Deadlines

A little while ago, I set some deadlines for myself. They were as follows: 

Finish the final draft of DRACONIAN by March 31st. 

Finish the second draft of BMT by March 31st. 

Finish the second draft of my super secret novella side project (SSNSP) by April 15th. 

I told you that if I didn’t meet at least two of these deadlines, you could revoke my coffee privileges. 

Well, you can’t take my caramel macchiato away today. 

Not only did I finish DRACONIAN ahead of schedule, I also got back into the query trenches. 

Before starting this draft, DRACONIAN was 96K words long, which was a bit high. As I went through, I tightened the writing, cut one scene, and added another. My end word count? 83K words. It took three read throughs, four months, and at least fifty lattes. You could argue that it was, in fact, not just one draft. Whatever. The point is, it’s done. At long last, I am finally satisifed with the finished product. 

Fun fact: On the day I was finishing DRACONIAN, I was sitting in my customary spot in my church, in the lobby, on the floor, beside a potted plant. (No, I do not want a desk, thank you very much.) A lady from the church came by and introduced me to her grandson, who asked me what I was writing. I told him my book is about “revenge, dragons, and murder.” He then proceeded to sit there and read over my shoulder while I edited, and when he left, he told me he hoped my book got published so he could read it. 

*internal screaming* 

I also finished the second draft of SSNSP ahead of schedule, because I am bad at keeping side projects side projects. It started off as a 103K word NaNoWriMo-born manuscript, which I wanted to condense into novella format. *laughs hysterically* "Why would you do this to yourself," you ask? Several reasons. I have never been confident with short fiction. More specifically, I have never tackled writing a novella before, and it seemed like a good idea to challenge myself. Since unpublished writers traditionally struggle with tightening their writing, I figured turning a 103K draft into a novella-length project would be an effective, albeit brutal lesson in cutting the fat. So what was my final word count on this second draft? 8,200 words. 

Now, before you start telling me that’s a short story, not, in fact, a novella, rest assured I am well aware of this. That is by no means the final word count. My process involves cutting away most of the rough draft so I can figure out the bone structure before going through and, in the third draft, adding muscle instead of fat. In this current draft, there is sparse description, little-to-no dialogue, and a lot of glossed over stuff. That’s okay. My main goal was just getting all the scenes in order and the plot tacked down so I can have a solid foundation. 

My end goal for SSNSP is to end somewhere between 25-30K words. I’m a little worried, with good cause (*cough* DRACONIAN started off as a short story and is now the first book in a trilogy *cough*), that this novella could still turn into a novel. 

"What about BMT," you ask? "As I recall, you were making such good progress on it." 

I know, I know. I was. 

What happened? 

A number of things. First and foremost, DRACONIAN took up more time and mental energy than I anticipated, and I wanted to prioritize finishing it up so I could focus on newer, shinier projects. But the biggest thing that happened was that, as I progressed, I found myself dissatisfied with the direction my story went in the rough draft. I found myself needing to draft new scenes while editing, but I can’t do that if I’m not sure where I’m even going with the overall structure. This means I’ll likely have to write a brand new rough draft. 

There’s also the matter of BMT being a weird, intensely emotional creature. I spent a year planning it and jotting down assorted scenes before I even drafted it in November 2015. And after, I immediately set it aside to let it cook until I felt I was ready. Now that time has passed and I understand the story better, I have to update the book accordingly. 

So what are my plans now? For the next couple weeks, I’m going to focus on sending out more query letters, writing and editing more blog posts, reading more books and watching more Netflix, and possibly editing a short story or two for fun. I also want to organize my hard drive, streamline my blog, answer comments, and tackle other assorted projects that work well for procrastinatory purposes. Realistically speaking I won’t have time to accomplish everything on this list, but I hope to at least make a dent. My creative well is a bit dry after completing DRACONIAN, so while I don’t want to waste time, I’m also struggling to dive right into the next project. 

My new deadlines are as follows (assuming no other time commitments get in the way, which they might): 

Finish draft three of SSNSP by June 30th. 

Finish draft two of BMT by June 30th. 

Finish draft two of DRACONIAN 2 (hereafter known as D2) by July 31st. 

Once again, if I fail to meet at least two of these deadlines, you have permission to revoke my caffeine privileges. 

What about you, my little coffee beans? What are some of your writing successes and setbacks? What are some of your goals?

Busyness

Confession time. I am a good deal busier than I had planned to be, though I should have seen this coming. I have never tried to edit three projects simultaneously in the past, much less while on a tight (although self-imposed) deadline, much less while trying to keep up with blogging and other activities on the side (like my custoidal job, and socializing, and oh, also trying to make myself eat food, among other things). 

That’s not to say I’m discontent or floundering or whatever. And I’m not going on hiatus, because I have taken enough breaks already and I’m itching—itching, I tell you—to get back to a twice-weekly blogging schedule, if I can possibly manage it. I am loving this—I am loving learning to deal with heavy workloads and tight deadlines in a controlled environment (since I don’t have the teeth of an acutal publishing deadline). I’ve found that I am more productive by far if I have a fire lit under my butt, because if I don’t, I tend not to prioritize writing. Which is lame, because I love writing. 

That being said, I think I am currently behind on all fronts, but I am also doing far more writing/editing work each day than I was before I set my crazy deadlines, so even if I don’t make a single one of them, I will still come out ahead. I should at least be able to finish the final draft of DRACONIAN on time. Contrary to my fears, I have not been hating working on it. In fact, I’m loving this draft so much I’ve been working overtime and, consequently, slacking off on reading. I have hit a roadblock on BMT, but that always happens at least three times in the second draft stage, so I just need to be a big girl and power through it. And I am making a little bit of headway on my novella sideproject. You can sort of track my progress here, but I’m finding I’m kind of terrible at remembering to update my word counts, so most of the time it will probably only be accurate for DRACONIAN. 

But back to blogging. I am hoping, hoping, hoping to be able to, as soon as possible, reach a state of equilibirum where I can post reviews on Mondays and regular posts on Thursdays (reviews being the first to go if I get too busy). I had meant to start that schedule last week, but I’m in a weird rut where I’ve been coming up with ideas and drafting them like crazy, only to lose myself in other edits and forget to finish getting anything ready to post. So I have the material, I just have to prioritize it a bit more. One thing I have done to maybe help myself out a little on the blogging front is organization (Yay! Scrivener index cards! Color-coding! Scrivenings!). 

In summary, I am busy, busy, busy, and I'm having lots of fun, but I need to ease up on the throttle a little so I can get more reading done, which will help with my anxiety. 

Before I go, can I just say? This music video is weirdly inspiring and I love it probably more than I should. That is all. 

What about you, my little coffee beans? What projects have you been working on lately (writing or otherwise)? What are some ways you deal with stress? Do you struggle with balance? What are some weirdly inspiring things you’ve stumbled across recently?

2017 Accomplishments and an Ode to Scrivener // Also a Snippet

Yes, you read that title correctly. I started out this year cynical and frustrated with goal making, and while I am still hesitatant to make grandiose goals I might not be able to accomplish without running myself into the ground, the year is not even a third over and I already have progress to celebrate. And celebrate I will. 

During NaNoWriMo, I drafted what was intended to be a novella with the idea that I could edit it on the side and hopefully publish it, serially, on Out of Coffee, Out of Mind in early 2018. (Now, please remember that a lot could change between now and then, so I don’t want to promise that I will be ready or willing to share it with the world when the time comes, but I also want to gauge interest. So if a serialized novella on this here blog would be something you’d be interested in, please, please let me know.) 

I have two goals, of sorts, for this project: 1) I want to challenge myself by writing a shorter work of fiction, since I’ve always felt that’s one of my areas of weakness, and B) I want to work on being consistent. *ahem* 

Back to what I was trying to say. I drafted this baby in NaNoWriMo, and if you were paying attention to the individual word counts of the projects I completed during November (if I shared those, I don't remember now), you’re probably wondering why you didn’t see a novella-length work. Um, see, that’s because the first draft for this widdle project clocked in at 103,000 words and change. It’s almost like I have a problem or something. Anyway, this gave me pause, because while I have historically cut half of my novels’ words during the second draft, I have also ended up adding 20-30K during the third. Of course, I got the sense that I had included extraneous information and unncessary internal monologue in an attempt to figure out where the plot was headed (because my writing process could best be described as: “There appears to have been a struggle”), but I also wrote this draft fairly near to the end of NaNoWriMo when I was in a coffee/wrist-pain/food-deprived trance, so you’ll have to pardon me if my memory is a tad distorted and shiny in places. 

Still, I decided to pull one of my more brash moves, which I like to call: “Hold my coffee—watch this. But also, like, I’m going to need that coffee back in just a moment.” 

Okay, let’s put on the brakes here, because I didn’t just write a gazillion words on this here baby. Oh no. That would be waaaaayyyy too simple. No, I wrote everything, and I do mean everything, out of order. In one document. Why, you ask, why? Because Scrivener, I tell you. Now, I have owned Scrivener for over a year already, but until this week, I did not know the true power of what I possessed. (Forgive me, muse fairies, I was young and foolish.) However, I was intelligent (yes, intelligent, we’ll go with that) enough to realize that you can at least use Scrivener to split your document into managable sections, which you can then switch around at will using the corkboard feature. So I let myself go hogwild with this draft, and honestly, I wouldn’t have let myself do that on Word because of all the clean-up I knew I was going to have to do, but it was also what this draft needed in order to come to life. Enter Scrivener, my hero. 

Coffee beans! My dear, dear coffee beans! 

You can color code things.

“But wait,” you say, attempting to be polite and ignore my embarrassing outburst, you kind soul, you, “aren’t you putting the cart before the horse here? You haven’t even finished the second draft yet. Why are you celebrating, you walnut???” 

Because coffee beans, in less than a week, I was able to take my giant 103,000 word “novella”, organize it into some semblance of consecutive order, use the notecard feature to painlessly whip together a detailed outline that has the tiny part of my brain that wants to be a planner in a state of euphoria, and hack off over 48,000 words—48,000 words—bringing my draft to a little over 55,000 words. Obviously it’s still too long to be a proper novella, but just from skimming the whole thing, I can tell that I will be able to cut at least 20-25K easily. This will take a lot of work, a lot of hours, more than one headache, and a devotion to concise writing that I am still working to develop, but don’t tell me it can’t be done. 

So you see, I love Scrivener. But I lied about the ode part in the title. I'm not going to start writing lyric poetry about it, even if it is an impressive word processor. 

You thought that was all, but it’s not. 

Oh no. 

Because there’s nothing like coming clean about an embarrassing personal struggle to get you into the rhythm of things. 

So far this year, I have also edited about 15K words of one of my two major WIPs, and I’m loving it. It’s a harder one, both emotionally and stylistically, than any project I have previously tackled. Had I attempted to edit it two years ago when I first wrote the rough draft, I don’t think I would have been ready to dive into it. Which is partially why I set it aside to age while I tackled DRACONIAN and then fell off the bus for a while (something I plan to talk about soon). But even though this project is challenging, I wouldn’t trade it for any other story in the world. *wipes away fake tear* *stares dramatically into camera lens* 

I do, however, really need to finish DRACONIAN so I can start sending out query letters. I’m so close to being finished, I think the biggest reason why I’ve been stalling is that I’m scared to return to the querying trenches. And by that, I mean, I think I’m scared that I will get an agent and a book deal and have to work on DRACONIAN even more, which at the moment sounds like less fun than chewing off my hand. Consequently, I’ve been burying myself in other writing work, all the while ignoring the red folder in my computer bag. (This, however, is not how you get published, folks. Monkey see, monkey don’t do.) 

In addition, I have drafted more blog posts over the past week, and will hopefully be blogging every Thursday (plus any bonus content I feel like throwing at you) from now on. 

I mentioned in my 2017 resolutions-ish post that I didn’t want to set many public goals for myself, but I do want to share my current project deadlines with you for accountability reasons (because I have been bad at meating deadlines for DRACONIAN, and I can’t afford to make a habit of that). So, you have my permission (and my encouragement) to pester me about these deadlines and revoke my coffee privileges if I fail to meet at least two of them. 

Here are the lines of death (to my sanity): 

DRACONIAN: Finish final draft and begin querying by March 31, 2017

BMT (my other full-length, priority WIP): Finish second draft by March 31, 2017 (sic)

SSNSP (Super Secret Novella Side Project): Finish second draft by April 15, 2017

Obviously, I have other writing plans for this year, but I’m not going to talk more about them in this post. I have to keep some secrets, don’t I? (I don’t, not really, but something about starting an editing project in secret lets me enjoy it more. *shrugs*) 

Anyway, in the title to this post, I promised you a snippet, so here’s a snippet of BMT (and be forewarned, I still have a lot of editing to do, so this probably won't be the final version, but I still wanted to share a little something of what I’ve been doing): 

“The sink of his mind was backed up again. His thoughts made slow revolutions, draining in microscopic increments. The paper swam before his eyes until all he could see, for half an instant, was a snapshot of her bending over a rosebush, a white dress clinging to her hip bones, a floppy straw hat shielding her brittle hair from the sun, a trowel in the dirt-stained glove of her hand. The single sliver of her face he could see past shadows and faded memory was the hint of her mouth, trying for a rueful smile. His fingers found the watch by habit, toyed with the dials as he toyed with the thought. Habit took over and he almost pressed the watch face. Barely managed to stop himself. Felt the whiplash as his body careened to a halt while his mind kept going. 

Not again. The memory was slow poison. Already he sensed it dripping into his veins, seizing up his heart. He blinked and he could smell her perfume, could feel the cool breeze braving summer to bring him the faintest taste of her scent, the smallest sample. 

His eyes slid halfway shut as the world blurred. Reality untethered, let him squish soil between his toes, let him relive without returning, and he sat there in a daze, his body pressed heavily into the dying couch, until a famliar metallic click woke him from his reverie. 

His hand found the watch face, but the cold press of a gun barrel kissed his temple, and time ran out for the time traveler.” 

And that's it for today. 

What about you, my little coffee beans? What writing shenanigans have you been up to lately?