Writer Fail

Going into this Christmas weekend, I had two goals: sleep a lot and write a lot. I've certainly succeeded in the sleep department, but I've failed miserably at writing.

I've been working on this same God forsaken scene for weeks and I'm almost at the point where I think I should just go back to how it was and continue on. Forget the changes. Forget improving the book and just focus on finishing the draft so I can move on to other things.

Except...I can't do that. I can't leave something crappy just because it's hard to fix. Okay, that's actually a lie; I've left lines and paragraphs here and there that I know I need to fix but couldn't figure out how to. But that's a paragraph versus a 3,000 plus word scene. It's a little different.

It's also possible that I haven't been focusing as hard on this as I should have. Accomplished authors always say that the most important thing is to get your butt in the chair and write. To be fair, my butt is almost always   in my desk chair, but I am far too easily distracted by the pesky internet. It might be the real reason why I write better at night - there are simply less people posting online to distract me.

The bottom line is I failed this weekend, wasted all this free time I had to write by doing other things. Not that those things were always bad - I spent some time with my family and friends, which was certainly not a waste - but I didn't take advantage of the extra time like I should have. A week ago me thought that this weekend could be not only the weekend where I fix this scene for good, but also the weekend where I complete the 3rd draft. Har har har, past week me. You're a real knee slapper.

Thing I Don't Understand:
1) How I ever accomplished anything in college, much less two degrees, with such a short attention span.
2) The game app Bad Piggies. Let's not even talk about how my little sister figures it out as I sit there in bewilderment.
3) Why my little sister left these sweet tart candy canes here and why I've taken it upon myself to eat all of them.

A Post Devoted to What I Don't Understand

There are a lot of things in this country to be worried about, whether it's the fiscal cliff or the sad state of music on the radio, but it wasn't until Friday that I realized something was missing on my list: I now have to be concerned that some psychopath might decide to walk into my sister's elementary school and shoot up her classroom.

The tragedy in Newtown is proof that there is no longer anywhere in this country that you can go and not worry about being shot. People have been shot in hospitals and malls, churches and movie theaters, coffee shops and grocery store parking lots, high schools and now, elementary schools. I just don't understand why this keeps happening.

There's nothing new I can say here that someone hasn't more eloquently said. But having a little sister the same age as the children that died just eats at me. The loss of my little sister would be the loss of everything to me. Just thinking of it is unbearable. I was there when she was born seven years ago, 10:23 on a Tuesday morning. Since that moment she's changed my life completely, in all wonderful ways (though I would appreciate it if she could stop turning my queen size bed into the width of an armrest when she spends the night). I can't imagine life without her smiling face, without the pictures she draws me or the notes that she writes me in her giant handwriting.

That now 26 families have to somehow go on without their children, siblings, or parents is just heartbreaking. And I think at this point, after all the senseless killings we as a country have endured, that we have to make some major changes if we ever hope to go more than a few months without this occurring again.

I'm not naive enough to believe that stricter gun control would mean the end of these shootings, that all guns would magically disappear. The sad truth is when a person intends to do evil, he will find a way no matter the laws in place. But that doesn't mean we should do nothing and cross our fingers that this trend of massacres will end. Stricter gun laws will at the very least decrease the number of people who own guns and thus decrease the likelihood of this occurring again. Other countries, such as Australia, have banned assault weapons and gone more than a decade without a mass shooting. They instituted a buyback program for these weapons, something I don't really see happening here. But it worked.

Even more important than that, though, is the improvements necessary for our mental health system. In this article, I Am Adam Lanza's Mother, a woman talks about her son's illness that often leads to threats of violence. The part that most struck me was when a social worker told her that the only way that her son could get proper help is if he were to be charged with a crime. What sense does that make? That we have to label those with certain mental disorders as criminals in order to justify spending money on treating them?

There's a reason I became a writer, and it's not just because a hermit lifestyle suddenly seems preferable. I can create a town and make sure that everything functions normally, I can control who walks into 1st grade classrooms and who gets a hold of a gun. I can make things terrible for a character all the way through, but then give them the happy ending that everybody needs.

I can't do that for those who lost their children on Friday. I can't fix the plot hole that is our mental healthcare system and solve all the problems. No matter how much I want to.

All I can do is pray. Pray that our government forgets political parties and comes up with a plan. Pray that God be with these families and that town as they grieve and try to go on. Pray that people get the help they need before it's too late.

Pray that this never happens again.

By Golly, I Think She's Got It

I've officially had a headache for more than 24 hours. I've almost forgotten what it's like to not have a headache, to not be constantly aware of my head and the pings and stabs inside of it. Luckily it's not as bad as it was early today and last night. Now it's like the lingering smoke after fireworks, except there are few a stray sparks shooting out into the sky. It's like the echo of  drum, not as loud as the initial smack but still loud enough that you can feel it course through you.

Trying to think of analogies is making it worse. I'll stop.

I'm writing today to talk about this great idea that I had last week that I'm still excited about*. In fact, my excitement is so high that I'm having difficulty completing my revisions for Book 1 or even glancing at the mess that is the beginning of Book 2.

* This feels like the intro to an infomercial. Sadly, there are no special offers for tuning in today.

I am going to write books from the POVs of the other characters in Book 1. I'm going to start this with Alex's enemy, Bethany (though she doesn't factor into the book THAT much, so maybe enemy is the wrong word to use). I'm going to start it either just before a big scene between the two of them or immediately after it, and then go from there in Bethany's perspective. So there will be overlap in the two books, but it won't really matter in this case because the two don't interact after this scene.

I'd kind of like to do it with other characters too, say the love interest or the best friend, or the quirky other friend who doesn't get delved into as much as the others did. It's a way to have sequels without really having sequels, to have he series that so many readers like to have without creating some lame cliffhanger so that people will wait for the next book (lame because this isn't the right genre for that). It's also a cheat for me because I would get to write the characters that I love so much. That's what we call a win-win my friends.

Now I just need to find the focus and time to juggle all of these projects. I particularly need to finish editing Book 1, something I meant to complete over the past weekend but did not do. I'm beginning to wonder if I should not make the change that I've been planning to make, as it has completely stopped me in my tracks. I know challenging myself is a good thing and I should keep at it till I figure it out. I think the book is better off with he change. But by golly it's getting on my nerves!

Okay, that's all for now. I hope this headache is just a one-off and not something that's indicative of an oncoming illness. I'm going to go eat an apple just to be safe.

A Post About Writer's Block

I don't know if it's because I've decided to make this post about writer's block or what, but I am having a terrible time beginning this blog post. Except there, it's begun. Phew, thank God.

You might think that once you get past the first draft of a book that the days of writer's block are over. All you have to do now is tweak, cut, and add pretty words here and there to make yourself sound smart. You might also think that when you get to the third draft of a book that revisions must be really easy; I should just be correcting "form" to "from" and putting commas where they should be and deleting repeated words. Simple stuff.

THAT IS NOT THE CASE AT ALL. 

At least, not for me. I decided in a late night haze that I was going to completely rework a few scenes of Book 1, scenes that happen to be integral to the story. I decided this mostly because one scene in particular was feeling really draggy. I had a character explaining something that happened in the past and she was just going on and on. Really, I think if I were to actually be in the room with her that I'd either get up and leave or stare pointedly at my watch.* 

* I don't wear a watch, but then I also am unable to transport myself into fiction worlds so really what kind of realism were you expecting you from this?

So it was definitely the right decision to try to fix this. The problem is I seem unable to actually do it. Every attempt I've made so far has been terrible, and that's when I wasn't staring at the blank page. I even did the thing where you lean in towards the computer screen, as if the secrets are right there and my poor vision is all that's preventing me from accessing them. I have no idea why this is so hard. The character is revealing what's been secret for the entire book! 

Well, I guess it's the pressure to make the reveal worth the wait, to not have people rolling their eyes when they find out why this character has been acting this way. I want it to be sympathetic to readers, to be relatable in some way. 

Basically, I want the scene, not to mention the book, to be amazing. I just read a book that made me want to throw it across the room due to its lameness. I want to write a book that does the opposite of that. Yeah, I want you to throw the book AT YOURSELF. (Please wear protective eye gear.)

Thing I Don't Understand:

I am eating a salad right now and I don't understand why this ranch dressing tastes so awful. Yes, I did buy the cheapest one at the grocery store, but I also bought the cheapest croutons and they're magnificent. 

BONUS thing I don't understand: Why is my vitamin pill so big? What if I were to die while choking on a vitamin? The very thing I'm taking to improve my health? Hmm, I could kill a character off that way, come to think of it....

Deleted Scenes

When writing and editing a novel, things have a tendency to get cut. And if the process of Book 1 is any indication, there are a LOT of cuts, entire scenes cut and pasted in a dump file that right now is too much of a mess for me to even consider going through.

But it got me thinking, what if there were deleted scenes for books? When movies come out on DVD they love to tout their bonus features: deleted scenes, commentary, blooper reels. Stuff that you can only see if you actually buy the DVD (or if you get Netflix). I don't know if most people care to watch these things, but if it's a movie (or tv show) that I love, I'll watch them. I'll watch the heck out of them. It's interesting to hear a funny director or favorite actress talk about a movie as it's playing, to get an idea of what it was like for them to create and film it.

That particular idea probably wouldn't work for books. I suppose I could include footnotes that said something like "this is the scene that was so difficult I literally fell to the floor and had a temper tantrum." Or "this is the part where I binged on cookies for three days and gained ten pounds." I suppose that might be interesting to some people, but it would really take away from the book.

Deleted scenes, on the other hand, could  totally work. Some things are cut just because they disrupt the flow of the story, or because they don't move the story line forward. But they usually still have something of value in them, some line or thought that made them difficult to delete in the first place. By tacking them on at the end, the reader has extra stuff to read if they enjoyed the book, and the author can feel less guilty for excluding them from the main piece.

Obviously, there are reasons why this hasn't been done. Printing out extra scenes means higher production costs. There doesn't even need to be a reason beyond that: money is just what things come down to these days.

Maybe these scenes can be put on an author's website then? Actually, what would really be great for me is to be able to continue writing things for these characters, to continue their story beyond the ending of the book. I can't envision coming up with a sequel for the book but it also depresses me that I'm nearly done working with these characters (which might explain why I keep coming up with new things to add in to the book - I don't want to let go). I wonder if some authors do this, put special content on their websites to attract readers and please fans. I could research it, but since I mentioned the cookies I've gotten hungry.

Thing I Don't Understand:
I feel like I'm always either 1) getting ready for work, 2) at work 3) going to bed because I have to go to work the next day. The free hours every evening barely seem to exist. It's criminal.

Little Bits of Me

I decided today that my main character of book 1, Alex, is obsessed with peanut butter and chick lit. Peanut butter because it's delicious, obviously, and chick lit because it's an interesting thing for someone who is otherwise dark and angry to love. I think it will be fun to mess with that. I was tempted to be super meta and have her be obsessed with YA books, but that would be just slightly overkill, I think. Still, it's nice to have these things figured out about her. It only took three drafts, though I fear at this rate I'll never stop adding things to this book. It will go on forever until someone shows an interest in it.

I often find that I want to give my characters some of my traits. Like someone needs to be addicted to Mountain Dew right? And someone needs to make sure everyone knows that Parks and Recreation is the greatest television show, and that Brandi Carlile is an amazing musician. And maybe this character is also a night person and takes corners too sharply when walking so they have bruised elbows. Maybe they get the Three's Company theme song stuck in their head once a week and still walk tightrope style along a curb, even at 24 years old. Maybe they give into peer pressure on the highway and drive faster than they want, just because everyone else is doing it. And frankly, not enough characters in books - nay, the world - are showing the proper love for baseball. There needs to be a character who is or does all of these things right? Because obviously, these are the makings of an awesome person.

And honestly, I do throw in bits and pieces of me into characters. Some of my insecurities, some of my interests, some of the qualities that I wish I had. It's a way to see things from a different perspective, to see how it feels if I were to act on the anger I sometimes feel, like Alex does, instead of bottling it up, like I do (mostly in the interest of keeping my job).

But it's tricky, because you don't want people to read your book and think to themselves "oh my gosh, this is how Lindsey feels. She needs a hug or a shrink, I'm not sure which." A character's opinion on things like marriage or race might appear like a reflection of your own opinion, even when it's far from it. A character's view on parents or best friends might seem like how you feel about your actual parents or friends, even when all you're really doing is trying to throw as many shitty people and situations at your character as possible, for the sake of conflict.

So I guess what I end up doing is this: I cut out small parts of real life and stick them onto huge bits of my imagination. I  might be influenced by a real life experience, but since most of my real life experiences have been pretty tame, I'll exaggerate the crap out of it until it's barely recognizable. Eventually I come up with something filled with people that are simply not me, people that some days I'm sure must be out there going about their day just like I am, completely independent. Which would be really cool, I think. But alas, I am not living in the world of Ruby Sparks.

Nano 14

My Nano project is so lame. I now know this about myself: I cannot rush into a writing project. Everything is scattered, ideas had and forgotten, changes made midway through only to be hated the next day. I may not need to completely outline a project, but I need to have bullet points. Things seem a lot easier to achieve when they are on a bullet point list, is all I'm saying.

I'm conflicted on whether I'll continue with Nano or not. If I don't, it wouldn't mean the end of this story. It would mean slowing down, figuring things out, probably starting from scratch. Those are all things I'll have to do anyway, even if I reach the arbitrary goal of 50,000 words. Seems silly to waste my time writing more crap that I just have to wade through later. It also doesn't help that I'm just over 20,000 words, and I think I'm supposed to be around 23,300 or something. Oops.

If you could see my main character right now, you would understand this hesitance to continue. She's all over the place as the struggle to maintain her lies becomes too much. I didn't really intend for the lying to become the main point of the novel. I wanted the character arc to be more like this: at the beginning she finds herself to be a complete bore and wants to break through whatever keeps her that way and become more lively. She makes this rash decision to not really go to school (but lies to her family). For the first time she has no idea what she's supposed to do, has no expectations to live up to, and with the help of some new friends she begins to break out a bit and enjoy life. (I hope this isn't repetitive from other posts; I sometimes have short term memory loss, it seems). Having her be pregnant complicates the story arc, certainly, which is a reason why I've considered having her not really be pregnant. But there are advantages to that option as well...

At any rate, right now she is a bit insufferable with the lies and covering up of said lies. It's not going the way I wanted. I may just start a new chapter of the way I want it to be and pretend the rest of it doesn't exist. Could work.

Thing I Don't Understand:
Why do artists write really great songs and then after two minutes decide "Ok, that's a wrap!" And then these same artists will write a bunch of songs that are a perfectly acceptable length but they are LESS GOOD. Perhaps this is an indication of lingering pop love from my teens, but I say when in doubt, do the chorus again. When only 1:55, do the chorus again. Recent examples of this: Regina Spektor's "Ballad of a Politician," Tegan & Sara's "Soil, Soil," and M. Ward "Vincent O'Brien." Oh my gosh and Cult's "You Know What I Mean." That song kills me at the end and masochistically, I would like it to kill me longer. Do better next time, music people. Please and thank you.

Panic at the Laptop

Here's a new thing that is happening to me. I call it Panic Statue Syndrome. Actually, I just made that up, but from now on that's what I'll call it. As someone with a degree in Psychology, I have the authority to create disorders. It seems only fair to me.

Anyway, PSS is this: I research agents I want to send query letters to, or maybe I prepare a query letter, and suddenly my heart starts beating fast and I can't move. I'm staring at this suddenly terrible letter, probably rife with grammatical errors even though I've read it 100 times, and all I'm seeing is my future teeter tottering over the fiscal cliff (at least, my personal finances are at stake). I'm basically sending my heart out to COMPLETE STRANGERS who live in NY who are probably perfectly nice but maybe not and now they have the most important thing I have to offer and can stomp all over it. They may just glance over the letter, skim the sample pages they ask for and then that's it, dismissed. There's no way for me to properly convey how important this is to me, or how deeply I feel the need for this story to be out there.

And even if there were, thousands of other people no doubt feel just the same, want the same or similar things that I do. How can I expect a few random people to give us all the attention we so desperately want?

It's terrifying, really, thus the breathing issues that come about, and the minutes that pass with me sitting like a statue, swallowed up in fear that this publishing thing may never happen.

Luckily, I snap out of it, and I send the letter and mark it down and hope. Some people do this for years and years, the sending and waiting, and I've only been doing it for a month and a half. That's hardly anything, in the grand scheme of things. Basically any book you read on publishing will tell you that it's a slow, slow process. But I guess I'm just in a hurry to get to where I'm going. Or even to have a sign that I might be going somewhere.

It could happen tomorrow. It could happen next year. Meanwhile, I'll just be sitting here with my brown paper bag, trying to overcome PSS as gallantly as one can. (There is currently no cure, please feel free to donate.)

Nano Day 9/10 - To Be Pregnant Or Not To Be...Pregnant

Here's the thing with this novel. I have no idea where I'm going with it. The furthest I've gotten in my mind is that the main character meets these people, works with them, befriends them, and then just, funny things happen? Until the end, of course, where MC will get caught in all the lies that she's been telling. But I feel like most of the ideas I've had, beyond those, are just the characters hanging out. It's like a comedy on TV where once you like all the characters, you don't need something to happen in the episode. The story doesn't really need to progress with plot development because it's enjoyable just to be spending that half hour laughing or smiling with an inner chuckle.

I'm not sure that will work for this book.

The main issue, though, is I can't decide if the main character, Sydney, should really be pregnant or not. While she's no longer in high school, it would still be tough to find out your pregnant on the cusp of college, where you expected to finally find freedom. Maybe I'm being a chicken, but I don't want to write about a character with these fears of motherhood and the unknown hanging over her head, of adding yet another character to the world whose experiencing morning sickness and weird cravings and everything else that has been beaten to death in movies and TV. Speaking of beatings, I really don't want to do a birth scene, especially since there's another character in the novel who's pregnant who will be giving birth in the novel. I'm already trying to figure out how to reduce that section to something like "*20 hours later* oh my gosh, there's a baby here!" It's easier to avoid when it's a minor character, at least.

What may be interesting though is for her to think she's pregnant, for one of her new friends to also think she's pregnant, only for Sydney to find out she's not. But because she's kind of become the pathological liar of all pathological liars, she doesn't tell this person she's not really pregnant, and eventually get's to the point where she has to start faking the symptoms, where she's contemplating how she's going to make herself look rounder and full in the face.

I've already chosen a path for the purpose of this nano draft (if you read that correctly, it rhymes), but that doesn't mean I can't totally change it in the future. I'll just have to see how this works out.

THING I DON'T UNDERSTAND:
Why I wait until 11 pm to be productive with writing. I am my own worst enemy.

Nano Day 5

I hit a road block in writing. Or to be more exact, I hit a Monday. Mondays are truly terrible days and I would endure hours of political ads and be the first at the polls if someone would just pledge to abolish Mondays. (Mentioning the election is the topical portion of this blog post. Also, for a while this year Santa Claus was running for President, but sadly he had to drop out. Something with the elves, I think. http://www.santaclausforpresident.com/ .)

Anyway, here I am, after working 9 hours today where I was sitting in a cubicle, staring at a computer, talking to people I had to be nice to, just so that I can sit here at my desk, stare at the computer, and talk to myself because music distracts me when writing.

I'm rambling because I haven't really written anything today. I fear my main character is a bit of a moron. I want to blame it on the present tense thing where I have to detail things as they happen, making her seem a bit all over the place when she talks about things in the past. I've written in past tense basically my entire life so it's kind of difficult for me to write this way. And I guess it's also possible that she's just a moron. She's not supposed to be though. She was salutatorian at her high school, narrowly losing to her best friend. She could've spent her weekends partying and shopping, but she stayed home studying. I wanted to make her seem and feel very boring so that she'll have a She's All That* makeover by the end. But instead of just losing her glasses and caring about her hair, she'll have realized something sappy and important on the inside and just feel more confident in herself, be more happy with who she is. I think that something too many of us do is watch other people and try to be happy the way that they're happy, liking what they like, doing what they do, instead of figuring out what makes us happy and being ourselves. Or something.

* Not sure I've actually seen this movie.

Here's the debut of a new special feature called "Things I Don't Understand." Today's thing is...
Justin Bieber. Brought to you by the strange picture that I saw of him on ew.com.
I suppose this alienates the very people that I want to like me and my book but I can't hide my confusion any longer. It's weighing me down. Truth is, I don't mind his music. It's no worse than anything else on mainstream radio. And I think he's a very talented dancer. But how on earth do so many girls find him so attractive? Especially now when his hair is sticking up like he stuck his fork in an electrical socket? Plus, ladies, you want a man that can defend you in an attack, not one that can't be seen when he stands behind you. His producted hair will be peeking over the top of your head, but that won't help you.

But anyway. I'll try to churn out a few hundred words tonight. Who knows, I might get into a groove and get all my words for the day done.

Nano Day 3

I just read over what I've written in the past few days. If this wasn't being written as part of a word count competition, I'd likely cut a few pages. I went into the character's past way too often when what was happening in the present was much more interesting. The main character, Sydney, is finding out she's pregnant. Yet for some reason, I have her mentally ramble on about how good of a student she was (she's just graduated high school), how obedient she is, how her family is more interesting than she is, how she competes with her best friend, how her brother is a drop out. All of these will be true for her, but why I felt the need to chuck each bit at the reader, one after the other, I'm not sure. That's probably info I'll spread around after she finds out she's pregnant when I begin to rewrite.

The actual scene of her finding out she's pregnant is interesting though. Her personality comes to focus a lot better. And though I unconsciously chose to write in present tense, I think it works really well for this scene, whereas past tense might take away some of the anxiety the character feels.

Now I need to decide if I really want to write chapters in alternating points of view or not. Those are usually my favorite books, and it's always so impressive to read an author who can make each voice so distinct, and even change their writing styles a little for each person. I'm not sure I can do that, though i guess I can have someone else be written in past tense to make things a little different.

The only issue is how exactly I would start this other person's chapter. Only one other person was in the first chapter and I wouldn't be writing from that person's POV. I would have to come up with something, some kind of incident to start off another person. And then later on, of course, their paths will cross. But I don't know. I may just write everything from Sydney's POV and then after November, when time is not of the essence, I can see about sticking in chapters from someone else.

NaNo Day 1

It's strange how you can look forward to something for weeks and then, when it's finally time to do that thing, it's suddenly less interesting. I've been looking forward to starting Book 2 for awhile, but now that I have, I'm already in that "oh look, something shiny" mood, and have been distracted for much of the evening. I've written a thousand words or so and while that's less than the daily average, I'm okay with it.

I'm not okay with how much those words suck, however. I know, I know. That's supposed to be the beauty of NaNoWriMo. I'm supposed to just go full hog into this project, my inner editor squashed in the name of churning out words and chapters at a ridiculous pace. The idea of having something finished by the end of the month is so sweet. Before I know it, I could have two novels to try to get published!

But if what I write is terrible, what's the point? Rewriting is a tedious process, as I've learned over the last few months. What's more, I seem to have this perfection issue. I can (and have) read my book 1 over and over again and still find things I want to change, things I want to add. Just looking over what I've written so far for Book 2, it's going to need a lot of work. Am I better off just taking this slow and forgetting this challenge? It's not like 50,000 is even a full novel, really. Book 1 is nearly twice that, and I feel I would at least want to hit the 60,000 mark (arbitrary number but it feels right).

Then again, there's more to this novel writing month than writing the novel. What I really have been looking forward to is interacting with other writers, something I haven't really done before (and something I haven't been able to do today thanks to the nano website bugging). It would be cool to become a part of a network of writers, even if I end up only interacting with a few. It would also be fun to join up with local NaNo folks, though how people are able to write with other people around is beyond me.

So I guess I'll stick with it, at least through the weekend to gauge where I am. Work is about to get crazy and tortuous (hello overtime, you foul monster) so I may be fooling myself to even think this is possible. But the only thing that will get hurt is my sleep schedule and that's already an issue so here I go!

Book 1 and Book 2

I finished the book. I finished it three times and will probably finish it once more before I get an agent, and then perhaps a few more times before it is ever published. For all I know, I will have finished my twenties by then. Such is the way of publishing, or so I hear. The working title of the book is Reasons to Hold On, which sounds like a book that would make good use of lists but sadly there are no lists in it. Yet. Hmm.

But at any rate, Reasons is about a girl named Alex who has had a rough summer, only to have it made worse when she accidentally cuts her arm. Her parents take this as a suicide attempt and send her off to an estranged relative, seemingly giving up any hope of fixing her themselves. Alex is, of course, pretty peeved and has no problems expressing her anger to just about anyone. But eventually, as she makes friends and begins to feel comfortable around people again, she realizes the decision was a good one. She sees that she doesn't have to hide herself or her secrets because now there are people around to support her. Of course, the book wouldn't be interesting if Alex wasn't miserable most of the time so don't worry, she is.

I also managed to avoid the boy and girl get together, have an argument likely over a misunderstanding or poor communication, break up, spend a chapter or so away from each other, but come back together in the end because they found the words that somehow didn't exist before. I understand why this happens in almost every YA book I read; I definitely wanted the point where everyone was mad at Alex and she was feeling completely alone. It just makes things more tense and terrible, just the way we humans like it. But I also keenly remember the aggravation each time I read it in a book - which is a lot because I've been reading YA nonstop. There may be things to find annoying but it won't be that, sir!

I've begun querying the book; we'll see if and when I hear back. But it's exciting to be in that part of the process at least.

Thanks to NaNoWriMo (I think I got the capitalization right there), I am beginning my 2nd book tomorrow. I've been having ideas for it nonstop; hopefully that keeps going. I think having written a book already I'm a bit more prepared for this. I'm ready to let sections and even chapters suck in the name of getting to the end. I know already that I'll likely have to rewrite the book three more times or so. I'm not nearly as prepared as I like to be, but that's part of the fun/stress/terror. 

This post has gone on too long so I guess I'll give the synopsis of book 2 in my next post. See you in 2 months or so! (hopefully that's a joke.)

Daunting

Well some time has passed and I haven't really made much headway in revisions. I can't seem to get myself to focus on it until it's time to go to bed. Then, of course, I'm suddenly overcome with various ideas and thoughts of the book, of everything I need to do, of all the possibilities. It's like my head hitting the pillow is a signal to my brain to immediately go into overdrive now that it has this comfortable resting spot. It's exhausting just trying to fall to sleep, which can take hours. Makes for rather difficult mornings. I've been decreasing the amount of time I take to get ready in the morning little by little, just to get as much extra sleep as I can. I wish my brain had eyelids, a brainlid, if you will, that I could just close over it when it's time to rest, knowing that it would stay closed until it was time to wake up again. And because it would be closed, it wouldn't be able to keep me thinking and doubting and worrying. It would just have to shut up.
Anyway, there's not much else to say about the book today. I have friends reading it who hopefully aren't thinking it's absolutely terrible, that it at least is capable of being a good book at some point in the future. I try not to think too much about that. I probably should've waited before handing it off, but I got caught up in the excitement of finishing the draft in the first place.
This is a boring post. Ta ta for now.

Pre-Revision Update

I'm supposed to be taking a break from the novel but I can't help it. I find myself sneaking a peek at it every so often, as if there's some kind of warden who might catch me and slam the laptop closed on my fingers.
I just have so many ideas for revisions. So many things I want to add and improve. That's the beauty of already having the first draft - the base is already there, now I only have to touch it up. But I'm concerned about length. It's already too long for YA and w/ all of the additions I want to add it could end up getting 3-5,000 words longer. I've only found one scene that I think I think I can cut, though doing that would force me to lengthen another scene to compensate (since I have to mention the certain plot point somewhere). I know it shouldn't matter, that the length of the book is the length of the book or whatever, so I'm trying to get rid of this nagging concern. I've read that sometimes when books get too long they're cut into two, but this doesn't really seem like a series. We'll see how things shake out.
I'm also working on the next novel idea, which I've had for a couple years as well. But I never really formed much of it since it immediately became a backburner idea. I'm ready for it now though, and look forward to getting to it, even if I don't really get to it for another couple of months.

The Beginning of Doubt

For the first day or so after finishing my novel, I was pretty ecstatic. And while I knew all of the things I still had to do to even have a hope of being published, I was feeling rather optimistic.
I am no longer feeling that way.
What if it's terrible, or at the very least, not good? What then? In my head I've already written giant red marks through dozens of things. Such as:
1) I don't think I've properly relayed a message or theme in the novel.
2) I don't think my characters have an onion amount of layers (Shrek reference, get with it).
3) I'm pretty sure I've forgotten to tie up some plot lines. And the big one:
4) I fear I've chosen a major cliche to occur in the novel, something that will turn off agents and publishers. But really it wasn't a choice. I knew right away the main character was guarding something and it only took writing to figure out what it was. Even still, maybe I should change the focus to something else...what, I have no idea. Maybe my secondary cliche of the narrator having lousy parents.
Really though, what hasn't been done these days? Aside from the off the wall fantasy stuff, which I have no interest in. There's a book on every sort of death, every sort of tragedy, every sort of teenage heartbreak event. The only differences are the angles the authors choose when writing them. It's certainly possible to take something cliche and make it original and interesting. The question is whether or not I've succeeded in doing that. Or will able to succeed in doing that based on the first draft. Time will tell.

I read in one of my numerous writing books that once you finish a project you should take a few weeks off from it so your eyes are somewhat fresh when you get back to it. So maybe things will clear up for me then, maybe the problems will stick out and solutions will come to me. Maybe it won't matter because I'll have won the lottery and will be able to take this at a more leisurely pace.
I guess the real goal now is to find a few people to read it that can give some kind of objective feedback. How terrifying. Why that's more terrifying than sending it to an agent, I don't know. I'm complicated with onion layers.

Finished

A few days ago I was an idiot, worrying about page count while using Microsoft Word. I think I only had about 160 pages at the time, maybe 150, and it didn't feel substantial enough, that number. I worried. I knew that the page number would go up when adjusted from Word to book size, but I didn't think it would be substantial.
What I should've been doing though was paying attention to word count. According to the internet, the standard size of a YA novel is 50,000 - 70,000. I don't know if I'll still fit in that category or not, as far as content goes, but I do know that my novel is 94,000 words long (219 pages in Word). It's more than long enough and if anything, it's too long. Not that that will be a problem in the editing process.
I ended up not even writing the last few scenes I had planned, mostly because the one I was working on last night seemed like the end, like the character had gotten to the point where things would be okay. She finished her arc.
And I finished the book. That's right, it's done. Aside from a million edits, of course. And constant fear of rejection. But hey, it's finished. And if anything I'll always at least know that I've finished something, something amazing enough to me.

This was my Calendar for the things that happened in the novel. It really came in handy to have everything laid out like that. The date on the calendar just shows you  how long I've been working on this and how long ago I bought it for this purpose. How it took me so many years to write the first 30 pages and the last couple of months to write the other 190 is a mystery to me.
Honestly, I'm kind of sad that I'm done writing. I had really been writing like mad these last few days. What will I do now with my time? I guess there's only one solution...
Start the next one.

Reading Problems

They say that if you want to be a writer, the second most important thing for you to do, aside from writing all the time, is read. Read a lot. And I guess that's what I'm trying to do, though it's bringing up some issues for me.
Namely, how can I ever write something as good as what I've just read? There are books I read where I think "I could've written this." And I don't mean it as a compliment. Certain books just don't seem well written to me. I don't understand how they managed to get published and find a place in my local library.
I shouldn't be so snobby to my fellow writers. But I can't help it.
Then there are times where I read a paragraph and just have to stop so I can say holy shit to myself a few times and wonder if I can ever make that much sense about something in such an eloquent way.
I know it's not a competition. I don't have to write better than anyone else in order for people to want to read my book. I just have to write well, I have to create relatable characters and a story that grabs people, that means something to them, even if only in a small way. But when I read something great it's hard to believe that I'll ever be able to do for readers what these authors have done. It's hard to believe that people won't grab my book off a shelf and wonder to themselves "how did this girl get published?" That's assuming I ever even make it to a shelf.
But I guess I shouldn't be so hard on myself. The rejections will do that for me later. At least I'm writing a lot. At 180 pages now, hoping to reach 200 by tomorrow night. I should make it to 250 now I believe, before I have to start sticking things in. Or I may have the story go on longer than I originally planned. We'll see.

Flashback I've Lost My Pants

Writing is funny. One day you can sit at your computer for hours on end and write only a page or two. Other days you can sit at your computer for three hours and write 10 pages. Today in the span of 4 hours I wrote 14 pages after writing 11 yesterday. And this after being at work all day and being out during the evening. I'd say I'm on a roll. Of course, they could be terrible. That's always something I try not to think about. I could just be producing piles of crap not even fit for toilet paper (that's funny because crap is meant for toilet paper - see how good at this I am? :/)

I realized today though that I may not be including enough flashbacks into the main character's childhood. As any how-to on writing will tell you, having proper backstory for your characters is integral to making them seem like rounded, fully fleshed out characters to readers. And since their opinion obviously matters, it's something I have to work on. 

I'm kind of wondering how I want to do this though. I already know that I have to go back and add things in here and there to help get me to an acceptable length (which from a book I read is 80,000 words. I'm actually pretty close to that right now - so it must be a lie.). But it might be interesting to instead have between chapters these sections where the character flashes back to some moment in their childhood, a moment that is somewhat relevant to the following chapter. I could give them stupid names like "4th Grade: Day I Lost my Pants" and talk about that. Or "Day I Nearly Died." That sort of thing. It would be like commercial breaks for the book, but instead of trying to sell tampons I'm offering insight into how the character became a screw up. 

But there must be a reason why most authors don't go this route. Maybe it's distracting. I've already done it the normal way, throwing them in as I write, so it wouldn't be hard to continue that way. I guess I'll give it more thought.

Wow I can't believe I've managed to stay up past 2 am, when only a few hours ago I wasn't sure I'd make it further than 9 o'clock. I guess writing has become an addiction, and though I wish it had happened in college when I had more time on my hands, this will do. I can't wait to see what tomorrow's writings will bring. I haven't felt this excited about something in years! Okay, if you don't count the Reeses I ate today, or how excited I am to sleep in tomorrow, then I haven't been this excited in quite awhile!

A Matter of Length

I'm kind of a particular person. Not all the time - I can let a little clutter fester, I can put something in the wrong place every now and then. Where that OCD gets me is with numbers, particularly when length comes into play. I've always had a thing about preferring songs to be over three minutes long, or for CDs to be around 42-45 minutes. I have no idea why. Maybe because there is nothing worse than really getting into a song for it to then suddenly end, depriving you of one more chorus or another wise lyric. I love the song Vincent O'Brien by M. Ward and have to listen to it twice in a row to feel like I heard a full song. Also ok, I just love something about that man's voice, and would play the song on repeat (and his CDs on repeat) no matter their length. And yes, I have issues with songs/CDs being too long as well. Call me Goldilocks.

If you're wondering why I'm talking about this, I have no idea. This page is completely white and it freaks me out. Also, this: I worry everything I've written and still have outlined to write will barely break the 200-215 page mark, which is kind of an issue because my OCD brain wants 300 pages. Sure, there are novels that are less than 300 that are great. The Perks of Being a Wallflower belongs in that category. And there are certainly books that carry on a little longer than I would've liked. But something about not reaching 300 is just...gross. I want a book that lasts awhile, that people can't say "Oh hey I read your book in an hour yesterday." I guess that's a compliment; they couldn't put the book down it was so good! But I don't care. I want something that lasts. Not that 300 pages is even very long. It probably could be read in a pretty short amount of time. And I have no idea how Word page counts translate to book sized page counts. I didn't say my particularities were logical.

But the great thing about writing is that you never know what's going to happen while you're doing it. Having a character say one random thing can change the trajectory of an entire scene, in a way you didn't even expect when you went to write it. It's always amazing when you manage to surprise yourself with what comes out, the person who supposedly has it all planned out.

And hey if I can reach 400...cool. Three hundred is just a bridge I want to cross; I have some wiggle room before things get too long (500, unless you're Harry Potter).

139 Pages

Yesterday was pretty successful. Honestly, I really kicked some ass. I wrote 27 pages and could have written more if it wasn't 4 am. I seem to kick it into the next gear around 11 pm and on nights when I don't have anything to do the next day, it's great to be able to just keep going. 

It's crazy to me how much progress I've made in the last couple of weeks. I was stuck around page 23 for months. I didn't know how I would ever get through that part, the dull beginning of setting things up. Somehow I did and after getting through the first couple days, I've zoomed through. It's amazing the feeling of knowing I'm going to finish, that the only thing preventing it from happening quickly is that annoying thing called a job and a need for money. Damn you, adulthood!

Writing this novel for me now is kind of like those early days of being in love. You can't sleep, or eat, or really think about anything else but that person and when you'll see them next. It's the same for me now, except instead of thinking of a hunky boy while I'm contacting Fedex about lost clothes (my job), I'm thinking about how excited I am to get to my lunch break to read over what I wrote the night before. Or planning what part I'll write that night.

Now I feel kind of creepy for sounding like I'm in love with a book. Hopefully you know what I mean, internet.

I know it's too early to think about the future, the what ifs of whether the book will sell or be successful. But I can't help picturing a future where my job is simply to write, where I can work every night from 11 pm to 4 am and not worry about sitting in a cubicle all day. I'm not looking for wealth or fame; I don't need to pen the novel that will become the obsession of teens everywhere (not that I'd turn the possibility down). I only need enough success to pay the bills. 

Before that can happen, I am hoping to get a job with a publishing company soon, a job that would certainly open doors to getting to what would be my second choice of career: publishing YA novels. At least in that field it would be acceptable to always have books on the brain.

But hey, it's Sunday; the work week is creeping up. Why not allow myself to dream that maybe, just maybe, writing novels will get to be my thing?

Day Off Progress

I took today off work to get a little extra writing time in. It's really hard to be working a boring desk job when you'd much rather be sitting at your home desk writing your book. But then, there are about a million things we'd all rather do then work at our boring desk jobs.
I'm a little disappointed with my progress today, though. I wrote 14 pages but I feel like I probably should've done more. I don't know where the time went. I kind of hit a road block and ended up changing my outline a bit because things didn't seem to be falling in place. I'm not writing the kind of novel that's action packed, where someone could die at any minute. It's a coming of age novel; the things that happen are just ordinary, realistic things. It's hard to tell if I'm making these things interesting, if I'm being consistent with my tone.
I know I have revisions for that stuff. It's just hard to wait until I get to that point to put off worrying about it. I'm so eager to finish the novel, to have it ready to show to people. I'm ready to get through the hundreds of rejections so I can get to the acceptance. But it's still a long road ahead. I just need to be patient.
Luckily there are still two full weekend days to get some work done. There's nothing better than having a full day to write. I'm already excited for it!

An Introduction

I have always wanted to be an author. When I was a kid, before the internet poisoned me, I wrote my first novel by hand, filling notebooks with handwriting that has not improved at all in the last ten or so years. Before I finished it, I re-wrote it. Again by hand. When I had a computer, but still no internet, I wrote a new story, totaling over 400 pages. The point of telling you this is simply to let you know - the kid version of myself was boss and I miss her to death.
After that I stalled out. I became easily distracted. I'd write something, become obsessed with it for a few weeks, then suddenly the light would be out. Or I  would have story ideas where I'd have pages and pages of notes of what I wanted to happen in the novel, who the characters were and what they'd be like, all of that stuff. But I could never seem to get them to come to life in a novel.
But a few weeks ago I had an a-ha moment. An idea I've had simmering for nearly five years suddenly seemed like something I could put together. I have 95 pages right now, the highest I've ever made it for a novel I'm serious about (and yes, I do seem to prefer writing novels rather than shorter stories). Not only that, but I have this strange confidence that I never used to have, a certainty that somewhere down the road I will finish this beast. I will be able to say I wrote a novel and not be embarrassed when someone asks if they can read it. I'll have something that I'll be willing and eager to send to agents and editors in hopes that maybe they just might be interested in publishing it.
So that's what this blog is about. This novel and all the highs and lows, the bumps in the road. The wonder at how these people I've created seem pretty real to me and also how it's really too bad they're not. I'll probably post non novel things too since I am, as mentioned before, easily sidetracked by the internet. Hopefully it will all be worth reading.