Becca Fitzpatrick

but then I saw this hilarious pop quiz over on Teens Writing for Teens and had to share. 

I'm reading a book called YOU CAN WRITE A MYSTERY by Gillian Roberts, and in the opening chapter, she delivers the fifteen commandments for mystery writers who want to be published. A few of them are great reminders for me.

Commandment V: Thou shalt write for yourself, not the market. If you imitate whatever's hot at the moment (e.g., serial killers, courtroom dramas, parrot-sleuths), you'll have an unsatisfying year or two rehashing someone else's inspiration and learning next to nothing. Worse, when it comes time to market the book, those killers and parrots and lawyers will be passe. Write what tickles your mind. Write a book you'd love to read.

Commandment VII: Thou shalt not ask whether you are good enough. This is not a valid question. You are good enough--or can be. The good (and possibly bad) news is that writing well is a lifelong challenge. The more you do, the more you learn you can do, and the more you then do beyond that. Start getting better at it now.

Commandment VIII: Thou shalt not intimidate yourself by comparing your writing with a published and polished work. You never see the awful early drafts of that book you love. Learn from works you admire, but don't let them become stumbling blocks.

*tries to imagine Diana Gabaldon's OUTLANDER ever being an awful early draft and fails*

Commandment IX: Thou shalt not worry whether your idea is new enough. There are no new ideas in the area of crime, only new voices and approaches to telling us about those crimes and their meanings. Yours is one of the new voices.

Commandment XIII: Thou shalt not believe that if writing's hard, you must be no good. The only people who think writing is easy are people who don't write. Writing's a difficult, courageous act. Bravery is required, as well as a great deal of slogging along. A lot of our work is work.

Commandment XIV: Thou shalt not set yourself up for failure with impossible goals. Don't swear you'll turn out one hundred pages a week or that you'll wake up at three o'clock in the morning and write until six, then tend the baby and get ready for work. Nobody writes a whole mystery; We all write one page at a time.

Okay, this is Becca again. Speaking of goals, I didn't keep my 1,000-words-a-day goal. Early last week I realized I was complicating my plot too much and needed to focus on what I'm good at, not what I want to be good at. That's not to say I can't improve my plotting skills (trust me, when it comes to plotting, there's always room for improvement). Instead, I needed to remember my strengths and play them up. So I trashed my outline and began anew. Again. :)

10,511 / 80,000 (13.1%)

Thanks for all the encouragement yesterday. Friends are better than chocolate!

Quick update. I wrote 2500 words today. Guess what? It felt amazing. I braced myself for a lame opening chapter, reassuring myself a lame opening was better than no opening, but my excitement with what I have is growing by degrees. I think I may be onto something good here . . .

Happy Hump Day and thanks again for cheering me forward!


ETA: I'm at 3500 words. I'm calling it a night.

3,500 / 80,000 (4.4%)

I had an encouraging chat with my agent today.  I'm not sure this is what she gained from our conversation, but I can say it's true for me.  It's time to stop putzing around and go to work.  I've got an outline of my sequel hammered out, and there's no reason to delay writing. 

Well, except for FEAR.   

It's been eighteen months since I started a story from scratch.  But as the wise patesden reminded me, I'm not the same writer I was back then.  I've got an arsenal of skills and tools I learned through the journey of writing my last novel, and I get to put them to use now.  I'm not promising the journey will be any easier this time, but it will be nice not to feel like I'm walking around naked and blindfolded.  

I have some exciting news, but can't share yet.  I will say that today was the first day everything started to feel real.  I am going to work with an amazing, talented and oh-so-wise editor.  I am going to create the best book I'm capeable of.  I am going to be published.  My book will hit shelves.  If I'm lucky, I'll connect with readers.   

I have arrived.  Time to get to work.    

I was supposed to go to Worldcon this year with several writing buddies, but it inopportunely landed on the same weekend as my triathlon.  I received this Wish-You-Were-Here card today from Laura, whose blog can be found at http://lauraadrian.blogspot.com 



Laura, if you read this, I bought a pair of shoes I think you're gonna love.  But I refuse to post pictures until I send in my revisions.  (See?  I'm still superstitious over my earlier shoe-cheating.)

ETA: The caption reads "Jerome was in his 40th year of writer's block.  If he could just 'break through' he'd buy a pair of sandals and a robe."

This is what happens when you start making lunch, a brilliant bit of dialogue pops into your head, and you dash to the study with the intention of typing said dialogue down before it eludes your brain . . . and then get sucked into typing a full-on scene.

316 / 365 (86.6%)

Three days until I leave for vacation . . . if you can call running a triathlon a vacation. My goal is to have all my scenes written before I head out. I can do it!

307 / 395 (77.7%)

288 / 407 (70.8%)

It's official. After using my keyboard for four months, I've eroded the letters S,D,C, and M. Apparently they're very prevalent in my story.

Quick writing update:

Shoes.  Obviously. 
OK, that's kind of a shallow thing to say.  And it's not entirely true . . . not entirely. 
But if we're being honest here, I definitely get a thrill out of nailing my writing goals because it means I get to turn myself loose at Macy's.  Discipline vs. reckless abandon. 


The rough draft of my novel is DONE!



I said THE ROUGH DRAFT OF MY NOVEL IS DONE!

My backside is on fire.  Thank you, kickboxing.   The good news is, I'm going to kill the triathlon this summer.  Step aerobics on Monday.  Swimming on Tuesday.  Spinning on Wednesday and Friday.  Kickboxing on Thursday.   Long run on Saturday.  Rest on Sunday.  Yeah, I'm taking it seriously.  (You would too if you had to run in a swimsuit in front of hundreds of people.)  Long live buns of fire.   

I got an email this morning from an agent - she wants the full.  That puts me at eight fulls, zero partials and a handful of queries left floating out there. 

I'm going to see 21 this weekend.  Can't wait.  The book was awesome.  I saw a preview for the movie and the lead character (Kevin) doesn't look at all Asian, though.  He's white.  Which kind of threw me, because the book specifically says the MIT club didn't want white guys - they don't fit the high-rollers stereotype.   Typical Hollywood :P

Have a great weekend, everyone! 

Last week I promised to pass along LCC notes on plotting, using Patriot Games as an example.  Here goes. 

Rising Action: Jack Ryan kills the brother of a ULA member and unwittingly saves the Prince and Princess of Wales
Pinch Point 1: Jack declines the offer to work at the CIA because his family doesn't want him to
Midstory: The ULA plans to attack Jack's family as revenge and to undermine American support for PIRA
Pinch Point 2: Jack's wife and daughter are run down, so he goes back to the CIA to hunt down the killers and keep his family safe
Climax: Jack faces off against the ULA at his own home, conquers the ULA, and protects both his family and the royal family
Resolution: Jack's wife gives birth to Jack Ryan Jr. and the Prince and Princess of Wales are named as godparents

The author who gave this presentation pointed out that Theme is what ties the whole story together.  Can you guess the theme in Patriot Games?  Family. 

I've been having fun (yes, FUN) applying this plot template to other stories I've read.  For kicks, I'll try to post a few more in the upcoming weeks. 

I can't believe in my last post I said "Marcus Sakey is a boy, he has curly hair, he introduced himself using the word 'handcuffs,' and he's cute."  Of course Marcus is a boy.  Do you know any girls who go by Marcus??  Looking back, I think I was trying to be funny.  Note to self: don't try for humor when you're dead tired. 

Onward.

Looking back over my notes from LCC, I noticed a few things I wanted to share.  These notes deal mostly with crafting mysteries, but I think the knowledge can be applied to just about any genre.  (These notes are also the personal opinions of published authors, and while I don't agree with all of them, I do agree with parts of all of them.)

1.  Every 25 pages or so of the manuscript, something needs to be elevated or get worse. 

2.  We don't learn as much about characters by being told which brands they wear, the type of car they drive or the color of their hair; we learn about characters by how they act in conflict. 

3.  As the story progresses, the reader needs to be more and more convinced that the protagonist is going to fail.

4.  As much as authors hate formulas, readers love patterns.  They have expectations coming into a novel, and it's the author's job to meet those expectations, or blow them away (in a good way).  One author in particular believed in plotting the mystery/suspense novel like a Hollywood movie:
             *Rising Action
             *Pinch Point #1
             *Midstory
             *Pinch Point #2 
             *Climax
             *Resolution

Tomorrow, I'll go into more detail on this "Hollywood plotting" by applying it to the movie Patriot Games.