Bo-Bo Knows Mitt's Craaaaazy!

Did you hear the latest? It's rough, rough, news, so make sure your furries are not around, kay? Mitt left his mutt on the roof then drove for twelve hours! Twelve! The Bo-bos can't go for three without yuking on mom's back seat...and that's when she puts me INSIDE with my BED and a BLANKIE. Sometimes there's too much stuffs in there with me, but mostly it's all right because--did I mention this?--I'm  INSIDE with the Moms!

Moms don't like the Mitt because he doesn't like the poor and she says he acts like he's the obsessively driven CEO who's pissed to find his company at number 501 on Fortune's list, but the Bo-bos thinks the prezzie shouldn't be allowed to be mean to the furries. I mean that Obowwow guy's pretty cool with the furries. And he names them such beautiful names, too. But back to the Mitt. He's mean and he doesn't even know it! Have you seen this?


Mitt Romney Admits He Tied Family Dog To The Roof of His Car [Video]

Clearly, furries need to be allowed to vote. If only to prevent Mitt's being mean to his mutts.

Bo-Bo Knows I'm Toast

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah-bity-blah blah. 
"Blah?" 
"Blah," blah blah.
Blah blah blah blah-by blah--blah blah-dy blah blah! 

The novel and all those other Big Ideas (not the capital letters) I had for December? They're making about as much sense as this blog post.

Bo-Bo Knows Mama Has No Business Making Wagers

After the first week of operation wacky writing wager (the use of the word wacky has more to do with my addiction to alliteration than anything wrong with the wager itself) I'd like to report that Stephen and I are locked in an epic horse race, but what we're actually in is more of a snail's race. We've both got a trail of slime stretching behind us that we've made an empty peace with calling our works in progress, and as you might imagine, neither snail is exactly hearing the Chariots-o-fire theme song as we race INCH toward what seemed like such a skimpy goal when we made this wager oh so casually in the comment section of this blog not so long ago. 

You can read about Stephen's dark night of the soul (aka his wicked writing woes--more ws!) here in which he whines that he's only got 7 pages finished. Only. Oh boo-flippin'-hoo, Stephen. Poor you.

You know how many pages I got if you only count the stuff that's pretty and perfect and ready to go?

Zero. As in none, nada, and if I knew how to spell it, bupkis.

But what I do have is a 20-page long hand page first draft of the first version of my revised (read that totally gutted and absolutely new) opening scene. It detours and tangents in the way my first drafts always do (I can't be the only writer whose first instinct is to take her characters from Boston to Cambridge by way of Timbuktu), but somewhere in the detours my imaginings have wrought, there's a faint heartbeat that tells me this might work. Keep chipping away at it. And please ignore the tantrum that your inner child is currently throwing about why oh why this convolutedly crazy craft style of yours (note the cs!) remains your process.


Because you have a wager on. And right now you're losing. Except in the one way you're winning: before the wager, you were stuck, and now you have a pile of prose poo (ps!) with a beating heart. Which means this wacky wager you've made has shaken you out of your revision paralysis and put you safely on the revising path.

So, no, Stephen. No fist pumps and booyahs here. But in my own way, I do think I'm winning. Even if I end up buying you a drink and toasting your superior output, I've won.

Bo-Bo Knows It's On...

I threw down a gauntlet and it was...picked up? Matched? Accepted? Whatever it is that the person being thrown down in front of does when accepting a challenge (and let's just say it's pointing a finger in the air and wagging it with all the nuance of a silent movie, cause that makes me happy), my friend Stephen Dorneman over at Barking at My Shadow has done it, and the race is on:

First person to 30 pages by the end of the year gets a beer on the slower writer's dime. 

 Except Stephen says beer isn't special enough.

So if I win he'll buy me a Boston Cream Pie Martini (if you think those letters should be lower case, obviously, you've never sipped such heaven) over at the Omni Parker House, and if he wins, he picks. And if you could hear the sports announcer doing the play by play in my head, Stephen is the front runner.

This weekend he let me know he was already five pages in while I was still navigating the family loop that is the long Thanksgiving holiday in my house.

And today's no more auspicious. Because I didn't just tell him 30 pages. I said 30 pages of the new opening of my book. And so far the new opening has arrived still born. But not much because there's a martini at stake. And a little something called the future of my novel. Right. I'll just get right on that and, um, mmmmm chocolate-cocoa-lined rims....

Why is it so much easier to picture the martini than it is to dream up an opening for my book?

Bo-Bo Knows Dirty Limericks

Metered Angst

A Limerick by Catherine Elcik 

When tracking my writing it's hard to ignore

when my hours shrink back to less than half four.

I say that I'm fighting 

To prioritize writing

But then dole out my time like I can simply make more.

Bo-Bo Knows Beginnings

Thirteen hours and 8 minutes this week. Could I have pushed out two extra hours? Sure. But it would be make work for the sake of hours. Because Monday through Friday I spent rereading the opening, making notes about how to revise, and just generally getting myself to feeling like I knew where to start. By Saturday I needed to let it simmer for a couple of days before starting in on the actually redrafting. Simmering is work, too, but it's hard to quantify. So I don't. I just know that I had at least two hours of simmering and I leave it like that.

Also, a blog note: watching hours tally does not exactly make for the world's most riveting blog, so I'll just keep count in a little column at the right. I'll add the hours weekly, though I suspect I'm the only one who will care much.

Happy writing! 

Bo-Bo Knows Limbo

My inner librarian slave master is well pleased this week. Not because I punched in my time plus some--15 hours and 48 minutes this week!--but because those hours brought me to the end of the draft I've been struggling with since I finished the rough draft longer ago than I can admit without embarrassment (I only missed the three-year mark by 48 hours).

Does this mean if I hit my 15 hours work week again this week I'll finish the third draft? No? Well, what fun is that?

Tomorrow, I dive into the third draft. As a person who feels anxiety in the limbo between completing one chapter and breaking ground on the next, I'm expecting to experience some fear at the start a new draft; to counter the anxiety, I've earmarked Friday as a writing retreat with a fellow sufferer writer.

In "On Writing,' Stephen King offers a permission slip for wary writers:

"You can, you should, and if you're brave enough to start, you will."

Change that 'if'' to a 'when,' and I think I've got myself a new mantra...