Stage 1: “I’ve got this.” You arm yourself with all of the essentials: a red pen (gel pens if you’re editing a YA novel), snacks (those extra cheddar Goldfish are really easy to shove into your mouth while you’re writing, and Lindt truffles make great rewards as you finish typing up edited chunks of chapters), Post-its, coffee, and headphones. Then you dive in. You figure you’ll be done in about a week, right?

Stage 2: “I have to type all of this?!” You finish reading through a hard copy of your first draft. You’ve made notes on things that need to change, crossed out sections that don’t work or are redundant, circled typos and blatant grammar errors. You’ve got your trusty copy holder or something else to prop up the manuscript while you type up the second draft… and you begin. Then reality sets in. You have to type up twenty-eight whole chapters.

Stage 3: “I’ll be done in four days.” You break up your manuscript into chunks. You create an “editorial” calendar to keep you on track. You have it figured that you’ll be done typing up the edits and revisions in four days, well before your deadline. Hell, you’ll have a whole week after typing it to read through it again and make sure you didn’t miss anything.

Stage 4: “I really have to type all of this?!” You discover that it takes hours to type up seven chapters at a time while reading notes and obeying your inner editor. Lindt truffles become an essential reward system. You stay on schedule, though… for the first two days.

Stage 5: “I’m only behind by three chapters.” You start falling behind. Real life throws a  couple of things your way. You run out of underwear and have to do some laundry. Work decides to schedule you six days in a row, two of which are overnight. “Three chapters” becomes “six,” and you take a look at your “editorial” calendar. You tell yourself you still have time, and you adjust your schedule.

Stage 6: “Pfft. I still have a whole four days!” Somehow, your deadline creeps up on you. You’ve fallen more behind. You wonder why you wrote such long freaking chapters. This actually doubles as a good thing, because suddenly you have a super ability to cut out the crap. You only have one chocolate left. All of the other snacks are gone. You’re out of underwear again. (Why doesn’t the laundry do itself?!) You start forgoing feeding yourself.

Stage 7: “I’m in the home stretch!” You’ve got about one and a half days until your deadline, and only six chapters left to type. No problem. The end is in sight. You may be out of snacks, but it’s all good. You’ve got this. Why were you even worried in the first place?

Stage 8: “I totally forgot about the pitch!” You realize, as you’re falling asleep the “night” before the deadline, that you forgot to write the most important part of your novel: the pitch. It’s already 3:15am and you need to get some sleep because your alarm is going to go off at 9am and you have to finish typing up four chapters or so, depending on how much you cut and rearrange. You fall asleep in a terrified state, somewhat like a deer trying to sleep while surrounded by five camps of hunters. When you wake up, you remember that not only did you forget the pitch, but you also forgot that the first round of judging for the contest you’re entering the novel into is solely judged on the pitch you forgot to write. You hug your cat and cry.

Stage 9: “I’ve cut too much!” You spend a couple of hours writing your pitch after doing some researching and prewriting, then you send it to a few people for critique. You turn your attention back to the meat of your project: Getting that bad boy typed up so the judges actually have a novel to read. Finally, after hours of typing, rearranging, and sweating, you near the finish line. You check the guidelines so that you can format… and then realize the minimum word count for submission is 50,000 and your novel is about 400 words under that. You stare in disbelief at the screen. You haven’t come this far only to be slayed by 400 silly little words! You rant to your cat. You rant to your mom. You call your best friend. You wonder why you’re even doing this in the first place. Then you return to your desk…

Stage 10: “Holy shit… I actually did it.” …You somehow make it happen. You squeeze another 400 words out of your poor, exhausted brain, run the manuscript through your formatting checklist, and begin the submission process. Somewhere in all of this, you enter Stage 9.5, a state of pure numbness. You have no idea what is going on. You just go through the submission motions. Then, when it’s all over, you slowly but surely start to relax. You realize that you actually did it. And then you go to bed, hugging your pillow.

♦

As crazy as this might sound, I want to edit another novel now. I feel like a champion! I actually finished about five hours before the deadline, which for me is amazing. I really thought I’d be working until 11:50pm (the deadline was 11:59pm). I finished in time to go watch the second half of the Super Bowl at my mother-in-law’s. I even had time to grab McDonald’s on the way over.

Please click here to sign up for my email newsletter* to get exclusive updates on my contest entry. I’m sending out an email later today with the details on which novel I submitted (hint: it starts with “Sade,” how the contest works, and how you can help me win.

♦

*You’ll also get updates on my other stories. Caution: There may be silliness.

For this recipe, you will need the following ingredients:

• boneless chicken breast
• eggs
• flour
• bread crumbs (optional)
• vegetable shortening (or vegetable oil; shortening makes it crispier)
• salt and pepper

…and the following “fancy” equipment:

• two bowls
• frying pan
• tongs

I honestly have no idea how much chicken I fried this batch. My mom had defrosted it and had planned on doing something with it, but she had homework (she’s going for her Master’s), and didn’t know quite what to do with it, so I volunteered to fry it up.

Put your frying pan — that’s right, you don’t need a deep fryer! — on medium heat.

Slice up your chicken breast into pieces that look kind of like chicken tenders, but aren’t too thin. Trust me, it is a pain in the ass trying to fry a thick piece of chicken. You only really know it’s done when you’ve put it in your mouth… and my former Culinary instructors would throw something at me if they heard me say that.

(Side note: That’s right. I went to Culinary school. I attended a tech school for high school and my focus was Culinary Arts. I did it for four years, went through NOCTI and came out alive, graduated with Culinary Arts on my diploma… and decided to go to college for web design. See? I am all over the place… but it’s given me a lot of great experiences.)

I didn’t take too many pictures because, well, you try taking pictures with your hands coated in egg and flour!

After you’ve sliced up your chicken breasts, gently add some shortening to your frying pan.  I say “gently” because if your heat is too high, it could back-splash and you’d end up in the ER wishing you’d gotten to eat before waiting behind all of the one-year-olds with colds. If it starts to melt like ice on a sidewalk during summer, you’re good to go. Go ahead and add a little more shortening. You want to lightly coat the bottom of the pan with maybe ¼ an inch of oil.

While your shortening gets hot, set up your bowls. If you’ve ever tried to make fried chicken at home and it didn’t come out crispy or just didn’t have enough flavor, it might be because you didn’t use the two bowl method. (Yes, it has a better name. No, I don’t remember it. I learned this years ago!) Put your flour, salt, and pepper into the first bowl. I added a little breadcrumbs to mine this last time to see if it would help get the skin crispier. It did, so if you have them on hand, give it a shot. I added ¼ as many bread crumbs as I had flour in my bowl. Basically, I eyeballed it all, as usual. Mix the flour, salt, pepper, and breadcrumbs with your fingers. I used fresh ground peppercorns. They make a huge difference in any dish, but especially in fried chicken.

Next set up your wet bowl. Crack two or three eggs — depending on how much chicken you’re frying — and add more salt and pepper. Whisk with a fork until it’s got the consistency of orange juice with too much pulp. It should be that same color, too, except with little flecks of pepper in it.

I learned this two-step dipping method in high school, and it really makes a huge difference. First, decide which hand is going to be your “wet” hand, and which one will be “dry.” This is important because it’ll help you dip faster, get your hands (a little) less messy, and leave you one hand to use the tongs with.

Toss a piece of chicken into the flour bowl. Use the fingers of your “dry” hand to coat it evenly. Then, with your “dry” hand, pick it up and put it in the egg bowl. Use your “wet” hand to coat it evenly, then with your “wet” hand, toss it back into the flour bowl. Coat it in flour again evenly with your “dry” hand, then use your “dry” hand to gently put it in the frying pan. Make sure to splash away from your body, meaning put the piece of chicken down so that the back half of it falls away from you.

Repeat this process until your pan is full.

Note that I really don’t have that much oil in my pan.

This part is kind of boring. You have to keep checking the undersides of the chicken. When they are golden brown, it’s time to flip:

Repeat for the second side. While the second side is sizzling away, grab a plate, load it up with paper towels, and put it within reach. Once those pieces of chicken get close to crispy, there’s a thin line between “extra crispy” and “ew, this shit is burnt.” When you’ve got them nice and golden brown, use your tongs to remove them from the pan and put them on top of the paper towels. The paper towels will soak up the extra grease, and you can throw another paper towel on top to keep them warm if you’re still frying.

I can’t say enough how fucking delicious this was with bread crumbs. I’m going to have to experiment with different brands, though, or figure out how to adjust the flavor a little.

What’s your favorite fast food fried chicken? I love me some Bojangles’, but they’re a southern joint so I haven’t had them in years. They blow KFC out of the water. Popeyes is good, too, because of its Cajun twist, and we actually have one up here (though only at the TA, which makes sense because truckers from the south would feel more at home). Recently, this mom-and-pop drive thru opened. I can’t remember what they’re called, but if you’re in my neck of the woods, they’re on Thomaston Ave, in the same plaza with the thrift store, Wendy’s, and Dunkin Donuts.

♦

Check Out My Other Recipes

• Basic White Cake
• Pasta with Garden Sauce
• Rotelle and Broccoli Alfredo
• Leftover Smoothie

SOPA is an American bill that could very easily become a law if we let it. Even worse, it will affect the entire internet, so even if you live in another country, you will feel the repercussions… and your country may even decide to pass a similar law.

My site will return to normal at midnight EST on Thursday. Most sites are participating between 8am and 8pm on Wednesday, but I feel that it’s important to blackout the entire day.

Please take a few minutes to learn more about SOPA, its effects,
and how you can help stand against internet censorship »

• 5 cubes of ice
• 1 nearly ripe banana
• 2 cups of strawberry banana yogurt

By “cups,” I mean those little plastic cups the yogurt comes in, not the actual measurement. The yogurt was some “extra creamy” bullshit that wasn’t appetizing on its own at all, but I thought it’d make a great smoothie. I broke up the ice in my blender using the “Hack Ice to Pieces” setting.

Then I cut up the banana into smaller pieces and dumped in the yogurt. If you’re into measuring, the banana came to about 1 cup.

I blended it all together until it was nice and smooth, like this:

Then I poured it into a summery cup, added a straw, and voila!

Don’t ever let anyone tell you that you need some fancy ass smoothie mix. The yogurt I hated on its own made a kickass smoothie. It probably cost me about $2 to make, if that.

What’s your favorite smoothie flavor? I’m a whore for strawberry banana smoothies. When I was sixteen and worked at the mall, I had one almost every day.

♦

Check Out My Other Recipes

• Pasta with Garden Sauce
• Rotelle and Broccoli Alfredo

♦

am still in the middle of a cleaning and editing induced hiatus, but while discussing this week’s budget with Mike today, I wondered how everyone else manages their and their partner’s money. I don’t think there is any one “right” or “wrong” way to do it, but I’m always curious about how other people do things, anyway, so I’d like to invite some of you to guest post here about how you do it. I am looking for five bloggers to guest post over the period of Monday the 9th through Friday the 13th one five-day period, as soon as I have rounded enough posts up. If you are interested, please shoot me an email at liz@elizabethbarone.net with the following:

• your name
• the URL of your blog
• a 300 word or three paragraph guest post in the body of the email
• a brief paragraph about you and your blog
• a photo of you (optional)

If more than five people are interested, I’ll gladly make the series longer.

Please help me spread the word by tweeting the following or posting it to Facebook or Google+:

How do you manage your and your partners finances? Guest posts wanted! http://wp.me/p1Uv9M-1ys

♦

PS: I’ve spent the last week reorganizing my space and cannot wait to show you what I’ve accomplished. I also have a lot to tell you in general! I hope you are enjoying the new year and having fun with your goals.

I hope you all have a lovely time with your close ones, and I wish you a happy New Year. I’ll see you in 2012.

What are your plans for the holidays? Mike and I are spending Christmas Eve with my dad’s side of the family, and then we’re spending Christmas Day with his side of the family and my mom’s side of the family. I have no idea what we’re doing for New Year’s Eve, but I hope I won’t be sick like I was last year!

♦

*I’m building a website for my brother-in-law for Christmas. I can’t wait to show it to you!

I don’t advise separating your life from your writing. Aches and pains aren’t thrilling, but they are human, and humanity in a writer is never a bad thing.

It changed how I looked at my little corner of the web, and also how I looked at myself, my life, and my writing. I’ve been on this quite extraordinary journey throughout the last six months or maybe even year, and I have this awareness of myself that I’ve never had before now. It’s freeing and empowering. It’s also, however, changed this blog (among other things in my life, but that’s another post for another day).

At first, the change in this blog scared me. I wondered if any of the people I’d met through blogging would continue to read it. It terrified me that maybe they wouldn’t like the new stories I wanted to tell. I decided I want to help other creatives — writers, artists, musicians, etc — market themselves, as well as continue to tell my own stories about my life. I worried about how the two would blend… and then I started thinking about De’s words. “Aches and pains [...] are human.” That’s what really stuck with me. Aches and pains are what get us from Point A to Point B in our own personal journeys through life. We might not see it at the time, but when we look back, it’s amazing. Or at least, it is for me.

I want to share my aches and pains with you, in the hopes that my experiences will help you get through your own aches and pains. This includes my chronic illness, my depression, trial and error with digital marketing, and everything related to writing. See, these things are all a huge part of me, and I have learned that I can’t hide the ugly if I want to show the beauty.

At some point, you have to make a decision. Boundaries don’t keep other people out. They fence you in. Life is messy. That’s how we’re made. So, you can waste your life drawing lines. Or you can live your life crossing them.

–Meredith Grey, Grey’s Anatomy

My best friend has this tattooed on her back, and what I love about it most is that it can be interpreted in so many ways, and the more I grow, the more interpretations I see. This is an important lesson in writing, too; Robert Kirkman frequently tells impatient readers of The Walking Dead that the highs wouldn’t seem so high if there weren’t any lows in the story.

What This Blog Is

• A chronicle of my journey from writer to author
• A chronicle of my life with chronic illness
• A chronicle of my struggle with depression
• A chronicle of my marketing lessons learned

What This Blog Isn’t

• A dumping ground for negativity; there is always negativity, but I will not share it just for the sake of being negative, no matter how tempting it may seem.

I share other things here, too, like book reviews and music I’m currently digging. (Speaking of, you should check out Washington. She’s a solo act from Australia, and I’m a little in love. She’s a little jazzy, a little ska, a little alternative, and her song “Holy Moses” hooked me from the first time I heard it.) My main goal here, however, is to chronicle my journey from writer to author, and to help other creatives market themselves online.

What’s the “point” of your blog? Is it just for fun? Is it for business? Is it a chronicle of something? Is it a mix?

How the hell do you make curly hair rock and roll?

He leaned against the frame of the bathroom door as she scrunched her hair with her fingers and then scrunched up her face. “Stop it, you’re beautiful,” he said. She made a face and he sighed as she leaned in closer to the mirror. He took a few steps further into the bathroom and sat down on the closed toilet seat. She snatched a shot glass full of bobby pins and pulled back and pinned sections of hair, then stood back and studied her head once more.

“That looks cute,” he said.

“That’s the problem!” she snapped, and yanked out each of the pins one by one.

He sighed as she began again, and glanced at the clock. He shrugged, stood, and went to find something to do until she finished.

Throw in a mass power outage and knock out most of the city’s traffic lights, and you get Extra Stupid Thursday. Without the aid of electronics, though, people forget that Thursday is already gone, and Stupid Thursday is extended to every day.

“What is so hard about acting like you’re at a stop sign when the lights at the intersection are out?!” I kept saying on Saturday, the day of the storm… and on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday… Fast forward to today, and the stupid is strong within everyone.

Once power is completely restored to Connecticut, though, you can expect Stupid Thursday to return to its regularly scheduled programming. At least I always know when it’s Thursday.

Go crazy trying to figure it all out?

Problem: I want to focus on writing as a career. I love all of my old blog posts, but moving them is becoming too time consuming; there are HUNDREDS of posts, all dating back since 2008. I have wasted the last few days moving some things around, and haven’t gotten any actual writing done.

Solution: ?!?!?!?!

Help. What would you do?