Month: January 2019

Back to School (+novel progress)

Sandy DavisLeave a comment
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Aria reading at the library.

The kids started school last week, and I started teaching this week, hence the lack of blog posts. We’ve been busy, busy, busy! I’m taking some time during a busy teaching day to write this post because I’m determined to keep up this blog.

This semester I’m teaching my usual ed theory and writing methods courses, and I’m also acting as coordinator for my area (English Ed), which adds an extra level of responsibility (and stress) to my work. However, one of my classes is online, which is nice because it gives me a little extra flexibility for things like hanging out with the kids after school while they are still young enough to want to hang out with me. Their new favorite thing is to go to the library after school. I love this too, because it’s such a nice, friendly little library. The librarian in the kids’ area actually used to babysit Oscar when he was a baby.

Now that I’m done prepping for the first few weeks of classes, I’m ready to turn my attention back to the novel. I’ve managed to slowly ratchet the word count up a few thousand words, and I’m telling myself that slow progress is better than no progress. Baby steps!

Novel Progress report for January 15th, 2019

Suit of Coins: 21,786 words

Excerpt:

They left Lem’s house and headed back to Anna’s. They were silent for the first few miles as Maria drove deftly through LA traffic. Then Anna said, “I think he’s hiding something.”

“You can be your sweet ass he’s hiding something,” said Maria, suddenly merging across several lanes of traffic. She never took her eyes off the road, but smiled as Anna began bouncing in her seat like a kid.

“Ooooh, this is exciting. Do you think he killed her?”

“No, nothing like that,” said Maria, “but I do think he saw something. Something he’s not telling us. I’m just trying to figure out how he never got interviewed by the cops.”

Novel Progress

Sandy Davis1 Comment

My novel, working title Suit of Coins, has been in progress since NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) 2008. Yes, that’s ten years. However, a few things have happened since then. I had two babies, went up for tenure, and found myself snagged in a hopelessly complicated plot tangle that caused me to ignore the novel for an entire year. I got the plot untangled at the end of 2016, but 2017 was pretty eventful, with a ten-day trip with the kids to Disney World, looking for and buying a house (no easy feat in a HCL area like Flagstaff), moving out of the house we’ve been living in for twenty-one years, and planning a wedding. These are not the conditions for writing a book.

What about 2018? Well, except for recovering from 2017 and also trying to unsuccessfully jumpstart my pathetic academic career, I don’t really know what happened to 2018.

Let me tell you something about writing. It’s damn hard. There’s a good reason many writers are single white men. Or women with no children. Or alcoholics or drug addicts. Or insane. Just as an example, I sat down to write for thirty minutes last night and was interrupted no less than seven times. I managed two sentences before I gave up. To put my struggles into context, I know several famous novelists (including George R.R. Martin of Game of Thrones fame), who are years and even decades overdue for their novels. George R.R. Martin’s last novel was published in 2011. These are writers who have no end of time and resources. They are rich, have no day job, and have the clout to lock themselves in a room and do nothing but write. And even THEY struggle.

Excuses, excuses.

HOLY HELL I am determined to write this story. The characters are very real to me and keep coming back around, determined to be heard. This may sound like crazy talk but it’s a normal thing for writers. Writing gets under your skin in a way that can make spinning out sentences and scenes intoxicating.

I am trying again. I realized that my plot problems required what they call a “clean sheet rewrite” which means starting over from scratch. That sounds extreme until you realize that the entire novel lives in my head. I just need to get it on paper.

2019 is the year. As Stephen King advises, the first novel is the novel that teaches you how to write. I’m just getting started, and that’s okay. That’s perfectly fine. What else am I going to do?

I plan to post regular word counts (Weekly at a minimum) and little W.I.P. (work in progress) snippets.

Progress report for January 1st, 2019: 

Suit of Coins: 18,272 words (my goal is 80,000) so I’m almost a quarter of the way through.

Excerpt:

When I was a little girl my mother used to read Shakespeare plays to me at bedtime. Without blinking an eye, she read about people stabbing and poisoning each other, about teenagers falling in love and killing themselves, about war, and bitterness, and revenge. Shakespeare used beautiful words to talk about terrible things. She said, “In literature, murder looks like art.” That always stuck with me, especially years later when my best friend in high school was murdered, and there was nothing beautiful or literary about it. Unlike Shakespeare, I couldn’t find the words to talk about it, not then, not now.