What's On Your Mind About Your Writing?

James Scott Bell said it so well. "What is the adhesion between your lead and antagonist?" What is it that will keep one reading?

g.g.

http://ggrebimik.blogspot.com

My upper MG fantasy is already bordering on too long, and what feedback do I get on it? It feels too rushed, and I need to add stuff.

87,419 words on 326 pages... Longest WIP ever, even feels like the most coherent and best I've done so far in terms of longer stories... And not quite wanting to wrap it up and wondering if I can even commence that yet. Though I think it's already way too long for its genre. What genre? What the hell am I doing and making?

Just killed off MC's mom.

Wish I had the money to print it all so I can start editing, but not in my glum little room where I've been spending some 4 hours daily writing and not getting enough sleep and defying my damn meds and gaining weight.
Already accidentally referring to the guy who inspired my MC, as Nadir instead of Sammy, or, as I nicknamed him, Surreal Schnitzel or Hairy Beast because man, that guy has a scratch.

And again, I'm about to hit Ctrl + S as if this post were my WIP. I need help.

Ugh, no, I hate editing. I'm probably gonna self-publish. Not looking for the serious authordom, fantasizing about it obviously, talkshows, HuffPost headline, big money for big house, a girl can dream (and does, too much) but realistically, throwing it on the Kindle market is the most likely outcome and kinda fine by me.

I don't wanna wrap it up. My MC has grown on me like a cancer. Ending the book is ending him. I've dug myself so deep into writing, he's become my social life. A very unhealthy one what with being based on a guy I have a raging hopeless crush on what with him being 8 years younger and from a totally different cultural and religious background, ranting here.

All I had set out to do, was write a quick, sloppy, 2 dollar "everyone screws everyone" smut novella to make some small change so I could buy cheap jewelry from time to time in addition to scavenging returned cat food. And then suddenly, I come up with a setting. Politically loaded. Very. Dystopian, kind of. Curfews. Military dogs. Resistance. Excommunications. Separation walls and blowing them up. Tragedy. A grim view of where I think Israel might be headed if the far right prevails. When all I had ever wanted, was a menage à trois between two hot guys and a voluptuous chick. Something I could shamelessly and thoughtlessly self-publish, lean back, and not care about bad reviews as long as I had a 5 to 10 bucks extra every now and then.

Ah damn, just remembered I had the morning shift.

rwm4768 said:

My upper MG fantasy is already bordering on too long, and what feedback do I get on it? It feels too rushed, and I need to add stuff.

Click to expand...

Hahahaha. I can relate. When the word count of my first fantasy novel came in at 147k, I spent months shaving words and resenting the loss of every single one.

Prominent among beloved beta's comments were things like: needs some fleshing out . . . when you get this fleshed out . . . description is sparse . . .

Hair tearing, isn't it?

What's on my mind right now is frustration with mainstream readers--it seems like everyone only wants to read bland fiction containing no words over 3 syllables. I, on the other hand, want to read heavy literature that is not an escape from the world but a relation to it. Too bad there don't seem to be any other readers out there who want that, so the market doesn't focus on them, hence why I can't write like that. I'm just freaking out thinking "oh man, in order to make a living as a writer, am I going to be forced to write teen paranormal romance??" It takes me a minute to talk myself down sometimes, but I get through it.

My mind is absorbed with making some (finally) submissions for my YA portal fantasy and my adult espionage thriller. I'm having to find new publishing resources and wish I had a larger database from which to choose. I accidentally wiped out all my favorites and erased my history.

Anybody have any links for small publishers for commercial fiction?

tri

I'm shopping around my manuscript. While ironing out the details of my next project, I realized that the tech level isn't possible because of...well, a lot of things. I've got thousands of words of notes, but now I'm fretting that they might be useless because things are so scaled down.

I was going to start the first draft soon, but now....ugh. I feel like I have to start over with the world-buildling.

So close to finishing part five of my space opera! The book turned out to be much longer than planned, but at least all the bits and pieces are coming together nicely.
Otherwise, I’m still struggling with the first draft of a picture book. I have never written one before and I do find the task a bit daunting.


Lilly

I'm still struggling with this "pacing" thing. My first novel is 50k words and rushed as all hell with an ensemble of underdeveloped characters, themes, and plotlines, and I know I need to cut things!

So I'm at this weird place where I need to both cut and add and it's mind boggling hard to do.

Having challenged myself to write a novel with a lot of things I am uncomfortable writing--politics, strategy, action--I keep hitting place after place where I have to come up with some kind of clever escape plan or taking-the-castle plan and... argh.

I don't really know what the big final dramatic thing of the novel will be. THAT is the problem. Except I do, except I'm afraid it won't fill the space I need to fill. Except I know it will once I actually write it. But I haven't written it, so I'm worrying about it.

A good solid head-desk might do me good.

My first chapter sucks. And I know I should finish the book and then go back and take my time fixing it up, but I can't stop thinking about it. I know it's there... Mocking me with its suckiness... Damn you first chapter... DAMN YOU TO HELL.

I wrote this short story based on a myth and it's... very different from my usual style. Still, I'm not sure if I pulled it off very well. It seems like crap to me.

So much is on my mind about my writing! I'm 25K words into my first ever novel and I know I have so much to learn. It's haunting me that I will need to go back and revise / rewrite the first few chapters to make them more engaging. I need to get to the inciting incident earlier but I don't know how to do the world-building without the set-up.

I am worried about my MC coming across as underdeveloped. I am writing in limited third but think I really want to do deep third, yet I don't quite know how! I've only just discovered this term as what I like to read, yet I seem to write more naturally in limited third. As it is YA though, I think I need to go deep with the POV if I'm going to write in 3rd and not 1st. Sigh.

I'm also wondering about the plot. I have an element of fantasy that I want to weave into the dystopia but I don't know if that is necessary, or a bad idea, or just too confusing for marketing. Sigh.

So much to learn! Actually writing a novel (as opposed to just dreaming about it) is a real process! But fascinating to be learning about myself as I do.

I keep having second doubts about writing books or just combining my art/writing and do a different medium.

Gah.

I think I've finally figured a way to start my story. Only problem is I think it'll just bugger the pacing right from the get-go, and that upsets me.

I'm not sure my writing gives a crap anymore, though I can't seem to not to.

/drama

I'm up to 11 subs so far, thanks in part to an AWer who gave me a different list than the one I had.

tri

How to not make my story falter after the climax. I don't want to pull a "oh she included all but the kitchen sink to wrap it up".

Still slogging through edits. Every step today was worth five when things were going well.

Struggling with pacing in my second ever MS. I feel that I have my breathing moments in order (she is alone in the wilderness right now, so lots of reflection) but adding in action is rushing the story along. Now almost halfway and I feel like I have too many breathing moments. Augh. Going to keep going and finish the story then fix it in edits.

Yesterday I made headway with my WIP. I figured out a couple of details I will need in the upcoming books.

At the same time though, I have three bullets left, possibly four to work on. Hopefully it will get me to 70k. Currently it is at 65k, so only hard work and perseverance will tell me.

Either way, time to knock out two of my bullets.

My car radio stopped working about a week ago so my daily commute has been rather silent. To pass the time I've been "writing" my short story in my head, getting to know my MC and trying to figure out an ending since I'm more of a pantser than a plotter. I come up with these brilliant (IMHO) sentences while I'm driving but when I get home and put them on paper, they just don't sound right.

Think I need to buy a tape recorder.

Just finished my second novel. It is, in my mind, much better than the first. Partly because I learned so much writing the first one, and partly because I learned so much lurking on this board. Some of you people really know your stuff. Jamesaritchie, for example, though we had an unfortunate run in on another forum, I'd followed his posts to the point that at times I would actually copy and paste his advice and email it to myself. So thank you, James. I should start with the querying process, but like a lot of you, I dread it, which is why I self-pubbed the first one. Queried about 20 agents, got a couple of nibbles, one full request that ultimately went nowhere, and finally just wanted to get it out there. I got some good responses, even a couple of good reviews, two from semi-known writers, but in the end made damn little money. For me, it's not really about that (do I need to add that it still would be nice?) You just hate to work so hard on something, believe that you've told a good story well, and then not get read by very many people. What I really want to do is to start on the next story, but I know that if I let this story fade into obscurity as I did the first one, it will really bug me.

I'm grumpy and my mood funneling into the current WIP. I have yet to decide if this is a good thing.

Cut half chapter for emotional effect! It's usually a good idea to switch POV when another character has just gone through something dramatic. Not really for anything but to increase the reader's tension.

Kinda like GoT, even though I'm not a fan.