Month: November 2014 (Page 2 of 2)

Books I’m Reading (to help with my writing)

November 15, 2014 / JennyDetroit / 0 Comments

I have to say, I’ve been inspired lately. Mostly due to my husband’s belief that I can be a professional fiction writer, as well as to the Christmas gift he got me last year: a Kindle. Before the success of ebooks, I thought the only way I could be a published novelist was to get an agent, get a publishing contract, and have my book published by a traditional publisher. I had considered self-publishing in the past, but those were in the dark days before ebooks, and the fear of paying for a print run and having stacks of unopened boxes of books in my garage hung like a specter over the whole enterprise.

But seeing the success of ebook authors in recent years has me reevaluating self-publishing.

So with my new Kindle, I started downloading a bunch of books. I started off downloading public domain books that were either free or super-cheap (A Princess of Mars and The Worm Ouroboros being two of my favorites). But then I started getting books about self-publishing, about making a living writing ebooks, and the whole crazy dream of me being a fiction author started to seem possible.

These are the books that have inspired me or that continue to inspire me. These are the ones I’m reading right now or that I’ve read in the last few months:

Write. Publish. Repeat. by Sean Platt, Johnny B. Truant, with David Wright

This one kinda started it all. It made self-publishing seem possible; it laid out a plan. It also gave me a nice kick in the pants to sit down and start cranking out words. I am not prolific. It takes me a long time to finish rough drafts of stories, scripts, novels. It takes me even longer to revise (I often rewrite entire drafts from scratch). So reading how Platt, Truant, and Wright have cranked out millions of words in the last few years has lit a fire under me to crank out the words at a faster pace. If I want to have a career writing books, I have to write a lot of books.

Writer Dad by Sean Platt

This one was suggested after my purchase of Write. Publish. Repeat., and since I liked the previous book, I thought I’d check out this other one. Though less nuts and bolts/nitty-gritty about the process of self-publishing, this book was just as inspiring. Basically, Platt decided to make writing his full-time career and Writer Dad is the story of how he did it. Again, it’s inspiring and helps me focus on achieving my goals as a writer.

Write Your Novel from the Middle by James Scott Bell

I have Bell’s book, Plot and Structure: Techniques and Exercises for Crafting a Plot That Grips Readers from Start to Finish, and I really like it. I’m not particularly good at plotting (I’m more of a character and dialogue person), so his techniques have been helpful. It’s also just a good “writing guide” in general, with nice exercises for keeping momentum going and hitting your word count goals.

I’ve also taken a screenwriting class with Mr. Bell, and he was fantastic. So I was predisposed to like Write Your Novel from the Middle. And it’s an interesting approach to plotting and one that I’ve been using in my latest novel, 13 Treasures of Britain. It’s a short book but it has a lot of great advice.

Make Art, Make Money by Elizabeth Hyde Stevens

This is not a book about writing; however, it is a book about being an artist and making money from your art. It’s also a fascinating career biography of Jim Henson, a man who is one of my personal heroes. Stevens’s basic thesis is that Jim Henson was an artist who didn’t sacrifice his art in order to make money. I enjoyed her analysis of Henson’s career, and I found her suggestions to be overall helpful and even sometimes inspirational. Again, this book is meant for artist-entrepreneurs who need to see that their dreams are possible.

Let’s Get Digital by David Gaughran

This is a how-to for self-publishing digitally, but it’s also an interesting analysis of the publishing world. I didn’t realize how messed-up some things are in the traditional publishing industry (for instance, authors’ royalty rates for ebooks from traditional publishers is a lot lower than I thought it would be). The book is a how-to self-publish, but also a why-to self-publish. I really like Gaughran’s ability to explain technical things; I feel like I can manage to upload my manuscript and do all of the technical/business things necessary to launch my books. It’s laid-out nicely too, making it easy to find whatever info I need for a specific task.

(N.B.: Write. Publish. Repeat. and Let’s Get Digital can be purchased as part of a boxed set along with How to Market a Book by Joanna Penn. The boxed set is called the Indie Author Power Pack, which is on sale right now for $0.99. It’s a fantastic deal for those who are interested.)

The best part about all of these ebooks (besides their wealth of information), is that they were not expensive. I’m still astounded by how much ebooks from the big publishers cost. Those who self-publish seem to have a much better handle on how much an ebook is really worth. So for not a lot of cash, I’ve been able to expand my knowledge about self-publishing and get inspiration for my art with these books.

Why I changed the blog title

November 11, 2014 / JennyDetroit / 0 Comments

Mostly to align with my twitter. My name is listed as “Jennifer M. Baldwin” on twitter, and my little description is “Fiction Writer. Snappy Dresser. Old Movie Obsessive and Garage Rock Connoisseur. Nerd Queen,” so I added that to the blog as well. Just trying to be consistent across all my platforms, or whatever.

NaNo 2014: Week #1 Recap

November 10, 2014 / JennyDetroit / 0 Comments

In order to finish the rough draft of my novel by December 30, I’m doing NaNoWriMo this year. I’ve done NaNo in the past (I won the challenge in 2009 and wrote a fabulously bad novel), so this experience is not new to me. But what *is* new this year is that I’m using NaNo as a way to complete the rough draft of a novel I plan to publish. So the pressure is on to write 50,000 words this month, more so than in past years of NaNo.

My first week has not been spectacular. I’ve found it hard to write after a long day at work, or the baby has demanded my attention for most of the day and I can only write for the 45 minutes she manages to nap. Or I’ve had to grade papers (day job = teacher).

I’m up to 7,806 words, which is almost double what I had written for the novel before November 1st (current total word count for the novel: 15,750). So in a sense, NaNo has already helped me increase my productivity. So that’s good.

But I’m also finding out that I am not a fast writer. I have moments where I get going and the words come faster, but for the most part, I just do not come up with ideas, words, lines of dialogue, descriptions, or plot developments fast enough.

This past weekend I tried a new strategy to see if I could get my word count up: Using the “Writercopter” (Courtesy of Hillary Rettig)

And so far, it has been helpful. I am not a writer who outlines her story (i.e.: a “planner,” as many in the NaNo community call it), but I do sketch out the basic structure of my story by figuring out what should happen in each chapter (and this is all very sketchy and rough; ex.: “Ch. 8, Merlin uses some kind of spell to find the Nomad [she is wandering on a distant planet]; she uses the whetstone to sharpen her sword and defeat the spirit creature that has stalked her”). So the Writercopter method works for me because I can skip from chapter to chapter whenever the mood strikes me, or I get an inspiration for a particular part of the story. Yesterday, when I was struggling with Chapter 6, I skipped ahead to Chapter 7 and then even did a little bit with Chapter 12.

Unfortunately, even this method hasn’t increased my word count by all that much. My new goal is 2,000 words per day. This should get me over the 50,000 hump. But so far today, I’ve written 46 words (and I just wrote them two minutes ago so I could claim to have written something before posting this blog).

The only thing that gives me comfort at this point is that my average per day is 780 words — which is more than the 350 George R.R. Martin supposedly writes each day.

Boardwalk Empire Finale and How to End a Story

November 1, 2014 / JennyDetroit

I find endings to be the most difficult to write. Beginnings come easy. Middles can sag, but there are simple ways to beef them up (add more conflicts, introduce new characters, do something surprising, flesh out subplots). But endings? Endings are impossible (or at least they feel impossible every time I need to write one). Of course, anyone can write “The End” and come up with some convoluted conclusion (after all, even the ancient Greeks had the deus ex machina). But to write an ending that sticks, that makes sense, that surprises, that satisfies — that is the hardest thing to do.

The series finale for Boardwalk Empire has me thinking endings, what works and what doesn’t. I have been watching the show from the beginning, and since that time, I’ve often thought about how I would write and structure the show if I were the creator. If I were approaching the ending, I’d first consider whether Nucky would live or die. There are basically four types of endings (although I concede that there are variations): The main character wins and something changes; the main character wins and things go back to normal; the main character loses and something changes; or the main characters loses and nothing changes.

For Boardwalk, the first decision is whether Nucky wins or loses. Does he live or does he die? If he were to live, the most satisfying and thematically appropriate ending is to have him lose everything and end up destitute and alone (basically, everything he ever wanted has come to naught). Perhaps he goes to jail, perhaps he just lives in an old shack somewhere and is forgotten. But I think it’s expected that Nucky should suffer. Most gangster stories, in fact, are highly moral in the sense that the gangster “gets what’s coming to him.” So whether he lives or dies, it seems fitting that Nucky should suffer some kind of emotional damage.

If he were to die, then he should probably be struck down by someone he has hurt (again, this puts the gangster story firmly in a moral universe). If the show wanted to go for a nihilistic ending, I suppose Nucky could be killed by some random person, but this would make things seem less moralistic and more random/meaningless. There *is* room for that kind of ending in a gangster story (with the theme being something like, “if you try to make money in a dangerous world, don’t be surprised if it bites you in the ass”), but I am not sure the random/meaningless ending is the most satisfying.

And that’s the key to a good ending: it should be a satisfying and fitting ending to the story. Endings (and the climaxes that precede them) are really where the main theme makes its presence known. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that in the series finale, Nucky tells the story about how when he earned his first nickel he thought it was the most wonderful thing in the world, and then he thought, “but a dime… a dime would be better.” That’s the whole sum of his character right there; he was never satisfied with the wealth that he got. [Sidebar: I am reminded of the season two opening sequence where we watch a montage of the main characters while the song “After You Get What You Want (You Don’t Want It)” plays over the images. It’s the theme again: nothing is ever enough to satisfy the greed and desire to “get ahead.”]

BOARDWALK EMPIRE SPOILERS AHEAD

So the ending we actually got — Nucky is killed by Tommy Darmody — should be a satisfying ending. Nucky dies (punishment for his sins), and he is killed not by a random person, and not even by the police or a fellow gangster (both his “natural” enemies), but by the grandson of the woman he originally wronged way back in his early, “good” days. Nucky’s crime against Gillian is his original sin/fatal flaw, so in a very Greek-tragedy sorta way, Nucky’s punishment must come at the hands of Gillian’s grandson.

But is this a good ending? Is it fitting? Is it both surprising and satisfying? Does it communicate the theme of the story? I was once told by a writing teacher that the best endings surprise us, but then as we reflect back on the story, we realize it couldn’t have ended any other way. Great endings are paradoxically both surprising and inevitable. Does the Boardwalk Empire ending do this? Does it feel like, yes, this was the only way this story could have ended?

I know I was surprised that the young man whom Nucky had taken under his wing earlier in the season turned out to be Tommy Darmody. I’m actually mad at myself for not figuring it out. (I even remember noting that this relationship seemed like Nucky & Jimmy Redux.) However, many fans online *did* figure out Tommy’s identity. So perhaps the ending wasn’t as surprising as it seemed.

Further musing: Is surprise necessary for a good ending? Yes, but the surprise doesn’t have to be “shocking” or a “gotcha” moment. But I do think the best endings give us something unexpected. Maybe not in *what* happens but in the *way* things happen.

While watching Boardwalk’s finale, I was surprised. I did not expect the young kid to be Tommy Darmody, and I actually thought Nucky might live out his life in obscurity, left alone with his conscience. As I watched the finale, I found it satisfying.

However, looking back on it a few days later, I’m not so sure. The ending definitely shocked me, but part of me wonders if Nucky got off too easy. Death is a release, and it might have been more punishment for Nucky to live out his life with the crushing guilt of what he did to Gillian. There is a part of me that wonders, “Maybe a different ending would have been better…”

I still think the ending the writers came up with is a good one. It certainly brings the story full-circle, and there is a kind of satisfaction in that. But even with an ending that I think is good, there’s a nagging feeling that maybe it could’ve been better. That’s why endings are so darn hard.