Jett Madison

In which Jett apologizes...

2009-03-12T11:09:00.000-07:00

So sorry for abandoning all of you, my loyal fans.

[ECHO]

It's been over a month since my last post, and what can I say? Life is crazy. I have a short story coming out at the end of the month, under the name Madison Leigh. It will be in the online literary journal, Prick of the Spindle. It's not science fiction, more of a literary story, called "Blood and Ashes."

So... AN/SAR. I let the story stall a bit while I was trying to figure out some important tidbits. Slowly, things are coming together, but the key here is s-l-o-w-l-y. It's a little frustrating, and hard to tell if my perfectionism is not just a form of procrastination/resistance (for more on resistance, attend Geri Krotow and Linda Cardillo's workshop at the NECRWA conference in a couple weeks).

I went to see Watchmen, thought it was awesome. I think it was honestly one of the best movies I've seen in a while, and for being 2:43 long, it didn't feel that way at all. I get bored in the movies if a movie is too long, and find myself wondering how much time is left. I didn't feel that at all while watching this. A little more violent than the graphic novel. The opening credits were a nice bit of work, though. Got a lot of backstory in very neatly. And the soundtrack was fantastic.

In which Jett's house is invaded by moths...

2009-02-08T17:48:00.001-08:00

I'm not joking. There are many moths in here, tiny tan ones, fluttering around. Wonder what they were eating...

Still plugging away. My birthday was over the week, and I'm still deep within my cake induced sugar rush. When I eat too much sugar I can't write as well; I get very hyper and just sit there and stare at the computer screen, my mind going in eighty directions at once. Sort of like right now. I can't even blog.

My good friend Jane Latta did a fun thing and posted a playlist to one of her novels. I was thinking about doing the same, but I feel too lazy right now. In fact, I think I hear Aeon Flux calling me....

In which Jett moves the desk downstairs

2009-02-02T11:49:00.000-08:00

You heard it, my desk is now downstairs, with the approval of the boss ;). This is the first day, and already I am getting so much more work done. This corner is cold though, and might require some additional bundling up.

In the middle of outlining chapter 3. I kind of outline and write at the same time... I start off in outline form, like a list, and then if a certain snip of dialogue pops into my head, I write that down and go on writing the scene from there. For example, here, the end of the chapter came to me first. A line that said, "I am the one you have been both seeking and denying since the day you woke up in that lab..." That just caught me and I started writing from there. Now I have the last page or so of the chapter written. So now it's time to go back and see what else pops in my head for the chapter.

This is how I work best. I hesitate to call myself a pantser OR a plotter, because I do both. I don't plot the entire novel out ahead of time in great detail. I get a beginning, some of a middle, and an idea of an end in mind. Then I look at act one. I figure out what happens at the turning point at the end of act one, and think about what needs to happen for me to get there. Then I start writing. At the beginning of each chapter, I outline that particular chapter to make sure that the story is going in the direction I want it to and that I definitely cover certain things in that chapter. Then I write a decent draft of that chapter (I usually do two drafts of it), and then I move on to the next chapter to do the same thing. At the end of an "act," I will go back and make sure everything is coherent and everything is doing its job. Then I repeat for acts two and three. After all that is done, it's time to put it away and do work on something else. Some people say put it away for six months. Not me; I think a month suffices. Besides, when working on a series, you want to be sure that what you are doing is working in the first book before you move on to the next. After a little break, pick up the manuscript and read it through in one sitting (heh, right... Not around this house!). That is just to see how it reads. Make little notes, but don't fix anything yet. After I'm done with that, I will go back and fix what needs to be done, until I'm happy with it. Then I send it to my trusted readers, which in my case are the members of my writing group. They tear it to shreds and send back the tattered remnants. It's not how everyone works, but it works for me. I've tried countless "methods" of writing, but nothing works like the natural way for me. There really are as many ways of writing as there are writers.

In which I am really hoping the ice stops...

2009-01-28T11:15:00.000-08:00

I'm having a few epiphanies about characters, who they are and where they are going. I need to weave in some bits about my narrator's past, and what made him the way that he is. The chain of events in this novel is pretty intricate, so I need to be sure I'm letting go of info at the right time, so I'm not spoiling any surprises to come. But i need to give enough so that readers aren't overly confused. They should be confused enough to be curious, but no more. Nothing ticks me off more than an author who is trying too hard to be tricky and instead of making me want to read on, I end up throwing the book against the wall. Intentional trickiness, or treating readers like idiots, has never been something I've been tolerant of. Yes, your plot should be deep and involved and everything should happen intentionally, but the reader should NOT feel like he's purposely left in the dark. The point of the author is to make all these things happen while being invisible.

Take Da Vinci Code, for example. The entire book screamed of DEVICE! The length of the chapters, the whole structure of the novel, was designed to make readers turn pages. The book really isn't that much different from any other adventure novel. The plot is straightforward, not unique. But he knew when to stop the chapters, and how to get readers to turn pages, and he chose a great topic to write about that sparked a ton of interest. The thing was though, the book was so OBVIOUSLY designed to get readers to turn pages that it pissed me off after a while. Maybe it was because I'm a writer and know all those tricks too, but it seemed very transparent to me.

If I do that, you have permission to smack me one. The author's job is to make a story. If he wants to call attention to himself or his devices, perhaps he should find a job on the stage.

I think I need to move my desk again. Downstairs, this time. Something my other half is just NOT going to want to hear. Something tells me that the idea of the desk being in the living room is not going to lend itself to great reception...

What used to be a nice informative post but is now just what is left after the internet ate my good post

2009-01-26T10:51:00.000-08:00

Let's try this again...

I just typed up a wonderful little piece on plotting vs. pantsing and where I belonged on the spectrum. Unfortunately now it is lost in the ether. I don't feel like typing the whole thing again, so let's suffice it to say that I am somewhere in the middle, maybe more toward the pantsing side. If I plot too much, I lose it. It's like letting the air out of a balloon. The more of the story I release while I plot, the less of the story is inside of me. There are some things I do need to plan ahead of time however, which basically comes with the territory of writing science fiction. World-building, the whens and whats and hows. What do people eat/wear/live in/travel in. Where is my story and why and when? What happened to make the world like that?

Right now I am in chapter 3 of AN/SAR (All Natural/Some Assembly Required). Right at the point where I can see what's working and what's not, and what just NEEDS more work. I've found some little stuff that needs to be changed, but so far it's not a big deal.

Back to work...