I've been debating for almost an entire week about what I want to post about, whether I actually want to post or not, and what I could even add to the discussion. After all, last week I left off in a pretty decent spot.
I was waiting for comments on Book 1--and I suspect I will still be waiting, as both my alphas want to discuss my book with me over lunch, and I haven't been able to leave the house other than to run endless errands and go to work. I was sitting on my queries and my agent list, as I didn't want to finalize anything until Book 1 comments came back. I was rereading Book 2 in the interim and having quite the time of tearing it to shreds, while internally agonizing over the two months I spent writing it.
And since nothing happened in the past 10 days, other than self-preservation and breakdowns, what could I really say? I had posts planned about other favorite scenes and about the evolution of my characters, but it all fell apart in the face of one simple fact: I didn't feel like writing. Hell, I didn't feel like eating most days. Fam, we've been in an IBS flareup, migraine, chronic pain, complete collapse era.
But then everything changed on Wednesday. I went to work and it was quiet. Barely any emails from students, barely anyone in the office...and barely any pain, because I was able to escape from a place of tension. Sure, I still felt actively pukey and I did have a panic attack in my car, but I had some life back to me and some precious time to myself.
I did what any respectable writer should do during company time: I worked on Book 2. (Also, Maria and Laurie, if you're reading this, you know I send emails and play "count the credits" after hours. I WORK MY 28 HOURS A WEEK, I PROMISE. I just don't work them during normal people hours).
And while I was working on Book 2 in the solitude in my office, I got to the end of my Part 2. I had about 100 pages left of book to read. I had reached the point where the reader should have been able to feel Ais's turn to the dark side, or at least, her growing frustration over the situation around her, which was supposed to result in her turning to the dark side...and I wasn't feeling it.
Which is bad. If you are the author, and you are not convinced of the feasibility of the plot point that you wrote and the behavior and motivations of your own characters, then clearly, no one else is going to believe it, either.
But no matter how hard I tried, I wasn't feeling it. When I was writing Book 2, I knew I'd have some difficulty getting Ais to become the Morrigan without some extreme mental gymnastics, because my girl spends all of Book 1 tormented by the thought of her mother's powers in her veins. But I wanted her to eventually occupy the same dreaded station that Macha did (either by free will or by coercion), because I thought it would be dramatic and painful. I wanted my readers to feel that inevitable "how could you?" Plus, it was a plot point I always knew would happen; the Ais that has always lived in my mind is ruthless and heartless and brutal, but a certifiable badass. The Ais in my mind was also someone whom I imagined as starting out kind and moral, but life made her jaded--of necessity, she became something like Macha, and she'd lived enough centuries that she no longer mourned the person she once was.
Unfortunately, two things happened in the translation from brain to page:
I fell in love with the version of Ais that was emerging from subsequent edits. This version of Ais resisted any attempts to mold her into the image I wanted. She gained one ridiculously strong moral compass, along with more trauma than I'd anticipated. She had her faults--she was prone to jealousy, impulsive, more emotional than logical, and very, very stubborn--but she was ultimately a good person. And she attracted good people around her. Nerys, Maeve's mother and resident blacksmith, became a mother/mentor to Ais, and that's a connection I wanted to retain. She got an amazing girlfriend in Saoirse, who, while also very, very flawed, was fundamentally good. She became best friends with Tyge, her initial crush. She found a place for herself in the heart of the resistance and got away from an unhealthy environment. And, most importantly, in this most recent draft, she discovered that her mother was not the monster she had once imagined, and so she set out to officially be the cycle-breaker.
Emrys became more important and I realized that I needed to shift the perspective to him instead in Book 2. Throughout subsequent edits, he became more fully fledged and I began to realize that I had been neglecting a key character AND that I was going to have to waste perfectly good relationships from Book 1 in order to have Ais turn to the dark side...whereas Emrys had never had these relationships to begin with.
I had felt a distant sense at the back of my mind that there was something wrong with Book 2, and I was right. There were many, many things wrong, things which I covered in the last post. But the worst, most unfitting part of Book 2 was right in front of my face and I hadn't even seen it.
Before, turning Ais into the Morrigan seemed difficult, but doable. Now, it was starting to seem cruel and unnecessary, especially in light of all the hoops I had had to jump through to get there. I was making her fight with Emrys more. I was making her fight with Saoirse for convoluted, stupid reasons. I was making her end up siding with Nuada, but he was gone for like the entire book, so that didn't even make sense. And finally, I made her watch Saoirse die. I pulled a "bury your gays," and I was dreading coming to that scene.
And then I read this passage, which takes place just as Emrys is getting ready to set sail to find Lia Fail, the stone that might grant him powers:
My brother finds me first. I sense his arrival before I see him, though at first, I think it is Badb shifting to her human form. Just a burgundy glow off to my right side that, through the blur of my tears, can be anything. Until I hear a loud sigh and then a grunt as Emrys lowers himself down beside me.
“Who sent you out here?” I ask. “Because I know you’d never send yourself.”
“Except I did send myself, Ais.” He shifts, spreading out his cape beneath him. His eyes are red-rimmed, voice hoarse.
“Fine. Let me guess: you’ve come to convince me to go with you, or Saoirse has finally snapped and murdered someone like she always warned me she might.”
“Neither.” Emrys shakes his head. “I don’t know where you’ve all gotten this picture of me as this selfish, horrible--”
I hold up one hand. “Perhaps you should go read that journal you’re so fond of keeping. I’m sure the past few months will tell you exactly what went wrong.”
He turns away from me then. The light breeze stirs my hair, ruffles the fur on his cloak. Badb digs her tiny talons into my skull.
“All I’ve ever wanted is to do what’s right for our family. Every time I hiked up to the top of the Donnsfort and stared at Solas Firenne until my eyes dried out, it was for our family. When I first made contact with Maeve in the market, and never even told you, it was for our family. And every single thing that you all believe is so selfish is not for me, but for something far greater.” His voice breaks. “I just don’t know how to make you see that.”
Despite myself, a faint crack of sympathy breaks into my heart. I reach up to pet Badb’s side, hoping to fill myself with even an ounce of her righteous anger.
“And is your obsession something Rowena and Seamus would be proud of? Because I can understand wanting magic, Rys. I really can. But twisting this entire trip to fit your own ends? Going behind all our backs to enlist Maeve, and then wounding your only ally? That’s something the Morrigan would do.”
“Trust me, I’m aware.” He reaches down for a stray rock, then hurls it off the side of the cliff. “It’s something Seamus told me the last time I sailed back. The night I wrecked the boat. He said that in our bloodline, there’s an endless hunger.”
“As if that’s some great philosophical statement. I know, Rys.” I hold up my blue and gray speckled hands. “I can’t not know.”
He shakes his head, presses his lips together in the way he used to when we were children. When a sudden sadness would overtake him.
“Our father wasn’t driven by some great sympathy for the fae. Seamus likes to pretend that he was, because it’s easier that way. But Dad wasn’t some hero that tempered Mom’s worst impulses, okay?”
“I never thought he was. I never thought much about him at all.” Badb’s talons dig in deeper. I wince.
“Well, he wasn’t. He was a conqueror. A warrior. A man who most assuredly would have risen to be just like Dagda if he’d lived long enough. Only the fae would have been his champions, and we’d be sacrificing godly souls and tormenting their immortal children.” My brother sighs. “You know what lurks in your veins, Ais, and I know what lurks in mine.”
“Then if you know that’s your legacy, why are you even trying? Just leave this half of the isle to rot. Just live out your days on Annwn, where no one even knows and no one even cares. You’re becoming a tyrant,” I say.
He nods. “I know. And I can’t stop it, though. I can’t stop this thing that I’ve started, and all I can pray is that I come out a better god for it.”
“So you’re serious, then? About finding the sacred objects, about getting Lia Fail even if it pushes away everyone you’ve ever loved?”
“I am,” he says.
“Then I cannot join you, and I feel sorry for you.”
Badb caws her agreement, plucks one ginger strand from my head, and flies off.
Emrys’ eyes follow her. “Has that crow been on your head this whole time?”
“That’s our aunt, Emrys. Show some respect,” I say, and then I leave him at the cliff’s edge. The wind ruffles the edges of his collar and his auburn hair like burning embers.
"You’re becoming a tyrant,” Ais says about her brother's quest to find powers...and Emrys can't stop it.
And suddenly, I had my lightbulb moment: the whole book felt off not only because I needed a perspective shift, but because I was forcing characters to fit where I wanted them to fit, and totally ignoring their desires.
Nuada does need to be in the book, but as a mentor to Emrys, who's being quietly manipulated all along. And Emrys, unlike Ais, would consent to be quietly manipulated, because he's more a collection of books in a trench coat than a moral compass. He wants knowledge. He wants power. And there's nothing wrong with either of those things...unless he's listening to the wrong person.
I am still workshopping. I still have an approximate 100 pages left to read and then comes the actual revision process. But I am very, very hopeful, and I guess I want today's takeaway to be: listen to your characters and honor them.
If something feels off, kind of like when something feels off in real life, it's because it probably is.
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