Writing Recovery Friday, July 26, 2013

Whether it was from the absolute stress and nervousness of sending query letters or completing a project that has encompassed so much of my life for the past 4 years, I’ve spent the last week languidly procrastinating as I sought a new purpose. For the first time in AGES, I did not have a chapter to complete or several pages to revise and I found myself unable to do much more than sleep or read and then go back to sleep. It wasn’t until Wednesday that it occurred to me that the efforts of finally finishing a novel were taking their toll, but this shouldn’t have come as a surprise to me.

When I finished Evan when I was 15, I was still recuperating from my second ankle surgery and still on Christmas break, so my fatigue was well-expected and its source went unnoticed. When I finished Alex when I was 17, I was getting ready to start school at Ohio State, but I remember a week of stomach-gnawing stress and fatigue that I’d attributed to nervousness about starting college. When I finished Flight, however, when I was 22 (I guess; I’m too lazy to look up the completion date at the moment), I was preparing to graduate and, in posting that final chapter, I was ill and generally fatigued for weeks, which is why I couldn’t even think clearly about Damen until March-ish of 2009.

So, here I am, with another book finished and just as much fatigue as I’ve encountered with the previous ones. Unlike the other ones, I have nothing on which to place the blame. I’m not recuperating from surgery, or starting school, or finishing school. Now, I can see what writing a book really does to me and how much of myself I pour into every word. It is, without exaggeration, an exhausting process.

Today, however, I am quite refreshed. To occupy my time, I watched North & South and then read the book and then watched it 2-3 times a day and also while I slept and then re-read the last few chapters of the book again. To avoid fully falling into some OCD spiral, I refused to watch the film again yesterday, but still finished the book. I’d like to read the novel once more as I’ve started to read it like I read Persuasion or used to read Goblet of Fire; i.e., I read through favorite scenes, stop, and then re-read those favorite scenes a couple more times before progressing with the remainder of the book. That said, I know a cycle when it’s coming and it’s best, for now, that I move onto other things.

I’m not entirely sure what I will focus on writing this weekend. I’d like to write a poem or two in this “As…” project I’ve created and, while there’s no cure for the old novel like starting on the new novel, I’d also like to write something completely outside of anything I’d like to see traditionally published. A good ole’ fashioned SVU fanfiction or something, just to get the gears moving without wearing them down too soon.

Oh, well; we’ll see. It’s just as likely that I’ll spend the weekend playing games (dear God, that Steam sale!), so we’ll just have to see.

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20 Years of Writing Friday, November 30, 2012

I started a new first-job at the beginning of November and the multiple changes in schedule combined with the thrill of finally having something new to learn with first-job, prevented me from having the energy to put towards writing. So, my NaNoWriMo project, like so many others, fell before it truly got started. That said, I’m not at all dismayed or discouraged.

As I lay in bed this afternoon, now that I’m on a more vampiric schedule, I somehow started to consider that there was virtually I’ve done “for the last 20 years” because I’d thought I simply wasn’t old enough to have had anything to do from age 8. The moment I realized, however, that 20 years ago, I was eight years old and in the third grade, I remembered that my third grade teacher used to force us to write short stories with our spelling words so that we could learn them better. This was the same teacher who, after I wrote a poem with our spelling words, decided to read my poem aloud to the class, causing me to run from the class and stand outside the door until she had completed the poem to avoid the awe and stares from my classmates.

That trauma notwithstanding, it was through these short stories that I learned to enjoy creating written stories. In the third grade, I created my very first true character; first in the sense that he was the first character for whom I’d thought about for more than one week’s worth of spelling words. I wrote several stories about this character, many of which were never intended to be presented for a grade, and I remember writing about him into the summer and into the fourth and fifth grades as well. The setting for this character provided me with a basis for what would become my second attempt at a novel, Evan, and the third, Alex, which got me in a rhythm of being perpetually in the midst of some writing project.

At age 8, I first started to write stories and it occurred to me only today that I’ve been writing for 20 years. I love just saying it over and over again: I’ve been writing for 20 years. 🙂

So, anyway, I’ve not looked at James of Avradel since I last wrote about it, but I’ve finally been kicked into gear for completing Damen. Everything works out and, despite some ups and downs every day. Life is good.

Waiting for the moment Monday, September 12, 2011

I’m not sure when I developed a routine of deep procrastination prior to a project, but I wish I could break the cycle as much as I wish I could avoid being late. I want to say that this started in college when I would wait until the last possible second to write papers or study for exams, as if I were giving myself the added challenge because the coursework wasn’t interesting enough to hold my attention by itself. That’s incorrect though; I’ve been doing this probably since I was fifteen, if not earlier.

When I was fifteen, I set a goal to finish Evan, which I’d started four years earlier, before the new millennium and it wasn’t until I reached the end of December that I put my writing in overdrive to achieve the goal. When I was seventeen, I set myself a goal to finish Alex before I went off to school and I didn’t finish it until about a week before classes started.

This cycle of procrastination brings an odd rush with it. It’s like an extra set of endorphins that steadily release, increasing with the more time I let elapse. The less time I have to accomplish something, the greater the rush I get when I complete it. If I’ve got a paper due at 9am, the rush I get from waiting until midnight the previous night to write it is nowhere near the rush I get when I start at 4am to write the same paper.

I don’t think I intentionally crave this rush as I hadn’t really recognized it for what it was until just now, but I can’t think of any other reason why I’d put off projects, really, really important projects, until the very last second except to get a hit of that rush. It worries me because, as with any drug, you never know which hit is going to be the one to spin you into ruin.

I wrote 594 words today (like a five-year-old girl), but a part of me, however, wishes that I could reach that moment once again to push myself into overdrive for the rest of this novel…just one more hit.

Another effort Wednesday, August 24, 2011

I’ve not got much to say this morning since fairly little occurred between now and my last post, but as I’m desperately trying to make this “writing in the morning” thing work, I thought it worth mentioning that I’m taking another stab at it.

I’ve reached a new point in the novel which I don’t really remember having with Flight. With Flight, I had a complete outline of the entire story and barely deviated from it when I created the heavy notes and then the first draft. Damen is becoming more reminiscent to Evan or even Alex which I wrote before I went off to school.

I find myself struggling to pull together the remaining parts of the story and I’m beginning to have thoughts of completely re-ordering the rest of the novel. I’ve all but decided to drop one character entirely or at least downplay Tabitha towards the beginning of the novel, though I’m stubbornly retaining Dana Barrington as I’ve at least identified a specific use for her.

I want to list all the “occurrences” between now and the end to make sure everything is flowing properly, but to be this far along into a draft and not have all of this sorted out by now is a bit disturbing.

I thought I had figured out all of this. The heavy notes were done! I was onto the draft…Here I am, however, still getting tangled in the plotlines. At this rate, the 26th will be staring at me in the face and I’ll watch another birthday come and go without having achieved a goal.

Sigh………….

I wrote 560 words today (passed over her face for just a moment) and will write a bit more throughout the day in hopes of getting what I need before I do something insane and start stripping the novel even before the draft is complete.

The third day Friday, June 24, 2011

I’ve gone three days without television or video games or non-classical music. I think I’m okay.

Whether it was from a dream I’d had during the night or just a bout of inspiration, I woke this morning with the desire to make notes for this Harry story I’ve been wanting to write for the past five or so years. It’s probably the last fanfiction I’ll ever write outside of X-Files and SVU stories the pop to mind, but the more I write the notes for it, the more I start to love it.

I’ve not done more than poke at it for the past two years as I’ve brought my focus completely onto Damen, but this morning, I could think of little else. The characters bounced around in my head throughout the morning and on my way to first-job and when I got bored during a meeting at first-job, I started making some notes for them, specifically another name I could anagram from “Tom Marvolo Riddle.”

When I took a lunch today (an oddity in itself), I sat in my car and wrote about four pages of notes for the story, longhand! My handwriting has deteriorated to that of a drunken dolphin, so it will be a bit of a challenge to translate what I wrote into something that can be incorporated into the main notes for the story, but I could not stop thinking about it until I’d committed it to paper, real paper. I just wish that it was a burst of energy for Damen or Jill or Evan or Luka or any of my feasibly publishable projects instead of just fanfiction.

I suppose I shouldn’t complain as writing is writing and I owe a lot to fanfiction as I used it to teach myself how I go about writing a novel, but still…there’s some frustration in spending the bulk of whole day on something that won’t mean much to anyone outside of myself and a few Harry fans.

That said, I think half of what’s started this is that my mind’s a bit clearer than it has been lately. Perhaps today’s ideas have been floating in my head for months, but I’ve only now quieted all the other noise for long enough for these ideas to give me a real picture. The fact that I wrote longhand is an experience all on its own since I don’t think I’ve written anything longhand since Alex and the first phase of notes for Luka more than six years ago.

I’m rather exhausted today; I think it was the exertion of handwriting at the pace my mind’s eye gave me an image. Fatigue aside, I wrote 466 words tonight (Anthony drove them deep into Cabot, Ohio.) and I delved into the beginning of some of Damen’s spiritual issues. My protagonist is an atheist, or at least believes he is, and I’ve laid some foundations as to why he is prior to this point, but I’ve still not quite figured out just how anti-theist he will remain. The fact that I’m coming to this point in the novel at a time when I’ve realized I must get back to my spiritual roots is surely a coincidence, I’m sure…