Happy tears and mounting edits

Hard for me to believe that I haven’t blogged since January.  But if you know me – or follow my musings – you know my life is a festival of happenings. There’s always something going on around here that competes with or supplants my writing time. (Not my desire – just the hours I have to execute.) Just as importantly though, I don’t consider these real-world intrusions as negatives. Take February through August, for example. In those months, we completed another senior year of high school and summer of college prep in my house. Whew! Two down. One to go.

Now that the chaos has calmed, I have to say that I miss my middle child. Desperately. Not that I didn’t miss my oldest just as much when he went off to college. In fact, I cried every day after he left – each time I passed his high school on my way to work…or the grocery store…or the movie theater…. You get the idea.

This time, with this son, I miss him in a way that’s nearly palpable. I get teary whenever I hear Big Sean sing "I hope you learn to make it on your own. If you love yourself just know you'll never be alone... And when you get it all just remember one thing - that one man could change the world." Those lyrics ring so true. I had to pull off the road one day and cry. Really. But like I told my youngest, my happiness for her brother outweighs the sadness.  So his going away isn’t any less difficult, just different. In the way that each child is different.

That said, sending my son off to frolic with the higher learning crowd has added a little more than 100 minutes of non-pickup/drop-off time to my daily schedule. (You don’t think about that while it's going on or else you'd talk yourself out of taking on the task. Or go crazy.) For years I've wished for extra hours in my day and – BAM! – like magic, I got ‘em. To top that off, my youngest is back in school and has freed me from her vampirish stay-up-all-night summer schedule.

 

So voile! I’m back to editing like the author I am. Here’s my magic to-date:

 

Gaging by numbers alone, my progress count would deceive me into thinking that I’m almost halfway through revisions. HA! I’ve actually added 8,424 words to the story. (Mind you, I cut 4,500+ words by deleting a chapter early on.) This means my actual word count – if I submitted the story “as is” today – would be 97,170. Oh my.

All that math made my head hurt. LOL Thus, the moral of this blog post is that it’s time to get back to the book. While my son's out learning how to change the world, my goal is to finish editing before autumn passes me by. 

#thatisall #amediting

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The World I Live In

Companies have focus groups. I have my children. We are huge lovers of all things fantasy, sci fi and supernatural, and wage serious word wars about the merits of earth-bending over X-Ray vision and things of that sort. For a while now, we’ve had an ongoing discussion – serious discussion – around the merits of a panic room in the basement that we can access in the event of the zombie apocalypse. The only thing we agree on so far is that having such a room would give us a huge advantage in our escape – but only so long as the zombies aren’t smart like the ones in I Am Legend. (((shudder)))

Shhh! Our potential panic room. Please
don't tell the zombies where we're hiding.

Tonight I asked a question I probably shouldn’t have about the tentative powers of the heroine in my current work-in-progress. Oh, the debate that ensued! My daughter re-wrote my story's entire Black Moment – and my son shot her whole notion down citing an example from some anime he watches. I let them finish before thanking them for the tangent and deciding my direction is a good one.

I love our spirited conversations about things that don’t exist. I cherish their unbridled willingness to not just think outside the box, but concede that there is no box at all. We need the escape. Heck – I need the escape. There is so much sad, bad, heart-wrenching news outside the walls of our happy home that I approach my Facebook newsfeed with a healthy dose of trepidation these days. They know that life is hard and unfair and some kids live with unspeakable horrors. We are lucky, we know. The dangers we conjure live only in our minds and on my pages. No one is harmed in the making of our “what if’s.”

So this is the world I live in. The crazy, every day realm I share with children who will one day blame their warped perception of possibilities on their overly imaginative mother. I figure they’ll either forgive me or wind up on Dr. Phil’s show. My money is on fond memories and grandchildren who appreciate a Nana who believes in fairies.

Stefanie

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Muse Moments: Lifting my kids' playlists

Have I ever mentioned that we listen to a little bit of (almost) every kind of music in my house? Well, we do. And over the past couple of years I have to admit that I've built my 99% of my writing playlist from my kids' song discoveries. I'd never heard of the alternative groups they adore, but now not only do I know their lyrics, I've collected their tunes on my computer. When I'm ready to write I hit play, shuffle, and get carted off into my characters' worlds.

So last week, my daughter plays a song that's new to me by Hozier and I have been absolutely fascinated with it ever since. So much so that I've concocted my own background story for the lyrics and allowed it to serve as my anti-villain's theme for the angst I'm putting him through. He's in a pretty bad spot - the Black Moment - so one song can't carry the whole ordeal. I added in Muse and Incubus and the guy is now out of his mind.

It's been a long week at work. Forgive me, the writer, who's taking it out on the people in her pages. Imagination has its perks. Let's see what you think:

Here's Hozier singing "Like Real People Do." The opening verse says:
"I had a thought, dear
However scary
About that night
The bugs and the dirt
Why were you digging?
What did you bury
Before those hands pulled me
From the earth?"

 

There's also "Starlight" by Muse. The lyrics that move my keyboard are pretty simple:

"Our hopes and expectations
Black holes and revelations"

But it's mostly the way he sings "I just wanted to hold you in my arms."

 

 

And then lastly (for tonight) I've been stuck on "Love Hurts" by Incubus for over a month now. He sings:

"Love hurts...
But sometimes it's a good hurt
And it feels like I'm alive.
Love sings,
When it transcends the bad things.
Have a heart and try me,
'cause without love I won't survive."

 

Now back to the tormented lover in my book who's about to lose it all. Without love, he won't survive either. Fade to black.

'Til next time, find more me at www.stefanieworth.com and www.facebook.com/stefanieworthbooks.