Blog Hop: The Writing Process plus #Writemotivation update (April 2014 No. 1)

So I've been a bit quiet over here. Mostly I've been busy either revising HJ (for the billionth time), playing on the computer, doing Grad School stuff, or just being lazy. I'll let you pick one.

Anyway, April has started off slow in writing but busy in others.

However, I was recently tagged by one my fellow #writemotivation tweeps, the lovely Carissa and should probably A) do this post and B) update on my goals for the month.

Here are the four questions she asked.

1. What writerly endeavors am I currently working on?
Currently, I am working on the 7th revision of my YA contemporary novel, Hate Jacket. I was halfway through revision 6 when my awesome CP, Bonnie, recommended that I delete one of the characters. It's actually an awesome idea, but it meant I had to go through and remove a primary character and replace them with another. This means starting back at the beginning and reworking some scenes to replace one character with another. Not a huge deal, but one that I have to make sure I do completely or it will be confusing. I'm hoping this fixes the plot issues I've been having.

At the same time, my brain is starting to itch to start a novel that I'm not even ready to start until I'm done with Romeo and Juliet escape Hell (my NaNo novel that I'm stopped at 40K with and need to break apart and maybe do some plotting to figure out how I got stuck). Said new novel is awesome and shiny and based on the music of Meg Myers. If you follow me on twitter, you'll probably see me talk about her music. It's dark, moody, obsessive, and it gives me awesomely cool story ideas (I feel like a creeper talking about it all the time, but it is just that awesome). I let her music influence a story, titled THE KNIFE, that got published in Issue 17 of Veux Magazine. They did a beautiful spread of photos with models and everything. Blew my mind. Check it out.

Anyway, I had to get some of the Meg Myers story, titled Something Beautiful, out of my head so I could focus. I wrote the first few lines and they really popped. Now my brain is all WE MUST WRITE THE PRECIOUSSSS! But I can't. Even though I've got the end figured out. R&J needs to be finished first. I have people who want to read it.

We won't talk about what I'm doing with the penname stuff. Needless to say, he has some cool stuff in the works, but we won't talk about it here. Because this is for my YA, etc. writing and not for the more adult themes that he works on.


2. How does my work differ from others in my genre?
Hate Jacket is dark. Yes, there is dark YA out there. I think HJ is different because the main character is A) male and B) not an alpha male. He's a Beta at best. Really, he's angry, depressed, and abused. He's a victim and he has to stand up and stop being a victim before he can take control of his life and move forward. It deals with a lot of issues that I don't think get mentioned much in YA, especially from a male's perspective. Usually these types of books center on a girl.

3. Why do I write what I write?
Honestly, I wanted to be a scifi/fantasy writer. Unfortunately, my brain has decided it has an easier time writing stories about real world stuff. I have some scifi/fantasy story ideas (R&J being one), but I seriously struggle with them. Not sure why. I used to read SF/F exclusively growing up.

4. How does my writing process work. 
It's supposed to work? Wait. Did I miss something here?

Seriously? I'm a quasi-pantser. I write and then outline later. To some degree my brain wants to figure out the characters a bit first. However, I have learned a lot from writing Hate Jacket under the mentorship of Nicole Rescinti. One of them is that I think I can outline. Or at least, outline in the way that makes sense to me. I know I'll never do a point by point outline. It's not how my brain works. How it works is to write a couple sentences for each chapter as I go. However, if I can channel that before I start writing, I might be able to maybe avoid getting stuck like I have with R&J.

Now for my #writemotivation goals
Grad School

1. Finish my LibGuide (Due April 11) YES! You can see it here.
2. Finish up my reflection journal. Haven't finished this.

Writing

1. Finish revisions of the first half of HJ. Almost done.
2. Stop getting anymore cool ideas for revising HJ. Thankfully, no. I think this is done. I do need to stop getting ideas for Something Beautiful though.
3. Cheer on my #writemotivation buddies. I've done some of this. Need more and visit some blogs.
4. BLOG (I'm so bad about this). Ack! So bad! But I'm getting there.
5. Read my beta reading that I've been putting off. I am doing this!

'Till Next Time