Lady Heroes

Warning: this is more of a short introductory ramble than an actual post.

I was berating myself last night for not posting on my blog during the month of February (but to be fair I had the flu etc etc) and today I was trying to brainstorm ways to keep myself posting, and I thought-- a theme! So for the month of March, my theme is going to be Lady Heroes. This is a partially because a friend and I have been discussing ideas for a podcast lately about different treatments of myth and history, and our first topic is the treatment of women in Arthurian myth through time.

It's also just because I like an excuse to ramble about literary Lady Heroes.

So prepare yourselves, because next week my first Lady Heroes blog will be going up!

The Art of Procrastination

Things I Did This Weekend When I Was Supposed To Be Writing My Book

• Tweeted.
• Went to three and a half hours of ballet and tap classes.
• Tumbld.
• Watched Merlin.
• Read my friend Savannah's creative/design blog, MaieDae.
• Facebooked.  
• Pre-ordered the entire China Glaze Capitol Colours collection.
• Tried to paint my nails.
• Facebook-stalked people I haven't seen since high school.
• Let my cat chew on my arm.
• Whined.
• Considered driving to Dunkin Donuts for coffee.
• Showered.
• Was too lazy to drive to Dunkin Donuts for coffee.

And yet somehow I managed to get it finished anyway. Winter's Majesty now has a complete first draft, although it's absolutely terrible-- so bad that I'm considering calling it a pre-first-draft. But all the important stuff is down on paper, and I can let this project breathe for awhile, and let myself breathe for awhile, and work on a different project.

Current Rejection Count: 3

Defeating the Query Monster

First of all-- I missed last week's entry, and I know it, and I felt bad about it, so I'm going to attempt to do two entries this week to make up for it. And this one is a day late, but let's be real here-- I warned you guys in the beginning that consistency was not my strong suit.

So. I had a very bad day today. Would you like to know what I did to make it better?

I sent out queries. Five queries, actually! And it made my day much, much better. I don't know if it was the bright, optimistic, anything-can-happen feeling that sending out queries gives me, or if I just needed to do something where I was in control, but either way-- it worked.

Now I just get to sit and wait (im)patiently for someone to respond!

In other news, I am a firm believer in setting goals. One thing that I know about myself is that if I state my goals publicly somewhere so that other people can see them, I am far more likely to hold myself accountable to them. So here we go:

MY GOALS FOR THIS WEEKEND

• Finish Book 3 of my Camlain quartet, also known as Winter's Majesty.
• Okay, let's be real here-- that's my only real goal for this weekend.

This is the first weekend in a few weeks that I haven't had a dance rehearsal or something similar, so instead of spending all my time driving around I am instead going to sit down and write the last seven chapters of this book. I want to move on to another project, but before I do that I need a complete draft of this book so that I can send it off to my personal-editor-slash-demanding-best-friend and take a giant step away from this world for a while. Wish me luck!

What goals are you all setting for yourself this week?

Rejection: 1, Hannah: 0

I've had this window open for about four hours now, trying to decide what to write about. I considered blogging about rejection, because I got my first rejection of my query letter today, but-- I'm not upset. And since I'm not upset, I don't really have much to say about it.

Actually, I'm not sure that I have much to say about anything this week. It's one of those periods in life where everything feels the same. I hate ruts. Every other one I've gone through, though, has passed, so I'm sure that this one will too-- I just have to find that thing that will get me out of it.

Any suggestions? Hope everyone's week got off to a good start!

Query Letter Shenanigans

I've posted before about how this query letter is probably the most difficult thing that I have ever written. (In fact, I believe I've posted about it more than once, which when you consider the total number of entries I have on this blog is actually a fairly high frequency.) But I'm making progress.

I think that, much like a novel, a query letter is something that is never actually done. Sure, a novel can be published, and technically then it can be called 'done'. In the same vein, once a query letter does its job and attracts the attention of an agent, that particular version can be called 'done'. But as a writer, I am always going to find something else that I want to change or tweak or rephrase. It's just who I am-- my creations are little tiny pieces of my soul that I'm tearing out of myself, and whether the creation in question is a novel, a short story, a poem, or a query letter, it's difficult to know when to let go and just send it out there into the universe.

I've had the help of my best friend's mother (a published author herself, Miranda Neville-- and if you like historical romance, you should definitely check out her books, because they're fantastic, especially her characters) on revising and editing this query, and she has been absolutely priceless and wonderful and irreplaceable, and the minute someone takes a bite from this query letter I am going to send her flowers, because this has been such a great learning experience for me.

I have to say, if I could give one piece of advice to someone writing a query letter, it would be to have someone else read it before you do anything with it. If that someone else has experience with the industry, so much the better, but no matter who it is (unless it is your pet monkey-- not sure I would advise that) a fresh pair of eyes looking at a piece of writing can do so much. Another person is always going to see something that you won't see, because you've been immersed in whatever the piece of writing is to the point that the old 'forest for the trees' adage becomes terribly true.

I think that I am going to give this letter one more round of edits, and then take my own advice and just let it go. Send it out there. Because I'm ready to send this book out into the world-- this piece of my soul that I've been tearing down and rebuilding for four and a half years. There's only so much you can do before editing and revising stops being a way to make your novel better and starts being a way to procrastinate putting yourself out there, and I've reached that point.

It's time for me to stop being afraid of this and take a chance.

In Which Consistency Is Not My Strong Suit

New year, new rules.

I've been challenged by a friend to do one post per week. I can do that, right?

Okay-- I didn't do very well with my attempt to blog my way through Camp NaNoWriMo, but I have good reasons for that! One being that Autumn of Discord was so depressing that I got dragged down into a pit of angst and despair whilst trying to finish it (which I did), and the other being that-- well, I finished it! I guess in the end a completed book is better than a blog post.

Which brings me to my next bit of news! During NaNoWriMo in November, I tackled book #3 of my Camlain quartet, Winter's Majesty. I reached my 50k goal before finishing the book, which currently has seven chapters remaining, so my current goal is to get that off my plate and then decide which project to work on next. What do you guys think-- finish last year's NaNo project, which is half complete, or rewrite my Sleeping Beauty reappropriation?

Something else exciting for 2012 is that I am finally going to start querying agents. This new venture should also help give me something to blog about every week, because I'm sure I'm going to get some rejections-- who doesn't? However, I'm hoping that at least someone wants it. Otherwise I'll cry.

Okay, let's be real. Those of you who know me know I'll cry no matter what happens.

But at least I know I'll cry and keep going, no matter what direction it happens to be in. Go big or go home, right? I think that's going to be my motto for 2012.

Camp NaNoWriMo - Day 12, or: That Time I Finished One Battle Scene Only To Immediately Be Launched Into Another

Night before last, I was so focused on getting through my first battle scene (which I did!) that I neglected to do one very important thing:

I did not look at my outline to see what I would be writing next.

Thanks to this fun little mishap, when I sat down to write last night, I realized that as soon as I finished my current chapter, I would be launched into two entire chapters worth of battle scenes or battle-related scenes. Although the majority of these scenes are from an emotional standpoint of one of my main characters, I can already tell you that these are going to have to be rewritten-- likely more than once. But I have to have a starting point, right?

Tonight I return to the battle, and I really would like to be able to power through to the end, because once I do I'm really into the plotty part of the book. Let the fun begin.

Camp NaNoWriMo - Day 9, or: That Time I Had An Unproductive Weekend & Was Too Ashamed to Blog

Wednesday and Thursday were fairly productive writing days. Friday and Saturday were not. Sunday and Monday were slightly more so. I am beginning to get back on track, but I definitely have issues with focusing-- any advice? (Apart from getting off the internet.)

We'll see if I can't make the playlist and the headphones work for me a little better this afternoon.

Today's post is brought to you by the letter "B", for "battle scenes".

They are the bane of my existence. The very idea of the battle scene terrifies me, and I know that is the main reason I've not been as productive as I should have been the past couple of days (apart from, of course, being easily distracted and just plain lazy). I suppose it's just that everything I know about battles from the era that my novel is set in (sort of a mashup of Medieval and Renaissance type eras, with tweaks of my own making because I can) comes from novels that I've read and some side research that I've done.

In the first book of this series, I managed to avoid having to write any actual battle because the theme of Book 1 was intrigue (actually, the theme of the entire quartet is intrigue, but I digress). Book 2's theme is, without question, war, and avoiding battle scenes would not only be a cop-out but also wouldn't make sense in the slightest, nor be at all fair to my story. So I can't avoid these scenes-- in particular, there are two scenes that I like to call BIG BAD BATTLES (mostly because the capital letters make me smile), but there are also a couple of smaller skirmishes that happen "on camera", so to speak.

The skirmishes, oddly, are what terrify me the most. With the BIG BAD BATTLES, the main events/outcomes involve lots of emotional reaction and so I am counting on the character's viewpoints of the battle to carry me through. With the skirmishes, the point of the first one (the one I am avoiding) is for the characters to be able to learn the fighting style of their enemies.

I suppose that's my problem. I don't know the fighting style of their enemies.

Perhaps I should work on that little worldbuilding detail and then try to write the scene. It may just make my life that much simpler.

Camp NaNoWriMo - Day 3, or: That Time I Didn't Write Anything Last Night, So I Talk Off-Topic

But fear not, dear reader! I am not resorting to my old procrastinating ways.

Focus is one of my biggest problems when writing, and last night was sort of rough emotionally. I won't go into it because a) I don't want to, and b) you don't care, and I like that you don't care. The point is that it completely destroyed my ability to focus for the evening, because once the stressful event was over, it was close enough to bedtime that the creative side of my brain was shut down anyway.

Because of this, today I am going to attempt to write double my daily wordcount goal! We shall see how this pans out when I actually attempt it, but I remain optimistic.

I am still going to talk about writing, though; in particular, one specific problem about writing that has been infuriating me of late. It doesn't directly relate to my novel, but it is something that I keep in mind at all times, because (have I already said this? I think I have) I despise being a hypocrite: i.e. hating something that someone else does in writing and then turning around and doing it myself.

My issue is something I have noticed of late on a soap opera that I used to watch quite regularly. Soap operas and novels are two entirely different beasts (having written both of them I know this well-- I created my own soap for my senior project in high school) but a few facets of character creation remain quite similar across the board.

• A character's history influences his or her personality. 
• His or her personality influences their decision-making process. 
• Fully-fleshed out characters are easier for the audience to connect with and care about than empty shells-- to be invested, we as either viewers or readers must have something in which to invest. 

The problem that has been bothering me lately, however, is not character creation, but character destruction. In particular, character destruction to serve the purposes of a romantic storyline.

To use the example that has been frustrating me the most lately, on a soap that I watch Girl A is in a relationship with Boy. When Girl A first came onto the show back in September of 2010, she was fiesty and stood up for herself without questioning any potential danger; she was a character women could be proud to see on television. She fought for what she believed in and who she cared about. Not everyone liked her, and I don't think that everyone had to; I know what it is like to despise characters other people love, so I'm certainly not going to force my character-love on other people.

But the point is that she had merit. She had strength of will, she had agency, and most of all her life did not revolve around a man. (Her storyline did, because Boy dragged her into lots of stuff-- well, more accurately, she dragged herself into it because she was trying to help Boy. But she made it clear that he was not the center of her universe.) She had ideals that she stood for, people that she cared about, and a solid personality.

In the past month or so, I have seen Girl A devolve into a clinging, whiny shrew who will do anything to hold on to her man, including throwing Girl B under the bus at any opportunity. She has been taken from a strong, argumentative woman who believed in herself to a lying, manipulative shell of her former character. That strength of will is only shown now when she is determined to do whatever it takes to keep Boy interested in her instead of going back to Girl B, his former lover, ex-wife, and mother of his children (a pairing that is wildly popular on this show and one that I confess to loving).

Let me be clear: I have no problem with Girl B and Boy getting back together. This is not a case of "Hannah isn't getting the ship that she wants, so she is going to whine". This is a case of Girl A's character being completely changed in order to serve the purposes of the writer, who wants to put Girl B and Boy back together at any cost.

I have absolutely no respect for a writer who feels the need to utterly destroy a character to get them out of the way for the romantic reunion of two other characters. If the romantic relationship between Girl B and Boy is strong enough, in my opinion the destruction of the other character is unnecessary. And guess what?

It is.

The storyline that I have heard Girl B and Boy have right now (because I have stopped watching lately) is one that could draw them back together and leave Girl A out in the cold even while keeping her character intact. Her destruction is, to me, a mark of laziness on the part of a writer who wants to make fans hate her and get her out of the way as quickly as possible.

The majority of my vehemence comes from frustration, yes. If I didn't like Girl A, I would still be annoyed by this but perhaps not as worked up about it. But there is a time for devolving a character to serve a storyline, and I simply don't think that a romantic reunion storyline that could have happened without said character destruction is that time. To me, consistency is key, and while character development is without question a good thing, when a particular development is self-serving, is it really necessary?

Feel free to disagree; I won't be offended, and in fact I'm interested to hear if others have a different opinion than myself on the subject. I like being able to look at things like this from various angles.

Camp NaNoWriMo - Day 2, or: That Time I Realized I Had to Kill Characters

I'm going to make an effort to update daily during this month, in part to keep you updated if you care, but mostly to hold myself accountable both for blogging and for writing.

Autumn of Discord was coming along quite swimmingly last night. I did a couple of word wars with a friend (I love word wars, because they force me to focus instead of simply dicking around on the interwebs and not writing) and got to just past my word count goal for the day. Something that I do always keep in mind during NaNoWriMo is that yes-- when I word war, the majority of what I am writing is stream-of-consciousness and will very likely be edited to pieces. But I am getting words down on paper for the first time in a very long while; I am keeping my general sense of focus; and, most importantly, I have the information should I need it later. I am very much a member of the "better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it" school of thought (something evidenced by my closet, as well as my suitcase whenever I pack to go anywhere-- right Becca?). I can always cut something out that I don't need and save it in another document in case it comes up as necessary elsewhere, or is needed for backstory information.

I did, however, come to a rather startling realization last night.

I have to kill people in this book.

I'm generally not a killing-people sort of writer. I like fluffy happy endings and rainbows and sunshine and daisies. But this quartet is about, in short, what happens when a country and it's ruler are plunged into a war for which neither are prepared. (Oh my heavens, did I just sum up my entire quartet in one sentence?? There may be hope for me in the summary-slash-synopsis-writing department after all.) People are going to die. It is a fact when dealing with war. And it would be a cop-out for no one important to die, and I do my best to avoid cop-outs in my writing for the simple fact that it irritates me when I see them in other books, and I try not to be a hypocrite.

Operative word being "try", of course.

Thankfully, the killing does not happen for about ten more chapters or so-- at least, the killing of the important person or persons (I shan't tell which). Until then I can happily kill randoms because I don't know their names, faces, or families.

Back tomorrow.

I've clearly lost my mind.

But then, this happens on a daily basis, so I'm not certain why this worries me.

The culprit of my insanity this time is none other than NaNoWriMo. But wait, Hannah-- NaNo is in November, you say! Except that this year, they decided to do something called Camp NaNoWriMo-- two month-long sessions in July and August wherein people do the exact same thing that they do in November. (For those of you who are not aware, that means 'write a 50,000 word novel in a month'.) As I am nothing more than a lemming, I decided to sign up for the August session.

What this means is that, starting this afternoon (though technically, I suppose 'starting last night just after midnight' is more accurate) I will be furiously writing on Autumn of Discord. Remember that novel I was supposed to work on on vacation? And before that-- the one that I was supposed to finish before vacation? Neither of those things happened. However, nothing spurs me on to finish a project like the pressure of NaNo.

There is an interesting sort of pressure to writing a sequel to an unpublished book. For one thing, there will likely be at least a draft or two more of the first book, because I know myself (and to paraphrase the great Maureen Johnson, whenever you ask if your book is done, the answer is always "NO!"), so even though the main things are set in stone, minor details may change. For another, keeping up with a world created entirely out of my own head is harder than one may think. This is why I have my handy-dandy WORLDBUILDING NOTEBOOK (not to be confused with the Handy Dandy Notebook(c) that allows you to play Blue's Clues), but alas, nothing is foolproof. Details may slip through the cracks; I may forget entirely that Ian has a 13-year-old sister named Emmeline (although now that I've said that here I can be sure that is one detail I will not forget).

But I shall carry on! I shall prevail! Etc.

I'm actually really excited.

Bring it on, August.

Challenge Failed.

HOWEVER! Even though I did not get Autumn of Discord written either before or during vacation, I have accomplished several things that have made the past few weeks more productive than the past couple of months. During vacation, I:

• Finished Chapter One of Autumn of Discord.
• Completely outlined Autumn of Discord chapter-by-chapter (okay, technically this was before vacation, but it's the fact that I know exactly what I need to happen that counts, right?).
• Completed a one page overall outline of Book 3 of the Camlain quartet, Winter's Majesty (very soon to come-- a one page overall outline of as-yet-untitled Book Four!).
• Completed a two page overall outline of a complete separate project that I shan't talk about yet, because it does not have a title and I don't know how I want to refer to it-- so we'll call it Sekrit Project for now.

Now all I have to do is put those outlines to good use! I can't decide if I want to outline Book Four first, or write Autumn of Discord first. On the one hand, I know that I need to get the second book written in case something that happens arbitrarily while I write affects what needs to happen in the second half of the quartet. On the other hand, I know that I'll be more likely to make myself stick to a writing schedule and get all of these written if I have the entire quartet at least semi-outlined. I have notes on the BIG PICTURE-- I know how it's going to end. But I want more specifics than that.

As for the Sekrit Project that isn't really that much of a secret-- I'm in love with this project. It is very character-driven (I am in love with the characters in this novel) and a standalone, which is typically difficult for me. I'm a series kind of girl-- Camlain has a quartet planned (as well as plot blurbs for future next-gen novels) and while I've managed to keep Rosie's book and World Enough to standalones, it wasn't easy. Even my novella, Reversion, has a couple of characters from its world who want their own stories.

Speaking of Reversion-- does anyone know of any publishers who just absolutely adore novellas? I would love to query someone about this.

I have been CHALLENGED.

Good evening, dear readers!

I am both happy and somewhat frightened to report that I have been challenged to complete the second book in my Camlain quartet. My dear friend Mary Beth is dragging me graciously allowing me to go with her to Savannah in June while she has to do some work for pharmacy school, and I plan to use the week as sort of my own writer's retreat. Originally, I was going to work on Autumn of Discord while at the beach that week; however, upon her re-read of Summer of Betrayal, Mary Beth decided that she needed to read what happened next and proceeded to challenge me to complete Autumn of Discord before our trip to the beach so that she had something to look forward to during her long hours of being endlessly drilled about names of obscure drugs.

So here I am, just under two months away from this deadline she challenged me to meet. I have the first five pages that I wrote back during NaNoWriMo when I thought I would be able to bang out a first draft, and tonight I plan to sit down and at least broadly outline what happens in Autumn of Discord.

Tomorrow, I begin writing. I will continue to blog through this process, hopefully every few days/week, in order to keep myself accountable. (Yeah, yeah, I know you've heard that before. I keep coming back, don't I?)

Let's see if I can do this.

The Query Letter Monster

The other day, a friend of mine and a fellow aspiring author (the illustrious Rebecca Mallary, whose blog I shall take a tiny moment to shamelessly promote) mentioned that she was trying to keep her blog posts focused. This made me stop for a moment and realize: mine are never focused. Instead, I just tend to write and write about whatever I have (or, as happens much more often, haven't) been writing about lately. So I thought that perhaps I should give this organized, focused thing a shot.

Brainstorming ideas for this blog post led me in a giant what-do-I-write-about-circle, and the topic that I kept returning to was the dreaded query letter.

This is something that's been rather giving me the fits lately. See, I finished Summer of Betrayal. I edited it and rewrote it until I was (mostly) satisfied. These are both good things, but in order to attempt to get it published, I need to convince an agent that it is utterly the most fabulous book in existence right now. And in order to do that, I need to write a brilliant query letter.

I'm going to let you guys in on a little secret: I'm horrible at summarizing.

The idea of having one letter --one chance-- to convince someone that my book is worth their time absolutely terrifies me. I cannot possibly talk my book up in a few paragraphs! Summarizing is all well and good when it's someone else's work, but ask me to summarize my own and I freeze.  And it isn't just summarizing-- it's summarizing well, and talking myself up, etc. Essentially I am writing a one-page persuasive essay entitled "This Is My Novel and This Is Why You Should Represent It Instead of That Other Girl's".

Right. I'll get right on that.

I've shied away from the task for far too long, however. It's time for me to put my big girl pants on and get to work. I've got a few sites bookmarked and I plan to research, research, research until I know how to write the most incredible cover letter known to man, but I thought this would be a good place to ask about it as well.

So? Anyone have any advice about query letters for me? I send enormous amounts of gratitude in advance!

Wherein somehow it has been EXACTLY a month. And I'm even more sorry. Sort of.

Didn't I promise to update no later than a week from my last post?

This just goes to show that I cannot be trusted, guys.

In BETTER NEWS, I have officially transferred ALL edits from my printed copy of Summer of Betrayal (seriously, I'm beginning to think that this isn't going to get renamed-- I don't know what my deal is, I can write an entire book but I can't title it?) to the electronic version. All that is left before it is DONE DONE DONE is to write three small new scenes!

Is this seriously my life? I'm actually about 5% away from finishing a book for real, what?

ETA:  I would like to jump back in here and edit this to point out that it has now been three and a half years since I began work on this. So...I'm not bragging or anything. It's taken me forever to get here. I really hope that the others in this quartet move faster. :|

Naturally the result of this is that my brain has realized that it is soon going to be allowed to plot and fiddle with new projects ENTIRELY GUILT FREE. And it's getting a bit ahead of itself.

Now, I would like to defend myself by pointing out that I don't mean NEW new projects, I just mean projects new to my poor brain. Things like the book that has been simmering in the Moleskin for months and managed to spill a bit of prose into a Word doc last week; or World Enough, the book I wrote half of during NaNoWriMo and absolutely adore; or poor Rosie's book that desperately needs a good editing. Nay, deserves, because it is excellent (and by that I mean told in a really fun voice)-- it's just that it's basically a giant hunk of ugly marble and I need to chip away all the crappy parts so that all the awesome can be seen.

Anyway. My arm is starting to hurt and I need to save its typing power to write those new scenes.

Wherein it has been nearly a month, and I'm sorry.

To the two of you out there who read this, my apologies for continuing to be so terrible about this updating thing.

I have done literally nothing since my last post. Well, that isn't entirely true-- I've gotten a few notes down about the project that I mentioned was entirely confined to my Moleskin, and I've gotten a craving to write ridiculously cliche teen drama, so we'll see where that goes.

I really need to force myself to blog more often. It makes me feel ashamed of all the stuff I haven't done to blog about.

Short blog post is short. My entire left arm is feeling ouchy, thanks entirely to today being Hannah-makes-a-bajillion-invoices-day at work. Hopefully I'll do a weekly update sort of thing. Which means I need to do something this week that's worthy of updating about.

Transitions

Why I decided working on multiple projects at once was a good idea, I'll never know.

Actually, lies. It's because I have the attention span of a squashed gnat. With ADHD.

So, current tally:

• Summer of Betrayal -- Needs a couple light scene/sentence edits here and there, then it's ready to (omg) show to agent-type people.
• Rosie's Book That Needs a Title -- Sleeping Beauty re-appropriation. Needs heavy edits that for some reason are nowhere near as daunting as the edits for SoB were. Likely because Rosie is a badass and pretty much writes this one herself, actually. It is for that reason that this is next on the list.
• Autumn of Discord -- The second Camlain book. Thanks to my attempt to start it during NaNo, I have the first...oh, three to five pages or so. It's not a bad beginning, actually; good enough to make me want to work on it again, which is a good sign.
• Wild At Heart -- Needs to decide if it is a standalone book or a series. And if it's a series, that's the series name, so what are the individual book titles? Most of Chapter One of this exists, thanks again to NaNo, but the characters are far more well-developed than any visible plot. Needs more outlining.
• World Enough -- I wrote this the majority of the time during NaNo and even though I skipped around and there are chapters from all over the place I reread it Friday and I love it. Love it. I have a full outline. I know my characters. I know my world. I just have to make myself focus. It would be easier to do this if I didn't have the attention span of a squashed gnat with ADHD. Ah, brain-that-loves-multitasking, you are both a gift and a curse.

I wonder if I left anything out. I only included the ones that already have existing prose-- counting the other two Camlain books, I have...four others (five if you count that one of those four is made of two separate novellas that are going to be smushed together with another one to make a book).

Any agents out there want to take a chance on a slightly indecisive, somewhat unfocused but ever-witty (in my fiction, at least) and overly imaginative authoress who really needs to pay off her student loans?

Please?

I told you.

I'm really bad at remembering to do things that I should! But I'm doing it. Or at least, I am now.

Since my last blog, I've only managed to paper-edit the first two chapters of this novel. But in my defense, three things happened-- I got sick, babysat my sixteen-month-old cousin (not in that order) and got inspiration for a new project. This new project is, for now, solely confined to my moleskin until I get this last round of edits done on Summer of Betrayal (seriously, people, I'm still looking for a better title here-- something involving treachery, intrigue, suspicion and summertime. GO) which I plan to have done by Sunday. Why Sunday, do you ask? Because my best friend just finished a very stressful semester of pharmacy school and has put up with me working on this book for the last three years, and has heard all about it, but has yet to get to read it. She comes home on Sunday, and I promised I'd have a copy printed out for her to read (what she doesn't know is that it comes with a red pen for her to use as liberally as she likes).

Sidenote: I have strawberry tea by Wedgwood and it is amazing. I'm on my last box, so I'm hoarding it like I'm on one of those A&E shows.

Next up on the editing list is my Sleeping Beauty re-appropriation. I've already made a start on it, back in September sometime, and I think I might have made it through the first chapter. I can already tell the editing process for this is going to be completely different from the one that I've used for Summer of Betrayal. Rosie's book needs more work than SoB (See? I cannot keep this title when it's abbreviation is SOB) in some ways, but it needs less in others-- namely character and relationship development. Mostly for this book it's that I wrote it for NaNoWriMo so it needs much paring down in some areas, and a large amount of expansion in areas that I decided I could totally skip last November. Such as wrapping up the entire end of the plot in a timely manner (I may have rushed right on through that one so as to finish the book itself when I finished my word count on November 30th).

This new project? Is the reason that I love tumblr (also, shameless self-promotion, but if you don't like Harry Potter, NCIS or other completely random things you might not like it-- my tumblr is here). I follow a blog called Crackships, which essentially makes or posts graphics of completely random celebrity pairings. One day there was an animated GIF someone had created of two characters from TV shows that did not exist at the same time or in the same country or even remotely in the same world-- and I was intrigued by the juxtaposition. It's been a downward spiral from there.

It really goes to show that inspiration can be found anywhere as long as you allow yourself to have your eyes and ears open to possibilities. So that's today's moral, kids-- keep your eyes open, your ears listening, and your notebook and pen at the ready. The world is yours for the manipulating.

Whoa, I still have a blog?

I always forget that this blog exists. Maybe if I remember to update it more often, I'll be able to use it as a tool to keep myself motivated. I'm going to try to hold myself accountable to posting at least once a week, and we'll see how it goes from there. (Haven't I said this before? Ah well.)

Currently, I am printing book one of a young adult fantasy quartet I have been drafting and redrafting for over three years now. Also, this printer is driving me insane, because for some reason we have no printer tray and so some, but not all, of the pages are out of order. This for some reason infuriates me more than if they were all out of order, and tells me that I need to stop this horrid habit of forgetting to put page numbers on anything.

Currently titled Summer of Betrayal, though I am looking for less...didactic...suggestions, should anyone care to toss some my way, this poor novel has gone through no less than four drafts, the addition of a new male protagonist and the switching of the former male protagonist into somewhat of a villain (for now, at least-- who knows where he'll end up?), and the battle between my two main female protagonists as to whose book this actually is. It began as Genevieve's, then Her Majesty Queen Marina took over, and then Genny wedged her way back into the main plot in a very large way, so I've told them they have to share.

Neither of them are very fond of this idea, but as they both have major plot arcs (that divert from one another in both type and location) in the rest of the quartet, they shall simply have to deal with it.

Novel printed (in 10 pt font because the less ink I use, the less likely my mother will whine) and not quite in order yet, I shall take it to work tomorrow, gratuitously borrow their three-whole-punch, put the book in order and in a three-ring-binder and let the editing games begin. Again. For the third time, with this book.

Hopefully, it will also be the last. I'm ready to shop this baby around, and frankly I'm ready for it to be completely done so that I can really dive into book two, and then after that books three and four, for which I now actually have plot arc sketches (thank you, Whitney, for your patience, and Wikipedia for your random article leaping that led me to an inspiring idea).

Till next Monday, then! Or sooner, should I be so inspired.

We'll see.

ETA: I was going to write about how I only managed 30k for NaNoWriMo this year and totally failed at keeping my attention on one story (that's right, I switched around four times), and the point of that was to lead into talking about this book because I burnt myself out the weekend before NaNo finishing it doing 22k in one weekend and this little ramble is mainly to explain why the URL says "nanowrimo-2010" when there is nothing about NaNoWriMo in this post.

I am a writer.

I have to remind myself of this often.

In my parents' world, this doesn't really count. I'm starting to get extreme lectures because I haven't found a job and I've been out of college for three months, despite the fact that I've applied for about a thousand jobs this summer (all right, if we're talking actual numbers, it's really probably only been between three and four hundred-- and I'm serious). But I've been putting solid work in on my novel and despite the fact that I have about twelve chapters and ten days, I'm still determined to have this round of rewrites done by the time September begins. The family is going to the outlets shopping tomorrow, I think, but I'm pretty sure I'm going to take advantage of that time and bang out a couple of edited and rewritten chapters.

But back to the job search. I'm either overqualified or underqualified for just about everything out there. My eighteen year old brother dared to lecture me today because I hadn't applied at places like WalMart, but here's the thing-- I want whatever job I end up getting right now to count for something when it comes time to apply for that golden job that I find and really want. And a job at WalMart isn't really going to count as relevant job experience.

I'm getting disillusioned. Bored with life, and the world. And I don't like it, because typically I'm the optimist in the room. The delusional, refusing-to-be-jaded optimist.

How do I get that back?