Off To Camp We Go

First I would like to apologize.  I didn't manage to get a single blog post up last week.  I'm supposed to do two a week and failed utterly.  I'm going to blame it on my lack of computer the week before and therefore the overwhelming need to get caught up on my planning goals.  I needed to have a plot done by end of day Thursday, and I just barely managed it (finishing it at 11:52)

Anyway, onto the real point of this post.  Camp Nano.

In November every year (since I started in 2010) I do something called NaNoWriMo.  For any of you that don't know, nano was started by a non-profit organization by the name of OLL (Office of Letters and Light).  Their main goal is to encourage amateur writers to get those books done.  The entire idea behind it (and I'm paraphrasing here) is: You can edit crap, you can't edit nothing.  Yes, I use that phrase all the time, no I didn't actually hear it from the website.

Basically it just means, you need to get that first draft written no matter what.  Don't make excuses, don't put it off, get it done.  Because until you have that rough draft in your hand, you're never going to become the writer you want to be.  It's basically the first step.

Nano has done great things for me.  In 2010 I started off thinking there was no way I was going to reach the goal (which, in case you were wondering, is 50k words in a month) and ended up with three times the amount I needed.  It was crazy.  I discovered so much about myself that month.  That I'm actually quite competitive (I spent the entire month staring at a chart swearing that I was going to surpass that first place person).  That there are, in fact, other people out there like me (before that point it had been a while since I had met anyone who truly understood me).  And, of course, the most important thing of all, that I am a writer.

Why am I telling you all of this?  Well, last year OLL came out with another program (NaNoWriMo isn't the only program they have.  Next year I'm going to try Script Frenzy with some friends as well.  I'm pretty excited.)

They called it Camp NaNoWriMo.  Basically it's just Nano, but in the summer.  You have the same goal as in November, 50k words in a month, but the format is slightly different.  First, all of the pep talks that arrive in your mailbox is camp themed, as is the site itself.  Second, rather than forums and grouping us into our districts, we're assigned cabin mates.  Five other people who are going through the exact same things as you, just trying to survive the month.

Last year, unfortunately, we weren't given a whole lot of notice.  It was about a week before July first that they said 'Hey, by the way, we'll be doing camp this year.'  and nanoers, as a collective, kind of gaped at them like they were trying to tell a joke that simply wasn't funny.

They weren't joking, however, and I was talked into the endeavour by a fellow nanoer.

July I managed to hit my goal (just barely.  I wrote about 25k of it in the last weekend.  It was crazy).  August, I didn't even come close, barely scratching 17k before giving up.  Even the novel I was working on ended up getting scrapped with a barely there plot (they pulled a Lord of the Rings and walked a lot) and characters whose motivations were murky (not to mention the twins who kept switching ages on me...)  With that short of notice, the MLs didn't even have time to consider setting up additional write ins.

It was a tough two months.  On one hand I was glad that OLL decided to set up nano in other months as well (really, once a year just isn't enough) on the other with how badly I did, I almost felt like I shouldn't have even bothered.

This year, of course, we had much more notice (not to mention the fact that the two sessions of Camp are a month apart, running June and August this year).  I wasn't originally planning on doing either session, but a friend of mine won't be able to join us in August, and I wanted to nano with her.  So I wrote up a plot (okay, I started the novel in April and didn't have time to finish it, so that's what I'm working on.)

The title of this book is Pandora.  It's about a female assassin who happens to be a werewolf.  I've never written a character like her before, and I'm finding her to be so much fun.  I love the things she says, and the replies she gets from the people in her life.

So far, at three days in, I'm sitting at 27337 words (54774 words for the novel, as I had already started it) and I'm not even close to regretting the decision to participate.  And doing this session certainly doesn't mean that I'm not going to do the other ones.  By the end of 2012 I fully intend to have one novel out to agents, and five novels written.

I only hope that I'll actually get to sleep in December.

Happy camping to all my fellow nanoers!  I hope your muse smiles on you fondly this month.  May your word counts soar, and your plot remain strong.  Good luck!

And They're Off!

On Tuesday I finished my editing.

That sounds like such an awesome statement, doesn't it?  Just uttering those words gives me a satisfaction that there are literally no words to describe.  Let me say it again.  I finished my editing.

Now that I've heaved that huge sigh of relief, it's time to face reality.

As of Tuesday I was officially done my third draft.  That doesn't mean that the book is perfect, of course.  Far from it.  In fact, I noticed a few things after finishing that will need to be fixed.  It bugged me for about a minute and a half before I remembered that this is far from the last draft of this novel that I will be writing.  I know that, once I get feedback from the beta readers, I'm planning on doing at least one more draft before even considering sending it out to agents.  And that might even end up turning into two, depending on the feedback I get.

Normally this thought might depress me.  I mean, I just finished editing, and already I'm thinking about what else I'm going to have to fix.  This time, though, that depression isn't showing up.  And I think I know why.

I've always struggled getting through this draft.  (In fact, I've never managed to get through a book in the editing stages the first time.  I always find way too much wrong with it, so I end up shelving it and never coming back.) While some writers struggle getting that first draft out, I don't seem to have that problem.  It's reading it over and seeing all the mistakes I've made that I start to feel like I'm in over my head.

Finally I've manged to get all the way through my editing.  I've even sent it to Beta Readers!  Even though I know it's not perfect, and certainly not ready to be sent out to agents, I know that I put a lot of effort into making that novel as good as it could be before I needed another set of eyes to pick out the weaknesses.  (Yes, I do still have some minor line edits that also need to be worked on, but I'll fix those as much as I can as I go through it next time.  Despite the nickname, I'm only human.  Therefore I do make mistakes.)

I'm excited, though.  Beta readers means that I'm one step closer to the goal of being published.  It means that I felt confident enough in my work to give it to friends and cross my fingers that I won't get it back with four notes telling me that maybe this isn't the book that will get published.

Now, more than ever, I'm confident that I'm going to become a published author.  This dream will come true.  I just have to persevere!  And put in the work.  One day I will see The Commons on the shelves at Chapters, and I can't wait.

So Little Time

My goal, as can be seen by looking at my progress before section, is to have The Commons to a completed second draft so that I can send out to my beta readers by the fifteenth.  That's a whole nine days away, and guess how far I am from finishing it?

If you guessed not anywhere near close, you were right!  I'm stuck around chapter 22 (in which I have to rewrite the first scene) of 35.  In the last two days I've barely gotten anything done.  It's a sad fact for me to admit, as I was actually planning on doing at least two chapters a day.  Of course, I was hoping to be done a bit early so I could take one more look over it and see if I missed anything, but that's definitely not going to happen now.

Nine days and thirteen chapters.  Which means I no longer have time to procrastinate.  I can't let myself get distracted by all the shows I want to watch.  I don't have the time to waste, anymore.  If I do get distracted, I'll end up missing my deadline.  And that's not something I'm willing to let happen.  If I don't get my manuscript out to my betas on time, then they wont get it back to me on time.  If I don't get it back in time, then I can't use the feedback to go through it one last time and start sending out queries.

It's the domino effect, writer style.

Now, I suppose you're asking: 'What does it matter if you get your queries out on time?'.  That's a very good question to ask.  The answer is, I was really hoping to do both Camp Nano sessions being held this year.  I also need to plan out the novels I'll be writing during nanowrimo.  If my editing isn't done, and if the queries aren't sent out, then I have to sacrifice one of those things.

In June I'll be taking part in the first session of Camp Nano, where I'll be writing Pandora, I book that I was supposed to write about a month ago.  Procrastination got the better of me then too, and I only managed 25,000 words in the time I should have been able to write 100,000 words.  I've been trying to figure out a way to get motivated when it's no nano...but that's another post.


The point of the matter is, I've already put off writing this novel once.  I can't do that to the characters again.  They've been awfully patient while I've been editing.  Mostly because I promised them that I would be finishing their story in June.  I'm afraid of what would happen if I tried to put it off again.  There might be a riot.

In August, I'm hoping to write The Techs which is the second book in The Commons series.  I've just barely begun to plan it, but I already have a bit of the story line going on, so I'm getting excited.  Of course, I don't want to write the novel until I'm completely done editing the first one.  I'm a little too wary of the changes that I could make which would mean far more work in editing the second one.  I've done that once, and I'll never do it again.

In August I'll need to write about 100,000 words.  I'll have even less time to work on the novel which should, by then, be completed. 

After that comes the planning for the three novels I'm going to be writing during nanowrimo.  Yes, three.  I'm a little crazy like that.  I'll only have two months instead of the planned three.

All of this means that I only have so much time to get my editing done.  I only have so much time to get my queries out.  And I don't have time to be acting like I have all the time in the world.

Nine days to finish thirteen chapters.  It's going to be tight, but I think I can do it.  What's my motivation?  In November I'll be taking a trip down to San Francisco to go the The Night Of Writing Dangerously.  And when I'm down there introducing myself to people, I don't want to tell them that I'm still working on the novel that I'm going to be sending out real soon.  I want to tell them that I have queries out and waiting for responses.  Or maybe, just maybe, that I found an agent

Teaming Up

My multiple projects have been the subject of a couple of my posts now, and it seems that this one is going to be no different.  Probably because I'm starting to feel a little overwhelmed by how much work I've managed to create for myself.  The fact that I actually want to add more projects to that list is really not the point.  The point is that despite how much I have on the go, I have yet to get anything completed.

I'm not the only one with this problem.  A friend of mine on twitter recently commented on a post a made.  It was a random one about having to finish my critiques before going away for the weekend.  She asked if I could look over some of her work, and I happily agreed (because I'm not nearly busy enough, I need to add a couple of more things to my schedule).  She told me that she wasn't close enough to being finished right at that moment, but she would be eventually.

The conversation went on in that direction for a while until she said something about another twitter friend telling her she needed to actually finish a project.  Pick one thing and actually focus on it.  It was so close to my own situation where I just keep project hopping, and never really settling in to get one done, that I couldn't help but tell her I had the same problem.

Of course, us being the writers we are, this realization that we had the same problem when it came to our writing quickly escalated into us have Wonder Twin-Multitaskers Powers.  Don't ask, it was late.

Anyway, while this may seem like nothing more than a random conversation, it was a lot more than that because of what came out of it: accountability.

I don't exactly have a great track record when it comes to being accountable to myself.  I tend to let myself off the hook more often than not, and that leads to things like entire weekends being spent getting caught up on TV shows as opposed to writing the book I was already 40,000 words behind on (no...that book is still not finished.  I no longer have and ETA on that, but I'm hoping eventually, as I have some serious plans for that series.)

Anyway, the point is, it was obviously not working.  Finishing a project isn't the same as doing something like nano.  There I have a chart I have to update daily, I have a word count goal that pretty much everyone in the city whose doing nano knows about.  I have other people working toward that same goal (Yeah, okay, maybe not exactly the same...theirs might be just a bit lower than mine...) that I can compete with to keep myself going.  Right now, though?  Right now I have nothing to keep that motivation.  And if I'm slacking on keeping myself accountable, nothing is ever going to get done.

That's where Moni comes in.  Since she's been having the same problems as me, we've decided to team up.  Create a system where we will be accountable to each other, and with any luck that will be what we need to get our projects moving forward again.

Of course, we haven't started yet.  With travelling over the weekend and critique group, not to mention the fact that we're in different time zones, we've decided to try and get started on Tuesday.  I'm hopeful that this will work.  There's nothing more encouraging than knowing there's another writer out there working on their projects at the same time as you and struggling just as much with the same issues.

Come Tuesday we'll see if we can actually get our projects done.  (I will be working on The Commons and getting it ready to be sent out, even though Pandora isn't done being written yet.  I would love to spend all of my time in Jayne's world, but it's really not fair to characters and plots I've already started.  Only once The Commons is out to beta readers will I allow myself to be pulled back into Pandora. Sorry Jayne.)

I will, however, be doing Camp Nano in June this year.  I don't know yet if I will just be writing the end of Pandora or if I will be writing something new.  I need to see how quickly I can get through my editing.  Either way, though, I'm glad that I found another writer than can hopefully help me through the multitasking cycle of starting a new project without finishing the last.

A Fresh Start

Well, the race is on.  Again.  It's time for me to start writing a novel.  One that I've told myself I'll try and get out in the same amount of time it took me to write a novel during November.  In case you're wondering, that means that I need to write this novel in only ten days.  I'm not entirely sure I can actually do it, but that's got more to do with the fact that I'm not putting my life on hold for this book like I do in November.  I have plans with friends, I haven't stopped going to critique group, and I don't know if I'll even have time to write ten thousand words a day.

But now that I've decided to do it, and even promised the character that it would be done by April, I can't back out.  First of all, if I did, I would end up with a character yelling at me and not giving me any rest until  I actually wrote it.  Second, I would be disappointed because I wouldn't have that novel I need to submit to my critique group so I can get my current novel ready for beta readers then for submission.

The worst part is that I have everything planned out.  And when I say everything, trust me, I mean EVERYTHING.  I have character bibles for each of my main to more important background characters.  Each bible consists not only of what they look like, but also their personality, their goals in the book, the motivations, what makes obtaining their goals difficult, any growth they have in the book, what their role is and any back history I've come up with for them.  (In case you're wondering, these characters have some of the strongest and most details character histories that I've ever written...)  I have pages and pages of brainstorming, as well as two pages devoted entirely to a cast list, naming every character that could possibly come up in the book.  And, finally, I have an entire plot written out (not too detailed, because I'd spend the entire time writing frustrated.  My characters don't really like to stick to the plan...) in my scrivener file.

The writing should be the easy part with all of that planning out of the way.  Especially since I don't have to make any actual decisions while I'm writing (which is good as I'm kind of indecisive...) I should be able to just sit down and write it, after all, my characters are even talking to me, and I can see some of the scenes in my head!  Scenes that I desperately want to write.

So what's holding me back?

Chapter one.  It's as simple as that.  When I wrote the plot I made it very vague, and I hadn't really decided on anything, up to and including what the guy did to deserve being killed.  I didn't even know what he looked like or did for a living.  I didn't have a single clue as to how my main character was going to approach him, never mind kill him.  Both of these things were very important as my character is actually an assassin and was being hired to kill the guy.

When I sat down to write, I found myself staring at a blank page certain I had a fantastic idea, but having no idea how I was going to start it.  Where this first chapter, that introduces the character, but not really the story, was going to go.  My mind blanked.  So I got desperate and wrote the first thing that came to mind.  In first person as I had planned.

Turns out the first thing I think of isn't always the right thing.  Or even good.  After 1200 words I was getting increasingly frustrated and realizing that if I continued to write like that the book that I've been looking forward to writing for so long was going to go the way of all the other books I've written so far: directly into that dusty old folder in the back of my computer.  That's the last thing I want.

So I did the only thing I could do.  The thing that nearly made me cry, as those were the only words written on the novel and I was supposed to write 10,000 words.  I deleted them and started over.

While it was a hard thing to do, it was the best thing.  I changed to third person, which I find much easier to write in. (Originally I thought I should do first because so many other books like the one I'm writing are written in first.  When I first started writing I actually wrote in first and never thought I'd be able to change to third.  I was wrong...)

Now I'm only 450 words into the first chapter (a far cry from my 10k goal...) but they're far better than the original 1200 I had been working with.  I'm looking forward to writing the scene, and I'm once again hopeful that I can write something other than crap.

Sometimes you really do have to give yourself a fresh start, whether you're at 1200 or 65,000 words.  Just make sure that you need to give up on it before you do.  You'll kick yourself if you start all over again just to realize that what you had already written had potential.

Well, time for me to get back to writing...hopefully I can hit that elusive 10k soon.  I've gotta get this book written!

Shiny New Ideas Take 2

Lately I've been getting a lot of Shiny New Ideas coming through.  Thankfully I've got a book specifically devoted to that very thing, but that's not the point. The point is, I don't have time to be working on shiny new ideas.

I'm currently in the middle of planning (soon to be writing) one book, editing another book, and even have a few collaborations in the mix.  Shiny new ideas aren't going to be worked on until, at the very earliest, during the June session of camp nano (something that I wasn't actually planning on doing, but may end up participating in.  Still thinking about it.  I'll need to get a little bit closer to the date before I really know if I can or not.)

So why are they coming to me now?  Why not when I'm in the middle of my editing and welcome the distraction?  (Yeah, yeah, I know.  I shouldn't be welcoming a distraction when I'm editing.  I'm working on it, I swear.  I just...don't like editing...)

An answer was suggested to me yesterday: The reason Shiny New Ideas present themselves when I'm planning or writing is because I'm being creative.  Those gears are already turning while I'm trying to figure out the novel or write the scene, so those new ideas occur to me because I'm open to them already.

Unfortunately this means that, even for that quick second, I'm distracted by this new idea instead of concentrating on the book I need to pay attention to.  Distraction tends to mean that I'm pulled out of the world, and I can sometimes have a hard time getting back into it.  Focusing on the characters that I need to focus on, rather than the tantalizing story that the new voices bring with it.  (Yes, I'm aware how crazy that makes me sound.  You don't need to tell me.  I've come to accept my craziness as a part of who I am.)

If only there was some way to ignore these thoughts while I'm brainstorming, but still be able to remember them when I'm not and have time to get them down.  I wish it worked like that, unfortunately muses and characters seem to work on the same idea: When we start talking, you had better jump, or we're going to shut up for a good long time and leave you annoyed and frustrated.

For now, though, I suppose I'll just have to grin and bear it.  After all, I've been museless before and it just isn't any fun. (is there such a thing as an editing muse?  If so, can someone tell mine that she's/he's been seriously slacking?  They've used all of their vacation time, and they need to get back so I can actually get past the first draft of a book!  Thanks.)  For years I thought that I didn't have a muse at all, so now that she's talking to me, I find myself unwilling to risk angering her enough that she goes on vacation again.

I suppose I should stop ranting now, though.  After all, Shiny New Ideas, even untimely ones, are better than having no ideas at all, which I know that some writers have a problem with.  I just have to learn how to keep my attention focused on one thing for long enough to actually finish it.  At this point I keep starting series, then scrapping it before I even get to the second book, which means that so far my characters haven't gotten an ending.  I'm hoping The Commons is the one that's going to keep my attention for longer.  Finger's crossed!

Writing Together

In my last post I told you all about wordmongering, a fantastic hashtag that created a writing community on twitter.  And that's what I want to talk about today again.  A writing community.

Most people think that writing is a solitary activity.  For the most part, they're right.  The actual act of sitting down and writing is something you have to do alone.  You can be in a group of people, which I actually find quite helpful, but the writing itself is a solitary thing.

I find, though, that at times the writing can be more of a group activity than most people would think.  Without the writing community (more like a friend, but one that I wouldn't have met without a writing community) Monday would have been a very frustrating night for me.

I am currently in the middle of planning a novel that I'm hoping to have finished the first draft of by the end of the month.  The book has one of the largest casts I've worked with, and one of the characters decided that Monday was the night he was finally going to start talking to me.  Unfortunately it was like he didn't realize just how loud it is in my head.  You may have noticed that I'm working on a few projects.  The characters from all of those books are always trying to get my attention.

Well, he managed to get my attention with a single stray thought.  That single thought managed to get me thinking about the different possibilities that could happen with this character.  Was he going to betray the main character?  Because that was the stray thought that managed to grab my attention.

Except that betraying her wasn't really in his character.  He may be an assassin, but I really didn't see him killing the girl that he trained as, basically, his replacement.  No matter how much I thought about it, though, whatever he was trying to tell me just wasn't getting through.  It was like we were on a call and all I could hear was static with a few words breaking through.  Then it suddenly felt like I lost the call altogether.

So I decided that I had to get some perspective.  That's where a good writing community really starts to come in handy.  With the help of some of my friends, who are also writers, I managed to figure out that the thought he was giving me wasn't at all what I originally thought it was.  I'm not going to post the solution I came up with, because I wouldn't want to ruin the surprise.  After all, this book is going to end up getting published, and you're all going to buy and read it, right?

Through talking it out I managed to figure out a whole subplot, a twist, that I had no idea was there.  If they hadn't been there, I'm pretty sure I would have never figured it out.  Something would have always felt wrong, and most likely, my character would have stopped talking to me altogether.  Which is not something that I like to have happen.

Do you have a writing community that can help you work through the problems in your stories?  Or do you go it alone, a true lone wolf?

The Learning Curl

Did you know that Canada won the first ever World Curling Championship?  According to wikipedia this competition was held in Falkirk and Edinburgh in 1959.  In curling there's a team member called the 'Skip'.  Essentially the skip is the leader of the team.  They're the ones that plan out the strategies and tell the team how they need to play that round.  They wear two different shoes while they play.  One that has a grip, that they generally use to push off from the 'hack' when delivering a stone.  The other has no grip, which they use to slide on the ice during the delivery, or to slide down the ice while sweeping.

Why am I telling you all of this?  Well, I thought I would share all the knowledge I'm acquiring for my current novel.

You see, I happened to see a curling game last Saturday.  Not in person, or anything, it was just on tv.  The thing is, though, I've never been remotely interesting in curling.  I've heard it mentioned before, and I had the vaguest idea what they did during the game, but it wasn't something I cared about.  Or ever even had an interest in watching.  So why was I so very captivated by this game?

I let it slide, though, thinking that it was just a one time thing.  I cared only because it was on, and once it was out of sight it was out of mind.  Which was generally true.

Except that I kept seeing games everywhere I went.  This probably had a lot to do with the tournament of hearts being in full swing, but every time I saw it, I wanted to stop and watch.  It hit me when I was sitting in Denny's trying to pay to the conversation, and was instead being distracted by the curling game that was being shown on the tv: it was my character that was making me care about it.

My character (a female werewolf assassin, in case you were wondering) is, apparently, a curler.  She's one of those people I was watching going out on the ice and throwing stones.  Not professionally, of course.  But she definitely does this on her off time.

For me, that meant one thing: research.  I'll admit, I'm not a huge fan or research.  In fact, if I could avoid it altogether, I will, and I have in the past.  I write fantasy novels for the simple reason that the entire world comes from my head.  In other words, no research needed!

Now I'm stuck finding out more about a sport that I never cared about before (though after this is done, I might care just a little bit more) all so I can accurately depict a hobby that my character enjoys.

In the meantime, though, I thought that you all might enjoy it if I shared what I had learned so far about the not so well known sport.  Like the fact that the team with the last throw has what's called the 'hammer'.  It's an advantage in the game, making it easier for that team to score points.  If the other team manages to get points instead, that's called a steal.

Oh, the things we do for our characters.  I suppose I should consider myself lucky for not having researched anything that will have some unknown section of the government thinking I'm a terrorist or the like...yet...

What have you learned about for the sake of your characters?

Ick

I had a blog post all planned out for today.  I was actually looking forward to writing it, but something happened that completely changed what I wanted to talk about.

Most of you probably don't know this, but I don't get sick very often, and even when I do I actually find it hard to make myself call in sick to work.  It's dumb, but I feel bad when I don't go into work, because all I can think about are the people at work being busy and I'm just laying in bed.  It's horrible.  Anyway, the point of the matter is, I'm sick.

Let me tell you about me trying to plan a novel while I'm sick.

I talk to my characters in order to figure out what's going on in the books I"m writing.  Yes, I know, this makes me sound crazy.  Nevertheless, this is the way I do things.  Normally 'talking' to them consists of them showing me scenes or pictures that I interpret.  Very rarely they actually speak.  When I'm sick, though, that connection is a little like trying to watch television back in the rabbit ears days.  If that's not bad enough, it's also when it was snowing outside, so the reception is terrible.  The sound is gone, and even the pictures are fuzzy.

It's frustrating to say the least, and I'm pretty sure that even my characters are starting to feel it at this point.  My poor Jayne Pheare is in complete distress, because I've been promising her that I would be seriously planning her story starting this week, but nothing that she's trying to tell me is actually getting through.  (Though I did finally figure out her assassin name last night, thanks to Eric.)

Needless to say, it makes planning a novel rather impossible.  I can sit with that notebook open in front of me for hours, and have Jayne yelling at the top of her lungs in the back of my head, and I still can't figure anything out.

This, of course, leaves me with a bit of a problem.  As I said in my last post, my goal for having the first draft of Pandora written is the end of March.  That means it needs to be ready to deliver into the hands of my critique group (at least the first chapter) by the second day of April.

How am I supposed to do that when I can't even plan right now?  Planning takes much longer for me than the actual writing does, so right about now I'm actually beginning to freak out.  Being sick was not in the plan!  In fact, now is pretty much the worst time for me to be sick.  I need this stupid cold to go away so that I can get back to the important things.  Like writing down everything my character's trying to tell me about her story.

I suppose the best I can do it try and get better as fast as I possibly can so that I can have as much time as possible to get the planning done.  I just hope that this one ill timed sickness doesn't completely set me back, because I plan to have The Commons in the hands of beta readers by the end of April, and querying it no later than the beginning of June.

Good luck to me.

Time To Prioritize

I have never been someone that can have just one project going at a time.  I get bored with it and start wondering off to do other things, such as reading or catching up on tv shows. (The fact that I do these things even when I have multiple projects on the go is completely besides the point...)

Anyway, I currently have about 6 projects on the go, each at a different stage of the writing/editing process.  I have my Dangerous Waters, a fantasy novel that I wrote last year and didn't look at for a few months until we started critique group.  I've also written the second novel, Changing Tides but as I haven't finished the edits on the first one, you can bet that I haven't even so much as glanced at the second one.  Considering how many chapters I'm having to rewrite, or just add altogether, I'm actually a little afraid to find out how bad the second one is.

I have The Commons, a YA dystopian that is set in a world where more than three quarters of the population was wiped out in the fourth world war.  The remaining people have separated into two societies.  The Commons and The Techs.  This novel is the one that I finished and thought 'I'm going to get this published.'  I have absolute confidence in it and can't wait to test the waters and see what agents and publishers think of it.  I currently have it going through critique group.

Wolf's Blood is an urban fantasy that I started writing with a friend some time last year.  Unfortunately, we're both quite busy, so we've only managed to write a whole 5 chapters, but as we're still talking to each other I'm counting it as a success.

Since November I've had this idea for a book bouncing around in my head.  It's about a werewolf assassin, and her name is Jayne Pheare (That's her real name, don't know her assassin name yet.)  The book itself is, unfortunately, untitled.  I have lots of work to do on it, as I'm still in the planning stages for this novel (including working out a brand new city for it with the help of my dear friend Eric) I'm very excited for this novel, but I just haven't had time to sit down and really connect with Jayne.  (I have to say, she's being very patient.  She only got annoyed that one time when I pulled out a brand new character and started paying attention to her...)

I also have two more collaborations in the works, but both are untitled and in the planning stages with only the bare bones placed, and not even nailed down yet.

This past week, though, I've had some time to think about these projects, and the priority I've been giving each.  (This 'time' has been while at work, or travelling back and forth between different social engagements...not actual time that I had to sit down and plan or edit.  Trust me, that's what I would have been doing if it was.)

Much as I love Dangerous Waters, lately I've been finding it harder and harder to concentrate on it.  In fact, on more than one occasion, I've actually considered shelving it indefinitely.  That there was just too much work that needed to be done on it to conceivably finish the series, and it's time to move onto greener pastures.  I don't actually want to do that, though.  I love the series, and I do think that it has some serious potential.  But I've been so frustrated with it, I can no longer see the potential, all I see is a pile of crap that needs be thrown out.

In order to keep myself from doing that very thing, I decided that it's time to re-prioritize my writing projects.  Instead of throwing two full manuscripts in the trash and walking away, I've decided that they should be shelved only for a little while.  This will (hopefully) give me enough of a break from the project to clear my head and allow me to see what needs to be done without wanting to bang my head on a desk.  Repeatedly.

Unfortunately, this leaves me with nothing to be working on so I can send out some queries, come May.  In order to fill that, I've decided to pull The Commons from the critique group.  This book is one that I'm actually quite excited about.  I can see it on the shelves for sale, and I want it to get it out there.  I'm hopeful that this is the right move, and I can't wait to finish editing the rest of the novel so I can start working on those queries.

That, of course, leaves me with an opening on what I'm sending into critique group.  So I've decided that for the next month or so I'm going to have a strong focus on my Jayne Pheare book.  (I can get a first draft written in about 10 days, but I have to have it completely plotted out, which takes quite a bit of work.)

As for my collaborations, those will stay the same.  I can't just sit down and work on them all day, so I will do what I can when I can, as I have been doing thus far.  I just hope that my next chapter for Wolf's Blood doesn't take me 4 months again...

Now I just need to get my critiques done so I can get on top of this planning.  The goal is to have Jayne Pheare written in full by the end of march so I can get started on some serious edits for The Commons.  Let's hope this works, because this is the Epic Year of Querying, and I need to start getting some work out to agents and publishers!

So Behind!

On Wednesday I told you all about my critique group, which (in case I didn't tell you then) I actually love.  A lot.  And I'm seriously excited about this Monday when we get to see what everyone came up with for some writing prompts that were sent out.

Now, I actually finished my stories for Monday on Friday.  And I was happy that I managed it, because I was having some difficulties with the second short story I was writing.  You see, I started writing it on Thursday, and by Friday I was a fair bit into it.  It was sitting at 1500 words, and I had it open and was staring at it during #FNTWP, when I realized why I wasn't willing to write as much as I normally am.

Nothing was happening in it.  I mean, at all.  The story was starting to read like the first chapter of a novel, with world building to boot.

Don't get me wrong, I thoroughly enjoyed the world.  In fact, I may find myself writing about that world in the near future.  Unfortunately, the way it was reading wasn't good for a short story.  I had to somehow put a whole lot of tension and conflict into the last 1500 words, and I didn't even know where the story was going.  I didn't have a good enough grasp on the character, or the setting, to be effective doing it.

Of course, this realization came only after a comment was made by a twitter friend (L.S. Taylor) asked me if maybe there wasn't any tension in it.  That was when I went back and reread what I had written so far (something I don't usually do for fear that I'll not want to finish writing it because it's just that bad).  And it was that bad.  I had a moment of sitting there staring dumbly at the screen, thinking 'what the hell am I going to do now', and then another story idea hit me.

There wasn't even a moment's hesitation after I had that random idea.  I instantly closed that document, opened another and was off.  I finished the story some three hours later (though it is sitting at 3650 words, and needs to be cut down closer to 3000).

Now, of course, I have 2 full short stories (totaling about 6850 words) and 2 chapters (totaling about 5000 words) to edit before tomorrow.  I'm sitting at work, wondering if I will possibly have time to do it all, and kicking myself for not getting it done sooner.  I probably shouldn't be so hard on myself, after all, if I had finished that second story any sooner, it wouldn't be what it is right now.  I would still be holding onto that first story that was going nowhere, and I would have heard about it from my critique group come Monday.

Unfortunately I'm stuck trying to get it all done today so that I'm ready for tomorrow. (Technically I have until the end of the day to get in my submission for next week, but as tomorrow is going to be a full day, I just don't have time to work on it.  Which means I must have it done tonight!!)

Well, I suppose I should really get on it so I can get caught up.  Wish me luck!!

Why Do I Do This To Myself?

Ever since I started doing nano, I have discovered that I suddenly have a life.  Where I was once a hermit who stayed in my room pretty much 95% of of the time, I now find myself going out more days than staying in.  Seeing my friends, going to movies, I even am part of a poker night.  (Don't get worried, it's a $2 buy in.  Any more than that and I would probably be backing away from the table, shaking my head.).  I'm also part of a critique group, which has been awesome in helping me to see my work in a new light.

Normally the way our critique group works is that we each send in a chapter (or two) of our current novel, and two people critique it.  (There are six people in our group, but we've broken up into two groups of three, because critiquing five selections would just take far too much time.)  We get together every two weeks to deliver the critiques to each other, and (at least I find) they help us to fix that chapter, or edit the next chapter.  Hell, it even helps us to fix our work as we're writing it.  Since I've started critique group, even my first drafts are getting better.  I'm more aware of my word choice, and description (though I still have a long way to go with that last one)

This month, though, we decided to try something a little different.  I'm not entirely sure if we'll ever do it again, as this is just an experiment (and I don't know about everyone else, but there's just so much to do this week!)

Anyway, on Monday we're going to have our first ever 'writing night'.  Unlike our nano meets, where we just get together and work on our own individual manuscripts, for this writing night an assignment (or two) were sent out.  Each assignment had their own set of rules that we had to follow, including no beta readers, and they had to be done for Monday, when we're going to read them aloud to the group.  Of course critiques will come in when the rest of the group weighs in on on what we've been working on all week.

My first confession: I'm the one who created the assignments, and set the rules.

On Sunday night I was frantically looking through pictures trying to find pictures, and reading through books to find writing prompts.  Despite what you may think, I definitely didn't have an advantage on everyone else.  I didn't look for the pictures or prompts ahead of time, as it was all done the night before I had to send it out.  But I did get it out.

My second confession:  I apparently don't want to follow the rules.

Which is terrible, because I wrote the bloody rules.  Literally.  I keep wanting to get one of my coworkers to read it for me.  Then I have to remind myself that I can't.  I even managed to write my first story about 200 words over the limit, meaning I now have to go back and somehow edit 200 words out of the bloody thing.  Something that I am dreading doing, because I always hate cutting words out of my stories.  I wrote it that way for a reason, and now I have to figure out which parts aren't actually necessary.  While I'm doing it, I have to actually think about what my critique group would say.

Needless to say, I'm nervous.  At one point in my life, I actually thought that I would never be able to write a novel.  I proved myself wrong on that one.  I've now written nine novels, with another one in the brainstorming stage, and two more collaborations I'm trying to work through.  Now, though, I find it hard to put my entire thought process into a three thousand words.  I can't even write a stand alone novel, for crying out loud.  I think in series!  Not short stories.

As this was my idea, however, I can't let myself not put my all into it.  I got through the first draft of this story, and I actually think that this story was pretty good.  I may change my mind when I go back and edit, but for now, I actually like this story.  And I firmly believe that my critique group is the reason this story is so good.

Now I just need to get one more story done before Monday.  Hopefully this one wont go over the word limit!

The Definition of Insanity

So, last week I set a goal for myself.  I wanted to finish three chapters of rewrites/new chapters.  I didn't have as much free time as I though I would, and I found myself procrastinating (as I always do).  Still, I was able to tell myself that I would be able to get it done on Sunday.  It was only three chapters, after all.  It would have been better to get some of it done before hand, but I have written that much in a single day before, so I didn't foresee myself having a problem doing it.

I don't know if any of you know this, but one definition of insanity is: Doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results.  I've always joked that, if this is true, then working in retail must be insane.

Yesterday I sat down all ready to do my edits.  I opened the document and even started writing.  I was going to get this chapter done in record time and move onto the next, because I was determined to finish the goal I set for myself.  It was definitely going to happen.

I managed to make it to about five paragraphs in before I started having trouble.  The words weren't flowing, and it was quickly becoming apparent that this chapter wasn't any better than the one I had just decided to rewrite.  In fact, I was leaning toward it actually being worse, which definitely isn't a good thing when the whole point of rewriting is to make it better.

So I scrapped those five chapters, thinking that I could do better.

Again  I managed to make it to about five paragraphs in, and again it just wasn't working, no matter what I did.  The description sucked.  The dialogue was utter crap, and don't even get me started on the voice.  Nothing was working!

But I was determined.  Those three chapters were in my sight, and I really wanted to get it all done.  No, not wanted, I was going to get them done.

Once more I got started on the chapter, throwing what I had already written away and struggling through those paragraphs, trying to make them what I wanted them to be.  Trying to force out the words that just weren't coming as easily as they should be.

It was around this time that I ended up getting some not so great news and was starting to feel annoyed and frustrated.  I can barely get anything done when I'm in a good mood, but the way I was feeling, there was no way that editing was going to be finished.

It took a while, but I managed to get myself out of the bad mood and willing to look at the chapter without fear of ruining it completely, and that was when it hit me.  There was a reason the chapter wasn't working.  One that I might not have noticed if I hadn't taken that mental step back and let myself look at it with fresh eyes.

I was trying to write it from the wrong character's POV.  I had originally chosen one of the characters, and when it came to rewriting, I thought I might as well stick with her.  After all, I must have had a reason for why I originally chose her, right?  I couldn't quite remember what that was, but I assumed that I hadn't simply picked a name out of a hat.

At this point, I still don't remember what made me chose her to begin with, but I do know what fixed the problem that I was having with the chapter.  I changed the POV.

It was that simple.  All of a sudden everything was working better.  The words were flowing (not as well as when I write a first draft, but well enough).  I didn't feel like everything that I was writing was worse than the first time around.  In fact, I was pretty sure that it was better.  Much better.

I only managed to get about 1000 words written, but as those words were all written some time after ten, I'm actually alright with that number.  Happy with them, even.  And excited that I no longer feel so bloody stuck on a chapter that I'm never going to finish.

Now, of course, I just have to finish the chapter, and move onto the next.  Maybe even remind myself that I need to take a step back when I'm doing rewrites.  I can't be as close to the action as I can be when I'm writing a first draft.  I have to look at the writing with a much more impartial eye.  I can't allow my feelings for the characters, or what I have originally written, to blind me to the flaws in my writing.

I probably won't finish this chapter tonight, and I don't know how much time I'll have to edit this week, but I'm going to set the same goal I set for myself last week.  To finish the next three chapters.  A week late, but better than it never getting done, right?

One Step Forward, But Standing Still

Today I finished the editing for my next critique group submission.  I wanted to get it done yesterday, but it seems I have become better at procrastination than I originally thought.  So, I decided to be happy with finishing today, as well as getting this blog post done.

Anyway, the point of the matter is that I finished the next two chapters, and I was happy that I finished it so early in the week, even if it was a day later than I was actually hoping for.  I was ahead of the game.

Unfortunately then I made the mistake of looking at my Dangerous Waters manuscript.  That's the one I'm trying to get through right now.  That's the one I want to have polished and ready by the end of April.  That's the one I want to query and get published.  It's the one I've put the most work into.

Sadly, it's also the one that still needs the most work.

A couple of weeks ago I went through the chapters I had left to edit and picked through the ones that (obviously) needed rewrites, and the ones I could try and edit.  I also figured out how many chapters I would have to add in order to fix the many mistakes I made while writing the novel.  (While it wasn't one of my nano novels, I still wrote it fairly quickly, and as it was one of my early novels, I didn't have the plot nailed down nearly as much as I thought when I started writing it).

Thirteen.  That's the number of chapters that need to be rewritten or added altogether.  I only had about twenty left to edit, so that's a fair amount.

This leaves me with a bit of a problem.  All of that work certainly doesn't make me want to actually do the editing.  It probably would have been better if I hadn't gone through and figured out what needed to be done.  Yet I can't regret it because I've always been a planner.  I actually spend more time planning them than I do writing them.  So not knowing how much I was going to have to change was bothering me enough that I felt I had to do it, and I did.

Being at a stand still with Dangerous Waters, however, means more than that one novel never being finished.  In fact, not finishing that novel means that all the other projects I have on the go (refer to the Progress Report section) are also not getting worked on or completed.

Sometimes I tend to get myself in over my head.  For example, during nano I decided to write 200,000 words.  But about five days in I changed that to 300,000 words.  Most of the month I was overwhelmed and thought I wouldn't finish.  I did.  Just barely, but I did.  Now I have all of this work, and I'm feeling overwhelmed, but for some reason I'm not really moving forward.  I can get done what I need to get done for my critique group, but other than that, I'm not making any progress.

It doesn't matter that I really want to finish this novel.  That I want to have it, done and complete, in my hands, and ready to send out to agents and publishers.  I want to feel like I've accomplished something.

I guess I'll just have to suck it up and get down to it.  Starting tomorrow (and everyday for at least a little while until Monday) I'm going to continue editing Dangerous Waters.  I have a goal to finish the next three chapters by the end of Sunday.  (In case you were wondering, the next three chapters are ALL rewrites, so it's going to be harder than it sounds.)

Don't worry, I'll let you know how it goes in my next post, also scheduled Sunday.  Till then, happy editing!

Two Months Already?

Yesterday I went to our first nano meet since November.  Our group is awesome, as we don't like to wait an entire year to see each other, so we meet up once a month, except for December, when we're all pretty nano-ed out (and with Christmas, it makes it hard to find a time.)

Anyway, it was fantastic.  While we didn't have quite the turn out that we have during November, I got to see more than a few people who I have been missing.  And it hit me while I was there...it's been two months since I've seen everybody last.

Two months.  Really?  I don't know about you guys, but my Christmas is always busy.  December is stuffed full of shopping that no one really wants to do, travelling that leaves you tired only to see the family for maybe two days before you find yourself back to reality and trying to get back into the swing of things.  For me January was nearly as busy, with me trying to keep up on the ridiculous amounts of editing I have to do for my Dangerous Waters book, along with critique group stuff.  And then losing my grandfather last week and having to drop everything I was doing to go down and see the family again.

These last two months have been crammed full.  They were tiring, and in some cases not all that pleasant, and I should be glad to have them done.  And I am glad.  I was glad that I could see the people that I am quickly coming to see as my family.  I was glad to be back in the atmosphere of a group of writers just wanting to get that book done.  While there wasn't the competitive nature that there is during November, just being there and seeing those people helped to remind me that just because nano is over and everything is changing, doesn't have to mean that it's all bad.

Despite how busy I've been, though, when I was sitting in that restaurant yesterday, looking around at the room full of writers that have the ability (and have managed to do so in the past) to scare waitresses and make them worry about us, I couldn't help but think 'wait, it's been two months already'?

Two months since I wrote three novels (and I'm not even done editing the one I started before nano)?  Two months since I've seen everyone.  Two months where I've barely written anything!

It's sad, really, that all I've written since nano ended is a single chapter that I owed a friend for a collaboration I'm doing.  I try to remind myself that I've been editing, but that's not really true, either.  I've been procrastinating.  I've been blogging (Which I love and wont stop doing.  In fact, you can start looking forward to two posts a week instead of one, at least for next month).  I've been critiquing.  But I haven't been doing what I should be doing, at least not with the seriousness that I should have.

So as of right now, I'm going to set this goal for myself:  I am going to finish Dangerous Waters by the end of April. (Beta readers allowing, of course.)  I'm going to have a new book (thus far untitled) written before the end of July (To the first draft.)  And I am going to update my blog twice a week.

To be honest, I don't know if I can do all of it, but I'm certainly going to try.  Because if I don't take myself seriously and force myself to do the work, can I really expect other people to take me seriously?

Wish me luck!

When Life Laughs At Your Plans

Since November I have been furiously trying to get everything done.  I've started the Epic Year of Querying (and I do plan on getting some of that done, I just have to finish editing first) I've joined a contest, and I've been taking this blog seriously, rather than something I thought I should do because everyone else was doing it.  In other words, I've become a writer.

Just like in writing, I have plans for my life.  I planned, for instance, that I would get my editing done for critique group this weekend.  And that I would be hanging out with my friends.  I was living my life the way I thought I should.

That was when disaster struck.  You see, life never lets you do exactly what you want it to.  Sometimes there are things in life that makes you drop everything you're doing.  Things that usually come to you in a single phone call and you realize that your life is about to change again.

On friday, at about 5 pm, I got just such a phone call.  It was from my mother, and we knew it was bad because she was crying.  Though I've seen my mom cry before, she always tries to play things down for us.  When she was getting an angiogram last year she told us it was 'just a test, and I'm fine.' So when we answered that phone, we knew that something was seriously wrong.

My grandfather died on friday.

We didn't spend weeks visiting him in the hospital while he drifted further and further away.  We weren't mentally prepared for this to happen.  He had been having some heart problems, and he even had surgery in 2010, from which he never quite recovered fully from, but his death was still a shock.  He died after getting morphine for some pain.  They never diagnosed what, exactly happened.  All we know is that he fell asleep and his heart stopped.

My grandfather never lived near me, and yet so many of my childhood memories include him.  He used to be in the marines, you know the type.  Tattoos all down his arms, all of them obviously made while on a boat in the middle of God-knows-where.  He handed out presents at christmas - unless he was just getting off a night shift and needed sleep.  He had an argument with us when we were kids about The Lion King, because lions don't talk!  He was my Papa, and I loved him.

Getting that phone call meant that all of those plans that I had got ripped apart and thrown out the window.  I always imagined having kids and coming down to visit my grandma and grandpa.  I never, for a second, thought that I would have to get married without him, and yet I'm not even engaged yet.  Even this weekend, one that I thought would be spent with friends and having fun, I'm instead at my grandmother's house preparing to go to a funeral home.

Life has it's own plans.  And these kinds of things are what makes us who we are.  How do we deal with the deal of a beloved grandfather?  Do we just deny it and go on with our lives?  Do we let it stop us dead in our tracks?  He may not have always been there, but I always knew that he was somewhere out there.  Somewhere that I could go to anytime I wanted to hear some awesome stories from when he was in the marines.  Or how he was trying to learn Manderin.

He's gone now, and I'm dedicating this blog post to him.  I'll also be dedicating my first book to both him and my cousin.  The Bryans in my life that are gone now.  (Another plan that has changed.)

Papa, we love you, and we'll miss you.  I hope that one day I get to see you again.  Until that day, look over us and keep us safe and together.  Just know that we'll remember you.  Always.

The Commons - A YA novel

Alright, I know that I just posted yesterday, but I have been shown a very interesting link by a friend.  One that brought me to a contest.  And, as I pointed out in my blog yesterday, I may be slightly competitive, and so find that I am unable to resist entering this.  Check out Brenda Drake's Blog for further details.  Unfortunately the contest ends tomorrow, but I'm hoping that at least some of you get to see this.  Anyway, the entry is requested on the blog as well as in the comments, so here goes:

Title: The Commons
Genre: YA dystopian
Word Count: 101,000

Pitch:  At the end of the Great War, the world split into two societies: The Commons and The Techs.  Now the two worlds are about to collide, and neither will ever be the same again.

First 150 words:

Once these streets had been filled with tall buildings. Large concrete structures where the people went to work every day. Streets that spanned for miles that were constantly jammed with an endless stream of cares. It was hard to believe that this was all that was left. Only one grey building stretched up to the sky, but even the top of that one was jagged and unstable. The rest of the street consisted mostly of piles of concrete.

It was an all too familiar sight to Arisa, who had been travelling to all the city ruins. Each one seemed to be worse than the last, until she had arrived here. She did not know what city it had once been, but from the remains she would guess it had been hit hard in the great war.

Arisa let these thoughts run through her head as she stared around herself.

Shiny New Ideas

First things first.  I must give props and respect to both L. S. Taylor and J. Larkin for getting some queries out and officially starting out Epic Year of Querying.  Much as I hate the fact that I'm losing (I may be just a little competitive...) I love that we have some numbers up there!  Can't wait to see how well we do with these queries this year.  (Especially once the rest of use get our acts together and get them out there.)

Moving on.  This week I have managed to not get any editing done.  You may recall in my last post I talked about how I had to rewrite about 13 chapters in the last half of my novel.  I wasn't exactly looking forward to all of the extra work, of course, but I also wasn't planning on never getting around to it.

In the last week I have caught up on three or four shows I've been putting off since November.  I've started reading a book that I just got in and is the sequel to a book I really liked. I've cleaned my room and organized all of my writing stuff.  I've set up the new printer my boyfriend bought me.  I even just barely managed to get the two critiques I need for tomorrow done.  (The feedback I give to the other three that I don't need to critique are barely started, however)

After that, why don't we all take a wild shot in the dark about how much editing I've gotten done.

None.  Zilch.  Nada.  Zero.  I haven't even brought my manuscript with me in an effort to make it look like I might be getting some editing done.  Oh no.  Instead it's sitting on my desk awaiting the arrival of my motivation (which I'm seriously starting to think is on an extended vacation.)  Two months after nano, and I still can't get my motivation together enough to carve my novel into something that people actually want to read.  The fact that the first half of it is out with beta readers doesn't even begin to touch the motivation I need to gather up in order to get those chapters done.

So why is it that I don't have this motivation?  Well, I think I've got a pretty good idea.

Back in November, I ordered a journal from nano.  I love it.  It features a sturdy cover, plenty of lined paper, an elastic to keep it closed and a place to store a pen.  The outside reads 'There's a book in you that only you can write.' A quote by the one and only Chris Baty.  I took one look at this journal, and I knew exactly what I wanted to do with it.  This book was going to be the place where I wrote down all of those shiny new ideas that I can't get to while I'm working on other things.  They don't have to be good ideas, just anything that's occurred to me.  Then, when I have time to write another novel, I can just flip through it and see which ideas stand out.

This has been working pretty well, but there's one tiny problem.  One of the ideas that I recorded in this book is not letting me shut it away.  The main character is more vocal than the characters from a series that I've written two books in!  She doesn't go away.  She just keeps talking and talking.  Telling me details about her life, which I don't want to know yet.

It's distracting.  All I want to do is sit down and write it all out.  I want to work out what's going on with her, and who the antagonist is.  I want to know more about her love interest (who isn't yet named.)  I want to see where the book goes, and what kind of plans I can come up with for future books.  I want to write her story.

Unfortunately, I also know that I have to finish this editing, because I need to start querying this year.  No ifs, ands or buts about it.  This is the year that I am going to get my stuff out there.  Whether it's liked or not, people are going to see it.

So the guilt doesn't let me work on the new project, but with my mind so distracted by it, I can't work on the old project.  The combination of the two are leaving me with no motivation to do anything but catch up on shows that I have been wanting to catch up on for months.

Next week, though, I can't let myself fall back into this pattern.  I want this book out by the end of april.  That means I need to get it to my beta readers by the beginning of February at the latest.  Sorry Jayne, but I can't listen to you right now, much as I might want to.  I have to get back to what I was doing.

I'm going to throw all of my shiny new ideas back into my book and leave them there.  Ignore those voices and hope they're willing to talk again when I'm done.  Much as I love telling new stories, I don't want to do it at the cost of my old stories.  I can't give up because there's too much work involved.  I need to keep going no matter what, and I'm going to do that starting tomorrow!

A Snag In Editing

Before I start this week's post, there were a few things I wanted to say.  First and foremost, I would like to point out that there are now six writers participating in the Epic Year of Querying.  You can get to any of their blogs from the side bar, as well as find the link to get to more information about it.  I'm very excited to see what this year brings, and how we will all do on this challenge.  Of course, it goes without saying, any other writers who wish to join in the fun can, just give me a link to whatever site (be it blog/twitter profile/website, whatever you wish) and how many queries you have sent out since Jan. 1, 2012, and I will gladly add you to the list.  You can also follow the fun on twitter using the hashtag #YEQ2012.

Second, there will be an extra special post going up on Wednesday of this week.  I'm not going to give away any details (cause it's a surprise) but make sure you look out for it.  I'm excited to see this blog becoming something other than me talking to myself, and this is just one of many such things I'm hoping will happen this year.

Alright, onto the post.  So, I was editing today.  I planned on getting about three chapters done so I could catch up with my goal.  It was something I knew I was going to have to do, because I spent all day yesterday doing things like getting my hair cut and hanging out with friends.  So when I finally got around to it today (instead of working on my blog like I wanted to) I sat down ready to edit.

I'll admit that I may not have been as anxious to edit as I could have been.  In fact, I was rather reluctant to start.  I may not have been editing as fast as I could have, and I kept getting distracted, but that's besides the point.

The fact of the matter is that after all of that, I got through half of the chapter and realized just how much I was changing, and how unhappy I was with what was left.  After all of that I ended up throwing the chapter out completely and starting over.

With that realization, however, came the certainty that I had hit the point in my book where I knew I was going to have to do some major overhauling.  See, I had already come to the conclusion that I had to change quite a few things in the second half of the book.  I hadn't written a very important scene, and that scene couldn't be written the way the book was already done.  So I knew that there was going to come a point where I would have to start rewrites.

Unfortunately this point came a lot earlier than I had thought it would.  In fact, I had been hoping that I would make it at least another five or six chapters before I would have to start completely changing what was written.

Alas, I cannot change what I have come to realize must happen.  Well, I suppose I could, but then the book just wouldn't be as could as it could be, and I definitely don't want that.  This is the book I want to get published.  The one that I already have half of out with beta readers.  The one that I have already gotten a second round of beta readers for.  I can't just not fix it.  This is my baby we're talking about.  I want it to be all it can be.

So, while editing is my least favorite part of writing (and yes, I will continue to complain bitterly about it for the rest of the time that I'm doing it) I will continue to do it.  Because, you see, I love my work, and I don't intend to let it be less than what it could be only because I don't want to do the editing.

Now I've gone through the rest of the book and have decided which chapters I need to rewrite, and which ones just need editing.  I've also decided what I need to add to make the story complete.  I now have a clear idea of what I need to do to make this book ready for my beta readers.  On one hand this gives me a sense of relief.  I know what I'm doing now, and I don't feel so much like I'm stumbling around in the dark.  On the other hand, rewriting is somehow so much more work than editing.

Wish me luck, because in the next month (okay...maybe two) I plan to whip this novel into shape.  Even if that means rewriting half of it.

The Epic Year of Querying

As some of you may have noticed, I didn't post last week.  I was planning on it, I truly was, but I was also at my grandmother's house, which doesn't have wireless internet.  So, instead, I decided to skip the week and take a Christmas vacation.

This year I'm going to be doing a few things different on my blog.  First of all, if you will kindly look to the sidebar, you will see a box entitled 'The Epic Year of Querying'.  This is where I will keep all of you updated on the progress of my writing/editing/querying.  I will update it every week along with my blog post.

Also, this year I will be doing my best to put my blog more in the eye of the writing public.  This means that you could see things such as guest blogs, character interviews, reviews on books, and participation in blog scavenger hunts.  I'm very excited for the first of these which should be happening in the next week or two.

This will be the year that I put myself out there.  That I look at my blogging as another step in my writing goals, rather than something I'm doing because it looked like fun.  Where I start to truly take myself seriously as a writer.  Where I don't give up on a writing project because I'm starting to feel like it needs far too much work.

It has been over a year now since I came to the realization that I am, in fact, a writer.  Since the beginning of nano 2010 I have written 9 novels.  5 of those have been pushed aside as not worth the time to edit, but the rest I'm going to do something with.  It may take a lot of editing.  It may make me want to rip the hair out of my head, but I am going to get them published!

I have two close friends also taking part in the Epic Year of Querying with me:

Eric Satchwill
B.A. Matthews

I'm excited to see how each of us do in this challenge.

I would also like to invite anyone else who wants to join in the adventure to do so.  Comment here and leave me your blog address.  I'll make sure to add you to the total counts!!

2012 is going to be an awesome year (right up to when the world ends, of course...) I can't wait to see what it will bring!