Writing Friends

On Writing; Thursdays:

If you are reading this blog, chances are you are a writer.  Yay, very cool.  So you've written something and now you need someone to read it.
You look around you life, the people you love and trust, your family, your friends, your signifcate other and you say, "whadda think?"

STOP

Don't do that.  Seriously don't.  If you want them to read it so they can see what you've been ignoring them for, that's fine.  But don't take their feedback as your end all be all.  Why? Because they love you. And they won't be honest. 

There's a much bigger reason:  You like these people and you want to keep them in your life, right?
I've lost a lot of friends and my feelings have been VERY hurt when I gave them my novel.  Why?  Did they give me bad feedback?  Did they tell me it sucked?  nope, they didn't even read.  I heard NOTHING from them.   Which my neurotic brain freaks out over and thinks it must have been SO horrible they can't even talk to me. 

Then I get angry, here are literal thoughts I've had, "what the hell, I have a full time job, I teach, plan, grade, meeting with parents, come home, deal with a two year old, clean, be a wife, find time to watch TV and write three novels, and revise them and what the hell you can't take a few hours to read." 

This is A HORRIBLE way of thinking. 

I need to stop.

So from now on I will try very hard not to have these thoughts and when it comes to writing I will seek out writer friends.

Writer friends sole purpose in my life is to read my writing, give feedback and talk me out of a pity party.  Lots of my writer friends have merged into REAL life friends.  I've flown to Boston to hang out with them, I've celebrated their victories and cried for them.  Some of my best friends started out as writer friends.

One slight warning: 
 I have an issue when the MC of a story is a mirror image of the author.  It makes it almost impossible to crit because when you say, "your MC is very unlikeble in this scene." You've really insulted your friend.  It's a tough line to walk.

Who is your favorite child?

On Writing Thursdays

Your characters are like your children, right?  There's no doubt in any one's mind that J.K R LOVED Harry and the rest of her magically cast.  Watching them grow up, I became highly attached to them, I can't image how hard it was for her to stop playing with them in her head.

I've written four books.  Two books were about the same characters.  I could go into the whole back story about how that cluster happened, but that's not what this post is about.  It's about characters.

In every book I write, I have characters I LUV.  99% of the time it's not the main characters.

Don't give me Buffy and Angel, give me Xander and Willow or better yet, Giles and Oz.
Don't give me Scully and Mulder, give me the 3 Lone Gunman.
Don't give me Bella and Edward give me Alice and Seth. <--yep Seth..my all time FAVORITE character in the twilight books, because he sits in a how full of vampires and eats lunch there.  4th book. Read it.

Minor characters is VITAL to the story and 78.974% of the time more interesting.  (BTW in case it doesn't need to be said, I'm making up my stats)
Not only do they have to deal with all the crap the main character has to deal with, because let's face it, they tend to be in the scenes when sh*t goes down anyway, but they also have to put up with the MAIN CHARACTER.

Let's face this fact too, the main character has some pretty deep flaws and can be kinda annoying.  Bella, I'm looking in your direction.  But I''m willing to put up with it because Alice likes her.  And I like Alice.

 The minor characters tend to have the best lines, call out the MC's when needed and sometimes do something so heroic you can't help but fall in love with them.

In my book, recently renamed, How to Pwn Noobz and Become a Rock Star, my favorite character is Dave.  I love him so much I gave him the house I grew up in.

On the other hand there are characters I don't know as well.  There's a character in How to Pwn Noobz, who has been around since the first draft of the first book and I still don't know him very well.   He's kinda like that friend you have that you're sort of indifferent to.  They have a car, and they don't really annoy you very much but you could take them or leave them.  For me that's Jason.  He's  important to the plot and needs to be in the story,  but I'm not as emotionally attached to him as others.

What about you?  Do you have favorite children/characters?  Do you have character's you don't know or like as much?

Self doubt and cutting meaningless words.

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Thursdays: On Writing

self doubt in revision.

So I write.

I won't call myself a writer or an author.  I"m not sure if I'm looking to make writing my career but I do think it was very awesome to get published.

I'm revising.  I'm on the 12 draft.  My process goes a little somehing like this.  I write. I sent it to my betas, Alicia, Danielle, and Cid. I change EVERYTHING they say I should change, or add more detail to or whatever.  Then I send them the next draft and I do it again.

A few days ago I TOTALLY rewrote my first chapter.  I sent it to Cid.  I won't do much more until I get her feedback.

Why?

I don't really trust myself at all.  Look I can fix your story no problem, I just can't fix my own. 

Revising is awful, because now I have to look at EVERY WORD in my novel and justify it's existence.

I'm not trying to be a bummer about it.

I AM trying to find something SUPER awesome about it.

My new favorite thing about revising is CUTTING USELESS WORDS.

Oh how I love it.  No self doubt there.

So I compiled a list of WEAK words from various places.  I did a find all, and wrote the number down.  Next I did a find NEXT and looked at EVERY time I used that word.  I decided if the word should stay or go.  Lots of times I cut WHOLE sentences because I didn't say a damn thing in it. 
There were 1299 empty words at the start of this.  I got it down to 600.   In a 74K novel--- not too shabby.  And it's a way to feel INSTANTLY productive. 


That 400 down to 200
Just- 49-- 18
Pretty 12 -6
Then 53- 28
Was…ing--- 205 ---58
Went 69 -- 25
Get 304- 172
Got 209- 139
Would 264
 Have 255
 had 409
make 88-- 50
go 137- 63
could 209
do 214
Felt 33-13
Heard 49
Saw 31 - 9
Looked 98- 27
Appeared 29
 knew 53
As you can see, I haven't done it for every word, nor will I.   But the novel is MUCH stronger for it.

Go, do it.   You'll thank me later.