A Clearer Vision Means Throwing Out Hours of Work

I've written before about my devotion to writing to the best of my ability, and how that sometimes means throwing out hours of work for the greater good.

I went through a chunk of time in the middle (more like the beginning) of writing An Offbeat Affair where I didn't write anything. This was partially due to a lack of time, but it was also because I didn't feel comfortable moving forward until I had a better idea of where I was going.
You see, gentle reader, despite having planned out my novel from beginning to end, the process of writing is nothing like making a blueprint for a building. It's much more fluid and dynamic; nothing is set in stone. The story takes on a life of its own and you milk that life for every word its worth - initial planning be damned!

Sometimes, as was true in this case, the story was taking on a life of its own that was quite terrible. I fell into old habits of giving characters traits that were nothing more than gimmicks. It makes sense why I did - I'm used to writing short stories where a character's intentions and psychology don't go nearly as deep as they do in a novel. In a short story I can get away with a character having a gimmick, because the story won't go on long enough for you to realize how shallow a character trait it really is.

I didn't even realize this at first - what I realized was that my story was uninteresting and I had no idea what the characters were really like. I didn't even know what fueled my own main character. Luckily, all I had to do in her case was to go back to the short story I'm basing this novel on and examine her from a new perspective. Her actions could no longer be described simply as "interesting" or "funny," as they had been when all I was concerned with was a short story. I needed to understand why it was interesting or funny. I needed to get into her head and see where she was coming from.

The other characters weren't as easy. In the short story you barely get a glimpse of each one; they hadn't been fleshed out nearly as much as my main character. For her roommate (who actually only appeared in one of my other short stories), who suffered from the most from gimmicks and stereotypes, I had to re-imagine her mental state in a way that was different from her stereotype, and added to the story in a way that the main character did not. I ended up taking a bit of advice from Pixar (yes, the studio that made Toy Story); the best stories come out of forcing two complete opposites to interact with each other (for Toy Story - Buzz and Woody being the new vs. the old).

With a better understanding of who my characters were, I set off to edit what little I'd written of the novel, only to find that there were entire scenes that no longer made sense. As I said earlier, I'm not one to dwell on something I've spent hours working on if it doesn't end up adding to the overall story (a characteristic I surely hope an editor will someday love about me). I've thrown those scenes out, and am going to approach the story from the new understanding of what these characters are like and how they would interact with each other. Throughout this entire process, I've also begun to re-imagine what the ending might be like - again deviating from my initial plan,

So what do I hope you get out of all of this? After all, my blog shouldn't just be me shouting out my struggles and triumphs into a great empty abyss.
If you are a writer: I hope that this inspires you to look at your story with a more critical eye - to realize that parts of your story that you love just may be holding it back from greatness. Realize that your story can be better, but first you need to be willing to let go of what's holding it back.
If you're not a writer: take this example to your own life. Is what you're doing going to be worth it in the end? If you spend hours a day sitting in front of the computer or television, ask yourself if it's worth it. Realize that you can be better, but first you need to be willing to let go of what's holding you back.

If you're an editor: please give me money to write this story for you.
-Ryan

Lack of Apples, NaNoWriMo, and a Rename

Just when I was starting to think I was running out of things in my own life to tell you about, and was about to resort to mindless rantings, a whole bunch of interesting things happened.

Firstly, my plans to plant an apple tree have unfortunately been cancelled, on account of me accidentally killing the apple seeds that I was so excited to plant.
You see, the instructions I had found online (which I will not be linking you to) told me to germinate the seeds in my refrigerator for at least six weeks. Last week would have been five weeks, so I checked up on them only to find that not only had the seeds not sprouted at all, but there were spots of mold forming on the damp paper towel around the seeds. I promptly threw them out and consulted a real live person who told me that I should have put them somewhere warm and in the sun -- you know, the type of place that plants actually grow.

Secondly, I've officially decided to take part in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo.org) for the first time. I've signed up on the site and have started tracking my word count. The unfortunate irony, of course, is that I cannot count the words written in my blog, making the time it takes to write this very post a bit wasteful when you consider the difficult goal of 50,000 words of a story in a month. I'd been aware of NaNoWriMo in the past, but this was the first year that I realized that it's an actual organized event and not just a title slapped onto a time of the year.

Lastly, and tied to NaNoWriMo, is news about the novel I'm writing. I've been writing the novel based on my short story titled "The Other Woman," and so I was tentatively using the same title as the short story for the title of the novel. I never wanted to use that title, as the novel is about much more than the main character being "the other woman" (dating a cuckold/married man). For the longest time I couldn't think of one, but didn't stress over it since I'd barely finished the first two chapters.

On the NaNoWriMo forums there is a place for people to get help with the titles of their works, and I was tempted to use this resource since part of NaNoWriMo is putting the title, description, and excerpt of the novel you're writing in your profile. It embarrassed me to have such a simple and inaccurate title.
Instead of using the resource, I started brainstorming while simultaneously using an online thesaurus. I wanted a title that couldn't be thought of in five seconds, and I'd always been fond of titles of classic literature (I had joked a few times of calling my novel "Having Once Been Normal" simply because it takes a simple phrase and makes it sound elegant).

Long story short (arguably), I've thought of a new title for my novel, which, henceforth, shall be called "An Offbeat Affair".

Wish me luck in reaching 50,000 words in a month!
-Ryan

The Directions My First(ish) Novel is Taking

For those of you who haven't been living under my rock, I'm writing a novel based on a short story I wrote for college.

It's still going pretty well, honestly. Despite some stressors and events in my personal life, my mind keeps coming back to the story with more ideas of how to expand it. I'm constantly adding layers to the plot and characters in my mind, and I've been puzzling together how they'll add to the overall story, and in some cases I'm realizing just how much potential this novel has to become something more.

At the risk of regretting it and not being able to live up to promises, I'm going to share details that are very subject to change regarding the direction of the novel right now, with you, my loyal readers.
Again, this is subject to change, and this is a really personal project to me. Pretend I'm naked while you read this so you feel as awkward about it as I do, since I'm exposing a bit of what goes on inside my noggin.

My Brain: It's not empty! It's full of potential!

For starters, I'm mixing genres. I've only drafted up a few chapters (and one is facing a pretty large rewrite), but right now the novel is heading in a sort of comedy-drama direction that feels completely natural to me, since I love dramas and thrillers but I'm a positive and humorous person. It's also a love story as could only be told in the 21st century that sheds light on a subculture that society has yet to acknowledge on a larger scale, and to top it all off, it only feels like the beginning of something bigger.

My primary influences are the Millennium trilogy and everything by Chuck Palahniuk, which should give you an odd idea of what to expect.

I don't expect success. That would be foolish of me. What I expect is to continue to surprise myself. I just happen to be checking off all the boxes that I've had in my head for what makes a good novel great, and I'm excited to see if I can pull it off.

If I don't pull it off, at least you'll have these lovely blogs to read over and over again until you rot away!
-Ryan

Non-Linear Writing

As those of you who read this previous post know, I got the program Scrivener for graduation, which helped me to plan out my next big project; a novel based on my well-received short story.

Well I'm here to tell you, firstly, that the writing is going well! I'm taking this project very seriously, as I've not only been having a lot of fun with it, but I honestly think it might go somewhere (and certain friends of mine have told me the same). Secondly, and mainly, I'm here to tell you how the writing process of this story is very different than any story I've written before, and why that's a good thing.

Thanks to the aforementioned Scrivener program, I've got a rough layout of each chapter of the novel (in the form of digital note cards with brief summaries of that scene or chapter written on them), and the great thing about the program is that it treats the digital note cards as individual text documents. That means I can see my story laid out as note cards, easily find a chapter or scene that I want to write, click on it, and begin writing that chapter or scene. I can rearrange the note cards however I want and their content moves with them, so that when I'm all done, the program will save or print the whole story entirely in the order I've chosen.

When I wrote all of my other stories (including my first few attempts at a novel), I was using Microsoft Word, which doesn't really have any good organizational features, and I hadn't been introduced to (or just hadn't seriously considered) drafting out an outline of my story or using real notecards for organizing my thoughts. I wrote all of my stories the same way a person would read them; in order from beginning to end. I would then go back and edit it multiple times to tie scenes together better etc, but even that was a linear process.

This story is the first time that I've been able to write whichever scene I feel most prepared or interested in writing, regardless of where it takes place in the larger narrative. I once had an idea for a scene while driving, and instead of having to commit the idea to memory or write a note for later writing, I had the luxury of being able to go home and write out that entire scene from beginning to end while it was fresh and exciting in my mind. I've talked to writers who've always written their novels like this, so to them it may not seem like a big deal, but for me it's huge.

I honestly think that learning this new writing process could save the novel from being put on the backburner, as it means that if I come to a scene that I'm not sure about writing yet, I can put it aside and work on another. I've embraced the non-linear process so much that I've been writing in Scrivener, in Google Docs/Drive, and on a small legal pad depending on where I am or what I have access to. Each medium may have a completely different part of the novel than any other at any given time, but in the end I'll be able to put them all together in one place very easily.
It's so weird, but so cool.

In other news, I've been regretting not having my stories accessible on this blog for free, so maybe I'll get around to that soon.
-Ryan

Continuing the Women's Perspective

For those of you who've been following this blog for at least a month, you know that I wrote a short story from the perspective of a woman that my college class loved. For those of you who have just joined us, feel free to re-read the post in which I talk more about that (that big link I cleverly hid in the text of my blog).

One thing it seems I failed to mention is that some of the women in my class started suggesting, or even demanding, that I continue the story, if only for one more scene. Obviously I had struck a chord and written something these students not only identified with, but felt the need to be completely lost in.

I don't take this lightly. This is the highest compliment I've ever received regarding my writing.

I knew I'd have to get around to writing more eventually, but for the time being simply decided I would add only one more scene to the short story, and get around to planning a novel in the future when I felt more prepared for such a task.

A creative mind is rarely a patient one in this kind of situation.

At completely random times during the following days, an idea would form out of thin air that my brain latched on to and held tightly for use in the novel. They were not simply "ideas," though, they matched the tone and plot that I was going for perfectly. It was as if I was finding hidden pieces of a puzzle that I had long given up on, and I suddenly needed to complete the puzzle.

Having received the writing program Scrivener as a graduation present from my parents (thanks mom and dad!) I set out a bit of time for myself one day and plotted the outline for what I expected to be a three-part story. I've never really attempted to outline a whole novel before, but Scrivener made it so easy and fun that once I started I became completely consumed with the task! After an hour or so, I had a draft outline for a novel in four parts with potential for a sequel!

To put this into perspective, the last time I tried to write a novel I saw it as a challenge, and eventually lost interest in it, instead opting to write a collection of short stories. This time, I see it as something incredibly fun to do, feel more capable and ready to do it, and it happens to be based on one of those short stories! In short, I feel a bit better about this attempt at a novel than my last.

A usual, I'll keep you updated, and thanks for reading!
-Ryan

Getting The Women's Perspective

Ever since I took a class called "Psychology of Women" in my second year of college I've considered myself a feminist.
I know, that word can have some negative connotations. My thought on the matter are less in line with bra-burning and more in line with something that writer George R. R. Martin once said:

That class, although focusing on the female psyche, helped me to learn more about myself and the world around me more than any other class I'd taken before or since. I immediately decided that I would try to do my part to represent women as they actually are (people) in the form that I know best; writing.

It's no secret that women are underrepresented in entertainment/media unless it comes to something "feminine". We see this every day: most television shows and movies feature a male lead character regardless of the role. Women are typically only featured as main characters in chick flicks; and to top it off they're always looking to solve their problems by finding the right man.

My plan became twofold; to write more stories with females as the lead character, and to portray them as people and not simply as women.
The first step has been fairly simple. There are still times when I prefer to write with male lead characters, but even then I'm always sure to write any female characters as capable and well-rounded human beings instead of needy and codependent stereotypes.
The second step has taken some practice. It's one thing to make women capable and well-rounded, (which I've found also makes stories more interesting since it's so contrary to the stereotype), but it's another thing to get their perspective just right.

I may have finally done just that.

I recently had my writing class read over my latest short story about "the other woman" in an affair. The story is told in the first-person perspective from her point of view. Overall, the class praised my successful effort to make the reader empathize with the woman who could be viewed as a home wrecker (though there was one bigoted student who insisted she was a "whore") as well as my successful effort to make the character interesting (one student said "I wish I could meet her").
But there was one compliment that I wasn't expecting to hear.

Something I had written into the story simply as a character trait and stylistic choice really resonated with the female readers. It turned out I had accidentally stumbled upon something of a universal truth among most young women that one reader described saying (something along the lines of) "why can't all guys think like this?". Many more of the women in the classroom immediately felt the need to interject with their own excited claims that they, too, felt exactly the same way as the character in the story. You cannot imagine the feeling of hearing such praise for something I'd not intended to be so relatable!

I'm not saying that I've got it all figured out. But it's absolutely refreshing to know that I was able to, if only for this once, think like a woman and see the world from her perspective.

Oh, and they thought the story was hilarious! You'll have to read it sometime.
-Ryan