Updatathon!

Update-athon? Up-date-a-thon? Up-data-thon? Whatever. Here's information!

I finished my draft! *pauses to skip like a ninny*

While I'm waiting for the draft to marinate for a few days, I've been catching up on other important things, like sleeping and watching tv. My life, it is a never-ending glamour-fest.

I actually feel guilty that I haven't written a single word, outside of tweets, in THREE WHOLE DAYS. I'm starting to get twitchy, but I can't draft the next idea until I smooth all the bumps out of the last one.

For me, a first edit isn't as bad as it could be. I tend to self-edit quite a bit while drafting. *please feel free to slap my hand here if you are one of the VOMIT OUT THE DRAFT, STOP EDITING NAO types. Yes, yes. I know that's how it works for you, but I can't do that and stay sane. Which brings me around to writing advice.

DISCLAIMER: This part of the post veers into "advice." This advice is not to be taken internally. The "you" addressed in the following paragraphs is actually "me," meaning Mittens. Yes, I'm talking to myself. Shut up. Don't look at me like that. Point is, please don't assume I'm actually talking to YOU, reader person. Unless you agree with me, of course. Then feel free. Thanks.

If I listened to every bit of writing advice as if it were WRITING LAW, I'd have jumped off the roof in hopeless desperation by now. I break so many rules, I'm sure the Writing Police would've arrested me ages ago if they knew my secrets. I'd certainly be up on indecency charges for being a pantser instead of writing a formal outline.

I'm fascinated by the idea of fast drafting, but I know that requires a detailed outline. My brain just doesn't think that way. There is absolutely no reason for me to force it to try. It makes me miserable, and provides less than satisfactory outcomes. It reminds me of the joke about teaching a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig. Well, dangit. The last thing I need is an irritated pig. It might make the bacon taste funny.

And you know what? There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Meaning ignoring writing advice, not the bacon thing. There's nothing RIGHT about funny bacon.

The best writing advice is to listen closely to what works for everyone else, and then pick and choose which strategies will work best for you. Then, live by them. Perhaps your Favorite Writer Ever insists that you not touch one word when drafting, just keep going no matter the issues you might run across. Then you read something from another writer you admire the next day that says just the opposite. It doesn't matter if Famous Author Person only writes on odd numbered days, and while wearing a hat made of chicken feathers, if writing on even numbered days while wearing roller skates works for you. See how silly these sorts of things can get?

The only way you'll find your own absolutely unique set of advice that applies directly to you and your writing is to keep trying until you hit your groove. You'll churn out more words, better words, words that make your little heart sing, if you stop trying to live up to every last bit of advice. That's all there is to it.

So now I've justified taking another few days off writing to watch Supernatural, because my brain is enjoying the simple distraction. It's like clearing the cache on the computer. I was so gummed up from drafting that I would never spot the problems when I went back to revise. I needed a brain purge, and Supernatural is proving to be an excellent health tonic. I can't believe I've never watched this before. I understand many of you would like to express dismay at my former Sam and Dean neglect. Feel free to form a line. I'll be over in the other window watching the next episode.

Until next time, sweeties!

Talking to people who can't hear you

No, not even sign language will help get your point across to characters, whether they be on film, on television, or in a book. The closest I've come to actual communication is dealing with the characters I write. I mean, they sprouted from my own head, you'd think I'd be able to make them listen to what I have to say. More on that in a minute though. First, a funny anecdote or two.

Helper Monkey and I love watching crime shows on TV. His biggest frustration with me (which I'm sure I've blogged about in the past) is Writer Brain Syndrome, in which I've figured out the bad guy and his motive long before the end of the show, and then spend the next 30 minutes mumbling, "Nope, it's not that guy," or, "You're on the right track, now just ask him about..."

In return, he sometimes likes to talk back to the characters, too. This morning, while watching an episode of Bones, he made his usual comments to Temperance. "Oh, please. Stop being so deliberately obtuse." I think he's convinced everyone else on the show has the patience of Job to deal with someone who takes everything literally.

One of our favorite past times (which we're engaging in while I write this post) is heckling the Amazing Race. It's so easy to judge when we're sitting comfortably on the couch with our feet up. But still, it's a great way to feel like a real genius. YOU DING DONG! YOU KEEP MISSING THE OSTRICH! (thanks for pointing it out for the viewers, making it look completely obvious, and accenting their failure by playing the menacing "ZHIIIIIING" sound effect, camera dude!) LOOK TO YOUR RIGHT! Bah.

Lately, I've been catching myself doing these same things while writing, as if the characters I made up inside my brain and continue to create moment by moment as I type weren't actually under my control. I'm now convinced that writers suffer from a mild form of dissociative disorder. There is a cast of thousands inside my head, but they're not aware of each other until I filter them through the keyboard and onto the page. They don't talk to each other, or to me for that matter. Their story unfolds in real time through my fingers, but since they're all coming from a real (imaginary) place inside my head, and I still can't talk to them directly, they let me know what they want as I write. Their personalities grow in ways that often surprise me.

I thought I knew everything about my main character, at least all the important details. I'm writing a prequel to the trilogy of novels I've already written, so I thought I knew her and her history. Well, SURPRISE, MOTHERFATHER! Turns out, she had something major going on with this other guy who was only supposed to be a plot device. Once I started writing him, simply as a way to carry the story forward, I realized he had a lot more going on than I wanted or needed him to.

I intended to make him irrelevant by chapter 3, a footnote in her history. Then I intended to kill him off in chapter 9. Bastard lived. All of a sudden, I can't tell this guy anything anymore. He's damned pushy. But you know what? He's right. And he's perfect for the job. Not only this job, of pushing my MC forward, of shaping her into the character I love from her later life, but he's a fighter. He won't go away, so I've had to work out a deal with him. He knows when he's going to have to bow out of the series, but he's going to enjoy his time in the spotlight.

Do y'all talk to your characters? Or the tv? Please tell me I'm not alone. Well, alone aside from all the imaginary people living in my head.

Reading, in all its many glorious forms

There's been a ton of debate in the last few years about the future of publishing. Are e-readers going to replace paper books? Are bookstores doomed? Is publishing doomed now that self-publishing is so easy? I will say no to all of that, at least for the foreseeable future.

I read A LOT. Paper books, e-books, unpublished manuscripts - as well as heaps and piles of book and publishing related blogs and articles. I want this to be my career, so of course I want to take the most positive outlook on the future of publishing in general. But I've noticed something when I read, whether it is the latest hardcover release from a favorite author, a worn-out old paperback that I got third or fourth hand from a friend, an e-book on my kindle, or a manuscript I'm reading for a CP on my laptop. I ENJOY ALL OF IT.

*note: I don't really do audiobooks. Never got into the idea of someone reading aloud to me. I know it's a popular source of entertainment for a lot of people, but I withhold analysis, since I'm not familiar with it like I am with reading with my own eyeballs.*

I don't think I completely prefer one method of getting the words from the author and into my brain over another. For most people, the choice is between physical paper books and e-readers (or another electronic device with e-reader software installed), so I thought about the pros and cons of each method, and came to the conclusion that I like both equally, but for different reasons. Let's begin with good old-fashioned paper books.

Pros of paper:

• The wonderful tactile and sensory experience of books. I love the way new books smell. I love the feel of the paper, the repetitive act of turning pages, the gorgeous covers, and in hardcover books, the secrets that lurk beneath the book jacket. Often you remove that beautifully printed outer cover to discover something equally lovely underneath, a secret clue to the heart of the story contained within.
• I love being able to see all my books stacked around me, on the bookshelves decorating my home, and randomly piled up waiting to be read and loved.
• I can easily loan a favorite book to a friend.
• A friend can easily loan their favorite book to me!
• While reading, I can easily skip around, page back to find a passage that only shows it's true meaning several chapters later when a larger secret is revealed, or even page ahead a few chapters because I'm terrified something scary is coming up for one of the characters and I need reassurances that everything will be okay. Yes, I cheat sometimes. Sue me.

Cons of paper:

• Paper books are often heavy and bulky. They're hard to carry around.
• When I go on a trip, I like to take more than one book with me. I'd hate to run out of reading material, but lugging several books in a small suitcase is impractical.
• If I spill coffee on my favorite book, I'd have to go buy a new copy. Paper and liquids are not friends.
• Books are fragile. They wear out after a while, even when well taken care of, especially if Helper Monkey or Lulu hauls them around for a few weeks. Nice books plus middle-schooler's backpack equals battered books.
• I can easily skip around (which means sometimes I spoil books for myself because I can't stand the sadness or fear I feel for a character). And yes, I also listed this as a "pro" for paper books. So now you know I'm indecisive AND a cheater. Congratulations. :P

But e-readers also have their pros and cons:

Pros of e-books:

• It's easy to carry around HUNDREDS of books at any given time, in a package smaller and lighter than a single paperback. I'll never run out of things to read!
• An e-reader is relatively inexpensive, and the prices keep coming down. Even if I spill coffee on it (or squish it, like I did to my original kindle), all my books aren't lost forever. I can still access them through my laptop, or even my cell phone, in theory. Replacing it would only cost about the same as buying four or five new release hardcovers.
• An e-reader is lightweight. It's SO much easier to read in bed. My wrists have thanked me. Not to mention, I don't have to worry about dog-eared pages or torn covers from carrying an e-reader around in my purse or pocket.
• I have a kindle paperwhite, which I love. I don't need a book light to read in the dark anymore, and the battery lasts quite a good long while. Like for the duration of four or five books worth of reading. I haven't tested how long it will last, but it's long enough that I haven't been worried I'll lose power in the middle of something.
• I can buy a book and be reading it within seconds. No waiting for shipping, and no drive to the mall to pick up a book on a whim.

Cons of e-books:

• I can't easily share them with friends. I could theoretically loan someone my kindle, but I'm not likely to do that. *glances protectively at Gary Jr.*
• There's not a lot of romance in the plastic of an e-reader. No literal page turning, no smell of new book, no gorgeous cover artwork.
• It's nearly impossible to page back and find something that's referred to later in the book. It's highly irritating sometimes when you really want to find that one little passage that gives a richer experience of later revelations in a story.
• I can buy a book and be reading it within seconds. And yes, I also listed this as a "pro." It's convenient, but hard on the bank account. :D

I'm sure I've left out a ton of reasons why either format is great or lacking. If you've got a definite preference, please let me know your thoughts and reasons.

I'm just glad I live in an era where everyone has easy access to any book they might want to read. We can walk into a library, a bookstore, or surf the internet to find WONDERFUL stories to cram into our brains in whatever way is easiest or most enjoyable for us. Isn't is FANTASTIC and MIRACULOUS?!

I mean, five hundred years ago, books were only for the very wealthiest people. Now they are for EVERYONE! HOORAY!

Why you need a Helper Monkey.

No, you don't need an ACTUAL monkey, like this little guy (but isn't he cute?):



If you're a writer, you might even consider this one:



But, no. I meant my big Helper Monkey, which is what I call my husband. Let's be clear. He calls himself monkey because he's got arms like an orangutan. Don't bother asking if he can reach something. He can reach it. And he totally gets my writing life.

We were discussing the weekend plans, since Lulu is going camping. I was scheduled to chaperone the trip, but I'm not needed, so I get a whole weekend to work in a quiet house. Helper Monkey cheerfully suggested I'd have a lot of free time to write.

Since I just finished my draft on Tuesday, I replied that I'm finished writing. I planned to read for CP's instead.

His completely non-sarcastic and supportive reply: You're never finished writing.

It took all my strength not to throw the laptop down and tackle hug the man. He gets me. And I love that.

This is also how I feel about everyone I share my writing journey with. CP's, beta readers, twitter friends, blog readers. My heart grew three sizes this morning, and I'm all full of gushy love that needed to go somewhere so I could go back to being bitter and withdrawn.

Now it's yours. Go pass it on to your own helper monkeys. It's these little things that inspire me to keep going every day, so that I really never will be finished writing.

If you have a story like this, where a few simple words made you realize just how lucky you are, please share it. I'd love to have a big repository of squishy lurve to turn to when I'm feeling less writerly than I need to. Thank you!

The hardest thing I've ever done

I've been thinking about this for a few days now. Apparently motivating myself to write it all down is harder than I thought, but it's still far from the hardest thing I've ever done. And I've done some pretty difficult things. I'll leave those for other posts, though.

When I first sat down to write, my intention was to write a short story. Maybe ten pages. That was it. Once I got started and realized I had more than a short story's worth of plot, I decided to attempt a novel. I never, ever, in a bazillion years, thought I could write an entire novel. It was the hardest thing I'd ever done. At least, that's what I thought at the time.



When I reached the end of the story a month or so later, I was amazed. Shocked. Gobsmacked, even. I'd done it, and you know what? It hadn't been that hard.



So I figured I'd test myself. I guessed I'd never be able to repeat that amazing feat. I'd never be able to write another entire novel. Even suggesting to myself that it was a possibility sounded like so much crazy talk. But then again, I'm famous for crazy talk, and some of it is grounded in actual, verifiable fact.



And you know what? I wrote a second novel. It almost felt like cheating, because it was about the same characters, and sort of a continuation of the story from the first novel. I didn't have to make up a whole other cast of characters, nor invent a new world for them to inhabit. Sure, there were a few new characters, and they wandered a little further afield in their world than they had in the first novel, but still, I felt like a cheater.



I assumed I'd never have another original idea for a novel, and I'd be doomed to revising that original idea forever. So I knew I had to challenge myself, and set out to write a third novel. This one had to be in a completely unique world, with entirely new characters. They couldn't have the same talents or history as the original characters from the first two novels. They had to be entirely new. This was the hardest thing I ever tried to do. Well, up until that point, anyway.

Right around that time, I decided to learn about the World of Publishing. I figured if I wanted to keep trying to write, I'd best educate myself about it a bit. I learned about agents, queries, submissions, editing, critique partners, writing contests, and the Joys and Perils of Twitter. I devoured all of this. And that's when I realized the real hardest thing I'd ever do was send my precious word babies out into the world to be torn to shreds by people I'd never met before.



After I actually went ahead and wrote that entirely new, completely original third novel, I put myself out into the crazy world of querying agents. I read the advice on writing websites that advised getting your writer friends to read and critique your work. My first thought was, "HAH! I don't have any writer friends." And then I stumbled into a MEGATON OF AWESOME WRITER FRIENDS on Twitter, through contests, and just by putting myself out into the world.



Despite feeling entirely inadequate and having absolutely NO experience offering critique on anyone's writing EVER, I decided to take a chance. I closed my eyes, held my breath, and hit SEND. And then I waited. Someone was going to read my book, and in all likelihood tear it to shreds. They were surely going to hate it and tell me to go home and never write anything ever again, for the good of humanity. It was just about the hardest thing I'd ever done. Except for maybe reading their manuscripts in return, and offering critique.

I thought they'd likely hate me after reading the notes I made. I mean, who the hell was I to point out grammar mistakes or confusing sentences?! NOBODY! I tried to enjoy the experience while I could, because I knew nobody would ever offer their manuscripts to me again once word got out that I was a nincompoop who knew nothing about writing or editing.



But all that stress was for naught. Turns out, there is no one correct way to critique someone's work. Everyone has a unique perspective and new insights to share. The critiques I got back on my own work were FABULOUS and ENCOURAGING, and strangely enough, the notes I made for others seemed to be received in a similar fashion!

So I started querying agents. I knew I'd be rejected over and over again. I knew this would probably be the hardest thing I'd ever done. I mean, rejection sucks, right? But in the world of publishing, it's pretty much a given. You go into it expecting rejection at every turn. All the writing blogs and advice sites hammer it home again and again. TOUGHEN UP THAT SKIN, OH WRITER! REJECTION IS NIGH!

And that's the truth. Rejection is inevitable. There is no way to please all of the people all of the time. But you know what? You only have to please ONE. Yup. That's it. Just one.

So the rejections rolled in. And you know what? It didn't suck nearly as bad as I expected it to. Strangely, sometimes it even helped! I was shocked! Agents were NICE PEOPLE who WISHED ME LUCK and told me I DIDN'T COMPLETELY STINK AT WRITING! They were, in general, ENCOURAGING! It's hard to feel bad about that! At least, not for very long...

And then I got a request for more pages, a request for THE ENTIRE MANUSCRIPT!!! When I finished dancing around like an idiot (and mind you, I was in the produce department of the grocery store when I got the email, so first I had to convince the other shoppers that I wasn't a lunatic), I realized what was going to happen. It really sank in when I got home and composed the cover letter, obsessively rechecked the formatting on my manuscript, and prepared to hit send. This was the moment.



The agent liked those first pages enough to make a request. I couldn't believe it, but I finally worked up the nerve to send it in. And then I sat and waited. It was so hard. It was completely out of my hands now. My words had to stand on their own. A few weeks later, I got the news that the agent was going to pass. She gave some very good reasons, and a totally new insight into some of the problems in my novel. You know what? That rejection was one of the best things ever to happen to me. Truth.

But you know what the hardest thing I've ever REALLY done was? Continuing to try. Refusing to give up. Sitting down every day and writing my heart out onto the page, with no certainty that anyone else will ever think anything I write will ever be worthy of printing out onto paper. Ever. I just don't know what will happen next, but I trust in myself, in my growing ability to keep putting words on the page in an order that is pleasing to others. I haven't thrown in the towel. And you know what? Deciding to keep doing these hard things has been the easiest choice I've ever had to make.



Will I ever find an agent? Will I ever be published? Will people want to read what I've written? Maybe. But it doesn't really matter to me anymore. I keep writing to prove to myself that I can. That I will not give up on my dream. I will keep testing myself every day, writing the next word, the next sentence, the next story. And that's the hardest thing I've ever done.

Mehpocalypse, and other fun

So we all survived the Mayan Apocalypse. Well, I assume if you're reading this you survived, too. The worst thing that happened all day, at least near my house, was a bit of light snow. Meh.




I finished wrapping Christmas presents, so at least the world won't come to an end for a lack of appropriate gift giving next week. At least not on my part. I hope y'all upheld your gift-giving duties.

I also realized that for the first time, I might be tempted to tweet about Christmas morning. There might even be pictures. Then I realized how crappy the rest of my living room looked, and figured I should tidy up a bit. It was a good thing I did. I found some interesting (read: appallingly embarrassing) things while going through the junk that's built up on the coffee table. Here's a partial list:

• A bag of Dr. Pepper Jelly Bellies that Lulu bought in Savannah. In July. Jelly Bellies don't go bad, do they?
• A gift certificate to Baskin Robbins she got for making the honor roll at school. Time to go get ice cream!
• An Irish penny
• The original notes that sparked the idea for my Untweetworthy posts (which in turn inspired this list).
• A Jack Skellington foam ball thing for the top of the car antenna. I bought it at Disney in 2010. Maybe I should actually put it on the car, huh?
• The last two car insurance cards I got for my truck. That's a year's worth of proof-of-insurance. Maybe I should put those in the truck. That would probably be a good idea.
• The unopened copy of Rachel Ray Everyday magazine from October 2011. That's not a typo. 2011.

So that was most of my day. Now that we're past the Solstice and the days are getting longer again, I feel excited about finishing my WIP. I'm finally past the painful sticky-spot that I'd been unable to get through for so long. We're tumbling ever closer to 2013, and I'm tumbling ever closer to a full first draft. Things are looking up.

Or, they will be. I have more exciting critiquing work to do before I go back to writing. So here's the last of my #ApocalypseConfessions. There's nothing more exciting then doing an emergency critique. Think about that. An emergency-level read-through. It always precedes exciting things, you know? So off I go. I hope y'all have something just as exciting to tackle this weekend. You know. Now that we're sure there will be a weekend at all.

Stupid Mehpocalypse.

Hi. My name is

A strange thing occurred to me a few months ago, and since then I've been flummoxed. I'm turning to you, the People of the Internet, for advice.

I am a writer, and I hope to be a published writer someday. Maybe even a well-known writer. Or at least a writer with an ongoing career in the business. The problem is my name. You see, there are at least two other writers I've heard of with the name Laura Hughes. *cue panic attack*

 

How can I stand out in the world of publishing if I'm constantly being mixed up with those other Laura Hughes writers? Not to mention the artist, the physician, the web developer, the actress, and the several dozen other Laura Hughes-who-are-not-me who turn up in a google search. I can't even stand out in a FREAKING GOOGLE SEARCH?! Yikes!

Well, I thought innocently, I can always publish under my maiden name. It's certainly not a common name. Herbenick. You likely don't know anyone by that name, unless you maybe heard of my sister, Debby Herbenick. It's not entirely unlikely. She has a Wikipedia entry AND an Amazon page. And no one would EVER mistake her books for mine. She writes nonfiction, and her alter-ego is The Sex Professor. So.

So I googled Laura Herbenick. I found a few references to myself, and a gajillion entries for Debby. At least there were no other Laura Herbenicks to confuse me with. But who knows me by that name? I've been Laura Hughes for more than 15 years!

I must have been a little slap-happy, because for a whole three minutes I considered publishing under the name Mittens Morgul. Ahem. I don't think so.

This is actually Mittens Morgul. No, kitty doesn't write.

And now on to the Reader Interaction Portion of today's post: (no, you don't actually have to do anything if you don't want to. But you made it this far, and I want to love you, so please share if you have any advice.)

I hope to someday have an agent, and I'm sure this is the kind of thing that they will help me decide. In the mean time, is your "real" name so common that you're considering publishing under a different name? Or have you already done that? Did you choose a pseudonym for another unrelated reason? Why? What would you do in my shoes?

A. Keep your real name. It's my name, and I don't care who else uses it.

B. Use the maiden name. No, I swear we aren't getting divorced, sweetie.

C. Pick another name entirely. Yes, that really is me. See? That's my picture on the back cover! No, I don't look that good today because I don't pay a professional hair and makeup artist to spruce me up every day. YES FOR THE UMPTEENTH TIME, I SWEAR THAT'S REALLY ME!

Writer Friends

I remember back about a year ago, when I first realized I might want to publish all those novel-length things I was writing. First I went to the library to see what I could learn about publishing there. That's where they keep the books, after all. I figured I'd find a ton of stuff about getting published. Most of what was there was sadly out of date, so I turned to the trusty internet in search of information. I searched every publishing topic from A to Z, and was slightly (okay, more than slightly) overwhelmed by it all.

One of the first and most frequent bits of information I read was you should edit and edit and revise and edit. The most recommended strategy for success was to have your writer friends review your work. You know, all your writer friends you have when you're first starting to write.



Yes. I hadn't even told my sister I was writing at that point, let alone tried to make friends with other people like me. People in caves huddled over their laptop, churning out word soup. Riiiiight.

I had been on Twitter for a while, but it was more a way for me to follow other people, rather than actually communicate with anyone else. I think I followed about 30 people, most of whom were celebrity-types, and I had a grand total of six followers, including my sister's dog. (Her dog is @Jezebelthedog, in case you were wondering. She doesn't tweet much. Maybe because she's a dog?)

So I trudged along, trying to edit my own work, doing the best I could. I felt so deprived because I didn't have any writer friends. And then I heard about a few writing contests. I heard about The Authoress, I heard about the Query Shark, Janet Reid. And then Cupid. Things kind of snowballed from there.

I made it into a few contests, and made friends with people I met in the comments sections. There was manuscript trading, and then learning how to critique and edit someone else's work. It was my entry into an amazing community of writers.

I didn't think a thing about this journey until I saw a series of tweets today about how much the twitter community of writers means to all of us who are a part of it. And how difficult it would be to get up every day and sit down to write without knowing all those other folks are out there right now doing the same thing. And without being able to pop over to twitter for a chat or a laugh when we get stuck or frustrated. It's the absolute truth. Writing might be a solitary activity, but being part of a group makes it that much easier and more fun.




Everything is better when you have folks who understand what you're going through to celebrate and commiserate with. So go forth and write, and celebrate the internet, because without it, we'd all be alone at our writing desks.

Untweetworthy, Part Deux

The second in a continuing series of bizarre little snippets that proved too long, too silly, or too irrelevant for Twitter, but needed to be written down somewhere (if only to get them out of my overcrowded thinker).










 Without further ado, here we go:

1. Facebook calls it a timeline. Why? It's not even linear. I wish there were a way to make the posts reflect the accurate passing of time. The same handful of posts seem to stick to the top, and interesting things get buried deep in the pile. This is why I like Twitter better. At least it uses linear time to post updates instead of the mish-mosh method FB uses.

2. Rape jokes: NEVER FUNNY. Rape APOLOGIST jokes: BAZINGA!

3. Oh, Florida. I thought I left you because I was sick of hurricanes. Turns out, you were too disorganized even for me to tolerate living there. Someday you will learn how to hold an election at least as well as Washington, D.C. can (and DC was woefully underequipped, but still managed to get everyone to the polls and tally up their votes on election night).

4. Just when I thought I was done with political ads, I remember how far behind I am on the TiVo. Just watched a show from two weeks ago, and realized every show for the next few weeks will be progressively more stuffed with campaign ads. At least I'll be fast-forwarding through all of them.

5. I'm starting to get distracted from my WIP by the first novel I ever wrote (and then imprisoned under the bed with an armed battalion of dust bunnies to prevent its escape). I am SO TEMPTED to rewrite it, you know, without all the adverbs this time...

6. Why was this blog so lacking in funny .gif images before?

 

7. I love the people of Twitter. I think I got kinda lucky in the imaginary friend lottery.

8. Having manuscripts on submission during election season was awful. I reflexively answered the phone every time it rang, JUST IN CASE IT WAS AN AGENT. I can't tell you how many political robocalls I hung up on, but I think the number was in the kajillions*.
*In the interest of mathematical accuracy, this is a number larger than a berjillion, but smaller than a squintillion.

9. I'm not the first person to say this, but WHY is it always the tweet with the typo that gets the most retweet love?

So there you go, the random overflowings of my sad little mind. To make up for it, please enjoy this gif of a slow loris having its little armpits tickled. Thank you.

I keep forgetting I'm influential about amnesia.

I'm sure you've all heard of Klout, even if you haven't bothered to check out your own "score." If you haven't, then google it. I'll wait right here...

Ok, then. We all know what I'm talking about now. But can anyone explain what the point is? I get access to "perks" once in a while, but most of them aren't worth my time. I'm not big on giving free ad space in my social media to companies just to get a free product. I have to really like a thing to talk about it. Which is the most puzzling aspect of Klout, in my mind.

They track topics, you are "influential" about through your social media interactions. I can understand that. If you talk about something a lot, people might come to see you as a source of reliable information on that topic. What I'm most interested in today is how the hell Klout decides which topics a person is influential about. Get ready for the surreality, because here's my list:

• Jeans
• Chocolate
• Sushi
• Pork
• Cookies
• Horror
• Pudding
• Bacon
• Yogurt
• Books
• Writing
• Amnesia
• Shoes
• Conferences
• Justin Bieber
• Video
• Tumblr
• Cats

Quite a list, right? I mean, Bacon AND Pork? Wow. And what's up with Justin Bieber? Maybe it's the amnesia talking, but I don't ever remember saying anything (other than possibly a joke somewhere or other) about the Biebs.

Some of these I get. Like chocolate. And shoes. I like those things. But then why am I not influential about coffee, too? I mean, I write about coffee all the time! And sure, I post some things about my cat, so I get that, to an extent. But Conferences? Really? Is this because I tweeted something to Backspace a few times? I have no clue.

Do you have an equally bizarre and unsettling list of things that Klout has assigned to you? Post them below so we can all have a puzzled laugh about it.

In the mean time, enjoy this delicious pudding.

Ahoy! Tis my anniversARRy today!

Yes. I got married on International Talk Like a Pirate Day. This was unintentional. I swear.

No, our wedding wasn't pirate themed. We got married in 1997, and September 19 wasn't declared International Talk Like a Pirate Day until 2002. So. No pirate-themed wedding. But wouldn't that have been completely AWESOME?!

As it is, I am deliriously happy to have been married to the wonderful Helper Monkey for the last fifteen years. Without even realizing it, I honor September 19th all over my left hand. See?

Yes, that is Captain Jack Sparrow next to my wedding rings.

I've got pirates and my wedding all over the place. I never take those rings off (unless I'm making meatballs, or scrubbing toilets, or, you know, stuff like that. You know how hard it is to pick cookie dough out of Captain Jack's beard? Eww).

In preparation for this evening's festivities, Helper Monkey and I went out to run a few errands. We tried to get the truck washed, but the car wash place was closed. So we went on up to the grocery store for junk food instead. Now we have a celebratory pecan pie for dessert tonight, so that was definitely worth the drive.

We also went to the liquor store for something special to drink. While there, I saw some strange things. This included:

Donut and buttered popcorn flavored vodka. This strikes me as jarringly wrong. There were other alcoholic atrocities going on at the store, but this was the most...disturbing. I mean, donut sounds pretty good, but buttered popcorn? To drink? Ugh. What the hell do you mix it with?

So we got some normal Sam Adams Octoberfest beer. No weirdo dessert vodka for us.

One other strange tidbit before I sign off. I've had some suncatchers up on my front porch glass door since we moved here, about 6 1/2 years ago. Lulu made them when she was like 5 or something. For the last week or so, there's been one crazy hummingbird that comes and checks out the flower-shaped one nearly every day. I have seen him multiple times bumping his little beak up against the window, as if the flower were real and full of yummy nectar. Poor little guy. He's too quick to get a picture of, but I'll keep trying.

And no Progress-O-Meter for the last few days, because I've been wrapped up in CP heaven, reading the final draft of a brilliant R&R. Tomorrow it's back to work for me! In the mean time, hoist yer grog before I make ye walk the plank, ya scurvy cur! :D

What I remember

Eleven years ago today, It was my husband's day off work. We were hosting an exchange student from Sweden (Hi, Peter!), and he'd been at our house less than two weeks. He left that morning for school, and Tim and I sat around the kitchen table drinking coffee and reading the paper. Lulu was only about a year and a half old, and she was toddling around and playing with her toys.

I overheard a neighbor talking on the phone with someone when I went out to get the paper that morning, and she sounded upset. I couldn't hear her exact words, but I made a mental note to check in with her later to make sure everything was alright. I didn't want to interrupt her phone call.

And then we got our own phone call. We had no idea what was going on until Peter's family called from Sweden to make sure he was safe. They knew we lived near Washington, DC, so we had to reassure them that everything was fine. Shortly after that, the school dismissed, and Peter walked in. I turned the TV on just in time to watch the first tower fall.

The whole time, Lulu was running around just like she would on any other day. She didn't understand what was going on. And I'm grateful for that. We needed that distraction.

Three days later, my mom and I were scheduled to meet at my grandmother's house in Boston. They reopened the airports, and my mom flew. I drove, which is what I had planned on from the start. I used to drive the route a dozen times a year or so, but this drive was different.

Fire trucks were parked on highway overpasses, and firemen waved flags and hands at passersby. People were decorating bridges and buildings with messages of togetherness and hope. And then I crossed the Hudson. I slowed down on the bridge, just like everyone else on the road did, and watched the dust and smoke cloud that had replaced the Twin Towers.

I don't remember how long it took for the sense of togetherness and unity to fade, but it wasn't very long. I only wish we could all remember that day; not for the horrible tragedy, but for how we all came together and supported one another in the aftermath. Maybe we shouldn't need a world-altering tragedy to bring people together as human beings. Maybe just being human together should be enough.

It's Disasteversary Day

I almost said "Happy Disasteversary," but that just sounds wrong. There's not really much happy about a disasteversary. Especially a double.

August 23 is a day filled with interesting memories for me. Twenty years ago today, I was battening down the hatches for Hurricane Andrew. One year ago today, I thought my house was sliding down the hill when the DC earthquake scared the bejeebers out of me.

I survived the hurricane, though most everything I owned before I was 19 did not. So much of my childhood disappeared overnight. Photos, toys, and clothes I would have passed on to my own daughter washed away in the storm surge or were irreparably damaged by the layer of mildew that grows over everything after it's been soaked in seawater for days on end. And that doesn't even describe the horror of living through the storm itself. A tornado spawned by the storm took out nearly every tree in our yard. The wind howled all night, broke the window in my mom's car, and then the air pressure made the horn honk in a solid blast until the battery died. It took hours. Can you say spooky? We had no power for nine days afterward. And we were a good thirty miles north of Homestead, where the worst of the storm hit and leveled entire communities. My mom's house wasn't so lucky.

Twenty years later I still relive bits of that day like it was yesterday. I wouldn't wish that kind of thing on anyone. It weirds me out that there's a "hurricane booth" at our local mall where you pay a few dollars, step inside, and experience hurricane force winds for a minute or two. I have no desire to ever experience it again. Enough said.

Exactly one year ago today, the earth moved. I'd experienced a mild earthquake before, but that was in Los Angeles, where you kind of expect earthquakes. I live 35 miles from Washington DC. We don't get earthquakes here. Except that one.

I was sitting out on the back porch with my laptop, writing. Lulu was at a friend's house. Helper Monkey had just gone to bed. At first, I thought they were blasting somewhere nearby. They were building a house down the street from me, and several times they had to blast through the bedrock in order to pour concrete for the foundation. But the shaking didn't stop, it got worse. My second thought was that my house had finally broken loose from the aforementioned bedrock and was sliding down the hill toward the lake. It felt like the ground had turned to jello, and wave after wave pulsed through the deck below me. I was too freaked out to stand up.

When the shaking stopped, I ran downstairs to ask Helper Monkey if he felt it, too. My third thought was that I was having some sort of psychotic break, and I'd hallucinated the whole event. He'd been drifting off to sleep, and his first thought was that I was moving the bed. When I called to make sure everything was okay at her friend's house, I learned that Lulu missed the whole thing. She was in her friend's swimming pool and they thought the waves were of their own making.

We were lucky. We escaped without any real damage. They are still repairing buildings downtown, though. The National Cathedral won't be fully fixed for at least 10 years. The Washington Monument is still not fully stabilized. Union Station still has netting up to protect passengers from falling things.

So that's what I'm thinking about today. And I'll kindly ask that if any further disasters are planned for wherever I happen to be living either now or in the future, could you kindly pick another date? This one is already full.

What I have to look forward to

I've been thinking about a brief twitter exchange I participated in last night. There are some fantastic teen writers on twitter, and I'm grateful for all the useful information they have shared with us during such events as the now-weekly YA writers Ask A Teen sessions. (Look for the #YAWritersAAT hashtag for more info).

Not only am I tossing an idea around for a YA novel, but my own YA is officially going to be a teenager in less than a year. I've been following along with whatever these lovely teen writers have to tell us. I know it will all be useful to me very soon, in a very personal way.

Back to the tweets from last night. @MeganWhitmer asked when the Mean Girls stuff started in school. I reassured her that it wasn't in Kindergarten, but @ABoredAuthor chimed in with his own experience. 7th Grade, he assured us, was when he noticed the beginnings of the cliquish, snarky meanness amongst his female classmates.

I was floored.

Lulu starts 7th grade in little more than a week. I was never concerned about her not fitting in before. She has a, let's call it unique, sense of style. She has her own ideas when it comes to colors matching, patterns clashing, and what constitutes an outfit that works together. If we're going somewhere with a definite dress code, I'll make her change. Otherwise, I don't want to limit her fashion sense. What's the point? I'd rather she was happy and felt like she could make her own choices than force her to wear what I think she should wear.

One of Lulu's more eclectic fashion choices. She didn't leave the house like this, at least.

I worried about how the "in girls" would react to her clothes. She doesn't dress like any of them, and this is the age where girls tend to get judgy about what all the other girls are wearing, how they style their hair, do their makeup, and everything else.

I should not have worried.

I asked Lulu about this. She just didn't care. Her attitude is that she makes friends for who they are, not for what they wear. If someone doesn't want to be her friend because she wore purple argyle socks, that's their loss. And you know what? If it doesn't bother her, I'm not going to let it bother me.

I think I know where she gets it. I routinely get mistaken for Mary Poppins. Today at the grocery store, someone thought I was going to audition for Alice in Wonderland. Okay. At least they noticed I made an effort to look nice in public. Lulu has seen me reply to these kinds of comments for years. I think she realizes that dressing differently might garner some attention, and not all of that attention is negative. She knows that I will keep dressing however I want to, and I don't even let the negative comments get me down or change my behavior. If it makes me happy to look like Mary Poppins, then that's good enough reason to keep doing it.

Mean girls will always exist. I'm just grateful my daughter doesn't want to be one of them. At least, not yet. We'll see how things go once she goes back to school.

The Ups and Downs of Writing

I've been on a roller coaster the last few days. The highs have been fantastic, but the lows were mostly of my own making. If you aren't already bipolar, entering the world of publishing might drive you over the edge.*

*Note: I am actually bipolar, diagnosed in 1997, so I know of which I speak. No disrespect intended to anyone suffering from mental illness. I'm right there with you.

It all started a few days ago, when I decided I was ready to begin querying again. I sent out a few feelers into the Wilds of the Publishing Industry. I spent that evening riding on a cloud of wishful dreaminess. (If you are bipolar, you will know this is a real thing.)

By the following morning, I'd convinced myself I'd made a huge error. What was I thinking? I'm not ready for my baby to meet Publishing Professionals! I'm not good enough! My words lack substance! My characters are underdeveloped! My plot is contrived and silly!

And then I remembered to breathe. The extra oxygen helped. I calmed down enough to remember that my critique partners like my story. We've edited it into a tight, cohesive narrative. It is a Good Story, darn it!

When I recovered from my Stuart Smalley moment (People Like Me!), I had a grip on the proper perspective again. My writing is fine. Agents and publishers will either like it, or they won't. I can't control what other people like, but I can keep putting out the best writing I'm capable of. That's all I can do.

Rejections aren't a personal attack, but simply the opinion of one person. Likewise, requests for manuscripts aren't an offer of representation, or a contract to publish. I'm doing my best to remember this. For me, it's just as dangerous to get overly excited about acceptance in any form as it is to get too wallowy over rejection (however nicely worded it may be).

I strive for a happy zen medium. I'm going to let the requests and rejections alike wash over me like water over a pebble in a stream.

If I just keep writing, revising, and editing, I'll be fine. Everything else is a distraction. Even the encouraging news is a distraction from the real goal. Write, write, and write some more. Wish me luck.

Writing is Evolution, or why chapter one stopped working

When I started writing the first book in this series, way back at the end of last summer, I knew who the characters were, and I had a general idea of the conflict that should arise and how it would be resolved. That was it. It was, admittedly, very little to base a novel on, let alone a series of books.

I wrote, revised, edited, and then wrote some more. Fast forward about eight months. I'm half way through writing the first draft of the third book in this series. All the while I've been adding things and taking away things from book the first. At this point, I'm happier with the second book in the series than the first, because it's been incubating on the hard drive for a while, while I've been playing with book one again. Book three is sitting idle, waiting for me to resume the car chase scene I abandoned it in.

Why would I abandon a perfectly good car chase? Because I found out that book one was more of a car accident. Thanks to the insightful and delightful editorial input of one @FeakySnucker, every confusing thing is being excised or rewritten. And I'm grateful.

The process of writing seems to breed inconsistency. The more I wrote, the more alive my characters became in my head, the more I went back and changed things. Turns out, a lot of those changes created strange loops, redundancy, and a host of other problems. The biggest problem? The story changed or grew in my head without any of that information landing on the page. Not exactly convenient for the reader, eh?

Since I don't write specifically for the mind-readers of the world, it's fantastic to have someone point out the confusing bits. I know the story so well now that I'm incapable of seeing the deficiency. My brain fills in the gaps with the information it knows should be there.

When I was in seventh grade, my English teacher was explaining the importance of punctuation. He asked for a volunteer to stand up and read a paragraph out loud. I'm a dork, so I volunteered. The sample had no punctuation marks. The teacher, who obviously didn't know me very well yet, expected me to read it as one long breathless blob of words. My brain wouldn't allow that. I read it like it SHOULD have been written, inserting my own pauses where they clearly should have been. The teacher was flustered, and asked me to sit down, complaining that I was clearly too good a reader for that particular exercise.

But that's what my brain tends to do. When there's a mistake, I fix it automatically and move on. Just like with the little blobby writing sample, if I KNOW something should be in there, I fill in the gap and keep going. It might be selective blindness, or maybe I just have some sort of mental spackle that smooths all the rough bits and plot holes out.

And that, my friends, is why a good editor or crit partner is worth their weight in helium. (Comment context for the science-impaired: since helium is lighter than air, amassing enough to equal a human's weight is impossible, thus rendering their value as infinitely increasing.)

So all that setup (Look Ma! Backstory!) goes to prove a single point. I had to essentially rewrite the first chapter of the first book in the series last night. I was up until 3 in the morning, but I murdered half a dozen darlings, and wrote three new paragraphs that set the stage so much better. They explain the essential conflict of the story. I'd assumed all along that everyone would understand the MC's problem immediately, but then it was pointed out to me that I never really explained it at all! Crap! So now it's in there.

I'm going back to reread from the beginning, and hopefully I'll tweak and clarify a bit more before the mental spackle starts spreading over it again.

Just for fun, now: Things overheard in my house in the last 24 hours:

Me, being a bad influence: Lulu, you want to have cake for lunch?
Lulu: No, I think I want a proper lunch before cake.
Me: O_o
Lulu, 5 minutes later after rummaging through the fridge: Okay, I'll have some cake.

Helper Monkey, on leaving for work after a week of vacation: Good night, see you in the morning.
Me: Don't work too hard!
40 minutes later, the phone rings, and I panic. Phones ringing at midnight aren't usually a good thing.
HM: Guess what?
Me, panicky: What? Please tell me you're okay?
HM: Fine. I'm not scheduled to come back until tomorrow night. I'll be home in half an hour.
Me: Crap. Ten bucks in gas down the toilet...and the last night of your vacation wasted.

Oh, and I went swimming for the first time this summer. I've taken Lulu to the pool several times, but this was the first time I went in. It was so crowded, you needed a shoehorn to get in. Even the lap lane was populated with people teaching their toddlers how to doggie paddle. I managed to get about two dozen laps in, nonetheless, by swimming under, around, and through clusters of sunburned teenagers and kids in floaties. It was better than nothing. Hopefully we'll get to go back this week at a less crowded time. Usually after dark is the time to go. All the moms who sit in the lounge chairs baking themselves are gone, and the few kids tend to stick to the shallow end and let the old fogies have the lap lane.

With that cheerful thought, GET OFF MY LAWN! I'm going back to work. Thanks for tolerating me yet again.

Back to the beginning, with better notes this time.

Between being on pseudo-vacation this week, and numerous tiny but time consuming chores, I haven't really been writing. Sigh, once again. This is becoming an all-too-frequent refrain around here. It's starting to sound a little whiny.

Hark! What's that yonder? *squint really hard at the horizon*

It's a PROPER edit/crit of my first manuscript! Wait...oh no! It's too much! It burns! Aaaah!

Cue much flailing and wailing and gnashing and rending. /END that silliness, pull on Big Girl Pants

Now that I've recovered from the shock that my writing isn't 100% clear and perfect (I know, right?), I have renewed purpose. I'm bowing out of the #B22K exercises for a bit. I might keep writing the WIP, but for now, the primary goal is to get book one up to snuff before finishing book three. It only makes sense.

In the mean time, I will keep writing. I can't really help myself at this point, even if it is just a few hundred words a day.

Also, I'm wondering what to do about the submissions I have out at the moment. Book One is in the hands of people with the power to make my dreams of publication come true, but now I'm terrified they aren't seeing the story at its best. Do I email them and ask for a chance to resubmit after the edits are complete? Or is that wishy-washy?

I know I'm frequently wishy-washy, so I'm not afraid of that. I just want to know what agents/editors might think of such a request. Any ideas/suggestions? Thank you all! :)

Last and First (and 100th)

It's the last day of school here, and the first day of summer. The last day of 6th grade for my daughter, the first day of being a 7th grader. I feel so old. I can't believe the tiny little bundle that once made me cry because she wouldn't stop crying long enough for me to eat dinner is half way through her standard education. Yikes!

With that note of nostalgia, on with the updates.

Last night we went bowling for Family Night. We haven't been tenpin bowling in years. For those who are unfamiliar with the bowling habits of the Mid-Atlantic Region, we have something called "Duck Pin Bowling" here, which is a lot more fun, in my opinion, than regular old bowling. Duckpins are shorter, fatter, and bouncier than tenpins, and the ball is the size of a large grapefruit. You also get three balls per frame, and a strike is exceedingly rare. It's a game of spares. A fantastic duckpin average, like for the top players in the country, is in the neighborhood of 145. So I don't feel as bad that I can't break 100 as I do when I bowl tenpins. In fact, no one has ever, in history, bowled a perfect game of duckpins.

I also think that Wii Bowling has completely ruined my form. But that's another matter entirely. Excuses, excuses. (My fingernail broke! I'm tired from donating blood still! My shoes are too slippery! Whaaa!) I was so bad, the kid nearly beat me, and she doesn't weigh much more than the ball.

Anyway, on the way home last night, we drove through some strange weather. A narrow line of horrible storms passed overhead, and quickly rinsed the whole world down in our path. We chased the clouds most of the way home, and were treated to some lovely views of the brightest rainbow I've seen in a long time.

Tomorrow is a big day for us. We're going down to the National Mall to celebrate Girl Scouts Rock the Mall, along with about 200,000 other people from around the world. It's the 100th anniversary of Girl Scouting this year, and the Guinness Book of Records people are going to be there. We're going to try to set a record for the most number of people participating in a sing-along. It should be fun.

This is also my first trip into the city in a couple of months. Last time, I wanted to go into the National Archives, but we ran out of time. I don't care what happens this time, darn it, I'm going in there. Sure, it's awesome to see the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, but part of the novel I'm querying right now takes place inside the building, and I'm eager to double-check that my memory of the place isn't faulty. It's been a couple of years since I was inside, and I just hope I wrote everything accurately. I'm pretty sure I did, but it's still something that's been bugging me. It will be a relief to just walk through the parts of the building I wrote about.

I have one more day of alarm clocks, and then I'm free for four whole weeks before I have to set another alarm. I'm very pleased about this. I am NOT a morning person. In fact, most of my writing is done late at night, and I'm really looking forward to getting a lot more done on my WIP once I don't have to wake up early every morning.

 So I suppose that's all for now. I've been so busy with the boring necessities of life for the last few days that I haven't been writing. This is probably starting to sound old. More excuses.

I think part of my problem stems from the fact that I'm now working on the third novel in a series. I'm querying the first, but the Helper Monkey thinks the second book is actually better than the first. Still, writing something than may never see the light of day is a little disheartening.  Granted, I've only sent out a few queries in the last couple of months, what with revisions, contest entries, and other things making me hold off on querying. Now so many agents are closing to submissions for the summer, I feel like I should just keep writing now, and then go back and maybe edit the whole series again when I'm done.

More circular work lies ahead.

So for now, I'll just keep writing. I don't know how to do anything else. Even if it never gets published, it's still what keeps me going. And it still makes me happy. In the end, that's what I started writing for in the first place. I never intended it to do anything else. I never wrote a single word for another person. Every last keystroke has been for my own sake, not for anyone else. If anyone decides it's worthy of publication, more power to it. Until then, I'll keep my sanity and just keep writing.

Blood and other necessasry things

Every 112 days, I'm eligible to donate blood. I'm tall enough, heavy enough, and A-negative enough to qualify to donate Double Red cells. This is not a regular blood donation. It's the super robot high tech blood donation. And it makes me LOOPY. I apologize in advance if this blog entry is less-than-sane.

They hook me up to an apheresis machine, which sucks out a regular unit of blood, spins out all the red blood cells, mixes the leftover bits (plasma, white cells, etc.) with some bizarro chemical, and then shoots the liquidy bits back into me. Then it repeats the entire process (draw out a unit of blood, spin, mix, return the dregs). It takes about an hour, makes my lips and nose tingle (that bizarro chemical's reaction), drops the body temperature (it's COLD in the Red Cross, and having two pints of 60-degree plasma shot into you in under an hour is chilling), and makes me woozy for a few days.

I hate feeling short of breath from climbing a single flight of stairs. I'm not fond of the lethargy. But then again, the person or people who benefit from my blood probably aren't fond of being in a hospital fighting for their lives. I figure my day or two of wooziness is a fair trade for someone's life. Especially knowing that my blood is usually used for premature babies and infants with chronic illnesses. Definitely worth the wooziness. And I got free cookies!

So if you aren't a regular blood donor, please think about going out this week to give a pint. It takes less than an hour, and you'll get free cookies. Oh, and you might save someone's life.

Only 5% of the eligible population actually donates regularly, and the donor center I went to today was deserted. It kind of makes me nervous to think if my life were on the line, there might not be any blood for me. My blood type is rare enough that I do worry about it once in a while... So if you're one of the rarer blood types, especially, please think about making donation a regular part of your life.

Plus, doesn't this look awesome? (squeamish people, please hit "page down" a couple of times right now)

Going Out

Coming back

Thanks for listening, or reading. Whatever. Loopy, remember?
END PSA.

So I finally managed to buy a ton of food that pleases both the Helper Monkey and Lulu. I was all set to put a roast in the crock pot this morning before going off to get loopy. But apparently I started out pre-loopified this morning, and I totally forgot. So, tomorrow we have the roast. Last night we had salmon steaks, corn on the cob, and taters. Starch city, but it was good.

Tonight, I was absolutely too whacked to cook, so we had pizza. The loopy continued, with Mr. Happy Sriracha Sauce Pizza Face Man.

Doesn't he look happy? He did, until I ate his face. Tasty!

Okay, where was I? Right. I've been Writing Actual New Words! Hooray! I hope they're not as kooky as I feel, but they actually exist, which is more than I can say about most of the week's writing progress.

Helper Monkey now has a new alert function: The Warning Siren of Distraction. Next time someone offers me a lovely gift that will clearly become an obsession, he's supposed to slap me on the back of the head like Gibbs on NCIS. Hopefully this tactic will work.

I'm not sure if it's a function of the bipolar disorder, or if I'm just a smidge OCD as well, but when I'm presented with a project that has a definite structure (such as a scarf to crochet, or a book to read), I tend to drop EVERYTHING ELSE, nearly to the point of forgetting to eat and sleep, until said project is complete. It's a Bad Thing. It's probably the Worst Thing, in fact. Anything that keeps me from writing regularly causes a backlog of the kinds of obsessive mental problems writing helps me deal with every day.

As much fun as it was to do something different for a few days, I'm suffering all around for not writing. But now I'm back at it. And oddly, I have a new idea for a new book, completely unrelated to the series I'm working on right now. We'll have to see if it goes anywhere, and I really have to get the first draft of the WIP done before I start anything new. Otherwise, I'll be stuck in a much larger version of the cycle of distraction I was trapped in for most of the week. Finish one project, then start the next. It's the only way I can work.

I'm completely envious of people who can work on two separate novels at the same time, but I just can't handle it.

Does anyone out there currently have two Works in Progress? I'd love to know how you juggle them both, or if you have a schedule for writing two works at a time. How do you balance it? How do you keep everything straight in your head? Just wondering. If you have a good strategy for managing it all, I'd be willing to give it a try... *frantic scanning of the room, waiting for the Gibbs Head Slap*

So that's it. Back to work! And it's now far enough out from the blood donation that I'm allowed A Happy-Ass Drink.

Progress-O-Meter:

Words: 52,458
Pages: 174

Driving myself to sleeplessness.

Some people are morning people. Some people are night owls. I am definitely the latter. I find that writing during the day is akin to pulling teeth. Through my nose. Once the sun goes down, I'm a writing fool.

To wit, I sat at the computer for hours yesterday trying to crank out pages. I stared at the blinking cursor, reread the last few pages of my WIP, and debated tearing out my hair versus biting off my fingernails. After dinner last night, when the house started to quiet down for the evening (as if it hadn't been quiet all day, too), my fingers finally connected up with my brain and the words flowed.

I thought about stopping for the night when Helper Monkey left for work at eleven. In fact, I stood up, stretched, got a glass of water, shut the computer, and sat on my back porch reading Twitter on my cell phone. I was Preparing For Bed. I never even made it to the brush-my-teeth phase. Five minutes later, I knew what I wanted to write, and sat back down at the computer. Two hours later, I couldn't stay awake any longer. I needed sleep. But I was too wired from writing. I finally got to sleep sometime around two. And after waking up at 6:30 this morning, I REALLY need the sleep. But once again, it's after ten, and I'm just getting warmed up.

So can anyone shed some light on this for me? Can chronic sleep deprivation cause bran dimmage? I mean brain damage? I can't wait for summer vacation from school. I'll be allowed to sleep as late as I want every day, and stay up all night long writing. Last summer, I wrote 15,000 words in a single day. Sure, I spent fifteen hours at the keyboard, and I knew exactly what I wanted to write. Granted, it was a lot of crap that had to be edited to a nearly ridiculous level, but it essentially became the bones of the book I'm querying now. After nearly a year of editing and revising, mind you.

I'm not sure how long I can keep up the late nights, but I hope it's until the current novel is done. HAHAHA! That's funny. So far, this has been the slowest-going novel I've ever written. Getting the words out on paper (or the computer screen) is harder this time around than it's ever been before. (And this is my fifth go at a full-length, 100k word novel.)

I think it's partially the fact that I'm actively querying the first novel in this series. Until I have the approval of an agent, I think my brain doesn't want to cooperate and knuckle down to do the work. I have the second novel in the series ready to go, as well. It's not like I don't have something else to send the glorious angel of an agent who loves the story as much as I do. My brain is practical though. It doesn't want to waste time making words for a book with such an uncertain future. Sure, I doubt myself. All writers do. But that's no reason to let my writing suffer. So I keep writing the best I can.

So I'm off to make the pages, out on the back porch where the rain patters gently against the copper roof and reminds me of what my characters are going through at the moment. It's raining in the novel, and it's raining here. It's as good an atmosphere for writing as I could hope for. Hopefully I'll get to sleep before midnight tonight!

Words: 45,092
Pages:  148