Urg, what a week. Sine die is tomorrow, the end of the 2008 Georgia legislative session, and I am so ready for it to happen. Been having to work a lot of late nights, and by the time I get home, I’m too wired to fall asleep. Last night, when I finally did manage to drop off, I dreamed of editing. Woke at 4AM feeling vaguely distressed about not being able to parse some text. Couldn’t get back to sleep, so I turned on my computer…and commenced doing some editing for The Fix. Sigh.
Also, my immune system has informed me that it is displeased with the liberties I’ve been taking with it. Both knees have ached for the last few days, making it a bit of a chore climbing stairs—which is awkward ’cause the Office of Legislative Counsel spans three floors. We editors are headquartered on the middle floor, and there’s a certain amount of upping and downing required, although we all try to convey each others’ bills to their varied destinations to maximize efficiency and minimize stair slogging.
In other news, fosteronfilm is going to be on Minnesota Public Radio tomorrow! He and another guest speaker, someone from Wired, will be discussing postapocalyptic movies. Haven’t had much chance to talk with the hubby this week ’cause of that whole consumed-by-work thing, so I don’t have any of the details except that it’s slated to air at 11AM (I think). Hope that they podcast or stream it so I can hear it if I can’t listen to it online tomorrow. Shiny coolness.
Writing Stuff
Starting to dwell on writing and writing projects for post-session. Went through my submissions and sales logs and sent out some reprint prospects which have been idling on my things-to-do list.
On the words on the page front, I need to finish the Russian fairy tale re-telling for squirrel_monkey‘s anthology that I started back in November, before session began. Fortunately, the deadline got pushed to June as the release date of the first volume in the antho series, Japanese Dreams (which will have my story, “The Tears of My Mother, the Shell of My Father” in it), got postponed until July to coincide with ReaderCon.
I’d also like to come up with a story to send to Cricket. I don’t have anything whatsoever under consideration in their slush pile, and that strikes me as a situation that needs remedying.
And then there’s The Novel. Once again I have set myself the (Sisyphusian) goal of finishing the %&!$#@ thing. I really need to get past this writing hurdle/milestone. It’s turning into one of those fell-off-the-horse-but-didn’t-get-back-on hang-ups.
I know how you feel about the novel. Just when I start to make progress, a piece of life slams me off course. I’m sure that one session is over, you will make progress.
I have faith in you!
Writing the first novel is a big hurdle. It scared the bejeezus (bejeezus being the technical term for this type of scared) out of me for a long time.
Then I took an idea I liked but wasn’t insanely driven by (because I knew my first novel would likely be crap), and I started doing character sketches, top ten lists, and figuring out where the conflict naturally arose. Then I made a loose plot, took two weeks off, and started writing.
14 hours a day. Completely stream of conciousness with no filters. The thing was done in 14 days, at 300 mss. pages (I had been targetting 10 days, but I just couldn’t do it). And it was pretty aweful, but it had some really good parts. Then I put it away. And I’ve never really managed to rewrite it (it’s truly overwhelming to think about, actually), and I moved on to projects that I was more attached to.
And my second novel was much easier. And took a 90 days. (First Draft), and I still hadn’t REALLY learned how to write a novel (maybe I still don’t know). So I’m rewriting the second one FROM SCRATCH in a completely different voice. (So it’s kind of my THIRD novel, now). And that’s going much slower. But it’s still worth it. And it seems to be working a lot better.
I keep cutting posts short, before I get to the important stuff:
The only way I can write a novel is if I work on it a little every day. Sometimes I get lucky and I can write for 5 hours and get a ton done. Sometimes it’s harder and I get a page only. But if I’m on a novel project, I write every day. If you’re not doing this, then I suggest you do 🙂
My novels tend to write themselves . . . when they’re in the mood to be written. What works for me is when a novel is dragging its uncooperative little feet, I don’t let it drag me and go write something else. Sometimes I end up writing another, different novel before the draggy ass one wakes up, shakes itself off, and demands to be written again! 🙂
Then there’s my other trick, which is to write the sticky chapter in a different POV, just to see if that doesn’t jumpstart things.
Hope things start popping soon!
Get back on the horse. Broken-up horse-woman speaking here with two novels written, but tons of revising to do. MUST have first draft to even commence that process toward finally completing the blasted tome.