News

Well, it's been a little over two months since I last blogged. I suppose it's because I haven't got much to update on. That is, didn't have up until two weeks ago.

The editing on TCC isn't going well. I was stuck on a dialogue in chapter 2 that I needed to rewrite completely, while still maintaining all the essential information and it wasn't going well. Still isn't. But I'm excited, nevertheless.

About a month ago an idea came to me. I won't say what kind of idea, but I'm thinking it might be a better debut novel than TCC. Then again, perhaps not. I'll only be able to know that when I finish both (as with TCC, I have mostly no idea what is going to happen in the novel and the ending is invisible to me. That's the way it's supposed to be). I currently have five chapters which are shorter than TCC, which had enormously large chapters (don't even get me started on Rulebreaker, the first story I attempted to write. Both of the chapters were 10,000 words long). It's more of a fun, adventurous, girly (from a girl's point of view) story whose style was inspired by "I'd Tell You I Love You But Then I'd Have To Kill You". I want to see where it goes and it's really surprised me so far.

Now I have finally gone back to editing TCC and just when I thought I couldn't remake the first chapter any more... Three more drafts in two days (and I was supposed to cut words but now I've added several hundred more). I'll never get to the ending at this rate. But at least I'm doing something. I want to finally finish it (and the other novel) and get opinions. One of my friends who read the first chapter says she liked it and wants to read more. So I'm waiting for Christmas holidays when I can hopefully work on it more.

Can't wait to finish it.

Jane

Trouble with parents

Well, the editing isn't going very well. It's been a week and I haven't even gone through the second chapter once. It probably has something to do with the fact that I keep getting distracted. A lot. But also because I decided to rewrite a scene (the one with the falling on ice) and I can't seem to do it. My writing stream has frozen up or something (speaking of, I'll have to rewrite the ending. Could it be that I haven't written a decent original sentence since July? Sigh). I'm hoping I'll get everything order again. In the meantime I'm already dreaming about other projects (including recording a song, making a video for it and shooting a small movie), all with the intent of bringing me new friends. And possibly make a fan base of sorts. What do you want? I only know one person in the whole of America. And all this reading about Kaleb Nation (who I believe is a great guy and I hate that I don't live in the U.S. and can't go to his book signing to meet him) and how his blog helped spread the word on Bran Hambric isn't really helping my confidence that if by some miracle The Changing Cloak did get published, anyone would buy it. Call me a gold digger, but I am way ready for some new friends. (Side note: Why doesn't any teenager in Latvia learn English seriously anymore? Oh, wait, they never have. Okay, why haven't they started? I want to be around people who are comfortable with speaking English and can fully participate in a conversation. While possibly being on camera. It's really hard to make a one-person movie. Ramble over)

But that's not what I wanted to talk about. The funny thing is that there are no speaking roles in The Changing Cloak for anyone who is over 23! Wait a minute... All right, there are four sentences in the novel spoken by someone over 23. That's still very little, considering that there are eight characters of that kind that appear in at least one scene. What's even funnier (to me, at least) is that neither of the lead's parents have names. Shouldn't I, as the author of the novel know what their names are, even if they don't appear in the book? That's the thing, I don't. There is a lot of stuff I don't know about my story and I like it that way. Only it gets a little hard when I'm supposed to know something. But that's off point.

Yesterday I created a new character. A parent. To someone who appears in about two scenes in the novel. What does that say? It says that my subconscious is figuring out another novel on the way. So that brings the total in the Pal Series up to eight. A lot, right? I love it when my subconscious takes over. Speaking of, I am totally in love with a character who didn't exist two weeks ago. I created him on the day I finished the novel and he only appears in the last chapter, but I can't wait to see what he'll do in the next novel! I actually didn't realize I liked him that much until yesterday when I started thinking about which of the villains I liked the most. And bam! Knowledge came. I don't think much of what I like about him (heck, no one's gonna read this unless the book gets published, so I can probably safely say that the character is Noah) shows on the pages, but I have a vague impression of his personality and I love it. You can't not love villains who are forced to be villains. Of course, his friend Alton is another story, but that's a tale for another time...

My manuscript keeps surprising me and I treasure every moment of it. Hopefully I'll get it polished soon and get some opinions! Which reminds me, I almost forgot: my friend Eve, the one that I gave the first chapter to, gave it back to me with words "I read five or six pages, really interesting" in a quiet tone (there were seven pages). I'm not sure if she actually read it, or if she understood it, but, nevertheless, I'm going to look at the positive. Maybe she really liked it, maybe it's worth something. Only you can tell.

Jane

First person narrative gender problems

All right, so the thing I might get criticized for the most is that I'm a girl writing from a guy's perspective. I don't even have many (or any, actually) guy friends to ask them about guy things or guy opinions, so, when writing the second draft, I'm struggling with the lead character, Blake's... Well, girliness, I suppose. I need to figure out what seems realistic, guy-ish, while still maintaining the views and opinions he has.

For example, today, after much thought over a several month period, I decided to change a major minor thing (I think I'm going to be using this term a lot. Don't know if it exists, but in case it doesn't, it means it's a minor thing that is major compared to other minor things, or, let's say, one of the few major things in a chapter that don't really matter elsewhere). I finally figured out that not only it is too weird for a guy that has a history in playing sports, but it's also completely not Blake. Largely because of his background in sports. He just wouldn't... The part that I'm cutting is a thousand word description of how he tries to balance and slide on ice, preferably not falling. He wouldn't fall on his face a hundread times over.

It's amazing how much editing can tell you about your character, how much you can learn. I'm excited to see what else the new manuscript brings me.

Oh, and also, I changed a very small major thing. There is this running gag about an *insert color* *insert item* that is largely connected to the title and even appears on some of the covers I've made for the novel. Today I changed the color. Huge, right? Yeah, not so much. The color didn't really change, I just found a more appropriate name for it. I'm not really good with names of shades.

Tomorrow I might be able to get the very first opinion on the 2nd draft of chapter 1 of The Changing Cloak. Can't wait!

Jane

Thoughts

Well, the odds had it this time as well. I couldn't find an appropriate moment to tell my teacher I was writing a book, so I didn't give the first chapter to her, or even a few sentences, really. I wouldn't say I chickened out, but I had no idea how to tell her without gloating or something. Perhaps she would have thought I was showing off, since I had to explain to her what "raining cats and dogs" means (for which I got an A+, by the way, no idea why) and she pronounces "lives" as "leaves", but that's beside the point. The point being... *looks above* that I didn't give it to her. But something unexpected happened. Just when I was waiting for the bus, one of my classmates that I don't really know well somehow tricked it out of me. Actually, I'm pretty sure I was deep in thought about what was going to happen next and my best friend asked me what I was thinking about and I said "my book" and Eve (the friend I don't really know) didn't hear and my best friend repeated that and Eve asked what the book was about and since I had the first chapter printed, I just gave it to her. I hope she likes it. Or that she'll even understand it, because where I come from, people who know even a little bit of English know: 1)the British English and 2)from text books. So, things like "sure as hell" or even "gonna" (and possibly "by the way" and "anyway") aren't common in Latvian speech. It is in mine, so...

Yeah, so basically, one door may close, but another will open and maybe you get to peek inside the third through the keyhole, too. Who knows.

In other news I am now officially done with Chapter 1 of The Changing Cloak and it only took 13 drafts. Sigh. I hope to work a lot on the novel this weekend and perhaps even get chapter 2 done. Or maybe it will be easier than I thought. At the moment, though I am very tired and thinking of writing chapter 1 from another point of view (Stephenie Meyer rip-off, anyone? What can I do, Midnight Sun is my all-time favorite book... And maybe this is starting a trend that many first-person authors will follow). It might help to get to know the other lead character even more and explore her head a little bit. Which is going to be hard, because her head is very strange (which is why I love her, of course) and half the time even I have no idea if she's deliberately weird, delusional or has cross-checked every piece of trivia she says (for example, hair salons for lions, monkey distaste for monkey-bars and wars between Ancient Greeks and Egyptians over plagiarized dances. All right, I'm pretty sure she made that one up, but who knows). Oh wait, she doesn't say anything about that in chapter 1. Relieved sigh. Anyway, I might do that in a little while.

Jane

The Fascination Continues

So, the odds were right. I came home from school and started reading the tenth version of chapter 1 of The Changing Cloak of something tentatively titled The Pal Series (you'll understand why when you've finished reading the first book). And, of course, I edited it. Little tweaks here and there. A few bigger ones in a couple of places. Some added sentences of thoughts where they were needed. Perhaps I'll delete them tomorrow. Who knows. Well, the eleventh version of chapter one is finished and I'm taking it tomorrow for my English teacher to read. Then again, it might be the twelfth or the thirteenth version, since I'm fully intending to re-read it again tonight and perhaps tomorrow before school. Editing expected. Sigh.

But back to the fascination. I remember when I wrote one particularly hard part of the novel that I had no idea how to write, because it was something I'd never experienced (as if I've experienced supernatural stuff, but that's beside the point). I wanted to get some opinions on it, so I posted those few paragraphs on Yahho!Answers. I fussed over each sentence, each word so that people would like it. They did. I was extremely shocked about it, because, well... Someone actually liked it! There were a few suggestions of improvement that I agreed on and the current version is nothing like that first one. I hope it's better.

But anyway, the thing was that I thought that surely I wouldn't fuss over each sentence in the whole book. I'd read about authors that really criticize every word and I knew one myself. I couldn't understand how it could be possible, why it would need to be, where I'd find the patience if I had to do that. And now I'm doing exactly that! I've literally fussed over each sentence at least five times. Some a lot more. And it feels surreal.

I never thought I of all people would do it, spend so much time doing something. The weird thing is that I enjoy it. It's fun! I hear authors say they've worked with the manuscript so much they're sick of it and I can't understand how it's possible. It's the work of your love! Or am I just very passionate about my novel? Whichever, I hadn't thought editing could be fun. Part of it is that it's the key to the next step: getting people to read it and get their opinions. But what I'm surprised about is that each day I can't wait to get home from school, and not just because it's school, but because I want to work on my novel. I hadn't expected that.

I've read about a lot of authors who have started writing for some reason and are doing it with their teeth locked. That shows in the work they've created. But when they find an idea they're passionate about, it just clicks and that has made them successful writers.

I like polishing my novel and that tells me that perhaps if I'm patient enough, hard-working enough and perhaps attend a few confences and courses and get a master's degree in English, I might make something out of this hobby of writing, because the passion is there.

And that's the most important thing.

Jane

P.S. I'm very nervous about tomorrow. The odds are my English teacher will be too busy to even glance at the chapter. Will the odds have it this time as well? We'll just have to wait and see.

Editing surprises

I'm fascinated by the process of revisions and editing. I don't know if I'm simply an exceptionally bad writer and editor, or if this is how it happens for everyone. But I don't want to believe it gets this way for everyone. How would anyone ever get anything finished?

The problem is that I have been going through the finished manuscript with a very strict electronic red pen, which in reality is the "delete" button. It was going pretty well and I thought that finishing the second draft would take a week tops. Then, before I moved on to the next chapters I decided to re-read what I'd edited to see if it makes any sense at all. I had that intention today. And yesterday. And the day before that. For chapter 1.

I just finished going through the chapter the tenth time and I'm still changing things. How is that possible? I've gotten rid of almost 2,000 words in one chapter alone, cut two minor characters along with their respective minor storylines in that chapter, arranged and rearranged the order of certain sentences, then cut some of them altogether and changing everything still.

The odds are that tomorrow I'll come home from school and drastically change the manuscript for an eleventh time. I don't know how many more things I can cut without intending to. At first I was really trying to cut anything that wasn't absolutely needed because I had to cut 8,000 words out of the manuscript and I couldn't think of cutting that much. I knew I wasn't going to cut any scenes, only alter them a little bit. The process changed in a matter of a day. Now I'm just looking for something that doesn't feel right. And it's seriously lowering my self-esteem to find that there is a lot of that.

Sigh.

And here I thought I was going to get through the whole novel in a week. That was Sunday. Today is Wednesday. And I'm not even sure that I'm done with chapter 1.

Jane

P.S. I see two good things here. Or perhaps three. First, perhaps I'm working on #1 so hard because it's the beginning and it has to be properly portrayed. Maybe the others won't take so much time. Second, I really feel like with each time I go through it, the thing keeps getting better. Who would have thought, right? And third, I might just be growing artistically as an editor. And you know what that means... growing pains. I certainly hope that is the case. Hopefully I'll be able to do all this in two or three edits next time.

The Changing Cloak 1st/2nd draft

So, the first draft of The Changing Cloak was finished two days ago. It's the second draft of the novel overall, but the novel was previously named Ever-patient Angel and with the title change came a lot of other changes. I have started to edit it very seriously, changing every other sentence and hurting inside because some of the things I fell in love with when writing them aren't really necessary. I'm sure I'm going to be hurting a lot the next few days because I need to cut approximately 8,000 words out of my novel and that's more than a chapter in my writing style. The good news is that I have already cut almost 1,400 words from the first three chapters and I may be able to cut the desired amount if this rate keeps up. Then again, it's sad to know that I've put so many unnecessary things in my novel. No matter which way you look at it, I'm still hurting. Well, I'll get over it. It's not like I lost my sense of sound and couldn't hear music anymore. That would be devestating (speaking of which, perhaps I should get my ears checked...). Anyway, I have to get back to it and I hope the finished thing is worth reading!

Jane

P.S. It's so weird how my opinion of my novel changes every other moment. One minute I think the plot is original, that it's definitely worth at least looking at, then I'll fuss over how I don't know if the first chapter is captivating enough to make anyone continue reading, the next I'm sure it'll be fine, the next I think the plot has been done before and is a rip-off of Charmed (not that my book is anything like Charmed, there are simply certain elements that are similar), and then I decide I need to get back to editing. Crazy! (I guess my main concern is that a foreign, barely sixteen year old author-without-any-sort-of-degree-in-English's literary language just isn't publishing material. I'm off to change that!)

Introduction to The Changing Cloak

Well, it's a longshot that anyone will ever read this, but in case The Changing Cloak ever becomes a bestseller or something, it might be interesting for someone to look at the early days of the novel (although they are far from early). Or perhaps it will only be interesting to me to view this as a sort of journal about my daily writing problems.

I'll just start with the basics. I'm currently a sixteen year old girl from Latvia who people may know as Jane Alith Knight someday. Writing is my passion and has been ever since I can remember, even though I didn't put anything on paper until I was fifteen. Who said you can't write in your head? I don't think I've forgotten a single story I've created, dialogues and everything, and maybe someday I'll write all of them.

So, when inspiration struck me like lightning, I decided to act on it. I remember that day very clearly. It was June 11th, 2009, a Thursday and I was making dinner after a long day and a particularly brutal session at the dentist. I was working on another story that I will definitely write someday, tentatively titled Shards of Glass. I was trying to think it through as I peeled potatoes, but another idea that had come to me few days prior kept intruding my head like the Russian Army. It wouldn't let me concentrate, so I figured I could afford to waste half an hour thinking about it and then turn back to Lucy Lee (the lead of Shards of Glass). About five minutes into the half-hour I realized that I had come up with four characteristics for the character I was thinking about and that they didn't really fit well together. For example, one quality was "dead" and another "alive". You can see where I had a problem. Not that they cannot coexist peacefully in my world, but at the time I didn't know anything about that world.
So I figured I'd divide the four in half - "dead" and "stalker" becoming one person, "alive" and "depressed" the other. Thus, Carter and Blake were born. Now I'm assuming that anyone who reads this will have read the book first, so I'm not worrying about minor spoilers like the fact that Carter is supposed to be alive at the start of the book.

Two minutes after I'd realized who Blake was I was already typing. I didn't know what would come next and I didn't care. Something was pouring out of me and I couldn't let the floor flood.
I wrote three pages that evening. And three the next. And six the day after that. Three was a lot for me then, not to mention six. Imagine how surprised I was when I began to write ten pages a day!

The ideas kept flowing out of me so swiftly I should have been drained in a few days, but I lasted more than a month. I didn't think, I didn't plot, I let the story take me where it wanted to. And, surprisingly, everything clicked into place without me worrying about it. I'm thinking my subconscious had figured out where the story was going to lead long before I consciously did. All the clues were there, I just hadn't figured out what they meant yet. And every now and then I'd get a "boom!" kind of shock and realize that something was utterly right and I wondered how I had missed that before. All the signs that pointed to it were already written!

Anyway, when the novel was 4/5 finished I had to take a hiatus for personal reasons and personal disasters, as in my computer crashing several times in a month in various ways, one of which was the audio system fail. Obviously, I couldn't write without music, so I... didn't.

I don't agree with people who say that if you're passionate about your work it should always come first. There are lots of things to be passionate about, but that wasn't my point. Just think about what makes you want to work. What gives you inspiration? Would you be able to do your job without it? Some people will probably say yes. I won't. Everything I do comes from music and if I don't have it in my life there's no reason for anything. So, automatically no music equals no creativity.

Back to the story (and if you haven't stopped reading by now, huge props for you). I caught a cold and had to skip school for a week. That week may be the single most important week of my life, because it was then that I re-discovered my passion for writing and realized that I might be able to do something after all. If it hadn't been for that cold, The Changing Cloak might have waited months to be finished and turned out completely differently. But, thankfully, I went back to reading what I'd written on September 20th, 2009 and on September 24th I went back to writing. On September 26th, precisely three and a half months after I'd typed the words "Philosophy. Ugh." into my computer, I had finished the first thing I'd ever worked so hard for. The first thing I ever finished. It was a huge moment for me and I couldn't stop jumping up and down for an hour. I'll never forget it.

It's two days later now and I'm getting the manuscript ready for its first-ever full reading. Can't wait to get people's opinions on it. What if it sucks? I'll worry about it later. For now I'm editing one of the things I love the most in the whole world, thinking about what to write on my query for Agent Kristin Nelson (http://www.pubrants.blogspot.com/) who is my first choice of agents, and thinking about the next novels in the series (at the moment I have planned seven books in total, I know, ambitious, right? Keep in mind, though, the number may and probably will go up since eighteen hours ago there were only four sequels planned).

So I guess that's the very long description of how The Changing Cloak (originally Ever-patient Angel, but the angel thing and the hyphen didn't really work for a book title) came to be and will hopefully come to be published. Cross your fingers!

And, trust me, I know that it's almost impossible to get published at sixteen, let alone in this crisis and from a different country three thousand miles away. Or more. I haven't measured. But I just want to do the best job I can and hope for the best! Who knows, maybe inspiration will strike me again, I'll write a great query and Kristin, the superb agent that she is, will make my dreams happen.

Jane