Guest Blogger: Jody Wallace

Please welcome a very special guest, Jody Wallace, host of the fantastic Mean Kitty blog and writer-wrangler for the Here Be Magic round robin, as well as a busy author in her own right. But I'll let her tell you all about that. :)
~Cindy

Overdoing It

Lately I've been overdoing it. And by "lately", I mean ever since I had stuff to do. I'm not talking about the classic modern societal complaint of being overscheduled. I can say no--except, apparently, to myself.

While I could easily trace a pattern of my disorder back to childhood, when I would spend hours creating a toy village I then ran out of time to play in, I'd rather examine a couple recent incidents that intersect with my writing career and are thus things our blog hostess might actually be interested in :). 

Exhibit One: My Most Recently Completed Manuscript

Despite knowing what publisher wordcount tends to be, I wrote a book...and wrote it...and wrote it...and ended up with possibly 20-30K more than the publisher I want to submit to tends to release. Let's just say I've scheduled a "gratuitous anything" edit starting today before sending the manuscript to my editor. (And no, this is not a first.)

Exhibit Number Two: My Round Robin with Cindy and Others

As I've screamed toward a conclusion of the Book That Wouldn't End (well, more like "yet another" book that wouldn't end...), I've also been participating wholeheartedly in a side project with Cindy and other authors at Here Be Magic (http://herebemagic.blogspot.com/). HBM is a group blog of paranormal and fantasy authors, many of whom are published with Carina Press. Near Halloween I had the brainstorm of luring these authors into a round robin, which is an ongoing story that gets swapped from author to author, each of whom writes the next paragraph, or page, or what have you.

We have posted sections of our handiwork on the blog. The story is about Delphie the pixie and her adventures after she gets mixed up with a member of a paranormal species (who is a hot dude, natch) she didn't even realize existed. Because the participants are all so talented and creative, the round robin quickly firmed up into a story that could become more than a two-week fling.

And because the participants, like me, also enjoy a spot of overdoing it, their entries morphed from short paragraphs to longer paragraphs and from longer paragraphs into pages.

While I'm sure this doesn't sound like a bad thing to you, you have to understand what I've been subjecting these poor, innocent writers to off-screen! They thought they'd signed up for a fun spot of wham, bam, thank-you, ma'am, yet I've become clingy and codependent. I keep wanting to TALK about the relationship (story) and make it cohesive, stronger, more enduring. I can't make decisions without consulting them. I keep throwing possible plot twists at them and writing long, rambling explanations for what has happened, what might need to be tweaked, and how we could revise our love to share with our adoring masses.

In my defense, it's their fault. As their entries became meatier and more clever, possibilities began twinkling on my horizon like...sparkle rainbow unicorns. The absolute WORST kind of unicorn. Their ideas have become too good not to showcase!

And also, I have, in an attempt to create order from the chaos of the first entries, gone completely bananas with the worldbuilding and a freakin' index and a plot summary and a cultural study and what have you to incorporate all of the wackiness that round robins inevitably generate.

It's been a very interesting exercise in writerly worldbuilding on my end. How can you resolve X, even when it seems to contradict Y? What kind of paranormal beings would result a society that is HIJK? How many glossaries can I share with everyone before they run away PDQ?

Needless to say, I was not surprised when a majority of authors voted it was probably a good idea to envision an END to the round robin, hehe. I hope we get it all posted in sections (as-is) and polished and edited (much shinier!) for readers in the early part of this year. To see what we've done so far, you're welcome to check out: http://herebemagic.blogspot.com/p/round-robin-story.html

So, do any of you guys overdo things like this? Right now I've got a 1920s theater costuming project whispering naughty, time-consuming things to me I should probably go devote myself to (not to mention a manuscript that needs a diet) and give Cindy and the others a break...

 

Jody Wallace

Author, Cat Person, Amigurumist

http://www.jodywallace.com * http://www.meankitty.com  
(Pack and Coven available at Carina Press.com)