Haunted Mirror

Back in the US and I'm freezing.

In LA, I'm freezing. Not. Good.

However, Vol. 5 of Aolon is getting a once-over in which I'm cleaning up a lot of sentences. It's huge for me to see them and not just cringe away and leave them for later until I don't see it anymore, and I'm enjoying the story, which is even better, getting both in one.

When my cellphone is charged it's time for a phone marathon of getting in contact with people about seeing them. I've already got a few e-mails out which betters yesterday. I was a bum yesterday.

The year is almost gone. Quite a few things I am looking forward to happen in '08, so I think I'll be ready to write the correct date when it changes.

My druthers have chosen to go out with a bang in terms of reading.
This contributes to the fact that I brought home 16 books from the library.
What also contributes is that I've been compiling "research" books for my next novel, which I am liberated officially to start on now because

Aolon, the 200,000+ word 1st draft, is done!

Oh, I am mighty pleased.

So what I'm working on next (I hope this is the right one...) is Sunschild, a story in which there are three elemental mage-lords--
Wait.
That wasn't the one I was thinking of.
See, life is hard, and choosing which baby to have is even HARDER.
I have books out to work out a world where a caucasian people went east via Siberia, catching some Asian on the way, to settle across the northern-but-not-arctic belt, starting our hero off in the far corner of civilization...Maine.
Only it's Not!Maine.

Maybe I'll spend a few months world-building that manifesto and write about my rebellious firesummoner in post-apocalyptic Rainier area during?
*sigh*

The euphoria is so easily put aside...

So I'm at 56000 words in Vol. 4. I've been creeping for the last 5000, but it's more than I realized.

I think there's still more story than I'm allowing, too, so that's half the uphill work.

Once more into the breach!

~For the end and for freedom!~



Today, interspersed with Useful Things, I read Blade Dancer. The title made me pick it up despite my immediate rejection of titles so cool they must be gimmicky or too popular for me. I enjoyed it a lot. Though I have a feeling it was twaddle.
It was all the overused elements I have a weakness for, I guess.
I mean really, it features a bicultural big-talking jock who goes in over her head at a battle school of sorts for assassins with a motley crew of other halfs that bond and become better than the individuals they are despite themselves.
Gah.
It was a day well spent.

And speaking of battle school:


I returned Castle Cant, to ignore. I still have Enola Holmes and Across the Nightengale Floor for a good old college try. Name of the Wind I will get to again. Someday.
But I've been crossing books off the library shelf-list quite a bit lately.

I need to start on my purchased books shelf pretty soon.
For now, survival.
Tomorrow ought to be calmer.
The aged next-door-auntie should be going home, as electric has been restored to all the people we've been helping support in the crisis, I've got packages off, I only need major sewing done and...well.
The list is still long.

But I'm here!

Today I realized that part of my inching may have to do with the fact that I've never re-read the first parts of Vol 5 (now titled "In Prayer and Song").

I didn't have the time to get to the point where I naturally realize I've gotten so far from the beginning we need to get back in touch.

So today, and however long it takes to finish while working 10-almost8/8:30, I will be reading it. Cleaning up a few lines I can't leave be, but just rereading it. I've already found a directional thread I lost that can contribute to a climax of all and a real tense piece for prelude to the resolution.

And I think I'm going to the Christmas Party for my writer's group. I also think I'm going to Panama.

[BTW: eBear's laudable lyric-quoting post titles got it started, but mine are mostly quotes from the day's writing, as a sort of earmarker for me.]

Uq, it's nice to not have to type everything after writing it. At the same time, my pacing's off. I bummed around today.

Well, except for a Hospice Care Volunteering Training hour. We'll finish in  few weeks, but meantime, I've scored major information on death and people dealing with dying.

Which is a pretty big deal; fantasy deals with deaths all the time, and I'm going to milk this for all it's worth.



Here, a One Sentence Review on Neverending Story:

The script-writers picked a good cut-off point, but Ende reminded me of his Momo-self in the Other Half; and PS I love Atreyu.

I haven't written since yesterday morning.

I think I need a break. ^_^

The wordcount, by the way, was a spare 50150. I wrote two pages, after doing a few extra the days before; work started, see.
However, if you count up all the other volumes with it I have:
          197157
words of manuscript since...I'm too lazy to check. I think Mayish. Is that too recent?
    Agh. Checking... [long involved shuffle to the end of my bed] in a failed attempt to find documentation.

Well, I have a LJ about Vol. 3 at the end of March.
    Sort of amusing quote from it:

Funny, I was looking at the crosspurposes chart from Bob&Jenny a few days ago (never knowing where we're going, nothing--I didn't even know I was almost at the end) and it's so innacurate to what's on the page it's funny. But it helped me know the depth of everyone's spats. Even if they ended up looking drastically different. Score one for some pre-writing! I'm still picking out a fossil, unhibited by the graph of string over the dig's ground.

I have a superiorly disregarding mind. It can block out plotting like a two-year-old blocks out the Dreaded Word "No".

Still true.

I'm pretty happy about this.
I even like the yellow of the image here, I'm that genial.

So, a few more chapters and I'll have won "Red's Finish The Year's Gargantuan Project Month-or-So".

You will be notified.

Some things I learned today:

~5 gallons of water is heavy. Almost too heavy for me to carry.
~It it impossible to stay cold carrying that much water, no matter how frozen the hose is.
~I really like dancing...like, to Irish reels. Step-dancing.

I pretty much choreographed an All New! folk dance for my story yesterday: the first time since I was on my choreographing kick at 14ish. I did it on paper, but used Lego blocks to try out the logistics of it, and I think it would work out.
I also think it will probably need to be cut, that scene of dancing. Because it was wicked boring to type up, except for the stuff going on in between.

I was at 46774 words yesterday afternoon.
This morning I wrote half the quota of pages, maybe, and last night I wrote a few extra. I think I'll be done tonight with NaNo, but not with the novel. Almost for both, though!

I have to talk about The Neverending Story soon. And read a few more books.

Do you know how painful it is to know there is a perfectly beautiful little word-meter out there and that I've never been able to use it and likely, likely never will?
{weeps}
I'm at 16448 words as of this evening. That's only 400 behind my own projected average, and since I've been _catching_  _up_ on these workdays, rather than otherwise, 100% ahead.

My brother came home to a very nice surprise today:



That's an acoustic bass with a pick-up. In terms of Ishtari Quest, the band we hope to be eventually, this is excellent because it means we don't absolutely need an amp to do most of our songs. See, he writes them guitar style but with bass fretwork.
[Fretwork has a nice fake-swear sound to it. I shall take note...]

This Nano thing feels so hectic. However, I don't think my book is suffering. The fact that I know I have to crank out so many words the next day means I have to know what the following issue will be, and make trouble. Now, making the fix create the next problem will be what I learn to do after this, with a short or two. That does not come to me naturally.

I watched Howl's Moving Castle in English last night. I Love That Stuff.
    Howl's too pretty, but then he turns into this fanged swallow-creature and bleeds and stuff. Hey, blood is vital, it's very dramatic, and I'm pretty much one for the soulful drama, if I can't help it.
    Ashitaka (besides having the greatest name, if you pronounce it right) is cooler because he's not pretty, bleeds, and gets fiery visions.
    But I still like Howl's Moving Castle a Whole Lot.

13179 / 50000 words. 26% done!

Pumpkin Orange to commemorate another day of fondling cucurbits.

Since I've been working at a Pumpkin Festival on a bonafide farm doing instruction sorts of things how about a random Thanksgiving fact?
Fact being defined losely in terms of Internet reality.

The Native Americans originated strawberry shortcake, as a way to enliven cornmeal. They mashed strawberries in the flour, I think with something to soak the grain in for softening. No doubt, like with salt and popcorn, the European propensity to season improved on the original.
The Japanese aren't the only ones to blatantly steal and make their own.

1812 / 50000 words. 4% done!

The pretty metre thingamabob iss no workk. Well, well, well.
Like the Nano site during after-work hours for the US.
But Zokutou's code ought NOT to be making a bar too big to fit in one line of my journal, or show the progress on the far side of the thermometer. Don't ask me how THAT happened.

The point: I almost reached one day's wordcount in two days. Today I might have reached almost two, in a less-close-almost sort of a way. I should have known this week would be a bit of a dead loss, but I don't like to believe that coffee and extensive [obsessive] preparation don't defeat the laws of physics as correlated to earth-relative time.

Or the inertia of not writing more than a few pages every few days in three weeks.

As of this morning, a warped Words Behind: 4188

Currently: Now I am a jolly 2722 words behind. With a little extra uncounted yet towards the positive side of things.

From now on, I promise you, LJ cuts about NanoNonsense. Today, I subject the masses.

I finished the fourth of five volumes in my epic today. This brings the book up to approx. 143,000 words. Yes. I told you it was an epic. It is not a series, to spawn two/four/six more books, mercifully: it is a series contained in one book, almost.
        Yes. That is still too blasted long to query until I've got three NYTimes Bestsellers on my resume. *sigh*
I'm so excited to have come this far, though and be ready to start the last leg...when I have time, in November. ^_^

In the other room, by brother is reworking the production on our song of the Roads poems by Tolkien as I have demanded. Merely in the interest of higher art, which he understands. Our younger siblings are kicked outside to play, not just by us, but by the lovely doomed sunshine of the day.

I go back to work after four days off tomorrow. I needed them. But writing is on the back-burner again as of tomorrow.

My icon honors the anti-racism etc. week of blogging. A post maybe later.

I posted a bit of recent writing (rare for me to do) on UrbanFantasyFan. To see part of what I'm working on This Very Second (sort of) you can go to that post and check it out.
 Shaim is progressing pretty well. No rivers, but we're approaching the Underground. I just remembered I headed myself off with the appearance of one Love Interest...but that's fine. Writing sometimes does that.

In other news, I made a playlist from some of the CDs I've copied to my computer (ostensibly, in preparation for being away from home for a month) and it ended up being a folk-heavy melange that does quite nicely with the randomizer. I might be able to do one of those I-Tunes meme things. Now I just have to find one.

Jade? I know you have that stuff at your fingertips...

It's funny to know I'm going to be too tame for most of the authors I am trying to get to know via their blogs. For example, I'm typing the beginning of Shaim's story in and came across a line, which my "sly imp" of the back attic changed so:

"As they got up, he found his right toe had somehow been cut." off!!!

Ah, well. Not all of us can be flippant about dismembering. Certainly that would be more exciting, but it would not serve the same purpose—establishing his personality and relationship with his mom when they talk about bandaging it up. No, I don't think the scene would go the same at all. Though it might be very cool to have Shaim trying to deal with severed toe (Lost but not Forgotten, adds the brain-imp), facilitating his being drawn into the underworld to find a doctoring type Romon knows is used to dealing with gang-war patching, therefore will have a good understanding of digit-loss control.

You know, depending on how the rest of this goes, I might have to succumb to the Muse of SecondGuessing and do that. Gives me the shivers, and a color-photo of the trip, even.

I've revised for VP--as good as it's going to get, I decided. To my immense relief. Once I'm decided I tend to be pretty stable despite my own character, a trait I'm sure other TCKs share.
The universe ends, and that's it. Drink up and get going, despite the drama previously.

So today's teaser will be private (not on UFF), as it's from a "sci-fi" superhero novel which I still love despite the long labor I have done and am not close to half done with. It's very short, also.

 

As for current work, I didn't do anything mean to Jess today, but Pythian was devastatingly practical in this scene. I'm at 98 pages and rediscovering the pacing for a whole novel on this one, which is relieving. Hmm. I just had a thought of how to extend the "between" novel...

Shaim, however, has been forced to blow off his friend for Romon-the-gang-liaison, who was mad at him for disappearing to play the day before. Also, random girl attention.
How mortifying.

I was contemplating the end of Vol. 1 of Aolon, and that the guy don't get the girl. Hmm, I think to myself. Is that a good way to make people read on into the next section?

"But," I reason with myself, "it's never necessary to him to win the girl: I hope I established she wasn't for him... And I'm writing this to break expectations!"

It struck me, that was false. Or it should be. I should write to break my own expectations. I'd never written a story where the guy misses out on the Fascinating Female, and instead gets reFascinated...or so it may imply.

If that's what the point of this is (making myself tell five stories in one, which is actually beyond my skill; writing a tragedy, which is more finessed than I've managed), then it's not such a pretension. Breaking my expectations of the stories I tell is a good thing.

And I don't have to try and be cleverer than the whole genre establishment, doing something utterly new.
If it strikes a few young readers that way, all the better.

Shaim has a nickname. Shai.

Awwwww.

Bad news: I'm having trouble not smiling in a motherly way at every act to proceed from Shaim's plot.

I've found out what world building is good for, with Aolon.
(After I found out what it was not good for with "Watchfires": first three chapters' plot deficiency!)

I had decided their national sport was a rendition of the Mayan game (Incan? Aztec?) where the ball was hip-checked--they still don't know how they got it up into the hoops. So I had it taken up to shoulders.

Well. Yesterday the boys began picking on Shaim. And decided his head was their new ball. Voila.

Passing references before established mood, and now it's become a plot-point. And because I have a novella's wordcount in preplanning, only what's pertinent comes out. We have smooth...we have relevant...maybe we have novel? We shall see.

I'm pretty much done with Vol. 3--just have to birth some twins, and the rest is history. It's about as long as the first, now. Which is pretty much double Vol2. It don't matter; it's almost Done!

Ready to move on? Me, me, me!

Haven't had a chance to work on Seditious Intent yet this week. But I know where this is going, so I'm pretty confident of it. I find it easier to relax on these. I mean, come on...

Flying girls, gag-filmers, and anti-Supers. Who's taking themselves seriously?