Archive for category WIP

state of the kate

Feb 3

Posted by kate in books, fluff, in hot pursuit, m/m, vanity, WIP | No Comments

I called out sick from work today. I feel okay saying this on the internets because I am actually sick. The funny thing about sick days when you are actually sick is that, right after you get off the phone with your boss, you think, “Awesome, I’ve got this whole day off in front of me.” But then you realize you are actually sick and can’t do anything. I, for example, fell asleep in the middle of reading a book and lost the whole afternoon. I was thinking I’d get in some cold-medicine-fueled writing, but no. (Don’t pity me too much, though; I’m feeling a lot better now. And there are worse things than spending a day curled up in bed with a down quilt, a cat, and a Kindle.)

I’ve been reading a lot the last couple of days. I haven’t been reading much lately, mostly because of lack of time, but it turns out my shopping vice of late is ebooks, because I’ve bought, like, 15 of them in the last few weeks.

Here’s what I’ve read since I’ve been sick: After eying it for a couple of weeks, I finally broke down and read The Dark Tide. I knew the book would be good, and it was. I just couldn’t face the end of the Adrien English series. I guess I got a little sentimental. I mean, the series is fantastic, but also, Fatal Shadows has the distinction of being the first ebook I ever bought (and I think also the first m/m romance I ever read, although I’d read plenty of things with gay characters before). And it was a good intro to Loose Id, which, hey, is publishing my book in two weeks.

I also read LA Heat, a pretty solid procedural crime novel featuring a closeted cop who falls for the suspect in his murder investigation. It’s heavy on the police minutiae, but we’ve already talked about that, so you know it’s cool with me. And I’m a sucker for an old-fashioned page turner.

I’ve got a murder-mystery work-in-progress that I plan (hope) to finish this month, and all this cop stuff is making me want to get back to it. I’ve been working on this one for the last few months; I know whodunnit but can’t figure out how the characters figure it out, so I’ve been dragging my feet on the ending. It’s lighter in tone than In Hot Pursuit, though it has a higher body count. And I like these characters a lot, which makes it a joy to work on for the most part, except for the ending. (You appreciate mystery writers more when you try to write a mystery.) The one drawback is that one of the characters is a mystery writer, and after I was 20,000 words into the first draft, I had a conversation with a few members of my writers group who were all, “I hate characters who are writers.” Whoops! I’ll tell you, this character is not too prone to discussing his Craft. He’s more a pop writer, more opportunistic and arrogant than flighty and artistic. Plus, I thought it was funny to have a character who writes gritty crime novels with lots of gruesome details who then loses his shit when confronted with the real thing. It’s possible I have a warped sense of humor.

It occurred to me that my book comes out two days after Valentine’s Day, and it’s a romance, so there should be some celebrating? Stay tuned.

process is a strange thing

Nov 14

Posted by kate in nanowrimo, new york, WIP, writing | No Comments

All writers work differently. I do this now less than I used to, but I always liked to draw, and when I’m really planning something out, I sometimes draw maps and diagrams. It helps me remember things.

Someone in my local NaNoWriMo forum posted a link to novelist Richard Kadrey’s plot outlines notes. There’s an odd familiarity in it, perhaps because I don’t think especially linearly.

The closest equivalent I have for that in a current work in progress is this: When I was working on my NaNoWriMo research, I sat through the penultimate episode of Ric Burns’ documentary New York. And I took notes. I feel sort of like a fraud now, because these are too neat and orderly seeming to be the product of a mind planning a novel, but I uploaded them anyway, if you’re interested: PDF. No, the crazier part of this process was, I think, the notes I wrote after I finished watching the film. I wound up not using a lot of this, so I feel okay posting the notes. They were:

Read the rest of this entry »

excerpt

Nov 7

Posted by kate in excerpt, nanowrimo, WIP | 1 Comment

Here’s a (raw, unedited) piece of the NaNo novel:

For context, this scene takes place in 1959, when our protagonist, Harvey, is 14.

Read the rest of this entry »

prewriting NaNoWriMo… and some other stuff

Oct 25

Posted by kate in nanowrimo, WIP, writing | No Comments

One of the things I really like about Jennifer Crusie’s blog is that she talks about craft a lot, especially as related to her latest projects.

I was thinking about this while procrastinating from some editorial work yesterday afternoon. In the grand scheme of “what do people want to read about on an author blog” I know that, for me, I like reading about craft. But maybe that’s not universal. You guys will have to let me know.

So what can I say about craft? Except that I’m such a scatterbrain, it’s amazing I ever finish anything.

I’ve got a WIP I decided I’d poke at during the week before NaNoWriMo, so I spent a couple of hours in my favorite local cafe yesterday doing just that, until I got sort of restless (and the laptop battery started to wane) so I came home to do more writing, at which time I promptly lost 3 hours to video games, got trapped inside the dress I wanted to wear to dinner, mourned the loss of the zipper, changed clothes a few more times, went back outside and got rained on a lot, had a delightful dinner out with friends, complained about the rain, complained about the Yankees, complained about the rain postponing the Yankees game, then stayed up until the wee hours of the morning doing nothing in particular for no real reason beyond that I just wasn’t ready to go to sleep. Me, I am good at the scheduling.

But, of course, the beauty of NaNoWriMo is that it forces you to write to meet a goal.

I’m not a big planner. I learned the first year that I participated in NaNoWriMo that planning too much is no good for me, because I tend to rush through my outlines. But it’s hard not to spend time thinking about the story I want to tell, and I tend to forget things if I don’t write them down, so I have to make notes.

So I guess I have planned to a certain extent: no outlines, but I’ve got several pages of notes (some on the story, some research), a 2-hour playlist on my iPod, and I’ve been talking about the story to anyone who will listen.

And nothing to do but sit on my hands for a week. :-D

Incidentally, instead of poking at my WIP, today I went out to brunch, wasted time on the internets, and baked cookies. Just one of those weekends, I guess.

new york changing

Oct 16

Posted by kate in music, nanowrimo, new york, WIP | No Comments

I mentioned in my last post, my idea for NaNoWriMo has a historical plot. One of my protagonists lived through New York City in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, and I’ve been researching important historical events of these years.

My thinking on the last 50 years of New York City history would probably take a whole book, but I will say 2 things: 1) there’s a part of me that always wanted to “be a part of it”; I grew up in the Jersey suburbs and spent a fair amount of time in the city as a kid, but more than that, I wanted to be a part of the New York as seen on TV, even the rough, nasty parts of it. I can’t really explain why. 2) There’s a lot of weird nostalgia for the Way Things Used to Be that puzzles me because it’s like people don’t remember how awful the city was, or they, for some reason, want to increase the odds they’ll get mugged. Maybe that makes them feel like a real city dweller? I’ll take the safer city, thanks.

But it’s hard not to get nostalgic, too, since the New York I live in is not the one I saw on the TV as a kid in the 80s, not the place I wanted to live when I was a teenager. And I think the cleaner New York has lost something, some edge to its creativity, as the mom and pop stores give way to Starbucks and the Gap.

Well, anyway. Speaking of 70s nostalgia, Scouting New York has a really cool series showing how New York has changed since certain iconic New York movies:

Taxi Driver: part 1, part 2, part 3

Ghostbusters: part 1, part 2

On Taxi Driver, Scout says:

Personally, I don’t look back nostalgically on the grittier New York of the late 1970’s. As I never experienced it first hand, I believe it’s dangerous and naive to romanticize something the city has worked so desperately to rise up from. In 1976, a large portion of New York’s population people simply didn’t care, and the city suffered for it. If you pine for this level of apathy, there are plenty of other American cities going through some pretty bad rough patches you could move to, and I promise the rent will be much cheaper.

In 2009, people care. A byproduct of people caring is a city that is safer, more g-rated, more expensive, more museum-like. I agree that such an environment leaves very little room for growth, artistic or otherwise – frankly, you CAN’T have a Belmore diner at the corner of 28th & Park anymore (if you owned the place, would you not sell the property for countless millions?). While I dislike the fact that so many of the FAR more interesting locations in Taxi Driver have been replaced by Duane Reades, McDonald’s, Starbucks, and Sephora’s, I can only look at it as part of the unfortunate social evolution of New York. Ultimately, if New York City didn’t want them, they wouldn’t exist for long.

And, yeah, that pretty succinctly sums up what I believe also, and it’s going to be one of the themes of my novel. See also this LCD Soundsystem song:

the song remains the same

Oct 13

Posted by kate in music, strategies, WIP, writing | 2 Comments

I do all my best thinking when I’m nowhere near a computer. Sometimes this is a problem; if I don’t write down an idea right away, it doesn’t always stay in my head. Most of the time, I view it as an asset.

I walk a lot. I live a little over a mile from my day job and I don’t own a car, so I walk to and from the office every day. Or, sometimes I just walk around the neighborhood when the ideas aren’t coming so easily.

And, because I’m also easily bored, I always have my iPod with me. The best strategy I’ve come up with to overcome writer’s block is to make playlists for each of my novels. If I’m stuck on a story, I’ll put on the playlist for that story and take a walk, and I can usually work out my problem. I started doing this for a novel I wrote in college: I made a soundtrack. It’s helpful sometimes to think of your novel in cinematic terms. Who would play this character in the movie? What song is playing in the background of this scene?

My musical tastes are varied and eclectic. I like everything from country to folk to opera to classic rock. Among other things, I’m a classically trained musician, and I’m a sucker for a good pop song that uses strings. (Real strings, not the synthesized ones; I can tell!) Sometimes I make playlists that are just a hodgepodge of songs that I think apply to specific scenes. It means that one soundtrack can have a folk song, a rap song, and maybe a piece of classical music. If I write a novel with a violinist character, the soundtrack might include a piece of music she plays in the novel. If I hear a song that I think is particularly evocative, that’s probably going to get added to a soundtrack. Sometimes I just pick a bunch of songs in one particular genre to set a mood for the whole piece. I have a work in progress about Wyoming ranchers, and I made a playlist that is entirely country music, for example (and all songs about wide open spaces, for the most part, or specific emotions, nothing that’s location specific to areas of the US I’m not writing about.)

So, I’m participating in NaNoWriMo this year, and the novel I have planned is, in part, “historical,” in that there’s a storyline that spans from 1945 until 2001 or so. The character who lives through all this is a lifelong New Yorker, so I’m trying to pick out some songs for his part of the novel’s soundtrack. So far I’ve got things like Bob Dylan’s “Positively 4th Street” and James Brown’s “Down and Out in New York City” and a whole lot of Simon & Garfunkel. If anyone has further songs, songs that are evocative of a particular era, or of New York City (especially in the 60s ad 70s), I’m open to suggestion, too.

PS — I haven’t officially announced it here, but my first novel is coming out in February, if all goes to plan. This novel’s got a soundtrack, too, sort of, in that I was listening to a lot of whiny emo rock at the time.

authenticity and audience

Sep 16

Posted by kate in WIP, writing | No Comments

I’m currently in the midst of having an almost-finished novel workshopped by my writers group. I have a character in the novel who even I can admit is kind of schmoopy. One of the members of my group called him emo and said that all of his internal monologue sounded like it was written by a woman.

This is fair criticism. I, obviously, have no first-hand experience with what the internal monologue inside a male brain sounds like, but I’ve read books that rang oddly to me, where it was obvious that it was a woman pulling the strings behind the male characters, and that lack of authenticity bothered me enough to pull me out of the story.

It’s making me self-conscious about the character I’m writing in my current work-in-progress, a man suffering from depression. He’s divorced, he’s stuck in a dead-end job, and just when he finds himself in a relationship that turns out to be a bright spot in his life, his ex-wife threatens to take custody of their daughter away. So life sucks for this guy, and he has a small breakdown. I worry that I’m not writing him masculine enough, that he will become, essentially a Chick with a Dick, a convention I am not a fan of, especially in m/m fiction, wherein one of the character is essentially a woman with boy parts.

I’m maybe especially self-conscious after reading this:

Certainly, [women] have a tendency to make gay love more romantic than it really is, assigning it the same emotional values of straight or Lesbian courtship. While a guy can readily get into wham-bam-thank-you-man sex for sex’s sake, and can get turned on by reading it, women tend to be turned on by mental involvement with which men wouldn’t be bothered in real time.

[...]

The transference of female emotions onto gay fictional characters may make gay men, in general, come across to women as better men than their straight male counterparts, if just because gay men, word-painted with the universal, albeit artificial guise, of being so often so truly kind, caring, loving, and considerate, have morphed into the female ideal of the perfect mate and lover. Is that a good or bad thing? I’m for anything that makes gayness more acceptable. If in the end, it’s a totally unrealistic way of seeing gay men, how many women are actually going to know they’re indulging in pure illusion?

My takeaway from this is that men portrayed as “truly kind, caring, loving, and considerate” (or, you know, sappy and emotional and sensitive and whatever else it is women are thought to look for in men) are not realistic, but if that’s what women are buying, it’s okay to write them that way. (“How many women are actually going to know?” I feel like this assumes all women live in some box in middle America where gay men fear to tread. It feels a little disingenuous for me to be all, “I have gay friends, I know what gay men are like!” because that sounds to me like, “I’m not a racist! I have a black friend!” but, on the other hand, I would hope that my gay friends fill me in when I’m portraying them in delusionally romantic ways. That’s neither here nor there, though.)

I don’t even know what to do with this. First there’s the gender essentialism (men like sex for sex’s sake, women like emotions, blah blah whatever). But say we buy into the notion that some emotions are feminine, I have the added problem of, generally speaking, finding beta men more attractive. I can certainly understand the appeal of the big, strong, alpha male, but I’m a sucker for a guy who is funny and caring and a little nerdy. Is that realistic? And what is romance if not fantasy? If I write a guy who is a little… feminine, is that still okay if that’s what my audience wants?

I’m still inclined to think that I’d rather get it right, that I’d rather write men who read masculine, who seem like men to my audience. Even fantasy requires plausibility; even if you’re writing about unicorns on Mars, they need to be depicted in a way that rings true to the reader, that seems reasonable and believable.