And now we’ll go back to my original purpose for typing on this keyboard (as opposed to my netbook). I thought I might provide a bit of an update as to how I’m doing. The short version is that things are better, but we all know I’m not going to stick with the short version. I’m a writer and therefor fairly addicted to using words.  A lot of words. A maelstrom of words across the screen! *evil laugh*

Uh, sorry, apparently I had to get that out of my system. But many words have been used, and I have another lesson going up on the wall.  It’s kind of an extension of the things I talked about in the last post, but I think the last couple of days have clarified things further for me.

Looking back at my last post, I realize that I know myself too well, enough that I was entirely right. The last two days have been 4k days. I wasn’t trying to get there, really. In fact, after hitting 2.5, I told myself I could quit any time I wanted to. But then I didn’t want to. I just kept telling the story. And that’s the thing, it was about the story, entirely about that and word count just got left behind as unimportant. Then I quit for the night, entered the total on my tracking spreadsheet and stared in amazement as numbers a little in excess of 4k came out both days. Seriously, I was kind of impressed with myself, a highly unusual state of affairs, trust me.

So the lesson going on the wall? Direct quote from what’s on the paper being taped up: Lose yourself in telling the story and words (word count and all) will flow along with that story. It means a lot of things, including using how the story flows as a tool for me to diagnose when something is wrong with the story, or worse, when I’m driving myself too hard.  It also helps me to know when I’m putting together a good story, because I think those are the ones that a writer tends to lose themselves in. I may be wrong on that part, as it’s purely my experience, and I welcome comments on it, either agreement or otherwise.

All that writing landed me at another milestone for the draft last night, 70k was reached and breached. I’m still not willing to pin down how far I have to go, but I think it’s in the 15k range. Nobody quote me on that later though, please. There are parts I think I will have to work with to smooth out and others that I’ve skimmed through and been surprisingly pleased with. But that’s all a worry for another time, not until at least a week or two after I finish this draft, depending on what I might have to keep myself occupied when I’m done this.  One day, if I ever have a lot of money, I’m going to go out and try to buy some patience.  Nothing else has worked, maybe that will, if I can find the right shop.

I have done one big scary thing, this past weekend, and I hadn’t mentioned it because, well, I’m a little nervous.  My recently written short story, Cost of Duty, is entered now in the Writer’s of the Future contest. It’s done on a quarterly basis, science fiction and fantasy only if memory serves, and there’s real money in it (if you win at least), plus there’s a bigger prize if you win the year. They produce an anthology every year as well. It’s been going on for 29 years and it’s kind of a big deal, thus the nerves.  It only took me about 15 minutes to get through the whole electronic submission process, and apparently my nerves don’t respond to big scary things that fast, because I didn’t get nervous until after I hit send.  This morning I got my confirmation that it’s officially entered.  Eeep.  Wish me luck. Apparently I get to wait until June to find out about winners.  I need to find that store and buy patience right away. :p

And finally, today’s picture, before I go off and make dinner, then (shockingly) write. I have a few like this one, and I tried to pick the best of them. I love the layering in this shot.

You might recall I said in my last awards post that I was never satisfied with my word count, that if I did 3k last draft, I would be pushing myself for 4k on the next? That’s literally true.  It’s what I’ve been doing, and I think that’s been part of the problem. 4k every day is a lot (especially after an 8 hour work day), and some days it isn’t there, but do you think I let myself understand that? Heck no. Yes, this means I’ve berated myself on the days it isn’t there, tried to wheedle and coax myself into getting there anyway, and I keep giving in to myself on it instead of saying “Look self, I’m over 3k, pace was 2.5k, enough. We’re good for the day.” And that only gets worse on the weekends, where the line is “If I can do 4k on a weekday, I should be able to do a lot more than that when I have all day. 6k minimum, and I should keep pushing even after that.” It’s never enough for me, it seems.

That is not to say I was wrong in my last post about the wall being related to a story problem. That was the wall, but when I got that problem sorted, I still had some trouble getting the engine to turn over and realized that it’s because I hadn’t even started it and already had the pedal matted.  Not good, only floods the engine. I was sitting there and seriously telling myself that I had to make sure I hit at least 4k every day now, and that this weekend I should use the time to make up for the lack of writing after I hit the wall.  After a moment, I realized exactly how stupid that sounded and went off to read for a while.  It was a delicious thing to turn away for an hour and do something else.  I won’t say it’s easy to resist the pressure I put on myself, but I think it’s worth doing sometimes, if only to me back on an even keel.

It’s great to drive myself to finish the book, but if I drive myself to the point of wanting to walk away, that’s just counterproductive (and the above mentioned stupid). Then I end up quitting over not meeting some artificial, self-imposed quota or deadline that wasn’t reasonable to begin with.  In a way, I’m laughing at myself right now.  I’ve told a number of people to take the pressure off of themselves, to be reasonable in their goals, to dial it back to where it’s still about loving writing. Do you think I take my own advice? Yeah, right, that would be sensible, which I rarely manage. So I am going to do that, I’m going to take my own advice. I’m going to dial it back, tell myself that 3k, which only a couple of months ago would have thrilled me as a regular achievement, is perfectly acceptable. I’m still over 20k ahead of pace and even that isn’t the point.  I need to let myself be a little sane (don’t laugh too hard, we’re talking my version here), do some things that aren’t writing the book or I’m going to do myself some harm here.  I don’t think I could quite make myself hate writing, but if I keep this up, it may become a job in the less pleasant sense, rather than the job that doesn’t feel like work as it has been for the past few months.

I’m the one who keeps talking about maintaining balance, so it’s time to bring this back into balance. What’s funny about that is I have this feeling that if I can rebalance this, the numbers will probably jump again on their own, if I’m not trying to force it anymore.  That’s just the way things usually work in my life.

I haven’t reported numbers on Possession for a while now, so I am going to do that now, so that maybe I (and the rest of you) can really see that it’s not like I’m in danger of not hitting my goal or not finishing the draft.  I know where I am with the outline, and the chances are excellent that, like the second draft of DM, I will finish the book at or before the end of my February NaNo, even with me dialling it back.  As of the end of the day yesterday, the manuscript stood at 62,151 words. I’m about to start chapter 16. Even with the problems this week, not including today because I haven’t gotten started yet, I’ve put in a total of 13,396 words. That’s fantastic, and I really should be happy with that.  I’m trying to be, trying to ignore the totals from Thursday and Friday (though Friday at least wasn’t bad, especially if you realize that I was rewriting a not so small section that wasn’t right when I forced myself to write it in pursuit of the artificially inflated finish line).  I really need to maintain some perspective here, something I’m spectacularly bad at doing myself most of the time, for all that I can help other people do it.

I do want to say a very, very big thank you to all of you who have taken the time to read, like and comment on the posts in the last few days. Your words of encouragement, support, and advice have helped more than I can tell you.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the supportive community is what makes WordPress a wonderful place to blog.

In closing, today’s picture. I thought we could all use some sun and colour on this February morning.

You see, I was thinking the other day about how we set and measure both our goals and our progress toward them.  More specifically, I was thinking about how I do these things, because by now you all know I never claim to be the wise old expert on anything.  There are definitely different ways one can measure progress on almost anything, but I find that there are two major ways with writing in my experience.

The first, the one that so many of us use, is word count.  Word count is nice because it’s one of the few quantifiable things in a field that is generally highly subjective. Word count is relatively absolute, especially when writing a first draft NaNo-style because you’re supposed to just keep blazing forward, and then the counter coughs up a number.  If you’re keeping track on a daily basis, then it’s a simple calculation to know how much you have accomplished.  Then you have something to measure against that quantified goal for that period of time, so you can tell readily if you are on track for your goal.  Of course, I never know for sure how long the story will be on first draft, because I always think you let that draft be as long as it needs, regardless of any other considerations, so it would be hard to give a percent to completion expression of this progress. But I definitely know how far I’ve come in a day.

While this is a great way to feel accomplished (I won’t lie, I love seeing the giant numbers), it does ignore the fact that writing is about far more than just writing X number of words, so very much more.  As I said, it’s a subjective field, where “good” and “right” and “correct” get tossed around a lot but mean different things to everyone.  For a while during university, I worked in a book store (lit major working in the fiction section, there’s a no brainer).  When customers would express that they felt like they should be reading certain types of fiction, usually literary, because they were under the impression that those types were automatically “better,” I would point out that we have so many different types of books and authors because there is such a variety of taste in books, that no type is better than the others. I might be a little biased because I’m a committed reader of fantasy, mystery and to a lesser extent, science fiction, but I do stand by the statement to this day.

So, if this is a subject field, is there a way of making goals and tracking them that acknowledges that and works with it? This is what I was thinking about the other day that made me want to post about the subject as soon as I had my thoughts on it straight.  Despite my saying that this post wasn’t caused by my afore-mentioned little difficulty, I do think that the wall and the fallout from it has helped to clarify my thinking on the subject, making it easier to write this post than I had expected. You see, I didn’t feel bad so much about hitting a difficulty, because those happen, but I felt (and still feel) a little bad about not making my word count goal yesterday. The only thing that stopped me from trying despite the way I felt was the realization that anything I tried to write at that point would be a pure waste, that I’d just be deleting it as soon as I had the problem sorted in order to move forward in the story. That leads me to think that purely number-based goals put undue pressure on us to perform even if we know we’re writing drivel.  The number of times I’ve seen in the NaNo forums that someone just had to go through their whole book from November and put in all the contractions that they deliberately left out during NaNo purely for higher word count, or something similar in the name of word count, well, it drives me a little nuts.  I mean, it’s good to hit the goal, don’t get me wrong, but what’s the point when you’re only writing it to add words you know, for sure, you’ll be taking out later?  You’re  making more pointless work for yourself, really.  This is not the same as editing, where you might be tweaking to better express something. I’m talking words put in the manuscript purely for the count’s sake. There has to be another way, I thought to myself, something that lets me feel accomplished without driving myself batty on a rough day, or just a day that didn’t have a high number, but got me through something important. This thought led me to where I’m leading all of you.

You see, I do think there is definitely a more fluid, qualitative way to judge progress, though it’s far harder to set concrete, achievable, measurable goals. This would be measuring it by general progress through the story itself. Note to all the pantsers out there, this probably won’t work for you because you’re still discovering where your story is going, so it would be impossible to judge progress toward the end.  But for those of us who plan and outline our way through the story, and then draft it, this is perfectly possible, if somewhat unpredictable.

I’ve done this method before. Because of the way I outline things, I tend to be able to say that I’m doing events A, B and C today. Those would be then 3 of a set number of events as laid out in my outline.  Some of you who were reading this blog as I did the second draft of DM might remember me referring to entries in my outline, how many I had and how many I had completed.  That’s basically what I was doing, trying to judge my progress by the amount of the story I had written, but in a fairly qualitative sense. The reason I find this subjective is that there are a number of factors at play in the length of draft an entry or event will turn into, including importance, intricacy, how much I need actually describe, things like that. Some of you might recall me first worrying that the second draft of DM would be too long, then that it would be just right, and in the end, it was about 30k shorter than I had anticipated. This is what I meant about it being unpredictable. But it feels like a way of measuring that is more fair to myself and the story. Why? Well, as a reader, I rarely care how long a story is, unless it’s either fabulous or crap.  If it’s crap, well, I probably put it down before the end anyway, so maybe it doesn’t matter then either.  When it’s fabulous, I don’t notice word count, but I do notice that I don’t want it to ever stop.  :)  In other words, what I really care about is the story, so shouldn’t I, as a writer, be judging my work based on that same yardstick? I mean, I can’t be the only reader who views books this way.

I’m still not sure, given the unpredictability this method, how I would set about creating, maintaining and judging progress on goals in this fashion. All I’m certain of is that I have had days where I’ve struggled to put as many words on the screen as I feel I should, but when I look back at the section I did write, I felt accomplished anyway because it was either important or intricate to the point of requiring careful work on what words I used.  That should count for something. Maybe there’s some hybrid of the two methods possible, if I can ever learn to maintain a sense of perspective and not drive myself into the ground wanting to eternally go faster and do more.  Hmm, it’s a thought.  I’ll probably be mulling this over still when I get to the point of setting the goals for The Nine.  Maybe I’ll even post further thoughts on the subject if I have them.

Before you ask, I did get some writing done tonight. I have the problem licked, I think (edit stage will have the final say on that), and even managed to hit pace tonight. It’s not nearly as much as I had been doing, but it was important to me to climb back on that horse, and to feel out the solution. Green lights all the way. Now to rebuild the momentum, as I told someone else once.

Also, feedback on DM continues to be good. I’m thinking that the pace it’s being read through is probably a good sign.

And, before I go, I did promise a picture, so here it is. My mother loves growing these things, has had one at every house they’ve owned. I love the way the light plays across the leaves in this one.

You see, I’m at a point in my outline where I had a bit of difficulty figuring out how I was going to handle a particular event and the lead up to the next one. And now that I’m trying to write that section, I’m feeling a tremendous amount of resistance in my own brain to writing what I had planned. This is a sign of a familiar problem. Without getting into specifics, the wall I just hit confirmed what I vaguely remember thinking when I wrote this part of the outline, that I had made the wrong choice for the story, that I was trying to force it in a direction that it shouldn’t be going in.  As I said, it’s not the first time this has happened in my writing history, but that means I know what I need to do to get back on track with Possession. In fact, I’ve already done it. I’ve gone back, evaluated what wasn’t working and why, both in the outline and in what I wrote in the draft, which led me directly to what I think will work.  It’s late and I’m too tired to actually sit down and start writing it, but I’ll get to that tomorrow.  I’m currently over 20k ahead of my pace. I think I can afford to give myself the rest of the night off after I’ve made a few more notes on the solution to my problem. It isn’t as if I haven’t been working on it tonight, just not in the manner planned.

No, this is not the post I had planned to write today.  That will probably come tomorrow after work, maybe first thing Saturday if I get totally wrapped back up in writing tomorrow (and I won’t complain about that one bit).

In the good news column, initial test reader feedback on DM is encouraging.

And no, no picture tonight. See above comment on being tired.  I don’t care if it’s only 9:15, my brain thinks it’s midnight.  I think I’ll call it a night early now.

The funny thing is that I am the last person I would ever point others to when looking for inspiration, but I think that has to do with a rampant case of it’s-not-impressive-if-I’m-the-one-doing-it. I’m in treatment, the doctors say it’s not life-threatening and that I can safely live the rest of my life with it if treatment doesn’t work.  They have, however, informed me that it’s not covered by any Healthcare system, and so they have been forced to mail me my invoice for services rendered.  Wait, what’s this slip of paper in the envelope with it? It looks a bit like a prescription.

1. Thank the person who gave this to you.
2. Write 7 things about yourself
3. Nominate 7 blogs

Oh, wait, those are the instructions. Apparently they found them when they were researching my case. Curiouser and curiouser…

So, many more thanks to Amber for thinking of me. Now, for the (not very) juicy tidbits of information about the (very) crazy writer-lady.

1. The first SLR camera I got to use was my Aunt Sandy’s, a Minolta X-700 that’s more or less been on perma-loan to me since she found out I wanted to get into photography. I’d still be using that if Agfa hadn’t stopped making my favourite type of film, more or less turfing me into the digital photography age.
2. I talk to the characters in my books.  A lot. Especially when I hit a road block in either the notes or outline stages. Sometimes they tell me surprising secret things, sometimes they just tell me off.  They’re a loudmouthed, mutinous bunch, but I love them, and talking to them has so far gotten me out of every jam since I started writing all the time last fall. Thank god I live alone, though sometimes I get funny looks from the cats.
3. Many of the writing inspirations I’ve shared on here were so shared for two reasons. First, I wanted to make sure I recorded them somewhere other than just my wall of lessons learned, and second, I’m not so much trying to inspire people as save them from bashing their heads into some of the walls I’ve bashed mine into. I know it hurts, and I’d like to try to save someone else that pain if I can.
4. I’m never happy with my progress. In anything, really.  It’s never enough. If I write 2k per day for an entire draft, I feel the need to top it, even if that’s not reflected in my goal. The actual stated goal this time, as I write Possession, is the same as when I wrote the second draft of DM (which is ambitious to begin with since I wrote most of that draft of DM while on vacation from the day job) but I’m not satisfied with just writing 3k per night (my average at least during the portion of last time that included going to the day job). No, this time, I’m not entirely happy with myself unless I’ve written 4k, despite the fact that pace is only 2.5k.  That’s just a little sick and I’m wondering when it will be forced to end by a serious case of I-don’t-have-any-more-hours-in-the-day-for-this. I’m pretty sure you can’t get treatment for that.
5. I rarely plan posts out ahead of time. I mean almost never. Okay, I think it happened once (not including the one I have planned for after this award post). I find it odd that they don’t ramble more because of this. I mean, I edit them. Trust me, I even tend to edit my comments on other blogs.  But strangely, all of these unplanned posts seem to stay more or less on subject, and even usually have a nice flow to them. I’m a bit amazed at that.
6. Though I have trouble being inspired by anything I do, even when I know intellectually that it should be viewed as inspiring, I often find others very inspiring and love to tell them so, to encourage them to keep doing whatever they’re doing that I find so awesome.  In that spirit, I’m looking forward to the nomination section.
7. If I were successful enough to do so, I probably would quit my day job and just write. It’s not because I don’t like my day job. I do like it most days. But I think that by the time I became that successful, I would need to quit the day job just so I could feel like I had time for things other than work.  Currently I work 37.5-40 hours a week on the day job and somewhere in the 55-60 hours a week range on writing. I really do dream of having just one full time job again one day, and I know I can’t give up writing. The implications are obvious.

And so, now we move on to the main event, the Inspiring Bloggers I wish to bring to people’s attention:

1. Though I don’t wear jewellery myself, I love her work as being beautiful in their own right and, as I know her in real life, I know exactly how inspiring she is, which is to say tremendously.
2. This gentleman often says the things I think out loud (out word?) for me or prods me into thinking about something differently.  I think that’s good for my brain, which I need for all this writing.
3. This lady lives her life with such honesty and a beautiful mix of self-confidence and self-examination that I find it inspires me to do the same.
4. This fabulous photographer also writes wonderful accompanying pieces that never fail to touch me.
5. This lady makes me look back at myself at that age and realize how little I had my stuff together. But that inspires me to keep it together now, so it’s all good to me.

Yes, I know that’s only 5.  I’m cheating. Again. I’ve just done enough of these things to realize that the number they ask for is arbitrary.  I would rather people just nominated those they feel it’s appropriate for, rather than adding to the list just because it isn’t long enough. That and several of the people I would love to give this to already have it, which just means other people have good taste too.

In closing, I want to leave you with this link, which made me laugh and think at the same time, my favourite kind of inspiration. I couldn’t not share it.

Daniel Abraham’s Private Letter From Genre To Mainstream

I’ll be totally honest, this weekend has been one of those rare times where I feel like I’ve wrapped myself so deep in the story that there’s almost no world outside of it.  Right at the moment, I wish I didn’t have to go to work tomorrow, because I desperately don’t want to have to climb out of Possession for that.  The title is starting to feel very… apt. I don’t think I’ve ever felt this involved with my own story.  I’ve felt involved in stories before, certainly, but only with other writers, stories not my own. The very idea that I’m this enthralled leaves me more than a bit breathless.

Before you wonder, no, I don’t think it’s perfect. By now, those of you not new to this blog should know me far better than that. For any new to this party, let me assure you, I’m far and away my own worst critic. There are some parts that are definitely first draft quality, in all it’s warts and roughness, and that I will certainly have to work on when I get to the editing stage (no, we are not yet taking bets on how short a time I will be able to leave this one in the draw :p). But the story itself, the whole, and the way that whole is unfolding in the act of making it concrete… Dear god, I am without words to describe it at the moment.  Hmm, that’s very un-writerly of me. I need more superlatives and the confidence to use them on my own work.  Anyone have some of either I can borrow, emphasis on the second part of the request?

One word of warning, when it comes time for people reading this.  I think that, by the end of this, I’m going to owe Fay something far bigger than an apology for what I’m in the process of doing to her.  I actually feel a little guilty, though part of that is because, due to their relationship, when I do bad things to her, Tavis catches some of it too, and I like Tavis.  Okay, more than like. Totally not the point.

Okay, now that I’m done mooning over myself, my story and Tavis and Fay (and the rest), let’s get the specifics in.  Yesterday was a new record for me, and I can’t quite believe that I did this, but somehow, I managed to write two chapters, 9 and 10, with a total of 7,173 words.  Yes, in one day.  Would you believe my brain only hurt a little?  Of course, it was a puddle on the floor, so maybe I just couldn’t feel the pain.  For today, not quite as much writing since Sunday is chores day for me. Chapter 11 is in the bag, with 3,657 words written for the day. I might write some more this evening, but that means starting a chapter I won’t be able to finish (and still be able to get up in the morning for work). This brings me to a total for the whole book written thus far of 44,072 words. I think I’m almost or around halfway, but I’m not even sure of that.  It’ll be however long it needs, but it’s fun to watch the total shoot up.

Oh, and, in the middle of all that, Sketh showed up yesterday and whispered a secret to me before slinking off. I missed him, blades, bad attitude and all. And I had a fairly major realization on The Nine, which is actually better, since that’s pretty much what’s up next.  I’ve promised myself that I will finish the trilogy at least before letting any other characters take over my brain entirely.  Trust me, that’s harder than it sounds (Devan, cut that out!)

Finally, to share with you another of my photographs. I have to say, I really do appreciate the comments and support on this aspect. I find it harder to share my photography than my writing. It isn’t that I care about the photography more (There is literally nothing I care about more than writing, which explains the amount of my life I’m dedicating to it these days), but that I have far less confidence in my camera work. I’ve had friends prodding me for a few years to share my pictures, where I require almost no prodding to share my writing. Or to talk about my writing, as you just might have noticed.

I think my writing muscles (the parts of the brain I use for it at least) are getting stronger as I go.  I remember when I’d feel fried after writing 2.5k in a night, and 3k+ resulted in Facebook status updates like “Click, click. Ow brain. Click clack. Ow brain.” (Yes, I really did that one day).  I now seem to write about 4k a night with little or no pain.  Part of it is that I’m grooving in on Possession, part of it is that it’s a good story, but I think a lot of it is practice and my process working out well for me, and that’s a nice feeling.  I remember a time when I thought I’d never find a process that worked and was destined to be stuck with ideas I couldn’t turn into stories despite a burning need to do so.  I feel fairly hopeful that the rest of the equation of me becoming a published author might actually fall into place.  Who knows, something crazy might happen, like people actually wanting to buy my books and read them!

So, specifics, as I’m sure you’re all dying to know them. Chapters 6, 7 and 8 are now complete. After my last post, I sat down and wrote 4,052 words, which was good. Last night, it got even better with 4,664 words (I’d been looking forward to writing one of those scenes ever since I stuck it in the outline) and tonight I’ve put up 4,549 words.  This leads to a grand total of 33,242 words.  Wow, already? Trust me, even though I’ve been watching both my daily totals and the overall climb, I’m still a little shocked to see how fast this is going up. That said, there’s still a ways to go.  I’ve got a couple of really challenging, important sections coming up. At least I’m writing them on the weekend, when I have all day to work with them, and no, that wasn’t planned.

And I want to say that, despite the speed, it’s in good shape.  I’m sure I’ll need to do some tweaking, but I don’t anticipate needing to rewrite this in a significant way (unlike the first draft of DM). I know one scene that I will want to focus and tighten, but otherwise, I’ve been quite pleased with the bits and pieces I’ve read while searching for a specific detail here and there (or just indulging myself and rereading because I liked it). I spend some time hanging around the NaNoWriMo forums, and I often read people talking about how they have this problem or that problem with their novel and directly relating their specific problem(s) to only taking a month to write it, but I think that with preparation, a month is plenty of time for a first draft that is reasonably tight for that stage of writing. But you have to go in having spent some serious time thinking about what you want to do with it and how it needs to go.  I’m not saying you have to outline (though I now have plenty of proof that I don’t function well as a writer without one), but you need to know your characters and have a general idea at least before you start that month-long writing-fest.  That preparation really can be as simple as time spent thinking about it, maybe making notes. You don’t have to read this blog for very long to figure out that I am a big believer in the idea that every writer is different, that we all need to find the process, stories, techniques and voice that works for us specifically. But if you don’t spend any time thinking about what’s going to go on in your novel and who it’ll go on with, why would you be surprised that your characters lack depth, or that your scenes feel flat?  I’ve said before that lack of sufficient planning and preparation was a big part of why the first draft of Dark Mirror didn’t get edited at all, simply went into archive while I started over again with a fresh outline.  I had some of those same problems. The key is to learn what causes your problems (and this point goes well beyond writing, into the arena of general rules for life) and figure out how to avoid making the same mistakes in future works.

Okay, I’m done preaching about how to write, really.  I generally hate doing it, but sometimes I see people say the same things over and over again and it irks me when they don’t learn from it.  Irkage usually causes me to say something. I once started a thread on my favourite writing forum that got bumped for months afterward just because someone did something I’d seen several times before, but they did it big enough to irk me a lot.  It was quite amusing to me, actually.  Come to think of it, it still is. I should go find that thread sometime.

In other news, Sketh showed up today and explained something to me.  Great, another character/story idea screaming for my attention. Because Devan isn’t trying hard enough to distract me from Possession and The Nine, I guess. So I’m still making notes on those and generally letting them stew in the back of my mind while I spend several hours a day with Fay and Tavis.  Why is all of this work not tiring me out at all? I don’t understand it, but I will say that I’m loving it.  The daily feeling of accomplishment I get from all of these things is wonderful, and seems to fuel continuing to do all of these things.  Maybe it’s some version of perpetual motion for this writer?  I don’t know, but I am going to savour every moment of it I get.

And, of course, last but not least, tonight’s picture. This is one of my more recent ones, taken on a trail near a town called Deep Cove here in BC.  I love the way the shapes and shadows play together in this one.

All of that said, of course it must be obvious that the first draft of Possession continues to go well, both in quantity and quality.  I feel about it so far as I did the second draft of Dark Mirror, in that I don’t feel so far that major changes will be required when I’m done, though of course there will be editing and it’s too early to really be sure of this.  In some ways, I think this one is better, somewhat more complex and the characters are more real in their relationships with others.  I’m also getting to explore a few things I couldn’t in DM because they weren’t there yet for the characters, though they were part of the world. Again, like doing the second draft of DM, I can feel some of the growth I’ve undergone as a writer working its way into the book.  I also feel like I have a better handle on this story and on my world now, and I don’t think it’s just because this is now the second book I’ve written in this world, or that it’s in some ways a continuation of the previous story.  Possession is definitely a story unto itself, though one that is easier to understand I suspect if you’ve read DM.  I think both things are more a result of spending most of a month thinking about and outlining it, in and around dealing with DM and the short story.  I’m also very happy to have Tavis back as a POV character.  I missed him.

So, exactly how well are things going, quantity-wise? Chapters 4 and 5 are in the bag now, Chapter 6 to be worked on tonight. Monday I wrote a personal best for this round of writing (early days, I know), 4,667 words, and another 3,899 were written last night.  Tonight? We shall see. This of course, brings me close enough to a fairly major milestone that I’m going to round 19,977 words up and say I’ve hit that mystical 20k mark.  In 5 days.  That’s awesome, and the brain doesn’t hurt (yet) which is even better. I’ve still got a long way to go, and some major, painful scenes to write though.  How long will this be in the end?  You’re guess is as good as mine (possibly better, given how wrong I was last time), so I’ve decided to only say that it will be as long as it takes to tell the story.  That’s still my favourite yardstick for how long the story is/should be.

And, of course, through all this, Devan still won’t leave me alone.  I’d be irritated with his attempts to distract me from Possession, but I’m too busy being startled and delighted by some of the places he takes me.  I’m deeply looking forward to writing that one in its time, and refusing to let myself even think about whether I’m good enough to write it well.  I think I might be, but I’m going to try to learn not to worry about that and just write anyway.  Besides, I still have The Nine to write before I can work on Necromantic.  Speaking of The Nine, I’m feeling a bit of flow in the ideas for that, which is good.  I know a lot of ideas for Possession got kicked loose as I was working on the second draft of DM, so this is probably a good sign that I’ll be in a good place to get down to work on The Nine once I’m done the draft of Possession.

What, me slow down? I might stall if I did that. Certainly I’d be utterly lost with all that time on my hands.

And, of course, before I go for the next couple of days and the night’s explosion of words, the picture of the day.  This one is one of my favourites of all my shots, which might explain why it’s one of those printed and framed on the wall.

I’m off to a good start so far on Possession.  No really mind-blowing days, but that’s okay, because it’s only day 3 and I’d like to still have a functional mind over the next however long to write the rest of the novel with.  So far this is shaping up to be a better first draft than the actual first draft of Dark Mirror, and that’s an encouraging sign.  I’ve learned a lot since then and I can feel that, with the questions I’m asking myself while I write and the way it’s unfolding.  Yesterday, after writing the post for here, I did 3,323 words, which was all of Chapter 2, and today I’ve managed to get Chapter 3 written, all 4,567 words of it (it’s a long one).  This gives me a total so far of 11,411 words for the book, which is entirely respectable for 3 days of writing.

I’ve had to refer back to my most recent draft of Dark Mirror a couple of times in the last two days, to make certain of specific detail (i.e. did Fay tell Tavis something explicitly or not) but that’s okay, because it doesn’t seem to be slowing me down.  I think part of the reason I’m not doing more of that is that I’ve spent a lot of time in January editing DM, with two separate passes, and I did plenty of checking or notes while I was doing the outline for Possession, and that helps too.  It hasn’t disrupted the rhythm I’m starting to get back into from my last NaNo, when I was doing the second draft of DM. It’s actually quite nice to find myself falling back into that groove so easily.  I’d kind of wondered how hard it would be to get back into the daily writing routine after a month away, and am glad it hasn’t been hard at all.  This coming week will be more of an acid test, with the whole routine of work, come home, write starting again, but I think I’m up to it.  It’s not as if I haven’t been doing some version of it through January.  It was just more of an edit or outline version of it, rather than actual writing (except for the day of the short story, of course), that’s all. I’d like to mention that I’m not the only one getting back into the groove.  Jay, one of my two cats, is already helping me write more by sleeping on my legs, just like last time.  He’s too cute to move when he does that, so I figure I might as well just keep writing since I’m pinned in front of the netbook. *shrugs*

In addition to all of this (No, I don’t ever slow down.  It’s so  I don’t have time to realize how much I’m doing), I’ve been continuing to make notes on Necromantic.  It’s unfolding beautifully, and I think my subconscious may totally be on Devan’s side when it comes to being impatient for me to start writing this one.  That said, I’ve paid the price of starting too early a number of times (dead, unfinished novels that started out as good but under-developed ideas) to want to risk it with this one.  It’ll be a bit demanding on me when I do go to write it, but I think I’ll be experienced enough by then that I can do it, if I make sure I do enough prep work. I’m not sure how much longer it will be before I open an Outliner file for this one, but I doubt it will be that long.  I give it another week, maybe, at the rate it’s been going.

And, before I toddle off for the night to rest my weary brain, today’s picture:

First, though, an announcement.  It has begun, again.  That’s right, 30 days of writing, my own unofficial NaNo in February.  I was originally planning on waiting until February 15th to start Possession because, well, it’s a nice round date and I’d already missed February 1st, but then we all know I’m not patient enough to wait almost two weeks, not with the outline done.  Besides, it just kind of felt right.  That was the major reason really.  The honest truth is that I’ve been feeling a little trepidatious about starting Possession, in spite of my enthusiasm and how happy I was with the outline on rereading it.  I think some of it is that it’s the second book.  There’s a lot more pressure in many ways.  Dark Mirror was easy, in that everything was possible, it was all free.  With Possession, I am no longer writing in a void.  I have a previous work to reference, existing characters that I cannot reshape on a whim.  I also have another book coming along after it that I am very conscious of needing to set up as I write this one.  Yes, there was some of that part at least while writing the second draft of DM, but that was in isolation from the rest of these issues.  Finally, I feel like I need to raise the stakes a bit in this book, and also to up my game as a writer.  So much going on regarding the book in the back of my mind that it’s been hard to push myself past all of that and sit down to start banging away at the keyboard.

Last night, I went with it though, putting all that aside.  I set my goal, which is the same 75,000 words in 30 days as I set when I was doing the second draft of DM, to be finished by March 3rd this time, and got on it with good results.  It took me until almost 8:30 pm to get my butt down in front of the netbook, and at first I had some trouble slipping in, for all of the above reasons and just a general feeling of expectation of quality I remember from before doing my first NaNo.  I had a long talk with myself, mostly reminding myself how leaving that expectation behind has worked out for me so well lately, and finally got myself grooved in.  For those of you who might not remember, weren’t here last time or have forgotten, 75k in 30 days works out to a daily pace of 2500 words per day.  I did my usual, checking every few hundred words (Am I there yet?) until I hit 2500, and then I kept going.  Longer time readers will recognize this pattern and are probably having a good giggle, knowing generally what happened.  I did 3521 last night, which was awesome, and a fabulous note to start this NaNo on.  Only took me about 3 hours too, which is good, because my eyes were trying to close by that point, so I had to type the last several paragraphs with them closed.  Thankfully, that allowed me to really visualize what I was trying to write, and also, I’m a relatively skilled touch-typist so it didn’t even slow me down.  So, the first chapter is in the bag, and what I remember of it makes me happy so far.  Early, I know, long road ahead, but at least I’ve started on the right foot.  My tracking spreadsheet is open on my iMac to taunt me into sitting down and staying there, and I’m starting to mull what the playlist for this book is going to be, based on themes and feelings I’m trying to achieve.  Yes, there was one for DM and I still have it as I was using during editing.  There will, of course, be regular posting on the progress of this NaNo, as in the past, probably every 2-3 days, or as often as I have something to say about it, whichever comes first.

Now that that’s taken care of, on to the hinted at and alluded to item for this post.  Another story idea pretty much exploded my brain Thursday night.  Devan decided to introduce himself with a truly intoxicating image.  Him, sitting in a tree, staring up at the moon, surrounded by spirits, a little bit melancholy.  I won’t tell you too much about him, partly because I’m still getting to know him and partly because it’s WAY too early for that, but I will tell you that he’s a necromancer, and before you say “Ick, he plays with dead people,” he mostly talks to spirits these days, for reasons I can’t get into because they’re related to the story.  The project, which shall be known as Necromantic and has already been added to the Project Status page, has had my brain frantic since that image showed up, and I’m thoroughly enamoured of both the story that’s unfolding in my head and, well, Devan.  It will be some time before I can write this one, but at this rate, it’s going to be hard to keep focused on the Mirrors Trilogy and finish that first, especially since I was so inspired by the idea on Thursday that I’ve already written the first two pages of the book.  I don’t think Devan’s the patient type… I am also getting the feeling that this is a big story, so we probably aren’t talking a single book here, but that will become clearer as I work my way up to and through the process of outlining this one.  That may happen sooner rather than later, as you’d be amazed the quantity of notes I already have and the way this story is exploding.  I’m amazed, that’s for sure.

The funny thing is that Thursday was a good night all around.  We had the most spectacular sunset that day, and so I couldn’t decide whether to grab my camera or my iPad.  Fortunately I did some of each, and today’s picture one of about a dozen I took.