I'm aliiiiive!

 I'm a bad, bad blogger.  I've been so focused on writing my new novel that I've completely let this blog go. Sorry about that.

But now I'm on chapter six and I've reached a really frustrating impasse. When this happens, I usually become unfocused and lazy. And I have.  Bad for my novel, good for my blog I guess.

I have some interesting things coming up in the next month, so look out for actual posts with actual content.Aren't you exited? Aren't you just going, "Ooooooh"?

My rock star reunion story is going strong and I'm really happy with it, but I feel like I'm still not where I want to be. I gave the whole shebang to my writing group and overall they were really happy with it. We just have a few things we can't seem to agree on.

My character is a hard rock/metal singer. She hates interviews and almost never talks about her history. She was fairly successful. Won a grammy or two. Toured for years. Didn't make millions and millions (because let's face it, most artists don't make Britney Spears or Beyonce money).  Then her band is broke up. Her label dropped her. Her money vanishes. She goes back to her small town for reasons I can't reveal. She's keeping it very quiet but she gets found out.

How will people react?

She's in her thirties and she's famous in a specific market of music. This has been the bone of contention between my writing group and myself. I maintain that your average Midwesterner who doesn't listen to hard rock or metal will have never hear of her, let alone get all excited because she's from their small town. I don't envision her picture on the walls of the diner, for example.

The way it's written, the teenagers know that she went to their school but not much more than that. She never shared any info about her life with the media and she never graduated from high school so she's not really in the year yearbooks or on the rosters.

I don't see her getting overwhelmed by the attention of grown ups whom she never spoke to and who have busy lives. My group thinks that the reaction of folks would be bigger and that people would know that someone from their town was famous and so she wouldn't be able to have kept some of the secrets she's kept. Especially in the age of the interwebs.

This is going to affect the next section of my book and I'm not sure how to handle it. What do you think?

Writer Worries: when your fictional business name turns out to be a real one



"Blushing In Pink" dress by Ouma



A character in my novel is a fashion designer starting an urban, alternative bridal boutique. She upcycles old dresses into couture gowns that people can actually afford. My character's business deserves a cool name.  I have spent the last week making up every cool name I could think of, just to Google and find out it already exists.

Now I know if I were actually starting a business, my business name is  only held in the state where I copyrighted it. But for the purposes of a novel, can I use the name of a business that already exists? I googled and didn't really find an answer.

I have a huge list of buzzwords that I have been putting together and tearing apart like refrigerator magnet poetry  and I'm getting frustrated. I need a name that is romantic and edgy and urban. One that declares that this is a bridal shop but not that kind of bridal shop. You aren't going to get white blindness from staring at generic gowns in this boutique. You won't find $10 worth of gauze sold as veils for $70. Instead it's a place where the prices are reasonable, the veils are birdcage-y and the dresses are made with love and color. It's the kind of shop where chick flick moments are optional but feeling like a badass is not.



Wow I think I just wrote the commercial for it :)

Anyhow, these are the names I made up that turned out to be real bridal shops:



Claire Pettibone Gown



She Said Yes

Something Old, Something New

Committed

All Frocked Up

Frocked Up

Unbridled

Unveiled

Swoon

I also have a list of ones that I googled that didn't come up as being shops but I'm not sure if I like those as well as the others:

Unlaced

Unruffled

Aisle Less Traveled

Rock the Frock

Vixen

Scandalize

Lovesick

Gorgeous But Deadly

Thoughts? Comments? Suggestions?

A quick question for my writerly friends...

What is your process for editing a very rough draft? I feel as though I'm editing in circles. I rewrote the opening chapters so I rewrote the next four chapters. In rewriting those I changed some things and then re-rewrote the opening chapters and then had to rewrite the next four... the snake eating it's own tail is still in my house.

What is your process for editing? In detail please, because I clearly need a system and I don't know how to do this. Previous to this book I've only written short stories so editing was a very different beast. I just rewrote everything over and over until I liked it. This requires being more systematic but I don't know how to begin.

HELP!