practice makes...well, persistence, for one thing. and probably improvement.

my second loaf of homemade bread, better than the first

I used to be a sandwich artist.  Back when the bread had a u-shaped notch in it and there were no cucumbers or spinach or avocados or even a choice of cheeses.  So when I first started, everything was a mystery--slicing tomatoes was clumsy and a bit dangerous, cutting a pan of bread took me an hour (and six bandages).  But as with most learned skills, practice made perfect--or at least, practice made pretty good and pretty efficient and pretty predictable. 

Writing is...a little different.  My hands could learn the best way to pick up the precise amount of lettuce to spread on a footlong sub for a perfect sandwich, but there isn't a formula for writing a novel, or even for getting a first draft written.  Writers talk about being "plotters or pantsers", they talk about outlining, they talk about fast-drafting and taking it slow.  They write out of order or they write only after six years of intensive research and planning.  They write on napkins, or post-its, or in longhand with a sparkly gel pen.  They write a first draft that sounds like the author talking to himself about what the book will eventually be.  They write crappy first drafts, comforting themselves that they can fix all in revisions, or they write with great care, hoping to not waste their time writing unnecessary words in their first drafts that will later be cut.

And however they do it, a writer gets a novel written.  It might be brilliant.  And the next time they do it--same process, same everything--it might not work at all.  In fact, the only thing that might work for that next book is to do things in a completely opposite way.  It's anything but predictable.

From here on I have to get personal.  I can't pretend that I can tell anyone how to write a book or what the best writer's process is because the truth is?  I don't even know what my own process is.  It changes with every book I write.  And while it can sometimes be scary and frustrating because...um...aren't I getting any better at this by now????...it can also be exciting and gratifying because...um...I get so bored with jobs that are the same all the time!  That pan of bread that took me a an hour and six bandages to cut later took me five minutes with my eyes closed.  But it also took all the joy and beauty out of my life forever.  (Okay, hyperbole aside, that's not even true.  I love the smell of fresh bread and I also like knives...but my point is repetitive jobs kill my soul.)

So.  Let me tell you about my processes for some of the books I've written.  My first novel took me six years to write.  (Actually, I'm really fuzzy about dates because I gave birth to two children in that period of my life and probably didn't sleep for more than three consecutive hours at any point, but yeah, it was like six years from start to finish.  Ish.)  The novel was a book for adults about a woman who is learning to paint but finds herself only able to paint pictures of public restrooms.  Stop judging.  I only pitched it like that once or twice.

Anyway, for that book, I knew my character.  I spent, oh, fifty-some pages getting to know her.  I had an idea of what might happen in the book, but I'd get to that later.  Every day, I revised everything I had written up until that part, and then I'd go on and write another page or two.  It was sort of like I was writing by the seat of my pants, and that was exciting, but the whole time I knew exactly where it was leading.  I knew the climax of the book, and I knew how it would end.  I can't actually remember how much it changed from that original vision, and I can't bring myself to read it to find out, but really, it doesn't matter.  Having the ending in mind was what allowed me to pull through the book to the end.  And finishing that draft was the miracle moment--the accomplishment that assured me that I could write an actual book, the accomplishment that still reassures me every time I sit down to write--I can end this!  Except.  It was messy and unwieldy.  Was there a plot? Maybe, if you squint.

My second book, about a boy who steals his history teacher's car, was like...I planned that book out within an inch of its life.  I had a notebook filled with plot diagrams, and I knew every scene and how it would lead to the climax and then what would happen afterward.  I wrote the first draft in less than a month, and the pace was like a race car flying along.  Writing a book has never felt easier. So I was like, OH OKAY! From now on when I write a book I need to know everything that happens, and it will be so much easier and better!  Except.  Later I realized that the book was so thin...it felt like I could still see the little plot diagram there beneath the surface.  Also I hated the simplicity of its themes and how...direct it was.  Back to the drawing board, process-wise.

I wrote another book.  This one, at that time called The Dharma Bum Business, but now known as KISS THE MORNING STAR!  Yay, happy little book!  I took about nine months to first draft this, and it was a wonderful and frustrating experience.  I knew I wanted a strong plot structure, but I also knew I wanted layers and depth and emotional connections and complex themes and gray areas and also there was this little problem with my characters who absolutely wouldn't do anything I intended them to do and did absolutely everything they could to surprise me on the page so that I scrambled to align the ending I envisioned to their journey.  I ended up writing three very different endings for the book--vastly different from each other--so different I can't even imagine how I got from one ending to the other without hopelessly unraveling the whole story.  And then I changed the point of view.  I've cut so many scenes and added so many others from the first draft...I've changed the geographical path of Anna and Kat's road trip by about a thousand miles.  It wasn't easy, but it was totally worth it...and it taught me a million lessons about writing that I hope I'll be able to remember for every other book I write.

I've written two more complete first drafts and two more partial works-in-progress since then, and I have to say, my process has changed--I still spend some time plotting and scribbling notes and noodling about with character voices and researching before beginning a draft, but I have less of a focus on what exactly happens and more of a focus on the emotional journey of my characters, the stakes and the conflicts they face, and what parts of their struggles are universal and will resonate with readers.  I've started writing a pitch before I get too far in, to sort of sell the idea to myself, and to focus on the concept--what I'm trying to say.  I write some parts fast and some parts agonizingly slow.  I write a lot of so-called "unnecessary" words--words and scenes and whole chapters I will hack from the manuscript at a later date--and while it may seem inefficient (and I hope to get better at figuring out where my story really begins, for example), for me, I think writing those words really is important, even if it's not necessary for anyone to ever read them.  I'm getting a tiny bit better at figuring out which of the words in my book are those words, too.  A tiny bit. 

I can't predict the exact process that will help me arrive at a perfect sandwich first draft, but I'm getting better at figuring out the things I need to know before I start and the things I'll figure out as I go...the questions I should ask before I begin and the questions that will keep me moving on to the next scene...the times I should write fast and sloppy, trusting revision to fix it later, and the times I should go back and fine-tune some of what I've already written in order to make it feel worth it to go on...the times when I should follow my characters into unexpected places and the times I need to wrestle them back onto the plot diagram.

And I hope that, even though I can't write a first draft with my eyes closed yet (or indeed, without needing multiple bandages, but that's just because I'm a klutz), I am improving.

How about you?  Do you first draft with the same process, or is it messy and evolving, too?  Do you plot or go by the seat of the pants?  Do you need to know the ending or do you let the events unfold?  What questions do you need to know the answer to before you begin? 

Dear Diary Blog-a-Rama

Ah, vacation. Where I get a little glimpse into just how much I can actually get done when I don’t have to spend like sixty hours of each week working. Speaking of which…the two bags full of papers that must be graded this week glare at me from the corner of the couch. “It’s Tuesday,” they say. They have a pretty menacing aura about them, to be honest.

Writing. TDBB is novel #2, and I just passed the 25 K mark yesterday evening. Or maybe it was early this morning. When I don’t have to get to work in the morning, I can stay up until my late night creative streak wanes. I’ve always been a night person. Anyway, in the loosest of senses, TDBB is about two girls who go on a road trip after graduating from high school, and at 23 K, I finally got them to leave for the road trip. I am enjoying my characters and their overall journey, but I was a little curious if they were ever going to actually go on this mythical road trip.

I still have no clue if what I’m writing is YA or adult fiction or what, but I think I’m aiming closer to the 90-100 K mark, so it’s all sort of slow and steady. They are in the Badlands right now, and one of my main characters just pulled a gun on some creepy guys. David had fun filling me in on all the details I might need for that scene.

Writing my secret santa story was a fun detour from the seriousness of TDBB. My prompt was that I had to write fantasy (I don’t think I’ve ever honestly finished a story that was fantasy, at least not since elementary school…although I’ve read a fair amount of fantasy, I haven’t really ever written it.) The other requirements were that it needed to have a strong male character, and there wasn’t supposed to be any romance. That’s sort of an anti-requirement, actually. I had no clue what to write about.

So I started writing about a seventh grade boy named Drew who was a faerie going through puberty. Except that he doesn’t know he’s a faerie. And he has zits that explode all over bullies, turning them into enormous green tadpoles. All in all, pretty silly. As usual, I have a terrible time writing an actual SHORT story. Everything I write seems to want to expand into its own book. I read the story, called “When Puberty Hits,” to my seventh grade homebase, and they laughed at it and asked me when I was going to write the next chapter. And so I have a middle-grade fantasy novel in the works.

And, as though I need more unfinished works-in-progress, I can’t stop working on another little idea, also fantasy, strangely enough. This one takes place in Duluth (or at least, one of the universes resembles Duluth) and has seagulls who can talk. Sort of.

Somewhere in the middle of all this, I need to get my new iPod working, figure out my internet challenges, and find something to cook the kids for lunch. It sure would help if I had actually gone grocery shopping last night as I was supposed to, but I did have fun seeing M and L at the Irish Pub! I can’t help it that my car didn’t want to stop at the grocery store on the way home!

the prodigal blogger

Yeah, so things have been a little crazy, what with the teaching and the writing and the life stuff. My goal was always that I would blog at least once a week, but I sure do like it when I show up at this page more like once per day. But then I start to realize that I am really not all that interesting on a day to day basis, and when I sit down to compose something that at least makes a stab at being entertaining, I realize that oh, no, I have to make lunches for tomorrow, or my mother-in-law is coming to babysit and I really should clean the house a bit. I discover that the laundry has been sitting, clean and folded, in laundry baskets placed at odd intervals around the house in some kind of crazy, anti-feng shui design nowhere near the little dresser drawers that once I neatly labelled with little pictures of socks and trousers.

I've been sending the little novel out to agents, and my inbox has already seen its share of rejections reading "Dear Author" and even a couple with my name in them. I have had one request for a partial (rejected) and one request for a full manuscript (still in progress). I'm amazed by how much time I can spend tweaking my query letter, researching agents, formatting emails, and tracking everything in my pretty little color-coded spreadsheet. This, along with the other stuff, has made work on the new novel a little slow, but I'm still plodding away at it.

And now, before you fall asleep to my prosaic excuses and status updates, here's a funny little exchange the Jabberwock entertained us with when I got home from work this evening.

Jabber: Dad? Is Luke Skywalker really real, only he lives on the other side of the planet?

D: Well, no, Jabber. Luke Skywalker is a character. He's fictional. In addition, if he did exist, he would be not just on the other side of the planet, but in a whole different galaxy. That's like far, far away across outer space!

Jabber: Um, but Dad, what if people thought Luke Skywalker was just a character, but really, they just hadn't ever met him. And he was real.

D: Haha, no he's made up. He's fiction, a character in a movie.

Jabber: (big serious eyes) Well, I hate to tell you this, but I've seen him, Dad. Because, you know, I growed up on the other side of the planet, and he was there. And I saw him. And he's so real.

Me: When exactly did you grow up on the other side of the planet?

J: Right after I was born, somebody drived me there to the other side of the planet, and that's where I spent my time until I came back to you. And while I was gone, I saw Luke Skywalker.

iPod Envy and Teacher Talk

I have iPod envy, I admit it. Tonight I was at the gym, working out extra hard because I haven't been there in over a week and my diet has been a pretty steady stream of pizza and candy, and everyone around me was plugged into one. Me, I don't even have a portable CD player. What is my problem. Also, I can't read on the elliptical--too bouncy. So instead of doing anything entertaining to my brain during that half hour (or forty-five minutes, if I can convince myself to keep going) I settle for watching the display on the machine and coveting my neighbors' technology.

Ooh, look, I burned another calorie! Only 17 minutes and 45 seconds left on this joyride. No, wait, 35 seconds. Hey, maybe I should see how many steps per minute I'm doing. Oh, 158. No, 144. No, 152. Huh. Fascinating. All right. Two more calories for the win! Ooh, Ooh, I should check my heartrate!

Yeah, I need some music, or a nice classic being read to me off of librivox.org, a podcast of This American Life, c'mon, anything but this. OOH, look! It said my workout was 10% complete! Wheeee!

So anyway, in the absence of entertainment, my brain uses this time to mull over ideas (when it's not watching digital numbers slowly flipping). Sometimes I write my blog post while pretend jogging away. Sometimes I work through a plot hole in my novel. Lately, I have also been spending quite a bit of time working over ways to increase my patience with the two little ones. With very little success, but you know. Last night I actually spent a good portion of my workout making a mental list of things that need to be cleaned in my home because they have surpassed my own low standards of disgustability. (So today I staged a mini-nervous-breakdown and asked my daycare provider to watch both boys for the morning while I cleaned my bathroom and organized all of the boys' clothes...damn, it's amazing how fast they outgrow stuff, and I've got to stay on top of the organizational system or I'll miss a whole box of second-hand clothing until it's too late and it's already too small!)

Tonight, though, something unprecedented for the summer happened, and although it made me a little bit excited, it also made me very much sad. While I was bouncing along, my brain landed on an idea for my 7th graders to do as a writing assignment. Can you believe it? SCHOOL THOUGHTS. And this wasn't only like, "Hey, I think when we read A Day No Pigs Would Die, I think I'll have them do this rite of passage assignment, only a little different than I did last year. NO. This was like, planning out groups and arranging for the use of the video editing iMacs, and putting together a faux reality television show in my classroom. This was true inspiration.

TOO BAD IT'S AUGUST!!!

Ugh. Oh, well. This is one of the stranger mysteries of summer vacation, I guess. Every year, well except my second year, when honestly I was still burned out from the first one, I find myself actually getting interested in the idea of education once again, even though I hardly believed it was possible a month ago. Inspiration creeps up on me.

Don't get me wrong. I'm very loathe to go back to work right now. I am in the middle of a very exciting round of edits on my novel, feeling really happy about it, loving my routine of late nights and coffee in the morning, and mostly even enjoying being around my children and my husband. I am really, REALLY not looking forward to that part of teaching that leaves me constantly feeling like I'll never get caught up, always racing to get seven thousand things done in four minutes, standing half my life away in front of the copy machine, and grading those goddamn papers. My life is nice right now without homework.

BUT. It's nice to see that I do still like the thought of teaching. That I still have some of my old enthusiasm for the process of learning. That the creative teacher I like to think I am is starting to stir inside me. I'll let her out a little later next week, I think.

The end

53,206 words in 27 days. Finished last night. I actually have several things I'd like to blog about, but my strength wanes......

Wheeeeeeeeee!

Climax approaching!

No time to blog much, but I have an update on my WIP...I'm on the scene right before the climax, and I'm seriously on the edge of my seat for Max. I want to scream at him to turn back, to go back to Vanessa and stop this foolishness, but you know. Characters never listen. Which is probably a good thing, at least in this case, since that wouldn't be much of a story.

I wrote like six thousand words today. And if I didn't have to sleep, I'd finish the damn thing tonight. At least, if I didn't have kids who will wake up at 6:30 whether I've slept or not!

I'm finishing this chapter, and then the next one's the doozy!

A Little Giddy

I'm five hundred words or so away from hitting 40K words on my new novel manuscript, which is really, really close to my goal for the end--somewhere between 50 and 60K. I realized this morning that if I'm going to get the story wrapped up under 60 K, I'd better make a list of the scenes I have left to write, so this morning I mapped out the things that still have to happen. I also did a lot more research, on some things that made David's eyes bug out a little bit when he saw the Google history (drug stuff mainly...there's a lot of drug research done for this book!)

I also got to make up some silly band names, which was amusing. And I read forty-some reviews of a concert venue in Portland, which I hadn't ever gone to but thanks to the amazing internet I have at least a few details to help my characters fit into the scene.

As soon as I saw it all mapped out like this--although of course there will be surprises as my characters enjoy doing that to me--it filled me with such a bunch of giddiness I could barely contain myself. I'm so amazed to be so close to the finish, and to still be happy with what I'm working on. I've written 1,000-2,000 words or more every day now since I started this. Granted, it's all first draft level work, and I'm sure things will change a lot in the editing process. But the thought of actually finishing a novel (even a short YA novel) by the time school starts makes me...well...GIDDY!

Happy Dance!!!!!

Are you sure it's young adult?

This is the question asked to me recently when I gave a quick summary of my WIP. Well, okay, I admit, what I actually gave the person was a laundry list of the things I am most worried about that are in my draft, namely: drugs, profanity, sexual innuendo (though no actual sex, at least not yet), lesbians, and grand theft auto.

Yes, I'm sure it's YA. And in my reading of current YA lit, it's actually pretty tame, even with all of that. The drug scene is really the edgiest thing in it, and even that doesn't really glorify the drug use, since my MC (that would be Main Character, non-writer-types) doesn't enjoy the experience much, and it leads him into a bunch of trouble. Plus it's "just" pot. One thing that makes me nervous about this, though, is that I know, in order for my story to go where it needs to go, it's not going to be the only scene like this in the book.

But the biggest thing that make me nervous about all of this is the people inside my head--like my mom, for one. Then all my students, but that's not as bad as...all my students' parents! My grandma, I can take her. Bring it on, Grandma! I'm ready for the fight. There would be one, too, just for the record. More than one, in fact.

OK, well, making a list here, it's not so bad, if I can just get rid of the voice of my mom and all the moms of anyone I have ever taught or will someday teach. There you go. Piece of cake, this writing stuff.

I know, I know, I have to just write it and not listen to the voices. (Well, except the ones that belong to my characters, but that was more about my crazy than you necessarily needed to know.) I have to write it and be confident and not worry about all those inner critics. Easier said than done, but it's coming out. And it's uncensored. And I love it. (When I get to the editing stage, probably not so much, but for now, wheeeee!!!!!) (And it's okay, it doesn't have as many parentheticals as my silly blog posts do.)

Still, there's fear. There's looking back over my shoulder. There's always a pen name. Ha!

This wasn't in the outline!

The characters in my works-in-progress do some crazy things when I allow them to have their own way. Crazy-good, and crazy-crazy. Saying things like that to non-writers always gets a raised eyebrow, a look that says clearly that I am the crazy one. Of those who write, there are some who understand me completely, and some who give me that same look.

I've always been the kind of writer who wrote the required outline after my paper was finished. Ideas form more easily for me mid-sentence, flowing out from some center with just a little help now and then from a nice thesaurus or perhaps a consult to the old MLA Handbook. Still, when I'm writing a long work like a novel (which, you understand, I am in the middle of doing for precisely the second time, which makes me far from an expert on this), I feel like I should kind of know where the piece is headed. I wouldn't want it to be just a big long ramble leading toward nothing, after all. I know enough about plot structure and such that I feel like I should put some rational thinking into building conflicts and developing a turning point for my character. Plus, it's really handy for me to know how the story ends, or at least the way I think it will end.

Give my rational brain a chance to stack up some conflicts, pin a climax scene at the top of the chart like a tail on the donkey, make lists of research subjects, and analyze word counts of similar works, and I'm all set. Then I start to write.

And my characters do crazy things.

Sometimes it's a small thing, like in my current WIP (work-in-progress) when Max was sitting in the waiting room waiting (duh) and suddenly he got up and decided to hurdle some chairs. He really made me laugh when he landed on top of the social worker like that; I hadn't seen it coming.

Sometimes it's a huge thing, like in my first novel, when Colleen fell in love. That was not something I could just ignore, you know? Here I am writing about a woman who discovers her own powerful woman self and frees herself from her dependence on her mother, and now she's hanging on this guy? Plus it really complicated the ending, to the point that I almost had to rewrite the whole thing. And as if that all wasn't enough, it forced me to dance right up to the edge of a sex scene--not a bit easy to do!

But, Elissa, you wrote the story. Can't you just...not have them do those things?

Not that simple. Take this morning, for example. I was writing about Max, and out of nowhere he meets this character, Julia. Just for the record, she wasn't even on my radar, not even close. Then suddenly, there she was on the porch swing, waving. OK, no big deal, I'm thinking. A walk-on part. Everything seems to be going according to plan.

I discover that she is a sculptor when another character mentions it. Oh, cool. I like sculpture.

Then Max starts wandering over to the garage studio. OK, I can deal with this. I'll just have her working with some clay. No big deal.

He rounds the corner, and there's Julia, in full welding gear, sparks flying. Uh...OK. Well, I don't know much about welding, but as long as Max isn't doing it, I think I can handle this.

Then she has to go and ask Max if he wants to try. And he has the nerve to agree. And then there I am, sitting in a coffee shop, watching online video tutorials on MIG welding and poring over comments on a welding forum to get an idea of what it would feel like to hold the torch for the first time.

With those words, I just have to say that anyone who has written a book before the advent of the Internet and all the amazing resources available there is my absolute hero.

The Writing Process--from pen to processor

This weekend I was separated from my laptop and internet by this pesky little national holiday business. You know, family, fireworks, parades, and BBQ's. I thought perhaps it would be a little rude to haul the computer along, with its dead battery and yards of power cord, and spend the weekend chatting to people in between scenes, my fingers tapping away. So I left it at home, all alone with its thoughts about being replaced as soon as the new one I ordered on Thursday arrives.

I couldn't leave my novel behind, though. It is too insistent, too close to the surface, just begging me to write it. So I brought my little pink notebook with the metallic butterflies on the cover, and I brought my green clicky pen with the rubber grips (whose two drawbacks--low ink supply and the word "profile" on this side, which my brain keeps reading as "prolife"--I compensated for by bringing a back up pen or three), and I tried to only write in it when nobody was looking. Yeah, right. One whole side of my hand was green from the speed with which I was racing across the page while the ink was still wet.

This is how I used to write, before I had a computer. It hasn't been that long, in fact, that I bought my very first computer, a Mac G-4 named Calliope that is still (until sometime this week when my new laptop arrives) the only computer I actually own. There is a compartment in the middle of the beautiful antique dresser that my grandma gave me, a "secret" cubby that is currently filled to the top with all my journals, since at least the second half of college. I like the way words flow out onto paper, with a smooth pen and just the right journal. Most of my writing has had its start in one of these little books, and all of my writing has pilfered bits and pieces from their pages, whether or not they were intended for the work.

Now, my process has evolved to reflect the speed of my fingers dancing across the keyboard, my ideas making their way into this world in an interesting hybrid of pen and processor, with most first drafts spiraling between my scribbled notes and manic typing. Poetry is almost always penned; fiction springs up from a handwritten beginning and takes off in my computer. This new novel comes to me in such a steady stream that I have taken to carrying my little notebook everywhere I go--from bathroom to bed--and I pour out these interrupted bits of story from wherever I am. Then, as soon as I'm near the computer again, I type it up (often making improvements and revisions as I do) and continue on from there.

Revising on the computer is so easy that some writers find themselves saving multiple copies of their work, afraid to change or delete something they later will want to find back. This is one thing that a handwritten draft avoids. In my notebook, each revision is clearly present, with words crossed out and added in, sentences winding like stray hairs across the page, little stars or arrows moving paragraphs from place to place. It's messy, but it's organic. It feels real. On the computer, my draft looks so confident and down-to-business with all that messiness invisible, hidden from even myself. On the computer, I revise fearlessly--cutting, hacking, and embellishing without using the "save as." It's quick, and it's dirty, but ultimately it leads me to "The End."

And then I go back to the beginning and do it all over again.

Writing What You Know

I've taken one class in writing fiction. That's it. I had been writing stories all my life (since before I could write, just like my Jabberwock), and I had thoroughly decided that being a writer was my destiny, but once I got to college it was all, "Well, you'd better get a teaching degree, 'cause you know nobody needs an English major," and "Well, now you've taken all these Spanish classes so you may as well get a minor," and seriously, I have to take a physical education class??? There wasn't much room in my schedule for creative writing.

Luckily, I had a great teacher (Barton Sutter--a terrific storyteller, essayist, and poet as well as teacher--Google him, if you want to see), who took my final completed short story (the longest finished piece I had ever completed) and tore it to shreds. He gave it a B MINUS! Was he aware that I was a straight A student, about to graduate magna cum laude? Well, I was so pissed off I nearly cried. Then I gathered the pieces, started them on fire, and rewrote my story out of those bitter ashes. "I'll show him!" I vowed. The story came back from revision with a wonderful note about how much better it was, along with my A. Several years later, I found the story back, and it was still crap, but it must have been an improvement over the original.

Anyway, I remember having a discussion in that class about the old writing advice, "Write what you know." This blog would be much more interesting if I actually remembered the quote that Barton Sutter said about that, but essentially it was that yes, you should write about something you're familiar with, but you should also be discovering something in your writing. Maybe it was "Write what you don't know about what you know."

Well, I'm writing about breaking the law, a couple of sports cars, the juvenile court system, and an awful lot of teen boy angst. That's not exactly what I know. You know? But in another way, it is. I think that I do actually know an awful lot about angsty teenage boys, just from spending the better part of the last six or eight years around them as a teacher. I can research sporty cars (ask me anything about the Audi TT Roadster, by the way!) and what happens to juveniles when they are arrested for grand theft auto. What I'm discovering is my memory of what it feels like to be young and uncertain--to long for acceptance while resenting having to rely on anyone. The way emotions can be fierce and bewildering. The way injustice is all around me, and how that can make me want to punch things.

And lately? In this scene I'm writing now? I'm (re)discovering how awkward it can be to flirt with someone you really, really like, without ending up sounding cheesy and cliche.

And now...back to flirting! Any advice appreciated...