A Life Post-Finishing

And pre-editing, I should add! Because the levels of laziness I have reached demand that little addition.

I realize that today is March 31st, the last day of March, which means that tomorrow is April 1st, the first day of April (I did really well in school). That means that Camp Nano begins tomorrow. Am I helping to write a script? Who knows. Am I writing my own story? Well...yes? I haven't really done anything with it since I created the novel on the Camp Nano website, and I haven't really thought about it since a thousand years ago. But the little moments that I do find myself wondering about it, I'm still pretty excited. I'm not really sure where it's going and what the whole point of the story would be, but that's what the camp is for. I'm not shooting for a full 50,000 or whatever words. I'm going for 20,000, which sounds like nothing, but can help me get started and not stress. Now I can write it out, see if it's going to go anywhere, as well as continue plotting it out. Easy-peasy April!

So if I haven't been thinking about that story, what exactly have I been doing since finishing my manuscript? A whole lot of nothing! And it's been wonderful. I'm almost finished with my puzzle, and not a moment too soon. Word of warning: never ever buy a puzzle with the thought, Goodness, I bet I could finish this before next weekend. You set yourself up for failure. It's been nearly a month and I'm sick to death of staring at the tiny pieces of candy that I've had to build. I have two more puzzles sitting next to me, but they're easier, yet they're still puzzles.

What else? Oh, yeah, that little thing, reading! I went a bit nuts on the Net Galley website and signed up for everything they sent me an approval for. Due to that, I have had five books sitting on my Kindle for the last month, patiently waiting for me to stop whatever I was doing and get to them. I went on a bender at the library these last two months, so I had to get through all the books I had on hold, and then I just started the Net Galley ARCs this weekend. I made it through one (if you want my reviews on any of these books, just go to my Goodreads page!) and began two others last night. I'm going to make it through these books if it kills me, which it just might because they're uncorrected proofs and some of the errors are making my mind reel.

Besides all that, I'm taking my time off very seriously. I'm still working (obviously; I'm not a Kennedy), but I'm managing to find time for all the things that I set to the side the last few months. I actually have a tiny backlog of games and feel guilty about it each time I turn on my computer. All of this is another reason why I only want to get 20,000 words down. I want time to do this other stuff because I've missed it. I'm about to reveal what a huge nerd I am, but I found myself missing The Sims 3 the other day, and all I want to do is build a stupid big house for one Sim. But I haven't done that because my story guilt-tripped me into writing it. But now I have the time to be a geek!

And that time is now. (If anyone read that in a John Cena voice, you are awesome.) (And if anyone read that in a Miz voice, you're doubly awesome.)

Sex and Finishing

...Wow, that really sets me up, doesn't it?

Well, let's get the obvious out of the way: I'm done with the first draft of my manuscript. I finished on Tuesday and I thought about beginning the editing process yesterday, and then I laughed. And laughed. And laughed some more. Because if there's anything that I enjoy less than my cat waking me up four in the morning because she wants wet food, it's editing. So I'm going back to the original plan of waiting a month or so and then beginning. I may start a bit in April, but right now, I don't even want to look at it. I'm going to pretend I've sent it off to my editor (his name is Carmichael, because he was the same guy who sold me horses when I was nine...and yes, I had a list of all 400+ horses that I bought from him) and wait until they send it back to me. Really, I mean, I'm going to send it to Staples to get bound and then I can get going with it. The one bad thing about that is that Staples is far too efficient and they bind supernaturally fast.

I wonder if I can pay Staples to take an extraordinarily long time to bind. Hmm.

So now that that's finished (I can't refer to it by a name because there is no title right now), I'll move onto the second (first?) part of this blog title. I just finished a book (the second in the series) and I don't even know how my eyes didn't fall out from rolling them so much. Look. I understand that some YA books feel the need to have sex scenes. I have no problem with those scenes. What I do have a problem with is when the girl just goes limp and does absolutely nothing while the guy ravages her. In this book (which will forever remain nameless), the girl, the main character, constantly "gasps" and "sighs" and "melts". Really. How many times can you gasp in a scene without finally becoming so light-headed that you just pass out? It makes me think of the noises I make when I have the hiccups and I'm trying to hold my breath to get rid of them.

Listen, sex scenes in young adult books are fine, as long as they make sense and I don't feel uncomfortable reading them. Why would I feel uncomfortable reading a sex scene, one may ask? Not because of the sex. But because sometimes (like in this particular book), it feels like the guy is totally taking advantage of the girl. This guy seems to be bullying the girl into making out with him and I just sat there, thinking, My goodness, I should probably call the fiction police on this guy.

It all made me think about my book and how I don't really have any sex scenes in there. It didn't make me want to run and change a bunch of stuff, because I didn't feel the need to have one in there (besides, you know what other books didn't have a sex scene? The Hunger Games and Harry Potter, thank you). I mean, sure, there's romance in my book, and Amory and Fintan are very close, but I didn't want Amory to "sigh" and "melt into his arms". I didn't want Fintan to take charge and throw her around, landing just short of clubbing her over the head.

Not all YA books are like this, I know. But it just seems that the ones I've read recently have some sort of scene where I want to shut the book and throw it out the window. Lucky for that book, it's most likely from the library, so I can't do that unless I want to incur some heavy fees. But really. Did Twilight teach us nothing about flimsy girl characters? Not all girls want to curl into a fetal position for months because the guy they like is a vampire/monster/dictator type. Not every girl wants a guy that they supposedly hate to walk in on her while she is in nothing but a "flimsy camisole" (because that is what every girl in YA books seems to own, I swear) and pajama shorts.

This rant went a little out of control. Sorry. But I've read both books in this series (well, there's a third and it's waiting for me at the library and I'm dreading it. But I have to finish series, because I'm a loser), and both books have driven me nuts. So I felt the need to get this off my chest and screaming at my boyfriend about weird YA sex scenes didn't sound appealing when I thought of it.

Sorry. Go back to your regularly scheduled lives. I'll just be here, staring at the wall and wondering just how long I can put off going to Staples.

A Weekend of Progress!

I tried to write this weekend, I really did, but things were crazy and we were busy and the cat demanded my attention and then an alien ship came down from nowhere and little green men tried to take over the world and it was just a mess.

That's what I would have said if I hadn't written anything this weekend. But I managed to get a chapter done (leaving me with two!) and added a few things to other chapters. Yes, I know I said I wouldn't worry about those little things that I wanted to add on, but there were some things that I knew I had to get done before they disappeared from my mind. But I made sure to finish that one chapter (and a half, really) before I went back and added anything. This is going to be an interesting read-through. I have no idea what makes sense and what doesn't, so this is a true first draft. Oy. This may just take until November again.

Did you know that there's only seven days, 14 hours, 14 minutes, and about 28 seconds left in March? Yes, I'm staring at my little handy-dandy clock in the corner of my computer. But there's a point to sharing that information with everyone. Once those seven days are up, that means it's going to be April. That means it's going to be time for Camp Nanowrimo. I'm hoping that I'll be working on one certain project with a certain someone (hint hint, certain reader!), but I also signed up for my other story that I thought I'd wait for the summer to write. Not like I want to write the whole thing this month, though. It'll be nice to get started, to see if there's something there. 20,000 words seems like a good enough start to see if it's something I want to continue with, and then I can either take a little break or continue working on it through the editing process. We'll see how April goes, I guess.

Well, since it's almost ten, I suppose I should try and do something productive with my day. Okay, so I've done my laundry and made some Cream of Wheat (and watched Once Upon a Time and The Vampire Diaries, but, really, that's just bragging), but I mean truly productive. I should start writing, because I have seven days to finish two chapters. If I start getting arrogant about it, I'm not going to get around to them until next week and then it'll be a stressful mess. But, you know, there's also a puzzle to be done and a bed to be made and Korean dramas to watch.

Sigh. Why aren't there more hours in the day for me to be completely lazy?

The Secret of the Old Clock

(Yes, I loved Nancy Drew when I was a child.)

With only ten days left of my goal, this should be the time that I'm telling you I've had so many things to do that I couldn't possibly even think about writing, correct?

Wrong!

But that's mainly because I found a handy little tool that kicked my butt into gear this whole week.

Do you see that thing? Because I do. Every moment. Every day. It doesn't leave my desktop. I can see it right now as I type this, counting down the seconds until the end of March. I found it a couple of days ago and decided that maybe I would give it a try. I didn't think it would do anything (really, I thought I'd get rid of it within seconds or forget about it), but that hasn't been the case. Each time I look at it, I feel its disapproval. I feel it staring at me as I work on my puzzle and saying, Excuse me. You put me here for a reason and it sure as heck wasn't to finish that stupid puzzle. I don't want to make the countdown clock angry, so I've been writing. Like a freaking madwoman.

I have about three chapters left. Looking back over what I've written so far, I know there's more to add, but I don't even want to think about that right now. All I want to do is get these three chapters down and then blissfully check out from this story for a month before editing. But three more chapters! Since I'm going to have a little time this weekend to myself, I could most likely finish tomorrow, or at least write most of it. I might make that little clock happy!

The truly amazing part of all this writing is that I've thrown myself back into this story and completely forgotten about the other story I was so excited about. Really. I just remembered right now because I found a bunch of notes from a few weeks ago stashed under my printer (I have a very complex system of organization). I still want to write it, and I'm still planning it out, but I really haven't thought of anything except Amory this whole week. The moral of the story here, kids, is that having a little ticking clock in the corner of your computer can do wonders for your writing (if this were a Disney movie, the clock would be cheering me on at this point).

But all work and no play makes Bree a something something. So now it's time for a little break while I go "clean" (i.e., watch Korean dramas and pretend like I'm not wanting to eat chocolate pudding at 9:30 in the morning). Hopefully by the time I write at the end of the weekend, I'll be done with this book and can move onto some other exciting project. I might get crazy and organize my closet.

Nope. Too crazy.

Earthquakes: A California Alarm

Living in California my entire life, I've become accustomed to waking up to shaking. This morning was no different. But while everyone else in Los Angeles and Orange County jumped on Twitter/Facebook/whatever other social media kids use nowadays to freak out about it, let me tell you the perfect way to deal with an earthquake:

1. Wake up to that annoying noise walls make when the shaking starts;

2. Make sure nothing falls over;

3. Check time;

4. Realize that I can still sleep for two more hours (!);

5. Promptly fall asleep.

See? Nothing to it. When I was six (and a half, thank you), I lived up near San Francisco, and I had the lovely experience of going through the Loma Prieta earthquake. While my main concern was my dolls (I had Barbies lining the top shelves of my bookcases), we had a visitor from Boston who honestly thought she was going to die. While now I understand her fear, back then, I rolled my eyes at her and sighed while I led her to a doorway. I also thought that Fraggle Rock characters caused earthquakes, so I was a dumb little jerk back then.

Anyway, to writing!

I managed a couple thousand more words this weekend, and that makes me...happy. Mainly because, last week, I looked at the chapters I had left and thought to myself, Well, there's not many of those, are there? But now I'm looking at the same amount (well, minus one) and thinking, Good god, I have that many left? So now I'm at that part of the writing process, where I'm so over everything because I'm so close to being done. It's the most frustrating part of writing, because I'm so close to being done, but there's about a bajillion more things that I have to include. That usually means that there's going to be more chapters added, more groans uttered, more eyes rolled (I know, how many eyes can I possibly roll? Well, two, I suppose). 

The only worrisome thing is that March ends in two weeks. I promised myself that I would be done by the end of March. That means I'm going to have to really buckle down and get this thing done. As I'm typing this, I'm waiting for my laundry to dry and watching Once Upon A Time, so I'm doing a great job so far at "getting this thing done". But, really, I need clothes to wear, don't I? And I need to understand why, when the character go back to Storybrooke, they're all idiots (I mean, really. We're going to spread false rumors and smoke out the evil person here. I wonder who it could be? Not the strange new lady who strides angrily out of the restaurant when we announced that we were close to solving the mystery of who is cursing us. Really, storybook characters?). 

But calm down. I'll get it done. I work best under stress. Not really. I stress under stress. More so than usual. Still, I'll get these chapters written, get this story sent off to Staples for binding. Did I mention before how much I love Staples? Wait...Yes, I did. Staples is awesome. Now I feel that I should say that I'm not a spokeperson for that store. Although, if I was, that would be amazing, because do you know how many office supplies I would get for free or a discounted price? What a wonderful job.

I guess now I'll go start writing. And plotting how I can attain my dream job as being Staples' spokesperson. Next time you see me, I'll be covered in pencils and Post-It notes, suckers!

The Pieces Are Coming Together (Wait For It...)

I guess I should start this off with saying that I think I might have a few new readers, and even though they might be my family, I figured, why not? So....

I know what you're saying. Bree, we don't care about your family. We only care about what you've written! Well, number one: rude! And number two, I've gotten along quite nicely, thank you! Sure, I thought about quitting this story until the summer and starting another one. Sure, my writing tempo from last year tells me that I should have about 13,000 words more than what I have. But, really, I've done exceptionally well under the circumstances. Okay, okay, I had a concert last night and then spent the other days cleaning up the allergic mess that is my apartment. But really. Those were dire circumstances.

Please. I more than made up for it tonight.

Usually after work, I'll come home and read or watching TV or work on this damn puzzle that has no end in sight. Seriously. I'm not kidding.

Look at that mess. And for someone who does not do well with neither messes nor unfinished business, it's been driving me insane (and, why, yes, that is a Gone With the Wind poster behind the puzzles pieces. Why, yes, I've lived in my apartment for about four months, why do you ask?). 

But back to the point! I wrote about 2,500 words tonight, which is way more than I was expecting. I wanted to finish a certain scene, but then I got on a roll and went in for another half. Yes, I break my scenes up and sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but my fingers begin to hurt all the time (I blame it on working at See's Candies for three years and packing all those little chocolates into their little cups). But since I'm writing this in the past (Thursday night), I'll have all of Friday morning to do some more writing. As long as I finish The Stand before tomorrow morning. Because I've been reading that damn book since October and my soul begins to die a little if I don't finish a book within a week. But I have a little more than a hundred pages left, and I can do this!

But, for now, I'm going to waste some time on that puzzle because I can see the stupid picture out of the corner of my eye and it's driving me crazy.

Time Changes Are Stupid

Daylight Savings Time is the worst. Not the one where we get an extra hour of sleep - that one is fabulous. But this one...I hate springing forward. I hate the fact that it should be 8:30 right now and I should be getting a ton of stuff done. I hate that I'm just an hour closer to going to work. I also hate adjusting to going to sleep. I was up until almost 1:30 last night, tossing and turning, wondering when the heck I was finally going to fall asleep. Of course, that could also have been a result of the humongous nap I took on Sunday afternoon. I told you, I'm not good with Daylight Savings.

I wish I could say that I spent this entire weekend writing, but that's not true. I did spend the entire weekend reading, and so I'm blaming Ransom Riggs for my lack of dedication to my story. Also, I'm going to blame this other story that is slowly worming its way into everything I do. I've been planning it out a bit more and developing the characters, and it's nowhere near close to ready, but it's more than I should be doing right now. I don't want to think about it too much because then I begin sabotaging my story, and that's where I am this morning. I keep thinking about it and how it sounds like Champion, but not really. It's...I don't know what genre I would put it under. I hate saying dystopia, because that's all there is out there for young adults right now (I swear), but that's all I can think of right now. There's a government that has gone out of control, thrown out "undesirables" and closed the borders. Instead of a girl and a boy who are trying to bring down the government, it's only a boy, because the girl has lost her memory. That's all I can really say about it, because the rest would give everything away. Reading that over, it doesn't sound very interesting. But it does in my head. Once it begins to take any shape other than a squiggly mess, I'll change that description and let you all know that I'm not a complete idiot.

The good news is that, from the original outline, I've only got about eight more chapters left for Amory. I still don't hate a title, but that can be worked out quickly, I'm sure. Of course, writing those eight chapters is the easy part. I'm thinking ahead now, and I've already got my David Tennant face on for editing. You know the one.

Yeah. If I could make that face, that's the face I would be making while thinking about editing. The only fun part of the editing process is getting my manuscript all bound and pretty at Staples. But then I stare at it for a few days and wonder how something so beautiful could make my life a living Hell. Maybe that's why I'm sabotaging my writing time. I refuse to finish because I don't want to edit. Maybe I'll just stare at David Tennant for the entire month and forget about writing. That doesn't sound too bad actually.

Okay, I've taken a long enough break from cleaning. I have to get back to it if I don't want my boyfriend breaking out into a red blob when he comes over later this week. It's the cat's fault. She should really get off her lazy butt and help me clean. Oh, geez, I just had an image of that and it's terrifying.

Chugging Along!

Holy canoli, am I moving along! With all the little stupid things that I've done this week, you would think that I got nothing done. I really had to check my progress to make sure that I did something more than the five hundred words I thought I did. Nope, there's a couple thousand words in the bank now. Not that I'm anywhere close to finished. This one seems like it's going to be a lot shorter than AYLB, and the first draft very well might be. Probably because I started and stopped on this one so many times, and, in the beginning, wrote in little spurts and spasms. I'm better when I sit down and tell myself that I'm going to write for so much time. Then it's kind of like a race, where I'm trying to get down as many words as I can before time is up. Yesterday, I wrote around 2,000 words. But tonight, because I'm trying to finish Cress and watching my boyfriend play the South Park game, I only got about 800 words down. Also, sometimes my brain moves on to another scene before I'm ready, so I have rush through whatever I'm working on to get there. But I've done well this week. Not what I want to be doing, but it's a start. At the beginning of March. When I want to be done at the end of this month.

Sigh.

Of course, I'm sure that sitting on the couch isn't helping the writing process. I don't know what it is, but whenever I get on my couch, I want to stretch out or watching TV or do anything that has nothing to do with my book. Why don't I just move to my desk? It's a real hassle plugging the laptop in and then getting comfortable in the chair and...I'm lazy, okay? I love my couch. I don't sit on it often enough. And then when I'm covered in my TARDIS blanket and staring at my cat trying to become one with the couch. But now that I've extracted a promise from my boyfriend that he will try to finish the South Park game this weekend (and possibly even another one!), I'll have plenty of time to sit on another comfy couch and write.

Hopefully by Monday I'll have more exciting news than just a few thousand words. This feels like slow going, but it's possibly because I've never written a sequel before. Even in all my little stories that I wrote as a kid, I never wrote about the same characters twice. It was always, Well, those creatures are done with, moving on to the next! So it's difficult for me to sit here and not want to rewrite AYLB because this is not the same story. This is a new, different story, and these characters need to change. But I liked them the way they were! Sure, they went through some trying times, but they don't need to change, right?

Double sigh.

So we shall see where I am on Monday. If it's super exciting, then maybe I'll even reveal the rough (ROUGH, I'm telling you!) sketch of my next story. I know I should be planning on the third, and final, Amory story, but that can wait until the summer or start of fall. Not like it matters, really. This is southern California. We don't have weather here.

April Is Coming Up!

Last year, I started keeping one of those journal calendars on cut up notecards. That sounds ridiculous. Okay, I started one of these:

Not only is it super cute, but it's kind of fun when I turn to the next day and see what I did last year. What's even more fun is when I see the word count I was at last year at this time and realize that I'm about 5,000 words over that right now. It makes me feel better when I don't write for an entire weekend or when I work on another story inside my head (I'm not very monogamous when it comes to my writing). Sure, it may worry me when I look a few days ahead and see that last year I was at 33,000 words on the 8th, but I have confidence in myself.

The fun part of it being March, though, is that April is just around the corner, and that means Camp Nano. I thought that I was going to do double duty, but I may put that story off until the July session. I actually want to work on it through April, but only to map it out. This story seems like a lot of little details, and I want to get it just right. But I'm still going to help my boyfriend with his script idea, because it's beautiful. Not only do I get to help him, but I get to boss him around for the rest of this month. I very rarely boss anyone around, so it's rather fun to tell him to get working or to think about his characters or to get a plot straightened out. He's really stressed at his job (because his job is ridiculous), and I know he'll have a good time working on this story. He's so creative and smart and I'm gushing because I'm mad about him. So not only am I excited about working with him, but I'm also excited about getting that other story going. I'll write more about it when it actually takes a shape and makes a bit more sense in my head.

You know what feels a little weird? With all the blogs I've gone to today, I feel like I should talk about the Oscars. Everyone else has been. They're talking about the dresses, the guys, the songs, the awards. But I didn't watch the Oscars. They kind of creep me out. When I heard Jared Leto won an award, the only thing that I could think was, Oh, good, Angela Chase is going to be so proud of him. I don't care who won an award for being okay in some movie I didn't see. And there's some people in this world that take this show a little too seriously, and they have permanently turned me off from the Oscars. And the Golden Globes. And the Grammys. And every other award show there is.

I wish I could say that I'm about to go work on my story. But right now, all I want is Cream of Wheat, my puzzle, and The Office. Luckily, I have nothing to do tonight, so Amory is going to be my main focus for about four hours. Maybe two if the puzzle calls for me. Because, apparently, I'm ten years old.