Plans

For those of you who really know me, you know that I'm not a planner. I love he idea of it and occasionally I get a burst of energy  and think - Wow! How cool would it be to have my plans done for once. I do them and it's great until I have to do it again. That's where I fall apart.

Well, this past week I was struck by the planning bug twice! Yes, TWICE! First I decided to get ready for NaNoWriMo. Last year I just wrote and I ended up with Songbird, so glad I did it and I am very proud of what I accomplished with it. For me I feel Songbird is a much strong, and yes, better story than Evolution of Janie. I'm just not working on it because I know the rejections will hurt more. But it was hard to stay focused last year, because I never knew what I was going to write until I sat down each day and started typing.

For this year, I'm going to work on an idea I have called The Pass this is the one I posted the poll on a couple weeks ago. I currently have the opening scenes written, but I'm not going to touch it again until November 1st. The exciting part is that I have the first few chapters planned. Not sure after that, but it's more than I had last year!

The other great thing is that I lost my headphones. What does that have to do with planning? Well, I get really bored on the elliptical at the gym if I don't have music or the tele to watch, so instead I decided to take my notebook. I spent 20 minutes planning out the rest of Liar. It's still pretty vague but I know where it's going and some general chapter points.

I'm not expecting this planning phase to last too much longer, but for now I'm really enjoying knowing what I'm going to write about. :)

On my iPod

Billionaire by Travie McCoy ft. Bruno Mars

Blogminded!

I keep getting ideas for blog posts. When I'm at work, in the car, laying in bed at night they just seem to come naturally.

Great, right?

Nope.

The second I actually sit down at the computer to write one up, they're gone! I completely forget what I was going to write about and then when I finally remember I can't do it in a way that brings to mind the way I wanted to say it. I was thinking about Wales today and now I don't know what it was that I felt was so important to me, or funny. ARGH!!

Goal for the week - get a blog journal to write this crap down!!

On a positive note, I'm getting some actual writing done on Liar and sometime this month I've decided to start another revision of Evolution, focusing on pacing and cleaning up a few details.

On my iPod:

Haven't Got a Care by The Barra McNeils 

In the Beginning...

I'm not sure what actually triggered my thoughts today but I was suddenly overwhelmed by the memory of how I felt when I first started writing The Evolution of Janie. It was a heady feeling, my chest tightened and a surge of excitement filled me. I can clearly remember sitting in the Barnes and noble bookstore in The Woodlands, flipping through pages of a Montana tour guide, hoping to find the perfect location for my story.

It was a feeling that I want to recapture. That rush of starting something completely new, that was going to change my life in a way that I never anticipated. Before starting Evolution I'd never seriously considered writing a novel. But once I started I found that the thrill of creating something of my own, where I could direct the characters to be what I wanted and to do what I wanted them to do, was better than reading what another had put down on paper.

I suppose now my goal is to find that feeling again and keep it going. So many times I sit at the computer and try to figure out what I'm doing. I've been too focused on trying to get an agent and get published that I've lost my love of creating. Since putting my querying on the back burner I've been feeling freer, but I know that to really get back to where I started I'm going to have to find a way to write for me first and my audience second.

There's always going to be a part of me that desires to get published, and when I had a full request on Evolution earlier this week, I did get a tingle in my stomach. But that needs to be second to the actual writing.

On my iPod:

Adam's Song by Blink 182

When to Quit

When it quit is a question I've been pondering for a while. Not that I'm thinking of quitting writing but revisions. When I first finished my draft of Evolution I thought it was nearly perfect. HA! Well, after a few rejections I ended up taking a serious look at my 'completed' draft and realized it still needed serious work.

The results of six months of revisions was an almost completely different novel. I changed setting, defined and removed characters, and altered the core conflict of the plot. I'm so happy I made those revisions. I definitely feel that the result was a stronger piece. Since I finished that new 'completed' draft, I've continued to make smaller revisions, adjusting minor issues and clarifying plot and characters. Each time I feel better about what I've written. About three months ago I decided to start querying again. I've had a bit of interest, with two partials and a full. Considering I've only sent out about 20 queries this round I think the two versions of my query are working alright. 

Last week, I had a beta reader who graciously read through the entire manuscript in one sitting. Overall, she had a lot of great things to say - the stuff I wanted to hear. In addition to the positives she pointed out the problems she noticed as reading - the stuff I needed to hear. Redundancies aren't a big issue. I can give it a read through again and remove some of them. But the main problem she pointed to was my pacing. And she's right. I know she is. Pacing was what I was trying to fix, and I did. Well, I did a bit, just not enough.

There was a moment a few weeks back that I thought I was done with major work. Now I know I still need to do more. Maybe I don't know when to quit. I just don't see the purpose of having a completed novel still on the shelf (or in my hard drive)that no one wants to publish because I'm too tired or lazy or stubborn to make the necessary revisions to make to sellable.

I have multiple projects on the go; Reconstruction of Janie, Liar, Witness, The Pass, and Today I die. I have other things I could focus on, but part of me won't let go of Evolution. It was the first book I finished. The first novel I ever put any of my effort and heart into. It'll sell one day. It may not be my first to make it into print, but it'll make it.

When to quit? Not now. Not until it's published.

On my iPod:

New Orleans is Sinking by The Tragically Hip

The Power of Description

The blood-red moon hung heavy in the pitch black sky. It's beauty was broken only by the piercing wind that threw dried golden leaves across its palette.

Umm...Yeah. Not quiet the best I could do, but I think, in a way, it gets the point across. Some description is good, too much is well...not good. For me I always thought my issue was not enough description, but as I continue reading Jack Bickham's The 38 Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes, I wonder if my problem is really not recognizing description when I write it.

When I think of description the example I gave above is what comes to mind, describing the setting, setting the mood. Yet in Bickham's book he discusses that description is really just a pause in the action to tell the reader what things look like, what the characters are thinking and feeling. I've had a lot of reviews that tell me to describe more - but they are suggesting more details to the surrounding, something I readily admit I sometimes skip. My real issue comes with character thoughts and feelings. I have no difficulty doing this, in fact looking back at reviews from the first version of The Evolution of Janie, I was called out on it a number of times.

For myself, I find it hard to take out character thoughts and feelings since I'm writing in first person. How do you not include thoughts and feelings when you're supposed to be the character? It was a question I've asked myself a lot after reading Chapter 6: Don't Describe Sunsets. But I think I may have figured it out by referring back to his previous chapter about warming up your engine. Instead of worrying about thoughts and feelings I need to focus on what those thoughts and feelings address. In my original draft I used Janie's thoughts to give back story, a lot of back story which in addition to taking the reader out of the action it took them backwards instead of forwards. Overall, I think I've fixed this in my opening chapters, but I'm not done. I need to go back and reread, searching for little bits that repeat, that just don't move us forward.

Just one more thing to add to my editing/revision to do list!!

On my iPod:

Wake Me Up When September Ends by Green Day