Posts

Another 10K

Image
I started the book over again because the tone and character weren't what I wanted, plus as if that wasn't already enough to bail on the draft, all kinds of current events got into it and it went off the rails. So now I have a new 10K and it's flipping awesome. Things are going the way they should have when it was happening to me, except they really super didn't. It still won't work out but it's fantastic to have these people rally around the two girls getting absolutely railroaded by some terrible stupid old men. Petty, miserable, angry, frustrated, hateful, narrow-minded, defensive, badly behaved ugly old motherfuckers who take it out on the young people around them.  The characters make me so happy. There's a cohort of freshman composers, each of which has a different area of expertise. Our girl is an alien among them (as I was not) because she's kind of a rock and roller, not a classical musician. I was a regular old play all the instruments classica...
Post a Comment
Read more

Started a new book

It's two ideas combined. One is the conservatory debacle that happened to me that left me unable to write music for multiple decades. All bitter and angry about it, too. I fixed that this year. That's all part of the story. The other part is the way that studying an artist can turn you into an inadvertent expert on them, such that imposters following you on social media are obvious because they would never use that color heart OMG, also sure they make grammatical errors but not that kind.  Both things are sort of out there psychologically, aren't they? But they combine to fix each other and let the person come out of it much better off. I also invented this character who's so annoying that he's actually entertaining me a lot. The annoying ex! This person is WILD and makes me laugh.  Her best friends are excellent. They are sick of hearing about prosaic chord progressions, just like everyone who has to listen to me rant about it. Like I just started listening to Ambl...
Post a Comment
Read more

Ten books on....

I decided to start writing this after publishing my tenth novel to track how the writing process is going and keeping a record out there somewhere. Why the hell not?  I finished the first draft of The Third Daughter (and the second and third drafts) a while back, but decided it needed another whole layer/web of interactions between the main character and the community, so I'm letting it rest until Christmas break, when hopefully I can get some solid concentration time.  Holding a whole book in your head feels like overclocking your brain. Like it's operating beyond its parameters. It's a very strange sensation.  Writing a first draft is one of the most fun things I could possibly do. Rewriting is much harder. And it lacks that delicious brain chemistry I get from writing first drafts. But then eventually I get to be finished! That's also a huge rush.  I'm in it for the brain chemistry, apparently. And watching numbers of KDP. You know we can see how many pages have ...
Post a Comment
Read more