Musings

 One of the funny parts of writing is how it has this very. long. internship. It's self led, unpaid, and largely low stakes, but make no bones about it, the unpaid lead up to a writing career is an odd time of self policing, tone watching, hopeful posting, and an evolution both of writing style and in the style one presents of themselves. 

It's been a long time for me since I blogged regularly. Mostly, the problem with blogging is that the advice is to not overshare. 

Which is pretty hard. How do I not talk about my WIP which is literally carving itself from my flesh? That's not entirely an overstatement, by the way. When I draft a novel, I have to drive myself to bring the words to life. It's an act of will, lost sleep, and pure stubbornness to be the person to see this thing into reality. 

But then don't talk about it because it might be embarrassing if you query too early and it crashes and burns--or so the advice goes.

Which means I can put up a projects page that will read "Secret Project A, status: Classified. Secret Project B, status: Classified (but very not at the same stage of Secret Project A. Secret Project C, Status: YOU GUESSED IT: CLASSIFIED!"

But is that any better than "A Really Great Novel, status: Querying agent 151, rejections: 100, pending: 51"?

I don't have a good answer for this because I'm given both sides of the coin: share more and share nothing. Obviously, the answer is somewhere in the middle.

Last year I started querying a novel I had put A LOT of work into. A Lot. More than usual. Probably three times as much as usual because I've been worried that I don't put in enough work before querying. Let's just say sometimes it's more than just the amount of work one puts into a book. I have never received such fast, sharp Nos. They came in hours and days rather than weeks and months. Clearly, I hit a nerve, just not the one I'd hoped. 

I stopped querying that piece because 2020 went pear-shaped in an awful hurry. 

I wrote a proposal (thanks, no thanks. Your writing is great, but this isn't quite what I want)

I wrote another book (why not? make it the most ridiculous thing to exist)

Then I entered a pitch contest (why am I such a sucker for pitch contests???) (oh, right, it's because I have five novels, complete and revised that I still love even if I haven't found the right outlet for them). 

I revised a whole novel (a big revision, too). 

I saw an opportunity to do something fun so I wrote a short (classification: Cute as hell (yes, that is an inside joke)). 

And now I stand at the edge of revising my ridiculous novel. I probably love it too much in it's broken rough draft form, but I also love it too much to let it stay broken and hiding in the dark of my hard drive. 

Moving and intermittent availability

Sweet mother of the seven plots, I am so tired. I'm also moving, and no, that doesn't mean I'm finished remodeling. I get closer everyday.

Somewhere over the last year, I stopped doing weights. Now that i'm schlepping boxing around, I can honestly say: BAD IDEA. On the plus side, I'll get a few weeks of carting around my library boxes prior to the main event: Moving my baby grand piano!

In renovation news, well here it is, a warning not to cut corners at the end. 

Just a late post about revising and remodeling

I'm in revision hell right now.

I'm also in remodeling hell.

They are eerily similar.

The First Casualties are the Keenest felt

Life in my neck of the woods went from uncomfortably fast paced to OMG PACK ALL THE THINGS!!!! over the weekend. And the longer you live somewhere the more likely you are to just leave the cracked tiles because you have to paint the bathroom, fix the faucet, weed the garden and otherwise do everything that owning a house entails.

We're now trying to sell our house. When you sell a house, you paint it. You fix the tiles, the funny doorknob that never worked right, you pack everything that's you so you can make emotional space in your house for other people to envision their life there.

Yeah, a writing comparison seems obvious, except that last one. You want your characters to be so vibrant they paint the walls florescent orange (or a very tasteful mint to compliment her doilies depending on the MC).  But you want your reader to feel like the book itself doesn't have any leaks in the roof. You want them to have the emotional space to escape with your florescent painting MC (or you know, your doily crochetting quiet detective with a black belt in Aikido... I think she gets her hair done at the same salon as my grandmother used before she passed).

But that means fixing the roof, painting the walls, chipping out the bad scenes and replacing them with better ones. It also means cutting stuff you love.

Why is it that the BEST SCENE EVER is always the one that has to go? Well writing and home repair are similar in that they both make you bleed. On Friday (yeah, the 13th), I got clipped by a random tile piece and it nailed me in my elf pride: my ear. The ear is a very dramatic place to get hit because it just bleeds and it won't stop, no matter how tiny the cut. So I have a picture of my ear (I don't know what it is about people wanting to see this kind of stuff, but for those of you squeamish, I'm going to put a picture of laughing horse first. Don't scroll past the pony if blood makes you run for the hills).

No really, turn back, there's blood in the next picture!

 

 

It got me! (barely).  And this is why we wear eye protection!

Off to the editing cave, or I'm not here today

I’ve run off for the revising caves, and I’m frantically working on my manuscript. I’m so giddy right now, I don’t know that I’m entirely sane. I’m supposed to hate this part, or rather, I usually hate this part. But, But! It’s working.

I’m starting to feel a little bit like Dr. Frankenstein…

I’m just hoping that my monster isn’t as hashed together as Frankenstein’s monster.

Back to the editing cave, because “It’s almost alive” just doesn’t have the right finality to it.