Melonade

Okay, kids. It's time for another obsessive month.

After a well-deserved month-long vacation from the novel, I am now ready to get back to it. Tomorrow I will officially start the second draft with the intent of squeezing in 50 hours of editing in the next 30 days. That means at least an hour and a half every day of confrontation between me and the words on the page. It's probably going to get ugly, folks.

Although I won't plan on making any wagers for this month, I will ask those friends who stop by the blog to check in on me every once in a while and make sure I'm keeping up. I do not want to insinuate that I will completely edit all 152 pages in the next 30 days, but it's a good place to start.

Enjoy your day.

I know, I know. I've been neglecting my blog lately. In my defense, after finishing the first draft at the end of last month, I had to take a break. Work got crazy, and then I went on vacation to visit my favorite Loraine (more on that later). Today is my second day back to a life of internet access, but I haven't quite formed the thoughts that I want to put down, so I'm letting them swim around until they're ready.

On another note, I'm going to see Star Wars tonight, and I'm not even a fan. Well...I wasn't a fan until about a week ago, when I finally saw all the movies, delightfully crammed into one week so I could say that I'd seen them all before I left for Tennessee.

It's not that I never tried to watch them before. I remember when I was a kid that they used to play the originals on the USA Network all the time, either that or the Back to the Future trilogy were always on. (Wait...is that network still around? I can't remember.) Anyway, I've seen bits here and there of them, but the sight of Luke getting his hand sliced off just terrified me too much, so I stayed away from the movies. Yep, I'm that much of a pansy, and not afraid to admit it. That same fear also kept me from watching Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (chicken in the tunnel) and The Wizard of Oz (falling house, Wicked Witch and flying monkeys!).

I have a strange feeling that I'm going to be totally unprepared for this evening, like I'm not worthy of my Star Wars license yet because I don't know enough backstory and can't name most of the random secondary characters. Ah, well. It'll be fun to be surrounded by people who are totally obsessed with something I don't really understand.

Enjoy your day.

50,041.

That's the word count as of 10:30 pm local time on Saturday, April 30, 2005.

For those of you just joining us, that's all I needed to meet my goal of a writing a complete first draft in 30 days. If anything important happened in the world in the last month, someone should probably let me know. I have been living in a writing bubble.

This peasant rejoiced by talking to Loraine(the best literary cheerleader in the world) and indulging in a bit of super-chocolatey frozen yogurt.

For the few people who have already been told that I reached my goal, the number one question is, Can I read it?

The number one answer: Are you out of your mind?

Not really, but I must politely refuse all requests for reading right now.

There are a few reasons for this, and I think they're pretty good ones.

1) It's all out of order. The best way to tell this story is not in chronological order, but I haven't rearranged all the sections to reflect that yet. That will take a while.

2) There are holes in the story. Yeah, I met my word goal, but there are places where the story doesn't flow yet (refer to Item 1), and letting someone read it would just confuse them.

3) It's not as good as it can be. One of the pitfalls of writing so much so quickly is that in the rush to finish, I sometimes used really cheap descriptions or none at all just to get everything on paper before I forgot it. If I let someone read it, they would laugh in my face, and I'm too exhausted to be able to handle that right now.

4) My guide told me not to. This may be my favorite one. I have been ordered to celebrate, take a vacation, and not look at the manuscript for two to four weeks. Editing may follow, but perhaps for a year or more. That's okay. I like this story enough to think that it has potential and is worth the time.

And so, fellow bloggers, if you have ever considered writing a masterpiece of fiction, I give the following advice:

1) Try it! You may find out that you suck at fiction, and that's fine. You've got other things to do with your life. That may actually be better for me (less competition). But you may find that you can write the things that other people have been waiting to read. That, my friend, is a really fabulous feeling.

2) Find people who will support you, and exploit the support. When you finish your book, you already have a list of people who want to take you out to celebrate.

3) Find people who won't get off your back about your goal. Make ridiculous bets with them. Let them raise the bar, and then show them that you can clear it with your eyes closed.

4) Find your best writing spot and bring your music! Mine happened to be the corner of the silent room at the Edmond public library, but I only discovered this during the last half of my writing month.


I could go on for another few pages, but these were the things that got me through.

And now I can return to the land of the living.