Zombies, eh?

I'm reading Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, by "Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith"... and it's very interesting. What's funny is, I have never actually made it through P&P all the way. Yet I seem to be more inclined to finish when zombies are involved. Weird, huh?

So this got me thinking. Maybe I could be on the NYT bestseller list just by revamping a classic (and if you use vampires instead of zombies, it's a true revamping!). Would you read:

Of Mice and Minions
War and Peace and Giant Killer Bees
Romeo and Juliet and Dracula
The Call of the Wild Werewolf
A Tale of Two Cities Ravaged by Bloodthirsty Beasts
Little Women and Warlocs
The Great Gatsby's Ghost
1984 Empty Graves
A Farewall to Arms... and Legs, and Heads...
Schindler's List of Abominations
To Kill a Mockingbird and Make Sure It Stays Dead

?

I would ☺
But seriously, I'm sensing a handful of short stories here... and that's not including the one about werefrogs in space!

Those are my thoughts for the moment. Someone should really get on these revisions. Maybe we'd get more high schoolers reading if the titles were along the lines of The Prince and the Pauper and the Witches Who Loved Them.

Ready!

Hair: cut and colored
Backpack: purchased and packed
Planner: bought and filled out (w/ the syllabus info I have already, of course -- I'm not telepathic)
New clothes: bought and put up
Dreamweaver: Learned and still learning
Laptop: researched and almost ready to buy ☺
Dog: bathed and teeth brushed

I think I'm ready for school to start on Wednesday!!

I'm not sure what the dog had to do with that... but I'm pretty proud to have accomplished all of that stuff today, and after sleeping in too. In my sweatpants, because today was the first day cool enough to wear them.

The only thing I still have to do before my senior year starts is... write. I'm working on a sci-fi short of 5K for a contest. Let's face it, "working on" it right now means I'm reading David Gerrold's "Worlds of Wonder: How to Write Science Fiction & Fantasy" and brainstorming. And it's due August 31. Gulp. But, no fear...

Oh, and I'm still stuck on a few chapters of IE revisions. Chapters 6-9 are giving me some trouble. I had planned on getting to at least 10, if not higher, before school started... it can still happen, if I can figure out these tiny issues. We'll see.

Otherwise, I'm ready!!!!!

Disenchantment

The high of ripping through several d2 chapters of IE is wearing off. Slowly but surely. A huge part of that is posting chapter 1 for fellow writers/readers to critique. Apparently, so far the vote is unanimous that some of the changes I made between d1 and d2 are not welcome.

Ollie is too lecture-y.
Sophia is too whiny.
Trent is too cold.
The conversations aren't age-appropriate.
There's too much dialogue.
The characters don't have original voices.
The new POV/tense is jarring.

Sigh.

I really shouldn't have posted that for crits yet, I don't think.

But I won't give up. I just might slow down a bit, even though I'm going to try not to.

Someone remind me again why I chose this hobby/future profession? It's mind-boggling!!

Funerals Suck

They do. It's a tried and true fact. Unless you're the Grim Reaper or something -- or Jason Priestley's character on Tru Calling... which was not unlike the Grim Reaper.

Anyhow.

What sucks worse than a funeral?

Writing about one.

There's an inherent tension, saddness, and ache that comes with funerals, and as an author, it's my job to get those all in the scene without crushing the readers' spirit so much s/he puts the book down. And you'd think, after attending countless funerals -- 3 grandparents, half a dozen great-aunts, three classmates, a handful of friends' parents and relatives, and my husband's uncle (which was less than a week ago, so I really should have it fresh in my mind) -- I would be able to get all these raw emotions on paper.

Riiiight. Because all those funeraly emotions come creeping in when you try to write a funeral scene, and while you'd think this is a good thing, it's not. Because they kind of block you from properly expressing any emotion.

So, funerals suck.

Writing about them sucks.

And they're both a part of life. Well, the real ones are a part of real life, and the fictional ones are a part of my novel. So, I'm going to have to figure out how to use my RL experience to create an authentic funeral scene for my readers.

Remind me again why I chose this hobby??

Rewriting

Rewriting Isaac's Eyes is going SO much better after I let it simmer for a while. Just this month, I have rewritten/revised 6.5 chapters. Since finishing the first draft on New Years' Eve of 2008, I had gotten exactly 3 chapters revised before now. And I had to re-revise those this week. So, it's been pretty productive! I just hope I can keep up this momentum and get the whole 2nd draft of the book done by the end of the year. I never wanted it to take this long to get finished in the first place.

After d2 (draft 2) is done, I plan to let IE sit for another month or two and then work on d3. Hopefully (fingers crossed!) I'll only need to get to d4 before I can start working on the dreaded query/synopsis/praying to God someone in the publishing field even remotely likes my work. The way I see it, d1 is for writing, d2 is for rewriting/revising, and d3 is for editing. Of course, there will be many half-drafts in between, and probably a few more editing drafts. In the case of IE, d2 is mostly for reWRITING, instead of reVISING, because I have added so much to the plot, characters, and overall complexity of the story since d1. So, what I'm doing right now is more rewriting than anything. In some cases -- like chapters 4, 5, and 6 -- completely re-writing the entire chapters... which is nice. It's back to the ole' blank canvas of d1 that inspires me to keep writing. I like it.

Stephen King and Elizabeth Lyons didn't have much to say to me about rewriting, but I have a feeling I'll be using much of their wisdom -- and that of many others -- to finish this draft. Especially if I want to make headway before school starts on August 26th (senior year!!! for real this time!).

Off to write some more. I'm adding a new series of flashbacks to the story, told backward from chapter 2 throughout the story (which is a basic forward-chronological structure, no tricks), and this flash is all new. And exciting. And hopefully gives some of my critters (those who critique my work, not small animals ☺) a taste of what they've asked for. Just a taste.