Ok, so I got this cherry thing dropped in my lap which basically meant I would have had to sacrifice my writing life.

I prayed about it a lot, and while it looked like a done deal, it fell through. There is a part of me that is relieved.

Then again, there is a part of me that is pure disappointment. Or at least, was…

Thing is, Commoner Days is something I’ve been writing forever, but it’s my 2nd attempt at a novel. (My first attempt was when I was young & stupid, and far more concerned with living and visiting cool places, and didn’t have a computer, and didn’t know that you could spend WEEKS on end editing one page and hold up your novel.)

Commoner Days was conceived during my first pregnancy and written over a year later in a NANOWRIMO 2003 (yes, you heard me).  I dropped it like a hot potato when I was done because I was terrified.

Do you hear me? Terrified.  Of what? The usual.  Failure. Success. Commitment.   Putting myself on the written page for the world to see.  You get the picture.

It kept growing as a story in my mind, blossoming, taking on politics during those awful Bush years, and religion during my awful God-struggles, mother-daughter issues as I lost my mom and gained 2 daughters.  I picked it up, edited a bit, put it down.

Then in November, 2008, I got serious. I picked up Create A Culture Clinic, by Holly Lisle and set to world-building. Mind you, I was terrified of this task, but Holly’s book was a great help. After that, I needed to get serious about editing, not the junky stuff I had done in the intervening 5 years (which was barely anything).  First, I read both How To Write Page-Turning Scenes and the very awesome The First Five Pages: A Writer’s Guide to Staying Out of the Rejection Pile, then I printed out all 264 pages and got to work editing by hand.  I tried to make page deadlines (as in, 5 per day), but that was just discouraging.

I’m down to the next edit and it’s getting better. But let me tell you that as I was shaping up those first 50 pages for submission to the contest I mentioned, I realized how much it lacked.  The religion and politics of the backstory got a hell of a lot more interesting, but it just wasn’t in the story.  I’ve grown in a year of editing and writing/not writing, blogging - personally and professionally. I’ve been reading a lot, with an internal eye on what works and what fails (stunningly and frequently, even on popular books).  Perfect books exist, but they are few and far apart. My God, so much can go wrong (see “First 5 pages”), without the author even realizing.

So I was ready to throw in the towel. Why couldn’t I want to do something easy with my life, like civil engineering  or become an abstract mathematical theoreticist?  (Yea, I’d do that last one. Stopped reading P&W when they wrote an article about a guy who’s both that AND a prolific literary novelist. Sheesh.)

But writing a novel is all kinds of difficult. It’s easy, for me, to keep the balls that you need to juggle in the air for a short story (in terms of being literary, economical and profound), but over the long haul of a novel it is damn hard.

I needed advice and direction. Maybe I should dump this kind of writing and focus on a different format, or plunge deeply truly into web design, maybe with the right kind of job.

Enter a 2nd cousin on Facebook, who said all kinds of wonderful glowing things about my blog.  And while that is a different format of writing, it gave me the encouragement to continue.  After all, if I can blog (and I quote) with a  “writing/style …like a box of really good popcorn…you just can’t put it down until its finished”, then why the hell can’t I write fiction like that?

The answer is, I can with a lot of hard work. Somewhere along the way I got it that my gift would come easy. And some of it does, but not all of it.  I was reading something recently (again), ok, actually a few things I was reading, and I realized I was already better than these published folks.  I’ve got my ready-made audience too, but I do really have to blood-sweat-and-tears this. This is how great artists are made. And make no mistake, that is what I desire from my writing, not just entertainment, but great art. The writers I love are great artists: Jane Austen, Iris Murdoch, Harper Lee, Connie Willis, Barbara Kingsolver (gee, and they’re all women, look at that!)

As a result, I’ve decided at this point in time to lay “Commoner Days” to rest.  I’ve completed it through a number of edits and have submitted it to a contest and a critique.  I’ll make my bones there, because I already know how brutal the critique will (and should) be.  More or less, I have seen the project through as I’d like to, and I’m probably 100 or 200 thousand words on my way to one million.  (You know that saying, right? It takes a million words to get prolific as a writer?)

I have a few things I need to decided between: fic or non-fic, and if it’s fic, then the period-historical-literary romance or the time travel romance?  A survey may help. How do I decide? Good question, answers welcome!

Well, I coughed up some bucks and submitted “Commoner Days”, the 50 pages anyway, to Word Hustler’s Literary Storm Contest and even added some extra for a critique. Good grief!  This is a big big deal for me.  So, what are you going to do with your writing in 2010 that involves jumping into the fray? Share!

(Note the contest is for all genres and deadline is now extended to February 26th, 2010. Go for it!)

 Yesterday in the shower, it was plain as day that my high fantasy WIP has to be YA.  The main character is, after all, 17, so what was I thinking?  This has some benefits:

• YA is 75,000 words, unlike the typical 110K or so for standard fantasy.  I’ve been just over 60K the whole length of this process, so I can maybe actually write a novel in a salable size.
• This makes a great way for me to approach the mother-daughter tension in the book which I’ve been struggling with, since it seemed to come out of nowhere.  Positioning as YA makes me consider a different audience, and breaking up with mom is right in there with teen angst.

There are some bad sides:

• As you know, I know nothing about fantasy. Turns out I know FAR LESS about YA.  sigh…

The next novel I’m writing may not be an historical romance, or I may go for broke and do 2 at the same time.  For now, I’m wiped out and need to get to my 5 minutes of editing…

It’s about editing (or writing) when you don’t have time:

Five Minute Editing

Well, I feel terrible that I haven’t updated this blog, nor upgraded, nor redesigned.  If ANYONE is still reading, here’s what you  need to know:

I’M WRITING

Yes, truly, only 5 minutes a night and that leads into much, much more. Thought I was doing NANOWRIMO but I’m so deep in now, I feel silly to start my next novel.  Maybe I’ll do it on my own in the spring. But “Commoner Days” is coming along, at last! I have to find  a good system for remembering all the threads. If I had a Mac, I’d had Scrivener.  Hm, maybe after I get my Mac, I can start my next novel! Something to shoot for.

That’s it for now, I promise I’ll work on upgrading this week!  Happy writing…

Well, much needs to be done on this blog, but since my laptop crashed, I have not been editing. That was 8/27, but I picked it up last night and it felt GOOOOOOD.

I realize it’s only about 6 weeks to NANOWRIMO, and I have to take some vacation days to make this work, but I will do my best to  make it work.  I doubt I can wrap up editing in 6 weeks and my new novel is percolating in my head, but we’ll see.

FYI, November will make one year I’ve been trying to edit Commoner Days.  We shall see where this lands me. I’m smarter now, and even last night, I can feel my writing has improved in one week.

I owe a debt to the following authors, who’s writing is making mine better:

• Jeannie Ruesch
• Michele Bekemeyer
• Jennifer Hudock

I highly recommend their work, especially if you like novels with steamy romance - apparently, it had to be  handled properly for me to enjoy it!  “Trapping a Duchess” is especially HOT.

I’m buried in work this month, but I’ll be doing my best to keep the writing coming. Namaste!

It’s been entirely too long, but I have a vision for this blog now, inspired from some author sites. So a few updates, first:

1. This will remain a writing blog, but it will also be my book marketing experiment for my novel. Design will reflect
2. My WIP at LONG LONG LAST has a real working title: Commoner Days.  Maybe.
3. Revision round 4 (I think??) is going very very well.
4. That will be followed by WIKI.
5. Started to do a “critical scenes” draft of my romance novel idea. I’ve never worked like this before; should be interesting.  Each scene is denoted by “what reader needs to understand”, to ensure they are all required scenes. Actually going way better than I thought!

That’s it.  I will start to do monthly links again, when some of the projects I’m on now expire. Later…

It occurred to me last night as I labored through a wedding scene in my novel that I am NOT actually revising my novel.  I’m still in the process of writing it.

At a start of 63K words, and perhaps 15+ typed double spaced pages already cut, plus maybe the same amount hand-written added, I’m still 40K shy of high fantasy typical genre.  I have LOTS of subplots I need to work out, I have to change POV, and I have to have a secondary view from the antagonist’s POV.  Arg.

Even some of what I’ve already gone over need more work, much more.

All in all, though, I feel better.  A final edit should not take me 3 months, so it make more sense that it’s still not completely developed.  Plotted, mainly, yes, but supporting characters need more flesh and the protagonist’s journey needs to be longer as well. With all that, I should be able to get to 110K, maybe by the summer.

Sigh. God help me. And I want it to be literary.  Hm, is that suicidal??

I have a confession to make.  The great, awesome, wow-I’m-really-into-it fantasy novel I’m writing?

It’s written in first person.

OK, OK, before you start throwing shoes at me, you have to understand TWO things about me:

1. I LOVE LOVE LOVE books in first person.  Really.  Maybe that’s why I’m so fussy about books, it’s tough to get 1st person right.

2. Somewhere along the way, I was taught that you should ONLY EVER WRITE from one person’s POV.  Ever.  Or you’ll burn in hell, or drown in a soggy slush pile.

Ever.

This is an extraordinarily difficult feat while writing fantasy, by the way.

This week, I started reading George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones
.  It’s really extraordinary how he worldbuilds, just flawless and easy to get without being “simplistic”.  I have in my novel been struggling with the villian.  I’ve given her an amazing backstory that really brings out her dimensionality.  When I write her, though, she’s as flat as a sand dollar (sorry, daughter brought home another fish book from school).

Last night it occured to me this could all be solved with POV and 3rd person perspective.

OH CRAP.

Not only that, but a buncha little “can’t quite figure out how she’d know THAT” of things would be resolved.  You have the stationery court characters, which I’d anchor, probably to her mother, and then you have the exiled jouneying princess.  It could be done.  It would be good.  Hm…  And Firlona would get redeemed as we’d learn EXACTLY why she has so much hatred without the hearsay.

SIGH. today I’m tired just thinking about it…

Ok, it seems every week I’m learning something as I edit my novel and read or watch more SF/F.  Here’s what I learned this week:

1. We saw Babylon A.D., which struggled to be a good movie (ultimately, hubby and I didn’t think it made it, but this is not Film Critique 1010).  As I watched, I realized it was an old plot, I even recalled what movie it mimicked (though I’ve forgotten).  Basically, hardened man rescues young girl and through many trials encountered on a journey, discovers love. (OK I can see a whole buncha guys throwing their BluRays at the screen, but really, that is how it breaks down for a woman).  I realized as I’m watchin Babylon that my plot is similar.  The romantic interest is not a bad guy, but it IS  a journey story- a classic tale where a physical journey develops your protagonist.  It always was meant to be such, but I forgot along the way.  A bit.  It’ll be stronger.  It also needs more action - on their journey, it would be better if they met with foul play (they don’t at this point).

2. Starbucks is a writer’s heaven.  This is another thing I’ve forgotten.  I’ve been finding alone time to edit late at night (with deep exhaustion and zero motivation).  Saturday late morning, I went to Starbucks, which plays the PERFECT soundtrack for me, and sat with my over-sized coffee.  I got more done in an hour, plus I wrote a poem.  Hm, could it be the lack of children underfoot?  (They don’t sleep well, so even at night privacy is rare).

3. I learned that there is a writer’s conference in Allentown, which is a stone’s throw from my house.  In fact there is a pretty promising looking fantasy author teaching there on, of all things, my nemesis, world building.  If Chris gets his job, he agreed I could attend, so let’s all pull for that!

That’s it, and really, that’s enough.  Ok back to work.