My New Favorite Thing

The other day my mother mentioned that she had seen an educational program on TV where they used pureed beans instead of butter or oil.  As some of you know, I'm practically addicted to experimenting with food, so I had to try it out.  Last night my son wanted blond brownies, so instead of adding 2/3 cup of butter, I thoroughly rinsed a can of pinto beans, tossed them into the blender (I did have to add a little bit of water to get it to blend smoothly) and then dumped it in my batter.  The brownies were delicious!  They even have the nice crispy edge that I loved but could never get by substituting applesauce.  So I thought I would share the idea since I'm so in love with it!

Happy baking!

(And hopefully this new discovery will not bring about a severe bout of writer's block because I won't stop baking things.)

What's With the Goat?

About a month ago, some friends and I exchanged novels that we'd written.  On Saturday, we got together to give each other feedback.  Hearing a group of people discuss an entire novel and not just a chapter or two is a very different experience.  I didn't quite know what to expect when I showed up.  Anyway, here are some of my favorite comments:  

"Your plot arc doesn't work.  At all."

What?  I'm supposed to have an actual plot that make sense?  Since when?

(Okay, I knew it had some issues, but I know how to fix most of it.  Hooray!)

"I want more descriptions" and "I want less descriptions."

Uh, yeah.  I'll get right on that...

"Um, what's with the goat?"

U

Um...  Because every book needs a random goat to have a cameo appearance???

"If this had been an actual book, I would have throw it."

Oh, yeah.  My work here is done.

They were actually very nice.  Far nicer than I deserved when I showed up late and had to leave early.  I really liked liked having several readers because it made it easier to get a sense of what actually worked and what didn't versus what is just a personal preference.

In other news, my daughter "measured" me with a ribbon this morning and informed me that my feet are too big to be a princess.  Such a sad, sad day for me.  Good thing I'm so excited about all the changes I want to make to my novel or I would have a serious case of the dismals today. 

Neighborhood Calculus Meetings, or Why I Am Not a Politician

I was driving yesterday and passed a sign.  It was one of those signs staked into a yard that usually advertise dance lessons or something like that.  I briefly glanced at it and read, "Neighborhood Calculus Meeting."  I started laughing, picturing little old ladies who had given up on Bingo and were now entranced by integrals and derivatives. 

Much to my disappointment, that wasn't what the sign said.  Neighborhood Caucus Meeting.  Not quite as interesting as a calculus meeting, but whatever.

What does it say about me that my mind jumps to calculus more easily than to caucuses?  Oh, yeah, that I'm not much into politics. 

I'm not much into calculus either, although I did once attempt to take a multi-variable calculus class in college.  I had 18 credit hours that semester and came down with a horrendous case of strep about three weeks into the semester and never recovered.  Needless to say, I dropped that class.  But I still have the textbook and someday, someday, I am going to understand the first page of the book!

 But that wasn't what I was talking about.  Where was I?  Oh, yeah.  Not really talking about politics. Well, let's talk about politics in books, because those really don't interest me.  I've been reading a book where the author put tons and tons of work into world-building and politics.  Which is great to do all that background planning, but then the author felt the need to share it with the readers.  I would give up on it, but I care about the character.  I just don't care about sitting through his history class with him. 

Contrast that with books like The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner. 

There is quite a bit of background and history in these books, but most of it is necessary to understanding the plot, so I care about it. 

So here is my question:  How do you know when you have included too much history and politics or too little?  How do you know when you have enough to satisfy the reader without dumping information on them?  Any ideas?

A Conspiracy of Kings

A Conspiracy of Kings comes out today!!!  It's the sequel to some of the best books ever.  I've been waiting for this book to come out for years.  In celebration, my friend Chersti Nieveen interviewed the author, Megan Whalen Turner, on her blog.  So check it out and leave a comment letting her know you dropped by.

Beginnings

When I'm browsing through books, I like to read over the first couple pages to see if it grabs my interest.  I'm guessing that I'm not alone in doing this. 

The beginning is important. 

Unfortunately, I think the beginning of my current WIP is the worst part.  What makes it worse is that I have no idea how to fix it.  I've been thinking about it all week and haven't made much progress at all.
 
Here are some suggestions I've heard over the years for beginnings:

-Know what makes your story interesting and make that the beginning.

-In most books, the major conflict should be introduced within the first three chapters.

-Start in the middle of an exciting scene.  I have mixed feelings about this, and I think it all comes down to grounding the readers in the world of a story.  When I'm thrown into the middle of a chase scene or whatever without any explanation, I find it disorienting and, what's more, I usually just don't care.  I don't care about the chase or the characters or anything that's going on.  But too much exposition is also a problem.  The trick here is to find a happy medium.  Good luck with that. 
  
-Start with showing us what the character loves and then why they can't have it.  For example, the first time we meet Ariel in The Little Mermaid, she's swimming through shark infested water to get a fork.  She's willing to risk her life because she loves human things so much and she can't live in that world because she's not human. 

-Try to answer the five "W" questions on the first page.  (Who the MC is, what they want, when they are, where they are, and why is this day different.)

-Don't start with a dream or the character waking up.  (I have to say, I think that Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl's book Beautiful Creatures is an excellent exception to this rule.  The novel begins with Ethan having a dream and when he wakes up, his bed is full of mud from the dream.  So we know it's not the average run of the mill dream, but something else.)

-The beginning sets up expectations for the ending.  It needs to make sense with where the story will lead, so think about where you want your story to end (assuming you know).  I want to relate this to The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner, but if you haven't read it (which you should), it would ruin things for you and I can't think of a worse book to ruin. 

Unfortunately, even after reading over all my conference notes and researching online, I'm still not quite sure what changes I should make.

Does anyone have any suggestions for fixing a bad beginning?

Even in Australia

No, I didn't wake up with gum in my hair or get soap in my eyes or have to wear my railroad train pajamas like Alexander, but I still claim that this is a Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. 

Okay, maybe it's not THAT bad, but our two year old still woke up too early (he's been trying to remind us this week that, although he's usually sweet and darling, he can be terrible too) and my husband took him downstairs only to step into a puddle of water.  In the carpet.  Splat.

One of the pipe fittings broke and we spent most of the morning cleaning it up, which has given me reason to be grateful that I have an inability to throw things away.  My husband loves steam cleaners (and pretty much any other machine), but after potty training two children, he insisted it was time for a new one.  He purchased one and the old one was moved to the garage with the intention of giving it to someone else or at least throwing it away.  We didn't.  Which meant that we had two steam cleaners to help pull buckets of water out of the carpet.  Hooray!  But, seriously, where does all that water go in the carpet?  How is it possible to pull up THAT much water and still have damp floors?

Anyway, the floors are much drier, although still damp, and we have fans blowing and windows open (hooray for nice days!), and my husband has resoldered things together.  Water is properly where it should be.  At least in my house. 

So maybe we don't have to move to Australia after all. 

It's a good thing we don't have to go because because it's Pi Day (3.14) this weekend!!  One of my favorite holidays and I would hate to miss it because of the difficulty of baking pies and celebrating on an airplane.
What are you doing to celebrate this illustrious day? 

Using the Right Language

One thing that I've been thinking about recently is how important it is to use descriptions and analogies that the characters in a story would understand and the setting is so critical when it comes to these kinds of descriptions.  I didn't realize until last fall when I tried to change the setting of a novel just how much of a character the setting is.

I once had a professor in a New Testament class who though it was important that we understood the background of the scriptures.  On our tests, he would give us a verse of scripture and have us identify which book it came from.  I loved it.  The other students, er, did not.

It helped, though, that I've actually been to these places and I agreed with the teacher that it was important to know what was going on for the people.  For example, in the Book of Revelation, the Laodiceans were told that they were lukewarm and would be spat out.  Why is this important?  Well, in Laodicea, all the water was brought in by viaduct.  And it was lukewarm.  The whole reason that these verses are effective is because the Laodiceans understood lukewarm water. Had they lived beside a river or something like that, the verses wouldn't have meant as much. 

In a recent interview after being named the National Ambassador for Young People's Literature, Katherine Paterson said the following about her novel Jacob Have I Loved:

"I couldn't start the book until I knew where it was set. I did all of these false starts. If you could see the mess I had trying to get that book started, you would see why it's such a triumph to me that it ever got finished. But as soon as I knew where it was set, then it became a book because the Chesapeake Bay is as much of a character in the book as one of the people in it.

"So, it was very important to me to finally find where these people lived, and then everything fell into place. I had the language for the book. I had the metaphors for the book. I had all the imagery I needed from the setting. I had to do as much research as I would do on a book for twelfth-century Japan, but if you have that rich of a setting, it gives you everything you need."

Knowing your setting well and knowing the language of the book is so important.  And I am so BAD at it!  But I'm trying to improve. 

Lately we've been listening to the soundtrack from the musical "The Little Mermaid."

One of the songs ("She's In Love") has Flounder singing the following lyrics:

 She’s moody as a snapper
Oblivious as rocks
You swim right up and tap her—
She lays there like a lox!

This is a little over the top (it's from a musical--what did you expect?), but you get my point.  He uses lots of fishy comparisons because he's, well, a fish!  What else would a fish use?  He wouldn't compare her to being moody as a cat, would he?  Make sure that you know your setting well enough to know what language they would use.

Or not use.  My husband has been listening to a book on tape and pointed out that, in a book with swords and bows and NO guns, using the term "lock, stock, and barrel" doesn't fit.

(And I told you I was being a bad influence on him when it came to analyzing books.)

Do you have any thoughts on this?  Or suggestions for how to make it "easy" to get the language right?  Because if you know the secret, I want in on it.

Blood Dripping Like Red, Red Roses and Other Things

I read recently that you should avoid similes in writing.  I'd never heard this bit before and have been thinking about it the last few days.  In my ponderings, I've decided that the advice should be modified.  I think there are definitely places where similes work.  "My love is like a red, red rose," for instance.  However, I've decided that similes should be avoided in fast paced situations.  For example, when your characters are running from pygmy vampire goats, I wouldn't have one of the characters stop to consider how "The blood dripped from the fangs like a red, red rose weeping in the summer sun." 

So there is my writing advice for the day: don't slow down tense scenes with unnecessary similes.   

Also, the website, Guide to Literary Agents, is hosting another "Dear Lucky Agent" contest.  This time, though, they're limiting the entries to paranormal romance and urban fantasy, both for YA and adult.  

I finished my rough draft yesterday morning.  It's not a paranormal or urban fantasy, so I can't enter it into the contest (nor is it revised enough to count as "done), but I'm happy with it and with how quickly I finished it.  My goal was to finish before March 1st, but March 2nd is still pretty close.  I began writing it at the end of December and set out with a clear goal in mind.  What's more, I knew how I wanted to get the characters to that point.  I think this is the first time that I reached the end and have felt like the novel was in the right place.  Woo-hoo!

And lastly, I'll leave you with a book recommendation.  My friend's birthday is tomorrow, so being the super creative gift giver that I am, I gave her a couple of books.  I gave them to her on Monday, since we were getting together so our children could wreak havoc on the world.  When we left, we accidentally left our jackets there, so I picked them up yesterday.  My friend confessed that she'd just woken up from a nap because she had stayed up all night reading Impossible by Nancy Werlin, one of the books I gave her. 

 

 I love this book.  When I first heard about this book I did not think I would like it, but it's wonderful.  After talking to my friend about it, I'm in the mood to rave about it, but I don't want to give too many spoilers. 

I Want the Good Days Back

At the first writing workshop I ever attended, the instructor warned us that we would get to the point where we spent so much time critiquing our own work that it would bleed over into everything else.  We would find ourselves critiquing all the books and movies we read, whether we wanted to or not.

I've apparently rubbed off on my husband as well.  We went to see a movie recently, one that had been praised by some people that we trusted their taste.  We don't get out enough to want to risk precious movie time on one that we won't like.  Anyway, both of us sat there critiquing the whole thing and left feeling disappointed.  He informed me that he's mad at me now because he can't stop analyzing everything either.   

I don't want to be in this phase anymore.  I want those good days back where I read for the sheer pleasure of it.  I want to sit down and lose myself in a book again, not wonder why the characters are doing this or that, or why the plot is only advancing because one of the characters made an unwise decision. 

I'm reading a book that I started reading on Wednesday last week.  It's a YA book and I should have finished it before today, even with all the craziness last week.  But I haven't.  Instead, I find myself pausing as I read thinking, "Ooh, I like this description," or "That's the second colon in two pages...and is it even used correctly here?" or  "They're still talking.  When are they going to do something?"  The fact that I'm so distracted that I'll stop to reread descriptions tells me that I'm not sucked into the story, and when I start complaining about too much dialogue, something is wrong.  I want to be sucked into this story.  I really do.  But I'm not. 

So my question is:  How do I stop critiquing everything?  How can I turn off the editor and just enjoy the ride?  Does anyone have any suggestions?