How I fixed a plot problem without wine (I know - I didn't think it was possible either).

I wrote this post a while ago, where I asked you if you'd ever set a WiP aside, and if you had, what happened to it?

At the time I'd finished (HA! yeah, it was nowhere near finished) THE CRACKS IN EVERYTHING and it was with clever Agent Julia. So it was shiny-new-book time for me.

I had an idea for a boy POV contemporary/romance-ish type story, and it even had (gasp) a title! My titling prowess is lame at best and so I took this as a good sign. This book had a plot. I had a plan. Yes, I'd confirmed the long-held suspicion that I was a genius.

So I set to work and wrote 19k words. And realised that the plot was RUBBISH. I set it aside. I wrote the aforementioned post hoping that you would tell me that this was a) normal, and b) certain to end in me running through sun-drenched fields of fragrant flowers clutching the finished work to my chest with a beatific smile on my face because, yes, one day I would finish the book.

You made valiant efforts towards letting me kid myself. (Thank you!)

A few months later, I read this post by Sarah Davies on the Greenhouse blog. You can see my enthused comment at the bottom of the post.

The point here is that I'm not a patient woman. I don't like waiting. I definitely don't like leaving things half-done and walking away. But a few months ago I could not for the life of me figure out how to fix this story. No matter how often I thought about it, no matter what crazy alternative directions I wrote down, no matter HOW MUCH WINE I DRANK (I know, it was bad).

I'd considered a change of genre - maybe this was a horror story. For a while I was convinced it was a contemporary ghost story. Or maybe a sci-fi? If I just added killer aliens or space monkeys, that would fix it, right? RIGHT?

Wrong. It's a contemporary boy POV romance-ish type story set in Siberia and London.

And what it took for me to fix it was TIME not WINE. Who knew?

Between the time that had passed (and in that time I'd written most of the first draft of another book and all but forgotten about the work that was rapidly becoming the-19k-that-shall-not-be-mentioned) and the stellar advice in the Greenhouse blog post, I figured it out. And lo, once again, it was awesome!

What do you do to figure out plot problems? Any advice for me if this happens again?

Quick post for a cool contest!

Yeah, I know I promised a reduction in the amount of exclamation marks, but cool things keep happening (!)

My writerly friend and fellow Greenhouse author Natalie C Parker, just sold her debut YA (which you should check out by clicking here). It's called BEWARE THE WILD and it sounds fascinating, which is why I added it on Goodreads. What do you mean, I'm adding as many links as I can in one post just to amuse myself? How dare you.

So Natalie is holding a cool contest to go with the cool news. Want to win an Arc of this?

All you have to do is click on Natalie's name above. That will take you straight to the post on her blog where you can enter!

There's more. It's ANNOTATED!! 
The Curiosities includes the stories and each author’s comments, critiques, and kudos in the margins. Think of it as a guided tour of the creative processes of three acclaimed authors. 


How cool would it be to own this? How much would you like me to stop using the word cool? *Both of these things could happen if you go over to Natalie's blog right now!

*Only one of these things could happen if you go over to Natalie's blog right now.

The How I Got My Agent series: This week's guest post by Natalie Parker.

This week's post is from a fellow Greenhouser from across the pond, one of Sarah Davies' clients : ) Over to you, Natalie!

I began my pursuit of the elusive agent in high school. Only, it wasn’t much of a pursuit. It was more like a half-hearted gesture in their general direction.

It went like this:

I wrote something.

I called it a book.

So did my mother.

And so I printed it out and mailed it off to one or two agents (I honestly don’t remember how many) along with my Hopes and Dreams of becoming an Author. It didn’t take long to receive rejections (I only clearly remember one) and that was the end of that. I set novel-writing aside and instead went to college, which later became grad school, which then became a career.

Basically, my creative self was off sitting in a corner tapping her toe, occasionally calling me names and making frustrated gestures (possibly, some of them were obscene).

So! I decided she needed some exercise and with the support of my partner, I began to carve out time here and there for things like writing and playing my cello and hoarding nail polish. Each of these was satisfying to Creative Natalie P, but writing quickly rose to the surface taking precedence over all other endeavors.

By the early months of 2010, I’d written something that was vaguely book-shaped. It had all the right pieces in all the right places and I was resoundingly proud of it. I handed it over to a few readers (oblivious to the duct tape holding key pieces together, the persistent droop in the narrative arc – it was positively replete with mediocrity) and felt relatively sure it would blow their minds. 

It did not.

They both returned the vaguely book-shaped manuscript to me with the same words: “This is really good, but you can do better. Put it down and write another.”

I never queried that project. Not even once.

In an instant, I went from Ready to Query to Starting from Scratch. And that very day, I started brainstorming a very different project. Creative Natalie P wasn’t feeling defeated, as I’d expected she would, but anxious and inspired. In fact, there was a certain amount of glee involved in shutting the drawer on that novel and opening a blank document. Much as I loved that first novel, I knew my next one would only be better, and I wanted to be better just as much as I wanted an agent.

The new project took a fair bit of time – nearly a year. I was still balancing full-time work with learning this craft and other daily adventure sorts of affairs. I drafted and redrafted and re-redrafted until once again I was certain I had something that would blow minds.

This time when I handed it over to readers, it looked much more solid. It had all the bookly pieces in all the right places and I could see they fit together really, really well. And my readers agreed. It blew their minds….but still we went through rounds and round of revision until finally (FINALLY!) they called it ready.

And it was.

I sent queries to my top seven agents. Six requested the full, and four offered representation.

Three weeks after sending those queries, I made an utterly terrifying, utterly exhilarating choice and signed with my agent (who, for what it’s worth, pulled me from the slush).

When I think back on it, I am so, so glad that I had readers who were willing to tell me I could do better. Listening to them was hard. I was anxious to move onto the next step. I wanted to believe that first manuscript was it. But I’m so glad that I waited.

So, I think if I were going to boil all of this down into a piece of advice about finding an agent of your very own, it would be this: Take your time.


Natalie's blog and twitter!