Heads up!

I'm jamming through the third draft lickety split--I'm already on Chapter 9. Beta-readers heads up.

I'm leaving with the fam tomorrow for a 4-day weekend in Seattle, but wanted to remind you that:

Vicki Pettersson's Touch of Twilight is being released on Tuesday, May 27th! To celebrate, I'm going to post an exclusive interview with Vicki. Yes, I asked the questions, so it's sure to be...um...interesting.

AND I'll be hosting a contest on Tuesday, to win a very special Touch-of-Twilight-related prize. Make sure you come back then!

GG 2nd draft: check!

Just finished the 2nd draft of Ghost Girl! Yay!

And....am flipping right back to the beginning to work on the 3rd draft. I honestly can't help myself. This is my favorite draft, where I get to just concentrate on the language. And I'm getting excited about this book in spite of myself.

Can I say that I still love the last 2 chapters?

{happy sigh}

Tuesday share: music

Today I'm going to share one of my favorite songs.

When I was in the early stages of writing JENNA, I was hunting around for some new music. A good friend ({cough} Kreek {cough}) recommended KT Tunstall, a Scottish singer/songwriter I'd never heard of. I LOVED her stuff, from the first song that first day.

KT's albums became my writing soundtrack. I listened to her every day I wrote JENNA. It became my pattern: open up a game of Spider Solitaire (what?), start playing KT's music, start writing. I think I was telling my subconscious it was time to get busy. When I listen to her music anywhere, now, I automatically start thinking of story ideas.

When JENNA was done I figured it was time for a new soundtrack, for the new book. But then KT came out with a new album...so it continued. I listened to a mix of all her stuff, still, for most of the time of writing GHOST GIRL.

And I'm thrilled to say that hubby and I are going to see KT perform live, this Saturday in San Diego. Front row!! Woohoo!!

Anyway, today I'm sharing a particularly important song for me. Astute listeners may guess, correctly, that I was indeed listening to this song when I was plotting GG...

http://www.last.fm/music/KT+Tunstall/_/Girl+and+the+Ghost

DONE

HA HA!!!! Donety-donety-done-done. DONE!

Finished the first draft of Ghost Girl at just over 52,000 words.

I've got a lot of work to do on the second draft, and the ending is too rushed I know, but that's usual. The word count will grow when I revise. But it's a complete first draft, with an ENDING and everything, and Done!

And I totally made myself blubber this morning while writing it. That's always a good sign.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh.

P.S. I finished it on March 31st, not April. You know what this means? Yep, I made the first draft in 6 months, exactly, again! Woot woot!

Now what shall I do to celebrate??

Wow. Um...yeah, wow.

So the text twisted under me again today, and suddenly I'm smack up against the climax, a little shell-shocked and wondering how THAT happened.

Which is fine, since that's how Nat feels too. But not quite what I expected.

I changed the goal for my first-draft wordcount to 53000, but I'm not even sure I'm going to make that. This is probably a cruel universe response to my hubris, when my husband asked me this weekend how you know a book is just going to be 60k and write to that, and I said airily, "Oh, I just aim for that and make sure all the arcs fit for that length, blah blah blah."

HA.

I think if I wrote straight through I could finish this draft by the end of March. I can't, so we'll just see how early in April I'm done.

Wow.

Otherwise known as AITC*

I found myself describing the latest plot twists and turns of GG to a trusted writer friend yesterday--she's the ONLY one who hears all this stuff but me, and only when I'm soexcitedIjustcan'thelpbutshare!--and I realized I sound absolutely insane. Maybe that's because it's so late in the book, so it's complicated, or maybe it's because it's paranormal, so what's going on is just so off-the-wall. Or maybe I'm truly insane. Hey, at least it'll be a good, crazy story. Y'all can remember this post when you're reading the almost-end bits, and nod your heads in collective agreement.

But I AM excited, because I love the difficulties poor Nat is in. Mind, I have no idea how she or anyone else is going to get out of them yet, but I have that sense of excitement that comes from *knowing* she will, that it will all come together and work out. Probably not how anyone expects, but somehow.

And to think the day I came up with this bit, Tuesday, I did not want to write. All you writers know what I mean--I was dragging. I kept doing everything else but putting down new words. I'd stare at the page with dislike, then go off and look at Facebook for a while. Then I'd come back and write 100 words, scowl, and go get myself another cup of coffee. 50 words. Solitaire. 100 words. I announced to Trusted Friend that 450 words was all I was bloody going to get today, so let's chat instead. Trusted Friend, bless 'er, said go away and write another 100. I sulked, but I did...and THEN I got the idea. And wrote another 300. If lunch wasn't up, I could've easily done more, and wanted to. I knew where I was going.

The point? Two, actually.

1) The words, the solutions, and the revelations don't come if you don't make yourself sit down and squeeze out words, even past the draggy parts. Even when you don't want to. You have to go through the slog to get to the fun stuff.

2) Get yourself some kick-ass Trusted Friends.

*Ass In The Chair

Contentment

It's awfully quiet out there today...both at the office (I think there are 3 of us here) and in blogland. It's Friday, it's the first day of Spring (pauses to look out window at blowing snow), and it's Good Friday.

As a consequence of all this annoying quiet, I'm being very productive. Work is flowing under my fingertips, and I made it over my weekly writing goal, and am sitting at 75%! (and psst! I think it's going to come in at a first draft final count of 55000 instead of 60, so that's 81%! I know, I am SUCH a statistics nerd for an English major.) I am definitely planning to finish this puppy next month.

Pandora's cranked up to the "My alternative" station, I've got a mocha in hand, and I've got fun work to do for the afternoon. Happy moments. Gotta appreciate them when they flash by!

Happy Easter to those who celebrate! We've got a date with a carton of eggs and a PAAS kit...

Spookiness?

I added a Ghost Girl-related poll, above. Please answer, and give me your story in the comments section here!!

Maybe not today--because I'm absolutely crushed for time--but in the next couple of weeks, I'll share some ghost stories of my own. I have some good ones. :)

Goals

Thanks for the lively discussion on Friday, guys!

I was away for the weekend, enjoying a much-needed break. Am back, but I'm going to try to lay low for a while, internet-wise, and focus on Other Stuff.

However, I do want to publicly post a couple of goals:

• Write 11,000 new words on Ghost Girl in March. This will allow me to (hopefully)
• Finish the first draft of GG by the end of April.

Then I can let Melody come play in my head for a while. She's still persistent. :)

Hope everyone is well. Have an excellent week!

Moving Forward

Whew.

I just updated all the side links--somehow, harder than it should have been. There are a lot of sites I've been visiting for a while in Google Reader that I just hadn't added to the list. (And oddly, considering that I had an issue with all the people entering my contest having names that begin with "J", I added 5 fellow writers to my sidebar, and 4 of them have J names. What is up? Am I drawn to J people?) Anyway, hope you enjoy. There's some wonderful stuff over there, almost daily.

In the past couple of days, I found myself drawing on a piece of advice Vicki gave me a long time ago.* It's one of those things I keep forgetting. Since it has been endlessly useful for me, I'll share it here:

Don't hold anything back for later in the book, or later in the series, or for another book. If you have a great idea, dump it in NOW. Another great idea will come in later for the next bit.

Even though I KNEW this, I was still holding onto a little tidbit, a plot direction, thinking it needed to wait for later. But I couldn't figure out what needed to happen now. And then I banged myself upside the head with this advice, threw the complication in without worrying about saving anything for later, and yup. It worked. Now I'm off on a whole new tangent, and I'm feeling the confidence again. Woo-hoo!

*See, Vicki? I gave you credit without prompting this time!

Back back back

The last couple of days have been a change, writing-wise.

Sunday night I had a sudden wave-of-brain, and realized I'd stepped the wrong way in the story. Well, it's first draft, so not wrong exactly, but not best. If I took it another way the later plot would go in a much better direction, include the characters and settings I'd rather be exploring, etc.

So. Halted headlong progress. The 1500 or so words I wrote on vacation will likely stay buried in the GhostGirl2 file--I'm now working on GhostGirl3. I rewound several chapters, found the misstep, and cut about 1800 words yesterday. More will be hacked today. I also wrote 900 new words, though, and will write some more cool new stuff...so it evens out. Better now than a much more tangled later. Much better for plot.

In going back over the old stuff, though, I discovered a few things (AGAIN) about Things I Do on First Draft.

Annoying things:
--My characters breathe a lot. A lot a lot. Take a slow breath, a shaky breath, exhale a long breath. Struggle to breathe. Mind, that last is a fairly important issue for my MC during some parts, but the rest? Geez. We know you're breathing, Nat, you're still talking to us. Stop. It.

--Dialogue tag repeats. I cannot believe how often I do this. "Blah blah blah," X said. He did some random action. Every time I read through a section I have to do a delete on all those "X said He" bits. {sigh} Thank goodness for later drafts.

Positive things:
--I made myself laugh, reading bits, and I'd totally forgotten I'd written some of them and was pleased. This is a good sign, for later. After cleanup.

So what do you do in first draft, and always have to fix later? Do your characters nod too much? Walk? Grin? Do you have to yank out useless adverbs?

Made it.

There. Got to the 50% mark on Ghost Girl.

Now there will be a brief pause while:

(a) we go on vacation, to sunny-land
and
(b) I figure out what happens next. Some brainstorming on various plot threads and possibilities is necessary.

In the meantime, if you'd like to see some skating cowboys (and who wouldn't, really?), go here.

Brrrr

It was -9 degrees (F) this morning. My fingers and cheeks were numb for an hour. It's up to a balmy 13 now, and I have my sweater off and the window open. This is the joy of working on the 3rd floor of a building built in 1896. The heat is either on (roasting) or off (freezing). Right now, with the window cranked, it's almost right.

With the blast of arctic air, though, I'm rather glad that we're leaving for vacation soon. We always try to do a week in San Diego sometime in January or February--knowing that the winter blahs will hit right about now--and I'm sooo looking forward to it. Not least because we got tickets to the Cirque de Soleil. Huzzah!

After today's work, I just have to get 1000 more words on GG to get to my 50% goal before we leave. That I can, and will, do.

{happy}

The shape of the future

AHA!

Over the weekend I started to see the shape of Ghost Girl. I remember this happening about the halfway mark with Jenna too--suddenly what was rather vague wandering around and doing stuff begins to crystallize into plots, threads, themes, and issues. I start to see what I will need to change, strengthen, and cut. Where I will deepen characters and relationships. I feel a surge of excitement, that I can really make this a good book. It's like I've been sculpting with no idea what the final product will be, and then I just SEE.

I also see the mounds of work ahead to get there. Yes, there will be massive rewrites necessary. But this sense of shape is validation that it will work when I'm done.

For now, though, forward progress continues. I just stuck Nat in a very lovely (not) situation I'm quite pleased with. Reminder: never volunteer to be one of my heroines.

Last night--sleepless again--I also got a bit more info on the NEXT book. I had to sit on her to get her to stop telling me about it, because I just can't listen to her right now. Her name, BTW, is Melody.

Progress

Yay, 25,000 on Ghost Girl!

I do love milestones.

Only 10,000 more to go this month...

yes!

I made it to 22,000. Whew.

Yay, 1000 words today! And a brand-new scene I'm happy with. Yay!

Woot!

Huzzah!

A good writing day--the stuff is sparse, but I was giving myself the shivers, which is always a good sign. Got 1000 words, to 30%.

I also had my first of two finals this morning, and it went really well. So yay yay triple yay.

Song on Pandora that's making me dance: Victim of Love, Erasure. I am such an 80s girl sometimes. {g}

A little change, a little stay the same

I'm here. Working on keeping my head in the new book instead of my email inbox, and making steady forward progress even if I must remind myself that this is in truth a shitty first draft.

I've been having a little trouble slipping into the skin of my MC...I get it for flashes, but mostly it's like she's not quite letting me in. I keep finding I was wrong about her--she doesn't like baseball at all (shame), she just likes to wear a Mariner's cap because her grandpa gave it to her. Oh, I say. Hmm. And must rewrite that bit. She dips in and out of being a photography buff (this I think is likely just me forgetting to keep that part in my mind).

And oddly, last night I realized I may have her name wrong. I heard a name on the radio, and suddenly something clicked in my brain and I thought, Ah. It's not X, it's Y. Maybe that's why you're fighting me, because I didn't even know you well enough to get your name right. We shall see. I'm trying out the new name today and see if I've got it this time. She seems much happier with it so far. (this last is the part where non-writers secretly think I'm insane)

I've also been reading Stephen King's ON WRITING, which has been recommended to me for years, rightly. Excellent. Most of the advice I've heard before, but it's always useful to be reminded, and in such an honest, no-bullshit, entertaining way. Actually that's probably the sum of his message, right there. Be honest. The story rules. Tell yourself the story on the first draft, tell it to others on revisions. Rock on, and keep at it. (I did meet Stephen King once, long ago at a wild Book Expo party, before he wrote this book. I was too overwhelmed to do anything but mumble.)

There's also a nice, completely true post by suricattus here about writing blahs.

Keep at it, fellow writers! Hope your holidays or pre-holidays are going well.

YAY!

I made my November goal for Ghost Girl! 15,000 words, 25%. Woo-hoo.

The story's taken off in a different direction than I expected, but that's always a good sign. I maybe get to do a little research this weekend, and then we get to the next exciting bit. {rubbing hands together, twirling mustache} I also unexpectedly came up with the beginning of another book last night. This is not the way I usually work, one book at a time, but I'm paying attention to it. It's a good beginning.

It's supposed to be -9 F tonight, which is damned cold. We haven't decided what to do yet, but I can promise you it won't be outside.

Speech done, check. Photography portfolio almost done. Work progressing apace.

Queries...still waiting. Wait wait wait wait wait. This appears to be a normal part of the process, so I shall continue...