Tuesday, September 30, 2014

When September Ends

Well yikes, last day of September and I haven't posted in a while!

Things are pretty slow on the writing front, I fear. Kind of dragging my feet finishing up that sequel, most likely because I really don't know what happens at the end and I'm at the point where I kind of NEED to know so I can write it! Ack. This, friends, Romans, countrymen, is why I'm such an advocate for outlines…

I'm also angsting about what to write for NaNoWriMo. I'd pretty much settled on the vaguely Russian fairytale-mashup, but now I'm kind of pondering this other idea and I just don't KNOW which to do. HALLLP.

We're also moving down the street coming up in a couple of weeks, and I've been packing up the office (and the books. oh so many books) and it's just going to get seriously chaotic before it settles down again. I'm sure I'll feel much better when we're all settled into our new place—just got to survive the actual moving!

Also—and I want to do an actual review sometime soon—last week I finished the PHENOMENAL book The Winner's Curse by Marie Rutkoski, and you guys I seriously loved it SO MUCH. It hit me right in the Queen's Thief series feels and I kinda felt like it was written just for me, and there's two more books in the series but they're not out yet, and the second one doesn't get published until MARCH, and I just want it right now because SERIOUSLY IT WAS SO AMAZING.

Anyway. Quite possibly my favorite read of 2014!

Hope you all have a fantastic last day of September!

Friday, September 5, 2014

POV Experiments

First off, a brief update!

Alas, I did not get picked for Pitch Wars **cue buckets of tears** but I DID receive some pretty sweet feedback. So… to the traditional querying wagon I go, Batman! I will also be participating in PitMad next Tuesday, and have all my pitches scheduled and ready to go on Tweet Deck. Hoorah! Basically I'll be tweeting (well, Tweet Deck will!) twice an hour all day with variations of my 140-character pitch. So beware, Twitter followers!

In writing news, I've decided to keep my fairy tale retelling/mashup for NaNoWriMo, so in the meantime I'm going to finish the novel I was working on last November (which I started way back in 2009). I already wrote over a thousand words on it today! Feels good. And it'll be interesting, too, as I'm not ENTIRELY sure how this thing is going to end…

Which leads me to today's ramblings about writing.

I like to try a little something different with each new book that I write, because 1) I get bored easily and 2) I like the challenge! Mostly, the "something different" has to do with POV.

Once upon a time in 2005, I finished my very first actually novel-length novel. I wrote it in close third person from a couple of different POVs.

Later that year I wrote a novel during NaNoWriMo, and chose first-person-past. It was my first heavy-fantasy-elements book, and I pulled a shocker POV change at the end to try something drastic.

My next novel I went back to close third with a couple more POV characters, and occasional sections of myths from an omniscient POV which gradually wound into the main storyline (if that sounds like the novel I'm currently querying, that's because IT IS! :-))

Next I tried out a dual first-person POV, partially in present tense, partially in past tense. It was a MONSTER of a novel and still remains an absolute mess, but it was super fun to write.

Next I went back into my myth-universe and returned to close third, with intermingled omniscient sections following an at-first-seemingly-random woman in an enchanted dream world.

Which I think brings me to 2009 and the novel I'm currently working on finishing. Back to close third again, but somehow I wound up with SEVEN viewpoint characters. Balancing all their arcs is a huge challenge, but it's really fun to be able to hop around to the different storylines.

After that I did a dual first-person POV in past tense—and one of the POV characters was blind. That was a SUPER interesting challenge, focusing on textures, sounds, etc. instead of sights.

So anyway. A little random look into my experiments with various POVs/tenses. I can't decide which one I like to write best—I think different things work for different stories, and I try to be true to the voice I hear in my head when I'm first brainstorming/outlining (I hear voices in my head, guys—run away!!).

I think my fairytale retelling/mashup novel will be first person, partially present tense, partially past. As a side-note, I generally dislike reading present tense, because often the writing sticks out to me and feels kind of awkward. There are some books I've read, however, that pull off present-tense so well I'm not even aware that it's happening. That takes some major writing chops, people! We'll see how I do. :-)

Happy weekend, and happy writing!