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!

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.

*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)

TLOS is out in the world

Welp, I've sent TLOS out to my (wonderful! generous! brilliant!) critique partners.

It's such a strange sensation to take an entire world that you created, which is populated with people you invented--all of whom feel as real now as your own family and friends--and expose it, for the first time, to someone else. Very exciting, very nerve-wracking, all around unsettling. Early feedback has been positive. It looks like I haven't COMPLETELY messed the darn thing up, at any rate. ;)

To distract myself, I spent some time today researching YA deals on Publishers Marketplace. Damn, 2010 was a good year for YA! And for debut YA! *fingers crossed*

I also spent a bit of time looking at pictures of piglets in rain booties. O.o (What? Don't pretend like you didn't...)

*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!!!

Doom!

I pushed past Addie and Isaac and grasped the deadbolt. Pain seared my palm and I stumbled backwards, cradling it to my chest. The lock turned a bright, glowing red, then began to liquefy, dripping down the door.
“They’re here,” Addie whispered.


I get to write a fight scene today! I get to write a fight scene today! *prances around*

I suppose, more accurately, I get to re-write a fight scene today. Still fun, though. ;) I'm on a day-long revisions marathon, people. Let's see what I can get done...

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.

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

That's a wrap!

I pronounce this draft of The Language of Silence done. *thud*

TLOS zero draft stats:

Began writing: 7/30/09 (though the thinking and planning began well before that)
Finished writing: 9/20/2010
Word count: 101,100 (damn it, should've written one more stinking word!)
Number of times I almost gave up entirely on the damn thing: At least 3
Number of times I thought it was the most genius thing ever written: At least 300
Number of ways I pushed myself out of my comfort zone: Let's see, how many words were there...?
Overall status: A hot mess.

Let's analyze, shall we?

Timeline: My main goal was to write my next book in a year or less. This one still came in at over a year, so I missed that mark. I'm disappointed but it's much more important to write a good story than it is to write a fast story, especially when I don't have an external deadline. And I did work really hard on telling this story right.

Word count: Waaaaaaay too high for a YA. However, about 3/4 of the way through the book I realized that I was really at what structurally needed to be the middle of the book, so I kept writing through to the (new, real) end. So in rewrites I have to smooth all of that out and probably hack off the beginning. And actually write the last big scene because I ended up having to leave it at detailed plot notes because of everything that will change in rewrites (see "Hot Mess" below). It'll all work out. I swear. Bottom line: The final product needs to be shorter, preferably by about 20K.

Doubts: Oh, yes. The doubts. I've never challenged myself like I did with this book, and it showed. My confidence was like a ping pong ball -- one day I was writing the next NYT best seller, the next it was utter, laughable crap and I was wasting my time. Ultimately, I think I have something really good (or, at least, I will after I fix everything in the magic of rewrites!) and I'm really proud of what I've done. We'll see how long that holds up. ;)

Hot mess: The term "zero draft" isn't one I've used before in relation to my own work but oh lawd does it ever apply to this manuscript. As I mentioned above, the narrative structure ended up shifting about two thirds of the way through the book. THIS IS NOT HELPFUL. I mean, it is because the book will be a zillion times better now that I've had this genius revelation but holy crap this draft is a mess. I basically just kept writing forward, focusing on what the new structure needed to be like. The central theme of the book also changed. Twice. *facepalm* Like I said, it's a hot mess. But, at the end of the day, the book as it exists in my mind (and, somewhat, on the page) is a much better book than the one I started out writing. MUCH better. Right now, though, it's a little bit of a Frankenstein draft. (Or, rather, Frankenstein's monster's draft. Or whatever.)

Bottom line: Rewrites are going to be difficult but well worth it. (Read: ZOMG THEY MIGHT KILL ME but maybe I'll get an agent with this one...?)

Next steps: Ignore said draft until November. Re-read with fresh eyes. Make magic.

Friday Five

1. My appetite has been endless this week. Why? WHY? I eat and eat and am never full. This sort of thing does not mesh with dieting. *sigh*

2. The end of TLOS is in sight. I'd like to have a count of scenes so I could tick them off one by one and pretend I had any control over this story. Ha. HA HA HA. (<--- this is not actually funny at all.) But for now, it's enough to feel as though there is a horizon and I am moving towards it.

3. My print of this arrived this week. Oooooooh I lovelovelove it. Once it's framed, it'll be going on my bedroom wall.

4. I'm reading my first David Sedaris book (WHEN YOU ARE ENGULFED IN FLAMES). Damn, it's funny and well written. Why did I wait so long? Also, thank goodness I'm not writing humorous memoirish essays because I would SO be emulating his voice. All my in-brain narration of my daily life has been Sedaris-style for the past few days. Amusing, but unoriginal.

5. I have eaten ungodly amounts of fake bacon today. Mmmm. Facon. nom nom nom (see #1)

A Small Measure of Peace

I swear the score to The Last Samurai by Hans Zimmer is the only thing keeping me going right now. 49 days to go...

I wake up scared, I wake up strange*

The current state of me, list-style. Lately, I've been:

1. Largely spazzing out about finishing TLOS before going to Japan in the fall. By "the fall" I mean in 56 days. By "spazzing out" I mean: wondering if the ending idea I keep flirting with will actually work; wondering if it doesn't, what the hell I'll do then; trying, futilely, to calculate how many words I'll need to finish the book and to match that against 56 days worth of daily word count goals, both herculean and possible; wondering why the fuck it isn't socially and economically acceptable to just crawl into a cave with my MacBook for the next 56 days to make sure TLOS gets finished BECAUSE JESUS, IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE???

2. Listening to old music that feels new again. Breaking Benjamin has consumed me since I discovered them a few months ago. I have literally listened to almost nothing else. They're the kind of band that can make you forget there's other music out there. But lately I've been rotating in some old playlists and remembering how much I love some of the other artists on my iPod. Rediscovery is magical. (I still listen to Breaking Benjamin once a day, at least. I mean, come on.)

3. Trying to give up coffee. That started yesterday. Today I had a soy cafe mocha from Starbucks. Enough said.

4. Reading more. Holy crap, do I love to read. I recently finished Sarah Dessen's JUST LISTEN on the recommendation of Stephanie Burgis (thanks Steph!) and it was great. You should definitely check it out. Annabel's story really touched me, in ways I didn't fully realize until days later.

5. Beginning to see the new structure TLOS needs. I can't wait to get the rough draft finished so I can tear it apart. Heh. I feel bold. Well, boldish. I'm sure I know how the book needs to be written now. It's just a matter of getting it there.

6. Feeling...strange. Off. Not quite connected--to my life, my work, my friends, myself. I definitely get in moods like this from time to time, where I seem to sort of retreat to a place inside myself for a little while. This time, it seems to be sticking around and I'm not sure why. I suppose part of it probably has to do with #1 above but...I don't know. I do still feel connected to my writing and this whatever-it-is also feels like it's something moving through my creative center. Maybe something's shifting within me--some new well of creative energy is opening or some new story is surfacing. Or, yanno, maybe I'm having a mid-life crisis. We'll see.


*Lyrics from the song What a Good Boy by Barenaked Ladies. Also, part of this list.

An open letter to my WIP

Dear TLOS,

You know what would have been super awesome? If you had told me, way back when we started this gig, that the middle of you was really the beginning of you. And, while you were at it, if you'd told me what the hell to do with that whole fake-beginning beginning, because that shit still has to be in you somewhere, doesn't it? Yeah, I know.

But now you have a chance to redeem yourself. Here's the way it's gonna work: You're going to reveal your Brilliant Ending to me--pronto--and then I'll clean up all that beginning-middle-beginning nonsense when I get back from Japan in the fall. Mmmkay?

Last chance. I'm not kidding. I'll be waiting for your answer in the reading nook with Butch and the Black Dagger Brotherhood.

xo,
Me

I'm melllllltiiiiiiing

Jesus christ, I hate the heat. And sweating. I hate sweating even more than the heat. It was like a fucking thousand degrees here today. UGH.

But anyway. I checked in over at KSC 2010! I currently owe myself 700 words thanks to Writing Fail, but I shouldn't have any trouble making those up over the next week or two. As I said in my check in, I'm well into the dark, bloody heart of the book. Bad Things have happened, more are on the horizon, but OMGSQUEEE!!1! the Boy is showing definite romantic interest. All of this makes for fun writing and major snarling when someone asks me to put the laptop away and interact with the "real" world. ;)

Here's a teensy little snippet and a shiny word count meter:

“You can’t go home.”
I pivoted slowly, trying to understand the sense of finality in her tone.
“You killed an emissary of the warlord, Megan.” She spoke slowly, carefully, like I was a child. “He’s going to come for you.”

56213 / 70000 words. 80% done!


And now, back to our regularly scheduled melting.