So yeah, just when you think all you have to do is proofread, these scenes you forgot all about from the beginning of your novel come back and bite you in the arse. Hard. 

Oh, and some months ago I agreed to take care of my friend's dogs.

Anyway, if anyone is wondering...this is where I am. I have lofty goals of finishing my revisions this weekend since I'm kind of tied to home anyway...HA. We'll see about that. I stand at 40% - paralyzed, cutting and pasting... See you soon world...

Since I'm spending so much time revising and thus, trying to make each sentence in my MS just right, I thought it might be worth mentioning what I have slowly discovered this past year or so... Sometimes all the right words are already on the page - just in the wrong order. I like to blame this on fatigue, or perhaps mild dyslexia, or both. If it gets late enough and I start typing with my eyes closed, the tsegnarts things come out. 

Frex: I just spent a good twenty minutes angsting over one weensy line of dialogue at the end of a chapter. You know - those lines that need to say more than all the ones written between it and the first line? So I cat-napped on my keyboard, kicked off my shoes and walked around barefoot, went into the kitchen to hold the conversation with myself in the dark, drank some ice water to try to wake up, and finally sat back down. Then I switched the beginning of the line to the end, and the end to the beginning. It works. Or at least, tonight it does.

So if you're having trouble trying to say what you want to say - take a good look at what's already there. Take an earlier paragraph and plunk it later. Move the dialogue closer together. Delete something! Or rearrange your sentences. Then you can have a bruised forehead like me from smacking yourself, saying "Doh!" 

And then, you move on to the next page...

BOGUS TO BUBBLY comes out October 21st!!
SO &^%!@)$%! EXCITED!!!
 

I feel a bit guilty about choking off the oxygen to my blog, but these revisions are owning me. And I realized today that I haven't cleaned off my desk in...longer than I'm willing to say...because of this BOOK. Agh! Luckily, S respects this as my space and doesn't care if I crap it up (the food table is another thing). But today I stepped back for a minute and felt the shame. I MUST finish revising so I can send this thing off for crits and rent an EXCAVATOR.



Just to expose myself completely to head shakes and tsk tsks, there are at least three months+ of bank statements and a wedding invite RSVP I haven't sent yet in that thing on the wall (I'm IN that wedding - so um, yeah)...There are Christmas cards, receipts, bills (paid/unpaid), uncountable sticky notes on every surface available (I have a sticky note problem - I stick sticky notes to sticky notes - I have a notebook that I write stuff in, and then stick sticky notes on top of the pages), a three pount free weight, two car registration renewals, an extra laptop battery, a christmas ornament, a birthday hat for my dog, a baseball hat I got for free, ~10 CDs in boxes, 2 loose, a copy of UGLIES I heart too much to put away, oh -- and LOTS of CAT HAIR.

I know what you're thinking...what about that nice black file cabinet...hmmm? I think it rusted shut.

Last night I dreamed that I left a Tori Amos concert to run to the bookstore (???)... 

I wasn't going to be gone long, but when I got there, I found out Neil Gaiman's new book, The Graveyard Book, had been released early. A helpful bookseller said I should get in line because Neil Gaiman was there in the store doing a signing, (!!!) I figured it would be too long a line and I wanted to get back to the concert, but then she pointed out the line only had about five people in it, so...

Here I should mention that I was sitting in my office chair from home this whole time - wheeling around the store. So I asked the lady to help me get the chair through the stacks, and I got in line. And there he was, signing books, with only five people in front of me! And then they were suddenly gone and I didn't know what to say! 

He asked which book I wanted since I wasn't holding one, and I said, "Any one will do." (eeeek!) and then he went on about it not being worth the shipping to get such and such or something, and finally signed a copy of The Graveyard Book for me. I was feeling bad that i hadn't read the new book yet (even though it had just been released that day), but in real non-dreaming life, I've been listening to him on audio a lot (HIGHLY reccommend!). So I told him I listened to his audio...and that I really enjoyed it...except, I said, "You do a really bad English accent."

:-O

I don't remember how he reacted, but I quickly corrected myself and said, "I meant to say you do a bad American accent!" (Awesome! I put my foot in my mouth in my own dreams!!) I back-pedaled, trying to explain myself and not being able to because I really don't think this at all and I don't know why I said it! At that point, I think he wanted me to leave, so he began chatting with the booksellers, and I began to wheel pitifully away in my office chair, feeling stupid that I ruined my one and only chance to speak to Neil Gaiman.

This one goes in the nightmare folder. *sigh*

 I am only here to procrastinate. With the rewrite finished and only revisions ahead of me, I am gripped by fear every time I open the Word document. I've read all the message boards. I've read all the blogs. I've eaten everything there is to eat (and more). I...haven't done the chores I should do. I know once I get going it will be fine. I hope. 

I will remember why I love the story. 

The faster I return to it, the faster I can send it to someone - Which is a whole new bottle of bubbly fears. I think this is all the fault of daydreaming. When I can't write during the day, my head goes up in the clouds to lofty places I shouldn't let it go. It explores the uncharted territory of a finished manuscript. I pull it back down over and again, but it is full of hot air. So perhaps my head is the balloon and the MS is a big sharp needle. And this is about to get very, very messy.

Meh.

Hee hee. 

The title of this blog comes from something Husband said to me the other day. -BTW, am I the only one who pronounces it Why Eh in casual conversation?- Husband has been doing a long metamorphosis when it comes to my young adult writing. At first he didn't take it at all seriously, and there was a lot of Why Eh bashing...but through classical conditioning (and perhaps the long nights alone in the dungeon) he has come to the point where he still doesn't understand it, but recognizes it as an art form. :D

So anyway, we were having a conversation about YA books, and he teased me saying the way I said it, it sounded like some kind of STD. So I was in the right humor, got the mental image and thought it was funny. 

And that got me thinking: When did I come down with YA?

I remember almost exactly - I was 15.

So I was listening to NPR today about the uncontacted-by-white-folk tribe of people living in the Amazon... and I could not stop thinking about Andrew Simpson Smith from Scott Westerfeld's UGLIES series. (Have I mentioned I LOVE anthropology?) NPR was debating what the tribe calls themselves, and I seriously doubt they call themselves anything. If they don't have much contact with others, there would be no reason to have a name for your own tribe. So I suggest we dub them the Andrew Simpson Smith tribe. Because I <3 Scott Westerfeld. And possibly because I drank too much coffee again and I'm up waayyy too late...damn.

38,058 / 70,000 (54.4%)

“Addy? You okay?”

The voice barely reached her. His thoughts were inside hers – her consciousness was flooded. She saw herself, the library, and fire..? Her breathing shallowed.

And then, she knew.

Addy clutched her chest and gasped. Everything went dark.

“That way,” she said, pointing west.