I have just under a month before I start working, and I just realized that this is basically the way I’ve treated the entire last month or so of school, if not all of April and May combined. Aside from waking up and going to class, turning in papers and assignments, taking notes, cramming lunch breaks into ten-minute binges of pizza and juice, scheduling naps whenever and wherever there’s a free hour/fifteen minutes, and using Hulu as a way to keep myself from doing anything at all until after 11 PM — you know, all that college stuff — I’ve pretty much done exactly what I would be doing in Austin right now at home. Nothing. I have a month off, and my only accomplishment for the five or so days I’ve been home is I’ve killed a mountain of roaches, and I’ve moved a bottle of Goldbond lotion to my nightstand so I can slather all of the mosquito bites I got … yesterday, while watching old Scrubs and Doctor Who episodes on my DVR.
If this is the good life, I sort of want my old busy life back. With deadlines and responsibilities. I did say “sort of.” Everyone needs a break. I just find huge gaps of free time just a little more suffocating than actually sitting down and getting something done.
There is one encroaching deadline: Remember how I said I would get my novel done by June 30th? It was a pipe dream to begin with. My new goal is less impressive. I have to finish the first book (another 2,000 words or so) in the next few days so I can print everything I have so far, edit it extensively with a red pen (this is the fun part), and submit it by June 2nd for my free proof copy. I did my math wrong, it turns out.
I’m a little bummed for two reasons. First, I wish I had more of my book done. If I just worked at it a little harder, I think I might have at least been able to make some headway. But I know that I don’t have that sort of discipline unless I’m actually setting goals for myself. “Finish the book” is vague and unhelpful. “Write 2,000 words,” on the other hand, is something I can deal with.
Secondly, little did I know that “free proof copy,” doesn’t mean that you’ll get a manuscript copy of your book. You get an actual book. This is driving my life-long perfectionist streak up the wall, because I just know something’s going to go badly. Maybe it won’t matter because I’ll be holding the first part of my book in my hands. But there’s always the chance that I’ll open to one of the biggest scenes in the first part, and go, “Oh god, that was supposed to be an apostrophe.” And my world will just crumble around my feet.
Thank goodness no one but me has to read this yet. I just might die of shame.
I’m going to apologize in advance to anyone who ever has to read my novel later, but I wanted to try something out. Most of my novel is written in past tense, with snippets in present tense where memories are concerned or flashbacks or dreams to make the past tense seem more vivid and fluid. But I threw in a whole chapter — a prologue really — written in present tense. And I love it. But it’s set about thirty years before the start of the novel. What this amounts to is that the present is written in past tense and the past is written in present tense. I thought that was clever. In hindsight. Really, I just wanted to mess around with a scene in my head, and the best way for it to come together was just as it did.
A lot of this is due to my chronology. I really set myself up for confusion by starting one of my prologues (there are three because I am ridiculous) twenty years before the first chapter, and tacking on each consecutive prologue before the first. So, I suppose, instead of covering eighty years in thirty chapters, I’m covering about ten years in twenty seven chapters, and the relevant bits of the past in three prologues (spread out over three books). In terms of skimming the story down to the immediate action, that is very nearly the best I can do.
I really like present tense, but I feel like it’s easy to abuse. I use it sparingly, because if I didn’t have any reserve with it, I would keep writing chapters in present tense and lose track of my plot entirely. In this particular section, I thought I’d use it to give one of my characters a memory from her own point of view — you don’t really get to see a lot of her in her own mind, or with her family. Here’s a snippet:
Sanctuary
They stand before her like other men — not her boys, not the babes she taught to read, to walk, to sing. Fera — Feruq, after his grandfather — is taller, but Ithas is built stronger. Morica laughs with them, straightens their tunics. Even at fourteen, she stands tall enough to meet her brothers’ eyes, and Rema, outside this triangle of her children, sighs in contentment. She has them now, all three of them. But today, the war begins, and nothing will be the same after this. So she treasures this, and does not close her eyes. Still, somehow, she misses them, and when the boys turn to go, she realizes that she has not said a word to them at all. It is almost too late now. The horses are clattering their way down the hill into the valley. But she cries out above the wind, above the clamor of her cowardice, and they return: her boys, always her boys. There are too many words to say, too many fears that she will not name. Ithas will return and take his father’s title. Fera will become a statesman, a Paladin perhaps, for all roads are open to him. Morica, she will have into her old age, a little longer than the boys, reckless as they are, trying to sieve glory out of a war that has not yet begun. Not yet.
I haven’t quite finished this chapter, so I don’t know what the last third will hold. Something about war and intrigue and such — nothing huge. I’ll keep you posted!
A few days ago, I hit 200 pages on my novel, and I sat there for a few minutes looking at the number wondering exactly how I’d made it that far. I’d come close several years ago, with a much older draft. I probably skimmed 180 and thought, Well, this is it. I don’t know how much more I can write. I’m not over that fear even now. If it weren’t for the fact that I keep adding chapters to deal with the gaps in narrative, I would be halfway done with the book by now. I’m not.
I know it sounds ridiculous, but I have so much more story in me. I’ve spent six years so far trying to get just the first section — all the exposition I could ever write — done so that I can proceed to the sections that actually begin to utilize the maelstrom of conflict that I’ve brewed so far. And while those parts of the story are not yet clarified in my mind, I know, very roughly, what I want. The story can only get longer from here, which makes my June 30th deadline a little scarier. But considering that I didn’t start writing this section until, perhaps, halfway into March — rather than February, which would have been ideal — and I didn’t average more than perhaps 1,000 words a day, if that, there’s still a chance that I’ll make it if I keep up to my original schedule. But I almost think I’ve lost the discipline to force myself to churn out 2,000 words a day. Sometimes, I’ll come to a sentence that I absolutely cannot phrase in any pleasant way, and I sit there staring at it for minutes upon minutes, and all I can think about is, “Why isn’t this working?”
Then, there’s the matter of plot. Since NaNoWriMo, I’ve added five chapters to the first third of my book, making it nearly as big as my intended second and third sections together. That doesn’t sit well with me for obvious reasons, and it means that either I’ll have to whittle down the first third to its bare bones, or beef up the second and third which, as of yet, are still hanging around in my head waiting for me to write them down. At this point, anything is possible, and I’m grateful for that. My brand new netbook (an Acer Aspire One) is really helping me out as well. Plus it…matches my stapler.
I apologize, like always, for the huge hiatus in posts. We had nearly fifteen people at our house (including us) over Spring Break, which was hectic and busy and incredibly fun, and for the first time this semester, I actually feel like the end is in sight. And I know it’s silly to go through my education just waiting to be done with everything, but I have some exciting summer plans to look forward to. If everything works out, I’ll post all of the fancy details here.
Right. So last night, we drove out to San Antonio at 11 PM (for hassling purposes) and got back around 5:30 AM. I stayed up for another hour churning Greek into my brain (τιθημι, τιθης, τιθησιν) before going to sleep, getting up at 8:30, and owning things until I finally crashed at 4 PM. I probably shouldn’t do this as often as I’ve been doing this this semester, but as long as I can get things done — and done well — I don’t see why I shouldn’t enjoy a late-night-harassment-run or two.
