Life Update 3 // DRACONIAN

Ages ago, in the forgotten year of 2017, I started querying DRACONIAN, which you may know as DSS. I talked a bit about it in this post.

In that post, I reference a sweet, kind agent who offered me a snippet of personalized feedback for my novel. Although it was still, ultimately, a rejection, and although I didn’t do anything about it right away, it got the gears in my head spinning. I knew that I hadn’t been getting as much interest in my queries for DRACONIAN as I had with TIB. I felt like I was missing something vital, like I had taken a step backward in the quality of my writing. So after I got over a bit of burn out, I pulled myself out of my funk, sat down with my story, and made myself face what I knew was wrong.

A long while ago (everything was a long while ago for me), I read some writing advice that said something to the effect of, “If you know you have a weakness in your story, and you’ve done your best to fix it, so you know you’re not being lazy, it’s okay to go ahead and query. No book is going to be perfect.” I’m still on the fence about whether or not that’s good advice. In my case, it wasn’t, because it gave me an out. I tried to fix the problem. I found I couldn’t. So I let myself query a novel I felt supremely insecure about, when I should have been like, “No, no, we are going to sit here, right here. We are going to look at this problem, and we are not going to leave this Starbucks booth until we know where the story’s going wrong.”

Okay, so maybe that’s a little overdramatic.

Let’s talk about the sticking point in DRACONIAN. It happens to be the most unfortunate, I dare say most common one. My beginning wasn’t working. It’s bugged me for years, has always felt like a low-level criminal offense. In its earliest iterations, when I was thirteen, it was pure exposition, all the telling and none of the showing. It stayed that way until I was eighteen. In my defense, I think that’s when I did succeed in streamlining it and introducing a good sense of rising tension. Where the breakdown happened was a few pages in, during a scene where I have a revelation that reads as too clichéd, the beginning of every single fantasy novel ever. I spent so much time trying to think around the issue. For the sake of the plot, my main character has to learn a significant secret her parents have been keeping from her, not because this will then launch her into glory and fame and riches, but because the betrayal will hurt her more than anything else, and it will affect how she behaves from that point on. But the way I had written it, it came off as tropey. There was no way for any agent to know, upon reading the first few pages, that I was trying something different.

When I finally sat down to address the problem from a new angle, I don’t know if I owe the subsequent revelation to timing, brooding, or pure happenstance. (I have this theory that stories are the sum of the times and places they were written, that where and when a scene is birthed changes its genetic makeup, that until you have written a thing, it is in flux, rich with infinite possibilities, infinite directions you could take that depend on the thinnest threads of fate and chance. Like, if you’re in the wrong place when you write something, you’ll miss some great revelation, and you won’t do it right. Or, if you write it too soon, you won’t have a vital, game changing thought that was scheduled to occur to you two months later. It’s at this point that I have to shut down this line of reasoning, because I can follow it in circles until I’m in the throes of an existential crisis, migraine and all. So, moving on.)

Somehow, (don’t look at the existential crisis, Liz, don’t do it), I finally thought of a way to restructure the beginning, to erase the aspects of it that had led to my querying woes. Of course, you know that whole, I’ll just tug on this one thread, just one more tug, one more, and then suddenly the sweater you were holding is gone, replaced by a pile of yarn. That’s what happened with DRACONIAN, but in a far less destructive way.

Altering vital details in the beginning has affected how the rest of the story plays out. Addressing those changes has, in turn, caused a cascade of differences down the line. I’ve kept a journal with extensive notes to track every stray thought that crosses my brain as I do this (it has two dragons on the cover), because there are so many balls to keep in the air. I’m about two-thirds done with the first pass now, but I don’t know how much work remains. I expect I’ll have to go through the whole thing at least two more times, so I catch all the errors and inconsistencies I’ve introduced.

I have been moving at a glacial pace on this story, usually only tackling it for (in a good session) four hours every Thursday. To which you are probably asking, if you haven’t read my pre-NaNo post, “If you were so frustrated with your slow progress, why wasn’t this one your NaNo project?” Two things. Firstly, I’m not frustrated, not generally. I’ll get to that later. And secondly, burn out is a hideous thing, and I was starting to feel it creeping up behind me. I decided I needed to set DRACONIAN aside and duck out for a month-long fling with some other stories.

The consequence of this hands-plunged-in-all-the-way-up-to-the-elbows-deep-clean edit is that my book is stronger, and I’d like to think richer, than it was before. My world building has improved; my characters have grown. I’ve shored up plot holes I’d never noticed before. My insecurity—it’s almost gone. DRACONIAN isn’t done yet. It might not be done for another six months. It might be done in two. Who knows? But I can see the bright shiny spark of what it’s supposed to be, now, and I’m entranced. Even if this book never sits on store shelves, this effort will have still been valuable. It has taught me so much about editing, so much about patience and determination and endurance. I’ve relearned, through this experience, how to love writing for the sake of writing.

As for the whole querying question, before November, I had fully intended to keep DRACONIAN as my main project, the one I prioritize finishing. There are now a few reasons why my plans have changed.

For one, it could be a while until it’s done, and it’s become such an intricate, loving revision, that I don’t want to rush it like I’ve rushed it before. I owe this book the time and effort it requires. That means that it’s going to have to become one of my side projects, at least for the moment.

Another thing is, and maybe this is a silly reason, that having already queried this one, I might want to put some distance between those efforts and renewed ones. I know people revise and re-query, and I know there are still so many agents I never queried with this project. But it’s also harder to jump back on the bandwagon with a book you’ve tried and failed with once before.

My last, and I think most compelling, reason is this: HIRAETH is suddenly so much further along, and while I have renewed confidence in DRACONIAN, it pales in comparison with how I see HIRAETH. HIRAETH feels like the one in ways that my previous two didn’t. As I mentioned in this post, I still have scenes to add and, realistically speaking, it will probably be a few months before I’m ready to query, maybe longer. Even if it was ready, I don’t think I’d send out queries until midway through January, so they don’t get lost in the holiday mix. But I want to take it and run with it.

That being said, I will still fight to get DRACONIAN to you someday, coffee beans, even if that means I have to print it out on rolls of toilet paper and leave them on your porch in the dead of the night.


That’s it for today, coffee beans. What are some stories you’ve wrestled with for years? What are some of your greatest revision triumphs? Are you currently in the query trenches/planning to jump in soon?

My Writing Process Doesn't Exist

Fair warning, coffee beans, this is going to be a long post. So buckle in and make sure to keep your arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times.

Now that I’ve edited two complete novels and am close to finishing my third, not to mention my various editing dalliances and numerous rough drafts along the way, I feel like I have a bit more perspective on my writing process than I did when I started this blog. That means it’s time to confront some of my overconfidence.

There’s nothing like finishing your first novel to make you think you know what you’re doing. You wrote a book. You conquered. Now you are equipped to sit sagely, handing out advice, telling others how to climb their own mountains, banish their own demons, etc, etc. It becomes uncomfortably obvious that you don’t actually know what you’re talking about when your own advice doesn’t help you write your next book.

I’ve noticed a pattern with myself. Every time I write something, big or small, I end up thinking I know who I am as a writer, how my process works. But this is a stultifying, dangerous perspective, because it limits my ability to move forward.

When I finished TIB, I knew that I was a writer who drafted in chronological order, who wrote quickly and edited quickly, who needed a minimal number of drafts. I looked at my success and told myself, okay, whipping out a book each year is easy. Knowing that I hadn’t pushed myself as hard as I could with TIB meant I could probably even manage two books per year. (Wow, Liz. Wow. I did not raise you to be this arrogant.)

Through that experience, I learned a great deal about the mechanics of my editing process, which I consider to be, in many ways, divorced from my writing process. How I approach the editing itself has never changed. I rewrite everything word for word. I subtract in the second draft, add in the third. My brain works well with that sort of structure. But the way I go about editing—the broader picture, how I approach the draft as a whole—differs.

There were things I learned through the TIB experience that I thought were steadfast aspects of my writerly identity. I got up early—4:00 am early—every morning, and wrote with my Earl Grey in bed, listening to music. I wrote after school, until supper, and after supper I wrote more. Weekends I worked late into the night after watching Star Trek. I was a writing machine.

After TIB, I picked up DRACONIAN, and I thought, with all this new knowledge and, gasp, expertise that I have garnered, surely this will be a breeze. Spoilers. It was a breeze in the way that a hurricane force wind that rips your clothes off and lands you a free trampoline in your demolished backyard could be considered a breeze. What’s worse is that the whole experience was deceptively fun at first. Drafting it was straightforward. Even the first round of editing wasn’t so horrible, though it took longer than I had planned. I was still pleased with my story, still confident that I knew what I was doing.

Then disaster struck. It was inevitable, a land slide that started ages before, whose rumblings I chose to ignore. The whole time I was working on DRACONIAN, I was querying agents for TIB. I think I sent out letters for six months to a year. I don’t remember the exact timeline, but it was a while. I received a stream of rejections for even longer than that. One came five months or so after I marked it off as an assumed rejection. I could give you more accurate numbers, but opening that Excel spread sheet is a walk in a different sort of park, the kind where you need to carry shivs and mace and everyone looks at you like you would be fun to murder.

I received an onslaught of rejections. Had I so desired, I could have printed them out and folded enough origami swans to have like, fifty origami swans. (Seriously, how am I not published?)

I experienced some life changes around this time. I graduated high school, got my first job. Then I moved to Virginia and started rooming with my sister. Like, literally rooming. Our first apartment was a single room, with a bathroom and a shared kitchen. All of these various events made my 4:30/4:00 am mornings first improbable, then impossible. I think it was easy to let that routine go, to not fight for it, and then to tell myself that I was failing at writing because, see, I wasn’t able to get up early in the mornings anymore.

What made the whole situation more unbearable is that I had a beta reader, on what I think was the third draft, who hated my book and tore it to shreds. I had it in my mind that you are allowed to ignore beta feedback you don’t think will make your story better, but you aren’t allowed to ignore feedback out of spite or because you’re hurt by it. I figured that I had to overcompensate for my emotions by listening to everything she said, no matter how untrue it felt to my story. Eventually I reached a point, some ten thousand words before the end, when I finally realized that if I looked at another one of her critiques, I was probably going to delete my entire draft.

When I handed my poor, battered book-child off to my next critique partner, this time my sister, she pointed out that all the edits I had input in the name of responding well to criticism had caused my book to take a massive step backwards. I don’t want to write a harangue on beta readers, because they are a necessary part of the process, but it really shook me, the whole experience, has made me a lot slower to seek out feedback from strangers, even vetted ones.

In 2017 I got DRACONIAN to the point where I felt it was as close to done as I could make it, so I started querying. I think I sent out around twelve query letters before realizing they all had a pretty glaring typo in them, which I had somehow missed even when I tried to fix it. I think that, more than anything, shows me how horrible my eating disorder brain fog was. And I was still trying to function like I was at 100%.

I didn’t hear back from most of those agents. One super sweet, super kind agent gave me some light, personalized feedback on my first fifty pages, and she said basically what I had been fearing, that, among other things, my world building needed more work.

I didn’t make any sort of set decision, but it just kind of happened naturally. I always meant to send out more queries, did the research on more agents, prepped more letters. I never sent them. (Don’t despair. I haven’t trunked DRACONIAN. I have another editing update that I plan to post soon.)

The lesson from that whole experience, as I saw it through the lens of how I felt as a writer post TIB, is that my writing process worked, but that I was broken. I couldn’t stick to the roadmap, so something must have been wrong with my vision.

I’m not going to argue that there was one single thing that I did wrong in the process with DRACONIAN that, if avoided, would have altered the entire course of events. There were so many things that went wrong, and there were additional factors that were out of my control.

But let’s move on to HIRAETH. I drafted HIRAETH out of order, just threw everything on the page, and none of it made sense, but all of it was exhilarating. The adults had exited the building; I could do whatever I wanted. I could make as much of a mess as I needed to in order to draft the thing, because I didn’t have to clean it up in any sort of hurry. My only plan for the story, at that point, was to share it on this blog someday, maybe, if it was good, if I felt like it. Zero pressure for me to perform. That release made it fun for me, made the story a refuge, something secret I got to keep for myself.

What I’ve learned, I think, is that my writing process doesn’t exist. With TIB, I wrote how I felt I was supposed to write, in order, quickly, with more confidence than was my due. With DRACONIAN, I thought that I could apply the same mold and get the same results. I thought I could ignore everyone saying your sophomore novel is the one that makes you want to quit, because I thought I was special and therefore exempt.

Here is something that you should know. You are allowed to write however you want, and you don’t have to have any set way you do things. Whatever works for you in the moment is your writing process. You can write at home for one book, at a coffee shop for another, in your unsuspecting neighbor’s basement for your next. Whatever gets the words on the page.

I think it’s maybe a bad idea to label yourself as a panster or a plotter, to force yourself into that dichotomy. If that works for you, awesome, and if you want the label, then wear it proudly. I spent so long telling myself that I was a panster that I never even let myself try plotting, except with the understanding that it was something I would hate. It’s hard to explain that brain space. Your subconscious takes over, turns your preconceived notions into rules which you follow to your detriment. You don’t like something because you tell yourself you don’t like it.

I outlined HIRAETH. True, I did so after the fact, when I had a handful of random scenes I was juggling, when I had to bring some semblance of order to the words on the page, but that was something I would have never even let myself consider before.

That’s what I’m trying with BMT, outlining, writing out of order, pantsing, a little bit of everything. For the first time in four years with this book, I think I finally see a hint of light at the end of the tunnel. (Although it’s weird, because I keep hearing these choo choo noises. Anyone know what that’s about?)

All this being said, it wouldn’t surprise me if, three years down the line, I decide to write a new post about how wrong I am in this one. So this is nothing definite, just something I am mulling over. But writing it down has helped me put my thoughts in order, and I hope reading it will help you too.


That’s it for today, coffee beans. What are some misconceptions you have had about your writing process along the way?

Quick Writing Update

I'm behind on all of my deadlines, due to a variety of factors, most of them unrelated to writing. *sad face* Work has been crazy, my health hasn't been too fabulous, etc...

I will try to blog more in the coming months. But, for the moment, I just wanted to pop in and let you know that I've decided to combine the two sequels to DRACONIAN into one novel, thus making DRACONIAN the first in a duology. In all honesty, I've been considering this move for a couple years now, and I've spent the last few months evaluating and reevaluating. I'm excited (although a bit nervous) about the challenges that will come with this, but I'm confident my story will emerge stronger and better. 

That is all.

DRACONIAN // In which Liz gets sappy

DRACONIAN has been the work of almost eight years, the driving force behind the majority of my writing journey thus far. Of course I’ve worked on other projects as well, including TIME IN A BOTTLE, which I went on to polish and pitch to agents and, ultimately, trunk. Since the idea first came to me, DRACONIAN has demanded to be told. In all its many iterations, it has spanned multiple computers (five) and homes (four). It began as a short story I wrote for literature class when I was twelve, became the 60K word rough draft I completed as a part of my schoolwork, survived my purple-prose-loving phase, and grew through my depression after receiving extremely negative feedback from a beta reader on one side and dozens of agent rejections on the other, before finally arriving at this stage, completed and ready for the query trenches. I can honestly say that as much as I hoped, and as much as I dreamed, I never quite expected to make it here. 

I look at it, and I see the bones from the very first draft. I also see the years of desire and doubt that followed. It has seen me through the stages where I struggled to sleep at night because I wanted, wanted, wanted till I was sick to my stomach to hold that book, published, in my hands, to have the validation that would make people’s judgement less bitter, less painful, less justified. I can’t count the times I let myself see my manuscript through another’s eyes, to the point where I wanted to burn it and move on because I wasn’t big enough or smart enough. It waited patiently while I listened to others who said my dream wasn’t worth sacrificing for, while my guilt and anxiety got the best of me and made me forget that I’m a writer to my core. 

When I decided to write a fresh rough draft of DRACONIAN during NaNoWriMo 2014, I expected to be finished by November 2015, because that was how things worked the year before. I can’t adequately express how sick I felt when November 2016 came and went and I still wasn’t done. I was stuck. I wanted to work on other projects. I was beyond tired. But I had to, had to, I say I had to finish. 

Even after this November, even mere strides from the finish line compared to the legwork I had already completed, I was not sure I had it in me to sprint down the homestretch. But I knew I had to try regardless. Because if there’s anything running cross country has taught me, it’s that you always have more in you than you realize. 

I've lost track of the amount of drafts I had to go through with this problem child—far more than I needed with TIME IN A BOTTLE. The vast majority of those drafts felt like hate drafts. I’ve lost track of the hours I spent filling in plot holes, wrestling awkward sentences, and crying over world-building, but I’m sure the 900 plus hours I spent on TIME IN A BOTTLE pale in comparison. Where TIB was a cakewalk, DRACONIAN was a marathon through Death Valley. The biggest redeeming quality of this experience is realizing that while it is possible to fall out of love with a novel, to see only its faults and none of its beauty, it is equally possible to fall back in love. 

So yes, I am moving on the next stage—the query trenches. While I am excited and nervous to be here for round two, with more faith in myself and more understanding that I am not the sure bestseller I thought I was, and while the thought of getting published is both nerve-wracking and difficult to imagine, I am pleased. I am happy. Even if this book never gets an agent, never makes it to the shelves, I will still have this: Against all odds, I finished. I proved my doubts wrong. Regardless of where this book ends up—your home or my trunk—I will still have succeeded. And that, my coffee beans, is more than sufficient. 

Last but not least, I need to wander into the realm of cheese and mushiness, because you all deserve a big thank you. Were it not for your support and encouragement, your excitement over my snippets and your faith in me, I wouldn’t have found the energy to finish this. I really hope I get to share DRACONIAN with you some day. 

What about you, my little coffee beans? What are some writing successes of yours that you’d like to celebrate?

2017 Accomplishments and an Ode to Scrivener // Also a Snippet

Yes, you read that title correctly. I started out this year cynical and frustrated with goal making, and while I am still hesitatant to make grandiose goals I might not be able to accomplish without running myself into the ground, the year is not even a third over and I already have progress to celebrate. And celebrate I will. 

During NaNoWriMo, I drafted what was intended to be a novella with the idea that I could edit it on the side and hopefully publish it, serially, on Out of Coffee, Out of Mind in early 2018. (Now, please remember that a lot could change between now and then, so I don’t want to promise that I will be ready or willing to share it with the world when the time comes, but I also want to gauge interest. So if a serialized novella on this here blog would be something you’d be interested in, please, please let me know.) 

I have two goals, of sorts, for this project: 1) I want to challenge myself by writing a shorter work of fiction, since I’ve always felt that’s one of my areas of weakness, and B) I want to work on being consistent. *ahem* 

Back to what I was trying to say. I drafted this baby in NaNoWriMo, and if you were paying attention to the individual word counts of the projects I completed during November (if I shared those, I don't remember now), you’re probably wondering why you didn’t see a novella-length work. Um, see, that’s because the first draft for this widdle project clocked in at 103,000 words and change. It’s almost like I have a problem or something. Anyway, this gave me pause, because while I have historically cut half of my novels’ words during the second draft, I have also ended up adding 20-30K during the third. Of course, I got the sense that I had included extraneous information and unncessary internal monologue in an attempt to figure out where the plot was headed (because my writing process could best be described as: “There appears to have been a struggle”), but I also wrote this draft fairly near to the end of NaNoWriMo when I was in a coffee/wrist-pain/food-deprived trance, so you’ll have to pardon me if my memory is a tad distorted and shiny in places. 

Still, I decided to pull one of my more brash moves, which I like to call: “Hold my coffee—watch this. But also, like, I’m going to need that coffee back in just a moment.” 

Okay, let’s put on the brakes here, because I didn’t just write a gazillion words on this here baby. Oh no. That would be waaaaayyyy too simple. No, I wrote everything, and I do mean everything, out of order. In one document. Why, you ask, why? Because Scrivener, I tell you. Now, I have owned Scrivener for over a year already, but until this week, I did not know the true power of what I possessed. (Forgive me, muse fairies, I was young and foolish.) However, I was intelligent (yes, intelligent, we’ll go with that) enough to realize that you can at least use Scrivener to split your document into managable sections, which you can then switch around at will using the corkboard feature. So I let myself go hogwild with this draft, and honestly, I wouldn’t have let myself do that on Word because of all the clean-up I knew I was going to have to do, but it was also what this draft needed in order to come to life. Enter Scrivener, my hero. 

Coffee beans! My dear, dear coffee beans! 

You can color code things.

“But wait,” you say, attempting to be polite and ignore my embarrassing outburst, you kind soul, you, “aren’t you putting the cart before the horse here? You haven’t even finished the second draft yet. Why are you celebrating, you walnut???” 

Because coffee beans, in less than a week, I was able to take my giant 103,000 word “novella”, organize it into some semblance of consecutive order, use the notecard feature to painlessly whip together a detailed outline that has the tiny part of my brain that wants to be a planner in a state of euphoria, and hack off over 48,000 words—48,000 words—bringing my draft to a little over 55,000 words. Obviously it’s still too long to be a proper novella, but just from skimming the whole thing, I can tell that I will be able to cut at least 20-25K easily. This will take a lot of work, a lot of hours, more than one headache, and a devotion to concise writing that I am still working to develop, but don’t tell me it can’t be done. 

So you see, I love Scrivener. But I lied about the ode part in the title. I'm not going to start writing lyric poetry about it, even if it is an impressive word processor. 

You thought that was all, but it’s not. 

Oh no. 

Because there’s nothing like coming clean about an embarrassing personal struggle to get you into the rhythm of things. 

So far this year, I have also edited about 15K words of one of my two major WIPs, and I’m loving it. It’s a harder one, both emotionally and stylistically, than any project I have previously tackled. Had I attempted to edit it two years ago when I first wrote the rough draft, I don’t think I would have been ready to dive into it. Which is partially why I set it aside to age while I tackled DRACONIAN and then fell off the bus for a while (something I plan to talk about soon). But even though this project is challenging, I wouldn’t trade it for any other story in the world. *wipes away fake tear* *stares dramatically into camera lens* 

I do, however, really need to finish DRACONIAN so I can start sending out query letters. I’m so close to being finished, I think the biggest reason why I’ve been stalling is that I’m scared to return to the querying trenches. And by that, I mean, I think I’m scared that I will get an agent and a book deal and have to work on DRACONIAN even more, which at the moment sounds like less fun than chewing off my hand. Consequently, I’ve been burying myself in other writing work, all the while ignoring the red folder in my computer bag. (This, however, is not how you get published, folks. Monkey see, monkey don’t do.) 

In addition, I have drafted more blog posts over the past week, and will hopefully be blogging every Thursday (plus any bonus content I feel like throwing at you) from now on. 

I mentioned in my 2017 resolutions-ish post that I didn’t want to set many public goals for myself, but I do want to share my current project deadlines with you for accountability reasons (because I have been bad at meating deadlines for DRACONIAN, and I can’t afford to make a habit of that). So, you have my permission (and my encouragement) to pester me about these deadlines and revoke my coffee privileges if I fail to meet at least two of them. 

Here are the lines of death (to my sanity): 

DRACONIAN: Finish final draft and begin querying by March 31, 2017

BMT (my other full-length, priority WIP): Finish second draft by March 31, 2017 (sic)

SSNSP (Super Secret Novella Side Project): Finish second draft by April 15, 2017

Obviously, I have other writing plans for this year, but I’m not going to talk more about them in this post. I have to keep some secrets, don’t I? (I don’t, not really, but something about starting an editing project in secret lets me enjoy it more. *shrugs*) 

Anyway, in the title to this post, I promised you a snippet, so here’s a snippet of BMT (and be forewarned, I still have a lot of editing to do, so this probably won't be the final version, but I still wanted to share a little something of what I’ve been doing): 

“The sink of his mind was backed up again. His thoughts made slow revolutions, draining in microscopic increments. The paper swam before his eyes until all he could see, for half an instant, was a snapshot of her bending over a rosebush, a white dress clinging to her hip bones, a floppy straw hat shielding her brittle hair from the sun, a trowel in the dirt-stained glove of her hand. The single sliver of her face he could see past shadows and faded memory was the hint of her mouth, trying for a rueful smile. His fingers found the watch by habit, toyed with the dials as he toyed with the thought. Habit took over and he almost pressed the watch face. Barely managed to stop himself. Felt the whiplash as his body careened to a halt while his mind kept going. 

Not again. The memory was slow poison. Already he sensed it dripping into his veins, seizing up his heart. He blinked and he could smell her perfume, could feel the cool breeze braving summer to bring him the faintest taste of her scent, the smallest sample. 

His eyes slid halfway shut as the world blurred. Reality untethered, let him squish soil between his toes, let him relive without returning, and he sat there in a daze, his body pressed heavily into the dying couch, until a famliar metallic click woke him from his reverie. 

His hand found the watch face, but the cold press of a gun barrel kissed his temple, and time ran out for the time traveler.” 

And that's it for today. 

What about you, my little coffee beans? What writing shenanigans have you been up to lately?

NaNoWriMo Prep #3 // A Cautionary Tale

This NaNoWriMo, as you strive to write however many thousands of words you hope to manage, it helps to remember: 

You can edit later. 

I have mentioned this in previous posts, I am sure, but it bears repeating, so I’m going to say it again. And again. And again. Until it sticks in your skull as well as mine. 

You can edit later. 

I know there are authors who find they need to edit their novels as they go (Gail Carson Levine, for instance), so I am not saying ABSOLUTELY, UNEQUIVOCALLY DO NOT EDIT AS YOU WRITE. But I am saying pause. I am saying consider. NaNoWriMo, at its core, is meant to help you break free from writing ruts. It’s meant to help you rip the bandaid off and get writing done, even if it feels unnatural. Because it will. You are by no means going to come away from this with a polished novel, so don't expect to. 

Story time.

You have seen me refer to to TIB, which I drafted in November 2013, as the first rough draft I managed to finish. I have chosen to consider it this way, even though I technically—very technically—finished two books before then. That’s what we’re talking about today. 

When I was twelve, almost thirteen, I was given a writing assignment in literature class. As these things go, I started writing the story and realized it was the beginning of a trilogy. What can I say? This is typical of me. I have a collection of short story ideas, and sometimes I pick away at them, but I am always a little scared I will get a seven book series from the next one I touch. This might be why I have trust issues. 

It took me almost a year to write the sort-of-rough-draft for DSS 1 (now DRACONIAN), because I wrote it chapter by chapter, editing as I went (and also because the computer broke halfway through, resulting in several months of unexpected, unwanted writing vacation). 

Even when I was that young, my mother recognized how much I wanted to become a published author, so she tailored my curriculum around that goal. On top of all my other schoolwork, she assigned me roughly an hour of writing a day. In order to be able to give me credit for my work, she read each chapter as I finished it, then made revision notes. Essentially, she guided me through writing my first novel, which is one of the reasons I don’t count it as my first official rough draft. But more on that later. 

When I tackled DSS 2 on my own, I resuming editing as I went even though I felt like it was blocking me. And I ended up cutting it off at 40K without tying up the plot lines. After that, I only made it 18K into DSS 3 before hitting a wall. 

In late 2012, I decided to attack DSS, to write a new rough draft of the entire trilogy using the original work like an outline, because I thought that would help me figure out what was blocking me. I made it about 50K in before I hit another wall. I would edit a portion, only to realize I needed to go back and reedit that section as the story evolved beneath my fingers. An editing session that felt successful one day would seem slapdash the next. It killed my writing mojo. 

Come November 2013, I decided to participate in NaNoWriMo with a new novel, a palate cleanse of sorts. I was nervous, because I didn't know if I would even be able to make the 50K, or if I would manage to write anything worthwhile. To my surprise, I ended the month with an entire trilogy (which I later cut down and consolidated into one novel, TIB). It was the most freeing thing to realize that I could power through rough drafts without getting bogged down by edits, that I could finish a project without spending forever backtracking. 

By the time November 2014 rolled around, DSS was starting to nag at the back of my head again, big time. Because it wanted to be finished. By golly, it demanded to be finished. So I picked up where I had left off and wrote the rest of the entire trilogy, a whole new rough draft, red and raw and not at all polished. Just word vomit on the page. And man it was horrible. And man it was the best thing that could ever have happened to that story. No more ripping the carpet out from under my feet. Just forward motion, like a truck plowing through a hoard of zombies. 

All told, I have been working on this trilogy since December 2009. For those of you who aren’t so good at math, that is almost seven years. SEVEN YEARS. My goodness, no wonder I feel like I’m going insane. 

It has taught me so much. Patience. Confidence and tough love. Technique. How to hide a body. (What? How did that get in there?) But the biggest thing it has taught me is the importance of maintaining momentum, of finishing a thing before I start judging it. I don’t regret the help I received while writing DSS 1. I needed that. But the point I’m trying to make here is that I wasted several of those seven years trying to force myself to use a system I knew was no longer working for me, to the point where I risked editing DRACONIAN to death (and this is coming from someone who likes editing). That is why I consider TIB my first official rough draft, because it was the first draft I completed without backtracking and getting lost along the way. It was the turning point, the place where I realized I could actually do this writing thing. That is why I love NaNoWriMo more than is probably healthy. 

So this November, as you plunge into NaNoWriMo full speed ahead, please remember this. Remember to lock your inner editor up in a cage full of disgruntled chipmunks until you are ready to sign over control once more. You can do this without the red pen. I believe in you. Be free this month. Be messy. Be brave. 

What about you, my little coffee beans? Have you struggled with the urge to edit as you write? What are some of your regrets in your writing journey? What are some things you feel you’ve done right?

The Trunk of Doom

Source

By this point, I realize I have somewhat of a reputation for bursting out with random, emotional blog posts from time to time. In a way, blogging has become a second form of journaling for me. Today, though, we’re going to talk about an issue I haven’t covered in my journal yet, which is atypical, because I usually go to my journal before I go to you. (I know, favoritism is bad. Please forgive me.) 

You know I love writing. (I also hate it, but love and hate are fraternal twins and they like to meet up for coffee sometimes.) If you’ve read many of my older posts, you might know about TIB, the book I began querying agents for two Novembers ago. You might also know about DSS, the book I have been revising for the past two years. (I have worked on it longer, but that’s irrelevant. My serious work on it began 11/1/14.) 

Before I say much more, I think it’s important that we do a run through of my writing history, so you understand the full weight of what I am saying here. 

You may know some of these details from posts like this. I started writing when I was a little seven-year-old living in Africa with a bunch of other missionaries from various countries. My English teacher was a sweet and proper Northern Irish woman who taught me to love writing more than I have loved anything else. During that time, when seven-year-old me felt ripped away from all that was familiar and secure, my teacher showed me an absolute safe-haven, and I made camp there. 

I wrote a trilogy of picture books during my time in Africa, books about a horse named Bessie who escapes her abusive master and finds love and a home and even an adoptive mother. There is mystery and mayhem and even some kidnapping and detective work. I had started on a fourth book, a prequel to the trilogy (that was before I even understood that this was a popular thing to do). I remember those stories so well, but I have not touched them in over twelve years because I left them in Africa when we evacuated. I didn’t mean to. But they were buried under piles of school papers on my messy desk (why did I have to be so messy?), and we had to pack so quickly. I didn’t even remember to dig them up, because I was so focused on trying to choose which beloved stuffed animal I had to leave behind, which beloved blanket I was going to abandon, which beloved books I would never see again. I could only salvage 10 kilograms of my life in that place, so I was busy mourning that I didn’t have room for my horse figurine or my pink, plastic alligator, or my precious, precious music box. 

I do not delude myself into thinking my writings are still there, waiting for me to come back. In all likeliness, they have been burned or used as toilet paper, because they would have been of little worth to the people cleaning out my old house. My home is not waiting for me, and I will not go back. I loved Africa. Leaving it ripped a hole in my heart that has never closed. Sometimes I get so homesick, it almost knocks me off my feet, and it has been more than half my lifetime since I returned to American soil. But I will never go back (unless God wants me to), because I will never be able to make things the way they were when we left. I will never get back the people and the community that made Africa so special to me. I will never get to tend my snail collection, or push my bike through the blue gate, or let my new puppy nibble on my fingers. The puppy belongs to someone else now, as do the bike and the gate. Africa belongs to someone else now. Almost everything that made Africa special to me is gone, along with my first writings. 

I have a wonderful memory. I can see the pages in my head, the poorly-drawn cartoon horses, the handwriting that I couldn’t keep in a straight line across the paper, the smudgy bits where my hand slid over the pencil marks too many times, and the places where I began to trace everything in with pen so it would last, so I would be able to keep it in readable condition forever. I remember it so well, I could try to recreate everything, if I wanted to. And there is a part of me that desperately wants to replace that lost piece of me, just as there is a part of me that desperately wants to go home. But recreating the story would be like going back to Africa and trying to force myself into an old groove that doesn’t fit me anymore—isn’t meant for me anymore. And I think it would hurt me so much, because I would pretend to myself that everything is the same, that everything is okay. 

You don’t get to go back. Not ever. And I need to not pretend about these things. I need to not lie to myself when the truth is what sets me free. 

As I grew older, I wrote off and on. Writing was always important to me, but it didn’t always take precedence. At the top of my list of struggles was lack of follow-through. I didn’t finish reading books. I didn’t finish writing them. I didn’t finish thinking certain thoughts. Instead, I put a lot of stuff on the shelves in the back of my mind for later, and then a lot of those shelves fell down when I was fifteen, but we’re not going to talk about that. 

We’re going to talk about the day I started pulling myself out from under all the thoughts that had fallen on me when my mind-shelves got knocked over, the day I started putting everything back where it belonged. A task I still have yet to finish. 

We’re going to talk about TIB, which stands for TIME IN A BOTTLE, which was the pride and joy of my writing journey because it was the first rough draft I ever finished, my first hint that I was (maybe, please maybe) going to be okay. It was a trilogy, at first, which I wrote in November (all three books) and then whittled down to one far more solid book over the next few months. I’m really proud of TIME IN A BOTTLE. It is still my favorite story that I have ever told, edited or unedited. Of course I love my current work in progress and my assorted rough drafts, but I do not love them in the way that I love TIB. 

Yes, I realize now that it was silly of me to treat that one manuscript like it was the pinnacle of my success. Looking back, I laugh at my younger self, so certain that TIB was going to be snatched up by agents and publishers and the general populace. (You may laugh too. It is amusing.) In my mind, I was certain that, in spelling all the words correctly, and in using good grammar, and in using proper punctuation, and in having incorporated feedback from other people, I had avoided all the pitfalls of an "unpublishable writer". I had followed the magic formula that would get me from point a (unpublished) to point b (New York Times bestseller). 

I do still think it’s a good book. However, I also now see that it was not perfect. I think it has a lot of potential, and I think that, when I revisit it someday, I will find that I know what to do to make it shine in the ways I couldn’t before. The thought of eventually sharing it with you makes me smile like a little girl, and I am not the kind of person who typically likes to share. 

TIME IN A BOTTLE did manage to get some agent interest. Not much. I got a bunch of nice, personalized rejection letters, as well as some form ones, as well as a rude one. I got two requests for the full manuscript, along with one request for the first fifty pages. Even after two years, I still have not heard back from one of the agents who asked for my full, but that is okay. I promise I’m not upset. 

From November 2014 to November 2015, I hurled myself into the querying trenches. I put myself out there. In the process of researching agents, I even struck up a conversation with Marissa Meyer, who told me she was proud of me for managing to even get agent interest at my age. Obviously this was massively encouraging, and it still gives me hope when I think about it. 

But by the time January 2016 rolled around, I had begun the slow process of erasing the lies I had been telling myself about certain things that I had not wanted to believe. At that point, I finally smartened up and stopped sending query letters. I had received almost forty rejection letters, and I was starting to take the hint. But I also wasn’t smart enough to let go and trunk the novel outright, because to me that felt like giving up on my entire writing career. (We’ll talk more about that in a bit.) So I kept feeding myself little nuggets of hope, just enough to keep me going. I kept checking my email, because there was still that little carrot dangling perpetually in front of me, that knowledge that one agent still had my full, that there was a chance she would read it and love it and want it. *cue confetti* Every time I opened my inbox, it was with a physical pain in my gut, because maybe that was the time I would get The Email. Or, maybe it was the time I would get The Last Rejection of Doom. 

For obvious reasons, I hope you realize how unhealthy this was. 

Then came the bitter pain cherry on top of the bitter pain ice cream sundae. Earlier this year, I got some rather harsh (although still helpful) feedback on DSS, and the last few shreds of my confidence as a writer drifted away. I felt embarrassed, like I had made a fool of myself by failing in every way that I could have possibly failed. There were other factors that contributed to my depression, but those were two of the three major ones. I’ll tell you about the third now, because I can finally laugh at how silly I was. 

As strange as it makes me sound, I legitimately forget that I am not ninety years old. I see myself as having lived so long, I keep half expecting myself to drift off in my sleep. So I carry around this sense of urgency, that I need to get my books published before old age takes me. I’m already elderly, and I’ve never once succeeded. (You may laugh.) I keep needing to remind myself that yes, I am an adult, but I am nineteen. Not ninety. 

Sadness has this way of making you old inside. And I have had so much sadness that I forget to be young. I have had more sadness than I will probably ever talk about on this blog, though I have shared plenty with you already. Please don’t think I’m complaining, merely explaining. I would not trade my life for a different one. 

But here’s the thing. I tried to console myself with something that wasn’t meant to be my source of comfort. I told myself, “All this will be okay, all this pain will have been worth it, if I can just get published this year.” I wanted so badly to be able to justify all the hurt inside me, so badly that I clung to that easy, clear-cut idea that God would do with me what he did with Job and bless me all over the place (which he has done, but not in the way that I asked to be blessed). 

And, you know, maybe that will be the point of all my suffering someday. I don’t know. Quite frankly, I’m not sure I will ever know. As cocky as it may sound, I do think that I will eventually get published, because I know that I will keep trying and trying, keep writing and writing, because I won’t be able to stop. There are stories in my head that need out, out, out. More importantly, there is so much pain in me that needs explaining. But I consoled myself with the false comfort that clearly God meant to get me published in 2015. That I was going to be able to become a paid full-time writer so I wouldn’t ever have to face my anxieties about getting jobs and spending time doing non-writing-related work. I wanted this sense of security as badly as a love-sick young woman wants a spouse. And gradually, almost without realizing it, I began to get angry at God, because couldn’t he see that I was suffering? Didn’t he know just exactly what I needed to get better? Why was he denying me the one thing that could make me happy? 

Make me happy. Give me the magic formula to make me happy. 

Make me happy, God. 

Make me happy, or I won’t love you anymore. 

I am ashamed of that attitude now, ashamed at how angry and unfair and unreasonable I was, ashamed at how ugly it made me on the inside, ashamed at how unhappy I chose to be. 

I don’t know if God was saying no, not ever, or if he was saying no, not now. All I know is that I was trying to tell him what to do, and, as usual, I was wrong about what was best for me. 

At the time, I thought I was ready to be published. I thought I was prepared. Looking back, I am grateful that I did not get TIME IN A BOTTLE published when I began querying. I do not regret writing it. Nor do I regret querying agents. I think it was a marvelous learning experience for me, and I have grown as a writer and as a person. Now, with the benefit of hindsight, I know that a disappointment that had seemed like it would be the end of the world to me did not turn out to be the end. Neither was it the beginning of something new and wonderful, as the cliche goes, I don’t think. But it certainly wasn’t the end, and that’s the important part. 

In the time that I have had to wait, I have lost confidence and then learned to push through and become confident again. I have suffered more anxiety than all the previous years of my life combined and then learned to fight it with everything I have. I have lost my sense of gratitude and then relearned how to find joy in counting my blessings instead of cursing God for not adding one more to the towering stack he has already given me. 

But I had to let go first. I had to do something I never wanted to do, never thought I could handle doing. I had to decide to put TIME IN A BOTTLE in the metaphorical trunk, lock it away, and switch gears back into the same old holding pattern I had hoped so desperately to escape. I had longed for an easy ride, a smooth path, one where I wouldn’t have to experience obstacles and learn through setbacks, one where life would hold my hand and stop hurting me. Just stop hurting me. 

It was doubly hard to let go and trunk the novel because I was (and still am) so behind schedule on DSS, so behind it’s not even funny. I had blithely told Marissa Meyer that I would be querying a new project in August. That was August 2015. It is August 2016 now, and I am not back in the querying trenches yet. Maybe in a few months, but still. 

That is another thing. I was so afraid to trunk my novel, because I was afraid to start the whole querying process all over again. To me, having to begin querying another book seemed like it would be the end, that I would lose myself and melt away like suds in dirty dish water. That I had one shot at success and happiness, and if I missed it, well then, I would die in my sleep of old age, and that trunking my first novel would be tantamount to throwing in the towel. 

I hold myself to such high standards, and I have to remind myself that I am young, that I am not a failure, that even if I have to work a part-time job to pay the bills for the next few years or decades, even if I don’t get published until I’m 62 or ever, it will still be okay. 

Say it with me, so I can hear it. 

It will be okay. I will be okay. 

Getting published is a wonderful goal, and it means more to me than many other things, but it is not God, and I should not worship it. Whether or not I get published is not the point. In my haste to mean something, I keep forgetting that. And I get so unhappy when I forget. I forget to be delighted for other writers when they succeed. I forget to enjoy the good things in life that aren’t writing-related. And I forget to be the person I am supposed to be. 

Getting published would bring me happiness, yes, but it would not make me happy. 

I don’t know if that distinction makes sense to you. It took me ages to figure out that the difference is between being offered something and choosing to take what is offered. 

So let me tell you something. If you don’t already, you might just come to understand the distinction when you go from crying about your disappointments to crying with joy because someone else has gotten their first big publishing success. And it will probably surprise you, if you are like me and don’t cry easily. 

I hadn’t realized that one of the most rewarding experiences for me would be almost sobbing out of happiness for someone I don’t even know in person, someone who’s book I have yet to read, someone whose life I have never lived. And I had not realized it would take embracing the trunk of doom to get there. 

Source

Well, that was long. I’m sorry, little coffee beans. If you managed to read this whole thing, you are my new hero. What are some things you've learned from disappointment?

Snazzy Snippets: Valentine Edition

In case you haven’t had your fill of romance yet, today I’m participating in Snazzy Snippets, a (normally) bi-monthly link-up hosted by Alyssa @ The Devil Orders Takeout and Emily @ Loony Literate. (If you are unfamiliar with Snazzy Snippets, here is a link to the explanation.) The prompts for today are:

A heartwarming snippet that makes readers go “aww!”

or

A kissing snippet

or

A snippet where love interests first appear together

(Applicable for both future or established relationships)

Since, as we covered on Wednesday, I am not a hugely romantic person, I don’t spend a lot of time attempting to write romance. This means whatever happens happens, and I just try to roll with it. However, I do have two characters, Jude and N, who will eventually be a couple. So once more, I shall be shoving them in your faces. (In case you’re new, welcome! These characters are from my Fantasy novel, DRACONIAN, also known as DSS. It features dragons, murder, revenge, and more. And if you’re wondering why I only include the initials for most of the names, it’s because I don’t like sharing my made-up names online.) 

I won’t be doing all three prompts this time, and I’ll be cheating a little on the two I do tackle. But you know what? It’s been a while since I’ve bent/broken the rules on my blog, and I’m feeling rebellious. 

This first snippet could (maybe?) fall under the “heartwarming” category. But it’s more a portrait of Jude and N’s relationship (in case I didn’t give you a good enough one in my Beautiful People post).

A smiles. “It’s a beautiful morning, is it not? Just listen to the birds sing—they know this day is wonderful.”

“All days are wonderful to you,” Jude observes, approaching from a half-hidden path. Just for a moment, I think I catch the faintest hint of sadness in his voice, yet I am unsure. 

Laughing under her breath, A leans over and grabs a silver decanter and a stack of wooden cups. An odd combination. With deft hands, she dispenses tea, straining the leaves out as she pours. “Help yourself.” She indicates the array of dishes on the table—boiled goose eggs, dark-brown bread stuck with seeds, piles of fresh greens—and my stomach rumbles. 

“Where is everyone?” I ask after the silence has held sway too long. 

A frowns. “Most are resting, I’m sure. After dancing till sunrise, they’re always tired. Others—” she coughs uncomfortably, “are biding their time. It may take a while for them to warm up to you. I’m sorry.” Her hands falter, and a teardrop of tea runs down the smooth side of a cup. 

“It’s okay,” I say, finding it difficult to make eye contact. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t intend to stay much longer. I only came because…” I’m not sure how to end that sentence. I’m not sure I want to. 

A clears her throat a couple times, seeming to struggle with her voice. “You don’t…have to leave just yet. You could wait a while.” 

“I’ll consider it,” I assent, only half-heartedly, wishing the wounded look on her face would go away. Clearly I do not belong here.

“Where do you plan to go?” Jude asks, seating himself beside me. I hadn’t noticed he was still standing, watching us and thinking indiscernible thoughts. I see them arranged beneath his bold brows, but I do not know what they mean. 

“I’m not sure,” I admit. “Just…far—far from here.” 

“Are you running away?” he asks yesterday’s question again, a little too innocently, like a dove with a snake in its eyes. 

“No,” I lie as I push away from the table. The ground is spinning, and my head is numb; I need to be alone.

“N,” he calls after me, but I ignore him as I press forward with the world all blurry around me and the air heavy on my shoulders like a mantle of lead. Despite the pain in my body that reminds me I am not well, I run for ages. Finally, though, I stop and fall to my knees on the verge of a dried-up stream lined with half-hearted blossoms. When I glance up, I see him—Jude. He must have followed me. 

Sighing, I pull my knees to my chest and hug my legs, shivering. If only I could tell him—if only I could tell someone—of the blood on my hands. Perhaps then it would ease the burden on my soul. But I can’t. 

Dried clay crumbles to dust beneath his boots as he joins me, lowering himself to the ground by my side. For a long while he just sits there, staring at the woods and the creek-bed and the marbled sky. Finally he turns to me. “You’re safe here, N,” he murmurs. “You know that, right?”

I pick a wilting flower and rub the limp petals between my fingers. “I’m not sure I’ll ever be safe,” I say. At least, not from myself.

This last snippet could fall under the “kissing” category, but, as you’ll see, it’s not actually a kissing scene. It’s the closest I have though, so we’re just going to go with it. (And in case my beta readers are confused, I’ve abbreviated it to remove spoilers.)

When I wake, it’s still too bright out for us to travel. Under the fading sun, I sit and study the others—the way Jude sleeps with his hands clenched into fists and the way K manages to curl herself into a tight ball, the way they breathe in and out in unison as though they are one entity. Maybe it’s my muddled, sickened mind getting in the way, but I feel a strange pang at this, when I see how peaceful Jude looks next to K. Lines of fatigue mark my face, and my boyish hair conforms to the will of the wind—I could never hope to be as beautiful as her. K may not be overly kind, but at least she is not a murderer like me—at least she is acting for the good of her people instead of for her own personal gain. In comparison with her, I struggle to believe anyone will miss me when I’m gone. 

Carefully, I fasten my cloak around my shoulders and stand, pausing a moment to get my bearings, to let the dizziness ebb. Then I lean forward and kiss Jude on the forehead, quickly, before I lose my courage. I don’t think I’ve ever told him how much I value his help, how much I truly have needed him all this time, how he’s always been there for me even when he has had no reason to be. How his loyalty and kindness baffle me. I’m not sure if this is true friendship or not, but I know I don’t deserve it. And I hope he will be able to understand why I have to leave without him. 

Allowing myself to stare at the two of them one last time is a mistake, I know, but still—I cannot deny myself this final glance. I want to imprint their faces in my mind—I want to memorize Jude’s black hair, his sharp jaw, the bronze gleam to his skin. I want to keep K’s unruly curls tangled around my thoughts. As I go to meet my death, I want my friends to come with me, but only in my heart. 

There you have it, my little coffee beans. Have you participated in this link-up/are you planning to? What are some of your favorite romances of all time? Are you doing anything exciting for Valentine's Day? 

Beautiful People #15 // Valentine's Edition

Note: There's still time to ask me some questions for my upcoming Q&A post. Just hop on over here, if you're interested. 

As you probably already know (if you’ve been following me for a while), I’m not a romantic person. When reading, I tend to skim over kissing scenes and declarations of love and all that stuff. So including romance in my novels is not high on my list of priorities, nor is it something I feel particularly skilled at. But, since I like joining in on the Beautiful People link-ups (hosted by Cait @ Paper Fury and Sky @ Further Up and Further In), I will try my hand at this one, icky love or not. And, in case you were wondering which book I’ll be discussing, I’m going to cover my YA Fantasy, DSS (which, as I’ve mentioned before, does not stand for Dumb Stupid Story). My beta readers are more familiar with this novel under the working title DRACONIAN, but since I’m not sure if that one will stick, I’ll probably just refer to it as DSS until I come up with something sufficiently clever (which will be never). The characters I’m covering today are Jude and N (she has a full name, but I don’t like sharing my made up names online, so there). 

Without any further ado, here we go:

How did they first meet? 

Jude and N first meet on an active volcanic plain when Jude saves N from getting roasted to death. However, despite Jude’s heroics, N is not convinced that he is trustworthy. Unfortunately for her, she is also not in the position to reject potential allies, so when he offers her a hot meal and a chance to stay in his community until she can get her feet back under her, she tentatively agrees, realizing this might be her best chance at staying alive. (Or, you know, it could be the death of her. But whatever. I mean, free food. Come on people.) 

What were their first impressions of each other?

Right away N notices that Jude looks a lot like the man who kidnapped her father (her father is missing, presumed dead). Of course, N has her reasons for wondering if this is purely coincidental. For instance, the similarities might be more racial than familial. But suffice it to say that she doesn’t immediately take to trusting Jude. 

For different reasons, Jude is unsure whether he can trust N or not. He knows of only two locations where people of their species live—the community where he grew up, and the country where all the baddies congregate. Obviously he is unfamiliar with N, so his first conclusion is that N’s presence bodes no good. However, he also realizes that, even if she is bad, she is not in good enough condition to kill him and his family. So he does what he would for any poor, lost soul—he offers her a meal and place to stay. (Like I said, free food.)

How long have they been a couple?

This is a little bit spoilery since, by the end of DSS, Jude and N are not yet a couple, and they don’t really discuss their feelings for each other until later on in the second book of the trilogy. So, right now they’re just friends—if that. They have a great deal of potential, and it’s only a matter of time before they realize they should be together. But N is also going through way too much to be able to focus on a romantic relationship. She’s too busy trying not to fall apart, and Jude is too busy making sure she doesn’t fall apart on his watch, and this all means they’re not in a good position for their relationship to be anything more than platonic. 

How committed/loyal are they to each other? Would they break up over a secret or a disagreement? Could stress drive them apart? Would they die for each other?

They are loyal to each other, to a point. Jude values family and trust and loyalty above all else, and when he picks someone to latch onto, like N, he will stick with that person through thick and thin. N, on the other hand, is not good at making friends. She also has severe trust issues. And because she is so focused on saving her parents (among other things), she will do anything to make sure she succeeds, even if it means betraying Jude. 

Since they’re not currently dating, and since I’ve edited the first book in the trilogy but only drafted the other two, I can’t say for sure whether they would break up over a secret or a disagreement, but I do need to make that decision soon. Basically, N has this ginormous secret that she keeps from Jude for the majority of DSS, and when that secret comes to light in book two, Jude’s loyalty will be severely tested. I’m just not sure at this point whether their relationship will be temporarily broken or just strained—I’ve drafted it several ways, so now it’s just a matter of deciding which one works better. 

N does not handle stress well; it makes her jumpy and unreasonable. Jude, on the other hand, is such laid back person that stress is pretty much a non-issue for him. 

When it comes to the “dying for each other department”, N would probably die for Jude, as would he for her. However, N would do her best to avoid dying because she would fear that her death would adversely affect her family. 

List 5 “food quirks” they know about each other. (Ex: how they take their coffee, if they’re allergic to something, etc…and feel free to mention other non-food quirks!)

Given the circumstances surrounding their relationship, they haven’t had much chance to learn each other’s food quirks. I should probably look into adding a few in this final draft, if I can find places where they would naturally fit, but we’ll see. Basically the only stuff I know about them, food-wise, is that N is a bit of a tea snob, and she’s not a very confident cook, whereas Jude could salvage a hopeless meal. 

Does anyone disapprove of their relationship?

Not really—at least, not yet. Probably I will find a way for someone to express some doubt about the stability of their relationship, especially because several of my characters aren’t fans of N in particular, and they would worry about the toxicity that she might bring to the mix. But I’ll just have to cross that bridge when I get to it. 

What would be an ideal date?

N’s ideal date would be sitting in front of a fire, eating and laughing. Most importantly though, she would have to feel safe and calm. She would have to know that her family is whole and well. Otherwise she wouldn’t be able to relax at all. And Jude’s ideal date would be doing anything where N felt comfortable enough to trust him fully. 

What are their personality dynamics? Similar? Contrasting? Do they fight a lot or mesh perfectly? 

They are different, yet similar. N only cares about a few people, but those she loves, she loves so strongly she would do anything for them—no matter what. Jude, on the other hand, does not have trouble caring for people, and while he is driven to make sure his family remains safe, he also has his limits on how far he would go for them. For the most part, they tend to mesh well. Jude is somewhat able to temper N and, even though she struggles to admit it even to herself, N does feel safer around him than she does around most other people. They do fight a bit, but they tend to argue more about emotional stuff (like N’s fear that her family will be killed if they don’t hurry) instead of personal stuff (they have bigger things to worry about than small, annoying personality traits). Obviously, Jude has his own fair share of faults, but they aren’t as in-your-face as N’s (I do need to work on highlighting them a bit more, though). 

What have been their best and worst moments together as a couple?

Probably their best moment together will be at the end of the trilogy when the main conflict is over and N is finally able to relax and pay attention to her own personal needs and desires. Their worst moment will be when N’s big secret comes to light in book two. 

Where do they see themselves and their relationship in the next few years? 

N doesn’t see herself as having much of a future because she is so intent on her mission that it has become her entire life. She does know that she would be pretty hopeless without Jude to help her along, but she has yet to think of him as much more than an older brother/friend type. Jude, on the other hand, is a tiny bit in love with her, but he also understands that he can’t broach the subject yet because she simply isn’t ready and won’t be for a while. He does hope they’ll be together down the road, and he’s willing to wait for that future. 

There you have it. Jude and N have a slightly weird, potentially toxic, rather unromantic relationship, bolstered more by need and shared experiences than by emotions and happy feelings. They are a team, and they rely on each other, but the romantic aspect of their relationship isn’t (and won’t be) the focus of the story—it’s just one of the natural conclusions to the path they’ve taken. 

Well, that’s it for today, little coffee beans. What about you? Are you a fan of romance? Do you have any character relationships you’d love to share? Have you done this link-up already/are you planning to?

Snazzy Snippets

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At long last, I have decided to participate in Snazzy Snippets. In case you’re unfamiliar with Snazzy Snippets, it’s a bi-monthly link-up hosted by Alyssa @ The Devil Orders Takeout and Emily @ Loony Literate. Every two months, they post a set of writing prompts and then leave us to go hog wild. Or something like that. 

The guidelines for this edition are: 

A snippet from page 16

or

A snippet of 16 words or fewer

or

A snippet about something NEW

(Eg. A new year, a new school, introducing a new person/character/setting, a new revelation.) 

I’ve decided to do all three categories. (Also, you might be wondering why I often use initials in my snippets instead of full names. I apologize for any confusion, but I don’t like to share my made-up names online. Call it fear that people will think they’re stupid and laugh at me or fear that people will think they’re cool and steal them. Either way, my lips are sealed.) Also, in case you were wondering, all of these snippets come from my current work in progress, a YA fantasy. 

This first snippet could fit under the third category (since, for one character, it involves a revelation of new information), but since it’s from roughly page sixteen, I’m going to use it for the first category instead. So there: 

Ages pass before A reenters with a bowl of steaming water pressed tremblingly between her hands. Sitting, she crumbles the herbs and lets them slip through her long fingers into the basin. “You asked if you father is here now,” she says. “Come child, what is the meaning of this?” 

“He’s missing,” I answer flatly, afraid to explain further, afraid to mourn, afraid to break the wall inside me that has held back the tears until now. “Presumed dead.” My stomach sours, and I curse myself for my stupid hope. Of course he isn’t here. Of course. 

He’s nowhere. 

“Dead?” Her hands tip the bowl abruptly, and the water sloshes her dress, yet she doesn’t seem to notice. “How can this be?” Disbelief crowds its way into her voice. 

“They say he was murdered.” 

*gasp* 

Here we are for category two, with a snippet of sixteen words: 

“You’re safe here,” he murmurs, “you know that right?” 

“I’m not sure I’ll ever be safe.” 

(I don’t know how much impact that has or how much sense it makes taken out of context, but whatever. We’re just going to go with it.) 

And finally we come to the third category. In this longish snippet, my main character is dealing with a lot of new stuff. She’s made a (tentative) new friend and a new enemy, entered a new living situation, and encountered a whole new set of problems. So I think I’ve covered my bases with this snippet: 

High noon sneaks up on us as we sit beside the dead stream, lulled by the rustling of the leaves and the chattering of squirrels. When a butterfly flutters past, I listen to the beating of its beautiful dragon wings, wondering if it understands how fragile it is. 

Finally Jude stands and offers me a hand. “We should go back. I don’t know about you, but I’m hungry.” Despite his inviting smile, I am tempted to pull away, to flee—to run and run until I have left all this behind. Instead I let him help me to my feet. 

Trouble is waiting for us in the clearing when we slip from the woods like thieves in the night. S. As she approaches, her eyes flash sparks at odds with the painted smile on her lips. Jude stiffens. 

“Where have you two been all morning?” she asks, her tone light and innocent, her fingers clenched into white-knuckled fists at her sides. 

“The forest,” Jude answers, squaring his shoulders. 

“I saw what happened earlier, N,” S turns to me. “I saw how you treated A, the way you ran off like a spoiled brat to throw your little tantrum. It was very childish of you. And they may not know what you’re doing, coming here and demanding everyone’s attention, but don’t think you have me fooled. I know who you are. And I know what you’ve done.” She smirks. 

“I have no clue what you’re talking about, but—” Jude begins. 

“Oh, don’t worry—she understands,” S cuts him off, unfazed by his anger. “Just be careful, N. Don’t hurt my friends like you hurt him.” Still smirking, she flounces off, her head held high, her posture oozing confidence. 

Why aren’t my lungs working?

“Well…I’m not sure what that was about,” Jude frowns, “but I apologize. I’ll speak with Mother; she’ll straighten this out.” 

“Oh no,” I blurt, forcing myself to make eye contact. “Please don’t.” If they speak with her—if she tells them…

“N,” he shakes his head, “S shouldn’t have treated you like that.”

“I’m not staying anyway,” I protest, “and I don’t want to cause more trouble than I already have.” I need to get out.

“You won’t be the one causing trouble,” he assures me, scanning the clearing. 

“No,” I insist, more sharply this time because I see A now, gathering wild greens at the far edge of the forest. “I’d really rather you didn’t.” 

He purses his lips. “Are you sure?” 

“Yeah,” I say. “Just let it be.” Does she know? Does she really know about Titus? “I should leave.” 

“You keep saying that.” He plucks a twig from a nearby tree and studies it a moment before casting it aside. “But I don’t think you mean it.” 

“Oh?” I try for a neutral expression. 

“Let’s get something to eat.” He takes my elbow, and I can’t help but wonder why he’s avoiding the question. “I can show you around later. At least give this place a chance.” 

Afraid to do anything that might draw attention to myself, I relent and follow him to a well-stocked table. Baskets of bread and jars of cordial line the surface like ramparts, and I wonder how these people can afford to be this liberal. In my village we drag our wheat from the ground and beat our milk from the cows and protect our spoils from the rabble under lock and key. Every day is a hard-won victory over the earth. And every day is another opportunity to die. 

As we seat ourselves on the rickety, weather-beaten chairs, I scan the clearing for any sign of S, but she must have left already. And good riddance. When Jude offers me a cup of tea and a plate of rolls to share between us, I fake a smile and force myself to eat, even though my stomach turns at the very thought of food. 

No matter what, I can’t let him see—I can’t let him notice how shaken I am. S doesn’t know what I’ve done—how could she? Still, if there’s even the slightest chance… If they find out, I doubt they’d let me stay. I doubt they’d deal kindly with me. After all, I know what my villagers do to those who murder their own. It can’t be that different here. 

And, there you have it, my little coffee beans. I’m still in the middle of (hopefully) my last intense round of edits on this project, so I apologize for any rough patches in the snippets. (I’m afraid S might still have a slight case of Cackling Disney Villain Syndrome.) What about you? Have you participated in Snazzy Snippets before? If so, feel free to drop a link in the comments below so I can check out your post.