Back from the Abyss

Yeah, still alive, even if only barely. I'm going to give a quick sort of update on Things In My Life* and then rant a little bit about writing and then maybe by the end of it I'll know how I'm going to fix it**.

As far as life goes, we're all moved into the new house now and my personal computer is set up and has the interwebs on it and everything is more or less where it needs to be***. I should be going to the gym regularly but dude seriously there are people on the internet who are wrong, I can't just walk away.

My two cousins, heretofore referred to as my little brothers (both nearly ten years younger than I), are moving in here in the next couple of weeks, and my sister's twentieth birthday is tomorrow and I still don't know what I'm getting her. At the moment, I don't have any money, since because of Memorial Day my paycheck is coming a day late (although in all fairness, I will take that paycheck a day late since it's for a good cause, seeing as my fiance is in the military and all of my grand-uncles were in World War II, and I've plenty of relations who were in Vietnam).

Adam and I are trying to put together some things for Gen Con, and as yet I don't even know what the deal is with the Con we're running for the freshman at ISU this fall. Hopefully I'll get caught up with that here soon.

Currently reading Night Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko, Just a Geek by the wonderful Wil Wheaton (alliteration not intended) who might just be my new hero, and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith. All of them are wonderful. (I would like to point out right about here, WITHOUT A FOOTNOTE, that Wil Wheaton is pretty much my hero, and I wish I could high-five him.)

Now, the Rant About Writing.

More or less, deAngelis is driving me up the freaking wall, and here's why: I overwrote. There's too much stuff happening. Between Major Plot Point A and Major Plot Point B^, I should have maybe two Minor Plot Points. Guess what? I have six. SIX FREAKING POINTS.

There are two possible solutions for this, both of which are a little daunting. The first option is to omit the scenes that I can (gulp) live without in this novel. That would be the cleanest, and the least time consuming. However, it would require me to also omit at least one major character, possibly two, one of which would definitely be Alexander Hunt, and the second would be a toss-up between Adrian McKinley and River de Luca, neither of which I can really bear to lose.

The second option is to move what I thought was the Point of No Return^^ and admit that it belongs better melded with the climax. Which means that I have to rearrange a bunch of things. The Point of No Return no longer exists, and it has to be there. And I think that I know how to make this work, but the fact of the matter is that this is going to put me even further behind schedule, and I would like to get Steel done during NaNoWriMo^^^ this year. My goal is to have deAngelis finished, final draft, by the time that school begins (I've pushed back the deadline at least a half-dozen times since NaNoWriMo last year), so that I have a couple months to rest and put together notes for Steel in time to start writing it in November (although to be honest, I've started typing a few paragraphs here and there already, which is bad, I know, I have noveling-ADD).

And clearly I'm going to go with the second option, which I thought of AS I WAS WRITING THIS ENTRY, and I think I can just go ahead and finish the draft I'm working on as it is now and then rearrange it later, but last night I thought I was going to have to just scrap a bunch of stuff and I was Not Happy. Luckily, my muse, Jason, woke me up with a text this morning and got me up early enough that I've had time to enjoy some tea and toast and think about it, and I think I've got it figure out how I'm going to fix it.

Also over at my fictionpress page there is some new, bad poetry if you're interested, should hold you over til the next update.

*~*~*~*~*

* Because let's face it sometimes I don't even care.

** Now since I have nothing to do but write and serve ice cream to unhappy people, I'm starting to realize all the things that I screwed up.

*** Except for plot points, but I haven't started the Writing Rant yet gahhh.

^ I will admit that I am using James V. Smith, Jr.'s book The Writer's Little Helper as a source for this, but what I like about the Little Helper is that it is fairly accurate and actually quite helpful, despite the fact that most "this is how you write a book" books really aren't that helpful; people forget that writing is subjective, and it stems from the imagination, and everyone's imagination works differently, despite the similarities in a successful end result. Smith did a good job of remembering the subjectivity of noveling and presents a few helpful tools geared towards noveling and lots of tools and explanations geared toward grammar and style, which is honestly more of what a person needs anyway.

^^ Again, still referencing Little Helper. You'd be surprised how accurate and helpful the chart on page six is.

^^^ For anyone who hasn't done NaNo, please give it a thought. It's wonderful, and for people who want to get started noveling but need a little extra oomph to get a rough - and I mean rough - draft out, it's the perfect thing. The community encouragement adds something to an experience that is generally fairly solitary (which is why a lot of writers are so freaking depressed). The years that I've participated, I've never regretted it, and I've won two years in a row now, deAngelis being last year and the reference-purposes-only-sort-of-prequel-to-deAngelis, Ten Thousand Hells, being the year before.

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