Wow. I haven’t posted in a LONG time. I apologize for my failure. 🙂

In the time since my last post, nothing much has happened. I’ve been working off-and-on on my historical fiction novel, which has now been named “Graceful Margaret” for the time being. It’s a lot harder to write historical fiction than I had thought it would be. My attempts at historical fiction when I was a kid mostly consisted of using ideas and information from other things I had heard. Now that I’m older and have become something of a perfectionist sometimes when it comes to my writing, I feel a desperate need to be accurate in my storytelling.

Anyway, in case you’re wondering what the title of this post is all about, I shall tell you. NaNoWriMo = National Novel Writing Month (www.nanowrimo.org). If you don’t know what this is…shame on you! NaNo takes place during the 30 days of November and you “win” if you write a 50,000 word novel during those 30 days. This will be my 6th year of participating and, I’m hoping, my first year of winning. That’s right…I’ve never finished. However, this year I won’t have the distraction of school going against me.

Needless to say, I’m VERY excited for November to get here. I plan to document the countdown to November and then my time writing in November here. Probably not every day, but I’ll try to keep this somewhat updated.

Current status: I have a novel idea for NaNo, a title, and a list of characters that will inevitably grow a LOT come a couple weeks into November. I can’t wait to get started and see how this goes this year!

Yeah, I know. I haven’t posted in a while. So here’s an update.

I have my 10 readers all lined up and now they all have the manuscript too. Easter, Amanda, Janet, Caitlin, Jessica, Emily, Jenn, Tracy, Liz, and Britt–you all rock! So now instead of twiddling my thumbs until I hear the feedback…I’ve started writing something else. I forgot how difficult it is to start a new novel. I’m trying my hand at historical fiction, which is kind of strange since I absolutely HATED history class in school. I’m trying to write something about famous 16th century Irish Pirate Queen Grace O’Malley and her daughter Margaret. It’s slow going right now and I’ve only written about two pages (and outlined about five chapters), but I’m trying. At least it’s keeping me entertained for a while.

Yesterday, I finished with the initial edits on my full first draft. This was a painstaking and painful process, let me tell you. There were many times that I wondered what I was on when I typed certain parts. Hopefully, I managed to catch most of my really stupid mistakes and clear up some parts that were weird. Now it’s on to my first batch of readers for this full manuscript. I love my friends so much, because they all were very enthusiastic about being an extra pair of eyes. Hopefully, with their help, I’ll be able to really tighten the whole thing down. So here’s a grand shout-out to my wonderful friends and readers who I emailed with the manuscript today (more will hopefully be coming later): Amanda, Janet, Jessica, Emmy, Jenn, Liz, and Britt. Love you girls!

I’ve begun editing “Nor the Battle.” It amazes me how much things have changed since I last looked at the opening chapters, which was actually only about six or seven months ago. Sometimes I read a sentence and wonder how on earth I ever though it made sense.

Yesterday, while procrastinating, I got on Facebook and typed in “writer” for the Pieces of Flair keyword. I then proceeded to write down all my favorite quotes that popped up from that search. Just for giggles, I thought I’d share my list here. Enjoy!

–I write because I’d rather deal with people who don’t exist!
–Conform, go crazy, or become a writer.
–My characters write the story. I just try to keep up.
–If I stare at you, it’s not because you look good. It’s because you just helped me figure out how to off my villain.
–Writer’s Block: When friends and family decide you shouldn’t be screwing around on the computer.
–I’d love to, but I’m working on my novel.
–Sometimes I have to tell my characters “I’m sorry…this hurts me more than you…”
–Whether you like it or not, you’ll be in my novel. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
–Please do not annoy the writer. She may put you in a book and kill you.
–I wish I had writer’s block so I could actually sleep.
–“Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.” ~E.L. Doctorow
–There is nothing more annoying to a writer than a pen without ink.
–Fiction writers think of six wore-case scenarios before breakfast, all involving death, mutilation, or global catastrophe.
–I’m a writer because real life is boring.
–Don’t get it right the first time, just get it written.
–“No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.” ~Robert Frost
–Shhh…I’m working on my novel.
–I write, therefore I embrace insanity.
–You ever seen an author that’s SANE?
–There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.
–Sometimes I have to remind myself that the characters I write about don’t actually exist.
–Can’t sleep. Must write.
–Plot. It builds character.
–I shall write a NOVEL and when it is deemed to be PUBLISHED thou shalt see me go SQUEEEE!
–Warning: Anything you say or do may end up in my next novel.
–I prefer to think of myself as “pre-published.”
–Do unto your characters the most deranged things humanly possible.
–If you could see my Google history, you’d think I was nuts…unless you’re a writer. Then you’d understand.
–I write to cope with life.
–I’m a writer. What’s your superpower?
–You don’t scare me. I write fiction.
–If you look at a crawlspace and think “Great place to hide a body”…you might be a writer.
–The pen is mightier than the sword. Never piss off a writer!
–Paper? Check. Pencil? Check. Idea? Ummm…
–If one wasn’t an author, one would be a really boring person filled with peculiar bits of trivia.
–“I write for the same reason I breathe, because if I didn’t I would die.” ~Isaac Asimov
–Leave me alone. I’m writing. *five hours later* Leave me alone! I’m writing!!! *stabs with pencil*
–Happily, we appear to have acheived coffee.
–The voices in my head won’t shut up until I write. The really annoying ones end up dead.
–Writer’s Block: When characters get fed up with all you put them through and go on strike.
–Freelance writer–will write for coffee.
–Because I’m the AUTHOR, that’s why!
–You’re going in my next novel.
–All hail the power of the pen!
–“Remember, writers are the only adults who get to spend all day in their pajamas playing with their imaginary friends.” ~Unknown
–Fuck off! I’m writing! Don’t fuck with a writer when they’re writing!
–I’m writing a book. A clever book. A scary book. A book that will be better than Twilight. And there’s nothing you can do to stop me.
–My characters hate it when I kill them.
–Writer. I.e. God of your own universe. Whee!
–Just keep authoring things or you will be eaten by flowers.
–You know you’re a writer when…you’ve thought all the flair quotes before you ever found them.
–Being a writer is great! Don’t like someone, eh, kill them off.
–There is no greater agony than bearing an unwritten story in you.
–Of course I live in my head…I’m a writer.

I’m done! I have officially finished the first draft of “Nor the Battle.” And now I don’t know what to do with myself, because this has been a big part of my life (and brain) for, well, two and a half years. I know the revisions are next and my friends had better be prepared to become my readers so I have more pairs of eyes to make sure everything I said MAKES SENSE, but…it’s done. The words are all there, and now I just need to make sure all the words can be followed.

So how do I feel? I really don’t know. I’m shaking, I feel a little like a weight has been lifted. I think I like how it turned out…I think it all makes sense…I think it’s a good ending for the story. But I really don’t know…I don’t know anything right now, that’s what I’ve decided. There are no. words. for how this feels.

I’m so rewarding myself with ice cream tonight.

One of the things I love about be a writer…if you walk into someplace like, say, a jewelry store, explain you’re working on a novel, and then ask them a really random question that they’ve probably never been asked before, people are usually pretty understanding. That’s what I did yesterday. I went to Fred Meyer Jewelers and Kay Jewelers to get a couple very specific questions I had about sterling silver jewelry. One question wasn’t that big of a deal…but the second question was kind of for a key plot point in my novel and I really needed to know. This was only after I bothered my friends on Facebook, Twitter, AND the girls that post over on the Blockhead boards. Anyway, I got my answer and all is right with the world.

Another thing I thought of recently is how many random things I’ve been looking up on Google over the past week or two. The Internet must think I’ve finally lost it. In the last two days, I’ve looked up information on twisted wrists, at-home pregnancy tests in the early ’90s, stomach bruising, the melting temperature of sterling silver, and the temperature of an average bonfire. Now all of these things make complete sense in my head, but they probably sound a little insane here.

In other news, I’m on the second-to-last chapter of my novel. I’m at 155 typed single-spaced pages (about 100 more than I had at senior presentation). And you know what I’m realizing? Writing the last couple chapters is comletely excruciating. For the life of me, I can’t keep myself focused. I’ve been working on this chapter for two days and barely anything has been accomplished. I think this is happening because I’m already past the climax of the story (or, at least, of the “past” portion)…now it’s just a matter of ending it…explaining what happens after that makes the stuff in the “present” sections make more sense.

It’s surreal to think than in another chapter and a half, I’ll be done. I’ve worked on this first draft for two and a half years, but in a chapter and a half I’ll be done with the first draft. That’s a little wild.

Yesterday, I officially broke out of the “teens” of my novel when I finished Chapter Nineteen. And today I wrote the excruciating Chapter Twenty…the chapter that I’ve both looked forward to and dreaded writing for several months. Allow me to explain.

In “Nor the Battle,” Liz (my main character) gets put through a lot of crap. And I mean A LOT of crap. For the most part, I’ve enjoyed putting Liz through this, just so I can see how she’ll respond…how much she’ll take before she starts beating my brain. But the crap that occurs in Chapter Twenty, in particular, is the worst so far. I knew she’d make it through, because she has to, but it was still hard to write. I think she tried to beat my brain a little bit, but my brain won, and the chapter got finished.

THIS chapter in particular is the one where a certain musical kept singing a certain song in my head. “Die Vampire Die” from [title of show], to be exact. Just so you know, in the show a “vampire” is “any person or thought or feeling that stands between you and your creative self-expression.” Here’s the vampire that kept sticking its head up while I was writing this chapter:

“Brothers and sisters, next up is the air freshener vampire. She might look like your mama or your old fat-ass, fat aunt Fanny. She smells something unpleasant in what you’re creating. She’ll urge you to pssssssst it with some pine-fresh smell-em-ups. The air freshener vampire doesn’t want you to write about bad language, blood, or blow jobs. She wants you to clean it up and clean it out which will leave your work toothless, gutless, and crotchless, but you’ll be left with two tight paragraphs on kittens that your grandma will be so proud of.”

Anyway, that’s where I am now. I finished writing the painful Chapter Twenty and I now know that Liz can pretty much take anything else I might dole out to her over the last few chapters. Because, yes, ladies and gentlemen, I am now on Chapter Twenty-one out of TWENTY-FIVE! And if Liz could survive Chapter Twenty, then these last few chapters will be a breeze…

I got my computer back on Monday. It was a glorious reunion! I found out on Sunday afternoon that my computer issue was in fact a hard drive issue. Cue my heart stopping. But Dude told me that it should be golden–he was pretty sure he could rescue my documents, pictures, and music from my old hard drive. So now my laptop has a brand new, shiny hard drive that is twice as big as my old one…and now it’s running SO much nicer! It no longer takes it 10 minutes to turn on (I wish I was kidding)…now it only takes a minute or so. Good stuff.

Today was my writing date with Emmy. It was our first writing date in two weeks and we had a little bit too much fun. I was happy to have my computer back (hand-writing this novel over the weekend gave me a renewed appreciation of writing on the computer). Anyway, about halfway through our time at Urban Coffee, we both got side-tracked by Twitter. And by “side-tracked” I mean we had an entire ridiculous conversation for at least an hour just over Twitter…any of our mutual friends who follow both of us probably had nothing on their feed but our insanity. After she distracted me by talking about her iTunes playlist she has for the story she’s writing, which led to me making a 60-song playlist for my own novel, THIS happened:

ErinLMillar @Serenityfilm I also love how we’re talking over twitter and not with our voices, since we’re sitting at the SAME TABLE! Eat your muffin!
Serenityfilm @ErinLMillar I DON’T WANNA! THE MUFFIN IS DRY AND CREEPY!
Serenityfilm @ErinLMillar Also that girl over there is wearing a tutu, and the other one is wearing fairy wings, it’s distracting…
ErinLMillar @Serenityfilm Weeeeeeiiiiiiird. Do you like how I spied through the bizarre coffee bean on the back of the bench?
Serenityfilm @ErinLMillar Yes. Very much so. I also enjoy that we’re using twitter for incognito communication…
ErinLMillar @Serenityfilm EAT THE MUFFIN, DAMN IT! You paid $1.75 for it!
Serenityfilm @ErinLMillar But you just stabbed it, now its tainted…
ErinLMillar @Serenityfilm Weirdo. I’ll put the strange girl’s fairy wings on you in retaliation.
Serenityfilm @ErinLMillar SOO WEIRD! Whatever, I’m not judging, I’m not. Really I’m not. I swear to god.
Serenityfilm Great, Splenda now owns my muffin. Thanks @ErinLMillar
ErinLMillar @Serenityfilm You know you love your muffin flag, don’t deny it.
Serenityfilm http://twitpic.com/c64qp – This muffin has been claimed by the land of no calorie sweetners.
ErinLMillar @Serenityfilm YEAH it has!
ErinLMillar @Serenityfilm I dare you to go over and ask Fairy Wings and Tutu why they’re wearing…fairy wings and a tutu…
Serenityfilm @ErinLMillar That would be a no. HELL no in fact, I’d rather just silently wonder.

Anyway, after this entire exchange and a few more distractions, I actually managed to get an entire (long) chapter written today. Start to finish. I’m getting to the really tense, really interesting part of my novel now…so it’s almost getting harder for me to not finish a chapter soon after I start it. Which I’m gonna say is a good thing. Another accomplishment today is that I’m now on the last page of my outline! The end is in sight, friends!

Life has been a little interesting around here over the last week. On the positive side…I managed to finish three chapters, which is pretty remarkable for me lately. And I finally broke 100 single-spaced pages. Took two and a half years, but that made me pretty happy.

On the down side…my computer died yesterday. It just up and died on me, which annoyed me to no end. Okay…so I don’t really know that it legit DIED, but I do know that it will no longer turn on for me without giving me a fantasic Blue Screen of Death. Oh, how I loathe the BSD. This happened yesterday morning. After I spent a good half hour fighting with my laptop and trying with every fiber of my being to get it to TURN ON, I finally gave up. I called computer dude (that’s how I refer to him…my mom calls him the computer guru…his real name is Bill) who has fixed my parents’ desktop computer on numerous occasions recently, found out he deals with laptops, and was told to bring it over. So I did…frantically. I was in complete frantics all morning because, oh, yeah, I haven’t really backed up much on that piece of crap. FORTUNATELY, I have probably 95% of my digital pictures backed up and (most importantly) I have my novel backed up in, now, four places. Those would have been the things I would be stressing out about the most. I’m hoping against hope I can get the rest of my documents back…and my iTunes music…but the novel and the pictures would have made me devestated if I lost (especially the novel).

Anyway, Dude told me that it could be anything that’s causing the BSD and he would have to diagnose it first. He said it could be merely a hardware/software issue, something could need updated, it could be a virus, ooooor I might need a new hard drive. I’m hoping it’s a quick, easy, cheap fix that doesn’t make me lose anything…or at least not much. I guess I should be impressed that I’ve had my laptop for four years and it’s only NOW causing me to take it to the shop.

Ah, technology. It’s really good at biting me in the butt.

Cheesy title, I know. But just go with it…it’ll make sense, I swear.

Tonight, I’m proud to say that I finished another chapter (much faster than usual, so that’s probably a good sign). I was sitting on the couch with Mom, watching something on the Food Network and after a short break I turned back to my laptop to start Chapter Fourteen. I stared at my outline, read the couple sentences I had written down regarding Chapter Fourteen’s events about a million times, stared at my computer, stared at my outline again…this went on for several minutes. And after groaning, and then explaining my reason for groaning to Mom, I realized something. Something I’ve known for a while, but just haven’t thought of that much…

I hate starting new chapters.

I love it too, but I REALLY hate starting new chapters. I love the feeling of moving forward…but I still hate starting new chapters. The reason for this is…I do this ritual every time. Fourteen times (well, fifteen, because of the prologue) during the course of writing this novel, I have spent a loooooooong time trying to start a new chapter. I figured out something tonight, though. It’s because each chapter is like its own story. And I’ve heard several times that the hardest part of writing is getting started (isn’t that the truth). So I finish a chapter…and then I turn to start a new one…and even though I know exactly what’s going to happen, I never have any idea how to start the story. So I sit there for minutes upon minutes upon minutes, staring at my outline and computer screen, willing my mind to form some opening that doesn’t sound completely stupid, something I haven’t already used before in the story, something that can get me going.

And then I find that opening. As soon as that happens, it’s all golden. For the most part, as soon as that happens, the chapter starts taking form and I know (more or less) exactly how I want to say what I’ve chosen to occur in the chapter. Yes, there are still rough spots…moments in the chapter when I’m not sure how to get to the next part…but nothing is as bad as when I’m first starting. So I write and write until I’ve told that chapter’s story. I bring it to a close. I celebrate a little–do a little dance, listen to a favorite song, treat myself to a snack. And then I type those fateful words: CHAPTER [INSERT NUMBER HERE]. I feel pretty good about myself…until I pick up that outline and read those few sentences. The whole cycle starts over again and I have to scour my brain for words I haven’t used…for something that’s not cheesy. But I keep going.

By the end of writing this first draft, I’ll have gone through this ritual twenty-six times, assuming all goes as planned. Once I finish, I’ll probably miss the cycle…I’ll probably miss getting frustrated by opening a new chapter. But then it’ll be time to come up with the next novel idea…and the cycle will pick up again with a new story, new outline, new characters. The cycle will never end, not as long as I keep writing. And I plan to write for a long time.