Stage Fright

I don't know why I'm so scared -- she's read my stuff before. Afterall, we met through fanfiction. Why is it so different, and so much harder, now?

I hate going through it; the revving myself up, the making myself sick with nerves until I think I'm going to puke, the gross, sweaty hands and the "Ugh." in the pit of my stomach when I hit send....

And then there's the waiting.

The endless waiting.

Has she read it? I don't want to ask, don't want to know, I wish I'd never sent it. Why hasn't she said anything? Has she read it? If has, why hasn't she said anything. I hate it. I hate it. I HATE IT.

But I have to.

I have to send it.

She wants to read it (at least that's what she says (but that's what she said last time)) so I should be grateful and pleased (so why is it making me sick?)

Why am I so scared? I hate it. I shouldn't be scared. I should trust her. No reason not to.

Butbutbut

But what?

I'm a ridiculous human being.

Success

I did it.

I hand wrote a novel.

190 pages.

Approx. 65000 words.

And it's good.

Like, I know it needs work and tightening... But it's good. I am very very happy with it and I can't stop smiling. I really think I'm going to be pleased when it's finished. Which is, as I'm sure you know, a super big-deal. It's almost impossible to please yourself. And I really think I will.

I've started plotting Book 2. I can't help myself. I've been writing solidly for the past week, like, 3,000 words-ish a day and I can't stop. I was supposed to take a fortnight off and not even think about it, but I can't. Maybe it'll get easier, but today's been tough. It's like going cold-turkey on an addiction. I just *need* to *pick up my pen* and *write*

But I can't.

I won't.

I do need space from it.

The last twenty pages did me in emotionally, and I think I've got physical symptoms from it. About an hour after I finished last night, I got a nose bleed and my stomach hasn't felt good for the past few days. I guess I've been internalizing everything my characters have been feeling. Which is a lot. Like, a lot. The only way I could express those feelings was to write, and by god did I write!

Anyway.

I'm taking a week off.

I am taking a week off.

And I'm going to read and play video games and limit myself to making notes if I absolutely have to.

It's going to be torture, but I need space. I need recuperation.

I am so excited to go back though, and that's a relief because I didn't think I would be. I thought it would be a pain to have to start over and type it up, but I know the story and the characters and my themes inside out and I can't wait to do them all justice.

I can't wait!

This is a song that really inspired the original NaNo Draft, and I think it's still very pertinent to the story -

I've got a lot more to talk about, but I'm still feeling quite dazed, so... later potater!

A Busy Couple of Months

And it feels like so much longer!

It's been pretty intense, being in St Louis with all that's been going on. Even though we're twenty-miles away from Ferguson, knowing it's just down the road is terrifying. There have been loud bangs going off every evening and no-one seems to know what they are. No-one seems very concerned either, so I'm just trying to follow their lead.

I thank God that Britain isn't pro-gun, I really do. It's another world over here. It's another world twenty-miles away. But the scariest thing is that it isn't another world at all; it's real-life in which people are being gunned down in the streets by rampant, militarized police. We're living in a dystopia.

My own little world has been taken up with writing and visa-applications. One is going well, the other is making me want to rip my hair out. Objectively, it's all going to plan, but I can't seem to make my brain accept that. I'm terrified of it being rejected and wish I could run away from it, but I can't. Once it's done, it'll be the best feeling in the world.

Writing is going very well. I've gone through the 50,000 words mark (!!!) and I've hand-written 147 pages. It feels like an achievement and the closer I come to the end, the happier I am. I know there's going to be a huge amount of work at the other end, but I'll be starting in a place I can be proud of.

Every time I sit down to write, the story and the characters take me off into completely different territory that I could never have planned. All my plans have fallen along the way, but the story as it stands feels right. I'm going to have to take them in hand when I start typing up, but at the moment I'm content to let it develop as it wants to. I've stopped being afraid of giving up - if something's not working, I re-work it until it does.

It's going well.

I've started developing my 2014 NaNo playlist and have rediscovered Brain Crain. Beautiful music, and I especially love his piano/cello duets. Recommended for tranquil writing time.

A Brit in America

One of the best decisions of the year was the decision to hand-write this story. For one thing, you don't get hung up on word count or formatting, or distracted by the internet, you just sit down and scribble. It's brilliant. I did my first rough word-count a couple of days ago and was amazed to see that I'd gone over the 30,000 mark! It's really coming together, and I couldn't be happier.

However - and it's a big however - I ran out of paper. Which, in itself, is fine - it means I've written a tonne. Which is good.

What is not good is the face that America has vastly different paper to us with three punched holes instead of four, and they don't even align so I can't put the new content in with what I've already done which means I have to get a new folder, and I'm reeaally struggling not to let my Writer's OCD take over... I mean, I've been going between A4 and A5 anyway, so one more size shouldn't matter too much, and nothing is pristine. I'm much less pernickity than I used to be, just like I don't believe in writers' block anymore. It's just another excuse not to sit down and scribble.

It's just very frustrating.

The fortunate thing is that it came right at the end of writing Part 2, so it's a very neat split between types of paper. I'm estimating that I'm about half-way done, so - if I keep going as I am - I should be finished with this draft in a couple of months (scary!)

I'm starting to feel pleased with myself and I can see the end and I don't hate it! It's going to be a good book.

Dizzying Circles of Novelling

I have reached page 84 of my rewrite and crippling doubt has kicked in. As far as the actual content goes, I'm pretty pleased with it, but I'm worried that it's all been useless (I know, logically, that it isn't - even if I end up not using this material, it's helped character development, world building, focus etc.)

My problem is that the part I'm writing at the moment just feels like an enormous info dump. It's important - very important - but nothing much is really happening. I'm also starting to feel that including all this exposition as it's happening will make the future less interesting. In the original, I quite enjoyed having this element as a bit of a mystery, and I'm starting to think that I might go in that direction again. 

The thing is - or the things are - I want to jump forward, if that's the direction I'm going to take it, and start from that point, but I know it's useful to continue writing out my exposition, but I'm getting bored by it because I'm doubting it's usefulness. The other thing is, or really a continuation of the same thing is, every time I sit down to write - something, anything - my character development is such that is almost always impinges on the larger plot, so if I jump ahead and write where I want, I'm going to miss out on a lot of that. 

Eh bleh bleh. 

But then if I do my magic time jump, where will it end? How much of what I've got now do I include, if any? I've said it before and I'm sure I'll say it again - I'm a sucker for backstory, but it's tripped me up and sent me faceplanting the pavement, and now my nose hurts. 

I often find myself going around in circles; wondering how to make my story better, changing it in my head, and I always find myself back at the exact point I started at. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not... It makes me dizzy, that's for sure! 

What am I doing? But actually??

In other news, I am rediscovering my love of Kelly Clarkson.

05/07/2014

So much has happened in the past month and I have nothing to say.

What's that about?

The facts:

• I am now in America.
• For the forseeable future.
• My computer is breaking.
• So is my Sansa.
• So are my headphones.
• I am replaying the first game I ever got for my Gameboy Colour - The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening.
• I am totally and unequivocally uninspired and unproductive. At least I had an excuse when I thought my Dell was dead. What's my excuse now?
• I went for a week without writing a word.
• I don't know how I feel about that. 
• I wish it was November NaNo.
• I much prefer the person I am in America. 
• I hate myself in England. I am an uptight bitch in England.  
• I have to teach myself how to relax in all aspects of my life. 
• Everything's going to be okay. 

Self vs. Traditional Publishing

It's a subject I've been thinking a great deal about in the last few months. Although I know I have a long way to go before I have something polished enough to even consider sending out into the wider world, I think it's important to have a plan for when the time comes.

On the one hand, it's every writer's dream to have something published by the Big Houses and done professionally and properly. On the other hand, it looks like a very arduous process - not only do you need to polish your novel within an inch of its life, but you have to court and woo agents with query letters, who then court and woo the publishers, who then rip your baby from limb to limb before it can be released. And then you have to share the royalties with all and sundry... 

It made me seriously consider saying 'Screw it!' and doing it all myself. 

But ( and it's a big But) no matter how much better self-publishing it becoming, I have still yet to read a really decent self-pub book. To me, it still has the stigma of inferior quality. Of course, I know that people can and do do it properly but, unfortunately, the majority do not. The majority is vanity publishing and/or impatience whilst waiting for The Big Break. 

I recently had a conversation with a friend about her self-published book, which isn't doing as well as she had hoped. I suggested that she look at websites like CreateSpace and LuLu which not only enables you to publish to kindle but also distributes hard copies as well. She ummed and aahed and eventually told me that she was waiting to be picked up by a publisher, which meant she couldn't fully commit to the road she was already half-way down. 

I hope it works out for her, I truly do, but it seems to be making her so miserable. She's feeling disillusioned with her writing because she can't fully commit to taking it down a single route and neither are working out. 

I don't know. I know that being a writer's tough, whichever route through publishing you take, but I guess the one thing I am certain of is that it is crucially important to choose One Way and do it the very best you can.