I Hate My Book

I know this is a normal feeling writers have.  I don't care.  My book really does suck. I'm hating it because of what I know it's going to take to fix it.  But right now, I can't even read it.  I'm sick of it.  It's becoming increasingly difficult to get it from scene to scene.  There are choices I made or actually they seemed to just happen that I'm not sure I want to keep.  I hate my main character's name.  I even hate my working title.  I want to edit it so badly.  But I'm only 27,636 words into it.  I just printed out all 88 pages of it and sat down to read it and make some changes.  And I'm exhausted and bored already.  Maybe if I were drunk?  No, I think I'd just probably fall asleep.  Maybe that's what I need.  But see, that's just it--I keep procrastinating and diverting my own attention elsewhere so I don't have to deal with it but I NEED to deal with it.  I must finish this stupid thing if for no other reason than to just say I finished it.  Then, I know, I can do whatever I want with it.  Maybe the edits will be easier then, knowing that at least it has a beginning, middle, and an end.

Okay, I'll go with that.  But I'm still hating it. 

Being a writer, ALAcon, and my goal and stuff.

Found out that I'm a writer after all.  Well, whatdya know?

My last day of internship at The Sea Coast Echo was Friday. While speaking with the editor, I thanked him for his assistance and for allowing me to write so much for the paper last week. I think I had 6 or 7 articles published. He said that I did an "excellent" job and that "it helped that you were already a writer." I was floored. That was THE first and ONLY time anyone had ever referred to me or called me a writer.

Honestly, I thought I aspired to be a writer. I wanted to write but never thought that what I produced was worthy of the author being referred to as a "writer."  So now, I will refer to myself as a writer.  But only because I was referred by one who knows writers as a writer. So there.

Now, I am just an aspiring author.  And since I have not written anything on my book in weeks, it is likely that I will remain an aspiring author.  I also have not heard from the publisher about my children's book either and the 30th of June looms.  Funny how "loom" rhymes with "doom."

Anyway, I jaunted down to New Orleans over the weekend and visited the American Library Association's annual convention.  It was just an orgy of books, publishers, writers, libraries, and all things deliciously bookish.  If you didn't care one way or the other about authors and books, it would have been insanely boring for sure but for me, a bibliophile, it was decadent.  It was the rock concert of librarianship.  And just about every Book God/Goddess I could think of was there. I didn't get any autographs but it was just something still to even walk by Kate DiCamillo and Mo Willems as they signed their tomes.  I really was upset that I did not get to hear Orson Scott Card speak.  Missed that by an hour and didn't realize it.

Overheard that someone stole the 300 galley proofs of part two of Ally Condie's Matched which is entitled Crossed.  Bummer.  They were giving away 300 of those and it looked like there were 500 in line so I didn't stand in that line either.  I preferred to peruse, overhear, and shuffle from exhibit to exhibit.

Even the Ayn Rand Institute representatives were there.  I mean, what? She like my frickin' hero.  Well, ideologically, not so much in the writing.  Overall,  ALAcon was just so impressive.  Google ALA 2011 to see a list of authors.  So awesome.  See, don't I sound like a teenager that just came from her favorite rock concert?  Got lots of cool swag, too.  I was lucky that this was the 2nd time I was able to go.  It probably won't be back in New Orleans for years and years.  If you ever get the chance to go, do. 

So, 5 weeks left of summer break.  Time to seriously buckle down and get some writing done.  My original goal was to be finished by the end of June.  However, life happens.  So, I'm setting the more than reasonable goal of 4 weeks from today.  Let's see where I'll be then!

Just call me Lois Lane . . .

I started my internship at the Sea Coast Echo newspaper today.  The Sea Coast Echo is a smaller community paper that focuses mainly on Bay St. Louis, Waveland, Kiln, Pass Christian and Diamondhead communities in southeast Mississippi.  It was totally awesome.  I love being able to write and contribute! So here are some things I did not know about writing for a newspaper and news biz:
--journalists don't get paid much (I actually never thought much about it before)
--sometimes there's a lot of sitting around and waiting when you're all caught up on your stories
--everything, everything is done on a Mac (I'm a PC but it's cool)
--the writers smoke a lot (okay by me)
--they all love what they do because they certainly don't do it for the money!

The editor, Geoff, has been soooooo nice in showing me around and teaching me how everything is done from the writing to layout to printing.  It's all so interesting and I think will be hugely impressive to my students!  I'm taking lots of pics.

Now I'm used to writing "academically" when I write non-fiction.  Having never taken a journalism course (which is actually surprising since I think I've taken every other course possible when I used to be a professional student), I didn't know about the "inverted pyramid."  This means the story is written by starting out with an attention grabbing sentence and load the first few sentences down with the important info.  The fluff and nonessential extras go at the end since the average newspaper reader skims and scans and only reads the first few sentences anyway.  Did not know that!  But makes sense.

I worked on three different articles today.  Two had to do with education and local school events and one was about a local woman who was recently appointed by the governor to be the director of the Office of State Public Defender.  I had to call her, interview her, get quotable comments, and ask for a photo!  I also had to get some commentary for one of the other articles, too.  So cool because I'd never done this before and I love, love, love getting the opportunity!  Finally, I'm also working on a year in review for all of the local area schools for an annual publication that will come out next week.  I'm so excited!

I so want a fedora with a little PRESS paper sticking out of the band.

Writing and Reading

I'm excited to be starting an internship next week at my local newspaper, The Sea Coast Echo.  This internship is a partnership between our local community college and my school district so that teachers can earn Continuing Education Units (CEUs) that go toward their teaching license.  So I'm thrilled to be working where I can WRITE!  So excited.

Other topic:  I'm currently completely engrossed in the book by Susan Beth Pfeiffer, Life As We Knew It.
Set in Pennsylvania, the book is in the form of the diary or journal of teenage Miranda and as it begins she and her family and friends are gearing up for a seemingly benign lunar event, an asteroid is scheduled to hit the moon.  What no one seemed to be prepared for was that the asteroid had far more mass than originally projected.  The moon is knocked out of its current orbit and travels very close to the earth.  This sets off a series of cataclysmic geological and meteorological events that affect every living being on the earth.  We read what Miranda writes as she describes life following the event.  Tsunamis and altered ocean levels drown coastal cities.  People die.  Oil production ceases.  Prices skyrocket.  Volcanoes explode around the globe bathing the earth in toxic darkness.  Temperatures plummet in July and we wonder if Miranda and her family are going to make it.
The writing is simple for the most part.  Occasionally there's a word or phrase that I doubt "Miranda" would know which throws me out of my alternate reality of reading trance.  There's a lot about life that Miranda doesn't describe which has me perplexed because it would definitely be stuff that I would think a teenager would care greatly about.  However, I'm almost finished and I'm thinking about the book when I'm not reading it, wondering what's going to happen.  So that's a great book to me.  I read for several hours straight last night but just couldn't stay awake to finish it off.  Definitely tonight.  It's a good, easy read that I recommend so far.  I'll post more about other great books I've read lately.

Not yet.

Haven't written in two days.  I'm pissing myself off.  TV is enemy #1 now.

The zombies are keeping me from writing.

So I don't so much believe in "writer's block."  I do, however, believe in "writer's procrastination."  Right now I think I am the Queen of Procrastination Country.  I do all sorts of things, stupid, useless, waste-of-time things completely on purpose instead of writing which is the thing I want most to be doing.

The quote, "How we spend our days, is of course, how we spend our lives," which I think is by Dickinson, haunts me daily.  I will clean anything and everything, I will play Angry Birds and Plants vs. Zombies for hours, or Facebook myself to death before I will sit down and write.  It's really disgusting.  I end up having such guilt when I count the hours wasted and think of how many words could have been written in that time.  So why do I torture myself with the guilt and self-loathing when I alone can just have some discipline and self-respect to not waste the time and get down to the business of writing?

Well, I think about this while I keep telling myself just one more load of laundry or just one more round of Angry Birds (those clever little pigs).  There are many reasons why I do this and I'm sure I'm not alone.  First, writing for me is like sculpting.  I get this image in my head of what it is I'm creating and when it might not be looking like I first intended, I walk away, get some perspective.  My writing so far, I've been pleasantly surprised, has taken on a life of it's own.  Ideas start popping while I'm writing and it's going in different directions and developing more layers.  It's getting kind of intense and I'm juggling more balls than I originally imagined. Plus, I'm developing this emotional attachment to my creation.  I'm starting to think of it as a whole and what this creation will be and mean when it's complete.  What if it's not good?  After all, I'm not just writing it for the sake of writing.  I want something in return from it, whether it be monetary or a sense of accomplishment or something I can be proud of or something I can hold and say that I met a goal I set for myself and on and on.  It has to be good.  How do I distance myself from this creation and look at it with objective eyes and say, yeah, this is good or decent or it totally sucks?

Anyway, so I spend my days thinking about my book more than writing it.  However, I'm writing it all the time, re-writing it, editing it constantly, all while I'm blowing up zombies with potato bombs.  It's working itself out.  I think I shouldn't beat myself up too much about doing the things that aren't physically writing because it's still, in a way, writing.  It's just in my head.


Anyway, so that's what I was thinking about today.  Now, I'm gonna go write.  Really!

A Magical Gift

Today I received an unexpected gift.  My mother gave me a necklace.  It is two silver feather quill pens joined together in the shape of a heart on a long, thin black cord.  I loved it instantly.  It reminds me of how supportive my mother is of my writing and of how much she believes in me.  It also reminded me of an essay I wrote about 3 years ago that I'll share here: 

Magic

I have a Harry Potter scar.  Well, nothing as jazzy and obvious as his lightning bolt, but a scar nonetheless, right smack-dab in the middle of my forehead.        

            "Does my scar make me special like Harry's scar does?", I think to myself at the other end of a sleepless night.  No, not special.  Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, unlike Harry's, my scar doesn't alert me to nearing evil with searing and blinding pain.  I hardly notice it's there when I look in the mirror.  But sometimes, when I'm deep in thought or worrying, my fingers slide across my forehead, and perceive the slightest crevice, marring my otherwise smooth forehead skin.  Underneath the surface of the skin I feel scar tissue leaving a raised bump beneath the scar which, thankfully, is visually imperceptible but feels yucky. 

            As my fingers trail the tiny line which has surreptitiously folded within my occasionally furrowed brow, the memory of its origin comes rushing back.

            I was 4 or 5 maybe, and we lived on the second floor of a yellow house on Willow Street in New Orleans.  The house faced an empty though grassy lot across the street.  Facing ten o'clock, you could see the lights of the K&B parking lot on the other side of the block through a great oak tree at night.

            I only know that it was day time and I was excitedly running from my mother's company in the kitchen through the dining room and into the living room.  I was abruptly thrown face forward from whatever I tripped on down into the exact right angle of the wooden coffee table.  I can still see the ornate burnished brass décor on the corners of that coffee table.

            I am certain, though I do not exactly remember, that at this time I shrieked in pain and shock, as the sickening sound of the 'thunk' echoed in my head.  I remember that I felt like I cracked my head open like a pumpkin. My forehead felt cool and open and then warm, very warm. Next, I seem to remember a towel and perhaps some ice? And my mother's urgency bordering on hysteria.  But for a moment, forget the blood and the 'thunk' and the screaming.  Because what I remember most was my mother's decided control over the situation.  Sometimes her control sounded a little like hysteria from a distance.  But most assuredly, I can tell you, my mother was always so great in situations like these.  It seemed so instinctual, whatever she did.  She said, "Okay, now it's alright.  Everything's going to be alright." But her voice took on this silken wrapped velvet quality that suddenly made me close my eyes and imagine I was floating on a cloud.  She would maintain her tone with confidence, so I never doubted that I was okay and that soon everything else would be okay too.

            The trip to the hospital was probably awful for my mother because her focus had to be somewhat on the driving even though I know she looked at me more than the road.  Her hand never left me, my head, the towel, as I struggled to see and understand what was happening to me through the blinding mix of tears and blood.  I'm sure my screams were so unnerving to my mother.  I remember her saying over and over, "Shhhhh, it's gonna be alright."  And though the pain was unbearable and my fear of the hospital was beginning to override the pain, I knew she was right not just because she was my mother and because mothers knew these things but because her calming, comforting voice convinced me of it.

            In the ER several nurses had to hold me down.  I felt scared almost as if I'd done something wrong. All of this because I ran and fell. And now my pumpkin head must be falling in chunks everywhere because everyone is so loud and telling me what to do and I didn't know where my mother was. Maybe she was there.  I guess I was in restraints at some point and finally a craftily conducted injection of a sedative kicked in.  Or did it?  It must have.  I can still see all of the eyes peering down at me, the injections coming so close to my eyes to dull the wound site, the cat gut pinching and pulling my skin to close the wound, and my funhouse reflection in the stainless steel brightness of the lamp leaving spots in my vision.  The result? Six neat little knotted stitches tickled and itched my small forehead like drunkenly strewn costume fake eyelashes.  And somehow, no doubt, my mother and grandmother, took them out ten days later.  I remember nothing more of the event.

            But sometimes, on nights like tonight, when all are tucked tight and the world is still and alone with only itself and I have been stroking my brow, I think of my mother.  I am much older now than she was then. I let my fingers caress the tiny indentation. I think of my 4-year-old and all of his bo-bos, bumps, and bruises and stitches yet to come. I feel him in my arms and I stroke and soothe him. My mother's words come, so sweetly, so reassuringly, and he and I both know that "everything is going to be alright." 

Does my scar make me special, magical? No. Not me. My scar reminds me of how special and magical a mother's love can be.