The same Summer I started this blog, I also wrote a novel.  There are elements to the novel that date as far back as ten years ago when I was only 16.  I was 18 when I created the main character.  I was 21 when the basic premise for the novel came about.  I was 23 when I started the novel.  I was 24 when I finished.  I’m 26 now and I want you to read it.

This is a really big deal to me.  I’ve been writing fiction for just about ever, but only in the last five years or so have I started taking it seriously.  I want to be a novelist.  But, I have kept most of my writing hidden away.  To me, it’s personal and hard to share with others.  But, sharing is really the thing I want to do most.

I have serious insecurities about writing fiction, because it is hard.  It is really, really hard.  And, novels are long.  They are really, really long.  It’s true what Ira Glass says that there will be a long time when your taste far outshines your ability, which makes it hard to be confident in your writing.  But, it’s also true what all writers say that the only way to become a better writer is to write, which means you have to allow yourself to suck.

I would really like to write this with confidence.  I would really like to think of myself as an artist.  Maybe I’m getting there, but it’s pretty obvious that I need a push.  I need to stop waiting for perfection if I’m going to make this dream happen.  I need to allow myself to suck  and I need to throw my words and stories out into the world, even if it’s incredibly embarrassing sometimes.

I’m trying not to get too disclaimery, but the truth is that I have zero perspective on this novel.  I’ve been rereading it because I’ve barely looked at it over the last year, and if I’m being honest, I cringe all the way through.  Sometimes it feels very immature, sometimes strangely dark, and sometimes just bad.  The thing that strikes me most about it is just how unironic it is.  It’s completely earnest, which means that it often fails, but at least it tries to do something.

I originally thought of asking a few of you to read my novel and give me notes, so that I could further revise it, but I’ve decided against that.  This novel has been too long in the making.  It is for me an uncomfortable mix of ten years worth of experiences and it’s time for me to let it go.  This story means a lot to me, but it’s not an open book anymore.  I’m working on a new novel and that’s where I want to put my attention.

I am incredibly nervous and incredibly excited to have you read my novel, especially given how much I’ve talked about it in the last two years.  You all have been really supportive of my writing and it’s given me the confidence at least to share what I’ve kept to myself for all these years.

Please read my novel.  Novels are long so that alone is more than enough.  You can let me know what you think of it or not.  You can even just let it sit on your desktop unread. Don’t feel guilty, because I’ll never know the difference.  Maybe just try to get through the first chapter, though, so you can say something that makes me think you read it.

The novel is called Careful Where You Stand.  It’s titled after this song, but this song is more important to the story and to me.  It’s about 90,000 words.  You can read more about it here.

If you would like to read the novel, please leave a comment
here or email me at writetoreach@gmail.com
and I will send you a pdf.

This is an excerpt from my novel Careful Where You Stand.  You can read more about the novel here and read another excerpt here.

She could hardly remember now how she used to fill the hours of her life.  To keep her mind busy felt like a constant struggle.

She tagged along with her parents as they ran their errands.  She wasn’t much for company.  It was hard to engage in small talk when they were always staring at her with those concerned looks on their faces.  It began when Ally died, but it’d become so much worse since her visit to the hospital.  Always they searched her face for signs.  When she was alone in her room too long, they’d come check on her.  When she said she was going for a walk, they insisted they could use the exercise too.

It was a new dynamic she was slowly getting used to.  She’d always been the happy child. She pushed the limits occasionally, but she never went too far.  They didn’t have to worry about her.  Now she was unpredictable. She was flirting with something serious, and they didn’t have confidence that she wouldn’t fall over the edge.

She knew how they felt.  Her mother was easy to read, and her dad had been forced to voice his concerns directly for fear that Haley was in real danger.  She tried to convince them that things were getting better, but they were watching all the time.  She couldn’t smile through it all, she couldn’t keep her eyes in focus through every dinner conversation, and she couldn’t always eat her food without first gagging.

Though they didn’t ask any specific questions about her sessions with Dr. Vine, she tried to offer them a clue or two after each one.  In passing, Haley would say, “We talked about that trip Ally and I took to Portland when she first got her license.  Remember that?” or “She said I should try harder to talk to the kids at school.”  They’d say something encouraging, and she would smile and agree.  Later when they walked by the living room and saw her staring into space rather than paying attention to the TV, they’d pause for a second in the hall, the look of concern returning, before walking away.

Her mother was most concerned that she continue to eat and shower regularly.  She’d been managing both fairly well.  It was easier if she ate regularly, but sometimes she’d forget and long hours would pass, the juices in her stomach swirling around, making her nauseated rather than hungry.  She liked to stand under the warm shower and think of nothing.  No one could catch her there.  Her mom only knocked on the door when more than a half hour had passed.  Then she’d wash her hair quickly, change into clean clothes, and appear downstairs for a snack before bed.

Maybe it was all a waste of time, since they didn’t believe her anyway.  But, Haley knew it was those subtle looks of fear and disappointment that kept her moving forward.  She’d like to climb in bed after school, but her mother couldn’t find her that way.  It was this self-delusion—the idea that she was really fooling people with her act—that helped her get up every morning and go to school every day.  She didn’t want to think of what would happen if she let the truth in.

Haley couldn’t even explain to herself how she could sit in class and talk and laugh with Ryan and Rick and the girl who sat in front of her, Angela.  Even then she wasn’t without her grief.  It sat in the pit of her stomach, weighing her down like lead.  She never forgot it.  It wasn’t like before when the realization of Ally’s death would leave her and then come crashing down upon her again, the pain renewed.  This was dull and heavy and constant.  But, it didn’t keep her from smiling or joking.  It just kept her from believing it would ever go away.

I did it.  I just sent off a draft of my novel to my friend Lisa–my first reader ever.  I made the July 1st deadline.

I didn’t exactly sprint across the finish line, but I didn’t trip and land on it either.  It’s more like I jogged across the line feeling pretty good, but coming in way short of my time goal. No personal best.

I had this idea that I would make all these revisions–big and small–and today turn over a draft that if not good was at least tight.  Like, I would at least be sure it made sense and that events lined up.   No one could poke any holes in my plot or question me on any scene I couldn’t defend.  It would be solid.

But that’s not the way it happened.  I started revisions not knowing how to revise.  I found my way a bit, but never sat for hours and hours pouring over one chapter.  I’m still not sure whether I had unreasonable expectations or I failed.  Probably something in between.  I had to reconcile the way I thought it would be with the person I am, the circumstances of my life, and the way I work.  I am not a detail person.  I’m never going to spend hours trying to find that one perfect word.  I’d really rather jump off a cliff.

I wanted this to be it, but when I actually dug into the revisions, I realized how much more there was (and still is) to do.  Still, I know this could go on forever and I could easily delude myself into thinking that if I just worked hard enough, it would one day be perfect.  But, I’ve never in my life done anything and thought, “yup, that’s perfect,” so I won’t hold out for that now.

In preparation for this post, I went back to the post I wrote last summer when I finished the first draft of my novel.  I was hoping to find inspiration there.  Instead I found only the words, “The End.”  I knew at the time that it wasn’t really the end, but, well, it sounded good.  I wrote that post on August 1, 2008.  Then I thought July 1, 2009, was really The End, but it wasn’t.  Now I think I’ve really got the end figured out: August 1, 2009–one year after completing the first draft.  The goal is to have a draft I might actually try to do something with, but that, more importantly, I will let people read.  It’s time to finish one project and move on to many more.  I could stay here forever, but I don’t want that.

This most recent race to the finish taught me a few more things about writing.  First, it’s like riding a bike.  I hadn’t written much fiction over the last year.  It occurred to me that I might not be able to do it anymore, however little sense that makes.  I found all kinds of reasons to hesitate and avoid getting started, but once I did get going, I found myself writing again without much effort at all.  I think a lot of what I wrote was actually better than what I’d written before.  Second, I find revising really hard and it will always be my habit to try to get things right the first time.  But when that’s not possible, I find that pulling out specific scenes and working on them in another document took off a lot of the pressure.  If it wasn’t good, then I could simply delete it without having ruined any of what I’d already written.  If I found a better way to tell the story, then I could simply cut out the old and substitute it for the new.  Third, I relearned the very obvious: the hardest part is getting my butt in the chair and my hands on the keyboard.  It’s so easy to avoid writing by, say, talking about what you’re doing like I have done here to a sometimes sickening degree, but there’s no way to complete a novel without just sitting down and writing it.

Remember a couple weeks ago when I gave myself a deadline for the revised, not-embarrassed-to-let-someone-else-read-it version of my novel? The deadline is July 1st. It’s the day I’m handing the novel off to my friend Lisa, who will be my first reader.  Not just the first reader of this novel, but the first reader of any of my fiction ever (aside from the excerpt I posted here), and I have been writing fiction since I was 16.  All this time people have said things to me about how they’re sure it’s good, but the truth is that no one knows, least of all me.

I do not think it’s impossible for a writer to have perspective on her own work, but any perspective I did have on my novel has recently slipped away.  What I mean is that I have no critical distance from my work and I can no longer tell what’s good and what’s not or what works and what doesn’t.  This happens to me all the time with papers for school, usually because I work so close to the deadline.  After writing for 8 hours, I can’t tell anymore if my arguments is genius or incredibly obvious, so I write until I’m out of time or energy and then I turn it in and hope for the best.  That doesn’t really work for a novel.  I mean, at some point I will have to say it’s good enough, but there’s so much more time for feedback and revision.

And, the truth is that though I could go on and on about its merits, I hate revising and I’m no good at it.  Normally I revise only for typos and small clarity issues.  Even with my Master’s thesis, my revisions were mostly adding whole new sections, not tearing apart the ones that were already written.  But, again, that doesn’t work for a novel.  I like a lot of what I have and I will never be one of those writers who rewrites everything, but there are parts of my novel that don’t work and they need to be changed.

I don’t know what it is about revising.  I know that most writers find such relief in having something down on the page.  The blank page makes them anxious, but once they have something down, then they can get to work polishing it.  I’m not like that.  I stare at my already written words and have no idea what to do, even though I know they need to be changed.  I guess it goes back to me being a big picture person.  In a novel, especially with dialogue, there are so many pieces that have to fit together and once you go messing them up, there’s so much work involved in making them flow again.  I hate it.

Once I can get enough perspecitve to see what’s not working and I gear myself up for digging into my already written words, the issue is that the problems in my novel remain problems because I don’t know how to solve them.  That’s something that’s really surprised me about writing a novel: I spend so much of my time feeling like Angela Lansbury in Murder She Wrote.  The biggest problems in my novel come in the last half where most of the major drama is over and it’s much more about recovery.  It’s easy in dramatic scenes to explain why people feel the way they do and why they react the way they do, but the far more subtle mood shifts and motivations that happen in day-to-day life are so much more difficult to write.

What I’m trying to say is that the writing is not going well.  And yet the deadline just gets closer!  I have very little time left and so much to revise.  I’ve always had a healthy respect for deadlines.  In fact, I’ve never missed one, never asked for an extension, and never taken an incomplete.  And, even though it would be really easy to do that now, because there are no real consequences for missing my self-inforced deadline, I don’t want to .  I know that some people would advise taking some time off, but that has never worked for me.  I never figure things out unless I’m in the thick of them and I never get anything written unless I sit in front of my computer and force myself to focus.

I look forward to a day very soon when I don’t have to rely on my own limited perspective–when I can hear what other people think of my work.  But, I realize now that even though I do fear harsh critique, what I’m looking for is not praise.  What I want most is for people to talk about my characters as if they are real and as if their lives are real too.  I want to engage in debate about whether one would really make the decisions she did or whether the other would really be so willing to put up with her.  I think that’s when I’ll finally get some of the clarity I crave.

It’s strange to think that I finally have some time to write, which is what I’ve wanted all year.  But, now that I’ve overcome that obstacle, I’ve run smack into several others.  It’s never as simple as just sitting down and writing, and yet there is no other way.  I can’t set aside the ego and anxiety and story problems, so I’ll drag them all along with me to the finish line.

I am a deadline kind of person.  It’s not that I like deadlines.  It’s just that I need them in order to get things done.

So, I set myself a deadline of July 1st.  On that day, I will have finished all of the major revisions on my novel and I will hand it over to Lisa to be my first reader. I’m hoping later on that some of you will consider reading it and giving me notes, but I’m going to just give it to Lisa for now.

The thought of anyone reading my novel makes me want to run far, far away, but Lisa has seen me jump up and down waving a glow stick at NSYNC concerts and march in the shape of a W while wearing a polyester band uniform, so I don’t have much pride left around her.

With this deadline in mind, I’ve already gotten a lot done.  It’s the second half of my novel that needs a lot of revision.  I’m reminded of what I learned when I was first writing it last summer: the big dramatic scenes are so much easier than the day-to-day stuff.  People not really doing anything, not reacting to much, but just going through the motions, is really hard to write.

In order to hold myself to it, I want to let this deadline be known.  By July 1st I will have completed a draft of my novel that I’m willing to let people (okay, one person) read.  Wish me luck.

I’m of two minds. Or one crazy mind. I’m not sure yet.

I’m like, “yay Summer!” I have that strange beginning of summer feeling where you don’t know what to do with yourself, because everything has suddenly ended. But, I wasn’t expecting it this year, because my life over the last year has revolved more around work than school, and I am still more than full-time employed.

I guess I was focused more on graduation than I thought, because the afternoon of the ceremony, my mind started to open up to this new freedom of (very temporarily) not being a student. I was sitting in the theater Saturday night watching Star Trek and even though half of my energy was spent admiring Spock’s ears, the rest was on some kind of anxiety-fueled spin.

It seems that this slight anxiety issue I have is actually worse when I don’t have things to focus on. So, I search for distractions. I could fill my time with the things I really want to be doing: reading and writing. But, in all that silence, my mind goes crazy.

I’m half filled with dread and anxiety and half stupidly excited about Summer and all the new things coming my way. Listening to the live version of “Summer Swing” seems to fuel the latter.

None of this is really anything new. I’ve gone through it all before. But, I am determined not to waste a summer trying to distract myself instead of doing the things I want to do.

I want to finish my novel this summer and get it to a place where I can actually try to do something with it. Because the truth is that I’ve done almost nothing with it in the last year. Some of that was legitimate, but a lot of it, I think, was me being afraid of finishing. It’s that damn brain crack again.

If this was just about accomplishing things, then I’d think again, because my time would better be spent learning French and relearning German (for my PhD). I’m going to write instead, because it moves me on some very deep level and does magical things for my mind and general well-being.

Time to become intimately involved in the lives of my characters again.

A few people have asked me about my writing process. Good question. But, the thing is that I don’t really have a writing process. I don’t have an elaborate approach for writing fiction. And, I don’t have a tried and trusted way of doing things that I’m sure to duplicate in the future. That said, I don’t really have any advice, but in the hope that it might be useful to someone, I will tell you the things I did do.

1. The Idea: I don’t know if anyone ever has an answer to the question of where their ideas come from. I don’t know where the idea for Haley’s story came from exactly, but I can tell you a little bit about how it evolved. I was writing this other story, and I needed the character (Haley) to have some tragedy in her past that was making her act a certain way in the present. I came up with the idea that her cousin, who she was really close to, died. I was writing this story in 2002. The back story became more elaborate, and at some point, I realized the back story was more interesting than the story I had been working on. In the Summer of 2005, I decided that it was Haley’s story I should write. It was the Summer of 2008 before I actually wrote it. What was I doing in the meantime? Not much related to fiction. The novel was always something I was going to write, but never something I actually sat down and worked on for long periods of time. No, it doesn’t take 6 years to write a novel. I wrote 90% of the thing in 2-3 months. But, I had known the characters that long. I thought I knew a lot about what would happen in the novel, but a great deal of it changed when I actually started writing.

2. Scenes Come Together: When I’m reading, I think of fiction as one big narrative. It starts somewhere and ends somewhere else. But, in my own fiction, I think of the story as a series of scenes. Some scenes strike me out of the blue–often when I’m in the shower or doing dishes or walking around the library collecting books. It starts with some idea, and I go over it and over it in my head until it grows into something more coherent. When I sit down to write it, I have the entire scene in my head. It feels to me as if these fully-formed scenes act as anchors in my story, and much of the rest of the writing I do is an effort to link one scene to the next. The difficult thing is when you get a beautiful or vivid scene stuck in your head, but you realize it won’t work in the story or it’s not necessary to the story. There’s this scene that I’d been thinking of for years, and it felt pivotal to me. It was the turning point. But, when I actually wrote the novel, I found it didn’t work and wasn’t necessary. You can’t know that stuff until you actually write.

3. Characters: I did do some character sketching before I started really writing. But, to be honest, I found it mostly useless. There certainly are some things that came out of it, and I think taking notes on your characters is necessary so that you don’t forget various facts about them. But, I think most of what you learn about your characters, you learn as you write. You see how they react to various situations. I’d known Haley since 2002 and Ryan since 2001, because they both existed already in earlier novels I’d written, but they became very different people when I actually started writing.

4. Outlines: I am a very big outliner when it comes to my academic writing, and I find them even more necessary in fiction. I think of outlines as very fluid plans. They give me an idea of where I’m going or how one scene leads into the next, but I don’t consider them limiting. Even though the narrative of my novel is quite simple, there are so many different threads of emotion, so many different relationship dynamics, and so many various points I want to make, that I find outlining essential. But, when I’m actually writing, I find out what works and what doesn’t. That means changing the outline. It took me about 10 outlines to get through the novel. By the time I’d reached the final chapters, I was outlining constantly, because I had to fit everything in before the end.

5. Notes: I have pages and pages, some type-written and some hand-written, of notes about the novel. As much as I find them 100% necessary, I absolutely hate them. I hate them because they are everywhere and they are so hard to organize and get a handle on. When I don’t have time to write, I will sometimes plot out scenes that have been haunting me. I’m worried I’ll forget them, and I want to take notes while they’re still so vivid in my mind. The notes on scenes are very helpful when I actually write the scenes. But, mostly, the notes are about character motivation. Character motivation is something I have to get right in my mind, but it very rarely makes it directly into writing. So, I have to just reread these notes all the time and try to keep everything straight in my head as I write.

6. Writing: This is it. It’s the only point I’m making here that really matters. I was hesitant to write at all about process, because all anyone really needs to hear is that you have to put your butt in the chair and write. Most of my good ideas come to me while I’m actually writing. And, even the ideas that comes to me at other times are a result of the time I’ve spent writing. There’s no other way to get where you want to go. You have to just sit down and write, even when it’s painful, even when you’re not sure where to go. As far as I’m concerned, this is the only step.

For a little more detail, except for the occasional note, I type everything. I use a Mac application called Scrivener. Of course, you can use any word processor, but I like Scrivener, because it makes it really easy for me to keep my notes and chapters all in one place and, most importantly, jump around them quickly. For me, it’s easier to navigate than one big Word document. I wrote a lot of the novel at my old library job where there was a ton of downtime. The rest I wrote sitting at my desk or my couch.

7. Revising: This is something I’m still trying to figure out. When it comes to most of my writing, I’m not a big reviser. I write at my highest quality as I go, and then I usually make basic editing fixes and turn it in. But, that’s not enough for the novel. I really don’t think you can write anything that long that doesn’t require serious edits. I mean, even as you’re writing, it’s hard to remember what you’ve already written. In revising, I think in terms of small problems and big problems. So, I read through my entire novel, taking notes on each chapter. The small problems are things like, “add more description here” or “this dialog isn’t working.” The bigger problems have more to do with character motivation or sometimes even time line and plot. The small problems are usually easy fixes, but they’re time consuming. The bigger problems I work out in the same way I figure out scenes: I go over and over them in my mind until I figure out what needs to happen.

Okay, damn, when I spell it all out like that, it really does seem like a process. I guess everything’s a process when you break it down.  Let me explain another.   First, I take the toothbrush off the stand.  Then, I open the medicine cabinet and pull out the toothpaste.  Next, I put the toothpaste on the toothbrush.  You see where this is going.

Thanks to everyone who read the excerpt from my novel. You all seemed to understand why putting my writing out there filled me with panic.  It’s funny how every description and even the characters’ names sound cheesy when you start thinking about other people reading your work for the first time. Posting might not have been so intimidating if I hadn’t been blathering on for eight months (the entire time I’ve been blogging) about writing the damn thing!

I’ve thought about posting some of my fiction many times before.  My conclusion was usually no–actually, hell no.  But, it’s funny, the minute I put it out there, it seemed like no big deal at all.  Still, your comments meant a lot to me, and I know all of us bloggers say things like that all the time, but this time I mean it more than ever before.

I was so preoccupied with my own fears that it really didn’t occur to me that any of you would care to know what was going on or who Ally was or what had happened to put Haley in such a state.  When people ask me what the novel is about, I never know what to say. I usually say something quick and then change the subject.  But, this time, I’m going to answer the question.

So, let me tell you what my novel is about.  It’s a coming of age story called (for now, anyway) Careful Where You Stand. I didn’t write it to be a young adult novel, but I think it is. It takes place in Washington. It’s about a sixteen year old named Haley (pronounced HAL-ee, and not HALE-ee). Haley is very sweet, very naive, not particularly talented at anything, and not particularly passionate about anything. She lives a small life, but she’s content. Her cousin Ally is quite the opposite. (Yes, they have rhyming names, and I really should change one of them, but, this far in, that seems almost impossible. I didn’t do it on purpose!) Ally is very smart, very outgoing, and extremely intense. She’s a year older than Haley, but they have been best friends their entire lives.

The novel begins the moment Haley learns that Ally was killed in a car accident. It’s the story of Haley dealing with her cousin’s death. It turns out that this person she’d put up on a pedestal was living a life she didn’t know much about at all. Haley has to reconcile the perfect person she thought Ally was with the imperfect person she gets to know through Ally’s journals, all while grieving the death of her best friend. She’s angry in a way she’s never been before in her life. She’s dealing with something she simply doesn’t have the tools to face.

I’ll keep Ally’s secret life a secret for now, but even in her anger at Ally not just for keeping a secret from her, but for what she was doing to herself, Haley finds herself adopting some of her cousin’s bad habits. Ally’s death doesn’t just lead Haley to question who her cousin was, but who she is as well. She’s rebuilding her images of them both from scratch.

In her grief, Haley pushes away almost everyone in her life. Her friends from school fall away easily–they were never that close anyway. Others of them fight for her, but she make it impossible for them to hang around. Alone, she spirals down pretty out of control. Finally when it seems that her physical health is at risk, her parents force her to go to a doctor and then a therapist.

Getting better doesn’t happen quickly or linearly. Even when she feels well enough to get through her daily activities, it’s hard for her to imagine ever being happy again. With the combination of time passed, therapy, and a new friend, she does come out of her black hole.

About that new friend. Oh, come on! You knew there had to be a boy in here somewhere. Ryan is a little too persistent for Haley to push away, though she certainly does try. He finds her intriguing, at least in part because of her grief. He claims otherwise, but I think, at least at first, there’s a part of him that wants to rescue her. But, she doesn’t need to be rescued. She needs to find peace with Ally or learn to go on without that peace.

Of course there are other characters and side plots, and plenty of back story, but that’s the basic premise. Every time I attempt to write a short abstract, I hear a movie voice saying things like, “In a world where everything seems uncertain, one sixteen year old must learn to face . . .” and “Haley was just your average sixteen year old until her world was turned upside down when . . . .” Yeah, no thanks.

I might share more excerpts in the future, but it’s hard to find scenes that make some sense out of context, and there are only so many hugely dramatic moments like that!  Man, I love to talk about this stuff.

Movie voice: “In a world where the future of publishing is so uncertain, one 25 year old must navigate a busy schedule of working, studying, and blogging to achieve her lifetime dream of being a published author. Will she do it? Follow and find out.”

I’m doing something I never thought I’d do. But, that’s pretty much blogging in a nutshell for me. So, I’ll step outside the comfort zone again. No explanations. And, no disclaimers–except to say that I’m not giving disclaimers, which is itself a major disclaimer.

The numbness that had set in the day before had yet to retreat, and Haley changed her mind again: it was worse than the anger. For a long time, she lay in bed, staring at the walls. Yearning to feel something, even if it was pain, she walked to her closet. It was easier now that her mother had washed and folded all the clothes that had been piled there before.

She grabbed the red journal, and sat down right on the floor. She flipped through the pages again, but she didn’t read anything. It was as if the emotion was sitting just below the surface, waiting for her to open the book again. The tears welled up in her eyes, but she wiped them away, careful to catch them before they fell down and streaked her face. She breathed deeply, trying to calm herself.

She had to get away from her father. The house was too small, and the walls too thin; he was sure to come and check on her soon. But, she knew the only way to get away from him was to walk right past him. She continued to breathe deeply, and willed the tears to stop collecting in her eyes.

She waited a few minutes for the rain to stop, and then she walked out to the porch where her father sat reading the newspaper. “I think I’m going to go for a walk,” she said.

“Do you want me to go with you?”

“No, I think I’ll go alone.”

He sighed. “At least take a coat. There’s no telling how long it will stay dry.”

She walked back into the house and grabbed a large green raincoat from the hall closet.

When she walked back out, he said, “have a good time,” but the words hung strangely in the air. They didn’t fit. They both knew that.

She walked down the porch steps, across the driveway, and through the small gate that opened out to the field. The first sob escaped her not long after she was past the gate, and though she feared her father had heard her, she continued to walk without looking back.

She walked faster now. She was almost to the far edge of the field, where the grass grew tall and green, when the sobs started coming so hard that she couldn’t walk anymore. She fell to her knees in the wet dirt. She was positioned now so that the large white barn blocked her father from seeing her from the porch.

Her mind was back to racing, but her body seemed to be acting on its own instinct. She shook so hard that she had to place her hands on the cold, wet ground to keep from falling over.

The realization that had felt so dull the day before stabbed at her sharply now. Ally was lost forever, and so was Haley. There was no going back–no making it right. They really weren’t that different after all. Fragile girls just waiting to fall apart. If Ally hadn’t been strong enough, then Haley knew she had no hope.

Maybe this was the last cry before she could get better, or maybe this was just the last cry. Something about it seemed final.

She thought of her mom and her dad, of her aunt and uncle. She would live for them if she could, but it didn’t seem possible anymore. Finally, her knees shook so badly that she fell over onto the wet grass. She laid there until the rain began to fall again, the cold drops stinging her face. She pulled the hood of the coat up over her head, but she couldn’t shield her face from the rain that was falling faster now.

It felt like she was going to drown if she didn’t stand up. She couldn’t breathe anymore with the rain hitting so hard. So, with more energy than she thought she had, she rolled over and planted one hand into the dirt. She made it to her knees, but then froze there, deciding whether to fall back to the ground or make the move to her feet. Without a conscious thought, her weight was on one foot and then the other.

Haley had the sense to pull the jacket tighter around herself as she stumbled back toward the house. She thought he would be there on the porch waiting for her, worried since the rain had started again. But, the porch was empty when she finally reached it.

She walked through the house to the kitchen. She was silent until he noticed her.

“Haley?” He said cautiously.

“I need help.” She said.

I know it’s hard to comment on things like this. I love you to pieces if you simply read this far. Okay, I’m going to go have a panic attack now.

Remember how I was writing a novel? Maybe you don’t. I finished the first draft on July 31st, and I haven’t talked much about it since. I very intentionally put it aside to work on my thesis. Don’t ask me how that’s going.

I know that we make time to do the things we want to do no matter how busy we are. I, for instance, make a ton of time for this blog. I make a lot of time for keeping up with politics. And, I make time for being lazy.

I could make time for working on my novel. But, I don’t. It just sits there in the back of my mind, and occasionally I freak out about how I’m getting older and no closer to my dream of publishing a novel. Yeah, I have a lot of time. But, it’s easy to think, “One day, I’ll . . . . .” I don’t want to plan on doing things one day. I want to do them now.

Of course, I do have real limits. It’s hard to call myself busy, knowing all the time that I waste. But, I am busy. Between all my jobs and finishing my degree and applying to doctoral programs, I feel like I only have enough time to meet immediate deadlines.

I don’t know where I’m going with this post. I have so many things pressing down on me right now that I really don’t feel up to making some grand resolution to work on the novel. But, the thing is . . . I miss writing fiction. I miss my characters. And, it feels like the more time I spend away, the more difficult it is to go back.

Is there anything you want to do, but you keep putting off? Do you have good reasons for not working on it, or are they just excuses?

Most people know that I write. It’s one of my longest running interests, and anyone who has ever spent much time with me, has probably seen me at it. In school, I’ve had a lot of success in writing, and most people know that too. Still, before I started this blog, the only person who knew I was writing a novel was my friend Lisa.

Why have I kept it a secret? I don’t know exactly, but I have some guesses. First, I have always written fiction just for fun and just for myself. Telling people felt like letting them into my secret world, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted visitors. I definitely wasn’t sure I wanted critics. I get enough of that with my academic work. Second, to be honest, I have never taken creative writing seriously, because I have never thought I was very good at it. And, finally, I have tried to explain this before and failed, but I think there’s something obnoxious about telling people you’re writing a novel. It just seems like something you only tell people, because you want them to be impressed.

Once I decided to take myself seriously enough to just write the damn thing, it started to take over a large portion of my thoughts, and I was thankful to have this blog as an outlet. Checking in here has reminded me that I love to talk about writing, and provided me with a place to be accountable. Blogging has served as a small step between going it alone and inviting in the people who know me best.

So, I told my dad. He has since told everyone he knows and brought it up every time we’ve spoken. My dad’s passion in life is business, and though it took him a while to realize that I wasn’t just messing around with this humanities stuff before hunkering down and getting a business degree, he has been extremely supportive of my less-than-completely-practical pursuits. Our love of reading has always been a middle ground between us, and so while he’s already making plans for me to finance the rest of my education with the profits from my first best-selling novel (ha!), he’s also interested in the process of spinning out a story that wasn’t there before.

After telling my dad, I had to quickly tell my mom and step-dad, because, though my parents have been divorced for twenty years, when I tell one of them something, I always hear back on it shortly from the other. Then I started telling friends. Between my dad, my step-dad, and I, everyone now knows. The response has surprised me. I guess I expected something like the response I get when people find out I’m pursuing a PhD in theology; most of the are impressed by it (ugh), but pretty uninterested, except for this small group of people who share my fascination and want to sit and talk with me for hours about religion and souls and creation and all that good stuff.

Some people are not interested in the novel—my brother and sister, for example. But, most people have responded with genuine excitement. Amazingly, they want me to hurry up and finish so they can read it. It’s more than I ever expected, and their excitement is exhilarating to me. My fear that people would find this whole pursuit annoying and even pretentious, was mostly for not. But, there’s a new fear now. I have exposed myself, I have admitted to the world what I want, and now I am open for criticism. There’s no going back now. The next step is letting people read what I’ve written. The whole idea of having the novel out of my hands fills me full of anxiety, but it’s a risk I’m building up the courage to take.

I won’t pretend not to like the attention, but it’s pretty obvious to me that people relate to the novel writing (like anything) with motivations that aren’t selfless. Most of them are readers and some of them are readers who aspire to one day writing a novel. The latter are particularly interested in the process. They ask me questions about motivation and inspiration, and tell me all the reasons they’ve never started novels of their own. Nearly all have the self-awareness to realize they have no good reason to stall. They know all of their justifications are excuses, because they know you can’t wait for inspiration.

Still, from the questions they ask, I think they picture me pounding out page after page like a maniac with a single focus. The boring truth is that I wrote this novel while working in the library, checking people in and out, answering questions about copy cards, and looking at the clock to see how much time I had left. I outlined chapters while waiting for my number to be called at the DMV. Scenes haunted me as I stood in the grocery store gawking at the price of bread. Even when I sat at my desk at home, I was distracted by hunger, the heat, stress about finding a job, and that damn internet! Never was I so inspired that I forgot all those little things. Many times, especially near the end, writing was painful and I struggled to put every word on the screen.

When I talk theology with those interested, I often hold back. I don’t want to arrogantly shatter illusions as someone who has thought about these questions more than most. But, I don’t hesitate to shatter the illusion of the inspired writer. There’s nothing more to writing a novel than starting and continuing and finishing. Of course you can say it’s more complicated than that, and maybe it is, but no one ever said you had to write a good novel, and, in my book (ha!), a terrible novel is infinitely better than one that doesn’t exist at all. Plus, the only way to become a better writer is to write.

Holy crap. Last night I went to LA (specifically, UCLA) for the Breaking Dawn Concert Series. Breaking Dawn is the final book in the Twilight saga, and this concert series took the place of a traditional book tour. It had all the normal book tour questions and stories, but it was also a concert featuring Justin Furstenfeld of Blue October. I love Twilight and Blue October, so I was bound to have a blast. The amazing part is that we had the best seats in the entire theater. Seriously, front row center. I could not only see facial expressions, I could see the eyeliner on Justin Furstenfeld’s eyes!! Considering how crazy dedicated Twilight fans are, I still don’t know how I scored such amazing seats. For once in life, Ticketmaster comes through. Justin was amazing live, and Stephenie Meyer is so nice and funny. Even with 1,800 books to sign, she still took the time to ask me how I was doing. We’re practically best friends now.

Stephenie is so nice that she almost made me feel bad for being incredibly disappointed in Breaking Dawn. The thing about the Twilight series is that it’s so fun to read. The plots are okay, but it’s all about the characters. I won’t go through my reasons for disliking Breaking Dawn, except to say that it was not fun to read and the characters didn’t seem like the same people from the other books. Oh, Edward.

On to the normal Friday rundown:

• I’m going home today! Yay! I plan to keep up regular posting while I’m in Washington if possible.

• This has been a crazy summer of favorite things for me. The last of the favorite things is the Olympics. I cannot wait. My favorite summer events are gymnastics and swimming, though I’m a little less excited for swimming this year since my favorite Australian swimmer, Ian Thorpe, retired. (Where do I claim my award for using the word “favorite” the most times in one paragraph?) There’s a lot of drama surrounding these Olympics and China, but the magic of the Olympics is still there.

• Just before I started this blog, I interviewed for a job at a financial firm. The interview went really well, but I never heard back, and like a total idiot, I never followed up. After two months, I no longer expected to hear from them, but this week I did receive a call. They wanted to know if I’d found a job yet. When I said that I’d accepted another offer, the woman who interviewed me apologized that things didn’t “solidify” on their end earlier, so that they could get their offer in first. I didn’t expect to get closure on this, but it’s nice to know that I didn’t totally misread what happened in the interview.

• So, after hearing nothing for months, I ended up with two offers and another potential job all at once. The job I was so excited about last week stands as the best offer, and I’ve officially accepted it. I start the day after I get back from vacation.

• Revising is not going fast, but it is going well. I’ve been rereading the novel from the beginning, and taking notes on everything I need to change. What’s missing the most from my first draft is description. It’s hard to describe what people look like without sounding cheesy, so for that reason, I haven’t done it at all. I also need to add description to the dialogue; too often even causal conversations seem rapid fire, because there’s no description to slow them down.

• I really need to finish packing. Have a great weekend!

• If you missed my last post, I did finish the novel. It’s only finished in that it’s a completed story; there’s still a lot of work to do. But, today I don’t really care if it’s good or bad. I made my goal, and I’ve done something I’ve always wanted to do. I’m going to take a break from the novel for a couple days before I start revising.

• My sleep pattern is completely off. I tried to go to sleep at midnight last night, and I couldn’t fall asleep until almost five this morning. I’m normally a very calm girl, but not sleeping makes me feel violent.

• Today I need to bake some cookies and go shopping for a dress. I can’t remember the last time I did either. The dress is for my cousin’s wedding later this month. I like shopping in general, but I hate shopping for specific things or occasions.

• Tomorrow is a big day. It’s the release of Breaking Dawn. I’m in a little too deep now to know if it’s still possible to have no idea what Twilight is, but I’m guessing it is. Me? I’ll be reading all day Saturday.

Have a good weekend!

I did it!

DAY #2 (Written Wednesday morning when I was still sane)
The second day of writing was not as successful as the first. I woke up late, then I received the call about the job offer, and then there was a freaking earthquake. My mind was kind of scattered, and though I enjoy writing, it still takes a lot of focus to sit down and pound out a chapter. I only wrote about 1,000 words yesterday. I did have some wiggle room, but now I need to write two chapters in two days.

It struck me yesterday that I’m now in uncharted territory. I’ve written a lot of fiction over the years. I have binders of handwritten pages to prove it, and that’s saying nothing of everything on my computer. But, I have never finished a novel. In most ways, writing the last chapters of a story isn’t much different than writing any other part of the story. There is, however, the difference that you no longer have any room to think, “oh, I’ll just wrap that up later.” You have to say everything you want to say about a story line, because there is no later. It seems that whether I comment on a story line in the final chapters or not is a testament to its importance, which means there’s the temptation to comment on every story line. But, I’m fighting that temptation, because I don’t want a final chapter that amounts to a montage of resolutions. That would be very untrue to the story and to real life, which I’m trying to represent.

DAY #3 (Written Wednesday night when I was something else)
I feel almost crazy right now. I’ve written all day, yet I feel like I didn’t get anywhere. I did accomplish the bare minimum, though, and that should be enough to finish on Thursday as planned. The writing got pretty lean there near the end of the chapter, and I’ll have to add description later when I revise. I try to write as completely as possible, because I find it much more difficult to change things later, especially in academic writing when there’s an argument to structure. But, the novel is going to require pretty extensive revision, and there’s no way around that. It’s just too hard to keep everything going smoothly for so many pages. At this point, I’m actually looking forward to the revising process. It will be a change of pace, at least.

Though at first the thought of writing this post (or anything ever again) made me want to cry, I still think I’ll be able to finish before the end of the month (today! if you’re reading this on Thursday). I may feel loony right now, but on the whole, I’m still really enjoying writing.

I just had a really exciting 15 minutes.

1. I GOT THE JOB!!!!!!!! They just called and offered it to me. I jumped around my apartment for a minute, and then I went back to putting on my make-up.

2. While I was standing at the mirror putting on eyeshadow, I felt a little shaking. No big deal, I live in apartments, so that happens. Then the shaking didn’t stop. It took me a second to realize it was an earthquake. I walked the few feet to the door frame and looked out at my apartment as it continued to shake. I guess it was a 5.8, and the epicenter was pretty close to me.

This is the third substantial earthquake I’ve been through. They’ve all started in the same way. You feel shaking, but it takes you a minute to realize that it’s not stopping. After the initial realization, they’ve all been very different, though. This one felt like real shaking, and it went on for an uncomfortably long time. The last substantial quake I experienced was back in high school. I was in the last place you’d want to be during an earthquake: the chemistry lab. We were surrounded by walls of cabinets with glass fronts that were full of glass beakers! After the initial shock, we climbed under our desks as we’d been practicing since elementary school. The weird thing about that one was that you could actually see the ground moving in waves like the ocean. Yay for living on the west coast, I guess! I haven’t heard of any major damage yet. I hope everyone is safe.

3. Day #1 of writing was successful! I finished chapter 19, which means I have two more to go. I was going to write more about writing, but with today’s excitement, I think I’ll save that for tomorrow. I really should be working on the novel right now anyway.

It started as a goal to finish a novel. Period. Then I started writing at the beginning of the summer, and I decided I wanted to finish before Fall. Then things started going really well and very quickly, so I decided I wanted to finish the novel before the end of July. Then writing became more difficult, and I let laziness get the best of me. Saturday I realized that July was going to end in less than a week, whether or not I’d finished the novel.

Meeting my goal no longer seemed possible. But, when I was showering last night, I finally figured out the motivation of one of my principle characters, and it has made all the difference. I quickly finished a chapter I’ve been working on for almost two weeks. Writing became easy again.

I have four days to finish the final three chapters or about 15,000 words. For me, that’s doable, but it’s definitely going to be a challenge. Of course, I have the luxury of not working right now, so I’m going to take advantage of it. My goal is to write a chapter each day on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. I’ll update each day on the blog with my progress.

I feel like I just broke through a major block in my writing, which is strange only because I didn’t think I was blocked. I knew something was going on, but it certainly didn’t feel like an impasse. I knew already what needed to happen, but I couldn’t figure out what my characters were thinking or why they were doing the things they were. I tried to explain to myself and potential readers what the characters were feeling, but it all felt very artificial. It shouldn’t be so hard to explain motivation; it shouldn’t feel like a persuasive essay.

While creating this story, I’ve often felt like the pieces were falling together like a puzzle. I can’t make any sense of that. It’s pure fiction–100% fabricated in my mind. But, when something is right, it often feels right, and when something is forced, it feels fake. Sometimes it seems as if the story already exists in its entirety, and I’m just uncovering it piece by piece. When I pass a block like the one I’ve just experienced, it feels like I’ve solved a mystery, uncovered a new piece of the puzzle.

Another thing I’ve learned: simple is almost always better. I was getting desperate and reaching for elaborate explanations to explain a character’s motivation, and what I finally ended up with was something very simple. Simple emotions are easy to relate to, even when the causal factors are extremely complicated and convoluted.

This week has been surprisingly productive. I took care of several things I’ve been avoiding for some time, made progress on the novel, and had two interviews.

• I twittered (tweeted or twitted) about this earlier in the week, but on Tuesday I spent 5 hours at the DMV. In a piece of fiction, I once described a character as someone who could even make waiting in line at the DMV a good time. High praise indeed! But, it really wasn’t that bad. The moment I pulled up and saw that the huge parking lot was full at 9:30 in the morning, I resigned myself to being there all day. I didn’t help my own cause by forgetting my birth certificate at home 20 minutes away. When I finally made it back to the DMV, I waited in a really long line to speak to someone, then another line to get my picture taken, then another line to take the written driver’s test, and then another line to get my test graded. Good news! I passed. I now have a California driver’s license. It took me another couple hours to get my car registered.

• Hanging out at the DMV reminded me of when I was learning to drive. I swear that was one of the most stressful times of my life. I wanted to go around and say congratulations to everyone who passed their tests as I sat and waited, because driving for the first time is a big deal, and the DMV people, though they were surprisingly nice, didn’t seem too excited for anyone. The woman who graded my test didn’t even tell me I passed!

• It’s been almost a month, so this is officially the longest I’ve gone without a job since I was 17. It’s funny, because I’ve been so busy stressing myself out with things both important and inconsequential that I haven’t enjoyed it at all. But, I’m enjoying it now!

• There’s only one more week to wait before the (sort of) final Twilight book is released! I have to admit I’m actually more excited about this than I was about the last few Harry Potter books. Don’t get me wrong, Harry Potter is the superior series, but it’s hard to maintain obsessive levels of excitement for years on end. I only started reading Twilight in May.

• I was talking to my dad on the phone last night, and he asked me if I go through periods of time while working on the novel where I just feel really creative and writing feels effortless. I said, yes! But, then there are times where every word comes out slowly and painfully. I’m experiencing the latter right now. I have the rest of the novel planned out in detail, but the writing has become arduous. This is all part of the experience, I guess. I can’t imagine that a person who waited for inspiration would ever finish a novel.

• Bare Minerals is seriously amazing stuff. I do not have the budget for an expensive makeup habit, but that doesn’t seem to be stopping me.

• Both of my interviews went well, especially the one for the job I really want. Now, I wait.

• Tomorrow I’m hanging out with my bff. I swear I’ve seen her more in the last month than I have in the last couple years. We only live about 35 minutes away from each other now, but she’s a law student, I’m a grad student, and gas is expensive.

I love to read all varieties of fiction, but in my own writing, I strive for realism. No big mysteries, no magical worlds–just regular people doing pretty regular things. I try to put words in people’s mouths that no one would be shocked to overhear and give them emotions to which we can all relate or at least understand. Sometimes it’s very easy and requires almost no thought. Other times I agonize over the smallest of plot points, trying to separate myself from the story just enough to get some perspective.

As I’m planning out stories, I sometimes think, “Damn! Real life is boring.” It’s partly true. Most of us do the same things every day. We drive the same places, eat the same food, and even think the same thoughts. But, then I think about my own life. I live a very small life, yet so much has happened to me. I’m changing all the time. I’m very different even from the person I was at the beginning of this year. Real life provides a lot of drama, even from the undramatic like me.

So, you’ve got real life as you experience it, and it’s hard enough to get a grip on that enough to turn it into fiction. But, then you’ve got real life as you’ve seen it in books and art and movies. You’ve experienced the second almost as long as you’ve experienced the first, and they’re both very powerful. In fictionalized reality, like tv and movies, things happen very distinctly. People have big feelings and they act on them. There are resolutions and they are sharp. Emotion seems to follow some king of logic.

Many of us think in these terms. We try to apply movie logic to real life, and we end up frustrated and disappointed. Things really aren’t fair. You can have big feelings and they can go unrequited until they slowly fade away. People are depressed for reasons that don’t make any sense by movie standards, and they have good and bad days that, similarly, follow no logic. Things don’t separate so easily into good and bad or past and present. There’s just so much gray, and no matter how things turn out, you still have to wake up every morning and eat food and go to work and use the bathroom.

Knowing these two realities do not match, but not always being able to separate them, it’s hard to think of how to move forward in my own fiction.

• It’s Monday, and I promised (myself) to update on the weight loss. This was not the stellar week I was hoping to make it, but I did go to the gym 4 days and had excellent workouts each time. I improved my eating a lot, but I still struggled to keep my calories low. I’ve got a couple things going on at the start of this week, but by Wednesday, I’ll be back to 100%. Whenever I’m doing poorly, I always have this urge to make up some new, elaborate plan, but I know what works and I don’t want to distract myself from doing the hard work by making new plans. I’m not sure if that makes sense outside of my head. What I mean is that I waste time coming up with some grand new plan instead of following the plan I know works. The new plan just makes me feel better about things for a moment; it makes me feel in control. But, bottom line, I want results and I know how to get them. Progress happens not when you create a plan, but when you stick to a plan.

• So, the things I have going on? Coldplay concerts! Yes, two of them. I don’t go to concerts much anymore. Actually, I think it’s been a couple years. Mostly it comes down to money. But, even if I was living in a box on the street (or a van down by the river), I would pay to see Coldplay. I’ll report back on the awesomeness!

• I’ve tried to keep my Twilight fangirling to a minimum here, but it’s getting harder, especially now that my friend Lisa has read the books and fallen in love with Edward too. A new book in August and the movie in December. In the meantime, we’re fighting the urge to stalk Robert Pattinson around L.A.

• Around the middle of last week, I looked at my Google homepage, and where there is usually a forecast that shows 4 bright yellow suns in a row with varying temps of 80-100 degrees, there was a cloud with rain pouring down. I can’t tell you what this did to my heart. I love rain, and, well, absence makes the heart grow fonder (in this case, at least). I just love the moodiness of rain. Plus, it reminds me of home. After waiting all week, I got about an hour of downpour. It was a disappointment, but enough to get me by for now. I’ll hope for rain when I go home to Washington in August (but, don’t tell my dad).

• Speaking of which, I need to book my ticket for my August trip home. My mom and dad ask me about it every two seconds. I’m excited to go!

• The novel is ending, and I’m still along for the ride. I’m such a binge writer. I’ll write nothing for a couple days, and then pound out 5,000 words at once. It’s going to be a bit longer than I originally thought, but that’s a good thing. I’m still well within the range of the average novel. I’d like to write more about writing here.

I’m off to look for a way to be productive before it’s time to head off to Inglewood for the concert!