Here With Me

Well, it's official, Mica and Emma almost killed me. It took two years and one month, countless arguments with the characters themselves, and the turning of the dragon into an actual ancient, immortal warrior, but I have finally--finally--gotten these two stubborn, wonderful characters to their happy ending.

Two years is an awfully long time to be lost in anything, and by the time I started this version at the end of January, I was convinced I'd either broken them to the point of never being able to fix them, or I'd created two characters, a story and an entire world that were just above my ability and creativity to write. When your family is getting jealous of the characters only you can see and hear, it's time to either get the story done, or admit you're just not that talented. Whether I am talented or not is yet to be seen, but I wasn't willing to give up on telling this story until I had no other choice, so I buckled down, and with the help of a very good friend who refused to let me give up, I was able to finally get these two to the ending they deserve.

Not that the story doesn't still need work, and honestly, I'm not sure they won't try to split my head open when it comes time to edit, but I am happy with the overall story. Making Mica immortal gave me everything I needed to make the pieces fit, and Emma LOVED the idea of her fantasy world being real--and her dragon really, truly being *A* dragon. Emma managed to get over her insanity fears and save her dragon, and Mica was able to see that he could break the cycle without it costing him his life. And thanks to the help of his seventeen year old daughter (you know, the one he never knew was his) he will let himself and his pixie have kids without worrying about passing down whatever was wrong with his father. But it's done now, for now, and it's time to move on to the next story.

I fell in love with Rachel and Chad the very first time I saw them together, and while their story will have their own issues and conflicts, neither of them will let the internal conflicts keep them apart. While Mica and his Emma thrived in the conflicts between them, even when it was close to destroying them, Chad and Rachel will break your heart at the need each has inside to just be where the other is, and they will fight to keep what they have found.

And now that I have stalled for long enough, I need to go finish chapter two of their story.

Thanks for stopping by,
Eden

Wow. It's been almost a year since I've updated this. That's really bad. What is it about life that sucks us in and makes us hyper-focus on certain things while others get pushed to the background, no matter how well intentioned we are to see them through?

Anyway, I'm still writing. Of course. I don't think I'll ever be able to stop, but no matter how much I want to get this story done, I can't get it to feel right. Yes, I am still working on Mica and Emma, and thanks to Christine Feehan's Dark Prince I have done some reworking of the world my characters live in. For two years, these characters have been all I've thought about, and I know them inside and out. I know everything about them, can hear their thoughts almost as clearly as my own--and yet the story refuses to write itself. I have no idea where I am going wrong, or how to fix my writing slump. I LOVE writing. I do, I love it, but I think--and this is the insecure author in me talking--that I am suffering from writer's doubt. Am I capable of bringing this story to life? Can I make readers love these two as much as I do? What if I can't?

Or maybe I am over-thinking this. It is a definite possibility, but the honest truth is that this story will not get done if I don't write it. So I will finish it, and if it's not perfect, I will keep taking it apart and putting it back together until it is.

Take care,
Eden

This weekend, a friend and I, along with five other women from our local RWA, went to Chicago-North's Spring Fling in Deerfield, IL. It was amazing, I had a lot of fun, and even had a seven minute interview with Tessa from Avon to pitch my new fairy story (more on that in a minute), but most importantly, according to my sister and my grandmother, was that I was able to meet Debbie Macomber.

Anyway, I went to quite a few workshops while I was there, and learned some new, interesting things that I was immediately able to see how they would apply to my own writing. For example, for twenty-five years, Mica has always known he was going to have to be the one to tear down his father's empire, and because he always felt that responsibility weighing on him, he was never going to ask for help in the end. I knew this, and had planned on letting Emma be the one to call for backup to get them out alive, but I really think to show how Emma has changed him-- to show how far he is willing to go to keep her alive-- that he has to get over his fear of this war claiming a life he couldn't live with, and let him call for help. It's just a little thing, but it will show his character arc. He refused to call for backup when he went after Alexi at the end of HWM, but when his pixie's life is at stake, he will do whatever he has to do to keep her safe. (I haven't told him yet that she gets shot at the end. I'll deal with that headache when I don't have any other choice.)

I also had a meeting with Tessa while I was there, and had seven minutes to pitch my fairy tale idea. I am very, very excited about these characters, and cannot wait to start building their world for them. Tessa seemed very interested in the idea and wanted to read the story, but she wasn't sure Avon was the place for the story-- she wasn't sure they had the contacts and resources to push a fairy story. She gave me a list of other places to try and other agents/editors to talk to, which I thought was excellent.

As for the progress on Be With Me, I've only gotten 1 1/2 chapters done since my last post, but I think I have finally-- by golly!-- found the reason I've been struggling with it. I love, love, love my Mica, but he really is a jackass and a bastard in the beginning. He has damn good reasons for being as hard as he is, but I know those reasons and wanted the readers to know them, too, so they'd love him as much as I do, but by spilling it all out up front the way I was, I wasn't letting him develop slowly into the man he is at the end. He wasn't effective, and I was forcing his emotions out into the open too much-- I need to let Emma and Becca slowly bring that side out in him, and I need to let him be the raging bastard he is at the beginning. Guess when I figured this out? The love scene in chapter eighteen. The man went... well, he went primal, territorial, and when Emma thought, this is the dragon, I realized she was right. I keep Mica at a stable place when I'm not writing his story, and I wasn't taking him away from that the way I should have been. So, YAY!! I'm way happy to have finally figured that out.

So that's two projects I'm working on, and I will try to keep this updated more frequently.

Later!!

Eden

Be With Me is now officially half-way done. I hit the 50,000 word mark on the 2nd, 24 days after I finished the new chapter one. I haven't written this much in more than a year, and it feels good to be creative again and know I didn't lose my creativity along the way.

My problem now is that considering how huge the issues of these two characters are, I'm half way into the story and realized absolutely nothing has happened yet. At first, when I sat down to start it, I told myself to just turn off the stupid internal editor and worry about pacing and fixing things during the edits--because I can always go back when the story was done and make it move faster. The problem with that is I HAVE to start the danger part of this story sooner or later, and I keep putting it off. There's just so much that Emma and Mica have to face and survive, and it overwhelms me, I fully admit it. I can handle the emotion conflicts, but the danger parts scare me.

So, anyway, since I'm hoping to keep this blog updated at least once a month, I'm going to post my version of Mica and Emma's synopsis, to show how insane I really am sometmes.

Later.

Eden

My weekend was long and painful--spent most of Saturday and all of today parked on the world's most uncomfortable bleachers to cheer my girls on at their swim conference. I love watching them swim and see them slowly shave off seconds from their events, but those bleachers are sheer hell--especially when you're squeezed in on them for 8 hours at a time. Sigh.

My point, and I did have one, was that I didn't get much writing done this weekend, but thanks to my reward system I was able to write the last 1300 words to finish chapter three of Be With Me last night. My reward was bed time, because after the noise and the seemingly now permanent ache between my shoulder blades, I'd have bribed the Devil himself to find oblivion for five straight hours.

The biggie, though, is that CHAPTER THREE IS DONE!! Yes, I know it's only the third chapter, but that's 9000 words so far, and if I can get chapter four done, it's the farthest I've gotten in this story in a year and countless different restarts and re-imaginings of it. I really love these characters, and I cannot wait to really get into the heart of their story. I finally found the theme of it-- They have to learn how to believe in not only each other, but in the person the other sees in them, as well. If they can't, they will never make it through, there's just too much for them to survive without the other. They scare me, their issues are huge and overwhelming, but Emma and Mica are magic when they're together.

Okay, need sleep.

~Eden

So. I'm on my way to Wal-Mart after a stop at my big sis's book store, when I come to the intersection of Central and Willowcreek, and saw two people (I say people because it was impossible to tell if they were men or women) dressed up as the Statue of Liberty. That was nothing new, as they've been there for the last couple of weeks, advertising a tax preperation shop. What was new, and which had me, Tink and the Maddog gaping, was what they weren't just standing and waving today--no, by the time I came up to the stop light in front of them, they were in the middle of a full blown dance war.

A dance war.

I'm not sure how many accidents they almost caused, but I do know that I was so dumbfounded as I watched them, that the guy behind me had to lay on the horn to get me moving. I'd had a headache all day, and had been in a general grumpy mood, but watching them definitely perked me up. It's just something you don't see every day, and for that, I was impressed.

Anyway, so no writing has gotten accomplished today. I'm on a new reward system-- write for 45 minutes, reward myself with something I want to do for 30 minutes, then start the process over. I did nearly 2000 words in less than an hour and a half of writing time yesterday, but I'm stuck for the moment.

Oh, well. There's always hope for tonight, but for right now, I'm off to take the girls to go see Spiderwick at the IMAX.

Later.

Eden

Don't have much time today, told Tink I would make it to her Valentine's party at school. Thought I should get my first post up, at least.

Anyway, welcome to Here With Me. In case you haven't noticed, it's the title of one of my novels--my NaNo success from last year. Right now, I'm working on Be With Me, but it's slow going. Sometimes I think I know Emma and Mica, my heroine and her hero, better than I know myself, but it doesn't make writing them any easier. They kill me, but once I hit my stride with their story, I think they're going to turn out to be magic.

Here's to hoping, anyway.