Editing Blues

So, I put off editing Gwendamned for a good 3 weeks. The first week was intentional, the last two were not so much. In truth, for things to be done ideally, I would not look at Gwendamned for another couple of months, let alone weeks, in order to get some distance from it before coming back to edit it. But, that's not a luxury I really have at the moment. Since I have someone waiting to read this I feel the need to get it done sooner than later. Also, though I know it's a crazy dream, and may not be all that plausible I'd really like to have a book in print before I'm 30 (I know it's a stupid and arbitrary goal, but hey, it's been a secret dream of mine for quite a few years now). If I didn't have someone interested in reading a novel of mine already, I would consider getting something in print before August of 2012 an impossibility. I know that the time from a publishing house purchasing a novel to getting it in print can take up to and over a year, let alone the time it generally takes to submit and get rejected quite a few times before you even find a publisher who is interested in it.

But, because I've got a small publisher interested in at least reading it (with admittedly no other promises) I feel like that jump-start might be able to get me to print before August 2012. But, I recognize that it's still a long shot.

Oh, well, dreams are dreams and I will do my damnedest to make this one a reality, but if I don't make my completely arbitrary and really not too terribly important time limit, so be it.

Anyway, random temporal goals aside. This editing thing is kind of a drag. Of course, I only say that because right now I'm doing the most boring possible part of the editing process. I'm creating a spreadsheet. Yes, you read that right a spreadsheet. After poking about on the interwebs I came across a few helpful posts about manuscript editing and came across the supposedly useful tactics of spreadsheet editing and the shrunken manuscript. They seem viable and I am giving them a shot. Of course, what I really want to do is take Holly Lisle's course "How to Revise Your Novel" but that's a five month course and I want this done before that. (Remember the whole arbitrary deadline I mentioned earlier?) So, yeah, I will take Holly's course but with one of my other finished manuscripts. I do have a few to chose from. Heh.

So, as someone who doesn't even plot much, this whole spreadsheet-as-way-of-editing thing is kind of a novelty. I've found that to do it properly I have to go through and make chapters. Or rather, I don't have to, but they turn out to be kind of useful. I never write with chapters in mind. I just write scenes. It's a bit odd to think about my books in terms of chapters, but I think it might be quite useful as an editing tool even if I don't keep them in the long run (though I might keep them anyway).

I'm looking forward to the actual editing bit. But the spreadsheet making is kind of a pain in the ass. Yet I already see the value in it. I've learned one very important lesson already and found something that's going to take some serious work to fix. My novel has no obvious timeline. I have no idea how long a period of time the book takes place over. It could be anywhere from 3 months to 2 years. I think it's more like a year and a half but that's just a notion in my head, the book really doesn't make it clear at all. I should probably sort that out.

Well, that's all for now as I have to get back to editing. But I thought I would just throw that out there. I might not be back until after the holidays, but I hope everyone enjoys them. Happy Solstice!

63,884 words = full plot

WIN!!!!! So, I may have passed the 50k mark a week ago, but that didn't mean that I felt I had finished NaNoWriMo. My secret inner goal, was to finish the entire book, regardless of length, during November. Last night at 11:15pm, that happened. Woot!

So, now I've got a completed first draft that needs a ton of work, actually it's not even a first draft yet, because parts of it that were written down by hand outside of November still need to be added in. But, that can all be done with relative ease and now I'm going to take some time off to study for a big Japanese Language Proficiency test that I have this weekend.

That's really all I have to say at this point in time. I am excited, I am looking forward to revising (which is kind of a new feeling so that's good) I am happy and I am tired. I also don't really feel like I've finished anything yet because this is just the rough draft. I am really looking forward to actually editing this enough for it to feel like a real novel.

I'm also feeling a bit dopey so I think it's time to wrap this up and go put some food in me. Hope everyone has been enjoying their holidays.

Why do I always stay up until 3am and then START writing?

I blame my mother.

I discovered recently, while chatting with my mom via skype (yay 2 cents a minute to the US from Japan!) that she also stays up ridiculously late to get work done and finds that she works best a. once everyone else is asleep and b. when she's coming down to the wire and has to produce quickly in order to meet a deadline.

Which means I just had a huge bit of my eccentricity explained away by genetics. Well damn. That's boring. But, also interesting. The nature vs. nurture debate is always an interesting one, and I find it strange that until this recent conversation with my mom I'd had no idea that she had the habit of staying up late to get work done after others had gone to bed. (I did know about the last minute deadline bit, but still.) It took me 28 years to find this out, and exhibit the exact same behavior. It strikes me as strange to think that there's a night owl gene, but that would appear to be the case.

Right, so that said... True to form and genetic inheritance, it is indeed 3am and it's time for me to get back to work on my novel. I'm at 57,208 words and I'd like to get to 60 or 65k by Tuesday at midnight (and more importantly get to the end of the plot). Things are indeed wrapping up. I think it's quite reasonable to think that I can wrap up the plot somewhere around the 60,000 word mark. I like where things are going but... I need to make sure I don't freeze up at the end. Endings are so difficult. Generally, once you set everything up they play themselves out pretty nicely. As I recently said to my partner in everything "Writing the ending is like setting up a really elaborate set of dominoes, it takes a lot of careful planning and painful work to set it up, but once you flick the first domino it generally takes care of itself." As to whether or not that quote is of my own making I'm not entirely sure. At this point I've read many a motivational essay on writing and it's possible I've snagged it from somewhere without realizing it, but at the time I considered it original and I can't actually remember reading it anywhere.

So, that's my one nugget of writing wisdom for the day.

Which means now I should get to work... I don't know... is everyone else completely asleep? **hears metaphorical crickets chirping and rain, wind and hail pattering on window** yeah I think so. Better get to it then.

50,000 words, check. Finished novel, not so check...

Well, it's now November 24th and as of yesterday at around 10pm I passed the 50,000 word mark. Yay!

But that's only about 75% of the plot, so I still have a ways to go. Still, it's one big accomplishment and I'm quite happy with it. I think that the finished novel will be around 65,000 words or so, and I think I can get there before the month is out, but to do so is going to take some serious work. Of course, that means I probably should have written something today... ahem... well, today was busy with quite a lot of things that weren't writing and I'm afraid there was no way around that. But, now... well now I have some time to write before I go to bed and I should get to that.

First, though, I'd like to tell you a little a bit about how well things are going. Because, that is, after all, why I decided to write this post.

My plan is working. Using NaNoWriMo for this novel has quite effectively shut up my inner editor and things continue to flow. So far I even, *gasp* dare I say it?, LIKE 90% of what I've written so far. I shudder to think about it. Of course, it remains to be seen if any of it holds up to the revision, but I haven't felt like I've been churning out crap much. That is always reassuring. So, I'm excited, and hopeful and starting to feel a bit nervous about the thought of getting this novel out into the world. But, I also feel confident. I think this is a solid idea, and I think that I'm doing it justice with my writing. I'm pretty sure, that I've learned a lot from the three novels that I've written so far and I only hope that my revision skills (which are close non-existent) manage to cohere in time to get this thing in shape. We shall see.

I'm seriously considering taking Holly Lisle's revision course in the not too distant future (though it'll have to wait til I've finished my TEFL class) but that's a 22 week course and I'm hoping to finish revisions on this book a tiny bit faster than that. So, I think I'll use one of my other novels for the revision course and then apply knowledge gained from that as needed to this novel.

Right. That might not have made any sense to anyone. But here's hoping that either a. it did or b. it didn't but that's ok because no one is reading this anyway, or better yet c. it didn't but that's ok because whoever is reading this finds me witty and charming and is willing to forgive the occasional spewage of nonsense.

That said, it's time to get back to writing. Yay.

It's November and we all know what that means...

That means it's time for me to write a brief blog entry explaining NaNoWriMo so that I can procrastinate a bit from actual noveling. Yep.

So, for those who don't know, November is National Novel Writing Month, aka NaNoWriMo. And that means that I and few other hundred thousand people (well only about 160,000 or so) have signed up to write a 50,000 word novel between November 1st and November 30th. (For more info, check out www.nanowrimo.org.)

It's something I do every year since I first heard of it back in 2007. It's incredibly useful if you've ever wanted to write a novel but have found that you lose steam after the first 70 pages and wind up never finishing them. At least I find it useful.

This year, I'm putting it to particularly good use. You see the thing that NaNoWriMo is best for is getting you to turn off your inner-editor (you know, that little voice that keeps telling you your work is crap and eventually makes you give up in frustration at how horrible you are and how stupid you must have been to ever think you could have completed a novel). NaNoWriMo helps you gag him, tie him up and lock him in a closet for a month while you get work done. Then you can take him out and let him look at things once you've finished your first draft. I am in particular need of this service this year. I am working on something that someone other than my mom or boyfriend is ALREADY interested in reading before it's done. The truth is that person has been interested since back in February and I should have knocked this out a long time ago. But, my inner-editor went NUTS as I tried to write. Constantly telling me that this wasn't good enough for publication, that the guy who wants to read it would hate it, and that I was an idiot for thinking I could ever develop a plot that would sell.

Right. So that needed to stop. I know better. I was eventually able to talk myself down. But, in the meantime I've written over 70 pages (handwritten) that make me cringe and I can't get past the whole writing for someone else thing. Or I couldn't. But that's why I'm making the project a November one. When you have to knock out 50,000 words in one month, it's a lot easier to shut out any objections and JUST  FUCKING WRITE. For me. What I turn out in November is always just for me. I have no one else in mind when I write at this pace. Sometimes that turns out quality prose, sometimes I have to churn out a couple pages of crap just to get to the next good bit in my head. But that's what editing is for.

This month, so far so good. It's only day 2. I was a tiny bit ahead yesterday, today I want to get solidly ahead. I love writing like this. I love the deadline, I love the word count motivator, I love just diving headfirst into the story and not worrying about the results. The results are generally good. I'm excited. I'm in love with my story again. It's a nice feeling.

So, having dutifully procrastinated in writing this post (a long standing and effective part of my writing process is procrastination) I am going to get back to writing.

Sorry if this post doesn't make a ton of sense. Good luck to all those who decide to do NaNoWriMo! See you on the 30th.

I feel like I don't know you at all, physically.

That's a quote from my dream last night. It was a rather odd dream in which a person who I am good friends with, but have no interest in romantically, gets professes some rather romantic feelings for me. It was particularly strange because while the setting was far from realistic and all kinds of characters background characters were interacting in places and with people that didn't make any sense, all of the protagonists (particularly myself and said friend) remained very true to character. That is to say, he was awkward and cute in a very lost puppy sort of way, and after he professed his love I told him that he was adorable and that I thought he was a great person but that I was very much in love with my boyfriend and, consequently, nothing would ever happen between the two of us. He took it rather well.

All of the scenes outside of our interactions were completely surreal. I was in places that I didn't know with a very random cast of characters that was entirely unlikely for this particular plot. Yet, the scenes with us in them were spot on, aside from the fact that I very much doubt this person has any feelings for me at all. It was also one of those dreams that I remember almost perfectly after waking up which is rare.

Anyway, I thought that line was particularly good. I mean, the fact that I write dialogue in my sleep cracks me up to begin with. But the fact that I remembered this one line word for word, and the fact that it barely makes sense makes me particularly happy. It would make more sense if this character had simply been referring to sex, but he wasn't. His character in the dream (much like the person in real life) would be more interested in romance than sex, so it was a very funny turn of phrase (and yet something I feel pretty sure he would have said).

And I now look back at this post and think... and who besides me would give a shit? I'm not at all sure. But, I felt the need to write about it, and since it would appear that no one really reads this anyway, I guess it doesn't matter. Hopefully I'll be writing more later having to do with things other than obscure dreams in which real people proclaim their imaginary love. Until then...

Kindling my imagination.

Amazon should probably pay me for this next post. But, oh well, the Kindle is amazing enough they deserve the pro bono. So, I mentioned in my last post that I had ordered an Amazon Kindle (did I mention that I ordered it RIGHT after the price went down so I saved 70 bucks?) it arrived a few days later and I have been supremely happy with it. Things that are awesome about the Kindle:

1.  It's tiny, but in a good way. It's much slimmer than I had expected, yet it's hefty enough to feel like it's well made and to mimic the weight of a book. Solid yay!
2. It has free 3G wireless all over the freakin' world including Japan!!!!!! So fucking cool I don't even know where to start. I can check my e-mail (slow as shit because of the screen loading system) from a moving car WITHOUT PAYING FOR IT. (This is a feature I can hardly get over.) I can also order new books from anywhere and start reading them instantly. ROCK!
3. Reading on it is just almost pleasant as reading a real book in most ways (it is exactly as easy on the eyes as paper which was my main concern). Is reading a real book better? Yes (there are some things about holding a physical book that can't really be explained and  can never be trumped). But not by so much that I would forgo the portability 1000s of books gained by the kindle.
4. It goes everywhere! Not that books don't go everywhere but it goes everywhere and is MANY books at once. 
5. It does PDFs. Sometime in a recent-ish software update my microsoft word gained the ability to convert to PDF (I know this was possible for lots of other people at earlier times, but for the version of windows I have it was relatively new.) I used this to turn some of my work-in-progress novels into PDFs in order to have them around as references while I continue writing by hand. This is DOPE! It means I can work far far away from my oh-so-distracting laptop. Sweetness!
6. The screen savers are pictures of famous authors and other cool black and white images. I love this! (Very minor plus, but still cool.)
7. I've run out of listable items in my head but I'm sure there are more. Take it from me, the Kindle rocks!

Ok. So, that list completed, I should probably talk about drawbacks to the Kindle. The only one that I've encountered so far is one that probably won't affect most people, but here goes: You have to have a credit card (or debit card that is visa/mastercard etc.) signed up to an amazon.com one click account in order to buy books for the Kindle. This is perhaps a minor inconvenience for some people. For me, it's a MAJOR pain in the ass. Why? Because due to me being on the other side of the world and my bank being dumber-than-the-dumbest-pile-of-dog-droppings-ever-crapped-out-by-the-dumbest-dog-with-irritated-bowels-ever-to-walk-the-earth stupid, I can't the card information for my OWN fucking bank account and consequently can't pay for anything in dollars other than by check. Sigh. Obviously, this is not Amazon.com's fault. But, they would make my life immeasurably easier  if they would allow me to buy my books with my checking information instead. Le sigh.

Whew. Glad I got that off my chest. Moving on!

So, I've been writing up a storm the past few days. My latest novel (the one I started back in November) has been put on hold for a while because I lost confidence in it as a story. Thanks to rereading it lately (all 444 pages of it after I put it onto my Kindle) and realizing I desperately wanted to know what happened next (always a good sign) I have taken up the pen again and for the last few days have been clipping along (at least as far as writing by hand goes). So, that's a very exciting development. I'm looking forward to getting through to the end and then going back and taking a machete to the beginning. In rereading it, I realized that while I do love the story and it's well worth continuing, I wrote some epic sections of drivel. Oops.

With that said, I will give up this post and move onto my other writing. My characters await and I am already up long past my bedtime, best to visit them before I go to sleep though or they may well haunt my dreams. Wouldn't want that. Cheeky bastards.

I love a good, hard... rain.

You might have been expecting a different ending to that title, but no you didn't read that wrong, I said rain. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of other things that I appreciate good and hard, but for tonight we'll stick with the one that also involves the warm and wet. Yes, I'm still talking about rain. Wow, the cheesy innuendos should probably stop. They're too easy to even be funny at this point. Sorry about that.

So, anyway, what's with the rain, you ask? Well, as I lie here on my couch with my laptop perched against my knees and listen at the open window there is a serious deluge taking place. I love the sound of the rain on the roofs nearby and the smell of fresh rain and wet ground in the air is lulling me to sleep despite my best efforts to remain awake to write this. If it were light out, or even if I simply weren't about to go to sleep. I would change into some shorts and go play in the rain and the puddles. Little can beat puddle jumping in the midst of a summer storm. Here in my neck of Japan we're just heading into the rainy season. We've had a series of showers over the last few days interrupted by warm sunny days that, aside from being overly humid, are quite pleasant thanks to a constant breeze. In other words, the weather's lovely. I know some people get upset about the rain, but as long as it's warm, I love it. And I have every intention of parading around in the warm rainy weather during my free time over the next few weeks.

Ok. So, that's out of my system. I'm sure everyone is now quite clear on how much I enjoy rain. I'll let that bit go for now. In the meantime let's see. What has been keeping me occupied... I think another list might be in order. (Just to help keep things from getting heinously long.) So, here are some things that have been keeping me occupied lately:

1. My books arrived! Remember all those books I ordered back in May? They showed up. I read them in short order (11 books in 13 days) and enjoyed them thoroughly.
2. My stories came back to life! All the things in my head that need to show up on paper have started twitching and turning and groping for the light once more. In other words, it's time to write.
3. I had a dream with a new novel plot in it. I was pleasantly surprised to awake a few mornings ago to the beginning of a very interesting plot as the remnant of a dream I had had.
4. I bought a new digital camera. After an excessive amount of internet research, I decided to buy a waterproof, shockproof, dirtproof, point and shoot, digital camera that I can lug around with me on all of my adventures without worrying about it's inevitable destruction. Result: Yay!
5. I bought a Kindle from Amazon so that I can buy books without paying for shipping etc. and so that I can take my library home with me when I finally leave Japan. More yay! (Though it hasn't shown up, so I'll keep you posted on exactly how Yay! that really is.)
6. I found not one, not two, but THREE, Japanese microbreweries that supply our local grocery store. They are delicious albeit extremely expensive by US standards. Yet, they aren't that much more expensive than the "premium" mass produced beers here in Japan, so really that's not bad.
7. I ran in a 10k race. I was as slow as drunken sloth but I finished and I "ran" the whole way (no walking, but picture said drunken sloth trying to jog and you'll have an idea of what I mean by "run").
8. After watching one of my friends here compete in her first triathalon to great effect I have decided that I want to compete in a triathalon next year and am planning to start training accordingly. This is exciting for many reasons, not least of which is getting in shape, and part of which is definitely the bad-ass factor.
9. For reasons best left unexplored I wrote a ninth item in a list of things for no particular reason other than that there wouldn't have been a ninth thing if I didn't make something up.
10. That's all.

So, that's it for my list. The rain has made me quite sleepy and I think I'll go ahead and let it cradle me to bed. It's let up considerably since I began this post, but the drip drip drop off of the nearby roofs is still quite soothing. That's all for now.

Gwen

PS. If you remember that little competition thing I posted about back in May and were perhaps wondering what happened, wonder no more: I didn't win. :-)

I couldn't leave it at that...

Well, I didn't plan to write any more after that last post. But, sure enough as soon as I was done with it, the guilt set in. I haven't written here for a while... I feel bad. Not because my poor mistreated fans miss me (I don't seem to have any) but because, honestly, why did I start this blog if not to write in it? And, moreover how can ever expect to gain any fans if I don't actually write things here occasionally? Grave questions indeed.

But, boring questions if you're not me. And, I can only assume (barring any crazy worm-hole/space-time continuum mix ups) that you're not. So, on to more interesting questions. Such as: Gwen, what have you been up to lately?

I'm glad you asked. As it happens I've been up to lots. Over the past few months I have done the following:

1. Dressed up like a samurai and fought a bunch of other people dressed like samurai (with fake swords) for a giant battle reenactment in a nearby city in my ken. 
2. Started learning to play the bass guitar.
3. Joined a band of other beginners that performs occasionally and isn't nearly as bad as it ought to be.
4. Entertained my boyfriends mother for 3 weeks while she visited. (Just in case there's any doubt that was actually pretty fun aside from the wicked halt it threw on our sex life.)
5. Written a short story that was rejected as a short story but that was encouraged as a novel by an editor.
6. Begun the process of turning that short story into a novel.
7. Halted the process of turning that short story into a novel.
8. Resumed the process of turning that short story into a novel.
9. Run out of steam as a writer do to lack of creative input (ie. reading)
10. Ordered a shit ton of books of Amazon.co.jp
11. Waited anxiously for the arrival of said books.
12. Continued to wait.
13. Still waiting.

I'm sure I've done some other stuff too, but I think that's probably about all I can get away with in a silly list like the before anyone reading this starts to get angry with me. So, I'll resume a more prose like approach from hereon-out.

As you may have noted there's been some angst surrounding my writing lately. Fear not, that's in the process of being fixed. I've always been a hardcore reader. By that I mean I devour books at an indecent pace and have always spent the majority of my free time with my nose in a book. Turns out, in Japan, in a small town, it's a pain in the ass to get English language books. That is, until I discovered the beauty of amazon.co.jp. Now, I've ordered a plethora of (overpriced but shipped at no cost) books. They will arrive over the course of the next few weeks. This should go a long way towards fixing my writing dry spell. Yay!

In other news, I've recently made a new Japanese friend. He's particularly fun because he's one of the few Japanese friends I have who I can hang out with on a regular basis. My schedule happens to be the opposite of most of the people I know. I work nights and am free during the day. And just about everyone I know is on a more normal 9-5 schedule. This guy is too. Well actually he's on some crazy other schedule entirely, but he works at a restaurant so that means I can hang out with him even when he's working (as long as things are slow). That makes him one of the few Japanese people I can hang out with every week, and BONUS he doesn't really speak English. Why is this a bonus you ask? Because I desperately need to practice my Japanese and everyone else I know want to practice their English with me. Not this dude. He likes to laugh at my horrible Japanese (which is fine by me as long as he still talks to me afterwords). Apparently I have yet to inadvertently insult his honor or his ancestors so, so far so good. I'm not entirely sure why he bothers to put up with me. He's clearly a nice guy, and he's even willing to help me with my karate (he's a blackbelt in the same style I train in) but I'm not clear on why. For all I know he's just trying to get in my pants, but I kind of doubt it since he's got a wife and kid and he knows I'm taken. I like to think he's just as excited to have a random 'gaijin' friend as I am to have a random Japanese buddy.

Well, it's long past bedtime and I actually have to teach tomorrow. Ja, ne! (Japanese for see ya!)

Mini Update

Well, I'm entering a tiny writing contest over on www.guidetoliteraryagents.com/blog and one of the requirements for eligibility is that I mention it on my blog. So here it is. I will certainly let everyone know if I win. And in the meantime I'll be back soon with another update. But not tonight... not tonight...