My Protagonistic Views

Yesterday I read a question that someone had asked a published author.  It was: Why are so many books written from the point of view of a female?  They were implying that most books tend to have a female protagonist.

The author replied by telling them some statistics that showed that, in fact, most books were actually written from a male perspective.  For years, in fact, female protagonists were quite rare when it came to published works.

To be honest, my favourite books tend to have female protagonists.  That's not to say that I won't read anything else.  I enjoyed many books that had male perspectives.  Not the least of which was Lord of the Flies. I read it during school, and I loved it.

Since high school, though, I've found myself gravitating more towards the female perspective.  Why?  I have a theory.  Because I am female.  Therefore, I find it easier to relate to the female characters and understand their motivations.  This doesn't keep me from reading the male perspective.  I've read the Harry Potter series, and I thoroughly enjoy Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson series, along with the rest of his books.  Most are from the male perspective.

Each person has their own preferences when it comes to reading, just as anything else in the world.

As a writer, I think that each of us tends to gravitate more toward what we like to read.  I, for instance, prefer female protagonists, so that's what I use when I'm writing.  When the characters introduce themselves to me, it's always the females that are more prominent and demanding.  They want to be heard, and they usually drag some male characters along with them.

That doesn't mean that I'm never going to write from the male perspective, though.  I have a couple characters that are wanting their point of view to come out.  Neither of them are my protagonist, but they're there and insistent

I do want to write a book from a male perspective.  There's just one little problem.  You see, it's hard to write something that you don't know.  I know that I don't know the male perspective.  I tried to write a middle grade during nano that was from the perspective of a ten year old boy.  It didn't go very well.

But I'm not going to give up!  Maybe not this year (just because I have so much going on this year already, and adding another book would only earn me a sigh from my boyfriend as he shook his head and reminded me that he would like to see me at some point) but eventually I will find a story idea that I want to write from the male perspective.

While I'm writing it, I'll probably pick the minds of all the men I know, trying to make sure that it's as accurate as possible.

But until then, I will be sticking with the female perspective.

What do you like to read?  What do you like to write?  Have you ever tried to write from the other perspective before?

In With the New!

This week me and a couple of my friends are starting a brand new project.  Something that none of us have ever done before, and that we all thought would be so much fun, we just had to do it: We're writing a script!

This all started last year when we realized that during Script Frenzy (a program that was offered by the Office of Letters and Light where the goal was to write 100 pages of script in a month) you could work as a team.  None of us thought that we would be very good at writing scripts by ourselves, but if we were working together we might actually have a chance of coming up with something noteworthy.

Of course, by the time we figured this all out, the month was nearly over, and we didn't have time to be starting anything new.  So we decided that we would put it off until this year.  That this year we were going to do script frenzy together!

You know how sometime life has a way of looking at the plans that you make and laughing in your face?  Usually it's rolling on the ground laughing hysterically until you walk away.  And even then it continues to laugh, though now it's doing so while trying to gasp out a 'wait, come back' and following after you with it's arms crossed over it's stomach because it was laughing too hard.

No?  Just me then?

Anyway, we made these plans and we thought 'this is going to be great!' and then OLL announced that it would have to regrettably drop Script Frenzy.  That since they started it, sign up rates had held steady or gone down, and the program wasn't making enough money to keep itself going.

The decision makes sense, of course.  If they're losing too much money on a project that isn't growing, why would they keep it open?  The timing was just bad.  One year earlier, and we would have managed it.

Of course, the one thing that you should know about me and my friends is that we're all damn stubborn.  We decided that we really didn't care if Script Frenzy was technically still up and running!  We were going to do a script in April no matter what!

So, in April we will be writing seven episodes (one an hour long, the others half an hour) of an original script that we've come up with.  I won't be sharing the plot of it at this point, mostly because I'm not sure we have an actual plot at this point, but I'm very excited about this.

It's the first time I'll be working on a script, and each one will be collaborative (every episode will have two writers.).  It should be an interesting experience.  With any luck, we'll have a usable script at the end of the month.  If not, well, at least we'll have tried something new.  Because nothing makes you a better writer than trying.

What are some new things that you have planned for the year?

This Feels Familiar

Today I get to do the very thing I've been so happy to not do so far this year: I get to tell you that I'm falling behind on my goals.

Yep.  You read that correctly, I'm finally falling behind.

January set me up to think that this year was going to be different.  That I was going to get through all of my goals, and I was going to be amazed at how productive I was.  Turns out, though, that I'm still quite capable of not finishing.  Of procrastinating for hours until I realize that I no longer have time to finish everything I need to get finished.

I'm not being down on myself, despite the slightly depressed tone of this post.  No, I happen to know that falling behind on goals is something that everyone does, and I know that I can turn it around if I just put my mind to it.

I also know that today isn't the day that's going to happen.

Today I have plans.  Ones that will eat up most of the hours of the day, and I only have another two hours to get as much as I possibly can done before I have to take off.  Two hours in which I have to shower, get ready to go, finish my laundry, and make my lunch for tomorrow.

Needless to say, I'm not anticipating getting much done today.  It's a depressing thought, seeing as how I'm so far behind.

Thankfully, I know that I have Tuesday off.  And I don't have any plans at night (and will not be making any) so I'm planning on getting completely caught up that day.

So, what do I have to do in order to get caught up on those goals?  Let me show you:

1) Complete 5 Epiphanies (writing exercises)
2) Edit the short story I wrote for Pen Duels
3) Write 13,000 words of Malice
4) Do two critiques

Those are my goals for the end of day Tuesday.  I have plans tomorrow too, so I'm going to have to work all day Tuesday in order to get caught up.

I think I can do it, I just need to stay focused.  Which has not traditionally been my strong suit.  But I did it last month, and I'm going to do it this month too.  I just have to keep moving forward.  Don't look back.  Don't question.  Just do it.

And don't think about all the things I have to do the rest of the year, or I start to feel overwhelmed.

What do you do when you find yourself falling behind?  How do you keep yourself on track?

It's A Celebration

This year, as I'm sure you've all noticed by now, I have a lot of goals.  I want to prove to myself that I can be a prolific writer.  That I have the capability of producing four complete (and well written) novels in one year. Of course, I am hoping that one day I'll be able to support myself with my writing (despite being advised to keep the steady job.  If I'm making enough money on my books, unsteady as that money may be, I don't think I could stomach working the day job) right now I've got a full time job that takes a significant chunk of my writing time.

So January first I started editing the first of four books that I'm hoping to get to the second draft (at least) before the end of the year.

Stolen Magick.  One of the four novels I wrote during Nano.  The first one, in fact, and the one I liked the most, despite all the headaches it gave me.  I had two characters show up that I wasn't planning on.  One character that didn't step up, even though I had made a character bible for her, a love interest that wasn't supposed to be there and more subplots than I could have ever planned out.

The way I judge how well a book goes is by how much happens that wasn't planned.  So I did pretty well.

Anyway, the goal was to have it done by the end of January.  But I've never been very good at keeping my goals.  I find them too arbitrary.  They aren't deadlines, they're just dates I pulled off the calender and decided was the day I was going to have it by done.  There's nothing holding me to that except myself, and I'm not very good at holding myself accountable.

So, when in a day of uninterrupted wordmongering I realized that I had actually finished the book and BEFORE SCHEDULE, my first thought was 'what?'

Yep.  I didn't believe it.  Even though I print off my books and there was literally no more pages to turn.   Even though I had just read the ending that I had written.  Even though I had been on track with my goal all month.  Despite all of that, I still didn't believe that I was done the book.

But I was.  Only to a second draft, don't get too excited.  And I'm already thinking that I need to play with the structure before anyone sees it.  None of that matters though, because the biggest thing here is that I accomplished my goal!

I have huge goals this month, and it's going to be key to finish the small ones in time.  So it's awesome that I'm not falling behind already.  2013 is turning out to be great so far.

Now to celebrate.  What should I do?  Here are the options:

1) Start rewriting Dangerous Waters (and epic fantasy that's far too short)
2) Start rewriting The Commons (A YA that I love, but it was just all wrong)
3) Start rewriting The Descendants (My first ever book, and a YA), or
4) Watch TV shows until February.

What do you guys think?  Post below!!

Oh, The Joys of Writing

Today I get to kill someone.  Okay, well I get to decide who gets killed, but not actually kill them.

Before you call the cops, I suppose I should explain.  My epiphany (which is what I'm calling the writing exercises I've been working on) today requires me to gather together three or four ordinary people whose task it is to decide who should be killed.  I'm not allowed to convey why they have to do this, and I'm not supposed to reveal their thought process, other than what is spoken out loud to each other, and the death is not supposed to happen in the scene.

My first reaction when I read the assignment?  This is going to be fun!

Which started me thinking.  Just how sadistic am I?  This is a topic that my friends and I have all the time.  And our non-writer friends usually give us that look like they're worried we're about to have a mental breakdown.  We don't take offense to that.  If we were them we would probably be worried about the same thing.

Because I'm a writer, though, I understand the thought process that goes into the idea that having a group of ordinary people deciding on who they're going to kill is fun.  I understand that if this were happening in real life, I would be absolutely horrified.  No doubt I would seeing a news story about it, my mouth would drop open and I would think  'that's terrible!'

The fact is, though, the person getting killed is a character.  And not just any character, but my own character.

While I often contend that my characters are real to me, the truth is I know just how not real they are.  And how real I need to make them feel.

That's the heart of it, really.  We as writers are aware of just how not real our characters are.  And we know that our readers will feel the same way.  So we make them real by putting them in situations that no one would ever want to be in and force them to make a decision, or react.  That's how we can make them 'real' even in our own heads.  That's how they get their voices and personalities.  It's how we form them in our heads.

So when I say that it will be 'fun' to place characters in this situation, what I really mean is this is going to be interesting.  To see how there characters grow and develop in the short amount of time I'm giving them.

To see what answer they come up with.

Now I'm going to go force my characters to make an impossible decision.  Wish me luck.

What's the worst situation you've ever put a character in?

Productive Days

This isn't something I get to talk about very often.  In fact, most of the time I'm complaining about how far behind I am in all of my goals.  But not today.  No, today I get to tell you all about the productive day I had on Sunday.

It started out fairly well.  Without the use of an alarm clock, I was up by ten.  (For those of you who know me, you'll know that this really is a feat.  I tend to sleep in when there's nothing waking me up).  As I thought it was closer to noon or one, I started the day on a happy note.

I didn't get up right away (because, why would I?) but I also didn't go back to sleep, which I'm pretty proud of.

By eleven, though, I had already gotten to work.  The first order of business was to catch up on the editing that I hadn't managed to get to the two days before.  That wasn't difficult, as I'd already gone through the chapters, I just had to put the changes into the computer.

Then came the blog post, which was actually a lot easier than I thought it would be.  See, I had tried to do my epiphany, and got a little stuck, so I wrote a blog post, which helped with my idea for the epiphany.

By the time I had done all of that, it was about one, and all I had left to do for the day was to do the two chapters of editing that I had scheduled for that day.

I'll admit, I slacked off a little at this point.  I might have gotten distracted by gag reels of comedies.  It started with How I Met Your Mother and quickly progressed on to Friends.  I had a few good laughs, but eventually I had to get back to work.

When I had finished my daily editing for the day (and had even managed to polish off the epiphany for Monday and got it all set up to post) I decided that I deserved a treat for sticking to my work all day (I don't really count the slacking off.  It was just a break, I swear!)

Anyway, I decided to watch Pitch Perfect, which I've seen before, but can't seem to get enough of.  It was a nice little way to reward myself, and when I was done, I thought, I might as well get a bit more work done.

So I did my Monday editing, and threw together another blog post (yep, this one right here) just to give myself a kick start for the week.

Now, if that isn't a productive day, please, tell me what is!

I'm happy with the progress I made.  I'm sticking to my goals for the year, which is surprising me.  I'm not usually good about keeping them.  Generally I procrastinate so long that it's no longer plausible for me to finish on time, and decide that I might as well just push back that deadline since I'm not going to meet it anyway.

With the way this year has been going, I'm going to accomplish all of my goals.  My first novel of the year is going to be edited to the second draft by the end of the month, and I couldn't be happier!

Now I'm going to go...I don't know...maybe work on another chapter of editing that doesn't need to be done yet.

How are your goals for the year going?  Have you started on any of them yet?

Motivation, Thou Art Fickle

Well, it happened.  The thing I knew was going to happen.  How did I know?  Because it always does.  I always fall prey to the mindset of not wanting to do anything for a single day.  And that single day somehow always follows the day when I was too busy to finish all of my work.  And where does that leave me?

Behind.  That's where it leaves me.  I'm supposed to be finishing up chapter 10 today during my editing challenge, and instead I'm stuck on chapter 6 (which requires rewrites) and I shouldn't be.  Because yesterday I had the entire day to work, and instead I chose to watch TV shows.

Now, you might think, how is it that I could just decide to watch TV shows and not feel guilty over not doing the work I promised myself to do?  The answer to that probably isn't what you think.  I do feel guilty.  Unfortunately guilt doesn't seem to keep my motivation in overdrive.  It just makes me wallow.  And when I wallow, I don't get any work done, I just keep putting it off more and more until suddenly I find myself piled under a mountain of work that I would have been able to get through if I hadn't been so damn lazy.

Don't get my wrong, I'm not complaining.  I did this to myself, just like I always do.  And I'm going to try and make sure that I get the work done today.  (This means editing 5 chapters -- at least -- writing one epiphany, and this blog post.)  At least I've gotten started before it's dark outside.

Unfortunately, now is when my brain has actually started to feed me information about the novel I'm currently planning.  (I don't know a whole lot about it yet, but I can tell you that it's set two hundred years in the future where only the very rich own cars, and most people travel around via teleportation pads.  The main character is a spy who has been forgotten and has taken to drink and sleeping around to forget .)  The problem with that is that I need to have Stolen Magick edited to a second draft by the end of January.  The other novel isn't going to even be written until June at the earliest, so why am I focusing on something that doesn't need to be done for a couple more months?

Okay, maybe I've slipped in to complaining a little bit.  Sorry.

Anyway, I'm once more recommitting myself to my goals.  I need to get this book editing.  I've promised myself that I'm going to plan, write and edit four complete novels this year, and damn it, I'm going to do it!  I just have to make sure that the motivationless days don't come around very often.  I have things to do, and if that means that I can't always keep up on all of the shows that I love, well so be it.

This is what I want to do with my life, and I'm not going to let a little bit of laziness get in my way.  So it's back to the YA for me.  I've got some words to wrestle into shape.

Do you ever find yourself unable to stay motivated?  How do you force yourself to keep working?

Another Dip in the Editing Pool

In November, a group of us spent a lot of time writing together, which does tend to happen during NaNoWriMo.  It's so much easier to get the writing done if you have other people doing the same thing as you.

Anyway, we were talking about it, and we couldn't help but wonder why we, as writers, are so willing to work together and have a similar goal during November, but not the rest of the year.  Why do we let ourselves become less productive just because it isn't time for NaNo?

It didn't take us long to decide that we needed to come up with another month that was much sooner than April's Camp Nano session where we could all work together, and decided to have a February challenge for writing.

Why February, you ask?  Simple.  That was when I thought I would have something ready to write.  Yep.  That was the entire reason.  Turns out, I could have had something ready for January.  In fact, I'm pretty sure I'm going to have something ready, but it's all good, I can just start planning another novel.

Here's the agreement:  During the month of February, we would have a writing challenge.  We all pick a writing goal (mine is 100k words, which should get me the second novel in my Jayne Pheare series written).

I'm quite excited for this.  It will be a month that isn't Nano where I might actually be productive (which was one of my goals for the year).  There won't be any websites to track our progress, but we will all be accountable to each other, and try to keep everyone on track for the month.

But wait, you say, what does all of this have to do with editing?  Now, that's where the story gets interesting.

You see, we were discussing this idea of ours to have a writing challenge and another girl said she would love to do it, but why not do an editing challenge in January too?


I, for one, was more than happy with this idea.  I have a ton of editing to get done, and having other people working at the same time for some reason always seems to help.  So I agreed immediately, and after a few other yeses, we had ourselves an editing challenge.

Of course, I finished the novel I was editing, and it's currently with beta readers, but I'm going to be editing Stolen Magick, a YA about a young girl who discovers that she has the ability to wield magick.  I had a lot of fun writing it, because a lot of stuff happened that wasn't originally planned.  Characters, plot points, love interests and entire chapters were added in, and I can't wait to see how it turned out.

So on January first, I will be diving head first in to the pool of editing another novel (which means that I have to actually pay attention to a world than the one I've been living in for the last little while).  It's going to be interesting.

2013 is going to be a great year, and it's going to start with some editing.  (nope, I never thought I would ever say those words either).

Are you going to get some editing done in January?  What's your favourite part of the writing process?