Lessons from Late May
Hi all! Happy June! I’ve spent the latter half of May reading the books from the Muse, and also working.
God have I been working. For summer 2024, I decided to devote my full attention to the novel and work my old bike shop gig because I desperately need income. What I didn’t anticipate was a.) My creativity has absolutely tanked because of this menial job I left behind for a reason, and b.) The bike bubble has finally popped.
Seriously. I started doing bike shop work in 2020 during the massive bike boom, I’ve done it every summer since then, and this is by far the slowest season I’ve ever worked. We’ve had whole weekend days of zero bike sales. In May! I like the gig and my coworkers, but given I’m in engineering grad school and writing a novel, hanging around an empty bike shop for most of every day feels like a colossal waste of my very limited time. I’m really regretting my decision to not find an engineering internship for the summer. I should have. Like an idiot, I forgot I’m the kind of person who thrives creatively when I’m burning hard academically. So I asked for my hours to be cut at the bike shop so I can devote my time and energy to Hand Magic.
June and July will go towards the novel and to showing up at the university makerspaces and doing things. Bike shop work will happen on the side. I’m relieved, excited, and ready to tighten the belt like crazy to both write Hand Magic and afford Fall tuition.
Oh, and a research trip to Ireland and Stonehenge. I bit the bullet on that one. Figured I’m already not doing an internship or classes this summer. If I’m going to take such a massive risk on my engineering career, might as well full send. I want to give this book its best possible chance. I can’t do that without some cultural immersion. Make no mistake, this was not a financially smart decision. I’ll have to scrape like a son of a bitch for the rest of the summer and well into the fall in order to balance the books. But I will.
More to the point of this blog: I’ve made a dent in my reading list! I finished Bone Weaver and Writing Fiction. I am currently working on Writing Description. The last one is profoundly useful and I highly recommend. I’ve been taking description way more seriously in my second draft. I’ve written two and a half chapters absolutely devoting myself to the prose. I want that shit to sing.
Revision Updates
I changed a lot about the novel for draft two. The basic plot is still the same, but I’ve changed the flow of power and the MC’s character journey, so it all feels profoundly different. In a good way! In the Opposition lecture at Muse, Desmond Hall said that the character’s inner journey has to match the outer journey of the book, ie the plot. Mine didn’t. It’s funny, changing the inner journey to match the plot framework has fixed almost everything that my beta pointed out. Everything feels deeper and more important, and weirdly, it’s helped with world building also. In addition, I’ve received a lot of feedback that my MC reads younger than sixteen. I was trying so hard to not veer into Adult territory like I always do, but I seem to have overshot the mark.
Which is great, because now I can age her up and deepen the emotions, maturity, and relationships! Imagine if she read too old and I had to age her down? Going the opposite direction would absolutely suck. With that alone, this thing feels like lightning in a bottle. There is so. Much. Depth. That I was not expecting and wasn’t prepared for. I love this!
Another issue that a beta reader pointed out to me (bluntly, if I’m being charitable) was that my pacing for the first half needs work. Which is fair. I threw myself at getting the information I needed onto the page. I didn’t consider the actual reading experience.
Y’know the H***y P****r series? The first six books take place at a school. Meaning there’s whole chapters of these books that are just like, a lesson in a classroom. So how does R*****g keep the pages turning? She makes each chapter into a tiny story. She brings the characters into the scene, builds the tension with whatever’s going on, then either releases the tension at the end of the chapter or uses a cliffhanger to keep the reader moving. Even if the stakes are low, the tension is there. Whatever is happening in the scene is the most important thing that’s happening. Y’know? And we’re given the critical information along the way.
The important thing is the build and release. Build and release. Build and release. You’ve got to release the tension you build at the right time, and you have to do it a lot if you want the pages to turn. That’s what Draft Two is all about. Shorter chapters, more chapters, and more immersion in each individual scene. It’s already working. In my first draft, I was like, “Ugh, first half, this is lame, let’s get to the second half where the action is!” And now I’m like, “Holy shit, this first half is bangin’. How could Act II possibly match up to this?” Which is awesome. What a great problem to have.
I hope everyone’s noticed the flavicon I now have. Courtesy of Hexachrome, the artist who also drew my MC. Now no one knows this is just a garden-variety Squarespace website. Hehehe.
My 30th birthday is this Friday! I can’t wait to see what my thirties bring. It seems like a good decade. I’ll be an engineer and a writer, and hey, maybe I’ll find a piano teacher who clicks and finally get good at the piano. No way to know, but I’m excited to find out!
Those are my updates! I’m hoping for a more creatively and academically fertile June and July to counterbalance these last few weeks. Thanks for reading, everyone.
xxClaire
