This is from All I Wanna Do, a novel length serial about the ultimate fan girl fantasy– meeting, dating, and falling in love with a member of the band… except that it’s not as glamorous as one might imagine.  In this scene, my lovebirds have had their biggest blowout yet and Serena has temporarily moved out, expecting JC to come after her. But he doesn’t and now she’s stuck. This conversation is between her and his brother:

“We weren’t really talking about kids. Not seriously, anyway.”

I tried not to remember JC’s flippant comments during our vacation about our girls and boys and my futile attempts to stop picturing them in my head-bright blue eyes, mops of thick brown curls, pretty voices. Sweet little people. Like their dad. Who was I kidding? Of course I wanted that with him.

“I’m sure everyone’s asking how you’re doing and stuff. But I haven’t. So how are you?”

“Life sucks right now, to be honest.”  I shoveled a mouthful of omelet into my mouth but I couldn’t even taste it. I had no appetite since there was no one to pick on my appetite, anymore.

“Yeah.  The house is different without you. You know I didn’t mean what I said, right? About moving out?”

“No, I didn’t know that,” I said, my eyes  flicking up at his. “Actually, I was pretty sure you meant it. And it was okay to mean it. It wasn’t fair to turn everything upside down, for me. It was about more than what you said, though. I’m just having a hard time adjusting and with JC not here… and he wasn’t even home before he told me he was leaving again. I just… I thought maybe…”

“You know what?”  Tyler leaned forward, his hands tightly clasped in front of him. He was rarely serious, but this was one of those rare times when there was no impish smile or glint to his eye.

“You’re a smart girl, Serena. Your brain is big, and you make sure everyone knows it. You’re sensible and practical and down to earth and real. You’ve got a good head on your shoulders and you’re real independent and self-sufficient and that’s all well and good, but sometimes it’s not about being independent and proving that you don’t need help and you don’t need anyone. Sometimes it takes being a strong person to realize that while you can do everything yourself and be a lone ranger, it’s not half as meaningful as building something with someone else.”

“I know that and I miss building with him, but I-”

“You want it your way or not at all.”

“And so does he,” I shot back. “And I don’t know what his hurry is, but the harder he pushes me, the less I want it his way. He runs over me with his opinions and his plans and when I was there, in his house with nothing that’s mine but the clothes on my back, I just felt… trapped by everything he is.”

He nodded slowly as he listened. After a few beats of silence, he asked,  ”So, how do you feel right now? Any better than trapped? Things looking up for you, living in Lara’s guest bedroom?”

“Okay. That’s enough. I hear you. I do. I just. I gotta figure this out.”

I stabbed the fork into the not even half-eaten omelet and slid out of the booth.

“Well, you better figure it out fast. He leaves tomorrow.”

Is it literary perfection? HA! Hardly. Some of it is really bad. Some of it is boring. A lot of it is unrealistic and just plain reaching, especially to me, and I wrote it! What it is, is 2 years of progress. Two years of writing, two years of practice, two years of improvement. I can definitely see a difference between my first chapter and my last– all the tips I’ve picked up from writing blogs, and books on writing, and tips from writers and from novels. The change in how my writing has developed is obvious.

It was not easy. In fact if you read through this blog, you’ll find that I flail about quite easily and frequently. It’s hard for me to fall in love with my own words, when I want the words to literally jump off of the page and into your mind and heart. I want readers to nod along and understand, and as James Patterson has coined the phrase, “unputdownable”. I want that word to describe the things that I write.

I feel like I have a ways to go before I get there. But today I am closer to that than I was two years ago. And that’s what I call progress.

So now I am sitting here twiddling my thumbs and thinking… now what? For the first time in years, I don’t have a new chapter brewing in my mind. I don’t have an end point that I have to reach. The story– which was burning inside me, demanding to be told– is complete.

Maybe now I can think past this story… past this genre and write something new. Maybe something original.

I am happy to say that I may actually be working on the last chapter of my Fan Fiction Serial All I Wanna Do.  We’ll see. I’m fleshing it out right now but I don’t think I have enough story left for two chapters.

Completing this story means a lot to me, and completing it in January would be awesome because I started it in January of 2009. Two years have gone into this thing and I will be sort of sad to see it go, but I really want to work on something different.

While I think I’ll always write fanfiction, I’m not sure if I’ll ever do a long story like this again. Or if I do, I won’t drag it out for 2 yrs.

So, it’s #WIPWednesday… what are YOU working on?

Trying to stay on track/ ahead of my 1000 words/ day posting schedule. This is what keeps me on track for the year. I don’t aim for 1000 words and then stop, but I don’t stop until I hit 1000 words. Sometimes, like tonight, I go a bit over if inspiration strikes.

Inspiration didn’t take me too far over 1000 tonight. I managed to get in 1,124 before it started to drone on and get boring. I’m going to break for a bit and if I feel like moving on tonight I will. Chances are that I will edit it down to below 1000, though. Always happens. I write everything and then delete half of it!

Otherwise I’ve found a good spot to stop. I need to pace this chapter well. I have a lot I want to cover and I can’t stroll slowly through it. I also have some conversations that need to happen on this trip, because that pushes this story forward significantly. This trip is very important in the lives of my characters so I want to do it right. I just don’t want to spend 30 pages doing it.

I’m also reading, actually a few books at a time. I get bored with one and pick up another where I left off. I wish I could be so ambidextrous with my writing!

What I liked about this chapter: I don’t know, ask me in a couple of days. By the time I post a chapter I’m tired of reading it. I guess what I liked is being able to write these two really truly in love with each other instead of the biting and fighting I’ve posted before. I’m a sucker for conflict, especially if the guy is nice and the woman is difficult.

What I didn’t like about this chapter: Heavy on the details. Since they’re not “at home” and in a special place, these chapters require a lot of research about everything from what kind of money they use to how a person might get from place A to place B. That takes up a lot of time and a lot of room.  It also makes me susceptible to mistakes.

At any rate, the chapter is up and I need to begin work on Part II, which will cover the rest of their trip and my female MC’s birthday in gorgeous Greece. I’ve been so jealous of my characters while doing research for this chapter.

I also started reading a new book that is way less of a disappointment than my last book.

[Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter is] an atmospheric drama set in rural Mississippi. In the late 1970s, Larry Ott and Silas “32″ Jones were boyhood pals. Their worlds were as different as night and day: Larry, the child of lower-middle-class white parents, and Silas, the son of a poor, single black mother. Yet for a few months the boys stepped outside of their circumstances and shared a special bond. But then tragedy struck: Larry took a girl on a date to a drive-in movie, and she was never heard from again. She was never found and Larry never confessed, but all eyes rested on him as the culprit. The incident shook the county—and perhaps Silas most of all. His friendship with Larry was broken, and then Silas left town.
More than twenty years have passed. Larry, a mechanic, lives a solitary existence, never able to rise above the whispers of suspicion. Silas has returned as a constable. He and Larry have no reason to cross paths until another girl disappears and Larry is blamed again. And now the two men who once called each other friend are forced to confront the past they’ve buried and ignored for decades.

It’s fantastic so far, fast paced and full of questions to be answered and puzzles to solve. I’m on Ch 4 and I expect to finish in the next few days.

Goodnight.

Oh no. Not goodnight. I finished The Lonely Polygamist. Sort of. I’ll let my goodreads review stand for itself. Suffice it to say…. *two snaps* HAAATED IIIIITTTT…

The Lonely Polygamist by Brady Udall

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This box asks me what I think… well. I think I don’t understand the 4 and 5 star ratings of this book. I liked the story itself. It seemed to be full, however, of winding stories and retrospection, which provides us with back story. I guess I’ll have to think further about the characters and development and writing style. [Adding: Which were fine, I guess. It wasn't impossible to understand].

Right now I just can’t get over the fact that I skipped about 1/3 of this book until it seemed like the story advanced.

I tried my hand at a review… I’ll have to try again another time. Everything I write sounds as boring as I found this book to be. I will say that I did not initially find Golden Richards to be a strong enough man to have 4 wives and that made me hard to respect him as a character. We find out, pretty early on from his skulking around his own house trying to avoid his wives, that he’s not really the head of his house. His children run wild and there is little bond/sisterhood that we hear so much about in polygamist families. Much more apparent is the discordance and dysfunction.

Golden didn’t seem very lonely, to me. Just out of control. The lonely one seemed to be his son, Rusty, who everyone thought was just weird. That story line seemed to be the most interesting of all of them and unfortunately seemed to get such little attention up until the end.
View all my reviews

I don’t know what I’m reading next, but please let it be good.

My chapter opens with my characters on a long awaited flight. I’ve spent 3 days with them on the plane… my goal today was to get them off of the plane and I did that.

Now it’s time to settle down and get some reading in. I’m taking a break from Pretty Little Liars and I’ve picked up the Lonely Polygamist. I don’t know why I am drawn to stories about this life, but I am. The MC so far doesn’t seem like a strong enough man to have 4 wives, but whatever. Just getting into it.

Speaking of, my to read pile is kind of scary. I’ve committed to not getting any more books (fingers crossed behind my back) until I’ve made a dent in that list. It’ll get to where I can’t remember why I thought a book would be interesting to read (why did I get a book named BUFFALO???) and then I’ll archive it and I’ll never read it. Thankfully most ebooks are free downloads so it’s not like it’s a waste of money, but… I don’t need to waste space either.

Speaking of x 2… I think I am going to give myself the gift of a Nook Color. I have so many books in .epub format, which the kindle doesn’t read. Also I only have the iPhone app, which doesn’t let you add books to it. I CAN add books to my Nook for PC app but they don’t translate to the Nook app on my iPhone. I’m hoping that is something that will work for the Nook, otherwise I’m still out an eReader that is truly compatible with my iPhone.

Ah well. Seems more research is in order!

Over at the fanfiction archive I thought it would be fun to do a challenge called AwesomeAugust, where writers sign up for a day and on that day, post a new, complete story that they want. It would get writers… well… writing and it would produce at least 31 new stories for the archive. We like new stories, and considering how dry the fandom is these days, new stories can breathe new life.

I hadn’t planned on doing one, because I didn’t have an idea. And then… with about 3 slots open, an idea came to me. And then I thought it was dumb and gave up my slot. And then I got some great advice and swallowed my pride at my ‘damn good idea’ cut it back to the beginning and re-wrote it and guh.

Can I say I love my own work? Is that egotistical? Oh well. I think it’s cute. It’s called, “Rescue Me” and borrows a little bit from Pretty Woman, which I know aired last night and that was a complete coincidence. I was trying to find a movie that two people could be watching at 4am and did a Google search and Pretty Woman popped up and I thought, Yes! there’s some great quotable lines in that! I already knew how I could mold some dialog around the lines and draw some parallels. I thought it turned out great.

A snippet? Don’t mind if I do (beware of language, this piece is Rate R):

“See, I liked the Julia Roberts character,” Gabby admitted, crunching on popcorn. “But I liked her friend more.”

“Kit De Luca? Yeah she’s a little spitfire. Every prostitute needs a great best friend.”

“Well, and I’ve had a girl crush on Laura San Giacomo, ever since The Stand.”

“Good flick,” he said, tossing a handful of popcorn into his mouth. “Scary, though.”

“The good outweighs the scary. I love the part where they’re talking about the fairy tale, the Prince Charming, you know? And Vivian asks her who that ever worked out for, and Kit says, Cindafuckin’rella.” She laughed, adding, “I always wanted to be called that.”

“Not Gab-Gabriele?”

Gabby burst into delirious giggles, nearly choking on a kernel of popcorn. “Shut up! I didn’t know if I wanted you to know me as Gabby the fun girl, or Gabrielle, the serious writer. I wanted to make a good impression.”

“Honey, you wasted a good impression on a man who was falling down drunk.”

“Shhhh,”she hissed, tapping him on the chest. “I like this part…”

We‘re going to be spending an obscene about of money…

Exactly how obscene an amount of money were you talking about? Just… profane or really offensive?

“You like that part? Where the guy drags her to a shop and dresses her up so she fits into his LA wet dream and doesn‘t look like a…you know…” His voice trailed off, seemingly on purpose.

“Like a whore?” Gabby volunteered. “Okay, not the deeper meaning part, no. But I like the sarcasm and how it’s so Beverly Hills. To a tee.”

“Got that right.”

“You know… this is kind of ironic.”

“What is?”

“Us. Watching this movie. Okay, you said you didn’t want to be alone, tonight. In the movie, Edward picks up Vivian because he doesn’t want to be alone. And she thinks it’s just gonna be this quickie… thing. And I thought I was just dropping you off, on my way home. And he convinces her to stay.” She twisted around so she could see him, face to face. “And you won’t let me leave your house.”

He was almost smiling. Almost. He blinked, slowly, then asked, “If I agree to that irony, am I saying you‘re a prostitute?”

“No. You’re just agreeing to the irony.”

“Then… I should point out that it’s not really irony. More coincidental. You’re a writer. You should know that.”

She laughed, and then blushed. “Touché. I would have caught it, if I wasn’t tired. But what a coincidence, huh?”

Gabby wasn’t sure what she was doing. Or if he would even respond, but fuck it… she was leaving town anyway–may as well go out with a bang. All it took was a few seconds of concentrated staring, her eyes moving from his eyes to his lips and back to his eyes. He picked up on the hint and moved in, brushing his lips across hers and then opened his mouth.

Soft. Slow. Heady. Damn. He was a good kisser.

Et voila. *shrug* I like it.

This week I am trying hard to move Same Time Next Week forward. All I Wanna Do is at a pinnacle point right now and I need to be strategic about how I take it. I have sort of an avalanche of events that are going to hit my main character… the reader needs to feel her absolute despair. It has to be done right. And I feel like I might lose my grip on Same Time if I don’t give it some attention. I still have some fixing that needs to be done with that story.

Seems like I have a lot to do. Maybe I might finish both of these odysseys this year! I def want to finish Same Time before November. My 09 NaNoWriMo cannot still be hanging around when ’10 NaNo starts.

I decided, for the rest of the year, to ONLY count my fiction words. While my blog posts are important to me, I want to focus on my writing specifically to write, to further my development of skills, to finish my WIPs, to start new stories, to achieve 300K words this year purely on my own merit.

July saw the return of Same Time Next Week, my 2009 NaNoWriMo piece. It is, as of yet unfinished but it’s close. I have a goal to try to get to that piece this week and get more of it accomplished before  lose steam. I rewrote several chapters and cut it back from nearly 100K words to about 85K… and then added some words to already written chapters, moved some things around and then wrote a completely new chapter. That said, it was hard to tell what was old and what was new, so I only counted the new chapter.

I also completed two chapters in All I Wanna Do this month. Which, lately, is pretty good. I actually finished the newest chapter last night but since I started it in July, I counted it for July. I’m not hurting for numbers and I don’t expect to slack in August, so no big whoop.

My July total, then was 24,573 words, for an annual total of 228,440 words in 2010. Nice. I’m very happy with that. I have ~71,000 words to hit 300K. Uh. Do ya’ll even KNOW me? No PROBLEM!

In August, as I mentioned, I’d like to move further along with STNW, work toward finishing AIWD (I KNOW, RIGHT?!) and write some new things. There is a challenge over at the archive and I am trying to drum up something new for it. We’ll see how it goes!

I guess that’s all, for this update! Till the next time!