Dear Secondary Character Who's Shaping Up Nicely,

Cool: trying to strike a bargain by offering to recite your poetry.

Not-so-cool: Falling silent and expecting me to write the poem in question.

I'm not a poet. If you are, the least you could do is help me out here.

Me

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Dear Me,

You don't flinch from slitting throats or destroying the world, but you flinch from writing poetry?

Seriously.

Me

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Dear Primary Character Who's Finally Getting Her Act Together,

I knew you had some fire in you.

Okay, I didn't mean that literally. But still, I'm not complaining.

Me

So in a scene that may or may not stay in the final version of TE, we have a boy who has shapeshifted into a bear, and our protagonist is, essentially, riding on his back to get where she needs to go. (This is, alas, one of those things you cannot research directly!)

My protagonist comments at one point that riding the bear (riding bearback?) felt "like flying, or better than flying."

I don't know whether that will stay either yet. But after I wrote it, I stopped a moment. Because this book is YA, but in my middle grade Phantom Rider books, I'm pretty sure my protagonist says pretty much the same thing. Only she was talking about a magical ghostly dream horse, and my protagonist now is talking about a shapeshifting boy.

And I thought, wow, it's true. Girls really do love horses and boys for the same reasons. :-)

I didn't want to step away from this draft when it was done. I wanted to just go back to page 1 and start the third draft of TE right away. I know well enough how much work I still have to do, after all. I didn't want to waste any more time.

But I made myself step away. "A week," I told myself. "At the least, you have to take a week off. Find other stories to work on in the meantime."

So I did. And late last night, it began happening.

Things began going clickety click.

Oh, if I add this at the beginning, we'll have a sense of overarching tension.

Oh, if I let this happen here, I can get rid of these tedious chapters in which the characters talk and talk, trying to figure out how to make that thing happen.

Maybe somehow I can explain this back here ...

Maybe I can move that there ...

Maybe I no longer need this after all ...

Right. If I keep up this not-writing a bit longer, I might actually get some serious work done. :-)

One of the useful things about writing short fiction is, it reminds me in a sort of snapshot form what my writing process is like.

I turned in a short story a few days ago--and looking back, it took me five drafts:

Draft 1: Write the wrong story. But sort of kind of get a feel for what the right story is about. (The exploratory draft.)
Draft 2: Write the right story. But with all the wrong words, muddled arcs, and not enough sensory vividness.
Draft 3: Get something approaching the right words. Only with lots of the wrong words still mixed in.
Draft 4: More right words. Not so many wrong words. Much tighter.
Draft 5: Polish until my teeth hurt.

Or something like that. This is pretty much a minimum, for me--that story went unusually smoothly. Any one of these draft stages can get repeated multiple times.

But it's good for me to remember this. Because today I finished the second draft of TE, and it really is a merry muddle.

But instead of despairing, I look at the above and think, no, draft two is right on target for what a draft two generally is, given my writing process.

And for about the millionth time, I take that leap of faith: There is a book here. I'll get there yet.

Lesson for characters in contemporary fantasy novels #318: As soon as things go weird, turn off your cell phone to save the battery. You're going to need it later.

Useful things about running #287: Even when the running is feeling slow and awkward and nowhere close to flying, your brain will use it to do story work. Heck, your brain will do just about anything to distract you from the fact that you have another 20 minutes of this to go.

=-=-=-=-=

Been working on both TE and a short story this month. Interesting to try to work on more than one project at a time, something I'm not always good at. But in some ways useful--when I jam up on one project, I can switch to the other instead of bemoaning my lack of productivity.

At least, that's now it's working this week.

( Thoughts on a multiple messy drafts sort of writing process )

In some ways, the whole preliminary exploratory draft of TE was about simply figuring out that my protagonist had run away from something she shouldn't have run from. So much is changing in the second draft, right down to the specifics of why the protagonist is running.

And yet other bits of the story keep finding their way from that exploratory draft back into the first real draft of the story, too, in unexpected ways.

Some bits are getting tossed for good, though (or at least until they find another story), and some of those I'm a little sorry to lose--like this one:

"Is she your girlfriend?"

"Not anymore," he said.

"Did you know--" my voice trailed off.

"That she was making plans to kidnap you to some realm of the gods? That she even could do such a thing? That by telling her I'd met you I was helping her find you? Oh, yeah, sure, I knew all of that, and I still offered to take her to the movies Friday nights."

None of that fits for the story I'm now writing, at all--M isn't even the sort of character who could have a boyfriend anymore, and there really is no realm of the gods anymore, either, and there only sort of ever was.

But the ghost of the old story still haunts the new one. Some part of me never fully forgets that M and A had a thing going at one point, and even though that doesn't even make sense now, it will still probably affect the story I'm actually writing in subtle ways.

I wonder whether all the stories we write are quietly haunted by--and quietly influenced by--all the stories we decide not to write.

Dear Character We're Never Going to Meet On Stage: It's not even your fault. That's the worst part, isn't it?

Dear Protagonist Whom of Course I Trust and Respect: Do you really think it's a good idea to get a thousand-year-old sorcerer hyped on sugar and caffeine?

Dear Story: Will you please stop handing out superpowers? It's not like they're free, you know.

=-=-=-=-=

The book is being very--non-linear--about getting written this week. Much back and forth, much of each new thing that happens (and each stray realization, too) altering the things both before and after it.

There's a story in there somewhere. Halfway through the second draft, you'd think I'd be more confident about finding it. :-)

One day, I'll actually meet up with the text of the first draft again, I just know it.