There was a time (about two whole months ago), when I was naive enough to think that once I had a rough draft finished, the rest would be a breeze.

Stop laughing. It’s not nice to laugh at people who are idiots by accident.

So it turns out that revision? Is a JERKY PAIN IN MY BACKSIDE! Going back over the words I’d slaved over for months and months, I read them now and say to myself, “Pshaw, self, you are such an amateur! Who wrote this? A second-grader? On allergy medication?”

Then I get it in my mind that everything I’ve written is crap, and that I should just shred my manuscript and recycle it as hen-house bedding. (y’know… so it can get pooped on? by lots of fat birds?)

But *sigh* instead I try to push my way through it (partially because we don’t actually own any hens). I write different scenes from different character perspectives just to get it all nice and fleshed out, hoping that one day this dumb manuscript will be able to pass for something readable.

Also, I doodle a lot, y’know, when I can’t think of words to write.

Unfortunately, I don’t really know how to draw anything but the swirly-things. So my notebook is full of them. And when revision becomes too much and I desperately need a break, I go outside… where I promptly draw swirly-things on my driveway with sidewalk chalk.

No, seriously.

On a totally unrelated note, I caught someone in our garage trying to steal my car. And though he had the keys, was in the front seat, and knew how to honk the horn… well, he couldn’t seem to figure out how to actually steal the thing.

I went out to get a closer look at the punk.

He was so cute that I couldn’t press charges. I agreed to let him off with a warning if he’d come live with me forever and let me smooch his little cheeks whenever I darn well pleased.

It was an agreeable agreement.

And now, back to drawing swirlies… err, I mean, revising.

Ok, ok… I know that my word count has not moved. It stills sits blankly at zero. This is not actually a true representation of my novel. See, I’m re-working the same novel that I worked on for NaNoWriMo last year. Last year I logged nearly 14,000 words (which is a little more than zero), so it’s not like my novel is just some unembodied, imagined thing. It’s real, people. It has words in semi-coherent order. It has chapters, even! (Even though some of those chapter will be chopped out completely. Same thing with a character or two.)

The problem that I’m faced with is that I have 15,000+ words and the NaNoWriMo peeps frown on writers logging giant word counts. (Like, if I were to go from 0 to 15,000…) So I’ve logged nothing, fearful that if I do people will write nasty things about me on the NaNoWriMo message boards. Which, I know none of them so why should I care…? I don’t know, but I do. Anyhoo, it looks like I’ve been super lazy, when in fact I’ve been medium diligent. I’ve also submitted two more items to children’s magazines and I’m revising a third. So I’m not doing nothing.

One thing that I really need to do, but that I’ve been too pansy to try thus far, is to pick up the phone and call the famous rehab center here in town. I could really use a tour of their facility to get a clear picture in my head for my setting. I’m fearful that if I call and tell them that I’m a writer and want a tour for research, they will turn me down cold. Instead, I am planning an elaborate lie for them about how I have a alcoholic younger brother who steals from the mall and who’s tearing our family apart. (I’m currently holding auditions for the role of my alcoholic younger brother. My real-life, non-alcoholic little brother would play it too straight, I think.)

A fun side note: I found an interesting site, written by a talented, cute YA author. It’s a site dedicated to relaying what she’s learned about the writing process, start to published. I found it late last night, and I haven’t read through the entire thing (yet), but if you are in the process of writing a novel (or even thinking about it) it’s totally worth a read.

And now, more medium diligence.