Did no writing today and felt no guilt.

Did feel weird not writing but I can live with it.

Did put in a request for a guest pass for Dragon*Con.

Did talk to someone about being at Marcon next year. I think that's definitely going to happen.

Worked on basic ideas for a proposal for a book.

Sent ideas to daytonward so he can shoot me down if I'm too far off base with ideas.

Talked to ghostbearmw about doing some short stories for Battlecorps.

So, no writing but lots of plotting. *grin* Amazing what you can accomplish with a little time on Twitter.

OH, and did spend evening visiting with family and running around the mall so daughter could spend gift cards she's been saving up. Good time was had by all.

Tomorrow, reading, watching a DVD and relaxing is on schedule. Writing officially resumes on 27 Apr 2009 unless something very strange comes up between now and then.

Allergy attack.

Eyes red and itchy.

Hit right as I was ready to start writing for the night.

Kept going. Added 1038 words to Childhood's Tears.

Heard back from editor for sekrit project this evening. It would help if I had sent 2008's biography instead of 2007's. Luckily, she's a good sport. Right one sent this evening.

Received schedule for the Maryland Writer's Conference, where I'm presenting representing Writer Beware. Will post more when I can see without watery eyes.

Same with March stats.

Time to take Benadryl and call it a night.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Words for Today

1038 / 1000 words. 104%

Progress on Childhood's Tears

30088 / 90000 words. 33%

Words for 2008

95493 / 366000 words. 26%

Didn't get any writing done this weekend, well nothing on paper anyway.

My collaborator, April and her husband, Mark, came up this weekend, which was a darn good excuse to pull the house together on Friday. Unfortunately, that took more time than I thought it would, but it was time well spent. They came up on Saturday and we went to Elicott City to go shopping. Old Elicott City has a ton of antique stores and specialty shops, which makes it a fun place to windowshop.

One thing in particular I'm wanting to do is set up our new office downstairs in an oriental theme. The interior designer we worked with suggested it when he picked out the paint scheme; said it would be a relaxing motif for working/writing. We only hit a few of the antique stores (we started with the largest one and since Mark had never been there, we spent a couple of hours just there checking out all the various rooms (it's an antique mall over four stories). We did find a nice set of four Japanese screen prints and the dealer gave us a great deal since we bought the set. We're going to have to go back again, though, since we didn't find any other furniture that would compliment what we're already going to be moving into the room.

They had to go back early (unexpected commitments meant they had to be home for Sunday morning), so April and I only had about a half-hour to work on the story. We were working on one of the themes of the book when a plot twist occurred to us . . . one that will affect both sides of the on-going war as well as our main characters. It was such a revelation and it came about from a poem she's writing that the antagonists have regarding the situation. She read her current draft of the poem and *bam*, the answer to one of the questions I still had about the story was right there.

Man, I love "eureka" moments.

I was going to try and write yesterday evening, but we had a friend drop over for a visit. We had a good time and wow, was service fast at dinner, but by the time we wrapped up, I was ready to call it a night.

*bad writer, bad writer*

So . . .

to get to the subject of the title of this blog . . .

I thought I'd check my e-mail this morning before heading to work and there was a letter from the editor for the project I submitted to a while ago. She likes the proposal and needs a bio to submit with it to the licensor. Now, it'll be up to them, but if they like it, I'll be getting a contract soon (at which time, I'll stop being so coy and let you know what I'm doing for real). The manuscript will be due sometime in early 2009, (which sounds like a long time and I intend to be done well before then).

OK, I'm guardedly excited right now.

OH, hell, I'm ecstatic right night, but I'm trying to not get too carried away until I actually sign the contract.

But, I'll be grinning all day.

I wonder, do authors with many books under their belt still get goofy grins whenever they hear one of their projects has been accepted?

The title pretty much describes my day at work.

I finished off the last two little assignments I had as well as making up the weekly status reports that didn't get turned in on Friday because I was here babysitting the appraiser. Poured myself a second cup of coffee and prepared to hit one of the big assignments I have staring at me.

And that's when my friend, Mr. Microsoft Word, began acting up on me again.

First off, the headings styles were acting up. I went into the style formatting, set up the numbering system exactly the way I wanted it and what happened? Word numbered my headings the way IT wanted them to look. It didn't matter if I set the numbers, if I went in and told it to restart the numbering, if I went in and manually set the numbers . . . Microsoft Word blithely ignored me and did whatever the hell it wanted.

But, that was only the beginning of its tricks.

After I finally got the headings almost exactly where I wanted them . . . I got the infamous, "Microsoft Word has encountered an unexpected error and will be shutting down" box.

Not once.

Not twice.

Six times . . .

. . . in a row.

I finally had to shut down my machine and restart it, hoping it would clear whatever was making the persnickety Word program so upset. At least when it came back up, I got a little smarter. I grabbed the document that I did have set up the way I wanted and carefully cut and pasted the words from the body of the offending document into the clean version and then just re-wrote the heading titles by hand rather than importing any bad formatting into the good document.

So far, so good.

But by then, I had squandered a lot of the afternoon and damn near all my desire to work on this particular document any more today. I have a meeting with the team leader about this tomorrow and hopefully when I return to my desk, armed with clearer guidance (I hope), I'll give it another try. However, if it keeps screwing up, I'll probably have to call our IT guys and see if they have any suggestions besides mine, which would be to wipe Word off my machine and give me a fresh reload. (I have to use Word, it's on the baseline and the government is unlikely to spring for a Word Perfect X3 license to make a lowly contractor happy.)

Still, even with the frustrations at work today, I still was in a better mood tonight than I have been in a while. Spent some good time with my family and then wandered upstairs to write. I may have piddled around on some blogs and web sites longer than I needed to, but I still added 1027 words to Childhood's Tears tonight. I'm happy with what I wrote and I hope to add quite a bit more tomorrow night.

And not a crash in sight. Thank you, WP X3. *grin*

Oh, and I also worked on a pitch for a possible ghostwriting project. I'm not adding the words tonight since they're still in pencil and not on the computer, but hopefully I'll be typing them up tomorrow night before my regular writing session. And I do need to start to work on my slides for the Writer Beware presentation I'm giving to the Maryland Writer's Association in May.

*wibble*
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Words for Today

1027 / 1000 words. 103%

Progress on Childhood's Tears

25826 / 90000 words. 29%

Words for 2008

81991 / 366000 words. 22%

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%

Let's see, I spent eight hours today editing three documents, to include one that's taken me three hours just to attempt to fix the formatting errors another office introduced into a seventy-two page document. So, what do I do when I get home tonight?

Take a quick nap and then start editing my sekrit project outline, of course.

So, three hours later and a lot of red marks all over the pages, I've finished typing in all the edits I could think of and ran my initial spelling and grammar checks on the proposal. I think I'm ready for wishweaver to apply the Red Pen of Doom(pat.pend.) so she can catch all the niggily little things that I missed. Hopefully, after getting her edits back, I'll be ready to fire this off to the editor. It's still a little light, but I think 3792 words is close enough and I did go back in and add in another subplot just for fun.

Needless to say, I'm pretty much brain-dead right now. Yeah, I realize I only got to 540 new words rather than the thousand I had been hoping for, but the fact that I'm still coherent is probably fragile at best.

Bleah.
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Words for Today

540 / 1000 words. 54%

Progress on tie-in outline/proposal

3792 / 4000 words. 95%

Words for 2008

63535 / 366000 words. 17%

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.
________________________________________________________________________________________________

Words for Today

957 / 1000 words. 96%

Progress on SMTI pitch

3252 / 4000 words. 81%

Words for 2008

62995 / 366000 words. 17%

Just a quick post before I head out the door to work . . .

Editor liked my pitch for sekrit tie-in project.

Asked to see more detailed outline.

Nerves are officially on overdrive.

Sent editor a note asking for clarification on one point.

Will attempt to concentrate at work instead of daydreaming about project.

Film at 11

*grin*

Submitted my one page pitch and two pages of writing samples for sekrit tie-in novel #1.

Received read receipt that the editor has at least opened the e-mail.

Now, the fingernail chewing begins in earnest.

Nah.

Actually, I have to get a short story out the door to F&SF and get back to work on my regular novels.

. . .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%

Of course, it's not in presentable shape. It's got way too much information to dump on an editor and it's still rough. There's going to be a lot of chopping and trimming and refining and all the other stuff that goes into making a final draft.

Tonight I added 680 words to bring in the first draft at 2295 words. Not quite the "one page proposal" they're looking for. *grin* Still, you can't edit a piece of blank paper, so by having the first draft done, now I can play editor (which I do professionally . . . just not with fiction). Then again, I edit technical documents for the government. Can you think of anything more fictional than that? *grin*

Tomorrow night, I'll be at Farpoint visiting with my friends and Saturday I'll be joining kradical and others for the Quality of Leadership panel. Sunday, I'll be going to see The Spiderwick Chronicles and Monday, I'm going to try and get in as much writing as I can. So, the word meter may not be moving quite as much as they have been earlier, but we'll try to pick up steam again next week.

So, all I have to do is survive work tomorrow and then it's convention time!
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Words for Today

680 / 1000 words. 68%

Progress on Proposal

680 / 680 words. 100%

Words for 2008

52143 / 366000 words. 14%

Well, there are deadlines and then there are deadlines.

I got back to work today to find out we have a new release coming out on Tuesday. So, that means I have to write the release notes AND update the user's manual between now and then. The other project needs me to update their internal web site and wiki as soon as possible and then start working on updating their training documents and slides.

Well, I didn't want to be bored.

I also worked on the tie-in proposal tonight. As I figured, my initial pass on the story is well over what I need, but I've always thought it's easier to edit down than pad out. I added another 1076 words to version one of the proposal, but I'm almost done. I've just reached the climactic scene, so I need to write it and the wrap up tomorrow, before I start editing. I'm really enjoying the story as it's coming together. I just have to hope the editor does also.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Words for Today

1076 / 1000 words. 108%

Progress on proposal

1076 / 1076 words. 100%

Words for 2008

51463 / 366000 words. 14%

Since I stayed home today, I took advantage of the situation by doing my research for the tie-in project. Some of my original ideas I had to frag and others popped into my mind while I was reading some of the episode transcripts.

Sometimes, that's the joy of tie-in work. A show that only has been on the air for a few seasons doesn't have a lot of back story and you have a little more freedom when it comes time to develop stories and either "fill in the blanks" between stories or project out beyond where the story is now. However, when dealing with a long-running franchise, like say Star Trek, then there are a ton of things that have to be considered when developing the storyline . . . and I don't mean just what's been on screen. Series like Star Trek or Battletech have tons of novels and anthologies out there also that have to be considered. Trying to find an original take on the subject can be a tricky thing.

But when it works, it's a wonderful thing to watch come together.

So, tonight I sat down and started putting together my proposal. I know the initial proposal is going to be way long, but it's giving me the opportunity to work out all the kinks in my mind. Then it's a matter of trimming away the fat and presenting a nice clean proposal to the editor. I think I'm getting better at this proposal thing . . . the last four I've submitted have gotten to the second level and I'm two for four there. With a little bit of luck, I'll be three for five. *grin*

So, there were words tonight, 539 to be exact. Not quite the thousand I was hoping for today, but writing pitches is a tad more labor intensive than writing dialog and scenes. And, hey, words is words. *grin*

*** Personal note: Just went over 50,000 words for 2008. Already passed the halfway point to reach the total number of words written in 2007. Huzzah! ***
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Words for Today

539 / 1000 words. 54%

Other Projects

539 / 539 words. 100%

Words for 2008

50387 / 366000 words. 14%

I'm not quite sure what's going on with me these days. Maybe I'm over-extending myself during the weekdays, but I really crashed this weekend.

Now, Friday night, I intentionally did not write. I took off from work early to enjoy the beautiful day, got wishweaver and went and did "stuff". Just "stuff", got the oil changed in my old truck, visited the bank, hit the local Costco and picked up some really good Teriyaki Chicken Fillets that we had for dinner and then threw on a new (to me) video game (Xenogenesis 1). Yes, I can tell it's a little older and the voices don't match up with the mouth movements very well, (sorta gave me an old Hong Kong movie vibe), but the story looks interesting and if I can get past this current section, I think the game may be pretty fun. (lots of back story and set-up to get through at first.)

Saturday was another thing all together. It was a day of nothing quite going right and for some reason, I was tired and cranky. We did stuff though. Went to the local mall so the daughter-unit could get some new clothes, looked at a few things for wishweaver and took in the local video store so I could get some ideas what I wanted to pick up with the next paycheck. However, while I was waiting for them on a bench, I started falling asleep. I hadn't been up that late Friday evening, so I couldn't explain it. But, by the time we got home, I was really tired. I walked in, sat down on the couch and fell asleep at 3:45. I didn't wake up until 11:45 and then went back to sleep at 1:30 and slept in until 10 this morning.

I don't know if I had a bug or what, but I certainly felt better this morning than I had all day Saturday. Sigh. So, today was spent folding laundry, watching Emergency with Wish or working on Chronicles of the Sea Dragon. It was a relaxing day but still pretty productive. I typed 3098 words today to make up for the lack of production on Friday and Saturday.

I need to finish working on my next blog entry for Writer Beware's blog. I'm working on doing something on tie-in writng/work for hire and discussing the pros and cons of this particular writing model. I'm going to try and bounce a few ideas off of some of my other tie-in writers to get their takes on the article before I post it.

Speaking of tie-in writing, I think I have a pretty good grasp on what I want to write now. It's just a matter of finishing up my research and trying to tie everything up into a neat little one-page proposal. Which of course, is my bane, being naturally long-winded. *grin*

But, I need to get a load out of the dryer and get it upstairs before I go to bed. Night, LJ.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Words for Today

3098 / 1000 words. 310%

Progress on CSD: Dragon Couchant

69592 / 100000 words. 70%

Words for 2008

48439 / 366000 words. 13%

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.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________

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!

Well, it's a good kind of problem, I guess.

I guess I was on more of a roll on Chronicles last night than I thought. Tonight was supposed to be dedicated to Childhood's Tears, but without even thinking, I opened up Chronicles and by the time I realized I'd screwed up the schedule, it was a tad too late.

Now, I'm pretty happy with where I reached tonight and the word count was pretty good (although I do admit a certain amount of distraction made the writing take longer than I had hoped). I'll just have to try and write a little more tomorrow on CT to make up for it.

I also have an invite to pitch for a new tie-in line. Time to borrow a few DVDs from a friend and get to researching. I have a pretty good idea what I want to pitch, but I want to do a little more research to ensure I have back-story continuity as well as a good pitch. I'm excited to get this opportunity but I'm not holding my breath. There are some other darn good writers pitching for the same property and if I lose out, I know I'm losing out to some people I'd enjoy reading.

Time to call it a night though. Keep your fingers crossed, LJ-land.

________________________________________________________________________________________________

Words for tonight

1103 / 1000 words. 110%

Progress on CSD: Dragon Couchant

67597 / 100000 words. 68%

Words for 2008

41024 / 366000 words. 11%

Well, I took a page from rkvincent's Theory of Chapter One creation and read through the chapter one more time, marked a few phrases that I thought I had done well and then closed the notebook and rewrote the chapter from scratch. Once I had done that, I went back to my notes to insert the few phrases I wanted to be sure were in the chapter and then edited it one more time.

I thought I had a pretty good chapter. Then wishweaver got ahold of it with herRed Pen of Doom. By the time I got it back last night, I was having problems reading what I had written through all the scribble marks, lines, and scratch-outs . . . which is a good thing. A lot of people owe Wish for taking the bullet for them before my prose (deathless or deadly . . . I'm never quite sure which) ever sees the light of day.

I slept on her corrections and then did the final rewrite this morning. Now, did I take all of her suggestions? Well . . . no, but that's because it's my story and my style of writing, not because she didn't have good suggestions. We just write with a different tone of voice sometimes. However, she did tighten up a few things and caught a few goofs I'd made for which I am very grateful. It's a lot of fun to be able to work on writing projects together. *grin*

Now, I just need to finish typing up the corrections I've red-lined in the Chapter Breakdowns and then we'll be mailing this off to the publisher this evening. Inshahalla.

Well, the weekend draws to a close with a finality of a prison door slamming behind me. However, I did get quite a bit accomplished. The 1500 word sample chapter is done as are the chapter breakdowns. Both have been edited a few times, things added, things deleted, things rearranged.

Still it's not quite ready yet.

I have tomorrow and Tuesday to make final cuts and decisions because it needs to go out before I go to bed on Tuesday. (It's due at the end of the month, but since we're four hours behind the U.K., I'd rather send it out Tuesday night than try to remember to mail it by 1300 on Wednesday. I always figure it's the end of "their" working day not the end of "ours" for deadlines.)

I'm pretty happy with what I have, but I want to sleep on it tonight and then give it a good scrubbing later. Yes, I'm nervous about this. I really have invested a lot of sweat and thought into making this a damn good story and I'm hoping this catches the publisher's eye. I'm thinking this could be my "bridge" between doing media tie-in work and original work since it'll mostly be my writing (even if it is work-for-hire).

Yes, I know good writing trumps good credits, but I'm thinking, a little of both can't hurt.

_____________________________________________________________________________

I didn't get much done on Saturday though, sigh. First, I took the daughter-unit to vision therapy, then we grabbed lunch en route to see Mike the Color Guy as wishweaver dubbed him in her blog entry. Then I had to run home to pick up various and sundry items to match paint chips against and then run back down to Beltsville. We snagged dinner early on the way back. It was probably a good thing also, since I started feeling poorly at dinner and took about a four-hour nap when we got home, effectively wiping out the rest of the evening.

Bleah.

However, we have picked out carpet and paint and the progress on the house continues apace. They're supposed to install the new deep sink next to the washer/dryer and then prep things for the new water heater we need. Once that's done, they'll finish off the storage area and then we wait for the inspectors to examine everything so far and then push on.

At least the electrician is almost done downstairs. All the recessed lights are in and it's darn bright down there just using 40 watt bulbs. Can't wait to see how it goes with the new lighting on the main floor.

Oh well. Time for bed. Have to been in at work AT 0700 tomorrow and Tuesday. Ick.

Spent today making the first series of edits to the chapter breakdowns. I think they're still too long, but I'm going to keep this set as the rough outline for the book. I think with some more judicious cuts and some more tightening, I can knock another 500 words out of the current breakdown (now sitting at 3,300+ words).

Still, the publisher wants one or two paragraphs per chapter, so I don't want to get it too sparse either.

Gah!

Tomorrow, I will start the first chapter (or the first 1500 words of the first chapter. As it stands, I'm proposing 20 chapters and an epilogue. That means each chapter will average 4,300 words. There's no way to write the entire first chapter for this book in only 1500 words, but I can write the first scene in 1500 words.

(rubs hands together) I love it when a plan comes together.

Now, where did I leave the "Red Pen of Doom"?

I've reached the halfway point in the chapter breakdowns.

I'm finally on a roll with the story* and I think I can finish the breakdowns by Friday, giving me Sat/Sun to clean them up and turn them into actual English instead of the long, rambling, and detail-heavy things they are now. Although I'll be keeping this version as I'm writing a lot of notes to myself in this version.

If I can be done with the CBs by Sunday, that gives me from the 22nd to the 31st to write the sample chapter. Since they only want 1500 words, they'll be getting the first half of the first chapter. Anyone who knows me knows I don't write chapters that short, but I have a natural break point in the first chapter, so it'll be a complete scene. No, it shouldn't take me 10 days to write 1500 words, but it will take me a while to write, edit, rewrite, edit and massage it into shape. I'd rather leave plenty of time to review the chapter and the CBs before I actually submit them.

Still, I feel like I've hit a milestone with this book and it's starting to feel like a real book now.

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* - It's taken a bit to get "into" the story and feel where the natural breaks in the story are. Now, how close the story will stay to the CBs is anyone's guess. *grin* Stories do tend to wander a bit if left to their own devices.

Well, I've scrubbed it, wishweaver scrubbed it, two beta readers from Absolute Write scrubbed it and I'm sick and tired of it.

So, for better or for worse, the synopsis/pitch for The Dark Shore is en route to the publisher in the United Kingdom. I think it's a pretty strong pitch, but then again, I'm prejudiced toward myself on matters like this.

Do I think I'll get picked up? Who knows? I know one other writer team that's going for this and they're pretty darn good, so I know I've got good competition. But I wouldn't have it any other way. If I'm going to make the cut, I want it to be because I had the better story, not because there weren't enough good pitches.

Now, time to relax and return to the Chronicles. I can smell the salt in the wind and that tells me there's a crew of privateers waiting (somewhat impatiently) for me to get back to writing about them.

April made it up today and we spent quite a bit of time today reviewing where we were with the story and where we wanted it to go. It's interesting, we've got different styles of writing, but I feel we're playing to each other's strengths when we work on this story. We went over where she was currently with the rewrite of Chapter Five and my initial beginning for Chapter Six. We established the time line for the chapter to ensure events in Chapter Five and Six work together.

I'll need to go back through the chapter and move some stuff around to work with the new time lines, but that's the joy of collaboration. I think it's going to be a stronger chapter for all the work we did on it though.

Also, April and dzeytoun spent some time working on Steel on Target with me and we went over an original story that April is working on.

I also added about fifty books to the Library Thing that I snurtched from klingonguy and michaelschuster. That's just about got all the books that are downstairs. Now, I need to grab the ol' CueCat and hit the library upstairs. Right now, we're logging wishweaver's books and mine together. In all honesty, it's all one big library anyway, since we share a lot of book interests in common.

So, no typing but lots of story- or book-related work today. Definitely fired up to get some work done tomorrow!

Been a busy day.

Stomach has been less than cooperative.

Stayed up way too late last few nights (damn insomnia).

So, tonight, I went to DuClaw's and picked up a growler of my favorite of their seasonal beers (Sawtooth - a Belgian wheat), watched the Chiefs pre-season game from my couch and read a story bible for a shared-world series. I think there's a number of things to hang a hook or two from in this bible and I have until 07 Sept. to get my pitches pulled together and polished up.

So, while I wasn't typing, I was plotting. *cues evil music*

Sent some questions to the publisher and am waiting for clarification on a few points and then I'll be hitting the butcher paper to get the brainstorming session together.

Tomorrow night, I need to put serious thought to Shattered Mirror since April is coming up for a writing session on Saturday.

Well, got the daughter-unit to school and wishweaver and I headed to Mad City Coffee. She's a bit under the weather so she's home today from work. We grabbed something to drink while we waited and I picked up the intrepid notebook and began writing.

Sketched out nine chapters for The Silver March to take it to fifteen total, so far. Not quite certain I have enough conflict. External yes (enemy armies are moving, ambushes are being set, diplomats are conniving), but I think I need some more internal to the unit conflict. I think I need another powerful figure in the unit to provide a foil to my mercenary commander. I'm not certain whether it should be someone who's vying for the leadership of the unit or whether it should be someone who's foisted off on them by the noble they're working for. Luckily, this project is several down on the queue, so there's time to figure stuff out. (Listen to me, like there's anything in the "queue" officially. It's in the queue of stories I want to write, not stories under contract, of which, there are none currently.)

Also, while at Mad City, I worked up four more possible Doctor Who pitches for the 2009 Anthology. The editor pushed the deadline back, so even though I think I've sent in a pretty good pitch, I've got a few others here that might be fun to examine. However all four will require a bit of historical research. Oh, darn. (insert faux disappointment here).

I'm currently at Paneras and have just opened up Dragon Couchant. Time to get to work on day one of being a full-time writer.

Caje, Littlejohn, Kirby. Cover me, I'm goin' in.

Been working on Dragon Couchant also, this weekend. I was getting stuff done, but I was usually too tired to post anything to the LJ, so we're catching up three days worth of writing tonight as I finished up Chapter 11.

Words for the past three days

3,288 / 3,000 (109.6%)

Progress on Dragon Couchant

49,080 / 100,000 (49.1%)

Words for the year

54,620 / 365,000 (15.0%)

As I said in the last entry, I'll be home all week next week. I'm hoping to get some writing done in the morning while I'm waiting for the daughter-unit to get out of class. Then I'll be visiting either the local coffeehouse or Panera's, where there's free wi-fi to write away from the house for a few hours every afternoon and then as usual in the evening. I'm not setting any unrealistic goals as far as words per day because I've never tried this before, but I do hope to have at least three chapters finished in Dragon Couchant by next Friday at a minimum and hopefully quite a bit more.

Oh, yes, plus I intend to send out The Demon's Head to a magazine, finish a few more proposals and try to find some more anthologies or other places I can place some work with as well as finishing preparations for NASFIC and Dragon*Con and getting kradical that bio I owe him.

Busy, busy, busy.

Got some more work done today on writing projects. Wrote up a quick synopsis for a novel I'd like to work on one of these days. It's not a query . . . way to much so and so is the king of X and he has designs on V who only wants to be left alone to run his kingdom but the Z empire nearby is doing Q. That sort of stuff. Still it gives me the basic idea of what I want to do with it, sets up the motivation for the five major players in the game and I could easily build an outline from that.

Which is probably what I'll do tomorrow at work if it's slow.

Also, responded to a question from the editor I sent the pitch to last night and followed it up by sending him my CV and a writing sample since he wasn't familiar with my earlier work. (All right, people, stop with the fake fainting spells already!) Still it was a chance to get a little face time in with him.

Also got another seven CD's uploaded (2 Mannheim Steamroller Fresh Aire CDs to write to and five classic rock CDs to jam to). Life is good.

Otherwise known as an excuse to go to Barnes and Noble and spend money.

Luckily for me, I received a $25 gift card for B&N at work the other day, so I decided to make good use of it. Hit the "sale" table for books and came away with a nice haul.

The Secret Voyage of Sir Francis Drake, 1577-1580 by Samuel Bawlf
Captured by Pirates edited by John Richard Stephens
The Tao of War by Wang Chen, translated by Ralph D. Sawyer
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

I'm rather pleased to find The Tao of War was translated by Sawyer. He was the translator on my copies of The Art of War and Military Methods of the Art of War. Actually, I'm pretty pleased with all my purchases. I've been wanting to add The Count of Monte Cristo to my library for quite a while.

In fact, the only things I didn't pick up tonight was The Divine Comedy by Dante. I used to have a great copy in white leather that I lost in the divorce. *sigh* I can find the individual pieces as books, but I'd like to pick it up as one complete book. It would go nicely on the shelf next to Machiavelli.

Got my pitch for the anthology off in the mail this evening. Nothing to do now but start thinking up other ideas in case the editor wants something different. Of course, that's supposing he doesn't ban me from ever e-mailing him another pitch *grin*.

Oh, the music library slowly is being restored. I've uploaded eleven albums this evening (5 anime soundtracks, three goth/heavy metal and two new-age (according to iTunes)). Only about sixty or so to go.

*whimper*

Finished the first draft of my next Doctor Who pitch. I'll print it out at work tomorrow (yes, I know, bad Rich), and hopefully, now that the desktop is home from the shop, we can get our printer working tomorrow night for later revisions.

I'm just uncomfortable editing on the computer screen. I can do it, but it's harder to edit my own work than it is others on the computer. I'm just one of those people who needs to be able to get the "red pen of doom" (pat. pend.) and go to work on some unsuspecting paper. I can compare things several pages apart, keep notes of who did what to whom and in general sort and shuffle to my heart's content.

I need to fire this off to the editor soon though, so if he "likes" it but doesn't LIKE it, I have time to make some corrections. Not unlike the Star Trek story I just completed. *sigh*

Keep your fingers crossed out there.

(Oh, and I got the galleys sent back to Marco on time. Go me!)

O.K.

Laptop rebuilt and programs replaced? Check
iTunes library rebuilt? Not yet.
Stack of CDs standing by to start reloading iTunes library? Check
Drop Comcast Cable for internet connection? Check
Add Verizon FIOS for internet connection? Check
Replace all writing projects on hard drive? Check
Back up all writing projects on thumb drive AND external hard drive? Check

To Do:

Finish reviewing galleys
Start writing on Chronicles
Finish editing Lynx query letter for Val
Prepare The Demon's Head to submit to F&SF and/or Realms of Fantasy
Participate in Codex more
Get Bio put together for Victoria Strauss to be put on the Writer's Beware web site
Renew P.O. Box
Decide whether or not to renew SFWA membership

*sigh*

O.K.

Finished all the paperwork that my company needed.
Made it through class Wednesday night (although test not handed back yet). Preparing for test next Wednesday.
Made arrangements to make up missed lab work next Monday
Finished History project revisions and mailed out to the project manager.
Survived another week at work.

To do:
Put paperwork for my company into the internal mail system on way home (I work at a client site, not the office).
Pack palm-top computer, accessories, floppy keyboard, thumb drives and other convention stuff.
Repack suitcase to add an additional days worth of clothes.
Drive to Richmond
Find a hotel room.
Get to Doubletree by 8am on Friday to go to High School to have my first Ravencon Panel with the Senior English Classes.
Finish edits on The Price of Conviction.
Talk to an editor about possible home for Lynx.
Try not to drink too much over the weekend.
Try not to fall asleep driving home on Sunday.
Try to have fun at the convention

Yep, that's about it.