I guess I should say I was in a band. We went the way of most bands: nowhere. But not before we released the 745th least successful album of all time. Okay, I made that number up, but I have to assume that at least 744 albums have sold worst than ours.

Critics said that our debut It is Good to be Without Vices was overly introspective. The lyrics seemed to be written by someone who thinks too much. One critic went as far as to say that our songs sounded more like the journal entries of an emo girl than anything you could really hum along to. Another said we lacked direction: “One song about God, the next about nail polish, and then one about some guy named Edward? What’s next with these people?”

I didn’t take their criticism seriously. I can’t help if people don’t get my lyrics. I mean, genius is often hard to recognize at first. But, the other band members couldn’t take the heat. They turned on me. Oh, they were so upset when I insisted on receiving credit for the music and lyrics I’d poured over that three day weekend they spent partying, but as soon as the critics started responding, they threw me under the bus and insisted I was “controlling.” Controlling? You think it was my idea to name the band after a character from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? But, whatever, I’ll just turn these feelings into my next album–a solo album.

If you’re ever in an independent record store, look for this treasure. It is Good to Be Without Vices, the first and only album by Merdude.  (I also have several copies at my apartment. Bring $20 and a Sharpie, and I’ll sign one for you.)

Okay, you got me. I’m not in a band. But, I am part of a super awesome writing blog that prompted me to write this post.  Here are the directions, if you want to participate:

Congratulations! Your brand new album comes out today, and you get to share it with the Twenty Something Writers community!

How to find out your album details:

1. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random – First random article is your band name.
2. en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Special:Random- *Find a quote on the page to be your album title. You may have to refresh the page once if there are not quotes on your random page**
   
3. flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days – Third picture is your album cover.
4. Write your back story and inspiration.

Remember to leave the link to your response in the comments of this post on Twenty Something Writers.

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?

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.

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.

Did I mention I’m writing a novel? I try not to. It seems like an annoying thing to drop. Anyway, it’s a coming of age story. Mostly I just wanted to say that, but it really is a coming of age story. I’ve been writing novels since I was 16, but this is the first one I’ve taken seriously, and it will be the first one I finish. This story has been in my head for more than 5 years. It began as another novel, but then I realized that the back story of one of the primary characters was far more interesting than anything I had plotted for her, so a couple years ago I decided to write her story. But, I was scared of the back story, because it’s dark and felt beyond me. She’s experiencing grief like I never have.

Fear, doubt, laziness, and a busy school schedule have kept me from making any real progress. But, last summer I finally wrote the first two chapters. I was very intentional about it, but the immensity of the project paralyzed me. I put it aside and went back to school. I’ve thought about the story a lot in the last year, but I haven’t written anything. Then, when school let out a couple weeks ago, I just started writing. I ignored the pressure I’d put on myself to make this thing good (like, publishable), and wrote because I felt a responsibility to tell this story. And, that’s where I am now: writing.