What Kind of Dog Do I Have?

Well, none, because I'm not a dog person.

But that's not the point, obviously, or it would be both a very short and very non-writing-related post!

So currently my beta reader is my boyfriend, after my other beta readers flaked out and he kept insisting he wanted to read some of my writing. I like letting him read it, but I also know it's not really what I need. Because, you know, even though I make him swear to be honest, at the end of the day he still wants to sleep with me. But he still has some good insights, and he isn't completely sugarcoating it.

The other day he was reading a book I recommended to him (The Lies of Locke Lamora, by Scott Lynch) and he pointed out a paragraph in the scene he was reading. "I'm glad you don't do stuff like this." (I'm a better writer than Scott Lynch! Well maybe not...) What he was referring to was a descriptive paragraph that had nothing to do with the scene. My writing tends to be very action-oriented--my polite way of saying that I hate writing description and have entirely too little of it. So then my boyfriend pointed out to me another paragraph in the scene where the description is integrated into what is actually happening. "I like that," he told me. "And you do that really, really well. But you don't do it enough."

And he's right. Adding description is one of the biggest things I try to do on re-writes, and it's hard. It would be a lot easier to go back and cut unnecessary crap out than try and shoehorn in more. I know my writing is too lean--this WIP is sitting right at about 80k words--and it's frustrating as hell.

So what my boyfriend told me is that some books are like Great Danes. Huge and thick and full of everything. And that maybe my book is a poodle--and no matter how much I feed it, it's never going to be a Great Dane or a German Shepherd.

That shook me pretty deeply. This WIP is the best thing I've got, and now I'm facing the idea that I can mess around with it forever but it will never be good enough. That I need to start over, at 0 words, with another idea. That terrifies me.

I'm not giving up on this WIP. I'm through 12 chapters of my rewrite and going to start shopping it again when I'm finished. But now I'm excited to start something new and see how much better I can do this time around. After all, I did first start working on this WIP when I was 16. Hopefully by now I've got something bigger than a poodle trying to get out.

Wishful Thinking

I haven't updated the blog recently because I was really, really hoping that my next post would be one with good news. I submitted a couple of my short stories to a few different publications back in March, and I had a good feeling about them. Maybe something would come of it, even if just a little nibble in the form of a personalized rejections.

(Rejections, honestly, do not faze me. I've been collecting rejection letters since I was like 12, and it is always the expected outcome. But hey, at least it means I'm trying! I only wish I hadn't lost some of my rejection letters over the years and moves.)

Anyway, here we are now, and it is May and I haven't heard anything. Not a peep. It's been about 5 weeks, which was generally listed as the response time, so I'll either start hearing soon or I'll know it wasn't meant to be this time. It's a little disheartening (give me a rejection letter any day, but sitting around waiting is killer!), but it's not like I've been sitting around twiddling my thumbs. I've been working busily on my rewrite of my novel.

So it's not quite the good news I was hoping to post, but it is good news. I've finished eight chapters--there are only eighteen in all, so I'm almost half done. And now that I'm finished at work for a while, I am getting one or two chapters done every day. I should be finished with this rewrite by the end of next week. And THAT is good fucking news.

February 2012 Wrap-Up

Okay, another month is come and gone. This one is a little shorter than most (although longer than usual!), so less time for getting all the things done that I want!

But while I won't expose myself by admitting my small numbers for the month, I will go ahead and say that I feel good about getting the wheels rolling again.

By the end of March, I plan to be done with an edit of my Novel 1. DONE. I mean it. And to finish up and polish up and attempt to shop a short story I'm almost done with.

Yes I can!

Writing Excuses

As I am once again gearing down to get writing done, I am looking for new ways to inspire myself. To light that spark that my fellow writers know and love (and hate!) so well. I find that is better to actively seek out inspiration than to sit around hoping it will come, and something that I found recently is the wonderful podcast Writing Excuses.

I am not generally a fan of podcasts. I never feel that I have a good chance to listen to them. In my car, I listen to radio or CDs (I have no connection for my ipod). At home, I read or watch TV or do something else that doesn't lend itself well to listening to someone drone on. At work, any personal electronic device more complicated than a wristwatch is banned and can't enter the building.

But when I read about Writing Excuses on another writing blog I follow (the Scribophile blog), it piqued my interest. It's short, so I don't feel like I have to have a long block of time available to dedicate to listening. It's done by authors that I know dealing specifically with the genre (science fiction/fantasy) that I write. And I've found that it is easy enough listening that I can listen while I workout.

Best of all, listening to an episode of Writing Excuses makes me want to write. It reminds me about the joys in writing and is a welcome reminder that I am far from the only one that struggles with any given issue that they are tackling.

They give writing prompts at the end of each episode, and so far I have yet to act on those. I have been so focused on needing to find an idea that I can carry through to a novel that I haven't been writing anything at all until I have that magical idea. And this is leading to my previously-mentioned atrophying skills. So now I am going to actually take these writing prompts and use them as an exercise. Just as I am spending the time now plugging away at getting miles so I can perform well at my upcoming 10K race in March, I need to put in the time practicing writing, even if just for my own benefit, so I can eventually produce a publishable, readable product.

And along the way, I'll be stashing ideas into my Bag O' Ideas to pull out later for a "real" writing project. Win-fucking-win!

Happy New Year! Um...

Okay, so I've been trying to convince myself to write a new year's post for a while now (about a month and 8 days!), but I kept putting it off. Because it was a pitiful year for me. Truly, gut-wrenchingly terrible. I'm pretty sure at this point my writing skills have atrophied into a twisted ball of lols and emoticons. (The majority of the writing I do consists of gchats with my boyfriend and the occasional tweet or facebook update.)

For a concrete measure of how little I got done, in the entire year of 2011, I wrote 24,045 words (according to my spreadsheet). Which I guess is better than nothing, although one could argue that it effectively is nothing, given that none of those 24k words have gone to a project that I think has real potential.

Reading through last year's wrap-up is painful. 2010 ended on such a great note. I was sending out a few queries in January 2011! I had novel ideas galore! I was going to have SO much more time! My goal was 180,000 words! And yet all that time came to nothing. I can blame it on my divorce, or stress at work trying to get through my training pipeline at the front of the group, or the happier distractions of a new relationship, but the truth of it is that I just lost the will to write. Not the desire to write, but the will.

So: no lofty goals for 2012. My only writing goal for this year is to write. And that is, hopefully, one that I can keep.

Why I Write

Blog posts have been scarce of late, but not as scarce as words on the page. It seems like there is a mental dam that is blocking any attempt at writing. I've tried to bust it, I've tried to not care about it, but it doesn't seem to work. I thought getting some betas for my close-to-done work would help, but I haven't heard back from them yet and it feels like a thin excuse to not be working on something else. (And although I am impatient to hear back, I am grateful that I've found people to read it at all and, as long as I haven't heard from them, I can assume they have nothing but good things to say!)

So why am I bothering, then? It isn't likely I'll ever make a living as an author. There are a thousand other, easier things I can do with my free time. I won't change the world or probably even a single person.

But today reminded me. I woke up and wasn't in the mood to get up (ah, weekends!), so I popped open the book I was reading (The Magician King by Lev Grossman) and proceeded to finish the book. It took over 3 hours, but the time flew by. It hardly seemed to matter. I didn't check my phone once to see if my ex had messaged me. I didn't feel the need to look at my facebook or Twitter or the message board I frequent. I was totally immersed, and after the last click (yes, I am a devout Kindle user) I just lay there staring at the ceiling. I felt too good to move. I had that precious feeling of being ensconced in another place, the trivialities and problems of my life irrelevant. I love that feeling. I used to get it all the time, when I had both more time to read and less ability to distinguish shoddy writing. It is rarer these days, but just as awesome as it used to be.

And I want to give people that feeling. I want people to close the cover on one of my books and sigh, and sit there or lay there for just a few moments. I want them to feel my work linger on even when the cover is closed (or the screen is turned off). I want them to shed a tear or two for the troubles of my characters. I want to immerse them in my worlds and help them cope with their own.

I don't know if I'll ever get to that point. It may be entirely out of my reach. But dammit, I am going to keep trying!

More Disappointment

So much for knuckling down. I had a small burst of productivity (2 days) and then nothing.In my defense, I've had some personal issues that have totally derailed my attention for anything. Not to get into to too much detail--this is my writing blog, after all--but my boyfriend broke up with me for legitimate reasons outside our control. We still both have strong feelings for each other and it has been quite the struggle to get myself to even focus on work, so writing was basically out of the question. I hate to use the "tortured artist" stereotype, but isn't it true that so many of us seem to feel things so strongly? I sure do, anyway.

But I am really determined to move on with my life, including my writing, so here I am promising more writing yet again. This time, however, I have a better plan than "just force it," which never works for me. I realized it was really sapping my creative energy to try to come up with new story ideas (I suck at plotting, I confess), make an outline, and then get 10k or 2k words into a draft and fizzle out.

So I decided I need to focus on the work I have that is complete and, hopefully, has publishable potential. Time to bare my poor little writer's ego to some barbs. I solicited some betas from an online forum I frequent, and the good folks there were quick to help me out. Now I have 3 different people currently reading it, and I am looking forward to getting their feedback and wrestling with the third draft.

I really think that after this draft I can seriously start shopping this one. I've put out a few feelers already, but it was more to force myself out of my comfort zone and get more familiar with the process than any real idea that it was ready. (Perhaps a poor idea on my part, as it has narrowed my submission options now, but it was made and done.)

I make no promises, since I break them so easily when it comes to writing goals, but I feel good about re-visiting Novel 1 instead of trying to come up with another one at the moment.