Day #8521 - A Solstice Solution

Good morning, blogosphere! How've you been? Keeping warm? Holiday shopping done? Read any good books lately?

I am currently on Day 4 of my winter break and have actually been pretty productive in that time. Lots of cleaning has taken place, I got some fabulous new bookshelves from my parents, last night I went and saw the Chicago Blackhawks beat the Montreal Canadiens 5-1 at the United Center.

And, FINALLY, I've gotten back to the summer novel! Rereading, tweaking, rediscovering, editing, cleaning up, etc. Take your pick.

Now I finished the first draft back in August, so why did it take me this long to get back to it? For one, life got in the way just a bit. A new job, a new semester of grad school, and all that jazz. And then there was the November novel that I needed to write (a primal need, not like 'so-and-so decrees you must write a book this month!' need).

And, if I'm honest, I was a bit nervous. I figured that if writing a book was going to be anything like the infinite number of papers I've had to write for school, the first draft was going to be absolute crap. I was feeling so good about being able to say that I've written a draft of a novel, so how awful would I feel if I went back and read it only to discover that it was terrible?

So with great trepidation, I opened that incredibly intimidating document on my computer that contains so much of myself, and I began to read. To my absolute delight and total surprise, it wasn't nearly as bad as I had imagined it would be. In fact, I'm actually enjoying it. It turns out for me, taking a break from the story was a very good thing at least this time around. I'm enjoying seeing these characters again, reimagining them and evaluating the choices I made back when the temperatures were in the 70s instead of the 30s.

My Solstice Solution and advice is simple: take your time, but give yourself a limit. When I started November novel, I did so only by promising myself that I would go through summer novel at least once before the end of the calendar year. Like with any relationship, be careful about the idea of "we're on a break." Don't let the break somehow turn into a permanent one. Also, challenge yourself to look at your story through a different lens.  When this story first came to be, I looked at it as a writer. Now I'm looking at it as a reader - what am I enjoying? What makes me cringe (and is it supposed to make me do that)? Does that part feel too long/short/boring/awesome? I take note of these things as I'm going along and then I'll go back see what can be done to make them better.

So there are my two cents. In other news, today is the Winter Solstice! Okay, technically it was at 11:30 last night but according to my desk calendar it's today so without further adieu, the traditional "Monica standing an egg on its end because it's the solstice or equinox" picture!

Happy Holidays!

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 #8503 - December Doings

Why hello there, blog! So nice to see you again. I know I've been neglecting you lately, and I really do feel bad about it. Let me tell you why, though, and I think you'll see where I'm coming from.

The last week has been a bit crazy to say the least in terms of scheduling and being booked. First off, I've been a reading MACHINE, devouring three novels in a matter of days. One of them was The Future of Us by Jay Asher and Carolyn Macker (check out my review of it over on my book-review blog) which seriously made me re-think the amount of time I spend on the internet and another was Five Flavors of Dumb, a work of fiction about a girl who is both deaf and the manager of a rock band at her high school - both books had such interesting concepts! If you haven't read them yet, you absolutely should.

Another thing that happened recently was on Thursday, I completed my grad school class for this semester! This now means I am one semester/two classes away from being DONE with my masters degree in May. *insert happy dance here*

But this is a writing blog, so I bet you're all dying to know what things have been like on the writing front for me. Honestly, I had to take a bit of a break. Not just because life has been reaching new levels of packed, but also after NaNoWriMo, I just needed to take a step back and take a breath.  I was starting to feel like Donna Moss in the West Wing:




See what I mean? My novel is the room with the boxes, and somewhere both written down and in the recesses of my brain is the piece of paper that I made out when this once "really great story idea" hit me and let me know where it was going. I can't find that piece of paper (I'm not even being metaphorical anymore - I really did lose the paper! eek!), but it's all okay because by taking a step back, it all came back to me. Now that November is over, I'm able to slow down my pace a bit (a necessary move for my sanity), but I've also set a personal deadline for December 18th to have this draft done by. Keep your fingers crossed for me, eh?

So that's really it from me for now, though I have to make a final plea. With both this and my other blog, I only have two followers each. If you read this regularly, please subscribe to me as a follower and if you like what you see, tell your friends and family! *steps down off soapbox*

Hope everyone's December is off to a good start!  Comments welcome and keep warm!

Day #8496 - Finished (Sort of)!

It has taken me quite a while. To get here, I have sacrificed my evenings to slaving over my keyboard and my lunch hours at work to outlining in my steno pad trying to figure out where the heck I am going. But this crazy journey that started on November 1st and seemed like a completely impossible goal has now been accomplished: I have written 50,000 words on a brand new story idea in the last 27 days.

Woot! *insert happy dance here*

I never thought I'd actually be able to take on the beast that is National Novel Writing Month. I mean, it's a ridiculous notion. Who the heck can write an entire novel in a month? It's crazy! It's insane!

It's also not me.

Let me explain. Yes, I did hit the 50,000 word goal that NaNoWriMo sets out for participants, so in that light, I am indeed a winner. But is my story actually done right now? Have I yet typed "the end" and brought the plot to a conclusion? Not so much. So in that regard, I am still a bit of a loser. But still, I'm excited because between work during the day, grad school at night, my two blogs, reading, and the many other things that make up my life, I still think it's pretty cool that I managed to write this much in this amount of time.

So here's to my second story being significantly closer to being done than it was 27 days ago. My hope is to have this first draft completed within the next two weeks, then I will probably take a break from this story and go back to Manuscript #1 (which I really want to come up with a cool code name for) that I wrote this summer and get to editing/rewriting. But I do feel like the pressure is off a bit. While I will still probably write every day, it will be because I want to and I can take my time with it, not because I feel like I have to.

So there you have it, folks. To my fellow WriMos, good luck here in the home stretch. To my fellow writers out there, I wish you luck and success in your own endeavors. What a long and winding road writing a book can take us on as we spend so much time inside our own heads, but what a feeling when you do it, right?

:-)

Day #8494 - New Look!

For the first time since I started this blog back in 2008, I've made the jump to go ahead and try a new look. I'll probably be playing with it in the coming weeks and months, but I decided that change is good and a fresh look is just what the doctor ordered.

Plus playing around with settings and colors and Photoshop are all excellent procrastination tools for avoiding my NaNoWriMo story. Not that I don't want to write, I almost always do, it's just that I know this next scene coming up is going to be challenging (emotionally speaking - it's the first scene I thought of for this whole book, so I've been thinking about it for MONTHS and I've unintentionally put a ton of pressure on myself to get it perfect now that it's time to add it to the story - eek!). So there's that, too.

I loved you, old layout, but I think we both know this is for the best. Life needs color, and so does this blog.

Goodbye, 2008!

So let me know what you all think!

Okay, really need to get back to writing now....

Day #8492 - Christmas Came Early

I know that Thanksgiving is supposed to come first and that's not until tomorrow, but I am almost positive that Christmas was actually on Monday night because I got to meet ten fabulous YA authors at Anderson's Bookshop in Naperville.

For a librarian's/more professional perspective on why these events and independent bookstores are a great thing, I suggest you check out my book review blog here. Right now I'm about to express nothing short of love and gratitude for these writers.

You have been warned.

But seriously, who knew that Mondays could ever be so great?! First of all, the whole event was moderated by author/editor extraordinaire David Levithan (Every You, Every Me; Will Grayson, Will Grayson; Boy Meets Boy) which was fantastic. He asked great questions that someone like me who's not really in the business (yet? haha) wouldn't have thought of.

First off I got to joke around and talk about "old-school, MySpace self-portrait skills" with A.S. King, author of Please Ignore Vera Dietz and Everybody Sees the Ants, two books I'm insanely excited to read. There was Stephanie Perkins who I got to talk to and she signed my copy of Lola and the Boy Next Door. She's incredibly nice, has a sense of style I wish I were bold enough to pull off, plus she's a Nerdfighter - she's easily one of my favorite writers.

Me with Stephanie Perkins

Then there was Carolyn Mackler and Jay Asher who each signed my copy of their brand new book The Future of Us (which I'll be reviewing over at The Fuma Files shortly once my grad school semester ends). I was so excited to tell them that the students at the school I work at voted for them as some of their favorite authors and it felt really good.

Jay Asher and Carolyn Mackler

I continued making my way around the room and talked briefly with Heather Brewer, author of The Chronicles of Vladimir Tod series, and David. I asked if I could get a picture of the two of them for my students (it makes me sound slightly less like a nerdy fan-girl) and they did, which was awesome. Then David asked if I would mind taking a picture on his phone so he could send it to Heather. And I gladly did. That's right, folks. I got to hold THE David Levithan's iPhone haha. Then I got a picture with Heather and she asked if I'd gotten any swag yet. I admitted that I didn't, so she gave me a Vlad Tod tote bag AND t-shirt. You can bet your bottom dollar I checked out the first book from her series the next morning as soon as I got to work. I'm excited to give vampires another chance.

David Levithan & Heather Brewer

Rocking my new Vlad Tod shirt with Eighth Grade Bites

Then there was talking about cicadas and colored hair extensions with Jackie Kessler (The Horsemen of the Apocalypse: The Riders Quartet) and C.J. Hill (Slayers). I shared with them the secret of my incredibly bright blue hair, and in return they let me get a picture and gave me signed posters.

Jackie Kessler & C.J. Hill

Also there were Coe Booth (Bronxwood) and Jeff Hirsch (The Eleventh Plague), neither of whom I got to talk to but they both seemed incredibly nice and I'm anxious to read their books as well.

So long story short, I'm super pumped now to keep going with my draft. I know I've been a bit whiny lately that it's dragging on, this month is so long, blah blah blah, but at the end of the day, writing and telling stories makes me so incredibly happy that it's all worth it. I was so bummed when I got home that I couldn't just burn the midnight oil and write in to the wee hours of the morning, but my students and work deserve my full attention during the day so that would hardly have been fair to them. All in all, though, it was an amazing night, I'm so glad I went, and I hope I can continue going to events like this which encourage people's love of reading in the years to come.

Follow those who use it on Twitter:

Anderson's Bookshop

Jay Asher

Carolyn Mackler

Stephanie Perkins
Heather Brewer

A.S. King

Jackie Kessler

Janette Rallison (aka CJ Hill)

Jeff Hirsch

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!