Irreversible Change
In How to Revise Your Novel lesson two, Holly Lisle says that the kind of change that matters is “irreversible change”. Using the example of a character getting a new haircut, she points out that it isn’t interesting to the reader because the character’s hair will grow back, there is nothing life-changing about it.
I think she has a good point. Though one could argue that something irreversible could happen because of the character’s haircut, the haircut in and of itself is not an important, irreversible change.
It occurs to me, on the other hand, that it’s possible for even irreversible change to be rendered meaningless. Even if there’s foreshadowing and build-up to a supposedly significant, irreversible change, if the change happens and doesn’t carry the weight implied by the foreshadowing, the reader is disappointed and bored. The reader may not understand why they’re left feeling dissatisfied, but the author failed to supply the promised payoff.
In the books leading up to Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer, we are told time and again that becoming a vampire is life-altering, it’s tragic, and that it’s difficult—nearly impossible—to control the vampiric bloodlust. The question of damnation in the afterlife is brought up directly and indirectly. Bella begs to be changed into a vampire, and Edward refuses her every time, not wishing the unlife of a vampire on someone he loves. Finally, in Breaking Dawn, Bella is given her wish, but instead of watching her struggle to transition into the life of a vampire with her respect for human life intact, we learn that being a vampire is easy! It’s even fun! She has the special powers, and she has super-resistance to that pesky bloodlust after all! The issue of damnation is never brought up again, and Bella is even able to maintain a relationship with her father.
This is an irreversible change that has no meaning. Life is barely different for Bella than if she’d never become a vampire at all, except that she has super powers that are only helpful. There are no drawbacks. Edward’s reluctance to change her in previous books now seems like mealy-mouthed excuses. What was he so worried about?
So it’s not only that the change needs to be irreversible. It also needs to create conflict, and it needs to be followed through with just the right amount of payoff.
Staying Connected With the Work
I have a policy of not working on Sundays, even just writing, and even when it’s fun. However, I find that if I spend more than one day away from a manuscript, I get totally lost, and it can take me a couple of days to get back into a comfortable working rhythm.
In the past couple of weeks I’ve had to add something major to my schedule. It became apparent that I needed a real day-job, and since there are none to be had in my region, my compromise is to start selling handcrafted jewelry. This is something I’ve wanted to do for awhile, but my skills definitely need work; my jewelry is good quality for what it is, but my execution needs improvement. So lately my daily routine (which I had just barely made a habit) has been turned topsy-turvy as I’ve added jewelry technique sessions to my afternoons. While planning all of this, getting the tools and materials together, and trying to keep up the new housekeeping habits, my manuscript got left by the wayside.
Sometime this past week I decided it was high time that I finished that first read-through. I ended up having to re-read about fifty pages just to figure out what the heck was going on, and to get a feel for the story again. (It probably doesn’t help that the plot is a train wreck.) Anyway, I just wanted to say how important it is to revisit your work daily for at least a few minutes, even during times of stress or upheaval, in order to stay connected to it. If I’d done so, it would have saved me hours of catching up.
Reasons to Write
I frequently ask myself the question, “Why do I have to write?” I think it’s a crucial question if one wants to survive the ups and downs of the writing life for the long haul. As a visual, tactile person, who sees strange visions of the story and feels the emotion of it before getting “ideas”, someone who is more inclined to create things that can be picked up and touched, why do I feel this burning need to write stories? I’ve always been a storyteller, ever since my days as an overly-imaginative kid running circles in my parent’s living room, telling stories out loud to myself (I never said novelists weren’t crazy). But why?
I hit on the reason awhile ago, but typically for me I’ve struggled to articulate it. It had to do with expressing ideas and beliefs, with drawing people into another world, and by doing so, putting them off their guard, so they might be willing to examine my admittedly odd ideas about the world, what it is and what it should be, with less prejudice. Not that I would necessarily change them, but that they might become willing to open their eyes and see something outside of themselves, at least while reading my work. In a recent email to her list, Holly Lisle said:
“My job as a writer is to create the best work I can, to raise the level of dialogue, to challenge my readers to see the world in new ways and to think new thoughts, to present to them worlds and ideas they have not met before in ways that make them hungry to discover more.”
There it is. She summed up my main reasons for wanting to write. I want to be able to say to other people, “The way you see the world, your fundamental premises, may be wrong. Why do you assume the segregation of children and old people is ‘normal’? Why do you get all your food from cardboard boxes or plastic tubs? Is the big, important job they promised if you went to school really big and important after all, or are you a wage slave?”
Another reason I want to write is because I am endlessly fascinated by other people and the inner workings of their minds. Visual arts can express the internal state of the artist, and possibly of the observer of the art, but it is limited in its ability to reach into the mind of another person, or many persons, and explore their every thought and feeling intimately, to uncover what drives them and what makes them laugh or shout or go quiet with awe.
I feel some tension with the writer’s life. Words are not my first language; feelings and dream-symbols are the language of my mind. But nothing fascinates me more than people and all the many puzzles that make them up.
© KY Craft
Goals for 2010
At the beginning of each year, I wonder whether it’s wise to set these goals, or if it’s even important. I think about skipping this step every year, and this year is no exception. This morning, though, I realized that I finally met a long-term goal of mine in 2009: I wrote a novel. It’s a NaNoWriMo novel, hardly what you could call “complete”, but it has a beginning, middle and end and has a main story arc. I’ve finally done it! So this year, I’m going to keep setting goals and keep trying to reach for them.
Writing Goals
- Revise Dogwood, my 2009 NaNoWriMo novel.
- Write another novel.
- Write a short story and submit it for publication.
Reading Goals
- Read 50 books (every year I participate in the 50 Book Challenge; year before last I read about a dozen, in 2009 I read 27, so I’m getting there!)
- Read 20 books off my list for 100 Project.
- Conquer my own bookshelves! I’d like to put a big dent in the unread books I own.
That’s all for reading goals. I’m trying to avoid any challenges involving specific authors, series or similar since usually end up regretting them. I’m also not hosting any challenges other than 100 Project, because every time I do, the blog I host it at dies a sudden death! Though I’m sure I’ll try again in the future . . . but not right now.
Personal Goals
- Learn to make madeleines.
- Develop a homekeeping routine.
- Learn wirework jewelry making.
- Keep working on bellydance.
I have more personal goals I could list, but I think I’d better keep it reasonable. If I get to other stuff, all the better. Those are the definites.
The mysterious “Evening Primrose”.
Last night I tried to start work on one half of the story that was Amaranth, pulling out the crucial pieces and renaming it Evening Primrose. I’m hoping a re-christening will give me a fresh perspective.
I shouldn’t be stressing yet. But last night a question occurred to me that is causing me some consternation. The first inklings of this novel in my imagination consisted of three elements: a forbidden love, a medieval cozy mystery with fantasy elements, and a castle full of inhabitants who all play a part in the story, including servants.
The troublesome question is this: It feels like a series to me, and I have never read a mystery that wasn’t part of a series. (As for “fantasy-mystery”, which this book is, I have no point of comparison by which to judge.) But if it’s to be the beginning of a long series, I want to pace the forbidden love element out to span the series. In otherwords, the characters involved shouldn’t marry in the first book; I want the feeling of sustained tension. However, the way I was taught to write (and the stance I generally agree with) is to never save anything “for the next book in the series”, because that next book may never be written.
So I’m in a bit of a quandary. Maybe I can resolve smaller questions about the relationship during the course of this book? But how to create the necessary dramatic tension to break the reader’s heart?
I will miss the title Amaranth, but I think it may be best to leave it behind, at least for now.
Sharpening My Skills
He who digs a pit will fall into it,
And whoever breaks through a wall will be bitten by a serpent.
He who quarries stones may be hurt by them,
And he who splits wood may be endangered by it.
If the axe is dull,
And one does not sharpen the edge,
Then he must use more strength;
But wisdom brings success.
~ Ecclesiastes 10:8-10
In otherwords, anyone can fail or experience difficulties in their chosen field of work, but starting out with understanding and skill increases one’s odds of success.
For years now, I’ve been alternately trying to hone my writing skills and chopping away at my works in progress with a dull axe. In fact, there are a lot of areas in my life where I’ve been working and learning at the same time. It’s frustrating, and I’m not sure how well it works to learn so many different things at once. As a married person, I never worried about making money; we didn’t have a lot but we had enough to get by with just my then-husband’s income. I squandered that time playing around, and now I feel like I’m fighting a battle every day to learn new things, and to learn discipline in my chosen path.
Another way of looking at it is that if I need money now, I should try to use skills I already have to earn it (research, article writing), while sharpening my skills in areas that need work (writing fiction). Instead of panicking because I haven’t finished a novel and my dream of being a published writer seems far away, I should write fiction for enjoyment and to learn, and try to make ends meet with non-fiction.
Sometimes, honing my skills means fighting the urge to get ahead of myself, chopping with that dull axe hoping to finally fall a tree with it and instead just getting a big fat splinter in my eye.
Forcing myself to do the fun stuff.
I keep forgetting what I’m supposed to be doing.
I keep trying to write a novel. I made a deal with myself that I would pull back from that goal for the time being, and yet I continue trying to choose one of the projects I’m tinkering with and force it into shape. Last night I tried to split Amaranth up into its original two novels, and it didn’t go well. Basically, there’s not enough left of the storyline I took out to make a whole novel, and I’d have to work out a plot from the ground up. I think the lifelong-love element I was missing from the current incarnation of Amaranth is going to have to wait for a different novel, because it just doesn’t have enough oomph to encourage me to start yet another unfinished novel from scratch again. My Muse is recalcitrant; it doesn’t believe I’ll ever finish anything, so why give me more ideas to just stick in a drawer?
I also promised myself that I would read. Here’s a sad state of affairs: Whenever anyone asks me, “Have you ever read so-and-so?” the answer is almost always no. I’ve usually heard of so-and-so, I’ve meant to get to so-and-so for ages, but have I read them? Nope. This is true both in and out of my genre.
When I was in high school I read tons of Romance novels. But that was quite awhile ago, so now I’m not even familiar with Romance. It’s a problem in two ways: Not only does my subconscious tend to produce Romance plotlines, even though I’ve moved away from Romance and don’t find writing it personally rewarding, but I’m almost completely unfamiliar with my own genre, Fantasy. The authors I have read extensively are Tolkien, Lewis, Rowling, and McKillip, along with a smattering of individual novels by other authors. I never have any idea what’s going on in my genre, except that vampire books are popular and I don’t care for them. I don’t think this is good.
I have to keep reminding myself that my purpose right now is to write for enjoyment, and to read to make up for lost time. I’ve learned that I’m a faster reader than I thought, but that I rarely take time to read. I feel guilty, I feel like I have to justify it, and it doesn’t directly make money, which is, you know, necessary to live. Especially now that I’ve opted only to recommend and not to review, it’s unlikely reading will earn me any coin. But still, I have a goal to catch up on Fantasy. I don’t know exactly what that means, except that I want to look around when I’m standing in Barnes & Noble and know what’s actually inside most of those books. I think that’s kind of ambitious, but I’d like to try.
It’s weird how I’m more resistant to doing pleasant things for my art than suffering for it. Intellectually, the suffering seems more likely to result in finished novels, but it hasn’t worked for me so far. Maybe it’s that whole carrot person vs stick person theory of rewards and punishment. It would be hard to say I’m “goal-driven” but I think you could say I’m “end result oriented”? Which may be saying the same thing, but in a less Type-A Personality sort of way.
- About: A journey into the realms of high fantasy, folklore and medieval romance, with a nice cup of tea.
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PROGRESS:
Dogwood (Revisions)
pages: 14 / 158 (9%)
Foxglove
words: 0 / 90,000 (0%)
50 Book Challenge
books: 3 / 50 (6%)