Two Years!

Happy blogobirthday to you…

Happy blogobirthday to you!

Happy blogobirthday dear blog-o’-mine—

[insert warbling that goes on longer than it should]

Happy blogobirthday to you!

Ahem. *clears throat* (A warble got lodged in my windpipe.)(Never a good thing.)

As of today yesterday, the blog is a two-year-old! Now, we all know what they say about two-year-olds—they’re terrible, and whatnot—but my blog is determined to shatter that stereotype and prefers you think of him (I guess the blog is male?) as a terrific two-year-old instead.

These two years have flown by—in fact, it feels like just yesterday that I wrote this post (last year’s “it’s been a whole year!” blogobirthday post).

Following the tradition I started last year, here’s a list of things I have now that I didn’t have a year ago:

• A so-close-to-being-finished novel (albeit one that still needs a bit of work)
• Two more novels in the first draft phase
• More amazing Twitter/blog friends, and deeper relationships with the ones I already knew
• A very, very, very full bookshelf
• A new apartment in a new city
• A baby boy (currently, uh, still baking)
• A first writers’ conference experience
• Numerous in-person writer friends
• A fantastic critique group, and more experience giving/receiving feedback

I’m sure I’m forgetting things, but that’s a good thing! There is much to be thankful for. Happy writing and reading to you all!

*ALSO*—don’t forget to enter my contest, if you haven’t already—we’re up to TWO prizes now (Julie Halpern’s Don’t Stop Now, which comes out next week)! All you have to do is leave a comment on that post to enter.

Your Words are NOT a Waste!

Last week, I had a conversation with one of my critique partners about first drafts—her in-progress first draft, my feels-like-forever-ago first draft.

Every now and then, she finds herself stuck writing this first draft, afraid of taking a detour that will end up being a mistake, a major waste of time.  As seems wise and logical, she’s trying to be efficient.  Efficiency is, by NO means, a bad thing.  But…in the first draft?  It can be paralyzing.  Same with perfectionism, which we both know all too well.

This got me thinking (and confessing) about how drastically my novel has changed over the course of four drafts.  I actually cracked open that first draft to see how it compared to what I remembered about it.

Oh.  Man.

It was, like, a completely bare-bones version of what I have today.  My minor characters are mere shadows of who they eventually became, my main character isn’t fully developed yet, it’s complicated but oversimplified at the same time (I know, that doesn’t make total sense, but trust me), two important minor characters don’t even exist yet, one character is WAY important in this draft but eventually became background fodder in later drafts, several plot points existed then but have morphed over time, the ending has changed completely.  I used way too many words to communicate things.  My paragraphs?  OY VEY, my paragraphs…some of them are, like, half a page long.

Basically, it was like an 85,000-word long extremely rough draft.  Which is why I scrapped most of those words and started over from a blank page for the second draft.  And then, on the third draft, though the story was mostly in place and I kept a lot of the ideas in tact, I knew I could write it better.  I started over from a blank page again.  I rewrote the beginning for this fourth draft, but mostly, this is the first time I’m actually editing words on a draft instead of rewriting them all.

All of that to say: I cut a LOT throughout that whole process.  That which I didn’t cut, morphed into better stuff.  It’s taken a while to get here.  But, hey, it’s my first attempt at writing a novel—I would have been delusional if I had thought it would turn out perfect on the first draft.  It was coherent, yes—but it’s gotten SO MUCH BETTER, much more complex, much tighter, much deeper, since then.  And, there are no more half-page-long paragraphs. *cringes*

I can say, 100% without a doubt, that it would have been a very, very pale imitation of itself had I merely tried to be efficient early on.  It’s taken all that work, and all those words, to chisel away at this story, to really know my characters, to learn how to write tight but effective prose, to spin and weave my novel’s various threads.

My words, my thousands and thousands of words, were not a waste.  Neither are yours.  Be patient with your story.  There are upsides and downsides to efficiency—don’t worry if you take detours.  You can always edit them out later, and the detours will probably spark better ideas you wouldn’t have thought of otherwise!

Happy writing, my friends!

Marathon Day of Edits…

…coming up right after I finish this blog post.

As you may or may not remember, I made an ambitious deadline for finishing this draft of my novel.  Well…the problem with ambitious deadlines is that they are, by nature, ambitious.

Translation: ohmygoodnessihaveSOmuchworktodo.

I’m determined to leave my deadline firmly where I carved it into stone set it.

Therefore: today. Lots of peppermint tea. Focus turned all the way up to eleven. Twitter on in the background—for sanity breaks, of course, so I don’t go crazy.  And, of course, my cat.  Most importantly: perseverance.

So.  Here I go.

*Deep breath.*

UPDATE! Thank you all—SO MUCH!—for encouraging me today, both here in the comments and on Twitter!  It helped a lot, and brightened my (very analytical, very focused) day.  In case you’re wondering about my progress, it was pretty fantastic!  I didn’t get through everything I’d hoped to, but that’s okay.  I got through most of it, then decided a) it would be good to move around, so I took a walk, and b) I can get back to work tomorrow with fresh eyes!  Again, thank you all for being awesome.  :)

New Year, New Goals…

2011 has only just started, but I can feel it: it’s going to be a big year.

A lot happened in 2010.  I made major progress on my novel, started a second novel, participated in Merrilee’s Creativity Workshop over the summer, joined Twitter, made new friendships and deepened others, and blogged more regularly (until, um, the move to Austin).

2010 was the year I really settled into a disciplined groove with writing, the year I learned how to cultivate new ideas (and therefore, the year I learned how to choose which new ideas to focus on as they came flooding in), the year I grew a spine and shared my novel with beta readers for the first time.

All that to say, I think 2011 will be just as amazing—maybe even more amazing.

The week before Christmas, I made a huge list of goals.  I’m talking HUGE.  (This is because I make extremely specific—and therefore, extremely measurable—goals.)

Perhaps the biggest, most exciting, goal is this:

This year, I will finish this novel to the point where I am satisfied enough with it to begin querying agents.

I’ve set myself a pretty ambitious, specific schedule (because, yes! I did set a goal date…and it’s soon…).  The novel’s close to being ready, but it’s not there yet.  Still: YAY.  This is the first year where “finish my WIP,” “send query letters to agents,” and “finish first draft of Shiny New Novel” have been actual, possible, achievable goals.

AND I’M SO EXCITED.

The other goal I’ll share with you guys is this: I plan a return to more regular blogging, and plan to write on a MWF schedule (plus any and all other random spurts of blogginess that just beg to be written!) from now on.¹

Happy 2011 to everyone!  I wish you all motivation, inspiration, and dedication in abundance!

xoxo ❤

 

¹On that note, if you happen to have any requests or suggestions for things you’d like to read about, let me know in the comments!

Christmas Traditions

Since I don’t have pictures of snow—and besides, many of you have seen more snow than you wanted to this year (insert unrelenting snow-envy here)—I thought you might enjoy this picture of Mr. Cat in the tree!  Yes, while my sweet husband risked his wrists and busted out the oven mitts to extract him from the tree, I helped by taking this adorable picture.

For my Christmas post, I thought I’d talk a bit about the traditions we have in our family.  They seem normal to me, but of course, they’re probably not.  (Okay, so I KNOW one of our traditions is anything but normal…) I got the idea for this post from one Linda wrote a couple of weeks ago.  At the end of it, she asked us to describe our Christmas trees and holiday traditions.

Since I practically wrote a blog post in her comment section, I decided to just copy and paste it here for you guys to read:

Every year, my grandmother gives my sister and me a new ornament (and now, she gives them to our husbands, too)—that means I have 28 unique ornaments decorating our (fake, but full and real-looking) tree. I usually add some bows made of muted gold ribbon and lots of berry-colored glass ball ornaments (tied on with ribbon, not hung with paperclips like at my parents’ house).

We always celebrate on both Christmas Eve and Christmas morning. On Christmas Eve, we eat an awesome meal (backstrap venison, twice-baked potatoes, green bean casserole, rolls, red wine, and dessert), drive around and look at Christmas lights, and then open one gift each. (ALWAYS pajamas. And they usually don’t fit, though they are cute.) Christmas morning, we all take turns opening gifts (NEVER all at once).

Nothing says Christmas like an ugly Star Wars wind-up toy!

Oh, and my sister and I have what is quite possibly the weirdest Christmas tradition EVER: the walking Sebulba.

Yes. The walking Sebulba, as in Sebulba from Star Wars: Episode One. We have this plastic wind-up Sebulba toy (you wind him up and he—that’s right—walks!), and when my mom decorates her tree, she hides the Sebulba somewhere inside it. My sister and I compete to be the first to spot the Sebulba. (Winner gets bragging rights.) Oh, and you have to pronounce “The walking SeBULBa” with the BULB accented really hard, with this exaggerated, sing-songy British accent.

Yes, we are dorks. Told you it was weird. But that’s what we look forward to, so I’ll stand by it, haha.

So, that’s what we do.  I’m curious about you guys—I fully expect to be all on my own with the whole find-the-Sebulba-in-the-tree thing, but I want to know about YOUR traditions! Are there any quirky things your family does, or are y’all straight-up traditional?  Or, do you not celebrate at all?

And with that, I’m off to drink some eggnog, eat what’s left of the Ninjabread Army, and ready the oven mitts for when the meows inevitably curl up in the tree.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

❧

 

Where the Magic Happens

As promised—(whee, I found my camera!)—here’s a picture of the writing room at our new apartment!  That desk was my grandfather’s, and it’s where I do most of my writing.  Well, when I’m not at Starbucks, anyway.  Oh, and lest you worry that my bookshelf isn’t well-stocked, just remember we have several more bookshelves.  This one’s just for books on writing and pretty hardcover new-releases.

It’s true!  We have two desks in the writing room!  This is the less-used one, because it’s small and antique and has a large crack running from end to end.  However, it’s the PERFECT size for laying out note cards while attempting to rearrange and rework troublesome sections of the novel.

This is pretty similar to the first picture, obviously, except it shows you my fun dandelion painting (which was a MAJOR score at Urban Outfitters—it had no price tag and a tiny smudge on it, and they let me buy it for a mere $5) and my guitar.  That’s, you know, for when I get stuck or tired or frustrated and just need a relaxing little break.  Lately, my go-to songs for this type of break include the song Gwyneth Paltrow sang on Glee (“Forget You,” the clean version of a song by Cee Lo), “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel,” (because Christmas is about much more than presents and decorations and ninjabread, and singing about it helps me remember that), and “Hey, Jude” (by the Beatles, but I hope you knew that already).

You can’t tell from these pictures, but the windows look out into trees and hills.  It’s a peaceful room for writing and reading (there’s a big reading chair on the opposite end of the room, but the pictures I took of it looked kind of lame, so I spared you all).

So, speaking of writing and reading, I have a LOT to do.

But…um…it’s Christmas Eve Eve today, and that only happens once a year.  Plus, I will be running full-speed ahead starting next week.  There’s a time for goals, and a time for rest.

Today, I shall rest.

Hope everyone’s having a lovely week—remember to rest amid the busybusybusy!

Merry Christmas Eve Eve to you all! ❤

 

Fresh Start

You know what feels good?

DECEMBER.

That’s right—in all its frigid glory¹, December is already rocking my face off.  Why, you ask?  Because that means NOVEMBER IS OVER!

Hallelujah!

No, seriously.  Hallelujah.  November was one of the best—and one of the worst—months I can remember.  Austin is fresh and fantastic, though.  All the stress, all those days spent not writing, all the goodbyes, all the everything?  It’s ALL worth it.

We have more space (ENOUGH space! More than a one-bedroom apartment space! SPAAAAACE!), we’re surrounded by all things green and gorgeous, it’s quiet, it’s steadily becoming organized and delightful, and the Starbucks (four minutes from parking lot to garage! Wheee!) is even better than I hoped for.  Except I don’t really have to go to Starbucks as much, because a) there are a TON of coffee house options here, b) I bought a fresh bag of espresso + cleaned our fancy espresso machine, and c) I have an actual writing room!

Yes: WRITING ROOM!

Even better?  I actually get to write in it today.

After an entire month of no WIP progress—zero words!—while watching everyone lasso the moon on their NaNo projects, I am SO. FREXING. EXCITED. to get back to work today.  On the agenda: back to work on the fourth draft of WIP #1, followed by (*hopefully*) 500ish new words on the first draft of WIP #2.

Happy December to you all!  Oh, and I’m glad to have the internet again, which means a return to regular blog and Twitter interaction—YAY!  What’s on your December agenda?

♦

¹Which, um, in Texas? Is about 37ºF at the moment.

Quick Hits: Moving Week Edition!

Hey, y’all!

I have approximately five minutes before leaving this lovely land of onlineness¹ and heading back to box-land.  Poor blog, though—you guys probably thought I forgot to bring it to Austin with me.

(FYI, those of you who don’t know me well—yet—this is my second full day in a new city.  Things have been crazy lately, hence the unintentional lack of blogging.)

Here’s a quick-hits list of all things moving-week-related!

one:

Packing Day—Sunday, the day we loaded all of our junk into not one, but two U-hauls—was one of the most taxing days I’ve ever experienced.  However, if you follow me on Twitter (@olsonkayla), you already know this because I flooded you with #ihatepacking tweets.  Sorry about that.

two:

Austin?  Is totally worth the taxing packing day.  It’s fresh and fun and completely awesome.  (PS: Melissa, you can absolutely consider this yet another subtle hint that screams MOVE HERE! in your direction!)

three:

The only downside, so far, is the lack of internet access at our apartment.  We’ll be hooked up soon, but for now I feel totally out of the loop.  I miss you guys. *waves at sweet friends*

four:

Our new apartment comes complete with a zillion awesome places to work on my novels.  Bay window here, fireplace there, two patios, trees, peace and quiet…I’m so excited to get a little more settled in so I can get back to work!

five:

People in Austin are FRIENDLY.  I’m serious.  We’ve already met some of our adorable neighbors—two young, married couples—because they came down and introduced themselves while we unloaded the U-Haul. (Ahem, I mean while we stood around and watched the paid movers unload the U-Haul.)(Best. Decision. Ever.)  Everyone we’ve met has been kind and welcoming.

Okay, that’s it for quick hits.  We’ve got some unpacking to do…whee!  I’ll be back soon(ish).

In the meantime—since I’m sort of out of the loop for a little while—please fill me in on your own quick hits!  I’m doing my best to keep up with all of your blogs, but it’s harder than usual given my less-connectedness.

Wishing you all a special and lovely Thanksgiving!

♦

¹Funny how my made-up word looks sort of like loneliness. (Not that I’m lonely. Just that it’s funny.)

Accio Chopstick Wand!

Remy the Ravenclaw Cat. Yes, that is his wand. And, yes—it IS a chopstick.

Here at our house, ALL of us are excited about the Harry Potter premiere.  This afternoon, we’ll be taking a break from the boxes (the Chick-Fil-A waffle fry boxes, obviously)(sans cats) to go be awed and amazed by what looks to be an incredible movie.

Can. Not. Wait.

No, seriously.  I can’t.  I’m about to throw on that Ravenclaw scarf, whip up some fake butterbeer (vanilla bean ice cream + butterscotch syrup + cream + blender = AWESOME.), jump in my car, and drive to the theater.

Soon, I shall be out of this moving phase and will stop posting pictures of our cats.  Thanks for hanging in there with me. ❤

Wildfire

I miss writing.  It’s only been a week or so, but I miss it, y’all!

As I mentioned in my last post (I know—so long ago, right?!), both of my WIPs are officially on hold until December.  It’s sort of necessary, given this pack-and-move-practically-overnight situation we’re in, but still.  I miss it.

Sure, I have some snippets of time here and there.  I could write something.  It’s largely a focus issue, though—not a time issue.

Revising my WIP into a fourth draft is something that deserves a fully-focused mind, not a mind that’s dealing with huge physical and emotional transition.  And, even though the first draft will be a first draft (read: in need of MUCH work, no matter how much focus is devoted up front), I’d still like to make it as coherent as possible.

I have a feeling December will be full of words and huge progress.  After a) this long break where I’m already itching to work, b) reading some good fiction during times when I would usually be writing, and c) the impending Harry Potter-palooza, I will have no choice but to be inspired.

So, December?

BRING IT ON.  I’m ready to wear off more letters from my keyboard (let’s all take a moment to mourn faithful letters D and C, the first of many keyboard ghosts), ready to dig in and focus, ready to do what’s necessary to make sparks fly on both projects.

But first, I must deal with Cardboard November and the Great Transition of 2010.

Once we’re settled, though: flying sparks. Words like wildfire. Important progress.

And I can’t wait.