I have just realized

The second part of my novel is the part that makes me cringe.

Its like--like seeing a childhood friend of yours and it's waving enthusiastically at you but you're standing there, thinking, "Uh. The clothes she wears...and she hasn't brushed her hair..."

Inside, my novel's middle part has a good core, I believe. And if I told it to brush its hair and put on a respectable t-shirt and stop wearing mismatched socks on purpose, it would be much, much better.

Thing is, right now I'm afraid, embarassed to even stare it in the face.

Means only one thing.

Rewriting.

That old, dear friend has come back again.

On embracing fears and being willing to work hard.

It's been a transformative few weeks. 

Right after NaNo, I jumped back into my old TeaNovel. I posted that lovely calendar for myself in a burst of energy. 

And then I reread TeaNovel.

It was...not as good as I expected. 

I began to see some of the flaws that I hadn't seen before. I saw that though the pacing was good, the mood wasn't set, and it was all a bit shallow. It didn't have enough depth. 

And I was moaning and groaning to myself, whining that I had already rewritten TeaNovel 3 times, that I thought that I had mostly untangled knots that weren't supposed to be there. 

I was afraid, really afraid that I would spend so much effort to do this, but in the end, it would all be for nothing. The publishing world really is fair. I believe in that strongly. 

Today I realized something. 

Now, I have to be willing to work. 

This isn't the school world, where you write snippets of essays and turn them in for a grade, and if it was long and well-thought, it got high marks. Not to mention that the teachers are obligated to read the papers. 

The publishing world isn't like that.

It is real. I am on the real arena, the real stage, being evaluated. In short, I have to ask myself: would someone spend potentially hours, weeks reading this? 

I was used to half-ass my way through school and get good grades. Now that I'm in high school, it's considerably more challenging, but still I'm not walking along the edge, completely focused, my stakes hanging on the tightrope.  

But for writing, I finally realize what it means to completely devote yourself to something that you love, to be willing to put in hours and days and potentially months and years to dedicate yourself to this one story that could potentially fall short.

I have to try anyways. 

The fear is there, real and ever-present. It resembles a small house-elf, staring at me with its spiteful little eyes. "You can't do it," it says. "Go back and do legitimate things. You're not good enough."

I try to be patient with the little monster. Give it cake and listen to the sharp, brutal words. 

And I try really, really hard to take in the fear. 

It still is difficult. 

But what else can I do?

Because in moments like these, there is no choice other than to pour your heart into something like this. 

Don't complain, Christina. You're doing what you love and in the end, you have to work as hard as you wish for it.

Also: must-watch for teens/fans of Maggie Stiefvater

This is a TED Talk she gave a while ago.

I actually watched it for the tenth time when this message finally sank into me, but she gives great points and charming anecdotes, with that dry, Maggie humor of hers.

The point of the video? Don't blindly believe in the labels others stick onto you. Stay true to your own self.

It's a great talk.Watch it.

stuff to do

Okay, so today I played at my last piano competition.

*whew* That's out of the way.

(After a hugely stressful week, you have no idea how much joy it brings me to sit in sweats and type out a blog post.)

So after these few crazy weeks, I will have the entirety of Winter Break to study for final...and revise!!!

Yaaay!

I have tests, projects, stuffs and stuffs to do, so for this week and the next, well...I hope it passes fast.

Right now, here are my goals:

-Dec-Jan 2013/2014: Finish last edits on TeaNovel, and then start querying/sending it out.

-Rest of Jan 2014: Plan out my SuperShinyNovel.

-Feb-April 2014: 2nd draft overhaul/rewrite of SuperShinyNovel.

-Nebulous time in the summer/fall of 2014: Query SuperShinyNovel.

That makes me a tiny bit nervous to type out. But my plan is to wrap TeaNovel up, and then while I'm querying it, I'll take my mind off of it by focusing on my current novel.

I seriously have no idea what to expect.

So yeah.

And I won.

End word count: 80.184 words.

A few days before NaNo started, I posted a letter to NaNoWriMo.

I wrote that letter in a stage of general fear.

I hadn't written down a single word of plot plans, and I had no idea what my novel was going to do. I had the first scene, and one smidgen of the conflict, and the last line.

That was it.

I never knew that roughly 30 days later, I would stand, my novel completed, at 80,000 words.

I never knew how exhilarating, how beautifully frustrating and challenging this novel would be. All in all, in might be my favorite novel yet.

But the best part of pantsing the novel was the act of throwing caution to the air and being open to any ideas. It's that sudden, unexpected twist your story takes that changes the arc drastically. It's the discovery of truths and beautiful lines hidden in the drivel. It's the feeling you get, in a coffee shop; you are shaking, literally shaking, as your finger stumble across the words that slams the plot together, and you discover the truths and revelations that only become clear the moment the words touch the screen. They leave you surprised, shocked, and absolutely breathless.

It's an experience unlike any other.

Thank you. For everyone who supported me on Twitter. For NaNoWriMo, the program that kicked me in the pants and made me leap into the unknown, with abandon, only to come back on a badass steampunk parachute and with a velociraptor perched on my arm.

I feel so, so...overwhelmed. And giddy. And proud.

So many feels.

*crash*

Day 29

Today is Friday, November 29.

My current wordcount stands at 74,007.

I have 6000 words to write. Six. Thousand. Words.

The end, my friends, is near.

I am so, so close.

Dear NaNoWriMo,

As of this morning, I stand at 64,000 words.

I am no longer at the point where I'm afraid I'm not going to finish. I have sixteen thousand words left.

Normally, had I been at 34K with the sixteen thousand words left, I would have freaked out.

But this NaNoWriMo has been different from all others.

My very very first NaNoWriMo, I was writing with a friend. We inspired each other, bounced ideas off of each other, but  it was a tough going. I loved my story premise, but then hated it. Though I reached 60,000 words, the story ultimately failed.

My second NaNoWriMo, I absolutely fell in love with the story, but it was so hard to write it. Nearly every scene was a struggle. I came in at around 52,000 words with the complete novel.

But this NaNoWriMo, I had Susan Dennard and her NaNoBootCamp, with all the wonderful NaNoCadets. I found a community, and I made great friends on Twitter. I did word sprints.

And even though I jumped into this novel with nothing written down on paper, and no index-carded plot, I knew my setting. I knew the barest bones of plot. And I knew the last line of the book.

That was it.

But I wrote it.

Perhaps it was because I had so many points of inspiration, or because this was a much more complex, convoluted plot for my novel, but this year, even with absolutely no written plot, I wrote many, many words.

And I sound so sure now, like it was all meant to be.

But in September, or even October, I was nursing another idea. But somehow, in the last two weeks of October, the idea of this novel pieced itself in my head. It wasn't done--I had to figure out some of the plot from the trenches of NaNo. I loved the points of inspiration, but I wasn't sure where this novel would take me, or if it would ultimately result in a mess of broken plots and story lines.

But--

I wrote it. I threw myself headfirst into a story I intuitively loved. I made some amazing friends and I sprinted with them, and they cheered me on when I was sure the story was going to give up on me. My writer friend Andi was there for me, always welcome to my texts, always firm and reassuring.

There were school days I wrote 3K, 4K, no problem. Days when I struggled to break 1K. There were miraculous days where I plastered my butt to the chair and set my hands on fire, and I came out victorious that day with seven thousand words.

And the story--it's developed so much, fleshed itself out, but in the roots and the vision, it is nearly fundamentally the same.

And I am so, so close to the finish.

It's like those last miles of a marathon, where you see everything sort of flash before your eyes, and you experience simultaneously all the emotions of elation and frustration and joy that brought you to this moment.

I know 16K sounds like a lot, but compared to the work I have done on my novel thus far, the 16K will be written, and I will be at the finish line on November 30th, dazed and awed.

NaNoWriMo, I will see you there.