I finished my book a couple months ago. Rough draft is essentially done.
I've also reread it once, doing some minor editing. There are a few hiccups, technically and plot-wise, and it's definitely missing some gravy. The meat and potatoes are there, but the gravy is a thin and altogether missing in some places.
But I think the plot itself is good. Interestingly enough, I wrote it before I'd ever read The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo trilogy. And it's eerily similar, yet still a separate story.
I'm terrified of having anybody else read it. I don't know if I trust anybody with it. It's very personal. There's a lot of me in the book and I'm worried that the way I've written some things will speak volumes about my psychosis of which I'm unaware.
I worry about this because of the fallout (and success) that Stephanie Meyer experienced with the Twilight novels. She wrote her books much like I'm writing mine. She had an idea, liked vampires, wanted to put her own spin on things, and developed a plot based on all of that. She developed a plot that was interested to her and that she thought others would find interesting.
I'm betting $100 that she did not intend for Bella to come out as a shell of a human being onto which readers would project themselves. I bet she also did not intend for everything Edward did in this books to be judged as creepy, abusive and harassment. I bet she even though a lot of what Edward did was romantic and that Bella was a completely competent and had a fully developed sense of identity.
We write what we know. An incredible professor explained this to me once. We write what we know. It is difficult to write that which we know little to nothing about, so we write based on our experiences. Stephanie Meyer wrote about a love she was probably familiar with. But I'm willing to bet large amounts of anything that she didn't see anything wrong with that love, except that it was somewhat depressing at times (and even then, I bet she thinks that Edward breaking up with Bella to protect her because he loved her so much, while depressing, was still romantic).
I know I'm projecting a lot of my own insecurities on Meyer's books and assuming a lot of her thoughts here. I get that. So I can't say any of this with 100% confidence that Meyer actually felt that way about the content of her books and then only realized later after people pointed this stuff out to her like, "Hey, you realize Bella is like nothingness incarnate and Edward is that antithesis of the abusive, manipulative boyfriend, right?"
I don't know if that's really what happened. But I would not be surprised were that the case.
And so I fear the same thing happening to my writing. I'm worried that Ruemer (main character) will be ... impersonal. She will be too unbelievable. Or she will be a reflection of my fucked up brain in some way, and I don't want that to happen. I want her to be Ruemer. I want Michael to be his own man. I want Ruemer to lead the way, and Michael to help her out when she might need it. Ruemer can help Michael when he's stuck too.
I had many goals when I set out to write this book. The first and foremost was to write an action-packed, smart, investigative thriller with a female protagonist. I also wanted to pair her up with a male ... side-kick, sort of. But not an idiot, Robin-like side-kick. A legit, back-you-up-in-a-fight, kick-ass side-kick. I wanted to prove that men and women can work together and that the two are not mysterious creatures to one another that and that they can comprehend each other.
In doing all of that, I also wanted to create a unique-ish story for a female protagonist. Some people might claim that she is part of the Waif-Fu trope. Waif-Fu is, basically, River Tam. I like using River Tam as my example of Waif-Fu because she's the perfect example. River Tam weighs all of 110 lbs, is short, and small, and probably couldn't expertly defend herself like she does in Firefly or Serenity even though she's expertly trained (unbeknownst to her).
Physically, even though she's trained, she could not kick and punch dudes twice her size and launch them back away from her. She might be able to do some damage, but she probably won't be able to flip and disable people due to physics. She's half their size.
I love the Waif-Fu trope. I think it's an awesome trope and it creates some pretty excellent characters (Hit-Girl from Kick-Ass, Lisbeth Salander from Girl With the Dragon Tattoo). But I can definitely see how it disenfranchises a character. It makes them less human, less believable.
To avoid this trope, I made her to be about 5'10 and weigh in at about 175 lbs. She's pure muscle and power. Think Gina Corano. I wanted the physics to be real. Ruemer absolutely had to be able to go toe-to-toe with people larger than her, but at her size, she should be able to handle that with her skills.
Ruemer and Michael's relationship had to develop in a believable manner. I only hope it actually plays out that way.
I'm almost positive Ruemer's name will change in terms of spelling. People will not pronounce it right. I might as well just spell it Rumor. Or change it entirely to something else.
But yeah, I'm kind of worried that it won't be well received. I've reread the whole thing, and I feel how the story moves, now. The beginning is slow, middle moves pretty fast, and then the end is somewhat slow, too. There might be a technical issue (chemically) with a part in the end as well that I need to speak with a chemist about and not risk going to jail for asking questions about a deathly substance.
That's all, just wanted to rant about writing, I suppose. I thought of it because I was reading about Stephanie Meyer wanting to be done with Twilight now.
