My mom liked it, and other stories

One of the cardinal sins while querying agents and editors is telling them, "My mom liked it." I'm going to avoid that sin by just doing it here. After all, it's my blog, right? :-D

A little more than a week ago, I sent my mom my manuscript by email. She read a little at her volunteer job the next morning (in which she answers phones and does other things as needed, so she has lots of time where she's just sitting, waiting) and when she got home she asked me to set up my old laptop where she could read more. She read all afternoon and evening and finished around 10 p.m. Yeah. My manuscript is about 425 pages at this point. I knew she was a fast reader, but seriously?

I asked if she read that fast to get it over with because she was falling asleep and bored out of her mind or if she actually liked it and couldn't stop reading. I am proud to say she answered the latter.

Since, I've heard her brag to a few people that it was really good. Now, I know what you're saying. It's your MOM, Julie. Of course she's going to like it. Well, yeah, of course she is, but at the same time, I do highly value her opinion. You are free to smirk here. :)

See, I come from a family of writers. Mom's greatest joy and my greatest trial as an adolescent were the stories she had published in national magazines. About me. Learning to drive. And other embarrassing moments. I'm taking revenge by blogging about my children in my other blog. At any rate, Mom was always attending some writing conference or another, watching the mail for those lovely rejection slips and the occasional acceptance check, going to critique group, and so on.

My brother has aspired as a novelist, screenwriter, and in more recent years, he's written and performed standup comedy on a regular basis. (And I get to edit his routines--now THAT is satisfying payback for countless years of sibling torture, let me tell you.)

When I approach Mom to read something I've written, I hold my breath because I know she's going to give me the lowdown. Always in a positive manner, but not 100% positive feedback.

When I sent her the manuscript last week, she knew nothing about it other than one of my main characters was a deaf teen. She knows exactly what you might know from reading my blog, because she gets her info the same place you do. It's been more than a year of living in the same house while I worked on this story, me sitting in the living room with my light shining into her room as I wrote and revised into the wee hours, and I was nervous about telling her about my story.

Apparently, it was nothing at all like she expected, but still ... she liked it. Wheeee! Well, other than the (few, non gratuitious) sex scenes, which normally wouldn't bother her at all, but apparently gave her the heebie jeebies because she knew I wrote them and that was just too weird to wrap her mind around. Heh. Sorry, Mom. (Hey, for the record, they gave me the heebie jeebies, too. So, ha.) Of course, she gave me lots of other feedback as well.

But, I proudly say here, where it doesn't really matter who smirks at me, My mom liked it.

I've noticed in Jodi Picoult's acknowledgements she always mentions her mother, Jane Picoult, as one of her first readers. Apparently, it hasn't hurt her. :)

In other news ...

1) I'm winding down the current set of revisions and maybe, just maybe, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Which is good, because I am sick and tired of this story, let me tell you. I'm brewing a new story in my brain and I'm eager to get started on it physically, but I really can't until I'm ready to query B/O.

2) I am excited about having identified an "expert" to vet the world building I've done for my deaf and Deaf and hard-of-hearing characters. (You'll understand why I state it like this once you've read my book or if you do a little research on your own!) I'm even more excited that she has agreed. And, of course, now I'm a nervous wreck and madly trying to be sure I've done my homework because I don't want to waste her time. She is *truly* an expert in the field and I'm humbled.

3) I can so identify with Carleen Brice's blog post from one day last week. I believe there are three main periods during the writing of a novel that are emotionally exhilarating, but also emotionally draining.

First, the honeymoon period: the initial state of euphoria when you are writing a new, exciting story, when you live, eat, and breathe the story and it makes you oh, so happy. In other words, the first 100 pages. :)

Second, when you are so close to the end, you can almost taste it, and you are racing to get there and you think of little else.

Third, and I'm there right now. The intense period of revisions. You've had a few people read your story, you know what needs to be done to improve it, there are some hard issues to work through, and you're sick and tired of these people who live in your head and ready to kick them out, but their lease hasn't expired yet. Too much togetherness, as I like to say.

It becomes difficult to do anything, including sleeping, showering, or something as simple as taking a walk without the story haunting you. Yes, literally haunting you, and not always in a pleasant way. There's been speculation about Heath Ledger's death and how much he took on the roles he was playing, and I can see a connection there between writers and actors. (Don't worry, I'm not in that deep.)

Carleen wrote last week that as writers, it's too easy to train ourselves to work 24 hours a day, even in our sleep--after all, we love what we do. But sometimes it's not healthy. She took a much needed break this summer because it was literally affecting her physical health.

Anyway, I find that this is most likely to happen during these three time periods. I'm ready to be in between for a while.

4) I did get my hands on a copy of the Lace Reader and I'm reading when my own characters give me a little break.

So, what about you? Does your mom like your story? Are your characters taking up all your oxygen? Are you simply a reader and worrying about my sanity? (Hi, Brenda.) Are you reading any good books?

Have a great week!

By the numbers

1: is the loneliest number. (If it ain't broke, don't fix it.)

2: Points of view in my story.

3: Number of the draft I start tonight.

4: Number of historical tie-ins to Waco I added to my manuscript this week.

1,604: The number of times the word "was" appears in my manuscript, according to Word. Do I have my work cut out for me or what? I can't get rid of every single one, but that's maybe a little over the top. (EDIT! Make that 1,382 after only a few hours of combing and replacing through about a third of the MS. Some of those was's are stubborn little suckers, though. They insist on staying. Unfortunately, there are also many instances of other "to be" verbs. Sigh.)

Still and all, it was a very good week for writing, in quality as well as quantity. I sent a new draft to my first reader, and though I know there's much to do, especially after my beta readers give me feedback, it just looked so purdy today I was all beaming and floating around.

I think if I were an already published writer, this is the point at which I'd whisk the thing off to my agent for a "Look! What do you think?" kind of read. As a "pre-published" writer, it needs to be well beyond that before I dream of sending even a query to an agent. Darn near perfect.

But, cripey, look how far my baby's come!

Quiet ...

... means I'm getting a lot done on my manuscript. It's been a good week already, and it's only Tuesday! I have to hurry--tomorrow's the last day of school. What will I do with the monkeys out?

I started gathering some history of the town where my story's set yesterday. Perhaps this seems backwards, considering the first draft is already written, but it's too late to do it any differently. It's actually working out pretty well. I used the Handbook of Texas Online for a short history of Waco, and several of the themes present were reflective in strange ways of my story, so I was pleased. I'm not sure I would have recognized them before getting the story down.

To include the most obvious modern history of the Waco area or not ... that is the question. Still contemplating that one. (Don't want to mention the actual details here--I get too many random visitors when I do silly stuff like that. If you haven't remembered already, it has to do with an odd religious sect and a lot of people dying.)

The layering and detail work is a lot more fun than I thought it would be, though.

Is it butter yet?

Last night, I worked on a query letter for my manuscript. I'm not ready to query agents yet, and in fact, it might still be months before I am, but I've done "practice" letters periodically while I've written this story. It's a good way to monitor how the book is going—the stronger it is, the clearer the main ideas become, and the easier it is to write a query.

It's interesting to see how the information I've included in my practice queries has evolved. The synopsis paragraphs and "big idea" sentences were much easier to write this time around, and that's encouraging.

It means I'm doing the right work in my revisions to identify what's most important in the story so I can ramp it up, capitalize on it, make it crystal clear.

It also means I'm doing a better job at separating the stuff that doesn't belong and removing it to safe keeping where it might be useful for another story in the future—or tossing it out when I realize it's complete garbage. (Such as when I'm reading dialogue and my own snoring wakes me up a few minutes later ...)

If you think about it, it's a clarification process not unlike clarifying liquids or fats for cooking. Look at these definitions for "clarify" from chefdepot.net:

CLARIFY
To remove sediment from a cloudy liquid, thereby making it clear. To clarify liquids, such as stock, egg whites and/or eggshells are commonly added and simmered for approximately 15 minutes. The egg whites attract and trap particles from the liquid. After cooling, strain the mixture through a cloth-lined sieve to remove residue.

To clarify rendered fat, add hot water and boil for about 15 minutes. The mixture should then be strained through several layers of cheesecloth and chilled. The resulting layer of fat should be completely clear of residue.

Clarified butter is butter that has been heated slowly so that its milk solids separate and sink, and can be discarded. The resulting clear liquid can be used at a higher cooking temperature and will not go rancid as quickly as unclarified butter.

None of these is an especially quick process. Each has different steps and leads to a specific refined product. Do you want liquid, fat, or butter? While there's always room for a quick, refreshing drink or a lazy, fat read in the market, I want to sell clarified butter.

Each process involves heating the original product, but if you want clarified butter, you can't just boil it quickly. You have to "heat slowly." You want to carefully increase the tension until the milk solids—the original "baby food" you produced—separate and fall away from the resulting clear product.

A story that can withstand higher criticism. It can take the heat. And it has a longer shelf life.

Wow, didn't really mean to go all philosophical on you. Sometimes even when I blog, the process I go through to post it on the page teaches me something.

I really only intended to tell you about my cool query letter. :-)

A hint and a lot of other rambling

I see from her blog that Donna followed my lead in getting her MS (a pretty dang funny story, by the way, at least what I've seen) printed and punched at Office Depot. Wait, I haven't done it yet, so she's the leader now!

Instead, I spent a whole afternoon making a "minor" change to the WIP (work-in-progress!). Wait, I'm not finished yet.

Because . . . that minor change entails revisiting every page of the story. I made it through about 150 today. A lot more to go.

Many published writers, but not so many pre-pubbed ones, drop hints about their WIPs (there's that funny word again! But you know it now, right?). I have avoided this like the proverbial plague because it was really important to me to keep this story very close to my heart for a good, long time.

I've been seriously sidetracked on previous efforts--to the point of giving up on the story. For good reasons every time, but with this one, I knew I had a unique premise, if such a thing exists. (It's at least a unique twist if not premise.) I didn't want to get discouraged before I had the first full draft written. I'm to the point now where you can tell me every which way but lose what is wrong with this story, and I'll probably take your advice seriously to heart, and then I'll revise until I'm blue in the face to get it right. Then this puppy is going out on submission.

So (sit up, take notice), here's my first little bit of real info about the story. The only other thing I've shared is that, in the words of Diane, it's s-e-r-i-o-u-s. If you can believe it. Anyway, one of my point-of-view characters is deaf. Or hearing impaired, hearing challenged, whichever politically correct term you prefer. He can't hear. Not at all. Wait, that's TWO hints. Now you know he's a he, too!

I tell you this because I've really struggled to wrap my head around the write, oops, RIGHT way to show the dialogue that's not spoken, but signed. And there's lots of it. Lots. I've checked out as many books from the library as I could that had deaf characters. There are NOT many, let me tell you. There doesn't seem to be any uniform method, and there are problems with each.

My only-est reader so far (Hi, Gail!), who saw the first couple of chapters about a year ago, struggled with the method I originally chose, so I knew this was an obstacle I would need to get around before I could pass the story on to many others. Identifying the best method--one that allows the story to flow seamlessly and engages the reader--will be a huge relief.

I said all that to say that I spent today changing every instance (so far) of this dialogue to a new method. I think it works better. Please, God, in the chosen Lennon/McCartney lyrics of my favorite girl AI contestant, Brooke, "Let it be." (I likes me some folkies--Can we all say Jason and sigh in unison?)

Next stop, Office Depot.

EDIT! So, this morning, I remembered I have another book (on hand!) with a character who uses ASL (as does mine). I look at it, and her dialogue is done exactly the way I HAD it, and it actually worked pretty well. Gaaaaaah . . . What to do? The book, by the way, is Between, Georgia, by Joshilyn Jackson, and was very good. She has another that just launched--The Girl Who Stopped Swimming. Her blog today just might make you laugh!

The Craziness of March has come, but it has not passed

It's going to be a busy month, and it's already nearly half over!!!

I'm starting Barbara Samuel's Voice II class next week, the kids have Spring Break, and I'm working on these revisions.

Revisions are going okay so far. I was going to start with printing out all the pages of my first draft, punching them, and filing them in a binder to do a read through, as I've seen suggested in several places. I still plan to do that, but I already knew of a few obvious plot holes with relatively easy fixes to make before I read or got any beta readers involved. So I decided to do those first, which has been keeping me pretty busy for the last week or so.

Hoping to trek over to Office Depot for the printout in the very near future. I figure it's better to abuse their large printing monsters than torture my little HP photo printer, and it will probably be less expensive in the long run than using all my own ink cartridges and paper.

Not to mention I have "bonus bucks" to use after purchasing my new laptop from them. (I am sad they failed to mention that "cash back" really meant credit to use in the store. Grr.)

Not to mention me and printers have this thing. We don't get along very well.

When I worked in an office, people assumed that since I was kind of tech savvy--I worked on the departmental intranet site, and I could always get them out of their fixes, like lost toolbars--I could also troubleshoot printers and copiers. Um, no. I am terrified of them. :-)

I went on an online scavenger hunt this afternoon, looking for more articles about character arcs, change, etc. Somehow (isn't it funny how that works?) I ended up at Margie Lawson's site. I've been there before. I'm considering either taking her Empowering Character's Emotions workshop in person--she'll be at a local writer's group in May--or downloading the packet from her site.

Anyone taken this class or downloaded the material? Would love to hear how it worked for you, and also any other good resources for writing emotion and nonverbal communication.

By the way, can you name the source of my (somewhat altered) post title? Ten points if you can. Ten points for what, I still don't know, but I'm keeping track. ;)

135,000 words later ...

The draft, she is done. Hovering right at 115K after the 20K I cut a few weeks ago, it might not be the most beautiful thing just yet, but it is finished.

Now for the real work.

Earlier tonight, I was studying this High Tension Workshop website, wishing I could attend this May workshop in Austin. It looks like the perfect class to take in the midst of revisions. Alas, it is pricey, and does not seem to fit into my continuing ed budget this year, no matter which way I look at it--even standing on my head and crossing my eyes just right. But simply reading the class description is helpful. Look at this:

Building tension on every page--meaning tension in dialogue, action and exposition. Then tension in scenes. Next, tension in premise.

Those are words of wisdom for free.

Pretty baby?

So, sometime today or tomorrow, I should be really and truly and finally finished with my first complete draft of my story. I feel like I've been saying that for days (weeks?) now, but there is no getting around it this time.

Hmm, you say, that sounds a little resistant. Well, yeah, there has been a little weirdness for me. I know how close I am, and yet, it has been really hard to pound out these last few chapters and scenes. Can't really say why for sure. One theory is that they're really boring. :-)

On the other hand, maybe I'm a little scared. Being finished with this draft means I will go into serious revisions, which means that one day, maybe in the near future, I'll be ready to ship this puppy off to face the first serious rejection of its life. That is scary. I think I'm up to it, but still.

So many have described the process of writing and attempting to get published as a very long pregnancy. In this case, verrrrry long. When I finish this draft, or maybe the revisions, I'm going to do a post myself about the process--how long it actually took, what happened in between, etc.

When I was a teenager, my mom worked for an ob/gyn doctor, and my first real job was working at the office for a summer. People often brought their newborns in a few weeks after birth for the doctor to see. If it was a cute kid, he'd say, "Oh, what a cute little girl!" (Or guy, or whatever.) If it was not such a cute thing, he'd say, "Oh, a baby!!!" and write FLK on their chart. Funny Looking Kid. Kind of cruel, I guess, but it was also pretty funny at the time to those of us who were on the inside track.

So, yeah, there is this little baby I'm carrying in my metaphorical womb, nearly ready to see the light of day, and I want everyone to think he's gorgeous, and they might think he's just an FLK.

EDIT: I get irritated with my crutch words, so I struck them for all the world to see. Maybe it'll remind me next time. :-D I'm sure there are more here, but this'll do for now.

I hate libraries

JUST KIDDING. ;-) ;-) ;-)

Why would I have spent the most hectic 18 months of my life earning a master's of library science degree if that was so?

They do annoy me, though. I go there thinking I'll get lots and lots of writing done without the distractions of home and family. HAHAHAHA. Talk about distractions.

Distractions everywhere. In the form of all those prettiful books. That is my daughters' word, but I can't think of a better one. It's also very Seussical. Thin books, fat books, little books, big books, old books, new books, books books books.

I did, however, finish writing the last chapter of my story sometime in the last few days (not my final chapter, mind you--I still have one interior chapter to finish and one transitional one to write), and I also wrote an epilogue today at the library. Just thought I'd sneak that in.

I came home from that evil place today with five books. That's a much smaller number than I used to tote home when I was a shy, 9-year-old kid in Boulder, Colorado. We had recently moved from Kentucky and the kids in Colorado thought I talked funny and dressed funny, and I proceeded to bury myself in books from the Boulder Public Library. The librarians gave me "that look" when I walked up to the counter each week with my stack of 10 or 15 books. You know, the "Did you really read all those books? In one week?" look.

I discovered my favorite books ever during that time of my life--especially Laura Ingalls Wilder and Francis Hodgson Burnett. I wanted to be a pioneer girl more than anything in the world, but I would have settled for being an orphan who lived in a cold, lonely garrett or an uncle's house on the moor.

I think that is why I feel so peaceful and at home in the libary. It was always my safe place--I could be whoever I wanted to be there, and so far, that hasn't changed a bit.

Wonder Week

Call it confirmation, guidance, a "God thing," or as my favorite singer/songwriter, David Wilcox, likes to say, Timing with a Capital T, this week made my head spin with it.

Seems like sometimes . . . no, often . . . making one good decision can lead to other good things. (Yeah, I've been trying to teach my kids that for years, and one of these days maybe they'll believe me!) My decision to cut the domineering subplot earlier this week has been followed by several rather amazing "coincidences" that have affected my writing in one way or another.

Let's start with Tuesday night. I was browsing Amazon and started reading about the number one book in women's fiction (by their rating system). My eyes got pretty big as I read about a plot that was identical in several critical ways to the next manuscript I planned to work on. Not the cut plot from my current one, but another I've been toying with for some time. I've had a few trial chapters from this story stuck in a file on my computer for a little more than a year because I decided the idea I had for my WIP was more timely, and the most original idea I had come up with so far. Now, I thought the other idea was quite original, if I do say so myself, and perhaps since it's number one on Amazon, it really was.

I felt a gamut of emotions--frustration, relief, and affirmation are a few. Frustration because I knew I couldn't effortlessly move right into that story when I finally finish my current one. But frustration quickly turned to relief. What if I had not come across this book before I poured my heart and soul into mine for a year? It would definitely have been labeled a copy cat book, even if my story was different in many ways, because the basic plot was too close. Finally, affirmation, because if I had a "what if?" idea as close to a bestselling author as I did, I must be on the right track. Apparently, I'm pursuing story ideas that are publishable and commercially viable.

The very next day, I browsed to one of my favorite author's blogs. Imagine my surprise when her blog title referenced the very same book. She blogged about how her upcoming release is similar in many ways to this book as well. (IMHO, her plot sounds very different, but it has the same universal themes. I can't wait to read her book.) Needless to say, I was having a Twilight Zone experience for sure. I exchanged some personal correspondence with her, and she encouraged me to squirrel that story away and somewhere down the line, give it some big tweaks, and try again.

Thursday night comes along, and my heart has pretty much taken all of this kind of shock it can stand for one week, but yes, God does have a sense of humor. As I blogged about earlier this week, I've been pondering a new working title for my WIP. Early in the day Thursday, I was tossing some ideas around in my head that seemed right, but I needed some confirmation. Yeah, I'm a spineless wimp. I can't make decisions on my own. So, there's something David Wilcox (the Capital T guy) says in concerts sometimes, and I couldn't quite remember how it went. I googled it, looked at song lyrics on his site, but couldn't locate it. I knew, however, that it gave the universal theme of my WIP in a nutshell. So, I was playing around with titles derived from it in some way. I ran them by my husband and kids at the dinner table, and there were the usual obnoxious jokes and so on, but also good reactions.

An hour or so later, I got an emailed digest from a group of Wilcox fans. One lady had posted a poignant story about her work week. She then posted the very quote I had been trying to remember. As if that wasn't enough, she signed off with a Valentine's wish using one of the exact phrases I was tossing around.

Yeah.

Before I went to bed, I changed the title on my WIP to my new one and put the quote at the top as an epi . . . uh, what is that word!? (Not epitaph--that's for tombstones.) Oh, yeah--EPIGRAPH! While the new working title is not the exact phrase she used, it was one of the alternates that means the same thing. This morning, I got a response from my first reader, telling me she preferred the one I used over the other, and I hadn't even told her which I had chosen.

In the meantime, I've done more writing this week than I've been able to do in weeks. I'm writing the last chapter of my story (although, I do have maybe two transition chapters that go in between the last one and where I left off earlier in the week). The place I thought was "the end" back when I was doing NaNoWriMo is pretty much the middle of the story now. Talk about opening up the story when I followed my heart by cutting that subplot.

My goal was to get a good first draft complete and ready for serious revisions before I start my Voice II class with Barbara Samuel in March. I think I can. I think I can.

What about you? Coincidence? Guidance? A God thing? Timing with a Capital T? How has it affected your writing?

Ouch, that hurt so good

If you have been paying any attention at all to the little counter on the right, you might notice something strange. Your eyes are not messing with you. My word count for LOTH (an acronym that represents the working title for my manuscript) did indeed just go from 119,271 to 100,511. Almost 20K words in the apparent wrong direction.

I've been struggling with something I had a feeling I needed to do. So, after giving myself some days to think about how I could save a subplot that I really love, then giving myself a few more days to get used to the idea that I couldn't, I did what I had to do.

Killed those lil' darlins. All 20K words, in which a subset of my cast acted their hearts out and developed into a sideshow that was stealing the thunder of my original story just a little too much. Well, if not exactly stealing the thunder, being quite distracting with their own brand.

But, really, they're not dead yet. (Be sure and say that with the proper accent.)

They've just been moved into their own file folder where they can continue to figure out how the heck they got there and how the heck they can emerge again in their very own show where they are the stars. They might just be, in the words of Hollywood, a successful spinoff.

So now, I'm back down around 100K, my original word count goal for this story, and while it's not over yet, at least it won't turn out to be the longest story known to man (or woman, since I'm equally opportunistic here), which is NOT a good idea for a writer attempting to sell their first manuscript.

The funny thing, and somewhat painful, is after reading back through my outline, sans the extras, the story still makes sense. That's a sure sign, I think.

On the other hand, the characters remain as peripheral, just not as major subplot/POV guys, so character development is still strong for them. I know all about them, you just won't know as much as I do, should this story ever be published.

I should say a short word of thanks to Judy Merrill Larson, by the way. I commented about my struggle after her post about revisions the other day, and she didn't mince any words in her response--"I say ditch it. But save it in another document. You never know when you might resurrect it. And, who knows how it will have changed by the time you finally get back to it." I'm thankful for accessible, published authors who are willing to share words of wisdom. I only hope I get to pay it forward one of these days.

Onward. I see the light.

It's a bird, it's a plane, it's Super Student! (of more experienced writers)

I finished my (25-page!) outline Thursday, and it's already a huge help to me. I've been doing the half-sleeping, half-awake, half-dreaming thing at night where the missing parts are writing themselves, and it's an amazing relief, let me tell you. Wait, is that mathematically possible? Sure, why not.

Let's just say, I was being way too easy on my characters, unlike, say ... Diane Chamberlain who blogged the other day about why she made Jon a paraplegic. Now, if you aren't a writer or regular fan, you might be a little concerned about that post until you read the fine print. ;-)

I'm doing my best to turn up the heat on my little darlings, and not be quite so protective. After all, if they deal with it all just fine, why on earth would you want to read about them, right?

I wanted to mention another resource I came across on the web for people in the writer boat. Therese Fowler, who's debut novel Souvenir is coming out in February with a huge bang, has a whole section on the side of her blog where she links to her posts about the mechanics of writing. (Scroll a good ways down the page, where you'll find a list labeled "The Writing Posts." I kept a few of those open the other day while I was working to remind me of some of the steps I needed to take.

I've been a reading fool the last few weeks, and last night I finished All the Numbers, another debut book by another Ballantine author, Judy Merrill Larson. I have a ten-year-old, and let me tell you, this lady had me wanting to go upstairs to my baby in the middle of the night and put her in a protective tower, a la Rapunzel. I don't cry very often when reading books, but I was a blubbering idiot Thursday night--at the end of the first 85 pages! Recommended ...

I'm excited about February. I feel like I'm suddenly making some awesome progress on my story, and if I can't see the light at the end of the tunnel just yet, I at least feel a breeze.

In writing, as in life

You know what I've learned? That in writing, as in life, it's much easier to learn something first and do it right. But more often, as in life, you learn something by doing it wrong the first time. And sometimes the second time. And third. After that, you might just be stupid. (Here's your sign.)

I have a feeling there's no finite list of those things, and ten years from now, I'll still be doing many things wrong--at least the first time--and then looking for solutions I file away to use ahead of time the next time. In writing, as in life.

Fortunately, it seems, the things get smaller and easier to fix the longer you stick around and the more you pay attention.

So, I'm about 50 pages shy of being finished with my outline. In (some of) my moments of "This task is so boring I think I'll go read 50 blogs instead," I've tried to do some bookkeeping activities. Like ... how many scenes are in this story? How many in each POV (point of view)?

Which kind of leads me to curious questions like, "How long should a scene be?" and "How many scenes should there be? ... per POV?" And, a least common denominator, "What the heck is a scene anyway?" It seems simple enough, but strangely, the answer is trickier than you'd think.

I know there aren't hard and fast answers to these questions. However, I do believe the majority of published writers have gotten there because they've figured out the "magic" for getting certain things right. Fortunately for novices like me, many generous folks taken the time to share some of that magic through books or articles--some freely available on the Internet.

I found a couple of pieces tonight by Holly Lisle while taking a look at these questions. I haven't read any of her books, because I don't typically enjoy fantasy or sci-fi, but more often than not, my Google searches for writing craft answers have led me to her site. She gives short, conscise, and extremely helpful explanations. And often they're even funny, which earns extra credit in my book.

These are the ones I read tonight:

Notecarding: Plotting under Pressure (Hmm ... might try this FIRST next time!)
Scene Creation Workshop -- Writing Scenes that Move Your Story Forward

There's lots more to explore on her site, too. I like this one:
Creating Conflict: or, The Joys of Boiling Oil

So many lessons, so little time ...

Whoa-oa ... halfway there ...

I reached the halfway point today in the detailed outline of my WIP. Two hundred pages condensed down into about eight so far. Shew. I think this is going to be an extremely helpful tool when I'm finally finished. I'm already seeing the gaps, places where I've renamed characters accidentally, and spots where the conflict needs to be cranked way up.

The tasty sandwich at my local coffee shop today helped a lot, too.

I'll probably trek over to the public library again tomorrow. I got a lot done there yesterday. The only problem with working away from home without a buddy is when you have to go potty. It's a pain to have to pack everything up just to make a five-minute detour. There were two LDS guys on mission hiding out in the library, too (it's been really cold here this week), and I almost asked one of them to watch my stuff. But, they'd been there a few hours already, and sure enough, when I returned, they had headed back outside to their waiting bikes. And for all I know, maybe they were just dressed like missionaries, waiting to steal computers from unsuspecting persons such as I. Naw, probably not. :-D

Out and about in blogland

I think I'll talk about other people again today in order to direct you away from asking me questions about how much I got done again this week. (Cough cough)

So many of my favorite bloggers just had some good stuff to say this week. Barbara talks about the simultaneous disappointment/relief of finding out that her project just wasn't going to work, and moving on to a new one. I love her candidness.

Diane made me laugh with her post about why she won't write your life story. I commented that I'm not even published and people who know I'm writing tell me I should write their life story.

Carleen got me all excited about music, which truly doesn't take much, yet there you go. Her upcoming debut, Orange Mint and Honey, is just around the corner, (February 14, I think?) and is going to be a Target Breakout Book.

I walked around Target yesterday afternoon and felt alternately excited and overwhelmed about how many intriguing books they have on their very small shelf space. Excited because, well, books just do that to me. Call me a dork. Overwhelmed wondering if little ol' me will ever get to be one of those. (Yeah, I know, finish the book, Julie. That's the first step. Heh.)

Gail and I are reading The Memory Keeper's Daughter (Kim Edwards) for our mini book club at the moment. (Mini, as in just the two of us, and we talk about it while we're walking trying to move the sack of potatoes.) This is an absorbing book. Twists and turns at every juncture, and yet a steady pace, which has got to be a hard thing to pull off.

I did have some success in all of my resolutions this week, except I think I gained back the weight I lost in one meal at Carino's Italian Grill last night, so I can't move the counter just yet. (Darn that Gorgonzola cheese.) I also spent a whole evening napping in front of the TV instead of staring at the laptop computer. Perhaps I can actually do something another night. I bought this amazing little paint by numbers kit at Toy Joy in Austin several months back--you basically paint your own reproductions of some semi-known works on these tiny canvases. I intend to get that out and have some artist's dates with it soon.

The elusive end of the story (a/k/a breaking the rules)

I'm still struggling with the last few scenes of my first draft of LOTH. I know I'm within about 25 pages of a complete first draft, and yet the words are not coming. I have a fuzzy picture of what I think is supposed to happen and how it's all neatly tied up, yet it's like pulling teeth to get the scenes down on paper.

I'm wondering if it's because I really can't know for sure how it's going to end until I do my revisions and make sure all the ducks are in a row, all the characters are present who need to be, all the points of view are the right ones, and so on.

Or, maybe I'm just lazy. Not sure. Maybe it's Maybelline. Or Facebook.

Anyway, in spite of my tendency to want to play by the rules here (i.e., write that crappy first draft to the bitter end, no matter what), I've started to revise. Well, what I'm doing first is a detailed outline of everything that's happened, who is present, where it took place, and so on. I should be able to have a pretty clear picture of the story as it is right now when I'm finished with that, and will be able to start cutting, adding, moving around, ramping up the conflict, and, you know, "killing my darlings." (But only if they have to go. Sigh.)

I'm planning to spend a big chunk of both quantity and quality time tomorrow and I believe I'll give myself a little while to see if those scenes will write themselves (in a manner of speaking). But if they don't flow, I'm moving on to serious revisions. It's time to get the show on the road. January is more than half over!

No matter how we try to follow someone else's suggestions in this crazy job, what they (whoever they are) say is true--what works for someone else may not work for me.

So, anyone else out there in writerland have this problem, or is it just me being ... um, me and not you?

Writing for bloggy treats

I'm still hacking a bit, but I'm writing. I finally got my butt off the proverbial couch Friday and wrote a good, long scene, and then wrote another this afternoon.

I can tell I'm feeling better, because today (drum roll, please), I even wrote BEFORE I did my blog tour, and in fact, have not done that yet. This is a great improvement over last week. I love reading my blogs, but they can be a huge distraction, so if I can get the writing done first, I am much more productive. Then I get my blog treat. I guess you could say that makes me kind of like a little dog. Ruff. (Whatever works, right?)

Lots of discussion among writers about how they motivate themselves in the midst of our exploding electronic environment. Most say they either: a) give themselves a block of time to get email and blog reading out of the way, some with an actual timer, then write, or b) do their writing, then allow themselves their virtual networking time after they get their writing done. Some even have two computers--one with Internet access, one without. I've got two now, but that's a whole 'nuther story. (And they both connect to the Internet, sot that won't work for me!)

As much as I convince myself I can do the first and still be productive, I'm more likely to do better with the second.

After all, I'm the girl who goes into Target at 8 and comes out of her daze at 11 when they're closing, right? I like to wander around in a store, feel everything and smell it. (Unfortunately, they don't usually like me to TASTE it, durnit.) I do like to wander, and that's a fact, and blogs and email are no different. I love reading about what's going on with others, and following their links, which lead to other blogs, and, well, you get the picture. Before I know it, I can "waste" an entire afternoon--although it's not all wasted, I say. It just doesn't always help me meet my goals.

As much as many of us talk about wanting to be full-time writers, it's often still hard to sit down and actually do the writing, isn't it? Once you're started, it's sometimes a blast--things flow and before you know it, you've written pages and pages, and hardly remember the trip. Other days, it's just spewing out stuff for the sake of spewing it, and going, "YUCK!!" when you're finished, and "thank goodness for revisions."

But I'd still rather spend my time doing this, most days, than anything else in the world.

When there's really nothing to say, say it anyway

If only this was one of those illnesses that made me lethargic and lose my appetite. Instead, it's making me lethargic (except for that one four-hour shopping trip to TJ Maxx and Target Tuesday night. I swear, I do not remember getting there or being there long enough for the guy to announce they were closing at 11. I must have been feverish and delirious.) and causing me to EAT EVERYTHING IN SIGHT.

Yesterday for lunch, I was downright Southern-fried with my leftovers of COLD potato salad (normal), COLD chicken (erm . . . now you're pushing it), and COLD baked beans (EW!). It never tasted so good straight out of the fridge. If it says comfort, right now, bring it on. Don't bother with the microwave. Thanks.

You'd think I could at least get a couple of pounds of weight loss out of this narsty-ness, but no, I suddenly have the appetite of a hippo, and pretty soon, we'll see the resemblance, too.

So, yeah, I'm still re-reading my WIP (in between blogs, of course) and trying to remember what those people were supposed to be doing and why. Suddenly, their trials and tribulations all seem so silly.

Tomorrow. There's always tomorrow.

And thank goodness for Blogger's new auto save feature, or I'd of had to recreate this post. I probably wouldn't have bothered. I simply wanted to add the Spanish dictionary to Firefox, so I could type "manana" properly, with the tilde, and after it downloaded, it restarted, even though I expressly told it NO! (Man, I'm cranky. Yelling at my browser like that. Gosh.)

I do, however, have this alter ego who blogged over at julielayne yesterday. She's much more interesting than little ol' me. She likes to start stuff sometimes. I try to keep her separate from the aspiring novelist personality, who is friendly and always eager to please.

But, just for you people who might want to learn something from this post right here, I'll toss you a crumb:

My title is NOT a good rule of thumb when writing fiction, nonfiction, or much of anything.

Except blogs.

She won NaNoFiMo, but it ain't over til it's REALLY over

I shoulda gone for the 50K. Because then maybe, just maybe, I'd be FINISHED with this story, which at the moment, I am terribly, horribly sick of. And I'm even writing the really fun parts now--the court scenes. There, I've given you just a tiny glimpse of what's happening.

But at this point, I don't really care WHO wins the trial. :-P-----------

But hooray for me! I set a goal to write 40K words this month, and by golly, I've done it.

That feels pretty freakin' amazing.

And congratulations to Donna and Barb, my online writing "sisters," who have reached their 50K NaNoWriMo goals a day early! Can't wait to see their stories.

Did you blink?

Tell me you didn't blink.

(I'm not a dancer, at least not since I grew six inches in the summer between 8th and 9th grades, but can you see me dancing over here?)