A Twist of Things to Come

But, it worked out all right. I had Saturday off because I went in on Friday. So, I mostly slept all day. I did get dragged out to the free family movie at the local theater. It was Rango, which we had rented but thought would be fun on the big screen. And it was, you know, FREE. :)

Got up and got my hours in on Sunday, then wrote. It worked out well, because I went from having about three pages of chapter 18 to having 12 pages of fixed content and another five more of fairly solid stuff that still needs to be retro-fitted. (Chapter 18 is a FrankenChapter, in which something that happened in the last third of the first draft is moved to near the beginning of the novel, so all the little details have to change.) I really like the way it is turning out, because I get to introduce a really cool character, like 200 pages earlier than before. And, like most of my secondary characters in this draft, she's much cooler than she was.

***

My Beloved made Taco Feast. *breathes shallowly* I ate too much. It's been a while since I've done that.

***

He also has a like on some contract work. My new employer also offered him a job, but he didn't take it. He has a minimum threshold that they couldn't meet. BUT he also had a meeting with a tech employment agency, and the guy there knows he can place him quickly at his required rate of pay, so it's all good.

Did I mention that he's decided to change industries? This man who has been modding Xboxes and rigging home networks to answer our phones and stuff in his spare time for fun, has finally clued into the fact that maybe he should be in IT. :P This was not as good an idea a few years ago when I suggested it. :P

***

They've added a new product to my list at work, because I had done EVERYTHING there was to do on all the other products they had for me. If they will just start letting a approve some of these things, I will stop annoying them with my constant presence at the end of their desk, like Oliver Twist asking for more. :P

Tomorrow we have a client visit. The client is MontBlanc, and we have to dress business professional. We also cannot leave until half an hour after they leave the office, so I am likely to be caught in traffic hell. Perhaps I should go prepared to stop off in Alpharetta at a short story/novel writing workshop that is just forming. That's not until 7pm, though. What to do between 4:30 and 7pm... Perhaps I will pack my computer and plan to write. :P

First off, up on GC Friday, we had Amalia the Savage's On the Set of Thor, complete with behind-the-scenes video. (The lead is cute and Kenneth Branagh is directing, so, WOW. I still want to punch Natalie Portman in the face for comparing eating meat to 'condoning rape' and then signing that freaking Roman Polanski petition (Really, Natalie?), but I guess everyone's allowed to be stupid once in a while.)

***

For the writers on my flist, here's a pep talk that Neil Gaiman wrote for NaNoWriMo a few years ago. It resonates with me right now because I'm so there, Dude.

The last novel I wrote (it was ANANSI BOYS, in case you were wondering) when I got three-quarters of the way through I called my agent. I told her how stupid I felt writing something no-one would ever want to read, how thin the characters were, how pointless the plot. I strongly suggested that I was ready to abandon this book and write something else instead, or perhaps I could abandon the book and take up a new life as a landscape gardener, bank-robber, short-order cook or marine biologist. And instead of sympathising or agreeing with me, or blasting me forward with a wave of enthusiasm---or even arguing with me---she simply said, suspiciously cheerfully, "Oh, you're at that part of the book, are you?"

It's vaguely comforting to know that even people who make their living full time by writing get the 4th quarter blahs. I know I just have to keep going. Pick another word and put it down. Pick the next one, put it down.

I'm up to 76,000+ words, and have about 80 pages to re-work my way through before I get to the end of them and start adding new ones. I got through about 20 pages in just a couple of hours yesterday. I can get a few more hours in before I have to go to a birthday party this afternoon.

Next week is a camp week for my youngest, so I hope to have some extra morning time to write while i wait on the West Bank for camp to finish.

It's all going quite well. I got a piece in for teh writing group, and I am suitably antsy about it. Forward ho!

Well, despite NaNo's tendency to chew people up and spit them out, it seems our Amalia The Savage is already finished! Wow, that woman is prolific! On GC, we're still sharing her Letters series, which is related to her NaNo novel and also to discussions of NaNo itself. Today's installment is Letters from the Kings, Another Not-Yet-Of Troy Story. I may speed up posting of this series - once a week may just not be enough!

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I mentioned yesterday some good things that are going on here for me, but that I've been battling the blues anyway. It's a strange disconnect from reality, because the reality is really good. The darling jedi_diplomat commented that the culture shock really starts to hit between three to six months in (and boy howdy, she should know!) and I think she's right. Things here are becoming familiar, and once-familiar things in Atlanta are becoming distant. I feel detached from my old life (not a bad thing, as it was comfortable enough to fall easily into stagnation) but not entirely connected to my new life, yet. I think some of that is bleeding over into my online presence, too, in the transition from lone fannish blogger to webmistress.

So, erm. Thanks for hanging in there with me. :) I'm going push my way through this phase, see, and whatever comes out will hopefully be better equipped to do what I gotta do than what went in.

***

On the writing front, thanks to a bit of discussion with the lovely hominysnark, I'm on track with the rest of HMOWK, and pretty much back up to the point where I lost my data. If I manage to pull this off, the end is going to ROCK. If I don't, well, it'll still be good, and a fun ride.

I have finally come up with a title for my shapeshifter series, and titles for the one I'm working on as well as the one I have as a complete draft. The first one, I'm calling Form and Void, and the second, which many of you have read swaths of, will be Face of the Deep. I think. I've half a mind to go ahead and name the third one (for which I have only vaguest of outlines) Intelligent Design, though that may just be my snark trying to break through.

I've been banging the GC drum pretty hard here lately, so I'm giving it a rest today. ;)

Except I will whinge a bit about NaNo eating up my time, and most of my contributors' time, so that we are likely to experience a dearth of substantive content (or at least have several posts from the same poor, beleaguered ladies).

I'm working on a post about privilege that many who read this space may find familiar, plus a post on harder Yaoi and a meditation on my recent re-reading of To Kill a Mockingbird.

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The NaNo writing is going on well enough. Some things come faster than others, but so far so good. Other writing, too. I'm past where I was in the HMOWK that I lost, so that is going well.

I still have no glimmer of a clue what to call this Shapeshifter story, though I posted the title on NaNo as Blade of Memory, I know that kind of blows. *g*

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Talked to my Beloved this morning after he talked to his mom, who has been with her mother at the hospital for days and days. I just started crying, because I've been where she is, sitting with my mother, waiting for her to die. Though mine was 63 not 93, I know what she's going through. I wish I could offer her comfort, but we're not terribly close and I think it might be intrusive. *sigh*

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In other news, the Boys started watching Mushi-shi again, which is a lovely anime. It's got a very slow, sedate pace in its storytelling, but it is still beautiful and compelling. The one bad side-effect is that the Ally Kerr song used as its opening theme is now lodged in my brainpan.

So, of course I have to share the joy:



I *love* that song, and I really have no idea why.

Writing and doing stuff for the website, I mean. Even with my computer desk adjusted properly and the fantastic Aeron chair a colleague of my Beloved's gave me, I still finish the day achy and beaten. If only I could get this stuff done while riding my bike, walking, swimming... something. I need to move. This is starting to get to me.

But, enough of my whining! Today, I am grateful for GeekaChicas because soloreader's article Inkheart:One for the Readers has inspired me to at least hit the video store. A fun adventure for the whole family, with the added bonus of a buff and shirtless Paul Bettany.

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I'm inches away from posting the next bit of HMOWK to the MA list, which is good. I'm also quite, quite close to the end, which is even better. I'd forgotten how much I love finishing things! The novel is coming along well, too, only I've written a bit at the pool (in notebooks because taking the laptop seemed a phenomenally bad idea), which means transcribing. I hate transcribing. The work is actually improved by it because I edit as I transcribe, but I still loathe it.

I promised the boys some time at the pool today, too, so I'd best get to work.

The time has just run by me today. Ziiiip! I made some progress on the website, a workable logo which I hope to run past your discerning eyes very soon, among other things. I'm just wiped. Exhausted. Not yet fully operational. But it will come.

***

The next ep of HMOWK is up at the fic journal. I'd only had it written for three weeks. *sigh* It occurs to me that I am very close to the end of something I've been writing for years, and that is kind of exciting, to be so close to finishing something that has been around that long, even if it is a 1,000 page smut epic fanfic. I'm gonna need a new hobby. ;)

Speaking of stories that have been with me for years, hominysnark helped me decide on a decent starting point for the shape-shifter novel re-write. I think it will work well, once I've had a chance to sleep on it.

I'm not sure why everything has taken me so long to do for the past ten years, but I managed to complete several projects in the last couple of months, so maybe I'm beginning to buck the trend. In the last week before my brain tried to explode, I'd learned enough about Photoshop to make some graphics I was pretty pleased with, and worked through some exercises on Premiere Pro.

Even being ill I managed to get Big Boy to clean up his own room by making it clear what the acceptable parameters for "clean" were. Wee Boy still needs some training, but the skill is in progress.

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Tomorrow, I hope to post more about the website, and solicit suggestions and opinions. Right now I think I'll just relax for a while in the bosom of my family.

With this:

	818
37
lab.drwicked.com

And then this:

	2424
111
lab.drwicked.com

The crappy first draft is done. By the time I get to the second draft, it will probably have an epilogue, maybe, but this is it for now. Last line: This time, he didn't care who saw him cry.

It's a bit gushy, but considering the circumstances, I think it's earned. I guess we'll see how it looks in the cold light of day. ;)

Or in bed. *shrug* Naughty Muse. Anyway, had a bit of a brainstorm today about the nearly-completed first draft. It means I will have to re-write the first part of the climax, but it will increase the relevance of a certain character who started off as a throw-away and became so much more. That's two novels in which that has happened. I start to write in someone who has a very specific function for a brief moment in the story and he becomes fairly central to the entire remainder of the novel. In Boyhouse, it was Laniel. I'm sure I had no freaking clue how important he would be when I first wrote him, because I still have the scribbled on scrap paper draft of his first scene. Oy. In the shape-shifter novel, it's the military guy I first named Richard because I thought it was funny to have someone call him "Dick." I kept trying to write him out and he kept coming back. Now, at long last, I know why.

My brain, she is a scary place.

Anywhoo, the stats:

	878
50
lab.drwicked.com

I've decided to call my muse Marve. Or Marva, sometimes. I think my muse is situationally transsexual. The only thing I know for certain is that he/she usually visits when I'm naked. ;)

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On an unrelated but still creative note, I have a new drawing in the hopper besides the other two drawings in progress I have not yet completed. I'm going to put some time in on them over the next few days and see where that goes. They are all figures and all, more or less, illustrations. Every one is a challenge, though, so this should be interesting.

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One final note. Do Virginity Pledges Work? Not surprising, really, but still interesting. No statistically significant difference in the rates of premarital sex for pledgers and non-pledgers, but the purity crowd were significantly less likely to protect themselves from disease and unwanted pregnancy. *facepalm*

	956
40
lab.drwicked.com

The hubby is sick, sick today, so we didn't risk seeing the in-laws and I got to write a bunch. I'm nearly done with the shapeshifter thing, and HMOWK is coming along, too. I'm getting very close to some things I'm quite proud of, there.

But, there's this thing bouncing around in my head. It's been there since I was a teen, probably, in one form or another. A mystery sort of thing. I do love a good mystery. I can sit and untangle knots or do logic problems for hours, and that is why I like a good mystery, I think. Never expected to have an idea for one, even though I knew that these characters I've had in my head for years belonged in a mystery novel. I'm just sort of remembering being a middle-class kid in an upper-crust sort of university, and all the little abrasive edges of things that flew around socially. Throw in some sweet Sapphic longing and a dead soccer player, and frak me if I don't have a mystery novel boiling away in the hind brain.

Crap. It's like I'm playing Genre Bingo in here.

I want to get back to posting my word counts, for two reasons. First, it encourages me, and posting them here keeps me honest. Second, well, I think Dr. Wicked deserves the free advertising. ;) I've already made up my mind to donate a portion of my next sale to the site. *shrug* I was raised to be a tither, yanno. This one was for HMOWK:

	762
34
lab.drwicked.com

This one was for the Shape-shifter thing (almost done!):

	751
43
lab.drwicked.com

This one took a little longer because I had to use the 'pause' feature when Big Boy's teacher called to tell me how miserable he was, and could I pick him up and spare him the wait for the school bus? (Of course I did. Poor baby has homework on top of all the studying for two more finals tomorrow.) I would love to keep him home tomorrow.

Life takes precedence over art, naturally, but at least I got Mobius and Lethe a tad closer to their big finish. Just a tunnel collapse, some self-mutilation and the great escape to go!