Question: Should You Rewrite Every Trunk Novel?

My friend Joe and I were talking about rewriting old trunk novels. He's in the middle of redoing several books he's already finished, and me...well, you know me. I've done several rewrites with various results.

It got me thinking. There's trunk novels I've written that I still love, despite how broken they are. Every book really does teach you something, and if I didn't love something about it, I wouldn't have written it in the first place. I look back on them fondly, but realize that no amount of revision would save those books. If I ever wanted to unearth the premises and characters, I would have to start from scratch.

But should you?

Is it really necessary to rewrite every good idea you've ever had? A certain amount of reusing old ideas is going to happen no matter what, so parts of those books will live on. But maybe at the end of the day, it's necessary to let go of an idea, a setting, a group of characters, no matter how awesome they are, and move on.

I don't think I'm going to redo every book I've ever written. Sometimes you just have to put them in a trunk and call them done. It's sort of freeing, when you let it go like that.

What do you think? Would you go back and redo every good idea you have, or just let them be training wheels?

Reasons to Rewrite

Today we're going to talk about rewriting. I'm in the middle of a rewrite, and was talking to two of my friends about rewriting, so it seems like a good subject to bring up. 

Today specifically we're going to talk about why you would want to rewrite a book. 

To be clear, when I talk about rewriting in this context, I mean rewriting the entire book from scratch. When you're revising a book and you rewrite three chapters, that's of course still rewriting, but there's a big difference between a few chapters and an entire book. The sense of self loathing, for example, is much higher.

The most common reasons (that I am aware of) to rewrite a novel is because a) you're redoing a book you've already written, but it's been a long time since you wrote said book and your skills have, hopefully, improved, or b) you're redoing a premise, and substantial parts are going to change. Parts such as a point of view character, genre of the novel, and/or voice.

There might be other reasons, but at the moment I can't think of any. Feel free to suggest reasons in the comment section. 

The important thing is to make sure you actually need to start over, and you're not just procrastinating editing your completed book. Rewriting is hard; really hard. You feel like a failure for getting it wrong the first time, no matter how many times you tell yourself this is not true. You despair, knowing you have write a book all over again. The newness is gone. All you have is the stubborn sense that you know how to make this book better, and you're going to do it, even if it means starting from square one.

Here's the secret. You're not actually starting over. Even if you've completely changed the premise, characters, and setting, you still have the experience of a full draft dedicated to explore these ideas under your belt. It makes a difference that's hard to describe. There's slightly less flailing about. 

But this is a last ditch effort. Your first job is to make all the changes needing to be made and make sure it can't be accomplished with a serious edit. This is a judgment call, of course, but most of the time no matter how broke the book feels, it's nothing a good edit won't fix.  

After a Google search, I found exactly one helpful post on rewriting by Justine Larbalestier. 

What do you think? Have you ever rewritten a book before? Why or why not?

A Redesign!

This isn't the original design I was going for, but I couldn't make that template do my bidding. So in the meantime, I'm using Blogger's template options and having some fun.

What do you guys think? I was thinking about something that looks really clean, but I couldn't find anything to suit my tastes in the Blogger templates.

I'm working on my website, which will eventually be connected to my blog, but until then, this is what you get. :D

Birth of a Novel: The (Not) Birthday Edition

Last Thursday I was going to write a Birth of a Novel post, and call it the birthday edition. Because January third is my birthday, naturally.

But, life had other plans, and it's a week later. The baby and the husband were both sick, and there was one night where the baby didn't sleep at all. We're talking crying out in his sleep from ten until two when I got him up, to being awake from two until five when he passed out from exhaustion.

Then he woke up at eight in the morning.

Yes. I was miserable. The very limits of my patience were tested and exceeded. Parenting: not for the weak of heart. 

I got him to go back to sleep until eleven, and I spent the day on the couch staring at the TV, counting down to nap time. 

Couple this with being very stuck on my book, and I don't have a lot of progress to report on my word count. I did sit down yesterday, after sleeping great for the last two nights, and hammer out some brainstorming.

See, the thing is, the book has veered wildly off course. I have ideas of characters and plot threads to put into the book, but they're not there yet. Things are very different, and I am having a hard time building up to the climax when the beginning and the middle of the book don't really match up. 

I read this post by Laini Taylor today that made me feel much better. Most of my panic is because I don't know what happens next. It makes me very comfortable. The book feels like it's coming apart at the seams and I have no idea what to build towards.

I have to remember that a lot of writing comes from faith. You have to believe in yourself; in your ability to spin something out of nothing. I made everything up--all the characters, the plot events, the setting. All of it. It came from my brain.

Sometimes, you have to trust your brain to come up with stuff later. You might not have the answer right away, and that's scary. But that's okay. The answer will come.

I'm not sitting and waiting for inspiration. Yesterday's brainstorming session was very productive, so today I am going to try and re-outline the rest of the book. 

If you build it, they will come.

So remember. Trust your brain.

How about you? How's the book coming along? What about the rest of your plans?

Milestones and Setbacks of 2012, Goals for 2013

I'm going to go ahead and say that one of the biggest milestones of 2012 is that the Mayan Apocalypse didn't happen. As someone who has intricately thought through what it would be like in any apocalypse scenario, I can say most of us wouldn't do well. Not well at all. 

It's funny because it's true.

 Aside from that, it's been a very eventful year. Kameron Hurley has an awesome post where she talks about things she wanted to get done this year, and where she succeeded and failed.

Inspired to do the same, I present to you this post.

Milestones, Events, Accomplishments:

*Gave birth to my son
*Did not die of sleep deprivation (yet)
*Managed to not smother my husband in his sleep (placed on list at husband's request)
*Quit job to stay home with my son
*Started rewriting my book, Zombie Road Trip
*Moved into a bigger house
*Bought new computer 
*Organized most of music library and figured out how to fix the messed up songs that WMA messed up
*Went to Dragon*Con and got to spend time with Rena
*Started Pinterest boards to help mind map book ideas. You can see them here. 
*Made new friends via Twitter, Internet stalking, etc
*Read lots of book on the craft of writing, and regular fiction

Set Backs:

*Did not finish rewrite of Zombie Road Trip (I could have pushed through and wrote the last 15K(?) before the New Year, but I needed to stop and brainstorm the last act)
*Neglected this blog something fierce. Sitting at under 80 followers for a long time.
*Did not get website up and running 
*Certain family relationships have deteriorated with no fix for the foreseeable future
*Still beta reading too slow
*House work and other Real Life Stuff piles up to near breaking point, so I manically clean/work on things/run errands
*Barely exercising
*Not reading as much as I would like
*Still not cooking as much as I want to

Goals:

*Finish writing Zombie Road Trip before the end of January
*Edit the pants off Zombie Road Trip
*Query Zombie Road Trip
*Get website attached to blog soon
*Do more active things with blog--contests, give aways, guest posts etc
*Learn how to manage time better for everything--writing, life, friends and family
*Exercise regularly
*Attend James Scott Bell's Next Level fiction writing seminar
*Attend RWA that's being held in Atlanta next year (2013)
*Attend Dragon*Con and spend lots of time with Rena. 
*Make more time for reading
*Attend cousin's wedding in hometown of upstate New York
*Plan meals better, and experiment more
*Maybe start a bento blog? Or post on here about bento adventures?
*Finish ripping giant collection of cds into iTunes and finish music library once and for all

That's my accomplishments and set backs for this year, and my goals for the next.

What are you guys planning for 2013? Feel free to post in the comments section what you're doing!

Ten Months Ago Today I was Screaming

Ten months ago we evicted my son from my uterus with an unscheduled C-section. After being a week and a half late, we induced labor, and after almost two days of labor he came screaming into the world.

He Did. Not. Want. To. Come. Out.

He figured he had a good thing going on in there. Food was delivered via a tube, and he was warm and cozy 24/7.

Ten months later, and he's adjusted to life on the outside well. 

He took seven steps on Thanksgiving and promptly went back to crawling. He would take maybe two steps before getting down on his hands and knees. 

Until we put up the Christmas tree. It was a great motivation. He wouldn't come to Daddy. He wouldn't come to Mommy. But the coffee table ends about two feet from the Christmas tree, so he would hold his hands out Frankenstein-style and walk towards the tree.

Now he pretty much walks around every where, heaven help us. 

He's eating real people food. You go from Stage One food that's pureed single foods in small plastic containers to Stage Two food that's bigger containers and more mixtures, to Stage Three. Which has about five options (two of which involve marinara), a few chunks in the food, and is in a large jar.

You're basically thrown off a cliff after that. He has hardly any teeth, so most adult food is too tough for him. Gerber has these toddler meals, but they're expensive and designed for fork and spoon eating, so most of the meals aren't finger friendly (think mashed potatoes and beef, beef with noodles in a sauce). I've taken to just baking some boneless, skinless chicken breasts and cutting that up into really small pieces, because Connor has decided he's DONE with baby food.

He loves the puffs though. Gerber makes these cereal puffs that come in a variety of flavors, and this kid is a puff-aholic. I can stuff him full of dinner, and he'll still eat the puffs I keep out on the table for him the minute his feet hit the floor. 

He has four teeth already, his two front teeth, and the two bottom. His canine has a suspicious lump under it, so I have a feeling that might be making an appearance soon. I had all my teeth by the time I was two, so he might get his teeth early too.

He's sleeping through the night, mostly. He's gone back to waking up once or twice a night the last two weeks, but before that there was a three week stretch where he slept straight through the night. The light at the end of the Sleep is for the Weak Tunnel is getting closer. I can almost feel it.  He takes a two hour nap during the day, but if he takes a nap later on in the evening he won't go to bed until ten. He goes to bed at 8:30 as it is.

I thought kids were supposed to get tired early, but not this one. He's a night owl like both his parents, so I guess he comes by it honestly. I've tried putting him to bed earlier, but he just wakes up two hours later like he's had a nap, and then he's up until ungodly hours of the night. The good news is this means he sleeps in a bit. Most kids his age are getting up around 6 or 7, but he sleeps until 8 or 9 most days.    

He says Da-da, Ma-ma, and Ba-ba and knows what they mean. He's smart. He watched me pull some puffs out of his diaper bag, and the next day he was rooting around in the diaper bag and went straight for the puffs.

In short, we're in a lot of trouble.

I hope you're all having a happy holiday! What are your plans for the holidays?

Holidays, Writings, and Apocalypses

As I write this, I am holed up in a bunker hoping to escape detection from our machine overlords...

Okay, not really. I couldn't resist the urge to make a plug about the failed apocalypse. From someone who is writing about the zombie apocalypse, it would be irresponsible of me to NOT plug the apocalypse. Not that I was actually hoping the world would go down in flames. No, seriously. I know I write about apocalypses a lot but it doesn't mean I'm super crazy...

*awkward silence*

Anyway...

The book is coming along, but I'm slogging through. It feels like work, and that every word I type is drivel, but I am advancing ever onward to the end of the book anyway. I just hit 77K, and I should be almost done. It's hard to tell, since the beginning in no way shape or form matches the middle of the book.

When the book is a slog like this, when you're Internal Editor screams at you that the book is wrecked, you're doomed, and you should start over now, all you can do is take it word by word. Paragraph by paragraph. Scene by scene. 

I literally cannot remember how I finished the other books. I've written five full length books, and I know each time I hit this place, that everything is coming undone and it's too wrecked to continue and I should just give up. Start over.

I've listened to that voice before, for various reasons. I'm not saying NEVER listen to that voice, but there comes a time when you have to just finish the book and see what you have. You can't hit a moving a target (technically, if you're a good shot, you CAN, but for the purposes of this metaphor, you CAN'T) and you can't edit an incomplete book.

I know I've moved past this horrible, sucky feeling at least five times (more, actually, because I have more books that are technically finished, but I don't count for various reasons), but I can't remember how. It's weird. They say you forget the pain of labor, otherwise women would only ever have one kid, but that is so not true. I remember every hour of that 30+ labor, but I can't really remember moving from suck to finished. 

So I focus on my writing for today. I focus on the scene I am currently in, and what might happen directly afterwards. So far, it's working. I don't think I'll be finished writing before the New Year, which was my goal, but I am super close, so maybe in time for my birthday (January 3rd). 

In holiday news, Christmas is almost here and we're so excited. It's Connor's first Christmas, and he turns ten months old the day before Christmas. He already got to open his presents from my in laws because they've going to be out of town. He got some fun baby activity centers and a walker he's been driving around the living room for the past hour.  

My in laws got my husband and I a GRILL! I know, right??? We've wanted a grill so bad, but living in an apartment we were never allowed to have one. Something about a fire hazard or something.

I know I'll be doing a lot of grilling in the week to come, and not just my characters! Zing!
Wait, come on guys, that was funny...

So as the year comes to a close, what are your holiday plans?