Today is the day....

Warning, everybody. This is a bitch post. It gets better near the end.

Greetings, fearless readers. I must beg again for your forgiveness. I have left the blog to linger... but I, also, have been lingering. Near the doldrums. The quiets. The not-so-greats. I am in a tiny sailboat with no wind. No wind whatsoever. I haven't been editing at a reportable pace. I might get a chapter or two here or there and that's it. The whole poetry writing thing? Out the window. I haven't done shit.

What have I been doing? Well, I have been reading. That is the only good thing I have to say for myself. I have steadily been putting up reviews on Books with BettieLee - if you would like to check out, I would be honored.... (that is a link by the way)

The one thing that has happened - I have renewed my lease on the studio. Where I live. No, I'm not a fancy pants that has a separate studio to write in... I am a paycheck to paycheck dweller who went from living in a horrendous box to living in a much more affordable albeit-furnitureless studio that overlooks a pond with a willow tree that willows over the pond, ducks, various cats and doggies that come out to play... in short, I live in a pretty awesome place. I am very lucky and have my parents to thank for helping me move out of that horrible dark hole I was in, spiritually, financially and literally. They didn't only move me, they gave me the financial support to do it. When I harken back to the first few months I was here, I was a dynamo. On FIRE. I edited every day, I plotted and planned and looked forward to more stories, I continuously won awards (meaning smilies that waved and clapped) in the Absolute Write Weekend Report Thread. I need to get back to that.

So. Today is the first day of getting back up on the horse. Today, we start editing every day, for a solid week. And if we absolutely can't face editing, we are going to write and/or dabble in something else. But every day for this week, I am going to write and blog, blog and write, like a grown up, responsible person that wants to be a writer and has a bug in her pocket and speaks about herself and her bug in third person. In other words, I am going to hold myself accountable.

Today, we begin with two chapters of my straight-up unsellable fantasy about Uny-corns. At least two chapters. I will report on how it went tomorrow.

What say you, friends? Into the breach, once more? I will give you.... the highest of fives... and a Cumberbatch Meme.... :) Two for one. It's all deals here, like Walmart.

To Do List

3 Day Weekend To Do List

1: Find Tony and get in his car, in which case, the rest of this list is irrelevant.

2. Edit that damn fantasy thing. (If needed, re-read the email received after sending the first 3600 words off to a respected-writer-friend who liked it and responded to the OMG reveal at the end of the first scene appropriately. Then rub hands together like Mr. Burns and say "Excellent.")

3. Clean bathroom.

4. Clean kitchen.

5. Boop kitteh nose at some point.

6. Review the last 3 books you've read that you haven't reviewed. 

7. Make sexy wiggle eyes at blog followers to keep them interested.

7b. Or maybe just a gif of Martin Freeman and Benedict Cumberbatch laughing.

No, darling. Thank you! 

I am sorry I've not been around. My production has been spotty. I am feeling like a total chub. I've been escaping into the warm landscape of other writer's imaginary places rather than my own. But I am going to try and knuckle down and get my focus and my drive back. I made a lot of headway last year but I did not reach the goal of subbing, which I intended to be doing in January. JANUARY. Of THIS year.

But I shall carry on. Thanks for being there....

Are you struggling with anything? Focus? Too much going on in your life to get down to writing? Watching the Avengers instead of writing? We've all been there... feel free to tell Aunty Bettie your troubles in the comments.

"It Is Only a Novel..."

"It Is Only a Novel..."

*wipes tear*

Vatican Cameos

Hello again. It's been a momentous few days.

I have had thoughts in those days, and nearly come to the end of another gothic romance. It is all written except for the epilogue, where the story is wound up, love declared, satisfaction guaranteed. I am feeling all sorts of feelings. I will try to rein them in enough to make a semi-meaningful blog post.

The fabulous Lara Pulver (Irene Adler on Sherlock) linked to this fabulous thing, either written or answered by John C. Reilly at The Guardian. In it, he says this:

Every person is the star of their life story. No one goes through the world thinking: "Well, I'm just a cameo." So even if a character has just one scene, I have to do it right. I've got to come up with their whole world view.

I know that Stephen King has said something very similar about characters in stories, but I've never been able to find the exact words. But it is something that he is amazing at, and something I appreciated even as a kid, before I knew I would want to be a writer, before I even knew what it was to be a discriminating reader. He introduces you to someone and you are there. Even when he breaks away from the people you've come to know and love (I'm thinking The Stand or Needful Things -which are filled with vignettes of random people living their lives, being affected by the plot, but not part of the larger story) and he grounds it in reality. You go down the paths he clears for you without question.

Because he treats them all like the stars of the story.

I think the same goes for villains, and it's something I struggled with in my writing when I began. My villains didn't have meat on their bones. They were just the bad guys. But that doesn't work. They have to be people. They can't think of themselves as the bad guys. They have to think their goal is either the right one, or the more righteous. 

These are just the things I've been thinking about. That, and the end of the book. It's been too long. I will be glad to be done with it and then I have to figure out which book I go on to edit. I have two really good things, one questionable, and one viable, but not agent or big house worthy. It's a genre problem. 

Onward my friends. Hate to drop science on you and run, but I have a full docket today. And an epilogue to contemplate. Happy writing and reading.

Post Valentine's Report

For those of you just emerging from their chocolate-induced comas, I welcome you back to the slick horror of reality! And to my Four-Day-Write-A-Thon. Or something like it. I'm hoping to finish this damn thing in less than four days, actually, but regardless, I do have four days off from work and need to spend them wisely.

The book I thought would take about 90k to complete is now at 114k and in need of a few more scenes. The main character and her cousin are currently partially incapacitated by drugs, in a flaming dining room, with a cracked beam immediately over their heads. In other words, not quite done, but we are at the ... flaming dining room scene I always knew would be there, so we are very, very, tantalizingly near the end. The smokey, charry, charyou tree*, end.

*link

It can't come too soon.

Even though I hate coming to the end. I'm not tired of the book, I don't hate it or the characters. That's why I don't want to write. Why I write maybe a day a week and then go days and days without writing. Gah. It's terrible. Does anyone else do this? I don't want to write The End. I don't want to say goodbye to my friends.

This has already taken three months longer to write than it should have. And that makes me mad and sad. I wish I was better at sticking to my goals. Oh well. Onward and upward. I will be writing and/or editing every day this weekend. I will keep you posted.

I got 2k today, one blog post, three music videos listened to on Youtube, and now for some food! Stay motivated, Fearless Readers.

I need a do over

This week has been shit.

And I have no one to blame but myself. This whole week I’ve been a zombie. Stumbling to work after 4 hours of sleep. Stumbling home, intending to do good works…and falling prey to the siren song of my lush and purple bed. 

I’m talking about naps, my friends.

Long, luxurious ones where you wake up and don’t know where you are or what time of day it is. Is it time to get up and shower, or get up and eat dinner? The kind where you slipped under the covers because you were tired and cold, and you wake a little too warm, with only one sock and slightly damp. Those kinds of naps.

After searching for my missing sock amidst the bedclothes, and sometimes more tired and stiff than I went to sleep, I don’t have the wherewithal to write.  I am too muzzy headed, and/or I get sucked into the Netflix stream and never come out, not going to bed until 1:30 or 2:00 am, because thanks to my ill-timed slumber, I am not tired. And getting into bed doesn’t mean I’m going to stay there. Last night, after getting in bed at 1:30 am, I woke an hour later to the hurking,  lurging of one of Cricket’s more splash-worthy upchuckings. Being aware there is drying cat barf somewhere in your apartment is not conducive to sweet dreams. 

 I’ve kept up (mostly) with my daily poetry challenge and blog posts are written well in advance. But the novel has been at a standstill.

This is totally unacceptable.

I can’t write like this. I’m completely miserable. I have to change that this weekend.

My boss asked me about my writing today. I was assuring her I was still actively writing, and talked a little about my book blog and my online writer’s board (Absolute Write). She was saying how it’s good to have a passion. I wanted to say something about how I’d probably do a kamikaze off the roof if I didn’t have my writing to keep me somewhat sane. But you don’t say those kinds of things in polite company. 

So instead, I'll say it on the internet. And thank you people while I'm at it. You know who you are. You encourage me. You may, or may not, understand me, but you act like you do. And you don't judge me. Or at least not to my face. Thank you all. Now, let's go have a better week.

Things I need to know at 2 AM

I read somewhere that you never have to edit what you write at 2 a.m. 

I’ve gotten out of bed a few times in my life to write something down. I have no idea where it’s going or what’s going to happen, I just hear a voice talking in my head. It’s my job to get up and write down what it says. It’s like channeling. I’ve only completed one story from one of these, as Tolkien put it, bolts of lightening out of a clear blue sky. I assume the rest of the story will show up one day, or the other stories wanting to be written will step aside, and that bolt of lightning's time will have come.

I currently have a world that wants to be written about, but rather than emerging, fully armored, from the top of my head like Athena burst forth from Zeus’s, it's coming in tiny bursts of static instead of a bolt of lightening. Sometimes, I hear conversations, sometimes I just get bits of information, for instance, the vampires in this world are not the sexy heroes I like. They’re old school vamps and their physical appearance changes depending on how much they’ve fed. The hungrier they are, the scarier. These are the things I need to know at 2 am. At least according to the muse.

I keep a notebook next to my bed. It’s not for writing down ideas, it’s to catch my dreams in a net of words. I have crazy, Technicolor dreamscapes rather than regular human dreams. I’m convinced they are of importance, and keep them in a journal for when Cthulhu calls on me to testify. The problem is, I might remember a dream in the morning, but by the time I get around to writing it down, it’s a pale version of itself or I’ve forgotten it altogether. But, with just a few words scribbled upon waking, I can remember most of the dream. I assume the tactile act of writing helps me remember, it carves something on my synapses so I don’t forget. But there are times when I’ve looked at the list and remembered something that had completely slipped my mind. It’s usually something incredibly important, like the coat color of the dog chasing me. This is not true of those bolts of lightning.

If I don’t get up and write down what I hear, the rhythm of the words, the phrasing, the magic, is lost, even with a net of words scribbled in the notebook. I look at what I’ve written, and there is no synaptic sparkle. I wonder... What was special about a shock of hair over an eyebrow? Why did that belong on the first page of a story? That’s like 2nd chapter stuff. What are you doing? What did you drink before you went to bed?

This morning as I lay awake, enjoying the fact it is Saturday and I can get up whenever I damn well please, I heard the heroine of the world trying to be born start to speak in my head. It was the first few sentences in a short story, and the first that I’ve heard narrated from her point of view. It was not the great big googeldygoo I imagine wants to be born, the grand sweeping epic. Maybe that was why I neglected to write it down. I scribbled a few useless words to try and remember the gist of what it was, but not in the exact words as I heard them. And now, they are gone forever.

I hereby swear, by the muse, that if she should every speak in my lazy, traitorous head again, I will get up from my bed, not just rise, but BOUND like a gazelle, to my desk and write down every preposition, every exhalation of breath that she sends in my direction. I don't care what time it is, or what day it is, or how late I went to bed. I don't care how grand the story is, if there is coffee or not, if I feel like it or how cold it is. I will not take the words of the muse for granted. If I do, may she turn me into a lollipop and put me in a tobacco chewer's mouth.

So help me, Odin.

Jesus, Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy, too.