Rain and Words

You know what I need? I need for people to stop making cool things. Really. I need writers to stop writing awesome books that I gobble up as if there's no tomorrow. I need WWE to not be kind of cool now and make a completely addicting app that lets me watch all the old Wrestlemania shows (which, I'll freely admit, I'm watching one right now). I need Pinterest and Tumblr to stop updating their databases daily.

Are you waiting for me to say that all these things are the reason why I haven't written a word this week?

Then keep holding your breath.

I've written a couple thousand words this week. More than a couple, actually. I've been rolling along nicely this week, keeping up a schedule and even writing when it's not my allotted time. I'm skipping around quite a lot, but it's working for me. Depending on how this weekend goes, I'm planning on getting down a few thousand more words, but weekends are so crazy. It's been raining (not southern California raining, but really raining) today, and that might mess up our plans for tomorrow, so that might not be a bad thing. Besides, I love writing when it's raining. It makes me feel like a real writer, as I stare pensively outside and ponder my next word. Really, I'm just staring outside and wondering if it could rain for the rest of my life.

So, if it's raining so copiously, then why am I not writing right now?

First off, sassy-pants, it's not really raining that hard right now. Also, I have to write this thing because I made a promise! Further, I have to make a packet for my students, so I don't have that much time to sit down and write. I'm actually still working on the packet, and I have a little more than 2 hours before I have to get ready to go to work, so maybe I could get a little writing done. Depends on if I get this stupid packet done and don't throw my computer out the window because this is so not my division.

Besides all that, I'm planning on another special sale for AYLB in the coming weeks. I had it down for earlier this month, but then the whole cat catastrophe happened, so I had to shelf it. I'm aiming for the end of March, but, as we all know, that could change. But it will be next month, that much I promise. But for now, I have to finish this stupid packet that isn't in my job description and that I'm not going to get any thanks for. Isn't this the life?

One Step Closer to April

Even though this weekend didn't pan out as I thought it would, I'm still starting this week off well! Instead of writing any time the last two days, my boyfriend and I decided that a trip to IKEA would be a much better idea. But, luckily, I put together everything last night and broke down an old dresser that had been acting like a living room table-thing for the last few months, so I'm free as a bird. So, while trying to sign up for some ridiculous app, I've been writing and waiting. Looking over how much I've written in the last two months isn't especially impressive, but I realize that I've gotten more down than I thought. Which, I suppose, is a win in itself.

But now that we're a week closer to March, the stress should be settling in, right? Oddly enough, it's not. Right now, I'm looking at an unfinished scene I've been trying to write for awhile, and I'm not even worried about it. I just thought to myself, Well, move on and it'll get done when it gets done. Honestly, that made me stop in shock. That's not me. I'm stressing out right now looking at my file box and the pile of papers on top of it. I don't like leaving things undone. I think about it all day and night until I finish it. But I just moved on right now, opened a new scene and started going to town on it. I don't think I'm a pod person, but who really knows, right?

There might be one more problem with this story. I said that in April, I was going to pull double duty for Camp Nano. I'll be writing a screenplay with my boyfriend and then I wanted to get this one story started. I figured I wouldn't get close to 50,000 words on it, but just to get it going would be wonderful. I've had it all mapped out for quite some time, so that's why I figured it would be easy-peasy. And then my little brain woke up one day with a wonderful idea. A wonderful, awful idea. I had an idea for a story, and I latched onto it like it was chocolate. I love it, and the more I think about it, the deeper I fall into it. Yes, I could save it for July (which is, really, what I should do), but I'm excited about it. This is what happens. It drives me insane. 

No matter what, though, Amory's story is first. I'm really not that far from finished, but that's all in my head. It's about getting it down on paper. And isn't that the pain in the butt part?

Still, I bet that Friday will come and I'll say, Man, why was I complaining? I just wrote eighteen billion words this week. Keep your fingers crossed.

Time Is Not On My Side

Ummmmm I refuse to believe that this is the last weekend in February. I refuse to believe that there's not a thousand and one days in February. I refuse to believe that I've spent the last week diligently following my cat around to make sure that she eats, drinks, sleeps, naps, doesn't hit her cone on things, etc., etc.

Basically...

Oh my god, I knooooooooow. I've been hating myself all this week, cursing my cat for being so freaking cute and cuddly and for constantly trying to find a way to lick her stitches.

But I have had one profound thought this week, and it's making me feel guiltier and guiltier by the second. I thought to myself, You know, I'll get back to writing once all this stress is done and packed away. That's all fine and dandy, but there's always going to be stress in my life. I just got to suck it up and push through, or else this story is never getting out of my head.

What all this means is that in March, I'm going to be on Nano schedule. I'm going to write like a fiend and hope - pray, really - that I get this thing finished before April. I already know that the editing process is going to be hell, because I've gone back over some of the old scenes, just to refresh my memory, and it's taken all I have not to erase everything and start over. Too much talking, not enough description, wrong names, dates, countries...I feel like I wrote these scenes with five years between each of them. And I know that once I get it all bound in one place, it's not going to be so bad. But, for now, I almost want to lie and say that my little cousin wrote it, but that would be an insult to her.

So, keep your fingers crossed that I successfully convince my boyfriend to play video games this whole weekend (I'm sure he won't argue too much) so I can write a little bit. Then, next week, I'll set aside all my books, my marathon-like watching of television shows, and laziness, and get to work.

I just hurt my heart saying I'd set aside my books.

Out With the Stress, In With the Stress

Yesterday, my boyfriend used a word that I never thought would come out of his mouth: worrywart. As in, Bree, leave the cat alone, you're being a worrywart. 

But it's true. Just one of the many lovely traits passed to me from my mother.

I am a worrywart. I have terrible visions in my head of every possible thing that could go wrong in any situation. Boyfriend not picking up his phone? Oh, god, what if he slipped in the shower and hit his head? My cat isn't meowing as loud as she possibly can at four in the morning? She must be somewhere in my little studio apartment, dead.

I'm really a thrill to be around, I swear.

Still, I never thought it was possible to actually feel my worries lift on my shoulders, but that's exactly what happened this morning. I woke up at some ungodly hour to give my cat her medicine, and she was already up, moving around, meowing, trying to rub her head against things (the e-collar makes that difficult). Just seeing her act like the idiot that she is made me feel about a thousand tons lighter. She's okay. She'll be okay. Yes, I'm most likely going to go broke getting her medicine and food for the rest of her life, but that's a small price to pay to have her wake me up in the middle of the night because she wants me to put her on the bed. I mean, look at this thing:

For reals. Even with that stupid cone, medicine she refuses to take stuck in her chin fur, and half her fat belly shaved off, she's still the cutest thing I've ever seen in my life.

What does any of this have to do with writing, you ask? Calm your butt, I'm getting to that. Now that I know she's okay and the biggest stress is gone, my mind is ready to get going on things, ready to write, ready to explode with ideas. Seriously. I had a dream about my characters last night and they were pretty ticked off at me. That's when I know I have to get back to writing.

The good thing is, it's only February 17th, which means I have about six weeks to finish my initial manuscript. The bad thing is, it's February 17th, which means I have only six weeks to finish my initial manuscript. But the other good thing is, I work well under pressure.

The bad thing? I'm not good with stress.

Also, I seem to be into sabotaging myself, which would be lovely, if I didn't insist on doing it all the freaking time. Going on Tumblr and Pinterest only takes me away from writing for a few minutes, half hour at the most, but when I find things on there that really interest  me (i.e., John and Hank Green's Crash Course, thank you very much), I'm gone. I downloaded The Odyssey on my Kindle, preparing myself to read it before the first Crash Course begins in two weeks. Forget that I've already read that thing a thousand times. Forget that I have a deadline. Forget that I have other things to do. It's Homer! It's excitement! Cannibals! Angry Greek gods! What more could a girl ask for?

Sigh. Where's one of James Patterson helper writers when you need them?

Truth With Some Cheese

I'm about to be super honest.

For the last few weeks, I've been in somewhat of a downward spiral. You know those? You start off hating one thing, and then it moves onto something else, and then another hateful thing adds onto that, and then, bam! Downward spiral.

I'm not depressed. Trust me, I've seen depression, and that is not what my downward spiral is about. No, it's more about hating everything and everyone around me until I feel like I could explode from so much hate. Then, a few days ago, I was watching the Olympics and messing around on Tumblr (because of course), and I noticed some kids saying that they were watching Julia Lipnitskaia, which made them wonder what they were doing with their lives. It made me laugh, and then I realized...oh my god, what am I doing with my life??

When I went to college, I applied for the English program because I was terrible at math and science, but I loved reading and writing more than anything. Honestly, I never once thought about what I would do after college, when I received a BA in English literature. Teaching came on the heels of graduation, and everyone in my life was a bit surprised, because I had never really been the best with kids. Really, I had never pictured myself as a teacher, but the further I got into my program, the more I thought that being a teacher wouldn't be so bad.

How was I supposed to know about the economy and teachers being paid barely above a child actor on the Disney Channel?

It's been a sad road, to say the least. When I started seriously writing All You Left Behind, I was halfway through my teaching program and about to rip my hair out of my head. Writing has been a way to release my anger and frustration, a way to get the stress out of my life.

Oh, geez, rereading this makes things sound so bleak. Is this me quitting?

Gosh, no! This all came about because I saw a blurb about someone I went to high school with. This person apparently is a vice president at some company. I didn't even look it up, because the first thing I thought of was, Holy canoli, this person could barely read and understanding Frankenstein in school, and now this person is effectively running a company?

No, my second thought wasn't about quitting. It was about getting better, about getting my life where I want it to be. I have no illusions that I'm going to suddenly become a New York Times Bestselling author (I leave those for my dreams), but that doesn't mean I should give up, right? Of course.

This may just be one long pep talk for me to get going on the sequel and to prepare more advertising for the first book and...well, to do a lot of things. I don't want to say prepare for an onslaught of new things, but I'm going to push my comfort zone a bit, see what I can do with myself, because it's not about being the best in the world (I'll leave that to Bryan Danielson), but about being the best I can be.

Yes, this is cheesy, and yes, this is most likely brought about by my cat going into surgery tomorrow (nothing life-threatening, but she's my kitten, and I'm freaking out inside). Oh wells. I'm very rarely cheesy on this thing, so I'm okay with it once in awhile.

Oh, yeah, and Happy Valentine's Day! Hope this isn't an indication for what the rest of your weekend shapes up to be.

After All, Tomorrow is Another Day

I love Gone With The Wind.

I love the book, I love the movie, and Scarlett O'Hara has always been a personal hero of mine.

But never once did I utter that line of hers. Sure, I tear up whenever she sits there on those stairs, tears streaming down her face, realizing that her life has not gone quite according to plan. But she picks herself up, moves on, gets on with her life.

It always seemed cheesy when I said it in my head. However, last night, I said it out loud in the car as I was driving home from a great weekend with my boyfriend, and it made sense. I'm dealing with some pretty stressful things right now, and I've been needing something to pick me up, especially when I'm home alone with my thoughts.

I just thought that I should explain the title, that's all. Just in case any of you were wondering what I was blabbing about.

But let's get to the important stuff, shall we? I went on a little writing marathon this weekend, especially Saturday, because I had the place to myself for a few hours. Sure, the internet may have sidetracked me (but not as much as my gorgeous new pencils...I'm a nerd), but I still got about 5,000 words down. I also learned something valuable this weekend: turning the inner editor off. That's been Nano's number one rule when writing in November, but I never quite understood this concept. I went back over everything I wrote for the day and edited the crap out of it all. But this weekend, I didn't do that. I just wrote. I honestly can't remember half of the stuff I got down, but that doesn't matter at the moment. What matters is that I'm getting things on paper, that I'm forming a story, that I'm learning little things about my characters as I move along. One surprising twist came at me late Saturday night (it may have been Sunday morning, I'm not entirely sure), and instead of reading back to see if it makes sense, I kept it, because I'm definitely in love with this part of my story. It's something that's been in the back of my head since I developed this book, so it's not like it was a complete shock. But when I wrote it down, I didn't worry about making everything before it match. I'll do that later. Right now, all I want is to shape these lump of words into a book.

So, thanks Nanowrimo. It's only taken my about five years to realize what the heck you were talking about. I'm a slow learner.

I'm soldiering on, though. This week is going to be a mess, but I have a four day weekend coming up, so maybe I'll be able to get some more marathons going on. Of course, there's the NBA All-Star weekend that I love, and my cat is getting surgery on Friday, so what I write may make a little less sense than ever before. But the inner editor is off. And will remain that way until I say so.

Oh, PS...I changed the website a little. I just needed some bright, soothing colors to make me happy. I succeeded.

Appreciation in the Smallest Places

I really thought I was going to have to skip today. First off, I had to go to my boyfriend's condo to wait for Sears to drop off his brand spanking new treadmill, but thanks to a mix-up in addresses (really, you took the new address in the store, how did you not transfer that to the delivery guys?), I'm home earlier than expected. Second, I didn't think I'd have anything to talk about today. Of course, I never really have anything to talk about any day, and you people who come here to read these rambling posts already know that.

But, ha on you! Because I've been writing this whole week and am happy to report that I've had a thousand and one ideas...for THIS STORY! Isn't that amazing? I know I had to catch my breath a few times when a vision would fly into my head and I realized it was Amory's face I was seeing, not a vampire, not a girl from the 1940s, no one but Amory. True, I can already tell that there's going to be a hellish editing process, but at least I'm laying down the bare bones of this story, which is all I can really ask of myself right now. Besides, the prospect of adding more and more is really quite exciting.

I don't know. Maybe I'm a pod person and I just don't realize it yet.

And I've still got more planned! I'm actually taking my laptop to my boyfriend's this weekend and am planning on putting a few hours of work into it. To be perfectly honest, I got really lazy last month. The hassle of trying to decide to move or not, and then the whole cat deal happened, and work really sucks sometimes, and all that added up to me not wanting to do a gosh darn thing on the weekends. Sometimes I wish I could blame it on the winter months, that whole depression thing that happens because it's dark and cold and dreary, but I live in southern California. Right now it's 62 degrees and cloudy, but it's still brighter than anywhere I know.

My poor laptop. I would stare at it in disdain as I thought whether or not I wanted to take it with my on weekends. It got so much hate from me, that I'm honestly surprised it didn't shut down or just walk away from me. I would have. After all the abuse I put it through.

But now that I'm getting things going again, I think it's time to spruce up the old blog. It's also an excuse to put up something to kick my butt into gear. I'm thinking a countdown clock. That'll scare me enough to get me writing and on schedule. I would put up on of those awesome word count bars, but I have no idea what I'm working toward. More than 5,000 words, really. Which, if that's the case, I'm done!

Does that mean I can stop now?

Jokes. At least until my next bout of writer's block happens and then I throw my laptop out of the window.

A New Kind of Sickness

First off, I'm going to defend myself and say that I've had plenty of ideas this week, but none of them have been written down. Of course, that might be because I don't have a notebook in my bag and my computer was at home while I was at my boyfriend's place. But that wasn't the main reason why I haven't written a word this last week. It's amazing how much stress impacts creativity.

I have a cat. I'm sure I've mentioned her in passing before. I've had her for almost eleven years now, since my old college roommate brought home a litter of strays that she had found and I fell in love with this tiny ball of fur. As much as I complain about her loudness or ability to destroy all of my stuff, she is the absolute love of my life. So imagine my distress when I took her to the vet last week and they told me she has bladder stones. Of course, the first thing that the doctor told me was that she's not going to die (yeah, because that won't bring on the tears; good try, doc!), but that she needs a very expensive surgery. So that's what's been on my mind this whole week. I wish cats spoke English.

But now that I'm a little closer to solving this problem, I'm getting back to my regularly scheduled programming. Life must go on, right? Well, that means getting a book together in the next two months, because now I have an idea for a story I want to write for the April NaNo. It's not really a new story, but something I've been kicking around for a couple of years now. I started writing it last year, but it wasn't going how I imagined, so I stopped. But now I've been thinking about it a lot, and I think I have a pretty good back story, which was what was really killing me. Also, it's a vampire story, and it took awhile before I could get sparkling bodies and bad Southern accents out of my head.

This means that I really have to crack down and get to writing the second installment for Amory. I realize that I keep calling it that, but that's only because I have no name for it. Oh well. That's not really important, I hear. But I will completely immerse myself in this story for the next two months, and nothing will stop me. Well, of course, there are the thousand and one books that are coming out that I had on hold at the library.

Man, I wish I was an established author. Time management is so much easier without a job smack in the middle of the day.

As always, I'll keep this thing updated (sorry about last week, but, you know, I explained that earlier). Hopefully I'll have more to talk about on Friday. Like that I went nuts and finished the entire book this week. Ahhh, wishful thinking. It keeps me going some days.