The Fooling Around Before the Storm

After returning to The Undisclosed Location from the soul sucking hole of hell that I call a job, I had dinner, and . . . relaxed.  It was time to fool around, not do anything writing related.  Because I know what’s coming:  work, then the drive home, then dinner, and relaxing.  By the time I get on the computer, it’ll probably be about 8 PM local time, and I can finally dig into the journey that will be Harper Voyager.

I figure I’ll have my package together and polished by Saturday afternoon, so as soon as I feel comfortable that it’s ready to go, it goes.  I’ll update my Author’s Page on Facebook, then play the waiting game.  I figure, at best, I won’t hear anything until after the first of the year.  Before that probably won’t be good news.  But after the first of the year . . . yeah. I can see that happening.

Since I was resting last night, I caught up on some news, and contacted a couple of old friends that I hadn’t seen for a few weeks, because editing takes up a lot of your free time.  I listened to music, which is no different than another night, because without music, I’m only half there at the computer, and my mind needs something to help churn the waters of my imagination.  (Notice I didn’t say “chum”, because I don’t believe I have sharks in my mind.  Not yet.)

I also caught up on a few game supplements   Even though I rarely game these days, I have a ton of games on my external drive.  And there are probably a dozen supplements and core rule books that I haven’t read through.  Again, writing takes away from your free time, particularly when writing isn’t you main source of income.

I didn’t do a very in-depth read of the books; it was more like, skim, skim, skim . . . oh, there’s something interesting.  It’s a routine I’m used to, because you stop and get the stuff that jumps out at you.  I can spend three or four days going over a book this way–especially if it’s one of the books for Eclipse Phase, which have great writing, incredible amounts of information, a lot of wit, and comedy you can’t find anywhere else.  (Read about Momo von Satan and the Chewy Gristle Commentary Hour, and tell me if you don’t laugh.)

One of the games I went through last night, though . . . I need to dig into it a little more.  The author and developer gave some rather particular reasons for developing the game, and the more I thought about it, the more a review of the game seemed necessary.  And when that review comes, you’ll see it here.  It’s been a long time since I’ve written a game review:  it should be interested.

But that’s for later . . . this weekend comes the real work.  Package, edit, upload, click, hope:  such is the mantra of today’s writer.  Oh, don’t forget wait, which hasn’t changed for writers for, well, a long time.

Everyone wants to buy the next masterpiece, but they certainly take their time that your book is it.

I can wait, though.  I can wait.

The Rest of the Unquiet

Part Sixteen is in the bag, so to speak.  I set out to finish that character of Diners at the Memory’s End last night, and I did.  Yes, just eight hundred and one words did the trick, and the chapter was almost nineteen hundred words, but if that’s all you need to get your point across, you use that, and nothing more.

Albert is back in class:  well, he’s sorta back in class.  Back sitting next to Meredith, back to listening to lectures . . . it’s all sorta back to normal.  So with that said, there are two more parts to write, two more sections in the tale, and in about four thousand or so words, Diners will come to an end.

What comes after that–I’m curious about that as well.  I don’t want to take a break from writing, but I don’t want to be in the middle of something when NaNo rolls around.  As much trepidation as I may have for the upcoming event, I will attempt it this year.  I want to believe that last year wasn’t a fluke, that I can actually do the deed as well this year as last.

So it was that I headed off to bed.  It was a dark and stormy night–no, really.  A thunderstorm brewed up last night, and it was all lightning and thunder the whole evening.  As I fell asleep, there were flashes outside the window, and a low rumble now and then.  I said good night to my Muse, then drifted off . . .

The thunder woke me up, right around 5 AM.  I lay there for a long time, because I didn’t want to crawl out of bed.  But things felt strange; it was as if the stuff around my feet just wasn’t there.

When I finally crawled out of bed, I discovered the sheets at the foot of the bed were all akimbo.  It looked like I’d run a race, because everything had been pulled about a third of the way up from the edge.  It reminded me of a scene from She Hulk, where Jennifer had a bad dream, and once she was awake, she discovered she’d shredded her pillows and comforter–which she could do with ease.

Me, not so much.  Which is probably good for me.

Now, I could say that my dreams were making me restless–but I have no idea what my dreams were last night.  That’s been happening of late; I fall asleep, then wake up in the morning.  What happens in between, I have no idea.  My dreams are becoming a mystery to me.  A few months back they were pretty vivid, but these days, I’m getting little, if anything.

I think this is one of the reasons I’m starting to sleep, but I’m getting very little rest.  The sleep is there, but I’m getting little REM action, and it would seem I’m moving about a lot.

If anything, I feel this means I’m not resting, I’m running as fast as I can while I should be doing nothing.  And what is the cause?  Could be anything.  I mean, while things are getting better, there’s still something going on in my mind that needs to be quieted.

Hey, maybe this is something I can write about!

Tripping the Day

It feels good to be rested up.  Or, at least, I feel that way at the moment.

Today is a holiday for me.  I had to roll back to The Undisclosed Location on Sunday for work, and because of that, I ended up getting today (Friday, the 27th) off.  After a long trip back yesterday–with a lot of foolish people on the roads, believe it–I got here, saw our damaged tree, ate, and spent hours fighting to stay awake until it was time to fall asleep.

No writing last night:  I was smart enough to realize that if I had tried, at best I might have churned out a couple of hundred words that wouldn’t have satisfied me.  I’ve done that too many times, and it’s always left me feeling like I was writing on autopilot.  Since I’m off today, there’s plenty of time to get the writing in . . .

After I do my running around.

Today I am a lab rat.  I have some lab work I need to do for my annual physical, which hasn’t been all that annual due to being out of work for three years.  I’m thinking I’ll be okay, but who knows?  Maybe there is a mutagen hiding in my body, just waiting for the moment to come out, and before you know it, I’m the Dark Phoenix, only without the planet eating, and dying every other week and coming back to life.

In about an hour and a half I’ll roll out of here, go do the lab thing, stop by another doctor to give them my updated insurance, then hit the stores, pick up a few things, then back to the home–

Where it’s back into the story.

There’s a couple of things I want to look at in Diners before I get into Part Thirteen.  I want to see how often I say, “Suddenly”, and I want to see how often I start a conversation with “So–”.  Those are no-nos, and I’m certain I’ve been doing it for a long time.  I know I’ve done it in some of my past stories, and I want to get out of that habit.

See?  I’m still learning the craft.  Maybe that’s one of the reason Her Demonic Majesty was rejected:  too many Sos, too many Suddenlys . . . or maybe it needs to be better.  Who knows?  Gotta send it out again and see if I get the big rejection. Or the big sale.

Can’t know until it’s out there, right?

But writing, writing, writing.  I’m at a good place in the story, and very close to the end of Part Thirteen.  Well, maybe a couple of thousand words close, but I’m close.  Most of it is about Meredith now, how she is the way she is, and maybe I’ll give her a sister named Sian, because having an annoying little sister is always a good thing, right?

Writing is back, and I feel excited today.  Can’t say why, but I have some energy here I didn’t have last week.  It’s coming back, though.

Save the dark times for the stories.  It’s time to write in the light.

Searching Through the Bones of the Past

Back tonight in the real home, and it’s so hard to write.  The problem with the eyes, and feeling so tired . . . I dozed off watching TV a couple of times tonight.  It’s the time change–and how long the day was today.

Tomorrow will be better.  Tomorrow is a trip to the doctor’s to have the eyes looked at, and maybe talk a little about my anxiety last week.  And I have to work tomorrow as well–from home.  Damn.  I could just spend the day writing.

That’s one of the reasons I’m doing today’s post last night, if that made any sense.  It’s 9:40 PM CST, because I know I’ll be so pressed for time in the morning that I won’t be able to get it in.  So, you write when you can, right?

The other reason I’m doing this now is because I know I’m far too brain dead to get into the story tonight.  I have a lot of things I have to keep straight in my head, and I’m not sure I could with my mind feeling the way it does.  So, a quick post here, so I can do my five hundred words and sleep the good sleep.

That doesn’t mean I didn’t do anything tonight.  I pulled up Transporting, because I wanted to get a little history to help me remember things.  There’s a bit of history in a few chapters of Transporting, and I know I’ll need that, because I can’t remember every date I created when it comes to stuff that won’t happen for over a hundred years.

The history lesion was great.  As I read through it I wasn’t editing, but I was.  There were a few things I changed here and there, but I’m leaving any big editing for later, much later.  I figure after NaNo I’ll start in on editing that monster; for now, it rests and waits.

When you’re reading something that you did a long time ago, you feel a certain pride, realizing how good it is.  The parts I read tonight I probably wrote about 1989, 1990, and then revised about 2002.  It’s not the original material, but it’s close enough, and my mind was on fire back then.  I loved how I worked that stuff out back then, and I need to do a little more reading for something else–maybe tomorrow between times when I will want to toss my work computer through a wall.

I’m thinking that I might need to make just a few notes about this history before I actually writing anything.  Nothing major, just notes.  I know when I wrote this part last time, I was winging shit like mad.  This time, I have a much better handle on what happens, and I will get it down right.

I do want Meredith’s history to be good, too.  I have a major part of her life locked in my head, it’s just a matter of doing a few dates and–bang!  I’m off.  Part Thirteen will be off and running.

There’s my five hundred.  That’s enough for tonight.

Hope all is good this morning for all my kind readers.