If Self-Doubt Were a Superhero, What Color Would His Cape Be?

Yesterday, I felt a little bit like a superhero with a secret identity. I was flush with the success of completing a monumental project. A project born from the primordial goo of my imagination, spewed forth like a fish-man-beasty thing crawling from the depths. Okay, that might be a little melodramatic. Still, it felt like a big deal. All day.

Alternately, I was overcome with self-doubt. I shamelessly posted it on Facebook, because, dammit, I can't help myself. I can't keep a secret. Don't tell me any. I sure can't keep something as huge as a novel quiet. People congratulated me all day. It was wonderful. Like a second birthday.

But in my mind I was having this conversation:

Superhero Me: Way to go! You did it! You rock!

Self-Doubt the Evil Nemesis: Yeah, but you probably just wasted your time.

Superhero Me: No Way! It's the journey that matters. Completing the task! Doing what you said and set out to accomplish.

Self-Doubt the Evil Nemesis: Uh, yeah, still a waste of time and probably at least one tree was also wasted with that stack of paper.

Superhero Me: No, it's just as good as some of the other paranormal romances I've read.

Self-Doubt the Evil Nemesis: Really, you think so? Soooo deluded. No one is going to waste time reading that drivel. It's not even a real genre. Paranormal Romance, what the hell is that? Who cares?

Superhero Me: Middle aged women, lots of them. We like that stuff.

Self-Doubt the Evil Nemesis: Does it really make any difference in the world if it exists?

Superhero Me: It made ME happy. So yeah, it does.

Self-Doubt the Evil Nemesis: Self indulgent and weak

Superhero Me: Shut Up, Self-Doubt or I'm gonna rip that cape off and shove it up down your pie hole.

Last night I was determined to start the next novel fresh and new. When I started trying to massage my tiny little germ of an idea, my last unfinished project kept niggling at the back of my mind, "What about me? Finish me."

The last project was also the first real project I had ever started. I retrieved it from the bowels of my hard drive, dusted it off and reformated it to make it look prettier than it likely deserved. I printed that puppy out. Printing it out all nice and double spaced with a title, header and page numbers made it seem a little more official,  more substantial  and worthy somehow.

I bound it together with a colorful binder clip and headed to bed to reread it. I had already completed 115 pages before I wrote myself into a corner from which I couldn't figure out how to escape. As I read through it last night and then more today, I can't help thinking, it's not that bad. Sure the plot is ridiculously complicated and has no continuity but that can be fixed, right?

Apparently there are plotters and pantsers. Plotters tediously plan their storyline and spend hours writing the map of their story before their characters ever even come to life. Pantsers just jump in and write, anxiously waiting to see where the story takes them. For all my planning in my real life, I think I'm a pantser as a writer.

I don't like to be bothered with the tedious details.

On the one hand that's exciting because, I spent a lot of the work reacting to the crazy things that kept happening. Like in real life but totally not. On the other hand, at one point I got my heroine into such a mess, I'm now going to have to delete her back to something less grand. A God, I would not make. Lisa Almighty won't likely be in my future.

So I've decided to work on actually PLOTTING this unfinished work and molding it into something much better than it is right now. See, I AM teachable. In the meantime, I keep trying to kick Self-Doubt to the curb but he's a real bastard sometimes. Mostly he creeps in the minute someone tells me they want to read it. What? Why would you want to read it??? It's a NOVEL for God's sake. Oh, yeah. Right.

I feel like I need to make lots of disclaimers and caveats before I let anyone read it. Only a handful of people have read any of it and that was only the first twenty pages. As long as it's safely buried on my hard drive, and my desktop and my USB drive and my Skydrive and Google Docs ... ( paranoid much?) it's safe and a gloriously unjudged jewel. As soon as it get's read .... well ... I'll be judged too.

My own doing I know. I hear the strings whining as you play your tiny finger violin for me.

Be careful what you wish for ... you just might get it.

Novel Success!

Five months of writing to the date.

86,456 words.

335 pages.

Having a finished novel sitting on my desk ...

PRICELESS

I finished my paranormal romance novel Reap 'Em & Weep tonight. You'll read this tomorrow sometime. It feels like a real accomplishment. I sort of like just carrying it around.

I have no idea if it will ever see the light of day but I always wondered if I could do it. Stick it out until the end. See it through. Turns out I can. That feels pretty damn good.

The only thing better than having a project is having a completed project.

My plan now is to let it sit and percolate for a couple of weeks per Stephen King's advice in his book On Writing. The idea is that when you go back to it and read it to do so in one or two sittings so you don't lose focus on it. Also, after letting it sit for a while and going on to new things, it will be like reading someone else's writing. You'll have more perspective on it.

I think that idea is swell.

Bryon is begging me to read it. Now that it's done, I'm chicken to share it. It's not ready. I know there are some plot inconsistencies I need to iron out. Other things I need to flesh out. Still more I need to take out. I think it will be like a scab that you can't stop picking. At some point, I'm going to have to share it. And I will, I promise. I can't keep a secret, let alone something this big.

Just not now. Just not yet. I need to pick at it a bit more first.

Thanks to everyone who encouraged me to do it. Thanks to Bryon and Grace who endured Ramen noodles and Beanie Weanies more nights than were probably healthy.

Tomorrow I plan to start another one. A rolling stone gathers no moss. This isn't a sequel yet, although I have at least two more in mind for a Reap 'Em series. God knows how I like a series.

I'll let you know a little about the next one when I get rolling, for now I can tell you it's going to be based on the Worst Case Scenario books. Did you know they have a paranormal one? They do my friend, they really do.

Writing the Reaper

I'm writing in JANO (local write a novel in a month challenge). I've added 7,282 words to my novel in the past four days! I should break 70,000 words tomorrow night. Then only 10,000 more to go!

Not getting much blogging in obviously. I'm a good multi-tasker but that's stretching it.

More to come.

Write In - Write On

This is what a Write-In Looks like. I was set up beside the girl in the red sweatshirt against the wall. I've mentioned several times that November is NaNoWriMO which I did not participate in. These folks did. There was actually about a dozen people that came to the Brown Egg last Saturday to participate in a twelve hour write-in. The Brown Egg is a new place one block from MSU and it just opened last month. I hope it lasts. It was super cool. I was BY FAR the oldest one there ... by a decade ... or two.

There was a very cute young man making and selling his zombie art while we worked. Who can resist zombie art? Not this girl. He's working on the piece I bought in this picture. I just wish I could remember his name. Timothy something. I can't read his writing where he signed my piece.

Here is the piece I bought. I'm going to hang it in my office over my writing desk. Seems appropriate.

 We spent half the day at the Brown Egg and then the second half a few blocks away further downtown at Boca Mocha . It was fun. I was just working on my revision and trying to get the word count up which is easier than you would imagine now that I can tell you what the other characters are up to.

I spent ten hours working on my novel and revised half the book and added seven thousand words for a current word count of 57, 627 words. I only need 22, 733 more to go. I have a couple of big fight scenes and the ending to finish so I'm feeling pretty confident.

I just need about eight more days like last Saturday to get it done.

Write & Wrong

So this month is National Novel Writing Month  in which I am not participating. Saturday was the Ozarks Romance Writers' meeting and several of those members were participating, so I had some writing envy. I decided I needed to love the one I'm with and work on my own already in progress novel.

I have waffled between rewriting it from third person or sticking with the first person point of view. Why I didn't just do that from the beginning I can not explain. Honestly, I didn't think it would really matter what point of view I used. I've read plenty of paranormal romances from both viewpoints.

Harelequin is probably the most new writer friendly publisher. Probably because they publish so many romances each much. Lots of awesome writers have cut their teeth in serial romance. In fact, so writer and submission friendly is Harlequin that they are having a free online conference all this week specifically on the how to's of writing romance. You can check it out at So You Think You Can Write if you are interested.

Last night I was trying to check out all of the events and podcasts from the first day and the main editor that accepts submissions for Harlequin Nocturne (the paranormal romance editor) had a podcast. She seemed great and gave good advice but also dropped a couple of bombshells. First, the word count for Harlequin Nocturne just got raised from 70,000 to 80-85,000. Yeah, I have 51,858 now. I've got some work to do.

Secondly, at the very end of the podcast she just happened to mention that submissions needed to be in third person point of view. Nowhere on the submission guidelines did it say that. Maybe it was supposed to assumed. Maybe I just didn't know what I didn't know what I didn't know. Now I know.

So my dilemma has been resolved for me. I have to rewrite it.

I guess the hardest part is committing to a course of action. Once there's a solid and clear plan, it's usually easier to proceed, right? It's good to have a plan.

So after all that waffling and hoping to take the easy way out, now I know, as with most of the things in life, there is no easy way out.

Bryon's pretty sure I'm windy enough to make it all work out. He's probably right. I just need someone to offer up their lake home to me for a long weekend so I can work on it without distraction. Either that or I'm going to have to check myself into a hotel.

Either way ... I got this. 

Storytelling - Day 28 of 31 Days of Blogging

I am not a good oral storyteller. I am a much better written storyteller. Relating a story to someone orally is a lot more difficult than writing it down for me. Bryon is a much better oral storyteller. He can take the slightest event and turn it into a twenty minute detailed narrative. He's especially good at relaying hunting stories.

He would have been an extremely valuable member of society back in the days before writing when oral tradition was the only way histories, laws, folk tales and literature were relayed. Think The Illiad or The Odyssey but much shorter . He's such a Homer.

He can spin a yarn or tell a story in a way that's both engrossing and interesting. Of course, sometimes he uses his power for evil and not good and tricks me with elaborate fairy tales and when I finally ask, "Really??? You're kidding!"

He says, "Yeah, I'm kidding."Aaaarrrrrgggg!

He used to get me all the time that way.

I'm still not immune to his ruses but I do still like to hear his stories. He fishes me in every time. And trust me, in the past 25 years, he's had a LOT of stories.

 I'm a much better written storyteller. I have to see the words appear before me and then rearrange them like puzzle pieces until they are just right. When I TELL a story, I don't have that luxury and under pressure, the story loses it's cohesion and impact. Sometimes I hear myself talking when I'm trying to tell a story and think, what the hell am I even saying? This story makes no sense.

It makes perfect sense in my brain. Somehow it between my brain and my mouth it loses it's potency.

The great thing about writing is that until the very last minute you can edit it, rearrange it and dress it up in different clothes until it's just right. Then, if you still aren't happy with it, there's always the rewrite.

I haven't worked on my novel much this past few weeks because I know that is what the next step is: the rewrite. I have ideas for at least two more books so I can make it a trilogy. Trilogies are very hot right now. But I can't do that in the first person, which is the point of view I've used for the first 50,000 words.

The good news is that when I do finally sit down to rewrite, it should blow up as I am able to expand the vision of the characters and flesh them out more making it pretty easy to reach my 75,000 word target. The bad news is that it's going to take some extensive time and uninterrupted concentration to do it.

I had really considered trying to participate in NaNoWriMo in November where you write a novel of 50,000 words in 30 days but I think I will be better served to concentrate on working on the one I already have in progress than starting another one. So I'm punting NaNoWriMo and hope to work on the rewrite instead.

Maybe if I can spend the next 30 days working on the rewrite, I'll have a brand spanking baby New Year book by 2012.

Write on.

A Leap of Faith - Post 1 of 31 Days of Blogging

Today was the second ORA (Ozarks Romance Authors) meeting I have gone to. It was fun. Last night I surpassed the 50,000 word milestone and decided I'd take my first ten pages to the ORA critique group. I printed out 10 copies stuffed them in to my folder and went back to work on my story.

As I read through those first ten pages again, I realized that nearly every paragraph started with "My" or "I". Apparently that's an inherent hazard of writing in first person. I had not done any revisions or rewriting yet, I just wanted to plow through and get the story out and onto paper so I could see that word count rise and validate all the time I was spending on it. I'm still 20,000 words short of a publishable length but it's two thirds finished and I don't have the ending written so I'm not worried yet.

I reworked those first ten pages and cleaned up the obvious and glaring mistakes and reprinted them, exchanged them for the first set and took my folder downstairs.

I still wasn't sure I was actually going to let anyone read it yet. I wasn't quite ready for the dream to be crushed.

This morning I got up and headed to ORA. One of the members, Beth Carter just had an adorable children's book published and since she had a book signing across town the critique group was only three members today. I was still waffling as to whether or not to offer it up for sacrifice. I did.

You have to read your work aloud while the others read along and make notes and marks as you go, then at the end each person takes a turn critiquing your work ... aloud ... in front of God and everyone. I was a little scared. I read fast like I was trying to rip a Bandaid off a hairy arm so it would hurt less.

They did not eviscerate me or my first ten pages so hope still springs eternal. They gave me some good suggestions and wanted to know what happened next. That's a good sign since none of them really dig paranormal romance.

Before I left, I gave a copy to two other members to read and critique and I know they are both pretty tough and thorough from hearing them at the last meeting but at least the debut wasn't met with utter disgust so I suppose that's something.

The dream is still alive.

A Novel Effort

Last summer I got hit with a hankering to write a novel. I have read more than a hundred paranormal romance novels in the past two years and each time I have thought, “I can do this!” So I finally decided to put my money where my mouth was and give it a try.

As a former English teacher and a graduate of a very respectable state university with a BS in English Education, I figured, why not? This does not, however, mean that I have perfect grammar or always use the correct word. It means I have some good ideas and I need an editor … and spell check.

I first tried to write a novel several years ago when I had what I thought was a great premise after my Bryon and I helped clean out his grandmother’s incredibly disgusting and packed apartment and moved her into a care facility. We found a lot of crazy and interesting items and papers during our efforts which led to all sorts of questions and potentially mind blowing secrets.

When I got home, I started the novel. I made it about 24 pages and lost steam. I was approximately 276 pages short of a novel. I binder clipped the pages together along with my internet “research” and stuck it all into a folder, likely never to be seen or worked on again. It was dead to me.

Writing a novel is something I think lots of people secretly aspire to achieve. Being a published author would be even better. I think people assume every published author has basically hit the J.K. Rowlings lottery jackpot or can at least quit their day job.

I have been researching this assumption and it turns out it’s not exactly the case. Sure some authors hit the trifecta of published book, best seller, movie deal but most don’t. Some self-publish their literary children and others quietly stuff them into a drawer or the back of their closet under some mothballed sweaters.
It’s not easy but it is exciting to consider the possibilities.

It all starts with page one and ends 300 some pages later. Even if it’s a stinker, at least it’s an accomplishment that has a tangible result; a huge pile of paper with words you typed from your very own brain. No one else can do THAT for you.

Then if you actually finish the damn thing and want to try to publish it, there are a whole new host of obstacles to overcome. Of course, if you never finish, you’ll never have to worry about any of that.

As of today I’m on page 135 and 37,667 words of my third novel attempt. That's fifteen pages from half way. I think this one might actually go the distance. It’s exhausting and exciting all at the same time. It’s also pretty all consuming. I’ve been working on it since August 5th of this month and writing in long hand at lunch time while I snarf down my Subway Buffalo Chicken sandwich in one of the five counties I cover for work and then slinking off to my upstairs office until midnight most nights typing up and amending my copy from the day.

When I finally make it to bed, I can’t fall asleep because things keep happening to my story in my head and those characters just won’t shut up. My brain keeps writing the next scene and finally I have to turn the light back on and write down some notes or it will be lost forever. That’s a good problem to have. I’m not complaining about that.

Today I spent at the Library Station in Springfield for six hours at the Ozarks Romance Author's monthly club meeting. I didn't know what to expect. I went alone with a notebook and a pen and good intentions. It was very inspiring. There were about a dozen ladies and one gentleman there and we all go to critique two pieces of member's works in progress. By the time the speaker arrived around lunch time, the group had swelled to nearly forty authors. Not a one of them was writing paranormal romance. I was encouraged by that.

I thought the two who offered up their work for critique early in the day were very brave. Sometimes I think it's probably mostly forest for the trees stuff. We spend so much time looking at our own work on the screen and printed out copies that we don't see the obvious stuff anymore. Other times I think maybe it's just that we have the whole story (or most of it) in our heads and it doesn't always make it to the written word in it's full context.

I didn't bring any of my story for critique yet. It's still at that embarrassing "work in progress" stage where you don't really know if you want to rip off the swimsuit cover in public yet and reveal your full middle aged, bikini clad glory.

I did get a lot of good information, met some cool people and learned tons today. I can't wait for next month.

 Page 135, here I come.