Dubbing my Novel

This is not a teaser O_O

I’m working on an R&R of Taylor-Made, and yesterday I came to a scene I wanted to pick out and salvage from my previous version.  One of the things I did in the revision was cut out two characters, both of which were used quite a bit in the scene.  One was easily ignored, but the other had a role in the scene that I realized just couldn’t be directly given to another character without some sort of explanation.

And that’s when I was reminded of a paper I once wrote about, of all things, Sailormoon.  The paper analyzed why certain things were okay in children’s programming in Japan that were not okay in children’s programming in the United States.  Namely, LGBT characters and situations.  (The fact that Dean, the needed character that I cut out, is bisexual has no bearing on this comparison, although it is a funny coincidence).  In the paper, I pointed out the great lengths that the U.S. dubbers took to hide all things homosexual or trans.  Lesbians in a committed relationship would become cousins (and the looks between them, therefore, incestuous).  A male tea master who wears a skirt for five seconds–as part of the episode’s joke–is changed to female (making the little girl’s crush on him really awkward to dub around).  And over all that, entire conversations and plots become almost nonsensical to cover, for example, the characters joking that one of the mains is on a date with a girl or that the would-be boyfriend of one of the mains (same one, actually) is jealous that a guy–who the viewers know is really a girl–seems to be, but isn’t, flirting with her.  Because they were struggling so hard to avoid the plot points that were still there in the visuals, some conversations became awkward and convoluted.

Well.  I hope that the scene that I altered to make up for the loss of Dean is not much like the Sailormoon dub.  Unlike dubbing, I was not stuck to following the same track as the original.  In an anime, the visuals are there, and the dub must match them (to some extent, because things do occasionally get cut and in some anime dubs, completely rearranged).  In the revision, I can cut or add as needed.  On the other hand, I am trying to keep my word count down, so I did feel a little limited by what I could expand on.

So what was it I was changing?  In the original, Dean was the guy who drove everyone out of the evil corporation’s headquarters and to a safe haven.  This made sense because he was the only person in the entire book who knew where their safe haven actually was.  Once I cut him out (for word count’s sake), I had to find someone else who could find the safe haven.  That left two characters who could potentially know or receive that information.  Oops, one of them was that other character I cut.  And the second needed to stay behind while someone else drove off.  So how the heck could they find their way to the safe haven when all three characters who could possibly do it were either cut or needed elsewhere?

I did make it work, although I can’t tell you how well until I get to editing my revisions.  It involved creating the ability steer the car by remote (Dean’s still driving, basically, just not in the car) and choosing a remaining character to be the one who hits the brakes and accelerator and swerves to avoid crashing.  I know that I wouldn’t want to drive like that, but whatever.  What really worked out for me, though, is that choosing the driver and explaining how it was going to work gave me a chance to squeeze in one last little moment in this romantic subplot I added to the revision before the two characters involved got separated, so that was nice.

So that was my most recent dubbing experience.

And if you ever want a laugh, watch Sailormoon S dubbed with the subtitles on at the same time.

Or don’t.  Those American voices and dialogue were awful.

Lots of love,
Sage

Revision Experiment: Completed

Long ago (in a galaxy far, far away?  Nah, right here), I started a revision experiment on A Paranormal Bromance.  It was quite an endeavor, and I actually got overwhelmed by the project and by life last year and took one full year off from working on it.

I wrote aPB during 2012 National Novel Writing Month in a flurry of words (about 75K of them, in fact) in the month of November.  When I finished, I thought that maybe I had more revising to do than ever.  The three main problems I saw were: 1) The early-middle scenes in school and during the first dates with the love interest seemed poorly written, and quite possibly, there were too many of them.  2) I had this sense that I had written both of my POV characters–teenage boys–with the same voice.  3) Related to #2, my ghost character seemed to have a maturity problem; sometimes he acted like a child, which made the times he acted like a big brother seem out of place.  Maturing his voice would help a little with this, to remind us that, in many ways, he is more mature than the human character, even while he’s goofing off.

Usually when I edit, I handle all the big problems in the document in Word (or whichever word processor), then print out a copy and go to town on it with pens, each pass receiving a different color (like pink or green or purple.  None of this red pen stuff).  I make the corrections, do some more on-screen stuff, and move on to betas.  But I know that I would not have been able to have the attention to the language I needed if I worked with a pen on printed pages.  I’m great at picking up on tightening, and from time to time I’ll improve every sentence, it seems, in a certain scene or for a few pages.  It might depend on the day or the scene.  Certain scenes can distract me with emotions or excitement, and then I’m not picking apart language use there.  I needed to pay attention to every sentence and every paragraph.  I also needed to feel free to rewrite entire scenes from scratch, I felt.  So I decided to do this one differently.

The plan was to send the “NaNo version” of aPB to my Kindle.  There I would keep the original on screen to refer to while I rewrote the novel in a notebook, using two different colored pens, one for each POV so I always would be aware of whose voice I should be using.  Writing by hand would force me to take even more time on each word and sentence because I can’t transcribe as mindlessly by hand as I can while typing.  Separating the original from the next version, I thought, would also free me up to add stuff where needed or to write a scene from scratch when I felt that the original didn’t work but was necessary in some form.

I started the revision in January or February of 2013.  I got through 20% of the original novel (less of the next version because of cuts) before two things happened.  I approached the first scene I thought I would have to rewrite and I grew intimidated, and I started working to sell my house, which took a lot of time away that I used to spend on writing.  So aPB fell by the wayside.  I picked it back up on March 1, 2014, and two days later came across an editing challenge, where I decided I would tackle the rest of the rewrite.  I finished that process today.

Here are my observations about this process:

• Success: This allowed me to seriously focus on language. Blake’s language was simplified (maybe too much) and Ren’s was matured. There were times when I was transcribing what was already written just as I wrote it, but I looked at each word, each sentence, and each paragraph and reexamined whether there was a better way to say or describe anything.

• Success: I was better able to recognize those places where I ramble because a) I over-explain things and b) it’s NaNo and, yay, words. Or where I think it’ll be clever to make this comment here, not realizing that it’s killing the action. Yep, there were some definite darlings killed.

• Success: It made me really free to cut out full scenes and rewrite necessary conversations somewhere else. But, I have had success in that without this method

• Failure: I expected to feel more free to add stuff to the book, but I didn’t. I often had to go back to an earlier part and leave a note to remind myself to add stuff in the next round.

• Failure: At some point I planned to get off the Kindle and write scenes from scratch. But I never was able to truly depart from the original, except for the half a scene I had to add from scratch to replace a chapter I killed.

Overall: Wow, that was a lot of time, effort, paper, and ink. It took two entire blue pens (I bought these pens when I started the revision), the better part of a letter-sized notebook and 2/3 of my new notebook (though I only wrote on one side of the new one because the paper was thin). It took a lot longer than my usual editing method, and I’m pretty sure that if I had been doing it the usual way, I would have finished it last year even with the craziness that took over my life.

I don’t know if I’ll ever use this method again.  It was definitely worth it for this book because it forced me to be consistent in each POV’s language use, but for the big rewrites, it didn’t do anything.  I might even have been too scared to deviate that far from the original with this method.  However, I removed a lot of stuff I was unhappy with, and that made the scenes I planned to rewrite a lot more tolerable, and hopefully, so did what I did revise within them.

Next step is to type it up, but I don’t know when I’ll get to it, considering Camp NaNo is coming and I have TWO books bursting to be written.  I guess that’s what you get for taking a year off!

Lots of love,
Sage

Valentine’s Day Teaser

I haven’t posted in a while, but, hey, I’ve barely written in a year too, that’s to be expected.  The last book I wrote that I loved was 2 NaNoWriMos ago, and that was A Paranormal Bromance, which is what I’m supposed to be revising these days.  In honor of Valentine’s Day, I thought I’d post a little date scene from aPB and show you just how annoying it might be if you had to bring your own personal ghost as chaperone on your dates.  This scene is actually from the POV of Ren, the ghost.  Shannon was Ren’s girlfriend before he became a ghost (and also Blake’s grandmother).

Blake must be the worst air hockey player in the world.  I try to help him out, blowing on the puck so that it falls into Julie’s goal, but it doesn’t seem to help his score go up.

I suppose that yelling “Geronimo!” every time he goes to hit the puck is probably not the most helpful thing I could do, but it’s fun.

“You really are bad at this,” I tell him.  I poke his arm a few times.  “You should let me play for you.”

“Not now,” he says under his breath.

Julie smiles.

I think she thinks he’s crazy.  Which is totally okay with me.  I mean, if a girl can’t handle a little crazy, what kind of girl is she to date my Blake?  Shannon would not approve.

I slam my hand down on top of the puck just after she hits it, and it stops dead.

Julie stares at it as it spins in place where I left it.  “Wow.”

“Don’t say anything.  It will only encourage him.”

“Like I need you to say something to encourage me.  Hey, you should offer her a soda or something.  Girls get thirsty, you know.  God, you’re really bad at this.”

I float off and leave them alone for a little while.  Nobody can say that I am not sometimes considerate.

I’ve never been to an arcade before.  It is really loud and colorful and dark at the same time.  I watch over people’s shoulders, cheering them on even though they can’t hear me.  Maybe my positive vibes are enough to get them a good score.  When a little boy loses a racing game, I reconsider this viewpoint.

Blake is playing a game where he controls a claw and tries to grab a toy from inside.  I know this game.  We had them on the boardwalk in California.  I won a stuffed bear for Shannon way back when.  She doesn’t have it anymore.  She had me to remember me by instead, I guess.

Blake fails to get anything, so Julie takes a turn.  She gets a little stuffed zombie.  It makes her laugh.  She’s clearly not as afraid of zombies as she is of ghosts.

“Ooh, try again, Blake,” I say, getting an idea.  I shift through the machine and end up in the center.

“That’s cheating, man.”

Julie follows his gaze over to me, and probably figures out who he’s talking to because she doesn’t look hurt like she did last time he said something mean to me.

“Come on, I’ll help you win her a teddy bear.”

“Do you want a teddy bear?” he asks her.

She hugs her zombie.  “I got a zombie.  Teddy bears need not apply.”

“She is weird,” I say.  This prompts a rare smile from him.

“How about a soda?” he says.

“That, you can get me.”

I punch the air, but Blake’s totally ignoring me, leading Julie to the refreshments counter.  They play a few more games, but I’m over it.  I sit on the edge of a pinball machine and watch them from afar.  After those first stupid attempts at conversation that Blake tried, he’s hit his stride, and I can see him telling Julie about his music choices.  I know because he’s air drumming.  Julie must have different tastes because he makes a face at her after she starts talking, but the thing is…it’s not like it’s stopped him from talking to her.  He’s still interested.  He doesn’t even look uncomfortable trying to figure out how to relate to her.

He looks happy.

In three years, I’ve never seen Blake look happy.

I lean my elbows on my knees and my chin on my folded arms, just watching them.  It’s nice.  I’ve been trying to make Blake smile like that for years.  Maybe they’ll fall in love and get engaged and get married and live happily together forever.  He’s already older than I was when I got engaged to Shannon, after all.  He’ll always be older than me now.  Much too old to have never fallen in love.

This is good.

I’m bored.

Yeah, enough of this.  I take off and somersault through the air to the refreshment stand.  Someone has left their paper boat of onion rings sitting on this counter for fifteen minutes, and I don’t think they’re coming back for them.  With some concentration, I scoop the container into my hand.  It takes no concentration, however, to pick up an onion ring and fling it towards Blake’s table.  The first toss misses it’s goal, bouncing off the table and landing on the floor, but the second catches on the straw of his soda cup and twirls around it before settling on the lid.

I throw another, hoping to succeed again at this game of onion ring toss, but this one goes wild and hits Blake in the temple.  “Hey!”

“Oops.”

Hopefully now that I’m out of the writing doldrums, I’ll be posting more.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Lots of love,

Sage

Editing Experiment

You know me, I’m a mad scientist when I’m not writing, doing experiments every day.  But this time around I’m trying an experiment with revisions on A Paranormal Bromance, which you might remember was my NaNoWriMo novel last year.  Or maybe not, since it was NaNo, and who has time to write then?

As I wrote aPB, I knew I was going to have to rewrite at least one of my main character’s voices, possibly both.  I also noted a ton of structural problems, some because I’ve had the same problems in the past.  And then I knew there were things I wanted to add throughout the novel and characters that needed to change.  Knowing that the way I usually edit might not be effective for these edits, I decided to try something new.

For aPB, I’m rewriting the book from scratch in a notebook.  I have the original on the Kindle, and I’ll admit to referring to it a lot, but by writing out even the sentences, paragraphs, and scenes I want to keep intact, I still force myself to look at each sentence, paragraph, and scene and think about it, the way that I sometimes don’t while writing the first draft because I might be in the zone, or even just plodding along to get words down (because, let’s face it, it was NaNo).  It’s also easier to cut something and fix that cut when writing it anew, as opposed to trying to squeeze transition or info into lines that are already there on the screen.  For me, it’s just a mindset thing.  If I’m already rewriting it, it’s easier to change or add to it, at least in my brain.

I haven’t gotten to a part where I have to add more than a line or a feeling or descriptive details, so I don’t know how well this experiment will work there, but I’m excited to find out.

At the very least, this helps me change the voice and to create stronger sentences and paragraphs, so no matter what, I see it as a great exercise.

According to my Kindle, I am currently 13% done, but that’s a bogus number, because it will depend on what I add or subtract.  I’m also debating a plot/characterization point, and I’m sort of at a standstill until I decide it, but I don’t think that will last long.  Worst case scenario, I’ll flip a coin 😉

Anyway, I’m excited to see where this new experiment leads me.  It feels productive right now, but we’ll see how I feel at 30% or 50% or 80% when the end looks so close, but so far.

What revision techniques do you use? Do you rewrite or revise within the same document you wrote the novel in?

Lots of love,Sage

Lots of Love Thursday – 6/28/12

So as I sit here, waiting for the A/C guy, I thought I would write a blog post.  If you squint real hard at my last title and this one, you might think that I wrote two days in a row (Workout Wednesday and Lots of Love Thursday).  But, no, I was my usual lazy blogging self and neglected the blog for like a month and a half.  It’s hard to get motivation to write (anything) when I’m baking in the oven that is my house these days.

I am cursed.  This is my ninth summer in Ohio, and for eight of them, I have had a broken A/C.   This spans three different places I’ve lived and five different A/C units.  Last year was the only year I didn’t have to get the A/C unit fixed or replaced (it had been replaced the year before…for free, but apparently with a broken model that started leaking coolant…last year).  It’s been a hot spring and summer, but today is supposed to get into the 100s, so I start off LoLT with:

• My A/C is getting fixed!
• Which also means that our windows won’t have to be open all the time, which means fewer bugs and fewer allergens in the house
• I went to check out a choir (for joining) and had a great time
• I rediscovered what a joy it is to read on my Kindle
• I read THE SELECTION like I was addicted to it, which is pretty exciting since I never feel that need to read books by people I don’t know anymore.  I’m not saying it’s great literature or anything, but I could not put it down.
• My parents got back from their cruise and I wowed my dad with his Father’s Day gift
• My Dear Teen Me letter is up.  You can find it here
• My friend Suz’s book, A WANT SO WICKED, is available (our indie bookstore should have it in today or tomorrow).

Since I last was on here, tons of stuff has happened, but this was just the love for this past week (which was pretty nice).

Writing stuff:

I’m working on my Trouble kidlit, although I’m having trouble (haha) deciding where to start the series.  I thought Trouble at School was logical, but it makes the timeline of the series awkward.  I did, however, print out Trouble with Pets, which I wrote in November, and I’m highly enjoying editing that.

I wrote the Dear Teen Me letter.  Dear Teen Me is also doing an anthology, in which the lovely Hannah Moskowitz participated.  Her letter is a tear-jerker, trust me.

I’m waiting on betas for Taylor-Made, but my first beta gave me lots to think about already.

Anyway, that’s all the love for now.

Lots of love,

Sage

Taylor is off the Assembly Line and Ready for Quality Control

Today I finished my rough draft for Taylor-Made.  I started the reboot at the beginning of February, so this was a very clear two-month novel. I know I started in February because on Jan. 31, I posted about the Rosie debate.  Would I change her from my initial vision or keep her the same?  I ended up keeping her the same…and writing it all from Taylor’s POV.

February saw me write about 20K (there was a little overlap with the 5K of my original in that total).  There was one 10K-Saturday challenge, in which I wrote 8K, so the other 28 days resulted in 12K, including the rebooted stuff.

Then I hit March.  I had another 10K Saturday that first Saturday, and I made the goal that day.  I also was more productive during that week.  In those first 13 days of March I got the novel up to 40K.  Things were getting easier once Rosie and Taylor got together.

And then on the 14th, I had the day off (I work weekends), and I was plodding along all day.  But that was the day that Taylor found out what he was.  And it was amazingly intense.  I stayed up writing because I couldn’t go to bed, not when I was so filled with Taylor’s emotions.  I continued writing until I hit a Justin scene, which I had written in a notebook earlier.  There was no need to stay in Taylor’s head at that point, so I finally went to bed.  But for the next two weeks you could not drag me away from writing.  Working in the lab was wasted time, particularly when my coworkers were around me and wanting to talk to me.  Yeah, there was a lot of “Beware of writer”-shirt-wearing and noise-reducing-headphone-wearing too, in the past couple of weeks.  When I got home, I was instantly on my computer.  My days off were spent hanging out in a cafe writing.

So another 30K was reached steadily in the following two weeks.  Yep, it was pretty much a NaNo novel in March, but the full novel clocks in at 71,675.  At least until the first round of edits.  And, man, do I have edits to do.

Note, that this is my longest novel since Echoes of Silence, way back in 2005 (which was twice as long and is not going anywhere, but anyway).  Most of my novels that I do something with are in the 55-65K range.  Once I pass 50K, I call it a word count victory.  I have had novels that were shorter.  And for MG, that’s fine (In a Pear Tree is safe at 42K), but for YA, under 50k is a tough sell for spec fic.  Anyway, I knew when I hit 50K that this novel was probably going to land at about 70K, and, look, I was right!  It’s a word count I’m really happy with.  But of course, it will change in edits.  I know many things that have to be added, and things that will probably be removed.  It’s amazing to be going into my first round of edits with some of this stuff already figured out.

While I joke about starting a Hero/Villain or Love Sucks sequel right away, I am actually pretty excited to do some of these bigger edits.  First up is to rewrite the first chapter (It’s in Rosie’s POV, oops).

So that’s what I have to look forward to.  You know, besides that little thing where Love Sucks comes out in 4 weeks.  I secretly love editing (don’t tell anyone), so this is not sarcasm in any way.

Anyway, yay for Taylor-Made’s first draft being done!

Lots of love,
Sage

Words with Strangers

So piggybacking off my Hanging with Friends/Words with Friends post, and continuing in the “making your words count” vein, I want to talk about my inability to write for strangers and acquaintances.  This really falls in the non-fiction category.  While what I’m talking about may not be any more formal than this blog post right now, there are certain mediums where I just freeze up and stress over every word.

E-mails are a big one, and sometimes this falls into the realm of Writer Sage because sometimes these e-mails are to agents or editors.  Querying isn’t too big a problem anymore for me, unless I’m making the query very personalized.  And then I freak out over one or two sentences.  Status queries can be agony.  A thank you for some excellent revision suggestions.  An e-mail to my editor that contains anything from “Here’s these edits” to an explanation of why I disagree with an edit or a question about one.  At work, I might just be sending an e-mail stating that I’m sending something to someone at the main lab.  It might be an e-mail with an attachment included, and that’s all I need to say.

But I stress about it.

At work this week, I had two requests for writing.  One was a self-evaluation.  The other was a resume with my updated lab experience.  Now, I have been told time and time again that the self-evaluations are meaningless.  Some people in the lab have even copy-and-pasted past evaluation answers into the current (identical) form.  Not me.  First I worry about the content. The first question is about new things I’ve learned and how I’ve made the lab more efficient and so on.  (It’s the only question I think is actually worth anything, tbh).  So I worry about what I learned this year vs. last year, and whether it’s impressive enough, and have I filled enough lines with the answer.  Then I start rereading it to see if the wording is bad.  Do I sound too full of myself here?  Does this sound like I think I did more than they think I did (and is this a bad thing or should I inform them of that)?  Does this item here seem wishy-washy?  Can I say this in a less awkward way?

And, stop.  Right there.  That’s really important in writing books, but really?  Who cares if my sentence was awkward in a self-evaluation?  One of our employees can barely read English.  Nobody else in the lab is a writer.  My first draft will probably be more polished than what anyone else turns in.

But I do three drafts and reread and reread and reread.  And reread one last time, just in case I change my mind or some key thing is going to pop out at me.  Because that’s what I do with this kind of writing.  Hey, at least I don’t send it out to betas.

Except on that resume thing.  Because at one point I was looking at the resume of a coworker with similar experience, whose bio I was supposedly going to be able to copy and make minor changes to.  And I stared at two of her listed pieces of experience and tried to figure out which one I actually had, because to me they sounded like a different way of describing a similar experience.  I finally took it to my supervisor and asked him what he thought.  He told me to combine them, lol.  After I figured out what to toss and what to add and what to leave alone, I found a new thing to stress about.  I remembered that when I was being taught to make a resume, there was a big deal made about the way you list your experience for each job.  I had to bullet each piece of experience and start the description of it with a verb.  And the verbs all had to be the same tense.  But the sample resume didn’t, and that made sense because some things are constantly being done by me (lab work, for example) and some are experience I have, but of things I did in the past.  I must have gone through and changed verbs and tenses about 20 times.

But you know what?  That’s not going to matter when they read the bio.  The reader isn’t going to notice the verb tenses.  They won’t care if I shifted them or not.  Certainly, nobody’s going to choose whether we get this projected based on a tense shift.

And it’s funny, especially in light of my “making your words count” post yesterday, that the things I stressed most about in these types of writing are the things that barely matter at all.  The actual words don’t count in my self-evaluation and work bio, only the message does.  Nobody cares how I phrase an e-mail at work, as long as they know what I’m trying to say.  A thank you to an agent or an editor could probably be simply “Thanks!” without my trying to express my appreciation in a wordier fashion.  No matter how many times I reread that long e-mail to my editor, in the end I will send it with only superficial changes made to it.

When you’re writing for an audience, for entertainment, every word counts, and how you write it counts.  Your readers are reading for your style and your words and your phrasing and your message.   You need the whole package.  And of course, I stress about that, especially in the editing phase.

But not like I stress about these things that just don’t matter.  Weird, huh?

Lots of love,

Sage

Writing Depression

Hi, everyone,

I’m back after a long long break.  But I’m back and ready to post as much as possible.  I have big news that I’ll announce in my next post, but this one is about the main cause of my disappearance: writing depression.

Last year after NaNo I devoted my time to revising Fireflies into a YA (for those just tuning in, Fireflies was a MG, and three agents suggested I revise it into a YA).  I started revising on the cruise, but didn’t get very far.  But afterward, I knew enough time had gone since the R&R request, and I needed to get on it.  So I focused on the revision, taking a detour for ScriptFrenzy (I only wrote 50 pages) in late April.

The problem was…I wasn’t enjoying it at all.  There were some good things I was writing, but every word was like pulling teeth.  The same for when I wrote for ScriptFrenzy.  The same after I gave up on Fireflies for good and tried working on a H/V sequel and on another old novel I gave up on once upon a time.  And when I thought about it, Nano Kid, my NaNo novel from 2010, had been difficult to write (though you wouldn’t know it from my NaNo stats).  I’m not going to lie.  Almost every novel has some area where I struggle to put the words down and get through the scene, but this was happening for everything I was writing and had been since I finished H/V (summer of last year).

For Fireflies, I had more discouragement because I never felt right making it a YA.  I felt like Fiona acted like a pre-teen and that the plot was better for an MG, but it seems like agents felt my voice and the relationship between Fiona and her brother were better for an older audience.  But being a YA required an additional 20K words and probably a romance too.  Plus I had other issues to address, based on agent and beta comments.  I worked on it for months, added enough words to make it into YA range (whether I succeeded in making it YA is another matter 😉 ), and fixed some of the problems, but in the end it just wasn’t working.

Meanwhile, I had non-writing issues I was dealing with.  I’ve been focused on diet and exercise because of health issues, and until May I was having difficulty seeing results despite working out a ton and eating pretty well.  In May, my cat had a tumor and had to have surgery (he’s okay).  Plus, I’ve been having money issues, which is why I stopped sending out books in May.  I have the books, just no money to send them anywhere 😦 Notice how this all kinda comes together in May?  Notice when my last blog post was?

It may be a bunch of excuses, but the end result was that I just was completely depressed by everything writing related.  I unplugged from the writing world as much as possible.  No blog, no Twitter, and I even visited Absolute Write rarely (and then only to act as a moderator).

This ended in August, thank goodness, and I’ve slowly been integrating myself back into the writing world since.  But what happened in August? you might ask.  Well, it turned out I needed a kick in the pants in the form of a Three-Day Novel.  My friend and I rented a cheap cabin for a three-day weekend and wrote our fingers off for 72 hours.  I had been coming up with plot points for that novel since March, but I have to admit that with the way my writing had been going earlier this year, I was pretty nervous about devoting 3 days to writing.  Especially since my April writing vacation completely failed.

Anyway, the plan had been just to be silly and not worry about plot or characterization…but that plan died pretty quickly.  But here was the amazing thing about this novel: the entire time I wrote it, it never once felt like I was forcing the words out for words’ sake.  It was fun.  It had been over a year since I had had fun writing, and the entire thing was just plain fun.

And, you know what?  Revisions and betas later, it’s still fun 😀

After that I wrote and submitted a short story to a kidlit contest (I did not win), I started a short story in the novel world (I never finished, but only because my focus went elsewhere), and I took Fireflies and cut it down into a short story.

Say, what?

Yep.  I figured out the problem with Fireflies.  The “brilliant concept” and “beautiful writing” worked better in a shorter work.  I had all these extra scenes in it that I didn’t need (in the teeny MG version, even).  Scenes that were actually causing problems.  Thanks to agent and beta comments, I could ID those quick and zap them out of the story.  Then came the harder part.  What Troy scenes did I need to get rid of?  See, the heart and soul of the story, to me, is Fiona dealing with her brother who is recovering from a Traumatic Brain Injury.  So every scene with the two of them was golden to me.

I cut a bunch.  I kept a bunch.  In the end I had 7000 words that revolved around the very essence of what I wanted when I wrote that novel and could be marketed to adults.  And what did I do then?  I actually submitted it to something.

That was all in August.  And, well, stuff has happened since then.

I’ll tell you about it next time 😉

Lots of love,

Sage

Tueser Teaseday

Oh, you know what I mean.

So I only wrote a scene and a half of Hero/Villain this week because I spent my time editing other projects and betaing for someone else.  So instead, I’m going to post the shiny new scene I wrote in AFTRLYF, which was a good call because it made me look at it and realize I wrote it in the WRONG TENSE.  Oops.  Well, hopefully that one mistake doesn’t land me a rejection from the person who has the full novel right now….  It’s in chapter 9, so hopefully the 8 chapters before will prove that the novel’s pretty polished.

I fixed it, but if you see any problems, let me know.  I mean, it.  The ego-boosting stage with this novel happened back in 2007, lol.

Context: Tia’s an angel of death.  One touch from her kills humans.  There’s a serial killer taking out angels, including her brother Sam’s girlfriend, who they just found.  Penny’s human and doesn’t know Tia’s an angel.

No sooner was Sam out of my sight than I was off to Del Rio High School.  I could have called or texted Penny, but seeing that she was safe would make me feel better.  The killer hadn’t taken out any humans–at least as far as I knew–but I was still anxious to make sure my one friend was safe.

I walked into the high school like I belonged there, which I looked like I did.  High school was something I’d never get to experience.  The Academy was totally different.  We spent 200 years there and only matured up to middle school in that time.  From what I knew about humans, middle school wasn’t fun for anyone.  And it wasn’t really that fun for us, even when I was top of the class.

Let’s see.  I had only been here once, and I could sort of remember where Penny’s locker was.  The nice thing about San Diego high schools was that there were no halls, and the lockers were set up between the buildings.  I took a right at the gym, went past the first set of lockers, then leaned against building E, waiting for Penny to show up and trade books.  The bell rang and students trickled, then gushed into the halls.  I hoped I could see her in the crowd.  I wasn’t sure which exact locker was hers.

A guy walked by and checked me out.  I couldn’t help but smile.  Something told me I’d like high school just fine if I wouldn’t kill any boy that dared to kiss me.

But I caught a glimpse of Penny and remembered why I was here.

I ran up to her.  “Hey.”

She almost dropped her books, but shoved them into her locker instead.  “Tia, what are you doing here?”

I shrugged, nonchalantly.  “Playing hooky.”  This was poor planning on my part.  What was I supposed to do?  Say, “Hey, there’s a crazy angel killing people.  Be safe, please”?  Somehow I didn’t think that would go over well.

“Just thought I’d come visit,” I finished lamely.  “Oh, and tell you that I can’t hang out tonight.”

She frowned at me.  “But I told Ray we’d go to Maestro’s and keep him company.”

“I’m sooooo sorry.  I really thought that I’d be free, but I have to be with Sam tonight.”

“Sam’s thirteen.  He can take care of himself.”

“Not tonight, he can’t,” I whispered.  “Just… let me off the hook tonight?  Please?”

Something in my voice must have hinted at how upset I was because she nodded.  “Okay.  But you owe me, all right?  Want me to play hooky with you?”

I shook my head.  “No, I have to get back before my teachers notice I’m gone.  I just wanted to check in with you.”

She didn’t have time to question that before I was running off to find somewhere to teleport back to Celestia and wait for Sam.

Currently on iPod: Daydreamer by Adele

Lots of love,
Sage

Teaser Tuesday – YAified AFTRLYF 1

Okay, so I’m going to pretend like I’m not obsessed with the iPod Touch I just bought myself (sadly because my beautiful iPod is dying) and do a teaser while it syncs.

I’ve been working on making AFTRLYF YA.  The biggest challenge in that is lowering Sam’s apparent age.  He started at “sixteen” and now he’s going to “thirteenish.”  Tia started at “twenty-six” and now is going for “eighteen.”  These are quote-unquote ages because Tia’s really 2000-and-change and Sam’s really about 200.  I’d love to make Sam younger, but I can’t justify to myself his older girlfriend younger than “13.”

This is the introduction to Samael, one of my favorite characters.  Context, Tia couldn’t get to her “clients” in time to pick them up at the time of their death, so she called her brother.

A young, blond kid leaned against a blue Ford Mustang and waved at me as I approached.  A teenaged Filipino girl and an old Caucasian woman waited with him.  “Thanks, Sam.  I owe you one.”

“No problem.  It’s a nice change from animals.”  One of the younger A.D.s in the field, Sam had the vet route.  San Diego’s animals that died in veterinary offices came into his care.  How lucky I would be to only have to frequent hospitals to collect my spirits.  Half of them died at home.  That was where being invisible and incorporeal came in handy.  If they couldn’t see you, nobody could object to you touching them, and, if you could walk through walls, they couldn’t keep you out.  But until I got off probation, I’d have to make do with my charms.

“Do you need any more help?” Sam asked.

“No, I have an hour before my last charge, and tomorrow’s looking much lighter in comparison.”  I patted him on the head, noticing his golden locks were a little shorter and more even than the last time I had seen him.  “How’d you get your hair cut?”

He grinned at me.  “You noticed.  Helen decided I needed a trim so she took some scissors to it.  I said it was silly, but she insisted.  Do you like it?”

“It’s just weird.”  Off his crestfallen expression, I added, “But good.  Anyway, thanks for your help.  Remind me to buy you an ice cream.”

He made a face.  “Please, I’m, like, two centuries old.  I’d much rather you put in a good word for me with Dad.  Could you?”

“If you think it’ll help.  I don’t exactly have his ear these days.”

“More so than me.  Come on.  Maybe he’ll promote me to humans.  These girls were pretty nice.”  The younger of my clients beamed, and I couldn’t help but suspect Sam of flirting with her, despite the fact that he looked like he had just barely hit his teens.  What would Helen think if she knew what her boyfriend wanted out of a transfer?

I sighed and gave in.  What could I do?  I owed Sam for saving my butt tonight.  “Don’t blame me if nothing comes of it.”

“Thanks, sis.”  He grinned as he turned the corner of a car.  “You better get going before the crowd’s around to see you teleport.”  And then he was gone.

Now that he had mentioned it, I noticed the trickle of people leaving The Q.  Chargers fans clad in blue and gold exited the stadium en masse, and Sam was right–if I wanted to teleport with the clients, I’d better make sure nobody was around to see it.  Spotting a Hummer 3, I ushered my charges towards it, hoping to use its girth to hide our disappearance.

So how am I doing?

Currently on old iPod: Cab by Train

Currently on new iPod: Sync in Progress 😉

Lots of love,

Sage