C'est Finis! (Again)

Boy, do I need deadlines!

After a very exciting request for the full from my #1 choice of agent, I spent a harrowing weekend resuming the temporarily postponed Book One revision project. I am happy to say that I have cut over 5,000 more words and tightened up the book considerably. I am very pleased with the outcome. While I could nitpick eternally, I don't think I could find too many more nits to pick. Hopefully, I will soon have an agent who will do that, and, ideally, an editor, too! While I will cheerfully revise upon demand, I am now content that Book One is in top submission form. Away she goes tomorrow afternoon.

And, in other news, I even wrote a few pages on the YA this weekend. I discovered that switching from the revision part of my brain to the creative part was difficult, but not impossible. This is good.

Now that this project is finished, I hope to switch permanently to the creative part. Viable Paradise approaches (exciting! terrifying!) and I'd like to speed the YA along now that one of my characters has popped on-scene a little earlier than planned to try to convince my rat of his destiny. I must be careful not to allow the characters too much freedom in writing their own story, although I did appreciate the help. Otherwise, I may not have had anything for writing group.

Tomorrow, after an early morning commute, fifteen diet cokes, and four classes of remedial Freshman Comp, I will think about goals and deadlines. But for now, I'm going to babysit the printer and pray it doesn't run out of ink before my ream-of-paper long book prints.

Then, I'm going to pass out.

Done

There. First three chapters, all polished. I am very happy with them. I've managed to cut about 2,000 words as well, which is lovely. On the last read-through this morning, I didn't even miss them.

YA chapter has some glitches, according to writing group. It's awfully tricky when a handful of unnamed boys beat up another boy-- lots of pronoun issues. But I will tackle that later. Overall, the beating up was well-received, and the story moved along nicely.

For the two hours that remain before it's time to get the kids from school, I'm going to plug on through my polishing of the rest of Book One, which doesn't have as much to change from Chapter Four on.

At some point, writing became less of a hobby and more of a priority for me. I love that.

Even if it does feel a little too much like work.

Starting to Feel Like Work....

I have been a good little writer bunny the past few days. I worked for hours on Thursday and Friday, and I've almost got the first three chapters all polished and shiny. As they seem to be the worst of the first ten, I'm feeling much better about Book One as a whole. I also solved a plot issue that's been nagging me. Reading the book again is going well overall; as it goes on it gets better, and I absolutely love my ending. If only I could send the last 300 pages to the agents....

Today, I got up early to shift gears and work on the YA, which was really difficult at first, but I think I've got a good chapter going after all. I did start this a couple of weeks ago, but I had the characters taking baths, which didn't really work in terms of story or plausability (how does a girl posing as a street boy go into the public baths unnoticed? Answer: she doesn't). I have a fondness for baths in general, but every time I write them, they get cut (see Book One). I imagine this is why Aragorn only cleans up twice during the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy. I bet Tolkien wrote lots of dips in the Anduin and such, but they just didn't make the final cut. Too many words.

Instead, I beat up my characters. That worked much better.

Today's progress: a nice 1986 words. That's 25.5% done. And I'm not even late for Writing Group!

16,570 / 65,000 (25.5%)

Getting All the Suck Out

So. It's been almost a year since I deemed Book One completed forevermore, amen. Then, I revised Chapter One.

But the rest was great, right?

Wrong.

I revised up through the end of Chapter Five in my hard copy yesterday, and discovered that distance is a very good thing. Now I can see all of the unpolished bits, the improbable plotting, the occasional laugh-out-loud bad dialogue that I missed during the course of Summer Hackandslash 2006.

I realize that I'm being a wee bit hard on myself. Overall, I can see the good parts, too. Of course, they just make all the bad bits look a whole lot worse.

Lesson for the day? It is a very good thing to go back and look again. That's why it's called re-vision, folks.

And hey, I'm cutting more words! Woohoo!

Hey, Look! I'm a Writer!

What an amazing week! On June 29th I left for Writer's Weekend in Seattle, a wonderful conference that provides an opportunity for writers to network and learn about the craft of writing and the business of publishing. My Master's Class with agent Nephele Tempest and four other talented writers was incredible. The writing and feedback were excellent! I came away not only with some great ideas to improve the first five pages of my draft, but also feeling lucky to have had the opportunity to read the first pages of some amazing stories. Ray Rhamey's flash editing workshop was also excellent. I now understand the importance of those first two pages, and will definitely take another look at my own to see if they compel the reader to read on.

Because this year's conference was smaller, I was able to spend some quality time outside of the workshops meeting and talking with Nephele Tempest and Mary Louise Schwartz, who are incredibly hard-working agents and wonderful people. I was also happy to spend more time chatting with Karen Junker and her husband, who are the unsung heroes who put together Writer's Weekend every year despite the stress and financial hardships running such a conference presents. And I loved chatting with all of the other writers in the halls and over breakfasts, lunches, and dinners, an opportunity to connect that doesn't really happen at big conferences.

After an extra day in Seattle, possibly one of the most beautiful cities in the nation, I came home to the news that I've been accepted to this year's Viable Paradise workshop! I could not believe, after all the drama getting my application there, that they would accept me! I am so excited! I am also out of excuses. After this past week's successes, I may have to admit that I can actually write, and that I should spend more time writing to increase my chances of getting published. This is going to seriously interfere with my self-sabotage and procrastination plans.

So now I've got plenty of work to do: I've got chapters to send off to one agent and the entire manuscript to another, so I'm going to spend the next couple of weeks taking another quick pass through the novel. I know all of the major edits have been made, but there are always a few little tweaks I could make here and there. Even if it were published and on the shelf, knowing me, I'd find something to tweak. It's my OCD. I have dirty floors, but I will never be satisfied with my own writing.

I've also got to figure out how to get from California to Martha's Vineyard without arriving completely fall-down exhausted.

But these are all very good problems to have.

Revision

Okay. It's crunch time. Writer's Weekend is approaching, and I have not been a good girl about getting my work done. There have been too many distractions of late, but as I am determined to keep this a blog about my writing and NOT life in general, I won't mention them. I will only say that three weeks is not enough time for a fourth grader to completely write and illustrate a 26 paragraph ABC book about California.

My Book One Chapter One is driving me nutty, so today I decided to revise it again. I ended up taking it apart completely and patching it back together again. I've eliminated some information completely, which I don't really miss so I don't imagine the reader will, either, and I added other little bits of genius that I hope will make better transitions. I moved other bits of information around so completely that I don't even remember where they used to be.

I'm so confused!

In the end, I'm at least a page shorter than the last draft, which was a bit shorter than the previous draft, which means I'm down some words (very, very good, for Book One). I'm also trying, perhaps unsuccessfully, to match the Good Writing to the Mediocre Writing.

The only thing I'm sure of is that this is driving me absolutely, certifiably, nuts.

Whatever. This is the sucky part of writing. I'm going to work on the YA novel tonight just to make myself feel productive.

Shout out: happy birthday, Ginger P.!