Inspiration

Whatever your art, I'll bet you all the money in my bank account (all twenty dollars of it) that you have some sort of inspiration, quite possibly from the other arts. If you're a musician, do you look at paintings for ideas? If you paint or draw, do you read stories for inspiration? If you write, do you listen to music? Do you people watch? Go for long walks and let your mind wander? Clean the house? Or does inspiration just strike you like a lightning bolt (you lucky, lucky people)?

I've done all of the above for inspiration in my writing. And, on occasion, for my doodles. But, mostly, for my stories. Prompts, photos, paintings, walks, music; it's all inspiring if you pay attention. For instance, I was listening to an updated, rock version of "The Minstrel Boy," the other day and bam! Story idea! (Does it say anything about my geek side that I chose to share the version of the song sung by O'Brien in Star Trek: Next Generation? No? Oh, good.) And at just the right time, too.

Last night I finally finished the rewrite I've spent almost a year on. I know there are still some things that need tweaking (aren't there always?), but the major edits should be done. Hopefully. We'll see how it goes when I start querying again.

But that wasn't the topic of this post! Inspiration was. And how inspiration strikes right when we need it the most. Keep your eyes and ears open for anything interesting, whether it's something as small as a character tic you want to work in, or something as huge as an entire plot. There's creative fodder all around us; you just have to look for it.

Let us begin with the unfortunate and not-writing news: I did not make Evita. Nerves and lack of practice with an accompanist got the better of me.

The good news is that not getting in the show means I don't have to try to juggle final rehearsals and the RMFW conference in a few months. And, honestly, I think writing is more important to me right now. Especially this monster book I've been working on for six years now. If it means I have to put my other passions on the back burner for a while, so be it.

I'm three quarters of the way through this rewrite, which will hopefully be the last major revisions I need to do on the manuscript. Crossing my fingers for that one!

Word Vomit

Last post today, sorry! I was out all day, running around various parks and meeting new people. But that's not important right now.

What is important is that I've jumped (once again) back on the rewriting horse. I'm about a quarter of the way from finishing this rewrite of Savior, which means I'll be restarting that query brain soon. Hopefully, within the next couple of weeks. I've also officially signed up for the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writer's conference in a few months, and I'm thrilled. I took the dive this year and signed up to participate in a critique session with an agent. If nothing else, it'll give me more exposure to how agents look at things, which is always good.

And, on the not-writing-but-still-artsy side, I'm auditioning for a local production of Evita on Monday. Excited and nervous at the same time, since it's my first time auditioning for a theatre I've always wanted to act in. With me luck!

Oljiru kovy.

The Real World

This week has been another slow writing week. This working in the real world and trying to carve out a niche for myself in the company has been rather a blow to my motivation. Which, of course, is hard to accept, since I'm so dang close to finishing the rewrite so I can start querying again. I want to go back to school and be able to justify sitting at home all day and working. And I've only been out of school for a little over a month now.

The good news? I have yet another project idea. This one playing with a faery tale. I know the faery tale retelling idea has been done over and over again, but that's not going to stop me from writing this, for fun if nothing else. I'm planning on tying it in with the history and myth of my world, which should hopefully make it a bit more unique than just another faery tale retold. Let's all keep our fingers cross for that one, shall we?

Oljiru kovy.

Two days ago, the registration packet for the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writer's annual conference came in the mail. I got inordinately excited. A collection of wonderful workshops, chances to rub elbows with agents and editors, a pitch session, and, hopefully, a chance to see all the lovely ladies in my critique group again. What isn't to like? Well, besides the price tag, but I can easily justify that. And the fact that it's not until September. Though, of course, that just gives me more time to finish polishing before I pitch.

This past week on the writing front has been all Savior, all the time. Mercedes Lackey says that she loves writing revisions, but I much prefer first-drafts. I like getting all the stuff out there, and being able to play and not have to worry about the continuity or whether or not this plot twist is necessary or whether this sentence is much too long. I've been mucking through revisions for what feels like forever now. I know it means I'll have a nice, polished product at the end, but at some point, it just gets tedious. Good thing realizing that I can have a pitch appointment in five months seems to have given me a kick in the butt! I'm almost done with the major revisions and can move onto tweaking.

I would normally put an excerpt from this week in this space, but seeing as I'm currently reworking the middle section of the book, I feel that a snippet might give rather more away than I'd like to put out there at the moment. So, instead, I'll leave you with an excerpt from the beginning of the book. The first two paragraphs, to be exact.

Seven-thirty Ikol Avenue was a small, one-story house straight out of a children’s book: white picket fence, blue tiled roof, red and white checked curtains in the window, a beautifully sculpted, tulip-shaped knocker, and a spattering of blood on the doorstep. 

Trick Mathis hesitated at the gate, his back ramrod straight. His normally pale skin was a sickly shade of yellow, his delicate nostrils flared at the expected scent of blood. He tried to swallow in a dry throat. When that failed, he pulled the black uniform collar over his mouth and nose and pinned it in place  with the bridge of his oval-shaped spectacles. 

Oljiru kovy.

Names, Critique Groups and Kells

This week I discovered that I'm a lot more detail-oriented that I realized. I wanted to write a short set after Savior, but realized that the names I had originally chosen for my twin characters did not fit at all. For one thing, they both started with the letter K, and I already had one person with a K name in the family, so having three was a bit overwhelming. And, secondly, neither of the names fit in with the other Elvish names I used. Keenai and Kalin just don't really fit with Araeli, Kelaen, Caera and Lekotae. So I spent much longer than I should have creating a family tree that will never see the light of day, just to see if these kids could be named after their great-grandparents or anything. I finally settled on naming only one of them with an Elvish name, since only one of their adoptive parents is an elf. The names I wound up with, thanks to discussion with a friend and a tweaked name generator result: Arillae and Enden. I'm much, much more satisfied with these. Yay names! Yay crazy ways to find them!

In related news, I've reworked the majority of the first chapter of Savior. All that's left there is to figure out a form of transportation that melds technology and majyk. I've got a vague idea of what I want to do, but I'm waiting to see what my critique group says before making anything solid. What I've got so far could be read as a bit...silly. And silly isn't really what I'm going for.

On the note of critique groups: I'm thinking about joining another one when I get back to Colorado. One that meets in person, as opposed to the online one I participate in at the moment. I just think I'd like the face-to-face interaction, in addition to email. And goodness knows that my manuscript still needs a lot of work. It's getting there, though. I just want as much input as I can get.

For the "not-writing-but-still-artsy" update of the week, I finally got around to watching The Secret of Kells. It's an absolutely stunning film, if you haven't seen it and are at all interesting in Irish mythology. The artwork is gorgeous, the characters well-developed for such a short span of time (it's only a little over an hour long), and the dialogue perfectly parsed. For me, though, it was even more wonderful, because I've spent months studying Irish history just before the time period this film was set, and to see most of my research represented in this film, in addition to the Irish mythology (which I've also been studying), is just amazing to me. I love it when things interconnect like that, don't you?

Oljiru kovy.

Whoops

A little late this week. Sorry! I got distracted by all sorts of craziness for the last few days--building a set for the show I'm currently rehearsing, finishing up the creative part of my senior project, and possibly starting a new co-authored project with one of the other ladies in my critique group. On top of the typical, life things that always get in the way, like sleeping and eating.

And, yes, you read that right. I've finished the story writing piece of my project. Which leaves me with a semi-academic paper explaining my process, my inspirations and what I gained from writing these shorts (yuck), and my big presentation at the end of the year. I'm tempted to polish up these stories, throw a few old ones in with them, print them out a few times, bind them together into some sort of book and sell them for five bucks a pop. I'm pretty sure no one's going to buy it at a senior project presentation, though. Oh, well. Guess that just means I need to polish them up and send them out to magazines an anthologies instead. That was part of the project goal, after all: a final product that I could potentially look into publishing. Don't worry, the first news of that endeavor will be posted here.

In other news: I didn't win one of the query critiques from Write On Con, but I spent a good hour and a half at Barnes and Noble on Friday, reading through The Writer's Digest Guide to Query Letters, and I have a few more ideas on how to fix up my query before I send it off again. Of course, I need to finish reworking the beginning of Savior before I do so. Motivation! I choose you!

Off to the grindstone! Oljiru kovy.

The Realm of Revision

I'm a perfectionist. At least, when it comes to my creative endeavors. Point in case, I've been working on Savior for six years now, trying to make it as perfect as possible. Of course, each successive draft is "perfect" until I go back and reread to make edits. Then it feels like I've written nothing but dribble. Any other writers/artists out there who feel like this, go ahead and raise your hands. Yeah, I thought so. It's a common problem among us creative types, I think. We never give ourselves enough credit.

What we should be looking at when we go over the most recent draft or the final painting is how far we've come. Yes, we will always see something we can improve; but just think about how much this draft improved over the last. Eventually, there will come a piece we are proud to call our own. I sincerely hope I'm almost there with this book. As I said, I've been plugging away at this story for six years--since I was a sophomore in high school, yikes!--through four versions, and it's still not completely where I want it. This from the girl who never wrote a rough draft for a school paper in her life.

Anyway, what I wanted to get at with this first "real" post is both a reminder to myself and to other perfectionist types out there: perfection changes; there will always be something we could tweak; get it to where you're happy and set it aside for a while. As an example of this "celebrating how far I've come" mindset, I'm going to let you, whatever readers I have, read a bit of one of my oldest and most beloved stories. Four times. No, it's not Savior. It's something that came about before that, between middle and high school, when I was just starting to dabble in creative writing. At the moment, I'm calling it Wizard's Bane, but that's not final. What I'm going to share with you now is the way the opening to this story has changed with each successive draft, from the very first to the one I started a few days ago. Why am I doing this? In an attempt to persuade any other artists reading this that you can improve with practice and that you shouldn't give in just because one draft isn't what you wanted it to be.

So, without further ado, the beginnings of Wizard's Bane:

2004: 
Tomorrow was Naylen’s coming of age. At Noon, he would be fifteen, the time of change and discovery. Naylen was not sure if he was frightened or excited by the impending period of exile. Exactly one hour after the coming of age ceremony, he would be kicked out of Omicron until he found his true identity, name, destiny and all. All of the sorcerers in Omicron had gone through the exile though no one revealed their true name to anyone except the elf-priests so the burial rites could be preformed properly after death. Naylen swore not to give out his name to anyone, that way he could not be controlled by him or her. Naylen got up off his bunk in the boys’ dormitory of the sorcerer school. He headed down to the large oak door that led down to the village.

“Alani,” Naylen called to his warden, the school was so small every student had their own warden, “Alani, I’m going out. I’ll be back by supper, don’t worry.”

As he headed out the door, a heavyset man came jogging up to him. “Naylen, where are you going? You should be resting.” The man stopped and tried to catch his breath.

Naylen laughed nervously. “I…I haven’t gathered my supplies yet. But I swear that I’ll rest when I get back. All right Alani?”

Alani nodded. He was still huffing very hard.

“Good. Bye.” Naylen left the older sorcerer standing in front of the school. Following the well-worn path out of the small wood and into the market, Naylen soaked in all the sights of the village, including the monstrosity that the wizards called a school. When he finally arrived at the market on the other side of town, he proceeded to buy supplies for the journey tomorrow. First he bought a sturdy pack followed by a strong bow, good arrows, dried meat and fruit and finally a small knife. After gathering these few supplies, Naylen hurried back to the school, supper was almost ready.

2006: 

The young sorcerer tread silently through the corridors, wringing his hands. He came of age tomorrow and he still hadn’t gathered any supplies for the quest that would follow the ceremony. Taking a deep breath, he stepped into the gardens that flowed down from the school to the village. The soothing gargle of a fountain calmed his nerves but they quickly returned as his eyes were drawn to the foreboding stone fortress that served as a school for the wizards. He would have to find a way past all that dark magic.

The wizards were well renown for their evil ways. Rumor among the students at Semper Terra, the sorcerer’s school, was that the wizards could drain magick with only a look. Of course the staff was eager to put down these rumors and encourage good will toward their fellow magick users. Most of the students found it hard to think of the wizards as something like themselves: wizards were born of human parents while sorcerers had no such luck.

In fact sorcerers were rare among the world, coming into being only when lightning strikes marble. Every student at Semper Terra had his or her own warden for crying out loud. Wizards despised them; magi were neutral in these disputes, sometimes siding with the wizards and other times with the sorcerers, depending on which mage one spoke to and what was happening with the humans at that point in time. Both sorcerers and magi tried to live among humans without qualms once they were out of school. Of course it didn’t always work…especially when a wizard showed up. That’s really when everything went wrong.

Naylen sat on the edge of the fountain, his mind wandering through his lifetime of lessons. Of course it wasn’t really all that long…he was still very young by sorcerer’s standards. Unwillingly his mind strayed back to wizards and the problems he might encounter trying to sneak past them. 

2009: 

The stone halls of Asharusk filled with the tolling of the bells, summoning students to the first classes of the day.

Naylen Liemdel waited in a shallow alcove, leaning on his broom as he watched the students hurry past. He was a servant in this school for wizards and easily ignored by those who attended lessons. He easily blended into the crowd; with his dusty blond hair and green eyes, he wasn’t exceedingly handsome or horrendously ugly. Just a normal, gawky servant boy. How he wished he had magick and could attend the classes here.

But he was stuck sweeping up the little fragments of magick and spells that got away.

The hall emptied and he stepped out of his alcove, turning his attention to the dust and dirt that the young wizards had dragged in. He hummed to himself as he worked, the bristles of the besom grating against the stone in a hypnotic rhythm.

When he was halfway down the corridor from his hiding spot, a great cheer burst through one of the closed doors.

Naylen jumped at the sound, his grip tightening on the handle of his broom. He hesitated, staring at the place where the sound had emanated. With a hard swallow, he crept toward the door and stood on tiptoe to peek through the tiny window in the wood.

Through the warped glass, he saw a large brown dog sitting on the professor’s desk. The class had erupted into chaos, the students throwing paper balls and harmless spells at each other. Several of the older girls were huddled around a solidly built boy named Tomo Orlan, who had his booted feet propped up on his desk and was idly examining his fingernails.

20011: 

His lungs burned. Leaves, twigs, brush, and thorns snagged his clothing, slapped against his face, and tore at his flesh. Blood trickled down his forehead. He struggled for breath. He stumbled, his foot in a tiny hole. His ankle wrenched and he bit back a desperate scream as he fell. No. No, no, no! He couldn’t stop running! He had to keep going!

Naylen forced himself to his feet, pained tears rolling down his cheeks as he staggered on. If he stopped, the wizards would catch up, and that meant certain death. Even with a sprained ankle, he had to keep going. He had to. A branch snapped back after he brushed it aside, smacking into his eye. He yelped this time, despite his better judgment, and pressed the heel of his palm to his eyeball in an attempt to ease the stinging pain. And still he stumbled forward, limping and crying. The only other choice wasn’t even really an option. At least, it wasn’t one he wanted to consider.

“Stop! Oi! Sorcerer!” That same, rough voice from Asharusk shouted through the forest, making Naylen’s heart leap. A moment later, the violent crashing of foliage shattered the relative silence among the trees.

Naylen kept running, though he was blind with pain and tears. All he knew was that he had to get away. Why he was running, though, was a mystery. He had woken in the middle of the night to his mentor hurriedly explaining some sort of ancient prophecy, shoving a pack at him and telling him to run. Not five minutes after that, a trio of wizards had broken into the school and started shouting, both with their voices and their spells. It hadn’t taken much more persuading to get Naylen out of bed and racing for the woods on the outskirts of town.

***

See how the opening changes over time? It's still the beginning of what will be the same story, give or take a few details or changes to the characters, but the writing is different. As we learn, our style and voice changes, our idea of perfection enters a state of flux, and some of us are driven to dredge up old stories or ideas to renew them with our new knowledge. I encourage you, any and all of you who read this, to try this at some point. Pull up a piece, written or otherwise, and redo it, then compare the old with the new. Which do you like better? Why? What did you learn from this? For me, rewriting this story gives me new insight into the characters each time, new plot twists and ideas, and a new understanding of why this isn't anywhere near ready for publication yet. And, I promise, that's not just the perfectionist in me coming out to play. 


Oljiru kovy.