To Pitch or Not to Pitch?

It's the first Wednesday of the month, which means it's the posting day for the Insecure Writer's Support Group! Click here to learn more and sign up!

It's a new year and I've decided for once to not make any concrete goals. It never goes well. I did, however, finally accomplish my goal of watching 100 movies I've never seen before (see the list here) in 2018. For books I made it to 68/100, which is the closest I've ever gotten. I won't be trying it again this year, but I definitely want to accomplish it someday.

But onto the new year! One of the first things I wanted to do was take part in the IWSG's Twitter Pitch on January 15. Like, I took the day off from work and everything (I'm about to max out on my PTO hours so it was a good excuse to take a day), and I've always wanted to do it. But I don't know if I'll actually be ready in time.

So I've come up with a few questions to ask myself in the next two weeks in order to decide if I should pitch or not, starting with:

Did I finish the book?

Kind of the most important one. As of writing this post, I'm working on Chapter 22 of the third draft. I think there will be 26 or 27 chapters when I finally finish. If I can really motivate myself and not slack off watching too much TV or something, I think it's possible to finish in time. But honestly, if I'm only one or two chapters away from finishing, I may pitch anyway (please tell me if this is a horrible idea). Only time will tell.

Can I pick an age group?

I know I've talked about this many times before, but I still haven't quite figured it out. Genre is easier because I'd go with contemporary. But age group? Errrrrrr still deciding. I've always leaned toward Adult, even though my main character is 15, because it's not exactly a book I would want younger readers reading. But it could also be New Adult? Maybe? In my two sequel ideas my MC is 20 and 22. Those ideas feel more like NA.

Remember when I said this book is unsellable??? *sigh*

Can I actually sum up my book in a tweet?

This is a tricky one because I have a serious problem summarizing my book, particularly in a way to make it sound appealing. Remind me to never ever write about a taboo relationship ever again please. I know a lot of people in Twitter pitch parties use comp titles as well, and I don't have any of those, at least not contemporary ones. I've always called it Lolita meets the Catcher in the Rye, but am I allowed to do that? Those books are old and very good. Kinda feels pretentious. I have no idea.

Can I write a query letter?

On the off chance that one of my tweets gets liked by an agent or publisher, hey guess what the next step is??? And I do not have a query letter ready. I've tried writing one before and it did not go well (let's not talk about that again...). And if I'm spending all this time trying just to finish the novel, I probably won't get a query letter done in time as well. I try to justify this to myself by saying I could spend the next day or two AFTER the Twitter pitch doing this, but that probably won't go well for me.

And that's about it. I feel like the odds are against me! But I guess I'll just keep chugging along trying to finish the book and figure everything else out.

Are you participating in #IWSGpit? Am I completely insane???

Motivation and Writing Space Stuff

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Here we are! The last IWSG post of the year! HOLY CRAP WHERE DID THE TIME GO??? *ahem* So it's time to scramble to wrap up any goals before they get repackaged as New Year's resolutions. Again. I'm about 99% sure that I've given up on my reading goal, well, because I've pretty much stopped reading. That was a tough one since I've never made it so close (67/100), but it just doesn't seem possible to finish in less than a month. I thought if I spent all my time reading, then I definitely wouldn't finish the third draft of my novel, which may or may not happen before the year is over. 

I think my main problem with writing is MOTIVATION! Sometimes even when I want to write, even when I have ideas, even if the scene seems easy, I just can't make myself start working. Ok, part of the problem may be that I'm always tired, and sitting around watching TV just sounds a lot better, but even when I make plans to write (especially on a day off), I still don't get a lot done. It's like there's something holding me back. Is it the fear of finishing? I'm not sure. If it is, it's probably subconscious. It could just be laziness and procrastination. It could be a mixture of all these things! But I do want to finish this damn book, so I'd better make with the motivation pretty soon.

This month, I thought I'd answer the IWSG's optional question, which was: What are five objects we'd find in your writing space?

Ok, so I'm cheating a little on this one. I'm gonna reuse an Instagram post from earlier this year, and it's more than five objects, but they are things that are usually useful/necessary for writing. I have a very very very small apartment, so I don't actually have a writing space (like an office or even a desk). I just write on my bed. So here are the things that usually find their way onto the bed during writing time: 

1. Laptop (for the writing of the words), and headphones (inspiration music is entirely necessary and not at all distracting)

2. Notebook & pens for brainstorms/free writes/whatever, my red 3rd draft binder, research books (or writing reference books, or sometimes just a book I'm reading), and a chocolate offering to the muse (he has a sweet tooth)

3. Wearing gray! (Absolutely essential...I'm not weird or anything...) And comfy pillows

4. Sleeping cat not required but usually present 

Just like I may or may not finish my novel, I may or may not write another blog post this year, so I think I'll say Happy Holidays and Happy New Year now!

What's in your writing space? How do you stay motivated? 

End of the Year Push

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How is it November already???? I think I say pretty much the same thing every month. Time just seems to fly by and I never feel like I get as much done as I'd like. So, with less than two months left in the year, I want to see how much I can push myself to get done before making brand new goals (probably just the same ones over again...) in the new year. 

So the goals that I still care about are:

1. Finish the third draft of Uneven Lines. 

How have I not finished this???? I really hope every book I plan on writing doesn't take me as long as this one has. In my defense, it's SUPER complicated and it's been difficult to write, but I still refuse to give up somehow. The good news! I think the end of the book is going to be a lot shorter than I anticipated. As I try to conceptualize the ending and how it needs to be different from the first two drafts, I'm realizing that things need to move a lot faster. I think the end of the book used to drag but now I feel like things will happen very fast and hopefully be exciting. So...it could happen before the year is over? Maybe?

2. Read 100 books

Oh, this one. I make it every year and never come close. My monthly themes idea hasn't been as easy as I'd planned, but I could probably spend an entire post talking about that. Honestly, this goal is probably the one that I'm least likely to accomplish. I'm currently at 67 books (see my Goodreads challenge), which is 17 behind schedule. I think the only way to salvage this is to read a lot of shorter books. I've still got a lot of blogger buddy books on my Kindle and a lot of them are short. But I'm also trying to stick to my monthly themes, and I'm on Anne Rice right now, which (you guessed it), is going slower than I'd thought. But this is the closest I've ever come to my 100 goal so I guess either way I've read more books this year than any other year, even if I don't make it there.

3. Watch 100 new movies

This is another one I make every year but never seem to get. You'd think since I have HBO and Netflix and Amazon Prime AND I live above a freakin' movie theater (I'm not kidding), it would be easy. I think it's just a time thing. I get way too restless to just sit there for two hours (especially in a theater). I like to multitask. But! I think this goal is doable. I'm currently at 78 movies (see my IMDb list!). 

Do I think I can get all three goals done? Uhhh...probably not. I think if I really tried to get the reading goal done, I wouldn't have time to finish the writing goal. But if I come up short on the reading goal because I was too busy finishing my third draft, well, I wouldn't exactly be disappointed. But I would be very disappointed if I didn't get either of them. So I'll just keep trying and see what happens. 

Do you have any end of the year goals? Would you rather get writing or reading done?

Derailed (Also, Back Up Your Work!)

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I should probably start with some good news! At the time of last month's IWSG post, I'd just finished my Chapter 16 edit. Since then, I've also finished 17, 18, and 19! Weird, right? I really felt like I was on a roll, like I couldn't be stopped....

but then...

Last Wednesday night, I went to turn on my computer. And nothing happened. It wouldn't turn on. Now, my laptop was probably at least 6 years old and the internal battery was useless, but it still worked fine with an adapter. It hadn't shown any signs of anything being wrong with it so I had no idea why it wasn't even turning on. My husband took it to some guys he knows at a computer repair place (that was closing in about a half hour) and they said they'd look at it. 

And so I was derailed. Like, I was a train riding smoothly along the track and suddenly I'm crashing down a cliff. Thursday was my day off and my plans of writing all day went right out the window. And before you say "well, just write by hand" I'll just say I DON'T THINK SO. I always write on the computer AND a huge chunk of dialogue I'd already written for Chapter 20 was on my flash drive. I hadn't printed it yet so I had no way of looking at it. 

I was also in slight panic mode. Most of the time I save my writing directly to my flash drive. Trust me, anything related to Uneven Lines, including all of the nonsense I've written for my two sequel ideas, is safe. I'm not a COMPLETE idiot. I back up my flash drive regularly on my computer, I print out finished chapters. I probably should back it up to some type of cloud thing (I'm super with technology as you can see) since now I'm even more paranoid. My blood, sweat, and tears have literally gone into this and I'll be damned if anything was going to make me lose it all (literally? ok, maybe just the tears). 

It was the other ideas. The shiny stories. Shiny New Story, to be specific. But also a fantasy novel idea that I'd only recently started actually writing instead of just playing scene ideas in my head.  I'd put a lot of work into Scrivener files for those ideas. And I'd never backed them up. They were only on my laptop, which was now in laptop limbo. 

Was it the end of the world? No. I hadn't exactly written pages and pages in these stories. But I'd written some good stuff. I'd done a lot of outlining, too, which I never do. I wasn't sure if I'd be able to rewrite those scenes and have them be as good just from my memory. So I was really kicking myself.

Did it all turn out ok? Mostly! The bad news was that my laptop was officially dead. I was advised not to put any money into it. The good news was that they could save everything from my hard drive. They sold me a used computer that was similar and transferred all of the files onto a folder there. It took me some time to reclaim my Scrivener purchase (because I was definitely not paying $40 for something I already had) and redownload it onto my new computer, but once I did, there they were! My shinies!!! Alive! And not lost! 

So the moral of the story is, BACK UP YOUR DAMN WORK! But I guess my bigger problem now is, I still feel derailed. I lost that drive I had when I was busting through chapter edits. And maybe part of the problem is that my latest chapter isn't actually an edit. It's a brand spankin' new chapter that I've never written before. But I think if the laptop fiasco had never happened, I wouldn't have fallen into this rut so easily. 

But I digress. Back up your work, people!

Sometimes it's Easier

I can't remember the last time I wrote a non-IWSG post! (I don't write the Jordan Takes Over ones, he does...duh...). Oh wait, let me check...it was January! I just have not been all that motivated to write blog posts lately. I don't know what it is. Maybe because the writing has been slow going, or maybe I just can't come up with ideas. Or I'm just tired all the time. But I do really want to get back into it, so, this is a start!

I've been on vacation for over a week now and still don't go back to work until Wednesday. It has been AWESOME. I love a good staycation, where I just get to relax and read and write and watch TV and (sometimes) clean/organize my apartment like I've been wanting to for months. Somehow, though, I never get quite as much done as I planned. But it is still nice to not be at work!

As for the reading, I'm trying to catch up with my goal. I've only got one more Harry Potter book to reread, and I'm still reading A Dance with Dragons, and have been since May (I think)...why exactly do I always choose the largest books to read?????? I've been trying to read more blogger buddy books, which has been going a bit better...I've read 5 now and still have plenty more on my Kindle to read. My problem is making myself write reviews...I just really think I'm bad at it! I still have to pick some books to read for Banned Books Week, too...the struggle continues.

Anyway! What I really wanted to talk about is writing! Which has actually been happening! Ok, I won't deny the fact that I had hoped for some mega writing spree where I could finally finish the third draft of Uneven Lines over this vacation. But I didn't honestly think that would happen. But there has been actual progress!

I have to admit I did procrastinate for a few days before really diving into the writing/editing. But that's what you're supposed to do on a vacation, right? Have some fun? But at a certain point I knew it was time to crack down or this would just be another wasted vacation, and I couldn't have that. I've had way too many of those.

First I had to get through Chapter 17, which I'd been avoiding for a while. Not even sure why. There was a lot of rewriting to do and I really had to dive into a character's backstory. It had always been a bit vague in the first two drafts so I added a lot more to have it make sense. It took a few days, but finally the chapter was done! I had reached the promised land!

Why? Well, because Chapter 18 is probably my favorite chapter. The whole chapter is pretty intense and there's a twist at the end. Plus, as I said in this Instagram post, this is the chapter where I take Jordan's already tiny heart, rip it out, and stomp on it repeatedly. WHY IS TORTURING CHARACTERS SO FUN? I don't know, but this chapter has some of my favorite lines in the whole book, so maybe sometimes the writing is better when the characters are miserable. Who knows?

Long story short (this post has turned out way longer than I intended...), a chapter usually takes me weeks, even months to rewrite. But I got Chapter 18 done in less than 24 hours. And that was with sleeping and eating and watching TV. It probably only took me 5 or 6 hours overall. I'd say a good 2/3 of it was completely rewritten, and I added 3 pages.

I don't even know how that happened but I would like that magic to stick around for the rest of the book. Will it, though? Probably not. But maybe things will be just a little easier from here on out.

My Unsellable Book

It's the first Wednesday of the month, which means it's the posting day for the Insecure Writer's Support Group! Click here to learn more and sign up!

Here we are at another IWSG day! I feel like I've lost my writing mojo. It went from not having the time or energy to write, to just not wanting to write at all. I did finish my Chapter 16 edit earlier in the month, though! So that's good. I also have a long staycation after this week (starting Friday at exactly 2:30, thank you very much) and I really hope I can get lots of writing done. We'll see.

Don't even get me started on my reading goal! I still have two Harry Potter books to read and I'm only on my FOURTH blogger buddy book (and I started with the shortest ones!!!!). Now I'm into September which was supposed to be Banned Books. I haven't even picked what books to read. But hey, Banned Books Week isn't until the 23rd, so....plenty of time, right???

Anyhoo, I decided this month to utilize the IWSG's optional question, which is:

What publishing path are you considering/did you take, and why?

This is a tricky question, but basically I'm considering any and all publishing paths, especially for Uneven Lines. In an ideal world, I'd like to be traditionally published, but I'm not so sure if it's in the cards for this particular book. Why? Well.......because it's probably unsellable. 

Man, I've really dug myself into a hole with this one. I mean, I knew before I started that it was a controversial topic. I wanted to write about a relationship between a teenager and an adult. I can only blame myself for this. But once all the details started filling themselves in, I fell in love with the thing. And it's been a struggle, but I've worked so hard on it, making it complicated, trying to make every line meaningful and mutli-layered and I really think if someone would give it half a chance they would actually enjoy it. 

A big part of the problem is finding a way to describe the book in a query letter or even a blurb that will get someone to actually be interested and not immediately turned off. I haven't quite figured that out yet. Well, mostly because I'm still working on the book. It's one of those I'll cross that bridge when I get to it kind of things. I did write a query letter for it once (for that pitching thing that must not be named) and I vaguely remember (because I've blocked it out of my memory) one of the mentors saying that the relationship came off as predatory. IN THE QUERY LETTER! I was like, huh? Clearly I did a terrible job on this letter if you have zero clue about the personalities of my characters and are jumping to conclusions. So in order to sell this book my query letter is probably going to have to be just as complicated as the book itself. 

But I digress...there's also that whole I don't know if its YA or NA or Adult thing. But...yeah. Basically, if I ever actually finish this book to the point where I think it's ready to be published, I'm going to try to get an agent and a publisher. But I am mentally preparing myself for it not to happen. I don't have too much of an idea of where to start for self-publishing, but that's just another bridge, I suppose. 

First I gotta finish the book, amiright?????

Jordan Takes Over: Symbolism Schmymbolism

**The first Monday of the month, I let my muse take over the blog. I apologize in advance.**

Did everyone miss me? Has there been a shortage of tissues? Wait, don't answer that.

I just want it on the record that I was dragged out of a very nice nap in order to write this blog post. But we've got this new thing going that I don't have to write a post *every* month, but if the first Monday of the month is after the first Wednesday, Sarah says I have to. Something about how her IWSG posts will always steal my thunder and I won't get any attention and I do not like that one little bit. So, here we are! I get this week, bitches!

Anyway, what to talk about? If you did read Sarah's post last week, she mentioned how Chapter 16 has a lot of potential symbolism that hasn't really been properly explored. To which I would say, these are things that actually happened in my life and it's not my fault if you read so much into it.

Ok, ok. OK!!!! So everything in a novel is supposed to serve a purpose, right? So I guess these things need to be figured out so that they're not just stupidly thrown around wherever. BECAUSE if a character lets me use a red blanket in this chapter, and then buys me a red scarf in the next one, you're supposed to stop and think about that, right? What does it mean????? 

Well, the blanket and the scarf are protective symbols, like, this person is trying to protect me (pfft like I need it), from a) himself and b) the cold mean world, yada yada. But **RED** is important here. Red is representative of sin/desire/passion. But the blanket/scarf is more about love/protection. Because the fact that this character has two sides is something that comes up CONSTANTLY, i.e. the structured/caring side vs the chaotic/desire driven side. He's not one side or the other; he's both--which is represented by these objects. ALSO. What else is red? Blood. Which makes you think back to an earlier chapter where I tried to help make dinner but ended up cutting my finger with a huge freaking knife. And this is the idea that he can try to protect me, but bad things will still happen.

I just bored you to tears, didn't I? Because you probably have no idea what I'm talking about. But even if you had read the book, would you be able to pick up on all of this just by reading about a damn blanket? Plus symbolism is always up to interpretation, right? Someone may read the totally wrong thing from it. Or they may not pick up on it at all.

But anyway, that whole paragraph of nonsense just leads me to realize that we DID figure out some of this symbolism a long time ago so why am I even here?

Because I guess there's MORE. *sigh* We have to figure out why there's a moment while making chocolate chip cookies where it has to be explained why salt is used in baking. And apparently that has to mean something. I don't know. I'm tired. I think I'll sleep on it.

JP