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Balance Beam

Mar13

I’m having a hard time balancing school and writing.

It’s not easy striving for that 4.0 I promised my parents (and myself) while writing an average of three thousand words a day. I’m not much of a multi-tasker: I tend to focus on one thing at a time. Sometimes I spend too much time on one thing, though, and I end up cramming things in at the last minute. I’m trying to break my procrastination habit, but it’s hard. After about five years of last-minute studying, papers, and projects, teaching yourself how to get things done early (and get them done well) takes patience. I have no patience.

I love this novel. I love writing. I love how it feels to take the thoughts and words in my head and write them down. I’m not the best writer in the universe, but I also have experience. It’s one of those things I could do every day for the rest of my life. It doesn’t matter how good I am, if my dialogue makes sense, or anything like that. I’m not in it to get published or for money (though both of those things would be amazing). Though it would be a dream come true for someone to pay me to write, the world won’t end if it doesn’t ever happen. And it’s not likely that it will.

But you never know.

I’m also getting 11 credit hours out of the way before I scamper off to my four-year in the fall. I started my senior year in August with 25-and-a-half credits, even though we only need 22 to graduate. I could hardly fill my schedule for one semester during registration last year. So I finished in January with about 28 or so credits, a terrible GPA, and a dream to get A’s throughout college. So far, I’m doing okay. Not great…but okay.

The hardest thing about writing is knowing the difference between making time for it and having time for it. If you have to make time to get in a thousand words or so, you shouldn’t even try. You should probably get everything else done first, so you’ll actually have time to write later. I’m not trying to make deadlines or write a perfect book. I’m trying to write my heart out, as long as it’s done before finals. June 6th, at the latest. Graduation day probably wouldn’t be the best day to finish a novel.

I’m trying; I really am. I’m trying to learn, is what I’m doing. I’ve been writing for, what, nine or so years, and I still haven’t figured out how to walk across the balance beam without favoring one side over the other, or falling off completely. But I get back up every time, and hopefully soon I’ll be able to do a cartwheel or stand on one foot. Now wouldn’t that be something.

Love&hugs, Meg♥

My Discovery: Writing Advice That Works

Mar12

This is going to sound really dumb—an “uh-duh” moment for you smart people out there. But I just recently figured out what it means to sit down, shut most of your brain off, and write a novel.

I’ve been a writer for as long as I can remember. I’ve talked about writing in practically every post I’ve publicized since last January. And I realized that, looking back on every novel attempt I’ve ever made, the only three I haven’t completely wanted to burn were written in thirty-one days or less.

My point? I think too much.

During challenges like NaNoWriMo and JulNoWriMo, it’s impossible to write a good novel. All you’re ever thinking about is words, words, words. The logical part of your brain (if you ever dare to use it) shuts off. For me, November (and last year, July) was filled with words. I’d sit down and pour out thousands and thousands of them without stopping to think, “What am I doing?”

The reason those were some of my best works (not great, but my best) were because, in a panic, my writing voice came stumbling out. Every writer has one: it’s not you, but your characters, adjectives, and metaphors speaking with and lacking quotation marks. And during those months that I wasn’t in a panic, wrote slowly, and tied that voice down, nothing flowed.

It’s March. There’s no official MarNoWriMo (though that would be AWESOME!). Yet I’ve written over 12,000 words in three days, fueled by this voice I’d never known existed before. All I did was this: stop trying to be a good writer, sit down, and let it all come tumbling out.

I never realized that you can’t read a book, go over to your computer, and write one just like it. I mean, I’m sure I knew that, but I think that’s what I was always trying to do. That’s why One Summer lasted two and a half chapters. That’s why I haven’t been able to write anything in two months. I was holding myself back, comparing myself to my favorite authors, saying, “I’ll never get there. I can’t.”

Don’t ever compare yourself to anyone else. That’s the mistake I keep making. But with this novel, which I have yet to name (the really fun part), it’s different. I’ve thrown caution to the wind. My metaphors are daring, my dialogue is short. My style is scary. Heck, this whole experience is scary. But now I know for sure I’m not just majoring in English for nothing. This is going somewhere.

I want to hear about your writing experiences. Fun times, eh?

Love&hugs, Meg♥

Bittwersweet Closure

Feb16

So, I got part-way through Chapter Ten last night, taking a nice study break and all, and then I stopped. And I couldn’t write any more. Because I realized I was confusing myself, knowing all these things that I want to happen, but unsure of where exactly I wanted to put them. And I realized that, in order to go any further, I would have to write chapters two through nine, which I can’t do right now because of all the other responsibilities I have to nurture.

And that’s why today is not a good day.

I have a math test today and a speech to do tomorrow. Not write, not outline, but do, as in, get up in front of everyone in my class and speak some words. And honestly, I don’t feel ready for either at the moment. And I’m tired of studying, and there are unfinished scholarship applications scattered all over my room that I’d rather just burn. If I’d focused more on school when I really needed to, I wouldn’t be in the position I’m in, trying to get them all done before the end of the month.

The question I’ve been pondering for quite some time is this: which is more satisfying, a sad ending, or a happy one? It’s a very general question that could be answered a bunch of different ways. When we’re talking book-wise, it really all depends on the story itself, not just the ending. When I asked this question of my Facebook friends, here are the answers I got. I didn’t ask any of them for permission to post what they said on here, so I won’t include their names.

Meg wants to know: would you rather a book have a happy ending, or a sad one?

“Happy! As long as it’s not completely unrealistic.”

“Idk.”

“I guess it would have to depend. I kinda like books that have a happy ending, but with a twist that’s kind of not happy.”

“ it doesn’t have to be happy as long as it’s good. sometimes stories need sad endings in order to work out correctly. that doesn’t make them any less good, though.”

“What about if it just ends[?]“

Really, all the endings to the novels I’ve attempted to write so far have been bittersweet. Now or Never ended with Kristi admitting to herself that she’d find love someday, even though her feelings for Jay were still lingering. Liz lost her memory forever, but Sean re-connected with his feelings about her, and shook hands with the man he thought she was cheating on him with (even though she wasn’t). Jenny was sad, but Anna finally stopped hating her long enough to feel sorry for her and tell her how unique and special she was. And I can’t tell you how my current novel ends, because it’s just too fun to keep it a secret.

Now that I think about it, the very first “novel” I ever tried to write ended in the same sort of way. The main character’s friend ended up dying from cancer, but left behind reassurance that everything was going to be okay. She wrote her a letter or something, I think. (This was, like I said, the very first novel I ever tried writing. It was the worst eighty pages anyone has ever written. But it had a good message, for being written by a fourteen-year-old.)

But the next two I wrote, a re-write and then a sequel, had happy endings, which was what made them so yuck. The first one ended with the foster child being adopted by the foster parents, happy-happy-happy, ick. It had no point. And the sequel ended in her husband coming back after he’d been gone for four months, and all the bad stuff that happened to her while he was gone didn’t matter anymore. Also ICK.

I may be forgetting one, but I’m not sure. Oh yeah! Mia decided she didn’t want to have an eating disorder anymore. The end. See, I had plenty of good ideas, just lacked the skill to develop them the right way. Not to say I have skill oozing out of my ears, because I don’t. And even if I did (I don’t), I woudn’t be sitting here, bragging to the world about it. I hate it when people do that. Half the time, when people brag, they’re not even that good at whatever they’re bragging about. I think that bugs me more than when people use their Facebook statuses to try to get sympathy from the world. WHICH REALLY TICKS ME OFF. Just saying.

Here’s the thing about things like books and movies. Like I mentioned before, you can’t always determine which type of ending is better if you can’t examine the whole story. Some books, like Mystery Person #4 said (you know who you are, and so do I, and if you’re reading this, I hope you’re laughing), need a sad ending to be good. Because out of tragedy comes good—always. And then, there are some books that need happy endings to be satisfying, or the reader would be left completely depressed and suicidal. And then there are the happy endings that just irk me (there are a lot of things that irk me, if you’ve never noticed), which are (Mystery Person #1) completely unrealistic. Like everyone at prom ending up in the waiting room waiting for Scarlett to have her baby. I love you, Sarah Dessen, but come on. No one cares about anyone else in high school, unless you are an Operation Girl lending a hand to another Operation girl. Which are six people out of the entire population of the world, plus a one-timer who needs to be invited back. So good luck with that.

What do bittersweet endings bring to the table? A good book, for one thing. Because, though bad things may happen, at least something good came out of it. (The thing about two people ending up together at the end of books is, you can’t help but wonder how long they’ll actually stay together before they break up, even though the author never tells you that part of the story.) And then, the reader walks away (sits back? I don’t know how people read) with something to think about, emotion to feel, or something. Those kinds of endings are what give a story purpose. Which is why I personally like them so much.

So tell me. Which would you prefer—a sad ending, a happy one, or neither? And heck—tell me why this time.

Love&hugs, Meg♥

Writing a Novel

Feb9

It’s not an easy task, and not everyone can do it. But there’s no harm in trying.

My advice? One project at a time. Don’t cheat on your novel with another one. I hate it when I’m just browsing around discussion boards featuring novel-writing and I read comments like, “Well, I’ve started a couple books, but I never finish them, because I just keep getting new ideas that are better than the old ones, so I start a new one without finishing the old one.”

Brain implosion.

Don’t! Don’t do that! That’s bad news! You’re never going to finish ANYTHING if you let your ideas control you, instead of being the one to control your ideas. Write them down, plan them out, but DO NOT start writing unless you’re one hundred percent sure you want to abandon your current project. This doesn’t mean that it’s okay to drop a novel after forty thousand words just because you’re bored. You have to finish, because starting a novel should be like comitting to raising a child. How’s it going to feel if you just stop taking care of it? Exactly.

I’m not saying that, if you’ve never finished a novel, then you’re never going to be a writer. I’m not here to crush your dreams, unless that’s what you came here to find. Maybe, instead of trying to start so many novels, you could try getting your stories out on a much smaller scale, like a short story. Those are a lot less work, a lot less time, and sometimes a lot more satisfying. Try it sometime. And then, maybe when you think you’re ready, you could give the whole novel thing a try.

My last point? If you’re just going to talk about your ideas, there’s something wrong.

If you’re that passionate about writing, then you wouldn’t be telling me about your story—you would be on your laptop writing it. The excuse “I’m too busy” does not exist in the writing world. If you’re too busy to get your ideas down on paper, then you don’t care enough about them to write them down, or you don’t know how. During this past year’s NaNoWriMo, I spent four days out of thirty on the couch sick with the flu, studied constantly for the ACT, wrote three seperate AP English papers, went to school seven to eight hours a day, got an average nine to ten hours of sleep most nights, and wrote a 50,000-word novel. I also raised my grades and stayed on top of my homework, because I MADE TIME for my passion.

Yes, I was very busy. But my ideas needed to be written down, and they were.

I understand that there are people out there who write just for fun, and I admire that. My writing isn’t necessarily all business, either. I’m talking here about people whose dream it is to publish their own novels, who want to have what it takes to make it out there in that terrible market they call book-selling. If you’re going to make it, you have to put in the effort. You can’t just quit in the middle, and you can’t let other things get in the way.

But for those of you who just write on the side, who really don’t care whether or not you ever publish a short story? It’s all good. You have my complete and eternal respect.

And for those of you out there (Evie) who sit down and read every word of your aspiring writer friends’ novels? You’re awesome. You’re beijing (a.k.a. amazing). You’re the ones they’ll turn to as they struggle to acheive their wildest dreams. Whether or not they ever get there, you’ll be the ones they’ll always remember. You’re also the ones who they’ll be thanking when their first book gets published.

Wow. That was some rant, huh?

Love&hugs, Meg♥

Revisions Are a Trip to Hell and Back: How to Survive Editing an 80,000-word Novel In 10 Easy Steps

Jan16

1: Do not panic.

Now that I’ve decided to do one last editorial comb through Reminiscence, the 83,000-something-word novel I wrote last summer, I’ve realized several things. One: editing is the worst part of the writing process. It’s like ripping apart your art into tiny pieces and trying to put them back together a different way than they were before. It’s time-consuming, depressing, and it makes you feel like a complete idiot. I seriously feel like the worst writer ever today. But it’s all worth it in the end.

2: Separate your drafts.

 You can’t just have one file on your computer with your book on it. You should have as many as you need—the first draft, the one you save triumphantly when you tap the last period; the first draft edit, the one you pick through to find typos and spelling errors; and then, you should have several others; the ones you comb through vigorously, rewriting sections, changing names, deleting chapters, etc.

I didn’t start doing this until a few years ago, until one of my English teachers told me it’s healthy to go back and look at how you’ve improved as a writer over time. When I realized I couldn’t do that, since I’d made all my changes and then saved over the old text, I started hitting “Save As” a lot more frequently.

3: Do not trust Spell and Grammar check.

It will not catch your night/might typos, wordy paragraphs, or run-on sentences. You have to pick through the text on your own to find these easy-fix mistakes. Besides, when it underlines the last name you made up fifty thousand times, well, that just makes you want to turn it off anyway.

4: Take your time.

I usually go chapter-by-chapter–especially on the novel I’m revising now, since the chapters are so short. Sometimes I take breaks in-between, and sometimes I don’t. If I come across a chapter that I know is going to need some serious reconstruction, I skip it and keep going. So yes, saving the difficult parts for last is your best bet. I’m still trying to figure out Chapter Two. It’s severely wounded.

5: Don’t give up.

Your novel is your baby. Just like writing, if you abandon it in the middle of revisions, it’s like leaving it out in the cold without a sweater. It needs you to help it improve and grow. Once you’re done with it, it really doesn’t care what you do with it—within reason, of course. But until then, keep at it.

6: No novel is perfect.

I find imperfections in published novels all the time. So what you’ve got on your screen in front of you has absolutely no chance of coming out perfect. Being picky is necessary when revising, but being a perfectionist will only prolong the process. Do your final revisions, be happy with what you’ve got, and move on.

7: Never delete your documents.

To this day, I still regret deleting the first “novel” I ever wrote. I was fourteen, a young writer, and embarrassed with my eighty pages of blah. So one day I just deleted it. And now, even if I would have wanted to, I can’t go back and look at how far I’ve come since the beginning of my freshman year—the beginning of my quest to write a decent novel (still trekking through valleys, but at least I’m out of the swamp). Don’t ever delete anything you write, even if it makes you cringe. You never know: it may come in handy some day.

8: Let your friends critique it, even if you hate it.

If you’re lucky enough to have friends with lots of time on their hands, see if they’ll read your masterpiece. Even if it’s just a chapter, a section, a page, or a sentence, anything helps. As an artist, your mind is never going to be fully satisfied with what you create. Therefore, you can’t always see how good your work actually is. Having someone you trust read through it may just boost your confidence—and they might even find a few little things you missed while you were in hell (revising, of course).

9: Once you’re done, don’t go back.

Even if it’s been months, and you’re itching to read your novel, don’t. You will always find something wrong, something you don’t like, and will want to fix it. This is BAD. You’ve already been through revisions, the equivalent to a root canal—don’t make yourself go back. Leave it alone, and let other people enjoy it. If, that is, you decide to follow suggestion #8.

10: Be proud.

You wrote a novel! Not only did you sit down and get it all out, but you sat down and revised it! If that’s not an accomplishment, I don’t know what is. There are a lot of people in this world that would never have enough patience to do what you’ve done. So celebrate! Have some ice cream, or go out with some friends. After all, you’ve just finished writing a novel—what else are you going to do?

Now it’s time to follow my own advice and get back to editing. Good luck! I hope to see y’all on the other side.

Love&hugs, Meg♥

NaNoWriMo – Day 29: Reaching 50,000

Nov29

Here is my journey, via Facebook status, to the finish line of NaNoWriMo 2009.

Meg is so close…it’s killing me!

Meg has 874 words left!!!!!!

Meg has 798 words left to write.

Meg has 678 words left until she’s free.

Meg will do a happy dance after 590 more words.

Meg is almost there, Evie. Keep on pressing Like.

Meg 49,635 words. Somebody do the math!

Meg 276 words! I found my calculator!

Meg has one hundred and sixty words left, and is hurt that Evie left me right before the end. **is weeping**

Meg has 74 more words to type. This is it, guys.

Meg has two words left. Drumroll, please.

Meg ‘s fingers are broken. I can’t do it. Nope. I refuse.

Meg won.

Meg  hey! the little word bar turned green! That rocks.

Of course, I have yet to submit my novel. I’m at 50,887 words as of seven o’clock last night, and I plan on turning it in tonight, just in case tomorrow the power goes out, or I forget, or something tragic like that happens. Because this is me. Something like that would totally happen.

You gotta love Facebook.

Love&hugs, Meg♥

 

NaNoWriMo – Days 25 & 26: Happy Thanksgiving!

Nov26

Well, the title says it all. Well, not ALL, but you get what I mean.

I had food and pie and everything! So now what? Oh, yeah, word count. Right. That. I’m actually catching up, which is seriously a relief after my near panic attack the other night, because I seriously became very afraid that I wasn’t going to catch up, and that would be very sad.

I’m only about six thousand words behind, which is not as horrifying as you would think. I’m shooting to get at least 40,000 words today. I’m at 37,681, so I’m not that far off, and it’s only five thirty here. It may be dark out, but that doesn’t stop me from writing. Yay! I’m sure my family won’t mind my hiding for a few hours. You’d be surprised how much you can get written in a few hours.

Well that’s all for now! Looks like I’m almost back in the game. It’s been a rough few weeks, with almost having the Swine Flu and all (but it wasn’t, so no worries), but I’m going to take these next few days off and really play catch-up. My story is about to take a huge turning point, so be ready, Evie!

Have a great rest of Thanksgiving, and remember: this is the one day a year when we can eat and not feel guilty afterwards.

Love&hugs, Meg♥