Winner!

Just validated my word count for Camp NaNoWriMo. Over 31k words edited and revised in April for my upcoming Young Adult novel, In the Middle.  
Can't wait to share it with you guys!  It's a cool, creepy story... but that's all I'm going to say right now. I don't want to give away too much.  :-)

Third Time's a Charm

On July 22, 2011 I met Claire Darling for the very first time.  At the time, Claire was an 18-year-old high school student by morning, horse trainer by every spare hour after that.  She quickly became a friend of mine because she's sarcastic and self-deprecating, a good soul.  Two-and-a-half years and three books later, she and I are pretty tight.  I've fought for her to fall in love and I cried with her (over and over) when her heart was shattered into pieces.  She's struggled and she's endured.  She's no Super Woman, but that's why she's real.  Well, real is a relative term, but you know what I mean.

Over the past couple of years, I've come to adore good guys Liam and Graham.  I've loved to hate all those shady characters--Rayna, Rowan, and Maureen.  Maybe you've found the strings of your emotions tugged by one or more of them, too.  If that's true for you, then I thank you for investing yourself in my humble words.

There's so much I want to say, but so much I can't because I don't want to give anything away.  That, and I'm so overwhelmed by the day that I don't know where to begin and where to end.  

Maybe Liam says it best in the last paragraph I wrote today that brought the third and final novel to a close:  

"With any luck, tomorrow his big heart will eclipse anything he lacks. At least, this is what I pray as I stare out at the stars strung in the deep blue. I want him to find his own place to belong, because I’ve found that place for myself, a home, and I’m homesick."


Like Liam, I've found a home in Hope Creek and I'm already homesick. 

Thanks, guys, for everything you've given me.  You'll never know what you've done for me.

A Doll For Daphne

I press my lips together and follow him as he leads the way toward the nuns in the back.  He’s so focused he doesn’t realize a soft doll slips from one of the bags under his arm and falls to the ground.

“Liam!”  I call out.  “You--”

A girl with brown ringlets framing her round cheeks runs toward the doll before I catch Liam’s attention.  She looks both ways to be sure no one sees her, then snatches it up and into her arms.  The doll fits perfectly in the crook of her arm and a smile brightens her face.  

“Hey!  Little girl!”  I say.

She freezes and clutches the doll tightly to her body.  Her fearful blue eyes dart to me and back to the doll as I step toward her.     

“Hey!”  I repeat, coming closer.  From a few yards away I can see the tremble in her shoulders.  The little girl drops the doll and runs from me.  

I stoop down and pick the doll up from where she’s landed in a heap.  There’s a smudge of dirt on its plastic cheek and I wipe it away with my thumb.  Liam’s over talking with the nuns, and he glances my way.

“That girl--who is she?”  I ask when I reach them.  I don’t wait for introductions.  One of the nuns, the younger one with round spectacles and a pointy chin, looks like she really wants to give me a quick lesson in manners.

“I’m sorry, dear?”  The older nun says, wrinkling her forehead beneath her habit.

“There was a girl, maybe four years old.  Curly brown hair, blue eyes--or at least, I think they were blue.”  I scan the yard as I describe the little one.

The older woman smiles, bouncing the child on her hip.  “Ah.  You must mean Daphne.”

Do I mean Daphne?  I have no idea.  

“She ran from me.  Do you know where she might have gone?”

The thin, bookish nun nods towards a strand of trees near the rear of the property.  The trees are short and sparse, obviously very young, and don’t offer much shelter.  A little form huddles at the base of the one in the middle, facing away from us.

I peel back the corner of the foil around the cookies and grab a couple, then hand the tray to the young nun.  When I reach Daphne’s hiding spot, I find her with her knees tucked into her chest.  Tears streak her face, which she presses to her knees.

“Can I join you?”  I ask.  I don’t expect an answer, and she doesn’t disappoint.  I sink to the grass, leaving several feet between us.  “My name is Claire.  They told me your name is Daphne.”

She remains quiet except for a soft shudder.

“Daphne’s such a pretty name,”  I continue.  “A pretty name for a pretty girl.”

The little girl raises her head to glare at me.  Blossoms of crimson burn at her cheeks.  “Go away.”  She hides her face again.

I place the doll next to her gently, so gently I’m not sure she knows I’ve done it.  “That’s a nice doll you have there.”

Daphne brings her head up again and starts to say something angry.  Our eyes connect and I glance down at the doll laying next to her.  She looks down, too, and then back at me.

“It’s okay, pick her up.”  I say.  “I brought her for you.  I knew you would take very good care of her.”

The girl scoops the doll into her arms again and snuggles her little cheek against its plastic face.  Her eyes squeeze shut in joy.  When she opens them again, I smile.  “Would you like a cookie?”

She nods and tentatively takes the cookie from my outstretched hand.  Daphne reminds me a lot of Taran--flighty, suspicious, and upset.  Like Taran, I don’t push her.  I eat my cookie as she eats hers. When it's gone I stand up and slip away.  She doesn’t follow behind me like the horse does, but that’s okay.

The End of the Middle

7/31/13.  In the middle of the night, I typed the last sentence of my Young Adult novel "In the Middle".  I celebrated and felt free and easy for approximately half a day, then I flipped back open my laptop and fixed a section that didn't feel exactly right.  Because that's what writers do--they always feel like something could be fixed or rearranged for more impact.  It's a sickness.  A strange and wonderful sickness.

The beginning of August marks the end of July's Camp NaNoWriMo, 31 days of writers worldwide creating.  Campers are encouraged to pick their own word count goal (mine was 26,364 words, oddly specific because that magical number brought my novel to 50k words) and go for it.  I rounded out July with 38,406 words (62028 words in total), 12k above my goal.  I'll take it.

In March I began this journey with Lucy, an orphaned teenager burdened by the weight of her parents' deaths.  Lucy was angry and unpleasant, scarred and in pain.  She wasn't the only one in the little town of Mitte who struggled with loss and regret.  In the Middle forced me to look at death and remorse from a handful of angles, mourn with each person, and then offer a bit of hope.  Perhaps it will never be published, let alone read and understood by an audience, but recording their story took me on a journey I will always remember.

To Lucy, Oliver, Jasper, Perdita, Letty, Duke, Magnolia, Tessa, Johanna, Norman, Millie, Sadie, Angus, Sal, Bud, Vera--even Derek and Tanya...  Thank you for waking me up.

Full of Win

In the wee hours of the morning--3:14 a.m. if we're getting all technical and stuff--I finally brought my current manuscript to 50k words, the length of an average novel (or so the peeps at National Novel Writing Month tell me).  This story, best described as a young adult paranormal thriller, woke me up one chilly morning this past March.  I read a lot of paranormal fiction, but it's nothing I really had any desire to write until this story shook me by the shoulders and demanded I pay attention.

In April I tried to take this particular story (currently titled In the Middle) from about 13k to 50k by participating in Camp NaNoWriMo.  For those of you not familiar with the way NaNoWriMo works, allow me to explain.  The other NaNos want you to write a 50k-word novel in one month (typically November), with emphasis on daily word count goals. If you've got a a big enough stash of junk food and are good at disciplining yourself and/or know how to blacklist most of the Internet from your computer, you will sit down at a computer, write for a month and magically a book appears at the end of it.  You grin like a maniac and shake your aching fists in the air proclaiming your triumph over evil--I mean, words!  Words!  Then you quickly realize you haven't showered in a week (or three), clamp those armpits shut again, and wander off to tell your family they can call off the Search-and-Rescue mission.

If you're not so good at the whole NaNoWriMo thing, nothing happens.  You probably have a social life, a job, a family who still likes/recognizes you--all bonuses.  The most social we get during NaNoWriMo months is usually comparing word counts on our latest word battles.  On Twitter.  That's, like, not even a real website.  That's people simultaneously yelling their opinions into a crowded room.  #yesI'mtalkingtoyou.  Sometimes I write on my porch just to remember what the air feels like on my albino skin.

Why do I do this to myself, again?  Oh yeah, because I really, really love it.

All kidding aside, the lovely, caffeinated folks behind NaNoWriMo have inspired a staggering number of people to write books.  Most of the time, that's a good thing.  And, no, I'm not talking about you, E. L. James.  Stopit!

The beauty of Camp is the ability to pick a goal for your month of concentrated writing that fits in with your life instead of 50k, which used to be the only option (go big or go home!)  Optimistic, or possibly sadistic, I aimed high--That ended up too ambitious of a goal when it all boiled down to it.  I lost a horse to old age and arthritis and gained two more within the same month.  Historically, I'd say I'm pretty crappy with change, especially change involving the equine species.  Emotional upheaval doesn't usually lend itself to my creative process unless you consider my creative process eating a ton of chocolate and threatening to move away because, and I quote, "y'all are crazy!"

I managed six-thousand words that month.  That's, like, 1/8 of my goal.  Or something.  I'm bad at Math.  Numbers aside, it was no bueno.  My main character stuck in the middle of something big, something that changed the whole storyline... and I couldn't write myself out of it because I lost it all.  Poof!  The passion that woke me out of hibernation on a frigid Saturday morning fizzled away, even though I knew I had a story worthy of bleeding onto the page.  I began to feel anxiety that I would never rescue poor Lucy from her predicament.  I feared In the Middle would get buried in the old files on my laptop, never to see the light of day again.

A similar thing happened to me last July (and August.  And Septem--do you see where I'm going with this?) while working on the second draft of my first novel.  I'd lost my horse and best friend of 19 years to colic and the devastation wiped my mind completely clear of everything, including my creativity.  My main character, known for her sarcasm, couldn't think of anything funny to say.  For months, literally, I stared at my laptop screen all day, lucky to work out a couple sentences in all of that time.  The whole thing seemed pointless and discouraging.  I finished the redraft of that first novel only days before NaNoWriMo started up in November.  When NaNoWriMo began, I started the sequel to my first novel, which I eventually finished up on January 15th of this year.  Can't win 'em all, they say, but I won when I didn't give up.  The second book was just the icing on the cake.  (Did someone say cake?  It is NaNoWriMo again, which means JUNK FOOD!  It's for the books, I swear!)

Life, and death, runs in cycles--and I guess it is my Kryptonite, all this grief.  And I need to learn to deal with it like Superman does.  On second thought, no, probably not.  Kryptonite renders him a whiny cry-baby.  Dang it!  That's the only comic book analogy I have!

Thankfully Camp NaNoWriMo occurs each July, too, which doesn't make a lot of sense to me because it is the worst possible month for a mom of four to accomplish anything beyond brushing her teeth each morning (and often that is questionable).  But they didn't design their calendar around me, so I just have to deal.  Camp is the perfect excuse to push myself to get back into the habit of writing a lot, so I went for it.  This time, I set a goal of 26,394 words to bring "In the Middle" to 50k words.  At 3:14 this morning, and six days before my deadline, I hit my mark.  **

The novel's not completed, as much as I wish it was, but the finish line is so close I can almost taste it (have you ever noticed how much I talk about food?  I have.).  Now I'm pouring my focus into getting as close as possible to "The End" before July reaches its end.  This month's success is the total opposite of last year's July paralysis

Being trapped inside your own head trying to figure out how to heal is not pleasant.  Being able to look back and see how far you've come and realize you really CAN do anything is a feeling beyond words.  Three-fourteen this morning found me staring at a blinking cursor and the word count screen with my heart bursting full of allllllll the emotions.  No one can possibly know what it feels like unless it is your struggle and your triumph.  Today I feel very powerful, kinda like the opposite of Superman hugging a bar of Kryptonite.  I think the analogy worked that time!

Now back to the story...

~~~

**Special thanks goes out to my writing doula, Courtney, whose enthusiasm (or, at least facade of enthusiasm) keeps pushing me to press on even when my eyes are bursting into flames.  Thanks to the Camp NaNoWriMo crew, of course.  Also, a humungo shout out to the dude who wrote Write or Die!  I don't know what it is about that red computer screen that makes me want to type complete gibberish just to make it go away. And, as always, a big "whaddup!" to my muses, Ish and Moe.  Keep it up, boys.  Mama needs a new pair of riding boots!

Camp, Day 1

Here is a snippet from the novel I began earlier this year.  I'd hoped to finish it up in April, but April was a trainwreck.  Camp NaNoWriMo began today, and my goal is to add an additional 26k words to this novel to bring it to 50k and, hopefully, completion.  For those of you following along, here's my progress today.  Meet Lucy, the main character of "In the Middle".

~~~

Being slow as a turtle—even slower than that, it seemed—wasn’t my norm.  My body was aerodynamic, thin and sleek.  My legs used to reach outward with the grace of the gazelle, bounding me forward with ease.  They said I would go places, that I’d have my pick of colleges.  Coach lined up college recruiters for our biggest meets, all I had to do was show up and let go.  My heart would do the rest.

I missed the wind in my face and the teardrops that collected in the corners of my eyes as the world blurred behind me.  I missed the crunch of pebbles beneath my shoes.  I missed the tickle of my ponytail grazing the back of my neck with each swaying step.  I missed pushing through the burn in my lungs and deep within my legs.  Faster, faster, faster.  I missed every single shin splint and weeping blister.  I missed running so hard the world spun behind my eyes, struggling to catch up.  Heck, I even missed throwing up in the grass because I’d pushed myself to my limits.  Even the worst day on the track paled in comparison to what my life looked like now.  This was not life at all.

They said I would go places.  Somehow I doubted this is what they meant.

I bit my lip to keep from sobbing as I continued forward at my numbingly slow pace.  The forest around me fell silent except for the low crunch of the pine needles under my feet.  The sulfuric air grew thicker and so heavy that it pressed on my chest and I had to stop to draw in a really good breath.  My throat burned with the effort, and I coughed.   The fire was close, and so was my rescue. 

The pines crowded close together ahead with branches intertwined in protest.  Even the forest wanted to keep me stranded in this pit.  I knew following the trees until I could find a large enough opening to squeeze through would mean going to my right or left instead of forward.  Sideways was frustrating to me.  Sideways wouldn’t get me away from Oliver or Mitte, two things I wanted more than anything.  It was not one of my brightest ideas, but I gritted my teeth and pushed forward into the arms of the pines.  The needles welcomed me, sliding across my skin like feathers.  The tang of pine tar overtook the smell of soot and destruction.   Maybe this wasn’t so bad, after all.  Spreading the branches of the tangle before me, I smiled.  Yes, this plan would work.  Adios, Oliver!

Almost as soon as I’d thought it, the needles turned against me.  Pins made contact with my face, pricking my lips and drawing tiny beads of blood. 

“Ouch!”  I yelped, trying to bring my arm up to shield my face, which only made me more of a human pincushion.  No one came to help me, even though it was pretty obvious that I was stuck.

Oliver left.  He left.

He didn’t owe me anything, and I figure most of the messes I’d found myself in since fate dumped me in Mitte had been his fault.  Not even two minutes ago I wanted as far away from that boy as humanly possible.  Finally, something had gone my way.  From where I cowered, shrouded in flesh-eating vegetation, I couldn’t bring myself to feel happy he’d gotten around to taking a hint. 

If Dad was here he’d have torn himself in two to protect me.  There was no way he’d let me wander off alone into the wilderness, no matter how much I kicked and screamed.  Dad would have kicked and screamed right back at me, and then, when he’d had enough, thrown me over his shoulder and carried me back to safety.  I would have hated him every step of the way, as much as I loved him.  He knew never to give up on me, but it didn’t matter anymore.  Even Dad had abandoned me as the dragon drew near.

A flood of anger surged through me, and its intensity vibrated wildly across my skin like a bolt of lightning.  Feeling sorry for myself wouldn’t do a single thing except kill me faster.  I was no damsel in distress, and this was the furthest thing from a fairy tale.  Death would track me to this forest, one way or another.  A man couldn’t stop the inevitable.  I felt it as sure as the pulse pounding in my veins.  Wiping the blood from my mouth, I forced myself further into the green.  Goosebumps sprung on the back of my neck and rippled down my arms.  What in the--? The frantic rhythm slamming through my body crushed the breath from my lungs.  

My grandpa suffered his first heart attack right in front of me as I blew out the candles on my birthday cake on my tenth birthday.   I’ll never forget--his eyes bugged out of his head like he was a fish out of water, gulping for air and finding none.  Yeah, my life sucked. 

Ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-changes!

I haven't blogged in weeks.  Maybe you noticed.  Maybe you didn't.  Maybe you never even knew I had a blog.  Maybe you never cared to know the random things that pass through my brain.  If you didn't care, then I guess you wouldn't be here reading this now, so nevermind that bit.

At any rate, I've not had a lot to say.  A lot happened in April, but the words kept to themselves, mostly.

I lost a sweet horse, Mariah, to a heart-breaking decision I didn't want to have to make.  Her weight was good through the winter, but her joints just seemed to give way.  We spent the afternoon before the vet's visit brushing her and stuffing her full of the treats she loved so much...  After I had to chase her back to my property when she turned tail and ran through the neighbor's hay field.  That burst of spunk caused me to second-guess myself up until the moment she walked away from the barn for good.  Really, there wasn't anything to second-guess.  Even with her halting gait, she nearly bowled me over to go through the gate for the last time, never to return.  My step-dad says I'm reading too much into it--she was just a horse, after all--but I think she knew her time had come.  She was ready to be whole again in some other place.

Two days after we said good-bye to Mariah I began what I assumed would be the long process of horse-hunting and test-rides.  That day we looked at two ponies and bought the second one, a grey draft pony named Ellie.  She reminds me a lot of the pony I had when I was a kid, another horse I loved and lost.  Thank goodness I can think of that pony and smile.  The wounds are still a bit too fresh from losing my Moe and Mariah nine months from each other.  Back to Ellie, though--she is talented and quick, so I've been working at slowing her down and getting her back in shape for the kids to ride.  I've been riding a lot, for me, at over two hours a day in the saddle.  I'm one tired muchacha, most days.

My step-dad decided the tack room in our barn was in need of a major overhaul, so they began that project around the time they purchased the grey pony.  Now instead of dust, cobwebs, and mouse droppings, we have wood paneling, fluorescent lighting, and linoleum.  There are cross-ties for three horses instead of only one.  It's super-fancy.  You know, I've been riding for the past 30+ years in squalor so I don't know how to behave in nice places.  I might have to let the mice and birds into the tack room to relieve themselves, for old time's sake.

Yesterday my sister also bought a horse, a bay Tennessee Walker gelding.  His name WAS Henry, but he has been renamed "Romeo".  Despite my mare's (Trinity) best attempts to scare the bejeebies out of him with her crazy front legs and ear-splitting squeal, he is not very concerned with the goings-on of our barn.

The reintroduction of my family to the barn has been difficult.  For decades it has been my safe haven, the place I go to escape everything.  One by one, the horses are being replaced.  Board by board, [beautiful] improvements erase the little bits that remain of my memories of horses past.  The air is laced with the conversations of others instead of the whisper of the breeze.  It is all changing.  The changes are not all unpleasant, but, to me, they are all related--directly or indirectly--to losing a loved one.  I'm still grieving.  Not with the intensity I did when I lost Moe, but it's still there.  I'm crying for all of them.  There's little emotional leeway for much else.

Things have been happening in my non-horsey life, too.  A while ago I entered a contest attempting to attract the interest of a literary agent.  My submission didn't make it past the slushpile readers whose job it was to wade through all of the entries for the agents.  At the conclusion of the contest we were given a second chance to submit a Twitter pitch so the agents could see what they'd missed.  My Twitter pitch received requests from one agent and a brand new publishing company.  The agent ended up passing once she read my query and first several pages, but the publishing company requested my full manuscript two weeks ago.  Last night as Mr. Ohboy and I walked back from feeding the horses, I checked my e-mail and found a message from the publisher saying they were interested in signing me.

This afternoon I talked with the woman who runs the company, firing off questions and concerns and sharing our mutual disdain for "50 Shades of Grey" for over an hour.  The premise of the company is promising:  Treating writers with respect, fostering community amongst the authors in this house, allowing authors as much control as possible, and a lot of other things that made me feel comfortable about possibly letting this company help me bring my stories to the world.  The biggest problem?  They are so new their first round of acquisitions isn't set to publish for another month or so.  They are a total unknown.  On one hand, it's flattering to be considered for this fledgling company, getting in on the ground floor, so to speak.  On the other hand, I worry that once things get moving they will discover that their nice ideals and flexibility aren't making them money and all of those "pros" will disappear.  What if they don't survive?  What if they take my reputation with them?  I'm not sure if any of that makes any sense, but I've been processing it all day long.

The next step is to lay my eyeballs on their contract and figure out if it makes any sense to me.  It won't.  It's completely written in legal-ese.  I barely speak redneck-tinged English.

And then I think of this publisher, someone who doesn't know me from anyone, who personally read my manuscript and saw something of value in it, and in me.  Enough that she'd be willing to take a chance by bringing me in to be part of the building effort for her company.  It's scary and humbling, all at the same time.

I've not signed anything or given a commitment of any kind because all I've had is a nice phone conversation with a stranger.  Maybe I will wake up tomorrow and this will all be a weird dream, but tonight I will smile remembering her compliments.  I don't get enough of those, do you?

Also on the writing front--In April, I participated in Camp NaNoWriMo.  My hopes had been to add 30k words to a project I've been working on, a Young Adult thriller tentatively named "In the Middle".  With everything else going on, I managed about 10k.  This big "miss" did give me time to think about the plot a little, so look for more happening with that story in the near future.

What else?  Oh, I have a new nephew!  He's adorable and I need to visit him.  Other than that, I haven't had time for much else.  What about you?  Anything big happening where you are?

Fifty Shades Of Frustration

I am on Twitter.  I'm not too terribly proud of it.

My motives were good.  I wanted to connect with other writers so I could stop boring my friends and family who don't really give a hoot.  Twitter seemed a logical place, with people much like myself just a hashtag away.  Or so I thought.

By searching out and following random (and not-so-random) writers and publishers and editors, I found myself eyeball-deep in self-promotion and little else of value.  Tweets like these, by the thousands, sweep through my feed:

BUY MY BOOK FOR .99, TODAY ONLY #bythewayitsucks

Mona doesn't need dignity where she's going...  VAGUE BOOK TITLE #scrubyourbrainwithlysollater

#Write your #novel in five hours but.payme20bucksfirst.com !!!!

I nearly called it quits, deciding I'd failed in ferreting out real live people on Twitter.  The best I could tell, Twitter was one big, soulless PR/Advertising dumping ground for authors and booksellers alike.  Not at all the place where tormented artists were huddled together, whining about deadlines, writer's block, and plot holes.  Something happened late last week to change that, though.  An innocent question led me to small community of writers loosely tied to NaNoWriMo, and, finally, I found hope in the whole Twitter idea that I'd been scoffing at all this time.

Until last night.  Yes, I had four whole days of Twitter happiness, and then I discovered something so..... so....  I don't have the words to describe it.

I followed a particular female author, just because.  She's no one I'd heard of before, and I didn't remember her at all until something popped up on my newsfeed last night while I was watching the Oscars.  This woman was interacting with her followers (something rare amongst authors on Twitter, with the exception of the incomparable Neil Gaiman), and I took notice.  Authors/celebrities who take the time to talk to their fans impress me--it shows me they care...  about something, at least.  Her follower complained that her website had crashed, and the author explained it always did after she released a new book "teaser".  They began talking back and forth about how wonderful and quirky the books' main characters are.  Now, I had no idea who this lady was or what she writes, but I was intrigued.

I proceeded to download a free sample of one of her books from Amazon without reading the summary.  The sample netted me 10 or so pages to read and decide whether I am interested enough to buy the entire book.  At $10, I'm already fairly certain I'm NOT interested, but I wanted to see this quirky character everyone's in love with.

It took me about five pages before I realized that this series is completely hanging onto the coattails of Fifty Shades of Grey.  (Please don't ask me if I am into Fifty Shades of Grey unless you want to hear me go off on a day-long rant....  I just....  Yeah, don't ask me about it, that's all.)

So, whatever.  I get it.  Sex sells.  A lot.  Like major best-seller a lot.  That's not really my beef here, although it's really annoying.  I'm taking a deep breath and trying--but failing--to climb down off my soapbox.

This morning I checked my Twitter account and came across this author again.  At some point, she (or one of her followers) had shared something by an individual on Twitter pretending to be the main male character of her book series.  Not that weird--I'm assuming that most fictional characters have a Twitter account maintained by some fanatic.  Maybe someday even Liam or Claire will have their own Twitter accounts, too.

What disturbed me is that this fictional character was having fairly graphic Tweetsex (is that a term?  If not, it is now) with his followers.  I mean....  What???  Y'all have no shame.  I don't want to imagine any of you doing any of that with any of that, knowwhatI'msayin'?

I'm not against romance novels.  I like it when people fall in love, in real life or in a book's life.  I've been known to drown myself in chocolate chip cookies and a trashy novel when I can't be bothered with thinking.  Trashy novels don't require thinking.  But.... some of these books are topping the charts! And I don't want to believe it for a single second.

It's discouraging to know that this is what I am up against.  That most of the readers don't care what the plot is or how utterly unbelievable a character is as long as they are drrrrty birdies.  That I will likely never see the same level of success because my main character doesn't let him x her y with a z.  Depressing, really.

I'm not yet swearing off Twitter because luckily I did find a few quality individuals along the way, and a couple of them have helped quite a deal with my novel.  However, I guess I will have to learn to be more discerning of the complete strangers I pay attention to.  I suppose that's not a bad thing to apply to most areas of my life.

And even though it's disheartening to see, I'm not going to let the Fifty Shades of the literary world get me down.  A captivating story can be created without all of that, I'm sure of it.

#rantover #amiright?

We Meet Again. Now What?

Tonight I did it.  I finally completed--in 2-1/2 months--what I was hoping would only take me one.  But who's counting, anyway?

Book 2 Draft 1 is complete at 50,004 words.  It is not perfect, but I never expected it would be.  Show me someone who writes the perfect first draft, and I'll point out that it probably took them 20 years to do it.

There is a lot of smoothing to be done, details to be added, and probably I will end up with a completely different story when I eventually go through and do a second draft of the thing.....  Kind of like when I did a second draft of my FIRST book.  But right now I feel better about this one.  I think that's just denial.  Time and space will reveal how horrible it actually is.  For the moment, I am proud.

Thank you to the hundreds of people who endured my word count posts on Facebook.  I know it is one of the many reasons you hide me in your newsfeed, and I love you still.  Don't expect me to like the accomplishments you are proud of, but we're still okay.  Haha.  But, seriously, thank you for your encouragement--especially those who have no idea what I'm talking about most of the time.  Yes, I realize that's most of you.

(Is it weird that I still get surprised when people say, "You're writing a book?"  I've kept it this big secret and all.... ;-)  )

And even though I'm not 100% he deserves it, I'd like to say thank you to my amazing husband.  He's my biggest fan, always, and yet he gives me so much grief about my starting on a second book when I haven't published the first.  There's a method to my madness this time, dude.  Take a chill pill.  Just for your impatience, maybe I'll start writing installment three.

The flu has made me testy, my bad.

Tomorrow--today, officially--I will rest and do whatever it is when I'm not worried about self-imposed deadlines.  It likely involves mountains of laundry and even bigger mountains of pet fur lurking in every corner of the house.  Exotic, I know.

Unless I decide to do something really crazy like enter this contest, in which case I would have to forego said piles of things and figure out stuff I've never done before (pitch and picking an excerpt).

Tonight, I sleep.

Home Stretch

... or I'd like to think it is.

I hit 40k words just a little bit ago.  Finally.  I almost went to bed early because I've been dragging all day.  Instead, something told me that it would be a perfect night to check out the Write Or Die desktop program I bought before Christmas.         The premise of Write Or Die is that you can set goals--crazy or easy, or somewhere in between--for your writing, and if you don't hit those goals, then you are punished.  The punishments range anywhere from violins screeching in the background to words deleting themselves from the screen.  If you are idle for too long the screen fades from pink to red, which I found to be really annoying. So tonight, I managed to write about 1084 words in an hour, which is  some sort of record for me.  I'm excited about this new gadget to hopefully motivate me to get to the finish line.  I'm only 10k off now!  Yay!

And now I am falling asleep at the keyboard.  That's the price you pay for an hour of super-speed.

My Reach Is Too Short, For Now

Here I am, the first morning of December.  Up too early on a Saturday despite having only one child in the house at the moment (two if you count Mr. Ohboy) who is still sleeping under a thick cover of Angry Birds and purring kitties.

I've been awake for an hour on the insistence of my bladder and that of the doggers.  I don't mind because I have much to unravel from the knotted plot lines of my novel.  My brain is not yet caffeinated enough to dig in fully, but the day hasn't stolen away all of my energy, so I'm not fighting drowsy-brain, either.  All week I've struggled to write because I've been the only adult in the joint, and by the time I get everyone settled enough so I can sit down and think it's 10 p.m. and I'm nodding off at the computer.

So...  National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) ended at 11:59 p.m. last night.  Participants were supposed to hammer out 50,000-word novels in 30 days.  I was participating in NaNoWriMo, therefore I was supposed to ring in December with 50,000+  words for my latest novel.  Somehow I squealed into the finish line with a blistering 28,036 words, just over half of my goal.  On the one hand, I'm disappointed that I fell short by so much.  It's not like I had unrealistic goals--I wrote a book in a month last year, so I knew that it was a huge undertaking but something I'd been successful at previously.  This time around, I guess I wasn't as interested in writing just to write, and maybe I stifled my creativity by trying to plan things out too much.  My second draft from last year's NaNoWriMo novel is mostly unrecognizable from what I spewed out onto the page the first time around, and it took, literally, blood, sweat, and tears to make it into something more, well, less crap-like.

And, confession-time, I rode my ponies a lot more than I probably should have and soaked in as much sunshine as I could before winter hits and the ground freezes and thaws, then freezes all over again.  There'll be plenty of hours to write then, hermitted in my house in my bubble of fleece.  I welcomed two doula babies this past month and met with several expectant families.  When friends asked me to go places and I wanted to take part, I did.  No regrets--well, except for missing my goal.  Ha.

I'm trying to be more positive about the missing of this lofty goal, telling myself I'll be happier to have taken a little bit more time with it.  The process of writing subsequent drafts or revising won't suck quite as much..... but that darn number bugs me a little bit.  Okay, a lotta bit.  It's just a number, but I knew I was capable of it.  I set so very few goals for myself, and fewer that I really care about reaching.  To write 28k words on any subject could be considered impressive, I guess.  However, the average reader can skim through that many words in the matter of an hour, if they really wanted to.

My new-and-improved goal is to reach 50k (or the end of this novel) by January 1st, 2013, should the Mayans be way off on this end-of-the-world business.  This is NaNoTwoMo, and I may be on my own with this, the lone writer striving for that elusive word count amidst the holiday chaos, I don't know.

I will do this.  I've got to.

Breathe.

My client sent me a text confessing she is scared to leave the hospital and the comfort of having a nurse or lactation consultant one button-press away.  I sent a text back to her to reassure her that we'd help her find support if it was needed.  What I was thinking at that moment was:

"Sometimes the most important thing you can do is take a deep breath, let go of the hands you've been holding, and trust your intuition."

It can apply to so many areas of our lives, can't it?  Along with being terrified of failing, are we also just as scared to succeed?

For me, this is significant because I've buried myself ridiculously deep, 8k-ish words, in my National Novel Writing Month word count deficit.  The words seem to be dammed up today, and I don't know why.  Is it fear?  The complete scariness of letting go of control?  Hushing the overbearing voice of that so-called "perfectionist" streak? 

I need to let go of those things that are holding me back, to trust I can do this because, deep within, I know how to do this... and I want it more than anything.    Just like this new mama, convinced she doesn't have the wisdom she needs to be the mother she was divinely designed to be.  We both need to stop and realize that God has not given us these gifts without the necessary tools to enjoy them.

Breathe in.  Breathe out.  

Day Five

I'm 5071 words in to book #2, cleverly titled "Hope Creek Book 2" until I come up with something better.

Nevermind that I should be 1500 words further.

Nevermind that I have no clue where I'm going in the immediate future with this.

Nevermind that the inner editor won't shut her yap because I'm still in editing mode.

Nevermind I shouldn't be blogging because there's a novel to be fleshed out.

I hate playing catch-up, but I love the feeling of that goal number.

T Minus Two Days

A year ago I'd not quite finished the first draft of my novel.  If I recall correctly,   the bulk of my writing took place near the end of July and most of August 2011.    The draft wasn't complete, so I dribbled bits and pieces here and there until I finally felt it was complete in December.  Nearly 69k words, a surplus from the 50k I'd been shooting for initially.  Thousands of attempts to make something readable--a feat considering I'd sat down at my tiny HP netbook with no story and no direction.  Crazy what has happened in my life since then.

This year I'm going into National Novel Writing Month with an improved second draft under my belt.  This time, my biggest fear is going into this thing blind again.  I love writing, but forcing myself to spend months ripping apart and stitching back together the old with the new feels less like writing and more like playing Dr. Frankenstein.  Outlining and planning are two of my weakest points, I'm already aware, but even the crudest of ideas are a step up from blank pages and an oppressive deadline.

Scrivener is a snazzy program for writers who are in the drafting/research phase of a novel.  They offered a nice discount for 2012 NaNoWriMo participants (and something like 50% off for those who meet their 50k goal), so I hopped onto that bandwagon.  This blustery, miserable day was spent navigating the tutorial in an attempt to demystify the program.  Now I kind of have a clue what some of the features do instead of being convinced I'd wasted my dough on something I'd never figure out.  Plus, the guy who compiled the tutorial wrote like he was British, which is always fun to read.

Another positive:  This morning the name of the next big antagonist came to me, I don't even remember how.  Out of curiosity, a few minutes ago I looked up the meaning of her name and it means "heavenly".  That's pretty funny because she certainly believes she is God's gift to mankind.

I wish those minor accomplishments were enough to say I was ready for the start of this next journey, but I know it's not.

Two days to make some plans.  Scary.