Done

The second novel is finished. Actually, I finished it last Sunday. I just haven't had the time (or the inclination) to post since then. Now I'm having it beta read by some of my buddies. AJ still has it. He's been reading it for a week and he says he's not finished. This might be a bad sign. After him comes my mom, who will read it and say she likes it even if it sucks, but she may still give me some good pointers. After her comes Kristi, who will say it's terrible even if it's amazing, and will give me tons of pointers. I'm hoping that another of my friends (Gena Rowe) will be able to read it, too. I think she'll give me some solid feedback. After the beta reading comes the query letter writing and the submitting, and that's my least favorite stage, but I have other projects before that happens.

First, I'm going to finish the outline for the book Tim Smiley and I conceived last year. With the advantage of a year in between me and the first mangled attempt, I think I have an idea of where it needs to go.

Second, I'm doing Vanheim's fifth draft--finally! I've only been sitting on the readthrough since last August. It's about damn time I got around to making it better. After my initial print-up yesterday, I'm on page 18. The book is a mess, but I wouldn't be starting a fifth draft unless I thought it was worth it.

I'm also hoping to get into a writing groove (I'm thinking fifteen minutes every night on one particular book) but that might not happen until I get settled into my sleeping habits. I've worked on the book Tim and I were doing a couple nights now, and it sucks, but that's what happens when you force yourself to write. The idea is to keep the creativity on tap. I probably won't use any of the stuff I'm writing now, but I'll be keeping in practice and will know where the book's going.

More next time, whenever that is.

Better Late Than Never

So, I'm not finished writing the second draft yet, but I'm damn close. I have two chapters to go, and the last few days I have been kicking this WIP's ass all over the place. I guess I've found the motivation again, which is great, because a couple days since I last wrote on here I didn't write anything at all, and sometimes it took me three or four days to write one chapter. Those were the low points. I even considered just taking a break from it for a few days. Then I woke up and realized I was being lazy, and I'm kicking ass again.

I know it's not June 4th, but at least I'm very close to finishing. I've been able to do a chapter a day the last three days. If that trend continues I'll be finished on Thursday. Hopefully I'll have a manuscript finished by this weekend!

Second Novel

I finished the second novel on Tuesday, as I believe I said I would. That's actually pretty good for me--it's not all the time that I actually keep my word about things. Of course, with my writing style (which I won't give up for anything, at least not at this time) that means i have three notebooks full of writing hardly intelligible to anyone except myself. I wish I could say I've been busy since Tuesday, diligently transcribing the written words to the computer screen, changing details, making the grammar flow better, but I haven't. Well, okay, I actually have, but not as much as I'd like.

I have about half of the book finished now, typed up on the computer, looking decent, sounding decent. I'm actually really proud of the prose style. The problem, of course, is that most of those chapters I had written up before. Since Tuesday, I've actually wrote about four chapters for the second draft. In other words, this thing is going to take a while. Fortunately all the mental heavy lifting has been done at this point. Now I just have to find the discipline to keep at it every day so I can get it done in a decent time. I'm capable of writing a chapter and a half every day. Realistically, that might turn into a chapter. Up until now, I've actually averaged about three-quarters of a chapter a day. But that's going to change! Maybe.

Let's set a goal, then. Let's set a goal of 12 days from now. One chapter per day, twelve more chapters to type up. That will put me at Friday, June 4th. If I blast that sucker out of the water, more power to me, but by no means will I go over that date. I still have way too many things planned for this summer, and this novel will not monopolize my time.

Seeing the Light at the End of the Tunnel

By which I mean, I'm almost finished with my second novel. Okay, so it's a children's novel. Big deal. Okay, so I'm not supposed to talk about works in progress. Big deal. I'm still proud of it. I'm proud I kept with it this long, and even though I'm not meeting my original deadline of one and a half weeks, I'm going to be finished with it in a couple days. Instead of ten days, it will end up being sixteen days, but it will still be finished. My new estimated time of completion is Tuesday, and as long as I stay focused, I should crush it. Then I'll get on with the hard work.

I love plotting. Plots are hobbies with me. Sometimes when I'm bored I'll start plotting a new book. Since I discovered a plotting style that I enjoy, I'm not afraid to start new projects, because I know that plotting will take maybe a week, and even an ADHD-er like me can handle a week. Plotting is like instant gratification for me. Some people watch movies, I plot novels. Anyway, what was the point of that little tangent? Oh yes! Although I like plotting, I've been finding out that in the course of writing, it's good not to stick too rigidly with the skeleton. The book grows, it takes on a life of its own, it becomes different than what I originally envisioned. And that's where the beauty of it all comes in.

Also, I've figured out that my favorite milieu is novels, not short stories. How long is it before most people figure that one out?

I'll get back soon, probably when I've finished the book, and I'll talk about some summer plans.

Change of Plans

Summer's here, school's done (and how!), and I'm back at work. All of those goals I discussed in my last blog are moot, because another goal has taken over. Which is? Well, I'm getting around to that, give me a minute. Ok. A minute has passed (and wouldn't you like to know if it actually was a minute or if I was just writing off the top of my head?) and I'm ready to tell you. Maybe. Ok, yes I am.

I'm finishing up the children's novel, and I really am almost finished. I'm aiming to be finished with the first draft sometime next week. Amazing, I know, right? The idea came to me in a flash of genius right after I woke up sometime late last week, and I started six days ago, even before I was finished with exams. Shows how much I cared about those wastes of time. BTW, the best flashes of genius come right after I wake up, I don't know why.

Anyway, I had gotten up to the halfway point last year before I stopped the book, and that was in late August, right before I went back to school. I haven't picked it up since, but I'm going on momentum, and I've written quite a bit in it since I started writing it again. Of course some things will have to be changed, but the first draft is the hardest thing to complete, and that's about seventy-five percent finished.

I've started reading other children's books too, and plan on analyzing them for stylistic elements. I'm reading Artemis Fowl at the moment, since it's the only other book I know of in recent memory that deals with the same subject (Fairies) as my book. Even though it deals with the same subject, I plan on approaching it from a completely different angle, using different style and the like. I'm glad I started reading it, though, because one of my fairies had the same name as one of Colfer's fairies. After that scary moment, I realized this was going to give me a better opportunity to make a new fairy culture--go more in depth, find new ways to name fairies, that sort of thing.

After Artemis Fowl, I'm going to read Harry Potter 1 again to analyze that. Even though that book is a lot different, I think its style is what I'm going for. We'll find out, won't we? And of course, I opted not to take the children's lit class at school next semester, so I'm going to be shooting in the dark. But this will be novel number two, and that is something to be proud of, even if I don't technically know what I'm doing.

Goals (Summer Edition)

Okay, last time I entered on this blog I was in the midst of writing a novel, over Christmas Break I believe. I'm not going to bother reading that to get back in the swing of what I was doing, I'm just going to talk about what I'm doing now.

For starters, I didn't finish it. I'm over 100 pages in it right now, but I got carried away with some other things over the break and stopped working on it. Typical. I think I'm starting to notice a pattern here--not finishing what I started, that sort of thing. But I am happy to say that I'm not planning on leaving it that way for long. I've got plenty of goals over the summer.

Goal 1: Fix the first novel.

Goal 2: Finish the second novel.

Goal 3: Get some work done!

The first novel is the one I wrote last year, and I have plenty of new ideas for it, to make it better and not so amateurish. The first of these ideas is telling it in a uniform point of view. Third person sounds nice--sounds safe. And when I get into the heavily tripped out parts of it I'll jump into third person present, just to mix it up a bit. Another idea I have is to drop the vernacular. Akam, why dost thou have to drop thine h's? Maybe a 'love' now and then or some other suitable bit of cockney jibberish will work a little better. We don't have to go with the whole cliched schtick, do we? I think not.

The other thing I need to fix about Vanheim is the little point of motive and making it less deus ex machina-ey. I think I can do that. I'm not too worried. I've got some scenes. I want to get some more of the mom in there, because she's just such an awful person, and I want to let all the potential entertainment inside of her come out.

I think I'd like to work on the novel I started over Christmas Break, and finish that up, but that's a second priority right now. I think it's going to be a little more difficult for me because it gets so amoral and downright evil in parts that it's tough to write. I know it's just characters and I'm writing it to make a point, but I still get uncomfortable. I guess I'll have to shove my morals aside a little on that one, at least for the time it takes to get it written. Honestly Drew, how are you supposed to write about breaking all the commandments if you can't even stomach a little parent dishonoring?

I'd like to work more on my children's novel, too, although since I haven't read children's novels since I was a child I think that might be the source of my problems. So that one will be the third priority. I've also done quite a lot in that one, so I think I could make some reasonable progress and get it done in the foreseeable future.

I'm also facing the problem of getting published. I need to find a way to break in and build up my folio.

I'm also going to take a trip. I don't know where yet, but I think I'll visit a lot of the places I wrote about in the first book, to try to add that extra touch of realism.

But first i need to finish up college for the semester. Not so far away now--only two weeks of actual school and then some exams. I'm happy to report that I'm keeping abreast of the things that need to be done with school, so panic hasn't been able to find a foothold as of yet.

And, you know, once in a while I may even find time to write this blog. Of course, if I was successful at writing, I'd probably be writing a lot more in it, since its original purpose was to show the status of getting my first book published.