I'm Not Actually Writing...

... but I felt compelled to check in anyway. I've been doing a ton of reading late late late into the night so I can walk around like a bleary-eyed monster during the day. I've been taking an online economics course that fiiiiiiiinally finished on July 3. YESTERDAY WAS MY INDEPENDENCE DAY!!! (This is why my reading was limited to late late late into the night.) And I've been looking for a place to live, as I start a new job in three weeks and I still have no place to live. :[

If I've read once, I've read a gabillion times that writers need to write, and we need to make time to write, and so-and-so wrote her first novel by getting up at 3am and writing for two hours straight while, I'm assuming, she was hooked up to an IV of coffee and meth. I'm assuming it's in my genes to feel guilty about things I'm not doing, like getting up at 3am to write for two hours before I trudge off to work or for not setting aside my econ homework after two hours in order to read notes for an hour.

The thing is, the more I feel guilty about it, the less likely I am to come back to it, because I'm going to hide from whatever it is that's making me feel guilty. So instead I'm facing my guilt and my writing head on and I'm saying that I need to focus on finding a place to live, because my book will either be published or it won't... but whether I get up in the morning hours after I've turned off the light or not, it will be published or it won't.

So I can either make myself feel like crap about it, or I can focus on things I need to focus on and stay out of the bubbling cauldron of self-loathing that is typically created by all that guilt.

I've made my choice, and I'm sticking with it.

Development

This blog post has been bouncing around in my head for quite a while, which is going to be my excuse for shying away from writing in a blog that nobody actually reads anyway. I've been working in earnest to better develop my characters. I'm using background exposition, dialog, and action to do this, and I'm enjoying where this new information about my characters is taking me and this novel. I also like the direction that this new information is taking the novel.

Better yet, I'm feeling more and more confident with the novel. As I flesh things out I have more and more instances where I can sit back and be proud of what I've done. I'm also finding that in a lifestyle full of revelry and merriment, hanging out with girlfriends, and cleaning up at pub trivia, I'm at my best when I'm sitting in front of my laptop and fleshing out my characters. I feel at my best, at my most comfortable, the most alive when I'm developing my characters. This feels like personal character development - I'm developing my me.

My 40-hour a week job leaves me cranky and crotchety and hating the world. It feels good to come "home" to something that I love and that I feel like I'm genuinely good at. I feel better and more like myself when I'm working on my novel, so even if it never goes anywhere, I'll still have gotten the world out of writing it.

Delete delete delete

Yesterday I did some major cutting, which hurt my heart. I was so proud and, I'll admit it, so in awe of my brilliance. I carried around the scar on my heart all day afterward, and into the morning. Then today I revised one of my favorite scenes, cleaning it up and giving it some style. Today I know that this favorite section of mine is stronger for the cutting that I did yesterday.

It's a good reminder that when we take out passages that don't belong - no matter how UH-MAY-ZING we think they are when we're writing them or re-reading them. By removing what doesn't belong, we're increasing the value of what does belong. So I'll delete delete delete to my heart's desire!

And if I can't delete delete delete, then I'll at least cut and paste into a blank document to slip under my pillow for the too-much-detail fairy.

Show & Tell

I'm struggling right now with showing and not telling. I have this whole world built up in my head, with a constitution (no amendments, it was done right the first time), and a social order, and a judicial system, and castes and... and everything. It's all there, in my head and scribbled into my notebooks interspersed in scenes. I already know that the best way to get this information across is to do it slowly, in bits and pieces as the reader moves through the novel. This is easier said than done.

I'm also having difficulty with being a lady, and not showing too much. Just because the information isn't part of a three-page expositional word-vomit (new phrase!), that doesn't mean that it's suddenly okay. As I go through and make my revisions, I find myself highlighting and deleting one and two paragraphs at a time - yes, just one and two. They're these little gems of information that put the characters into more of a context, but this isn't a history textbook, this is a novel.

My response to this is to go through and find new places to put more action and dialog. I'm not talking about using dialog to tell this same information, but to put more actual action into the pages. Right now the characters are shackled by my own world building, so really, these revisions are a rescue mission to save my novel from early burial.

Mood music

The initial inspiration for my novel was a B-side song by Jimmy Eat World. In 2007 I worked on a NaNoWriMo, which turned out to be a "first draft" that would be eerily similar to the Hunger Games. I guess it was a good thing I never finished it.

When I started working on the revamped version of the novel I spent very little time listening to the inspiration music and a lot of time listening to peaceful folk-esque music. The novel took a very different turn and after a while I wasn't happy with it. I liked the writing, but it wasn't where I wanted my novel to go.

So I went back to the original inspiration album and BABOOM. The novel takes another turn, going exactly where I want it to go. I didn't realize the importance of going back to the original inspiration so that I would be able to write the novel that I wanted to write. I'm at 53,600 words, and I'm most excited to finish the first draft so that I can go back to the beginning and weave the original music back into the pages.

Outline to Freedom

I've never been a fan of outlining. Even as I taught my students to write five paragraph essay by outline, in my head I was poo-pooing the idea of outlining. Then last night, when I was starting at my notebook trying to get myself into my protagonist's shoes, I thought... why not?

Boy, have I been wrong! An activity that took me fewer than thirty minutes, put me onto the path to completion. I would pull out the notebook for some specific examples of how this helped my writing, but Pippin is napping on my wrist. Trust me. It was very helpful.

Now I know how many chapters my novel's going to be, who my protagonist is going to meet along her journey, and how I'm going to include exposition. Now all I need to do is go through and make sure I'm following the rules that I just made up.