Natasha Fondren

I’m weary of devices. They’re everywhere. It gets to the point where you read a novel, and you’re thinking, “Ah, yes, foreshadowing. Interesting choice of symbol. Oh, drop a bit of suspense there, huh? Red herring, that. Uh-oh, theme alert: INCOMING!”

There is sort of an image authors like to maintain, that these things—these themes and symbols and the like—are all mystical happenstance. Like Isabel Allende writes:

“But there is something magic in the storytelling. You tap into another world… I have a feeling that I don’t invent anything. That somehow I discover things that are in another dimension.”

Okay, I concede: sometimes things just show up in the book. Themes emerge. Symbols happen. John Irving likes to laugh and shrug and say the bears in all his novels are just coincidence.

Seriously, LIKE HE DIDN’T NOTICE. Once they were there, he made the conscious decision to keep or delete.

Sure, there are writers who end up with that stuff in their novel and don’t realize the technique they’d used. You think their editor didn’t notice? Didn’t consider the keep-or-delete question? Didn’t bring it to their attention?

Yeah, NO.

Which brings me to what I wrote today. I spent an hour writing it, and three hours desperately trying to cover my symbolism and delete all but the essence of my theme.

I spent more time unwriting than writing.

And it still seems to me that all the devices are there in blinking neon lights. Yes, I’m weary of it. Yet these are the elements of fiction; these are the tools of our craft.

I’ll admit that I’m pretty adamant that pseudonym speak nothing of craft. It spoils the magic. No one wants to see the cameras or the supports behind the props.

But there’s not a period in my work that’s not crafted.

So that’s where I am today: frowning at my work and trying to figure out how I can hide all the craft. That’s the challenge. Make it all too blatant, and I irritate readers. Heck, I irritate myself.

More unwriting tomorrow.

What think you?

You know writing’s not going well when you say to yourself, “Just write one good sentence today. That’s all you have to do. Write one good sentence.”

Yeah, well. All those posts the past week? I wrote before New Year’s. Glenn left New Year’s Day. I’ve been a regular old Eeyore since then. Worse: Eeyore with a sore throat and a cold.

I’m in a numbers group that sorta is in fizzle stage from the holidays (I’m sure we’ll get back to it), where we “just” have to write 100 words a day. That helps.

But on really bad days, I get down to, “Just open the document. That’s all you have to do. You don’t even have to read it. Just open it.”

I’ve started thinking about my New Year’s resolutions, but no doing. Well, I just looked up and realized my camper is clean and I have my candles set out. I always resolve to think about my New Year’s resolutions, but not stress about getting to the “doing” part for awhile.

And lo and behold, I just realized I’ve gone and started them. I’ve added visualization and meditation already to my daily routine. Huh. I’ve exercised a few more times than normal.

I didn’t even notice.

That’s the magic of “just.” If I “just” start, sometimes I surprise myself and do a whole lot more. Even if I’m slow and mopey.

How do you motivate yourself when Eeyore has taken possession of your enthusiasm?

I’m back to sentences. My first story (novella—2001) was a bit of a Harry Potter rip-off. Really sort of ridiculous, considering the genre pseudonym writes in, but I had a blast creating a magic-filled world. I made lots of mistakes, which I look back on with some fondness and a lot of embarrassment, considering it’s still out there. (*cue The Twilight Zone music*)

It would be hard to read it now and not laugh myself to absolute tears. We’re talking rolling-down-the-face tears. I don’t dare. Just remembering the names I gave the characters makes me giggle.

The second story I wrote was a short story. I don’t remember what it was, but I remember that period of my life. After teaching, I’d kick back in front of my desktop (A desktop! One of those archaic things! *snicker*), and I’d spend an hour toying with a paragraph.

I’d consider the nuances of each word choice. I’d look nearly every word up in the thesaurus, constantly checking that I was choosing just the right one. I’d read the dictionary for fun. I’d spend hours on a single paragraph. Gosh, it was a blast!

But then came money and pounding the keys and daily word counts and frets and worries and deadlines and… all that baggage.

Still, I grew to love plot. I have been plot-obsessed for two years. I love knitting together a plot. I can sort of understand why James Patterson enjoys (besides the financial gain) hiring co-writers: when I’m done playing with the puzzle of the plot, the grind of actually writing it seems… boring.

I’m a pantser, but my current hat tip of a novel to Les Miserables means I pretty much know the entire plot. And now I’m back to toying with sentences and playing with paragraphs.

I feel like a craftswoman again. I feel like my hands are wrist deep in clay.

It even feels Zen, taking my eyes off the top of the mountain and focusing on just the one step in front of me.

So what are you loving right now? What are you focusing on? What is making it fun for you?

I’ve been dreaming characters. This book I’m writing is a modern retelling of Les Miserables, which I’ve tentatively titled Tears of the Wretched. Tentatively because it’s a little melodramatic. But then so is Les Miserables.

Every time I think about what I’m attempting to write, it scares the bejeezus out of me. I cringe just to tell you what I’m attempting. I’m, like, embarrassed that I presume to try this.

So moving on…

I’m dreaming characters. This is so exciting, because they are these vivid, fascinating (to me) characters. They are not main characters, but walk-ons. And they say so much about the world they live in, their society, their family, their life, and who they are, in a very poignant way. (At least, I imagine they do.)

That’s a tall order. They are a picture worth a thousand words.

And they’re so fleshed-out, in my mind, that I could write a whole novel on each one. Which is a problem, because I keep wanting to move them up to major character status. Or actually write a novel on them.

What’s also odd is that I’m not thinking them up. They are hitting me. Bam! I am dreaming them. Just boom! and they’re there.

Surreal. This has never happened to me before, not in nine years of writing.

But thank you, Universe. No way could I write this story without some major divine intervention.

It makes me ponder. I generally focus on my main and secondary characters, and other “bit” characters are added as needed. They’re static, single-function, serving the story and/or the other characters.

Should I be doing this in all my stories? Would I have a livelier, more vivid story if I made each bit and minor character novel-worthy? Even those who are only onstage for a sentence or paragraph?

Am I reading too much Dickens? (I’m currently reading Oliver Twist. Reading Dickens is like sipping a good cup of hot chocolate: comforting and yummy.)

What think you? Do your bit characters make you want to write a whole novel on them? How do characters occur to you? How fleshed out do you go for each character? Major? Minor? Bit?

Since I let myself work on Shiny Idea, I’ve been possessed. I love feeling like this. My god, I love my story. It’s crazy. I wake up early so I can work on it. I think about it all the time.

It’s like this story is a divine mission.

Which is a little depressing, since books of the heart and whatnot do not typically sell. I don’t think I’ve ever written a “book of the heart.” I’ve loved several of the stories I’ve written, but I don’t think I’ve loved my characters quite so much.

This story is so populated, my head is already spinning. I have no idea how I’m going to pull this off. I can’t wait to try.

Different things drive us in different parts of our writing life. I used to love getting in a character’s skin. When I first started writing, I would sit for hours and play with words in a single sentence. Now, my obsession is plot. The more complicated I can make it, the more I love it. Plot is the COOLEST. I think that’s why I’m having so much fun in this one. I love a ton of interweaving connections. I love the mini-stories, the hints and bits you drop and then weave in later, the twists, and—in this one—the far-fetched things I have to challenge myself to “sell” to the reader.

You know me. I love fictional fiction, where belief must be suspended. That’s going to be a struggle in this one, since so many elements are “real.” I love Irving and Dickens and Zafron and Gaiman and the like because you’re reading fictional fiction made real, not realism made into a novel.

Anyway, I’m possessed, loving my characters, and having a blast with plot. This book is going to be FUN to write. It’s a modern re-telling of Les Miserables, which always makes me cry. When I was telling the story of Les Miserables to Glenn, I choked up several times and had tears running down my face. I’ve been dying to do a modern re-telling of it since forever; I just needed the other half.

What about you? How does your current WIP tickle your fancy? Have you ever been possessed’ by a story before? Have you ever had one where “writer’s high” is nearly constant?

I’m sure you can write from different points of view. Can you read your work from different points of view? Can you put yourself in a place where your work is a stranger, and you’re seeing it through a specific person’s eyes?

And I need to say upfront that when I use the word “read” below, I actually mean a combination of reading, writing, and editing, all put together.

First, I read it as me, as a woman. I imagine my lonelier moments, particularly when I was sick and lonely in my twenties, because I always hope my characters can be friends to those who are having a rough time of things.

Then I try to read it as someone who has zero attention span. This is also easy for me, as I have the shortest attention span in the universe. Okay, not the shortest. But it’s pretty bad. And anytime my attention wanders or I start skimming, I cut and edit and re-write.

Somewhere in there, I try to read it as a copyeditor. I think copyeditors are the coolest, so I invariably end up reading half of the Chicago Manual just for fun, just to double check nit-picky things. Even though I tend not to use the serial comma that it suggests.

I read as both my target readers and my fringe readers. Pseudonym gets mostly middle-aged women, but also quite a few in their twenties, with a sprinkling of men. I think of what they want to get out of my story, and I read to see if I’m giving them that. For my NaNo novel, I’m imagining teenagers to college-aged reading it.

And then I imagine someone who reads my first sentence and hates my voice. Passionately. In fact, even before they get to the first sentence, they are prejudiced against me. They don’t want to like my story. In fact, they can’t wait to hate it and point out all of its flaws. They approach my story with reluctance; my world-building with skepticism.

For them, it’s personal. They don’t like me. If I’m writing in first person, they hate first person on principle. In fact, for them, it’s a pet peeve.

That’s when I make sure hooks are planted, questions are unanswered, and suspense is willing the reader forward. I trim every sentence. I try to make it so that reader can’t help but keep reading.

When my imaginary readers fail me, I beg for real readers, LOL.

Lately, I’ve also been visualizing my story as a graphic novel. I don’t know why. But when I do that, it’s very clear when the pacing falls flat, when I’m thinking aloud too much.

So how do you read your story? Which “skins” do you put on when reading your story? Whose eyes do you read with? How do you edit? How do you decide what goes and what stays?

My NaNo novel is kicking my butt. I’m not saying pseudonym’s stories are formulaic, but they sort of are. They follow a familiar pattern and have familiar elements and, while I do try to bring something fresh to the formula, they have a structure that feels easy to me, because I’ve done it many times. And while pseudonym’s stories have explored every genre under the sun within the confines of her genre, a YA/New Adult novel is completely kicking my ass.

But I’m kicking back. I’m shoving it out. I got busy this month, so I wrote about 20K on a project I was finishing later than I wanted to, plus I wrote about 5K on a novel I want to write sometime soon, plus I lost a lot of days being sick.

So I have five more days to hit 50K. I’ve calculated that if I write 500-750 words an hour for the next five days, about 12 hours a day, then I should be good.

Write or Die is a lifesaver at helping me push the words out past my fears. NaNo has inspired some genius inventions, that’s for sure.

And it’s not just NaNo that’s pressing on me. There are two more novels targeted for New York that I want to write in the next few months, as well as pseudonym has about 60K worth of projects for the first few weeks of 2010, plus a 60K erotic novel I want to test out self-publishing with.

I love my life right now, and I’m definitely feeling the pressure to hustle for fear I’ll lose it. I do need to up my income in the next year… or find another career. And that is NOT an option.

So it’s write or die for me.

How do you push the words out when you’re flailing, but a deadline is looming? How do you hustle?

…when you’re bargaining for your life? We’ve all been there, right? Some life-threatening medical attack, an accident, a huge scare, or—god forbid—a medical disaster in your immediate family? Maybe intense pain?

Whatever the cause, out come the plea bargains with the Universe, God, or whoever you worship.

Last night, I had a killer asthma attack. Nothing much new, and it’s not a big deal except when you’re in the middle of it. Drowning is sure not the way I want to go, that’s for sure. There were a few moments when no air would go in or out, and I mentally told the universe, “I promise I will be a better writer tomorrow.”

And then, when I managed to cough up some of the mucus, I wondered what my friends would promise.

But first, there are two great things happening today. First, Susan Helene Gottfried has started a Women on Wednesday Meme in order to celebrate women authors. (I’ll be joining in after November is over!) Second, for the first time, a charity for sexual abuse survivors has made the finals of L’Oreal’s Women of Worth contest. Please consider giving Shannon Lambert your vote: the prize is $25,000 to the winner’s most charitable cause, and sexual violence is too common and too prevalent to be swept under the carpet as often as it is.

So what are your plea bargains, your promises under duress? What would your characters’ promises be?

Slipping into the zone is not easy. It takes practice. When I was practicing piano, playing now and then, performing now and then, speaking in front of an audience now and then, and practicing Tae Kwon Do, slipping into the zone was second nature.

Flip a switch and there.

Or, as Michael Jordan said, “I know the Zone. I can put it on like an overcoat.”

But the further I get away from piano and Tae Kwon Do, the more difficult this becomes. The snap-boom-on doesn’t happen at command anymore.

I never thought I’d lose that.

Getting into the zone takes triggers. Sit at the piano, there. Bow, there. That’s the problem with computers: they are multi-purpose machines. Sitting at the computer can’t be an instant there, because sometimes you’re watching Hulu, sometimes you’re playing Facebook, sometimes you’re chatting with friends, sometimes you’re writing emails, and sometimes you’re writing.

Add into the fact that when you’re writing for hours a day, you need a little mental break every hour. So even if you were to snap into the zone at your desk, you need to snap in and out of it every  hour.

So how to trigger it? That’s the question. Opening the document seems obvious, but doesn’t quite work. Sometimes going into a full-screen editor helps, like Q10, where all you can see is the words you write. (Sorry about the colors in the preview picture; the colors are customizable.) Other than that?

I’m looking for ideas: What snaps you into the zone? Or, should we brainstorm? What triggers could we use to snap ourselves into the zone?

Not yours. Not your career’s. What are the hopes and dreams for your novel, for the world inside your novel, for your characters?

You all know how badly I want to (finally!) write a story targeted for New York for NaNo. This is taking a whole new process, because usually I start with the romantic tension between two characters, their problems, and go from there.

I’m flying clueless and scared, here.

Worse, I’m also catching up on projects that I’d meant to be completed before NaNo began. I’ve also been writing past planned: the last novella was meant to be 52K, but it ended well over 60K. This one was supposed to end at 48K, but it’s still going steady at 52K. (I’ll probably have to split it in two parts to fit guidelines.) Plus I meant to squeeze in a 20K novella last week.

*sigh*

Anyway, I’m still determined to write a non-erotic novel targeted for New York. This month. But I still don’t “know” it. It’s not “ripe” yet.

One of the tips NaNo gives is, if you’re stuck, to write your hopes for the scene, or your hopes for the book. Not your hopes for getting an agent or getting published or getting a certain advance, but what emotions you hope your scene inspires in the reader, where you hope the scene will take the characters emotionally, how you hope the climax will play out.

What do you want your scene or your story to say? What kind of effect do you want it to have on the reader?

It loosens things up, for sure, especially if I haven’t done enough pre-writing imagining in my head, but I don’t have time to indulge in just waiting longer. I’m getting little glimmers of my story, but not yet enough to know where it begins.

So how do you knock things loose when you’re stalled? What are your hopes and dreams for your current story?