NaNoWriMo

Per usual, I have waited until the very last minute to make this happen. All of October I've been going back and forth with myself as to whether or not I should participate in NaNoWriMo.

"You should do it!" I'd say. "You love writing."

"I know, I know! It's just that I have this seasonal job coming up and winterguard just started and I'm the idiot that decided to coach two teams." This from another voice in my head. The one that likes to make legitimate excuses that I frequently ignore.

"But you totally whipped out a 110,000 word novel in 4 weeks before." Ah, yes, this one is not the voice of reason. This is the one that reminds me that I can do amazing things, even when I have absolutely no time for them.

"Well...there is that." Me. The real me. The one that looks back and wonders how the heck I finish anything.

*Sigh*

It's been decided. I signed up ten minutes ago. I even know what plot I'm going to use. See how prepared I am? And I'm uber excited to be writing again. Haven't written a word since I finished Antithesis. Pretty stoked to let that one settle for another month as well. I'll get back into it in December and work out any kinks that remain.

I know that lots of my writer friends will be participating, so search me out! I'm looking forward to sharing this month with you!

All the best,
Kacey

Is it so Hard to be Helpful?

I'm having one of the days where I just want to strangle someone. It's not so much that anything is going wrong exactly, it's just that I'm getting beyond irritated with other people's inability to see past themselves and their own beliefs. I'm seeking help for my writing, yes, that's true, but that doesn't give you the right to criticize what you haven't even read. How could you know that my stuff isn't ready for an agent, have you read it? Last I checked, you hadn't. 

*sigh*

I need to take a deep breath...hold on...

I am a pretty positive person. I work with teenagers and I believe in instilling hopes and dreams and having faith in a person and their ability to achieve something great. Don't get me wrong, I don't believe in giving them delusions of grandeur, but I believe in encouragement and self confidence.  

Maybe I'm just feeling defensive.

Recently someone told me that people should be able to give criticism in a positive way and actually want to help. Actually, it was a fellow winterguard coach talking about accepting help from someone you know is so much better than you. There shouldn't be the words "never" or "can't" involved. And I feel like in this writing world I'm getting a lot of that, from people who have never met me, never read anything I've written. It's just you're not ready, you can't do this, don't do that. But when am I actually going to get something that's helpful? I realize that when I post my query, I'm asking for your help, but if you're not actually going to help, why bother responding? I want concrete advice, not just a wishy-washy insult to my writing style (which btw, you've never read.) Months ago when I posted my first query I got SO MUCH helpful advice. Now it seems like I can't get anything close to that.

What I really think I want is myself, in the form of someone else. Someone who can encourage as well as give solid advice. I want someone who will not automatically tell me that my stuff isn't ready for an agent, but actually tell me how I can improve so that it will be ready. Stop with the assumptions, cut the crap. I've had enough.

I need a writing circle, some local people that are willing to work together. But since I live in Michigan, which is apparently a lame state, there doesn't seem to be any of those around here. I just want some positivity for once! I'm sick of being so proud of something I've accomplished only to have someone who's never read it tell me it's crap.

I'm not an idiot. I do realize that a manuscript isn't ready for agents a week after it's finished. I knew this when I was ten. But thanks for telling me again and again and again, just in case I didn't know. Maybe next time you could not waste your time and tell me how to make my query better.

Wow.

I feel better now.

Happy writing friends. You are all amazing and I know you can accomplish great things. Don't let other people tell you that you can't, because you can.

All the best,
Kacey

Moving Forward

It's happened! I took my OB board and passed! Woohoo! But that's not all folks. As of a couple of hours ago I finished my latest manuscript. I don't mean finished finished, but I completed the first draft and I'm uber excited. I'm insanely in love with this manuscript, the characters, the plot, all of it. I can't wait for it to be ready to query. 

So I've noticed in the process of writing this MS that I've grown a whole lot as a writer. I have hard evidence of this, too. During one of my off task moments (one of the many I had in the avoidance of studying) I printed out the first few chapters of my first manuscript. I've edited this manuscript about six times. I thought at the time that I was getting close to having it ready for agents. I took a red pen to the chapters. I marked the heck out of them far worse than any English teacher's nightmare.

So. Not. Ready.

Don't get me wrong, I love that story too! I love the characters, I've written 4 books about them. I want those to be published, too. Sadly, that's not going to happen until I work some more on them. While this depresses me, at least I'm willing to accept it. Writing is a learning process, is it not? 

This has led me to the conclusion that I must query my current MS first. I feel this is a good move for several reasons. One, it is a stand alone book. I've heard repeatedly that stand alones query better than series. Two, it's written better. The plot is more succinct. I found my niche. The characters are very true to themselves and believable--but this is just what I think. I've yet to beta the MS. After my first swipe at editing I'll be looking for a beta if anyone wants to volunteer :) And if I query this MS first I'll have my foot in the door for querying my series at a later date when it's all ironed out. 

Here comes the red light on all of this. 

I. Hate. Editing.

With a passion. I hate filling plot holes, I hate grammatical editing, I hate rewriting scenes. All of this only in my own work, of course. I can edit the crap out of someone else's document, but only because I know I don't have to make the corrections. Motivation is key here people. 

Another thing that comes along with the editing process is other people's opinions. I posted my current query letter for this MS and got a lot of negative feedback on it. Nit picky stuff that has nothing to do with my letter. My book is about a Ginger, some people freaked out about my usage of this word. I mean, really? Are we five? If you can't read a book with things like that in it I suggest you don't turn on the television or walk outside because something might offend you. I also got nit picked for my usage of the word dimension and given some mathematical equation. Does anyone know if there is a law against using the word dimension in a mathematically incorrect way? Please! Point me in the direction. 

In all seriousness, if I'm using the word dimension in a mathematically incorrect way, is this going to make a difference with agents? I write YA, I'm not trying to get a show on Sci-Fi (or is it Syfy now?) It's not such a big deal to change dimension to "world" or "reality" if necessary.

Well I'm off to bask in the satisfaction of crossing things off my to-do list.

All the best,
Kacey

Plans

At best my life could be described as chaos. At worst, a disaster. Between my commute, my obsession with writing, studying, and the plethora of bad stuff that keeps happening, it's amazing I have any time at all. For my own sanity, I need to have a plan. Said plan will probably have many deviations as most plans do. The plan might fail or it might not. Maybe for once in my life it'll stick and something great will happen. Maybe.

Item #1 of Plan:

Take OB boards. Most of you know by now that I do ultrasounds. This board is extremely important to my career and future. Plus I've already signed up for it. D-Day is September 30 and the countdown has begun though panicked studying probably won't begin until the 15th. Man, I'm so looking forward to those days. Gah!

Item # 2 of Plan:

Finish writing my current WIP. It has no title yet, so I can't call it by name, but it's the one with the one armed Ginger. It's fantastic. I love it. I can't wait to finish. After I finish, I will query. So says Item # 5 of the plan.

Item #3 of Plan:

Satisfactorily edit Stepping Stones. I've been making excuses. I've been avoiding it like my son avoids my sister's cat. Why? I'm afraid to lose the story in the editing. When I first started writing Stepping Stones I had a very clear picture of the story. I'm beginning to wonder if I'm getting too much advice and it's clouding my judgment. So yes, one more edit and we're through and moving on. I will also be confident about this decision, the plan says so.

Item #4 of Plan:

Query Stepping Stones. Relish rejection and anticipate an agent. Feel complete in my success regardless.

Item #5 of Plan:

Edit, write query letter, and query one-armed Ginger book. (Also give it a title.) Repeat good feelings from Item #4 of Plan.

Item #6 of Plan:

Begin editing Broken Stones until satisfied. Repeat with Rising Stones and Sand Stones. Wash, rinse, repeat. Print all four books and put them on my bookshelf. Pretend they've been published. Do happy dance.

Item #7 of Plan:

Start new WIP. Possibilities are endless. Maybe I'll take a look at something I've already started. Maybe it'll be a completely new idea. Maybe I'll write another book in my series. Regardless, I will write. (Maybe I'll blog more, too!)

Conditions to the Plan:

This plan is a sequential list, with Item #7 being flexible. Items 1-5 must be complete before 2012. That gives me 4 months. Plenty of time once I get all that crazy studying out of the way. Items 6-7 have a longer deadline with 6 being finished by the end of 2012. Item #7 varies wildly as to a time frame. Writing kind of takes it's own path and can't be rushed. That's what all the procrastinators say after all.

Sigh. So here it is, folks. I'll probably need some help sticking to it, but it feels good to get it down on, uh, paper? I feel better.

All the best,
Kacey

Liebster Blawarding

The fantastically fabulous Riley Redgate has blawarded me with the Liebster Blaward (jeesh, say that five times fast!) We all know how much I heart her. In fact I think I've professed my love for her in this very blog. So, thank you Riley!

So what is this Liebster Blog Award, you ask? It's very simply this: an award to highlight new bloggers, the ones that have less than 200 followers. The ones like, um, me. After my spiel, I'm going to list 5 of my fav bloggers who have less than 200 followers in hopes that all of you out there will follow and heart them as much as I do.

So here goes!

1. First and foremost is the lovely Dawn at Write Away. Dawn is amazing for several reasons starting with the fact that she has interviewed tons of writers and posted them on her blog. It's always so much fun to read and learn about fellow authors. Also, she's sweet and nice and made of everything good. I actually don't know how many followers Dawn has, but I don't think she's going to complain about the additional traffic.

2. Next I would like to call out Missy at Missy Biozarre. She's quirky and fun and a newbie like the rest of us. She's in need of some serious love from the awesome group of people that I know follow my blog. I look forward to reading more of Missy's writing. She's got some talent, yo.

3. Here we have Michelle from Greenwoman. Michelle is the mastermind behind The Skeleton Key, a round robin blogvel that features a plethora of fantastic authors (including yours truly!). She's smart. She's witty. She's fun and entertaining. She offers great advice and says a lot of things worth listening to. So yeah...she's amazing. :)

4. Sadly, I'm falling short of being able to send you to people that have less than 200 followers, so I'm going to send you to some who have already been sent. Oh man, I'm starting to get confused. So Riley Redgate, here's sending the award back to you. I don't care about no blaward-backs (how's that for grammar??) You'll take it and you'll like it. That's right. But seriously, follow her. She's probably the most amazing teenager I've never met. Go In the Jungle with Riley.

5. Here I am again failing to live up to these blaward standards. It's not that I don't want to award people, I do! But they've all been awarded already, I'm sure, since I exist in such a tight knit community of writers. Instead, I'm going to promise you something. I am going to broaden my horizons and seek out some new writer friends. Hopefully by the next time one of these come around, I'll be better prepared. As writers we depend on this network, live for it on occasion. So I'm going to take this moment to say thank you to my friends. I seriously appreciate you.

All the best,
Kacey

End of Manuscript Anxiety

Here it is the end of August and I've only written one blog this month. One. Seriously. I'll make some excuses: I'm busy, I've been studying for my boards, I've been writing my WIP, it's summer, I work a lot.

Ah, there, I feel minutely better.

For three weeks I've been debating writing this really awesome blog about killing off characters. However at this point it still remains an illusive idea. I have been writing. I'm 60,000 words into my WIP. That's a fair amount in, I'd say. In fact, I'm nearly finished. I've reached the What the heck is wrong with me stage. It's a really crappy stage that goes something like this.

"Awesome! I've gotten to the fun, interesting, dramatic, action-filled part of story! And I'm stalled..."

What the heck.

I'm on Chapter 26. I know how the story will end. I know how to get from Point A to Point B and sum it all up with Point C.

So...what the heck is wrong with me? Why can't I just sit down and write it all out? My critique readers are bugging me for the rest. I'm still interested, still in love with the characters, the plot, all of it. I'm even more excited about having a finished product and starting to work on a query letter.

Soo...why am I not finishing it?

The truth: I have NO idea. This happens every time I get close to the end of my manuscripts. I write like a beast for 3/4 of the book and then I hit this lull where I can't even bang out a chapter in a week. It's ultimately very frustrating. In six days I've written a page and a half. But it's not writers block (or is it??) because I know where the story is going. I know how it'll all end. I could even brainstorm out about a million conversations and scenes.

The explanation I like the best (because it doesn't involve scary words like writers block or lazy) is that I'm afraid to finish it. I love the story so much that I don't want it to end. I am especially in love with this story line and I'll be sad to leave my one-armed Ginger behind. But there are other stories in my head that want to be written, too. Plus I have another MS that's nearly ready for querying that needs some final editing and polishing (and three more than haven't been edited at all, yet). I have a future, maybe I just don't have the ambition. Maybe I'm just scared.

What about you? Do you suffer from end of manuscript anxiety? Maybe I need to start a support group. ;)

All the best,
Kacey

Dead Rules

I’ve never written a book review before, so let me apologize in advance if it’s terrible. I figure I owe it to Randy Russell to try since he was kind enough to send me a signed copy of Dead Rules. This may end up being more a synopsis than a review, but what do I know? If you plan on reading Dead Rules (read it!) then you might want to stop here so I don’t ruin it for you. (Thank you so much!) Here goes:

If I had to describe Dead Rules in one word, it would be: Clever.

Jana loved her boyfriend to death.

Jana Webster is an actress. She’s not too pretty (like her drug addict mother) but she’s going places. As soon as she graduates she’s going to Hollywood to make it big. Jana loves to think about herself and her future and all the amazing things she’s going to do with her life. She’s very aware of her abilities—not so much about others. Michael Haynes, Jana’s boyfriend, is going to go with her to Hollywood. Of course he is. Why wouldn’t he? They’re Jana and Michael of Webster and Haynes. Everybody knows that.

Jana loved her boyfriend to death.

All of her dreams are shattered when she ends up in Dead School after a freak bowling accident. I have to give credit to Randy here; he kills people in seriously creative ways. Jana can’t believe it. She died alone! How long will it take Michael to die too? Surely he can’t live without her. They’ve been together forever. They had plans—a future! Shared dreams. They were never going to part. Even death couldn’t keep them from an epic love like that.

Jana loved her boyfriend to death.

In Dead School Jana meets the dead kids. Stretchers, who are just what you think, bodies on stretchers. It took me a really long time to understand that and I work in a hospital. Wow. I know. I was disappointed in me too. Grays are kids who have committed suicide. They’re depressed and not trustworthy because they are loyal to the Regents who control Dead School. They don’t do much other than keep to themselves and follow orders. There are Virgins who died before, well you know. They’re ethereal and gorgeous and wear long white gowns and sing pretty. They don’t do much except sing. I don’t think you’re allowed to talk to them. Next are Sliders. Sliders are closer to the earth (or The Planet) than the other dead kids. They can manifest their bodies on the earth and be seen or heard by people. They’re also the bad kids, and were doing something bad when they died. Sliders basically do what they want, what hope is there for them? They’re bad. Finally, we have Risers. This is what Jana is. Risers are the good kids (not as good as the Virgins, but still good.) They follow the rules at Dead School. They go to their classes and wear their school uniforms properly and don’t do anything crazy—that’s left for the Sliders. As a Riser, Jana is alone. But she knows as a Slider, she could naturalize on The Planet and kill Michael. She would end his suffering and they would be together forever! Didn’t he want that? Of course he did.

Jana fantasizes about how to kill Michael, bullet, knife, poison, spider, hairdryer in the bathtub. In Dead School, you look just like you did when you died. Lawn dart to the head? That stays with you, bobbing from your skull like a lopsided metronome. Sliced in half by a tin roof? You can take your body apart and dance the jig forwards and backwards. Major road rash from a motorcycle? You’re missing half your face, including lips, eye, skin, etc. Swallowed a bird? You spit feathers and sound like there’s something trapped in your throat. Jana doesn’t want Michael to be ugly, so she has to think of some nice way to kill him.

Jana loved her boyfriend to death.

Jana enlists the help of Mars Dreamcote, a gorgeous bad boy Slider who breaks all the rules. But Mars has a secret of his own, a secret the leads him to helping Jana, even though he knows the truth. He was there when Jana died. It wasn’t a freak accident at all. It was murder.

Mars takes Jana through the steps to becoming a Slider, a truly bad dead kid. But once she’s ready to finally have Michael again, will she still want him?

Jana loved her boyfriend to death.

OH! The suspense! Sorry, I’m not going to take you through the end; you’re going to have to read it yourself!

Dead Rules is a fun read. Just when you think you’ve got it figured out, Randy throws in a twist just to keep you unsettled. You find yourself caring for the dead kids and the horribly creative ways they died. At the same time, you’re laughing at them. It’s okay, I won’t tell that you laughed at the girl with the lawn dart sticking out of her head. It is funny.

The bottom line? Dead Rules is a great read. Intriguing, amusing, and truly enjoyable. It has enough plot twists and turns to keep you guessing and plenty of things that you’ll never see coming.

Thank you once again Randy! (Follow Randy on Twitter!)

All the best,

Kacey