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I’ve been away for too long haven’t I? Sorry about that. A lot of stuff is going on in my life right now – stressful stuff. I haven’t been in a writing mood so instead I’ve been reading writerly type blogs. And I swear lately I’ve been reading that they all knew from a young age that they wanted to be writers. This is not true for me and it’s causing me some self-confidence issues.

As a kid I changed my mind about what I wanted to be when I grew up often – sometimes daily. Journalist, Judge (until I discovered that you had to a lawyer first, I just wanted to be Harry T. Stone from Night Court), Photographer, Astronaut (until the Challenger explosion, that is) – you name it, I probably thought about it. Until, at age 16, I finally settled on THE ONE – actor. I could be all those things I wanted to be, and more, on TV or in the movies. I could sing and dance and make people laugh or cry on Broadway.

And that’s what I devoted myself to. Voice lessons, acting classes, head shots, BFA degree in college, moving to NYC, auditioning, getting rejected, becoming depressed. Depressed, hating my day job, feeling lost – then I read about NaNoWriMo and thought, that sounds like fun. So I signed up without a plan, a plot, or even much of an idea. November 1st, I started writing.

I “won” the challenge, 50,000 words by Thanksgiving. It felt wonderful, my creative juices were flowing, mind was reeling. I felt alive and passionate again – something that had been lost for quite some time regarding the theatre world. Now, I’m knee deep in revision of a full-blown novel. One I planned, thought-out, and executed. I took classes and studied. I tried things. Started and finished something. I became a writer.

But sometimes I feel like a fraud because I never was the one with my face buried in a book as a kid – I was daydreaming about singing in front of adoring fans. I practiced signing my autograph over and over again and planned my wedding to Joey Lawrence. I haven’t always wanted to do this, but I want to do this now – is that enough?

I’ve been feeling stuck, creatively. Uninspired, the writing hasn’t been flowing, everything seems wrong. I’m judging things I write or have written, I have no energy, the passion is gone. Even my Photo-a-Day project has felt stagnant lately. I’m just stuck.

I posted on twitter and asked fellow writers what they do, and only got one response – he said to talk a walk, get out with other people and get away from the screens. So I did that. Yesterday, Little Man and I went to the Queens Zoo, which is a good 15 minute walk from here, and looked at all the farm animals (note: The Queens Zoo has two parts, the zoo part which has big cats, coyotes, birds, etc. And the farm side which has cows, pigs, sheep, chickens, etc). My son loved the ducks this trip and we spent quite a bit of time just watching them swim, waddle, fly, and sleep.

The walk helped, actually, and once my son was napping I worked on two scenes of my revision and felt okay. Then this morning happened. I didn’t get enough sleep, was awake at all hours with a toddler who had a nightmare, apparently, and wouldn’t go back to bed and I felt groggy. So….I wrote three bad poems while I ate breakfast. Yup…I wrote poetry. I don’t write poetry, so that’s why I’m calling it bad – it is, but it was fun and I enjoyed working on these three short pieces. I need to allow myself to play more, and not the kind of playing that I do with my son (blocks for the win!) but creatively playing. Bad poems, doodles and drawings, singing something other than The Wheels on the Bus, creative photographs, playing around with my photo editing apps on my phone – I need to play more. I need to allow myself to fail and try and not give up in other areas of my life.

So…without much more explanation, three bad poems:

Coffee
Sweet liquid in my mug
Cream and sugar best of friends
Swirled ‘round and ‘round
Comfortably blended
Sipping elegantly
Chugging enthusiastically
Some mornings, gives me courage
Champion, ready to take on the world
Soothing elixir, chasing away nightmares
Charging forward into my day

Pinterest
Popular, pretty people who pin trendy clothes
Images from strangers, friends, exes, and enemies
Neon lights glow bright – New York and Tokyo
Too many recipes, too many movies, too many books
Exercise restraint – don’t pin too much, ignore
Retreat to a safe haven, the geek board
Everyone can have a piece
Sinful, chocolate, salted caramel delights
Tasty celebrities, artsy black&white, full color photographs

Little Man
Tall and strong, trying to be independent
Sweet, affectionate, stubborn, and full of personality
I see so much of myself in you.
I see so much of your father, too.
Little man who plays so hard
Exploring, learning, growing up so fast.
Still, you love to climb up in my lap
Rest your head upon my shoulder.
Still my baby
Always and forever.

Clean first draft, before the pens took over.

So, it has occurred to me that I haven’t actually told you guys what my novel is about. Bad writer! Without further ado, my novel in a sentence:

A young art protege, thrown into early fame, yearns for a normal life with her immature parents, only to discover a shocking secret about her birth.

The Art of Lying (working title) is a Young Adult coming of age story with a romance subplot (of course!). I really like my main character, Rachel, and her parents. Even though all of them are flawed, childish, temperamental, and whiny. Rachel was so much fun to write. She’s creative, scared, hopeful, sarcastic, and trying to grow up. Along with that comes problem after problem after problem that she has to deal with. Some she handles better than others.

I didn’t shy away from the problems either – poor thing – doesn’t get much of a chance to breathe before something else falls on top of her. I was proud of myself with this during the first draft – I wasn’t too easy on my beloved main character, I liked watching her struggle.

With revisions underway, I’m making her even better. More witty, more sarcastic, and more…well brave. Yes, she’s scared – growing up isn’t easy – but she was a bit too whiny first go round. I’m taking most of that out. Not all of it because 18 year olds whine (hell, 36 year olds whine – trust me!).

I’ve been working on revisions for a full week now and I’ve made really good progress. I realized snacks weren’t helpful, they were more distracting actually. Except the fizzy water, that stuff is awesome – this week’s flavor is Peach. I’m moving ever forward – cutting, adding, making changes, moving stuff around. It’s exciting. I’m about a quarter of the way through so I’m on target to hit my goal.

So, my fellow creative peeps? I’ve shown you mine (as it were) now show me yours. What are you working on? Novel, poem, short story, song, scarf, painting, what? Let me see!

Well, I’ve started. Block Revision, that is. This is a process – a major process, a very long major process – that involves going scene by scene and fixing things. Finally writing on the actual manuscript using all the worksheets and index cards from the past few months.

The process: You start with your new outline (the bright colorful index cards) and go from your new #1 scene (in my case that was my old #3 scene) and just start. You take a pen and make revisions based on your hit list (or laundry list – which I mentioned last week was the list of all the things you don’t want to forget to change as you’re going through this process), your targets (or goals for your revised novel), and your new ideas (from the worksheets and the index cards themselves). As of right now, I’m on Scene #3 which is a brand new scene.

So, before I started this process I set up my desk with all my supplies (some stuff I bought at Staples last week –  I love school/office supply shopping!). I have my Hit List, my index card outline, my manuscript binder, my worksheets binder, additional notebook paper for new stuff, and a major amount of pens. Then I bought snacks! I got trail mix with nuts, raisins, and chocolate chips. I bought fizzy flavored water (this week is Watermelon) and double chocolate chip mini cookies. Ahhh…snacks!

The last thing I needed was courage. This was huge. HUGE, I say! It’s a constant battle too, as I keep second guessing myself at every turn…and I’m only on scene 3. Yikes. I don’t mind going slow – I really only get to work when little man naps – but I still would love to be done with the block revision by late October. For one thing, we’re going on a family vacation at the end of October and for another, I hope to have the entire revision process done by the end of the year, and there’s still stuff left after block revision before type in (where you go to your actual computer document and make the changes).

So…I’m trying not to think of what’s ahead. I’m just concentrating on the scene in front of me and trying my hardest to make it the best scene it can be. One scene at a time.

I’ve been busy, as little man has napped really well lately, and I’m nearing the end of filling out worksheets and playing around with my outline cards. I’m getting ready to actually start cutting, rewriting, revising, and reworking my manuscript. I’ll be using those worksheets I spent weeks painstakingly filling out, I’ll be using the outline cards (a lot actually), and I’ll be grateful that I did all that work ahead of time – but part of me is nervous. Very nervous.

So, last time I wrote I was working on characters and I only cut two minor characters. I’m going to bump up one minor character to a slightly bigger part, and all others are just getting some juice added to them – that sounds weird – but I mean, they’re getting some work done, but nothing too major. I just want to get them back to where I had originally (in my plans before I wrote the first draft) thought of them. My main character especially. I had envisioned her being a bit more of a firecracker than she turned out to be. I think my first idea wasn’t quite right either, but I need more spunk and less frightened five-year-old.

Once I had that worked out, I moved on to working through my conflicts. I have one main plot and two subplots so I went through and figured out if the conflict was strong enough to withstand an entire book. Luckily, it did with minimal tweaking and a few additions. After conflict came time. This was actually harder than I thought it would be.

On my outline cards I had to write down the day, time, season, etc for each scene. I had to map out (for myself) on a piece of scrap paper a month and write down times, day of week, and season details so I wouldn’t get confused and then used that to fill out my cards. Once that was narrowed down and the cards were in the right order, then we had to fill in how time played out within the scene. This was the hard part. Trying to figure out how long the action would take versus what was happening in the background. I thought it would take about 30 minutes to fill out my 40 scene cards, but it took closer to 2 hours. Again, I’m very grateful that my son is taking healthy naps lately.

Now…the only two things standing between me and cutting/rewriting/revising are playing around with time within the book (linear timeline, backwards timeline, jumping around from head to head) and figuring out my Hit List – the things I need to think about as I’m working through and changing things. I’m not there yet, but right off the top of my head I’ll add some thoughts about my Main Character, adding some more details to her art studio (I was insanely vague with details my first draft, but boy is my dialogue good), and making her romantic lead a bit more smarmy at the beginning. I’m sure I’ll have more as I read the lesson more carefully – I’ll admit, I skimmed just to see what was coming up.