The Late 2008 - Shine in 2009

Like my cheesy title? *grin*

So, given it's what everyone else is doing*, I thought now would be a good time for my 2008 recap.

Raw stats first.

In 2008, I:

* wrote 161,207 words of fiction.
* finished a draft of TBAEO.
* did preliminary edits and replotting of TBAEO.
* worked on The Black Gates, then retired it at about chapter 5 - the plot Needs Work.
* started Logan. Wrote 10 chapters only to realise the story started at chapter 11. Put aside, as the MC was too boring.
* learned how to write short stories - hoorah! Total of 8 in various stages.
* edited my first 'proper' play. Wrote several others, including an 8 act one to be performed in a week's time.
* began The Project. Wrote half, outlined the rest, realised I hated the MC and put it aside.
* signed up to write a self-pubbed non-fic ebook, to be completed this month.
* began several MG novels for nano, none of which behaved, so they've been temporarily put aside.
* started Jesscapades, which I adore, and which at this point I'm planning to be my debut novel.

My main goals for the year were to make 10 submissions and have 3 complete manuscripts. Sadly, the year has been fraught with false starts, so I have only one :( As for submissions, I've done 12 :) So that's a success. Granted, a lot have been resubs, and I've had no bites yet though a couple of commendations and personalised rejections, but hey - I did more than 10 subs :) Rah!

Although on the one hand I feel like the year has been a bit of a failure - I haven't completed any novels that I'm happy with - on the other hand, my total word count is up by 60% on last year's count. And more importantly, I've learned a lot. Sure, I've had a lot of false starts - but I know why they were false starts, and each time, they've been for a different reason - which means I'm learning.

And now I've hit on a novel that I like, with a reasonably strong voice, a fun plot, a great MC... Mind you, I'm not halfway yet, so I'm hoping like mad that I like the book because it really is good (this is what the beta readers are saying) and not because I just haven't hit the wall yet (what my brain is saying).

So, this is what I've learned from each of my false starts this year:

1) TBAEO - not a false start, but something that DEFINITELY needs work before it can see the light of day. From this I learned perhaps my biggest lesson of the year - that I can finish a complete novel, and that I can dissect it and replot it to make it stronger.

2) The Black Gates - this is actually my first novel. I've been working on it off and on for years - and because of this, it's fraught with beginner mistakes - not least of which was a lack of original, interesting plot. I fixed that by introducing some great twists - but I'm yet to figure out how on earth it all goes together. It's not complex enough - but it's too complex. Gack.

3) Logan - heh. From this, I relearned the importance of having not only a strong MC, but one who has enough tension and internal conflict to drive the plot. Logan, the MC, was not strong enough to be a driving force - instead, he was someone who was driven, being forced and manipulated into making his decisions instead of reacting to the situation himself - and so he was boring. It was about now that I also realised that I didn't actually want to write traditional-style fantasy after all...

4) The Project. If TBAEO could be called an exercise in character development, then TP is its opposite: an exercise in plot. I set out to write this deliberately as a pot-boiler, simply to force myself to learn how to keep up the pace and tension, how to introduce stumbling blocks and small problems - in short, how to keep the middle from sagging. I succeeded pretty well, but unfortunately in doing so sacrificed character, and the MC turned into someone whom I didn't like, couldn't identify with, and just plain didn't want to write about.

5) The Edge and Gem series - I only made a tiny start on these at the beginning of Nano, but it reinforced for me the necessity of knowing your character's voice before writing the book.

6) Jesscapades. With luck, this one won't be a false start. So far (about 1/4 of the way in) it's got a great combination of character AND plot, and I'm excited to see just how much better this is than anything I've done before.

And that, my friends, was 2008. I know, I haven't talked about my goals for 2009 yet - but to be honest, I can't really get my head around the idea of new goals until this big camp (Jan 16-24) is over, and the dog book is written. I'll think about goals, and post them either in the final week of Jan, or in early Feb.

In the meantime - what's the biggest thing you learned in 2008?


* I was going to do it anyway. It just seemed like a good excuse O:)

Welcome to my Sidebar: Lisa Shearin

"Welcome to the website of Lisa Shearin, the National Bestselling Author of the fantasy adventure series featuring Raine Benares, a sorceress and seeker of things lost and people missing."

Who: Lisa Shearin is the author of the fabulously successful series featuring MC Raine Benares, a wise-cracking street-smart elf who works as a Seeker - and has a nose for trouble. This series is one of my all-time favourites, for its ease of reading, high entertainment value, fabulous dialogue and absolutely sparkly characters - not to mention the awesome urban fantasy-ness of it all :o)

What: This is Lisa's author website. It's chock full of goodies, from news about her latest books to events such as signings, free chapters to read and of course, her blog.

Where: Here, or here: www.lisashearin.com

Why: Lisa has a great sense of humour, which comes through in both her books and her blog. She shares her experiences openly and candidly, treating us to insights into the life of a Real Live Author :) From the way she balances writing with her day job, to cooking for the family when you're in the grips of a novel, to how she begins writing her book, to some wonderful posts on editing that inspired my own edits on TBAEO, Lisa's blog is a genuine, entertaining look into the life of someone who does what we all dream of - Writes, and gets Paid To Do So :)

When: Usually daily, with 'fun pics' on Saturdays :)

June in Review

So, happy July everyone! Already - can you believe it? I'm not sure I can. The year is half over, and it feels like it's only just begun.

Anyway. What did I accomplish in this last month of the first half of the year? Let's have a look:

* Finished 1 short story, Not Fantasy. Would like to have done more, but that's okay. It's been a busy month.
* Made two submissions, SFB and Shoe. SFB required MASSIVE rewrites to get it to a sub-able stage, and I'm awfully proud of how it's turned out :)
* Very, very nearly made my goal of 15k of writing, almost all of which was done on The Project.
* Outlined a story that's been bouncing around for a while, temporarily titled Fairy Tale Ending.
* Finally, after much struggle and heartache, pegged down an outline for The Project. Am immensely happy about this.
* Began a new play, Where Your Treasure Is.

As for the year as a whole, I'm rather proud of the work that I've done so far. I think I've come quite a long way from the writer I was at the end of December - some of the highlights being the completed first draft of my first ever novel, To Be An Evil Overlord... and my entry into the world of submissions - thus far I've made 5 submissions of plays and short stories :)

I've learnt important things about structure, I'm slowly learning to pare back my overwriting, and I've managed to write more than one short story that has not only stayed short, but that I'm actually quite proud of. My total word count for the year so far is nearly 74,000 words, which is fast approaching last year's total of 102,000, which included 50,000 for nano in November. I've got plans for Nano, outlines for novels, I'm learning to recognise which stories will work and which won't, and I've discovered that I really do have something to say after all - to which end I've started and been running with reasonable success (I think ;)) this lovely blog (yes, despite the archive record, this blog was only started at the very beginning of the year).

So, what would I like to achieve in the second half of the year?

* 2 submissions per month, which is what I've so far been achieving since I began submitting in late April.
* Finish and complete at least one revision of The Project. I'm working on a TP blitz at the moment and hope to have a draft done in mid-August.
* Pare back my writing even more - stop over-writing - learn to recognise what is significant to the story, and what is not.
* Win Nano again. I'm fairly sure I'll be starting my mid-grade fantasy series for this, as it will be a big incentive to actually be able to complete a novel in under 50k.

I'm sure I'll think of more goals month-by-month, but for now, those are the big things.

And more than anything, I hope I'll continue to grow both as a writer and as a person, and that I will never lose sight of the bigger picture and what I have to say.

Thanks to all of you who read my often-rambly comments here. Your support and comments make this endeavour worthwhile :)

May Recap

Scary that I typed the title (twice, given I spelled it wrong the first time!) as 'April Recap'. Oich.

So, goals for this month were (laughable):

* Edit to chapter 11 on TBAEO
* Write 4 shorts
* Get to 15k on Logan
* Polish and submit Murder
* Polish and submit Shoe

And achieved this month:

* 1374 on Logan, taking total to 13,710
* 6048 words on The Project, taking total to ~8100
* Two complete shorts, Shoe (1384 words) and Sea Foam & Blood (4378)
* Two partially complete shorts, Finding Bunny and Lightning
* One chapter of Secret Breaker
* Overall total of 17,522 words
* Murder & Shoe both polished and subbed

So a nice, productive month, even though it's been mostly on things other than my official goals! Regarding TBAEO, I'm taking a break from editing it at the moment since it's become the second book. I'm not sure how edity I want to get with it, so will continue if/when the mood strikes, but shan't push.

Story Elements #1: Conflict

Today, I was going to post about the Archetypes of Fantasy - good versus evil versus well-rounded characters, and the various appeals and turn-offs of both.

Instead, because of this post, I'm going to talk about conflict, because it's something that I've been thinking a lot about lately.

Conflict. What is it?

Dictionary.com gives a nice suite of possible answers:

1. a fight, battle, or struggle, esp. a prolonged struggle; strife.
2. controversy; quarrel: conflicts between parties.
3. discord of action, feeling, or effect; antagonism or opposition, as of interests or principles: a conflict of ideas.
4. a striking together; collision.
5. incompatibility or interference, as of one idea, desire, event, or activity with another: a conflict in the schedule.
6. Psychiatry. a mental struggle arising from opposing demands or impulses.

So, conflict is a bad thing, right?

WRONG.

Here's a writer's definition of conflict: The lifeblood of any story.

And why is that? Bluntly, because Real Life is, on the whole, boring enough. Sure, we get our fair share of conflict in our day-to-day life, but it's ours, it's boring, and for the most part, we just want it to go away.

Fiction is different. In fiction, if you don't have conflict, you don't have a story. You have a random series of events that are almost guaranteed to lull your readers into a deep sleep - or have them throw your book at the wall in frustration. Either way.

But readers read fiction to escape Real Life! If they want their conflict to go away, and if their lives are boring, why don't they want to read about someone who has a perfect, interesting life where everything goes right and all is rosy?

One word. Jealousy.

Well, there might be other reasons too, but personally I'm not going to sit down and invest my time and effort into something that's going to make me want to throw it against the wall and scream, "But life's not like that! I hate you, you perfect person! Stop showing me up!"

Fiction has to be real.

If it sounds like I'm contradicting myself here, then you're obviously paying attention. Well done. I am. Fiction has to be real, but real life is boring, real conflict is boring, but stories must have conflict? Excuse me?

And this brings me to my point for the day. (Are you surprised? I have a point! :D)

There are different types of conflict, and they do different jobs.

At the uppermost level, conflict can be divided into external and internal conflict. External is where, say, a meteorite is discovered to be right on track to demolish the demon home world, and they have to do something about it if they plan to survive.

Internal conflict is where the head honcho demon can't decide what to do, because if he takes option A, everyone except his family survives, and if he takes option B, the entire planet is obliterated - except his family.

What to do, what to do?

It is precisely this question that will get and keep your readers interested. And something I've learned from personal experience - you can't get away with using only one type of conflict in your story. For it to seem 'real', for it to have depth, it must have both types of conflict. My first ideas for TBAEO suffered from too little external conflict (something most of my initial, pre-planning stage ideas contract). My first attempt at Search had far too little inner conflict.

Both resulted in stories or ideas that felt thin, sparse, and either confusing (because the characters weren't reacting to their situations) or boring (because they spent all their time whinging rather than acting).

So, where did this post come from? Two sources.

The post I linked to at the beginning is an article by Merc about the rules of magic. How does that relate to conflict? Because if you don't have rules, and people can do whatever they want with magic, then you don't have conflict. The all-powerful mage can whip up a spell that will annihilate the Dark Lord and Free The World? Great - why didn't he do that in the first place and save us from the pointless meandering of the story? Rules mean limitations, limitations means people might get hurt, and the potential for people to get hurt - aka conflict - is what will make a reader turn the page to find out what happens to that beloved character. Assuming you have likeable characters, that is ;)

Secondly, in two weeks time a group of us will be doing our own version of the tv program 'Thank God You're Here' as part of an all-day youth event. In planning the improv scenarios, I've discovered that in many ways, it's just like writing a story. To keep it moving and amusing, you need conflict. In this case, the easy way we developed to create conflict was to take a person in a position of responsibility and have them fail at that responsibility.

And on reflection, that's not a bad way to approach a novel too :)

April in Review

This is a little late I know, and yes I am back dating this entry - but I have to at least pretend that I'm up-to-date with something in my life at the moment O:)

So, here's what I accomplished in the month of April:

* 17,388 words total. I am absolutely stoked about this - this is my best word count ever, apart from Nano :)
* Of which, 8,842 on Logan. A little shy of the 10k I'd hoped for, but the total w.c. is so shiny that I don't really mind.
* Edited 1.5 chapters of TBAEO. Pathetic. Really, I mean pathetic. I blame it on the fact that it was all-new material, so it was in effect first draft writing, not editing. :S
* Polished In Search of Freedom. FINALLY. This was on my to-do list for JANUARY. But, happiness, I also submitted it to a publisher - my first ever query.
* One of my CC friends, in a determine attempt to teach a few of us 'I Can't Write Anything Short' people how to write shorts, started a queue where we have weekly prompts and have to write 1 story per week to a maximum word count of 3000 words. I wrote 2 stories for this (The Dress and Murder, though Murder I'd started last year). I also finished Bran prior to the establishment of this queue, and...
* Wrote something that was supposed to be a short but has turned into a new novel, now called The Project. I'm summarising it as Huxley's Brave New World meets Wells's The Time Machine, plus magic. Much fun :D
* To top it all off, I critiqued an entire novel for a friend, and stayed on top of all my uni assessment.

So, all in all a very productive month :) Here's to May! :D

Another Progress Report

Tuesday was Wonderful. Absolutely Wonderful.

Just imagine - an entire day, in which nothing has to be done... Mmm...

So, thanks to my lovely 'day off', I have:

* 3,347 new word on Logan, bringing the total to 9,110. That's the first six chapters done and posted. Yay :)

* A new scene for TBAEO, which is really good. I've been slacking on it lately because I've hit a run of three pink (aka completely new) scenes - and we all know how much I love first drafts :S

I also have a whole new bunch of shiny ideas to add to my list, which is growing horribly, horribly long. *stabs shiny, new, distracting ideas*

This afternoon I have lots of homework to do, but will try to do at least 500 words of something, I think. Will see how I go...

TBAEO is... Number TWO??

So, in a random conversation over at Critique Circle, an exciting title for a story came up. And, because it seems vaguely related to TBAEO, it was shoved in my direction.

As you may or may not know, I've been trying to think of an alternative title for TBAEO for a few weeks now, and this /other/ title re-sparked the discussion about TBAEO - should I change it to match this fun new title, that will be the next book in the series?

Which of course lead to more title brainstorming... And the creation of /another/ title. (Confused yet?) Which apparently is book one.

Yes, that's right. Book one.

So, long confusing story short, it turns out that TBAEO is actually book two in a three book series. The first book, HNTTOTW, will be about Mercury and Bystar - and just exactly what did happen at the Eye - and the final one, WWTBAM, will relate the future adventures of Deviran and Mercury.

In the mean time, it's going to play havoc with my TBAEO rewrites, because I'll be thinking the whole time - but it's book two! I'm going to have to change so much again!

Not to mention the temptation to go play with shiny ideas rather than doing my homework %-)

Long Time No Post...

Whoops! I see I have been shamefully neglecting this dear little blog lately. All I can do is apologise and blame Real Life; the last two weeks have been rather shocking.

HOWEVER.

Yes, there is a 'however'.

The last two weeks have indeed been shocking, but, oddly, I've still managed okay with the writing. Here's the report since the last post:

* 5 chapters of TBAEO revised and typed up, including one brand new scene which will help explain Z'a'k'r'y's background better. Am having a lot of fun with this, and wish I had more time to devote to it :)
* Started and completed a new short story, temporarily titled 'Won'. It's a quick flashback into the history of Logan's brother Bran - why he is the way he is :) About 2500 words total.
* Nearly 4200 words on Logan, the current wip. First drafts are awful, horrible little things that ought to run away and die.
* Edited In Search of Freedom, the play. Something (which goes by the names of 'Mercwriter' and 'Capthook' in its various incarnations) has possessed me to actually think about querying this... As well as editing I've formatted the first two acts.
* Added about four new folders to my writing folder, which means four new novel ideas...
* Have another short story in the pipeline, related to TBAEO. Should prove comic %-)

So. It's not astoundingly brilliant or anything, but it's progress, and it means that my total word count for the month of March was 6577, and that for April I'm currently sitting on the beautifully round figure of 1300.

I'm aiming for 10k again this month, which I hopefully should be able to hit if I use my uni 'holidays' wisely.

Of course, it might help if I went and did my uni homework /now/, so I could get onto some writing... Me? Procrastinate? Never... O:)

Editing With Pens

Today's title is somewhat misleading, and yet precisely correct. I am editing with pens, not on the computer. However, that's not what I'm going to talk about.

Firstly, editing. I've discovered that I absolutely adore the editing process. Playing with my post-its was too much fun, and editing is nearly as good. I've also discovered, however, that part of the making-the-book-better process is this nasty thing called Rewrites. Editing I like. Rewrites, I Do Not. Hence, I've spent the entire afternoon procrastinating, instead of using my only free day this week to get some writing done :(

As for the pen part, I've finally resized those photos to post.

First, the ginormous pile of pens that I uncovered, stashed in various locales around the house:










You can just see my fingers in the corner... And I promise, the pile looked bigger in real life. Out of all those pens, I found a few special ones, like these:











The top one I've had since year 10, and you can see it's been well-used. The next is an awesome pencil I got from the university's library when I first started, in 2004. The next one down was a birthday present from a friend. The bottom one is just a plain Papermate Kilometrico - this is my writing pen of preference these days :)

Some other cool things I found:















My awesome frog pen, whose eyes have unfortunately expanded and become funky over the years. How awesomely evil does he look all lit up?! :D
















My wonderful medicine-bottle highlighter that hubby found for me at work...











My pencil that I used in kindy! That weird thing next to my (ex)initials is a dog's face, believe it or not...

And last, but by no means least, the pen you've all been waiting for...











The post-it note pen!! Isn't it just the coolest thing ever? It's not actually a pen, it's a yellow highlighter, and it has those cool mini post-it flags build right into the body! I saw the post-it brand name on the bottom initially, and was puzzled - then pulled it out, and was utterly astounded - I'm sure I've never seen it before; it's the kind of thing you'd think you'd remember seeing :)

So anyway, that concludes my pen-ness for the day. It is funny though how people develop pen-preferences - I remember going through a stage in year 10 where I would only use artline felt-tips, and had a friend that I always used to steal them off :D He ended up giving me some for my birthday... heh heh.

So, what about you out there? Do you have a favourite pen or type of pen that you'll pick up to use before any other? What makes for a good pen, in your opinion? Weight? Colour? Type of tip?

Photos

Finally, I have located batteries, the camera AND the card reader, all in the appropriate sequence and at about the same time.

Hence, I can now present for your viewing pleasure, pictures of my lovely post-it notes.

First, the BG plotting:






























And photos of the TBAEO edit...












































In accordance with Holly Lisle's One Pass Revision technique, green scenes need editing for flow etc only; yellow have at least one major plot point that needs to be changed/added/deleted; orange scenes need major reconstruction; and bright pink scenes are brand new scenes that need to be written.
Pale pink ones are ones that are in the first draft but that I think won't make it to the revised version.

As you can see, there is a surprisingly high proportion of green and yellow post-its, which I find extremely pleasing :) And the little tags are notes to myself - dialogue to include in scenes, thoughts about changing the order of scenes, etc.

I must say, this whole process has been an absolute blast :D Things like structure appear so much more easily when I have the frame of the first draft to work with, and drawing out and adding in subplot that relate to the themes of the novel - primarily acceptance, in the case of TBAEO - well, it's dead easy to see how they slot in when I see it all there in front of me like this :) I likes muchly.

As a final note, some observant readers may notice the gap between the rest of the TBAEO post-its and the final three green ones - that's because there's another scene before those that I wasn't sure if I wanted to change or not. I've decided now, and once I'm allowed to play again (once uni work is done) I'll dig out the post-its and fix up that final scene :)

Well, that's it for now. I hope this has been interesting for you! :)
Why can't first drafts be this fun?!

Edit Update

:)

So, I went away this weekend expecting to get some work done. I did NOT expect to nearly complete the pre-edit work. But I did, and I'm so excited!

I have seven pages of A4 paper covered in pretty coloured post-it notes (since I felt I couldn't really post-it note other people's walls! And besides, my plotting is now transportable...) with scribbles and arrows and colour-coding and all. Much fun. AND it includes 12 new scenes, which means (based on average scene lengths for the book) another 19,200 words, bringing the word count up to about 75,000. Less the fat, of course. But a much more respectable length than 64k, at any rate :)

When I get home this evening I'll scrounge up some batteries for the camera and take photos. The notes look so bright and happy and colourful, it cheers me just thinking about them :)

Another tiny note of triumph - I managed to rewrite the first scene of BG which has been sticking me for ages, so hoorah :) Hopefully I can get back on track with that, provided uni doesn't become too hectic :)

Preparing to Edit

So, this afternoon I printed out my manuscript. Technically I'm not 'allowed' to work on it until I've (re)written the first two scenes of BG... Untechnically, I can't wait. And printing the manuscript was such a high! :)

I've also been reading through some articles on editing, in particular Holly Lisle's article on One-Pass Revision. I've also been checking out the Snowflake Method site, and combining bits of the two and some thoughts of my own - plus some thoughts from a dear friend over on Critique Circle.

I'm getting excited, and I'm really hoping editing will be as much as I anticipate - and I hope that the end result will be worthwhile.

I'll let you know how that goes... :D

I Hate Writing?

So. It's the 5th of February, and my writing count for the month stands at a big fat zero. Not fun.

I sat down today to think about writing the beginning... And thought to myself - I hate beginnings. Somehow, they seem like they need to be more perfect than any other part of the story - it's what's going to hook people in, after all.

And then I remembered the trouble I had throughout January trying to finish TBAEO. I hate endings, remember?

All okay. Endings (including the climax) are hard too. So, I hate beginnings and endings... But I can do the middle.

Um, no.

Remember Nano, anyone?

So, I hate the beginning, the ending, and the middles...

Does this mean I hate writing? *grin* No. It just means that the process of writing a novel is a long and difficult one, and my brain is just a little bit lazy.


On that note, off to find a beginning...

World Building - Too Many Ways To Do Things

Help.

It's the third of the month, and I haven't started writing yet.

I know why, and I need some advice...

Basically, I need to do a WHOLE heap more worldbuilding before I continue with any of my stories - and I mean a LOT. So my dilemma is thusly:

Do I sit out the mini-nano we're doing over on critique circle and worldbuild industriously this month (something I find hard to concentrate on in large amounts), or do I write the story anyway, knowing the worldbuilding will be thin and the characters not fully rounded until about half way through??

Which is basically what happened with TBAEO, being a true Nano. It's going to need a complete revamp come rewrite time.

And of course, there's styles of planning to consider - what if writing the story and world building as I go is just the way I work?

Argh. Why can't there just be one definitive way to do this?!

*Sigh*

CELEBRATIONS!!

Hoorah!

I've just completed my first ever novel!

*does happy dance*

And right in time... We're going out to dinner tonight, and now it can be a celebration dinner too :)

Thank you everyone for pushing me to finish :) I owe you all :)

Two P's

Being Progress and Procrastination, naturally.

Progress first.

After a month in which, my spreadsheet informs me, I've averaged a mere 200 words per day, I managed to write over 1200 yesterday. Rah! Net result being, I have less than a chapter and a half to go.

This morning I was early for work, and managed another 285-ish... though still haven't finished either of the two remaining chapters. *sigh*

Hence, the other P... Procrastination.

See, it's HOT this week. And I am TIRED. Neither of these alone are conducive to much writing... Both of them together are plain awful.

So right now, I think I'm going to go have a powernap. Then I'll come back and see if I can hold myself at knife point and get some writing done. :)

I WILL be done with this by the month's end. I WILL.

This Week, In Headlines...

Mostly, this is a post to let you all know that I'm going away tomorrow, and won't be returning until Sunday after lunch. So you probably won't hear from me until some time next week.

Secondarily, this is a post to complain about the painfulness of climaxes. Though whether or not it's the fact that these chapters are the climax that is the problem, or whether it's something else...

No, no, upon reflection I think it might be that it's the climax. See, climaxes have to be right-er than the rest of the book, because really, they're the whole point of it.

At least, that's what my stubborn muse is stubbornly protesting \:|

Lastly, this is a post about short-term plans. I will, I will, I WILL have TBAEO finished by the end of the month - some lovely people (read: suckers) have offered me bookcrits if I do - so I can start The Black Gates in Feb.

So this week, while I'm away, I want a scene from TBAEO done, and the beginnings of an outline for BG. Not too much to ask, really, given I'll have no internet. Oh, did I mention I'm going to summer camp for 10-17 year olds, where I'm one of two counselors for the 17-year-old girls? 60 kids total, four full days and two part days, activities all day, programs at night... Oh yeah, I'll be abounding in time to write. Right?

~Inky, the Hopeful One

PS I'm officially no longer labeling posts about Messiah and/or The Black Gates with the 'Search' label. Just in case you wondered.

No News...

...is not always good news. More likely, it means I've been slacking on the writing and have nothing to report O:)

In my defense, this has turned into a ridiculously busy week. Two friends are getting married on Sunday and there's been lots of 'preparing' to do...

I have, however, managed to complete chapter 19 of Evil Overlord - which means only two more chapters to write, since I've done 22 and 23 already. Apparently, I really hate climaxes |:\

Can we take a vote - who would be willing to read a book that skipped straight from the build-up to the denouement? O:)

Also making news this week... I've devised a schedule for myself for writing this year. I suspect it's way too optimistic, but meh. At least it gives me something to aim for.

Finally, I'm very excited. At the beginning of the week, over on Critique Circle, I deleted my personal queue and created several smaller ones instead. I'm very happy, because they're proving to be rather successful, in that people are using them and critting on them, and conversing on my forum. Hoorah.

*hugs virtual friends*

*casts furtive glance around room*

*chains virtual friends to wall to prevent escape*

*speaks loudly to muffle the screams* Isn't it lovely being popular?

Brainwave

I have been puttering around, making virtually no headway on To Be An Evil Overlord... for nearly six weeks now. In that time, I've written less than 10,000 words. In fact, I've done only just over eight thousand.

That is pathetic.

I mean, I wrote over fifty thousand in November. How can I not write the five or so more that I need to finish the damn book? Seriously, what is wrong with me?

Thusly have I been beating my self over the non-literal head for the past few weeks. To no avail. Do I have a finished manuscript? No.

But tonight, I had a brainwave. I was sitting there, reading Lazette Gifford's Two Year Novel, and all of a sudden something I'd read in Holly Lisle's Create-a-Plot Clinic combined with what I was reading and hit me full force.

See, the muse is a tricky little beast. It doesn't like work, or discipline, or any other of those little nasties that the conscious brain imposes upon it.

And I realised: I can't finish the book because my subconscious - that pesky muse - is afraid of how much work it's going to be to rewrite it. It knows that once I've finished the next thing is rewrites, and that scares it.



"...Rewrites? You've got to be kidding. To rewrite this story you're going to need to add in SO much stuff. You need to weave all those things that happened in the middle into the beginning. You need to solidify the characterisation and make sure it's there from the beginning. You need to iron out the sub plots and make them logical and coherent. You drastically need to time-check the whole thing, and you need to deal with the horrendous amount of POV characters you have. And what the heck happened to the ferret? Seriously? Sounds like a heck of a lot of work to me. Rewrites? Uh uh. Not me. Not today. No thanks.

So, you see, it's probably better if you don't finish. If you don't finish, you can just think about all the stuff you'll need to do, but not actually have to do it. You can say - yes I know the book's not perfect, it's only a first draft - and it will all be okay. I mean, I'm not trying to sabotage you here or anything. You know you can finish it. It's a measly six scenes, right? And you did nearly thirty during nano. So it's not like you're doing it coz you can't.

Besides, you're bored with it anyway, remember? Why don't you try working on these cool stories... They're so much more fun. The plotting is fun, remember? And you love the writing..."



At this point I nearly choke, recalling how many times during nano I hated the fact that I wanted to be a writer, and hated the fact that I had to sit down to write. Muses. Yerk.

Perhaps now I've established the problem, I can devise a solution. I'll let you know how I go with that...