Where Have I Been

I occasionally fall into long periods of introspection. I get so overwhelmed by everything that happens in the world and in my life that my brain turns off and I find myself unable to get motivated enough to write a birthday card, let alone a book. Like an attack of ennui, but less... depressed (because, I promise, I'm actually happy while this is going on, just sort of lazy).

That's at least partially to blame for my extended absence and complete lack of productivity over the last few months. As I mentioned in a previous post, I moved in April, which led to a downhill spiral of too much to do and not enough desire to do it all. Which led to five weeks spent vegging on my new couch (the comfiest couch in the history of couches, by the way) watching Buffy for the first time. Which led to two weeks of, "Why can't I write as well as Joss Whedon?" Which explains the half-unpacked boxes that are still cluttering my apartment four months later.

Plus, I got some more responsibility at work, which led to a few weeks of late nights trying to finish some projects.

But it's a new month, and I'm kicking my ass back into gear. Pack Mentality is so close to completion I can taste it. I pushed the release back a month, so it's expected publication is now October 8th. I plan to spend August finishing the edits, sending it out for a final proofread, and nailing down my cover, so the month of September will be devoted to promotion. I'm really excited about sharing it with all of you (and the rest of the world).

I hope everyone's had a good summer so far! Sorry I haven't been keeping up with blogs and book releases; I'll do better about that!

Writing Slump and a Call for a Book Recommendation

You know how, in baseball, batters sometimes wind up in a slump when they're constantly swinging for home runs? And how the best advice they're given is to just try to hit the ball instead of trying to get it over the fence?

I've been swinging for the fences.

Some of you know I'm pretty obsessed with television. It was my major in college and, for awhile, it's where I thought I'd work after graduation. I watch a lot of it, and it's a huge influence on my writing. Except right now I think it's negatively influencing me.

I've been watching The Newsroom every Sunday. As in, I don't miss it, and I usually watch it two or three more times throughout the week. If you haven't seen it, it's a show by the creator of The West Wing that goes behind-the-scenes of a cable news show. It's clever, idealistic, a bit full of itself, and all around wonderful.

But it also has the effect of making me want to go change the world. The characters in this show do. Every day. And what am I doing? As much as I love Capitoline Hill and as proud as I am of it, it's unlikely to be a life-altering book for most readers. I want to change lives.

So I've plotted out a handful of new books recently with the intention of making them epic. I'm assuming I can't possibly be the only one who's done this, so some of you know that when you set out with "epic" in mind, you're almost guaranteed to fall short. I can't imagine J.K. Rowling or Suzanne Collins thought, "I'm going to change the world," when they wrote Harry Potter or The Hunger Games. They thought, "Just make contact with the ball."

I need to refocus on the basics, but how do you balance desires like this with reality? How do you shove aside the "change the world" mentality? I keep falling behind on my word count and starting new stories because nothing ever seems to be good enough to keep writing. I also think I might be making myself a little nuts. So, if you've been in this position before, what advice do you have? Or, you know, if you have an epic idea for me to write, that'd be cool too.

And on an unrelated note: I spent a lot of time talking to my 15-year-old neighbor yesterday. She's not a big reader, but she seems to be open to the idea of trying some books, partly because she has to read one for summer reading and partly because I've been bugging her about it since she was in elementary school. So we're going to take a trip to Barnes & Noble in the next few weeks, and I'd like to have some suggestions for her.

Basically, she likes contemporary YA romances. You know, boy meets girl, boy falls for girl, some conflict ensues, boy and girl live happily ever after. If there's something about a sweet 16 in there more's the better. For a reference, Catching Jordan by Miranda Kenneally and Knee Deep by Jolene Perry both got "maybe"s. Any suggestions would be very much appreciated.

And last but not least! Kyra Lennon's book Game On is for sale on Amazon! You should go buy it!

Amazon.com kindle version
Amazon.com paperback
Amazon UK kindle version
Amazon UK paperback

May Wrap Up

Hear that explosion sound? That's my goal for the month of May.

I had a very, very unproductive month, at least when it came to writing. I wish I could say I had more important things to do, but the truth is I got discouraged early on by some things in my personal life, then K.S. Lewis was visiting (you just knew I was going to find a way to blame you for this ;-) ), and work was particularly crazy for a week or so. And I just sort of... stopped.

And, guys, I came up with yet another new plot for Defenders. I had this big revelation at the beginning of the month, and about the only thing I did right in May was edit the first 13 chapters to line up with it. And last night I decided to (possibly) change it all.

I should explain. I've always felt that Defenders was a romance, even though it doesn't appear so at first. So when I revised it the first time, I brought the romantic aspects out earlier. Which led to... a love triangle. I hate love triangles. I mean, it's not a make-or-break thing when I'm reading a book, but it's usually something I groan about. Because I never agree with the main character's choice. NEVER. I like to root for the underdog, and it's always so obvious which guy the MC is going to choose that I find myself rooting for the other guy (who's always popular, cute and sweet, but she goes for the bad boy with the troubled past). And sometimes it's done well, and I don't mind as much. But sometimes it's done badly, and I find myself resenting the book because of it.

So, long story made not much shorter, I have a mental block against writing a love triangle, especially when it will be obvious fairly early which guy she's going to wind up with. So I thought, "Well, what if she's just with the one guy?" But the result was that the book lost a lot of its key tension (not the romantic tension, but the plot was tied in with Guy #2). So then I started tweaking the plot to make it fit. And now... there's a new plot.

I haven't decided whether I'm definitely going to go in this direction yet, but it doesn't seem like, "Because it will be a pain," is a good reason not to do it. Needless to say, this is part of the reason I didn't write so much this month.

So if there's anyone still reading this, let's do the monthly breakdown anyway. My May goals were:

• Write 23,000 words, keeping on track with 1000 words/weekday. Um. No. I wrote 8700. That's like 23,000, but... not.
• Have a polished MS for CH, along with a complete query letter and synopsis. Um. No. I have a partial query letter and feedback from three of my beta readers (and I'm waiting on feedback from two or three more). I have no synopsis. In fact, my Writer-brain cries when I even type the word "synopsis."
• Get 100 followers on Twitter (at which point I might have a giveaway) and 65 followers on my blog. YES! I have 108 followers on Twitter and 67 on my blog. And in light of that ('cause y'all are awesome), I'm going to have a giveaway next week. Stay tuned for more details.
• Submit at least one short story to a magazine or contest. Continue writing flash fiction every week. Um. No. I submitted... nothing. And I wrote maybe two flash fictions.
• Enter at least two bloghops. I actually entered three: the Dust It Off Bloghop, the First Loves Blogfest, and the Flash Fiction Blogfest. So, yay.

But it's okay. Everyone has a bad month sometimes. The important thing is to keep moving forward and not get discouraged. I can do that. So here are June's goals:

• Write 10,5000 words. I'm halving my writing goal this month because I really want to focus on editing CH and prepping it for querying, and I'm starting to realize I can't do that and write 1000 words/day. I have to choose.
• Have a polished MS for CH, along with a complete query letter and synopsis. For real this time. I've pushed back my goal to start submitting it to agents until later in the summer, but I really want to have something to show by the end of the month.
• Get 125 followers on Twitter and 75 followers on my blog.
• Enter at least two bloghops. Right now, I'm planning on doing the First Fight, First Kiss Blogfest and the Girls Just Wanna Have Fun Bloghop.

And if you made it all the way to the end of this post, you're awesome. Here, have a cookie:

OK, seriously? How much do you want a chocolate chip cookie right now?

D is for Defenders

Oh, Defenders. The bane of my existence. (I say this affectionately on the heels of one of the best days of writing I've had in awhile.)

Defenders is a project I've been rolling around in my head for a long time. Well, okay, really more like a year, but that's a long time for me to sit on an idea without writing it or discarding it. It's about a city called Rafcate, which was attacked and nearly wiped out 150 years ago. To prevent this from ever happening again, they imposed a mandatory military service for every witch, mage, werewolf, demon, berserker and fairy over the age of sixteen in the city.

The story follows a team of girls who are in their first year of service: Laurie, Shawn, Kali, ZJ, Alexi and Meg. Not long into their training, a dead body shows up on their doorstep with a message. This is just the cap to the pretty weird things that are happening all around. Laurie and the team are determined to figure out what's going on, no matter what the cost.

I'm roughly 1/4 of the way through the first draft, and I have to say, it feels like I'm pulling teeth. Slowly. Without Novocaine. I don't know if it's just a weak plot, or if I'm really not cut out for complex world-building like this, but whatever it is, I'd love to fix it. And I feel like I spend a lot of time whining about how difficult writing this is for me.

But I'm not ready to abandon it yet. First of all, I love the concept, maybe more than I ever have with one of my ideas before. Secondly, I know bits and pieces of book 5 (the final book in the series), and I know that if I can get there, it will be awesome. Once I realized this was Laurie's story instead of the team's as a whole, pieces of the end fell into place for me. So maybe, if I can ever get there, that part might be easier to write.

The other thing is that I've already invested a lot of time in this. I actually did world-building! I never do world-building. I'm much more likely to wing it and hope everything falls into place eventually. And every time I think about that, my resolve to finish this book grows. I love my characters. I want to tell their stories.

And I want to prove to myself that I don't give up just because it gets a little difficult to write. I've already done that, many times, to the point where I thought I'd never finish anything again. For four years after the collapse of my third novel attempt I started and abandoned projects on a regular basis. I'm afraid that if I fall back into old habits, I won't be able to pull myself back out.

So my question is: what do you do when you just can't seem to get anything write for a story? At what point are you willing to put it down? Are you the kind of writer who just keeps pushing until you finally break the wall, or does putting the story down help you refocus on it? And when is it okay to admit that a project just isn't working?

Flash Fiction Friday - 3/23/12

Sorry, guys, I haven't been the best blogger this week. I had a lot to do at work, and I've been feeling a little creatively tapped. I'm hoping that spending this weekend really plotting out some of Defenders (and maybe even editing Rosetta) will help get me back on track. It feels pretty messy and disjointed, and it's making it hard for me to write it when I don't know what's going to happen next. I didn't even take a swing at hitting my word count yesterday, so I've got almost 1600 more words to write before Monday to keep me on goal.

But anyway, this is Flash Fiction Friday, not Tobi Whines Friday. And this flash fiction is a possible future scene from Defenders (depending on how the story goes). Hope you enjoy.

He knew he was in trouble. His chest ached where the sword had pierced it, and no amount of fairy magic could heal a gash like this.

Yeah, black magic was a bitch like that.

Still, he forced himself to his feet and summoned the remainder of his strength. He might be dying, but he wasn’t going down without a fight.

She was only about a hundred feet away—though it may as well have been a hundred miles to his battered body—and he staggered to her just as she threw a Trip Spell at her opponent. He fell back, head smashing against a rock, and didn’t rise again.

“You’re getting better,” he grunted, and she whirled to look at him, face falling when she saw his bloody shirt.

“You’re hurt,” she said.

“You always did have a way of pointing out the obvious.”

She glared at him, fierce. He liked her fire, even if it would get her killed someday. “I’ll be fine,” he lied, and she didn’t believe him.

She let it go anyway. “They have us surrounded,” she said. “And there are a hell of a lot of them.”

“Where’s your backup?” he asked, looking for her teammates.

“They’re here. Not far. They’re waiting for my signal, but I don’t… I…” She hesitated, then pushed on even though the words seemed painful. “I don’t have a strategy for this.”

He nodded. “You’re in luck. I do.”

She looked heartbreakingly hopeful, and he had a moment to remember that she was really a kid still. “You think we can take them all?”

“No,” he said. His realism made her face fall, though she hid it behind determination.

“Of course we can,” she argued, and it was a struggle not to laugh, even though that would have hurt his wound.

“The best you can hope for is to delay them until more backup arrives. But that,” he continued before she could interrupt, “we can do.”

He watched the conflict flicker across her face before she nodded. “Okay,” she said. “Where do we start?”

What am I doing?

Deep down, every author wants to write that epic book or series, the Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings that moves a generation, becomes a major motion picture, and makes you so successful that you never need to work a day job again. It may not be an all-consuming thought, and that certainly doesn't mean you're not going to write and even publish other things, but I firmly believe somewhere in the back of every writer's mind is that desire to write an epic story.

For me, Defenders is that story. It's a five-book series, and by the end of book five, I truly expect it to change lives. It's got romance, action, philosophy and politics all rolled into one, like The Giver meets The Hunger Games but with werewolves (and a host of other supernatural creatures). I have big dreams for this series.

So why am I writing Angels instead?

Unless you follow me on Twitter, I know I haven't talked much about Angels. It sort of came out of nowhere. I wrote half the first chapter during NaNoWriMo last year, then stuffed it in a metaphorical drawer in lieu of finishing Rosetta, starting Defenders and writing some short stories. It was really just a silly little writing exercise when I had writer's block one day.

Which is what happened again a few weeks ago. I had writer's block on Defenders, so I looked through some old projects to get my mind off it for a little while. Angels popped up, and I wrote a little more. Then a little more the next day. And again, and again, until I'm now 3,000 words into it, and it's starting to develop a plot.

Perhaps the scariest thing about it is that it's middle grade fiction. I've written MG fiction before, mostly when I was in the middle grades. The only MG thing I've written since graduating middle school, however, is The-Novel-We-Speak-Not-Of.

For those of you who haven't been following my blog since last November (so... everyone), I consider my third novel (and 2009 NaNo submission) to be the lowest point of my writing career so far, made all the worse by the fact that I had been sitting on the plot for several years before getting up the nerve to write it. Badly.

(Kim says it isn't as bad as I think it is. I agree. It can't possibly be. The Hindenburg wasn't as bad as I think this novel is.)

Needless to say, I have some concerns. I don't speak like a normal person to begin with. I like vocabulary, and I like using words to their fullest extent. I like grammar, and I like using it properly. 13-year-old girls do not do this, or at least not often. Not the ones in my story. And the 13-year-old girls I used to talk to are now in high school (I have a lot of younger neighbors). So what makes me think I can write this character and her friends convincingly?

I'm also afraid that the minute I put any pressure on this (i.e. call it an actual WIP), it'll crack. It feels so very fragile right now. I guess all books do when I first start out, but I think my insecurities are making this one worse.

The flip side of this is that 1) the words seem to be really flowing with this one, and 2) I'm having a ton of fun writing it. Which is a really nice change, considering how difficult Defenders is being. I guess I'm just confused because I've seen myself as an adult author, and I've seen myself as a YA author, but I'd never even considered the possibility I might also be a MG author.

Of course, I'm only 3,000 words in. Maybe I'm just getting ahead of myself.

Has your writing ever taken you by surprise? Every gotten really into writing a book you never expected? Or ever written something you didn't think you knew how to write? Or should I just shut up and be glad the words are coming?

Random Thoughts on Editing

• Editing is a much different process than I expected it to be. I guess I thought I'd just be able to jump to the sections that contained notes, do a few quick spruces and suddenly have a beautiful, perfect book that every agent and editor would be waiting to receive. But it turns out...
• I have a lot more insecurities than even I realized. I can't just be happy with the fact that I wrote a book for a few days. Instead, I dove into editing right away and was suddenly plagued by doubts. Is my book really good enough to compete with every other urban fantasy book out there? Do the characters and the plot develop in an organic way? Is it bad that nothing ever seems to happen directly to my main character? In case you were wondering, I'm pretty sure the answer to the last question is yes, which means that...
• "Rewrite" is not a dirty word. While I'm not rewriting the entire book per se, I am writing significant portions of it, far more than I expected. My first draft is, at this point, acting like the patches that will eventually be sewn into a quilt. I'll write a new scene, then find some old scenes that fit, but I'll rearrange them from the order in which they were initially written. All in all, the job is way more time-consuming than I expected it to be, so...
• My goal of having my initial edits done by 1/31 is a pipe dream. I have to let it go now, and set the slightly more realistic goal of having the first round of edits done by 2/29, so I can start sending the drafts to the friends and family members who so wonderfully offered to read and critique it. I don't think this will cause a change in the rest of my timeline, but I'm trying to learn to be more flexible.

This doesn't change the fact that I plan on starting Defenders on 2/1, as well as some short story projects and contest submissions. I want to get back to writing 1000 words/day, whether that be Defenders, submissions for magazines, short stories, blog posts, television reviews, or whatever.

What's your favorite/least favorite thing about editing?

Story Hints: How Much Is Too Much?

When I'm writing a novel, I often have many things about the ending planned in advance. I assume this is a common thing for writers, since ultimately the goal is to get to the end. In the case of Rosetta, I also have things planned for the next two books. Obviously, to get to these things, I need to build toward them gradually. In other words, I need to drop hints along the way, so it's not surprising when all of a sudden two characters sleep together in book two. But the question is: how big a hint is too big?

I have a tendency toward dropping too many hints too quickly. I don't want to leave the possibility that the reader might not pick up on it, or that it might be jarring. I have every intention of fixing this problem during editing. But I'm constantly worried that the reader, who is not inside my head and therefore has very little idea of what I'm thinking (though admittedly that problem may not be remedied if they were inside my head), will not understand the way my characters grow or change to fit the end game I have planned for them. So my hints tend to be heavy-handed, more of a smack in the face than a teasing caress.

On the other hand, my friend Kim trusts her readers much more, and she's very cautious about giving away too much. She relies on the reader to put the pieces together on their own, never wanting to give them too much information so they figure it out too early. She likes to give her readers more credit, believing they can reach the same conclusions she has. As a reader, I appreciate this quite a bit. As a writer, I find it incredibly difficult to do.

So maybe this is the question: is it better to err on the side of too much information or too little?

I've always liked those books where you don't pick up on the hints right away, but when you read them a second time (and I'm a chronic re-reader) you suddenly start to see them all for what they are. It's what I've aimed to do with Rosetta, especially with some of my main character's personality traits that I plan to develop more as the book and series go on. Yet I can't help feeling discouraged when I read a chapter back and realize I "casually mentioned" one such aspect four times in one chapter.

I have this problem when Quinn feels anxious about something as well. For example, in the first few chapters, she runs into her ex-boyfriend and spends the entire time thinking about how she acts like a lovesick teenager every time she sees him. Luckily, in the first round of edits, I sought and destroyed many instances of this, leaving just a few to acknowledge that she is, in fact, acting like a 13-year-old girl around him (a character trait that made me grind my teeth together and pray she grew out of it soon). It got so bad I actually broke the fourth wall and yelled at her through the page.

Now in chapters seven, eight and nine, she spends an unhealthy amount of time obsessing over a test she didn't believe she should have passed. This was done partly because I wanted to show her need to prove herself, but it exploded into her solitary focus for about 35 pages.

At what point do I start believing the reader will understand Quinn's insecurities without my harping on it any longer? At what point do I assume they'll understand a dropped hint or a secret smile that may show up several chapters later? And at what point do I trust that a few actions on her part will do more than a thousand long (internal) monologues? I'm just never sure.

Writing Prompts

So I spent the better part of this evening looking for ways to fill my NaNoWriMo word count. After running through my list of projects (Rosetta, Dash, YA, Long Live, and now my newest story Angels), I came up with... writing prompts. So I set about searching for writing prompts online to help get me started.

I have to tell you: they suck.

I don't know if it's just the websites I found, but there were a ton of one-word writing prompts (which can be fun when I'm in the mood for them) and a ton of prompts along the lines of, "Write about something you dislike about yourself." But there were very few longer prompts, containing things that might get your mind working if you're having trouble coming up with an idea of your own. It's all well and good to have the prompt, "Cinnamon," but if you're already a little burned out and not having luck coming up with a concept, sometimes you need a little more.

Maybe it was just the way I was searching. I typed "Writing prompt" into Google and went with the sites on the first page. Is there a better topic to search? Maybe "story starters" or something like that?

When I was in high school, I used to spend the first fifteen minutes of every morning doing free writing. Basically, I'd sit at my desk at 5:15 in the morning and write about whatever could possibly come to mind.

Needless to say, there were a lot of angry journal entries about how much I hated being awake that early.

I liked doing the free writing. I read about it in one of those "How to Be a Writer" books (maybe Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird), and the author talked about how it loosened up her mind for the rest of the day. I noticed a distinct uptick in my creativity whenever I did it. I felt more awake during the day (which was ironic because I woke up earlier), and I felt like my brain was firing on all synapses.

Unfortunately, like most things I did in high school, this faded away as I got older. Eventually, I valued the extra fifteen minutes of sleep more than the burst of energy and creativity I would get from free writing. Nowadays, I wake up and sit on my computer for a half hour before even attempting to move. I could use this time to write/free write.

Instead, I watch reruns of Boy Meets World or play games on Sporcle.

Part of the problem is that I'd rather write than free write, but I'm afraid whatever I wrote at six in the morning would be completely useless--and it probably would be. But I don't want to have to rewrite everything I do, and I don't want to waste time writing things that don't matter (aka stream-of-consciousness free writing), so instead I write nothing. And for some reason my brain is okay with this.

Anyway, at this point I'm just looking to fill my word count, but I will go back to the initial point and pose a question to all of you who are reading (so possibly just Kim): Does anyone out there have a tried-and-true writing prompt site they use?

Expectations

I'm currently in the process of writing chapter 8 of Rosetta, the chapter which will introduce Eli, a 24-year-old werewolf who will become quite important throughout the rest of the book and future ones. Eli was probably the second or third character I created, and the first one I had actual expectations for. I know what I want him to do by the end of the book, and while a whole host of other things need to fall into place to make it work, the thing that frightens me most is the Eli won't be the character I need him to be to make those things happen.

This happened to me once before. I started a novel with the intention of the main character getting together with this one guy. And when I got to the part of the outline where they were supposed to get together... nothing. No sparks, no chemistry, no conceivable reason why these two people would ever see each other in a romantic light. He was her sons' principal; she was his students' mother. Nothing more, nothing less.

Instead of rolling with it and changing the plan, I panicked and shut down. This was the concept I'd built my whole story around. If it wasn't going to work, what point was there in continuing it?

I'd like to think I've grown from this, and that I can readjust if Eli is not ready to do what I need him to do at the end of the book. I'd like to think I'm a better writer now than I was when I was 18. And I'd like to think I'm more flexible now. But the problem with having expectations for a character is that then they have the potential to disappoint you.

One DV Rebel vs. The Plot Summary

The more I write, the more I realize something rather disheartening: I suck at plot development. Really suck. Like, can't-get-the-last-of-the-milkshake-through-the-straw suck. And I never knew this was my problem before. Because I can come up with ideas. Oh, baby, can I come up with ideas. I've got a list of story ideas a mile and a half long, and I'll still come up with a new one before I start writing something new.

At some point, though, I've started to understand that ideas and plots aren't the same thing. This was never more obvious that the other day when I came up with Dash, the tentative title for one of my NaNoWriMo projects (more about that in a future post). The idea was spawned from a text message to Kim: Can you think of a book that's not midway through a series where the main character starts the book and ends the book in the same relationship, and they don't break up and get together somewhere throughout?

We could not.

So the idea was: Book about a couple that doesn't break up. And they do some other stuff too.

See, that other stuff is where I have the problem. In the past, I've taken this idea, developed a couple characters (let's call them Ash and Em for this book because, well, those are their names), and started writing with nothing else to guide me. Sometimes I've developed an outline around this idea, where very little happens except the characters talk a lot (and, in this case, maybe flirt a lot). Then I write a few chapters, decide it sucks, and put it in a drawer.

I'm breaking the cycle.

I don't know if I've actually developed a plot yet, but I wrote the back-of-the-book blurb. I'm finding more and more that this is a much better jumping point than the idea is. At least this hints at conflict and obstacles to overcome. Plus, it makes me smile, because I would totally pick up this book if I read the summary:

It’s not that Emma Flamel likes to keep secrets. It’s just that she has no other choice. Sure, she could tell Ash, her boyfriend of almost a year, that she’s a witch with the power to make him do anything from swat imaginary flies to confess his darkest secrets... but who needs the hassle? It’s already the longest relationship she’s ever been in; why tempt fate by pushing it? But when her 16-year-old “Little Sister” turns up dead and reeking of magic, Em starts to suspect someone’s trying to tell her something. And Ash’s investigative skills may be just what she needs to get to the bottom of it.

Now I know several things I didn't before. I know Em is a witch, and Ash doesn't know that. I know Em hasn't been in a relationship for longer than a year. I know someone killed her Little Sister (as in, Big Brothers/Big Sisters). I know witches can smell/sense/taste/feel magic. I know Ash has investigative skills (cop? PI?). And I know Em is going to investigate this death, probably with Ash's help. These are all from six sentences, and suddenly... I have the beginning of a plot. And the more of a plot I have, the more excited I get about writing this, and the more details I'll fill in.

I know a lot of writers will swear by the outline system. Until recently, I was one of them. But you have to be flexible if you make an outline because things will change, and I find it difficult to do that. Instead, this plot summary and the notes I make from it give me the freedom to create the story as I go, as the characters develop, but also gives me some guidance. Sure, there are still many, many things I should probably know before diving in, like maybe Ash's last name, but it's only October 27, and I already feel like I'm in a way better place than I was the last time I did NaNoWriMo. Sure, my bipolar love affair with writing could swing back to depression at one wrong word or bout of writer's block. And, sure, I still have to worry about hitting 50,000 words by the end of November. But, hey, for now? I'm going to enjoy picturing what the back of my book will look like.

Writer's ADD

I have what I affectionately refer to as Writer's ADD. Think of it as the polar opposite of Writer's Block. Instead of having no ideas, I have too many. And I want to write them all.

I don't remember this being such an issue when I was younger. Hell, I wrote two novels before I turned 17. I could sit and write for hours... on the same topic! Now, I've already been distracted twice while typing this blog post.

Part of the problem is that every idea I think of sounds amazing, until I start to write it. And this, I understand, has more to do with being my own toughest critic than anything else. Perhaps if I wasn't so hard on myself, I wouldn't think every idea sucks once it's on the page.

Another problem is that I like instant gratification. I can't write a romantic scene between two characters in Rosetta because those two characters aren't together yet. So instead of patiently waiting to build up to it, I thought of a new idea, where the main character is already in a relationship at the beginning of the story. Now I can write that romantic scene without having to wait.

Yes, that is the same logic I apply when I write fanfiction.

And perhaps part of the problem could be that I have a subconscious fear of success. If I never finish anything, I'll never be successful and then I won't have the pressures of living up to fans' expectations, publishers' expectations, friends' expectations, my family's expectations and my own expectations. This has the added bonus of being both really depressing and difficult to fix, so I'm hoping this is not the problem.

Most likely, it's what my 4th grade Reading/Language teacher told my mother--my brain goes faster than my hand. And I suppose having too many ideas is better than having none, though if none of them are ever written I guess it doesn't make a difference. That's why setting deadlines (and answering to someone else) is so important for me. Having someone else who's anticipating my chapters motivates me better than I could ever motivate myself.

The moral of today's story? Always write with a buddy.