Working hard.

I’ve been hard at work on revisions for Fey Touched.  It’s been interesting and a bit crazy.

After I sent in Fey Touched to my editor April 1st, I had a bit of time to putz.  So, I worked on a loose plot for the sequel, Grave Touched.  I also worked on lesson 12 of HTRYN with Flamebound.

I’m very happy with what I got done.

Now I’m about 3 weeks away from my next deadline, June 5th.  I’m not even halfway through.  I’ve run into a few problems and it took a bit longer than I thought.  But, as of yesterday, I started moving forward again.  \ 0 /

I’m also trying to nail down what I want to do with Darklight.  I have ideas for a second and third book, so stayed tuned for that.

I also got a beautiful review for Without Wings which made my whole week.  Check it out here:

http://www.soulvomit.com/9/post/2012/05/review-without-wings-by-erin-zarro.html .

Update – Still alive, mostly.

Um, yeah.  I’ve been working on Pirouette (up to page 88 of 281) and promoting both Life as a Moving Target and Without Wings.

I’ve had some issues with Pirouette.  I’ve made a very critical change to the book near the beginning, and while I believe it will make everything stronger, it kind of threw me for a loop.  Alisia and Lucien have to react to this and it’s not something they’ve encountered before.  Also, they are newly married, so things are a bit tricky right now.

I just finished the second new scene of 3 and I’m not sure I nailed it.  Lucien leaves the room at the end, and I didn’t plan that.  I asked my muse, “WTH? Why did he leave?” And my muse hasn’t answered my question yet.  I hope she will sometime soon.

I’m also a bit worried about the length.  Two words: Growing. Again.

In cheerier news, I have some new and not-so-new stuff happening.  I’ve decided my next project is to try to finish the revision of Flamebound and then begin the rewrite.  I have some ideas for that, and I might try to fit in some revision work here and there when I can.  Pirouette is still the priority though.

And lastly, I have an idea for a horror story.  I don’t even know what it wants to be – short story, novella, or novel.  It came fast and furious in the shower one night and I’m pretty excited.  Just don’t know when I’ll be working on it.  It doesn’t even have a title yet.

So that’s what’s shaking here in my world.  Stay tuned.

Without Wings is now available!

Without Wings, my second chapbook with Turtleduck Press, released yesterday!  It explores the dark side of love.

My friend and fellow indie author SM Reine wrote an awesome review!

Here’s an excerpt:

“Her poetry has a way of painting pictures with negative space– that is to say, the things she withholds from the poems, rather than what she puts in them.  She dives right into the depths of emotion without hesitancy, and she has arranged the poems within to create a rhythm throughout the chapbook that flows as well as her poetry itself. ” 

You can read the review, as well as a short interview I did with SM Reine, here: http://www.smreine.com/2011/04/review-and-interview-without-wings-by.html  .

And to buy or for more information, visit us at http://www.turtleduckpress.com . I will be doing a giveaway very soon!

In other news, the Free-For-All ended up becoming Pirouette month. Which is just fine.  I’m on page 32.  It sounds like not a lot, but I’ve made some fantastic progress on the worldbuilding and the characterization.  I also have some ideas for the story as a whole.

Which leads me to my next point.  I realized that, while writing and rewriting novels may at times seem slow and inefficient, it also helps bring the entire thing into better focus.  For an example, in draft 2, I had Alisia totally unwilling to do something.  She fought with the people forcing her into it, but eventually figured she was overruled and went along with it.  That to me seemed rather shaky and Alisia is not one to go along with something she doesn’t want to do.  So, instead, in this draft, she’s going along with it, yeah, but to prove everyone wrong.  I think this is keeping with her personality more than in draft 2.

I also added some neat little touches to the world that will become important later on.

Alisia is more snarky now, if that’s even possible.  I’d wondered if I’d forgotten how to write her.  Nope, just took a little sabbatical.  She’s alive and kicking again!

So you see, I had to write 3 drafts to get to that destination.  I believe that nothing is ever wasted, even if I scrap something and start over.  It’s still there, in my head, and it can be revisited or refigured.  But I wouldn’t have gotten here without the original scene in draft 2.

Now my task is to keep the characterization consistant throughout the book.  Alisia and Lucien have to work for their happiness, and there needs to be obstacles.  And there are many.  So, that’s what’s next.

As for Alpha Female, I have a few changes I want to make, and the things I added to Pirouette will affect a few things in Alpha Female, so I think it would be best if I put it on the back burner for now.

I also was considering trying to write more poetry this month.  We’ll see how that goes.

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.

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.

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.