It’s Spring Break! *flings off bikini, then puts it back on again because NO*

Spring Break is heeeeere!
Spring Break is heeeeere!

My poor, poor neglected blog. I still think about you sometimes, and that’s usually as far as I get. I’ve been so wrapped up in life and my characters’ lives that I’m not 100% sure where the past few months have gone.

 

It all started with National Novel Writing Month in November. Oh my God, that month was killer. I’ve never done NaNoWriMo before, and I’m pretty sure I left my brain somewhere between weeks three and four. But I wrote over 50,000 words. Boom! Some of them are really ugly words, more like a string of nonsense that may have more to do with my waning supply of Pop Tarts than the actual story. But still! Words!

 

I did learn a few things about myself as a writer through NaNoWriMo though–I can breeze through dialog with hardly a clickety-clack pause. Give me two or three characters with tons to talk about, and I’m set. But for a pantster, someone who writes with only a vague idea of where they’re going, NaNoWriMo will tear your arms off and beat you with them. I did have an outline, but the further I got into the story, the more bare-bones it got. There are many instances where I wrote *something happens here but I don’t know what*. I think I’m going to leave that in and let the reader fill in their own blanks. Just kidding!

 

Anyway, this book is called Sail, and it’s a New Adult sexy ghost story in space. I’m thinking it will be ready for consumption by Fall 2014.

 

What else? Oh, yeah! I expect to have edits back on The Grave Winner book 2 sometime this week. I’m excited to jump back into Leigh’s head.

 

One more thing! See the sidebar on the right where it says Subscribe to Lindsey’s Insider Newsletter? It will be a happy day if you sign up because you’ll get cover reveals (the one for Sail is going to be AH-mazing!) before anyone else, never before seen excerpts, and contests just for newsletter subscribers. It’s different from my blog in that I will actually do something with it! 😉

 

Now, excuse me while I continue licking dishes clean. Hey, it’s Spring Break–I can do whatever!

Make Nice With Your Muse

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

 

No no NaNoWriMo. I won’t participate in you this year or next year or never but I will cheer for participants from the sidelines.

 

Why? I’m a slow writer, like 1000 words in three hours slow. I try not to stress about making things look pretty in a first draft, but I do anyway. Plus, I have to stop and picture what’s happening in my head. It’s like watching a movie in painfully slow motion.

 

But I’m using NaNoWriMo as inspiration to learn how to not worry so much and speed up the pictures. I’m also using it to get inspired to write after I get home from school. I used to think a sleepy brain tells sleepy stories, but a sleepy brain is the norm now, and sleepy brains still have stories to tell.

 

The story I should be telling is the sequel to The Grave Winner, but it’s still coming together in my head. So my muse has hammered another story into my brain (ow!) while I let the sequel percolate. That’s the story I’m working on now, and I feel like I should make nice with my muse in case it flips me the bird and abandons me.

 

This new story has ghosts in space, in case you’re wondering. It also has some sexy times in it because it’s not YA. The title is A Boy and Her Scratch.

 

The sequel to The Grave Winner is coming, I promise! Please don’t hate me, Fabulous Editor Melissa and my Must Have Critique Partners and my Totally Tubular beta reader and everyone else who has made it this far through my ramblings!

 

Anyone else have a muse? Anyone else pet it and feed it cookies so it won’t flip you the bird?

 

P.S. I voted today!