Onto Stage…Whatever Wednesday, June 5, 2013

Finally, I’m onto file damen1-13k. Technically, it should be 13h, but I don’t really care for the letters F and J, so they were skipped. This is the 8th edit of Damen and in this version, I’ll be doing a spell check/grammar check that’s not truly possible in the full document. Because Microsoft sucks (though their products are sadly the best currently available), their spell check function stops working somewhere around the 100th page and my only way to catch typos, etc. is to find them on my own or add each of my 36 chapters to their own document and individually review the book again, chapter by chapter, document by document, just to catch if I’ve spelled “thought” as “tohguth.” Mac Office is even worse and stops counting words after 100 pages in addition to jacking up the spell check. Total crap, but my Microsoft rant is best left for another post.

I was a little dazed when I finished the seventh edit yesterday, so I’m not entirely sure if I’m on Chapter 2 or 3 at this point. I’ll pick Chapter 2 because you can’t read through the book enough times.

Current word count is 121,542 which I think is slightly higher than my previous update. Though I told myself that I was through with rewriting anything else in this edit, I ran into the same problems with the middle part of the book that I’ve re-re-re-written more than any other part of the book. What I find is that with each edit, I lose my emotional attachments to specific scenes.

In a previous edit, I’d gone back and retrieved a scene where Jessie Clarke and Brit have a major fight because I wanted so badly to show Jessie’s compassionate side. In the edit I just finished, I realized that Jessie really didn’t need to show that kind of compassion because Brit has enough compassion for the both of them. If I had 500k words to work with, I’d still probably include the scene, but given that it unnecessarily broke up the flow of the book, it had to get cut.

Of course, that scene was wrapped around a more pivotal scene where we see Damen really struggling with his mother’s addictions. What I ended up with was a completely re-written chapter where we see Angel balancing her problems with the love of her son, we finally see some imperfections in Anessa’s character, and we get to see Damen grow a little as he realizes that he’s not the only one in the world handling emotional problems. For the first time since I’d first finished the novel, I can actually say that I enjoy the events and flow of this chapter.

I’d figured I was done at this point since I’d not added to my word count, but then I came again to the chapter where we come to understand the root of Jessie Clarke’s character. I cried through the scene as I always do, but this time around the end was very flat to me. Jessie reveals a very long, painful story about her childhood and then when Damen refuses to divulge anything about himself, she just lets it go without showing the relative crazies Jessie displayed throughout the previous chapters.

Up until this point, I’d made very few changes to Jessie’s part of the story, but this time around, I added another 4-500 words to the book to make sure Jessie went ape-#$%@ when Damen did not do as she said, just as we’ve seen her do throughout the novel. I hated to add 500 words to the book to show all of this, but scene feels complete and really envelopes you in the pain that’s coursing through Jessie.

Apart from those two re-writes, the book felt really done for the first time since I thought I was done 15 months ago.

Now, my next steps will be to review general spelling and grammar through each chapter file and then make this into a Kindle book that I can read either on iPad or Kindle, like I would a normal book. The goal there will be to ensure that I don’t lose my own interest as I’m reading. Anywhere that I feel like it’s time to put down the book is a weak point of the novel and may need to be revised. Further painful revisions notwithstanding, once I do a Kindle-read through the book and print out and mail the whole thing for my Poor Man’s Copyright, I will finally begin my hunt for an agent.

Phew! It’s been a long ride. Onward and upward!

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Dana and Damen Thursday, March 14, 2013

For the past three years I’ve have struggled with the character of Dana Barrington. From the moment her addition seemed providential inspired, I’ve wanted to keep her in the book. I’ve twisted and turned the story and 9 different directions in order to keep her, only to return to my initial conclusion made several years ago: I’ve got to cut Dana Barrington.

I’m in the midst of my 3rd full edit of Damen and found myself almost screaming in frustration over a slow point in the book. This slow point involves surrounds not only Dana, but also my other beloved character of Amber MacDonaugh. While extricating Amber from the plot is near impossible as she defines the characters of several others so well, removing Dana will not only free up a good 10K or more words from my word count, her removal will also leave me with a little more wiggle room to focus on other characters.

If I wasn’t so very fatigued at the moment, I’d probably cry, but I’m trying to stay positive. Dana is a fully shapened character now who, while not immediately useful in Damen, may possibly find a place in another project; she’s not lost forever, just to this story. While I’m losing my only link from Flight, perhaps in the long-run, this will keep me from getting sued down the line. Who knows, right?

The more I re-re-read and edit this book, the more necessary it is to cut her. In exchange, I will be able to keep nearly all of the drama regarding the college visit, including Xavier’s colourful speech regarding politics and I will be able to streamline the story. By downplaying Amber and removing Dana, the book rests on the shoulders of Damen, Brit, Corey, Jessie, Angel, Anthony, and Anthony’s family. It sounds like a lot because it is and winding Dana’s story within a host of characters who are already related was, while a noble and artistically challenging task, still unnecessary.

Phew…I feel better about this already. I stand at around 131K at the moment and I think I’ll stop with damen10g here in the 20-something’th chapter, begin with damen11h (or 11k, I don’t really like the letters h, i, or j) and get started editing this thing with the focus on removing Dana and reducing Amber.

Onward and upward!

Edit: So, in trying to completely cut Dana today, I came upon her introduction which not only provided an nice interlude that introduces us to one of Brit’s brothers, gives insight on Damen’s history with social workers, helps display more of Jessie Clarke’s character, and shows how Damen interacts with girls who aren’t Brit and Jessie. So, despite all my above clairvoyance, I’ll not be able to remove her as entirely as I’d hoped. I’ve done too good a job at entangling her with the rest of the story, but I’m determined with damen11h to ring in her character. Her scattering throughout the rest of the book just feels overwhelmingly desperate, so while she’ll still appear in her own chapter, her interaction with Damen will be more like that of Tabitha Laird or Tatum Price; mentioned once, serves her purpose and never mentioned again.
…I can’t help a little joy over the best compromise I’ve made with regard to writing in the longest while. 🙂

618 words! Saturday, August 25, 2012

I decided on a brand new drastic change for the novel today.

In what is currently Chapter 17, I’ve got this nice dialogue between Damen and Brit about God. Damen is an agnostic and Brit is a Christian and they argue about God’s will. The rest of the chapter details Damen’s attendance in Brit’s church as well as a brief visit in Sunday School. I edited the conversation between Brit and Damen and continued with the rest of the chapter.

It was not until I was nearly done with the chapter that it occurred to me that this conversation was way over the head of my character Brit Leighson. It is very clear that I am speaking through my character in this scene and while I still want to get across my message, it sounds false coming from Brit. It sounds as if I’m pigeonholing her into a personification of myself, which is what I really don’t want to do.

I thought about this for a while. “Who should have this argument with Damen without it sounding trite or false?” Finally, it occurred to me that it should be Damen vs. the Sunday School teacher Ms. LaRoe, who I’ve not yet given a first name, even though I know she’ll also feature in Jill. I started to rewrite both scenes, but in minutes, I hit Undo and let what I had stand because it looked like too much work to edit. It ate at me though until I finally took a new document and started writing and deleting and writing and deleting until I had the precise scene I wanted with Damen and Ms. LaRoe.

I looked at my new creation and was immediately disheartened. Here I am trying to reduce word count, but my new scene looked almost twice as long as the original text. I started to throw away what I’d written, but I shook my head and looked at the word count for the original scene. 618 words. I frowned and figured as long as the new scene was only 200 or so words more, I’d figure out what else I could cut to make it fit. To my absolute shock, the new scene was exactly 618 words. I was so shocked by this that I had to screenshot it to believe it was real!

I know there’s some editing to do for this part of the chapter, but still! Whoo boy! This is the kind of coincidence that makes you want to go to church and have “Hallelujah good time!”

From there to here Wednesday, August 22, 2012

I think I may finally understand why I want to badly to keep the character of Dana Barrington in Damen.

It occurred to me just after I reviewing yesterday’s post, but I wanted to sleep on it and take a break from writing to be really sure of what I want to do, which is remove Amber’s suicide attempt, but I’ll get to that part later.
Here is an except from Flight and all that I ever wrote of Dana Barrington’s character in that book:

Olivia stepped off the elevator on her floor and trekked toward her apartment door, weighed down by the stacks of files in her bag and those being carried under her arm. All of the documents and images that pertained to Dana Barrington’s rape case were in her possession and she was scheduled to testify at the trial the next day. She knew she was ready for the trial as she had testified at many previous to this one, but she hauled everything home to review just as a comfort to herself.

Dana Barrington was a high school student who had been brought into a hospital after being found bleeding profusely in an alley. She had attempted to perform an abortion on herself with a wire hanger and nearly killed herself in the process. After she was admitted, the detectives learned that she had been raped several months earlier and that she could not tell anyone about what had happened to her. Dana had said that she was too embarrassed to say anything because she had walked home alone and she knew she should not have.

The rapist, Gregory Lars, had been apprehended by the DNA provided by Dana’s baby who was born premature, but healthy, two months later. Lars had been preying on adolescent girls in the city for years, but it was only with this case that they had the DNA needed to convict him.

On Friday, Olivia was supposed to testify about Lars’ behavior when he was finally caught. She had no qualms about testifying in front of Lars, who had actually hit her in the stomach while she had him against a wall, but her nerves were slightly on edge when it came to facing the victim again. Dana’s large brown eyes displayed nothing but innocence and she knew only too well that a child born to a raped victim, especially one as young as Dana, would not be as loved as he could be. She knew that upon seeing Dana in court, she would want to tell her what was coming in her life and what she should tell her son as he grew up, but she knew she could not. It was not her place to do so.

…

Friday January 19, 2007
New York County Courthouse

Olivia stood in a corridor outside of the courtroom where she had just testified against Gregory Lars looking for Dana Barrington and her family. When it seemed like she had missed them in the bustle of people flowing out of the courtroom at recess just before noon, Olivia spotted a sixteen-year-old with brown hair and large brown eyes holding a baby carrier.

“Olivia!” Dana said, the moment her eyes reached Olivia’s.

She handed the baby to her mother standing next to her, crossed the corridor in three steps and hugged Olivia.

“Thank you,” she said, tears welling in her eyes. “Thank you so much.”

“It’s no problem. It’s what I do.”

…and that’s it. That’s all I wrote about Dana Barrington’s character in Flight, so I’ve been so puzzled why this character in particular has caused me so much stress in the past couple years, but finally! Finally, I think I know why.

Dana’s story is brief, but very sad. Here she was, a young college bound girl, with almost no problems at all and, through no fault of her own, she was attacked and impregnated. Dana did what I considered I would have done had I been in her situation and pretended it didn’t happen until the problem, literally, grew too big for her to ignore.

When I think of this character, I feel like I need to see her through this. I need to see that she’s happy and healthy and that life goes on. Not because I’ve personally experienced this, but because I just need to know that at least somewhere, life goes on.

Yes, I know that these are fictional characters of my own making, but I feel them and know them as if these were people I could touch. For the same reason, I couldn’t really understand the ending of my novel until I realized where Corey could get his comeuppance (much, much later and in a completely different book) because I just couldn’t leave things the way they were. I needed to see life go on and these characters move forward, even though I wouldn’t be writing about them after I’d moved them on.

So…

I’ve decided to leave Dana firmly in the background along with others who just briefly see light like Tatum and Paige and Tabitha. Amber, however, won’t be pushed to the background, but she won’t have nearly as large a part to play anymore. Instead, I’ve decided to pull Damen’s mother Angel into the foreground where she belongs and use her drama to provide the conflict. In short, I’m completely changing the plot of my novel well into my second edit.

It’s not as bad as it sounds, though. Yes, there will be far more scene rewrites than I wanted at this stage in the novel, but in the process of just reviewing my “points” and chapter summaries, I’ve nixed 3 chapters and removed several smaller storylines that irked because they were originally necessary to avoid plot holes.

I prayed about this last night and asked God if this was really what He wanted of me. Not just the novel changes, but the idea of writing at all. Today, my emotions have run the gamut, from hot/cold, east/west, whatever, but I ended up with a clear path.

I’m not sure I’m willing claim any of this as providential inspiration because God works in mysterious ways and I think it a bit too bold say something like that, but I can’t help noticing how when I really, really asked for help, a calm path came to me.

300 words Tuesday, August 21, 2012

I suppose I could say I made up for lost time from the last few days by spending the majority of today editing. I cut a little more than five thousand words today bringing me down to 158K; it’s almost like deleting an entire chapter.
What’s further gratifying is that I still managed to cut 5K words while adding a scene that helped explain a few things without spending another 10K words to “tell” it.

I jumped into Chapter 16 as well, but hit a road block with exactly 300 words that I winced to delete and eventually just hit Ctrl+Z until I had them back.

It’s just 300 words and exemplifies Damen and Brit’s characters so well…It’s just 300 words…

I find myself in a familiar predicament because these 300 words are really the bulk of the 38K I’ve left to cut. I keep telling myself, “It’s just X words. I’ll wait until I finish this edit and, if I’m X words over my limit, I’ll cut them then.”

Three hundred here. Two hundred there. Four hundred in this chapters, but I’ve already cut so much there as it is! It’s the same story every few thousand words.

I think what’s got me doing a complete 180 on where I was a few days ago is that I, against my better judgement, researched the industry’s standard on newbie author’s again, and it hit me: I may never even come close to publishing this thing if it’s not below 120K. And, that’s a discouraging thought when I’ve got 20-some chapters left and almost 40K to delete.

Today, as I was getting my braids done, I wondered about which of three storylines would have to get the axe. On the gallows stand Dana Barrington’s story that has, on multiple occasions, received the governour’s call the moment it had the rope around its neck; Amber’s story that was once supposed to be a focal point of the book; and Corey’s backstory who, while not new to the rope, believes that the pardon is inevitable.

I’ve considered dropping Dana Barrington’s story so often that searching for her name in this blog actually yields its own page of results. Amber and Corey, however, are relatively new considerations.

Corey is supposed to just take off randomly some day and return with a tale of his father’s hypocrisy. His story keeps the strain between Damen’s dual friendship with both Corey and Brit going. Amber is supposed to attempt suicide because of Jessie Clarke, which makes her story really more of an extension of Jessie’s character. At one point, this was the climax of the novel, but now I find myself completely lacking a climax at all, except for the very, very end.

If I cut any of these three stories, I may be able to save almost 20K words, but I’m still at a loss here. I feel like a spoiled brat whose favorite horse has had foals, but I have to give up one of them. Yes, I’ve a dozen other beloved horses in the stables, but I want all the ones that belong to me!

I’ve got to see you again Saturday, August 18, 2012

Norah Jones ~ Come Away With Me

I’ve not done a song-titled post in a while and since I was little stumped on a title for today, this fits. I think I miss the days when I just had “Mission of the Month Post #12” posts, but anyway…

I’m finally starting to face the realization that I may never get this novel down to 120K. Firmly into 163K as I start reviewing Chapter 14 again, it occurs to me that unless I completely cut a storyline (i.e., I’ll probably have to nix Amber MacDonaugh’s part of the tale), I probably won’t come anywhere close to 120K words.

That said, I have got quite a few chapters to go and I’ve been averaging around 800-word deletions per chapter. My Chapter Details (I’m soooo glad I made these) shows me that I’ve got a lot of deleting and rearranging to do as well, so maybe I’ll pick it up to 1500 words removed per chapter, but it’s quite likely that I’ll not get this finished product down to 120K; this doesn’t upset me as much though. I think I’d rather have a 500-paged great story than strip it down to 300 pages of bilge.

Again, though…I’ve still got more than 20 chapters left to go and Chapter 14’s probably got at least a 3K cut in its future to bring me within 40K. I may still get there…maybe.

Goodreads makes goodwrites Tuesday, August 7, 2012

I love Goodreads like I love Earl Grey tea. There’s something so special about it that even if I walk away from it for a while, I’ll always return wanting more. I am kaitco there as well, in case you were wondering.

Today, I spent a long while perusing some of my Goodreads recommendations since I love discovering new books and, after adding 5 or 6 of them, I reviewed my To-Read list because I have this very obsessive complex with lists that Goodreads feeds better than my Netflix queue. Right now I’m reading Octavia Butler’s Kindred which is turning into one of my favorite books, Darth Bane: Rule of Two which keeps me reading because I’m just anxious to see how it ends and The Phantom Tollbooth which is simply amusing.

Up next I’ve got Northanger Abbey, The Hunger Games series, The Color Purple, a couple more Star Wars books and a couple others I’ve recently “discovered,” but after those comes the Twilight series.

Now, I’ve obviously not read Twilight yet (technically speaking, I’ve read up to the part where she first sees Edward in the cafeteria, but that was more than a year ago), but I’ve also not seen any of the movies either. This does not, however, prevent me from being well-acquainted with the plot and almost dreading to finish the first book.

On the one hand, there’s a chance I’ll enjoy them if I just erase all the commentary (positive or negative) from friends, relatives and peers and take the books at face value, but there’s also a huge chance that I’ll just plain hate the books because I’ve so many reasons to hate them.

I’ve seen that the folks who tend to adore the Harry Potter series tend to loathe Twilight and I really love Harry Potter. I’ve looked at the books read by those who love Twilight and I can’t help but cringe because I often judge others (often incorrectly) by what they read. Then I’ve read descriptions about vampire romances which makes me begin to lose faith in humanity because if this is all we have to offer, let’s just bring on the four horsemen.

All this notwithstanding, I’ve decided not to procrastinate on Twilight any longer and after I’ve read the other 8 books ahead of it on my list and written my own novel and cleaned the bathroom and beaten “Through the Fire and the Flames” on Expert in Rock Band and completed Skyrim to 100%, I’m going to start reading Twilight.

What has me writing, though, is that in reviewing and dreading what may come for me with Twilight, I couldn’t help reading the reviews for the book. The negative reviews (at least the most-liked ones) actually fascinated me and I’ve been rolling them in my head all day as I consider what I want and don’t want for my own characters.

Is my dialogue “stilted and absolutely wretched?” Am I doing anything that would make mine a “profoundly antifeminist novel?” Is Brit or even Damen a dreaded “Mary Sue” character? Are there potential problems with my book that would make others create an entire blog to demonstrate what a shoddy job I’ve done (no, seriously)?

Goodreads have got me thinking today about what I’m really trying to do with this novel and, if I accomplish nothing else with Damen, I just want it to be a decent book.

My points Friday, August 3, 2012

Last night, I had another epiphany: Writing a novel is really, really hard.

Actually, I take that back; the writing part is incredibly simple for me, but editing what I’ve written into something others would want to read is a chore I wouldn’t wish the folks I most despise.

My plan for July was to create notes for each of my chapters to determine how best to move around things and figure out what needed to be deleted. Those notes haven’t really done that, but they’ve aided me in another way by giving me a quicker method of getting to the “point” with each chapter.

I sat down last night, read each chapter summary and made a point about the chapter. Basically, “What am I trying to do in this chapter?” Some of them are very simplistic (The Point: Setting the scene), while others forced me to really wonder why I’d included the chapter at (The Point: ?? Introduction to his black books and a view of the world from Damen’s eyes; Memory reflects that more fights are likely imminent).

I found myself ready to scrap scenes that, had I not gone through this exercise, I would have never thought possible to delete, which has its pros and cons. There are some scenes (Damen and Dana’s Tumblr poems; the thought of it nearly made me burst into tears) that I’m loathe to delete, but I know I may have to in the end. I’ll save the really beloved scenes from the axe until the very end, however.

I finished my points last night and today, I’ll use them to ensure that the novel has a real plot to it. After that comes my digital red pen which will view the book not as “my beloved novel”, but as “a project that must be corrected.” My “right brain” and “left brain” will do battle today over this novel and my prayer is that the compromise on something worthwhile.

30-Day 5K – Day Twenty-Four Sunday, June 24, 2012

I reviewed almost 10K words today. Of those, 2766 are likely to be included in a final draft of this novel and the rest, I’m just not sure.

These 10K make up 3 chapters; 2 are entirely a part of the overall plot and one was like filler that made me shake my head as I was reading and highlighting through it.

The problem with this filler (and any other filler I’ve encountered in this process) is that it’s not usually just fluff. It hits very specific parts of the story, like noting why Anthony was raised by his grandparents, that don’t get told elsewhere, but are entirely necessary. None of this is central to the plot, though. I’ve the last few months, I’ve learned to tie these fillers into something substantial, but now I’ve got to break it all apart and since I’m not entirely sure how to do that at the moment, I’m left shaking my head at the laptop screen.

Despite finding another deterrent to finishing this edit before the end of the month, I finally managed to just let go of a character. I’d added a brand new character in this edit who helps bring together a couple plot points and enhances the characterization of others and this evening, instead of just pushing to make her more relevant, I just let her go.

It’s fine…She’s still relevant and necessary, but she is no longer cluttering anything and I no longer need extrapolate further on her because she’s fine with what I’ve written…It’s fine.

It’s very hard for me to just let characters go, especially when I like them, but I suppose it’s necessary at this point. I’ve just got to remember that it’s not like they’re gone forever. I’m free to take a minor character from Damen and use her in Jill (which I worked on a lot today) as much as I want…once this project is done.

30-Day 5K – Day Twenty-One Thursday, June 21, 2012

I now remember the most infuriating thing about getting to this point in the novel. I’ve spent the previous 100K words laying the foundation for these characters so that my audience can understand and care about them and only get to move along the full story in quick bursts in this last bit of the book.

I edited 6455 words and both chapters I reviewed took me less than 20 minutes to read a piece since all the other details were lain earlier, so I can just speed ahead with the plot.

Also infuriating is that I have so little to cut, but I’ve said this dozens of times in the last 5 days…

I think I’ll just focus on finishing this. I’m on Chapter 31 of 40 and there’s 8 days left in this month. I’m going to finish this…I’m going to finish this…I’m going to finish this…

30-Day 5K – Day Twenty Wednesday, June 20, 2012

I sometimes wonder if it’s normal for your own writing to invoke your own tears. There are two parts of my novel that brought me to tears as I made the notes for them, gave me more tears as I wrote the full chapters and then gave me tears well after I’d finished editing them.

I know I’ve said this before, but I’ve often got to “become” my characters to write them properly and when they discuss horrible things, I do just what they do. When they cry, I cry. When they get red-faced, I feel my temperature rise. I suppose this all has to do with the characters choosing the writer and so forth, but the fact that I can get so emotional over fictional events for fictional people that I knew were going to happen because I created the events myself, leaves me a little…rattled.

While writing Flight, I intentionally left my most fiendish antagonist fuzzy and blank because to write him properly, I’d have to “be” him and I really didn’t want to be him considering the things I was having him do. In writing Damen, I don’t often want to be Corey or Jessie or especially Damen in the end, but unlike my Flight antagonist, I can’t leave these characters ambiguous. I have to see life through their eyes to write them properly and so, when they emote, I emote.

I completed Chapter 30 in just one day, which is probably a record in this month-long challenge, finishing 5996 words (quadratics and The Old Man and the Sea) and bringing the chapter down almost a thousand words. From yesterday’s calculation, I’ve got less than 38K left to edit and, since this is when my drive to finish in March took it up a notch, I know that editing this last 38K is going to be a battle. My editing sword is ready, though; I may even finish this edit before the end of the month!

30-Day 5K – Day Five Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Well, it’s finally happened.

I knew that I’d reach a point in this novel where the writing was tight enough that there would be very little to cut and I’ve reached it.

I wrote and edited 6939 words tonight (even think to add this to her book) and, even after doing two reads over this chapter and splitting into two, I’ve still had little to edit, which means that after I finish this edit, I’ll have to cut even more from the beginning chapters to keep what really is important.

My success for tonight, however, (since I’d like to think I’ve succeeded in at least one thing) was in re-writing the scene where Anthony quite literally, throws Damen from the house a little more realistic with regard to Anessa’s reaction. Previously, Damen showed up battered at Brit’s house and then the family tries to continue with dinner until it becomes necessary to react, but this time around, I’ve added a “What would I do if this happened to me today” thought process to the scene and now, it no longer feels so forced.

So, cheers to me for making my 5K word count today and here’s praying that I can figure out how to cut another 80K words out of this book before August.

The fine line Wednesday, April 18, 2012

It occurred to me yesterday that I’m finally beginning to understand that fine line that exists between showing my audience what I mean and telling them what I mean.

I previously thought I learned my show vs. tell lesson after writing Flight, where too much tell resulted in an incomplete character, or rather a disconnect between what was supposed to be a favored character and my audience. As I push through this edit of Damen, however, I see that I have many, many lessons yet to learn in my writing endeavours.

Where Flight told too much, Damen has overcompensated by showing far too much and telling far too little. As I re-read, I find that I can map out the character Damen’s every movement between August 2007 and May 2008. It’s unbelievable!

I’m sure that when I was writing most of this last year, all this detail seemed relevant, but in hindsight, the details just make me want to pull out my hair. That’s not to say that it isn’t interesting to see every facet of a character’s life; it’s the fact that I spent nearly 300K words doing it and now have to rewrite entire chapters as I concede to a word count that’s aggravating.

…thus ends my rant of having to re-write the entirety of Chapter 14 due to my own hubris…

I’m down to 240K words and am finally into the meat of the novel. With that, however, comes to realization that I’ve a lot of re-writing coming to me. The first part of the novel was finely polished and led to my overall goal, but into Chapter 15-16 and beyond, I’m starting to see where I floundered a lot last year, hence the 15K chapters.

I think I may just sit down and just read for the rest of this week, focusing on whether what’s on the page is relevant and have a rough idea of how I’d like to reorder the remainder of the book. Unfortunately, with more than 20 chapters left to edit in this manner, this means that I’ll have to back my final draft goal to May 31 and the agent search to July, but I’d rather have all the proverbial ducks in a row and know I did this right, than rush it and face rejection when I didn’t do my best.

I HAVE been writing Friday, March 9, 2012

I know it does not look like it from the lack of posts, but really a lack of posting at this stage in the book simply means that I’ve spent more of my time focused on writing.

I’ve got maybe ten chapters left of this thing. I had only nine, but then I split one chapter into two and I’m certain I’m bound to do the same before the end, but I’m just so close.

The notes for the doc damen29-end (as in Damen chapter 29 through the end) was less than 14K words when I first started it. That 14K worth of notes is littered with mostly complete dialogue and prose so I know I’m close…so very close.

I’ve got Jill and Reruns popping up in my dreams now and my thoughts come back to them and even Luka or Evan or even Annie more often than focusing on Damen. Just yesterday, I “saw” Jill and how she interacted with her friends and realized that I would be making her far more like myself than I had done with Brit…but this is just the flow of my mind; a mind so anxious to move onto other projects that it makes me want to cry that I’m just so close to finishing Damen.

When I was young, I used to get mad when a TV show I liked ended or changed drastically because one of the actors got bored and left the show. I never used to understand it. How could they do that? Didn’t they care about the overall story? What about the people who’ve watched this since Day 1? Lately, however, I get it. There comes a point in a project, any project, where you’re just so…over it.

I love Damen. I’ve loved creating these characters and imagining this world where they interact together, but I’m soooo ready to move on because I’m just so close to the end. So close…

Contrast Wednesday, September 7, 2011

For the past few days, I’ve been working diligently to study the bible prior to writing. In my mind, if I can manage to post something every single day, and write more than 500 words every single, then I’m more than capable of studying the bible…every single day. I’m not quite to a place where I look forward to my study every night, but I’m getting there and I’ve even started to note some of the more memorable verses, like Matthew 6:33 to which my pastor often refers (“‘Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven!'”).

Studying the bible each night has started to calm my mind a bit so that I spend less time painfully staring at the laptop screen in search for inspiration. On the other hand, I’m starting to have some…issues, for lack of a better word, when writing some of these characters, namely Corey.

I’ve said before that Corey’s nature makes him sometimes difficult to write and it’s never so difficult to write Corey than it is after I’m fresh from studying the Word.

There is a fascinating contrast that almost limits my ability to “channel” him properly after I’ve studied. Case in point, tonight I tried to write Corey using the Lord’s name in vain as I have many, many times in the past, but tonight’s pause last long enough for me to debate with myself whether or not this was really what I wanted Corey to say. I settled with allowing him to curse, but only to do so by making him appear unnecessarily foolish, which I’m not sure I like doing because, despite the often horrible things he says and does, I like him to some degree. I’m just intrigued by the contrast between Corey’s dialogue and the words in red in my bible.

I wrote just 527 words tonight (smiled from the doorway) and I’m lucky to get that considering all that’s going on with my grandmother right now. I suppose I just get sad on days when all I’ve really got left is prayer.