Evil Cats, Evil Books

Most days I'm pretty sure my cat Mack is human-level intelligent and capable of reason. And that he uses his intelligence for EVIL. EEEEVILLLLL...

The apartment in which I will not be living much longer has ledges built into the walls around chair-rail height. These ledges are about 5 inches wide--perfect width for cat butts.

Mack the boy cat lives to walk across my desk. Over and over, blocking my view. Occasionally stopping to try and eat my plants. Knocking my candles onto the floor. Stepping on whatever is on my desk--paper, sandwich, whatever. All in the pursuit of looking out the windows...

This is pretty much our daily routine. Especially if I'm eating--the effort goes up a few notches. 

I've decided that I'm tired of waiting for my hubby to finish my rough draft of FOUR before I read it. He has 13% left, and that's close enough, right? So I'm going to start reading today. Let's see, it's been...28 days since I finished? Yes. So, a February has gone by, and I think that's enough time.

Last night I started to chicken out about revisions. I'm a big coward when it comes to revisions--I get so many ideas that they start snarling in my head until I feel like beating it against the wall. That's usually when I scrap the revision idea and start on a new draft. 

But not this time. Thankfully, my stalwart CPs (Lola, Portia, and Tara) are there to talk me away from the ledge. Last night I kept my breakdown limited to just my hubby, and he snapped me out of it well enough, but I know I'm going to need hand-holding. Turns out I'm a little bitch baby when it comes to revisions. (I got the phrase "bitch baby" from Grey's Anatomy and I love it.) 

Oh, and what's all this about the world ending and such on Saturday? I have plans on Saturday, thanks. 

Your Knowledge is Greater Than My Knowledge

In personal news: the house buying is coming along nicely! We had our inspection done earlier this week, and while we're going to have to replace the furnace/AC unit, we're still moving forward with the purchase. Our latest closing date has been set as June 1, but we're really hoping to close earlier so we'll have at least a week to make the move.

So if all goes well, this will be my first house! It's not much to look at from the outside right now, but I have big plans for landscaping and some repainting. The inside is very cute with some unique characteristics, though. And the backyard is huge! When I was there for the inspection, I watched two bunnies running around in the forested part of the yard--so cute!

I've been haphazardly packing the apartment, trying to keep some things out and unsure what to do with others...so basically, the apartment is a wreck with boxes everywhere. I like to have neat surroundings whenever I'm working on something big writing-wise, so the chaos isn't helping me think.

I'm still waiting on Evan to finish reading my rough draft, and he's getting closer. I've slowly started my story bible. So far I've got some of the world-building and a lot of the mythology, but nothing much else.

This is where I need help: I've never revised before. I have three messy novels sitting on my hard drive, all worthy ideas, all still untouched because I'd rather write a new messy one than try to clean up an old. But I really want to polish FOUR up and try my hand at sending it out, thus revision looms.

I have Donald Maass' The Fire in Fiction and The Breakout Novelist and am reading through them again with revision in mind, but I'd welcome any and all information you guys think might help me. Personal methods, links, websites, worksheets--anything!

And because it's been so long, a picture of my fur babes:

I was dyeing my hair. They were supervising. 

This is Just to Say...*

On The Revision Process:




Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action. 

--Benjamin Disraeli













*maybe William Carlos Williams next time

Revision, Day 1

I can't believe that I'd not found this blog before, but yesterday, in a roundabout manner, I stumbled on Alexandra Sokoloff's blog.

Holy mine of information, Batman!

Just a few posts in, I grabbed my notepad and started scribbling like I was in class again.

If you haven't checked out this blog, I highly recommend it can't recommend it enough! She's both a screen writer and a novelist, and her writing and organizing advice will appeal to anyone at any stage of the game.

After several hours soaking up her brilliance, I spent the rest of my day writing scene index cards and brainstorming. It was rather against my pantser nature, but since the novel is complete in my mind already, it's a little easier to get organized, y'know?

In a very rough form, I've indexed the first Act:

It all seems to happen so fast, but that right there is 20 scenes, folks. Twenty! And if each of those scenes is only 1,000 words, that's already 20,000 words--just in my skeleton outline.

 I'm not worried, though. Because after reading Alexandra Sokoloff's blog, I thumbed through an older issue of The Writer and found an interview with Audrey Niffenegger, who of course is the author of The Time Traveler's Wife and Her Fearful Symmetry.

Her advice for writing:

"Turn off the TV, get off the computer, and read a lot of whatever it is you hope to write. The more you read, the better your innate sense of character, story, rhythm, and style. Don't worry about publishing until your manuscript is excellent. Take pleasure in the writing itself and be willing to listen to criticism."


I'm going to embrace this advice as hard as I can!

What's at Stake?

Over the weekend, a good friend from college visited us with his cousin. I haven't seen this friend in a year and a half; he moved to Michigan 2 years ago for grad school and has only made it down to visit twice. We first met in Japanese 1101, where I sat behind him; we then discovered that we lived about a quarter-mile apart on the same road, and we took the same bus to campus every day. He bailed on that professor for the second semester of JPNS, but we met again in the third semester; later that year, I got a job at Borders, where he'd been working for some time, and we worked together there until graduation, marriage, and moving into adulthood.

He's also a writer, and he was the first friend I had with whom I felt comfortable talking about my writing. At the time we met, he'd already finished 2 novels and was slogging through ideas for his third (which is now in re-writes).

This time that we meet, we're on equal footing: two finished novels, slogging through revisions. There's a sense of camaraderie in that, and also a sense of shared desperation.

How is it that writing a novel "isn't that bad," but the prospect of a massive revision--oh God, it's crushing? As Lola calls it, Revision Hell.

I'm planning on diving into Revision Hell today. I'm feeling quite overwhelmed, as there's a lot that I need to do, and I'm not quite sure where to start.

In this month's issue of The Writer magazine, there's a short article called "What's at stake?" in which the author recounts a meeting with an agent who just couldn't understand what was at stake in her novel. He explained patiently--pulling down books he'd agented to prove his point--that on each page and in each paragraph, the reader must be aware of what's at stake for every character.


'Every character?' I repeated. 'Not just the protagonist?' 


'Every character,' he said. 


So she wrote "what's at stake?" on a post-it note and planted it in full view on her computer monitor.

I'm thinking this is good advice, and I have my yellow post-it all ready to go...


Any tips for a revisions n00b?