I'm on a writing hiatus.

Nano was strenuous, for sure. But not so much that I'm like.... exhausted or anything.

I just think that a hiatus is nice. Well deserved. A week or two, perhaps.

But that doesn't mean I'm not going to drop the tiniest

 

straight from the mouth of everyone's favorite little sister, Christine.

In the meantime, I'm thinking about that dirty, dirty word

REVISION

I still have yet to COMPLETELY revise a book

I'm still not sure what's the best way to go about it.

Usually I would say:

First, fix all the giant gaping plot holes, the big chunks you know you want to cut, etc.
Then adjust the tone/remainder of the book to suit the new changes.
Last, run through, sentence by sentence and fix the crapp-o writing and the typos, the general red-pen type stuff.
And then, one more read through. For continuity and clarity mostly.

Repeat until done.

But this time around, I don't really HAVE any giant plot holes. I can think of maybe.... 2 sections that I know are shitty and need to be replaced, but that's like, 10 pages tops.

Hmmmmm.

Plus there's the whole Four Voices, One Story deal. Kind of messes things up a li'l bit.

But I can't help but feel like I'll operate better with a PLAN.

Tentatively, I'm thinking THIS:

Step One: Line by line edits.

Why?

Because I can give it a readthrough (which I haven't done yet), perk up my writing, and take notes as to where some structural problems might lie. Make note where things get slow. Make note where things seem random, which characters, situations need more time/less time etc.

Also: I wrote in this ungodly format - single spaced, with line breaks between paragraphs. It looks pretty to me, but it's not the accepted standard for an MS. And I can't just fix it with a "select all" click-click kind of thing either. If I do that, my ms becomes 365 PAGES!!! I have to go through and delete the spaces between EVERY paragraph. So that has to be done eventually, and I can do it now, get it over with, editing as I go.

Step Two:

????????

Step One is enough for now. I also have to find a way to print off a copy of the damn thing. Park Library, I miss you! Maybe I'll make a late Sunday night visit when I'm up this weekend and..... be very very devious and take advantage of my former place of employment HAHA.

I'll end on this note:

without nanowrimo..... I've been BORED.

 

I bet all of you have been waiting at the edge of your seats to find out how Nano turned out for me.

Well, I won.



Yay!

Here's how it really went down:

After Thanksgiving, I still had like, 15K to write. So after a few days of procrastination, of thinking there was no way I could finish, I got to it. I was putting back at least 2K every day, a few days more. 7,000 words shy of 50,000, I ran out of story. I'd finished my last character's section, and everything that came after was pure filler. Extra scenes because I liked a side character. A scene that I wasn't going to include, but thought I might.

On November 30th, I had 835 words to write. I wrote them in the backseat of my boyfriend's Jimmy, in the parking lot of an elementary school while he set up for a jazz concert. I uploaded my book for the wordcount later that afternoon in a location extremely fitting, being that it was pretty close to being a place featured prominently in my book. I huddled over my laptop, stealing wireless internet and running on a 9% battery, tucked in between aisles of a smelly, dusty used bookstore.

How do I feel about the quality of my writing? Good. There were very few times that I thought my writing was just utter CRAP. Which is more than I can say for my first book (Sorry, Mer, I love you, buuuuuutt....) Is it rip-raring and ready to go? No. I half want to dive into revising, I half want to wait. I think that latter half is going to win.

Doo-doo-doo!

Draft One of the extremely tentatively titled novel:

The Collegato Curse


Is COMPLETE!

62,427 words.


Now where to put those extra 4,288 words I need to win Nanowrimo..........

Startling revelation:

I might not finish this book in 5 days.

Funerals + Holidays + Broken Comp = not so much on the word count

And now that I'm comfy at home and ready to go, I'm all procrastinatey.

Lord, beer me strength.

for the first time
all month
i feel too mentally exhausted
to write
my plot got a little lost
after not writing for a few days
and now i'm not behind in word count, but in momentum
what is happening to Christine? To everyone?

33488 words.

16512 to go.

9 days left.

Goodbye, Amelia!

Hello, Christine.

Last quarter.

I'm at 26,365 words for nano
41,787 total.

Which means I have a little 25k for Christine.

Which is OK.

Because she has a lot to say.

Hey!

Even though

I felt the least like a writer that I've felt in years
I felt pretty slighted, hopeless, insulted, sensitive, and pretty much like...

a useless hack who writes complete tripe and will never ever succeed at writing anything ever that anything will want to read and I should just give up now and probably give up life too while I'm at it and let the rest of the succeeders-at-life use my precious resources that I am now wasting

Even though

the thought of opening my word document and trying to write anything
was the equivalent of falling into my own open grave

I still did it

and I pounded out 2245 words

and in the end

felt pretty good

about what I'd done.

And I'm glad I did that.
I'm glad I could to it.
I'm glad to pat myself on the back for that right now.

Because even useless tripe-writers like myself will be happier if they self congratulate.

My life has had far too much self-loathing in it for me to deny myself a tiny moment of self-proudness.

Ladies and gents,

I am officially NO LONGER BEHIND IN NANOWRIMO.

Way to go me!

I'm actually about 600 words ahead of schedule.

(This is disregarding the fact that I wrote zero words today. But it's only 2 pm!)

Anyway. I am at the magical number of

20,675

Nanowrimo applicable words

and

37,388

Total Words!

Holy guacamole!

Last week I gave you Jill, the driveway stripping mental case. This week I shall allow you a peek into the mind of her little sister, Vixie, the anal retentive, dirty-mouthed tense-oid.

           

I'm definitely hitting my stride with this story. Unlike Meredith, I kind of feel like I know what I'm doing.

And I surely want to hit the ground running on a third book. NaNoDecembro?

We'll see how I feel Nov. 30th

Yesterday and the day before, I was a grumpy gramps.

I didn't want to write. I thought my book was crap. Vixie's story was completely falling flat at the exact point in the timeline when it should have been peaking. I was distracted, moody, and

INCREDIBLY

BEHIND.

Today I was gearing up to be even more grumpy grampsy. I thought of some thing to cheer me up (going grocery shopping, buying new t-shirts, cleaning my room, finally going to the gym)

But I had cleaned my "desk" off last night. Thrown out the Halloween weekend wine bottle and put away the dirty clothes. I even wiped it down with Fantastick.

And once I got back from the grocery, looking at the white desk reminded me of my white laptop sitting on the far edge of it, and how I have to have to HAVE to write so I don't get so impossibly behind that I'll just GIVE UP.

So I wrote.

And it seemed like I would write and write and type and type and then look at my auto-word count (Thanks, Mac Word!) and see

200 words.

Dammit.

But my bed was comfy and warm. And I had a pretty pink Rockstar to drink. And I really didn't want to go to the gym anyway.

So I kept going. Said I'd finish Vixie. And as I neared closer to the end, writing this scene between Vixie and her parents that I knew had to be written but hadn't thought of how important it would be.... the words just kept increasing and adding and more and more and more of them came out.

Until the last ones

"Amelia laughs so loud in my ear, I can’t help but follow right along, like it’s a song I know by heart but haven’t sang in years."

Holy schmaltzy mushiness, I know! But Vixie is a character who could use a little more mush in her life, and I think it's the exact note her story needed to end on.

Even if the climax was a little fuzzy and sloppy. Even if my story hasn't done her justice yet.

And I word counted.

16,068. Out of 18,000 some odd. Which is reasonably behind.

And I dug up Jill's story, added the two together and got this beautiful number:

31,752.

96 single spaced pages.

And I remembered that it's a gosh-darn book that I'm writing, and it's fucking coming along.

YAY!

And since I've finished Vixie in 11 days or less, that puts me exactly on schedule to take 10 days on Amelia, and 10 days on Christine, and then it will be December and I will be done, done, DONE.

The bug has bit. I wrote short stories in college, and enjoyed them, but it was hit or miss. When a story hit, I was happy and unlikely to change a thing. When I missed, I tossed it aside and worried about something new. Never did I experience this kind of immersion and drive and wonder at the complexity of writing. Never did I have this urge to write more and more and more and really figure out how to write books and how to write them well.

I'm glad I found my medium.

Dude.

I have been writing. All. DAY.

Damn you, Nanowrimo, DAMN YOU!

Not really it hasn't been awful. Just... strange. Like just now, I was writing away and kind of decided that even though I'm still a good 2,500 words behind, I was done for the day.

And I couldn't think of anything else I wanted to do for a few minutes.

Like writing was my only option

9:30 Wake up. Eat 15th bagel in last five days. Watch The Office.
10:00 Watch more Arrested Development. Force self to write till 3,000 words before... leaving to go out and write.
11:00 Run errands. Buy things don't need like pink sweat pants, lamps, and car coat sweaters.
12:30 Lunch with Francie and favorite god child.
1:00 Starbucks on a whim. Force self to write to 4,000 words
2:30 Pick up sisters from school. Watch Arrested Development while pounding out more words.
4:00 Bring sister to voice lessons. Write to 5,000 words while waiting for her to finish.
5:00 Home. Cook dinner. Boil applesauce because writing and watching Arrested Development.
7:30 Force self to go to gym
8:15 Home, and write to 6,000 words
9:15 Sit and wonder what I could possibly do, other than write, tonight

The answer? The Sims 2. I may bring the laptop down to write during load times because um, I'm just not a big enough dork.

Also, subscribe to my Youtube page to stay updated on my video blogging. I do it quite often. In fact, I might do another one now, just to celebrate that I wrote so much.




Although, contractually, that means I HAVE to write more tonight.

Gah.

Hello.

Nice to see you too!

Things are going well in the writing world for miss_author (misleading name, I know. I'm no author. Yet. Ask
antler3649 about his short story/essay/something I critiqued for class years ago that discusses the author vs. writer vs. useless hack paradigm.

Anyway. I’m writing. And here’s a

of what it is that I’m writing.

 

And my 15,000 words will, over the course of the next 30 days, blossom into a completed novel.

HOLLA.

I’m excited.

I’m registered for Nanowrimo, even though it’s more like Nanocheato. Or John Green’s NAFADOYBIMSCOM (National Finish A Draft Of Your Book I Mean Seriously Come On Month). But whatev. Spirit of creativity, people! I’m going to finish!

I’M GOING TO FINISH!

A 15-year-old boy whose step-dad is dying of cancer.
A 17-year-old girl who is getting political and going to Washington.
A family of equally fucked up sisters who fight to save each other from destruction.
A 14-year-old city girl who almost gets expelled for a guerilla body-image campaign.
A 16-year-old hippie chick who falls in love for the first time.
A 16-year-old do-gooder turns into a psych-ex-girlfriend.
A 17-year-old who cheats on her boyfriend to avoid a boring suburban life.


My problem is I JUST HAVE TO PICK ONE and fucking WRITE IT.

Gah.

I'm doing Nanowrimo, I think. And I'm choosing the family drama. But I'm making it a comedy. Jill, Vixie, Amelia and Christine in the month of November. Mental patient Jill, bitchy Amelia, flighty Amelia and cynical Christine in November.

Where

have I been?

Working.

(Story times, picture books, problem patrons)

Thinking.

(Do I have what it takes? Will I ever learn how to write a freaking book? Should I take more time off before grad school?)

Reading.

(Writing the Break Out Novel. Catalyst. 10 Days In The Hills. Etc. Etc..)

And

Writing

(Something new. I need to step away from M. We have SUCH the love hate relationship and right now I want to throttle her for not fitting into my time frame. I need to WRITE. I need to WRITE SOMETHING GOOD. With M, it would take far too long to fix her. I just want to write something new. So I will. I don't need to mull over it and debate. I need to effing write.)

So I am.

Something close to home.

Something a little ballsy.

Something that will be hard to make come alive, hard to make sense of....

but

something exciting.

Got a revision draft that's inching along at a steady, but uninspiring rate?

Are you just dying to finish the damn thing, but can't seem to find the time and concentration to get any real progress done?

Might I suggest the following technique:

1) Query an agent
2) Indulge in unrealistic fantasies that upon reading, he or she will immediately demand a full manuscript.
3) Refuse to ruin one's future bright career as a novelist by having an unfinished draft. Write often, cut and paste liberally, and watch the numbers fly.

Perhaps it's not as well-crafted as the slow and steady rate, but fuck, it's getting done.

30,000 words. Over 5,000 in the past three days. The past three WEEK days.

Let's see how the weekend goes...

So yeah. I'm full of excuses. I won't give you all of them because you can probably already guess what they are. My new job doesn't allow for time to jot down ideas and sentences, so I kinda lost momentum.

Buuuuuuuuuuut since I owe you not one, but TWO teaser tuesdays, I'll give you a bit, fresh off the stove, the first bits written in a few weeks!

          

So I'm going to take a guess and assume that writing porn for teenagers is not really much of a growth industry.

Which sucks.

Something about the innuendo, the details, the excitement of trying it all for the first time, the playful "is she REALLY going to write about THAT" element that really turns my crank as a reader and a writer.

I'll compromise by infusing my books with as much pseudo-smut as I comfortably can. Promise.