The Oracle of Delphi Kansas Archives

Raising the Dead: Giving an old manuscript new life

July 27, 2017 By Kerry Gans Leave a Comment

Every author who has written for any length of time has novels in the drawer that didn’t quite make the grade. They are “almost” there, but sometimes we can’t quite figure out what’s missing the mark. For the moment, they are dead novels.

I have one such novel, The Oracle of Delphi, Kansas. It’s a YA contemporary fantasy that made the query rounds a few years ago. I had a few requests, but ultimately no one took it. The feedback I got pointed to a confusion on the reader’s part on the character’s goal, the driving force behind the action.

I didn’t know how to fix it, so I put it aside and moved on. Now, though, I am ready to raise it from the dead. I have learned a lot on the past few years, and have new ideas on what might help move the book from “almost” to “ready”.

One tool I am using with this review is Story Genius by Lisa Cron. Her book is meant to be used before you start writing, but can be used to revise. Her exercises focus on the “why” that drives all the character’s actions–and thus the plot. Since the feedback I got from the agents who looked at the manuscript was that they didn’t understand the main character’s driving motivation, Cron’s exercises seem tailor-made for bringing this to the front.

Hopefully my revamping under Cron’s guidance will move the manuscript from “almost” to “there”. I am having fun viewing this story through a different lens. Even at this early stage of revision, I see my protagonist more clearly, and I can hear her voice in my head more precisely than ever before.

Do you leave your dead manuscripts buried? If you do raise them from the dead, what methods do you use?

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Focus Forward

December 31, 2015 By Kerry Gans Leave a Comment

As 2015 draws to a close, I have a lot to be thankful for. My family is healthy and happy. I am comfortable in my life. And my first novel, THE WITCH OF ZAL, debuted from Evil Jester Press!

Now 2016 looms large ahead, and my focus is turning to the future. What do I want to accomplish in 2016? I decided to keep it simple and focus only on things I could control, because to do otherwise is an invitation to stress and frustration.

So what are these goals?

Create and implement a new marketing plan for THE WITCH OF ZAL.

Finish revising and polishing at least 2 of my works-in-progress.
- THE CURSE OF THE PHARAOH’S STONE is close to finished—one more go over and sending it out for proofreading. So I should easily reach this goal.
- VERITAS. This WIP is in a monster revision right now, and I feel that I have been procrastinating because of the magnitude of the task. Once I begin, I will be able to chip away, and there is no reason I can see that I should not finish this by the end of 2016.
- THE ORACLE OF DELPHI, KANSAS has been complete for a year or more, and has made the rounds of some agents. The feedback I received showed that I have some work to do on this book, but I have not yet looked to see how large a task fixing the issues would be. It is possible that this, too, can be done by the end of 2016, but I consider this a stretch goal.

When one of the manuscripts above is ready, I will send it out to agents. With luck, I will find one that connects with my work.

And that’s it!

Three things.

I can do that.

What are you looking forward to in 2016?

The Rusty Merry-Go-Round: Switching between projects

July 23, 2015 By Kerry Gans Leave a Comment

Last weekend I met my friend and fellow writer Nancy Keim Comley for a “writer’s play date.” We both needed a break from “summer mommy brain” and a chance to get reacquainted with our writing. We had fun, and it felt good to immerse myself in my fiction for a few hours.

A mere six years ago, it wouldn’t have been unusual to find me working on multiple novels at one time—and having the time to immerse myself in all of them. After my daughter came, however, I have been much more single-minded. I’ve worked on one story at a time because if I didn’t nothing would ever get finished.

So when I started up the novel merry-go-round again this week, I found my skills a bit rusty. My current full-throttle work-in-progress is a YA science fiction called Veritas—and talking to Nancy showed me just how much work I have yet to do on it. (Daunting. So I will pretend I don’t know how high the mountain is and just keep climbing.)

However, I also have my debut novel, The Witch of Zal, coming out soon. While I am not actively writing for that, the marketing requires me to delve back into my story world—or at least remember what the heck I wrote. So that story is floating around in my head, popping up at odd moments to say hello.

Also, I’ve been collaborating on a middle grade historical action-adventure novel, The Curse of the Pharaoh’s Stone, and the latest 10 chapters have just landed back in my lap. I’m reading them as if I’ve never seen them before—good for editing, bad for getting back into that novel’s headspace.

To make things even more interesting, I’ve got a YA contemporary fantasy, The Oracle of Delphi, Kansas, that needs to be looked at again before I send it back out for another round of queries. So that’s on a back burner of my brain, too.

Earlier in my life, juggling all these would not have been a problem. In fact, I relished having multiple projects going at once because it eliminated writer’s block and boredom. Whenever I got stuck or burned out on a particular story, I could jump to another one and give my subconscious a chance to chew on the problem. It always worked for me.

This time around, I’m finding it hard to switch from project to project. Part of it is lack of practice, of course—writing skills are like any other skills, you have to use them to keep them sharp. My brain is also not as sharp as it was, largely due to perpetual under-sleeping. And I’m six years older—maybe my brain is more reluctant to leave the groove it’s in and move to something different.

I think the biggest problem is my fragmented time. I have spoken before about how my fragmented writing time has negatively impacted my writing, and I think it plays a large role here. I don’t have concentrated hours of time a day to write. This has made it harder for me to slip into the world of my story. Now mix in more than one fictional world. Synaptic chaos.

The only way I have found to combat the fragmentation is to always have my current work-in-progress running in the back of my mind. Simmering, as I like to call it. You can think of it as having the movie of my story playing in the background on my mental TV all the time. So when I have time to get back to it, I waste less time getting my mind back into the story.

There’s no way I can keep 5 stories simmering at usable levels. My brain would explode. I may have to assign specific days to specific stories, so I can have my brain set to the correct channel all day. That’s my plan, at any rate. We’ll see what happens!

If you have merry-go-round projects, how do you keep your headspace straight? Have you ever had trouble jumping from one world to the next?

The Writing Process Blog Tour

May 12, 2014 By Kerry Gans 10 Comments

Writing friend Donna Galanti asked if I would join The Writing Process Blog Tour, and since I can’t ever have too many things to do, I said yes!

The awesome Donna Galanti writes suspense, young adult, and middle grade fiction and is represented by Bill Contardi of Brandt & Hochman Literary Agents, Inc. She is an International Thriller Writers Debut Author of the paranormal suspense novel A HUMAN ELEMENT (Echelon Press). Watch for her suspense novel A HIDDEN ELEMENT, the sequel to A HUMAN ELEMENT, coming summer 2014 by Imajin Books. Her middle grade series, JOSHUA AND THE LIGHTNING ROAD, debuts in 2015 by Month9Books. Check out Donna’s Writing Process post, and follow her on Twitter or Facebook or Goodreads—or all of them.

Without further ado, here’s what passes for my writing process:

What am I working on?

On Friday, I got my editing notes for my middle grade novel OZCILLATION (coming in 2015 from Evil Jester Press), so I am getting ready to dive into those. Currently, I am wavering between freaking out and excited. I’m a writer who enjoys revision, though, so I am eager for this challenge!

Because I like to have several projects going at once (it helps me block writer’s block), I also am editing two short stories that I hope will find homes this year; finishing up the formatting for my genealogy book, THE WARREN FAMILY OF PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA, AND THEIR ANCESTORS, which should be available soon via POD; querying my YA novel THE ORACLE OF DELPHI, KANSAS; writing a first draft of my current Work-In-Progress, a YA sci-fi titled VERITAS; and looking forward to the Philadelphia Writer’s Conference in June.

Add my Mom duties to all that, and, yeah, I’m busy!

How does my work differ from others of its genre?

Well, that’s a question that every author should know the answer to, but most of us struggle with! I write middle grade and YA—which are categories rather than genres, but I write different genres within each category. Some of my kids are ordinary, some have paranormal powers. They all get into adventures they didn’t seek. So far, none of that is very different from most work in my genre.

My focus, however, is on a kid or teen’s ability to change the world. Kids often feel helpless when facing the problems out in the world. They don’t think they can do anything to change things. I know they can. All my characters, ordinary or paranormal, find their own unique gifts and use them to solve the problems they face—and in doing so, they change their worlds. Kids need to know that being who they truly are is powerful, and that their power can change the world. I know this is true because I have seen it happen.

Why do I write what I do?

These are the types of books I have always liked to read. Both as a child and an adult, I have been drawn to books that range from sci-fi/fantasy to those with just a touch of paranormal. I love to touch the magic that we cannot see. In short, I like books where the world is so much more than it seems, and where the characters discover that they themselves are so much more than they ever imagined. Books that show kids that one person can change the world–and that they are never too young to be that person.

How does my writing process work?

It’s rather a miracle it works at all, because I feel like I spend all my time putting out fires and jotting down words that may or may not be coherent when I look back later!

When an idea comes to me, I write a down-and-dirty outline. And by outline I mean summary of what I think might happen. I usually have a beginning and an end, and a large blank spot in the middle. One friend dubbed it the “miracle-happens-here” approach to outlining. I have been trying to think things through a little more in my pre-writing stage lately, to keep me from floundering too much when writing. I will never be one of those authors who outlines every scene before they even start writing (how do they do that?), but having a better handle on structure and character arc before I start will allow me to take better advantage of the snatches of time I have to write in.

Once I know where I’m headed, I start to write. I usually write chronologically, but I will skip around if a scene comes to me strongly. Because I have a 4-year-old who is at home most of the time, my writing time tends to be highly segmented and divided into short periods. So some days I manage many words, some days not so much. But I generally strive to write a complete chapter per day when I am in full writing mode (my chapters tend to be short).

I like feedback early in the writing process. When I first started writing seriously, I wrote with a writing partner—we were practically symbiotic in our relationship. Unfortunately, she passed away about 11 years ago, and I had to figure out a whole new writing process that involves less early feedback from others. I have found a great critique group, and I have some wonderful beta readers who are willing to give me honest feedback, whether it’s on a first draft or a final draft.

Revision is where my book starts to feel solid. Usually it’s not until the 5th draft that I feel like things are getting close to “The End.” I start with a big-picture storyboard edit to track the plot structure and arcs, then slowly whittle down to sentence-level edits such as destroying every “was” I can find. Once it’s as polished as I can make it, I get a professional edit, and then it’s ready for sending to agents!

That’s my process in a nutshell! I’m pleased to hand off to two amazing people for next week:

Writing maven Jami Gold writes beach reads with bite, delighting in paranormal romance and urban fantasy. The queen of beat sheets, Jami shares her wealth of writing knowledge with her blog readers and workshop attendees. Jami will post her Writing Process Blog on Thursday, May 22nd.

Very busy man Uriah Young is an author, motivational speaker, and publicist. He strives to find out what makes people successful, and motivate high school and college students to find their passion. Writer, speaker, and podcaster, he often seems to be everywhere at once! Uriah will post his Writing Process Blog on Monday, May 19th.

Good News: My Career Grows

May 8, 2014 By Kerry Gans 3 Comments

Last year saw my first short story, TO LIGHT AND GUARD, published in Bewildering Stories magazine. That was a big milestone for me: my first official publication.

This year is shaping up even better! I had a poem, THE TOWERS STOOD, published in the World Healing, World Peace 2014 Poetry Anthology, and my short story DYING BREATH sold to Youth Imagination magazine!

In even more exciting news, my middle grade sci-fi retelling of the Wizard of Oz, OZCILLATION, was picked up by Evil Jester Press, and will be released in 2015! I am so excited to work with this group of enthusiastic and creative people, and to be one of their first middle grade novels as they expand.

Right now, my novel is with the editor, so I am waiting on pins and needles to get the feedback from her. I know there will be some hard work ahead to make OZCILLATION all shiny, but I am ready to tackle it. I will be approaching the novel with fresh eyes, as I have not read the book since I started querying agents waaaay back in December of 2012. I have come a long way as a writer since then and will probably see things in the book I want to change as well.

So what am I doing while waiting for my editing notes? I am editing two short stories that I hope will find homes this year. I am doing final preparation on my genealogy book for upload to the self-publishing Print-On-Demand (POD) site, likely by the end of this week. Then I will figure out how to format the genealogy book for ebook, and upload that. I’m sending querying to agents for my YA contemporary fantasy THE ORACLE OF DELPHI, KANSAS. I am also beginning to work on my marketing strategy, as well as optimizing my website and blog and other social media. Oh, and I’m working on another novel.

So, I’m busy.

The list, of course, does not include weekly repetitive tasks like blog posts, watching the 2 TV shows I allow myself to watch, reading, taking care of the business of life, and running around after my most important Work-In-Progress, my preschooler!

As much work as the coming year will be, I am looking forward to the challenge! How about all of you? What new bragging rights do you have? Share!

Working Vacation

April 24, 2014 By Kerry Gans 1 Comment

I know that most people return from vacation to a crushing workload of backed up emails, housework, or other work they do. I, on the other hand, have returned from my recent week-long sojourn farther ahead than when I left.

I work from home, with a preschool-age child. So I find that tasks that require prolonged concentration are difficult for me to find time to do. I have the time after she is in bed, but by then my brain is tired and I am prone to stupid mistakes (although this is a good time for creative writing for me). But most business-related tasks require attention to fine detail and often a half an hour or more of blocked time to accomplish competently. For example, I submitted the same short story to 5 magazines recently—and I had to format the story in 3 different ways to follow their guidelines. This is not a complaint—I understand why this is so. This is just to show why I need time to really pay attention to these sorts of details.

As a result, I have had a list of business-related items that I kept saying, “If only I could have a week without distraction, I could get all this done!”

This vacation was that week.

With Preschooler being entertained by Grandma, aunts, cousins, and Daddy, I was able to grab some focused work time. In this week away, I accomplished:

Submitting 3 Critique manuscripts to the Philadelphia Writers Conference
Submitting 3 Contest manuscripts to the Philadelphia Writers Conference
Spending several hours on Duotrope making lists of markets for my various short stories
Sent 5 queries out for my short story Dying Breath
Sent 5 queries out for my novel The Oracle of Delphi, Kansas
Edited 1/3 of my short story Finale
Read 2 Newbery-Award-winning novels
Critiqued a friend’s short narrative non-fiction piece
Wrote a blog post for my personal blog, The Goose’s Quill
Wrote the Thursday blog post for our group blog, The Author Chronicles
Kept up with social media platforms
Slept

I also managed to have fun visiting with relatives and enjoying the beauty of the countryside!

Many people might not consider this much of a vacation, but for me it was ideal. I get so worn out with trying to keep up with everything, and so frustrated pushing things off to the back burner because of time constraints. Getting so much of this done was a great weight off my shoulders, which allowed me to relax.

Do you find yourself working on vacation, or do you really get away from it all?

Writing in the Present Tense

June 28, 2010 By Kerry Gans 3 Comments

I just finished reading The Great God Pan by Donna Jo Napoli. It’s YA, based on the two Greek myths of Pan and Iphigenia. Napoli fills in a few of the gaps in the mythology with this engaging, inventive and lively book.

Pan tells it in first person, with a voice that grabs the reader immediately. The voice is so inviting that at first I didn’t even notice that the book is written in the present tense. Since I didn’t notice, Napoli obviously used this device skillfully, but it got me thinking about using present tense in novels. The next 3 YA books I read (Meg Cabot’s The Princess Diaries; Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak; and Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games) are all also written in present tense.

Present tense used to be taboo, but now it seems to be a trend. When is it most effective? Are there times when it absolutely should not be used?

Present tense gives immediacy to the action and the emotion. The reader lives the moment simultaneously with the protagonist. Hindsight and explanation don’t flavor the action. It is, in a way, a cleaner way to experience a story. And yet, so many readers and authors dislike its use. My husband says he hates present tense so much that he cannot read a book written in it—he never makes it past the first page or two. I asked him why he disliked it so much, and he said that perhaps it is because he looks at a book as a history, the events in it as something that already happened—it had to have already happened to be written down, and that chronological disconnect in logic bothers him.

Personally, it doesn’t bother me, as long as the story has grabbed me. Then, as now, I sometimes don’t even notice until I am well into the book, and too invested to stop reading. I also find that first person narratives lend themselves to present tense. My current WIP, The Oracle of Delphi, Kansas, is my first attempt at a first person narrative. When I began writing, I found myself slipping into the present tense quite frequently, even though I am writing it in past tense.

What are your thoughts on using present tense in novel?

Revision Paralysis

June 21, 2010 By Kerry Gans 3 Comments

I love getting feedback on my work. I am no longer thin-skinned about it—in fact, it is one of my favorite stages of developing a novel. I want to know what worked, what didn’t and where I need to improve. I am an author who thrives on the creative synergy of back-and-forth with ideas and feedback. It’s a good thing.

You can have too much of a good thing.

I have recently gotten all my beta reader feedback from my latest WIP, The Oracle of Delphi, Kansas. The feedback is strongly favorable, but there are areas in the book I need to improve. I skimmed the feedback eagerly as soon as I got it—and it has been sitting there ever since.

I’d like to blame my procrastination on my 7-month-old daughter’s constant demands on my time. I’d like to blame it on the fact that every two weeks or so I am shuttling myself, my daughter and a carload of baby paraphernalia back and forth between New Jersey and Virginia (with side trips to Pennsylvania). I’d like to blame it on my other writing obligations, such as the complete revision of my middle grade novel The Egyptian Enigma and thinking up topics for this blog. But none of that is the real reason I haven’t gotten to the revisions of Oracle.

The real reason is that I suffer from revision paralysis.

I have so much feedback, so many things to revise, that it is overwhelming. Even worse, changing one thing often means changing another that wasn’t even on the list to start with. At first, I didn’t even have a list—just heaps of feedback scattered across multiple computer files. I took the first step and organized everything into a single file of feedback, dividing it into categories: Character, Plot, Setting, etc. I accomplished this in short order, and basked in the warm glow de-cluttering always brings.

But I still haven’t revised, because now instead of overwhelming heaps of feedback, I have a single overwhelming list of feedback.

The cure for my revision paralysis is near; I can feel it. The feedback, its implications, and ways to fix things are rattling around in my brain, simmering and surging. I am almost to the point where my creativity overflows and I must write things down. When I get there, I will turn to my revision file, take a deep breath, and dive in.

And once in, I will find, as I always do, that the water is fine and I love the challenge and satisfaction revision brings!

Do you suffer from revision paralysis? What’s your cure for it?

Conflicting Feedback

June 14, 2010 By Kerry Gans 5 Comments

First readers and beta readers are awesome; let’s just get that out there right away. Having readers whose opinion you respect, and who have a sharp eye/ear/nose for writing is a boon to any writer. No writer can do without such people, and I, for one, relish their feedback.

That said, readers can also make you crazy.

There are occasions when two readers’ opinions clash. For example, two of my readers for The Oracle of Delphi, Kansas, gave me the following feedback:

1 – “Gram is thoroughly one-dimensional…and is utterly unsympathetic.”

2 – “Gram was unpredictable, and I liked her a lot.”

Hmmm. What’s a writer to do?

The easy thing, of course, would be to go with the opinion that you like best—the one that means you don’t have to go back and revise Gram’s character. However, a good writer needs to be honest, to go back and look at the character and see if there is validity to the first statement. Gritting your teeth and reading with an open mind is always necessary when you get conflicting feedback. After all, the reason you want others to read the story is precisely because they will see things you don’t – things you are too close to see. Dismissing their opinions when they are unfavorable is counterproductive to making your novel the best it can be.

This example also shows another truth that all writers must deal with—you cannot please everyone. Readers bring their own baggage, their own prism to the page every time they read. They will read things into the story that you did not intend. Their minds fill in the chinks with what they know, what they have lived, and what they have experienced. That is the magic of reading—the same book will be a unique experience for each reader.

Knowing this, writers cannot write to satisfy everybody. In the end, writers must be true to the story, to the character, and to their own vision. Feedback helps hone this vision and to open dimensions of the story you didn’t see yourself. But the bottom line is your gut, telling you what is right for your book.

So, what am I going to do about Gram? I have to read the manuscript and see, but I suspect there will be some “rounding” to be done for her character.

Thanks to all my readers for their valuable feedback!

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