Billy Collins is coming to Bemidji Minnesota this September!! WooHoo!
I am sooo excited. If you haven’t yet seen them on youtube you need to go watch These By Billy Collins. There are many to see/hear and they are absolutely incredible. I can’t wait to hear him live. And, is it just me or does he sound like Kevin Spacey when he played the serial killer in Seven? And doesn’t that just add another awesome element of dimension or what!
Stage two of The Talking Stick
Everything is in a digital file. Poetry, Creative nonfiction and fiction. There is no more scanning or typing to do (Thank God). Sharon has gone through the digital file and made as many corrections as she can there. The judges have already returned to us the first and second place finishers in all three categories. All that was left to do last Sunday night was for me to sit down and figure out how the book is going to read, which poem goes where, which story goes where. Made all the more difficult that we want to start everything that goes on to more than one page on a right hand page.
It took me four hours.
Not even kidding. Four hours. I started at 11pm and ended up still sitting there at 3am. It was the hardest book I have yet to put together in my life. It is strictly because of our standards of excellence and the fact that we’re getting more and more writing every year. That all translates into “less filler for the book.” Less easy going and blah poetry about nothing etc. We encourage and published clear-voiced pieces that are well described, as short/cut/tight as possible. And we love stuff that ends with a clear message. No, I don’t mean “Kill Hitler!” what I mean by a clear message is that there is a beginning, a middle and an end that translates into something, anything. An emotion, an idea, anything, anything at all without the writer TELLING IT TO US.
And that translates into . . .
A book that was damn hard to put together. I mean, my God, I’m not going to be caught putting a poem about baby’s dying across from a creative nonfiction that is a humorous slant on cabin life. Hell no. Everything this year was clear and imrpessive, but that means everything this year had to be very carefully handled. What a job!
But what a great job to have! I can’t believe I’m saying the quality of the work was so good it actually made my job harder. lol. What a great problem to have.
There was bad too though.
Don’t get me wrong. There is always truly horrible writing that I remain sitting with my mouth open while reading it wondering why the hell the writer thought anyone would want to read it. Half of the creative nonfiction submitted this year I crossed off (with red ink) at least the first and the last paragraphs. Simply put I eliminated the stupid back story that should start NO story (if back story is necessary and, it really shouldn’t be with a word limit of 1,000, then it should only be brought it when its relevant to the action.) and then I eliminated the part when the writer decided to tell us what we learned because of course all readers (especially editors) are too stupid to get it.
What writers don’t seem to understand.
I can imagine them. Flaunting along in tied died t-shirts in their minds as they expand their horizons and click off the editor and slip into that creative bliss where everything is genius. And then they write words that absolutely ooze like honey, thing like, “Expanded into/Void of oppressive/Convulsed noise/Weeping . . . Weeping . . . Weeping/Dreams shattered/A blink and I knew/I was alive!” Wow, really? This is the best you can do? What the hell did that even fucking mean? And, for that matter, who ever said that I cared about whether or not you felt alive? Do you understand that I don’t care? I couldn’t care less actually. You’re job as a writer is to make me give a fuck. Figure it out.
The number one rule that most “hobby” writers don’t seem to get is that writing is half creative process and half intellectual work. It seems they all throw out their brain, their working common sense, for this lofty bull shit hope that you can become a writer by writing what you think is poetic.
Most people who sit down to write a “poem” are always lacking the most important thing. Heart.
The impressive pieces, every one of them, start by the writer being inspired by an emotion. From there, not all writers create anything that’s worth reading (I can’t tell you how many pieces that we don’t put in the book but they had a great idea) the inspiration is the most creative part of it all and it does not create something worth reading. Your intellectual self, your ability to step back and allow that story to shine (or that feeling, that emotion) without ever telling us how to think, is how good writing begins. It takes clear thinking and an absolutely hated eye to get a piece cut down to the only words that matter. Very few things that I’ve read have ever reached this point of brilliant tightness and almost no creative nonfiction that I’ve seen has ever achieved this.
The ability to step back and clearly assess your own writing.
You need to be objective. So often I hear “I wrote it for a class” and I think, “Wow that must be an exciting read!” The basis of your work must be a seed that inspires you. You must have a clear and present knowing of what you are trying to achieve when you’re writing that piece. If you’re not excited about it, God knows, no reader will ever be.
Sitting beside me on the desk is the product that I have created over the last few days. A little note pad with five pages, fronts and backs, covered with my bedtime scrawl that only I can understand. Notes written down, trying to cover everything in as few a words as possible without losing what I thought, at the time, had to be changed in Embraced by Darkness. I’m reading my book now you know.
I almost announced it when I got the book from lulu a couple of weeks ago. I bought two copies, the next step toward the book being almost finished. It’s over six hundred pages in pocket size. It cost more but I wanted desperately to see my book in the form of the paperback size that fills up every book store. It’s bigger then the uncut version of The Stand, but seeing it like this is really a wonderful thing.
I started reading it at night.
I started reading it every night, keeping a notepad beside me to write changes and things I couldn’t forget. At first glance I was disappointed. There are missing words, misspelled words, old sentences I meant to delete starting new sentences here and there. Not a lot, I would say I caught maybe thirty of the above in the first four hundred pages. Which, of course, means there’s a lot more.
I’m surprised at how much I miss while reading it on the computer screen day after day. Then taking a break. Then reading it on hard copy. It’s like two completely different books. I see them entirely differently after two weeks and in two different formats. Stephen King wrote in his book On Writing that after the book is written a writer needs to put it away for a minimum of two weeks before working on it again. It is the soundest writing advice I have ever heard.
I took the break.
I took the break while waiting for my lulu book to arrive. I read something that wasn’t going to get me thinking while I was waiting. A teen book The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Book 1) by Rick Riordan that I know you’ve heard of. But, let’s face it, Twilight included, these books aren’t going to keep you up with their incredible depth at night. Neither are they going to inspire you as writers. So, that’s what I read while I waited and that is generally the type of book I choose to read if I don’t want a distraction from my own work. Normally, it doesn’t matter, but my head needed a break. At that pointed I had spent over two hundred hours on my book in little less than two weeks. My boyfriend (Joseph Crawford) suggested I start keeping track of my time. I’m not doing that anymore, it was too shocking and upsetting.
Thoughts on my book.
I was a little disappointed in the first hundred and fifty pages or so. Not the writing, not the characters, not even the sad editing job that I did. I was disappointed and worried that it seemed to jump around so much. In my push to get the reader right into the action I’m afraid I might have pushed too hard. As it is, my book is in four parts and within the four parts I switch between my three characters twice. I think it’s too much for the beginning of my book. I’m considering, in part one and maybe part two as well, scaling it back so instead of jumping back and forth six times in each part, I think I may combine my girls’ parts down to one instead of two separate pieces. So the jump would only be three times and the reader would stay with one main character twice as long. I’m going to keep thinking about it. God knows I’m going to be reading the book again and seeing whether or not my thoughts are justified.
Almost there.
I have about a hundred and fifty pages left to read. I’ve found some more places I’m going to be cutting. Most of it is left over scenes from when I first re-wrote the book a couple of years ago. The writer I am today is sitting there reading them and going “What the hell? That doesn’t make any sense at all, why don’t I just do this and save five thousand words!?” The first major one is where Karalay really comes into the book in part two. The second one is what really feels like a ridiculous amount of words that I devoted to Jezaline. After that, I’m actually pleased with Osondrous, but her stripping down I did right away when I started this last push (again, the last push, how many last pushes can I have?). For both Karalay and Jezaline I need to find better words for some longer arrays of dialogue between them and the men they are with. Karalay with the man she has been with for ages but only now developed an awkward love life with and Jezaline with the gigantic prince of the Draegoone who is very interested in her. Both women are very intelligent. The dialogue is going to have to be the tie that binds it all together and brings the readers to a place where they can understand Jezaline’s attraction to the prince and Karalay’s attraction to the Darkhalk.
It seems like I used to be better at Dialogue.
Or at least I thought I was pretty good at dialogue a couple of years ago. I’ve cut out so much of what I wrote in the last rewrite. Dialogue, that when I wrote it then, seemed drippy and amazing with unsaid layers. Dialogue that I read now and wonder what the fuck it was even in the book for.
My last complaint about my book.
I’m a cutter. I don’t know if I’ve told you that yet. I’ve taken first draft fiction to writers meetings and had people tell me that it felt like I had “cut too much” when I edited it. Everyone is always stunned when I tell them it’s first draft and I haven’t edited it yet. This is my a-typical first draft: an almost bones only, no adjectives with a subtle or nonexistent narrator. I am pleased to say that I have finally cut my book down to where it almost reads like a first draft of my own writing today. Actually more like a second draft. It’s all good news because before the book read like I hadn’t wrote fiction before. Now, I need to add back. I have so much dialogue missing description and I have many characters and places missing the first and most important description of them. I won’t add many words, but I do feel it is time to dress my beast.
I started this blog entry the night before last, after I had spent several hours looking for scfi-fi/fantasy places to be published and I still had part 4 of my book to go through. I felt good and I was so enthused that I named the blog post “Actual Hope” though I got nothing else written in it. I found eight places (mostly magazines) that pay and accept scfi-fi/fantasy stories. I’m excited about it and have already sent off one of my short stories for consideration. I have plans to work on four more and get those sent off as soon as possible. I’ll be so excited if just one of them gets accepted. What’s really neat is that most of them urge for novel excerpts so I’m already working on pulling some stories out of The Death of Eliana and I’m working on the same for Embraced by Darkness. For some reason all of this has made me feel pretty good. I’ve also bought some cheap back issues of most of the places; research is a must.
Meanwhile I also found seven different scfi-fi and fantasy publishing companies that accept unsolicited submissions. Woot! Though I know the reaction I’m probably going to get from all of them. “Your book’s too damn long. We can’t publish anything over 120 thousand words.” Still, knowing that those publishing houses are out there, looking for books like I want to write, and being willing to take unagented submissions is pretty fucking awesome.
And I have been working on my book. I said in the beginning of this post that the night before last I was down to Part 4 – the end of the book. If you can believe it, I’m feeling pretty good about how the whole thing is reading. There was some doubt throughout the beginning of the book and, of course, I need to work on those places. But, last night, I finished it.
I finished the first complete read-through after putting my book back together!
Without a doubt, the last half of my book is a better read than the first half. I’m hoping I can cut even more but as it stands the book is now down to 173,052 from 236,743 when I started this last push a few months ago. That’s sixty thousand words that I’ve managed to cut. My boyfriend has taken to teasing, “How much did you delete of all your hard work today? Did it go well?” And I’ll say, “Oh yeah, I just love slaughtering it!” But, the truth of the matter is, that I’m actually not deleting any real substance from the book. Any real writer will know that what I’m doing is just improving what’s already there.
I literally sit and think, “How can I say that in less words?”
The biggest hardship I ran into in this last read through is that, because Karalay’s story is shorter, things were happening for her way before they were spurred to happen for the other characters. I.E. Karalay was reacting to Osondrous becoming queen before she actually became queen. Now, I know a lot of books do that deliberately and there was a part of me that wanted to leave it because the book was so happy and organized as it was. But, I decided, that because of the scope and size of my book, I needed to help my readers out and keep my three characters as close to the same time line as I could. So I had to change my method in Part 1 of the book.
If you’ve been keeping up with my blog posts than you know that I decided to break the book into four parts and omit chapters all together. In each part of the book I ended up going from Osondrous to Karalay to Jezaline to Osondrous to Karalay to Jezaline and then moved on to the next part. But because of Karalay’s shorter story and the fact that she HAD to end my book and the fact that she was the main character in my Epilogue I decided to pull half of her story out of Part 1 and move all of her story down. So Part 1 is now going from Osondrous to Jezaline to Osondrous to Karalay to Jezaline and then moving on to Part 2. See diagram. None of the other Parts have changed but I feel this was necessary and the fact of the matter is, no one reading the book is going to care or notice.
I want to cut more.
It’s painful and it’s true. I need to cut more and I want to cut more. There are two places in the book I hope I can slice more of it out, maybe not more than a few thousand words but if I can get the book down into the hundred and sixty thousand word area I think it will look better. Really anything shorter than it is now will look better to publishers.
But I’m not going to start cutting rashly. I’m going to read through it, one more time, and cut as I go. I hate to say it, and it does pain me quite a bit, but the truth of the matter is the places I’m thinking of cutting are out of Jezaline and Karalay’s stories which is pretty frustrating because Osondrous has the most words in the book. But, as I’m typing this I am thinking of a place in Osondrous’ story too that I noticed. When I read through it again I really hope I can cut them down without mercy and maybe “crosses fingers” even cut another ten thousand words out of the book.
So, wish me luck!
Well, I said very apprehensively in my last post that my next post will be, hopefully, saying that I have finished Karalay’s part of the book and am starting the work of putting my good back together. Well..
It’s better than that!!
Yesterday I sat down at about 2 o’clock in the afternoon and at 9 thirty I finished going through Karalay’s portion of the book the second, and last, time. I was so excited I could barely hold myself back from putting the book together to spend time with my boyfriend and my mom. But I did. I took a break and didn’t go back to my book until nearly 11 thirty.
Than I got to it. And I’m just going to say it: it was fucking hard and stressful.
I wanted to put my book back together in an organized and thoughtful way. I had roughly the same amount of pages between Karalay and Jezaline but Osondrous had about 30 more than that. I wanted four part and to have about an equal amount of pages in each of the four parts of the book. I had already decided how far into the book the Epilogue would go (that was easy because I had already done that though this is the first time I’m calling it an Epilogue, I’m still not sure about that). And I decided to number the pauses in the book (where most people might put chapters) starting at 1 and going up through each of the parts and the epilogue too. I did not indent the epilogue though, I wanted it to look unique from the rest of the book and, though I know they are important, I hate the way paragraph indents look. I chose a Nimbus sans font for the whole book because it’s easy to read and really uses the line space. I used a Palantino for the Part, Epilogue and Title font. Not that any of that really matters. I’m a book designer, I can’t help it, so sue me.
Putting the Monster back together. Snout to Tail.
I wanted to remain consistent and organized while still having the book line up (you can imagine that some things happen in Osondrous’ story that can’t happen until other things happen in Karalay’s story etc.). At first I started Part 2 WAY too early and that helped me absolutely determine how the book was going to go. It would be Karalay, Osondrous/Constance, Jezaline and then all three of them one more time. So two parts from each of their stories for every part of the book.
The worst moment was when I realized I hadn’t been using enough of Osondrous’ story and well before she became queen Karalay was responding to the fact that she had become queen (a very vital happening in my book). So I had to take from Osondrou’s story in part four and add it in to part three and take from part three and add that in to part two to get her story to line up properly again. I knew people would be reading more from Osondrous’ part but, because I had to go back and shift her story around, I’m left anxious and worried on how the whole thing is going to read.
In the last rewrite of my book I broke entirely out of any system I had and just jumped between the girls as I saw fit. I like this way better. It feels stronger, I just hope it actually is.
So, happy new year to me!!
I am continuing in the last read through of my beast put all back together again. It is 330 eight and half by eleven pages and 181,000 words. At first I was down that it was still that high in word count but I just did the numbers and I ended up cutting over 55,000 words from the book! That’s a NaNoWriMo! So I am excited and feel good about the work I’ve done and about my monster. I have already read through the first ten pages and cut some and edited some. It read just fine and I can’t wait to get it printed in lulu and given to my aunt, my mom and my boyfriend.
Doubt
I’m terrified. I know that you can’t allow fear of failing to stop you from trying. But what if they don’t like my book when they read it? This is absolutely the best I can do right now. Period. This is as good a writer as I can be and if this isn’t this great, after all of this work, I will be devastated.
Keep it in perspective, Ta!
Of course, that is what I need to do. My book might not make anybody cry or even care much but I do believe it’s a fine book and it is so close to finished. I started this thing ten years ago and I’ve never felt this good about it before. I am truly entering the edit stage now and I will report back. I hope I will say in my next post, at least:
That it’s not too bad.
Other thoughts: I hate every word processor on the market. Hate. I have tried every program for writers in existance and none of them come close to what I actually need. I use Open Office and it is an absolutely fabulous text editor and it is free! But for putting a novel together none of them work for me. Most novel writing software forces you to save chapters separately etc. I hate that. (Yes, I’m going to be using the word hate a lot) So I’ve always ended up back in Open Office with my whole book in one massive document (like right now).
All I want, and I finally, truly, figured it out last night, is a tab system. I want down on side by the scroll bar there to be tabs that I can add that will jump me to certain parts of the book. I would like to create a tab for every part of my book so if I want to go to Part Four I just click the tab and I’m there (instead of scrolling for hours, that’s basically all I did last night scroll). I want to be able to create a tab for important moments, for all of Karalay, Osondrous and Jezaline’s parts of the story etc. Is this too much to ask??
One day I will design the perfect text editor for writers.
Well, I finally got through Karalay. Who knew? I knew I just needed one day. Just one. I can get through forty thousand words in a day. That seems to be my limit. That’s not writing forty thousand words but going through, cutting, adding and editing. I find that my limit of writing, if I have all day and a clear outline, is about seven thousand words in a day. Though I have written more. It really depends on what I’m working on and whether I’m motivated.
Like the other characters switching my writing soul to Karalay and really getting into her head and focusing on her took time. The switch between characters is not a quick thing for me. This is something I have found excessively frustrating. It means the first twenty thousand words can take me three weeks while the last three quarters of her part of the book takes me three days. I hope this is something I can really work on and improve about me but I’m not sure if that’s possible.
Karalay’s epic end.
The reason I chose to do Jezaline first was because she was the main character I had that was not the start nor the end of the main story of my book. I did her first because she was shorter and less important. Than I did Osondrous because she was absolutely my beginning and then I worked on Karalay because she was absolutely my end. The last nearly half of her story was the epic fight that concluded my novel. Who will win? Who will die? And it was damn fun when I finally reached that part of her story and got myself into it.
Strange things.
It’s funny what I remembered of my book and how it was written and what it actually was. It turned out to be two completely different things. Where I thought I was going to have a lot to cut from Karalay’s story, because of just plain stupid excessive writing, turned out not to be the case at all. Once I deleted Karalay’s first twenty thousand words (because earlier this year I wrote a new beginning for the whole novel) she became a trimmed down little chick with less words devoted to her than either of the other two characters. It surprised me and disappointed me. Where I knew I had a lot to add and re-write to give Jezaline justice I was not prepared for that with Karalay. Though Osondrous took me a long time most of her story was just cutting and I expected the same with Karalay. It’s just not the case. I have quite a bit to add and change now that I’ve gone through her once.
So the real editing begins.
I’ve begun Karalay’s line-by-line edit and addition. It’s the last real hurdle of my book and I am both apprehensive, excited and, most importantly, I feel really well prepared. Well prepared for me means I am thinking about her, I am motivated and I have twelve sticky notes stuck to my monitor of every thing I must add to her story to give it more depth and clarity. My most important addition will be the laying on of fear for her life and, hopefully, the readers. Where there should be this slow sickly building of tension there just isn’t yet quite enough mentioned in the beginning of the book to make my readers aware that they should be anxious. I hope I am capable of adding tension. We’ll see.
The best boyfriend in the world.
Yup, that’s my guy. We’ve been together for over six years now and I simply have the most wonderful boyfriend on the planet.
Why?
He got me the most thoughtful, useful gift I could have ever asked for. It is a beautiful, tiny laptop. In the past I have had massive laptops that I’ve been damn near embarrassed to take into public and have almost never used them on planes.
Not Anymore.
Now I have the perfect writing machine. I have been working on my book on the couch, in bed, at my desk, anywhere I want. It even has a seven hour battery life, something I have never even dreamed of before this. It’s beautiful, it’s an Acer and it is all mine.
No More Excuses.
Not that I had any before but now I am constantly tempted when I go to bed. There is my little laptop beside me and I want to write and now it is so easy.
Back North.
I made the thousand mile trip back north and am spending the next couple of months trying to make some money so we can truly finish our southern home and get it sold. My new years resolution will be entirely for me. Finish my book.
How much farther do I have to go?
I must line edit Karalay’s story. On a good, motivated day I could have that done in less than twenty four hours. But for now, I am enjoying some R&R and Christmas with my wonderful mom. We will be playing Guitar Hero, beating the new Mario that she got me for Christmas and finishing the hardest puzzles Walmart sold. After Karalay’s line-edit I will be attacking the daunting task of putting my book back together. I’m terrified or, as my boyfriend would say because my name is Tarah, I’m just “fied”.
So, cross your fingers for me.
Next week, when I report back, it is going to be to say that I have finished Karalay and have begun putting the beast back together, from nose to snout. The biggest thing I’m worried about is getting the cut offs between characters just right. I want people to be left hanging at the end of each of my girls parts. So, I’m afraid it’s going to be a very big task. On the other hand, it is my book and I do know it by heart. Maybe it won’t be so bad. Wish me luck.
I am struggling through Karalay’s portion of Embraced by Darkness now. Stuggling? Well, actually that’s not accurate, I haven’t worked on it for a few days now and I feel damn bad about it
We drove a thousand miles north two weeks ago and stayed a week where I belong. It was just impossible to work while I was there. All I wanted was R&R after the drive and everything. I also had several very early and very far away meetings for jobs to get out of the way. Not to mention personal things like doctors apointments and hair cuts. Being away from home so much is so inconveniant. I end up with so damn much to do while I’m there its just crazy. Not to mention people to see. I have a lot of family that I don’t get to see very much (just like everybody else it seems) so I ended up with four thanksgivings to go to. So after you add all of that up and squeeze it into ten days and give me some down time on the floor snuggling with my dogs. Well, it just doesn’t leave much time for writing.
We finally got our butts back here and I’m already losing time so fast I’m panicking. Two days ago this was my to do list before I can leave:
Add in over a hundred products for mjsportandoutdoor.com (a website I’m doing)
Finish a web design for Computer Services of Durant
Finish a book I’m designing for Marsha C. Porter
Finish Candace Simar’s new website (and add in email lists)
Finsh the newsletter the LOMPlighter for mnpoets
Finish figuring out the shipping problems for another site I’m doing neitherwolfnordog.com
Finish and get working a new Electronic Submission form for the JWB for The Talking Stick
Start and finish the church website including getting their logo scanned in and finished.
Finish three very important xmas presents, Joseph is the only one that knows how to do it!!
On top of all of that there is work we MUST finish on the house before I leave and that list is: Finish epoxying and fixing the tub/shower upstairs and spray finish it. Put linoleum down in the bathroom and closet upstairs. Install upstairs bathroom vanity and finish it. Install furnace upstairs. Take all four doors back that are the wrong size and install the new ones (so help us God).
To be able to take those doors back we have to pick up Joseph’s brother’s truck which is almost an hour drive away. So we’re going to kill two birds with one stone tonight and go to the Xmas party for Computer Services of Durant and get his brother’s truck on the way back.
FINISH MY BOOK!!
There are other things on that list but I hate listing them as “things to do” like going out with Joseph one more time before I go and going to his family’s x-mas party next Saturday. And Joseph and I are going to have our own little xmas together before I go. I hope I can bake a ham and maybe scalloped potatoes sometime this week and we’ll exchange gifts. Not to mention we are going out one night too, hopefully to Red Lobster 
So, that’s my life. Everything just listed above and there’s more (I’m certain I forgot something) that must get done before I leave on the 21st. That is eight days away. I’m freaking out a little and starting to feel panicked. I am a stubborn wench when it comes to goals. If they kill me or not I do reach them when I need to.
What sucks the worst is that I only need one day to finish Karalay’s portion of my book. ONE DAY!
I just don’t think I’m going to get it before I go. Right after I post this I have hurry up stairs and get the tub/show unit upstairs sanded down. And I’m crossing my fingers that I won’t have to epoxy it again before we spray it. Tomorrow morning we’re taking the doors back, getting the paint for the tub, picking up a few things to finish those xmas presents I mentioned up there, getting the right-sized doors, picking up the linoleum and glue that we need (crossing fingers that they even HAVE a remnant big enough for what we need to do the closet and the bathroom with).
On top of all of that Joseph’s father went in for surgery this week and Joseph ended up losing several days of work. Joseph’s dad is okay though, thank God. Joseph will now need to make up all of that work this week (because we simply can’t do without those three days of money) So he’ll be working at his computer desperately all week except when I drag him away for xmas with me, xmas with his mother, Red Lobster with me and to lay linoleum and install doors.
There is just not enough time in the day
I feel exhausted and pathetic. Balancing working on this damn house and finally get the renovations done (once I finish everything on the list up there we can install carpet throughout the house, that means DAMN CLOSE TO FINISHED AND SOLD!!). And trying to get my own personal work done for our business is becoming daunting. We’ve been trying to finish this house in Oklahoma for three years now and I’ll be damned if it takes much more of my time. I belong in Minnesota, not in Oklahoma under any circumstances. This house has taken a good two years longer than we thought it would and I thought I was coming down here this last time to finally fucking finish it. But, that’s not how our money situation is turning out. And Joseph, as much as I love him, does very little to no work on the house when I’m not here. The entire project of getting this house done is entirely on me. And, the truth is, I’d rather die that have to be in this shitty state any longer. (For those of you that like Oklahom, well, good fuck for you.) So, among everything on that list, I must get those house things done because I feel certain they will not be done if I don’t get them done and I’ll come back in three months and find everything just waited for me.
I’m going north on the 21st to stay through to March in and attempt to make some serious money. I have an $8,000 opportunity in Fargo up north that I absolutely cannot say no to. It is medical testing, so just call me “testee” and I will need to drive an hour and a half to Fargo every day for two and a half months. But, it’s $8,000 and we desperately need the money. So I’m going to do it.
And in the end, all I wanna do is finish my book.
I want to go back to Karalay, I have only 30,000 words left for her and that’s peanuts to what I have been doing. I just want to settle in for day and get it done, finally. But I’m afraid I would have to sacrifice something I’m doing professionally to do something for myself and that’s just not in the cards. I’m terrified I’m going to lose so much of the roll I’ve had going on this monster of mine. But, I guess we do what we have to. No matter what.
I swore in my last post that the next post I wrote I would be proclaiming a finish of the final going-through and line-editing of Osondrous’ and Constance’s story of Embraced by Darkness. (Wow that was a mouthful.) I did it. I took the day off from everything else in my life (my wonderful boyfriend even made supper for me when I stopped once to eat) and I got through it. I even managed to cut it down to just under 70 thousand words and that had been my crossed fingers hope that I had completely give up on. But going through it again I was able to cut even more and where I had been a little hesitant when I worked through it to start with I was able to be more fierce with this last edit.
Osondrous’ and Constance’s part of the book started at around 93,000 and ended up at just under 69,000. WOOHOO! It was tough and this last push took me eight hours. Jezaline’s story was nowhere near so tedious. The only thing I can come up with as why is just because of word count. I watched the pages slowly trickle by today. Osondrous was sitting at 133 (81/2 by 11 page size) and when I finished with Jezaline she was in the 80s. That’s less than I thought would make such a difference. But I finally got through it and I am so relieved.
New Decisions
As you might already have noticed I am an avid Stephen King fan. He is my number one. Simply put. Judge me as you will I don’t give a rat’s ass. In my opinion he is the best commercial fiction writer in existence. Something Stephen King is very fond of doing with his books is omitting chapters all together.
I am immediately drawn back to conversations with other writers (not novelists) about how important chapters are. And “how chapters should each be there own complete story” Are you kidding? What the hell. The book is the story, it should never pause for any reason besides itself. Chapters are formalities that are forced that the story of the book must pause around. And the minute novelists start altering chapters, to make them stories in their own right, is the minute the real story, the book itself, is lost.
I am dropping the chapter thing and have settled into the notion that I will be granting my book pauses numbers. Each story will have it’s own start and end with it’s numbering. Otherwise the book will have four main parts.
No more chapters. I am boycotting.
It just killed me tonight to not start numbering as I went. It makes so much more sense. Where the book pauses but where it would never been correct to start a new chapter, now I have the next number. Each of my stories (Osondrous, Karalay and Jezaline) will start at 1 and end where they end. I will force nothing. No more chapters.
Moving on to Karalay
I will have a formal post when I really start work on her story but I’m damn near delirious. Karalay is at 71,000 words right now, 20,000 less than where Osondrous started. This will be less of a heart ache than the last push to finish this Osondrous. Though I am both looking forward to her story, I am also apprehensive. I have as many add-ons to Karalay’s story as I did for Jezaline’s and just as much to cut. As always I am doubting my ability to do it right. But I also know that this kind of work moves faster than Osondrous’ story did. I had little to add to Osondrous, her story was just edit work. That is tedious as hell.
Karalay’s story I am hoping will be fun and I will ride a happy wave on my way through it.
A little lofty and dreamy? Sure. But I’ll take anything I can get.
Thoughts on the finishing touches
I’m thinking a lot about how this book is going to get put back together. I’m afraid this is going to be a major, final headache, to finish this monster. I have notes made in my brain where each story needs to end and start the next portion of the other story beside it. I’m terrified. Strictly speaking. Absolutely terrified I’m going to have to read, line for line and even rewrite to get this book to fit again. This is where I can’t let my momentum fail me. The instant I finish Karalay I need to start putting this thing back together while Osondrous and Jezaline are still fresh.
I can’t stress this more
No amount of notes can get you back to knowing every nook and cranny of your book. If you walk away, expect to have to read everything again and forget a lot. Write everything down and don’t walk away until at least some kind of outline, with all of your thoughts, is down on paper. I’m speaking from tragic experience here. I know that I’ve lost a lot.
Short story site
I’m also working on a 7,000 word short story for a site I was forwarded from my writers’ group http://www.one-story.com. Writers’ group can be great things. Wish me luck! I’ll be submitting sometime soon. I sent my story off to my writers’ group for critique (I have not yet considered asking any of them to read my novel I will post soon on what I think, truly, about writers’ groups) and I’m hoping for some good edits.
http://www.one-story.com
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