A.J. Maguire

Category: Uncategorized

  • Writing the Unpopular

    Persona is almost finished. In fact, I’ve got approximately two chapters left to write. This is three chapters more than I had outlined, but something happened near the end that surprised me and, now that I look at it, really makes sense for the story. 

    It’s always fun when things work out this way. It means my subconscious brain probably knew this was coming and it took a while for my conscious self to recognize it.

    Anyway, I’ve mentioned before that Autumn tends to spur me into creative-mode. I get new ideas for different stories, or better ideas for current projects, and I start to have a crap-ton of fun. September through December tend to be my happiest months because I am in the middle of this surge of creativity.

    I don’t know why, I don’t know how, I just know it works.

    And this year, having tackled my first historical fiction with Persona (heavy on the emphasis with fiction) I have come up with a new project dealing with the Civil War.

    Well, the Civil War and the frontier. The two tend to go hand in hand since soldiers who fought in the war and survived would head West out of some instinct to get as far away from the battlefield as possible.

    This will be challenging on several fronts. First of all, I really don’t know much about the Civil War. I’ve picked up some documentaries to help remember what I was taught in history class and, funnily enough, have been enjoying them whenever I have a minute between homework and housework and the kiddo.

    Secondly, Dan Wells joked about the fact that nobody reads Westerns anymore. (He’s one of the authors on Writing Excuses, a podcast I sincerely hope every author listens to.) Given that this project would eventually find its way into the West I had to cringe a bit. But, I’d rather write a book that I would love to read than write a book based on trends.

    Even if that trend is several years long.

    No, really. I checked out the Western shelf in Hastings to discover it was drastically smaller than every other section and had all of five prominent authors on it — including Louis L’Amour.

    And I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised by this since I’ve never actually read a Western myself. I watched Lonesome Dove when I was a kid, and High Noon in school, but I can’t say I’ve actually picked up a book that followed gunslingers and the like.

    I did read a truly terrible romance novel based in the Old West. I won’t name the author or anything, but I will say that I scoffed through the first fifty pages and then stopped reading.

    So I am faced with a new challenge here. I love the story concept and the character — I always start with a character and this one is named Alex Huntly — and I’ve wanted to write something that dealt with the West and pioneers since I was in High  School. But the truth is that it probably won’t find a home with a publisher.

    My gut instinct is to write it anyway. I imagine a lot of people would tell me it is a waste of time, but then I have to examine why I write in the first place. And the truth is, I don’t write to please other people. I write the story in front of me because it’s the story that inspires me; be it fantasy, science fiction, historical fiction or, Heaven help me, a Western.

    So! As soon as Persona is done I’ll start the groundwork on this new novel. If only three people in the world read it then that’s fine.

    On a side note, I’ll be using NaNoWriMo to complete the last 15,000 words of Usurper. Trenna fans will be happy to know that this third book in the Sedition series should be out next year, barring any complications with the publisher.

     

  • Endings and Hate Therapy

    Carver Edlund said it best in Supernatural; “Endings are impossible.”

    You have to tie everything up, bring all of the characters into a place of resolution and no matter what you do it will always feel like you missed something. In fact, on the next few edits it’s very likely that you’ll find one or two subplots that never got resolved.

    Don’t panic. It happens. That’s what editing is for, after all.

    My first published book Sedition went through four different endings. Witch-Born had three and Deviation (due to release in 2014) had five. That’s a lot of re-writing and re-plotting. It was frustrating and I went through weeks of what I like to call my “hate therapy.”

    Basically, “hate therapy” is when I become disgusted with everything I’ve written. From what I understand every writer has this problem at some point. We all come to a place where we stare at our work and can find nothing salvageable about it.

    The inner critic comes out in full force, identifying poorly worded sentences, cliché’s we hadn’t noticed before, and weak characters that suddenly remind us of tin soldiers. You know, identical soldiers made of tin with no inner workings, no motivation, and no reason to exist.

    By now you’re wondering why I call this “therapy.” There doesn’t seem to be anything therapeutic about loathing your own work.

    I learned a couple years ago to embrace this natural period of a writer’s life. When I’m in the middle of “hate therapy” I know I am being too hard on myself and, at the same time, am able to identify some very important things.

    Like tin soldiers running rampant on the page.

    But instead of dwelling on how bad it is I embrace it as a challenge to fix those things I’ve done wrong.  That’s when it becomes therapy. When I turn all that angst into a productive outlet I almost always find myself enjoying the work again.

    Persona is coming near to its ending. For those following it online you’re still in chapter fourteen, but I am in the middle of chapter eighteen. (By the way, I dislike chapter fourteen and will be editing it.)

    I’ve always had a particular place in mind for Persona’s ending. In fact, I have stubbornly re-worked and worked again and altered my outline in order to preserve this ending. Timelines are crazy hard to keep in check when writing fiction, especially if you’re dealing with something as well documented as World War II.

    But about a week ago I had a eureka moment and figured out how my characters get from point A to point B (the ending) without screwing anything up. The timeline is mostly preserved. The actions make sense. More importantly, this ending leaves a profound impact on the characters and, hopefully, the reader.

    Persona and Saboteur are the only two books I’ve written where I knew the ending before I got there. To be honest, I don’t know if this is a good or bad thing. Knowing the ending still gives me a struggle because I find myself working harder to make sure the entire book deserves the ending that I’ve planned.

    I still have to go through “hate therapy”, it just happens earlier on in the book. But at least I don’t have to re-write several scenes like I did with Sedition, Witch-Born and Deviation.

    So … Yes. Endings are impossible. They’re heartbreaking, irritating, and hard work but if we do it right then it’s all worth it.

     

     

  • Making Time to Write

    Between work, school and being a single parent I’m told that it is impossible for me to have the time to write as well.  And I suppose for a lot of people that might be true, but the sad fact of the matter is that I just can’t function properly without some story going on inside my head.

    I call it my “back reel” — that weird, unidentifiable space in my brain that is constantly collecting story ideas, running through plot fragments, snagging hold of a stranger’s face for use in a description and … well … pretty much always driving me insane.  The point is, it’s always running and if I don’t get it out on paper I think I could explode or something.

    So how do I write while attending school, working full-time and being a parent?

    Well, the first thing I do is listen to music at work.  Right now I’m rocking the Pacific Rim soundtrack because it totally revs me up for the edit on Tapped I’m going to be doing here in a few weeks.  I haven’t actually started on those edits, but I do keep some paper nearby for any instant inspirations that hit me.

    Now, I’m lucky enough to have a job that allows me to put my headphones in and pretty much ignore everyone else while I get my work done.  This gives my muse plenty of space to run in and by the time I get home and the kiddo in bed I’m ready to start writing.

    Yes, I do the writing thing before I do my homework.  I have to.

    If I didn’t do it this way I’d be distracted from my homework.  Plus, it gives my brain a chance to acclimate from the work scene to the home scene.  So by the time I’m done with my writing hour I’m ready to do my homework.

    After I’ve gotten up and done some dishes, swapped out the laundry and checked on the kiddo, of course.  And at the very end of the night, when the homework is done and the writing is carefully tucked away, I watch something.  That’s what gets my brain to stop thinking so hard so that I can get a good night’s sleep.

    It amuses me when someone says they really want to write but don’t have the time for it.  To be really harsh about it, they’ll never have the time to write if they continue to think like that.  You have to make it a priority.  Once you do that, you’ll find a way.

  • Bad TV

    I can’t literally watch television because I’m in school and all that, but I do have Netflix so I can watch various shows.

    (Alas, no Castle on there at the moment.)  So I decided to watch some Star Trek.  There are lots of choices out there for me, but I picked Star Trek: Enterprise because the concept interested me and I liked Scott Bakula.

    Now, my mother always taught me that if I didn’t have anything nice to say then I shouldn’t say anything at all.  So … while I can’t say that the show was awesome and go wildly fan-spastic about it … I can say that it taught me a lot.  And since anything that teaches me how to be a better writer is awesome in my book, this show falls into a strange category of “So Much Potential, So Little Follow Through.”

    (That’s a new category I just made up for stories that fall short of greatness.)

    So here’s what I learned from Star Trek: Enterprise …

    1) You cannot make a hero look good by making all the supporting characters look bad.  

    Captain Archer was repeatedly put into positions where he had to save his senior staff from certain doom, thus weakening his senior staff until one had to wonder how these people got chosen for the first space exploration mission.

    Point in case, an early episode where his tactical officer – Lieutenant Reed (who really wasn’t given enough screen time, by the way) – gets pinned by a mine on the outside of the hull.  And because it makes TOTAL sense that the Captain would be the right man for the job, Archer goes out to have a heart-to-heart with Reed while he tries to disarm the mine.

    It was a blatant appeal to the audience that Archer was supposed to be “the man” on this trip and the story could have been so much better if Reed had been given the opportunity to show what he was made of.

    And that isn’t even the first time a supporting character had been undercut.  I can’t count how many times poor Commander Tucker was made to look stupid.  I get the “good ol’ boy” thing he had going for him, but “good ol’ boy’s” aren’t necessarily weak.  In fact, I could have loved this show so much more if Tucker had been allowed to really be as brilliant as he could have been.

    By the middle of the first season I actually waited to see which character was going to be sacrificed on the altar of Archer’s Awesomeness in every episode.  And in fact, by season three we still don’t know anything more about Archer as a character than what was revealed in the first four episodes of the show; he has a beagle, he likes water-polo, and his dad built the engine.

    Which brings me to point number two;

    2)  Pets do not a character make.   

    Yes, Porthos is cute.  In fact, my son thought he was the best little puppy in the world.  And yes, you can reveal a lot about a person by putting them in the room with an animal.

    Do they pet the animal?

    Do they talk to the animal?

    Do they show compassion and get gushy?

    Or do they run in fear?

    However likable a pet might make a character, you cannot rely on the audience to make a connection with them based solely on this likability.  A hero needs to have more oomph to them.

    3)  Flaws!  Gimme some flaws, please!

    As much as I love Scott Bakula, Archer needed some flaws.  And I don’t mean his over-fraternization with his senior staff.  That’s not a flaw.  That’s a non-military man in command of something that has distinct military aspects (come on, Navy).

    For as much as I hated the way Tucker was massacred in season one, he’s my favorite character in the show.  Why?  Because for every weak moment he had with the Captain, he had some tremendously wonderful moments on his own.  I loved him because he had flaws that I could relate to, moments of indecision and moments of strength that made him who he was.

    4)  When working in a known and beloved Universe tread carefully. 

    I say this because of the weird way the show dealt with Vulcans.  Any Trekkie worth their salt knows that Vulcans are the most repressed beings in the universe.  Yet this show … I mean … it just …

    Ugh.

    Don’t mess with beloved tropes.  If you use them at all, respect the audience you’re going to be using them on.  You’d better have a very, very good reason for turning a culture on its head in a show like this.  And make sure you make it right again when you’re done.

    Because fans will murder you.

    And that’s it.  That’s what I gleaned from watching Star Trek: Enterprise.  Honestly, I did enjoy Tucker’s character.  I didn’t think I would because his accent drove me nuts the first couple of episodes, but after a while I fell in love with him.  In fact, he and Reed made the show bearable for me.  I wish it could have been Archer, but that just wasn’t in the cards for this one.

  • Woo! Blog Anniversary!

    Honestly, I don’t keep track of these sorts of things but WordPress apparently does.  I have a neat little icon telling me “Happy Anniversary! You’ve been blogging with us for 2 years now!”

    That’s two years of writing epiphanies, motherhood traumas, and entertainment reviews.  Goodness, does time fly.

    So what do I have to say on my 2 year anniversary here?

    ….

    Um ….

    Well, I went to the park with my son the other day and a couple of boys decided to start throwing rocks at a small duck.  I was offended not only because the duck was near my son and I, making many of those rocks hit right near or on us instead, but because of the mentality that went into those actions.

    I mean, what kind of mindset does it take to see a small creature and decide you must, must, must throw things at it or pick on it or otherwise attempt to cause it harm?

    I tried asking them to stop and they wouldn’t listen.

    To make matters worse, this duck had an obvious limp and was already injured.  So I put myself directly in the path between the boys and the duck until it had managed to swim a safe distance away.

    Then I got my son and took him to get ice cream where I sat down and explained to him that we have a responsibility to take care of people or creatures that cannot take care of themselves.

    That’s a blanket version.  There was a lot more depth to it.  I know we can’t possibly take care of everything and everyone in the world, but we can make an impact on exactly where we are living.

    I mean … seriously, people.  There’s a cute duck swimming by and the first reaction was to try to hurt it?

    Ugh.

  • Fact vs. Fiction (Persona)

    Chapters 7, 8 and 9 have the distinct advantage of being mostly action and character development.  Because of that, there was fairly little research I had to do since I was building on research I’d already done.

    However, the major issue I had with these chapters was the timeline.  There are oceans of information on what happened in World War II and dealing with that can be difficult.  For instance, Chapter 7 starts June 3, 1944 and we all know that D-Day happened on June 6.

    I did do that on purpose, wanting to wait to show the reaction D-Day had on those in the story until after Sam was relatively settled.  That and there’s the whole birthday dinner invitation that Megan receives in chapter 9, which would not have happened if German society was reeling under the effects of D-Day.

    Also, I have a particular end point I’m trying to build to.  So watching the timeline is very important.  Having Megan’s boat sink in late 1942 has been difficult to manage since it is stretching the boundaries of disbelief to have an American girl keep hidden for as long as she has.

    Fact: Sulfonamide or Sulfa Powder was the first antimicrobial drug we had.  It was discovered in 1932 and soldiers during WWII carried it in powder and tablet form to ward off infections.  We use penicillin today, but this was the common treatment back then.

    Fiction:  Honestly, I couldn’t decide what a 1940’s German first aid kit would look like.  I could find all sorts of information on field kits, but Megan isn’t in the field and this would be a home kit.  So I decided to stick to steel — keep things dry — even though I’m pretty sure steel was something they collected for the war.

  • Developmental Editors

    Since the release of Sedition in December 2011 I’ve become quite acquainted with editors.  Suffice to say, there are many different styles and personalities out there and while I’m happy to say I’ve never had a tremendously bad experience with any of them, my two most recent editors have to be the two I have enjoyed the most.

    I’m not going to name the editor that my publisher hired for Dead Magic because I’m not certain that’s allowed.  She is, however, one of the most challenging editors I’ve encountered.  She uses a spreadsheet, which was a new one for me.  Most of the editors I’ve dealt with go through Microsoft Word and track changes through there.

    Her comments and questions have a lot to do with consistency — and for a book I wrote in chunks while going to school you can imagine there are several consistency errors.  Even after two drafts on my own I hadn’t caught many of the issues that she is.

    The second editor is a developmental editor I approached on my own.  Since he did some of the editing for Tapped in his “open air editing” on Google+ I feel confident that he won’t mind if I give his name here.  Gabriel Fitzpatrick went through Tapped very quickly and his notes were not only exactly what I needed to hear, but made me excited to get back into the draft again.

    I specifically asked him for developmental critique, which is very different from what we might lovingly refer to as “Crazy Grammar People” who know exactly when you’ve used a preposition wrong or have hanging participles requiring your attention.  (I’m sure Mr. Fitzpatrick is every bit as talented at being a grammar policeman and when I’ve finished implementing this first round of edits I’ll be shooting the manuscript back to him.)

    But the point is that developmental editors focus on the story line in particular and how to make the book the best it can be.  They ask questions.  Lots of questions.  And for me, those questions spur my creative muse into working order again.

    Because after however long it’s taken me to get the first and second drafts done, I’m pretty stuck in a rut.  I think; “Hey, this is the story.  That’s all there is to it.”  But the developmental editor pinpoints aspects of the story that not only should be explored, but will be awesome to flesh out.  They find the hidden gems that the writer missed on the first pass.

    So!  They’re totally worth your time.  If you’re an author, that is.

  • Round Robin – How I Unwind

    This month we’re talking about what we do to unwind in our Round Robin!  Which is really a fun question to answer because I do all sorts of things to refresh my creative mind.

    At the risk of sounding like a nerd … Well, I am a nerd, so I guess there’s no hiding it … I totally play Star Trek Online.  This game is immensely helpful when I need to get into the science fiction groove without actually writing.  (Though the writer in me has to question some of the things they make us do there.  Such as the control panel for a shield device sitting right next to the shield you want to take down.  I mean … smart money is on putting the control panel on the inside of the shielded area so the enemy can’t get in.)

    I tried playing Star Wars Republic but it just didn’t have the same feel to it, you know?

    When I’m in the middle of a fantasy novel and I need to unwind, I’ll play Dungeon Siege or Arcanum, depending on the level of my frustration.

    Oh!  And I have a ton of Dungeons & Dragon’s manuals that I’ll flip through for ideas.  The pictures alone set my creative mind to buzzing.  (I know, my nerd-factor just rose by about ten notches, didn’t it?)

    I go to the gym every other day — when my car is working — or enjoy time with my son at the park, but I don’t really consider those “unwind” moments.  Jogging is for my health and time with my son is for my soul.

    Still, I have noticed that my writing is clearer and my creative muse more willing to get to business when I’ve kept my exercise schedule and had time with my son.

    And, of course, there is the ever-ready movie to watch or book to read.  But I tend to view movies and books as investments since I’m always learning new and better ways to tell a story through them.

    That’s it!  Those are the things I like to do when I need to step back and relax.  Thank you for joining me and I’d like to encourage you to take a look at what author Ginger Simpson does to unwind as the Round Robin continues.  Here’s her link!  http://mizging.blogspot.com/

  • Writing In A Different Genre

    I am primarily a Fantasy and Science Fiction author.  The three books I have out for sale right now are all fantasy and I do have a science fiction scheduled to be released next year.  So when I started work on my historical fiction novel Persona I felt like a fish out of water.

    Suddenly moving shadows had nothing to do with lurking monsters.  And the idea of genetic enhancements stretching the limitations of the human body wasn’t an option.  Suddenly I had to deal with real people, real problems, and real settings.

    To make matters worse, I chose to limit my point of view character.  Normally I write within two or three characters, but in Persona I limited myself to just one, just Megan.  Because I wanted this to be a “Who am I?” story I wanted the so-called camera lens to be focused entirely on Megan as she struggles through Nazi Germany.

    And these were the best decisions I could ever have made.

    Let me tell you what I’ve learned about the writing craft through this experiment.

    1) My other writings are severely lacking in setting.  Yes, you can see some imagery and I give a sketch of what you’re looking at, but the settings in my other books don’t have the character that it should.

    2) I have learned how to reach deeper into the personality of a character through Megan.  By limiting myself to Megan I can now see how very vague I’ve been with other characters.  (Even my beloved Trenna, though I think she’s purposefully private in many matters.)

    3) The use of a theme-based outline has been supremely enlightening.  Rather than just following the plot to its conclusion, this outline has been able to focus my writing on Megan’s journey to self-discovery.

    I’ll use an example from this weeks posted chapter.  We’re in chapter seven and Megan comes home to find a POW hiding in her bathroom.  That’s all plot and action.  My outline goes further to the main question of the scene; What will Megan do with this man, and what does it say about her when she does it?

    There are more practical issues that I’ve learned during this process as well, most of them having to do with taking ownership of the story and my craft.  But the main thing I want to say is that this decision, to write something outside of my comfort zone, has been incredible.  I highly recommend any author to try it.

    Pick a genre outside of what you normally write and commit yourself to it.  If it’s just a short story then that’s fine, the point is to look at how writing within this new genre is different.

  • Fact vs. Fiction – Chapter Six (Persona)

    All right, here we go again!

    For those unaware, these posts are following my historical fiction novel Persona as I serialize it online for free.  You can find Persona at its story blog or at its Wattpad address.  Because it’s my first historical fiction, I’ve opted to post pieces of the research I’ve had to do for the book …

    Hence, Fact vs. Fiction Chapter Six!

    Fact:  I have a massive orange and white male cat.  He is very vocal and a great deal of fun and I opted to immortalize him in this novel because … well … I’m the author and I can.

    However, his name is not Grendel.  In fact, a friend of a friend had a cat name Grendel once and I just loved the name so much that I opted to use it here.

    Fiction:  You’ll notice I had Megan keep the lights on all night.  Given the war and all the bombings that were going on, that is very unlikely.  It’s a small detail, I know, and I’ll probably change it during the next round of edits.

    Fact:  Cat box vs. litter box.  I researched and found that litter wasn’t exactly a thing back then.  In fact, it wasn’t really invented until 1947 by a guy named Ed Lowe.

    My Americanized view of pets is completely different from what was likely the norm.  While I know pets have been around for quite some time, I’m sure if Grendel were a real cat living in a real country estate like this that he would most likely be comfortable outside.

    In fact, he probably would have been in charge of catching rodents in and around the house.  (My own cat would be in heaven.  He goes nuts when he can take on a spider.)

    But this poses the problem of Gunter, since we learn here in this chapter that he’s been coming out to VanBuren’s place to care for the pet.  I’m sure this is a matter of my American culture and the way I was raised with pets, but I don’t think I’m going to change it.

    Fiction:  Herr Rahn’s reaction to Megan is highly fictional.  In all likelihood, the SS (Schutzstaffel) would have tossed Megan into a camp very quickly, with or without the word of a high-ranking naval officer to aid her.  I’ve implied that VanBuren’s wealth probably had something to do with the way she has been treated, but … yeah … it’s unlikely.

    This is just one of those moments where I’m hanging a large “FICTION” sign on it.  I hope readers can suspend their disbelief long enough for the story to progress.