So–back to the drawing board. I’ll not only have to rewrite that scene but others before and after it. I won’t be submitting this month. I am too optimistic about the prospects for this novel to send it off with sloppy editing and with a scene that doesn’t make sense. I’m not under a deadline, and I want this novel to work on all levels.

I’ve seen too many authors rush to submit work that isn’t ready, get rejections, and finally self publish because they are too impatient to be published to want to do that one more edit that would make the novel acceptable–or, in some cases, two or three more edits.

I’m certainly not saying that any time an author gets rejected it’s because the novel isn’t ready. We all have to accept rejections that can come for many reasons other than the quality of the work submitted. We’ve all read of best sellers that were rejected by publisher after publisher until finally one editor was willing to take a chance on the manuscript. Writers need a lot of patience. We can’t get discouraged and give up because of rejections. But at the same time, we have to be able to look at our work objectively and make sure it represents our best effort.

I won’t send my manuscript out until I honestly feel that it is the best I am capable of. I don’t have to compare it with other people’s work. I just have to know that I have done my own personal best. And I hope that that personal best will get better with each novel I write. That’s my goal.

A pleasant young man came on the line, greeted me, and asked me how I was doing. I told him. Then he asked me what he could do for me. I said I needed envelopes in which to mail deposits. Fine, no problem, he assured me. And what is your account number? I gave him the account number. And what is your name? I told him. Thank you, he said, and what is your date of birth? I asked why he needed that information just to send envelopes. We have to have your account information to get your address, he said. But I can tell you my address, I told him. No, we have to do it this way. It’s the way the system is set up.Oh, okay, I said, yielding. I gave him my birth date. And what is your mother’s maiden name, he asked. I told him. And the last four digits of your social security number? All this just for envelopes??? But I gave him the information, all of which he seemed to need just to bring up my account to get the address I could have given him to start out with.

And then he asked, And would you please verify your address for me?

I was laughing so hard I could hardly get it out, but I did, and he proudly informed me that he could now send the envelopes and how many would I like. We settled on a number, he told me the envelopes would arrive in 7 to 10 business days and wished me a good day.

I know we live in the information age, but isn’t this carrying it just a bit too far?

So do I ever come up with a theme, and if so, when?

Not while I’m writing the first draft. Sometimes not until I’ve written a second and possibly a third draft. It isn’t until the novel is pretty much in its final form that I can step back, look at it as objectively as possible (as objectively as an author can look at her own work), and discover the theme. I don’t ever plan a story around a theme. For me the theme has to arise naturally from the plot and characters.

In my new science fiction novel, Shadow of a Demon, the theme is “dealing with inner demons,” using demons in the metaphorical sense, of course.  This is how I described it in the submission package which got the novel accepted by Double-Dragon Publishing: “Inner demons haunt them all: China Terrano must face and overcome her incestuous love
for her half-brother, Paolo. Paolo Terrano has to accept the rejection of his foster mother  and the blame she puts on him for the tragedies her family has suffered.  K.T. (Koyne Tamille) Malloran must resolve the conflict between her religious calling as a novice in the Daughters of Mercy, her growing love for Paolo, and her feeling of responsibility for India Terrano’s fate at the hands of the Interplanetary Patrol. But it is India who must cope with the worst inner demon, for her demon is all too real.” I go on to explain that the “demon” is actually a symbiont, an alien being accidentally brought by her father from another planet and transferred to her at her father’s death.

The point is that just as these characters all have inner “demons” that haunt them, so do most of us, and, like India, we must learn either to cope with them and draw strength from them or to exorcise them. This is a lesson that a reader can take away from the book, but the book is not didactic. I didn’t set out writing it to teach a lesson. It is meant to tell a story that entertains, and I hope it will do that whether or not the reader “gets” the theme. Because, ultimately, that’s how the book will be judged–by whether or not it tells a good story. The theme lends depth to the story, but it doesn’t determine its success or failure.

I’m a real purist when it comes to grammar. I was raised to use correct grammar, have a thorough grounding in sentence structure and know how to parse sentences to be certain I’m using grammar correctly. As a kid I loved to diagram sentences! (Are kids even taught that any more?)

All that said, when I write, I have to consider the level of diction that my character would use. If I’m writing in the point of view of a character who uses casual speech and is careless about grammar, I need to reflect that in the character’s dialog and also to some extent in the narrative of the scene that is seen through that character’s eyes. And it’s the narrative part that gets tricky. I don’t want to “dumb down” the narrative, but neither can I use exalted language and phraseology that just would not fit the character. It’s a bit of tightrope walking, because over-simplification can turn off a reader, but so can the use of a lot of obscure words and overly poetic language in situations where that type of writing just doesn’t fit.

I hope this is something I’ve gotten better at as I write more. I know that my first novels had problems in this area. It helps me to read the work of other writers and see how they handle the vocabulary and phrasing in similar types of situations and characters as I’m using in my work.

Language usage is very different in a novel currently under production in which my protagonist is a well-educated young noblewoman in the mid 1700s and the story, written in first person, is told through her journal entries,  from the language in a novel I’m currently working on, also written in first person, in which the protagonist is a modern young woman with only a high school education and a flip, somewhat jaded attitude. The two novels require entirely different writing styles and different levels of vocabulary. Challenging but fun. Then there’s also the matter of language difference according to whether the point-of-view character is male or female.

I’d be intersted in hearing about how some of you handle language issues, and how you adapt language to character, time, place, ethnicity, and other variables. What problems have you encountered? Is this anything that presents a difficulty, or are you able to change styles easily when needed?

Let’s learn from each other!

I write fantasy because I enjoy stretching my mind and using my (admittedly wild) imagination. I also hope to stimulate the imaginations of my readers. I find writing fantasy a wonderful creative activity and I hope my books may inspire creativity in their readers.

As for whether I believe in magic and in the occult, the answer is that I’m very much a skeptic. Occult has many definitions, so I cannot say flatly, I do not believe in any aspect of the occult. But I do not believe in the sort of magic I write about, nor do I write to promote witchcraft and sorcery (as I’ve been accused of doing). I reject all forms of magical thinking.

Unfortunately, magical thinking is all too prevalent in these times. And often it’s especially prevalent among those who would accuse fantasy authors of promoting witchcraft and magic. Just a few days ago I was treated to an example of it when someone referred to the recent tsunami and nuclear contamination in Japan as being God’s punishment on the Japanese people, evidence that they must be very wicked. This, too me, is a particularly dangerous and insulting type of magical thinking. Another example occured on an NPR program in which young people from a town struck by a deadly and destructive tornado were interviewed as to their reactions to the devastation. Some who were touched by it–homes damaged or destroyed–felt guilty, believing it to be God’s judgment on them and on their families. Others who escaped any damage, whose houses were not in the tornado’s path, wondered why they had escaped because they did not feel that they were better than those who suffered damage. And there’s Texas Governor Rick Perry, now a presidential candidate, who refuses to believe the scientific evidence of climate change and global warming, but believes that the drought afflicting Texas can be healed by prayer and repentance.

The forces of nature are impersonal forces that do not choose their victims on the basis of morality or lack thereof.  People can and do affect nature and bring about change, but this is not magical. Our interference with natural processes and our greed too often put the desire to gain wealth at any cost over the wellbeing of our earth and its peoples. I firmly believe that until we put aside the magical thinking that we have a God-given right to exploit all the natural resources of our planet and we cannot exhaust those resources because God has provided them for our use, we will not take the steps necessary to protect our planet and all its lives–and then it may well be too late.

Writing fantasy and science fiction can be a way of subtly getting the message across that our resources are finite and that the practice of “magic” always exacts a price. And not all stories have happy endings.

Titles can’t be copyrighted. You can use a title that has been used by someone else. I think most authors try not to do that, but we don’t always know what has been used and what hasn’t. We can check via Google and Amazon and feel fairly safe if nothing comes up in either place. But sometimes a title that I’ve checked does come up but on an obscure work published many years ago that is not even remotely like the book I’ve written. That has just happened to me. I have a manuscript recently accepted for publication that I called Twice Blessed, Thrice Cursed. The publisher doesn’t like that title and has asked me to come up with a different one. The one I came up with is The Weight of a Crown. I found that there is a book listed on Amazon with the title The Weight of the Crown. It’s an older book, not the same type as mine at all.  The Weight of a Crown does fairly well express what my book is about, and the publisher likes it, so I’ll probably go with it. It’s a fantasy novel set in a fictitious eastern European country in the mid-1700s. The protagonist is a young noblewoman who falls in love with a prince and winds up marrying a prince, but not the one she’s in love with (and who loves her). I thought my original title best alerted the reader that this might not be a story with a happy ending. It is, in fact, a tragedy. The Weight of a Crown may hint at this but not so blatantly. Preferences, anyone?

My YA novel A School for Sorcery has the title I originally gave it, but my publisher had wanted me to change the title. I came up with a couple of other options, and the publisher decided that A School for Sorcery was better than those alternatives and let me keep it. And the book has done very well. The prequel to it, A Perilous Power, I originally titled For His Friends, which I was asked to change and did, felicitously so. For His Friends is a blah title, and A Perilous Power really expresses much better what the book is about.

On the other hand, I was not asked to change the title of the sequel to School, When the Beast Ravens. I should have been. I liked the title but I now realize that it probably was a big mistake, because people do not understand the use of  “ravens” in that context and may have been put off by that. If I ever get a chance to republish the book, I’ll change the title to When the Beast Hungers. I think that would be much more effective.

Titles do matter. You can’t really judge a book by its title any more than you can judge it by its cover, but in fact people do buy books on the basis of title and cover, and so how to title a book is a matter requiring careful thought.

I have a good-sized library in my own home, with lots of reference works, but now I do most of my research online. As an example, for the YA fantasy novel I’m currently writing, I had to research cobras–their habits, diet, characteristics, and how dangerous they are. I save quite a volume of material in a file that I can refer to while I’m writing. Of course I don’t use it all, but I have it available to pull up when needed.

When I’m working in a fantasy world or on an alien planet, I need to do a lot of world building. I make maps. I work out a system of magic in the case of a fantasy world. For science fiction I look up and work out characteristics of the world determined by the planet’s size, distance from its sun, land masses, oceans, etc. Does it have a moon? Several moons? How does it/do they affect the planet? climate. weather systems. And so on.

For my Arucadi series I have a detailed file on the world and the country. (Someone asked why the world has only one continent. I never said it did. It doesn’t. There are other continents and there are island chains. But Arucadi is, like Australia, a nation that occupies an entire continent and, while it has trade via ship with other lands, it is large enough to be fairly self-sufficient and peaceful.) I had to work out a political system, economics, religion, political divisions: provinces, regions, etc. What is the economy based on? What are the major sources of revenue? What is the monetary system? Educational system? culture? (art, literature, music, etc.) Again, I don’t put all that into one novel or into the series. But I need to have it ready to call on as needed.

And character development. Once I know who the characters are, I want to know all I can about the principal characters. What their background is, what problems they have, what strengths and weaknesses, who their friends are; their enemies. What their home and family life is like. What their level of education is. What their likes and dislikes are. What kind of clothes do they wear? How do they wear their hair? What foods do they eat? And much more. Most importantly, why do they matter?

So this is the other side of the equation. A lot of preparation, a lot of research, a lot of logical thinking that go into constructing the framework for those crazy ideas. If the equation isn’t balanced, the novel won’t work.

So what do I do? I just leave it, but I save it. And sometimes I go back to it much later and find that those pieces just needed to be turned a bit or tried elsewhere and I can fit them in after all to make the complete picture.

That happened with A Perilous Power, my second Arucadi novel. It started with an idea derived from a dream. The dream was about a young man named Trevor Dark who had magical powers but did not use them wisely and made a lot of terrible mistakes. I wrote a couple chapters, but I couldn’t make it work, so I set it aside. For several years. Then, after writing A School for Sorcery, which I had hopes for but hadn’t yet found a publisher for, I decided I wanted to write a prequel to explain why the School for the Magically Gifted  was established and who Headmistress was. And I thought of that started and failed novel about Trevor Dark. I changed his name to Trevor Blake and while keeping him stubborn and over-confident and therefore prone to making grievous errors, I also gave him a deeper purpose. And then I worked in a fragment of another strange dream about a robot creature, and put it all together in a different way, and came up with a publishable novel. And a character named Lesley Simonton, who was Trevor’s best buddy, and for whom the School for the Magically Gifted would be named. It was a novel I couldn’t have written at the time I started that ill-fated original draft, but when the right time came it worked very well.  The pieces that had been missing the first time around had magically materialized!

I have a few other false starts like that. And, if I’m lucky, those missing pieces will turn up eventually, too.

Every writer has to find his or her own method of work. There is no “one size fits all” system. In speaking to writing groups, I often get questions from aspiring writers about my work habits. I try not to scare them off by admitting how erratic my “work habits” really are. But the thing is, they are looking for some magic formula that, if followed, will make them a successful writer. There is no such formula. At least not beyond this one: Place your behind firmly into the seat of a desk chair, turn on the computer, and WRITE. The method by which you form your plots, develop your characters, bring your novel or short fiction to a satisfactory conclusion will be your own. You may get ideas from other writers, but ultimately you have to find a way that works well for you. I’ve done that, and no matter how crazy my method may sound, it does work for me.  What works for you?

And now to put those jigsaw puzzle pieces together.

This past week since the death of my dear friend Diane Marcou has been a time of  mourning and inability to write. I just haven’t been able to get my creative juices flowing. I needed time for grieving, and I don’t regret the lost time. But I do need to get back to working now. And, amazingly, I got unexpected help.

I have always gotten inspiration from dreams. From my early childhood I have had vivid “story” dreams, dreams in which I was not a character. Of course I fully understand that all the characters in our dreams come from the dreamer’s subconscious and represent aspects of the dreamer’s character, but in these story dreams my role has usually been that of an observer, rather than a participant. It was as though I were reading a novel or watching a movie.  Almost every bit of fiction I’ve written came to some extent from or is in some part based on a dream.

Lately, as I’ve grown older, the story dreams have become fewer. My dreams generally deal with some aspect of my life and do not tell a story. I have feared that without that inspiration I would lack story ideas. Then two nights ago I had a dream that, while not a story dream, did contain the germ of an idea, only a single line, really, but one that was
pregnant with possibility. I awoke feeling that my dry period was ended, and I felt relieved and refreshed. Although Diane did not figure in my dream, it was almost as if she had said to me, “Okay, it’s time for you to get back to work, and here’s a little something to get you started.”

I lay in bed thinking about this, and fell into a waking dream—that state between being asleep and being fully awake, when the subconscious is especially close to the surface. In that waking dream I saw two rooms, side by side, with an open window in the wall between them. I saw them as though the front wall had been cut away, allowing a view of the interior of the rooms.

The room on the left is brightly lit, and a file clerk sits on the floor in the center of the room. The walls of the room are covered with narrow file drawers. The clerk is receiving printed papers, some short memos, others long treatises. She reviews each and places it carefully into a file drawer from which it can be readily accessed when needed.

The room on the right is dimly lit. No person is in it. It is filled with crumpled bits of gray paper, looking like something someone had crushed and thrown into the trash. A cyclonic wind fills the room, and the crushed wads of paper are caught up in it and fly around the room in wild and erratic motion.

Occasionally one of the crumpled papers flies through the open window into the lefthand room. There it is caught by the file  clerk, who smooths it out and reads it and with a smile places it into one of the file drawers.

The two rooms represent the left-brain/right-brain idea, which is an over-simplification but helpful, nonetheless, in which the right brain is the creative, intuitive side and the left brain is the analytical, logical side. In my mental picture the file clerk in the lefthand
room is the conscious mind, which organizes and stores information for use in
practical ways. The crumpled papers in the righthand room are the haphazard
snatches of thoughts and dreams and intuitions that come to us in unexpected
moments when we allow our subconscious to intrude into our conscious thoughts.
The random papers that fly through the open window represent the cross-over
that brings those dreams or sudden impressions into the light of reason, where
they can be put to use in creative but organized ways.

But there is more to the waking dream. On the side wall of the righthand room, opposite the window between the rooms, there is a door. It is ajar, and some of the crumpled papers fly out from it, while others  fly in from outside. I go into the room and peer out through the door. There I see the same vision of papers flying about, but there is, off to one side, a
column of bright light. And some of the papers, both from within the room and without, fly up into that illuminated stream. In it they transform into beautiful butterflies of all colors and sizes! And in the stream they dance.

This outside area represents to me both the collective subconscious and the collective consciousness. Ideas come into our minds from some source without, but they also pass from us through  our creative endeavors into the outer world, into the “public domain,” where, as works of art of any type they add to the splendor of the butterflies’ dance: the accumulation of culture that brings wonder and hope and beauty to human life.

This picture pleases me. I hope it may mean something to some of you. It is, like any analogy, imperfect and not truly adequate to convey what I mean it to express, but it brought me peace and a fresh resolve to set my butterflies free to dance in the light.