Two Unrelated Things

Well, I've hit the bottom of the deletion cycle, I think.  I wrote 500 words today beyond what I deleted.  There is still a lot to get rid of, but the character arcs have tightened somewhat.  I feel so insecure about this book.  I don't know who this dude is sometimes!

Also, I read a blog post somewhere in which an author complained about authors who talk about politics.  Now, I am one of those people who believes that the personal is political.  That you really can't separate the two.  But I appreciate that my readers may not want to hear my diatribes. 

Those of you who feel that way should probably stop reading now.

The GOP made a fatal mistake this election.  They did not LOOK at the American people.  They looked at the fantasy in their heads in which the vast majority of Americans are white protestants, who hate immigrants, intellectuals, liberated women, foreigners, homosexuals and any race not their own.  And now they will have to wake the Ef up or there will be no Republican party in the future.

Maybe the Green party will be the next challenger?  I could go for that.

Thank God.

Writing backwards

Yesterday I 'fixed' a chapter.  Which means I wrote 1000 words more or less, but deleted about 1800.  I'm down 685.  I don't know if it's better or worse, but at least I'm working on it.

word count

Yesterday was a miserable writing day.  Wrote only 500 and deleted 900.  So I'm down 400.  Today I am approaching the problem area.  If I can just work this part out I might start making some progress.

Day Two

Yesterday I wrote 1200 words and deleted 900, so I'm at 300.  So sad, but that's how it goes.

I may have mentioned 'If Not for You' some time ago, when I first started it.  I sometimes start books and finish them years later.  This one is about a wheeling dealing stockbroker, Eric Tack, living in San Francisco, who is trying to recover from the crash of 2008.  He hears that the man he loved and lost has been murdered and that he, Eric, has been named in the man's will. 

The entire book takes place in Humboldt County, up in the Redwood National Forest, where so many grow houses, legal and illegal, exist.  I got stuck on one of the main character's personalities.  I couldn't seem to nail him down which, you can imagine, created a major problem.  I've written the beginning and the end.  I'm kind of flopping around in the middle trying to get a grip.

NaNoWriMo

I've never done it but it seems like it might be the kick in the butt I need, so I'm going to do the NaNoWriMo on 'If Not for You' this month.

Today is my first day.  The book is 62,638 words currently, and I don't expect to publish more than 90,000 but if you knew my process you would weep for me.  This is the point in my novels where I start savagely brutalizing my story.  Cutting out characters, scenes, chapters.  For every word I write, I delete at least another word somewhere else.  So.  If I can write 50,000 and delete 20,000 I should be doing well.

I'll blog about the journey.  It will probably be boring.  Day after day of:  wrote 1200, deleted 1200, but I am going to finish this book and I'm going to be happy with it when it's done!

101 ways to procrastinate

Last weekend, I finished painting and unpacking my office.  The desk faces a window which, now, shows me a patio with sculptures and azaleas.  No more excuses, I was going to finally sit down and finish 'If Not for You' this weekend.

But I let myself get distracted again.  I tried to 'save money' by re-purposing the old sprinkler system valves to go from the main water line to the old sprinkler system.  None of these were properly rigged to begin with and my messing around with them was the last straw.  'POP' went a few joints and water sprayed everywhere until I turned off the main valve.  Now I have no water and had to use the studio gym to shower this morning.

In retrospect, I know I did this on purpose on some deep subconscious level.  I can FEEL that I didn't want to sit at that desk, open the laptop, and deal with those odious story issues at the place I left off in the book.  Now I have a serious problem that will cost money to fix and be yet another really good excuse to delay finishing the book.  This has got to stop.

And the epiphany I had this weekend was this:  If I wait until everything in the house is exactly as I want it to read, play with my friends and, yes, write, I will NEVER do any of the above. 

So I vow to you all and to myself:  For the next three weeks I am going to open the book to the iffy chapters and fix the problems.  I am going to soldier through this damned thing one way or another so that it's finished before the end of the year.  The popcorn on the ceilings, the brown patches in the lawn, the weird plumbing issues and even the rust in the old sinks is going to have to wait.

Lost again

Good news first:  I now can mow my lawn!!!  With the help of two well-meaning neighbors, I finally sorted out what I was doing wrong and my lawnmower started last weekend on only the second try.  One of those neighbors even asked me if he could trim the edges with his new trimmer.

Um.  Sure?

Then he GAVE me an old manual trimmer which I love love love to pieces.  I wish I had more edges to trim. 

I know this will all get old soon enough but it's still new and wonderful.  And my garage smells like fresh mowed grass which is a nice smell anyway and now makes me feel successful and victorious and like a growed up woman.

And, even better, I now feel a little more at home because I have nice neighbors.  Which helps because last week when the pit bulls attacked us nobody came to help and I was starting to wonder if there was anyone out there anymore who actually gave a hoot about people.

On another note, I've read several blogs recently about writers who create fictitious online persona so that they can go onto sites like Amazon and Goodreads and dis the competition.  Now let me explain why I am shocked and horrified by this news.  You see, I've always kind of thought of writers as MORAL.  Because there is so little money or fame for most of us, I figured we did it out of a kind of hopeless, if loving, compulsion to create.  How much more of the already paltry money or fame could one really obtain from giving one star reviews to every other writer of similar genres on goodreads?  Or how much of the creative time it takes to write a fictitious scathing review is really recompensed adequately?  Wouldn't it be more useful just to work on the book at hand and let the process out there take care of itself?  I don't get it.  I thought, in this cold cruel world, that other writers would be my FRIENDS. 

Of course, I DO have friends of the writerly persuasion.  Thank goodness.  They talk me off the cliff.  They kindly point out the places where my book goes awry.  I couldn't survive without them.  I hope they aren't the exception to the rule, like the neighbors who came over unasked and helped me out of a jam this weekend.