Stealing the Stars is Drafted! Again!

Honestly, I don't know what possessed me to do it.

Three years ago I wrote a book poorly about a girl who could use natural disasters in an X-men kinda way. I named it Stealing the Stars, edited part of the first chapter, then gave up on it. I think the original word count was around 40K. It had all kinds of plot twists that didn't make sense, and it ended very abruptly. I'm pretty sure I even ended it in the middle of a sentence. Kidding.

I wrote some other books after that one. Most notably, Existence. Which was also poorly written. And What Not to Do When You're Falling in Love. I queried both books with marginal success--meaning I received small press offers--which I ended up not taking. At the time it felt like the world was ending to turn down those contracts, but I'm glad I did. I wasn't ready yet.

In between those two books, I decided to write Stealing the Stars again. The book about the girl with the natural disaster thing. Once more, it didn't work, and I ended scrapping it. 

I published an Anthology, and wrote two more books--The Definition of Awkward and The Home Ec. Boys. Which I also did nothing with.

Three more times--amidst the madness--I tried to write Stealing the Stars. Three more times, I failed.

Then came 2014.

I didn't give up writing. I never once gave up hope that I would be a published author. I started a few books with high hopes, but didn't finish. I did, however, write four fanfictions that averaged about 30K, each.

It was getting close to the end of the year and I started to panic. In 2013 I wrote two books and published an Anthology! I felt like there was something wrong with me. I couldn't even get ideas. My writing career was over, or so I thought.

But slowly, slowly, my girl with the powers over natural disasters came back to me. I decided to ditch the orignal plot completely because obviously that wasn't working out, and start fresh. New names, new ideas, new everything. Except my girl, and the boy she would fall in love with.

It took some brainstorming, but I realized one of the problems before was that I was trying to tell the boy, Kai Andrew's, perspective without actually changing point of views. I had never tried to switch between character POV's and I was hesitant. Because that was hard. And it was.

I wanted to quit this book, again. I don't know why it always called to me, begging to be written, but it did. Every other idea flew out of my head until this book stepped up and said, "I'm still here, write me!"

40K in, the plot was not heading the right direction. I started re-reading, only to find Andrew's voice was still not heard. He needed to be written in 3rd person past tense, and my girl was going to stay in 1st person present tense.

Again. I didn't want to do it. Because it's hard.

But I did anyway.

After my re-read, I deleted ten thousand words. That was almost a months worth of labor on the book that did, yet did not, want to be written. I pushed forward despite this.

The words still came slow. Each day I'd spend an hour on 300 words. It was painstaking.

One Saturday morning I woke up early, ready to tackle this book once and for all. I wrote two-thousand words. Finally, I was finding my groove again!

The very same day, my computer died. Every last word I had written that morning was lost.

Quitting. Quitting sounded sooo good. Quitting would be easy, but quitting also meant I wasn't going anywhere.

300 words a day. One hour of complete torture--to the brink of madness. But I didn't stop. I kept trying every day and, eventually, the words flowed.

For two months I'd been saying I was going to finish this book and, dangit, I wanted to.

Last week, I had a final breakthrough. Cassie Mae (a.k.a. my idol) shared this blog post with me. I skimmed over the first part of it, and decided to give it a try. I wrote 15K in three day.

Stealing the Stars, the book that had been so loved and never brought to pass was finally complete. And, yes, I will query it. After a year of drought, I'm ready. Never have I been so excited to finish something.

When this book is all pretty edited, I'm going to start on the next one in series. And let me tell you. I can't wait. Seriously.