It has been a wild two weeks and I have to admit I have fallen behind but for good reason. I am moving! It is official and even though I’ll be moving only about five miles away into downtown it’s still significant. The last couple of weeks I’ve been cleaning and packing, readying myself for the final move-in day. It will be great going to a new place right as spring is finally taking hold of Salt Lake City but my novel has suffered because of this.
I’ve edited a few passages and read the end of part one about three times since I got back from Vegas earlier this month but my heart is not in it right now. I am distracted and unable to focus. I will get better and I am almost done with the transition now and I know right when I move I will want to focus on writing instead of unpacking.
What else have I been up to? Working and reading.
Over the weekend I felt like a little Austen so I watched a movie and then watched The Jane Austen Book Club. The movie was ok but bad enough to just make me want to read Austen instead of watch people ‘read’ her.
On Monday after work, I went to one of my favorite book stores and bought a cheap copy of Persuasion by Austen. I started reading it the same day and was about halfway through by Monday night now I only have about six pages left. It is good and I don’t think I’ve ever read it before. I love Pride and Prejudice but I am more fond of the Bronte Sisters than Austen. I thought why not, I’ll work my way backward with Austen and read her last work (Persuasion) then second to last and so on. It is a lot of reading and of course, I am reading about 17 other books right now but I can’t help it.
I think it’ll be a fun little list to read but I know I’ll cave in and read some Bronte here and there, I usually read Jane Eyre about once or twice a year.
Overall, I am on a little involuntary break from working on my novel and it is tearing me up. I will work more diligently on it soon after the chaos settles until then I write a little bit here and there for practice, my daily writing.
Thank you for reading my updates and following me on my journey through writing my first novel.
Last week I was on vacation in Las Vegas, Nevada. I went out of town to visit family and took only the essentials. I was torn up between bringing my manuscript or laptop but decided against it. It was a good choice, I wouldn’t have had any time to work on my novel and I needed to focus on my family.
Flying to Vegas March 2019 Photo: Alina Happy Hansen
I’ve been back since the 9th and today is my first day off since returning to work. It’s nice to get back into the groove of my regular schedule but at the same time, I am aware of how far behind I am.
What do I have planned for this week? Catch up on my reading, work on about 90 pages of my novel and write a few poems for submissions to literary journals. Last month I worked on one poem for about two weeks before submitting it to a lit journal. I am still waiting for a response from the journal but it was more of an exercise for me to have a deadline, a goal, a poem to work on.
Las Vegas March 2019 Photo: Alina Happy Hansen
I am looking forward to returning to my characters. I feel like they’re close to smashing up the furniture if I don’t give them some attention.
On Monday I returned to my book. I opened up the Google-doc and skimmed over it a few times. I got the printed manuscript of my second rough draft back along with some insightful information (I had given my rough draft to a trusted friend who read it in three weeks and helped me figure out my characters motives and chapter placements). Now I’m back to the grind. Today, I am about 30 pages into my second rough draft picking it apart once again, looking for grammar mistakes, punctuation, and parts of dialogue that need fixing.
Since I haven’t seen or read any drafts of my book the past three weeks, I’m surprised by how much I remember, how much I can almost recite line by line as I look over it. Did I miss my characters? Yes. Now that they’re back in my hands I want to expand and fill in the bare bones of my rough draft. Just in these first 30 pages, I’ve noticed how stripped it is, how it needs filling and fleshing out, which would help to make it more swallowable and enjoyable for readers. Of course, I’m not here to please, I’m here to write but I can see what I need to do and I’m ready to get started.
What I want to do going into my 3rd rough draft: expand and fill in necessary chapters/dialogue/scenes, rearrange a few chapters (their placement), and polish off my ending.
At first, I had about four to six different endings for my book. I wrote and rewrote from different perspectives but I cut all of that out in my second draft. I know I need a more solid ending, or at least one final chapter that doesn’t necessarily wrap everything up but most likely leaves questions and a few complications. Knowing that I still need to write a final chapter has brought me to the unsettling realization that there is more to be written, the story goes on and I can sense that my characters have more to say and do. This means that there will be a second book at some point, but I’m not even going to start thinking about that. I just need to finish this first one and then I’ll move on.
Besides my book, this week was eventful, I went out of town with my partner for a short vacation. It was good to have a brief change of scenery and some much needed alone time together. I came home yesterday and spent the day resting, now starting my work week I feel fully rested and ready to get stuff done.
I woke up with Lana Del Rey’s “Tomorrow Never Came” playing in my head. The line, “sitting on the park bench, waiting for you” repeating over and over in my mind. I can hear the music, her voice. Are those words even right? Or do they go another way, I have to look it up,
No, I was wrong, the part I was thinking of, it goes,
“I waited for you
In the spot you said to wait
In the city, on a park bench
In the middle of the pouring rain”
The image is stuck in my head, and it repeats over and over. Now I am finally able to drown it out listening to Warpaint, or Sharon Van Etten. I don’t think I really like “Tomorrow Never Came” as much as other Lana songs, so strange. The reference to Elton John and with accompanying vocals by Sean Ono Lennon. The past is present, it lives on, its alive within us.
What does it mean when I get songs stuck in my head? How am I able to hear the song, the instruments, everything not just the words. I can recall exactly how it sounds as if I am actually listening to the song, how is the brain capable of that?
This is week two of me taking a break from working on my novel. I have given the second draft to a trusted friend and I am patiently waiting for them to finish it and provide some much-needed feedback. I feel calmer and less anxious this week than last, I had been itching to keep working on my novel but refused to look at any drafts or write any background on my characters. I need to distance myself from my work so I can gain a better perspective.
When I say/write “my novel” it sounds so pretentious. But when I say “my book” it sounds flat and lifeless, like it could be anything, a recipe book, a book of quotes, anything. Novel sounds better.
For lunch today, I had a wheat bagel toasted with butter and blackberry jam. I fried up some scrambled eggs and ground up some pepper and salt for taste. I drink my coffee, my thermos keeps my french roast hot for hours, the longest I’ve counted was seven hours, I think that was yesterday.
Mundane details of my day, by writing them out I’m keeping myself occupied, my mind and my constant desire to write anything.
Every morning I use my electric kettle and boil enough water to fill the french press up to the little white line that denotes ‘4 cups’. I use pre-ground organic french dark roast coffee. I have cut cream out completely from my daily coffee ritual. Did that take as long as when I cut out sugar years ago? After I noticed I went through a 5 lb bag of white cane sugar in only a couple of months. The amount of sugar I used is revolting to me now. Two to three teaspoons per cup. Cup after cup after cup after cup.
There is a winter storm warning in effect right now. It started yesterday around noon. The big white flurries coming down. The mountains white with snow and half hidden by looming thick grey clouds. I drove around and ran some errands, bought a new pair of shoes and decided to go home. Reading the road, the drivers, aware of their movements which were becoming more erratic since it started snowing, I didn’t want to risk it. Risk being on the road with people excited, aroused, or angry ready to hit the gas and plow through the snow only to slip and slide and run into each other or worse, me.
Now the snow has piled up high, at least a foot on the fence as far as I can tell when I look out the window. There is so much snow. I am beginning to wonder how long it takes for people to get cabin fever in these conditions. I think about reading The Shining. I really want to and I am surprised that I haven’t yet. Today would be a perfect day to start but I have plans.
Soon I will have to pull on my layers, my boots and gloves, wrap myself up and go outside to dig out my truck. I have plans tonight with my partner and the short drive to meet him will take longer than usual today. Can’t help but think about the movie The Thing, can’t help but think to myself that some things are not what they appear even when they look familiar. My street, the house, even my truck hidden under snow on snow, white on white. It is all unfamiliarly familiar like prescribed deja vu.
In the back of my mind, I can hear my characters, they shuffle in the kitchen, pacing. I can hear their voices begging me to let them out. I can only imagine what’s going to happen when this is over.
I’ve decided to take a break from my manuscript for a while. I need to finish reading a few books and put some space between me and my characters. After my last post, My First Novel: (Finishing 2nd Draft) I ordered a printed copy of my manuscript. It was substantially thinner than the first draft.
I can’t figure out the ending quite yet and there are still about a dozen places in dialogue that need work but I wanted to read through it once and see how it felt. I made it a point just to read through my 2nd draft without editing, making any marks or highlighting. I just had to read it.
It has been stripped down to the bare bones, I cut about 16,000 words from the original 50,000. There are places where I can put some much-needed padding and other spots where I saw that chapters were almost identical (as far as the intended goal). But overall I enjoyed reading my manuscript without editing it, it only took me about two days to finish reading it.
I plan on keeping myself away from my manuscript for about a week or two, then I’ll dive into the third draft. Until then I plan on posting a couple things about what I’ve been reading, such as all the Patti Smith books I’ve been reading, and a list of how-to writing books.
