Momentum

There's nothing like it when you're working on a bigger project. It takes a few days of steady good writing to build it up, but then you're rolling. You have to force yourself to break away and go to bed at night, and you wake up early, your mind already at work. You can't wait for the work day to pass so you can get back to it. And when you are writing, it's concise and more prolific than normal. It's a damn wonderful intoxicating feeling and it stops only when you break the momentum. And often one single lousy non-writing day is all it takes to shatter the mood completely, drop you back to ground zero, where you have to start all over again. I'm hoping that day is at least a week off, because I'm having too much fun writing right now.

Last night's session was so profitable, I reached the halfway point on editing this book, and I stopped at midnight only because practicality dictates you must be at least mostly rested for your day job. But that won't stop me from grinning all day long and counting down the hours until 5 pm, when I'm free to get swept up in/perpetuate the current momentum.

Goals are good

They can keep you working far into the night when you should be in bed cuz it's a work night. I wanted to get through two chapters this weekend, and I finally made it. Doesn't seem like much, two chapters, but it ended up being a lot with the rewrites. And the novel has grown in word count from draft one, not shrunk. Hmmm.

What's thirty days, give or take?

Well, I had July 1st set as the due date for completing the second draft of DTD. That's been moved up until the end of May.

So what the heck am I writing in here for? Time to get cracking. Dead tired and hungry though. No, hungry is such an inadequate word for this feeling. Famished. Fall-down-in-the-desert-can't-take-another-step starving. (I AM defrosting chicken to cook for dinner right this second. It'll only be ready in an hour or so, after I've passed out. Typical poor planning in the meal department. I need a keeper, I really do.)

29K edited, 84K to go...

Well, somehow, to my complete surprise, I got back in the writing groove last night and wrote an entire new scene and edited the other 5000 words of chapter five without ONCE having my brain shift off-track to the movie. I'm not quite sure how I stayed focused that long. I guess my own characters were sufficiently annoyed with my straying mind ("why is she daydreaming about other men?! Er, not other men, just the same man in another role! Er, no... this is way too confusing.") that they amped up their own smouldery atttiudes and sucked me back into their world and made me forget everything else. Whatever they did... it worked.

do not underestimate the power of B&W movies

Brain has not recovered from last night's movie. Trying to edit novel today and, mid-sentence, brain drifts right off. Repeatedly. Brain is wearing dog tags, so if seen anywhere, please send home.

Well, I WAS on a roll until tonight

Did excellent writing work today, finally. Buckled down and tore the current chapter apart and put it back together. Worked hard and long and disciplined, and it felt GREAT!! Pretty sure the chapter now works the way I need it to, but time will tell.

So I rewarded myself with a movie, a nice short 97 minute movie. Figured I'd go right back to writing afterwards. Um, no. Emphatically no. See, there was this one scene...

Melted me like buttah in a saucepan... like chocolate chips microwaved for, well, I've forgotten the exact second count required to render it perfect, but just like that.

And I'm useless now, just utterly useless for writing. Worse, that thought doesn't seem to be bothering me any. Seems, once dropped into a high state of puddlization, you feel no pain. None whatsoever. Better than morphine.

Chugging along

Well, writing's been slower than I've wanted it to be lately. Stymied by plot machinations and harassed by real life (I had my main water pipe freeze and break), not to mention other fun projects on the side. I'm only just now through Chapter Four. Still, it's forward movement, no matter how slow. I have one scene that I have to re-work at the beginning of Chapter Five, then it's smooth-sailing until Chapter Six, then it all falls apart because I hit a large chunk of brand new material. Novel used to take place in six days. I've made it seven... and I'm about to hit that new, missing day.

Well, duh...

You're a Plot writer!


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How writers really edit

Oh man, too funny, the timing on this. Found this via Elizabeth Bear's journal and it sums up exactly what I'm doing in editing right now on DTD.

Moving steadily forward

I've spent the last two nights editing the early chapters of DTD, and I just finished chapter 3 right now. How sad is it that I just got the biggest grin on my face? Not because three chapters are completed, no, but because Chapter 4 is where my favorite character makes his introduction. And that's why I'm grinning. I just can't help it. Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly and all that....

I think I'll just keep working a bit more tonight.

Weekend was too short

Writing, Wreading, and Watching, that was the weekend. The three Double-U's. And a little exercise thrown in to keep me from getting too chair-bound. Pleased with all three. First two chapters of DTD edited, and some new stuff written for a fanfiction project. The next couple of novel chapters will be more difficult, as I've got new scenes to work in. Should be interesting.

Get those fingers typing

Wake up calls for writers come in all shapes and sizes. What jogs one into gear won't work on someone else. Today was an odd sort of wake up call day for me, a kick in the pants day, a get-the-lead-out-and-get-back-to-serious-writing day. Nothing important happened, no life-changing event or anything like that, just some emails exchanged with a friend regarding the sudden and ridiculous demise of Astounding Tales. But, sometimes, that's all it takes.

So, spending my lunch break, not writing like I meant to, but pulling a book off the shelf to check on one little tiny insignificant trivial detail -- and then spending the rest of the hour flipping through the rest of the book, mindlessly drooling.... bad, very VERY bad. (All right, all right, the book was The Complete Films of William Holden... and I can't help it if it's loaded with pictures and I'm a sucker for a handsome guy. If there was a matching book on Dana Andrews, I guarantee you I'd have to lock it up and mail the key to Rachel because it would be twice as dangerous to have just lying around.) Fortunately, that episode was BEFORE I got fired up, but it's a prime example of how NOT to "waste" my lunch breaks in the future. (yes, waste is in quotes because it may not have been a productive hour, but it was an awfully enjoyable one.)

"...when you get a ship of your own."

Music and words, words and music... such a potent combo. I'm still reading "Wanderer" by Sterling Hayden. I love this book. I've been deliberately reading slowly, oh so very slowly, because I don't want it to end. I like how he puts words together. Compelling, concise, visual, startling, sometimes brilliant. He makes me want to go to sea, and I am not remotely an ocean person unless it's cruising beneath the waves in a submarine. But his own love for the sea is in every single word...and you can't read and not be affected. At least I can't. I read a long time tonight, slowly, reading some passages over again, aloud to hear how they sounded. Horner's score to "A Beautiful Mind" was on in the background... a fitting accompaniment -- both words and music tonight covered depression, despair, and then regained hope. And the moment of unexpected hope in the book was enough to make me cry.