In my head, I had what I thought was a bit of cute, witty, but story line revealing banter between my main characters. I took notes on Friday, because I knew I couldn’t get to it until after the weekend. I was looking forward to writing it, because I could just hear it in my ear, on the tip of my tongue, and laughed every time I thought of it.

So then I sat down to write it. And uh…………it kind of fell flat. Awwww.

Good news is that I think it can be revived with some editing CPR but first I need to pick up the chapter where I left off and write it through and THEN go back and edit. That’s going against my usual habit of write, edit, edit again, write, edit, edit again, throw the laptop against the wall. Trying to remove that last part, so removing some of the edits and the edit agains.

Hoping I’ll get at it tonight, but we’ll see! Next month, when I still have nothing published, I’ll kick myself for these ‘I don’t feel like writing’ nights.

Write.

Write some more.

Look for some books.

Leave the house.

WRITE.

I am hoping to get a start on Ch 41 of AIWD. Got some ideas rolling around but the chapter needs a purpose. A goal that I need to achieve in writing it otherwise I will write into oblivion. Maybe some planning tomorrow.

More editing on Calm Waves and Smooth Moon. I made some really great progress last night before I stopped to watch one of my fave shows. Tonight I have been playing around (obviously, with my theme) and enjoying my Friday night.

If I’m reading it right, I should have about a month to come up with something spiffy and shiny for Glimmer Train. I seriously need to start writing things down. I had an idea but it’s now gone. No clue when I am going to learn this lesson.

Beginning to yawn and hallucinate. Time for resting. Work tomorrow.

I may never be published but I do not suck.

*breathes*

But YAY, because I was talking about AutoCrit on twitter the other night and they tweeted me back and gave me a discount code for 10% off of a subscription. Wow, the power of social networking, huh?

Huzzah!

Last night as I was tiptoe-ing through my Google Reader, I opened a post from a writer I’ve been following. She’s currently editing a book and sent out some queries and is trying to get published. She posted last night about a website that she found the is sort of an auto-editor. It looks out for things like cliche’s, overused words, sentence structure, all things I wouldn’t normally look at, when I’m editing. I’m always more concerned with does it make sense, do you care about my characters, are there any misspellings?

Well. WHOA, mama. The wesbite is called AutoCrit and it does some things I’ve never seen a website DO! This is, of course, not made for a rough draft or even first pass, but if you’re past the point of seeing your faults, this will definitely show you new ones!

I love constructive criticism (concrit). I want my pieces to read the best that they can and if people can see where there is a flaw, I want to fix it. I don’t want strangers pointing out my literary failures, if that makes any sense. So, even though I had just written the beginning of a new chapter in my (hopefully) novel, I plugged in the first 800 words and waited for the result. When it popped up, my eyes lit RIGHT UP.

Suddenly I was seeing things I hadn’t ever seen before. How many times I use certain words; whether or not I used too many -ly words (I rarely do) how many times I use ‘just’ (which I’ve been trying to get away from, but in an 800 word sample I used it 8 times! EIGHT! I feel like the clouds just parted and the sun came out. STUFF I CAN DO TO MAKE IT BETTER!

Of course, that’s only the free version, which limits you to five times a day at 800 words a pop. For shorter pieces, and if you’re only concerned about the basics, it’d do you fine. I’m salivating over the option to upload up to 100,000 words in that baby and have it spit out a report.

But first, I have to FFFFIIIINNNIIISSSHHHH IIITTTTT. GUH! I cannot seem to get going on this thing. I think I’m freaking myself out by thoughts that this might actually turn into a book. I waiver between thinking it’s really very good and I’m impressed with myself and then thinking it’s so dumb, no one will want to even look at it. Put it away and move on. No matter what, I don’t want my parents to know about this book. They are religious and it is…. It’s uhm. Explicit. Holy Gah… if my mom ever…*passes out*.

Hoookay. Well. Since I have a book to write, I am going to skiddadle and get to writing. I’ve written about 1000 words this weekend, which is completely underwhelming for me. I’ve found everything to do BUT write, and it shows.

Pen in hand,

Except….it wasn’t. It was quiet, for sure. My thoughts were rolling around in my head, and I was reading and editing and then I wanted to explore a tangent and started to type and all I could hear was KLUNK KLUNK KLUNKETY KLUNK KLUNK KLUNK. My keyboard is SO LOUD. And I type fast. And a lot (I’m quite verbose, once I get going) and so all I could think was someone coming up behind me going, ‘what are you working on?’  I always feel guilty if I have to close out what I’m doing when my boss comes out of his office. That is a sign that I shouldn’t be doing whatever I’m doing. For sure, I couldn’t look up at them and say, “well, it’s another installment of my fanfiction series, it’s a romance and my main character is meeting his love interest’s family for the first time, and it’s really awkward because……….” Yeah, so no. I didn’t want to get caught.

So I had to close the page and pretend to work, which is harder than actual working. And, of course, because I couldn’t write, I had all these ideas of things I wanted to bring out, some I wanted to tone down, conversations I wanted them to have. Need to punch up the emotion here, add more descriptive terms there…. but I COULDN’T.

It was like having to ……. use the facilites but you CAN’T. Have to hold it in, until you get home. Drove. me. Mad.

So, I left early. I wasn’t working anyway and it was Friday and no one cared. I checked out and went straight home and went straight to the laptop, ripped Word open and aaaaahhhhhhhhh. Relief.

After a couple of breaks, actually got to a point where the bare bones of the chapter is complete! \o/ I usually just spit out what I can and go back and edit. Someone, I think Stephen King in On Writing maybe (???), said “anyone can write. The magic is in the editing.” For me, that’s true. I can spit out some of the world’s most droll, boring stuff. I’m kind of amazed at myself when I read the finished product. It’s nothing like my rough draft.

Maybe the magic for me was knowing what I want to do and not being able to actually physically be able to do it. It made me long for it, wish I could, imagine myself doing it, until I just wanted to scream, and when I finally could, it was like a dam burst. Sweet. Perhaps the next time I really want to write, I should deny myself until it drives me out of my mind!

So, today is working through the rough draft. I’ve already edited the hizzy out of the first part of it, so I hope I don’t want to make too many more changes. And then it’s time to send it off to critique, more editing, more critiquing, and then archive that puppy and move on to something else.

On with the day!

I missed today’s  #writechat because I’ve been staying up until 1 or 2am writing and it finally just came crashing down on me this afternoon. Slept for hours and hours. And now I’ll be awake for hours and hours. Yikes. This happens every Sunday, and tomorrow I will be sleepy and cranky because I can’t sleep tonight.

I would have loved to participate, because it was on editing, something that is the bane of my existence but it so necessary. My process is almost obsessive, but, reading through the chat, I find I’m not the only one. Lately, I’ve been trying to just write, write, write, but if I have to stop, for any reason– to go to the restroom, eat dinner, go to work, any reason– I can’t just pick up where I left off. I have to go back and edit, and write what I meant to say, and put those missing words in, and fix that comma, and ‘does that dialogue seem right?’, and do some research and do more editing until it’s “right”. Only then can I move on.

And then I do another chunk until I can’t write anymore, and then I go back and edit the same way, BUT FROM THE BEGINNING. Yes, people. I am… yeah. The further a person gets away from the material, the more objective a person can be. At least that is the theory, because when I move on to a new chunk, I’ve separated myself from the first piece and my mind is elsewhere. When I read from the beginning again, I’m kind of reading with new eyes and I see things I should have said better, in a different way. Not only that but reading back from the beginning helps me make sure the chunks fit together like a puzzle piece.

One of the last comments on today’s chat was from @KarlBimshas, who asked: When looking back at your old writing (years) what percent impresses you and what percent horrifies you?

Allow me to alleviate anyone’s fear or mistaken supposition that I think I am some kind of great writer. Because… yeah. Reading actual novels and then reading what I write? I need work. But I’m working at it and not content to just write badly because no one sees it. I hope it makes a difference. In answer to the question, I’d say more than half is a little embarrassing, especially the stuff I wrote before I became such an aggressive self editor, and before I started sending drafts to critique friends to read. KFLO is my most staunch reader– she is so quick to send me a *rolleyes* at something, or tell me I missed a word or something’s not right. Unfortunately, she’s not the best ‘idea man’… sometimes I have to stop talking to her because she wants to turn my piece into a soap opera. “Hey man,” she says, “I’m just throwing ideas out there. You know? What if’s?” Her caveat is that she wishes that she could write. She is an accountant. I wish I could add. We’re even.

V is a good friend, ardent reader, pretty much reads everything I write in a certain genre and I kind of have to say if it wasn’t for her I might not still be writing. I get sensitive about what I write– it’s like baring your soul and putting it out there for everyone to pick at. And in the uh…. embarrassing admission in 3…2…1… fanfiction world, certain things matter more than others, specifically, RPF (Real Person Fiction, or fiction about the public representation of a real person). Characterization is massively important. Realistic plot lines and dialogue and story pace– it all has to make sense, or no one will read it, or comment on it, or LIKE it.  Honestly, not many in my fandom read me, but the few who do say they enjoy what I write. Even so, sometimes I feel like I just really truly suck, and I want to hang up my hat. V keeps me going, invoking what we jokingly call the ‘Circle of Truth’, which is that I am a talented writer and that every word I write brings me closer to the rest of the world thinking so. And so I hunker down and put on the Dave Matthews Band and open Word and get to writing. It’s getting to where she won’t even listen to me whine anymore. Now there’s the sign of a good pal. Thanks, V!

Sometimes, when I’m brave, I send a copy to my novelist friend Rebecca Miller. She’s written two novels and is on her third self published book. I love love love her books (the Quintessential Series, based on a group of five men in a pop group. Each novel focuses on one of the members, tells their story). I’ve been hooked since Build My World, through Save Me, and each successive chapter of Coming Home is even better than the first two. Anyway, Rebecca (or Becky, as I know her) will most definitely tell me when something isn’t good. She’s also the person behind me trying to step out of fanfiction and write original fiction, which is really scary and kind of exciting. “You need to lock him in a closet,” she says about my usual fanfiction main character. “Explore the world beyond him– you have to work so hard to remain within the confines of actual history and truth.” Which is true, it has to be realistic, so you can’t take a character and turn him into something he’s really not, unless it’s an Alternate Reality which sort of becomes less like fanfiction and more like original fiction with familiar characters. It’s something I tried but 1.5 chapters in and I’m *shrug… whatever* about it. It’s on my list of pieces I want to finish before I hang up my fanfiction hat.

So, after I get word back from my three critique pals, I edit to where I’m happy. I don’t necessarily take all advice given to me. I do consider it, all of it, and either follow it or put it away after making sure it either won’t work, or that’s not the direction I want to go. Sometimes I’m advised to remove/shorten/ change things and I know my current iteration doesn’t work but…I just love it so much as is that I refuse to change it. Writer’s prerogative!

So after it’s perfect to me, I archive it, so I can stop messing with it, and move on to something new, and the whole process starts up again. It’s a maddening, odd, obsessive cycle— that I kind of actually really enjoy. Maybe it gives me something I can control, makes me feel powerful and like a ‘real writer’.

Speaking of, I guess I’d better get some food and get down to some ‘real writing’. I’ll be up for awhile.