Adult draft complete!

In January of this year, I decided to undertake the revision that I'd been considering, but afraid to do: to turn my YA steampunk into an adult novel. When I began writing it, I knew it could have gone either way, but I had been writing YA, so I decided to take it the YA route. After receiving several comments that it would make a better adult story, and after feeling that way myself through the revisions of the YA drafts, I decided, in January of this year, to redraft the entire thing as an adult novel.

After spending half of February and most of March working on the first half of my steampunk novel (after having spent January thinking and outlining and reworking my ideas), I realized something: the second half would have to be entirely rewritten. Which is what I was doing all of April, and why you kept seeing blog entries from me telling you how much I'd written in a week. It was all for this novel, this adult draft.

I am pleased to say that on Saturday evening, the same day I made the 100k words post, I wrote the last 2 chapters of the novel, and I officially officially have an adult draft of my steampunk. It is now an adult fantasy* novel.

In 27 days, I wrote 64,500 words and 21 chapters. The entire draft is now 106k words long, and 381 pages. And it's better for it. I only added a little bit of plot, and world building--but only where I needed it. The bulk of the extra came from developing my characters better--including my antagonists, and from beefing up a sub-plot that needed better explanation anyway. Basically, what it was missing as a YA novel, I really believe it has as an adult novel. I like it a lot better this way, and it's really taught me to analyze which of my ideas belong where.

Let's see how long I can let it sit and simmer before I want to dive back in and shred it all to bits again. A week, maybe...

*A lot of steampunk takes place in Victorian London, as either a historical setting or as an alternate history. Mine is a fantasy world, like in China Mieville's stuff, or Clockwork Heart by Dru Pagliassotti. My world is still heavily based in Victorian times, but I altered a lot of historical detail to fit my world better--borrowing from other time periods and other cultures, and just making up a couple things.

100k!

I have momentous news concerning my WIP. Last night I broke 100k!!!! Which means two things: 1) if nothing else, my revision has Officially landed me in the acceptable word count range for an adult fantasy novel, and 2) I have made my goal of writing 60k words in a month 4 days early (well it might be like 59k right now, since I think I may have started at 41k or 42k with the beginning parts of the novel, but whatever! Too excited to care!)

This is exciting for me because this is the longest novel I've written so far, and honestly I was worried I wouldn't be able to make it to even 90k without just fluffing up the language and adding useless long rambling sections. I'm really pleased to say that I had to resort to none of that. It turned out that the worldbuilding and sub-plot additions really did the trick! Plus there's nothing like adding a new character and giving another minor character a major role to make a manuscript longer.

I'll be sure to post for you all my crazy Alexandra-has-no-life wordcount for the day/week stats when I type the last words into the manuscript! Hopefully that won't be too long from now.

You know what? I think Q is lucky. There's nothing like having a to-die-for cute kitten sleeping beside you (or eating your toes) to motivate (distract) you to get things done!

Whew, I still have a climax to write! Must get cracking...

Q has a youtube channel!

Check out Quentin's youtube channel!

http://www.youtube.com/user/kittenquentin

The biting my finger videos are especially endearing, if I do say so myself.

The cutest thing I've ever seen.

I have a very exciting announcement.

I have a kitten!!!!!!!!!



This is Quentin. Yes, she's named after Quentin from The Sound and the Fury. Yesterday there were some high school girls who had found abandoned kittens at the fair grounds and brought them to campus to see if they could find homes for them. I went by to check them out, and ended up going home with this little one.

I LOOOOOOVE her.

I have a new obsession...

... Yoga.

I know, I'm such a cliche, right?

But I'm terrible at it! Last night I went to a class, and I almost fell down doing one of the poses (revolved triangle, if you're wondering.) It was so funny--but now of course I'm wondering how interesting it might be to write some sort of fantasy novel in which one of the characters is a contortionist (yes, everything I do comes back to writing. What can I say?)

I'm a very tense sort of person in terms of muscles (I don't know WHY, but I've always been like that... maybe it was the Irish dance I did as a teenager...) so learning to basically tie myself into knots (well... first I have to get my heels to the floor during downward dog, so...) makes my muscles very happy.

So I like it. And I like doing something I'm bad at--it takes the pressure off in a fabulous way, and I can just enjoy it! :)

Personal Accomplishment

This morning, I finished chapter 29 of my steampunk manuscript revision. Which means... I just made a document for chapter 30! I've never had 30 chapters before in any manuscript. This excites me to no end--it's a personal goal that I just reached. The next one is to reach 100k in a manuscript (before now I've been doing YA, and I was good at keeping the length down) and I'm within... let's see... about 13k words from that goal, too. And I still have the pre-climax buildup and the climax to write. *rubs hand together and mutters to self like Gollum*

Hooray!

So you're probably wondering if I'm not a little bit obsessive and maybe crazy, given all this single-mindedness I'm displaying... well, considering that people talk to me inside my head, where worlds other than this one lives and where I create cities and countries and religions... well... I think pleading my case for total sanity would be a bit futile. Another thing that helps is I type ridiculously fast, like 90-100 words a minute (depending on how accurate I want to be.) The ability to concentrate for several hours without a break helps, though I have to say that conditioning myself to be that way was NOT fun. I spent all of middle and high school learning to study "properly" (meaning to study for hours with no break) so that I could have all As.

Turned out to be a useless skill for life, because in college I've discovered this fantastic thing called procrastination... but turns out it's useful for writing.

And lastly... I have an outline! Yes, the outline helps me up my speed, since I've already figured out all the plot hiccups, so I don't have to pause nearly as often to answer the "where am I going with this?" question. Three cheers for outlining, the only thing that has kept me sane through this revision!

Of course... you could argue that the more insane I go, the more creative I get...

Today, I created Religion

One of the coolest parts of writing fantasy is getting to create things... like your own religion. (Heh, this, of course, puts me in mind of Scientology, but L. Ron Hubbard "deserves" his own blog post so I'll just leave it for now.)

This morning I was reading something for class about Fortune in the Renaissance, and how Fortune was sort of a godlike force in of it/herself, even though obviously everyone in Renaissance England was Christian. But Fortune, good Lady that she is, gave me some GREAT ideas for the religious structure that I'm creating for Memento Mori's world (thanks, Fortune! Now if you'd just help me with the whole agent thing....) Not that it'll necessarily show up in anything more than a cursory manner in MM (my mc Chase isn't particularly religious--and she's afraid of one part of the religion, with good reason.) But I still love making it, and having it is a comfort. I can put in small details that will make my world seem richer without info-dumping, and if I ever DO need it for something far grander than I use it for now, I'll have it already made.

You know, one thing I do have to say is that I'm realizing how easy it is to fall into the generic Fantasy World (thanks, Tolkien, we all owe you one for that!) I mean, so much stuff is already created by other people, but since everyone uses it, it's almost like writing in the contemporary world because it's so familiar. You know, knights and lords and kings, inns and taverns and horses, battles and wizards and swords. There's nothing wrong with using that typical Medieval-esque fantasy world. I mean, as a high fantasy fan, there is something nice about opening up a book and knowing that I'm going to get swords and wizards and journeys on horseback and all that. And, you know, too much unfamiliar world building can make you just want to give up on a book or pull your hair out at the amount of info-dumping required to carry it off.

But then, at the same time, I realize that my favorite high fantasy and sword and sorcery fantasy books are ones that totally flip that idea of the world on its head. It might be easy to fall into that pattern, but I really appreciate it when authors decide to do something very obviously different. Even if the differences aren't huge (like, the setting is usually at least reminiscent of Medieval Europe) it's really nice to see the creativity that went into making not just the plot, but also the World.

I mean, let's face it, how many times really can you do that medieval world without adding at least SOME variety?

Which makes me want to try even harder at my steampunk fantasy world. I'm determined to fix this manuscript in a lot of ways, but something I became painfully aware of when I went back over it to really start ripping it up was that I'd slacked on the world building like whoa. So... no more slacking. I have Religion, I have Industry, I have Government AND a competing and decaying Aristocratic structure, among several other things, I see now, but I'm not giving up ALL my secrets! ;) And I have a city I really love... which also really needs a map. Er... anyone know how to draw?

Today my shirt says FANGTASIA

No, really. I bought a shirt at Hot Topic on Saturday that is like a t-shirt for the fictional vampire bar in the tv show True Blood (love that show! Love the Sookie Stackhouse books, too.) I also bought a Lady Gaga shirt. You know you're jealous.

Anyway, even after my outlining hiccup and having to delete almost an entire chapter that went astray because of writing without my outline, I did make my 14k word goal for last week during the last gasp of Sunday night. But I made myself sit down and write the rest of my outline. So now I have it, minus one climax thing I'm not sure how I want to twist.

Also, and this is so random, it's the first time I've been writing chapters numbered above 21. When I did YA, my chapters tended to be a little longer than they are now (which I now realize makes NO sense,) and since the wordcount was shorter, I only even broke 20 once (with this story, in fact). Now I write them a tad shorter (a la urban fantasy style) and since my wordcount is getting longer (please make it to 100k, pleasepleaseplease) only 4 chapters stand between me and chapter 30. That probably shouldn't excite me, but it does.

Lastly, I feel the need to tell you all that I slammed my hair in the car door this morning. And by that I mean, I was all sitting down in my seat and everything, and I pulled the door shut, and lo, my hair was caught in it, blown by a wayward breeze. Gah.

Book Review: Whitechapel Gods

I just finished one of the steampunk books out: Whitechapel Gods by S.M. Peters. Before you go any further, isn't this one of the most awesome covers you've ever seen?



I freaking love it. If I hadn't already had the book on my "to read" list because of the steampunk genre, I would've bought it just seeing this cover in the bookstore. (Disclaimer: I'll never NOT buy a book because I don't like the cover, but I've definitely picked up books I've never heard of because they have interesting covers. As I'm sure everyone does.)

Anyway, the premise of this book is that the Whitechapel section of Victorian London has been gated off, and is totally mechanized, ruled by two gods: Mama Engine and Grandfather Clock (yes, the punk there made me laugh, too.) These are mechanical gods, with their henchmen called cloaks and Boiler Men (totally metal soldier-types) running around keeping "order" in Whitechapel.

The protagonist, Oliver Sumner, and a group of rebels, are trying to find a way to destroy the gods. Oliver accidentally led a rebellion 5 years previous, but it failed, and he took all the blame upon himself (though nobody else blamed him) so part of his motivation in the story is trying to right the wrongs from before. The points of view are really cool, because they switch from Oliver, to a prostitute named Missy, to a few of Oliver's friends, and then to some of the people on the enemy side. It sounds kind of confusing the way I describe it, but the characters are really well formed and all so different and it's VERY obvious who the 3rd pov narrator is following.

The best part of this book was the world-building, though I do have to say that it might scare someone off who isn't familiar with steampunk or at least hasn't read much fantasy. It's very in-depth. But the coolest part was this disease that they called "the clacks" which slowly started to turn a human body into a machine. I was so jealous when I'd read that. What a cool concept.

I have to say, at the beginning of this book I wasn't sure I liked it. It moved a little slow, and the world-building was so heavy that if I skimmed at all, I got lost. But, once the plot hit its stride, it took off and didn't stop until the epilogue. I brought this book everywhere with me to catch any possible stray minutes of reading.

Fan-freaking-tastic. I love steampunk :)

Minor Setback

I ran out of outline yesterday. My outline went plot-point by plot-point (including the "down-time" or "filler" scenes) for what ended up being seven chapters. Monday night I finished with that. Tuesday I managed to write a nice romance building chapter, but last night I fell back into my old ways of cramming about 4 chapters worth of plot into one chapter. (You know how a lot of people have problems with making things too long? I have the exact opposite problem.)

I am really, really becoming a proponent of this outlining thing. The pacing was great through the six chapters I wrote last week and the seventh I wrote on Monday where I was working off an outline. I didn't have it outlined chapter by chapter, but I was able to pace myself knowing what was coming next and when it was coming relative to what I was writing at the time.

So I'll be scrapping what I did last night and spreading it out. It's not a big deal--not even 2,000 words--but I will be writing myself more of my outline before I continue writing chapters. I know that I'll definitely have to work on this second half very heavily before I even get it to match the first half in terms of polish and quality (and that's not to say the first half is even particularly good) but I'm going to TRY to keep myself from creating any MASSIVE pitfalls that will involve the scrapping of entire chapters or plot points like I did with the YA drafts of this thing.

Point is, I'm now a huge fan of outlining. Like, way huge. The thought of writing a book without knowing what would happen used to make me excited, but now it makes me nauseated.

Research? I don't need that crap!

When I was 14, and I decided to stop writing fanfiction and start writing my first real novel (a novel I never finished, mind you) I wanted to write fantasy for 2 reasons. The first reason was that I love fantasy. It's always been my favorite favorite genre, the books I gravitate to, the books I end up reading until my copy falls apart.

The other reason was that I didn't want to do any research. If I was writing fantasy, creating my own worlds and rules and everything, then I could just make everything up.

I am proud to say that I have not researched a darn thing since I started writing fantasy! I have not set foot in the library to check out books on the structures of a medieval court, or on what types of land holdings each member of the aristocracy had, or the order of titles of nobility. I found all that through wikipedia! And as we all know, wikipedia is not a viable source.

I most certainly NEVER in a million years looked up ANYTHING about Victorian London or Antebellum and Civil War era US for my steampunk books. Heck no, why would I bother getting some icky book out, or *gasp* asking a librarian for help when I can Google that stuff? The structure of a Victorian textile factory? Psh! Who cares? Early era TRAINS? Goodness, why would I want to look THAT up? All those handy Google images and links that I find? I don't need research!

And faeries? Haha! I don't need any Irish or Celtic mythology to help me with faeries. The closest I've ever come to researching THOSE is reading "Goblin Market" by Christina Rossetti. All those bookmarks I have in my internet browser of types of faeries, where they like to hang out, what they look like and what they do... that sooo doesn't count.

Fantasy doesn't need research! You get to make everything up! There's no reason to even crack a book, or even really LOOK at another book, while writing it.

Wait...

I did it!

Two weeks ago, when I was finishing up revising the second big chunk of my manuscript (steampunk Memento Mori) and looking at the third chunk, I realized I would have to completely rewrite the second half (well, over half. Half in terms of plot, but not in terms of length, because the plot gets more complicated.) My reaction was sort of like "ugh..... *headdesk*" because I'd been hoping to get to querying by the middle of April. Not that what I'd been doing wasn't mostly rewriting--it totally was. But I kept a couple chapters about 50% how they were, and they were nice landmarks to have, and it was nice to actually, you know, LIKE something I'd written.

Anyway, so last Sunday night, I set this mad crazy goal for myself. I would write at LEAST 2k words every day, without break, for 30 days--which means a weekly goal of 14k words. That would get me 60k, or it would see me finish before the 30 days were up (depending--I'm not sure how many words I need to get to the end at this point.) I thought well, I won't be able to do this goal, because it's insane and I'm taking classes and have a job and am getting a kitten, but whatever, I write really fast regardless and goals are good things to have.

On Monday I started--and today, I am proud to say that I wrote 6 chapters and almost 17k words this week!!!

Woohoo! The quicker I get this next draft down, the quicker I get to really finish my revisions and get it to the cps and make the entire thing shiny and gorgeous. Or at least gorgeous enough to query.

If anyone wants to join me, I love company <3

Hypocrites make me laugh

A few weeks ago in a lecture class class (which means last quarter) I had the distinct displeasure of sitting by two very loud and talkative girls (or rather, they sat by me, because I'm one of those overeager types who gets to lecture 20 minutes before it starts to get a good seat.) They whispered and chatted and texted through the entire lecture. Yet, at the two minute mark before the class let out, when everyone started surreptitiously packing up their stuff, one of the girls whispered, "God, it is SO rude when people do that!"

Er... this coming from the girl who talked through the whole lecture, who probably didn't take one note and likely has no idea what the professor even discussed?

I had to wait to get out of the classroom to start sniggering. But boy, it was pretty funny.