Crazy Land

Now seems like a really great time to let you guys know what's going on. So here we go!

The movers are coming this Saturday to pack all our stuff on a truck, to put it on a boat, to send it to Puerto Rico. See how many prepositions I got in one sentence? That's mad skillz right there.

This boat will be crawling at a snails pace, as we're assured our stuff will be there in four to six weeks. Yeah, ouch. My husband is already in Puerto Rico; today was his first day at work. He arrived last week and managed to secure a Jeep and a house in that span of time. Yeah, we've been busy.

Meanwhile, everything in the house that isn't my computer or the toddler is packed. Although the toddler has tried to pack himself repeatedly, I told him we can't afford the postage to mail him to daddy. When I called the movers last Friday they told me they would be here between Wednesday and Friday of this week (EEEP), so I assumed worst case scenario, and packed ALL THE THINGS. Of course, now they're coming Saturday, but hey. At least we're ready.

Now, the husband has the house we're renting, and an air mattress, and some EasyMac, but since it's going to take so long for the rest of our stuff to get to Puerto Rico, Connor and I will be staying with my in-laws on this side of the ocean for a little while. We're not sure how long exactly, since a) we have more cookware in the house than previously thought and b) he  came back from being in Oklahoma for six weeks only to leave for Puerto Rico four days later, so we MISS each other (I know, ewwww mushy stuff!), but the fact remains it would be better to give our stuff a head start, so to speak. 

ALSO I have stuff to accomplish over here. Stuff like physically going to the water and power companies to close our accounts, the walk through for the house we were renting, and spending time with friends and family. I KNOW! *sniff* Don't get me started. I'm really, really excited to live in Puerto Rico, and my husband has already told me how beautiful it is, but I'm still going to miss my friends and family. I haven't made a long distance move in 15 years, so I'm a little set in my ways. 

In my free time (I know, I slay myself...free time *snickers*) I've been doing some brainstorming, but I'm flitting between three different projects. I'm done with my second draft of Zombie Road Trip, but every time I go to start another novel, I feel pressured to pick the right one (which is utter b.s.) and also the voice tells me I don't actually have time to write a novel right now. Which is closer to the truth, but I can still dream, right? Right.  

We'll see what's taken hold when I can actually sit down to write something. Considering I'll be staying with my in-laws before Connor and I fly out to Puerto Rico (and let me tell you, I am so looking forward to getting the toddler on a plane again...) I don't know what my schedule is going to be like. I'll have access to my computer, but I doubt I'll have a lot of time to myself. 

Come on Mom, what's the worst that could happen? I promise I won't scream all during take off and landing again.

I plan to NaNo this year, so there's that. I was doing the dance of joy when I realized for ONCE I wouldn't be moving during November, but my joy is somewhat quashed by the realization that our stuff will probably arrive around the end of October. *facepalm*

So that's the story, morning glories. I'll be on a plane for Puerto Rico probably around the first week of October, and after that it's time to NaNo. I'll be blogging in between, but I'm not sure what the Internet situation is going to be like at my in-laws (they have it, but I need to make sure I can mooch off their wireless).

What do you guys having going on? How's the writing? The living?

Traveling in Time (But Only 5 Days)

I just spent the last five days sick. Super sick. As chance would have it, my husband caught the same thing I had, so we laid on the couch watching my Criminal Minds DVDs while high on cold medicine.

As some of you may remember, I don't do well with medicine. I have no idea why, but basically anything stronger than Tylenol makes me loopy. The night time stuff makes me go right to sleep, and the day time stuff makes me groggy and spacey. We packed the kid off to the grandparents and laid around wishing we were dead.

Yesterday was the first day I felt like a human being, so I spent five hours straight cleaning the house. All the blankets got washed, all the surfaces disinfected, and all the floors scrubbed. I now feel confident that we will not reinfect ourselves with the plague.

It's always weird getting back to the world and social media after five days straight of not thinking about anything but how much phlegm your body is producing. I feel like a time traveler who's not very good at her job, as I've only jumped five days into the future.

I didn't mean to, but I know have distance on all the writing and personal stuff I'd been working. I think I am going to take advantage of this, and re-prioritize my projects. I'm also trying to not over do it and "catch up" on all the stuff I didn't do whilst coughing up a lung. Wish me luck!

How you do get back into the routine after spending a long time sick? Any disinfecting rituals you have that don't involve setting fire to everything and hoping for the best?

Reasons to Rewrite

Today we're going to talk about rewriting. I'm in the middle of a rewrite, and was talking to two of my friends about rewriting, so it seems like a good subject to bring up. 

Today specifically we're going to talk about why you would want to rewrite a book. 

To be clear, when I talk about rewriting in this context, I mean rewriting the entire book from scratch. When you're revising a book and you rewrite three chapters, that's of course still rewriting, but there's a big difference between a few chapters and an entire book. The sense of self loathing, for example, is much higher.

The most common reasons (that I am aware of) to rewrite a novel is because a) you're redoing a book you've already written, but it's been a long time since you wrote said book and your skills have, hopefully, improved, or b) you're redoing a premise, and substantial parts are going to change. Parts such as a point of view character, genre of the novel, and/or voice.

There might be other reasons, but at the moment I can't think of any. Feel free to suggest reasons in the comment section. 

The important thing is to make sure you actually need to start over, and you're not just procrastinating editing your completed book. Rewriting is hard; really hard. You feel like a failure for getting it wrong the first time, no matter how many times you tell yourself this is not true. You despair, knowing you have write a book all over again. The newness is gone. All you have is the stubborn sense that you know how to make this book better, and you're going to do it, even if it means starting from square one.

Here's the secret. You're not actually starting over. Even if you've completely changed the premise, characters, and setting, you still have the experience of a full draft dedicated to explore these ideas under your belt. It makes a difference that's hard to describe. There's slightly less flailing about. 

But this is a last ditch effort. Your first job is to make all the changes needing to be made and make sure it can't be accomplished with a serious edit. This is a judgment call, of course, but most of the time no matter how broke the book feels, it's nothing a good edit won't fix.  

After a Google search, I found exactly one helpful post on rewriting by Justine Larbalestier. 

What do you think? Have you ever rewritten a book before? Why or why not?

The Cost Of Kindness

Warning: Angry rant ahoy!

Over a week ago on Monday (not this past Monday, but the Monday before) my husband and I noticed that once again, our apartment's AC was not keeping up with the Georgia summer heat. Last summer our AC was always a few degrees higher than we had it set. It was set at 71, the house was regularly 76 or 77. But after a week or so, the temperature dropped enough outside that it wasn't an issue.

This year it was already having a hard time keeping up, and the hottest part of the summer wasn't even upon us. Plus, we have a four month old. So we called the maintenance people and were promptly ignored. Wednesday we called them again and they sent someone out. They changed the air filters and charged the freon, and sent a guy out to check on us in the morning. We tried to explain that the AC did the same thing last year, but they were sure it was just the air filters. It was 77 degrees in the house.


Thursday morning, someone stops by and checks our unit and says it's fine: it's blowing cold air. We explained that wasn't the issue. Our unit would blow cold air until Judgement Day, but never cool the apartment down enough to make it livable. Plus, over the weekend it was supposed to be over a hundred degrees outside. He said was just hot and we'd have to deal with it.


Friday we stop by the leasing office to talk to the property manager. We explained the issue. We explained that we weren't just being whiny about the AC being off a few degrees; it had reached 80 degrees in the house last night. We have a four month old. Their nervous systems are immature. It takes a baby a lot longer to warm up or cool down than it does an adult. Plus, he's got eczema, and the heat was just making it worse. If your AC is set at 71, and it reaches 82, and doesn't cool off until 3 in the morning, something is wrong.


The manager said she understood. She would have the maintenance men put the portable AC unit in our apartment tomorrow, and have them check out our AC unit again. We went back to the apartment, and by 5 it was already 80 degrees. I decided to take the baby over to my parent's house where the AC lives until Saturday.


Saturday arrives, and they hadn't brought the portable unit before my husband left for work (1 in the afternoon). I try to give them some more time. My parents live one town over, and I didn't want to drive there and back just to have them say the unit was on it's way. I'd called the office a few times, but no one ever called me back. I went back to the apartment around 4 in the afternoon and still nothing. It was 84 degrees in the apartment and 105 outside. I called the maintenance man again, and left. I spent the night at my parent's house again.


Sunday the office is closed so we knew nothing was going to happen. We called the maintenance man anyway. He'd said he went out there Saturday, and no one was home (*eyebrow twitch*), but he checked and the AC was blowing cold air (*tiny stroke*).


By this time, I was furious. FURIOUS. I live in the South, people. I know complaining about the AC seems like a petty, First World problem when people are starving all over the world, but again, this is the South. It's HOT outside. VERY hot. It was 105 on Saturday, and 103 on Sunday, and 99 on Monday. It's still in the high 90's this week, and will be until the end of August. We had a record breaking heat wave this weekend and our AC wasn't working. The inside of the apartment (top floor, by the way) was like an oven. 


I consider myself a nice person. There's a lot of people that before now would have been up at that front office, screaming at the nearest warm body. But that's not me. I don't think screaming at people solves anything. Usually the person you're yelling at simply nods and smiles, and just ignores what you're saying. It's not productive. I try to realize that everyone has their own problems and that I am not, in fact, the center of the universe.

I was pissed we were being ignored, and I was pissed that they had me backed into a corner. Being nice and understanding that they probably had lots of calls about AC that weekend wasn't doing anything but getting us walked all over, and I hate it. I hate that some people refuse to respond unless you're pissed off and complaining.  They never called us back when they said they would, and they didn't follow through with a single thing. I felt sick to my stomach. I knew I would have to go up there, and I knew I would have to be firm. I HATE confrontation. I HATE. I would so much rather sit down and discuss things like the rationale human beings we are then have to complain and be mean.


Which brings us to this past Monday. I drove up to the apartment, and my husband got up early (he had to work that evening) and we went over to the leasing office, once again. We had written a letter, complete with photo evidence, about our complaints. We walked in, and calmly yet firmly explained what was happening and why it was not acceptable. The apartment manager made some sympathetic noises. You might think I am exaggerating because I am ticked off, but I swear you could see her eyes glaze over the minute we started talking. 


She explained that the second unit was being used in another apartment whose AC was completely not working, and that the maintenance people would be looking at our unit today. It would have been REALLY nice to know this on Saturday. The maintenance supervisor came in and explained they would probably have to replace the unit, but in the mean time they would bring us the portable unit they had just ordered. Apparently the apartment complex only had one, and couldn't be bothered to drive to Lowe's, or Home Depot where they are easy to buy and even ON SALE.


You might be wondering why we didn't buy one ourselves. Well, we thought about it, but when we spoke to the property manager on Friday she said that wasn't necessary, and frankly, we don't have the extra couple hundred dollars to spend on one right now. We weren't 100% sure they would reimburse us if we sprang for one, since the manager said they would provide us with one.

Later on in the afternoon they brought the portable unit by and I was able to FINALLY sleep in my own bed. 

Here's where it gets fun. Tuesday morning the maintenance man comes by and takes out our old crappy unit, because I assumed (my bad) that the new unit had come in. The afternoon goes by and they bring us the second portable unit, explaining that the new unit hadn't come in yet.

Of course, Wednesday was the Fourth of July so nothing got done, and yesterday they didn't call or bring by our new unit. 

So once again, today I get to call them and ask where our new unit is, because guess what? It was 84 degrees in the house last night because just the two portable AC units couldn't keep up. Plus, they tripped the circuit breaker a few times.

I hate this so much. I hate being so very angry, I hate feeling like a bad person because I just want to march up there and scream at them for ignoring us, for patronizing us. We're good tenants. We don't complain. We clean up after ourselves. Our rent is always paid on time. Yet, this means nothing. Sometimes the squeaky wheel IS the one that gets the most grease, and I think that's wrong. That just sets up the next time the person has a problem they'll think the only way to solve it is to get pissed off. I've worked in retail and customer service my entire life. It's not fun to have someone yell at you over something you can't control.

But being ignored, being patronized and walked all over just because I haven't screamed at them just is just...wrong. 

Needless to say, we will not be renewing our lease.   

The Ever-Popular Rewrite Playlist

So it's that time again folks. 

Yes, the time where I go into a second or third draft and completely rewrite the entire thing. Why? Because I am a masochist, that's why.  No really, I must hate myself.

Really it's because I've finished revision and it's actually better to rewrite it than to try and add in and take out all the stuff. This is probably the third complete rewrite I am about to embark on, and I am noticing a disturbing pattern. Hold me.

Last night, while my brain was doing it's normal "NOOOOOO" panic attack, I thought about Libba Bray's Ever-Popular I Suck Playlist and figured rewriting would make a good addendum to that post. So here it is. If the stages your brain goes through when you're about to embark on a major revision/rewrite was a playlist, this is what it would look like:

Playlist Titled: Why I Am I Putting Myself Through This Again?

1. It's Time to Rewrite the Book, Hide the Gun

2. Maybe This Time It Will Be Better

3. It's Not Better; It's Worse

4. Why, God, Why? (stuck on repeat one)

5. Maybe I Should Write Something Else

6. OMG I Have the Best Idea for the Rewrite!

7. Happy Dance

8. It's Not Better; It's Worse (DJ Sally Remix)

9. Shiny New Idea Syndrome Breakdown

10. Maybe I Should Write Something Else, Part Two

11. No, Really, I Should Leave This Book Out In the Cold to Die (of Exposure)

12. Major Breakthrough Anthum

13. It's Not Better; It's Worse (Special Duet with Crit Partner Who is ALSO Rewriting)
14. The Internet Has the Answer
15. The Internet Does Not Have the Answer--Oh Look, Twitter

16. Where's the Chocolate?

Hidden Track: If I Hide Under My Desk Maybe the Book Can't Find Me

So that's going to be on my iTunes the next couple of months.

How about you? Any new tracks to add to the Revision/Rewrite Playlist?

When Zombies Really Aren't About Zombies

I am currently slogging through my zombie book. It's been like threading a lemur through a needle. And the lemur is hopped up on cough medicine. I kept trying to up the ante, to increase stakes, but it all felt boring. What's the world coming to when zombies feel boring?

Until I had an epiphany.  Zombies were boring because after the first encounter, it was more of the same. I mean, sure, the characters were worried about dying, but a constant "Oh crap we're going to die" gets stale, quick. It seems like it should be exciting, but in reality it's repetition.

I started to think about the zombie books I'd read, and the movies I'd seen. I realized that zombies were part of the initial conflict, yes, but they existed more as a setting conflict. Zombies caused conflict in the same way a character in a war zone was in conflict. The setting is actively trying to kill the characters, but that's not the only place conflict needs to come from.

In fact, it's not even the primary place. 

Because the setting throws the character out in the cold, and forces them to survive. Your story might be about their survival, or some internal flaw brought to the surface, or maybe both. Because your story isn't about war, or zombies, it's about your character.

DUH.

I know, right? This sounds really obvious, but when you're in the thick of writing it seems like you should be able to throw some zombies in there, and presto, conflict. But no. That's not actually how it works. Even stories without zombies in them (yes, they do exist--I've even written some!) aren't just about the main conflict. They are about how the main conflict affects the main characters.


That's what matters. That's what raises the stakes. It's not the zombies, but the fact that zombies are forcing the character to hide in a locker room and consider eating each other like a bunch of stranded soccer players. 


So the next time I get stuck, I'm going to try and remember that it's not really about the zombies: it's about the characters the zombies are trying to eat.

Flexibility Matters

I smile because I am holding my son. Also? IV pain meds.

 It's impossible to say how much my life has already changed, and what more is to still come.

I was supposed to be induced for labor on Thursday, February 23rd. I was. I spent the entire day in labor, walking back and forth between a 3 foot space. I was hooked up to an IV with pictocin and minerals in one arm, and a fetal heartbeat monitor and a monitor for my contractions around my stomach. But I walked within the space I had, because it would help me dilate. 

Around six that night the midwife checked me, and found I was 3 cms dilated. Hooray! So I kept walking. I would sit on occasion, but that was very uncomfortable. The contractions were getting stronger and stronger as they upped the pictocin drip. It wasn't until 2 in the morning that I realized my legs hurt too badly to walk on, that they were swollen purple. So it was time for the epidural. They broke my water and set me up on some awesome IV pain meds.

I was told to get some rest, which I would have loved to, but people were checking on me often, and I had a blood pressure cuff that went off every 30 minutes or so. I named it Eeyore because of the sad noise it made after it finished deflating. I was 5 cms by this point.

A few hours later, very early on Friday, the midwife came in to check me again. I was only 6 cms for some reason. Breaking my water should have sped up the contractions, but instead my body just plateaued out. They started talking about a c section, but said we could try taking me off the pictocin for an hour and then starting it back up again.

We tried that. It didn't work. I actually went back to 5 cms dilated. I could have waited until later on in the day to see if I would dilate further, but it was a numbers game at this point. Once they break your water, you have a high chance of infection. My body was showing no signs of dilating further, and the longer we waited, the better chance there would be that they would move me from an unscheduled c section to an emergency c section where they are worried about me and or the baby.

So I decided on the c section, and less than 10 minute later they started prepping me. They gave me this nasty tasting stuff to prevent heartburn, which I promptly threw up (I would have rather had heartburn). They put pressure garments on my legs so I wouldn't clot. They wheeled me into this large, cold OR, and upped my epidural so I couldn't feel anything from the waist down. A thin blue curtain draped across my chest separated me from the doctors. My husband sat with me, holding my hand and looking funny in the hospital gown they gave him. 

I was scared and cold and nervous something would go wrong. But I was lucky. The baby came out no problem. He was perfectly healthy. And while I am still sore from the labor and operation, I am healing well. 

I would have rather not be induced. And then, I would have rather not had a c section. Nothing about my son's birth went how I'd planned, except the most important part about both of us being healthy.

On our way to see the doctor. He sleeps blissfully unaware.

Writing is a lot like that. You have all these ideas and expectations. It comes with the territory. We're imaginative people. Why wouldn't we imagine what it's going to be like to get published, to get an agent, to reach any milestone we have our heart set on?

But it's important to remember that life has other plans. Being flexibile can completely change your experience of an event. I could have gotten really upset and pissed off about how the birth of my son turned out. I could have been mad that I also have to recover from major surgery after being in labor for a day and a half while taking care of a newborn. 

But why? Why get all caught up on how you wanted things to be? Why not plan for every outcome and just know that things are going to change, things are going to be different, and that's okay?

If you get too upset about the curve balls life throws you, just look at this picture. I dare you not to laugh: 

Sausage baby! To the rescue!

  

Just So You Know...Plot Points

Yesterday I was being very good and working on my book. Problem is, I am stalled, big time. I don't know what happens next, and at the moment, I don't really care. It feels stupid, boring, and like hard, hard work. 

I know a big part of this is because I haven't be able to work on my book for about a week and half (you know how I am always going on about writing the first draft as quickly as possible? This is totally why.). But I looked at my outline and make a startling realization.

I had very few plot points. And of those, most weren't even proper plot points.

Here's the thing. You can totally put "learns to accept herself" on your outline. You really can. You can put whatever you want on there. But the reality is this really doesn't help you with your story in a concrete way. I put notes on my outline like that, but only to remind myself of where I want the character to be at that point. It does nothing for me as a plot event. 

Also? Settings do not make good plot points either. "Goes to a club and sees the evil monkey" doesn't really help you. You have the "sees the evil monkey" which is the point of the scene, but "goes to a club" really doesn't help you. I can almost guarantee that you will get to that point in your outline, and wonder what the heck the character is going to DO once they get to the club and see the monkey.

The really sad thing is I know this already. I know better than to jot down "sees largest ball of twine" as a plot point. But a lot of times while I am outlining I jot stuff down and never go back to add details.

Then I get to where I am now, where I have an idea of where I want my character to go, and what sort of emotional journey she experiences, but very little ideas in the way of the actual plot. So here's a friendly reminder for you:

A plot event is a concrete event that moves your character from point A to point b. 

Obviously this is a basic definition, but I want it vague enough that it will apply to different people's writing styles. The important thing to remember is a specific event. Like "Sally fights the zombies that have broken into the secret lab". Or "Jonathan kisses Mabel, and Denise walks in the middle of it."

Something happens. It's usually action oriented, even if it's not guns exploding and kittens being saved from a burning building. 

Hopefully this little reminder will help you guys in your plotting endeavors. Now if you'll excuse me, I have an outline to rip apart.

What litmus test do you use for your outline? Any hard and fast rules or do you just keep everything vague?  

Plotting

So for the last few weeks I have been working on my next novel. I definitely need a break after that extensive rewrite, so it was time to work on a new project.

The idea came easily. The characters too. It's just this darned plot that I seem to be having troubles with. At first I was shocked, and then I thought something was wrong with me.

And then I realized it's just part of writing. We tend to forget how hard certain parts of the process are after we've moved on. Or we approach a new project with a "this time it will be magical" frame of mind. I know I do. I get so excited about my idea and the characters that when I stall out, it baffles me. 

"What a second? Wait...this is starting to feel like...yes, yes that's it...WORK."

But it is. As fun as writing can be, there's still a process. Even if you're a panster you still have to come up with the idea. You have to think about the characters, and then figure out how to start the book. Even if you sail through this, you're bound to get to a part in the middle where things start to feel like work. 

But that's as normal as feeling like your writing is blessed by the Book Fairies (they do so exist, and you can't tell me otherwise). If everyone who could make coherent sentences could write a book, there would be tons of them.

Funny slightly off topic observation: there are a lot of people out there who don't know how to write well.

I am not talking about perfect grammar and complex sentences. I am talking about writing a short paragraph that puts their ideas together in a coherent fashion that reads better than something a third grader could write. 

I noticed this when I started getting emails from people (not my writer friends, so no one out there feel guilty). These people from my everyday life know how to speak proper English. They are relatively intelligent, educated people. Yet when I received an email from them, it sounded like something a third grader might write.


Some of the mistakes are just my pet peeves. Over use of text-speak (lots of LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!! for example). Not capitalizing the first word in a sentence. Cramming the sentences together without rhyme or reason. 


But most of it was the way those sentences read. I don't know how else to describe it, other than it looked like something you'd write in third grade. At first I thought these people were just being lazy, but then it dawned on me: they didn't write a lot in their daily life. These are people who didn't have to write something longer than a grocery list in years, and now suddenly there's this magical email thing. 


And just because you can talk well, doesn't mean you're going to automatically be able to write well. 


All of this is to remind us that writing is a skill. It truly is. It's a skill we hone every time we write blog posts about Book Fairies, every time we think about our character's conflict, every time we, you know, write. 


P.S. I have valiantly checked, and rechecked, this post for typos. I always do, but since I was talking about writing skill it seemed extra important to make sure I didn't do something silly. Yet, it is early and I am so very tired. So I apologize for any typos in this post, and shall submit myself to the Grammar Police if there are any typos that escaped the purge. 

DONE!

Ladies and gentleman, I am done with my rewrite.

Yes. You read that correctly. I am done. Finished. 

This is how I currently feel:

My brain is mush. I also feel really proud of myself. Because there were times I didn't think I would finish. I know you read that a lot, usually in a celebratory post like this one, where the writer says, "I thought I might never finish!" or "I almost gave up, like, a million times!" 

And then the writer sips champagne (and pronounces it that really pretentious way, "shamp-PAN-ya") because she's just sold the book for a million dollars.

Except I still have to do a major edit on this book, so I won't be querying anytime soon. And also, I really did consider giving up lots of time. Sometimes just because I was frustated, and other times because it was just so HARD. It's difficult to decribe to people who have never written a book before how it can be hard. It seems like the easiest thing in the world, to just jot a bunch of words down on the page. 


But I bled for this book, and it's not over yet. But for now, I am letting it rest, and I have you guys in part to thank. Having this blog is a great way to stay accountable. I knew if I quit that my friends would give me a hard time. Ditto for the blog. And even though you guys would be understanding, there would still be the guilt. The guilt that I quit. 


So I kept going.


And now I am finished.


Thank you, everyone, for your support. 


Now if you'll excuse me, I am going to figure out how to occupy my time now that the rewrite's over.

Pet Peeve: Words Have Weight

"Word have weight." 

                                 ---Holly Lisle

Today I am going to talk about a pet peeve of mine. Since most of my readers are also writers, I am going to be preaching to the choir on this one, but I figure some of you might not have thought about things this way. If you have, well then join me in the comments section and we can complain about it. :D

Today I read a funny article on Cracked.com about subjects people love to talk about, but most people don't want to hear about. Number one on the list was your book/script/screenplay. I rather enjoyed the article, especially since Daniel O'Brian made the caveat that most writers like to talk to other writers about their ideas. And most of the time, if you have a book or something to show for your efforts, "normal" "non-writer" people usually like to hear about your book because you have something to show for it.

I am going to add to that statement and say in my experience, even IF you have a book to show for your efforts, most people don't want to listen to you breathlessly talking about your space adventure cowboy romance between a sentient tree and a hamster. Short, interesting pitch sentences, yes. When my co-workers ask about what I am writing, I use that as an opportunity to practice my pitching skills. 

"It's a retelling of Snow White on a tundra, about an exorcist who promises her mother on her deathbed that she'll stop a demon summoning before the winter solstice, but she winds up discovering her mother's secret life in the cult." (that's the basic plot of my book, The Heart's Remains, in case I haven't mentioned it before).

See, that was short and sweet. I can gauge how interesting the story is (to some people) by their reaction. I can also choose to include different details to see what people seem to respond best to. When they ask for more information, I expound, but I usually don't go on at length about my book. 

I think a lot of people like the idea that you're a writer more than actually hearing about your book in detail. We're interested because it's our book, but most people really couldn't care.

I used to ramble on and on and on. It wasn't pretty. I would deluge the hapless sap who asked me about my book with details. "It's about this girl who's mother is sick from an unknown illness, and right before she dies she tells Sera, the main character, about a demon summoning that a secret cult is doing, and Sera promises to stop them, but then she finds out it's hard to find proof of the cult, and she gets sick herself, and she has a twin sister, and her friend gets possessed, and...."

To most people it's just a bunch of details. It doesn't make sense to them. 

But that's not my pet peeve. I have made my peace that 99% of the population is not rabidly excited about my book ideas.

In the comments section a lot of people disagreed with the author's statement that you need to have tangible results, like half a book, in order for most people to be interested in your book/film. Lots of people said that ideas were just as good, if not better, because you can see where the book is going.

I've also seen this basic sentiment prevalent on forums everywhere and in real life. How many people have you met that say they had a book idea? And it's going to be the best thing since Twilight/The Da Vinci Code/The Bible. Yet they have nothing to show for the idea.

I am not saying these people are lazy posers and need to write that idea down. Not everyone is a writer, after all. It's a lot of work. It's just really annoying to me when people act like having an idea is the same exact thing as actually writing a book.

I know I should be more understanding. They don't know, because they haven't written the book yet. They don't actually know how hard it is to get from the beginning to the end, and then to edit the sucker within an inch of it's life, and then...

The other thing these people don't seem to understand is words have weight.  Having an idea is great. It's the first step. But anyone who's ever had an idea and then wrote that out into a book knows that no idea remains completely intact from when you first had it. The words you're writing have weight. Even if you have an idea come to you and everything is laid out perfectly, and you write the book and barely a thing changes, the book still feels different than your idea. There's layers to it. Nuances and subtleties that you didn't conceive of intially.

That's okay. Normal. What's supposed to happen. But that's why I get annoyed when people try to compare having an idea to writing a book. It's not as easy as simply jotting the idea on paper and selling it for millions of dollars.  

If it was, everyone would have a book out there.

So there. That's my rant. I'll stop foaming at the mouth.

So what do you guys think? Am I nuts? Or does that burn your biscuits too?

My Book and My Baby

I promise I am not going to make every post about being pregnant, guys. I swear. But I've always thought of this blog as about more than just the nuts and bolts of writing, but also life that comes with it.

And right now, life is going through some pretty big changes. Being a writer, I compare a lot of what I am going through with writing and getting a book deal. The feeling of disbelief. The shocking realization that this is happening, and within a set period of time.

And my favorite, the feeling that I have no clue what I am doing. 


The interesting thing is that even though pregnancy is something you hear everyone talk about, there's a whole lot of stuff I am experiencing that never gets mentioned. Then something happens, like for example, my hips have been killing me lately, and I think there's something wrong with me. Until I check with my books, and it turns out it's completely normal.


It's a good lesson for doing your research I think. There's a lot of general information about things that "everyone" knows, but when you get to the daily life of a doctor, a mental patient, and a pregnant woman (those last two may be connected) there's a slew of stuff that no one ever talks about. 


So here are some funny observations:


*Morning sickness is a misnomer. Lately I am sick to my stomach all day. For a few days last week I was having dry heaves the very second I woke up. I couldn't even eat a cracker without gagging. It was water, water, water until about 3 or 4 in the afternoon. Luckily that's getting better.

*Which brings me to the next point. You assume your level of queasiness is going to stay the same for the rest of the first trimester. How how naive I was. Last week I was sick to my stomach all day and couldn't eat a thing until the evening. This week it's getting a little better.


*Food aversions. The weirdest things will make you sick to your stomach. Usually it's not until I put the food in my mouth too, will I know if I want to eat it or not. This makes ordering in a restaurant adventurous at best.


*Body aches. Because of the hormones coursing through your veins, your body will ache. Just...everywhere. I can't sleep on one side for very long before it starts to hurt my hip and shoulder. Also I'll get hot and cold and hot again and then cold.


*People over sharing. You would be very surprised how many people have told me their miscarriage horror stories. Most people are trying to help reassure me that it's "totally normal" but seriously, folks. I don't need to hear about that right now. I am still in the first trimester. That's like, Valley of the Shadow of Death for miscarriage. I am taking my prenatal vitamins, eating healthy, not drinking caffeine, and generally doing everything I can to be healthy. But there's still only so much control I have over things. And since I don't want to be a crazy person, I am just not thinking about the Bad Things that could happen. There's no sense in becoming neurotic.

*Have I mentioned that we're also looking at houses? Yeah, we're going to move sometime this year, depending on how quickly the house hunting goes.

*Have I also mentioned that my best friend Melissa is getting married December 3rd? I am the Matron of Honor (that sounds so old, but I am married, so no longer a "maid"). I will be in my third trimester then, and probably huge. Finding a nice dress is going to be...interesting. It's also funny how people act like I will totally be incapacitated and unable to help her with the wedding. I'm pregnant, not dead. 


*Fatigue. This one's a killer, especially for my writing. Imagine that you're moving and you have to pack everything in one day. The next day, you have to move all your stuff and unpack it. Let's also say that you didn't get any sleep at all for a few nights in a row, and your day job is as a construction worker. This scenario barely scratches how tired I am. I still have a day job, so some days it's all I can do to just go to work (which is physically demanding). I've spend a lot of nights on the couch trying to perfect my Jedi mind tricks so I can will the fruit over to me. So while it's been a challenge, I've still managed to make progress on my book.


Because I want to try to be completely done and querying before I go into labor. I am nine weeks right now, so that gives me 7 months to finish rewriting, pass it off to the beta readers, implement beta reader feedback and then start querying. That should be plenty of time, but we all know how life likes to creep up on us. Did I mention moving and a wedding, for starters?


The really great news is that despite all of these funny things, I am still making very steady progress on the book. I rewrite at least a scene a day, and two days ago I managed to write 7k. The tiredness and malaise kicked in, and I didn't feel like doing anything. 


So I just wrote, since it's my first escape.


So there you have it. An update on my book and my baby.


How are all of you dealing with your projects? How do you deal with life's curve balls?

Time Travel and Regrets

Time travel movies have it easy.  


When you see the main character in a time travel plot make a mistake, there's a chance he could go back and fix things. A chance to endlessly say "Do over!". 


And I'm going to be honest. The thought of having a chance to go back and fix all the places where I feel like I messed up? That's really enticing to me. I didn't used to think in those terms. I try not to regret anything. I've never wanted to go back and change anything, even the hard times, because I feel like it's made me into the person I am. 


But lately I've thought that it would be really nice to invent time travel, just so I could fix a few things (in addition to investing in the proper stocks and other requisite time travel stuff). Sometimes you know when something big is happening to you. You fall in love. You get married. You break up with the love of your life. These decisions feel big.


But some decisions aren't big, all at once stuff. A lot of decisions you make are small, but over time have their own weight. I think it's these smaller decisions that make people say "If I'd known then what I knew now" because it's so subtle.

These regrets are hard to think about, to deal with, so we mostly just run off of auto-pilot. If you've been estranged from your best friend for a year because of some fight you had, it's really hard to go back and try to undo the damage. It's hard to sift through the hurt and pain, to try and go back to make things like they used to be. Part of doing that requires the ability to see the places that you've messed up; places where you dropped the ball. And that's not always easy.

And like I said, sometimes you don't know how vital something is until you see the after effects.

There's a song by The Fray that makes me think about that. It's called "How to Save a Life".


"Where did I go wrong, I lost a friend
Somewhere along in the bitterness
And I would have stayed up with you all night
Had I known how to save a life."

Between the chorus and the rest of the lyrics this song always makes me think of a situation where you didn't know some conversation you had was so important to someone, until it was too late. You would have done things differently if you had just known.

But since no one has invented time travel yet, you have to make the best out of the way things are now. If you do have regrets, it doesn't mean you can't try to fix things now, no matter how hard it is.

Because just like there's a lot of small decisions you make that lead to a estrangement, there's also a lot of smaller decisions you can make to bridge that gap. Don't let your fear of what might happen, and your desire to not open old wounds stop you from doing something you really want to. 


We all have regrets, and places where we feel like we failed. In our writing, in our dealings with people, in our own emotional development. But we can take those regrets, learn from them, and try to make things the way we want them to be. 


Just like getting a book published, we can't be too afraid to try.

Celebration! Warning: This Post Contains My Feet

Thank you everyone for the congratulations on finishing my rough draft. Also, thank you everyone who encouraged me to celebrate, despite my slightly off kilter enthusiasm. If there's one thing I can do well, it's celebrate.
 

In an effort not to let you down, I made sure to celebrate my very hardest. It mostly involved spending money, as the best celebrations often do. Here then, is a list of the things I did to celebrate:

1. Got a Massage

I am a massage therapist, so this isn't quite as decadent as you guys are thinking. The massage was free, since I trade out with my co-workers. But has been about six months since I made the time to get worked on, so it was a nice change.


2. Bought a Book


I already ordered some books a few weeks ago, so instead of just ordering more, I decided to order a comic compilation of Order of the Stick that I have been drooling over for a while. The added benefit is this book is a limited print run, so it's not like I can just order it any time.


3. Pedicure!

The Feet!

Lookit my feet! Lookit how pretty!

I love getting pedicures, but I never go. I feel like it's a waste of money because I can paint my own toenails. Also, I have a huge horde of nail polish (another fringe benefit from working at a spa) so I try to rotate through those. But my mom wanted to have lunch with me (Chinese Food!) and suggested we get pedicures. I was so there.


I apologize to those of you grossed out by feet. I tried to warn you. I know some people really don't like even the thought of feet, much less a picture of someone's feet, but in my defense I did just get a pedicure. They are extremely clean. 


Also, look at how pale I am! I don't tan AT ALL so I stay pasty white year round. 

4. Staples Shopping Spree!

The LOOT

I really just went in for ink and manila folders. I swear. My printer is screaming for mercy since I just printed off my rough draft and revision worksheets. 

But while I was there, I decided to browse...and wound up buying cork board (the roll to the far left), colored index cards, white index cards, Post-it notes, mechanical pencils, highlighters (buy one get one free!), tape, and those little legal pads. Aren't they cute? I am so excited about them.


I love office supplies. I mean, I LOVE them. Some women get really excited about buy new shoes, but not me. I get really happy when I get to buy index cards and highlighters. I don't know why; it's like I can feel the potential of the index cards. Think of the scenes I can write out on those index cards. Think of the words I can highlight. Think of the different colors that I can highlight in.


Let's ignore the fact that I already have about three packs of white index cards, and one pack of the colored ones. Clearly I was dangerously low. I might have run out.


So that's what I did. I celebrated the way a writer would, and did "Writer's Gone Wild" at Staples. Now I am armed with cute toenails and index cards and ready to face revision!

Picking Nits: From Competent to Good

Sometimes I feel like I am drowning in my own inability to work past my writing weaknesses. 

My husband plays a game called "Go." Your skill is ranked by a score, moving from 30K at the lowest, to a 9dan at the highest. It's very simple to learn, but the strategy behind the game rivals chess.  Anyway, when he first started playing, he was able to move up in ranks quickly. In a few weeks he went from a 30K to a 20K. A few weeks from that, he went from a 20K to a 15K. I don't know what his actual score is right at the moment, but I know that as time went on, it became harder and harder for him to get better. It's like your average in school. It was a lot easier to bring a D up to a B, than to bring a B up to an A. The higher you get to the top the harder the climb.


I think writing is very much like that. When you first learn how to start and finish a novel, you can see your skill improve in a very real way. You went from "never finished a book before" to "finished a book." That's a major accomplishment. Then you achieve "finished a book, and then edited it". Another big deal. 


All the while, you're learning about characterization, plotting, setting, dialogue, grammar, and description. You write and edit more books. You learn how to avoid info dumps, and how to make dialogue sound realistic, but not boring. You play around with pantsing versus plotting. There's a very real sense of Moving Forward.


Until you move to the Intermediate level. You know how to write a book. You know about three act structure. You know about building realistic characters. Maybe at this point you've queried a book that even got pages requested, but the agent passed.


You're writing at a competent level, but you're still not quite there. By no means does this mean you've mastered building realistic characters or writing an engaging plot, but these aren't your biggest crutch right now. "The characterization is very poor" is something that can be picked out from a rough draft easily. But feedback like "It was good, but I don't know, something was missing." is much harder to deal with. 


I read this post by Kristin Nelson, and it got me thinking. Go read the post for a minute. I'll wait.


....


Do you see what she said? Not, "The dialogue needs to sound more realistic," but "Dialog that didn’t quite work as hard as it should."

Here's another example she mentioned for passing on a manuscript:  "Not quite nailing voice in the opening."


Notice how she mentions "not quite" nailing the voice. In her other examples she mentions telling versus showing, and passive voice. A lot of these elements come down to nit-picky details that make ALL the difference in your writing. It's the difference between "competent" and "good".


A lot of writers, myself included, are working at this level. Learning how to write is hard, and it's not any easier once you move past the basics. You need to be brutal with your work. Not just making sure you're telling a good story, but that your scenes are doing several things. That you're not just writing realistic dialogue, but dialogue that characterizes, moves the plot forward, and adds some tension.


Mark Twain said the difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and lightning bug. The same is true for the rest of your writing. 


It's somewhat frustrating to try and spot you weak points, but it's also liberating. Sometimes I know there's something wrong with a certain passage, but I can't put my finger on what. I know there's places I need to improve, but it can be hard to figure out exactly where.

I saved this list from Kristen Nelson's blog and put it next to my editing papers. Because we can get better. We can improve. We might have to sacrifice some beta readers on the alter of necessity to do it, but we can figure out what weakness are holding our writing back from being great.


What resources have you used to improve your writing? What has helped you the most to become a better writer?

Late to the Party

But I am still here, and that counts for something. Right? Right?

You can now follow me at Twitter at ElizabethJPoole. I wasn't planning on adding my middle initial, because I have been blogging as Elizabeth Poole, but that was already taken, and I couldn't fit WriterElizabethPoole. So I used the old standby and crammed my middle initial in there.

So there you have it. All I have to do is figure out how to make a Facebook Fan page, and force them to update all at the same time, and the trifecta will be complete.

But first I need to figure out how to work Twitter. Wish me luck!