Writing Process Linky Party!

Here I am, one in a long line of blog links talking about our writing process. I was invited by Heather Romito, who is a friend of the lovely Katy White, another MMW blogger. Go check out their blogs and keep clicking back if you want to keep discovering more cool writers!

What am I working on? 

My current project is titled (for now) The Price of Sight. It’s a loose sequel to Unsightly, a young adult retelling of “Beauty and the Beast.” It follows the daughter of Isabel (the Beauty) and the Beast. When she comes into some very dangerous and unwanted magical power, she does everything she can to deny it. But when she realizes that she and her loved ones are in danger from someone who seeks to control her power, she has to overcome her fear and learn to control her magic.

It’s part adventure, part coming-of-age, and part court intrigue, with the tiniest whiff of romance.

I also discovered that I like a break from the longer projects, so I’ve been doing more flash fiction lately, just for kicks, most of which I post here on my blog.

How does my work differ from others of its genre?

I love the stories behind the stories. Some fairy tale writers like to take just a little bit or hint of the original story and take off from there, expanding into a completely different tale. I have loved many of these stories, so I can’t complain. But I love looking at the questions that arise from the stories—Why would she do that? Would that really work? Then I try to figure out what pieces of the story are “missing” from the original and would suddenly make those events make sense. (For example, in the original “Beauty and the “Beast,” I was always bothered by the fact that she fell in love with her jailer. Can we say Stockholm syndrome? So in my retelling, I addressed that.)

I also like to think that one difference is the way I deal with magic. Most YA fantasy that I run across has a rather nebulous sense of what is and isn’t possible with magic in that world. That works fine in many cases, but I have always thought that magic, like science, has rules—even when you don’t understand them. The magic in my novels is rule-bound, which I think makes for a harder and more real world for my characters to live in, especially because they tend not to understand the rules.

Why do I write what I do?

Young adult fiction has always drawn me because I think that generally speaking it has a hope that isn’t always present in adult novels. YA can still be dark and painful, but most YA novels seem to say that things can get better. I love fantasy because, even though I don’t believe in actual magic, I do believe that the world can be a magical sort of place (I mean, have you seen fireflies?). So these are the genres that appeal most to me right now.

I also love retelling fairy tales because I think there’s something so wonderfully timeless about them. The themes and ideas just apply all over the place, and I think they endure because they appeal to our inner selves and have things for us to learn—but without having to be beat over the head by “the moral to the story.” They’re just good stories, but with meaning. (I wrote a whole honors thesis on this subject and the story of “Beauty and the Beast,” so just be grateful I gave you the one-paragraph version.)

Oh, plus, I think fairy tales are pretty. :)

How does my writing process work?

If I could tell you that, I bet I’d be getting a lot more done than I currently am. With Unsightly, I muddled through and found myself very frustrated a number of times when suddenly there were massive gaps in the plot and I couldn’t figure out how to fix them. When I was finally doing the first major rewrite, I discovered that when I outlined scenes and determined their purposes and the main actions in them, those scenes went so much better. So for the current project, I’m trying a new thing: I’m outlining much more extensively than I did for Unsightly, hoping that will help me cut back on some (not all, of course) of the frustration. We’ll see how it goes!

Next up in this fun blog linky thing is going to be FrankAdams, a funny guy who writes humor and horror together (because what’s funnier than absolute terror?). (I may also find another friend to link to and insert him/her here.)

An Excerpt: Seven-League Boots

Tonight for your reading pleasure, I thought I’d share a tiny excerpt from a project I worked on last November (hello, NaNoWriMo!). It’s currently called The Price of Sight, but that is extremely subject to change. It’s loosely a sequel to Eye of the Beholder (my “Beauty and the Beast” retelling). It follows the story of a young woman named Minette, who comes into a vast magical power by accident and struggles to know how to control it or avoid the unwelcome attention it attracts. The excerpt below is from Min’s childhood and is neither particularly polished nor absolutely certain to end up in the finished product. Hope you enjoy a random story!

The tale is told of the old magics, magics so powerful and great that in those times the waters ran with gold and the trees gave forth ruby apples. The old magic, it was said, could save a person from death, could heal any wound, could save a person from ever going hungry again. Marvels and wonders, the minstrels sang out, miracles and dreams.

Min’s favorite story was the one of the seven-league boots.

“Long ago,” her father intoned as he sat beside her bed at night after tucking her in. “Long ago, there was a young man who had a pair of boots. Oh, how he loved those boots. They were ordinary and they were old, but they got him every place he needed to go. They were comfortable and fit his feet to perfection. He even imagined that in winter they expanded just enough to allow an extra layer of woolen socks.”

He reached down and tickled Min’s foot, and she giggle and squirmed away. “Then what happened?”

“Well, the young man loved to travel. He was an adventurer at heart, and he wished to get away, off into the distance where he had never been before. But he knew it would take a long time to get there, to wherever it was he wished to be. Even he didn’t really know.”

“So what did he do?”

“He went to a witch,” her father said with relish, savoring the word on his tongue.

“And what did she do?” Min was always far too excited in the stories to allow her father to pause for long.

“She told him she could help him to travel long distances as quickly as he took a single step. He was thrilled at the idea. But she was quick to point out that it would cost him something. He would have to give up something he loved. He paused in thought. ‘What must I give up?’ he asked. He was certain he would not mind the price. ‘Your boots,’ she said. ‘And something else that you will not know until you let go of it.’”

Even though she knew the story, Min still had to ask. Maybe this time he would say no. “Did he do it?”

“Yes, he did,” Min’s father replied. “His boots were such a little price to pay, and while he loved them he did not need them to make him happy. So he gave her the boots and waited for her to make him what he wanted.

“She took the boots and performed the necessary magic—no, don’t ask me what the magic was. I don’t know. This sort of thing is lost, Min. Now hush and let me finish the story.” He smiled down at her, and his smile warmed her to her toes.

“When she was finished, she gave him back the boots. ‘Do not wear them unless you plan to travel. And then put them on only to step in the direction you seek to go. Take one step, and you will travel seven leagues.’

“He thanked her excitedly and went out the door. Where shall I go first? he wondered. With a little thought, he picked a direction and sat down to put the boots on his feet. Then he stood and took a step.”

Min raised herself off her pillow to listen eagerly to the rest of the story. Her father gently pushed her back down and brushed the hair from her face. “Shhh. . . You shall hear the rest. Just close your eyes.”

She obeyed him and listened sleepily as he finished.

“The world swept past him in a blur, and truly the boots were magic now because when the world resolved itself again into trees and dirt and grass and sky, he did not recognize where he was—and he hadn’t crashed into a single thing,” her father said with a chuckle.

“But then, when everything was settled, he felt a pain in his feet so great that he fell to the ground and pulled off his boots to look. They were dirty and bloodied and sore.”

Min cringed at the gruesomeness of it. Even with such a terrible ending, she loved the mystery and the magic.

“He discovered that he could travel those seven leagues in a single step but that his feet would feel every step, as if he had been barefoot. Why did it work that way? No one knows. Such is the way of the old magic.”

Min sighed and yawned, her eyelids drooping.

He smiled gently. “I bet he was very, very careful from then on where he traveled and how.”

Min stirred, barely capable of speech. “Thanks, Papa. Do you think it’s real?”

Her father leaned down to kiss her forehead as he had a thousand times before. She was fully asleep before she even had a chance to hear his answer. “Yes, my little Minette. I am sure of it.”

He walked from the room and gently closed the door.