Sage Collins's Blog, page 9

Salvaging Your Abandoned Projects

Rhetorical question alert: Ever abandon a project, only to realize months–maybe years–later that there was some promise there after all?

A lot of my early books were this way.  After the first 2000 words of AFTRLYF, I decided it was far too ambitious.  And I wasn't that good a writer anyway.  What was I thinking?  Yeah. That was me.  Then one day I was deciding on a NaNoWriMo project with my friend, and I described three projects I had in my mind.  The more I described AFTRLYF, the more I knew it was the one to write.  She confirmed that with a, "That's awesome!  Do that one!"  And I loved it, even the overwhelming parts.

DownLoad was the same way.  I got about 200 words in before I decided it was too ambitious.  Sci-fi? Me?  What was I thinking?  Fast forward to… wait for it… NaNoWriMo, and once again I was tackling it head on (NaNo's my time to try new things, right?).  Okay, so I doubted myself the whole way through for that one, but I finished it, and after it was done and revised and revised, I loved it.

Sometimes I just can't seem to salvage the project I abandoned.  Boy/Girl is one I've revisited a couple of times.  I think it's just too dependent on the romance and not enough on the fantasy.  I need more action!  But I can't figure out how, so it gets abandoned again and again.  It doesn't help that my MC is not choosing the boy he/she is supposed to.

A couple of years ago, I started writing this novel called Taylor-made.  It was based off a song (aren't they all?) .  I made a soundtrack of image songs for my characters.  I had a basic plot.  It was light sci-fi, so I developed a dystopian setting (it was before people got tired of that).  I wrote 100 sentences about my MC.  I wrote the first chapter, and I still adore it.  It was everything that came after that was the  problem.  I was beginning this story during a mini-writing retreat.  3-5 days in my favorite little town with my favorite coffee shop.  I should have been knocking words out, but I wasn't.  I moved slowly through my MCs meeting, and then I had nothing.  I had no clue how to proceed.  I knew some events that were to come, but I couldn't make my characters move towards them.

I started writing Hero/Villain instead.  I fell in love with it and put TM aside, probably forever.

But, you see, the other day I happened upon that playlist and listened to it.  And thought about it.  And asked how I could change the setting (which wasn't working anyway) and up the stakes in the plot (now that I've realized that I need MORE action in my plots to be able to finish them).  And I want to keep the love triangle and the basic concept (except right this second, I'm even considering changing the romance a little, lol), but I could make this novel work.  I say without writing a word.  But, no, really.  The last few days, it has been on my mind, and I don't want to give up on my characters, which, let's face it, is really all I'm salvaging from the original idea.  If I rework the plot and the setting, I think I could get into the story, this time for keeps.

But, you know, it might not work.  Sometimes you find out that you abandoned it for a reason.  It was a sinking ship and you didn't have the time and energy to sink with it.  It's not really your style.  Or you still feel it's too ambitious.  And that's just fine.

But if it's on your mind, and there's just that chance that it might be salvageable, go ahead and try.  You might save it or you might just learn something (like I did with B/G).  And it might, it just might, turn into something you love.

Lots of love,

Sage

Words with Strangers

So piggybacking off my Hanging with Friends/Words with Friends post, and continuing in the "making your words count" vein, I want to talk about my inability to write for strangers and acquaintances.  This really falls in the non-fiction category.  While what I'm talking about may not be any more formal than this blog post right now, there are certain mediums where I just freeze up and stress over every word.

E-mails are a big one, and sometimes this falls into the realm of Writer Sage because sometimes these e-mails are to agents or editors.  Querying isn't too big a problem anymore for me, unless I'm making the query very personalized.  And then I freak out over one or two sentences.  Status queries can be agony.  A thank you for some excellent revision suggestions.  An e-mail to my editor that contains anything from "Here's these edits" to an explanation of why I disagree with an edit or a question about one.  At work, I might just be sending an e-mail stating that I'm sending something to someone at the main lab.  It might be an e-mail with an attachment included, and that's all I need to say.

But I stress about it.

At work this week, I had two requests for writing.  One was a self-evaluation.  The other was a resume with my updated lab experience.  Now, I have been told time and time again that the self-evaluations are meaningless.  Some people in the lab have even copy-and-pasted past evaluation answers into the current (identical) form.  Not me.  First I worry about the content. The first question is about new things I've learned and how I've made the lab more efficient and so on.  (It's the only question I think is actually worth anything, tbh).  So I worry about what I learned this year vs. last year, and whether it's impressive enough, and have I filled enough lines with the answer.  Then I start rereading it to see if the wording is bad.  Do I sound too full of myself here?  Does this sound like I think I did more than they think I did (and is this a bad thing or should I inform them of that)?  Does this item here seem wishy-washy?  Can I say this in a less awkward way?

And, stop.  Right there.  That's really important in writing books, but really?  Who cares if my sentence was awkward in a self-evaluation?  One of our employees can barely read English.  Nobody else in the lab is a writer.  My first draft will probably be more polished than what anyone else turns in.

But I do three drafts and reread and reread and reread.  And reread one last time, just in case I change my mind or some key thing is going to pop out at me.  Because that's what I do with this kind of writing.  Hey, at least I don't send it out to betas.

Except on that resume thing.  Because at one point I was looking at the resume of a coworker with similar experience, whose bio I was supposedly going to be able to copy and make minor changes to.  And I stared at two of her listed pieces of experience and tried to figure out which one I actually had, because to me they sounded like a different way of describing a similar experience.  I finally took it to my supervisor and asked him what he thought.  He told me to combine them, lol.  After I figured out what to toss and what to add and what to leave alone, I found a new thing to stress about.  I remembered that when I was being taught to make a resume, there was a big deal made about the way you list your experience for each job.  I had to bullet each piece of experience and start the description of it with a verb.  And the verbs all had to be the same tense.  But the sample resume didn't, and that made sense because some things are constantly being done by me (lab work, for example) and some are experience I have, but of things I did in the past.  I must have gone through and changed verbs and tenses about 20 times.

But you know what?  That's not going to matter when they read the bio.  The reader isn't going to notice the verb tenses.  They won't care if I shifted them or not.  Certainly, nobody's going to choose whether we get this projected based on a tense shift.

And it's funny, especially in light of my "making your words count" post yesterday, that the things I stressed most about in these types of writing are the things that barely matter at all.  The actual words don't count in my self-evaluation and work bio, only the message does.  Nobody cares how I phrase an e-mail at work, as long as they know what I'm trying to say.  A thank you to an agent or an editor could probably be simply "Thanks!" without my trying to express my appreciation in a wordier fashion.  No matter how many times I reread that long e-mail to my editor, in the end I will send it with only superficial changes made to it.

When you're writing for an audience, for entertainment, every word counts, and how you write it counts.  Your readers are reading for your style and your words and your phrasing and your message.   You need the whole package.  And of course, I stress about that, especially in the editing phase.

But not like I stress about these things that just don't matter.  Weird, huh?

Lots of love,

Sage

Making Your Words Count (or "What I learned while Hanging with Friends")

So when I'm not working on edits for Love Sucks, I'm playing my new obsession.  My sister and dad introduced me to the "with friends" games while I was visiting for Christmas.  Well, after getting my shiny, new iPhone, I downloaded the apps, and now I play with them all the time.

The two I play are Hanging with Friends and Words with Friends.  Words with Friends is essentially Scrabble.  Hanging with Friends is a hangman/Scrabble hybrid.  Hanging is my favorite (so far I haven't lost).  With Hanging, you have a certain set of letters that you can create a word from 4 to 8 letters long.  Each letter has a number of points it's worth, and one space you have to fill might be worth double or triple.  You get points for the word, but those aren't what wins the game.  Instead those points are used to collect "coins" so you can get special avatars and such.  What wins the game is whether the other person can figure out your word before they run out of letter guesses, just like in hangman.  You also get fewer guesses for longer words (supposedly because there are more letter options in the word) and more for short words.

Sometimes for Hanging, I focus on getting more points and sometimes I focus on stumping the other person.  I am much better at beating the other person in Hanging because, in the end, a better vocabulary is your friend.  This is not necessarily true for Words with Friends.  An impressive vocabulary can help you figure out how to use a difficult set of letters, but for Words, what matters is the points you got for each letter.  It doesn't matter how great a word is if it's a ton of common letters and doesn't land on a special square (double/triple letter/word score squares).  Then someone will hit me with "za" on a triple word score and get 33 points.  Grrrrr.  (But now you know that trick, as do I )

So what do we, as writers, learn from Hanging with Friends and Words with Friends?  It's how to make your words count.  It doesn't matter if you use a ten-dollar word, if you don't use it right.  Even in Hanging with Friends, I know that there are some letters the people I'm playing with always guess first.  Also, the guesser gets the last vowel automatically, so if you have several of that same vowel, they get every one without a single guess.  If you have several of any letter, it leads to fewer guesses that they have to make.  So I have to try hard to avoid these things, even if the letters I have available give me the opportunity to make a great word out of those letters.  In Words, a long word might be gold, but it might have been worth more if you had put it in the right spot, or if you had used the same letters for two smaller words in different places.

Writers are taught that we have to make sure that our words matter.  We have to make them count for all they're worth.

Maybe my Hanging with Friends and Words with Friends obsession is nothing more than me being thrilled to show off my writer's vocabulary.  Totally possible.  But maybe, just maybe, it's helping me learn to make those words count.

Lots of love,

Sage

A Little Bit of Distance Can Be Hard

Last week I posted about how nice it was to receive edits on a novel you haven't worked on in a while.  And it is nice from the viewpoint of not being too attached to your golden (silver… brassy… well, black and white) words.  How free of stress the suggestion to change your prose is when you haven't gone over and over it recently, trying to make it perfect.

But, of course, there is a difficulty.  Once we get past the change-a-sentence-here, change-a-sentence-there stuff, we come to edits that require knowledge of the scene.  And I have to admit that after a year away from the novel, I don't remember every detail of every scene perfectly.

For example, my editor wanted me to change a scene, and when it came time to consider what to do about the scene, I thought I had the fix.  Basically, Mailee's and Eric's clothes were wet and they probably should change them.  No problem.  I'd make a simple change and have Eric grab clothes for himself and Mailee from his room and they would both change.

Oh, wait.  As I read the scene, then the beginning of the chapter, I realized that they weren't at his apartment.  They were at her mom's house.  Well, that posed a bigger problem, since he wasn't going to have any clothes there to change into (I might have considered him wearing her clothes if he wasn't huge and she wasn't tiny ), him leaving to get clothes would destroy the scene, and her changing when he hadn't didn't make any sense because they were going to spend the rest of the scene cuddling.  Oops.

Later on, my editor reminded me that Mailee's hand was hurt, and she should react that way in the current scene.  I was preeeeetty sure her hand was hurt from punching someone, but I had to read everything in between those scenes to make sure that that was all.  Mailee's a little accident prone, so there were plenty of other reasons she could have hurt her hand, but, nope, I was right and it was the punching.

Of course, there are some things that you're going to have to reread and reread no matter how long ago you worked on it.  I was adding in a bunch of world-building mythology into the novel, and I had to make sure I didn't contradict anything that is vital to the plot.  Mailee has a week to perform her quest, so I had to make sure the week was included in the mythology.  And then I debated whether or not I really needed that week.  Wouldn't it be simpler to lose it?  Oh, but, wait, the week was needed because someone had started the quest before, and I needed to explain why everything went back to square one when he didn't finish.

And I probably would have remembered most of the mythology even with the distance.  I mean, it's the reason the plot follows along the way it does.  But it's the details that I worry about, and so the distance must be crossed so I can gain a new familiarity with this novel that I once knew every word of.  Well, maybe not every word, but I sure would have known that they were at Mailee's house, not Eric's.

Lots of love,

Sage

A Little Bit of Distance Can Be Nice

This week I received my first edits for Love Sucks from my editor.  I was a little nervous, let me tell you.  I had 16 beta reads of this novel (8 before the agent R&R and 8 after), and I remembered how it felt to get notes.  Even ones I logically knew were spot on could upset me.  Part of this would be me feeling ashamed that I overlooked the problem, but you know that some of it was a tiny bit of golden word syndrome. "How did the reader not understand that I was doing this???" You know how it is.

When you write a novel, you put your heart and soul into it.  When you revise it, you're polishing and making it even better than when you started, so now your heart and soul has been shined up and how could anyone not love it?  You get pet scenes and pet plot points and pet characters, and even pet lines, and then someone tells you to change one.  And you get defensive because it's your baby.  They tell you to explain something you know you made clear.  They don't get what you were doing.  And you think it's all their fault.

And then you calm down.  You look at what the basis of the complaint is.  You figure out ways to make necessary changes without losing the things you love about that scene or plot point or character or line.  You remember that sometimes you miss information when reading too.  And you also see if what you thought was clear was maybe not so clear after all.  If they don't get what you're doing, maybe you need to make it more obvious.  Maybe.

Of course, the whole time, you still appreciate their hard work.  You make a lot of changes, you don't make others (sometimes you should have).  But there's always this little tiny defensive voice.  But I find that defensive voice goes away pretty much as soon as I finish the edits and read through it.  There are very few things I remember from my earlier versions, and they are all MAJOR edits (like losing/adding in scenes).  I rearranged the beginning of Love Sucks, and I could not tell you what scenes came before others.  As important as I thought the way I originally wrote it was, it was not important enough to remember.

Those beta notes on Love Sucks, though?  They were two years ago.  I reread the novel for fun some time last year, and I took out most of Mailee's stuttering a little before that.  Other than that, I haven't touched the book in over a year.

So when I got these edits from my editor, it turned out that I was so distant from the book that I didn't feel defensive about any of them.  Not even a little.  If I think there was a bit of a reading miscomprehension, I figure out how to make it all clear.  There's one place so far that I've had to STET, and I was perfectly mellow about it, and all the rest of the revision notes have been me just nodding along and seeing what I can do.  Maybe I got an editor who gets it?  Well, I think I did, but my betas got it too, I know they did.  I have betas who still tell me they love that novel.  And one major suggestion by my editor is one that I've gotten before and I shrugged off and now I'm all ready to do it.

Distance is nice for taking revision suggestions.

But don't get me wrong.  I'm still an advocate for going straight into revisions as soon as you're done with the novel if you're still on that writing high.  I love the initial editing passes, and I almost always do them within that month I finished.  And I don't suggest waiting a year or two before getting those first beta notes, no way.

But distance is nice.  And I'm hoping that I continue to feel this way about my edits.

And as long as my editor doesn't suggest I do something odd like cut out the main LI and make my MC fall in love with a minor character (yes, it's happened before), I probably will.

Okay, time to go back to edits.

Lots of love,

Sage

100 Book Challenge 2011 results

Oh man, from November on, I was so busy last year.  But it's a new year and time to start posting again.  First post is looking back at 2011.

Last year I took on the 100 Book Challenge again.  For those of you who don't remember, the challenge is to read 100 MG or older books.  Graphic novels count, but I didn't read any in 2011.  Rereads count, but not if you reread it twice in 2011 (I had one audiobook I listened to twice in 2011, but it only counted once).  I also read several chapter books in preparation for NaNo, but none of them counted.

In all, I read 103 countable books.  11 were adult books.  27 were MG. 1 was a classic (hard to define YA/MG/adultness). 64 were YA (big surprise).  4 were beta reads.  10 were audiobooks.  2 were won in blog contests and 1 was won at a radio event when I was getting a hair cut.  Only 17 were books I got out of the big Borders closing shopping trips (but I have several more on my TBR shelf), and out of those, I adored only 4 and ended up buying sequels/prequels if they were available, and I hated 2.  This year I rediscovered the library and 23 counted books came from there.  7 chapter books were not counted, and all but 2 were library books.

So you're probably tired of the stats and just want the list.  Here's my 103 books of 2011:

1. Meetings at the Metaphor Cafe by Robert Pacillio

2. Jane by April Lindner

3. Death Masks by Jim Butcher

4. Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay

5. Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery

6. Sphinx's Queen by Esther Friesner

7. Coffeehouse Angel by Suzanne Selfors

8. Luna by Julie Anne Peters

9. Choker by Elizabeth Woods

10. Clockwork Angel: The Infernal Devices by Cassandra Clare (audiobook)

11. Dr. Friedrich's School for Minions(beta read)

12. Blood Rites by Jim Butcher (audiobook)

13. Across the Universe by Beth Revis

14. The Demon's Lexicon by Sarah Rees Brennan

15. Marcelo in the Real World by Francisco X. Stork

16. Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine

17. Fairest by Gail Carson Levine (audiobook)

18. The Headless Cupid by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

19. Water Wars by Cameron Stracher

20. Dead Beat by Jim Butcher (audiobook)

21. Daughter of Xanadu by Dori Jones Yang

22. The Goose Girl by Shannon Hale (audiobook)

23. Dearly Devoted Dexter by Jeff Lindsay

24. Warped by Maurissa Guibord

25. Princess Academy by Shannon Hale (audiobook)

26. The Outside Boy by Jeanine Cummins

27. Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones

28. Empty by Suzanne Weyn

29. Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta

30. The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

31. Kiss Me Kill Me by Lauren Henderson

32. The Prince of Mist by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

33. Front and Center by Catherine Gilbert Murdock

34. The Body Finder by Kimberly Derting

35. Glee: The Beginning by Sophia Lowell

36. Twice Upon a Marigold by Jean Ferris

37. Bleeding Violet by Dia Reeves

38. Ironside by Holly Black

39. Divergent by Veronica Roth

40. Huntress by Malinda Lo

41. A Deadly Game of Magic by Joan Lowery Nixon

42. Breathing Underwater by Alex Flinn

43. Steel by Carrie Vaughn

44. Battle Dress by Amy Efaw

45. I am J by Cris Beam

46. Invincible Summer by Hannah Moskowitz

47. The Shakespeare Stealer by Gary Blackwood

48. The Boyfriend List by e. lockhart

49. Book of a Thousand Days by Shannon Hale (audiobook)

50. Wildwing by Emily Whitman

51. The Boy Book by e. lockhart

52. River Secrets by Shannon Hale (audiobook)

53. A Need so Beautiful by Suzanne Young

54. House of Many Ways by Diana Wynne Jones

55. Small Gods by Terry Pratchett

56. The Off Season by Catherine Gilbert Murdock

57. Forest Born by Shannon Hale

58. Paranormalcy by Kiersten White (audiobook)

59. The Secret of Ka by Christopher Pike

60. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling

61. The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by e. lockhart

62. Beastly by Alex Flinn

63. The Near Witch by Victoria Schwab

(xx. Blood Rites by Jim Butcher (audiobook))

64. Prom and Prejudice by Elizabeth Eulberg

65. Soundtrack (beta read)

66. Boy Meets Boy by David Levithan

67. The Grimm Legacy by Polly Shulman

68. The Treasure Map of Boys by e. lockhart

69. A Series of Unfortunate Events: A Bad Beginning by Lemony Snickett

70. Enter Three Witches by Caroline B. Cooney

71. The Agency: A Spy in the House by Y.S. Lee

72. Harmonic Feedback by Tara Kelly

73. The False Princess by Eilis O'Neal

(Cam Jansen and the Mystery Writer Mystery by David A. Adler)

74. Beezus and Ramona by Beverly Cleary

75. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling

76. How to be a Pirate by Cressida Cowell

77. The Mouse and the Motorcycle by Beverly Cleary

(Clementine by Sarah Pennypacker)

78. Frindle by Andrew Clements

79. Ramona the Brave by Beverly Cleary

80. White Cat by Holly Black

(The Talented Clementine by Sarah Pennypacker)

81. The Witches by Roald Dahl

82. Real Live Boyfriends by e. Lockhart

83. Ramona and her Father by Beverly Cleary

84. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl

85. Supernaturally by Kiersten White (audiobook)

86. Sideways Stories from Wayside School by Louis Sachar

87. Blackbird (beta read)

88. Ramona Quimby, Age 8 by Beverly Cleary

89. Anna Dressed in Blood by Kendare Blake

90. The Worst Witch at School by Jill Murphy

91. The Fabled Fourth Graders of Aesop Elementary School by Candace Fleming

(Time Warp Trio: Summer Reading is Killing Me by Jon Scieszka)

92. An Awfully Beastly Business: Battle of the Zombies by the Beastly Boys.

(Ghosthunters and the Incredibly Revolting Ghost by Cornelia Funke)

93. The Worst Witch Saves the Day by Jill Murphy

(The Boxcar Children: The Vampire Mystery by ???)

(Marty McGuire by Kate Messner)

94. Doctor Who: Forever Autumn by Mark Morris

95. Poirot's Early Cases by Agatha Christie

96. Mason Dixon: Pet Disasters by Claudia Mills

97. No Talking by Andrew Clements

98. Liar by Justine Larbalestier

99. Red Glove by Holly Black

100. Beauty Queens by Libba Bray

101. The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin

102. Shanghai Girls by Lisa See

103. Jack (beta)

There are so many books on this list this year that I loved.  Some of them were surprising (I had no clue I was going to love The Boyfriend List and its sequels so much), some were totally expected (there was no doubt I was going to love A Need So Beautiful).  I know I should tell you my favorite book, but I just went through the list and found the task impossible.  Even when I tried to make a top 5 list, I had difficulty, lol.  Yay for a year of great reading!  In recent years, I've found it difficult to enjoy reading.  My writer self kept intruding.  Sometimes that still happens, but I've gotten back to reading for fun and enjoying good or fun (or both) books again   Unfortunately, there were a few books I was very disappointed in as well.  One got my very first 1 star review on Goodreads.  I know.  But overall, a great year for books for me.

I've taken up the challenge again this year. I am currently on my 3rd book this year, and I have loved every one of them so far.  And they're all so different, so this is kind of amazing.

Anyway, I hope your reading last year was as successful, and feel free to take on the challenge with me.

Lots of love,

Sage

And a Writing High!

Previously on "Like Fireflies in the Brain," Sage had a writing depression that climaxed in May, and she didn't break out of it until August, when she wrote a novel in three days, wrote a short story and a half, and cut down a novel she couldn't make work into a short story, subbing it immediately to the Absolute Write SFF anthology.

Busy August.

Two days into September, I received word that I had made it into the second round of the anthology.  There was still another round of cuts to go, but just getting that far was really encouraging.  I knew that if I was rejected, I would be confident enough to submit it elsewhere.

So I waited. In the world of publishing, it wasn't that long.  Just under two months.  And then a couple of weeks ago, we were told that the table of contents would be decided on that Friday.  Imagine my nerves that week, lol.  Friday came, and then we were told that only rejections were going out that night.  Acceptances would be the next evening.

I didn't receive a rejection before bed.  I had to work the next morning (Saturday, I know), so I went to bed a little early.  I got up at 6 a.m. when my iPod went off, and just like every morning, I checked it to see if I had e-mail.  I did.  There was a little red circle with a "1″ in it.  Kinda like when I see that "Inbox (1)," at first I got excited.  And then I remembered that rejections were going out.

I tried not to be too disappointed as I opened my e-mail.  It was a rejection, I knew it.

Only it wasn't.  It was an offer!  But not for "Fireflies", not for the anthology.  It was an offer for Love Sucks, which I submitted to an e-publisher a little over three weeks ago.

That's right!  Love Sucks is going to be published by Musa Publishing!

So, yeah, that was pretty good news.

Even better was when I received the acceptance for "Fireflies" that evening.

Two acceptances, one day.  There might have been some dancing involved.

All right, it's time for NaNo.  Hope you enjoyed my little story.

Lots of love,

Sage

Writing Depression

Hi, everyone,

I'm back after a long long break.  But I'm back and ready to post as much as possible.  I have big news that I'll announce in my next post, but this one is about the main cause of my disappearance: writing depression.

Last year after NaNo I devoted my time to revising Fireflies into a YA (for those just tuning in, Fireflies was a MG, and three agents suggested I revise it into a YA).  I started revising on the cruise, but didn't get very far.  But afterward, I knew enough time had gone since the R&R request, and I needed to get on it.  So I focused on the revision, taking a detour for ScriptFrenzy (I only wrote 50 pages) in late April.

The problem was…I wasn't enjoying it at all.  There were some good things I was writing, but every word was like pulling teeth.  The same for when I wrote for ScriptFrenzy.  The same after I gave up on Fireflies for good and tried working on a H/V sequel and on another old novel I gave up on once upon a time.  And when I thought about it, Nano Kid, my NaNo novel from 2010, had been difficult to write (though you wouldn't know it from my NaNo stats).  I'm not going to lie.  Almost every novel has some area where I struggle to put the words down and get through the scene, but this was happening for everything I was writing and had been since I finished H/V (summer of last year).

For Fireflies, I had more discouragement because I never felt right making it a YA.  I felt like Fiona acted like a pre-teen and that the plot was better for an MG, but it seems like agents felt my voice and the relationship between Fiona and her brother were better for an older audience.  But being a YA required an additional 20K words and probably a romance too.  Plus I had other issues to address, based on agent and beta comments.  I worked on it for months, added enough words to make it into YA range (whether I succeeded in making it YA is another matter ), and fixed some of the problems, but in the end it just wasn't working.

Meanwhile, I had non-writing issues I was dealing with.  I've been focused on diet and exercise because of health issues, and until May I was having difficulty seeing results despite working out a ton and eating pretty well.  In May, my cat had a tumor and had to have surgery (he's okay).  Plus, I've been having money issues, which is why I stopped sending out books in May.  I have the books, just no money to send them anywhere Notice how this all kinda comes together in May?  Notice when my last blog post was?

It may be a bunch of excuses, but the end result was that I just was completely depressed by everything writing related.  I unplugged from the writing world as much as possible.  No blog, no Twitter, and I even visited Absolute Write rarely (and then only to act as a moderator).

This ended in August, thank goodness, and I've slowly been integrating myself back into the writing world since.  But what happened in August? you might ask.  Well, it turned out I needed a kick in the pants in the form of a Three-Day Novel.  My friend and I rented a cheap cabin for a three-day weekend and wrote our fingers off for 72 hours.  I had been coming up with plot points for that novel since March, but I have to admit that with the way my writing had been going earlier this year, I was pretty nervous about devoting 3 days to writing.  Especially since my April writing vacation completely failed.

Anyway, the plan had been just to be silly and not worry about plot or characterization…but that plan died pretty quickly.  But here was the amazing thing about this novel: the entire time I wrote it, it never once felt like I was forcing the words out for words' sake.  It was fun.  It had been over a year since I had had fun writing, and the entire thing was just plain fun.

And, you know what?  Revisions and betas later, it's still fun

After that I wrote and submitted a short story to a kidlit contest (I did not win), I started a short story in the novel world (I never finished, but only because my focus went elsewhere), and I took Fireflies and cut it down into a short story.

Say, what?

Yep.  I figured out the problem with Fireflies.  The "brilliant concept" and "beautiful writing" worked better in a shorter work.  I had all these extra scenes in it that I didn't need (in the teeny MG version, even).  Scenes that were actually causing problems.  Thanks to agent and beta comments, I could ID those quick and zap them out of the story.  Then came the harder part.  What Troy scenes did I need to get rid of?  See, the heart and soul of the story, to me, is Fiona dealing with her brother who is recovering from a Traumatic Brain Injury.  So every scene with the two of them was golden to me.

I cut a bunch.  I kept a bunch.  In the end I had 7000 words that revolved around the very essence of what I wanted when I wrote that novel and could be marketed to adults.  And what did I do then?  I actually submitted it to something.

That was all in August.  And, well, stuff has happened since then.

I'll tell you about it next time

Lots of love,

Sage

Winner of part 3

Hey, guys.  I know, I know, I neglected you yesterday.  But here's a post just to announce the winner of part 3 of the Bye-Bye Borders giveaway.  This week I'm not going to do another one, though there are still plenty of books to give away.  I have to reorganize the remaining books, and who knows when I'll get to that.

But for now, the winner of part 3 is…

Ariel

Congrats, chica.  Leave me a comment with some kind of contact info, so I can get you your books. (If you don't comment in a week, I'll go with the random # generator's second pick, whose contact info I know I have).

Have a great week, everyone.  I'll probably post Workout Wednesday next.

Currently on iPod: The Joke by Lifehouse

Lots of love,

Sage

Workout Wednesday 5/4/11

I've decided that in order to keep motivated for working out and my weight loss goals, I'd implement a new series.  Workout Wednesdays   I'm just going to detail my workouts for the past week, from Thursday to Wednesday (assuming I'm posting after my workout on Wednesday).  Hopefully I can share weight loss info too, instead of plateauing forever.

By the way, is "workout" one word or two?  Or maybe it matters what context I'm using it in.

Well regardless of the spelling, here's my past week's workouts:

Thursday:

Aqua fitness – 35 minutes of cardio, 10 minutes of abs, and about 10 minutes hitting around a beach ball

Zumba – 50 minutes of dancing, variety of music including latin, reggaeton, bellydancing, etc.

Friday:

PT (personal training) routine – a bunch of exercises on the Purmotion "machine," which looks like a giant jungle gym.  Chin ups, pull ups, lunges, step ups, two ab exercises, and a shoulder exercise.

Saturday:

Aqua fitness – pretty much the same as Thursday

Sunday:

Took it off

Monday:

PT routine – Skater lunges with weights, triceps lifts (12.5 lb dumbells for both), squats with weights, chest press (22.5 lb dumbells for both), leg lifts, midrow cable (35 lb), and a cable exercise with a staff that made me feel like Mulan (20 lb)

Zumba – 50 minutes of dancing.  This was a new class, and I don't know if I'll go back.  More pop-oriented and the instructor wasn't big on going over moves before doing them.

Iron – Barbell weight lifting with light weights set to music.  Hour class.

Zumba – 50 minutes of dancing.  This class seems more ab-oriented, which is great (Yeah, I did 2 different zumba classes 'cuz I was pretty disappointed with the first)

Tuesday:

Aqua fitness – a variety of cardio and strength moves with gloves on

Wednesday:

Same PT routine as Monday.

In general I'm going to have my first PT routine of the week on Monday with my personal trainer.  Then I'll do the same routine on my own twice more and fill in the rest of the week with classes or something boring like the treadmill.

Can you believe that with a schedule like this, I used to be the girl who hated P.E.  I have to admit that having an inhaler has really improved my ability and willingness to workout.  Having the personal training once a week to keep my workouts fresh from week to week and then a bunch of fun classes like aqua fitness and zumba really help.  In fact, I look forward to working out most of the time.   Miles away from teenage Sage.

So hopefully I keep up the good work, yeah?

Oh, I almost posted without reminding you.  Don't forget to enter the third Bye-Bye Borders giveaway.

Currently on iPod: It Doesn't Matter by Allison Krauss and the Union Station

Lots of love,

Sage