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Almost halfway there - although, like I said in my previous post, I plan on going much more slowly starting in December. Part of the reason is because of time constraints, but another reason is that I'm going to be going back over the first half and rearranging the chapters slightly. One of the things I did with my erotica, that ended up working quite well, was to divide the story not by chapters but sections: the eight sections of "The Unattainable" were based on the eight seconds a rider needs to mark out in a rodeo event; and sections of "At the Edge of Ellensburg" were based on various geological time periods of Eastern Washington. Instead of having "Chapter One", "Chapter Two", etc., I plan on labeling the novel chapters with certain astrological events as they relate to Earth. That's about as much as I'll say about it for now. Not to be coy or anything - once I see if it works, then I'll be more specific.

Since this is Thanksgiving, I'll say that I'm thankful for the apple brown betty in my oven and the cold beer next to my computer, and generally for the fact that I'm alive. I hope everyone else has a good holiday weekend.

Labels: "the ruins of love"

Yes, I promised I'd put up the first chapter last week - what can I say, life and writing got in the way. Also, I forgot how freakin' long it takes to format something in a Livejournal post. Really, it's a bother - but I want it to be readable, so I'm taking my time.

Something else I'm going to be taking my time with: starting in December, I'm cutting my daily word count goal down to 750. I'm doing this because I've been finding that every night as I approach 750 words or thereabouts, the quality of my prose plummets. I make my word count of 1000 words, but only because I'm writing paragraphs along the lines of:

"blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah beer beer beer blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah omg heroes is on must hurry up blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah is it time for bed yet blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah gah bleh blah"

And then the next night I have to erase or rewrite that last chunk of "prose", which is an enormous waste of time, as well as rather demoralizing. My day is very long, so I don't have a lot of time to write to begin with - it makes no sense to spend most of it working over crap I wrote only to hit a made-up word count. So, back to the smaller word count. Quality over quantity, right?

Labels: "the ruins of love"

Next week I'll put it up over at The_Numinous_1 - my old (and largely private) Livejournal that I now use as a repository for my trunked YA novel. I can make a public entry, put it under an lj-cut, and I'll just post a link back here, so anyone who reads this blog won't be inundated by a flood of words they don't want to read. And since very few people comment over at that journal, it won't feel weird if the response is silence.

You know: sometimes I think I put too much pressure on myself, and sometimes I think I put too many expectations on readers. :) That's a post for another time, though. It's Friday, it's been a long and somewhat hideous week, and I'm calling it a day. Besides, my contacts are so dry, I can't see whut i'm typonig anymlopre.

Labels: "the ruins of love", free fiction

Still recovering from a somewhat sobering experience on Sunday - a bout of carbon monoxide poisoning that's left me a bit shaky both physically and mentally, to say the least. I'm ok now, but it was pretty bad for a short while. I won't go into the details (and I'm not bringing this up over on Livejournal) - suffice to say that everything's going to be alright. One good thing about CM poisoning is if it's not too severe, you can snap out of it fairly quickly. Amazing what breathing oxygen does to improve the spirits. :/

Despite the problems, I still managed to get a fair amount of writing done. I'll post a word count in a day or so. Right now I'm debating whether or not to post the first chapter here. I don't want to clog up anyone's newsfeed or friendlist - I can't lj-cut on the feed - and I also don't want to bore people. I posted a small section on a private forum, and got some positive responses, but still... I always get a bit paranoid about posting stuff. I never seem to get a lot of responses. That worries me. Either my writing is so fantastic it's striking people speechless with joy, or... it's not. I suspect the latter. :P

Labels: "the ruins of love", mortality

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Not bad for a month of writing, considering I don't have much time to write. As you can see, I've pushed the total word count up to 120,000, so I fell a bit short of my original goal of getting one third of the novel written - now it's one quarter, and I fell a bit short even of that. Oh well. Quality over quantity, right?

Next month - er, this month, I mean - will be a bit more challenging. November is a very busy month at work, and we have a sales conference during the last week, which includes various dinners and evening events. All of them are work-related, so that means that last week after Thanksgiving is a write-off for writing. Oh, the irony! However, I tend to stay home over the holidays, so I plan on having several writing marathons to make up for it. I'm hoping to get to at least 55-60k words written by the time December rolls around.

Novel writing aside, I've been thinking of what I want to do next year. I have a few stories I'd like to finish for very specific markets: ParaSpheres 2, which will close to submissions at the end of March, and a pro-rate queer horror anthology called "Shadows from the Closet". I'd like to write a novella for (hopefully) Subterranean Magazine, and I have to think about what novel I want to start on after "Ruins" is finished. I have an idea for another stand-alone (also horror), but I'm not sure... I know it seems odd to be thinking of what I want to write next year, but I tend to flounder if I don't have specific projects ahead of me. These are the projects that excite me the most, so it makes me feel good to know that they're waiting for me. It's like a carrot in front of the horse. Or a nice little bar at the end of a rainy street - a much more apt metaphor for a writer, don't you think? :)

Labels: "the ruins of love"