Whether it's stumbling on just the right reading material, finding the perfect resource in a most unexpected place, tripping over a website that shouldn't have anything to do with the book, and yet it turns up a perfect detail.

See? Even searching for an image of the Theseus myth turns up a wonderfully medieval picture of the myth, even though it wasn't medieval at all.

It feels like the very Universe itself is lining up to help me write this book. I adore this stage, truly. And it doesn't always last long, so I try to soak it up while I can.

In other news, I have vowed to leave at least five comments a week on other blogs. Okay, three. Five might be biting off more than I can chew. But I vow to leave three comments a week on other blogs. The thing is, I love the blogs I read and I want the bloggers to know that I'm there, reading, appreciating their efforts. So that's my new almost-May-Day-resolution.

Questions to Reveal Character

One of the things I need to know kind of early in the process of writing a book is my turning points. I write to the turning points and acts, rather than to the end. The benefits of this are that I am writing three or four smaller stories within one larger narrative, and not having one long endless slog through a never-ending middle.

It is also the way to check and be sure that the events of the story are forcing the necessary character changes so that they will have undergone a true transformation by the end of the book. Which is why I am so married to the idea that plot is character—the external plot is often the construct an author uses to effect the internal change in their characters, which is where I think the true juice of the story is.

And I know all my turning points for this medieval French book—except the first one, which comes at about the 1/4 mark in the mss. That first TP is so important! It launches the character on their external journey, or if the character is already moving along that path, it ramps up the action, increases the urgency, or throws a major kink in the works.

Or it should, anyway. Mine? Not so much.

I have a really soft turning point, which is bugging me because it should be, at the very least, the moment the two forces in the novel, the protagonist and antagonist (or antagonistic force) cross swords and agree to duel

And I got nothin’. Well, there’s something there, I’m sure of it, I just have to find it.

Which is where these questions I mentioned the other day came in so handy. They are from a workshop Michael Hague gave at the RWA National Conference a couple of years ago. He suggests that the internal journey of a character is a transformation from persona (the construct that they show the world) to their essence (their true nature). Now, I’ve looked at these questions before, and they never really clicked for the Theodosia books or the Beastologist books. Maybe because those are series and the process happens throughout the course of bookS rather than A book. But boy, the questions clicked for me with this manuscript. Which is one of the reasons I like having a collection of writing processes and approaches up my sleeve, you just never know which one will coax which story into being.

So, onto the questions. The first two are ones I already ask myself, but the way he worded them triggered something this time. I think one of the reason these questions worked for me is because they echo something I do instinctively, but give it a bit more form and cohesion.

What is my character's longing? What is their deeply held desire they’re only paying lip service to, that they’re not pursing. Now some characters are so shut down or disconnected from their selves that they don’t even have a longing. Instead they have a need, a hole inside that must be filled.

And that hole is usually caused by the answer to the next question…

What is my character’s wound? What past traumas have shaped them and profoundly altered the way they see the world?

Third question, What is my characters belief? How has my character’s wound shaped his way of seeing the world? Of seeing other people? This is the one that really helped me this time because it gave me a sense of what the scenes needed to reveal about my character.

My character’s belief is that her only value or worth is in her usefulness as a tool to her organization. In fact, she clings to the fact that she’s a tool and uses it to disconnect from her emotions, her self. If she clings to the fact that she’s a tool—separate from the needs and desires other people are subject to, then she doesn’t have to admit they are lacking in her life, that she isn’t worthy of them.

This belief is used to keep fear and terror at bay.

The fourth questions is What is your characters’ identity? Which for me was answered in the belief question. She is naught but a finely honed, fully committed tool.

And the fifth question, What is your hero’s essence? When you strip away all the roles they play and the beliefs they protect themselves with, what are they at their core?

Now I have to admit to not being certain what essence was, so I rephrased it like this:
Who would my character be if she had the courage? If she wasn’t afraid of anything? It turns out my heroine’s essence is that she is a merciful, compassionate person who is being used for the purpose of judgment and punishment.

And then of course the story is about her movement from her persona to her essence, learning to step away from being a tool for a punishment she finds she doesn’t actually believe in.

Again, this doesn’t work for all stories, this is the first one of mine that it really generated an aha! moment for. Maybe it will be helpful to you at some point.

Plan B

Well, I had a lovely post all typed up and ready to go, but the Alpha Smart I used to type it up can't connect to this ancient computer without lugging the stupid thing away from the wall, so that will have to wait a bit. Sorry!

However, the good news is (well, for me, not so much you) is that between the threat of jury duty looming over me and an ancient (read: s-l-o-w) computer, I've gotten tons done this week. I wonder if it was Fate's way of getting me to focus on the basics of storytelling. You know, the old, butt in the chair, pen and notebook, get off the frackin' computer kind of basics. Whatever it was, it worked.

Speaking of fracking, my buddy Katy Cooper has turned on to the wonders of Battlestar Galactica. I'm totally loving this show! And thank god it's on DVD so we can gobble them up as fast as we want. It is well written; excellently plotted and the characters are all delightfully complex and multi-dimensional.

I am also reading seven books at one time, which is a lot, even for me. A sure sign that I am deep in a book and being the world's most finicky reader. I am currently reading:

Mysteries of the Middle Ages
World Without End
New Moon
The Hallowed Hunt
Lady MacBeth
Book of Unholy Mischief
Kushiel's Justice
and have just started The Hunger Games.

Oops. That's eight.

And speaking of that...brings me to e-readers. You know, I've never thought very much of them, nor been tempted in any way to own one. I love books--real live books--way too much. However, does anyone else get reader's thumb or book lover's elbow?? The former is usually from forcing open fat paperbacks and feels like two sprained thumbs, and the latter is akin to tennis elbow from holding up books that way six pounds or more (I seem to be drawn to 500-1,000 page tomes). The physical hazards of being an avid reader have me at least pondering e-readers and wondering if they eliminate these injuries.

Best Laid Plans....

Well, we're going to have to wait a bit for the show and tell (with pictures!) of my colored index card plotting because . . . wait for it . . . my frackin' iMac crashed again. Only this time it took the entire hard drive with it. I swear, I have the worst mac luck ever. I know they are supposed to have better no-fail rates than PCs, but I've sure not found that to be the case. My first iMac crashed and burned (literally) three times, and this newest one has crashed twice in less than a year. Maybe I have the wrong kind of electromagnetic field or something.

Anywhoo, I'm typing this blog post from one of my son's old computers, tucked away in a spare bedroom that is stifling (we are having 94 degree weather today my So Cal coastal community!?) and I am not even sure it can accommodate my camera's software for loading and organizing photos, so that will have to wait until I get my machine back from the shop.

Speaking of computers, I saw one of those tiny ones and boy, are they tiny. Not very usable, I think, so I guess I will shelve that idea.

In other news, I did get a lot of great work done this weekend, culling my Cast of Thousands down to only a dozen or so noble families. Again, I want to evoke the court politics and plotting of the time, not drown the reader in medieval French lineages. And I figure if I was drowning, the reader would absolutely be drowning.

I also got some great character work done using some questions from a plotting template method from Michael Hague, screenwriter extrodinaire. Which may seem somewhat contradcitory--to get character answers from looking at plotting structure--but since I think plot IS character, it actually makes a fair amount of sense. You can check out the template here, but I'll talk about the questions he discussed in his presentation in tomorrow's post. Well, if there is a post tomorrow. I also got a jury summons and may have to go in for jury duty. This might just be my lost week. Thank god it didn't happen while I was on deadline!

Having The Courage of Your Convictions

I know tons of people have already seen this, but it makes me tear up every single time I view it. If ever there was a vivid reminder to writers--to all artists--to step up to the plate, grab our dreams by the short hairs, and just do it fer gawd's sake, this is it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY

You can clearly see the judges and the audience think she is slightly ridiculous, and she is awkward, but carries the absolute courage of her artistic convictions. And in the end, she receives a well deserved standing ovation. ::le sigh::

In other news, I am spending the weekend with brightly colored index cards in an effort to wrestle this latest mss into submission. I will report back next week. With pictures!

(For those of you who are seeing this twice, no you're not imagining things, I accidentally posted it over on Shrinking Violets this morning, the dangers of a split blog personality!)

Back Away From The Research!

This next project I’m working on is set in Medieval France and requires tons of research. I mean, tons! It needs way more than even the Theodosia books, which were extremely research heavy. Research is also one of the means through which I enter my story world. By immersing myself in research, the world of Edwardian England or Medieval France becomes real enough to me that when I close my eyes (which I do a lot. It’s called napping and is highly valuable exercise!) I am there.

One of the reasons this project requires so damn much research is that the worldview of someone who lived in Medieval France is radically different from our contemporary mindset, or even the mindset of a hundred years ago, and its that radically different worldview that attracts me to that age. But in order to evoke it on the page, I really have to know more than what sorts of clothes they wore, houses they lived in, and food they ate. I need to know how they thought of themselves in relation to the world.

The other thing I find is that there are wildly different interpretations of medieval life, with some authors claiming love was never a part of any marriage or betrothal and others claiming that theory is ludicrous and that while noble marriages were political beasts, there is evidence that some love matches occurred. At first this can be wildly frustrating, but after enough of these contradictions, it ends up being very freeing to me as a writer because if the experts can’t decide, then it means we don’t know with absolute certainty, so I can pick which theory works best for my story.

Of course, there will be some reader whose read the theory I didn’t choose, and will take me to task for getting research incorrect, but one of the things I’ve learned is that you can’t please every reader. It is impossible. For every story decision you make, for every character attribute you select, for every piece of research you incorporate, you risk alienating some reader somewhere. The thing I think we have to come to grips with is that it is okay, expected even, to not be every readers’ cup of tea. Ultimately we have to make the choices that resonate the most with us and trust that there is a sufficient body of readers out there for whom our choices will also resonate.

Okay, that was a tangent, Now where was I? Oh yeah, some people claim that research can be an avoidance technique, but even with the piles of it I do, I have never found this to be true for me. The thing is, my process has had over a dozen years now to mature and take shape and the one thing I know to be true is that writing is my favorite thing ever, and I don’t lack discipline for writing. I don’t need to force it because I will always come back to it. I can hardly force myself to take week’s vacation. So if I don’t feel I’ve done enough research, it is not because I’m avoiding writing, but because I truly haven’t done enough research or I still need time for the story or voice to jell.

If I try to cut the research short, the voice doesn’t fully ripen and it sounds off and clunky or anachronistic. In fact, I sometimes wonder if all the advice to write every day, and that warns against too much research doesn’t contribute to stories being written before their time? I’m a firm believer in the role of the subconscious (read: the girls and boys in the basement) in sending up some of the best stuff for our stories—but they need stewing and fermenting time.

The other reason I’m inclined to keep on with my research is that much of the time I will find the perfect plot element or the answer to a thorny story problem in the research—I consider that the writing gods reward for keeping at the tough slog through the genealogy charts of long dead French land barons (and isn’t google the most amazing thing ever!) and staring at maps until my eyes cross (because in medieval power and political struggles—land IS power and military strategy—it is absolutely integral to the story).

When I do need to back away from the research is when my poor brain becomes over saturated, like a lawn that’s been watered too long so that all the water just runs off onto the sidewalk. When my brain starts dribbling out my ears into puddles on the table, I know I need to stop. For now, at least. But the research process continues throughout the writing of the entire book.