So, last week on The Whine Seller I wrote a post called Giving the people what they want even when you no longer understand why they want it. This post centered around a product I was refusing to sell, despite the fact that people still wanted to buy it, because I personally didn’t understand why anyone would want it. It was a post about being stubborn to the point of stupidity and trusting too blindly in your gut feelings over cold hard facts. On missing out on money for no reason other than pig-headedness, if you will.

This post may be the counterpoint to that. 

Last year, I came up with an idea for a Christmas play. It was dark and weird. Two things that aren’t necessarily desirable in a Christmas play, I’ll grant you.

I started to talk it out with friends and family as I do all my new ideas and was surprised to discover that almost everyone had a negative reaction. The best case was “I don’t know about that, Hill…” said while wrinkling their face and some people (including my mother who had some absolute GEMS to say about this idea that I will share with you later) actually tried to talk me out of writing it. It wasn’t that they thought the idea was bad. It was that the subject matter was too dark or weird or crossed some line.

But I liked the idea and I was convinced that all the objections were because people were picturing it one way in their head and that was wasn’t the way I was going to write it. I started to write the play (you’ll have noticed “Holiday Play” was on the list of projects I worked on in 2011 even though I’ve never really talked about it before).

It was terrifying.

Normally, when I start something new, I’ve had at least a few people tell me that my idea “sounds good” or at least indicate that they’d be interested to read it. This time out, I was writing something I knew all of my usual cheerleaders were leery about (there’s a pun in there I’m frankly disappointed in myself for not being able to make). I was writing in this bubble where I was putting words on paper and, instead of thinking about pleasing my ideal reader, I was thinking about fighting against their prejudices about the idea in the first place. It was a very strange and lonely place to be writing from.

Especially since I was writing a comedy. I didn’t just need to win people over. I needed to win them so far over they’d laugh.

Side note: Many people have told me that I’m funny. My bestselling play is a comedy. But I do NOT think I’m funny at all and when I’m trying to be funny on purpose? It’s this hopeless mess of over-thinking everything and convincing myself I’m a total failure. So writing this play was basically this absolute nightmare for me. It mostly involved my shaking my head at words on the screen going, why did I ever think I could be funny?

I knew they only way I’d get through this was to give myself a deadline and so I forced myself to finish the play by last Friday. And I’ll be darned if I didn’t rather like the fool thing now that it was finished. Things came together in ways that felt like someone else set them up and… like everything I write these days… the play is almost a metaphor for itself. It’s weird and dark still, yes, but it also ended up sort of holiday-heart-warming in a strange, what-goes-on-in-the-deep-recesses-of-Hillary’s-twisted-mind kind of way. But I’d thought it was a good idea from the start so my opinion didn’t really matter… what would readers say?

My husband is always my first reader because I talk out so much of anything I write to him that he’s usually the one with the closest perspective on what I’m trying to do. But I’d been so weird about this play when I was writing it, I’d told him almost nothing about this one. He was also one of the many who didn’t think this play was the greatest idea.

He didn’t want to read it. Usually, I send him something and it’s read before I come downstairs to tell him he doesn’t have to rush and read it right away. I finally had to beg him on Monday to read it because I wanted to send it to beta readers before the end of this week. He was in a terrible mood and was nagged into reading it so I was dreading his response. I called my godmom and talked about books for a while to distract myself while he read it.

I went back into the kitchen to hang up the phone. Husband turned from his computer and said, “I’m almost done, one second.” But he was smiling. This massive smile. This would seem more impressive if you’d see the horrifying bad mood he’d been in before. But he was downright cheery all of the sudden.

So I go upstairs to basically do the maternity ward waiting room pace because how am I supposed to concentrate on anything now? Clearly the play was not terrible. Or was it so terrible he was laughing at how bad it was?

He loved it. Usually I get a “It’s good, but…” after a first read but he actually gushed about it and told me he wanted to see it on stage so badly no less than three times. I was totally thrown by this response.

I’d been expecting him to tell me it was a mess, to hate it. I’d forced him to read it when I did because I’d expected to do at least a week of edits before I sent it to readers. He had literally one line he had a problem with… we worked on it and I started digging up beta readers that night. I wrote the play in such a bubble that my perspective on it is so horribly muddled, I’m wasn’t even sure I should believe him. Granted, he’s my husband, he’s never going to tell me something sucks but he’s also a pretty critical reader. If it was as terrible as it seemed in my head, he would have said so.

So, I sent out an open call to my friends to get some beta readers and am getting responses back. And while I’m waiting to hear what a few more people say, one thing seems to be abundantly clear: I was right to follow my gut and write this play even though everyone else said nay. I was, as I suspected, onto something.

But there’s still one more hurdle. The person with the most objections to it from the start hasn’t read it yet. So I’ll be waiting in tense anticipation until I hear what my mother has to say.

The lesson here? Sometimes being stubborn when it’s something you believe in can pay off in the end.

Have you ever stuck with your gut to good results?

I’ve mentioned the project affectionately called Asplode many times now but I’ve never really told you anything about it. In fact, the #1 most asked question I got throughout both this and last year’s NaNoWriMo was, “No, seriously, what’s your book about?” because I could never give a good answer. So, to anyone who’s curious what this project is about, I’m going to try to explain. This could be long.

You’re going to find it funny that I rarely talk about this book on the blog after you read this because it’s an overwhelming majority of the writing I’ve done this year and pretty much all I think about. You see, guys… this book is the bane of my existence. I’m hoping to help you understand why by giving you a little history. 

When I was in middle school, I wrote a book that we’ll call Proto-Asplode. It was a mystery with a romance… and ghosts. Also, like many things one writes when one is a teen, it was terrible. But while I decided that I was no longer interested in writing that book, I was somewhat enamored with the unabashed teenage-ness to the story. It was, appropriately enough, exactly the sort of book that a teen would write. There was something so stereo-typically cheesy about this book as “indulgent teenage angst writing” that I found myself still drawn to it.

In the meantime, I was thinking about a very loose idea for NaNo 2010 about a mystery in which a viral marketing campaign goes horribly awry when these two trains of thought collided. What if the viral marketing campaign that goes awry is a teen doing marketing for a book she wrote and self-published? And, of course, the book that she’s written is good ole Proto-Asplode. There’s a lot more to this story then just that (which is part of why I’m having so much trouble with it) but this is what I started out with.

I was so busy leading up to NaNo 2010 with it being my first year as an ML and the worst of the issues with my hands that I did no outlining of this idea whatsoever. I figured I’d be OK for two reasons: 1) I already knew at least part of the story from the book I’d written as a teen and 2) thousands of people “pants” (write by the seat of their pants) NaNoWriMo every year and it works out just fine. So, even though I am usually a plotter (aka I plan stuff out ahead of time) I decided to see how the other half lives and try to write this story with no plan.

I also decided to write the book in first person. Full discolsure: I really don’t like books in the first person. But I was writing this book entirely with the Dragon NaturallySpeaking dictation program so I thought that first person would make it easier for talking it out. So, not only was I trying to write a book with no plan, I was trying to write it from a perspective I don’t really care for. I mention this because I’m trying to figure out where I went so horribly wrong with this project.

I wrote the book. As advertised, the characters moved the story along in their own way and the story went some surprising places even without a plan. All sorts of rich and interesting things happened I didn’t expect. But I finished the book with an ending that felt satisfying without ever having revealed whodunit which made me question if this book was meant to be a mystery at all. Even as I was writing it I began to suspect this book wasn’t about what I thought it was about. I was frustrated because I’d ended the month with a draft that wasn’t really anything and I didn’t know where to go next.

So I let it sit. In that time, I thought about it a ton while I was doing final edits on both Three Oranges and Mistress Novel. After 6 months, I thought I had it. I came up with a real honest to God working title (instead of the silly Asplode that I was calling it as a joke) and sat down and wrote  the book over again entirely from scratch. What I’d concluded in that 6 month interval was that the characters and setting were really solid and strong… it was just the plot that didn’t work. So Asplode 2.0 was the same characters in a completely different plot. Parts of it worked great and I was really excited about the new version. I really thought I could be ready to query it by the end of 2011.

As we edged closer to NaNoWriMo 2011, I realized the new plot wasn’t working any better than the original. Things hardcore fell apart. (To put this in perspective, my new working title was about a season… that the book no longer took place in.) I had intended to use NaNoWriMo to just finish the book but I was sitting there in October outlining an entirely new plot. Asplode 3.0 was to be an entirely new story using the same characters. I went through two other working titles I thought were it before I just gave up and went back to calling it Asplode.

To my surprise, as I started writing during NaNo 2011, scenes from Asplodes 2.0 and 1.0 kept finding their way into the story even though the plot was entirely different in this version. Surely this meant I was onto something, no? But while I actually managed to write a version of the story that makes sense from start to finish, it still isn’t really working. I resolved to let it sit again and see what developed. Then a few nights ago, I had what felt like an epiphany and spend many hours outlining what would be Asplode 4.0 (8 pages, this outline was, written in the middle of the night like a crazy person) but, while it’s better, it’s still not quite it. It’s getting better though. I think.

See, I’m having trouble figuring out what goes into this book and what doesn’t. I’ve cut and re-added scenes so many times I genuinely have no idea what should be in the book at all anymore. I’m a “nothing is sacred” editor and I’d be happy to cut stuff… but I don’t know which things to cut. I’ve cut different core elements in each of the three drafts and realized I needed each of them as I wrote. Every time I think I’ve got it figured out, instead I’ve just found another way that won’t work.

I’m getting frustrated. Because if the story wasn’t working at all, I would know to just walk away. But parts work VERY well and I suspect it’s some of the best stuff I’ve ever written. And I think the fact that I can’t stop working on this book means there’s something to it, even if I don’t know what that is yet. I’ve had that feeling of being THIS CLOSE to having it right for a year+ now.

I’ve written many things in my life all the way to the end. With every story, play, novel, or even blog post I’ve seen the problems and have been able to eventually work through them to something I’m satisfied with. I’ve never had a project like this before. I can’t figure out how the heck to fix it. I don’t know what story these characters belong in. I have never more genuinely felt like I have no idea what I’m doing.

I know they say that the experience of writing every book is different but I have, basically, written this book completely over from nothing but the characters three full times now. Four if you count Proto-Asplode. Shouldn’t I know what it’s about by now?

This post may seem a little doom and gloom but, rest assured, I’m still writing. I’m still letting the 2011 draft of Asplode 3.0 sit even if I’m jotting down notes about future drafts as they come to me. I’m also still working on my (too many) other works in progress in the meantime. I’m not taking time away from projects that are working to poke at Asplode. But this project is consuming a lot of my thoughts because it bothers me that I can’t figure out how to fix it and I wanted to give you an understanding of where my mind is with this.

I hate this book. Though, clearly, not enough to stop writing it…

Any advice?

Over the summer, I took a playwriting class. One week, for our assignment, I handed in a scene from The Muppet Play which happens to take place in a subway car. The instructor praised this scene as being an unusual setting, one you didn’t often see in plays, which made me insanely self-conscious. Not because I can’t take praise but instead because…

I realized as he said it that have never written a play for adults that DOESN’T have at least one scene that takes place in a subway. In fact, the entire play of Daddy Issues takes play on a subway platform. There even was a subway scene in TheLibrary before I self-consciously cut it out after noticing my apparent obsession with subways on stage.

Why am I seemingly incapable of not writing subways into my adult stage plays? OK, I did work in New York for many years and commute via subway every day but I also took a bus everyday and I haven’t had the urge to add buses into any of my plays.

Then I noticed something else… The two short stories for adults I’ve outlined recently? Both have subways, one featuring subway cars in a very major role.

But of all the YA novels, short stories and plays I have in various states of finished… there is only one subway and it’s really more of an underground train station, not NYC type subway like the others. My YA is mostly subway free, even the ones that take place in cities.

What the heck? What is going on in my subconscious that content for adults = subways. Is it because I commuted via subway for my first real adult job and I associate it with being an adult? Is it some NYC centric world view that everyone commutes to work via subway train? Is it symbolic of my relationship with rats? What?

I give you permission to psychoanalyze what is going on in my mind here with the subway obsession. Have you ever noticed an unintentional theme in your writing?

Oh, and today is the last day to grab a free copy of Daddy Issues (aka the subway play to end all subway plays) if you haven’t already. You’ve only got until midnight PST so get on that before the train leaves the station, if you will.

Last year, I took an in depth look into my writing habits (see Looking back on past writing goals and tweaking them for the future) and, without repeating myself, I think my tweaks were good. I passed 400,000 words for the year late on 12/30 which was later than I’d hoped to but still pretty good. Though I struggled to meet it this year, I’m going to keep the 500,000 word goal for next year for two reasons:

1. I really was only 100k off from meeting it this year which is close enough to make me want to shoot for it again
2. Adding 100k to what I actually wrote this year seems a good amount to keep pushing myself
3. Even if I don’t hit it, it will push me to write more while trying to reach it like it did this year
4. There’s a random extra bonus day this year because of the leap year!

I was a bit more OCD about keeping track of my writing progress this year with not only a chart that details what percentage of my writing time was spent on which project but also how my daily writing habits stacked up. One thing that becomes immediately obvious is that not writing in February while in vacation did some serious damage. Another thing I thought was amusing was that, for all my yammering on about “Where there’s a will, there’s a May!” like a dork, May came second only to November when it came to total words written. The lesson here is that, when I motivate myself with silly challenges (even ones I made up for my own amusement) I really do get more writing done.

I’m very pleased with what I accomplished last year and I got to cross several big projects off the list. But, at the same time, I’m frustrated by the things I didn’t get a chance to finish. I need to figure out how to modify my goals next year so include not just word volume but something to direct me to finish specific projects by deadlines. This will involve planning. Much planning.

I also think it odd how, while 400,000 is a ton of words, looking back on it, it doesn’t seem like enough. I guess that’s just part of driving yourself… you never really feel satisfied which is what makes you keep going, but the sensation is oddly unsatisfying. I feel like I should have done so much more.

Let me show you how 2011 shaped up in stats:

• I wrote a total of 400,248 in 2011. That’s 99,752 shy of my 500,000 word goal
• I averaged 804 words a day in straight writing or rewriting and 18 minutes a day of editing. Averaging editing into the word count, I wrote 1,097 words a day. Over double what I wrote last year, though, so I’m quite pleased about that.
• Of the writing I did, 73% was new writing while 27% was editing. Not a terrible breakdown.

As I was writing those stats out, I noticed something. My secondary goal had been to average about 1,000 words a day and 30 minutes of editing a day. What I didn’t realize until right now is that… that would have been much more than 500,000 words for the year. In fact, a more realistic goal for 1,000 words a day of new writing would have been 15 minutes a day… which I passed for editing and nearly hit for writing. The lesson here is that even an insane writing stats keeper like myself can lose sight of the realism of my goals.

What does that 400k plus represent? Let me break it down for you. (Not familiar with my project nicknames?)

Some of these works in progress I’ve never even mentioned here before so don’t be confused if they aren’t on the projects list yet. I always have more than a few irons in the fire at once. But the fact that Mistress Novel and Asplode were tied on how much I worked on them this year? That seems insane to me since one is a polished finished project and the other is a wreck beyond all reason. And if you’d asked me which play was taking up more of my time this year, I would have told you it was The Muppet Play and yet… in reality TheLibrary got much more attention. This makes me wish I’d been keeping stats like this all along because it’s very telling and shows a fascinating breakdown of how I spent my writing time this year.

Speaking of my writing time, take a look at this:

It’s a little hard to see that little but fee free to click it to make it bigger. The yellow line represents where I’d need to be to hit my 500k goal while the orange line is 1000 words a day. Slow and steady is still not my style but there is much less binge writing followed by dry periods. And while there are some serious dips, I stay mostly in the middle of the two lines.

Overall, things keep moving up and onward which seems like a good thing because it means I’ve improved my writing habits.

I’m almost embarrassed to show you this next chart…

How pathetic is Feb? Sept, Oct and Dec aren’t helping either. But the lesson I take away from this is that I need to plan better next year. Obviously some months are much busier than others… I need to stockpile words over the summer to be able to stay on pace through the busy fall. Make no mistake, if Nov wasn’t NaNoWriMo, it would have been just as small as its neighbors. The good thing about this chart is that at least now I know where I get myself in trouble and can work around that.

So that was my 2011. And as satisfying as it is to look back over what I accomplished this year, the reality of the situation is that, as of midnight last night, all that matters was this picture of my 2012 writing progress:

Oh brother… I better get to work…

“I can’t wait to not be writing this book anymore.” -Me, to my husband yesterday

I spent so much time this month being a good little ML and writing articles about NaNoWriMo that I didn’t actually write a single post about my own personal NaNo journey which is odd. Usually I can’t shut up about how my novel is going and I bombard you with little potato updates all month but I guess it’s a testament to how freaking busy I was that I never had the chance. This month zooooomed by so fast, it’s insane.

If you’ve been watching the little widget at the top of the blog, you know that I passed 50,000 words on Sunday, November 27th. But keeping in mind my firm belief in finishing the novel not just hitting 50k, I still powered through the last four chapters finally finishing the book tonight in our area’s online write-in. Now, my novel is actually MUCH longer than the just shy of 55,000 words I finished the month out with both because I started early and for other reasons I’ll cover in another post so my feelings at the end of this NaNo are mixed.

The actual event itself was great. I have a wonderful area and I can’t stress enough how awesome they are. We had great turn out at events, lots of wonderful people who volunteered to head up events while I was unavailable or out of town, and we have several wonderful library partners who kindly and enthusiastically let us have events there and helped publicize the whole movement. Having such a great group of people to support you and write with is invaluable and they really made this a wonderful experience.

But it is, obviously, a ton of work being an ML for a huge event like this (especially such a large area) and I am completely wiped out. So many days this month I ended up having to rush or stay up late to finish real work because I used up so much of the day doing NaNoWriMo things unrelated to writing my novel. It was all worth it but, at the same time, I’m going to be really glad to get my life back. I’ve had sort of a “Can’t Deal with this Now, Save it for After NaNoWriMo” philosophy about everything so that things have piled up both figurative and literally (my office and desk… I actually have 30 different To Do lists in various states of completion that I need to combine into one tomorrow).

And, at the same time, for all the stress and madness, there is something really sad about the end of NaNoWriMo. Because it’s fun in a weird insane kind of way and there is this total Post-NaNoWriMo Letdown Syndrome once it’s over that I can’t quite explain if you haven’t been there. Add to it the massive thrill of winning and finishing a novel and then the creeping dread as you realize that you’ll have to actually edit that monstrosity sometime in the future. It’s a bit of an emotional roller coaster.

I think that was the single hardest thing about NaNoWriMo for me this year. 2011 was the year of the edits for me, I edited a novel, an ebook, a non-fiction book and four plays and that’s just the big stuff in the last 12 months and it has changed the way I think. I had trouble doing my usual wild writing with literary abandon because my inner editor was stronger than ever before. I spent almost every writing second of 2011 polishing and trimming the fat… I found it suddenly hard to shut that off and just write with the usual first draft freedom I used to have. I could not have finished were it not for Write or Die and I need to write a full review of soon because it was an absolute godsend this year. Was writing with an over-enthusiastic inner editor nipping at my heels harder then writing the whole novel with a dictation program like I did last year? I’m honestly not sure.

Let’s look at my stats from the site:

There was one day I forgot to update until after midnight but, other than that, I was pretty consistent about updating every single day so this is pretty accurate. I wrote an average of 1,816 words a day which is higher than the recommended 1,667 so that’s pretty cool. I think it’s also funny to look at the jump around the 17th when it’s clear I got my second wind. Not gonna lie, just looking at this chart makes me exhausted all over again.

But remember last year’s lament about binge writing? I actually wrote almost every single day this November and didn’t have a single 10k day. It was more of a slow and steady wins the race kind of thing instead of lots of little burst of speed which I think is better in the long run.

As for the book itself, well, we need to discuss that at length so that’s a post for another time. For now, I shall bask in another NaNo well done. I’m not quite done yet… I have to write a pep talk and two more emails for my region and then there’s one more event to run next week but the work load definitely lightens from this point on.

But does the word load lessen? Helped by NaNoWriMo, November was my biggest word count month all year. I’ve written 379,329 words so far this year. My original goal for the year was 500,000 words which would mean an additional 120K to write in December. If I down that to the slightly less insane goal of 400,000 for the year, I have only 20K ish left to write. Either way, as much as I would like to take a long break from writing, it’s not going to happen anytime soon.

So that, my friends, is how NaNoWriMo 2011 went down for me. How about you?

So, for posterity, we had a freakish out of season snowstorm on October 29th. Because there were still leaves on the trees, the snow pulled down many, many branches and whole trees. If you aren’t in the area, it’s really hard to explain just how massive the damage was and how, over a week later, it’s still not even really cleaned up. It’s like, it’s just snow, what’s the big deal, right? Many areas look like a tornado ripped through. Trees are snapped in half, big branches down everywhere, whole trees have fallen into the road and… just left there. Driving in some areas is… interesting.

But many trees down meant many power lines down. We lost power between 3 and 4 PM on Saturday, October 29th. We didn’t get it back until the evening of November 3rd. Our neighborhood of 400 homes was completely dark for 5 days. It was very freaky looking. (What deity has it out for Denville, man? Our poor downtown was completely trashed by the Hurricane Irene flood and this time we were the top town in NJ with number of houses without power.)

We were very lucky that our house has gas so we had hot water, use of our gas fireplace and could cook using our gas stove so we definitely were better off than many but it was still very annoying (and COLD). We were also very lucky that my parents, who live nearby, got power back on Sunday so we temporarily moved in with them starting Monday night (though we kept coming back to the house for a few hours each day out of the deluded hope the power would come back). I know the crews worked very hard to get everyone’s power back and I also know that many houses, including some friends, didn’t get their power back until even later than us so I have no complaints re: the crews and power companies.

One complaint I do have, though, is directed towards the news. Because we get the New York news stations in NJ, all the weather reports were like, “We may get a little snow tomorrow, tee hee!” when they should have been like, “Holy crap, total tree devastation, expect a week without power.” I guess if you live in NY, it was just Tee Hee Snow which was all they cared about but, living in NJ or CT, it would have been nice to have had a heads up of just how bad the situation was going to be. Maybe we are just dumb but it didn’t occur to most of us that Trees + Leaves still on the trees + Snow = Huge mess and I can’t help but feel like the news should have pointed this out. They said snow, we were thinking about normal snow storms past when really we had no idea what we’d be dealing with. There’s a big difference between the news saying, “You may lose power.” and “You WILL more than likely lose power and the power will be out for up to a week in many areas.” When you’ve never had power out for more than 12 hours before in your life, you’re not expecting a simple snowstorm to knock out your power for 124 hours.  That was the #1 complaint I kept hearing from people in person and on the news: some freaking warning would have been nice.

The biggest casualty was the contents of our refrigerator though we were able to keep more food than most because I filled every Tupperware-like container in our house with snow and shoved it in the fridge and freezer. This actually worked pretty well. What can I say, I’m a smart cookie.

Anyway, we were very lucky all things considered so it was just a minor inconvenience for us. I just figured I should write up some notes about this while it was somewhat fresh in my mind.

One thing that was a little funny was how it affected my NaNoWriMo area. We had an online kick-off party for Northeast NJ and almost everyone there was like, “I’m at a hotel,” “I’m at my friend’s house,” or “I’m at my parents,” because many had no power and were mooching off someone else. We were like writer refugees huddled anywhere there was power so we could write our novels like the freaks we are. In a silly little way, I found that heartwarming.

The outage was good for one thing, though. Without access to 90% of what I need to do my day job, I really couldn’t do much else during the day but write so I got ahead on NaNo in the beginning. Of course, I squandered my early lead once the power came back and I had to do a week’s worth of real work in a day but what can you do? Also? It was a nice little reminder not to take things like electricity for granted.

Oh, and there is absolutely no place like home!

Anyway, were you effected by the October snow?

Related articles

• N.J. residents blindsided by fall snowstorm regroup among downed trees and widespread power outages (nj.com)

It’s been almost a month since my last works in progress update! I can’t believe September is almost over, you guys. This is insanity.

I thought to schedule posts for while I was away in FL for eBay On Location but then while I was back home but really busy catching up? Nothing. Sorry about that!

I’m almost embarrassed to give you this word count update. This month has flew by and I haven’t had a lot of time to write. Let’s do the potato right up front to get it over with.

I’ve only added about 19,000 words since my last check in a month ago. I’m still not at 300,000. I’ve written only 4,738 words in September and the month ends in a week. Eeeeep!

My class is over now and I plan to write up a comprehensive review of it on the blog in the near future. As for the plays themselves, I need to be able to get some actor friends together for a reading before I can do much more with them and since there is no way in heck I’ll have time to do that before the holidays so the plays are temporarily on the back burner.

Not on the back burner? Asplode! With Mistress Novel out floating around agent and publisher land, I wanted to focus on getting another novel ready to shop. My hope is to be able to finish editing Asplode to give to beta readers in early winter, say February. I voice this goal with some trepidation: Asplode is a MESS. It is a much rougher draft then Mistress Novel was at this point so there is more work to be done. That said, I feel like I learned a ton from editing Mistress Novel so my hope is that the process will be a little easier this time out.

I know. I may eat these words later. But for now? Hope!

Which brings us to the ever closer November and it’s NaNoWriMo and how it fits into this plan. Don’t tell anyone, but I’m going to cheat this year. I’m going to write up until day one of NaNo and then only count the words written in November towards my 50,000. The official rules of NaNo say you have to only start the project on the first but I have much too much writing to do between now and the end of the year to wait. This is actually what I did with Mistress Novel which was part of the reason it was as polished as it was come editing time so I’m hoping to recapture that magic.

Which brings us to the title of this post. As of right now, I plan to write Asplode for my 2011 NaNoWriMo project. Yes, that was last year’s project but I tried to “pants” it and discovered that I am so not a pantser (plotter 4 life, yo!). I also wrote it with the dictation program which made for some very messy sections. I’ve spent a year outlining and figuring the story out and now I want to rewrite it from scratch between now and the end of the year. Since this will be much more of a total rewrite then an edit, it feels like a good fit for NaNoWriMo.

And if by some miracle I finish early? I’ve outlined the new plot for Wife Novel just in case. Either way, I will be writing at least 50,000 novel words in November.

Oh and Asplode no longer contains an explosion. And has a real title. I’m keeping its nickname the same, however, so I don’t confuse the heck out of you. Though I am confusing the heck out of myself.

In many ways I still feel like I’m playing catch up from eBayOL but things are definitely better this week then last week when I was sick and hated everyone and everything so it’s progress of a sort. But, boy, do I wish there was more of September left. The whole Wedding Anniversary > 5 family birthdays in a row (including my own) > Halloween > NaNoWriMo > Thanksgiving > Christmas while I try to survive the biggest retail season of the year thing kicks my butt Every. Single. Year. I always feel like October through New Years Day is complete insanity and knowing there’s a week before that starts makes me feel like the starting pistol is about to go off while I’m not even in the locker room yet.

Was that a sports metaphor? Man, I should really go to bed…

But I WILL hit 300,000 before this month is over, darn it!

Guys… I’ve missed you! I feel like the proper blog posts are me giving a lecture and these kind of blog posts are just sitting down for a nice chat. I feel like I haven’t had a moment of calm in weeks though my brother did visit and few weeks ago and it was very nice to get to spend some time with him.

So, where am I with my various projects? Well, to start with, I’m taking a class on Playwrighting this summer. It’s *much* more work then I anticipated. Every week there is homework (which is often the kind of writing that, while short, is very difficult and takes a while), a reading and then you have to join in the discussion of the reading AND read and critique the work of 2 to 3 other people. This is every single week. From July through Sept. Not to mention that I had to hand in my own 20 page play submission twice over the course of the class (my second submission was last week so that, at least, is finished). Writing and editing like a madwoman amidst all the other things I have to do. 

My goal in taking this class was to polish up The Muppet Play with the help of teacher and critique group. I did get a ton of editing and work done on it but we’re limited in what we can hand in for class so I didn’t get feedback on as much of it as I would have liked. But the feedback I got on the parts I did share were very good so it seems like I am, indeed, onto something.

I didn’t intend to bust out The Library (which was my 2011 Screnzy play) for this class because it’s a train wreck. However, once we got started, there were some assignments that just didn’t fit The Muppet Play so I decided to start polishing pieces of The Library instead for those assignments. I feel like I’ve made some serious headway on this play but it’s still a real disaster in some ways. I did so much work that I ended up handing this in as my second submission instead of more of The Muppet Play. I’m getting better feedback then I would have thought considering what a mess I still think this play is.

Both of these plays are things I suspect I’m not a good enough writer to pull off. They are subtle and deep and… I’m not sure I can pull it off. Of course, this won’t stop me from trying!

Then, because this is how these things seem to work, I started two new plays. Both a comedies to counteract the fact that the other two are dramas. I’ve got over half of the one written and I just outlined the other. I’m excited about both of them so we’ll see what happens there. I’ll have to give them code names in a future post.

So, in the meantime, I signed up for the August session of Camp NaNoWriMo. I really wanted to hit 50k this month and I figured with all the extra writing and editing I was doing for the class, it would be possible. I’m currently at just over 20,000 words for the month. I’m not giving up but… I’m kinda behind. And burnt out. BUT today was a very big word day so we’ll see.

I’m knee deep in a non-fiction project I *have* to finish soon so there’s that. Also, I’ve been working on Wife Novel again sporadically while I try to figure out how to fix that.

Then I decided that I must finish Mistress Novel 2 and have it ready for Beta readers by February at the latest. Which means I really need to be working my butt off on it now so I’ll have time to finish it with all the NaNoWriMo/Holiday chaos the autumn brings. I actually compiled all my separate files of scenes and chapter into a master draft today AND wrote up a definitive outline of the whole book to work with as I edit/rewrite. Progress!

The good news is that I have the whole book solid in my head with no gaping plot holes and scenes are easier to write then in any other WIP because I already know the characters so well. The bad news is that I wrote most of this draft before I was finished editing the first one. So many things have since changed so I can use very little of my original draft. Also, what I thought was the end is really only the middle of the book so… much writing to be done. February may be impossible but I’m getting some good work done on it when I have time to write so we’ll see what happens. But it’ll be more less editing, more writing then I originally thought.

The other thing I’m frantically trying to finish is the project known as Asplode. I recently had a brain wave about Asplode and rewrote the whole beginning. The most exciting part of this was that I actually figured out what the book was about and it got an actual real title. The less exciting part is that there are still huge parts that make no sense. Also, this book is VERY different from Mistress Novel so it’s hard to work on them both at the same time without them just sounding like each other. I’m hoping these voice issues will buff out in editing when I’m concentrating on one book at a time.

I may be a NaNoWriMo rebel this year and use the Nov NaNo to finish both of those projects.

In an ideal world, I’d finish Asplode, give that to Beta readers and then only work on Mistress Novel 2 once I’d sold Mistress Novel 1. But we don’t live in an ideal world and since MN2 is closer to done, I’m going to just keep on working on both of them at once. Well, all four at once since I’d really like to give both The Library and The Muppet Play to beta readers before the year is up as well.

Guys… it’s official. I have too many works in progress. And these are only the ones on second draft and beyond. There are several more in a proto-state.

Anyway, progress is being made on a wide variety of things! I’m very close to finishing several projects, the hardest part is deciding what to work on first.

As for the year, where are we?

Past halfway! God, I’m tired…

Until next month!

As soon as I got my author copies of The Love of Three Oranges, I gave a copy to my parents. From that day in May until a few days ago, that copy has sat on their coffee table.

A few days ago, they had straightened up and finally moved it to the bookshelf.

Then, on Saturday, I brought them their copy of Daddy Issues. Later, I noticed they had put it on the coffee table in the exact same spot that Three Oranges had vacated. I fully expect it to stay there for a while.

Weirdly, I’m finding this inspirational. If I can somehow keep releasing books at a rate that exceeds the frequency that my parents tidy up, I can ensure that one of my books is always on their coffee table.

It’s something to shoot for, anyway.

It occurred to me yesterday when I was publicizing the fact that I was going to be on eBay Radio again on Twitter, Facebook and The Whine Seller that I never post things like that here and that’s probably stupid of me. I guess my logic is that I’ll obviously just be talking about eBay and if you cared about what I have to say about eBay you’d be reading The Whine Seller but I should probably still cross post. How do you feel about it? If I’m doing some kind of internet radio, podcast or guest blog appearance that has nothing to do with writing, should I also mention it here? Understand that, no matter what blog I post it in, it will still show up after the fact in the weekly digests posts.

Anyway, today I rewrote the first chapter of Mistress Novel for what is easily the 500th time. At this point it’s like this:

• write a word
• stare at the word for 20 minutes
• delete the word again
• stare at that for 20 minutes
• delete entire paragraph
• weep

It’s productive… I guess.

I’m embarrassingly behind on the yearly word count but I’m zen about it. I’ve got so much on my plate right now that as long as I’m successfully getting things done I feel like I’m winning.

My brother is having a similar month and he was telling me this anecdote: A co-worker came up to his desk and said, “Whoa! That’s your To Do List?” about the list on his desk that took up a full sheet a paper. Frazzled and overworked, my brother grabs the list and holds it up to the co-worker’s face demanding that they read the bottom. The last item on his To Do list was “See Other To Do List” and referred to a second entirely full sheet of paper. I feel his pain. I am notorious for the multiple sheet To Do list and I am also currently rocking two of them (though there are a few things checked off of both which is nice).

I’m a very bad NaNoWriMo blogger in that I haven’t said anything about Camp NaNoWriMo yet and I will get you a nice full post on that as soon as I get a chance. But because they really need beta testers I signed up for 50,000 word sessions for both July and August in the hopes that it would force me to get all caught up. (I’m cheating through and counting everything towards that count, not writing a new novel.) So far no such luck even with all the writing I’m doing for my class but we’ll see where I end up by the end of August. Having 100k by the end of the summer would be really nice but I also don’t want to work myself into an early grave so we’ll see.

As for the class? Great so far. Lots of work, more work then I thought it would be, but it’s forcing me to get a ton of writing and editing done which is sort of the point. Good stuff.

I worked from 7 am yesterday morning until 3 am this morning (A 20 hour day? Seriously? I didn’t math that out until just then. WTF is wrong with me, you guys?) so that I could get all my computer work done and take almost the entire day tomorrow to take all my “offline” work to the pool with me tomorrow where I shall work with little swim breaks every time I hit a work benchmark. I’m looking forward to it an absurd amount when you consider that I’ll still be working, just doing it outside. Still, I’m frickin’ pumped! I feel like summer is whipping by way too fast and little things like this make me feel like I’m slowing down the clock just a wee little bit.

Anyway, let me just lay the potato on you and then hit the hay…

He’s put on some weight! But he still isn’t past 50% so he’s a loser.