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.

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!

Since TOMORROW! Is THE OBVIOUS GAME's technical publication date (meaning you can finally buy it on NOOK and Kindle tomorrow on major booksellers' sites), I have been typing my damn fingers off for the past few months to spread the love around the blogosphere. (I am fully aware the entire Internet doesn't read my blog. Thank God. Some people on the Internet are super mean.)

Here are some guests posts and interviews that are already up, if you are interested.

• My horrifying stats on queries and rejections on Vino Baby
• Overcoming rejection on Erin Margolin
• Similarities between me and my main character, Diana on Fictious Musings
• On making your characters believable on B.O.O.K.L.I.F.E.
• A new review by Angela Amman

The very lovely Neysa at B.O.O.K.L.I.F.E. let me guest post on her blog about making a character believable.

Here's an excerpt:

In the early drafts of THE OBVIOUS GAME, my main character, Diana, was too unlikable. 

Shewas all rough edges and whining. People would tell me that, and I wouldstruggle with that, because I wanted her to be realistic and goingthrough some really tough stuff, which in many cases does lead to pityparties.

Duringthe publisher querying process, my agent told me he thought the bookneeded to be funnier. I thought it ironic he wanted my anorexia novel tobe funnier, that it in fact might not get published because my anorexianovel wasn't funny enough.

Read the rest at B.O.O.K.L.I.F.E.!

The other day when I was driving home, I saw the end scene of my novel. Today, I sat down and wrote the last 40 pages.

 

Many, many Fridays.

There are still a few scenes that I really want to include for which I haven't found a place yet. And the sentences -- oy, they're not good yet. And also? I think a bunch of the details don't yet agree. I haven't read the first few chapters in months. I can't remember some of the middle. So I'm nowhere near ready to let anyone but Beloved read it yet.

However, the rough draft is done.

 

I wish I had more to say, but I seem to be all out of words.

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Reviews for daring girls and Ivy-League seekers on Surrender, Dorothy: Reviews!

Now that it's November, people might think I'm doing NaNoWriMo, butI'm not. I've been working on this novel since June, and there is noway it's going to get done by the end of November. Ha ha ha ha ha.Ahem. Ha.

But I did turn a corner last Friday. I ended the second third androunded the corner in my head into the last full section of the book.I'm at 46,000 words now and still aiming for 75,000 before I startcutting. The novel is definitely feeling young adult at this point, andI think YA word count is supposed to be between 55,000 and 70,000words. 

About halfway through the second third of the book, I finally saw how it was all going to fit together. There are still certain details that are lost on me, and there's one character I haven't figured out how to fully utilize (does every main character have to be important?) or I should probably cut her out. Right now she's just sort of there but doesn't play a big part in my heroine's life. I think I need to go read some more novels to figure out the answer to that question -- reading always answers most of my questions about writing. How did someone else pull it off?

I sat down with my notebook two weeks ago and laid out the last half of the book. Each chapter got two or three scenes I wanted to work in. What happens between those scenes usually occurs to me when I sit down to write. I try to write at least one chapter -- at least ten pages -- each time I sit down. The chapters may or may not stay at that length -- it's just a way for me to mark progress, like mile markers on an endless highway. Without those mile markers, the trip just seems unbearable.

I get very overwhelmed at the thought of writing something I can't finish in one sitting. Even when I'm tasked with writing long articles, I do the research in several sittings but then when I sit down, I spit out the entire rough draft in one go. This novel thing is different. It's too long, and even if I had the stamina and time to do it in one sitting, I wouldn't know what was going to happen. The plot has occurred to me in the car and in the shower over months. 

Last Thursday night, Beloved and I were talking and I told him I had no idea what I was going to write about in the chapter I had to do the following day. I knew the scenes, but I didn't know what was going to happen in them or how I was going to get from point A to point B. He said, "Just let it come to you," and I knew he was right, but I was panicky. Usually I can sort of see it before I sit down. But then, last Friday I totally got it and wrote 27 pages in one sitting. I think the subconscious will bring a lot to fiction if you plant the seed of the scene and then let it rattle around a little.

Once I wrote out the chapters and scenes for the rest of the book, the writing got a lot easier. Many people believe in outlining an entire novel before they sit down to write, and many people just give it a go. I'm sort of in between, but I am finding having the scenes decided makes it easier to sit down. Then I have the room -- I just have to decide which characters walk into it and what they do while they're there. 

I am anxious to get the rough draft out. That's always the part that worries me the most. If you're going to lose the scent, it's in the rough draft. Rewriting is easier for me than writing. I'm not a person who gets trapped in rewrites, going over and over the same passage. I believe in making each sentence the best it can be, but I don't like working the same project over and over. I read once that Tom Robbins rewrites his novels something like 30 times before they are published. But he doesn't use an outline. He's going at it in a completely different way than I do. I like to make passes, he likes to get it right before he moves on. I have no idea how he can do that -- not know what's going to happen next, but be at that level of detail with each sentence -- but clearly it works for him, and I can only hope to learn how to make this novel-writing process work for me. It has never worked for me before.

While I understand the language of a YA novel should be accessible, I want this novel to be well written. I don't believe in purely plot-driven novels with sloppy sentences (ahem, Twilight). Lemony Snicket wrote some really tight middle-grade novels, and they are clearly accessible to young readers. They even define the hard words right in the text. So I know it can be done. 

The book thing scares me. I had a dream the other night my publisher called me and said every book in the history of the universe written right before and right after mine had sold well, but mine was horrible. And WHY? WHY WAS MINE HORRIBLE? WHY DIDN'T PEOPLE LIKE MINE? I sat there trying to explain but realized I couldn't. 

After much consideration, I think the point of the dream is I'm writing this novel for me. It's a story I want to tell. I really, really want it to get published and be out in the world, but like Beloved always says, I can't focus too much on whether or not it will be popular, because to focus on that is abandon why I write in the first place. Yes, I believe in supporting books with author marketing efforts. Yes, I believe in finding a publisher with a solid distribution model. Yes, I definitely believe in the power of good publicity. Ultimately, though, like bloggers who start blogs to make money, authors who write books only to sell copies will not last very long, for the same reason -- nobody will want to read them.