I was supposed to be back to work by now. My brother-in-law made it through his surgery with flying colors, my daughter has moved, I’ve moved, all the chaos is supposed to be done with.
Instead, I’m seeing specialists. I have no energy, the constant headaches and vertigo make it impossible to work for more than a few minutes (not even long enough to do a decent job at customer service), and I’m frustrated and furious with myself for not being able to just shake this off.
I have not forgotten TalysMana, or Write A Book With Me. At least I can think, and while I haven’t been working, I have been thinking. I’ve come up with some fun stuff for the TalysMana story, two new big courses I want to create (HTFYD and HTTWM…yes, I’m being enigmatic), and a really cool bonus thing to do with the Create A World Clinic.
And I wanted to set up a new post for you (the last one was getting pretty crowded), and to offer encouragement.
I haven’t answered–no energy. I have read.
Keep going. I’m cheering for you.
The TalynMana project hit a snag a couple weeks ago, when Becky’s day job got slammed with, well, the economy. Not just her job, you see, but the company she worked for, too.
So she’s in the middle of changing everything, and the jewelry part of the TalysMana project is on hiatus until she gets through this particular disaster.
And the contest is on hold until Becky can participate in judging the entries along with me. We’re looking at–realistically–a couple of months for this to happen.
On my end, there’s still a bunch of craziness going on, but it’s winding down. So I should be able to get back to writing TalysMana in another week or two.
We’ve had a couple of weeks of sheer zoo here, in which ALL I’ve been able to do is squeeze in time most nights to write the lessons for HTRYN—leaving TalysMana languishing.
We’ve had (and have ongoing) a couple of family crises, both medical and economy-related, we’re fixing up our next place to live to save hundreds of dollars a month on the rent we’re currently paying, I’ve had to squeeze income tax stuff in there, and that has taken two or three hours a day for the past few weeks. There’s also been a stack of other stuff that has come blasting through the doors at almost-regular, suspiciously intentional intervals that would make a less optimistic person than me suspect…well…let’s not go there.
ALL of March and the first few days of April have been “when it rains, it pours, and when it pours, it floods, and when it floods, your house floats down the street.”
Okay. Not that bad. And not as bad for us as for the folks we love. But…
There has been no fiction writing. None.
I’m going to get the lesson done this week, and next week, start back with my regular life, I hope.
Hope things have been going well for you.
Talk about your writing. I need to hear the beauty of how it’s going.
The content of the chapter veered as I realized there were some story issues I needed to deal with before I could deal with the issues I planned to deal with…and isn’t THAT clear as mud?
But I ended up moving the scene title “The Face In The Mirror Is Not Mine” to the next scene, and renaming the current scene “Ghost.”
For reasons that will become apparent.
Finished the scene. 1017 words tonight, and writing that flowed pretty well for me, in which I managed to surprise myself a couple of times—always a nice plus.
And I got the scene posted, too, so it’ll go out in the next mail cycle to folks who are caught up. It’s #18, if you’re not sure how far along you are in the story.
And I now have 27,675 words of my proposed 50,000 word first draft completed. More than half—a point I’d failed to notice until just now.
I went light tonight, but I did get words. 292, to be exact, as I started exploring the aftermath of Kettan discovering Nate’s fate.
The Face In the Mirror Is Not Mine is already suprising me. Will is proving resourceful—my objective is to keep Kettan strong enough to keep up with him and be his equal, not turn her into a dependent wimp. That’s always a danger when one character turns out better than you anticipate.
I’ve had a rough few days personally. It was a pleasure to be able to sink into fiction for a while, even if not for long.
I wrote 1618 words tonight, and finished the very long scene Where The Bodies Ain’t Buried.
This scene is as critical to the story as the previous Interlude…it clears up a question for Kettan that she’d failed to ask.
And you find out a bit of what happens to Nate.
The scene is posted, and for folks who are caught up with the story, will probably go out either tonight or in the Wee Small Hours of Thursday morning.
Last week was rough for me—I wrote massive wordcounts of nonfiction, but everything else that was going on kept me away from TalysMana. I’m hoping for better this week. I’d love to get back to doing 400-500 words a night. I end up with the same number of words, but I have more time to play with how I get them.
If you’re reading the story, this scene is about as dark as the previous one, but in a different way.
If you’re playing WABME, how are YOUR words coming?
Went back to Kettan tonight in the next scene, “Where The Bodies Ain’t Buried,” and to a neat mystery for her and Will to struggle with…one that the reader is going to be in on, but that has some cool implications for things going wrong in a big way soon.
I got a little carried away—it was such fun to write fiction again after a week without. Wrote 1092 words, and I’m pretty happy with what I got.
Hoping to be regular with smaller word counts the rest of this week, but things are such an incredible zoo right now I can’t be sure I’ll manage that.
I’m getting LOTS of writing done. 3-4,000 words a day. It’s just not fiction.
If you’re doing WABWM, how are your words coming?
I’m writing HTRYN and the Crash Revision workshop right now, and have a couple other big things on my plate. So TalysMana is getting a week of hiatus (with my apologies).
If you’re playing “Write A Book with Me,” this is the topic for the week.
And I have some new contest entries I’m going to try to post tomorrow.
I have serious doubts about scene 15, Interlude—To Breathe What Breaks.
Not doubts about the content itself, which shows who Nate is, and who Blade is. This is something the reader needs to know.
But doubts about how the scene will go over. This is dark stuff.
Kind of holding my breath.
Got 884 words tonight. And that’s going to be it for a while. Life threw a major monkeywrench into our lives, and for the next month to two months, it’s going to be all I can do just to get daily words on the HTRYN course.
I’ll come in and wish my fellow writers good words (and give you posts to do your own counts on). But I’m not sure how I’m going to get words on TalysMana along with everything else that’s now landing on me.
What came out tonight in the interlude was Nate and Blade, trouping across the Bleak. I don’t know where they’re going yet, but it can’t be good.
And I discovered details about Nate that I didn’t know.
And learned a term of his—one he shares with Blade. Arting.
I wrote it, having already discovered what it meant, and shuddered.
This part of the book may be too dark. It stays through the first revision, though. What’s going on here is critical to defining why Nate is one of the villains of the story, not one of the dark heroes (who will be coming), and I have to leave it in to come to a full understanding of who Nate and Blade are, and what they’re working towards.
As written, though, it just may be too much.
Anyway, 394 words.
How are your words coming along?
