Finished! But wait, there's more

I finished the massive rewrite I undertook on my YA Fantasy, bringing it in at 82K and 25 chapters. See before the rewrite I'd gone to this fabulous website called Absolute Write or AW, where the very best critiquers eat, sleep and live, who gently informed me that I didn't have a story. And after swallowing that one down with a little bit of ice cream and cake I determined that yes indeed, they were right. My main character didn't have a purpose. He didn't have something to do other than live through it and that just wasn't good enough. So I wrote him a shiny new story and gave him a huge purpose, a couple of obstacles to test his mettle and I managed to retain the original scope, themes and basic story line of the original while I toiled away.

Now onto the 'wait there's more' part. There's always more, isn't there?

The last two chapters were torture to write, probably because sleep deprivation makes it hard to think straight much less write well. Maybe it was the idea that I was almost finished that slowed me down. I got there after many days of staring at a blank page and eating more ice cream than is a good for me.

And now I have to...here it comes....edit.

Cutting, trimming, tossing out the extraneous bs that ends up between the important stuff is not a lot of fun, but a necessary self-check. Editing is the polishing cloth you put to the silver to rub off the tarnish that's obscuring your brilliant prose. I'm going to try and keep that in mind as I juggle the day job, the kids, the house, the bills, pets who pee on the floor, life, etc., while I make this baby shine. I hope it's more fun than the last two chapters.

It's good to be writing again. Sometimes I think about giving it up, but then some idea or other will come and it's all I can do to wait to get to a place and time to write it all down, filling up the clean white space of a page, or the computer screen. Sometimes I still do write long hand in any old spiral notebook I can get my hands on if a computer isn't available. Technology is great, but it doesn't travel too well to the places I like to go, like the beach, for instance. Have you ever tried taking a laptop to the beach? Sand and sea salted air don't mix too well with electronic equipment! Pen and paper you can drop and not worry about, pick it up and brush it off. Not so with a laptop, ipad, kindle or anything electronic you might want to risk.

I'm handling the job/writing dichotomy a little better now, getting something of a schedule down. I'm still more likely to write at night than I am in the morning, though lately I've forced myself to do it. I'm just not awake enough in the morning. Of course I've not been awake enough at night either. There's got to be a happy medium. I wonder when others are at their most creative - morning, noon, or night? I don't like writing in the morning but I seem to do a better job of it then than at night when I'm tired from the day.

Wouldn't life be grand to get a job writing? Oh yes, yes it would. I'm not talking about being published though that would of course be the best of any world, but having a 'real' job that involved writing on a daily basis. Wish I knew how to get one of those, lemme tell ya.

Off to finish up a chapter....

Fitting in writing

How do people write and work a 'real' job at the same time? Not having the best luck figuring that one out. There's no time! I get ideas in the middle of the day just when there's not a computer in sight. By the time I get home, poof! Gone! Maybe I should start taking a small notebook in to inconspicuously write this stuff down. Doubt that will work. And then there's the exhaustion factor, as in too tired to think straight much less string together coherent thoughts on paper.

Speaking of...It's time for bed.