FallFicFrenzy + Know the Novel Part 2
November, my favorite month of the year!
I might be slightly biased, as this is my birthday month… but hey, as Ken Ham says, “Everybody is biased. It’s just a question of which bias is the best bias to be biased with anyway?”
grin
So, I’ve been having a blast participating in Christine Smith’s Know the Novel and Fall Fic Frenzy over the past several weeks.
If I hit my goal before November 15, I’m going to dive right in to the rest of the edits on this book, because while I’ve been writing these scenes in a linear row, they need to be arranged in between the pre-existing chapters of the book, and I need to go through the first edit of this book, a task I hope to have accomplished before the end of 2022.
In spite of the excellent progress I’ve made, I hit a bit of a wall of despair over the weekend, feeling like my story just wasn’t as good as I’d hoped it would be.
This is the part where I tell you how important it is to have people in your life who believe in you and encourage you.
Without the encouragement of a few key people in my life (namely my husband, my dad, and my brother) I don’t know if I would have gotten back to writing this week at all.
But after listening to their kind words, and taking some time to read over what I had written, I was able to quell those doubts and keep moving forward.
This meme always simultaneously cracks me up and hits me right in the feelz because it’s so true and applicable. Always.
ANYWAY…. on to the raison d’être…
THE QUESTIONS
1. How’s the writing going overall?
It’s going pretty well. I set out with a goal to write approximately 18,000 words on the new subplot for The Prisoner and the Pirate, book 4 of The Turrim Archive, and so far I’ve written about 14,000 of those words! I had already written about 17,000 words in October before FallFicFrenzy started, so I’m currently sitting at 31,000 out of 35,000 planned words for this entire subplot. Book 4 was pretty light compared to the rest of the series, so this new subplot fixes a variety of problems all in one fell swoop.
2. What’s been the most fun aspect about writing this novel so far?
I think the research has honestly been the most fun. And of course, hanging out with Beren and Grayden some more. I’m excited to see them continuing to stand on their own in this book rather than being the more passive passengers that they originally were. In the rough draft I had them take a bit of a back seat… but it just wasn’t working well for the story to have them standing SO far outside the spotlight. Having them do something else is requiring a little finagling of the timeline and I’m going to have to problem solve how they get to the physical location they’re going to need to be in by the end of the book… but I think I’ve got it mostly sorted.
3. What do you think of your characters at this point? Who’s your favorite to write about?
I love my characters. Honestly, this group of characters is so much fun to write about. What I’ve been writing has mostly focused on Beren and Grayden, and they are both such great guys and good friends. I love them to pieces.
I miss writing my pirate captain and his crew, though. And Beren’s family is always a blast. And Wynn… oh I just want to give Wynn a hug. He has things kinda rough. I have to keep reminding myself that a lot of those characters are still in the book, it’s just not the part of the book I’m working on right now. Because I keep feeling like I’m missing them.
Who’s my favorite to write about? In this section, probably Beren. I love Grayden to pieces, but Beren’s voice is more fun to write.
4. Has your novel surprised you in any way?
Oh goodness, yes! I did not expect this story to become kind of a war-story. So that’s been a bit of an interesting new thing to wrap my head around. I never expected to find inspiration for my gaslamp/fantasy book in true stories from WWII… nor did I ever expect to have to do research into WWII in order to write this book better…. but that’s where I’m at. Probably another reason this story has become such a difficult one for me, battle scenes and war strategy are my writer’s Kryptonite.
5. Have you come across any problem areas?
Yes. Mostly just the whole “strategizing a whole war so that the bits of it the reader see make sense and feel big enough that we don’t end up with a Clone Wars style problem” (you know, how the Clone Wars start at the end of Attack of the Clones and then end at the beginning of Revenge of the Sith and we didn’t ever get to see the actual war (well, until we got Star Wars: The Clone Wars cartoon series, which definitely helps, but still!!!!))
Ahem.
Anyway…. Star Wars is always a bit of a rabbit-hole danger for me. Sorry.
And like I said, strategy and battles…. not my favorite thing to write. I’d rather write swashbuckling and daring-do and witty banter. I miss my pirates.
6. What’s been your biggest victory with writing this novel at this point?
I think just getting it down on paper. Also figuring out how the cynders actually work. That was a huge victory. Took my husband explaining to me what a “Prince Rupert’s Drop” is… but yeah… that helped me fit the final piece into the puzzle. Wanna know what a Prince Rupert’s Drop is? Destin of Smarter Every Day explains it well… with awesome slow-mo capture and everything!
And then tell me if you have any ideas about how I’m using THAT in my fantasy novel!!!! I’d love to hear your theories!
7. If you were transported into your novel and became any one of the characters, which one do you think you’d be? Would you take any different actions than they have?
I would probably be Raisa. Or Cathrin. One of those two…. I think I would probably BE Cathrin, but I’d WANT to be Raisa. grin Although, if I were Cathrin, I don’t think I’d be able to go to the sychstal (my world’s hospital) to take care of the wounded. Not with my inability to deal with medical stuff without passing out. So if I were Cathrin, I would probably pass out a lot more than she does, at least in book 5.
I’m not sure what different actions I’d take if I were Raisa. Not getting captured by the Ar’Mol and his soldiers would be good… but I’d have to have knowledge beforehand about the attack, and I wouldn’t have that, so… I probably wouldn’t do anything differently.
8. Give us the first sentence or paragraph then 2 (or 3!) more favorite snippets!
First paragraph:
Ericole Niveya sat back in his chair and gazed out the window. Smug satisfaction filled him and he dipped his quill into the inkwell once more and continued his letter, the words appearing beneath his fingers in simple, elegant lines.
Favorite Snippet:
It felt like coming home, Grayden thought, as the carriage rumbled through the enormous gates of the Academy and pulled up to the main building. Beren handed the driver a few stin and the two men disembarked. Standing beneath the impressive colonnades in the sweltering heat of mid-summer, Grayden pondered how far he had come since the first time he had stood in this place. He had been so young when he started out from Dalsea, nearly an entire year ago now. The young man he had been back then, so many lunats ago, had been merely a boy, with little understanding of all that he would experience, and none of the losses he would suffer.
Grayden’s fingers rose involuntarily to the insignia pinned to his collar, his thumb brushing strangely over the new double chevron that marked him a first lieutenant. They were his and Beren’s reward for their work in Doran over the summer lunats chasing down and discovering the culprits responsible for the assassination of the Regeont. Beren noticed his slight gesture and gave him a grin.
“Still adjusting?”
“It’s like wearing a coat two sizes too big,” Grayden admitted. “I still don’t feel like I earned it.”
“Our commanding officers disagree,” Beren replied.
“They need to let us do our job,” Grayden said, keeping his voice low as he and Beren made their evening rounds one night. It would not do for the men to hear them sounding discontent.
“Truth,” Beren agreed. “But we wait for the scouts and their report.”
“Why train us to do all this if they won’t let us into the war?” Grayden asked.
“These tactics have never been tried before,” Beren reminded him. “Figuring out how to deploy us to the best effect cannot be a simple task.”
“That’s probably true,” Grayden allowed. “But I hate sitting here. Every day we see men coming back from the front injured or rotating for a rest, and we’re just sitting here in safety. The rest of the Southern Command… well… the men have heard them making some comments.”
“Their comments don’t mean anything,” Beren replied evenly, pushing down his irritation. “You and I, we’ve been on the front lines. How would we have felt?”
Grayden nodded. “That’s what I told Shep, but he’s kind of a loose sailstring. I’m worried he’s going to start picking fights.”
“Well, he’s in your platoon and it’s your job to keep an eye out and see that he doesn’t. I’ve had to do the same in my own platoon.”
“I know,” Grayden said. He paused. “It’s just… there’s a part of me that thinks there should be someone around here to keep me from picking fights right alongside him.”
“That’s my job.”
The two men whirled and looked right into the grim face of Captain Argond. They stared at him as he walked up behind them and Beren wondered how long he had been listening.
Argond cut his eyes sideways and then his stern face relaxed into a grim smile as he fell into step between them. “And Major Semiv’s job is to hold me back from joining in.”
9. Share an interesting tidbit about the writing process so far! (For example: Have you made any hilarious typos? Derailed from your outline? Killed off a character? Changed projects entirely? Anything you want to share!)
Interesting tidbit….
Hmmm.
I mean, I watched all of Band of Brothers as homework for this writing assignment. That was new and different. While most of my family has seen that show multiple times, I’ve only ever seen 2 episodes, so it was nice to finally catch up. Absolutely incredible mini-series. NOT family friendly, but incredibly powerful. Amazing what those men went through.
No worries, this series I’m writing will be, as always, family friendly.
I haven’t had a whole lot of hilarious typos. My typos are always rather mundane and boring. It’s disappointing, really.
I am NOT going to tell you if I killed off a character! Goodness. Spoilers much?
These are certainly the most unruly characters I’ve ever written. A lot of times this entire series it has felt like I’m trying to wrangle them in certain directions, only to have them go charging off and then I’m just along for the ride…. Very Nim’s Island-esque.
10. Take us on a tour of what a normal writing day for this novel looks like. Where do you write? What time of day? Alone or with others? Is a lot of coffee (or some other drink) consumed? Do you light candles? Play music? Get distracted by social media (*cough, cough*)? Tell all!
I have been writing most of this story in my new little writing corner down in Narnia (the room under the stairs). It also doubles as the Lego room and our oldest daughter’s school space for when she’s taking an online class or needs to get away from the noise of her younger siblings.
Because I am a wife and mother first, my writing time probably looks a little stark and business-like on the outside. I only have so much time in the day to write, and so I have to make the most of it. I don’t have time for fancy routines, and I’ve always been a little simple in my tastes anyway.
Mostly I write in the late afternoons, I get in about an hour from 3pm - 4pm (more if we finish school early), and then I write more after the kiddos go to bed, usually from about 8pm - 9:30pm. Sometimes I can get more time in, but that’s about it for the time I have each day. Generally I’m by myself. Generally it’s quiet. I tend to listen to music more when I’m editing than when I’m drafting. I usually have my water bottle or a Dr. Pepper nearby. And I have discovered I really like writing at my standing desk… something about standing while I write seems to make the creative ideas come faster, and I don’t get tired as quickly, which is nice.
Well, that’s all I’ve got for today! Hope you enjoyed hearing about my WIP! Journey on, Fearless Adventurers!