Ordinary Day

The last several months have been shaky for me on getting new writing done, in no small part to all the medical crap I’ve had to deal with. So I’ve been focusing on getting editing done instead–and in particular, in carrying out the recommendation of two different agents to edit Lament of the Dove down hard.

Those of you who’ve followed the progress of this book on either of my LJs know that the first draft of this thing was a monster, weighing in around 167K in the word count. By the time I started seriously querying it to agents last year, I’d managed to beat the tally down to 137K.

Now, the target is 117K. If I get there, I’ll have killed 50,000 words out of it. That’s half a book right there. The whole process is teaching me a lot about how to make sure that every last word in a novel absolutely, irrefutably needs to be there–because in Lament, with three different POVs, I’ve got a lot going on. And I can’t waste words describing it.

As of this writing, I’m 4,500 words away from hitting the mark, and I’m finishing up Chapter 18 out of a total of 24 chapters and an epilogue. I think I can get there, hopefully by the time of my (hopefully final) surgery later this month.

Wish me luck.

Mirrored from angelakorrati.com.

+/-0: As posted earlier today, I sent off the query letter for Faerie Blood to what will probably be the first of many attempts to find an agent and/or a publisher for this thing. Gulp. Breathe, Anna, breathe. Oxygen is good. We like oxygen.

-1: Been a stressy week in general for assorted reasons I won't get into here; I in fact stressed out enough on Wednesday night that it was making me feel badly enough to stay home from work on Thursday. I needed the downtime, and I needed the weekend, too. Still feeling kind of wrung out, but pulling out of it.

+2: Great Big Sea's new album, Something Beautiful*, is out. My initial listen was kind of 'enh', but I think this was partly due to me being so stressed out on Wednesday night, which was when I listened to it. It's mostly pop, as this is part of GBS's effort to try to broaden their audience, and I don't like their pop material as much as I do their Celtic trad, but as I kind of expected several of the tracks are growing on me. And it does help that several of their signature instruments I've grown to look for are distinctly in there: e.g., Séan's bodhran, Bob's whistles, Bob's accordion. Alan's in good vocal form, and even Bob sings a song. Only one ditty with really good harmony in it, though; I don't know if this is because Murray isn't doing as much singing or what, but I am missing Darrell in the vocals, I think.

+3: Been finally trying to tweak my Livejournal to get it to better match the overall look of my personal web page. I've gotten it there for the most part, though I suspect there will continue to be more things I'll want to tweak as I discover them. The whole S2 style system gave me a bit of a headache to begin with, though as I've slowly delved through it it's started to make sense. It helped to be able to see the source code for the various system-wide layouts they have available. I just scarfed "Punquin Elegant" and have been heavily tweaking the code for that.

+4: Been working my way through an extremely belated birthday present from mamishka: the first season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer on DVD. I'd almost forgotten a lot of what's in that season, and it was especially weird and funny to see Cordy trying to hit on Angel in the Bronze.

+5: An old friend of mine and solarbird's, Brent, came and visited us this week along with his current girlfriend. That was pleasant enough since we don't often get guests at the Murk, though it was a bit of a challenge to find ways to amuse them. But they did seem to like the part of Eddie Izzard's Dress to Kill that we showed them. And they amused themselves going down to look at Mount Rainier yesterday, and took cool pictures. I would have gone, except Dara had to go to a Norwescon concom meeting, and I really needed to try to write. But we did succeed in going out to dinner with them on Friday and Saturday both. Thursday we just got them pizza, but we also watched Buckaroo Banzai and they seemed to like that.

+6: Got another new set of strings for Rags, just because I'd snapped the A string again. And while Trading Musician does sell individual strings, they didn't sell any of the brand I like, the Red Augustines. So I just went ahead and bought another package. Because trying to play a guitar with only five strings is not useful.

+/-7: Two of my teammates left on Friday as their contracts expired, which was a little weird since both of them had started after I did. Apparently I'm a little odd in having the whole year contract. On the other hand, we also have a new person on the team--and it's a chick for once, which is pretty cool. I introduced her to Great Big Sea and she likes them, which is even cooler. Friday afternoon, several of us went to lunch with one of the two guys leaving to bid him a goodbye and good luck; it was Azteca, so the food was just sort of meh, but at least the conversation was engaging.

+8: Current reads: Cape Random, which is proving a slow read just because it's got this whole feel of 'important lit-ra-cher' about it, as well as an epic kind of scope to the story which makes it hard for me to get a particular feel for any of the characters. Not to mention that it's beginning to seem like just a big ol' 'chunk of life' kind of novel rather than something with a specific focused plot, and that doesn't interest me as much as an active beginning-middle-end kind of plot. On the other hand, I am also getting some pleasure out of reading a story that periodically mentions several locations with which I am currently only familiar via Great Big Sea songs. And it's also interesting to see characters talking with Newfoundland accents--or perhaps more specifically with the Irish or English accents that led into developing Newfoundland accents. At the same time, I'm also reading To Shield the Queen, which is a mystery set in the time of Elizabeth I, specifically the second year of her reign. The heroine is one of her ladies-in-waiting, and she's apparently trying to figure out whether the Queen really has conspired with her Master of Horse to bump off his wife because she's got the royal hots for him.

+9: Because of the aforementioned stressy week, I haven't written a damn word since Monday, before today. They've come out erratically across this afternoon and evening, but I have added 515 more words to Chapter 3 of Lament of the Dove. Whoof. Don't know yet how much more work I'm going to get done on this story this week, as it's about time to work on the second draft of Faerie Blood, but I'm going to try to balance these two tasks out so I can keep going at both of them. Thankfully, one of my beta readers finally got me some more feedback, and to some level of good critical detail, too. So I have a bit more to add to the file of notes of my own I've already compiled.

Written tonight: 515
Chapter 3 total: 4,319
Story total: 20,767

Not much writing over the last few days except for today, but well hey, stuff happens. Among the things that have happened:

+0: Finally getting caught up on Angel, since mamishka got a hold of the two episodes we'd missed--so we've chugged through six episodes this weekend, two on Friday, two yesterday, and two tonight. WHOOT! Lots of intense goodness all over these plotlines.

+1: The second of the two chiropractor appointments I'd scheduled with Dr. Dowell, yesterday morning. Went quite well, a couple of quick, deep cracks to my hips and one to my neck. The interesting side effects of these have been my shoulder feeling a lot more normal than it has ever since I broke my arm, and my ankles having these odd little pings of pain every so often that I've been wondering about; I've been trying to figure out whether the deep cracks to my hips were deep enough that I'm carrying my weight differently enough that my ankles have to adjust.

+2: Had a pleasant lunch down in the U Village after said appointment, taking the time to read while I had a burger and fries, and beginning to put a dent into Cape Random. Bit of an odd read, so far. Most of it is in first person present tense, with periodic jaunts into third person past when the story talks about past history of the main cast. It's starting to get interesting, though there's also sort of this feel to the prose of 'This is lit-ra-cher!' rather than 'this is a story'. I'm thinking maybe once we get past 'cast is stuck in a tiny port in a Newfoundland winter and starving and OH LOOK there's seals maybe we don't have to starve after all', we might get some more character development here.

+3: Poking about the web looking for data on handhelds, as per my earlier post. So far the Sony Clie UX50 and the Zaurus SL-5600 seem to be the front contenders, just from what I've seen from folks' answer to my previous post and from the reviews on CNet.

+4: Actually roleplayed a little, though that was more like Thursday night. I was going to RP Ynderra some more on Friday, but got distracted by Angel... and the guy on TM I was going to RP with was late anyway, so we didn't wind up RPing.

+5: Read about half of The Blue Sword again, and sighed happily. I had, indeed, forgotten about Robin McKinley's gift with language.

+6: Watched Eddie Izzard's Circle while balancing the checkbooks, and it was fun, and funny. Circle, that is. Not balancing the checkbooks. But at least the checkbooks balanced without errors, so yay!

-7: Lamed out about going to get replacement strings from Trading Musician so that I can get another A string for my guitar. Oh well.

-8: Tried to go deposit my paycheck today, but the bank had no deposit envelopes by their ATMs for the second week in a row. Bah.

+9: Also watched some Kim Possible Saturday night, and giggled at an episode we hadn't seen yet as well as one we had. I (heart) Shego.

+10: Played quite a bit of Nethack and Slashem, and got farther than I have in Slashem before. Yay!

+11: Did finally wake my muse up again today to beat on Chapter 3 of Lament of the Dove some more. I'd actually gotten in about 100 or so words on Friday night but didn't bother to record them, thanks to being distracted by Angel, but got in a lot more words today. To wit...

Written over the last three days: 1,274
Chapter 3 total: 3,292
Story total: 19,743

Fought massive waves of the sleepies today; I don't know whether this was a leftover effect of being all stressed out over the weekend, having a workout yesterday morning, or both, or what. But I was yawning practically nonstop all day at work today, and for good measure my shoulders and arms have been aching with that sort of 'why yes, we did just have a workout for the first time in a MONTH yesterday, why do you ask?' way. My forearms, especially. I think that was thanks to the fact that I did wrist curls with ten-pounders for the first time since before breaking my arm.

I think I'll wait till Wednesday for another workout.

The good thing, though, is that I seem to have gotten through a block of some kind; as I'd kind of hoped I would, I topped 750 words tonight. One more night of this and I'll make up for Thursday from last week, too. It's helped to be thinking my way through underlying logistics of what I'm writing about, but it's also just helped, I think, to get some of the stress out of my system and to have work not be quite so crazy. I may even finish Chapter 2 tomorrow night.

A tiny bit of TM distraction, as Rhaevin and Jenesek pointed out a couple of things that I needed to fix with the Timeline Search page and with Jenesek's character entry in the web database for the site, which in turn led me to discovering a couple other things that wanted fixing as well.

In the meantime, I've been re-reading a lot of my older books rather than putting dents into my To Read shelf; go figure. I've got Cape Random, the first of the two novels set in Newfoundland that have been patiently waiting for my attention, riding around in my backpack. But I got distracted by re-reading Margaret Ball's No Earthly Sunne just because I had a yen to re-read it because I remembered her hero being "Wicked Kit Arundel", and I was going to call Christopher in Faerie Blood Kit, except that never really seemed to be appropriate to work into the story. But I still like the sound of it, anyway. Kit, Kit, Kit. Even if half of my brain wants to assign it as a label to roguish men, and the other half wants to assign it to mizkit. ;)

Also re-read Doranna Durgin's Seer's Blood, which I'm partial to just because it's got a unique thing going for it that I have yet to see in any fantasy novel to date that isn't set in the alleged 'real world'--it's set in a culture that's distinctly Appalachian-flavored. The characters actually drawl, and I feel like I'm reading a novel set in Kentucky, only with magic. And I have to admit I rather like that. This one, along with A Feral Darkness and Touched By Magic, are possibly my favorites of hers.

But for my own words, this evening....

Written tonight: 755
Chapter 2 total: 4,238
Story total: 14,818

Not much writing the last three days--for assorted reasons, I didn't write anything last night or the night before. Part of that was stress, part of it was the story being difficult (though it does occur to me that this might well also have been at least in part attributable to stress), and part was just too many other things going on for me to really have the time to sit down and work on more words.

solarbird gave me a lot of hugs this afternoon and helped me let out some of that stress, and once that happened I felt prepared to face going over to another session of poker at kathrynt and llachglin's house. However, while the others played I opted to sit out and just write. I wanted the companionship aspect of the evening, but I also wanted to write. Fortunately, my computer is portable, so this was doable. Kathryn and Erik even had a wireless network, so I had Internet, though I had to try to keep myself focused on the writing.

I wound up getting 717 words out, which was good... that got me the daily quota and helped make up a bit for not writing at all yesterday. That helped the stress level a lot--I really need to write at least a little every day, I think. Especially now that we're not doing the jamming group anymore.

Of course, the two Mike's (one hard lime, one hard cranberry lemonade) and the Gran-Marnier-laced hot chocolate Kathryn gave me also likely contributed to easing off the stress, too.

Very groggy now. Bedtime.

Written tonight: 717
Chapter 2 total: 2,624
Story total: 13,204

Last week, word came down the line that my team was going to have to do a huge test pass through both our BVTs and our Functionals on every single operating system we support, thanks to a major fix that had to get out into the field. The problem with this, though, was that we expected to get this fix last week and didn't get it until today. And they want results by end of day TOMORROW. So I stayed at work an extra two and a half hours tonight, helping my teammate chug through as many tests as we could possibly get done.

Unlike with my last contract, however, this time I will actually be getting PAID for the overtime, so I'm okay with that.

And in bizarre but only vaguely related news, I got email today from a guy who said that he remembered me from working in the same division I did TWELVE YEARS AGO at Microsoft. Apparently, he's seen me in the halls of building 50. I am floored just at the thought that somebody I worked with twelve years ago would actually recognize me. :) I'm also chagrined to admit that I don't remember this guy in the slightest, though once I thought about it a little his name felt vaguely familiar. If he's seen me walking around building 50, though, I certainly haven't recognized him.

Written tonight: 512
Chapter 2 total: 1,203
Story total: 11,783

Okay, maybe glancing at all my Aether logs--especially some of the Julian ones--is a good thing. Tonight, I had a lot less trouble getting the words out; maybe it's because I've reminded myself of some of the core aspects of Julian as I played him before, not to mention Nine-Fingered Rab, who was just too damned fun a sidekick to not keep around. Reading some of the very last Faanshi logs is helpful as well, because latter Faanshi, the Faanshi who was learning at last how to be a grown woman and how to handle the sorrows of her life, is more the attitude I want to shoot for with the Faanshi of this story.

Trying to focus on active ways to relay bits of vital information in this chapter to the reader, rather than just delivering them in narrative, is hard. And interesting. And a challenge! The trick is the whole show, don't tell thing--but also, showing it in a way that avoids having two characters who should already know the thing you're trying to relay explain it for the benefit of the reader.

Whoo, lookit that. Book 1 is almost to 10K!

Written tonight: 691
Chapter 1 total: 3,979
Book 1 total: 9,615

Oooh, it was hard to get going on the words tonight. I kept being distracted by the urge to dig through my old AetherMUSH logs and get some of the ones still waiting in the queue to get up onto the web page posted; I mean, Aether went down two years ago at this point, and some of my logs from my first year there are five years old at this point, and it's doubtful that too many people are actually going to read them... but hey. I'm a completist. And I put all my still-as-of-yet unposted logs up onto my lodestone account this morning, because I had to defrag my laptop's hard drive and it bitched at me that it didn't have enough space. So the pending logs got moved, to try to clear some up.

Which meant that I had access to them from work, so in between running a zillion automated tests, I slapped up a bunch of logs on my web page today. Most of them were the rest of my small store of logs for my least-played Aether character, David. But a couple of them are Faanshi, and one is a Kaiulani.

For writing purposes, of course, the major point of the logfest will be re-reading Faanshi logs as well as Julian ones--since both of them are going to appear in altered form in The Dove, the Rook, and the Hawk.

With this to distract me, though, it took a big effort of will to actually work on the story. But I did, finally, though I am yet again up Way Too Damned Late.

And oh yeah... some feedback is starting to come in from my beta readers. Most importantly, a couple of the beta readers who don't know me locally, and who are hopefully therefore less prone to the I'll Tell You You Write Good Because You're My Friend factor! Given that so far the feedback has been very encouragingly positive, I'm hoping I won't have to worry about this. :D

Bed now.

Written tonight: 510
Chapter 1 total: 2,764
Story total: 8,400

Tonight I actually lost words, as a result of having to revise Chapter 1. But I've done most of the revisions I want on it--and although I've had a net loss of words in the chapter I think it'll actually make more sense when it's done. Moreover, it gets the action started a little faster, because I get to lose some unnecessary exposition, and I can get in more of the stuff I want to cram into this chapter. It's still going to be longer than any of the chapters I've got in Faerie Blood.

Written tonight: Hard to really count since while I stuck in a lot of new words, much of what I did was revising words I've already got and deleting words I didn't need. I'm down by 990 words, though.
Chapter 1 total: 2,187
Lament of the Dove total: 7,823

Last night, I wrote precisely 40 words. This was directly attributable to my brain having the approximate consistency of pudding. I am, however, duly noting these words for posterity, as it would not do to try to include them with today's words given that I did, in fact, write them LAST NIGHT.

We shall have to see if I can get more words written before taking off for the long-belated bowling that should have happened in December for spazzkat's birthday, and which is now slated to be the double un-birthday party for both him and me, since I was all having the flu and stuff when I had my natal anniversary a couple weeks back. Still a little tired, but at least after about ten hours of sleep I've gotten back a reasonable level of coherence!

Written last night: 40
Chapter 1 total: 2,717
Story total: 8,353