Tag Archives: writing

My Amtrak Experience

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I traveled to Florida to visit my family and decided to trade up a plane trip for something more oh, adventurous and less expensive. When transporting five people, cost is definitely an issue. So I settled on a train trip from Tucson to New Orleans, spend a few days in the Big Easy before heading down to Florida. I’d visited New Orleans on a couple of weekend benders while a college student at Florida State University, but those are tales for another time…maybe.

I packed all my writing gear along with my imaginings over conversing with people, admiring the passing countryside, and all sorts of experiences born from travelogues. My own trip was not quite as romantic, but certainly as interesting.

Unfortunately, the trip out wasn’t pleasant. To explain, I have to come clean as battling chronic anxiety. It’s something I’m constantly working on, but it has been impacting my life, make things like travel difficult. As a result, part of my train experience involved dealing with anxiety about being on the train. Also, I hadn’t quite developed my rail legs and spent much of the trip wavering between spilling my guts and moments of reprieve after taking anti-nausea medicine. To my pleasant surprise, I fared much better on the return trip and was even able to write.

The observation deck was definitely nice with amazing views of parts of the country I’d never see otherwise. Past swamps in Louisiana, desert canyons in southern Texas and Arizona, through El Paso with an enlightening view of Mexico and the fence separating neighbors…and over the Mississippi. Let me elaborate on that particular event. Just before arriving in New Orleans, the train makes a slow, dizzying climb up a platform constructed for trains to cross the Huey Long Bridge. Here’s a nice video someone posted on Youtube.

I watched this video before taking the train ride. From the perspective of the person taking the video, the track appears wide and the whole experience cool but not so crazy. When seated on the train, it feels like you are coasting on air. You can’t see the track guiding the train, only the city sprawled out below. It’s a disconcerting fifteen or twenty minutes. I wished I’d had more nerve to actually enjoy the spectacle instead of the occasional terse glimpse out the window while I distracted myself playing Clash of Clans.

Now down to the nitty gritty. The train does not lack for its share of drunks. On the way to New Orleans, a man stumbled around at night and ended up sprawled across two seats belonging to a couple. The conductor was called to sort things out. (By the way, the Amtrak staff was great. One conductor in particular, sensing my initial discomfort, talked to me, offering his assistance. He roamed the train, conversing with travelers, addressing issues, and truly seemed to enjoy his job.) When I was waiting for coffee at 8:30 am at the cafe, the man in front of me asked for coffee and beer. When the attendant told him they couldn’t serve beer until a certain time in accordance with Texas law, he took his coffee with shaking hands and waited until Texas law allowed him to get his dose.

While watching the scenery zip by on the observation deck, two guys behind me discussed our antiquated rail system, comparing it to European trains, which I would have to agree with. The track from El Paso to Louisiana is quite bumpy; however, I don’t to need to hear about how our tracks and trains are a disaster waiting to happen when I’m sitting on one. My only comment to that discussion is how we have a much larger landscape to cover with more challenging terrain than places like France and Spain.

The return trip to Tucson, on our last evening in the observation car, really brought home the Amtrak experience. From a group of kids—white, black, Hispanic, they didn’t care—sitting together playing on their game boys calling each other dorks, to the train enthusiast, gazing out the windows with wide eyes. I’d brought lots of movies, my computer, a book, but most of the time, found myself just taking it all in. A plane would never bring together these various slices of the American population. I wouldn’t have a blog post to write about a plane trip bringing to mind something I learned while in the Peace Corps, riding on trains and buses and vehicles not meant for human transport…sometimes the journey is just as important as the destination.

Writing a Book Series – Book One as Act One

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I’ve wanted to write a series about writing a series 🙂 for a while now, partly because I’m stumbling along, learning as I go, and find that in posting and sharing, I’m learning from others and from the process. I’d love to hear what other writers have learned about writing a book series. Please share your insights, tips, and frustrations, if any. Or, as a reader, things you like or don’t like about book series.

The Necromancer’s Seduction is Book One in a three book Urban Fantasy series. It’s my first book. My first series. Sometimes I wonder what the hell I was thinking. But I guess I wasn’t thinking when the story came, just writing.

Disclaimer: I’m speaking from my experience of writing my series and what worked or didn’t work for me. Everyone has different writing styles and different stories, but that’s also why it’s very cool to hear about people’s different approaches.

There are also many different types of book series. Some are connected by the world and characters, but each book is a book unto itself. The next book in the series may take place in the same world, but may feature different characters facing a separate challenge. Or vice versa. Same characters, different world. And many variations in between.

My series is set in the same world throughout, with the same characters, and has a major story arc that will only get resolved in Book Three. So my Book One has a plot (or in reality a subplot) that gets resolved at the end of Book One, but it ties into and hints at the major story arc that builds and builds until it culminates in Book Three. Think Harry Potter. Each book deals with Harry discovering something about himself and his wizard skills, and resolving one specific threat, but the Voldemort story hangs and builds over everything that happens, influencing things in subtle ways, until the final battle at the end. For example, we don’t learn about Harry being a horcrux until the very end although we are given clues.

I wrote Necromancer Seduction-Book One-with maybe a smidgen of thought to the end of Book Three. And now, after writing the first draft of Book Two and starting Book Three, I’ve altered my mythology some as my characters reveal things to me, and as I develop the story. In hindsight, I wish I would have plotted out my entire series before starting Book One, but my brain is just not wired that way. The story for Book One came out as it came out.

However, despite the changes in my mythology, I’ve made very minor tweaks if any to Book One, and it hit me. I had written Book One almost like it was Act One of the Three Act structure, but for my major story arc. It’s an arc within an arc. Yikes. I do better with diagrams. (Here’s my high tech graphic 🙂

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It’s helpful to review the purpose of the Act I or first chunk of a book. Usually, an author introduces the main characters, the basic plot, clears up any important action or events that occurred before the book began, maybe introduce a subplot or two, and some basic clues. And usually, the first chunk ends with a major action scene or complication that carries the story into the second chunk. (Sometimes sagging middles occur because too much was given away in the first chunk.)

What really made me realize that I had treated Book One of my series like the first chunk was that I hadn’t given too much away. I introduced the main characters and gave some insight into their background, but not everything. (For example, my hero Ewan has a major back story problem that impacts his life immensely and I’m not telling what it is until Book Three, although I provide some hints along the way.) I did slip in some basic clues about the world and past events that are important to the overall story arc in Book One, but I’m talking slivers because more wasn’t necessary. The rest comes in the subsequent books.

With Book Two, I reveal lots more, like an Act II. The purpose of Act II or the second chunk: add more complication, grow the seeds planted in the first chunk, provide new clues, expand and inform. The threads are still loose, but closing in. Usually, the second chunk ends with a bigger bang, but we don’t know how things will work out. And in the third and final chunk, pacing increases because we are solving problems and tying everything together. That’s basically how Book Three is panning out. A rush to the endgame, which was mostly revealed in Book Two. There are a few more surprises in Book Three, but it’s basically a race to the finish line.

Using the Three Act structure as a lens to view my three books helped me organize my series in my head, and how much to reveal in each book. Any thoughts and suggestions to share on how you organized/structured your series?

In my next post on writing a book series, I’m going to discuss character arcs and relationships throughout the series.

Keeping the momentum

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The writer Carla Neggars said about writing and whether to plot: “I do best when I focus on…forward momentum of the story versus forcing myself to write a certain way. If forward momentum means stopping and outlining, I stop and outline. If it means going back to page one and rewriting, I go back to page one and rewrite. If it means writing in a whoosh without pausing to revise…that’s what I do. I’m disciplined as a writer but not regimented.”

Whew. I read that about five times because it made me feel less like  a slouch on the days when I did some research on my book, or spent time outlining, or editing, etc. Forward momentum. Yes. I may not always be writing although I try to do some writing everyday, but I’m moving forward. Not static. No steps backward.

Second Book Blues

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After finishing my first manuscript, I thought my second book would come easier.  I cracked my knuckles at the typewriter and anticipated the words, perfect plot structure, witty dialog, fresh dialog tags gushing from my mind.

As much as a desert can gush.

Why am I finding it harder to write my second book? It’s a continuation of the first, the second of a planned three books.

Part of the problem, I believe, is that when I began my first book, on a whim, yet at the insistence of my characters, I felt no pressure. I wrote when I had time. I didn’t set any writing goals. It was basically a hobby and I’d see where it led.

Now? Now I have query letters and synopses and books on plot and structure and blogs and online groups. Holy shit. What happened? From feeling like I had all the time in the world to write the one book, I now feel like if I don’t finish this second book in three months, I’m a failure. It’s pressure I’m putting on myself because I’m not published, so what gives?

Is it because I have this silly notion I should know more? Or maybe I do know a tiny bit more, and that’s making it harder to plot out my book because I’m applying the knowledge instead of letting things flow freely? I didn’t have all the plot elements worked out when I starting writing my first book. I’m part pantser and part plotter.

When I started my first book, I wrote whatever came to me (some of it never made it into the final draft), explored various options for my characters, and the scenes and twists and turns just came to me. Ah, maybe I should shove the plotter in the closet and pull her out later. I’m sorry pantser. I’ve neglected you.

When I let a few days pass without writing, and it happens, I have kids, a job, fatigue. But when those days go by, something begins to creep into my psyche, a slithering, nasty thing called self-doubt and anxiety that I’m fooling myself. You know that anti-muse that all writers refer to and I begin to shrivel AND it’s at that precise moment I know I must write again. I begin to emerge from the darkness (the words don’t always emerge) and the anti-muse’s whispers in my ear grow less fetid and destructive.

I see the light. I set writing goals. And I feel better, less apt to burst into tears of angst.

And maybe, just maybe, shudder at the thought, I should give myself a break.