How to Get a Husband to Stop Bugging You

Okay, so it would have to be my husband, but here's the story. After everyone left from Thanksgiving, I went to write. Usually I write in the living room, but hubby wanted to play an XBox game he got a year ago, so I went upstairs to my recliner in the bedroom (all good writers should have one lol, at least those that have hip issues). After a while, hubby wanders in and sits there. He'd finished playing the game for now. One child is on the computer downstairs and the other is playing the DS.

When I ask him what he's doing, he is done playing the game for now and doesn't really have anything to do. Which is fine typically, however, trying to write while someone stares you down isn't very easy. So I ask him about charts in Excel... I'm trying to make a word goal thingy like NaNoWriMo's NaNo Stats page, because it's really cool. I told him that I figured out what I want to have in there but would probably ask my favorite author friend to make it work for me. He volunteered to give it a go. He can program it, but it won't be too pretty. :)

So now he has a project for the weekend and I'm free to finish NaNo. How close are you to The End?

Long Time No Write

In any sense of the word. I have written a bit, but mostly synopsis. I've decided to put my Hollywood stories on hold and work on a different Silhouette Special Edition. When inspiration strikes, sometimes it's best to follow it. Well as long as my editor is on board with it, that is. :) I am NaNoing again this year and hoping to finish Finding Home Again, working title, of course. Last night I brainstormed another book with some friends, so hopefully I'll be able to tackle that one too.

NaNoWriMo is where I first wrote L.A. Cinderella. For the month of November you write 50K which is only a little shy of the SSE word count. So it's perfect for me. And as long as the story is flowing, I'm in a good place. I haven't given up on Hollywood yet, but it's nice to do something different. So back to writing...

Last Week

18158 / 20000 words. 91% done!

The Yucks

Boy do I have them. They start kind of slow and innocent. You get back feedback and you grouse about it and try to continue working on the pretty shiny project you've been working on. Then you get feedback on a different project and you grouse about it and try to continue on pretty project. Everything stops.

The words no longer sound right coming out of your characters' mouths. Did you make the right decision to include this scene? Couldn't they do something interesting for a change? Is this even worth writing?

Then you decide to work on the revisions and the words you groused about end up being better than your own. Doubt weighs heavy. That other book you haven't touched for revisions yet. Well, maybe it really sucks and you should put it away for longer. Ignore it and the potential it has. Maybe it just isn't your style of writing.

I'm sure I'm not the only one with the yucks. Part of that has to do with waiting, which is part of the business. Part of it is just the fact that I can't be 100% confident all the time. I need those periods of yucks to make myself a better writer. To make myself learn more techniques. To bring my ego back down from whatever cloud it's been playing on. Loving what I do is essential to making the words flow and to get the word count. When I have the yucks, it tears down everything I've worked on, but it will also make me come back stronger. More determined.

Yesterday the words sucked. Today they could be so much better. The story is still there. The potential is still there. It might look like a filthy penny right now, but with a whole lot of elbow grease and shine, it could be gold. A project is never finished. Even after it is published, someone will make you wonder if you could have done something different to make it better. That's what makes an author good. The continuous striving for perfection in her work. The next story will be better and the lessons I learn on that one will make the following even better.

So no more yucks. No more giving up. Only hard work will achieve gold.

When the Words Flow

Sometimes, when I sit down to write, it takes me 15 minutes to come up with one sentence. It's grueling and long and there are so many other things I could be doing with my time. And before I would have done them. This forced march, of sorts, is helping me be a more productive writer.

During the daytime hours, I write. My brain turns on and the synapses all fire correctly and the inspiration is there. Sometimes I will sit and look out the window for a second, but I'm still driven to get my 4000 words a day. I'm not a dumper. I can't just fly through a MS without thought of the words I'm putting down. I used to be able to, but I figured out I hate revision.

I mean it. I hate revision. I do them and I'll continue to do them but I hate them. It takes me a little time to find my editor voice detached from my writer voice. But when I find that bad boy, he does some amazing things. I get to the point where I can pick apart individual sentences, but it takes me a while to do this. And I need time away from a project before I can truly give it the cleansing scrub it needs.

These are things I learned by doing. I tried to dive right into Casanova's revisions and it took me a long time to get into the groove. But when it's been a while, the words seem fresher. It's easier to cut those lines that I worked so hard to find. It works for me. To that end, when I finished Fallen, I went through and applied the critiques I'd received, and then sent it out to Beta readers. I haven't looked at it since. I don't plan to. I'm fully involved in Robert's story right now. It's a different voice, a different world and when I'm done. I can head back to the dark world of Fallen and read it with different eyes. And when that one's ready to go, my editor bad boy will still be in residence, making Robert's revisions easy to tackle. This is the hope. This is the experiment.

Write 2 books, revise 2 books, write 2 books, revise 2 books. Rinse, repeat as necessary.

The Past Two Weeks

Writing, well it happened. I finished the first 3 chapters of Alex and revised the synopsis and sent them off to my agent. I hadn't realized I didn't have synopsises for the 3 other books I was going to write. So I spent this week working on a synopsis for an unrelated SSE and worked on Robert's synopsis. And boy are those two loud. So loud that I started working on the first chapter and hope to keep going through to the end on Robert's. It was in the plan for this year anyway, so why not. :)

Next week working on the 20K goal and hopefully making it.

Last Week

18442 / 20000 words. 92% done!

I finished Fallen and took the weekend, Monday and Tuesday to get it ready to go out to my readers. Yay! So now I'm polishing the first three chapters of Alex and deciding whether to work on plotting for the other 3 or continue writing Alex... Decisions, decisions.