author: Nicole J. LeBoeuf

Should anyone ask, "With what was today's novel-editing session concerned?" well, now you know.

Additionally, it was concerned with better placing Diane's fight with her father (Chapter Two) in the context of a well-developed plot arc. The scene ought to be an example of Life With The Lenner Family; it's far too early for stakes-raising earth-shattering revelations. First drafts, even those not of the NaNoWriMo variety, are often front-loaded with every great idea the writer has for the story. It takes a second draft to properly space them out.

(Oh, and, by the way, don't you just love the way I'm proclaiming Universal Truths About Writing in spite of my largely unpublished status? I'm so humble. No, no, really--just pretend I've said "I'm discovering that..." at the beginning of each of those kinds of sentences and we'll get along fine.)

But anyway, fight ends, Diane storms off from the dinner table, and heads out onto the balcony where she can see the stars "speckling a cloudless indigo sky" and yet complain that "it was cold and snowy out here." Snow falling. Out of a cloudless sky. Yeah... Plot doctor over here, stat!

Boulder snow is lots of fun. And by "fun," I mean entertaining. At least in hindsight. I mean, sometimes you get a decorative overnight blizzard that's done by the dawn, leaving mounds of dry sparkly flakes all over the trees and lawns but easily plowed off the streets. And then sometimes it starts up in the midafternoon and doesn't stop for three days, and the snow plows never quite catch up.

We had the latter sort of snow starting Tuesday night. We were fooled at first by the light dusting over the neighborhood that evening as my husband's birthday guests were leaving (yes, he's a Valentine's baby, cho~ kawaii), and the illusion of getting off easy was only enhanced the next morning by a stingy sky that had to practically be petitioned for each tiny snowflake. But it picked up Wednesday afternoon, and when one of our friends drove over around eight or so in his '74 vehicle with rear wheel drive, it was fish-tailin' fun for everyone. A Thursday night on the town revealed abandoned bicycles heaped with snow at every U-rack on Pearl Street, and though it stopped actively precipitating by the weekend, damn it was cold on Saturday.

Which is just to say that Boulder weather will accomodate all sorts of plot necessity, but the author has to meet it with at least some minimum of effort. So this morning I did a lot of combing over Chapter One and Two for places to wedge in weather references: that cattle smell coming in as Diane skipped out of class (what we at Chez LeBoeuf-Little like to call "A mean wind from Greeley"), the first flakes falling as she encounters Babba, a full-grown blizzard as she runs home, and a clear sky after dinner due to the storm having blown away to the south.

Of such glamorless minutia is a convincing novel made. At least, I hope it'll be a convincing novel. More convincing than the idea of snow actively falling from the freakin' stars, anyway.

According to this quiz over here, my protagonist is not a Mary Sue.

You have no idea what a load off my mind that is.

(Further fun reading on the subject can be found at Making Light.)

Because I slack off on weekends. You know, like the rest of that portion of the human race that lives in this country. And given that I'm going out clubbin' tonight, it's quite likely that 6:00 AM and I will not be seeing each other tomorrow, either.

And I can go out clubbing. I did my homework. I met my deadline. Whoo-chaaaaa.

(Dear [any friends who have emailed me lately and are waiting for a reply]: Thank you for your patience. Now that I am All Done, a response will be forthcoming. Tomorrow, most likely.)

My husband and I had this conversation about work for hire assignments. On the one hand, they come with deadlines. Deadlines are good; they make writing actually happen. If the writing doesn't actually happen at a rate of 1,000 words per day over 15 days, it happens in dribs and drabs until one painful 8,000 word all-nighter at the eleventh hour. But it gets done.

(For the record, this project--which will be on sale here sometime soon--was somewhere in between the two scheduling styles mentioned above.)

On the other hand, they interfere with my Raisin Due Otter, which is to say, writing fiction. I haven't finished a new short story in, like, ages. And that's despite requests. And I really, really, really ought to be getting my VP application together, and revising a couple battle-scarred short stories so they can return to the front ranks of the slush wars, and, y'know, stuff. But no, I have instead been working on non-fiction/journalism stuff to which I don't even get to keep the copyright.

On the third hand (yes, I'm a mutant today), two of these projects right at the beginning of the year means that my business account has seen a profit. Writing paid for my cell phone coverage. That's cool, right?

In any case, I have marked myself as Unavailable To New Projects Of This Nature until March 3rd, the date on which--train schedules permitting--I return from a trip home. (For Mardi Gras. Quite possibly the most important, historical Mardi Gras since they brought in the megafloats and moved out of the Quarter. Maybe even since the first one. I don't think y'all need me to tell y'all why.) Until then, I am not only on Mardi Gras vacation; I'm on a writing vacation.

'Cause that's another good thing about WFH stuff. Yesterday, I was revising The Golden Bridle as a break from working on the WFH project. I was working on a novel for fun. Wow. Nothing like blowing a little perspective into my life, huh? So, yeah. Fiction is fun, and now I get like three weeks to do nothing but fiction. Whoot!

And then, when I get back to Denver, I'll probably pick up another "not so fun but it pays the bills" project. If not of the same type, then of another. Because all those good reasons above really do outweigh the bad, and really, with 24 hours in a day, exactly how much fiction not getting done can I really blame on two hours spent filling in the blanks on an editor-provided outline? I mean, really. Most people work eight hours a day five days a week. Surely I can work a bit more than two or three.

'Cause I'll tell you one thing. SkillJam.com ain't paying the bills or giving me much job fulfillment, and that's the truth.

I'm all clever. I have turned my laptop into an alarm clock. In fact, it is a writing alarm clock (an actually writing alarm clock) because in addition to "Time to wake up!", it says, "Time to write! Show up at the page, you lazy bum!"

Premise The First: Once I associate a given handful of environmental elements with writing--a lit candle, the Blue Man Group: Audio CD--those elements will cause me to get into a writing mood.

My computer does this every morning at 6:00 AM so long as I have left the computer in "Standby" mode.

Premise The Second: If I write at the same time every day, the practice will form a habit. Also, designating that hour as writing time protects a place for writing in my day.

So here's how this works: First, create a playlist in Windows Media Player. Next, create a scheduled task in Windows. The Scheduled Tasks Wizard will prompt you for program to run (Windows Media Player) and a time (Daily, 6:00 AM). When you finish with the Wizard, check the box that says something like "take me to this task's advanced properties" and tweak it. Under the "Task" tab, append the name of your playlist to the end of the command in the "Run" field. (Mine looks like this: C:\PROGRA~1\WINDOW~2\wmplayer.exe /prefetch:1 "c:\documents and settings\niki\my documents\my music\Instrumentals To Write By.wpl".) Check "Enabled" and uncheck "Run only if logged on." Under the "Settings" tab, check "wake computer to run this task." There you go. Put the computer on Standby last thing before bed, make sure the volume is up, and rest easy. If you're using a desktop, you might even be able to leave the computer on Hibernate, and it'll magically wake up anyway. Something to do with the BIOS. Most laptops don't have this capability, unfortunately.

(Note that in Windows XP, scheduled tasks only run if you provide a username and password. If you don't want a password on your login, then create a new profile, give it a password, and run the scheduled tasks under its aegis. If you don't want to do that, I mean if you really want only one profile on the computer which logs itself on automatically, here's what you do. Create a password for that proile. Then, Start->Run->"control userpasswords2". Uncheck "Users must enter a name and password to use this computer." Select your profile from the list. Hit "OK". You will be prompted to enter your new password. From this point on, your computer will log on automatically even though there's a password on the profile.)

This is how I got an hour done on the novel even before leaving the house for my 8:00 AM volunteer reading session. Ta-da!

Premise the Third: If I do some writing first thing in the morning, I won't resent all the rest of the things I have to do with my day. You know, for taking up time I could of used writing. 'Cause, see, I already wrote some for the day.

You have no idea how good that felt. Best damn sunrise I'd seen all winter.

Note to self: Really, let's make a habit of this.

Yesterday, I was in gloom. Gloom! I was absolutely certain that This Book Would Not Be. I was midway through working on that first scene, with Babba and Diane (sounds like a John Cougar Mellencamp song), and I found myself just throwing words at the wall and watching none of them stick. I couldn't seem to gracefully or convincingly convey how the bad-ass cool chick turns into a wide-eyed child again in the old homeless woman's presence, or why, and I couldn't figure out exactly why Babba decides to give the talisman to her out of all the teenage girls in Boulder, or how to reconcile contradictory bits of Babba's personal history with the unicorn, or, or, or--gaaahhhhh! I suck! I suck like a great big sucky thing!

Today, however, I finished rewriting the scene. And it ended totally differently from in the first draft. It revealed less, it was more visceral, it got a little creepy, and it got me just totally, totally happy. I was once more convinced that I could write! Yes! Yes I could! And this book will not suck all the quartz out of great granite boulders, no, it will instead rock those granite boulders like they've never been rocked before.

No, I am not actually bipolar. But thank you for your concern.

I told my husband about this phenomenon, and he, doubtless thinking of a friend of ours, said, "Like stripping."

I kinda went blink-blink while I processed that, and eventually said, "I guess so, yeah. Or like any field of expertise."

It's true. Whether you write or paint or program or dance nude for a living, the bad days can make you feel incompetent and depressed, low in the self-esteem department, prompting you to question your life choices, your attractiveness, your very status as human. And the good days can make you say, "I can so do this. I am a total writing genius," or "Damn, I'm one hot chica."

Right now, as far as I'm concerned, I am one hot chica escritora.

Even if I maybe did just call myself overheated writing desk.

Yes, I already quoted this on Metroblogging Denver. Yes, I do tend to go on and on about things that are funny. Yes, this is another example of me reading other people's flamewars for kicks and grins. But OMG this is good.

So we have a follow-up to Miss Snark's "When To Quit" post. It's an example of the sort of doomsayer I've been railing about here. Only this guy's line is, apparently, that anyone who writes but isn't seeking publication really ought to just stop wasting their energy on such a pointless endeavor. Her Snarkiness, of course, trods him firmly beneath her famed stiletto heels.

Oh, but that wasn't enough. Intrepid Snarklings had to go read this bozo's blog. Mr. "If it Ain't Gonna Be Published Why Bother" has a self-published book of his very own, and a blog subtitled "a novel in progress." That blog, apparently, gives one little doubt as to his book's commercial viability, or, more to the point, lack thereof. Each entry consists of one sentence, perhaps two, each of which earnestly vying for the title of Longest Sentence In The World. A reader might be prompted to reflect on the other meaning of "sentence," and how appropriate it is that both meanings fall under the same word, for reading the run-ons to be found at the bozo's blog is certainly a punitive procedure.

Or, as these comments demonstrate, one might be prompted to think other things:

I'll say he's talented! In scrolling through his blog, I think I saw two periods. Those are some of the longest ass sentences I've seen since me Joyce and Faulkner readin' days. Yikes!

I read some of his stuff.

Congrats, Mark!! To judge by the singular lack of periods in your narrative you're PREGNANT!

This has absolutely nothing to do with my writing beyond the fact that in reading blog archives I was rewarding myself for a successful hour on the novel while simultaneously procrastinating the next round of attack upon the current work-for-hire project. Which goes swimmingly, by the way. I am still on the aforementioned sanity-saving schedule, and should be able to go to the goth club with everyone Sunday night guilt-free.

Yes, first time hitting the novel since the wee hours of Friday night. What do I have to say for myself? Thththbbbp. "Thththbbbp" is what I've got to say for myself. What are you going to do about it, that's what I'd like to know. You don't feel you could love me but....

Eh, whatever.

Today's task: Rewrite the first real scene of the novel, in which Diane skips school, runs into Babba, and gets given the talisman. You know? It's kind of fun. I feel like I'm actually getting to make them real characters now. First draft, the arcs of the various characters' developments weren't exactly in place. All I had were echoes from their future possible perfections ringie-dinging around on the page. I get to listen for those echoes now and try to justify them. So Diane is a lot more surly in this first scene and a lot less ambivalent about hanging around with Mitch. She's irritated and she's dying for a smoke. And Babba actually has more of a consistent voice, too. I actually know who she is and where she's been this time around. In 1802, for example, she was in Tattingstone.

So I'm not done with that scene, not hardly nearly yet, but I have Other Things need working on tonight if I'm going to stay on a schedule that'll keep me from pulling some miserable all-nighters this weekend. Hurray for being on schedule!

Meanwhile, here. Have a link. Therein you'll find Miss Snark, the literary agent, addressing the question, "When should I just give up on this whole writing thing?"

When you're standing at the Pearly Gates and St. Peter is busy discussing his novel with Miss Snark.

Some like to harp on this fact more than others. You'll find them on writing-related forums all over the Internet. They can often be heard pointing out signs by which one will know that one is destined to be a life-long crap producer. "Look, real writers write because they have to. If that doesn't describe you, no amount of X Words Per Day tricks will make you a writer." "If you find it so hard, maybe you ought to be doing something else." I can only presume that such doomsayers are themselves struggling or even published writers who feel threatened by the army of would-be writers hurling themselves bodily from catapults at the great stone wall standing between would-be and did-become. The doomsayers must want to discourage them from continuing the assault, out of fear that they might become competition. "Look, just stop. You'll never be a writer. Go do something easier, like law school."

And the doomsayers can just bloody well shut up, right? Because yes some would-be writers will never reach the land of did-become. Some will never get published. Some will never even finish a single story.

But you know what? It ain't our place to say who that'll be.

It's said that where there's life, there's hope. That goes for just about anything you might want to aim your life at. No amount of crap you produce today, fellow writer, can indicate for sure that you won't start spinning straw into gold tomorrow. Or the tomorrow after that. Or in thirty years. The only way to succeed is to keep trying, and the only positive indication of utter failure is to stop trying.

And even then, you might start trying again next week.

So fie upon doomsayers. You'll give up when you're dead. Until then, for as long as you love it, keep writing.

Well, maybe not Hell. Maybe just a little bit of Purgatory. And not so much "breaking loose" as "sidling over surreptitiously and hanging about all evening."

All I got done tonight was rewriting the the rewriting of the very first scene, the opening piece of the framing device in which Grandma Lenner announces that she's going to tell a story. In which all the cousins and one of the parents is introduced. In which all sorts of statements about age and who's whose kid are made, using numbers and names I grabbed out of the air on November 1, 2004.

I do believe I spent forty-five minutes just hammering out a family tree.

How old each person is now... how old each of Diane's daughters were when their father died... how old they were at the time of each grandchild's birth... an explanation of each daughter's love life and why one of them apparently had her first child at age sixteen...

That's a bunch of math. And not the easy sort of math, like checkbooks and restaurant tips. No. The hard sort of math where you have to keep about eight or ten random numbers floating around in your head at all times.

And then there's family tree issues of the rough draft variety, such as why the heck I had two children named Bryne listening to Grandma's story, and whose child she was, and whether Grandma's daughter Sherri actually existed or ought to be conflated with the middle daughter, skeptic Giselle.

And why the hell so many characters in this book have names that start with "D."

My head hurts. I'm going to bed now.

All right.

It took me the full hour to get there, but the read-through is now done.

The end is pretty complete. It's got themes and the ends of plot arcs and characters having changed for the better and everything. It has bits that make my eyes prickle up and my pen right "Yes!!!"

Now, all I have to do is provide the rest of the story that leads up to it.

Yeesh.

Tomorrow's session will have to begin with taking notes on my notes, so I can figure out what to do first. Daunting task. Maybe it'll be easiest to start with writing whole new scenes from scratch that my notes indicate I need to write. Or maybe just take the notes one item at a time, taking each item through the whole novel as needed. One thing I know: I can't just turn back to page one and start a type in. I need to turn the novel into its component building blocks and shuffle the reshaped blocks around.

Yes, I know this entry sounds a lot like yesterday's. That's because I'm still terrified.

*Sigh*

Meanwhile, I'm boring people to death over at Metroblogging Denver. Come look! It's fun!

So the read-through is practically over. And the last quarter of the book is, like, totally fragmented. Reads like an outline. I know exactly what I was thinking about when I wrote it: "Oh crap! It's week 4 and I only have 35,000 words! And I don't know how to get to the scene I want to write! Crap! I'll just splotch it down on the page without any run-up..." It reads like something between an outline and a "scenes from" abridgement.

There's also the scenes that by their very existence imply something that ought to have gone before but failed to, what with me not having thought of them until week 4. I keep making notes like, "Good description of Mitch & co. on p 190. Need more throughout." "Too far in to be the first time we see this mannerism." "Did she really? Figure this out."

Yeah. I am not looking forward to finishing with the read-through. I'm going to have to fix all this mess.

And the sad thing is, it looks about ten times less painful to fix than either of the two NaNoWriMo novels that went before.

We really do get better at this. But what "better" means is never quite as much as we'd like it to.