Not so fast, romance...




The last several days, I've been writing until my fingertips cramp.  Partly to make up for the tiny funk from two weeks ago, and partly because I am almost finished with the 2nd pass/rewrite of Wishful Thinking.  It looks amazing to see that typed out.  Almost finished.

This means for a self-imposed three weeks off from the novel, my husband won't look over in concern at me every time I gasp, or glare furiously at my screen because the antagonist pulled a rather %^&$# move.  I think he wants to ignore most of them but doesn't want to get stuck if my expressions are reality related.

It also means I can take a break from the emotions of my characters.  Throwing rocks at them takes a toll on even the most wonderful days; when the words are hard to come by, every pebble becomes a boulder and I kick and scream more than my darling main characters.

In the meantime, the last five scenes are the hardest ones to write.  My protagonist is elevated, hopeful, like the couple in the picture above.  She has no idea what's coming.  But I do, and it isn't pretty.  It's sad, it's messy, and it's the way it has to be.  And it's almost over.  For now. 

Things that distracted me on the internet:
~  Trying to work through what the Health Care Act means for me.  Lots of text to slog through. 
~  Reserved my iPad and raring to pick it up on 4/3.  I am even going to brave the crowds of people to get it.  This is no small deal for me since any group larger than 5 people is a crowd to me. 
 Non-internet distractions:
~  Dragon Age: Awakenings conquered.  Hats off to the writing team on this franchise, the lore is well done.
 Accomplishments:
~  Did I mention around 5 scenes to go?  Granted they are the longer ones because they are ramping up to climax but I'm in the last 2 or 3 chapters.  Woot!



Image above courtesy of Dynamite Imagery/Free Digital Photos

What do you call spring cleaning if it isn't spring?


I am convinced writer's funk is worse than writer's block.

I can blame the sun for daring to shine for days before slipping behind the clouds again where it belongs this time of year.  I can blame having to rewrite several scenes (ok, the whole end of the book...) because the plot works better this way.  I can blame my house for being dirty.

What I ended up doing - moped for three days, scrubbed the master bathroom, rearranged middle daughter's room (and bought her a tv).

The whole time I complained I wasn't writing.

Before I left for a weekend break and some fun, I sat down and pumped out 1800 words of a scene that had been bugging me for a bit.  Of course I break the funk right before swearing to leave the laptop home.  Part of me feared I might not get back into it when I returned.  Irrational thinking that turned out to be - over 3500 words over the course of the day yesterday.

The funk has faded, I'm energized and ready to get this novel done.  I learned two important lessons over the last week though.  1. Writing can be a bitch.  2.  I don't feel right anymore without doing it.  I am clearly an insane typist (Thanks @alta03).

Things that distracted me on the internet:
~  More research on setting I needed for a scene between brothers.  Decided to bookmark it but wasn't worth adding too much description. 
~ I had fallen way behind in my blog reading and I wanted to peruse the expert websites.  There were too many good updates to list but my Distracting Writers and Agents blogs are starts. 

Non-internet distractions:
~  EA Games and Blizzard helped pass the rest of the time when I wasn't scrubbing my house.  And indoor waterparks are pretty awesome.  Running up and down five flights of stairs, not so much.

Accomplishments:
~  Will cross the 50k barrier today.  The rest of the book is a rewrite and I am determined to be 3/4 of the way done before April 1st.

Hot dogs that snap when you bite into them...

 
Now that I've gotten my sun fix for the day... .

In all seriousness, I bow to our weather overlords for giving us  in the greater Seattle area the second best winter I've experienced here.  The first time around, I hadn't realized how atypical a winter it was.  This is the first year since then I haven't needed to fly to LA and parts south for a break.

Just as the rain usually doesn't let up here, I've tried writing every day including the weekends, including when I didn't feel it, when the scenes had to be ripped screaming from my brain.  And each time I've forced myself, I wind up deleting or archiving what I've written.  If there is one thing I can't stand (besides from hot dogs that snap when you bite into them...), it's inefficiency.  Writing subpar is bad enough but writing subpar just to hit a number of words on a spreadsheet is a waste of time.  

So, I'm ready to try something revolutionary.  Something atypical.  At the end of the day, I'm going to go through what I've written and take words off the total for various insults to the English language.  Something like a net return on decent words.  I'll give myself a break if the sentence could be written a little better.  No, the words I'm talking about are most adverbs that I throw in lazily (:P  I'm talking about the word 'just', the word 'that', the filler words padding my word count.

I'll post next week how I did.  Now, excuse me while I play hooky and get my pasty self some more vitamin D from the primary source before mother nature tells me she didn't mean to give us an early spring.

Things that distracted me on the internet:
~  The teen needs a driving school to get her one step closer to her license.  I'm trying not to fall over how expensive it is to drive when you are <18 years old. 
~  The teen also needs a college and has given me a short list to peruse.  Somehow, I'm not experiencing sticker shock there.  I am experiencing information way overload. 

Non-internet distractions:
~  Pulled my level 66 druid out of languishment and have been fast leveling her.  My server went down unexpectedly and I played around on my Alliance priest (1st character).  So strange not to fly to Thrallmar :)

Accomplishments:
~  Passed the halfway point on rewrites/1st round of edits.  Have made peace with tossing more than 25k words from manuscript.  If it doesn't work, it doesn't work.  Oh well.  Also made it through a difficult scene emotionally and the family is only singed.  :D