CREATIVE SURGE plus ANXIETY equals "Wait, what is productivity?"

About once a month this happens to me: I suddenly get overwhelmed with creative ideas, particularly if I'm starting a new project, and my brain runs away from me before my body (typing fingers) can keep up. This then leads to serious anxiety (especially if I'm on a time limit or money is an issue) that basically leads me to running in a giant circles going LKSDFKLAFKLAKLDA and not getting a single thing done.

Woo.

This is happening to me tonight. It began around 6pm when I was facing the obstacles of my new pen name rolling out in a couple weeks. Next thing I knew, it was 10pm and almost NOTHING had gotten done. Once again: woo.

I always come to the same conclusion: Hildred, sleep on it. Odds are things will be clearer in the morning (or you know late afternoon for me.)

Am I the only one with this productivity canceling issue? What do you do when anxiety is colliding with the creative process?

Weekly Writing Check-In: Aw, crap, Camp.

With all the real life stuff going on right now (don't we all~) I've completely forgotten about Camp August. I think I have it all figured out now. I've changed my writing schedule as I change some priorities around, but for the most part I'm happy where things are going.

Tentatively, I feel it's about time I can announce just a little something:  I currently plan to release my first novella this upcoming September (probably lateish). No finalized cover or title format yet, but that's what I've been working towards lately. It's actually the first part of a trilogy. I'm writing the second one right now and hoping to get it out around Christmas and the third in early 2013. Of course as I said before it's all tentative, depending on how long outside editing takes and the subsequent changes, but look forward to a more solid announcement and corresponding marketing plans sometime next month!

And with that, back to writing. I'm just glad I managed to get all my writing done early yesterday, because watching gymnastics live at 1:30 am has killed my usual writing time. I see how it is.

June Camp Results

Forgot to mention this yesterday in my check in post, but I won June Camp at 62,926 words. Yay! I already know what I'm doing next month (work on CROSS//Revenge, the usual nano novel) so I don't even have to think about that right now. Right now I'm focused on finishing up "Daisuki." as soon as I can.

How about you? How did you do in June? Any plans for July?

(also, post 250!)

The 25k February Gameplan, 2012

I can't believe I posted this.

A couple days ago I proclaimed that I was going to write another 25k in February, in a desperate attempt to get this draft I'm working on mostly written so I can get back to concentrating on editing.

I still intend to do that.

I just don't think I'm going to get as far in the story as I originally hoped.

You see, yesterday I had an epiphany. And not just any old plot epiphany, I now know what the climax and finale of this novel is going to be.

I tend to wing these things. Sometimes I know what I'm leading up to in a draft, sometimes I don't. In this case I had no idea. I didn't know in the previous novel either. (I do know, however, what the main climaxes in books 3 and 5 are going to be. Woohoo?) Usually my best bet is to just start writing and eventually I figure that stuff out. This time I was taking a bit longer than usual, and was starting to get a little worried that Ye Olde Muse had taken an extended vacation when I reached the point in my handwritten outline where I didn't...know where the plot was going to go from there.

Than BAM! It hit me like a sack of potatoes twirled around by a...I dunno, something that twirls around really fast? Regardless, I had so many ~brilliant~ ideas at once that I almost had a freakin' brain hemorrhage and had to race to write everything down before I forgot it all overnight. I'm in love with this ending now, it includes pitting two characters together that rarely get any "screentime" together and a league of cloaked sorcerers doing some dirty mind tricks...literally. Pretty much the shit I love the most. AND I FINALLY HAVE A USE FOR ALL THESE SIDE CHARACTERS! I'm the most excited about that. This novel pretty much sees every damn side character in the series pop up in one form or another and I was getting worried that it was getting too confusing and they weren't doing enough. Well now they all get to be in the ending. Hooray!

And everything ties back into the theme/title of the novel (Revenge). And sets the characters up perfectly for what happens in the next novel after this one. It's these moments that make being a writer so damn thrilling.

So, yes. This February my goal is to write at least 25k more of this draft. I really should be editing. But I have to write this. I'm sure most of you know how it goes.

Fun With Maps: Now...where do those homes go?

Yesterday I shared my floor plans for one of my novels and yeah, that was fun. Today I'm talking about another facet of setting, and that's where, well, the story actually takes place. (Or, where the houses and apartments that yesterday's floor plans represent actually go.)

The CROSS// series takes place in a fictional, alternate universe version of San Francisco. This pretty much means that I base as much as I can on the actual city (without ever calling it by name, to boot) but don't feel bad about taking creative liberties when I need to. I've never lived in the city, and I've never spent more than a few (really, really intense and exhausting) days in nor nearby it, but damn if I haven't been spending most of my research time on San Francisco and its geography and culture. I think the only thing I research more for this series is the American military. And that one's just really confusing most of the time.

One thing I've been focusing on a lot lately is figuring out where exactly in San Francisco my characters live. Now, I started writing like a dumbass before figuring all this out, and then I decided about a year ago that I actually did care. So I had all these "rules" I had for myself - so-and-so lives downtown, so-and-so lives in an affluent single-family neighborhood, so-and-so lives near the university (where is the university omg), and so-and-so lives in an abandoned warehouse on the water - and was determined to stay with while also coming up with logical neighborhoods for everyone to live in. This week I finally sat down and wrote it out on the hand-dandy map I printed out and took a picture of above. While doing this I found out that in reality my characters really can't afford the neighborhoods they live in, and hey! I don't care! In my fictional version the cost of living is slightly cheaper! Oh, and I have an entirely fictional military district in the middle of downtown. Yeah, I'm sure that's totally feasible. (That would be "M-Town" on the map.) Also, damn if Devon doesn't move a whole damn lot in the series.

I originally wanted to buy an actual to-scale map with labelled neighborhoods and streets while I was in SFO last week, but the only one I found was almost ten dollars! LOL~~ So yea, I just printed a crappy one off from the internet.

So, readers, you ever go to this extreme before? Tell me about your fictional Detroit. Even better, tell me about your fictional Portland, because even though I've lived in Oregon my whole life (minus this past year) I know like, nothing about it. You could totally fool me.

Weekly Writing Check-In: Dissected and Disolved

Dead @ "militarily"

Quiet week from me, thanks to yet another six-day day-job work week aaaaand lots and lots of gaming! Teehee~. Oh well, girl's gotta do what she's gotta do to stay out of a nervous breakdown, right?

Of course, there was editing. A lot of editing. Every night editing! But nothing exciting, just the usual editing monotony madness that comes with buckling down and getting stuff done. That said, here are this week's progress reports!

CROSS//Revenge

So I had a real "OH NO I DIDN'T~" moment this week when I was looking over my notes for this first draft on Thursday. There's a really, really important plot/character development point that needs to happen in this novel, and I TOTALLY forgot the set-up in the draft that I have so far and I'm kicking myself over it. See, there's no place to go back and put it without forcing it in/changing everything. I was not happy. Well, I managed to fix it. The original scene was going to take place in Japan (where my characters are en route now) but I figure it could just as easily take place State-side. The scene takes place in a psychiatric hospital, and part of the original drama was going to be in language issues (the character involved doesn't speak Japanese very well) buuuuuut I'm pretty sure America's ~amazing health care system~ can bring just as much drama. Especially back in 2007 in which the story takes place. Of course this means I have to do all new research now. I know a lot of about hospitals in Japan but now it's time to depress myself with stories about American hospitals. Yay! (Either way, I'm problem solving! Go me!)

CROSS//Rebirth

 Editing sucks. Actually, no, I take that back.  I like editing. I just don't like it when it laughs in my face.

Since this is no longer MASSIVE READ THROUGH TIMEZ for clarity, flow, and checking for major holes, I have to get into the real nitty gritty of every chapter, and I didn't skimp on the first one. For now it's "finished" (until later of course, because editing is never really finished, sigh) but it gave me a headache. You see, I have a very specific way I do these detailed edits. Here's the breakdown:

Step 1: Do a careful read through of the whole chapter, changing anything I feel like/needs changing along the way. I get rid of lingering adverbs and passive sentences that stick out to me. The real focus of this, however, is analyzing characterization, especially in these first few chapters. I ended up changing one scene entirely because I did not like how FMC2 came across at all.

Step 2: Run a search and destroy of adverbs, aka ADVERB SLAYER mode. This starts with the obvious "ly" search, and then searching for non-ly adverbs that I know I'm notorious for over-using. A lot of adverbs that survived the first main edit were culled this time. My goal is to not have more than 1-2 "ly" adverbs in prose per chapter. (My chapters are usually 15-30 pages in length, single spaced, so I think this is acceptable. Also, this all only refers to non-dialogue adverbs.)

Step 3: Passive sentences, ugh. This is trickier to search for because not every sentence that holds the key words are passive, and damn you "to be". Word threw a fit at a couple passive sentences that I decided to leave in because they're in dialogue, and sorry Word, that's how they talk. Get over it. This is my least favorite step at all because I just hate searching for passive sentences. Anyone know of a good  program that can do it for me? Heh.

Step 4: Said. Now, this isn't necessarily OMG EVIL KILL THEM ALL search and destroy. This is because I tend to use said as a crutch as I write, when words don't need to be there at all! So I search for "said" and see if it's actually functioning or if a tag is totally unnecessary to begin with. It's usually about half and half.

There's other little sub-steps in there, but those are the four main ones. With the goal of doing one chapter a week (remember how I said some chapters are 30 pages long, single spaced? Yup. A week is good stuff for me!) I usually do Step 1 for three days (it's very careful, close reading) and each other step is one day. That gives me about one break a week if  I decide to take it.

Overall, I deleted about 1000 words this week. Not bad!

Sometimes you reach a point in editing where, you know there are still some passive sentences/adverbs left over that don't need to be there, but you just don't care anymore man. You just can be assed to look for them because yuo're sick of it. Suddenly it's the beta readers'/editor's problem. Yeah. That's the spirit!

It's not my problem at all~

Cats! Forever! And ever!

LOOK AT MY KITTY. LOOK AT HER.

I like cats, so it goes without saying that most of my characters like cats as well. This is one of those instances where I don't feel bad at all for projecting my own likes/dislikes onto my characters - because cats are amazing and if my characters want to remain, you know, my characters, they damn well think so too. (Blackmail works on characters, did you know that?)

That said, while my characters like cats I very rarely...have cats in my novels! I can think of only one instance in which a character actually owns a cat that gets a fair amount of screen time, and she ain't in the series I'm working on at the moment...nor is the cat coming along for a few more books. However, in my notes for both of my series I can see where I had planned for cats to be hanging in the background as stress relievers for my characters, or you know, great comic relief cause catz r funn3h. 

And now I would like to talk about the cat that may never be.

Her name is Sadie. She's a simple black American short-hair with charming green eyes and the proper catitude that says "all this? it's mine. yeah, the TV too. Oh, you're saving the world? Too bad. TV's mine." In my notes Sadie belongs to one of my female characters starting in CROSS//Revenge. These are old notes, however, and Sadie is currently not slated to be in Revenge at all. Or any other book in the series, probably.

I don't know what happened! At first it was that I couldn't justify this character just going out and getting a cat between novels. And then she's not in a spot in her life where taking care of a small creature is very feasible. So Sadie was going to wait until the end of the series when everyone is settled down again and can have a cat. But now I still don't see it. Sadie may never ~come to be~ in this series.

I know. I could just shelve her and use her later in some other novel or story. But you know how cats are. They know what they want and there really isn't any arguing with them. Sadie may be fictional, but she's much the same. She wants to belong to this particular character in this particular series, or she's just gonna stay in the Imagination Shelter forever (luckily, it's no kill!) I still don't have plans for the frisky feline yet but the final books are still a few years away from any official planning, so who knows! Maybe Sadie will appear in CROSS//Repent or later. Or maybe she won't.

Maybe she's run away from home and go shack up with someone else...like you?

How about you? Are there any things that you share with your characters, and yet they never show up in your stories? Or are there characters that you SWEAR you're going to use and then never do? Dish.