January Assessment

I've decided to check in on how 2013 is going, mostly because it's the last day of January and I've finally made my resolution. 2013 is going to be all about getting my life under control. Living in chaos and filth is getting a little old, so I'm establishing! good! habits!

In order to work on my self motivation, I've joined the gym (and I've already gone three times since I joined last week! woohoo!). From what I've read, a big problem you run into with being self employed is sleeping. With no one demanding you wake up at a certain time, sleeping in becomes a siren call of eternal procrastination.

The gym is going to be a key piece of my resistance strategy. See, I'll need to get up early enough to complete my gym routine. I've always found that working out in the morning makes me more awake for the rest of the day. After going to the gym I'll be so filled with energy I'll be able to make myself work instead of procrastinate. (If you are in doubt that this actually works, let me just say that when I got back from the gym last night I cleaned the entire apartment.)

Cleaning is actually the second pincer of this metaphorically confused strategy. Getting my life in order means getting my apartment in order, so I'm taking up the fly lady baby steps. Tomorrow I will be shining my sink. Mostly I'm motivating myself to do this part with vague promises about how I'll need these skills when I get a house. You see, owning my own house is a dearly held dream of mine. Unfortunately, there seems to be an unthoughtful consensus that I will fail at keeping a house due to my messy, dissolute ways. Therefore I'm going to habit myself into building the skill set and motivation I'll need in order to have the BEST HOUSE EVER.

On a writing note, I've succeeded at my goal to write a short story this month (the prequel to Junk Squad totally counts, okay?) and finished the Broken Hearts edits on schedule. I failed utterly at writing any poetry and/or getting much further on Junk Squad. Oh well. There's always February.

Thereto and therefore, I am declaring January to be a slightly echoey success.

An Interlude

Minor Character is standing in an art museum, clearly wearing a uniform and name tag that reads, "Minor Character." He's a plain man who blends into the background. Love Interest walks in, looking at the paintings. She's a beautiful woman who stands out, but her face has a vacant expression. She wears a visitor's pass that reads, "Love Interest."

LOVE INTEREST

Do you have any Picasso?

MINOR CHARACTER

No.

LOVE INTEREST

I thought you would.

MINOR CHARACTER

What?

LOVE INTEREST

Have some Picasso. He’s my favorite, I think. He’s James’ favorite.

MINOR CHARACTER

Whose?

LOVE INTEREST

James. I love him, you see, so his favorite must be mine.

MINOR CHARACTER

I don’t.

LOVE INTEREST

What?

MINOR CHARACTER

See.

LOVE INTEREST

Oh.

        (Pause.)

Picasso is his favorite. He mentioned that on our first date. We went to his favorite Italian place by the ocean. He talked the entire time and I fell in love with him.

MINOR CHARACTER

Why?

LOVE INTEREST

I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. I can’t exist without him. Loving him is who I am.

MINOR CHARACTER

You exist.

LOVE INTEREST

You’re very kind, but I’m afraid I don’t believe you. Loving him is my defining characteristic. I haven’t got much else. 

MINOR CHARACTER

Do you like the ocean?

LOVE INTEREST

Not particularly. It's cold. But James says it's poetically endless, so I guess there's that.

MINOR CHARACTER

Do you like Picasso?

LOVE INTEREST

I already told you. James likes it.

MINOR CHARACTER

Which painting do you like?

LOVE INTEREST

What?

MINOR CHARACTER

Which one?

LOVE INTEREST

I don’t know. I don’t think I like art.

MINOR CHARACTER

Then which one do you hate the least?

LOVE INTEREST

I don’t hate them. I just don’t like them. 

MINOR CHARACTER

You must feel something.

LOVE INTEREST

I suppose I almost feel something for the modern art. It’s so empty.

MINOR CHARACTER

But it isn’t empty. It’s full of thinking. 

LOVE INTEREST

Is it? I shouldn’t think so.

MINOR CHARACTER

You just have to look closer.

LOVE INTEREST

James is always saying things like that. He says I have to see the potential. But I don’t want to be potential. I just want to be.

MINOR CHARACTER

Then be. 

LOVE INTEREST

It’s that simple?

MINOR CHARACTER

No. But you already are.

LOVE INTEREST

I don’t think I understand. I’m not sure I understand anything.

MINOR CHARACTER

Why did you fall in love with him?

LOVE INTEREST

I don’t know. I was supposed to.

MINOR CHARACTER

Maybe it’s time to stop falling.

LOVE INTEREST

I’m not sure I can. Will you help me?

MINOR CHARACTER

No. I’d leave you just as empty.

LOVE INTEREST

I think I’d rather be empty than alone.

MINOR CHARACTER

There’s pictures of Picassos in the gift shop. Buy one.

(He leaves. Love Interest is facing forward and doesn’t see.)

LOVE INTEREST

Thank you. I’m sorry, but I have to be shallow. If I get too deep I’ll drown. It’s so easy to be empty. I could almost disappear. Do you think James would notice if I disappeared?

(Pause.)

LOVE INTEREST

Hello?

(She looks around and realizes she’s alone.)

Oh. I didn’t mean to be. I didn’t mean to be.

CURTAIN

how to eat five pies while juggling a monkey

I did things! Like update my website and write some prequel stuff and umm, no, nothing I actually intended to do today. Sigh.

I’m finding it really tough to transition into working on Junk Squad when Broken Hearts is still at the forefront of my mind. I keep thinking about the cover and release date and worrying about how everyone in the world is going to hate it and declare me the worst writer of all time. *deep breath*

Maybe I should learn from this and not try to work on a different project while getting ready to release something else? Nah. I just need a clever trick to refocus my attention. And to make me stop fiddling with changing stupid last minute things in Broken Hearts.

Maybe I’ll ban myself from opening the Broken Hearts file until the copyeditor hopefully gets back to me and I can fix up my mistakes. Maybe I’ll invest in electro shock therapy. 

Changing playlists might help, slightly. But what I really need to do is reprogram my brain until everything reminds me of parts of Junk Squad instead of Broken Hearts, and the best way to do that, I suppose, is to write more Junk Squad.

Why does everything always come down to just doing more writing? Geez, you’d think I’m a writer or something.

Anyway, in a couple weeks now it’ll be thoroughly and truly done with Broken Hearts. I will toss my hands up and be rid of the whole mess.

So I suppose the trick to eating five pies while juggling a monkey is to know that it’s only a temporary situation, so you just need to do as much as you can while you get through. Or at least tell yourself it’s a temporary situation, even though you suspect there’s a herd of monkeys waiting to be juggled when this one is done.

I'm baaaack!

I know, it's terrifying.

On a smaller yet completely relevant note, I should really write these posts ahead of time like a sensible blogger. Then maybe I'd actually, I don't know, succeed at keeping a blogging schedule or something.

The weekend went brilliantly. I got all the writing done I needed to do and read over my stupid book about fifty times. Also, I've decided that once I get this book all wrapped up and published I am never, ever reading it again. Stupid book.

Speaking of being wrapped up and published, the cover is underway! Yay! But as my dear and currently much hated character would say, more on that later.

On a less high wrapped up and published note, I seem to have flubbed up on the getting it edited front. Hmm. Did you know there's this thing, where you're supposed to contact the editor in advance or something? I KNOW, RIGHT? So, oops. Lesson learned. I might have to do some backflips to get this book out in time to meet with the excel schedule, and the excel schedule is GOD and therefore must be met!

Okay, yes, I wrote it myself and there's absolutely no one except me who cares about it, but I told myself I'd be eaten by zombies if I didn't meet the deadlines and I take my threats against myself very seriously.

On that note, I believe I will end this post before I embarrass myself further.

In Which I Stab Procrastination in the Face

I meant to be productive this week. I really did. I had how I was going to finish up the Broken Hearts edits all planned out. And then I watched Downton Abbey instead. Also, I may have procrastinated by reading an article on how to stop procrastinating. Hmm.

The point is, I've decided nothing will work but a complete internet black out, which means I'm going all medieval this weekend. Well, I'll still be using my laptop to write but that TOTALLY DOESN'T COUNT, okay?

So from the time I go to sleep on Thursday to 8 p.m. on Sunday (That's when Once comes on, okay?) I will be ridding myself of all my distraction causers and getting these final edits done so I can hit my self-imposed deadline. Man, myself is such a hard ass (fun fact: if you try to make hard ass one word spell check corrects it to hairdos).

See ya Monday, internet!

In Which I am Still Not a Sci-Fi Writer

"We can't expect the multi-tentacled space goat to save us again," Nagda said, the glowing sword in her hand dripping Lorgor ooze on the chrome walkway as they huddled behind a statue of Sir Hildorf the Great.

"But it might!" Pipin's eyes held the reflection of death's roving flashlight growing closer. 

"No." Nagda struck her sword down. It let out an ear popping clang. "We save ourselves this time."

"With what?" Pipin wailed. 

"Determination." Nagda set her face in what she imagined a statue of herself might look like. She had the face for stoney expressions with her high cheekbones and ice blue eyes. Her blond hair was tightly coiled against her head, splashes of it dyed purple from the ooze.

"We're going to die," Pipin wimpered. With her onyx black hair and sharp features she might have struck as imposing a figure as Nagda, if it wasn't for the wimpering on the floor part.

The rest of their party consisted of a confused warrior hologram waving its sword uselessly in the air, a cleaning robot that may or may not have been simply left in the corner, and a levitating fish.

"We should retreat," the levitating fish said.

"We fight to the death!" the hologram said.

"May I offer you a bev-rage?" the robot said.

Nagda realized in that moment that they were all doomed. The howl of a pack of Lorgor got louder. "Do you think there's any chance," Nagda wondered aloud, "that they might just pass us by?"

The walkway was a fairly wide one bridging the gap between the court house and the old library. A few other statues of legendary librarians were interspersed along its length. It had no rails along the edges that led to an infinite drop into The Chasm, no doubt an oversight of the architects. 

They could hear the snuffling of the approaching Lorgor hunting down their trail now. Nagda raised her sword into a fighting stance. Pipin tried to hide at the base of the statue. The hologram let out a cry of defiance and charged the Lorgor, passing straight through them. The robot busily cleaned the goop off the floor. 

"Bye," the levitated fish said. It drifted out into The Chasm.

"On the count of three," Nagda said, "we Jump."

"But the tech hasn't been proven sound yet." Pipin sniffled. 

"One."

"The last test subject split into four even pieces that gained individual sentience and sang 'Delian Spotted Delian' in four part harmony."

"Three."

When the Lorgor reached the statue they found nothing but a blackened spot on the chrome and a woman's left shoe. For years the fate of their escaped prey was debated along with whether the shoe was technically a tennis shoe or a sandal because it was a sort of slip on that only resembled a tennis shoe in the front. The bunny lords settled the issue when they declared the girls dead, the cleaning robot exploded, and the shoe to be a Tenndal. 

There was much rejoicing, even as a few Lorgor quietly whispered their doubt and passed on legends of the multi-tentacled space goat.

(Brought to you courtesy of the Writing Excuses writing prompt. What's that? I'm still procrastinating? Pfft. This was totally productive. It almost doesn't at all resemble anything I'm supposed to be writing.)

Outline Methodology

I learned a new thing and I’m so excited I just had to share it with my imaginary friends!

So I was procrastinating on rewriting the ending to Queen of Broken Hearts by listening to the Writing Excuses podcasts (I don’t think I use these podcasts as intended) when they said something absolutely genius in the outlining podcast. See, they were talking about Mary’s method of outlining and how she expands from a thumbnail sketch and sees the outline as a sort of under painting, and I was all, hmm, that’s interesting. She mentioned that she ends up with at least a sentence about each scene, and  I was all, oh, I do that too! But THEN she said the genius part. She writes the novel ON TOP OF the outline.

My brain exploded. I was all, what. But that makes so much SENSE. Admittedly, this probably never occurred to me because I tend to write my outlines in notebooks then reference them as I type the story. But I did my last outline on virtual notecards, and I had to keep switching back and forth to reference what I would need to write next.

Writing on top of the outline would not only solve that problem, it would solve the problem of forgetting my outline notebook somewhere and having no idea what happens next (this usually leads to writing with reckless abandon and creating big plot snarls when I finally have my notebook again).

So I’m implementing this method for writing Junk Squad. Honestly, I’ve been debating the best way to go about Junk Squad for a while, and this seems brilliant. If it works I can totes also use it for my Seven Deadly Sisters novellas. I’m so excited! 

In Which Fluffy Robes Induce Deliria

It’s weird, but the further along I get with this whole becoming a self published author plan, the more I feel like my daydreams are wandering into reality. I mean, I have a website that looks all pretty and official, a shiny blog, covers, copy, and release dates for my books.

It’s like I’m becoming a real author and not just a crazy person inflicting my words upon the world. Okay, so there are people who would call the latter the definition of a self published author, but that’s not what it feels like right now.

Maybe it’s because I’ve been going about it so deliberately and putting so much work into. I mean, I have a business plan. Me. With a business plan. Who would ever have thunk it?

Plus crazy people wouldn’t spend as much time editing as I’ve been doing with Broken Hearts. Or maybe they would… I’ve got my eye on you, brain. (Great way to sound non crazy, self.)

It might be pointed out that I don’t have an audience, but I don’t expect that yet, anyway. I’ve always figured I’ll need to get a few books up before I can even think about that whole audience part.

So it’s weird. I spent a lot of time waiting for some magical signal to tell me that I was good enough, but now I’ve decided to simply judge my work as being ready for myself and it’s terrifying in some ways. What if I’m not good enough? (whatever that means) Am I reaching too far? Will I burn myself to cinder in the atmosphere? Will I ever be able to craft a decent metaphor?

Who knows.