Monday, July 25, 2016

It's starting to get like the DMV up here...only much more awesome

Way, way more awesome.

Where is up here, you ask? Well, that would be the inside of my brain, of course. Beckyland. The place where ideas and daydreams are born. It's the place where my characters live while they are awaiting for me to finish their stories. . . . hmm . . . does that mean it's like purgatory? And if it is, what does that say about what happens to the characters when their story is finished? On no! They're not dead after that, are they?

No . . . wait . . . it's the opposite of purgatory. It's the before. It's like the womb. So, when their story is finished, they've been born, and they are out in the world.

Phew. That was scary.

Okay, none of that was actually the point of this post. The point is that my brain is getting to be like the DMV (only much cleaner, prettier--lots of purple--,more things to do while waiting, etc.). A while ago I wrote a post about how I was afraid that my first novel was just a fluke and I'd never have another story idea, but then suddenly the ideas started coming. Last night at 2:00 AM (almost on the nose; it's the magic time), another novel idea came to me. Thankfully, it's a standalone. The idea I had a few months ago was for a trilogy (or maybe a longer series, that has yet to be determined). And this new idea is for a romance novel, which is really weird because I don't do romance as the main genre, but I'm going to write it, because it's a good idea.

Where does the DMV thing come in? Well, while I'm no longer opposed to working on multiple projects, I am not going to start any new projects until at least one of the three I am currently working on is finished. And by that I mean, I am going to try very hard not to start a new project until at least one of the three I'm currently working on is finished. So that means these new ideas have to take a number. Right now, since I'm new to this publishing thing and don't have a lot of money, I just have one of those cheap little machines where the ideas pull a paper number out and a new slip moves forward. In the future, I'd like to upgrade to a fancy computer system where the ideas will see a touch screen and they can type in what kind of idea they are: what genre, memoir, stand-alone, series, novella, short story, etc. That way, they may get a different place in line depending on what kind of attention they need. But that may not need to happen until the ideas start getting backed up into the two-digits.

I don't know how some writers churn out twenty or thirty books. I suppose you get faster over time, but I'm still waiting for that to happen. At least I know the idea train is functioning.

Psst . . . Have you checked out Chapter 1 of my serial, City of Secrets, yet? You totally should:

https://www.jukepop.com/home/read/9558?chapter=1

Tuesday, July 12, 2016

Updates and Rambling and Stuff

Partially because I feel like I should blog, because it's been a week and I can't neglect the blog. I've been busy writing (or trying to write), to get as many chapters of City of Secrets possible ready before the big release date. July 19th in case you forgot. One week! Yay!

Unfortunately, I won't have nearly as many ready as I thought, but that's always the case with anything involving a self-imposed deadline. I should know this by now. I'm still recovering spoons from the move. That's the thing about not having enough spoons to start with. It takes you much, much longer to get them back. Every time I get a couple back, I use them all up again because I still have so much stuff to do. My apartment's still not fully set up. I have a new desk which is sitting in a box on my office (I feel important saying office) floor. I don't know when it's getting put together, because last week I put together a small cabinet, and it kicked my butt.

But all in all I'm very excited and nervous and neurotic about City of Secrets. I'm not sure this is the right thing to do for my story. I'm putting a glorified second draft (2nd and a half draft?) online. I know that's sort of the point (it gets reviewed/critiqued online, then I self-publish it), but now I'm getting all nervous about it. I could wait until it's done-done, but now I've bought a cover and gotten all excited about it. Sure, there's really no right or wrong way to publish, because there are so many ways, and I would freak out no matter what way I chose because it's what I do.

All right. I've vented. Freak out over. I'm sticking with the current plan.

It's so not over. It's just over on my blog. But I'm still sticking with the current plan, freak out or no.

Funny story time. I had this thing with names going for my first draft. There are a lot of characters in this story, and for some reason I decided to be old-fashioned or clever or I don't even know what, and have every male have the same name as his father. Sure, that stuff happens in real life. But in your novel, if both father and son are going to be in your story, you really shouldn't do that. I'm all for being realistic, but not when it's confusing as hell. Even I was confused. When the author is confused, that's a bad thing. So, I needed to change lots of names for the second draft, and not just father/son names. I also started lots of names with the same later and that got a bit confusing too, in certain contexts.

I had to do a lot of find and replaces. In case you don't know, find and replace is very sensitive. You have to make sure to put in spaces where spaces are needed. I know this. I just forgot. I was replacing all the Toms with Henry, and forgot to put a space after the "m" in Tom. So, word replaced every instance of "tom" with "henry". Think about it. Lots of words have "tom" in it. Tomorrow. Stomach. Bottom. The character whose name I was keeping, Tommy. It was a mess. Picture it: Henryorrow. SHenryomach. BotHenry (which is somehow not getting flagged as a misspelled word). Henrymy. After I figured out what happened, cried (not really, but almost), it actually wasn't that hard to figure out what the words were supposed to be and do a spellcheck and fix it. It wasted a good half an hour though. Now that I fixed it, I can laugh about it. The reason I'm sharing it is so you guys can laugh at me too. Because it's funny.

Luckily, that's done, and I have almost six chapters ready. My super-secret thing is ready, and I just have a couple more non-writing things to do. So, one more week. Don't forget. Teasers are coming in the next day or two. Also, like my Facebook page! Pretty please!
Facebook.com/beckymunyonauthor