Lost and Found Blogfest

Today I'm participating in the Lost and Found Blogfest, hosted by Myne Whitman to celebrate her reaching 500 followers. Congratulations, Myne!

As you can see, the task is to write about something you've lost and (re)found. So here's my story. It involves finding two things at different intervals. Two for the price of one :)

WARNING: This story is somewhat personal, discusses dark material, and eludes to violence (though imaginary/from a dream). Please read with caution.


My father and I were very close, especially after I went away to college. So, several years after I graduated, when he was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer on July 3, 2008, I broke. Broke down. Completely. I'm the only child and daddy's little girl, and this destroyed my world. I couldn't eat. I couldn't sleep. And when he died on October 1—only a couple of days before my birthday—it all got worse. The walking dead seemed animated in comparison to me. I stared at the TV without any idea what I was watching, and lost close to 40 pounds in about three months.

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia

That's when my nightmares began. One in particular plagued me night after night. I stand on a beach, my jeans rolled up to my knees as the waves swallow my feet over and over. I'm not prepared, though I know what's coming. And from nowhere, I'm attacked. Literally, from thin air. Over and over. I'll spare you the details, but the pain would continue for what seemed like an eternity before I would wake in a cold sweat, sometimes screaming.

This dream tortured me night after night for at least a month. In late November or early December, I realized that the only way for me to take control of the dream would be to write it down. I needed to own it instead of it owning me. So, I did.

This is my first finding. I began writing again. I hadn't written anything beyond term papers in ten years.

Picture courtesy of http://buffy.wikia.com/

This dream became the climax in my epic Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan fiction—sort of. It involved the Buffy crew but added several new characters of my own creation, including my new MC, Edie (see Season 8 for how I could easily do this). I shared the pieces I wrote with fewer than a handful of close friends, and only the parts that were actually written. I jumped around in writing it—a lot—and my outline grew toward War and Peace-length proportions. It became unmanageable, and while I plugged along at it, it grew difficult and tiring to keep all the subplots straight.

The following July (2009), I had another idea, one that has led me to write Fighting Fate (which is its 72,482nd title). Edie and her beach sacrifice snuggled into the recesses of my Documents folder and started gathering dust.

About a week ago, I woke up thinking about Edie and her sacrifice. As my consciousness gathered strength over my dreaming mind, I realized that this story is worth saving. I can rework it, streamline it, remove the Buffy elements, and make it mine. Truly own it like I had wanted to do 2.5 years ago. I rediscovered my story. Now I think I'm going to spend a few months (re)plotting it, and potentially use it for my NaNoWriMo project in November.


Are you participating in Myne's blogfest? I'll be sure to stop by. 
Not participating? What have you lost and found again?

Guest Post: Hart Johnson – Wonky Trails

Today Charity and I are both pleased to host Hart Johnson, awesome naked mistress extraodinaire, and author of some upcoming cozy mysteries.

Hart and I frequently see virtual-eye to virtual-eye. We both came back to writing through fan fiction (though not the same subject matter, since mine is a Buffy obsession). So I asked Hart if she could talk about how fan fiction helped her get to where she is today.

Since I've started writing again, it's taken me a while to realize that my one way is not the only way. I can't just write a novel, query it, and become the next JK Rowling. Granted, I wrote fan fiction at the early stages, but I wrote it for me only, without any thoughts of posting it somewhere. Now, I'm looking for different ways to break in, and I'm open to suggestion.

This is part of the reason why Charity and I are hosting the HONE YOUR SKILLS Blogfest. Many of us only focus on novel-length fiction, but we all have different means to get in the door. One way (though not Hart's) is to join us in our blogfest by writing short fiction. We're interested in helping each other build our resumes, hoping an agent will be more willing to take a chance.

All that aside, I'm pleased to welcome Hart Johnson to talk about how she broke into the market. For those of you who know her, you already know she never follows the traditional route... for anything :)

And so, without further ado....
_________________________________

First of all, I really want to thank Rosie and Charity for asking me to play. Most kids are worried what their mothers will think, so it's nice to have people take a chance. Seriously though, I've gotten to be good friends with Rosie and I think if it weren't for geography and maybe about fifteen or twenty years, we would have hung out together for real. That's one of the things I love about this blogosphere... meeting people you actually have... I guess it's similar processors to... because on paper I'm not sure we have so much in common, but we assess things very similarly.

Anyway, Rosie asked if I'd address my...erm... alternative route... I never do things the way they say you should. It's just not the way I roll, but somehow I've managed to slide in there sideways...

Thus... Wonky Trails

Once upon a time I wanted to be a writer... but it was the same kind of desire as wanting to be a model or an actor. It seemed some OUT THERE unattainable thing. I would plot stories and write a couple paragraphs and then bury them as even more embarrassing than the angsty poetry that filled several dozen notebooks in my teens. At 26, the summer between my first and second year of grad school, I suddenly had 'time on my hands' (when full time work and full time school cut back to only full time work *rolls eyes*) and even managed about 250 pages of an (amazingly bad) horror novel (set partly in Portland, and partly at Lake Coeur d'Alene—pic above). But I was under the disillusion that a person wrote as they went and was just inspired... and I didn't know where that dumb thing was going... the combo of getting busy again with school and not having a clue what came next was enough to drop it.

Enter a decade or so and a Harry Potter obsession...

Before Harry Potter I had maybe a dozen books I'd read twice. None more than that. But when my daughter brought the first one home from the library (she was a first grader) I fell in love. Santa brought the set (4 at that point) so I read them to me, and then I read them to her... and then I read them to her again when the fifth came out... and then my son wanted to read them all... So in the wait for Half Blood Prince, the writer in me was itchy to predict what would HAPPEN next... I found HPANA and a FABULOUS group of people who (I swear have changed my life) debated endlessly, supported by canon, finding the clues... and in spite of myself I learned that a well done book, and ESPECIALLY a well done series has a PLAN (buwahahahahahahahahaha –excuse me. That is my plan demon).

I had a WILD theory that because Voldemort had killed his father, (and because of some things in the timeline—death years) that Voldemort made his death eaters kill THEIR fathers to prove their loyalty to him... which led to Snape... Would Snape have had to kill his father? Well, OBVIOUSLY!

Nobody would believe me.

So I wrote it. I ventured into their fan fiction forums with my story from an Eileen Snape point of view... about her life... a brother sucked into Voldemort's realm... killed for his doubt... a plan for revenge...

And I learned what it takes to finish a story... and I wrote more.

I am a deep believer in fan fiction as a training ground because as a writer, you can work on a couple angles at a time. There are already developed characters, so you need to think about things like consistency. We had debated so much that we thought about things like WHY certain characters were the way they were (thus my goal of explaining much of Snape's bitterness... and how a WITCH allows herself to be abused by a muggle). That first story was a PREQUEL, so I knew where it ended... all the things we have in the books had to be consistent with my ending...

But I also wrote a 'book 7' before Deathly Hallows was out where I got to plot ahead. It is a really nice system for being able to not have to think about everything at once.


The REAL Book (because of course fan fiction is imaginary *shifty*)

 Not very far into the writing of The Other Prince (because of course it was posted serially), one of my readers, Rayna Iyer, told me I should consider writing a regular book. I'd had an idea niggling at me for (literally) years and I started to write down some of the details. I wrote a couple scenes, then got another idea... and FINALLY had an epiphany about how to fit the two ideas into a single story that had a lot more meat to it.

I continued to write the fan fiction because of course... my readers wanted me to! (the other bonus... you are accountable) but I also wrote Confluence... took 2 ½ years... and then another 6 months before I thought I was ready and queried my 204,000 word book *dies* (oh yeah... nobody said there weren't bumps)


That's about when I started BLOGGING

Now here I need to explain something... I envision myself as erm... dark and mysterious... I write SUSPENSE *shivers *...

But when it was time to blog, I sort of looked at what I had to work with, and honestly, I'm sort of a nut... possibly insane... definitely delusional... my strength is in my ability to PLAY. So I thought, 'fine, let's work with that.' Suspense readers are hiding under their beds shivering anyway, and I had networking to get to.

I found a few successful bloggers, and I stalked 'em like a good blogger... and I met some people... and I bet I hadn't been doing it three months when I heard 'you should write cozy mysteries.' (say what?) I stored that in my hat, or something, because frankly, the idea of mystery scared the crap out of me. It seemed like finely honed CRAFT, far more organized than... you know... me.

But last February an opportunity arose for an 'audition' of sorts... now most books are written in full and submitted to agents, revised, then submitted to publishers (with about a hundred layers of rejection built in) but some genres have such avid readers that there is a bit more of a... system... This exists for romance, and it exists for Cozy Mystery... The various editors define some parameters and give writers a chance to 'try out' with the first 50 pages. I had a referral to an agent to help me with this and... I GOT IT... It's a three book contract, the first of which is with my editor right now—hopefully the feedback will be positive, but I am waiting to start the second in case she envisions a different direction.

So see... while a more normal path might be and MFA program, or writing short stories for literary mags... I snuck in the side door. And what I've learned, is CONSTANT VIGILANCE! The way in may NOT be the one you expect.

_____________________________

Thanks, Hart!

While Hart was definitely lucky to have found the side door, I know I haven't found it yet.

Have you found a different door? Or are you trying to squeeze through the front with the rest of us?

Remember, join us for the HONE YOUR SKILLS Blogfest, in which we help each other build that resume. There's still three more weeks before D-Day, so there's plenty of time to focus on a short piece of fewer than 1000 words!