Long Time No See

...crickets. Yeah, I don't know where I've been either.

Seriously though, the reason I haven't blogged on here in so many months is that this is a writing blog, and I haven't been writing. My life is basically school, work, tennis, and all nineteen or whatever extracurriculars I'm involved in.

It's always an issue for me to write when it's NOT November. Maybe that means I'm not a real writer or whatever but I don't like it that much. I mean, writing is fun, but it's also hard and I feel like I do enough hard things in my life without adding another. But I am going to try NaNo this year, but I have so much going on in my life that I don't know if I'll win it this year, which is a shame since I have won it the past two years.

But those two manuscripts I wrote were so bad, and I haven't even attempted editing them. Maybe that means I'm not a real writer too.

I'm writing a contemporary teen romance this year, and I'll share more as the month goes on, but I'm honestly too tired right now. I wrote like 465 words today, and I hate all of them. It was all just INFO DUMP OF CRAP--all 465 words. I know what I want to be in the middle of my story, and I know exactly how I want it to end, but I'm having a hard time figuring out the beginning.

I'm behind 2869 words and it's only day two. Hope that's not an indication of how this month's going to go.

Bye. I'm going to sleep now. Thanks to all of you who have continued to follow this blog. I'm glad you're still reading, and I promise that not all of my posts will be this damn depressing and melancholy.

(See more of this angsty ranting on my twitter, @byAlexBennett)

Cats Hate Water, But I Am Not a Cat

Not much to talk about today, since I haven't written anything new since last time (shame on me), but there are a few little things we can talk about.

First of all, do you notice anything different? No, I didn't get a haircut (though I need one, badly), this blog got a new design! Thanks to Lori of Imagination Designs for making it, it's really fun and cute and stuff. So, what do you all think?

Also, I just finished EXAM WEEK! Dun dun dun! I think I finished this semester with a 4.0, but my Spanish teacher still hasn't put his exam grades in, so there's no way for me to tell just yet. Now that hell week is over, I'll be able to do more things with my time. Like writing!

Confused? Me Too.

Good news, guys... I wrote today! Granted, I didn't write a lot, but I wrote, and that's what matters. Really, I only wrote like 600 words, and it's on something completely new. More about that in a minute. So, I'm back at it. What I started today is completely unlike that last thing I wrote (my NaNo book), and it's refreshing. I'm writing a dark contemporary. Think... Gone, Gone, Gone, by Hannah Moskowitz. Oh wait, that's not out yet. ANYWAY, think of what you imagine that to be. Except different. Confused? Me too.

So I decided I'm just not ready to edit my NaNo book. Maybe in a little while, but right now I just don't have the motivation to do it, so I'm going to write something new instead. Who knows, maybe I'll get a random push of motivation to start editing, tomorrow even. But until I get that push I need, I'm just going to dedicate my time to other things--namely, this new project.

Before I go, I'd just like to thank you for all of the awesome advice you guys gave me on last week's post! All of your insight really helped, and I greatly appreciate your awesomeness.

Oh, and did you notice that I'm back after only a week... and a day?! I told you I could do it.

Am I the Only One?

I'm doing terrible at posting here, aren't I? Well, I'm hoping that will change soon. Like I said last post, I want to blog here at least once a week. So look forward to that, will you?

Here's where I am in my writing process: I have the big scary NaNo book's first draft done (duh), and I have beta notes back from my beta reader. Basically, I'm going to have to do lots and lots of edits, probably a rewrite. I knew this was coming. And yet, I just can't motivate myself to just do it. It seems so ominous, editing. It's like a big scary world--a maze, that I could just get lost in.

Writing first drafts is pretty dang easy, I'd say. You just have to write whatever you want. Nothing has to be perfect, and you can't really do anything wrong. But edits and rewrites are hard. And that sucks. And maybe I'm just lazy or something, but I just don't want to do it. I wish I could just write perfect first drafts, but that's never gonna happen, obviously, so need to edit sometime if I want this dream to be a reality.

I don't even really feel like writing anything new. I have a few cool ideas for new projects, but I really, really want to polish up that NaNo book before I start anything new. And yet, I don't. Maybe I could do both at once?

So, writers out there, what do you do when the first draft is all done and you have to go into edits? Do you freak out as much as I do? Maybe I'm the only loser out there who doesn't want to do it. But then again, I've never really done it in the first place to know if I really hate it or not. Sure, I've done edit work for other books, but those aren't mine, and that somehow makes it easier for me. Am I a terrible person? I really just need to find the motivation to just... do it, eh?

I'm a rambling mess, and I'm sorry for that. I just don't know what to do.

In other news:

1) My friend Amanda Hocking's book, Switched, came out last Tuesday, and you should totally go buy it. If you don't know about Amanda's story, she basically wrote one of--if not the bestselling self-published book series, and now that series has been picked up and republished by St. Martin's Griffin, an imprint of Macmillan, and I am so stinking happy for her. So, go buy her book.

2) I've began to watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and I'm totally in love. I've watched the first six episodes so far and they're totally epic. It's  like a mix between The Vampire Diaries, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and Goosebumps. And I love it.

3) I also just watched Zero Day, a Blair Witch-style movie about two boys who document their lives from July to May 1, the day they go to school and shoot twelve people there. It was totally disturbing and I'm not sure if I loved it or hated it yet. But it seriously freaked me out.

So that's all, I guess. I will see you next week and will hopefully have started edits by then, and maybe a new project. We'll see.