IWSG—Pulling up to the finish line

Welcome back to the Insecure Writer’s Support Group, which convenes the first Wednesday of every month to commiserate over worries, fears, doubts, and struggles.

This month’s question is:

How do you deal with distractions when you are writing? Do they derail you?

One of the reasons I miss the older Macs (128K, 1993, 1996, 1999, eMac) is because the screens were much smaller, and the Internet either didn’t exist or was very primitive. Thus, I didn’t need to worry about online distractions while writing, and could just type while listening to music.

I could turn off WiFi, but that would take away my writing soundtracks on Spotify and YouTube, as well as my ability to research as necessitated. Handwriting a first draft removes those distractions.

Just as I suspected, taking a break from Dream Deferred for a few weeks to research, write, gather images for, and edit my A to Z posts on both blogs threw my forward momentum off again, and it took a few weeks to fully get back into the swing of things. I think I’ve finally learnt my lesson this time, and will get back to how I used to do my A to Z posts months in advance instead of waiting until March and creating a lot of stress as a result.

I rethought my plan to end Dream Deferred with a few chapters getting the Konevs set up in NYC and taking care of remaining business in Minnesota over the summer of 1952. In just one abandoned, unfinished chapter, the story was already becoming too overcomplicated all over again!

The end of a book isn’t the time to start introducing a bunch of new plot twists, dramas, and setting changes. It’s supposed to be about bringing storylines to their conclusions and tying everything together.

I briefly reconsidered one of my earlier ideas, for Mr. Konev to die near the end and the Epilogue to open with his funeral and the reading of his will. Then I remembered why I decided to push that off till the fifth book. Keeping him alive a bit longer and merely introducing the idea of an upcoming move back to NYC also gives additional layers of meaning to the title.

Belatedly attending university isn’t Lyuba and Ivan’s only deferred dream. They’ve reconciled with Ivan’s father after decades of acrimonious estrangement, and now get to enjoy a peaceful relationship in his remaining time left. They’re also looking ahead to a new life in New York when it’s more convenient, knowing this is one dream that won’t be deferred for decades.

It’s important to not let a story keep going after all the major plots have found their perfect endings. Always know when it’s the right time to quit. The Rap Critic (one of my favorite YouTubers) was very confused when the (awful) Young Money song “Every Girl” suddenly introduced a new guy after the song seemed to be finished. “Is this song still going? Is this another verse or an outro?…What is the point of this part? It sounds so disconnected and tacked-on.”

He was even more annoyed at the (also awful) Nicki Minaj song “Anaconda” for going on way too long. “Dude, just end it. Dude, just end it. Even the engineer’s trying to cut you off. End the song. End the song!”

I hope I can finally be finished by the end of May, and will be getting some more ear piercings to celebrate (my right tragus and helix flat). When I’ve finished writing the new chapters in my editing outline and done preliminary edits, I’m leaning towards a reward of my left anti-tragus, which would be my lucky number ninth ear cartilage piercing.

Have you ever second-guessed your writing outline and plans multiple times? Have you ever found yourself going on way too long with a story that needed to end earlier?

WeWriWa—A last-minute Easter basket

Welcome back to Weekend Writing Warriors and Snippet Sunday, weekly Sunday hops where writers share 8–10 sentences from a book or WIP. The rules have now been relaxed to allow a few more sentences if merited, so long as they’re clearly indicated, to avoid the creative punctuation many of us have used to stay within the limit.

Since today is Easter, I decided to switch to a holiday snippet for my readers who celebrate. This comes from Chapter 27, “Emotional Easter,” of my WIP A Dream Deferred: Lyuba and Ivan at University. It’s the eve of Orthodox Easter 1949, and 22-year-old Yustina Yeltsina-Baronova is making an Easter basket for 26-year-old Nestor Ugolnikov, whom she met in St. Nicholas Park earlier that day.

Nestor is a former Marine who was disowned by his parents after he lost a leg at Iwo Jima. He just moved into Yustina’s grandmother’s boardinghouse after years in the veterans’ hospital. Though he planned to celebrate Easter alone in his new suite, Yustina insists he join her family for both services and meals.

Kolbasy are sausages. The Russian letters XB stand for Khristos Voskrese (Christ is risen), the traditional Easter greeting.

Paskha, a traditional Slavic cheese dish eaten at Easter

Yustina places a lamb mold around a chunk of butter. “Would anyone like to contribute some spare paskhi for Nestor’s Easter basket?”

“We’ve already made all the paskhi we’re going to make,” Naum says. “We only expected eight people, and we’re not in the habit of putting multiple paskhi in each basket.”

Yustina shrugs. “Then I’ll have to go out and buy one. How about extra kulichi?”

Valya points to several plain kulichi still on a cooling rack. “Have at it.”

Yustina pulls an embroidered placemat out of a drawer and sets it in the basket, which she fills with ham, kolbasy, salt, horseradish, wine, bacon, roast beef, pork, lox, plenty of colored eggs, and chocolates.

The ten lines end there. A few more follow to finish the scene.

She then grabs several cheese balls and sticks cloves into them in the shapes of crosses. After that, she places a cross mold around more butter.

After the butter is in the basket, Yustina liberally applies a mix of chocolate and vanilla icing to the three unclaimed kulichi, followed by slivered almonds, colored sprinkles and sugar, candied flowers, shredded coconut, powdered sugar, cinnamon, brown sugar, and chopped, candied walnuts. Almost as an afterthought, she ices the Russian letters XB on the side.

“Are you trying to give him diabetes?” Artur asks. “His kulichi are a lot sweeter than any of ours, and you barely left any room for the candles.”

“He hasn’t properly celebrated Easter in a really long time. Why shouldn’t I go all out for him?” Yustina places each kulich into the Easter basket in turn.

Kulichi, Copyright Loyna

WeWriWa—Plotting confusion has resolved

Welcome back to the Insecure Writer’s Support Group, which convenes the first Wednesday of every month to commiserate over worries, fears, doubts, and struggles.

I am so relieved to finally be fully back on track with the homestretch of Dream Deferred.  When a book is on hiatus for that long, and was on several prior hiatuses, one often tends to be out of the swing and needs some time to reacclimate oneself.

Probably my biggest problem as I returned to it was how many times I’d changed my vision for the concluding events of the last few chapters and the Epilogue. I needed to mentally replot the ending in a way that naturally fit into the story as it unfolded, without skipping over or rushing through any important events. I also couldn’t pack too many events in.

E.g., the idea of Ivan’s father’s death being more or less glossed over and the entire focus being on the reading of his will and subsequent inheritance of his long-secret riches came to feel like an insulting send-off for such an important character.

Mr. Konev’s Stage 4 bowel, liver, and lung cancer won’t have a miraculous remission, but it feels like better, more respectful timing for him to die early in the fifth book. Not only to fully showcase Russian Orthodox mourning and funeral customs, but as a contrast with Stalin’s death and funeral in the Soviet chapters.

It’s already more than enough that Lyuba, Ivan, his aunt Valeriya, and his much-younger sister Varya genuinely forgave him for his lifetime of some quite abominable sins. The repentance arc should remain his only storyline in Dream Deferred!

I also realised I planned to end the main text in the wrong place, with Igor and Violetta’s long-awaited wedding and Ilya and Milada’s religious wedding (after a civil ceremony). Their relationships are some of the book’s main storylines, but Lyuba and Ivan are the title and bookending characters!

Since the book starts in September 1948, why not end the main text in September 1952? I’m working on a chapter called “A New Life in Riverdale,” about the newlyweds’ first week in their new home (a generous gift from Mr. Konev). A number of their friends and cousins are also thinking about moving to Riverdale or already live in nearby Marble Hill, so they’ll have fun exploring the neighborhood together.

As I quickly came to find out, it’s just a stereotype that everyone in Riverdale is a rich snob! Some districts are like that, but not the overall area. Plenty of ordinary people live there too.

There will be three more chapters, “The Rekindling of a Repressed Dream,” “Tying Up Loose Ends,” and “Beautiful Colors,” focused on Lyuba and Ivan’s “What were you waiting for so long?” decision to move back to New York to be close to family, have better career opportunities, and give their two youngest daughters the education they deserve.

These chapters will include packing up their houses in Minnesota, moving into the Kalviks’ penthouse until they can find their own home and jobs, and touring the school Sonyechka and Tamara will attend.

I was also really conflicted about my love for big cities, the kind of housing that would work best for my characters, and the very real trend of young families in that era moving out of cities because they genuinely wanted houses, yards, and more space. As if I’d suddenly forgotten there are plenty of suburbanesque neighborhoods in the outer boroughs that would keep my characters in the city, and couldn’t bring myself to take them away from their familiar bubble.

The final chapter takes its title from the 2005 Duran Duran song “Beautiful Colours,” which has the beautiful line “Life isn’t standard-issue, it’s customised.” Here I was subconsciously trying to force my characters into a standard-issue life that didn’t work for who they are!

I’m already starting to mentally plot a lot of storylines for the fifth book, and getting really excited to start it!

Have you ever temporarily lost your bearings when returning to a WIP that was on hiatus for a long time? Have storylines and book endings ever naturally come together by letting ideas marinate for awhile?

IWSG—Back on track after a long hiatus

Welcome back to the Insecure Writer’s Support Group, which convenes the first Wednesday of every month to commiserate over worries, fears, doubts, and struggles.

This month’s question is:

What turns you off when visiting an author’s website/blog? Lack of information? A drone of negativity? Little mention of author’s books? Constant mention of books?

If a writer’s blog or website is primarily intended as a showcase of his or her work, writing advice, contest notifications, etc., I don’t want to see heavy-handed, polarizing political opinions that have nothing to do with writing! Save that for your personal blog.

The same goes for oversharing about one’s personal life. Maybe an agent or editor is reading that blog and decides not to offer representation or a free critique because s/he’s so turned off by those opinions or thinks it’s unprofessional to share such private details.

The former friend who soft-blocked me on Instagram is a prime example of this. I roll my eyes every time I check out her blog and see she’s still obnoxiously virtue-signalling and giving us way too much information about her private life.

I’ve returned full-swing to my series about writing and researching Medieval historical fiction, after not doing any work on it since July 2023. Topics still to come include art, warfare, architecture, science, and the Medieval understanding of history.

My commitment to this series is necessarily slowing down my progress on finally finishing Dream Deferred already, since I have to alternate days for working on them. Still, slowly but surely, the ending is coming into view.

After so much back and forth fumbling, indecision, confusion, and debate, I finally realised my original idea of the Konevs moving back to NYC really does perfectly fit the direction of the series. Long before I deliberately introduced this storyline, it was not so subtly knocking at the door in so many ways.

I ran into such huge problems with it because I failed to do any detailed planning. So many other storylines in all of my books that weren’t part of my initial plans came together so naturally and perfectly, but there’s a huge difference between, e.g., a love story and an entire extended family moving 1,000 miles away.

The latter involves dramatically changing the setting (where people live, attend school, and work, plus what type of home they have and new friends), not just plotting personal drama with a set beginning, middle, and end.

I needed to let the idea marinate a lot longer instead of blindly blazing ahead. That made me commit so many embarrassing rookie mistakes, like constantly jerking back and forth between where they’d live, and heavy-handedly preaching about the merits of apartments vs. townhouses vs. detached houses.

By simply letting it marinate, a lot of things have naturally come to me, like sending Sonyechka and Tamara to a fictional school combining progressive pedagogy with college prep academia, and having Lyuba studying for a dual bachelor’s and master’s. If they move in June 1953 instead of 1952, in the fifth book, there’ll be so much more space to develop the new settings and friends, and more time for me to think about everything.

Only their older children’s families will relocate at the end of Dream Deferred.

I’m also reconsidering the planned trajectory of the fifth book, From a Nightmare to a Dream: Out of Stalin’s Shadow. Since Georgiya and Aleksandr were imprisoned for violating the infamous Article 58, they’re political prisoners and thus not eligible for the amnesty of 1953 after Stalin’s death.

It’s more historically accurate and believable for their terms to be commuted in 1954, after which they’re sent into perpetual exile in Bulun. Only after Khrushchëv’s February 1956 secret speech denouncing Stalin will they be able to finally make their way back home.

The title will have more bearing on the entire book if Georgiya isn’t able to reunite with her family and successfully escape to America so soon! Her reunion with Ginny and their daughter Inga will also be much more emotional.

Have you ever come back to a storyline that wasn’t working after setting it aside for a long time and hit upon a much better direction for it? 

Third time’s the charm for the storyline that refuses to stay dead, Part VII (More valuable lessons learnt)

I’ve written before about my lessons learnt from a now twice-rejected AND twice-resurrected storyline, but since I’m now at long last in the homestretch of the first draft of Dream Deferred and have had even more time to mull over everything that went wrong, I’ve learnt even more valuable lessons.

1. If you keep rejecting every possible direction and detail of a storyline, to the point you suspect you’re deliberately looking for reasons to reject them, something deeper may be going on. Forget about the specifics of my own story. Say your MC wants to become a nun or priest, but you find reasons to reject every single religious order and church, even fictitious ones of your own creation. Or you reject scores of great universities your MC might attend. Maybe you’re subconsciously projecting your own frustration and disappointments at a similar real-life situation, or someone put a bug in your ear and convinced you you’d automatically, immediately fail if you did that.

2. Redirecting a storyline and changing details along the way isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it’ll be a lot harder to edit, and probably come across as artificial and out of nowhere, when you reference things you never included in the existing prior material. It’s one thing to change a name or make a blonde into a brunette; entirely another for your characters to suddenly be talking about, e.g., moving to Boston instead of Chicago, starting a grocery store, or living in a small rented house instead of owning a huge Victorian estate.

3. When you change important details, you can’t just keep writing the story from that point as though nothing happened! When I decided to switch Lyuba’s love from Boris to Ivan during my first period of writing You Cannot Kill a Swan, I wrote in new lines on the print-out of the then-completed material and handwrote supplemental stories which I could repurpose material from, or at least reference relevant events from. I also went back through the chapter files and made those radical changes. That way, their romance was always an integral part of the story instead of coming out of nowhere or being developed as though it just started in 1919.

4. In addition to researching what a city was like in that era, you should also be aware cities rarely change overnight. Unless there’s an extreme emergency like war, fire, or plague, odds are pretty good it didn’t go from, e.g., thriving world-class city to cesspit of urban decay, having a large Jewish community to not even having one tiny synagogue, or predominantly Irish and Polish to Dominican and Korean within the space of a few years.

5. Many U.S. cities pre-1950ish tended to be built around a few major industries most residents worked in. E.g., railroad, coal mining, steel mills, flour mills, iron mills, shipping, fishing, copper mining, meatpacking. If you came to that city as a migrant or immigrant, it was decided by the train or ship route, or where you were dropped off after hitchhiking, not because of a cute downtown, restaurants, charter schools, bars, parks, and singles scene. People not working in the major local industries were in the type of indispensable businesses found everywhere (hospitals, schools, hotels, groceries, banks, etc.).

Hence, why NYC had such a unique position among the majority of U.S. cities prior to the interstate highway system and the mass exodus to suburbia! It was the centre of many different industries and companies, and THE place to live if you were an artist or musician.

6. Many U.S. cities, regardless of location or major industries, had much smaller populations in that era as well. Not that they were sleepy hamlets, but they didn’t have millions of people either. Other cities with once-large populations have seen significant decrease.

7. If you can’t figure out where to take a storyline, you need to take a break and spend some time brainstorming instead of trying to make your own indecision into a serious plot. No one enjoys “As you know, Bob” dialogue, and it’s even worse when it seems the product of a writer trying to figure out a story’s direction as s/he went along.

8. If a storyline just isn’t coming together properly or the way you envisioned, you don’t need to throw the baby out with the bathwater by entirely junking it. Maybe that storyline just needs more time to keep marinating in both your mind and the characters’ minds before being introduced, or you should develop it much differently.

9. Don’t be so determined to think of reasons why a storyline can only be a mistake that you lose sight of just why it felt so right, perfect, and natural in the first place.