Stuff in August and General Bookish Excitement

So.

School has begun, which means that a LOT of things are picking up pace. Summer has changed, from slogging, hazy days that pass by in a trickling morass, and into days full of getting lost in hallways and meeting new teachers and seeing your old friends and gearing up for another school season.

Speaking of seasons...

Wow. There's a LOT of hype surrounding a book called The Bone Season, by Samantha Shannon. TV shows, magazine articles--it's been featured in everything from the Today show (the very first pick of their new book club!) and the People magazine. I briefly saw Samantha Shannon back in June, at BEA--I really had NO idea that she was part of such an explosive series! 

And look at that cover...

Delicious, I know. I can't wait to get my hands on a copy.

But I'm also reallyreallyreally pumped for something else. 

Yup. You saw that. Crown of Midnight by Sarah J. Maas. Coming out this Tuesday.

That has gotta be the most badass cover I've ever seen. 

I've heard people who managed to snag an ARC at BEA gush and froth at the mouth over it and say it's the best book ever and no, they refuse to read other fantasy books this year because nothing else can quite manage to attain the awesomeness of Celaena. 

I am SO. SO. excited. Like, jumping-off-my-chair-because-I-know-it's-gonna-kick-serious-butt excited. 

In other news, I'm taking a wee break from TeaNovel. But it doesn't matter, because my time will be occupied with piles of schoolwork and that timer that ticks down the days until Crown of Midnight comes out.

Beth Revis and her genius

Well.

Internet, author Beth Revis is an amazing kickass.

Because of this:

I had seen this video a while ago, maybe a year. At that time, it resonated with me, but not in a soul-shaking, revelation kind of way.

Beth Revis, the author of the New York Times bestselling Across the Universe series, talked about failure.

Before she wrote Across the Universe, she wrote ten--TEN--novels. But the thing is, she said--and this was the part that hit me the most--that she thought each of those ten novels was "the one". She edited them meticulously, poured her her love and her soul into each of those novels, and she edited the absolute crap out of them. Each. One. Of. Them.

None of those ten novels ended up getting published.

She showed the stack upon stack of papers that reached about two feet high, the legal pads full of notes and edit letters. She showed the three drafts, the thousand pages that made up the comparatively slim, small book of A Million Suns (her sequel).

And I saw a woman who gave everything she had into her writing. She took her energy and passion and tenacity and fragility and wove it into each and every one of her books. She didn't crank them out like scientific papers or magazine articles. She genuinely thought that each of them was the one. 

And that was the part the hit me and struck me and slapped me in the face.

I will admit a secret. This past week, in preparation for this online conference I was taking, I had rewritten an entire novel in two weeks, and two-thirds of that novel in one week. I wrote 37,000 words in the course of eight days. I set my alarm for 3:00 AM every night. I was working like a mad, crazy scientist on the brink of discovering a new set of atomic laws (well, as crazy and furious as I could get in the wee sluggish hours of the morning. )

I loved my TeaNovel. I loved it so much to rewrite it over and over again, four times and rack up about 300,000 words over it, to spend my days worrying about my plot and wondering if it would all work out.

And I was worrying that all this would go to nothing, all of it would slip away if/when my novel ultimately gets rejected.

And I'm still afraid.

I shouldn't do this. I should be a good high school student and do Stuff that Will Get Me Good Grades and Stuff that Will Get Me into College. I should go watch movies and go squee over Taylor Swift and go outside more and Get A Life.

I shouldn't be writing a novel. To tell you the truth, I'm breaking a lot of the rules I was wordlessly given.

And there is the question: is it all worth it? 

Beth Revis had asked herself that question. She said that if she knew it would all be this hard when she was just starting out, she would have said no. That it wouldn't be worth all the work, all the struggle and the angst and the heartbreak.

But...now?

She says yes.

And her ending words are, "My name is Beth Revis. And today, I didn't talk about failure at all. I talked about success."

Thank you, Beth. Thank you.

Fear, Procrastination, Repeat.

So I've been working on this novel for a while. Let me just call it TeaNovel, because it involves tea in some aspect and that's what I've been telling my friends. It was my NaNoWriMo novel last year, and it has had me twisted in pretzels to make it work.

I have rewritten it about five times and each time, it gets way better. And each time, my morale pretty much sinks a bit.

I no longer have that super-shiny-novel-OMG-wheee! buzz. The plot still has problems. It has rounded out in many ways, and my characters have really developed, but it's still...I don't know. There's still a long way to go.

And I'm sitting here, at my desk, chomping at it. I want this ready for this online conference I'm attending. It's in six days. I need to write a query and a synopsis. It's supposed to be a 70,000 word novel.

I have 45,000 words. 25,000 of which were written in the last four days. Which nearly killed me. I need to write 25,000 more.

On the bright side, it's an incredible motivator. On the not-so-bright side, well, I can't write Thursday and the weekends are pretty off limits, so I have today, Friday, and Monday. You can do the math.

I am listening to everything from Celtic jigs to Lana Del Rey to Christmas carols.

It's the middle of August.

What's worst is that my inner editor won't shut up. It gripes about plotholes and inconsistencies and my nemesis; the too-convenient events. I love my inner editor sometimes. It makes beautiful prose. It gets me an A on my papers. But...not when I need to rewrite my novel in like, a week.

I am completely, totally, procrastinating right now. But I don't have time to even procrastinate. It's a self-made (well, conference-made, I guess) deadline that doesn't even give me room to breathe.

I...need to go.

See you in a week, if I make it through alive.

Piano and Mistakes

Today I was practicing piano, one of those beautiful pieces by Ludovico Einaudi called Nuvole Bianche. He doesn't have the mathematical and musical precision as say, Beethoven or Bach or Mozart did, but he makes these clear, ethereal melodies that have a feeling of fragility and richness at the same time.

And I was getting lost in the music and being sucked in by the perfect harmony of the notes and then...
I made a mistake.
An ugly one.

It was a slip of the key, an accidental sharp or flat, but I cringed at the same time and at that moment multiple thoughts were running through my head, like Ugh! It was supposed to be perfect! You ruined it! How could you even ruin such a pretty piece with just a wrong-placed finger? Why couldn't you play it just like Ludovico Einaudi did? 

And I sort of had this little epiphany, I guess.

What if Ludivico played it wrong, too?

I know that sounds really stupid, but it changed a lot of things. I kept asking.

What if Ludovico also cringed at a wrong chord?

What if Nuvole Bianche didn't come out perfectly the first time? What if it was a mess of chords and then, slowly and slowly, it became beautiful?

And that's something I've struggled with a long time since my childhood; my expectations of myself. Call it perfectionism or something, but when I was a kid, I would have fits and these mini-tantrums...at myself. I wanted to give beautiful art art and music justice.

That's why I would have the fits, the times where I actually broke down and cried at the piano, because I could not get this beautiful piece torn apart by my clumsy, mistake-prone hands.

And then I remembered this old Chinese saying; Lotuses bloom in mud.

Lotuses had long been the symbol of purity, but its roots are firmly anchored in ugly, brown mud. And I realize this is how beautiful art comes, just like in writing; fast and ugly at first, torn with mistakes and mired in messes, but with careful hands and devotion, it can become stunning.

These Summer Days

Sometimes I don't know how to title these posts.

But as of now, I'm sitting in the family library, and from the view out the windows, it is a perfect brooding gray outside. Of course, a rain day.

Rain days create this certain aura of nostalgia, and they create this sort of closed-in atmosphere that is...cozy, I guess. I don't like cloudy days, but I love days that storm and rain, where I'm safe inside, reading classics on the sofa while the skies above throw a loud fit. 

Writing is slow. Everything is slow. Of course, when I am trying to chug through revising/rewriting in a month because this rewriting business has gone a bit far too long, writing a thousand words a day is considered terribly dragging. Today's the last leg of my rewrite for Part 1.

I'm thinking about making myself a cup of tea right now.

I suppose I should focus on a bit more objective thing, such as writing a post on the craft of writing or something. But I shy away from the idea, because in reality, I am still very much a beginner. I am still learning a lot.

And I'm not really trying to gain a big readership, not right now. I don't really care about subscribers or comments or regular readers. For now, I just want something so I can look back in the future, and read what my thoughts were back then. I like tangible records, and I'm not a good journal-keeper.

Well. That's all for now.

The book I read

You know how I said I checked out a bunch of Middle Grade books to avoid YA for a while? Well, I lied, sort of. I did check out that one YA book, that was decidedly not dystopian or sci-fi.

The Storyteller, by a German author named Antonia Michaelis. 

           

It begins the day Anna finds the child's doll on the floor of the student lounge. When it's claimed by Abel, the school drug dealer, Anna becomes determined to learn more about this mysterious boy with the military haircut and deep blue eyes. She follows him after school and discovers a secret: Abel is caring for his six year old sister Micha, alone. Anna listens as he tells her a fairy tale , the story of a little orphan queen pursued by hunters across the oceans for the treasure she carries: her pure, diamond heart.

It's a story with parellels to reality. Social services and Micha's abusive father could take her from Abel if they discover the truth. 

Despite friends' warnings, Anna is drawn to Abel and Micha, and falls under the spell of the story of the little queen and her desperate voyage. 

But when people Abel has woven into his tale turn up dead, it's Anna whose heart is in danger. Is she in love with a killer? And has she set out on a journey from which there is no return?

Antonia Michaelis has written a spell-binding tale of suspense, danger, and transformative love.

Guys, THIS BOOK.

I don't even know where to start.

It was a new idea, a combination of fairy tale and dark reality, scarred and edgy to the core, but beautiful and lyrical. Antonia Michaelis truly pulls out a beautiful, original tale and executes it almost flawlessly. I wanted to cry and laugh and cry, but I could only stare on in stone silence, at the simple, haunting cover, and wonder how it could hold so much power in the pages and words. The book caught me, held me, and when I closed the it, I felt that aching, gut-wrenching bittersweet feeling, the hollowness that settled in my heart. It was not fangirling or gushing over characters--describing it as that would be almost sacrilege. I felt a deep love and heartbreak in finishing it, and it would only be the utmost appreciation I could ever offer as a reader.

The combination was perfect. Please read it. I love it so much, and hope that you will too.

Greetings from Revisionland

It is rather confusing here. Sprawling, lush hills with roads that twist about, jungles you get lost in, and when you emerge, a searing hot desert.

In short: it's fun, overwhelming, and hard. 

So many ways! I have seen outlining scenes with index cards and writings 20 page outline and highlighting and color coding.

I am also deep in research--something I did not go deep enough, and now my brilliant friend (and writer) has pointed out that my supposed "fantasy" world is like sheer strands of thread that cannot form a tapestry rich enough. 

(She also very rightly pointed out that I needed description. As you hopefully tell, I have been practicing that in this blog post.)

It's really a lot to take in. Because though I rewrote my novel two times already, I wrote them in a Nanowrimo-style madcap dash to the end. And while my plot improved SO much, well, my prose? My characters that sound all the same?

I think I may need to do another kind of rewrite--the scene level rewrite. 

I went to an Office Depot and got myself some index cards. And sticky tabs. And I did not really know what to do with them. 

But just I was getting lost in all these index-cardy tricks and highlighting fashions and color-coding I felt like I had stumbled upon this unwelcome pit of quicksand--

Just as I was writing the title of this post, I was thinking of this very word--revision. Revision. Re-vision. It kind of hit me, made me think for a second. 

I am re-visioning my novel. 

Creating higher standards. Ratcheting up stakes. Making characters move and dance and make crushing mistakes, and pay for it. I am seeing it not in the flat, two-dimensional plot arc I have had for too long. 

I may have to rewrite most of my scenes--but this time, the plot structure is there. I have the foundations and the supporting beams. 

Index cards may help, but what matters most is my vision. 

See y'all,

Christina