Pushing yourself

As I wrote in an earlier blog entry, I was starting the next set of revisions for Inventing Vazquez. And I was moving right along, until I got some feedback from my friend, Lisa Alvarado. We had a chance to discuss the first four chapters, and her critique really opened my eyes to something I might have lost sight of along the way: sometimes you really have to push yourself to get better at what you do.

After our chat, I went back, and started noticing all these little things she’d pointed out, and realized, holy crap, this draft really needs work! And so, I restarted my edits from scratch. And I do mean scratch.

One of the things I did was ‘sit down’ with my protagonist, Liliana, and had a nice chat about her past. It’s strange that, after two drafts and 900 pages (1800 if you count the drafts separately), I hadn’t given much thought as to why Liliana is so afraid to talk. I’d attributed her problems to self-consciousness about her mousy voice. And my girlfriend, bless her heart, had been clamoring (in her own unique way) for weeks about how Liliana needed more of a reason for her fear of talking. So Liliana and I performed a bit of historical psychoanalysis. And it turns out, she didn’t have as pleasant a childhood as I initially thought.

I took a couple of days to just map out her life’s trajectory, imagining a personal history for her that involved a three-year trauma named middle school. By the end of it, I was content that Liliana not only had the necessary vulnerabilities to round out her narrative, but that she had a new complexity of character that would benefit other characters as well (especially her obnoxious big sister).

Aside from Liliana’s character, Lisa also encouraged me to improve my descriptive writing, which relied too heavily on adjectives and adverbs. “Paint a picture for the reader,” she advised me. She’s pushing me to push myself, to work harder to make a more vivid, colorful narrative to engage and immerse the reader. And I think that's the best thing about someone taking the time to critique your work: a critique isn't about inflating egos or crushing them. It's about reminding you that there's always room for improvement, and that if you really value what you do, you'll work harder to improve what you do.

I have no doubt that Inventing Vazquez is going to be an infinitely better novel thanks to the input Lisa and my girlfriend have given. Because it’s one thing to have great ideas and transcribe them on paper (or a word processor document). But it’s another thing to have caring people make you realize that you can demand more of yourself, that you can work a little harder and improve the quality of your writing to make sure you’re writing the best book you can.

Moving forward, I’m about 10 percent into the new rewrite, and confident that the next draft will be very strong. And I’m jumping with excitement about starting the sequel, Electing Choi. I haven’t done too much work on that (aside from writing a brief intro), but I know it’ll be a project that will allow me to expand upon the Inventing Vazquez storyline while taking on another issue I think is important.

I’m not sure when I’ll start looking for an agent in earnest, but I guess I should start compiling a list.

Keeping busy on multiple fronts, as usual ^_^ While I’m still trying to be a film reviewer for Quiet Earth, it looks like I’ll also be a columnist for Urban Molecule. My first column should be up soon, and I’m already working on the next one. Having recently decided that my humorous, quasi-facetious, snarky writing is the style I’m most comfortable with, I’m running with it and having lots of fun in the process. Besides, laughter is good. And the world’s a depressing enough place without me writing about ending it, huh? ^^;

And, because I really don’t have enough to do, I’ve also joined a new band with some old friends. I’ll be playing bass again for a blues band here in Detroit, so there goes any prospect of sleeping anytime soon ^___^;