megwrites

Strange bit of writing therapy: I wrote out the query letter for Soul Machines. Of course, I have no intention of sending it anywhere I've finished this draft, edited it, had it beta-read, and then polished it within an inch of its life.

But it really helped, because it took pressure off of the queries I'm sending out now. It made me realize that I really will get other chances at this, maybe not with the Tower!Guy novel, but it's not all-or-nothing. It's not zero sum.

There will be other queries, other novels, other opportunities.

Speaking of Soul Machines (boy do I love having an actual title for this thing), have a progress update:


Project: Soul Machines

Wordcount: 40540 words

Goal: 80,000 - 100,000

Deadline: November 1

Reason For Stopping: Not stopping, just updating

Exercise: Walking, shaking booty, cleaning things.

Stimulants/Chemicals: Naproxen, caffeine

Musical Inspiration: KK & Akriti Kakkar - Marjaani (Kilogram's Balkan Mix); Andrew Bird - Dances of Death; Bear McCreary - Heading the Call (from Crossroads, Part 2) Battlestar Galactica: Season 3; Rihanna - Breakin' Dishes

Other Creative Activities:

Reading Materials: Personal Effects: Dark Art by J.C. Hutchins; The Princes in the Tower by Alison Weir (re-reading)

Darling du Jour: "Yes," Ty said, rolling his eyes and sounding extremely exhausted. "Unnecessary bodily harm to any of my people, including Master Monteagle, will void our deal."

"But necessary bodily harm is okay?" Ruby asked, perking up.

Mean Things: People in dog kennels, racism, abuse, torture, rude questions, being held prisoner, blood hunger

Things Learned/Discovered: The pair of Manolo Blahnik thigh-high leather boots one of my characters is wearing is worth more than the blue book value of my car (don't ask). The Japanese -san and -chan honorifics are often confused/abused by stupid Western people (I include myself) and mean different things. Several interesting Spanish-language profanities (hijo de puta being my fave). Obscure but fun thing: the first official Chinese mission to a Western nation was Russia in 1729. The emperor sent envoy T'o-shih to congratulate Peter the Great on his coronation. Only, the czar snuffed it before T'o-shih got there, thus forcing the poor envoy to return to Peking for new credentials to negotiate with Peter's successor, Anna Ivanova. I don't know what the Ancient Chinese translation of "son of a bitch!" would be, but you just know poor T'o-shih was mumbling it under his breath all the way home.

Project: UF!2Girls. I've gotta get a better title.

Wordcount: 8923

Goal: 100,000

Deadline: July

Reason For Stopping: Dinner and then reading/bedtime.

Exercise: An hour of aerobics and some light walking for errand running.

Stimulants/Chemicals: None

Musical Inspiration: Moira Smiley & Voco - Wondrous Love; Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - Feel It Now

Other Creative Activities: None

Reading Materials: The Pretender's Crown by C.E. Murphy

Darling du Jour: Jane knuckles went white around the stapler she'd been fiddling with for the last five minutes. Lissa wondered if she was going to use it as a weapon. Not that it wouldn't be funny to see Jane chuck a flaming Swingline at this guy's head, but they needed the client.

Mean Things: Bad prophecies, old age, prejudices, racism, wife beating, manslaughter, impending doom.

Things Learned/Discovered: I must be getting better as a writer because I don't even have to wait for the next draft to know where and how I'm sucking on charcoal briquettes. But that's what edit notes are for. Just make a little reminder to myself at the top of the chapter about what I'd like to do when it comes time to fix things. I will fix this later after I make the story come out.

Project: Tower!Guy

Wordcount: 73252 (+11630)

Goal: < 100,000

Deadline: September 21st

Reason For Stopping: Dinner don't make itself, kids.

Exercise: 35 minutes of dragging my flabtastical behind across pavement at 6:45 (or as I call it, Half Past the Buttcrack of Dawn). I'm at least 5% less of an embarrassing mess after finishing than I was in August.

Stimulants/Chemicals: None

Musical Inspiration: Gjallarhorn - Ack Lova Gud; Bear McCreary - Two Funerals; Jeff Beck f/ Imogen Heap - Rollin' and Tumblin'; Matthew Good Band - Weapon

Other Creative Activities: Paying off the rest of my student loans, thus becoming debt free for the first time since I was 18. Flawless frakkin' victory. Now any money I make (after taxes) is mine, all mine.

Reading Materials: The Fall of the Kings by Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman

Darling du Jour: Eiryn nodded and took a breath. "Not that I'm surprised to find he's a son of a bitch, but how do you know his mother?"

Mean Things: Deception, loveless marriages, lying, continuing to plot regicide, husbands who might kill you, attempted suicide

Things Learned/Discovered: I'm rubbish in the morning before 10, even though I get up at 6:30am. Sometimes it helps to take a few moments to let my mind energize and free associate and wander before I force it to stay on task for hours.

I've been kind of flying at the speed of light with this story. I'm getting close to 25,000 words and have only been working on it for a couple of weeks.

So where did the Tower!Guy story go? It's taking a breather. I pushed back my deadline for it, because I have the time to do that, and because I was getting nowhere with it. I'm coming back to it, but I seriously did need to do this. Because right now, I'm learning more from this story than I have from anything else in a long time.


Project: The Wolfshorde (tentative title)

Wordcount: 21,942

Goal:75,000-90,000 words

Deadline: October 1st

Reason For Stopping:Dinner doesn't make itself

Exercise:Walking on errands. Usual walk/jog at 6am was canceled because of imminent rain.

Stimulants/Chemicals: None

Musical Inspiration: Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog; Kings of Convenience - Homesick; Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Down Boy; The Ting Tings - That's Not My Name; Bear McCreary - All Along The Watch Tower (from Battlestar Galactica).

Other Creative Activities - Journaling, organizing things.

Reading Materials - Queen Isabella - Alison Weir. Still waiting for my amazon shipment.

Darling du Jour: The Wolf watched Dylan strip off his shirt, in full view. Lean muscles worked under skin scarred with old cigarette burns from childhood that hadn't healed right.

Mean Things: Kidnapping; abusive childhoods; surprise! you're adopted!; houses being burned down; death threats

Things Learned/Discovered: How to economize each sentence; Readers are not like dogs, you can let them off-leash; It's okay to trust your readers to make small logical inferences from time to time.

Let me explain that last bit. Let's say I start out with a scene like this:

Lisa stomped into his office, she was furious because he had taken away the funds her department needed. Those funds were necessary to keeping everything running.

She came in with a slam of the door.

"Ted!" she yelled angrily, absolutely determined to give him a piece of her mind for cutting off the department's funds. "You're nothing but a cheap, useless pencil pusher!"

Ted clenched his jaw and stared at her. He was furious because she'd come stomping in and insulted him without even saying so much as hello. (wordcount: 89)


If I trust my reader to have even a minimal amount of savvy, I can economize my words and come out with this:

Lisa was furious that Ted had taken away the funds her department needed to operate.

Lisa stomped into Ted's office and slammed the door. "Ted, you're nothing but a cheap, useless pencil pusher!"

Ted clenched his jaw and stared at her. (wordcount: 41)

I can trust the reader to know why Ted is staring at Lisa and clenching his jaw, and I can also do without having to add "she yelled, angrily" to the dialog. Because we have a pretty good idea why Lisa is angry. She losing money. That and the exclamation point make it obvious to all observers that she's raising her voice to him.

This is to say nothing of the fact that the first two sentences were a waste of space respectively.

I know this is going to come as no great revelation to most of the people on my f-list who are consummate writers and probably figured this out ages ago. But for me, it's important. Because I've been doing this sort of thing all the time. It's why my wordcounts go so high, so fast.

It's why I need to write this story before I can go back to the Tower!Guy story. Right now, I have to go back and revise my writing to tighten it. Hopefully, I can start training myself to write this way from the get-go, thus making the editing process infinitely less painful.

Didn't get as much done writing wise this week as I had hoped. Especially since I'm at that stage where other ideas are coming around to distract me, like a cat rubbing up against you and purring. As fuzzy and tempting as it is, I have to stay the course.

Ideas really are like cats. They're beautiful and fickle, and no matter how lovely and playful and well behaved they are right now, they will hork on your carpet and leave little birdie torture victims on the porch. It's their nature. Thus, getting another cat won't solve the problem. Investing in carpet cleaner and a sturdy resolve is much more useful.

Luckily for me, this is the last go around for this story. If it doesn't work out now, it gets trunked. Because if I can't shape this story acceptably, then it means I'm not ready, mentally or professionally, to write it yet.

I imagine my progress notes are pretty horribly boring to anyone else, but I post them in case someone is randomly curious - and because they help me.


Project: Tower!Guy Story

Wordcount: 50198 (+ 8829)

Goal: 100,000

Deadline: End of August

Reason For Stopping: Dinner

Exercise: Brief walk to go get breakfast, besides that, utter laziness. Cat nap included.

Stimulants/Chemicals: Naproxen for headache caused by next door neighbor's excessively loud home improvement project. Is the cement mixer and jackhammer *really* necessary on a Sunday. Really?

Musical Inspiration: Been keeping The Frames on tap. "Pretty" by the Cranberries is sort of creepy but sets a good mood. Mostly been surfing the random shuffle.

Other Creative Activities: Painting. Did a still life of a pear that didn't suck as much as I thought it would suck.

Darling du Jour:

"I think I might want to do business with you," Sephon said.

The knife lowered again, the sarcasm returned. "You shouldn't go into business with women."

"Why is that?"

"I hear in town that we're very underhanded and bad with money," Eiryn said.

"And I've heard that the way to wisdom is not to believe everything you hear said in town."

Mean Things: Trying to stab people, intense physical pain, not being warned of impending intense physical pain, using marriage as a trap, bad fathers, regicide, wanting the affections of a person who is an emotional wasteland

Things Learned/Discovered: I never lack for mean things, which might say something about this novel, but I'm not sure what. I need to get a move on if I want this done by the end of August.

I chickened out of going to Fantastic Fiction at the KGB Bar last night. I made up a bunch of excuses, but it basically boils down to anxiety and social awkwardness and fear. And I really wanted to go, too, but that's the nature of anxiety. It'll steal anything you don't nail down.

But on more positive notes, I did have a productive writing day to the tune of 3000 words and change. I also read through some of the earlier chapters that I'd reshaped and they were at least 40% less crappy than I thought at the time I was writing them.

I'm still tinkering with the progress notes format, because I intend to make a study of the writing/revision process so that the next time it'll go quicker.

Project: Tower!Guy Story (working title)

Wordcount: 37143 (+ 3735)

Goal: 100,000 words or less

Deadline: August-ish.

Reason For Stopping: Exhaustion and errands that needed running.

Exercise: Slower walk than usual, still working back up to my previous pace. Did lots of errands.

Stimulants/Chemicals: None.

Musical Inspiration: "If I Never See Your Face Again" - Maroon 5 f/ Rihanna. The explosive chords and combative, sexy duo are good for a fight scene between characters who are snarling at each other. Also good exercise music.

Darling du Jour: "Goddess preserve me. A princess who doesn't know the name of her own land. "

Mean Things: Fighting. Calling someone stupid who isn't. Calling someone "crazy" who actually *is* mentally ill. Inquiring very rudely about the sexual practices of relative strangers. Trying to marry off fifteen-year-old girls to older men. Gambling. Stalking.

Things Learned/Discovered: When I type from my notebook, the amount of typos goes up exponentially and I feel like an ass having to make up fictional plants. Oh, yeah, and I frakking love fights and argument scenes, maybe as much as I love sex scenes. I can't justify having my characters have dirty, dastardly fight!sex in this story, but maybe the next one. I have mental issues, Y/Y?