Day Two

447 words today. I fell a bit short of my 500 word goal for the day, but it's been crazy and hectic and full of interruptions over here, so I'm just going to be glad I got some writing done at all.

I also started putting my Think Sideways course printouts into a big three ring binder so I can have everything organized and in one place for my planned read through of the course. Did I mention that here? I am going to read it all and then go back and do the actual steps. This plan works much better with the way my brain works. So, I am glad to be started on the organizing part so I can do the reading part.

And now, since I can tell that last sentence was barely coherent, I am going to put myself to bed. I've been exhausted all day. I think I'll just give in to it.

Write a book with Holly Lisle

I have been stuck in planning mode for so long. I'm doing Holly Lisle's Think Sideways course, but I'm plodding and dragging and just feeling stuck. The course is great. I'm just having a hard time doing *anything*, not just that.

Enter a new venture by Holly. She calls it "Write a Book With Me." And it's pretty darned brilliant. Simple rules, simple goals, an easy place to post your progress. No pressure. Lots of fun. Lots of words. And I just realized that, even doing the bare minimum 250 words a day five days a week I will have a draft finished in four months (80 working days which works out to 16 weeks). And with a load that light, I can easily keep up with my course work.

I am not going to start on the course novel just yet. I think I'm going to pull out one of my back burner ideas and work on that. I'll tell more about that on Monday once I have some plans in place.

Renewal

It's spring. Time for spring cleaning. For me right now the thing that needs to be cleaned the most is my mind. I have been wallowing in depression and dreariness for months now, and I'm ready to stop.

I am still working on the Holly Lisle How to Think Sideways course. I'm way behind in the lessons, but I am going to keep moving forward. I think it's a good system, and I refuse to give up.

I've toyed with the idea of giving up, thought that maybe I wasn't meant to be a writer. I thought maybe if I was really meant to be a writer it would be easier to actually just sit down and write; if I was really a writer I'd just be doing it. So maybe I wasn't meant for it and should just stop trying, stop yearning and hoping, stop beginning again and again. But I have this quote in front of my from Christina Baldwin: "We do not choose a vision; we are not given a longing, unless we are also given the ability to fulfill it."

I can't walk away from it, even though I'm not really doing it right now. I can't stop thinking about writing. I can't stop thinking of story, of the people who live in my head, of things that I might want to put into my writing. I can't stop thinking of new stories, bits of dialogue, descriptions of places. I can't stop turning things I'm looking at into descriptions in my head, trying to figure out how I would write the scene to make it most vivid. I think this actually tells me everything I need to know. I can't stop. I can say that I'm going to stop, but I can't actually manage it. My brain won't stop sending the ideas and thoughts and compulsions.

So, how to turn ideas and thoughts and compulsions into a regular writing habit that will move me forward and get me to finish stories and create a real writing life? Not fully sure on that one yet. But I'll keep you posted. I'll probably be writing here more--I thought checking in with page or word counts and progress updates might be useful for me. The writing here will probably become more personal, more about what I'm doing with my stories rather than about writing in general. If anyone is still looking, I hope you'll like that ride.

So much to say, so little time

Running short on time today after a lengthy but productive doctor visit. So here's what's up in my writing world right now:

*Writers' group tonight (because tomorrow is my birthday, so we moved it up a day)
*Getting ready for NaNoWriMo, planning a Greenvale story
*Reading a couple of writing books by James Scott Bell
*Participating in Book-in-a-week this week, my goal is 20 pages

And a biggie that gets a line of its own: I signed up for Holly Lisle's How to Think Sideways course. Got the first lesson last night, and I'm already loving it.

And one last thing, writing related because it deals with Dracula: Stoker's blood relative to bring Dracula back from the undead

Let me count the days

The Willamette Writers’ Conference is in 91 days! The pitching workshop is in 85 days (the weekend before the conference), but the actual opportunity to pitch a book to an agent is at the conference, so 91 days. This means I have somewhere in that time frame—right around three months—to finish Blood of the Mist and get it ready to show to someone in case there’s interest.

I don’t quite exactly know what happens if you pitch a book and the agent likes it. I think that you need to have a full draft ready to give to them. I think it’s supposed to be a finished, polished draft. Gulp.

Can I get a finished, polished draft ready in three months? I don’t actually know. I think I can. I think it can be done. I think I’m turning into The Little Engine that Could. That’s all right. At least he got things done, right?

Seriously, I need a game plan. One that doesn’t involve panicking and hyperventilating. So what’s my plan? Oh yeah. I still have to make one.

Here goes the plan, then. Tonight I will finish reading the last pages of BoTM to get me back into the flow of the story. Over the weekend, I will spend time writing a bullet point outline of what we have going on so far in the story and what we need to reach the finish line (and who is this “we” and where are the other parties and why aren’t they doing any of the work?!). Then next week, during Book-in-a-Week, I will write. I set my goal for 20 pages for this month, but I would really like to do more. At least 30 pages, and then the same the following week and the week after. At that rate, I should be finished with the first draft by the end of May.

In June, I will transcribe all of the handwritten pages onto the computer. This process for me always involves editing as I go, so I will end up with an edited/revised draft just by typing the book in. This is good. It sort of feels like an added bonus! So, second draft complete by June 30. Good.

July. (I am actually hoping the transcribing/editing won’t take all of June, but I’m going to give myself that timeframe anyhow.) In July, I will print out the book (yikes that’s a lot of pages!) and do a read-through with pen in hand (this is where my training as an English/Literature major and an English teacher really pays off!). I will do this read-through from July 1-10. Then I will enter my corrections into the computer and reprint the pages with corrections on them (oh please don’t let it be all of them!). Then from July 11-20 I will do another read-through and mark any further changes. And then again with the making changes in the computer. And then I hope I’ll be finished and have a little bit of time to let it sit so I am not thoroughly sick of it by the time the conference rolls around. I want to be able to speak about it with some enthusiasm!

I think this should work. This is how I revise short stories. I think revisions on a novel should work about the same except for taking longer because of the length. I’m also going to reread Holly Lisle’s article "How to Revise a Novel" and incorporate at least some of her ideas into my revision process.

I will keep up with my blogging here and at Mythic Writers. My posts may be a bit scanty now and then. They may be all about the rewriting process, at least some of the time. But I will be here. And next week, I’ll even be back on my normal schedule! See you Tuesday!