Get back to work, young lady!

I am, I am! Since VH is over at a friend’s for the day and took the Big-Eyed Boy with him, I’m pretty much obligated to sit here and keep writing… even if it is crap.

Focus on something that drives your emotion that you can project into your characters, like how much your character dislikes someone like Rumsfield, or cares for someone like a little boy. You have to get your blood pressure up or start tearing up to put some edge and soul into those fake people.

Ernest Hemingway said he wrote 19 pages - or more - of crap to get 1 page of exceptional writing. I am sure that if you filtered through those 19000 words, you will find some outstanding prose.

You’ve been reading my story… *grin* Ah the pixelage I am wasting on this - it’s scary it is.

Scary is thinking about what Bryan said. At least Hemingway got 1 good sentence out of 19 pages. That’s about 12 words out of every 6500.

Let’s see… 20114 words (my current count) divided by 6500 is 3.09, which multiplied by 12 is 37.08.

Thirty-seven words…. out of all that crap I’ve written.

That’s shorter than this comment!

Ugh. I believe there might just be one more wall in the house that doesn’t bear the imprint of my head. I think I’ll go find it.

You must finish this book, Katie, and see it through to very last resounding announcement of “The End” because too many wanna-be-woulda-coulda-writers are living vicariously through you in hopes that someone in this god forsaken wasteland of half-finished novels and stories where laziness and lack of discipline have stolen a possible sweet victory! Press on! Write, write, write! And let us knwo what it actually feels like to say the best three little words of all…”I finished it”….

oops. I popped an ‘i’ into your name, apologies….

That’s ok, Dana. If your computer did not immediately explode and your fingers didn’t turn green then fall off, it must mean I like you enough not to take offense over the extra ‘i.’

As for finishing, I’m going to stick to it. It may be crap, but I’m dying to find out what happens to the main character at the end of the book.

Crap like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder but with a book its really up to the publisher. Make sure those you have read it through before sending it off aren’t afraid of you, aren’t intimidated by you but understand an unvarnished objective truth and constructive criticism are the best gifts to give a friend who writes…and then you have to be able to take it like a woman.

Ah, you mean with a cold martini and a burning desire to outlive the critics?

…mmmm, you got it!

Now that I’ve realized I’m writing “literary fiction” instead of “Chick Lit.” it’s made a world of difference, since I no longer feel obligated to be funny, or to have any real external action.

The latter was really getting me down: my main character goes places and does things, but the biggest action goes on in her head.

interesting that a label can make one feel obligated in their writing…perhaps its the cart before the horse in that the story should unfold and be shaped and molded as the characters demand…once completed then it falls into whatever category te pub. thinks it would lend itself best to? Just musing as it seems one’s story being written comes with its own demands and pressures and obligations, why add more to it… I just finished Joan Didion’s Year of Magical Thinking and found that it could fall into several genres… but then what do I know - I am the ultimate lazyand undisciplined wanna-be writer there ever was.

I’ve been wanting to read that book since its release, but I bought a huge lot of 200 used books from eBay for $29 earlier this year and am still working my way through them.

Found some other gems in there, though, like Toni Morrison’s first novel, The Bluest Eye. (She was magnificent even in the beginning.)

My novel’s written in first person, I don’t ordinarily use while writing fiction. So I’ve been reading other books written in that POV lately, in addition to Morrison, to see how it’s done.

I have a habit of reading three books at a time: one in my room, one in the family room while VH watches TV, and one on my desk that I look at when I’ve drained my own brain of words. Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons is my current “upstairs” read. Anne Rice’s Interview with a Vampire is my family room read, since I’ve read it before and don’t feel frustrated trying to read it while the TV is blaring. I just finished my most recent office book, though, so I’ve got to find something new.

Guess that says a lot about how often I’ve been sitting at my desk and felt my brain drained of words, huh?

I like to mix it up between something challenging….Heather McDonald’s The Burden of Bad Ideas: How Modern Intellectuals Misshape our Society, to be simultaneously counterpointed by the feisty Janet Evanovich. The brain can only take so much.

The thing w/chick lit is it can easily bleed over to contrived sap… and that loses me and makes me wish women would stop trying to categorize themselves in order to please others.

My brain definitely isn’t up for challenging right now. Last night, in fact, I wound up thumbing through People magazine for what was probably only the third time in my life. Nice, vacuous entertainment, that.

As to chick lit’s tendency toward sap, that’s partly what was blocking me for a while there. My main character’s a selfish woman who callously walks out on her family. No way to varnish it or make her a hap-hap-happy person: she has some issues to work through and her life gets messy while she does. Although I thought I knew what would happen to her at the end of the story, I’m trying not to pre-write that part for fear of it becoming a contrived ending as you mentioned.

Meanwhile, I just wish I could reach through the screen and slap my main character around a bit.

Kate, eventually, the main character will probably reach through the screen and slap you herself and tell you to ‘buck up and get me to resolution because I’ve made a muck-up of my life’. And from what I’ve surmised from both your blogs, you neither suffer fools nor endorse whining. Basically, you’re up to the challenge…because, if you put it off by the time your son becomes a teenager you will have had so much of your gray matter leak out your ear you will need years to recover before stringing together a coherent sentence, let alone an entire book. I am living vicariously through you! Get to work!

Dana, I may just have to put you on salary as my Motivational e-Muse.

And I’ll be the one who cracks the whip.

Agent Bedhead, you do understand there will be no boot-licking, don’t you?

Not that I have anything against boots, mind you. And, as you well know, there aren’t many women aside from you whom I’d let crack the whip on my ever-spreading ass.