The birthday.

November 30th has always meant a lot to me. This year I have looked forward to it because it's my birthday (which I apparently can't stop talking about like I'm a small child), marking the end of 30 Days of Ash because I'm now 30 years old on the 30th, and it's also my deadline. It's been a good year and a great month (largely due to my thoughtful and cool sister who came up with some amazingly amazing gifts, the rest of my amazing family, my friends, a trip to H&M, some birthday donuts from Lehi Bakery, and—let's be honest—my parents, as the reason I have a birthday at all) and the many thousands of words that I dredged up from the deep recesses of my brain to finish this book.

So yes, in a word, the book is done.*

*Meaning, not done. 

I'll explain. The rough draft is done: there is an excellent beginning, a hefty middle, somewhat of an end, and nearly 50,000 words, but it's still going to take some revising and fleshing out before I'm happy with the first draft. There are some holes and I know it, so I need to go back and fill them in.

And, by the way, I really hate knowing that it's not as good as I'd like it to be. Thinking about that reminds me of this quote from Ira Glass:

"Nobody tells this to people who are beginners. I wish someone had told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it's just not that good. It's trying to be good, it has potential, but it's not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn't have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know that it's normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you finish one piece. It's only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I've ever met. It's gonna take a while. It's normal to take a while. You've just gotta fight your way through."

So there's your inspirational/demoralizing quote for the day. (It's good that it fits both moods.) But truly, I'm happy with the progress I've made. I'm glad that I can say that I [essentially] wrote a book by the time I was 30, which was my ultimate goal. (I don't care if it's a loose interpretation.) So I will keep working, once the birthday celebrations quiet down, and for those of you lucky enough to read the darn thing, I will alert you when I'm good and ready. Merry birthday to you.

Let the countdown begin.

Happy November. This month is going to be a big one. I'm scared and excited all at once, which is resulting in my going from rapid clapping and squealing from happiness right into the fetal position and back again, figuratively, several times a day. (It's pretty exhausting.)

Anyway, besides all the normal life stuff going on, here's what else is on the docket:

1. My book deadline. [squeals of excitement] I gave myself seven months to write this book, as a present to myself for my birthday, and here we are, folks. I only have one month left. (!!!) I began pretty ignorantly and I've come a long way, for sure, but now that I know what I know, I know I have so much work left to do. I'm excited but a little scared as to how it's all going to happen. But it's also totally awesome that November just so happens to be National Novel Writing Month. Super cool coincidence, right? It's cool even though I'm not, like those folks, going to write a novel in a month. But I am going to finish one!

2. So yeah. My self-imposed book deadline is my birthday. My 30th birthday. Which is huge. And not only that, I turn 30 on the 30th, which means it's my GOLDEN BIRTHDAY. [rapid squeals] So exciting. My amazing sister sent me a huge box of presents so that I have one to open every day this month, an event she named 30 Days of Ash.

What a sight. Isn't it amazing? I've let out several squeals just thinking about it. And Anna's twice as bad. I've had to pry her fingers away from the pretty packages (days 4 and 17, for instance) more than once.

Anyway, there's a lot going on. So many presents to open, so many thousands of words to write, so many parties to plan. I'm swamped, but in the best kind of way.

In the immortal words from "Major Tom": "4 . . . 3 . . . 2 . . . 1. Earth below us, drifting falling . . ." (What?)

Let the countdown begin!

On writing a book: More lessons

This is exactly what I look like when I write.

Remember how I'm writing a book? (I know, it's so cliché.) Well, I feel like I learn volumes every time I sit down and write, so here are a few more brief lessons and things I'm noticing, just in case you're wondering.

• Sometimes I'm excited to write. I'm just feeling it and things are happening and life is good. Other times, it seems like everything is coming out sounding like a ten year old wrote it. Or I'm just tired of thinking about it and tired of making myself think about it. It's nights like these where you just have to surrender and, say, watch Ghost Dad in the name of research. (There's a little teaser for you—you'll have to guess how it's related to the book. Cryptic?) That way, you're still making some kind of "progress" on your book and you don't feel so guilty, even if no words were written.
• It's been interesting, learning the way that I write a book. It's almost like I have to learn over and over again that the book is not simply going to flow out of my brain with perfect ease and perfect prose and a pulitzer prize stamped on it. I hate learning that. But I'm realizing that I have to just get something down on the page—sometimes it's good and sometimes it needs work—and then I have let it sit for a while and then go back and make adjustments and additions and subtractions. I should have learned this from how I blog: I usually post something at night and then my brain goes to work while I'm unconscious, and I almost invariably make changes or additions the next morning. Have you noticed?
• Speaking of brains, brains are amazing. Mine even gives me ideas before I consciously try to think of them. It does so much work on overtime and totally doesn't get enough credit. Here's your shout out, brain. Thanks for all the good ideas. (But you're also to blame if this book bombs.)
• Once upon a time, Anna left a purple-glitter-filled bouncy ball on my desk, and it's been there for a couple months now. Almost unintentionally, it has become my thinking ball. When I am at a stopping point and need to think and find some direction before I move on, I grab the ball and give it a twirl (it's just so shiny and pretty) and maybe try out some cool David Bowie moves à la Labrynth. It totally works. And I'm not giving it back. 
• I feel like I've made pretty good progress, considering I started this whole thing not knowing what in the world I was doing. And I feel like my momentum is definitely increasing, as I now know what I'm actually writing about and what needs to happen. That's a nice feeling.
• But I'm starting to get just a tiny bit nervous that I only have three months left. I'm probably one-third or halfway finished. I can still do it, but wow.

So here's my progress report thus far, since my blog is apparently my accountability partner.

My book so far.
Pages: 73
Words: 20,780
Chapters: 8
References to a Tom Jones song * : 1 . . . so far
Times I use the phrase "sugarbum" * : 2, and maybe more to come

* the mark of a good book

On writing a book: The first month . . . ish

Since you, my seven blog readers, are now my obligated book fans, here's an update on how the book writing is going. I feel like it's been a roller coaster ride already, with undoubtedly more changes and extremes to come. But here are a few things I've learned thus far.

It's fun.
I was all excitement the first couple of weeks. I made relatively fast progress, spewing out everything I had been thinking about for the past four years. And I did not anticipate the sudden increase in new ideas. It was as though my brain was waiting for the first ideas to get down on the page so that there was room for more. That was great.

It's hard work.
That said, there have been some challenging times. Sometimes the words just come and I'm happy with them. Other times I know what I want to say but I feel like I have to climb way up into the treetops of my brain and painstakingly pick them one by one after careful selection. And other times, I know I need to say something more but I don't know what it is yet and my fingers just sit on home row, waiting and waiting for direction that never comes.

When I set out to write this thing, I don't think I understood how carefully I was going to have to plan every little detail, how thorough I would have to be, and how I was going to have to build this house of a book brick by little tiny brick. Imagining the completed house is much easier than building the whole thing from the ground up. And it's overwhelming to think that I've probably only scratched the surface. So overwhelming that sometimes my laptop stays closed and I try to give it some distance when I walk by it.

Filter, filter, filter.
I have to do so much hard thinking about the story and the characters that sometimes I think too much. Sometimes my mind will go a little crazy and try to tie EVERYTHING to the book. I've had to fine tune my ability to filter these thoughts so that when I think "Oh, I should include that funny little bit I just came up with about the raspberry jam!" I can say, "No. Stop right there. It wasn't that funny." Not every thought that crosses my mind needs to go in the book. It's "write what you know," not "write everything you've ever known."

I am my own worst enemy.
Sometimes I'm like, hey, I have thirty seconds, I'll just open up the laptop and squeeze in a bit of writing because it's just itching to come out. Other times I feel like I want to write, but there are so many other distractions. Like the other night. I told myself that I would just check my email and then start writing; I wasn't allowed anything else. But when my one email was about something posted on Facebook, I had to go check it out, right? And then I found myself halfway down that slippery slope thirty minutes later, not having written anything but up to date on several friends and several blogs I had been wanting to catch up on. Geez. So I now find myself creating little rewards or mini deadlines to make myself accomplish something (like, finish writing this scene and then I can work on my blog post about writing a book).

There's a delicate balance between planning and flying by the seat of my pants.
What a great expression that is, by the way. Anyway, these past few weeks have been an interesting experiment in both planning and flying in this manner, for me. I'm a pretty organized person, for the most part. And, if this amateur can say so, organization is very important in book writing. So I have planned and plotted and made many lists about many things, but you can't plan everything. There are times when I just sit down and start a scene without a care in the world and it's so fun to see where it takes me. I'll be going along, kind of sort of knowing the direction I'm heading, and then I'll be like, "Whoa. I just created a new character. I like it." And off I go.

Anyway, it's been an experience. Sometimes I get scared that this book will be my practice novel, that writing it will be the way I learn how to write a real one. I'm scared it will be terrible because it's my first. I want this one to be good. I'm very tied to it. So I guess I'll keep trying to make it good, but seriously, keeping Self-Doubt at bay is a full-time job. Sometimes I succeed and have a stellar night like tonight, where ideas come and words flow and holes are filled and I think I can actually make something good out of this. And other times I warily eye my laptop like a scared animal, frightened that I'll sit down and nothing will come and I'll realize that I've been foolish to think I could do this. But I'm still committed. The nights like tonight keep me going, and I'll keep writing, hoping for more of them. Five more months to go.

My golden birthday present

I'd like to make a public announcement. This November, I will have my golden birthday. And I decided that, for my golden birthday, I am going to give myself a present. A golden present. (Just kidding. I promise not to say 'golden' anymore in this post.) I am going to write a book before I turn 30. As April 30th just passed, I now have seven months to do this. I think I can do it. In fact, I can totally do it.

Sounds pretty bold, right? I know. But I'm also excited—as in, really.

I'm also simultaneously scared out of my mind. Of course I'm riddled with self-doubt. Like I can write a book! Okay, so I've written a lot. I even do it professionally, but I've never written fiction. Long fiction, anyway. I don't know anything about pacing, character development, arcs, writing dialogue . . . And who in the world is going to read it, besides my seven blog readers and my parents? [p.s. I love you, blog readers. You're not chopped liver.]

And for another thing, I so hate the bandwagon thing. (It took me a while to read Harry Potter, for heaven's sake, just because everybody else was already doing it.) But it seems like everyone is writing a book. And I don't want to be one of those people. I can just imagine the conversation now: "Hey Ashley, what are you up to these days?" "I'm writing a book, actually." CRINGE. That's only cool to say if you're good at it. (And see how bad I am at dialogue???)

So what the heck am I doing? I ask myself this constantly. I guess I'm saying to heck with all of that and throwing caution to the wolves (yep, I just did that) and saying I'll learn along the way. And, like the lesson I learned from Harry, many people doing something isn't a good reason for me to not do it too. (Does that even make sense?) So I'm doing it.

Because the fact of the matter is this: This said idea has been weighing heavily on my mind (and gaining weight as we speak) for months now and I. Just. Can't. Shake it. It needs to be reckoned with.

Here's how it all came down. Writing a book has been a goal of mine for years and years (probably 15). This was back before I even knew I liked to write; I just thought it would be cool to write a book. But I specifically remember writing it down as one of my goals during a Relief Society lesson in college, and that was probably 10 years ago. Anyway, I've always loved to read, but some time after that lesson, I decided on majoring in English, took up editing, and have been a lover of the written word ever since. And the more I edited and the more I wrote, the more my brain started to think about writing and shaping phrases and translating thoughts and life into words—and doing it the way I liked to do it. I think about it a lot.

And then I got a story idea. Just a tiny seed of an idea. It grew slowly at first, taking years to add anything significant to it, and then this last year it seemed to take off. And now the more I think about it, the more my brain kicks in to overdrive and I make lists and lists of ideas. And they just keep coming.

I have the first line, maybe even the last one, and the first couple of chapters pretty much planned out. But I don't know what's going to happen from there. So my self-doubt was successfully keeping any progress at bay—until this last week when it was all just too much.

First I saw another post from a friend who is feverishly writing and networking and trying to get published someday. (Props to you, Julia.) Another knock on the door from the book in my brain.

And then I read again this quote by Joe Konrath that she has on her blog: "There's a word for a writer who never gives up . . . published." Argh. Another prod. But Self-Doubt was still totally winning.

I also saw a link on Julia's blog for the book Supernaturally, the sequel to Paranormalcy, the best-selling book written by a girl I went to school with. I read the first book. It was fun. And I'm so excited for her—but I'm so completely jealous of her success. So I think, "If she can do it, why can't I?" One more prod. Self-Doubt was starting to get worried.

And then I remembered this Maya Angelou quote I read a while ago that has long since rankled me: "There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you." Argh! I know! Or at least I'm beginning to understand.

Then I read this post from another friend, about how it is her dream to be an author. So many things resonated with me from her post, but it wasn't until I thought about it and the book and my dream for a few days and then finally made a decision (and a public comment—gasp!) on her blog, saying that I was really going to do it this year, that Self-Doubt took a huge beating.

It's still there, to be sure, but it's quieter. And kind of hiding in a corner, probably lurking until the next time my defenses are down. I've told half a dozen people or so about my plan and the more I talk about it, the more real and achievable it seems. (Although I will say that telling people about my extremely private story idea has made me feel incredibly vulnerable, but I think that if I want people to read and buy my books, I'm going to have to get used to the idea of them eventually finding out what the story is about. I'll work on it. So stay back, Self-Doubt!)

But I'm excited to have a plan and to just finally do what I've always wanted to do. Who cares if it sucks? I will have achieved my goal and I can move on from there, hopefully writing something less sucky the next time around.

So I'm aiming for somewhere between Thoreau and Total Crap. I'd like my book to be thoughtful, a little fun, and interesting to read. I think those are modest goals, but I still really don't have a clue about how I'm going to bring them to fruition. But like I said, caution to the wolves.

So here I am, climbing up the ladder to take a seat on the big author bandwagon. But I'm doing it consciously and with good reason, not just to fit in. That makes a difference, doesn't it?

Here goes everything.