Cheers!

While browsing blogs (procrastinating, of course) I found this odd little amusing thing called: discover your drunken name. Type your first name with your elbows and see what you get. I got:

dxceblloraznh

With the best of intentions...

My goal is to finish my current novel by the 14th, which is a fitting conclusion date for about ten different reasons. I'm figuring another 15 - 20,000 words, which is hard, but doable if I just stay focused and keep on writing. I don't think I've ever done more than about 6000 words in a day, but if I can really WORK over the next two full weekend days, then that should finish most of it.

Milestones

Passed 100,000 words tonight on novel.

I say, old chap, stop mocking my bloody spelling!

All right, all right, all right! It's not just "towards." ALL of my written English tends towards British spellings. I typed "smoulder" in an email earlier, and, on reading it back, I thought...um, is that U supposed to be there? But "smolder" didn't look right, so I left it. Checked the dictionary later and got what is turning in to an eye-rolling cliche response: Chiefly British....

So, on a whim, I found these other things I do on a daily basis. They're all British:

Judgement and arguement. There's no E in American: judgment and argument. My spell checker always changes these on me automatically, but it doesn't stop me from typing them with the E originally. Though it could just be me. Same with travelling. I always put in two L's and spell checker removes the extra.

Dreamt, leapt - and similar words ending it T - American would be dreamed, leaped.

Even my sentence structure, I'm discovering reading up on various links, tends to the British... One example -- I would almost alway say: "I've just seen a movie." It appears that most Americans would simply say "I just saw a movie."

And it goes on and on.

So, does this mean my books will be naturally better sellers in Britain (don't I wish!), or will I simply drive my future American editors insane??

Words

This sentence fascinates me no end:

"Beware the man who looks in the mirror of his name."

Page 96, "Wanderer" by Sterling Hayden

Making those words count

I love discussions like this, and I love reading Elizabeth's Bear's journal precisely because she jumps right in. I tend to save these kind of entries out to a Word file to read back later. This one got filed under the "editing" notes folder.

Stay on target....

Passed 94K on novel last night. Getting so close now! Besides the need to simply reach the end, I've got two scenes I'm especially looking forward to writing that are keeping me going each night. The first I'll hit this weekend -- one of the main characters gets his much-anticipated moment of vengeance on my hero. Which I'm not looking forward to writing so much as passing, cuz then I'll loathe him so badly that getting to the final confrontation where I can take care of him once and for all will be that much more satisfying. The other scene is the big three-way confrontation finale. That will simply be fun.

"We followed a trail of lilies."

Had a mini-vacation, now back to work writing again. Had an idea for a flash fiction story, but discarded it immediately because it meant too much to me, if that makes any sense. Those are the ones best left unwritten.

So, I wrote novel instead. Thought it'd be hard to get back into the swing of things after a week of inactivity, but the scene I had to write involved my favorite character, and writing his stuff is effortless and grinningly fun. Over 92K total now. 100K is just around the corner if I can keep up the 1000 words a day minimum.

Had an odd realisation the other day. I've worn the same necklace for over four years now. Silver pendant of the Norns in swan form on a choker chain. I've never taken it off, not for any reason; it's part of me. But I realised that on the day I finish the first draft of this novel, I will take this necklace off and put it away. As if its purpose will have been served. And the weird part is that it feels right to do so. It's time for a change. Which means I now have to start looking for a new necklace. I know what I want, but I've never turned up anything remotely like it. We'll see.

What's in your wallet?

I used to write novel in one big file. Just keep adding on, doing daily editing etc. all within the same file. Sure, I'd make backup copies of the file at assorted points, but it was basically one file, say, "novel.doc" that kept growing and changing. Then I read somewhere on Holly Lisle's journal last year that she does a "save as" each day and so each day's work gets appended on the main work but in its own file. This gives you both a backup and a time line progression of where you were at the whole way. And the most recently dated file will always be the current file with the whole novel in it.

I went, hm, that's interesting. Let's give it a try. So, I then had files named "novel 08-30-05.doc" etc.

And what then completely surprised me was how fast I got used to this system. I can't think of working any other way now, and I even do longer short stories in this manner. Sure, I end up with a lot of files (I have 61 on my current novel, which is rather interesting in itself -- 91K, 61 days, average of nearly 1500 words per day), but then I hit a night like tonight, where I realize that two nights ago I screwed something up. I wrote a scene on Sunday, decided on Monday it went the wrong direction and promptly deleted it and wrote a new one. Now, here I am on Tuesday, realizing the first version was the correct one. Had I been working in just one file, that original scene would have been gone. I would have deleted it and overwritten it with the new scene. But tonight, all I had to do was just go back to Sunday's file, copy and paste the scene into today's file, and life was good. I lost nothing. I don't have to recreate the scene from memory.

Daily backups. Don't leave home without them.

Novel update

Passed 91K on current novel. I had been thinking I'd be wrapped up by now, but that's not the case. I'm revising the estimated completed word count to be around 110K total, giving me another 20K left to write. Sigh. That's about four chapters worth, and that's about right, I think. And that pushes the completion date to somewhere around the end of February, I'd guess, at my current slow writing rate, instead of the end of January as I was hoping.

And I remember back last October before I started writing this book that I feared it was only novella-length. That was back before I knew anything but that a murder started the story and a murder ended it. Back before the characters took charge and the plot took off. Silly me.

10 signs a piece of fiction was written by me

This is an interesting meme from QueenoftheSkies on LJ. I'm going strictly with novels here, which, HAH! no one has read, cuz they ain't been published. Yet. Don't worry, I'm working on remedying that. In the meantime, this is what you have to look forward to:

1. It will be scifi, fantasy, or a combo of both.

2. It will explore to varying degrees several of the following: freedom, loyalty, friendship/love, integrity, honor, sacrifice, oppression, and redemption.

3. Someone will betray someone and usually not who you think it will be.

4. Someone will get backhanded and someone will probably get their throat slit.

5. You'll cry "Noooooo!" in your best Luke Skywalker imitation (pick Star Wars, Empire, or Jedi -- there's a "Noooooo! from Luke in all of 'em) because something will happen that you really REALLY don't want to happen to a character(s) I've made you care about.

6. The superstructure will fall off. Or, in non-Deb-nautical-plot talk, just when you think it can't get any worse for the main characters, it will.

7. People get hurt/die. Lots of them. Usually ones you care about. Sometimes this is linked to number 5, often not.

8. There's much more to the bad guy's plan than the main characters know about until the end of the story, and, yeah, there's usually a McGuffin.

9. It will be visually written and the plot will move fast

10. I use the British "towards" instead of the American "toward" though you won't probably see that because there's a handy feature called "find/replace" that neatly solves my Britishismist leanings, but, for those who beta my work, it's a dead giveaway that I wrote it.

Oh man, do his words about the "need" for security speak to me...

To be truly challenging, a voyage, like a life, must rest on a firm foundation of financial unrest. Otherwise you are doomed to a routine traverse, the kind known to yachtsmen, who play with their boats at sea -- "cruising." Voyaging belongs to seamen, and to the wanderers of the world who cannot, or will not, fit in. If you are contemplating a voyage and you have the means, abandon the venture until your fortunes change. Only then will you know what the sea is all about.

"I've always wanted to sail to the South Seas, but I can't afford it." What these men can't afford is not to go. They are enmeshed in the cancerous discipline of "security." And in the worship of security we fling our lives beneath the wheels of routine--and before we know it our lives are gone.

What does a man need--really need? A few pounds of food each day, heat and shelter, six feet to lie down in-- and some form of working activity that will yield a sense of accomplishment. That's all--in the material sense. And we know it. But we are brainwashed by our economic system until we end up in a tomb beneath a pyramid of time payments, mortgages, preposterous gadgetry, playthings that divert our attention from the sheer idiocy of the charade.

The years thunder by. The dreams of youth grow dim where they lie caked in dust on the shelves of patience. Before we know it, the tomb is sealed.

Where, then, lies the answer? In choice. Which shall it be: bankruptcy of purse or bankruptcy of life?

--Sterling Hayden