Slogging On

Some people march on, but I happen to be slogging. It's a slogging kind of month. Or something. Lots of people are participating in National Novel Writing Month this month, or NaNo. I've sort of attempted this in the past.

Problem is, I do my first-draft writing in longhand, so if I wanted to do an "official" NaNo, and get my words logged on the Official Website, I would have to first write, then type, then do the upload/count-y thing, essentially doing twice the work of anybody else. And I'm too dang lazy for all that work.

My other problem is that I'm a slogger, not a sprinter. I do best at a "slow and steady" sort of pace. Six to eight pages a day, every week day. EVERY weekday. Sometimes, like when I haven't been writing for a while, I don't make it to six pages, but if I really work at it, I can do it. That gives me the 50,000 words NaNo wants in about 6 weeks.

Which brings us to my other other problem. I write long. At least when I'm writing fantasy, I do. Each one of the Rose books came in at just under 150,000 words. (Okay, Eternal Rose came in a fair bit over, but I got it cut!) So did New Blood for that matter. That's THREE books' worth of writing, if you count 50,000 words as a book (and that's how long my Desires were, when I was writing them).

Anyway, I'm still slogging. This week, I finished the synopsis for White Elk, Red Sword.* I also finished the world-building and character development for the science fiction/gene-splicing story, which I am tentatively calling Catching Time. Of course, the world-building will continue to develop as I get into the story and figure out other things I need, but it feels good enough I can work with it. I need to type in the world-building stuff, so I have multiple back-ups. Pen and ink can also be lost/destroyed.

Then I can go back and type in the synopsis, and edit it as I do. Type-in is my 1st edit, giving me a second draft on the computer. Then--maybe this weekend, maybe starting Monday, I can rewrite the opening of Chapter 3 for WERS, putting all of it (at least so far) in the hero's point of view, and it just might be ready to ship out to the agent.

I want to pull together a partial of Catching Time after that, and after that--we may be into the new year, when I think I need to go back and work on Devil in a Red Dress. I also need to write another 25 pages or so on Thunder. I might actually get them done before this month ends. We're not going anywhere for Thanksgiving. It will be a small gathering here on the island, but the weather promises to be gorgeous. It is right now, anyway.

Beach report: I've only gone down to walk on the beach once this week. It was quite warm, and I wish I'd gone in my flipflops so I could have walked in the water. But I didn't, so... Lots of little rocks and broken shells along the high-tide mark. Lots of sea gulls.

I did pick up my Bird Book when we went back to Clarendon. I now know that the larger of the sandpiper-like birds are willets, and the little flocking ones are sanderlings. I'm looking forward to seeing them in their summer plumage.

I walked in my neighborhood one day--the day the cold front came through. I thought about walking the other way, around by the bayou (which is actually more like a big opening to the bay than it is like a bayou, but that's what they call it so...), but the wind was really whipping, and it was cold, and coming off the bayou it would have been even colder, so I stayed on the residential streets.

Today, I walked a little bit over in the historical district--or one of them. This town has a bunch of historical districts. Anyway, I'd gone over there to see someone about getting my fancy black dress altered, and there were some neat looking houses with For Sale signs in front of them, so after I was through trying on the dress for her and had it all pinned up, and went back out to my car, I decided to walk around a little and see what there was to see. Some of the big ol' houses had been divided up into apartments. Some had been restored and some hadn't. But it was fun to walk around and look at them. There was even a brand new house that fit exactly into the neighborhood. The inside layout wouldn't work for us, but it was a neat house. Until we find a place to buy (and hopefully sell the old house), I think my hobby's going to be driving/walking around looking at houses. Maybe afterward. I like looking...

Okay, I've driveled on long enough. Time to stop this and go do something useful. Or play Mah-Jongg... Whatever.

*Title subject to change, if it ever sells/finds a publisher.