Sudden inspiration

What is it about having loads of homework that massively increases the desire to write unrelated things? I have a 3-5 page paper on Agamemnon due Wednesday, 200+ pages of History of the Peloponnesian War to read, 12 position papers on the crisis in Darfur to study in preparation for a simulation beginning Monday, an integral scene to write for my Craft of Fiction class, and a lot more work to do on my fantasy story for Fantasy & the Numinous in Children's Literature.

And yet all I can think about is how much I want to revise my NaNoWriDay novel. Or pick up my abandoned JanNoWriDay novel, or - heaven forbid - start a new NaNoWriDay novel. Which would be absolutely nuts.

Add to this the fact that it's 85 degrees and cloudless out, with a gorgeous little breeze, and that I foolishly went to Titular Head last night (the big drunken student film festival) after spending the whole day on work...and gosh, it's really hard to focus on getting homework done.

Meanwhile, my mirror is completely covered in plot notes and character information for my NaNoWriDay novel and my fantasy story - not sticky notes (which would make a lot more sense), but written on with a dry-erase marker. It works very well, but it makes getting ready in the morning a little difficult.

Finally, I'm going to a roundtable discussion with John Edgar Wideman tomorrow. Should be very interesting. In celebration, I'd like to recommend a poem that everyone in the world should read: Language Lesson 1976, by Heather McHugh. My previous English prof calls her 'the queen of paranomasia', and it's one of the more fun/rich poems I've read lately.

Remove distractions. Write. Lather, rinse, repeat.

In order to successfully write my fantasy story for Fantasy & the Numinous in Children's Literature class, I will now be hiding my Ethernet cable. My theory: I'll be too lazy to extricate myself from this uncomfortable little dorm desk and find it when I want to check my email, thus forcing me to focus on writing.

The amount of homework I have this weekend is just disheartening. On the upside, it prevents me from checking Fangs, Fur & Fey every .03 seconds to see if they've posted anything regarding the contest. Which I'm freaking out about.

Right. Unplugging that Ethernet cable now. And ignoring my built-in wireless...maybe I should go outside and write by hand instead.

Ingenious publicity

This is one of the most ingenious marketing tools I've ever seen. And pretty. So I had to post it.

Step back. Breathe.

All right. Panic time is over. I have a first five pages that I'm willing to submit. They're certainly loads better than my original opening five pages, which (swear to God) consisted of three pages of preparation for a road trip and two pages of my main character describing her friends. To herself. In her head.

That's what NaNo does to you. But now I can see the shape of something decent, and it's pretty cool. Plus, the opening now reflects the rest of the book; instead of packing and vague description, I have a car chase and a Molotov cocktail. Fun stuff.

My cure for writer's block? Three bottles of vitaminwater focus, a thunderstorm outside, "The Hand That Feeds" by Nine Inch Nails on repeat, and loads of other homework that I should be doing.

Tomorrow afternoon, I'll do some fixing before submitting my pages to Fangs, Fur & Fey.

Thank God

I'm finally writing again. This has been painful, y'all. It's so nice to have words make sense.

A little, anyway. They're not quite working the way I'd like, but still. At least I'm writing something, right?

Hooray!

I'm one of sixteen advancing to the next round. Hell yeah.

Fun fact:

According to this site, "to call a spade a spade" was originally "to call a bowl a bowl".

Neat, huh? That's been bugging me all day.

The Hook

Since it'll be posted on the Fangs, Fur & Fey site on Monday, I figure I might as well post my hook here too.

Flying an ancient Bristol F.2B Fighter plane wasn’t exactly covered in Meri’s high school education. Of course, her teachers didn’t expect her to end up in an alternate version of 2007 the weekend before her senior year finals. But when she heads out on a beach trip with three of her friends, that’s just what happens – while driving her old minivan towards the Oregon coast, Meri takes the wrong exit and suddenly they’re headed for the gates of a refugee camp in Nevada, in a world where the Nazis didn’t lose.

This alternate United States has no use for undocumented refugees. They quickly send Meri and her friends to the British Independents, the only group still fighting the Third Reich. After working on her piloting skills, Meri joins the British Independent air force. Life there is too intense to waste time worrying about her distant foster family. Soon she’s deep in the world of the British Independents – sleeping in the pilots’ barracks, addicted to flying, and seeing an awful lot of a certain lieutenant. It’s a place where Meri feels completely right for the first time, a place where she has a purpose.

Then disaster strikes and Meri is left with a choice: stay and risk her life with the British Independents, or run back to the quasi-safety of the alternate United States and abandon the cause she’s chosen and the people she loves.

Hmm. It's not quite as great as I remember. Ah, well - too late to change it now.

How do you know you're procrastinating?

When you've cleaned your entire dorm room - including taking out the recycling and organizing your tiny closet - for the third time all year, it should be pretty clear that you're putting something off. For example, editing the first five pages of the novel that you really need to fix by Monday morning.

It's even more obvious that you're procrastinating when you start working on homework that isn't due for nearly three weeks - even if it is writing a fantasy story.

Or when you take a 45-minute break from writing your blog entry to comment on hooks posted for critique on Fangs, Fur & Fey. And your blog entry itself was procrastination.

Oh, this is ridiculous. I'm going to work on my final project for Fantasy Children's Lit while my novel cries out for editing.

Hook, Line, and...

Good God, it's hard to write a good hook. Every word has to be absolutely perfect, and there's so little room to accurately (and compellingly!) describe the book's concept.

At least I have a good writing friend to read and critique my hook. Otherwise, I think I might go insane.

Crap-o-meter, minus the snark and plus a prize

So I stumbled across this on Miss Snark's blog: a contest for hooks.

I have a sudden urge to create a hook for that NaNo project under construction and enter it. I'd love the feedback, and it would help immensely with my query letter. Plus, it would light a fire under me to get some more editing done (if you advance through the rounds of the contest, you send in more and more of your manuscript).

I have till 12:01 AM on Friday, April 13th. I suppose I'd better start brainstorming.

Er, after I finish writing my presentation on Sri Lanka's civil war and coming up with discussion questions for Sabriel. Stupid homework.

Editing

I've begun editing my WriDay beast. Printing alone took about 45 minutes - unfortunately, you can't print ~150 pages in a single go when you're using a computer lab, so I had to chop it into 20-page chunks and print them in between other people's print jobs.

Then the editing started. Basically, I've split it in half between two 3-ring binders. I go through with a highlighter and a colored ballpoint, writing comments next to text and on the backs on pages, using the highlighter for sections that need major reworking. There's a lot of highlighter so far.

I'm about three-quarters of the way through. There are some significant chunks that need fixing, but the biggest problem tends to be the way that I skipped so quickly from event to event. Thus the book takes place over span of, at most, a week, when it should be at least two weeks long.

Whenever I get bored with editing (which is frequently), I focus on the publishing aspect. Using the terrific AgentQuery.com, which is in my opinion vastly superior to Writer's Market (and free!), I've been combing through YA agents - looking at bios and websites and sales lists. In the process, I found the agents who represent Neil Gaiman and Stephenie Meyer - not the same agent! - which was pretty cool.

I figure I'll be editing/rewriting until the end of school (mid-May). I'll let it sit for a month while I'm in Argentina, come back in July, and start polishing again. Then, around the beginning of school (late August/early September), maybe I'll be able to start the submission process. It'd be nice, anyhow. I doubt I'll get the preliminary rewrites done that fast - I detest rewriting scenes.

Especially since that jerk Lt. Oliver dragged me into writing a sequel about him.

Back to work

Well, I'm back from an unexpected spring break in Scottsdale, Arizona. And (I hope) I'm going to get serious about getting a novel published.

As far as I can tell, this requires a few steps.

1) Picking one novel to focus on. As of now, I have
-150 pages of a spy novel
-120 pages of a YA fantasy
- 60 pages of a contemporary YA novel
- completed NaNoWriDay novel
- completed NaNoWriMo novel.

2) Editing that one novel. The first three novels would require completion as well as major editing, while the last two just need significant overhauls.

3) Wading back into the the world of publishing and agents to find a good YA agent. And, of course, I can make all the lists I want, but part III doesn't really become important until I've finished parts I and II.

Aargh. I need to stop putting off the editing and just EDIT already. NaNoEdMo ended up flopping, so I need to find a different way to motivate myself.