Epiphany

When I started writing my novel Summer Rush, I had a vision. In fact, I was so caught up in that I went around visioning all day. And now? I’m re-visioning.

Ghosts of the old vision are still there. But there’s also a newer, stronger, more structurally sound vision that includes description, 3D characters, and a climax and ending that are worthy of those new and improved aspects.

Yes. I have had an epiphany.

I have them quite often.

I’m a bad rewriter. I’m just going to admit that right now. But my bad writing skills were exemplified when I started “rewriting” Summer Rush. Why, you ask? I was afraid to change a thing. With every little sentence that was restructured or comma I removed I was continuously, nearly in a panic, asking myself, is this changing things? Am I staying true to the story?

The thing is, I lost sight of what Summer Rush really is: just a first draft. No character, scene, or theme is set in stone. This draft was simply an on-ramp for me to get to the real story – the rewritten story.

I’m not saying everything was crap and should be destroyed. But writing is rewriting. Haven’t we all heard that one a million times?

This epiphany has been a long time coming (okay, like 2 or 3 weeks). It all started with a potential plot twist that popped into my head. At the time, I didn’t want to use it. It wasn’t “true to the story.”

But I’m letting the world and myself know right now – after careful consideration, I am taking that plot twist and going for it.

Sure, Summer Rush 2.0 will be a very different story. But the theme and the people and the real story stays the same. The story is always the same; I’m just cutting out the bad writing and telling it better.

Wish me luck.

Stream of Consciousness Writing

Stream of consciousness writing is absolutely fascinating. You put pencil to paper and just write every word that comes to mind, paying no attention to grammar, spelling, or even coherence. It's a near seamless transition from brain to paper; true mind to hand writing.

I've done this a couple of times, although I find it a fight to not think about grammar and such. The editing book I'm currently reading, Revision and Self-Editing from the Write Great Fiction series, suggests a similar technique to get into your characters' heads; it's sort of like the Write or Die tactic that I first learned of during NaNoWriMo (I learned a LOT during NaNo; it was like a crash course in the butt-in-chair-hands-on-keyboard technique and everything even remotely related).

While I was waiting for my sister to get out of class today, I sat in my car and started brainstorming. I've currently sworn off writing fiction until school lets out, but I'm allowed to brainstorm. The reason my brain was suddenly overflowing with ideas? In history, whilst discussing the 50s, my teacher mentioned an author. I can't remember his name now, or the name of his book, but he wrote a book entirely using the stream of consciousness method. Wow.

My teacher had us listen to an audio of the author reading it, and I was mesmerized. It was an endless stream of babble, and I was scrabbling to try to find meaning in it as the guy threw out phrases like "God is Pooh Bear" and "the utter darkness that is death."

But, for some reason I can't fathom, it got my mind working. All through the rest of history class my brain was frozen on a phrase I'd heard. But in my mind, it had stopped being a phrase by the author and had become the title of a nameless project I'd been working on for months. Sitting there, the project took off in a dozen different directions at once, all under the heading of this new title.

This is one more thing to add to my to-do list for summer - practice stream of consciousness writing!

Me and my conscience have a conversation

Conscience: You should edit a few pages today, at least

Me: Hm, nah

Conscience: You haven't edited a thing in thirteen days

Me: Whose counting?

Conscience: I am

Me: But why? The story sucks

Conscience: That's why we edit

Me: Easy for you to say, you don't have to do the work

Conscience: Just do one page

Me: Why?

Conscience: Because I said so

Me: Now you sound like me

Conscience: I am you, genius

Me: Sheesh, don't have to be mean about it

Conscience: Open your laptop

Me: It is open

Conscience: Close your chat windows

Me: B-b-but

Conscience: NOW!

Me: Fine. I'm going to work now. So leave me alone.

Conscience: Once you get past your first three urges to stop and get a snack, then I'll leave

Me: Fine

Conscience: Fine

Me: If Ne-Ce calls and says EJ's about to be born, I'm outta here

Conscience: Just edit, Gabrielle

Me: Fine. Right after I -

Conscience: NOW

Me: (closes chat windows and mournfully opens Word document)

Writing, Editing, Covers, & Brainstorming

In my opinion, the hardest part of writing is when you look back over what you’ve written and it doesn’t add up. Sometimes there’re those totally awesome times when you realize two or three instances link up to strengthen your story. And sometimes, not.

That’s what I love about poems. You don’t have to worry so much about the plot. I wrote three linked poems one time. And then I wrote a short story about the horses in the poem. And I turned the short story into a novella. It was a lot of fun. It was fantasy, and there were flying horses and horses with silver eyes. That would look really weird, now that I think about it.

Anyhow, I really should be brainstorming about the second book in my Sacred Promise Trilogy, “The Promise Child.” It has a telepathic filly named The Desecration in it. She’s Sacred’s daughter; Sacred being the white Friesian stallion in the first book in the trilogy, called Sacred Promise. I love trilogies. I’m reading one right now, as a matter of fact. It has selkies in it.

Anyhow (I like that word) now I’m thinking about a cover for the Sacred books. My sister Liz was supposed to be drawing one for me. The plan is for there to be a white Friesian (Sacred) on a cliff (The Ciel) in a storm. In the foreground will be my character, Angelica. It was weird, I first started the Promise books years ago. And then I read the Horse Angel books, and my Angelica and that Angelica have the same golden hair. My Angel has hazel eyes and I think Angela Dorsey’s Angel has golden.

Here’s the first part of the trilogy of poems I wrote.

Wild Things

There is a place in the sky
Near the middle of the sunrise
Where the spirits of the pure at heart
Live when their body dies.

In colors of gold, red, silver
With wings made of white gold
They are the magical Wild Things
Brave, true, magnificent, bold

The wildest of the Wild Things
Mighty Saber, the Stallion of Flight
He gallops, mane and tail streaming,
Through the sky in dark of night.

His sister rules the red dawn
Bellalyse, the Lovely Red Mare
Her coat, as red as the setting sun
Brings dawn from here to there.

Guardian of All That Sails on Wind,
Jade’s tail is the clouds floating by
The mare’s hooves bring thunder, storms
Her eyes, stars, stud the velvet sky

Troy, the charismatic blue stallion
He lives in the depths of the waves
The exception, rescuing drowning souls
The depths is where he stays

The magical horses, the Wild Things
Live in the place where sun meets earth
Wild Things guard things wild at heart
Each one its weight in gold is worth.

I am off. Here’s a joke my sister just told me. What can you break with one word?

Later-later, Gabrielle