Stuff about Writing or the Most Generic Title Ever

The lovely Sarah Skilton said I’d been negligent in my blogging, which is true, and she also commanded I include this photo of my cats:

I’ve had some fun conversations about writing in the past week.* Sorry the formatting is so wonky; I truly have no idea what’s wrong with this post. Here I am, trying to blog again, and WordPress apparently hates my stupid face. Let’s try to get through this together, internet.

1. Isn’t it funny how you can get so married to “facts” in your work of fiction? When I’m revising, either thanks to someone else’s notes or just my own ideas of what could work better, there are elements I’m happy changing. Sometimes it’s to make the story flow better, sometimes it’s because a published work of fiction used a similar element and now mine seems inadvertently plagiarisy, sometimes it’s to make a different revision work, sometimes it’s something I totally think works but notes indicate otherwise. Anyways! Sometimes these are easy to change, often they’re challenging, and every once in awhile they’re practically painful.
   
   But then there are changes I truly can’t make. Amazing that in a work of ABSOLUTE FICTION that I find something absolutely permanent and immovable. Just another thing that makes me truly think writers are crazy. (Or, you know, at least me.)




2. Casting! I’m not talking about the crazy hypothetical film/TV adaptations perhaps some of us you dream of. No, every once in awhile there’s a character I just can’t quite pin down. And then I view an actor in whatever, and totally just FEEL that character. And suddenly it’s easier. Their dialogue becomes consistent, their mannerisms firm up, they suddenly just MAKE SENSE. It’s not as if they’re based on that person at all, it’s just a tool to help define someone. And, for me, it’s not that I seek out people who I can base characters on, it’s that occasionally I’ve already got a very hazy picture in my head, and seeing someone who resembles that pulls it all into focus.**




3. I used to hate rewriting. Really, really hate it. PASSIONATELY HATE IT! And then I got actual notes on actual fixable books, and, amazingly, I figured it out. But more amazingly, I’ve grown to love rewriting. First drafts are so much easier and more fun when you can just sail through, knowing you’ll fix those rough spots later.*** And then rewriting becomes about more than just polishing and catching typos and noticing that the ex-boyfriend’s name changes halfway through. It totally works a different part of my brain than writing does, but after pounding out a whole manuscript, that part of my brain needs a vacation anyway.




4. Not so much a discussion, but I will say that when you’re down and out and angsty about your own manuscript, some positive feedback from trusted readers means the effing world to me. Writing can be really solitary, so it’s good when it’s not.

*Well, fun to me, at least. I am a huge geek, so YMMV.
**Sometimes this is also an excuse to ogle celebrities.
***It is true that this can create some soul-suckingly terrible days of rewrites, I admit.

Bad Blogger!

Egads, it has been a terribly long time since I posted. Here is what I did instead of blogging, in no particular order:

1. Finished the first draft of Current Project! I suppose now it is no longer Current Project! The abbreviation for its working title is MLLM so I guess I’ll be calling it that around these parts too. You will never guess what that stands for but if you really want to try go ahead! Here are three things about MLLM: show choir, boys with good hair, Stephen Sondheim.
2. Began first draft of what is now Current Project! Here are three things about Current Project: improv comedy, baristas, reinvention.
3. There might be some REWRITING going on too! Three things about the rewritten project: school paper, hot college boys, tattoos.
4. Went to fun events! Another Goodreads swap, this one at the fantastic Book Soup and involving the Kogi truck. Frank Portman (I KNOW RIGHT?) read at Skylight! (King Dork was totally seminal in my path to YA.) I tried to see a panel at the Paley but I ended up stuck in the lobby, which was fine, because the lobby has free soda, mostly-delicious snacks, and cute caterwaiters.
5. Went to St. Louis! Do you know what St. Louis has? My family! Also: humidity.
6. Shopped! It is the Fall of cardigans, and since I live in L.A. it will also be the winter of cardigans. I am so happy patterned cardigans are in right now! It’s not that I particularly care about fashion trends; it’s that I enjoy when my favorite items are easily accessible in stores. Also I think Doc Martens may be coming back in, but either way, I just ordered a new pair and I am psyched beyond a reasonable level.

And now I promise to be a better blogger. If you don’t believe me, look at a cute picture of my cats:

Do Not Fear the First Draft

The whole time I was flying (and plodding and also stumbling) through my rewrite, I was feeling relieved I could at least stop thinking about Current Project. So I guess the good news is that – while I’m awaiting word from Darling Critique Partner, at least – as of today I am officially back to it, and it isn’t awful at all! It might even be good! OK, it at least doesn’t stink.

It’s still all first-drafty, of course. Sometimes I question my word choices, sometimes I wonder if I am secretly attracted to the semicolon or something else that would explain why I cling to its overuse, sometimes I wonder if scenes are truly necessary or if I just like them bunches. But, whatever. It doesn’t stink. That is all I require from a first draft.

Playing Catch-Up

Oh no, I was abandoning my BEDM duties! Bad Ames! My dear friend Sharon was in town for the weekend, and given that I hadn’t seen her since I drove up to SF for my thirtieth, I’m not sure a minute went by not spent yammering about one thing or another.

It’s amazing – OR NOT AT ALL – that I took a few days off from writing/editing hunched over my computer at a crappy table at a coffeeshop and suddenly I’m not having any back pain. I am so old! Ergonomic concerns are certainly new ones for me. I think I must add a good desk/chair combo to my wishlist though I think first is a new bed and a couple new tattoos.

Not necessarily in that order.

My rewrites are very nearly done (for the moment) which is quite exciting, even if it means I have to dive back into the first draft of Current Project. Listen, I love Current Project, but Ink is nearing completion and it’s much friendlier to me. Things are resolved! The plot is actually there!

That said, I’m actually excited (OK, I am always fairly excited, because I am a very easily amused person) because I had to cut a beloved character from Ink, and I love her too much to let her go. So now she’s getting swapped into Current Project, where I think she’ll be used even better. I mean, hopefully so. Maybe I just get way too attached to characters.

(At least I don’t kill them off and then recycle them as medical symptoms. WRITERS OF TWO DIFFERENT SHOWS, I AM TALKING TO YOU.)

Productive Amy Is Productive

Somehow, amazingly, I find myself staring down the very last chunk of my book during a rewrites process that initially seemed daunting and unending. Yes, I’m now left with shifting a key scene in a huge way so it’s not like I’m gonna breeze through to that finish line, and of course Critique Partner still needs to work her magic, and I still need to give this sucker another full read or three, but, man, it’s amazing what good notes can lead you to do.

So, of course, because I am a neurotic beast who is never happy, now I feel like dragging my heels because at the moment, rewriting seems so much frigging easier than getting back to Current Project and its ragged, first draft ways. I used to live for first writes and I never bothered to polish (which probably explains why I have so many deleted/burned manuscripts haunting me) but now the polishing is what I live for.

(Of course, when I got ready to start rewrites I was all annoyed because Current Project was flowing and it felt terrible abandoning it. SO I KNOW.)

Very much off-topic, I took a break last night to see 17 Again, and now I am convinced Zac Efron is an alien sent from a superior race who will distract and hypnotize us all with his abs and his hair before they invade.

I made a picture for you guys to demonstrate this.

BEDA in my Blood

I thought that blogging every day of April would be impossible, but I only missed one day, and now I’m noticing I have the urge to do this on a daily basis. BEDA awakened some sort of blogging impulse in me previously undisturbed. Good or terrifying? We shall see.

Woke up early this morning to discuss rewrites with Critique Partner (who lives in The Future, i.e. Eastern Standard Time), feel like I’m really rounding the bases now, though I really have started to lose perspective. I sent off the first chunk of edits to her with an email that stated I truly had no idea if I’d even improved anything or just weeded a lot of words out. She says I have the editing equivalent of tolerance, like it would take me 50 drinks to have any idea I’d been partaking in alcoholic beverages. Let’s hope she is right with this metaphor. Otherwise, I’m gonna need me some drinks.

You’d Better Love your Book

People in publishing talk a lot about how you have to truly love your own work. This is usually said regarding the fact that if you don’t fully love it, how are you going to convince an agent, and editor, and then the general public to love it too? And I totally agree.

But that said, I also say you should really love your book because you are going to be spending A LOT of time with it. It is basically going to become your life partner. This is honestly my first time really working through rewrites this way (i.e. A SMART WAY), and it kind of astounds me how many times I must keep revisiting scenes and ideas and characters and arcs. Me and this book, we can’t get enough of each other right now.

So it is a good thing I do, indeed, love it.

(That said, I am looking forward to the day I am not so up in its grill every moment.)

Ink Playlist

While I’m focusing on Ink rewrites, I’ve decided to finally go one step better than just listening to albums that help and make a book playlist. I love how many writers do this; to me it just proves how important music is to the process (well, for a lot of us at least!). My protag is super into music from the 1960s, so I spent a lot of time last year listening to a collection called the Best Sixties Album in the World (I know that’s quite a hyperbolic title, but I think it holds up). I’ve also got music that puts me in mind of a few of the other characters, or general mood, so that’s mixed in as well.

(That means this may be the only playlist around that features both Dusty Springfield and the Damned.)

Writing and Rewriting and the Love/Hate of it All

I’ve hit a wall with my rewrites, which is not the kind of realization one loves to make. I’d gotten more than halfway through the first pass in what felt like record time, and now I’m just staring at Chapter Thirteen willing it to just fix itself. Maybe it’s because unlike previous changes, with this one I really need to change the setting and the participants. At least I know who the new participants are going to be! Who knows where they’re gonna be hanging out.

I will say that is sometimes a challenge in writing YA. You want to keep it fresh and interesting, but you’re still dealing with kids who either can’t drive or have rules about where they’re allowed to take their cars, plus there’s the whole “they can’t get in to certain places until 18 or 21″ thing on top of it all. Also I strive for that sweet spot between realism and readability, so while it makes sense kids might have the same constant hangout, sometimes that gets dull on the page.

Though, I guess, for me, that’s just writing in a nutshell. Real life is generally too real-life-y. Make it better. But keep it real.

I’m amused that last night I was talking to another writer, far more experienced than I, and we both came to the conclusion that a lot of times we just don’t want to write. But, god, we love having written.

I will expand this to say I love coming up with new ideas. I love it when they’re coming out on the page and they make sense and they’re sparkling and you get that gut feeling that, oh my god, maybe this is something. I love getting a good set of notes; I love talking out stuff with Critique Partner. I love watching my page count either increase or decrease (depending on what I’m striving for at the moment).

But, yeah, one thing that seems to be in common for all the writers I know is that often we find writing really, really difficult and unpleasant. I just couldn’t stop doing it if you made me.

(I am, after all, the girl who wrote bits of Current Project on the backside of her resume in her bag while waiting for her friends to be dropped from great heights on the Tower of Terror. I’m the one who passed up the Grilled Cheese Invitational (I KNOW) to sit at the coffeeshop and glare at my screen and wonder why this chapter doesn’t just fix itself.)

Welcome to the Hellmouth

Oh, god, it’s that part of rewrites time. ALREADY. Let’s delete scenes I love! Let’s kill lines I crafted so tenderly. Let’s just ditch entire characters! Let’s just GO AHEAD AND RIP OUT MY HEART.

I was talking yesterday to other writers, and we laughed how we basically spend our time avoiding writing and hating our rewrites and stressed about how to handle things and procrastinating constantly and shaking in fear of critiques and notes, except that there’s the fact that we love it like nothing else and couldn’t stop if we were paid to. It’s a weird, weird thing.