"Oooh, we're halfway there/ Oooh, living on a prayer"

It's been a little while since I've written a post about the book, so why not now? Ok! Hence the title, I have hit the halfway point! Woo hoo! I outlined the book a few weeks ago and determined there are going to be about 26 chapters and I finished chapter 13 last week. I spent this week editing the first half and fact checking.

Is it lame I really enjoyed the fact checking? I remember reading that JK Rowling had notebooks full of facts about her characters. Now, I'm not planning on a seven book series with this crew but I like everything to be accurate and consistent so each character has a page with facts and characteristics on it. It sounds stupid but it is so hard to keep the physical characteristics of each character straight. Probably cause there are so many of them! Like the RY-inspired character, he had green eyes earlier in the book but then I had a sentence later on referring to his blue eyes! Doh! So good thing for fact checking!

Plus, I didn't really have the beginning of the book planned out in my mind; I really wrote as I went along so there were some things that I introduced once, acting like it was a given all throughout the book, only to never mention it again. Like I have the two characters playing "The Question Game" as a big factor of their friendship. Well, is it big if they only played it once the entire first half? Nope. So I had to go back through and add some of those sessions in. Just little things like that.

Now I know I've said that the second part is the part I came up with many years ago. But that doesn't mean I have thirteen chapters already composed in my head. I just had basic plot points. I sort of think the process of writing the book is like playing connect the dots. I have the big picture in mind, but it isn't clear or obvious to any one else at all (and sometimes not even to me). Then I outlined the book (after I sat down at Starbucks one day to write I think it was chapter five and I had NO idea what it was going to be about and completely freaked out) and the outline created all of the dots. But honestly, that's the easiest part. It's connecting the dots that's tough. Creating characters, writing dialogue, establishing background, and literally creating connections to set up later events in the book is dragging my pencil from dot to dot, making the lines connect and form the whole, big (and hopefully clear and interesting) picture. It's tough but hey, I'm halfway there.

My goal initially was to finish this by Christmas cause that is when my sister, LA, is coming to visit and she will most likely be the first one to read it (no offense other family members). But that's probably not going to happen. Cause it took me 3 months to write the first half so I don't see how I could cram 3 months of work into 20 days. But like I said, I do have a clearer idea so there won't be times where I sit and have no idea what to write but still that would mean working three times as fast. Verdict: Unlikely.

And I've read through the whole first half over the past two days and it's weird. It is like an actual book. I know that's dumb to say. But really, it's like a honest-to-goodness novel. Of course I wrote it so I am partial to thinking better things about it. I used to read every previous chapter before I started writing a new chapter to keep things consistent. But then I was reading a lot longer than I was writing so I had to abandon that plan. So that being said, I know the first few chapters backwards and forwards but from about 7-13, I'm not as clear. To the point where I'm like "I wrote that? Seriously? Hm, good job Annie". Not saying I am writing anything mindblowing or revolutionary but it's like reading a book someone else wrote. I know that's obviously been my goal, it's just weird that it's actually there, in black and white in front of me. Crazy!

Okay, enough self-indulgent talk. As my niece SD would say "Aunt Annie, that's bragging."

OH! And in other news: Remember Starbucks worker Mike-or-James? Well due to the fact I've been trying to find a job and doing other random stuff, I haven't been frequenting SB as often. Well I've been there the past two days editing and reading and today I was about to put on my iPod and I heard a worker call him Michael! Seriously! One of the names was actually correct! This made me very excited. Okay, I'm all done being a dork.