Date: 2009-12-08 20:06 Subject: Interstate of Broken Dreams Security: Public Location: Witchnest Mood: depressed Tags: nightcraft mother, querying, travel

Last night, as I was finishing up packing at Nuevo Rancho Lake and getting ready to go to bed so I could get up this morning at the crack of crack and drive 650 miles home to the Witchnest after being gone for over two weeks, I checked my email and found the final agent rejection for Nightcraft Mother.

It’s the final rejection because I’m not going to send out Nightcraft any more. And I’m not going to work on it any more, and I’m not even all that interested in thinking about it any more.

I had a lot of time, alone in my head today for 11 hours, to think about this. I’ve been working on the tales of Calendula Isadora for five years now–I started the original, 250K version of Nightcraft Sister in the fall of 2004. Yes, I’ve written a whole bunch of other things in that five years as well–including a handful of other novels–so it’s not like it’s been all Nightcraft, all the time; but this has been my sort of basic, core project. Callie’s story is fully formed in my head, the whole series, all the way to the end–the five or six or seven books it would take to tell it all.

They’re not going to get written. I’m done. I’m sick of this.

It’s just not hitting, for some reason. And/or I’m just not a good enough writer to pull it off. And/or I’m a better writer now and my fresher, newer stuff will sell. (I do get short stories published, in major markets…) And/or it’s just tough to break in. Or whatever.

But I just don’t feel the love for the project any more. I’ve worked so hard on it, revised it so many times–cut that first book into three, and then two; dropped the first half and made NCM the first in the series; edited it within an inch of its life–it’s too hacked up now, it’s been gone over too much, I think. It’s time to let it go.

Time to let Callie go.

__________

I don’t usually post about rejections, because it’s tough stuff, and also so common. To everyone, I know. But this one is different. I had a lot of excitement about this particular agent, about this particular version of the manuscript. And her rejection was very kind, and very detailed; she pointed out several areas where the book could be improved, and offered to take another look if I edit it.

But… I can’t. I’m done. I can’t climb that mountain again. I’ll send her Demonhead, when I’m done editing that. Callie’s going on the shelf.

Sorry, Callie.

Originally published at Shannon Page: Author. You can comment here or there.

Date: 2009-10-02 08:27 Subject: Quarterly Report [yesterday's post] Security: Public Location: Witchnest Mood: awake Tags: metrics, nightcraft mother, oloti, stories, travel

**I wrote this last night on my website-blog, went to post it, got an error message...went over to LJ to see if it had crossposted, and any of you who crosspost know what happened there...LJ was down for hours, completely...eventually, the post showed up on my website, but it's still not crossposting, so here, without further ado, I paste.**

October 1, 2009

Well, lookie there, another three months have gone by. And what have I done?

-Sold three stories (two of them collaborative) and an article.
-Attended WorldCon, Foolscap, a writing retreat, and the King Tut exhibit.
-Read my story "By the Sea" before a packed house at the Grants Pass anthology release.
-Finished editing NIGHTCRAFT MOTHER in preparation for market.
-Drafted most of OUR LADY OF THE ISLANDS.

Metrics:
-Wrote 115,566 words of new fiction in 78.25 writing hours.
{That's a total of 196,617 words of new fiction on the year; so, it was a good quarter for fresh writing, to be sure.}
-This includes: 107,766 on OUR LADY and the rest on various bits of other short pieces, mostly "Embers" and "The Hippie Monster of Eel River".

Other stuff:
-Quit my job (last day December 1....sigh)
-Quit my therapist
-Flew back and forth to Portland a few times
-Drove back and forth to Portland once
-Went to far too many oncology appointments (ANY oncology appointments are far too many)
-Saw two movies (one in theater, one on DVD)
-Attended two weddings, both fairly nontraditional, and therefore all the better for it
-Fed some cats
-Read some books (metrics and titles on these at year-end only)

Not bad. Much more to do. Onward!

Date: 2009-09-22 15:05 Subject: Process Security: Public Location: Nuevo Rancho Lake Mood: busy Tags: demonhead, eel river, entangled, jay, nanowrimo, nightcraft mother, oloti, process

So skaldic asked yesterday how do I (or we) plan out a novel, which is one of those great process questions that I can think about and talk about all day. Or, well, nearly.

My process has been shifting over time, and it’s different with collaborative projects and solo ones. When I wrote my first novel (that you will never read), I don’t think I had much of an outline at all, just a random aggregation of notes and character sketches, and some dates on post-its. A lot of that novel came straight from my imagination and memory, because it was the obligatory Far Too Autobiographical First Novel that we all have to get out of the way before we can do good work and develop our craft.

From there I moved into the Gigantic Outline method. The proto-book which eventually became NIGHTCRAFT SISTER (which itself eventually got cannibalized into NIGHTCRAFT MOTHER) was called 360, and it was going to be a highly mathematically structured thing of 360 short pieces, divided into 12 chapters of 30 scenes each. I actually handwrote out a 360-line outline, starting with the major element in each chapter, and then filling in the 30 scenes that would build to each element. Then I wrote about two and a half chapters (again by hand–this was back in the days when I thought I could not compose on computer–ha!) before I realized that the project was made of fail: the protagonist was completely helpless and everything happened to her, she didn’t do anything.

I pulled back from that and rethought the problem, ultimately realizing that if she were also magic, she could be much more active and the story would be much more interesting. Hence Callie came into being.

That, however, necessitated a reworking of the outline. I pulled back from the 360 structure and let the story dictate its own needs. I still ended up with a 250,000 word book, but hey, I didn’t know any better.

The next novel I started from scratch (as opposed to all the revising and reshaping and cutting and recombining and blah-de-blah that the Nightcraft series has been subjected to) was my first NaNoWriMo, in 2006, when I wrote EEL RIVER. NaNo is a highly social event, involving write-ins at cafes, retreats, write-a-thons, etc–in other words, being quite mobile with one’s writing. The Gigantic Outline method was cumbersome for that. Also, I hadn’t had much time to prepare; I started the month with a rough-sketched one-page outline that had the major plot points, and I wrote the novel off of that.

And I LOVED that. I loved being able to see the whole story at a glance. Sure, it was short on details, but those would come out in the writing.

However, in the spring after my EEL RIVER NaNo, I learned about the Snowflake Method. That sounded like a fantastic idea. I had a haunted house novel I wanted to write, so I followed the method and wrote that story in a month, just like NaNo. (My former crit group, the Critters, were all going to do a novel-in-a-month together; the others fell off, but I finished it anyway.)

Trouble was, by the time I was actually writing the story, I hated it. I was bored with it–all the problems had already been figured out. There was no discovery process left. It was just too overplanned. I mean, nothing against the method–I still think it’s a great idea, and it obviously works for a lot of people–but for me, the joy of creativity was lost.

So for NaNo ‘07, I went back to my beloved one-page-outline method. I wrote DEMONHEAD, and it was a royal disaster. (That was where I discovered the Dragon Problem that I still refer to today.) Not nearly enough was figured out; and with the required pace of NaNo, I was writing so fast, I got way ahead of my own brain.

In the spring of ‘08, I rewrote DEMONHEAD from scratch, with a one-page outline and a whole bunch of notes and feedback from crit partners and brainstorming verbiage spread around on the desk to refer to.

It was also a disaster, just a slightly smaller one.

Thing was, I knew there was a good story in there, waiting to get out. I shelved it for a while and fiddled in the Nightcraft universe some more, and then for NaNo ‘08, I rewrote DEMONHEAD from scratch a third time, changing it from first person to third person, and writing from–yes–a one-page outline. This time, I think it works. It still needs revision, but I think the plot now holds together reasonably well. I’ll see for sure when I get into it again, which is next up on my agenda after OUR LADY is done.

Speaking of OUR LADY… then there’s collaborative writing. My first collaborative novel, ENTANGLED, is back on doctodd’s desk now. Our process was to brainstorm the plot, then he wrote out the outline for me to draft from. I asked for a one-page outline; he gave me about a page and a half. That was fine. I wrote an 80,000 word draft in about two and a half months, then handed it off. doctodd now tells me that he’s thought of whole new plot twists and elements…and I am pleased to leave them to him.

And now to OUR LADY OF THE ISLANDS. I told jaylake that I work best from a one-page outline. We brainstormed the plot as I did with doctodd; then jaylake presented me with a 26-page document, including background and world details. This is actually a novel synopsis, though it was written before the novel itself.

Yet the Snowflake problem didn’t happen to me this time–I’m almost 98,000 words into this thing, and I’m totally still having the joy of discovery. I think the difference is that I didn’t come up with all these details myself–even though we passed the outline back and forth a few times before I started writing. And there’s the occasional plot holes and problem and un-figured-out things–we had a particularly complex and fun one this morning, where we talked out why the MC would do the exciting and dramatic but incredibly risky and foolish thing that we need her to do at this point in the story, to make it all work out the way it has to.

So…in short…that is my process: figure it out anew each time. For my next large new project (after DEMONHEAD revisions), I will need to do a good deal of research, so even if the one-page outline method works, I’ll still need to have piles of notes at hand as I write. I do really like to see the shape of the whole story at a glance. Even at risk of dragons.

Everybody: tell me your process!

Originally published at Shannon Page: Author. You can comment here or there.

Date: 2009-07-13 19:56 Subject: More Or Less As Planned Security: Public Location: Witchnest of Done With NCM Mood: accomplished Tags: editing, jay, nightcraft mother

With minor adjustments (i.e., staying in and being cooked for last night rather than going out and being cooked for), the weekend went as described. So, apparently I am a reasonably reliable narrator.

There was one bump in the road, insofar as the whole “being done with a novel” thing goes. As in, faithful longtime readers here will remember that last Thursday, I finished my revisions of NIGHTCRAFT MOTHER. jaylake had been reading the book as I’d worked, so he was able to get small notes and markups to me by Friday. He said they were very minor; they’d take me maybe an hour.

I started working on them Friday, before Clark Kent arrived. Got through about half.

Sat down to finish them on Sunday…got almost all the way there…and found a place (in chapter 19, out of 20) where jaylake had made a note along the lines of, “You really need an actual scene here, this handwavium bullshit is fooling nobody.”

I was devastated, furious, knocked over, incensed, wounded to the core…because, of course, he was right, and I knew it. I knew it at the time I wrote it, and I knew it even moreso when he said it.

But, dammit dammit dammit dammit!!!! I was done!!

Or, I was not done. Bitching and complaining the whole while, I wrote the required scene. Part on Sunday, part tonight.

It is done now. Boy is it done now. I am SO DONE with this book.

Except, of course, for the query, and the synopsis, and the querying, and….yeah.

But, for tonight, I am done. Again.

Originally published at Shannon Page: Author. You can comment here or there.

Date: 2009-07-10 15:20 Subject: The Days Ahead Security: Public Location: Day Job Mood: busy Tags: day job, food, nightcraft mother, writers with drinks

Here’s what you do when you finish a novel: you immediately cram all your available time with a strenuous burst of social activity, including getting other people to cook for you as much as possible.

To wit: Tonight, Clark Kent is coming over to cook native delicacies from his home planet (and, yes, bringing all the ingredients). Tomorrow, the President of Glyptotronics and I are going hiking, and he is organizing the lunches; when we get back to the city, Sweet Alabama Diva will join us and we’ll go to Writers with Drinks. (Oh dear, I’d better get her to make dinner, eh?) Sunday, La Diva again, this time showing off her favorite restaurant.

At least I can provide wine:

Yes, Boss Man knows how to gracefully lose a wager.

But, there is no rest for the wicked, for sometime on Sunday I plan to start work on the Seekrit Project, nearly two weeks late. That only means I need to write faster, I guess. Anyway, if you don’t hear from me for a few days, you’ll know why.

Originally published at Shannon Page: Author. You can comment here or there.

Date: 2009-07-09 18:57 Subject: Done Done Done!!! Security: Public Location: Witchnest Mood: confused Tags: editing, jay, nightcraft mother, twitter

Finished my edits!!! Book is now handed off to jaylake for what looks to be fairly minor copyediting, and then he will write help me with my query letter, and then we will be off!

I have NO IDEA what to do now. I mean, I have loads of things to do, but I’m stuck in the morass of end-of-book-itis. Wandering around, tidying things, staring at the ceiling–like that.

______________

Oh, and, um, I signed up for twitter. I’m calendula_witch there too; come and loiter, or linger, or tag along, or whatever. I’m still figuring it out, so bear with me.

Originally published at Shannon Page: Author. You can comment here or there.

Date: 2009-07-08 21:26 Subject: Oh So Close Security: Public Location: Witchnest, right by the bed Mood: exhausted Tags: day job, editing, nightcraft mother

Ten pages to go. I can almost taste it. But I am done for today–my brain is mush, and the last 10 pages are too important to rush through. I’ll have time tomorrow, I’ll do it right.

Plus, I want to make some changes in the prologue. Heh. It never stops!

___________

I had an hour less this evening because I worked till 6. Though I won 2 bottles of wine in the process…the first one was almost by accident: the Boss Man bet me something wouldn’t print, as I was walking to the printer to show him that it did.

The second one was pure evil on my part. He insisted that the name of one of his former postdocs was spelled a certain way; I knew otherwise. “Double or nothing?” I asked. “Sure,” he said, then shuffled through his papers and saw that I was right. Score!

I await my wine. He makes fabulous Pinot Noir in his basement; I wonder which vintage will be waiting on my desk tomorrow morning?

Originally published at Shannon Page: Author. You can comment here or there.

Date: 2009-07-07 20:58 Subject: Even Here, There Be Progress Security: Public Location: Witchnest of Nightcrafty Editorialness Mood: accomplished Tags: editing, nightcraft mother, reading

Here is what I love, love, love about being a writer:

When you’re a writer, eventually you get to meet other writers, and eventually they show you their work, and a lot of it is pretty good, and some of it is awful but you can tell them how to fix it, and some of it is really fairly inspired and clean but you try to help them make it better anyway—

But then every now and then somebody gives you something SO INCREDIBLY MINDBREAKINGLY WONDERFUL that you just feel grateful.

Grateful that you have been given the chance to read it.

Grateful that you are so caught up in a story that you can’t wait to see what happens next, because the characters and the setting and the situation has become entirely real to you, even as the utterly gorgeously ridiculously snarky fictionality of the thing is always right before you.

Grateful, and humbled, to see such skill at work.

Grateful and excited at the prospect of being able to say, a year or two or three down the road, “Yes, *I* read it in manuscript form.”

I am talking about a book that will no doubt get a new title even before it is queried (though its current title is perfect). It’s a crazy funny voice-y mad romp through a traditional fantasy world…with nothing traditional about it. (Unless you count the…nah, not even that.) C.S. Inman, you rock. I’m doing the best I can to mark it up, which amounts to noting a typo every hundred pages or so. Really, I’m just enjoying the ride.

________________

Oh but I mentioned progress. Yes that too. I hacked and slashed my way through chapters 16 and 17 of NCM–three to go! 36 pages! God, it’s so close I can taste it. I’ve cut thousands more words, and there’s more to be cut….I will be done by the weekend, and with such relief I cannot even tell you.

Originally published at Shannon Page: Author. You can comment here or there.

Date: 2009-07-06 20:38 Subject: Fried Brains Security: Public Location: Witchnest, right by the bed Mood: drained Tags: family, health, nightcraft mother

No, nothing to do with zombies…just, I edited chapters 14 and 15 of NIGHTCRAFT MOTHER this evening, cutting about 2,000 words, and I can hardly think any more.

At least I didn’t get stung by a bee and stab myself in the same moment.

Originally published at Shannon Page: Author. You can comment here or there.

Date: 2009-07-05 16:54 Subject: Back from the Land Security: Public Location: Witchnest Mood: busy Tags: family, jay, nightcraft mother, travel

I have returned from Points North and all manner of family-related activities. Everyone got to meetjaylake; I do believe he passed muster.

The visit featured, among other things: a trip to the land where I grew up and a swim in the Eel River; excellent potato salad; a driving tour of important geographical points in the witch history (high school and junior high school, Eastlick street, the several places I lived over the years); an explication of the history and potential future of the courthouse trees; and an animal kingdom including several energetic dogs, cats of varying degrees of friendly, mosquitoes, huge polliwogs, chickens, guinea fowl, tiny nibbling fish, and a Clydesdale.

The drive up there was riddled with so much construction and traffic and other madness that we decided to leave this morning earlier than originally planned. So of course I got him to SFO way ahead of schedule. Which, for a guy who writes in airports, is not the worst thing in the world. After a fond farewell, I left him to do just that, and came home to delve back into NIGHTCRAFT MOTHER.

Edited chapter 13 of that fine tome, which took longer than it should have, because I kept getting distracted by all this wonderful internet they have here in the big city, plus my iPhone decided it was time to fall apart and have to be Restored. This made me anxious, but it all seems to be okay now.

And…I have lots of re-entry and general weekend chores to do now, so I’d better have at it! Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday weekend, if your country does that sort of thing.

Originally published at Shannon Page: Author. You can comment here or there.

Date: 2009-07-02 17:20 Subject: TGIT Security: Public Location: Witchnest Mood: thirsty Tags: family, health, jay, nightcraft mother, travel

Just finished editing chapter 12 of NCM. So that’s officially 2/3 through, although I think I may be closer to done than that, although maybe not. Editing: funny stuff.

Medical updatery here. I guess I sort of feel better than yesterday, although whether that’s just as a result of getting used to the idea or whether having things more clearly laid out is reassuring, I don’t know. We had a strange moment this morning where we both realized that we had been going crazy-anxious because it seemed like the entire medical profession was saying, We’re not going to do anything, let’s check again later; and then suddenly they started saying, Okay, let’s go ahead and do something–and it made us go crazy-anxious.

Like, be careful what you ask for, you might get it?

* * * *

So tomorrow we go to Points North and I bring jaylake to meet the whole family. I am looking forward to this with the usual mix of excitement and nerves. Of COURSE everyone will love everyone. Of COURSE it’ll be fine. My family is great; Jay is great. But, um, you know? Nerves, that’s all. Don’t mind me.

Have a great long weekend, every(USA-ian)one!

Originally published at Shannon Page: Author. You can comment here or there.

Date: 2009-07-01 19:04 Subject: Second Quarter Report Security: Public Location: Witchnest of Nightcrafty Editorialness Mood: creative Tags: metrics, nightcraft mother

In April, I finished the draft of ENTANGLED, which doctodd is now preparing to rip to shreds and make ever so much better. That month alone yielded 38,061 new words of fiction.

In May and June, I was largely consumed with small bits and pieces of things–short stories, writing-related program activities, and the like–and then I dove into editing NIGHTCRAFT MOTHER. These things, while as equally full of writerly goodness as fresh new writing, do not yield up the impressive word count. Therefore, my total word count for the quarter is 44,555, for a total 2009 word count of 81,051.

You’d probably be more impressed if I could tell you the total number of hours I’d spent working on all these writerly things in the second quarter of the year, except I sort of forgot to keep track. Word count is exciting: hours count, not so much. Sorry. I will do better in the third quarter!

And I look forward to logging huge numbers of fresh new word count soon. I am near page 200 of NCM, and though there’s a lot to do, it’s running along smoothly and smartly. I plan to start Exciting New Seekrit Project within a week, two at the outside. And then, watch the numbers grow!!!

Originally published at Shannon Page: Author. You can comment here or there.

Date: 2009-06-28 21:35 Subject: Without Fail Security: Public Location: Witchnest, right by the bed Mood: sleepy Tags: conference, nightcraft mother, stories

9:30 pm: just got home from the weekend at Iron Springs. See slightly fuller reports here, and here; I’m sleepy.

Don’t ask me about the underwear signing. But it was pretty funny.

For me, highlights include: what they said, plus the story I submitted for crit, “Souvenirs,” is one I like a lot and haven’t been able to figure out exactly how it’s broken. Now I know. Now I can fix it. Yay!

Also, I “edited” three chapters of NIGHTCRAFT MOTHER, by which I mean made tiny changes here and there for a few pages, then entirely eliminated one character, cut the heart out of a pivotal scene and rewrote it with different action and motivation and outcome, and then stitched the ends back together so it would make sense. I am now officially more than halfway through the page count on this edit, but hopefully far more than halfway through the work, because the latter part of the book needs a lot less changed. I hope. So they say. So we will see.

And, for a change, my trip home featured:
-no blood (except for maybe my eardrums from screeching babies…)
-no late planes
-no traffic
-no parking fail.
In fact we landed 10 minutes early, and now I must finish unpacking and put my tired body to bed.

Ahh, back to the interwebs. Did anything happen while I was gone? No celebrities died, I hope.

Originally published at Shannon Page: Author. You can comment here or there.

Date: 2009-06-23 23:04 Subject: Briefly Security: Public Location: Witchnest, right by the bed Mood: exhausted Tags: conference, editing, eel river, jay, nightcraft mother, not writing

Sometimes just thinking about writing is good enough to be counted as writing. (as in, I got an entirely new idea about what needs to happen in the next scene in NIGHTCRAFT MOTHER which was completely unexpected, yet exquisitely perfect for this rewrite.)

Sometimes not writing just happens. (as in, in the 30 minutes I was home today before an evening out, I worked on Iron Springs crits and talked to a sick jaylake , including encouraging him not to write, being sick and all.)

Sometimes a social evening out turns out to be incredibly writing-related and helpful. (as in, the President of Glyptotronics’ friend, who is in town, who was the reason for the dinner out, had read EEL RIVER, and had all sorts of really fascinating, helpful, and exciting commentary for me about it, and that makes me want to work on it again!)

And sometimes, I am almost too sleepy to think further. I woke up at 4 this morning; it is 11 and I am still up. That is wrong, and I will rectify it momentarily. And I MIGHT write again before vanishing off the grid tomorrow afternoon…and I might not. If we don’t speak again till next week–be well, all!

Originally published at Shannon Page: Author. You can comment here or there.

Date: 2009-06-22 21:43 Subject: Editing Like Crazy Security: Public Location: Witchnest, right by the bed Mood: sleepy Tags: conference, editing, jay, nightcraft mother

I have made it through 7 chapters of NIGHTCRAFT MOTHER. I keep thinking the next little bit won’t need line-by-line rewriting….but, turns out it does.

Next chapter though! Maybe not!

Anyway, I’ll take it to Iron Springs with me. What with jaylake writing like crazy, there should be some quiet keyboard time for me.

Originally published at Shannon Page: Author. You can comment here or there.

Date: 2009-06-17 17:24 Subject: News of Today Security: Public Location: Witchnest Mood: fretful Tags: baseball, day job, nightcraft mother

Me and 37,000 of my closest friends played hooky from work today to go watch the Giants lose to The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.

Yes, that’s really what they’re called. Yes, I know this isn’t news to anyone, but think about it a minute:
The = the
Los = the (plural)
Angeles = angels
Angels = angels
of = of
Anaheim = Disneyland.

Los Gigantes de San Francisco lost to The The Angels Angels of Disneyland.

Well enough of that. Before I left for the ballpark, I put in some solid work on NIGHTCRAFT MOTHER, finishing chapter 5. I’m not quite a third of the way through, and very happy with my work, though I wish it was going faster. I don’t wish this badly enough to rush it. Just, wishing.

The rest of the news: Big Ugly messages in my work email, confirming or at least supporting rumors of pay cuts–they’re talking 8% pay cuts, and/or something they’re calling “furloughs”, by which they mean not paying us for holidays any more. Which, dudes, that’s not a furlough: a furlough is when you get EXTRA DAYS OFF without pay. Not paying for holidays? That’s a pay cut. And probably illegal.

The suckiest part is that all those economic stimulus package grants (that I spent so much time working on a few months back)–the university has already gotten the first tranche of them, and all the state did was cut our funding by that amount. So far. Thanks, Arnie. Way to reward us for taking an initiative…

Grumble grumble.

Originally published at Shannon Page: Author. You can comment here or there.

Date: 2009-06-16 21:15 Subject: New Scene, Half a Chapter Security: Public Location: Witchnest of Nightcrafty Editorialness Mood: sleepy Tags: editing, nightcraft mother

Chapter 5 of NIGHTCRAFT MOTHER started with a boring blurt of exposition. This has been eliminated and replaced with an actual scene, with dialogue and description, and even a little tension.

You know, like books are *supposed* to be. The reader is supposed to get, you know, *pleasure* from reading. I get it, I do.

Eventually.

That, plus editing about half of (the remaining bits of) chapter 5, plus various and asundrous other things, and now it’s after 9:00 and I am bleary with the exhaustion.

So, without further ado: good night, all!

Originally published at Shannon Page: Author. You can comment here or there.

Date: 2009-06-15 18:24 Subject: In Which I Actually Write About Writing, For A Change Security: Public Location: Witchnest of Nightcrafty Editorialness Mood: busy Tags: editing, health, jay, nightcraft mother, zombie club

Because, um, yeah, I do still write.

Every now and then.

I am currently editing NIGHTCRAFT MOTHER in preparation for sending it out to market. It’s been through…oh, you don’t even want to hear its whole history again. Recently, it’s been through the Zombie Club (my most excellent critique group), and before that, jaylake read it.

What I have before me now is a very minimally marked-up manuscript and a page of handwritten notes, based on the verbal feedback from the Zombies and discussions with Jay.

I’m afraid that, based on the cleanliness of the manuscript, I rather underestimated the amount of work to be done here. The markups there are things like Red Shoes’ fetish against using “like” when “as though” was meant, and some hysteria she has against commas, and the like (or, the as though…um…).

The handwritten notes, however–well, they’re deceptively simple. They’re things like “Callie should discover this herself.” “Callie initiates this.” “This should be a problem, not a tension release.” Which…well, as I’m getting into it, I’m finding that these things are requiring a line-by-line rewrite of the scenes in question.

Which is a good thing. The scenes are getting better, stronger. The MC is taking action, not reacting; the trouble and woe and drama is steadily increasing, not always being sidetracked.

But, oh man. Anyway–this is all to say, I’m only three chapters into this thing (of 20). And I need to be done by the end of the month. Heh. So, yes, I will stop blogging and get editing!

_______________

But first, in news of the personal: my toes are so very much better that I am sort of astonished at how much pain, and for how very very long, could be involved in such an apparently nonserious injury. Because, wow. Yesterday, they literally throbbed for hours–all through my flight home and the afternoon–then dully ached all evening. I couldn’t walk normally. The President of Glyptotronics and Sweet Alabama Diva came for dinner, and I sent them to the store and made them cook and clean up. (Well, I might have done that anyway…but truly, I was too sore to stand, to walk.) I considered taking some of my copious leftover Vicodins to sleep, but gave it a try without drugs.

I slept like a rock; went for an hour-long hill-climbing walk this morning; and am considering yoga tomorrow. The cut stung in the shower, and the toes are sore if I touch them, but there is no swelling, no throbbing, no pain otherwise.

Weird. I mean, yay, but weird.

Anyway–on to editing!

Originally published at Shannon Page: Author. You can comment here or there.

Date: 2009-06-05 10:37 Subject: Dove In Security: Public Location: Day Job Mood: creative Tags: editing, nightcraft mother

Yesterday I spent some time diving into the edits of NIGHTCRAFT MOTHER…it was both better and worse than I expected. Better, in the sense that I’m already totally into the story, it’s moving in my head, I know the things I want to change, and am figuring out how to change them. Worse, in the sense that: oh man, I suck. Am I serious? Did I *write* that???

I guess the good news is, I can already tell that I’m a better writer than I was just a few months ago, when I last had my hands in this manuscript. (All this practice must be good for something…) And far better than I was when I wrote the earliest parts of the book a few years ago. (This continues to bolster my theory that I should have just rewritten this stupid book from scratch…hey, I know how to do that.) The new stuff in here, like the Prologue, are quite clean. The older stuff…yech.

So I got through the Prologue, and the first scene in chapter 1. But I’m still going to have to go through at least chapter 1 all over again, looking at pacing, stylistic things, etc–I’m sort of concentrating on plot and character consistency at the moment, and the Zombies’ comments. Hard to think on all those different levels at once.

And now that I’m all jazzed up about this…I’m leaving town (yay Jaycon!) for a few days without my computer. (Probably…) Oh well! I shall return. Either way, this work will get done by my June 30 deadline. It will. Because I said so.

Originally published at Shannon Page: Author. You can comment here or there.

Date: 2009-06-04 08:41 Subject: The Dragon Problem Security: Public Location: Witchnest Mood: organized Tags: demonhead, nanowrimo, nightcraft mother, to-do list

As I sit here at my desk with a few extra minutes this morning (because, despite going to the chiropractor yesterday and feeling o so much better, my back is still kind of tweaky, so I left yoga early), I am going over my writing to-do list, with time line.

One of the items on the list–in fact, the next big item–is currently Seekrit, though I hope to be able to talk about it soon…it’s a fresh new drafting project (as opposed to being an edit or something), and it has an actual deadline.

Deadline (and word count) makes me think of NaNoWriMo, and NaNoWriMo makes me think of the Dragon Problem.

When I wrote the first draft of DEMONHEAD, I had a great idea, a cool vision of the world, and a fairly thin outline, as I always do. I started writing with great enthusiasm–everything was going fantastically, I was ahead of word count, etc.

Then I hit the retreat, with the word count wars, the all-day writing, the too much sugary snack stuff (NaNo, of course, being right after Halloween)… anyway, I ran out of story.

Enter the dragon.

Which, naturally, had to be removed from subsequent rewrites of the novel. All the damage the dragon had done had to be fixed. In fact, as many of you know, I’ve actually rewritten DEMONHEAD from scratch.

Twice.
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What I’ve learned, from NaNo, from the Dragon Problem, and from subsequent projects, is that I can safely manage about 40,000 words a month without ridiculous plot elements sneaking in (or roaring in, breathing flames and knocking over furniture with their big scaly spiky tails). So that is my plan. I’ll start drafting Seekrit on July 1 for a first-draft deadline of October 1.

Which means I need to get NIGHTCRAFT MOTHER revisions done by June 30.

Which means I better get started on them!

Originally published at Shannon Page: Author. You can comment here or there.