In which the author takes three chapters to get into what she's writing. (Also, a farewell to a querying WIP.)

I started out not liking this new WIP at all. I wrote it well, but my mind was still in query-land with my finished WIP. I constantly compared my new WIP to the querying one, and I never thought the new WIP would amount to anything! I was convinced it wouldn't be as good.

CONVINCED.

But I kept going on. To avoid riding the extreme high/lows of the rollercoaster that is querying and keep the ride kind of even, I kept writing. Plowing through this novel I was convinced was crap all around.

But then came chapter three. Out of nowhere. At 2am in the morning. After a long, hard, exhausting day at work where all I wanted to do was collapse in bed. The writing just flowed right through me. Nothing like that has ever happened to me, ever. It was an exhilarating experience. I...I don't even think I can describe it, there is no other feeling to compare it to, except maybe getting a huge bar of chocolate, or finding out you actually got an A on that test you thought you failed, or that the cop who pulled you over is deciding not to give you a ticket, or...














...or drinking a whole lot of kool-aid, or inhaling helium and singing on rock band. Long story short, it's awesome. New WIP is offically a cool kid. It can sit at our lunch table.

I'm excited to keep writing it! Is there a moral? If there is, it's to keep going. If your idea and your WIP is boring you, even though it has promise, keep going. You never know what you might come out with! I'm glad I didn't scrap this story. It might turn out to be even better than Querying WIP. (Sshhh, don't let him hear you say that though.)

It's also just about time to trunk the Querying WIP. It's been nearly three months! I've gotten no new responses, so I'm going to trunk it after one last round of queries. Maybe a long-reaching query will be sent back to me in a month or two, or maybe six. But as of this moment, it looks like FEAR ITSELF was probably not the right kind of book. What did I learn from this querying round? SO MUCH. I am so grateful for all the people giving me advice, the wonderful writer-friends I made, and I even got to correspond with a few AWESOME agents. I was incredibly lucky and learned a heapload.

So, FEAR ITSELF. RIP, good friend. It's time to get ready to say farewell. You were my first love, my first great plot, my first...everything. You were the beauty born of adversity. You made me into what I am today. You breathed the joy that is writing into my life. You helped me choose this path, and you helped me through a rough patch in my life. You kept me hanging on. You will be missed.

I'm teary. Gotta buck up and move on. :')

Also, I'm planning to buy some new books on Kindle! If you have any recommendations, let me know! I'm looking for DARK YA. Will read paranormal, but only if it isn't wishy-washy. No straight romances either! But please, recommend away. I'll buy whatever you wonderful people recommend. I also might review some of them.

EDIT:

After a lovely email from a concerned follower (;D <3 you) I should clarify that FEAR ITSELF has only been on query for three months, but it's previous incarnation was on query for more than seven. That's why it feels a little like the end for it! There's a point where every writer has to step back and see that her baby might not be what people are looking for at this point. It helps ease the pain if you prepare for it in advance. So don't worry, I'm properly preparing to mourn and cling to it with all the stubborn in my body. XD;

The Importance of bein' Honest.

Courage Wolf has a point here, but no. Today it's all about honesty.


There has been hullabuloo.


This hullabuloo has centered around a certain string of points made by various peeps, all of which may or may not have upsetted your little stomachs.

I am here to clarify what this hullabuloo is all about. Get me a cape with a huge C in it. The Clarifier is here to save the motherfuuuuuing day. (And if I had my way, Brandon Routh would be my co-star. Ahem.)

The hullabuloo in a nutshell: SELF-CENSORING ON YOUR OWN BLOG IS BETTER THAN NOT SELF-CENSORING. ESPECIALLY, (ALMOST EXCLUSIVELY) IF YOU ARE A WRITER IN SEARCH OF PUBLICATION.

The clarification: Self-censoring actually sucks.

A blog is your personal domain. You can tweak the colors, the pictures, whatever you want. This applies to your posts, too. You, aspiring authors, may post whatever you damn well please. The one exception is as thus; It would probably not be wise to post rants that hurt/directly attack certain individuals or companies. This is true in real life, too. The old addage; If you have nothing nice to say, don't say it works wonders. If you HAVE to say something, say it to your clutch in the ladies room, or halfway between sips of mojitos. At least with the latter you can pass it off as tourettes. (I have passed many a snarky comment off as tourettes, I will admit. Other times, I blame it on stubbing my toe. See? You can be clever about this.)

Of course, we are creatures of opinion! I love opinions. I only really dislike opinions that say other opinions shouldn't exist. Opinions are the lifeblood of a human society. It is what we do best.

After this hullabuloo, I was also very tempted to go through my blog (some of which is very personal to me) and delete everything except the carefully looked over posts. Then I stopped. Why should I? They don't hurt anyone, and they are representations of me. If a blog is my personal space, what better to represent me than the entries in which I was myself? You can find a bunch of them on here, (to a bit of my shame) because I decided not to delete them. For now, they accurately represent me, my soul, and what I'm all about, yo.

The hullabuloo went on to say that posting any negative reviews of books is certainly not favorable. This had me making a face, mostly because I like reading reviews, especially if they are HONEST. Not negative, or right out sugarcoating, but HONEST. I wrote a review of a very popular book that may or may not have been glowing, but I'm not keen on taking it down. It is an honest review of a book I didn't like. Okay, good. I made up for that by doing a review of a book I DID like! It's all part of the balance.

The hullabuloo states that if you have any of these things on your blog, agents will probably reject you. I think what the hullabuloo meant was that you certainly have a lower chance of being offered rep by an agent who likes the book you bashed, and that is if they even do reasearch on you in the first place. Your blog represents you, sure, but it should not represent a santizied you. You do NOT want to lie to an agent or a fellow reader/writer/author/follower by presenting a facade. When they find out it's not who you really are, things could get quite ugly.

As you can tell, I'm the sort of person who's the 'you get what you see' type. Heheh.

Honesty is a great truth. Writers are oftentimes liars, sure. We have to be. We lie to make a story that doesn't exist, but that doesn't mean it isn't sincere, or genuine, or even based a little in truth. You can lie and build facades in your writing, but if you don't really mean it or it doesn't fit, it will show. The reader WILL pick up on it. Write your lies for the good of your writing, with heart behind it, and never lie about the person you are. There is no reason to lie. You are a wonderful, talented human being. Hiding and lying is like refusing that fact.

I want to meet real people, and real stories.

And if you really have to rant, there's always the draft section. ;)

In which I wish I could finish Buffy, but my romantic sensibilities cry NOOOOO.

First off, if you're a fan of Buffy, please don't be offended by the following!

Secondly, Joss Whedon is snarkier than you, more imaginative than you, and on a bad day he conducts himself with more class than an 70-year-old New York Victorian socialite.

What I mean, of course, is he's good. Firefly is my favorite serialized TV show of all time. ALL TIME, guys. I don't even watch TV. Firefly dances circles around LOST, punches Dexter out in the eye, and sends True Blood back to whatever filthy coffin it crawled out of. The reason Firefly conquers all? It has something these kinds of shows rarely do - heart.

Yeah, okay, fire wind water earth WE ARE CAPTAIN PLANET aside, Firefly is never cold. It has a warm familiarity about it, whether that's brought on by the witty dialogue or relatively seamless chemistry between the actors, I'll never know. When I watch Firefly, I'm right there with the crew. There is no AUDIENCE-ACTOR division.

Which is why I even gave Buffy a try.

Buffy and Twilight share creepy similarities. Not in the way you think! TO ME, they are disturbingly familiar in one aspect - when Buffy gets together with Angel after only...seven(?) episodes, I instantly got turned off. Same thing in good ol' Twilight. Bella and Sir Disgusts-a-lot Edward get together after...two chapters (?). I instantly knew something was wrong - this book and this series were not for me.

Maybe it's my background of writing stories where the MC and her Love Interest are enemies/oblivious to each other/can't be together due to circumstances for the entire story. If they ever get together, be assured that the end of the story is nigh. To me, the instant the two get together, all tension is lost. All character-building struggles of pull-push fly out the window. Develop them each on their own, in their own way, the muse says, and then put them together when they feel ready.

Non-descript Love interests also irk me. Angel and Sir Disgusts-a-lot are the same in this regard, with caveats; Angel has a much more interesting past, which is supposed to 'define' him. But both are tasteless, substance-less, and essentially have no defining characteristics of their own. They're what I like to call 'Dummies', in the literal sense of the word - they are models for the reader/viewer to build upon their own fantasy. Instead of liking them for who they are, they like them for who they could be.

And that's not what a character is supposed to be. Characters have character. If anything, I write character-driven books. World-building is a little hard for me, but I'm trying and learning, and plots come naturally due to the characters.

So, SO! Warning bells always go off in my head when I read/watch a work where the MC and his/her love interest get together quick. I don't know why, but I lose interest quicker than a wet sock loses interest in smelling good.

Which is why I can't finish Buffy.I got to the point where Angel comes back from the demon world, and seriously, I'm done. I just stared at the screen and went; "I'M DONE NOW." And shut the TV off. I dislike when characters get together too quick, but I dislike it even more when they exist solely to produce unproductive angst in the show. So I doodled on their faces.





















For the record, I like Spike a lot better (angry, british, borderline psychotic, looks like a kitty, what's there not to like?). I know Buffy gets with HIM, later, and that Angel takes off to LA or something, but I'm physically incapable of suffering through another season of Buffangst just to see that happen. There's a fine line between angst and well-done angst, and I'm a purveyor of the latter. I write the latter. I will not stand for cheap imitations of the latter.

(Also, when Buffy Nice Boat'd Angel (as in drive a sword through his heart before kicking him into the demon portal), I cheered. I know, I'm a terrible person.)

Let it be said I like Buffy. She's a strong, womanly character. All the characters have character (save for Angel). Joss never failed me on the character aspect, or plot. (Though it got a little repetitive.) He failed me on the romantic interaction that slowly devolved to senseless overall angst!


Sorry Joss. Love ya, but not this time.