Nurturing Wonder

There’s an old story, I can’t remember where I read it the first time or what the original source material is, but it goes kind of like this:

***

A long time ago, an Emperor decided that he wanted the best painting of a rooster ever. He called the most renowned artist in the Empire, and offered him this commission, promising great gifts if he succeeded.

The artist was pleased to serve his Emperor, and accepted the commission, telling him that he would contact him when the painting was completed.

A month went by, and the Emperor sent servants to check on the progress of the painting, but they returned with no news. After six months, he sent a general, but he too returned with no news.

After a year had passed, he went to visit the artist himself, and demanded that he produce the painting, or face death for failing in his commission.

The artist brought out paper, a brush, and ink. In a few deft strokes, he drew the most lifelike picture of a rooster that the Emperor had ever seen, and presented it to him before the paint was even dry.

The Emperor was impressed by the beauty of the painting, but incensed by the fact that the artist had made him wait a whole year, just to create the promised painting in less than a minute. He called upon his guards to execute the artist on the spot.

Before they could strike, however, the artist begged the Emperor to allow him to show him something. He led him to his house, and opened up the door, and within, filling every shelf and table and piled up in drifts were paintings of roosters, none so masterful as the one he had just completed.

“My Emperor,” he said, “I have not made you wait on a whim. I needed the year past in order to learn how to paint a rooster that would be worthy of you.”

***

I want to be a novelist, and the way to get better at writing is to write novels. Of course, I’m also impatient. I want to be a good novelist now, and if not now then as soon as possible. The only way to get there, though, is practice. Lots of practice. Intensive practice.

So currently, my plan is to spend two hours a day writing new words, not revising or editing.

I’m also planning to write a novel (or novella) a month over the course of the year. By the time I’ve written twelve month-long stories from start to finish, I think I should be starting to get the hang of it!

The primary goal here is practice, so to make it easier to shut off my internal editor I’m not going to be posting or emailing the finished first drafts – knowing that no one else will ever see them unless I’m happy with the result will help me to relax and just write, and see what happens. I might post excerpts as scintillas, though.

To keep me honest, I’ll be posting a scorecard at the end of each month, reporting on how long the story is, a one-sentence summary of the story, my thoughts about the story upon finishing it, and what aspect(s) of writing I think I need to focus on with the next one.

I’ll also be making frequent random posts with interesting links and personal updates.

So far, I’ve done two days of writing on the first novel, close to three hours yesterday and not quite two hours today. It’s based on a dream that seemed to be inspired by The Hunger Games, so who knows if it’ll be worthwhile or utter drek, but either way it should be fun, and educational.

What are your plans for the year to come?

So, I’ve now read four of Connie Suttle’s urban fantasy novels, the first of which I talked about a few days ago.

There are two more out, but I think I’m done for now. Unfortunately, the quality of the writing didn’t get any better, and the story lost a lot of its appeal when I realized that all of the male characters had started to seem exactly the same, and entirely loathsome.

(Especially every single one of the love interests. I’d be more than happy to see every single one of them die horribly.)

Partly, though, I hit my flying snowman moment, that one extra detail that shatters your suspension of disbelief like a plate falling off the George Foreman grill onto the kitchen floor. (That was a couple of days ago too.)

I don’t know if the same detail would have hit someone else the same way, but there were a bunch of other details that had already nudged my suspension of disbelief off balance, so I think it was inevitable that something would.

In any case, if reading the first of her books reassured me that a good story can shine through even if your writing isn’t ZOMG AWESOME! yet, then reading the next three reminded me how important it is to keep getting better!

Better at writing, better at plotting, better at making the characters believable individuals, better at anything you can recognize as a weak point.

I’m not saying this as a criticism for her so much as a goad for myself. I don’t know what her goals are, or what she’s doing to work towards them.

For me, though, while my enjoyment of her first book in spite of its flaws reassures me that people might actually enjoy my writing, I want to make sure I remember that what I’m shooting for is the kind of enthralling, well-written, elegantly plotted stories that my favorite authors deliver.

It may take a long time for me to get there, and I doubt I’ll wait til then before publishing novels, but I want to make sure that I’m always working towards that goal, and never coasting along on “good enough.”

One of my favorite urban fantasy authors is (the husband and wife team writing as) Ilona Andrews, as anyone who reads this blog regularly already knows.

So, today I was reading the blog post linked above, where she mentions a $0.99 e-book called Blood Wager. Her comment was that it’s not necessarily as polished as a traditionally published book might need to be, but that the story and voice pulled her in such that she stayed up til 2 in the morning finishing it.

I figured “hey, why not?” and downloaded a free sample… and then bought the e-book, noting as I did so that there were another four (!) books in the series out – which I will most likely be buying as I read through.

The writing really is less polished than I am used to in the trad-published books that are most of what I read, but not so much that it’s getting in the way of me enjoying the story, and I really am enjoying the story! Actually, I think she could easily have split this first novel into two, but I’m not going to complain about getting more bang for my buck!

It also makes me feel better about my ambition to write fiction for a living – I *can* write this well, I think. And I’ll keep getting better, as I’m sure she has over the course of these five novels. I’m also pondering the idea of series again… and I was already thinking about my Ilsa stories, partly because I know they’re some of Brian’s favorites, and partly because my friend Gosia was mentioning them this weekend. And partly because I’ve always wanted to do more with that world, and those characters…

I think Ilsa and Vekev could sustain a pretty lively series, as they travel, discover, and face new challenges. I think I could enjoy writing with them for a long time too.

I have a new novel idea, which I really really liked and started planning… and then started not wanting to write yet, possibly because I’ve planned it too much. So I think I’m going to try something new – having two active projects at once, and just working on whichever catches my fancy the most when it’s time to sit down and write.

Hopefully it’ll still be a fun ride.