I'm Either Livin' the Dream, or Dreaming My Life

Since the middle of September my life has been nothing but a fantasy. Now, I don't mean a fantasy where it's been a series of perfect events. Not at all. Though it's certainly been perfect in its own way. Of course, no one else can really see it happening, because it's mostly been inside my own head. That's one of the many joys and frustrations of being a writer. You can be as happy as a clam (decide for yourself if a clam is really happy), yet no one has a clue that you are.

Starting around September 15th I began writing a book. I finished it (technically) around October 12th. Now I've spent the last few weeks editing and revising that book. I dream about the characters, and my first thought when I wake up is about those 'people' and what they're 'doing.' I don't remember ever getting involved with my writing like this before, even when I was much younger and was getting those mad spurts of creativity that made me look like a female version of Dr. Emmett Brown. Oddly, my biological father looks a bit like Christopher Lloyd, but thankfully I don't look like my father - not that I'm really happy about looking like my mother either.

I actually wake up, roll over, and start working every single day. It's become my waking habit if you will. I live within my book, because it's the only life I have at the moment. Not that I consider that a bad thing, because I truly love fiction and its ability to zip us around through alternative realities. The places we can go, the people we'll meet, and the things we'll do in those books can never be duplicated in everyday life.

This year I decided I would join National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo as it's called. After writing 126,000+ words in less than a month, I realized that writing 50,000 words was rather like a walk in the park for me. (In case you're unfamiliar with NaNoWriMo, the goal is to write 50,000 words in a 30-day period.) I'm three days into it, while still putting the final touches on the other book, so I'm just hitting the daily word count for that book, but since I'm also working on the other one still I'm not too worried about it.

The joy of writing this new book for the contest, is that it's the second book in a trilogy. Both books are connected, and everything is staying super-fresh in my mind. This is a very good thing, because I have a lot of characters to keep track of, and various events on the timelines, so I don't want to lose the details. The world has basically come to an end, a lot of people have died, and the survivors are limping along. I honestly never thought I'd write science fiction, as apocalyptic fiction is labelled, but my personal interest in off-grid living became a trigger.

The research, before, during, and after writing the book, has actually been a joy. It's all stuff I'm interested in for my own life, and I feel I need to know anyway, so the two-bird-with-one-stone thing makes it seem like half the work to begin with. Plus I have a genuine interest and get enjoyment from learning about pretty much anything. My head has been stuck in a book (if you can call online research a book) even when it wasn't stuck in my book.

You might be wondering why I would have to research after writing the book, but that's to do with revision and editing. I occasionally get to a part where my critical thinking skills finally kick in and ask, "Yes, but is that really how things work, or were you just pretending to be a know-it-all?" I've been schooled a few times since the 'completion' in mid-October. In fact, a friend of mine has introduced me to some knowledge on survival knives recently, that may find its way into the book even now when I'm about to format it for CreateSpace. I'm not sure if it's particularly relevant, but I'm keeping an open mind.

At this very moment I'm actually supposed to be rewriting the first two pages of the book, along with the epilogue. Both are rather ham-fisted at the moment, and not what I intended, but sometimes writing is like that. You just get the general concept down, and fiddle with it later. Not everyone wants to write like that. Often people who call themselves writers will refuse to write unless the blinding light of inspiration strikes. Most often those writers never finish a project. Believe me, I know. I was one of those.

I'll be fair to myself here and say that a good portion of the reason I wasn't doing my 'real' writing (also known as novel-length fiction), was pain. It can be very difficult to get out of your own world and into a fictitious one, when your body is screaming at you. I had to figure out a way to write so that I was as physically comfortable as possible, which isn't easy if you're trying to avoid mind-numbing narcotics. I don't want to be one of those writers that can only write if they're drunk or high. It's one point on which I'm in complete agreement with Stephen King. Substance abuse is substance abuse, whether or not you're using it to write. I feel the same about music, actually. I've never like listening to drug-infused garbage. I figure if they can't play it straight, then they really can't play it. Anything else is like being an athlete on steroids or blood-doping (ahem, Lance Armstrong).

Thankfully I've given myself a major deadline on my first book. I've told a whole bunch of people that it's coming out on Friday the 13th (yes, this very next one, here in November). It's most likely that will be Kindle only, because the paperback may take a couple of weeks longer to be finalized. Still, a promise is a promise, and that means there will be no more fiddling and procrastinating after I submit the formatted work.

I love Friday the 13th. It's my lucky day, and it has been my whole life. Back when I was a figure skater (the main cause of the pain I deal with these days), I always did exceptionally well during tests and competitions if they happened to fall on that day. Good things were attracted to me on Friday the 13th. A friend of mine (who actually knows and loves me) tells me it's because I'm the devil, and so I chuckle wickedly in response. Maybe I am, maybe I'm not. It could all be an intricate plot. In my life pretty much everything is.