{"id":2648,"date":"2013-02-14T10:34:44","date_gmt":"2013-02-14T15:34:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.old.caraghobrien.com\/book\/?p=2648"},"modified":"2013-02-14T10:45:35","modified_gmt":"2013-02-14T15:45:35","slug":"writing-secret-duds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/writing\/writing-secret-duds\/","title":{"rendered":"Writing Secret Duds"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Feb14\"I need to park my main work-in-progress for a period so that I can return to it with fresh eyes, which puts me in one of my rare lulls where I\u2019m forced to stop thinking about what normally obsesses me.\u00a0 I can\u2019t not write, because I become prickly and discontented if I stop, so instead, I\u2019m kicking around ideas for something else.\u00a0 I\u2019m throwing noodle possibilities together to see how they stick, rereading old favorite books to see why I liked them, daydreaming, staying up late, and nibbling chocolate chips.\u00a0 I\u2019m still writing every day, 5-10 pages or so, but I zag off on tangents, sketch outlines, abandon scenes mid-sentence, and digress into journal rants.\u00a0 It isn\u2019t nearly as satisfying as working on my main project, but I can see it\u2019s good for boggling the old noggin around.\u00a0 New ideas have to come from somewhere.<\/p>\n

One of the things I did last week was look at what I produced in previous lulls like this.\u00a0 Two fledgling novels emerged from those experiments, and they were complete departures from the Birthmarked<\/em> trilogy.\u00a0 As you may know by now, I trust my agent\u2019s judgment.\u00a0 He\u2019s very savvy, always honest, and extremely nice, so when he told me the novels would be hard to sell, I believed him, shelved the manuscripts, and went on to other things, like what would become the new series I\u2019m writing now for Roaring Brook.<\/p>\n

But wait.\u00a0 Here\u2019s what is really cool to me. At the time that I wrote those books, I thought loving them and following my passion about them would instinctively guide me to write brilliant stories with irresistible characters.\u00a0 Now that I look back at those books, I can see exactly why they wouldn\u2019t fly, commercially, and the reasons are both more subtle and more obvious than what my agent told me.\u00a0 The books just bore me. \u00a0Ten pages into both of them, I think, I don\u2019t want to read this stuff.\u00a0 Nobody else would, either.<\/p>\n

How cool is that discovery?\u00a0 It means two possible things: either A) I\u2019m a better writer now with a more fine-tuned sense of what makes a book work from the get-go, or B) I\u2019m not a good judge of my own writing while I\u2019m close to it, meaning I still won\u2019t be able to tell if I\u2019m writing something bad.\u00a0 I\u2019m hoping it\u2019s A.<\/p>\n

Please note that I\u2019m not saying writing those books was a waste of time or not valuable to me.\u00a0 I was happy while I wrote them, which is big.\u00a0 I also learned while I was writing them, and I\u2019m still learning from them now by looking back at them.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what I see: a writer experimenting with voice, having a good time, and playing with language. \u00a0Here\u2019s what\u2019s missing: momentum.\u00a0 In each case, the story has no pull.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know why characters are doing anything or what they want.\u00a0 I keep hoping a crisis will pull everything into focus so I can see the character take charge, and that doesn\u2019t happen fast enough.<\/p>\n

So what am I doing now, in response?\u00a0 I\u2019m writing about a character who wants something very clear, from the first page, and it\u2019s big enough for her to want it for the entire book, whether she gets it or not.\u00a0 New problems come up every other page.\u00a0 It\u2019s the wild west of first-drafting.\u00a0 It\u2019s perfect for my lull time when I have permission to write anything.<\/p>\n

If we\u2019re perpetually pushing ourselves to become better writers, that involves exploring why some of the projects we love are duds.\u00a0 It means thinking about what makes a book commercial, and respecting the market of readers.\u00a0 It means growing as an artist and a business woman, and taking chances on ourselves.<\/p>\n

Happy Valentine’s Day! \u00a0I have a\u00a0love poem<\/a> up today on Tor.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I need to park my main work-in-progress for a period so that I can return to it with fresh eyes, which puts me in one of my rare lulls where I\u2019m forced to stop thinking about what normally obsesses me.\u00a0 I can\u2019t not write, because I become prickly and discontented if I stop, so instead, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[37],"class_list":["post-2648","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birthmarked","category-writing","tag-writing-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2648","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2648"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2648\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2657,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2648\/revisions\/2657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}