Friday Review: The Awesome by Eva Darrows

I first heard about The Awesome on twitter when someone tweeted the first line, "I am not the asskicker people think of when they hear 'monster hunter.'" I was smitten from that moment and bought it straight away though it took a few months after the purchase to actually read it. 

The Awesome is about Maggie, an apprentice monster hunter, and her pro hunter mom, Janice. To become a true hunter Maggie has to lose her virginity or else she can't hunt vampires. For rough and tumble Maggie this seems like a hunt she's going to struggle with. 

This book surprised me in the best possible ways. At one point I almost put it down because I was convinced I knew where this book was going to go and I didn't want to read the inevitable 'Oh, you only wanted to be with me because you needed to not be a virgin! I hate you!' fight that I was sure was on the horizon. 

I'm so glad I kept reading because the book blasted that out of the water in the very next chapter and veered into more fun and interested territory than I had imagined. Maggie is great and with a voice so distinctive that I kept thinking about it for days after I'd finished the book. She reminded me of someone I'd known in high school, someone both confident and trying to figure themselves out. I adored her. 

The range of characters is also a fun group. Ian, the boy of the story, is a fun, sweet guy but Janice is really the star of the book. The heart of the book circles around this unusual, but still very real mother daughter duo and their relationships with each other and the world around them. It's a really fun family with the same drama of any other family, just with added vampire and zombie issues. Lauren became a clear favorite towards the end of the book. 

I loved the journey of Maggie and how she ultimately conquered the monsters around her. I really hope to see more of Maggie in future books.  

You can buy The Awesome here or at your local indie bookstore. 

The whooshing sound of deadlines

“I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.” ― Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt

Most people have a love hate (or a hate hate relationship) with deadlines. Knowing a project has an end can be motviating, terrifying and just a little bit of both. I love deadlines. Knowing that I have a certain amount of time to complete a project brings out my inner racer and I want to beat that deadline. It also brings out my inner procrastinator and I want to wait as long as possible to start. It's a terrible combination, like tying my shoelaces together right before a big race, and then crawling along the race instead of running.

Finding what works best for you is a big part of the creative life, but whether you like them or not, deadlines are always going to come into play. Whether their deadlines you give yourself, or deadlines hoisted upon you by outside forces, they're going to come for you. You need to learn to work with them even if you might not like them.

Work backwards from your deadline. If something is due in four weeks, figure out what you need to have finished every day to meet that goal. Need 300 pages edited in 4 weeks? 300 pages divided by 4 weeks ( 28 days) is roughly 11 pages a day. Breaking it down into bitesize pieces often helps make a project seem less overwhelming than it actually is. You can also use it to predict how long a project will take. If you're trying to write a 90,000 word novel and know you average 1,500 words a day then you can estimate that it will take you 60 days to finish that project. Knowing your own speed and creating your own timeline oftens helps you stay in control of your projects and keep moving forward even when you're not sure what to do.

Deadlines are great because they give you a target to aim for. They make me feel like I know where the goal post is and how long it's going to take me to get there. Without those, I end up lost and confused, wandering around without any clear direction. I'm easily distracted and I need the focus that a deadline gives me.

Some people however seem to shut down the second a deadline enters the picture. There's some sort of mental shut down that makes deadlines into the enemy. I think the best thing to do here is keep moving forward and writing the day away. There's no shame in that; you've got to work on things nd see them through to the end.

Writing to a deadline is one of the things I love about NaNoWriMo. It's got a clear goal post, it's well-defined, and easy to know if you made it or not. Did you write 50,000 words by the end of November, yes or no? It's a goal post that's easy to define and you know what it requires. How many words a day do you need to write? What do you need to change to make that happen?

Knowing the goal let's you adjust your other needs and balance to find what to do. Set a dealine and see what happens.