Avoiding the dreaded DEAD END

As mentioned in a couple previous posts, I'm wrapping up my Novel-In-Progress. This has been a long, somewhat traumatic process, but it's getting done. About two weeks ago, I realized that I had to scrap the ending entirely. Why? Because my ending wasn't The Ending.

Confused? Let me clarify.

To be a good ending to a novel: 1) there has to some resolution to the major problems faced by the central character/s (this doesn't mean there is a happy ending, just that you see things are settled); 2) the conclusion should share the themes addressed at the beginning of the book (even if it's to turn the initial beliefs of the characters on their heads); 3) the end should be consistent with the details and personality brought up earlier in the novel; and 4) the reader should feel satisfied that they didn't waste their time.

While some books have many possible "Endings" that flow logically from what precedes, there are also many "endings"--dead ends that leave the reader disappointed. You can't expect a reader to be satisfied by the last minute introduction of a character (never before seen in your novel) to save everyone from destruction. Unless you're trying to be funny, it probably won't work for a character to act like their personality has been switched with the hero of a different story entirely. Consistency helps your world become believable to the reader.

The ending I wrote in my outline was replaced long ago with another. However well this ending resolved the characters' dilemmas, it didn't really address the same themes as the initial chapters of the book, nor did it satisfy the readers. Everyone who read my first complete draft seemed to sense that I was holding back certain details of how the book should finish. The truth was, I was afraid to write the Ending the way it should be written, because I was afraid it would become unpublishable.

What do I mean by "unpublishable?" All publishing houses use a style guide. Normally, this governs mechanics like punctuation, capitalization, use of American English vs. British English, and the like. However, Orthodox Jewish publishing houses have an additional level of what words, topics, and the like that they think are appropriate to include in their books. Truly, other kinds of publishers have similar guidelines, just must less stringent ones. Then magnificent Ending I have just written has just crossed a few too many of those guidelines most likely to be found at an Orthodox press. However, the book is VERY, VERY Jewish. Like probably wouldn't make sense if you didn't have a sound foundation in Yiddishkeit.

I think I have now written the Ending the way it should be, but it's just as unpublishable as I feared. Seeking sympathy and advice, I spoke to the ladies from my writing group. They think I should keep the new conclusion, since it is after all the Ending.

And so now, I will have to revise yet again, to see if I can make this book into something someone (other than myself) would publish.

Picture courtesy of http://etc.usf.edu/clipart/68000/68050/68050_123_W14-1_b.htm

Another existential crisis in the life of my Novel-in-Progress

So, if there was any one thing that every single person I've had read the Work In Progress has said, it's this:

You call this an ending?

Otherwise known as: time to find another way to end this book.

I've been avoiding this issue a bit as I've been rewriting, because I'm still not sure what would be a better ending. However, I'm almost done resolving the other issues in the book. My new ending must be found. Preferably soon rather than later.

It's not that I don't know where my story's going. Or at least the general neighborhood. It's just the details.

I've been looking for some inspiration online, and have found a few great links to help me out. I'll share them with my readers, in case any of you are in the same corner as me.

Post from The Other Side of the Story with Janice Hardy http://blog.janicehardy.com/2010/03/end.html

Post from the Creative Penn http://www.thecreativepenn.com/2010/08/09/how-to-write-the-ending/

From How to Write a Book Now http://www.how-to-write-a-book-now.com/plot-development.html

Article by Holly Lisle http://hollylisle.com/how-to-finish-a-novel/

Ever wanted to write a novel?

As some readers might know, November is National Novel Writing Month. Known as NaNoWriMo to insiders, participants sign up on the website, http://www.nanowrimo.org/, then commit to write a novel of at least 50,000 words by the end of the month. While some people find this task daunting, other people find it motivating and even exhilarating. The deadline gets people who've always wanted to write a novel but failed to follow the number one rule of writing (get your tush into a chair and start writing daily).

Intriguing? Well, even though it's almost the end of the month, it's not too late to participate! Barbara Krasner, who blogs at The Whole Megillah, is starting a Jewish version of NaNoWriMo to coincide with Jewish Book Month, which starts tomorrow (Nov. 21st).

Follow this link to get more details.

http://thewholemegillah.wordpress.com/2011/11/20/write-your-own-megillah-guest-post-why-write-a-thon-by-rochelle-melander/

Almost ready to print and distribute to a selected few

I'm almost done (at last) my rewrite of the novel-in-progress. It's still too short (over 30,000 words, but not by very much), it still has a few scenes that I think are a little lame, but the characterizations are more convincing, there's better world creation, and I think the whole thing is more coherent. I've lined up a few writing friends (and a couple teens, too) to read the book and tear it to shreds.

That puts me at the point of printing the copies I need to distribute. As big as an investment of time that I've already put into this project, the copies that I need produce to hand out will require actual moolah. Moolah is not something we have a lot of around in the Klempner residence.

Here's a link to an interesting post on the "MY WRITING LIFE" blog on this topic: http://learnedaboutwriting.blogspot.com/2009/04/printing-manuscript-terror-and-anguish.html

The author writes that even before making copies at a print shop, astonishing length of time and price of ink invested in that first manuscript at home is frustrating. Plus, a long document inevitably requires troubleshooting due to jams, misprints, and the like. Ugh. In this case, do-it-yourself may not be either the cheapest or best option.

I'm thinking of electronically sending my document to the local Office Depot or the like and having them do the entire thing. Time to do a little comparison shopping.

And then I have to reveal to my darling husband just how much I'm spending on a book that I may never even sell.

Missing a deadline

Confession time: I didn't finish my revision of the novel-in-progress by Nov. 1st. In fact, I'm only 2/3 done and it seems just to go slower and slower. It's so stressful, I find myself wasting time in lots of creative ways.

I'm usually great about making deadlines, so I'm trying not to view my -ahem- delay as either a failure or evidence that I'm really just a slacker.

I'm heading back to work, now.

Really.

Revision update

I know I set a deadline of Nov. 1st for revising my novel, but I kinda forgot I'd be out of commission during Sukkot. Now, I'm paying the price.

My tush is asleep. My tailbone is rebelling.

I really want to finish by Tuesday night, but I'm finding the chair at my computer so painful (despite yoga and 600 mg ibuprofen every 6 hours), I'm not sure I'm going to make it. Plus, every time I look at what I've already written and supposedly revised, I keep finding more things I don't like. Ugh.

Self-doubt sets in. Maybe it's no good after all.

I'm going to try to finish, anyway. What if I spend the next 20 years kicking myself about "that novel I wrote, but never finished..."?

Chugging away

(photo by RJ Stew on Flickr)

I've decided to set a goal for myself: rewrite the rough draft of my novel in entirety and hand over to my trusted reviewers by November 1st. Hopefully, a deadline will keep me chugging away.

After the research I did last week, I've decided to do a "two pass" method. First I went through the whole thing and made sweeping changes to the structure, made characters, plot points, and themes consistent all the way through, etc. Now I'm doing a line-by-line edit.

I'm very excited but very nervous. What if everyone hates it? What it everyone loves it but no one will print it?

[Reminding myself to reframe:

It doesn't have to be perfect, just the best I can do right now (thanks Holly Lisle).]

And now comes the hard part

I'm preparing to revise the novel-in-progress.

Many bloggers have recommended the "One Pass Method" of Holly Lisle. For details, see: http://hollylisle.com/how-to-revise-a-novel/ which tries to do everything in one fell swoop from beginning to end.

Others suggest a longer process, saying their revisions take longer than writing their first draft. Yikes! Just the idea makes me want to hyperventilate.

I'll update you on my trevails. I'm taking a breather for a few days and working on other projects.

I DID IT!

Yes, it's true! I finally finished my first novel. Hooray! Of course, I was supposed to finish by Labor Day, and it's probably pretty terrible, and it's shorter than I intended, but it's done. It's just a first draft...but a complete first draft! And the longest thing I've ever written. (I never realized before how it takes a long time to print an entire novel.)

I'm in shock right now. All my nearest and dearest are in bed right now, so I'll just blog and get to bed.

Almost (but only almost!)

(photo by Ian Britton)

Well, my goal for the summer was to finish my first solo effort at a novel and...I didn't quite finish.

Ugh.

I'm probably just 3,000 words shy of a complete first draft. After ditching my original draft of "Part 3," I had a good think and outlined a new path for the rest of the book. However, I'm having problems bringing myself to sit down and finish.

What's my excuse? Instead of spending quality time with my keyboard, I've been spending quality time with humans (my husband and kids, now back in school), and I've been actively looking for more freelance work.  I finished a writing project last week and submitted something else. It's not like I've been wasting time doing nothing. On the other hand, I have wasted a lot of time blogging, reading weird science news (justifying it as research), and listening to music that's too noisy for effectively focusing on a computer screen.

It's time for a completely non-professional attempt at psychoanalyzing myself. I definitely need to figure out why I don't just sit down for a couple nights and crank out the rest so I can get over it.

1) I used to write for fun. It was relaxing, and even escapist. I still love writing. I'm still very enthusiastic about this project. However, writing has been reclassified in my brain over the last 9 months as a professional exercise and not a hobby. It's actually work.

2) I think I'm a little freaked out about finishing the first draft because I know it will be...a first draft. Like, not perfect. Like, potentially terrible. I guess I have to just accept that it will start out that way, but trust that it'll eventually improve.

Drat!

As I mentioned before, one of my objectives for the summer has been to complete a first draft of a novel. Make that my weird Jewish, sci-fi, teenage parable. So I was cruising along, having outlined and then fleshing out first part one, then part two, and then got 3000-ish words into part three...when I realized that part three didn't belong in this book! Yikes. Now I'm trying to decide just what is the real part three that belongs to this book.

I'm not entirely stuck--I've added additional materials to part one and two this week (including some borrowed from the now-defunct part three)--and have worked on another couple writing projects, to boot. However, I'm starting to fear I will not finish by Labor Day. I'm starting to fear I will never finish. (Insert image here of me imitating the little boy in the photo at the top of this post.)

I need to decide where I want to go with this book, but the idea of being stuck is giving me such anxiety that I think it's actually making me more stuck. Usually, I'm not the writer's block type...but this might be it.

I'm going to go practice some deep breathing now...

Have you always wanted to write a novel?

So you want to write a novel, but never have motivated yourself to crank it out? Here comes the "Write Your Own Megillah" contest from The Whole Megillah blog to get you moving.

Goal: write a middle-grade Jewish-themed novel of 18,000 words or a YA Jewish-themed novel of 36,000 words in one month this fall (Nov. 21-Dec. 21). There are prizes and all sorts of guidance offered. For more details, check this link: http://thewholemegillah.wordpress.com/2011/06/22/write-your-own-megillah-a-new-whole-megillah-event/ .

Hatzlacha raba!

Self-doubt, or the Intimidating Activity Called "Writing a Novel"

I'm both distractedly excited and painfully terrified. As I mentioned in a previous blog, I'm trying to change a short story I have written previously into a novel in response to the advice of friends and colleagues. I'm completely overwhelmed by the task at hand, but I want to try to get a rough draft written in the next couple months just so I can get these characters' voices out of my head, at the very least.

If you don't want to write a novella--you're committed to a novel--you have to crank out AT LEAST 30,000 words for middle-grade or YA readers, 50,000 for adults.

At the same time, you don't want to be "bore-geous," what Ayelet Waldeman calls writing that is long, lush and vivid but does nothing to further the story line. Neither do you want to add subplot upon subplot upon unnecessary scene upon unnecessary character just to make deadlines, fill up a word count, pad the pocketbook, or all of the above. (The latter often happens with books that start as serials, like those of Charles Dickens, to point out an example that will hurt no one's feelings and probably not constitute lashon hara.)

The problem is that I HAVE A LIFE, and not a very convenient one at the moment. I have more immediately remunerative work to complete, a husband and children to feed (bli ayin hara!). Tushies to wipe! Candyland to play! I am haunted by the desire to fill in the story of these characters, but have been cruelly separated from my PC.

Even when I resort to writing in a notebook while supervising my children's play, self-doubt leaves me thinking, "Can I think of enough details and plot twists to fill a novel? And what if I'm just plumping this goose up so it's ready for the rejection-letter-shaped ax!"

Sometimes, I finally sit down at that PC and can't even figure out where to start. To prompt me a bit, I'm now improvising a bit on the Snowflake Method, invented by Randy Ingermanson. I'm going over every hinted-at back story, every interesting character, every "off-page" alluded-to event that appears in the initial short story and trying to extend, extend, extend. I am now at just under 7,000 words...and I can't imagine how this baby is ever going to get done!

I know I'm not alone on this. A quick Google search about novel-writing included an article subtitled "The quiet h*** of 10 years of novel writing," by Susanna Daniel, and a blog entitled "The Long Path to a Novel" by Rachel Connor.

Check back with me in two months to see if I'm any closer to the "Great American Jewish Sci-Fi Novel's" completion.