Alas, I think I have fallen prey to the dreaded condition of Editingosis. In the Guide to Authorly Conditions, Editingosis is defined as

[...] temporary affliction which plagues writers, usually in the second half of the year, in which the afflicted suffers from bouts of forgetfulness, untidiness, unkempt appearance and frequent whining [...] This is caused by editing taking so much brain power, there is simply not enough left for trivial matters such as Housework, Entertainment, Sunlight or Getting Out Of The Apartment.

It isn’t only me who’s out and about doing edits: loads of other writers are celebrating Revisions Season with me. I woke up this morning, after a wonderful didn’t-end-until-2-AM-but-I-got-2500-bloody-words-cut day of editing yesterday, only to find that many of my usual duties have gone undone.

To my utter shock and surprise, not only were my dishes crying out for my attention, but some absent-minded person had left more mess all over the bed.

The problem with Editingosis is that things really aren’t as bad as the condition makes you believe, and I quite possibly could get outside, see that glowing golden ball of gas, and dart back inside, and still make my deadline. I think by spending so much time revising, I’m violating my own editor’s commands:

Me: Yes, yes! Summertime! I’ll edit all day, every day!

Editor: Good. But make sure you get outside and have some fun this summer too.

Me (singing): All day, every day! All day, every day!

Editor: Great. One of THOSE authors…

All things are going very well. Just yesterday, in fact, I managed to cut about 2,500 words of plot meandering in one sitting. That is a lot of meandering, and has no place in a finished novel, so I’m actually very happy these word cuts are forcing me to be creative with the limbs of this book I chop off, armed only with a pen and two keyboards (yes, I have two keyboards).

My family was particularly disgusted after my previous post, in which I said a certain loverly (and wickedly unpleasant) character was taken out. You have to remember that they have seen this book in every stage, from the first draft when I was 14 all the way to now. They pretty much know all the characters who were in and are now out, and all the histories and backstories from each draft. So, to oblige them, I have decided to at least make a mention of the character I killed, just to keep her out of the Prison of Removed Characters until the next book. And after the book is out, I’ll take one of my commenter’s suggestion and post the deleted scene on here.

Somebody emailed and asked if I could show my writing notebook. I actually have a bunch of different writing notebooks and printouts and notes, and at the moment a few of them are sitting in a General State of Disorder on my side desk:

You can’t really read much of it but that’s they way it’s sitting on my desk right now. The big notebook to the right is an enormous, 11×14 inch drawing pad I use for plotting scenes out and working out notes (on that page in particular, I’m working out some gnome business). Then, on the left, I have two smaller notebooks. The corner of the printout is (by pure coincidence) partially covering an important piece of information (he he).

I have this melody playing in my head right now that I will probably be recording very soon into a new song. When I say that, it could be weeks before it is finished, but that melody is the beginning. Also, I have two very important interviews coming up: one with me, and one with someone else.

29 comments »
Posted in College, Writing
Tags: Bran Hambric, Writing

There are many very important stages in getting a book published, and one of them is known as Editing.

Since this is my first book I’m very new to all of this, and thus parts of it are slightly painful as my body adjusts to 2AM nights, all meals comprised of microwave or delivery foods, sheer lack of outside communication besides instant messenger, and headaches from screen-staring that no amount of Tylenol will drive out. My alarm clock is set to noon, or not at all.

I’m certain that not all writers out there subject themselves to these torturous routines (if my editor knew he’d probably remind me calmly that my deadline is NOT next week or anything). Still. I’m new, and if I gain twenty pounds, earn blue circles under my eyes, and never eat another delivery pizza again, this book will be finished before deadline and it will bloody well be edited to perfection.

Speaking of delivery pizza, heard of the Domino’s Gotham City Pizza? It’s a large with crust-to-crust cloaking in pepperoni. It was on sale. I thought it would be good.

Um…yeah. I discovered something: you can have too much pepperoni. Just warning you. Next time I’m sticking with the regular: Brooklyn with a rational amount of pepperoni. Safer that way.

Anywho, what bothers me the most as I write is the fact that due to living in a college apartment, there is a certain house of trolls a few apartments over who thinks it is their duty to their fellow humans to play their music at the highest, bass-iest volume possible. It is so bloody loud it is rattling my keyboard. It angers me much. This is how writers get reputations for being violent.

I would not be bothered if this was just a party or even a multi-day celebration. But it seems that these particular morons absolutely must run the stereo from six in the evening to two in the morning, the hours in which I do my best writing (note: the future source of circles under my eyes) and even sometimes from two to past daylight (the hours in which I do my best staring-at-the-ceiling-trying-to-sleep).

In the times I can ignore their racket, I’m working hard on the edits, getting the big stuff worked out and all the word-count cuts. Thankfully my other writer friends have been through this and know how to console me. I think I nearly made one of my friends faint when I told her how much we were aiming to cut from the book. See, the number of words I’m trying to cut happens to be nearly the length of her entire novel (!).

Sometimes in the revising process, there comes a point where certain scenes must be added and others taken out (the removed scenes I’ll hopefully get to post on the website eventually). I did have a particularly wonderful revelation of a new scene which is turning into one of my favorites in the book. It involves the same setting as what has been in the scene for years, but now suddenly, Bran notices a secret door across the room. A secret door is a very, very useful device when writing. In fact, you can pretty much just throw a secret door in anywhere and it works. Example:

Pamela Pinkersnort was delivering one of those abysmal Gotham City pizzas to somebody’s apartment. She knocked on the door. It was hard to hear herself knocking, because of the horrid rock music coming from an apartment nearby, which obviously housed moronic trolls.

“Psst!” a voice came. “Over here.”

Pamela turned, and saw a secret door.

Pretty much immediately, Pamela’s gonna wonder how the secret door got there, why it’s a secret, what’s behind it, and if the person there will tip nicely or be a scrooge.

Great. As I wrote that last paragraph, the music trolls just turned it up even louder. Thanks, I surely needed that.

Sheesh.

On a side note, my publishers have a news blog. This I did not know, until this week. So someday in the next-yearsy-future I might get to see my name on it

30 comments »
Posted in Bran Hambric, College, Writing
Tags: Angry, Bran Hambric, Pamela Pinkersnort, Pizza, Rock Music, Writing

You wouldn’t believe all the junk we writers keep around. It’s not that we particularly have more things than most people, it’s just that writers always seem to have more pressing things to do than keep their humble abodes clean, such as getting an overdue manuscript in, scratching out 4,000 words on some draft, rewriting a scene where everyone has green hair, etc. The unimportant things in life such as eating, sleeping, and keeping our living conditions up to par with health and safety inspections just fall to the floor.

I decided it was high time, whilst awaiting the revisions from my editor, to give my room a good solid cleaning. After all, I’ve lived here for six months and as you can see, there’s still loads of things in boxes. The reason for this is that the moment I got here I immediately hopped on Youtube and haven’t pulled myself from it since. Oh, and there was that book deal thing. And the college thing. But after I went to my Big Junk Drawer and couldn’t find my box of favorite pens, I realized that I was living as messy as Ernie, and something had to be done about it.

Anyhow, I got set on cleaning stuff out. Writers have a thing with pens, paper and notebooks. I have boxes and filing cabinets filled with them. I can understand that, but what I don’t understand is why I need 43 sales receipts from various stores stuffed in my dresser drawers. It’s not like I don’t have stacks of free note pads lying around from college salesmen (college salesmen are those folks that come around campus trying to get you to pay more fees for learning overseas, special classes, new computers, etc, and love handing free stuff out). My junk drawer in particular had grown out of hand:

Yes, that is a cassette tape. No, I didn’t throw it away.

Whilst cleaning, I realized that when I come in, I always drop all my change into the drawer and forget about it. Imagine my surprise when I pulled all the junk out to find this at the bottom:

I felt like Ali Baba stumbling upon the treasury of the forty thieves. Then, I found something else stuck between the lid of a box:

I can’t imagine how it could have gotten lost in the drawer. Maybe I should start cleaning things out a little more often…

23 comments »
Posted in About Me, College
Tags: Bert, Cleaning, Drawer, Ernie, Junk, Money, Sesame Street, Stuff, Writers

In the aftermath of The Lasagna Burglar, this has been placed in my freezer:

If these disappear, next time I will try the Anvil Approach. When someone so much as breathes on my lasagnas, a 100lb Acme Anvil will drop from the ceiling onto their burglary-brained heads.

27 comments »
Posted in College
Tags: The Lasagna Burglar

I failed to mention the break-in of my apartment a week or so ago. It was probably the oddest crime I’ve seen before, as the only things taken were boxed, frozen lasagnas and pizzas in my freezer. While taking nearly $80 worth of food, The Lasagna Burglar completely overlooked the stereo on the floor, and also decided to leave behind my frozen salmon and Reese’s ice cream. So if anyone spots a starving Italian who abhors music and hangs around college campuses, please let me know.

The reason I recall this story is because when I returned from my week in Alaska, I came to my door and found a note that said my locks had been changed. After the break-in, the police came and the locks were changed back then, so this is the second time in a week. This meant that the key to my home did not work. Also, it was Memorial Day, which meant the offices were closed, and I had to sit outside my own house for nearly 2 hours waiting for someone to break me in. Obviously, the burglar had an easier time getting in my home than me. The exhaustion brought on by all the flying had me seriously considering a brief career change (<—).

Coincidentally, I discovered the magic way to make these apartment maintenance crews move. In the third call to them, I simply made my voice sound upset, at which point they began recording the line (you know they are doing it when you hear a low beep every five seconds). I then said, in an exhausted tone, that if I am not in my home in ten minutes, I am calling the campus police to break me into the apartment for which I pay rent every month, at the manager’s expense. The crew was there in five minutes to let me in.

This is the sort of thing that happens to us writers and ends up somewhere in a book. Strangely enough, my book is filled with burglars, though I hadn’t previously run into one before — so I suppose I could just think of this as gaining experience in the field.

But somewhere out there, this fellow is still loose, munching away on my food. Beware, all frozen dinner enthusiasts. No freezer is safe whilst The Lasagna Burglar runs free.

19 comments »
Posted in About Me, College
Tags: burglars, College