Hairballs of Genius

Still Excited


3 Comments

I’m going to start out by saying that, even though it’s been over a year since I started writing Nerdgasm, I’ve never lost my excitement for it. I was talking to my pal, Becca Patterson, about it last night on a walk after our weekly write-in. (Yes, we’re still doing this, after more than two years of epicly awesome friendship!)

Normally, I bounce around a lot from one project to another. Normally, I have ten different projects going at any one time, and I spend time on all of those inside a week. Normally, I can’t concentrate on any one project for more than a day or two, often while switching back and forth between a few different ones each day anyway because a random idea for one of them pops up on me.

But with Nerdgasm, that’s hardly been the case. And yet it has been the case. There were times where I had to distract myself from the story so that I could cleanse my thoughts and clarify ideas.

At the beginning of March, I’d set the goal of having the first draft completed. But the month of March was a bit of an asshole to me, and I missed that deadline. I couldn’t concentrate on it. I’d stare at the blank page, or I’d stare at the scene, and not know where to start.

I’ve done a lot of brainstorming, and scenes that were previously completely unwritten now have goals and a reason to exist. Again. (In case you’re wondering, Becca thinks “again” is the single funniest word in the English language. I think I agree.)

Fortunately, we’re out of March now. I may have missed my goal deadline, but it won’t be long before this first draft is complete. I have a few more scenes I want to beef up. But then again, they might not need any more meat on their spindly bones than already exists. I will have this draft done. And then I’ll be begging my crit partners for critiques. Because that’s how this process works.

But here’s the thing. All this sounds annoying and frustrating and anger-inducing. It is. And none of it matters because I’m still excited about this project. Nerdgasm came to me on a whim, based off of one of Misty Carlisle’s characters. It was going to be a short story, but Judy and Max had so much more to tell. It pissed me off. But I was excited about their story.

Then came a world-change for this geeky couple. And as frustrating as it was switching out all references of the original world to references to the new world, I was still excited.

I still find occasional references when I do read-throughs of scenes before I buckle down and work on them. But I’m still excited about Nerdgasm.

And even with my publication date of Black Friday looming ever closer, and the panic that I won’t finish in time sets in, I’m still excited. It’s kept me pushing to finish this story. It’s kept me more focused on this story than any other story I’ve ever written. It’s not a super long story, but it’s long enough to tell the story it’s supposed to tell. And I’m still excited about it.

All the other projects that I keep abandoning and going back to? Am I really that excited about them? I don’t know. Even the Series that got Away doesn’t feel as exciting as it used to. But maybe that’s because it exploded and got too big, and the task of finishing/revising/editing all those stories got to be too much for me to handle, mentally.

Or it’s because it’s just a massive undertaking, and it’s going to take a while, and I lack the motivation at the moment to get going on it again. Whatever the reasoning, I’m just not that excited about it right now. Will I ever be again? I don’t know. It could be that I’m just more excited about Nerdgasm right now, and that’s what’s taking up all my focus.

I guess what I’m trying to say is… work on what you’re excited about working on. If you’re not excited about it… will your readers be excited?

Nerdgasm Update


Leave a Comment

As you all know, I’m writing a novel called, Nerdgasm, of all things. When one nerd meets another, they geek out plenty over all the right things. I’m ‘not’ a nerd. I’m also ‘not’ a geek. ‘Neither’ do I do fantasy. Don’t believe those last three statements unless you don’t know me. I’m what I would consider a… ‘beginner’ nerd. I’m not super versed on the nerdy things that interest me, and I don’t know the science behind… well… much of anything. Basically, I understand Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. And that’s only thanks to a line in a movie, and I was like… “OH! I get it now!” (For the record, the movie is Deep Blue Sea, and the line is spoken by the character, “Preacher”, who says something to the effect of, “Put your hands on a hot pan and a second can seem like an hour. Put your hands on a hot woman and an hour can seem like seconds. It’s all relative.”)

This story was going to be a short story for the Bowman’s Inn world, and then I realized there was so much more beyond the end of their story, so much more that needed to be told than could be squeezed into a 10,000-word short story. So I decided to use the short story as a teaser to a full length novel.

Events happened, and I’ve skipped out on the short story option, changed worlds, and am now going to publish the full length novel on Black Friday, 2017 (November 24th, for the record) in both digital and print formats. I’m super excited, and crazy nervous about this endeavor. I’m fretting over the cover design I’ve created, I worry I won’t have enough, or maybe it’s too much, I worry that my references aren’t nerdy enough, or even worse, accurate. I’m freaking out over whether or not it’ll be ready by then, and basically every other aspect of the novel. Because oh, my god, I’m writing a novel. With a deadline. Even if that deadline is one I’ve given myself, and even if that deadline is still a year away. It feels like it’s a lot closer than it is.

I started with sixteen scenes, with about thirty more planned for the story by the end of October. Then I got most of the way through NaNo 2016 and looked at my scenes. Something wasn’t right. This one scene had to happen after another, but I had it happening months earlier in the timeline. Okay, fine. Move this scene here, and that one there, and viola! Wait. No. That totally messes this up, but I can move this over… no, because then I’d have to…

I stepped back from the story and realized I needed to do a full re-organize on the timeline of events. No biggie. I went into Excel and each scene got a box. The scenes that had to be in a specific POV got either red (for Judy) or blue (for Max) and anything that could go either way, I left in black. I cut them all out and got the key things in order, then filled in the blanks with what was left.

Late nights, headdesking, blurry vision, headaches, temper tantrums… It’s not a fun process. BUT… I got them in order. And then realized, no, I still need this one somewhere else, but then that throws this whole thing off…

So I tried again. Got it! Nope. I tweaked it a bit more. That’s better! Buuuuuut not quite right. What if I move this one over here, and then this one goes here, and then I need to add a scene here from Max’s POV. And then these two, I need to move, but then this one, and now it goes… Okay, that’s better, but I need another Max scene here, now. I went through the process, and figured out where the POV holes were. Then I obtained the brainstorming help of my pal, Misty Carlisle, to figure out what the heck these new scenes were going to be about. DING-DING-DING!

So now it’s all in order, and I have another 21 new scenes to write, one has changed what it’s about, others have been eliminated or mashed up with others because they’re important. Did I mention there are still probably a good twenty scenes that still need more meat to them, that need to be fleshed out more? *sigh* I’ll get there! And I’ll do it right! And I’ll do it well! And you’re all going to love my book!

Just a recap: Nerdgasm will not be published as a short story as originally anticipated, but it will be available in print and digital on Black Friday (11/24) 2017 as a full-length novel. It’s got a lot of work to do, and has undergone a number of major changes over the last few months, but it will be ready, and I’m super excited about it! Okay. I think that’s enough for now!