Shamelessly Stolen from Tate Hallaway's Blog

What do you find _______ about writing?

Hardest? Editing stuff that spans a seven-year period in my life. OMG. What insanity. The most depressing part is that for the most part, it isn't the earliest writing that sucks the worst.....

Easiest? Dialogue. As long as one character is working off the other, it just keeps on flowing. My favorites are arguments.

Most fun? Hearing little snippets of conversation in my head all the time.

Most Tedious? Trying discipline myself to ACTUALLY FIND A REGULAR TIME to sit down and write.

Coolest? Having people tell me they remember certain scenes I wrote, vividly. Even things of mine they read ten years ago.

Least cool? Knowing there's a book out there with my name on it that I don't like very much. *sigh*

Best? When you feel like you could go on and on and the words come easily.

Worst? When you can't even force a coherent sentence. For a good three months.

-Mel

Inundation

It seems my best option is to keep shopping Once Bitten while getting the dreaded holy mess Thieves fit for shopping as well. I'll just have to swamp them all with books and books and books out of my arsenal. Now, if I only had books and books and books fit to print. I'm only 25. I didn't hit my stride until last year. I was still hung up in the whole "but I just don't feel like writing" trap. This is total boloney. Professional writing Step 1: Take that whiney little child who doesn't FEEL like writing out back and beat the snot out of him. This is a job like any other. I don't FEEL like teaching sometimes either. But I do it. And eventually, your imagination gets the memo that we aren't just writing when we feel like it anymore, and you write better, faster. My God, if I still waited until I FELT like writing...

Speaking of whiney children, I also have to kick Anxiety's butt up and down the emotional plane, because I really have a lot of trepidation about trying to edit Thieves. And that's not going to help the process.

-Mel

Rejection Six

Well, that's the first time I got rejected on a pre-query. Lois Winston at Ashley Grayson says I missed the boat on vampire lit, that chick lit itself is a hard sell right now, and that I should either shelve Once Bitten and wait a while, work on something else, or I'd need to turn my vampires into shapeshifters or witches.

My vampires are, I guess, in the technical sense, witches. But they're still vampires, so I think that would just be arguing semantics.

It's a good book. It's a really good book. I don't want it to die in a drawer.

-Mel

Written Into a Corner

Long time, no write, I know. And that's been precisely the problem. I haven't worked on Two Evils in two months. I haven't worked on anything in two months. I figured out the historical fiction thing I was working on was SOOOO not me, and that Thieves was still, indeed, to clusterfucked up beyond repair.

So, I went back to Two Evils, because when I was reading it, I remembered the true enjoyment I get from writing about Evie, and how much I like her wit and sarcasm. I was trying to think of exactly why I stopped. Part of it is that I still haven't sold Once Bitten, not to an agent, not to a publisher, nada. So I decided to try and think of something that might be more marketable, and as Lyda always said, writing for the market instead of writing for enjoyment is the KISS OF DEATH.

I think the biggest problem, however, is that I HAVE WRITTEN MYSELF INTO A CORNER. I don't know how to move forward from where I am, honestly. Oh, I have a pretty good idea of what comes next, but I have literally created an impossible situation impeding the journey from here to there. It's frustrating as all hell.

Maybe I'll whine at my writing pals and ask for advice. I've been thinking on it for two months now and STILL don't know how to move on.

Despite this, I have written a new section for the book that I think rehashes two arguments that have already happened in the book, but hey, I worked on the thing and you edit when you're done. Forward motion is key. Kicking the inner critic's ass, however, has proven challenging.

Bad inner critic, no soup for you!

-Mel