The good news is, in two days, I managed to edit/revise 20,000 words of my novel. I then shipped it off to two of my writing partners. Since then, I’ve been trying to balance writing with settling in and getting some rest.

I’ve found that I’m not so good at the resting thing.

Last week I edited/revised 8400 words. Well, there was more — another 3500 words, but I cut them from the book. Still, the progress isn’t as stellar as my 20k sprint the previous week, but it’s still a strong start. At this point, I have about 35k to go, and ROW80 will be over in one week. I don’t know if I’ll be able to do it. We’ll see.

Once I’ve finished this round of cutting and chopping and hearing from my writing partners whether or not the story is sound as-is, the book will go through another round of edits. Then it goes through Tom, the silent partner behind my Vote Your Adventure series, and another writing partner of mine.

This last week, I’m really not sure what to expect. I would like to commit myself to finishing revisions in this final week of ROW80, but I’m just not sure if I can do it. I’d like to get another 20k in, but this last section is going to take a little more work than the previous sections. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Despite the sarcastic title of this post, I do know that it’s Week 6 of “A Round of Words in 80 Days” — a program for writers that enables you to tailor your goals around your life. Which, I have to say, is a damn good thing since my life took a turn immediately after I posted my last check-in at Week 4. You know, back when I gloated that I’m 50% through my novel and I’m definitely going to finish it by the end of this month?

Hoo boy.

There have been some strange new developments going on in my life that I haven’t been able to talk about publicly until now. To sum up, it goes like this:

Tom got a job in Seattle and now I get to move home. In three weeks. Gotta pack up and sell the house. OMG. My head asplode!

Needless to say, I haven’t touched my novel since I posted I posted my Week 4 update. (Lame, I know.) I did some other things, though…

Site 27 (Vote Your Adventure)
My web series, inspired by the old Choose Your Own Adventure stories, is still a big priority for me. When people count on it weekly (and you get middle-of-the-night tweets asking where in the hell the next installment is) you make it a priority. They’re decently short (ranging between 600 – 850 words) and I’m getting better at writing them. This week is the final vote for Site 27 and next week will be the grand finale. Once again, the vote isn’t going at all how I thought it would. What is it with you people wanting to bring on the end of the world? What happened to self-preservation and survival instinct? LOL

Tom is also going to update the site and make a special page that will feature each Vote Your Adventure story individually. As soon as all this moving stuff is settled, he’s on top of it. I promise.

Web Series Novella
One of my Vote Your Adventure fans asked me for an origin story to the web series. I have a special notebook set aside for that and I’ve started brainstorming some ideas. This will probably be my back-burner project; something to work on when I have time.

Synopsis for THE FOURTH CHANNEL
I entered a contest for new novelists by submitting a 1-page synopsis and the first 2,000 words of my action/urban fantasy novel. Now, to be honest, the reason I’m so scared to query an agent is because of the heartache I get trying to figure out a query blurb. I’ve just never been able to wrangle one. At all. So the fact that I was finally able to wrangle a 550-word synopsis of my 120k book… Serious accomplishment. I doubt I’ll win the contest, but to know that yes, I can do it… well, I’m very excited.

I don’t know if I’ll make any editing progress on THE FOURTH CHANNEL this week, though I do intend to sit down and at least start penning ideas/scenes for another project. I’ll make that my goal for this week.

Goals this week:
1. Write Site 27 Finale
2. Protag, Antag, and loose plot for next project

I hope everyone’s doing well and going strong with their goals. I have to say, while I do like reading everyone else’s goal check-ins, I get kind of bummed that no one says exactly what their projects are about. It’s hard to be excited about a simple number. What’s your book about?

I’ve said this before, but for my own peace of mind I want to say it again: I’m not good at making or tracking writing goals. Mostly because in four years of writing, I’ve never done it. One of my good writing friends, Steven Montano (author of the ass-kicking Blood Skies novel) is always aware of his progress. He periodically mentions it on Twitter or in emails. “I’m 2/3 through my next novel!” and “Hit the 50% mark on novel edits!” and “I write faster than you, bitches! HA HA HA HA!”

Okay, he’s never said that last one. I just hear it in my head when he zips past me like the freaking Road Runner of writing.

ROW80 has changed me. These last two weeks in the program have been phenomenal. This post isn’t about whether or not I hit my goals. It’s about how having the goals has forced me to work differently. More efficiently. Faster. Better. I won’t bog you down with details. I will just say that when I write, my work gets done. I wish I could convey just how damn excited I am about this. I have hope for a long-standing and enjoyable career as a writer. I’m now in a position to take a writing career by the horns and, uh, do whatever it is once you’ve got the horns of a 2500-lb. pissed off bull in your hands. Scream like a little girl? I can do that.

Anyhoo. Now for the good news:

My web series is still coming along strong. On Friday, I released Part 4. I’m very excited about where Site 27 is headed because I’m going to give my readers/voters a chance to change the broader story world. Forever.

Should be a good time.

My urban fantasy novel, THE FOURTH CHANNEL, is still in revision stage. This weekend, I officially passed the 50% mark. I want to have this book finished by the end of the month. That means 15k per week for the next 4 weeks. I’m positive I can do it.

The biggest news of all is this: I’ve decided to query this novel.

I don’t expect to actually get an agent, but I should at least try. So I’m going to. I feel strongly about the book and my novel writing partners (Steven & Amber West) have responded positively to what they’ve read. Steven’s been through the first third of the book, and Amber’s been through the first half. If the querying thing doesn’t work out (I really only plan on querying a handful of agents so I’m not expecting much) then I’m going to self-publish.

This weekend I even started penning a sequel. When THE FOURTH CHANNEL is all wrapped up at the end of the month, I’ll start focusing on that. I believe it will also be time for a new Vote Your Adventure.

Except for my friends. You have to be here. (Sorry, friends.)

And now, it’s time for another episode of “Unsolicited Advice” with your host, Ranty McRanterson!

Well, I have a microphone, and you don't, SO YOU WILL LISTEN TO EVERY DAMN WORD I HAVE TO SAY!

Something happened earlier this week. Not to me, but to a writer friend. This friend happens to be one of the sweetest people I’ve met. She threw out a Tweet saying she thinks someone in her writers’ critique group was making fun of her. Immediately, my Spidey Senses Douchebag Detector started tingling. She then forwarded me an incriminating email where an unnamed person attempted to provide feedback on a portion of her novel.

Remember the infamous MTV Awards where the all-American sweetheart Taylor Swift won the “Best Female Music Video Award”, but Kanye West ran on stage, grabbed the microphone from her and declared Beyonce had the greatest video of all time? OF ALL TIME?

The email was like that, only less coherent.

I believe what the person was trying to say was that one of the character’s reactions didn’t ring true to him. Only he was saying it in the most sarcastic and demeaning way possible.

I talked to my writing friend about her critique group. Apparently she’s the only person in the group who is actually writing anything. She gets feedback from only a couple of people — including the moron who sent her the email*. She seemed kind of scared to let the group go, since she is determined to get critique and be connected to other writers… and this crap is all she has.

So listen up, writers! I’m about to rock your world with this tidbit of wisdom:

You don’t need a freaking crit group.

No, seriously. When I first started writing, I blogged every day. And then I came home, grabbed the laptop, and went into a dark hole all by myself, and wrote stories. Bad ones. I did that every single day for years. I didn’t wait for a crit group to tell me if I was on the mark; I just kept writing. And you know what? I got better. The more I wrote, the better I became.

Just go into your hole and keep writing.

It’s okay. I mean, I get it. I once thought I needed a critique group, too. I wanted feedback very badly. I still do. Unfortunately, the standard critique group didn’t work for me. For one thing, you’re matched with all different skill levels and, for another, people just weren’t as serious about writing and improving.

Oh, yeah. There are lots of people who attend crit groups and have no intention of working at improvement. That shouldn’t surprise anyone. After all, people spend small fortunes to attend colleges with no intention of learning anything. People treat crit groups the same way. When you’re determined to be a great writer, you quickly find that these little groups are a waste of time. And I can’t respect their attitudes toward writing, so why should I respect what they have to say about my work?

The answer is: I don’t.

Writers, you must be selective about who speaks into your writing life.

There’s nothing wrong with being selective. It doesn’t make you mean or snooty. It makes you serious about improving and will protect you from a lot of bad advice. If you’re at the stage where you feel you need critique, remember:

Good advice will help you grow as a writer. Bad advice will cause you to, uh… get gangrene and you’ll have to chop off an arm or something.

You know what I mean. If you’re serious about writing, you can’t afford to receive bad crit.

Date various writers like you do before you get married. Not everyone is going to be suited to you. And I also think writing relationships wane and sometimes you even grow apart. Try out different people with no commitments. Send them a half chapter and see what they say.

Are they actively working on a writing project that you respect?
Do you have similar goals?
Do they take a month to provide feedback?
Do their comments inspire you to continue writing or do you want to jump from the top floor?
Do you feel that their writing is strong and can stand up to yours, or are you propping them up?
Do you respect them as a writer?
Do they respect you as a writer?
Do they accept feedback well?

Be flexible and figure out a loose system that works for you and your partners.

Now that I’m involved with novelists that I respect, I find that getting a scheduled hour together is impossible. The hours we can eek out of our work and family schedule go straight to writing time. Instead, I’ve learned to just email off a section of work, and I know that I’ll hear back in a few days. I don’t get stressed or worried — we’re all working hard on novels and web stuff, and pinning people down to tight crit deadlines is a cruel ask.

Remember, there’s no hard feelings if it’s not a good match. I’ve given work to writing friends before and all I got back was, “I liked this a lot — will send in-depth notes as soon as I can.”

And then never heard more.

It doesn’t mean that they are bad writers or bad crit partners — in fact, I consider many of these people friends. It just means we are not well-suited to one another in writing. I know lots of people who make great spouses… to other people. It’s not personal, it’s just that you can’t be a good match for everyone and visa versa.

I now understand why agents are so picky about finding writers they love. I want to mesh. I don’t want to take on a piece of work that I don’t love reading and critiquing. (I’ve done that and it’s agony.) I want to have similar goals and work ethic. You should, too.

If you can’t find that right now, no crit group is better than a crappy one.

* Before you ask why no one was talking to the idiot Kanye-crit group guy, I already asked. Apparently everyone’s response was that this guy is just being super funny! Not funny to me. I would have kicked him from the group. Since they won’t kick him from the group or talk to him about his damaging advice, my advice was to drop the group immediately.

1. NO INTERNET while writing.
2. Weeks that I’m making revisions/edits: 2 chapters per week
3. Weeks that I’m completely rewriting chapters (only 3 of those): 1 chapter per week
4. In case #2 and #3 aren’t applicable, 3000 words per week

I would love to have higher goals, but my Vote Your Adventure series really messes with that. The good news is ROW80 has forced me to be more productive when I can sit down to work on my novel.

So how did I do?

The NO INTERNET thing is coming along. I find it funny that, as I’m sitting down to write, I have to consciously tell myself: STOP.

Get your hand off the mouse and back away from the email icon and nobody gets hurt!

It’s getting a little better, and I think I’m starting to break the bad habit.

The even better news is, I’ve exceeded my goals. In 2 1/2 weeks, I’ve plowed through 5 chapters of revisions and I’m halfway through a full rewrite of chapter 7… and then I made line edits on 3 chapters of my WIP.

It doesn’t sound like a lot in my head, but when I put it on paper I feel a little better.

Tonight and tomorrow I will be working on Part 3 of my latest web story, but when that wraps up, I intend to complete the rewrite on chapter 7. That’s about 3000 words.

And no internet while I’m doing it.

I’ll check back on Sunday to let you know how I did. Hope everyone’s having a very successful week with their goals!

C+. Passing grade with no distinctions.

It was a rough week. For those of you who don’t know, I write a quasi-popular web series based on the old Choose Your Own Adventure stories. They get published over on my professional site, JenKirchner.com. My first one, called THE RELIC, wrapped up and I took two weeks off to recuperate. On Friday, my new story, SITE 27, was revealed.

Juggling the stress and production of my VOA shorts and my ROW80 goals didn’t go as well as I had hoped. In the beginning, I cruised along with my goals and I was decent about not getting on the internet while writing. In fact, I was pretty excited about my output.

Then came Thursday. Thursday night was spent solely on edits for the VOA short. I was stressed to all hell about the new story. Tom’s editorial comments, while helpful, made me feel even worse. Poor Tom. I don’t know how he puts up with me. We got a late start as it was and didn’t wrap up until 11:30 — and don’t ask me how I did with the internet that night. I was so stressed, I hit Twitter and Google+ every five minutes. If the internet was a cigarette, I would have chain smoked it. By the time I shipped the story off to Mark Lidstone, my writing partner, I was a wreck. Zero word count for that day, and no work done on my novel, THE FOURTH CHANNEL.

I think it’s clear that a daily wordcount goal is just not possible with me — not when an entire night is dedicated to editing. Weekly goals are more doable. I’m going to have to play around with it a bit more and will post a revised goal next week.

Anyway, today’s supposed to be my day off from writing, but I want to make up for what I didn’t do on my novel. When I stay away from the internet, I easily do 1k words in an hour. I did it twice this week. Easy. I’m going for that again as soon as I finish this post.

Aside from the VOA stuff, the novel really is coming along. I’m almost finished rewriting chapter 9 and I expect to wrap it up and send edits off to Tom either today or tomorrow.

I hope everyone’s having a successful week.

Anyway, yesterday when I was feeling excited about my vacation, I committed myself to a neat program for writers called “ROW80″: A Round of Words in 80 Days.

It’s for writers with lives. Basically, each writer sets their own goals and we “check in” weekly on our blogs. Whether it’s revisions or edits or flat out word count — I understand some people just make goals to plant their butts in writing chairs for 30 minutes each day.

This might be the very thing I need.

I need to have THE FOURTH CHANNEL finished soon. My hope was to have it finished in the next two months. I don’t think that’s going to happen though, not with my next Vote Your Adventure looming. That sucker takes 2 nights a week.

So let’s say this for my initial goal:

Weeks that I’m making revisions/edits: 2 chapters per week
Weeks that I’m completely rewriting chapters (only 3 of those): 1 chapter every 2 weeks
In case the above isn’t applicable, then 500 words per day (excluding Saturdays, which is my day off)
Also (this is the biggest goal) NO INTERNET while I’m writing

In the midst of that, I will also be adding two more Vote Your Adventure stories. That’s two nights a week in itself. I’d say these are pretty hefty goals. We’ll see how it goes.

UPDATE: I edited my goals on July 4, because I realize that the biggest impediment to writing is the internet. When I’m sitting at the computer, I can’t seem to stop clicking to something every 2 minutes. My goal has now been updated to reflect the no internet policy. Hopefully this will break my bad internet habit.

I get where they’re coming from. First off, I’ve read firsthand experiences by authors who have attempted it, and that it was a great idea until someone came along and publicly ripped their writing apart.

I’ve said this before, but I think it bears repeating: My VOA segments go before a crit partner and an editor before anyone sees them. Tom’s and my schedule revolves around these short stories. Wednesday night is for writing them. Thursday night has become known in our house as “Editing Night”. Yes, it’s become a thing.

I’ve seen a lot of blog stories published over the last few weeks. Some were better than others. Overall, it was painfully obvious that the majority of those stories hadn’t been given to another writer for either critique, proofing, or editing before being published.

Now if you only takeaway one nugget from my rambling thoughts here, I want it to be this:

An editor is like false advertising. They make your work look twice as good.

Artists, your “blog” is your resume.

I hate the word “blog”. I mean, unless it’s actually a blog. This website you’re reading is a blog. JenKirchner.com is not. It’s my resume. You know that one shot with readers the agents are always talking about? JenKirchner.com is that. It’s my one shot to get in front of a potential reader and win them over. And when you’ve got one shot at impressing someone, the name of the game is go hard or go home.

I went hard.

I didn’t pick a genre that was for everyone. I picked a strong niche and grabbed a bag o’tricks. I didn’t give you dialogue and romance and steep story development. I hit you hard and fast and beat the snot out of you for seven weeks. THE RELIC was gimmicky, and I knew that going into it. I did it because in many ways, it was my one shot. The next piece will be just as gimmicky, but a different bag of tricks.

One shot.

I know I won’t win everyone because THE RELIC isn’t the genre for everyone. I’m okay with that. What I’m not okay with is someone reading my work and deciding this is my first attempt at fiction and I pulled this story out of my butt. (Hopefully this hasn’t happened. Or if it has, I hope it hasn’t happened often.) The goal is to find people who are interested in my genre and keep them coming back. If I’m lucky, I might get them interested in my book, too.

The point is, maybe we should stop referring to our blogs as “blogs” and start referring to them as our resumes or even our show-stopping calling cards at the scene of the crime. In that format, our websites are another avenue of entertaining our readers. Would you show up to an interview dressed like a hobo that’s been sleeping in a cardboard box under the viaduct? No, you wouldn’t. So make sure your fiction is dressed as best as it can before you publish to your website. Send it around, get it critted, find a proofreader or an editor.

This is your writing career staring you in the face. Treat it well.

With that said: if you don’t care about my hard day and my struggles over my novel, simply stop following this blog. It won’t hurt my feelings. There won’t be a single thing I will say here that will entertain or inform you. These are my personal, private thoughts. Of course nothing is sacred on the internet, but I need a relatively-safe place to go and clear my head. This is it. If you don’t care, follow my story site instead. New Vote Your Adventure on July 8.

You’ve been warned.

So last week I cleared my head about The Fourth Channel. I got a lot of mental bile and worries out of my head, and you guys rallied in comments, emails, IM’s, and some Twitter love. And then I finished the complete rewrite of chapter 1. All 7200 words of it.

Yeah, I write Alan Edwards-sized novels. My teeny Vote Your Adventure segments are false advertisement.

Something happened after I finished. A switch flipped on. This new chapter put the book in an entirely new light for me. It’s got a whole new tone – a spring in its step, so to speak! And now that this pressing task is out of my head, a flood of fixes and changes have come to me. I’m ready to finish it. Unfortunately it’s going to take a bit of time and I’m not the fastest writer. I’m going to need some vacation time. Lately, my day job has not been good for my writing life. We’ve had a lot of people out of the office on the worsts days possible. My stress was up and I broke out in pimples all over my neck – wtf! (Seriously, I looked like I had been attacked by a starved band of vampires.) The last couple of weeks at work haven’t been conducive to my writing life or my vanity. Double-whammy.

To make a long story short, we’ve had a run of surprise illnesses, surgeries, elderly parent emergencies — and on the worst possible day you could imagine:

The day of our Division’s Reorganization announcement.

On that day, my counterpart was rushed in for emergency dental surgery and my boss’ chief of staff had to take her elderly father in for a specialist appointment. To top it all off, our VP of SysOps, who was going to help me with the org announcement “stuff”, had gotten himself into a little poison ivy over the weekend and had a major outbreak that day. It was all over his body and face (he looked horrible), and he had to leave the office to get to a doctor.

On that day, I was doing the work of 3 people.

All this was the culmination of a rough couple of weeks already with people in and out of the office, and then this. So that’s where my head was at when I spewed venom about my novel.

But I’m better now. I swear.

It’s 10:00am on Sunday and I am going to spend most of the day working on this hefty to-do list for the novel. And then I’m going to schedule some vacation time. I’d like to knock a lot of this list off before the next VOA starts.

Oh, right. The VOA. I want to talk about those, too. More on VOA’s later.

<3
Jen

I’m questioning the latter.

For the record, I have rewritten this book four times. I know, I’ve fibbed that number and said two or three, but it’s four. I get right up to the end (once I even wrote the end) and then I tuck it all away, all 110,000 words of it, and start over with a fresh page.

Tom thinks I have a fear of finishing.

And now that I have finished The Relic, people are asking when The Fourth Channel is being released.

Um…

Right now, I should be basking in the glow of some post-story awesomeness. I should be “keying in” to how amazing I felt when I wrote “THE END” of The Relic. I should be saying to myself, “Self, you should finish this first novel so people can enjoy it just as much as The Relic.” But I’ve been staring at this damn novel for so long, my confidence is low.

I think I’m going through all the normal issues that writers face. Does my novel suck? Once I finish the first novel, will I come up with another idea? Maybe my brain will run dry after this one.

I don’t want anyone to think that I’m saying these things for praise. Praise is a very cheap gas that will only get a writer so far before your car runs dry. The only thing that’s going to get me going is me. Plain and simple. I have to get a grip on my writerly balls and finish. Then publish. Probably self-publish.

I still dream of having an agent and having enough guts to approach one. But I don’t, so here we are. Self-publishing requires a different set of goals. I have no dreams of seeing my book in film. I have no dreams of being one of the most wealthy people in the world. My dreams are modest and mostly circle around self-fulfillment. For the record, my immediate self-publishing goals are (in no particular order):

1. Release book. Find 100 people who enjoy the book.
2. Become successful enough that I can work half days on Wednesdays and Fridays.
3. Write another book.

As a new writer, those are some very modest goals and could actually be attainable. I’m satisfied with starting there. But all of this hinges on finishing and releasing The Fourth Channel.

And I have some fears and issues surrounding that.

If you ask me what the book is about, I can’t tell you. No, really. I can’t tell you. It’s about a necromancer named Kari Eliana Hunter. Her talking knives say she is the worst necromancer in human history and they’re probably right. My explanation gets a little muddled after that. There are a couple of strong side plots and I’m no longer sure what the main plot line is. And in those fleeting moments when I actually get a grip on the main plot line, I have no idea how to say what it is. I’m so deep in this thing I can’t see the forest for the trees anymore.

There’s a plot in this story, I swear. I’m just so confused now that I can’t tell you what it is. Yes, that makes me feel stupid. When I decided to write this novel, I had no thoughts of ever being published. Eventually, I got better. I realized that I liked telling stories. I loved people’s reactions to the twists and turns I gave them. All of the other extracurricular things I was doing paled in comparison. I stopped doing those other things so I could spend all my free time writing. Suddenly, after that third rewrite (LOL) I wanted to have this story published. I wanted to share it, just for the sake of giving someone an enjoyable read. I still do.

You will laugh. You will be in suspense. You might even be a little scared. There are fight scenes. A lot of them. There are talking sacrificial knives who get cranky because they aren’t allowed to actually sacrifice anyone.

Now if only I could tell you what the book was about…

And to those people who keep harping in my ear that you need to have a plotline written before you begin your novel, screw you. I like being backwards. It’s my favorite thing ever.

So anyway, that’s where I’m at. I want to finish this novel but for all the problems and uphill battles I’m facing, I kind of don’t. Alan wants more stories in The Relic world. I could do that. I could do it right now, actually. Just toss The Fourth Channel and start this new idea I’ve had simmering… It would definitely be easier and would put me back at square one with the “fear of finishing” dilemma.

Anyway, so that’s where I am at. Just throwing it out there to clear my mind.