Thank You!

Invitation

by Shel Silverstien

If you are a dreamer, come in,
If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar,
A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer...
If you're a pretender, come sit by my fire
For we have some fla-golden tales to spin.
Come in!
come in!

That poem is one of my absolute favorites, and the one that really made me decide I wanted to be a writer. Yes, I have been dreaming of this since kindergarten. I may have made up a bunch of fake jobs because I was afraid of telling anyone that I really wanted to write, but this has always been it. For some reason that I'll never understand, a parent would rather hear that their daughter dreamed of stripping for a living than becoming a writer. This is a fact. Test it out. I'm posting this today because I believe I am finally - yes, finally! - able to begin drafting my novel. I'm going to go about this fast, which is how I  work best, and then work out every single one of the kinks in the rewrite. By then I'll need some beta readers, but I've seriously got to stop putting the cart before the horse. My goal is 500-1,000 words a day, and so far I think I've clocked in at 406. It's still not enough for me, but I have to be realistic. There's no way anyone can sit down and have half of it done one night and the other half the next, which would fly just fine with me. Plus, it's a good thing to isolate yourself and  your story. No worrying about not getting it done or how your mother probably cries herself to sleep at night because  you're not going to medical school right now, no sir. Sit that story right down in a chair across from you and say, "Okay, shoot. I'm listening." Then write down what is says with your little pen, there. God, I'm crazy. I'd like to conclude this post by thanking each and every one of my readers from the bottom of my heart. This blog wouldn't amount to a pile of dog crap if it weren't for you, and I say that as elegantly as possible. So many writers get caught up in their work and their own words that they forget what they would be if it weren't for the people reading---which is nothing. To this day I am a blogger only because you are reading this post, and I want to thank you so much. Not a lot of blogs manage to make it even this far, and it's all because of you that mine has. So what do you say? Help the blog go a little further? I'm in if you are! :D

Hindrance, Thy Name is Procrastination.

Image by Nemo's great uncle via FlickrWhat should I be doing?

Working on the long, hyper detailed version of my outline.

What am I actually doing?

Typing a blog post, eating fried rice, and mindlessly browsing the Kindle Store. Am I proud of myself? No, but I'm definitely not ashamed, even though I should be.

Yep. Should be.

I want to read Lolita, but I'm afraid it will be one of those classic books that turns out to be amazing and incredibly boring at the same time. That was how the 1962 film struck me, anyway: I just couldn't stop watching because I was so interested, but I'll be skinned and left out in the sun to dry if it didn't drag on forever! I know that you can't judge a book by it's movie, so I think I might just give it a shot.

I downloaded a sample on my Kindle to see how I liked it. I was immediately stricken with the desire to both slap Humbert Humbert in the face and crane my neck and stare at him as if he were the eighth wonder of the world. I've been told that this feeling will persist for most of the novel.

 This is very different from how the movie made me feel about him...mostly, I would assume, because they changed quite a bit about Lolita to redeem the tale a bit.

It's almost like looking at a train wreck. You just can't stop, and a tiny, sordid part of you actually wants to see more.

It makes me want to rip my hair out, but it's completely worth it.

Image by John-Morgan via FlickrSo my novel is finally underway...sort of.

 I'm trying to have the first draft done in three months. I really feel like I have a chance of finishing this one seeing as its more than just a jumbled mess of ideas, so quite a bit of energy is going into the developing and outlining stages. In fact, I spent four hours today on character development alone. Granted, I did stare blankly at my writing journal for some of that time...but it's still something, right? It truly is amazing how long it can take just to decently fill out a bio sheet for one measly little person.


The main character is a fourteen year old Jewish girl living in Brooklyn, though not much of the story is set in the city. She gets taken into a world that the inhabitants refer to as "The Hidden World" by a man known as  "the retriever."

As  you can probably guess, it all goes down hill from there.

It's a magical little world full of all sorts of schmaltzy fairy tale elements and all that jazz, but its sinister secret is that every few years it must take a human sacrifice from our world to ensure that it survives. It's a bit dark, and I don't know how happy the ending is going to be, but I'm thinking that it has the potential to be a pretty good work. I honestly can't wait to get started on outlining the actual novel. This may even extend into a series if I can make enough content.