The Inadvertent Vacation

121/205 I think.  It's been awhile.

You may notice that number hasn't changed much.  Allow me to explain.

Earlier this month I was moving along, as this blog indicates, editing my way through the 200 plus pages of my manuscript.  Normally I simply  go through, scene by scene, fixing each one in chronological order. While working on this current section, I began to realize that the sequence of scenes wasn't quite making sense.  The emotional development and thought lives of the characters did not seem to have a smooth flow.  It was like a carrot chopped and mixed up, so that it was no longer a smooth flow from skinny end to fat end, but instead a bumpy mess of different sizes.

So I thought about rearranging the scenes.  Maybe, with some rewriting to make the transitions make sense, many of the same scenes could be more effective if put in a different order.  Maybe this was the right thing to do.  I wasn't sure.  I didn't know what to do.

And then, life interrupted.  The "inadvertent" title of this blog may indicate to some that I valiantly tried to keep working when the life got busy, or that maybe all the busyness caught me by surprise and so my plans were foiled.  Neither, really.

My inlaws came to visit, their first time since the weekend we moved into this place (last minute "bucket list" of move-in tasks, anyone?).  Technically it was two visits with them staying overnight, as they came to see us before and after spending time in nearby Newport, RI.  I had an interview for a job, then got the second interview, where I was offered and accepted the position.  Between those two interviews, and during one of the inlaw visits, I volunteered with my new church, doing my first turn as a clown in months.  So yes, I was busy.

But here was a cool thing pertaining to my writing:  I was separated from my scene switch dilemma.  Even if I were to think about it, I wasn't going to try to effect any changes any time soon.  In a "normal" span of time, I may have put more pressure on myself to decide sooner.  After all, I want to keep moving, keep progressing that page count.  Got to have something to show the blog readers, right?  But I didn't work on the page count.  I think the dilemma came to mind at least once, but again, I had already come to terms with the fact that any editing was on hold anyway.

It would be nice to tell you that after all these things I came back with my problem easily solved and my workflow moving at a nice pace.  Not all true.  I still procrastinated.  I worried that I had lost readership from not updating the blog in so long.  But, saying prayers for help and guidance, I did get back to work.  I rearranged those scenes, and I  think the sequence will come out well.

So maybe those "writing vacations" aren't so bad after all.  Those times when life gets busy, we can put our work aside when it's driving us crazy anyway.  Get some distance from the rough stuff.  And feel better about ourselves when the vacation does not win out and become permanent, but ends as we pick up our work again and take another step forward.

Encouragement

As I've mentioned before, I'm a new homeowner.  A little while back, while going through yet another box, I came across something interesting.  Years ago, I used to print out exerpts of my manusript for my mother to read. I have two of them on my desk, which she returned with notes.  One of them, which she dated May 2007, has this note in the margins, written in green highlighter:
"Darlin This is Your Gift - I hope someday you will be able to slow down enough to finish it."

Encouragement is such an important thing.  For a something designed for an audience (in this case of readers), writing can be a very lonely pursuit.  And it's hard to put so much time an energy into something that you hope to make money doing but aren't sure if you will.  So when we get down on ourselves, when we start listing all the other things we could be doing that are supposedly "more productive," its good to have someone at our elbow, or a note on a page to say "This is your thing, keep going."  Hey, I mean really, even an occasional "I've read worse" might be all we need sometimes.

So if you're writing, keep writing.  If you know someone who is a writer and you truly think they're good at it, tell them.  Or, break out the green highlighter and get scribbling.  And Mom, I know you know this already, but I have been slowing down enough to work more.  Interestingly enough, at

120/206

I'm back in the territory of those same pages from May 2007 that you wrote that note on.

Something That's Been On My Mind

It's time to talk about the fear.

It's amazing, really.  I wouldn't have thought that I would actually end up with this clean sounding, ready for some movie speech type of complex.  But I think it's happened.  It's fear.  Fear of rejection of my work has kept me from working as hard as I could.  Because think about it - and here's the clean cut part - if I don't finish it, I can't send it off and get it rejected.  And lets face it, if you've spent any time taking in the stories of those who have broken in to the writing world, you hear about the rejections.  It gets to the point where it feels like you HAVE to be rejected to be normal.  And I realize the reality may be that the majority of writers go through at least some rejection before they get a yes, but does that mean we, the unsubmitted writers, should go into our first submission pretty much accepting failure?  Not exactly great motivation to keep you editing.

But, for better or worse, I must keep going.  I don't know what types of belief systems are represented by everyone who may read this, but I truly believe I have a calling to write this book.  Notice I said write, not get published.  I realize that rejection may just be a pathway to something else.  And if you take away the power the threat of rejection holds, shouldn't that mean the fear goes away?

117/204. Take that, fear of failure.

Can't I Just Pretend That Part Isn't There?

114/205  Look, the page count went up.

Here we are.  It happened.  I stayed away from blogging and editing for I think longer than I have since I began this site.  Sure, there are those instances where I would remember, oh, "I've still got to do that," but yet, it still didn't happen.  Life gets in the way, and in this case, life involved a particularly frustrating passage of my manuscript.

If you read it, you may think it was just another section.  But this section included condensed time and changing points of view.   The kind of thing that I would just look at and wonder how I was going to make it something that would be acceptable to the publishing company I'm dreaming of.  But folding the laundry or glancing warily at my iPad won't make that writing any better.  And, honestly, I don't think working on a piece of writing always makes it better, either.  But in this case, I think it might have.

That Laundry Looks Good....

112/204

Still working.

The progress is happening, paragraph by paragraph, page by page.  I will say having this blog is helping.  I'm aware of the fact that I should probably keep posting regularly to help keep any readership up, but I don't feel right doing so without being able to come to you with an updated page count.  Not always easy to do, though, as life gets in the way.  Which brings us to today's topic: procrastination.

It's amazing how easy it is.  How one can spend hours doing other tasks all in avoidance of something that may only take 10 or 20 minutes.  "Yeah, I need to work on the book....but that stuff really needs to get picked up over there.  And I need to vacuum over there...." and so on.  What is it about my manuscript that makes putting away laundry look so appealing?

There are probably many reasons.  One of which is facing the "bad" writing.  It's one thing to be in the  drafting/writing phase, where so much time is spent on creating new material.  It's a time where the writer can put his or her story out there like a painter laying out big, broad brush strokes.  And if its bad, so what?  I can fix it later.

Well, my friends, welcome to later.  It's drudgery sometimes.  Having to mentally roll up the your sleeves and face the fact that those sentences need to be reworked or just plain rewritten.  And, lets face it, it's hard to spend your time on this, hoping it will lead to work and not knowing if it will.  But I press on, and, God willing, I will finish.  And the laundry will just have to wait.

The Genre

Before I really begin, I've realized over the last several days that the way my Pages app on my iPad works (and lets face it, the way I use it) may not be producing completely accurate page counts for my progress ratio.  But if there's a page or so error anywhere, it still shows forward motion in a quantitative way, rather than a bunch of entries starting with "I'm still working on it."  Anyways, all that being said, and allowing any potential margin of error:

109/204

Let me tell you a bit about the genre I'm writing in, as well as some of how I got into writing for it.  The official title of this type of story is "inspiriational romance."  If that term leaves you still wondering about what the book could still be about, let me put it this way - Christian romance.  I don't like to admit it, but I get embarrassed often when I need to tell people the type of book it is.  I guess after so many years of living my faith in a secular world, I expect most people on the street to find my genre laughable, as if its just a bunch of dumb, naive stories.  While I won't go claiming that every work of this nature is intelligenty written and highly literary, I will go on record as saying that the inspirational romance genre can be a great avenue for readers like myself.

Christian romance, at least in the guidelines I'm writing for, is defined as "sweet" romances, where there is both a romantic and faith element present in the story.  Basically, its a romance where one or both of the leads have some sort of issue of faith that they work through in addition to the romance storyline.  The nice thing about these stories (or should I say, one of them) is that people like me can get what they want - the romantic, guy meets girl, couple overcomes obstacles to live happily-ever-after type of stories without any sex scenes that one might find objectionable.

I didn't always know about this subset of the romance genre, and I used to read other mainstream novels, which would often include me having to skip pages at particular sensitive parts, skimming for any dialogue.
"Nope, still doing it." *turns page* "Nope, still doing it." *turns page*

It's great to have a genre of romance where I can read a love story that doesn't have those objectionable parts, and has a Christian message.  This is the genre I hope to break in to.

My Version of a Progress Bar

I realize I forgot to tell you about how I, and now you, can track my progress.  I'm working straight through my manuscript, editing each section/paragraph/scene as I encounter it.  I've begun tracking this with a type of fraction.  For instance, I didn't tell you, but before I started editing yesterday, I had last left off on page 104 of my 204 page manuscript, so that's 104/204 according to the little blue sticky note pad I have here.

The reason I say 104/204 is simple.  As I edit, the manuscript size shifts.  Sometimes it may be subtle - retooling a couple of sentences may shift the word count either way.  And sometimes there are more dramatic changes, like if I rewrite a section and it ends up pages longer than the previous version, or I cut an entire section that is seems week and out of place upon review.

So here we go. At the time of yesterday's writing it was 104/204. Today I can check in and tell you that after yesterday's work I'm at 106 of 204. That may not seem like a lot, but it's forward motion, so it counts :)