Almost there...almost there...

Yes, okay, I'm not finished with my NaNo book yet. I've been writing steadily on it, though, working hard to wrap it up with a reasonable ending.

I reread the whole thing for the first time yesterday, and you know what? It's actually pretty good. That's the main reason why I decided to take a little more time to finish it; the beginning is so promising, and the follow-through not bad either, that it seemed a shame to rush the ending just to get it done. That's essentially what I did with Bell-Men, when I was trying to finish it before NaNo, and now I'm having to rewrite the last third of that book. I'd rather do a good job the first time.

Besides, I think I can finish tomorrow.

Getting to those magic words

I've made it to about 32,000 words in my nano book. I'm really getting impatient with it. The writing is terrible, the story banal, the plot more of a plod. I like the main characters, but they never have engaged my imagination the way my best characters do.

So I decided today that I'm going to wrap it up as soon as possible. Tomorrow's my day off, so this is my goal: tomorrow I will finish my nano book. I won't get to 50,000 words, of course, but I'll get to "the end." Then I can go back to my Bell-Men rewrites and I'll just count any additional words I write on my nano count.

I like that idea! Cam has been really patient with me, especially considering that I left her in the middle of a scene where she's been kidnapped by vampires and she thinks all her friends have been killed, but she's getting really insistent about me getting back to her.

No books in November

I'm feeling much better today, so much better that I no longer loathe my NaNo book. Still, at lunch when I dragged my beat-up notebook out of my bag along with the leftover pizza, I had a wave of "oh hell, not now." So I tra-la put the notebook away and pulled out the paperback book I've been carrying around for weeks, Fritz Lieber's Swords & Deviltry.

I know, I know, I've been talking about reading it for probably two months now. I even started it in October, but before I could get more than a few pages in, suddenly it was November. I don't read much during NaNo. But today I read through lunch.

At first I couldn't really get into the book. It's a parody of those swords and sorcery books that were popular in the 60s and 70s, which I've never loved. But--about twenty pages in, I suddenly realized that I love this book dearly and want to read it until I'm done. That's going to make it hard to get a few thousand words in on my NaNo book tonight. And that's why I don't read much during November.

Other people suck (present company excepted)

I just went through my files to find an old story to rewrite or a WIP to finish that might catch my fancy. I'm so bored with my NaNo book that the mere thought of writing one single word on it today makes me want to take an axe to the computer. Alas, I can't find anything else I want to work on either.

I know, I know, I ought to go back and finish the rewrites for Bell-Men. But my current reluctance to write, and my loathing of my NaNo book, are directly related to stress. I'd just open up the Bell-Men document and reach for the axe too. Until my stress eases up (it's about work, and I'm hoping to get it resolved tomorrow, which I dread because it involves confrontation), I doubt I'll be racking up many words. It's infuriating that this is happening now, during NaNo, but at least now that I've figured out what the problem is, I know it's not the project itself that's failing to hold my interest.

You know what my idea of bliss is? Working for myself, by myself, without needing to deal with other human beings in person at all. Other people are self-absorbed jerks.

Of course you're not a self-absorbed jerk. It's all those other people.

Oops.

Time to call in the evil clowns and cowboys and attacking robots! I've run out of plot. How do you run out of plot in a book that is so far only 23,000 words long and probably will be wrapped up by 35,000 words? I don't know, but I just managed it.

Of course I'm not entirely out of plot. The plotlines aren't resolved yet and the main character keeps getting into worse messes. It's just that I have the notebook in front of me and I'm staring at the next blank line thinking, "Now what? Nothing is happening. Nothing is about to happen. Unless I have May's breakfast brought to her by ninjas or something, there's a definite lack of things happening in the foreseeable future."

Maybe I'll just have the bounty hunter return and menace May for a little while. Except that he wouldn't do that when she's hanging out with a dragon. So I'd better get her away from the dragon. She really needs a bath and a change of clothes. Hehe, maybe she'll discover a bounty hunter spying on her then.

The hard parts of writing

Ideas are easy. Writing is easy, even though writing well may not always be. Even revisions are easy. No, the hard parts of writing are the parts no one ever tells dewy-eyed young writers about.

I just had to write another bio. I hate those things. How do I make a bio sound interesting but not amateurish, informative without being brusque? Answer: a lot of work. And I still probably failed.

Queries are hard. Synopses are hard. Sure, there are writers who like writing both, but there are some people who enjoy getting their heads run over by trucks. There's no accounting for taste. If I had to choose one or the other, queries are not quite as awful as synopses. Synopses are horrrrrrible.

Keeping track of contracts is not easy, no matter how organized a writer is. I have a big plastic file where I keep contracts, each one in its own folder, and on the front of the folder I write when I signed and sent the contract, when my copy of the contract was returned, when reprint rights become available, how much I'm being paid and when the payment was received, and whether I've received my comp copy. Thank goodness for manila folders.

Keeping track of submissions is simpler than it used to be because of Duotrope, but I never rely 100% on Duotrope. What if its server tanked tomorrow? I keep a binder with careful records of every submission I've made since 2007. I'm always having to refer to it.

Taxes. Taxes are really hard. This week I received my first, albeit tiny, royalty check for Jack of All Trades. Taxes this spring are going to be...interesting. As in "may you live in interesting times" interesting.

Networking and The Business is not as hard as writing a synopsis and can be fun, but it's complicated. This week alone I've written a guest blog about editing, posted a review on Skunk Cat Book Reviews (which I love to do and started for fun, but which is all part and parcel of writerly networking), written that bio and sent a photo for an anthology, read a short story proof and responded to that editor, and updated my blog.

Yeah, this blog. Updated!

Plans

I'm down to one active short story. I've either sold or retired everything else I've written. I have three stories forthcoming in different magazines, but that's it.

I hate writing short stories, but it's becoming obvious that I need to do just that. Once my nano book is finished and I'm done with the Bell-Men rewrites, I want to knuckle down and write some short fiction. It's either that or not sell anything next year, and I like selling stories. It makes me feel like a real writer.

Besides, when I get a really juicy idea for a short story, it's almost as fun to write as a book--with the added bonus of not taking very long. I just wish I got those juicy ideas more often.

Speaking of juicy short fiction, here are three you ought to read:

"Faith" by Aaron Polson
"The Revival" by Jeremy Kelly
"A Cause for Celebration" by Jameson T. Caine