My favorite came to visit. He left before I wanted to kill him 'cause he's cool like that. My least favorite 'aunt' is also visiting. Urgh. I mentally plotted my next scene. I cried in church . . . again (there is just something about that place). I went to a bookstore and bought Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Peter and the Starcatchers, Fade, The Hunger Games, A Hat Full of Sky, Graceling, and I already had Catching Fire, because I'm a ninny and accidentally bought it before the first book.
Personal Note: I think it's one of the coolest things in the worlds that I'm Twitter/Aspiring Writer friends with a video game developer/programmer/whatever exactly that I wouldn't understand.
I'll admit it. I'd kind of given up. Burn out was approaching nuclear levels and any time I thought of editing this book again--especially an edit this extensive, where practically the entire novel is reimagined--part of me curled up in a little ball and meweled pitiably. I avoided it. I gave myself plenty of highly plausible excuses why I hadn't made any progress, like taking on the care of two extra boys in the afternoons, bringing my total to five between the ages of two and nine (that's four sets of homework, people. Four different math assignments on any given evening!).
I rustily churned out ten, fifteen pages, not really happy with the end products, but at least being able to call it progress. Just enough to say I was working so that nagging little voice didn't get too loud when it chirped at me.
And then I got the flu. You remember my last post. You remember the drugged energy bursts. Did I mention that one of them forced me into reorganizing the entire scene index/timeline? Yes? No? Well, it did. And that, heroes and heroines, was a game changer.
Ever since, I've been editing like mad. I blew through another four scenes yesterday and today, and retweaked others I'd already been over once this time. It's insane how much everything is opening up, how every character seems to be doing exactly what I need him or her to do, and it all feels natural.
As for the title of this post, well, you may have already read this on Twitter (I was really proud of it), but today my girl, my main character and narrator (first person love, y'all!), called someone a bloated wart-sack, and that, to me, is just about as fabulous as when Rory Gilmore called Logan Huntzberger a butt-faced miscreant, which is my favorite insult in the HISTORY of insults.
Personal Note: I like broccoli better than any other veggie. I know, I know, I'm a radical. Also, people seem to either really love my hair or absolutely hate it, and it's kind of surprising, who's on which side of the fence.
Top of the list, give blood. You have to weigh at least one-hundred-and-ten pounds. I've never weighed that outside of being pregnant.
But just after that? Take grown up medications for anything, especially anything of the cold/allergy/sinus variety. Why? Because they make me super-loopy. If you've been one of those extremely kind of helpful people to read past drafts of the first Dionadir novel you likely know there's a scene in which Joss gets the flu hardcore, and you'll remember her mentioning something about looking for the Meaning of Life chillin' in the fridge, a side-effect of her cold medicine high. That detail is based in fact, my own life around the time I was sixteen, actually*. I'd contracted Mono (as had our entire marching band--we'd all shared the same water fountain at practices and our drum major had spread the love around, so to speak) and was having a lot of trouble sleeping because I felt so awful. The doctor I saw put me on ten milligrams of Benedryl before bed every night. Yeah . . . that was an interesting two weeks. I might as well have been dropping acid every night (something I've not actually done, but I'm guessing here) for all the psychedelic shenanigans my brain ran me through. I even remembered to write down some of my thoughts. I think my letters to my boyfriend-at-the-time, Michael, and my friends were probably hilarious and riddled with hidden meanings only a drugged version of me could interpret now.
But you want to know something even sillier? In between bouts of insanely hard sleeping (I go out like you would not believe, or maybe I just don't believe it because normally I'm the lightest of sleepers) I get this . . . I don't know, giggly burst of productive energy (hence this blog post, you know?) and STUFF GETS DONE, BUCKO!
Earlier today I finally sat myself down--after having index carded every scene in the book last night--and physically put them in a really good, sense-making, tension-holding, heart-tugging order. And now I just have to surgery those suckers into a book worth NOT putting down, because my cold-medicined brain is shooting in fourteen different directions and all of them are made of PURE WIN . . .
At least until I pass out again, dead to the world as far as everything else is concerned.
But first! I must conquer a kitchen!
*Though I still maintain my best friend describing her behavior on Robitussin and/or sleep deprivation is the funniest thing I've ever heard. Patrick Swayze and a space so thin a piece of paper wouldn't fit in it were mentioned.
