Day #8735 - The Write Spot

Location is just as important in reality as it is in your writing. It can be the thing that inspires long passages of incredible prose, bringing out thoughts and feelings that you can't even believe have been hiding within yourself this whole time, spilling words onto the page like a welcome rain storm.

Or it can be the very thing that cripples your efforts.

I'm finding that I need different things with each story I write. With my first manuscript, the one that I'm still agent searching for (no luck yet, but you'll hear it here first if that should ever change - keep your fingers crossed for me!), my writing spot was my bed. I have one of those sit-up pillows with arms, I perched myself on my bed by the window, and my story was born. For my second manuscript during NaNoWriMo last year, my spot was everywhere. I had a notebook that I made insane outlines in during my lunch breaks at work (or anywhere else when I found myself with a spare five minutes to think), and then I would come home and turn those notes into a story at my desk, 2000 words a night without fail.

But this time it's different. This time, when I sit on my bed or at my desk, my thoughts and those wonderful words I've been daydreaming about flee faster than a speeding bullet. And to put it plainly, it sucks. I want to write. I want to get this first draft of this WIP out of me so bad so I can go back and start revisions and tearing it apart again. But writing from home isn't working for me this time, so this afternoon, I grabbed my laptop and my notebook and I tried something else.

I found myself at the library of my earliest years. In a table in the back of the adult section, right next to a wall of windows and an electrical outlet, I was able to write more in two hours than I think I've been able to write in two weeks. It certainly wasn't Shakespeare by any stretch of the imagination, but it was progress nonetheless and so I welcome it just the same.

And this past weekend, I had some luck toying around with a sci-fi story idea that I've been kicking around since last fall but have putting off because I've been trying to work on other projects first. I was out at a park with my family and I started writing a background scene on my iPod touch, thoughts I've had for ages that I was finally able to get out without hesitation. And let me tell you, having two good writing days so close together feels Awesome.

So what's the moral of my story? Well, it's nothing revolutionary that you haven't heard before: if something's not working with your writing, don't be afraid of changing things up. No two stories or writers are alike - they may all require something different. And that's okay. Apparently for the time being, I can only write when I have outdoorsy things in sight that are not near my house. And maybe for the next book, I'll have to go some place else. We'll see.

And that, dear readers, are my thoughts today. To any fellow writers out there, I hope your WIPs and adventures in Queryland are going well. Let's stick together, friends. Someday, our words, agents, book deals, and publishing dates will come, but until then, keep on trying =)

Day #8717 - A New Approach

It's been a while since I've written here, so I thought I'd fill the Internet in on how my writing and all that sort of fun stuff has been going lately. In short, there's nothing to report on looking for an agent for my completed manuscript - believe me, if that changes, you'll probably be able to hear me cheering from the rooftops!

In the mean time, I have my current work in progress (or WIP for those of you who like to use the lingo) and I'm finding that I've had to go with a new approach for this story than I've had to for any of my others. It's this funny little thing called "research" - you've heard of it before. While all of my stories in the last few years, this one included, would definitely fall in the "contemporary YA", this one requires me to roll up my sleeves and dig into a little bit of history. I'm putting my skills as a librarian to use, searching for what isn't exactly obvious information. I've even had to go to a few public libraries and check out actual books to find what I'm looking for.

It can be tedious and tiresome and I absolutely love it! Taking the time to do my homework with this story gives it something extra. It has been helping me make the world I'm building and the situation my characters are in that much stronger. So this is something my previous stories didn't necessarily need, but this WIP does and already feel like it's better for it.

I hope that you're all keeping out of this crazy insane heat and enjoying your summers! Take care!

Day #8510 - Minor Victories

I am very proud to announce that today, December 11, 2011 at 6:27 p.m. CST, I FINALLY finished my first draft of my NaNoWriMo novel! I did hit 50,000 words before November 30, so technically I was a "winner," but strictly speaking I wasn't because the goal of that group is to complete a first draft in a novel in a month.

So it took me 41 days instead of 31. Minor details. Let's move on to the part where I get to do a happy dance!

*insert happy dance here*

Originally I gave myself until a week from today (the 18th) to finally finish my first draft. However, during the week I felt myself dragging and I was confused. It wasn't that I didn't know where I wanted my story to go - quite the contrary, I knew exactly where I wanted it to go, I just didn't know how exactly to get it there. So I decided to go back to what I was doing early on in NaNoWriMo and plan out an outline of what was going to happen with my story before I sat down to write it. I've been playing with that for a few days and today I found myself on a roll. I didn't expect to finish the draft today, but I think I mentally needed to. The subject matter and general tone of this story is not nearly as happy (happy's not really the right word, but my vocabulary is failing me right now) as the story I wrote earlier this year, but I think the combination of that heavier tone and the fact that I wrote it so quickly just meant I needed to wrap this draft up so I can step away from it for a while, go back to editing Summer Story (I think that will be my ultra-fun code name for that story), and moving ahead with that (whatever that might mean).

We all on the same page? Okay. Excellent.

So just to recap, I've now written two first drafts of novels in the past 7 MONTHS.

*insert second happy dance here*

Thanks to my friends and family for their amazing support during this crazy journey! Comments always welcome and thanks for everything, blogosphere!

Day #8489 - Park and Bark

Back when I was in my high school marching band, every year we would learn a halftime routine that we would then perform at all the home football games. A common element in these routines would be something known as the 'park and bark' - everyone would stop moving, typically we'd all take a step so our feet were shoulder-width apart at the same time, and we'd just wail on our instruments, letting the sound fill the stadium on cool autumn nights. It wasn't always the most musical of moments because sometimes we'd get a bit caught up in the moment or carried away, but it was all about just laying it out there.

In a way, NaNoWriMo is sort of like a park and bark. For one month, you sit down with your story and let it run wild in whatever direction necessary to just get it out of your head. But the park and bark is hardly ever put at the end of the song, you still have a lot more choreography to do afterwards, so you better make sure to conserve some energy for what comes next.

Long story short, I feel like this is where I'm at with National Novel Writing Month. I've been writing an average of 2,000 words a day for the last 19 days. This story, which I have been cultivating in my head for the last few months, is finally being given a voice and while that makes me happy, I don't feel like it's the voice that the story really needs. Like my story is walking around doing a fake New York accent while walking around Brooklyn because it wants to fit in even though it's from Chicago.

I am, simply put, running out of steam. I'm trying to charge through everything so fast that I'm going back and finding contradictions all over the place and it makes me sad that the story I was so excited to write isn't really getting the care that I think it deserves even if it is "just a first draft." I think that part of taking seriously if you really want to make a go of it is to take all parts seriously. I'm not saying first drafts will be perfect or that if you're having an off day it's not alright to throw something completely random into the mix just to see what happens - it totally is and different things work for different people - but for me, a solid first draft gives me a strong foundation to then work up from.

Right now things in my draft are coming out sloppy, not to mention the pacing of the story is suddenly all over the place (I just realized that the last four scenes I wrote are all supposed to take place on the same day while every other part clips along a bit quicker). However, I'm keeping my chin up. I'm confident that I'll "win" and meet the 50,000 word goal set by the the organizers, but my draft probably will not be completed by November 30. The thing is, I'm more than okay with that. Every story will be told in its own time, and it just so happens that this one of mine needs more than 30 days.

So hang in there, fellow writers and WriMos! The end is nearly in sight, we can finish this thing!

Day #8476 - Blog Reboot

To say that it's been a while since I've written here is an understatement, as would the remark that for the exception of the summer of 2008 when I started this blog before studying abroad, my entries have been sporadic at best and completely random at worst.

But things can change. Blogs can be updated and repurposed and before you know it, they're like new again. And that is my hope for this blog.

What started out as a place to share my thoughts and experiences while traveling around Italy eventually became a spot where I wanted to share my many grand ideas with the world. It would get discovered by a plethora of readers who would find what I had to say interesting and it would be EPIC.

Or, you know, not.

So that didn't happen, but that doesn't mean it never will. But until it does, this blog is going to be getting a facelift and a new direction. Rather than simply being a home to my rants and ramblings, this is going to be a place where I more specifically document my writing life.

To some people, this may be a bit of a surprise because since when is Monica a writer? I know, it was a bit of a shock for me too. But since July of last year, I've been consistent about writing in my journal (a habit I would occasionally turn to in college). But I've actually written entries in my notebooks every day since mid-March, and after a few months of that, a thought formed: I feel better when I'm doing this.

So this past summer, I wanted to take it a step further. Writing down my thoughts and feelings and the things that were happening to me was all good, but I kept wanting to play with those things. What if this had happened instead, or it took place here, or I'd said the clever remark that I didn't actually think of until two days later? I'd been kicking around ideas for stories for years, but I never had the courage to seriously try to write. I figured there was no time like the present, so four months and 60,000 words later, I had the first draft of a young adult novel completed.

Let me tell you, it felt great. I still need to massively reread and revise and all that fun stuff before the next step that comes with being a writer, but to say I got a draft down of a BOOK is a dream I never thought I'd be able to actually accomplish.

And now it's the seventh day of my first NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month for those of you who are just as new to the party as I am), I'm just over 15,000 words in, and so far, so good. Every day I come home from work and I'm anxious to get back to my characters. Even as much as I plan and ponder, my characters are the ones in charge (for now - it's a first draft) and they're surprising me left and right.

Guess I might actually be more of a writer than I thought after all.

So who knows where this road may lead me. My expectations are low. I don't expect anything to come of this. All I know for sure is that I like writing. Whether or not I'm any good at it is a whole other ball of wax.

So that is what this blog is going to be about until further notice: me writing about writing. I'll be going through past posts and cleaning up what I'm actually comfortable with the rest of the world reading and what is probably best filed away. I'll be adding labels and tags and even picking a new page design because I've had the same one for over three years.

Sometimes change is scary. But it can also be liberating, and you never know what wonderful adventures it will lead to.

Comments always welcome, and let the blog reboot begin!