I used to write songs about love, and loss, and God, and the tragic but hopeful state of the world.

Today, Dylan and I wrote a song, and the lyrics go: “Apple tree, apple tree. Apple juice, apple juice.”

I’ll save love and loss and tragedy and God for the novel, I think.

Blue plaid button-up shirt and green camo pants?

I still love my honey, even if he can’t dress my baby, lol!

Just so you know, if you leave your journal out on the dining room table, the journal you’ve been keeping for two years, and you then leave the room, your toddler will take a crayon to it. He will scribble all over several of the pages, maybe even important things, or profound things, or all those sweet baby things you wrote about him when he was little. Yes, he will scribble it all out, with a big fat orange crayon. Just so you know.

Also, I find it funny how these Friday updates never end up happening until Monday. Toddler rules, I tell you!

not a writer:

There are these forks in a novel, just like in real life, where the character makes a decision that branches off a whole different future than they might have had otherwise. But the thing is, in real life, we don’t get to see those other dimensions and what our lives might have been like had we made different decisions.

In a novel, I can. My problem has been, I think, that as I went about this business of writing a novel for the first time, I was trying too hard to hold on to parts of those old futures, the different scenes that happened in whatever dimension of the lives they might have lived. This stupid novel has been through dozens of drafts and idea stages, and these poor characters have been through so many possible scenarios.

It took me writing about half of the thing to finally find what the heart of the story actually was, and so now I’m finding that things that I wrote for old drafts don’t really matter to the story as a whole. Maybe, at one point, in an old old draft, many dimensions ago, they did matter. Now, not so much.

So this is what I’ve been working on this week, thinking about which parts of the story really belong, really matter, which dimension should my characters live in, and it’s honestly driving me a little crazy.

And for the record, my hubby absolutely thinks I’m crazy when I talk about my characters like this, like they’re voices in my head or something. Do other writers talk about their characters like this, or am I really crazy?

Changing the POV from third to first really changed everything. It honestly did, and I really didn’t expect it would be so different. So, when I was wondering before whether this was starting a second draft, or starting over, I think it’s probably closer to starting over. Better than starting from scratch, but you know, starting over just the same. Everything is being rebuilt from the ground up. Blank slate.

I think I might try out NaNoWriMo, and I obviously won’t finish the whole novel in that month, but I’ll commit to the 50,000 words anyway. It might be an interesting challenge. Maybe I’ll try early mornings? Maybe hubby will get up with me and work on that million-dollar idea that he keeps distracting himself from with television shows? What do you say, Hubby?

Novel stats:

Part 1, four chapters
13,400 wds and 41 pages.

I’m liking the structure of novels like Then We Came to the End, and The Feast of Love, where the novel is broken up into broad sections, then further broken up into chapters. I think I’m going to adopt this strategy, which actually resembles what I was badly doing when I first started, and wrote big fat monstrous chapters. I think those big fat chapters were supposed to be sections.

So, my first section/part has four brand-spanking-new chapters. It could use just a bit more plumping up and polishing, but I’m nearly finished with it, and hope to finish it off by the end of the week. Then move on to the second section/part, obviously, since the second comes after the first, lol. Do you see how clever I am?

There will be seven section/parts. I might get all creative and give them titles, or maybe I’ll be boring and just number them. Creative sounds better than boring, of course, but we’ll see.

Happy writing

It finally happened. My child brought me a real live bug. It was a HUGE roly poly, with big fat creepy crawly legs. I did my very best to act cool about it, lol.

I am making up a blogging prompt, because I feel like it! One year ago, on this date, this is what I wrote in my real life journal:

8 months? Seriously? I just don’t know how some people have the balls! I was sitting in the doctor’s office with Dylan, waiting, and this woman, mother, asks, “How old is he?” and then before I can answer, she blurts out, “8 months.” Not even a question, but a statement! Then I say, “No, 14 months.” And she has the balls to say, “Oh, he’s little.”

First of all, my kid may be skinny, but he is AVERAGE height for his age, NOT small. And how often do you see an 8 month old standing on his own, walking very independently? I think there is an obvious difference between and 8 and 14 month-old. Seriously! *rolls eyes*

LOL, that’s me having a very obvious hissy-fit. I should have shared that then. How funny