Okay,
so I’ve never participated in any linkups before, and I’m a little late in
joining this set, as you can tell from the fact that this one is Beautiful
Books #3, not #1 or #2. Oh well. I’m here now. So there.
In case you’re wondering, the Beautiful
Books/Beautiful People linkups are hosted by Paper Fury and Sky @ Further Up and Further In, and their questions are always so cool. It was only a matter
of time before I broke.
On
a scale of 1 (worst) to 10 (best), how did the book turn out? Did anything defy
your expectations?
Objectively speaking, my seven NaNo novels
turned out to be spectacularly awful, but since I already expected them to be
horrible, I haven’t suffered any disappointment on that count. Outsiders would
probably give all seven rough drafts a one or a two, at best. Personally, I would
give them anywhere from five to seven because, while I know they’re terrible and
I know I’ll cringe while I’m rereading them in preparation for edits, I also
know they have plenty of potential, and that’s really all I look for in a rough
draft.
Comparative
title time: what published books, movies, or TV shows are like your book? (Ex:
Inkheart meets X-Men.)
This is a tricky one, since I don’t like writing
novels that remind me of other stories. I’m not going to try to think up comp
titles for all seven books, since that could take some time. But I guess one of
my historical novels could be described as Beauty and the Beast meets Rapunzel
(it’s a fairytale set during the time of the first Black Death outbreak in
Europe.) And though I haven’t read the play yet myself, I’ve been told my
satire on writing could possibly appeal to fans of SIX CHARACTERS IN SEARCH OF AN AUTHOR.
Do
you enjoy working with deadlines and pressure (aka NaNoWriMo)? Or do you prefer
to write-as-you’re-inspired?
I need deadlines, and I need pressure. If
I know that I have all the time in the world, I won’t get nearly as much
writing done. So NaNoWriMo and other short-term goals definitely help with
that. There’s a reason why my younger write-as-you’re-inspired self never got
anywhere.
How
do you go about editing? Give us an insight into your editing process.
Instead of just dealing with different issues
separately through lots of individual drafts, like most writers tend to do (from
what I’ve seen), I rewrite my entire first draft, word for word, making all the
necessary changes that I know are needed. Then, once that draft has cooled and received
feedback, I handle all the tweaks and changes required, but again, all in one
go. And I get more feedback and keep tweaking until I’m confident the book is
officially finished.
I
use this editing process across the board, even for blog posts. It frees me up
to write awful rough drafts—as horrifying as they need to be for me to get them
out—because I know that I’m going to rewrite and reevaluate every single word
anyway. So there’s really no need to bother writing something polished and
beautiful on the first round. It won’t save me time. Anyway, the more work
during the second draft, the better because the only time I truly feel like
myself is when I’m in the midst of those extensive rewrites. At no other time
does my head feel as clear and my thoughts as orderly and in control. Yes, you
may go ahead and judge me now.
What
aspect of your story needs the most work?
Does “everything” count as an aspect? *cue
crazed laughter*
My plots need a whole lot of tightening
and reordering since I hardcore pantsed my novels this month which does not
make for a cohesive plot. But hey, that’s what editing is for. My dialogue needs
some major fixing as well. And in rough drafts, I do all telling and no
showing, so editing is when I need to think of more creative approaches to
convey information without just telling it to the reader. Basically, with my
NaNo novels, I just pulled together all the building materials I felt I was
going to need and piled them up, and now I need to take all those materials and
all the tools in my mind and I need to build something presentable. I seriously
cannot tell you how much I love this process, as crazy difficult as it can be
at times.
What
aspect of your story did you love the most?
Despite the incalculable faults in all
seven novels, I think that I succeeded in conveying at least a seed of the emotions
that I wanted to capture (well, okay, so that’s what I tell myself). And if I
have the beginnings of something, I can take it from there.
I actually wrote a large portion of
character internal reflection in order to figure out how my babies tick, which
means I have a rough map of all their motivations and conflicting issues and
fatal flaws. Translation: Christmas came early.
Give
us a brief rundown on your main characters and how you think they turned out.
Do you think they’ll need changes in edits?
They began life as large piles of goopy
clay, and I will have to give them shape and hone them during edits. Since I
wrote more than one novel, I have a healthy handful of main characters and I’m
only going to list the major ones here.
November (Ember for short) can’t stop destroying
herself with the one last tiny seed of hope she has left. Miranda knows what
she has to do but doesn’t have the strength and the confidence to do it. Edison
has allowed his bitterness and his exhaustion to ruin his last year alive.
Jaqueline is so grief-stricken she can’t even see well enough to stop the
people around her from dying. Eve’s arrogance is ruining her. Rachel actively
sabotages herself and her career. Aiden mistakes apathy for patience. Will is
controlled by his fear and by his anger. Maebel won’t even let herself be free
now that her controlling husband of sixty years is dead. Cambria is sweet, but
she is too naïve and silly to protect herself from those who are eager to take
advantage of her. Marianne can’t fight her irrational rage. Roderic is foolish
enough to destroy everything just to save the woman he loves. And, last but not
least, Lara has allowed her obsession with an unsolvable mystery to consume her.
While much of their respective core
natures have been somewhat established, I still need to work at making them
properly unique and three-dimensional and compelling and all that fun stuff.
Also, I love how their most defining features, at this point, are their fatal
flaws. *laughs maniacally* In edits, though, I will be sure to give them positive
qualities to balance out their vulnerabilities.
What
are your plans for this novel once you finish editing? More edits? Finding beta
readers? Querying? Self-publishing? Hiding it in a dark hole forever?
Mad editing and then querying.
Share
a favorite snippet!
This snippet is
actually the very first paragraph I wrote during NaNoWriMo, and no, I haven’t
edited it any, so it still needs a lot of work:
“She
could see him. In the corner of her eye, she could see him, and he was so close
there were still times she thought she would be able to reach out and touch
him. Times when she spoke to him and was certain he would respond. Times when
she forgot he was just a hallucination.”
What
are you writing goals and plans for 2016?
In 2016, I plan to finish editing at least
two rough drafts, maybe three. I have a few novels from last November that I haven’t
touched yet, and I have the seven I wrote last month, so I’ve decided two of
the ones I want to prioritize, but I’m not sure which other one I will add to
my plate. At some point, if I’m feeling brave enough, I may have you vote to help
me decide, but until then…
(Yeah, I was just too lazy to finish that
last sentence, but if you want to think that I was doing that for dramatic
effect, then by all means, do so.)
Other goals include writing 800,000 words
next November if I can possibly manage that without killing myself. And I want
to see if I can get some small freelance writing jobs on the side. In other
words, it’s going to be busy year.
What about you, my little coffee beans? What
are your plans for 2016, writing or otherwise? What is your editing process? If
you participated in NaNoWriMo, how would you rate your work?
