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Posted in Writing, Writing: Help

WIPMarathon Check-In #3

Posted on by Amy McNulty

Last Check-in Wordcount + ChapterCount: 45,053 words and 15 1/2 chapters.

Current WC + CC: 72,956 words and 28 chapters and… COMPLETE! I finished the first draft!

Yeah, that goal to write “as much of the first draft as possible this month”? How about “finish the first draft a week before the month is up” instead? Yay. 😀 This was mostly due to a light work week and getting in the writing groove. And also, my story veered off in its own direction (disregarding the outline) twice, and the second time I had to throw out the rest of the outline (like 10 more chapters), it was so different. But I rewrote the end of the outline (shaving off five projected chapters and thus 10,000+ words) and it’s much better this way, I think.

My goal for this last week of the marathon is to make preliminary edits (usually just typo check and a few minors changes at this stage for me, before I get feedback) and start sending it to my beta, while also editing a manuscript I’m beta-ing for her, AND outline my next project, that shiny new idea that popped into my head this week.

WIP Issues this week: Getting off the outline not once, but twice, but both times it was for the better and I didn’t even get hit with writer’s block adjusting it.

What I learned this week in writing: I can finish another manuscript! (The three unfinished WIPs made me think it might never happen again.)

What distracted me this week while writing: Not much. I (obviously) had a good writing week! A shiny new idea did threaten to distract me, though, as I wrote the first paragraph for that and kept brainstorming ideas. But I pushed it aside and committed to finishing what I’d started.

Last 200 words: Can’t share due to spoilers! I thought about sharing the opening 200 words, but I’m not sure I want to just now. They’re pretty dark. ;-;

Posted in Geek Out, News, Reading

The Sight Seer Is Only 99¢ This Weekend!

Posted on by Amy McNulty

If you’ve followed my blog for a while, you may have noticed me getting excited over a particular book release. The Sight Seer, published by Crushing Hearts and Black Butterfly, is one of my dearest friends’ first published book. Melissa Giorgio and I are beta readers for each other, and I had the pleasure of reading about Gabi and Rafe and all those nasty tricky demons long before most. If you haven’t followed my advice to check her book out yet, now is the time.

SightSeerAd2

That’s right, for three days only you can get your hands on a Kindle copy of The Sight Seer for just 99 cents! This is a limited time sale, and you may never be able to read this book for so cheap ever again.

So click here and buy The Sight Seer! Sale ends this Sunday, August 25th! Don’t forget to tell your friends!

Gabi Harkins likes to think she’s a pretty normal sixteen-year-old. She goes to school, suffers though an awful part-time job, and deals with a bratty younger sister. But when a potential shoplifter morphs into a monster right in front of her, Gabi realizes her life is far from normal—especially when that monster follows her home and ends up battling a boy wielding a sword in her backyard.

The boy, Rafe Fitzgerald, is a member of Silver Moon, an organization devoted to eradicating demons before they kill humans. If this little bit of news isn’t earth-shattering enough, Rafe reveals that he needs Gabi’s help. As strong as Rafe is, he does not possess the Sight—a rare ability that allows a hunter to See through a demon’s glamour, enabling them to strike before the demon does. But guess who does?

While Gabi is reluctant to face another demon, she knows she owes Rafe big time for saving her. Together, they’re thrown headfirst into heart-stopping situations as they battle newer and more frightening demons. When she starts to fall for Rafe, Gabi knows her normal life is gone forever.

Posted in Writing, Writing: Help

WIPMarathon Check-In #2

Posted on by Amy McNulty

Last Check-in Wordcount + ChapterCount: 23,839 words and 7 chapters

Current WC + CC: 45,053 words and 15 1/2 chapters.

Yeah, I wrote more in one week than I did in the ENTIRE FIRST MONTH I worked on this WIP. It was a combination of this awesome WIP marathon, having the outline completed and having less work (boo) than usual.

WIP Issues this week: Continuing to balance the multiple POVs. It feels harder to keep them separate when I work on more than one chapter a day, but I’m not going to stop when I have the desire to keep writing! I just remind myself about how each character would view the situation.

Also, setting high expectations has a drawback. I’m starting to be disappointed with perfectly FINE accomplishments each day. Like this week, 1000-2000+ words per day was the norm, and that’s GREAT, but one day I did just under 800 and I felt sad. Um, but 800 was MORE than I was doing MOST days in all of July!

What I learned this week in writing: Getting over the initial “omg, I have tens of thousands of words ahead of me, I can’t do this~” hump has helped. I’m probably only halfway to the end even still, so I’ve got a lot to go. But it feels more like I can do it. I HAVE to do it. My characters want the story told. (I’m getting nervous as I approach the word count where I got irrevocably stuck in one of my previous WIPs.) Also, I’m still loving outlines now. I’ve even managed to keep thinking of new ideas as I write, but having that framework in place is immensely helpful.

What distracted me this week while writing: Car troubles and a busy schedule, but I still managed to find plenty of time to write.

Last 200 words: A little more, I cheated. Also, this is smack in the middle of a chapter, but I was done for the day:

Tierny grabbed me by the elbow and pulled me onward. “Avoid the ladies of the night.” We stopped moving, and I noticed a slight twitch at the corner of his mouth. “At least when there are rumors the soldiers are combing their chambers.” I wondered if he would tell me to avoid them under any other circumstances.

He dropped my arm and guided me onward, through one alley and the next, through more puddles and muck than I ever imagined could exist.

At last he turned a corner and stopped again. No one was in this alley, and there was no torch to light our path. Something pulsated in the dark beneath me, like the heartbeat of the city, buried in mud and feces. I lifted a foot and shook it, suddenly feeling like I was covered in rats and insects.

Knock. Knock knock knock. Knock knock. Tierny’s fist pounded on a door I hadn’t even realized stood partway down the stone wall. He pounded the pattern again. And then once more.

“All right, enough.” A woman’s throaty voice called back from the other side of the doorway. I waited patiently, bouncing my knees and reminding myself that even a city as filthy as this one couldn’t possibly have as many spiders and vermin as I pictured now crawling up my leg, and the door opened, a squat and stocky woman holding up a candle in my face.

I looked down and saw my foot squished into the pile of what I hoped was horse excrement and all the maggots and worms squirming in it

And my little announcement–I came up with a working title last night! 

Fall Far From the Tree

I’m pretty bad at coming up with titles. (My other completed manuscript didn’t get one until after I’d finished the first draft.) It actually only works on one level, but I like how it sounds. However, it might give off too much of a contemporary vibe (the WIP is fantasy), and there isn’t enough direct connection to the narrative, and yeah… But the idea is a play on “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.” Well, it’s a working title anyway. And it’s better than “TITLE,” which it was named until today…

Posted in Writing, Writing: Help

WIPMarathon Check -In #1

Posted on by Amy McNulty

Last Check-in Wordcount + ChapterCount: As of last Saturday, I’d just finished the fourth chapter and that took it to 17,480 words. (Long chapters, I know, but they were intro chapters and from now on, the chapters HAVE TO be shorter.)

Current WC + CC:
I outlined on Sunday and then got back to work. Now it’s at seven chapters, 23,839 words.

WIP Issues this week: Figuring out the rest of the plot (which I did with an outline, yay, I feel more confident now) and feeling bad about not writing much toward the end of the week because I was busy with work and then a bit ill.

What I learnt this week in writing: Writing outlines are not the enemy of creativity that pantser-me used to think. Yes, I love discovering the story as I write, but having that outline in place is so reassuring. I’ve tweaked a few things as I write, so it’s not like the outline is something rigid.

What distracted me this week while writing: Work and feeling sick. At least feeling sick let me read a lot, yay.

Last 200 words: Hmm…. Not my favorite passage or scene by any means (and a tiny bit more than 200), but:

“My advice, should you ever find yourself surrounded by an angry mob again.” The voice was alto, deep but melodious. I felt the soft brush of dark hair press against my cheek as he spoke, as the man—the man—ignored my blows and turned the horse backward, back toward the duchy. “Don’t rely on someone in the sky to get down in time to save you.” He flicked the reigns. “Hee-yah!” The horse went speeding forward, the few women and children remaining in that direction scrambling desperately to flee the pounding of hooves taking me away from Mother Flore and Mother Ermessenda, away from Mother Jehanne and the safety of the towers… And off into the burning ember sun, toward the duchy, a sun-kissed, unknown savior seated behind me.

“Why are there no men in the Stargazers, Mother Jehanne? Why must all the boys leave when they come of age?”

Mother Jehanne stroked my hair, lulling me to sleep with the rhythms of her rocking chair. “Ytoile would not permit their savagery. We take their gifts to the tower, it’s true. We might bless them even, if they are devout. But they will never be as dear to Ytoile as are women and children.” Mother Jehanne leaned in, whispering directly into my ear. “Men want women, Cateline. They want them in unspeakable ways. If one ever catches you, let Ytoile guide your hand. Don’t let him defile you.”

I shielded my eyes with my arm at my forehead, feeling the hot burn of the sun demon even through my closed eyelids, taunting me to do what needed doing.

Posted in Writing, Writing: Help

WIPMarathon Intro

Posted on by Amy McNulty

So I don’t usually talk about my WIPs in depth at my blog. Mostly because I have too many of them going at once—or started, anyway—and I feel ashamed that I have nothing to show for it other than sweat and tears and some rough, uncompleted drafts that no one on earth but me has ever seen. Life gets in the way, writer’s block hits, and even well-intentioned “I’m going to write every day and finish this!” goals end in getting stuck at what seemed like the climax of the manuscript. (I’m looking at you, contemporary suspense YA manuscript. I’ve shelved you for a while now, but I swear someday I’ll dust you off and figure out what went wrong.)

Well, I’m tired of having nothing to show for it. It’s been my dream practically all my life to be a published author, and—dare I hope—an author with more than one book to her name. But I’m never going to get there until I have more than one manuscript to shop around!

So luckily, shiny new idea hit in early July. Like I needed another new idea I wouldn’t finish… But how about one I WOULD finish? What if I told myself I’d write almost every single day (I’m sorry, me, but some days I’m just too busy or tired to write even a line, and that’s okay, as long as it’s not often.) and this time, I had an outline ready so I couldn’t possibly wind up stuck at the end?

So that became my goal: write this manuscript and finish it. Stop fretting about all the things people will find wrong with it, that everyone I know will hate it and I’ll have to start another project, and just write it, just have another project in the wings ready to go.

So last week I found out about a group of bloggers devoting the month of August to accomplishing their individual goals in their WIPs, and although I’m late to the game, I’ve also been writing a lot this month (more than last month even), so I decided to join in! Learn more here if you feel like doing the same (yes, you can join late, I asked!).

So here’s my intro, soon followed by my check-in:

Marathon Goal: As close to finishing the first draft of this project as possible. I originally gave myself until the end of the year, but I feel more pumped. I’m hoping I can finish long before that. I did also have a goal of writing my outline this month after finishing the first four (long) chapters in July (I wanted to get a feel for the characters before I decided the rest of the plot), and I did that last weekend, yay.

Stage of writing: Writing the first draft of my sixth novel project. (Of the previous five, one is completely retired, one is finished and got me an agent :D, and the other three are in various stages of being on hiatus.)

What inspired my current project: It’s YA fantasy. I want to say Game of Thrones meets Marvel Comics’ Runaways, but every YA fantasy these days has the “YA version of Game of Thrones” tag already, so… yeah. Also, it’s my first project with multiple POVs. Four to be precise. Because I’m crazy like that.

What might slow down my marathon goal: Getting distracted, getting busy, and having too much work to do. I write for a living, too, and if I spend all day staring at my computer, pulling the creative juices out of my brain writing for work, sometimes I’m simply too exhausted to keep doing that for my own stuff. (Seriously, I wish I had like a Kindle screen just for typing. I get so tired of staring at a glowing screen.)

Posted in Writing, Writing: Help

Character Voice and First Person Point of View

Posted on by Amy McNulty

I’m a fan of first person narrative. I love reading it, and I love writing it, and thankfully it’s pretty common in my favorite genre (YA). There’s something so immediate about first person narrative that lets you slip into a character’s head better than third person, to picture the action from his or her point of view. Through one character’s eyes, you go on an adventure you’d probably never get to experience, you get romanced (sometimes~) and, in YA at least, are free to regress to a younger age when you were just getting used to the unfairness of the world (and overreacting to it), and you viewed things through a not-yet-adult-no-longer-a-child point of view.

I love writing when first person voice is unreliable especially. As the writer, you know your character isn’t seeing things as they truly are, but it’s fine manipulating the reader into seeing things from the skewed point of view, only to turn it on its head later.

My only problem as a writer of first person perhaps? Learning to give each narrative voice its own flavor. So far I have one completed manuscript in first person and two works in progress in first person—the newest will actually have four different first persons at that. I know, I’m crazy, but that’s the story I want to tell. (My other two works in progress are in third person and I’ve yet to become as attached to them, perhaps because I don’t feel as immersed in them.) I’ve seen multiple points of view first person done well (among them, one I’ve beta read and hope you all see someday), and I think I can come up with some strategies for trying to make each voice different. (We’ll see if others agree I’ve done a decent job distinguishing them, since I’ve yet to share more than one first person narrative with a single human being… My cat, though, she’s seen them while getting fur all over my laptop screen.):

  • Try to figure out who the narrator is before you start writing. What makes him or her different from the other characters you’ve written before? What are their strengths, and what are their weaknesses?
  • How would you write dialogue for this character? Chances are, you “get inside the heads” of dozens of characters all the time anyway when they speak to your narrator. This time you just have to think of how the new character would describe everything unfolding in the room.
  • How are they unreliable? Everyone is, to a certain extent. Figure out the “truth” of the scene, and then figure out how the character would interpret that truth. How would they describe a scene in a different way than the last character from whose point of view you wrote?
  • Don’t go overboard with the voice differences. Having one character drop the “g” off of “ings” seems like a good idea to remind the reader that this is Character B speaking, not Character A, but it’s really just distracting. If Character A is serious and Character B takes everything as a joke, there are ways to express that better than speech differences, like smarmy commentary.

What other tips and strategies do you have for writing different first person points of views? Share them with me!

Posted in Geek Out, Reading

The Sight Seer is in paperback!

Posted on by Amy McNulty

Those of you without a Kindle or those who just prefer the feeling of a paper book in your hands:

The paperback version of Melissa Giorgio’s The Sight Seer is now available! Please support my friend!

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Gabi Harkins likes to think she’s a pretty normal sixteen-year-old. She goes to school, suffers though an awful part-time job, and deals with a bratty younger sister. But when a potential shoplifter morphs into a monster right in front of her, Gabi realizes her life is far from normal-especially when that monster follows her home and ends up battling a boy wielding a sword in her backyard.

The boy, Rafe Fitzgerald, is a member of Silver Moon, an organization devoted to eradicating demons before they kill humans. If this little bit of news isn’t earth-shattering enough, Rafe reveals that he needs Gabi’s help. As strong as Rafe is, he does not possess the Sight-a rare ability that allows a hunter to See through a demon’s glamour, enabling them to strike before the demon does. But guess who does?

While Gabi is reluctant to face another demon, she knows she owes Rafe big time for saving her. Together, they’re thrown headfirst into heart-stopping situations as they battle newer and more frightening demons. When she starts to fall for Rafe, Gabi knows her normal life is gone forever.

Posted in Geek Out

ALA Conference 2013

Posted on by Amy McNulty

I’m not a librarian. (A few job interviews and a perfect score on an entry exam for entry-level work at the local libraries are as far as I’ve gotten to that career path.) So I’ve certainly never made a point of attending the American Library Association conference before. It’s one of those cons that floats around the country once or twice a year. A couple of weeks ago, thanks to my Twitter feed, I discovered it was being held in Chicago this summer, which is somewhat easy commuting distance for me. With a little research, I discovered it was open to the public and there was an affordable exhibits-only entry fee. With the blessing of one of my librarian friends (how can you be a book lover and not know more than one?), I decided to go ahead and go, and stop worrying about con-crashing something intended for a different career field than the one I’m in.

After all, I’m a writer and a reader, so we all love books, right? And I do love comic book, entertainment and anime conventions, so I was eager to attend what would be my first “book convention.”

It was a lot of fun! It was also very crowded, but NYCC holds the record for most-people-squishing-me-into-booths still. (And hey, sometimes being squished into booths is a good thing, like when I was accidentally squished into a signing line on my way out, and it turned out to be for free graphic novels and signatures from a few comic book writers!) I’m so grateful for the opportunity to attend and to be introduced to popular and upcoming books, and to meet a few authors of those books in person, all of whom completely rocked. It’s a good thing I was nearly finished with all the books on my to-read shelf because I just filled it up with these:

books

And I also got my paws on some cool posters!

posters

Sorry for the glare. Was anyone else there? Did you attend any signings or panels?

Posted in News, Reading

Buy The Sight Seer today!

Posted on by Amy McNulty

It’s a day early than I expected, but the Kindle version of Melissa Giorgio‘s The Sight Seer is available today! And for only $2.99! For less than a cup of coffee, you can be swept up in the YA paranormal thriller adventure of Gabi Harkins and swoon-worthy Rafe Fitzgerald.

Buy it now!

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If you don’t have a Kindle and don’t want to use the free Kindle app to read it on PCs, Macs, tablets, smartphones and web browsers, or you just love holding a book in your hands and keeping it on your shelf, the paperback version of The Sight Seer is due soon, probably within a few weeks. I’ll keep you posted when I see it for sale!