Sabotage

I was going well on my challenge for all of 2 days. But then there was Tuesday.

Tuesdays are generally very hectic days for us--my husband plays Wallyball, leaving me to tote both kids to Charlotte's 5:30 dance class (a stretch to make after working a full day...bad, bad, bad time of day). Trystan is generally wide awake and into his usual trouble during the class, and last night was no exception--he spilled Charlotte's snack all over the floor while we were changing her clothes (and ate about half of it before I could pick it all up). He spent the entire class crawling, cruising, or walking (holding my hands) straight into anything and everything--a wheelchair left by the info desk, rocks by the front door, papers and a Sharpie left by one of the other mothers.

This is starting to sound a lot like my other blog. Hmmm. Long story short, once I was reasonably sure the kids were in bed, then I was pleasantly surprised that it was only 8:30 and I ought to have been able to both exercise and write in the same night, and still get into my bed before all brain function ceased for the night (my pumpkin hour is about 10-10:30). And, having had the kids through errands and dinner all to myself, and having singlehandedly put one kid to bed without a fuss, I could afford an hour and a half of "me" time with a minimum amount of mommy guilt (note I don't say "no mommy guilt").

When I returned from the Y, sweaty and craving a leftover cupcake, I first found that my laptop had mysteriously relocated itself from its earlier resting place. Annoyed, I crammed down my cupcake in the kitchen (not a big fan of eating in bed, at least not something with crumbs), and headed upstairs thinking that my husband had tried to be "nice" and bring it up for me. Not so. He was using my laptop. There are 3 computers in the house, and the laptop is supposed to be mainly mine. Not that I won't share, and not that I don't occaisionally use his desktop, but come on. It is mine, and it has my WIP on it, and no one else was conscious in the house (therefore there were 2 underutilized machines waiting patiently in the office for him). He did say that Charlotte had been kept awake by noise out of the office, which is why he started on mine. Fair enough, so why was he still on it after she was sound asleep?

I should have outright said "I want to write. Log off and use your own computer," but as always, I assumed that he would take a hint (a very cold, sarcastic hint--let's just say that I didn't start off in the best of moods yesterday). He didn't. 45 minutes later I finally turned off my light and told him that I was upset with him for using my computer. "I didn't know you wanted to use it," was his reply...yeah, right. Like I would have been making nasty comments about it in order to encourage him to sit there and continue. And, apparently, my writing goals aren't something he's bothered to notice or to assign much improtance to.

Apparently, we need to have a rational discussion on courtesy in using each other's things. If all else fails, I have a whole arsenal of tricks I learned growing up in a crowded house where the idea of "personal property" was rarely respected....I'd really rather not revert to that state though. My sarcasm is bad enough on the maturity-in-communcations scale.

A new challenge

There was a challenge posted to the RWC group, to work on your WIP at least 5 days every week. No time limit, no word count limits, just do something. Could even be editing or writing query letters or whatever. I'm game. I want Chivalrous finished. Really finished, not the sort of half-formed lump that it currently is. It needs help in a lot of places, and if I don't just sit down and do it, then it will end up like the afghan I found yesterday--a sort of granny-square thing where each "square" is really a hexagon, so it ends up more like the flower garden quilts. In any case, about 3/4 of the blocks have been hooked together, and the rest need to be added, and a finishing border put around it. I think I started this thing long before Charlotte was conceived. In my defense, I didn't like the color combination after I got started,w hich made it hard to stay excited about it, and babies tend to require both of my hands (and the yarn is a huge temptation for them to play), so I have done exceedingly litte handicrafting since Char came along.

Ok, so back to the writing. 5 days out of every 7. Friday I signed up, but we had out of town visitors Friday night-Sunday. So I worked Sunday for about an hour after our guests left and while both children were napping. I made progress. Maybe 400 new words in a new version of an old scene. It's the second scene in teh book. Originally, my heroine meets the hero's fiance in this scene, and the hero doesn't show (the couple have already met in teh first scene). I'm trying to throw hero + fiancee + heroine all together right away and see if it works any better. As long as I don't ramble as much as this post, it will probably be fine. I hope.

Where did all the books go?

I saw an article recently, that has been much blogged about apparently, about Borders changing how they arrange books on their shelves so that more books face out so that you can see the covers. They believe that it increases sales, but the downside is that because the books take up more shelf space this way, they stock fewer titles.

The thought of this horrifies me. Or maybe it saddens me. I love shopping at the big bookstores because they are so big, and so very full of books. That sounds a little simplistic, but here's the thing: I don't shop there for coffee, chocolate, board games, or usually even music or dvd's. I just want books. I love the smell of the freshly inked paper, and the sight of floor to ceiling shelves packed with more words than I can probably read in a lifetime (though I do my best).

I am a regular browser of Amazon, and get plenty of mass mailings from the Doubleday Book Club (who still addresses me by my maiden name, if that's any indication of how long I've been hearing from them), so I'm fairly up to date on the big-name new releases. When I go to a bookstore like Borders, though, I'm not going to see the top 10 (or even 100) new releases. I can find better prices on those online, or at places like Walmart and Sams' Club, or even Walgreens. When I go to a bookstore like Borders, I want to be able to wander the shelves and browse books I am not familiar with and authors I've never heard of. That sort of shopping is really difficult for me on a website--browsing 10 items per page is not the same as scanning a few hundred per section of bookshelf. If I only shopped for books that I already knew existed, then my reading list would be very limited, indeed.

They're not talking about reducing themselves to only selling a few hundred books, just reducing the inventory by 5 to 10%. The problem, as far as I can see it, is that once they start reducing the inventory and marketing just the higher-quantity items, then they will start losing customers like me. Yes, I buy some of those more popular books that they will be keeping, but what is the point of going out of my way to a bookstore to buy something that's cheaper at another store? Think I'm making a special trip for the coffee and tote bags?

I have seen many examples of stores attempting to "increase profits" by "focusing" on certain profitable items, and not exactly succeeding. Been to a good fabric store lately? One that wasn't so cluttered with scrabooking junk and lawn ornaments that they had no room for anything that wasn't a poly/cotton blend? Me either.

*Sigh* I'm not a marketing executive, and my little blog posts aren't enough to change the opinions of the all-powerful statistics-wielding decision makers (and I'm no longer doing data warehousing and analysis of any of those statistics). I guess I will do my share of voting with my dollars, although abstaining for lack of a good choice won't bring back the books.

Progress, I think

I have decided that having other people critique your writing is like working out in public in spandex pants. It takes a nice ass, bravado, or, failing those, a knack for avoiding mirrors to make it through the first time. Depending on what kind of gym you go to, spandex is probably easier--at the Y we belong to, no one is scrutinizing every bump, or offering suggestions for improvement.

I freshened up my intro to my novel and submitted it to my fiction class for our final project. And the feedback I got was helpful, and actually pretty encouraging. The parts that got the most attention were the sections that had received the least attention, and it really helped me understand why I wasn't satisfied with the end of the piece. My first draft of it, from last November, was written almost exclusively from my heroine's POV, and this rewrite included a lot more of the hero's, especially in the opening scene (it's a lot more exciting to be riding the horse during a joust than sitting bored in the stands...). But the very end retained most of my first draft, and so his voice was lost. That is probably why I wasn't happy with how it left off.

I was also quite happy to hear one of my classmates say that she was sad for the couple at the ending, because she really wanted it to work out between them. Our instructor knew that it was the intro for a longer work, but I don't know that anyone else realized that. That comment gives me hope that this is a story that someone would want to continue reading, to see if these two people can ever get together.

Also, I now have at least a draft for the concluding scene of my novel. I had a different ending written last fall, but I didn't like it. This one could use work, but I think I have at least the plotline mostly right. Ok, so I have a beginning and an ending, I guess I have a lot more work to do on the middle, huh.

Deadlines can be good

So, my novel still has no ending. Well, it has an ending, but not the right one. And I have one, that should be the right one, in my head. But it's a bit like cutting into a fresh piece of fabric--I always have to grit my teeth and close my eyes and just start snipping or else I will never get the shapes cut out. There's always something a bit sad about destroying that smooth expanse of cloth. It's a good thing I never went into surgery, I don't think closing your eyes while making an incision would be a good practice. You wouldn't think that after 60k words that I'd feel like I'm staring at a blank sheet of paper (virtual paper), but I long ago gave up on explaining how my brain works and having anyone I'm not genetically similar to understand me.

I have, however, rewritten my first chapter, though I already know that it needs more work. I'm using it as my sort of final paper for my fiction class, which is good as I get feedback from the entire class (there are 4 plus the teacher). This one is better than my original, but keeps the same plot. (Future) Draft #3 nees a better opening, and I have an idea how to rearrange a couple of parts to give it one. I'm inspired, I suppose, by a "contest" I found on this blog. If I could do a little rewrite tonight, I could post my new intro by tomorrow's deadline and see what happens. Of course, with a book that's not complete, I'm not sure how valuable the "prize" is (a "critique" of a query letter and synopsis by the agents who own the blog, which could theoretically lead to being represented by said agents), and I'd have to rush to actually write a query letter and a synposis for a novel that's not complete either.

Then again, I always did work better with a deadline. Am I the only one who made a habit of finishing my homework during the passing period (you know, the 5 minutes right before the class where it was due)?