At the beginning of the school year, I instituted Library Tuesdays. On Library Tuesdays, I and anyone in my family who wants to (or needs to) come with me heads out to the public library with novel-in-progress or homework or book in tow. I get there, I set the timer on my phone for an hour (longer would be nice, but I have to be realistic about how late I can push dinner since this is after my full-time job), I put on my headphones and I work on whichever novel I'm focusing on at the time.

This is my latest iteration of Project Find Time to Write. Last year, my husband traveled so much I tried instituting Saturday blocks of time for myself, even going so far as to put them on both my and his calendars, but life didn't cooperate. There were always family plans or birthday parties or something that cut into my writing time until I was never getting anything done and feeling more and more lethargic about fiction and guilty about not writing.

The year before that, I tried to have Tuesdays after dinner be my writing time, with my husband taking over bedtime duties for our girl, but then sometimes he had a late meeting and sometimes we ate late and sometimes I couldn't bring myself to sit at the same desk where I spend ten hours a day at my day job and write more.

The year before that, my daughter was still in ballet and I used the hour and a half of her classes twice a week to write, and that was kind of nirvana for writing me, but it was awful for parent me because she ended up hating ballet so much she cried every time we made her go. (Still, writing me was pretty sad to have that custom-carved two blocks of time a week dance away on little abandoned ballet slippers.)

In the eleven years since I became a working parent, I've tried so many things in the name of finding time to write. I've booked meetings with myself in abandoned conference rooms over my lunch hour. I've holed up in Panera for five or six hours at a time while my husband and daughter hit a state fair or lone trip to visit his family. I've written on six-hour roadtrips, headphones planted in my ears while my husband listened to sports radio and my daughter napped or watched a portable DVD player as she got older.

One thing that has never grown easier: finding the time to write. The location changes, but the struggle lives on.

After more than a decade of living this struggle, I've realized finding the time comes down to making  necessary changes in two areas: location and methodology.

One: I can't find time to write fiction at home. Some may find this unusual since I work my fulltime job as managing editor of BlogHer at home, but normally during my workday the only folks home are my cat and occasionally my husband, but he is also working and thus not trying to distract me. However, if I try to write on a weekend or weeknight, there is a child who would like my attention, please, but there are also a zillion other chores and events that must be squeezed into nights and weekends in order to keep the house from dissolving under a pile of trash or my child from walking around with her toes sticking out the ends of her too-small shoes.

Two: I can't actually write fiction on a computer anymore. I used to be able to pull out a laptop in the car or what have you, but I just don't have it in me now. After almost twenty years spent sitting at a computer for the bulk of my workweek days, the last thing I want to look at in my copious free time is another damn screen. So, I don't draft on the computer anymore. I type up what I've written after the fact, but I don't compose with a cursor these days.

My current way of separating out Library Tuesdays and my novel writing from the day job is to write longhand in a notebook preferably at the library but at the very least somewhere that is not my house where I am not surrounded by my family.

I've temporarily abandoned my third novel-in-progress to go back to THE BIRTHRIGHT OF PARKER CLEAVES, which I realized isn't done yet after seeing a pattern in query rejections and getting some insight from a novelist friend.

A few Library Tuesdays ago, I emailed the manuscript to my Kindle and went through the whole thing making notes, highlighting parts to cut and figuring out what sucked. Then I compared the Word document against my Kindle and cut 7,000 words and made a bunch of notes. Then I printed out the manuscript. And now I haul the printed manuscript plus my notebook and headphones to the library, pick a section I've marked to rewrite, elaborate upon or grow a new head, and write longhand for one hour.

When I first started doing this, it was hard to get to an hour. It felt like a chore. I questioned whether to abandon PARKER CLEAVES altogether. It wasn't until after I made those deep cuts that it started getting fun again and I was surprised when my alarm when off.

The hard part about writing novels on top of a day job (though I'm sure it's hard on top of any sort of life) comes, for me, in finding the pay-off. At first I thought the pay-off would be financial or in reputation. Then when neither of my first two books blew the roof off the publishing world, I thought the pay-off would be social, in that it would be give me something to talk about. Then I realized when I'm in the thick of it, I don't want to talk about what I'm working on at all. Finally, I realized the pay-off comes at the end of Library Tuesday, when I pack up my stuff and count up the new pages and realize that I am four baby steps closer to another finished, published novel.

It comes when I sit down to type what I wrote and think maybe it's a little better than what I cut.

It comes from looking at the stack of paper I just printed and thinking that even though it might be done yet, I did that, and I am doing that, and I'm doing that even though it's not my job to do it, and it's not my public's voracious appetite for my next work to do it.

I'm just doing it because like it.

Remembering you're doing something because you like it makes it easier to prioritize.

See you at the library next Tuesday.

Well, Southwest Airlines has sent me three very nice emails telling me they are thurching and thurching for my writing notebook, but alas, I fear it's gone. Gone, gone, gone, along with all those lovely ideas for chapter beginnings for my new novel. I remember what the device was, just not the embodiments of the device. Going to have to go eavesdrop again.

Twenty years ago, this would've been my worst nightmare.

Twenty years ago. Before I'd lost entire computers and phones full of information. Before I'd lost jobs. Before I'd lost people.

Man, twenty years ago I didn't know shit.

Now I'm a little sad but mostly annoyed because there were some good chapter heading ideas in there that took a good three hours to conjure in the car on the way home from Thanksgiving in Iowa.

When I got home, I went to my stash of hard-covered, spiral-bound, lined notebooks and picked another one. Then I printed out the brain dump I'd vomited into a Word document in the hotel the night I realized the notebook was gone. Then I pulled out the last notebook from THE BIRTHRIGHT OF PARKER CLEAVES, because there were some notes on the new idea in there, too. I'm still new enough to this novel-writing gig that I don't have a real set process yet. It does seem to be one notebook per book, though. Even if it's not, I may make it so, because it seems clean, and everything else about writing is messy.

But I still couldn't start again. I decided I needed a different music line-up, so I made one, and in doing so I realized we've only downloaded about 1/6 of our music collection onto the Mac. It's so tedious, the downloading. Beloved used to be a DJ and has like 600 CDs, and I brought a significant amount of chic-rocker singer/songwriters into the marriage, and also the two-disc set of Piano By Candlelight (purchased off late-night television, natch). There wasn't nearly enough to make the perfect new-novel playlist, but there was enough of the soul-searchy and NIN teeth-grindy to get me in the proper mood to remember the first twenty years of my life. 

I'd like to make a playlist to go with this new project when it's done. I didn't do that for PARKER CLEAVES. I missed it. Maybe that is part of my process. Who knows?

So the working title for this new book is THE NIGHTMARE DRESS. It's going to be young adult. I'm going back to high school, yearning and reconsidered relationships. This is the sentence I wrote down to set the stage for myself:

"Don't you know," she said, her pupils dilated in the falling light, "hell is other people not caring."

ONWARD.

Hello Everyone! It's that time again. We have less than two weeks until the YA Scavenger Hunt begins. I hope you reserved plenty of time for this one because there isn't just one team or two or even three. This time we have 6, that's right, I said 6 YASH teams which means more prizes, news, and fun for all you readers out there! So let's get started!

TEAM RED INCLUDES:

 

TEAM GOLD INCLUDES:

 

TEAM GREEN INCLUDES:

 

TEAM ORANGE INCLUDES:

 

TEAM INDIE INCLUDES:

 

TEAM BLUE INCLUDES:

  There are so many books here I don't even know where I would begin. I hope you all are as excited as I am! The YA Scavenger Hunt begins at noon pacific time on Thursday, October 2nd and runs through Sunday, October 5th. That means to get through the entire hunt you'll need to go through 1.5 teams per day!

Are you going to play? 

Welcome back to my journey through book marketing. THE OBVIOUS GAME is coming up on its one-year birthday, which prompted me to show it a bit of financial love as it blazes onto a backlist and I dive into my second group of beta readers' suggestions for THE BIRTHRIGHT OF PARKER CLEAVES.

I've learned a lot this year. THE OBVIOUS GAME was a different marketing game than SLEEP IS FOR THE WEAK because the publishing landscape has changed so much from 2008 to 2013.

If only I had a bunch more money. I know now where I would spend it -- marketing to librarians and booksellers and consumers. I would absolutely make sure I had ARCs six months before the book came out to get a better chance at reviews in industry publications, because (I of course did not know this) many will only accept a book for review at a set amount of time before it is published. THE OBVIOUS GAME went to publication so quickly that I didn't even have a contract that soon before my pub date, let alone an ARC. Which meant I missed out on that chance. It exists one time for each book, and one time only. 

As it stands, I don't have a bunch of money. My efforts initially were focused on getting reviews on Amazon and Goodreads. Anything I do now is focused on getting THE OBVIOUS GAME in front of the consumer, particularly the warm-lead, YA-e-reading consumer. (There are several reasons for this, but the two most important are 1) more services exist to promote ebooks for a reasonable amount of money and 2) I make a much higher percentage from ebooks than I do from print books due to margin issues.)

In case you're curious, here are the screenshots from my BookGorilla campaign over the holiday and my Riffle Select campaign that is going on right this minute (in other words, the book is $1.99 again today). Both campaigns involved me negotiating with my publisher to drop the price of THE OBVIOUS GAME ebook to $1.99 from $4.99 for about a two-day period of time to make sure it was that price when the email went out from either service. Both services were fine to work with. Big Five publishers had books on there next to mine. BookGorilla had a Joyce Carol Oates title the day my campaign went out, and today's Riffle Select had THE OBVIOUS GAME right next to John Green's THE FAULT IN OUR STARS. (yay)

Here's what the BookGorilla one looked like:

And here's what Riffle Select looked like:

Finally, I've had a Goodreads ad that I change up every once in a while since January 2013. I ran seven giveaways on Goodreads in 2013, one roughly every two months. You can only run them the year before your publication date and the year of your publication date. When I could, I tied my Goodreads ad to a giveaway. The giveaways were great for getting people to put THE OBVIOUS GAME on their to-read lists on Goodreads. I have no idea if they read it or if they bought it or if they asked their librarian for it -- but I know they at least showed interest in it, which is good. Now that the giveaways are done, my ad looks like this.

Feel free to ask questions. There really isn't enough information out there, in my opinion.

So yesterday I got up on my high horse and rode about not having word count goals. Today, I finally finished transcribing all the handwritten changes I did to THE BIRTHRIGHT OF PARKER CLEAVES after my first round of beta feedback and thought I'd have buried the 40k mark I was at before.

Two hours ago, I exported to Word. 39,879, bitches.

WHAT THE HELL?

I cut a lot, but I added a lot, too. Well, now I have 39,879 better words, but I'm still about 20k short for new adult. Or maybe it's young adult. It's hard to say, because the protagonist is 18/19 and it's not all sexy-sex -- is there new adult non-romance? We'll see. The jury remains out on genre. 

Regardless, as it stands? It's a novella. I don't want a novella. I want to give my second round of beta readers a NOVEL. I want to get feedback on what is close to the end game, not a second version of a rough draft.

*silently raging*

It appears rather than adding Juliet balconies to the house I've created, I need to add a new wing. Perhaps a subplot. Perhaps fill in some plot holes I haven't really explored. Not sure. I'll tell you, though, I'm glad I didn't know how many words I was cutting and filling back in when I made these changes, because if I'd known, I would've cried.

The book is better now. It needs to be better -- and longer -- yet, but we'll get there, one scene at a time.

*breathes into paper bag*

*prints another draft*

*notes need more ink cartridges*

I'm nearing the end of my first major revision of THE BIRTHRIGHT OF PARKER CLEAVES. This time, I gave the shitty rough draft to a group of trusted beta readers to get feedback on the general structure of the thing before I tried to make it any good. They  helped me see what I should add more than what I should take away. Cutting is so easy. Adding, for me, is harder.

I've found despite my Internet publishing job and my years working with software development, in the end, I still write best longhand. I sit in front of a screen all day long, and trying to write at night in front of another glowing screen is very difficult for me. It feels like work. Printing the manuscript out and editing it by hand, referencing different notebooks with extended scenes is just easier. I wish I'd known this while working on THE OBVIOUS GAME, but, well, it's like anything else -- you have to fuck it up a few times before you figure out what works for you.

One of my writing professors told me once revising fiction is like pulling it up from the bottom of a well. At first, you can just see there's something there, then gradually as you haul on the ropes, the details emerge, until at last the water pours off and the thing in its entirety is visible. I can't completely see THE BIRTHRIGHT OF PARKER CLEAVES yet, but this past week I've been working on it hours every night, and I can finally feel its emotional compass. Knowing it's a story that ultimately will matter only to me doesn't feel as maddening as it did before. THE OBVIOUS GAME was a story I had to tell, because I thought it might help the people who email me, desperate to hear what helped me recover from my eating disorder. This novel is different -- it's a story. I'm trying to capture what it feels like to be nineteen and on the cusp of your life starting and not knowing where that will take you. The moment when you realize no one really knows what they are doing and the house of cards on which you hung all you know to be true wobbles. The day you choose whether that knowledge will turn you jaded or ambitious. 

As I transcribed my shaky handwriting from notebook to StoryMill tonight, I felt excited. I felt alive. 

I like remembering what it was like when I spent my days and nights asking myself the big questions, before I got caught up in making sure the leaves didn't kill the grass and whether I've volunteered enough for the PTA. I'm still that girl who corrected the grammar of the school behavior manual during suspension. I haven't forgotten the pain of realizing no one would ultimately look after me but me. I remember the day I realized I had to value myself enough to demand the respect of the men I dated, to not accept careless affection as love.

I wouldn't go back to being fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen for anything. God, it was so hard then. But do you remember how alive you felt when every emotion exploded like fireworks over the ocean? 

I do. I still do.

The leaves haven't even turned yet, but last night I found myself lying on my daughter's bed with a frowny face.

My husband walked in. "You look upset."

Me: "Yes."

Him: "Should we move out?"

Me: "No. I mean, maybe. But I think it's just me. You moving out might not help, so you should stay."

Him: "Gotcha."

I proceeded to try to explain that it's October and October means cold weather is coming, and I'm at the first revision stage of THE BIRTHRIGHT OF PARKER CLEAVES, which feels like getting all your syllabi on one day and wondering how the fuck you're going to get all that work done in one semester. And maybe I was having a There's No Point to Any of It day, the kind of day where you realize you're just going to have to make the bed again tomorrow and you can be a totally awesome worker and then you'll retire and three years later the entire department will have turned over and someone will ask who the hell made the decision for the border to be goddamn orange and if you do publish books, they'll eventually go out of print, even the ebooks will find a way to go out of print. One of those days.

I felt like when Louis CK tells Conan about that time when you're in traffic and you have the forever empty feeling because it's all for nothing and you're alone, and Conan looks at him like, I'm not sure I want to admit in public that I know exactly what you're talking about. Can someone please hand me a smartphone? I need to check Twitter.

Yeah. I had one of those days yesterday. I'm still trying to shake off that feeling that really nothing I do is important or worth doing and really, I'm pretty sure that's just my fear talking and I should just revise anyway, because that's what you do in order to occupy yourself until you die.

KIDDING.

Sort of. Because even if that's what it is, maybe that's still something worth doing. 

This week I'm finishing up my shitty rough draft of THE BIRTHRIGHT OF PARKER CLEAVES to send to my beta readers, and I'm pretty sure it sucks and they will think less of me for reading it. Yesterday, I tried to list THE OBVIOUS GAME on a discount site, but it wasn't accepted. I suspect it's a little heavy for their genre-heavy readership, which I totally get, but it was disappointing because I could use the boost in visibility on Amazon. This year I've watched other blogger anthologies rising to heights SLEEP IS FOR THE WEAK never saw when it came out. I realized a long time ago I don't have the personal following it takes to nudge my books over the echo chamber wall of who I know into the mainstream world of who I don't. It would take marketing dollars to get there, marketing dollars my publishers don't spend and I can't spend. I understand the business behind the business, but the art/business marriage keeps separate apartments. 

When I get low, Beloved always says, "But you got published." 

To which I retort, "But I didn't take off."

To which he responds with a frustrated stare, because he is never able to convince his ambitious and bullheaded wife that her goals are too lofty for her circumstance and abilities. Which is basically the premise of THE BIRTHRIGHT OF PARKER CLEAVES. It's something I have struggled with for years -- when my overgrown ambition does battle with my talent and financial support.

This week, BlogHer syndicated a post by Kyran Pittman, which discussed why creative people compare themselves to the superstars of their fields when accountants and bus drivers don't. She writes:

The actors who don’t get Oscar nominations, the authors whose books don’t make the bestseller lists, the songwriters who don’t go platinum, the cellists who aren’t Yo-Yo Ma -– they aren’t underachievers.

Oh, the metrics available in this world, how bone-crushing they can be. I've stopped looking at metrics more than once a week for anything -- my blog, my books, my weight. There are too many ways to measure yourself with indisputable numbers in 2013. I'm the type of person who prefers problems with no one answer. Am I a success? The numbers don't lie. But subjectively, am I a success? It depends on your perspective.

I fight every day to push away the feeling that everything I do artistically is the adult equivalent of chalk drawings on the driveway before a rainstorm. 

But Kyran's right. The point isn't to matter to everybody, it's to matter to somebody, and it's my job to beat back the emails telling me I'm not doing enough to market my work and the emails trumpeting who won this or that award or made this or that bestseller list. I can't really manufacture that any more than I can force a stock to go up or down on Wall Street. 

Who and how many notice the art can't be more important than the existence of art. The existence of the art has to be the point.

And so a new day starts, and I remind myself this again. 

I'm almost to the shitty rough draft stage with THE BIRTHRIGHT OF PARKER CLEAVES. It's about 10,000 words too short, but I don't know which 10,000 they should be. Also, I don't know the answers to certain questions myself, and those questions need to be answered in the draft. Finally, it's the clay and not the sculpture -- most of it totally sucks.

I spent about two weeks going through a printed-out version from StoryMill and trying to write connecting tissue because I'd written everything else just scene-by-scene and put it into the software. The export from StoryMill didn't look like a book. It looked like a bunch of scenes. So I ended up writing A on the paper and then handwriting out several pages of A in a notebook and so on until I got to Q. Then I went back in and typed all the handwritten stuff into the scenes in StoryMill and did another export.

Then I stopped. And I despaired a bit, I'll admit, because it just wasn't where I want it to be before I show it to my beta readers (God bless them). 

So I am taking this week to reread two books that have a bit of starlight to them, starlight I want to infuse into the characters of Helen and Parker in TBoPC. Perhaps if I wallow in the sentences of work I admire I'll get some inspriration by osmosis. Previous to this I've been reading a lot of dystopian stuff just for fun, but that's a totally different style than what I'm trying to achieve with TBoPC.

And so far, my sad little novel. Oh, it sucks. This part of the process is pretty frustrating. At least I've learned enough now to know I'm not done yet.