In spite of all the interruptions today, I have hit the end of the first draft of Redshift. I was right, it came in a little heavy at 11896 words. Still, I'd rather have to trim down than to have to add to a story. Even doing papers for college, I'd rather overwrite and edit down, simply because it gives me an opportunity to follow ideas to their logical ending rather than having to self-edit as I go because I'm worrying about an artificial stopping point.

When I was working on both Gauntlet Dark Legacy and Harbinger, I found a few of the rabbit trails I was following turned out to be more interesting than what I'd originally outlined and weeded out some other stuff to make room for them. That's what first drafts are for . . . to explore where your characters are wandering instead of trying to force them where they don't want to go.

I'll let Redshift sit for a day or so and then get ready to go after it with the "Red Pen of Doom" (pat. pend.) and then let wishweaver have fun whacking at it. I'm hoping to have time to give it at least two goings over before I have to turn it into Marco on the 21st.

I heard from kradical tonight and now have a tentative deadline for the Doctor Who story I'm working on also. I now owe that to him on 01 May 07. That should work out perfectly with what I've seen in the syllabi (syllabuses?) for my college classes. It doesn't look like college is going to be as demanding of my time as last semester, but there's no sense in getting behind either. I've got a working title for my story, The Price of Conviction, but that may change the further I get into the story.

I did get a chance to discuss my new story (the one set in medieval Japan) with dzeytoun, who along with being a pretty good writer, also holds a PhD in History. He thinks I'm on the right track with the basic concept of the story. I'm going to ask him to help me keep my historical facts consistent and see if there are any Oriental Historians where he works at that might have better sources of information than I have. Ah, research. Nothing like it in the world.

It did feel good once I got the opportunity to get going on the writing tonight. Now to find some way to keep that momentum.

Words for Today

2,189 / 1,000 (218.9%)

Progress on Redshift

11,896 / 10,000 (119.0%)

Words for the Year

24,157 / 365,000 (6.6%)