A Plantser’s Life: Intractable, Usurping, Murder, and Magic

In November of 2015, I began a mission. My mission was to get some of the thousands of stories in my head out into the world. There was one major problem with my mission, while I excel at having ideas the execution leaves a lot to be desired. At forty-seven I believed I was a reasonably intelligent person. One with a remedial grasp of the English language including grammar, but I’d never finished a story. Not one. Ever. I signed up for NaNoWriMo in October, telling myself it is now or never. Either I write a story and finish it, or I give up the dream forever and focus on being a reader of other’s stories. This is where my journey began.

If you had asked me last year who I was my answer would have been relatively straightforward. I’m a college student studying psychology. My goal was to get my Ph.D. and teach people living with chronic health conditions to become their own medical advocates. It was something I was passionate about, having gone through the process myself after fighting my doctors to find answers to why I hurt all the time. However, I’d always had a hidden dream. I wanted to see my name on the cover of a book. To know that somewhere out there people read my stories and loved my characters as much as I do. My hidden dream wasn’t always hidden. I’d always been very vocal about it until my father pointed out that “no woman is considered to be a decent writer” and my mother mentioned, “men don’t like women smarter than they are.” So I killed that dream. I strangled it and buried it deep in my subconscious along with other fantasies like meeting Duran Duran (don’t judge) or marrying Tom Cruise (seriously, don’t judge).

In November, I set out to write a story about a corporation using an entire town as experiments to find the secret to immortality. I’d decided on a YA story not because I thought it was easier, but because I’d had the idea rattling around in my skull for a few years and was the most familiar with it. I wrote every day in the month of November and on the thirtieth I validated my win. Then I read it and broke down into tears crying like a baby. It. Was. Horrible. Not just a little bad, it was God awful. I wouldn’t let anyone read it because I knew they’d all tell me it was pure dreck and I didn’t think I could handle the humiliation. I’d made such a big deal out of writing my first book in November that I couldn’t deal with what my family and friends would tell me when I was forced to admit it didn’t turn out quite as planned. So I buried the dream once more.

Then in December, my sister asked me about my story. I told her I’d won NaNo but left it at that until she asked to read the novel. I told her no and admitted it was too horrible to share with anyone. I even acknowledged that I was considering deleting the file so no one would ever be able to read it. For those who don’t know my sister, she’s awesome, but she has a mouth like no one I’ve ever met. When I told her what I felt she stared at me for about ten seconds and then began to berate me for my own stupidity. Of course, my novel sucked, she said. It was guaranteed to be awful because it was a rough draft. She may have also threatened to kill me if I deleted it without trying to fix it, but I kind of blocked her out halfway through the lecture because it was hurting my ears. That woman has an amazing set of lungs and is deafening when she yells.

Now my sister has decided to jump on the Vicki wants to be an author bandwagon and sets in motion a chain of events with the catastrophic magnitude of Mt. St. Helens. She forced me to sit down and tell her about a story I wanted to write. Not the one I’d already written, but one I really felt needed out in the world. I gave her a brief overview of an urban fantasy idea I’d been working on. One where the main character wasn’t a man or a twenty-something woman. One with a smart-mouthed, melodramatic, forty-something woman whose entire life turns out to be a lie. A story with dragons, vampires, a sentient house, and a wisecracking lecherous gnome. Telling her the story made it real for me. My hands itched to write it, but I wouldn’t do it until I had some idea of what I was doing. Then I found Shaunta Grimes and her Ninja Writers. My sister encouraged me to try a couple of her free programs, and eventually, I signed up for her A Novel Idea Course (I highly recommend it to anyone who’s ever considered writing, but doesn’t know where to start). I flew through each lesson and learned how to plot a story from beginning to end. In April for Camp NaNoWriMo, I took the story I shared with my sister, and I wrote the entire thing. All 95,000 words of it in about six weeks. When I finished, I shared the story with three people. My sister, my niece, and a friend all received it in the roughest shape imaginable. I told them I wanted the painful truth. If it was awful, I needed to know. My niece loved everything about it, which I expected because she wouldn’t say anything to hurt my feelings. My sister wanted to know where she could get a dragon and gave me a detailed list of things that didn’t work. Including a ten thousand word section that I eventually cut out in its entirety during revisions. The friend, who is male, asked if I was planning on writing more because he’s on board to read them all. He sent a list of corrections (typos, spelling, grammar, and one enormous plot hole) and I started rewriting.

Fast forward a year and here’s what I have to show for my sister’s lecture. I have self-published one novel and one novelette. I will publish book two in six weeks. I’ve written four novels total, one in the same series as the first two, and one that needs a massive amount of rewrites thanks to the main character who’s whiny and too annoying for words plus the two that I’ve finished. I’ve started a blog, where I discuss the truth about self-publishing and a few things that annoy me. I have a social media presence. It’s not much, but it’s there and growing.

Here’s what I’ve learned:

· I’m not perfect, duh — I’m always going to be a work in progress, and that’s a good thing.

· Write even when you don’t “feel” it — Revisions and editors exist for a reason so don’t be afraid.

· Characters will usurp a plot if you let them — Sometimes characters have a mind of their own and love to go off script. It’s disconcerting especially if you’re a die-hard plotter, but you should always go with it. Sometimes it turns out amazing.

· How to commit darlingcide — It’s much harder to kill your darlings than anyone who’s not a writer realizes. It’s worth it in the end though.

· Characters are intractable — Characters are stubborn, whiny, temperamental bitches. Especially if they’re dragons, but that’s another story. Sometimes, a plotter spends too much time thinking they’ve got everything figured out and when it comes to execution the characters prove them wrong. It’s not a bad thing, learn to roll with it.

· Don’t be rigid — Plotters are not always right but neither are pantsers. I am a devout plantser. I write my outlines, use my storyboard, spend weeks doing research and when it comes to writing sometimes things need to change. It’s a good thing.

· When things come together, you have magic. — I’ve learned I have a lot left to learn. I’ve surrendered my dream of helping people become their own medical advocates, and was recently accepted into the MFA program in writing that was my first choice. Evidently, they love mouthy, melodramatic, forty-something female main characters as much as I do. The first two chapters of Golden Opportunity were my writing submission for the admission process. There’s magic in being flexible and willing to change, and we should all be willing to embrace it.

I hope you all follow your dreams, it’s totally worth it in the end. I’d love to be your personal cheerleader, feel free to tell me about your dreams in the comments below.

V. L. Cooke

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