And Progress Is Made!

Despite the lack of motivation that I've been suffering from during the last week or so, I'm happy to report that progress has officially been made on my latest project, Dangerous Waters.

I've been trying to rework this project, which I've written once, and am currently in the process of giving a complete overhaul, for a couple of weeks now, though only seriously since I finished Pandora and sent that out to my last beta reader before it moves onto the stage of agents (scary!).  But this last week, I had stalled out on it.

I was worried it was because of how I was planning it out.  Rather than doing a full on planning (which I didn't think necessary, as the story has already been written once, no matter how different it's going to be when I'm done) I've been using the cork board I bought to help me figure out the restructuring Pandora currently went through.

The last time I worked on it, I had nine chapters up on the board and absolutely no idea on where the story was going.  In fact, those nine chapters weren't very good.  Okay, it wasn't the chapters themselves, just the order (and the emphasis I was putting on them).

I figured out the problem, eventually.  The novel centres around three women (who are the main characters of the entire series) and I was trying to give them all equal say in the novel.  In order to do that, I was structuring it very specifically, making sure that they each got a turn one after the other.

Needless to say, it wasn't going over very well.  So, I decided that one of the characters needed to be the main POV, whether or not the tension of the story revolved around her.  When I figured that out, I tried to restructure again, this time giving her twice as many chapters as the other two.

Again I found myself looking at those opening chapters and thinking that they just weren't right.  There wasn't enough action, or plot, or even world building.  They all felt like filler chapters, and that couldn't happen.

So tonight, when I finally decided that enough was enough and I was going to get some work done or die trying (okay...I wasn't actually willing to die over getting work done...but, hey, I'm a writer, I'm allowed to exaggerate) I sat down and stared at the board.

It took a while to get into it.  At first all that happened was taking down the cue cards and trying to figure out what was wrong with them.  Eventually, though, I managed to get that ball rolling.  Scene after scene started to present itself to me.  And, rather than focusing on whose POV was being used, I focused on where the story needed to go, and what would help me get there.

As a result there are currently seventeen chapters up on the cork board.  And the best part?  They feel right!  Like the story is actually moving, and there's enough tension and plot to not stall out!

I'm pretty excited to rework this project.  It was one of my favourites, and I know that my critique group will be happy too.  I can't wait to see what the final result will be.  I have a good feeling, though.  This novel is going to go somewhere.  Now all I have to do is figure out what I'm going to work on next.

Do you have any tips on how to get past those block?  How do you figure out what POV each scene needs to be from?

It's A Celebration

This year, as I'm sure you've all noticed by now, I have a lot of goals.  I want to prove to myself that I can be a prolific writer.  That I have the capability of producing four complete (and well written) novels in one year. Of course, I am hoping that one day I'll be able to support myself with my writing (despite being advised to keep the steady job.  If I'm making enough money on my books, unsteady as that money may be, I don't think I could stomach working the day job) right now I've got a full time job that takes a significant chunk of my writing time.

So January first I started editing the first of four books that I'm hoping to get to the second draft (at least) before the end of the year.

Stolen Magick.  One of the four novels I wrote during Nano.  The first one, in fact, and the one I liked the most, despite all the headaches it gave me.  I had two characters show up that I wasn't planning on.  One character that didn't step up, even though I had made a character bible for her, a love interest that wasn't supposed to be there and more subplots than I could have ever planned out.

The way I judge how well a book goes is by how much happens that wasn't planned.  So I did pretty well.

Anyway, the goal was to have it done by the end of January.  But I've never been very good at keeping my goals.  I find them too arbitrary.  They aren't deadlines, they're just dates I pulled off the calender and decided was the day I was going to have it by done.  There's nothing holding me to that except myself, and I'm not very good at holding myself accountable.

So, when in a day of uninterrupted wordmongering I realized that I had actually finished the book and BEFORE SCHEDULE, my first thought was 'what?'

Yep.  I didn't believe it.  Even though I print off my books and there was literally no more pages to turn.   Even though I had just read the ending that I had written.  Even though I had been on track with my goal all month.  Despite all of that, I still didn't believe that I was done the book.

But I was.  Only to a second draft, don't get too excited.  And I'm already thinking that I need to play with the structure before anyone sees it.  None of that matters though, because the biggest thing here is that I accomplished my goal!

I have huge goals this month, and it's going to be key to finish the small ones in time.  So it's awesome that I'm not falling behind already.  2013 is turning out to be great so far.

Now to celebrate.  What should I do?  Here are the options:

1) Start rewriting Dangerous Waters (and epic fantasy that's far too short)
2) Start rewriting The Commons (A YA that I love, but it was just all wrong)
3) Start rewriting The Descendants (My first ever book, and a YA), or
4) Watch TV shows until February.

What do you guys think?  Post below!!

How Soon We Forget

With Nano ending only a couple of months ago, I've been hard at work editing.  In December I finished Pandora, and this month I've been working on Stolen Magick, and it's been going quite well.  I've gotten through the chapters at record speed for me.  The manuscript is reading more like a second draft than a first, and it's been making me feel pretty good about myself.  Especially since I've been finding myself with some actual free time because everything is getting done, and it's getting done early.

So what can possibly happen that would knock me back a few steps?

A short story.  Simple as that.  I had to write a short story for critique group, and I had it scheduled for Monday.  So I sat down to work on it at 11:30 in the morning.  I didn't expect for it to take too long.  I guessed about an hour.  Two tops.

Then I stared at the blank screen in front of me, not quite sure where to start.  I had an idea, but I just didn't know how to start it.

And then, when I finally got the words put down on the page, they weren't right.  Nothing was right.  I stopped after about three sentences, and immediately erased everything.

Next I started to do some research.

I just want to stop and point out here that I don't like research.  Actually I hate it.  With a passion.  I don't even like to do it for my novels.  And yet I found about six tabs open, all of them with different bits of information that I needed to write the short story.

When I had finally managed to get everything that I needed to know, I pulled up that blank page again.

It still didn't go well.  I needed names.  And then there was a million other things I needed to look up in the process of writing.

By the time the story was done it had been five hours.  FIVE!

It hasn't taken me that long to finish anything since...well...since Nano!

That's when I remembered.  Drafting doesn't always go as smoothly as I want it to.  In fact, it never does.  If I'm not struggling to force the words out, then new things that I didn't plan are appearing, and I find myself getting annoyed, and more often than not, frustrated.

I'm not saying that I hate drafting.  Far from it, it's one of my favourite part of the writing process.  I'm just glad that I remembered that before I started working on the first draft of Malice next month.  I can't wait to do it, and I'm glad that I didn't remember just how long it can take when I was getting started on a novel I have to work on for a month.

Now I just need to finish Stolen Magick so that I can move onto Malice without getting distracted.

Do you ever forget about parts of the writing process?  How do you get yourself into the story so you can write it??

Motivation, Thou Art Fickle

Well, it happened.  The thing I knew was going to happen.  How did I know?  Because it always does.  I always fall prey to the mindset of not wanting to do anything for a single day.  And that single day somehow always follows the day when I was too busy to finish all of my work.  And where does that leave me?

Behind.  That's where it leaves me.  I'm supposed to be finishing up chapter 10 today during my editing challenge, and instead I'm stuck on chapter 6 (which requires rewrites) and I shouldn't be.  Because yesterday I had the entire day to work, and instead I chose to watch TV shows.

Now, you might think, how is it that I could just decide to watch TV shows and not feel guilty over not doing the work I promised myself to do?  The answer to that probably isn't what you think.  I do feel guilty.  Unfortunately guilt doesn't seem to keep my motivation in overdrive.  It just makes me wallow.  And when I wallow, I don't get any work done, I just keep putting it off more and more until suddenly I find myself piled under a mountain of work that I would have been able to get through if I hadn't been so damn lazy.

Don't get my wrong, I'm not complaining.  I did this to myself, just like I always do.  And I'm going to try and make sure that I get the work done today.  (This means editing 5 chapters -- at least -- writing one epiphany, and this blog post.)  At least I've gotten started before it's dark outside.

Unfortunately, now is when my brain has actually started to feed me information about the novel I'm currently planning.  (I don't know a whole lot about it yet, but I can tell you that it's set two hundred years in the future where only the very rich own cars, and most people travel around via teleportation pads.  The main character is a spy who has been forgotten and has taken to drink and sleeping around to forget .)  The problem with that is that I need to have Stolen Magick edited to a second draft by the end of January.  The other novel isn't going to even be written until June at the earliest, so why am I focusing on something that doesn't need to be done for a couple more months?

Okay, maybe I've slipped in to complaining a little bit.  Sorry.

Anyway, I'm once more recommitting myself to my goals.  I need to get this book editing.  I've promised myself that I'm going to plan, write and edit four complete novels this year, and damn it, I'm going to do it!  I just have to make sure that the motivationless days don't come around very often.  I have things to do, and if that means that I can't always keep up on all of the shows that I love, well so be it.

This is what I want to do with my life, and I'm not going to let a little bit of laziness get in my way.  So it's back to the YA for me.  I've got some words to wrestle into shape.

Do you ever find yourself unable to stay motivated?  How do you force yourself to keep working?

Hello Aliens. Please, Steal My Socks. (Day 8)

Last night I started on the next novel I had planned out for this November (I didn't get very far, but that's another blog post). Because today is the first day I get to concentrate solely on this novel, I thought I would tell you guys all about it, and where the idea came from.

In 2010 I took part in my first every NaNoWriMo, and it was a success! With 150k words under my belt, I was feeling on top of the world when I walked in to the TGIO party. I had my three novels tucked away in my bag, and I sat down with some new friends I had just made that month.

Giddy with success, and excited about what was to come afterwards, we started talking about the next NaNo.

We came up with all sorts of ideas for books, but the one that stuck with me (The one that I claimed I was going to write the next year) was an idea about a book that explained how one socks inevitably goes missing in the dryer. I said that, obviously, aliens ate the socks, and that needed to be a book.

Obviously I didn't write that book in 2011. First of all, I had forgotten about it, second, I just didn't find it plausible to actually become a book.

This year, though, when I sat down to pick out the ideas I was going to use for NaNo, that idea stuck out to me. I stared at it for a while, wondering what I could possibly do with a story like that, rejected the very thought that it could be turned in to a novel, and then finally gave in and sat down to start planning.

What I ended up with was no where near to the idea I had originally started with (which does tend to happen with most of my story ideas, honestly.)

My main character is a ten year old by the name of Tommy Thompson (yes, it did take me a while to think of the name, and yes I did pick it because of how memorable it is). In the very first chapter his world is changed forever when he finds an alien stealing a sock out of the dryer.

The alien tries to kidnap him, but when Tommy evades him, he goes after Tommy's half-sister instead. He trieds to tell his mom, but she doesnt believe him. When his friend Felicia says they need to go after Emily themselves.

The story follows them as they go on an adventure up to the mother ship, find countless other kids the aliens have stolen to bring to their home planet and serve them and begin searching for the little sister Tommy never thought he wanted.

As you may have noticed, it's a Middle Grade novel. I've never written anything like it before, and I am a little worried about having such a young main character. I think I've already made some mistakes with word choice, but that's editable. Plus, I started the story in third, but I really do think I need to change it to first.

Other than that, though, I'm excited to see what comes of this idea that I jokingly called a novel two years ago. Who knows, this could be the novel that puts me on the map as an author!

Do you have any story ideas that you're not sure would work as a novel? What are you currently writing about?

*  *  *

Daily Word Count: 4,722

Total Word Count: 75,600

When Editing Takes Over

Last time I talked to you about how my inner editor had escaped, and how I was planning to catch her, put her back in her cage, and make sure I locked it this time.  I swear that was my intention.  I was going to do it.

I'm not sure what happened, to be honest.  I had the cage open, the editor in hand, and I was really trying to get her back in the cage...and then she was gone again.  Slipping away as if I had never caught her in the first place.

Here's the thing, though, I've never had a great relationship with my inner editor.  Okay, so actually I had a great relationship with her.  I just shoved her into her cage and forgot about her.  I never checked on her.  Hell, I don't even know her name.  It was the perfect writing relationship.  She never got on my case, so I could just keep writing all of the time without having to worry about it.  I was even able to leave those little red lines under the words alone.  At least, I was until the end of the word war.

It was fantastic!  So, what happened, you ask?  Simple.  I let her out.

I decided it was high time I did some editing.  July was always supposed to be an editing month for me, so when the betas didn't get back to me, I had a very cranky editor bitching at me every day about how this was supposed to be her time.

So I gave in.  I pulled out the other novel I happened to have finished (don't give me that look, it's the one I wrote in June...) and started the edits on it.  You might have heard me ranting...um...I mean discussing...the fact that there were going to be some major rewriting going on with the novel.

I was actually looking forward to it, which I'm starting to think may have something to do with how often I leave her locked up.  Honestly, more than I really should.  Even when I'm editing I'm not really consulting her.  I tear through it and don't fix most of the problems.  It's not a good way to edit, and as a result I've never gotten  a novel to the point that I can actually say I was happy with it.

Now, though, my inner editor seems to have had enough.  She's battened down the hatches, and she intends to stay for the long haul.  Which means, she wants me to edit.

Of course, now all I can think about is the book that I've been editing.  My writing has gone absolutely no where in days, despite my decision to hold off on the sequel I was writing in order to finish editing the first book.  I stare at the screen for hours instead of doing anything productive, all because I keep trying to put her off.

Maybe I need to give in to her.  I write enough during the year that maybe right now I need to get down to editing.  I need to focus on this novel that could be the first one I publish (if anyone is willing to take on another werewolf book...).  Maybe I shouldn't keep on ignoring her, even when she's yelling in my ear.

I guess it's about time that I actually take my editing seriously.  That I finish editing a novel, step back and think, that's pretty damn good.  It's time for me to sit down with my inner editor and fix everything that's wrong with this novel

Hmmm...I wonder if my inner editor has a name?

Well, off to tackle the challenge of getting this book up to par!

That's Not What I Wrote...Is It?

As I mentioned in my last post, I've spent the time since the end of the first round of Camp Nano working on some short stories.  Three of them, in fact.

I've finished all of them now, each of them printed out and gone over.  The first has been submitted.  The last still needs the changes put into the computer (I edit on paper.  Also, I realized that I had gone over the word count limit by more than 200 words and needed to take out words)  The second one, though, has left me wanting more.

When I originally thought of this idea, I was excited by it.  I thought it would be a great short story.  My critique group would love it, and I could maybe expand on it at a later date.  I couldn't wait to see how it turned out.

Well, it seems that it turned out a little underwhelming.  I knew it was going to even as I was writing it.  I still can't put my finger on what, specifically, is wrong with it.  The main character annoys me.  There doesn't seem to be any action when there should be lots of it, and the end just seems too easy for the antagonist.

I don't know how many of you have ever felt that.  I know that I have.  Even with my novels.  It makes me want to shelf the entire thing and move on to better ideas that I'll be able to write better.  That will be able to sell better.  Anything to get away from the story that just isn't right.

With a short story, it's pretty easy to say it needs to be redone and throw the entire thing.  The story was only about 3500 words.  I know that I can write another one with no problem.  I'm not even going to throw out the idea behind it, I'm just going to adapt it to a new way to look at that same idea.  It shouldn't be too hard, and I'm hoping that it comes across better than the original did.

The novels, however, are another story altogether.  We spend weeks, months or even years working on a single novel.  They can be hundreds of thousands of words long.  Throwing all of that in the garbage to start again is not only demotivating, it's also quite detrimental to us as writers.

I've always been a big believer of 'You can edit crap, you can't edit nothing.'  As writers we have the ability to go back over work that we think is subpar and fix it.  Make it into the very thing that we wanted it to be in the first place.  Sure, that could include rewriting, adding or even straight out deleting scenes, but we're still working with the original content.

Throwing out an entire novel is like saying that we wasted all of that time.  It's not salvageable.  For me, at least, I start to think that maybe I can't do this.  That I'll never get published.  That if I'm not good enough to write that novel, what makes me think that I can write any novel?

It's not a good frame of mind to be in.

Now, sometimes the novel really isn't salvageable.  I've had a couple of those myself.  However, I've never completely thrown out a novel.  I've never hated it so much that I've deleted it off of my computer, or shredded the paper copy.  I keep everything I write, because I learn something with each project.  If it wasn't for those failed novels, I doubt that I would have been able to write the two short stories that I love so much.

So I will rewrite the short story, and I will continue to try to find the gold under all the crap in my novels.  Because, in the end, sometimes we have to trust what we were thinking in the moment, even if we don't quite get it afterward.  Eventually we'll figure it out.

Stop and Smell the Roses

Today I heard a phrase I'm sure I've heard a thousand time in my life.  Stop and Smell the roses.  I don't think that anyone has specifically said it to me, but I've always known what people have meant by it.  That you can't rush through life.  Sometimes you have to take a break and make sure to enjoy the little things in life.

So when I heard the phrase today, I couldn't help but really stop and think about it.  Mostly because, at the time, I was actually watching a show and procrastinating on my writing.  (Well, rewriting.  I do have an editing goal I need to try and keep as I have beta readers waiting for it.)

I've never really been the one to be busy all the time.  However, in the last year I've found myself doing more and more things, and therefor finding my schedule getting more and more full.  There are weeks when I almost never go home after work.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining.  I love going out with my friends.  I love my critique group and all the different things I've been doing since starting writing.

So now, for the first time in my life, I find myself actually able to appreciate the saying.  I understand what it's like to get so caught up in everything that's been going on with my life that I forget to stop and see or appreciate all those little things.  I've done it, where all I can think about is the stress of getting a book written, or edited and forget that I love this.  I love creating a story, and there's nothing I want more than to share those stories with everyone else.

Of course, getting stressed means I start to feel overwhelmed.  When that happens I tend to stop working on whatever it is I need to get done.  Unfortunately that means I start smelling the roses a little too much.  I just stop.  I'll do pretty much anything to not work on the writing or editing that I have to do.  Today that happened in the form of watching the first season of Dead Like Me.

I know how to stop and smell the roses.  I do it all the time, even when I really shouldn't be.  That doesn't mean that I disagree with the message of it.  It doesn't matter what's going on in your life.  How stressful everything is, or how much you  have to do, every once in a while, you need to stop and take a deep breath.  Look around and realize that life isn't always about that to do list.  Sometimes it's about taking those thirty minutes you don't think you can spare to have a meal in the park while listening to the birds sing.  Sometimes it's finding the time in a week to watch that show you absolutely adore, because it inspires you, or even just entertains you.

Sometimes it's not about doing something.  Sometimes it's about not doing something.

Unfortunately for me, right now it has to be about doing something.  The roses will be there when I'm done, though, and I'm looking forward to smelling them again.

My First Characters

A conversation this week had me thinking about the first novel I ever wrote.  That would be the novel I wrote during nano 2010.  It was a short 50,000 words and was about an idea that had been bouncing around in my head for about ten years.  It was about the Greek Gods.  Basically the Gods had gotten into a war and, in essence, died.  I believe they had sacrificed their bodies in order to protect Mount Olympus, which would have given anyone to take it over the power to literally control the universe.  The Gods were only able to survive by coexisting in the bodies of their descendants (or the closest thing there was to them.  For instance, one god lived in the descendants of her brother, as she was a virgin goddess.)

At it's core, that probably sounds like at least a decent idea for a book, and I would actually agree.  Unfortunately, it wasn't executed all that well.  Not all the surprising, considering it was a first attempt.  Of course, that's the book that pretty much every single member of my family has read.

Anyway, thinking about that book, I couldn't help but think about the characters.

Now, I don't remember all of their names, I've simply created too many characters since then to remember them.  I do, however, remember the name of the main character.  Well, one of.  She was the first character I created for the book.  Acacia.  The spoiled rich kid, who was somehow more down to earth than pretty much any of the others.  Her parents were famous - an actress and director - who were always on the set of some movie.  The book was set in Calgary, and I have no idea why this famous pair would have a house here, but that was what I decided.  Her parents were never home and loved her through gifts.  She hated this, of course.  She just wanted their attention.

I don't think I've ever written such a Mary Sue character in my life.  But I loved her.  I loved that she hated her boyfriend, but was with him to gain popularity in her school.  I loved that she had a mental break down in the middle of school, ruining her reputation forever.  But, most of all, I loved that three books later I had her tortured and she not only survived, but somehow came out stronger.

I also had a pair of twins in the book.  Oddly only one of the twins had a POV.  The boy.  Don't ask me their names, cause I don't remember for the life of me.  What I do remember about them, though, is that he fell head over heels in love with Acacia.  I remember this because they got pretty close really fast.  They were practically dating by the end of the book.  This may not seem fast, but the book took place over a period of about a week.  The girl twin died in the third book, and his reaction wasn't anywhere near what it needed to be.  He was more distraught when Acacia was kidnapped and tortured.

Where Acacia didn't have any flaws, he had far too many.  He would have needed so much work, just thinking about it gives me a headache.  Yet there were parts of him that I loved too.  I loved that he could get distracted by a girl that he had fallen in love with at the worst times.  I loved that, in a group of females, he was the only non-fighter.  Most of all, I loved the fact that I was willing to take the risk of writing a male perspective on my first time around.

The final two characters were also female.  To be honest, I don't remember much about them.  One, the descendant of Aphrodite, was a tom boy with short spiky hair.  The other I remember even less, but at the time I remember thinking that they were the perfect cast, and when that book was finally written, it was definitely going to be published.  How could it not?

As you've probably guessed, that book has been shelved.  Actually, it's been filed away in a dusty folder in the back of my computer never to be seen from again.

So why am I telling you about it?  Well, as I said, I was talking about the book to a friend this week.  She asked me about it, and what it meant to me.  I told her that maybe one day when I'm a better writer, I might go back and rewrite it.  Give those characters the stories they deserve.  Right now, though, I see that book as the thing that told me I could do this.  I could become a writer.

Really, isn't that what all first books are about?  Very rarely are those first attempts the amazing piece of literature we thought they would be, but in the end they take us a step closer to being the published author we're dreaming of.  While I'm sure the book isn't nearly as bad as I remember it (it was set in the modern day, but no one had cell phones...before you ask, no, it wasn't explained...) I know that I will certainly never regret writing it.  Without that book (and the two others I wrote that November) I wouldn't be the writer I am today.

Being Productive

Normally I procrastinate so much that I don't get much done.  Especially when I'm editing.  I find it so hard to make myself actually want to start fixing and changing my story.  You all know exactly how much I love editing, of course, and I am very good at making sure I do everything but the editing that I'm supposed to be doing.

In a conversation with a friend this week (one B. A. Matthews) I started expressing my frustration with the fact that I'm really not getting anywhere with my stories.  That was when I realized something.  I can't be frustrated with not going anywhere, because the reason I'm not is because of all the procrastinating I've been doing.  It's not my manuscript's fault that I'm looking everywhere but at it.  It's not my characters' fault when they're constantly shouting at me about what they want to happen in the next book, or the one after that.  I can't write those stories, though, not when I'm not even done the first book.

No, there's only one person at fault in this whole scenario, and it's me.

I've been getting frustrated with myself.  I claim to want to write for a living.  To want to be a published author who is taken seriously and has a following, but how can I do that when I'm playing useless games on facebook instead of editing or writing?  How can I say that I want fans, when I can't guarantee that I'll be able to focus enough on the story in front of me to get it past the first draft?

So I'm making a new promise tonight.  I've done this before, I know.  I've committed myself to my writing more times than I can really count, but I'm still going to do it again, and I'm hoping to actually stick with it.

My first promise:  I am going to stop complaining about editing.  Especially on my blog.  I'm sure you're all as tired to hear it as I am to type it out.  Because, let's face it, complaining about editing is really just another way to avoid doing it.  And that's just a vicious cycle that I'll never be rid of if I let myself continue down that road.

My second promise: Get my manuscript out to beta readers by May 15th.  I currently have 2 beta readers anxiously awaiting (at least in my head) the arrival of my manuscript.  Having an actual due date, rather than an arbitrary goal, I'm hoping that I can actually do it.  I'm also still looking for a third beta reader.  If anyone's interested, please let me know.

My third promise: I'm going to go out of my way to try and find someway to like editing.  It may never work, but I'm certainly going to try.  I don't want to spend my entire life hating this part of writing, so I just have to look for that part of it that I like and latch onto it.

I'm hoping that I can keep these promises for longer than I've kept most of my previous ones (for the record, I have stuck with getting my blog posts up, but none of my editing/writing promises have been stuck to.)

Now it's time for me to start putting these promises into action.

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!