1400 more words. No one is being particularly nice to this eight year old. Poor Myr. We get to find out why in a few chapters, but for now she’s just getting hammered from all sides.
My tub is still full of dust and detritus, so I have to go to the gym tomorrow, so I have to go to bed now. Convenient how that works, eh?
1500 more words, plus some background about cities and cemetery cities.
Some awfully violent stuff in there. I’m concerned that the story thus far sounds a little too much like [OTHER NOVEL I READ LAST YEAR]. I’ll need to go back and check that book to see if they’re too close kin or if I’m just overlaying my memory of what I read onto what’s really there.
(Ironically, the subject of my worry is memory itself, specifically the rewriting or fracturing of it by outside forces, so all this is rather recursive and hurting my brain, thanks.)
The ending of the chapter is not satisfactory, but I’ll leave it to next draft to fix.
Off to the gym and a birthday celebration. Also, catpans. Oh, the catpans. >_<
and the time when our steps are retraced
and I creep through the twilight to that hidden place,
beyond the lonely,
I’ll meet you.
Wrote some. 1300 words. That’s nearly half a chapter! If I’d started earlier, it would be a whole chapter.
I need a deadline. End of February for a first draft. That’s ten chapters a month…2.5 chapters a week, plotting as I go.
Sure. Let’s go with that.
Also, I can’t get through The Scar for the life of me. Maybe when I’m in California for the holidays and have no choice but to read. Maybe then. But I swear to god if he doesn’t stop describing the ocean floor and get to a goddamn plot….
Magic for Beginners, however, is absolutely captivating. Figures that this is the same person who co-edits for Small Beer Press, which published the super-excellent Perfect Circle by Sean Stewart.
crushed velvet, candle wax, and
dried up flowers.
The figure on the bed all dressed up in roses, calling,
beckoning to sleep, offering a dream.
My house is clean. This is a sign. I haven’t been writing.
Not giving myself goals and deadlines doesn’t help my writing self. Damn. I had so hoped I could be one of those fancy shoot-from-the-hip types, but….
So, anyway, I have questions to ask myself. Like, do I want to write a novel for commercial sale? I kind of like my dayjob. So — is there a way I can write novels AND keep my dayjob? These are the things that have been floating through my head the last few months, and with a few lull days coming up, I need to address them now.
The solution I’m coming up with is that I want to go back to Myr and her world, using what I learned from the last two exercises to craft a novel with the right weight to it. I may also invest in Write It Now because it’ll keep track of the stuff I tend to lose when I get busy and can’t write.
…anyway, that’s where things are. Not a resignation, just a regrouping.