So, once I'd finished the first draft (finally! After all the blood, sweat, and tears it bloody took), I emailed it, full of hope, to my now Ex-Agent. She was... lukewarm about it. Liked the writing, thought the plot was lacking. So I immediately began ripping the plot apart, throwing in some werewolf gang warfare and LSD-abuse for good measure. Then I grew incredibly disenchanted with my agent, my writing, and myself, decided I hated Wild and everything to do with it and never wanted to look at it again. So I wrote the first half of AFTERLIFE instead and pushed my junkie werewolves to one side.
And then I got my writers' group to look at it. They suggested I move the story to Liverpool and keep trying with it. So I started rewriting it again, got half way through, decided I hated it, everything to do with it and never wanted to look at it again, again. Then I finished writing AFTERLIFE, left my agent, decided my writing career was over anyway and seriously contemplated never writing anything ever again.
Then in 2009 some other stuff happened, like WOLF STRAP selling to QueeredFiction, and them contracting me for SILVER KISS and its sequels, and AFTERLIFE selling to Damnation Books, and suddenly I was feeling like, man! I'm not going to let Wild beat me! It may be the literary equivalent of a puddle of vomit that makes my headache just to think of it, but seriously! I'm going to damn well finish that book.
And then I didn't because some other stuff happened.
And then something else happened. Something I can't go into details about, but something with potential. Nothing I want to put too much hope in, but something that's sent me back to Wild like a ... I don't know, demented writing junkie masochist of some kind. Because I need to finish rewriting this book and making it as good as it can possibly be. This is always a problem for me - I never believe anything I do is good enough, but with Wild I want to try and do the story and characters justice. And I want to do it before next Monday.
I've got roughly 100 pages to go. Half the book is still set in America rather than Liverpool, and the first half of the plot has nothing to do with the second. One character is called Grady for 200 pages and Lennon for the next 100 or so. One character is a witch for the first twenty chapters and a werewolf for the next ten. It's a great, nasty sprawling mess. But I will tame it. Oh yes, I will tame it.
- Mood:
determined
I get The Fear. I worry that the new writing jars with the old, that it's inelegant and sticks out like a sore thumb. I worry that the material I cut out in the first place was better than the new stuff. I worry that I'm making the story worse with the rewrites, not better. I worry that the end product will be a gargantuan mess that will take me years to wade through and set straight (in other words, I'm worried it will turn into Wild). And I worry so much that in the end I have to made a choice between stepping away from the laptop before I spontaneously combust with angst, or screaming "sod it!" and carrying on anyway like a British soldier at Rorke's Drift, only with werewolves instead of Zulus.
Last night I chose to step away. I had to remind myself that I've done this before. I've written fourteen novels now, and I've gone through this process with every single one (still am going through it with Wild and expect to be doing so for many years to come). I had to remind myself that I can do this, and do it well if I stop angsting long enough. Over the weekend I'll be digging in again and trying to ignore The Fear. And, failing that, fighting it off with Meatloaf and chocolate. Maybe wine. We'll see how bad it gets.
- Mood:
listless
So the lovely and stylish Leanne has departed back to Leeds, and in honour of her time here, I offer some stats from the past four days:
Cocktails consumed:
Mudslides x 2
Polish Bullet x 1
Strawberry daquairi x 1
Strawberry Woo Woo x 1
Liquid Gold x 1
Grey Goose and cranberry juice (there ought to be a name for that) x 8 (I think, I lost count after a while)
Baileys and chocolate ice cream smoothies x 2
Mint Baileys and chocolate ice cream x 3
Books bought:
In Great Waters - Kit Whitfield
Creature Conversations - Collette (What a find! I dig charity shops)
Bone Song - John Merney
Blood Calls - Caridad Pineiro
Familiar Stranger - MIchelle Hauf
Seasons of The Mighty Boosh watched:
One and a half
Weird food consumed:
All-day-breakfast pizzas (pizza! With egg and baked beans! Seriously!)
An assortment of steamed and fried dim sum, included fried cream buns (I know! Fried cream!)
Many, many, many varieties of cakes and chocolates.
All of which is most awesome.
- Mood:
contemplative - Music:Horse and I - Bat for Lashes
I've started keeping a food diary, rather than going for counting calories and weighing myself, because I'm exactly the kind of person who would get obsessed with calorie counting and then feel shit when she went over her daily limit and stuff an enormous pizza down her face to make herself feel better and... well, you get it. A food diary seems much friendlier anyway. I don't think I need to lose much; I'm aiming to go from a size 14 to a size 12. I don't want to be one of those lollipop models, but I do want to be able to fit into my jeans comfortably.
Give my propensity for comfort eating, I think I also need to address some of those my-life-is-shit aspects. Some of them are out of my control. I had a huge dip in confidence when I left the Ex Agent, managed to convince myself that signing with her in the first place was a massive fluke and that nobody will ever want to take me on ever again because my writing is hackneyed and crap. The only reasonable thing I can do about that is keep querying other literary agents and keep writing.
The other big thing has been work. I can so do something about that - I found a job I really like the sound of (even though it involves manual lifting, which is forbidden by Laura the Physio, and children, which is just ... scary). It's at the Fitzwilliam Museum, where I would love to work, and it's a couple of grand more than I'm currently on, which would be nice. Must get application form in this week.
There are other issues too, but I think some of them I'm just going to have to learn to live with for the time being. So, I'm giving it a go. My bag is full of grapes and cereal bars, and I'm pretty confident I can shift the weight as I have in the past. Wish me luck!
- Mood:
anxious
... Lurks the black-hearted, alienated soul of a sixteen year old emo kid. This will come as no surprise to anyone who knows me. I spent a lot of time earlier this year dealing with my many and varied issues, but I realised recently I haven't actually overcome many of them. I'm still constantly punishing myself for what I "should" be doing but aren't. I'm still berating myself for not living up to other people's standards - standards, I should add, that I have created out of thin air and exist entirely in my own imagination. To some extent, I've managed to sap the joy out of the things I love by setting all these goals for myself and then failing to achieve them. Writing being the biggest one. Every time I open my laptop and try to work on something I get this huge sense of "why bother?" and pack it in again.
Something has to give, and usually it's me. I'm determined that this time it won't be. I had planned to spend the Christmas holidays finishing the first draft of Death for the Born, but now I think I'm just going to do nothing instead. I mean, I'll still do stuff. I'm critiquing (and loving it, I might add,![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
goth_huntress) and I'm not boycotting writing entirely, but I think I need to relax and stop beating myself up over how much I'm doing, and just write what I feel like. I'm going to read lots and recharge, and eat chocolate and generally loaf around my parents' house like a total slob. I'm going to get my hair dyed. I'm going to actually put into practice some of the stuff I learned this year and take some of the pressure off myself. I want to enjoy next year. I want to send a novel to my agent that she thinks will sell, and that means I need to be loving what I'm doing. At the moment it's just a chore and that's no way to go about anything.
Except chores, I suppose.
Anyway, I do solemnly swear this is my last emo, soul-wrenching, angst-ridden livejournal entry of 2008. In 2009 I'm going to be totally candyfloss.
- Mood:
cranky
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
dwg, I read your blog and now I've got "Mama" stuck in my head too! *shakes fist at you*So, I had the Ninja show up at my house last week. This weekend he called and texted me relentlessly, all along the lines of "why aren't you answering my calls/texts etc?" Mostly I wasn't answering because, as usual, my phone was in a separate part of the house to me. But obviously he doesn't know that. Argh. Why did I give him my phone number? (Okay, I know why, it was because I was totally freaked out to find him lurking on the doorstep and I panicked and did it to get him to go). Still, dumbass. When we finally talked, it was like the most awkward thing EVAH and I realised that everything I used to find endearing about him, I now find squeamishly uncomfortable, and I quickly hung up with many a lame excuse. Why can't I ever stand up for myself? Why do I have to be so worried about upsetting other people that I let myself get upset first?
So, the next text I get is "I miss your love," to which I replied (I paraphrase) "it's over, move on." His reply? "Let me give you a clue: anything is better than nothing."
Not for me. I don't want to be someone's last resort for happiness, and I certainly don't want anyone to be mine. I sent him another "Please let it go," message, and received a rather random response to the efffect that he had let go, months before, and it was me who lured him back in at Christmas and made him think there might still be hope.
WTF? The ONLY thing I sent him at Christmas was a message saying "there's no way we're going to get back together" AFTER he'd phoned me and begged me to give things another go. Where's the hope in that?! How have I lured him back in?! Why do I feel guilty over this?!
I haven't heard from him since Sunday, but my parents are freaking out. Dad wants me to change my phone number, he's insisting I get lifts everywhere and don't leave the house after dark, etc... It feels ridiculous. I'm not changing my number; why should I have to? I'm not going to act like a victim because I picked another crazy boy to go out with. This isn't like Richard; I don't feel scared or threatened or anything. But I'm fed up. I always do my best to play fair and be honest with people, and it gets me nowhere.
- Mood: annoyed
But in July I will be venturing out of Cambridge and going to the RNA 2008 conference! Yay, I'm going to a writers' conference! Or at least, I assume I will be; I haven't actually posted the form yet. But I plan to go, if only to see my extraordinarily talented friend, Leanne, bag herself an agent with a well-practised book pitch ;)
- Mood: grumpy
Me and Pip went and saw Order of the Phoenix last night. It's been aaaaaages since I read the book and I'd forgotten how much Angst!Destiny!Tyranny! there was. Also not buying Dumbledore's exposition scene at the end. "Sorry I've been completely ignoring you all year, Harry, but I assumed not telling you about the horrific dangers awaiting you would keep you safe from them. PS, sorry your godfather iz ded."
Anyway, I'm sending Fire and Moonlight back to Ricia today, with much nerves and woe. I'm hoping the changes I've made will work and bring this book in line with the darker tone of the second one, but I don't feel I can be objective enough about it to tell. I suppose that's what agents are for. Wish me luck!
- Mood:
bored - Music:Bring It Back - Moloko
