Paksworld

I was determined to keep on schedule as much as possible before husband’s surgery, so my goal for this week was to make it to 120,000 words.  Which I did.   Today I went back to an unfinished chapter (it had stopped in a sort of lurch awhile back) and it took off a bit.    A certain teary widow has pulled up her socks and had an idea I certainly had not anticipated when I quit on that chapter.    I’m impressed.  Kieri’s impressed.

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This may not make it into the final Book IV,  but even if it doesn’t this isn’t a huge spoiler.  I don’t think.    But imagine you’re Dorrin Verrakai, and a Personage (one of several in the book) comes to visit–a Personage whose attitude to magery is not exactly positive.

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Some of you may have read the long article on epic fantasy at Clarkesworld built on interviews with fantasy writers, editors, etc.   Robin McKinley, whose blog is my just-before-bedtime reading, was one of those interviewed and she referenced the article in her blog last night.

I threw a comment out on her discussion board, as I didn’t exactly agree with everything everyone interviewed had said, and she asked if she could use it–perhaps expanded a bit–as a guest-post on her blog.  Uh…(scraping jaw off the floor)…certainly.  Absolutely.   Honored & delighted.

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Thousand, that is, words a day.   Ritual disclaimer:  what works for one writer is wrong for another.   Writing every day (or at least five days a week) works better than writing “when I feel the urge” but aside from that, writers’ clocks keep time right side up, sideways, upside down, and face down under the bed.

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Back on the 2000 words/day schedule for as long as I can hold it (planning for less wordage when husband’s in the hospital and I’m driving back and forth, feeding horses, checking the wildlife guzzlers, etc.)   Saturday was productive with 2160.

Current wordage is ~103,200; end of day should top 104,000.    A certain Personage has finally shown up onstage (I knew Personage existed and would be plot-critical, but Personage came in Personage’s own sweet time) and this is helping untangle a previously difficult tangle.

Back to work.   The nose on the grindstone is thickening its callus.

Made it to 100,010 words…just now.   (OK, five minutes ago, time in between spent shaking out fingers.  Call it 11:15 pm.)   Today’s production was about 1500 words.

At this time last year,  I was only about 52,000.    Hence the difficulties of last fall and winter.   I don’t think I can hit my usual full-steam-ahead production rate of 2000 words day right now, what with LifeStuff, but I’m not in the bind I was in last year as long as I don’t take off a month to lie in a hammock.

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Some people like to write villains, just as some gamers really like to play evil characters.     For writers who like to write villains, writing non-villains can be a challenge.  And the same is true for writers who don’t like to write villains.

Before we can talk about this, a few caveats.   Characters are not the writer.  All competent writers can create characters very unlike themselves (and not just taller, stronger, more physically attractive, either!)  Much of a writer’s research is “people-watching”–observing people of all walks of life, in different settings.    So someone who’s never been a doctor or a helicopter pilot can–with research–write believable doctors or helicopter pilots.   Similarly,  writers who are not nasty themselves can write nasty characters, and writers who aren’t saints can write good characters.

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In real life, many things impinge on our lives but are only slightly connected (by us) with one another.    I have horses, so I have a “line” to the horse vet, the farrier, and the feed store…I write, so I have lines to my agent, my editors (present and past), the various publishing houses, and readers.    It’s true that because I have readers, I still have publishers, and also the money to put in the bank to pay the vet, the farrier, and the feed store…but nobody at the feed store has ever met any of my editors, or knows their names.   The farrier is aware of the equine vet (most farriers know every equine vet in the area they service) but neither the farrier nor the equine vet knows any of my readers outside their home town.

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Plot bombs I’ve explained before–inspiration that explodes in the plot and drives it forward into new and fascinating territory.    What I’ve had this week isn’t a plot bomb.  It’s more like that rib-spreader thing that surgeons use when they want to mess around inside someone’s chest cavity.    This week’s inspiration–if you can call it that–shoved itself into too small a space in the plot and then pushed it open.

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A-Kon was interesting, fun, challenging, and huger than I’d expected, silly me.   I did not manage to get online even once, nor do any writing, so now I’m officially behind my own (sculpted for such occasions) schedule and must dive into work.    One five-day chunk of wiggle-room is gone.  (Four of those and a month of wiggle-room is gone.)

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