Friday Feedback: Rough Writing and Whacking Back the Muse

Hey, peeps, it's Friday Feedback time once again!

In case you haven't heard *coughs* I finally got a book deal for my next YA, currently titled Frankie Sky, and I'm "supposed" to be working on my revisions for my new (shiny, fabulous) editor.

Any of you who have been here before, have seen snippets of the book that sold on Friday Feedback.

Trust me, I love the manuscript.

And I lurve my new editor.

And I'm totally excited about the revisions.

In fact, I've started them and they're going pretty well.



And, yet.

This week, my damned muse came a-knocking (tugging, pulling, screaming, bugging, noodging).  


And, sprinkled her musey-magic fairy dust all over my fingers, my brain,

and my laptop screen.

"Work on that other thing," she whispered.

You know, the one with the boy, and the angel girl and 9/11.

The one you keep changing and playing with because you have absolutely no IDEA what its really about.

You know, the one you have barely started.

The one that may be going NOwhere.

That one! Work on that one!


Yeah, I don't know who this dude is,
but he's got a machete, and I need him
to whack back my muse. I tried to ignore her. I picked up a machete and tried to whack her back.

The thing about my muse is she can be tricky,

and particularly fickle.

She's led me up plenty a dead-end, overgrown, fruitless path.


And, I have more pressing, sure things, I should be doing.

And yet. And yet.

And yet.

So, I put down the machete and caved in.

I wrote 15 or more pages yesterday and already she's calling to me today. I'm pretty obsessed. I don't know if the story will amount to anything, but it's weird and quirky and a sad and magical, and there are bits of writing that enthrall me:

     Uncle Matt pushes his plate away with his dead fish hand, and mumbles again. "Ace of Spades on the subway tracks.” The angel girl’s eyes shoot up to him. Dad and I both see it. I look over at Dad, but he shakes his head and shifts his gaze away. Just a coincidence. We both know nothing Uncle Matt says means much of anything anymore.

It's rough. Really, really rough. But there's something. . .


She nods. “I think so.” She gets up and walks to the window. She looks heartbreakingly pretty in my pajamas. “It’s weird, Kyle,” she says. “I remember little things, parts, bit of stuff like movie clips. Like I’m watching them, through gauze bandage.”  “Which parts?” I swallow.“I don’t know. Not much really. Some guy talking to me on the street. Walking down the steps to the train.” “Where are your parents?”“I don’t know.”“Your name?”              She shakes her head.
             "Do you know why you did it?” My ears burn red. I’m embarrassed for asking, for prying where I have no business.
“No,” she says. “And, I’m not sure I want to know, either.”Maybe I just need to get to the hard part (the part where I hit a wall because I have no effing idea where the story is going or what I am actually writing about) so that I can put it away. But, in the meantime, I'm driven, delirious, typing frantically as the hours whoosh by.

So, I told my muse: "Rough, fast, and furious, you hear me? Get it down and get back to what you need to be doing. NO editing. NO MAKING IT PRETTY!!!"

My muse is hard-pressed to listen.

It's why I've never Nanowrimo'ed well. I can't tell if my art is working unless it's, well, arty, unless the words are reading the perfectly right way to me.

Still, I'm trying my best. To keep moving. To start and end chapters.

To ignore HUGE plot holes and logistical problems.

To ignore the fact that I have no freaking idea about some of the things I am writing about (say, cops' lives for instance).

To not worry where things are versus where they should be.

To just get all the thoughts and images and concepts that are calling to me committed to paper, so I can whack back my muse and move on with things.

Dumb muse.

She seems awfully unphased by my machete.


Got some rough writing you want to share with us? It's Friday Feedback. You know the rules.

- gae

p.s. I'll be at Teen Book Festival in Rochester this weekend, so if you post and I don't respond, I will... gimme a few extra days. In the meantime, maybe a few of my loyal readers/commenters will chime in. I know you're there. I see you. :)