Progress is Progress

So progress on the new ms is going well. I'm at page 87 in just about 1 week. Times like these, I wish I could write as fast as I think. I'm not sure how long HoF will be when it's done, but I'm going to guess 300ish pages, because I'm just past the first turning point. I'm still having a hard time not talking about it, because my first instinct is to yammer on and on about the stories in my head when someone asks me how I am. But holding it in does seem to be helping me keep the pages coming.

Heart On Fire

21,750 / 80,000 (27.2%)

Jumping the Gun

Over the past week, I somehow managed to write over fifty pages on a new story. (Thirty of that was yesterday in the space of about six hours. I'm not sure where it's going exactly. I have an idea, but sometimes by the time a book is done, it has veered off seriously from where you thought it was going. It might still do that. No guarantees. But so far, the book is exactly what I envisioned it being.

The problem is this is the point at which I usually jump the gun and go running to the nearest writer/reader friend for feedback on the characters, plot, etc. It's like I'm suddenly filled with self doubt that anyone will want to read it - that anyone will enjoy these characters, or feel what they are feeling and understand why. Which is bunk. Because if there's one thing I should know by now, it's that my characters are strong, and their conflicts are real live things that people can feel. So last night, I decided not to do that. Not to ask anyone to read it yet. I've met some other writers who write in the dark, get critique, and then go back in the dark to apply said critique. For a long time, I've kind of begged for others to come in the dark room. But as a result, I'm not always happy with where the plot goes, with the character's final catharsis. Because you get a well-meaning litany of "Well, why did she do that? I don't think so-and-so would really act like that" And "That scene was pointless. Take it out."

As a writer, we do need this feedback, sure! And the newer we are to the craft, the more feedback is necessary to round out the opinions until we can learn our weaknesses, educate ourselves, and develop our own style. We need to deal with flaws the story has that are going to prevent our target audience from getting the emotion or point we're trying to make (and I'm less often trying to make a point than to get to an emotion - usually one we forbid ourselves to be with). We need this feedback to polish the work - to turn a manuscript into a book - but at times, particularly in the beginning phase, the feedback can make you lose that loving feeling.

So it's been really hard not to email my crit partner and ask her for a read. Because truthfully, what if she does hate it? What if she does see holes in my beginning? (She's bound to at thirty pages.) This is not what you need to hear when you're starting a new book, particularly if you are more experienced and confident in your writing. These kind of comments will get me off in a direction that doesn't favor creation. It gets me off in a direction that has me repeating the words, "sucky hack" over and over in my mind.

I'm going to try to save this one. For when the first draft is done. Or at least until I've hit a serious bump in the road, and my asking people to read is more out of necessity than a desire to hear what a genius I am. I'll let you know how that goes.

Heart On Fire

Edwin Levine, you set my heart on fire.

When I wrote those words in Edwin’s yearbook last year, it was supposed to be a joke. I didn’t do it to be mean, and I certainly didn’t think he’d ever figure out it was me who wrote it. It was just a spur of the moment thing – designed to get a laugh out of Cece, my ex-best friend, who found the book lying on the bleachers after junior assembly. Edwin Levine’s yearbook? Way too tempting to pass up. Edwin was… a legend. A name we heard over the intercom for detention twice a week. The guy who invented ugly sexy. The epitome of bad news. I mean, really. Looking back, how could I have been so stupid? I’ve gone over it in my head a million times – how different things might have turned out for both of us if I’d have just told Cece to screw off, put the book down, and walked away.

I might be able to sleep at night.

I might have a normal relationship by now, instead of having the impression that every perfectly nice guy I meet is a sheltered little boy.

I might be a lot less fucked up.

But then I never would have known how high a real fire could burn if you threw gasoline on it. And I never, never would have known about that dark needy place inside myself. The part that still misses him, still hungers for his touch, still wants to take care of him and make everything okay, even after every sick thing he did.

Another Good Reason to Be Green

If you aren't already using reusable shopping bags, recycling plastics and thinking about cleaner, more efficient ways to heat your home and get to work, here's another good reason to go green. It will not only protect the environment, but you'll stop contributing (by association, if not directly) to this. Now don't you agree that's just plain ridiculous?

If I had a billion dollars, I'm not saying I wouldn't keep some just for me, but what family of five needs this kind of space?

Which leads me to thinking about this - what would I do with a billion dollars? Hmmm.

1. Pay off our house.
2. Hire that guy to do everything on our project log, including putting in that new geothermal heating system hubby was researching.
3. Rid the world of Great Golden Digger Wasps. *Shudder* Okay. That might be impossible, and besides, I saw Bee Movie and I know how wasps contribute to our delicate environmental balance, but if you saw these muthas on your lawn, you'd stop at nothing to get rid of them, too. They are UG-LAY!
4. Set my mom and dad up for retirement. Because the garage thing is a joke, and I really don't think they want to come live with me.
5. Buy a Green car.
6.... Oh! I know! Finally put up some curtains in the living room. Because we have some tall ass windows and that kind of fabric is expensive, and I'm so afraid of choosing something that will look awful that I've done exactly nothing with them.
7....

I dunno, that can't be it, but please do notice that nowhere on my list is build ginormous skyscraper complete with a fake snow room.

What would YOU do with a billion? Care to share?

Punked

My son got punked by one of his classmates today. He was pissed, and I mean pissed. And he's only eight, so I wasn't even sure he knew what pissed was.

Because I think you'll appreciate his upset after hearing this, and because I am amazed at the craftiness of other people's mean children, I've decided to tell you all about it.

It all started with these fluffy cute toys that come with their own online game. This little boy at school has been bragging for about two weeks about how rich he is (in this computer game). When my son told me about this, my initial response was, "it's not nice to brag, and I don't think you should be impressed by someone telling you that." My son's response was, "no mama, in the game he's rich. In the game." He continued to be impressed by this, and the other kiddo continued to discuss all the things he could buy his fluffy animals with his game wealth.

Then get this - the other kid tells my son he wants to SHARE his game wealth with some of his friends - because sharing is a nice thing to do, right? Oy. I remember hearing about this earlier this week now -

Son: "Mama, N wants to give me some of his WK money..."
Me: "Did you brush your teeth?"
Son: "Mama, he can transfer some of his WK money to me, and he said he would."
Me: "Get in there and brush your teeth. And while you're at it, you need to go back and wipe off the seat, young man."

So naturally, the other kids want to do whatever he says, because they want what he's offering. Only he says that to get it, he needs their username and password. My son and one of his classmates gave their passwords to him. And today the classmate came back to school and told my son that this other boy stole all his game money (basically transferred his funds to his own account), and now he was going to get "revenge", but not on N, on someone else whose password he had.

So when my kiddo logged on tonight to change his password, he discovered that his game account had been robbed. How sad is that? I mean, I realize it's just a game & that the only thing actually stolen from him was a password and some money that wasn't real to begin with, but think about this in a universal sense! A five year old orchestrated this! Hubby and I explained to our kids today that this kind of thing happens with people's checking accounts with REAL money all the time and it's stealing.

The kids wanted to know if they should still be friends with these "friends." Usually, my answer is "yes, you should still try to be kind and work things out" when my kids experience some sort of bad experience with others. But hubby and I had to rethink our answer on that one. We had to ask our son, "was that honest? was that kind? was that the kind of thing that you would do to a friend?"

My boys are bright though. One of them said, "well, I guess we know why he's so rich now."

Filthy Starving Readers

So since I've been in rewrite land, working on tightening and reworking the first hundred pages of Intended to get the story moving quicker, this post definitely caught my eye. Not because I think my pitch needs a lot of work, but because of all the feedback I've received, the number one crit was that it begins kinda slow. And by kinda slow, I mean that while I'm not necessarily writing drivel, it could stand to be faster.

It wasn't that I wasn't getting to the catalyst by page 3o that was the problem. The catalyst was there on page one. But the problem was it wasn't catacalysmic ENUFF. I had gotten it stuck in my head that the catalyst needed to simmer and build and then bang. And as a result, it ended up banging somewhere around page 100 (or so I'm told... okayokay, I can see that now). How do I know it banged somewhere around 100? That's the page number that five different people who read the book in part or completion gave me that said it went from being "good" to "not-put-downable". That was the point at which they decided to go hungry (or forgot to take a shower and get dressed) to find out what happened to the characters.

So yeah. That's what your shooting for in the first 30ish pages. Filthy starving readers who want to know what happens next dammit! I had never thought of it that way.

So while rewriting today over my lunch break, I decided to peek (I've been trying not to peek because 100 pages is a quarter of the novel!). I was wondering how many pages I had shaved off. I still don't know actually, but I was in the middle of a scene that I would personally consider unputdownable and it was only page 46. I'm pretty sure it has some unputdownable moments before that, too. So that's a pretty nifty improvement in my book.

Segue Back to Writing

So I've taken a rather long break from serious writing (whatever that is). Did a play. Sang really loud. Made some new friends. Drank a bucket of Guinness (not all in one night, mind you). Learned about fingerprints (am still learning about them, will still be learning about them for several years, but I like them, so it's cool). Read a few good books. Let my membership in my local RWA chapter lapse... *big sigh*

Time off has definitely helped me recharge my creativity, but I'm pretty sure it blew my daily writing habit all to hell. Er... yeah. Daily Writing Habit - you know - that thing that you see in all the advice columns as being the secret to becoming a publishing success. Well, ever since going back to work, I've been thinking about this. How DO writers write when they are supporting themselves with another job. I read somewhere that the perfect day job for a writer is the job that doesn't get in the way of their writing production... HUH? ALL day jobs that I know of get in the way of your writing production. I think this bit of advice is assuming that one would QUIT the day job if the writing income were there in all its best-selling glory. Hmph. My only comment here would be that my day job is giving me about twice as many ideas for good stories as I had when I was home... More Ideas = WICKED GOOD for inspiration = WICKED GOOD for quality of production. But it also sucks my freetime dry as a popcorn fart - and this is becoming a complex equation, so pay attention, and try not to lose me here - Popcorn fart freetime = WICKED bad for production QUANTITY. So what are we after here, huh? Quality or Quantity? Or both? Let's try to equate those equations... shall we?

Full-time Work = More Ideas = Wicked Good Inspiration + Less Freetime(a pile of dirty frickin dishes to the power of the number of people in your household and mustn't forget about laundry) = Wicked Good Inspiration + Popcorn Fart Freetime = Not So Good Production Quantity, but What You Do Produce Actually Is Pretty Genious

Hm. Doesn't actually sound so bad when you get to the bottom line, does it?

But the point is, I'm struggling to even find time to create a new sentence, much less work a complex rewrite that's been requested. I realize I need to give myself time to develop a new writing routine. That I need to make a date with the keyboard and defend it. But there are things (eh hem, people I love, and pets, and those pesky thrice daily rituals we call meals, and omG, the dishes... *sobs uncontrollably*) that routinely get in the way. What's a gal to do?

Well, as you can probably imagine, finding an hour or two a day on weekends isn't as much a problem as stealing minutes of a weekday. This is a puzzle that I'm determined to solve, but so far, the solution is stumping me.

I hear a lot of folks get up early to write. Hm AGAIN. All I have to say is: they must be morning people. So let's get this straight before anyone suggests I actually try to mimic this pattern: I don't do mornings without at least a pot of high test coffee in my system. And I'm trying to cut back on my coffee intake.

On the other end of the spectrum, I guess the obvious answer would be to write after the kids go to bed. Well, frankly, this could work for me, now that the play is done. But night time is not the best time for me to be writing. Writing isn't conducive to sleep for me. It jazzes me up, gets me going. Gets my brain ticking. And the last thing I need to be thinking about at ten pm is how I didn't finish That Scene. I could be awake staring at the ceiling for hours with a daily writing routine like that. Sheesh.

The only thing that's working for me right now is writing during my breaks and lunch at work. I bring my laptop to the office, and fire it up first thing in the morning, that way I don't have to wait for it to load during precious break time. Then I can just slide over and start reading/writing when I have free time. I like it because that's the kind of writer I am - fits and starts.

Other tips I'm trying out:

1) Limiting time on email and the phone. These are serious time sucks (that - don't get me wrong - I love with the power of ten thousand suns).
2) Limiting time reading blogs/internet surfing. It helps that my laptop at work isn't hooked up to the internet. I'm still reading my favorite blogs, but instead of checking obsessively every day for updates, I now check a few times a week - reading several posts at once, catching up on all the goodies and news.
3) Jotting down ideas in a notebook. I used to do this back when the kids were babies, and I can't believe I forgot how helpful it is. There's nothing worse than getting a genius idea when you have no time to play it out on paper, and then forgetting about it by break time.

Stirring It Up

I should probably be catching up on sleep, but catching up on blogs is soooo much more fun! I kinda miss being able to read them daily, and I miss the daily writing, of course. But I'm still loving the job, and strangely enough, think that the time away from the writing is actually boosting the possibilities in that realm. In the past two weeks, I've had so many ideas for old and new stories that I've actually had to stop and jot things down on a post-it, napkin, receipt - whatever the hell I could dig out at the time I was thinking of it. I've also been reading during my breaks at work, which is a pleasure I've been ridiculously denying myself for quite some time, and that too, is stirring up the old creative juices so that I can barely wait to start writing again.

Anywayz, speaking of creativity and funness, Jesus Christ Superstar DID debut this weekend at the Waterville Opera House, and it DID rock. If you're interested in seeing a nice review of the show, you can catch that here. I felt slightly bummed out that I had to choose between doing this show and going to the NECRWA conference this year, but at this point, I know I made the right choice. Writing conferences are a recurrent thing - JCS is a once in a lifetime deal! And what an experience its been. Great show, great cast, beautiful historic theater... (check out the photos of the stage if you go are a nostalgia freakazoid like me).

Now I'm going back to watching television with hubby!

Upweek...

Upweek starts today!! Jesus Christ Superstar goes up this coming Friday, so we have rehearsal every single night this week. Needless to say, I won't be blogging, but you knew that, right?

Lookee What I Bought Today!!

I realize I should have seen this waaaay before now. Actually my sister ruined it for me weeks ago. I should have clapped my hands over my ears the minute she said she saw it - "LALALA - I can't hear you!" But as they say, better late than never, right? Now I need to somehow commandeer the television from hubby.

Me: pointing "Look, there's Elvis!"
Hubby: "Where?"
Me: quickly shoving DVD into machine and hitting play "Oh, I guess it was just the cat... Well will you look at that - a movie's on..."