Monday Musings: That pesky background stuff

So you want to be a writer? Well, my biggest advice is this: fire up Google 'cause you're going to be doing some research! And I'm not talking about research in the sense of boning up on the Tudor period in England for your work of historical fiction, I'm talking about everyday things that come up when you're writing about completely imaginary worlds and people.

One of the biggest challenges I face as a writer is writing about careers about which I know nothing. I try to stick to stuff that I'm at least somewhat familiar with, but I think it might get boring if all of my main characters were teachers and writers. I found this aspect of writing very complicated when it came to Contributor, and I don't anticipate it getting much easier with the next two installments. I don't know anything about engineering, but my main character is an engineer, so I needed to make things at least sound feasible when she was in her work environment. This is something I never considered before I sat down and started writing.

Next up is inventing products. Yep, inventing products. Now, this isn't something that every writer will have to do, but there may come a time when you need to figure out something for your main character or one of your secondary characters to invent. In my case, as I work on Committed, I decided I wanted to come up with a product for Masato, the groom-to-be, to create. The series notes that he and his friend are partners trying to start up their own tech company, and it occurred to me last night that I should come up with something specific for him to be working on, in order to flesh out some aspects of the story related to his job. I looked at my husband and asked him what kind of app he thought would be useful for a smart phone, and with his help, I came up with something for Masato to invent. Or did I invent it? It's complicated. You can read all about his product in episode four.

Names are another area I've found surprisingly difficult. For instance, when I wrote Contributor, Dara's name was not originally Dara Morrow. Her first name was the same, but her last name was different, and I thought it sounded too close to the name of a character in a popular YA series. I didn't want to look like I was ripping the name off--even though I came up with it long before the other book was published--so I changed her name.

Company names can be even trickier. The company Melinda works for in Phoning It In was originally named something else. When the novel was complete, I pulled up my trusty friend, Google, and found there already was a business with that name, so that was a no go. I then spent probably a good forty-five minutes typing various business names into Google until I managed to search for one without results.

Place names aren't always a piece of cake either, especially if you're creating a big, expansive world. No joke, parts of my manuscript sometimes look something like this: "Are you talking about the king of DESERTCOUNTRY?" I did this with Asleep, as I worked on it during NaNo '12. It looked ridiculous but, as anyone who has done NaNo knows, time is at a premium, and I just didn't have time to name all the characters and places I was using in the story. Names would sometimes pop into my head as I was writing and I'd go back and replace the placeholder names with the names I'd thought up, but I'm pretty sure there's still a placeholder or two in the manuscript.

This can all be frustrating, and I sometimes feel like I ought to sit down for hours making up lists of character names, place names, etc. But I always have to weigh things like this: do I want to spend time making up names of countries, or do I want to write? Usually the answer is that I want to write. That's not to say that coming up with names, doing research, etc. isn't important because it goes without saying that it is. It's just that, when I get a story in my head, I have to get the story out onto my computer screen because I'm terrified I'll forget it. And sometimes I do forget things. I'll have a scene all plotted out in my head and then, when I sit down to write it, it's gone. Zip, zilch, zero. Maybe it means the ideas aren't as good as I thought they were, I don't know. But it's not a good feeling, I can assure you of that.

Then again, there are times when it's fun to just let my imagination run wild and think of character names, what a city on the coast in my fantasy WIP would look like, etc. I spent plenty of time drawing up a map of the kingdoms for Asleep, proving to myself that I had a good vision in my head of what my world looked like--and that my cartography skills are tragically poor. It is imperative for world building to be well done in a spec fic novel, but sometimes that world building comes after the story because the story shapes what the world looks like. Or vice versa. It's a chicken and egg question, really.

Still, I'm grateful to be a writer in this day and age. I can't imagine what a pain it must have been to do this kind of research without the Internet waiting to fetch you all the info you need. I remember what it was like to have to go to the library and thumb through book after book trying to find helpful info, and I'm grateful I now only have to do that when I need in-depth knowledge about something. The digital age, she is a glorious thing.

Monday Musings: Writing when you don't feel like it

I'm finding the title of this blog post kind of ironic because I've already started and deleted at least two posts since settling on this topic. So, yeah, I guess it just goes to show you that even writers don't feel like writing at times, doesn't it?

 The hardest thing about writing, for me, is pushing through even when I feel like whatever I'm working on isn't working. You see, it's not even external critics that really get to me, it's my own internal critic who doesn't seem to like what I'm writing as my fingers are tapping on the keys. However, when I go back and read, I feel better. I can see the threads of the story, and I know it's there, no matter how much I might have suspected it wasn't. There are times when I have to tear away a lot of the fabric so that I can get at those nice, neat stitches, but that's okay--or, at least, I'm learning to accept that it is. For a long time, I felt like the words had to come out fully formed and, if they weren't perfect they weren't worth saving and I should just get rid of them. Now, I go with the flow because I'm learning that I can always go back and fix what needs fixing.

Writing has long been a hobby of mine, and the way I used to write goes exactly with what the word "hobby" implies. I would go months or years without writing because I would wait for the fever to overtake me, until the need to write was so powerful that I could no longer ignore it. I don't do that anymore. Instead, I write at least five days a week. I sit in a chair, I put my hands over the keyboard, and I make myself type. I'm not sure I ever appreciated before just how much discipline it takes to be a writer. It's hard to fall into the trap of "Oh, I'm just not inspired today. I think I'll go fool around and play The Sims instead." Like most things that we find difficult, it's easy to come up with reasons why we can't do that thing, and writing is no exception.

What I'm coming to understand is this: writing is work. It isn't physically intense work. Why else would so many writers have treadmill desks if not because we writers tend to spend a lot of our time just sitting? But writing is a lot of mental work, and that mental work can be very exhausting. Some days I feel completely drained, like there isn't one drop of creativity left in my body. I find myself wondering if my head is a bottomless pit of ideas, or if it's more like a well that will one day run dry. But then I start writing, the story takes shape, and I have hope that I have at least one more in me, and that, in a nutshell, is why I make myself write when I don't feel like it.

Monday Musings: My characters have a life of their own

This NaNoWriMo, I'm noticing the same phenomenon I noticed during last year's NaNoWriMo: my vision for what the story would look like and the way the story began to take shape aren't necessarily the same thing.  This is something I think most writers can identify with.  Usually, I don't consciously realize a story would work better if I did it a bit differently.  For me, it tends to be more unconscious.  I'll write something, read it, and think, "Oh, that does make more sense, doesn't it?"

I think a big part of my anxiety over this project comes from the fact that The Eye of the Beholder has been a lot more successful than I'd imagined it would be.  I'm thrilled I've found an audience, and I am very grateful for my readers.  However, I'm also aware that having this audience may lead to expectations.  When I wrote just for myself without ever knowing if anyone else would really read it, I didn't worry too much about the turns my stories took.  I just let my characters do their thing while taking me along for the ride.  But now I'm afraid that if I deviate a lot from the style I used in The Eye, I may let my readers down.

I didn't feel this same level of anxiety with Contributor or with Phoning It In, because they were different.  I'm interested in a lot of genres, and I knew some of my readers might like one genre in which I write but not another, and that's perfectly understandable.  It also frees me from having to worry about expectations, because I've already set up the expectation that what's coming is going to be different from what's already out there.

However, Asleep is meant to be my second in the Fairytale Collection, and it's shaping up to be a different book from The Eye.  The Eye was my take, but it was still pretty much a straight up retelling of the beauty and the beast story.  My inspiration for Asleep is the sleeping beauty story, but the tale I'm telling is far, far different from the Disney version.  There are elements I've straight up left out--the fairies--and elements that I've inverted--the princess being the rescuer while the prince is the rescuee.  So, while Asleep is also inspired by a fairytale, it doesn't stick as closely to the fairytale as The Eye did.

The major difference between this year and last is this: I'm having trouble letting go.  When Contributor started to turn out a lot differently than I'd anticipated, I went with it and was happy with the result.  I'm more nervous about Asleep because I've got something out there for it to be measured against.  At the end of the day, I need to be faithful to the characters and the way the story wants to progress.  I think any writer will say that if you fight this and try to make the story fit your original vision, the end result will be something that's not worth reading.

I'm gaining a new perspective on being an author with at least one published book.  When I first plunged into the world of publishing, I worried what my readers would think when they compared my work to that of other authors.  Now, I worry more about what my readers will think when they compare my previous novels to my newer ones.

Fun with covers

When I decided to self-publish my novel, there were many things I worried about (aside from whether it would sell--but I think that one goes without saying!), from whether it would be difficult to format the novel for upload to KDP (it wasn't--thank you, Scrivener!) to if my blurb does enough to convince people that they must read my book (jury is still out on that one).  The one thing I didn't stress all that much about is the one thing that has turned out to be the most stressful aspect of all this: the cover.

Now, if I were independently wealthy, I wouldn't even attempt to make my own cover.  I'd hire some talented artist, admire their work, and be done with it.  Hopefully, I'll get to that point someday.  But because I'm just starting out, I decided to tackle my own cover, with a great deal of assistance to my husband.

Fortunately, my husband is a great photographer, so finding images wasn't a problem.  He had taken this fantastic shot of a castle called Bouillon, which he took when we were visiting his family in Belgium.  It's a magnificent site, a castle whose initial construction dates back to the 8th century.  I liked the aged, somewhat ruined look of the picture and was sure it would make a great cover.  After some quality time with Photoshop, my husband created a cover for me, and we both thought it looked really cool.

However, while I do still like the cover, while watching my sales figures, I began to suspect that maybe the cover wasn't really conveying what I wanted it to convey.  I started to wonder if it was too unclear what it might have to do with the novel and that it might be difficult just by glancing at it to get an idea of what to expect from the book.

That said, I made a marketing decision to create a new cover.  After more time with GIMP and Paint.Net than I care to admit, I've come away with a whole new appreciation for graphic artists and cover designers and with some prospective covers that will hopefully reach an audience more effectively.

I would really love some feedback as it will help me to get a better picture of what will work.  Please vote in the comments with the number of your favorite, and any suggestions as to what you think might help improve the cover.  So, without further ado, here they are:

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Fairytales: not just kid stuff

I have to admit that when I talked about my manuscript for The Eye of the Beholder, I was kind of embarrassed to tell people what it was about.  Lately, I've been a lot more open about my writing and have asked friends and family to read manuscripts and give feedback, but in the past my writing was kind of my secret.  When people did find out I'd written something, their first question would always be, "What's it about?"  This question never failed to fill me with dread.

This is partially because I was anxious about how people would react.  I understand that not everyone is going to be in love with the genre I've chosen, and that's fine.  But it's always awkward to be put into a situation where I'm talking about something that has so much of my heart and soul in it because I'm afraid the other person might not be interested but will be forced, for the sake of being politely social, to pretend like they are interested.  Sometimes I think people are more interested in the idea of someone writing a book than they are in the actual reality of the book, and that's fine.  As with anything in life, though, it's hard when something that's meaningful to you doesn't seem like such a big deal to other people, particularly when those people are important to you.

The other reason why this question fills me with dread is because it's very hard to boil down the essence of your novel into just a few words.  My fellow writers know what I'm talking about.  The thing that stressed me out the most about ABNA was writing my pitch.  When I published The Eye, I was more wigged out by trying to write the novel's description than I was by writing the actual novel.  It's very difficult to make things sound snappy and interesting without giving too much away and in only a few hundred words.  Anyone who's ever picked up a book and not made it all the way through the flap description will understand what a skill it is to write copy that's attention-grabbing.

Now, take all of this and imagine that the book you just wrote is about a fairytale.  I will temporarily go all geeky on you and say that fairytales weren't originally for children, they were for adults.  They were often used as a way to talk of forbidden or subversive things (like how much the king sucked) while still being able to claim innocence.  Don't believe me?  Pick up a copy of Grimm and/or Andersen and read just one of the tales there.  I guarantee they're nothing like the Disney versions--not that I'm knocking Disney because I very much dig their fairytale movies.  My point here is that using a fairytale to tell a story offers a means to tell a tale through a familiar lens while trying to put your own unique spin on it.

Of all the fairytales, the Beauty and the Beast tale has always been my favorite.  There are two reasons for this: I love its theme of redemption and I love the message that love goes far beyond the merely physical.  Beauty learns to look past Beast's appearance and love him for who he is while Beast has to become a better version of himself in order to be worthy of her love.  This is meaningful to me because I think the best kind of love is the love that inspires you to be more than you are.  I am definitely not talking about a relationship where you have to lose weight because your boyfriend tells you to lose weight.  That's not love at all.  What I'm talking about is the relationship where you feel like your partner loves you warts and all and also helps highlight your best traits.  Real love should bring out the best in you.

This is why I chose to do a retelling of the tale.  I'm the kind of writer who thinks a lot about my characters and what motivates them.  This is partially a reflection of my personality.  Not only do I tend to think about why people do the things they do, I think a lot about what motivates me to do what I do.  I think self awareness is a very good thing, as long as you don't take it too far, which I sometimes tend to do.  I can be my own worst critic, and I think that's reflected in the character of Lysander, who has a tendency to be his own worst enemy.

Writing the novel was very challenging at times because it is difficult to take a character like Lysander, who is initially so unrepentant, but who ends up genuinely wanting to change.  Mira wasn't without her challenges either, as I wanted her to be very strong-willed but, yet, she had to somehow fall in love with someone who, let's face it, isn't very nice in the beginning.  This often made me feel like I was walking a tightrope, but hopefully I pulled it off.

The Eye of the Beholder is available in the Kindle store and can also be borrowed from the Kindle Owner's Lending Library for those of you who are Prime members.  Happy reading and stay tuned--for my next trick I will try tackling women's lit!

Insecurity, thy name is Nicole

There's now a fair bit of distance between myself and an extremely productive NaNoWriMo.  I clocked in at just over 50,000 words at around the 18th of November, and then I took a bit of a break.  I've been back at it for most of this month, however, and am now up to 77,326, as of today.  My intent is to cut the final product down to about 70-75k words, but I want to just finish it and then start going at it with a scalpel (or a hatchet, as may be the case).

Working toward the finish has made me realize something: I tend to get really insecure about my endings.  I don't know why I never really thought of it before but, as I look back on my writing, I realize that endings always stress me out--maybe even more than beginnings.  On the one hand, things are easier here than they are in the middle, because all of the action is moving along swiftly and the words usually flow.  On the other hand, there's the stress of trying to tie all of the threads together, trying to keep the pacing on an even keel, and trying to write a killer of an ending.  As this book is intended to be the first in a trilogy, I need to have a good hook in place for my ending as I naturally want to interest people in reading the next installment.

Today was kind of rough going because I am back in the mode of worrying.  The closer I get to the ending, the more I stress about the idea that I'm hurrying things along.  I'm not doing this intentionally, of course, but I just can't seem to shake the conviction that my newest chapters somehow feel rushed.  I think this may have something to do with the fact that the story took a much different turn than expected, so I have a lot of balls up in the air and I don't want to drop any of them.  Whatever the cause, today was one of those writing days where I felt like I needed to reach into my brain and forcibly extract the narrative--never a very fun thing.  Whenever this happens, I tend to worry incessantly that the writing sounds stilted or forced and I never, ever want my writing to feel like that.

I'm not sure that someone can understand how all-consuming writing can be unless they also write.  I think about my writing constantly, and I do mean constantly.  I think about it while I'm driving, while I'm grocery shopping, while I'm brushing my teeth.  Sometimes I walk around the house muttering to myself about it, which prompts my two-year-old to say, "What do you say, Mama?"  I'm still not sure how to respond to that one.  "Sorry, kiddo, your mom is a crazy wreck who is obsessing endlessly" seems like it might be just a bit out of his grasp.

But when you are in the midst of writing something, particularly something about which you feel very strongly, you live, breathe, and eat it.  I have to figure out how the plot will unspool, decide what's motivating each characters, dream up scenes, etc.  It's really pretty astonishing how much writing goes on inside my head before anything even hits the paper.

Once I'm finished with this manuscript, I'm going to give Scrivener a try.  I was really pleased to get a discount on it, thanks to my NaNoWriMo completion and, though I've only taken a pretty cursory glance at it, I'm pretty excited about it.  I particularly like the bulletin board feature because it makes me think that I might be able to write a bunch of sticky notes so that I can get the information in a trustier place than my good ol' brain, which has an unfortunate tendency to erase those massively awesome scenes I dreamed up just hours ago.  Maybe once I do that, I'll stop walking around the house talking to myself and worrying my two-year-old, who already seems concerned that I may need extensive psychotherapy.  Maybe, but I kinda doubt it.

***

“Any idea what Javier is up to?” Letizia asked her at lunch.

“Javier?” Dara asked.

Letizia scowled at her.  “The project, Dara.  Do you have any idea what Javier is working on?”

“Oh, that.  Uh, no, I hadn’t really thought to look...”

“Do you know how many mistakes you’ve made?” Letizia asked, and Dara knew her master wasn’t referring simply to her lapses of attention during shift.  “You cannot afford to keep on going like this.  It’s a miracle you’ve made it this far.  You must have more dumb luck than any other person I’ve ever met.”

Face burning, Dara ducked her head so that she wouldn’t have to look at Letizia’s accusing eyes.  “You’re right.  I’m sorry.  I’ll look today.”

“You need to learn how to compartmentalize.”

           She knew Letizia was right.  If she wanted to make it, she was going to have to learn how to lock her emotions in tiny boxes and hide the keys where no one could find them.  In short, she was going to have become a master at dissembling, just like her master.

It all makes sense now!

Well, at least I hope it all makes sense now.  At any rate, I'm finished with the first round of edits to the chapters I wrote during NaNoWriMo.  Some of them needed extensive rewriting, while others just need a little tweaking here and there.  I also wrote an entirely new chapter, so I boosted my total word count by around 5,000, now that the first round of work is over.  This means I can now continue working toward finishing the manuscript, at which point I'd like to try to do another round of edits before I consider it ready for exposure.

Last night, my husband and I sat around for a while as I worked out some thorny plot issues verbally with him.  I'm determined to do my best to make the plotting very tight, and to avoid those convenient little episodes that are oh-so-handy in terms of moving the plot along.  If some event happens, I want there to be a reason for it, and so I was using him as a sounding board, trying to figure out which of the options I was playing around with struck him as the most believable.  It was extraordinarily helpful.  Though he's always been supportive of me, reading my manuscripts and offering feedback, I think this was the first time I really used him in this capacity.  I guess this is because, while my novel is infinitely interesting to me, the last thing I want to do is bore other people to death talking about my work.

Really, what I'd like to do is to try to create a smaller, more focused group of fellow writers.  While going to the large group is extremely helpful, it's also a bit limiting because, naturally, we want to give everyone a chance to share some of their work, which means we only have time for small excerpts from each person.  I used to think writing was an entirely lonely exercise, and in some ways it is.  However, as I've worked on some collaborative projects and become involved in writers' groups, what I've found is that it can be really eye-opening to sit and toss ideas around with other writers.  I have a teaching background, so this doesn't entirely come as a surprise to me.  One of the things I liked doing as a teacher was attending conferences or team meetings where we'd share activities we'd done in class.  It inevitably resulted in surging creativity as the thoughts of one person were embellished by another person, and so on.

At the end of the day, if this novel becomes successful, it will be the direct result of not just my own writing, but of all of the assistance I've received from various friends and family members.  Without their contributions, the novel would definitely not be what it is, nor would it continue to evolve as it has without their feedback.  This, for me, is the most rewarding part of writing.  For a long time, I kept my work to myself because I was afraid of criticism, but now that I've taken a leap, I find the feedback and the time others devote not only feeds my creativity, it makes me a better writer.

And now, a small tidbit.  This particular bit of conversation really speaks to me.

***

          “But what’s more despicable is that the system not only allows this, it actively encourages it.  How many times have you been told you should report any suspicious activity?”

             

            More times than she could count.  “We’ve always been told that it’s for our own security,” Dara said.

             
           “That’s always what people say, when they’re busy stripping away rights.  If you work everyone up into enough of a panic, they’ll be glad to hand you things they’d normally never even think of giving up,” Mal told her.  “Don’t believe me?  I can give you plenty of books on the topic—books you’ve likely never seen in your life.  Why do you think that is?”

NaNoWriMo Day 17: The final stretch--or not

As of today, I have 46,001 words of my novel written.  This means that I only have 4,000 words to go to complete NaNoWriMo and I will have a novel!  Or not. 

In fact, I find that I am only now really getting into the story and I have quite a bit of rewriting to do, so hitting the 50,000th word just means that the real work will begin.

Still, this isn't a complaint.  I was so worried about making it through NaNoWriMo this year, what with all the chaos that's been going on with the renovations and with the normal, everyday challenges of my husband's job and life with two young kids.  I thought I was crazy for even contemplating participating this year and, in fact, I've had several days where I wondered why I've been inflicting this stress on myself.  There are two reasons for this:

1. I really like the concept for my novel, and I want to submit it for the 2012 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest (ABNA for short, if you've never heard of it).  I've entered the last two years, but both times in the adult category and, since I'm still unpublished, it probably goes without saying that I didn't win.  But, while I'd certainly love to win or attract the interest of an agent or publisher, I'm still really proud of myself for entering as it means I'm taking those first tentative steps toward actually trying to get myself published.  To be honest, as much as I love my other manuscript, I feel like the one I'm currently writing will be much more competitive, and I think the young adult category may be a better fit for me.

2. This is the real reason: because NaNoWriMo proves to me that I can do this.  I can write a novel, no matter what kind of craziness is happening in my life.  I've always been a writer, ever since I was a child, but I've somehow always had this thought in the back of my head that I can't do it.  I have a bazillion reasons why: conditions aren't right, I don't feel inspired, etc., etc., etc.  But I've come to realize that these aren't reasons, they're excuses.  NaNoWriMo does not allow for excuses.  NaNoWriMo provides me with that extra nudge I need to make me feel I simply have to finish my project.  For me, NaNoWriMo is about chances, about proving to all those little voices of doubt inside that they are, in fact, wrong.

I recently read this really offensive article on The Economist.  It more or less states that NaNoWriMo is a waste of time and that the world doesn't need more bad novels--as if every novel that's published is good or, conversely, as if every novel that isn't published is bad.  Well, The Economist, I will take a Shakespearean tack: I bite my thumb at you!

I'm not suggesting that everyone is capable of writing a masterpiece--I'm nowhere near being convinced that I'm capable of this.  Nor am I suggesting that everyone quit their day jobs so they can sit home and write a novel.  We do need to be practical.  What I am saying, though, is this: we always encourage our children to follow their dreams.  Why, then, are we so willing to give up on our own?  Maybe I'll never get published, but at least I'll know I tried.  I don't want to be one of those people who lives a life full of "what ifs".

And further, to suggest that participants in NaNoWriMo are just fooling around is offensive.  I bleed for my novel, just like every other author I've ever known or read about.  I care passionately about what I write.  I agonized over this manuscript long before NaNoWriMo began, and I will agonize over it long after NaNoWriMo is finished.

So to my fellow WriMos: I salute you!  Maybe you're surrounded by people who are supportive and helpful and believe in you.  Maybe you're surrounded by doubters who think you're crazy for even trying.  Either way, I am with you.  I may not know you and you may not know me, but we understand one another's passion.  Go right ahead and reach for the stars--I'll be doing the same alongside you.  Let's shine on together, fellow crazy NaNoWriMo diamonds!  May we all someday look back and laugh at that article, as we enjoy the phenomenal success of our books that were originally NaNoWriMo novels.

***

“Dara, the next four weeks are going to be critical,” Joshua said, his voice urgent.  “We have to do everything in our power to help your mother.”

            “Oh, I wish we worked opposite shifts,” Dara moaned.

            “I know, but there’s nothing we can do about that now.  We’re just going to have to make do.”

            “We’ll take turns each night.  I’ll sleep one night, you sleep the next,” Dara suggested.

            Joshua looked relieved as he nodded.  “Yes, that was my idea as well.”

            “Let’s take turns going to the medical bay too.  There’s a lot that needs to be done around here to get things ready.”

            “I don’t know what I’d do without you,” her father said quietly, taking her right hand and pressing it between both of his.

            “We’re a family,” Dara said, a lump rising in her throat.  

            “Nothing and no one can change that,” her father said, a ferocious note to his voice.

NaNoWriMo Day 16: It has a life of its own

Well, I am now just over 41,000 words into the novel and I can say that it truly has taken on a life of its own.  Though I actually prepared this year, coming up with a concept and making lots of notes, the novel is turning out quite different from how I thought it would.  I liked my original concept, but I was  a little worried about how I would flesh it out and make it interesting.  Since I started writing, I've had several epiphanies, and the fact that the novel is different from how I'd envisioned it is a good thing.  I think the new ideas I came up with will actually make it stronger and better.

My big frustration right now is with having to move forward.  I've been hopping around in the novel, adding chapters here and there as I've changed the direction of the narrative.  However, there are several chapters that need extensive rewrites and it's killing me not to be able to touch them!  I swear, as soon as my fingers finish that 50,000th word, I am going to be rushing straight to the stuff I want to fix.  Yes, I am a little obsessive!

***

“What are you trying to say?” Dara asked, tired of playing games.  She felt a sense of foreboding at where the conversation was going.  Seeing as how she had so much on her plate already, she was very unhappy at the thought that Letizia was about to heap more on it.

            “I know you don’t want me here.  I don’t want to be here either—I have no business intruding on you right now.”

            Dara knew she should probably protest, but she didn’t.  She agreed with what Letizia had said, and she was done observing form for form’s sake.  It had been a long day and she simply no longer had the energy for it.

            “Magnum is very protective of its secrets, you should know that,” Letizia said, sounding as if she was choosing each of her words with the utmost care.  “If trade secrets were provided to other Job Creators...  Well, I probably don’t need to tell you that it’s one of Magnum’s worst fears—one of the worst fears of any Job Creator, actually.”

            “What does that have to do with me?” Dara asked, her fatigue making her much more blunt than she’d normally dare to be with her mentor.

            “It means that Magnum is very meticulous about the information exchanged by employees.”  Letizia studied her intently, waiting for her to put the pieces together.

            “Are you saying that...that the conference rooms are observed?” Dara asked, horror struck at the idea.

            “Not observed, no.  But there are recording devices—and not just in the conference rooms either.”

            “But why...”  Dara allowed her voice to trail off; Letizia had already anticipated that question and had answered it.  “So everything I said in the room...”

            “Was being recorded, yes,” Letizia confirmed.

NaNoWriMo Day 15: When frustration leads to inspiration

One of the most rewarding things about writing is this: when your life is really frustrating or sad or awful or tragic or whatever, writing offers not only a respite from it, but sometimes your best work is informed and inspired by the rocky patches in life.  It's the classic making lemonade from lemons scenario.

***

Suddenly, Dara realized what a long road they had ahead of them, and it made her feel so weary she wanted to curl up on her parents’ bed and fall asleep like she had when she was a little girl who’d had a nightmare.

            Instead, she said, “You’re right, Dad.  We both need to go in tomorrow.  We can go to see Mom after our shifts.”

            He nodded, and she noticed how red and hollow his eyes were.  How strange it was for her to see such vulnerability in her father.  She supposed this was part of growing up, this change from the conviction that her parents were invulnerable and would always be there to protect her to wanting to protect them.  It made her feel much, much older than her seventeen years.