Writing: A Conversation Without Interruptions

Yeah, we all know how this feels, right?

Well, I’m sitting here now, with Silk Over Razor Blades in front of me in its current form, I have the Avenue Q soundtrack blaring in the background – funny! – and I can’t focus. Well, I can, I just don’t want to in a way. I’m looking at the pages (153,650 words by the way – gaaaaah!) and feeling odd about changing it. And I know bits of it need to change. Lots of it needs to change. Less than last time, I suppose, but enough that I may well be here until January, what with full time work and NaNoWriMo to get through too. Its going to be a busy end to the year. -_-

In some weird kinda way, I guess I’m just scared to start. Its a big undertaking. I know that. Its enough to make me shudder, though that might be the cold. o.O And of course, instead of doing that, I’m sitting here writing to you lot. Nuts.

Okay, Illy, get a grip!
I’m going to do it. I’m going to start. Here we go!

So.  Since coming to you and explaining what this blog was for, I’ve had an interesting week.  Well… I don’t know if interesting is the right word, but its the one I’m going to use, because it sounds far less nasty than ‘complete mental break down, floods of tears, swearing and dear-god-awful self pity’ which is what it actually was.

I’m not going to tell you about the whole week; that would be boring as hell.  Most of it was at work.  I am however, going to tell you about my Thursday, in which I went to the weekly meeting of one of my city’s local writing groups.

It was awesome! They had fantasy writer Graham Joyce in to talk to everybody and though I have never actually heard of him – yes I blush to say it – it was pretty damn good. He talked about how he began, writing on a tiny island from a shack in Greece. He talked about how he fell into his genre and how easy it is for a writer to procrastinate their whole day away. He talked about his non fiction as well as his fiction and about how the writing work and the market for books and the futures of authors may be affected by things by eBooks and video games. All wonderful, wonderful stuff and to hear it first hand from someone who had already been there, was enough to reassure me, once again, that this is what I want to do. I don’t want to have to wait until I’m 50 to have the sort of back library that he does, but I’m known well for being somewhat over optimistic and ambitious. So we’ll see how that goes. Anyway, my Thursday was gentle, easy and generally, inspiring.

My Wednesday was not so good. On Wednesday, I was mooching through the Writer’s and Artists Yearbook 2011 and trying to get hints and tips on how to proceed with the publication of this novel of mine (I’ll give you the background in a little while). Anyway, I was reading on the Agents’ lists and the Publishers’ lists and all the while fantasising about all the people I’ll contact, how to organise my address book, the folder I’ll inevitably fill with rejection letters before finding that one name who tells me ‘I’m in!’ And I also decided to take a look at putting my synopsis together. It is at this point that I make a horrible, mortifying, crushing – all-manner-of-other-words-to-describe-utter-decimation – discovery.

I’M NOT READY!

It was awful. I remember holding a pen in my hand and thinking; “Holy shit! This book isn’t ready yet. I can’t summarise it, I can’t get a decent plot line down for a pre synopsis summary, there are still points of the plot that even I think are clunky and utterly rubbish. I’m not ready.” And I put down this pen, back the cling film remnants of my highly unsatisfying lunch back into my bag and go back down to my desk. Where I proceed to sulk, bitch and generally be extremely unpleasant to any poor sod who came near me. I feel quite sorry for my poor team to be honest… though not quite enough to apologise. Hmm. Anyway.

My point is, that a combination of that understanding on Wednesday, Graham’s talk on Thursday and various other problems which aren’t really relevant to this blog (and so aren’t going to be included… unless you BEG!), I spent fairly large portions of late Thursday and late Friday crying my eyes out.

As an aside, I’m lucky – VERY LUCKY – by the way, to have enough people here to look after me when I fall to bits. People who will just walk around my room, dropping anything in their hands to give me a crushing, wonderful hug. People who will eat sour sweets, despite the face it makes them pull, for not only their own enjoyment but to make me laugh. People who will just hold me. People I treasure. And its these people I’m dedicating this entry to.

Still, that does leave me with the matter of what to do now. I know I have a lot of work to do. I know I have a long way to go. So… this is what’s going to happen. This blog, which I initially told you, was going to chart my screen-to-print process, is now going to chart even more. Its going to chart the rewriting process of my novel. The tearing it to pieces and putting it back together (for the sixth time, by the way) of my book so I can, when the time comes, hold my head up high to say that I didn’t ride on the business of my parents to get published or utterly destroy the myth of one particular creature with a wet, romantic sparkly!!! image that makes NO FUCKING SENSE!.

(Yes… I DO have strong views about those particular authors. Get used to it if you’re going to read more of my journey.)

I want to say that I wrote ‘an incredible fantasy piece worthy of admiration and awe’, or that I wrote a ‘chilling, thrilling, and utterly disgusting horror, filled with fabulous, nausea-inducing scenes of human depravity and gore’. Better yet… I long to be able to say, I wrote a ‘piece of literary fiction so incredible, a story so broad, rich and full of colour, filled with characters so full and believable, that I’ll be remembered forever.’

Ambitious? Yes, I know.

I did warn you.

Let’s do this.

Well this is it. Ileandra introduced to the crazy, wacky and hopefully interesting world of blogging. I think this is probably a sensible way to go.  I think that I can use this blog to tell you and everybody else how I, Ileandra Young, that is, am doing on this roller coaster journey that is my life.

Bear in mind that Ileandra is only one of my names. Or rather, it is not the name on my birth certificate, but it is my name as much as the one of that rather ratty piece of paper. I answer to it, I love it and many of my friends know me only by that name. So that is the name I will use. Its also my pen name.

Yes… I did say pen name, because, you see, I am a writer. Unpublished as yet, but that takes nothing away from the fact that writing is something that I love dearly and has been a hobby/obsession of mine for almost twelve years. So yes… I am a writer.  And this… ‘wibbly blog’ will be my means to chart, document, attack my breaking into the world of published writers. That is what it is for.

So… hold onto your asses (or just the chair seat if your in polite company) and try to stay with me. I am likely to travel very far, very fast, and very wildly through this blog. Let me know if you fall off; I’ll try to come back to pick you up.