2011 is odd, writers' ADD, and my last novel.

Note to self: Don't write two stories at the same time. It gets too confusing.

Now, will I take my own advice next time I want to rewrite an old novel at the same time as write a new one? Probably not. Maybe I'll reread this blog post and have an "ah-ha" moment right before overloading my brain with two novels at once.

I really don't like this post's title. But anyway.

In case anyone reading this post doesn't understand what I'm talking about, January 1st 2011 I began rewriting my very first novel (which I'll call LoZ, for now), the only problem was... Well, no. That's an understatement. There were so many problems with that novel, but I won't go into them atm. The only thing that had me overly worried was that I stopped writing something else when I began editing. I'll call that MP. At about 25,000 words--or something near that--I gave up MP for an entire month. (Doing this always scares me, because I've done it before and never finished the novel.) Then, because I think I've caught writers' ADD or something, I gave up finishing rewriting LoZ and turned back to my other story. So all was good from February 10th until today, when I decided that I really wanted to write the last two scenes of LoZ and be done with that novel for another four years. Or whenever I give it another look and another rewrite.

I stopped writing LoZ because I didn't want to figure out the last bit. Why any part of my mind concluded that it would be easier to write the ending after putting it aside for a few weeks, I have no idea.  

I always say that I'm trying something "new" with each novel I write. This isn't my usual style, I'm trying something new. So... I'm not sure what my "usual style" is, because it's always different. But 2011 is the oddest year for my writing so far. ("Odd" seems to have become my new word. I find myself using it all the time, which is, um, odd--as well as, you know, ironic.)

So far, my writing in 2011 has consisted of me jumping between rewriting LoZ and writing MP. Literally every month I switch stories. At least I know this won't go on for the rest of the year. Once I finish rewriting LoZ, I'm going to try to force myself to stick to MP, but the sad part is, MP is probably going to be the last novel I write for the next four years.

I can't help but think that I won't have time to write novels while I'm in college, and even if I have some free time, I don't want to overwhelm myself by trying to bang out novels in four or so months like I do now. Still, I don't want this to be my last novel for four years! That makes me very sad. It also makes me want to stretch out writing MP until August when school starts, though being that I'm already 48,000 words into the story, I don't think it'll last past June, if that long.

Yeah, yeah, just because I'm going to college doesn't mean I have to stop writing. But I'm going to a conservatory. I used to think that conservatories had less classes than regular colleges. Now, I've realized they have more. Yes, so if I go to this one school I might only have three academic classes, but add to that dance classes in ballet, tap, modern, jazz, rhythm/improv./partnering/otherstuffthroughtheyears, and any extra things I want to participate in, then that doesn't leave much time for novel-writing. 

That's a dance major for you. Too bad for me I also like writing and being in theater. It'd be so much easier if I only enjoyed doing one thing. But I could never pick between dance a writing. (That's why that creative writing minor looks so appealing, even if it would use up all my free electives. *sigh*)   

I've been writing pretty much non-stop for about four years now, so I can't imagine suddenly not writing that much anymore. In the back of my mind, I had this idea that maybe I would slowly go through and edit my novels. You know, whenever I had some time, just start reading and marking the manuscripts up with pretty colored pen. That would mean bringing my novels with me in the printed form (because I hate reading on the computer. Seriously hate it). I must've mentioned something about bringing my stories with me to my mom, because she was like, You're not bringing them with you, are you?

Well, I might? I can imagine myself packing up a big heavy box of manuscripts and sticking it in my dorm closet or something. I can totally see that. I can also see myself lugging the box from college to my house every time there's a school break.  

I don't know. All I do know right now, is that instead of finish rewriting LoZ, as I was in the midst of doing when beginning this blog post, I have written 800 + words here instead. Yay for anti-productivity.

Radio Music and Broadway Songs

Sometimes, I listen to song lyrics and can’t help but wonder what the songwriter was thinking when he or she was writing. Half the songs on the radio sound the same and are either about falling in love or heartbreak. That’s why I listen to movie soundtracks when I write, though those can get boring if I’m not trying to concentrate, so while I do turn on the radio occasionally, I’d rather listen to Broadway musical soundtracks. I think I like Broadway songs because they tell a story. It can be a love story, just like those songs on the radio, but the music is so much fuller, and the singers are actors or actresses, so they have so much emotion in their voices.

Some of the wittiest lyrics I’ve ever heard come from the musical Spamalot; some of the best musical accompaniment I’ve heard comes from Next to Normal. The worst lyric’s simile that I’ve heard comes from Katie Perry’s Fireworks. Her opening line is “Do you ever feel like a plastic bag, drifting through the wind,” and makes me wince every time I hear it. She’s probably asking if someone has ever felt ever felt as if they had nothing holding them down, but it sounds an awful lot like she’s asking if anyone has ever felt like a piece of garbage.

Essays...

I'm such a hypocrite when it comes to writing essays. Twice now I've had to write an essay on "how to write an essay"--the first one was confusing; the second annoying. Both times I had this section where I talked about how you don't. Ever. Ever. Start. Writing. The. Intro. First.

Guess what I just did.

Yuppers. I'm working on an essay (er... actually, I'm writing a blog post instead of writing my essay, but, uh, you get what I mean) and the first thing I wrote was the introduction. Actually, I think I might've written the conclusion first, but I'll have to see if I can circle the essay back around to include that paragraph.

So I keep thinking back to my other essays and wanting to force myself to start with the body of the essay, like I keep writing is what you're supposed to do. But I don't actually care that much (I care about a good grade, that is, but I don't care about going against my own advice).

The last four essays I wrote I started in the middle, and I just don't feel like it this time. I like my opening paragraph. The thesis is iffy, but I'll fix it up later. And I like my opening sentence. (Now let's just hope my professor does, too.) I got some nice quotes for the middle, and after that I've no idea. I hate planning anyway. So I'm going to start with the intro because I feel like it. So what if it's hypocritical. I have my own way of writing, and I'll stick with it. I hate forced writing. I hate forcing myself to write forced writing. So the answer is simple. I won't.

Intro... check. Conclusion... possible check. Body of the essay... nonexistent. I can deal.

Now back to writing this essay.

Books, libraries, and not reading fast enough.

I really hate it when I get a book from the library and then have to return it without finishing it. I dislike when I don't finish a book on my own (I just have this thing, even if I don't like a book, I feel bad returning it without reading it), but worse than that is returning a book that I want to finish.

Cinda Williams Chima's novel The Exiled Queen was supposed to have come out last September, but for some reason, my library did not get the book until three weeks ago. Come on, people--it's January! And guess what? I didn't get to finish it. I have to admit, it didn't start off as good as I had hoped (and after reading Catherine Fisher's Sapphique and not being able to put it down, it's not surprising I read the first few chapters of The Exiled Queen rather slow. Plus, I was editing my novel and then my writing class started up... But I'm just listing excuses here). 

So go figure, it finally started getting good about 100/200 pages ago and it's due at the library tomorrow. The obvious answer would be to renew it (or read super fast, though I doubt I could read more than half the book by tomorrow morning when I go into town), yet I can't renew it because someone else has it on hold. I hate when that happens.

Okay, okay, minirantover.

To Write a Prologue or Not to Write a Prologue

The day I heard that some people actually skip over prologues when reading novels, I was shocked. To my sixteen-year-old self, prologues always seemed like the most fun part of writing, and I had included them in every single story I’d written for the past few years (finished or unfinished). Besides enjoying writing them, I could not understand why someone would skip any part of a book. The author went to all that trouble to write the prologue, so it must be important. Now, I think I’ve changed my mind on prologues.

Someone said, in an online discussion about prologues on a young writers’ forum that I moderate, that an author should be able to put the important information into the actual novel, and so prologues are just a way of cheating, especially when author’s use it as an info dump where they tell their readers the entire history of their fantasy world. They forget that unless they’ve already got a following of avid readers, no one’s going to care about a war that happened five-hundred and fifty-one years ago.
There are cases where prologues do work, or else I would feel like a complete hypocrite writing about this because one of my novels still has a prologue in it, six years and four full rewrites later. I’ve decided that the occasional prologue is all right, so long as it’s short enough and to the point. A fifteen page prologue with a vague connection to the actual plot of the novel is stretching it in my book, yet I’ve seen this done (and it is part of the reason I never got more than twenty pages into the book).

I still find prologues extremely fun to write, though now when I begin a new story I try to limit myself when writing prologues. Most of the time, they’re unnecessary. Even for my rewritten novel, I’m considering cutting the prologue when I eventually reach a final draft, but then I remind myself that my prologue hooks up with the main story right away, and I’m still left undecided. To write a prologue, or not to write a prologue?

Dialogue Tags

Sometimes, I think that being a writer makes reading a whole lot harder. I constantly find myself focusing on an author’s sentence structure and description when I am trying to read for enjoyment. Of course, almost every author who has written a guide on writing (and whose guide I have read) says to read, read, read, so taking note of how a published novelist goes about creating his or her fantasy world is certainly helpful. I think back to before I considered myself a writer and the books I read at the time. Back then, I cared little about cliché plotlines and the ever-controversial prologue; now, I find myself mentally critiquing published novels as I read.

If an opening paragraph does not catch my interest, I will give it about a page or two before putting the book down if it is not by an author that I know I like. Even if a book I am reading is by one of my favorite authors, I still critique them in my head.

The book I am currently reading is a young adult fantasy novel, as with most of the books I read for pleasure, and the second in a trilogy. I have read another series by this author, and have been waiting for this book since September, yet I noticed a pretty blatant error about twenty or so pages in.

Sometimes I wonder about an author’s editor, such as in this case. I have noticed numerous places in this author’s work where a period was missing, or a dialogue tag was wrong. This was another such case with dialogue.

Normally, when an author writes “he said,” the dialogue tag is there to inform the reader which character is speaking. I have read guides on dialogue tags, where they say that the tags can be replaced with a character’s action, otherwise “she said this” and “she said that” can get a little dry. If, then, dialogue tags are there to help the reader distinguish between who is speaking, would it not make sense to only have one dialogue tag per dialogue?

I would say so, but the author and editor of the book I am reading apparently have a different idea. For three sentences of dialogue, they figure that three separate dialogue tags of “he said” are in order. It still baffles me as to why someone would need three dialogue tags for a single paragraph of dialogue. I remember what Kurt Vonnegut said when talking about excess sentences and think that it should apply to dialogue tags, too: "Never include a sentence which does not either remark on character or advance the action." (I have been trying to use this line of thinking while rewriting my novel and it seems to work.)

After cases like this, I wonder if I would have noticed three dialogue tags for one set of dialogue three years ago.

Everything happens for a reason... right?

I hate when you get yourself set on something happening and then it doesn't. Unfortunately, that's what today's been like.

Even though I got into a dance conservatory, I won't be going until Fall 2011. In the meantime, I've been taking classes at my local SUNY college. Only problem is, I'm considered a continuing education student, so I have to register last. I've taken three other classes, and it's never been much of a problem, registering late, that is. I've managed to get into each class I wanted. But there's a first for everything.

I was planning on signing up for advanced writing, being as I already took COMP 100 and composition classes transfer perfectly. There were about twenty spots open for COMP 200, so I figured I was good. Most people hate writing, don't they? So how many people are going to take advanced composition, anyway?

Apparently a lot. I never realized how many English majors there were at this college.

So I e-mailed the professor of the class I want to take. Still waiting for his reply, but I don't want to spend the next five months doing nothing--and not many classes will transfer and I don't want to take too many because it's best to take them at the university I'll be attending.

Things like this really mess up my writing. I can't concentrate and keep hitting the "send/receive" button on my e-mail. But I'm a fan of thinking, Everything happens for a reason. Funnily enough, an author whose page I've "liked"  on facebook (Neal Donald Walsch) posted one of his quotes today that reminded me of this.  And when I think about it, it makes me less angry/annoyed/upset, because it's one of those things that I find totally and completely true. 

I'm beginning to think that things actually do happen for a reason. (Okay, "beginning" is wrong. I know they do.) I mean, when stuff goes wrong if you try to figure out what the reason might be, I've found that it makes whatever has gone wrong seem less dramatic, less horrible, less "this isn't fair!"

So today when COMP 200 was closed, I kept trying to think of a reason why. The answer came a few hours later when my mom found another class that I could take (because I'd be completely bored out of my mind waiting to go to college in the fall. Writing novels is good, but there's only so many hours in a day that I can force my mind to concentrate before it decides not to listen). I don't know if this class will transfer, but I've already figured out that if I get a creative writing minor as I want, I'll be over the required credits by about two classes. And what better class to help me reach my goals of publishing than a course on editing and publishing. I mean seriously? In the class description, it even mentions a query letter!

So now I'm trying to decide if I even want to take COMP 200 if the professor let's me in, or do I just go for the publishing and editing class. I keep thinking that it would help my writing a whole lot if I learned about publishing, while COMP 200 is just more essay-writing. Yay for decisions that I have until tomorrow afternoon to make. (<--sarcasm.)

But to end on a positive note, this is the quote by Neale Donald Walsch: “Nothing can happen, nothing can occur in your life which is not a precisely perfect opportunity for you to heal something, create something, or experience something that you wish to heal, create, or experience in order to be Who You Really Are.”