Willow's Inner Thoughts...

Derichos, lightning, and full binders... Oh my!

2009-07-20T17:55:00.004-05:00

Wow! It's been a while since I've been able to blog. Sorry 'bout that. :(

Between the dericho (a hurricane that forms over land) hitting our town and lightning striking and frying a lot of our electronics, things have been hectic that last few months to say the least. We're just now finishing up the new roof from a storm that happened in early May...

The therapy has been going really well for our son and we'll be starting up at a really good autism center later this month. In essence, I think things are finally settling down... (looks left and right, waiting for something new to hit...)

And since things seem to be settling down, it's time to write!!! Today, I printed off a hard copy of my first draft, all 239 pages of it (my poor printer... I had to restart the laptop twice to clear the memory so it could finish printing.). With all of the ideas spinning around in my head, I think this is the only way I can sort them out right now. Well, that and it's amazing how many errors jump out at you on paper that are invisible on a computer screen (how does that work anyway?). I hate wasting paper and that's why I haven't printed it out before, but this was important. It needed to be done

Have any of you ever printed out a 239 page book you've written and stuck it in a 3-ring binder? It's amazing. It's crazy. It finally seems "real". Before, it was all just pages in an electronic document, but now... WOW! It filled a 1.5 inch binder nearly full. Seeing it in hard copy like this is major motivation to get it done so that maybe it can appear in a different hard copy format someday.

The portability of the binder will help things out too. I write on a laptop, but it's a big laptop with a widescreen and a full keyboard. In order to take it with me to work on the story when we're out and about, I have to pack up not only a toddler and diaper bag, but also the full laptop case and hope I have an outlet nearby since the battery doesn't last very long. Now, I can just toss a few pens and pencils and the binder into the diaper bag and head out.

As for the content of the book, I think I know most of the major changes that will occur, but am keeping an open mind knowing that the characters will probably voice their opinions as well. The first chapter is definitely going to change, that's been decided finally. I was uncertain about this change at first, but the more I think about it, the more I like it. It will make the beginning a lot more interesting and hopefully make the reader feel the need to read the rest to figure out what happened.

I'm not sure if this new chapter will be a type of epilogue or what. I'm really not sure what to call it. The first chapter will be a scene that actually occurs towards the end of the timeline and the rest of the book will be showing the events leading up to that scene and then continue from that point on to the big ending.

I'm 99.9% sure that my current first chapter will remain in the book, I'll just move it to a different location. I really like how it introduces several of the characters and sets up some running jokes used throughout the book by the friends.

I'm also 99.9% sure that my favorite chapter, my baby, will be cut. It's one of the funniest, most relatable chapters that I've come up with I think, but would be really hard to pull off without breaking copyright laws or having some popular musicians suddenly become really generous. The only to salvage the chapter would be to write some lyrics to original songs in order to include them. I might even give that a try even though writing songs and poetry isn't something that I think I do well. Oh well, I guess we'll see what happens if my writing gremlin or I get inspired.

Another writing-related issue that's caused my work on Instinct to slow down is the prevalence of another one of my non-Instinct characters in my daily thoughts. A while back I created a character named Lisa with a pretty cool backstory. Love, love LOVE this character! Well, she's been making herself really well known in my thoughts as I've been processing hundreds of possible storylines for her. I know the basics of what her story will be, but there's still a lot left unplanned and she doesn't like that one bit. I've been playing around with her character, putting her in different situations and seeing what turns out the most interesting and still haven't decided anything. She's just going to have to deal with the fact that her story isn't ready yet, even if her character is pretty much fully developed. Now to break it to her so I can get back to my other favorite character, Casey.

But anywho, that's what's been up with me and my book lately. House repairs, replacing fried electronics, and therapy for the toddler. But the important part is that I'm finding ways to make writing a priority again by making it easier to access.

So, until I blog again...
Talk 2ya later...

~Willow

Writing Mojo - Check!... Internet Access - not so much...

2009-05-26T10:34:00.004-05:00

Well, I typed up this post on 5/24/09, but then our Internet went down as the cable company is still working on lines in the area from the storm. So, here it is... better late than never!

***

Okay, the yard and house are mostly cleaned up from the in-land hurricane… We’ve pretty much settled into a routine of sorts with our son and his autism therapists… Technically, we’re all still sick… but, I’m back! This time it’s going to stick gosh-darn’t!

I’ve found my writing mojo and realize that my brain never stopped working on the book, it just did it in the far corners of my mind where I wasn’t paying attention. Today, I skimmed my first draft and read over all of my notes and ideas for what to tweak in the second.

Somewhere around page 211, I think I figured out what to do about my first chapter. The scene that is currently chapter one is all right. I like it and plan on keeping it in the story, but it just didn’t seem right for the first chapter. The chapter that is supposed to draw everyone in and make them start asking questions and needing to read the book to figure them out... The current chapter is a fun way to introduce several of the characters while showing Casey’s personality, but it just doesn’t have that… that, you know… That thing that makes you curl a little more into a book that you’ve begun? Yeah. That.

But, as I said, around page 211 of my skim-fest, I had an epiphany. I really like my new concept, but am wondering exactly how I’ll pull it off. I’m thinking that I want to start the book with the death of one of my favorite characters, preferably within the first two pages. Currently this death occurs towards the end of the book, but I’m wondering… maybe I can start the story there and have it leave enough cryptic clues to really get the reader sucked into the story and then have it go back and start at the beginning. Maybe have the death be a type of prologue, even though I know that some people don’t like those.

Start with the death and have the next chapter start up with the scene that is set to start next on the timeline. This scene includes a phone call where Casey is told about the death. Now, what I’m thinking is that the shock of hearing that this character is dead will have Casey internally questioning what happened? Was there anything she could’ve done to stop this? Thus, leading into the story from the beginning.

This would make the bulk of the story in the past tense as it’s describing what’s already happened and would require a bit of extra rewrites to accommodate this. But! One concern that has been expressed with the story is that it’s in the present tense. This way, most of it would be past, until we catch up to that point in the story, where she is sitting in shock. Then it would pick up in present tense.

This would also explain why most of the story is from Casey’s POV. It’s all her memories at that point. Once we catch back up to the present time, the POV starts swapping around again, at least a couple times.

It would also give me more chances to lay cryptic clues about the men in Casey’s life and it lets the reader know what a large part the dead character actually plays in the story. What they do in those first couple of pages lays the groundwork for the entire series.

I wish that my husband was home from work or that my beta reader was online right now because I want to explain this idea in detail to someone who knows the entire story to see if it works for them. I think that vocalizing it and answering any questions that they might have will help me decide if this is really the way I want to organize my chapters.

There are a lot more tweaks that I plan on making to the story that will really change it for the better as well. But, I’d really like to start by reorganizing it if that’s the path that I choose to take. Otherwise, I might rewrite a chapter and then have it affected by the reorganization and need to be rewritten again.

But anyway, I guess I’ll spend the time until the hubby gets home reading the story and adding in more comments via the Track Changes feature on where I’d like to add in all my new ideas.

Oh yeah, I’ve also found a great new procrastinatory outlet other than Facebook. I enjoy watching TV shows on the Internet because I can never seem to remember to watch them when they’re actually on. (Yeah, no TiVo or DVR and I’m not about to try and find a blank VHS to use the VCR.) But anywho… somewhere along the lines, I discovered that the Highlander series is on Hulu! I loved that series and it’s been forever since I’ve watched it. So, now that most of my shows are on hiatus until the fall season, I’ve been watching Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod beheading people. Hopefully, my writing mojo is stronger than my need to watch Highlander… I can find a healthy balance, right?

Anywho, until I blog again…
Talk 2ya later…

~Willow

***

Additional Note: After talking with the hubby, I think I know how to make this new idea work in the story. I'm going to start the second draft with the new, reorganized story and if, in the end, I don't like it, I can go back to the first draft copy and start over.

I spoke too soon...

2009-05-10T11:21:00.003-05:00

It figures that as soon as I decide to start working on my novel again... southern Illinois gets hit by an inland hurricane!

Our town was where it peaked, but we're fine. We were exceptionally lucky that nothing major happened to our house. A little bit of damage to our back porch roof and some hail damage on the cars, but overall not bad.

We don't have power and don't expect it back anytime soon. Had to drive 20 miles to find a town with power and wi-fi so we could let friends know we were all right.

I don't have much time as we need to head out and buy some supplies while we're in an area with power, but I just wanted to let everyone know where I am if I'm not able to respond for a week or more.

Hopefully power will be back up middle of next week, but we're not holding our breaths.

So, until I blog again...
Talk 2ya later...

~Willow

I'm Back... I hope...

2009-05-08T12:15:00.003-05:00

Well, we are all finally getting over the various flu's and other illnesses that have invaded our household. The stomach flu ping pong match appears to be over, yay!

Things are going really well with my son's therapy sessions and we look forward to starting occupational therapy next month (yay for wait lists...) We still have some paperwork to fill out for other services and I'm looking for a support group for parents with autism in my area, but I think it's time...

Time to come back. I really miss writing. I miss my characters and that rush that I feel when I get it right. I've felt myself sinking into a depression of sorts since the diagnosis last month and know that I need to focus on some "me time". Writing pulled me out of post-pardum depression and made me feel like myself again in the past and I'm hoping that it will do the same for me this time around.

I know that I won't be having 4k writing days anytime soon, but even a couple hundred words is better than nothing. Squeezing in writing sessions during naps or when my husband is home to watch our son... I have- no I need to do this for myself. Getting sucked into the fear and uncertainty that a diagnosis of autism in your child causes isn't an option. I will face these emotions head on and channel the energy and emotions into my characters.

I have to re-read my manuscript as it seems like it's been forever since I've ventured into the world of Instinct. That will have to wait until tomorrow though. We have family in town tonight and they want to take us all out to dinner. (If everything doesn't wash or blow away in these intense storms that is...)

No promises on how often I'll be able to update the blog or how much writing I'll be completing at first, but I do promise to try my best.

***

Other Notes:
Once again, THANK YOU to everyone who has commented or emailed me with support and kind words. Having not found a local autism support group yet, your words have helped keep me grounded and have reminded me that I'm not alone in this. *Virtual Cookies for You All!*

Other News:
A while back, I mentioned how much I enjoyed reading The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan. Well, she recently sold the movie rights! Apparently, it's being created for a yet-unnamed A-list starlet. Not bad for her debut book. Way to go Carrie!!!

***

Well, that's it for now. My son has decided to squish his veggies from lunch in between his toes, so I have a lovely mess to clean up.

Until I blog again...
Talk 2ya later...

~Willow

You guys are the best...

2009-05-02T13:47:00.004-05:00

When I made my "Taking Time Off..." post, I never expected the outpouring of support that I've received. The posts and emails have been simply wonderful and so helpful. As many of you know, first-hand, getting a diagnosis like this can be difficult to cope with. So many mixed emotions and changes to your lifestyle... it's truly an emotional roller coaster.

So, thank you! Thank you everyone who had a kind word or inspirational story to share with me. Thank you for making me feel a little less alone in all of this. I've been pretty depressed off and on this past month and all of your support has really meant the world to me. And thank you Robyn for nominating me for the lemonade stand blog award! (I'll be making another post for it shortly.)

On a positive note, my son is doing really well. He's in developmental and speech therapy and has been given a trampoline to help with his sensory issues. We've started PECS and he's making wonderful progress with it. We're able to make all of the cards that he needs through a local autism center that he will be starting therapy with his fall. He's speeding through phase I and we're starting to ease into phase II and it's only been a couple of weeks since he started the program. It's wonderful to see him picking up a means of communication so fast.

Unfortunately, my writing time has been replaced with reading up on treatments and learning everything that I can about autism. Instead of finding five minutes here or there to write up a scene, I'm using that time to do PECS trials to help my son thrive with this program. I really do miss writing and blogging about my writing and hope that one day soon, I can get back to work.

My novel is still in the back of my head, just itching to be finished. In a way, I'm hoping that this whole life-changing experience will add depth to my story and characters. I know that I'll get back to it, once things settle down a bit. (On top of everything else, we're getting over a few rounds of the stomach flu in our household...) (Oh, and once I got over my turn with the flu, I caught some vertigo virus... lucky me.)

So, the main thing that I'm trying to get across with this post is that we're doing all right. Sure, things are different now, but not a bad different... just different, ya know? We've been lucky to have so many people to support us, both off- and on-line. So... thanks!

Until I blog again...
Talk 2ya later...

~Willow

Taking time off, for a good reason...

2009-04-14T21:03:00.003-05:00

As the subject states, I will be taking some time off of writing and blogging. I haven't given up on becoming a published author someday, there have just been some changes in my daily life that need to be addressed first. Right now there simply isn't enough time or free space in my brain to accomplish everything and my family has to come first.

Image via Wikipedia

This past week, my two-year old son was diagnosed with autism (yeah, ironic considering April is autism awareness month...). Now that we officially have a diagnosis, my days are filled with doctor appointments, therapy sessions, and learning how to implement treatment programs. Oh yeah, and going through the stages of accepting this diagnosis. While this whole ordeal is difficult on our son, he's always had it, we just never knew. Us, as his parents, on the other hand, are having to learn everything about this disorder while trying to come to terms with what's in store for him in the future. Right now it feels as if everything is speeding by so fast and I'm struggling to learn everything I can to help my son thrive in spite of this condition.

So, until things settle down and we develop some sort of regular schedule that our son is thriving on, the second draft of my novel will have to wait. Providing the day-to-day support that he needs in order to one day develop some form of communication is truly a full-time job (but worth every minute of it knowing how it will help him later in life). It hurts to think how close I am to being done, but I know my priorities and Family > Writing.

Thank you everyone for your support and advice in my journey into writing my first novel. I'm not giving up on writing and I won't be gone forever, but I do need to take some time off. Maybe I should consider this as time away from the novel so I can return to it at a later date with fresh eyes... Maybe it's just wishful thinking...

Either way, until I'm able to blog again...
Talk 2ya later...

~Willow

Writer's A.D.D.

2009-04-06T13:41:00.006-05:00

I have self-diagnosed myself with having Writer's A.D.D. It wasn't all that hard to do really, I have all of the symptoms...

So many ideas spinning around in my head that I can't focus on anything
Jumping from one part of the story to another because... "oooh, what if I did this, here?!" (very similar to SOS - Shiny Object Syndrom)
etc...

(Oh yeah, disclaimer: I'm not a medical doctor, but I could write myself in a story where I am one... Oh, and there is no such disease as Writer's A.D.D., but it makes me feel better thinking that there's a medical term for what I'm suffering from, lol!)

I need to start meditating again or something. Anything to get my mind to calm down and let me work on one thing at a time. When this would happen during the first draft, I would just do a free write with all of my ideas and I'd be all set to start implementing them. That's not even working this time! Halfway through a note for one idea and my brain is already racing ahead to the next idea.

The excitement of getting this far in the process must have fried my brain. Well, that along with the burst of creativity that hit me once I started thinking about what needed to happen in the second draft. I'm sure my inability to make a decision regarding my main character's age isn't helping either though...

Today, I'm going to try organizing all of my notes for the story to see if that helps organize them in my brain as well. Maybe, having everything together in one document will convince my brain that we have it all down... no need to worry about forgetting something. I'd do just about anything to calm my thinking right now, my brain has more energy than my two-year old... and that's impressive!

Thanks for all of the amazing comments on my last post by the way. Your comments and advice on the situation really helped me realize that I have to stay true to my characters and do what is best for the story. Overall, I've decided that if I can't commit to a decision and support it 100%, then I'm not going to change anything, yet. Down the road, should I decide to change her age or if an editor or agent wants it changed, I know what needs to be done. So, thanks again! You guys are the best!

But, anywho... Off to round up my notebooks and documents so I can start my "second draft to-do list"...

Until I blog again...
Talk 2ya later...

~Willow

So many questions...

2009-04-04T09:39:00.006-05:00

My poor little head is spinning. The rewrites on Instinct aren't confusing me, I pretty much know what needs to be done there... it's a new change I'm considering that has me unsure of what to do next.

First a little backstory (yay! the dreaded info dump!). I submitted part of my story to an online critique group anonymously and some of the comments have me thinking. There were a lot of stupid mistakes on my part that I'm not sure how I missed, but some of the other comments were deeper than just SPaG (Spelling, Punctuation, & Grammar) errors.

The first issue that got me thinking, people seemed to agree that my voice is very YA. That's pretty cool as most of my story ideas are definitely YA, except Instinct. To be honest, I'm not sure how to classify this story. Right now my main character, Casey, is 21 and attending the police academy. I know that due to her age, this would be a tough sale as a YA, even though I think that the story itself could go either way, YA or adult.

On the same note as the last comment, I've had several people ask if I couldn't just change Casey's age to maybe 18. Before, I would always say, "No, it wouldn't work with the story or the series..." but now, I'm not so sure. I originally chose Casey's age based off of the requirements for the real Boston Police Academy, minimum age of 21 and have lived in Boston for 1 year (I wanted the story to be as believable as possible).

But, I am writing fiction, aren't I? Would it be horrible if the academy in my story had a minimum age requirement of say... 18? I'm taking liberties on the timing and content of her classes and training, why shouldn't I fudge the admissions requirements while I'm at it? I'm taking liberties with the entire city of Boston since I've never actually been there. I don't want to pull people out of the story who have been a part of the police academy, but I need to do what's best for my story at the same time, you know?... [Head Spinning Moment]

The more I thought about changing her age, the more the story seemed to make sense. I had found a couple of plot holes and other problems and this change would fix most of them.

Why would her father, all of a sudden, insist that she have a roommate if she's been living in Boston for 3 years? She couldn't have been living with Heather the whole time or their dynamics wouldn't be believable. Her having a different roommate before doesn't make much sense either though, it's very obvious that Heather is her first roommate.
What actually released her gift? If her turning 18 triggered it, that would make sense.
Why is she so anti-social to begin with and why, in her three years living in Boston, did she never try to change this on her own? Being 18 and fresh out of high school would work with her backstory as to why she's not over her past enough to make the changes on her own.
Why is she so emotional and having other specific problems? Still a teenager, yet expected to act like an adult... that would definitely be believable.
And a few others...

I always wanted Instinct to be YA, but didn't know how well it would work given what I knew about the story in the past. Now that the first draft is done and I know the entire story, I think that it would really work.

Well, I'd have to alter one of her love interests too... maybe make him a Ph.D. student instead of a young associate/assistant professor (can't remember which is the correct term off the top of my head, but it's in my notes). That would work well too, make him a TA... would explain why he doesn't really have his own office...

But anywho... If I can get past the whole, "I want my story to be as accurate as possible, except for the paranormal aspects" (which, you never know, they could be true...) then, I think it would really work well. I'm doing rewrites now anyway, so this would be the best time to implement these changes...

But my questions for you, my dear readers.

Would an age change in this case be believable? Would you believe a story where an 18 year old was a police cadet?
Is 18 still too old for a YA story? I can think of several YA books that had characters with similar ages, but they were still in high school and Casey has graduated.

Well, I'm off to write up notes on these potential changes and maybe skim through the chapters and see if there's any major issues with her being 18 that I'm forgetting.

So, until I blog again...
Talk 2ya later...

~Willow

It's Back!

2009-04-01T10:10:00.004-05:00

My writing mojo that is.

Image by kattebelletje via Flickr

I've been in such a funk lately, not sure why I haven't been inspired to write up my last few chapters on Instinct to finish the first draft... now I know why. The chapters I have left suck! I can see why I outlined them in the beginning, but over half of them aren't going to make the final cut in this story. Sure, the scenes actually happened to Casey, but the reader doesn't need to be bored with all of those details when they don't really further the plot.

I made a decision this morning. My first draft is DONE!

Sure, I have a couple of chapters that aren't "complete", but I have them fully outlined and the parts that aren't complete will most likely be changed anyway. I'm starting on my second draft and feel that unexplainable energy that I felt writing the story before. I started seeing the characters in my head again and envisioning scenes that need reworked. It's an amazing feeling let me tell you!

I'm going to re-read a section of chapters that are done today to get ready to work in the mythology information. In my head I can see how to make this work where it isn't an info dump now! Woot!

As for my other to-do list:

1. Layer in some scenes for a major character that kind of got pushed to the background in his scenes: I have so many ideas for how to do this now. This is going to be so much fun!

2. Add in some extra paranormal aspects to Casey's gift and their ramifications to the plot: Love, love, love this idea now! The best part is that I get to add in these same abilities on a couple other characters. And this helps explain what happens to one character at the end perfectly.

3. Rewrite 2-3 scenes from another character's POV: I know at least two chapters that I want for this, but need to see if the chapter after that can be reworked from his POV as well. It's a tricky situation because I need to let the reader get to know this character without giving too much away that would ruin the twist at the end.

4. Figure out what I'm going to do with my "boring" scenes: Well, this one is fairly easy. Most of them are going to be cut or completely re-outlined to the point where I might as well cut them and start from scratch.

I was really starting to wonder if I'm meant to be a writer or not. It's a bit disconcerting to have your writing mojo fizzle like mine did on this story. Now I realize that I was trying to force myself to finish my boring chapters instead of following my own "instincts" that said to start the rewrites. I am so happy to be back to this frame of mind and see things being written fairly quickly in the coming month.

You wanna know how giddy this change in attitude has me? Well, it's no secret that I am NOT a morning person, but I woke up early this morning (well, early for me... especially on a day that my husband is watching the toddler). But anywho, I woke up and realized what I needed to do and everything came together so wonderfully in my head. My favorite scenes started playing themselves in my head as I re-acquainted myself with the characters that have been so silent for the past weeks and months. I grabbed my bedside notebook and started scribbling down notes and ideas. The excitement is so intense that I'm not sure how I'll get through reading over a couple of chapters before I dig in and start writing.

I haven't drank alcohol in about three years because of the whole pregnancy and nursing thing, but I think I'm buzzing on this writing mojo feeling! Woo, riding the writing high!

For anyone else who feels like they've lost their writing mojo, I have some advice: re-evaluate what you are trying to do with the story. Are you trying to make yourself go against your instincts? Toss out your preconceived notions on how a writing process is supposed to go and just do things your own way. When you really think about it, every known writing process started off as someone's instinct that ended up working so wonderfully that people emulated it. Maybe someday people will be following your process!

But, I need to get to work organizing my notes and reading a few chapters that need rewrites.

So, until I blog again...
Talk 2ya later...

~Willow

Just Checking In...

2009-03-29T11:51:00.004-05:00

This has been the longest week ever!

I have very little to report on the writing front unfortunately. For the past week I have been taking care of a very sick little two year old boy, my poor little guy. We're not sure where he picked it up, but he has been suffering with a really bad stomach virus for a week now. The doctor says that he'll be fine and he is getting better, but it's heartbreaking to see him so sick.

Every time I sat down to write, he would come and lay his head on my lap and just want to hold my hand. Luckily, I never got puked on like my husband... but it's not easy to concentrate and type one-handed when you are seeing your only child so sick. I think I managed a few hundred words and random edits this past week, which isn't bad considering everything else going on.

I'm debating on whether or not to start my rewrites before I finish my last few short chapters though. I am so excited to go back in and add in all of the new special scenes for Casey and crew that it's hard to focus on what else needs to be written. In my defense though, a lot of what I "need" to write will probably be changed once I make all of my rewrites, so I could just write those scenes fresh after I lay the groundwork for my new ideas.

Maybe I'm just suffering S.O.S. (Shiny Object Syndrome). Forget the old stuff that needs to be written, I have this new shiny object that I want to play with. It's... so... shiny...

Then again, maybe I need to rethink these last few chapters and their purpose. If I'm not as excited about writing them as I was with all of the others, maybe that's a sign that they need some work. If they bore me to write, they'd certainly bore a reader.

A couple of these chapters, I fear, are going to become info dumps the way I have them outlined. A good portion of Casey's gift has to do with Greek mythology, so I have a couple scenes that are supposed to give out some basic information on the deities that have been "possessing" her. (Man, I hate the word possessing for this, but it's the closest thing that I can think of to describe it...) Now, I don't want to make these chapters just mythology lessons, but I need a way to sneak in little bits of this information in a way that furthers the plot.

Another chapter that I need to write doesn't necessarily need any work done to it's outline, I just need to decide if I want to include a really goofy scene in the middle of it. In my mind I can see it, but it can come across really cheesy and that's not what the story is about. This goofy scene doesn't really do anything for the plot, but does show a side of a few characters that flesh them out a bit.

I have yet another chapter that is written, written badly - but written, that needs a lot of work. This is one of my favorite scenes in my head and is pretty important in showing Casey's struggles (as well as being freakin' hilarious), but it has a big problem. Copyright issues. In the scene, a radio is playing and what is played and said over the stations is very important to make the scene work. Unfortunately after writing up this scene, I found out that you cannot use song lyrics in a novel without paying for permission. I don't know why this didn't occur to me before, maybe because I was only using maybe one line out of each song, but whatever reason it was, now I have to do a major rewrite or be willing to cut a chapter that I love. Right now it's on the chopping block and will just have to be a funny scene in my head... who knows what will happen in the second draft though?

Then there are a few really emotional scenes that are really important to the plot, one of which really hits close to home. These scenes just require me to have more than a couple minutes here and there to work. Every other scene can be written in little bits here and there, but these require a fluidity that can't be achieved that way, at least not by me... yet. I am still new to all of this you know. Once we finish the bathroom remodel (the task that is taking up my husband's free time, time that used to be spent watching the toddler so I could write), I'll take a couple days to write these out. They will be fun to write because of the range of intense emotions that Casey experiences. Getting inside her head for these scenes will be a great writing experience for me.

As for rewrites, I have to:
- layer in some scenes for a major character that kind of got pushed to the background in his scenes (oops!),
- add in some extra paranormal aspects to Casey's gift and their ramifications to the plot,
- rewrite 2-3 scenes from another character's POV (This will be great and add to the mystery around a couple of the characters),
- figure out what I'm going to do with my "boring" scenes

Once that stuff is done, I'll just need to polish everything up and it will be done. Then the scary part starts... querying!

Well, what do you know? I guess I did have a bit to report on my writing after all :)

Until I blog again...
Talk 2ya later...

~Willow

YA -vs- Adult... I wanna write both!

2009-03-23T17:08:00.005-05:00

Image via Wikipedia

I'm drowning in ideas for YA novels... Every week it seems like I'm outlining another fun book or series with a YA vibe to it. The cool thing about this is that each new idea seems better developed than the last. The bad thing is that all the time I'm spending writing up these synopses is time away from my nearly completed first draft of Instinct. But, if I don't write up these stories now, they'll be lost forever because of my bad memory. *groan*

Technically, I guess this isn't a horrible time for me to be taking a break from the writing aspect of Instinct though. You see I've recently decided to make a few little tweaks to the plot and a couple of main characters. These tweaks will affect a good portion of the book, but will make it a lot better. It will involve rewriting some scenes and layering in a lot of new information in other places, but it will be worth it in the end. One night I just had this moment of inspiration that set off a whole row of dominoes in my head until I knew what I had to do. I'm so excited to think about how these little changes will add a new sense of drama to the characters' lives as well as fill in a few plot holes.

So, why isn't this a bad time to outline other stories if I have so much new work to do? Simple. I have to let all of this new information "cook" in my subconscious for a few days so I can add it in as seamlessly as possible. I have a separate document typed up and handwritten pages of notes that will help, but... I don't know... it feels like when I first started outlining Instinct. I needed time to let my subconscious work out the kinks and once that was done, I started writing like a maniac. Taking the time to let everything settle in my head for a few days seems to be part of my process when I make big changes. (And these are big changes, but will be so much fun to write!)

This Just In: And just like that, while editing this blog post one of the new scene ideas *dinged* in my head and started playing. I typed up the outline and know exactly where to put it. I expect moments like this to happen off and on over the next week or so until everything is "fixed" in my head. But now, back to the somewhat regularly-scheduled blog post...

There is one thing that I am nervous about with all of my new book ideas though. If I'm successful and am able to get Instinct and the subsequent novels in the series published, how hard would it be to write YA novels after that? Instinct is one of those books that would be hard to classify. My MC is 21 so technically the story is at the extreme high end of what is typically considered YA, but I can easily see a teenager enjoying the book. I wish that I could believably change her age to 18, but that wouldn't work on many levels so I'm pretty sure it would end up classified a sweet, paranormal romance should it get published. Would it pigeonhole me into just writing romances if I were to find success with this story?

The stories that I want to write next are all YA and I've really enjoy creating these characters and their worlds. There's something about writing dialogue for a teenager that is so much fun. Maybe I can relate to teenagers because I love reading YA books and listening to the teen and tween music groups. It's not that I don't have ideas for new romance novels or that I have a problem with the genre (I love it!), but I just feel that the YA stories are better ideas and would be more enjoyable to write.

I hate to even think this way because I believe in Instinct so much, but what if it's meant to be my practice novel? The one I write first, but for whatever reason never gets published. What if all of these YA inspirations that I've been bombarded with lately are the universe's way of telling me what I'm supposed to be writing? Maybe I'm just scared to finish Instinct and my mind is looking for any excuse to keep me from working on it... *sigh* Then again, maybe I'm just over thinking things AGAIN...

I have no intention of quitting my journey to finish and publish Instinct. I love Casey and can't imagine not finishing her story and trying to share it with the world. So fear not, Casey Parker will not disappear! I just need to work on my ability to focus and try to regain control of my muse... Hah! Like I've ever had any control over him, but I can dream right?

If I can successfully make my tweaks to Instinct, then I think I would have a decent shot of publishing it somewhere. Anyone I've told the premise to says that they haven't seen a paranormal romance with my particular paranormal element before and that it sounds awesome. Agents and editors want new ideas right? But, what if finding success with Instinct makes it where I can't tell the stories of Brooke, Lisa, Megan, or...? Arrrggghhh... I need chocolate...

The current plan is to finish Instinct and then start writing whichever one of these YA stories inspires me the most at the time while on submission. If Instinct should happen to sell while I'm working on my new project, great! If not, I'll start submitting the complete YA story as well and let the universe decide which should be published. And, if both sell... I'll wake up and blog, "I just had the best dream..."

But anyway, until I blog again,
Talk 2ya later...

~Willow

Help with Grocery Costs

2009-03-19T16:53:00.008-05:00

As we all know, most writers don't exactly make the big bucks... well, unless you're Stephen King, J.K. Rowling, Nora Roberts, etc... And, if any big-time writers like that are reading this blog, AWESOME! Any of you guys want to take on a fledgling writer as an apprentice?
(Hey, I have to try, don't I?)

But anyway, beginning writers don't usually rake in the dough and the economy isn't so great right now... so I thought I'd share information on a program that I've recently been introduced to, Angel Food Ministries. Below, I have included a copy of a press release from their website.

---

For Immediate Release:

Contact: Juda Engelmayer
212-999-5585 or angelfoodministries@5wpr.com

ANGEL FOOD MINISTRIES PROVIDES FOOD RELIEF FOR HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF U.S. FAMILIES EACH MONTH

As Food Prices Escalate, Families can now get a $60 Box of Food for Only $30

Monroe, GA – September 19, 2008 -- Angel Food Ministries (www.angelfoodministries.com) is a non-profit, non-denominational organization dedicated to providing financial support in the form of food relief to communities throughout the United States. Established in 1994 to provide relief for struggling families in the Monroe, GA area, Angel Food Ministries today serves hundreds of thousands of families across 35 states. Since inception, Angel Food Ministries has fed more than 20 million Americans. In 2007, AFM provided $95 million in direct food assistance to American families.

Angel Food offers a medium-sized box of food for $30 that contains top quality food staples from every food group, including chicken or beef, milk, eggs, vegetables, and other nutritious items. One box of food feeds a family of four for about one week, or a single senior citizen for almost a month. The menu varies each month, and consists of both fresh and frozen items with an average retail value of approximately $60.

“We offer each and every family who comes to us the opportunity to put a decent meal on the table, no matter what their financial situation,” said Mike Wood, of Angel Food Ministries. “We are especially honored to be able to provide a protein rich diet for many families who wouldn’t otherwise purchase meat.”

“I just participated in your program for the first time,” said R.A, of Jourdanton, TX – a recipient of Angel Food Ministries’ services. “This is a wonderful program. I have four children, and my husband and I work very hard to make ends meet...This is great for families like ours!

Angela Gonzalez, of Waldron, AK, says, “In the midst of rising prices on everything, AFM has made it possible for the people of our town to lower their grocery bills tremendously.”

Our food is purchased directly from some of the top suppliers in the country. Those who participate with Angel Food receive brand name food without worry about it being fresh.

The great part is that Angel Food is for everyone. There are no limits to the quantity of boxes per individual, nor are there any applications or qualifications for eligibility.

There are also specialty boxes available. In addition to our excellent protein specials, Angel Food Ministries is offering a fresh fruit and vegetables box and a Senior Box to continue providing an excellent nutritious variety of food.

For more information on Angel Food Ministries, please visit our website, www.angelfoodministries.com.

---

Click here to read an article on this group that was published in the Chicago Tribune.

They have a referral program that allows people to earn points towards free boxes of food, so if you decide to give them a try I'd appreciate it if you'd mention me. They keep records by email address, so please tell them bkilbarger [at] gmail.com sent you. (Of course with the correct symbol in place of the [at]... what can I say, I don't want spammers mining my blog and harassing me with annoying emails. I mean, why would I be interested in male enhancement drugs? Really?!)

I hope that someone out there finds this information helpful. Remember, us writer types have to stick together!

So, until I blog again...
Talk 2ya later...

~Willow

D'oh! D'oh! D'oh!... DING

2009-03-15T16:25:00.005-05:00

An glimpse into the mind of a writer working through a plot problem...

Have you ever had one of "those" days with your writing? I've spent a bit of today working on the motivations for one of my characters... Who would've thought that this simple task would lead to a major duh moment on my part?

I started my task by re-reading the scenes that this character is in so I could get a feel for his voice again, not that I could ever really forget it... he is one of my favorite characters after all. The more I read, the more in love with my new scene ideas I've become. I'm going to add in additional little mini scenes with this character to help build his character up with the reader. It will really add to the story in ways that I honestly didn't think of when I first outlined Instinct. I never realized how little this character was in my original draft when he plays such a major role in the story. I guess I took for granted that the reader would sympathize for him, without really knowing him. These new mini-scenes will help show more of his personality and add some drama for Casey to deal with. Drama + Casey = Fun!

So what's the problem then? Arrrgghh! Well, while re-reading the text, I noticed a specific point where my character gets upset over something he walks in on (and rightfully so, given his perspective of the situation). The problem... his reason for being upset is horribly, horribly wrong. Unless I can recreate the way the weekdays fall believably in my story (not likely...), his motivation just isn't going to work here. Here's a breakdown of my lapse in mental processing:

1. Character asks girl out for the weekend and she tells him that she's going home to visit family.
2. He's sad, but accepts it, he did wait until the last minute to ask her (It was Thursday afternoon).
3. The next Friday (not the next day, the next week) he sees her out with another man.

The problem? His reason for being hurt and mad is that she lied to him... basically in my head the days of that particular week went something like this: Thursday (ask out) > Friday/Saturday (she's with family) > Sunday (she meets other guy) > Friday (he sees her on a date with new guy). There are no other days between Sunday and Friday. It just doesn't make sense for him to be upset for the reasons I thought he was here.

So, now I have to find a better motivation for him to be upset about when he sees them out together. Maybe I can have him ask her out again for Friday sometime during that week and she tell him that she can't. Him asking her out for that night would work with their backstory, but she wouldn't not tell him why she couldn't and she wouldn't lie to him either, I think... I guess I could work that into the story, her lying about her real plans... Then he catches her in the lie and... well, the rest of the scene happens!

... \
... Brain processing this new info...
... /

*DING* (That's the sound of the buzzer in my head going off, saying this new idea is ready!)

OMG, I think I've got it! Yes, him asking her out again is DEFINITELY the way to go!

Thanks for listening to me working through this problem. For some reason working it out in my head wasn't cutting it, but blogging about it did the trick! I haven't figured out all of the specifics for this change, but I'm liking where they're headed. Fixing his motivation in this one scenario has even caused a domino effect to go off in my head and now I know his motivation (as well as a few other characters' motivations) in later scenes.

Well, I need to start sketching out these new scenes and motivations so I can add them in as notes in my main story file. This makes so much sense now! Maybe I was misinterpreting the scenes all along... it wouldn't be the first time... But anyway, Instinct calls!

So, until I blog again...
Talk 2ya later...

~Willow

In My Mailbox...

2009-03-15T11:34:00.008-05:00

In My Mailbox is inspired by a weekly feature of The Story Siren. It is a way for bloggers to share books that they've received in the mail, from the library, or from bookstores.

I actually received a few books this week:

The Magic Knot
by Helen Scott Taylor

(Won from Book Talk with J&J)

- Click here to buy

The entire Kitty Norville Series
by Carrie Vaughn
- Kitty and the Midnight Hour
- Kitty Goes to Washington
- Kitty Takes a Holiday
- Kitty and the Silver Bullet
- Kitty and the Dead Man's Hand
- Kitty Raises Hell

(Won from Pat's Fantasy Hotlist)
- Click here to buy

The Forest of Hands and Teeth
by Carrie Ryan

(Pre-ordered from Amazon)

- Click here to buy

I've actually finished reading The Forest of Hands and Teeth and it was AMAZING! This is definitely a page-turner and was near impossible for me to put down when I absolutely had to. I'd definitely recommend this one for everyone to read.

Well, until I blog again...
Talk 2ya later...

~Willow

Sigh The world doesn't want me to write...

2009-03-14T14:07:00.005-05:00

As if I didn't have enough to distract me from writing right now... Look what arrived in the mail for me this morning...

Debut novel, The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan.

Now, I've only been dying to read this since... I don't know, the day I first read the blurb for it! Now it's sitting in my house, luring me away from the keyboard.

Contests, contests, and more contests... I entered quite a few, hoping to win an ARC of this baby just so I could read it quicker. Sadly, my contests luck must've run out for those particular entries so I headed on over to Amazon.com and pre-ordered my copy. Luckily, I had an Amazon gift card that I won from a short story contest from the Pen & Muse Blog.

I knew that it had shipped and was headed to my doorstep, but hadn't really considered the ramifications of it arriving. My personal deadline is looming ahead of me and all I'm able to do is stare at the oh-so-tempting hardback book on the table...

It's a conspiracy I tell ya! Someone, somewhere doesn't want me to finish writing on time. Never mind the fact that I'm a bit of a speed reader and will probably have the book finished within a day or two, that's one or two days that I should be writing. If I never finish writing my book, I'll never have a chance to have my own debut novel released and sitting on someone else's table, tempting them away from what they should be doing.

Now to discover which is stronger, my Writing Gremlin and my need to write Instinct or the overwhelming desire to dig into this new book.

I suppose I could consider it research... You know, seeing what the author did so right that she was chosen for publication...

All right, I've looked up and stared at the book about a dozen times while typing this, so I have a feeling who is going to win this round... So...

Until I blog again...
Talk 2ya later...

~Willow

Update - 3/15/09: The Forest of Hands and Teeth won...

Wordle and Time Turners...

2009-03-13T16:06:00.003-05:00

Okay, I'll admit that I've read about authors using Wordle as a writing tool before, but I never realized how cool it is to see in action. I took my current WIP, Instinct, and plugged it into the form and this is what it came up with. (Click on it to see a full-sized version)

I can definitely see the merits of using this as an writer. Basically, what Wordle does is, it totals up the frequency with which you use words and then creates a word cloud out of the most used ones. The larger the size of the word in the cloud, the more prevalent it is within your manuscript. This is a great way to see if you're using certain words too often.

I haven't read all of the smaller ones on mine yet, but the large ones are right on target. I was worried for a minute when a specific name didn't appear, but then I remembered that I haven't finished writing his parts yet. Duh! It was an after thought to add more scenes with this character and sadly something that I haven't had time to do.

Time... Man, I wish I had more time to write. My life is full of appointments and caring for my crazy two-year old son (who I absolutely adore). I used to be able to sneak in a good chunk of time writing when my husband got home from work, but now he's remodeling our bathroom. It's a much-needed remodel and will help the resale value of our house, but man, I want to write for long stretches again!

I've tried staying up late writing like I did in the beginning, but I'm still recovering from my months of being sick with one thing or another and don't seem to last very long. I'd try to wake up early to get my writing done, but.... I am SO not a morning person. My characters would all meet their untimely demise rather quickly if I did that... not a good thing when I'm hoping to make this into a series, lol!

I try writing during my son's naps, but they're just not long enough. Just as I really get into a scene, he wakes up crying. He never did like waking up from naps... It really sucks to have built up all of that momentum on a scene and then have to drop it. I know that I'll be able to come back to the scene later and finish it, but it feels so good... so freeing to write when you're that in to the story, you know?

I'll definitely have to do whatever I can to find more time to write if I'm going to meet my current goal to finish the rough draft by April 30th. Either that, or I'll have to figure out how to build a time machine out of household items... anyone know where I can buy a working Time Turner? No? Drat! Oh well...

Until I blog again...
Talk 2ya later...

~Willow

The Writing Gremlin Strikes!

2009-03-10T17:30:00.005-05:00

Earlier today...

Writing Gremlin (WG): *POOF* "I have a brill idea..."
Me: "No."
WG: "No?"
Me: "No. I have a goal, remember? Finish the rough draft of Instinct by April... Ringin' any bells?"
WG: "I suppose you're right, but this is quite brilliant. Remember that romance story we came up with a few months ago, with the-"
Me: "Yeah, I remember it. Too many plot holes. There was no external conflict. Definitely not worth getting excited about."
WG: "But... what if we re-worked it into a YA story with the hero still a teenager. Make his internal issues a family affair... There could be an secret group out to-"
Me: "Damnit!"
WG: "Hehe..."
Me: "Don't be smug."
WG: "But I always win..."
Me: *Groans* "You know... if you learned how to type, we could double our productivity."
WG: *Laughs* "Luv, I create the stories, you write them. For now, I'm off. I shall return the first of April for you to take down the new outline." *POOF*
Me: "Wait! I meant the end of April! WG? What about Lisa's story? What about- Damnit!"

---

If I suddenly disappear for any length of time, unannounced, I've been arrested by the Writing Gremlin Police and am awaiting trial for murdering my muse...

But before I'm hauled away, I want to thank all my readers world wide! Checking my Google Analytics today, it registered that I have readers in four different countries! So, hello England, The Netherlands, Indonesia, and the good old US of A! It is so cool to think that my little blog has not only crossed the pond, but has crossed a couple of them to reach people all over. Thanks for reading!

Now to set my goal of having readers in every state, like Beth. America today... tomorrow, the world!

Until I blog again...
Talk 2ya later...

~Willow

Google Analytics - Ah Ha!

2009-03-10T13:02:00.002-05:00

Ah Ha! I figured it out!

In case you were wondering how to block your visits to your sites from appearing on your GA reports, here's how! https://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?answer=55481&hl=en_US&utm_id=ad

Or, more specifically:

1. Click "Analytic Settings".
2. Click "Filter Manager".
3. Click "Add Filter".
4. Fill out the required information and select, "Exclude all traffic from an IP address".
5. Add the filter to each of your "Available Website Profiles" to "Selected Website Profiles".
6. Click "Save Changes".

And, Ta Da! The program won't count your visits to your sites from the computer with the IP address you entered. If you don't know your IP address, just Google, "What is my IP address" and use one of the websites to figure it out. Piece of cake, mmmm cake sounds good...

Well, I seriously have some catching up to do on my writing, but I had to share this.

Until I blog again...
Talk 2ya later...

~Willow

Google Analytics ROCKS!

2009-03-08T10:00:00.005-05:00

Image via CrunchBase

Okay, I'm a techy geek so how did I NOT know about Google Analytics before? This program is awesome! Thanks Beth for introducing it to me in your blog here and here.

I had been trying to find a free web service that would provide me with a "hit counter" of sorts that didn't look cheesy. Thanks to Google Analytics, I've found it! I'm especially loving the Map Overlay feature. It's just so cool to be able to see where in the world my readers are. (Thanks especially to North Carolina's readers, who are second only to my home state of Illinois and most of that traffic is probably me checking/responding to comments or making sure that things posted correctly.)

I'm still learning what all I'm able to do with this program, so I'm probably missing out on several other really cool features, but I'll figure them out. I'm not a techy geek for nothing! Right now I'm interested in learning if there's a way to make Google Analytics ignore traffic from my computer so my having to click into the blog to check things doesn't skew my traffic data.

But anywho... I should be writing my novel right now, not my blog.... I guess I'll get back to that.

So, until I blog again...
Talk 2ya later...

~Willow

Amazing Writing Days and Being Completely Wrong...

2009-03-07T01:45:00.003-06:00

Well, writing today was completely awesome! I had so much fun writing up this chapter today. Well, technically, the chapter isn’t done, but the big parts are all written. I just have to finish up the last few paragraphs, all nice and neat, and lead the characters into the next chapter. Then it will be done.

This scene was fun because one of the characters took me completely by surprise. I had always figured that Casey’s ex would be a bit more of a pushover in this scene. The type of guy who just can’t stay mad at people, no matter what they’ve done to him- you know the type, right? Well, that’s how I had this guy outlined. That deep down he knew that he should be mad at her, but just couldn’t bring himself to do it.

Boy was I wrong!

I started writing the scene and couldn’t help but notice how snippy he was being, he was dang near rude at times. To be fair, Casey does deserve to be treated this way, but still… wow! It felt so amazing to write his emotional transformation from Casey’s point of view. While I know what he’s thinking during the scene, the reader only gets to interpret what Casey notices which makes this scene, no this entire book, that much more fun to write!

It was really amazing to see this side of him, I think that it makes the entire scene, and his character in general, a lot more believable. With their history, it’d be expected that there would be some awkwardness and residual anger popping up all over the place now that fate has brought them back together – yet another sign that fate and irony are truly out to get Casey.

It can be difficult at times for me to process their past, especially when I’m bombarded with both of their feelings on a topic at once. I can see and feel exactly what each of them are going through the entire time. While I would completely understand if the guy chooses to never talk to Casey again, I also really understand why Casey did what she did. Just thinking about it all now is making my head spin...

I really can’t wait to finish up this chapter and maybe start working on layering in some of the scenes with guy #2. This guy has become another one of my favorite characters because he is so obvious with his intentions towards Casey, but she’s completely oblivious. You all know that type of girl, right? Everyone knows that a guy is flirting with her and she still denies it, saying that they’re “just friends” or that everyone is seeing things. Casey is so that girl and that makes it so much fun to write her. My beta reader, M, seems to really like how I’ve written some scenes dealing with this. Casey sees everything happening, so the reader does to, but this is where the similarities end. While the reader uses common sense and knows what’s really happening, Casey remains oblivious. I can remember one interesting Gmail chat where M said that she wanted to just reach in and slap Casey to knock some sense into her.

I’m torn on whether or not this response is a good thing though. Yes, it means that the reader is really involved in the story and connecting with my protagonist… but on the other hand, would this “pull readers out of the story” too much? I love writing Casey this way and think that it works fairly well, but I don’t want to ruin the story for people. But then again, the story really doesn’t work as well any other way. It’s so much fun to slip in clues here and there and have Casey see them as normal. I can’t wait to see people’s reactions to the end of the book when the villain is revealed. All of the important clues are right there in the preceding chapters staring them in the face, but will be very easy to overlook thanks to Casey’s unique view of her world. I’m really going for that *GASP* “No… how?... but I thought… wow!” type of reaction.

I love how this whole writing style works with the premise of the book as well. “Two men vying for Casey Parker’s heart. One becomes the man of her dreams, the other something out of her worst nightmares.” It’s such a fun love triangle to write because I get to make the reader root for both the hero and the villain before their actual roles are ever revealed. They’ll get to see the good and the bad parts of each and yet the last several chapters will still leave them shocked and kicking themselves for not seeing it sooner. The rough draft of these last chapters are complete and parts of them still give me chills to remember. I hope that readers have a similar experience.

The hard part about the ending for me is knowing how much I need to reveal about the villain and his motives. Instinct is designed to be the first in a four-part series, well technically it works as a trilogy, but the fourth book idea is just so much fun (and the only one not mostly from Casey’s POV). I need to reveal enough information to satisfy readers while saving other information to be released in later books. Hopefully I find a good balance.

A big problem with this is finding a good way to present the information. Right now, I have three or four chapters written from the hero’s perspective because it’s simply impossible for Casey to witness certain events. I’ve considered rewriting a few chapters of the book from the villain’s perspective, but not showing anything that is too sinister. I even have a good part of the book in mind for this. This would be a good way to help the reader connect with him and learn some of his secrets. I’ll probably make a comment about it within the manuscript as something to consider in the second draft. Or third… did we ever decide if my first draft was done a while ago and I’m writing the second now? Oh well, it’s not that important…

What is important is my need for sleep. It’s way too late and I should be in bed, but I felt the writing gremlin getting anxious about getting this blog post written, so here it is. I hope it lives up to your and his expectations. Especially his, he can be quite the little bugger when he’s irritated with me…

Well, until I blog again…
Talk 2ya later…

~Willow

Note to Self: NEVER type up a blog post in Microsoft Word and then copy/paste it as it WON'T format correctly because of embedded code from Microsoft.

Making Progress Again...

2009-03-06T11:43:00.003-06:00

All I can say is finally! The past month has been horrible for my writing and I'm going to have to work my butt off this month to meet my personal goal of having my rough draft done by the beginning of April. Now that I have something writing-related to put on my query letters, I can't wait to have something to send out. Even though it will still take a long time to polish my novel once I finish it, I'm still excited and looking forward to everything that I'll no doubt learn along the way.

February was rough, but I guess setbacks are to be expected, but they're so not fair. Having the flu pass through our household wasn't cool at all. And who got the worst of it? Me, of course. My husband had maybe two days of it and my son (the only recipient of a flu shot this year) had none. I had it for over a week and it even developed into a sinus infection to boot! It was a long week of huddling under blankets and wanting the world to just go away and let me succumb to the germs, but I somehow survived and I'm back!

In case you missed it, my son wasn't sick at all this past week. Imagine if you will, a stay-at-home Mom, horribly sick and unable to move, watching an over-active two year old boy. Sound like fun? Yeah, I'm not ashamed to say that the Little Einsteins crew were a near constant in our house this past week.

Now that my husband and I are better, you'd think things would be looking up again, right? Wrong! The day that I starting feeling better, the toddler got a cold. Fun, fun, fun... So now he's all snotty and won't let me wipe his poor little red nose. Lucky for my writing, he's mostly wanting to just sit with his toys or lay on the couch. He lets me know when he needs me, but mostly just wants to be left alone to be sick. Poor little guy.

But on the bright side of things, I've been writing again. Yay! I'm hoping to finish the chapter I started this morning sometime this afternoon/evening. It's pretty fun to write. Running into an ex that you've been avoiding, that you still have feelings for, is always interesting, especially when you're the one who ran away from the relationship. I've missed writing about Casey and now that she's speaking to me again, things are going great!

I think the contest win snapped her into perspective. I let her know that if she didn't want to cooperate, I could always write the novel inspired by my short story. People already like Megan and Joseph, why not tell their story first... I woke up this morning and she was all ready to go and suggesting scenes to start on. Is it bad that I'm making threats to imaginary friends who live inside my head?

With what I've written so far this morning, I'm at 90,648 words and thinking that my goal of 100k words is too small. It's hard to say what the final word count will be though as those 90k+ words that were counted aren't all completed scenes. Thanks to my blue text technique, every scene is mapped out, it's just not written in the correct POV. I just need to go back and change those incomplete scenes from "campfire story telling" format to having it told from Casey's POV. Does this mean that "technically my first draft is "done"? The story is all there, I just need to polish it and make it flow with the rest of the text. Hmmm...

Let's see, what else... Oh yeah, my strange, glowing skull dream never returned. It's a shame too, that dream was so vivid and I really wanted to know what was down that next small hallway. Sure, I could play the "what if" game and come up with several answers, but I really hate doing that in this instance. I have no idea where this dream came from and don't even know how to get my head into that frame of mind again. I should really pull out my dream dictionary and look up the hidden meanings of everything that I saw, but that would be another procrastinatory outlet that I don't need right now. I have enough ways to keep myself from writing ithout adding something new to the mix. Google Reader, I'm looking at you...

Oh yeah, still no news from the editor about my short story. Its been about a month now and I'm not sure what to think. What is the typical turn around on hearing back on a short story? Is no news still good news with how the industry is changing or does no news mean no? I know that I've read about literary agents having to forgo sending out rejection letters, instead letting no response after a certain amount of time mean "no", but are editors doing the same? The publishing house that I submitted to doesn't accept unagented work, except for one line and this short story promotion, so its hard to find information on their response time.

My "think positive" assumption is that either a) he likes the story and is doing whatever needs to be done to see if he can use it, or b) he hasn't gotten to it yet. There have been all sorts of changes at this particular publishing house recently and I can only imagine how backed up people are. The short story promotion hasn't been cancelled though, as new stories have continued to be posted every week as promised. I'm doing my best to maintain this positive outlook and to not worry about it. I've let the editor know about the contest win associated with the story and now, again, it's out of my hands. Unless I've suddenly developed the ability to bend people to my will, there's nothing else I can really do- except wait. Just tested things out, and no... I still don't have that ability, darn't!

Well, I think that's about it for my writing-related news. I want to thank everyone who's following my blog now, whether publically or through some reader program. I do a little Snoopy dance every time I see that someone else has started following my little blog here. So thanks!

Until I blog again...
Talk 2ya later...

~Willow

Interviews, Tarot Readings, and Crazy Dreams...

2009-03-04T23:56:00.004-06:00

Hey everyone!

As the first part of the title explains, my interview with The Pen & Muse Blog has been posted. Yay! Click here if you'd like to read it. It was so surreal sitting at my laptop, filling out an interview questionnaire. It kind of made me wonder if someday I'll be doing this regularly. Making the rounds online doing blog tours and other promotional stuff for my writing career...

All-in-all, this entire experience went completely differently than I had ever thought it actually would. Sure, I had those random, daydreaming moments where I could see myself winning... but then reality would kick in. It would remind me that no only am I an unpublished author (even though everyone in my category would be too...), but I had also never submitted anything before. Yup, this was the first writing contest that I had the nerve to enter.

To make this situation even more surreal, actual published authors have been congratulating me both on the interview site as well as on my blogs. Part of me is fully convinced that I'm going to wake up tomorrow and this will all have been a dream. I get up each morning and double check my email just to make sure that I wasn't dreaming this all up.

Hey! I have an overactive imagination. This situation would be nothing for me to dream up... but I guess that overactive imagination is the reason that I'm here...

I know why I'm here. I'm here to write. Not because I want to, but because I have to- not that I don't enjoy it, because I really do. Coming back to writing only made me realize that I was missing a very vital part of my life before. Writing is truly my passion and I can't imagine ever giving it up again. And if my tarot reading, given by the amazing Karen Mahoney, is any indication... I'd better not give it up! As part of her blogiversary, Karen performed 50 tarot readings (simple three card spreads) for people who left comments on her blog. I was able to get in before the cut off and asked for a reading having to do with my writing. Here's what the cards told her:

"So a general reading about your writing:

The Moon, Princess of Cups, 9 of Pentacles.

The Moon is an interesting and powerful card. It highlights creativity and imagination - you are filed with ideas right now and you are possibly confused about which roads to explore. The Moon says you need to explore as much as possible, because only by doing that will you find out for sure which is the right path for you. You might have some particularly vivid dreams (or just plain weird ones!) in the coming weeks - take note of those you remember, because even *they* might hold the seeds of more ideas you can write about. :) You might want to try writing something you've never tried before. Sometimes this card indicates mystery, so perhaps a story with a real mystery at its heart?

The Princess of Cups, in this context, backs up the rush of ideas you are already having - or will soon have. She also says that writing fiction for children could be a good thing to explore. Cups also = romance, so you should do well with romantic themes, whether in YA or not. The 9 of Pentacles confirms that writing is your calling - this is a wonderful, fertile card. You will one day make money from writing, so stick with it no matter what stage you're at right now. Work hard and you will be rewarded."

The really cool thing? I have been having amazingly, vivid dreams lately. Some have been really sweet and are ideal scenes for YA novels with a romance element to them, while others have been of the creepy, mystery sort. I've been bombarded with inspiration from everywhere the past few weeks and have, at times, struggled to outline it all and store it in my TBW (To Be Written) folder on the laptop. One dream in particular keeps me wondering what would've happened if I hadn't woke up when I did.

It was night and I was with a group of people wondering, lost through a gigantic mansion of sorts. There was an older gentleman with white hair, a woman in her mid thirties with red hair and wearing a lime green suit dress, two teenagers (a boy and a girl, both wearing punk-style clothes and hairstyles), and myself. It was dark in the hallway we were in and we were following tracks on the ceiling because, for some reason, we were certain that they would lead us where we needed to go.

At one point a glowing, red, crystal skull suspended from a metal rod appeared along the track and we followed it. The older gentleman tripped and we all stopped to help him. When we turned around not only was the skull gone, but we realized that we were at a T-intersection where the tracks went both straight ahead along the path we had been following, but also down a hallway to our right. I'm not sure why, but the teenaged girl had a piece of chalk, so we made a mark on the wall and turned right. We could've followed the path straight and stayed at the outer perimeter of the mansion, but the woman in the green suit said we should go right, so we did. We left the security of seeing the outside world through the large windows in the original hallway and ventured inward.

Looking out the windows before, we could tell that we were on an island of some sort and that the mansion was built on a cliff face, well, at least this side of it was. Looking down all we could see were crashing waves and jagged rocks in the moonlight. We ended up in a gigantic atrium (I'm talking professional football field sized, gigantic). The ceiling was rounded and towered stories and stories above us. We could just barely make out the stars and clouds in the night sky through a holographic image of the world that was projected on the ceiling. There were symbols on different countries that would occasionally blink or change color before disappearing. This room was full of people and everyone was certain that we were at the end of our journey, that this was our treasure. And, to be fair, it was a pretty amazing room. Food, music, well-dressed people there for an amazing party ... it was magnificent.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed the glowing, red skull zipping along the perimeter of the room as it headed toward another small hallway that would normally have been overlooked. I stood there wondering if I should follow. If this room- this party was our reward, then the skull should've stayed here, right? Was there a greater reward if we kept following? Was it a trap, meant to punish those too greedy to appreciate what they have?...

Then I woke up... and unlike my normal dreams, this one didn't pick up where it left off the next night. I guess I'll never know what happened...

Oh well, maybe now that I've actually typed up the dream, it'll finish tonight? It's late and I'm tired, still getting over the flu, so I'm going to end my blog here for the night and head to bed.

Until I blog again...
Talk 2ya later...

~Willow

Snoopy Dance Time!

2009-03-01T10:20:00.007-06:00

Hey everyone!

First of all, if you don't know what the snoopy dance is... go out and rent a Peanuts movie. No one should go through life having not seen the beagle dance.

The picture to the left is my little way of celebrating. Celebrating what, you might ask? Celebrating the fact that I won the grand prize in the Pen and Muse Romantic Short Story Contest in the unpublished author category!!! So yes, that is the reason for the blog title, "Snoopy Dance Time!" When I read the email from Denisse last night, jumping up and doing the snoopy dance was the first thing that I wanted to do, sadly not the first thing I did do. I think it went something like this...

Slightly hyperventilating, Willow puts her hand to her agape mouth. "Honey!" she calls out to her husband.

"What is it?" he answers from his chair across the room.

"I... won... I won the short story contest," she says, re-reading the email, certain that she misread something.

"Awesome!" he says before pulling out the phone to call his mother and tell her the great news.

I then sent a Gmail chat to my beta reader, M, who happened to be on at that moment. I think she wanted to snoopy dance with me too. I really wish that I could've jumped up and celebrated, but sadly I'm getting sick again... ear ache, sore throat, the works. Getting the email about this contest was exactly what I needed to make me feel a little better after a day spent huddled under my blanket.

So today, once I finish this blog post, I'm going to be filling out a interview questionnaire and sending it off to Denisse. The awesome thing, she'll post it on the blog! How often do unpublished authors get interviewed about their writing? Answer: Rarely.

I still don't think I've fully processed the fact that I won. I mean, I believe in my writing and really enjoyed the story I submitted, but I really wasn't expecting to win, you know? I was just hoping to place, especially since this is the first writing contest that I've ever entered.

Hearing that someone else likes my story (other than family and friends who have to say they like it) has really re-energized me towards writing. I think I sort of hit that slump that I've read about where you feel like everything that you write is crap. I spent so much of my writing time second-guessing everything that I've written that I really wasn't getting anything accomplished. Once the shock wears off, I'm sure that I'll end up in another typing frenzy on Instinct, which will probably bring me to the end of the first draft.

So , I think I'll start on that interview questionnaire now. I'll post a link to it once it's up over at the Pen and Muse. I still can't get over the fact that I'm being interviewed for my writing... me... plain little, unpublished me... just wow... but anyway...

Until I blog again...
Talk 2ya later...

~Willow

Sighing, Willow bangs her head against the wall...

2009-02-23T17:23:00.004-06:00

Casey isn't speaking to me... Of course Casey would be the heroine from my current WIP, Instinct, not some random friend I've offended in some way. I'm pretty sure I haven't offended anyone in real life lately...

As you will remember from my last post, it was my last one right?... anywho... I had begun outlining a fun story about a pop/rock singer named Lisa. Not that I want to spend all of my free time working on yet another fun story that I'd like to write, I simply had no choice. I'm sure I'm not the only writer who's been hi-jacked mid-story, well I hope I'm not the only one, that would be weird and kind of lonely...

Well, Lisa has a very strong personality and wasn't about to let me ignore her. I would begin visualizing a scene from Instinct and she'd just walk right in and plop herself down on the couch, turning on the TV and saying something like, "Oh don't mind me, I just have a few things to settle with her," while pointing skyward, towards me. So, yeah... my cast of characters in Instinct got a bit fed up with this so I decided to take a few days and write up a synopsis of Lisa's tale to add to the TBW (To Be Written) pile.

So here I am, quiet house, husband at work, toddler napping... and what am I doing? Blogging. Oh, I tried to work on Instinct- I really did-, but as I mentioned before, Casey's mad at me. As she's the main character and everything is from her POV, this puts me in an awkward position. I understand that she's upset that I took a few days to write up some stuff for Lisa, I really do. Why can't she see that I did this for her. Now Lisa is happily sitting in her own file knowing full well that her story is spinning around in my subconscious, brewing up all sorts of misadventures for her to have. Now I'm free to work on Instinct without any more interruptions from a certain pop/rock princess.

I guess I didn't make things any better between Casey and myself when I pointed out that she is acting just like Heather towards the end of the book. Yeah, that didn't go over well... how could I forget the temper she has? I really should've remembered that, after all she can channel the instincts of Ares to help fuel her anger. I was quickly reminded of this fact once I uttered the stupid words, "You are so being Heather right now..." with a roll of my eyes. The way her eyes flashed bright red as her hands balled into tight fists at her sides before she turned and stormed out of the room... yeah big ol' reminder there. I'm just lucky that the Casey from the end of the book was the one I was talking to, at least she has some semblance of control over her gift. I shudder to think about what could've happened if I had encountered a Casey from an earlier chapter. But seriously, where were the gray eyes of Minerva with all of her wisdom when I needed them, huh?

But anyway... Last night I was able to write the beginning of a chapter that was otherwise done. Yeah, I'm horrible about skipping the beginnings of chapters. I know what I want to happen, just not the best way to start things off to hook the reader. So I use my "blue text" technique and write down a quick summary of what I need to include in the beginning and make it blue and italicized so I can tell what isn't done just by glancing at the page. So far this has worked really well for me.

I'm not really happy with what I wrote though. I think Casey was silently fuming while we were working things out and not cooperating very well. Something with the voice of the scene just sounds too... harsh? compared to everything else I've written. I hope that I'm not losing Casey's voice because of all of these other characters that are swimming around in my head. That would suck because I love Casey and her story. I'm just going to hope that I'm able to smooth out that section of the story in the second draft.

So what am I doing right now to try and locate Casey's voice amongst the ever-expanding crowd of characters in my head? I've tried listening to Edwin McCain singing I'll Be on my iTunes and looking at pictures of the celebrity cast of Instinct that my friend M and I compiled a while back. I'm really hoping that this helps pull me back into Casey's world. I'll Be is sort of the love theme for Casey and one of the men vying for her heart. If this doesn't work I'll have to loop the book's playlist all day while re-reading the entire manuscript, all 236 single-spaced pages of it. Not that I don't enjoy reading the book, I really do, I just wish I could be writing it today.

Maybe the secondary love theme, Why Don't You Kiss Her? by Jesse McCartney will help too... the scene it goes with is one of my favorites so far. Maybe Mina's themes, Do You Believe in Magic? or I'm Walking on Sunshine would do the trick... Man, I need another mad Casey scene to write... all I can hear is her angry voice right now.

Anyone else have characters revolt on them before? Any way to make them cooperate without threatening them? I'd try the whole, "Behave or I'll delete you," but she'd just laugh at me, knowing I couldn't do it. I'm actually tempted to say, "Fine. I'm sure Lisa would be happy to have her story worked on today..." but I'm pretty sure that wouldn't help my case any either. What do you think?

Well, I'm off to have an argument with the voices in my head... man that doesn't sound good...

So, until I blog again...
Talk 2ya later...

~Willow

New story idea & "Are you Willow?"...

2009-02-19T23:02:00.006-06:00

I'm ba-ack!

Still no news on the job my husband applied for or about my short story. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for both though. I've lived in Southern Illinois my entire life and due to personal issues with my family, I'm more than ready to get out of the area. Long story short, after the death of my father in 2003 things between me and my family went downhill fast. Lucky for me, I absolutely love my in-laws and can't wait for us to move closer to them.

But anyway, this blog is supposed to be about my writing... so I'll get back to that.

Still waiting on news from the editor at the publishing house on my short story. It's been over two weeks and no form rejection yet, so I'm still hanging on to hope. My realistic goal is to receive a personalized rejection letter while my "head in the clouds" goal is to get "the call"... which would actually be "the e-mail" in this case, but you get the idea...

Today was the final day for the Pen & Muse short story contest. I'm not sure how long it'll take them to judge all of the entries and come up with a winner, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed on that as well. It would be nice to have a contest win to list under my bio in query letters. I'll keep you updated if I hear anything.

I've made a little bit of progress on Instinct this past week. Nothing like I was accomplishing before I got sick and had to stop completely for a few weeks. Man, I cringe just thinking back on those days. So desperate to write, so stuck in medicine-head-land...

I know what my lack of progress this week was about though. Once again my lovely Writing Gremlin or his girlfriend, not sure which, decided to have me jot down yet another story idea. This is the second YA (Young Adult) novel idea that they've presented to me in the past month. The first was Megan and Joseph's story that came from my short story, On Occasion.... This new one is about a girl named Lisa and her adventures as a pop/rock singer. Dealing with her singing career, a very public breakup from her boyfriend, paparazzi, interactions with friends (celebrity and not), and the ups and downs of starting another "Hollywood relationship" fairly soon after her breakup... that's a lot for an 18 year old girl to handle! Watching this story play itself out in my head the past week has been crazy! I felt like I was on a roller coaster ride because her emotions are all over the place! Then, the night before last, she let me in on an absolutely heartbreaking moment from her past that makes her character so much clearer to me. She has such a fun voice that I'd really like to explore writing in, which leads me to my next dilemma...

Now I don't know what I'll write once I finish Instinct. I have a folder full of ideas (that is growing every week it seems), some more fleshed out than others, that are all just screaming to be written. To make matters worse, I have three or four that I've really made a connection with the characters. To make things even worse... Instinct is supposed to be the first in a four-part series! Gah! I need to learn how to manage my time better so I can write multiple projects simultaneously. It shouldn't be that hard, right? I just have a house to run, an over-active toddler to chase, typical errands and appointments to attend to, a horrible addiction to celebrity gossip and blog reading... Oh boy, I could really be in trouble here...

For right now though, I think I'll just focus on Instinct and keep filing away all of these story idea outlines as I think them up. The sooner I type up this new twist in Lisa's story, the sooner I can wipe it from my memory and free up some mental space for the novel at hand. I'm getting so close to having the first draft done that I can taste it! If I can get the rough draft done then I can start working on one of these new projects while I work on edits. I know that most of the hard work on a novel comes after the first draft is done, but I'm looking forward to it. I'll keep ya posted on my progress on everything.

Let's see... what else?

I had my second Southern Illinois Writers Guild meeting tonight. It was really fun. And, get this, I wasn't the youngest person this month! A man brought his daughter, a freshman in high school, to support her dream of becoming an author. How cool is that? Why couldn't my family have been supportive of my writing like that? I gave her the best piece of advice that I could come up with, "Don't let anyone talk you out of your dream." I then told her a 30 second run down of how I let well-intentioned family members talk me out of pursuing a college degree in Journalism and Creative Writing because I'm "good with computers.." But that's another blog that I'm pretty sure I've already written...

Had an interesting experience tonight. I was actually recognized by my blog at the meeting. It felt so weird to have someone call me "Willow" in real life. I mean, I play Final Fantasy XI online as a character named Willowdream (known fondly as Willow) so people type it as my name a lot, but it's still a different experience to hear someone say the name out loud. I know that I've considered using Willow as a pseudonym should I get published, and I guess tonight I got my first taste of what that would feel like. I just can't decide on the whole pseudonym issue. I'll probably just go with my gut instinct on what name to publish under once I sell a novel.

Speaking of blogs, I found a small group of ladies in the group who blog regularly. We so need some really cool name for ourselves amongst the guild members... but I'm tapped out on creativity at the moment though... so tired... So big cheers to Kristin and "Neechiwoo"!

Well, as I'm tapped out on creativity as I mentioned above and the two year old is refusing to sleep... again *groans*... I think I'll sign off for tonight.

So, until I blog again...
Talk 2ya later...

~Willow

No news is good news...

2009-02-10T18:47:00.005-06:00

Willow, reporting for blog duty!

Well, it's been a week since I sent off my short story, On Occasion... to the publishing house and no response yet. Part of me keeps reminding myself that in publishing, "No news is good news..." is a general rule. If the editor has read it and didn't immediately send me a form rejection, that's always a good start. Now, of course, my story could be one in a long list that he has to read and he simply hasn't gotten around to it. Either way, I'm just happy that I found the courage to send off my story for consideration.

I wouldn't even blame this editor if he hadn't gotten around to reading my story yet. In the past week this publishing house has made the news several times. Once reporting their financial situation and another announcing that they are doing away with a couple of their imprints. With all of that going on, I wouldn't blame anyone at the company for being behind. It doesn't appear as if they are going to scrap their short story project though, a new short story was posted on their website this week... so that's a good thing.

I'll just maintain my standpoint that no news is good news and even if I end up with a form letter. At least my story was read by a professional editor. If I hear anything, good or bad, expect a blog post about it. If it's bad news, I'll chalk it up to my first professional rejection and see it as an opportunity to develop the thick skin necessary for this business. If it's good news... well, I'll be freaking out again. I'll call my husband, if he's not home. I'll call my friend, M, who beta reads my writings. I'll have my husband start calling the family because at that point, I'll most likely be a quivering mass on the floor. Once I'm able to function normally, I'll email the editor back, thanking him profusely, but professionally, and then write up a blog post. Not that I've thought this through or anything...

Now for an update on Instinct...

I'm still having a blast writing this story and working with these characters. This past week I've continued my useless scene weeding. I found several places where I had outlined a scene that would be more powerful if I just mention it in passing.

For instance, at one point Casey is sent to a counselor about something that happens to her. I had the scene all outlined out with her and the therapist, but then realized that the entire scene was one big info dump. Not a good thing. The story will be much more powerful if I begin the scene with her walking out of the session and let all of the information she was going to spew out to the shrink reveal itself in small chunks throughout the rest of the story. I'm really excited with how the scene is outlined now and can't wait to write the short transition from the counselor's office into the next scene. I love writing Casey mad!

I've also been going back and finishing up scenes that I found myself stuck writing before. If I find myself stalled on part of a scene, I simply add a comment about what I want to add in and move on. I have these "incomplete scenes" scattered throughout several of my otherwise complete chapters so I'm going back through now and seeing if any of them are clearer now.

Once I'm done rechecking my incomplete scenes, I'll click through my document map and see which unwritten chapters want to be written. I have several of these chapters that are attempting to write themselves in the back of my head, but I don't think they're ready yet. It's like baking a cake. I take my characters and my outlines and mix them up and toss them in my subconscious to "bake". Every once in a while I'll check on them and see if they're done early for whatever reason, but if not, I leave them to do their thing. Right now I'm waiting on that mental "ding" to let me know they're done.

The scenes that are appealing to me right now are the more paranormal ones. I've written a few scenes where Casey has random episodes, but these scenes are different. The ones I'm cooking right now are where she is going through training, trying to learn how to control her gift before it controls her. Of course having her try to avoid getting back together with her ex the entire time will add some interesting internal drama for her. This point in the story is especially cool because this is when Casey starts coming into her own and accepting herself for who she is. She deals with making new friends and losing old ones... she's able to move past events from her childhood and recent past... she decides to give love another shot... In other words, it'll be a blast to write!

Here's an update on where I am right now:

Pages (single spaced) - 232
Words - 89,053

So I'm making pretty good progress considering how little time I've been able to devote to the story this past week. Even with cutting a lot of scenes, my word count at the end of the day keeps going up. My goal is to have the first draft done by April. I'm giving myself plenty of time because, if things go well, we could be moving in between now and then. My husband is applying for a pretty good job about 6 hours from where we are now, in the same area where his family lives. I really, really, really, really hope he gets this job. Not only would he be making more money, but we'll be so much closer to loved ones. All-in-all, we'd all be a lot happier if he gets this job, so fingers crossed!

Well, that's about it for today's update. I have to get some work done off of the computer... blech! So...

Until I blog again...
Talk 2ya later...

~Willow

I don't want to jinx anything, but...

2009-02-04T21:02:00.001-06:00

Hi again!

Has it been an intense week for anyone else but me? Well, maybe not the entire week, but definitely the past couple of days.

Let me explain... Now I don't want to jinx myself, so I won't list specifics, but... yesterday something crazy happened. I stumbled across an open call for short stories. As it so happens, I have a completed short story that I'm pretty happy with. I'll go so far as to say that I down-right love the story. Loved the characters so much that I've even outlined a full novel for them to be written... sometime...

Finding a call for short stories isn't that impressive, but this call was put out by a MAJOR publishing house. I don't want to provide any names over the blog because I'm scared that I'll somehow jinx myself...

Anywho, there weren't any guidelines listed, just an email address. I copied over the address into my trusty Gmail account and sent off a quick email asking for specifics (formatting, length, genre, etc.) and waited, not expecting much because it was after what would normally be considered busines hours. Around an hour later, I had a response telling me how to submit and that they would gladly read my story.

Okay, at this point I was really excited. Not only is this a major publishing house but they don't usually take unagented work. And here I am -unpublished and unagented- given permission to submit my short story. I quickly make the required adjustments to my file and send it off, really excited that my story was going to be read by someone at...

Now, I do my best to stay on top of the publishing industry and know the major houses, but... as my novel isn't complete yet, I haven't done a lot of research on the actual editors at these houses. Sure, I know of a few, whose blogs I follow on my Google Reader but, for the most part, I'm clueless.

I pretty much assumed that the person I was emailing was a junior staff member or at most a junior editor, but still treated everything as if I were emailing a big wig in the company. Boy am I glad that I did! After sending off the email, I knew that doing anything else for my novel would be near impossible so I Googled the name of the person I had been corresponding with. While I was unable to find any company hierarchy or listing of agents with titles, I did find a news release from a couple of years ago. The news release listed him as being the editorial director for one of the publishing house's imprints...

*THUD* -- That was the sound of me passing out at the memory of what was going through my head when I first read that...

I also found a short summary of an article that was published maybe 6 months after the news release that I mentioned before. This summary mentioned something about this person being a VP at the publishing house... As I was unable to read the entire story in context, I don't want to assume that what I read means what I think it could mean... I don't want to draw conclusions based on a short blurb that was cut off mid-sentence when I can't find any other information to substantiate this.

But anyway... unless this publishing house has two people with the same name (and it's not a common name that you hear a lot...) it looks like I was emailing at the very least an editorial director at a major New York publishing house.

*THUD* -- There I go again...

Can you see why I'm alternating between mild and major freaking out episodes? If my story gets selected, it would be published on a website for this particular imprint of the publishing house alongside short stories written by other published and unpublished authors. Do you have any idea how hard it is to wrap my brain around what that could do for my writing?

To be perfectly honest, I'm just elated that someone at this house is even reading something that I've written. I'm too scared to even think about what would happen if they really like it. I keep having to repeat, out loud, that, "an editor at ... is going to read my short story. An editor at a publishing house that, for the most part, doesn't accept unagented work. One of the largest publishing houses in the country, if not the world..."

*grabs a paper bag to hyperventilate into*

I don't know anything about having short stories published, everything that I've researched thus far has been specific to novels. I'm not sure what the typical turn around time for getting a response to this type of submission should be. If it were a novel, I'd have a general idea of what to expect, but I never even considered having a short story published. Heck, I never expected to write a short story.

For now I think I'm just going to be excited that an actual New York editor is reading my story. Sure a part of my brain is shouting for me to finish Instinct so I can strike while the iron is hot should On Occasion... get accepted for publication... but the rest of my brain is numb from freaking out. At this point, I don't think that I'd be that upset if I'm not chosen. There are a limited number of slots available and I'm not sure how many are available for unpublished authors.

Is this what it always feels like when you have something out for submission? I feel like I'm checking my email every five minutes, even though I know that any sort of decision that I would like would take longer than it's been. What's sad is that I don't even have to "check" my email to check it... I found that if I keep my Gmail open in a tab in Firefox, it will update the tab name to show that I have an unread message. So now that tab never closes, lol. If I'm doing something away from the computer, I make random passes by it... just checking the tab title... How pathetic am I?

So, other than that... I've made a little bit of progress on Instinct, not as much as I had hoped... but I think I have a decent excuse this time... I've mostly been weeding out scenes that I had originally outlined, but now realize have no real value to the story. Nothing new is presented in them and they don't do anything to further the plot along. Nothing is lost by removing them, so they've been stuck in a file for ideas that just didn't cut it. This way, if I need to add something in in a later draft, I have pre-outlined scenes to consider. It feels so weird to see my word count going down and knowing that I'm actually making progress.

I have my "To Write..." list made up for tomorrow. It includes a couple of incomplete scenes that I'm really excited to finish up. So, hopefully I'll make some decent progress later tonight and into tomorrow.

Well, that's my vague, big news and a boring update on the novel. I'm sorry again for being so vague, but I'm still trying to convince myself that I'm not dreaming. I check to make sure that the emails are real a couple of times a day as it is... Maybe I'm overreacting to the situation, but this is pretty exciting considering that I've never submitted anything for publication before.

Until I blog again...
Talk 2ya later...

~Willow

Short Story DONE! and other news...

2009-01-31T11:09:00.004-06:00

Here I am again! I've had a pretty good writing week, in my opinion at least.

First, I finished my short story for The Pen & Muse Romance Short Story Contest. As in, it's done! Written, edited, proofread... D.O.N.E. done! I was very fortunate to happen across a post on The Writer's Beat forum where someone volunteered to do free proofreading so that they could build their resume. As I had read and re-read my story so many times that I knew I was most likely missing a lot of little errors, I jumped on this opportunity. I'm so glad that I did!

I send my ~3300 word story off to Aspen and had it back the next day, well before the 72 hour wait period that I had been expecting. As expected, I had several little errors... comma/semi-colon issues and a couple of instances where I had used the same word multiple times in a paragraph, etc. I'm proud to say that I've learned where some of my punctuation weaknesses are and am working on improving them. I agreed with every suggestion that was offered, even though I was fully prepared to ignore anything that didn't feel right to me; it is my story after all. But that never happened, every suggestion was spot on.

Overall, I would say that this was an awesome experience for me and I would definitely recommend Aspen's services to anyone in need of a proofreader. I'm not sure how long the free proofreading services will continue, but I would definitely encourage anyone to email and inquire about it. It's a win-win situation, they get experience to put on their resume and you get a cleaner piece of writing along with an opportunity to learn your strengths and weaknesses. You can't get any better than that now, can you?

This shot story contest ends on February 19th and I'll definitely keep you updated on how my story fares. People who have read the story seem to like it and I love the characters, so I guess only time will tell. I'm doing my final read-through on it today and sending it off. I know... I should have sent it off yesterday like I originally planned to, but I guess I'm paranoid. I wasn't able to do my final read-through last night because my writing gremlin hi-jacked and forced me to outline something else (more info on that farther down in this blog). So, once I'm finished posting this blog, I'll be reading over the story one last time and emailing it off. Wish me luck!

Let's see... what else has happened?

Oh yeah! Speaking of my short story, titled On Occasion..., after hearing from two important people in my life who have read it, I wrote up a six page outline to further my new character's stories. I honestly had never considered that there might be more to these characters than what was created in my fever-induced brain when I dreamed them up, but I guess I was wrong. First my friend, M, after reading it, told me that she wanted to know what happened next... I was like, "um... nothing that I know of, I think..." Then, the other day, my husband read it and said that he agreed with M that the story could be expanded beyond what I had, not for the short story, but for another writing project. Hearing this from a man who I'd never imagine reading a romance short story really made me start thinking. If someone who normally wouldn't read this genre likes the story and characters and sees the potential, maybe I should consider it? No harm in asking the characters if they have anything more to share, right?

Wrong! This started several days of my writing gremlin creating, writing, and rewriting Megan and Joseph's story after On Occasion... ends. To be honest, the process is pretty cool to watch in my head... very Butterfly Effect. A scenario creates itself in my mind and plays out as if I'm watching a television show or a movie, then something won't seem right and the whole thing stops, rewinds, and starts again, changed to fix the error. Day and night I was plagued by these characters, just like when I started writing Instinct. At night, I would dream these looped scenes until my brain and the writing gremlin agreed that they were "just right". During the day, I would find myself daydreaming more scenes. Somewhere along the way, I created a playlist on my iTunes and started throwing songs that fit the scenes and characters into it. Then, while engaging in my worst time waster-checking celebrity gossip blogs (I know... but I can't help it...)- I started finding pictures of actresses that looked like a couple of my characters. This whole process is reminding me of the early days when I first dreamt up Instinct. Maybe this YA story will be added to my back burner projects for when I need a break from what I'm doing on Instinct.

Speaking of Instinct, I'm having a blast working on it again. The medications are fully out of my system and I can finally see and hear the characters clearly again. Don't ask me why I could write a short story while on them but not my novel... medicine head is a very complicated ailment apparently....

After reading a blog post from Murderati, I found myself really wanting to write all of the scenes with my villain. After reading a different blog post from Fangs, Fur, and Fey, I suddenly wanted to finish up everything with Casey's love interest. And now that I've started finishing up incomplete scenes and thinking about how I want to begin some of the chapters that I've yet to start.

I can't believe how happy I am to be back writing again. M even commented to me over a Gmail chat that I sound happier than I have been since I had to take my break from it. The funny thing is that I feel happier, more "myself" now that I'm back writing, ya know? It might sound weird, but part of me thinks that I was going through some sort of withdrawal/depression the past month because I couldn't write what I wanted or how often I wanted.

"Hello, I'm Willow and I'm addicted to writing..."
"Hi Willow!"

All right, now that that's taken care of... back to where my writing has taken me since my last post.

I'm actually almost done with the only part of the story that isn't in Casey's POV and I'm liking how it's turning out. I really like getting inside of this other character's head and it works really well to jump to his perspective towards the end of the book. Certain things happen at the end that Casey doesn't experience first-hand that are necessary to keep the plot going. I went back and forth on how I could get her this information when I realized that some of what happens can't be told to her. And since this book is part of a series in my head, I need to have a character experience things in order to subtly place clues to set up future books. Things that the characters don't think much of at the time and definitely not something that they would rush out to tell everyone about. Little subtle clues and hints that, on the surface, don't appear to be much... but when the truth is revealed make perfect sense.

So, what I'm saying is that I'm back writing Instinct and really excited to be back in that world. As confusing as it was, I was even writing on it while my brain was figuring out Megan and Joseph's story. The fact that I was able to go from writing a chapter of Instinct one minute to writing up the full outline of this new story (who's working title is being quite elusive...) makes me believe that I'll be able to work on both as needed.

My main focus is still going to be finishing Instinct- I'm so close to seeing the end of the rough draft that I can taste it! But, for those times when the scenes for it just aren't ready to be written, I now have a back up project to keep my occupied. Can't have me slipping back into writer's withdrawal/depression again. Now I have an alternate story to outline fully so I can get my writing fix when I'm stuck.

So everything is going really well with my WIPs and I can see the glimmer of a light at the end of the tunnel for my first draft of Instinct. It's so good to be back!

Let's see, what else? Oh yeah, before I forget again... I'm joining a writing guild. At the end of last year I found a website for a local writers guild and decided to check them out. I went to their first meeting of the year on January 15th (a horribly, horribly cold night where I found myself having to fill up the car before making the drive out because my husband forgot to...). Well, during the first meeting, I was able to meet several different writers from all different specialties. Writers of fiction, non-fiction, journalism, even a woman who is specializing in oral story telling. While at 26, I was the youngest person there, it still looks like it'll be a good group. Sadly, I wasn't able to officially join that night because I forgot the checkbook at home (d'oh!), but when I attend the next meeting on February 19th, I'll definitely become an official member.

This group has guest speakers at the meetings, be they published or unpublished authors, industry professionals, or even professors. The speaker at the first meeting was published author, Harry Spiller. He's a local author and retired teacher who has had several books and short stories published. He's even done work with a true crime television show on A&E, pretty cool. He told us about his struggles to find a publisher for his first book as well as the importance of knowing, and adhering to, submission guidelines. While I had already read pretty much everything he spoke of on the do's and don'ts of getting published during my extensive research of the publishing industry, it was still amazing to hear these truths repeated in person. It seemed to make them more real to actually hear someone speak them.

Another plus to group membership is that I'll be allowed 4 pages in their yearly anthology to have my work published. I'm not sure what I'll be able to find that is short enough to fit in the allotted space, but I'll definitely be looking out for something good to include.

They also produce a newsletter and allow members to submit writings to that as well. Maybe I can take some of the valuable information that I've learned through my favorite writing websites and blogs and write up an article for it? It'd be fun to try and I'm sure that someone would find the information useful.

They also have a yearly writing contest, but the fiction category is limited to 1500 words. I would be hard-pressed to write a piece of fiction that short. I still don't know how I wrote On Occasion... in under 3500 words, especially when the maximum word count allowed was 10,000 words. The deadline for this contest is May 1st, so maybe I'll feel inspired by then. If not, well... there's always next year if we're still living in this area then.

But anyway, this coming month I'll be joining the ranks of the Southern Illinois Writers Guild and I'm really looking forward to it. Not only will I be able to connect with other writer's in the area, but I'll be given the opportunity to network with published authors in person. As I've mentioned in other posts, I love the opportunity to ask questions and get advice from those who've been successful in this industry.

I think that's pretty much all that I've been up to in regards to my writing since my last post... If I think of anything else that I forgot, I'll definitely make a new post. So...

Until I blog again...
Talk 2ya later...

~Willow

Catching up on the past few weeks...

2009-01-24T18:43:00.003-06:00

Hello again!

I've finished my second round of antibiotics for this stupid sinus/ear infection now, so let's hope that it's cleared everything up so I can feel human again.

So, what have I been up to while living in medicine-head-land? Surprisingly quite a bit of writing. Sadly, most of it wasn't on Instinct, but it's still writing. I really wish that I had been able to work on Instinct these past few weeks though, I really miss the story and the characters. Unfortunately sinus medication + full length novel plots don't mesh up that well in my brain.

So, what did I write then?

Well, first off, the one thing I did write for Instinct was for a blog that I frequent regularly, Dear Author. Every Saturday, they post what is known as "First Page Saturday". Here's a blurb from their site that explains what it's all about:

"Welcome to First Page Saturday. Individual authors anonymously send a first page read and critiqued by the Dear Author community of authors, readers and industry others."

So, I spent a good amount of time polishing the first page of Instinct to send it off for this. Now, I'm pretty sure that this is a popular program, so I'm not certain how long it will take for my first page to be posted, but it's worth the wait. The advice and critiques that have been posted for previous entries are wonderfully helpful and insightful, not to mention brutally honest. So, I'll be checking back every Saturday, waiting to see if my page gets posted.

***

The other project that I've been working on is a short story for a contest held by The Pen & Muse blog.

"The Pen & Muse Blog proudly presents a Romance Short Story Contest! This contest is open to published/unpublished writers. There will be two categories/divisions for winners, published and unpublished.

Story length: 10,000 (no more than 10,000 for minimum)
Deadline: February 19, 2009"

(Click here for more details.)

Strangely enough, about a week before this contest was posted, I felt inspired to start writing a romance short story. I think I typed up about half of it and outlined the other half before sending it off to a friend to read. I was pretty doped up on sinus medication, so I wanted a healthy, outside opinion of it before I finished it.

I hadn't written a short story since high school, almost nine years ago... okay, feeling a little old saying that... I really didn't think that I could still write something so short and have it turn out well. Ever since I first sat down to outline Instinct, I've been hooked on writing novel length fiction.

But, anyway, this story came to me in a fever-induced dream one night and kept haunting me the entire next day. I figured that since I was having trouble remembering what I ate earlier in the day, that the fact that this story from the previous night was sticking around in my brain meant that it must be important. I really liked the characters and thought their story was cute, but was willing to discard it initially because I couldn't see how they could be used in a full-length novel. I can't believe that I almost threw out a story that I liked for a stupid reason like this... the medicine was really strong I guess. Glad to be writing anything though, I typed it up and put it aside, figuring that I'd find a use for it someday.

A little under a week later, that use appeared in the form of this contest. I knew that I'd be able to finish the story in well under 10,000 words and that my friend absolutely loved what I had so far, so I went for it. I've spent my free time since then writing, and re-writing, and editing, and re-editing this story. I have a couple of sentences highlighted that still sound wrong to me that need to be fixed, but I'm really liking what it's evolved into.

The goal for me is to straighten out those last few sentences that are being a nuisance before bed tonight. Then, I'll read it out loud... again, before going line by line doing spelling and grammar checks tomorrow since you can't trust MS Word to do this correctly 100% of the time. I'd like to send it off by the end of the week.

Giving myself 'til the end of the week should be plenty of time to have a couple of friends read over it for me. I have the friend, who read it in it's original format, who I'm sure will read it again for me. My husband has also volunteered to read it over, even though it's definitely not a genre he'd usually read. It's hard to imagine him reading a romance story in any format though, even a short story. Luckily for him, it's at just under 3300 words right now.

***

In other literary news...

I've won a couple more free books online. All of my research into the publishing industry is really paying off for my personal library. Thanks to various contests on publishing and review websites and blogs, I've won the following things:

An iPod Shuffle - (Bitten By Books contest sponsored by The Pen & Muse)
A signed copy of Eternal Seduction by Jen Turner as well as ARCs of her next two books when they're ready. - (Bitten By Books author interview contest)
A signed copy of Unleashed by C.J. Barry - (Paranormality guest blogger contest)
A copy of Kitty and the Dead Man's Hand by Carrie Vaughn - (Bitten By Books author interview contest)

In case you haven't noticed, Bitten By Books is an awesome website, not just for winning contests, but for amazing interviews with authors and book reviews. Someday, when I'm published, I'm definitely signing up to do an interview and contest with them.

I love my iPod and can't imagine not having it now. I've read Eternal Seduction and really enjoyed it, I even did a review of it on this blog. (Click here to read it.) I just received Unleashed in the mail today and am looking forward to reading and reviewing it as well. And I've received word that my information has been sent to the publisher so that I can receive my copy of Kitty and the Dead Man's Hand soon. I'm really looking forward to reading and reviewing it once it's here.

I plan on posting reviews of every book that I win in an online contest as a way to thank the author. I can't promise that I'll like every book that I read, but I'll be honest and explain what I did or did not like about each one.

***

I think that's about it for what's happened in my literary world since my last post. Of course, I could have missed something, those sinus pills were really strong... If I think of anything else cool that happened, I'll make a new post with it.

Oh, and I'll keep everyone up-to-date on the short story contest as well as any other cool contests that can be entered as I find out the information myself.

Until I blog again...
Talk 2ya later...

~Willow

Day 1 Back on medication...

2009-01-19T14:14:00.000-06:00

Yeah, you read the subject right, I'm back on the medication. I had started to feel better, finished up my prescription, and crossed my fingers that all would be well in my world... yeah, that didn't happen...

My ears are still killing me so the husband sent me back to the doctor today. The infection looks better, but there's still fluid in my ear. Luckily I only have five days worth of antibiotics this time and I wasn't instructed to stay on the antihistamines. Hopefully this new, stronger antibiotic won't affect my mental functioning too much, I'm finally getting back into the groove with my writing.

Since going off of the antihistamines, I've wrote up a synopsis for one story and written the rough draft for a short story contest I'm entering. I've also started reading my 200+ page, single-spaced manuscript of Instinct to help get myself back in the groove to finish it. Luckily, I still love my characters and their story and I'm not having any real problems getting back into that mind set. I guess part of me was afraid that all of this time away from it would somehow diminish my enjoyment of writing it, but it didn't so I'm happy.

As for what I've actually written... I'm liking the story synopsis that I came up with yesterday. It came to me in a dream during the few hours that I was able to sleep... the toddler has been a little sick and wanted to see 3 a.m. apparently... But anyway, it's sort of a middle school/young adult type story. I really like the main character, Kat, she's fun to write about. It's basically the story of how a 13 year old girl is chosen to tend a mystical tree that is the source of hope for the world. I think I wrote up around five pages, single-spaced, outlining the story and making notes of certain pieces of dialogue that I remembered from the dream. Right now, it's happily sitting in my "Incomplete Story Ideas" folder, waiting for me to get to it.

I also finished a rough draft for a short story contest that I'm entering. The maximum word count for the contest is 10,000 words and mine's just over 3000, so if I decide that I need to add something, I have plenty of wiggle room. Right now, that draft has been sent off to a friend of mine. She had enjoyed the characters when I originally wrote up a 1500 word scene with them, so now I'm waiting to see what she thinks of what I added to it to round out their backstories. Now, I have a couple of weeks to polish it up and make it presentable for the contest.

I'm not expecting too much though, I'm not a short story writer. Well, I used to only write short stories, but ever since I picked up writing again, I've fallen in love with novel-length fiction. This will also be the first contest that I've entered something I've written in. It'll be a good experience, getting used to sending off something that I've written and love for someone else to read and critique. Should be good practice for when I finish Instinct and start sending query letters out for it. And, if by some miracle, I was to place in the contest, it will be something to add to my accomplishments in the query letters.

So, I guess... wish me luck on the contest, wish me good health as I recover from my illnesses, and send me encouragement as I jump back into the world of Instinct to finish it up. Of course, I wish you all well, good health, and good luck in all that you do too!

Until I blog again...
Talk 2ya later...

~Willow

Another contest from Bitten By Books!

2009-01-16T10:25:00.002-06:00

Just wanted to let everyone know that Bitten By Books is holding another contest this week:

- Bitten by Books is excited to welcome author Missy Lyons today as our featured Guest Blogger! She will be talking with you today and answering questions. One lucky participant will be chosen to win a copy of her latest book Dragon Heat.

Click here for details: http://bittenbybooks.com/?p=651

Day one off of the medication:

2009-01-15T15:43:00.001-06:00

I'm feeling a bit better today. My ears don't hurt anymore so that's an improvement. My sinuses are still driving me batty, but I don't think I have the infection anymore. Sinus problems are just part of living in this part of the country I guess.

Today will be the first day that I'm going without my antihistamines and I'm hoping all goes well. Medications like these always seem to affect me really strongly. Even supposedly non-drowsy versions of medication make me groggy. Probably something wrong in my genetic make-up...

Anyway, I think that I'm going to take it easy the next couple of days and ease myself back into the writing process. As much as I'd like to just jump in and start writing again, I think it'll be better if I give it a couple of days to let the rest of the antihistamines get out of my system. I'm feeling more like myself today, having not taken the mental-fog-inducing pills, but I know that the fog isn't completely gone yet. I think that I'll take a couple of days to re-read my manuscript and notes to re-acquaint myself with what I have left to write. The iPod is loaded with several of my inspirational songs for the story, so I'll be playing those off and on too.

I've also decided to enter a short story contest on a blog that I frequent regularly. The Pen and Muse is currently holding a romance short story contest and I'm really excited about it. This is the blog that sponsored a prize that I won in a contest held by Bitten By Books. Feel free to click the above link for more information on this contest, the prizes, and the deadline.

From somewhere within my clouded mind, an idea for a short story came to me this past week. Well, one scene from it came to me. Happy to be able to write anything, I eagerly typed it up and shared it as a cute story with a friend of mine. She really liked it and kept asking me what happens next. I was shocked, I hadn't thought that far through it. It was just a cute little scene to me, not an idea for a novel. I can't even think of an interesting way to expand these characters into a full-blown novel right now.

My scene is currently around 1500 words and is almost done. I have a couple of paragraphs of background information that is necessary in order for the characters motivations to be clear, so that's what I'm going to have to work on before the deadline next month. I have an idea of how I want to let the reader see what led up to where the characters are now, I'll just have to see how well it comes out when I go to write it. Luckily the contest has a 10,000 word minimum and I'm sure I can easily flesh out the character's brief backstories in less than 8500 words.

Writing this short story should be a good way to ease myself back into my writing habit. I can practice getting into these character's heads for a few days while refreshing my memory on what my Instinct characters are thinking and feeling in my remaining scenes. And if I win, or even place in the contest, it will be something to add to my writing resume. Being able to say that I won, or placed in, any writing contest is better than having nothing to include in my query letters when I finish Instinct and start looking for agents. (This, of course, only matters if my short story does well enough to win or place...)

To be honest, I've been wondering about my writing abilities. Maybe it's just how the illnesses and medications are affecting my brain, but I wonder if I'm talented enough to make it as a professional writer. I know that my beta reader enjoys my writing and my stories, but what if she's the only one? I keep trying to find a good excerpt to include in my blog or an various websites that I peruse regularly, but am having a bit of trouble. So much of what I've written needs backstory to have it make sense so I never know which passages to include. Also, since I'm still on my first draft, a lot of the writing needs a bit of polishing that I'm trying to hold off on until the subsequent drafts. When people ask for snippets of my work, what should I do? Post something that people may not fully understand in a hope that it "hooks" them into wanting to read more? Take time to try and polish just that scene to make it as error-free as possible? Or should I just wait until at least the first rough draft is finished?

I'm by no means ready to give up writing, I enjoy it far too much to ever do something like that. Actually, I don't even know where these doubts came from... no one's actually told me that my writing is horrible, the opposite in fact. It's probably just the after-effects of being sick and on the medications... I'm sure that once I'm able to delve back into the world I've created in Instinct that I'll be back to myself...

Well, until I blog again...
Talk 2ya later...

~Willow

Bitten By Books: Win a Free Book Contest!

2009-01-12T20:54:00.003-06:00

Hey everyone!

I'm just making a quick post to let you all know about the new contest at Bitten By Books.

Click here for more details: http://bittenbybooks.com/?p=3748

I've won two contests from this website, so they are completely legit.

Oh yeah, if you enter, be sure to mention that Willow sent you so we both get extra entries!

Talk 2ya later...
~Willow

Illness and New Writing Projects

2009-01-12T14:57:00.000-06:00

Anyone have a quick cure for a sinus/ear infection? I'm serious, this being on antihistamines and living in a constant fog is getting old. What's really annoying is that I can still write fairly decently. I just can't focus on how what I'm writing ties into the bigger picture of the story.

I wrote what I consider a fairly cute little scene the other day, while at the height of being sick and drugged up. My beta reader likes it at least. I just have no idea what I want to do with it as it has nothing to do with Instinct. I've considered putting it in this one book idea that I've been toying with, but I'm not sure if it really fits.

This other book idea is actually one that I came up with before I started writing Instinct. It's sort of a Princess Diaries (book, not movie) meets Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. I really like the concept behind it, but I'm not sure exactly how I want to execute it. I know pretty much everything that I want to include in it, but can't seem to come up with a good "voice" to use for it.

I've actually been able to do some work on this project because none of the chapters directly tie in to each other. Before you get all shocked, saying "How can a book's chapters not fit together?" Let me explain... It's a compilation of stories, letters, and blog posts from a small group of friends. Each chapter will be them sharing special moments with each other as they go through their lives starting the day before they graduate high school. Sure, several of the chapters will be by the same "author," but each chapter will be it's own self-contained story. There's no need to connect the ideas to each other. In an opening portion of it, I'll set it up to show that the girls also communicate with each other regularly on the phone to keep track of the day-to-day stuff, but write up the important moments for each other.

I've created a basic character for each of the girls and what their "moments" will be, but I'm considering adding to my original idea. I'm thinking that as each of them go about their lives apart from each other, they invite new friends to join in their moments sharing group.

I'm glad that I can work on these individual moments while I'm sick. I've been going crazy not being able to write this past week. I'm still dying to get back to Instinct because I'd say that it's about 80% written... I can see the light at the end of the tunnel and just want to get back to writing it. I think at last count, I'm at almost 86,000 words. Considering most novels are anywhere between 80,000 to 100,000 words, I'm pretty proud of myself.

I'm really looking forward to the editing and revision process once my first draft is done, strangely enough. I want to read through it and find where my mistakes are. Then, I get to decide what scenes that I've written really aren't that important and get to fight with myself on whether or not I want to cut them.

Thanks to hundreds of websites and blog posts that I've read through this whole writing process, I can't wait to finish this book and start polishing it up so I can start querying agents. I've learned so much in the last five months that I've been researching and writing. I want to learn what my strengths are and figure out how I can improve on my weaknesses.

Part of me also can't wait to start blogging about the whole querying process. Maybe reading what I go through will one day help another new writer learn from my mistakes. Maybe not? I'm not really sure who all reads this.

I really believe in my characters and their stories and really hope that I get my chance to share them with the world. Thanks to everyone to continually sends me encouragement as I travel this bumpy road that will lead to hopefully becoming a professional writer one day.

Well, today is my son's second birthday so I have some prep work to do before friends start showing up for yummy cake.

Until I blog again...
Talk 2ya later...

~Willow

Willow’s Book Review: Eternal Seduction by Jennifer Turner

2009-01-08T16:57:00.004-06:00

"After living on the streets of New York City for over a decade, Logan Ellis admits her perceptions might be a little skewed. But twisted or not, there's a satisfying irony in watching a well dressed vampire stand in the middle of a ghetto alley, windblown trash scraping small circles near his feet. What she finds even more intriguing, is waiting for him to decide whether or not he's going to kill her.

Kerestyan Nelek hasn't quite made up his mind. As the Lord of New York, he can't allow a homeless drug addict, whose memories are packed with knowledge of vampiric existence, to run free in his city. It's not the first time he's been in this situation with a human, it's just the first time in thousands of years he's come face to face with one who doesn't seem to care. And that's what makes the decision so damn difficult.

What horrors would you have to witness before you went numb? How many years would it take for you to feel that way? What would it take to make you care again?

Logan's answers are simple: the worst humanity has to offer, almost thirty…and something she never expected." Darkness Within Novels

******

As many of you might remember, not too long ago I was the winner of a contest sponsored by Bitten By Books. By simply participating in an interview session with author Jennifer Turner, I ended up winning a wonderful prize package that included a copy of her self-published novel, Eternal Seduction, as well as advanced copies of the next two books in the series when they're ready.

Due to all of my spare time being spent writing my own novel, I was unable to read this book until recently. Now I'm kicking myself for not reading it sooner. I loved the book! I ended up reading this book in three sittings, although it would have been in one if silly things like plans with friends and the need for sleep hadn't of gotten in the way... Almost immediately I felt drawn into the mystical, yet realistic, world that Jen has created. After only a couple of chapters, I already felt as if I knew the characters and all of their quirks and idiosyncrasies.

Why traditional agents and publishers passed on the opportunity to buy this series is truly beyond me. The characters are rich, the world is believable, and the plot draws you in and keeps you turning the pages. The only "negative" thing I found with it is that I wanted certain scenes to last longer, but isn't it the sign of a good book that you find yourself wanting to spend more time in the world created? I think so, but that's just me.

Now, I cannot wait to receive my advanced copy of Eternal Hearts, book 2 in the series, some time next month so I can read more about these wonderful characters. Eternal Hearts is scheduled to be released in May 2009 and, from what I've read online, fans can't wait. If the publishing industry was smart, they'd see the potential behind this talented author and pick up her amazing series up ASAP.

For anyone interested in purchasing this wonderful book, it can be found in print format at Amazon.com or in eBook format at locations listed on Jen's website, The Darkness Within Novels.

I'm no professional book reviewer, but this one definitely gets two thumbs up from me!

Out Sick.

2009-01-07T18:11:00.000-06:00

Well, it's official. I have to take a few days off from my writing... and I HATE it. I'm on two different medications right now and if either of them would do their job, then I could probably continue my daily writing regimen. But as modern medicine has yet to create an instant cure to sinus and ear infections, I'll have to be patient and wait it out in misery.

If the antihistamine would kick in and get rid of all of the pressure on my eardrums, then I could stop taking it. It's a good medicine and I feel pretty good while it's working, but I live my days as a zombie in medicine head-land. Normally, this wouldn't bother me and I'd just ride it out, but it's really annoying with how my writing process works.

You see, I'm a very visually stimulated writer in that I see all of my scenes playing in my head sort of like a movie before I write them. Thanks to the potent effects of this medication, it's almost as if I'm looking through a foggy window. I can make out the vague shapes of my characters and hear their muffled speech, but I can't see or hear anything clearly enough to write it out. No matter what I do, I can't seem to clear the glass, as if it's dirty on the inside... so I sit outside and wonder what mischief my characters are getting themselves into and what scenes I'm missing out on...

If the antibiotic would kick in and start fighting the infections, then maybe I would feel well enough to at least work on the chapters that I've already started. Do some editing or at least add in a few comments of what parts of scenes don't seem to work right in my medication clouded brain.

But, as it is, I have no choice, (and believe me I've tried fighting this for the past couple of days...) I have to force myself to take a couple of days off of trying to write anything good. Sitting and staring at my open work in progress (WIP) like a drooling idiot all day doesn't get anything done.

I know that I could write up a lot of short little scenes that could, possibly fit into the story, but without being able to keep the whole story in the back of my mind, this idea really wouldn't work all that well. These scenes would be too hard to tie in when I can't write them successfully in context with the rest of the book.

So, please pardon my whining... whining that I can't write the scenes and chapters that I want... whining that I let myself get so horribly sick before going to the doctor... just whining in general...

I think that I've decided what I'm going to do to remain somewhat productive during my recuperation. Recently, through Bitten By Books, I won a copy of Eternal Seduction by Jennifer Turner. Jen is a really nice woman that I was able to speak with via an open interview session where the readers would comment on her blog post, asking questions, and she would answer back. I've been dying to read this book since it came in the mail, but never had enough free time to dive into it. As, I seem to have quite a bit more free time, (all of the time that I would normally spending writing...) I figure that now's the perfect time to give it a read. This is actually pretty decent timing because as another part of my prize, I should be receiving an advanced copy of the second book in this series, Eternal Hearts, sometime next month when it doesn't actually release until May.

So please forgive me if, over the next week or so, I don't do much real writing as I recuperate. Who knows? Maybe I'll write up a review of Eternal Seduction when I'm finished and post it up. I'm an opinionated person who likes to write, I think I will write up a review of the book. I'll be sure to let you all know what I think of it as soon as I'm done.

Well, until I blog again... (hopefully with a clearer head...)
Talk 2ya later...

~Willow

Being sick... sucks!

2009-01-06T02:47:00.000-06:00

I gotten absolutely nothing productive done today, well except going to the doctor. I've felt sick for a couple of weeks now, but thought that it was just sinus problems because of the crazy weather we've had recently, gotta love denial. Well, it finally got bad enough that I decided to go to the doctor today. For having to go to a walk-in appointment, it wasn't bad. By the time I got there, it was 12:15 and I was home about an hour later. Diagnosis: double ear infection and a sinus infection... So in other words, my head hurts all over and I feel like crap.

I'm a sniffly, sneezing, ears-hurting... mess, and I can't seem to get anything done with my writing. "Take a few days to get feeling better," and "It won't kill you to not write for a couple days," are the typical pieces of advice that I'm receiving right now. The sad thing is that, no matter how sick I feel, I still want to write. What really sucks is that I don't seem to be able to.

Between all of the pain and pressure, compiled with the sinus medication, I can't seem to focus long enough to actually write anything. I can't even spend my "writing time" editing my work because I'm so out of it. Researching topics doesn't help much either; I'm too easily distracted right now and know that I won't remember any of what I've read once I'm able to start typing again, so I'm not sure what I can do.

To have what feels like a physical need to do something, and yet be unable to do it, gets old really fast. Even typing out this blog post is taking forever because of my "medicine head."

There are so many scenes and chapters that I'm dying to write as I inch my way closer to completion of this novel. At last count I was at a little over 85,000 words, not counting those included in my imbedded comments.

I'm actually a part of an online writer's forum now and posted a section of a chapter up for them to review. I've received some amazing advice from the members of the forum that I'm sure I'll be able to carry through the rest of the book. The main positive feedback that everyone keep giving me is the realistic sound of my dialogue. Hearing things like this makes me so happy because dialogue is what I absolutely love writing. To know that I seem to be good at something that I love doing is, well amazing! Thanks to everyone at Writer's Beat for your continued advice! (http://forums.writersbeat.com/)

Let's see, one new thing that I did in the past couple of days that I can report on is the fact that I saved a new version of my main file. I know, doesn't sound exciting, right? But I went through and added heading information so that I can use the Document Map feature to have a type of clickable table of contents to use. This has already proved invaluable as, single-spaced, the novel is over 220 pages right now. Being able to jump back and forth between various scenes and chapters with just a click of the mouse comes in really handy. No more scrolling through the entire document to find out where a scene starts, it's wonderful!

On my document map table of contents, I've also annotated the chapter names with an "O" (for outline) if the scene has yet to be written. I made the main chapters a "heading 1" style using the following formatting:

"O - Chapter - Chapter Name".

Then I added special "heading 2" style text within the document to show where certain scenes within chapters aren't complete. I simply added in a line of text before each part labelled:

"Outline - Incomplete Scene"

I considered giving these scenes a more descriptive name, but decided that I should be able to tell what the scene is about by simply reading which chapter the scene is taken from.

I end up with an awesome nesting affect, where I'm able to click an image beside the main chapter name to make the incomplete scenes visible or not. It ends up looking somewhat similar to the following:

- Chapter - Chapter Name
Outline - Incomplete Scene

Within the document map, I can click the symbol before the "Chapter ..." text to determine whether I want the "Outline..." part to be visible or not.

This is nice because I'm able to tell at a glance what chapters are done, which ones I've yet to start, and where all of my incomplete scenes are. This lets me plan out what I'm going to try and write for the day. If I have a lot of time (and I'm not heavily medicated...) I can try and tackle an entire chapter. But, if I know that my time will be limited, I can start looking for smaller tasks within the incomplete scenes to work on. Not having to scroll continuously to find these scenes is wonderful.

I also swapped out all of my text box "post-it notes" for actual comments via the track changes feature. Before, if I decided to leave myself a note, I would add a text box, color it yellow and simply place it on top of the text. Made for some cute, fake post-its, but not so handy when you need to read what's behind the note quickly. Now, all of my comments are neatly recorded in special text bubbles on the right side of the document and can be completely hidden if necessary. Of course, a part of me will always miss my old post-it notes, but this new method is a lot better.

So, in closing... for anyone writing a novel in Microsoft Word, I'd definitely advise you to try out these tips. Well, if they're coherent enough to follow that is... I'll probably end up coming back in a few days and editing this post like crazy to fix all of the mistakes I'm making right now. Between being sick and having to stay up with a cranky toddler who refuses to sleep, I'm double loopy right now.

Here's to hoping that I'm feeling better soon... I just want to write the book, why does that have to prove so difficult?

Well, until I blog again,
Talk 2ya later...

~Willow

p.s. - it took me about an hour and a half just to type this up... *sigh*

Where did the year go?

2008-12-31T15:20:00.001-06:00

Wow! How is it New Years Eve already? Where did this past year go?

Now, I could write everything that's happened in my personal life this year, but I won't... to be honest, my memory sucks, I'd be lucky to tell you what I did last week... I could blog about how much my son has grown as he is about to turn 2 on the 12th of January. I could reminisce about times spent with friends and family, but I won't. This blog is about one thing, my journey into writing my novel, so here goes...

I know where the year has went since August. It's been sucked into my laptop in the form of an ever-expanding novel. At last count I had over 81,000 words written. Eighty-one THOUSAND words! I still can't believe that I've written so much. And if I think about all of the chunks of outline that I've removed to add in the actual chapters, I've written a whole heck of a lot more than that. Not to mention all of the other documents that go along with the story: character development exercises, setting descriptions, extended backstories, etc.

Then there's this blog. I don't even want to know how many words I've written in this blog, I know that I get long-winded when I start typing. (long winded? Doesn't sound right for typing, but oh well...) I also know that it's exponentially worse when I'm talking about my book and characters. So, I guess part of me apologizes for making such epic posts... but then part of me sticks my tongue out like a five year old and says, "deal with it, I'm a writer..."

I've been really lucky with this story though. I have wonderful friends and family that are willing to read parts of it for me and help me through rough patches. I have a husband that is super supportive and understanding when I have to write, not want to write, have to. I have in-laws that support me and even give me good suggestions when I'm having a difficult time writing something.

I have an overzealous writing gremlin, who is rarely short on ideas or creativity. And if he has an off day, now his girlfriend is staying with us too, and she likes writing a good story as well.

I've also found a really great writing forum. I've been reading the public posts for a while, but just recently joined. The members all seem to be top-notch people who sincerely want to help each other. The Writer' s Beat. Check it out!

Then there's my main beta reader. She has gotten me through many a rough patch and her enthusiasm and addiction for my characters keeps me writing at an insane pace (50,000+ words since the beginning of November...) She's my own personal cheering section, but she also doesn't hesitate to tell me if something just doesn't sound right to her. She is great for helping me work through plot holes and letting me know when something doesn't seem right for a character to say or do (i.e. - I'm trying to force the scene to go an unnatural direction.). So thank you for all of your continued help and support.

Okay, I've thought about the past year (check), made a few thank you-s (check), yay, I guess now I get to make a few of those pesky resolutions...

1. To finish writing Instinct. As it's currently about 70-75% written, this shouldn't be too difficult.
2. To begin, if not complete, all necessary revisions, rewrites, and editing. As I do some editing as I go along, I'm not sure how long this step will take, but I want to at least start the polishing process so that I can...
3. Research and possibly start sending queries to agents. I've considered trying to just send queries directly to publishers, but I think having an agent would be really helpful. I don't even pretend to imagine that I could do what a good agent can, and definitely would prefer to have one help me. If I can find one interested in me and my stories that is.
4. Continue reading and researching the industry so that I continue to grow as a writer, and...
5. Keep writing! I have so many stories outlined that I could write for years and not run out of ideas.

I guess in my "perfect world- fate decides to stop kicking me" reality, my goals would be:
1. Finish book
2. Edit/polish book
3. Find Agent / Agent finds me (hey this is a dream world... it could happen...)
4. Sell book to big publisher
5. Be that one-in-a-million author who's book takes over the literary world and sell millions of copies worldwide.

But, I won't hold my breath on the fantasy resolutions.

Well, if I'm going to finish this book, I'd better get back to it.

Until I blog again,
Talk 2ya later...

~Willow

Christmas is over, Now back to work...

2008-12-27T23:31:00.001-06:00

Well, the holidays were really nice. We traveled up to the northern part of the state to spend them with my husband's family. Unfortunately, we were only able to visit everyone for a few days, driving up on Christmas Eve and coming back today. Luckily, we were able to see almost all of the family we would normally see on the holidays. But sadly, we weren't able to hang out with all of our friends up there though. We were only able to see one friend during our visit and it was because we went to torment him while he was at work. I really can't wait until we can move up there. Not only do I absolutely adore his family, but it'll be nice to live so close to the friends that Erich has known since high school.

I won't lie, this particular group of friends is comprised of quite a few interesting characters. And, I'm not ashamed to admit that I've borrowed various quirks and characteristics from these individuals to help create characters in my writing. Never copying them exactly onto the page, mind you... just taking various unique qualities and infusing them into my pre-existing characters in order to make them more realistic. My husband laughs when we spend longer hanging out with these friends then planned, and I say that it's for research, so we shouldn't feel guilty.

Speaking about the book, it's going pretty well. I think my writing gremlin took Christmas Eve and Christmas Day off. He was giving me all kinds of inspiration into the wee hours early Christmas Eve morning, and then *POOF* he disappeared. I guess I don't blame him for wanting the holidays off, but it felt so weird not having him there for inspiration for a couple of days there. But, bright and way too early on December 26th he woke me up and was itching to get writing again.

We spent all morning re-outlining the one chapter that my beta reader had been confused by when she first read the outlines for it. I had originally thought that it was confusing because it's a very short outline and I figured that the story just wasn't explained sufficiently enough to make it easy to understand. Boy, was I wrong! My Writing Gremlin presented me with a few new ideas for the chapter and, of course I loved them. The new minor characters that the chapter introduces are more believable and the experience does a better job showing why Casey values normalcy so much. I'm able to keep a couple of good bits of dialogue and internal monologue, but don't have to write up a lot of useless stuff now. By simply reworking one character, not only am I able to get through the important parts of this chapter faster, but I'm able to do it without being bogged down with useless information that only created an unbelievable character anyway.

Then, later that evening, inspiration struck again. I've been pretty nervous about writing one particular section of the story. It's a pretty big event, but nothing so big that I want to use several chapters to explain. I wasn't sure how I could get across all of the necessary emotions in just one chapter, so I was worried. I know everything that happens during this specific week in Casey's life but didn't know how to express it without having to explain everything. This would have easily taken three or four chapters and would have really slowed down the main story line with a lot of useless information. Now, I'm new to this novel-writing business, but even I know that allowing that to happen is a big no-no.

Well, while waiting for Erich's father to get home from work, it hit me. Well, not exactly "hit" me, more like gradually crept up on me. The beginning of the scene started playing in my head and I found myself in awe, thinking, "of course!" I exiled myself into a darkened room an let it play itself out and slowly the rest of the scene began unraveling itself, piece-by-piece. Within my outline, all of the necessary emotions are able to be portrayed realistically and yet somehow it all fits in one, normal-sized chapter. Oh, and thanks to this scene working itself out, I now know the catalyst that helps Casey work through a difficult situation later on, and it works out wonderfully.

I'm really excited to get to write this chapter out, not only because of getting to write a really emotional Casey flipping out, but also because of all of the other scenes that this one will inspire me to finish. I already know at least one other scene that is directly inspired from this one that is very eager to be written now.

So, now it's full speed ahead again. My Writing Gremlin and I took the necessary time off for the traditional holidays and now we're back and ready to get this book written. The number of scenes that are simply outlined is getting smaller and smaller every day as the blue, italic text continues shrinking.

What does blue, italic text have to do with anything you might ask? Well, I compiled all of my chapters and outlines into one big document a while ago. To differentiate between outlines and finished chapters, I decided to edit the outlines into blue, italicized text. It's worked really well and gives me a real sense of accomplishment watching the color fading to black. So, for anyone doing any form of long writing from an outline, I highly recommend this method. Having a visual representation of what you've accomplished compared to what you have remaining is proving really helpful.

Oh, and I've discovered a new way to do my writing late at night. If you've read this blog before, then you've read about my countless nights, hand-writing into a notebook by cell phone light or small night-light. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not knocking this practice and will continue it when I'm writing out full dialogue and scenes, but for random notes and outlines I'm going to use something new from now on. For these quick notes, I've found that using my Palm Pilot is amazingly useful. Not only is it naturally back-lit, so no need for an external light source, but getting the information onto the computer is as easy as syncing the PDA to the laptop.

I'm fast enough using the special PDA alphabet to get basic thoughts down, so this is a nice alternative, and if I'm having a tough time writing this way, there's also a pop-up keyboard that I can use. Ultimately, I think that I'm still going to hand write any full scenes with dialogue that I come up with if I'm too lazy to get out of bed and make my way to the laptop. I just don't think that I'll be able to input scenes that full onto the PDA quick enough, with the correct formatting. My brain just seems to work too fast when I'm writing these types of scenes and I'm not sure if I'd be able to keep up while being able to format everything correctly. But for random notes, that don't need proper formatting or capitalization to be useful, this will be invaluable.

Well, it's getting late and I still need to reformat some notes that I just synced from the PDA... Yeah, I admit that I forgot the USB cable for it when we packed...but in my defense, I had no idea that I was going to use it for this purpose. We only packed the PDA because my husband has been using it to read e-Books lately...

But anywho, the Writing Gremlin calls...

Until I Blog Again,
Talk 2ya later...

~Willow

Sick Toddlers and Declining Word Counts...

2008-12-21T16:53:00.001-06:00

Well, it finally happened this year. The little guy and I are both sick. I'm pretty sure that all I have is my typical sinus issues because of the crazy weather changes we've been having here, but the little guy has been a bit sicker than that. Took him to the pediatrician and was told that he seems to have a mild sinus infection and a mild case of pneumonia in his left lung. We were just thinking that he had an ear infection!

So, as I've been helping nurse us both back to health the past few days, my writing has slowed down a little bit. When you're up until 3 or 4 a.m. with a cranky, sick toddler and then spend all day cuddling under blankies with him on the couch, the word count totals take a nose-dive.

Not that I'm not getting at least some work on the novel done, just not much actual scene writing. I think that I went from writing about 2,000+ words a day to about 1000, so it's not horrible. I'm doing random editing and trying to map out the series and see if there's anything I need to include in the first book to set things up for the later ones. I have one thing that I'm going to introduce in this book as a hobby of one of my characters that will play a big part on the second book, but I'm going to wait until the entire thing is done before I go back and implement it.

Why wait? Well, I've also been doing a little bit of research on how series books are published. Instinct can very easily be a stand-alone book, but it has the possibilities to expand on into three more books afterwords should a perspective publisher be willing to buy the rights to them. I figure that I'll type up the stand-alone version first, take out anything that is solely there to set up the later books and have that be my first version of it. Then, I'll use a copy of the manuscript and edit it with everything that's needed to set up the series to have a second version.

Who knows? Maybe the fact that I have everything done to publish the book either way will set me apart when I start sending out query letters. I can market it as a stand-alone novel initially, but mention that, should an editor or publisher want this book to be made into a series, not only do I have another version of the story that sets everything up, but I have the next three books outlined. The story definitely ends after the fourth book though, it's a really good place to stop.

If by some miracle, my books became a success and people would want it, I have notes for a prequel of sorts. More of a collection of past scenes that are mentioned in Instinct that helped make the main characters who they are. Instinct doesn't need these scenes/flashbacks in order to make the story work, but if people liked the stories and the characters, maybe they'd like a glimpse into how these characters grew up. It's just a thought...

On another literary note... after Instinct I may try writing my first book with a male protagonist. I came up with this story idea where a race of people are descendants of mythical creatures. Originally, I outlined it from a female perspective. Upon researching the idea a little bit I suddenly realized that my main character would work so much better as a man. The main internal conflict seems so male-oriented anyway. My husband loves the idea and thinks that it could become a series of sorts. Not necessarily one where the same characters appear in each book, but where each book would follow the story of a different person in the same world. I'm liking the possibilities that this idea presents and it could very easily take the slot as the next story I write.

I'm glad that I found a new story idea to keep on the back burner. My Hollywood story just isn't turning out how I'd like to in my head. I can't seem to come up with some big, main conflict for my characters to overcome. It has my two main characters own internal conflicts but the only real external one is how the world perceives them as a couple. It just doesn't seem like enough for a story though. I love the characters and I like the scenes that I've seen in my head, but something's still missing. Maybe if I put it away for a while it will become clearer next time I pick it up... With how descriptive my outlines are, I shouldn't have any problems remembering the scenes later on.

Oh yeah, I've also realized something new about my personal writing style. From what I can tell so far, I seem to write entire plots out at once. The best way that I can describe this would be to have you imagine how a soap opera is set up, several sub plots all mixed together. If you imagine a writer writing out the entire story line for couple A, and then moving on to the story for couple B, then C, etc. then that's how I'm writing. I know that in the end, everything has to be mixed together, but as I can't write chronologically- this will have to do for now.

In Instinct I have subplots for Casey's relationships with the other characters. All of these subplots tie in nicely with the main plot and are only there to help further the story, since I'm against adding scenes that have no intrinsic value.

At first I wrote a lot of the scenes that were mostly just about Casey and the ones that introduced the other main characters. Now, I've found myself writing all of the scenes pertaining to her relationships with specific characters.

- First I wrote up pretty much her entire storyline with one of her suitors. I'd say 90% of those scenes are complete now with the remaining 10% needing me to write other scenes before I can write them.

- Then, I started writing up the scenes leading up to Casey's friendship with another main character. I was about 30% through writing this storyline when we all got sick, so that kind of threw off my writing process. But fear not! As I'm beginning to feel better and after a fun evening with friends last night, I'm pretty eager to get writing these scenes right where I left off.

While I've been sick, I've found myself writing and outlining new scenes for Casey's relationship with a second suitor. Originally, I hadn't planned on writing this many scenes with him, but I like the idea of this love triangle of sorts. This character was always just supposed to kind of be in the background, but his motivations at the end of the story just didn't seem strong enough with the scenes that I had originally planned. By adding in these scenes, it really rounds out the character and shows the reader why he does what he does in the end. (was that vague enough?)

I'm also loving placing all sorts of red herrings for the reader to throw them off and keep them wondering who Casey should end up with in the end. This is really easy with her main character flaw. She has a problem interpreting situations in her personal life. She can see things clearly that are going on at school or work or even with her friends' lives, but just has a blind spot within her own life.

For example: With Casey's past experiences with men, or lack thereof, she can't always tell when they're flirting with her. She'll see the flirting actions and those around her will say that a guy was flirting with her, but she never sees it for what it really is. She's completely oblivious when it comes to such things.

Having this flaw makes it really easy for her to not pick up or focus on the important things. When she tries to overcome this problem, she starts latching on to the wrong things in situations. Instead of noticing the important parts of a conversation, she'll get stuck on another part and pick it apart. I almost feel like I'm writing a whodunit book and having to place good and bad clues everywhere and it's fun!

It's also really fun to see my beta reader react to these interactions. While the book is from Casey's point-of-view and you see and hear everything from her perspective, it's funny to see how different people read the situations differently. Seeing your beta reader act like she wants to reach into the manuscript and smack your main character to knock some sense into her is a funny thing to witness. I guess that means that my characters are believable enough that people really connect with them, so that's a good thing.

Well, I think I'm going to see if I can write up a scene that I had begun before we all got sick... wish me luck!

Until I Blog Again,
Talk 2ya later...

~Willow

P.S. - Here's some basic stats on where the novel is at:
- 72,790 Words
- 260 pages (1.5x spacing, 12 pt. Arial font, 1 inch margins)
- I'd estimate that it's approximately 70% complete, 30% outlines

Oh yeah, I have a progress meter bar on right of the page that keeps a running total of my word count if anyone's interested in seeing how much progress I've made on any given day. I try to update it daily to show my current word count compared to my minimum goal of 100,000 words.

A-ha!!!!

2008-12-16T21:38:00.000-06:00

I figured it out! I know why my focus has been split between two different stories that I want to write! I really should've seen it coming... it makes perfect sense to me now...

First a little bit of background...

Not long ago I sent my writing gremlin home to find another gremlin who would want to work with my friend Jason as he makes his way through his proposal and dissertation for his PhD. He was gone for a couple of days, but eventually came back and he and I resumed writing.

The weird thing is that another story began popping into my head off and on. A decent enough story, I wrote down a synopsis and seriously planned on writing it once I finished this story.

Well, this story keeps getting more and more insistent in its desire to be written. The story for it isn't quite as polished as the series for Instinct, but it's really getting there. It's holding my interest, so that's a good start I guess.

I just couldn't figure out why my writing gremlin was doing this. The scenes weren't coming to me the same way that the ones from Instinct did. It's almost as if someone else is telling me this story... then I figured it out. The proverbial light bulb went off over my head and it all made sense.

My writing gremlin didn't just bring back a buddy to work with my friend. He also brought back his wife or girlfriend or whatever she is considered to him in the writing gremlin world. This "new voice" giving me this story isn't my original writing gremlin at all! She must have gotten bored and decided that my poor brain could handle her story at the same time too...

All right, no problem... I'll just focus on Instinct and write up rough outlines of whatever she tells me and I'll be all set to start that story later on... My life can't be that simple to fix...

I guess my original writing gremlin got jealous and decided that I needed more incentive to keep living in the fictional world of Instinct. Knowing how badly I wanted to write a story from the perspective of my villain, he is now danging a new book in the series in front of me. It's completely from the point-of-view of the villain, but can't be written until I finish books 1, 2, and 3 for the series...

Oh, and if that wasn't tempting enough... he's presented me an idea to write a prequel of sorts for the series. It shows some of the key story lines from the character's pasts that laid the groundwork for what happens in Instinct and the rest of the series...

So now, to clear up any confusion, here are the things playing in my head and fighting for dominance:
- Instinct (probably 5 scenes fighting to be written at once)
- 2nd, 3rd, and now 4th books in the Instinct series
- Prequel for the Instinct series
- Hollywood Romance type story (female gremlin's project)
- a random Sci-Fi story that popped into my head while my gremlin was out of town... oh crap! What type of creature inspired that!

Well, I guess I'm off to ponder that thought and try to wade through my house full of muses... Wish me Luck!

Until I Blog Again,
Talk 2ya later...

~Willow

Way too real...

2008-12-15T21:37:00.002-06:00

I've written over 66,000 words of my novel. It's amazing to watch this story that began with a simple "What if..." question enfold into such an elaborate story. Having all of these characters and plots and subplots running through my head is mind-boggling at times.

Everything is so real to me, I constantly find myself talking about my characters as if they're real people. I swear my husband must think I'm going crazy, especially when my beta reader comes over to talk about the book. It's awesome to see someone else connect with this story the way that I have. I've lost count of how many Gmail chats we've spent discussing which famous people most remind us of the characters. Eerily enough, we naturally seem to picture the characters the same way.

Oh, and speaking of eerie... we went to visit a couple of friends this past weekend. Well, like most of our friends who live around here, they've heard quite a bit about the book and have even read a couple of chapters. I was talking about the setting of the story (Boston, Massachusetts) and one of them said that he thought he knew which part of the town I was talking about. He had done a campus visit out there a couple of years back and said that the streets and basic setting of part of the book sounded a lot like Harvard Square.

Myself, having never been anywhere near Massachusetts, replied with a simple, "huh?" He proceeded to open up Google Maps and brought up this really cool street-view image of Harvard Square. Well, it only took a couple of minutes of navigating through the virtual tour before things started getting weird. He turned down a street and everything looked familiar! Everything- down to the brick planters around the trees lining the streets, to the cobblestone sidewalks, to the old style street lamps, hell, even the architecture of some of the buildings was familiar...

Then, a little farther down the street, we came upon a boarded up alleyway. If you were to take the boards down, then it looks exactly like one that appears in my story. I had to get up and walk around at this point in the evening... I was really weirded out.

All of these coincidences keep popping up where I find things in real life in the Boston area that are near exact replicas of places in my story. Is this normal? My beta reader is half convinced that I'm somehow channeling someone real and telling their story. Or that I'm reliving some past life and substituting modern-day equivalents of music, clothing, and cars to make it more up-to-date in my head.

I began looking up coffee shops in the Harvard Square area and had yet another weird moment. I stumbled across one, that I won't mention the name of, that had various pictures of the interior on their website. Common enough, right? How about the fact that the front counter and menu board were EXACTLY like the image I saw in my head, down to the color scheme? This isn't a chain shop either, from what the website says, it's only found in Boston...

I'm really enjoying writing this book and how real everything is in my head, but... is it normal to have everything be this real? To visualize areas that I know I've never seen before, exactly how they are in real life? Or am I going crazy? I know they say writing is the only socially acceptable form of schizophrenia, but this is just insane! (okay... bad pun there, but you get the idea...)

So, here's a recap of my writing progress:
234 pages (1.5x spacing, 1 inch margins, 12 pt arial font)
66,662 words (as of an hour ago)
~53 scenes (number of chapters is unknown until I finish writing them)
13 weirdness factor (on a scale of 1-10)

I guess I could say that "technically" the book is almost done with it's first draft, I just have large chunks here and there that are written in the wrong POV. There are only going to be two different POVs for this story and one of them is only for a few chapters towards the end because it makes sense to do so given the circumstances.

Right now, I have almost all of the second POV written out in chapter form and a good portion of the Casey POV chapters done. The rest of my file is filled with extremely detailed outlines. Did I emphasize "extremely" well enough there? Maybe I should find a way to make it blink...

My "outlines," if you want to call them that, are basically large blocks of text that tell that part of the story from a type of third-person narrative perspective. My approach to outlining is very stream-of-consciousness. I type up everything that pops into my head, exactly how it pops into my head. My beta reader says that it's almost as if the story changes over to someone else telling the story when she reads over a section of this text. All of the, "She goes home to visit her father and while she's there... this happens, then this happens... blah, blah, blah..."

I only write up the outlines this way because I'm afraid that I'm going to forget something. Early on in the outlining process everything rushes through my head so fast that I struggle to keep up. Writing without an outline is simply out of the question for me. Taking dictation of my thought processes seems to be the only way that I can preserve these early inspirations. Sure the detailed outlines sometimes change quite a bit when I sit down and let just that scene replay itself in my head, but at least I have the basic important things written down for future reference.

But anyway... winding down... Thanks to everyone to reads this blog. When I started typing this post tonight, the current stats (according to the MySpace version of this blog) said that I've had a total of 395 views for my blog posts. I never thought that anyone would actually be interested in my ramblings and random epiphanies as I write this book, so it's amazing to think that my little blog has been viewed almost 400 times now (Just on the MySpace side of it). And yet somehow I only have very few comments and of the few that I do have, I'd say that at least half of them are me responding to what other people say... So, feel free to leave me a comment. Any advice or encouragement would be amazing, even to just see who's so interested in my journey would be cool.

Well, until I blog again...
Talk 2ya later...

~Willow

Writing Gremlin, Inc

2008-12-10T23:50:00.004-06:00

At the insistence of my husband. I feel compelled to share the body of an email that I sent a friend today. He is working on the proposal for his PhD and had requested a Writing Gremlin after hearing about the success my friend had once I gave her one. He already knows about how much mine helps me. But anyway, my other friend was also writing the proposal for her PhD and right after receiving her gremlin had a crazy 3-day writing marathon. Well, long-story-short, not only did she finish her proposal, but it was accepted and she gets to defend next week.

This is how I responded to his request (I actually filled out the personal information for him):
*****

Greetings [ Insert Name ]!

After a lengthy interview process, I am proud to announce that your Writing Gremlin has been selected. There was quite a stack of applications as many of the little buggers really want to work with [ Insert Job ], so many apologies for the delay. We here at Writing Gremlin Inc. hand select the best possible gremlin and won't settle for anything but a perfect match. We hope that you enjoy your new muse and that you are able to form a lasting friendship with him or her that will keep you inspired for years to come!

*******
Here's a pic of your new Writing Gremlin:
http://s236.photobucket.com/albums/ff16/willowdreamer/?action=view&current=Writing_Gremlin_by_TerribleToadQuee.jpg

Here's the steps that you'll need to complete in order to meet your Gremlin and introduce them to your work:

Print up a copy of it's picture.
Determine in your mind if it's a boy or girl and anything else unique about it. You have to really get to know your Gremlin if you want a good working relationship with them. You wouldn't feel comfortable working closely with someone who didn't know a single thing about you, would you?
Leave your data out for your Gremlin to peruse.
Open up your files on your computer and leave out any other research materials overnight with the picture either taped backwards to the monitor or sitting nearby to allow your Gremlin time to become familiar with your work. You didn't expect them to just automatically know what you're writing about, did you?
Prepare yourself for feeling the presence of your new partner.
Whether they perch lightly on your shoulder, or drape themselves across the top of your head... Your Writing Gremlin will find a comfortable position for them when they are inspiring you. The sooner you adapt and adjust to this, the sooner you can move on to step 4...
Bond with your Gremlin.
Eventually, as you bond with your gremlin, they will become more in tuned with your writing style and needs. You will notice that, as time passes, you both begin to work really well together once you adjust to each others individual quirks and moods.
Marvel at the work you're accomplishing.
- Writing Gremlins do not mess around. Once you start truly working with one, they'll do whatever they can to keep you writing.
- Don't expect every idea they give you to pan out as they aren't miracle workers. If they were, do you think they'd be volunteering their time to help us measly humans write?
- They will wake you up at all hours of the night, so keep a notebook by the bed. You will NOT remember what they tell you at 2 a.m. later that morning.
- It's important to remember that they won't necessarily give you inspiration on the part of your paper or project that you want to work on. Iit's part of their charm and you'll learn to love them for it eventually.
Turn in your finished project.
Don't forget to leave a cookie or two out for your Gremlin to thank them for all of their hard work.

We here at Writing Gremlin, Inc. sincerely hope that you enjoy your new writing partner.
Good Luck and Keep Writing!

~ Bobbi Kilbarger
President, Writing Gremlin, Inc.

Legalese:
- We here at Writing Gremlin, Inc. in no way, shape, or form guarantee a successful project based on working with one of our clients. Remember that the writing is all in you, a Writing Gremlin can only bring out what you already have inside of you.
- Writing Gremlin image originally found at: http://terribletoadqueen.deviantart.com/art/Writing-Gremlin-91042972

******

See why it's bad for a Willow to be stuck on part of a chapter? I start writing goofy stuff like this!

Well, Until I Blog Again,
Talk 2ya later...

~Willow

Bitten By Books Rocks!

2008-12-10T23:41:00.004-06:00

All right, I know I've mentioned this before but... Bitten By Books Rocks!
( http://bittenbybooks.com ) This is the website that I won my iPod Shuffle from a little bit ago during a contest.

Well, I just found out today that I won another contest! They had a live interview with self-published author, Jennifer Turner.
( http://www.darknesswithinnovels.com/ )

To be honest, I didn't even realize there was a contest until after I had posted, asking her a question. I just got on for an opportunity to chat with another author, she was really cool by the way for all of you that didn't catch the interview. Well apparently by posting my questions/comments I earned an entry into a contest to win a copy of her current book and advanced copies of her next two about a month or two before they're released. I am so excited!

So, for any of you who haven't checked out Bitten By Books, ( http://bittenbybooks.com ) You really should consider it. They have contests all the time, sometimes several going on at once. The people are really cool and it's just a nice website. But, if for some reason you don't like winning free stuff for doing easy stuff... oh well, more goodies for me!

After the last couple of days, I really needed cheering up. I've been in a slight slump, writing-wise for a couple of days now. I had been writing so much that I started getting into a rhythm of writing every morning, always getting done around 1 p.m.

Well, the other morning, my husband was using the computer to look some stuff up online and I didn't have the heart to ask him to let me use it to get my work done, figuring that I could always start later. I've also been feeling pretty guilty for hogging it non-stop lately.

Now, I don't know if I broke my rhythm and have to work my way back up to it again or if my brain and Writing Gremlin just need a couple of days off to catch up, but I can hardly type up anything for this story right now. I had been typing 8-10 pages a day for several days in a row there, usually within 2-3 hours time. But now I'm stuck, it took me all day to write up part of one scene... and I only got as far as I did thanks to a pep talk from one of my reviewers via Gmail messenger.

She thinks that, knowing my writing style, that I just need to take a couple of days to recharge and I'll be writing like crazy again. I must be overworking my Writing Gremlin or something... She's probably right though, I don't see how missing one morning shift of writing could throw everything out of whack like this. Maybe it's "Chapter 2-itis" all over again... Maybe I've written all I'm supposed to for this scene right now and I'm just forcing myself now... Maybe... I can use more ellipsis in this sentence...

Oh yeah, did I mention, my reviewer tried to name my Writing Gremlin, saying he seems like a Jasper to her. I keep trying to picture him with the name, but my love of the Twilight series of books and the new movie keep holding me up... my Writing Gremlin looks nothing like Jasper... but, oh well... at least she didn't try to name him Edward, lol!

Well, until I Blog Again,
Thanks Bitten By Books!

~Willow

P.S. - I actually figured out what was up with my Writing Gremlin. I forgot I had sent him to find another gremlin to give to a friend of mine who's working on the proposal for his dissertation. Being as my gremlin is from the London area, he had to go back there to find a friend for the job. No wonder I couldn't type worth anything, I was going it alone!

But fear not, he returned last night, hopped onto my shoulder and excitedly said, "Let's get writing!" And we did, writing up a good 8 pages of text, keeping me up until... well too late, lol. Now that he's been home for a visit, I have a feeling that it'll take a bit for him to adjust back to this time zone again... oh well, who needs sleep?

Moral of the story: Never underestimate the power of your personal muses...

Oh yeah... one more thing...

2008-12-07T22:09:00.000-06:00

While writing and proofreading my last post I had something else happen to me that I'd like to share. When I'm writing, I tend to have iTunes running in the background, playing all of my songs on shuffle so that some random song can pop up and inspire me.

Well, as some people know, I have a mental playlist of songs that go with this story, it's own soundtrack if you will. One song in particular that is never mentioned in any of the chapters in any way, shape, or form has always had a major impact on me when I hear it. I first heard it in the background of my brain when I was typing during the "week of emotional scenes" over our Thanksgiving holiday. I was writing a lot of mushy relationship scenes between Casey and one of my male main characters and this song started playing in my head.

Now, this isn't a current song at all, I think that it was at it's most popular back in the '90s during the time when shows like Dawson's Creek were "the" show to watch. (I know this because this song debuted on a season finale of the show.)

This song has come to be the song that represents the true love between these characters. Being that it represents such a strong emotion and me being such an emotional person, yes I cry when I hear it. But it's worse than that! Whenever I hear it now, I have to completely stop working until the song is over, no matter what I'm doing at the time. I sit there and scenes from the story flash through my head while I hold back the tears. Now, the easy solution would be to skip past the song and continue working... Now what in my life is ever easy? I can't even bring myself to skip this song. It's like my brain freezes up and I get sucked into the emotions of my characters until the song is over.

Now I have over 4 playlists of various songs for this book but no other songs on any of them have this affect on me. Now, granted this song is an emotional song in and of itself, but this is crazy. I used to listen to this song randomly before, but it never had this affect on me.

So, I've come to a conclusion... I'm addicted to my own book. Over the months that I've spent getting this far, I've developed a strong emotional connection with my characters. So strong is this emotion, that I lose sleep after writing a scene that would cause them to lose sleep. I cry with them when they're sad. I celebrate with them when they are happy. Hell, I even get that butterfly-in-your-stomach feeling right along with them as they fall in love. So if you think that the emotions you feel on a daily basis are intense... imagine feeling at least three other people's emotions along with yours almost all of the time! You wanna talk intense!

So everyone cross your fingers that I can somehow get these emotions onto the page. One of my reviewers seems to have the same reactions to scenes that I do so far, so I just have to hope that I can keep it up!

Now to play that song again so I can go spend some more time in my fantasy world...

Until I blog again (and it shouldn't be again tonight...)
Talk 2ya later...

~Willow

Currently listening to:
I'll Be
By Edwin McCain

Aha!!!

2008-12-07T22:08:00.000-06:00

Don't you love it when you have an epiphany? When realizing one tiny thing starts a chain reaction in your brain and you finally understand a problem that you've been facing? I just had one of those tonight!

I have a chapter where one of my characters is sent to therapy because of an incident that occurs to them. They're sent as a precautionary measure, but what comes out of this visit leads to a whole subplot and eventually leads to the introduction of one of my other main characters.

As a person who's been in therapy before, when I heard that my character was being sent to talk to someone about how an event affected her, my mind immediately flew to the realms of therapy, psychiatrists, the stereotypical couch, and the "how do you feel about that..." nonsense.

Running with this idea, I went so far as to ask a friend who is working on his Ph.D. on this topic to ask for help. I want the scene to be as realistic as possible so it won't "rip the reader out of the story" as some authors describe it. I don't want anyone associated with the mental health field who would read it to stop and say, "What was she thinking when she wrote this?"

Well, anyway... he came over for dinner last night and we discussed this therapist character. I've been having a lot of trouble picturing him, so we were trying to figure out what type of psychiatrist he is. Sounds simple enough... yeah right! Everything that I "know" about this guy just didn't seem to fit with what a psychiatrist is. The night ended with me planning on just writing the scene and hoping for the best. Then I would send the draft to my friend and he'd tell me what changes I needed to make to make it realistic. And if that didn't work, he was going to stage a mock-therapy session with me pretending to be the character in question. Now while I can write from the perspective and personality of Casey, actually vocalizing and acting like her would have been difficult.

Well today, while researching the types and wording of possible questions that could appear in an initial visit with a therapist, I stumbled across something that made everything "click" in my head. I happened to scroll past a heading that read, "The differences between therapists and counselors," or something like that. It was at this point that I realized that my "therapist" isn't a therapist at all! He's a counselor! I read information on the role of a counselor and my guy fits it perfectly.

It even makes more sense in the grand scheme of things for him to be a counselor. This character works for a police academy in the story. It just makes more sense that a counselor would work in this setting than a psychiatrist. And a counselor probably wouldn't have any problems with giving advice during an initial visit because sometimes that's all they ever see of the person.

Now, right now I'd love to put my hand up in the good old girl scout salute and vow to never make assumptions about new characters ever again. To allow them to take whatever time and means necessary to introduce themselves to me so I avoid all of this confusion next time. While I'd love to say this... I know that it's not going to happen. Sure, it sounds good on paper (or the screen in this instance), but I know that I'll keep doing this. You know that I'll keep doing this. So I'll just save myself the trouble of making a post in a month starting off with, "You know a little bit ago when I said..."

So no, I won't promise to never ever do this again. But I will promise to always trust my gut feelings on my characters. I won't change them to fit some preconceived notion that I've created for them. I write character-driven stories. If I start ignoring my characters and try to force them to do things "my way" then I will lose what I think makes my stories good. I love the personal feelings that character-driven stories present. They seem so realistic and you're really able to connect with the characters on a personal level. This connection is an important thing for a book to possess in order to become one of my favorites and I hope that someday the fact that I write in this style will make my book(s) favorites for others.

Well, until I blog again!
Talk 2ya Later...

~Willow

Another chapter nearly done!

2008-12-06T14:34:00.000-06:00

Wow! I am tearing through chapters like crazy lately.

Yesterday I wrote up almost all of chapter 8, I just have the very beginning and a couple of small additions to add and it'll be done.

Today I woke up and wrote almost all of chapter 9! I have the very beginning to write on it too, hmmm... I wonder why I have this fear of starting a chapter at the beginning when I write... oh well..

I even got to write up an action scene in this chapter- Not that type of action! *shocked gasp* My characters just met each other... You! Go wash your filthy mind out with soap!

Back? Okay...

Anyway, since my main character is a police cadet there is going to be a criminal undercurrent going on throughout the book. I don't really describe most of the crimes, except through her hearing third-party descriptions of incidents if they're necessary to carry the plot along, but this crime was important. Not only does it happen to Casey, but it affects her emotionally for a while in the story.

I was so nervous about writing this incident. I think I do an all right job writing the sappy parts of the story, but I've never actually written out anything like this before. I guess my saving grace is that everything happens from Casey's perspective so I can get away with not knowing a lot of the specifics. She's really trapped in her thoughts, squeezing her eyes shut in fear during the most violent parts of the scene, so that helped out a lot too. I hope I did an okay job writing it, I guess I'll just have to wait until I hear from my reviewers.

I love seeing her react like this because it's pretty uncharacteristic for how you'd expect a police cadet to behave. But, after hearing her thoughts throughout the evening, it should make sense for her to act the way she does.

I feel so bad for the guy she is with during this time though. Her decision at the end of the chapter is really going to hurt him, and after what he did for her it'll hurt even worse. I just have to resign myself into moving on, knowing that this is all necessary... Without this early conflict, Casey wouldn't be able to grow emotionally the way that she needs to in order to face what's just around the corner...

I have a slight concern in how I wrote my characters behaving in chapter 8 as well, but I can't explain the problem without giving away plot details, grrr.... so...

But anyway, I'd say adding ~18 pages to the manuscript in two days isn't too shabby. I have a lot of new ideas that I'm going to add to a couple of short, early chapters that will really help set the stage for later stuff nicely too. I guess an anxious reviewer is better motivation than I thought!

Let's see, what else... Oh yeah, last night I found a wonderful set of articles written by an author who also happens to be a cop. She wrote them to show how many authors misrepresent the police in their works and offers examples of what it's really like. I found a couple of instances where I had made mistakes in terminology, so I'm really glad that I found these articles.

I still have a few questions about a couple of scenes that I've written though. If I can't find a good source online I'm considering sending an email to my local police station, asking if it would be possible to email some interview questions to an officer. I just want to double check some terminology and procedures that I want to write up accurately. The questions are basic enough though, that I think that I'll be able to find a reliable source online.

Well, I think I'll try and finish up chapter 8 and 9 this afternoon before we have some friends over for dinner later tonight. I swear this inspiration is just bubbling up inside of me! I'm at over 50,000 words now and I'm showing no sign of slowing down! In fact, everything seems to be speeding up!

Well, until I blog again,
I'll talk 2ya later...

~Willow

I feel like I’m possessed...

2008-12-05T14:17:00.000-06:00

Well, as the title says, I'm feeling possessed right now. I've been writing up a storm the past few days, adding around 15 pages to my manuscript rough draft file.

I think this all came about starting Wednesday. One of my reviewers came over for dinner. We had worked together a couple of years ago and had recently just started catching up again. Well, she had read my blogs and kept asking about my book and I decided that I needed a good female perspective on the story, so I sent her the first chapter. She devoured it and immediately started asking for more. I ended up sending her the outlines for chapters 2-4 and the completed chapters 5-7 before she came over on Wednesday. I'm happy to say that I think I have her sufficiently hooked on the story. Well if all of the emails with the subtle "How's the book coming?" and "Anxiously waiting on the next chapter..." lines sprinkled throughout them are any indication that is...

But anyway, we spent a good portion of the evening talking about the story. Going over characters, the plot, looking at my collections of pictures and files... having a great time. And probably alienating my husband and his cousin who had come over to do laundry. They seemed to hide out in the kitchen while we sat, oblivious in the living room... oh well!

She had begun begging to know more about the story and where it was going, and I, feeling bad that I have so little of the first half of the book actually written out, made her a deal. Once she had read through a certain point, I would answer any questions she threw at me. Well, she came prepared on Wednesday, having read to that point and the chapter after. I mostly wanted to see her reaction once both of Casey's potential suitors had been introduced, to gauge which way the reader would initially lean. Well, she reacted to the whole story exactly how I had intended the reader to! Yay me!

We spent the next couple of hours with me explaining the whole story, all of the twists and turns, the ups and downs... it was really nice having a female to share this with. She definitely understood exactly where the characters were coming from. We eventually shifted to what was going on in our regular lives and had a great evening and dinner catching up.

Now, I had spent a good portion of Wednesday morning typing in nervous anticipation of hearing what she thought of the last chapters I had sent. Well, actually the night before as well.. I kinda, sorta stayed up until 5 a.m. typing up scenes... what can I say my little writing gremlin is a slave driver!

I then proceeded to wake up Thursday morning with an indescribable desire to get writing. And write is what I did... ALL DAY LONG! I think I took short breaks to eat those pesky meals and to make trips to the bathroom, but the rest of the day was spent typing.

I wrote up at 15 page scene-by-scene summary of the story to help me keep track of the storyline easier. It takes a little while to scroll through an ~180 page document to figure out when something happens. I'm going to use this new summary to determine where I want to add in elements of foreshadowing and to plot out the slow degradation of my villain's character. I want all of the signs to be subtle enough that the reader can explain them away, but in the end when they are revealed, I want the reader to smack themselves on the forehead and say, "Of course!"

I'll also need something like this when I get done and am ready to send it off to publishers. I'll need a chapter-by-chapter summary that's anywhere from 2-20 pages to send in with my query letters from what I've read so far. Now, I'll just have to update this file and put it in the correct format. Two birds.... One stone... Oh yeah!

I also wrote up most of the rest of another scene in the middle of the story. I have a small block of dialogue left to write for it, but it's nearly done.

Now the really fun part! I stayed up until around 3 a.m. last night reading various articles about writing. I decided that I wanted to write chapter 8 as it's been kind of in the back of my head for a day or two now and my new reviewer is dying to read what happens next.

I opened up a new document and copied over all of my notes and outlines for the chapter and read them over several times, hoping to plant the information in my subconscious and allow it to grow into a beautiful chapter over night. I think I wrote up about one page of early dialogue that had been brewing in my head, but then I left it. I left the document open on the screen in hopes that my writing gremlin would look it over during the night and went to bed. When I woke up this morning, there it was- the scene, nearly in its entirety, playing in my head. Have I mentioned how much I love my writing gremlin?

In between feeding, changing, and playing with my son I ended up writing up 12 pages for the chapter! I still have a phone conversation to write up for the beginning and the very end of the chapter to write up, but... 12 pages! I can't believe I wrote that much in 3 hours while doing everything else. I guess it helped that my son decided to eat his meals incredibly slowly today and that he's in one of those, "don't look at me when I'm playing and don't you dare come try and touch my toys," moods too.

I sent the chapter off to my anxious reviewer and am laughing at the thought of her working in her office today, staring at the computer and trying to force herself to work faster so she can let herself read it. I'm not selfishly using her to critique my story, I'm providing a motivation to get her work done quickly, lol! Really! ...that was believable, right? lol But really, I'm really glad that she, and all of my reviewers, are so wonderful to read over this story as I'm writing it. Your input is really invaluable. Thanks guys!

In a funny twist of fate, two of my other reviewers are coming over for dinner tomorrow night. Now to see what they think of the chapters they've received so far... It'll be interesting to get a male perspective of it as my husband doesn't want to read outlines and is patiently waiting until I can finish chapter 2 to read anything else. He'll sit and listen to me vocalize my thoughts on where the story is going, but doesn't want to read anything but fully written chapters. Go figure?

Well, I think it's time to do some research for the beginning of chapter 8. I have to figure out what type of car a certain character drives. I know what color it is, but have no clue what make/model/year it is. Then I have to decide how much of this information Casey would actually know by just looking at it. I also need to decide what they are wearing in this scene, it's actually important to what they're talking about... So, off to farm some pictures up..

Until I blog again, Talk 2ya later...

~Willow

I Love Writing!

2008-12-02T22:07:00.001-06:00

I love writing my characters so much. They've become so vibrant, so life-like to me, I find myself almost believing that they could really be real and living out there somewhere.

Today, while writing an email to one of my reviewers, I found myself inspired to write an earlier scene in the book. I'm really happy about this because I've spent quite some time lately working on the last half of it. I was telling her that a character she mentioned was one of my top 5 favorites as well and that I hope she likes the others too, once she meets them in later chapters.

This got me thinking about how Casey is supposed to meet this character. Thinking about this, I suddenly could feel the pressure of a little writing gremlin perching himself on my shoulder. For the moment he was silent, with a very thoughtful look on his face. I decided to let him be and finished my email. He'd let me know when he was ready for me to write, no sense rushing him.

I put my son down for his nap and the scene started playing in my head. Well not the scene that I thought he was thinking about, but the one immediately before it. Just happy to be writing something in the first half of the book, I shrugged and started typing. I typed the last sentence of that scene and *POOF* he was gone. I can still feel him nearby though, maybe later tonight I'll be able to continue on with the next couple scenes as I'm still feeling inspired by them.

Now, when I was typing, I really wasn't thinking too deeply about deeper meaning in anything my characters were doing or saying, or that maybe I should be foreshadowing future events, but in re-reading it I was amazed. Amongst everything else going on, I had laid the first clues of what lies ahead for Casey and the man she falls for. Go subconscious mind!

Writing this scene was also fun because it contained a lot of dialogue between roommates, Casey and Heather. These characters couldn't be more different if they tried, and people often wonder how they are such good friends. But when you hear them talk to each other, in their sisterly banter, it's so obvious that they really are best friends. They pick on each other, they fight... but at the end of the day, they're friends. Being an only child, this is how I imagine older sisters treating each other. Guess I'll just have to wait until my reviewers get to this part of the story to see how believable their interactions are.

With this scene, I'm up to 160 pages now. I can't believe how much I've written since August. I'm having such a blast writing this that, at this point, I can't imagine how people are able to quit writing a book- to be able to give up. I've read that only 3% of books that are begun actually get finished. Doesn't everyone feel this amazing rush when writing? The indescribable drive to record their characters forever in print... The joy that comes just thinking about their story and where it's going... The intense sadness that comes when you aren't able to write...

I can't wait to finish this story and hear what people think about it. I can't describe it, but I have such a good feeling about the possibilities of it being published. I know the odds of an author having their first work published, but it doesn't affect my optimism for some reason, which is weird. I'm usually a worrier that, while typically optimistic, is able to dwell on all of the possible negative outcomes in a situation. I guess I'd say I'm a realist. I know the reality behind me getting this published isn't necessarily that great, but for some reason it doesn't bother me. Maybe I'm spending so much time living in fantasy worlds that I'm losing touch with reality? Who knows? All I know is that just finishing this story will be one of the proudest days of my life, up there with my wedding and the birth of my son.

***

Let's see, what else... I did some research on local writing groups today. I found one that meets once a month about twenty minutes from my house. They have a membership fee if you want a chance to be published in their yearly anthology or get other perks, but the meetings are free and open to the public. Better yet, the meetings are on Thursdays, a day that my husband always has off of work. Starting in January I think I'm going to check out the group as they don't hold meetings in December. If I like the group, I'll most likely officially join it too. Not only will this give me one night a month where I can get out of the house to interact with other people, but I'll also be able to connect with other local writers.

Looking at the group's schedule for the past year, it looks like they have various authors come and speak to the group, local English instructors come and give workshops, and they have three critique nights a year. So, not only can I network with other published authors, but I can also bring in my work and ideas and get their input too! I'm sold! Maybe some of them would be willing to do a manuscript swap once I finish this book. I give them my honest opinion of their work and they do the same for me. I can only hope!

In case it isn't obvious, I'm reveling in this whole writing thing. With everything I've done in the past in my jobs or in school, I've never felt so... alive, as cliche as that sounds.

***

A lot of people don't know this, but writing really has helped my mental health status. Shortly after the birth of my son I was diagnosed with post-pardum depression and put on medication, sent to a shrink- the whole she-bang. I quickly realized that the psychiatrist wasn't helping me any, so I stopped those sessions. I've been treated for depression before, when my father died, and therapy was a godsend then. This time, not so much.

I struggled with the depression for over a year before I felt strong enough to wean myself off of the Zoloft. I had a hard time transitioning to life without the meds and was about to call my doctor and ask them to re-prescribe them when I found writing again. I had written quite a bit in high school and junior college, but as my courses got more demanding, I slowly left it behind. But anyway, I started reading fan fiction. Not necessarily great literature, but it was free and some of it was actually pretty good. Slowly I began coming up with my own story ideas. I never actually took any of these ideas beyond a basic outline, but it was a starting point.

It began with me picking the underdog from various shows and creating a happily ever after for them. Then, slowly I noticed that my main characters weren't dependent on the constraints of their original creator's world anymore. Pretty soon my ideas were entirely my own, no longer using other people's characters or settings to tell my stories.

At some point during these months I started trying to write poetry again, as I had enjoyed doing that in high school. I dug out all my old journals and cringed at some of the stuff that I had written (so young and naive...). I did research on how to get back into writing, at this point mostly focusing on poetry and songs since I used to enjoy writing them so much before. I'll admit I wrote a few poems and a song or two during this time, but nothing great. It was fun, but it just didn't flow out of me like it used to.

Poetry felt more like work than I ever remembered it being, so I dug out my old short stories. I think I was maybe 10-14ish when I wrote these stories, so they're not great, but I remember how much I loved writing them. Being the avid researcher, I did research on how to write a good short story. What elements do writer's consider important for a successful story? At what point are short stories considered too long for that term anymore? etc.

Before I knew it, I found myself writing up outlines and synopses for various stories and characters. I still have these, even though they never made it past the outlining stage. They also seemed like they would be too long to be considered a short story. I researched novel writing, never thinking that I'd ever be able to (a) come up with an idea for a story that long or (b) have the discipline to see a project that large to its end. (I'm a true Gemini and get distracted easily...)

Then, while on vacation, it hit me. The idea that has grown to 160 pages and is still going strong. The idea that reintroduced me to my own inner writing gremlin. The characters and story that keep me up late at night and wake me up early in the morning, writing their story and not caring about the lost sleep.

I'm not sure where along this path that I completely overcame my depression, but I know that it's gone. Replaced by something so wonderful, so fulfilling, that I sincerely hope that I can keep writing like this the rest of my life. I can't imagine ever wanting to give up on this story or any of the others that keep popping into my head. My brain is so full of other ideas that I think have a lot of potential that at times I feel like I could burst. Every dream and daydream morphs itself into a full story right before my eyes. Right now I'm resigning myself to simply writing up outlines of these other stories that present themselves to me because I don't think I'm ready to try and write multiple stories simultaneously.

At this point in time I just want to finish Instinct, not because I'm tired of writing it, but so I can share it with others and move on to the next story. The relationships that I see forming between my characters are so touching to me, I just want to see if they affect others the same way. I guess, to make a long story short, I just want to write...

~Willow

What I did on my Thanksgiving vacation...

2008-11-29T18:58:00.002-06:00

Home at last!

The amount of writing I was able to get done this past week was simply astounding. Like I've mentioned before, I don't know if it's because we were in the area where I first dreamed up this novel or just because I had so much extra help taking care of my son, but whatever it was - Wow!

It's not even just the amount of writing that I was able to do that shocks me most, but how emotional the chapters were. I felt so bad for the people around me for a couple days as I worked on depressing portions of the story. I just know that I was moping around, quiet and brooding. I think I had my iPod playing almost every day, repeating a few key songs that really put me in the correct mental "zone" to write all of the emotional roller coaster stuff.

I even made a huge mistake while typing up one scene at around 3 a.m. (Yes, I learned from the night before and drug my exhausted, lifeless body down to the laptop rather than laying on the floor with a notebook and pencils...) While writing a scene from another character's point-of-view, towards the end of the book, I stumbled across one of his memories from a scene that wasn't on my outline. I thought it was a pretty powerful memory and decided that I needed to try writing it up to see if it would fit in well with the rest of the chapters in that section. Well, I wrote it up and loved it... unfortunately I made a mental boo boo. I wrote it as if a pretty major plot point hadn't happened yet... only that plot point happens quite a bit before then. Oops! So I put a yellow text box (my electronic version of a post-it note) with a note on what I need to fix in order to keep this new scene included. This scene just makes everything seem so real to me; it's something that would definitely happen to Casey with how much fate likes picking on her. I'm really lucky that it will be fairly easy to rework the story to fit with the actual story line.

Whew! *wipes the back of my hand across my forehead*

Another day, my husband was using our laptop to check his email and to just kill some time online, so what does my little writing gremlin do? Of course, he perches himself on my shoulder and, in his adorable British accent, begins describing a scene to me. Now this was a scene that I had been thinking about for a day or two, so I was pretty anxious to get started. I paced the living room for a few minutes, peeking over the edge of the laptop every now and then, seeing if my husband was almost done... probably driving him crazy. After a couple of minutes of this, I started feeling that sense of inspiration beginning to fade and panicked. I rushed upstairs to the desktop computer in the office and started typing. Probably five minutes later, my husband came up and told me that he was done with the laptop and I could have it. Unfortunately I already had nearly a page typed up and was "in the zone," so to speak. I quickly told him that I'd just stay in the office so I wouldn't lose my momentum. It was quiet up there and I was comfy... He wished me luck and headed down to play with our toddler. (I'm so lucky he's so supportive and understanding.)

I'm not sure how long I stayed at that computer; time tends to have little meaning when I get writing like that. All I know is that when I came back down 1) I noticed that it was darker outside than I remembered and, 2) I had around 6 more pages of text to add to my rough draft file. The scene is almost done too. There's a small flashback sequence that happens that I need to work on some more, but that shouldn't take long. The problem with writing this sequence is that every time it plays in my head, I tend to get caught up watching it and find myself forgetting to type. Of course, it's all very theatrical in my head, complete with music playing in the background as the scenes fade in and out... If this book were a movie, I'd definitely cry at this scene. It, in a way, makes up for a lot of the depressing things that happen before it.

oh great, I'm tearing up just thinking about it again... moving on...

We were lucky enough to find time to hang out with a bunch of Erich's friends that he's known since high school. Some of the people present were actually inspirations for a few of my minor characters, so I secretly used this evening as a night of research as I have several scenes that need to be written that involve these characters. Hanging out like this is a pretty new experience for me. I've always tended to be a bit of a loner. You know the person who has lots of acquaintances but very few real friends? I've never really had that big group of people that I could just go hang out with, you know? Well, until meeting Erich that is. Luckily his friends don't have a problem having me along when they all hang out together. Of course I have a small circle of good friends that I've been able to keep in touch with, get re-acquainted with, etc. and I'm really glad to have them in my life... but there's just something about this group of people up north that inspires me to write really fun stuff!

Like I said, I was doing a lot of mental research while we all hung out that night- joking, playing board games, etc. Just seeing how friends who have known each other so long interact is really going to help me write this story. My biggest thing in this book is that I want it to be very real- the people, the conversations, the settings- all of it. I want all of this to be believable to lull the reader into accepting that other things, such as Casey's gift, are real too. If I can make someone believe that this story could be happening in their own town, maybe even to someone they know, then I would be ecstatic. I guess I just have to work really hard to make this story the best I possibly can.

This past week I picked up another reviewer who's been eager to read the story for a while. So far I've only sent her one chapter, but I'm really looking forward t her input. As my target audience is women, probably older teenagers and up, her input should be invaluable. It'll be nice having a reviewer who doesn't know the whole story. I'll be able to ask her questions about what she thinks about characters without her knowing which one is the villain; to see if I'm successful at misleading the reader.

I'm still having a hard time figuring out how to give my reviewers chapters to read when I skip around so much while writing though. This would definitely be easier if I could just write chronologically, but sadly that method didn't work too well for me. Should I just send out random scenes for review? Should I, for example, send out a completed chapter 1 followed by a synopsis of chapters 2-4 so they can move on to 5-7 which are done as well? Should I wait until I'm done writing my first draft to send out anything else?

If anyone reading this has any experience in any or all of this or knows someone who does... advice would be awesome. I'm doing this all through trial and error so far, but I'd love to know how other people do this. I love reading about other people's writing processes so I can learn what works for them and decide if it would work for me too.

So, please, leave comments or send emails to bkilbarger@gmail.com
Have a cool website you get advice from? Have your own personal story? Just want to give advice or encouragement? Feel free to contact me. Thanks in advance!

Well, hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving! I'm off to play in one of the literary worlds I've created in my head...

Talk 2ya later...
~Willow

Inspiration can be so emotionally draining...

2008-11-28T18:45:00.001-06:00

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Wow! I had hoped that while we were up visiting my husband's family this week that I would get some good writing in. After all, this is the area where I first dreamed up Instinct and it's characters that I have grown to love so much. Like I said, I hoped I would get at least a little bit of writing done... I had no idea just how much my little gremlin would come through.

For example, the night before last I was up a good 3 hours hand writing a total of 7 pages worth of dialog for two different scenes. It took me all day to type it all in, adding in all the extra descriptive details that my dictation-style dialogue had lacked. When I stay up writing dialogue, I tend to just write down exactly what I hear the characters saying in my head, only adding in descriptions if they come naturally. I never stop to think about the correct way to describe the facial expressions during these settings. This could be because I'm so tired and just want to get the gist of it all down so I can get back to bed- actually... yeah that's probably the main reason.

I really wish that I hadn't been so stubborn that night, refusing to walk downstairs and plop down on the comfy couch and type everything on the laptop. Looking back now, it would have made more sense to do this than to lay there on the floor, hand writing page after page of text by the glow of a little plug-in night light. I'm even a faster at typing than I am at hand writing, but as I said... I'm stubborn.

The scenes that I wrote were so emotionally intense that in between writing them I had to actually walk around the house, get a drink, check my email... (don't even get on to me about why I didn't just stay on the laptop once I was there... it was a crazy night!).

That night I wrote the scene that transitions Casey at her happiest, "life is perfect" time to where the proverbial rug is pulled out from under her. Writing the first half of the first scene was so euphoric for me. Casey was happy, I was absolutely glowing with the joy she felt... it was wonderful! But then by the end of the scene, I was crying and just as depressed as she was beginning to feel, probably even more so because I knew what was coming. This is when I had to take my little walk around the house. Having this scene playing through my head repeatedly while I wrote it left me feeling so empty, like a hollow shell of myself. On the plus side, this is how Casey is supposed to feel, but it was so much more intense then I ever imagined it would be.

At this point, I tried to go back to bed. Surely after writing 4 pages, front and back of deeply emotional text my writing gremlin would be satisfied, right? ... if you answered yes, you obviously don't know my writing gremlin very well... As soon as my head hit the pillow another scene, slightly related to the one I had just poured from my soul onto the page, started playing out in my head. I groaned and then very quietly I made my way out of the bed again, trying desperately not to wake my sleeping husband.

Now, at this point, you would think that I would have been awake enough to realize that going to the laptop would be the best course of action? You obviously underestimate my stubbornness.

I found my comfy spot on the floor and angled the notebook in such a way that my hand wouldn't block the nightlight as I wrote and began again. This time I wrote part of the final chapter, the second half of it to be exact. I can see why my gremlin wanted me to finish with this scene that night though. It was the perfect emotional balance to correct the depression from before. A conversation from the previous scene was a major part of the ending and it was so nice getting to write a different perspective on what was said.

Without even trying, when I finished I noticed that I had used the final sentence that I had dreamed up a while back. I was almost certain that since I changed the point-of-view of the chapter, that it wouldn't work anymore, but it did! Even with the change of perspective on what was said, I found it just as emotional as the original interpretation of it, if not more.

These characters are becoming so real to me. I don't know if it's because I'm spending so much time with them, learning everything about them or if it's because of where I'm at right now, pretty much the birth place of the entire novel. Whatever it is, it's making writing the scenes so easy. For most of the characters I hardly have to take any time to "get into character" before writing dialogue for them anymore. I just hope that I am adequately expressing everything that happens. If I can make a reader feel the connections between the characters half as strong as I do, then it will be something special. I wouldn't expect anyone to understand the characters as much as I do though, I mean, I know things about everyone that will most-likely never be told.

Right now I am deeply inspired to write another emotional scene. It keeps playing itself over and over in my head complete with the music that I had put in my inspirations playlist for it. This scene is huge to the story as it's a major turning point for one of the characters. Being so important, it's a little difficult to express everything properly. I mean, I could easily enough write up a bland chapter explaining exactly that happens right now, but that wouldn't do it justice. I'm spending a day or so to really delve into the emotions that this character is feeling at that moment. It's not an emotion that I have any experience with, well, to be honest I can't imagine anyone having experience with exactly what they are going through. I just want this scene to ooze the emotions and contradictions and deep thoughts that the character is experiencing. So much is going through the person's mind that it pretty much leaves them spinning. I've been playing several songs on my iPod on repeat throughout the day, trying to absorb the emotions from them. I think I'm almost there, the feeling of inspiration that feels like it's about to explode out of me is getting stronger as the day progresses.

Oooh! Oooh! That reminds me, here's something that I wrote during our drive up here this past weekend. I got inspired to write what I think inspiration feels like.

"It's odd, I have this… physical reaction when inspiration hits me suddenly. You'd think, being a writer, that I wouldn't have any problems describing this feeling. It happens without warning, I might see a dead tree, it's silver bark and limbs standing starkly in front of it's lush, green counterparts. It could be in response to an overheard conversation. Even if I don't know exactly what about the tree or the words are inspirational, the feeling is still there. It's a tightening of my stomach, like a knot forming within it's core. It's a sudden dryness in my throat and a catch in my breath. This feeling stays with me until I relent and seek out meaning within the object of my curiosity. I begin digging, peeling through the layers until I find that perfect spark of pure inspiration. Once I find it, I cradle it and nurture it into explaining itself to me fully. Then, once the story enfolds within the confines of my mind, I type up the synopsis and store it away. To save the perfect spark of imagination for a later time when I am able to fully develop it."

I wrote this during our 6 hour drive. Our son had just fallen asleep, so I was free to use the laptop, which had previously been playing cartoons to distract and entertain him so that he wouldn't notice he was strapped into his car seat. I've felt this feeling so much lately, that I decided that writing what it felt like would be a good writing exercise. I have a lot of emotional scenes to write and if I could adequately describe my physical and emotional response to being inspired then I shouldn't have any problems writing like that for my characters. So, whatcha think?

Well, it's time to try and put my son down for his nap, so I'll stop here. Well, that and I don't really have anything else to say right now...

In case I don't post again tomorrow, Happy Turkey Day Everyone!

~Willow

Writing Gremins have a Wicked Sense of Humor!

2008-11-28T18:43:00.001-06:00

Saturday, November 22, 2008

Okay, my writing gremlin is just cruel. I swear he read my blog and said, "oh dear, she's having far too much fun right now... time for a curve ball."

And a curve ball is just what he gave me. I woke up an hour earlier than my son this morning all inspired and excited to write when I realized... the crazy gremlin is giving me scenes and dialogue from the second and third installments of my Instinct trilogy... As much as I love this story and how it enfolds in later books...

*prepares toddler tantrum voice*

"I wanna write the first book!"

*end toddler tantrum voice*

He's sneaky, my writing gremlin... instead of his typical, "we're taking a break from Instinct for a day" routine where he gives me some random, new idea to type up and file away until I have time to come back to it, he goes and does this! I can just picture him shrugging and saying, "I never promised that you'd finish one before you started the other two..."

Don't get me wrong, I did enjoy spending my free time today organizing my notes and typing up pretty good basic outlines for books 2 and 3. I love watching my character's lives grow and change as the story progresses. I already have good working titles and covers designed for them. I'd just really like to finish the first book before I get too detailed on any future outlines. Is that too much to ask?

Hell, I have reviewers who are still waiting for a new chapter to read who are probably going to end up getting either a cleaned up copy of my outline or a brief synopsis of what happens in chapters 2-4. I'll have to do something like this so they can read the next set of completed chapters without feeling completely lost since chapters 2-4 aren't done yet.

Oh well,

To my reviewers - I'm working on a good way to get you a new chapter without leaving you lost as to what happens in the missing chapters. As soon as I find a good solution, the pdf will be sent out.

And to my writing gremlin - you cheeky little bugger! (Yes he is a British gremlin, don't ask me why. Maybe it's the monocle...) You know I love ya and all the inspirations that you are giving me. But please let me wake up tomorrow with some fresh, new dialogue for the first book... PLEASE!

Does he look like a reasonable type to you?

You know him being a British gremlin could explain the initial time differences we were experiencing. He must have just a arrived over from England and hadn't adjusted to the new time zone yet...

Oh well...enough random babbling for tonight... Cheerio!

~Willow

P.S. - Writing Gremlin image found at the following address, although my perception of the little bugger is quite a bit different from that author's... http://terribletoadqueen.deviantart.com/art/Writing-Gremlin-91042972

I need more utterly profound thoughts...

2008-11-28T18:38:00.002-06:00

Friday, November 21, 2008

Well "one of those days" is here. Something finally clicked in my brain and I honestly believe my outline is complete enough to just write dialogue and prose now. In fact, in the last couple days all I've done is write prose. Yesterday alone I wrote almost 4000 words in just over a couple hours time.

Every morning I've been beginning to wake up at least an hour before my son to write. I'm not setting an alarm or anything, it's just naturally happening. Not that I could set an alarm with my toddler's crazy sleep habits lately... but that's a whole different story. Anyway I wake up, grab my 3-ring binder that I keep by the bed and start hand writing dialogue. I don't even have to think about what I'm going to write anymore, a scene just pops into my head and I struggle to take dictation of what my characters are saying.

Now that I'm focused on just writing out scenes in their entirety, it's amazing how I'm able to jump around between them. With the two scenes I wrote out yesterday I went from writing Casey at one of her most depressed, hopeless points to, five minutes after completing that scene, writing her at one of her happiest times. While I was writing I was completely engrossed in what I was doing, feeling every emotion that she felt; but when it was time to change focus, I found that I could so easily. It was so weird, almost like flipping a switch in my brain. One minute I'm feeling total despair and emptiness and the next I'm feeling exuberant and completely overjoyed. I guess this is a sign of me growing into my own personal writing style. Whatever it is, it's completely exhilarating!

At this rate, this book will be done sooner than I ever expected. I'm easily writing 2000-4000 words a day in a very small amount of time. It looks like so far my preferred writing style is:

1) write a VERY detailed outline of the entire story, writing small scenes and bits of dialogue as I feel inspired to do so. When I say detailed, I mean DETAILED. Before I finished this stage of my writing process my outline + random scenes was already over 30,000 words and the average novel is only 80,000 - 100,000 words.

While doing this I:
- complete any research necessary to fill out the outline. I seek out various pictures and useful resources and compile them into a set of files.
- fill out my in-depth character development documents. I try to really get into the heads of my main characters and learn as much about them as possible so I can write them as accurately as possible. I know things about these characters that will never appear in any of my stories with them, but is important for me to know so I know their motivations. I know how the parent's of one of my main characters met even though they never make an appearance in the story, nor are they ever mentioned. Yeah I'm a little obsessed...

2) When I feel that I know exactly what is supposed to happen in all of the major scenes, I begin writing up chapters with prose and full dialogue. Right now I'm just writing whatever scenes I wake up and feel inspired by. As I continue on this stage of my writing, I'll have to see what method I use from here on out.

I'll definitely keep posting what I'm learning on my journey to writing my first novel. Wouldn't it be funny, when I go to try and publish this story, if publishers end up being more interested in this blog than the story itself? I keep having these crazy thoughts that I'll find a publishing house willing to read my manuscript and, in researching me, they'll stumble across this blog and be more interested in the story of an amateur author's writing style while writing her first book than my work of fiction lol.

Not that I think I'm writing anything utterly profound in these blog entries, but I have a wild imagination and totally bizarre thoughts like that pop into my head all the time. That would probably explain my file folder full of rough synopses and outlines of various stories I've thought up. Topics ranging from stories for young children all the way to more adult books. Then I have my collection of stories that I wrote when I was much younger that I'd like to re-edit someday and see what I could turn them in to. Then part of me wants to research screenplay writing, it's just a fascinating subject to me.

I'm just glad that I've found a positive outlet for all of these bizarre thoughts that come to me. It's also very therapeutic when I can transfer my various stresses over to a character. When I finish writing a scene after doing this, it's almost like I can leave all of my worries on the page with that character and truly move on. I was lucky that I could do this within my Instinct plot line. I recently had a falling out with a friend on an online game I play and, if you take the gaming-related context away and just look at the emotions involved, it pretty much mirrors something that Casey and Heather go through in the book. Casey is pretty much in the same emotional state I am during those scenes, so it's been really easy and therapeutic being able to write those scenes and work through my anger and betrayal. I honestly know, first-hand how she's feeling and since this is from her point-of-view, I think the emotions come across fairly well.

But anyway, I don't want to type too much on that as I'm still writing those scenes and I don't want to leave all my good emotions in a blog when I might need them later.

Well, I need to get packing for our trip up north for the holidays. It's gonna be awesome going back to the area where I first dreamed up these characters and the original plot for their story. I'm hoping, in my free time, to get some good writing done this coming week with us having so many people to help watch the little guy. But if I don't, I know that the story will still be in my head when we get back.

I'll post again next time I have a good writing day or if I come up with something utterly profound... What? I need a back up plan in case this story fails and I need another way to get my foot in the doors at the publishing houses.

Talk 2ya all later...
~Willow

P.S. - Page Count......126 (1.5x spacing so it's easier to read for edits)
Word Count......37,697 (Outline + Chapters)

Writing, writing, writing... keep that Willow writing...

2008-11-28T18:29:00.003-06:00

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

You know, one of these days I'm going to be inspired to actually write dialogue for my scenes again. Maybe my brain wants to outline everything fully before I start writing everything out in chapter form? Don't get me wrong, I have quite a bit of dialogue written and several chapters done. It just seems like lately all I do is get inspired with ideas for scenes without all of the specifics I'd need to write them up fully. Oh well, maybe this is my writing process...

In the past week or so I have:
- Outlined several new scenes and added to previously outlined scenes
- Spent a great deal of time on character development. Typing up background stories and explanations for each main character and really getting into the characters motivation for doing what they do.
- Found a really cool website that is helping me develop my characters. http://www.meez.com
- Typing up rough outlines of other story ideas that I dream up. It's the only way I can get the ideas out of my head so I can focus on Instinct.

Outlining New Scenes:
I'm really liking how full my story is becoming. There are very few scenes that aren't fully outlined at this point. I'm pretty sure that once I feel that everything is planned out that the chapter-esque text will just flow out of me like crazy. I'm very much a planner and I know that most of the issues I had before when skipping around writing chapters is because the scenes weren't fully planned out in relation to the story when I started them.

I spent most of this morning typing up outlines to two chapters/scenes that I hadn't put much thought into before. I was able to add a good conversation into an early chapter that opens the door for the emotional changes Casey goes through in the rest of the book. All-in-all, a pretty productive morning, even if I didn't write one line of actual dialogue.

Character Development:
I've really delved into my characters motivations in this story. I've always known what they are supposed to do but never really understood why they do what they do. I made myself sit down and really figure this out. I had a couple variations about how the story would end for my villain and how the main characters would react to each version, but wasn't sure which "fit" the story right.

I ended up looking at each character's reactions and asked myself "Would they naturally react this way?", "Why or Why not?", "What would their most natural reaction be?" I then took all of these answers and typed them up in my character profiles. This actually led to a whole back story on my villain that I never took the time to realize before. Learning more about this character makes me almost want to write a different version of this story from their point of view eventually. It would be an interesting read...

But anyway, thanks to this character development exercise I think that I have the perfect ending for my villain. It's perfect to me because the other characters can react naturally and it still make sense in the grand scheme of things... i.e.- the trilogy...

I've also been trying to create a fairly minor character, they have an important role in the story and are spoken of by a main character fairly frequently. I just can't decide if they are male or female, yeah sounds like a stupid problem to have... but here I am. I'm seriously considering never actually using a specific pronoun for them and giving them a gender neutral name like Sam or something. Let the reader decide who they are because since Casey never actually sees this character to describe them, I could almost get away with it. This character is a boyfriend/girlfriend for a main character, who I have no problem with them being gay or straight. I guess I'll just have to see where the outlining process takes me with them.

http://www.Meez.com:
This site is so fun. It lets you create 3-D avatars. You get to choose everything from their facial features, skin tone, hair style and color, clothing, background setting, etc... You don't even have to sign in to play with the program, you only have to sign up for free if you want to save your creations and have access to the coding for them.

I've had a blast using it to create 3-D images of my characters. It's amazing how playing dress-up with your characters reveals so much of their personality. I create the base character and then start picking out the types of outfits they would wear in different scenes. I actually learn the most about them based on what types of clothing they would NEVER wear. It makes me think about why they wouldn't wear it. Are they a punk rocker who wouldn't be caught dead in a sweater vest? Are they a socialite fashionista who never wears anything that isn't the epitome of style? Are they trying to dress according to their social status rather than wear what they really like? The questions go on, and on...

Other Stories:
My writing gremlin is a busy little bugger these days. If I try to take one day off from the story, even if it's just to let any changes I've made sink in completely - BAM - there he is... with a new idea.

In the past week or two he's presented me with the following story concepts:
- a high school type of love story that involves misguided time travel. Took about 4 pages single spaced to type out a rough outline and get it to stop playing in my head mixed in with all of my Instinct time lines.
- a story about a young girl who's gypsy heritage doesn't mix well with the relative she is sent to live with and how she has to reconnect with her heritage to end an evil curse on her tribe. The gremlin didn't push this idea too strongly, but it was presented so I typed up a rough synopsis of it in case I become a big time author someday and want to try and write it
- a story written in dual journal formats about a Hollywood manager's niece falling in love with one of her aunt's clients. It's going to be told in journal entries from her and the actor and deals with how they deal with the unique difficulties of having a "Hollywood Romance." Stayed up until 3 a.m. getting this bugger out of my brain so that I could get some sleep one night.

Yeah... In case it isn't perfectly obvious by now, I like stories that center on some sort of romance. The Hollywood journal one is the story that keep popping it's little head into my subconscious anytime I'm not 100% focused on Instinct. I have a feeling that once I'm done writing this trilogy out, even if it's just for my own eyes, that this will be the next story I write... well unless my writing gremlin provides me something more entertaining to write about that is.

Unlike the rest of my story ideas, this journal one seems like it would be better in book form than on film. The rest I think would be told easily enough in either format. I can visualize the story pretty well, but I'm not sure how well the story would translate itself to an audience that can't see exactly what the characters are feeling. The story is kind of "meh" at the moment too, the only real conflict in it so far is how the outside world treats them and how they react. It just feels like there should be something bigger going on. But what do I know, I'm new to this whole writing novels thing...

~Willow

On a Roll!

2008-11-28T18:23:00.001-06:00

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

It seems like just yesterday that I started working on this first novel writing experience. I guess I'm still riding that "writer's high" that I've read about, but now, about 3 months after the idea for this book came to me, I'm still having a blast!

Looking at my ever-growing collection of files for the book, the earliest one that I have found dated to August 7, 2008. That sounds about right. We were up north visiting family when the idea for this novel came to me, so I guess I'll count that as my start date - give or take a day or two in either direction.

As of what I have written yesterday here's some stats on how the book is progressing:

Number of Pages (1.5x spacing).....108
Total Words for Story..................30,886
Minimum Word Count Goal…….80,000

Total Words Broken Up:
Written Chapters..................10.757
Started Chapters....................8,693
Outlined Chapters................11,436

Yesterday I wrote a scene that I find pretty funny. It's been playing in my head since the very beginning, but for some reason I never got around to typing it up during my writing times. It's a car ride scene that pokes fun at how evil irony and fate can be at times. It's not perfect, but no rough draft is. I'll be able to fine tune it later on when I'm editing the whole thing. I have the main point that I wanted to get across done, but I need some additional descriptions to set the scene. Not a lot more, but it just needs something - oh well that's what the second draft is for.

I've been reading a lot of writing websites. Reading articles by authors on their writing processes and various tips and tricks on how to get the story from your head and onto paper, or the word document in my case.

Hi, I'm Willow... and I'm a techy geek, but I have no plans to change so... :P

Speaking of techy geek, I'm really looking forward to getting my new iPod from the Haunted Bloggy Carnival Contest I had entered. The sponsor said she bought it today and it should arrive in the next few days. The main reason I'm looking forward to getting it is because I've recently started using music as a driving influence on some of my scenes and characters. I have a special MySpace Music profile set up with my inspirational songs and I play them when I'm about to write about a certain character or situation. Surprisingly I have all of the songs in my personal collection already, they're just not all on the computer yet and it was really fast and easy to make the play list. With an MP3 player I'll be able to carry the songs with me wherever I go to help me subconsciously continue working on chapters.

I've been trying to put together a play list of songs that Casey, my main character, would listen to. Since I'm writing from her point-of-view I think this will help me "get into character" when I'm typing. Although this means that I'll have to make up a play list for a second character as well. At one point, at the end of the story, I think I'm going to change perspectives for a chapter or two.

I've come to realize that a lot of the exciting stuff at the end of the story happens when Casey isn't around. I've went back and forth on how to deal with this. I've considered having a character tell her what happened, but then the reader would wonder if that character is telling her everything, or if they even remember it all clearly. Everything happens pretty fast at the end and it would be understandable, given what happens, for this character to not remember things correctly. If I switch to his perspective for a couple chapters I think it will really let the reader see what a good guy he actually is. There's certain scenes that he's the only character present that I'm not sure if he'd tell Casey about them. Not that he'd be hiding stuff from her, but – on their own – these scenes don't seem very important. They only have major importance when you see them in the grand scheme of things.

The regular chapters would end in his perspective and he utters the final sentence that left me in tears when I wrote it. Then the epilogue would be written in Casey's perspective, so the readers leaves the story knowing her take on everything as well.

There's really only one part of the ending that I haven't decided on – how to write the ending of my main villain. I know what happens to them, but I don't know what Casey and the reader should learn about it. I like what I have in my outline right now, but there's that little voice in the back of my head wondering if maybe it would be better to…

But anyway, this whole blogging experience is pretty cool. Even if no one else reads it but me, just typing everything up like this is really freeing. Sometimes just typing the problems I'm having with a scene seems to make the whole situation so much clearer. I know I've worked through several bouts of writer's block just by blogging about it, whether the blog entry was marked public or not. What? There are times that I type too much plot information in a would-be blog entry. Since this is a public blog, if by some miracle, this would get published someday, I'd like to keep some things a secret. (Yeah, I've done the research on how likely it is to get published… *sigh* oh well, even if I just write this for me and a few friends it'll be worth it to me. Oh and to appease the writing gremlin, mustn't forget him…)

So for anyone who actually reads this, thanks for lending me an ear… or I guess it'd be an eyeball in this instance… you are reading this after all…

Oh well, back to writing! Talk 2-ya Later…

~Willow

Writing a Book is an Emotional Process...

2008-11-28T18:21:00.001-06:00

Saturday, November 08, 2008

Okay, I have grown too attached to my characters.

I felt inspired to do some major outlining for the last 3-4 chapters today, so I did. I have probably 10 pages of notes, single-spaced covering just before the final climax of the story through the epilogue. I picked Erich's brain for a while, tossing around ideas for how I could write my characters out of the jam that I had let them get into. I was really stressed because I could see them in the scene and everything around them, but couldn't figure out how they could possibly survive. With his help, I have a good ending that wraps up the story in a great place for the next leg of their stories to begin (aka - book 2).

The saddest part is that in my rigorous outlining, my brain stumbled upon the final sentence of the book. I finished typing the outline and then realized what I had just typed. I quickly re-read the block of text with the last line and had an immediate response... I started crying! I won't give the last line away, Erich won't even let me tell him what it is, he just saw me behind the laptop, fanning my eyes, willing the tears not to fall. I haven't even wrote the full chapters and dialogue leading up to this line and I'm crying. What am I going to do once the book is done?

This isn't even the first time that I've cried over part of an outline. As some people know, I've found myself particularly drawn to one of my characters. Ever since they first appeared in a minor role on an outline, I knew they had to have a bigger part in the story. This led to some major outline revisions to showcase their new role.

Have you ever seen the movie, "The Butterfly Effect"? or maybe the "Back to the Future" movies? Well, I learned really quickly how one tiny change on a story's time line opens a can of worms that changes the later chapters drastically. Over the course of about 5 minutes I decided that I liked this character and wanted to give them a bigger part. I started watching the story re-enfold in my mind, watching the movie re-write itself and play the scenes back to me. Then * BAM * my beloved character was dead. Oh cruel fate! Why them? Why not one of the other characters?

Unfortunately when writing such a character-driven story, once they tell you what happens - there's not much you can do about it. I fought it for a good half an hour, desperate to find some other way for it to play out, but to no avail... it was settled and I had to accept it. This was the first moment that I cried over this book, full-on, tears streaming down my face CRYING.

I guess on the plus side, if I can write up the chapters half as emotionally as the outlines are to me, it could increase my shots of getting published. Now I just have to find a way to tell this story well enough that the average reader will feel as emotionally invested in the characters as I am.

Oh well, wish me luck!

~Willow

Book Update - Going Great!

2008-11-28T18:17:00.002-06:00

Friday, November 07, 2008

As the subject line suggests, the book is going great! I went through over a week of writer's block because I kept trying to force myself to write the chapters in order. I was making progress, but it was SLOW. So slow that my writing gremlin started presenting me with ideas for different books; guess he figured I had lost interest in 'Instinct' which I most definitely have not. I've really grown attached to these characters and want to get their story completed.

Well last night the little guy refused to fall asleep so I stayed up and watched him play until around 1:30 a.m. He finally decided to konk out so I put him in bed and tried to fall asleep myself (I had been dozing off and on the entire time he was wearing himself out before). Of course, it being close to 2 a.m. by the time I got the living room cleaned up and into bed, my little writing gremlin decided that since I was still up, he had a few suggestions for me.

I tried to fight it, which only led to me waking up completely. I tried to meet him halfway and pulled out my three-ring binder to take some hand-written notes to jog my memory when I went to type everything later in the day. Apparently that wasn't good enough. After three or four rounds of me pulling out the binder and writing by cell phone light, I gave up (cell phone light because I refused to leave my warm bed and didn't want to wake Erich up with lamplight). I grabbed my glasses and drug myself out to the laptop and proceeded to type up various scenes and conversations from 2 or 3 different chapters, staying up until after 3:30 a.m. in the process.

I spent my writing time today breaking my outline up into individual files for each chapter, marking the 5 chapter ideas that will most likely end up being multiple chapters. My original outline had grown too large for me to handle since it contained notes for over 17 chapters. Once I was done with that I spent some time editing my sleep-deprived work from the night before.

I've come to the conclusion that my writing quality is a lot better if I just write whatever is inspiring me. I've spent over a week trying to finish chapter 2 and while I'm really close, it's still not done. And to be honest, what I have written really isn't my best work. It has it good points, but I have a lot of revisions ahead of me.

Not only is my writing quality better this way, but the quantity is much better too. When I write what inspires me, no matter where it happens to fall in the story line, the words just fall out into the laptop in torrents. Without even realizing it, counting what I wrote in the wee hours this morning, I've probably written 8 or more pages worth of new content today and who knows how much I've added just in edits.

While I know that it will be a little more work in the end, I'm liking this writing style so much more than doing everything chronologically. It makes for a happy writer right now, and a happy writer = book gets written faster.

Oh and for those of you who haven't heard much about the actual plot of this book, here's a rough draft synopsis that I've been working on for a while:

"Casey Parker, a cadet at the Boston Police Academy, has a secret gift, though she might call it a curse at times. She has 'episodes' were she has really good instincts. These instincts drive her to be able to do things she couldn't do otherwise. 'Instinct' is the story of how she comes to terms with her gift while trying to maintain a "normal" life. She must overcome fears from her past in order to control a gift that threatens to overtake her life. Oh, and then there's the challenge of having a roommate who's sole mission in life is to set her up on blind dates. Can she use her gift to save those most important to her from an evil presence, forged from the same powers she possesses, who's very existence is threatening her happiness, as well as the safety of the entire city? Can she overcome all of her fears and challenges so she can live happily ever after with the right guy or will her gift prove to be more curse than she could have ever imagined?"

It's not perfect yet, but as the story grows I'm sure it'll continue to come together. I figure I'll have to come up with a good synopsis if I ever try to publish this book so why not write it when I feel inspired?

Well, that's about it for now. Hopefully my writing gremlin gets adjusted to my time zone and realizes that 2 a.m. isn't a good time for me to get inspired. Oh well, I'm sure everything will all work out in the end.

~Willow

Remember when I said...

2008-11-28T17:55:00.002-06:00

Friday, October 31, 2008

*sigh*

*SIGH*

I'm stuck. I've written about half of chapter 2, the one that I had skipped before and now I'm stuck. I know exactly what I want to write, it's all completely outlined. It's just not coming together right when I try to type it up. I need to write up a couple small classroom scenes and a really funny scene at an ice cream shop and it would be done. I don't know why my brain is so anti-chapter 2.

I have chapter 3's rough outline done. I know the gist of what I want to happen, but not specific scenes/dialogue like I do for other chapters. I'm not terribly worried about this chapter though. It's important of course, otherwise I'd scrap it and move on. It's mostly just character development. It's just a chapter that I'm sure will all come together once I start writing it. Since the idea for it is fairly new, compared to the rest of the story, I haven't had quite as long to dwell on it.

Chapters 4, 5, and 6 are done. Probably need minor editing and tweaks as the story grows, but for the most part done.

I have felt so compelled and inspired by later chapters that I am seriously considering scrapping my plans to never skip chapters again. I know, I know... in an earlier post I said that I never ever wanted to skip chapters again, but arrrgggghhhh chapter 2 is being so difficult. Then to make matters worse, I read an interview with an author who said that they felt like they wrote better if they simply wrote whatever scenes inspired them. In the end, they tied everything together and made all the minor changes at once. They rarely dealt with writer's block and had their story done before they knew it. Bah! What to do? What to do?

Today, I spent most of the time making small changes to chapter 1 and expanding the outlines of the scenes that have me inspired. So I guess, technically, I'm not skipping ahead... just taking notes very well on those scenes... All of my outlines are very train-of-thought and, after today, very detailed. It would take very little time to write them up with how detailed they are now.

I just can't decide if I should give myself permission to try jumping around between scenes again, at least for the smaller ones that shouldn't affect other scenes very much... Like one scene I have planned that is simply Casey driving home after an interesting visit with her mother. I've been dying to write that scene since I thought it up, I think it's hilarious. And another scene that takes place in the summer at an amusement park has been jumping up and down in my brain, saying, "write me! write me!"

I'll guess I'll just have to go by trial and error on this one. I can always write up the scenes and if they don't work out once I get that far in the story, I guess I can rewrite them. At least most of the work would be done then, I'd just have to make adjustments based on how the story has changed since I wrote the scene.

Well, the little guy has fallen asleep on my lap and is making it very uncomfortable to type - so I'll stop here for today. Wish me luck battling my Writing Gremlin!

Happy Halloween!

~Willow

Book Update and Why I’m Kicking Myself...

2008-11-28T17:51:00.002-06:00

Saturday, October 25, 2008

Hello again!

I'm still having a blast writing the book and I think it's coming out pretty decently too. Right now I have 4 chapters done and ready to have reviewed, am about 40% done writing the fifth and have 2 others outlined to the point that I could probably write them within a day or two.

I am kicking myself though. As I've mentioned before (or at least I think I have...) I decided to skip writing chapter 2 and come back to it later because something minor happens in it that really affects the rest of the book. Well, after I spent a day in a particularly bad mood, I decided that it was time to start writing it. I was in a bad mood because I think I'm mentally connecting with my characters a little too well. I wrote a chapter one morning where Casey was just in a rotten mood and it stuck with me all day.

But back to why I'm kicking myself. I realized that I was just scared to write such a big part of the story, for fear that I wouldn't do it justice. Well, I got over that and started outlining the chapter quickly, before I could change my mind. About halfway through that process it became glaringly obvious that there needed to be another new chapter after chapter 2. No problem, so I have to change the names of a few files, bumping them up a chapter number - easy enough. What isn't so easy is the fact that as I began actually writing chapter 2, I made tiny little plot changes that seemed to fit better... doesn't sound too bad, right? Except, now, after every change I have to go back and read my new chapters 4-6 and make slight alterations. Fun Fun Fun!

I swear once I finish chapter 2 (possibly could be done today) and chapter 3 (shouldn't take too long), that I am not going to skip any more chapters! I'll just write one chapter after the next, after the next, until it's finally done! If I even slightly mention the thought of skipping a chapter, for ANY reason... somebody please send me multiple comments trying to knock some sense into me.

The partial reviews I've gotten so far for chapter 1 have been pretty good, so that makes me happy. I've been told that the dialogue flows well and that it all sounds real and believable. I just hope the plot line lives up to their expectations. We're going over to our friend's house tonight for dinner, and they happen to be 2 of my guinea pi... er reviewers, so maybe I'll get some good constructive criticism. Once I get their opinions and make any changes that they suggest that I think needs fixed, I will be sending a copy of chapter 1 off to my final reviewer. She's going to be a tough audience. She reads books constantly and should be a pretty good judge of the story.

But anyway, 4 chapters down... 38 pages written... 14+ chapters and know knows how many pages remaining. Thanks for all of the support and encouragement as I work on this book. It's always been a secret dream of mine to try and get something published, and who knows... maybe this will be it! If not, at least it will be out of my head and safely stored on the computer and I can start fresh with some new idea.

~Willow and her Writing Gremlin

~ Oh yeah, here's a new copy of a cover that I made for it. At least my graphic design experience comes in handy when I'm experiencing writer's block...

Welcome to the Twilight Zone...

2008-11-28T17:48:00.001-06:00

Monday, October 20, 2008

Okay, I think I'm going crazy... no really!

I spent part of this morning doing some research and picture farming for the book. I find pictures of stuff to help me describe it as best as I can and so I can show my reviewers what I'm seeing so I get my point across better. But anyway... I started this morning by searching MySpace for some of my character names in and around the Boston area... and when searching for my main character, Casey - I found one. She has the same hair and eye color it seems and lives in Boston, oh and she's the exact same age as the character in my first book... Her profile was set to private so I coudn't find out more about her, but weird, huh?

But apparently that wasn't enough weirdness for me for one morning so I continued looking for some of the various locations using my good buddy Google! In my mind I kept imagining one chapter taking place in a theme park that is a cross between Six-Flags and Holidayworld (local one in Indiana). It had the traditional rides like Six-Flags but the water park of Holidayworld. I've never been to one of the newer Six-Flags water parks so I didn't know what those were like. A friend of mine had told me that there is, in fact, a Six-Flags in Boston (main city location of story) so I looked it up to see if they had one particular ride that I had imagined.. they did. I've only seen one of these types of rides before, at the St. Louis Six-Flags and they called it Mr. Freeze and it was all shades of blue. I couldn't figure out why the one in my vision of the scene had red bars on it and was designed slightly differently, until I looked up a picture of the Boston version of it. Appropriatetly named 'Scream' and having, you guessed it, dark red bars on it... weird huh?

Oh, and don't even get me started on the layout of this particular theme park. Being the glutton for punishment that I am I looked up a map of it... yeah it's laid out very similarly to how I saw the characters walking through it. I feel the need to remind you that I have NEVER been to Boston and have seen any of these things before. I've been to 2 Six-Flags before and neither of them are set up similar to this one at all...

I'm desperately trying to find a good image of the primary coffeeshop where several big scenes occur, but keep coming up empty. I should google the name I made up for it...wait, maybe I shouldn't. I don't know how much more weirdness I can handle this morning...

~Willow

Update on the book

2008-11-28T17:44:00.001-06:00

Saturday, October 18, 2008

I am having a blast writing my book. I have three chapters written out in rough draft form and summaries for the 16 or 17 others complete. I've sent off my first chapter to a few friends to review and am anxiously awaiting their comments. If they want to keep reviewing for me, as soon as their done with chapter 1, I can send them chapters 3 and 4. No, that isn't a typo... I skipped chapter 2. Something fairly important happens in chapter 2 and I don't know if I'm ready to write it yet. That is, I don't know if I'm capable of writing it well enough right now. I'll probably save it for last and go back to it at the end.

For a while I've known that 'Instinct' isn't the end of Casey Parker's story, on the contrary - it's only the beginning. Well the other day my friendly, neighborhood writing gremlin decided to keep me up way too late yet again. Over the course of an hour, he bombarded me with images and story lines. In about an hour I learned Casey's whole story. All three books of it! I sat down and started typing as soon as the inspiration hit and felt like I was taking dictation more than I was creating. I had known the basic story line for the 2nd book for a while as it was originally part of 'Instinct'. A part that had grown far too long to include in one book. But the way it all turns out really amazed me. I wonder if all writers write this way, or maybe I'm just slowly going crazy... either way, I'm having fun!

In one night I witnessed pretty much her entire life story. I wish there was a way I could show people the exact images that appear in my mind when I think about my characters. I know how she grows and changes over the course of a few years and where I'm meant to stop the series. I have a tentative title for book 2 and a title I really like for book 3. The graphic designer in me has even taken to creating book covers during my occasional bouts of writer's block. I make this okay in my mind by saying that I need something to use as a cover when I send chapters to friends to review...

But anyway, the book is going really well in my opinion... we'll just have to wait and see what my reviewers think. Erich thinks it's started off really well and that the chapter he read flows well. If all goes well I should have chapter 5 done within the next week, it would be sooner but we're going to go visit some friends for a couple days. Their mother recently passed away and we really want to be there for them.

~Willow

Full Speed Ahead - Warning: Book Writing Zone!

2008-11-28T17:40:00.002-06:00

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

I am having so much fun writing my book! So far I have 1 scene complete and 2 others at least half written. I'm not really separating it all into chapters yet but I know I have 16 major "scenes" to write out and that some of them will easily take multiple chapters to finish.

I found an amazing online resource that teaches a writing technique known as the "Snowflake Method". (http://www.advancedfictionwriting.com/art/snowflake.php) Strangely enough I found myself following most of the steps outlined in this method naturally. The one major thing I have taken from this technique is the extensive character development process. Since reading this website I sat down and have begun really writing out everything about each of my main characters. I took the development of 5 of my characters to the point of finding pictures of actors/actresses who look similar to how I see them. I only found 1 actress who is a dead ringer for Casey and the other 4 I found are only similar looking to their respective characters. After finding doppelgangers for my characters I started finding pictures of the types of clothes each of them would wear so I could really get their personal styles settled in my mind. I found pictures of specific outfits that Casey wears so that I am able to describe them better. In doing all of this I have learned a lot about my characters that I never paid attention to before.

Every morning I'm waking up remembering my dreams so vividly and every dream is another scene from the story, complete with full dialogue. I guess my subconscious worked out an agreement with my writing gremlin so that he wakes me up early from vivid dreams rather than keep me up to ungodly hours. I wake up in the morning, before my toddler, and grab my notebook I keep handy by the bed and write everything I can remember from my dreams. Then, later in the day, when I find a free moment or two, I type up everything from the night before. It's amazing how easily I'm finding it to slip into Casey's personality while I type as the entire story is told from her point-of-view.

I recently added a new character to the storyline, well I guess I should say I upgraded her to main character status. She was always a minor character that Casey was only supposed to talk to once, by chance; but the more I thought about her, the more I found myself liking her. I just couldn't let this awesome character (in my opinion) slip through the cracks so I tweaked the last half of the book to make her a bigger part of it.

I'm getting so attached to these characters that when something emotional happens to one of them, I feel it too. I found myself crying as I tweaked the final part of the book just thinking what was going to happen to my new found friends.

I've gotten so obsessed with making this story seem realistic that I have done a ton of research online. I have looked up the cities that everything takes place in and even have a map of Massachusetts with color-coded stars on it marking where major plot points occur. I've gone so far as to ask a soon to be Ph.D. in Psychology to assist me in writing a scene where Casey is sent to therapy. (Thanks again Jason!)

As some of my close friends know, I was having a major problem visualizing my main villain. I knew there was a "bad guy" but every time I tried to picture them all I saw was a figure hidden in shadows. I am so happy to announce that after making a slight change in the plot, my villain emerged! I really like my villain and find myself almost wanting to write something from their perspective (notice my intentional hiding of their gender... muahahaha). The few people I've told the complete story to seem to really like my "bad guy" description and how I will work them into the story.

In closing, I'd like to apologize to all the friends and family that I have hounded relentlessly for opinions or name ideas for this story. I'm not saying I will stop annoying you with all my new daily revelations, but I'm sure some part of me is sorry if you find it annoying. I only have a few more last names to finalize on main characters and some random names to come up with, so hopefully i can stop bugging you all with..."What would you name a person who..." questions all the time.

Well, that's it for now... I feel inspired to jump ahead a few scenes and write one really funny one that's been playing in my head the past couple days...

~Willow~

Sometimes I love being able to speed read...

2008-11-28T17:35:00.000-06:00

Tuesday, October 07, 2008

Like the title says, and what a lot of people don't know, is that I have a slight knack for speed reading. I'm not great at it and can't apply a photographic memory to what I've read like some people can, but I can speed through pages of a book really fast if the story interests me enough.

I do admit I'm a little rusty as I haven't really read anything of any real substance that caught my interest in quite a while. I started reading a couple different books as a type of research so that I can write mine as well as possible. I had heard from my friend Jason that my story reminded me of the type of books M.R. Sellars writes so I found an excerpt of a few of his chapters online to see for myself. I've only read the first two chapters of Harm None, but I can really see what Jason was talking about. (Due to a printing mishap while borrowing their laptop, Jason and Joel have read more of the early ideas for my book than even Erich! Although I have verbally told Erich everything it's about, especially when I've been stuck on how to write any of it) I hope to continue reading Mr. Sellars books and see just how similar he writing styles and genre are. The main thing that interests me is that his books are written from the first-person perspective of a man who works with the police to solve not-so-normal crimes; my story is from the first-person perspective of a female detective who receives non-traditional assistance from various dieties to help solve her cases and how this "gift" affects her life. Should be interesting the type of insight I get from reading these books.

But now the main part of this blog entry, no I haven't been speed-reading M.R. Sellars books (yet!) but only because I got caught up in a new series by Stephenie Meyer - the Twilight series.

To say that I enjoyed reading this series is an understatement, I managed to read all 4 of her novels in 1 week. If you know my current schedule of taking care of my nearing toddler everyday, you'd see how shocking this is, even to me. It's been years since I've read this fast, I really didn't think it was possible anymore from lack of practice. I'd liken it to a marathon runner winning the Boston Marathon after hardly even jogging for 5 years, crazy, I know! Something in the story caught my attention and I was off. Somehow, I seemed to get almost everything I would normally get done each day finished too. Although I will admit to staying up a couple extra hours on a coupe of nights because bedtime came at such an inconvenient point in the plot.

After reading such a well-written series I am just dying to get to work on my book. Reading Ms. Meyer's books really gave me an excellent perspective on how to write a love story that includes the typical love triangle from the woman in the middle's perspective. Even as I write this blog entry I can see the tone that I want to use in order to bring this world into existance.

Then, when I didn't think I could be inspired enough by these books, I checked out the authors webpage and read the story behind the first book...Wow! The fact that her book was based on characters from a dream is just so familiar. While I came up with a basic one paragraph idea for my story on a long car ride while visiting my in-laws, the entire story came to life in my dreams (...thanks to my writing gremlin and my initial lack of motivation to write up the original couple ideas that he gave me...) The author website is: http://www.stepheniemeyer.com

Bah, now the hard part... I am feeling pulled to start writing so many parts of the story at once. I'll have to find a good way to get all of this creative energy typed up and saved while it's so strong.

I guess what I'm saying is that by some miracle this book comes out well and by another miracle were to get published... I have an author I have to thank somewhere in the acknowledgments. Also if you like a good book, or 4, I'd definitely suggest the Twilight series to just about anyone.

Happy October!

2008-11-28T17:33:00.002-06:00

Wednesday, October 01, 2008

Well, I finally figured out how I want to start my chapter... now to just find the time to do it. The little guy has been taking shorter naps because he's teething and I don't want to get started writing something good and then be interrupted by a crying little boy who needs his Mommy. I just hate to lose momentum like that. I guess I'll just have to wait until his nap cycle goes back to normal when his molar breaks through or try to find time when Erich has a rare day off of work. At least I've wrote down some stream-of-conscious notes so I'll remember how I want it to go when I find time...

Willow's Inner Thoughts...

Derichos, lightning, and full binders... Oh my!

Writing Mojo - Check!... Internet Access - not so much...

I spoke too soon...

I'm Back... I hope...

You guys are the best...

Taking time off, for a good reason...

Writer's A.D.D.

So many questions...

It's Back!

Just Checking In...

YA -vs- Adult... I wanna write both!

Help with Grocery Costs

D'oh! D'oh! D'oh!... *DING*

In My Mailbox...

*Sigh* The world doesn't want me to write...

Wordle and Time Turners...

The Writing Gremlin Strikes!

Google Analytics - Ah Ha!

Google Analytics ROCKS!

Amazing Writing Days and Being Completely Wrong...

Making Progress Again...

Interviews, Tarot Readings, and Crazy Dreams...

Snoopy Dance Time!

Sighing, Willow bangs her head against the wall...

New story idea & "Are you Willow?"...

No news is good news...

I don't want to jinx anything, but...

Short Story DONE! and other news...

Catching up on the past few weeks...

Day 1 Back on medication...

Another contest from Bitten By Books!

Day one off of the medication:

Bitten By Books: Win a Free Book Contest!

Illness and New Writing Projects

Willow’s Book Review: Eternal Seduction by Jennifer Turner

Out Sick.

Being sick... sucks!

Where did the year go?

Christmas is over, Now back to work...

Sick Toddlers and Declining Word Counts...

A-ha!!!!

Way too real...

Writing Gremlin, Inc

Bitten By Books Rocks!

Oh yeah... one more thing...

Aha!!!

Another chapter nearly done!

I feel like I’m possessed...

I Love Writing!

What I did on my Thanksgiving vacation...

Inspiration can be so emotionally draining...

Writing Gremins have a Wicked Sense of Humor!

I need more utterly profound thoughts...

Writing, writing, writing... keep that Willow writing...

On a Roll!

Writing a Book is an Emotional Process...

Book Update - Going Great!

Remember when I said...

Book Update and Why I’m Kicking Myself...

Welcome to the Twilight Zone...

Update on the book

Full Speed Ahead - Warning: Book Writing Zone!

Sometimes I love being able to speed read...

Happy October!

D'oh! D'oh! D'oh!... DING

Sigh The world doesn't want me to write...