A Duck and Cover Week

Some weeks, the universe is just out to get you.

Last week was one of those weeks for me. I experienced career failures, poor health, and a dismal outlook on life.

Today wasn't a whole lot better. For example, two post offices closed just before I arrived (I think they did it just to spite me), the library parking lot was completely full (when does that happen?), I took a swig out of a water bottle that had been in my car for who knows how long (what kind of illnesses can I develop from such actions?), and my cat was sick (even though I brush him every day and feed him hairball remedies by the dozen).

When everything seems to be going wrong, all I can do is sit back, sigh, and say, "I suppose it could be worse," or "This too shall pass." I like to follow those more placid statements with a string of curse words and a healthy dose of sarcasm.

For everyone out there who's also in a bad mood (and who wanted to kick the television when the unimaginably-wealthy, annoyingly-attractive, madly-in-love "royal couple" looked so smugly happy on Friday), I post this video for your viewing pleasure.

Friday Read: Dark Mirror by M.J. Putney

When Lady Victoria Mansfield's family discovers that she has magical abilities, they send her away to reform school to be "cured." Her new school, Lackland Abbey, is located near the English Channel--a dangerous place to be on the brink of a feared Napoleonic invasion. Instead of working on suppressing her magical abilities, Tory finds herself drawn to an underground group of rebellious student mages who wish to develop their talents for the good of England. While the reader is expecting some sort of Napoleonic showdown, Tory actually ends up falling through a magic mirror that transports her to 1940 on the brink of World War II when her and her friends' abilities are needed more than ever. Tory must also struggle with her magnetic attraction to a handsome and mysterious aristocrat named Allarde who has secrets that threaten to keep them apart.
Dark Mirror provides an interesting paranormal explanation for actual historical events, and the contrast between 1803 and 1940 is vividly described. The plot is riveting, the characters engaging, and the end left me longing for the sequel, Dark Passage, which is set to be released in September 2011. I would recommend the book to anyone who enjoys stories about magic, English history, the Napoleonic period, or World War II. Even if you don't think you like history, you might change your mind after reading this book!

I purchased Dark Mirror at Books-A-Million. My community doesn't have any Indie bookstores, but I do try to support brick and mortar stores when I can. I want them to stick around! You can also find the book here.

Love: How Do You Like It?

The "Drumming Song" by Florence and the Machine is, in my opinion, the perfect description of all-consuming, mind-blowing, soul-wrenching, dysfunctional romantic relationships.

Obsessive love is:

Louder than sirens
Louder than bells
Sweeter than heaven
And hotter than hell

That's how it felt for me when I fell in love for the first time. It was as if someone hit me over the head, drowned out all rational thought, and made me a puppet to my emotions, to the passion that consumed me.

It was sweeter than heaven. And it was hotter than hell. And I'm not sure that I ever want to go back there again.

As a result, I don't want to take my characters there. I don't want the instant attraction of Edward and Bella or Jack and Rose because instant attraction tends to flare up quickly and burn out equally quickly, usually in a destructive blaze.

Instead, I like romantic relationships to heat up slowly like the controlled flame beneath a gas burner. I think about the British show Doc Martin and how the flawed hero and heroine's relationship develops slowly over the series. I think about GiGi and Gaston. Anne of Green Gables and Gilbert Blythe. Beauty and the Beast. And in the realm of literature, I think about my all-time favorite book Blood and Chocolate by Annette Curtis Klause where the hero "waits" for his heroine, knowing that she is the woman for him.

If anyone stops by, leave a comment and tell me what you prefer. The knee-shaking, heart-pounding, instant-infatuation type of romantic love? Or a love that grows slowly over time, that may even start out as hatred or a general dislike?

Creative Frustrations

So...I had the whole book planned out and organized. Everything should have been perfect. But it wasn't.

Writing felt like drudgery. Nothing was coming out correctly. I just couldn't think, and I wanted to compulsively refresh my twitter feed or read blogs or feed the cat...anything but write. I had to sit down and really try to analyze what was going on with me.

First, I haven't been exercising or eating right. I've been sitting in a chair all day, eating far too many sweets, and watching television at night. The extent of my exercise was a short, thirty-minute walk with the dogs at night.

Second, I explained my story idea to a friend, and he thought it was weird. I should have known better. I should have kept it a closely guarded secret, but I was just so excited. Now I'm struggling to hold on to the joy of my original vision.

Third, I'm feeling the time crunch. 13 days are gone. Only 47 days left. It's a lot of pressure.

What am I going to do now? Well, I'm going to write. It doesn't matter if I like it. I'm going to make it work because I have to. I won't let frustration or negativity bring me down. Writing is my job.

But I am going to do some things to make the process easier. First, I'm going to stop eating junk and give myself permission to exercise--to take some classes at the gym, or go swimming, or walk around the lake. I'll do something fun every night without fail because it's my responsibility to stay healthy. Second, I'm going to keep my lips zipped about my story. I'm not going to tell anybody else until it's done. Finally, I'm going to relax a little about the time crunch. I have plenty of time. If I let myself relax, I'll write fast, and I'll enjoy it. I just need to "let it be easy."

I wonder if others can relate. How do other people give themselves pep talks?

Word By Word

Well, I started running right out of the gate on my #60n60 project. Got an idea, explored it a little, wrote about 15,000 words and then another 27,000 words. Quickly realized it wasn't working! It wasn't my voice! It was a disaster (alarm bells were ringing in my head).

So I went back to the drawing board. Came up with a setting, a hook, a mythology, and characters that I could live with. Created a story bible with my characters' backgrounds, the setting, and other pertinent info. Wrote a tentative pitch and synopsis/outline.

Tomorrow, I begin the actual first draft. Keeping my fingers crossed that it will come out the way that I envisioned. I can hear the characters' voices in my head. The plot is pretty clear. Really feeling the time crunch, though. Tomorrow is day 11 of 60, and I need to be able to publish this sucker in 49 days!

No matter what happens tomorrow--even if I hate the writing and it's killing me and it sucks--I will keep working. Because rough drafts are always hard, and happiness doesn't come until I start editing.

Hope everyone's Monday brings much joy and happiness.

Writing about the Wicked

Day after day, I stop at red lights in the middle of nowhere, pay my bills even if I feel I'm being extorted, and ignore my neighbors when they start their home improvement projects at seven in the morning on a Saturday.

I'm not wicked. Not even close to it. But sometimes I admire people who are. Like vigilantes and bank robbers and assassins and, for the more supernaturally inclined, werewolves and vampires. As long as I'm not the victim of their unlawful actions, I can enjoy reading about them or watching them. The HBO show Dexter is a good example--he's such a lovable sociopath.

My story for 60k in 60 Days contains characters who behave in morally questionable ways. For example, I googled "How to Run a Strip Club" yesterday--something I never thought I'd need to know. And I have to say that I'm enjoying writing about bad boys and girls. Virtuosity is often good in real life but boring on the page.

I believe that everyone possesses inside themselves the potential for both good and evil, light and dark. Thankfully, movies, television shows, novels, songs, and video games let us explore our dark side in safe and healthy ways. In the end, when I self-publish my current project, I hope that people enjoy my wicked characters as much as I am

The Closest I've Ever Come to Writer's Block

I don't know about this whole "Writer's Block" thing. In school, when I had a deadline, I used to procrastinate, feel like I couldn't do it, and finally, with the dreaded deadline looming, produce something. It might not have been my best work ever. I might not have felt jazzed about it. But it was something.

Well, on April 1, I started my 60k in 60Days project (60,000 word novel entirely conceived, created, edited, and self-published in 2 months--see http://www.pushingthepen.com/ for more info). I was so optimistic.

Let me start off by describing my process (a rather high-faluting way of saying what's worked for me so far--and by worked, I mean what's gotten me to the end of a novel that I felt I could pitch to agents or enter into contests). I start off with a premise (and sometimes not even that), panzer my way through the first draft (i.e. write to find out what happens and how my characters get from point a to point b--very sloppy, very messy, very fast), and usually outline somewhere in the middle of my first draft once secondary characters and sub-plots have developed so that I don't forget anything.

Before I write my second draft, I create a pitch (to focus me), a synopsis, a detailed outline, and a story bible with maps, pictures of my characters, detailed bios of my characters, notes about my world, etc. Finally, I create a second draft. I still don't worry about grammar and mechanics. I worry more about character arcs and plotting.

Finally, in the third draft (which takes forever!), I edit for grammar and style and try to use sensory descriptions and make my sentences pretty and have proper grammar. My weakness is the third draft, I think, mainly because my self-editing isn't spectacular. Even when I was an English Major, my advisor said to me, "I gave you an "A" because the writing was good but the grammar--not so much." And the irony is that I don't even see those small details--I really don't.

Anyway, so I broke with my own process for 60k in 60 Days. I felt the pressure of a deadline, and I tried to draft an outline after a small amount of brainstorming. To make a long story short, 15,000 words later, I ended up with about five different versions of the same story that just...weren't...working (insert sound of teeth grinding here). Could I have forged ahead with those earlier stories? Yeah, probably. Would they have been--I hesitate to say "bad"--not good? Yeah, probably.

So after much hand-wringing and self-defeating cognitions, I finally figured out a premise. I brought all the activities of my world to a screeching halt (aside from feeding my animals who don't care whether I'm writing or not), and I pounded out another 11,000 words on a novel I'm feeling pretty good about. Not great, mind you. I'm too supersticious to say great. I have to finish first. It has to be 60,000 words. I have to feel good about it (after the third draft).

In the end, I wrote 26,000 words in 3 days, but I was only able to keep 11,000. I never considered giving up, but I did start to sense this terrible, unscalable psychic wall. The wall has become small, more manageable, but it will stay there until the first draft is done, until I don't have a blank page and endless possibilities to deal with anymore.

Now, I have to join the real world today--run errands, pay bills, etc. But tonight...tonight, I'm going to keep working on scaling that wall.