Here are somethings I have said over Skype chat when I wasn’t feeling well…

• I can never time. therefore you are mes. {this was supposed to be – “I can never type, therefore you are me.”}
• My brain is squashed flat like a pancake gym.
• ommy nom nommy.
• My head is smacking against the sides of my gym brain skullface.
• I need foods like yeah seriously foods will make me normalsauce.
• I eat potatoes so my heart no go plooey and explodes.
• Right we are like peanut butter and peanut butter’s best friend. like peanut butter and regular butter? {this after Becca told me – “you and english are awesome together” – and I know peanut butter’s best friend is supposed to be jelly but I don’t like PB&Js.}
• what epsidieso? **epsidis. GOSH. YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN. {translation: “what episode?”}
• apparently there is no end to the amount of times I can see ane psidies of that show. {translation: “apparently there is no end to the amount of times I can see any episodes of that show.”} {and yes, I really do type this bad}

Because Hannah Moskowitz (who is aaaamazing) did a post of all her novels (clicky here), I’m going to do the same thing. Mine is a bit different because unlike her all of my novels are unpublished/unsold (and also I have way way less), but maybe it’ll still be interesting?

Also: until I started querying I didn’t really give my novels names so I’ll call them stupid things like “the sister story” or whatever. Apologies in advance for being lame. Also: guessing on some of the dates that I wrote the stories.

Veronica’s Diary : (2005) The first “novel” I wrote. It was a MG (middle grade) story that ended up around 35,000 words written in journal format from the POV of a 13-yr old girl. It had no plot, was full of cliches and horrible sentences, and just flat sucked. My grandma really, really, really liked it.

The Sister Story : (2006) Aw. I have a soft spot for this novel. It was my first true YA novel (though I’d done many YA short stories) and ended up around 40,000 words. I told it from two POVs, from an older, “smarter” sister and a younger, “prettier” sister. Except forget those air quotes. The older sister was boring and plain-looking and the younger sister was a pretty little stupid head. They were very 2-D, but I loved them. (I’m trying to remember their names now and I can’t for the life of me… the younger sister’s name started with a C, I think.) Anyway, the story was that the younger sister’s best guy friend (Trevor – how the heck do I remember his name?) was in love with her but the younger sister didn’t believe in love and her older sister was trying to convince her to give the guy a chance and also get a guy of her own. The story was so all over the place – I had a lot happening that shouldn’t have been because I couldn’t keep it focused, the dual-narrative wasn’t working, my characters SERIOUSLY needed to be fleshed out, there were all these subplots about their different groups of friends and some vacation the sisters were taking. It was so scattered. After I finished the story I chunked it and years later realized what I needed to do was take it, tell the whole thing in the older sister’s POV, and focus the story in on the younger sister and her non-boyfriend. I want to do this someday but it doesn’t help that I’ve lost the disc I saved the original novel on (and of course the computer I had when I wrote it is old and broken beyond repair.) Nobody read this one but me.

Broken World : (2006) This was my novel in verse, about a girl, Whitney, whose parents got a divorce. Definitely YA with a really short (hello, it was verse!) word count. It wasn’t very good (maybe because I’m horrible and poetry?) but I loved it because there was just so much emotion and I really wanted to explore what was going on in this girl’s life and the emotions she was dealing with. (I love writing about big-ticket emotional issues. It’s kinda my thing.) Anyway, like with a lot of my early stuff, this was a good premise but not very thought out and ended up falling way short. Plus once I realized how SHORT it really was, I kind of let it slip away from me. Which means I didn’t edit it or attempt to query or anything.

Click My Heels : (2007) Aw, hey lil’ sof sof. THE FIRST NOVEL I QUERIED. This one. Oy. About Naomi, a 17-year old girl sick and tired of her small, dusty Texas town, who runs off to California chasing after a boy who’s recently “escaped” the same town she’s living in. This novel went through at least four titles (Ash Creek, By the Creek, Ruby Red Shoes) and my MC went through three (I think) different names. It was the first book I really really edited, the first I wanted to be **perf!** for querying. I love the premise and the story, but I don’t love the boring names everyone had. (Yeah, I think about names waaaay too much.) This book got a bunch of partial requests and at least two full requests, but, sadly, no agent. Le sigh.

The Empty Bottles: (2009) This is the novel that I’m currently querying/being rejected for. Yay! And even thinking about what to write in this little informal summary of it is making me anxious because try as I might I just can’t describe this one very well. Jenna’s mom is stumbling-though-the-door, puking-in-bars alcoholic and her boyfriend is wonderful but pushing on to a new phase in his life, which leaves her feeling alone and slightly terrified of what the future holds. The whole story takes place over three weeks, during which time Jenna breaks away from, and is pulled back to, her dysfunctional mother, culminating in a choice between caring about her mother – her only family – and seeing if she can care about herself. This book went through MAJOR edits. At first the timeline was stretched out over eight months and I compressed it into three weeks. I got rid of one character and pushed two other characters together into one. It was intense. As much as I like this book, it doesn’t look like it’s going anywhere right now. I’ve scored a whole TWO partial requests and no fulls, so I’m thinking this project might be dead in the water, though I do have a few more queries to send out once I revamp the query letter.

Sitting on Rooftops : (2009) *squishes!* I just finished editing this novel (right? right? unless I decide to do more.) and let me tell you, I ADORE IT. My favorite novel I’ve ever written. I love it so freaking much. And I haven’t written the query for it yet, but I’ve written summaries for different people. Basically: three cousins, a boy, a time capsule, and a summer of post-grief. More elaborately: (copying this from an email I wrote to a friend, yes yes): Three cousins – Grayson (the MC/narrator), Willa, and Ainsley – who grew up together, closer than sisters, are back together for a family reunion after being apart for three years. They’re sixteen years old and, along with the rest of their family, still reeling from the car accident four years ago that killed Willa’s parents and tore the family apart. For years Grayson’s been in San Francisco with her brother and dad, but now she’s back in Phoenix, back in the place she calls home, back with the two people who mean more to her than anything, and it’s proving harder than she expected for them to be whole again, especially with Ainsley trying to push her cousins away, Willa’s resurfacing grief, and Grayson’s growing feelings for Willa’s boyfriend are at odds with everything else she wants out of the summer. It’s about family and love. About how to put things back together after they fall apart and, sometimes, if it’s even possible to put them back together. I planned this novel more than I had my previous ones (but not by much) so there wasn’t as much editing as with The Empty Bottles, but it was still kind of intense. I took out at least one subplot that had been kinda crucial before, and did lots of other smaller adjustments. Mostly it was a lot of taking things out (and this novel is still, at 59,000 words, the longest I’ve written.) I love the characters and the story and the premise and pretty much everything, which scares the crap out of me, as does the prospect of writing the query letter. I hope agents love it as much as I do, but that’s a giant leap of faith.

What was I doing between Click My Heels and The Empty Bottles?

Starting and stopping another novel that I have about 20,000 words in that I’m always picking up and putting down again. I’ve also started and not finished about four or five other novels I didn’t mention.

So yeah.

That’s my writing life.

jordynface: You know when Britta tells Abed that real stories don’t have spoilers?

beccaface: yeah

jordynface: It’s at that moment that I want to punch her lights out.

The is the beginning of a novel I want to write someday, as soon as I can figure it all out in my mind.

I am scared of dying. I’m thirteen and I’m scared of dying and I don’t think this is how it’s supposed to be. My breaths are so shallow though and I feel like I can never get enough air.
If I die I will never graduate junior high, much less high school or college.
If I die I will never fall in love. I will never be kissed.
If I die I will never know my future.
I wake up crying. The corner of my pillow is soaked and I’m twisted up in these blankets and I have to stop crying so I can breathe. I sit up. I’m dizzy. I turn on the light and blink and wipe my eyes and keep breathing. I tell myself this is all I need to stay alive, that I only need to keep breathing, that my heart only needs to continue beating. I press my hand to my chest. I feel the steady thump-thump of my heart. It sounds so fine. How can it sound so fine and be so wrong? I roll over in bed, the moonlight streaming in between the slats of my blinds.

And that’s it. That’s as far as I am.

Thoughts?

Things.

• Waldo (my cat) is gone. She ran away a couple days ago and she’s never been gone this long before and I know if she could have gotten home she would have. It’s been so cold and rainy and the only reason she’s not home is she’s not coming home. I had a good cry about that today. I want Waldo back.
• I finished (I think?) editing the novel today. (Sitting on Rooftops) This is definitely good. It went from 65k to 59k (words, yo) though, which is less good.
• I’m sick, but not as sick as I was a few days ago.
• The goat’s mustache is Cameron Diaz.
• Something else I forgot.
• Finals tomorrow. Music, math, then Spanish. Wish me luck, ducks.
• In espanol my nickname is el tigre chino!
• I’ve been writing a lot of LOLSI. Some of you know what that is. Some of you don’t.

Two of these things were references from the best new television show. Love love love Community.

This is posted on my blog at the ning and I’m reposting it here so you guys can see it. Not sure if you can on the ning or not:

WORD COUNTAGE…
Total: 32,228
Today: 5,070

I KNOW IT IS A LOT. I’m finally caught up and a little ahead again, so I’m proud. BUT this comes at the cost of everything good writing should be. I think I’ve finally learned the meaning of quantity over quality. I’ve also learned the meaning of after I finish this novel I am never looking at it again it is going in the trash for serious. There are so many issues with this novel. So, so many.

Shall I enumerate?

1. The plot.
2. The characters.
3. The writing.

Dang.

Now I’ve started something (that I won’t be working on too much until Nano is over) that I hope/think will be a lot better. I actually started writing this novel before but I did it a bit differently. I’m reworking the ideas in my head and making it something I can do. Problem is, it’s really sort of dark and SRS SUBJECTS and after The Empty Bottles I thought I was done with serious issue novels, but I guess not. It has a few of the themes I’m always writing about and I just have to figure out a way to write it best. I have to work on the ages of the characters and the path that the novel will take and the fact that it’s going to be told in past tense, which is a tense I don’t work with too often. There’s also the fact that I might be telling a dual story – the THEN and NOW if you will, and I’m not quite sure how to do that or even if it’ll work for this. I’ll probably end up doing just a straight story with flashbacks, but who knows.

NOW, BACK TO THE NANO AT HAND.
I am a little bit ahead now and all my words are garbage and I’m trying, as I type, to be really, really okay with this. I’m trying to remind myself that it DOESN’T MATTER, that all I wanted out of November was to prove to myself that I could accomplish NaNoWriMo, even if it’s with a really, really crappy novel. Even if it’s 50,000 words of suck (to be honest my novel didn’t REALLY start sucking until the 25,000 mark), I will be okay with finishing, with writing so much in a month and proving to myself that I can do it.

There. That’s a healthy attitude, isn’t it?

Also: more enumeration on the problems.

They say to write what you know and I’m not exactly. I mean, I never do. Divorce crops up so often in my books that you’d think my parents had been married five times each. But with this book the main character, though I like her in a strange sort of way, isn’t someone I’d ever hang out with in real life. I can’t even relate to her emotions, which is a problem. It’s hard to make a novel about someone like that ring true when you’re, um, me.

Also: it’s not the kind of book I read. YA, yes. Contemporary, yes. But it’s a teenage love story, nothing more nothing less, and I always find myself bored with those books especially when it’s so obvious (as it is in this book) that it really is TEENAGE love and therefore INFATUATION. I don’t read many books like that because they tend to bore me. You should never write a novel that bores even you.

More on the characters: what the frick was I doing trying to write about the cool kids? I am so entirely out of my league here. If I’m going to write about the cool kids I have to make it funny, and this is not funny. This is pathetic whiny emosplosion with a touch of high school.

That’s right, folks, it’s the best of bahbahbecca. Oh, Twitter, we love you. Oh, and these are ALL from @bahbahbecca. All of them. FOLLOW HER.

• I have a major crush on Taylor Lautner. I’ve accepted and embraced this fact.
• @ninjajordyn Well your 13 year old cousin has good taste in men.
• Who has two thumbs and hates John Dewey? THIS GIRL.
• Oh and I also still hear the voice in my head when I said “Babies! AHHHHH!’ I just love babies, who doesn’t?
• Catch Phrase says: Mount Everest. I say: The place where the president’s faces are carved. FAIL.
• @ninjajordyn Thank you. I know college has done me good. =)
• @ninjajordyn You want a pickle? Whatttt?
• @ninjajordyn BABIES! YAY!
• Apparently I must not think about you if I’m over you. F that. I’m going to think about you anyways and loathe myself simultaneously.
• When texting my sister I said “Hello there sibling.” I’m cool.
• What if I just dropped out of college and became a stripper? I feel like that’d be productive.
• Sister: How do you feel? Me: Like crap, but thanks for asking Sister: Stop being sick, you’re not allowed to go to the hospital. Not cool.
• Every time it tells me that my tweet failed to sent I get very angry at twhirl. Two seconds later after it sent I’m back to loving it.
• @ninjajordyn Suck it up cupcake. When you’re still sick two weeks from now then we can talk lol.
• My roommate just whispered in a very weird voice “I need to wash my body.” Crazyyy stuff going down in Ponce.
• @koriannespeaks So holy crap on a cracker Terri is crazycakes/wackadoodle/crazy nutballs.
• I always make an effort to say funny shit via twitter, it has finally paid off because I have been favorited. haha.
• Pretzels. They are saving my life.
• @jordynface I love how I get the full experience of your thought process although you’re perfectly capable to edit it to make it less crazy.
• This woman needs to stop working at Sheets & Things and get a real job. Then she can complain about not having money. #glee
• @jordynface Sometimes you talk like yoda.
• @jordynface I don’t see the box.
• @jordynface I found the box.
• I’m making Colleen’s pants vibrate by updating twitter right now.
• I just saw a sign that says “Old Beach Rd” and the sign under it says “No Beach Access.”

Oh dear, universe.

I don’t even know what to blog about. I’m stuck.

I’m tired.

I’m really tired. I’m really not looking forward to school today. Haven’t been in in weeeeks (two. maybe one and a half?) and I’m a little scared of going back. One of my professors already told me he dropped me (and I’m like askdhfduaioudkjd dude, I told you I was sick and I told you I was going to meet with my pediatric cardiologist and I told you I have a stupid 504 form and I AM A MASTER AT MAKING UP WORK, PLEASE DON’T DROP ME!) (rant over.) and I’m a little worried about my other professors dropping me too. Or, you know, the very real possibility that I might now fail my classes.

can.not.fail.omg.

HAIKUS! I have more to write still, but…

Monopoly is
only a game unless you
aren’t the one winning.

This is a haiku.
It’s about chocolate milk.
Yum, chocolate milk.

Medical dramas:
they make hospitals seem cool.
Hospitals aren’t cool.

I know. I still have more to write. I need to do haikus on the following topics (these are from the long list of topics I suggested for Khy’s research paper…)

Star Trek
The Beatles
Kleptomaniacs or Polygamy
Morse Code
Loch Ness Monster
Disappearance of Amelia Earhart

Dad: Aaah.
Me: What are we aaahing?
Dad: You cleaned the kitchen.
Me: …you were actually here.
Dad: Really?
Me: Yeah.
Dad: Did not pay any attention.

In other news, I’m a couple thousand words behind in Nanowrimo, I’m almost done watching ALL of Arrested Development, I’m still not loving the show Chuck but I continue to watch it in the background of my writing time, and this article is meeping hilarious. Wow. That was bad even for me.

CLUB SAUCE!!