wip: navel gazing

Over at SBTB HQ, Sarah and Candy often refer to moments of personal reflection as “navel gazing” – generally with hilarious results. This morning I find myself inflicted with this condition - generally without hilarious results.

I last posted about the BS2 Workshop I attended, and while I am still very enthusiastic I find myself stalled in the project. Unfortunately, this is typical for me. When I reach a certain point in the writing process which demands more logical reasoning than “Hey! Wouldn’t it be funny if they said/did this?” I tend to stall out. Because I don’t want the project to suck ass and yet that’s what I’m terrified has already happened. So I tell myself that I am “percolating” or “brainstorming” or some other such nonsense. And eventually I never get back to the WIP. A tragic yet true story.

Why do you care? Maybe you don’t and that’s cool. But since I set this blog up to track my progress through various writing projects, the information seemed relevant.

I’d really thought that once I attended the workshop, I would be able to pull a fully finished and polished screenplay out of my butt within a week or so. Ha! Not so much. Because while the workshop helped to identify a core defect very early in the process (location! location! location!) so many more questions were raised in the solving of that one problem. So now we have to seriously look at our heroines (there are 3) and possibly change (again) who the true protagonist is. And while it’s all for the good of creating a saleable product (cuz really, that’s the ultimate goal – I have other ways to entertain myself that require much less brain power), it’s a lot of work. And I find that I have trouble getting the old motivation motoring forward most times.

So coming back ’round to the Smart Bitches, I always find that when I check out their site I desperately want to go back and finish the Tucker beta (which I abandoned to tackle the screenplay). But I also want to finish the screenplay. Welcome tonavel gazing limbo land!

But on the SBTB site I found that they had a spot on NPR’s All Things Considered this past weekend. That is so highbrow! And very exciting. Their book is officially out this week and apparently going like hotcakes at my daughter’s daycare and I couldn’t be happier for them. And in clicking around the article I found the Old Skool vs.New Skool Romance Flowchart. It gave me something to smile about today. Check it out. It’s totally worth the brain twist.

And here’s to hoping I can overcome this funk-rut sometime soon and get back to my pending million dollar writing career. Gotta be positive, right?

oi

So, after lo these many, many, many days of not updating this blog, I log back in to add an RSS feed (see ‘Bad Mommy’ on the right – hilarious) I find that WordPress decided to get all fancy and change some stuff. Looks good, but took me a bit to figure out where everything got moved to.

Ask my hubbin, I’m not a big fan of change.

Anyhoo. I’ve totally fallen off the writing wagon and am wallowing in the wheel ruts of getting not a damn thing done. Started lots o’ projects, but about the only ‘real’ work I’m getting done is the random post on someone else’s blog (oops) and I’m pretty sure that isn’t going to advance me very far into a writing career.

Actually, I’ve been spending my copious spare time taking the H&R Block tax preparation course, thinking to pick up some extra cash this coming tax season. I’ve finally graduated – YAY – but apparently will not be working for said firm – BOO – because of a snafu in getting an interview scheduled. I’m way bummed. And not a little pissed, too.

Ah well. I am trying to look at it as the universe’s way of saying I have too much going on and I need better focus. So, back to my stories then. Wish me luck.

Start moving forward again…

holy frakin’ wednesday, batman!

Ok, it’s Tuesday. But that is less important than the fact that I just cracked 30,000 words on Tucker! Not only that, but I’ve cruised right past that benchmark to land at 32,214.

YEE HAW!!!

This is very heady stuff, especially since I’m targeting a line looking for roughly 55k on the word count. Which line? Not sure yet. I know, I know – shouldn’t I have this decided already? Likely. But the fact remains I haven’t and I’m just STOKED that I’ve passed the Wednesday of my writing week – it’s all downhill to Friday from here, people.

 

Now, my kitchen is a sty and my hubbin has no dinner. But who cares?? I’m at 30k words and counting…

 

Boo yah.

wip: Tucker @ 16,488

Whew. I beat that last scene into submission. Well… not really. It was going pretty well before but I had to wait a day before I could go back in and finish it. But it’s done. Moving forward…

 

I’m not sure if this process is harder than I thought it would be or not. The “seat of the pants” or “don’t look down” method. On the one hand, I did do up a quick sketch of the beginning, middle and very murky end – about six pages – back before I started this. Heavy notes on the front section and then ending with, “they kiss & make up… they live happily ever after”. Hardly a detailed roadmap. More like, “Hey, let’s go east and see where we end up.” But so far I feel better with this project than any of the ones before and I’m making progress.

 

Except for the fact that my prose is flat as a pancake.

 

My writing partner tells me it really isn’t that bad and to keep in mind this is the underpainting. Once I get the story blocked in I will be going back and editing and layering adding the color and texture. But see, that’s the fun part and I want to do it now.

 

Must stick to the plan.

 

I figured out about 2,400 words ago that my hero was a useless wad; he was a plot device. So I finally figured out how to get him into the story in a way that makes sense and enriches it instead of having him be there merely for the heroine to go, “Hey you’re kinda cute. Let’s live HEA.” I desperately want to go back and rip off the front section and rewrite. More than I can adequately express in words. But that’s one of my usual traps. I “skim” over what I wrote before and end up editing as I’m reading. This method, my friends, does not get you very far.

 

I just checked and it appears I sent out the sketch to my writing partner on April 17th. Today is May 16th. 30 days. 16,488 words. I appear to be averaging 550 words a day. Hrm. That’s discouraging. But then again, I’m only writing a scene every couple of days. I need to really try and get a scene a day. I really want this thing done. 

holy crap!

I just realized something: since my goal for Tucker is approximately 60k words… I am 1/4 of the way there!

WOO HOO!!!