The Life and Times of a Fledgling Author

Spring break! Oh, hooray, I have a whole week to get ragingly drunk, take my clothes off in front of video cameras and laze around on a warm beach!

Just kidding. I'm actually just going back to my parents' house for some R&R, which is much-needed after the past three weeks. Exams, papers and projects have pretty much buried me so I'm loving that I have a week to do whatever I want. Which is writing, riding my horse, hanging out with friends and, yes, getting ragingly drunk. Hey, I can't go to the beach, but the back yard is just about as good, right?

Writing is continuing apace, I guess. I'm struggling with what I see my story as. It's about 91k words right now (214 pages) and I'm feeling the initial twinges of dissatisfaction with it. There's a lot of editing to be done, for sure, but that's the case with every book. I keep telling myself that because otherwise I will pull my usual routine and just stop working on it. But NO! I will persevere. It's just another bump in the road and I'll get through it.

As a side note, the episode of Mystery Diagnosis I'm watching just came up with the diagnosis of 'migraine'. What the hell incompetent doctor missed migraines? Jesus. There better be something more intense to this.

Anyway, I had to laugh when I looked at my tabs open on my computer. They're not as bizarre and apparently unconnected as they usually are, but they are, today:

• A picture of a miniature golf course
• An article on leisure activities during the Civil War
• The Wikipedia page for baseball
• An answers.com page about when the official MLB season starts and ends (so sue me, I'm not a big baseball fan)
• My gmail
• An animated picture of the globe that tracks the spin of the earth by showing the light's progress across the surface (not related to my story, I just like it)

Sooooo. Baseball, miniature golf and the Civil War. Yup, just another day at the office.

Anyhow, at some point I'll need to head to the barn and fuss over Miss Lola a little - I think she's been feeling rejected. She was definitely not very happy about seeing me yesterday, but she was pretty good to ride, considering she hadn't been ridden in a week. We'll see how she is today - often the second day after a short layoff is the day she decides she hates me. I plan to circumvent this issue by making today our draw-reins day; she gets one day of trot work in draw reins each week, and it is good because not only does it burn off a lot of energy and condition her muscles, the draw reins make it more difficult for her to get distracted and decide to frolic. So yeah, flexibility, strength, good use of energy, lack of distraction, all in all usually a productive workout. And then tomorrow we'll take it easy on her and let her work long and low on the flat. Hopefully she'll be feeling benevolent.

Ah, Mystery Diagnosis update: She had PFO (patent foramen ovale). Apparently this causes headaches when the hole is too large. You learn something new every day.

Anyhow, let's wrap this long and rambly post up with an excerpt! Proof that I still work on things. :D

“Shut up, Vermont.” He flicked her shoulder and she prodded him in the ribs. He retaliated with a precision attack under her arm down the length of her ribcage. She shouted and jumped away, but he followed her, tickling her mercilessly as she laughed and gasped for air, eventually falling to the ground, contorting to avoid him.

“Teach you to call me Vermont again,” he laughed. “This hurts me more than it hurts you.”

“Stop it,” she gasped, trying to push him away with her foot. “I’m sorry. Stop.”

On the porch, Tib and Celmer stood watching the two of them. The wizard patted his apprentice on the shoulder and turned to go back inside. “Have fun being the third wheel.”

“That what?”

“Never mind.”

Whoa back.

I've been run away with before. My last horse ran away with me, one time, when she got stung by a bee. My current horse runs away with me frequently, when she astutely spies various deathly hazards, like buckets, blue tarps, or suspicious branches on the ground. It's not that scary - getting run away with is not half as scary as being thrown, or reared up with.

Such it is, I'm finding, in writing, too.

I've never been run away with by a story before. I've been bucked off a story before, and I've had a story rear up on me and try to go over on me. And, unlike in horses, I don't feel like I have to train that crap out of them, so I just leave them alone and move along.

But this running away . . . this is fun. Of course the story's going to monstrous and editing it is going to be dreadful, but who the hell cares? Editing is what comes after writing. And the writing is the best part.

Of course let's not talk about what this is doing to my school schedule and plans (horrible things). Let's focus on the part I actually am enjoying.

I realized today that a year from now, I won't have school anymore, should all things go to plan. I'll have a job (PLEASE HEAR MY CRIES, O MIGHTY ECONOMY), sure, and . . . that's it. I'll have time to write and to ride, and to do stuff that I want to do.

I want to move to South Carolina. I want to move to South Carolina and I want to have my horse and I want to write until my damn fingers grind off and bleed. I have a story, and now I have a world and characters that live there and the world's not perfect and the characters are still clumsy and sketched out and the plot's all wobbly, but it's running and it's moving and I'm going to love it. Violently. And then I'm going to edit it (violently) and mark off the lines in black felt-tipped pen and fill the white spaces in with bright colors and teach the characters some damn etiquette. But I want the story to keep running, just as fast.

I want to let it run away with me, but I want it to have power steering. And I want it to have brakes.

I want a story, and I want it to be a Veyron.

Sometimes I'm funny

Twenty frustratingly modern websites later, and the three of them realized this may not be as easy as previously thought. “So everything is made up of atoms,” Tib said slowly. “Everything?”

“Yes.”

“So there are atoms in that table. And there are atoms in you.”

“Yes.”

“That doesn’t make any sense at all.” He prodded Bill with a bony finger. “Unless you’re made of wood.”

“Well, that table’s from Ikea, so it’s particle board, but yes, I can see where you’d be confused.”

In which I remind myself that sometimes I can be funny, and that zombies are adorable.