Flashback Friday #1: Waitressing

Heyall! I've decided to start a new feature on the blog: Flashback Fridays, in which I will dig through the mess of my ancient, outdated drafts and fish out something semi-presentable to an audience. Then I'll share it, with a little background and no minimal editing.* Hopefully it will be fun, provide you with a little insight into what I'm working on ... or, err, was working on a couple years ago, and allow ME to appreciate how much I've grown! Let's try it out!

[Now for the moment you've all been waiting for (drumroll, please) ... an unfinished scene written Jan '14, meant to be the opening of one of my WIP's, codename WONDERLAND. This book is one of my more troublesome babies, and you'll be seeing more alternate versions of it soon -- I think it ran up to seven openings before I caught the one I'm using now. Nothing about this scene is still accurate to the book, but I loved it enough to share, in all it's warty goodness. Comment with your favourite line below and you could win something awesome! (and totally imaginary shh just pretend)]



The restaurant was stifling, heavy with the scent of grease and bad cologne. Scarlett was sweltering in her black waitress uniform. She itched to get out, to burst through the doors into the cool night air and never come back. Instead she plastered on a smile and went to refill a tableful of water glasses.
This table sat a party of six — three adults, three children, the youngest of whom seemed to be painting a Picasso in the gravy on the table. Scarlett’s plaster smile became a little strained at this.
“Will you be having dessert today?”
“Actually …” The thickset older woman at the head of the table frowned at the man on her right, and he subsided.
“We don’t need any dessert, thank you,” she told Scarlett.
“Are you sure?”
“Quite positive. But do be a dear and get us some extra napkins. I believe Franklin has upset his plate.”
The heavyset woman had a sharp glint in her eye. It was the look of someone who only bought toilet paper on sale. Scarlett decided not to press for dessert.

On her way back to the kitchen, she caught sight of one of the TVs set up beside the corner booths. It was displaying a local news channel, where one of the news anchors was talking against the backdrop of …

Scarlett’s heart sank at the sight of the smiling fourteen-year-old girl’s face. Emily Keys, her name was. Local kid — she attended a school only six blocks over from where Scarlett’s own younger sister went. She’d been missing for six days.

There was no evidence of foul play, no unusual behavior on the girl’s part before the incident. She had left for school that day perfectly normal, had by all accounts had a perfectly normal day at school, and had biked home from school with a group of friends, only turning off when she reached a residential alley half a block away from home. Then she had simply … disappeared.

They’d found her bike in the alley, when they finally went looking. Lying on its side across a jagged crack in the pavement, one wheel spinning gently in the breeze. Perfect and unharmed. What they didn’t find was the girl.

================

* Originally there was going to be no editing allowed, but then I found a couple things in this snippet that I absolutely COULD NOT post without editing. So I've settled on a compromise -- I will edit as little as possible, and then tell you exactly what I changed in a postscript. Deal? Okay.

DISCLOSURE OF EDITS!!!

Edit #1: second paragraph, first sentence. In the original copy, for some reason it said the oldest of the children was painting in the gravy, but the wording wasn't absolutely clear as to whether the artist in question was child or adult. It was driving me crazy, so I changed.

Edit #2: tenth paragraph, second sentence. My subconscious does this obnoxious thing sometimes where it names minor characters after celebrities I know just little enough about to not realize, in the distraction of drafting, why the name sounds so natural. This scene was one of those times -- in original copy, the little girl was named Alicia Keys, and I didn't realize until I was uploading it to the blog. Oops.

Cleanliness: Next to Usefulness

Today's post is about showering. No, I am not going to tell you about how I read this book when I was eleven and became convinced that the bottom of my bathtub (nearest thing to a boat that I could find) was going to open up and reveal rows of zombie pirates clamoring for me to take their place. Nor am I going to tell you about how this image became so real in my mind that I developed a deathly fear of showering in said bathtub and still feel a tremor of horror when I even see the cover of Isles of the Dead.

It's a good book, really. Just don't read it in a boat/bathtub.

Instead of telling you that story, I'm going to tell you why I think showering is important. One of the wide-spread myths about both homeschoolers and writers is that we spend the whole day in our pajamas. 

This myth is completely true. And completely false.

Let me elaborate. I do, in fact, wear pajama pants ALL THE TIME. I have yet to venture out of the house in them, but as soon as I come home the jeans/skirt/whatever is immediately exchanged for pajamas. ALWAYS.

But this luxury is not without its limitations. I cannot go a day without showering. Not without becoming the most pathetic being on the face of the earth. There seems to be a switch in my brain that turns on as soon as I turn on the hot water. It tells me, 'Enough stalling. Go do something cool.'

Seriously. I don't care what I'm trying to do -- clean my room, write a battle scene, it all gets better if I just take a shower.

And yet I consistently put off that part of my day. I tell myself that I'll do it after I eat breakfast. Then it's after I write a few scenes. And five hours later, I've wasted my day tweaking a million things that didn't need to be tweaked and I still haven't showered. By then I'm so disappointed in myself that my entire day is ruined, and I settle into the Slump of Doom.

All that can be fixed by the Magic of the Shower.

This might be a Sarah thing, but I don't think so. I think there's a connection between cleanliness and productiveness, one we can all use to our benefit. So why don't you try it? Next time you're feeling useless, ask yourself, 'Have I showered today?' If the answer is no, do it.

Then report back, so that I don't feel like the only hygiene-challenged slug in the world.

*This post brought to you by the Magic of the Shower, which reminded Sarah to blog.
**Now Sarah is off to save the world. Or write that scene she's been dreading. Either one works.

Hudson's 1st Law (Or Writing Romance: Sarah Style)

For this post, I'm going to depart from my usual rule and actually try to tell people what to do. Shocking, I know. But recently I've read a number of books which did not do this well, and ended up souring my love for an otherwise excellent book (sometimes an entire series!) Since I can't actually talk to the offending authors themselves, I'm talking to you.

Before I want to go any further, I want to clarify that I'm talking about writing books with romance in them, not romances. There's a distinct difference, and I don't actually have any experience writing romances.

That said, I'm sure the following rules apply to any love story.

1. CHARACTERS BEFORE RELATIONSHIP: Writing Excuses had a few excellent things to say on this subject a while back. (I believe it was in this podcast.) It ties into the concept of character-driven plots versus plot-driven characters. If you want your readers to fall in love with a relationship, first make them love the characters. When we love both characters, we will want them to be happy.

This will make your job much, much easier. If your heroine is whiny and suicidal and your hero is a jerk ... well, you might be able to pull it off. But only if you follow the next rule perfectly.

2. BUILD THEM UP: Loving each other should make your characters better people. I mean, if you want their relationship to last, there has to be something deeper than attraction involved. Identify your characters' emotional needs and weaknesses. Now figure out how their loved one meets those needs and builds up those weak places.

This is the reason I was Team Peeta every page of The Hunger Games. It's the reason Elizabeth and Darcy are meant for each other. They complete each other. They build each other up. No matter how good your individual characters are, their relationship won't go anywhere if you can't find some concrete reason they should be together. And once you have ...

3. KEEP YOUR PROMISES: I cannot stress this rule enough. This is where so many good books go wrong. Once you've made two wonderful characters and drawn a connection between them -- even if it's just the barest hint of foreshadowing -- you MUST follow through. You must.

I'm not saying that every couple you've ever hinted at has to end up together. If that were so, love triangles would be much more creepy. I'm saying that if they don't end up together, you need a really solid reason. Right now, I can only think of three.

a) One of them dies. That's a pretty good reason not to get married. It's also one that will make a lot of people angry with you, so be prepared. Also, it's a good idea to have some satisfying resolution before death steps in, to make your readers feel less cheated.

b) There's someone else who's TRULY a better match. This is a very tricky line to walk. Love triangles are becoming more and more popular these days. I've never written one myself, but I have enjoyed several books that utilize them. (See Hunger Games above.)

This solution itself has a few rules, the first and biggest one being FORESHADOWING. It boggles my mind when I read a five-book series where a possible relationship is very clearly underlined, then disrupted with an alternate love interest who turns out to be evil, leaving the way open for the relationship again ... and then in the VERY LAST BOOK a spanking new character shows up and skips away with the main character's heart. I mean, really? I put that book down feeling cheated and generally dissatisfied.

Do not do this. I beg you. If you're going to end with an alternate relationship, introduce the other character at least half-way through the book (or if it's a series, even the penultimate book will do.) Make it clear to the readers what advantage this second character has over the first.

c) Your book is a tragedy, or otherwise an exception. I hate tragedies, myself. I don't just think they're depressing -- I think they're unrealistic. I personally believe that everyone's ending is happy, even if it involves their own gory death. If a book ends sadly, it ends too soon. But that's just me, and there must be plenty of other people out there who like sad endings.

As far as other exceptions go, the only thing I can think of is Star Wars. There were several hints of a possible Luke/Leia relationship throughout the movies. Obviously, this turned out to be impossible, since they were actually twins. Still, I've always been a little disappointed with Luke's ending. He obviously wants someone, yet he seems doomed to live his life alone. Depressing. But I still watch the movies, even though they broke their promise to me and to Luke.


I have several more rules for my own romance writing, but those are the only ones I really think should be universal. To be honest, I don't understand why so many people break them. Perhaps they're afraid of being 'too predictable', or doing the same thing everyone else does. I have news for those people -- good plotting is not cliché. It's what makes me read a book more than once. And as a reader, I would a million times rather be able to predict the ending than feel that it was contrived and unnatural.

Please, please, please write romance that builds my faith in love, rather than convincing me that I'm better off alone. The world needs your help. So do I.

Rant over. You may turn the Christmas music on now. (December! Eee!) (Does this mean I'm allowed to wear my snowman pajama pants now? Cause I sort of broke them out in October ...)

Butterflies (Or First Drafts: Sarah Style)

When I first started writing, I read a lot of books about (would you believe it) writing. Among them was Seize The Story, by Victoria Hanley. I highly recommend this book -- it gave me the perfect combination of inspiring advice and kick in the pants that got me through Sarawen. But today, I'd like to quote the only sentences that I do not relate to.

"I dread starting a new book the way I'd dread living in the middle of an especially disturbing nightmare. Getting through that first draft feels very much like clawing my way through solid rock using only my fingernails."

This image caught my fancy so much that I have it heavily underlined in my copy of the book. It was my mantra as I launched each failed beginning, my solace when I began to believe that I could never make it. "So what if it's terrible?" I'd tell myself. "All first drafts are terrible, and none of them are fun. If I just make it to the end, then I can revise! That's the fun part."

I'm not sure when I realized just how ridiculous that was. It might have been Christmas Eve of 2009, when I stayed up until two in the morning wrapping presents, and then pulled out my laptop to get just a few more words in before bed. It might have been in March 2010, when I wrote my first love scene, a scene that made my mother cry. It was surely before that October day when I wrote my first 8k day and crested the climax of the book. It doesn't really matter when I realized it, because it's true.

I love first drafts.

Are they hard? Yes. Are they long? Yes. Do I sometimes stare at the stationary, blinking cursor until I'm sure my eyeballs are bleeding? Absolutely. But with all the pain, with all the heartache and the frustration, there is nothing more beautiful than watching your precious story take shape before your eyes. It's magical. It gives me butterflies.

On November first, I started my new novel, A Winters Tale. The first day was agony. The second was better. On the seventh, I fell in love. I wrote a scene so glorious, it kept me up three hours past my bedtime. I danced all the way to bed and rose in the morning with a song in my heart. That scene stayed with me all day, glowing somewhere near my abdomen. I wanted to curl around it and never let it go. I wanted to share it with the world.

Three days later, I am rattled. I am vexed. I may even be frothing at the mouth. Why, you ask? Today, I reached a scene that WILL NOT WRITE! I am currently beating it into submission, abusing my poor keyboard in my fury. But beneath it all, the glow is still there. I am a writer. And this is what I love.

2 Weeks Post-Op

I have survived. The worst is behind me ... or at least, I hope it is.

The last two weeks have been rough. I have cried and bled and taken pictures. I have lost weight. Maybe ten pounds. Maybe more. (My bathroom scale isn't all that reliable. This morning, it told me I weigh a whopping total of 0.00 lbs. Yippee!) (NOT. I was only 127 lbs to begin with. That seems like a good weight to me. Besides, I miss food. A lot.)

On the bright side, I'm completely off painkillers and able to sleep most of the night. The wounds are healing well, according to my orthodontist. The swelling is almost all gone. So is the bruising, except for one dark spot on my throat. (No idea what happened there.) My bite is wonderful. Strange, but wonderful.

And Horizons is 60,000 words. My record for words-written-in-a-day? Ten thousand and four.

Am I pleased? Yes, I am pleased. Am I sane?

Um ... More ice cream? Yes, I would like some more ice cream, please.

Catching Up

First, a few pictures!

Me, morning of August 31. (Happy Birthday, Lizard-beth!)

My bruising, evening of August 31. I wore the sickly

yellow shirt to match, of course.

So late on September 1 that it was technically September 2.

Really September 2. As you can see, the swelling went 

back up a little overnight. Yes, the deer-in-the-headlights

look is intentional.

September 3, and the swelling is holding steady.

So is the bruising.

Now here I am, sitting on the couch, staring at the

headlights of my laptop right before it runs me over.

The marks where it ran me over, duh.

So that should give you an idea of what's been happening with my jaw. It's healing well enough, though I have trouble sleeping at night. I'm trying to keep my head elevated, which means I have to prop myself up with pillows to sleep. And with the jaw pain, it's hard to lie on my side. I never sleep on my back. So sleeping is probably the hardest part.

And eating. Eating stinks. But my wonderful parents bought me some of the taboo flavoured oatmeal packages, so I can whip myself up a meal in as much time as it takes to boil water. That helps.

On the bright side, I WROTE 31K THIS WEEK!!! (Breaking my words-in-a-day record. TWICE.) I am so in love with this book. More in love than I was with Sarawen. Maybe it's because it's a sequel, and I already have the plot mapped out in my brain. Maybe it's because I'm a better writer. Whatever it is, I am rejoicing as a strong man to run a race. Minus the sweaty icky parts. Plus sleep-deprivation. But, you know. It's a simile, so anything goes.

Also, I had my first post-op appointment on Thursday. Everything is going great. Wounds are clean and healing well. Yay! I got to see x-rays of the hardware in my head. It was pretty sweet. I'll see if I can scan one for you guys soon.

Fun With Names

So, I'm working on the side project for a few days. (I'm just too drained to edit Sarawen anymore. Yes, this is how I recover from writing. By ... writing.) And for the side project, I need inns. A fair number of them. And they need names. So I did a little searching and found this handy generator. Modified it a bit to fit my world and voila! Inn names galore! No guarantees that they won't be a little wonky, though. Take a look at some of the gems I've discovered:

The Prancing Crown

The Lovesick Fist

The Rosy Harp

The Yak's Lair

The Bard and The Squirrel

The Shining Wagon

The Smelly Mermaid

The Diamond Squirrel

Those were all created by my friendly neighborhood random number generator. (Except for one. One is a fake that I slipped in there. But you can't guess which one, can you? Can you?) Most of these probably won't make it into the book, though I rather like The Lovesick Fist. Here are a few that probably will:

The Cowardly Centaur

The Thief and The Unicorn

The Blind Sphinx

The Laughing Elf

The Silent Flute

The Withered Rose

The Cat and The Fairy

Also The Dirty Mug, but I totally made that up myself. What's the best inn name you can come up with? (Note: by posting it, you are giving me permission to put it in my book. Unless you say 'please don't,' in which case I will cry but obey.)

Out of Context

I don't know what to say today. So I'm turning the blog over to ... myself. Behold, a lot of out of context lines from books I have not written yet. (These lines may or may not make it through the edits. They may not even make it through first drafts. But you want to read them anyway, right?)

* * *

Guard: Hey! This is private property! You and your sweetheart go canoodle someplace else.

Boy: (splutters)

Girl: (indignant) We are not canoodling! I don't even know how to can noodles!

* * *

Wife: I'm old, [Husband].

Husband: I know.

Wife: (winces)

Husband: That wasn't what I meant to say, was it?

Wife: I hope not. What did you mean to say?

Husband: I love you.

* * *

Girl: If you lose your head like that again, we'll both lose our heads!

* * *

Girl: I was trained to use this on men who are less than animals. Don't prove yourself one of them.

* * *

I hope you got something out of that. If you didn't, too bad, because I'm not going to explain it to you. Feel free to write your own explanation in the comments. (EDIT: Please, please write your own explanation. Pretty please?)

Bonus points if you figure out which character appears in two of these snippets, and which snippets. (If you know his/her name, too, then you're my mother or sister, and you're not allowed to guess anything. Bad, bad family member.)

P.S. Does anybody know how to can noodles? I'd really like to learn ...

Falling In Love

I didn't really get much editing done yesterday. Or the day before. I've been too busy falling in love.

His name is Dogface. And he's a character introduced in Book 2 of Sarawen. He appeared on Thursday, and he brought a whole cast of new, shiny characters with him. This thread has it all: humor, romance, tragedy. And novelty. We can't forget novelty.

A new story (or part of a story, as this really ought to be called,) always sucks up my brain for a few days. It's just part of the frantic, intoxicating rush of creating characters, naming characters, killing characters, marrying characters ... How can I even think of editing when all these brand new people are bouncing around in my head? But the rush is over. I think. And maybe, just maybe (PLEASE?) this is going to be the last thread I add to the series.

Goodness knows it's long enough already.

The Best Laid Plans

You remember that time when I told you I was going to blog the next day? And have pictures? And, you know, words?

You remember how I didn't do it?

I'm totally not sorry. Because while I was supposed to be writing that post, I finished editing Dann and Resni!!!

Eek! This is exciting news, people! (Aside from the fact that it's totally boring and all.) D&R ARE ONLY, LIKE, A FIFTH OF THE BOOK!!! And to make it even more awesome, I checked some numbers this morning and realized I have edited over a third of my book. That is a lot. The edited portion of my book is as long as most full novels.

Yeah, my book is really long. But that's the other exciting news! It's getting shorter! I've cut over 25k from my first draft length. Not bad, considering that I've only edited a third of the book. If I can cut another 25k, I'll be under 200,000 words total.

So to commemorate this momentous occasion, I'm going to give you some interesting facts about the D&R plot thread. (I'm not sure how much this will mean to people who haven't read the book. But you'll at least pretend to be interested, right?)

Fact #1: At 40k, D&R is the second shortest of my four plot threads. (Of course, that might be because they're edited. But I'm pretty sure they'll keep that ranking.)

Fact #2: They were also the second-last to be created: I only came up with their story a few weeks before I began work on what eventually became my first completed draft. (As opposed to Sara, who's been there since the beginning of time, N&M, who came into being on my second failed attempt to write the book, and Jia, who was actually added mid-book. As in, I was 20,000 words in before I thought of her.)

Fact #3: D&R were what kept me going through that first draft. They were just SO FUN to write! I remember times when I was frustrated with all my other characters and ready to throw my laptop out the window, and then I'd write a D&R scene and the world was interesting again. They saved my neck.

Fact #4: They were not nearly so fun to edit. For some reason ... perhaps their late addition to the story ... I had a really hard time latching on to voice for these two. I would guess about half their scenes had to be totally rewritten. What. A. Pain.

But am I happy with the finished product? OH YEAH!!! There's something incredibly fulfilling in looking at a completed story in the chaos that is my first draft. Something that makes sense from beginning to end, that I wouldn't be ashamed to show to an agent. Now I know it's still a long way from finished. There's a lot more polishing that needs to be done. But what I have now is so much better than what I had before. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go see if I can polish off N&M too. Then we'll really have a party.

It's Got Ups And Downs

Writing has its downsides. That might be a bit shocking to hear me admit. Everyone who knows me knows writing is my life. But, like all great things, it can cause problems. And I'm not just talking about the time when I didn't shower for three days because I was writing the climax of the book. (Erm, let's pretend I didn't tell you about that, okay?)

In this particular post, I'm talking about health. I went to the chiropractor a couple weeks ago, and I was really messed up. After an extremely painful adjustment, he asked me how much exercise I got. My answer: Um. I walk to church? And to the library? When was the last time I left my house, anyway? Him: What kind of walking? Do you do any exercise that makes you sweat? Me: ARE YOU KIDDING ME? IF I SWEAT, I'LL HAVE TO SHOWER, AND THAT'S FIVE MINUTES THAT I DON'T SPEND EDITING! DON'T YOU REALIZE I HAVE TO FINISH THIS BOOK BEFORE MY SURGERY IN AUGUST AND WRITE A QUERY LETTER AND A SYNOPSES AND EAT FOOD?! I DON'T NEED MORE DEMANDS ON MY TIME!!!

Let us have a moment of silence to reflect on why I have a blog. (Actually, this helps me write.) (Actually, so does exercise.) (The real problem with exercise is that it requires me to clean my room quite thoroughly, which I haven't done since last week.)

Okay, I didn't actually say that to the chiropractor. I thought it. But then I thought, 'Exercise is a good thing, really. It always makes me more productive.' I resolved to exercise more. And then I thought of a really great person to kill in book 4. And I forgot about exercising. (I was also supposed to go back to the chiropractor last week, which I didn't do, because he's a half-hour away and I can't drive. I think it would really break a sweat to walk there, and that would be a pain, because I wouldn't even have a shower handy.) By the time I remembered, my sinus trouble had started, and most of my usual exercises (jumping jacks, sit-ups, hopping on one foot) was too painful to even attempt. I settled for some wimpy leg-lifts.

And then, yesterday, I finally decided to really exercise. And promptly broke my neck.

No, that's not what happened. But that's what it felt like. I was doing sit-ups, minding my own business, and then I was flat on my back, and my neck hurt. As in, I could not move because my neck hurt so badly. I had to find a way to get up without bending it AT ALL, then stagger over to the couch, grab my computer, and figure out if I was going to die. I'm not. Best I can guess, I messed up one of the disks in my neck, trapping a nerve, which decided to complain. It is still complaining, and I still have about half the normal range of motion that a neck is supposed to have.

I'm going to see the chiropractor today. He's going to tell me to exercise. This time, I might actually cry. (And then I'll have to hold my neck still, because crying really hurts right now.) (I've done a little more research, and come to the conclusion that if I supported my neck when doing sit-ups, this probably wouldn't happen. Not only am I lazy about exercise, I'm really, really bad at it.)

So who wants to come be my personal trainer? I'm warning you; I'll whine. A lot. But I'll love you anyway. (Nobody? Are you sure? Drat. I don't love you anymore.)

And lest you come out of this thinking 'Oh no, the life of a writer is horrible and I never want to do it,' let me show you one of the moments that really makes it worthwhile.

Disclaimer: The star of this moment (baby sister Lizard-beth. Not to be confused with lizard breath.) (Yes, I'm going to keep using these inane nicknames for my siblings even though you all know their real names) has refused to let me share this video unless I make it clear that she doesn't look like this all the time. She doesn't. At six o'clock in the morning, she looks like this:

[Image deleted due to disturbing content. And fangs.]

The rest of the time, she looks like this:

The exception is candid videos, one of which I am about to show you right now. This was filmed on my webcam while Lizzie read the scenes I edited yesterday. Behold the glory of being a writer. (And please, ignore the household sounds/conversations/tantrums in the background. We've got six kids here.) (Sorry about my loud, obnoxious voice. It was loud because I was in a different room from the one I was talking to, being immobilized by above neck injury. I can't help the obnoxious part.) (I can't believe I'm actually going to post this. Deep breath.) (You don't have to watch all of it unless you want to. One minute is enough to get the gist of it. But it's really, really awesome to watch the whole thing.) (At least watch until she whimpers the first time. Please.)