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.

Two Weeks Later

It's been two weeks since I last wrote here, and since then things have been pretty slow in the writing world over here. Right now the rough draft of the book I wrote for NaNo is with my critiquer, and I am waiting for her to get back to me before I do anything with that project.

I've been telling myself that I'll start working on something else for the past two weeks, but I keep putting it off. I was afraid this would happen. I can't let this happen; I need to write. And I will, I promise. I just need a little push.

But tonight something awesome happened. I won't share anything yet, but I will give you some information. 1) It is a book I am writing. 2) Leah Clifford. 3)Other authors. That's all I'll say right now, and I can tell you right now that it's probably not what you think, and that's okay. When things are more set in stone, I'll tell you more because I love you.

Also, regarding this blog... I think I'll try to get at least one post a week, maybe two. It just depends on how my writing goes in the future, but there should be at least one a week for the foreseeable future.

NaNoWriMo: Day 30

I did it. I did it! I won NaNoWriMo. Second year doing it, and my second win. This year, it was a challenge. I was ready go give up so many times but thanks to a very special supporter, I marched on and wrote. And you know what, it feels awesome.

It was really easy to get the words out today. Every day should be the last day of NaNo, because that made me just want to write in a way I usually don't. And now that I've won, it's so worth it.

So, now I just have to finish writing the book. Sure, I have those 50,000 words all written down on that nice Word doc, but now I have to write the ending. I am just about there too, just one more scene to go until Charmed (the title needs to be changed, also) is done.

So, what's next? Well, I am going to let the book sit for a month, like I said yesterday. And I'm going to keep writing. That's my number one priority right now, not waiting for NaNo again to write again. I want to write my middle grade book I started in October from December to probably February. Besides that, I want to write at least two more books next year, not including next year's NaNo. Can I do it? I don't know. But I am going to try.

Also, I got a critiquer tonight. It's that special supporter/cheerleader who made me want to finish NaNo this year, and I wouldn't want anyone else to help me with my writing than her. She's blunt and brutal, and kind and supportive. The perfect person to tell me what I need to fix, and what's perfect the way it is, in my opinion.

To all of those people who did NaNo this year, you rock. If you won, yay! We won! If you didn't, WRITE ALL OF THOSE WORDS TONIGHT. Seriously, do it. You'll feel so good about yourself if you do.

NaNoWriMo: Day 29

One. More. Day. Those are the best words ever right now. As exciting as it is to have another novel nearly under my belt, this month has been super hard. Last year, it was easy as pie, but this year it hasn't been nearly as simple to accomplish.

But looking back, I was ready to give up just a few days ago, when I was nearly 20000 words behind. But I didn't quit, thankfully, and now I am nearly all caught up. I'm still behind, but I will write those final words tomorrow, and I will win NaNoWriMo. And it will be an amazing feeling.

I don't think I'll be able to wrap up my NaNo in 50,000 words, it will probably be about 55,000, which is about how long my NaNo last year was. I am nearing the end of this first draft, though, and I am so ready to finish it.

My plan right now is to finish this book, let it sit for the month of December, while working on other stuff. One of the publishers I intern for is opening for submission the first day of December, and I will start working on another book in December, and will write that (at a slower pace than my NaNo book, of course).

Then in January, I will edit this NaNo. I am at a complete loss at what exactly editing a rough draft really means, and I am freaked out. I think that's a big problem with my book last year, was that I was too scared to edit. So, if anyone out there has edited a book, WHERE DO I BEGIN? And where do I go from there?

So, one more day. I am going to win NaNoWriMo tomorrow, and it feels amazing.

Words written today: 3339
Total word count: 46696
Recommended word count: 48333