A Little Revision And A Lot Of Shakespeare

I hate revision. It is so frustrating. I just had to cut about 3,000 words of extremely hard work. I have to rewrite a whole bunch of scenes but I have to admit that the writing part I'm enjoying. It's just really hard to get myself to cut all those words.

Woe is me!

I'm really self-depreciating too. I slashed across a scene with my pen and wrote, "DIRT," over it. I do that kind of thing a lot. I think half my problems with writing come from within. Doubts, fears (a lot of those), frustration. I'm my own worst enemy. I don't think any other person in the world can cut someone down as much as they cut themselves down.

I'm doing pretty good with my fan fiction though. Dance With The Devil is pretty popular, so I know I'm doing something right. I'm making friends through my writing on there. It's really nice to have conversations with people who actually like writing and reading the way I do. My family is fairly supportive but they're also pretty clueless.

I say Shakespeare, they scream no. Is there anyone out there who likes Shakespeare anymore?
I'm reading Hamlet right now and I'm crazy over it. It's fantastic. So touching and emotional. I'm not one for tragedies but this is one of the few I think I'm going to read again. I'm also reading A Midsummer Night's Dream and that one I really love. It's uproariously funny and very romantic. Much Ado About Nothing is another one I adore by the Bard. He's great when you need a little romantic comedy to lift your spirits.

Another great thing about Shakespeare is that his stuff has been used so many times before in other media that  the characters are as familiar to you as your favorite pair of shoes. There's something timeless about them that touches your heart and sweeps you away to another world.

Enough of my gushing though.

~ Jane

Dance With The Devil

I am having serious problems with working on Plain Jane. It's so slow going because I don't have a clue what I am doing. You'd think after writing a whole novel I would've already gotten with the program. Still, I admit that there are days when I really just love it. And then there are days when I want to shoot myself, or even worse, burn my manuscript.

It's definitely a love/hate relationship. ;)
And revision completely sucks. :(

I'm really into working on my fanfiction.net fic, Dance With The Devil. It's gotten a lot of reviews and someone even made banners for it.

It's a Vampire Diaries story about an original female character (OFC) (Rose Cresswell) who is abused and is saved by Damon. She in turn saves him from his obsession over Katherine. And there's a twist. She's a witch and knows all about vampires. But I won't say any more. Who knows who might be reading... ;)
(My winking smiley faces look demented on here. How odd.)


I'm hungry. I think I'll go find some food and write more. Bye-bye!

Write with patience,

                            ~ Plain Jane

Losing The Finger And Working With yWriter

I just lost about half my finger in a terrible kitchen accident involving scalloping potatoes.

Just kidding. I cut the tip off, but I won't bleed to death. Pity, isn't it? It'd make a great story if I did. *wink*

Typing isn't particularly easy but I'll probably still manage to pump out hundreds of words of fan fiction. Be nice if I was that dedicated to my novel.

I haven't done a whole lot of work on Plain Jane lately. I'm working with a new software called yWriter. It's amazing. It's not like any other writing software I've seen out there, and it's FREE. Yeah, people. FREEEEEEE!

I love it. It's unlike anything out there for writers. Take a look: http://www.spacejock.com/yWriter5.html
What's to lose, right? 'Cause it's FREE!

Fanfiction.com: My Curse

I have to say that my top reason for not writing would be my serious and crippling addiction to fanfiction.com. I am not joking. I have a disease. I simply cannot stay away from that site, and it drives me frickin' crazy!
You would think that at seventeen years old I would have learned a little self control by now.

I really just love reading fan fiction. Stories about my favorite characters doing things they didn't get to do in the movies or tv shows. It's refreshing.

Is there a rehab for fan fiction junkies? No? Well, that sucks.

Does anyone have any tips on how to keep myself on track?

I could use the help...

Thanks.

Try New Things

     Has anyone heard of Cheryl Corbin's mini-course, 8 Steps to Goal Setting (and Achieving!) for Writers? It's pretty cool so far. I've only done lesson one, but so far so good.
     I was looking for writing advice online one day and her site came up. I liked her blog, subscribed to the newsletter, and have loved everything from her ever since. She, like Holly Lisle and Lazette Gifford, seems to have a good grasp on the writing stuff that works. I myself like to try every technique under the sun, but I personally don't think that's a bad thing. It gives me a lot more room to find things that work for me, unlike if I was stuck on one thing and one thing only.
     I like to experiment. Try new things. It gives me a challenge. I feel that there's not one person in the world that I can't learn something from. It's all about being open minded and looking very hard at what other people do and say, and trying something new.
     Like the Book-In-A-Week community. On Cheryl Corbin's Need For Speed mini-course, the first assignment was to look at the FAQS page on the community's website. I scoffed. Yeah right! I thought. Like I could actually write anywhere near an entire book in a week. But I did go and look at the FAQS page like she said, and whadda ya know, it wasn't anything like I thought it would be. It actually looks pretty cool. I think I might even join. There's a $3 non-refundable members' fee, but I'm pretty sure it's just a one time thing to make sure you're serious. There's even prizes and stuff.

     So here's the lesson of the week: Be open minded and TRY NEW THINGS! Things that you would normally look at and think, Yeah right! about. I cannot stress enough how important it is to try new things. It has gotten me from wishing to be a writer to actually having a completed first draft and a crud load of ideas, more ideas than I would know what to do with in a lifetime.

     Write with an open mind,
                                        ~ Ashlie

Revision: The Unhappy Word

I think revision is my unhappy word of the month. I am floundering to get things going with it, and am mostly just piddling around with my manuscript instead of getting any real work done. It's kind of sad actually.

I have about sixty thousand words on the screen and am about twenty to forty thousand short of what I need for the finished product.

I have this one scene where my heroine and her fake boyfriend are fighting werewolves. They defeat the werewolves... but then the werewolves just disappear. I didn't give any explanation as to where they went and I have no idea what to do with it.

My dialogue is pretty generic too. I need to do some serious revision on that, add a bunch of scenes (which I have not yet written), add about thirty thousand words, fix scenes that are about as dead as can be, and still do outlining on one of my other novels and worldbuilding on another one after that.

Remind me again why I wanted to be a writer? No, seriously. Please do.

The book I'm working on right now, Plain Jane, is the first of a trilogy but the only one that I've done any real work on. I have most of everything figured out but I stil have character sketches, worldbuilding, plotting and a bunch of other crap to do. And on top of all that, we're going though a bankruptcy, losing our house, have lost two vehicles, and are trying to get out of the last house before we're locked out. Oh, and someone got into our house and stole two hand guns, a PS 2 system, and our X Box 360. Talk about kicking someone when they're down...

Anywho, I've been pretty lax with this blog but I'm hoping that once things slow down I'll have a chance to do more writing and blogging. Right now, I'm struggling with just the writing.

To all you other writers out there:

PRAY.

It's the only advice I can give.

Write with hope,

                    ~ Ashlie (I've changed the way I spell it)

I Have A Dream...

You know how Martin Luther King Jr. had a dream? Well, I have a dream too. Now it's no where near as altruistic as equality amongst our races, but I still think it's pretty cool.

My dream is to have a career in the fiction writing genre.

Which is why this blog is called "My Future Writing Career."

My name is Plain Jane, and the reason I created this blog is to share my agonizing journey to publication with all other aspiring writers out there so that they know:

YOU ARE NOT ALONE!!!!

Holly Lisle is more or less my inspiration for even attempting to have a writing career at all. Before finding her site three years ago, I never thought that I would be able to pursue a career in writing, regardless of how much I loved it.
Holly Lisle is a writer with more that 30 books published and more on the way. I ran across her website http://hollylisle.com, and figured if a single mother with two jobs could do it then why not I?

I'm only 17, but I already have a finished novel under my belt, and I'm working on book number two while revising the first one.

Pray for me, Fellow Writers. Heaven knows that I need it! ;)

~ Plain Jane