The Lazy Life of a College Student on Winter Break

10pm: Fall asleep watching Psych on Netflix.
6am: Wake up confused and disoriented and realize you fell asleep at ten last night and that's why you're waking up when it's still dark out, like some crazy person who is motivated or something. Try to convince yourself to get out of bed and exercise or something, but instead go on your computer and find out that Kim Jong-Il is dead and browse Reddit reading about it.
6:45am: Decide that being awake this early is a lot lamer than you expected. Go back to sleep.
11:47am: Wake up again and finally get up to get coffee and cereal. Decide that the most productive thing you will do today is go to the pool.
2pm: Go to the pool. It's windy and in the 70s outside because you live in Florida, but it's still just warm enough to where swimming is nice. Do breaststroke for one lap and pretend that's a workout, then go into the hot tub and read a Jennifer Echols book on your Nook.
3pm: Go home. Go on Tumblr.
5pm: Realize how little you've gotten done. Decide to write for the rest of the night.
5:30pm: Write a blog post instead.

My first day of freedom and I feel as if I've botched it. I meant to wake up at a decent time and write, then maybe go running. I wrote one sentence of TSTB today. It's been super productive.

How's everyone else's break going so far?

Oh! Oh! I have an idea!

I've been vlogging a lot this past week, so you may have heard me mention in one of them that I've decided to write a fantasy novel. I've been busy plotting it out, getting all excited for it, since it definitely seems like it'll need more than one book to be complete. I've never even tried to write a series before!

However, there's one small problem: I'm currently in the middle of another project. Several other projects, as a matter of fact. There's the more-than-half-finished TSTB rewrite, which is coming along pretty well. (Kissing scene was written the other days, lots of swoons to be had.) There's what I planned to write for NaNo, another YA romance called I KILLED FIONA WASHBURN, whose characters I am in love with. There is the not-finished rewrite of THE UNLIKELIHOOD OF NOSTALGIA. Finally, there is the disaster that is THE REAPING OF JONAH SALT, a 12k word monstrosity that was more of a fun exercise than it was ever a real, viable idea.

I find it ironic that the most oft-asked questions of authors is, "Where do you get your ideas?" The question should be, "Where don't we get ideas?" It's constant, this influx of ideas. From movies, to television shows, to other books, to real life, to stories on the news--that where our ideas come from. And it can get really annoying when you're in the middle of one thing and another catches your eye, like you're a bird who is trying to build her nest with as many shiny (half-baked) ideas as you can.

My advice, however: don't switch horses in the middle of the stream.

If you are in the thick of one manuscript and you want to start another one, WAIT. Wait until you've come out of the other side in the darkness that is the middle, boring part of writing, and then see how you want to do your next idea. It's so tempting to stop what you're doing for a shiny new plot and set of characters who don't have the problems of your current manuscript, but it's really hard to finish one thing if you have ADD of the brain and can't stop jumping back and forth.

How do you deal with errant plot bunnies? Do you ignore them, wait, or jump right into a new story, no matter where you are in another?

I Love My Laptop and Lies

Today's post is going to be in two parts, just because both of these things are on my brain and I'm also procrastinating from writing TSTB. (I'm up to 18k on the rewrite--more than a quarter done! Hoping this one will top at 60k-ish.)

Anywho, part one: I really, really, really love my laptop.

Last night, I was without my beloved HP and when I got back to it an hour ago, I realized just how much I love my computer. It doesn't usually complain or freeze on me, even when I've been on it for hours at a time, and though it isn't awesome enough to play The Sims 2 for longer than ten minutes at a time, it can still handle my excessive tweets and the fourteen new documents I open when I'm trying to figure out a problem within my writing that cannot be solved. I love Google Chrome and Tumblr and Reddit and LiveJournal and Twitter and Tweetdeck and Window Media Player (not so much with Windows Movie Maker, that thing sucks). I love Microsoft Word and Q10 and my fast Internet connection (that, at the end of the month, basically stops working). I love free Wifi at Starbucks and at Panera (where I now work). I love my keyboard, even though the R and the shift key have both been sticking lately. I love the worn parts of the space bar, exactly where I always touch it.

I am incredibly grateful for my laptop.

Part Deux:

I have a problem reading books where the main conflict hinges on a huge lie by the protag. I have some social anxiety and just the thought of lying and keeping the charade up for so long gives me a really bad stomachache, so when I read books where I know the entire time that the main character is lying, I usually have to put them down. They make my anxiety meter go off the charts.

The reason I mention this is because I recently picked up Bumped by Megan McCafferty at the library and I stoked (I can't believe I just used that word) to start it because I'd been looking for it for awhile. I got about 100 pages in and then I stopped reading. Not because it was bad; on the contrary, I loved all the slang and the characters and everything about it was great. I just really couldn't handle the huge lie and the inevitable scene where everyone finds out about it.

I guess I just don't lie, in general. I'm bad at it because I never do it. It just freaks me out.

Does this kind of thing both anyone else?

And, an added bonus:

On July 23rd, I'm going to see Maggie Stiefvater, Libba Bray, and MEG FREAKIN' CABOT in Miami! I am beyond excited because I never get to go to these things; when Sarah Dessen came down here a few years ago, I almost went, but then I couldn't find a ride. My mom is being awesome enough to drive me and I am freaking out because a) I love all of them and b) MEG CABOT. THE MEG CABOT.

That is all for today. I'm done procrastinating.

Rewriting or, THE BANE OF MY EXISTENCE

Sorry for the radio silence, dudes and dudettes! I've been reading ravenously and writing just a little less hungrily, but my online presence has been severely lacking. I was going to do this blog post as a vlog, but I'm so awkward on camera that every time I tried to record it, I played with my hair a lot and talked in a very low voice so no one else in my house would know I was talking to the man in the computer. So, this is a text post to spare all of you from second-hand embarrassment!

Onto today's topic: REWRITING, or THE ABSOLUTE BANE OF MY EXISTENCE

My name is Sam Ripley, and I am a chronic rewriter.

As many of you know, I've been working on The Shape that Breaks (heretofore referred to as TSTB for brevity), since I was fourteen. I started it the winter break of my first year of high school and while the story has changed quite a bit, the characters have mostly stayed the same. (Aside from Alex, that is. First he was an abusive boyfriend, then he was a really good guy, and now he's kind of a jerk again.) At first, it went by the lame name of GOLDEN EYES, back when Aiden had golden eyes because I thought that was SOSPECIAL!1!!oneone. But now, it is just TSTB.

And I am working on my fourth rewrite of the damn thing.

Don't get me wrong. I love the story. I love the characters. I love everything about it. But it has overtaken my life for the past five years and as soon as I think the draft I finished a few months ago was all polished and ready for querying, I realize that my writing has improved a lot over the course of this draft. And I started a rewrite for NaNo last year, so I started to read that one, and I'm like, WELL THIS IS SO MUCH BETTER, WHY DID I STOP WRITING IT?

So I'm 16k into another rewrite.

I want to bash my head on the table. (I'm at Starbucks or else I would do this. You guys can have a .gif of John Green doing the giant squid of anger, though.)

Eff yeah, Nerdfighteria!

Anyways, I think a lot of writers get to that stage in their manuscript where they just want the story to be DONE, already. If TSTB never gets published, I don't think I'll care as much as I would if I never finished this draft. But I believe in this story so much. It has been my life for so long that I think I'll feel empty when I finally finish it.

Is anyone else a chronic rewriter? 

NaNoWriMo!

So, I'm sure you guys have noticed my absence as of late. While it has as much to do with school and crew practice (I'm going to Tennessee this weekend to see a race - wish the varsity good luck!) as anything else, the thing that has been preventing me from blogging is the specter we all like to call:

NaNoWriMo

*cue the scary music*

This is my fourth year doing NaNoWriMo and I'm currently working on a rewrite of The Shape that Breaks. Hopefully, this will be the draft that I can get through revisions (since it is the second rewrite) and finally, maybe, get an agent with. I was originally going to work on something else, called Other, but I decided against it at the last minute. I have to say, I'm glad I did. TSTB is as close to my heart as anything can get - I started writing it as a fifteen-year-old, not knowing much about love or anything else, and now that I'm finally going to finish it, I've grown so much and so many things have happened to me.

I have a review coming up tomorrow as well as an author interview, so I'm not completely dead! I feel like my college is in the middle of nowhere, though - I have to order books instead of going to the bookstore all of the time, since the bookstore is so out of the way. 

I'm so excited to go to Tennessee - the bus leaves tonight at 2AM. Wish me luck on getting some sleep; the crew kids tend to be rowdy! 

NaNoWriMo?

Okay, so I'm aware that it's September. I'm also aware that delaying something for as long and you possibly can can only make it better when it actually happens. So, I've started to plan for my novel for NaNoWriMo.

Is it sad that two out of the three novels that I've finished were NaNo novels? I'm bad without a definitely deadline and thousands of other people trying to do the same thing, I guess.

This discussion happens with writers all the time: Are you a plotter or a pantser? And now, pantser's don't pants people: they just have an idea and go wherever it may take them! Plotters, on the other hand, plot every detail they can out until they know exactly what is going to happen, exactly how their characters would act, etc. Me, I've always been a pantser. I treat my first draft like my outline, just using it to get to know the characters and what parts of the plot work and don't work. A very, very long outline.

Yeah, most of the time I don't have the patience for this. Like last year, with TUON. I wrote it, hated it because I was a pantser and now I hate the story even more with the second draft. Maybe because people keep telling me, "THIS IS SO CLICHE. LIKE A SOAP OPERA. Blah blah blah." You're not supposed to listen to those people, but they've wormed their way into my head. So, TUON is on haitus.

And the rewrite of TSTB? Well, I like that one. But I can't get over the idea, once again. Celeste is so whiny. And I didn't really understand heartbreak when I started writing it because I'd never had a boyfriend.

And now, we have my NaNo novel. The idea itself has been puttering around in my head for a couple of years but I'd never fleshed it out enough to make it make sense. But! I've been writing notes!

So, I've totally been productive. And since there's a month and half left until November, maybe I can actually outline! For once!

Is anyone else doing NaNo? Started planning yet? 

Teaser Tuesday!

I've been a little down in the dumps about my writing this week, probably because Forget You by Jennifer Echols features both a main character named Zoey and this said character getting amnesia. A little to close for comfort for my tastes and people keep telling me to change my main character's name, but I'm so stuck with it that I can't, at this point. Maybe I'll just scrap the whole project, because both The Unlikelihood of Nostalgia and The Shape that Breaks officially suck.

So, this is a little excerpt from something I'm working on based on a short story I wrote. It's thoroughly depressing and totally fits the mood of this week's writing:

The radio signal cut out right about when the eye of the hurricane began to hover over us and for a moment, there was complete silence. The world outside was still. And then, in loud capital letters, the radio began to yell: “THERE HAS BEEN AN INFECTION IN RUSSO COUNTY. I REPEAT, THE INFECTED HAVE REACHED RUSSO COUNTY.”

We listened like there was nothing strange happening, even though my heart began hammering like the Infected were right outside our front door. Then my dad’s eyes opened wide and he pressed a finger to his lips as he twisted the volume dial on the radio. For a moment, I didn’t know why he looked so frightened, but then I heard it too: the high-pitched chuckle, like a hyena laugh, near the back porch.

In one hastened breath, my father, with his scratchy beard and huge brown eyes, said, “Go, the attic, Hollow, go.”

Irrationally, I grabbed the bag of marshmallows and ran up the stairs. I pulled the string and the ladder fell, creaking so loud I was sure that the something’s (they weren’t the Infected, no, no, no) outside would hear me, but that was when the huge crash, the shattering of glass, shook the house. I threw the bag of marshmallows up into the attic, and in one big breath, I was up the ladder and pulling it shut behind me, slow, slow, no creaks, please, please.

I don’t know what happened to my mom, but I heard what happened to my dad. Death gave him no dignity. I covered my ears and wished and hoped and prayed to a god my dad had told me didn’t exist. I breathed hard so that the noise covered his screams, but it didn’t, it didn’t, it didn’t.

The screaming seemed to go on forever and day and my heart was broken but the news prepared us for this. The television told me that they were too stupid to think about people hiding, but if they heard you, if they saw you, they would find you. They were stupid, yeah, but they knew that bullets killed people. They knew that if you pulled a trigger, it would spill the blood of the target. They didn’t get bullets and they didn’t get gunpowder, but they got guns. But they were too stupid to look for them.

I lay on my back, hands pressed over my ears, until there was almost silence. They were listening, heads cocked, distended teeth spilling over their lips, for more prey, for more blood to spill. The way the news had described them at first was halting, like they were afraid to offend, but as the Sickness spread, the descriptions became more sensational. My favorite one was, ‘half-vampire, half-zombie’ because it fit the pictures well.

They did not hear me. They did not wander up the stairs. I heard, briefly, the pantry door open and close, and then their hyena laughs, and slowly, painfully, they left the house, laughs fading, fading, fading in the distance.

How do you go downstairs? How do you know that blood will be everywhere, yet open the ladder anyway? How do you smell the blood – the tangy, metallic smell – and still go downstairs? How does your heart break and you do not die?

Being Good At Failing

I've been reading a lot of inspirational posts as of late - namely Vee's post about self doubt, and it's made me think a lot about my own writing. I honestly believe that there is no such thing as writer's block; for me, writer's block is fear. It is being afraid to ruin what you think may have potential or being afraid that whatever you write won't be good. It isn't a lack of ideas. I always have ideas. I just don't apply them.

I have been working on The Shape that Breaks for almost four years and the reason I have yet to try to polish it off for publishing or actually finish the goddamn second draft - I'm scared. I love the story so much that I want to do it justice and, at the same time, I'm afraid it isn't going to be good enough. I'm afraid that it is stupid and no one will understand the characters or the fact that two teenage boys move in across the street from Celeste and she magically falls in love with them - I'm so scared no one will get it. No one will get them, these characters closest to my heart. TSTB was the first novel I actually finished. I'm not good with endings, and I ended it.

The thing is, though - fear of failing, fear of not being good enough - they don't matter if you don't try. JK Rowling said that the only reason she ever succeeded is because she got good at failing. I've never failed at anything writing related, aside from not winning a few contests. I've always been praised, especially in high school, probably because I was one of the only people who'd been practicing it since they were tiny. I'm bad at taking criticism, even in real life, and I always want it on my writing, but at the same time, I'm afraid.

So I don't finish things. They just sit there and rot because if they aren't done, they can't fail. There's still potential. But honestly? You might not be able to fail if you don't try, but you also won't be able to succeed.

We're all scared. The difference between me and those people who are out there, getting agents and getting published? It isn't fear. It's bravery.

We can all be brave.