In Which I Find a Post About Blogging That Might Change My Life

Yesterday, on Twitter (I know, I've been doing Twitter less than a week, and I've already blogged about it twice!) @elizabethscraig over at Mystery Writing is Murder tweeted a link to TribalWriter's post about blogging. It's called "where to find your interestingness as a writer + blogger + ruler of your domain" and it really spoke to me.

Theoretically, it's about how to become a better blogger, but for me, it hit right to the core of problem I've been dealing with for years. She talks about how edges are more interesting, but as children we're taught to seek the middle. "So you smooth out your own edges, or maybe cut them off." 

Right or wrong, I cut off a lot of my own edges over the years. (I would maintain that since I survived, what I did wasn't wrong, but it felt and feels wrong.) I've bemoaned the fact that I am not a starfish, and I can't regrow those parts. But I envy people that do have those parts. Envy in the way that means "I want that, too".

And, because I am not a starfish, I am always trying to find ways to regrow those parts. To be the edgier version of me that I lost over the years, in school yards, living rooms and bed rooms.

So, I will need to re-read that post several times, until I can integrate it in my brain. And I need to remind myself to live closer to my edges. Every day.

But for everything, there is a cost. When I become edgier, I will lose the approval of (some, most, all?) people that follow this blog. I may never get published. I may be the only person that ever reads (and likes) the stories I want to share.

Am I willing to sacrifice that, in order to heal? Is there a possibility that I can become that person and still have everything I want.

Oh my gods, I'm Troll Wife.

In Which I Have a Field Day With Tropes

Roughly 2,500 words into "The Monster of Dewsberry Drink" and I'm finding some weird similarities with "Troll Wife".

Troll Wife is a story where a young female troll discovers that part of her job description as “tooth fairy” is stopping a deadly monster before it kills more children.

The Monster of Dewsberry Drink is about a boy that discovers a monster in the local lake, and is determined to save him before the lake is destroyed by a local developer.

At first glance, they don't seem to have that much in common. Female non-human lead vs male human lead, for example.

But on closer examination:
They're both Urban Fantasies.
They're both set in Southern California.
They both have weird issues with names. (Troll Wife hasn't earned a name yet. In MoDD, "Sape" goes by that nickname and would die of shame if anyone learned his real name. Plus, he names the monster, Monster.)
They're both about Outsiders trying to find a way to fit in.
A hand print appears in both stories, as a significant "you're not alone" moment.

People reading these are going to start thinking I have issues. (Ok, Bill and Kim already know I have issues.)

In Which I Turn Troll Wife Over to My Crit Group

Tomorrow I'm sending Troll Wife to my crit group. It's a rough draft, and it's rougher because I keep thinking of extra little things I want to add in, which causes continuity errors further along. So, when I hand it off to them, I hope they'll look for three things:

1. Oubliette was originally written as male. About halfway through the book, I changed Oubliette to female (decided the Dark Mother archetype was a better fit). Unfortunately, I am *still* finding "him" in the book. So, I hope they'll let me know if they find any "him" that should be "her".

2. Continuity errors in general. I've moved so many scenes around, that I have more continuity errors than I can find. My problem is that I know the story, so I have trouble picking them out.

3. Missing scenes. Again, since I know the story, there are times when I'm sure I've written a scene, only to discover that it's not there. Also, there are duplicate scenes, when I wrote a scene two ways, and couldn't decide which one I liked better, and now I can't find the duplicate scene to remove it, because so many things have been moved around.

Once we get those things fixed, I'll resubmit for my more standard problems. "Telling not showing" and using the same word umpteen times on a page.

Query Letter Time!

Ok, here's a new version of my (ongoing) attempts to write a query letter for Troll Wife. I'm not there yet, but in writing this I discovered a little plot hole and was able to fix it. It tied up a loose thread that I didn't know was there. Yay for writing mock query letters!

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It's hard being a young female troll. First off, unless you're really special, you haven't earned a name and everyone just calls you "Troll Wife". Second, it's hard to get work (except maybe as a bouncer) because, hey, you're a troll. Third, you don't have any friends because again, hey, troll.

So when Troll Wife gets accepted into the tooth fairy training program, she wants three things. A job, to make friends, and earn a name. She's not thinking about why tooth fairies collect teeth and she certainly isn't thinking about monsters.

But there is a monster. Oubliette is determined to kill any human that hasn't kept the terms of an ancient pact between the humans and the fae. And any child that has lost a tooth but hasn't received money for it yet, hasn't kept the pact.

As a tooth fairy, Troll Wife has friends, a job, and the tools to continue the long fight against Oubliette. As a troll, she has the ability to actually stop Oubliette. She must choose. Give up everything she is and continue the fight against Oubliette? Or give up everything she's ever wanted and stop Oubliette?

Finally! (not what you think)

Well, I'm finally done!

Sadly, not with this round of revisions (though I think I'm really close). Nope, I'm finally done importing Troll Wife into Scrivener and breaking it down into scenes. I have about 20,000 words that I've pulled out of my original draft to be relocated someplace else in this revision.

I'm breaking out the time line again. Obviously, when Oubliette hints that she is attacking faeish, that has to happen before Brux is attacked. But some things aren't so clear. They may end up getting cut from the final draft.

Which means that Troll Wife would be about 75,000 words. Not good. I guess I better find a way to stitch those scenes back in.

Continuity Error!

Ack! If the instructor gets injured in chapter eight, he's not going to be able to teach Troll Wife the next night, no matter how quickly he's healed.

This means that the substitute (evil) instructor will have to take her out the next night. This means chapter nine needs to be totally re-written!

You know what, I'm ok with that. In fact, I'm eager to write it!

Progress Report

I finally got past chapter eight this week. It's not beautiful, but it's there. This round of revisions is all about getting the scenes in the right order. I'm afraid I'm going to have some left over scenes when I get to "the end". Then I will have to decide if I am going to try to shoe-horn them in, or just cut them completely.

Chapter eight is one of my favorites. That and chapter twelve. I've been trying to figure out why I like those best. I'm afraid that it may be because those are the chapters where the worst things happen to Troll Wife. Which makes me afraid that there isn't enough of that in the other chapters of the book. I'm trying very hard not to worry about that right now. Because if it's true, I'm afraid the book will get trunked.

I'm working on chapter nine this morning. I'm frustrated that I'm not already done with this. Why is this revision taking so much longer than the writing? Why is it so much less fun?

A Troll Wife's Tale update

Thank you to everyone that offered support (both here on the blog and in email). It really helped me get through the blues of realizing that this isn't as done as I thought it was.

I spent this weekend reworking my outline. (I ended up using Keynote, which was just what I needed, though Excel probably would have worked just as well. I just needed something newish to help get me through the blues.)

I reworked the outline, and rewrote chapter six. (One down, four more to go.) I feel really good. I've done more work on my book this weekend then I have in the past three months, and I love that feeling.

It's kind of like taking a shower. I don't like the idea of getting into the shower, but once I'm in it, I love it and when I'm out I feel really good. (Hey, don't look at me like that! I shower! And probably lots of people don't like the idea of a shower, especially if they saw "Psycho".)

In other news, I now worship the outline. I, Suzi, take you outline, to be my writing guide, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish; from this day forward until the end of the book do us part.

Oh waiting, that's wedding vows. I guess I that means I love the outline. (Of course, for my next book, it may be different.)

It Is With A Heavy Heart...

It is with a heavy heart that today I announce what I think I have secretly known for some time. A Troll Wife's Tale can't be revised. It's going to need to be re-written.

Not the whole thing, just the middle third or so. When I took out one subplot, I just left too many holes. Besides, while trying to revise, I've discovered a couple of scenes that need to be in this book that make it work better. (Seth the bartender, for example. He's going to appear in several scenes now, not just one.)

The scene where Troll Wife gets shot? That's going to have to move much closer to the end.The replacement subplot where the guardian and the siren fall in love? That will have to be strengthened which means it needs more scenes. (Little scenes, but still scenes.)

All of this means that I probably won't be ready by the end of this year to send it out to agents. I hate to say that, because it sounds like yet another perfectly good and logical excuse to put off sending this story out into the world, and because it feels like failure. Yet again I've failed to meet a goal for this story. But I also think it's true.

This also means I need to create a new outline. The original outline for this book was created on 3x5 cards, and those cards are long gone. (Note to self, in the future, save your outline.) And, knowing me as I do, something shiny helps with this process.

So, does anyone have any outlining software they recommend?

In Which I Bang My Head Against My Keyboard. Repeatedly.

I'm having a lot of problems with this blurb. Here are the elements I'm trying to incorporate. I want it to show that it's an urban fantasy, without saying that it's an urban fantasy. I'm trying to use setting cues, like telephone pole or gunshot wound to convey that.

I want to have three basic parts: Character, Conflict, Consequence.

I want to let people know how dangerous Oubliette is, by showing ("killed millions of people") not telling ("Oubliette is dangerous").

I want to let people know that the tooth fairies are both a solution and a problem. Plus, the leader of the tooth fairies has a whole spider motif going on. I try to get both of these things at once by talking about "the web of the tooth fairies".

Here's my latest attempt. I may just have to go with it, since I'm running out of time. (My son hates it.)

Troll Wife could use a job, so when she finds the poster on the telephone pole that says, "Any fae may apply", she does. She's as surprised as anyone, when she's accepted for training as a tooth fairy.

She's also surprised by the impressive number of injuries she racks up on the job. A broken bone and a concussion? Eh, maybe she should have expected that. After all learning to fly isn't as easy as it sounds. But the gunshot wound? That was because she was fighting a monster that she ran into while collecting teeth.

The monster, called Oubliette, was a soldier in the war between the humans and the fae, hundreds of years ago. Now Oublieette wants to start the war all over again. This time, it wants to kill all the humans, not just most of them. The other tooth fairies should be her allies in this war against Oubliette, but Troll Wife doubts that any fae that smells like cotton candy can help save the world.

Troll Wife only has days to learn how to fight the Oubliette, protect the human children from it, and make sure that she collects her quota of teeth. While she's at it, she needs to find out what dark secret the tooth fairies are hiding, and rescue herself from their tangled web.

Another Blurb for A Troll Wife's Tale

Here's my second version of a blurb for Anne Mini. Again, any and all feedback is welcome. Do you like it better or worse than the first version? (This one is 250 words exactly.)

I took stock of my injuries. I hadn't even been on the job a month and I had 14 bruises, a concussion, multiple cuts and abrasions, a broken bone, and now, a gunshot wound. Being a tooth fairy shouldn't be this hard.

But it is this hard, and I knew it a few days into the job when I met Oubliette. Oubliette was said to have killed millions of humans during the Plague War hundreds of years ago. The only thing that ended the war was a pact between the humans and the faeish. Tooth fairies keep that pact every time we give a coin for a child's tooth. But Oubliette isn't ready to end the war, which means anyone that has lost a tooth, but didn't get a coin for it, is in danger.

One of my new friends is a homeless boy with his first loose tooth.

Being a tooth fairy isn't all bad. I love flying with the magical wings they gave me. For the first time in my life, I'm making friends. The wings make us all look alike so no one cares that I'm a troll. Of course, I wasn't given full disclosure about the wings. They interfere with my magic in strange ways. 

I think I've discovered something else. Something wrong with the tooth fairies. Now I have to stop Oubliette before Peter loses his tooth, and find a way to get myself out of this tooth fairy web. And maybe keep the wings?

The really cool thing about the blurb is that it works as a query. But for some reason, a blurb is easier to write than a query. Go figure!

Blurb for A Troll Wife's Tale

Here's my first draft of the blurb that Anne Mini asked for. Any feedback is more than welcome. It needs to be between 200 and 250 words. This is 233.

Troll Wife applies for the job of tooth fairy, but she doesn't expect to be hired. After all, most faeish respect trolls but don't want to be around them.  Becoming a tooth fairy is a happy surprise and at first Troll Wife only sees the benefits. She gets a set of wings that give her the ability to fly and make her look just like everyone else. Best of all, she starts to make friends.

A few days into the job, she discovers that it also comes with a dangerous enemy. Oubliette was said to have killed millions of humans during the Plague Wars hundreds of years ago. The only thing that ended the war is the pact between humans and faeish. Tooth fairies keep that pact, every time they give a child a coin for a tooth.  But Oubliette isn't ready to end the war. Anyone not covered by the pact is fair game. Which means any child that has lost a tooth, but hasn't received a coin yet, is in danger.

One of Troll Wife's new friends is a homeless boy with his first loose tooth.

As if Oubliette weren't bad enough, Troll Wife discovers that the tooth fairies are hiding a dark secret of their own.  Troll Wife must stop Oubliette before Peter loses his tooth and rescue herself before she's permanently caught in the web of the tooth fairies.