Not doing any writing, or much thinking about it.
Did reach that wonderful point yesterday afternoon where the lucid dreams were crazily beautiful, and I dreamed two complete stories--one was a book, really--but was unable to wake up long enough to write even a hint of one of them down. Alas. I have but scattered fragments: "applejack" poptarts (uneaten for five years); masterpieces of Renaissance art painted onto the ceiling of a camp cabin; driving across lush farm country; stopping at a little temple with hot water springs at the corner of M61 and Bard Road.
Strange and wondrous.
Up betimes and to my office, leaving my husband in bed... I never cease to be amazed at how much Sam and I have in common. Though, really, it is just sleeping spouses.
It's a stepdaughter week. The sun was just rising when I woke up at 6:15. It was a fortuitous thing--I hadn't actually set my alarm. I thanked the sun, made the stepdaughter French toast, did the dishes (our dishwasher very alarmingly started leaking into the basement a few weeks back; it was declared dead. The new one has not yet been brought in), checked the weather, made sure the stepdaughter packed everything up (crosses fingers), and sat through five painful minutes of Dave the Barbarian.
Then--then--I did not go back to bed. I checked my email (still no news on two submissions, one of which is a little late and one of which is VERY late, and yes, I am getting agitated), showered, dressed... checked all the blogs I usually read... backed up my files from last night (hint, hint)... and tried to figure out if today was a bring-the-laptop-to-work day or not. My shoulder says no. My mind says no. I think it's a notecards-and-research-books day. Now, I'm going to pack myself a lunch, throw some chicken, apples and potatoes in the crockpot and go for a walk.
I don't know how it is that I get into such denial about how winter makes me feel. Just a little extra light at 6:15 and this is what happens. I don't mind the snow and I think I don't mind the cold; it's the dark that drives me to my knees, and I feel it as early as September. Six months of feeling light-deprived is about five months too many...
I just realized that I've made a deep tactical error. Fortunately, it's completely fixable.
I've been planning on writing a book I don't really have any enthusiasm for.
I had enthusiasm for it once, and I fully expect to have enthusiasm for it again, but when I think about all the cool and meaningful stuff out there up there (in my brain) that there is to write, I really am not having a bit of thrill about finishing up my Regency romance. I only put it next on my list because I thought I'd be able to get in the groove once it was up, and because it's about 65% written already.
I don't think those are good enough reasons, though. Not here and now, in the on spec phase of my career. I have medieval warfare on the brain right now.
And--oh heavens!--what happened to Bound By Spells? Where has my urban fantasy gone, 25% done as it was? Weeeellll.... it stalled. I had a beginning. I had a sort of end. I have got no freakin' middle. Never underestimate the power of having a middle. Or the importance. I think that it's a matter of craft at this point, going forward with BBS, because the issue is, I don't know how to make the middle part interesting with your usual things like turning points and raising the stakes. I understand what to do in theory, and I have managed to do it in other places, but for right now, I can't apply it to the scenario of BBS. So, I'm filing that damn book away for the moment, until it grows a middle.
Now, the question is, do I have a middle for Heroes of the Cold Island? I'd hate to get 25% to 65% done with it and have it putter out, just like it's brethren. I'd also hate to finish it and then go on to write three more drafts and sit on it for a year or so in between like The Bitter Road, but at least I'd hate that less.
I'm doing the research for Heroes right now, which is how I know it's the thing to write next--I'm super-excited about it.
It's a good thing to realize. It's not pragmatic, but it's good.
And my goals for the fortnight were:
* finish rewrite of The Bitter Road
* agent list for TBR
* re-attempt ending for "Wedding Dress Tea Parties of 2443"
* begin rewrite on "Sun's East"
* finish and return 2 research books
No, I didn't manage to finish The Bitter Road. Significant progress was made. I took a vacation day, and I worked pretty hard on the weekends. (Not so hard during the weeks, or at least, not as hard as I could.) I think I'm past the hardest part of the rewrite, though. Well, for now I think that.
Did get the preliminary work done on an agents list, however.
Didn't touch "Wedding Dress." Did start a new story, plus discovered that writing during lunch is definitely a possibility. Of the nine days I was at work in the last two weeks, for a full five of them I managed to do significant writing on breaks.
I got the beginning of "Sun's East" write, finally. We'll see how the rest goes. I'm not yet certain if I should resub as a short story or see how it likes being a novel. Though I'm thinking, screw how it likes being a novel! I don't have time for more novels.
Read two research books, but haven't written up the one. Am hoping to do more multi-book posts, fewer single-book posts. Am also hoping to start writing up my reactions to articles I read on occasion. That's neither here nor there.
Goals for next fortnight:
Preliminary goals for April:
* get gamma reader opinions on Bitter Road
* Zelazny entry for Sekrit Project
* Bujold entry for Sekrit Project
* work on agent list for Sekrit Project
* check in with Julie on Sekrit Project
* finish up "Sun's East" and "WDTP/2443"
* pitch letter for Sekrit Project
* check in with Julie on Sekrit Project
* submit queries on Bitter Road
* submit queries on Sekrit Project
* official novel break: short stories only this month
Preliminary Goals for rest of year:
* rewrite Regency
* finish another novel
* finish six short stories that I'm proud of
Jenn Reese posts her take on the stages of writerliness.
I concur on the stages, but not necessarily the order. Vera Nazarian in the comments comes up with a few additions and subtractions that seem more like my experiences, but even then... I'm definitely going through this process my way.
Tobias Buckell talks about the intricacies of the Neopro stage in his complete audio version of "Getting Past Being Joe Blow Neopro" at Spoken Alexandria. I am sad that I don't have this in a written format--my reading retention is much higher than my listening retention, unless I'm taking notes--but on the other hand, I've listened through all of these podcasts twice now, and will probably go a third time. Repetition never hurts, and they lend themselves well (individually) to the shortness of my commute, and it never hurts to be thinking strategically when you're not awake enough to be making plots in your head. Er, right?
Again, I disagree with some of Toby's ordering--he suggests that Neopros need to step up their research, innovation, invention and such--which is one of those things that... well, let's put it this way, research and innovation are the least of my problems right now. There will doubtless be a time in my career where I'll need to do that, but the time (I don't think) is now. She says, with great hubris. I should probably just shut my trap...
About the originality thing: it is good advice. It was probably the second most noticeable thing about delving into the slush piles for Lenox Ave. last year: people aren't so original. I think about fifty percent of the stories I passed up to the managing editors were passed up because--all other flaws aside--the stories were not cliché-infested. Though. Craft is an incredibly big component: if you can't write your way out of a paper bag, then no, I didn't pass the original stuff up. Highly original concepts worked out in unreadable English read like the rantings of a crazy person.
The stages of writerliness probably can't be worked out to universal satisfaction because everyone brushes up against publication at a different point. The Neopro writings seems super-valid to me because they all address that period that some people hit where they've sold a few pro stories but then can't break pro again right away. That's a highly specific point in a person's career, and one that doesn't come to everyone. And they probably especially hit home because that's my career point: neopro.
Additionally, personalities vary: in the beginning, I was incredibly diligent about making all my submission packets perfect, from the handwriting on the SASE to the placement of the envelope and paperclip (I always put the lip of the SASE around the manuscript so that the gum doesn't moisten in transit and seal the envelope before it arrives in the slush pile. Why? I read it somewhere. I'm not even sure it makes sense. But I do it). Lately, I've found that, oh, I haven't read the guidelines carefully and there was a change, or I've forgotten what day it was and jumped the gun on a reading period, or when sending a rewrite, have forgotten to put the item in proper MS format. It's not that I think these things don't matter, it's that I somehow got tangled up along the way with thinking I knew how to do things, so... I could stop paying attention, or something. This is a common step for me in almost any of learning process. I'd like it to not be so, but it's there, and I hope no one else has it.
Anyway. I could stay here all day debating this, but that wouldn't get the writing done. My EV0L Justice awaits. (That's what it says on my white board: today I have to deal with my villain.)
The Forever War by Joe Haldeman (18) [science fiction]
My objections (noted in the previous entry) aside, I did enjoy this. The science fictional aspects are rich and deep: the play with relativity and the bleak danger of "collapsar planets" were fascinating. The socio-political and gender-sexuality stuff rang untrue to me, but, hey. In the end I was satisfied.
I took the day off to get a passle of writing done. The further I get into the manuscript, the more I end up fiddling with Chapter One. I'm not sure it's bad--it leads to things like foreshadowing and chock-a-block telling details, and I think Chapter One is currently the strongest Chapter One I've ever managed to produce, but I'm sick of Chapter One now and would like to just keep going with the rest of the damn book! I'm only one quarter done with the rewrite!
I have to leave for an appointment in about twenty minutes. When I come back, I'm hoping for an extremely productive afternoon in which I ignore Chapter One entirely.
I don't think I can adequately describe how awesome I think this is:
Science Fiction Citations for OED
Need to know the provenance of the word http://www.movabletype.org/
http://www.movabletype.org/ansible? (Well, as it happens, I already thought I knew the provenance, but at the same time, it's nice to have it confirmed, since I rely on it in a short story--it's an expensive technology in that world, but it exists.) Here you go.
This will make writing steampunk adventures so much easier...
(I remember when OED issued the call for this research. And then it dropped completely out of my mind...)
The Midwife's Apprentice by Karen Cushman (17) (reread 1) [children's]
By chapter four, I remembered why I had a less than positive reaction to this book the first time--not only is it not funny like Cushman's first book, it's grim. The not-funny is forgivable. But the grim is too grim. I would tend to think that a very grim book, which has no place to go but up, would be okay, but it so doesn't seem to work that way--there's no sense of joy in the relief of the grimness, for example; we are too distanced from Brat/Beatle/Alyce, I think, by the omniscient third person narrator. And in the middle of the book, the narrator does something half-prank, half-revenge, but it's written even more distantly than the whole rest of the book. I had a hard time figuring out how and why Alyce managed to come up with the idea let alone the daring to do this...
Most of the secondary characters were terribly unlikeable until nearly the end, and I'm still not certain of how the midwife came to be redeemed. She does one good act, follows it up with many, many demonstrations of bad character, and then at the end, is worthy once more.
I've got one word for this: ambivalence. On my part, and on the part of the author, I think, as well.
...And also, I have dishpan hands even though the dishwashing liquid in question promised me soothing moisture.
Or maybe dishpan hands are something other than the stiff feeling you get after too much soap and water?
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Mike Brotherton is trying to get funding for an astronomy workshop for writers. He needs your writerly help, which you might give by taking a survey.
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Nominate the best in technology writing of 2005 at digitalculture.org. They're looking for technology writing that's "engagingly written for a mass audience... Preference will be given to narrative features and profiles, 'Big Think' op-eds that make sense, investigative journalism, sharp art and design criticism, intelligent policy analysis, and heartfelt personal essays."
I've read numerous blog entries and other things this year that I think apply, and I've already made my nomination!
I'm halfway through a new short story just by writing on my lunch hours at work. Won't be able to write at work tomorrow--have promised to eat lunch with a former co-worker and friend.
For someone who once swore that she was not likely to make any lasting friendships at work, she sure has. But I think that's one of those things I swore in my first year of work--which was an interesting, atypical and otherwise depressing year. I was 20, fresh dropped-out of college, still living with my college friends, and my social group was made up of ex-dormmates and gaming buddies. The group I started working with was close-knit and had parties at each others' houses seemingly every weekend. (It was probably once a month.) I had no room in my life or my mind for them. Now I really see the value in socializing with one's workmates, and since then I've maintained work friendships with people I met ten years ago. But I think that sort of happens when a job becomes a career. Even if it's just a day-career.
(Day-job seems inaccurate, at times. I like day-career.)
Back to Brook, then on to bed.
Am I wrong in making up a sexual symbolism for all the horns a-blowing in Child Ballad #4, Lady Isabel and the Elf-Knight? I only wonder, not because I don't think sexual subtext is a possibility (oh-ho, it certainly is) but if the particular slang that's caught my eye had any meaning back in the day.
I must needs find a slang dictionary, and soon. Preferably one with etymology and word origins. More than just my 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue--which does mention that "old hat" means a woman's private parts, but doesn't mention why ("both are frequently felt"). I also think I need a modern slang to old slang dictionary. I bet there isn't one. I bet there's a market for it, though. Hm.
Also, is "shambolic" a real word, or did that come from Shaun of the Dead or something?
Too much wordplay going on in my head right now... the good news is, I dragged the laptop to work, and I managed to write all through lunch and break. The bad news is, none of it was on anything at all related to my self-imposed deadlines.
I'll note that as soon as I said I didn't have much time to read, I managed to finish four books in a weekend.
The overwhelming font of ideas that was sort of beating me down for the last two weeks (a fortnight during which I used an entire pack of note-cards) seems to have pulled back a little. Today I only hit upon two great ideas, and I think they're both more or less immediately useable. I mean, if I could remember either of them.
I tend to get ideas when I have movement. While driving or walking, mainly, but you see, the movement is key. And usually what happens is that I walk out of my library towards the parking structure and get an idea or three--then I scribble madly once in the car, and then get another idea or six on the ride home. Today, I had an idea when I stepped outside, but the soughing of the wind through the pines distracted me, and I had to stop and listen for a few minutes. Then, on the way to the parking structure, the moon had seemingly turned the sky blue (it was a reflection from the clouded-over sunset, in part), and there were these dramatic, blue moon-clouds edged with that color between gold and silver that the moon sometimes is.
My ideas got a bit lost, between wind and moon. But I'm sure I'll find them again.
Histoire de la Maison des Baux by Gustave Noblemaire (14) [non-fiction]
I debated counting this book in my log because it was in French and my comprehension wasn't fantastic, and I skimmed it looking for relevant information. But on the other hand, it was in French, so maybe it should count double.
What a great book! Written in 1904, it's heavily detailed with the history of the region and the family, has geneaological tables out the wazoo, and has a FANTASTIC map of the Baux plateau. If there were an English translation of the book, I'd buy it in a heartbeat. Heck, if I could find a copy in French to buy, I'd probably embark on some madcap attempt to translate it for the web (because there'd be no other market, I'm quite sure), since it's well off copyright. (I can't find a purchasable copy, btw, even with the 1976 reprint of a whopping 250 copies.) Anyway, I'm glad I got to see it, however briefly (thank you, interlibrary loan!).
Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones (15) (third reread) [YA]
I don't believe I've read this since high school, and it largely lived up to my memories. It's a lovely story with lovely characters, including a good stepmother and a fire demon who is really a (spoiler). Anyway, probably my most favorite thing about the book is that the plot relies heavily on John Donne's "Song," a poem which is placed third in my copy of A Treasurey of the World's Best Loved Poems, which was given to me by my aunt when I was 13. I don't know if I read the poem in that book before or after reading Howl for the first time (I tend to think I read the poem first), but it all seemed part of the tremendous synergetic magic of life.
The Wrong Stuff by Sharon Fiffer (16) [mystery]
I know, I don't read mysteries. But this one sucked me in with its clutterers and its furniture restorers, and I was halfway through the thing before I remembered I don't like mysteries much. And boy howdy do I not like mysteries much. Every time we veered off deep into mystery solving territory, I was sort of annoyed, and just waiting to get back to the inner workings of the characters' lives and inter-relationships. Fortunately, those were so entertaining that, for the most part, I was able to ignore the fact that I was reading in a genre I don't actually like.
Also? When I say I don't like mysteries, I think it's just in book form. I always enjoy Monk and various other PI television shows. One day, I will figure out what my aversion is about. Until then, I'll keep haphazardly picking up mysteries and reading for all the stuff around them. In the meantime, I don't like having this aversion. It feels like a betrayal, because when people tell me they don't like science fiction I get a sort of red mist over my eyes just before the rage blackout, because science fiction isn't one thing. I realize that mysteries have a more strict set of genre conventions (I mean, they never solve the mystery in the first act, now do they?), so maybe my aversion is a tiny bit smaller of an egregious hypocracy. Maybe?
Ok. So, fortnightly goals it is. Of the goals I set for the week of Feb. 26 (and extended into the week of March 5th):
* re-attempt ending for "Wedding Dress Tea Parties of 2443"
* notecard Bound by Spells (partially done)
* rewrite two chapters of Bitter Road
* Zelazny entry for Sekrit Project
* take notes on Breakout Novel and return to library
* take notes from last Baux book and return to library
* work on query letter for Bitter Road
Not half bad. I didn't actually manage to write the reworked ending for "WDTP/2443" but I'm pleased with what I dreamed up, and will be working on it as a reward for finishing up The Bitter Road, which is coming along famously for all that I did no writing on Saturday of this week.
I think I'll put off the Sekrit Project entirely until TBR is with gamma readers.
I've decided that the reason "Sun's East" doesn't work as well as it could is because I start the story too far before the action. (Well, DUH, right?) Mainly because I was afraid I'd lose the voice. One criticism I got from the Realms of Fantasy slush reader was that there were too many disparate fairy tale elements, and I'm down with that, but not in the way he probably thinks... I think there are too many random and unexplained fairy tale elements. There's more to being a miller's daughter and a dragon slayer, I realized on Friday, while talking through the problem on the drive home. (Yep. I talk to myself in the car. I am definitely crazy, but since I'm mostly harmless...)
And that fear of losing voice is a big one of mine. If I'm going to do well with voice, I nail it on the first draft, and any futzing thereafter tends to ruin the voice very quickly. Which is probably where I got my fear of rewriting--I've actually known this about my writing for years, maybe since I hit puberty, which is when I decided that I wasn't a rewriter, and truthfully, didn't attempt to rewrite anything, not really, until, oh, 2003. I'm just now learning how to make rewriting work for me, and it's been an uphill struggle all the way.
So anyway, I think I've figured out how to fix "Sun's East," and I'll be working on that as my reward story for the next couple weeks.
On to the new goals.
Goals for fortnight from March 12-March 26:
* finish rewrite of The Bitter Road
* agent list for TBR
* re-attempt ending for "Wedding Dress Tea Parties of 2443"
* begin rewrite on "Sun's East"
* finish and return 2 research books
Preliminary goals for end of March-beginning of April:
* copyedit heck out of Bitter Road
* get gamma reader opinions on Bitter Road
* Zelazny entry for Sekrit Project
* Bujold entry for Sekrit Project
* work on agent list for Sekrit Project
* check in with Julie on Sekrit Project
* finish up "Sun's East" and "WDTP/2443"
Preliminary Goals for mid-April:
* pitch letter for Sekrit Project
* check in with Julie on Sekrit Project
* submit queries on Bitter Road
Preliminary Goals for end of April:
* submit queries on Sekrit Project
* official novel break: short stories only this month
Preliminary Goals for rest of year:
* rewrite Regency
* finish another novel
* finish six short stories that I'm proud of
Matilda Bone by Karen Cushman (13) [children's]
I rather liked Catherine, Called Birdy, though I wasn't as enamored of The Midwife's Apprentice--but I read them both a long time ago, and I think I expected the second to be a lot like the first (and it wasn't). (I do intend to give The Midwife's Apprentice another try now that I've reached a more forgiving age and have a new interest in midwifery.) Matilda sort of came in between the two in terms of tone, I think... for the record.
I enjoyed it, in part because it was the fast, semi-humorous read I was looking for. I had a few quibbles about the timing. (What was up with the weather? Still cold at Easter? In England? Even at the end of the medieval warm period, I don't think the coldest part of the year would end after the vernal equinox. It's still England.) Beyond what seems to be a dubiously timed and unremarked nod to the beginnings of the Little Ice Age, the social position of women to me read like the post-Black Death surge in gender equality. But for now I'm going to leave it alone, since the parts that worked for me worked quite well. I enjoyed the "survey of medieval medicine" feel to the piece; I've always loved stories about historical medicine, especially from a female perspective.
It occurs to me that I live on a fortnightly schedule. My stepdaughter lives with us for a weekend and a week, then goes to school on Friday morning and then she doesn't come back until the following Friday evening, and the week with her starts again. See? Fortnightly. My work habits change significantly depending on whether she's there or not.
And naturally, my goals-tending fluctuates wildly depending on what kind of week it is.
So why am I keeping a weekly goal schedule?
Well, the answer now is: I no longer am.
Introducing... fortnightly goals.
I'm sure there's an important lesson in this about not trying to make square pegs fit into round holes, and about making goals work with your schedule instead of trying to make your schedule work with your goals.
But that lesson will be left as an exercise for the reader. Or, rather, I will not belabor the point.
Speedy rejection from Baen's Universe . I'm losing faith in my rewrite of this story--revised version is not getting passed out of slush as often as original. Worrisome.
The question for the evening: speed on to the next chapter, or go watch the Project Runway finale? Hm. Maybe if I take my notecards downstairs with me...
Something that occurred while commenting in
Some of us, while going through their first year or two of submitting stories and novels, have to learn about
1) writing
2) marketing ourselves
3) professional standards
4) how to take rejection
all at the same time.
People who've had sales experience or similar things get to eliminate number 4 right out of the gate, and maybe number 2, also. People with previous experience in publishing get to eliminate anywhere from one to four of those items right away.
It's something to consider, if you're in your first year. There's a learning curve for each one of the things on that list. It's number 4 that's nearest and dearest to my heart, because I think number 1 is a life-long quest, and number 2 and 3 can be empirically learned: there are right and wrong answers there.
In what I now realize was my quest to learn about rejection, I surveyed any author I could get to talk to me (usually by commenting on their blogs) to ask how many rejections they'd gotten before making the first pro sale. At least one of them, whose first novel had just come out and had a dozen short story sales, said "Oh, I sold my first short story to a pro market." Which made me slink away to a quiet little corner to wonder why I was on rejection 25 with no acceptances whatsoever, pro or otherwise.
I forgive her the callous moment because she very likely didn't know she was being callous; she'd been working in publishing for years, and probably had no clue that anyone seemingly in their right mind would be taking rejections personally.
My heroes are the people who keep going after two hundred rejections and no sales. I got my first acceptance on number 27, about 9 months into my first year; I got money for the first time after rejection 40 or so, right at the year mark; I hit pro after rejection 60-something about a year and a half after I began submitting. With time and perspective, I see that this was lucky-early. It felt agonizingly long. Agonizingly. And rejections hurt back then. I took the first one with good grace, as I recall, but by number 10, I was squirming.
Part of it comes from having lived a life free of rejection. I've never been involved in sales. I've gotten almost every job I've ever applied for, and the ones I didn't get, didn't bother sending me a rejection letter. I got into all my colleges but one--that rejection reduced me to tears, and in no way prepared me for the upcoming writerly battle with rejection, ten years later. Even on a social/romantic level... I'm a woman. Most heterosexual women don't (or didn't, in my day) have to go a route that risked rejection in order to date.
Yeah. So, factor in everything else you have to do in Year One, and then factor in learning to take rejection. Something to think about if you're planning on taking up the writer's life.
I feel like I got a rejection that I forgot to report. *fret*
I also had a vague pang of worry about a rewritten short I sent back to the editor, and when I checked, learned I'd failed to put it in proper manuscript format. *fretfretfret* I'm not even sure what to do--but I guess I'll risk being a pest and resub it properly.
I sent one sub to a wrong address. *minor fret* (Thank goodness for email bounce notices)
It's almost as if I'm sabotaging myself.
***
Brief thought about war...
I spent an awful lot of time writing about war in college, and thinking about it before and since... I always angled my anthropology papers towards the origins of war and similar topics. For someone who's never had the barest of intentions to be involved in a war or the military, it seems to take up a large part of my brain... I don't identify particularly with Iraq as 'my' war(s), even though it is (generationally speaking; Vietnam was over before I was born, and WWII was my grandparents' war). If anything, I think of my war as the one that didn't happen in the '80s--the nuclear war that always felt imminent during my childhood.
Something about the threat of that kind of war--the "annihiliation of civilization" kind of war--makes other kinds of war bearable. Understandable, even. And almost impossible to bring to a personal level, especially since no one I've loved or even anyone I've known has ever gone off to war in my lifetime. I feel like there's something essential missing from my understanding of war, like I've over-intellectualized it. Hm.
A link:
Young People and Nuclear War
A further thought: while I stopped dreaming about nuclear war on a regular basis sometime after the Berlin Wall fell, I don't think I felt I'd really moved past it until I wrote "Reparations." How bizarre.
Been a busy weekend around here, writing-wise. I am doing my best--buckling down on The Bitter Road and finally like how it's coming together. When I stall, I take a five minute stretch break, and then try again. If I'm still stalled, I give myself permission to write something else for half an hour, or work on redesigning the merriehaskell.com main page. Then back to it. This method seems to be working pretty well.
I had a small break with Julie. We ate Indian food and watched a few hours of Prison Break so J. could be all caught up. Now I taste of cardamom and have the thrilling option of eating leftovers for breakfast. Or maybe tomorrow's dinner.
Am considering dragging the laptop to work for lunch-writing this week. I will do my goals reporting on Monday... maybe Wednesday... things have gone a bit off the rails. I wrote seven thousand words yesterday, probably another three thousand today, so I'm okay with off the rails.
That's all the news that's fit to print. I mean that literally--I just had to erase a whole rant about the email program I'm forced to use at work. It was definitely not fit to print.
Based on information gathered from April 2003 until November 2004, I average about 700 words of new material in an hour, assuming there are not extremely lengthy pauses while I search for "what happens next?" by staring off into space or going on a research safari.
Given that the rewriting of The Bitter Road is going slightly faster than that, and given how much work I think I need to do, I have given myself 72 hours spread out over two weeks to finish this project and get it out the door.
We'll see how that works.
Earlier today, in a supreme effort of catwaxing, I tallied up all the shows we have on TiVo's season pass, calculated how many hours of each one I watch in a year, and divided by 52. It comes out to 5.3 hours of television a week. (And doesn't count movies, or the 15 minutes of weather/local news I catch on mornings when I get up with my stepdaughter.) I think we can officially cross off Time Lost Through Television as a big villain to writing.
Which means all eyes are on the internet.
Managed to write longhand at lunch. It was interesting and fabulous, simultaneously. Infatabulous. No, that's no good--sounds too much like someone in the royal house of Spain.
Am at the dining room table again, assuming cold or discomfort don't drive me to my office. Interesting times down here--there's one cat alternately hiding out in the chimenea in the corner and eating straws from the broom. Funny thing is, someone at work was just saying that their cats been eating broom straws obsessively. I was pretty sure I'd never had an animal do that. I was mistaken.
Rejection on "Unanswered Letters." It seems to make editors unhappy. Uneasy, almost, but not in any good way. I'll probably shelve it. There's a difference between good persistence and bad persistence. A foolish persistency is the hobgoblin of little minds? I don't know. I didn't think the story was good enough to submit the first time I wrote it; I shelved it immediately, and I'm still not quite sure what caused me to pull it out, tack on a new ending and send it around. Boredom, I guess. A desire to increase inventory.
Things I want to blog about soon:
If none of those grab ya, I'll take requests.
I'm stalled. On the actual keyboarding part of writing, that is. I have been outlining and notecarding up a storm, and I don't feel a particular lack of creative juice. Freewriting, I've been able to do, even, but I'm getting mired in that sincere lack of forward motion when I open up a "real" file.
Usually what this says to me is that a change of venue and a damn good to-do list are in order. Now... Change of venue is the hard part. I'm at the dining room table right now--an accident, because I thought I needed to be close to my scones last night while they were baking--and I can already see that this will be acceptable for a while, assuming my husband stays asleep and I don't hear from my stepdaughter for a few hours (probable on both counts--Dann, when he sleeps, sleeps With Intent, and K. is at school). But when tonight rolls around, it will not be so cool, and further, it won't last all that long, I bet.
Coffee shops are out of the question, by the way. Too loud to suit my current purposes. And usually only fun when you're there with a group.
Essentially, I need Writer's Retreat. I'm so not ready to plan and execute one, however, and there's no way I'd get the time off work to do the extra day.
Ok, time to stop complaining and get busy on the dining room table.
Haha.