What I'm reading now

Hi! Today was a Saturday, and although I didn't do the 10k words as promised, I did about 3.5k.
Here's what I'm reading this month:
River of Smoke by Amitav Ghosh

This is a book I got in China (but it's a British book) and it chronicles the opium drug trade, and many lives that intertwined in the busy ports of Canton---and what happened when a man named Commissioner Lin stepped up to abolish the opium from China forever. It is related to the topic of my novel, and I do love the descriptions, but it is incredibly dense and it takes me a lot of work to get through it. But the cover! I think that is the most beautiful cover I have ever seen.

The Night Circus by Erin. Morgenstern

Funny story--about 9 months ago, my family was preparing to go to South Korea (on a connecting flight to Bali, our actual destination.)  In the O'Hare airport, I saw a copy of The Night Circus--and I wanted to buy it, because, well, the story sounded intriguing and the characters and oh!-- the cover was beautiful.
But it was an airport bookstore. And airport books are really expensive.
Now, a year later, I am reading it now, and I wish I had bought it nine months ago. No matter the price, it wouldn't have paid enough for the beautiful, illustrious descriptions, the mystery, the intrigue of the circus.
(Okay, you get this blog post's theme now--descriptions and book covers)
Plus, Erin Morgenstrn has done NaNoWriMo (The Night Circus was her Nano novel) and I love her pep talk.
And on her blog, in the archives, I stumbled upon a quote she had read;
"Sometimes you wake up. Sometimes the fall kills you. And sometimes, when you fall, you fly."
Beautiful.

Awesome Video

So I came onto this fantastic video today. Now, I'm usually not a fan of writing videos, because they tend to sort of talk about a great point, then ramble for a bit on it, but this video is truly a gem. Every word is like receiving wisdom from a wise sage. (Well, Neil Gaiman is a bit if a sage sometimes...)
Neil Gaiman on Writing: From The Nerdist Podcast  

Update...and BEA countdown!

Just a quick update.
Yesterday, I pounded out 4,000 words (How? I am in shock.) But today, I am paying for it because my batteries have been effectively sucked up.
I'm a third of the way through the novel, maybe more. But right now, I feel....lethargic. Yes, that's the right word.
I'm in the drama, the fun and games part of my novel. But the scenes don't feel connected, really. Maybe this is just because  I'm writing in Scrivener, so I tend to skip around and write all the interesting scenes...and the scenes that I feel like writing at the moment.But I hope it turns around.
But I can't help but get excited when I realize that BookExpo America (BEA) is less than a month away! *squeals*
This will be my first ever book conference/convention of any kind, and I am super pumped. Oh, the authors! The aura of tons of paper, bound together into volatile, beautiful works of art!
But right now, I have a headache (too much staring at the computer) so I will go get some sleep and hope that by morning, I will not be a zombie anymore.
One last thing--Today, author Veronica Roth finally posted her cover reveal for her Divergent Book 3, Allegiant! Go check it out--and have an excited aneurysm like I did.
http://veronicarothbooks.blogspot.com/2013/05/allegiant-cover.html

I'm back!

Basically, the story of March was this: I went MIA for a bit, then looked over at my 2nd draft and decided that I needed a third rewrite. And then I went to China for two weeks for spring break. It was fantastic.
The story of April is this: After China, I came back, went MIA for some more, and had a week freaking out about my novel and decided that I should go plunge into it after a week of meticulous plotting.
And then the meticulous plotting basically translated into watching all sorts of NaNoWriMo pep talk videos on Youtube. Even though, you know, it was April, and Camp NaNoWriMo was already half over.
This rewrite was going from April 20th to  May 29th. Which gave me exactly 40 days to pound out a suitable 3rd draft before BookExpo America. (Cue excited dance; this is my first time!)
And this time, I estimated that my final word count was to hover somewhere around 85,000 words. 85K.
This is absolutely crazy, and I know it. But the love for my story is still there. It 's not quite like the passion-filled, this-story-is-consuming-every-fiber-of-my-soul kind of obsessive love. But it has sweetened and mellowed.
Either way, I still don't know what I am doing. But I am plugging away at the novel, and I recently ran across a quote by the author Dave Eggers, from his pep talk from last Nano.
"You better do it now because you know how to write, and you have fingers, and you have this one life, and during this one life, you should put your words down, and make your voice heard, and then let others hear your voice. And the only way any of that’s going to happen is if you actually do it. People can’t read the thoughts in your head. They can only read the thoughts you put down, carefully and with great love, on the page. 
So you have to do it, goddamnit. You have to do it, and you can step back and be happy. You can step back and relax. You can step back and feel something like pride."
Bravo, Dave. You will keep me going. 
 

The Best Creative Advice I've Been Given

Aspiring Writer/Interviewer-"What advice do you have for young writers?"
Published Author-"Just write."
--
That's how it goes, every single time. Every single time the words, "Just write" were uttered, I wanted to gnash my teeth like a troll and secretly wonder how they could enchant readers with bouquets of beautiful prose and florid descriptions while, when asked about their craft, they could only offer two words.
Here's the thing; they are ABSOLUTELY right.
But there are better ways of giving that rock-solid piece of advice. a gem doesn't have to be found in rubble. (sorry for the horrid pun).
My two motivators?
The War of Art by Steven Pressfield and a particular blog post by Merlin Mann.
First off is the brilliant Merlin Mann. He wrote a blog post, Nanowrimo: a pep talk and a warning, and it will be the hands down, best pep talk to get through Nanowrimo and that first draft. I can't pinpoint a quote from it; it's so chock-full of awesome and no-nonsense advice that i can only honor it by pasting the link from his blog, 43 Folders: http://www.43folders.com/2009/11/02/nanowrimo-advice
Next is War of Art. A clever wordplay on Sun Zi's The Art of War, Steven Pressfield reveals the furry devil; Resistance, mother of procrastination, writer's block, and the subsequent brain cells killed by thunking your head into the keyboard all the time. Why does it have to be so hard? You think. Why does the thing I love have to be the hardest thing I do?
Pressfield offers a brilliant piece of advice; Resistance is a compass. The more you love it, the harder it is to do. Especially if it's a creative endeavor.
"Are you a born writer? Were you put on earth to be a painter, a scientist, an apostle of peace? In the end the question can only be answered by action.

Do it or don’t do it.

It may help to think of it this way. If you were meant to cure cancer or write a symphony or crack cold fusion and you don’t do it, you not only hurt yourself, even destroy yourself. You hurt your children. You hurt me. You hurt the planet.
You shame the angels who watch over you and you spite the Almighty, who created you and only you with your unique gifts, for the sole purpose of nudging the human race one millimeter farther along its path back to God."
That quote alone was enough to make me sit. And write. 
What are your secret creative weapons?

Back from my slog

I'm back. And I'm looking over the last post and thinking, "Man, I must have been really depressed when I wrote that."
But I think that is part of the process. There are days when I feel like I'm freaking out and I never have time for writing. But I try to flow like water. If one thing doesn't work out, that's okay. Just fix, bend, and make do. If I'm extra busy on Mondays? Just write 500 words on Mondays and save the 2,000 word monsters for Wednesday, when  I have more free time.
And as for the email thing, I haven't checked my email once this month and I don't feel deprived at all. Strangely, I also do not emerge with huge pockets of free time now. (Even though I conservatively estimated that I spend 2 hours daily on email and guilt surfing the web) It's been taken up by, you know, writing.
But I got past the midpoint of my rewrite, and I am still squinting and trying to figure out if, upon completion, it deserves another complete rewrite (or its furry primate cousin, the huge mud slog fix-everything revisions). But it will be easier. I can already tell that my rewrite is a LOT better than my first draft.
I'll go back to my manuscript now.

On Mood and Screenwriting

I'm a writer of novels, I know.
I lately have been looking into screenwriting outlining tips and methods in order to spur my own outlining for my rewrite.
Also, I'm doing the Phase Outlining by Lazette Gifford. Basically, you do a very detailed version of an outline, with about 200 words to summarize each scene in a truncated fashion.
I was stuck, though--there were so many loose ends to tie up, so many plotholes to fill. *Sighs*. Story dragons. What can you do about 'em?
Also, writing like a 10,000 word phase outline sounded daunting--even if it would make my story 726,840 times easier to write.
But I had this sort of minipiphany (yes, I just invented it) and I realized the essence of each scene.
It's the mood.
I might be wrong about this, but in each scene in a movie, upon more discovery, there's always a mood. If I can form my scene around a mood, it will be easier to write. Right?
I hope so. Now I should go crank my timer and get to work.