Jaded Jennifer

For the last two days, I’ve been working on my next book. I had to write out my character sketches, and do a quick synopsis, then work on outlining my plot points, all before I could start the actual writing.

I didn’t used to do things this way. I was always the “fly by the seat of your pants” type of writer who just sat down and started writing. But I never finished a book that way. My focus with the story was never clear enough so I’d get half the book written, then give up on it. Now I’ve figured out a system that works well for me, with my 3×5 index cards and my notebooks full of outlines.

But see, this is how I work:

I sit on my bed surrounded by stuff. You know, my laptop, two or three notebooks, five or six ripped out pages of stuff that I need to copy over into a notebook, my pink and white box that holds all of my index cards, and of course, the cards themselves, spread out on the comforter around me.

It took me the last two days to get it all written down. Sadly, it’s not like I wrote a lot. A couple of pages in my notebook and one or two sentence plot points on about 30 index cards. But it took me awhile because I’m pretty easily distracted lately.

And now I’m writing. I moved to my chair to write, where I can put my laptop on my lap (where it’s apparently supposed to be as opposed to on the bed in front of me where I have to lean over it and kill my back), I can put my feet up on the bed, and I have all of my paraphernalia on the little wicker shelf next to me. You know, my writing essentials. My notebook, my index cards, my cell phone, my ashtray, my Mountain Dew and my cigarettes.

So I write about 50 words.

Then I get distracted by Must Love Dogs, which is playing on my DVD player and I spend the next 20 minutes or so watching it. I shake myself and get back to my laptop.

And I write about 25 more words.

Then I click on my Mozilla, which is open (with 9 separate tabs, mind you) and minimized. Up pops Facebook, which I refresh just to see what’s going on with people or if anyone has left me any comments. I spot a status that my niece posted saying she got a new chair for when her baby arrives. So I leave a comment asking her what kind of chair, and then I scroll through and read all of the other status updates since I last checked. Then I minimize my Mozilla again and go back to Word.

And I write another 50 or so words.

Then I’m distracted by Diane Lane having slept with Dermot Mulroney’s character even though he’s clearly a player and she should be with John Cusack’s character, who is a bit kooky but that’s no big deal. Kooky is fun sometimes. The excitement on the screen fades so I turn back to my computer.

And this time I had a writing burst….of 100 words.

Then I check to see if my niece responded to my comment because I’m really curious what kind of chair she got. Is it a rocking chair? Or is it a bouncy chair for the baby? Or maybe it’s some neat, new thing that makes parenting easier. You know, something that they didn’t bother coming out with when my kids were babies because I didn’t deserve to have my job made easier for me. I had to do things like bounce one kid in his bouncy seat with my foot while feeding another in the high chair and balancing the third on my head because he was learning to be an acrobat so he could run off and join the circus. But no, still no comment from my niece. So I quickly check my email (which is empty, by the way), then refresh my MySpace (which is completely dead because, duh, nobody uses MySpace anymore) and finally I go back to Word.

Where I write another 50 words.

But then I start to feel like I need something to munch on, even though I’ve already eaten half a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos, two eggs and two pieces of toast, and a slice of banana cream pie with a fresh banana chopped up and sprinkled across it. So I look around and find the box of Fig Newtons that Wren bought for me earlier and I eat a couple of those. Then it’s back to work.

And the food has refreshed me. I manage a whole 200 words.

But then I just have to go back to Facebook and see if my niece has responded yet and oh! Look! There’s one notification. My niece got a glider rocker with an ottoman for a really good price. So I have to leave her a comment warning about fingers or toes near it, which is probably pretty insensitive since she just shut her son’s finger in the door last night and I didn’t think about that when I wrote it so I added that I’m not a fan of rocking chairs or recliners ever since our kitten was killed in one, hoping that by mentioning the tragedy of our cat’s death about four years ago, she’ll disregard the fact that I had in essence pointed out her own guilt in smashing her son’s little finger. Once the comment is posted, I quickly go back to Word before I end up deciding that I should probably go delete it because I don’t want to hurt her feelings.

And I write another 25 words.

But really….I should go delete it, right? I love my niece and lord knows, I’ve done enough emotional and physical damage to my kids that I’ve actually felt guilty about. I’d hate somebody callously bringing up those moments and making me feel more guilty. So I go back to Facebook and delete the comment real quick, hoping that neither her or her sister (who had also commented on that post and would be notified of my comment) had read it yet. Breathing a sigh of relief that my stupid comment wasn’t there for the world to read anymore, I go back to Word.

And I write another 50 words.

But then I get distracted by Diane Lane finally realizing that John Cusack was the right man for her as they awkwardly kiss in the grocery store. And I wonder what kind of face cream Diane Lane uses because she really looks so good for her age. I mean, seriously, she doesn’t look a day over 25 if you disregard the slight bags under her eyes but those could just be because she was up all night sweating with some 18 year old hard body and had to be on the set bright and early in the morning.  Hmmmm…..maybe that’s what keeps her looking so young, huh? But yes, back to my book.

Another 50 words pop up on the page.

But then I realize the movie is over and it’s awful quiet in my bedroom and I just can’t write in a silent room, it’s too distracting so I have to get up and find another movie to put in, which could take me quite awhile except I had the foresight to bring TWO movies up to my bedroom when I got ready to start writing. So I throw Because I Said So in the DVD player and settle back in my chair for some Mandy Moore and Diane Keaton goodness and I smile at the slight coincidence of me choosing two movies that star ladies named Diane, before turning back to Word.

And I write another 75 words.

But the previews on the DVD are showing the movie Knocked Up and I remember that we had that movie at some point because I remember watching it, but I don’t remember seeing it since then and I don’t know what could have happened to it so I send Wren a quick text asking him and, of course, he has no idea but I’m thinking maybe it went to the pawn shop at some point and we never bothered to get it out and I should buy it sometime because it was really a pretty good movie. But, back to writing.

Another 25 words done.

But then the previews are over and I have to find the DVD remote to hit play on the movie and, you know, while I’m already distracted, I should quickly check my Facebook again and just make sure neither of my nieces read my comment before I deleted it, and I’m relieved to see that they didn’t unless their lack of responses is just because they both read it and they’re so appalled that I would say something so mean and they’re currently on the phone with each other wondering why they even bother calling me family since technically I haven’t been with their uncle in over 7 years now.

I shrug off the worry and check my empty email box again and then, while I’m already distracted from writing, I figure I should write a new blog all about my writing process so maybe other people who want to be authors can learn from my super-organized skills and I realize that in the last 2 hours I’ve managed to write about 700 words of my book but in the last 20 minutes I must have written about 1500 words on my blog and why is it so much easier to write a blog than work on  my book?

Hmmm…..you know, maybe none of you should try to learn from my writing techniques actually. Go buy a book about writing or something. Because that way at least you know the person you’re learning from managed to finish and publish at least one book, right?

For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to be a famous author. I’d start writing a book, get a couple of chapters written, and then never go back and finish it. One of my life goals was to actually finish writing a book. Another life goal of mine was to get a book published.In 2007, these goals hit me hard. On April 8, 2007 my brother, at the age of 35, died of a heart attack. He was a great painter, especially when you consider he had very little formal training. He never did anything with it, though. He painted and painted but never sold anything until shortly before he died when he started making 3D wood sculptures and selling them to people. I felt like he didn’t take any real chances to achieve his goals.Then, on November 13, 2007 my dad died of lung cancer. My dad…..where do I even begin to talk about him? We had a terrible relationship when I was growing up. We butted heads all the time. He was an alcoholic and took a lot out on me. But in so many ways, I was more like him than any of the other kids. My dad was a writer. He wrote poetry more than anything else, but he always wanted to be a published author. This may be where I got my own goal from but since I can’t remember when my desire to write started, I couldn’t really say. As an adult, our relationship totally changed and he became by biggest supporter and fan. I loved showing him things I had done because I could always see how proud he was of me.When my dad died, he wasn’t a well-known author like he wanted to be. In fact, other than posting on some ezines and in a few literary magazines that nobody had really ever heard of, he wasn’t published at all. I found a folder full of his writing in his file cabinet. It was line after line of beautiful, melodic prose that, rather than making me feel good, actually caused me to feel desperate. My dad wasn’t just a good writer, he was a great writer. Yet he went nowhere with his writing because he didn’t take chances. Or if he did take them, I certainly never knew about them.

Last April, 1 year after my brother died and 5 months after my dad died, I decided I needed to push myself to achieve my goals. I have so many story ideas inside of me that it’s almost painful. I sat at my computer and, in 11 days, I wrote a 107,000 word book. I thought that I’d feel this great sense of accomplishment when I finished it, but instead I almost felt depressed. It was sad to me not being able to run to my dad and show him what I had done. I think the let-down was magnified by the fact that it was all so anti-climactic. I was happy with the book. Sure, there were some areas where I thought it could use work. What piece of writing can’t use work? But overall, I was happy with it.

Sometimes, achieving a life-long goal isn’t as exciting as you expect it to be.

And maybe part of it was the fact that there was a whole other step to this goal that seemed insurmountable. The publishing part.

I spent the spring putting off writing a query. Once I had finally exhausted all of my excuses, I wrote the letter. It wasn’t good. Really, it sucked. But it was finished. So I sent it off to 10 agents. I knew my summary paragraph wasn’t good enough for them to ask to see more. I knew what their responses would be. But I sent it off anyway, just so I would feel like I was taking chances. But I stopped after those 10 because I knew if I really wanted to get anywhere, I needed to change that summary.

And now, here it is March. I haven’t rewritten the summary or attempted to contact any other agents. There’s always something that keeps me from doing it. Right now, it’s a new book. At the end of last summer I had an idea for a new book and started writing it. I got halfway through the first chapter, and did a basic outline, but then never went back to it. I’m finally forcing myself to write this one because I think it will be better than my first one, especially now that I have a better idea of what it takes to fill a 107,000 word book.

There’s something I realized last night. I used to constantly hear authors say that when they’re writing a book, they become obsessed with the characters. They can’t talk about anything else or think about anything else and even have dreams about them. The characters become like real people to them. I never completely understood this until I wrote that book last year. But last night I realized that, for me at least, they had it all backwards.

It’s not a matter of “once I start writing a book, I become obsessed with the characters.” For me, I can’t begin to write the book until I become obsessed with the characters. Once I’ve talked about them, and outlined them enough to make them real, I have no choice but to get their story down on paper….or laptop. Whatever.

So right now I’m lost in a world of my own creation. It’s an interesting world. Unfortunately, it’s almost like being God and knowing exactly what’s going to happen to all of the people in your world. Luckily, also like being God, you can’t completely control the characters in your book. Not if you’ve done a good job making them become real. You’ll be typing and they’ll say something or do something that surprises you. Something you didn’t see coming.

Or, you know, maybe it’s just me.

*Disclaimer: Since I really am the Queen of Procrastination, I should tell you that everything you read above was really just my way of putting off writing chapter 2. What? Did you think there was actually a point to all of this rambling?

I really don’t hate winter. I probably sound like I do most of the time. I absolutely love the concept of winter. Snow is a fun, wonderful thing if you don’t have to go out and drive in it. Or worry about loved ones who are driving in it in my case because I wouldn’t be caught dead driving in this crap.

I love making snowmen, which we haven’t been able to do yet this year because all of the snow we’ve gotten has been too powdery. I love having snowball fights with the kids, but once again, that hasn’t been possible this year. It’s so very beautiful to look at and there’s nothing I love more than sitting in a nice, warm house, drinking hot chocolate, watching the snow fall outside. This is the first time I’ve ever lived in a house with a fireplace and the idea of roaring fires with snow drifting down out the window is just so romantic.

The reality is quite different, though. Who knew that fires were such a pain in the ass? Sure, it roars for about 5-10 minutes but then it starts dying out and somebody (read: Wren) has to get up and stack more wood on it. There’s no such thing as relaxing in front of a fire. Or at least, there isn’t if you’re Wren. One thing I have learned this winter is that a gas fireplace would be much more preferable. I think I’m just burnt out on winter and snow after the 3 feet we got in 2 days back in December. Being snowed in at Christmastime wasn’t fun. And, of course, now that it’s snowing again Boogie keeps running around saying “Christmas is coming back!” It probably doesn’t help that I still have our tree and decorations all up. Ah, the life of a procrastinator.

Apparently, Boogie also thinks it’s my birthday today. She spent over an hour telling me it’s my birthday and that she’s getting everything ready for my party. I caught her in the kitchen filling coffee cups with water from the cold water dispenser on the freezer. Despite the fact that I told her after 2 cups that she needed to quit because she was dirtying up all the cups in the house, she still ended up filling 9 cups, one for each of us and one for Luke who has been here since Saturday.

I wonder if I should just go along with the birthday idea. It’s not like I usually get a birthday celebration in May, when my birthday actually is. I’m pretty sure she’s taken some of her toys and wrapped them in towels for me to open. And it didn’t help when Wren came back from picking up the kids and had a big cake that he just had to get from the store because it looked so good. Now Boogie thinks that’s my birthday cake.

I was wondering how old I would be if I actually had as many birthdays as my kids have thought I should have. I figure that each of my kids has tried to celebrate my birthday at least 5 times in their young lives. 6 kids x 5 birthdays = 30 years old. Of course, since they don’t acknowledge my REAL birthday, I think we could just leave it at 30 years old. I’m ok with that.

Hell, most people get older on their birthdays. I just became 3 years younger. Awesome.