Welcome back to another edition of What I’m Working On. Mostly guaranteed to come out sometime in the first half of every month, I talk about what writing projects I’m doing, editing steps, behind-the-scenes business parts of said writing, and probably whine about something. You have been warned.
So I guess the big news is that the first novel is out! SIren’s Song released on January 5th, which essentially made me an emotional wreck. It’s funny, because I was certain I wouldn’t be that way. Authors are basically my social media heroes (yes, I realize this makes me a huge dork) so over the years I’ve seen an untold number of release-day nerves chronicled online. Ergo, I thought I was well-prepared to be calm about the whole thing. But it turns out, when you put your heart and soul out into the world, reason goes out the window. But the good news is, it’s out there, release week is past, and my brain has settled back into the rhythm of work.
Sort of.
Let me digress, for a moment, to a short tale of my college years. Yes, I promise it has something to do with work. I worked 35 hours/week in college while taking a full course load, which meant I had very little free time. I had a tendency to spend that free time on myself and not worry about things like essays (I was a dual English Lit/Philosophy major so everything was essays) until the night before they had to be done. (If any of my college professors are reading this now, I apologize. Know that if I took more than one class from you, you were an excellent professor and I didn’t deserve you!)
I tried to start the essays earlier. I really did. But it was always the night before. If you’re picturing me furiously typing away at my computer for twelve hours straight leading up to the class period in which the essay was due, you would be . . . half right. The night before usually went something like this: my best friend and I headed to the gas station, where we loaded up on Red Bull and other forms of sugar, before heading to the campus library where we were certain we would be inspired to diligently work by the sheer volume of knowledge around us. An hour was usually spent scouring the various floors until one of the private study rooms could be nabbed. A half hour was spent settling into the space. It was usually 7 or 8 pm by this point. We then proceeded to spend the hours until the library closed (I think that was at 1am or 2? I can’t remember now.) . . . not working.
A few paragraphs would be written, for sure. The general idea of the essay would coalesce in my brain, in between eating entire packages of Spree and FunDip (God, I’m aging myself, aren’t I?) and talking about whatever it was we talked about that clearly deserved precedence over our impending intellectual deadlines. When the library closed we would bemoan the unfinished states of our essays and quickly decamp to one of two all-night establishments in our town, WaffleHouse, where we were certain the hash browns and over-boiled hot coffee would inspire us. I usually ended up super-sleepy about half an hour in, and my best friend would take pity on me and we would head home.
It was now approximately 3 to 4 in the morning, depending on the given night. My essay was due between 8 and 10, depending on the class. I would decide the thing to do was sleep. Without aid of an alarm, it was a given that I would wake at 5am in absolute sheer terror, at which point the adrenaline coursing through my body would accomplish what a metric ton of sugar and caffeine did not. I would tear through my essay in approximately one to two hours. Let me reassure you, lest you think this approach didn’t work, I graduated with a 3.9 GPA. It wasn’t a 4.0 because a particularly snobbish English professor who didn’t like having a freshman in her class told me I didn’t know how to use the word lest, so I inserted it into this paragraph out of sheer spite. Did I use it right? You decide.
Okay, you say, we charitably read along while you rambled about your misspent youth, what does it have to do with settling back into the rhythm of work, last referenced quite some time ago? Mostly, that I balk at deadlines, even self-imposed ones, and am easily distracted. The easier something is and the better it’s going, the more I decide it’s going so well that I can ignore it.
Which means I’ve written 48k on Valkyrie’s Call, was scheduled to finish it by the end of January and . . . promptly allowed myself to be distracted by The New Shiny Idea. It’s a secret, I can’t talk about it, but I now have over 10k of it written, along with an entire series plot-line. I’ve started switching days between Valkyrie’s Call and New Shiny, and am just trying to write faster to have everything I want. Which is both books.
It helped a little to take a short break on VC, too. I’d hit a bit of a block, because I was pretty damn certain Random and Valkyrie weren’t going to seal the deal, so to speak, until a particular scene, but they kept telling me it was going to happen sooner, and I didn’t want to listen. In the end, I was right (rarely happens), but the space gave me time to figure out the emotional shit that was happening between them that I needed to get just right.
Other than that, I desperately need to do a reread/brush-up edit on the second Guardian book, Shadows, which is due to the editor at the beginning of February (checks calendar, shudders). That, my friends, is a perfect night-before-the-essay is due scenario. Unfortunately, if I drank a giant Red Bull and ate a mountain of candy now, I’d probably die.
And that, more or less, is What I’m Working On.