Really Bad Writing Advice: When in Doubt, Stop Writing! (In which I obsess about Afterparty, because that’s why I’m not writing.)

So there you have it, the perfect solution to all that stress, self-doubt and mining the unpleasant recesses of your soul, such as it is: stop writing!

And here I am at the perfect moment to stop writing.  Afterparty is about to go to copyediting!  Yes, it is!  (Yes, I know I said something a lot like this four drafts ago, three drafts ago, two drafts ago etc., but this time I mean it.) 

I am obsessed with how many days there are until January 7^th, when it comes out.

That would be 236 days, gang!!!  (Did you know you could google “How many days until January 7^th?” hundreds of times and get the ever-changing correct answer daily?  You are open to so many new and exciting learning experiences when you’re not writing.)

Anyway, while ordinarily I have things like deadlines, commitments, and a sense of desperation bordering on chronic panic, now I am obsessed with Afterparty instead.  How much I love the characters. How pretty the cover is.  How much I long for a blog tour with character interviews with these characters I (quasi) channeled to the point of (quasi) psychosis.  The impending ARC’s.  How gorgeous the cover is. 

I mean, who the hell can write while fondling a book jacket?

The point is, there are many, many things you can do while not writing that are absolutely impossible while writing, such as fondling stuff.  Or watching the Sad Cat video every few minutes.  Also, you can dig out your house. (This is not a metaphorical use of “dig out.”  I have large pieces of furniture I can’t see because they’re obscured by even larger clumps of dog hair.)  You can remove the spots where Pilot pens, yellow markers, and snack food have stained the otherwise lovely writing sofa. 

You can have conversations with your husband that don’t start with, “Read this!!!” 

You can be so obsessed with what you just finished that the prospect of hitting new walls seems a whole lot less attractive than it did back when you were hitting those old walls, given that this new thing is in the shitty first draft (Thank you, Anne Lamott!) stage of development.  Whereas the thing you’re obsessing about is finished.

And while it may be true that winners never quit, quitters get (or at least have time to think about getting) manicures.  Which you can totally get while obsessing about your finished book, but not while writing.  Higher calling.  Cuticles.  Higher calling.  Cuticles?  Oh what the hell, just this once, cuticles win.

Really Bad Writing Advice: 5 Top Reasons Revising Your Novel is Better Than Having a Life

Excuse me. I have just sent in what had damn well better be the final total overhaul of the novel I’ve been carrying on about for the last year and a half, and now I am faced with the alarming prospect of reclaiming my life.

Oh the trauma!

Never mind the fact that my dog, who tries to stay up with me when I write, is in a virtual coma and will barely even open his eyes when you wave a dog cookie in his face. Or that my entire closet has been turned into a hamper, and my washing machine barely remembers who I am. But I digress. (This tendency might be what was wrong with my novel, but I digress again. Damn.)

Anyway, here we have the 5 top reasons that revising a novel is far better than having a life.

1. When you finally do take a break, which you shouldn’t, but you do, and your family wants to watch an Oscar-winning and also educational documentary, you get to screech, “No! I want to watch The Carrie Diaries!” and your (entirely male and entirely horrified*) family will go along with you for fear your head will explode right there, in your family room, if they cross you. 
2. When you insist that your family not make any sounds whatsoever, including tv, music, closing the dishwasher, turning the pages of books, or hitting the keys on their laptops too vigorously, due to the fact that each sound deprives you of six seconds you vitally need in order to meet your deadline, no one will remind you that you watched 13 straight hours of House of Cards to distract you from the fact your book was falling apart. Ditto about your head exploding.
3. You will come to realize that wearing fresh clothing on a daily basis and personal grooming are not all they’re cracked up to be. Unlike when you’re living your life and don’t leave your house without the endless and repeated annoyance of combing your hair. Revision does not require combed hair. (Also make-up, jewelry, or matching socks.)
4. Friendship is challenging, messy, and complicated. The revision cave completely eliminates any hint of these issues, due to the fact that your erstwhile friends barely remember you after your complete disappearance.
5. In life, your fears about other people being annoyed with you are a paranoid remnant from your unfortunate youth, and we all know how distressing it is to question your perceptions of life in general, and your life in particular. In revision, on the other hand, you can feel completely confident in your conviction that people are annoyed with you because people are annoyed with your because your freaking book is so late.

*My fellow female has decamped for Manhattan.

Really Bad Writing Advice: 6 Top Reasons Being an Author is So Much Better Than Actually Writing

With the author vs. writer debate breaking out in all its impassioned glory on LinkedIn lately, I thought I would impede everyone else’s writing career with some really bad advice on the subject.

1.) Writing involves sitting in your room alone with only your characters and the occasional gnawing sense of doom for companionship. How much fun is that?

Being an auteur, on the other hand, involves people strewing your path with rose petals which you don’t actually get to admire because people are falling at your feet, totally interfering with your rose petal experience. (And no, I don't mean auteur the way Truffaut used it in expounding his theory of directing films; I'm just being pretentious. French is so good for that.)

2.) Writing involves taking in critiques, edits, notes, copyedits, and people who point out they don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.

Auteurship involves foot massages.

3.) Writing involves having deadlines and roots your don’t actually have time to go get colored because you’re chained to your laptop.

Auteurship involves shopping for smashing yet artsy outfits made of silk spun by special magic silk worms to wear to your next auteurish event. (n.b. Auteurs have naturally good hair, and don’t have to worry about their roots.)

4.) Writing involves a shitload of coffee.

Auteurship involves champagne, mostly on the Queen Mary, in the 1920’s, with a lot of witty repartee and bugle beads.

5.) Writing requires, well, writing.

Auteurship involves status.

6.) Writing is real. Actual stuff has to go onto an actual page. Then it has to be made good. And it might still not be good enough. How stultifying (and also hard) and potentially gut-wrenching. Who wants a wrenched gut?

Auteurship, on the other hand, is largely imaginary. Except for the foot massages, which you can actually go get any time you want to, except that it will take time away from your looming deadline.

Writing sucks.

Really Bad Writing Advice: Organization is Bad

All right, so the second half of my novel-in-progress is kind of a mess. All right, an actual mess. All right, so the arc kind of droops with a scoliosis kind of twist at a point when droopiness is not exactly what I was going for.

After some mean-spirited yet rational person advised it was a poor idea to demand that my Facebook, Twitter, Google +, LinkedIn, and Listserv friends send me over some writing software that would fix the problem for me upon installation, preferably while I slept, I resorted to the notecard.

There they were, a monument to hoarding, slightly yellowed, a lifetime supply from when my kid took Spanish and we spent almost an entire year laboring under the delusion that notecards help kids learn languages.

Then I bought a corkboard. (Two actually – thinking that this mess might require a vast panorama of color-coded notecards, spreading six feet across my dining room.) Then I found some flashy, multicolored thumbtacks. And some matching pastel post-its that I could use to make some really insipid pastel rainbows should I ever finish reorganizing the second half of my book.

And now, in the story arc that should culminate in the repair of my novel and the first aspiring truth ever involving Staples, we reach the premature and unanticipated horror of organization: My dog, my writer’s assistant, companion, and eater of paper (I like to think of this as editing choices from the Great Beyond) likes flashy multi-colored thumbtacks. A lot. Also notecards. I hesitate to describe the amount of chasing, cajoling, and offers of salami, brie, Puperoni, and leftover almond cookies from take-out Chinese were involved in getting my thumbtack back.

Suffice to say, not only did organization almost kill my dog, but the convincing of my dog to return the notecard with the thumbtack lodged in it was highly distracting and not conducive to unscrambling my novel.

Eschew organization. It could kill your dog.