Tuesdays with Taryn~ Emotional Rollercoaster #amediting

I know I've been lax in posting a lot since 2013 began. It's just been an emotional roller-coaster for me- especially since I've been intent on self-publishing my contemporary romance LOVE BY DESIGN- the first of my four book Love By Series. There's been a lot of highs and lows though in my day to day life and my writing, as well as Mercury being in retrograde last month and a lot of other really lame excuses for why I can't seem to get my groove back.

Mentally I feel wiped clean of inspiration and determination to accomplish the goals I set for myself. Physically I'm doing better and have lost around 25 pounds while eating better and doing yoga and Everybody Dance exercise workouts and this past week, walking while I was visiting in my hometown. I'm 4 years a non-smoker, which still feels like a great accomplishment and all, but somewhere in my writing self, I feel like I'm lacking and self-doubt is strangling me just a bit. I'm digging the claws out, but there are still days when it takes all I have to focus and aim my attention in the right direction.

If things were always simple, life would be too easy, so I'm going to keep on keeping on and push through this- Chugging up the hills and screaming down the slopes. I'll get to the end of this crazy ride!

Have a wonderful Tuesday and thanks for stopping by to hang with me today!

Getting Back in the Groove...No Thanks to Mercury

Mercury is in Retrograde (February 23rd-March 17) and my household is surely feeling the effects of it. Little things going wrong, hubby had a sty in his eye last weekend, around the time Merc went Retro, or shortly thereafter. He treated it himself here at home with warm wash cloths and rubbing alcohol, but since then, he's started noticing symptoms of having another staph infection in his nose. He had one a couple years ago and the doctor warned him that once he'd had it, he would always be susceptible if his immune system was vulnerable. Well, with the eye issue and a cold and working some overtime, I guess he's gotten a bit rundown, so it's off to the doctor for him today—to get this cleared up and get him to feeling better.

I’m still working on edits to my manuscript for LOVE BY DESIGN, which seems to be taking longer than I had hoped and I’m not too thrilled about doing “revisions” during a retrograde, but I figure I was already working on them beforehand, so I should be okay.

I’m sort of feeling trapped outside myself though and wondering how I’m going to get this done and whether the minor changes I’m making aren’t actually major changes I should have left alone. Thank you again, Merc, for making me rethink & reassess what I’ve set out to do. You’re such a buddy…a super duper true pal!

I guess really I just need to purge the bad feelings from my mind onto the screen here…perhaps if I relinquish the hold it has on me, this niggling that I don’t know what I’m doing anymore, then I can let it go and come back to the manuscript with fresh eyes. I know I feel like I’m just chopping the story to bits and making it worse, but I know that’s not something that only plagues me.

I’m sure many writers feel that way when they’re “in process”- taking useful critique and trying to weave it into the story, hoping to build up the tension, tighten the sentences, tighten the story and plot line and polish it until it shines.

It’s hard to do when the story is complete and it’s not always as easy to go back in and squeeze in a puzzle piece into the jigsaw that wasn’t there before, but might need to be.

Makes me feel like my puzzle has bunched up on the tabletop though and will NOT lay flat to safe my life or the life of the story. Rework is an emotional thing for an author and there’s a lot of moments where you think—

“Yes, this is working great!”

OR

“Wait, this feels wrong!”

Of course, that leads me to wonder if sometimes it’s better to trust your own gut and stick with what you already knew, to the truth of how your story played out to begin with, rather than trying to make changes that might be unnecessary in the long run. I guess I’ll get it figured out. It’s just a matter of time and hopefully a few more swipes through the manuscript and perhaps after a few more eyes have seen it, maybe they can help me figure out if I reworked it enough, too much or if all I’ve done was for naught.

Maybe Mercury in Retro is trying to tell me something. I guess I shall have to wait and see.

WIPlash Wednesdays-Question from Marlo

WIPlash....it's what I get when I work with on my current novel(s)-

Unlike the real word "whiplash"- I'm putting a new spin on it.

WIP= Work In Progress Lash- the flexible part of a "WIP"

Wednesdays are also flexible. They're not quite so stressful as Monday, but not nearly as exciting or as looked forward to as Friday and the weekend. It's a nice little in-between to take inventory of where you've been and where you're heading.

WIPlash Wednesdays will be that place for me in my writing. It will be a day to take inventory of what I've done on my current manuscript, whether it be writing, editing, or whatnot. It will also be a nice place to just answer questions from friends and family about my life "as a writer." Questions that other writers also get from family and friends or curious strangers and their readers. Eventually I'll probably pool all the questions and my answers into a FAQs section on my website, but for now, I'll just be flexible and go with the flow.

Hopefully soon though, I'll be adding word count to my meter again(I added 3,046 new words to my WIP just the other night), working through various manuscripts, and talking again about the thrill and excitement of creating, of actually getting words on paper (or on screen, as the case may be.) I have more stories to tell and many miles to go before I sleep.

Today's WIPlash will include a question from one of my friends on FB. Of course, as my fellow writers can attest, these questions remain the same, but the answers are usually as personal and as individual as the writer who answers it and those answers vary tremendously among all of us in the writing industry.

Here's my take on one question. I think I'm going to get long winded on this question, so bare with me. Other questions will follow on other WIPlash Wednesdays in the coming weeks.

From Marlo- I've always wondered how writers come up with their characters.

My characters come to me in a variety of ways.

Catherine, from Castaway Hearts, came to me via, of all things, a Myspace background in 2006, which I'll touch more on when I post my blog in a few weeks that introduces her. (not sure who this image actually belongs to, but this is where Catherine really started to come to life in my mind)
See, though the story came to me via this "black & blue" image, Catherine Barrett had actually existed on paper since I was a teenager. I wrote what I considered the introductory couple of pages—just one sheet, front and back, but I never got any farther than her stepping up the planks of her grandfather's ship. I knew the story was historical, I knew she was going to sail away to a new world she was not accustomed to, but I hadn't yet dreamed what that story would possibly be. The image above helped bring Catherine from my past to the present. It haunted me as I'd lay down to go to sleep at night. This girl was so forlorn, so heartbroken and I knew the ghostly ship meant something, but what?

But what of all the other characters? Some were born when I gave them names, and their personalities bloomed from there. Literally. Others, names just came to me and I just already knew what kind of person they were and still others, a name has come to me, but they are playing coy and keeping their secrets about themselves a mystery for now.

In my Love By series, the four sisters originally started out as individual book ideas, single titles. There wasn't going to be a series, but their names all seemed "flowery" and this formed a synapse in my brain that said they HAVE to go together, those characters are SISTERS!

Some authors name characters and give them characteristics based on their names, the origins of the names, based on the cultural and ethnic backgrounds of their characters but I go on gut instinct a lot in choosing names. The wrong name can make or break the character, or do little more than create a block when it comes to writing them as they should be. The right name that suits a character feels like it fits them like a second skin, blends with who they are and makes writing and reading them a pleasure.

Tune in next Wednesday for more and questions from Mary Ellen & Katie!

Feel free to leave me more questions in the comments here at anytime.
I'll be happy to answer them.

Happy Hump Day! I can see the weekend from here!

So Much For Not Procrastinating...

For a week I dawdled some more...I know I know...I said I was done with dawdling and procrastinating...and then I let it rule over my thoughts and I shut down my desire to write.

I hit 21K and stalled out...And then this week got off to an okay start. I wrote 1,639 words on Monday...followed by a very poor word count on Tuesday (barely over 400). Yesterday was my saving grace. I wrote 4,891 words! I went to bed thinking about the story, playing out scenes in my head and thinking about what will happen next. That makes it hard to go to sleep, but filled me with a wonderful sense of accomplishment and the desire to keep pushing forward.

After allowing myself a week of procrastination...having no desire to write...I realized that in order to finish this book by the end of the month I was going to have to buckle down...I figured it up and realized that I need to write AT LEAST 4K a day or better to accomplish the goal I've set before me.

Last night I pushed through and got a lot written. The good, the bad and the ugly of it. The story does seem to be coming to life more in my mind's eye, so, THAT MUCH I have going for me. I can see the setting- the cabin near the lake, the high open beamed ceilings, the large living room and kitchen area, the bedrooms, the layout of the house. I can see the snow falling outside, and the lake from the kitchen windows where a private stretch of beach rolls out to meet the water. I can see the tall pines, the blanket of snow...The wilderness and the white capped mountains in the distance. I'd LOVE to go to this place...the feeling of serenity and peace.....even though its all in my head..Well, Lake Tahoe exists, as does Zephyr Cove, NV, but the actually cabin/chalet/chateau/lodge, or what-have-you, is all up here (points to temple) in the good old noggin.

My characters are coming to life and struggling with their apparent attraction though they shouldn't really act on it. They're snowed in together, the only two people there, getting to know each other with all the time in the world on their hands, and yet they have to fight their growing desires for one another. Tension builds as the game of cat and mouse plays out. They're destined....it just seems an unlikelihood at the moment...considering he's the physical therapist and she's the patient. It'll all come out in the wash though....It has to...it's meant to be.

And it's meant to be that I need to get my rear in gear and start writing some more today. Laterz!