Discussion: Your Favorite Part(s) of Being a Writer

Photo credit: Tekke on Flickr

With all the struggles involved in being a writer, many of which I openly discuss here, sometimes it's nice to stop and think about my favorite parts of my chosen career.

I love:

• that moment while first drafting when the story takes over and everything starts to flow.
• that moment while revising when your changes come together and the manuscript becomes better than you ever expected.
• that my job is to make up stories. 
• diving into a new story and falling in love with characters and words all over again.
• that daydreaming (about stories) is totally working.
• that reading is a job requirement.
• seeing my book cover(s) for the first time.
• making fun publishing announcements. 
• that feeling of holding your book/manuscript and knowing these words are mine. 
• meeting and talking to other writers, both online and IRL.
• meeting readers.
• the welcoming nature of 97% of the bookish community.
• writing "THE END" at the end of a manuscript.

What are some of your favorite parts of being a writer? 

Twitter-sized bite:

What's your favorite part of being a writer? Join the discussion on @Ava_Jae's blog. (Click to tweet)

On Titling Manuscripts

Photo credit: sugr.stoc on Flickr

So a while ago when I asked what people would like me to blog about, someone suggested I do a post on the process for coming up with Beyond the Red's title. I thought about this for a while, and also wanted to expand it to the sequels so had to wait for that announcement to be made, and then it was, so here we are.

Titles.

It's no secret than I am not a huge fan of the titling process. I've mentioned before that coming up with Beyond the Red's title was a struggle, to say the least—and one that ultimately my CP saved me from by coming up with the basis that then became Beyond the Red. I've talked about the strategy she used to help me in this vlog.

But once upon a time, Beyond the Red's first title was Slave & Sira. This was not a great title for many reasons—something I already knew when I was querying and thus was zero percent surprised when my now-agent said we'd be changing the title—not the least of which was because "Sira" is not an English word and most people have no idea what a Sira is. So. You know. That. And other things.

For a while I went back and forth with my agent and her team with different title ideas, many of which came close but didn't stick. Where the Stars Don't Reach almost became the new title until Beyond the Red won out in the end—something I'm now very happy about because I do love my title and the cover that fits it beautifully.

Despite all of my title woes, however, I found coming up with sequel titles way more enjoyable. With Beyond the Red set in stone, I had a frame to work within. I knew I wanted to continue using colors, partially to fit the frame and partially because colors actually play a decently important role in the series. From there, it was a matter of deciding what colors, and what adjectives or verbs I wanted to use, and then play around with the order while keeping in mind the overall arc for the series.

If I remember correctly, I came up with Into the Black and The Rising Gold in the same sitting—way faster than the multi-week brainstorming hell it took to come up with Beyond the Red. All in all, I'm really happy with titles I have, and while brainstorming unrelated manuscript titles still hasn't become any easier (I've been using hashtag titles like #YAFantasyWIP, #illvigilanteenbyWIP and #MagicMurderMayhem to talk about WIPs until I have a real title I use) the end result has been pretty great so far. :)

How do you come up with manuscript titles? 

Twitter-sized bites:

How do you come up with manuscript titles? Join the discussion on @Ava_Jae's blog. (Click to tweet) 

Author @Ava_Jae talks naming her series and the struggle of titling books. (Click to tweet)

Vlog: 4 Productivity Tips

Want to be more productive but don't know where to start? Today I'm sharing my top four productivity tips—also known as how to avoid procrastinating. :)

RELATED LINKS: 

• How to Get Productive
• How I Became a Morning Person
• Writing When You Don't Want To
• On Finding Time to Write
• Do You Have to Write Every Day?

What tips do you have for increasing productivity?

Twitter-sized bite: 

Want to be more productive but don't know where to start? @Ava_Jae vlogs her top four productivity tips. (Click to tweet)

Fixing the First Page Feature #25

Photo credit: marco monetti on Flickr

We are exactly one week from August! And so the time is here again, to critique another first page here on Writability. Yay! 

As per usual, I'll start by posting the full first 250 excerpt, after which I'll share my overall thoughts, then my redline critique. I encourage you guys to share your own thoughts and critiques in the comments (because I'm one person with one opinion!), as long as it's polite, thoughtful, and constructive. Any rude or mean comments will be unceremoniously deleted.

Let's do this thing. 

Title: RISING

Genre/Category: YA Historical Fantasy

First 250 words: 

"Ailis slipped out from the glow of the street lamp into the shadows of the porch. Shivering from the cold, she peered down the lonely alley. Ivy hung low over the wooden eaves, offering concealment from the road, and from the British armored truck that was parked in front of the flats across the drive. She hadn’t expected the enemy’s presence so near. From her orders, she knew Pedlar’s Cross was occupied, but not that the Tommies were taking billets on the same street as her dispatch. 

She took a deep breath and tried not to tremble, but to hold back the fear. Her Mam had cautioned that this work was not for young people. She said the risks were too high and her daughter had no business endangering her life like the men do. Ailis refused to hear of it, yet her Mam’s voice echoed in her ears, even though she was miles from home. 

'You can’t imagine what they’d do to you, Ailis. If they catch you they’d be shearing the wool clean off your head, fixing you for a hanging,' she had said. 

It didn’t matter though. Ailis was going to defend her homeland alongside her da, and alongside the man she loved, too. She tapped on the door with the brass knocker as quietly as she could. Three taps, silence, and two taps. 

She wrung her hands, both to keep them warm and to settle her nerves. Being seen outside this late at night was a crime."

Wow! So no question about it, this is a great opening. We've got instant conflict, some beautiful imagery, and tons of tension right off the bat. Upon a first glance, I'm very impressed and definitely want to read more. :)

Now for the in-line notes.

"Ailis slipped out from under the glow of the street lamp into the shadows of the porch. Beautiful opening imagery. Shivering from the cold, she peered down the lonely alley. I'm cutting "from the cold" to condense—and also given her situation, she's probably pretty afraid too. Ivy hung low over the wooden eaves, offering concealingment her from the road, and from the British armored truck that was parked in front of the flats across the drive. All adjustments made to condense. She hadn’t expected the enemy’s presence so near. From hHer orders, she knew said Pedlar’s Cross was occupied, but not that the Tommies were taking billets on the same street as her dispatch. Adjusted to remove filtering ("she knew").

She took a deep breath and tried not to tremble, but to hold back the fear. The fear bit of the sentence is unnecessary, IMO. The trembling/deep breath plus the following thoughts already shows her fear well. :) Her Mam had cautioned that this work wasno't for young people. She said the risks were too high and her daughter had no business endangering her life like the men do. Ailis refused to hear of it, yet her Mam’s voice echoed in her ears, even though she was miles from home. Great (and nicely placed) detail.

'You can’t imagine what they’d do to you, Ailis. If they catch you they’d be shearing the wool clean off your head, fixing you for a hanging,' she had said. Fantastic world building and setting up of stakes here.

It didn’t matter though. Ailis was going to defend her homeland alongside her da, and alongside the man she loved, too. More nicely placed information. She tapped on the door with the brass knocker as quietly as she could. Three taps, silence, and two taps. And another nice detail—great job. :)

She wrung her hands, both to keep them warm and to settle her nerves. Being seen outside this late at night was a crime." Great world building, tension, stakes, everything.

So in case it wasn't obvious in my notes, I love this one. The world building is really well done, the details are fantastic, I can picture everything, and I need more! Most of my notes are just focused on condensing to make it read even more smoothly, and I would 100% keep reading if I saw this in the slush. Also, I don't know if Dianne plans to enter #PitchWars, but if not, you should definitely do that thing, Dianne. :)

I hope that helps! Thanks for sharing your first 250 with us, Dianne!

Would you like to be featured in a Fixing the First Page Feature? Keep an eye out for the next critique giveaway in August!

Twitter-sized bite:

.@Ava_Jae talks condensing, great world building and more in the 25th Fixing the First Page critique. (Click to tweet)

Discussion: YA Anthologies

Photo credit: VioletMusic on Flickr

So I'm in the middle of reading my first ever YA anthology (Slasher Girls and Monster Boys edited by April Genevieve Tucholke), which I'm really enjoying. It's been a while since I've really sat down with some short stories (the last I read were for class) and more than that it's the first time I can remember that I actually picked up some short stories for pleasure reading. And so far, at least, it's been a great decision.

I've noticed YA anthologies have slowly become more popular as of late, from A Tyranny of Petticoats to Slasher Girls and probably many others I'm just forgetting about right now. And it makes sense—it allows a bunch of kick-ass authors to collaborate into one book with a bunch of awesome stories. It also makes for easy bite-size reading, because you can read a story in a sitting, which generally doesn't take too long.

In Slasher Girls, the stories so far have been about twenty to thirty pages each, and it's been a good experience seeing the arc of a story laid out and completed quickly (probably would be a good writing exercise too!). All in all, it's been an interesting experience so far, and I think I'll probably want to do it again, so I'll have to keep an eye out for more anthologies. So I'm curious—have any of you read any YA anthologies? And did you like them? 

Twitter-sized bite: 

Do you enjoy YA anthologies? Join the discussion on @Ava_Jae's blog. (Click to tweet)

Fixing the First Page Winner #25!

Photo credit: Ju Muncinelli on Flickr

Another quick Thursday post to announce the winner of the twenty-fifth fixing the first page feature giveaway!

*drumroll*

And the twenty-fifth winner is…

DIANNE GARDNER!

Yay! Congratulations, Dianne!

Thank you to all you fabulous entrants! If you didn't win, as always, there will be another fixing the first page giveaway in August, so keep an eye out! :)

(Updated to reflect new winner after previous winner passed!)

How to Condense Without Losing Anything Useful

Photo credit: M1keez on Flickr

It's not uncommon for writers to rely on filler words while writing—and especially while first drafting. From filter phrases to adverbs all over the place, drafts that aren't scrutinized to condense the writing are often full of words that unnecessarily clog up the writing.

Good news is while this is totally not something you should worry about while first drafting (seriously), when the time comes to take care of this issue, it's relatively easy to do. Time-consuming and painstaking, yes, but thankfully not too difficult to do.

To make it even easier, however, I've decided to add to my how to make cuts without losing anything useful post with more easy-to-remove words to look out for.

1. Starts/begins to. This is actually a tip I picked up from my editor, and it's a good one—9/10 times when you preface an action with "starts to" or "begins to" you don't need that phrase. Just by describing the action, the readers assume it's just started unless otherwise stated. 


2. Immediately/without warning. Like "suddenly" these words are usually unnecessary. I'll refer you to the other post for a longer explanation. 


3. That. I'm not going to say you never need "that", but oftentimes I find "that" is super overused. In sentences like "She said that I should go," for example, removing the "that" improves the flow and we don't lose anything by cutting it. 


4. Up/Down. For these two I only mean in very specific cases: sitting up/down, standing up/down, etc. In those cases, the up/down is unnecessary. 


5. Dialogue + action tag. I see this a lot, and tend to do this a lot when first drafting and just slapping words down, but when you have a dialogue tag and an action tag, you usually only need one—and oftentimes I go with the action tag because it's more visual (although there are exceptions, of course). So, for example: "'Where've you been?' he said, scowling" could be condensed to "'Where've you been?' He scowled." 


6. -ly adverbs. One of my last condensing steps is to go through and do a search for "ly" to cut down on my adverbs. While I definitely don't recommend removing all of them (adverbs can be useful!), writers in general tend to use them more than necessary, so it can be good to go through and do a quick sweep. 

So those are some words I look out for when condensing my writing—what phrases or words would you add to the list? 

Twitter-sized bite: 

Need to lower your word count but not sure where to start? @Ava_Jae shares six easy condensing tips. (Click to tweet)

Do you tend toward wordiness? @Ava_Jae shares six ways to condense your writing. #edittip (Click to tweet)