Rejections

I know every writer gets rejections, I'm not naive enough to think I'd be immune from the inevitability, but that doesn't make them easy. The interesting part of it is analyzing how I respond to them. I'm obviously a pleaser, I'm learning it more every day.

When I receive a rejection, I hit a kind of panic mode. I don't get angry; getting angry is projected negative energy. I don't necessarily get sad either, even though being sad is probably the healthiest response. I get panicky and I get doubtful and I start to believe all my faiths are delusions.

It's shocking how quickly it turns. I was at lunch today with a friend of mine who believes in me unconditionally. She read the first three chapters of my book and loved them, giving them sincere praise and lots of encouragement. I thanked her over and over and assured her, in full confidence, that I would keep trying despite getting rejections. I'm only beginning along this path. Then, the minute our lunch was over, I opened my email to find a rejection and I instantly doubted my merit.

Thinking about it, I can rationalize why this is. It's because I feel like I'm doing the best that I can. I'm making the best story I can produce with all the work and attention I can afford. Receiving a rejection fills me with this intense fire to fix things. I want to make the book better for having received the rejection but I have such a hard time pushing through what I considered was "the best I could manage". This makes my paranoid mind call into question my ability and taste level. I'm terrified that I'm clueless and delusional about my own abilities and skill level - of those who think they are God's gift to their particular field but are actually stuck in the mediocre.

I want so badly for Threadcaster to do well. I want it to be a big success - I really think it could be, and I'm terrified of failure. Not only of not making it to the national market, but also of being a blip on the radar. I feel like the world and its inhabitants could resonate with audiences, and I have faith in its promise, but there's so much that's out of my hands. If the world that receives my baby isn't receptive then my big dream and my best shot might die on the table. I'm not ready for that, and I'm not ready for by best job to be nothing special. If only passion could sell a book.

Vinita Oklahoma

On my way home from a family wedding in Dallas TX, I find myself in a Holiday Inn Express in Vinita OK. I legitimately love it here.

Not to live... holy cow not to live... but as a tourist of a legitimate small-town USA burg I'm enraptured. All the local restaurants are closed unfortunately (it's Memorial Day) but the hotel is very nice, they have hot tea, and there's a thunderstorm on the way. I've got the second half of Chapter 25 to rewrite but I thought I'd take a moment to update the world.

So I haven't written in my blog recently because I've been busy in the publishing world. I hesitate to go into details, but it's requiring one last-minute scan through the full draft, an editor I made contact with on Facebook and the hopes and dreams of the last eight years. I'm hoping the effort pays off. I know having interest is driving me to finish this polishing-off.

Something I'd love to do though, one day, is to take a writing vacation to a small town like this... maybe me and another person (a fellow writer) and we'd pick a new coffeeshop/restaurant to camp at every day until we've explored most the whole town. Just sit and write forever for, like, 3 days. It sounds dreamy. Vinita OK is small enough that their fire truck is a pickup with a hose in the back. It's parked outside my hotel right now and I'm not sure why... maybe because everywhere else is closed and this is as likely a place as any to get struck by lightning.

Someday I also want to go on a Writing Cruise. One of those transition cruises that go from, like, SanDiego to Vancouver in the off-season? No stops, no excursions, just me, all the hot tea and blended coffee I can consume, and nowhere to go.

Maybe when Threadcaster's a thing we'll have a big Threadcaster writing cruise and I'll open it up to any other writers/readers/fans etc and we'll all cruise together. I'll write the sequel, you all write your own novels. Some of you can even write TC fanfic, I know I'm DYING for that inevitable Trace/Artemis slash fic (and by dying I mean I can't wait to know it exists and never ever read it and that's the honest truth. I can't wait to know it exists somewhere, the pairing is SO obvious). Anyway - writing cruise - it'll be the best thing ever.

Okay, back to Wind Town.

The rapidly decaying spiral toward success, destruction or both

To start with, I think it's a sin to occupy the only chairs at Barnes and Noble near power outlets when all you want is to nap. Sleep in chairs I don't need!

Second I have lots of news in the world of Threadcaster. Firstly the novel and I went to the Missouri Writer's Guild's 2012 conference here in town. I learned lots of things about voice and character. I also pitched to two agents and both asked for partials! So that was good news.

I worked for a week after the conference on my first three chapters. Getting them beta'd, read aloud, edited, the works... then Monday I took the plunge and sent them off.

Ten minutes later -- ten minutes -- I got a reply from one of them asking for the full. This is the dream of any author! A full draft read by a real agent!? Elation.

Or by elation I mean panic... because I was kinda counting on those four to six weeks agents ask for to do the whole beta-read-aloud-edit-final draft stuff on the REST of the book. So I asked for a couple weeks which she was gracious enough to provide and went all-in on this draft.

Which brings us to now. I'm sucking down chocolate milkshakes and tea in Barnes and Noble praying the amount of books around me will radiate brilliant literary confidence and lucidity because my brain is a curly fry and my emotions are just as frazzled. It makes you wonder why people are writers at all... but only for a minute. The fact is that for all the pain I am LOVING this. I'm collapsed in a mound of drool and tears but I wouldn't have it any other way. I have an excuse to write forever. Forever and always. If I didn't need food or rest I'd be golden, it's the rest of the world that's making me crazy...

I'll update when I'm further on.

OH and btw if you all are interested, Threadcaster has a tumblr now. http://threadcaster.tumblr.com/
I'm a visual thinker so a lot of my character and plot brainstorms come out as pictures which I'll post up there. If you're interested in seeing Threadcaster art on the casual follow or bookmark! I predict a lot of frustrated Cats and Peters coming up... and maybe one or two Sharons with holes in her head.

Observing development

I was looking back over old art and was thinking about all the changes my story and characters have gone through. Some are radically different than their concept stage others look the same on the outside but changed on the inside, still others no longer exist at all! I was thinking of doing a blog series about my different characters/Curses and the development process they've gone through to this point. Would that be interesting to anyone?

Back on Track

Whew... okay! Everything is back how it was. I kept the good additions, the tweaks in character and pacing, and nixed that annoying contrivance set to establish false urgency; because that's what it was: FALSE urgency. I spent more time making my characters remind each other how urgent it was than I spent developing their relationship. It drove a wedge between my mains and kept everyone unhappy including me. I'm better off without it.

Progress wise I'm back in the realm of 60-90... that dreaded pie slice that has dogged me for so long. I'll tell you all when I get back to Kindle parts and have to snip her out again. My Betas tell me they don't miss her at all from the previous pages where she was summarily amputated. Just goes to show you that I didn't really need her to start with. I plan to write an obituary on her later when she's 100% gone.

For those friends who keep track of me on facebook and instant messenger I'm sorry I've been so absent. I've been keeping my chat streams off so I can get down to writing. I never make any progress when it's on - too choppy. I'll be back later when this stuff is sorted out.

If I don't post another blog I wish you all Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! You can keep up with me on Twitter (@threadcaster , @jenniferstolzer ) facebook and tumblr (jameson9101322)

A sense of urgency

So I share 30 pages of Threadcaster at a time with a few close friends and mentors. They are all extremely patient with me - especially since I keep rewriting and rewriting things they've already seen, but it's their feedback that makes it necessary possible. Yesterday I got such a piece of feedback from fellow author Peter H Green. He said "Everything flows fine but there is no sense of urgency. You've got the pull toward the goal, but I don't feel any push."

Sense of Urgency huh? This posed a dilemma. My story has plenty of conflict starting around page 65... but up to that point it's getting to know the characters and getting used to the world they live in. I 100% believe this is a good thing - my world is complicated, it has rules and traditions the reader must understand to follow the rest of the story. Still a lack of urgency is a very real problem and it does not a good writer make if you ignore the input of your betas just because it's a little work.

So I thought about ways to build urgency - how about a villain actively working against the players through the plot? No... I do have villains but they are very powerful people who's leverage on the beginning of the book would probably keep our reluctant hero from agreeing to go without three pages of combatant dialog. No, the Brushcasters need to stay where they are.

What about a ticking clock? A time limit would impose some urgency and up Cat and Peter's emotional dilemma because a rush to save the world is a rush to put poor Pete in an early grave. That could do... it can't just be contrived though. I need to find a way to get it in without it creating an audience perceived False Urgency. Otherwise known as the "Just'cuz"es.

A "Just'cuz" is when an author's fingers start to show. "Why did he do that?" Author - "Just because." "Why did he decide to go there?" Author -"Just 'cause". "It was extremely lucky that he went to that town to run into the next action scene." - "Yeah, I needed him there for the plot"

The Just'cuzzes are as bad a disease as the Yes-mans and the Bamboo Traps. These things pander to the audience and insult their intelligence. I needed to find an integrated way to up the intensity that isn't Lady Creven saying "'By the way, I'd like you to complete this dangerous journey in about a week... Thursday's my only free day, you see. Does that fit in your schedule?" So what solution did I decide to employ? Well... it's all a matter of festivity.

I've had an elaborate backstory for a while now, but I took it out of the book because a large part of it had nothing to do with Cat. It still doesn't, really, but it has a lot to do with the rest of her world. I used the backstory as a stage and invented this great big huge festival in which the people of the Valley try to fulfill the same prophecy Cat and Peter are trying to fulfill in the book. This festival takes place on a specific day and time - the only day and time that "success" can take place. Unfortunately that festival day is a week away. Cat's going to have to hurry to keep the world from dying.

This solution is super. I can use the festival theme throughout as Cat moves from town to town. We see the decorations going up; the signs and festivities and how hopeful the people are that this will finally work. Little do they know that Cat's the one REALLY trying to fulfill the prophecy and the Brushcasters are actively trying to stop her. It gives us a C story that is separate from Cat's main quest but parallel so I don't have to cut away to any sidescenes. I've already implemented it up to a point. I have a little more rewriting to do before it's done... but I think I'm content. It definitely gets the beginning of the quest to go a bit faster.

The Ensemble Cast: a Collection of Names

I thought it would be fun to share a little wisdom I've found writing a book with a very large cast and a bit of a tactic I use to implement it.

Threadcaster, as some know, is a quest story - Cat and her horribly afflicted friends travel their small world on a grand adventure. They meet a lot of people on their journey - some important, some not so important, some only important later on. So the questions is - if you meet ten new people every place you go how do you help your readers keep it straight? The answer I've found is as simple as ABC.

That's right; the Alphabet. Reading is a visual activity as much as an aural one and having a lot of characters with similar names can be very confusing. For the eye, starting the name with different letters helps the reader differentiate at first glance - if the character is the only person in the whole book whose name starts with "F" then the reader will instantly say "Oh! It's the "F" name guy!" when he shows up again. Let's apply this to Threadcaster.

As a bit of an exercise I opened a blank document and listed all the letters A-Z in rows, then filled all the names of people we meet with any significance. I do a pretty good job of this already it seems ... but some letters (A, J, and M as it turns out) had an uneven number of characters listed. These might get confusing so I've taken some of the minor characters out and either not named them at all (Is it really important to learn the Mayor's first and last name?) or renamed them (Ashley is a very minor character tucked in with some important ones like Aiden... so I swapped her for Heather since I only had one H.)

I try not to name two characters in the same place with the same letter unless it's plot-appropriate, and I try to make reoccurring side-characters the only ones in their list. This way I think the cast, although large, is a little easier for the brain to sort - and if there's one thing I pride myself on in this book is how easy I want it to read and understand. It's taking a lot of work and brainpower on thsi end of the pen but for you, noble readers, I hope it's pretty easy.

Replotting the path to Water Town

In response to the twitter freakout I had a little bit ago, I realized I was flaying my baby to the point that there was no life or love in it anymore. This, of course, is no good, so I got out an oversized sketch-pad and an offensively orange pen and wrote down what my troubles were. Aside from motivation issues and otehr problems I realized that the major problem here is that Cat didn't have a thing to do before she reached Water Town. She's the protagonist; if it's not important to her then it should not be included, even if it's developing the personalities of characters we'll be killing off shortly.

So this begs a new question; how can I accomplish the same end using Cat as a more prominent character. I won't get into all the details but suffice it to say I've run out of ink in my offensively orange pen and I have a plan for a new, better scene that will play out at the beginning of 60-90. It will involve the Brushcasters and will give Sharon and Kindle more definite direction. I hope it works in my favor... and that this new scene will eliminate a bunch of the questions and concerns that have been dogging me for months. Here is a short list of what I hope the new scene will accomplish for future reference:

1, It will include the Brushcasters without killing the action and explain a bit of what they are and how they work without having a lecture scene - although I like the lecture scene. I'll use as many elements from that as I can in this new scene.

2, It give Kindle a chance to be the hero again and take off through the wild blue yonder. With one more act of courage perhaps she will justify her existence?

3, It will put Cat in Chalsie-Veneer first, therefore allieviating a lot of the problems I had with getting people into town.

Wish me luck on this stuff, I'm not sure how it's going to work out. You might see some graveyard days go up here shortly as a result... or you might not because at this point the previous series of events is pissing me off so much I'd rather not look at them again.

First step: Ask yourself questions

A lot goes into making a really good plot. It's hard work and takes a great deal of reconsideration. When you spy your own work with a critical eye you get the closest glimpse you can get to what your reader will see. Even if they are the forgiving sort of reader that will bark just because you command them to, the back of their minds will still know when something is amiss or awry - when a plot hole opens or a decision hits air on that shark in a jetski. This is my method for developing stories; ask questions.

This works when helping others too. When I sit down with a writer friend who is having trouble with their story I start by asking questions. They're sometimes obvious questions, sometimes more specific, but in the process of figuring out the answers the friend comes to understand a little bit more about the world that lives in their head. I like it when other people ask me questions about my world or my characters... part of me knows everything there is to know about Threadcaster Land and sometimes the answers that come out of my mouth are news to me, too. Like someone asked "How does a Wind Curse die?" and I answered, "They're turning to air so they're wasting away." and the other asked "Does that make them short of breath?"

Hadn't considered that before... but yes, yes it would. If Water Curses have coughs because the water is filling their lungs then why shouldn't the Wind Curses have athezma and the Fire Curses have heartburn? There's no reason for them not to. Right now I'm asking myself the questions "Why don't Earth Curses spit rocks?" to which my mind answers, "I don't know, Jen, why DONT they spit rocks?" Look forward to seeing at least one person sneeze a cloud of dust when we get to Earth Town.

I decided to ramble about this question thing because I've hit a snag in the revising (I don't have time to do it) so instead i've been brainstorming the next couple steps in the story. We're rapidly approaching the end as far as outline is concerned, but the outline was written years ago and things need to be changed. To solve this, I got out the old pen and paper and started writing my steam of consciousness:

Where do we go next:? Why do we go into town when Cat knows it's dangerous there? What if they go straight to the Curses instead of going through town first? Weigh options: two columns Positive and Negative.
Positives: Excuses the fact I can't figure out a reason for them to go.
               Excuses the fact I can't figure out what to do with them once they get there
               Speeds the story up where it needs to go fast.
Negatives: Astonage is kind of an important location for our epic past, it'd be a shame not to see it
               We have a letter to deliver there - but is that important enough to send the whole party AND the      
                quest into danger? No, no it's not.

Thinking about this problem presented me with a solution; what if Cat goes in alone. She wouldn't risk everyone to deliver a letter... and a promise would be enough to get her in and out quickly. It also adds variety to the City-town combo we've done three times previously, and gives Cat a chance to choose to do something on her own as opposed to begging Pete to go along with her as she's done all the way to this point.

So there's a solution to that... which poses another query. I know what she'll find while she's there... but what will she get out of her visit? She shouldn't do anything if it doesn't move her toward her ultimate goal. She has to find something in town to help her. This leads me thinking about the next location, the kind of environment they're headed toward and who they will inevitably meet there. To spare anyone else my train of thought, I came up with a satisfactory solution through asking myself questions, making positive/negative columns for comparison and writing the word SOLUTION really big and cockeyed on the page. It's a system that works for me... maybe it will help you other writers out there as well.