Day 140-142: Revisions! Revisions! Revisions!

I have placed two pictures side by side. One is the inside of a Lucky Charms cereal box. The other is Eleanor Roosevelt looking like a pissed off teenager who hates Lucky Charms. Oh Ellie, you saucy minx.

I have put these two pictures together, because they perfectly sum up the last three days. My life has been filled with badass people from the past who did badass things and every sugary junk food I can stuff into my mouth. See, I've got this thing where if I'm eating, I write better. I don't know why I don't turn into a bloated pontoon boat every time I revise anything, but I guess it's because I forget to eat actual meals.

I've been waking up, writing, eating, writing while eating, eating while writing, and then falling asleep. Somewhere in there, I'm going to my part-time job and carpooling Alex to work. So I'm still a functioning human being, but revisions.

The revisions have been a mixture of feeling amazing and feeling miserable. I go from crying over something that happens to one of my characters, to just wishing all of my characters were dead. I will admit, though, this is the first time that I've felt like my characters are real. Up to this point, I've been dragging them through the mud, attempting to galvanize them into a group of people who can function on their own. And now they're doing it! I don't know if it's because I'm just spending more time with them, or if I finally have a car that allows me to listen to character playlists while I drive, but I've turned a corner.

Eleanore would have liked my crew.

I think one of the most transformative characters in all of this has been the main character. This kid started off as the absolute opposite of me. He's mechanically and scientifically inclined, he has a great knack for working with his hands in practical use. He has ADD, he thinks in spirals, and he is a seventeen-year-old boy (although he'd remind you that he does in fact turn eighteen halfway through the book). 

But the more time I spent with him, the more I found things in common with him. Although I have to pause and research for two hours to get one good line out of him when it comes to *SCIENCE!*, I know how he feels when he wants to be someone special. There's a lot of channeling the little snot I was when I was a teenager, how I thought I knew better than everyone around me, how much I wanted to stand out, even if it meant losing everything else. His ego is my ego, his passion is my passion, his absolute condescending adolescent tone toward his father was my absolute condescending adolescent tone toward my father.

I promise we both are likable people.

And the girl main character? Well, she was always awesome and I always got her. Am I right, Ellie?

Now the hard stuff happens. Trying to put the words right. Trying to get the thing out there. There's still a long ways to go.

And in the time it took to write this blog post, I ate two cookies.