I worked on that first book with Candace as the main character for nearly four years. Once I finished a draft, I had to go back and edit all of the little conventional mistakes and sometimes break out the thesaurus to enrich the words. I had to rewrite the ending four times before I thought I had it right, each ending in completely different ways. There even came a time when I thought the book, then tentatively entitled Fremont Street was a finished product, just barely hitting the 100 page mark in Microsoft Word.
But after writing the second book and just about finishing the third, I realized that my writing skills had developed so much from eighth grade to eleventh that the style I started Fremont Street was no longer tasteful to me. I felt that it was too choppy and that there was too much dialogue. So I went back and added an entire 6-chapter, 48-page chunk to the novel. And that was just the beginning. I went through the entire book and brushed up on some dialogue that I thought sounded too much like an inside joke and explanations that I thought weren't exactly clear. I took out full sentences, paragraphs, sometimes even scenes that I thought didn't enhance the story as well as I'd like it to.
Once it got to that point, I had also been revising and refining the other two books, but with the second, it was much less adding and a lot more touching up, hence why the novel is so thin. I've told myself I'm going to work on that, and in fact I am. As for the third book, it took as much surgery and implantation as the first one did, if not more. I added new paragraphs to nearly every scene in the book and rewrote the ending probably three times if not more. I realized that the only way to get over rewriting endings was to accept the fact that I was never going to be fully satisfied with one ending over the other. Not completely. So I let it be.
When my friend told me she wanted me to print out a copy of the first just for her to have, I got an idea. I'd use Lulu (lulu.com, great site) to self-publish the three to give to her for Christmas! In that case, I'd need to really title my novels instead of the temporary nicknames I'd given them.
I'd actually been in the process of writing a fourth book that would go in the huge time gap between the second book that ended in 1991 and the third that started in 2006 that explained some huge, life-changing events that were merely mentioned in the third book and not given enough attention for what they entailed. I had a tentative list of titles for the book that included "The Perks of Being a Rock Star: Part 3" (naming the others respectively, of course), "Candies and Ivories" and "The Next Second Chance." When I realized that the book didn't have enough material to make it into the trilogy, (shocking, with the size of the second, I know!) I abandoned the idea of writing an entire book about the events and instead decided to incorporate them more into the final book. However, the title "The Next Second Chance" stuck with me.
After some time mulling it over, I realized that it was the perfect title for my first book and its contents pertaining to Candace's life. So the first one was named.
As for the second and third... well, the second's title was a long story and the third's is actually quite short, so I think I'll start with the third!
There was a movie that had recently come out called "The Kids Are All Right," and I thought, "What a cool name. It's so simple and and it just kind of brings everything to a close. Like, they've been through some kind of trouble, but they came out just fine." (DISCLAIMER: I never saw the movie, so I have no idea if that's what it's actually like or not) So I looked at that last book. Yes, it was about the children of Candace, her husband and their close friends. Yes, they had some serious issues they had to get through before making it out alive. So the real question was, should I use the word "all right" or "alright?"
Naturally, the Internet was my best option when kids in my English class had a full-fledged discussion about whether or not the words were the same with different kinds of spelling upon my inquiry. And the Internet confirmed my suspicions that the words were not the same. "All right" meant that everything was right at the moment, and that in the movie title, "The Kids Are All Right," means the kids are in the right places (in their lives, perhaps?). But "alright" meant "satisfactory." So with "The Kids Are Alright," the kids were satisfied with what they'd been through, what it taught them and where it took them. BAM. The name of that third book, never to change throughout all of my other little revisions.
But the second book, the shortest, and most of the time forgotten book, remained untitled. I thought of witty little phrases off the top of my head as well as simple one or two-word titles that blatantly explained what the novel was about. Nothing was working to my advantage.
So I looked into song lyrics. Because songs and music are another big part in my life. It's funny how you can sing along to a song without really thinking of what you're singing about until you sit down and look at the lyrics on a piece of paper or computer screen. I think it's then that you realize how truly powerful the lyrics are. Especially with Fall Out Boy. Now one of my favorite Fall Out Boy songs is a song off their newest album, Folie a Deux called Tiffany Blews. (It's a song that actually inspired me to write another story that's still in progress, and I'm still debating whether or not to turn it into a real project) One of the lyrics in the song goes, "My friends all lie and say they only want the best wishes for me." For some reason, that lyric struck me really hard, especially for the title of that stubborn middle book.
I knew what was in the book. If the reader read the blurb on the back, they knew what was in the book. If they looked at the title, I wanted them to make the connection between it and the blurb on the back just enough to be interested enough to read.
So I played around the the syntax of the lyrics and before too long, I had thought up "My Friends All Lie." Upon glancing through the plot once more, I realized that wasn't going to work. So I took a look at the second part of that line: "They only want the best wishes for me." That part, without the beginning of the line, rang true for the character in my second book. So, after some more lyric editing, I came up with "Only the Best Wishes for Me." When I showed the idea to my best friend and number one fan, she seemed ecstatic with all three of the titles. And so, because I'm selfish and love when people love my work, the titles stuck, and the three nameless stories became novels: The Next Second Chance, Only the Best Wishes for Me and The Kids Are Alright, each with their own set of new characters, plot and conflicts.
Kids In Love
After watching a music video for a song called Kids In Love, which consisted of four older teenagers/young adults getting into a car and simply letting the road take them where it pleased, I got the idea to write a short story about the same thing. Because I think some of the finer things in life are VW buses, I had the vehicle ready probably before I had the characters ready: a bright orange, 21-window VW bus.
 |
| Orange Samba with 21 windows from 1965 |
I'd never done a book with so little characters before, and so it was really kind of refreshing for my brain not having to keep track of all of those people and personalities, hair colors, eye colors and names. There were only four this time! I think most of the research went into the places they went, ranging from Silverwood Theme Park in Couer d'Alene, Idaho to the capital of the United States. I've been to both, but for other places (i.e. Kansas or Texas) I had a lot of research to do. It was tedious, but at the same time, it was really fun to learn about places I'd maybe like to visit.
As for naming my characters, for some reason, Shae came really easily for me. And for some reason, after naming the blonde Shaelyn and calling her Shae, I wanted all four characters to have longer names with cute nicknames. So Jonathan (Jon) and Andrew (Andy) were born. I actually based Jon off of a real musician named Jon and Andy off of another musician named Nick in a completely different band. It's always easier (for me) to work with my characters when I can see them in my head or in a picture on a computer screen.
So that left my character. I played with her name a few times, for some reason, really wanting her to have a unisex name when it came to her nickname. She was Sam out of Samantha and I think even Randy out of Miranda. But then I finally stumbled upon a book my friend recommended for me (I don't think I ever read it, sorry!) called Charlie. It was about a girl. And just like that, I had Charly out of Charlotte.
As for the content of the story, I basically took random scenes out of the music video and out of my own past experiences and compiled them into a short story for my editor to read. It all happened really fast after that. She read it, edited it, told me what I needed to do, and then Kids In Love was a finished product. And though it's short, I'm actually pretty proud of the message it gives and the style of writing I used for it.
-mp.
