One Hot Mess

I just sent the edits for A Fear Unnatural back to the author! Yay! Or at least, yay if he's happy about them... It was a very good book, but it needed lots of fine-tuning, so I hope he doesn't hate me... Anyway, First editing assignment complete. Huzzahs!

In other news, I went to a local wildlife park this morning with Pip as a pre-birthday treat for her. We got there very early, so a lot of the animals were actually still dozing, but we got to see tigers and meerkats, and adorable otters! They sneezed! It terrified Pip. I'm not sure why. Then we headed into Cambridge for brunch and shopping and I managed to achieve the one thing I've been determined to do all summer: buy a maxi dress. I found a gorgeous blue one on sale, so I snapped it up. Now, obviously, it's pouring with rain, but the point is I found the dress, dammit.

I also finished reading this:



I love this story, and it actually suits the graphic novel format really well. I have it on audiobook too, so I might listen to it tomorrow and see how they all compare. I'm slacking off for the rest of today because my beloved chaostheory  is on her way over, possibly for more Lovecraft-related activities, but there is still some stuff I want to get done before the week is over, so let's have a list!

1. Edits for DARK HUNT.
2. Finish a short story about Ayla and Shannon, for DARK HUNT promotional purposes
3. Sort out my books and take a load to charity (to make room for all the new books I want)
4. Get back to work on Night Breed
5. Start the next freelance editing job

Will I achieve any of these things? Stay tuned for my next adventure...

I finally managed to book a week off work! Come on, 8th August. *waits*

I was just checking over my writing to-do list ahead of this and came to the following conclusions based on the last time I updated the do-to list:

 

( Stuff! And things! )

So my hope for the week off is that I'll have cleared enough of the editing stuff to be able to just write and watch copious amounts of Come Dine With Me. I'm making a start on the critiquing this Sunday (we have to go to a wedding tomorrow. I know!), and I'm trying to avoid social engagements for the next couple of weeks anyway because frankly, I think I've seen enough people this summer already. Yay! Pure, unadulterated writing time is just a few weeks away!

I'm going to be working as an editor for Damnation Books. Huzzahs! More paying writing work! More excuses not to leave the house! One small step closer to that ultimate dream: quitting the day job *_*

Obviously that's a long way off. But if I can juggle the editing and writing well enough, I'd like to take on more editing down the line, once I have the experience, and look at ways of making that a bigger chunk of my income. If I can get to a part-time day-job stage, I'll be very happy. This has helped solidified my decision to not go full-time indie as a writer. That would be too much on top of everything else, I think. So for the time being my only self-published projects are going to be the Vargulf Trilogy and the occasional short story.

Anyway! I hope this is the start of something very cool ^_^

So, I split my weekend evenly between burlesque and writing, which seems to be a fair way of going through life. Salon Rouge was on Saturday night, so everyone got dolled up in their finest corsety wear (except the men, who wore suits instead) and hit the cocktail bar (I was restrained - one French Martini and two Fruit Pastels). Lots of photos were taken, but I could only find one of myself that I liked, so:


It was awesome fun! There was clown burlesque, which I'm not entirely sure I approve of, (where did the balloon go?!) but it was still fun. I'm classing it as part of my birthday celebrations, since why the hell not? I was tempted to keep the dress on all week to signal to the world that the birthday celebrations are a-happening, but then I realised I couldn't go to work like that. Just one more reason I need a new job!

 

Also in honour of my birthday, I'm going blonde again. I know! Kate Johnson will totally think I'm copying her. But I've decided, as much as I like the red hair, it's too much effort in terms of upkeep. When my roots come through, they're pure white so I look like a skunk, and who wants that? With blonde hair, the roots don't show as much, so I won't need to spend quite as much time and money redying my hair. This will also lead to a bathroom that isn't covered in streaks of hair dye, one hopes.

Anyway, on Sunday, once the cocktails had worn off and I'd consumed nachos, I hit Wild again to carry on with those final tweaks. I was amused to discover at the end of the day that, having cut the manuscript down from almost 90k to 69k over the past few months, I added 5k back in yesterday. Editing - I'm doing it wrong? I'm nearly done with the tweaking - just need to add a couple of new scenes and probably two new chapters, so I'm hopefully that pretty soon this beast will be out on submission. I wanted to write more than I did yesterday, but of course my arm started giving me problems, so I had to quit a lot earlier than I planned. But no matter! The end is nigh!

 

 I finished Wild. Again. Now off to rock slowly back and forth in the corner, kthnxbai.

I can honestly say that I've never worked as hard on anything in my life as I have on Wild. Version 4 is still kicking my arse, but I'm in a better position now than I was last week, when I was just about ready to throw my entire laptop away and never write again. Wisely, instead of doing that, I emailed my (very patient) agent, confessed I was having a crisis of confidence and threw out some crazy suggestions for getting myself back on track.

She approved my crazy suggestions, and now I am back on track. Huzzahs! Just goes to show that most of the time, you probably already know what your novel needs. You just need to step away and look at it objectively, instead of dashing in, flailing your arms, screaming and hoping for the best.

I gave myself Friday and Saturday off because my arm was playing up, but then on Sunday I got cracking again. I was up til 10.30 last night working away, and went to bed finally feeling like I'd made some progress with the damn novel. It's easy to feel overwhelmed - I've cut nearly 20k from Wild since I started this particularl redraft, and written a lot more fresh material than I originally thought I'd have to, and I definitely came down with a case of The Fear last week.

But I overcame that and now the end is in sight. The new plot elements are firmly entrenched, and the older elements that I'm keeping in are slotting back into place slowly but surely. My one lingering fear is that I've reintroduced these older elements too late in the story, but never mind. I'm determined to keep ploughing on until it's done now, if only so I don't have to look at it anymore.

First - we told my parents and family over the weekend, so now it's official - Kyle and I are engaged! ^_^ We just need to find a way to involve Holly in the wedding, and all is well. Can spaniels be bridesmaids?

Anyway. I cut almost 10k out of Wild over the weekend. Goddamn, that was traumatic. I lost so much material that I thought was blistering, well-written stuff (I say "lost," it's actually just in the Outtake file, which is now over 30k itself). But the upshot of that massive deletation frenzy is a pacier, more streamlined plot, refocused and revitalized, and with more ghouls masquerading as homeless people.

See, my Ex Agent thought Wild was too simple, so I added in a couple of subplots to complicate matters. Problem is, in retrospect, I can see that this was just panicked plotting on my part, and it made the whole book into the unruly mess it is today. By eliminating a big, big chunk of extraneous plot, I've been left with the bare bones of the very first draft. Now that I'm adding (carefully!) to that a few new ideas, the whole thing is started to just feel better. It's like I can see the shape of the novel in my head, and it is now an aesthetically pleasing Greek amphora, instead of a mind-melting Lovecraftian Thing On The Doorstep. What?

There's still a lot of hard work to do, and I am behind the schedule I set for myself (I blame day-job stress entirely), especially now I'm working on the edits for SILVER KISS too. But I feel pretty chipper because I know the hard work is paying off. Phew!