This is one of my top fave days, Minions. Next to Halloween. So I’m in a wonderful mood (especially after all the love you Minions showed me yesterday), and plan to make the most of it.

Today I’m waiting to hear back from my editor on some ideas I had for NINTH GRADE SUCKS and likely spending time playing catch up on email, blogs, forums, MySpace, etc. (And, you know, I may search fruitlessly on Google for any mention of EIGHTH GRADE BITES…) It sounds like I’m fluffing my day away, but I’m not. You wouldn’t believe all the stuff a writer does that isn’t writing, but is necessary. But after that, hoo-boy, it’s back to butt + chair, believe me.

It wasn’t until yesterday that I realized that I only have ninth months until EGB debuts. Wow…time flies when you’re having fun, I guess! I’m really looking forward to August and holding that book in my hands.

I’m also looking forward to putting some more work into NGS. As it is, I rewrote Vlad’s introduction (and laughed so hard, tears streamed down my cheeks–so, y’know, it’s nice that I can amuse me that way) and worked some on another scene, but it’ll take a lot of work to get this puppy rolling.

Oh! To all Minion Bling requesters: so sorry I’ve been lax in my mailing of the bliing. Things have been CRAZY around here, so in the next week (or two…) I’ll be sure to get them shipped. Thanks for your patience!

Uh oh. Here I am again. Back in that place where I don’t believe I’m actually having a book published.

It’s weird. Something cool will happen, say I see my spiffy cover or someone emails me to say how much they can’t wait to read EIGHTH GRADE BITES (which I greatly appreciate!) and I’ll feel a little important, a little special for a while. But then that all goes away and I’m left with “HOW am I gonna fix this piece of CRAP?!” as I work through revisions of NINTH GRADE SUCKS (Incidentally, the question is rhetorical…I know how to fix this piece of crap, it’s just a matter of actually sitting down and doing it: butt + chair = writing). It’s back to working hard and not having little special moments, knowing that if I keep moving forward, I’ll have more.

Success is addictive. Even small success.

But these between moments…they can seriously mess with your confidence. So, I’m burying myself in work. You Minions run along and spread word of the Bat to School Contest, because we only have three weeks until somebody wins!

Okay, at most, I’m brilliant. At least, I’m smarter than I was yesterday. Either way, it’s jump on the table and Cabbage Patch time…or…you know, NOT.

There were a lot of questions my wonderful editor asked me about NINTH GRADE SUCKS, but five really stood out. Five were pretty big. But I mulled them over all last week and as of about 9:30 last night, I have all the answers. SQUEE!! Sure, these answers will mean a longer book, but the story of Vlad’s freshman year just. got. better. I’m so excited and can’t wait to begin making the changes!

I have other good news, but I’m not telling you that. But the editing? Oh yeah. You can totally celebrate that with me.

Someone pass the dip.

Ta-daaa! Just like that, I’ve decided that slowing down is exactly what I need, and what my work needs. Usually I skip even rolling up my sleeves and dive head-first into a book, but now…well, working out the kinks of a second book in a series is proving a wee bit more complex than I thought. So in order to make NINTH GRADE SUCKS even better than (or at least as incredible as) EIGHTH GRADE BITES, I need to take my time with revisions. So…I’m not touching the manuscript.

Nope. So far, I’m living with the big questions that my wonderful editor raised and trying to figure out the answers to them. Once I have them, I’ll move on to making changes, but right now, I need to think.

But all this thinking time can be headache-inducing. For instance, how do I go from an average of eighty visitors a day to an average of eight on this blog? I suspect it’s the address change…I hope it is, anyway. So, you know, if any of you eight get up the urge to spread word of the new address (which I thought I’d done pretty well, but then again…maybe I didn’t), g’head. I’m not complaining. It’s not like it matters *twitches* much.

Okay, so it matters. But I’m trying not to fret. I’m too busy to fret.

After all, I have to go read up on the morphing abilities of vampires again (Gawd, I love my job).

(and if you believe I’m capable of teaching you that, I have a nice bridge I’d like to sell you)

I don’t think I’d be too terribly wrong if I told you minions that every writer edits differently. You just find your niche, your way of doing things, and before you know it, you discover what works for you. The following is what works for me (and this is oh-so appropriate as I tackle the revisions of NINTH GRADE SUCKS, the second book in THE CHRONICLES OF VLADIMIR TOD).

Step One: I print out my manuscript. For some reason that physics cannot explain, words read differently on paper. So I print it out and usually staple the chapters together, so that if I drop them (and I will), it doesn’t make a big, confusing mess. It just makes a little, less-confusing-than-it-could-have-been mess.

Step Two: I get ready to edit. I grab a Diet Pepsi, settle on my favorite end of the couch, tuck my legs underneath me until I’m all comfy, sit the little desk pillow on my lap, grab my handy dandy liquid highlighter set and pen and begin to read. If something feels out of joint, I mark it with a highlighter. I go through the manuscript pretty quickly, marking pink what needs deletion, marking yellow what needs changing, marking purple what feels off, but I don’t know quite what it needs. Most of my editing will be purple the first time. Sometimes I highlight a word. Sometimes it’s a page or two…or three. I highlight plot holes, logic issues, even spelling mistakes. I make notes in the margin with my pen–mostly suggestions for what should be there instead. Occasionally, I jot down a helpful reminder to myself, like “draw out the tension, you twit!” or “But Vlad doesn’t eat meat…” (okay, that one is actually from today) And once I go through the entire manuscript (which can take days or weeks or months) and it looks like a rainbow of “Wow…I suck”, then I move on to…

Step Three: It’s back to the computer. I pull up the manuscript file and go through the marks I’ve made on the physical draft, deleting all the pinks and, if I’ve noted with a pen how the yellows should be changed, I make those changes. If not, then I wait until the pinks are taken care of and the noted yellows are finished, then I brainstorm to try to correct the remaining yellows. (It’s during this phase-and certainly throughout the dreaded purple phase-that my husband loathes the phrase “Pauly, could you come here for a minute?”. I tend to use him as a sounding board and, at times, as a suggestion vending machine. Our minds run on the same wavelength, you see, so if he has an idea, I’ll usually smack myself on the forehead and say, “I SO should have seen that!”) Often, the key to finding out what works in those non-noted yellows and the purples is for me to read it outloud. Nine times out of ten, I can tell what it’s missing just by speaking it outloud. How? Well, words have a certain natural flow and if what you hear when you read it outloud sounds less like a conversation (yay, fun!) and more like a lecture (boo, hiss!), then you know what needs to be fixed. How to fix it is another question.

Step Four: I repeat steps one through three. Then I print out a final copy of the manuscript to read through without a pen or highlighters anywhere near me. This time, I’m not looking for mistakes. This time, I’m reading it as a reader. This, generally, is my favorite part. I might find a few things that I’m not happy with and, once I’ve finished reading, I’ll make those changes on the computer file, but I’m usually pretty happy with it by this round.

Step Five: I let my Critique Partner and readers have a go at it. They’re brilliant and I love them for being honest. Once I hear back from them, I take the advice I agree with, leave out what I don’t, and send it on to my fabulous agent.

And that’s it. It sounds so simple, doesn’t it? And yet, at times, it’s driven me to doubtful tears. And, on more than one occasion, sent me into a fit of hysterics. I wish it felt as simple as it looked. I wish it were easy. But it’s not.

The other stuff–recognizing plot troubles, identifying what’s missing–has been largely instinctual for me. But the best thing that I ever did in order to learn just how to write, was to read. I devoured books, picking them apart and figuring out just what made this scene so good or that scene so terrible. If you want to be a good writer, the answer is pretty simple.

Read. And write.

Lately, I’ve been spiralling some into a bit of depression (bit, pit, whatever), questioning my abilities as a writer and scrambling in a panic that EIGHTH GRADE BITES and NINTH GRADE SUCKS may be ‘it’ for me. Stupid, right? I mean, I’m certainly not the best or brightest, but I can hold my own. Yet…I’ve felt incredibly down on myself and without all hope that I’ll be able to grow a successful writing career. I’m not sure where these feelings of despair came from, but they started in on me sometime in August and only yesterday did I get what I really need to get past it all.

The person closest to me (Hi, Paul!) kicked me in the butt and told me to snap out of it.

All the worrying, all the self-imposed stress, all the rushing (which I always do to myself), just needs to stop. I need to take some time to relax, to breathe, and move forward knowing that I can do this, that just because I don’t have four books sold my first year (yes, this was something incredibly stupid that I was sobbing about yesterday, I’m ashamed to admit) doesn’t mean that I am incapable of success. I’m far too hard on myself. But that’s going to change.

It helped to know that not only does Paul seriously understand where all this is coming from, but that I also have an amazing agent and incredible editor who believe in me, who know that I can write a damn good story (if I, y’know, slow down a bit). I’m absolutely blessed and I need to remind myself of that now and again.

Now in happy news, my wonderful editor sent on her thoughts on the NINTH GRADE SUCKS manuscript. I’m seriously excited about these changes–they’re all things I should have seen before, but for some reason, didn’t. So after I finish working on DEVON’S PLAYGROUND (which I’ll continue today, to try to make the best book I possibly can), I’ll go back to Vlad and make NINTH even better than EIGHTH. I love being edited. You know, after the initial OH MY GAWD, THIS WILL TAKE AN ETERNITY!!! feeling, it feels really good to know that she has my back and knows what my book needs.

In other happy news…I’ve been rejected by the best of ‘em. To add to my seriously cool Poppy Z. Brite postcard, yesterday I received a letter from Clive Barker, apologizing for not being able to blurb my book. I knew that, actually. I mean, dude, he’s CLIVE BARKER. But I was geeked that I even heard anything back, and even more geeked that he signed it. But, for some reason, Blogger’s not letting me post a pic of it, so you’ll just have to use your imagination.