Arrrg.

So I was hoping to be able to proclaim that I have finished the novel. Nope. Not gonna happen. I realized that with each edit I did, it was to please other people, not myself. I didn't start writing to please others. Now, I know that there is a degree of pleasing others that every author has to contend with. Writing for the audience and all that. But that shouldn't suck all the fun out of writing or editing.

I had 4 beta readers who helped me get feedback so I could do all the editing I did. But the more I edited, based solely on what these readers thought, the more I ended up cutting, and the more skeletal the book looked. After the last edit I did, I looked down at my word count and realized I had cut almost 15 thousand words without adding a single one. I realized that I was no longer writing for myself and my characters. I was writing to please somebody else.

And that's when I knew I wasn't going to get my book out by thanksgiving. Which was my original plan. Now, being a perfectionist, and always having a plan and being rather inflexible, this really messed with my head. I got overwhelmed at how much I needed to put back into my world and how much life I needed to breathe back into my characters. I just looked at my pitiful story and cried.

So I called in my best friend and favorite genius. I asked her if she'd be willing to help me edit and go through the book and figure out why it was so messed up. It's always been difficult for me to edit my own stuff, because to me, it all makes perfect sense. I know the story, I know the plot twists, I know my characters, and I know the minute details. But, unfortunately, no one else does. So it's always hard trying to relay exactly what I mean, without giving away too much, and without sounding overly concerned with details. (I am often prone to over detailing the landscape, because descriptive things like that are some of my favorite things to write.)

So I sent her my poor, pitiful, emaciated story and she stuck it on her kindle and started making notes. One of the reasons I love asking her for advice is because, even though I'm her friend, she is always brutally honest. And that is what I needed right now, even though I physically flinched at some of the critiques. I know it's not a smack at me or my writing ability, but she is trying to help me make this the best it can be. And really, I think that's the only reason why I haven't scrapped the whole project.

Some of you may not know of one particular piece of my writing background. I've been writing, both long and short stories, poetry, you name it, since elementary school. I've always been an avid reader and writer. Most everyone, friends and family-wise, have been very supportive of my little hobby. When I was, oh, 14 or so, I decided I was going to write a book. I had met my best friend (the one I've been talking about) on a role-playing site and we had been writing back and forth for a while, and I wanted to turn that story into a readable, cohesive, book. She was totally into the idea and we got started. I can't tell you how excited I was. I worked on that thing day and night, printing pieces out, physically cutting and pasting sections so it read better, and then retyping it into the computer and sending it to her for verification. At that time, I had developed my self-esteem and self-worth through my writing. And as anyone can attest, a teenagers self esteem is a very fragile thing. While out to lunch with a mutual friend of mine and Chris's (my hubby, before he was even a boyfriend), I was asked how my project was going by this friend. That was all it took to get me to gush out how well it was going and how fantastic it was going to be and how excited I was, all that. This friends next sentence literally destroyed my writing confidence, and with it, a good portion of my self esteem. "Don't bother. You'll never get anyone to publish it. Talented writers wait years to get an agent to get their works published, and they're better than you are." Awesome friend, right? After that, I stopped writing all together. For years. Until Jacquelynn, the best friend, convinced me to start writing again on our own roleplaying site.

Slowly I worked my way back into writing, and I steadily gained confidence back, but never what I had before. I always had that crappy little doubtful sentence in the back of my head. For a while, I focused just on other roleplay stories and little things like that, but nothing big, like making a book out of our first roleplay. And for a long time, I got rid of that stupid little voice telling me I couldn't do it. And when I was dragged into doing NaNoWriMo for the first time, I thought I had gotten rid of that voice for good. Here I was, writing 50,000 words in a single month, with no inner editor to fuck it up. And what came out of that month, was awesome. Rough, but I loved it. It was mine, and it felt like I could make something out of it. I started shaping it up more and more, slowly building the word count higher and higher and higher. And that's when I sent out copies to my beta readers and things started going downhill.

As odd as it seems, especially to me, reading all of Jacquelynn's critiques actually made me more excited to start working on it again. Even after how much it's fallen and lost. We decided to work on it a chunk at a time (10% at a time, by kindle measurements), which makes it much more bearable. I had planned on printing out that ten percent, and since my mother in law is taking Felicity tomorrow afternoon, I thought I would take over that physical copy, a pair of scissors, some tape, and a couple highlighters, over to the theater. Yes, the theater. It's one of my favorite places to be, and if a show or rehearsal isn't going on, one of the quietest places you can go.

Sounds like a good plan right? Well guess what I rediscovered this morning? My printer doesn't work! With all of my pregnancy hormones playing ping pong in my head, I just wanted to cry. I could go print it out at my moms, but I really hate using her paper and ink, since it's so spendy now a days. I could also just try and do it all on my laptop and save the paper and ink, but honestly, I work so much better if I can physically write my edits. I don't know how many others are like that, but it's what I prefer! So now I'm stuck between just doing it, and giving in to that awful little voice in my head that I want so badly to mutilate and set fire to.

Aaaand I just realized how much of a ramble that was to tell you I have nothing to tell you. Ha! Suckers! >. > Yeah…

I'm Alive!

In the famous words of Shaggy: "Zoinks!" (If you didn't get that... There is no hope for you.)

Boy, the last few months have been... interesting to say the least. I was not intending on staying away so long, and I could make up all the usual expectant mother excuses; nausea, back ache, head ache, etc etc. I could throw in the already-a-mother excuses of toddler tantrums, potty training exercises, etc etc.

But, I really don't want to. I had started working on the novel again, just because I felt like it wasn't finished yet, and of course, my poor Mac dies. I mean, this time it died. As in, wouldn't even turn on or anything. So it had to go back to Apple and get fixed (sigh, again) but now that I finally have it back, I have lost the urge to do anything with it. I know I should, because I had a goal of getting it out into the Kindle world by thanksgiving, but I really don't think that's going to happen now. With everything else I have stacked on my plate at the moment, the novel is taking a back seat for a bit. I'm still planning on doing this years NaNoWriMo (I know, I know. I'm insane. Tell me something I don't know!), and am working on the story line and character building and all that. So I think I'll be ready for that, and if my Mac survives it, it will be awesome! In my own, completely unbiased opinion, of course! ;)

Now, if you care to jump on over to my other, and more pregnancy focused, blog, I'll give you updates and even a picture or two. And that's all the advertising I'm doing.

Back to writing... I will say, even though this is totally pregnancy related, that I will be going on bed rest, as ordered by my doc, at the end of the month. So you may be seeing, er, reading a lot more of me than you would care to otherwise, but hey, I may actually get something done while confined to my bed!