After I attended RT Booklovers, I came home and plotted out my scenes and updated my long synopsis of the new adult novel I'm working on now. (I've decided it's new adult, not young adult, because the story works better that way. Though I would like to write another YA novel. Really like writing teenagers -- it's such an exciting and also terrifying and also boring time of your life, all at once and every day.

Then I completely stalled out as we started spending every night ripping apart our kitchen and foyer and then slowly rebuilding it and holy hell we're not done yet because the last cabinet is STILL not installed which means the pantry can't be attached to the wall, which means every bit of nonrefrigerated food I own is on the kitchen table and floor. And because I can't control that situation, I turned my frenzied eyes back to a project I can move forward: THE BIRTHRIGHT OF PARKER CLEAVES.

The beginning is so hard. I don't really know Meg well enough yet. I'm getting there, slowly, but most of what I'm writing right now will probably end up chucked and I'm just writing it to get to know Meg and for no other reason. I like the plot so far, which is funny because the plot was the hardest part of THE OBVIOUS GAME. Of course, I didn't really think about the plot in advance for TOG the way I am PARKER CLEAVES. I probably should've done that, but what did I know about writing novels? 

So now I've got a scene list that I like and it's much easier to sit down after my daughter goes to bed and tell myself to just start a scene or add to a scene that's started or just puke out a thousand words somehow and then you can watch TV. I've been doing that and I'm up to about twenty thousand vomit words. This way of thinking makes the process much easier because I have absolutely no delusions about this rough draft being good. No, it's vomit with maybe a few decent sentences sprinkled in there so I don't set my Mac on fire in the end.

The other thing that's different this time around is the pressure I'm putting on myself to move forward. I do want a career as a novelist. I want to write a bunch of books. It seems more likely that I'll get anywhere if I have more than one book. But the first novel is done, I proved to myself I could do it, and that temporarily has muted a huge voice in my head. (There's another one in there pointing to my book sales, but I just shush it by saying DISCOVERABILITY, ASSHOLE, and that works for as long as it takes me to fall asleep at night.)

I haven't added anything to my PARKER CLEAVES pinboard in a while, so I added something today. I'll be adding to the board as I write, for my amusement and anyone else's. I also have a pinboard for THE OBVIOUS GAME.

ONWARD!