Veritas Archives - Page 3 of 3 - Kerry Gans, Author

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 Editing Puzzle

December 10, 2015 By Kerry Gans 2 Comments

My smartphone has a game on it called Move It! by AI Factory. The game is a spatial relations game, where you have pieces of various shapes on a board, and you have to move them around until you can guide a red square into the upper right hand corner. The game is fun, frustrating, and highly addictive.

Move It! is a lot like editing—at least the stage of editing where I am now. I have a WIP that I just finished putting through my critique group. I have reams of helpful suggestions that I cannot wait to get moving on—but there is so much work to be done, I find myself faced with a plethora of pieces scattered on a board of unknown dimensions.

Move It! specifies a target number—the least moves required to clear the board. Alas, my editing does not come with a target number.

My editing notes include checking for conflict in each scene, making sure Scene A leads logically to Scene B, noting my character goals for each scene. I need to follow character arcs, plot arcs, goal arcs. I have 3 POV characters, so I plan to separate their scenes out and listen to voice, check for character consistency, and make sure they are three-dimensional.

I also want to check continuity, symbolism, and rhythm. My ending needs some help, and the entire book needs a language overhaul because it sounds too middle grade and it’s YA. And of course there’s the nitty gritty of grammar, punctuation, and formatting.

Even with the target number, your game can run away with you. I had one game with a target of 72 moves and ended up with 265. I’m hoping to avoid that problem while editing, but you never know because when you change one story piece that changes them all.

At this moment, I am looking at the board, wondering how I can move those manuscript pieces in the most efficient way to get my book to the final position. I’m a bit overwhelmed and unsure where to start.

How you begin in Move It! sets you up for success or failure. A false start will get you to 265*. A good start narrows your available moves until only the successful path is left open to you.

Let’s hope I choose the right starting move with my manuscript.

How do you organize a huge editing project like this?

*My current score on that target 72 game is 76.

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?

First Draft of Veritas Finished

January 22, 2015 By Kerry Gans 2 Comments

Last week I completed my first draft of my YA science fiction novel Veritas. Yes, I still have a long way to go before it’s ready to be seen by publishing professionals, but I still got as excited as a kid in a toy shop!

Why?

Because even though it’s only 70,000 words and I know I have a lot of world-building to add and a lot of revision to do, it is finished. As in, there is a story with a beginning, middle, and end. Character arcs exist. Plot arcs exist. It hangs together as a whole. And finishing any creative act is always something to celebrate—because a very large portion of people who start creative projects never finish.

So that’s one reason I am celebrating. Another is that I actually prefer the revision phase to the drafting stage. Some writers are the opposite. But I like having something to work with, something to mold. As a video editor, the most painful part of any project was finding the music and visuals needed. Once I had them, I flew! It’s the same with my writing. Whatever’s there, no matter how bad, can be worked with. I can polish, demolish, rebuild, whatever. And I can see what story I actually ended up telling—because it’s not always the one I set out to tell in the beginning. So I can see the whole picture and weave all the details into a tight mesh.

The last reason is something of a personal milestone. This is the very first novel I have written from idea to finished draft since my daughter was born 5 years ago. All the other novels I’ve worked on in that time, I had first drafts completed before her birth, and spent the ensuing years editing and polishing. I had no idea how long it would take me to write a complete first draft from scratch. In this case, it was just shy of nine months. It would have been shorter except that I do have a book with a publisher and I had to stop several times to do edits for that book in that timeframe.

But now I know approximately how long it takes me to write a book with my daughter around (it will go faster once she’s in school full time), and more importantly, I know I can still finish! I spent a significant portion of the last few years in a creative wasteland, so just getting the idea for Veritas was huge. To actually finish it?

Enormous.

Do you get giddy when you finish your first drafts? How do you celebrate/reward yourself?

A Pantser Plots: Bringing Old Friends to Life

August 14, 2014 By Kerry Gans Leave a Comment

I am usually a hybrid when it comes to outlining. I know my beginning and ending and a few of the big points in the middle, and then just let the words rip. For my current Work-In-Progress (WIP), I wanted to plan ahead more.

This is my first “from scratch” novel since my daughter was born. I know that I have much less free time to write, so I wanted to be able to make the most of the time I had. I figured if I knew what needed to happen next before I sat down to write, I could use my time more efficiently. So this time around, I decided to plot more.

First I just did the four major beats: turning point (end of Act I), midpoint, black moment (end of Act II), climax. That was enough to get me to the end of Act I, because the beginning had been very clear in my head. Then I looked ahead and realized I would need a more detailed outline—something new for me.

This book is new for me on many levels—in particular, it is dual point-of-view (POV). I realized after getting to the end of Act I that I needed to plot so that I could see the flow of POV chapters. During the messy middle the POV characters are separated (thus the need for 2 POVs). So I had to make sure one storyline was not much shorter than the other. And in doing so I realized I needed to bring in a third POV to make it all work.

The third POV is a spirit that possesses the female POV character, and the female POV character cannot see or hear what is happening while she is possessed. But the reader needs to know. So in essence the third POV takes the place of the first POV character at times. Confused, yet?

Yeah, that’s why I needed an outline.

Finally, this WIP is based on a complete but very poorly written novel I wrote about 30 years ago (yes, I was only 14). I always loved the characters and the premise, but I am a considerably better writer than I was as a freshman in high school. A year or so ago, these characters came back into my mind and would not leave. I got so enthused about writing them again that I had to do it.

The old manuscript had pretty much everything wrong with it, but it served as a rough guide. One big problem with it was that it was written in omniscient POV, which I had no intention of using in the new book. So when it came to the big battle scenes in the middle/end of Act II, I could not jump from POV to POV to POV of all these minor characters. Wrestling the main events of the battle (and events leading up to it) so my male POV could be in the key places was another huge reason I needed to outline.

Although based on the same premise as that old manuscript, this WIP is vastly different plot-wise, and vastly better craft-wise. I am so excited to be writing these old friends again and finally being able to do them justice.

Have you ever gone back to an old work and given it new life? Or has an old work given you new life?

VERITAS, Act I complete

July 31, 2014 By Kerry Gans 2 Comments

My current Work-In-Progress (WIP) is a science fiction YA called Veritas. This is the first book I have started from scratch since my daughter was born. As a result, I have no idea how long it will take me to finish this book. In pre-child days, I could have gone from rough draft to final draft within a year, if I put my nose to the grindstone. Today? No idea. I’m learning what my new normal is.

So, I was very happy to reach the end of Act I in Veritas. It’s about 15,000 words, and will probably grow closer to 18,000 by the time I go back and fill in some of the world-building and deepen some of the emotional moments.

I’ve been trying to work my process a little differently this time around. Although I love to edit, I want to try to cut my time between rough draft and final draft. I am more of a pantser, but I am trying to use a very basic guideline. In my case, I am using Jami Gold’s Basic Beat Sheet,which allows me to pretend I’m pantsing while actually plotting. 😉 It tells me the four main beats I need to have, and about where they should fall word-count wise given my estimated final word count. So far, it has helped me stay on track.

I am wondering what I should do next. Normally, I am a proponent of writing the first draft through to the end without going back and editing. However, I am a little unclear where I am going in the second act, and I think going back and expanding the world and adding depth to the characters might help me find my way. Perhaps it will inspire me. Or I may just plow on and write to my next beat (midpoint) and see what happens. As I said, I am feeling out my process now and seeing what can help speed up the writing while maintaining (or improving) the quality.

Veritas seems to be an experimental novel for me. Not only am I tweaking my writing process, but it is my first dual-POV novel. So far I like how it’s working, although I may reach the end and decide it doesn’t work for the story overall. But we shall see.

I am waiting for the second round of edits for my novel Ozcillation (coming 2015 from Evil Jester Press), but in the meantime I will continue to move forward with Veritas. I know what my major beats are, I am growing more comfortable with my characters, and I am eager to try and take my writing to a new level.

How about you—what writing milestones have you reached lately?

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.

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