Hello again, my friends

I have returned from my blog hiatus! I have emerged from the Revisions Cave of Doom(tm)!

I really hated to disappear like that but, due to a variety of converging factors, I had to give something up in my life and tragically, it couldn't have been my day job. ;) But anyway, I'm back! TLOS is once again out in the world, awaiting its fate and I'm gorging myself on some reading while taking a short break before diving back into my new project.

What the heck is new with you? Along with blog posting I also had to (sadly!) give up blog reading while I was on hiatus, so I am completely behind on all the news and views. Please, if you have had momentous news, fill me in!

*******************************************

Yeah. So I was diligently revising on my lunch hour the other day, feeling really good about my progress, when BAM! I scrolled down to the next page and all my text was asterisks. Suddenly, I had written an entire novel in stars.

That sounds cool but it was not, people. It was not.

I hadn't backed up in a couple of days, either (IDIOT) so now I get to re-do stuff I've already done. *le sigh* Let this be a lesson to you: Back up your stuff every day you work on it! Every day! Without fail! 

Speaking of backing up, what do you use for backing up your work? I use Dropbox and am very happy with it.

Also, don't forget to enter for a chance to win a copy of BITE THE BULLET by L. A. Banks on my previous post.

Good things come to those who wait

I'm very, very happy to say that, after two freaking years of writing this book, I have finally, finally, figured out what I am actually supposed to be doing with my main character. *big sigh of relief*

It's possible I've posted something similar to this before but this time I mean it. Like, fer realz. I have learned a million things while writing this book but the biggest and most valuable--and hardest--is how to really revise a book. I definitely didn't get that with my first book. I couldn't shake this sense of permanence once I'd laid the words down on the page and the idea of unraveling them and weaving them back together in a new, albeit better, way was out of reach for me at that time.

This is not to say that I'm perfect at revisions now and I have nothing more to learn. Oh-ho-ho no. I still feel like a kindergartner when I sit down at my keyboard, most days. But at least now I understand what it takes to really improve a book and how much potential is still lying in wait after the first blush of the rough draft--even if that first draft is really good.

One of the final things I've really been struggling with is Megan's character arc. I knew it hadn't reached its full potential and I even knew where I needed to take her in order for her and the story to really come full circle and pack more of a literary punch. I just couldn't figure out how to make that happen, not without adding, like, 20,000 more words into a story that was already bumping up against the upper limits of word count guidelines.

Today, I did. The hilarious thing? It's not even hard! It doesn't even require many words! *jumps up and down* I am so freaking happy an relieved. You know how you sometimes get that sense of rightness when you're writing? Where you can feel a piece of your story slide into place and you can almost hear an audible click? Yeah. That. :D

By the time I start querying this sucker, it will have taken me about two years to write and revise it. It feels like an eternity. I've almost given up three times now, no joke. But I honestly wouldn't change a thing about my journey with this story. I've learned so much and, sometimes, I really think you just need some time to sort things out.

Blah

I'm a third of the way through this latest round of revisions/rewrite.

I am getting really, really sick of TLOS and yet, I still love it. *sigh* Oh, the joy of revisions. *headdesk*

I am not dead!

Or wounded! Or in a mental institution, etc., etc., as certain very very kind and wonderful persons may have worried, thus prompting them to PM me.

Let's get caught up, shall we?

> My Day Job is still a hot mess. Pro: Not working a zillion hours at the moment. Con: Job-related stress is off-setting the "return" of "work-life balance."

> Revisions are progressing. Vewy, vewy slooooowly. They are challenging and frustrating and tiring, which hopefully means I'm doing them right. I just finished combining some scenes (thanks to a BRILLIANT suggestion from Sandy Williams!), which had a large trickle-down effect on some other scenes. Up next: rewriting the beginning for the third time (!@&#^$!!!) and changing where Megan lives for the third time. Which seems like no big deal but is, in fact, a very big deal.

> I went camping this past weekend! Outside! In the forest! With a tent! I saw moose poop! I cooked dinner in foil! I broke down a tent in the rain! My dog slept on my pillow, sometimes sort of on my face! I ate smores! It was an exciting adventure, involving many exclamation points! There was one incident with a malfunctioning propane cylinder, but Ben recovered quickly enough to mourn the fact that he didn't gain any superpowers from having his hand sprayed with propane for an extended period of time. Ah, well. Better luck next time.

> I've also read a few books since we've last chatted. Due to my posting-lameness, I haven't cross posted any reviews but you can find them all on my Goodreads page. (oh em gee, do i heart goodreads)

> Got my house powerwashed. Woo!

> Rekindled my love for sushi (vegetarian, of course) and Corona light.

That about catches us up.

Love and kisses to all!

And now we're going to try a different approach.

That quiet place

I don't believe in the Muse, but I do believe in inspiration and this week I've been finding a lot of it over at Marjorie M. Liu's blog. Today she posted this quote:

“You must have a room, or a certain hour or so a day, where you don’t know what was in the newspapers that morning, you don’t know who your friends are, you don’t know what you owe anybody, you don’t know what anybody owes to you. This is a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be. This is the place of creative incubation. At first you may find that nothing happens there. But if you have a sacred place and use it, something eventually will happen.”

- JOSEPH CAMPBELL

I've been spending a lot of time in my version of what Campbell is referring to. It's helping me sort through the stuff I'm dealing with and work through the questions I need to answer in order to tell Megan's story the best, most true way. I expect to be there for a while yet, maybe another week or two, but when I emerge I will be more whole and so will Megan's story.

See you on the flip side.

Guinness makes everything better

So I don't talk very much about my Day Job 'round these parts. That's intentional. Unlike some individuals, I'm fully aware of the fact that a blog is not a private, personal diary. Anyone in the universe can read anything I write here. I think a good rule to follow when composing a blog post is, "If I were going on television and everyone I knew in the world were going to watch me, would I still say X, Y, and Z?" But I digress. The point is, I have a Day Job. I post in my real name with my real picture next to it. Therefore it behooves me not to talk shit about my Day Job on my blog. End of story.

However, I'm going to talk a little bit about my Day Job right now.

My Day Job is in a period of transition right now. Re-orgs are pretty common in Corporate America and my department has gone through a veritable identity crisis in the last several months. I now report to my third boss in as many months. One teammate has already left the team. It's safe to say we are a bit of a hot mess right now.

This Day Job Drama(tm) has completely derailed me. I had *no idea* how much being happy and relatively stress free in my Day Job centered me in the rest of my life. For the past few years, since I've been writing, I always thought that writing was my anchor (aside from Ben). Turns out? Not so much. At least, that's not how it's feeling right now. And that, in itself, has kind of thrown me for a loop.

Though, to be fair, I've hit a bit of a wall with revisions. I went from thinking I was thisclose to having a polished draft ready to send to agents to realizing I need to do another major rewrite. And the things I need to fix in this one are really, really challenging me. (read: sucking the life out of me) It's all going to be for the better and the things I need to change offer some exciting possibilities for the story, yadda yadda. It's just a lot of hard work and pressure and, frankly, something that's shaking my faith in my abilities a bit.

So, yeah. When I get into true crisis mode, I retreat. I pull farther and farther into myself and become a cave troll. Or something. I hide. Hence, blog scarcity.

That's the end of today's sob story slash revelation slash thank god i'm drinking a guinness right now.

*sigh*

Revisions status:
1. Despising passive sentences.
2. Realizing that, although I'd "worked on it," I still have Issues trusting my reader.

Love the growth, hate the process. *sigh*

(LOVE having fricking AWESOME crit partners. <3)

*Thud*

2300+ new words written today
4400+ words rewritten today (combo of new words and old words shuffled around)

One more scene of threats and such
One more scene of closing/wrap up

And then this sucker is DONE.

It'll be in the hands of my critique partners by Monday. Boo-yah!!!

Perfect...and perfectly wrong

Do you ever come up with a line that just perfectly captures what you were trying to say...only it's completely wrong for the character who needs to say it? Damn, I hate that.

This basically falls under the heading of "kill your darlings" but it's so hard to do--especially when it's a struggle to come up with something equally succinct.

In this case, I have my 16 year old main character saying to herself, "Except that’s not really true anymore, is it? The life you want now is made of more than just the quieting of your old fears."

That second line absolutely, utterly, perfectly captures what I'm trying to say. But I'm pretty sure there isn't a 16 year old on the planet who talks like that. *facepalm*

Goodbye, darling.

Friday Five

1. Holy crap, it's cold. Do you think I can get away with wearing my mountain lion hat in the office? Hmm...
2. Kaz has posted a link to a 19 picture Vanity Fair slideshow of Johnny Depp. Updside? It's 19 pictures of the beauty that is Johnny Depp, primarily photographed by the unbelievable talent that is Annie Liebowitz*. Downside? He's smoking in most of them.
3. THIS IS A SECRET. Ssssh. Don't tell anyone. *looks around* I don't have any plans this weekend. I'm going to spend the whole blessed weekend locked in my house like a hermit, pretending the rest of the world largely doesn't exist and working on revisions. OH, DEAR GOD, THE JOY. :D
4. I am super psyched about the work I'm doing on revisions. I don't think I ever knew how to properly revise a book before. Maybe it was first book syndrome (a.k.a. ZOMG, the Preciousssss) or maybe I've just learned some things. But I think I'm actually making a difference in what I'm doing here. Very, very exciting work. I don't even hate the revisions process! (Yet.)
5. I feel another vlog coming on. Possibly one while wearing the mountain lion hat. Stay tuned...

*I have long suspected that Annie Liebowitz possesses seekrit magical powerz that allow her to capture True Portraits of people. When this news finally breaks for real, remember: you heard it here first.

Another revision technique that's working for me

I'm just dashing through in between xmas shopping and more work on revisions. I hate how this season compresses my time. I start to feel claustrophobic. I haven't been able to keep up with many blogs lately, because I've been having to make careful choices about how I spend my time and, so far, revisions has been winning out when it should. (Go me!) But I miss knowing what's going on with everyone! I'll be back to a normal schedule after the holidays, I hope.

Anyway. Revisions.

I had to do some pretty serious re-plotting as a result of my wonderful revelation and I was having a hard time (per usual!) untangling sub plots so I could get a clear picture of what to cut and move to the second book, and then what to layer into this book to complete it.

This is the hardest thing about revisions for me: I can think and talk all day long about what I want to do and what needs to be done, but when it comes time to actually parse out the words, I have a TERRIBLE time unstitching the scenes and then stitching them back together again. It's like my brain can't process them as anything more than a quilt now (to carry on the sewing metaphor), rather than a bunch of individual squares pieced together.

Drives me bonkers.

So, anyway, I tried this new thing. (Well, new to me.) I took one plot line at a time and just wrote it through on a piece of paper. (Well, on a virtual sticky note. God, I love Stickies.) For example, let's say this is part of my story*:

John sees his friend Sally having coffee with the stunningly attractive Jane.
Walking home from the coffee shop, John notices he's being followed by a man in a purple turban.
The next day, John asks Sally for Jane's phone number.
John and Jane talk on the phone that night and set a date for dinner.
John wakes up to find his car has been broken into. A scrap of purple cloth is on the ground near the car.
John and Jane have their date. They kiss.

With my new technique thingy, I would separate out the dude-in-the-purple-turban plot line from the romance plot line. So the purple turban plot line Stickie would look like this:

Walking home from the coffee shop, John notices he's being followed by a man in a purple turban.
John wakes up to find his car has been broken into. A scrap of purple cloth is on the ground near the car.

While the romance Stickie would look like this:

John sees his friend Sally having coffee with the stunningly attractive Jane.
The next day, John asks Sally for Jane's phone number.
John and Jane talk on the phone that night and set a date for dinner.
John and Jane have their date. They kiss.

Make sense? I'm sure everyone in the universe already does this and I'm just late to the game, but I'm finding this IMMENSELY helpful. So I thought, I'd share it. Just in case. :) It's really helping me to see where I have holes or multiple scenes that are really serving the same purpose or where each particular plot line may be sagging, etc. I'm just not able to get that kind of perspective with them all sewn together.

*Note: TLOS has no purple turbans in it. There's quite a bit of kissing, though.

Oh thank goodness

I had a revelation about my revisions today. WOOOOO!!! Thank god. I mean, it's the kind of revelation that means I'll be hacking out a good third of the book at least and rewriting about half of what's remaining but really, what's a thousand hours of bleeding on the keyboard in the name of a better story?

Turns out? I have two books crammed into one. AS I HAVE LONG SUSPECTED. *nods wisely* It just took me a while to figure out where the first book ended and the second book began. Which is sort of the same as dividing a plate of spaghetti, when you get right down to it, but I've mostly gotten it straightened out in my head now. Also, (added bonus!) I now have a pretty concise three book arc. Boo-yah! I loves me a series, I do.

The last loose end to tie up before I fire up the chain saw is to reinvent my antagonist*. He was a lion when I imagined him and I wrote him as a lamb. That's NOT HELPFUL. So, I have to figure out how to lionize him again (what?) and then I'll be ready to roll up my sleeves and dig in to the dirty work.

*marches off humming victory tune* *wearing mountain lion hat, natch*


*I feel I should mention that I first typed the word 'villain' here, mostly because I love that word and the images it conjures and prefer it to stuffy literary terms like 'antagonist.' But... it's just not quite an apt description for this dude or the role he plays in my story or my main character's life, so I changed it to antagonist. And I find that, itself, interesting. Perhaps that's why I had the whole lion-to-lamb deflation to begin with. *strokes chin thoughtfully*

My first Vlog!

Yep. Here it is. My first Vlog, in which I:

>Roll my eyes about a thousand times
>Talk very fast
>Appear to have a snaggle tooth even though I don't really
>Am wearing my husband's sweater
>Only swear one time, shockingly

On slicing and dicing

I've never done great amounts of shuffling around in my stories before. Honestly, the thought has terrified me. But thanks to my shiny! new! plot (i <3 you, plot!), I've been doing just that for the past several days. Slicing out entire sections from Chapter Three and dropping them into Chapter One. Carving out bits of scene from here and sewing them onto bits of scene over there.

It's actually kind of fun. :)

I have a very clear picture of the changes that need to be made and, more importantly, why they need to be made. There's no question in my mind that the story will be better for them, so I'm not afraid of the plug and play.

Oh, this book. It's taking me places I've never gone before...

6595 / 60000 words. 11% done!

(re-done words only)

*headdesk*

This is the third time I've tried to write this entry, so I'll cut to the chase:

Apparently I've used all my brain juice on the mini-rewrite of BLOOD AND SACRIFICE, which I wrapped up today. I realized (too late, of course) that I made the whole thing ten times more difficult than it had to be by stubbornly refusing to acknowledge that there is more than one way to tell a story, despite the fact that I believe that is one of the fundamental truths of storytelling.

Note to self: Remember there is more than one way to tell a story.

Oy.

Frakking beginnings

So... I need to rewrite my opening and I can't find the first line. And it's driving me crazy. I've stared and stared and stared at the page. I've sat and thought and thought and thought without staring at the page. I've literally thought about the new opening for hours. So then I thought maybe I was becoming obsessed (ya think?) and I just needed to stick something in there and move on.

Couldn't.

Brain wouldn't function on the rest of the rewrite without knowing how the story opened. It kept veering back to that opening scene, trying to pick apart the words and figure out what the first line should be.

GAH!

Help? Anyone? Tips, tricks, anything? Well, anything other than, "My opening lines just come to me and they're always perfect the first time out." That? Not helpful right now. ;)

Oh, Patrick Swayze. :(

I am so sad that Patrick Swayze died. Kaz has done a lovelier tribute than I could manage so I'm going to point you there.

In other news...

...I am doing a small rewrite of BLOOD AND SACRIFICE, mostly of the opening chapters. There's tightening to be done and some pacing to fix. I've clearly not found the beginning of this story yet. {big, heavy sigh} I'm close, I think. I need opening lines, perhaps new opening paragraphs (as in, plural). Then I can work with what I have. This blank space ---> <--- is where I would love to be swearing and complaining about rewriting. But I shall not.

...I have also joined again this year. I haven't completely laid out my goals yet, but they'll be a combination of the rewrite and new words on THE LANGUAGE OF SILENCE. If you're looking for a motivator or are intrigued by the idea of NaNoWriMo but are intimidated by the pace, check JoNo out! I loved doing it last year and it was the perfect pace/time for me with the day job, etc. (I can't write fast enough to make the real NaNo goals while I'm working full time.)

...I've been in a funk lately, mostly due to some real life stuff going on and partially due to the impending rewrite on a book I thought was "done." This is not a cry for pity or LJ hugs or sympathy, etc. etc. :) But I like to let my public (*snort*) know why I've been posting so sporadically lately. Maudlin doesn't make for good blogging, therefore I keep it to myself. ;)

...I went on a music-buying binge tonight. I bought the latest from Howie Day and Butterfly Boucher, both of whom I'm a big fan of, and also Shinedown (I think Second Chance is such a sad song!) and Parachute (sort of on a whim after I heard a single and fell in love with the singer's voice). Oh, and this, which I found thanks to Pandora:



That's Sara Bareilles singing Gravity.


Now...I've got a date with a manuscript and a machete...

On chapter length

I'm currently playing around with the lengths of my chapters. Or, as I call it, re-chaptering my chapters. After some feedback from a CP about a particularly long chapter, I decided to take a good hard look at the entire WIP.

I've always been of the mindset that a chapter should end wherever the chapter should end. In other words, there should be action happening in the chapter. That action should come to some sort of climax. At or after the climax, depending on whether you're trying to drag your reader into the next chapter or give them a break, is when the chapter should logically end. Sometimes that may be 10 pages. Sometimes it may be 5 pages. Sometimes 20. While I was writing my current WIP, this made sense to me because, assuming the story is well written, the chapter should hold the reader's interest even if it's long and if it's short and ending on an action or intrigue note, then the reader should just be turning the page anyway. Right? Hmm. As it turns out, maybe not.

There are certainly other schools of thought out there, including the nice and neat "100,000 words divided by 20 chapters equals 5,000 words per chapter!" school of thought. Cue dusting off of hands. I've never been a fan of this method, personally. I can't imagine how I would plan for such a neat and clean division of my manuscript. But maybe that's my inexperience as a writer or my misunderstanding of the method.

In any case, after receiving the feedback on this particularly lengthy chapter, I thought a lot about chapter length and realized I'd only been approaching the topic as a writer and not a reader. It only took me 10 seconds of thought to realize what I like as a reader: short chapters.

I split my time 100 different ways each week, so if I'm reading a book, I'm usually stealing time to do it from some other activity: twenty minutes on the bus, five minutes at the bus stop, seven minutes in the waiting room of a doctor's office, ten minutes before I go to sleep at night. And I hate to stop reading in the middle of a chapter. So I much prefer short chapters because I can fit whole chapters into my stolen reading times.

So, I made an Excel spreadsheet with all my chapters, their word counts, approximate page counts and major events. Whoa, nelly! What an eye-opening experience. My chapters ranged from 4 pages to 23 pages. Granted, the majority of them were in a much tighter range, but still... Not good. So, over the last week, I've been smoothing out the chapter lengths, evening them out and cutting them down so that they're closer to 10 page chapters.

Lesson learned. :)

*glances up at post* Damn. Maybe this should have been on post length! ;)