On Writing

First, there's an idea. Just a little spark. A moment of "what if?"
For many people it ends there, because of demands of the outside world, loss of interest, fear. It's daunting to start writing. There you are, sitting with your blank paper or empty screen, trying to make something magical happen. You want to write the perfect book. And as long as you think that way, you'll never get started. Writing is messy, cluttered, sometimes random. You have to get this mess into a computer or a ream of paper so that you can begin the process of revising. This is where the real work is, where you take that mess that you made and turn it into a book. It's not as fun as writing, but it's just as important. Or even more important.

I make a lot of notes on a separate Word document when I write. It's full of good sentences that don't have a home yet, a few words to denote a scene I want to add, random ideas which may or may not get used. It's messy, and I have to scroll through it to find what I'm looking for, but it's a place to put what's in my head somewhere until I can attend to it fully. I don't worry about spelling, punctuation, or grammar in this document. If I didn't make this document, I would have a thousand post-it notes stuck all over the table, in a certain order, and color-coded. Which sounds a little like the opposite of my catch-all "Ideas" file. And I would probably spend more time organizing the post-it notes than writing, frankly.

Faith.

I have faith that readers will find my books. Meanwhile, I'll just keep writing more of them. Hopefully when some of my reviews come out, more people will be exposed to my book and want to give it a try. And then try the second one. And the third one. Right now I'm rarely getting blog post views. But they will come.
I think I might try doing a book review or two to try to get my name out there. So if you're an author who writes literary fiction, crime fiction, contemporary fiction, or paranormal fiction, drop me a note in the comments with your name, email, book title, and a 3-5 sentence blurb, and I'll see if it sounds like something that might interest me. No straight-up romance, overtly religious, or science fiction, please. I'll try this out and see how it goes, and whether it interferes with my writing too much.

I'm really excited about my new book!

I'm really excited about the book that I'm going to release soon, Judgment of Evil, which is the continuation of Rebekah's story from Instrument of Evil. It works as a stand-alone novel, so you don't have to have read the first book to enjoy it (but I'd love it if you would!). I'm also excited about the next novel I'm going to write, which will continue Rebekah's story. I'm working on a YA paranormal right now, while I research for the next Rebekah novel.

Another strange dream

So, I took a nap, and found myself having this dream. I am at a memorial service for a little girl who was abducted, and something honoring the military at the same time. I was sitting next to my mom at a seat at the corner of this large table. One of the military people wanted me to move and I said no. He then asked me if I was Jewish. Which made no sense. I replied that I wasn't, and he asked how come I didn't have any Jewish blood in me. I responded, "Because none of my ancestors fucked a Jew." This caused quite a commotion, and made the professional basketball team that had just entered the room start laughing uproariously.

I have no idea where these things come from.

Strange dream

Strange, but they usually are. My dreams are like surrealist movies.
The dream starts with me and a bunch of people I didn't know sitting around in a house talking. All of a sudden, one of them looks out the window and says that these people are shooting a sexually explicit video of a child outside. We all go outside to confront them. Two of the people run off, so we call the police. We take the child with us, who is a little girl around eight years old, and perform a citizen's arrest on the last pornographer. Who looks somewhat like John Lithgow. (I am in no way suggesting that John Lithgow is involved in child pornography.)

We take him into custody, and he is yelling things about his lawyers and we tell him we are not afraid of his lawyers. He keeps slipping away from us, because apparently we are the most bumbling group of citizen's arresters ever. At one point, John Lithgow slips away from us and goes to the food court that has opened up inside of the house, which is now the size of a mall. I intercept him at the food court and he is irritable, saying that he just wanted to buy a sausage, egg, and cheese bagel because he was starving. I let him buy the bagel but don't let him buy a coffee, which makes him curse at me. He comes with me back to the group, and we are sitting around impatiently because there is a concert we have tickets for that we want to go see, and we are afraid that the police will not come in time to pick up the last pornographer. The little girl has been adopted as a mascot, and seems surprisingly well adjusted and unharmed by the attempt to film her involved in explicit sexual acts. She is somewhat attached to John Lithgow so we try to keep them separated, which is partly why he keeps slipping off--we are using most of our resources to keep the little girl safe. I think of Nabokov's nymphets, because of how she is acting.

Then I was lying awake in my bed, wanting to go back to sleep to find out the outcome of the dream. If I had gone back to sleep, I mostly likely wouldn't have returned to the same dream, although sometimes I do.

Do you ever have lucid dreams? They are dreams that you are in, in which you know you are dreaming. You don't wake up, but keep dreaming, with full awareness that you are in a dream. I usually test to see if I am dreaming when having a lucid dream by trying to do something like dial or memorize a phone number, or do math. I can't process numbers in any way while I am dreaming. If I tried to read a phone number, I would probably be able to read the area code, and maybe the last few digits, but something would happen to prevent me from reading the digits in the middle of a number. In a lucid dream, you can "consciously" influence the course of the dream, so if you are having a bad dream, you can decide to stop having it, and have another dream instead. Or you can decide what you want to dream about. Lucid dreams are very cool. I have them all the time, and I have my numbers tests to verify if I am dreaming. Having lucid dreams is a skill you can learn, starting by developing some reality test that helps you know when you are dreaming. It's kind of like Inception.

Weird day--couldn't decide what to do

I finished writing my third novel on Monday. On Tuesday, I did a first-pass edit/rewrite of my second novel. So today I was trying to decide what to do--do the first-pass edit/rewrite of my third novel, relax and play on the internet, or start writing my 4th novel, which I have maybe half-way plotted out. I wound up going with the editing, because I felt like I should get this book tucked-in and ready for the next set of eyes. Whenever that happens. Because book 2, Judgment of Evil, just went to the next pair of eyes.
I'm not sure I didn't work on the next book instead. Maybe because I only have it half-way plotted? And my head is swirling with ideas for a sequel to my third book, so maybe that plays a part.
It's just strange. Usually my choice is "write."

Finished!

I just finished my third novel today. I realized that I've written 3 books since July first. That is craziness! And people who've read the first one, Instrument of Evil, have liked it. I know it's not for everybody, being about a serial killer, but it's a pretty lighthearted look at a serial killer.
This third book tortured me. But I like what I've created, and I think my readers will too.
I start editing/rewriting the second book, Judgment of Evil, tomorrow. Several people have asked me when it's coming out. So I've got to get it out there for those people. :)