Jessa is looking for more columnists at Bookslut. I'd love to see someone writing each month on nature or science or history. I'd really like to see someone covering cookbooks and sports titles as well. Lots of subjects you could pitch an idea for if you're looking for some exposure. It's done wonders for me - I do have that fabulous agent now as you all know! So if you have time and interest, give Jessa a shout.

I don't want to turn this site into an over analysis of the writing process but I realized recently that I must sit down and plot the hell out of the YA novel if I want it to go anywhere near the sort of directions I'm hoping for it. I have gotten into the habit, from the AK books, of writing in essay form and linking the pieces together as I go along. The AK flying book was so haphazardly written that I can't imagine sometimes how it finally became coherent (it did though - as if I had planned it that way all along!). I am writing the AK memoir in a bit more structured manner - the memoir aspect requires some chronology - but still I jump here and there and fill in gaps after the fact. I'll be up in Fairbanks next week and plan to research a bit of the first bush pilots - stuff I researched back for my thesis and now need to look at from a different angle. So I'll be putting that chapter together (in a rough form) even though I won't be ready for it chronologically. So that is how it goes with the AK writing but it can not go that way in the YA book, which I am now officially calling Winter Called Him Far Away, or Winter for short. (I imagine this will change a dozen times but it suits my mood for the book right now and works remarkably well for one of the major characters.)

It has just gotten too complicated, what with diaries from WWI and a fire and a ghost and not one but two suspenseful scenes at the same church (decades apart though) and a pivotal exchange in a nursing home (run by nuns of course) and late night wandering through a cemetery (a bit of grave digging I'm afraid) and well - all that other teen stuff that comes up when you are solving an old family mystery that affects the fate of the world. (Not that I'm trying to make it sound too dramatic, or anything....)

I can't keep it all straight and so I'm struggling and putting it aside and I don't want to do that. Part of the reason why I started to blog ("why do you blog? why why why?") was to keep myself honest writing-wise. I have no one really to be held accountable to other than myself and most of those in my family consider my writing as little better than a hobby; I have miles to go before they will regard it with any respect.

Honestly, at this point, I don't give a rat's ass about most of their opinions on my work.

This means that I really only have all of you to lay it out to - you to be my sounding board. I'm not a big one for page counts but I do think a decent daily goal is good and fair. I'm aiming low for Winter though - as the AK memoir does take precedence. But I want some forward momentum on both projects so I can believe they are both real and alive and matter.

If I don't give them my attention, after all, then no one else ever will.

The plan then is 500 words a day for Winter and 1,000 words for the AK memoir. Typically I exceed that for the AK book - as soon as I hit a stride in a chapter. There is always a day or two of fussiness and then clarity and then - well, not to beat a metaphor to death, but then I fly. So is this doable/possible? Yes - but it remains to be seen if I will be disciplined to stick to it.

Jenny D - I need a writing coach! ha!

But really, seriously, one must get serious about writing if they want to accomplish anything. I was very serious about my first book, after a year of being rather serious about my thesis. (Which was interrupted by two major life events, but still finished on time. When I think of how much harder my life was then as compared to now, I can hardly understand why both of these books are not long finished.) I think that is one thing that I envy about students attending MFA programs - they have made the step towards seriousness that the work really requires. It is the inclination of most people to assume that writing is a hobby and so unless you take proactive steps to make it more than that - by going back to school to learn more or intentionally carving out a portion of your day to demand it receive more attention from you - then really, it will only ever be a hobby. And that is okay if that is all you want it to be.

But I don't, so here is my plan and now you all know it. Now, really, it is just up to me to follow through with it.

*With credit to Siegfried Sasson for "A Letter Home". (Image via Endicott and taken from Nicoletta Ceccoli - it is how I feel when I do not make time to write.)