Good News, Bad News

Good news: I'm almost done with the outline. I have 376 phases done (out of what will probably come to somewhere between 400 and 450). I'm finally past the middle and on to the ending. I think I'll be done by the end of the week.

Bad news: My computer has taken to shutting down randomly. The thing that is supposed to keep it alive during power failures is malfunctioning, and every so often it decides to turn off, turning my computer off with it. I'm backing up my writing files frequently.

List Night?

I was just reading through a short story to see if I needed to make any changes before sending it off to my writing group. In the first paragraph, I had a character saying, "Last night was amazing"... only that's not what she said. She said, "List night was amazing." What's amazing is that this made it through one revision already, as well as several readers. I wonder if any of those readers wondered what "list night" was and why this character was so enthusiastic about it. It certainly doesn't sound that exciting to me.

I like finding amusing typos; they make me laugh.

The Rest of Us

It seems like more and more, urban fantasy and paranormal romance are merging. I like the books that result; they're fun, and I enjoy reading then. But it makes me wonder – is there still room for the rest of us?

My books don't have a strong romance component. I'm not a romance writer, primarily because I'm not a romance reader. I'm not prejudiced against romance; I don't think romance is worth less than other genres. It's just a personal preference. I'm perfectly happy to read a romance if it's got lots of other stuff in it besides the romance (for example, Lynn Viehl's Darkyn novels, or Tall, Dark, and Dead by Tate Hallaway; the latter has secret Vatican witch-hunters, and there was no way I could pass that up), and occasionally I'll pick up a romance if it looks particularly angsty (yeah, I'm a sucker for angst). But while I like love stories, for the most part they're not what get me excited about a book, and when I'm writing, the love story is rarely what ignites my inspiration and makes me eager to sit back down at the keyboard.

I also don't write sexy chick-lit heroines. I'm not offended by reading about them – sometimes they're so alien to me that I wonder if I've picked up a science fiction novel by mistake, but assuming the book is well-written, that's just part of the fun. But they're not what I write. Take Phoenix, the heroine in my 2YN novel (which isn't precisely urban fantasy; in fact, I'm still not entirely sure what it is). She's not sexy; in fact, she's quite socially awkward. She doesn't exude sex appeal, and probably never will.

For awhile I tried to write this style of urban fantasy. After all, I like to read it, so it only made sense that I would like to write it. But my ideas were lackluster, and I couldn't sustain enthusiasm for them; only one actually made it to the writing stage, and I never got more than a couple of pages into it. In contrast, when I let myself write in my natural style, the writing flows much more smoothly. Liking to read something doesn't necessarily mean you'll like to write it.

So I wonder – is there still room for me in this genre, or has it moved far enough away from what I write that I don't fit anymore?

The Halfway Point

I hit two hundred phases tonight, which means I'm about halfway through the outline. This is good; my goal was to hit two hundred by the end of this week, which would get me finished with the outline a week before the actual writing starts. I often feel like I'm going too slowly with this, so it's encouraging to see that I'm ahead of schedule.

I'm still in the middle. Seeing as I said I'm halfway through the outline, you probably guessed that. Sometimes it feels like an impenetrable forest, or a collage of unrelated fragments, but sometimes it actually feels like I'm building something that's true to the vision in my head.

It doesn't help, though, that the humidity here is making it very hard for me to think. It was bad enough this evening that I felt nauseous.

Frankenstein's Monster

I'm doing a phase outline for the 2YN novel (tentatively titled Nothing So Pure) - a very detailed form of outline developed by Lazette Gifford. So far I'm liking it very much - it gives me a chance to write down all the little details and snippets of dialogue that tehd to occur to me when I'm in the prewriting stage. That way I won't have to worry about forgetting them, and I won't have to rush through a scene to make sure I don't forget what's supposed to happen next. It also makes it harder for me to save the hard work until the last minute - in my usual line-per-scene outlines, I can get away with saying vague things like Tim somehow finds out where Lia is, but in this type of outline, that's harder to do.

This outlining process is also having an unexpected result. I think I may have figured out what my problem is with novels - why they always seem to die on me. I think my problem is middles. Beginnings are for setting everything up, endings feel like coasting down a hill, but in the middle the book starts to feel like Frankenstein's monster - a collection of scenes badly sewn together, trying to be a book. And then I feel like it must be a weak idea, and then I get discouraged. With this form of outlining, I'm close enough to the story that it's almost like I'm writing it, but I'm also far away enough that I can observe the process, so I can see this happening more easily than if I was doing actual writing or doing a more distant outline.

So now I finally know what the issue is. That's the good news. The bad news is, I'm smack in the middle right now, and the book is starting to feel like Frankenstein's monster.