tell everybody i'm on my way, and i'm loving every step i take

well, i wasn't able to add forty thousand words to the novel, but i did add thirty-six thousand and a few. i just can't put anything else in without reading the whole thing first. (also, a lot of the stuff i was adding at the end resulted in me ctrl+f-ing a word and then just adding in exposition or a little characterization and i have no idea where in the story those things fell or if they even make sense where they are and if they should be moved. but they're in there and that's really all that matters to me right now. although that's another reason that i need to do an entire read-through before touching it again.) but the second draft is done, and that makes me extremely happy. i'm not planning many big changes for the third draft, just the basics: get rid of any word-padding (though i was trying really hard to keep that to a minimum) move around plot points if needed and fix the time line which right now is very, very messed up. months pass in a single weekend. one day it is saturday and the next day is friday. there are three days left in school and at the same time summer vacation started two weeks ago. obviously, this needs to be fixed.

but the second draft is done! woohoo!

of course, this means that i was a little under four thousand words short of winning camp nano and i refuse to lose any nano session so i started on the potential sequel and can i just say how much i have missed writing a first draft. so much easier. so much more fun. the words just flowed out. all month i've been struggling to get five hundred words down at a time. it took me hours to get my thousand words a day. yesterday i sat down to a new open office document and when i looked up again there were over two thousand words in it. it was fantastic.

except now a middle-grade story that my brother and i were excited about has been haunting me. (i mentioned the idea to him and he got really into it and helped me hammer out a rough outline for it. which i think i lost. oops.) it's the one that i was originally planning on just getting out during this camp session but then abandoned in favor of fleshing out forbidden (which is the working title for this novel that i just cannot think of a title i am happy with for). part of me wants to take a break from editing and sequel writing and write about mermaids instead. (that's what it was about. a mermaid war. there are kidnappings and fighting and friendship. it's pretty awesome in my head.)

since august will be full of family visits and school preparation, i don't think i'll be able to get much writing done. maybe i'll use august to step away from the story, then push out a third draft in september-october. i will use nanowrimo (november) to write the mermaid story while at the same time get some beta readers for forbidden. and somewhere in all of that, i should probably work in time for school stuff.

anyway, i promise that by the first week of august i will have things going on in my life besides writing. but at the moment writing is my main focus. especially since i finished the second draft. did i mention i was excited about that? oh, and i've finished knitting a third of the patches needed for my blanket. and i decided that if i ever get rich and famous i will hire someone to hold my book open and turn the pages for me while i knit because sometimes i want to knit and read at the same time and since i only have two hands, i can't.

*On My Way - Phil Collins

no, i won't give up

okay, so. i have a bunch of drafts that will eventually make really great starts to blog posts, but i am not going to use any of them now because i am hungry, and i am fasting, and i have no energy or will power to do them justice. see, there's this thing about my family where we get grumpy when we get hungry. or we cry. one or the other, and sometimes both. it ranges in severity from person to person. for example, my uncle gets downright obnoxiously ornery. and mean. and if respecting one's elders wasn't such a big thing, i would probably punch him in the face. or at least yell at him, because he gets absolutely ridiculous. i am nowhere near that bad, but hungry!me is definitely not one of my funnest versions to be around.

in other news, i have seventeen pages of my novel left un"edited" and i have only added just over twenty-three thousand words to it. my goal was forty thousand. i've made a few notes like, "go back and add such and such here" and "you forgot to make connor's mom into an actual character. again. go fix that." and "make the passing of time less inconsistent and unrealistic." so those will add more words, but i dunno if i'll actually get to forty thousand even with those or if i feel like going through the thing again to address these notes. the longer i sit with the thing (the thing being my novel) the more it seems really, really bad. it's very discouraging. but i'm stubborn. the plan is to go back and fix all the little notes i've been making first, then to go through it with a pen and paper(s) and every time i mention something about a character or an event to write it down so i can see how many times i contradict myself and fix it. (i complain so much about obvious inconsistencies with other authors that if i have any i deserve to be punched.) then i will move it into a book format by either pretending to publish it for the proof copy or just printing out the pages. i will read through it as a reader (or try to at least) and if i do not want to crawl into a hole with shame (actually, crawling into a hole is acceptable. killing myself from embarrassment is not.) then i will pass it on to some trusted readers to find out what they think. if all of this goes well then i will try to get published. and once i am published i will sign books with: editing sucks. -sarah

completely unrelated information: i go through phases with "scary" things. like, sometimes i can watch anything and not be affected at all and sometimes i watch nancy drew and am afraid to walk into my bedroom alone. the phases last for months and are very unpredictable. when supernatural first came out, i watched it religiously. then class time got in the way of show time and it was not one of the shows available online so i missed a couple of seasons. i have always said that i would go back and watch them all, though. i decided that this summer, the summer of shirking responsibility, was the perfect time. unfortunately, when i got four episodes into the first season (i forgot most of what happened) i realized that i was getting way too jumpy and should probably wait a bit on it. this made me sad so i decided to go through a few of the top shows that i always wanted to watch (or the ones that netflix did not take down. which is not many. grr.) and then go back to it, jumpy or not.

*I Won't Give Up - Jason Mraz

i can say it better than you

i reread books a lot. sometimes i go months reading more "old" books than "new" ones. when i was younger, i did not believe in rereading books. i was irrationally against the entire concept and would argue till i was blue in the face about how pointless it was to read something when you already knew what was going to happen. now i could go on about how amazing it is to curl up with characters that you already know and love and to go over your favorite parts, reading something new and learning something more from them every time, but that's not what i came here to say. i have certain books for certain moods, and when i get into a too-stressed-to-function mood -when my mind stops working because it's so overwhelmed and my body's go to reaction for everything is panic and tears - i pick up stephenie meyer. don't ask me why. right now, i'm rereading the host because, not only will i finish it faster than the twilight saga, but i am also being bombarded with images and clips of the movie version which is coming out soon.

maybe it's because of what i've been reading lately, but in this read i am not "learning something new" from the story, instead i find myself editing every sentence of the book. while still enjoying the story, i am thinking that an entire paragraph could have been shortened into a sentence, that we, as readers, are not stupid and can connect some dots on our own, and that that was definitely the wrong word choice. i semi-recently finished another book that i could (and have) rant about for hours (and maybe i will here one of these days) that needed some major editing. there were plot holes that i would have been falling through left and right if the language was not so awkward that it kept me from reading myself into the story. there were inconsistencies and mind numbing repetition and nowhere near enough research done into the time period that the story was written in. actually, forget research, these were just common sense things. i found myself editing the book as i went along, more interested in fixing the promising premise than reading the thing. then, i read (or started. i kinda put it down for a bit) a story that was also poorly written. aside from spelling and grammar errors (which you all know bug me to no end), there was this feeling that the author was trying so hard to be impressive. and nothing is less attractive than someone trying too hard. it was self-important and wannabe mystical and philosophical and just really not engaging. but i have plans to finish it. and then, of course, i've been receiving such great writing from my students. 

so maybe after those my mind is just in a state where it is ready to look for errors? maybe it's gotten used to making prose tighter and stories better and conflict more conflicty? i hope so, and i hope it lasts through the end of the host and the end pf this current bout of stress and procrastination. if i can be in this mindset while tackling my own story, there's no telling what i could do with it. i'd be elated to be half as picky. here's to hoping this pretentious editor in me sticks around for a bit. 

*Every Time I Die - Guitarred and Feathered 

all these things that i've done

did you know that kids are more likely to own a cellphone than a book? and i'm not just talking about teenagers, here. i'm talking about every child from the age of seven to seventeen. now, if this meant that libraries were being frequented more than bookstores, well then, i'd be okay with that. but most libraries i've been to say that they have some days where no one comes in. not one single person. and maybe i just live in an area where there are too many other things to do and people are too busy working for the government to go to a library or take their kids to one, but i really don't think this is only limited to my area. and i find this statistic both sad and really, really scary.

i want to blog more, but aside from feeling like i have no time to do anything lately, i also feel like i have nothing to say. i'm actually being pretty productive with my days. well, sort of. i'm getting things that i want to do done, and they may seem like a waste of time to other people, but i am not other people so it counts as being productive. and there are only so many times i can say that i'm editing and potterying and schooling and knitting before i want to punch myself in the face, so there's that.

i need to develop some subplots for my novel, and though i have two in mind, neither of them seem particularly exciting to me so i'm kind of dragging my feet with it. (probably because they're kind of hinted at and ignored already and my brain keeps telling me that if they weren't worth developing then, they aren't worth developing now.) i also desperately need a title for it, but can't think of anything good. titles are hard. once i have all the main plot points in, i can go back and edit line by line which i am looking forward to because there are a lot of things that need to be fixed on a sentence level. i was literally laughing at loud at some of the things i wrote when i was doing the initial read. so, so bad, you guys. but then there were some scenes that i read through and was just like, "wow okay i like this. this is good," and if i can get the rest of the scenes to incite that same reaction then i think this may actually go somewhere. maybe. at least i hope so.

i have two homework assignments due friday that i am supposed to be doing right now. actually, i was supposed to start them at nine and finish them at ten. which was fourteen minutes ago. so maybe i'm not as productive as i'm letting myself believe.

*All These Things That I've Done - The Killers