W-I-P Wednesday

Today's work in progress is a bit different than past entries.

Since I'm still giving myself a break from writing before diving back into revisions, I decided to dust off another part of my creative side, a side that's been slightly atrophied for a while.

This is my little homage to pop art great Roy Lichtenstein. I've always liked juxtaposing 2 seemingly opposite pictures, and I think this one will work well together.

I started the whole thing yesterday morning; penciled the top cell, ruled out the framing. I finishing painting the top cell around 8pm, then immediately penciled the bottom cell. Basically just got the black on the plane and the flames before collapsing into bed at 1am.

I'm hoping to finish this afternoon, probably around 3-4pm.

The woman's face still looks wonky to me, but there's not much more that I'm willing to do to fix it at this point. I'd have to paint all around her white and start all over, and...yeah, just not going to do that.

It's been fun to paint again, and it's giving me lots of time to think about my novel while I'm listening to my ultimate 90's playlist.


How about you? Any progress on the WIP? Anything new in the works?


And Don't Forget to Enter My Giveaway!!

Charleston

On Wednesday night, I finished my latest WIP, Saving Me. She rang the bell at 75,404 words, 153 pages (single-spaced), and 20 months.

Actually, that's not quite true.

The idea was born on November 1, 2008 (NaNoWriMo). I wrote about 32k, then stopped. Over the next year, I dabbled here and there at it, added about 10k, then stopped.

November 1, 2009, I started Eternal Spring, which you now know, and I finished that draft in March of this year. Pretty much a few days later, I decided I'd finishing Saving Me once and for all.

I cut down to about 23k and started from there.

So I guess it really took me around 4 1/2 months to write, if you added together the times I actually wrote on it. Once I had my breakthrough with Evan this past Monday, I really hauled ass and wrote 12k in two days. That's a big deal for me. :-)

Anyway!

I'm happy and content, but no great feelings of excitement this time, not like when I finished Eternal Spring. That was the first book I ever finished--the moment where I could look someone in the eye and tell them that I'd written a novel.

With Saving Me, I wasn't going to take no for an answer. I knew I'd finish, I just didn't quite know when.

Don't get me wrong--I'm excited. But more like this:

than this:

I finished writing around 10:30 Wednesday night, and what did I do? I immediately picked up the book I'd been reading (Where the Heart Is) and finished it. That's what I call celebration. :-)

Maybe because this idea's been with me for so long, niggling at the back of my head, compelling me to write it, the feelings are more subtle.


But anyway.

In continuation with tradition, I will be hosting a giveaway to celebrate finishing Saving Me. I'm afraid it can't be as fabulous as I'd like, since hubby and I are still basically poor college students, but I'll do my best. :-)

I'll have more details on the giveaway next week, but I can tell you that the prizes are all going to be writing/revision-related.



PS: Wondering about the name of this post? "Charleston" is the last word of the novel.  :-)

Have a fab weekend!

I Fancied Myself Faulkner (and then I learned better): WIP Wednesday!

A much more exciting WIP Wednesday report this week, friends! Thanks to the (ridiculous) goal I set myself over the holiday weekend, I was able to boost my wordcount quite spectacularly (for me).


Saving Me
genre: women's fiction
wordcount: 68, 316
goal: somewhere in the vicinity of 75,000 words


General Thoughts:

Bear with me.

As anyone who read my colorfully illustrated post last Friday knows, I had quite a week last week. A lot of it was WIP worries--as I drew closer and closer to my resolution, I began worrying about the plot, the conflicts, the characters--everything. I was valiantly trying to just keep writing, and I barely managed to keep the hounds of doubt at bay while I typed.

And then Monday night everything came to head.

There I was, pacing frantic circles in the office, practically shouting my issues with the book at my husband.

I was going for so much--so much that probably would have been lost on many readers. I was going for parallels, adding in subtle elements of the grotesque here and there, mirroring instances, Biblical allusions, several themes woven throughout, and TWINS! By Mjolnir, I wanted TWINS. And even the better, the grotesque was going to be IN THE TWINS. Flannery would be SO PROUD of me! And all this was getting so convoluted in my head that I couldn't even decide if I wanted my MC to scratch a freakin' lottery ticket without thinking of all the possible repercussions this lottery ticket could have, depending on what she revealed.

Evan let me rant and rave and generally sound like a crazy person (Faulkner), and then in his easy, logical way, he began to point out things in my plot that for him didn't work. And then he took my metaphorical hand and pulled back the curtain, and together we gazed on a land BRIGHT with possibility!

"Look!" he said. "THERE is where your story lies!"

And he was right. He's not a writer, my hubby, but he loves movies. And I'm starting to think that those who watch a lot of movies may be more in-tune with solid plotting than me, at least, who doesn't watch a lot of movies.

So I kept Evan up far past his bedtime, making him repeat our previous 30 minutes of conversation so I could type it. Then I threw bunches of questions at him, and we worked out my revised direction together.

It was beautiful. And then, friends, I slept. Soundly. And I woke up eager to get to the keyboard.

So here I am. When I started writing this morning, I had my new direction in mind, so maybe the last 10k won't need complete overhaul. Then again, it still might. Who knows? All I know is that I'm loving the WIP again, and that's enough for me!!


In other news:


Remember how I told you that I ordered my proof copy of last year's NaNo novel? Well, guess what came in the mail??

I didn't design that cover myself, but I'm still pleased with it. 

Let's just hope that I'm never the one to write the blurb for my books...

whee! I found a typo. 

How is everyone's writing going? I'm seeing lots of new ideas whispering to bloggers! Start a new project? Finish an old one? Have a new vision? Eaten some cake? Share!

W-I-P Wednesday

Geez, here it is again! It's like it comes every week or something...




Saving Me
Word count: 56,020
Goal: in the ballpark of 75,000 
Genre: women's commerical fiction 


General Thoughts


 As you can see, I've added nearly 6k to my wordcount since last week. I'm pretty happy with that progress, but hope to be speeding it up even more. I have a deadline in sight and really want the first draft complete by July 15. What can I say? I love arbitrary goals. 


I'm really battling the inner editor/shitty draft police right now, but so far I'm winning. Let's just say there's going to be a lot of work to do come revision time... 


I'm reading Sue Monk Kidd's novel The Mermaid Chair. She's the author of The Secret Life of Bees and one of the better-known names in Southern women's fiction. I haven't read Bees, but Mermaid Chair isn't bad so far. 


Also, I'm reorganizing my bookshelves to be in alphabetical order. Before I had it ordered by size. Is that weird? I'm a visual artist too, so I liked the symmetry. Alas, one of the shelves on my Target bookcase is sagging quite alarmingly, and the stupid manufacturers decided that it didn't need to be finished on the bottom, so I can't really flip it over. I'm hoping hubby will add a little support to it one of these days...just needs a few more gentle reminders. 




I've acquired 2 new television shows: The Gates and Rookie Blue. Any others watching these? What do you think? 

W-I-P Wednesday

Has it really already been a week?
Google Desktop doesn't lie (or does it?).


Saving Me
Word count: 50,855
Goal: in the ballpark of 75,000 
Genre: women's commerical fiction 


General Thoughts


I'm reaching that stage where I'm a bit terrified about where I'm going. I know from experience that it's pretty well downhill from 50k--thank goodness. However, the more I write, the more things are deviating from my [extremely loose] outline/plot guide. I'm already seeing the need for tons of scenes to be added earlier in the draft, freaking out about the heavy lean towards romance [though it's not a bad thing], and generally wondering how the hell I can communicate without their #$*@ eyes. 


In short, I'm making progress. 




----


Tonight will be Sigo's last night with Evan and me. We're going to Nashville this weekend, so we'll be taking Sigo to her new home a little earlier than expected. 


She had a fairly stressful weekend visiting the in-laws and their cats. 

Lots of toys lying about, though. 

Herbie just wanted to be friends, but he's a big boy & a wee bit intimidating (even though his legs are three inches long and he's declawed...) 

----

I"m reading my first Jodi Picoult book, Nineteen Minutes. I'll withhold judgment until I'm finished. 

In the meantime, I'm curious about your genres. 

What genre do you write? 

Sometimes Blogger seems inundated with YA authors--not that there's anything wrong with that. Just wondering where some of the other genres are! 

W-I-P Wednesday

We bloggers love our alliterative blog schedules, don't we? Since I love alliteration as much as the next person, I henceforth declare Wednesdays as the day in which I talk about my WIP and ask you awkward and random questions about your own works-in-progress, writing process, etc.

Saving Me
Word count: 46, 503
Goal: in the ballpark of 75,000 
Genre: women's commerical (Southern) fiction 
Terrible one-line summary without spoilers for my CPs: A graduate student with a troubled past must choose between herself and her family when an unexpected event throws everything she's worked towards into chaos. [Could that have been worse? Probably not. In fact, I don't even think that's what the story's about, but the spoiler is pivotal to the plot.]


General Thoughts
As always, work on SM is slow-going, or at least it feels that way to me. I'm trying to write around a thousand words a day, and so far I've stuck pretty well to that. Trouble is, a thousand words doesn't get me very far, story-wise, hence the feelings of sloth.

I've crossed 2 important plot bridges now, and am about to get to a third, which is all very exciting. New ideas are falling into place every time I sit down to write. I really love this story and its telling, but the urge for it to just be done grows stronger every day! 


Also, my ability to channel "shitty first draft" energy is shorting in and out. Help me, Anne Lamott, you're my only hope!


Short Excerpt (spoiler-free for CPs)

     Time to move on.
     And I would be moving along, in exactly...I checked my watch. One hour. One hour, and Georgia would be nothing but a faint, humid memory.
     But I would miss Julie.
     I'd been battling with feelings of selfishness ever since I decided to go after the fellowship. Julie had never asked for her lot in life, two siblings with mental illness and her own substance addiction. And when an angry, recalcitrant eight-year-old had been dropped in her lap, she'd never once complained or resented me or tried to pawn me off on any of my father's distant relatives.
     Julie taught me about unconditional love, but here I was, leaving her in the dust first chance I got. Not much Christian charity, that, but I'd never been a good Christian.
     She wanted me to go, or at least she said she did. More than anything, she said, she wanted me to get out of Clarkston and make something of myself. Not to turn out sick like my mother, or haunted like my uncle, or just plain motionless. Like her.
     She'd never said so much, but I knew.
     I finished my latte and left the coffee shop, found my gate and leaned against one of the picture windows.        Atlanta was not a pretty city, inside or out, but I'd known beauty here.


Questions for YOU


1. How do you format your first draft? For instance, I keep mine single-spaced, 12-point Times New Roman font. My draft is currently 90 pages long at 46.5k words. I think it's more exciting to double-space in the end.

2. What would you say is your #1 character physical tic? Mine is nodding. Nodding and shoving hands in pockets. #headdesk