Author: JamieKate
•5:42 PM

Yes, Book Graveyard. No, not The Graveyard Book (although that is also an interesting topic). Book Graveyard. Have you witnessed this anomaly lately? I have. And it is not pretty. In fact, it made me want to cry.

Do you know what the Book Graveyard is? The Used Book Store. Stop'N'Swap Book Nook. Bert and Ernie's Book Emporium (BEBE). Buks 4 Cheap.

I went to one two weeks ago to purchase some gifts for Christmas (actually, my family went and I came along because I'm complacent) and the image of the torn, smelly, stained piles upon piles of sad, lonely books made my heart swell. I wanted to take them all home and make friends with them and tell them they're loved. If you're not a bibliophile, imagine the feeling one acquires upon entering an animal shelter (although, that also happens to me in the animal shelter...poor aminals). Those poor things! They hadn't been good enough for someone to keep. And what few books people were buying were not the sad ones. The one-time author books with the frayed spines and rippling pages. Those were the ones I melted for.

Yes, I'm weird.

The Used Book Store has turned up in my thoughts again and again, especially as I revise my book and look towards the future. I will be published one day. There is no other option. I am a writer. I will become an author. My problem will be not letting my poor baby/babies end up in the Book Graveyard. And though that place was a terrible, awful place (although I have no argument with the establishment itself - I just can't personally force myself to enter it), it has incited my particular resolve to make my book as good as possible. I want my book to be somebody's favorite - the one they read over and over again until the pages are dog-eared to extinction and there are food stains in every chapter (depending on the cleanliness of my readers, of course). I cannot let mine be the lonely one. It will not be abandoned and alone, buried beneath stacks of others. I will rescue it. I will increase the tension in each scene. I will improve my chapter breaks. I will eliminate useless words. I will prevail.

In closing: I am way too dramatic for my own good.
Author: JamieKate
•12:38 PM
I know. It's been a while, Loyal Readership of Sad Numbers. But life, as you must know through your empathic telepathy which spans across cyberspace, has been both tough and busy. School, life, school, sleep, life. You know the drill.

The word of the day, I have decided, is stagnant. I cannot resume writing the ending of my bloody, stagnant book. I have tried. I have eked my way through about a thousand words of that infernal epilogue, but each time I do it screams at me about how inadequate and talentless I am and I have to run away. I'm sure you also empathize with this problem, even if you are at the crest of a creative wave. Which I am not. I am definitely being dragged across the seaweed-ridden sandy bottom of my creative ocean. And the worst of it is: I have the premise for a new novel, but it's been done! Well, not the exact premise. But I feel like my stories have all too much in common. A girl marries and finds out that her husband is not what she initially thought. Big whoop. Who cares. No matter the variations.

I should hire a personal assistant who tells me a) that I'm always right, b) what to do at any point of indecision or hopeless inadequacy, and c) not to eat the fudge.
Author: JamieKate
•5:25 PM
Alright, alright, alright. So I've been a blog slacker lately. Can you tell? Blog. Slacker. But no one's reading as of right now anyway, and I'm the only one who needs to forgive me. Except I have drastic problems with forgiving myself a lot of the time. But that's another story.

ANYWAY. I've plowed through that awful scene that took so many weeks, and I'm now onto the final scene which has taken one week so far and is now suspended in midair thanks to a general lack of motivation and wanting to finish the baby I've been working on for months. I don't know what the last scene needs to say, and I'm way too indecisive to decide. I know the themes of my book. I know what I want the scene to look like. I suppose I just have to force myself to write it at some point. Blech.

In other news, I've thought up a new story idea, and I'm very excited with its inherent possibilities. The only problems are:

  •  Time sequencing (I have a ton of ideas, but I have no idea in which order to put them in) 
  •  The story's completely out of my normal box of historical fiction. It's so contemporary that I might have to start paying attention to the news again. But it's amazing! Or I think it is. Le sigh.
  • I'm indecisive (again) and I can't make definitive choices about the cause of the protagonist's magical powers. Random mutations, like X-men? But is that cheating/cliche? Government-run experimentation, Orwell style? Just plain inexplicable magical gifts? 
I feel like I need someone to talk all this stuff over with, even if I come to the same conclusions or problems I still had before, I will have reinforced my ideas by debating over them with someone. But people I know are either not creative, creative in the wrong respects (and I don't mean that offensively), or way too busy to talk to.

Problems, problems, everywhere, but not a solution to drink. I just mauled Coleridge.
Author: JamieKate
•4:46 PM
Alright. I've been writing this one scene in my book for over a week. It's not the type of scene I usually write: fast-paced action and lots of violence. I'm quite out of my element, and though I feel I'm learning, I hate it. Blech! Action. Who needs it? You only have so many different words to use for pain and violence before you run out. Blow, strike, punch, fist. Done! Or, at least, I can't think of any more. And my own inexperience in this area is playing a part as well. The violence area, I mean. I'm a female who's never been in a fight or felt an urge to hit anyone besides my sibling (but that's an inherent quality, I think).

Just thought I'd vent. Return to your life, nonexistant reader.
Author: JamieKate
•9:28 PM
Down: I never sent out my partial. I didn't want to send out anything less than my best, and Loyalty is definitely not my best. *shudder* If only you knew, nonexistant reader. If only you knew.

Up: One more scene to write in the novel before massive revisions occur!

A short post just to update everyone. Nothing really significant.
Author: JamieKate
•5:31 PM
WIN: I'm on the last chapter of my new book. I expect it to be complete very soon. Within hours and/or days, actually. This is both good and bad, since I have no real new idea for a novel, but I will have two completed novels (pending numerous revisions).

FAIL: I've been putting off sending my partial. Bad, I know. Criminal, even. But I just feel that, after rereading it, it isn't my best work, and I would really want to rework the entire beginning of the novel in order to be able to put it out. And that is even more criminal, because it means I hadn't reread it enough before querying. Faux pas to the max. Beginning writers aren't allowed to make mistakes and/or bend rules, ask anyone.

MEDIOCRE: I may convert one of my old unfinished novels (which is set in contemporary times, unlike about 90% of what I've written) into a historical one to make it fit my future target audience and so that I will actually finish it. Writing in contemporary times is pretty boring, in my opinion. Where's the excitement, the escape? Anyways. I might do that. But I haven't decided. And I'd have to alter the plot slightly, because I don't want to look like a one-note writer, and all my books seem to have a guy who's in unrequited love. I have more than one note, I swear. I just have to figure out where the hell I put the other one. That was a joke, by the way, if any agents/publishers happen to pass by this epic, sweeping public monstrosity of a blog. I have many diverse, marketable, loveable notes. Ask anyone. And by anyone I mean me, because no one knows who I am.
Author: JamieKate
•11:28 AM
Alright. Alright. Okay. So last night I got to working on both stories, which is a win in itself, and then I got a partial request from an agent! That'd be my third request. The other two said things about my writing being competent, but they felt it wasn't right for them. And hopefully this one says I'm both competent and right for them. That would be....uhh...FANTASTIC!

I'm slightly worried because she deals mostly with erotica, which my book is pretty far away from. Since my books are inspired mostly by Jane Austen, I don't get very explicit. Or, you know, explicit at all. But that could just mean that this agent isn't right for me. Which would suck, but I could move on, as I have done in the past. Sigh. I wish I could just telepathically communicate to an agent how awesome I am, and then they'd sign me. That would suit my purposes pretty well.

EDIT: I just looked up the agent who requested things from me, and apparently MOST people who send her query letters get partial requests, since they take unsolicited partials anyways. Let down to the extreme. But we're still okay. Maybe she'll like it still.
Author: JamieKate
•4:35 PM
Well, I had meant to revise my first novel, but real life got in the way all day. I still have the nighttime, however, and I hope to get at least something done for either one of my books. And I found out some new miniseries to fuel my obsession with English period drama, which is nice. I usually have half my screen taken up by a movie and the other has Word open so I can type and revise. Usually that's just when I transfer my writing from longhand to e-form. I write everything down first - it's more portable and it takes longer so it gives you more time to think before you write. Plus you have another opporunity for revision as you're typing it up.
Author: JamieKate
•9:58 PM
I know, I know. Back too soon. But I'm eager, forgive me.

I queried two agents just now after being discouraged for some months. I did another revision of my best complete novel Loyalty, so I'm hoping it's up to snuff for the big ol' literary types. Well, not to say the literary types are big and old, or that things shouldn't be up to snuff. I'm just bitter from dozens of previous rejections. I've had partial requests, and I've been told I'm a "competent" author, but no one would like to actually represent my work. But we're trying again! Trying again and staying positive, that is the key.

"No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better."
 - Samuel Beckett
Author: JamieKate
•4:53 PM
Alright. I've had trouble with keeping blogs rolling in the past, so I must try to keep with this one, really. I'd like to make a commitment and stick to it. This, believe it or not, is the honeymoon stage of this blog. I, and anyone who reads this (although I have no idea why you would, I'm very tiny and obscure), is in the clutches of a blog-o-riffic honeymoon. We've just left the church, and I'm still in my pretty dress (you can be the groom. I'm the blogger here). We're going on this wonderful journey together. Although I don't preach total fidelity, at least in blog terms, so feel free to shop around.

I write fiction novels. I'm 19 years old, and so far I've written a novella and two novels (well, I'm about 90% of the way through the second one, so I think I deserve the credit). People tell me this is impressive. It is, in its way, impressive, but when I consider all the time I could have been socializing and living instead of writing, it's not all that exciting. Or, you know, healthy. But that doesn't matter. Writing is isolation! Writing is suffering! And writing is fun, most of all. Fun, isolated suffering. I do a lot of that.

I'm hoping: A) I can continue writing this blog thing and B) as I continue writing this blog thing, I will obtain a following and C) once I obtain a following, and once I finally get published (which I will someday - come on - look at how cute I am!) people can read it, see my pitifully humble beginnings, and feel encouraged. Sound okay to you, mystical non-reader who probably doesn't exist? I bet it does. Or if it doesn't, then it's weird you've continued reading this long. Don't you have better things to do?

I'll probably post again tonight because, after all, this is the honeymoon phase, and you can't have to much activity in the honeymoon phase. Wink wink, nudge nudge, say no more. Also, I've been rather indecisive about plot and conclusion lately and perhaps talking things out with you, O Nonexistant One, will cure this malady. But until then, adieu.

Jamie