New Year

Well, we've got about 5 hours to go before the New Year. Unlike nano, though, I won't be starting at midnight. First of all, I'll likely be drunk (and writing drunk is not a good proposition for me), and second, I promised my sister that I'd watch the south park movie with her at midnight (or 1, I forget which). It's a tradition, so I can hardly abandon it.

Tomorrow's also a family day, and I'm supposed to be meeting with my best friend and possibly spending the night, so I foresee getting behind on the very first day. I'm sure that'll be a splendid predictor of the rest of the year.

Anyway, Happy New Year to everyone.

Argh...the ideas! the ideas!

So I just finished watching a show on Nostradamus on the history channel (my favorite channel...yeah, I'm a dork).

And then I came downstairs and now I'm looking through the quatrains of his predictions, and it occurred to me what great story-starters they'd be. I mean, really, they would be.

And I'd do it, too. Just get a random number generator to pick one of the 942, and off you go.

If only I weren't doing nanowriye.

I'm still tempted though.

Reeeeeeeeally tempted.

(and I'm adding the linky to the side, in case I lose it)

Frustration

So, the original plan was to write the approx 120k word draft of a mortal god before New Years and then set out on the 20 novels of the 2007 year.

Plans suck.
I'm soo bad at them.

So I was sitting there yesterday with 20k words. I think to myself that if there's 100k to go, I might as well make that Book 1 of the new year. That means not touching it until January 1 and then going on my already-decided 5k daily pace. Shouldn't be a biggie, 'specially as I've hardly touched it since coming home for Christmas.

Now, of course, that I've made this decision, what's the only thing I want to do? That's right: write the damn thing. Stupid writing.

I also have 6 other story ideas that I'm hoping last out 100k words. I'll also need to think of a few more, or I'll run out pretty quickly.

And it's 3 something in the morning. I should be in bed. Not worrying about writing, not worrying about my stupid semester grades, not posting on the blog. In bed. Sleeping.

Epiphany!

So I was forcing myself to write last night, just because I'm of the firm belief that if I sit there thinking about how much I don't want to write that nothing will ever get written. I don't personally happen to believe in writer's block - I think that you can write through it and revise later. (as long as the writer's block isn't happening in the editing stage, of course). Anyway, I was writing away, and thinking to myself about the comments that Miss Snark made (that Russian bad guys are way too cliche) and so I thought that maybe I should change it.

Basic rundown - Russian guy is the kinda good/kinda bad guy, and I've got an American guy that's supposed to be his counterpart, who's supposed to be a good-ish guy.

So I've decided, on a spur of the moment, to switch those roles around, and now the Americans are the kinda good/kinda bad, and the Russian is the counterpart.

Of course, that's no doubt cliche in it's own way, but it felt really right to do it. I only thought about it for a few minutes before I began to change the names and places, and I wrote 4k words today. I know that I'm going to have to rewrite everything I've written because it's both clunky and strange now that I've switched the setting from Moscow to Washington. But I'm not going to stop the flow now by going back to rewrite, and instead I'm just going to plunge on ahead and see what it looks like at the end. The only issue is that nanowriye starts in just a few days, and I'd really rather have this finished, as I want my nanowriye novels to be completely separate from this project. But we'll see how that goes.

I'm just glad that I've had this epiphany, and that I have a whole new direction to go in. (Even if it does mean I have to do research on Canada to make my plot work. Argh, research!)

(Christmas in about 40 minutes!)

Season's Greetings!

Well, it's nearly Christmas Eve, and I'm sitting at home on the dial-up connection (though we're getting high-speed on the 27th, I think).

I've rewritten an outline for a mortal god and I'm 2500 words into it so far, but I can't quite motivate myself to write any more. I think I'll write some more tonight, but I'm having one of my spells where I'm convinced that I'll never be a published author. Unfortunately, these spells can last months, and so I'm hoping that with nanowriye starting in a week, I can work myself out of it.

I'm hoping to finish this draft by New Year's, but I realize how unlikely it is. Maybe it'll just sit docilely on my hard drive until the end of the year (if the stupid f%$king laptop lasts that long) and then I can work on it again.

I haven't quite given up the dream of being published before I graduate, but it's looking more and more unrealistic as time goes on.

In any case, happy holidays to all!

Squee!

Okay, I'm uber-excited. Why? See, lulu.com does a promotional deal for nanowrimo winners, and you can get one free copy of your book. It doesn't even have to made visible to the public, so it's not giving up first rights. What it means is that in a few weeks, I'll have a book delivered to me, that has my name on it as the author.

Yeah, I know it's not quite the real thing. It's not gone through the hell of revision and all that (in fact, it's not been edited at all. Then again, it's just a copy for me to put on my desk and squee at all day...which I definitely will), but it's going to give me incentive to push for getting it done for real, getting it really, honestly, truly published.

Best. Christmas. Present. Ever.

*squee*

When is it time to just...stop?

As mentioned in my editing post, I have the same plot-line/characters that I've been working on for 6 years. Once my hook was sent into Miss Snark and I received her comments, I rewrote the hook (for my own personal satisfaction) and have since decided that the new hook means a complete rewrite of the prequel one.

Is it time for me to stop trying to perfect this story line? Should I simply put all of it in a folder and leave it alone for a few years, and work on something else in the meantime? Or should I keep torturing myself thusly and rewriting and rewriting and rewriting? Or is this just some inner nervousness - I never want the story to be finished, so I make ways for it to not be? Should I suck it up and just start trying to get the damn thing published?

Well, I don't know the answer to any of the above questions. I haven't yet decided whether to rewrite the prequel before the New Year, or to make it the first novel of Nanowriye. I just feel as though I'm not getting anywhere, that I'm not making progress at all. One draft seems just as shitty as the last when a new idea comes in.

Maybe I'm just grouchy this morning.

*hyperventilates*

Submitted to the crapometer.

Now the waiting begins.

How is it that that feels worse , the anticipation of it?

Argh.

You know, I still haven't slept yet. I'm going on 34 hours now, but I actually feel pretty good.


-EDIT-

And yes, I stayed awake to get the results, because I couldn't have slept even if I'd wanted to. That kind of jittery adrenaline (and I've not even had any extra caffeine), means that at close to the 37 hour mark, I still feel plenty awake.

Anyway, what was the verdict?

Well, like every other piece so far, no pages for me. I got some tips on what was wrong with it, and when I rewrite for the queries, I know what to do with it.

I guess I do feel kinda deflated, but at least I didn't get that it was complete crap. So that's something.

Now, sleep?

Coffee and Exams and Writing and Such

I'm so high on caffeine I'm practically shaking right now as I type this, and I've been awake for 24 hours, studying for my psych final, which I just got home from. It's a 2-hour final, 66 multiple choice questions, and I finished it in just under half an hour. Why? Cuz it's on personality disorders, which frankly interest the hell out of me, and so I knew it, even though I'd not slept.

I think I'm going to go to sleep now, because sooner or later I'm just going to go SPLAT and I'd rather be in bed when that happens.

Of course, there's the nagging little bit of me that wants to sit here and gnaw away at my hook for the crapometer for the next 10 hours, which would be hugely unhealthy and ridiculously unproductive because who can work when they've not actually slept?

Not sleeping is good for some things, though. I came up with the most utterly fantabulous first line for my novel at about three this morning. What is this sparkling gem of caffeine and sleep-deprived brilliance? "You know, the Gestapo went out of fashion ages ago."

Amused me, anyway. We'll see what I think about it when I wake up.

Partly terrified of the thought that I'll somehow manage to sleep the next day and a half and miss the crapometer entirely, which would suck.

And I'm rambling now. Time for Kate to clear off the bed and go to sleep.

Editing

I have this novel. I've been working on it for 6 years, give or take. The first version was a 300k word monstrosity that even I can't bear to look back on. But I was certain that it was going to make me millions. Indeed, I clearly remember telling a summer camp counselor at the time that I'd be a millionaire by the time I was 20. Oh dear, I'm 19 now, and riches sure as hell ain't running my way.

So, anyhow, I realized that this book was a. completely unpublishable because of the length and b. just bad. I decide that rewriting it would probably be my best bet. Of course, I'm an awful procrastinator, and I'd just started college, so anything could justifiably be put ahead of putting my story through the wringer. Consequently, it lay untouched for the better part of a year, probably. Around the spring of this year, I discovered that somewhere in the past 18 years, I've picked up a fast typing speed. So I decided to put it to good use, and put out another draft of my novel in a bit under a month. That one came to about 125k words, I believe. I was really psyched about it, and thought it was the best thing ever.

I gave it something of an edit and then decided it was time for Kate to find an agent. So off flew the queries. They were all email queries because it was over the summer and I was at home, and I didn't want my parents giving me funny looks when I asked them to buy envelopes and stamps and stuff (me not having a license). Checking back on the records I emailed out 9 queries and got back 5 form responses. The rest never replied, so I can make my own assumptions there. It was a bad query letter, it was remarkably 'form-like', in that I didn't do much to alter it between one agent and another, and the book wasn't ready in the first place. It had hardly been edited at all, and I admit that, freely.

In condensing down my 300k monster to something that stood a chance, I cut out a lot of characters and a lot of subplots. What was left was incredibly boring, and so I have come to the realization that I need a happy medium. This does not make ME terribly happy, but that's another story.

Of course, there's also the PREQUEL to this novel, that I've written and that I think is quite a bit more sellable than the original.

The goal is to edit this prequel of mine, a mortal god, in the spring and hopefully have it ready by the summer to get rejections. But at the rate I'm going (read - utterly untouched), it's going to be quite a bit longer.

Almost anything's more fun than looking back over your darling and realizing just how much fucking work it needs.

Nanowriye

So, as well as trying to find an agent for my book in 2007, I've also decided that it would be a good idea for me to continue writing, becuase the fact is, that maybe I won't be able to sell my first book. In that case, I need to at least be working on something else that could potentially be it. Thus, NaNoWriYe - National Novel Writing Year. I think there's a website for it, but I can't be bothered to find it at the moment.

What kind of goal have I set for myself? Well, I already know that my next Nano goal is 300k words, so that's at least 300k. But I know that writing 5000 words a day is not a particulary difficult task for me - I can do it in about 2 hours. So I decided to set my goal at a rather ambitious 2 million words. That's just 5000 words a day January-October, 10k words a day in November, and 6k words in December, with one day off somewhere in the year. That seems like a decent enough plan to me, without me actually knowing what much of my next year is going to look like.

Of course, then I have to sit back and realize that 2 million words is 20 100k rought drafts. That's 20 novels. And that's far scarier to think about than just plain old 2 million words. Do I have 20 different ideas in my head that I can write to 100k?

Well, we'll see, won't we?

Lazy Bitch

I'm lying in bed with my laptop, and I've just realized that the music stopped playing and I'm still wearing my headphones.

There's a gazillion things to be done.

On the educational side (which I can't afford to neglect), papers to write and exams to study for

On the writing side, a novel to edit, a stupidgoddamnedhook to deal with by Friday for the crapometer, and by midnight, I have to have a full critique on a 200-page book that I said I'd edit for another nanowrimo-er. Fortunately, I've read it all the way through, so it'll only take about four hours instead of ten if I want to give a proper critique (and I really do).

And you know what I'm doing?
That's right. Lying in bed with my laptop.
Doing none of these things.
Instead, I'm playng Dicewars, a hugely fun and timewasting game.

I'm probably going to do this for at least another hour, despite me telling myself that I need to do some work. Then I'll stay up all night working. Even though I work better at night, that's still not really a great schedule to get myself on.

At least I've done all my Christmas shopping.

Done with School

Well, today was the last day of classes. I survived another semester. Almost, anyway. I still have 2 exams and 2 papers, by the 20th. After that, though, I'm free until January 8. Except for the fact that I may have a job over winter break. In which case, my writing will likely get neglected again.

I can sit down and force myself to write every day, no problem. I'm not saying that the quality of it is very good. Most of it's pretty crappy, to be honest. But first drafts are supposed to be, which is something that took me a long time to learn. I can write crap, because I know that it'll all get edited into something that doesn't resemble verbal vomit.

Therein lies the problem, though. If I tell myself that I have to edit a part of it everyday, or that I have to sit down for half an hour, or an hour, and edit...I'll never get it done. It's not that I don't think my stuff needs a good hard edit, because I guarantee that it does. I've got a couple glaring plot inconsistencies in my draft, which has adopted a new title "a mortal god", which I reeaaally like. But the plot inconsistencies need to be worked out. I've also got a list of new scenes which I intended to put in the first time, but they never got in.

Oh, and I did something silly. I sent off a query letter, because I was proud of my hook. Of course, the danger is if they like it and want to see the first couple of chapters. Fortunately, the first couple chapters are (I think) some of the best in the book, so hopefully IF the agent likes the query then I'll have enough time to put the thing through a proper edit. I've always worked better under pressure, and yes I KNOW this is a bad idea. But I console myself with the thought that I sent out 11 (something like that) queries over the summer, and got a uniformly negative response. So maybe this agent will hate it as well. Hurrah.

Hooks

Blech.

I'm exhausted, should be studying and/or writing one of my gazillion papers due (okay, okay, there are only 2 of them, and only one of those is due this week). What am I doing instead? I'm busy trying to come up with a decent hook for my novel.

Why now?

Well, because of Miss Snark's Crapometer contest (see link at the side for her blog). Basically, by December 15, at 8pm EST, anyone can send a 250 word or less "hook", and she will give her snarky opinion on it. Now, my skin's not the toughest in the world, but I'm pretty convinced I have a good novel. So I'm trying to come up with something half-decent...which probably is not the most feasible thing when my head is pounding and my eyes are sore and keep closing every fifteen seconds.

Regardless, I'm working on it now because I know that if I work on something practical and sensible now, I'll just have to redo it. Redoing, though, is part of the editing process, and so there's no harm writing while in this state!

And that's if I don't chicken out and not send it in. But probably, I will.

A New Month

It's going to be a busy month for me. I promised myself that I was going to get a start on editing my novel, with the hope to have it edited by mid-January, so that I can start putting the finishing touches on it and have it ready to send out to agents by the spring. Of course, we'll have to see if that actually happens, or if I procrastinate my way through the month, as I'm so good at.

Of course, I do have some excuse. Classes end next Friday, and I've got 2 exams and a 12 page paper due by then, and then another 2 exams and another paper by the 20th of December. So when I don't work on my novel, I'm justified, right? Right???

But at this moment, that's not what's bothering me. I'm a really lazy person, and I...I won't go as far as to say that I don't care about my classes, because that's absolutely not true, it's that some days, I just wake up and I just can't convince myself that it's worth going to class. For most of my classes, this is not a problem. Most of my classes are either too large for the professor to notice whether I'm there or not, or too impersonal for them to care. That, however, is not the case for Russian. Technically, you're only supposed to miss 3 classes a semester, and every one after that loses you a grade point, or something like that. Thing is, our Russian dept is really small, and so in their endeavor to keep students, they don't like to fail people. That bad attitude towards going to class has lingered through three semesters of Russian now.

But today when I got to class, she told me that I'd missed too many classes, and asked what I thought we should do about it. I never got a chance to answer before class started. I have to go see her tomorrow for part of my exam, and I know the subject is going to be brought up, and I have nothing to say in my own defense except that I'm lazy. I don't know what she's going to suggest. I'm thinking at this point that I'd probably be lucky to get off with a C. I've never gotten a C before. But even worse than that, I'm thinking she might fail me and I don't know how I would face myself or my parents with that. Really, I don't. There's nothing I can do at this point, though, there is no case that I can make, no excuses. I have decided that if she says something like that, I will ask what I can do to change that, and if nothing, well, then there's nothing that I can do.

I'm trying to convince myself that this is all just a worst-case scenario, but...I can't. I'm a worrier by nature, and I just don't know what I'll do if she fails me.

But it's my own stupid fault, and I'm not blaming anyone else for it.

I hope that it comes up tomorrow. If not, it's something I'm going to worry about until I see my grades in January, and that would be awful (though probably no more than I deserve).