Halp

I have signed up for Weight Watchers and NaNo this week and downloaded the new Scrivener for Windows.

Does anyone have any tips or advice about any of the above? I heart Scrivener so far. (Drat. I missed my I <3 Monday post this week, didn’t I? Honestly, I was in a crap mood and did not heart anything on Monday.)

I’ve never done NaNo before, but I’ve been feeling sort of discouraged about writing lately. Uncertain about the Thrice revision. Sad about shelving Garolass. I know these are only bumps along the path, and everyone has to deal with them at some point. But I also know myself. I’m over-thinking the revisions and being a perfectionist. I need to be writing, not just talking and thinking and angsting about it.

I’m choosing between three projects. The first is my old Valentine’s Day magic cupcake book, reimagined. I had fifty pages of this at one time but it was initially about, well, magic cupcakes, and as a device I’m not sure they really worked. Now it’s a straight contemporary about a small-town girl dealing with her parents’ divorce, her grandmother’s illness, and an unrequited crush on her best friend while working in her grandmother’s bakery. I really want to write this at some point but it still needs an actual plot, not just relationships and conflicts. The second is the Theatre Ghost Book, which is about a girl who wakes up on her sixteenth birthday able to see ghosts. She usually holds her group of misfit friends together, but as they work to put on a junior-senior showcase production of Little Women and she’s keeping the ghosts a secret, things start to fall apart spectacularly. I thought this one had fizzled for me, but then I found an actual synopsis I’d written a few weeks ago (surprise!!) and I got super-excited all over again.

The third idea, which is murkiest, is set in the 1880s in Gettysburg. It involves a girl with the same ability to see ghosts–a gift inherited from her mother, who had a mental breakdown after the Civil War. I love research. I’d forgotten how much I love research until I was two hours and two cups of tea in, IMing a librarian while checking the visiting hours of the Historical Society and browsing women’s letters and journals from the period. But I think it might be pushing it to try to research and write that one for NaNo. And I can’t decide on character names. So really, I think I’m choosing between the above two. But all that research was a fun way to try Scrivener!

Between all of this and revising Thrice for Agent Jim, November is going to either make me crazier or saner than ever. I am, it seems, happiest when I’m writing. Sort of frantic and weird, but happy. Anyway, stay tuned!

Also, if you are NaNoing, tell me and we can be buddies! I’m jessica_shea there too.