(Posts from the Author) These darn kids...

Ugh.

I find myself saying that a lot these days. Ugh. It's in my head, it's in my story... and now, look! It's in my second blog post.

Right now, as of Monday, I have officially finished the first rewrite of my YA supernatural novel, "Wizards." I feel so much better about it this time around. Characters have depth, story arcs, issues to resolve, growing that happens. Second time through it, and I like it a whole lot more. I believe in it a whole lot more.

But, damn, these kids are killing me.

After spending the past four months thinking of almost nothing else, I find I don't even want them in my head anymore. Not even to visit, joke around, or daydream. I feel like an abused friend... the one you've asked too much of, one favor too many, and now they won't answer your calls. These kids keep calling me, asking me to give them rides places and help them with their homework, and I just pretend they don't exist. La la la... I don't know you anymore. After giving them so much mental time and creative energy, I find I don't want to talk to them. For a while.

That's not to say the book isn't good, or the characters aren't wonderful. The book is... kinda awesome. It turned out GREAT! (damn, I don't think I've ever said that about one of my novels before). It's just that now, my brain is mush!

Maybe it's because I wrote it first time through "Nano Style" (National Novel Writing Month, check it out). Nano Style is balls-to-the-wall, raw writing, with no edits along the way. Just get from Scene A to Scene Z as fast as you can write. Don't get bogged down in going back to rework things, or with making your writing "good". Just write the story and see what happens. You know what happens? Magic happens! So, after six weeks of this kind of writing, I had this amazing little novel with some interesting characters and some big-ass plot holes. Nothing that wasn't fixable, though. And, even at the end, I was still in love with the characters and excited about the story.

So excited that I didn't let it rest the required six weeks. I couldn't. It was all I thought about.  I tried, really I did, to walk away from it, but found myself obsessed with fixing it. I KNEW how to fix it and what it needed, so I got right to work.

The results are wonderful... except now my brain is broken, and I don't think I can write anything else for a while (except, obviously, this blog post). I think I lifted too much weight, just now. Did too many bench-presses with too much weight, and now my creative muscles are spent. But, you know, after a bit of rest and maybe a protein drink, I think my muscles will come back stronger than ever.

Because, honestly, I feel like a goddamned writer now. Fighting hard. Winning battles. Earning my stripes.

I still need to work on my scene summaries... which involves reading each chapter AGAIN and trying to condense what happens into single paragraphs. But I find I can't even look at the damn thing right now, not without wanting to hurl my head through the screen. So that bit of housekeeping will have to be put off for a while, which only makes me feel like I have homework left undone.

Like I said before, ugh.

-- LLH