Fumbling

1011 words tonight. So goal is met. This book is proving interesting so far. Usually I'm pretty clear on my first scene and write it quickly. But this book, well, I've had about four different starts now and keep having to pull back and change tack. I started with the hero, thought perhaps maybe it should be the heroine, changed my mind again and went back to the hero in two different situations. Nothing felt quite right but today I think I might have cracked it. We'll see. Of course, that probably means juggling around some of the words I've fought for so far and going backwards in word count at some point but we'll deal with that when it happens.

Two things helped.

One, this post by Jenny Crusie is brilliant and made me realise I was trying to smooth out my hero too much instead of letting him be his acid tongued messed up self.

Two, I realised I didn't really know what his initial goal was. Some poking and prodding at the muse with pointy sticks at lunch today gave me a glimmer of an idea on that one and so far it seems to be working. Now I just have to figure out the heroine. Oh and how to wrap up all the pesky plot threads I've set in motion in the last two books. Why did I think writing a trilogy would be a good idea again? If there was a magic potion I could take right now to turn me from pantser to plotter I'd be on that thing faster than Neo and his little red pill. But given I'm pretty much stuck with my own brain and my own crazy process, I guess I'm just going to have to screw up my gumption and remember that it will all come to me eventually if I just keep writing and letting the weird storyteller part of my brain do its thing.

In other words, I need to remember to look at this which I have perched on my noticeboard near my desk!



(Get your own here)

And now, time for enjoying the results of some other poor writer's self torture aka curling up with a good book before I go to sleep! Catch you tomorrow when maybe I'll go crazy and write more than 1000 words!

Wednesday

Was very busy but 1155 words were achieved, so all is good.

Back tomorrow, no brain left for blogging tonight.

It's a start

1003 words achieved. Using the time honoured, write bits that spring to mind method. This is going to be one of those teeth pulling jigsaw puzzle books unless the muse and the girls come up with something brilliant in short order.

Home stretch

September has been the month of very busy all the time. I have one more week of the crazy to go and then I will be officially entering the writing hermit cave until the book is done. Which is getting close. Have basically three sequences left then the climax and resolution. So hopefully it will come together fast! Ideally I want to be done mid October so I have time for a quick fine tune the prose pass before it heads off to my editor.

Then there will be pondering of book three's plot. I know the start, I'm looking forward to throwing my hero and heroine together but the rest is a vague foggy blur. Hopefully fog lamps will appear and illuminate it all when I get there!

Also after the book is done, I get to learn to use a spinning wheel. Hey, the girls in the basement think it's cool, so I'm going with it. More about that over on the crafty blog (see the link at the side). The girls like colour a LOT so I think that's part of the appeal. Plus I find watching a wheel soothing somehow. Hopefully it's as soothing when I'm the one feeding it fibre!

So blogging may be a bit scarce for the next four weeks or so but I'll try and catch up while I can!

In brief

Drive by update as I am somewhat brain dead after cranking out six pages after crit group. Muse continues to jump around in this story like a frog on steroids. Hopefully it will all hang together!

Progress - Holly

New pages - Six (yay, 13 more and we hit 300!)
Intriguing things - Ballsy sisters
Annoyances - Jumping around the timeline
Linear/non-linear - Non
Music - Various from the soundtrack.
Location - Desk. Write or Die and Think.
Taking care of Mel - Nap. Chocolate. Tulsi Tea.
Muse food - About to see what the muse feels like watching given there's nothing but the election on telly!

All very familiar

Ladies and gentlemen of the internet, yes, we have reached that time again, the time when Mel needs to pull out the progress stats to keep her inner taskmaster happy and get the darn draft finished. Today I decided to write twenty pages. No idea why. It was a little bit nutty. But I did it. So that seems like as good a time as any to start this again. Technically, I'm in the last quarter of this book. Maybe I'll figure out what it's about soon. Though possibly not. That's why the powers that be invented second drafts, after all! Weirdly, usually I know the last scene of my books. This time, I think the scene I have in mind is more like third or fourth last...the muse, she is secretive at times!

Progress - Holly

New pages - Twenty
Intriguing things - Sneakiness. Things I thought would happen earlier, happening later.
Annoyances - Not many. More arms would sometimes be nice.
Linear/non-linear - Non
Music - Various from the soundtrack.
Location - Desk. Write or Die and Think.
Taking care of Mel - Chiro. Exercises. Tulsi Tea.
Muse food - Notting Hill about to be watched!

In other news, I am going to see Joss Whedon next Friday (woot and squee) and also going along to AussieCon 4 for a day the week after! Having never been to a SF con before, it should be fun!

Happy

I feel like I've got hold of the new shape of this book now. The weight of it is sitting right in my head and I can tilt it and turn it and see the whole picture nearly.

Sometimes writing feels like hiking up a heavily wooded trail. You get glimpses of the destination now and then but mostly you can only see what's right in front of you, the twists and turns hiding the next part of the path. And like, hiking, sometimes it's damn hard work and you doubt you'll ever get there and your mental feet hurt and you want to kick the next damn fallen log that gets in your way and everything you're carrying rubs the wrong way and all you want to do is sit down and not move and let someone else do it while you drink something and pass out.

Then you reach the top and the view spreads out before you and it's kind of gorgeous and well worth the blood, sweat and tears and it all falls away. Not sure there's a good analogy for the feeling like the end of book (or even nearing the end and feeling like it's all working out) but that one's kind of close.

And even though I'm not quite there yet, I think that's deserving of a glass of wine or two tonight while I'm out with the girls.

She lives

Yes, I am indeed alive. Bad blogger. But I have been suffering from a horrible cold which decided it should bring its friend razorblade throat and consequently have done little worthy of blogging for a week. Catalogues of pills and potions and tissue count are not very exciting. I haven't even read a lot due to foggy brain. I have watched a fair amount of DVD (Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip and most of Glee if you care) and slept a lot. Perhaps I'm turning into a TV watching cat.

But today I am starting to feel human again and have managed ten pages. Yay. The muse is throwing up disconnected random snippets but at least they're snippets that are flowing easily. So given book has decided to talk again, I'm figuring Murphy's Law will dictate that my revisions will hit any second now and I'll have to switch tracks. But oh well, nice problem to have : )

Marooned

Thanks to the gods of communications who decreed that fixing my landline = breaking my adsl I am without Internet at home and can only get online via the iPhone (have I mentioned how much I love my iPhone?)

So I'll be tweeting a bit and checking emails but otherwise scarce as things like blogging are tricky on teeny screen. Plus I can't update my template on the phone so here's the latest wordcount....45k!!! Yay that is hopefully over half way of first draft page count! Aiming to get to 50k by tomorrow night which should be doable given have less ways to procrastinate with no Internet on the computer!

More when I'm back in the land of the wired.

Nearly

Well, I didn't quite make it to 40k which was my goal for the weekend, thanks mainly to a fit of the tireds yesterday and a fit of the generally uninspireds today. But I did still manage 7 pages today so that's not a complete write-off. If I do six tomorrow I'll hit the 40k mark.

The words are still coming but still not entirely sure how this book is going to hang together. There are a few different goals being pursued which are pulling people in completely different directions and I still haven't had the flash of inspiration as to how it all fits. Hopefully that will still arrive, otherwise there will be much revision whining to be had.

Otherwise the weekend has contained crit meetings and dinners out and wrestling with recalcitrant fridges and recalcitrant phones. I can claim (I think) victory over the fridge but we're waiting on the repairman to check out the phone line. Luckily whatever is affected the voice calls doesn't seem to be bothering my ADSL so I still have internet. So as long as Melbourne doesn't have any more completely crazy weather (which luckily my little house survived unscathed) which makes using a mobile phone ill advised, I'll just have to rely on the cell for awhile.

This week I have a couple of presentations to do at the day job, including one Friday morning which means my day off will be shortened so all will be busy busy but I'd still like to get another forty or so pages written. At times like this, when you're not sure what's going on with the story, being a pantser means just keeping on putting one damn word down after another and trusting that the girls know something you don't.

I also need to get a bit more focused back on the food and exercise. There have been many celebratory dinners and lunches and I think the indulgence is one reason I'm feeling tired. Plus I didn't get my last run for the week in yesterday or today so have to make sure that happens tomorrow to try and pep myself up again. And cut off the cravings for cake and chocolate and champagne which are rearing their little heads a bit too much after being allowed out too often! I've still been pretty good but pretty good can slide to not so good and then before you know it to really not good if you let it. I feel better when I'm eating healthy most of the time and doing my exercise so it's back to the routines this week.

And now, I think I'll go watch Big Bang and get an early night because the first of those presentations is tomorrow!

The awkward stage

If my wip were a person right now it would be a teenager. A slightly sullen, earphone wearing, far-more-interested-in-texting-their-best-friends-than-talking-to-someone-as boring-as-the-person-writing-it teenager. It's at that awkward stage. It happens every book.

I'm not a plotter, so I tend to plunge into a book with a shiny crunchy idea and see what happens. What usually happens is that the shiny crunchy idea and initial book rush gives me enough momentum to get about a bit less than a third of the rough draft in (around 100 pages for one of my long books) and it gets tricky. I start to realise I have no idea what's happening, feel like there's no plot and can't really remember what was exciting or interesting about the idea in the first place. It all feels flat and dull. The words come more or less (though there will be a point where I'm just stuck for a bit and have to keep circling back through what I've written while I think) but they feel off kilter (even though when I come back to revise they'll be no better or worse than the rest of it). It's the bit where my analytical side starts to try and take over and say "we NEED to know what's going on. you NEED a plot. The sky is falling etc etc".

Depending on the book, this means brainstorming or whining to my crit partners or just ignoring it and plowing on or skipping ahead to some of the bits further on in the book that I do know and getting those down in the hopes of shaking something that will pull it together loose. This particular book, I have only the vaguest idea of later scenes. I don't even have a very good idea about the last scene (and I usually know that) though I'm starting to get glimpses. And I've done some brainstorming but haven't yet had the lightning bolt idea. So I'm thinking that I just have to put my head down and keep writing.

Of course, for this book, for the first time, I know that in a few weeks it will have to be put on hold for a bit while I do revisions on Shadow Kin. And I know that what changes in SK will have an impact on this book. But that's really just going to be situation normal from now on. I will be interrupted to do revisions or copy edits or whatever publishing throws up. I will have to chop and change. So I'm using this as an opportunity to learn how to do it. Learning how to plot in advance might be more useful but I've been doing this for eight odd years now and have never really managed to find a way of plotting that doesn't send the muse screaming from the room...I know I'll probably have to do outlines or proposals in the future but I'm not under the illusion that the books will end up much like those proposals. Or that I will enjoy doing them.

So for now, it's much like dealing with a teenager, stay positive and just keep moving forward. My goal for the next four days is to get to 40k. Should be do-able. I might even get the blinding flash of inspiration.

So what about everyone else? Do your books have awkward stages? Are you pantsers who sometimes wish desperately for an industrial strength flashlight to show you the way like me or do you wrestle with the story in advance while you plot and then just write your way through? Any tips or tricks for coaxing a story out to play?

PS Don't forget: comment on any of my posts this month and you're in the running to win a copy of Robin McKinley's Sunshine (details here).

100

Yay, have cracked one hundred pages...hopefully a bit under a third of the way through the draft now!

Would like to be around 250 at the end of the month, so let's see how that goes!

A pause to ponder

After my big push over my five day weekend, I took Wednesday and Thursday to think about where I was taking the story and Friday to do a bit more brainstorming and working out what I needed to nail down a bit more in the 20k or so I've written before moving on. The upshot is that I think the direction is okay but I'm taking the next few days to take a pass back over that 20k and flesh a few things out so I can move forward from a more solid base. This often happens to me about this stage, but this time because I've been sprinting and not going back over what I'd written, I do need the pause and a fast loop back. I'm not aiming to make what I've written perfect, just make sure I've got the bones of everything I need in place. We'll see if I need a few more pauses as I go given that I intend to keep using Write or Die as much as possible to get through this zero draft.

Today I spent most of the day at a patchwork class but then I came home and made it through Chapter One (and added some pages so technically, I'm still making progress). Tomorrow hopefully I'm get through a couple more chapters and add some more pages. It would be nice to finish the month with 100 pages done! Still aiming for zero draft done by the end of March.

In other news, it's hot, I've been doing pretty well with the diet and exercise portion of my goals for the year and niggly shoulder keeps on improving. Woot all round!

The simple things

Having Monday away from the day job always feels kind of decadent (even though it's a regular occurence with my schedule). It's nice to go to sleep on Sunday night knowing that one doesn't have to get up early, even if the grey cat apparently begged to differ this morning and demanded breakfast at six am. After which I went back to sleep.

Another lovely sunny not too hot, not too cold day in Melbourne. I have swum, caught up with the VT and eaten of most excellent orange and ricotta hotcakes at her cafe, caught up with other friends, done grocery shopping so that I can eat for the week and made my page count (hopefully after tomorrow I'll be somewhere in the closing-in-on-ninety pages vicinity, at which point I shall most likely have to stop and think a bit). Not a bad life really, even if the current influx of small boys in my street combined with school holidays means that it rather more punctuated with boy noises (ie strange thumps, yells of triumph during street cricket and the sounds of bike tires whirring around the court) than usual which can prove distracting at times.

Still it's good to see kids outside playing rather than stuck inside with a video game. I grew up in a street full of boys so have had more than my fair share of strange thump creation, cricket and football matches and hair raising bike chases (our street was bracketed on either end with two quite substantial hills which meant one could get up quite the speed burst...the trick being able to stop afterwards - I have a scar on my right knee to prove this).

And now, the daily report...

Progress - Holly

New pages - 11
Intriguing things - Unexpected plot directions
Annoyances - Not many.
Linear/non-linear - Linear
Music - Soundtrack
Location - Write or Die and Think.
Taking care of Mel - Swimming! Orange and ricotta hotcakes (hey treats are good too)!
Muse food - Soon to be administered

Not so lazy Sunday

Reporting in (which I forgot to do last night but I was distracted by the interesting vocal talents of the band playing at a neighbours party and Iron Man).

So far we have stuck to the plan, so go me. Exercise wise yesterday I did my last c25k run for the week on the elliptical and today I did Cardio Coach on the elliptical and then in a fit of sunshine inspired craziness, went for a swim too. So go me lol. Am officially starving though and ready for a big dinner which is next on the to-do list. Have met my page goal each day too. I think I deserve pancakes tomorrow so will head on over to the VT's cafe and try theirs.

Progress - Holly

New pages - 11 today and 13 yesterday
Intriguing things - Reluctant knights
Annoyances - Not many.
Linear/non-linear - Linear
Music - Soundtrack
Location - Write or Die and Think yesterday. Word and Think and Write and Die and Think today.
Taking care of Mel - Swimming! Running. Salad galore.
Muse food - Robert Downey Jr. Though he's more muse food for the next book...

Five by five

Yay, it is the weekend. And an extra long five day weekend at that. My goal is ten pages a day (with the theory that this will bootstrap me up to something like 80 pages which is almost one hundred pages which is almost a third of a book...oh the strange mind games writers play lol) and to do some exercise every day. Today I went swimming for the first time in forever having had the physio sign off to do a limited amount of backstroke and sculling. Still, was nice to be in the pool on a warm morning. Tomorrow will be Day 3 of Week 2 of the Couch to 5k challenge.

And writing wise, I can give myself a tick as well. So onwards and upwards to Day 2 tomorrow.

Progress - Holly

New pages - Fourteen
Intriguing things - Very very mean fae. Bad fae! Who likes Comfortably Numb (the Scissor Sister's version...go figure)
Annoyances - No attention span this afternoon but then things flowed nicely after dinner.
Linear/non-linear - Non
Music - Soundtrack, mostly Scissor Sisters
Location - Write or Die and Think.
Taking care of Mel - Swimming! Quinoa! Lovely blood orange sorbet for treats!
Muse food - Er, I'll think of something...but bought (after seeing a recommendation on Justine Larbalestier's blog) Gurrumul by Geoffrey Gurrumul Yurupingu and it is a beautiful CD. Sad and soothing at the same time.

Wednesday, full of lots of stuff (but no woe)

Good enough for a sleepy Wednesday evening after a busy day at work. Need an early night!

Progress - Holly

New pages - Seven
Intriguing things - Very mean fae
Annoyances - Minimal
Linear/non-linear - Non
Music - Soundtrack
Location - Write or Die and Think.
Taking care of Mel - One early night coming up. More enchiladas (yum!)
Muse food - Hopefully can keep eyes open long enough to read a bit.

Onwards and so forth

So the last book is starting it's journey out into the world today and we've had a few weeks of light writing and brainstorming and kicking around of ideas but I have enough now to get stuck in and ideally, I'd like to have a draft of this by the end of March, so time to get back to the routine. I'm at 5k now and the draft should be around 80ish if things run true to form, so need to crank out 310 or so pages in two and a half months. Which is perfectly do-able (knock wood, throw salt etc). For one thing head down and write is a distraction from what's going on over there with the other book (fingers crossed!) : )

Therefore, herewith, metrics are recommencing.

Progress - Holly

New pages - Seven
Intriguing things - Mean Fae
Annoyances - Minimal
Linear/non-linear - Non
Music - Shakira and Scissor Sisters
Location - Write or Die and Think.
Taking care of Mel - Physio. Elliptical (week 2 of couch to 5k commences). Chicken enchiladas.
Muse food - A smattering of Grey's. Soon off to bed with good book.

The year to be

Continuing on...so what do I want to focus on in 2010?

1. Writing. In which my goals are to write two books, to play around with some shorter form stuff to see if I can write short stories or novellas (given the novels seem to keep getting longer and longer) and keep the biz side from interfering with the writing.

2. To get healthier. This means sorting out the sore shoulder and before, during and after that process, doing what exercise I can. Before, I think that means doing my elliptical, my Nia tapes with modified arms and some pilates at home and taking the pills and icing it afterwards. During and after is to be determined based on the diagnosis. It also means eating healthier which is mainly a matter of planning and organisation.

3. Feed the well. Keep doing what I have been doing with the craft and other stuff.

4. Get organised. 2009 has felt like a year of routines slipping away and stuff not quite getting done at times. I'm a Virgo, I like lists and notes and checking stuff off to-do lists. But I don't have a good system right now for keeping it all organised. I have notes in my iCal, to-dos and goals in various notebooks and stuff in my head that gets remembered at random moments when the brain decides to cough up. I need something to co-ordinate it all and given that I seem to be increasingly outsourcing brain space to my iPhone and computer, I'm looking at technology tools.

I've started using Tumblr to capture images etc that take my fancy but that's more a muse thing (the electronic equivalent of my old habit of ripping pictures out of magazines). I've just got an Evernote account with a view to using it to capture all the stuff I currently capture in bookmarks and jotted notes and, once I get a scanner, backing up my writing notebooks electronically.

I do have a to-do type program on my iPhone but it's not exactly what I want so the other thing I'm looking at is Things. Which will sync with my iPhone and my iCal and hopefully allow me to dump stuff out of my head and remember where I dumped it more easily. I'm going to download the trial version of Things tomorrow and buy the iPhone app and see what happens from there (you know, some of the more expensive iPhone apps should have trial versions too!).

So that's my plan. I guess in twelve months we'll see how I've done. The big dream remains, as always, to sell a book but that I can't control other than by doing the best I can with my writing. Still, I hope the publishing stars align this year!

How about you, oh great interwebs, who's got plans and dreams for the tenth year of the century?

Done - take two

Let there be rejoicing for the endless revision is done and duly sent to my agent and crit buddies for comments. After which there'll undoubtedly be another pass but let's not talk about that right now.

Right now there is only the righteous joy of done-ness and a distinct urge to sleep for a day or so.

Final page count: 426 (making it officially my longest book ever by one measly page) and just under 90 pages added in the revision (I am coming to accept my write-short, grow in revision process but the volume of growth still startles me...when I wrote shorter stuff, 90 pages was a third of the book!)

I am now declaring a few writing free days and then I shall play with something new...possibly the crazy cinderella story but who knows?

Now all I need to be able to figure out why twitter doesn't like this blog's feed and complete happiness would be mine *g*