Update

Things are finally rolling along with writing.  I floundered and flailed a lot, and got hit with an idea that grabbed me by the throat and wouldn’t let go.  It’s actually the project formally known as Surrender, which was originally The Sacrifice, my first finished novel evah written in November for NanoWriMo.  My first time.  Ah, the memories.

So now it’s a science fantasy that basically has the Fey rooted in science, not myth.  Sound interesting?  It’s a million shades of cool, and I’ve been majorly jazzed.  I am beginning to enjoy writing again.  I still feel the need to rewrite stuff, but so far, I’m winning the argument.  First draft, baby.  Rewrites will come.

I’m hoping — if my wrists hold — to get a good chunk of this done by the end of the year.  I’m most likely going to publish it with Turtleduck Press, and my deadline is April 1st.  Kind of scary, but good practice, too.  So, this is my unoffical NanoWriMo novel.  It’s called Fey Touched.  The name Surrender didn’t fit as well as Fey Touched did.  I’m hoping to make this into a series.

Darklight has been put aside.  I thought I could do both, but I really work better with one project.  I need to get immersed into the story, and I can’t do that if I’m thinking about another story.

I’m still going to try to work on the Alpha Female revision as planned, after my words are done for the day.  I still believe in it and think I could make it so much better. I’d love to be able to submit it soon.

As for Pirouette, it’s with critiquers.  Until I get more feedback, I can’t make any decisions on whether or not to work on it more.  I’m guessing yes, but we will see.

I’m also writing more poetry for Turtleduck Press.  It’s been eye-opening so far.  I seem to have changed a bit, and I hope for the best.

What else?  Something huge recently happened that shook things up at home.  For awhile I couldn’t write, but now I’m finding it a comfort.  And that’s a good thing.

Oh yeah — I guest blogged on my friend Ana Ramsey’s blog.  I talked about my crazy muse and I.  Go read it.  It’s cool.  Linky: http://anaquana.wordpress.com/2011/10/27/guest-post-5-erin-kendall-surviving-my-muse/ .

 

It’s going….kind of.

It’s been slow.  Darklight is just shy of 5k, after rewriting the opening scene 3 times.  I also discovered a better way to bring out the creepy so things have changed a bit plot-wise and Ellya might have a brother who becomes very important later.  I think.  The muse and I are still working on that.

I had oral surgery one week ago to remove a wire from my jaw surgery 20 years ago (!) that my body decided to reject.  I’d been feeling like utter crap, dizzy as hell, and a bit spacey, and that is why.  So no writing occurred because I couldn’t fathom it.  So I took a bit of a break, but spent most of my time either reading or thinking about writing, which was actually quite productive.  So now I’m back at it, but slowly, because my muse is still a bit gun-shy.  My quota is 100 words a day and I’m aiming low.  I have the time, and pushing myself or pressuring myself isn’t gonna work this time.  So going slow and building up to more.

I’ve approached Darklight very differently than I’ve approached other novels.  I’ve never tried to write a straight-up horror novel, and I suspect this one will end up with psychological horrors as well.  I can’t help it.  It’s my inner psychologist working on me.  But I am trying for more horror too, so we’ll see.

I’m also telling this story differently.  First person present, a first for me.  Also there will be some journal entries by Ellya, the main character, in this novel and they will take place in a different location than the main action (her relationship with her love interest I think will be told in the journal entries, at least for part of it).  And finally, the chapters have names.  They will all use the format “[something] and the [something].”  And I’m letting my muse come up with them ahead of time and I will try to pull out what I think should go in that chapter based on the limited “plotting” (if you could call it that) I did.  Totally random, totally muse-directed, and I think it’ll be good. This is thanks to Holly Lisle, who has a class (How to Think Sideways) which I took and graduated from where she demo’d a plotting technique.  I sort of adapted it for my chapters.

So I’m living the muse for now, and it’s been enlightening.

I’ve also decided that once I get the comments back on Pirouette, I’ll make a ruling on whether or not I want to pursue getting an agent with it.  And after that is decided, I’ve also decided to tackle Alpha Female again.  Going with my goal of submitting something this year, I think AF is the logical choice as it needs a bit of work and then it might be ready for critique.  We shall see.

On the back burner (can you tell I’ve been thinking a lot about this?) are Darkweaver, which was supposed to be my Nano novel for this year, and my Fae-war romance inspired by my grandparents that suddenly bopped me over the head about a week ago.  Tentatively titled Pixie Queen, but that’s subject to change.

Ugh.  Want to move forward.  And I am, just slowly.

Status update.

I’m still alive.  The holidays just about ate me, and I’ve had a few things come up that kept me from making any noticable progress.  But I persevere!

The first thing is Alpha Female.  I’m almost done with the current pass.  I have a few new scenes to write, and do another overall edit for things I might have missed, and after that, I’m calling it done.  Going to see if I can get it beta’ed.  It’s been slow going for the most part.  I haven’t really been focused as of late.  I don’t really know why, just that I’m getting tired of looking at this story.  But I promised myself I wouldn’t set it aside to languish after spending all these months hammering away at it.  So I gotta hang in there, and get it done.

Without Wings, my 2nd chapbook for Turtleduck Press, is almost ready for the approval process.  It’s due on Feb 1st.  I’ve done a few edits and it looks good, so I’ll need another pass to make doubly sure — and to add the acknowledgements and such.  Very exciting.  I was hoping to have some new poems written for it, but that just hasn’t happened.  I just haven’t been in the poetry mindset.  I’m hoping I can write more in the future, though, because I want to get back into it.

And finally, my surgery is happening Feb. 2nd and I anticipate being laid up and doped up for a week, so I have no idea if I’ll be able to get any serious writing done.  We’ll have to see how I’m feeling.  I want to use this time wisely, but if I’m not feeling it, it’s okay.  I remember when I had surgery to remove some hardware from my jaw — the pain meds made me so dizzy that I couldn’t sit at the computer to save my life, so I dictated a scene to a microcassette (this was in 2004).  It was weird, but it worked (and it pre-dated my first serious foray into voice recognition software).  That’s how desperate I was to get something done.  Dunno.  We’ll have to see.

Future projects are Pirouette and Darkweaver, in that order.  That’s another reason to get Alpha Female done and gone.  So I can move on.  I want to move on.  Hopefully, I’ll be able to start Pirouette sometime after my surgery.

So that’s what’s going on.  I had a recent career development that I can’t get into at the moment, but it is a good one, so cross your fingers that it comes through.

2010 in Review and 2011 goals

This year just flew by.  I don’t even know what happened to it.  It felt as if I were making no progess anywhere, but I did accomplish a few key things.  I also had to adjust my goals to accomodate Alpha Female, which wasn’t planned.  All in all, this was a pretty productive year.

What I accomplished:

~I finished the 3rd draft of Pirouette in May and am gearing up for the final revision (which is my #1 goal for 2011)
~I started the Flamebound revision using HTRYN.  Got to lesson 8 of 22.  Yeah, that was one of the things that got adjusted. 
~I wrote and rewrote and completed Alpha Female.  My original goal was to submit it to an anthology by the November 1st deadline.  After getting it back from a wonderful beta, I realized that it wasn’t going to work for the antho.  I decided to expand it, as most of the issues were due to trying to keep the wordcount within the limits (25k) and then decided to try to finish it up by the end of the year.  Which I pretty much did, if you don’t count the tweaks I’m currently working on.
~I started Broken and got it up to 12k.  Broken was a personal challenge to myself, as it’s got a bit of BDSM in it and I’d never written that before. It’s also a different genre for me. I am very pleased with how it’s going.
~I critiqued 3 novels for writer friends.  While this isn’t a huge thing, I made my deadlines for the most part and got the honor of reading some really good books.
~I joined up with a few writer friends and started Turtleduck Press, which is our publishing endeavor which will hopefully change the world, muhaaaa.
~I self-pubbed Life as a Moving Target through them, which has been a dream of mine since December 2002 when I wrote the very first poem in that collection.  After trying traditional publishing, I decided to go ahead and self-publish it.  I’ve gotten some great feedback so far.  And it’s so dear to my heart.
~I wrote approximately 100k this year.  Not bad considering I did mostly revising and editing.  Some writing, too.  I’m glad to have hit 100k.  It certainly didn’t feel like 100k.
~I wrote and rewrote my query letter for Pirouette.  I think I have it nailed.  We’ll see.

So, yep, not a bad year at all.

Goals for 2011:

~SUBMIT something.  This is HUGE.  This year was supposed to be the year for that, but I got a bit derailed.  I will submit something if it kills me.  Most likely either Alpha Female or Pirouette.
~Finish up Alpha Female and get it critted
~Do the final revision on Pirouette and get it to critters.
~Submit something!
~Continue Flamebound revision, hopefully finish (I see a rewrite in my future…)
~Finish Without Wings, my second poetry chapbook with Turtleduck Press, and get it to approvals by Feb. 1st.  This is a biggie because it still needs some work and time is ticking.
~Write (hopefully) Darkweaver.
~Work on Don’t Close Your Eyes, chapbook #3.
~Do not get derailed this time.  Stay to the goals.
~Get an agent

Will I accomplish all of that?  Perhaps.  But I will try for sure.  It feels like 2011 will be a good year.

Alpha Female is done!

Yep, just finished it a few minutes ago.  It needs a final tweak, but it’s basically finished!  It’s at 38k, 2k less than the projected 40k.  Once I do my tweaks, it’ll probably end up around 40k.

This one gave me fits to the very end.  I’m so glad to be done.  Another year-end goal accomplished.

Next is the tweaks, and back to the Pirouette revision.

So what have I been doing?

Yeesh, that’s a really good question.  The short version: banging my head against the wall.  And hating everything.  And jumping when my Inner Slave Driver says so. 

Lemme  explain.  Awhile ago, I got horribly, mercilessly, wacked-out-crazy stuck on Alpha Female.  It was so bad that I’d open up the file and I’d go numb.  Nothing would happen.  I’d feel uncomfortable and slightly panicky.  And then it would get so intolerable that I would have to close the file.

Imagine about a week of doing this, and then spending all my time away from the computer obcessing about it.  How to fix it.  What went wrong.  Alternate ideas.  Throwing lots of stuff on the wall.  Seeing what stuck.  Soul searching.  Wondering if  I really need to finish this draft now.  That’s important, yanno.

So at the end of that hellish week, I finally — after brainstorming until my eyeballs damn near started bleeding — came up with something.  The current direction?  Wrong.  The current ending?  Wrong.  It all needed to go from where  I started rewriting it last.  Ugh.  That really friggin hurt, but I saved the file under different name, just in case it was The Crazies and not a Brillant Idea like I thought.

Soooo I start in on the new direction and it’s flowing for a day or two.  I’m on friggin fire.  I can’t type fast enough.  It’s going, it’s going, and then..it went.  Just…nothing.  I went to start the next scene last night and ended up with this mess:

“Are you sure you’re up for this?” Derek asked as we walked quite a distance away from the Circle and through a copse of trees. The sunlight sent diffused light through the canopy of leaves, and I hugged myself, suddenly cold. The smell of saltwater reminded me of the time that Luke and I spent at the beach, and my heart clenched tight.

“No, I’m not,” I admitted. “But I have to do this.”

“It’s just down this path.” A dirt path lead to complete darkness. Disconcerted, I followed him, wondering how far into the darkness Luke was. I realized that I should have had my daggers. Some kind of protection. Who was to say that Derek wouldn’t just..kill me? They didn’t exactly owe me anything. Although, I was still the Alpha Female, and it had to count for something, right?

I tried to think positively.

I’m positive that I’m going to die.

 I shook my head. This wasn’t going to work.

“Natasha?” Derek asked. “Are you okay?”

I blinked. “Wha – yes, I’m fine. Just a little worried.”

“I can imagine.” Derek stopped at a short nondescript building made of brick. It seemed to completely fill the area, but maybe it was my imagination. Luke was in there. Right now. I wasn’t sure if that scared me more or gave me comfort.

The sound of chains banging against each other broke into my thoughts. Derek was trying to unlock the chains.

Not even going to go into why this sucks, just that it does, okay?

So what’s going on?  Well, my best guess?  Some things have been weighing on my mind, and as usual, I’m putting too much pressure on myself (what else is new?).  I would like to finish this draft of Alpha Female by the end of the year.  What might be the reality is that I don’t, and that’s okay.  But I have goals!  Well, sometimes goals aren’t everything.

I’m not giving up on it, but I am going to lighten the load a bit on myself.  It’s been difficult and I know I need to work through these things, but I have been working on Alpha Female since August.  Three rewrites plus countless other scene rewrites.  This has been one of the toughest books I’ve ever written.  Why?  I don’t know.  I can’t say it was because I had a deadline, because that was shot to hell halfway through.  It’s almost as if the book is fighting me.  Why?  I love Natasha and Luke, I love the Pirouette world, I love the story.  So why am I so effed up about it?

I don’t know.  That’s a bit of a mystery.  But it’s really pissing me off.

I’ve also been thinking about Pirouette and where to go with it once I start the revision.  Out of the gate, I’ll need to revise the first two scenes.  That’s been simmering in the back of my head for awhile.  And a new project — well, an old one that’s screaming for my attention — is Darkweaver.  I have Ideas, baby, but can’t work on it.  I need to finish Alpha Female and Pirouette before I can even start think about writing it.  Because I could get involved in that for a year and meanwhile, Alpha Female and Pirouette suffer.  Can’t do that.

And, lastly, is poetry chapbook #2, Without Wings.  I have a preliminary file started with the poems in a possible order.  They still need editing and the order needs to be studied.  It’s due to the Turtleduck peeps on Feb. 1st.  So that’s in the plan as well.

So, I’m taking it easy.  Hopefully, I can get something going before the end of the year.  I hope.

Buy my chapbook!

You know you want to.  Come on, it’s only $7 and Christmas is coming…

:looks around:

Oops, did I just say that?  Sorry.  I think Alisia’s been hijacking my brain again.

What I was going to say was that my chapbook, Life as a Moving Target, is now for sale by Turtleduck Press.  Head on over to the Turtleduck Press site at http://www.turtleduckpress.com or to my website at http://www.erinkendall.com to get more information and/or to buy a copy.

You know you want to.

Even if you’re not into poetry — my chapbook is written so everyone can understand it.  That was important to me. 

:glares at Alisia, who’s grinning at her:

Um, sorry about that.  She’s doing it again.

Anyhoo, a friend of mine reviewed my chapbook on her website.  Here’s what she had to say:

Again and again, she uses metaphors for balance, for movement, for focus — tightropes and pirouettes, crawling, tops, the world pulling her along with it. Other images appear, rainbows and fog, medical terms and magic, shadows and shapes.

Overall, this is an incredibly moving and personal collection of poems, that deserves to be lingered with, reread, and shared. I encourage everyone to check out the excerpt at the Turtleduck Website and consider buying the chapbook.

If you’d like to read the full review, check it out here: http://www.erinmhartshorn.com/life-as-a-moving-target-review/ .  I’m so excited about it!

In other news, Alpha Female is giving me fits, so it hasn’t been going well.  But I did finish the Pirouette notecards.  The grand total? 118 !  That’s alot of notecards! But they will really help me nail down what needs to be changed.

Goal for the rest of the year: get as much done on either project.  After the first of the year, things will get crazy again, so for now I’m taking it easy.  No outrageous demands.  :grabs Inner Slave Driver by the throat:  You hear that?  I need a break.  And I will take it.

:whip cracks:

I mean, uh.  Yeah.  Going to write till my fingers bleed.  Uh huh.  Must work harder.  Must…….  :incoherent whispers:

NaNoRevMo – days 21-27

This past week has been really rough on me.  I lost a few days due to some personal stuff that made it virtually impossible to work on anything.  Everything is fine.  I just wasn’t in the mental place for writing and taking the time off actually worked to my advantage.

I was also horribly stuck on Alpha Female.  It always happens near the end: I’ll lock up completely and not be able to move forward to save my life.  I’ve heard that some writers subconsciously don’t want to finish their projects and by getting stuck, they’re able to delay the inevitable. It happened with Flamebound, too, although I’m not sure if it happened for Pirouette.  But it’s starting to flow better now, so I might actually be over the hump and into the home stretch.

I don’t doubt that I’ll need to do another edit pass, though.  Some of it is new words and right now, the goal is to finish it first.

I also worked on more Pirouette notecards.  That’s also coming along.

And of course, my chapbook is launching with Turtleduck Press on December 1st.  You can find out more at our website, http://www.turtleduckpress.com .  I’m looking forward to that. 

Bits of poetry are still rattling around in my head, but nothing’s jumped out at me.  I may need to just freewrite sometime soon and see what happens.  For some reason, I can’t seem to make the pieces gel into something cohesive.  I imagine it’s because I haven’t written much poetry lately.  Must change that.

All in all, I made pretty good progress if a bit slow.  Hopefully, things will pick up in the final 3 days.

NaNoRevNo days 15-20

Yeah, just moving along.  I’ve worked mostly on Alpha Female, except for one day when I got really, really stuck and couldn’t conceive the notion of writing.  I thought about it instead.  That day — I don’t remember which — I worked on the Pirouette notecards.  I also gave some thought to my second chapbook that’s releasing April 1st from Turtleduck Press.  Working title is Without Wings, and it’s all love poetry.  I’ve been trying to get myself to write more happy poems because the happy ones I have are of inferior quality and the better quality ones are mostly sad.  I’m not sure I want to have a whole collection of sad poetry, so it’s time to write some happy poems.  But, unfortunately, the muse isn’t cooperating.

Last time I wrote a poem was last year for Life as a Moving Target.  I actually wrote 3, 2 of which are included.  The other, Insignificant, will be in the second chapbook.  But as much as I try, I can’t get into the proper mindset.

I used to freewrite alot and then turn it into poetry.  I wrote alot.  I still have alot of my drafts.  I’m considering using some of those as jumping off points for the new poems.  I have a list of lines in my iPhone, but they are all for the third chapbook, Don’t Close Your Eyes.  I wish my muse would just throw me a bone.

Anyhoo, so that’s what I’ve been doing.  Slowed down some on Alpha Female, but today I was able to work through the block.  It’s still not perfect, but good enough for now.  I’d like to finish it by the end of the month.  I should be able to do that still.

What got me so stuck?  Werewolf pack rules and werewolf fight scenes.  Yep, that was my undoing.  And I decided to use something from the original draft (nothing is ever wasted) so that was an added bonus.  I still have a few things to clear up and a plausible way for the ending to happen, and another edit, and then I think I can call it done.

This has been a very insightful experience.

Also, one of the winners of my giveaway hasn’t contacted me so I’m re-drawing a new name tomorrow.  If you weren’t part of the first, comment here (with an email address or you will be disqualified) and I will add you to my original list.  Those of you who were part of the original giveaway are still eligible for the re-draw so no need to add your name again.

Talking to myself

I wrote 576 new words on Alpha Female and I’ve set the end in motion.  However, I left out something really important, so it’ll need to be added in next time.  Hopefully tomorrow.

What I’m grappling with is the Pack structure.  They have a mating rite where the males compete to mate with the Alpha Female (Natasha, the main female character).  They have rules.  Delia, the antagonist, broke the rules.  So technically, she should be dealt with and wasn’t.  Well, except for a death threat.  😉  I dunno.  I guess there are more things to consider. My beta reader brought the whole Delia thing to light — Luke, the male lead and Natasha’s love interest, needs to address Delia trying to kill Natasha.  She should, technically, die, as was implied in one of the earlier drafts.  I need to definitely tie this up before the novella ends.

And then there’s the climax.  I’m basically keeping what I had, except for the circumstances that lead to it, if that makes sense.  Luke needs to go rabid on her, and she needs to [spoiler alert!] heal him. [end spoiler alert!].  I really, really like that.  It’s different than what I’d planned, but as I was writing the current draft, I went with it.  I think it works well. 

I think it might be trying to tie all the loose ends together in one shot that’s killing me.  Maybe I need to do it one by one, not all at once.  I always feel like my brain is going to explode.  Or maybe I could make notes to refer to later about these things.  I’m still learning what works and what doesn’t.  And I feel a bit like I’m climbing through quicksand.  However, if I can get this done within the next few weeks, I could get it back to my beta reader and maybe, just maybe, be able to submit it by the end of the year, which is the goal.

Yeah.