Right.

Can. Not. Go. On. Vacation.

GYAH!

I swear to god, I'm just deranged. That's all there is to it. Bleeding out of my mind.

I finished a NOVEL last week. Wrote over ten-THOUSAND words in a single week. Promised myself a week's vacation before I even thought about writing again.

And what did I do on Tuesday? Re-read everything that Liz and I wrote year before last for Silver and Green (my last dated entry for Silver & Green is December, 2004). And what did I do yesterday? Wrote ~2,800 words for Silver & Green.

Now, on the one hand, Silver & Green does take place over multiple countries and one of the things we've decided to do is Interlude between each part of the novel with a short faerie tale from the country where that part of the novel takes place as sort of a flavor text introduction to the nation and its ideals. So what I wrote was the Khadya faerie tale.

Faerie tales have a pretty natural flow and rhythm to them, a sort of repetative structure... given that most of them were originally intended to be verbally passed down, these sort of devices aided the memory, etc. So, really, I probably only wrote about 1200 words because I copied and pasted a bunch of sections (Liz pointed out to me 2 places where I'd actually forgotten to change the stuff in those copy/pastes that needed to be changed, making it completely obvious what I'd done, but hey, that's what editors are for, right?)

That being said, I've also found that it's harder for me to sleep now, if I'm not planning out the next bit of writing I want to do... I fall asleep thinking something along these lines: He thought that he had absolved himself of guilt over the atrocities of war, but apparently... Like that.

Anyway, guess I'm going to be getting right back into the grind...

Oh, pardon me, are these your eyes? I think they rolled under my desk.

I'm done.

After a whoppingly impressive week.

April 25 - 2,297 words
April 26 - 3,486 words
April 27 - 805 words
April 28th - 3,876 words

Weekly total - 10,464 words
Novel total - 171,357 words (about 343 pages)

Free at last! Free at last!

(Well, not really. But I can let it gel for a while before I tackle the painful process of editing.)

Getting very, very close to done. (Done! Done! Done, I say!).

April 18 - 1,648 words
April 19 - 1,224 words
April 20 - 475 words (at 5 in the morning, thankyouverymuch!)

Total: 3,347 words (347 words over goal)

And this was a short week, since Kevin was home half day on Thursday and all day Friday. And this week got off to a slow start, since Kevin was sick yesterday. Wish me luck, I'm expecting about another 6 - 7,000 words before I'm done.

Why do I always need a vacation to recover from my vacation?

I spent 3 days in the Outer Banks and now I'm exhausted. I didn't get much done this week, but progress is progress.

April 12 - 1,182 words
April 13 - 1,444 words

Total 2,626 words (374 words below goal)

This week I finished the actual 'plot' of the story. Only two chapters of 'and they lived mostly happily for a while' and then, DONE DONE DONE!

April 3 - 1,039 (end Cha 27)
April 5 - 2,150 (start Cha 28)
April 6 - 2,579 (end Cha 28)

Total - 5,768 words (2,768 words over goal)

It's always good to get a whole chapter done in a week...

Well, last week was the first week of Kevin's new 'regular' schedule. He hasn't had a regular schedule since we lived in Lynchburg, some 7-8 years ago.

Funny. I thought him working a more normal schedule would mean I'd see more of him.

I don't. Seems that most of the weird hours he worked was while I was sleeping, so now I routinely have 1 or 2 days less husband than I used to. Unfortunately, I haven't seemed to manage to make those days count, as far as novel-writing word goals go.

This week:

March 27 - 1,252 words
March 29 - 703 words
March 31 - 1,133 words

Total: 3,088 words (88 words over goal)

Well...

Last week, I did not do anything.

Words, total: 0

Week before last, I did do some work, but I didn't do a blog entry, so here it is:

March 13 - 1,017 words
March 14 - 900 words
March 19 - 1,382 words

Weekly total: 3,299

This week? I slept. I watched TV. I read a bit. Mostly I layed on the couch while a movie of some genre or another played on the DvD player and I stared at the ceiling and wondered why walking across the room was exhausting.

I have, it seems, been exposed to mono. Lovely. I haven't actually gone into a doctor yet to have it checked out, but I plan to do so today, if I can manage it.

Kevin's starting his new job today. He was so tired last night, he went to bed at 9pm. His new job is 8:30-5. No more 12 hour shifts. (Yay) As a result, he was up on the first beep of his alarm (and had, he says, been awake for a few hours before that)

I should like to be happy for him. I am happy for him. I'm just not very demonstrative right now because sitting up for too long makes me weary.

Writing this blog entry makes me weary.

I swear, I don't understand, sometimes.

March 7 - 1,263 words
March 12 - 1,810 words

total for the week - 3,073

What I'd really like to know is why can't I write as quickly when I'm *not* under pressure. *sigh*

Well, after doing quite good work for several months and missing only 3 weeks worth of goals over 10 months, I missed 2 weeks in a row for household illnesses.

First Kevin got sick, then Jess got sick, and then I got sick. No fun, and I got almost no work done.

Over those two weeks, I did 951 words. Total.

Last week was a little better, although I didn't get any work done yesterday because Liz and Penny came down for a visit. Jess nearly killed herself falling off the sofa and refused to get more than 2 feet away from me after Penny left (up to and including not taking a nap). However, I did write some this week, so my word count for this week was

Feb 27 - 1,131 words
Feb 28 - 838 words
March 1 - 1,269 words

3238 words total (238 over goal)

I don't know how much I'll get done this week, though, since there's some work stuff going on with Kevin that I'm practically sick to my stomach with nerves over.

However, my total word count is 139,692 (about 280 pages) and that's not bad at all.

This week was ok... didn't get much over goal, but honestly, I'm starting to expect that. I mean, that's why there are goals and that's why I keep raising them up, right? Eventually I have to get to the point where my output is just about at my expectations. Or my expectations are about where my output is. Something like that.

Feb 7 - 876 words (end Chapter 24)
Feb 9 - 974 words (start Cha 25)
Feb 12 - 1,334

Total: 3,184 (184 words over goal)

Anyway, I have a cold and have been suffering from some of the worst leg and ankle pain in years these last few days. Despite my animated conversations with my friend Karen, part of the reason I've been dallying about going off to bed is that bed starts this long series of ... sleep, dream OW OW OW, FUCK, jump out of bed and try really hard to get ones toes unembedded from ones kneecap. I'm getting sleep in thirty minute chunks, followed by 10 minutes of being cold, standing on the side of the bed while my leg unkinks.

This morning was particularly bad. I was having an iritating dream (the sort where everyone in the dream is deliberately trying to make your life as difficult as possible but not yet justifying liberal doses of high velocity lead) and suddenly I was on the floor. For at least three minutes, I couldn't do anything at all because I couldn't get my ankle to unbend enough to even put my weight down on the leg to unkink the calf. Once I did, there wasn't much point in going back to bed.

Jess has had a bad cold and is generally being a pesto....

And my subject matter has been particularly difficult.

Part of it started out when Catreen (my female lead) looked at the situation as I'd laid it out for her and said "Excuse me, lady writer, that wasn't cheating. It wasn't a betrayal. What happened was rape, plain and simple." I stepped back, looked at the situation from this new perspective and said "Damn, girl. You're right."

Basically, my female villian (Lyra) tortured Bastian for about 11 days (with some help and some breaks, even my villians have to go get dinner once in a while) and during that time, she also teased him and kissed him and coddled him. When he could respond to her, she was nicer to him. Sometimes. "Variable reward system," as my husband calls it. I didn't describe it in too vivid a detail, but it was there. Later, when he's released, she comes to him and he literally cannot help himself. They end up having sex on the floor in his flat.

The second time she attempts to get him into her 'bed', he stabs her. "I said no." he says.

All that I'd already set up. And now he's back with the woman he loves and he feels like he betrayed their relationship by having sex with Lyra. I had, up til that point, agreed with him. Now, there were some truly extenuating circumstances, and all that... I thought the relationship would survive...

But rape... that's an entirely different story. And there's a lot of bullshit that goes on about the idea. The first piece of bullshit is that erections are voluntary, a sign of arrousal... ask any teenage boy who's gotten a hard on looking at a stop sign. (Oh yeah, that was one sexy stop sign...) Victims of this sort of thing are not only being victimized by the rapist, but also, to some degree, by their own bodies... they get all the yucky feelings that go along with being raped and it's complicated by the fact that the body responds to stimulus. They may not understand why they reacted the way they did, thus bringing additional guilt and blame on themselves.

Also, the victim of a rape like this will have a great deal of trouble going to the authorities - people in general are less understanding, less sympathetic, and at the least, likely to crack some entirely inappropriate jokes that would not be considered at all proper or allowable around a female rape victim. And that's in these so-called 'englighted' times. (I know, I know... we're really not all that enlightened, but we like to pretend we are) Bastian and Catreen don't live in enlightened times. They live in a fantasy setting, semi-medieval, where occasionally rape is a means of 'persuation' for getting a difficult heiress to marry a lout. Where fathers and brothers and husbands might 'defend a woman's honor', but there's not going to be jail time about it.

So, not only do I have a difficult subject to deal with and explore, my main character is being extremely... hostile about it. Which is understandable. Part of the problem is the Meta-Bastian in my head, who encompasses the Hall-version, the novel-version, and has some personality quirks of his own... he's very, very masculine. Manly, tough, macho, whatever you want to call it. He's obsessed with self-control...

Back before I started writing this novel, I did a Hall-plot in which I had him captured by the police and 'questioned under duress'. Part of my own dealing with the current political and war climate, perhaps. But it was also some character development... Bastian was tortured and broken. While his friends eventually rescued him, the damage had been done... I almost lost him, as a character, he was so traumatized by his experience that he was literally beyond my control for a while.

It took me several weeks to nurse him back into a position where it was even possible for him to start trying to recover... and to some degree, he's never quite forgiven me for doing it to him in the first place (the benefit of having a character go through a traumatic experience is that, in general, the meta version of themselves knows that it's all about drama and development, not necessarily tormenting them because it's fun. Altho sometimes it's about that, too. But a meta can usually cope and move on, because the rewards for living through it are generally pretty good.)

Anyway, he's being difficult because this - the mere possibility of rape - is so sickening to him, so threatening to his manhood, that he refuses, point blank, to discuss it with me. Which is completely understandable. But it doesn't make my job any easier. And my job is to tell the story.

This week was a little better...

Jan 31 - 822 words
Feb 1 - 955 words
Feb 5 - 2,854 words

Weekly total: 4,631 words, or 1,631 over goal.

Despite the good writing, yesterday was not one of my better days.

I have several bad habits that have replaced the one big bad habit I used to have - smoking. I scratch, usually my legs, but sometimes my arms, until they're raw. If I don't notice I'm doing it, I'll actually scratch my legs until they bleed. Fun, huh? I also bite my fingers. Not my nails, like you might think, but the skin around the fingernails. I'll do that until my fingers bleed. Nice. I know.

I'm currently wearing two bandaids, one on my right thumb, the other on my left middle finger. It makes typing a bit difficult. Also, and this is because I'm truly too cheap to buy more than one kind of bandaid, they're elmo bandaids. That's right, I'm wearing two bright yellow bandaids with little red muppets on them. Jess thinks this is endlessly fascinating. Yesterday she insisted on having her own bandaid.

Right now, I'm putting lotion on my legs every 2 hours. This doesn't really help - I mean, I'm not scratching because my legs are dry. I'm scratching because I'm tense and unhappy. But putting lotion on makes my legs sting, which reminds me not to scratch. And it makes the friction of my fingers over my legs less, so even if I do scratch, I'm less likely to damage myself.

One of the things I like to do when I'm unhappy is cook. Cooking is soothing... I like taking raw ingredients and turning them into food. I consider myself to be a fairly good cook; nothing so good as my mom, who can bake a pie on a campfire (no, shit, really, she can... it's sickening.) but not too bad. So, yesterday I decided to do some cooking.

I made coq au vin... it wasn't what you'd call 'lots' of trouble. A half an hour of prep around 1pm and then it sat in the crock-pot all day. I really liked it. The wine did marvelous things to the chicken itself, which was tender and falling off the bone when it came out of the pot.

Kevin. Did not.

Gods, I miss smoking. I really do.

I'm getting mildly annoyed by my word count, here.

I mean, yes, I know, my word goal is 3,000 words a week (6 pages) and I'm making that without too much trouble. It's just, before the holiday season (why in gods' name do we need an entire SEASON of holidays? Aren't they disruptive enough without turning the entire winter into a useless block?) I was busting out 2,000 - 4,000 words over goal and now I'm lucky if I can manage to get 300 words over goal.

I dunno. Maybe it's because the 7th Sea game is going really well. That's not a complaint, as I really am enjoying the game, but the moods of the two don't go together at all.

We'll see, I guess, if things start picking up in the next week or so. Kevin spent the last week working nights, which was tiring for me and exhausting for him, and now he's back on day shift. I expect him to be pretty dead this week, too, but hopefully it won't affect me so much.

Anyway:

Jan 24 - 1,355 words
Jan 27 - 724 words
Jan 29 - 810 words (end Cha 23)
Jan 29 - 414 words (begin Cha 24)

total: 3,303 words (303 over goal)

Total wordcount: 127,688 (255 pages)

I think I'm headed into the last bits here... I have (ish) 7 chapters left to write. which may or may not include the wrapping up - everyone lives mostly happily ever after for a while bits...

I'm sort of at a loss for that part, the happily ever after. I'm giving serious consideration to changing a plot detail (it's not very important, except that it'll affect the ending somewhat, so the question is, write the ending with the plot detail as is and change the ending when I change the detail? Or write the ending as if the detail was already changed and fix the detail first off on re-writes? Or, worst yet, go back and change the detail *now* so that when I write the ending, it makes sense... ug.)

I've been playing this novel a lot by ear, so to speak. I didn't ever write an outline for the events, and what's happening now isn't really how I envisioned things in the initial planning scenes... the results of this is that I have several secondary characters who came in for a scene or two and wandered off, never to be heard from again. I'm not certain what to do about this, either.

Massive.

Rewrites.

This sucks.

Well, this was my first week with the new writing goal...

So, of course it had to be the same week Kevin transitioned to night shift, that there was a scrapping event and a Mismas party, and that Jess got some sort of ick and threw up on me multiple times. Right? This was just obvious to everyone?

Yeah. Me, too.

On the other hand, I did actually get the work done anyway, although I'm a little dubious as to the quality thereof.

Jan 17 - 845 words
Jan 18 - 1,190 words
Jan 22 - 1,647 words

total: 3,682 (or 682 words over goal)

This past week went fairly well, despite all the disruptions in my life... like, the dentist. And the doctor's office on Thursday and spending Thursday evening with Liz and Elizabeth (not a problem, just time I didn't have to write.)

Jan 10 - 907 words
Jan 13 - 1,198 words
Jan 15 - 1,455 words

Total: 3,560 (860 over goal)

I'd wanted to write more yesterday, but Jess is becoming the Baby of No Nap, DAMNIT! and climbed out of her crib yesterday around 2:30 when she decided that she didn't want to be in there anymore...

Great. I don't know that I like this no-nap business. I need that time to take showers, do housework, get writing done, nap myself, etc.

This week starts my first week with the higher goal of 3,000 words.

The beginning of the week went well, the middle of the week was a wash, and I pulled a miracle out of my ass last night and managed to make goal. If I had a word goal this week. WHICH I DON'T! Sheesh.

Jen 3 - 907
Jan 4 - 1,411
Jan 8 - 492

Total: 2,810 (110 words over goal)

Well, writing went better this week than I had any right to expect.

Dec 27 - 623 words
Dec 29 - 1,241 words (finished Cha 21)
Dec 31 - 381 words (begin Cha 22)
Jan 1 - 1,154

total: 3,399 (or 699 words over goal. If I had a goal for this week. Which I did NOT! So, nyah!)

Kevin goes back to work tomorrow (and for this I'm extremely grateful. I desperately need some alone time. Or relative alone time, at least.) and that gives me Tuesday, Wednesday and Sunday to write this week.

Next week, however, I have a dentist appointment on Monday, so that's probably going to throw my schedule for a loop.

Starting on the 16th, back when everything is back to normal with no unexpected holidays, visitors or other sundries, I'm upping my word goal again to 3,000 words per week until I finish the novel.

After I'm done, I'd like to try and get the main bulk of editing done in 3 months or so. I will desperately need help for that, both in content editing and in grammatical editing. There shouldn't be too much need for spelling, since I do spellcheck, although sometimes things escape spellcheck's notice, or I accidentally change a word to the wrong word...

In my estimates, I've got about nine chapters left to wrap this up, although there may be a chapter or two at the end for the "and they lived happily ever after, etc" bit.

I think I can manage it.

Well, I didn't get much done last week...

1,366 on Dec 20th.

But as I hadn't expected to get any writing done at all, I guess 1,366 is better than 0.

In other news, Jess is making vomiting up breakfast a Christmas tradition, as she yakked all over one of my step-mom's bar chairs. Yay. really.

I got stuff, including a nice bag to carry all my scrapping supplies in. And a new toaster. Dad and Dee seemed to like the new photo album I made for them.

Kevin liked the special Dr. Pepper (made with the original formula, including Cane Sugar) that I ordered him from Texas, which is good, because it cost a fracking fortune to have 4 6-packs of cola shipped up here.

Jess got some clothes, a bunch of books, and a space heater for her room because it's the coldest one in the house.

And now I'm home again and trying to relax. It's not easy. I still need to wrap Liz, Matt, and Jeff's presents, ship Jeff's presents and cookies, make another batch of fudge...

On the plus side, I got a "free house cleaning and carpet shampoo" gift certificate from my husband, who cleaned out most of the bedroom last night. So... that's nice. He can clean and I can feel NOT GUILTY about it.

Well...

Never done that before.

I made goal this week exactly.

2,700 words.

Dec 13 - 879 words, end Chapter 20
Dec 13 - 809 words, begin Chapter 21
Dec 14 - 701 words
Dec 18 - 311 words

Total - 2,700 words

My overall length is 109,568 words (~220 pages) and I'm guestimating myself at being about 2/3 done with an expected finished length of about 150,000 - 165,000 words (300 - 330 pages) and about 30 chapters even.

That makes 40,000 - 55,000 words left to write, or 15 - 20 weeks, (3.5 - 5 months) if I meet goal exactly each week. My ~weekly output though has been more like 3,700 words per week or 10-14 weeks (2.5 - 3.5 months). I was guessing to be finished around March-April. I think I'm still on track for that.

However, after Wednesday, Kevin's going to be home for 13 days straight. Then he works 1 day and is off again for three. Or he may have to work Thursday because Enzo's dad had a heart attack and Enzo's up in New York right now... if that happens, Kevin will be off from the 23rd until the 7th of January because he'll take the 4th as his comp day for working the 23rd. In either case, I'm looking at more Kevin than I've seen since he got laid off from Gateway.

Oh. Yay. Really.

In any case, I'm pretty much thinking those nearly three weeks are going to be a fracking wash. Do I resent this? A little....

I didn't have a word goal...

Really. I didn't.

Kevin was home all week, except for a three hour stint on Sunday, a three hour stint on Thursday, and yesterday all day. This should, theoretically, have absolved me from having to write.

Heh.

It seems, given access to a computer and any amount of not-having-a-spouse-standing-on-my-head time at all, I will write.

Dec 6 - 541 words
Dec 8 - 1,402 words
Dec 11 - 947 words

Total: 2,890 words (for an overage of 190 words if I did have a word goal this week, which I didn't, so technically, it's 2,890 words over goal.)

I am psychologically incapable of taking vacation, it seems.

I know, I shouldn't complain...

Kevin's on vacation. Again. So, this week I'm taking the week off. If I get writing done, great. If not, it's only to be expected.

Then he works for 2 weeks and then he's off again for 10 days. And the Warcraft expansion's been pushed off til June. I have no idea what I'm going to do. Aside from not get much work done.

This week:

Nov 28 - 1,133 words
Nov 29 - 487 words, end chapter 19
Nov 29 - 742 words, begin chapter 20
Dec 1 - 85 words (pathetic)
Dec 4 - 362 words (Kevin was only at work for 2 and a half hours, so... bleh)

2809 words, or 109 words over goal

For those of you not in the know, "That's nice" is part of the punchline to a joke that Karen told me a long, long time ago... first time I ever heard Karen swear, too...

The joke (which really goes much better with the southern belle drawl, too) goes along the lines of two 'friends' talking about their respective marriages, where one of them is given all sorts of expensive gifts so her man could prove how much he loved her, and the other one saying "That's nice."

Finally, the show-off turns to her friend and says "But, dear, what does your husband do to show how much he loves you?"

"He sent me to finishing school where I learned how to say 'that's nice' instead of 'fuck you.'"

Kevin is probably in an extended bad mood that will last about a month longer than my tolerance for it. I mean, yes, I understand that he's unhappy and that he should have gotten the promotion and didn't. I do understand that. However, it is not my fault, and I personally don't see why I should have to bear the burden of most of his bad mood.

He's home "sick" today. I have the nice little quotes around it because I remember him telling me two weeks ago that the 28th and the 29th were the last two days this year that anyone on his shift could be sick, because the rest of the time someone's on vacation. (Kevin starts his vacation on Sunday next week and is off for 8 days, then he works two weeks and then is off for another 10 days. Yes, most of that is comp time for having worked excessive amounts of overtime, having gotten no pay or recognition for it. I might mention that to add insult to injury, ROBERT got the MVP award last month... Robert? The guy who's been in operations for six years and still can't manage to fill out a Magic Ticket correctly without calling at least 2 people... )

I mean, I'm sure he's going to act sick all day (after waking me up at 5am to have me call his manager and the night shift's supervisor, keeping me awake for almost an hour and a half...) and probably sleep all day today... but he's still around, he's liable to be 'oh, woe is me'....

Personally, I'm fucking fed up with him, Dendrite, Kathy, him, the company, Robert and him. GYAH.

Especially with Mr. Grumpy taking two weeks of vacation this month, I'm not expecting to get Jack and Shite done in the way of writing.

"That's nice."

Word count for last week:

Nov 22 - 1,676
Nov 22 - 245
Nov 23 - 1,182

total: 3,103 (over by 1,753 if I stick with my halved estimate of 1,350 for the week, or 403 over if I stick with my regular goal of 2,700. heh)

The little 245 word bit was adding a short conversation back in Chapter 15 to make things a little more consistant...

All righty...

This week was great, right up until Kevin got fuct by his company (again) without even a dinner and a kiss.

Nov 14 - 1,244 words
Nov 15 - 3,107 words (highest word count in one day, since I started the novel!)
Nov 16 - 809 words

5,160 total (2,460 over goal)

I've discovered that it's just as difficult - if not more so - to be funny than it is to be unrelentingly bleak. I wonder what that says. I further find myself respecting people like Matt even more, who is funny almost non-stop.

This week, I'm headed up to my mom's on Wednesday night and won't be back til Saturday, none of which is my regularly scheduled writing time, but with the bad news Kevin got at work and holidays coming up and all, I'm going to cut my word goal in half this week, just because I know I'm upset and not at all in the mood to write. So, 1,350 is the goal for this week. Hope I can meet it.

Well, I'm happy with my productivity this week, even if my characters are not.

I finished off Chapter 16, and started and finished Chapter Seventeen this week. I also co-wrote an incredibly long email with a friend, made an absolutely fabulous shark dinner, baked cornbread, did several loads of dishes, one load of laundry, watching Star Wars III and Fight Club, worked on a birthday present for a friend of mine, and did some computer file clean up that I'd been putting off for a while.

Also, I suffered through several days of a RMI (repetative motion injury) that had me in a brace on my wrist for two days.

I am a goddess. Bow down.

That being said:

Nov 7 - 788 words
Nov 8 - 1,245 words (End chapter 16)
Nov 9 - 1,080 words
Nov 10 - 1,434 words
Nov 12 - 810 words
Nov 13 - 847 2,312

The above strikethrough is because Kevin came home yesterday around 1pm, which I was not expecting, so had put my document away, as I have a really hard time writing with someone sitting just behind my shoulder. I'll be really, really glad if he gets this TPM job and there might be some end in sight of this cramped and overcrowded sucky little apartment. However, that being said, he went to bed around 9pm and I went back to work. I wrote until about 1:30 in the morning and did an extra 1,400 words or so before going to bed.

Weekly Total: 7,669 (or 4,969 words over goal. By the way, I've upped my word goal again by 200 words to 2700 words per week. Don't ask me why I picked 200 words, I don't really know beyond that I don't want to push myself too hard too fast and risk getting depressed when I consistantly don't make goal, and I have this fetish for nice round numbers. Ok, go ahead, ask. But don't expect it to make loads of sense.)

In any case, while I've been planning this little snag since the beginning of the novel - with several changes as to actual execution of the snag - it's finally happened, and my main character is now firmly in the hands of his enemies.

Which means my main test reader is now chewing her fingernails off.

On the plus side, I have the next 2 - 3 chapters or so pre-planned out, as I had pre-planned this one, so I think, barring (un)expected catastrophes (like Kevin not getting the TPM job) I should be able to knock out a chapter a week or so for a while.

I think.

Back from my vacation...

And this is why I hate taking a vacation. Despite having a good time with all my friends, (and man, did we!) it takes me forever to get back into the writing groove.

It was a good vacation. We spaced our activities out just enough that I wasn't exhausted at the end of it. Kevin and I didn't get into a single screaming argument. We did get a household cold, but I'm beginning to think that's Karen's fault. She drags down all these fancy New York germs and our pathetic southern bodies just can't cope with them. I'm kidding, really, but it does seem that every single time I see Karen, I get sick. So, it's gotta be her. She does work with the public, after all.

The two weeks while I was on vacation, I did 891 words.

This week:

Nov 1 - 747 words
Nov 2 - 548 words
Nov 3 - 334 words (this downward spiral of writing was worrying me for a while, it really was)
Nov 5 - 618 words
Nov 6 - 1,020 words (oh, now that's better.)

Total: 3,267 (767 words over goal)

Some numbers, mostly for my own benefit:

Started writing on or about May 6th (24 weeks of work, with 3 weeks of vacation)

Total written: 87,113 words (174 pages)
Total words goaled: 62,500 (125 pages) (yes, I'm counting that for several weeks my goal was 2,000 words instead of 2,500 words)
Number of words exceeding goal: 24,613 (49 pages)

Number of weeks failed to reach goal: 3
Number of words under goal over those three weeks: 2,396 (average 799 words per week)

Number of weeks exceeded goal: 21

Honestly, I think I'm doing pretty well. I'm a little more than halfway through the novel, as far as my forward planning indicates. If I 1) don't expand things considerably and 2) keep up with my writing as I have previously, I expect to be completing the first draft around mid-March.

There are some serious redrafts in the works... everything before Chapter 8 needs to be picked over with a fine-tooth comb, as the story started to evolve certain flavortext I'd put in became incorrect. (Not just incorrect from the characters' point of view, since there is some of that, too) Chapters 10 and 13 need to be rebalanced to account for travel time that doesn't add up (one day on foot up the coast does not equal a week back down the coast).

And unfortunately, I'm not a very good or relentless editor, so editing will probably take me at least another four months after I finish. Which really means I need to learn to write faster, since a novel ought to only take about a year to write and edit.

I think - think mind you - that I'm about halfway done with this novel. Ish. Although just about anyone will tell you that I've got a bad case of writer's inflation, so sometimes I just keep going long after I should have shut up already.

Oct 10 - 1,189 words
Oct 11 - 1,263 words
Oct 12 - 2,677 words
Oct 13 - 79 words to finish off Chapter 15

Total: 5,208 words

Which is really good because Kevin's on vacation as of Wednesday and Karen will be down and I have absolutely no idea if I'm going to get anything done this week at all, because 1) I'm really tired and 2) I'm going to be exceptionally busy for the next 2 weeks

I know, I know, I've been MIA and all that...

Gods, what a lousy couple of weeks.

Last Wednesday we had a power surge - actually several surges - and my computer's power supply decided that enough was enough and turned in its two week notice, and promptly took all of its remaining vacation.

Fortunately, it was only the power supply, which was an easy $40 fix, but it did mean my computer was out of commission for the entire day, and I hate Kevin's computer even to chat on, much less try and write, which I couldn't do without all my files anyway...

However, it was also Kevin's weird work-week, since this week, they were doing some massive inventory thing and he was going to be working Monday - Friday, 9-5. Which meant I didn't have last Sunday to do any writing, because Kevin was home...

So I decided on Friday, rather than beat myself up over a bunch of odd things I couldn't do anything about anyway, I'd just combo the two weeks' goals... so, rather than 2,500 words for last week and 2,500 words for this week, I'd have an overall goal of 5,000 words. Especially since Kevin was working Mon - Friday, that'd give me more time to work.

I spent a few days this week being ill with some god-awful virusi thing that in addition to giving me a fever was also making my kidneys ache. Who ever heard of a virus like that? Headache, sure. Fever, right. Swollen glands, check. Aching kidneys and having to go pee every three minutes? Huh?

However...

I did actually manage to get the work done I'd assigned to myself and I managed to spend an entire week on a diet. (I'm still on the diet... usually I don't last long on diets, though, so I thought I'd mention it. Sort of as an aside, because I don't want to make a huge deal out of it.)

September 26 - 919 words
September 28 - 258 words
October 3 - 1,180 words
October 5 - 1,686 words
October 7 - 593 words
October 8 - 1,578 words

Total: 6,214 words

On the downside, Kevin's home sick today... and he's not even sleeping, he's behind me playing Warcraft... Which means today is pretty much a wash.

Sigh.

Six weeks ago I had the best writing week in several years: 8,427 words.

This week was not so impressive. But it was close.

September 12 - 1,031 words
September 13 - 1,247 words Cha 12
September 13 - 413 words Cha 13
September 14 - 1,216 words
September 15 - 1,929 words
September 17 - 658 words Cha 14
September 17 - 491 words Cha 13
Septmeber 18 - 923 words Cha 13

Total: 7,908 words

The smart shoppers will notice that it looks like I wrote something out of order. Again.

Sort of technically, I did, but that wasn't the intent. I ended (or thought I ended) Chapter 13 on the 15th. When I started writing again on the 17th, I started with Chapter 14 and wrote about 1,000 words or so.

What I wrote wasn't what I'd planned to write at all. I'd planned to tell Tsorin's story of how he got together with his lover and why they can't be lovers anymore. Instead, I started with a memory of Bastian's, about his mentor, Kaynin. It just came out and as I frequently do, I just let it go, curious to see what I was talking about.

After sitting back and reading through it a few times, I decided that about half of what I'd written on the 17th didn't really fit where I'd put it. I considered taking it out completely, but it was really good stuff and explains a few things that I hadn't gotten around to talking about yet.

Snip. Paste.

Except it didn't really go on the end of Chapter 13, either. Not as Chapter 13 currently ended. So I had to make a bit of filler to patch the original ending onto the new ending.

I'm happy with the results, though, so that's ok.

On the other hand, I haven't yet gotten around to telling Tsorin's story. Which isn't necessarily bad, since I've got that mostly headworked and I should be able to write it some time this week.

I hope. Maybe.

I'm going on vacation on Thursday (thank you god) and we'll be gone for the rest of the week, so I may or may not get anything done.

Word Counts:

Well, week before last was... less than productive, really. And I was feeling sort of pissy about it most of this week, so I didn't post last week.

Last week I was sick on Sunday and Monday. On Tuesday, I started to feel better, but Kevin's new wireless internet equipment was due fed-ex in the early afternoon, so he decided that I was feeling "too ill" and he needed to come home, take shiny stuff out of boxes, swear a lot, finally get it set up, and HE went to take a nap.

Does this seem unfair and rude to anyone else, or is it just me?

Tuesday - Friday, we had intermitant cable outages while he got the system set up and working completely. It took me nearly two years to get to the point where I could do basic trouble-shooting for cable outages on our regular, wired hookup. And I don't like fucking with computer stuff that I don't understand, so whenever the cable went out, I'd have to (usually) go wake Kevin up and let him putter around for a while before the thing fixed itself with no explanation whatsoever and caused him to glare at me like I was casting a voodoo hex on his precious shiny new toy.

Yeah, that's coming across a little bitter.

I can't help it, though.

Our redneck neighbors (they of the "oh. ick" post a while back) have a dog. A mutt, to be precise. Now, to be completely fair, I do not like dogs. I have rarely liked dogs, I think they are stupid, smelly, loud, gross, and somewhat scary. I know this. So I try not to associate with dogs because I feel that way. I know I am likely to over-react to someone's loud/messy/bothersome dog than I will react to someone's loud/messy/bothersome child. (I know I've heard people complain somewhere about loud/messy/bothersome cats, but I've never had a problem with cats that weren't an up-close personal problem, and really, if someone tells you that their cat bites or is mean, leave it the fuck alone if you can, sheesh, how hard is that? Which is not to say that cats don't make problems too, just that I've never had one, and I've certainly never had a cat problem with a neighbor's cat.)

I am short tempered and crabby because this dog barks. Not constantly. Constantly I could call the police, frequently, and eventually they would either get the dog to shut up, or someone would take it away and give it to someone who had a yard. Because, really, I think keeping any dog that doesn't have the word "toy" in front of it in an apartment is just cruel. Likewise, I think anyone who owns a husky and who lives south of Maryland ought to be forced to wear a furcoat year-round.

This dog only barks when something bothers it. The problem is, people going to work or coming home bothers it. And when something bothers the dog, it barks. Not long, maybe 30-45 seconds or so. However...

What you have to understand about my apartment building is that no one who lives here has anything remotely resembling a 8-5 work schedule. Kevin works 3-4 days a week, 5:30 am -5:30 pm. Our upstairs neighbor is in the navy. He works 6 am - 4 pm. His wife works 8 pm - 3 am. Don't ask me how they ever got together long enough to have a baby. The neighbor cat-cornered across the hall gets home around 11:30 pm. Our upstairs neighbor across the hall gets home around 2:30 am.

I think you're starting to get the idea.

My typical evening has been like this recently. Go to bed around 10:30. Get woke up at 11:30. Get woke up at 2:30. Get woke up at 3:15. Get woke up at 3:45 when Kevin's alarm starts going off. Get woke up at 5:10 when Kevin leaves for work. Get woke up at 5:45 when upstairs neighbor goes to work.

I haven't gotten this little sleep regularly since Jess was nursing.

So, word count for last week:

August 30: 268 words
August 31: 525 words
September 1: 798 words

Total: 1,591 (below goal by 909 words)

This week:

September 5: 973 words
September 6: 854 words
September 9: 552 words
September 11: 1,158 words

Total: 3,537 words (over goal by 1,037 words)

I guess it averages out.

Last week was both good and bad...

My word count was good:

Aug 22 - 1,400 words
Aug 26 - 1,230 words
Aug 28 - 1,423 words

total for the week - 4,053

However, I did something I've been trying not to do since I started this novel... I wrote something out of order.

I suppose I can weakly sort of justify it in that

1) it's not too much further down from where I am now. I just started Chapter 12 and this is going to be the end of Chapter 13.

2) it's not going to be a difficult scene to set up. Really, all Bastian and Weilian have to do is be in the same room for a few minutes and they're going to be arguing.

3) the scene really did spring to mind fully-formed and I wanted to write it down before I lost it.

Other than that, I went through and renamed a character, because the name I'd originally gave him is associated with a larger amount of sarcasm than I was getting from him. I'm not sure I like the new name any better, but it can just be a place-holder, if I need it to be.

I also need to remember to go back through a couple of chapters and update some information because it's not very clear, and I may want to go back and give my heroes slightly longer than two months to nab the main baddie, because really, a lot needs to happen between now and then... but we'll see about that. I like the deadlines because it means there's not much time for the characters to relax (and hence, not much time for readers to get bored.)

Otherwise Known As: Why I loathe AOL

I actually wrote a longish entry last week, both about my word count and about a particular friend of mine who's on my AOL blocked list now for his consistant lack of good spelling, anything remotely resembling grammar and absolute derth of punctuation. (Among other sins, he seems to believe that "not" is an optional word and when he says "i could find a paring spce" or "my romate and i are geting along" I should be able to figure out that he couldn't find a space and his roomate and he are fighting all the time.)

In any case, I opened AIM to check what the actual commands were to put someone on your blocked list, AIM hijacked my browser and I lost my wonderfully sarcastic blog entry about grammar.

So, I've been so pissed about this (and some other things that really aren't worth getting into) that I slammed my browser shut and went off to sulk in Warcraft, where I've been for the last almost week.

Week before Last's Word Count: 6,712

Last Week's Word Count (before I got pissed off with the universe): 3,154

So, I'm still on track, provided I can stop being pissed off enough to do some writing this week.

(As a further note to people with sig others: If you're feeling neglected by your spouse/girlfriend/boyfriend/whathaveyou, waking them up - after they've stated that they're really tired - an hour after they've gone to bed to say you're feeling neglected is Not a Good Plan. Really. It's not.)

Weekly Writing Stuff:

August 2nd - 1,519 words, end of Chapter 8
August 2nd - 837 words, start Chapter 9
August 3rd - 2,438 words
August 4th - 1,614 words
August 5th - 647 words
August 7th - 1,372 words, end Chapter 9

Weekly Total: 8,427 words

I'll tell you, I don't know why Mondays always seem to be such non-writing days. I know why I have weekly slow-downs around Wednesday - Saturday...

Given my husband's work schedule and all, I get most of my work done on days that he's also working, which is to say Sunday through Tuesday and every other Wednesday. I'm getting better at it through lack of options, but I still have a hard time writing when someone's in the room.

Part of it is the distraction thing: other people in the room talk, mutter, move around, play video games, watch TV, etc. And I am incredibly nosy... if Kevin's on WoW and he's typing a lot, I'll almost always ask him who he's talking to, what's up, anything interesting going on...

The other part is the self-conscious thing: I don't know exactly why - I mean, I'm not ashamed of writing - but it somehow feels twitchy and wrong to be doing it in front of another person.

And even worse, this week at least, was that I'd come up onto the old debate: Have a sex scene or do not have a sex scene.

For nine chapters now I've been working on this relationship between the two main characters and now that they've finally admitted that they care about each other....

It is actually a debate, the whole sex-scene thing. And it's a weird one.

I mean, first off, I'll admit, I like to read them... in books where there's a well-established plot and interesting characters, etc. However, I generally skim them, second-read around... (of course, I also skim through long descriptive passages of flora and fauna, which is why the Clan of the Cave Bears series only takes me a few days to get through, since I'm not reading 90% of the novel ANYWAY) unless they're really well-written and I haven't come across that many that were that well done.

On the other hand, I always hate the concept of a "gratuitous sex scene" in movies and novels... if it advances the plot, great. If not, thanks, there are porno movies available to rent, and I'll take advantage of that at my leisure...

Still, sex scenes do a lot for a word count...

To cut to the point, I decided to write it, on the basis of if I didn't like it, or it wasn't necessary, I could cut it out later.

I think it works... mostly. And I didn't have too much in the way of purple language (sex scenes tend to work that way, for some reason. it's either crude or purple...) And I managed to keep most of the actual plot-relevant conversation out of it (altho there is some character relevant conversation in there, very good for development and insight) so if I decide to cut the scene later, I don't have to scramble to make sure I've covered the important bits. (no, that pun wasn't intended, but hey.)

Now, I'm getting better about writing with another person in the room, although I am by no means as comfortable as say, Harlan Ellison, who I understand works on novels at conventions and signings and posts his work on the wall behind him as he finishes for people to read (nerves of steel, that one). But writing a sex scene... with my husband in the room. Nope. Was not going to happen.

Which is why my word count sort of dribbled out on the days he was home and then geared up again on Sunday. When I was by myself again. (Yeah, yeah. Go ahead, I just know you're thinking it.)

Yesterday was both a good writing day and a bad writing day.

Especially since I woke up in totally the wrong mood and spent almost the entire morning and early afternoon discussing Hall-shit with Liz about a character who - among his other faults (like having a bad redneck accent that gets worse every time I play him and I really need to get a hold on that before I sprain my fingers) - happens to be a cop, and thus is not even remotely friendly with the "scum" characters that inhabit this novel.

You normal people out there (who are probably not reading my blog, but that's ok) who are alone in your head, I just want you to know. Some days I envy the shit out of you.

I sort of think about my headspace (which is not necessarily the same space between my ears and over my mouth) as a rather cramped apartment with lots of rooms. Each room is assigned to a given character and I'm constantly building on new wings. There are a couple of "common" areas, but mostly my characters are forced to stay in their own rooms if they're not currently "on call" because a lot of them tend to fight.

What's worse is sometimes having multiple versions of a character. Like Bastian, for example. (All my charcters have at least two versions, the one who's on the Hall, in the story, etc, and therefore doesn't know all the evil nasty things I have planned for them. And the version that does, who gives me advice, talks to other characters they have no way of knowing and protests my plans loudly. Most of my characters are a lot like me in that they'd much rather have a nice calm life. But that makes for dull story, so they're generally out of luck. Thus, they complain. A lot. Especially to me, as I'm the chick in charge. Wow, this is getting to be a really long aside, isn't it? New paragraph.)

Anyway, Bastian has his regular Hall-version self (Angel - which is his current alias), then there's his "I know the plots" Hall-version (ArchAngel - Arch meaning over). Then there's the novel Bastian (Mace - which is the alias Bastian was using when he first came on the Hall and is, in the novel, the alias he's still using.) who's a bit younger and less cynical than the Hall version. And his Arch. There are a couple of wispy "what ifs" Bastian/Angels who float around from time to time from alternative timelines.

Unfortunately for me, Bastian (in all his different guises) is a very powerful character. He's the one I have no control over whatsoever. The best I've been able to do is nudge the people around him in order to get him pointed where I want him to go. He's very difficult to shut up. Getting him stuffed into his room for an extended period is so hard that I end up being reluctant to let him out again.

And - Karen forgive me for this - he's sort of an asshole. No, I take that back. He is an asshole. He's an asshole and he's an evil man. Just because he has some good points doesn't make him less evil. He's almost nothing like me, and unlike a lot of my other characters, he's nothing like I'd want to be if I could, and I wouldn't really actually want to know him in person. He's scary. And uptight. And a murderer.

However, he's an evil man who happens to be exceedinly emotional with an almost obsessive lockdown on said emotions, which makes him a real handful to deal with.

I had a good writing day yesterday. Several very emotionally charged scenes. At first I didn't like one of them. It came out a little flat and eratic. I poked at the conversation for most of the rest of the afternoon and finally got it placed to my satisfaction in the evening. Which made me very happy.

And I got some good, creepy writing done after that. Nearly 2,500 words yesterday alone.

There are only two times in my life that I miss smoking: after a really good, multuple orgasm fuck, and after a day of good writing. There's nothing quite like leaning back with a cigarette and looking back on the day's work with satisfaction.

Too bad I quit smoking seven years ago.

July 25th - 850 words
July 27th - 1,070 words
July 31st - 1,099 words

Total week: 3,019

So, I'm still meeting my new word goal, and that's good. Despite getting dragged over to warcraft - sometimes kicking and screaming - an awful lot this week.

I'm working on the non-human races of my world and came to realize that there's a lot about the world I don't know.

I didn't even give the character's home city a name until a chapter or two ago and when I did, it was a real cop-out name: Croninsburg (the city of the crown. where the king lives. very original, really.)

I also haven't named any of the gods. I know there are gods, and that they can and do interact with the people who live on the world, but I don't know anything about them. I don't know what they do, how many of them there are, or how they're related. I know there's a very large cathedral called Godshome in the city of Portshead (that's pronounced Port shed, in case anyone cares. Similiar to Portsmouth, down here, which is said Port Smith). I keep wondering if the gods need names at all. Or, maybe like the Christian's god, they can have names, but most people don't know what they are. Dunno, still working on that. I hate drawing up religious systems.

I have several races:

Humans: humans are currently the dominant race in the world, through sheer numbers more than anything else. They're able to utilize magic two different ways - through training, (book mages) by pulling bits of magical energy out of the world around them and binding it together to turn loose in one spot, and by natural instinct in which they draw magic from inside. This later kind of magic is pretty dangerous: for one, it attracts extra-planar creatures known as leeches. If a leech is able to consume the mage that attracted it, the leech will absorb all the mage's power in addition to its own natural defenses, making it a real menace. Thus, natural magic - called shadow weaving, or demon speaking or witch speaking, mostly by people who really don't know anything about it - is illegal and people who practice it are hunted down and killed.

There are a couple family/sub-races of humans who are specially trained or have special semi-magical abilities: Hunters (the Munda Din) and Dragonslayers (the Hin-jai). Hunters can sense, in a limited area, natural magic being used. They are also trained to fight leeches and to dispatch natural mages. Sometimes, they also hunt down book mages who refuse to abide by the 'rules'. Dragonslayers are able to craft magical weapons to use to slay dragons, and these weapons are formidable - they can heal the wielder and her allies, form magical shields to protect against dragon-breath, make the wielder immune/resistant to many spells.

Feylin: these are the first non-humans I've talked about much. Feylin are a fallen race and probably in the next 500 years or so, they'll be extinct, unless they manage to find a better solution to their problems. They were created by the gods first, and had a much better understanding of magic than humans ever will. Unfortunately, they were also very proud and they treated the other races pretty badly. They tried to compete with the gods and in doing so, they created orcs. They were cursed by the gods to become that which they reviled, and all the males of their species died. Only girls are born, and in order to survive as a race, they are forced to breed with humans and Undina, which is diluting their abilities.

Feylins have a few remaining graces: some of them can transform into animals and back. This is called being 'aspected'. Previous to their fall, all Feylin could do this, and many could aspect several different forms. Nowadays, it's uncommon, and only a few can manage more than one form. Also, some Feylin can use magic, naturally, without as much risk of summoning leeches. And they can make magical weapons to fight leeches, on the occassions that one does show up.

Undina: the Undina are sometimes known as 'the adapters'. They can't use magic so much as they are magic. An Undine can, by concentrating, adapt to any land or climate. They can breathe air or water, can add limbs to run faster, fight better, fly, swim, etc. In their 'birth' form, an Undine is unremarkable, looking much like a plain, brown-skinned human with vivid purple, silver, or black eyes. As they grow, they select their own forms, which essentially means an Undine can look just about like anything. Many of them favor horns or various decorative tentacles, making them look a bit demonic to humans.

Orcs: Created by the Feylin in a magic experiment gone very badly, the orcs are the equal and opposite of their creators. Orcs can shape-change to a few different forms, are skilled with natural magic, and very, very smart. They're almost as ugly as they are smart. And they loathe the Feylin for creating and then abandoning them.

Dragons: Dragons come in a few different forms: wyrms, drakes, and dragon-kings. Wyrms are smaller dragonkin, entirely unintelligent. There are a couple of different species, but they're no larger than horses, sometimes capable of flight and sometimes not. They eat smaller farm animals like sheep, sometimes prey on humans, and are difficult, but not impossible to dispatch using mundane weapons. Drakes are larger, can always fly, and have a rudimentary sort of intellect. Drakes, if raised from egglings, can carry a rider and be taught to fight in battle. Wild drakes are pretty dangerous, but can be dispatched without magical aid by well-trained fighters or by large groups of desperate villagers, but they'll probably have some casualties. Some orcs raise dragon-flights for battle. Dragon-kings (or true dragons) are the most dangerous, largest, and intelligent. They are able to use magic, both natural and constructed, they can shape-change to human or animal forms, and are very difficult to kill. Fortunately, true dragons are pretty rare, as they tend to kill each other off as often as they war with other races.

Anyway, enough babble this week...

July 21, 1,959 words, finished up Chapter Seven

July 24, 743 words, starting Chapter Eight

Weekly total: 2,702 words, which is over goal, and therefore peachy.

This week's writing:

July 12: 209 words
July 13: 670 words
July 14: 1,993 words
July 16: 1,082 words
July 17: 2,879 words

Weekly total: 6,833

Anyone who's taking notes at home will quickly come to the conclusion that over the last 10 weeks, this week has been my most productive.

A quick summary:

Week 1: 2,432 (or 3,532 - I'm not entirely sure how to count this week, because I also wrote a short Hall-related fiction piece, which technically counts as writing, but has nothing whatsoever to do with this novel)
Week 2: 855
Week 3: 3,000
Week 4: 2,417
Week 5: 2,234
Week 6: 1,658
Week 7: 2,578
Week 8: 4,106
Week 9: 2,441
Week 10: 6,833

for a ten week total of 28,554 words (or 29,654) which is about 58 pages. (2,855 word average per week)

My word goal has been 2,000 words per week and I've missed it twice in ten weeks. I've been considering pushing it up a bit to 2,500 words per week (an extra page) and I'm going to do that.

I still haven't written an outline for this novel yet, although I'm pretty sure of the events of the next 2 chapters. After that, it gets a little fuzzy again. I keep putting off drawing up an outline because I know - know, mind you - that when I have an outline, I tend to write all out of order, so some things end up being continuity issues, which is very annoying to try and go back and edit out. Also, near the end of the novel, I end up having avoided all the hard spots to write, which is just thrilling to go back and try and fill in later.

I actually wrote this novel before, for the NaNoWriMo thing in November. I got about 70,000 words done, which were almost entirely total crap. The thing read like a bad mixing of Chronicles of Riddick and EarthSea (the mini-series, not the novels). When my computer crashed earlier this year, I lost it, since I'd never posted it or shared it with Liz. I tried to tell myself this really wasn't a big loss, but it sort of was.

It took me quite a while to recover from it - I hadn't been writing much of anything else. In talking to Liz a few months back, I decided to give it a go again, and obviously it's been going.

Which is why I'm trying to figure out how come I still feel sort of obscurely guilty.

I had a fantastic week this week, I got over three times my word goal done. I finished Chapter Five, started and finished Chapter Six, and got a good go at Chapter Seven. I had some revelations about my Bad Guy (who really is quite vile) and developed my heroine's character.

(In the middle of this, I also read the entire Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, dealt with the baby of hives - who still has them, and I wish the pediatrician would call me back, played a lot of Warcraft, had the deviants over two nights in a row, yelled at JD about posting Harry Potter spoilers and have mostly been coping with a personal issue that I don't want to talk about right now, sorry. So it's not like my real life has been quiet or anything.)

So... I wonder why it is that it seems no matter what I do, how hard I work, or anything that I accomplish, I never feel happy with myself as a writer?

Week of July 4th - July 10th

(Yes, I count my week as starting on Monday, like most sane people do, thankyouverymuch.)

July 4th - 408 words
July 5th - 902 words
July 7th - 1,131 words

Total: 2,441 words for the week

And all things considered, I'm pretty proud of that, too. The 4th, we all went up to Liz and Matt's, ate and talked and otherwise were mostly social, or at least as social as geeks get.

The 5th, Karen and I went to see Star Wars Ep III (her first viewing, my second). The 6th we were visited by Jeff and Matt and Liz (sans Penny, who was up at daycare) and were social in a slightly more air-conditioned setting, plus had lunch at the hibachi place across the way. The 7th, Kevin and I dumped babysitting duties on Karen - who apparently feels a total failure as a babysitter because Jess had a meltdown, which makes me an absolute disaster as a parent, since Jess melts down fairly often - to go see War of the Worlds. Which was awful, so please, if you haven't already wasted your money on this, I beg you. Don't.

Friday we took Jess to the Zoo and Kevin bailed on his Shadowrun game because he was so tired he nearly ran into two different minivans on the way home from the zoo. And Saturday we drove all the way up to my dad's place, ate, and drove home. Traffic was miserable.

Karen went home yesterday and Kevin went back to work yesterday as well, but after being exceptionally busy, I decided I needed a vacation from my vacation and spent all day yesterday doing as little as I possibly could.

I'm giving consideration to doing more nothing today. I'll let you know how that works out for me.

I've gotten a lot done this week.

Which is surprising, because round about Tuesday, I decided that I wasn't going to get anything done and that I wasn't going to worry about it. Given that Karen was going to be here for almost two weeks, and Jeff and Ashby and etc, etc. Plus with Kevin being home from work...

Despite that, having the instant gratification of having Karen nearly bodily shove me out of my chair on the merest mention that I might have written something new has been startlingly encouraging.

I finished off Chapter Four (1,455 words) and got a good start on Chapter Five (2,651 words) for a weekly sum of 4,106 words this week, over twice of my weekly goal.

This week's writing thing:

Monday: 923 words
Friday: 299 words
Sunday: 1,356 words

total: 2,578

I'm doing things a little differently. Uusally I don't let anyone read my stuff until I'm at least done a first draft (well, except for Liz, but she's always before been my co-writer, so she has to know what I'm writing.)

This was a habit that I started after allowing/asking a "friend" to read over the first couple chapters of something I'd started and he pretty much lambasted me. From one end to the other. He didn't have a single good thing to say about it. At all. He definately left out the constructive part of constructive criticism.

I like to think my writing's just a tiny bit better than that. Maybe it's not...

Of course, he also said that no one reads novels unless someone has sex or someone dies within the first three pages. Ever since then, I've read every single book with that tag in mind. And mostly I've enjoyed the ones where that isn't the case.

Any road... I pretty much abandoned that project after recieving his lambastment. It was just impossible to keep going. Seemed meaningless. And perhaps it was my own soft-shelled crab ego that got squashed under his boot, but I rather viewed it as "he killed my project."

After that, I never let anyone read anything until after it was done, so at least if they hated it, it was out there and done, rather than sort of rotting in my head. I'm demented enough without additional help.

This time 'round, I invited Karen and Liz to read along as I wrote. Liz because she's very good for helping me with clogged story pores and Karen because I know she'll like the characters. Also because Karen can get away with nagging me and Liz can't. Stupid, but there it is. When Karen nags me to write, I'll either write or ignore her as I'm in the mood. When Liz nags me, I get defensive and guilty, neither of which are conducive to writing. Stupid, that, but I can't seem to help it. Fortunately, Liz knows this and she doesn't nag me very much. But I also do need to be reminded, sometimes, that I have 'work' to do. Especially when I get wrapped up in something stupid, like Warcraft, or Hubrid's Hero Heist.

And anyone who keeps a blog knows that sometimes the audience itself is all that keeps you going.

So... since Karen's been reading along, I've had a couple of benefits from it; 1) as one character is loosely (very, very loosely) based on her Hall character, I've been able to get sort of running commentary from her version of the character, which has assisted in shaping some of the events and conversations. 2) I have someone to nag me gently into writing if I've been distracted and 3) I have at least one person who's slavering for the next bit.

Especially since I seem to keep ending on a "WHAT NEXT?" kind of note. It's not entirely always intentional. Sometimes I just run out of time to write and I'm right in the middle of things. But other times it is. I like having the chapters end on an "ohmigod" sort of note. (A leftover evil tactic from my youth when I'd often say "One more chapter, mom, and then I'll come do the dishes." Have I mentioned that she'd come back 45 minutes later, dishes undone and I'm now nearing the end of a different chapter? Right. Same idea.)

Friday, Kevin was taking the car in to get the flat tire fixed and an oil change, and I expected him to be gone for a few hours, so I opened up my document and got to work. He was back 20 minutes later because the shop couldn't fit him in. So I only got a little bit of work done before I was dragged away.

Karen did not find this at all entertaining, as I got my characters from "oh, shit" to "OHMIGOD!" in those ~300 words.

Yesterday, while writing, I had to do 800 more words to reach my word goal for the week and when I checked the document to get the word count, noticed that I'd reached my goal at a "WHAT THE FUCK" moment...

I sent Liz the following beep:

"Made word goal. On another cliff. Thinking about stopping here. Just to frustrate Karen."

(I didn't.)

Well, full time mom this week - not that I'm not full time all the time anyway, but sans husband around, Jess started out whiney and got worse as the week progressed - so I didn't get as much done as I'd wanted. For some reason, it is really, really hard to write with Miffy going on in the background. While I usually limit Jess's tv viewing, this week, she started getting to watch more because it was either that or have me being tempted to kill her.

And Liz and Elizabeth came over this week. Which was nice. But not at all condusive to writing.

Grand total: 1,658 words this week.

This week's word tally, and I use the word "week" with extreme caution, was:

2,234 words

I'm perhaps 1,000-1,500 words away from the end of chapter three, bogged down again by technical details.

(At least in my vocab, a writing technical detail is anything that you have to stop and figure out the physics/logistics of it. Most shit, particularly in fantasy writing, you can just make up - or, in the case of sword fights and whatnot, you can go with general descriptions... usually gleaned by watching one of several swash movies I own.)

Right now I'm bogged down with a conversation that someone's not hearing all of. I want the character to hear just enough of the conversation to come to all the wrong conclusions regarding it. In essence, I have to figure out exactly how to phrase the conversation person A and person B are having, then smudge it around enough so that person C hears X instead of Y. Confusing, no?

In any case, last Monday, I shelled out all 2,234 of those words in one session, and probably would have gone on to finish Chapter Three entirely, if I hadn't gotten bogged down with this one two-paragraph conversation. I love writing. I really do. Most of the time.

The rest of this past week has been pretty heavily bogged down, between outings, Kevin's going out of town yesterday, and general Hall stuff, so I hadn't had time/quiet to get back to writing.

On the other, other hand, my word goal has been pretty modest over the last few months... 2,000 words a week. So I met the goal, and I'm not entirely sure what I'm complaining about...

This week, started Chapter Three and did

2,417 words.

Less than last week, better than the week before. But Kevin was off for an extra day this week for Memorial Day and I have a really hard time writing with someone else in the room. Gods, I want a bigger apartment so I can have the computer room to myself again.

This week, I've done just under 3,000 words.

Not a bad week, really.

Chapter Two is completed.

Writing for this week: 855 words.

Wow. I suck.

This week:

today: 635 words (new novel)
today: 1,100 words (hall fiction piece)
yesterday: 340 words
day before yesterday: 1457 words

Weekly total: 3,532 words this week.

Not up to like the 5,000 words a week+ that I used to do, but it's something.

In other news, my nephew's been diagnosed with preliminary schitzaphrenia.

And mental hospitals smell of urine, tears, depression and strong floor cleaner. Nothing's changed since I was in one. Poor kid.

I keep debating about posting this at all... Kind of a meandery meaningless ramble through my somewhat incoherent thoughts about blogging.

Recently, I got a few comments on my blog that got me thinking about the whole thing.

I've gotten worse comments, honestly. Usually I delete the ones from people who get to my site by looking up "XXX Anime" and write "fuk you" forty times because they're disappointed that I'm talking about Vin Diesel instead of anime chicks who make it with tentacled monsters. Or the pointlessly rude and badly misspelled comment I got once while complaining about my pregnancy that said "u wil b fat adn unhappy the resp of ur life and so wil ur kid!"

Pointless complaints from illiterate people are worth deleting.

I also routinely delete any blog spam that comes in - people selling p.enis aids or offering cheap prescription drugs or any of that other nonsense. I don't want to read it in my email, I don't want to see it on web sites and I certainly don't want anyone to waste their hard earned money (or even their easily earned money!) on crap they saw on my website.

These comments I went ahead and kept while I debated writing this entry.

I also kept them because I found my sense of the belief strongly tested. Do I really believe two random people found the same old blog entry less then three minutes apart and both of them found the story to be completely pointless? (I might add neither of them had the courtesy to leave an email address or a link to track back to them.) On the other hand, do I really believe that someone hated the entry so much they felt it was necessary to pretend to be two people so that them telling me I sucked was doubly enforced?

There's no way to know, I suppose, unless they see this entry and decide to tell me in their terribly bad spelling and witless prose that certainly, they are two seperate people and of course it was coincidence that they both found my blog on the same day and of course I'm an idiot. (Don't bother. I already know I'm an idiot. You don't need to tell me.)

Of course, reading back over the entry, I tried to remember the point I was attempting to make by writing it in the first place. And what I was trying to get at was my own muzziheadedness combined with a brain that frequently refuses to shut up and let me sleep. I saw the two pairs of shoes and I wondered about the two pairs of shoes. Eventually, unable to sleep despite being tired and sick myself, I had to get up and investigate exactly where my husband was and if he had gone to work, what on earth was he wearing on his feet?

I wondered if I had any business continuing to blog when I was obviously incapable to conveying these feelings of otherworldliness that comes from the disconnected ponderings of a mind still cottoned by sleep. I already know that I don't write nearly as well as I'd like to, that I am constantly plagued by the knowledge that I will never be able to carry accurately to paper the myriad dreamworlds that inhabit my mind so clearly that it is often a real pang to come back to this dreary, so-called real world. I spend a lot of time reading and feeling that guilty ache of jealousy knowing that I will never write half as well as so many other people.

And my life is not exciting. As a matter of fact, it's often damn boring. I'm a stay-at-home mom married to a type-A professional. I don't own a sex shop so that I can have enormously funny anecdotes with which to entertain readers. I don't even have a regular job about which to post frustrated entries of corporate stupidity. I'm not experiencing any major difficulties that keep people tied to my journal for updates.

Tiny people. With tiny problems. In a great wide open world.

There are thousands, if not tens of thousands, of journals and blogs and musings out there on the web. People who dream, people who do, people who live, people who love. People who can make you laugh and people who can make you cry. Train wreck lives that you can't stop reading despite knowing that nothing good is ever going to come of what they're doing. Triumphs of the human spirit. Miracles. People with ordinary boring lives who find clever ways of telling you about it. People who do things you wish you could, people who do things you never would.

I won't twist your arm to read my blog. And I won't pretend not to be slightly hurt at being called an idiot.

This is my life. You don't have to share it with me.

Unless you want to.

After a few months of being sort of stuck spinning my wheels, I think I'm finally getting my feet back on the ground...

I finished writing the query letter for our novel Circle in the Sand and mailed it out to four agents, hoping we can get someone to represent us.

I've also started the working outline for Book 2. We decided to go ahead and do The Silver and The Green next, since we were having trouble with In This Life or the Next. Also, some of the stuff that happens in This Life is a little easier explained if you've already read Silver and Green.

The working outline was 2,545 words

I've also put two pieces of it up already, both previously written:

The Seduction of Mila - 1,254 words
Zephyr and the Lissa - 1,093 words

My goals for the time being are:

• 3,000 words per week
• read through Adam's suggestions and attempt to deal with at least 2 of them per week for Circle
• re-read at least 2 Chapters of Circle and make sure it's ready for submission

Wish me luck. Especially since I'm going to have a baby sometime in the next month.

In recent weeks, working on our editing, Liz and I have discovered not only our own writing foibles, but have become a lot more aware of other people's mistakes. And, if we're not careful, we start sounding like someone's ancient English teacher, correcting them.

This was driven home to us the other day after we'd snarked about the problems with affect and effect [Note: affect is a verb. Effect is a noun. Affect an effect. And, further note, effected is not a word, it's a Dilbert-corporate-ism used to mean "make" and should be stomped out whenever it is encountered. "We effected the changes." No. No. We made the changes. Anyway....] and Jeff - a scientist with a tenuous grasp on the finer rules of grammatical structure - was feeling a little hurt about our insensitivity.

"Gee, Jeff," said I. "You should hear us snark on ourselves at one of our editing sessions. We're much ruder to ourselves than we are to anyone else." As if this excused anything...

So, I decided to go ahead and record a bit of the session we had, just so people could see...

[Format Note: First, the original paragraphs. Then the session. The text we read aloud will be noted in blue. Then the new paragraphs.]

"The ritual begins the night before the public ceremony," Kevil explained, his face solemn with reverence.

Loria's eyebrows rose slightly. "A long ritual," she commented neutrally.

He nodded briefly, continuing with his explanation. "That night, each member of the circle must spend alone - by preference, either in the homes of our parents, or in the temple's meditation chambers."

Loria nodded. "All right. Sleeping alone doesn't sound like much of a ritual, though."

He grinned, shaking his head. "We do not sleep. We meditate."

"Do we? On what?"

"On the nature of love. On the nature of our relationship. We must consider very carefully whether we truly wish to join in circle."

Loria laughed lightly. "We're already married, my heart. It seems a little late to back out now."

Kevil's eyes turned serious again. "It is the ritual, n'shava."

Missa, carefully scribing invitations at the table across the room, glanced up with a grin. "Don't worry, Loria," she said lightly. "I understand it's not at all uncommon for someone to fall asleep during their meditation. As long as you're alone, no one's going to give you too hard a time for it."

Loria caught the mildly exasperated look Kevil shot in Missa's direction. Kevil was, she knew, extremely devout to his Bright Lady, and more than a little bit of a traditionalist. This was, she sensed, very important to him, not only that all the steps be taken, but that they were granted all the reverence and respect that tradition demanded.

"It's all right, Mish," she said quickly, smiling at Kevil and reaching to twine her fingers with his. "Kevil was very sweet about following all of my family's traditions and rules. I want to do this right. I'll have to catch a nap that afternoon, but I'll do it."

She knew, from the sudden flood of love in his eyes, that it was the right decision. She had loved him, after all, from the moment they first met.

KT: Ok, we'll just sit this over here. Right...

Liz: Shall we begin?

KT: Yes.

Liz: Am I reading?

KT: You're reading.

Liz: I'm reading.

KT: Oh, and while I'm thinking about it, write a note that you wanted to try the cocoa.

Liz: I'm supposed to make a note?

KT: Well, so we don't forget. We'll just stick that there...

Liz: Sure, that'll do May we begin now?

KT: Sorry.

Liz: Chapter two, circle in the sand. All right how much do we have in our first sentence? Not much? Ok, I have quite a bit. I got rid of public, changed explained to said, and got rid of everything after "said." So I have "The ritual begins the night before the ceremony," Kevil said.

KT: Mmmm, that's true, it's not like there's a private ceremony..

Liz: Well, it's sort of private, but it's well....

KT: ok....

Liz: Ok, we're going to get rid of these eyebrows... There are too many eyebrows. There are eyebrows all over the place. It's this whole facial expression thing...

KT: That's Ok. You want to know what I noticed about Chapter Four? Not that we're doing Chapter Four tonight? But that we're very pully people. We grab people's arms and we pull them everywhere.

Liz: That must be why they're all so long...

KT: We pull them down the street, we pull them into discussions...

laughter

Liz: Ok, that must be why everyone's features are so long, we're pulling on them too much.

KT: Ok, we can get rid of the eyebrows.

Liz: So I have "A long ritual," Loria commented, neutrally.

KT: I took out neutrally.

Liz: Loria commented period.

KT: And then, I added a sentence here...

Liz: Wooo! Let's have it.

KT: Although some of Loria's devotions to her own goddess, Nacheyla, were lengthy, the marriage ceremony was not one of them.

Liz: Say that again.

KT: Although some of Loria's devotions to her own goddess, Nacheyla, were lengthy, the marriage ceremony was not one of them.

Liz: Got it. Email that to me. Alright, I took out briefly, and I put in an and. He nodded and continued his explanation.

KT: I changed that to He nodded, continuing his explanation.

Liz: Well, the with definately needs to go. He nodded and continued. He nodded, continuing.

KT: I liked continued. At least keeps that verb-tense thing going. We change tenses all the time.

Liz: We do that a lot, yeah. Well, I completely rewrote the next bit, so let's see what you have first.

KT: "That night each member of the prospective circle must spend alone." And then I have this note here: Loria stayed at Kevil's place - did we want to take this line out?

Liz: Yeah, um, yeah I changed that... I changed each member of the cirlce to we each.

KT: We each? No, no, I don't like that.

Liz: Something.

KT: Prospective is a sort of Kevil-snotty word

Liz: And everything after the dash - die evil dash! - I put something like "You may stay here, if you like. I will make use of the temple's chambers."

KT: Oh, that's good. I like that.

Liz: What did you do?

KT: I just took it out. My point was, this is not what Loria does, so we might want to change that.

Liz: Keep that. I got rid of the nod.

KT: Yeah, we nod alot

Liz: Almost as much as we smile. The rest of her sentence I left alone. Did you get rid of the whole next sentence? The stupid grinning?

KT: I took out the whole "he grinned" We just did one of these back and forth...

Liz: grinning and nodding and nodding and grinning.

KT: I just, for this whole section, I got rid of all the dialogue tags.

Liz: Woohoo! Ok, "We do not sleep. We meditate." "Do we? On what?" "On the nature of love. On the nature of our relationship. We must consider very carefully whether we truly wish to join in circle." And then you got rid of Loria laughing. "We're already married my heart. It seems a little late to back out now."

KT: And then I added this little Loria joked, turning her hand back and forth, spraying light across her wedding ring. Just sort of a ... what I meant for her to do is this gestures Basically what she's doing is holding up her hand saying "It's a little late, don't you think?"

Liz: She held up her hand, displaying her wedding ring?

KT: Yeah, something like that. I think put this at the beginning of the sentence because she's doing it while she's talking.

Liz: We're going to get rid of Kevil being serious.

KT: Oh, yes, Kevil and his eyeballs. Everybody looks at everything.

Liz: Yes, I know.

KT: It's like "Stop looking at each other!"

Liz: Just the whole thing. wipe it. It is the ritual, n'shava. Italicize n'shava. Missa - who we need because we're introducing Missa - carefully scribing invitations across the room glanced up. Period.

KT: Glanced up from her work.

Liz: Sure.

KT: Just because "glanced up" seems sort of what? where?

Liz: "Don't worry, Loria," she said. Period."I understand it's not at all uncommon for someone to fall asleep during their meditation." And then I changed this last bit.

KT: Yeah, I'm a little awkward with this "too hard a time"

Liz: I changed that to "As long as you're alone, it's not all that serious."

KT: Yeah, that's good.

Liz: Ok, we killed the mildly.

KT: Yeah, I took out the mildly.

Liz: Loria caught the mildly... no, Loria caught the exasperated look Kevil shot in Missa's direction.

KT: Yeah, every once in a while, they can look at each other, and this is kinda an important look.

Liz: A specific glare... a sort of "Don't do that." Ok, and I have two of these little things here where I start the sentence, put a clause in it and finish the sentence. Kevil was, she knew, extremely... which I do all the freaking time.

KT: I took out this thought here. Kevil was devout to his Bright Lady.

Liz: Yes, that's what I did too, I got rid of "she knew". And extremely out. Kevil was devout to his Bright Lady and more than a little bit of a traditionalist. Then here is it again. This was, she sensed, very important. That's my big trick.

KT: I got rid of that, it's like we're putting dialogue tags in the middle of sentences.

Liz: Yeah, when I'm writing, I like the flow of it, but it reads badly.

KT: Oh.

Liz: And I changed this to it. It was. It was very important to him, not only that all the steps be taken, but that they were granted all the reverence and respect that tradition demanded.

KT: And I have a new paragraph here...

Liz: A new paragraph.

KT: Which I stuck on this other sheet for no particularly good reason... flips some pages It was little enough that he asked of her, and she was not so fanatical in her own beliefs as to hold his in contempt. Although she felt no particular alliegance to the Bright Lady, the goddess was Nacheyla's younger sister in the Heavens. The goddess of love and the goddess of motherhood should be closely allied, she thought, pressing one hand to her stomach.

Liz: Ok

KT: I just...

Liz: we needed to get it in there. I'm not writing that all out, it was a good solution last time, just email it to me.

KT: Ok... note here

Liz: Where was the other sentence?

KT: After long ritual. I just had this problem with this whole "Loria is doing this to be cute for Kevil... I wanted to sort of line up... She's a priestess, she understands."

Liz: Did you take out quickly?

KT: Yeah.

Liz: "It's all right, Mish," she said, reaching to twine her fingers with Kevil's. "He was very sweet about following all of my family's traditions and rules. I want to do this right." And I just killed the last sentence.

KT: Ok. And then I had made some changes in this last sentence. "She knew from the flood of love in his eyes, that she had touched him and was glad to know it."

Liz: How about and just was glad. She had loved him, after all, from the moment they first met.

KT: I changed that. She had loved him, after all from the first moment they met. I don't know why, it just seemed to flow a little smoother.

Liz: That's fine. Ok, we ready?

KT: sighs Ok, Jeff, that's enough for you. turns off the recorder.

"The ritual begins the night before the ceremony," Kevil said.

"A long ritual," Loria commented. Although some of Loria's devotions to her own goddess, Nacheyla, were lengthy, the marriage ceremony was not one of them.

He nodded and continued his explanation. "That night, each member of the prospective circle must spend alone. You may stay here, if you like. I will make use of the temple's chambers."

"All right. Sleeping alone doesn't sound like much of a ritual, though."

"We do not sleep. We meditate."

"Do we? On what?"

"On the nature of love. On the nature of our relationship. We must consider very carefully whether we truly wish to join in circle."

Loria held up her hand, displaying her wedding ring. "We're already married, my heart. It seems a little late to back out now."

"It is the ritual, n'shava."

Missa, carefully scribing invitations at the table across the room, glanced up fomr her work. "Don't worry, Loria," she said. "I understand it's not at all uncommon for someone to fall asleep during their meditation. As long as you're alone, it's not that serious."

Loria caught the exasperated look Kevil shot in Missa's direction. Kevil was extremely devout to his Bright Lady, and more than a little bit of a traditionalist. It was very important to him, not only that all the steps be taken, but that they were granted all the reverence and respect that tradition demanded. It was little enough that he asked of her, and she was not so fanatical in her own beliefs to hold his in contempt. Although she felt no particular alliagance to the Bright Lady, the goddess was Nacheyla's younger sister in the Heavens. The goddess of love and the goddess of motherhood should be closely allied, she thought, pressing one hand to her stomach.

"It's all right, Mish," she said, reaching to twine her fingers with Kevil's. "He was very sweet about following all of my family's traditions and rules. I want to do this right."

She knew, from the flood of love in his eyes, that she had touched him and was glad. She had loved him, after all, from the first moment they met.

Posted by tisfan at 07:02 AM

Liz and I had our second editting session tonight, and this one went...

well, it didn't go "faster" since we spent almost the same amount of time working on it, but as we got many more pages done, I think it does count as faster.

Anyway, we got a lot of work done.

I've learned a few things about myself, and about editting, in the last two weeks.

The first, and most important thing I've learned is that it helps immensely to go into an editting session with my sense of humor intact. I shudder to think what a bruising my ego would take if I took my own mistakes and typos personally. Actually, in a way, it is a very funny process. Liz and I have both discovered "bad writing habits" that we have. Liz has a predeliction for using dashes, and I've an annoying fondness for the phrase "gave him a look".

I also discovered, much to my horror, that I have borrowed the grammatical atrocity "took and went" from Louisa slang. "She took her apprentice and went to the island." Back in my hometown, the phrase "my mamma, she took and went to the store" would have raised no eyebrows at all. It is, however, one of the phrases most likely to send me into convulsive shivers (right up there with "fixin' to get ready")

Liz and I've gotten very handy with the red-pen and we bleed rather profusely over our manuscript. I've gone through one red pen already, and I'm very relieved to have found a new brand of pen that I like very much. I bought a whole box of them, and I hope that a dozen pens will last me a while (provided, of course, that I don't lose them.)

We cut Chapter One down by almost 500 words (about a page for those of you to whom word count makes no signifigance), mostly adjectives, adverbs, and people smiling at each other. Bad Hall habit, that. We're so used to having to indicate emotions during the Hall that every other sentence seemed to be "Loria did this and smiled at her husband. He smiled and said that." Ug. Too many deliriously happy people in the novel. But we cut it down a LOT and I hope it reads a little less revoltingly cutesy now.

I'll read it through again tomorrow and see how it flows now.

Another thing I've learned is that if one is out of breath reading a sentence out loud by the end of the sentence, that sentence is probably much too long and should be cut up into smaller sentences. We had to break up many such monstrosities of clause and phrase tonight. I am in dire need of learning to use periods instead of commas.

The third thing I learned, although I did not exactly learn it tonight, is that editting is a lot of work. A lot, a lot. More than I really thought it would be. And I just don't think I can keep up a word-count on the second novel and edit at the same time. I don't want to get out of the habit of writing, but I just don't think I can do it. For one thing, the second novel is much darker and grimmer than the first, and switching between moods is difficult. Secondly, editting is so much work that my writing is coming out lifeless and flat. Which doesn't help anything.

I think I will still write if I am particularly inspired, but I believe, at least for the time being, that I will table the word count until the first re-draft is complete.

Which I forgot to do last night!

So far, a semi productive week:

Actual Writing Done:

Returning to Haven: (re-write) 250 words
Leaving Home: 1,372
A Harmless Bit of Deception: 1,796

Total writing: 3,416

After more discussion with Liz and a bit of writing on her part, I did some more work last night

We now have a rough outline of the novel 2 and where we want for it to go. Which is great. It means I now have direction when I want to write!

Yay us!

It's been both a good week and a bad week It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.

Anyway....

Actual Writing Done:

(Did I mention I was going to half my word goal while we're editing?)

Returning to Haven: 2,296
No Good Deed goes Unpunished: 1,936

Total Actual Writing Done: 4,232

Headwork and notes:

Outline for Vallel and Eleanore's relationship: 1,075

Administrative Stuff:

Re-did web site, set up new outline for In This Life or the Next: 2 hours

Editing on Book One: 3 hours

Total non-writing work: 1,075 words + 5 hours (equiv 2,500 words)

Total weekly work 7,807 (in words and hours)

Unfortunately, I can't really remember any more the actual details of starting the first novel. It seemed to me that we were almost 1/3 of the way into it before we even started saying the "n" word (that would be "novel", not whatever you were thinking!)

I'm feeling a little lost without anything remotely resembling a story-outline, and also because this story is loosely (very loosely!) based on a Hall plot that ran almost four years ago now. It was not a plot I was very involved with, and it mostly took place between Braz and Liz's characters. With Braz being Sir Not Appearing in this Novel, and my not being very involved at the Hall end of things, I feel a bit lost. I know we're changing a lot (LOTS and Lots) of stuff from the Hall Plot into the Novel Plot, but I still feel like I'm missing a lot of information that might help me feel more comfortable with the story. I'm pretty much ok with the whole Vallel/Eleanore relationship and how it's going to work, but that's what you might call the C-story. The Zoya/Marten/Masato crises being the A-story, and Masato's history being the B-story.

See, we also have this problem in that Liz has a life, and I, honestly, don't. I don't go out, I don't have a quote - real job - unquote. I don't have family that I spend loads of time with, and I don't have Christmas parties to go to for work. A lot of this has eaten into Liz's novel time, and while I don't blame her at all for it, it does sort of leave me out here dangling a bit.

We've chatted about it and we're just now starting to get outlines together. Leastways, there's a lot of Val/Ellie I can write, since that's mostly character driven and the actual events can be massaged around or into the bits. I have some direction to go in, at least.

And I'm doing some vague editting. Not really anything heavy-duty, but just purple-penning the adjectives and adverbs (as Liz and I have a love affair with the words faintly and lightly) and green-penning foreign words, as well as doing a little red-penning. Not too much, yet. Just very basic spelling, grammer checks and whatnot. I want to at least get a bit of opinion back from our test audience before I begin even thinking about major redrafts.

Although there is one part that I completely want to tear out and rewrite, where Loria explains her status as a priestess of Nacheyla that I want to alter quite a lot.

I'm feeling good about finishing the rough draft of novel one, but it does sort of leave me feeling a little... deflated. I don't know, it's sort of weird. I have learned a lot of things, though, over the last six months.

1) writing is work. don't let anyone tell you it's not, because it is. And there are days when it goes well and there are days when it sucks, just like any other job.

2) sometimes, the best thing to do is stop thinking and just write

3) sometimes, the best thing to do is walk away for a while

4) there is no way to tell the difference ahead of time

This week, I read our novel, from one end to the other.

Things I noticed that I would like to change:

Word Usage:

faint, faintly - There's an over-fondness for this word, on both my part and Liz's. I'm pretty sure there are other words which mean the same thing.

other adverbs and adjectives - It seems that there are a few too many descriptive words. These should be trimmed a bit

eyes, smile, look, laughed, blush - these words show up a lot, too

Consistency:

Simone's hair color changes at least once that I noticed. Most of the time it's dark blonde, but at least once it was described as being brown

Cities and countries. On several occassions (as we still don't have anything remotely resembling a world map) cities and countries were just made up to fill a name-slot. The hired mercenaries have at least 2 different country-named homes. Also, in the bit just before Alarik shows up, Floristahn and Kristlestahn get their names switched in a few places

a few places in the story need to be polished up to match - the difficulty of writing things out of order is sometimes details get a bit muddled. There's an argument between Alarik and Simone just before Monika arrives that's... dreadfully inconsistant with the last several arguments they've had before.

Harrik's language - somewhere near the end of writing, Harrik developed this speech quirk, using slightly archaic words like ye and nae. I like this, but I need to go back and apply it to all of his dialogue.

Seamist - Liz wants all the elf-descriptions to match. In a few places where I wrote about the elf, the descriptions are slightly different.

In the Trial for Marshal Sorvech, there's a bit of a jump in logic on the Kronig's part about something Heidel says which should be smoothed out.

Oh, and Brunklaus's name and title need to be checked for consistancy. Sometimes he's Brunklaust. And sometimes he's the Patriarch, and sometimes the Arch-Partriarch.

Details:

Deshi's mother's name needs to be changed. Originally she was a captured slave, Khadyian in descent, and her name is Sanya, a Khadyian name. This should be altered to reflect her changed history, and her name should be Karandi instead

Fondness for D, K, V, and B names. there are soooo many sub characters whose names start with these four letters, either last names or first names. Some of them need to get new names. These people don't matter much, but I don't want to confuse the hell out of everyone.

Foriegn made up words - also need to be examined, particular in my sections. Liz already had a good deal of Alani worked out before we started, but I did not have any languages worked out, so I often just sort of made up a word when it was needed. This led to the Khaydian word for hunter and the dwarven word for human being almost exactly the same word. Not only that, I recognize where it came from. I simply mixed up the syllables for an EQ city name, Kael Drakkel. I should fix this.

Story:

Ok, this may sound really arrogant, but thus far, I haven't really found any issues with the story itself.

Decisions:

We still need to decide about the sex. Does it stay in (in which case, a few more scenes will need to be added where we faded to black) or does it come out (in which case, several scenes will need to be removed and faded to black) or does it get softened up a lot (since most of them were written as erotic short stories at first, and are... a bit graphic. In which case, several of them will need to be rewritten).

Which further reminds me that if it does come out, there's a chapter in Part one that will either need to be padded up (since there's really only two scenes in there, and one of them is a sex scene) or merged.

OH! And title: We were in the bookstore the other day and found Margaret Weis's new book Brothers in Arms on the shelves. BAH! My current suggestions for new titles are Circle in the Sand (which really only applies to Part One, but so what? And changing Part One's name to Bag of Rocks) and Hammer and Rose which is actually backwards, since the rose part comes before the Hammer part, but Rose and Hammer doesn't sound as good.

An additional thought: should we include a glossary/index sort of thing to define foreign words and an index of characters, since there are an awful lot of them. I hesitate, since some of these could be considered spoilers: Such as, how does one index Valleria Lorian? She's Diya and Loria's daughter, the child of the circle, but by saying that, it ruins the suspense of "will Diya manage to win his suit with Kevil and Loria?" I know that happened to me when I was reading the Dragonriders of Pern series... midway through book one, I knew that Jaxom was going to impress a dragon.

Anyway, just some random thoughts.

Work done:

Read through (15 hours)
Editting (2.5 hours) (I know we said we weren't editting this before January, but I was so disgusted with the universe a few days ago that I needed something to distract me and settled on editting.)

Now on to the 90% perspiration part.

But, rough draft is finished!

Yay us!

I'd like to say thanks, now, to everyone who's been supportive of this project. Kevin, Karen, Matt, Jeff, Rachel, Jeremy, and Andy, thank you all very, very much.

Actual Writing:

Shadow of Death: 2855
Machines of War: 1507
Different Battleground: 2194

Total Weekly Word Count: 6556

Administrative Work:

3 hours printing
1 hour dividing chapters

Total Rough Draft Word Count: 289,442 or 579 pages.

Here it is, Sunday again.

Despite keeping track of my writing on a spreadsheet and making notes here on my blog, I also have this fat little spiral bound notebook, with 200 sheets in it (perferated, but of course, it never actually tears on the perf). In any case, I was getting pretty close to full on my old notebook (not to mention the notebook is pretty beat up).

So I got a new one.

My old notebook starts out

Aug 4

387 - Fire
1300 - Character Sketches
666 - more character sketches

and goes (currently) to

Nov 24

Of Blood and Water - 1571
Shadow of Death - 483

Finish
Machines of war
Of Blood and Water

Write
Reinforcements
Shadow of Death (Finish!)

Cool, huh?

So, here's my work for the week

Regents and Refugees - 1178
Coming of the Chained - 250
Floristahn's Fall - 250
Arrival of the Fleet - 2307
Hammer and Anvil - 1946
Of Blood and Water - 1693
In the Shadow of Death - 483

Total Writing for the Week - 8107

Total Current Word Count - 278,292 (556 pages)

Well....

You know, this time of year really sucks for anyone hoping to be productive.

Rachel came up this weekend, and while that was particularly cool, it did not lend itself to much useful work getting done.

Actual Writing Done

Holding the Pass: 1587
Arrival of the Fleet: 954

Total work done: 2541

Blah. I know I said I was going to count it as a half-week, and technically that means I made my word count, but wow, doesn't that look pathetic?

Task List:

Finish:

Machines of War
Arrival of the Fleet

Write:

Hammer and Anvil
Blood and Water
Reinforcements
Shadow of Death

Rewrite:

Refugees and Regents (add Diya's story)
Floristahn's Fall
Coming of the Chained
Affairs of the Heart (add information about the stabbing)

Back to work this week. At first it took me some time to get back into the swing of things, but when I did, I think things went quite well.

It was also nice to have a Saturday that didn't pass in complete panic as I tried to make 5,000 words before bed.

Actual Writing Done

Holding the Pass: 1283
City of Mages: 1897
Unexpected Guests: 3780
Scars of the Past: 1480

Total actual Writing: 8440

Administrative Stuff:

Developed a Calendar: 1.5 hours
Split up several sections: 2.25 hours

3.25 hours total Admininstrative

Looking over the outline, we haven't really got much left to do.

Between Grave Promises and Rock and a Hard Place, we should write a piece of domesticity for someone. Just to break up the two emotional pieces.

I need to finish writing Machines of War and Holding the Pass. Both of these require I do some research on catapults and war machines.

I need to rewite Floristahn's Fall and Coming of the Chained to fit with the backstory Liz reworked in Giants at Sunset

Liz needs to rewrite Sorvech's Coup to fix some technical details

Pieces left to be written

• Arrival of the Fleet - Kronig's troops arrive in Kristelstahn
• Reinforcements - Alarik and Simone's argument
• Blood and Water - Monika and Alarik discuss peace between Loyalists and Tutors
• The Delegation - Sending Talarin circle north to make demands of Sorvech
• Hammer and Anvil - Harrik and Brunklaust's theological argument
• Kronig's Return - Alarik, troops and Monika arrive in Zhakistahn
• Revealing the Conspirators - Ismael testifies to Sorvech's treason in return for clemency
• In the Shadow of Death - Brunklaust suicides
• What He Would Have Wanted - Araejan and Heidel wed
• Circle of Life - Serji and Darin born

All things considered, we'll probably be done writing in a month.

Then comes the fun part. Editing. Oh, rapture.

Total Word Count: 261,742

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday!

Or is it still Saturday? No, not really, despite getting an extra hour, it's an extra hour on Sunday, not Saturday.

In any case, my weekly work report.

Trial (finished, finally!): 3085
The Advantage of Semi-Legal Dealings: 1596
Fire: 856 (rewrite of bits)
Visiting Zoya: 920 (rewrite of bits)
Holding the Pass: 1343

Total writing for the week: 7800

Man, the weeks fly by, don't they?

Actual Writing:

Interlude: 360 (short edit)
Dead Men Tell No Tales: 1682
Travel Plans: 647
In the MoneyLender's Temple: 2193
Trial: 4023 (rewrite)

Total: 8905

Editing:

2 hours redpenning and readthrough

Total Word Count 228,742

Very productive week this week.

Actual Writing:

Interlude: 4345
Estrangement: (500 words disposed) 2262
Endings: (rewrite) 53
Drowning: (rewrite) 496

Total Actual Writing: 7656

Red-penning:

7.25 hours read through and minor corrections (we're counting 1 hour of redpenning as being "roughly" equivelent to 500 words - mostly to have some sort of countable goal, so another 3625 "words" in editing)

Administrative stuff:

discussed with Liz a more detailed outline for Part Two (especially around the peace conference) 1.5 hours

discussed with Liz details about The Silver and The Green (which will be novel #3 or #4) .5 hours