Looking Ahead to 2016

The year of 2015 is quickly ending, and it's now time to think about what writing goals I have for the upcoming year.

1. Finish the first draft of my book (I still retain a small glimmer of hope at finishing it before 2015 ends, but the year is almost over so it may not happen).

2. Edit my draft, ignore my draft, edit it some more, have the two ladies who have agreed to spend their time reading it read my book and give me feedback, edit some more with that feedback, ignore book again, groan a lot, complain about all the drafts, and continue to edit and revise as many drafts as needed until it is all polished and shiny.

3. Write a query letter. Get feedback on said query, polish query.

4. Write a summary of book. Probably get feedback and polish that as well.

5. Query lots and lots of agents with query, summary, and/or specific pages of novel all depending on the individual agent's requirements.

6. Treat myself to some as yet undecided fabulousness for finishing book and querying agents. Try not to check my email every five minutes for the next six months while I wait to hear back from agents.

7. Participate in (and plan to be a winner at) NaNoWriMo again.

8. Read 30 books.

9. Start writing a new novel.

So that is what I am looking forward to achieving in regards to my writing in 2016. It will be fun!

Halfway Done with NaNoWriMo

Today is November 16, so I am officially more than halfway done with my first ever NaNoWriMo! I have written fourteen days out of those sixteen, and I have written a total of 26,975 words so far.

I have not written 1,667 words every day, but on those days when I wrote less or did not write at all, I succeeded in making up during the other days.

So here are some of my thoughts about NaNoWriMo so far:

1. I love the website. I enjoy the pep-talk messages they send me. I like getting to go and update my word count after I write. And I utterly adore that they make a little bar graph of how much I've written on what days compared with the 1,667 words a day I'm aiming for. Graphs do bring out the happy nerd in me. :)

2. I have learned that I can write way more than one scene at a time. I'm used to sitting down and writing out a scene and then having to take a break while I shift my mind from that scene to the next. I have now discovered that I can push through that and keep going with relative ease.

3. 1,667 words a day sounds unbelievably daunting, but it really isn't that bad. Sure, when it's a scene I'm struggling with or one I simply had never planned on having in the story and I have no clear sense of where it's going, it can be a bit of an effort to get the words onto the paper. But on those chapters where I know what's happening and I'm excited about what's happening, 1,667 is easily reached and passed.

4. I owe a great deal of my success staying on top of my NaNoWriMo writing to my friend Abby Schwartz, who is participating with me. Knowing that she's doing it to, us texting each other to find out when the other is writing and then checking up to see if it happened, getting to see where her word count is at on the website, all these things have been incredibly motivational to me. She holds me accountable for the writing I'm doing, and it's really helped a lot for me to persevere on those days when I honestly just want to go to bed.

5. I adore my husband. This is not a NaNoWriMo epiphany. I have an amazing husband and I'm aware of how blessed I am to have him. But my disappearing into my office after the girls go to bed and often times not coming back upstairs until after he's turned in has been a not great aspect of NaNoWriMo. I wish I was able to write earlier in the day, but my extremely pregnant self can't seem to find the energy to do much writing when it can be napping instead. My husband has never complained about this sudden decrease in our time together. I don't care for it, and I'm sure he doesn't either, but he supports my dream of being an author and I love him so much for that. And for a multitude of other reasons as well, but I'm keenly aware of that support this month.

I honestly believe I will be a NaNoWriMo winner this year. I will successfully write 50,000 words this month. And it will either finish my book or get me ridiculously close since I started NaNoWriMo with 46,500 words of my novel written (well, 46,503 to be exact). And the nerd in me also enjoys the subtraction of that 46,503 from my current word count to find out where I am in my NaNoWriMo journey.

I encourage anyone out there who wants to be an author (or already is an author but wants help motivating themselves to write another spectacular book) to participate in NaNoWriMo next year. I am having a blast!

NaNoWriMo

November is National Novel Writing Month. The goal is to write 50,000 words in the month of November, which equals 1,667 words a day. I have heard about it before, but have never thought about participating. Mainly because I have never, in the month of November, been at the start of a book. I have been writing for two Novembers, and both times had already started before NaNoWriMo began.

The same is true this year. As of right now, I have written 46,503 words in my novel. However, I expect the novel to be between 80,000 and 100,000. And I woke up this morning realizing how very close to 50,000 words that is.

I will have a brand new baby at home at the beginning of December. I had the goal of finishing this book, subsequent drafts included, before baby comes. With severe motion sickness being part of my morning sickness, coupled with an amazing amount of exhaustion, I have had months during this pregnancy when I have not sat down to write anything at all.

If I could finish the first draft of this book before my baby comes, that would be spectacular! I know I will still have all the follow-up drafts of the book, the peer reviews, and the eventual querying of agents left to juggle while taking care of a newborn, but I would be a heck of a lot closer!

So, I am going to participate in NaNoWriMo this year. I will subtract whatever my word count is from the total number of words I end each day with, so I can actually see how many words I am successfully writing in November, but I will do it!

Hopefully this will be the push I need to actually find the time and energy to get this done.

Writing, When You Absolutely Don't Feel Like It

There are lots of quotes and images out there saying exactly this. Don't wait until you are in the mood to write. Write anyway.

It is only recently that I have begun to properly understand the importance of this.

I have been writing for two years. Yes, there may be a day, or even a week, here and there when I can't really be bothered to sit down and work on my novel. But that day or week passes, and I'm right back to being in the mood to write. I find writing extremely fulfilling, and even when I hit a point where I struggle to figure out what needs to happen next (and that's usually due to the last bit I've written being wrong and needing to be fixed), I am still typically filled with the desire to write. I may struggle for a few days to figure out where my writing went wrong so I can make it right and continue on my merry way, but it doesn't last for long. The book is always there, in the back of my mind, churning and changing without my having to pay it that much attention.

Yet with this pregnancy, it hasn't been working like that. I don't know if it's pregnancy brain (I have noticed I am often incapable of thinking about two things at once, so if my mind wanders while I'm having a conversation, I have absolutely no idea what the other person is talking about. Which is not normal for me. And if you've ever sat down and had a conversation with me, you will notice it going off in a dozen directions. Which is what typically happens silently in my head while I listen to someone, only normally, I'm still paying attention to what the other person is saying. That's just not functioning for me right now) or the general exhaustion of sleeping badly while simultaneously growing a person. But, for whatever reason, that constant behind the scenes writing that usually happens throughout the day is just not happening.

So that day or week of not feeling in the mood to write stretches on to weeks and months. Maybe I sit down to write once a week, but it's not the usual, proper writing. I'm not spending the time, even when I sit down, that I usually do.

This last week, I have been trying to write anyway. To come downstairs with more than half an hour to spare, sit down at my desk, pull up my novel, and write. Regardless of whether I feel like doing it.

And it is hard! It is hard to turn off Netflix or put down the book I'm reading, to devote a solid chunk of time out of my day to write when I'm not really feeling like it.

But it is worth it.

My long-term goal is to sit down and write five days a week, but I acknowledge that right now, with the pregnancy kicking my butt like it is, that's just not doable. So my current goal is to sit down and write, properly write for at least an hour at a time, three days a week.

The first time I sat down without feeling remotely in the mood to write, it was a struggle from start to finish. The words dragged their feet as I sent them out onto the page, and there wasn't that wonderful flow that typically happens when I'm writing.

Last time, however, it clicked. It started out as difficult as ever, but partway through, the flood occurred. It was easy, it was fun, it was what I am used to writing being.

And since then, there are times when I notice the book figuring itself out in my mind. I wrote out an outline about a month ago, and it also seemed forced. But a couple of days ago, the scenes suddenly came to me that made it smoother. That slipped perfectly into my plan for the book and made it work. The only writing I did yesterday was to write down those bits and pieces and add them to the outline so I don't forget them before I reach that point.

I don't know if that churning away in the back of my mind will stop again. I still have six weeks until the baby comes. This may just be a brief reprieve. And who knows how my mind will function with a newborn waking me up at night?

But sitting down and writing, even when you desperately don't want to, is what I need to do. Working on this book is important to me. So, even if I don't feel remotely like sitting down and working on it, I will still force those words out and wait for the floodgates to open once more.

A Change in Perspective

I wrote my novel over the course of a year, edited it, sent it out to agents, realized how to make it a million times better by rewriting over half of it (much, much more than half of it I realize as I'm writing it), and started over.

I wrote about half of the book, realized I was trying to incorporate too much of the first version into the second, and have just this week gotten past the revision of that change and back to the actual writing of the novel.

And I'm noticing a big difference in how I'm writing.

When I wrote the book the first time, I actually started out each day of writing rereading the previous chapters and editing before continuing on. I did that until I had written enough that it simply wasn't feasible, and gave that up. But I did worry about each chapter. As I wrote, I would reread each paragraph and swap out words, rephrase sentences, and just generally try to polish it up as I was writing it. Which makes sense from my writing experiences before that. I am someone who never actually did the three drafts of my school essays, because they were only, what, five pages long or so, and I could easily write it polished and save myself some time.

Writing books is not like that. And that first version of this story was written with that point of view.

This time around, it isn't.

The last chapter I finished, I know is going to need a lot of polishing. I feel like there may have been too much description and not enough dialogue. I know there were times when I used the same word too many times too close together. I feel like I had the main character rushing around seeing too many people in the last few paragraphs.

And I am not going to give it a second thought. Not while I'm writing my first draft.

Because books change as you write them. Stories have a life of their own, and you can be writing away and then look back in surprise at what the characters just did because that is not what you had planned on them doing. But of course, it is what they should have done, so you shrug and move on.

There is a lot of revision that goes into writing a novel. Like, an unbelievable amount. You finish your first draft and have a merry celebration, and then you have to buckle down and make it perfect. And perfect is a whole lot of work.

With my first version, I had my second draft, which consisted of my going through the first one and changing all the parts that had wandered off on their own later on and made earlier passage nonsensical. I had made a list of chapters as I wrote, with a brief description of each one, which I later returned to to make sure that this person picked up this apparently inconsequential item, or this building was described in a way that would make the changes in chapter thirty make sense. And there were a lot of those.

My third draft was me going through and just reading the second draft and checking things like grammar and flow and seeing how it felt to read through it, bit by bit.

My fourth draft was me actually setting aside an entire day to spend eight hours reading the thing through from start to finish, finding inconsistencies and fixing them.

Then I handed the book off to kind and loving people to read through and give me their feedback. Which I only got on probably less than a third of the book if at all, but still, feedback is feedback (I have a couple of different people lined up for feedback this time around, so hopefully they'll manage to complete this version so I can know what the entire book is like).

Then I revised again based on their feedback. I can't remember if I revised twice after hearing from them or if it was just the one time, but I certainly had five or six drafts by the time I felt it was good enough to try to get published.

So this time around, I understand that it really doesn't matter if chapter twenty-three needs a lot of polishing. Because each and every chapter will undergo so many drafts before it is actually a completed, polished work. A few relatively minor issues in one chapter is nothing.

The important thing is to keep at it and complete the first draft, so I can move on to the next ones.

Settling into the New School Year

My eldest started first grade yesterday, and therefore, we are all getting up much earlier than we did over the summer. During those summer months, I always had a plan of getting up early so I could get a couple of hours of writing in each day, but it very rarely happened. Which I'm okay with, since I had an unbelievably difficult morning sickness this pregnancy and I was very fatigued from growing that baby and, unfortunately, losing so much weight from the frequent vomiting.

I am now in a very pleasant stage of the pregnancy where I'm not throwing up constantly, nor am I incredibly tired all the time. Although, the first two days this week of waking up at six were very, very tiring. But I've passed that now, and I'm feeling myself again, even with being awake so much earlier.

It also means I have much more day at my disposal. I am constantly surprised at what time it is, since surely it must be far later!

That being said, I have not found a nice little niche of time each day to sit down and write. Part of that, I'm sure, is that my family is not into its normal school schedule yet, since my youngest won't start preschool for another week and a half. Part of it is also that I finally have some energy and can actually make a start at making my house less of a disaster area. Yesterday I cleaned and organized one of our bathrooms, shifted things around, and made the necessary space to put in the dresser that will act as a diaper changing station when the baby comes. So it was a good, productive day, but no writing got done.

So today I'm going to sit down and do my writing first, before beginning to tackle the house as a whole. I would really like to get my living room cleaned and sorted, but I also really want to work on my book.

I made a sticker chart the other day, as I do. And I decided that I would see if I could extend it all the way until the week the baby will be born. And I did it. I have fifteen weeks before I become a mother of three, and I have all the workdays between now and then written out, awaiting stickers awarded for sitting my butt down and writing.

I would really like to have my novel finished, edited, peer reviewed, edited again, and agents queried before the baby comes. Because life will get a lot more complicated after the baby arrives. Fifteen weeks does not seem like enough time to do it, but I think it is doable. I just need to make writing a priority and stick to it.

Which will be easier to do when I can have some childfree time. My mind is happiest in the mornings, but I concede that writing while my four year old is at preschool in the afternoons will work best. It will also help when she adjusts to not having her big sister around the whole day. Right now, she's been told that I'm going to go do some writing and she can only be in my office if she's silent. And I have certainly not found that to be the case so far. She's forgotten how to play on her own, since she's had the entire summer of not having to.

Still, right now I am going to go and do some frequently interrupted writing, because it's still better than no writing at all. And hopefully we'll soon settle into a schedule where my writing is a given every day and I don't even have to think about it.

Rejection

I was recently reading an article that showed rejection letters submitted to artists of various kinds (writing, painting, singing, etc) who have since gone on to be very famous and successful. The article talks a lot about how foolish these people were who sent these rejections, and I'm sure, looking back, they may be kicking themselves for not getting to be a part of that success.

As anyone completes their first (or seventh) novel and sends it out in hopes of getting published, there are going to be rejection letters. I have a friend who saw firsthand how seemingly random poems were chosen to be published in a magazine, and she, as a poet, found it disheartening.

I, however, choose to see it as encouraging.

The article from above shows how these people were rejected but didn't give up. They kept on developing their gifts and continued searching for the person who would see their vision of their art, and eventually they found it.

There will always be rejection letters. I have been in many book clubs, and I can read a book and adore it while someone else could barely get through it. Or it can be someone's favorite book, and I truly didn't care for it. The same way that there are drastic tastes in readers, there are drastic tastes in agents and publishers.

I recently found a wonderful author. She has written three different series of mystery novels. I completely adore one of them, and don't care for the second. The mystery in the second was perfectly good, but I didn't care for the dialogue between characters or perhaps didn't care for the characters themselves. I have, only this morning, checked out the first book in her third series, and we'll see how I like that one. But that is drastic differences myself within mystery novels by the same person!

And yes, I assume agents and publishers look beyond their own personal enjoyment and can see the books from a business point of view. Perhaps they have some issues with some of the characters, but can see past that to how well received they can see the general public will find it. I don't know: I'm neither an agent nor a publisher.

But I think the main thing to take away from it is that you don't give up. Perhaps this book of yours gets rejected fifty times over. That doesn't mean that you turn your back on your dream of being a published author.

But it also doesn't mean that you don't look hard at your story. It might be a great idea, but maybe you're writing needs to continue to grow and improve before anyone will be intrigued enough to read it all the way through.

I completed the first version of my novel a little over a year ago. I sent off whatever sections agents asked for, and started to wait. And before a week was up, I suddenly realized how to make my book unbelievably better. It meant throwing out over half the story and starting over, but it was improve the book dramatically.

Which means, that that first version was in need of improvement. It had flaws that I didn't notice until I saw how to fix them.

And I have gotten so many rejection letters from those agents I did query before realizing how to improve. They didn't sting though, since I had already realized these flaws that needed to change.

However, I'm sure that when I do sent it out to be queried whenever this new version is done, I will get rejection letters. And I expect they will hurt a lot more than the ones I've already received, since I will (hopefully) have it polished to the brightest sheen my book can be at.

But you don't need fifty acceptance letters. You just need one. And maybe this novel won't be the one to do it, but you just keep writing until you write the story that finds that perfect person who sees the beauty in it.

Even the most successful novelists get rejected. They just never gave up.

Admitting Defeat

I have been adamant as I've been writing this novel. I will not start editing my manuscript until I have completed the first draft. Will NOT. Nope. Not going to happen. Oh, I'll take copious notes about the changes I need to make, but I will not sit down to make them until I've finished with the story. Stories change and mutate all on their own as you write them, so something I feel needs to be adjusted in chapter fifteen while still only on chapter twenty might need to change in a very different way by the time the story has ended.

"How foolish to start editing when you haven't even finished!" I scoffed.

Except... I need to.

You see, this is my second version of this novel. I spent a year writing the first version, with the copious notes being all I needed to do all the editing at the end. But that version had two points of view, and after completing it and sending out my query letters, I realized how to make it into a novel from a single point of view, which would make the story infinitely better.

Now, in this version, there are glimpses of the other point of view. I have a row of notecards taped up on the wall of my office outlining those glimpses. I found a way to double up the events to make them take up less time in this version. I thought it was good and wonderful.

Then it hit me that it is too much. That other point of view, and her story, are taking up too much room in this version. It's making it a more difficult read, a more garbled storyline. In other words, it's causing the book to be worse, and not good and wonderful as I had hoped.

I need to fix it. I've figured out how: instead of two events throughout a myriad of glimpses, I need to cut it down to three glimpses, one event each.

Which means I need to move away from the story that happened in that first version and make something new. I need to combine events to make newer ones, more refined and smoother.

Which is a great big edit.

"Oh, do it at the end." I thought to myself.

But no. Because stories change and mutate and become something else entirely as you write them. And this is a big part of what is already written that needs to change. Who knows the path the characters will take to reach the end after this edit has escaped onto the paper?

If I don't redo it now, I'll have far more work to do redoing not only this first part, but also everything that follows.

So, I admit defeat. I will begin editing the first part of my book before the end is completed.

And going forth, I will check my superiority at the door. Yes, I have successfully completed a novel before, and while that is a wonderful feat and something I'm deeply proud of, I still have a lot to learn.

Difficulty Moving Forward

There are many things that make moving forward with your story difficult. Fear, lack of energy, a chapter that simply wont come, and more recently, a flash of genius for an earlier chapter.

I haven't yet found fear to be a strong factor in my dream to become a published author. When I had completed my first version of this book and revised it many times, I felt incredibly nervous as I sent it off to my friends to critique it. It was the first time someone other than myself was reading it, and what would they think?! Then I felt that sickening feeling in my stomach after I had sent my query letters off to agents, and that lasted for a good week or so until I realized how to rewrite it to make it a million times better. Then, all the rejection emails didn't sting so much since I had already found a different route to take with the story that will improve it tremendously. So, while the fear is there, it has yet to hinder the words getting on the page.

I am a big fan of sticker charts for myself. They help motivate me to reach my goals, and I was just noticing one from a year ago. There was proof that one year ago, I was writing almost every day. Not so these days. I've been watching two of my nephews this school year, and while I have shifted it back to three days a week from five, those three days still take an awful lot out of me. It's impossible to write in the evenings on the days when I'm exhausted from the day's activities. So, until the end of this school year, I my goal is to write twice a week, on the days I have no boys and just my sweet daughters wearing me out. Which they do, but only half as much as four of them! So far, my twice a week goal is going fairly well, and I'm pleased with it.

I have had many instances when I couldn't progress my story and I struggled to figure out why. I would close my eyes and try and make the picture appear of what should happen next, and it simply didn't work. And then I found that it was not the next chapter that was the problem, but the previous one. After reworking what I had already written, the story progressed as it should and all was well.

This morning, I had a new struggle to contend with. I have known for some time that I'm changing the world from having both witchcraft and sorcery to having sorcery alone. In making that decision, some major things need to change in the first chapter. From previously sharing that chapter with the wonderful people in my writer's group, I knew I wanted to make some changes to that chapter anyway to liven it up and make it more captivating. While I was dropping my youngest off at preschool this morning, I had a wave of understanding about how that chapter should go. What should happen, who the main character should talk to, everything. It played out in my head as I sat in the waiting room at my chiropractor, and continued polishing itself up as I drove across town to run some errands.

I had decided to come home and write it out right away, and then I, with some difficulty, decided not to. I have jotted it all down in an outline, and I will write it up once I have finished my first draft, but not right now.

When I first began writing the first version of this story a year and a half ago, I would reread the previous chapters and edit them before continuing on. I did this until there was too much written for it to be reasonable, and then I stopped. I'm glad I did, for two reasons. The obvious time restraint was one. Clearly, I cannot reread and edit the entire 80,000 word novel each time I sit down, or there will never be any time for the writing itself.

Secondly, and this is something I was not expecting when I sat down at my keyboard with my completed outline, the story changes. It moves and adapts all on its own, and I look down with some surprise at what has occurred so unexpectedly in the story. Unexpected, but very welcome. I know now that my story will change, and I will write countless new outlines to incorporate the new gems that appear without warning. Editing the previous chapters when I have yet to determine exactly where the story will end up is foolish. My notes of what needs to be edited change as the story changes, and it saves me so much time to not put them into practice until the story has finished telling itself.

So, I have half a page of detailed notes on what should happen, as of now, in the first chapter of my story. Part of me is disappointed not to get them on the page immediately, but the rest of me is filled with a renewed drive to complete the remaining half of the story so I can return and rewrite and perfect how this novel begins.

Fiction Inspiration from Nonfiction Sources

It's interesting to see where story ideas come from. I can't tell you what spurred the inspiration for the book I'm writing. It just suddenly hit me, and there you go.

While writing this book over the last year and a half, I have figured out ideas for three completely different books as well as a huge mess of half-ideas and notions.

The first book I figured out as being something to write down the road (when this book is done, assuming it wins over the other two book ideas plus however many others spring up during the writing process) came to me when I was watching "That 70's Show". Just a conversation they were having about whether Samantha from "Bewitched" was better than the genie from a different show whose name is eluding me. And suddenly, there was a book idea. Yes, there is a genie in it, but it is far from the nature of their discussion on that show. And now, I have almost the entire book outlined. All from watching "That 70's Show."

I am a fantasy/science fiction writer. Mainly fantasy, but one of those book ideas is a science fiction novel. Or will be some day. And while I do get book ideas out of the blue and from television shows, I get an incredible amount of the random book notions from non-fiction.

I love watching Nova documentaries. I do enjoy documentaries in general, but Nova makes just exceptional ones. There are certainly topics I have zero interest in. My DVR records Novas off PBS, and there will be a few in a row that just get deleted because I simply do not find the topics compelling. But there are so many that I absolutely adore.

And I will watch it and suddenly, I will get a wave of genius. I have to use some piece of information in a book in some way, some day. So I quickly write it down, and accept that some day I will have to actually buy the documentary so I can rewatch it over and over when I weave that little glimmer of inspiration into a book.

I recently subscribed to the "National Geographic" magazine. I have received three of them so far, and haven't had the time to finish even one, but I have torn out (carefully) two or three articles that I feel can inspire future books. I really enjoy having the physical articles to file away for future use. It seems a lot easier than having to look up a documentary, and when I do weave it into a story, I can tape it up on my office wall and be able to glance at it as I write.

I love looking at the real world and seeing the fictional stories come to life. It's amazing that I spent so many years of my life blind to those stories, and now they are everywhere!

"Failing" your Writing Goals

I am blessed to know some other aspiring authors and be able to share this journey with them. I made a Facebook group for us, so we can share the disappointments, excitement, and everything in between that trying to become a published author causes, and all in the safety of a private group of people who understand the deeply personal nature of writing. When I started the group, I knew I wanted a place where I could share my journey without announcing it to the world in general. It is rare to get the first book you write published, and knowing that, I was unwilling to share my hope of doing just that with everyone.

This year, we have started telling each other what our writing goals are for each month. So far, we have only January finished, and out of the three of us who ventured forth our writing goals, I was the only one to complete them.

I could just feel the sighs from the other two ladies when they said that they had not completed their writing goals. One of them actually wrote that she had "failed" both of her goals.

Now I don't know exactly how driven they are to complete their goals right now. I know one of them is traveling, and the other is in the very early stages of resurrecting a book she started writing years ago.

But I do know that there are times when our writing goals don't get completed in the time allotted to them.

Writing is so different from anything else I have done in my life. With most things, when you set a goal, they are easily achievable. If I plan to exercise three days a week, I know exactly how to complete that goal. If I want to spend an hour cleaning a week, I know how to do that. If I don't succeed at those goals, it's because I didn't put the time in to finish them.

Writing isn't like that. Yes, you can certainly fail to put the time in. But there are times when writing comes slowly. There are times when you need to spend time mulling over the plot or the characters, and sitting down to write that day will come to nothing because you're not ready yet to put it down on paper. There are times when you sit down to write and it comes at a trickle. Each sentence seems difficult, and you may delete the entire scene when you return to it on a day when inspiration hits. Other times, the words come out in a torrent, and your fingers struggle to put keep up on the keyboard.

This month, I had an entire chapter that I wrote that didn't sit right with me. I was unable to keep writing until I figured out what was wrong with it. At that point, I deleted it and wrote an entirely different chapter in its place, which works much better. Now the story can continue, but it was unable to before because that chapter was wrong.

I think you can "fail" your writing goals if you don't attempt to achieve them. But I think that sometimes, even with putting in the time and the effort, our goals may remain unreached for the simple fact of how writing works.

Editing is Hard

When I wrote the first version of my novel, the main difficulty of getting the words on the page was being able to find the time to write. Once I had the time, it was always fairly easy to sit down and let the story flow out.

Editing that version was perfectly straightforward as well. I had a sheet of paper where I had each chapter written along with a short description, and as I wrote the story, I would jot down by a certain chapter something that needed to be added or changed as the story developed. I didn't have any major points that needed to be changed, and a good deal of my editing was noticing that I used the one word too frequently in such and such a paragraph and changing it so it was no longer repetitive.

Now I'm doing a major, enormous edit. Creating my novel 2.0 is a lot harder than making it the first time.

I'm changing it from being a dual perspective book to being only from the grown-up's point of view. It makes for a much better book.

I am still including a good chunk of the other perspective, at least that was my plan. Yet I just finished writing the first chapter incorporating that perspective and I've been mulling it over ever since.

I have an entire half a book's worth of writing from this other point of view, and I had been aware that I would of course have to cut out parts of it to make it work. But now that I've written this one chapter incorporating the previous story line, it just isn't going to work. I don't mean the entire notion, but how I had pictured it.

If I include as much from this point of view as I had planned to, it is going to be too much. There won't be enough time for the main character to figure things out without it weighing down the plot.

So I'm going to have to really sit down and figure out how to do this. I'm going to have to cut out a lot of things I had planned to include, and I'm going to have to find a way for it to flow well with this new change. A lot more is going to have to change than the half a story I had originally thought.

And I'm not sure where it'll end up. I don't know how this book is going to end, now. The last chapter was from the child's perspective, and I can't find a good way to wrap that up. Not that I'm anywhere near the end of the story.

Editing is a lot harder when it's a huge shift like this. I just need to remember that this will make my book so much better. It may be a struggle to work though it at times, but this new version will be a great improvement on the old.

It's just hard to throw out so much that I've put my heart into, even with the knowledge that I'm making it better.

Forced Writing

I've been making a point at trying to write my book, even at times when I'm not feeling it. I took my car in to get some button fixed so it wouldn't randomly start a fire, and I brought my laptop along. I sat in the waiting area, writing my book, only to come home and delete everything I had written. Once I was actually in the frame of mind where writing came easily, the writing I had tried to force wasn't what I wanted on the page.

I know that even trying to get the scenes out when they don't want to come is a good thing, and that sometimes I can get where I need to go, even if I need to go back though it completely redo scenes when I'm editing it. It just makes it hard to feel like trying to write if the words are struggling to come.

Still, I think trying to find the words and think about the story, even if it ends up being redone later, is a good thing because it's making me continue to think about my book. I have weeks when I don't sit down to write because my mind is busy on other things, and at least when I'm writing sub par things, I'm still writing and thinking about the story.

So I'm going to consider it a success, and accept that some things will need to be thrown out when my mind is in proper writing mode.

A New Year

I haven't blogged for quite some time. My eldest started school, I've been sick with a constant cycle of colds, and I've been watching two of my nephews during the week. So my life has become very busy with non-writing things.

However, writing things are happening as well.

So back in October, I read what little response I got from the people who agreed to read through my book (I gave them a month and one hadn't even looked at it and the other two had read only a small portion). In the future, I may try to find less busy people to give me feedback, although the feedback I did get was greatly appreciated.

Anyway, in October I finished my edits, wrote my query, and emailed a bunch of agents. A week after sending them all out, I had an epiphany about how to make my book a thousand times better.

Which is good, since I've received lots of polite rejections as the months have gone by.

I'm drastically changing my novel. It used to be a two perspective story, and now it is only from one point of view. I think it will work a lot better, and hopefully agents will think so too when I'm ready to query them all once more.

I now have three solid book ideas outside of what I'm working on, so that's exciting. And frustrating, since I'll be doing some mundane task like taking a shower or folding laundry, and I'll picture an entire, wonderful scene in my head for one of these books that I'm not currently working on. But I'm forcing myself to simply outline the ideas, and stay on task with writing the one I've started.

I got stuck at the beginning of December. I knew I wanted this chapter from the previous version, and I had added it into the book and it just wasn't sitting right. I finally figured out what was wrong and have added two chapters before it, and now all is well again. I'm about to begin the chapters that are incorporating the point of view I've eliminated from this version, so that will be fun. Although I expect it will be difficult to eliminate so much of what I had written, but I recognize that I need to cut it down significantly for it to work from the other character's point of view.

I wrote the first version of this book from October 2013 until October 2014. So I'm hoping to complete this version at the same rate, and hopefully have the first draft and perhaps some other drafts finished by the time 2015 ends.

I'm looking forward to another year of writing!