{"id":32807,"date":"2018-09-13T07:58:26","date_gmt":"2018-09-13T11:58:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/?p=32807"},"modified":"2022-01-09T21:13:54","modified_gmt":"2022-01-10T02:13:54","slug":"jessica-mcdonald-five-things-i-learned-writing-born-to-be-magic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/2018\/09\/13\/jessica-mcdonald-five-things-i-learned-writing-born-to-be-magic\/","title":{"rendered":"Jessica McDonald: Five Things I Learned Writing Born To Be Magic"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

It’s like\u00a0Law & Order,\u00a0but with witchcraft.<\/em><\/p>\n

Rachel Collins isn\u2019t sure sarcasm is an actual method of self-defense, but she keeps testing the theory. On paper, she\u2019s an agent for the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, but in reality, she\u2019s a ley witch, and as a deputy working for the High Council of Witches, it\u2019s her job to keep the supernatural in line and protect humanity from the things they don\u2019t know exist. It\u2019s dangerous, and not just because a\u00a0Walking Dead\u00a0reject might eat her face. If she uses too much power, she could become a monster herself.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

It’s all magical forensics and arresting perps for dealing with demons until Rachel\u2019s brother disappears, kidnapped by someone sending her a very particular message. Defying the Council\u2019s order to stay off her brother\u2019s case, Rachel hides her witchy identity from the demon hunter Sean\u2014which\u00a0definitely\u00a0has nothing to do with how hot he is\u2014and strikes a deal to save her brother. Unfortunately, their plan risks corrupting Rachel’s soul, a grievous offense in the eyes of the Council. Now she\u2019ll have to prove she\u2019s not hellbound \u2014 or suffer the same brand of justice she used to serve.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Diversity isn\u2019t a default<\/h2>\n

You either nodded or rolled your eyes right now, but hang with me here. We need diverse books. We need them because we have diverse readers, and those readers deserve to see themselves represented in media. I\u2019m a big believer in this, to the point of being an activist. I\u2019ve spoken on it at conferences. I wrote an essay for Invisible 2<\/em> [link https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Invisible-Personal-Essays-Representation-SF-ebook\/dp\/B00XLCK9FU\/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1535121412&sr=8-2&keywords=invisible+2], edited by Jim C. Hines, on representation of Native Americans in sci-fi and fantasy. I put my dollars toward diverse media as much as I can.<\/p>\n

My first couple passes of BORN were very white, very straight, and very male\u2014despite having a female protagonist.<\/p>\n

Even for me, the default of straight white male had wormed its way into my writing. What\u2019s worse is that I didn\u2019t notice until I did a fun little exercise where I cast my novel\u2014I picked actors and actresses that I would like to see play all the different characters and put their pictures in a Word doc. When I looked at it\u2014whoo boy. I ended up doing a lot of gender- and race-swapping to make the book more balanced.<\/p>\n

It made me think about my writing more critically, to think about the experiences of marginalized people and how those experiences shape characters, and how we as authors can authentically reflect those experiences. It made me think even more critically about media I consumed and how it affected me. It made me put more effort into the characters I created. I learned an uncomfortable truth about myself: That even with all my attention toward diversity, I\u2019d still been so subconsciously influenced that my novel reflected dominant cultural norms. It surprised me, and it\u2019s made me pay more attention in novels I\u2019ve written since then.<\/p>\n

Just keep writing\u2014but edit ruthlessly<\/h2>\n

When I was but a wee research assistant at a trade association in Washington, DC, my boss, the chief economist, was fond of the phrase, \u201cDon\u2019t let the best become the enemy of the good.\u201d Never has this been more relatable than in my writing. As authors, we\u2019re all intimately familiar with self-doubt and insecurity. They\u2019re the dragons that threaten to slay our dreams. We want polished, publishable work done on a first draft, which is pure fantasy. But we want it, and when we write less-than-perfectly, it can intimidate us. Sometimes, it becomes so intimidating that the writing wheels grind to a halt, and that, my friends, is how you get a hundred people telling you, \u201cI wanted to write a novel, but I only got a few chapters in\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

I wrote the first draft of BORN in under two weeks. People asked me how. I said I used the \u201cDory [link: https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=0Hkn-LSh7es] method\u201d\u2014just keep writing, just keep writing. I even jokingly wrote a blog post [link: http:\/\/coloradojessica.tumblr.com\/post\/32751026557\/the-writing-process] about my writing process in which Stage 1 was WRITE WRITE WRITE JUST KEEP WRITING IS THAT EVEN ENGLISH WHO CARES.<\/p>\n

I have written sentences like, \u201cI watched my watch.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEyes like chips of eyes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSean looked thought he had not mulling it over.\u201d (Actual line from an early version of BORN.)<\/p>\n

Friends, I have written sentences that even I didn\u2019t know what the hell they meant upon revision.<\/p>\n

But I kept writing, and by continuing to write, I finished BORN. I finished three sequels to BORN. I finished a YA novel and am a quarter of the way through a crime thriller. Graduate school first taught me this. You can\u2019t wait for the inspiration or muse: you publish or perish. You write or die. (Maybe not literally, but trust me, in grad school it feels<\/em> literal.) This lesson flourished as I wrote BORN. I learned to write even when I thought it was trash, even when the words came torturously slow, even when all my doubt and insecurity screamed at me like ten thousand cicadas at a metal concert.<\/p>\n

I kept writing. And I learned that I could write not just one, but multiple novels.<\/p>\n

Now, I\u2019m clearly a pantser [link: https:\/\/thewritepractice.com\/plotters-pantsers\/], and I also learned a follow-up to this: Revisions are where your story becomes a story instead of merely a collection of words. I learned to be ruthless in my edits. I\u2019d heard to kill my darlings, and I didn\u2019t only slash paragraphs, I axed chapters. If it wasn\u2019t moving the plot, if it wasn\u2019t revelatory about a character, if it wasn\u2019t contributing to the story, it hit the circular file. I also learned it\u2019s a lot easier to kill your darlings if you cut and paste them into a separate Word file. I have fantasies that maybe one day I\u2019ll release \u201cdeleted scenes\u201d like on DVDs. But I learned to be cold-hearted when it came to revisions, and I learned that multiple revisions\u2014sometimes multiple structural<\/em> revisions\u2014were necessary. I hated doing them (see this blog post [link: http:\/\/coloradojessica.tumblr.com\/post\/100538392721\/lets-talk-about-revisions]) but I learned they made my story more complete and created an overall better novel.<\/p>\n

Hone your skills in unexpected places<\/h2>\n

So I\u2019m going to get super nerdy here. I told you to keep writing. Sometimes, though, you simply can\u2019t muster the wherewithal to write on your novel. Writing is a practiced art form, one that you must do<\/em> to perfect. You must do it relentlessly. When I got stuck, or more often as a warm up, I\u2019d do side projects. I\u2019d rewrite episodes of TV shows to tell the story from a different angle, or to insert my characters into that world. I did a 30 Days of Writing challenge. I did writing prompts. Sometimes the results were long, sometimes only a few paragraphs, but it flexed my writing muscles and got me geared up for novel work.<\/p>\n

I also learned that my roleplaying hobby could be an important way to improve my writing. I don\u2019t mean tabletop RPG (although I do that too), but online roleplaying, which is cooperative storytelling. It\u2019s prevalent on Tumblr (you can see my nerdiness in all its glory here [link: http:\/\/soulbranded.tumblr.com]) although it\u2019s been around for ages. I used to do it as a teenager, along with writing fanfiction, which I will defend to the death as an important form of creative expression.<\/p>\n

Roleplaying works like this: You play a character, and you have a thread\u2014a cooperative story\u2014with another person writing their character. You make a post describing your character\u2019s actions, and your partner will reply with their character\u2019s response. Sometimes there\u2019s a loose plot, sometimes it\u2019s on the fly. What I learned is that people threw things at me I never before considered about my protagonist, and that made me a better writer.<\/p>\n

I learned to flesh out things about my characters and my world that I hadn\u2019t thought of before. I learned to write better dialogue. I learned to be better at showing instead of telling. Because you\u2019re writing with the same person, you can\u2019t repeat lines like, \u201che smiled\u201d or \u201cher eyes shined\u201d if you want to be a good roleplayer. You have to be creative with language. Roleplaying was a way that I practiced writing when I wasn\u2019t writing on the novel, and it made me develop strong habits in description, character, setting, and voice. Not everyone is going to be a roleplayer, but I learned that unique activities like those side projects and roleplaying polished my craft in surprising ways.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s how you tell the story<\/h2>\n

There\u2019s a lot of discussion over whether there are any \u201cnew\u201d stories left. I worried about this constantly while writing BORN, where I felt that my plot wasn\u2019t the sparkling unique unicorn required to stand out. I thought I\u2019d better make strong characters, because I was weak on plot. But as my novel went through critiques and beta readers, as I got feedback from agents and editors, not one person mentioned that the plot was unoriginal. In fact, they praised it. Now, let me tell you that when I started BORN, here was my concept: There was a witch and her brother went missing. That was it. I had to figure the rest out along the way. Eventually, I worked something out: it wasn\u2019t about the plot, it was how I was telling it.<\/p>\n

Some of our most beloved stories are fairly pedestrian in their plots. There\u2019s the old canard about every story being about either a journey or a murder. There\u2019s the hero\u2019s journey, which we all recognize in Star Wars<\/em>. The trick, and where good stories stand out, is to take the recognizable and give it a twist. Tell the story in a way that only you can tell it. I learned this could come through characters, but it also comes through in the reason you\u2019re writing this story in the first place. Everyone has that Reason\u2014why this<\/em> story, why this<\/em> way. I wanted to tell a story about identity and dealing with something inside you that both gives you power and poses great danger. As a mixed-race person with chronic illness, both of those themes are near and dear to my heart. So my plot\u2014my series of events\u2014was told through that lens, and that lens is what matters most.<\/p>\n

I also learned that to make that lens complete, you have to tell the story from every angle. I don\u2019t mean you have to write a book for every character, but sketch out notes. I told myself the plot from the perspective of the villain, the male lead, the protagonist\u2019s brother, the human cop that\u2019s sniffing too close to the protagonist\u2019s supernatural case. This made my world more robust, and made the story more whole. I learned that it takes a village of viewpoints to build a strong story.<\/p>\n

People will help you in amazing ways<\/h2>\n

Other blog posts have mentioned the importance of finding your writer tribe, and I\u2019m going to mention it too, because it\u2019s probably the most important thing you can have as an author. Writing is a solitary endeavor. You feel like Gollum holed up with your precioussssss laptop. There may or may not be weeping in the corner. It\u2019s hard. When I first wrote BORN, I didn\u2019t have a critique group or a tribe of other writers. I had a few friends that I sent it to for fun. Most didn\u2019t respond; one in particular (shout out to Pherin!) became my biggest supporter. She has read every version of BORN, and there\u2019ve been approximately 243,934 of them. She\u2019s talked through plot points with me. She\u2019s been an editor and a cheerleader and a therapist and someone who believed in my novel and me even when I didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

It took me a while to find a good critique group (shout out to Highlands Ranch Fiction Writers!) They also became so much more than critique partners. They are commiserating shoulders to cry on. They are motivational speakers and coaches and comrades-in-arms in this battle against insecurity and doubt. They\u2019ve all helped me in amazing ways, whether it was to read the novel or buy a copy or publicize my Kickstarter or give advice. And that\u2019s what I learned\u2014people will do amazing things for you if you simply ask.<\/p>\n

I hate to seem like I\u2019m imposing on others, so asking for help isn\u2019t something I\u2019m good at. But I learned that writers, we stick together. We help each other and we lift each other up and if we can lend a hand, we do. And not only writers, either\u2014friends and family and people you met through work conferences. People are incredible beings with great capacity for giving. All you have to do is ask. This blog post is here because Chuck is an awesome dude and was willing to help me. Jim Hines publicized my Kickstarter because he\u2019s also an awesome dude and was happy to help. A colleague I met several years ago not only pushed my Kickstarter out to his network but also became a backer.<\/p>\n

Trust that people believe in you and want you to succeed, and will help you if they can. Trust in the good, kind nature of people. That’s a lesson not just for writing, but for life.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Writer, speaker, geek. Jessica writes urban fantasy and YA, and is a purveyor of real-life magic. Powered by caffeine, ridiculousness, and charm. Proud indigenous.<\/p>\n

A two-time Zebulon Award winner, she is currently working on my sixth novel, a Din\u00e9-inspired YA paranormal called SKY MARKED. She belongs to Pikes Peak Writers and Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers, as well as the crucial-to-her-success critique group, Highlands Ranch Fiction Writers.<\/p>\n

Jessica McDonald: <\/strong>Twitter<\/a> | Blog<\/a><\/p>\n

Born To Be Magic: <\/strong>Kickstarter<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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