Writing... or pretending to write

Well little ol' me was just be-boppin' along this week, and then two days ago I remembered... #PitMad was today!

I'd tweaked, cut, and changed several things since participating in September's #PitMad, but my pitches were going to have the same premise (obviously, I was pitching the same book), so I didn't feel unprepared.

Plus I knew what to expect.

And Brenda Drake made new rules so the entire process was much less hectic and overwhelming, for both authors and agents/editors from what I can tell.

So I got four (**edit, FIVE) favorites/likes/hearts/whatever-the-hell-they-are from publishers, and I've already sent off two submissions!

NaNoWriMo 2015... I have failed. It's day 17, and I should have over 28k words written.

I have 1209.



That means 3486 words per day to finish on time. Right.

Last year, I worked full time (still do), had a baby (still do... well, now she's a toddler), and still I cranked out the first draft of Book One. As I was planning NaNo this year, I didn't see much difference between 2014 and 2015, but the differences are hugely real.

It was a strict 8:00-4:30 job, and this year my job is all over the map (events coordinator, WHEW). I had a baby who was doing a little shuffle-crawl thing and slept 2-3 times a day, and this year I have a toddler who runs and only naps at daycare. And several family obligations have popped up this year. So yes, there is a big difference between NaNo 2015 and NaNo 2014.

These are all big obstacles, but they would be easier to overcome if I had the same drive for New Book as I did for Book One. I needed a break from my characters, so I haven't touched it since September. But apparently I'm over the space, and I keep thinking about that story and what I could change.

I've rewritten Book One probably 4 or 5 times, but hadn't put it down in the 10 months that I was working on it. And now Amara, Don, and Ryan keep bugging me and putting different scenarios (in most cases, better ones) in my head and coming up with really epic lines of hatred/jealousy/love/whatever all the time. And I'm just over here like:


But they don't care. Damn, I sound like a crazy person.

Regardless, I'm not going to win NaNoWriMo 2015, so I don the cone of shame for a brief moment, but I'm realizing that now isn't the right time to start New Book when I'm still living in the other world with the other characters.

I can multitask, but not that well!

A year ago (what???), I used NaNoWriMo as a tool to write Book and it morphed into Booksssss. This year, I've been debating on what to work on for my NaNo project. Should I work on Book Two or a new project entirely (which should only be New Book, and shouldn't multiply like Book did. SHOULDN'T. I really hope it doesn't...)?

I can't believe that this time last year I had a few thousand words and a flat plot, and now I've got a completed MS and several bits of drafts for more in that series.

Time. Flies. Really.

*I began this post around 9:00 a.m. It's now almost 4:00 pm, and I'm getting back to it...*

Now that I've had all day to keep it in the back of my head, I think that's what I'm going to do for NaNoWriMo 2015.

New Book here I come!

Oh no! I completely missed September!

Since my last post, I made my goal of finishing the chapter additions and revisions, I participated in PitMad, and sent in my first queries ever.



I thought that this would be the longest 4-6 (and 6-8) weeks of my life, but it's been going by insanely fast.

My challenge now is to leave Book One alone (since it's sitting in inboxes. eeek!) and begin work on Book Two. I've already got a good chunk of it since all of this was just Book at one point in my life, so at least I don't feel like I'm starting from completely nothing.

In short: I've put myself out there, I'm waiting on feedback, and I'm still writing. Go me!

14 days til #PitMad.

4 chapters/scenes to write from scratch.

6 scenes to finish or heavily edit.

1 final read-through.

Yes?

Maybe.

I'll try.

No guarantees.

December event might be better.

We shall see.

Until then...

Yet another goal!

I feel that writing has a lot of these.

Daily word counts, overall word counts, pages, "this scene needs to get from Point A to Point B with this conversation," and on and on and on...

But! In my getting lost in hashtags (yes, I've still been doing that) I discovered Twitter pitching events/contests/things.

140 character (actually less, because you have to have the event hashtag in there) book pitch. Boom. You have to introduce your main character, the conflict, the stakes, the antagonist, and make it interesting enough for an agent to "favorite."

I first looked at this as a daunting horrible task, but it's actually kind of fun! The host of #PitMad, Brenda Drake, says that "the rule of thumb is twice per hour per manuscript." Agent Carly Watters also suggested to have several different tweets written so you aren't pumping out the same pitch all day.

I have five favorites. Narrowed down from ten.

So my new goal is to finish these edits and additions in time to participate in #PitMad on September 10, 2015.


Woot woot!

This post is for my fellow writers/authors/fulltimeemployeeswhohavebiggerdreams...ers.

My 10 Steps of Writing a Book**
Step 1: get idea.
Step 2: write book.
Steps 3, 4, 5, and 6: edit book.
Step 7: discover the genre of written/edited book.
Step 8: find agent in newly discovered genre for book.
Step 9: pull hair out researching how to write the perfect query.
Step 10: have heart attack as the email is sent into the ether.

I am at Step 4... possibly Step 5.

I'm enjoying the editing part so far (I get to think of things to do to characters, and that, my friend, is power. Albeit power over fictional people, but still.). But at this point, I'm getting wires crossed and am trying to force Step 8 into the middle of Steps 3-6. While I'm definitely not ready to send out any queries, I have compiled my list of dream agents. And let me tell ya, it's a good list.

My struggle right now is not getting lost in the endlessness of #tenqueries and #askagent and #querytip and any of Chuck Sambuchino's blogs (like Successful Queries or Guide to Literary Agents). This can be likened to going to IMDb to see who played the Seer in season two of Once Upon a Time and getting to Shia LeBeouf's bio page (btw, this is the path: OUAT S2E14 - Shannon Lucio - Criminal Minds S4E19 - Michael Rooker - The Walking Dead S3E14 - Jose Pablo Cantillo - Disturbia - Shia LeBeouf.)

See what I mean? Endlessness. Lost.

Here is my advice to myself and to everyone else in the same position: know your goal, know how to get there, and know where you are on that journey and stop trying to live 4 months from now.

This isn't to say that we shouldn't be keeping an eye out for new agents or dreaming, after all, that's what our job is, to dream. What I'm saying is that it's easy to get sucked into the querying world, but try to resist doing it before you're ready.

I read #tenqueries periodically on Twitter, and I'm always shocked to see an agent pass on a submission because they don't represent that genre or the writing needs work (not that they pass, but because the author didn't do their research on the agent or haven't done the work to get the MS to as close as perfect as possible).

I've been so tempted to go ahead and submit something now because I know that it'll take weeks for the agent to get to my email. I think to myself, "I could totally be done with editing in 6 weeks. That's what they said their average response time is, and if I send the first 5 pages now, I'll be 6 weeks earlier on getting that request for a full MS."


Why? 1) in fiction, we're told to never query before it's complete and polished. 2) knowing me, I'll write something incredible that would be the greatest opening line ever, but my dream agent will already have my first few pages.

So I'm not going to fool myself by swearing off dreaming or looking up agents until I'm through Steps 6 and 7. But I am going to work to aim my excitement and energy into finishing as many rounds of edits/rewrites that my book needs before sending it out.

This way, whenever I get to that step, I'll be prepared, have a draft of my query letter, and have a solid starting point on what agents I'll send it to. I just won't get ahead of myself like I have been over the past few weeks.


**as of now, I am not published or represented, so please don't read this as a promise of "how to get published" if this is your goal.

It's been almost a month since completion of Book One, Draft One and so far, Editor-Nicole has been doing a lot of staring. I found/posted this a couple days ago that aptly depicts me:

Past. Freaking. Tense.

Scarily enough (and it really does scare be a bit... a lot... yeah, it's terrifying to stare into the abyss), I can see the end of my manuscript, or MS as it's called in bookland.

I can see it. It's there. And it's unknown.

I've had "an idea for a book" for years.

I've been "writing a book" for months.

But I've never "written a book" before. That just seems odd to me. It kinda gets stuck in my throat when I try to practice saying it. (You know, think back to 7th grade when you practiced signing your name with your crush's last name like you were going to get married? No, just me? Well then...)

I've been tracking my progress by chapter/scene now instead of word count. Once I got over the NaNoWriMo hump of 50k, it was just like, "this is a lot of words." Not only am I tracking my progress, I'm channeling my writing by making a to-do list.

My list now looks like this:

Reorder everything to fit new timeline
Ch 13
Ch 14
finish Ch 16
Ch 18
finish Ch 19
Ch 20
Ch 21
finish Ch 27
finish Ch 35
finish Ch 38
finish Ch 39
finish Ch 42
Ch 43
finish Ch 45

I know 10 things left on this list (since I made it about a week ago) seems like a lot, so how do I see the abyss already?

Well I'll tell you how, Curious George. See all those chapters that say "finish" in front? Yeah, that means I just need to connect a few things or write an opening/closing paragraph for them. BAH! So yeah, I can see that abyss. I'll probably be able to smell it in a few days. I hope it smells like honeysuckles. That is my favorite smell in the entire universe.

All this babbling about almost being done and seeing the abyss of the unknown and blah blah blah does not by any means mean (haha, see what I did there?) that I've forgotten about the editing phase. Duh, I'm an editor.

My naive hope is that since I've been unable to resist editing so much along the way that this phase might have been reduced. At least a little bit. Even just a few days would make me feel less insane.

There is no such thing as bad brainstorming.

Right? This is what I've been telling myself for months now. I (along with six or so others) have been brainstorming book/series titles. I've come up with I don't even know how many, but the vibes span from boring to gorgeous-blond-couple-holding-each-other-with-their-hair-blowing-in-the-wind book cover to creepy and irrelevant to sci-fi.

I do believe this is even more difficult than naming Ryan. Lovely.

I'm not sure if this is kosher for the authoring world, but I'm giving you (basically my friends on Facebook at the time I'm writing this post) a list of possible titles for Book One and taking any suggestions and judgments on a scale of 1 to 10 (10 being the whole light from heaven/angels singing bit). I'd love it if the title was spoken/read and makes me do this:


but I'm realistic. I know I'll probably just stumble a little bit. Okay, okay. I doubt I'll have any sort of physical reaction. But I will know it when I see it!

Beginning the month with just over 50,000 words, my goal for Camp NaNoWriMo was 80k. I am not going to make this goal. I will not deceive myself into thinking I will write over 2,000 words a day for the 8 days left in Camp.

Even though I'm not going to make it, I have been writing consistently. Okay, not really consistently in the sense that I'm getting exactly 1,263 words every day (this was a totally random number to be used in this example, don't read into that), but consistently meaning that I'm writing something every day.

On average (which is an extremely loose term, by the way) I've been writing at least 500. This is taking into account my actual getting-paid-for-it-now-workload, my weekends, the randomly awesome days that 2,500 words pour out, and the randomly awful days when those 2,500 really suck and get deleted.

If I keep this pace up, theoretically I COULD have a manuscript ready for editing by the end of May.

Say whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?!

Not in a bad way, but in the "it's all downhill from here" kind of way. Wait, that's negative. Redefined: Going downhill is easier (not running, cuz that crap hurts your shins, but the coasting aspect of it on some sort of vehicle, dur) than going uphill or flat, and I think I might be there.


Of course, this is before reaching the point of editing and being told what parts suck and that I need to scrap 15 pages of work or something like that.

Sooooo, let's just call it like it is: I've gotten to the point in my writing where I'm going for the details, to make readers see what I see, to make it (as my lovely sister pointed out) so these characters aren't just talking heads. They are on a couch, drinking vanilla-caramel lattes sharing a blueberry scone that makes your mouth yearn to be eating that scone, sitting on a worn-out lumpy couch in a corner of a close-air, but not uncomfortably so, coffee shop with concrete floors that were painted so long ago only flecks of brown paint still exist up to the dark wood L-shaped counter littered with glass jars of handmade biscotti and 14-layer caramel cakes. (As any Statesboroian would guess, they are sitting in the Grind. Yum.)

Dammit. Now I want a slice of cake. It's a 14-layered party in your mouth.


I've got most of the conversations hashed out, and the plot is probably 80 percent finished. Okay, maybe closer to 74 percent. But Emily was right: They are floating heads named Amara, Ryan, and Donatus.

Ha! See? I told you I'd reveal names as time went on! They are no longer A and D and Ryan (beautifully named Ryan... wistful sigh), but Amara and Donatus. And they're wonderful people.

My next reveal will (hopefully) be the book/series titles. This has been almost as hellish as naming Ryan.

Buuuut, according to my sister and father, the Naming Angels might not be humming, but are at least clearing their throats. I'm just sitting here, waiting for Amara, Don, or Ryan to say something brilliant and beautiful enough to be the first thing that any reader reads.


Yep, just hanging out here. Waiting on a figment of my imagination to be a genius. This isn't a problem at all, is it?

Hey hey everybody!

Organization: [awr-guh-nuh-zey-shuh n] noun. the act or process of organizing.

This is what I've been up to this week with Book One. Awr-guh-nuh-zey-shuh n. It was a daunting task at first, but then I found that I rather enjoyed the power I hold over my future readers. I can either send them to fifty years ago, or back to the 14th century with just the click of a few keys. I was drunk on it.

Power: [pou-er] noun. the possession of control or command over others; authority; ascendancy



While going through my two files, I decided that it's a little crazy to have 60+ pages in one document (even though I had always known that the day would come when they got to this length when I originally divided everything to keep in chronological order), so now I have 6 documents about 20 pages in length, in plot order. Eeek!

It was exciting to read through what the final (well, how I imagine it) product will be. A happy little discovery: the next scene I'm working on is the time period that changes D for the rest of the story. Lots of pressure on me now!

I do need to be careful, and think futuristically, because Book Two and Book Three revisit this memory, and I want to make sure that I'm not going to be repeating myself in the coming years/books.

More exciting news that really doesn't pertain to me except for the fact that I really hope I'm able to attend this event next week *takes deep breath after run-on sentence*

Maggie Stiefvater, #1 NYT Bestselling Author of The Shiver Trilogy (also Books of Faerie), is coming to campus (I work in higher education, which you'd know if you read my bio to the right!) to speak and do a book signing next week! AGHHHH I was shocked that this event flew under my radar and I had nothing to do with planning it o.O

Anyway, so I shall have to acquire hard copies of her books because asking her to sign my phone with a sharpie would be a little weird.

Now that I've got Ryan pegged as Ryan, and snow days are over so I'm not alone with muh bebe all day... I'm back to work after a 5-day forced hiatus from writing. I've gotten almost 2,000 words done today over my lunch break, and I'm just itching to clock out so I can do more.


But but... paid work is good work. That just means I must be patient and trudge through the boring slop of my to-do list at my current job until I can click that "OK" button when it asks me if I'm sure I want to end my work day.

Sigh... can't wait.

On the plus side, I'm now over 40,000. For those of you who have difficulties putting that into book/page length, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone is just under 77,000 words. So I'm longer than half of the first Harry Potter book! Yay me!


I'm working on D's relationship with Ryan at the moment. D is fiercely protective of A (she is his little sister after all) and doesn't take well to Ryan being in on their secret.

As I've been thinking more and more about their past, I have come to accept that A and D will experience some PTSD, but I want it to be clear that I'm not writing a book about PTSD. I know it is a horrible disorder, but my books are not meant to be an informative source about it.

With that said, A and D look out for each other and keep one another grounded in the present. Because of this bond, Ryan entering the picture kind of freaks D out a bit, and I've been exploring that relationship today (which has been fun, because I know D sooooo well based on scenes from Book Two and Book Three, and I'm giddy to be able to find places to let his personality shine!).

For those of you who haven't read my... summary? blurb? "back cover text"? Whatever it's called, I shall be posting it soon on a page (not as a post) so just keep an eye out. When the time comes for it to go up, I hope you all are excited about it!

My wonderful husband is... well, wonderful. He named him! The guy, A's love interest! Yup, I married a genius.


Ryan.

I've been having a devil of a time naming some of these people. Okay, naming this one character. A's love interest (A is the female main character, and Book One is written in her POV).

Way back when I came up with the concept for this (which you can now read all about here, or you can click "Debut Origins" at the top of the page, same thing), all it took was 2 minutes of research and A and D were named perfectly. I can't imagine them being anyone else, they are (I italicized and bolded, that's how much emotion you should read into that word) these people.

Their previous significant others were also fairly simple. I just looked up a few names from the time period, and I found the ones that fit each person. The antagonist was also quick to identify. I cringed and detested him as soon as I read his name, and I knew that was the one.

But when it comes to A's current love interest, I haven't a clue. Here are just some of the names he has been:

• Keith,
• Jeffery,
• Michael/Mike,
• Jared,
• Andrew,
• I think I even threw in a Chris or Matthew at some point.

Currently, per my sister's suggestion, his name is Jackson. I have looked up baby names popular at the time this guy was born, and I didn't see anything that stuck out. I even tried to use the name my husband and I would have chosen if we had had a son instead of a daughter, and that just made me project weird maternal instincts over the character which never would have worked in the book.

"Jackson" is a very open, honest guy. He accepts people for who they are, but if that doesn't work with him, and they don't take the many opportunities he gives them to change, then he backs off. He worries about everyone's well being, even people he just met. Sharing in joy and positive experiences is a big part of why A falls for him (also his deep brown eyes, but ya know, she's only human). He defends his feelings for her against her very protective brother, D, and eventually gains his trust.

Bughhhhhh! I figured naming a fictional character would be easier than naming my child, but that appears to be very untrue.

Why am I only venting about this now? Because I thought that Jackson would work if I just left it alone for a while. It's been three months and over 30,000 words, and I still hesitate before typing his name, because it just isn't his name.

Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard (her blog, and her website) came out on Tuesday. I'm ashamed to say that I worked like a good, responsible adult does all day, BUT I did finish Red Queen that night.

One: I recognized the cover from Epic Reads book shimmy awards (or maybe it was just one of those "here's what we're super stoked about for this year" articles) and it's beautiful.

I've been doing really well at writing something every day, but I'm still struggling with the "shiny things" like overused verbs or adjectives, or typing "teh" instead of "the" (which I obviously must fix right then, it can't wait). For instance, I posted on Facebook 5 days ago that I had reached 27k. Yay for me!

I wrote maybe 700 words over the weekend, 1000 on Monday, and another 1000 on Tuesday. But my word count today was 28,888...

-_-

I have got to stop editing! Granted, the chunks I took out were probably going to be taken out at some point down the line anyway, but they apparently just had to be gone this week. At least to editor-me they did. Writer-me needs to stop reading her work and just let it come out.

Everyone is probably sick of me discussing my selves, but the struggle is real. Compartmentalizing is a lot harder when it comes to actually writing something than it is in the rest of my life. Now that I have a goal, hopefully me harping on the fact that I need to compartmentalize will help me do it.

The scene I've been working on for the past few days has taken a rather dark turn. As I see A and D go through this, I'm cringing, but also hoping that I'll make the readers cringe, too. All I can say is that if they come knocking at my door, the only think I could do is take a page from Chuck:


On a positive note, I inspired my sister to pick up her blog again (check it out! Whimsical Makes). She's super talented, and also insanely busy, but thrives that way.

So my "author bio" says that I'm "armed with about 20,000 words." This was the case until I divided everything into separate books (it's still up for debate as to whether it'll be three or four... if it's three, then Book Two will be insane). Now everything together is over 35k.

But when I look at Book One alone, I'm officially over the NaNoWriMo halfway mark!



Only like, 200 words over the halfway mark, and that's just the 50k NaNoWriMo goal, not a completed novel, but HEY! I'm happy about it.

Now that I've got the really big events written, I'm going through and writing the in-between-scenes that make it a cohesive plot. This is surprisingly more exciting than I thought it was going to be. I was dreading having to go back through and puzzle out how A was going to get herself from this point to that point, but it's actually interesting and I'm enjoying getting to know her even better.

** Side note. I put the Alexander Skarsgård gif in this post while writing it, and I just stared blankly as he bowed over and over for like 3 minutes… Oops.

Anyway, now that the plot sequence is coming together, and my editor-self is happy that we've got an opening chapter, that dumb part of me is beginning to panic about a title. Even though I keep telling her that we have months of work ahead of us before we desperately need to have one, she is an awfully stubborn self. Sigh.

Greetings!

So I've read lots and lots of "how to begin your book" and "your first chapter" articles from bekindrewrite, Natasha Lester's website, Laura Mizvaria's old blog here (pssst! her new blog is here) just to name a few. And I think I wrote my first scene today!

Since there's SO much back story that will be revealed throughout the book, I've discovered that writing from beginning to end is going to be pretty much impossible for me. In my jumbled mind, the story will bounce around time (you know, from 2012 to 1881 to 1645 to 1998 and so on), but with the plot making sense and always moving forward. Right.

Originally, I had everything saved in one file, putting the scenes in what I thought the final order would be. Welp! After scrolling up and down trying to find a place to start a new scene (in the past or present, didn't really matter, I scrolled anyway!), I decided to keep two separate files. One historic and one modern.

I really have been trying to keep my mind in creating the story, but my dumb editor's brain is really really loud and wants to drown out my writer's brain. It's a struggle, let me tell you. So, even though my writer's brain is currently winning at the screaming contest, the editor in me has decided to softly ask the nagging question: How are you gonna start this?

And I think writer-self finally has an answer for editor-self. In the first 150 words I placed A and D in a place (yes, yes. I know how ridiculous "placed in a place" sounds, and I'm calling my main characters A and D) and by the end of 880 words, I've introduced my breakthrough conflict idea from last week, and exposed their secret to the reader.

Dance with me!

So yesterday I was driving to work like I always do, but was struck with this thought: "Does this book have enough conflict?"

Answer: Nope. Nope it doesn't.

My lovely sister agreed with me, and said that right now this story is pretty much a romance. But I don't particularly do romance, thus sparking the creation of the Guild.

Now, I know that you have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about here, and since everything is still so up in the air with where the story is and where it could go, I'll just breeze over the concept. I needed a reason for two siblings to be running for their lives (even though their lives really aren't in danger because that is impossible... more on that tidbit later on!) so if there's a secret order that is out to get them... ta-da! Conflict!

The protagonist's main goal is still rooted in romance, but the Guild is going to add a sense of urgency and drive the story forward better.

Hello friends!

If you're reading this then that must mean that you found me after I have made several (ahem, countless) attempts at blogging.

2015 is going to be the year. I've been married for two years this summer, and my baby girl is going to be a year old in April! Also, I'll finish my first book in the next 12 months and work on the next steps of authoring.

I said it, and I'm publishing it on the internet to hold myself accountable!