I’m working on more crits for DII right now, because the Summer Madness “In Focus” for novels is over at midnight and I need to rack up the points for when I finally send Trouvere through (I am so mercenary). I’d also like to get myself ahead of schedule, since I’m sick of pulling all-nighters at the end of the month.

I’m still struggling with writing the critiques. I don’t know if it ever gets easier, but I find it so tedious (and as I’ve said before, this has nothing to do with the material). I feel like I’m nit-picking for the sake of nit-picking, and I often wonder, “If I saw this in a novel I bought, would I even notice?” When you’re in the mental space for critting, that question is not always so easy to answer. This is the reason I prefer to give general impressions over line-by-line; the line-by-line may be educational for me, but I’m not sure my neurotic over-analysis is really what the author needs. Anyway, I’m trying. These are just some of my thoughts as I force myself on. My guess is that as I crit more, the more comfortable with critting I’ll become.

I’m working on crits tonight, since I’m way behind at Dreaming in Ink and it’s starting to get embarassing. I’ve figured out why I hate crits; it has nothing to do with the quality of the work I’m critiquing, but rather the exhausting effort that needs to go into it. If the piece is bad then the difficult part is to think of positive points to mention (which is required for a good critique, if you ask me), and if it’s good there’s almost too much to work with. For instance, thankfully I’m enjoying the piece I’m critiquing tonight, and it’s the sort of thing I feel comfortable forming opinions on, but that also means it’s most natural to do a line-by-line, which I normally don’t do. I prefer to give general, big-picture critiques because I know someone else will usually do a line-by-line, and I think coming up with solutions to overarching problems is what I’m best at. I expect to have a couple of critiques done tomorrow, which will be just in time (I hope!) Anyway, I applaud people who whip out a number of critiques a week. I just don’t have it in me, not yet at least.

Now that I’m home, I should be in a frame of mind to get back on that Trouvere outline. I’ve been stuck at this “almost ready to write” point for a week or more, but it’s really because I’ve had hardly more than an hour at a time to sit down and work . . . and frankly, maybe my writer’s neurosis is showing, but it takes me an hour just to get warmed up!

After watching the first few episodes of Steven Spielberg’s brilliant miniseries Into the West, immediately followed up by One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (also brilliant), I remembered an old project, a contemporary romance taking place on an Indian Reservation, and realized that it needed to be set in the 1970s. Honestly, I don’t know how I missed it before. Depending on how my other works-in-progress go, I may start tinkering with the plan soon.

I’ve been incredibly unfocused the past week or so. Could be the finally-learning-to-drive thing, but whatever it is, hopefully it’ll go away soon now that I’ve got fewer distractions. I’ve done very little on the Trouvere outline lately, but at this point I’m just moving scenes around and making sure the storyline is rock-solid. It shouldn’t be taking so long though, and I’m going to have to get to work, most likely when I get back home. I’ve got to have some sort of project to throw myself into to relieve the boredom, after all.

After more days than I expected away from SPG and my lifeline (read: the internet), I think I’ve solved one of the main problems with the tone of The Trouvere. You see, all along I’ve kept in mind that according to Yvan LePage, my hero was known for being a great lover, in the spirit of Tristan (yes, the Tristan) and Chastelain de Coucy. I wanted to write him that way, but the main plot (the rescue of the hero’s closest friend and liege) continued to overshadow the love story. While this is desirable in some respects, I felt my hero’s love for the heroine was vacillating and weak, not good at all if he’s to compare to the likes of Tristan.

It’s my feeling that ninety percent of good storytelling is asking the right questions. I asked myself about my hero, and more importantly, what traits are required for a legendary lover. What I decided in the end was this: A great lover is one who refuses to relinquish the hope of his love, who believes in it so firmly that even death is no hindrance to his quest for it. Yet, he must believe that honour and love are mutually inclusive, that without one, the other can’t exist. It is therefore impossible for him to either betray his love, or betray his own honour for her. He will give up neither, and that puts him at an impasse, which means I have him exactly where I want him.

Relatively little in my outline has changed as a result, but this discovery made more concrete some of the issues I’d been waffling on, and helped me see some weak areas in interactions between characters. It’s also given me a clearer vision of my heroine, which is always difficult for me. I expect (or maybe just hope?) my story will soon be strong enough for a rough draft.

I counted up the scenes in my outline and it came out to 80.

According to Karen S. Wiesner (Author of First Draft In 30 Days), a book with more than 70 scenes usually comes out to 100,000 + words.

I guess the idea with this method is that you can see which scenes to cut in the outline (as opposed to taking a knife to your rough draft). I certainly hope so, because that’s one hum-dinger of a first novel.

I caught myself trying to put the entire third crusade in the novel, but quickly nipped that in the bud. I think I can see some other places to cut as well, but I’m going to get the outline completely finished before I remove anything I’m not positive about. This novel is not a crusade novel. It is a historical swashbuckler. I repeat, for my own benefit: historical swashbuckler. Not every treaty or agreement made by Richard, Philip and Saladin needs to be printed in triplicate in the text.

Because I need to get cracking on the outline, a quote from Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous:

The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you’re uncool.
- Lester Bangs, Almost Famous

We will now skip outlining the Siege of Acre, because it is big and scary and has sharp teeth. Instead we will outline love scenes and scenes of the hero taking a bath because they are fluffy and kind.

So it’s 2:30 according to Special Patrol Group, and I’ve just now opened my file. This is not the way to make progress. I think that the problem is that since I’ve moved so many times and had so much going on in general I’ve never really established a routine for my writing day. I think from now on I will:

• Start up SPG and check my LJ friends page, this blog for comments, and my various emails and gmails.
• Take the dog out.
• Make any spammy posts (ie like this one).
• Write my 2k.
• Refresh my LJ friends page.
• Do housework.
• Refresh my LJ friends page.
• Write any serious and important posts I’ve been planning. *makes a serious and important face*

I will not:

• Transfer my Firefox bookmarks to Ma.gnolia.
• Refresh my LJ friends page five hundred times.
• Search for pictures of cute animals or Dean Martin or Jimmy Page.
• Read posts in my newsreader.

. . . until I have finished the tasks in the first list.

2,000 difficult words on the outline. Took me all of yesterday, actually. I closed the file at about 10:30 PM. But they were enjoyable words! I’m pleased with how it’s going, just hoping the process will start picking up speed soon. In a lot of ways, I’m having to agonize over every little thing because of the historical nature of the book. I have no desire to write myself into a corner here. I’m not sure I’ll ever tackle a historical novel again (though hopefully I’m striking a balance between historical novel and historical romance in this one) but we’ll see. Sometimes I think I might like to write a prequel, since I’ve done so much development on the hero’s many-coloured past.

Now I’m gonna lose some words, cause there are scenes that need deletin’.

This weekend I spent some time sitting on the floor with a stack of books on Richard I and pulling out my hair, but I managed to get a pretty good batch of notes down on the initial battle that opens the novel. It’ll be as accurate as I can manage with my current resources. After getting an outline of the historical events, I worked out the first couple of scenes in greater detail, and I’m ready to move on to the battle. The cool thing is that although I’ve decided not to launch straight into the battle immediately on opening—I need to set it in context a bit—what I do have is a romantic scene with a new, bit-part character, a young English knight (love him), with just a touch of foreshadowing to set the stage, and then, the best part, an immediate encounter between the hero and the main villain (and there are a few villains in this story). And! That scene is written from Philip’s (the villain’s) point-of-view, which is something I’ve been dying to do ever since he first slithered through my imagination.