writing. sickness. guitar.

1. WRITING. Yesterday I broke my previous writing record. The old record was 10,000 words in one day, set in July of 2008 while I was sick with the flu. Yesterday, I wrote a whopping 12,000 words. WHOOHOO! I was on a roll, yo! I never write on Sundays (I mean on my novels--clearly I blog and journal and email and stuff), so I'm trying not to think about my novel until tomorrow when I can jump back into it.

This is the first novel I've ever:

- Plotted out fully in advance, beginning to end, and
- Refrained from ambitious plot twists in.

The story is straightforward. If I had to write a pitch for it...

Lena Clark is sure that nothing exciting will ever happen to her, and she's okay with that. Despite herself, she's blown away when she meets Nick, a handsome newcomer to her small Colorado town. As they get to know each other, Lena realizes that things with Nick are not what they seem, and that his past--whatever it is--is still haunting his present. And as her life and his begin to intertwine, she discovers that his secrets may lead both of them to untimely deaths.

So far it has 26 single-spaced pages. If it were in a printed book form, that would be... 53 pages. Word count's at 13,200 right now. I'm aiming at making it 65,000 words in total. If I can squeeze out 12,000 words every day (yeah, right) that would put me finishing the first draft by Saturday! How sweet would that be!

Judging by my outline alone, my outline originally had 37 scenes/plot points. Yesterday I wrote up 12 of them, for an average of each point taking up a little over 1,000 words. I'll have to flesh out a lot of scenes, I guess, to hit my goal for the novel overall.

I'm very excited about this book.

2. SICKNESS Carl spent the weekend ill, starting on Friday. He was sicker than I have ever seen him. Poor guy. Over the past two days, he's probably eaten maybe 500 calories. A bowl of Lucky Charms and four Saltines. He felt well enough to go to bishopric meeting this morning, where he is now. I hope he continues to get better--and that Nathaniel and I don't get what he had. Yuck.

3. GUITAR. Yesterday I decided to practice my guitar. I don't do that too often now, sadly. But I pulled it out, and found my old lyrics blog (not linking! but maybe someday) and practiced some of my old songs. I was superoverjoyed to realize that I could remember several songs I haven't played in years, and never recorded. I decided that I will for sure have to use my flip to record these songs and stick 'em on teh youtubes.

In other news, I realized this morning that I haven't restrung my darling guitar since before I met my husband. This is no good. We've been married for three years, dated for a year before that, and flirted for months before that. My poor guitar is going on five years of the same strings. No wonder they sound so weird.

rather than writing... or, the gap

Rather than writing, I will over-analyze my writing.

I have always loved to write.

I have little stories that I wrote when I was so small--stories my mom had to write down for me because I didn't know how to write yet. They're funny and imaginative (for a four-year-old anyway).

As a kid growing up, I would write stories all the time. I have binders full of stories in my attic now. Stories about all sorts of weird crap only a nine-year-old would think of.

Then in high school I could barely stop writing. I wrote hundreds of thousands of words in high school, on tons of different projects. I started something like 8 novels in high school. Of course, didn't finish any of them (though some came close).

In college I started doing NaNo and really focusing. I completed two novels, a sci-fi and a fantasy. The sci-fi sucked, I'm sure. The fantasy, eh. Could be better. I've rewritten it now, oh, like 6 hundred bazillion times. It's getting there.

I love to write because I love sentences. I don't know what it is about those guys. I love 'em. I just heart 'em with a million lovey dovey hearts. Good sentences just make me want to hug things.

Bad sentences make me want to hit things.

Grammar is my homeboy. I love it. I love understanding it and I love messing with it and using it and strategically not using it.

I love utilizing white space--e.e. cummings is my hero for that.

I love layers of meaning, like T.S. Elliot mastered. He is so cool.

I love to write because I love how words look, how they work, what they mean. I just love words and how they fit together. They are beautiful puzzle pieces that you can put together however you want, to mean whatever you want, however many times you want to. How amazing is that?

Because I love writing and patterns and structure, it follows that I like to write stories. I love it. But I always feel lacking in the inspiration department.

Recently I had what I thought was a good idea for a story, and I snowflaked the crizzap outta that sucker and now I have no real motivation to write it.

I started writing a story to go along with the writing exercise I did the other day, but now I'm 7000 words in and have no idea where it's going.

This year, I resolved to complete four novels. Didn't matter which ones they were, if they were new or old ones I've put on the shelf. So far I have not really come close to finishing any and my first deadline is in March. I need to be accountable.

Here is a pin, since all my inspiration comes from Pinterest these days (possibly sad, but extremely true):

Source: thepipersson.tumblr.com via Allie on Pinterest

I think this is my big problem. The stuff I write is rarely as good as I want it to be.

Sometimes I get it just right. Just so perfect I fall in love with that one passage--regardless of whether or not it belongs anywhere in the fine world of literature.

And sometimes, most of the time, I'll get it partially right, or even mostly right, but that one niggling mistake just gnaws at me until I fix it. It's hard to complete anything when you are so set on perfecting every little thing you write down.

I AM GOING TO FINISH THE FOUR NOVELS THIS YEAR SO HELP ME.

This is my commitment to you, blogosphere. Make me keep it.

story beginning?

Here is my writing exercise from yesterday.

I’m ready to get violent with whoever is tapping on the table—but just before I sigh in exasperation I look down.

I am the culprit.

My fingers are dancing, dancing like madmen. They remind me of feet, the feet of hanged men on a tree. I saw that once, before I came here. Two hanged men, side by side. Four legs, four fingers, dancing madly.

I squeeze my fingers back toward my palm, making a tight fist. I feel the eyes of others on me. I disturbed them, too.

“Vera,” comes the computerized voice through the speaker above our heads. There is a collective sigh breathed from every mouth in the room.

Well, almost every mouth.

Vera is the girl next to me. She is stone. I scan her face, and she catches my eye; she is afraid. I look away. I hadn’t meant for that connection to take place. I would have trouble sleeping tonight, remembering that moment.

The door opens, and a rush of air sends my hair flying. I wait, frozen, as two men enter the room. They smell of sweat and leather, and their arms and faces glisten in the light of the one light bulb swinging above us. There is one man for Vera’s left arm, and one man for her right. She doesn’t struggle. She merely stands, and allows them to escort her out. The thick metal doors slam behind them, and the rest of us pray prayers of gratitude.

And I wonder: did she know?

When she stepped into the room, did she know that she would be the one escorted out?

I shiver. None of us know what happens when you leave this place. When you leave Home. That’s not what this place is; it’s just a title. I can barely remember my real home, but the snatches of memory I have are enough to remind me that this place, whatever it is, is anything but home.

There were twelve of us, once. Twelve of us.

Seven are left.

In my mind, I call it the Selection: the time when we all come to this room, and wait for our name to be called. Wait to be Selected.

I don’t know what the process is for. I wonder if it’s death. I remember Vera’s eyes and shudder. She was wondering the same thing, if the calling of her name meant her destiny was death. But what had she done? We were obedient.

We were obedient.

“You may exit,” the voice through the speaker comes again. We all stand up to leave. All of us, except Vera.

And four others. The four others who were called before.

“Maybe it’s freedom,” Laurie says as we move toward the door. Everyone turns to look at her.

“It doesn’t have to be bad,” she says as Millie opens the door so we can go. There is another rush of air, and I hear a scream from somewhere else in the building. It soaks through the walls like water, flooding the room. We drown in it.

I usually am 100% opposed to the use of the present tense in narration, but I was writer's-blocked and just started writing. I really like this beginning. But I have no idea where it's going.

I thought of having the narrator be:

- a priestess in training
- a gladiator
- a human sacrifice of some sort

And then last night I got the idea that maybe she could be a slave--like a slave in training. Something like that. When she is Selected, it will be her time to be sold at an auction, and the price will be high because she is trained in combat but looks weak. Her current owner maybe made a fortune off of kidnapping girls, training them up to be hardcore potential assassins, and then selling them at exorbitant prices to the elite who could really use a nice-looking girl to sneak into certain places and wreak havoc. Something like that.

I mostly like that idea, but I don't like how animal my main character is becoming. I hate in fiction how female characters so often are just tomboys. I think it's cheap and denigrating to femininity in general. There are already way more stories about boys than about girls, and even in books about girls, male characters typically outnumber the female characters by a wide margin. Why is it that even in stories with strong female characters, those characters almost always spend all their time trying to be men?

[/rant]

Anyway. Any ideas? Anyone?