Month: May 2014

See this?

That would be my cover for Everything’s Fine, my novel that will be out next month.  NEXT MONTH.  I am so excited to show this to you.  IMHO, my cover designer, Melody Fender, did a truly beautiful job.

This is my favorite part of writing novels–the part where they’re all pretty and finished.  This is my book that won the Utah Arts Council Original Writing Competition award for Best Young Adult Novel back in 2007 (under its working title, Haylee’s Journal), so it’s been in the works for a while.  I am so excited to finally get to show it to you.

Release dates are a little squirrely for indie books, but it’ll be out sometime next month.  If you’d like an email when it’s properly released, please sign up for my newsletter.  I promise no spam.  You’ll only hear from me about new books, and maybe sales.

Want more?

Here’s the back cover copy.

I really hope you’re as excited about this as I am.

Kira thought she knew everything about her best friend, Haylee.  But when Haylee commits suicide immediately after her first date with her longtime crush, Bradley Johansen, Kira is left with nothing but questions, and a gaping hole in her life where Haylee used to be. 

Kira is sure that the answers to her questions must be written in Haylee’s journal, but she’s not the only one searching for it.  The more Kira learns about Haylee’s past, the more certain she is that other people grieving for Haylee are keeping secrets—especially Bradley, and Haylee’s attractive older cousin Nick.  Kira is desperate to get to Haylee’s journal before anyone else finds it—to discover the truth about what happened to Haylee—

And to hide the things that Haylee wrote down about her. 

This is another one of those rambling posts.  But it has information! in it!  so you might want to barrel through.  Maybe.

My life has become total chaos lately–the most wonderful sort of chaos where I know everything I’m doing is vitally important and irreplaceable and must! be! done! and I’m so so happy to do it except that there aren’t enough hours in the day.  Love that.  Love when there aren’t enough hours in the day to do all the wonderful things.  It’s my favorite.

Some of those things are boring or personal, like chasing my two year old around in circles (like this mommy! just like this!) or taking care of my (seriously needy) yard or the endless march of church responsibilities that called on me a couple months ago.

But some of it is writing stuff.  That stuff you get to hear about.

First, the imminent: I am reaching the very tail end of the task list for EVERYTHING’S FINE.  Layout is done.  My editor is doing one last pass.  The cover is basically done.  I believe that I will get to share it with you next week!  Spoiler: it’s gorgeous.  SO THE BOOK WILL BE OUT IN JUNE!  I’m way excited, if you couldn’t tell.

Second, the tedious: I’m doing a pass on a book that’s already been on submission once, because once I learned all that stuff about beats I discovered I need to revise basically everything I’ve ever written.  This book is no exception, and adding tons of beats to a 70,000 word manuscript is brain frying.   But I’m gaining new skills!  If there’s one thing you should never stop doing as a writer, it’s building new skills.  There are so many possible skills to have in your writing toolbox, your lifetime will not be enough to master them all.

Third, the endless: I’m also revising a book that my agent looked at last year.  It needed work.  In fact, I wrote the wrong book all together.  I am nearing the end of the rewrite now.  Have I written the right book this time?  I’m sitting on the edge of my seat, let me tell you.

Fourth, the new and shiny: I’ve started collaborating on a project with a writer friend of mine, who happens to be a freaking genius.  This may turn out to be a train wreck, but I hope not, because playing with this book is FUN.  I want it to be equally fun to read.  (We’re still in the outline stage.  If it turns into an actual, readable work, you will hear more.)

Fifth, the waiting: I also have a first draft of a YA romance just waiting for me to pause to breathe, so I can revise it into something readable.  I am so excited about that book.  I need to bump numbers one through three off my plate, and then I’ll be digging into this.  I.  Cannot.  Wait.

You guys.  I have not been this excited about writing…maybe ever.  You know why?

Because I’ve stopped caring about how any of it turns out.  I have so little control over what happens to my books.  Maybe they’ll sell to publishers.  Maybe I’ll put them out myself.  Maybe they’ll turn out to be train wrecks that take years to rewrite.  (Um, maybe, all three?  Yes.  I’m going to hope for all three.)

But the only piece I can control is whether or not I show up to work in the morning.

Here I am!  Working!  For the first time in years, I’m really pleased with the results.  I hope you’re excited about them too.

I blogged a while ago about discovering a problem in my writing related to reaction beats.  Here’s my friend Heather’s recounting of the events.  Basically, my character’s reactions to story events weren’t coming through, because I was getting the mechanics of beats wrong.

Since then I’ve done quite a bit of research about beat structure.  What I’ve learned is basically summarized in this post on motivation-reaction units, which is brilliant.  I also like everything that is said about structure in this post.

But.

Let me tell you, it is really hard to come up with beat after beat to show character reactions and emotion.  The character’s heart can only thud so many times before I want to crack my head on the desk.  As I’ve been fixing my motivation-reaction units, I’m having occasion to write (and re-write) literally hundreds of beats.  And mostly, I just want to claw my own skin off instead of writing one more way that my character can express that she’s upset.

So I did some research into how to come up with better beats, which is really the root of all of my problems.  I tend to leave the beats out, which makes it hard for the reader to connect with the character.  I do this because I can’t think of a good beat at the time, so I just kind of wander away and never come back.  Time to learn to write better beats, Janci.

A friend referred me to the work of Robert Olen Butler, whose thoughts on the subject are summarized here.  He suggests five types of beats; let me tell you, for the volume of beats I need to write, five was not enough.  So I did some more research, and some brainstorming, and this is what I’ve come up with.  Ahem.

A Non-Inclusive List of Physical Beat Ideas, for When You Want to Claw Out Your Eyes Rather Than Write About the Beating Heart

1. If you have a magic system, use it.  In Mistborn, Brandon Sanderson gets a lot of beats out of people burning various metals; in Warbreaker, his main character’s hair turns color according to her emotions.  I’m working on a shape shifter book; my characters can show their emotions in the ways their bodies shift, but consciously and subconsciously.   If you’re lucky enough to have something like this, use it.  Your beats will be more unique and interesting when they’re derived from your world, and you’ll be enriching your world to boot.  Reciprocal relationships like that are the best.  Win/win!
2. You do have a setting.  But it looks and feels different, depending on your character’s mood.  Let your character describe people, places and things in emotional language in the dialogue beats; then the reader can tell what they’re feeling through the same words you’re using to get across the blocking, or the setting.  Once again, win/win.
3. This is Butler’s real contribution: you can use quick, one sentence visceral images from the past as a character remembers something, or from a feared or desired future when your character anticipates something.  Not a full flashback, just an image.  These can make really powerful beats, but they have to be pretty seamless in order to work right.
4. I’d add, you can do the same with things the character fears/hopes are happening in the present, in other locations in your world.  If a character is worried about someone else, you don’t need to tell us they’re worried.  Give us a one sentence visceral image of what the fear looks like, and we’ll be worried, too.
5. On the same note of Butler’s “little vivid bursts of waking dreams,” you can also go surreal.  If the character gives us an image of the floor swallowing her whole, we’ll get that she’s scared, or wants to hide.  Just make sure that the surreal images are clearly metaphorical, and avoid them in the first pages of fantasy novels.  Wouldn’t want your reader suddenly imagining carnivorous floors, unless you’re writing about them.  In which case you are awesome.
6. Another good beat is a deliberate physical action that reveals what the character’s feeling.  Just make sure we’re really grounded in the character’s internal thoughts before she slaps someone.  If we are, it’s a great beat.  If we’re not, we’re confused.
7. Then, there’s the oft used physical sensation beats, both the internal and the external.  The wind can blow across her face.  Her heart can pound.  She can grind her teeth.  These are powerful, but super easy to overuse.  I try to exhaust the rest of the list first, and I’m still using too many of these.  Time to cut, cut, cut.  And then replace.  With a better beat.  Dang it.
8. And last, while I don’t glowingly recommend this, you can just tell us what the emotion is.  “He looked angry,” isn’t the most artful sentence ever, but hey, it’s better than leaving it blank.  And as I’ve been researching, I’ve been surprised about how often my favorite authors just tell me what the emotion is a lot of the time.  I put this at the very bottom of the list, because I think other ways are better ways, but if artistry fails you, just tell us what the character feels.  You can fix it later, or if you don’t, most readers will probably forgive you, especially if you don’t do it every time.