a nice saturday

[ksmith]

Well, maybe only semi-accomplished at this point. Still a few more things to do.

Sank the doggy septic tank today. Still need to add enzymes and water and get it digesting, which will have to wait until nights creep above 40F--that's the temp below which the enzyme is inactivated. But the hole was dug, and I bought a small garden spade and an even smaller shovel to fill out the garden tool collection.

Grocery-shopped. Bought books. Bought ink for the all-in-one. Celebrated with a California Pizza Kitchen 5-cheese and tomato pizza and a glass of merlot.

Now I think I will try to write a bit. The start of Jani 5 was bothering me because I felt it was pretty dead. Too slow, with too much infodump. Then, last night the thought hit that instead of starting the book with a Jani pov chapter, I should start with a secondary POV. This is a new character, an idomeni who intends to cause a great deal of trouble. But that trouble leads to Jani, whom the idomeni is thinking about, so it will be a good way to shove in some info about Jani while setting the stage for what comes later and adding a sense of menace to the whole thing. Then the slower Jani chapters that follow will seem more calm-before-the-storm rather than when-will-this-story-get-started.

Beginnings are always the most difficult for me.

Comments

[janni.livejournal.com]

Sympathies on losing your Dad.

I find beginnings the only part of a book that's easy for me; if I could make a living based on compelling opening chapters, I'd be doing pretty well.

But middles are a trudge, and endings are out and out hard. Not unusual for me to rewrite an ending a half dozen times just on the basis of large scale stuff, not counting all the language polishing after.

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

>Sympathies on losing your Dad.

Thanks.

>I find beginnings the only part of a book that's easy for me; if I could make a living based on compelling >opening chapters, I'd be doing pretty well.

>But middles are a trudge, and endings are out and out hard. Not unusual for me to rewrite an ending a half >dozen times just on the basis of large scale stuff, not counting all the language polishing after.

The last book must have had 5 or 6 beginnings, all of which I felt were solid at the time I wrote them. Learned that meetings aren't usually the best way to begin books, among other things.

Middles are a slog, and difficult in their own right, but there is at least a foundation on which to build. Beginnings set the stage for the story that comes after, and if I don't hit everyone's marks just right, I find myself going back a couple of months later and rewriting to catch up to the middle that snaked out from under me and took on a life of its own.

Part of this is due to the fact that I'm a seat-of-the-pants plotter in a three-chapters-and-outline world, but part of it is because I just have trouble with beginnings. I admire writers who can hit on just the right tone and pace right from the start and follow through. I feel like a one-step-forward two-steps-back writer by comparison. Sometimes I don't know my characters as well as I think I do.
 

[janni.livejournal.com]

I'm a seat-of-the-pants plotter too. And get to know my characters as I go. And often get what I think I know wrong. :-)

IOW, I get the right starting tone, but not always the follow-through. That takes drafts and drafts and drafts.

You know what's funny? I always felt I had to defend the way I write in the adult SF/fantasy world. But then I started also writing YA, and discovered that the kids' book writers who apologize are the ones who do outline, while everyone around them is telling them to just start writing and find the story. :-)

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

I don't believe anyone should feel they need to apologize for how they write. I think it's an inherent part of how your brain constructs a story. You do whatever works. I think the trouble I have with outlines is an illo of what happens when you try to cram a square peg in that round hole. Even though my outline seems pretty solid at the time, in the end it's more a guideline, like Judy said.

I think writers who maintain, 'this is how it should be done' do other writers, both vets and beginners, a disservice. I take comfort in finding others who write as I do, but I'd never give an outliner a hard time unless they tried to convince me that theirs was the one true path.

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

Heh, as an aside, I wonder if there's a correlation between writers who do/don't outline naturally, and the tendency to read instructions manuals/directions. It just hit me that I'm not a natural outliner, and when I build something from a kit or buy a new piece of equipment, I either lay out the parts and piece the thing together visually or otherwise try to work out what is what. I only read the manual as a last resort.

[janni.livejournal.com]

Heh. Manuals are last resorts for me too, what I turn to when I realize I can't just figure it out.

I think that's partly because I'm a fairly tactile learner--gotta touch things, use things, to understand them. Which may or may not be one of the reasons I write the way I do, too.

[janni.livejournal.com]

That's what I finally learned, is that there's no need to apologize. My process is my process, other folks' processes are their processes, and what works, works.

Amazing how long it took to figure that simple thing out.