I finished writing my rough draft of Feral eight days ago. You'd think it would have been a bigger deal. I mean, I wrote a book. But finishing the book came and went in my life with little remark.
I think there were two main reasons for this. 1.) I was busy. O and I are at work 50 hours per week, we had scheduled our mandatory summer overtime, we had a baptism class, and we became Godparents. 2.) Even more likely why I didn't get super worked up about it, I knew in my gut I wasn't done.
I thought I knew myself as a writer. I write long and make lots of cuts during revisions. This was the case with the last novel I wrote, this has been the case with most short stories I've written. I thought it was just a given.
I was wrong.
When I finished the zero draft of Feral, it clocked in at 65,000 words. Don't get me wrong, I realize this is long enough to be a full YA for some writers, and not every story is the same. I was just a bit flabbergasted that I'd written something so short. So when I didn't jump and dance and celebrate at my zero draft being done, I thought it was just because I'd done this before, and I knew I had lots of revising and editing to do before it was ready to go out into the world.
Well, I've just finished doing my first read through and taking notes on what needs to be fixed. And I have a new theory. I didn't get super excited because in my gut, I knew a had more to write. After my first read-through, I now have a list of 29 scenes that need to be written or re-written. Which sounds very big and scary, but I'm more excited than anything.
29 scenes sounds like a lot. But looking over the list, it varies from an entirely new scene that needs to be written beginning to end from scratch, to a three paragraphs of a scene that have to be slightly re-written because something changed in the plot.
O asked me for an estimate of how long I think it will take to get through the list. Honestly, I'm not really sure. I don't think it will be very long, given how excited I am to get it done. But you never know what kink will pop up. But I do know one thing. It will get done faster if I get to work on it. So, hi-ho, hi-ho, it's off to work I go.
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Despite having to be to work today, O and I decided to head off to a midnight showing of Captain America. I'm not a Marvel fangirl. My love of Marvel basically boils down to the X-Men and whoever gave me Chris Hemsworth's abs as Thor. I have no deep love of Cap. He's too much like Cyclops, IMO, a goody-two-shoes. I always preferred Wolverine, Gambit, etc.
Suffice it to say, I wasn't excited for the movie. But I was willingly to go along to see it. I'd gone to see Green Lantern and even enjoyed parts of it, for Pete's sake.
Overall thoughts: I enjoyed myself thoroughly. There are a few nitpicks I have that really bothered me, but there were things I really liked as well. It was funny. There was no lack of laughter in my packed theater.
I liked what they did with Peggy Carter. She was one of the better written women in a comic movie lately. Especially after watching the dishrag of a Carol Ferris in Green Lantern. Peggy was strong, motivated, and managed to be both of those things without being hard or losing her femininity. You can be a badass and girly. I like characters that manage to have both.
But I must say, I have one big nitpick with this movie. Maybe I'm the only person that it bothered, but it was hard to accept and pulled me somewhat out of the story. I can accept the lame science behind making a super soldier. Whatever. It's comic book cheese, I expect some of it. BUT! If you tell me a shield is going to protect someone from bullets and disintegrating rays because it's made of vibranium and absorbs all vibrations/shocks that hit it, how exactly are you going to expect me to believe it will hit something and bounce back to Cap? You do understand how things ricochet, right, Captain America writers?
Yes, comic book, I know. But for some reason, despite all the other things I could be nitpicking, that's the thing that left me grinding my teeth throughout the movie. Still, despite that, I had fun. Plus, it's almost worth the ticket price just for the bit after the credits. I can't wait.
Overall, I'd give Captain America a B+.
I had several false starts on my WIP. My current draft now stands at:
I've basically torn this thing apart so many times as I've gone, that I've removed nearly as many words from the file as I still have left in it. You'd think, that if I were a normal person, that would make me frustrated or sad. Lately it's been making me a little giddy. Yes, I know, well adjusted I am not.
But here's the thing. I recently had hit that part of the book where I hated it, couldn't stand it, was absolutely sure it was all crap. So far, for just about everything I've completed, that kicks in about a third of the way through and last until I hit the last third. I spend a third of the the thing I'm writing convinced I've spent countless hours typing useless drivel.
And I would have done so with this one too. Except! Except, I have all those wrong words to look back at. Which I did this weekend. And then I gave my current draft a once over. They may not all be the right words, but they're mostly in the right place. Which supplied me with a little pick me up that kept me from hating this book or thinking it's awful.
It may have taken me awhile, but this book is nearly halfway, and well on track to be done in late July or early August, in pretty decent shape. Don't get me wrong, I'll have my work cut out for me when I start revisions. Who doesn't? But I'm more confident about this book, than I have been anything else I've written, so far.
So here's crossing my fingers, plugging away--current goal is at least 1k/day--and hoping when I hand it over to some crit partners, they don't think it's a steaming pile.
<tirade>
No, not you. The inconsiderate $*^%#*$ sitting behind me during the 4:35 showing of Green Lantern today.
I paid to watch this movie, not listen to some white-trash, mullet having jackass explain Green Lantern lore to your son/friend/whatever he was.
Don't get me wrong, I understand if he had some questions and you were trying to fill him in on the back story so he could enjoy the movie. I'll even give you leniency and give you a pass on it, even though it was the first movie and was ENTIRELY ORIGIN STORY! If you had just had the courtesy to whisper.
But no, not you classy guy in the nearly sold out showing. You had to speak loudly enough for everyone in a three row radius to hear everything you said. And you continued to talk through at least 10-20% of the entire movie.
When the movie got particularly loud during an action scene, you raised your voice to a near shout to make sure you could be heard.
Really? REALLY?!
You, Sir, are the antithesis of everything great about comics/superheroes/good movies (not that I'm sure Green Lantern necessarily falls into this category, I'm just sayin')/the world! This little tirade cannot begin to cover how much everyone around you hates you for this greatest of sins: talking through a movie.
But what's actually worse? At least half of the "lore" that you spouted is wrong. And not even slightly factually inaccurate wrong. Wrong like you had lumped a dozen super heroes' back stories together and still didn't manage to get a single fact about any of them correct. Seriously? W? T? F?!
</tirade>
Google gave me all their wonderfully Google-y apps like blogger and reader for my domain account. I had been using my domain account for gmail, calendar, and documents. However, when I first set my domain email up through gmail, they didn't offer services such as reader and blogger.
I could not be separated from my Google Reader, so I kept using my original gmail account. And then when I switched my website over to being hosted on Blogger, I had a separate account for that.
Thank you Google for letting me combine everything I use into this one account.
So I have now copied over my reader feed and starred items, moved the website over, and gotten everything from my now extraneous old accounts. This doesn't make any real difference on my page--except now all my posts have lost their original dates and are now listed as being posted this week. But it is sure a hell of a lot more convenient for me. One log in! No switching accounts/commenting from the wrong one.
I am easily stoked. And you probably don't care, but I had to share my excitement.
There is something about being in a library that immediately puts me in a good mood. I used to think it was just being surrounded by books, being enveloped in the presence of all those stories. And I was half right.
Part of being surrounded by those books, the part that sets me instantly at ease, is the smell. The smell of the paper and the ink bled into its fibers. Even the smell of the dust that collects, that musty old book smell that is different than any other musty item smell. It is the smell of infinity. It is the smell of being surrounded by thousands of stories, thousands of histories and worlds, thousands of possibilities. It is the smell of escape and adventure. It is the smell of bliss.
And I am surrounded by it today. It will be a good day. When I'm not paying attention I keep finding myself smiling for no apparent reason. That is what a library does to me.
It's one of the big reasons I have not switched to an ereader yet. There is a draw to easy access to so many books. To be able to have them all at my fingertips all the time, to be easily carried with me everywhere I go. But I have hesitated because repurchasing all my books as ebooks would be expensive. Plus there are still a few publishers who wait to release ebooks rather than release simultaneously with the hardcover, and I can't bring myself to wait longer for the new books in any of the series I am a devoted fan of. By the time the book is released I am usually already slavering for it and devour it in a day.
But my big reason I haven't made the switch? That wonderful feeling I get when I sit in a room full of books, like I am right now. I'd miss that so much.
This is not the post I had planned to write when I opened up my browser this afternoon, but sometimes that's how the best posts turn out, so I'll go with it.
I had planned on writing about revisions and finding crit partners, but I opened my google reader feed to see if there was anything going on that I should know about before I posted. (Yes, I read all my blogs my rss feed. I am the penultimate lurker, hehe) What I found was this post by Natalie Whipple about love and our expectations of it, both it book & movies, and in real life.
There is a reader mentality that she talks about that I'd like to discuss.
And this is not the first time I've heard this. I hear this off kilter argument all the timewhen people start ragging on paranormal romance or praising contemporary fiction.
"Oh, that relationship is so unrealistic! That never happens. People don't just take one look at each other and end up getting together. People don't do that undying dramatic love for all of forever."
"This relationship is realistic—they break up and hate each other forever and move on with their lives. The girl loves the guy, but he never notices and that's how it is. Betrayal. Divorce. Boredom. Fights. These are real."
I understand that in the real world these are the circumstances many times. I understand that a lot of adults feel that it's a false advertising of sorts to imply to YA readers that they'll get that girl/guy they love and be happily ever after 9 times out of 10. It might be. But I've got to tell ya, that happens to some people. It may be complicated and messy, relationships are, it might be the hardest damn thing you've done in your whole life, but it happens. I'd know, it did to me.
On July 12, 2010, on our nine year anniversary, I married my best friend and high school sweetheart. I've never really talked about O and I's story on here or any of my other blogs, mostly because I assumed that anyone reading knew us and already knew the story. But I'd like to talk about it a little bit now, because this backlash that says it can't happen bothers me. It really pisses me off when we tell teens what you feel can't be real love, you're too young. The relationship you're getting into won't last, so it doesn't really matter. Seriously? F*$& that!
I spent much of my adolescent life head over heels in love with a friend of mine. It was destined never to work for a whole variety of reasons, but it was that aching, pining love you find in most YA books. Man, did that relationship ever give me angst ammunition to write YA for years. :) But if you had told me then that what I felt wasn't real or wouldn't last I would have been seriously pissed off. Ya know what? I still would be. Just because it was flawed and didn't work doesn't mean I felt it any less acutely at the time.
If anything I felt it more because I was at that age, not less. I hadn't become bitter of hardened by things going wrong, by all the crap there is to deal with. I felt with my whole heart from the get go. It was a long drawn out thing, with us falling back into familiar patterns and then breaking them and seeing other people. It was during my sophomore year that I met O. He was a senior and in my creative writing class. He was smart, funny, older and seemingly wiser/more mature. I had a little crush, but he had a longterm girlfriend and I was still in love with the unnamed friend.
We talked during class that year, flirted a little (though unsuccessfully), and then he graduated and moved away for the summer and that was the end of things. See, O and I weren't even really friends. He was that guy you talk to in one of your classes that you never talk to or see outside of school. That's all. We were both wrapped up in other things. Other people. Though he still professes to have been madly enamored with me from the get go. Silly boys.
At the end of that school year I started a relationship with somebody new. It went on for over a year, but crazy happenstance, he was acquaintances and slight friends with O, despite a 3 year difference in grades. Yes, if you're doing the math, I spent a year in high school dating a boy in the grade below me. No, I was not a cougar-in-training. We were the same age, I was younger than most of the kids in my grade.
Anyway, he was emailing O while O worked at Cedar Point over the summer, and I sent an email to O also, saying hi and asking how he was doing. We didn't keep exchanging emails, but it was a gust of air that kept a little ember burning, if you will.
We didn't really talk again for almost a year. The next April, almost the end of my junior year, the boyfriend asked me to come along to O's birthday party. I did. O's long term girlfriend and he had just broken up and she was about to move away. Suffice it to say, I am a terrible girlfriend and O and I flirted like mad. After that night we kept talking. Mostly chatting online, some phone calls. After a few weeks we started hanging out. O lived about a half hour away so I would bum rides with his best friend when he went to see O.
Soon we were inseparable. We were talking constantly when we weren't hanging out together. I was very lonely for a lot of reasons back then and O quickly filled that void. He became my best friend. And it was through our being such close friends that we fell in love. I'm not saying it wasn't messy or complicated, I mean I was still dating somebody else (though, admittedly trying to find a way out of a sticky relationship). It was extremely complicated and messy. It almost didn't work. We even broke up once. It didn't take. (Mostly because Oliver can be stubborn, said you're being ridiculous, and then proceeded to wait for me to also come to this conclusion.)
We were young and sometimes stupid (not that we aren't also sometimes stupid now) and not as mature as we thought. There were times when it was the hardest thing I could imagine, there were times when it almost didn't work, times when I threw my hands up in the air and said, "I quit." But to say that it is impossible to find true love at that age, that is can't last, that what a teenager feels is just lust or infatuation may be true for some, but certainly not all.
Of course, you could argue that almost ten years is not that long, that I have no way of knowing what will happen to O and I, that we could still get divorced. And you might be right, I have no way of knowing what the future holds, but I find it highly unlikely. We have grown into our relationship and still remain best friends. We have moved from the knock-down drag-out brawl (metaphorically) level arguments we use to have, to something else. We still fight, don't get me wrong. But now it lasts less than a half hour and at the first sign of something even remotely funny we're both giggling and the fight is over.
I guess my argument for why I know it's possible for teenagers to find that person while they're young can be summed up as this: When I was a child I asked my father who his best friend was. He smiled and told me, "your mother." I thought this was a ridiculous notion. Mom didn't count, they were married. Wasn't it the guy he went bowling with or one of his work buddies? No, he told me, your mother is my best friend in the world. I shook my head and left, thinking he had cheated and given me a cop out answer.
Fifteen years later, as I married O, I had come to understand exactly what my father meant that day. My parents met in high school and were on again off again for several years until they married. In four months they will celebrate their 28th wedding anniversary. Do not discount the love you find as a teen, it might not be the person you expect, but they might stick around a lot longer than anyone tells you is possible.