Top Ten Books of 2011

I have just spent several hours wallowing in my beloved Excel tracking sheet for the books I've read in 2011. I now know such delightful things as how many fantasy novels I read this year (16), which author I read the most of (Janet Evanovich at 5 books), what month I read the most books in (10 books in August), and how my totals stand up to last year's totals (new-to-me authors dropped by 8%, while the number of books I personally authored doubled).

Inspired by Just Can't Know's Top Ten Favorite Books I Read in 2011, I've toiled an extra twenty minutes in winnowing out my favorite ten books out of the 81 I read this year. In the order in which I read them, they are:

World-building Bliss

Dani Marco: My inspiration for Eva

For the last month, I've been happily building the world of my next novel. There's no rush. I want to get it right from the beginning. Plus, I'm trying a different approach this time. I'm trying Kim Harrison's method. With my own adaptations, of course.

For me, this means extensive character write-ups on my main people. I now know how Eva Parker (my protagonist) dresses, what her hobbies are, what she's afraid of, what her strongest and weakest character traits are, etc.

On the Block: Round Two

I've finished the first editing pass of my novella, Mika. Two weeks of steady work netted me a much tighter story, one with a great arch and a solid, fun tale. However, I didn't meet my word cut goal. The original story was 23,667 words. I wanted to cut 10 percent across the board, but while I'm sure I cut even more than that, rewrites added it right back in. After round one, I cut 1,483 words (4 pages!), leaving me at 22,184 words.

Seeing Red

After six weeks of writing, my story idea morphed from short into novella. I made peace with the bloating before I began, when I was still in the storyboarding stage. Even then, I could tell it wasn't going to be a simple 12-page piece. But I liked all the elements, and the goal of this project was to give myself some creative freedom while keeping the writing crisp and tight.

A Query Letter That Worked

This week on Number One Novels, we have an exclusive look at Amy Ackley's query letter—a query letter that won her the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award for Young Adult Fiction. Out of 10,000 entrees, Ackley's novel was selected to move from round one to round two by her query letter alone. Amazing.

Gaining New Perspective: A Lesson from a Derailed Novel

As the dust of Faye settles and I'm able to more rationally look back over the massive derailment that is the novel, I realized that despite the immense frustrations of the project, I think I learned more while working on this one novel than I did on the previous four. I learned a lot of what not to do (rush down plot holes, begin before the plot is solid, change points of view, have a vague theme, have a vague emphasis of the overarcing story, and change the magic/world system midway through the novel—to name a few).

There were also a lot of productive lessons—I defined what it takes for me to write a good novel, I streamlined what makes a novel great (to me), and I pinpointed my key weaknesses (overwriting and dialog).

Happily, I found a workaround for the my troubles with dialog: third-person perspective.

The Power of Doing Nothing

I finished Faye with a smear of mixed emotions and underwhelming ennui. After a sprint that lasted ten months rather than the predicted two, I was numb. The book ballooned beyond control to over 850 pages—a length no editor wants in a debut and a length that far exceeded what was necessary for the story. I'd self-indulged in plot paths and ill-fated decisions regarding point of view and character exploration. Ahead of me was a massive edit and rewrite, if I could muster the energy.

Meanwhile, two other stories, both seeming infinitely more interesting and marketable, build in the back of my mind, spilling over to cover the hallway-length whiteboard and splatter the walls on colorful sticky notes.