Eric: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

http://www.georgerrmartin.com/if-sample.html

BLARGHWEAWED

me: ahhh

CAN’T READ IT

MUST FINISH DANCE WITH DRAGONS

Eric: NO YOU MUST

OH MY GOD

WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU

SALKFJS:LGDKJHSDLKF JHSD:LKFJ

me: I AM A TERRIBLE EXCUSE FOR A HUMAN BEING

I WILL START IT TONIGHT

Eric: AGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG
WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT THIS

me: AGAIN

Eric: I MEAN THIS IS A SEROUS STICKING POINT IN OUR RELATIONSHIP

me: I AM LIKE 150 PAGES INTO IT

Eric: I JUST FEEL THAT WE’D BE BEST SERVED IF YOU’D READ THE DAMN THING

FASTER

OH MY GOD THE CHOICES I’VE MADE

me: I JUST GOT SIDETRACKED

Eric: NO

me: I’LL FIX THIS I PROMISE

Eric: LOOK AT YOUR LIFE

LOOK AT YOUR CHOICES

ALSO GO LOOK AT TAVICAT’S FACEBOOK STATUS

me: I DID

Eric: WASN’T IT AWESOME!?!

me: YES IT WAS

BECAUSE HE IS THE BEST TAVICAT AROUND

Eric: TRUTH

In other words, 2011 has set the bar pretty high as far as awesome years go. If 2012 is HALF as good, I’ll consider myself lucky.

I decided to go ahead and make a list of ten things I want to do in 2012:

1. Go on a trip. Eric and I most likely won’t be able to afford a honeymoon, but I’d still like to go on a little trip, even if it’s only for a weekend.
2. Have a wonderful, beautiful wedding. And not stress out TOO much over it – I just want an honest, heartfelt celebration with the people I love most in this world.
3. Finish my MS.
4. Find a Crit Partner or a writing group.
5. Be accepted into the fiction program here at Hopkins & start taking classes!
6. Run a 5k.
7. Start querying!
8. Continue to decorate our home and fill it up with pretty things and, most importantly, love.
9. Make new friends, and find time to catch up with old ones.
10. Remember to be happy and thankful every day. Sometimes it’s easy to forget how wonderful I really have it.

I think these are realistic goals – and I hope that posting them here publicly will help me follow through on them.

What about you? How was 2011 for you – and what do you hope to accomplish in 2012?

This past month was certainly interesting. I finished NaNoWriMo on Sunday, a few days early, which to me was – and still is – incredible. It’s something I’ve been attempting to do for the past six years. It’s something that I always, always gave up on. I’d get frustrated because I felt like I wasn’t good enough. I would give up because I doubted myself, because I never cared about whatever I was working on enough to finish it.

This year, as I mentioned earlier, I had a plan. I also had, for probably the first time, a really supportive community on twitter who held me accountable, who encouraged me, and who cheered me on. I placed second in a first line contest, which gave me a huge boost in confidence. I mean, it’s only one line, but still. People voted for me.

And I wrote.

I wrote every day on my lunch break. I wrote while Eric was doing his homework (and he has a lot of homework this semester). I wrote on my weekends.

Somewhere along the way, it became a habit to power up my laptop every day and open up that document, so much so that I’ve felt kind of lost over the past few days. I told myself I needed a break. One week off. I’ve been reading. Having Buffy marathons, thanks to Netflix. I’ve worked my way through the first one and half seasons. Since Sunday. I’ve slept like 12 hours each night. I ordered some books on revising and editing from the public library. I designed and coded our wedding website. And now it hasn’t even been a week, but I’m bored and itching to write again.

So. Where does that leave me? Flightless isn’t done, even though I really like the place I ended. I really rushed and skipped over a lot to get to that point, though, so I think my goal for December is to go back and fill in those blank spots. Not a problem. I can do that. I also want to rewrite some parts of it, just because, well, some of it is really, really ugly. But overall?  I’m so happy that I don’t know what to do with myself.

After that, well. There are several things to do. First, I’ll send it off to Roxanne, who’ll critique it as my prize from the first line contest, and my wonderful friends Sarah and Isabelle, which will be another nerve-wracking experience in itself.  And then we’ll go from there.

So. I guess what I really want to say is thank you to everyone who cheered me on and helped me along and encouraged me and made me believe in myself over the past month. I couldn’t have done it without you. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

What do you think? Do you have a novel soundtrack?

In other news, I have less than 15,000 words to go! I can’t believe that this might be the first year that I win!

Anyway, I’m assembling my sandwich and thinking about my NaNoWriMo novel.  I was musing over possible outcomes of an unexpected situation when I realized that for some reason, the mustard was really, really thick and hard to spread.

I picked up the jar and saw why immediately. Instead of mustard, I had tried to spread caramel ice cream topping on my sandwich. On to my last sandwich thin.

Yeah. So, I did what any other self-respecting multi-grain sandwich thin enthusiast would do. I scraped it off and got out the mustard. And then enjoyed a slightly caramel flavored turkey sandwich for lunch that day.

It could have been worse, I guess.  But I realized just how scatter-brained I was getting, and I took two days off of writing. On Friday, I got my hair done and ate way too much pizza with Eric and then Saturday we explored Baltimore with my brother and his girlfriend, and I barely even talked about my novel.  Okay, well, I wrote about 300 words each day, and MAYBE I mentioned it once or twice. But still.  I took a break. And just taking that small breather was enough to clear my mind before I dove right back in and wrote 5,012 words yesterday.  It made me a little less crazy.

NaNoWriMo has been an interesting exercise this year.  We’re just about finished with Week 2, and as of last night, I had a word count of 27,455 – just over the halfway mark.  During the past two weeks, I’ve learned a lot about myself as a writer. It’s no secret that I’ve attempted NaNoWriMo every year since 2005 and failed miserably each time.  This is the first time I’ve ever broken 25k. Previously, I had adhered to the school of thought that it’s best to start with something brand new, so I wouldn’t be overly attached to the story or characters.

This year, I decided to do things differently. I’ve had this story in my head for the past nine months – and even wrote the first 10,000 words before Eric and I became engaged and pretty much all of my writing was pushed aside for wedding planning. Once pretty much everything was settled in the wedding department (well, sort of – we still need food, flowers, and music) I took another look at what I had. I wasn’t in love with it, so I scrapped it and started outlining extensively. By the time I was (almost) finished with that, it was mid-October, and the thought of putting Flightless aside and starting something brand new for NaNoWriMo didn’t sit well with me. I started outlining another story, an alternate history/steampunk romance about a mail order bride that has the potential to be a lot of fun, but I kept coming back to Elinor.  And on October 30, I made my decision. I was going to jump into Flightless head first.

And I did.

And I was amazed at how easily the words came to me, even during this past week. Writing 2,000 words a day or more isn’t a sustainable pace for the long-term.  It’s a breakneck pace, but it’s getting it done.

I’m under no delusions about the quality of this novel. I know that Flightless isn’t going to be anywhere near done at the end of the month, even as a first draft. As I flesh out my outline (and in some cases, depart from it entirely) it’s clear that this needs to be at least 75,000 words long, and probably more like 85,000. It’s going to need some major work once I’m done with the first draft. I don’t think I’m going to let anyone – except maybe Eric, because he puts up with me more than anyone else – read it until some major things are fixed when I revise it. But that’s okay. I’m not expecting perfection. I’m not even expecting it to be good. I just need it to exist, in all of its ugly duckling glory, before I can make it beautiful.

Overall, I’m really, really happy with it. It has good bones. I love my MC. I love everything about her. She’s strong and sassy and really developing with every chapter. This story that has lived in my head and in my heart for so long is finally coming to life on the page and it’s a really exciting thing to see.

How’s November treating you? Are you doing NaNoWriMo?

Take this weekend for example. Well, not today because all I did was code and code and code but yesterday – yesterday would have been a great day for my camera. We went to the Renaissance Festival in Annapolis, which was awesome. For one thing – it is huge. And there are a gazillion people. I think it may have been more enjoyable with about a quarter fewer people, but still. We went with our buddy Isaac, who has been friends with Eric for forever (he’s our Best Man) and I’ve known since the first day of freshman year at OSU. He just moved to DC, which we are thrilled about, because a) he’s awesome and b) we love him and c) it’ll be way easier to press him into service in my paper flower and pinwheel assembling wedding sweatshop this way. I’m kidding. I think.

Anyway, it was Isaac’s idea to go to RenFest since we always went in Ohio. And I’m so glad we did, because we had such a good time! Some of the costumes were amazing - my personal favorite was the knight staggering around with two black arrows sticking out of his chest. Some of the costumes were pretty standard, and some where just … I don’t know. Maybe it’s the part of me that majored in Medieval and Renaissance Studies, or maybe it’s the part of me who doesn’t understand the itty-bitty uber-sexualized Halloween costumes for women, but I’m not sure what part about the Renaissance inspires people to dress up in just a corset, tutu, and fishnets. Oh, and horns. You can’t forget the horns.

(I also don’t understand turkey legs at a Renaissance Festival. There is nothing medieval about a turkey leg. But I digress.)

Let’s see … we watched a show, saw a witch trial (I was just waiting for the Monty Python references, but they never came), and attended a tournament. The tournament was my favorite part, even though I was sitting in front of these girls who were just … ugh. Seriously, they were asking WHY THEY WERE HITTING EACH OTHER WITH STICKS during the joust. Because it’s a JOUST. And they are called LANCES. The knight I picked to win actually won, which was exciting. But then when we were leaving and heading back to the car, he was leading his horse through the parking lot along with some of the other knights and their squires (yes. I did really just say that) and he started screaming at people to get out of his way.  I looked at Eric and said, “I guess there really are no true knights.”

(Seriously, there’s no better time than right after a tournament to pull out the George RR Martin references. Just like there’s no better place than a Renaissance Fair to let my geek out. Which I did. Often.)

We had such a great day.  Eric and I drove home and worked out some finer plot points for my Nanowrimo project. We snuggled up on the couch and ate pumpkin pie and watched puppies on Animal Planet,  and I looked around at our little house  and couldn’t help but realize how much I love where we are in life right now. I couldn’t be happier. And I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

I’ve really struggled lately with my writing. And by struggle I mean I’ve hardly written over the entire summer because every time I open up those files on my computer I just feel so … inadequate. Like I’m a failure. I read over every word I’ve written and I hate it. And I sit there and I can’t bring myself to type another word, because I know that I’m going to just keep on sucking. It’s discouraging and unhealthy. The other day, I realized something else: it’s stupid. I need to stop and I need to change my attitude.

I’ve gone and put most of my creative energies over the past five months into planning this wedding instead of writing, and that isn’t fair. It’s become this major time vampire that I feel like I have no control over. Sometimes I even think I hate the wedding. I hate how I second-guess (or someone else second-guesses) every decision that I make. I hate how much money and time we’re spending to focus on one day. I hate that I feel like we have to invite so many people. What if they don’t like it? What if they think we’re trying too hard, or not hard enough? What if I trip? What if I spill barbecue sauce all over Eric? All of this fear, this doubt, and these feelings of inadequacy have spilled over into every aspect of my life, including my writing. But then I think of our friends, and our families, and how this is the one time in our entire lives that all of the people we love best in the world will be in one place at the same time.  I think of how special it’s going to be to share that day with everyone. And so what if I trip? I trip over everything. It won’t be worse than throwing up five times in the middle of a cheerleading competition, will it? And I managed to survive that.

I just have to stop worrying about things being perfect and about what people will think of me, and follow my heart. Things will fall into place.

I think that’s true for my writing, too.

That was what I realized this weekend, when I sat down and opened up my word document for the billionth time. And it dawned on me that the story wasn’t working right because I was trying to hard to make it perfect. To force it into being something it wasn’t. By doing that, I had started in the wrong place. I had stifled Ellie’s voice instead of letting her speak for herself.

So I opened up a new document, and I started to write.

You know what? For the first time in months, since I’ve actually decided that, yeah, I want to do this, I want to be a writer, it came naturally. I know this story. I’ve plotted and outlined. I know the best way to tell it. I know these characters. I just needed to trust myself. By the end of that hour I had over a thousand words of the best stuff I’ve ever written, and I sat back, stunned. And proud. And this morning? Yeah. I wrote another thousand words.

So here’s to forgetting about perfect.

I’m going to spend the rest of my Monday just doing my best, instead.

Hopefully things will be back to normal soon.

xoxo,

Jenny

(PS – All of my links have disappeared, along with my images,  so please please please feel free to send any links my way. )

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My life isn’t really all that interesting, and I don’t have many profound things to say. So why do I bother to share?

I blog because I’m writing my own story. First and foremost, this blog is for ME. It’s a record of what I’m thinking, feeling, doing, at a certain point in time. If I say something, it’s not to hurt anyone. It’s not aimed at anyone.  This blog isn’t about anyone or anything other than myself. And sometimes Eric, but he doesn’t count because I spend like 95% of my time with him and this was something he knew about before we got serious. So do I particularly care if people I know read this blog? No. But I’m not going to censor myself, no matter who reads this, for two reasons: I am vehemently opposed to censorship in any way, shape, or form, and because censoring myself would be lying to myself. I’m not going to do that.

I blog because it helps me deal with drama. That being said, there’s no reason for anyone to be offended by the things I write here. None. It’s nothing that I wouldn’t say – or haven’t said – to your face. I don’t attack anyone. I won’t say, “OMG MY SISTER IS SUCH A BITCH I CAN’T STAND HER BLAH BLAH BLAH” because a) that’s totally not true, I love my sister and b)  that’s not my style. But if I’m frustrated about something, then yeah, I’m going to vent about it here.  It’s therapeutic, believe it or not.  To just write it down and release it to the wilds of the internet means that I let go of it emotionally.  I can get over it in a way that I can’t if I simply write it down in a journal. I can’t explain it.

I blog because I like feeling like I’m a part of a little community here on the giant internet. I’ve made friends that I never would have met otherwise, and it’s fun to share my life with them and to peek into theirs.  We support each other and listen to each other and it’s pretty awesome. We’re all growing up now and our posts have gotten more sporadic over time as we start our careers, follow our dreams, and even create baby families of our own, but that’s okay. It’s a chapter of my life that I’m not ready to close the door on yet.

I blog because I’m still growing as a writer. I’m still working out what I want to do with my life.  I want to write more than I want almost anything else, and blogging allows me to hold myself accountable in a very public way.  Bookish allows me to do that. I’ve connected with other writers and have dipped my toes into yet another community that is so warm, loving, helping and welcoming that I can’t help but want  to be a part of it.

I blog because, in it’s purest, distilled form, blogging makes me happy.  And I think that’s a good enough reason to do anything, don’t you?