Some Days the Bear Gets You

Well that was humbling.

After a great first day, I found myself on day two stumbling and bumbling. Wrote about 600 words, deleted most, tried again. Couldn't come up with anything that worked to get me into the story. Clever? Maybe. But useful? Not at all. So I backed up and tried again. And again.

The problem, I suspected, was that my opening was kind of flashy but didn't get me into the story. Had trouble transitioning. So I started the story in a slightly different place, just a little farther along.

It worked, but I'm not there yet. Took several false starts before I finally got right into the action, in a place that works. By then, the afternoon was over and I had to run around picking people up, dropping them off, the usual.

So my word count isn't impressive. Oh, if you count all the false starts, it's probably good – probably more than 1,000 words. But what I have left after all teh deletions and fiddling, is: 54 words. So what with all the backing up and adjusting and fiddling, the grand (?) total is now slightly LESS than it was the day before: 1,270 words.

But that's better than no words. I'm not happy about it, but at least I kept pushing until I found soemthing that works. And it does work.

Some days you get the bear. Some days the bear gets you. But I'm back at it, a little mauled but pushing on.

I'm Not Worthy

I'm 15 pages into Will Grayson Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan and all I can think is, "What made me think I can write?"

David Green I know. I've read a couple of his books and boy, he knows how to write today's kids. Paper Towns and An Abundance of Katherines are both great YA novels, the kind of book where you feel like you know these kids. If you are that age you want to be those kids, or hang out with them. I'm not familiar with Levithan, but I intend to remedy that in the coming weeks.

My son Max loves Green's work, has read everything by him in the library.

And now, 15 pages into Will Grayson Will Grayson, I suddenly see in a painful flash exactly why I was never able to make headway with my book, The Bones in the Closet. I have a great premise and some really good characters, but that's what they are, characters. The people in Green's books (and probably Levithan's although I don't know yet) are real people. And they write with an abandon I haven't mastered yet, a freedom I frankly am a little intimidated by.

I tell myself, "Well, yeah, but can they write pirate stories?" Because I'm still convinced Scurvy Dogs! is a good book, the one that's going to kick down the door of the publishing world. So I have that over them.

But if I'm going to make a story out of the really good premise for Bones, I've got a lot of work to do.

I've got to raise my game. Because I can write, but I'll have to write better.