What's Up Wednesday: Revisions and Demons

What I'm Reading
I'm reading Allegiant, which I teaser-ed on Monday. I should have to be done sometime today because the book is due back at the library tomorrow. Yikes. Next up is Of Triton by Anna Banks.

What I'm Writing Revising
Yes. I've finally started revisions on EPONINE. Right now I'm going through the in-manuscript notes from two betas while reacquainting myself with the story (I haven't looked at it since October). Also, I'm taking notes about big picture things that need to be fixed.

What Inspires Me Right Now
I've long loved Demons by Imagine Dragons, but lately I've been blasting it and singing along at the top of my lungs. I've had Bleeding Out on my EPONINE playlist for forever and I'm definitely adding Demons.

 

What Else I've Been Up To
I saw the movie Lone Survivor on the weekend. I had no clue what this movie was about and wasn't all that excited to see it, but holy cow. It's one of those movies I'm glad I saw, but probably won't watch again. It's super hard to watch at times, especially when you know it's based on a true story. There are a whole ton of F-bombs in this movie, but I'd definitely recommend it, especially if you like war movies.

Allegiant Teaser

After much waiting, and spoiler avoiding, I finally managed to get my hands on Allegiant. Actually, it wasn't hard at all to avoid spoilers, surprisingly. I know people have mixed emotions about it, so I'm interested to see how it ends.
Anyway, I used to participate in Teaser Tuesday, but I thought that today I'd go crazy and do a teaser on MONDAY. I know, I know, watch out for my insanity people. So here's a teaser from Allegiant, spoiler-free, I promise.

"Why's he bleeding?"
"Because he's an idiot."
Zeke offers me a black jacket with a factionless symbol stitched to the collar. "I didn't know that idiocy caused people to just start spontaneously bleeding from the nose." (page 79)

Have you read Allegiant? What did you think of it? (Without spoilers please, I'm not done yet. ;))

December Reads

I know it's already mid-January, but I never did a best book of December post, so here I go.

 

All Our Yesterdays: Good book, but I have major issues with the end. Issues that seem to be bugging me the more I think about them, even though it's been more than a month since I've read it.

On Writing: Very insightful. All writers should read this book. However, I was surprised that half of it was memoir. I didn't know that in advance so I kept thinking, as interesting as your life is, get to the writing advice. I see why he did it- you can see how many things from his life he's used in his writing, not to mention the trials he's gotten through. But I was still itching for those gems of writing advice.

Teardrop: Great book. Like the Atlantis twist. Looking forward to the sequel.

Sense & Sensibility: I enjoyed the book, but was disappointed with how SAME it was from the original.

Divergent: Even though this was my second read, I have to give the best book of the month to Divergent. It's an exciting book with interesting characters and a richly imagined world. I don't identify with Tris necessarily, but I understand her. And Tobias is not the typical swoony love interest but still manages to be swoony nonetheless. I've just started a reread of Insurgent. I remember not liking it as much as Divergent when I first read it so I'm interested to how I feel this time around.

 

BTW, I took that test at the end of the Divergent paperback and I'm a mix of Candor and Amity. (I had absolutely no Dauntless answers whatsoever. Big shocker.)

 

What's Up Wednesday: Or Rather, What's Down?

What I'm Reading

STILL waiting on Insurgent from the library. Grrr. On the upside, I got Emerald Green by Kerstin Gier from the library so I reread Ruby Red and Sapphire Blue in prep and now I'm on the last of the trilogy. These books are so much fun and I love them like crazy. It's funny because I remember when I read Ruby Red for the first time, I found it hard to get into at the beginning. I didn't have the same problem on my reread at all. But maybe that's because I knew what was coming. ;)

What I'm Writing
Oh gosh, I feel like such a slacker. I was supposed to start my revision of EPONINE the 1st week of January. Then I said, okay I'll start the next week. I still haven't started. BUT, I'm almost done critiquing a CPs MS, so once I'm done that and my reading pile diminishes a bit, I'm going to get cracking on EPONINE. Hopefully Monday.

What Inspires Me Right Now
To be honest, I'm not really feeling the inspiration right now. I've had a couple down days and so it's hard to find that spark, you know? I know it's still there somewhere and if it doesn't appear by Monday, I'm going to dig it out with a shovel or an ice pick, or whatever it takes to get myself lit on fire again. "This I vow," she said, head upturned, one hand pressed to her heart. Ha.

What Else I've Been Up To
My newly seven-year-old daughter had a birthday party last Saturday which reminded me why I was hesitant to do birthday parties in the first place. Girls can be M-E-A-N. I think I'm going to go back to doing a special activity for birthday kid and that's it. No party. That may sound harsh, but so is my daughter crying in my bedroom for 15 minutes because a girl was mean to her. I still have bad memories from my own birthday parties and I don't want that to happen to my kids.

ANYWAY, what have you been up to?

Nighttime Blogging

I have this problem. (One of many, ha.) I blog in my head when I'm trying to sleep. I lie awake, trying desperately to fall asleep, and meanwhile my brain is writing, or rather speaking, blog posts. You know how hard it is to fall asleep when your brain just won't shut the heck up?

In bed, these blog posts seem especially witty and/or poignant. They seem important. Unfortunately, I wake up in the morning either totally forgetting what I "blogged" about in the night, or the topic is a lot less witty and/or poignant than it seemed at 11pm last night.

My cure for nighttime blogging? Nighttime writing. Well, not actually writing, but in my head writing. Instead of writing blog posts in my head, I make up scenes. Scenes for books I've already written. Scenes for books I need to revise. Scenes for books I will probably never write. Somehow, even though my brain isn't shutting up, this helps me to wind down and eventually, fall asleep. Of course, I still run into the same problem. The same, "wow, this is awesome, I totally need to write about it tomorrow," and then in the AM, "dang, I can't remember what the heck I thought was so awesome last night," OR, "dang, that actually sucks bricks. I will NEVER write that down."

You know how people keep journals by their beds so they can write down those crazy nighttime inspirations and thoughts? I don't do that because I would never go to sleep. I just need something that attaches right to my brain and records it all. Then with one touch of a button I can either DELETE that junk I "wrote" in the night, or save those gems for real writing time.

Someone get inventing that, okay?

What's Up Wednesday: Waiting

What I'm Reading
I already did a post on Joanna Trollope's Sense and Sensibility (see Monday), then I reread Divergent in prep for Allegiant. Unfortunately, my library has taken its sweet time getting me Insurgent (and why isn't this book in paperback yet?) and so while I was waiting, I read Vicious by V.E. Schwab (AKA Victoria Schwab who wrote The Archived and The Near Witch). This book was brilliant. If you ever need an example on how to write bad guys well, READ THIS. Both MCs are antagonists. There isn't really a good guy, there isn't really someone to root for, and yet you do. You want to read about them, you understand them. It's so well done. I have a hard time writing bad guys and this book taught me a lot. Now I'm rereading Ruby Red while STILL waiting for Insurgent.

What I'm Writing
I'm about to start revisions on Eponine. It's been sitting since October so I think it's time. I'd like to finish reading Self-Editing for Fiction Writers first. I'm also reading/critiquing a CPs excellent fairy tale retelling.

What Inspires Me Right Now
The new year. Even though I don't make goals or resolutions, there's something about starting a new year with new motivation, new energy. I want this year to kick last year's bottom, and it won't do that unless I get my own bottom in high gear.

What Else I've Been Up To
Christmas. New Year's. Birthday's. Eating. Exercising to make up for all the eating. Reading. Eating some more. I've also had time to catch up on most of my PVR'd shows and watch some movies I've long been wanting to watch (Argo, Silver Linings Playbook, Pacific Rim).

What have you been up to? Link up on Jaime's blog.

Sameness

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Now that I've gotten that out of the way...

Over the holidays, I read Sense and Sensibility by Joanna Trollope. It's a modern adaptation of Jane Austen's book of the same name. And I have thoughts. LOTS of thoughts.

When I wrote my first draft of Sway, (which, FYI is a modern adaptation of Persuasion by Jane Austen) one of the big resounding comments I got from all of my betas and CPs was that it was too close to the original. And it was. So I revised, tried to make it more my own. I still worry that it's not standing out like I'd like it to because I haven't made it wow-worthy. Look at Diana Peterfreund's For Darkness Shows the Stars, also a Persuasion redux. That book was brilliant. Beautifully written and so original yet true to Jane Austen's story. I read that book and despaired.

I liked Joanna Trollope's version of S&S, but it was EXACTLY the same. Aside from giving Elinor a job (which is barely mentioned) and giving Margaret a high school (which is almost never mentioned) it's the SAME. Almost paragraph for paragraph. Every plot point matches up, every character was included. Even every name, both people and place, was the same. She threw in a few mentions of Twitter and Facebook and iPods, a minor character ended up gay, but it was the SAME.

I guess Joanna Trollope, who's written tons of books (S&S was the first I've read by her), is allowed to do this. She already has a readership. She's an experienced writer. She can do what she wants because her fan base is already there. I don't have that luxury.

This isn't meant to be a bitter rant (I hope it doesn't sound that way), nor do I regret making the changes I made to make Sway more my own. It's just me, noticing. And somehow, it also gives me a bit more hope for this little romance book I've written that I love so much.