Jordan Takes Over: It's a Trap!

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

I know, I know--I haven't been here in forever. It's not that I didn't want to. Well, ok, maybe I didn't want to. But, I mean, do you really want to listen to me ramble unless I have something really good to say? Real life conversations? Easy. Blog topics? Not so much.

Anyway, why did I decide to show up today? I was tricked, thank you very much. Ok, it went like this:

Sarah: Are you writing a blog post for Monday?
Me: Pass.
Well, fine. You know what? You can't write a blog post. 
Excuse me?
I'm not letting you. 
GIVE ME THAT LAPTOP.

Dammit, reverse psychology really works on me. I mean, you tell me I can't have/do something (or someone...), whooooooooaaaaaaa watch out. So now that I'm here, what do I write about?

Hold on a second, someone left a plate of cookies here! That's...suspiciously thoughtful. Well, ok, I guess Sarah knew the whole time that the reverse psychology was gonna work and I'd be here, so maybe the cookies are a peace offering. And I don't say know to dessert. I'll just have one...or ten.

Where was I? Oh, right, blogging. The thing I'm supposed to be doing right now. Listen, it's not my fault when you just drop cookies in front of me. Sugar. My only weakness.

So apparently Sarah has a staycation next week. Which apparently also means that I'm supposed to be on full time muse duty next week. FAT CHANCE. No one asked me about my schedule. I'm extremely busy. I've got...you know...gigs. Snacks. Naps. Very important stuff. Did anyone clear this with Adam? You know, he's way more organized than me. Where is he, anyway?

OOooooooooooo there's cupcakes, too! What's going on here? Some kind of dessert buffet? I mean, really, I'm not disappointed, but if Sarah had just told me there'd be dessert, then she wouldn't have had to do the whole reverse psychology thing. Well, I guess I could have grabbed the food and ran away. Ok, maybe she knows me too well.

So, right. Staycation. *sigh* A whole damn week and she expects constant writing? Yeah, when has that ever happened? Ok, when we first started writing this story, but that was like, seven years ago. When has it happened since then? Huh? NEVER. That's right. So why exactly does she think it's gonna happen now??

Wait a second. MORE DESSERT? Oh look! Pie! Ha. Ok, this is a little weird. It's like...there's too much dessert. Something's kinda off here. What kind of pie is that, anyway? Wait...is that...KEY LIME?

OH F---------

*a giant net falls* 

What the....AGGGGGGGGGGH. I knew it! The dessert buffet was a trap! This whole thing was a trap! But wait a second...who would....YOU! This is not right. You are not this crafty.
Yeah, but I've had you living in my head for seven years. It rubs off. 
That's what---
DON'T EVEN. 
Wait a second, did you do something to Adam?
He's indisposed at the moment. That way he can't distract me with Book 3 ideas and he can't distract you with his hair. 
Yeah, but, where is he?
Tied to a chair somewhere. It's ok. Muses don't need to eat.
I beg to differ.
Come on, we're gonna finish this damn novel. 
The whole thing? But there's so much work to do!
Which is exactly why you're not going anywhere! *starts dragging net*

I just want it on the record that I was tricked and KIDNAPPED and any words produced and/or edited were done against my will. Is there a muse's union? I'm calling my rep.

JP

Try Something Shiny

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!

So here we are at another IWSG day...and I feel like I'm in the exact same place I've been in for the past two months. I just don't have much of a desire to work on my novel. I desperately want it to be done, but I don't want to work on it. Solid logic, right?

Anyway, I decided to change my strategy (you know, doing absolutely nothing), at least for a little while. Take the pressure off a little. So I let my mind drift to a different story. Shiny New Story, to be specific (which will get an actual title at some point). And then eventually my fingers drifted as well. As in actual writing. Real life words! Not just random ideas I punch into my phone at 3 AM. Like, paragraphs! Dialogue! Stuff happening!

I think there were a lot of factors that made it easier to work on SNS. Just because it was something different. Because it's a first draft and I can write really crappy sentences and not care. Or even care if everything is making complete sense, because I can fix it later. And the main parts I worked on were particularly suspenseful, which was a fun change. Not all of my story ideas always involve suspense, but I do really enjoy it, so it was fun to work on.

I'm not entirely certain this completely reinvigorated my desire to write. I was hoping after indulging for a while, I would eventually get back into editing UL. That still hasn't happened. But it was nice taking a little break and to actually get some writing done instead of just avoiding everything.

At least I know when I'm struggling to write/edit, I always have something shiny to distract me.

Same Old, Same Old

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!

So here we are again at IWSG day aaaaaaaaaaaaand....I feel like I am in the exact same spot I was in last month. I haven't written a blog post in a month. I'm still working on Chapter 15. I have no idea why it's taking so long (I'll get into that later). According to Goodreads, I am 12 books behind my goal of 100 for the year. Last month I only read half of the books I planned on (my books made into movies category), so I plan on continuing with those books while also reading poetry books for this month. Also because I think if I'm not reading a novel I may go insane. 

Anyhoo, back to the Chapter 15 woes. This is once again a chapter I thought would only take me a day or two to edit, and now it's been over a month since I started working on it. However, in this case, it's more like I just can't motivate myself to work on it, rather than it being more difficult than I expected. It's not that difficult. I mean, editing anything has its challenges, but this isn't a chapter that needed a lot of huge changes.

There are only two scenes in this chapter. There's a lot of dialogue, and brief make out scene (don't judge me). There's some backstory for both characters, and a secret is revealed that I've been keeping for the whole book. Sometimes I worry about that secret, that by the time it's finally revealed, the reader won't actually care (since it's about a subplot, so it wasn't something that was constantly brought up).

Is any of this the reason why I can't finish this chapter? Uhhhhh....not really. Except maybe I think I've used up every way I can possibly describe a kiss.

I honestly don't know why I can't finish it. I think I'm just tired when I come home from work and I don't really want to do anything. That's a big part of it, at least. I think I need a new routine that works in writing and reading time (and hopefully some gym time, too).

So hopefully by my next IWSG post (and hopefully it's not my next blog post), I'll have at least finished this chapter. More would be nice. But I'll settle for one.

Securely Insecure (or Insecurely Secure?)

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 happened again! I went a whole month without a blog post! Bad! I haven't even been reading other people's blogs. Double bad! I don't even really have a good excuse besides laziness (or maybe just being tired).

At the very least, I thought I'd write a post just to brag about how I managed to see all nine Best Picture nominees before the Oscars this past Sunday. Well, I guess I'm bragging about it now! It helps that I live above a movie theater and my husband's friend is in SAG and lent us some screeners (shhhhh just don't tell anyone). I really liked all nine, which is unexpected. But they were all good and deserved the nomination in my opinion. Just don't ask me to rank them! You can probably guess my heavily biased I've read the book like three or four times favorite...if you pay attention to my usual nonsense 'round here.

Anyway, I'm rambling again. On to the insecurity!

Actually, you know what? I'm not really feeling that insecure lately (besides the not blogging thing). Well, I'm not fully secure either. At last month's post time, I was still stuck on Chapter 13 of my third draft. It was definitely grueling, but I got through it! In the last draft, this chapter was 3 1/2 pages. Now it's 8 1/3! I think it came out so much better than before.

And guess what happened after that? I FINISHED CHAPTER 14, TOO!

Ok, so this isn't happening at the speed of light, but it's much faster than my usual pace. So now I'm on Chapter 15, which I haven't looked at in a couple days but once I actually sit down and do it, shouldn't take too long (yeah, yeah, we've heard that before, Sarah). I'm actually surprised at how much I've had to change as I'm writing this draft. It's a lot of new stuff.

What I am a bit insecure about is that the closer I get to the last third of the book, the more work will be needed. I basically have to completely rewrite that last third, minus a couple scenes (maybe just one, actually). I thought editing the first two thirds would be easy, and I was so, so wrong. I already know that last third will be difficult, so it'll probably turn out to be impossible. Or maybe it'll be the opposite and be surprisingly easy. I can dream, right?

Does editing ever turn out to be harder (or easier) than you expected? Did you see any of the Best Picture nominees?