J. Libby's Blog - Posts Tagged "writing"

NaNoWriMo is kicking my ass. It kicks my ass every year. And every year I wonder why I bother because, really, who likes to fail. Then the following year come November 1st the madness starts all over again.

When will I learn? I’m a writer. I’m pretty sure that I never will.

It’s a love/hate relationship. Like P!nk sang: “At the same time I wanna hug you, I wanna wrap my hands around your neck.”

In case you’re wondering… not following that thread … NaNoWriMo is short for National Novel Writing Month. It happens every year. Millions of people around the world hunker down over their computers and laptops, favorite beverage (alcoholic and otherwise) of choice at their elbows, and endeavor to write a 50,000 word novel between November 1 and November 30. It’s a thing that I never complete.

This year, flush with the compeletion of my first ever e-pub, All This and Love (now available at most major e-retailers), I felt in my SOUL that I could finish it. It was in the bag, baby! No problemo. 21 days later of course, reality sets in and the 9,000 words that I completed in the first week are looking pretty far away from the 50K its supposed to be. LOL! I am so easily distracted. With things like finding a new job, surprise family visits, Wine and Food Tastings with Clare!Bear, Candy Crush Saga and Pet Rescue saga, not to mention all the awesome hair and travel vids on YouTube.

Whatever…

It’s discipline. It’s an issue. I get that. The problem might be that I did just finish the self-pub and rolled into prep for NaNoWriMo two weeks afterwards. A little burned out? Maybe. Totes possible.But! We haven’t thrown in the towel yet! My fave cuzzo has greenlit a temporary squat at her place to get some writing done. I might have to roll over this weekend. She has food. She has wine. She’s great company! While I write, of course. Of course!

How you doing? How’s your writing project going? Are you participating? Jetting towards the finish line? Bringing up the rear? Scratching your head and wondering what the heck? Fill me in. What’s the what?

There's a stigma attached to self-publishing. Some people assume inferior quality. That doesn't have to be true. I've read a few stellar pieces. And if my word just doesn't do it for you, check out this Huffington Post article. Although the novels that were published weren't the things these authors are BEST known for, it's still an example of how starting small and pushing forward can lead to bigger and better things. In the end, practice your craft.

Publishing All This and Love was a butt load of work. From writing the shorts to formatting the manuscript and uploading to Smashwords and Amazon, it was a job! And I’d do it all over again. In fact, I plan to. My first project is a full length novel set in the universe from the Briar short "this, too, like water and memory". I’ve had the idea for the book for a while, but navigating the details of the story and cracking Briar, as a character, has been hard going. I couldn’t get my brain wrapped around her and how the story I wanted to tell needed to happen. "this, too, like water and memory" was a way for me to explore the character and it helped alot, but now I’m running into the challenge of writing a much longer piece of fiction.

I’ve been writing short stories for a while and one thing that I have always had trouble with is formatting for longer stories. Writing tips and tricks are a dime a dozen around the Interwebz, but GOOD writing tips and tricks are rarer than a hippograph.

Well, maybe I should take that back.

Read the rest on Tumblr.

I finally cracked my laptop open and I have all of these unfinished pieces that I don’t even remember starting:

An inter-steller Sleeping Beauty story that I just barely recall. There’s a circus and a witch, and Sleeping Beauty has become a sideshow attraction.
She had dreamt the world into near ruin, once upon a time. That is why the man has come.

Impossibly, the start of what I remember was going to be a romance novel:
Counting stars and mistakes from last year and the year before that, and five years past makes Kat want to cry. Her eyes burn, but she hates crying. She’s not a pretty crier. She is queen of the ugly face cry, so she steals herself, buries her nose into the fuzzy warmth of a heavy blanket and breathes deeply. In and out and in again. Controlled, deep, and she shakes her head to clear her eyes and the melancholy fog in her brain. Leaning her head back against the chair she goes back to counting stars, the streak of the Quarantid meteor shower, determined to enjoy it because she called out Friday just for the opportunity. And now she’s sitting here, the reluctant and sleeping Lilla at her side, staring at the sky.

A million and one bits and pieces, starts and finishes to the Briar story …
Briar dreams of Mary Angel with cellophane wings, her skeletal beetle arms and bent, too long fingers reaching and gathering. Curled beneath her wings, crouched low and hunched over, she spins silk from the regurgitated blood and viscera scooped from the body stretched at her feet.

Something about werewolves. Clay’s story; it started with a birth.
He would swear, later, after the shock wore off, that she growled. A low animal sound deep in her throat right before she lunged up off the ground, her mouth wide, and snapped at his face. Her teeth clacked together hard as he jerked back. All he recalls is an impression of teeth, elongated canine, and something shifting beneath her skin, something wrong in the bones of her face.

The boy jumped back hard, slamming into the shelves behind him, a rain of bows and ribbons falling around him in a flurry of color. The woman was heavy and slow with her pregnancy and just like that she was back on floor.


*sigh* What to do?! OMG … what to do …

Now available for free at all major e-book retailers! All This and Love, available from Amazon, Barnes & Nobles, Kobo, iTunes Store, and Smashwords!

Fall, I've discovered, is the beginning of writing season for me. If such a thing can exist. Imagine. Seasons of writing. It's a pattern, the burst and then the lull. The somnambulant haze of the summer months when all I really want to do is play in the sun. I run wild in bare feet and short skirts, with the sun on my legs and my shoulders. The citrus-vanilla scent of sunscreen and the tender sting of burnt skin. That's what I know. Car windows down, no AC, driving the freeway and blasting songs about escape and being in love. Feet still bare, dusty now from the peddles and the brief moments when I step out of the car and I've forgotten my shoes in the back seat.

In the summer, I drink icy beer and tangy margaritas, chilled wine with cheese and honey and mustard. I sit on patios and beneath awnings and watch the kids flirt and dip around each other. I wear spaghetti straps and flavored lip gloss so that my kisses will taste like grapefruit or cupcakes. Sometimes my dress has no straps at all and I am content with the smear of chapstick on my lips.

Fall is when I want to write. When it starts getting cool outside and the days are shorter. The long nights make me yearn for stories and characters and bridges from beginnings to endings. I want good stories and to sleep in and to stay up late. Luckily for me, Fall includes November and November is a writer's month. NaNoWriMo for 30 days and the IWRY Fic Marathon. And then there's Yuletide in December and the months and months of Winter and Spring. Months that are perfect for bundling up and snuggling down and reading. Writing, too, because one cannot happen without inevitably leading to the other.

I'm drafting. NaNoWriMO and IWRY. And maybe something special for Christmas. Maybe. There's so much possibility. It's October, weeks past the Equinox. Officially, the sun and moon say, it is Fall.

85K words in. I'm challenged and surprised. I like the Briar book better than I thought I would on the days when I don't hate it for being difficult. I love writing and I hate writing, and it fulfills me in a way that a lot of other things don't. I am perpetually amazed that I indulge in such a fucking hard and stressful hobby. How ridiculous ...

The novel is coming together and that makes me anxious and happy all at once. This has been a really long time.

"Maybe I just fight because I don't know where I belong." - Natalia Kills, 'Devil's Don't Fly'