The Writer Flip-Flops

Being a writer is hard. I am revising my first MS and I’m not doing too well with it. It’s a frustrating venture for me as something I don’t really have experience with. And because of those frustrations, I sort of just want to focus on another WIP instead. This is part of one of what I’m calling the Writer Flip-Flops. The other part is the love/hate relationship with what I’m trying to revise.

I have such an easier time creating something new. For whatever reason, a blank page that needs to be filled in is so much less overwhelming to me than 90K+ words that need to be altered, pruned, reduced, expanded on, clarified, reworked, rewritten, etc. The story idea is in that stage where all I really have to do is figure out how to put it into the correct words, which is actually a bit more complicated than that sounds. But I don’t have to figure out how one seemingly small change is going to impact every single word that follows it. I know I need to revise. It has to happen, even if just to clarify the story for me. And more than that, how else am I going to get better at revising if I don’t actually do it?

While I’m pushing myself to keep going through this slow-going process, I’m struggling with another flip-flop and I really hope I’m not the only writer experiencing this. Some days I absolutely love my work and other days I can’t help but think my storyline is stupid, silly, and full of plot-holes. I've been very fortunate to have some great friends and family read my MS and give their support and valuable input and honestly, some days it’s that support and input alone that keeps me going with it. That’s usually the point in which I step away from my computer or binder and give it a few days or weeks before attempting more progress, waiting until I’m back in that I-love-my-characters-and-their-story-has-to-be-told mentality.

Like I said, being a writer is hard. But I’m working through the Flip-Flops and hoping that at some point, it will get easier, even if that only means the flip-flop periods get shorter.

Do you ever get the Writer Flip-Flops? How do you get through them?

 

It's coming!!!!

(I'm posting this from my phone so I apologize if the formatting is weird!!)

SALT comes out in 20 days.

The sequel is due in 33 days & I have 18.5k words.

I baked cookies for 3 hours last night. 

Now you've has insight into the life of an author.

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But in all seriousness, SALT comes out in 20 days and I'm thrilled. (Mostly. Sometimes I'm scared.) 

There are a lot of reasons we write books: for a friend, for a deadline, for a character, for publication, for fun, for themselves. SALT was completely for myself; I honestly never thought it'd ever be published. 

I wrote SALT after finishing a major revision on FOLLOW ME THROUGH DARKNESS. I'd spent two years with FMTD and that book is my heartbeat but the MC is lost, the subject heavy and the world intense. I was so tired when I finished that revision and then I heard Penelope's voice. 

She made me laugh. Her story made me smile, left me feeling joyful and light. It rejuvenated me, and I wrote it. It was fun to write and read, even while drafting and rewriting and building. That was why I wrote SALT. It was fun. It was never meant to be this beautiful piece of literary genius. It was relief and escape and happiness and kissing. 

As other people read her story, they fell in love with Penelope and her voice. That's how Entangled ended up with it. It's a fun story. And even when I was doing page proofs a few weeks ago, it made me laugh. It always makes me laugh. :)

As SALT comes out in 20 days, I hope it beings you happiness for a moment and makes you laugh. (I mean the cover is purple and sparkly I think that's pretty self-explanatory for the tone of the book.) 

Find it: Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble

I hope SALT is as fun for you as it was/is for me! 

And now, back to my sequel. And the cookies. 

 

We are Limitless

December is the season where we tell our babies and toddlers and youngsters that magic exists, it's real and you can have it if you believe in it enough. When do we all stop believing in that magic? I hope the answer is never. 

Imagination is our greatest tool and it has carried humanity to impossible shores and beyond. And I think that we need to use it more, or we'll all grow zombie-like.

Here's what one of my favorite author's has to say about the topic of imagination:

“I think most people’s imaginations don’t have limits. Imaginations get limits forced on them. You know, it’s really interesting, with kids. Kids just imagine stuff. They make stuff up. They think up stuff. They daydream. As we get older, we stop daydreaming. As we get older, we stop letting our mind wander, and it’s when your mind goes wandering that it comes home with really interesting things that it found on the way. I think what’s most important is just remembering the value of imagining. The knowledge that, if you look around, everything you see was imagined at some time, by somebody.”

— Neil Gaiman, in an interview with Cosmopolitan Philippines

See the original location of this quote 

I watch the little ones I teach everyday and there's a wonderment that I try to tap into with my own artistic endeavors. We are never too old to daydream. We are never too old to dream. We are never too old for imagination. We are limitless.

What have you been imagining lately?

 

I'm Such a NaNo Liar

In my Tangled post last month I admitted that I was planning to give in to my desire to participate in NaNo. And I really did have all intentions of doing so. My plan was to modify the demands a bit and spend the first two weeks of November revising my last manuscript so that I could turn it into my agent by the 15th. Then, I was going to spend the second two weeks writing my newest manuscript idea. I had hoped to hit 25K in the new one by the 30th.

Yeah...that totally did not happen. Not even close. It's now December 2nd and I am still not done with revisions on that first project. I won't lie. I'm a bit disappointed I haven't yet gotten to my new idea, but I'm honestly not that disappointed.

The reason why? I'm finally back to enjoying this book. Somewhere in the middle of all the revising, I fell in love with my characters and their story all over again. I am connected to them again and that feels soooooo good. Like, omgpleaseforgivemeforeverwantingtoabandonyou good. I'm happy I stuck with them and will be proud of what I turn into my agent in just a few days.

So while I didn't achieve my original NaNo goal, I'm still grateful for NaNo because it got me recommitted. It helped me focus and, really, what's better than falling back in love with a story that you haven't felt connected to in months?