Over and Over Again

Today’s RTW Question from YA Highway: What themes, settings, motifs, scenes, or other elements do you find recurring in your work?

This is such a good question and I wish I had more time to answer it…but I’m determined to post something earlier than 6pm! Some recurring elements I find in my work are:

·        Non-conventional endings: My WIP The Rose of Coracus does not have the ‘the boy and girl are together happily ever after’ ending. Because it’s not right for the pair. Perhaps it’s the bit of feminist in me, but I don’t think books—even romance-driven YA—need to have that conventional conclusion. If it’s not right for my characters, it’s not going to happen in my manuscript.

·        Patience: This relates to the first point. I was surprised to see that many of my characters have to exhibit non-teenage-like patience. They have to wait for what is right for them, work towards it even if it takes a long time. In this regard, I feel like my characters have a lot to teach readers—and me!

·        Female-Centered: Many of my manuscripts have scenes where women need to work together to stand up against patriarchy (an evil king, the Princess’s father, in Dueling Princesses for example) or highlight female-centered networks of support. (My goodness, I am a feminist!)

·         On a more superficial level, I doubt I will ever write a fantasy book that doesn’t include gorgeous dresses, quasi-medieval setting, a ball, and royalty!

Do you have any themes or such that reoccur in your writing? Share!

Also, last chance to help me out and let me know what you’d like to see here!

Plan of Action

Writing and editing all my WIPs is going so well right now! Maybe it’s those extra hours during summer Fridays that are making all the difference. J Here’s what’s going on now and what will happen in the near future:

My best friend just gave me wonderful notes for my WIP The Rose of Coracus. I’m going to do another thorough rewrite this month, focusing on making Shayna a more dimensional character and her relationship with Johnathan more romantic yet realistic. And editing and adding and changing a million other little things. Heather’s notes were fantastic and gave me the direction I needed, so June is rewrite month.  It’s a tough goal, but goals are good (see this great post). One week down, three to go! And then I will be finished and submit query letters to agents by July 5^th. It’s the plan and I’m sticking to it!

My next WIP, Dueling Princesses, will be put on the burner until July, but after that I will be writing lots and lots. I’ve found two critique partners to work with, who will hopefully read the manuscript in small batches and help form the story as I go along. I’m looking forward to working on that!

So there you have it; my summer writing plans. I’m excited!

Critique Partner Calling

Guess what? (You say: “What?”) I’ve actually been writing! Not as much as I’d like, but little by little the word count of my new WIP, Dueling Princesses, is increasing. I already knew the world in which I’m writing (it’s the same setting for The Rose of Coracus) but now I’m getting a feel for the characters, what they want and what is going to happen in the story. Last weekend I even dreamt about my story!

Now that I’ve gotten into a writing pattern again and have learned to better manage my limited free time, I’ve realized another stumbling block that I need to overcome. I need feedback. I need someone to tell me what’s working and what’s not. I need someone to suggest a brilliant scene or tell me that my favorite character actually is annoying. Someone who can provide me with constructive, detailed, editorial feedback.

When I was writing The Rose of Coracus as my senior project at Hamilton, I had to turn in 10-25 pages every other week for my classmates and professor to read and critique. I always turned in at least 25 pages…often more, much to my busy classmates’ chagrin. But also because of them. They gave such enthusiastic and constructive feedback that after class I wanted to write more. I wanted to follow up on their comments and rewrite and revise and make my manuscript better than ever. For them, my readers. Getting feedback in small segments worked wonderfully for me.

So here’s the deal: I’m looking for a critique partner/beta reader. Early last month Maggie Stiefvater offered a “Critique Partner Love Connection” on her blog. I wasn’t ready with my new manuscript at that point to participate, but the idea is great so I’m posting my own call for a critique partner here. The nitty-gritty: I write YA fantasy. I am knowledgeable about the publishing industry. I have a degree in creative writing. I am serious about getting published. I would like to work on a firm (but negotiable) schedule. The ideal critique partner I’m looking for has a similar background.

Writing is not as solitary as some would believe. The best kind of writing comes from collaboration, suggestions and feedback. I hope someone (you?) wants to provide that for me!

Writing?

Yes, there is a question mark after ‘writing’ today, because the facts are simple: I haven’t really been writing/editing/working on my stories lately. I am just full of excuses and my New Years Resolution is failing miserably (as always…it only took ten New Years Resolutions to stop biting my fingernails!). I have a full time job and a social life and a relationship and books that begged to be read at night. Something has got to go to make time to write, and it won’t be my job (I love it and it pays the bills!), it won’t be my social life (I love my friends!), it won’t be my boyfriend (I love him!) and I don’t want it to be my books (I love them, too), but I think it has to be. Even when I do something after work, when I come home I read for hours…hours that I could be writing.

Since my biggest difficulty writing during the past few months is lack of time; it will sometimes be days or weeks or (I’m embarrassed to say) months before I can get back to where I left off. And by that point, with my terrible memory for plot details, I can’t remember what has happened in the story, even though I’ve written it myself! So then I have to go back and read the earlier paragraphs or chapters before I can even write. It’s so frustrating, so unproductive! I like writing. I want to eventually make a career out of writing. So why am I making it harder for myself?

My updated resolution: three days during the workweek I will work on my stories-any story in any way (editing, writing, brainstorming)- for one hour from 9pm to 10pm. And then I will write for at least two hours (preferably more) on the weekends. This seems reasonable. And once I have my schedule back, I hope to be much much more productive. I hope you’ll help keep me on track!

UPDATE: I wrote this post ahead of time like I always do. And since writing it on Sunday night I felt so guilty that I have worked on writing up a detailed outline for new WIP Dueling Princesses (one hour each on two days) plus I wrote another chapter (up to three whole chapters)! Dueling Princesses is the companion novel, but not quite sequel, to The Rose of Coracus and tells the story of some of the minor characters from the first book. I've very excited about it and please of the progress I made this week. Now I want a cookie. Or at least a gold star!