MF Rewrite:
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57,174 / 58,500
(97.7%) |
Only the epilogue to go!!*
*erm, and some major editing…doh. But I started June with under 35k! So Boo-yah.
Um, I’ll update more when this is done…I’m feeling a bit zombie right now. I realize this looks incredibly boring now, standing back, looking at this post…so I will come forth with a teaser perhaps, and maybe even tell you :
what’sitallabout??
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8 Comments »
Hee hee.
The title of this blog comes from something Husband said to me the other day. -BTW, am I the only one who pronounces it Why Eh in casual conversation?- Husband has been doing a long metamorphosis when it comes to my young adult writing. At first he didn’t take it at all seriously, and there was a lot of Why Eh bashing…but through classical conditioning (and perhaps the long nights alone in the dungeon) he has come to the point where he still doesn’t understand it, but recognizes it as an art form. 
So anyway, we were having a conversation about YA books, and he teased me saying the way I said it, it sounded like some kind of STD. So I was in the right humor, got the mental image and thought it was funny.
And that got me thinking: When did I come down with YA?
I remember almost exactly – I was 15.
My sister was going to college in the fall and I was struggling to identify myself as something other than Charlotte’s Sister. I was terrified of boys, and had been given a 20-year-old’s body for a nice kick of irony.
During this time I read and read and read. Mostly YA. Christopher Pike and L.J. Smith were my favorites. Books where boring everyday life is suddenly interrupted by the not-quite-possible totally grab me. But there was not enough YA to satisfy me! I sat up from a book one day and said I want to write this stuff! So I sat down at my PowerMac one night and decided to give it a go.
It was bad. High fantasy about a group of redheads who are persecuted for being redheads. (Hmmmmm….) I got about fifty pages in and hit a sex scene. I turned lobster red. All writing ceased.
Now, there are all kinds of ways I know I could have gotten around this …fade to black, promote abstinence, fake it… But what the hell was I doing writing high fantasy anyway??
So I stopped, and then we got “the internet” and my sophomore year began, and I started to become a real person. And that October my life became the plot of a YA novel. Someday I’ll blog about it.
Anyway, it took me years to come back to YA after all that (I know, and years to get to the end of this post!), but I remember that moment when I realized YA is what I want to do!
So…when did you come down with YA?
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MF Rewrite:
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52,735 / 60,000
(87.9%) |
Yes, the word count dropped again. -sob- But I won’t know how I feel about that until I’m finished.
Things along the way this week:
-I haven’t made as big a dent in word count, but I have wrassled some serious plot points. SO many loose ends to address – but I don’t think I’ve missed any so far!
-In the last couple of chapters I have had a character appear that was not in the book until this point. WAIT! I know you’re thinking that is a big fat no-no, but I promise it works…I hope. Getting to this character is actually part of what drives the story. She’s one of those many loose ends. Problem is, I have been so wrapped up in HER, that I’ve kinda let my poor MC go by the way-side. I wrote these great scenes over the weekend that new girl is the star of, but then I was like Where’s my MC??? She’s standing right there, but she’s hardly said two words in as many pages, and I haven’t been letting the reader in on her thoughts at all like I do in the rest of the book.
Damn. Two steps forward…
-Lots of action is fun to write, but sometimes feels sadistic.
-Self-Doubt and I have been having tea. Lots of it. Sigh.
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So I was listening to NPR today about the uncontacted-by-white-folk tribe of people living in the Amazon… and I could not stop thinking about Andrew Simpson Smith from Scott Westerfeld’s UGLIES series. (Have I mentioned I LOVE anthropology?) NPR was debating what the tribe calls themselves, and I seriously doubt they call themselves anything. If they don’t have much contact with others, there would be no reason to have a name for your own tribe. So I suggest we dub them the Andrew Simpson Smith tribe. Because I <3 Scott Westerfeld. And possibly because I drank too much coffee again and I’m up waayyy too late…damn.
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Mind Fire: Rewrite
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48,413 / 65,000
(74.5%) |
Agh, my eyes are crossed. Added almost 5,000 words this weekend – adjusted the projected word count (don’t know how I feel about that) -and the end is in sight!
Interesting things that happened along the way:
-MC’s ~boyfriend did something I was really not expecting. Like so much, that we argued about it because it really changed the story. I kept saying like, “Are you really going to do that?” And he kept answering, “Just watch me.” And he did. And let me tell you, My MCs best friends are PISSED OFF.
-I had an epiphany about the epilogue – which is a huge relief because the original was tres cheesy. But now I have to figure something out… If the whole novel is written in 3rd person close following my MC…can the epilogue be written 3rd person close – about someone else? (obviously a different important character, but it ties up a lot of backstory that’s important about her, and which drove the whole novel). I could write it from the same POV as the rest of the book, but I don’t think it would be as effective…
Anybody got some suggestions/advice??
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Mind Fire: Rewrite
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41,306 / 70,000
(59.0%) |
OMG, look at that! This is funny. I’m probably up too late (I swear this is writing related), but my sister is pregnant and she’s been sending me these weekly email updates she gets about the growth progress of her baby - Like for instance, this week baby is the size of a head of cauliflower. So I’m kinda tracking the progress of MF the same way. Except I don’t use vegetables… But if I did, I’d have to say this week, MF is about the size of a really cool-shaped Yam.
Which reminds me…the very first “report” I ever wrote in school was on the Yam. I picked it from a list of topics…because it was easy to spell. I had actually never heard of yams. My laziness backfired. I learned something anyway. Go figure.
Uncategorized | 6 Comments »
Hey, I wanted give a shout-out to Amanda, Mary, and Suzanne over at Lip Gloss Lit! http://lipglosslit.blogspot.com/
Back in May they had a contest to win a brand new copy of BREAKING DAWN.
I entered…and promptly forgot about it. But I WON! And just in case you’re curious, in order to win, you had to ask any question they could answer. So thinking about the lip gloss girls, and the prize I asked:
Who is the hottest vampire in literature? Edward, Dracula, Lestat…?
So…what’s your opinion on that? Yay Lip Gloss!
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I’m such a geek, but for my birthday this year, I really, really, really wanted some nice noise-cenceling headphones. I have wanted a pair ever since I saw Romancing the Stone with Kathleen Turner when I was a kid. It was still the eighties, but I knew when I saw her wearing big leave-me-alone headphones living in that lonely apartment with her cat, that I HAD to be a writer. ;-D
So…I got some!
I get so distracted by any little sounds when I write – I can’t wait to see if they really help!
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Mind Fire Rewrite:
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38,058 / 70,000
(54.4%) |
Yay! Exciting! After seeing what pitiful progress I made last month, I’m now three days into a fast-draft session (okay, fast-rewrite?) and with my goal of at least 1,000 words a day I’m getting serious. I should be close to or DONE by the end of the month! Then tweaking and critiquing! Eeeek!
This isn’t really a teaser…more of a snippet, but:
“Addy? You okay?”
The voice barely reached her. His thoughts were inside hers – her consciousness was flooded. She saw herself, the library, and fire..? Her breathing shallowed.
And then, she knew.
Addy clutched her chest and gasped. Everything went dark.
“That way,” she said, pointing west.
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