I’m coming home on my back, kissing me, your lips painted black.

Much has changed since my last post on this page, both in writing and otherwise.  What I did not realize back in the shining days of that first draft was that I did not have a firm grasp of what makes a solid, proper novel.  I have studied, and rewritten, producing another first draft that still doesn’t quite cut it.  I am on the sixth rendition of such endeavors, with two other completed novel manuscripts sitting as skeletons in the closet.

I am pursuing another career in addition to writing, and thank goodness that I have the opportunity for that.  It is my hope that my fiction writing can provide supplemental income in addition to my salary.  I hate it that the pursuits of my life have become about money instead of the alleviation of human suffering.  As one might guess, I have no choice in the matter.

Enough of worries and complaints.  I have joined a professional writing group run by published authors.  I have applied to summer writing workshops, and drained my bank account to attend my first major writer’s conference.  I have found as of two weeks ago a beta reader who tears apart my work and reveals its weaknesses.  I am reading novels objectively and recommended writing guides.  I am still writing, and I hope that will result in a real story one of these days.  God Bless me and keep me until I manage it.

Well it shows in every line that’s on your face. Stay with me tonight.

The week before last I finished what editing I could think of to do and sent it to a friend to read it over for me.  It still feels pretty scattered at this point, like the story is still only just barely there, though by far more present than it was in the first draft!  I worry that I don’t have enough there for the story to take shape, despite the fact that this draft is just below 68,000 words, and that’s with leaving out an extra 15,000 or so of a scene that I was on the fence as to whether to include.

I was quite happy to get in off the waiting list for a revision workshop online by a published author who is connected with NaNoWriMo.  Though money is tight right now, I think it is a wise investment and something I could not get simply from reading articles and asking family and friends for advice.  When I take classes for things I want a fundamental competence, so that any further learning I can easily direct myself and have the skills I need, so I am thinking this workshop will do that for me.

My writing schedule is light this year since I am still in school.  The main focus is the revision of this novel, which I would like to have in professional hands by August.  I would also like to get a short non-fiction piece done that will be at most 10-15,000 words.  I’ll ask a couple of people to read it, but I am not concerned with tweaking it in order to be published, but rather recording the events before time pushes me further away from it and I begin to forget the details.

The only other thing I will be writing this year is the plot I’ll be using for Nano 2010, although I am certain my 50,000 words for Nano will just be a supplement and I will begin writing and planning it in September like I did this year.  The novel I wrote this year was based on a plot revolving around a short story I had written four years ago, and this new novel is much the same, based on a short story of 11,000 words written in  July of 2008.  Both short stories were skeletons of a much larger plot, environment, and cast of characters but at the time I was trying to get the gist of my intentions down so I could keep them separate in my mind from other tales.

I am excited about the novel for this fall, but I am also glad that I have a good several months before I begin writing.  The story in my mind is barely more than the skeleton at this point, and I need to put it in the crock pot and let other details bring out the real flavor of the piece.  The reason Nano went so smoothly for me this year was because I had a massive story in my head, so I never ran out of things to write.  I never had to ask myself, “What else should I write?” but instead “What next should I write?”  I’m sure many writers wish they had the luxury of time like this.  I will update again when I receive the edited draft back from my friend.

Annie are you okay? Will you tell us that you’re okay?

Welcome to anyone who stumbles in here.  I have made this wordpress anonymously in order to talk about my writing life, which I will also be conducting anonymously.  I would like to become a novelist, but I do not want to reveal my identity for my own reasons.  I would like to be able to publish my stories widely and hopefully get a reader base without becoming famous myself.  Of course I only want to be published digitally, and ultimately the goal of all of this is to become such a writer that my stories can captivate other humans.  I do not want to be published otherwise.

Last week I finished (what I will call) my first novel.  It is not the first I have written, but the first which I believe is capable of, after much editing, being published.  I would like to be in with a publishing agent, or what have you, by the end of the year 2010.

Basically the aftershock of having written a novel was quite profound.  I am a student, so when I finished it I had a week’s worth of classes to distract me, but afterwards this weekend I had a minor mental breakdown from self-displacement.  It can’t be healthy, putting your soul over here onto a piece of paper and then reexamining yourself as an empty shell.  Surely all novelists are masochists to some degree.  I have had quite the weekend because of this.

Although now I think I am handling it quite well.  I looked at my printed rough draft today and I was not afraid to resign myself to the editing process.  I will start by outlining my characters, and ironing out those details I lost along the way.  I’ll write more on this later.