Rolling to a stop

Still creeping along but have lost the uumph. It's almost December. Isn't it? Not yet? Damn!

Rollin', Rollin'

I'm picking up the pace a little. It's really fun to have whole days before me. To write in the morning, afternoon, pick it up again at night. It's fun to have words already done when I come back, it builds faster. It's fun to just let Sissy take a long bath, let Ray have a ridiculous conversation with a mean old man. It's nice because now I think I've gotten this one rearranged, which cost me a couple of days, but now it makes more sense. Of course, it's a murder mystery as well as a relationship novel, so that requires more structure and I'm not sure I'm quite there yet with the detective work, but mostly. I know who did it and how but I'm not totally sure how my detective figures it out, though he already suspects. Anyway, that's the least interesting part of the story. And the interesting part is such fun, kind of grim, but fun for me as a writer. Still probably can't hit 50K but I'm doing much better than last year.

Breaking the 20,000 barrier

In a rush, wrote a whole chapter of backstory and got to over 21,000. Lovely. If I can keep this up, I might get to where Jen is now by the end of the month.

Moving On

Which is the title of a wonderful Larry McMurtry novel. Now there's someome who'd have no problems with nano. Knocks off 50000 a week probably.
So, I have nothing more I can do with Reply All but embroidery, until I get feedback from my buddies. The romantic comedy takes like no words. So I am going back to a novel I left in tatters more than a year ago. And lo, it has so many holes and so little word count, I have found new life in Nano. Onward!

Surfacing and Submerging

I just posted most of this on Jen's blog. She was fretting over skipping a scene in her Nano novel. And since I do that all the time I was inspired to bloviate about my own process.
Anyway I said I do not start and the beginning and write to the end. I generally know the beginning and know the end and start the journey sleepwalking through a chapter or so at a time until I arrive at my destination. I once talked to Kate about this and she said she can only plan about three chapters ahead. I'm very much like that.
I often skip scenes because usually they're too heavy to deal with. So say you have a scene where, say x murders y, and to really write that scene would take so much emotion and strain and deep mining that it would totally keep you from making any progress for days at a time. In this situation, I do what Jen did, make a quick x murders y comment, highlight it, and keep going with the first draft.
After I get a first draft, I look around, see what I've said and then often TRY again to go from begining to end, but my mind frequently doesn't cooperate and I can't save the things I think of until I reach that point in the novel to fill them in.
For example, I'll think of a bit of dialogue in the bathtub. I try to fill that in as soon as possible or I'll forget all the stuff that went with that snippet. See I could write down that bit of dialogue for later use but it wouldn't be attached to the sort of dreamlike structure it came from. If I do it quickly, I can still catch some of that substance and then I end up adding a lot more to that particular scene. And then I got back to the linear revision.
Now I've reached the end of the linear revision of Reply All that I'm doing for Nano and I keep thinking, "Well, I'm finished." But this stuff keeps coming to me, like I realized that A. is born in 1951 and I've said nothing about the historical context. So I was going to go find stuff about 1951 and fill that in in the section where they go to get A. out of the hospital.

So I say skip the bloody scene until you have the psychic energy to deal with it. No master is standing over you smacking his pointer on his palm ready to pounce if you skip a scene. WHACK! For instance, the scene in Peace where E. tries to save T. in the river was the very last scene I wrote, because I knew it would be so hard to write, and indeed I came up crying.

Title a quote from a large English woman Ginny and I met in Spain, who was describing someone swimming.

Nano

Still whacking away in the brush here, up to 14,000+ words. I have just about finished the third draft of this novel, but it's still only about 60,000 words, which is enough for a maintstream novel, but still a tad short. It will fill out though in the next round of edits, when I start plaguing my writing partners with it again. This is the longest work I have ever done.
Now I think I will turn to the romantic comedy collaboration. This makes my excel spread sheet for nano a little complicated, but I just do a daily start and end word count, so it's not really that complex.
I'm ahead of where I was on this time last year. It seems easier to get the word count done this year? More to say, more discipline?

Why Can't I Dance

Couldn’t write at all last night. Too riveted to the election results and the end of 12 long years of right-wing Republican domination. As Ginny said about 9 o’clock, “I just want to be less oppressed.” I feel strange today, like the proverbial bird whose cage door is open. A curious silence hangs over my personal e-mail, blog and listserv outlets for political discourse. No one is e-mailing triumphant paeans to freedom, like we gagged and puked after 2000 and 2004. It’s like everyone’s waiting for the Rovians to steal it again, somehow. And I guess the breath has still got to be held on Virginia.
But come on, everybody, let’s dance. We’ll have ethics reform, oversight investigations and real attention paid to getting us out of f—ing Iraq. Rummy’s OUT! Rove is hiding somewhere. Santorum is gone, gone, gone. Delay is a bad memory. Wow! This is great news.
But why can’t I write, why can’t I dance?

I’m re-reading Phineas Redux and I feel like he did when he was supposed to have been all happy and ready to go to his club for a drink after he’d stood trial for murder. We’ve been in the dock for six years. It will take a while to be able to take it all in and stop looking over our shoulders for another assault on the Constitution in the name of “the homeland.”

DAY THREE

Up to nearly 4,000 words. Had a lovely situation last night. I had to take Gus over to the wilds of Northern Virginia to do his play reviewing. Was stuck over there for four hours. Found a Madeleine's on King Street in Alexandria and nabbed the only table in the place that had a plug next to it. Was all excited when I logged in and found there was a free Alexandria wireless! hah. I could putz around on the Internet. NOT. Never got above 2 mbps (or whatever that unit of measurement is) and low signal so .... I had to write for four hours. Got a difficult section completely done.
And I've started an interesting new method of character analysis. For those of you who know a bit about astrology: Write their charts. it's fascinating. I like astrology for this very reason. it's a language more than anything; a vernacular of character and karma. For instance, my MC, Araminta, is a double Gemini with her sun in the 12 house and Pluto in her fourth house. My friend Susan, who is a pretty serious astrologer, said "a dark, half-unconscious, busy-minded girl...." And that's a pretty damned good description of A.
I'm doing Buckley now. He's a Leo with a Cancer moon in his fourth house, either opposing or conjunct Pluto, and Sag rising. Something affecting his venus as well.

Day One

OK, only 650 words on day one. Sneaking little spurts at work, looking over my shoulder to see if my boss was walking by. Had a planned drinkie-poo meeting with my friend Aimee from the Unitarian writers group that I am rejoining in December. But now, NOW, I can really launch. I am just bursting with it. I can feel it. Felt it today. it's all right there and I've never felt quite this way about my writing. Just so looking forward to it. Not like having to exercise. Like really wanting to get home to work in the garden.
ONWARD! The name of a town in my WIP.