Another country music song title, this time by the talented and awesome Tanya Tucker. And it fits my mood tonight. Its been a week of ups and downs, and I’m trying to focus on the ups. One of my best friends recently came back from her tour of duty. (Hug a veteran or soldier today. Seriously. Do it. No matter what you think about the current war, respect the soldiers. These people deserve it.) So that’s a definite up. As soon as she gets back from family time, she and I are going to have a lot of catching up to do. She’s been gone for seven months, and I can honestly say I’ve been about to lose my mind because of it. She’s helped me through so much, personal and professional, and she keeps me grounded and boosts my ego when I need it. And trust me, as a writer, your ego can gather a lot of shoeprints on its backside.

I’ve gotten back another batch of rejection letters, which sucks, but I’ve gotten some personalized letters, which is a boost. It means I’m doing something sort of right. I’m going to dive back into my synopsis and sample chapters and see if there’s anything I can do to spruce them up. I’ve spoken to several authors who hate the synopsis/query part of writing more than any other part. Don’t know why, since they’re the shortest part of the book. I think that in and of itself might be the problem, at least for me. I tend to be a long-winded storyteller (it’s a southern thing) and I have a difficult time condensing my ideas. Why say it in five words when you can throw a couple of subjunctive clauses and prepositional phrases in just for the hell of it? My writing group is helping me with it, pointing out my repetitions and helping me be more succinct, but sometimes it feels like someone is taking a file to my teeth- it grates me that hard. I write very stream of consciousness, and spend more time refining my thoughts than getting them on paper. I like to tell people I’m not so much a writer as a rewriter. I may have mentioned that once already, though.

Another up: I’ve started another story, which I’m having fun with. Its a paranormal erotica, quite a departure from the stuff I usually write. I like urban fantasy and mysteries best, blame Poe for it, and even though I have some romance in most of my stuff, it tends to be spice to the stew, not the stock. This time, though, I decided to write a full-on erotic romance. With paranormal overtones, of course. Got to have something of a safety line there. Still, I’m having fun with it, and right now, I could use a little fun. Especially since I just trashed 350 pages of a novel I’ve been working on for over a year now.

I’ve known the novel was in trouble for a while now but, like a bad relationship, I just refused to give up on it. I thought there might be something in it I could salvage, that I could somehow make work. Then, last night, I realized that I’d been working on this novel for over a year and a half, and I was still tweaking Chapter freaking One. I should be to the point where I have to go back and reread the chapter just so I can remember what I’ve written, not still be writing the damned thing. Its my fault, though. I got in a rush with it, and then panicked when I realized how boring it was. I went back and tried to shoehorn a bunch of things in to make the story more interesting. The result? I lost control of the whole thing. My main character is lost in the maisma of secondary characters, my plot is completely gone, and I have no idea even how to begin to salvage it. So I chucked everything into my dump file, to possibly salvage later, opened up a new word.doc file, and started at page 1 again. But I’m going to let the story rest for a while before I start again. I’m going to finish the erotica novel, and maybe dive into NANOWRIMO again this November before I start again on this novel. I want some time apart so I can fall in love with it all over again.

I have the hardest time reminding myself that this job is supposed to be fun. If I’m not having fun while I’m writing, then I’m not going to finish the book. It’s that simple. I can’t count how many projects I’ve thrown down because I got so bogged down in getting them finished that I forgot to have fun with them. And I’ll be honest here. When I stop having fun with the book, that’s when they start sucking. Like bilge-water sucking.

So like I said, its been ups and downs this week. Autumn tends to be the roughest time for me as a writer. It’s the most fertile time for my imagination, but my restless nature tends to take over and I have a difficult time buckling down to one thing and sticking with it. I thought for a while that it was just because I was used to the upheaval of getting ready for another school year, but since I’ve been out of school for quite some time now, I don’t think that’s it. I think its something deeper than that, but darned if I know what.

So, in any case, I am working on something. I usually need a couple of projects to keep me happy. I work much better if I have a couple of balls in the air than if I’m just working on one thing. I’ll just ride it out. It’s all I can do at this point, honestly.

By the way, does anyone have any good music to recommend? All the bands I listen to have either gone on hiatus or broken up, and I am in desperate need of some good toonage. I like just about everything, so any suggestions are welcome.