Current Status

Alrighty, now that I'm not blogging after midnight, (ignore the time stamp, it lies) I'm a bit more coherent to discuss my projects and what I'm currently working on. Or at least better than last night. My head is currently aching from trying to clean out the Banzai storage space in the heat. It wouldn't have been so bad if we had more than 4 people out of all the staff come to assist. Thank God for Jose and Sara or else it would have just been my sister and I. And I only gave everyone a full two weeks notice we were doing it. Thanks everyone. I still need to go back with some better boxes to organize and label stuff. They are lucky I really, really enjoy organizing stuff.

ANYWAY, back to the topic at hand.

I've really been wanting to write something that could be possibly published for years and years, but I've had such a hard time doing it. A couple of months ago I attempted to do the NaNoWriMo, which is where you attempt to spew out a full novel during the month of November. My project of choice turned out so awful I was scared away from attempting anything else for a while. When 2008 rolled around, I really wanted to try it again and I still have several beginning attempts on my computer. But I kept putting so much pressure on myself to make a perfect first chapter and nothing was working out. I kept discouraging myself.

So finally, over the winter, I made myself commit to one project, a smaller, more simple one. By forcing myself to take baby steps, I felt I would have a better chance in completing my goals and I would have at least one finished product to work with.

I am happy to report my first draft is completed and is now working through several other drafts. It is a mid-grade chapter book of about 60 pages. The title is Alice Through the Ocean Gate and it's an Alice in Wonderland story.

The current problem with Alice is I'm having a really hard time getting feedback on the book or even help getting out the typos. To this date, I have sent out copies to at least SEVEN people. The last copy I sent out was about 2 months ago. Up until now, only one person has read the entire book. And that is my dear baby, baby brother.

Unfortunately, the only feedback he has offered me is "It's good. If you write something else, send it to me". Even though I'm glad to hear it wasn't bad, it doesn't help me too much. Though, I do have to admit, it was a bit encouraging when he read all but the last chapter, then read John Dies at the End. So I thought he would never ask me for the last chapter, as the climax of the story was already over. Because, I don't care what you like, there are very few things as entertaining as John Dies at the End. I thought Alice would seem like a huge snore in comparison. But lo and behold, as soon as he was done, he was asking for that last chapter. So that was a bit more encouraging.

Still, it's a far cry from anything useful I can use. And while I love my friends who are the best friends I've ever had and I completely understand that they all have lives and not necessarily the time to give to my story, it still disheartens me a little to not be able to glean any feedback from them since they're all intelligent, well read people.

But one must keep moving forward if one can. I currently have a beta reader who's been proofreading my "fan projects" that has so graciously agreed to assist me and I'm looking into begging a few other people I've met over the net who I know to be intelligent and useful when it comes to these kind of things.

So I'm just going to keep working on getting the kinks out of that. While I wait for people to send me critiques, I'm already working on two, longer novels for older readers. And I will talk about them in another post. I'm certainly done for tonight.