Cat Grant's Blog: Memoirs of an Amnesiac - Posts Tagged "new-wip"

Got a new story taking shape - m/m this time. Another one about musicians. A cute twenty-year-old keyboardist who's just been kicked out of his band (and thrown over by his boyfriend) and a slightly older ex-teen idol trying to reinvent himself as a blues guitarist.

Oh, and the young keyboardist is Trevor's son Brian, who we met in The First Real Thing. Expect cameo appearances from Trevor, Cameron, Mike and Ryan!

I'm a dyed-in-the-wool pantser, so that's all I know about the story right now. Watch this space for more details as they develop! :)

My first week working on a new WIP always proves an eye-opening experience. Every day I expect the work to suck - and sometimes it does, but most of the time I reread the words I wrote the previous day and think, "Huh. Not nearly as bad as I thought!"

Then I start missing my downtime. I usually take a few weeks off between projects to let myself decompress and get done a lot of stuff around the house that I let slide while my last book ate my brain. When I write, I WRITE. Meaning, I don't do much else that isn't absolutely necessary. Grocery shopping, laundry, feeding my cat, changing his litter - that's the sum total of real-life stuff that gets accomplished here while I'm furiously plugging away at a new project. Oh, and keeping regular appointments with my therapist, because there's nothing more crazy-making than a new book.

It is indeed a kind of madness, and I both love and hate it on a number of levels. But honestly, I wouldn't give up the writing life for anything. My worst day writing is still ten times better than my best day sitting in an office. And you can't beat a job where you get to wear your pajamas to work! :)

Only two chapters into this new WIP, and my sweet young hero Brian's getting put through the mill. He's just made a very painful realization about his (current) bad boyfriend - and in the next chapter, it gets even worse!

I feel so bad for doing this to him, even though his new, good boyfriend's will be along soon! :)

Got about 9K down on the new m/m WIP this week. Which is slightly below average for me, but I've had a houseguest since Friday. I know, I know, any old excuse...

Plus, last night I hit a "WTF happens now?" point - which usually happens at least once or twice per new project - so I'm taking the afternoon off to let it percolate.

So, fellow authors, what do you do when you get stuck? How do you shake the story loose?

Hopefully I'll be back on track by tomorrow. I'd like to finish this book before RT next month! :)

Well, almost! It's still alternating between sunny and rainy here in Monterey, but I'm looking forward to switching back to daylight savings time (yes, I know a lot of people hate it, but I hate when it gets dark so early!) and I'm especially looking forward to the Romantic Times convention in Los Angeles next month!

Just FYI, I will also be attending Ellora's Cave's RomantiCon and the GayRomLit retreat in New Orleans later this year.

In other news... got myself unstuck on my WIP and have chugged ahead. 12K and counting. My two young heroes are about to get together (finally!) within the next couple of scenes. I can't wait!

Chugging slowly and steadily ahead on the WIP. Hoping (fingers crossed!) I'll have it done by the end of the week.

However, I just realized it's all in one POV. Not something I planned, but as a pantser, I don't really do much advance planning. I've got two young heroes here - Brian, who's twenty years old, and Chase, who's closer to thirty - and thus far it's shaped up to be more Brian's story than Chase's. He's the one who changes the most, so it seemed natural to tell the story through his eyes. But now I'm wondering if I should stick in some of Chase's POV, just to vary it up a bit.

Huh. That sounded dirty. ;)

Well, I'm getting there. Only about four or five scenes left to write on the WIP. Of course, they're the four or five hardest scenes to write, and I really would like to get it done before next Monday so I can spend the next week concentrating on preparations for RT, but we'll see. As usual, my characters do what they want, when they want.

This will be the third and last book in my First Real Thing trilogy. I've enjoyed revisiting Cameron, Trevor, Mike and Ryan five years after they first got together. I like knowing I sent them off for their happily ever after, and they're still together and still happy. :)

I'm writing the run-up to my WIP's black moment today. I love and hate these types of scenes, because this is where the book ultimately succeeds or fails. All the preparation, the building of tension, leads here.

Starting a book is difficult, but I find ending a book three times as hard. So many loose ends to tie up before the protags can kiss and walk off hand in hand into their happily ever after. And every time, it hurts. This is where the words start to slow down. Some days they have to be yanked out of me with pliers. And when it's finally over, I sit back and wonder how I did it.

Okay, no more putting it off. Time to go torture my heroes.

Well, the first draft's done. Now comes all the smoothing and fleshing out. And since I wrote this one all in one POV, I'm toying with the notion of an epilogue in my other hero's POV. That should bring it full circle.

Then I can send it off to my critique partners and chew my nails waiting for them to rip it apart.

And while I'm doing that, I can clean my apartment, which really, REALLY needs it.

Ah, the glamorous life of an author! :)

Woke up around 4:30 this morning itching to get my new manuscript in shape to send to my editor, so I've spent the last five hours doing just that, and writing a synopsis.

Now it's off, so I can spend the next few days getting ready for RT. But first, I get to go exercise!

Ain't I lucky? :P