How awesome!  This is what happened: I read my Holly Lisle newsletter yesterday, the last one, about how something was missing in her story and nothing she did brought a solution, and then in the shower, randomly, it came to her.

It took FOREVER yesterday to GET to the shower, but while I was there, I thought I might try to figure out a way to make worldbuilding fun, or at least a whole lot less like root canal or labor & delivery.  I begrudgingly built another typed out page, answering questions that I didn’t want to, knowing too well that a book that involves politics, a ruling monarchy and a coup needs to have it’s history, culture and foreign policy worked out.  Argh.

I finally got in the shower, plopped on the shampoo and let my mind wander back to Earth Science, a class I took 10 years ago, and thought about a planet accreting together from the dust in the cosmos.

Don’t ask me HOW, but that did it.  15 minutes later, I’d gotten all the way up to nearly modern times in my country, and even started to form the underpinning theology of the major religion, also critical to the book.  I still have big swatches to go through, like foreign affairs, but I went to bed, opened my notebook and let my world grow.  AWESOME!!

OK, so I have finished my novel - and believe me, it’s a long way from done or even marketable - but I have NOT devoted the time to worldbuilding.  (Can you say ‘character driven’?? lol)  That is a task I’m going to begin today.  I’m unsure where to start, though at FmWriters,  I did find some resources way back when.  I guess my planet is mostly like earth but slightly different and that totally throws me.  Really, the setting needs not to distract from the plot but since the main character is a dethroned princess and the antagonist is the newly installed Queen, and the country is at the end of a civil war, the setting is quite important.  We are dealing with humanoids (there’s a few medical differences) and no fantasy creatures at all, with a highly evolved usage of brain areas (mind control), very advanced medicine, and transportation at a stand still (lack of fuel or fuel delivery due to war, I assume).

Yep, I got a lot of work to do.  And question 2 is, how much time do I spend on this?  Are my original goals worth it?  If it could be sold at all, this is valuable to me since I have a very good sense of the sequels, but this is not my primary genre, so that’s an issue.  Hmmmm….

My first edit of my first complete novel IS DONE!!! Party time!!  Excellent!!

Go ahead, have a drink on me. 

My first question: what now??  I mean, i didn’t really DO the required world building, so I guess that’s next. Right??

I fell off of writing because life got in the way.  Two new clients, on top of my last new one, for starters, and 2 contests - one I want to enter, one I gave one entry and want to enter another.  THREE new full time job prospects, so life IS HOPPING.

But HERE’S where it gets interesting.  Two new clients?  Writers.  One with a writer’s site.  Closest job prospect(15 minutes away) ?  Co-owner is a writer (and mom of two), that is Fiction Writer. Hm…

Life is going in a strange AND good direction, even though I haven’t got enough $$ to pay both my mortgages.  I imagine God is having a good laugh at my expense.

WIP UPDATE:   Took the dive -am doing late-in-story rewrite.  Two key scenes were entirely too medieval UNTIL I turned them into torture-for-information scenes.  VERY today, I’m sad to report.

And I have another novel idea.  Need to remember and jot it down…

Life is good.

Well, I mulled it over and consulted my new online writing group.  Instead of forging ahead and THEN going back and rewriting the scene, I completely thought out the new changes.  Turns out it leads directly to the desired ending very well, better than before, so I probably won’t even really peak at the old pages.

OK, that’s a lie because I’m sure I could use some of it. SIGH.

If you know me, you know I don’t believe in coincidence.  So, the mail that came the other day that I only opened today was a 1 year subscription to Poets & Writers for only $9.95.  I was JUST THINKING of subscribing again, can you say perfect?

Then I got a post about a virtual conference being held Thursday through Sunday on publishing and writing your book.   Now all I have to do is dig up $27 in 2 days…lolololol…  If it’s meant to be it’ll come in, right?

I’m stumped on my novel because of all those changes I discussed last time.  Not sure whether to plow ahead editing to the end or rewrite now.  Augh!

Finally, I just landed a gig that will get me EXPOSURE.  It’s on parenting, but all exposure is good exposure, right?  Moms read fantasy, right?  Wish me luck.

Yea, so I’m 15 pages from the end of editing, when I’m lying bed tonight realizing that something I wrote - 2 critical scenes actually - are shit.  They are medieval in the middle of a plot that’s decidedly NOT.  So I kept mulling it over and over in the shower, and I came up with how to change the scene that makes the rush toward climax almost easy.  At least easier than it is now.

It’s a good way to dispatch a character who needed to be killed, which leads to the death of another, and finally an ultimatum between Do my bidding happily or under duress.   (That’s poor writing I know, but I’ll leave the good writing for my story.)

Still thinking about restructuring the last 30 pages is killing me right now…Arg…

I’m hysterical crying here. I can’t believe the separation scene of my stupid fantasy story could be so painful.

32 more pages to edit. It can’t get any worse, this is the worst scene.

Just needed a break to stop crying so hard, it’s damn hard to write WELL when you’re weeping, but it’s nothing new.

UPDATE: The next few scenes were brutal enough to dry up any tears.  And, oh yea, TWENTY PAGES LEFT TO EDIT, BABY!!

So I’m editing tonight, had to force myself too, and I came to the part of the book where something tragic happens…

And even though I made this decision years ago, wrote in NANOWRIMO in 2003, and have lived with it ever since, the writing … well, I damn near cried.  CAN YOU BELIEVE IT?

This is my one true path, I know it now.  I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with the business I haven’t been able to build lately or how to make writing my business or how to get unstuck out of 2 chairs instead of one, but I know this now.

And it feels DAMN good.  This is the purpose God put me here for.

Amen to that!

OK, so as of now, I have exactly 50 pages to edit in my novel.  If I 10 per night, I can have it done in 5 days.  Let’s make it more reasonable, OK, how about 7 per night, that gives me one week to completion.  Cool!

Meanwhile, today I tossed out at a least a dozen books of morning pages and childish poetry.  Found some decent stuff and kept it: a handful of typed up poems, some notebooks with novel and short story concepts, some inspirational quotes, and a blank pad (woohoo! the writer loves finding paper).  I also came across some very high praise about one of my poems.  (Look for the one called “Slipping“.)

I forgot to mention that within 2 days of last week, I got this line: “pursue your degree” as advice in TWO different books I’m reading, one spiritual, the other about writing.  I don’t believe in coincidences, so I took this as a sign.

In addition, I found out that the closest college to me has a nighttime English degree program, BUT what’s really great is that they have creative writing classes AND something called “novel IS” or something that is a one on one.   Which leads me to believe it’s capstone novel writing seminar (I hope).  Most of the creative writing courses are at night, which is good because the tuition is half the price of the same class in the day (also think of childcare!).  So I’m psyched but I’m broke - no idea when this is going to happen because of money issue, but I have faith.  (Once again, anyway.)

Now I know I don’t NEED the degree, but it is a lifelong dream and I do need to write with accountability.  I hope this works out!

That’s all for now.