Life On The Rocinante' (After Dark!)

[Batya33]

1 minute ago, ShySoul said:

Think an author should stay true to themselves and write what works for them. There's no telling what an audience is going to think. Some will see it as too forceful. In that case, they don't have to read it. But it'll hit home for a specific audience. And if it reaches them, then it's done something right.

Having writing a couple chapters of Cynder's novel, I can say I'm probably not the target demographic. It does seem a bit darker then I'd like. But it's very real. And I think it's good to have that real and raw feeling out there for people to consume. Certainly not something that should upset people to the point of suing. But you never know with people. Have to be ready for anything.

Cynder, stay true to yourself and your writing. Looking forward to picking it up one day... no matter how long that might take. 😉

I could not agree more.  As a former writer myself -to me though there are two considerations.  How badly does the person care about being a published author let alone widely read.  If that is not a true goal and the person is mostly writing for themselves or perhaps their writing group or a class- for sure have at it. 

In a perfect world you wouldn't need to edit your writing if publishing was the goal and some don't -but some do I'm sure. My friend who is about to publish her second novel -first was published 2 years ago and she's middle aged like me - she writes what she knows.  It is raw and real.  I've read her blog/articles/excerpts of short stories etc over the years. So far she is reaping the benefits of publishing the first novel and the second seems to be on an awesome path so far.  I am very happy for her!  I don't know if she had to change what she wrote about to get published but I can imagine there were discussions with her agents and editors -I would assume that is typical when sensitive subjects are involved?

I don't think real and raw have much to do with suing but not in that field.  Depends on what the real part entails I guess -if it's only about the person's reality that's different but it's not my area.  

I think if what someone writes reaches and resonates with anyone that is a success! And for some writers it's a success -just to write it -to enjoy it for what it is, on one's own.  I shared my children's book with hundreds of children over the years and  they loved it.  And I never made a serious attempt to have it published -wasn't important to me. It was cool to publish a poem in my early teens and find someone had copied it into their blog over 20 years later - from the magazine.  I wrote to her and she got nervous as it wasn't attributed to me but I was just so thrilled how much she loved it!

[mylolita]

I personally know nothing about publishing a book or technical writing or, any writing… mapping out and structuring stories - any of that!

 

But, the main sign, for me, of a gifted and natural writer, or any artist for that matter (painter, musician, poet, on and on) is that, they sit in full control at the helm of an emotional sea. The writer is the Captain. 
 

If they want to move you to tears - you will be moved. If their desire is revulsion? You shall be repulsed. If they insist you walk with them, side by side in glee or distress - you will walk or be dragged along with no way to stop! 
 

An exceptional writer embodies you and forces you along for their ride. They are something of an effortless mystic, conjoining up deep feelings, whatever they choose those feelings to be. A master of the mental experience. They cause reaction. 
 

A great writer takes you by the hand and, even when you reach for it, there is; with expectation, nervousness - for the reader knows the power doesn’t lie with them! 

 

Hat’s off to you Cynder for attempting and finishing a goal! 
 

Here’s to many more.

 

I know you won’t get this message but, I felt like putting it out there anyway.

 

x
 

 

[Cynder]

Well, my editor wants me to fill in the year long gap in my book.  I guess having a year of unaccounted for time in a novel is a nono. And I won't say it's completely unaccounted for. Between part one and part 2 there is a one year jump. And since part 2 follows different characters, I didn't think it would be a big deal.  But I guess it is.

So, I came up with this whole additional story arc that follows the characters from part one, over the year before part 2 starts. And this is going to change everything. As of now, the story is told in 3 parts, and it's currently sitting at 130k words, which is way too long for a debut novel.  So, after I add this other arc, it will definitely be split into two books. This also means my release date might happen a lot sooner than I think. Since all of the old part one has already been gone through by my editor and final revisions have been made.  So, that means once I'm done with this other arc, and once those revisions are made, the first book is done, as in, ready to publish.

The outline I have for the new arc is 4 chapters long. But considering my history and the way I write, it will probably be more.

But man... this new story involving my part one characters is really good. I have the first chapter of it written and I'm half way through the second. I plan on giving the first chapter a good polishing and sending it to my editor as soon as I can. I have AIK this weekend. So I have that to prep for that, too. So, being realistic and not expecting myself to be superwoman (because I also still have to find time to sleep and you know, work my regular job in this time,) I probably won't get it to him this weekend.  But definitely next week. 

The city that a lot of my stories take place in is based on the city I live in. And the city I live in has a network of underground tunnels and rooms. This is true. It isn't just an urban legend. A few entrances are known around the city. I've never been able to find a concrete answer about what they were used for. Some sources say they are prohibition tunnels. Some say they were part of the underground railroad. Either could be true. And maybe they were used for both, as in built as part of the railroad but later on used for smuggling booze into the city.  Why they're there doesn't really matter in this context. 

When I was a teenager I went through a time where I was really fascinated with the Paris Catacombs. I wrote a paper about them in history class when we were supposed to pick a famous landmark to write about, and my morbid teenage self thought it was so interesting that Paris just moved all their dead bodies below the ground and that people go down there and have parties and stuff.  So, as expected when I found out there are tunnels under the city I live in, I got kind of fixated on that, too.  As far as I know there's no dead bodies in the tunnels below my city and no wild parties go on down there, either.

So anyway, the city where Needles, and most of my other stories take place, also has an underground network like this. The tunnels were never mentioned in Needles, specifically, but they are a main focus of one of the side stories I wrote a few years ago.  Well, this arc that I came up with focuses on them, too.  It's also a chance to give this one side character that I really like more time on the page. This does tie up a lot of the things that happen in part one pretty well.  Like, Needles has a relatively high body count. Multiple people die in it. And one of the deaths was never explored further in the original story. This version of the story gives more time to it and shows more of the aftermath and how this person's loved ones moved on. 

I made sure to tone down the violence in this part of the book.  There is already a lot of violence, a lot of drug use, and a lot of drinking in this book.  My editor keeps telling me I'm going to have a real problem with Amazon.  And if Amazon won't sell your work, you're pretty much screwed. So, hopefully I can squeeze through their content policy.  But since it's pretty much violent from the getgo (I mean... within the first 6 pages my main character holds a knife to his Dad's throat...) but since it's generally a violent read, I made this arc that I'm adding a lot less violent so the reader has some room to breathe and process things, just like my characters do.

I know there are people reading this thinking a lot of violence doesn't make a good story. And no, it doesn't. The violence isn't gratuitous. And the sad reality is, that's life for some people. I grew up in a house where violence was practically a daily occurrence. And when you're a kid in that situation, you have no agency to get out. An adult can just leave whenever they want. A child is stuck.  We like to think there is all this help available for kids in bad situations. But there isn't as much as people think. CPS was called on my family multiple times. They never helped. Most of the time they just escalated things and left a bunch of loose ends. I know I've said this before, but even taking into account a possible confirmation bias, I can't think of a single person I know who CPS has helped. I know so many people with stories about CPS, and no one has a positive story. 

The CPS workers in Needles are actually portrayed pretty positively and nothing like what I've experienced in real life. I've seen CPS workers complain about always being villains in the media. Well, there must be something to that.

Lawyers are another group that is vilified in the media a lot. But the lawyer in Needles is actually a good guy who really goes above and beyond for his client (a murderer.)

None of my characters are all good or all bad. Everyone is mortally ambiguous at best. 

Well, anyway, these new developments will change everything. I hope for the best.

Lol... I guess I'm feeling nostalgic today. My dad played this song in the car a lot when I was little and I always loved the violin solo (which I guess isn't actually a violin but a guitar played with a bow.)  Either way, sounds just as cool now as it did when I was kid.  

 

[Batya33]

You’re working so hard and obviously putting your all into it. Good luck with the continued writing and edits !

[Cynder]

4 hours ago, Batya33 said:

You’re working so hard and obviously putting your all into it. Good luck with the continued writing and edits !

I've put so much on hold just for this book. I've barely painted anything over the last year. I've sacrificed sleep, etc.  I jut keep hitting one road block after another.  I feel like every time I turn around I'm being told there is this other thing I need to change. And it's not like making one change is always easy, because one change means things have to change all throughout the book for continuity.  For a time he was telling me to take all these plot points out, and it was starting to feel like I was being steered toward writing a completely different story. But now I see adding these new chapters as taking back control. Because instead of just removing stuff that might upset people, I can keep most of that in, just with more of a buffer.  It's hard to really explain this without going into a huge summary of the whole plot of the book, which I'm not going to do here. 

But, like, W (easier to type that my editor) wants me to take out chapter 12 because it's too violent. And it is really violent. Honestly, chapter 12 is probably the most violent thing I've ever written.  When I posted it on Reddit I got a lot of messages from people that ranged anywhere from being concerned about me and asking if I"m safe and if this was a cry for help, to people telling me I'm disturbed and need to seek therapy. W told me that this chapter will kill my career if I leave it in and release it to the public. Well, with this new arc added, I can remove the most disturbing parts of chapter 12, but what happened is still eluded to. Because what happens in chapter 12 is important to the plot. It's just really dark and awful. 

I absolutely will not budge on the rape, though. That doesn't happen in chapter 12, it happens earlier. But that scene isn't going anywhere. I posted the final revision of that scene on Reddit a few months ago and I got a message from this random guy that made me cry. He told me he wanted to thank me for writing about this because reading it was the first time he's felt seen since it happened to him. I still fail to understand why our society isn't shocked by male on female rape but if the genders are reversed it's a really shocking thing.

If anyone is wondering, when I say I post this stuff on Reddit, what I mean is share the links to google docs. Whenever you post something on the internet it is considered published, and thus, not publishable by other means. But in these writing communities and critique groups, people share links to their GDocs and that makes it technically not posted on the internet. I also never link my masters on Reddit. I create separate documents specifically for Reddit. When I work, I have a master copy, a beta copy (this is the one that gets sent to W) and a copy for sharing in online spaces. And whenever I revise, I only revise the master, and then update the others as I go.

Also, since I am well into final revisions for part 2, this means I have a good head start on what will be the second book.  So I won't be pulling a GRRM and releasing books 6 years apart, lol. 

I need to give myself a little grace here.  I've said it before but I forget sometimes that it was July 2023 that I decided to publish it. Before that, I had 6 chapters. They were written completely out of order, with barely a cohesive story tying them all together.  D just happened to introduce me to this editor who liked my work, otherwise that's probably still where it would be. So yeah, even though I started writing it in 2021, I didn't get serious about it until July of 2023. Writing and releasing a book isn't a fast process. And you only get one chance to make a first impression. 

Anyway, I really should be busting out the next chapter instead of rambling on and on here.  So, that's what I'm gonna go do.

 

[Batya33]

FYI am reading a memoir called Splinters which deals with addiction and the author is a writer. Jamison.  She has interesting takes on the importance of revisions and editing. 

[Cynder]

1 hour ago, Batya33 said:

FYI am reading a memoir called Splinters which deals with addiction and the author is a writer. Jamison.  She has interesting takes on the importance of revisions and editing. 

Revising and editing is actually my favorite part of the process.  I hate drafting. I know it seems like drafting would be the best part because the story is already in my head. But drafting is where I struggle the most.  Although recently I did start letting myself let go of all these arbitrary rules when I draft. That has helped.  I just let the words come and then fix whatever mistakes I made later, instead of trying to write a clean, polished draft.

For me, it's during the revision process that the story actually becomes a story, and not just something I threw down onto paper. 

I might check out the book you're talking about.  Since another project I started that's on the back burner deals with addiction, too, but my main character in that story is in recovery.  Recovery is something I can't personally relate to since I've never been there. I love hearing people's stories about it, though.