Actual Writing Content!

Currently, I'm in a battle with myself. This is nothing new--it's been going on for 33 years this Wednesday--but the situation has taken a somewhat grave turn. My elbows are so arthritic they're damaging my nerves. It's being treated more slowly than I'd like, but it's being treated. Even now I'm waiting for a call from my pain specialist's office regarding the next step.

The upside of this, of course, is that I'm writing (or at least rewriting) like a mofo.

Because I can't really type for more than maybe up to an hour at a time right now, I'm looking through my backlog of short stories, fixing or finishing them, and sending them out for consideration. It's nice to get back into that; I'd stopped for a long time due to time limitations and health issues. I've gone through most of the shorter ones and sent them out to potential homes (hoping like hell here), gotten two rejections so far, hoping for a sale before too hideously much longer, and decided to cut a 48,000-word short novel down to a 25,000-word novella so I might submit it to more places. Because I'm crazy that way. I don't want to lengthen it into a real novel right now, so I'll hack it into pieces. Yay, the joys of being me.

My hands are hurting, so I'm going to give them some downtime. I think the length and breadth of this is a public announcement that, yes, I'm still writing. It's not as long or much as I'd like, but I'm doing it all the same. Hopefully, medical science will make it possible for me to start spending four hours at a keyboard again within the year. As things stand, I'll take being able to eat without dropping it all over myself. (There are reasons I don't wear white shirts.)

Quick Post

Just a quick heads up (again) to say that I'm still alive. RL is going well--I'm happy in my personal life for the first time in many, many years, and my gallbladder (aka The Beast) is now floating in a jar of formaldehyde somewhere--and I'm hoping to formally get writing back on track again soon.

It's still suffering somewhat from the upset my life took in February. However, I've been meeting people in the profession, and I'm actually working with a good friend from Texas, helping him copy-edit a nonfiction book, which is pretty kickass. There's nothing in it save thanks and maybe a professional leg up (and, I'm promised, a roof and a bed whenever I'm out that way), but I enjoy the work and I very much enjoy the chance to work with someone like this. (Colleen, Linda, you know who I'm talking about.)

On the actual writing front, the book should be ready to market within a month or two, Elvis willing, and I'm finally revamping a novelette that's in dire need of attention. It's got a lot of potential, but it needs serious work. At least I've got people who can help me with the finer aspects of librarianship. (I not-so-secretly refer to the story as my librarians-as-gods story. You have no idea how happy this makes the librarians in my life.) Other than that, I'm just working on getting properly geared up again. No idea what I'll be doing or where I'll be ten years from now, but I'll be writing. Unless I've kicked it, which probably means I won't be doing much of anything. :P

Am loosely playing with the idea of going back to school for Fashion Design, of all things. It's something I'd enjoy, though, and there's no way in HELL I could stand four years of academics. Let me get my hands on something, and I'll be happy as a clam in silt. And if there's one thing I know my way around, it's a sewing machine.

Erk. Is midnight. I'm due up in seven hours. First day back post-op. Wish me luck!

Gorramit.

I got caught up in reading and forgot I'm supposed to be editing and making notes. I'm not sure if that's a good sign or not.

Out with the old, in with the headache.

It's time for me to write two-page synopses of Books 2 and 3. Book 1 is nearly ready to stop around, and I've got to get my ass in gear on the other that I finished (in my bull-headed way--common sense does not compute). I'm going through with major changes needed to make the books fall in line with the revised Book 1, and I'm doing something actually fairly clever: at the end of each chapter, I'm rewriting the whole thing in one sentence. That lets me keep note of the important bits. Hence, I won't have to boil down any more 16-page synopses.

What? My fingers don't know when to shut up.

In other news, I have today off. Tomorrow is moving, Tuesday will involve taking my Conestoga costume to work so I can finish sewing it before going shopping for the last piece I need, Wednesday and Thursday are work and packing, and Friday starts the con. Going to be a VERY busy week, so I'm doing nothing today but editing, laundry, and hopefully a little exercise. (Believe it or not, all of these things are relaxing.) I should probably find room for food in there, too, but that's not such an issue. Worst case scenario, I have tofu and stir-fry frozen veggies. And frozen edamame. Mmm, edamame.

Okay, off to do some chores, take a shower, and get back to work! My life is so exciting. Indeed.

Rrrr! Brains!

Sigh. I'm editing down the Sex Scene that Wouldn't Die. Its graphic intensity rivals the heaviest slash, and, well, it's TEN PAGES LONG. (Remember this one? Plot plot plot plot, TEN PAGES OF....) Alas, in order to fit with the rest of the book, the most, er, shameless bits need to be taken down a notch.

Yes, this sucks. Big time.

At least I decided against cutting the whole thing. For now. Le sigh.

Looking up.

I managed to play Wii Fit for the first time in more than three weeks tonight. I'm exhausted for it, but it's not the hideous, crippling, agonised exhaustion I've had lately. I'm not even sore, though that could be due to the 100mg of Ultram I necked back earlier. I need to take another 100mg before bed so I can manage at work tomorrow. Still, improvement is improvement. Huzzah for methotrexate!

This tune may change tomorrow night, mind. I ramp up to full maintenance dose, and may spend Election Day hugging a bucket. It won't be nearly enough to keep me away from my polling place, but I suspect my watch party will involve pizza, OJ punch, and MSNBC. (OJ punch is just orange juice--sometimes with pineapple and/or mango--mixed with Sprite and a dash of Rose's lime juice. It's nummy, and downright healthy if you use Sprite Zero.)

Going to finish reading a chapter on LLTD, then get some sleep.

Also? Finished the last three eps of the most recent series of Doctor Who. OMG so, so good. I was very nearly crying by the end. If a mysterious blue box ever lands in front of my house, well, expect these posts to get a lot more interesting.

Different Editing

Since I can only go so long without trying to hurt my own brain, I'm paring down a novelette so I can try to sell it to Asimov's. (And, hey, I just checked my "do market research" file, and I've got a short that hasn't gone to WotF yet! This thing's gettin' polished for next quarter!) I've got about 200 words of novelette to go before it's within guidelines. The story is pretty solid, but I can't help thinking it could be a little tighter. It still needs most of its 15K words, because the storyline is fairly complex, but I'm going to sit down, condense the story into a paragraph, and start again from there.

Oh, regarding my sex scene post from a couple of weeks ago, thanks for the feedback, guys. :) I think that I'll leave it in for now. My big concern is that it kinda sticks out after so many revisions. Right now, the book goes, "Plot, plot, plot, plot, plot, plot, TEN PAGES OF SCORCHINGLY HOT PORN, plot...." I may have to tone things down, but I'll see what Colleen says. At the very least, I know it'll have to be shorter. (And, yes, it gives some character and relationship development--hoo, boy, does that relationship develop--but I don't think it gives ten pages worth.)

Knitting goes apace. Nearly finished with Mom's present. With luck, I'll finish the main body tonight, so I can get to work on the detailing. After that, we move into blanket territory. I think I'm going to be lazy and just knit the whole thing in one piece, with blocks of intarsia rather than separate blocks. (That makes sense to knitters, I promise.) I hate finishing, so that really is the cheater's method in my mind. This way, I'll just knit, block, and throw on a single crochet edging. Boom, blanket.

IF YOU ONLY READ ONE OF MY POSTS, READ THIS ONE.

Colleen, my extraordinary (and persuasive) agent, has made another post on word counts. She's getting more and more queries with high word counts again, and, well, that's REALLY, REALLY BAD. I posted this in the comments field, but I'm putting it here, too, because you NEED TO KEEP THIS IN MIND. (The all caps are there for a reason, folks. Pay attention.)

People, KEEP your LENGTH DOWN. I'm condensing THREE HUNDRED FREAKING THOUSAND words into 120K. That's FORTY PERCENT of the original length. Sixty percent GONE. DO NOT PULL THIS SORT OF STUNT. If your book is even good enough to consider at that length, it will be chopped to pieces just to make it marketable. You will learn a great deal from that sort of edit, including the meaning of pain.

Seriously, take it from someone who's learned all of this the hard way. KEEP YOUR BOOKS SHORT. (This goes for books shorter than 300K, too, btw. Anything over 120K for an adult novel is begging for surgery, and anything over about 90K for an upper-grade YA gets the same treatment.)

Editing

*breaks down in incoherent sobs*curls up on the floor*becomes a cat bed*

Gahh.

I'm editing a scene to accommodate an excised subplot. It's intensely personal to the point of making me (and the main character) uncomfortable, and I'm trying to work out how to fully integrate it into the rest of the story. I suppose my wine and knitting session tonight should help somewhat.

And on that note, I need to brush my teeth and find some socks.

Hell.

1. At three in the morning, I had an epiphany as to how I could remove a good 20K words from LLTD. I remember how, and it includes moving a scene later in the book AND removing two unnecessary subplots that were, in previous incarnations, very necessary. However, I want to give Colleen a chance to give some input, because I could be completely and utterly wrong.

2. My DSL has been flaky for two weeks. This is seriously pissing me off. Note to self: get Windstream's number in one of my connection's lucid moments, call to complain. I know it's the heat, but some piece of their equipment is damaged--probably by the insane heat we're having--and it needs to be repaired.

Made of Daft

Dear self,

You have three weeks to rest your brain and work on some blunt comedy. You know perfectly well you've been comedy starved. So why is it that you insist on going, "Oooooooh, that'll help the plot!" regarding the Hellogy every thirty seconds? You've already written half a page of new dialogue AND advanced the Nefarious Plot (as well as the story's plot) a dozen times.

See that short story you've got up? Work on it. Also? Eat something, then get a shower so you can run to the library for ten minutes. You also need to fill in your bookstore application, because that would be the best job EVAR and you know you're good enough to get it.

Now put away the novel, and work on something else. All right? Good little addict.

More annoyance than love,

Me

Oh, fu....

Kill me. Kill me now. I have annihilated 130-mumblety-K words, and I need to do a whole new revision to kill another 50K. Nnngh. *thumps head on desk more than is healthy*

Worse, I have a whole new plot element I have to foreshadow (a small one, thank Elvis), and I think I may need to reconstruct part of the ending.

Yeah. Yeah. We're gonna skip dinner and just get some sleep. Yes, I know it's 2:30 in the morning. It's dinnertime when I say it is, damn it.

HOT PRAWN

Ahh, editing gratuitous sex scenes. I know that the whole thing's probably going to either be cut or trimmed to bare bones (heh, I said bone), but, damn it, I like writing porn. Let me have my moment.

Also? It's really farking hot.

Oof.

This weekend, I learned that:

• At least half my artistic temperament comes from my dad's family.
• Trigger points are miserable things indeed. Ow. Ow.
• I'm not the only weirdo in my family.
• Nor am I the only one with Fibromyalgia. Genetic link, anyone?
  
• Milk is tasty, but does yucky things. Pleh!
• Good Indian food is worth any amount of pleh.

I'm glad to be back to editing, all told. I've got a huge stack of knitting to do now, which is a bit annoying, but it'll keep me busy for a long time. Going to edit myself blind this week, get some of the house cleaned up, and hope my back (ow, ow) has loosened up in time for Conestoga this weekend. If anyone's planning to go, look for the weirdo knitting the light blue shawl or the bizarre garter stitch scarf. The shawl might be a bit too complicated to take with me.

Getting back to editing now. Then, we load the dishwasher. UGH. Are men genetically incapable of doing housework before leaving town for two weeks? I came back to a nightmare, and that's not an exaggeration.

Hah.

I found three whole chapters I'd made irrelevant, which means that TBFKaB1 has gone from 145K to 70.6K. I removed more than fifty percent of the damned thing. Hot dog!

I think I'm going to open TBFKAB2 and work out what needs to be rearranged first. I've got a few ideas. Mostly, though, I need some sleep. Assuming I can scrape a suitable spot from beneath either the very snorrific Import (I can hear him on the other side of the house) or a stunningly fat and spoiled cat. I'll probably make Aldous move from the couch. The poor Import has to be up at six, and he has a hard enough time getting to sleep without me making him budge up.

Yes. Rather proud of myself. There's a lot that still needs to be done, and I'll have to go back and patch some holes, but this is eminently doable.

FOR THE WIN!

The Book Formerly Known as Book One has dipped below 90K. I've still got a lot of work ahead of me, but I'm getting there. So far, I've cut more than 55K, with as much as 25K yet to be excised. Now to pare both it and TBFKaB2 down to 120K together, and we're set.

In other news, my ear infection is back. Seems it's levafloxacin resistant. This is a very, very bad thing. Seeing a specialist on Friday to see what needs to be done. I sense a microbial culture in my future.

Getting back to work, then trying to get some more sleep. I'm pretty much homebound until my appointment. With luck, I'll be able to con some get-well yarn out of someone.

Looking Up

I just had one of those little flashes of insight that mean that the task I've got before me is eminently doable. A royal pain in the ass, but doable. I've managed to condense some early events to the point that the Former Book One should be cut to maybe a third of its original size. The Former Book Two will be more difficult, but I should be able to retain the high points without losing the flavour of things.

I'm trying to figure out what I'm going to knit on my upcoming family reunion weekend. It'll have to be from my stash, and I really should get to work on Christmas stuff, but neither of those are really major problems. (Also, if anyone's got any non-Red Heart yarn out there you'd like to get rid of? I'm more than happy to give it a good home.)

I seem to have come up with a solution to my sunscreen problems, too: Desitin. Yes, the caulk-like stuff you smear on diaper rash. It's 40% zinc oxide, which is about the widest-spectrum sunblock available. The rest is pretty much fish oil and petroleum jelly. I haven't been in the sun to test it yet, but, damn, is my skin soft.

All right, back to work. With luck, I'll actually get to sleep before 6:00 this morning.

Crap.

Dear Self,

When editing down, you should probably not end up expanding scenes from their original formats. Yes, it's now in a completely different context, but there are limits to keep in mind. No, really. You need to stop being so damn wordy. OTOH, you also need to reconsider exactly how much story can fit into three books.

So get back to work, and make this shorter, not longer.

Love,

Me

#

For those of you playing at home, this is starting to get incredibly painful. My self-worth should not be wrapped up in a word count, but for now, it is. There's loads yet to come out, and I keep telling myself that, but... Rrrr! I think it's time to re-negotiate the ending point on this thing. I've still got to pack everything into three books rather than five, though, and the next two are even longer. Fortunately, one can be re-worked and the other can have whole chapters cut free. Still going to be living hell to get this all done.

Nope, nope, the ending on book two needs to remain the end to the condensed first book. It fully cements the main character into the thick of things and takes away any easy out he might have. Also, no more living on PB&J. That's a complete aside, but a necessary one, I fear.

A few more minutes of work, and then to bed.

Brokeback Kittehs

I am increasingly convinced that Crowley, my enormous white kitty, is gay. No, seriously. Last summer, I saw him trying to mate with another stray I call Bravery. Well, this summer it turns out that Bravery is a boy. Admittedly, it might have been a dominance issue, like he's had with Aldous, who does NOT appreciate being made someone's bitch.

But today, Crowley started bringing Aldous gifts. He'll sometimes pick up his toys and bring them to me while I'm knitting. Four times, he walked straight past me with a toy in his mouth, and set it in front of Aldous's kitty jungle gym. The Import just rolls his eyes at the whole concept, but I'm the writer, damn it. Let me have my active imagination.

Editing continues apace. In fact, I haven't even had a shower yet today. (TMI FTW!) It's kind of nice to go back and insert new scenes to accommodate the change in structure. It feels like revisiting a more innocent time in the series. Not that any time in the series was innocent. Backstory is my friend.

Aaaand that squeal means that Jack "Crowley" Twist is at it again. I'm gonna go spray down the cat. Poor Aldous.