"Write, Write, Write"

There's a debate on the web, about the "just write" advice writers often give each other.

One side says: "Just plant your fanny in the chair and write, whether it's working or not, whether you feel like it or not, no matter what. Don't edit--just write."

The other side says: "If it's not coming, take a break. Read a book. Watch a movie. Take a walk. Write something else. Do other writing-type stuff like marketing. Just don't push it."

And, as usual, I'm one of the people who says "Yes, Exactly!" to both sides. (I've always been one of those "yes" people when asked either/or questions. As in "Do you want chocolate or vanilla?" Me: "Yes, please." or "Can't I have both?")

See, there are times when you just have to power through. Like when there's a deadline. And there are times when you're better off taking a break, because there's something wrong with the story and you have to let your subconscious work on what the problem is.

I think part of the debate comes when people are told "If you don't do this, then you're not a real writer." Which is BAD. Even when we tell it to ourselves. I'm working through Julia Cameron's Artist's Way (and I'm not making a link for that, because I have too much to do as it is--you'll just have to look it up yourself) with my best friend, because she's been doing some of that to herself. Any time someone tells you that you have to write This Way, because otherwise you're doing it wrong, it's BAD. Because it just ain't so.

Your writing goals are Your writing goals. Your process--How You Write--is Your process. I probably do it differently. So does everybody else. And however you do it--if it works for you, then Great! If it doesn't work, well--try something else.

That said--if you want to be a writer, and you're not writing? That's when you have to just Sit Your Fanny In That Chair and WRITE.

If you've been writing, and it's not working? Try something different.

I spent February through mid-July of this past year (as those of you who have read this before know) wrestling mightily with The Book That Became Heart's Magic. I wrote pages and pages and pages of scenes that will not be in the book. They are Good scenes. A little action-heavy, but good. I'm hoping I will get to use them elsewhere with some tweaking. I may not. I wrote them because I had a Sept. 1 deadline and had to get the book done. But I knew something wasn't right. The book just Was Not Coming Together.

Some days I wrote a whole half page. Some days I wrote Nothing. I walked on the beach. I journaled about the issue. I brainstormed and plotted with friends. I visited family and went to writer's conferences and free-wrote and took the dog for walks and read books and watched movies. I fit and fought with the thing--knock-down-drag-out combat. And I wasn't winning. (Not sure who was, but it sure wasn't me.) I kept writing, but writing wasn't all I did. It took me till mid-July and a conversation with my editor before I finally figured out that it was a plot issue, and the issue was that I had way too much. (As I have said before.)

But all of that wrestling and struggle and fighting was not a waste. Since this is the second time I've done it, I will probably try to put way too much plot into a book again, and not figure it out for a while. (The plots of New Blood and Heart's Blood were originally both in New Blood. I realized I had two complete plots about 1/3 of the way through NB.) If I get to write more blood magic books, I already have a plot for one. :) And I think--by the time I did pull my plot together, I knew my characters and world so well, things just flowed.

Of course, when life throws craziness at you, and you can't write because of this issue or that one--whether it's illness or hurricane evacuation (that was Heart's Blood) or a house full of company for two weeks in the middle of the last month before deadline (Heart's Magic...)--It is important to acknowledge that Stuff Happens, and you just can't beat yourself up over it.

The thing is, there's a lot of stuff that's included in the writing process that doesn't necessarily include putting new words on the page. For some people that includes a lot of plotting. For others, that part may be minimal, but they do a lot of revising. It's all writing. It all counts. And as long as you're producing something you are pleased with and that accomplishes your personal goals--it's all good.

Oh--the picture. Did you know that looseleaf notebook paper would go through a printer? Neither did I. I recycled paper from a revision and didn't realize I had looseleaf paper stuck in the middle of some printed pages with my inserts written on it. This page I could read. Most of the others, I had to reprint...

Time for lunch.

Write fast? Write slow?

Seawall mural is looking sadly bedraggled since Ike. Wonder if they'd like volunteers to try to spruce it up...

Anyway. I have taken to checking in at Twitter, and clicking on all the referrals to articles & such until I have a whole row of tabs across the top of my Firefox. And when I have a minute more, I read them all. And now I can't remember which one I read that made me think.

It was an interview with Ron Charles, who is an editor and book critic with the Washington Post and just won an award. He sounded like a fascinating man (especially since they have been trying to find a Romance novel reviewer who doesn't write things like "If you like this kind of crap..."), and I found the interview interesting. But there was one thing that tweaked a few thoughts. I've thought this before, but I don't know that I've blogged about it before. If I have, and you read it, forgive me, and skip down to the beach report.

He mentioned how he tried to be respectful of the fact that the novelist might have poured the past 8 years of his or her life onto the book when he reviewed it. And I got to thinking about a writer's pace of writing.

There are a lot of folks out there who think that a book more slowly written must inevitably be a better book than one written quickly, all subjectivity set aside. I do not agree. Furthermore, I have a sneaking suspicion that if a person takes 8 years to finish a book? They were doing a whole lot of other stuff (most likely a day job) while they were writing that book.

I have a book I'm working on that I have been working on since, oh--1981, or earlier. I'm still not finished with it. But I have not been writing on the book every day of that time. I decided, back in '81 or so, that I did not have the craft and skills to write the book at that time, since it had a complicated plot, would have to be told in flashback, and had a difficult character to write. So I set it aside for about 20 years.

In the intervening time, I have written 5 or 6 books which will never see the light of day. I have written 8 more, which have or will be published by various publishers. It's not like I haven't been writing. I just haven't been actively writing on THAT book.

If I count only the time in which I have been actually writing and researching Thunder in a Cloudless Sky (working title), I've probably been working on it 6 or 7 months.

I don't consider myself a fast writer. I can't whip out a draft in a week. Or even 2 weeks. Or a month. But. I do write an average of 6 pages a day, which is faster than the 1 page a day book in a year that some writers manage. And I don't write multiple drafts. My first draft is pretty darn close to the final version. I might add a scene. More likely I've cut several scenes (I tend to write long.) and reworked it to smooth things out. I've probably cut and smoothed some dialogue. Corrected grammar and typos. Fixed inconsistencies here and there--like changing eye-color, or minor character names. And that's about it. I prefer the "all at once" method.

Still, despite all that, it does not take me 8 years to write a book. Even Thunder, which is a huge book, will not actually take me that much time to write. I posted here last week: it took me 10 weeks, 2-1/2 months, to write 450 pages. And I don't even spend all day writing. I do my composing/drafting in the mornings, then I do other stuff--PR, e-mails, blogging, etc.--in the afternoon. I do it this way because I have found that I tend to fall asleep over the desk if I try to draft in the afternoon. I just have a sinking spell, as my Great Aunt Jessie put it, about that time. So I get those 6 pages written in half a day.

Other award winning authors write faster than I do. Some write slower. The thing is--how you write is how you write. Faster does not necessarily equal better. Nor does slower. Working eight years on a book (or six, as in Dan Brown & The Lost Symbol) does not mean it's going to be a masterpiece. It might be a darn good read. But it might not.

Personally, I think I write better when I write faster, because I keep my head in the story. I'm more immersed in the story world. I do not think about it all the time. I think it's better to shove everything back into the swamp where my stories live, and ignore them, until it's time to pull things out again to go to work. The swamp does a better job, most times, of letting the right stuff bubble up when I need it than if I actively think about it. I might think a little bit if I'm working morning pages a la The Artist's Way, but mostly, I don't. The subconscious is smarter than I am about a lot of things.

In the end, I am still skeptical of those people who claim to write full time for years to produce a single book. I just find it hard to believe they're writing all that time. If I took six years--or five, or two--or even one--to write a book, you can bet that a whole lot of that time would be spent doing other stuff.

I'm not saying it's wrong to write slowly. Your process is your process, just like mine is the weird thing it is. I just have trouble comprehending what they're doing with all that time...

Because, you know, if you write just one page a day, at the end of a year, you have enough pages for a book. I wrote a whole hour & a half today, and got TWO pages. And they were synopsis pages, which, as we all know, counts the same as Four pages of story, because it's twice as hard to write a synopsis...

Beach report: Yep, went out to the beach to walk. Went late, at 9 a.m. instead of 8. Sun was bright and hot, humidity is heavy enough to make the windows of my house sweat all day. Temp about 82 F/28 C, but it felt hotter because of the sun & humidity. The water was pretty surfy today. More waves than we've had lately, white water all the way out past the jetties. The seafoam was white. When I went out Saturday, it was kind of greenish. Weird.

It was still a nice walk. I found a big, pretty shell. Will try to remember to take a pic of it soon. Met a cute little dog. (Did Not take Dolly.) Not many birds out that late, but lots of little crabs were digging the sand out of their holes. Didn't see any cool crab footprints though...

Better go put food on to cook.

Lifelines - or How To Keep Going

The princess wussy dog and I went for a walk this a.m. She makes me walk faster, so I get more out of it. I intended just to walk on the seawall (I have to wear actual shoes when I'm walking with her from the house--too far in flipflops) but she was a good dog--didn't bother any of the people while we were out walking, and she kept looking over the edge of the seawall. She hasn't jumped off since that first time. I imagine the 10-12 foot drop gave her pause. So we went down the stairs and walked back along the water. She was very good then too--did not slip her collar to chase birds and did not upset the small children by going too close. It was a beautiful morning for a walk, cool & breezy. (Cool for Galveston = hot for many other places. It's probably 80F/27C) I threw in this picture of the "Do Not Swim Too Close To the Jetties" signs because I thought they looked festive with their red and yellow floats on the ropes--but you can't really see them in the picture. Oh well.

Walking on the beach is one of the things I really enjoy about living here. We can walk from the house (which we never do with the grandkids, because we don't want them to know just how close it is), or drive up and save the walking up time for beach time. I was going to use that as a segue from talking about my beach walk to talking about lifelines in writing--but I can't figure out quite how to do it. Except that writers have to do non writing things to "fill the well" that the writing comes out of, and walking on the beach is one of the things I do.

Now, I am going to talk about those Lifelines mentioned by Ali Hale. She talked about how lifelines are other people who keep the writer honest. They keep us writing and working toward the goal of finishing a longer work, so that we keep writing those 10 pages a day, or 6 pages, or 2 pages. (There have been times that I struggled just to get a half page written.)

She mentioned writing critique groups, online or in person. And critique groups are great. I belonged to a fabulous group in Waco about 15 years ago, before I moved away from the area. Of the first 5 members, four of us have been published. I do believe in critique groups. The problem is, not everybody can find one where they live. I moved from my small town near Waco (I lived about 30-45 miles (48-73 km) out of town) to an even smaller town in the Texas panhandle, about 60 m (97 km) from Amarillo, the nearest city. No critique groups available. There are online crit groups that work very well for some people. I've never been able to make them work for me, because so far, nobody in any group I've tried to participate with has been consistent in either critiquing or writing. Which kind of defeats the purpose of a lifeline.

See, a lifeline is a form of accountability for those deadlines. When you set your own deadlines, there's no penalty if you don't make them, except maybe guilt, and getting down on yourself. However, if you're producing 10 pages a week for your crit group, and they expect those 10 pages, (we met every other week, and shared 20 pages each time) you work harder to get them done.

That said, a critique group, for all that I love them and would love to have one again, is not the only kind of lifeline there is. The past 3 years, I have had a Goals Coach.

Back in 2006 I took an online class by Gwen Shuster-Haynes on creating a writing career plan for introverts and extroverts through the Kiss of Death mystery/suspense chapter of Romance Writers of America. I got a lot out of this class--I took it, I think, just before my publication contract with the LUNA imprint of Harlequin got canceled, and it really helped me organize myself and keep moving forward. Anyway, one of the things I got was the idea of a goals or career coach.

How this works, or how it's worked for me, is that I teamed up with another person, we wrote down our goals for the week every Monday (or as close to Monday as I could manage), e-mailed them to each other, and then the next Monday, when we e-mailed our next set of goals, checked off what we managed to get done in the last week's goals. My first Coach was Shari Bouillion, (I may have added or left out an I in there) who insisted we work out yearly and quarterly goals with dates. (I tend to be real wishy-washy about dates.) And that we include family, work, writing, and spiritual/personal goals. It's obvious she was MUCH better at this goals coaching thing than I am. We coached each other for over a year, and her life got so complicated, she had to drop out.

I was bereft! I still wrote up my goals every week, and printed them out and stood them up on my lamp where I can see them if I ever get stuck with what else I need to do, but it's not the same if you don't have somebody to be a bit of a nudge. I limped along on my own for a while, when on an e-mail loop I'm on, someone asked about how to keep going through the end. So I did my goals coach pitch on the loop, and asked if anyone was interested, and now we have a 3-way goals coaching group going between myself, Natasha Moore who writes for Red Sage Publishing, and Carol Stephenson, who is one of those right on the verge of publication, that last frustrating phase before you finally make it over that final hump.

Natasha has very short goals lists. She confines hers to just writing. Carol prioritizes hers. She has a Must Finish section--which are not all writing goals--and a Priority 2 section which is "If I have Time & Energy." I put all my goals in one long list, but the ones at the top of the list are top priority, and the ones at the bottom are lower. (I need to move "Exercise" higher on the list!) And it's time to nag them (though usually it's Carol that does it) to post some goals for the last quarter of the year.

We don't critique. We all write Very different things. We write at different paces. Sometimes, we don't post any goals for a week or two. I tend to disappear when we have company (friends & family love to come visit us at the beach). Carol moved house a while back and is still dealing with that. Natasha goes on RV trips. (Jealous!) But we come back when we need to, because it's a way of keeping ourselves on track.

It seems to work best in a smaller group. We could probably add one or two more, but I don't know that I'd go higher than four.

So. There you have it--another kind of lifeline for writers to stay on track. If you have a critique group that's working for you, great! But if you don't, you might try finding one or two other people who can help keep you on track by exchanging weekly goals.

The Book Is In - Deadlines

This is what my office looked like right after I finished putting all the revisions into the ms. and e-mailed it to the editor. Do you see anywhere else handy for me to put the pages after I finish putting stuff in??? Neither do I. The floor works. That hump? The one that's not a leg of the chair... That's my purse. It's under there somewhere.

I did pick up all the papers today. The floor looks much better. And HEART'S MAGIC is turned in. On time. Sort of.

I wrote 448 pp. in 10 weeks, with a couple of weeks of lots of company in there. So maybe, it was more like 9 weeks. (I did get some done while they were here. Just not a whole lot.)

Which I guess really leads me back around to my riff on Deadlines.

Deadlines are really helpful. REALLY. If you want to write a story/book/memoir/whatever--and you don't have a deadline? Get one.

I am the world's greatest procrastinator. Just ask the people who know me. Self-imposed deadlines don't work as well on those of us with this issue, but they do help. I would not blog here even the once a week I usually manage if I didn't make it a deadline, that I WILL blog at least Once in a week. Monday is a soft deadline. Friday is the harder deadline--and sometimes I miss that one. But not often.

It's really better if you can get somebody else to give you the deadline. I have a college degree in journalism. That's when I learned about deadlines, and that you really can crank out 500 words in 30 minutes, if you have the information. An hour is better, but it IS possible to do it faster if you have to. Those deadlines that somebody else gives you? Those are the ones you HAVE to make.

On the other hand, sometimes life happens. Or books refuse to gel. This is particularly bad if you have a deadline set by somebody else, and they are counting on having that book. You Need to tell your editor--the somebody else--that there may be issues.

Early in July, I had a bad feeling about The Book That Became Heart's Magic. I was writing and writing, and getting absolutely NOWHERE. It had no structure. Individual scenes were pretty good, but as a whole, it sucked swampwater. So I talked to the agent, who talked to the editor, who said "Sure. We can back the deadline up a month." I figured that would be what it would take to get it nailed down and finished. So I got an extra month, and I needed every bit of it. I got my deadline extended. But I finished it by that deadline.

I have entered contests that required a book to be finished for entry--okay, it was RWA's Golden Heart contest. Once, I entered with a book that was little more than a 5-page synopsis. I took the days left till the entry had to be turned in, divided the pages to be written by the number of days, and figured out how many pages I had to write per day to get it done. (I've been pretty much stuck at 6 pp per day since. I'd really like to get that up...) I'd paid my money. I had to finish the book by that deadline. And I did. (Didn't make the finals. I've Never made the finals in the Golden Heart Contest. Never won an "unpublished ms" contest, either. So you don't have to, to get published. Doesn't hurt, but isn't necessary.) Anyway--contests are another good way to acquire a deadline that is more than just your own "I really need to have it finished by X" because those are really the deadlines that can go whooshing by.

So, yeah. I believe in deadlines. And setting goals and all that kind of stuff. They work.

And next, I will riff on lifelines. Later.

Fuzzy outlines

Picture: The dolphin statue at Fort Crockett Park on the seawall. Hurricane Ike washed out the sand and rocks supporting the concrete here, and you see the result. They're going to be re-doing it sometime in the sort of near future, so I wanted to get a picture of it in its deconstruction. You can see how so much was knocked down and around and, well, ruined... and hasn't been fixed yet.

Mostly I write blogs about my life. Because I don't often think profound thoughts, or if I do, I'm nowhere near a computer and by the time I reach mine, I have forgotten what I thought of. I forget to write the thought down anywhere else too, like my "notebook-o-lists" or whatever else I might have.

Anyway, a lot of times, thoughts are springboarded from other blogs, which I haven't been reading much, while I have been in the deadline cave (and with it being so cloudy outside, Boy is it Cavelike today). But I read one today. It's a week or two old, and it's a good blog by one Ali Hale on Three Words That Will Help You Finish Any Writing Project.

Her words--which I am now going to take and riff on--are: Outline, Deadline, and Lifeline.

Ali apparently mostly writes short things. Articles, blog posts, that sort of thing.

I suck at writing short things, except for blog posts (and even then they tend to be long) and newspaper columns. Mostly I write novels. I just finished (on Saturday!) my 8th.

The process has taught me yet again, the importance of these three things.

FYI, I hate those outline things we had to do back in school, with the Roman numerals and letters and numbers and such. But I really discovered with this book, Heart's Magic, when I was struggling so hard with the plot, that I cannot just fly into the mist. I have to have something.

I've used a lot of different frameworks for outlining. The Hero's Journey (from Christopher Vogler's The Writer's Journey); Syd Fields' turning points method. I had just bought Save the Cat by Blake Snyder when I learned I didn't have to complete the entire story cycle in HM and pulled out the extra book's worth of plot, so I used his outline format. Pretty much the same as the others, but a little different way of thinking, which seemed to unstick me.

All I had, when I started putting the story back together, was one page of notes. One loose-leaf notebook page, one side only. It's not particularly neat. In some places, all I had was a question mark, that I filled in with a tiny note later. That didn't even turn out to be what I did in that slot. And later, I did add another sheet (of printer paper) where I wrote down scenes that could fit in each section. (these are my pages-the scene list on left, & "outline" on the right) I didn't put all of those in. But whenever I got stuck, I had that page in my file folder that I could look at and see where I might/needed to go next.

I essentially wrote this book in 10 weeks, people. I struggled with it for twice that long. Because I didn't have a decent outline. (Which was because I was trying to squeeze too much in.) There are some people who can't work from an outline. I don't know many of them, and I now know that I am definitely one of them. It's not much of an outline. Fuzzy and amorphous-blob outlines will work too. But they're outlines.

I'm going to have to riff on Deadlines & Lifelines another day... Have to go work. My deadline is tomorrow. Plan to e-mail it today.

Blogging while Printing

I am printing out the book now, and have to babysit the printer, in case the ink runs out, or the paper runs out, or it jams. So I figured I would blog while I printed.

I print the ms out to revise, because I miss less stuff that way. Problem is, it's printing back to front, so I can't start reading it from the beginning, (which is where you need to start, if you're reading for continuity) until it finishes. Oh well.

I went for a walk this a.m., actually climbed down the steps to walk on the beach, in the water, and got out there before 8. (Usually I'm a little after.) I had to wait for a lot of traffic to pass before I could get out of the car, because I was so early. (I don't like walking long distances in flipflops, and I wanted to walk in the water, so I drove. If you can follow my logic here.) And the first thing I saw when I got out on the seawall was these guys here, lying on the bare pink granite of the jetty, (hold on--paper reload) exercising.

I thought at first they might be some of the beach patrol lifeguards, but they never got in the water, and the guards always swim as part of their workout. Plus, they usually work out carrying those floaty lifesaver belts. Now I'm thinking these guys might be part of a Marine reserve detachment that got back from Iraq on Monday, running to stay in shape.

It's still cloudy this a.m. There was just that one line of pink-tinged sky while I was out. Lots of wind blowing onshore, making a fair bit of surf. (We never have a LOT.) Water's green almost all the way in--means good fishing.

I did see all the usual culprits in the bird kingdom while I was out. Laughing gulls, all white-headed since it's fall. They were already mostly white-headed in August, though. (They have black heads during mating season.) There were willets and a couple of sanderlings (tall and short sandpiper birds, respectively). I saw cormorants and pelicans fishing. But I was very excited to see not just one snowy egret, but two out surf fishing.

You can just see, I think, on the legs of the single egret, that they turn yellow about halfway down. That's the snowy's "golden slippers." The original egret, in the first pic, is the one in the back in the other pic. Don't know if they're parent/child or "just friends."

Another stop for putting in more paper. Had to go get more out of the box. I'm almost out of paper to recycle...you know, print on the back after it's been printed on the front.

I have to fill in some more here, because I'm having trouble fitting all the pictures in, and I wanted to show you the picture of the TWO egrets. They don't come to the beach side of the island very often, though I've seen them a lot over by the bay and port. They like to perch on the lines tying boats up to the docks, and watch the fish. I don't know that I've ever seen one jump off into the water to catch one, though.

And there is my foot in the water. See? I was out there, walking, in the water with no shoes. The water's still very warm, and it was nice and cool with the strong breeze. Humidity was still about 900%, but that's pretty much a given. It's an island.

And this is my other foot, in its flipflop, crossing the pink granite jetty--the one west of the one the guys were exercising on. I picked this particular rock to stick my foot on, because it's Very red. The rocks are all shades of pink, but they are all pink. Makes it purty. You will note the crevices between rocks. Some are larger than others. These rocks have had sand piled on them, so their crevices aren't deep, but I have lost my whole leg down one of those things... Not like broke it off or anything-- (look! They're still attached), but like--sank it up to my hip in a crevice. One closer to the water, right after they piled sand on top and the water washed it out underneath...

Almost all of the ms. is printed out now, and I'm just driveling on. I do have more pictures, but I'm having trouble squeezing them all in. The "preview" doesn't really show how they will actually come through on the blog, so I'm going to have to post and edit, post and edit, I think.

I have more. Will definitely post them. Or maybe will post them on my twitter thing. Come by and tweet me. I'm @GailDayton

Official Title for Harry & Elinor

It is official. The editor and I have just agreed. The title of this new book in my blood magic Victorian steampunk series, the one starring Harry & Elinor, will be HEART'S MAGIC. Because that's the kind of magic that brings about the happy ending...

Also, Twitter is very bad for me.

I am there, since ... Tuesday? I think so. Look for me. GailDayton. One word. Easy-peasy.

Have to go kill the Monster-Kitty!!

First time in four years

I'm excited. It may seem dumb, but I'm excited anyway.

For the first time in four years, I have entered the Romance Writers of America RITA contest. It may be longer than that...more like 6 years. But it may not be. You all do understand that math is not my strong suit, even when it comes to simple math like counting stuff.

I entered my first two published books--my Silhouette Desires--in the RITAs. (Why is it in all caps? Is there a reason? I don't know.) And made the finals for Best First Book the first year I entered. No, I did not win. But I finaled. I cling to that, on the bad days.

Anyway, the reason I haven't entered in a while is because I didn't really consider the Rose books, the three books I wrote before New Blood, to be romance. They were romantic, but not really romance. I know I could have entered them in the "Novel with Romantic Elements" category, but I'm kind of in the camp of "It's Romance Writers of America. Why have a category that isn't romance in the RITA, which is to recognize romance novels?" So I didn't enter partly out of principal, and partly because I didn't really think the books would do that well against all the women's fiction, suspense and urban fantasy books in the category. Yeah, I'm a coward.

I did enter the books in the Prism Awards, which are for romantic fantasy, futuristic and paranormal books--in other words, a contest where the judges would be people who prefer the kind of books the Rose books were. And I won my category twice, and came in second the third time. (Actually the first time. The Compass Rose came in second to The Smoke Thief. The other two won.) I cling to this too. And yeah, this is kind of sounding like a "Shameless Bragging" post. Sorry about that.

But New Blood is a romance. Unabashedly. I even got a review that complained about all the mushy romance in it. (I bask in that review, because--you know--that's what it was supposed to be.) So this year, since it's eligible, I entered. I mailed off the copies of the book this afternoon. Right now, everything is all possibility. I'm going to enjoy the moment while trying not to build up expectations. I have no expectations. Hopes, maybe, but no expectations.

I'm going to try to post a picture with every blog post. So I went out Monday with the camera to walk along the seawall, and take a bunch of pictures I could use in case I don't get around to taking a fresh picture every week. This is just a shot of the beach from the top of the seawall, looking toward Fort Crockett Park.

Yeah, yeah, so it's tough to remember to take them, and it's tough to remember to download them. It took me 3 days to find the connector cord. (In my nightstand, but in the top drawer...)

I also took all the pictures off the camera and put them on my firefly flash drive because the fella has not been downloading the pictures to his computer either, and I'm sick of un-checking each picture one at a time (it won't do multiple unchecks, unless I want to uncheck ALL) so I only download the new ones. He can just take them off the firefly. Okay. That is my rant for the week.

Back to typing. I am up to p. 381. Having to make notes to make my monsters scarier...

Posted Elsewhere

I will post a separate blog here, as soon as I find/remember where I put the cord to download pictures from my new camera. Meanwhile, I posted a blog at the 2 B Read authors blogsite. Check it out!

Still plodding, after all these...weeks

Last week, it rained. Every day. For most of the day. A lot. It was great, since we've been in something of a drought. There are mushrooms sprouting all over the neighborhood. There were a few days I had trouble getting much writing done, because it was dark and raining and it made me sleepy. (Of course, staying up late goofing off didn't help any.)

I think I'm in a better swing of things now, finally. Should have been here earlier, but it's working now, and ought to come in right on deadline. I'm into the final battle. Hoping the heroine hasn't repeated herself too terribly much--I'm going to have to print it all out and go back through and check on that... I think I'm going to raise hope, and then dash it again, oh--two or three times. (maybe) I just keep trying to figure out how to raise the stakes higher. I don't feel like they're high enough yet, so I'll goose them again. Elinor's being a horse's patoot at the moment, actually. Somebody's going to have to knock her upside the head, I think. Maybe Harry. Maybe Nigel. Maybe... well, we will see. I just need to make sure she's not being a repetitious horse's patoot. :)

I did go hit the sales at Macy's yesterday, before the local RWA chapter meeting, and spent my birthday money. They were having some pretty good sales--I got three shirts and a pair of dressy black pants for just over $50. (I paid the tax.) I have clothes to wear. I wanted to go to another store to buy a pair of jeans--I went, but they didn't have any that were long enough. Maybe next time.

I'll have to get somebody to take my picture in my new "finery" so I can show you. I was going to post a picture, but I don't have any new ones. I don't think I can do a "take a picture every day" thing, but surely I can manage "take a picture once a week." Then I'd have to download it, though... I'll try.

Off to type in story.

Plodder's Progress

I am a plodder. This has nothing to do with plotting, mind--though it sounds a lot alike when spoken aloud. And plotting issues can make me plod slower than usual--but my point is that in my writing, I am a tortoise, rather than a hare. I get the most done when I sit down every day and just keep plugging.

That said, the plodding and plugging is coming along nicely. I've hit the "All Is Lost" moment. The bad guys have struck back. The hero has inserted his foot in his mouth and done himself in. The heroine is throwing hissy fits. And it's time for me to figure out how to get them down to the grand finale, catch at least most of the bad guys and win the day. I mostly know what will happen, but I'm not quite sure how I'm going to maneuver them into the situation where it can happen. I know what the closing scene will be too. It's just moving really slow right this minute. But it's moving. It's pretty much on schedule to finish on time. By hook or by crook. I just have to keep plodding along...

Want to share a picture that amused me. The grownups played Twister at the beach house last month. It was funny. :)

I've been a total slug this past week. It has been wonderful. We did go do some shopping. Since the fella's birthday was last Monday (we went to the Saltwater Grill for his birthday--I had barbecued redfish. Yum.), and mine is today (happy birthday to me--I am now officially a senior citizen, sigh), we went out yesterday to get our birthday present. When we bought our new sofa, the designer at the store showed us a lamp table we really liked, which we didn't buy then. We bought it yesterday. Who knows when it will be delivered, but it will be beautimous, whenever it gets here.

We also bought a new amp for the keyboard, because the sound system went out at church last week, and the fella's keyboard went totally silent. It's not a big amp, light enough to carry, and has extra channels to plug in mikes if we need to. Then we hit the Labor Day sales at the mall--I got a T-shirt, a pair of pants and some shorts. The fella got a suit, dress shirts and two Hawaiian shirts, all on sale. I'd think he got more for my birthday than I did, but really, it was just stuff he needed. (Hawaiian shirts are almost required dress here.)

I get to have dinner out tonight--haven't quite decided where to go. Fisherman's Wharf maybe. I'll try to remember to tell y'all where.

Dolly is a very, very good dog, yes. She is also the wussiest princess dog in the state. We had a rainstorm this morning. We've been letting her in at night, so if she escapes the fence, we don't have to go find her at 4 a.m. I let her out this morning after the sun came out again, and the ground was all wet and puddly. She walked with me to take the trash out front--and when I was heading back in the house, she ran in ahead of me and went to her cubby hole. She didn't want to stay out in all that wet! And I'm the softest touch in the state, because I let her come in. Sigh.

Back to work. Y'all have fun.

Grandboy visits

The daughter and her boy came to visit. For two weeks. It was wonderful. :)

They came to see us, and to let his dad get some work done on his dissertation so he could get it finished. So I didn't get a whole lot of writing done while they were here. Partly because the first week they were here, my parents, sisters, brother, spouses, some nephews and a niece came to visit, and stayed in a beach house out on the west end of the island. We had to visit them as much as we could.

One of the nephews was just back from a Navy tour in Bahrain. He and the son went out one night. When the son came back the next day, he informed us, "I am never going drinking with a sailor again. Ever." Oh well. Oh, and the day all of those relatives left, a nephew from the other side of the family--one of the fella's brother's boys--came to visit for 4 or 5 days. That was fun too. But again, didn't get a lot of writing done. Did get a lot of swimming done. (Yay!)

The grandboy is six now. He likes to take pictures with his mom's camera. With my camera too, but he took a picture of his nose with Mom's. This is the boy with autism, and allergies to all dairy, as well as gluten. (The dairy is related to his autism, the gluten is related to his granddaddy.)

He had a few adventures with Dolly the granddog. She's a pretty frisky, playful dog--she's about 3 years old, and still has lots of energy, especially when meeting new people. Which scared the little guy. But it was too hot to be playful for very long, and she quickly learned that if she moved--if she even looked at him, he would run away. So she would just lie there in the shade and let him come to her.

Within a day or two, he approached her. Then he touched her feet. Then he patted her back. The next thing we knew, he had hold of her tail, had the white part in his mouth, biting it. (Don't think he actually bit down, but...) It was rather traumatic getting him to calm down enough to listen to Granddaddy and understand "Don't bite Dolly." By the end of the visit, he was pulling up her lips trying to put dogfood in her mouth, and she would just turn her head and walk away. This picture of Dolly is about a year and a half old. She's filled out quite a bit, looking very "pit bull." It really is all in how they're raised...

So, yeah. It's been pretty crazy. But a lot of fun. :)

And I am writing. Really!

Wow--love this review!

I try to avoid reviews, because if they're bad, they just aggravate the snot out of me, and if they're good... Well, it's hard to know if they're going to be good or not. But this one--

I am honestly in awe. I not only love what this blogger said, I love how she said it. I never knew that was what I wrote--but I guess I did. I remember doing it. Anyway, go forth and read it if you are so inclined. It's at Tempting Persephone.

(Yeah, I'm on leave from the p-t dayjob to write the book. Got 8 pages today. Will be at the grindstone--er, desk--to write more tomorrow.)

Oh, and the picture--it's blurry because the gyroscope was moving, under the muscle power of my darling daughter who got to try it for the first time because grandparents were at the museum to chase the doodlebug (aka the middle grandboy) instead of her. I missed the "when she was upside down" shot. Oh well.

I DID take pictures

Yes, I really did take pictures. When I was in Washington, I went to the National Zoo, and took a picture of the panda. See? It was sleeping, but the camera did a really good job of zooming in on it. :)

I have other pictures, but I think if I insert them without taking up some of the space with text before I put the next picture in, they will try to overlap or something. So I shall blather on about nothing--or whatever I can think of--until I can put up another picture.

I am now on my hiatus from the dayjob to work on the book. Am I writing? Well, not RIGHT this second. I'm putting stuff in the blog. But I did work on it this morning. I got all my cover pictures up at the website. I'm not sure when I'll be posting my excerpt--probably in October--but that's not too far off. And I always post it to the newsletter folks first, so you know, if you want to read the excerpt, make sure you're signed up for the newsletter.

Now for picture #2. My older son and his boys were here when I got home from D.C. and stayed for a week. They went out in the gulf to fish, and caught angelfish. I think I told you, but here's the proof--the Big Guy with his angelfish. They're striped when you eat them too, and they're darn good eating.

The guys have been doing a lot of fishing lately. Earlier--at spring break, I think--they went out on a long boat trip and caught a bunch of vermilion snapper. The fella caught a HUGE red snapper, but had to throw it back because it was too big. Or maybe too small. I don't remember. I do remember he had to throw it back. but not after he got a picture of it!

So there. I have shared pictures of the guys and their fish. (The oldest grandboy has a few speech issues--he has trouble with soft consonants, so "sh" tends to come out as "tch" and "f" tends to come out as a "p" or "b". So he was in WalMart with his dad one day, in the pet section, and asked Dad to buy him a fish--except it came out with a 'b' at the front and a 'tch' at the end...)

Enough about fishing, and enough about the guys, right? You want to see a picture of ME, right? Even though they're prettier than me...

So--I made this picture big, because it's a pretty impressive fish--if you're the type to be impressed by fish, which means I need to fill up more space. I also need to put my travel receipts into the accounting program. :P But it needs to be done. I have this bad tendency to save them up for 3 or 4 months and then do them all at once, digging them out from the wire basket on my desk, or the depths of the side pocket on my purse... I should do them right away, I know, but...

And I did have one last picture I wanted to share with you. I don't look so hot in it, but my friend Rosemary is the star of the picture, because look at the pretty statue she's holding. Yes, Rosemary Clement-Moore won the RITA award for Best Young Adult Novel at the RWA National Conference awards ceremony. She even let me rub RITA's head for luck. I think she hand-carried her home to Dallas, for fear her feather pen would break off.

I have more pictures, and now that I am home for a while, I'll try to get some of them posted with the blog, instead of a huge bunch with no art at all, then one blog with a bunch of pictures. I'll space them out. I hope. If I remember to do it. You know how my memory is...

Heart's Blood - It has a Cover!!

Okay, so I did promise the magnificence that is the cover to Heart's Blood, the second book in my steampunk blood magic universe. It truly is beautimous.

Look! There are little mechanical spiders with red eyes down in the lower left hand corner. There is Big Ben. There are moody clouds. There is even the villain lurking behind the title. And there is a quote from the wonderful Nalini Singh (who is one of my favoritest people now, besides writing really great books).

Admittedly, I think the hero looks a tad young, even though they've olded him up a bit. And okay, I have to admit that I visualized him--well, actually, I started off visualizing him as oh, this guy-- but he didn't stay that way.

Partway through New Blood, (the first book, remember?) Grey Carteret, the hero of Heart's Blood, morphed into Johnny Depp, as seen in the movie From Hell. It wasn't my idea. It was totally Grey's.

But hey, it totally worked. For some reason, especially when the characters are the ones who decide how they look, they acquire personalities and do a lot of dictating of the story. I didn't have to make up Grey's banter. He just spouted it off for me to take down...

And yes, I know exactly what Harry Tomlinson looks like, and he is providing his dialogue and the rest of it for book 3--but I'm not telling you who plays his part, because-- Well, just because...

So, if you want, you can paste the one face over the other face, or if you like the one on the cover better, you can imagine that one, or whatever suits your fancy. I just thought I'd let you know a little bit about the weird way I work. (Yes, it is true, I have never grown up. I still have imaginary friends. Scientists have done a study of novelists and other writers of fiction, and shown that we (authors) relate to our characters in an identical fashion to how children relate to their imaginary friends.) Sometimes I cast my characters. Sometimes they cast themselves, and there's nothing I can do about it... In my head, in Grey's behavior, Mr. Depp plays the part of Grey Carteret...

Ahhh, the beach--

I have now been to the beach twice. It was fabulous. The first day, the water was a little cool, but still nice. Saturday, it was Perfect for this weenie, no-going-in-the-water-unless-it's-over-90 sissy swimmer. Not quite bathwater warm, but darn close.

I really love the Gulf because the waves aren't strong and splashy. I can get out past the surf without much trouble at all and just let the water rock me, and that's what I truly enjoy. When the water's warm and the waves are easy, I've found my bliss.

The wind's been really strong from the south, pushing currents right up along the beach--Gulf water, especially in Texas, tends to be kind of gold--well, okay, brown--because of all the Mississippi sediment, changing to green water, then blue water at various distances. This past week, the green stripe has been really wide, with a very noticeable, distinctive color change not far past the end of the jetties. Which is where the shrimp boats have been trawling, and the seagulls, terns and pelicans fishing. It's really cool to see brown pelicans fly maybe 6 feet over your head, going out to catch fish...

So, yeah, the grandboys were visiting. It was great getting to see them and go play with them. We went to see the Cirque du Soleil "Saltimbanco!" show on Thursday night for the older one's 8th birthday (He had his birthday at our house last year, too). It was a great show--I really loved the sound-effects mime clown, and the tumblers, and the--well, just all of it, except the two-on-a-trapeze act scared the pee-wadding out of me. But they were great too. After, we went to Chuy's to eat, because we only had a birthday cake snack beforehand, and I had Elvis Green Chile Fried Chicken. Yum!

I also was trying to get the book untracked. I did get my plot sorted and have been re-writing the opening and tweaking some of the stuff I already had written to make it fit. It's all in the computer now, and I think I have around 70 pages, which is pretty good. Now I get to start from scratch and write madly. I'm ready for the "Debate" scene, where they debate about what the heroine wants to do.

I am taking a "sabbatical" from the dayjob for August so I can really focus and get this book written--except my parents, sisters (and brother at least part of the time) and their families, plus my daughter and her son, will be coming down for a week or more smack in the middle of it.

I foresee more Taco Cabana time. Yeah, I spent a couple of mornings over there last week. The boys all went fishing or golfing the other two mornings... We ate angel fish one night, because they caught them on their boat fishing expedition, the gray-and-black striped kind. They're pretty good eating...

Pictures. My goal is to download pictures this week and post some, one day.

Back from Washington

I went to the Romance Writers of America national conference last week and got home last night at midnight or so. It was a great time, but man, am I tired now. Of course, the tiredness is mostly because I walked to the National Zoo from the hotel, and all through the zoo, and back to the hotel again, and my calves are knotted up like a macrame plant hanger. The rest of my legs are just sore.

I will try to get pictures downloaded this week and posted. The grandboys (and their daddy) have come to visit for the week, and their dad is sleeping in my office, but I bet I can get some pictures onto the blog. I have pictures of the panda bears and an orangutan crossing the zoo on the special "O-line" cable, and a wolf, and a few other animals. Do not let me forget the pictures!

I took many more pictures at the zoo than at the conference--I kept forgetting to get the camera out--but I do have a few. It was a good conference. I sold about 12 copies of New Blood at the literacy signing--more than half of those donated. The big news about that was that they were all sold to people I don't know. It's easy to sell books to your friends, but not so much to strangers. A number were made curious by the steampunk label, so that was all good.

Had my first "OMG, you're Gail Dayton!" moment, complete with a hug like we were long lost sisters. That was fabulous. And my "fangirl" was a librarian with the Portland-area King County library system. Who did a little "favorite library story" podcast thing with me. I left her card at home, so I'll have to get back to you with the link.

Got to see the cover to Heart's Blood, WHICH WILL BE RELEASED IN JANUARY, instead of February as I had thought. I will get it up here and on the website asap. It is gorgeous, and I can't wait for y'all to see it.

I moderated two workshops, and volunteered at another where the moderator didn't show and the speaker had transparencies to put on an overhead projector. I swapped out the pages. I went to a number of interesting workshops, but of course, I can't remember which ones they were at the moment. Several of them helped me figure out why I am struggling so much with this book--the 3rd in the steampunk series--though the biggest thing I just figured out last night/this morning. Which is:

I am once more trying to cram two books' worth of plot into one book. So I will have to pull all the extra stuff out and focus on the correct main plot. This ought to help tremendously in the "get the &#@$!%*! book written" department. I am now re-doing all my plot points and such. Trying to get it sorted out. I may do this "Save the Cat" style. Yes, I finally found the book.

So--I'll do my best to get pictures and such downloaded and posted asap. Again, nag me, if I don't.

Wild Weeks

So, last week I went to Fort Worth with the fella, to his conference. I hadn't been able to go in a while, so it was nice to see some people I haven't seen since the last time I went. I ate really well. We stayed at the Worthington Hotel which is in Sundance Square. It's been a while since I spent much time in downtown Fort Worth, but it is a really nice place. Lots of good places to eat (I didn't make it to all of them, though I did go to Razzoo's twice...), a Barnes & Noble within 3 blocks, and a movie theater next door. Not a whole lot of other shopping, but I really didn't care.

It was blisteringly hot--topped 100F/37+C every day--but without the island's 900% humidity, it wasn't actually too terribly bad. Okay, yeah, it was bad, but not THAT bad. At least, not for a person who's used to being a little bit sweaty all the time. Somebody from Minnesota, or Idaho--yeah, they might've died a little. I went out to the bookstore twice in one hot afternoon. Went to the movie one day. Took a nap. Read books. Oh, and I wrote. I wrote and wrote till I ran out of ideas. I got quite a bit done--except I think I'm going to have to scrap some of it, because my heroes are getting answers handed to them on a platter. They need to work a little harder at it. But I made progress.

This week is Romance Writers of America conference. (I'm working at a newspaper. They make me spell everything out the first time, every time.) I discovered this morning that I booked my return flight on the wrong day, and it's costing me some bucks to change it. (sigh) Oh well. I am flying out at way-too-early o'clock Wednesday. We got home Saturday night. I have time to wash clothes, pack again, (change my flight reservation) and leave again. And try to make sure everything's together at the paper for me to be out most of another week. Oh, and the day I come back--the older son and his boys will be here for a week. I WILL get to the beach to swim while they're here. I will. By hook or by crook.

Of course, the rest of the time, I'll probably be at Taco Cabana writing. (I don't really like coffee, and Starbucks doesn't have enough space, anyway.) Wish me luck.

Holiday weekend

It was Independence Day over the weekend. And it was hot as blazes on the island. As usual, the actual temperature wasn't much over 90F (32C), but the sun and the humidity made it FEEL much, much, much hotter. The fact that it hasn't rained in more than a month (and doesn't look to rain today, despite the storms predicted by The Weather Channel), does not help

And I still haven't made it into the water. I really wanted to go swimming sometime last week/weekend, and every time I wanted to go, everybody else had something else going, and I didn't want to go by myself. I believe in the buddy system. Swimming in the Gulf of Mexico really isn't a solo activity, even if there is a lifeguard on the beach... I am just going to have to twist somebody's arm and GO.

I didn't go to the 4th of July parade downtown. It was too hot, and I didn't want to go downtown an hour and a half early, and nobody else in the house got up. Which didn't really hurt my feelings. ('Cause it was hot.)

But we did go to the fireworks. We headed down toward 39th Street about 45 minutes ahead of time, because they shoot them off out the 37th Street jetty. (It's paved along the top, so they could drive the Budget Rent-a-truck out onto the rocks.) There was a really strong onshore wind (isn't that what you call a wind that blows from the water onto the land?), whipping up the sand everywhere, so we had to hunt a little while to find a place where we could actually keep our eyes open and not have sand in them. The kids on the beach below the seawall digging in the sand like puppy dogs did not help, but it wasn't too bad, once we moved upwind from the sand ramp down to the beach. And shortly after it got dark, the fireworks started. It was a good show--lasted about 30 minutes. I'm not sure if it was longer or shorter than last year, because I don't remember how long last year's show lasted. But there were plenty of great big sparkly, splashy, flashy fireworks. It was fun.

I am hoping to have a chance in the rest of the week to plunge deep into the deadline cave and get a bunch of this book written. The fella and I are leaving the boy behind to hold down the fort and keep the dog in the yard to go to a conference of his. I plan to spend my time in Fort Worth writing. And maybe going to some fun stuff. I'm not sure what's playing in Bass Hall. We talked about going--but I don't remember if we ever did anything about it. Wish me luck. I have GOT to get some writing done!!

Blogging Here, Blogging There, Gail is Blogging...elsewhere

I am definitely not blogging everywhere, but I did blog in two different places this week. Which has sort of left me all blogged out. However, you can Read my blogs from those other places and know what I'm doing.

On Tuesday, I blogged at the To Be Read blog of the published authors chapter of RWA, all about my weekend spent at ApolloCon. So if you're more interested in my day-to-day life (which admittedly is not that interesting), go read that one.

Today, Wednesday, I have a blog up at the Fantasy, Futuristic and Paranormal chapter's blog, all about steampunk and what it is. And of course, a blatant promo job of the NEW BLOOD book...

More blogging? Here? Let me catch my breath, 'kay? I'm going to be busy the next couple of weeks. I need to catch up and try to get ahead... Oh, and I have my page proofs to go over, as well. I have plenty of time, but there's so much ELSE to be done! Ack!!