Paksworld

(GRUMP: just erased the whole post I was about to send.  My right little finger hit *something* (I wasn’t looking at it, so don’t know) and it all disappeared.  So this is not the post you would’ve had but the post’s general gist as I remember it after that moment of shock, useless attempts at recovery, and then writing a GRUMP.)

This week has been about reorganizing the POV sections into chronological order and writing connections when the lack of them became apparent.  I’ve also been noting places were cuts could be made later, to accommodate the additional material that will bring the book to the conclusion I’m trying to achieve…for which I need a LOT more room.    Right now the book’s just under 163,000 words,  but it changes daily up and down as this is trimmed slightly and that is added for connectivity and this other bit now turns out to be wrong, and here I’ve added a chunk…etc.    There’s a lot of front-loading in this book, so anything trimmed there has to be carefully done so the plot-threads can run smoothly on, without fraying to nothing later.

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Because I moved from POV chapters to one central file a bit early (in order to make keeping word count easier, and thus checking against daily goals easier), the book began to grow in ways that ran counter to temporal sequence.

Or, more simply, it was/is a mess.

What I needed was a printout.   By this week, I desperately needed a printout.  Usually I start doing a printout earlier, but for reasons A – R, that didn’t work for me this time.     And printing out 780+ pages takes a) time,  b) lots of paper,  c) lots of printer cartridge, and d) even more time to punch holes in the sheets so they’ll go in the two big fat 3-ring binders that I use to move chapters around.

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Yesterday’s 2700+ words and today’s 2000+ have rolled over the writer-odometer another satisfying amount.   More important for your reading enjoyment, Stuff has been Happening to multiple characters, some of whom are being revealed as not what I thought they were.  You may be smarter than I am and guess earlier that X is not really X but R’.    Or not.

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Today was a 2000+ word day.   Clitter-clatter-clitter-clatter on the keys, sometimes very fast, and sometimes a half hour spent staring futilely at the computer screen hoping words would show up there before I froze in that position.

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Sometimes I’m amazed at what the Plot Daemon has been up to behind my back.  I was not feeling well for several days after the trip, and couldn’t get more than a hundred words or so out at a time.    Far below my daily goals.    (I was waking up unsure where I was–mostly thinking I was on the train, but once still in a hotel–and the writing itself was peculiar.  I knew certain scenes would be difficult, but usually those difficult scenes come embedded in their full context.  This time…not so much.)     But underneath/behind all that, the Plot Daemon was busy.

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So I left Atlanta this morning and wrote 2700+ words on the train, mostly about poor (ummph, you don’t know him yet.  Let’s just say that he’s young and was brash, but reality has laid some clue-bats on him lately.   I didn’t expect he’d ever become a POV character, as he wasn’t my favorite of the available young-and-brash stock, but sometimes they simply o’er leap all obstacles to find themselves on center stage with very important lines to say–and say them with panache.  Or some word of that type.

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Another day of travel, another 2000+ words added to Book III.    Maybe I should live on the train?   No, not really.   But it focuses my mind something wonderful–no phone, no interruptions (well, meals and such but nothing else) and the words come.   Scenery, too.  And interesting people when I do come up for air.  (Little do they know, the writer is watching…and listening…bwah-hah-hah-hah!)

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Progress: 40,000 words in August.  40,630, to be precise, from August 1 through 28.

Book III is now closing in on the next writer-odometer marker (watching those zeros turn over) and will reach that by August 31.   I don’t know how much writing I’ll actually get done at Dragon*Con, but I’ll try.

The Thursday and Friday were fizzles as far as writing was concerned, and Saturday wasn’t especially good, but did produce something, and this evening the scenes I’d been contemplating while driving to and from church today came alive, so I made both my week goal of 10,0oo words and I’m on track to meet  my month goal as of midnight Sunday (yes, it’s after midnight–just finished work at 11:54.)

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…The Writing Magic, that is.    After some slogging days of making quota but not feeling the thrill (“But I’d rather sit out by the water garden and watch dragonflies…”)  I started a scene on Tuesday that grew…and picked the right place to stop for the day.

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