Sherri Cornelius

Looks like it’ll be a rainy day here in Blossomland. Just before the kids got on the bus a black wall cloud rolled over us, and now it’s raining pretty hard. Doesn’t look like it’ll be severe, just dark, warm, windy and wet. My favorite kind of day. It will make it extra hard to concentrate, though, especially since I stayed up too late last night talking to my brother on the phone.

A couple more readers got back to me with notes on my synopsis, so that makes four, which is a good number to start my rewrite. The response has been mostly positive, but there are a few places that all four readers pegged, so that’s where I’ll start. I love how each reader brings his/her own personality to the critique–like, the mysterious M., language dude extraordinaire, told me the meanings of some of the names I’d chosen for my characters, and the meanings sort of fit the characters’ roles. To answer his question, the fit of the names is accidental–except for the name of the main character, Drina, which in Spanish is short for Alexandrina and means “defender of mankind,” I assume because of Alexander the Great. “Defender of Mankind” is a good title for Drina Ramirez.

I was right, it’s hard to concentrate. I think I’ll have to take my work in small sips today, and that work is: to continue where I left off editing yesterday; start rewriting the synopsis; housework; pay bills; other miscellaneous things I can fit in here and there. I have a feeling the housework will be the easiest of those tasks; I don’t have to think to load the dishwasher.

So here’s a question for you: Do you do anything special to pick names for your characters? Do the names come immediately, or do you have to study and research and pick just the right one?

I’ve spent the past six months or so hitting the ol’ reset button. (Search on “reset” to find related posts.) It’s a sticky little sucker, and I have to hit it several times before it takes. This is my year of renewal, my year for re-evaluating my priorities, my year for growing a backbone and becoming my own woman.

I hope.

I’ve been trying new things, like editing, and letting go of things which don’t serve me, like an unhealthy preoccupation with what other people want of me (still working on this one, but it’s getting easier). I’m tired of fighting. There’s such an attitude of “go get what you want, no matter what! Don’t let anything get in your way! You can do it if you never give up!” in this world that I wondered why it wasn’t working for me. I’m a really tenacious person, taking those sentiments to heart. I’ve spent the first half of my life wondering why I couldn’t make things happen like Trump or Oprah. So I decided since taking the path of most resistance wasn’t working, I’d try to take the maligned path of least resistance.

Well now I forgot where I was going with this.

I think I was going to talk about my writing attitudes. Before, I always wrote to please someone else. I listened to other people’s advice, and as you know, there is a lot of it on the Internet, consumed and regurgitated over and over without thought. Tried to please everyone, you know? And half–no, most of the time I had to guess at what people wanted–readers, agent, potential editors, critters, family. Each of them seemed to want a different thing, and it was impossible to please everybody. Froze me up. Too much resistance.

Well, I’ve had almost two months of forced time off. When I first broke my finger, it didn’t seem real that I wouldn’t be able to truly write until it healed. I couldn’t wrap my head around it. I was really angry at first, had major withdrawals, not only from the book itself but also from the idea of writing. God, that was hard.

Now I see I should have done this a long time ago, but I was too busy trying not to let anyone down, including my dream. I wish I hadn’t forced Fate to break my finger and my laptop in order to get me to reset this aspect of my life. But now I feel cleaner, like I might actually enjoy writing when I get the chance to start up again, and it makes my eyes well up to feel that love again.

Anyway, that’s my ramble. Have a good weekend.

P.S. Got tired of scrapers stealing my content, so I’m syndicating only an excerpt till I see if it helps. Sorry for the inconvenience.

I know it’s Friday and nobody and not their dog will read this post, but I have some rambling to get out, and it must be done.

So I have this book I’m writing. We’ll call it BVA. I love this book. From the very first day I’ve thought this book will be my “break-out” book. Now before you get all excited, this isn’t about BVA breaking out, I just want to convey how cool I think this book will be when it’s finished.

I wrote another book a while back, EG. Completely different look and feel than BVA. EG is sensual whereas BVA is bleak. EG’s setting is medieval while BVA’s is contemporary. The main character of EG is all girl, and BVA’s is a tough cookie. Looking back, EG was delivered with relative ease. I am still in labor with BVA.

I haven’t thought about the EG world in about a year, maybe longer. It’s with the agent making the rounds, and though I had planned at least two more volumes, there’s no point in writing a sequel when the first one hasn’t sold yet. So instead I’ve been working on BVA. Or rather, pummeling on it.

Yesterday I decided to take a break from BVA. Agent has the submission package so it would be the perfect time, when one month will make absolutely no difference. The point I’m at now, I don’t think I’ll get anything significant done in the next month anyway. And plus, I need a break, darn it!

So today during my writing time I pulled out the dusty stacks of notebooks and loose paper which represent every idea I’ve ever had, and started through it. The first thing I came across was the notes for CT, sequel to EG. I read. I got lost in it.

I remembered CT being very rough, and it was but it didn’t matter. I found myself with a pencil in my hand, making notes in the margin, but I didn’t remember grabbing the pencil or deciding to make the notes. Surprised the hell out of me. That is some good shit. And it just goes to show that I HAVE NO IDEA OF THE QUALITY OF MY OWN WORK AND NEVER HAVE. I’m not saying that in a self-aggrandizing way, I’m saying sometimes I think what I wrote sucks, sometimes I think it’s good…and it always turns out to be about the same quality. It’s freaking crazy. I absolutely have to start trusting myself.

And yet I can’t apply that trust to BVA because I’m too close to it. I know where my blind spot it, and BVA is smack in the middle of it. I used to love the plot but have no idea how to execute it. Now I know how to execute it, but the energy is not there. I’m numb. I need to write something that excites me, but it’s not the right time for CT. I need some ideas. Maybe now that I’m not constantly thinking about the physics of the Black Veil I can catch a new minnow with my net.

I’m done rambling, I guess. Any questions?

First, some random notes:

• Happy voting day, everybody. May your candidate win, whichever he is, because I truly do not give a shit. I’ll start caring again when I see what a terrible job the next president does. This is how I operate every election.
• Typing this on the treadmill. Unfortunately, it’s not electric, so getting the pushing angle right without hanging onto the bars is a little difficult. Every once in a while it just….stops. You can imagine the hilarity which ensues.
• Oprah had an explicit discussion about sex yesterday, and girl, you KNOW I want to dish about that! But I won’t.
• Finally saw the movie “The Notebook” last night. Rachel McAdams was so pretty, my eyes hurt. Ryan Gosling was so virile, my loins hurt. And that ending? My eyes hurt again from rolling them so much. Geez.

Now. Nanowrimo. Not even bothering to link to it. I devoted Nov. 1 to thinking about what I might write, and then I wrote a few lines, and then I decided not to bother. I thought if an idea hit me during my writing wanderings I’d continue, but that did not materialize.

It was quite a low priority anyway, because I’m still working on the NaNoWriMo book from 2007. I’ve been calling it my WIP, because I wasn’t working on anything else, but I must admit I went weeks at a time without cracking it open. Partly because of the personal problems plaguing me the past few months, but also because it was an utter mess, and I seriously didn’t know what to do with it.

NaNoWriMo gave me the incentive I needed to finish the WIP. I finished it, all right. Finished it right into the ground. But I have mixed feelings about it, because even though it turned out to be a mess and shook my confidence, now that I’m in the middle of serious edits I see that without that ovaries-to-the-wall, scary-ass month of writing, I wouldn’t have made some of these creative leaps that the story needed.

I’ve been keeping a brave face. If I didn’t love this story so much, I’d have totally put it away. But it’s a great book! I swear! I usually don’t toot my own horn, but this one is going to be great. IF I can pull it off.

And I only fell off the treadmill once during this post.