Trapped in poetry

I am still struggling with my Paris poem, painting her as both a whore and a presence who saved my soul. I am not a poet, yet the exercise of writing a poem, especially one this important to me on a personal level, is freeing. It's using a different part of my word brain. It's practicing an economy of words that I don't normally use.

I am a goddess when it comes to meeting word counts, but a poem demands even stricter guidelines. Every word comes under scrutiny. Why did you pick it? What does it say? How does it sound? What else could it mean? These questions all matter in poetry.

What's fun about poetry is the process of distillation. You must think of what you need to say, and compose it in your head, then keep rephrasing it until you hit the right mix. As a consequence, where writers can ponder a scene for an hour while vacuuming, they cannot truly put each exact word together until they sit at the screen or at paper.

A poet, on the other hand, will work those works over and over until perhaps a six-word phrase emerges. Then eventually, those words are recorded. And reworked. But so much of the actual creation can be honed without writing anything down. And that can be really freeing.

Word counts as success

The more you write the better you get.

True.

Write everyday if you "want to be a real writer."

False.

A real writer is compelled to write when the mood strikes. It doesn't matter what else is happening. A two-year-old on the toilet who needs help wiping? 9/11/2001? When you have the deep writing bug, you write through things that move you and you write because the idea moves you. You can be moved by life to write. You can be moved by ideas to write.

Writing everyday improves your technique, makes you better, makes writing easier and makes you more professional.

When I am truly working hard, I write 5,000 words a day. If I lose interest and force myself to write anyway, I get 1,000. Or maybe 2,000 but 1,000 might be crap that needs to be edited out later.

Lately, I have written a sentence or a paragraph a day. This refers to my fiction project. I have still written in my journal, to my friends and on my blogs. I am still plotting in my head.

Why stress over the word count when I know without a doubt that once I get the plotting right, and I am ready to sit down and write, I'll produce the 5,000 words, probably in one sitting. So, why stress for a week trying to force myself to do something that will effortlessly take a day when I'm ready?

But, please not, I do open the file, read it and write anywhere from a sentence to a paragraph everyday to keep myself engaged and remember what problems I am supposed to be solving.

Writing, writing everywhere

So, my daughter won the reading contest at school. Today, in addition to Read Across America and the reading-related events for Dr. Seuss's birthday, her school is hosting a children's nonfiction author. The top reader in each grade level got to attend a pizza party with the author. My daughter, who read about 1500 minutes in February, earned a spot at that party.

I am beyond proud. She told me she was going to win that contest. She set a goal and she did it.

Speaking of goals, I am slowing meeting mine. I'm writing today (since someone had to go to school early for the lunch). I've probably spent an hour writing, and I'm editing/smoothing over a difficult chapter. Since my writing time lately has meant a sentence here or there, even an hour seems like a wild success.

A writer I know mentioned that she keeps a monthly spreadsheet of her daily word counts. At first I dismissed this as crazy, but then my curiosity piqued. How productive am I? If I made such a spreadsheet it would need several categories: fiction (by story?), press releases for work, writing blog, food blog, homework, journal.

How productive am I? How much do I really write?

Writing Contests & Writing Goals

I have several writing goals for 2010, after having made progress but not considerable success on my 2009 goals.

I'm going to join RWA-- Romance Writers of America-- for two main reasons:

• I have attended meetings of the local affiliate (Pocono Lehigh Romance Writers) and I like them. They also seem to encourage each other and prod each other.
• My work has romantic elements, and I know I could write more romantic fiction, and be good at it.

In the past, I was a member of HWA-- Horror Writers of America-- but they have time limits on how long you can remain an associate member. This of course means you have time limits to get published, or lose your membership. As someone still seeking a genre, or perhaps of mixed genre, I haven't done enough work to get published to make that kind of leap. The HWA does offer a superb network of information though, so I'd like to get reacquainted with them some day.

I'm a paranormal chick lit writer. No doubt that what I write is aimed at women. And I tend to include that fashionista style universe that flies well in chick lit. But with lots of sex, paranormal, violence and some suspense.

So, I've saved some info on contests. I want to enter a few. Why? I'm not sure. For exposure? Practice? Feedback? To say I'm doing something? (To waste money?) To get closer. To motivate myself.

I need to renew my subscription to Poets & Writers. That magazine was chock full of real info for writers. Not just how-to tidbits and wanna-be writing info like Writers Digest. I always hated Writers Digest. I liked the Writer. It was a good middle-of-the-road publication.

But I digress. These contests. I haven't read some of this potential submissions for probably eight months or more. My (first) manuscript was originally 167,000. It's now about 92,5oo, and I can't even tell they're missing. I say "about" because it's 92,646 I think... but I've already cut about 50 words from the first five pages.

The process never ends. Writing means constantly facing your inadequacy or your victories every day. What seems like a victory one day can seem grossly inadequate six months later...

First chapters

I hate first chapters. I'm a notoriously critical reader. It took me years to get past page eight of Wuthering Heights... I think it was Wuthering Heights... because the beginning was so dry. Once I got past page eight, I loved the book.

I go to the library or the bookstore, I open the book and look at the first couple paragraphs. What is the opening sentence? What 'person' is it? If it's first person, that's a hurdle the author will have to overcome.

I hate the first person. Now, there are exceptions. Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games. But in general, authors who rely on the first person for their voice never fully developed their characters/writing enough to construct a well-crafted story... but that's an argument for another day.

I judge the authors I read on their sentence structure, their word choice and what happens on that first page. Perhaps I should be an agent... or a reader for a publishing house.

Some friends had posted this link on their facebook page:

Seven reasons agents stop reading your work
http://www.guidetoliteraryagents.com/blog/7%20Reasons%20Agents%20Stop%20Reading%20Your%20First%20Chapter.aspx

Now, I don't think I do any of these things. (Although right now, I do have dates in the beginning of my chapter as a simple reminder to myself to keep my chronology straight. My work depends on moon phase for some events, and I have a pregnant woman who's going to give birth in this novel so I have to be careful with the time sequence. The dates will disappear in later drafts...)

First chapters are hard. It's hard to find that balance of tight writing, exposition, character introduction and compelling action. Agents and editors judge on that first five pages and what happens there sets the pace for the whole manuscript. As an author, there's nothing worse than the intuition that your first chapter doesn't measure up to the rest of the book...

So, the word count mentioned in the link above, doing a "writing idol" contest based on the first 250 words interested me. Now, I'm cautious about posting my work on the internet, but I have been mulling this over for a day and I want to address this question of openings...

This is the current first paragraph (66 words) of book one of my Fashion and Fiends series:
"A drunken jumble of bleached blonde hair, cheap denim, and tight tank tops crashed from the unlabeled door. Inside his car, he reached for his cigarettes, tapping the box with his finger. The blondes stumbled, arms tangled and bodies barely upright, to a Firebird. They exuded their intoxication as a dreary fog that blurred the defining lines between them. He only needed one for the ritual."

This is its predecessor, the former first couple paragraphs of the same book. I was pitching this book to agents with this paragraph at the lead and I hated it the entire time. That should have been a sign that these 144 words didn't work:
"Galen could kill her so easily right now. He could wrap his fingers around Adelaide’s throat and suffocate her, quickly and directly as she slept. He inhaled sharply, meditated, and sprinkled cleansing herbs across her bed.
Galen didn’t want to kill her. If he had, he would have done it as soon as she opened the sliding glass door to her balcony. But he didn’t. He had plans. Hopes. Instead of destroying her, he ushered her sleepwalking figure back to bed, not distracted by her nudity on this humid summer night. She had a toned, muscular figure and shapely bosom uncommon in other fashion models, but Galen recognized assets beyond those that might attract mere mortal men."

This is the former first paragraph (89 words) of book two of my Fashion and Fiends series:
"Something orange and translucent clung to the cuff of Galen's sleeve as he swapped lenses on his Nikon. Étienne hobbled closer, index finger and thumb pinched to grab the offending scrap but a sudden flicker stopped him. The vivid orange-and-red object moved toward the hem and over Galen's hand. A flame. Fire. As it licked Galen's fingers, Étienne's chest tightened. His throat swelled, blocking the air. He fumbled for a chair, but someone had moved the furniture to accommodate the clothing racks, the lighting equipment and the make-up stations."

Now I've determined my proposed chapter one is too fast past and unresolved to anchor the story, so I've mounted my umpteenth revision and this is my current first page or so (255 words) for the second book:
"Étienne d’Amille clung to the steering wheel of his wife’s Mercedes, his fingers grip tight enough to stretch the supple leather of his favorite old driving gloves. The keys laid in his lap as he surveyed the other cars in the parking lot from his rear view mirror. The typical array of dusty pick-up trucks and nondescript Chevrolets and Fords surrounded him, except for one gleaming black sports car with white racing stripes.
A Dodge Viper. His eyes remained nailed to the spot. Or, how did the Americans put it? Glued. Glued to the spot. The heavy emptiness that had dwelled inside him since September now ached, even worse than it had inside the house.
He couldn’t sleep inside the house. He hadn’t gone into the bathroom where Adelaide committed suicide, where he had his heart attack, but yet somehow his wife slept in a bed in the next room. He couldn’t. But then, these days he barely slept anywhere...
He thought he would sneak out, have a beer, and go home. This tiny town had a population of 400 people and in that respect, it reminded him of rural France. Not much to do and not much there. This particular country hamlet had one option at this advanced hour of the night: a bar péquenot... peasant? redneck? He hadn’t expected to find anyone he knew, let alone the Viper.
Galen’s Viper. The aspiring photographer had dated Adelaide. She was completely infatuated with him. Étienne hadn’t heard of him or seen him since her death."

In my revisions, I have moved the location of the opening of the second book to the same setting where book one opens. This makes for an interesting parallelism and I'm intrigued to see if structurally it will work...

I guess I don't have much of a point for this rambling but to say that first chapters are hard. Eternally. Because as authors we know what we have to say and it's bursting from us, but to try and control that initial flood of information... It's hard. But therein lies the fun and the frustration.

I wrote last night

Once upon a time, a long time ago...

I was a prolific writer.

I wrote in my journal most of the day, constantly scribbling as if an observer of the world outside of it. These days, I regularly misplace my journal and write, on average, once a week. Facebook seems to have replaced those journal entries and I'm not sure how I feel about that.

I used to write 10-12 articles a week for the newspaper. In those days, I never had the energy left to write anything else.

One summer, I thought I had found the best job ever. They fired me after a month, because they had hired me to be their in-house writer and the VP decided he'd rather have an artist. I boosted my confidence my writing a third volume to my paranormal chick lit series (series nicknamed Fashion and Fiends) -- 170,000 words in about 35 days.

I can write a press release in 20 minutes, but my own résumé stumps me.

I wrote a ten-page paper in French on the political parties of the moderate right in three days during my Thanksgiving break.

But I have not written a single word on my second volume of Fashion and Fiends since June? July? Whenever we launched our critique group via GLVWG. I had about six chapters then, and since we were submitting 20 pages a month, I knew those six chapters would last through December. And here I am, in December (almost), with no more chapters. This book has my favorite tentative title (Courting Apparitions) but the hardest plot. It's a ghost story and ghosts present a lot of limitations. In addition, the first draft spent the first 200 pages with the main character moping around doing nothing, because of his grief for the dead person...

Of course, Stephenie Meyer's New Moon has the main character moping for 200 pages. Maybe Étienne just needs to rebuild a motorcycle and hang out with a werewolf...

Well, last night, I wrote about 400 words. The novel I wrote after I got fired... That one needs to be split in two: one half for the ridiculous fairy plot line (which will get saved for another project) and the other half for the actual plot line where evil witches destroy the balance of the universe and a non-magical woman has to stop them. I've dickered with the plot and did a scene last night where the heroine waits for her missing husband, in a venue where she thinks he has to attend and her disappointment when he doesn't...

In my "old days," before returning to school and raising a five-year-old daughter, I could polish off 5,000 words a night, almost every night of the week.

I miss those days, but the other activities-- school, work, parenting, the non-profit boards I'm on-- indirectly do make me a better writer.