I’m reading and sort of editing/writing more of my YA novel right now. I was hoping it would be going better. It’s only about 100 pages right now (1.5 spacing, 11 pt font), which is short. It’s not even quite 50,000 words (this part I’m editing) and I was hoping to double it while going over it. Not happening. At all. And it’s not that what I have written is bad. It’s pretty good! But short. And I have trouble lengthening the story.
Let me give you an example. Say, I’m telling you a story of part of my day. I would choose the shortest route to get from point A to point B.
Example 1:
I was thirsty. I went and got some water. And then I sat back on the couch with cat.
Boring, but informative. Point A = thirst, Point B = water. Try to extrapolate this in terms of my zombie YA novel. Main character needs food, she goes ashore, she gets food, she returns to ship. I need to make that like 20 pages long instead of 2 but it’s VERY HARD. And I get waaaay too bored trying to make something longer when it’s so much easier to make it simple and to the point. My point here is that I’m pretty sure that makes me a bad writer. Or at least a really lazy one.
Example 2:
My throat felt like I had swallowed sand. Dry, dusty Saharan sand not even the sand I was used to from California beaches. Scorched, hot sand. Dried and dessicated like a lizard who’d been lying under a flaming ball of gas for a few days.
“Fish, I’m thirsty.”
He continued lying on my stomach with no change in demeanor.
Yeah, I talk to my cat. He’s around all the time and I get lonely. Sometimes he talks back. {read} I talk back for him. {/read}
{memory}
“Are you the fuzziest Fish-face in the whole world?”
“That is the wrong question.”
“Do you love me?”
“Asinine.”
“Sigh. Do you want a smackeral of a snackeral?”
“Yes. I would like a smackeral. I like treats. They are yummy. Smackeral, snackeral, do doh do. Maybe two?”
“Because you are so fuzzy and cute.”
Crunch, crunch. Crunch, crunch.
…
“Maybe three?”
{/memory}
This time, I ignored his fuzzy cuteness and plucked him off my lap so I could roll off the couch. He immediately curled up into the warm spot my body heat left behind. Sometimes when I walk down the hallway in my house, I like to slide in my socks. And in the kitchen I often do dances to songs I make up and sing to myself. Today was no exception.
“Water cup, water cup
I choose you
Because you are the best
And oh so blue.”
I have 4 water cups. They’re tall and plastic so I can’t break them (I break glass easy). They’re each a different color and I play favorites. Yellow, green, red, and blue, I love the last two best. Much like I love red and blue pixie styx best (but black Fish Styx best of all). I dislike grape pixie styx, but I would love a purple cup so that does not correlate.
Dancing to my new song involves some booty shaking and a lot of twirling. I like to pirouette a lot so it’s good I took so many years of ballet and know precisely how to angle my wrists for the proper graceful arm movements. A pirouette without proper arm positions is worthless.
When I get back to the couch with my water, Fish slits open one eye to look up at me from his couch-hogging sprawl.
“Is it time for second breakfasts?”
“You threw up first breakfast.”
“Yes, and I tried to eat it again for second breakfasts, but you took it away. So now it is time for second second breakfast, yes?”
“No.”
See, that was way too hard. Today is a day I don’t feel like being a writer. Like most days. Except that it’s kind of all I am right now. Which is ridiculous since I never even wanted to BE a writer. Ugh, back to zombies. I need to finish this before April so I can do the Script Frenzy (like NaNo, but you write a script of 100 pages instead of a novel of 50,000 words). Though I will write a graphic novel, not a script–the idea is the same.
