I got my editorial comments back for my Stargate novel this morning.

To quote "Mr. Tanner" - "The critics were concise but no one could accuse them of being over kind."

Ow.

I read through some of the comments I received and I went through the various stages one usually goes through. However at the end, the editor asked if I wanted to see the actual edits and we could discuss doing a re-write and set a new delivery date.

I wanted to reply - "Hey, you only gave me eight weeks to finish this and I have a regular job on top of that." "Hey, you approved that part in the synopsis and now you don't like it?" "Hey, if I had more time, maybe I would have caught a couple of those facts I got wrong."

What did I reply?

"Sorry it didn't work for you. Absolutely I would love to see the edits. I appreciate you giving me another shot."

Why?

Because that's what being a professional is. I had submitted something they found sub-par. It's their call, it's their license. It was time to take the big-boy pill and check the ol' ego into the hotel for a while. Yeah, it hurt. But, I've always told people, if you can't take critique, don't be a writer. Time to live up to my own words.

I received the edits this evening after I came home and read through them. I agree with about 90% of them. Still I have to go through and see what's left in the story, review the comments again from the initial letter and then go back to the editor with a plan on how to bring the story more into line with what they want it to be.

I knew the initial edits might be rough. It's a new franchise for me to work for and a new editor to learn what they like and don't like. I have to admit, I didn't expect it to be this bad, but they didn't kick me off the project. I'll take that to mean they must have seen something in my writing that made them want to salvage this.

*rolls up the sleeves*

Time to get to work. More to follow after I sleep on the edits I read.

Wow.

I've completely gutted Chapter Five in Childhood's Tears and scattered bits and pieces into Chapters Six and Seven and cut parts of Chapter Six out completely and Seven's not looking so good.

I do admit, I'm liking it a whole lot more than the initial pass, but it's still not natural for me to be editing before I reach the end of a book. I thought this might take a few weeks. This may be an entire summer just to catch up to where I start putting new stuff in.

Yikes.

I may have completely edited out two entire sections. I know you're supposed to be brutal when you edit, but this is darn right homicidal (? - libracidal?). I have saved them out into a new Word Perfect file. I may be able to use one of these little sub-plots later rather than now. *lifts one eyebrow* In fact, one would be perfect for later in the book. Bwah-ha-ha. Yes, once again, I have outfoxed you, plot monster.

Tomorrow I'll be trying to squish the left-overs from Chapter Five into Chapter Six with a slight twist on them to make it a tad more creepy. We'll get back to the swashbuckling in the chapter after that.

But, that's tomorrow.

Went and saw Up today in the theater. Damn good movie. I thought the quiet montage at the first was a very touching part that they didn't underplay or overplay. Nice amount of silliness and seriousness in the movie and I think Ed Asner had a ball doing the part. The short before the movie was cool too. Had never thought about the stork that had to deliver porcupine babies before. *grin*

Did a little shopping and picked up some music from a couple of groups that had been recommended to me by friends. Of course, FYE's scanners were down so I couldn't listen for myself, but they were used discs so I figure it's worth a chance. I'll listen to them tomorrow at work and hopefully I'll think my friends have wonderful tastes in music.

Did get some work done on Childhood's Tears tonight. Finished the re-write to Chapter 4. I added almost 2000 new words in the process and am now well on my way to finishing Chapter 5. I may be re-doing a chunk of this chapter too. I'm going to read it again tomorrow and make a decision then.

All right, computer is showing low battery, so I'm going to go to bed now.

After sending a chapter of Childhood's Tears off to a beta and getting their feedback, I have decided to do something I've never done before. I'm going to revise this story before I get to the end. I was looking at the comments they made, especially between the first half and the second half of the chapter and realized they were absolutely right.

Then I looked at the whole story I'd written up until now and realized I had an OK story, but I had missed the big thrust of the story. I'd always envisioned this story to be sort of an "Indiana Jones meets Call of Cthulhu" but in the first draft, we were heavy into Indy and there was damn little Cthulhu. This needs to change.

So, since I wss going to rewrite the first chapter, I might as well go in now and revise the story to add in the spooky as well as the adventure. It was fun, I discussed the issue with the daughter over dinner tonight and she suggested what would make a wonderful addition to the book which will give it a Lovecraftian feel, but still keep it true to the world I'm developing.

You won't be seeing word counts for a while, but there will be progress measured in chapters updated. (Actually, overall word count will probably be coming down with the rewrite, but that's O.K. too.)

Current Revisions: Chapter 1 completed.

But, now back to see if the Royals can beat the White Sox in extra innings.

Night, everyone

Stargate SG-1: Shadows of the Heart is gone.

I finished edits, ran spell check, fixed a whole bunch of dumb mistakes I'd made and gave it a good look over today. Typed up a nice letter to the publisher, attached the Word document to the letter and shipped it off.

Now we start the "hope the licensor likes it" voodoo rituals.

Book came in at 89,411. Just didn't have time to find that 589 extra words to get it to a nice round number.

At this point . . . who cares. It's done and I never want to back myself into that kind of deadline crunch again. I guess it's good to know I can do it. I just don't want to do it.

I'm going to take a short break and then get back to work on something. I may go back to rewriting Harbinger or maybe I'll jump on Childhood's Tears. Plus, I do have this Star Trek idea I need to have worked out so I can pitch it later this year.

Ah, a writer's life. Get one out the door, start working on the next.
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Words for Today

830 / 1000 words. 83%

Progress on SG-1: Shadows of the Heart

89411 / 80000 words. 112%

Words for 2009

80907 / 365000 words. 22%

Wow, I guess it's a good thing I took off Friday and Monday because the universe conspired against me about getting much done this weekend. Now, what happened over the weekend was mostly good stuff, but getting more than a couple of hours at a shot to work on Shadows was just a hassle.

Still, I won't bore you with the whining. Let it be known that going into D-Day, I have completed 23 of 25 chapters for rewrite and added 1324 new words. I've rewritten big chunks of Chapters 22 and 23 and I think they now tie all the earlier ones together rather nicely.

I also met with April over the weekend and we hashed out the next chapter of Shattered Mirror as well as starting to tighten up exactly what we want to happen in this book. We've be building this book one chapter at a time, but now we're at a point where we need to stop talking in large generalities about the book and really pick our focus. We've come up with a lot of good thematic stuff as well as the who's doing what to whom stuff, but now we have to decide what EXACTLY happens in the book and what would go into later books, if we sell the first one.

It's interesting trying to work in the YA universe since complete YA novels tend to be 20-40K shorter than what I normally write. It's going to be good to help me focus and really ensure any rabbit trails we follow must lead to something specific in the book. No just "seeing what happens" as I tend to do in first drafts.

Still, even with all the distractions, I did get 4 chapters done between Fri and tonight. The end (of this project) is in sight.
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Words for Fri-Sun

1324 / 3000 words. 44%

Progress on SG-1: Shadows of the Heart

88581 / 80000 words. 111%

Progress on Shadows of the Heart's Revisions

23 / 25 chapters. 92%

Words for 2009

80077 / 365000 words. 22%

wishweaver did not have a good day today, so I wound up taking off at lunchtime from work and coming home. She felt well enough not to go to the doctor, but she was either fighting off a bad virus or she got some bad food yesterday. Much unfun was had by all.

I decided to go ahead and take all day off tomorrow also. We are supposed to have some company coming by tomorrow, so I'll want to use tomorrow morning to get as much done as I can. I did push on today and wound up adding 995 words to Shadows. I also completed the edits on Chapters 17-19. That leaves six chapters to edit between now and Monday. Still going to be close, but we'll keep plugging away. I'm a little less concerned than I was Monday night.

I'm already plotting out things to do once this is done. None of them has anything to do with writing, unless you consider the work I'm going to do on getting my web site back operational as writing. I have a stack of anime that needs to be watched, a stack of older and newer movies I need to watch, an entirely too tall pile of books to be read and some serious video gaming I need to get back on. (If nothing else, I need to finish up Xenosaga II. I've been ready to move onto the last big section in that one since last summer. Just got distracted and never sat down and finished.)

In some ways, Monday can NOT get here soon enough.
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Words for Today

995 / 1000 words. 100%

Progress on SG-1: Shadows of the Heart

87257 / 80000 words. 109%

Progress on Shadows of the Heart's revisions

19 / 25 chapters. 76%

Words for 2009

78753 / 365000 words. 22%

O.K., wishweaver has been pushing me to ask for an extension on the delivery of this book, but I'm so damn close to being done, I just hate to do it. Of course, to make the deadline, I'm really pushing myself in the editing and rewriting stages. I made it through Chapter 12 last night and then Chapters 13-16 tonight. I can see the finish line (nine chapters to go), but I'm exhausted in the mornings. Luckily, I've turned in my latest deliverables at work today, so I've got a few days before anything else is going to be due. I'll try to balance doing some work at work and doing some editing at work.

At least, I'll be off from Friday noon until COB on Monday. As long as I get this en route to Fandemonium by 2359 on Monday, I'll be on time. They'll get it first thing Tuesday morning, which is when they would have gotten it whether I quit working on it at 1700 EST or 2359 EST.

It's weird, I went through four chapters today and the word count meter barely budged, even though there was a whole lot of typing going on. I added 692 words for all my efforts on Shadows. Even though the word meter isn't moving, I caught some conflicting information between Chapter 2 and 14, which would have annoyed the editor if it had slipped through. So, I guess, yeah me?

I could probably make it another hour or so, but I'm thinking the body is telling me to go to sleep and it usually knows better than my mind does in situations like this.

Night!
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Words for Today

692 / 1000 words. 69%

Progress on SG-1: Shadows of the Heart

86262 / 80000 words. 108%

Progress on Shadows of the Heart's revisions

16 / 25 chapters. 64%

Words for 2009

77758 / 365000 words. 21%

Survived another Monday at work, actually got some stuff done, received my first set of edits by the development team and now am busy correcting my misconceptions of how this system works and making new pictures to help me demonstrate my new-found knowledge.

There are times I wish I could just make the developers write some of this stuff and let me clean it up. They probably spend more time trying to explain stuff to me than they would just breaking down and typing up a few paragraphs.

I didn't get any work done on the book yesterday. wishweaver and I went out for a "short" trip to Tyson's Corner, VA. I had intended to get home around 6pm and get back to work. Instead we wound up meeting friends for dinner and I got home after 9pm. Had a great time, but really didn't have the time to spare. Still, it was nice to meet up with mollymorrison, sorerutenshi and April (my co-author on Shattered Mirror) and much good Japanese food was eaten by all.

Came home from work tonight ready to make up for lost time.

That was, until Chapter 11 reared its ugly head. I spent three hours tonight working on the one chapter. I wrote, re-wrote, added, shifted, deleted . . . In general, this chapter looks only vaguely like it did at the start. Officially, I've added 373 words to Shadows, but there was probably a couple of thousand words written tonight all told.

I'm hoping I get the corrections made on the document at work tomorrow early. I'll be taking in a few chapters with me to try and edit in any slack time I can get. Just need to ask Wish where she's hiding the "Red Pen of Doom" (pat. pend.)
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Words for Today (officially)

373 / 1000 words. 37%

Progress on SG-1: Shadows of the Heart

85570 / 80000 words. 107%

Progress on Shadows of the Heart's revisions

11 / 25 chapters. 44%

Words for 2009

77066 / 365000 words. 21%

Wow, where did the day go. Somehow, writing doesn't seem to take anywhere near as long as editing does. I finished creating the new Chapter 7 today and then edited Chapters 8-10. I've been sitting here at the computer off and on since 1100 today. *sigh* Still, we added 1760 words to Shadows, and finished 4 chapters so life is good.

Part of the problem was I added in some new stuff at the start of the new Chap 7 and wanted to end the chapter on a bit of whimsy, without loosing the flow of the events or making it too silly. I think I spent over an hour working and reworking the last page of the chapter this afternoon. The problem is, it was something that would have easily worked on the TV show, but it just didn't seem like it was working in the prose. I like the compromise I worked out with myself, but we'll see what the editor thinks when she gets it.

I am happier with the flow of the story now and I did catch some errors (had characters changing name in mid-event for one thing). While I'm sure I'm going to have lots of "editorial changes", especially since this is the first time I've worked with this editor, but I'm glad I'm catching the blatant boo-boos now.

We didn't get into the city after all, mores the pity. I'm going to have to make sure my schedule is clear for next year, come hell or high water. This is getting ridiculous.

OK. Have to go into work for a bit tomorrow and then back on the story.

Talk to you later, LJ.
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Words for Today

1760 / 1000 words. 176%

Progress on SG-1: Shadows of the Heart

85197 / 80000 words. 106%

Progress on Shadows of the Heart's revisions

10 / 25 chapters. 40%

Words for 2009

76693 / 365000 words. 21%

This is it. The next-to-last weekend before I have to turn Shadows in to the editor. Trouble is, I was really unfocused tonight. Not necessarily unproductive, but unfocused. Just took longer to get what I did accomplished. I added 2021 words tonight in the new Chapter Seven. I'll try to finish it up tomorrow morning and then edit it on the metro if we wind up going to the Cherry Blossom festival tomorrow afternoon in D.C.

I haven't been to one for years and I'm thinking, if the weather holds out, it might be a lot of fun and a good way to recharge the ol' batteries for the last big push.

Also, I found a new web comic that I really enjoyed tonight. It's called The Dreamland Chronicles. It's a lot of fun and I really enjoy what the creator is doing with this one. I know some people are not fond of 3-D rendering in their comics, but for some reason, this one really works for me. Check it out and see what you think.

Not really much else to say outside of iTunes being stupid tonight. I'm not sure if it and Twitter don't play well together but I'm getting spikes on the CPU which are making iTunes really stutter and drag. Very odd. Didn't do this on the old laptop which had way less RAM. I'm thinking I may need to reload iTunes and see if it clears it out.

*sigh*
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Words for Today

2021 / 1000 words. 202%

Progress on SG-1: Shadows of the Heart

83437 / 80000 words. 104%

Progress on Shadows of the Heart's revisons

6.67 / 25 chapters. 27%

Words for 2009

74933 / 365000 words. 21%

First surprise of the day was I didn't go to work.

Daughter-unit injured her hand last night (shut in a door). Nothing too serious, but it was definitely painful. She and wishweaver didn't think it was a good idea to go to school where it would probably get bumped into repeatedly over the day, but Wish had something due at work, so I stayed home in case the daughter's hand got worse and she needed to go to the doc.

We used the opportunity to finish an assignment she was late on, but the teacher said she'd accept it up to Friday. We sat down, discussed what needed to be done and hammered it out in a few hours. Course, if she'd done it when she was supposed to, we could have spread the pain out a bit, but what's done is done. I know when her next assignment like this is due, so we'll start on it a tad earlier next time.

Along with her typing, I did get some of my own typing done today and tonight. I revised Chapters 4-6 of Shadows, adding another 2093 words to the story. I almost completely rewrote Chapter 6 and tomorrow, I have to add in a new Chapter 7. This should be the last major revision until I reach Chapter 23. Should be. Will keep fingers crossed.

So, if I mentioned a first surprise, that implies a second one, no?

Well, here it is. The Balticon Program Participant's page. What's so surprising about a standard convention page listing who's attending. Well, I always assumed one would know they were a participant at a convention before it appeared on the Internet.

Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the thought. Given everything else, I probably will attend it since it's about 40 miles from my house as the beltway turns. Still, either someone was "watching out for me" after the last few times of not knowing whether I was an attendee until the last minute or else there's another Richard White out there who'll be fighting me for the badge.

I wonder what panels I signed up for? *grin*
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Words for Today

2093 / 1000 words. 209%

Progress on SG-1: Shadows of the Heart

81416 / 80000 words. 102%

Progress on Shadows of the Heart's revisons

6 / 25 chapters. 24%

Words for 2009

72912 / 365000 words. 20%

The editing/re-write of Shadows kicked off tonight. I only made my way through three of the 24 chapters tonight, but with the adding details, deleting superfluous dialog and reorganizing some of my thoughts (as well as some of those of my characters), I wound up adding 984 words. I'm hoping I can devote more time to this tomorrow night. I'd like to get through at least five chapters worth of revisions going into the weekend.

I finished two of my quarterly reports today at work, so they're out of my hair until late June/early July. Huzzah! I have one more deliverable that's due on Friday, but it's short and mostly done already. Now, if I can just get going on a couple of major deliverables I have that aren't tied to production cycles. Ah, the joys of tech writing.

I'm sure I had more things to say earlier, but the brain tends to get fuzzy this time of the morning.

Night, LJ.
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Words for Today

984 / 1000 words. 98%

Progress on SG-1: Shadows of the Heart

79323 / 80000 words. 99%

Words for 2009

70819 / 365000 words. 19%

Been a bit since I posted. Sorry to disappear like that.

a) UCM lost in the NCAA Div II Final Four to the eventual national champions Findley (OH) University 67-65. Congrats to Findley for going 36-0 on the season. Well done.

b) Survived the daughter-unit's 16th birthday party over the weekend. Good part - everyone enjoyed themselves. Best part - over until next year.

c) Found out I did not get accepted into University of Baltimore's MFA program by logging into my student page and finding the message waiting there. Official word is supposed to come sometime this week. Will try and schedule a meeting with the Dept. Chair to see what I can do to improve my chances for next year. If I don't get in then, I'll just pass on the MFA. I'd be 55 if I get in next year. Any older than that and it shifts from being useful to vanity.

Yeah, that one stings a bit. Esp. since I have more pro credits than most of the instructors at the school, but I can't teach at the local JuCo without the Masters. Maybe I'll look into getting a straight MA in English instead.

d) I lost Monday because my old computer was just not enjoying life, so I have a new baby in the house. It's a cute little HP Pavillion dv7-1245dx Entertainment Computer. Let me tell you, that extra 2G of RAM is making this baby scream loading programs compared to the old Toshiba. The Toshiba would have probably been fine with XP on the machine, but Vista and it were NOT friends. Took a little bit to figure out how to move all the stuff from one machine to the other (esp. setting up Thunderbird as my mail client and getting it to talk to a recalcitrant mail server).

e) And speaking of pro cred, as you might note from the title of this blog entry, I have officially hit the end of Shadows this evening. Yes, I know I need to add another chapter and yes, I know it needs editing/rewriting and yes, I know the 13th is still right around the corner.

But, the first draft is done.

I finished Chapter 22 and then wrote a bridge chapter (currently Chapter 13b) which explains some of what happens in Chapter 21. Now to add in the new chapter and modify the chapters I've already identified to accommodate all the rest of the stuff I added in 20, 21 and 22. I'm quite convinced, the new stuff I have to add will push me well over what I needed for this book.

But still, it's nice to say, I'm in editing mode, not writing mode.

Note to self, never get this far behind on a project again or else push for a more reasonable delivery date.

And now, it's off to bed.
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Words for the day

3810 / 1000 words. 381%

Progress on SG-1: Shadows of the Heart

78399 / 80000 words. 98% done!

Words for 2009

69835 / 365000 words. 19%

It's always fun when you get really into the groove in a story and then you realize you've completely wandered away from the pitch you sold the story with. That brings up an interesting dilemma, do I stay with the last couple of chapters which are working real well (considering I'm up against a time crunch), OR do I go back in and revise at least one chapter to get this back on track with the original proposal that the editor approved.

Yes, I know stories wander all the time, but this is a serious wander. Now, it's a good wander and it opens up an interesting side plot that I only thought of once I started writing this thing. If I put some thought to it, I can probably find a way to curve the rabbit path and bring this section of the story mostly back onto the original path.

The question is, how much of my writing time is it going to take to rewrite this chapter.

AAUUGGHH!

Lesson learned? Don't trust your memory when trying to remember what you put in the proposal, White. Go back, read it and refresh your memory.

Tomorrow night is likely to be very busy.
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Words for Today

1564 / 1000 words. 156%

Progress on SG-1: Shadows of the Heart

32042 / 100000 words. 32%

Words for 2009

24488 / 365000 words. 7%

I was down Thursday-Sunday with some annoying bug so no writing done. We've had a death flu going through the office, but luckily I've managed to miss that so far. I just got run down and all I really wanted to do was sleep. So, all that wonderful time not at work and I didn't even get to enjoy it. Shazzbat.

I did manage to watch the Iron Man DVD with the family on Saturday though. We watched the extended/deleted scenes afterward and for once, I really didn't feel they made a mistake editing the movie. Sometimes, like say with the Harry Potter movies, I think some of the deleted scenes might have explained some things for non-fans better. However, with Iron Man, I think the deleted scenes would have changed the entire mood of the movie and not for the better. It's amazing what a few judicious edits/cuts can do to tighten the entire feel of a movie and make it flow . . . and why some movies desperately needed more/better editing.

I am seriously looking forward to the second one. *grin*

No real changes at work. Still hoping my job can get me placed on a new contract before Thanksgiving. I'm not worried about being unemployed (we have lots of work) but I hate being "on the bench". For tech writers, that tends to translate to "Hey, you're not doing anything, why don't you help us write this proposal?" O.K., it's an important thing for a business, but it's just not my cuppa.

However, now that I'm feeling better, I got some writing in this evening. I added 1106 words to Shadows of the Heart. I actually would have had more, but as I started working on the writing tonight, something was bugging me about a scene I wrote on Wednesday. So, I dug out Chapter Two and sure enough, I had re-hashed a scene I'd already written. *grrrrr* So, I had to burn up some writing time deciding how to edit the scene. Luckily, I think what I came up with works better, but I'd have rather added those words to the new stuff, not to replacing what I'd already written.

Oh, the joys of picking up a document five months later and trying to remember what you'd covered or not. Of course, my laptop is having problems connecting to the wireless printer, so I'm going to have to drop what I've written so far onto the thumb drive and take it to one of the other computers and print it from there. Have I mentioned I really hate Vista? Ever since I downloaded SP2, I've had nothing but problems with this laptop when it comes to wireless peripheral devices, Firefox 3 and other non-Windows programs. I think wishweaver and the daughter-unit had the right ideas going to Mac. Trouble is, I haven't finished paying this off yet, so it's not cost-effective for me to dump this quite yet.

When they said we had to suffer for our art, they failed to mention having to put up with Windows and Vista would be the main antagonist. *sigh*

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Words for Today

1106 / 1000 words. 111%

Progress on </i>SG-1: Shadows of the Heart</i>

7534 / 100000 words. 8%

Words for 2008

164329 / 366000 words. 45%

Came home from a boring day at work to find out that wishweaver and the daughter-unit had just gotten home from getting a bite to eat. The D-U decided she was in for the night, so Wish and I took off to go do "something". She joined me while I grabbed a quick bite to eat and then we wandered over to the pet store to get cat "supplies" and then off to Staples. The chair I've been using upstairs was slowly dying (it was a Target special that came with a relatively cheap computer desk), so I got a nice new chair with good back support and she picked up a FM tuner for her iPod, so I can recover mine. *grin*

We weren't quite ready to go home, so we went up to the local mall and wandered around doing some window shopping. We're going to be taking D-U back to the mall tomorrow with us, since we've made an appointment at the Apple store. The D-U has been using my old laptop (and I mean old, I think I got this one back in 1999 or 2000) and it's seen better days. Since she's really getting into art, especially doing art on her computer drawing tablet, Wish and I thought getting her a Mac might be the way to go. We talked to one of the associates and we're leaning toward a 24" iMac for her, but we'll let D-U make the decision (within reason) since she'll be the one using it.

Yes, we're a Windows family for the moment, but the art world belongs to Apple (plus we can install Windows on the Mac if we decide to not upgrade a few of her programs to the Mac versions). I have to admit, I've been tempted by the Macbook Air, but I need to get a lot more use out of my Toshiba before I consider buying any more computer equipment for myself.

Did I mention it was a slow day at work? I took advantage of the situation and wrote 2,372 words today. Of course, they were words for the new version of Harbinger of Darkness, but this new first chapter is insisting on getting written sooner than later. So, since I didn't have anything to add to Shattered Mirror tonight, I transcribed the pages I brought home with me, edited some sentences, added some stuff here and there and generally enjoyed getting to visit with my girl, Raven.

Tomorrow, I hope to get some writing done on Chronicles. I know Wish has college stuff to do and D-U may be playing with her new toy. (She's already talking about what she can do with Garage Band and iMovie, sheesh!) That may be my cue to slip out and hit the local coffee shop for a bit.

Ulterior motives? Me? I'm shocked, shocked you could make such an accusation.

(Your winnings, monsieur. Thank you, Andre.)
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Words for Today

2372 / 1000 words. 237%

Progress on Harbinger of Darkness rewrite

2372 / 110000 words. 2%

Words for 2008

142969 / 366000 words. 39%

Ouch.

I finally finished the first of two web redesigns I have to do at work. Well, actually, I had finished it at 1030 this morning except for one thing . . . I wanted a nice little rollover that would present a drop down menu to three sub-pages. Sounds simple, right?

Wrong

I fought this thing six ways from Friday. I wound up with two java programmers at my desk along with me trying to suss out why it worked perfectly on Firefox and not at all on IE. Now, if we had the code all by itself, it worked perfectly but it wouldn't work in the spaghetti code the previous author had left me. (Turns out it was harvested from someone else who wrote it back in 2002, so I have no clue what modifications have been made since then.) We finally fixed all the miscellaneous bugs, copied the appropriate code to all the other pages and finished the web redesign at 4:48. Yep. Almost six and a half hours to add a little piece of code to show a drop down menu consisting of three links.

Methinks there was a better way to do this, but that's the price one pays for going for the elegant solution instead of the simple one.

Got home and after dinner, I got ready to help edit wishweaver's term paper. Of course, the printer took the opportunity to die on us right then. Needless to say, this was an inopportune time for this to happen, especially with only dedicated computer store near us (CompUSA) having gone out of business a few weeks ago. We decided to chance Staples before moving on to the other box stores and as luck would have it, they were having a $50 rebate if you brought in an old HP printer (which we had) and bought a new HP printer (which we did).

That disaster was averted and Wish's paper was edited post-haste. I'll re-edit it tomorrow night and then she'll be done with term papers for this semester at least. It's a pretty good paper on Identity Theft and she's done a good job with her sources as well as explaining some ways to mitigate the damage if it occurs. I think she'll do pretty well with this.

I was afraid I wouldn't feel like or have time to write, but I managed to slip in a little over an hour's worth. Added 1032 words to Childhood's Tears and am getting ready to transition into Act II. At least, that's going relatively well.

Now, I get to get started on two major writing projects at work that I've been putting off to work on the web site. Yippie-skippie.

Oh, and I'm taking the daughter-unit into school tomorrow, so I get to wake up an hour and a half earlier than I usually do. *wheee!*
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Words for Tonight

1032 / 1000 words. 103%

Progress on Childhood's Tears

28022 / 90000 words. 31%

Words for 2008

90313 / 366000 words. 25%

I went out this afternoon and took the computer with me to the Atlanta Bread Company. Bought a bowl of soup and a large tea and found a place to plug the computer in and settled in for an afternoon of writing. Wound up staying there for two and a half hours working on Chronicles of the Sea Dragon. Got a long way into Chapter Eighteen and added 2569 words to the story. Snagged a drink for wishweaver and a big slice of cheesecake for the daughter-unit on the way out (which they both enjoyed). I was hoping Wish could join me at the ABC, but she's working on a mid-term and she has a term paper due in a few weeks, so she needed to stick around the house to work on the desktop. *sigh* Maybe next time.

Decided to relax a bit afterward, watched some TV with the two ladies of the house and then started working on Chapter Eight of Shattered Mirror. It's going to be interesting, because I've started Chapter Eight well before April has finished Chapter Seven, so I may be describing some things that she hadn't planned on doing in her chapter, but we'll negotiate that out next Tuesday on our usual Skype session. There's a good chance April and her husband will be visiting with us next weekend to help celebrate Wish's birthday. We're wanting to swing through Elicott City, which has a lot of antique/second-hand stores to pick up a few things (or at least look at them) for the new office downstairs and the library as well as getting a chance to work on Shattered Mirror face-to-face.

Still, even knowing I may have to revise what I wrote tonight, I still added 1116 words to that story also. So, all in all, it was a heck of a writing day.

Plus, the expanded proposal for the sekrit project is out the door. Now, all I can do is wait.

Unfortunately, I have to go to work tomorrow. *bleah*
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Words for Today

3675 / 1000 words. 368%

Progress on CSD: Dragon Couchant

76594 / 100000 words. 77%

Progress on Shattered Mirror

1116 / 1000 words. 112%

Words for 2008

68802 / 366000 words. 19%

Progress on Childhood's Tears

6202 / 6000 words. 103%

Progress on Steel on Target

4768 / 5000 words. 95%

Progress on Chronicles of the Sea Dragon

10583 / 8000 words. 132%

Other assorted writing (Pitches for tie-in novel/Writer Beware Blog entry)

5615 / 5615 words. 100%

Total Words for February

27468 / 29000 words. 95%

Total Words for Year-to-date

63535 / 60000 words. 106%
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Well, as we can see, between sick days and working on the proposal for the tie-in novel, I came in a tad behind on my word count for February. Luckily, I built up a bit of a cushion in January and it's keeping me on the plus side for the year, so far.

However, this tells me that I need to kick it up a notch and get back to producing on a regular basis. I saw too many nights with zero words to make myself comfortable. Hopefully, with the proposal almost out the door, I'll get back into my writing rhythm. Besides, I need to get to work on Chapter Seven/Eight for Shattered Mirror this month as well as trying to work on a new short story.

31,000 words or bust in March! Huzzah!

The editor I pitched the sekrit tie-in project to wanted me to give her about a 4000 word outline to further refine what I had pitched earlier. Well, you might think that would be easy given my proclivity to overwrite anything and the fact that I had already written a 2295 word initial draft before editing the hell out of it down to a one-page pitch.

Unfortunately, you would be wrong.

I've spent about three hours working on this thing tonight and I've only added 957 words to it as well as probably pruning about 500 words from the original draft. See, that draft wasn't meant to see the light of day. It was more for me to save "good lines of dialog" that I had thought of when I was working on it as well as ramblings. I tightened the heck out of it when I cut it down to one page, so now I'm going back and forth between the initial draft and the one page draft to ensure I don't forget something as well as finding ways to expand the sub-plots that I've introduced going back to my sample first page.

Still how to expand it without boring the editor with details she may or may not need at this point. See, I was thinking a five to six page outline was probably too much, but now I've got nine pages and still am roughly 800 words short of what the editor was asking for. How far is too far down in the weeds to show I have a good handle on the story? How short of 4000 words can I be without annoying the editor? Because I need to add in one more paragraph that'll tie up one of my sub-plots that was barely mentioned in the pitch and then I think I'm about done and I don't foresee writing an 800 word paragraph. *Yikes!*

But those are questions to consider tomorrow. I'm done for this evening.
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Words for Today

957 / 1000 words. 96%

Progress on SMTI pitch

3252 / 4000 words. 81%

Words for 2008

62995 / 366000 words. 17%

Well, I wanted to get away from the help desk and back into a tech writing position.

I'm currently up to my eyeballs editing Internal Control Documents, revision notes, web pages and wikis. Let's just say, if I'm bored at work now, it's my own fault. To quote Jerry Reed, "we've got a long way to go and a short time to get there."

Still it's coming in handy. Even though I got home late this evening, I read through Childhood's Tears from Chapter One and caught several small errors. Some were minor like using the same name for two different characters. Sure, it could happen, but it might confuse the readers into thinking the two were the same person. Better to just go ahead and give the first one a new name (since he's called by name the least). The other wasn't major as in "stop the book" major but it would have been embarrassing. I have one of the characters mention they don't have a telescope at the start of a chapter and then six pages later, they're pulling out the telescope they didn't have to observe something. Unless I'm giving that character magical abilities I didn't know they had, that's not going to happen. So, I rewrote things a bit, making her wish she had it with her.

Yeah, a minor glitch, but still something I should have caught.

I think I added in the major edits I wanted to before starting tonight's writing session. I added 1677 words to the story tonight and almost finished Chapter Six. With this, I'm almost 100% back on track with the story outline and now it's time to see how long it takes for me to jump the tracks again. That's the joys of these outlines versus the ones I have to do for media tie-in work.

With those, I have to stay pretty close to the pitch and chapter breakdowns I do before I start writing because that's what the licensor has already approved. If I wander too far afield, then he has to really go over the manuscript with a fine-toothed comb wondering what I've done with their property. It's just easier to stick to the script and not ad lib with media work.

With my own story, I can ad lib to my heart's content. Now, as you've probably guessed, I'm a little particular when it comes to outlining and world building, (all right, I'm a little anal about it), but it helps me keep from chasing too many rabbits while I'm working. Still, sometimes the characters have a different story to tell me than where I thought they were headed. It's best to follow their suggestions rather than giving them a lobotomy to force them back onto the path (ala Hermione Granger in the last two HP books).

Sometimes rabbit trails lead to diamond mines. Sometimes they lead to rabbit poop.

But if you don't follow them, you'll never know.

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Words for Today

1677 / 1000 words. 168%

Progress on Childhood's Tears

21849 / 90000 words. 24%

Words for 2008

62038 / 366000 words. 17%

Yep, it's amazing how much writing you can get done if you turn off the TV and just go someplace quiet. Also, staring to write before 2200 hours is probably a good thing also. Now, normally, I don't do a lot of writing before 2130-2200 because I'm waiting for the family to go to sleep before I get started. However, since wishweaver has a cold, she decided to call it an early evening. I snagged my laptop and made a makeshift computer work station upstairs (old shelf and a desk chair), curled up in bed and started typing away.

(Yes, the upstairs is still in a state of flux with the remodeling, so all proper flat surfaces are currently covered with books waiting for the library to be built downstairs. MacGyver would be proud of my set up in here. *grin*)

Worked on Childhood's Tears tonight and hammered out 1132 words. I'm starting to drift back to my original outline for this story with this chapter, so we'll see what happens. Maybe it's because I'm working on four stories right now, but I'm noticing all of my stories are tending to drift away from the original plots. Not hideously so, but there's definite story creep going on. Well, except for Steel on Target, there never was an outline for that one.

Still, I'm making progress (or April and I are) and each story is shaping up pretty well so far. Course, we'll see how well they shape up once I start trying to get an agent for one of them. As soon as I finish one of them, probably Chronicles: Dragon Couchant, I'll start the rewrite to Harbinger. I should finish up one of the others about the time I'm done with that and start the CSD rewrites. This way I'll have stuff being written and rewritten/edited through the rest of the year. This way, I should have several different stories ready when I start querying.

But, right now, I need to get a good night's sleep. Running on four to five hours a night on average these past four weeks is starting to catch up with me. That's why I'm starting a little earlier on the writing - so I can finish earlier and sleep longer.

Yeah, even writers need sleep now and then. Go figure.

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Words for Today

1132 / 1000 words. 113%

Progress on Childhood's Tears

20172 / 90000 words. 22%

Words for 2008

60361 / 366000 words. 16%

. . .is done.

I need to give it a little rest and then review it against the original. I'm a little worried. Somehow cutting it down from four pages to one, I feel like I've cut some of the quirky, unique stuff about the story. I'm a little more used to having at least two pages to write a proposal, but if they want one page, then they're getting one page.

So, I did get some writing done last night (which will be totaled up with Monday's work). Tonight, I decided to concentrate on the proposal and one page comes to 647 words.

Now to let it marinade a bit.

On a different note, we saw The Spiderwick Chronicles today. We really enjoyed the movie and I have to say, there are a number of movies they're advertising that look really interesting (Speed Racer, Indiana Jones and Horton Hears a Who). Kung Fu Panda? Well, the jury's still out there. *grin*
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Words for Today

647 / 1000 words. 65%

Words on Proposal

647 / 647 words. 100%

Words for 2008

53277 / 366000 words. 15%

I have to admit, this is a very strange circumstance I find myself in.

I received an invitation to pitch for a media tie-in series that would be a great deal of fun. Well, at work today, I was talking with the other SF junkies in the office and as I was talking to them, I came up with the opening to the story. So, on my lunch break I roughed it out and then rewrote it tonight at home and had a couple of friends of mine who're big SF fans read it (it's only 500 words), and they liked it. Heck, even wishweaver liked it.

So now, I have the pitch, but no plot. I know exactly how I want the story to open . . . if I just knew what the story was. OK, I have some ideas . . . but nothing has congealed quite yet. I need to review a few more episodes to be certain I have all my facts straight and then I need to check the existing novels out there to ensure I'm not using some elements that have already been done to death. I figure I'll try to work up a half dozen plot paragraphs and see if two or three interest me enough to actually pitch them.

But, by God, I know what the first two pages of the story look like. *grin*

Backwards much, White?

Talked with April this evening, but between family illnesses and weirdness at work, she didn't get much of a chance to work on Shattered Mirror this past week. We spent most our Skype session reviewing SF/F on television and how when I was younger, SF was more action-adventure with some drama or comedy mixed in. Now, too many of the SF shows are trying to be edgy dramas . . . but that could be because shows get pulled so quickly these days, they never get the chance to build an audience. If ST:TNG was debuting these days, it probably would have been canceled given its first season. It didn't really hit its stride until mid-season two (IMHO). These days, it would have been canceled after eight episodes and another "Dancing with the Stars" clone would have replaced it. *bleah*

I think in some ways, animated shows (whether American or Japanese) aren't embarrassed that they're genre shows. They don't have to be "everything for everyone" or else "high drama". Action-Adventure isn't a dirty word in the animated world. Live SF/F on the small screen seems to take itself way too seriously these days.

*mutter, mutter*

Oh, I did get some writing done, btw. As I mentioned, the opening to the pitch came in at 508 words and then I added 1333 words to Childhood's Tears tonight. This story is driving me crazy. Yes, I had an outline, for all the good its doing me. Still, I know where I'm going and what I'm going to do when I get there, it's just taking a detour getting there on me.

Sorta like my pitch/plot.

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Words for Today

1841 / 1000 words. 184%

Progress on Childhood's Tears

16980 / 90000 words. 19%

Other related writing

508 / 508 words. 100%

Words for 2008

42865 / 366000 words. 12% done!

Progress on Childhood's Tears

8233 / 9000 words. 91%

Progress on Steel on Target

13096 / 11000 words. 119% done!

Progress on Chronicles of the Sea Dragon

9132 / 7000 words. 130% done!


Progress on Shattered Mirror

5071 / 2000 words. 254%


Other assorted writing

783 / 783 words. 100%

Total Words for January

36270 / 31000 words. 117% done!

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All in all, not a bad start to the month. Took a few days off (like last night when I came home from work and fell asleep. Woke up only long enough to eat and go from the couch to the bed.), but I'm happy with the progress on all the stories. Now, it's time to hit February running.

I reviewed what I had written for Chapter Five of Steel on Target last week and I wasn't quite satisfied with it. It needed a bit more description and the ending was a tad too pat. So, going against my regular advice to myself, I decided this chapter could use a little editing.

Well, as many have noted, editing is a tad slower than writing. Still, I added 970 words and brought the chapter to a more satisfying close. I've set up Chapter Six pretty well, I think . . . although I'm beginning to have doubts. This is reading like a chapter that should be occurring much later in the book. I'm thinking I'm going to try writing a different Chapter Five tomorrow night and saving this chapter to set up the climax of the book. I'll need to steal a scene out of this one, but it'll be a small incision (the incident still needs to happen now).

I guess this is one of the drawbacks of pantsing. I'm much more comfortable with outlines and plots but I'm trying to write Steel on Target as the story comes to me. Unfortunately, it appears the ending came to me before the middle of the story. *sigh*

Back to the ol' drawing board.

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Words for Today

970 / 1000 words. 97%

Progress on Steel on Target

19641 / 90000 words. 22%

Words for 2008

36270 / 366000 words. 10%

Well, let's just say I made good use of the holiday today.

Earlier this morning, I worked to finish the revisions on Chapter Six on Shattered Mirror before we went to visit April. It took a little longer than I had thought, but in the end, 3,147 better words were added to the story.

wishweaver, the daughter-unit and I went to see April and her family. For the first part of the visit, April and I reviewed the updated chapter and then worked on the outline and time line for Chapter Seven. We also added some more portions to the story bible, helping define what the antagonists, protagonists and a secondary group were doing that was driving some of the action as well as more back story for some of the characters. We also determined the rough dates when the story was taking place, a detail that hadn't been needed up until now, but suddenly became a plot point. I loves me some good brainstorming, yes I do. *grin*

Afterward, we enjoyed a nice dinner and watched a very silly movie, Help, starring the Beatles. I think April's husband Mark and I enjoyed it more than anyone else in the house, but so it goes.

I also was interviewed by April's stepson for a class project. He needed to interview a tech writer and I was the only one he knew. I was happy to help out with the assignment, but it was strange. I've been interviewed before but as a Student Senator back in college or as a comic writer, never as a tech writer before.

I also got some writing done on Childhood's Tears tonight after we got home. Not a whole lot, 567 words, but at least I have things moving on the story. It should be pretty easy to get something done tomorrow night (provided I don't spend too much time watching my war shows).

But, first I have to survive work tomorrow. *sigh* It was nice playing "full-time writer" for a day anyway.

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Words for Today

3714 / 1000 words. 371%

Progress on Childhood's Tears

12859 / 90000 words. 14%

Words for 2008

26300 / 366000 words. 7%

First off, the good news. They hired my replacement at work! Hopefully, we'll get this young lady trained up quickly and I'll be able to go full-time on the new job soon. Of course, I found out about this in a roundabout way, but who cares? It's a win-win all the way around. Huzzah!

Talk about a load off of my shoulders!

I had a great time working with April tonight on Shattered Mirror. Boy, did she have some serious edits on Chapter Six, but I like what she's done. When we talked last week, we said we wanted to pull some of the back story out of this chapter and save it for Chapters Eight/Nine and we also wanted to ensure both of our protagonists really shared the spotlight in this chapter. In my initial draft, one of them (the POV character) was pretty dominant and the other was hanging back. With April's rewrites, the POV character still has the lion's share of screen time but her partner makes her presence felt also.

I'm hoping I can get the chapter rewrites done on Friday/Saturday. We're getting together over President's Day for another face-to-face writing session and dinner at her place. (Sunday will still be a Chronicles day.)

Tonight, as with most Tuesdays, it took me a while to shift out of Shattered Mirror mode to start working on Childhood's Tears. Still, after a couple of false starts, I got started on Chapter Four, which is going to have a distinctly different feel than Chapter Three. In Chapter Three, I got to play Rowena off of one of the major baddies, who's very sophisticated, very educated and very evil. This chapter, we meet the other major opponent. However, unlike the first antagonist, this man only believes he's sophisticated and educated. Still, he is very evil also, just in different ways. *cue spooky music*

It's fun to watch characters develop their own sense of personality as the writing comes together.

*smile*
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Words for Today

1079 / 1000 words. 108%

Progress on Childhood's Tears

12292 / 90000 words. 14%

Words for 2008

18950 / 366000 words. 5%

I was thinking writing this evening would be easy. After all, wishweaver was in class tonight and I put together a good deal of writing last Thursday. What could go wrong?

Well, first off, I forgot I'd arranged with April to get together every Tuesday via Skype to discuss Shattered Mirror. As I logged on to write, there was a message from her waiting for me. So I buzzed her and was reminded about the appointment. Yikes! I quickly called up the latest chapter and we discussed the edits we wanted to make on it until 2030.

Then, I noted Tuesday night is my one night that I really want to watch TV. American Life TV runs their World War II shows tonight. So, I was torn between writing and watching The Rat Patrol, Combat!, and Twelve O'Clock High. Luckily for me, the episode of Combat was one I had on DVD, so I was able to get quite a bit of writing done during that show. I sort of pecked a few things out when the other shows were on, but I still managed to get 1063 words added to Childhood's Tears.

So, I'm going to have to rethink the schedule a bit. Perhaps I'll have to schedule some time before work or at lunch on Tuesdays to make up for my lack of enthusiasm while my shows are on.

Yeah, it's a little embarrassing after going on and on about trying to write every night and then being tempted not to just eight days in. *sigh*

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Words for Today

1063 / 1000 words. 106%

Progress on Childhood's Tears

9728 / 90000 words. 11%

Words for 2008

9725 / 366000 words. 3%