When the Internet Isn't My Friend

Sometimes the Internet is just plain scary. I logged in today with the intent of writing a fluffy little post about my first QVC purchase (I've gotten sucked into so many of their pitches and thought I needed what was being sold, but this is the first time I made the plunge). I'm very pleased with the purchase, and it was fun, and it was in the grand scheme of things, pointless, especially in a writing-related blog, but I like celebrating firsts of all kinds, and I was going to celebrate with you.

Then I stopped by several of the blogs I follow. Everyone out there has serious topics of late: how writing saved their life, changed them, helped them find something better than abusive relationships; how hard the industry is; how the novel length I've chosen is probably too long for a debut author...

Scary stuff (though the article about writing saving the author's life was very powerful—it just was much more serious than my mood). I don't need doubts planted by other people. I'm rational enough to be able to tell when what I write is good (and I have had feedback, real non-Mom feedback, that supports both my good and bad opinions about my work, so I know I'm not delusional). I get along pretty well in a bubble of hope and inspiration and determination. Being told that it's hard doesn't help. Being told that I'm writing too much...well, it's good to know, but at this phase in the writing process, I can't think about word count too much. I have to focus on a good story and cut and trim later.

Which is why I'm going to check out Cute Overload and then log off, because I don't need the added pressure of an industry's collective doubts and fears.

A NaNo No-No

Yesterday morning, I finished a scene that struck a sour chord. All day I pondered it in the back of my mind, and by the late afternoon, I knew where I'd gone wrong. I even jotted down some quick notes for how to fix it in the next scene.

This morning, while brushing my teeth, I realized that I didn't need to fix the next scene—I needed to fix the scene I'd already written. And I knew exactly how to do it.

So this morning I broke one of the number one NaNo rules and went back to text I'd already written. I started out with the idea of doing the changes as edits, but I realized that I pretty much (except for two paragraphs) needed to scrap the entire scene. The entire scene!

I cut out eight pages (2,161 words), saving them in another document in case my new notion was way off base. Then I wrote 11 new pages (3,277 words) and confirmed that the bad feeling I'd had all day yesterday about the previously completed scene being wrong had been right: this new scene is the one that needed to be written.

I've decided not to count the removed text, since my real goal is not so much to make the NaNo word-count goal as it is to make my own 100,000-word novel goal. Still, it pleases me that I'm ahead of schedule even with the cuts, having amassed an "extra" 4,363 words more than the daily NaNo requirement (being 1,667 words per day). Since my personal goal is 2,000 words a day, I'm still ahead there too, with a spare 2.365 words, just in case I need a day off.

Coming Up for Air

I had a wonderful writing session this morning, in which I wrote 3,692 words! I started trying to make the scene short, and it got away from me. Great for now, but I know there'll be a lot of cuts and edits to this section later. Of course, it's the beginning, and it takes me a while to get the right tone and pace for my new world/book.

But that's not what this post is about. It's about The Proposal. I finally got to see Sandra Bullock's latest romantic comedy and I loved it! It made me laugh so hard in parts that I couldn't breathe (always a good sign in a romantic comedy), and though I saw the ending coming (it's kind of hard not to with a formulaic genre I've read and watched a thousand different times), it was unique enough that I was captivated.

Which is a rather jaded way of saying that I think all fans of the genre and all Sandra Bullock fans should see this film if you haven't already. So cute!

(And I'm going to blame my lack of articulation on those 12 or so pages I wrote this morning—they didn't leave much creativity for a witty blog post.)

Sing Along With Me

I love my new ending on Madison! I've been dancing around the house and in general being quite obnoxious about how much I love the ending I added on to Madison. Editing it the other night was one of those magical moments when my writing was better than I remembered it!

As you might have guessed, I finished the final major edits on Madison and I'm now typing them all up, one hour at a time (or whatever time's worth of energy I have left at the end of the day—so far an hour is the max). Every little bit gets me closer to selling it, and now that I've chopped off a good 30+ pages from the beginning and added an equal amount to the ending, making sure there's actual story on all the pages, I know I'm going to sell this novel.

Hooray!

Can't Equals Motivation

I recently discovered that there seems to be nothing quite as motivating as knowing that I have to stop writing to really get my creative juices flowing. I've been writing in the morning, so I can devote the most energy to writing before work has funneled off it's portion. However, I also schedule most of my appointments for the morning because I like large, uninterrupted blocks of time during my day in which to work.

Thus, I had a problem today when I was almost finished with a scene in Sasha, almost finished with my minimum daily word count, and I had to abandon it and rush out the door to a chiropractic appointment. I considered canceling the appointment because the scene was so alive in my head, the dialog vivid and fresh, the next scene building behind it, but I really needed an adjustment, so I went.

When I returned home, the scene had cooled, but I managed to finish my minimum in a matter of minutes and wrap up the scene. Now I need to learn how to capture that I've-got-to-leave-in-just-a-minute, hurry-up-and-type-it-all-out-in-the-remaining-two-minutes urgency at the beginning of my writing session.

New Book, New Name

I have finally settled on something to call this new novel. It's most definitely not the title, but since I still needed something easier to say than "my current NaNo WriMo novel," a nickname will have to suffice. Thus, I shall call it Sasha.

Why Sasha, you ask, since the main character's name is Eva? Well, I've secretly been calling the novel Sasha for a while now, since I first conceived the story idea almost half a year ago. Sasha is a secondary character around which the entire plot revolves. Yep, you read that right. Although the main character, Eva, is who the story is really about, her story wouldn't be possible without Sasha. I thought of Sasha long before I thought of Eva and her electricity-killing curse. I thought of Sasha long before I considered she'd be in danger for most of the novel. She was the impetus of the whole book. She's also not human.

I'm not sure how much I'm going to give away of this novel at this time, though, so that's a sad little teaser for a project at least a year from being read. But I'm happy to share the novel's nickname, finally, and be able to have something to call it while I slave away at my word-count goals.

It Has Begun!

NaNo WriMo has begun! For the third year in a row, I stared at the blank first page of a brand new novel, and I didn't curl into a little ball under my desk (as a small part of me wanted to do). Instead, I began typing. Then erasing. Then typing again. I deleted almost as much as I kept as I tried to find the right voice and tone for this story, weed out information that only I need to know about the characters, and keep the pacing going. Yep, all that, and I wrote only 6.5 pages.

The last two years of my life have been devoted in one shape or another to Madison projects. I know the Madison world pretty well by now. I can slide in and out of it in a matter of minutes. But while I've been kept awake many a night by visions of this new world, getting it down on paper proved a tad more difficult than I imagined. I'm writing in the first person again, so getting into my new character's head was also challenging. She's different from Madison, more mature, more self-sufficient, more focused and driven. She also, finally, has a name: Eva Parker.

Choosing a name took a large chunk of time out of my day. I'm still not a hundred percent certain it is the name, but I'm liking it for right now. The male lead: Justin. As of yet, no last name. (Cody wants "Case," but I've vetoed that; the novel's going to have humorous elements, but I'm not leaning toward spoofy.)

The other thing I'd forgotten: how much energy writing takes! I've set a goal of 2,000 words a day, with the expectation that this novel will be 100,000 words. Which means, I should finish December 20, like an early Christmas present to myself. That's the goal as of today, day one. I'll let you know if I still think it's realistic in a week.

For all you NaNo WriMo people out there: I wish you luck. The rest of you should try this!