19 posts tagged “assassin's choice (heroes)”

The house has fallen through.  This is upsetting on so many different levels, but it also means that I have a LOT less stress and a bit more time to focus on my writing.  There's still fallout to deal with: getting youngest into a better school than her home school, cleaning up the financial mess left behind, recovering or adjusting routines that were disrupted and now either need to get back on track or will need to be readjusted to things like youngest's change in schools, and so on and so forth...oh! And unpacking.  We had started packing and the house has kind of...fallen apart in the craziness, so, yea, will be cleaning up, de-fleaing, and unpacking again.  Not particularly thrilled with how things turned out, but I saw what was coming and got my grieving done before the final ax came down, so I'm angry at what happened (and how), but ready to move forward with what we need to do.

The good news is that I kept up on my Assassin's Choice revisions.  I'm halfway through v6 and should have it finished and ready for beta readers by December.  At least that's my hope.  I've been so focused on A.C. that my other projects have been pretty much set aside for the time being.  I might be able to pick them up with less on my mind and less to do, but I'm not going to worry about it if I don't.  A.C. deserves to be done; I've been working on it for far too long and it's just time to get it off the plate and maybe out the door.

Why would I hang onto it after it's done?  My main concern is the chance of a multi-book contract.  I don't see my Alden books taking 2 years or less from start to finish, and most have indicated that 2 years is generally the time expected between books in a series.  So I need to get the second book to the point that A.C. is at now before I run A.C. itself around.  There may be a day when an Alden book will take 2 years or less, it's just not today. ;)

As for the other novels in process: Blood Charms is ready for me to start the building draft (which is the draft before the rough draft: a lot of information is supposed to go into the building draft, but I'm not sure that's what will happen here), and Phoenix Rising is about ready for the rough.  I've not been working on any shorts, and haven't been submitting much either.  This is one of those things I knew to drop since the house stress was already making me crazy.  Submitting shorts is already a frustrating process, so I really didn't need that on top of the house stuff.  I probably won't get back to submissions until the new year.  The current focus is A.C., Charms, and Phoenix.  Once A.C. is finished, I'll be moving on to book 2 in the trilogy, Quest for Ehlarayn, which is already stripped back and ready for me to get back to work on.

In other news, the husband is in culinary school and very happy.  Unfortunately, he also lost his job, which is actually only bad because of the lack of a paycheck.  The job itself was making him miserable and being run in an unethical manner.  We plan to report and sue, it's just taking us time to get it all figured out...and to find a lawyer.  In the meantime, he's looking for work in the industry.  He's not done a resume snow storm as of yet since midterms are a big concern for him right now, but he's started putting a few out, and the school will be holding a career fair especially for its culinary students next week, I believe.  We're looking forward to it.  In the meantime, we're looking a little on our as well.

So, it's going to take some time to get us back on our feet, especially with the job situation the way it is, but I'm ready to move forward and work on it.  And to get back to a full schedule of writing.

I keep meaning to post here and keep getting distracted by other stuff.  Even writing has fallen by the wayside of late because there's so much going on.

The good news is that A.C. v5 is done!  I'm working on some changes I need to make, which will end up being v6, then it will go out to betas.  The hope is that there won't need to be much done for v7, and I'll be able to start working up a query letter and the scary synopsis.  If nothing else, I can say it's DONE and I actually FINISHED a novel.

Among the things keeping me busy:

»  A freelance editing job.  Took up 6 weeks, and then was aborted.  I discussed the extensive story problems I had with the author, and he chose to put it on the back burner despite the fact that it had been accepted by a small press.  It amazes me that people trust my judgment that much...now why can't I apply it to my own work?  ;)

»  Buying a house.  I can't believe how much WORK it is to buy a house.  I knew it would be initially time consuming because you have to actually go look at houses.  I didn't realize the time sink would continue all the way through until after the move...and we're not there yet.  At this point, we're waiting for a check we need to help pay a few expenses and for a grant program to process our paperwork.  After everything we've done, the hoops we've had to jump, I've told the husband I'm not doing it again unless we can buy outright.  I think we've pretty much decided we're just going to stay put and never move again.  lol

»  Oldest's unemployment, which impacted the household finances in a big way even though she was out of work only for a couple of months.  Of course, the house stuff has also turned the finances upside down, so it's been a bit of a mess.

»  Getting the husband into culinary school.  He starts in October!  We're so excited for him! :)

»  Dragon*Con this past weekend.  I wimped out and only made it through half of Sunday—still have a lot of healing and strength building to do since the surgery.

This is all just the tip of what we've been dealing with.  There's been changes in routines, eating habits, and all kinds of things going on.  Most of it has been good, thank goodness, but there's been a few upsets.

Right now my biggest challenge is finding time to write in a day that's broken up into a dozen little pieces and often has other things going on that takes up what little pieces I have.  Working on it, but it's definitely tough.  About the only thing not suffering right now is Twitter, and that's just because it's so much easier to slap up a brief "here's what's going on" than to write a scene or chapter or blog post.  Things should be less crazy once the house is finalized and we've moved.

Speaking of crazy busy, have another house related call to make and need to take oldest to work then go to the grocery store, so better get going.

But, yay!  A.C. v5 is done!

These latter chapters of A.C. are proving to be difficult because I'm having to make huge cuts and rewrites, so they're going slow.  I've already cut it down by a chapter, and may end up cutting it down by another.  Right now, I have 3 chapters left.  If I lose another will depend on how much the chapter I'm working on now gets cut.  The sad thing is the chapter has a good ending point, and I'm not so sure how well it will work out if I end up needing to split the next chapter between this one and the last chapter.  We'll have to see.

Based on average chapter counts, the novel should end up somewhere between 130-133k.  I am very aware that this might be too high a count for a first time novelist, but I have a couple of chances for cuts before I start submitting.  Once this last round is done, I need to make some corrections and make sure that the world building is consistent.  Then I'll run through the novel again, hopefully fairly quickly, to align it with the changes I have in mind and to make sure any fixes in the world building make it to the novel.  Once that's done, it will go out to beta readers, and I'm sure more than one will tell me what I can lose without killing the story.

I've been thinking about the query letter and the synopsis, and, honestly, they scare the crap out of me.  One thing this novel isn't is simple.  And bringing 600 pages of novel (double spaced, folks) down to 3 is a daunting task.  And the query?  Let's not go there yet.

The good news is it's almost done.  Never imagined getting there with how much hair pulling I've done over it.  And if it never gets published, it did do the one thing I really needed me to do: it taught me A LOT.  I know how I need to write now, I've learned a lot about process in general and mine in specific, I've even learned quite a bit about the critiquing process and how to respond to it.  But most importantly, I've learned that 1) I can write well and 2) I can finish a novel.  Both of these are important since they help with what started off as a near non-existent confidence.  This novel may have been a pain in the butt, but it also employs a lot of advanced techniques, and whether I managed to do them well or not, I did finish.  That alone if a huge boost.  The years have also given me time to work on my confidence level myself.  Still have a ways to go, but I'm 100 times better than I was, and that's probably a bigger accomplishment than the book.

I currently have two other novels in progress: Phoenix Rising is almost to the rough draft stage and Blood Charms is in the early plot building stages.  Both need some world building done, though Phoenix needs less than Charms because it's in the same world as A.C.  Right now I'm just working on writing them at their particular stages.  A.C. is work enough and I don't want to have two novels in a work place at the same time.  I'll wait until A.C. is out to betas then transition to world building for Phoenix.  I'm holding off on "work" for Charms because it's so much fun to write right now, and I want to keep the fun.  I think this is one of the reasons I work multiple projects: so I have something at the fun stage while working on others.  Of course, another reason is the ADHD.  The books allow me to control my distraction and help me keep going forward by giving me enough variety so I don't get bored.

Other than the books, I've been revising a short a week and have started subbing again.  Word counts slacked off for a couple of weeks because of illness and schedule changes, but look to be on the rise again.  Most importantly, I've been very happy with where I am.  Leaving my editing job has not only helped me get to where my first novel is almost done, but has made me a much happier person in general.

I know all this up energy I've gotten since freeing myself to focus on my writing will eventually be interrupted bad a bad day or two, but right now?  Totally enjoying this energized, motivated, "this is what I should be doing" feeling.

And it shows.

This week, between new words and revisions, was a 13k week.  I can't even begin to remember the last time I had a 10k week, much less a 13.  Even days I have to run around and do domestic things like grocery shopping and picking up medications have been productive writing days.  The Phoenix building draft is now over 51k, I just finished a new version of A.C.'s chapter 33 (two chapters combined, lots of cuts made, and not so much revisions as rewrites—it'll need another go before I do my v5 polish), and just finished the outline for a new project, Blood Charms.  I've also been tinkering with a short, "Pretty Things" and submitted 2 others.

I think the personal changes are helping too.  I wake up tired, do my workout (3 times a week), and have the energy to get to writing even if I woke up tired.

Next week, I'm bumping up my count goal to 1k/day and 6k/week.  This is for new words, and I'll be sitting there for a bit until I'm sure the habit has reformed.  Shouldn't take too long.  I've already learned to do the new words first or my time gets eaten up by other things.  I just have to remember not to forget Phoenix in the process of working on the new project.

And speaking of domestic duties...must run out and get milk and eggs.  Writer or not, being a mom never ends.  ;)

There's just something about deciding that you WILL do something.  No hedging, no "if I can", but a definite "I WILL do this."

2009 started with a little bit of a stumble—I was still struggling with chapter 30 of A.C., but I've since kicked myself in gear.  Today, chapter 30 will be done and posted (along with the 4 previous chapters) to the workshop and sent to my two readers (in a 10 chapter section).

Which also brings up the fact that it's sometimes silly what finally gets us motivated.  In this case, I thought about writing a new short...and ended up finishing off chapter 30.4 revisions in 2 days.  I guess writing a new short is a threat to me?  Whatever works, right?  The only problem with this is that I do indeed need to write a new short.  A Christmas one for a private advent calendar, so I'm going to have to get over it being a threat soon.  I write and revise too slow to wait until we're too much further into the year to get started.

So far this month, I've written or revised a total of 11k.  In new words, I'm holding steady at 3900/week for the moment.  It was a bit of a stretch, so getting back into the habit of making that particular goal each week is more of a priority than trying to push more words just yet.  These words have been split between world building for both A.C. (which is now pretty much done) and Phoenix 1 and working on the Phoenix 1 building draft.  The other projects haven't been touched much yet, and that's fine.  I probably need to get A.C. off my plate first.

There are two things I'm really trying to put into play as I recover from the mess that was last year: 1. knowing my limits and being patient with myself because of them, and 2. easing back into things and being patient with the process.

Knowing your limits is as important as understanding your process, I think.  This doesn't mean you don't try to increase your limits, just that you realize that you have them and may need to build upon them.  Otherwise frustration sets in and you give up.  this was a real problem for me last year because my limits had decreased because of my health issues.  I needed to allow myself to heal before I pushed, but was just too used to pushing to convince myself to do that.  This year, I am measuring success a little differently.  Yes, I want to reach my goals, but I want to enjoy what I'm doing (for the most part since I'll probably always hate revisions) and reach those goals a bit more consistently.  To do that, I have to realize where my limits are, find the point where it's a challenge, then take the time I need to actually consistently reach that goal before I try pushing some more.  Last year, when I made my goals at all, it was more of a "Oh, I made my goal this week!  time to add more for next week."  Habit building just doesn't work that way for me.

Baby steps can be frustrating, but right now, that's what I need to take.  So, I've got a long way to go before I'm where I want to be, and I might have put too much in the goals to be able to reach them all.  The good news is that I still have a lot of year left.  And if I don't reach them all, I'll at least have a better idea of where my challenge point is and either cut back a project or two or keep the same number for next year.

And, really, THAT progress, that understanding of what I need to do to be happier in what I do and be less frustrated with myself and my writing, is a better achievement than the word count so far.

Now, about that exercise problem....  ;)

Yes, it's been a month since i last posted.  No, the progress hasn't been so good of late.  Seems I have a touch of SAD, plus some life stress stuff going on, and I'm struggling to make a schedule that works in the sense that I actually get things done, and all of this has interfered with just about everything.  The one thing that is getting done is my editing work, but that's purely because it's for someone else...and there hasn't been that much coming in or to do of late.

For about 2 weeks, I did nothing but sleep -- the consistently overcast skies made me more and more down, more and more lethargic, until, somewhere near the end of those two weeks, there was no doubt about it: I was depressed.  The sun finally came out for a few days and I was instantly better despite the fact that the other issues in real life were still issues.  Since then the clouds have been in and out, and so has the lagging, dragging, put me to bed feeling.  The biggest frustration is how this also affects my night time work -- I'm just too plain tired to want to do much of anything at any time.

I finished A.C. chapter 27 in a timely manner, then 28 took 2 weeks.  Now I'm trying to slog through 29, but finding myself dragging on it as well.  As a result, I'm so far behind on my novel challenge that I dropped it.  I am still working on my crit challenge (a little behind, but I think it's still doable) and the world building challenge (also behind with a 4500 word count required for each of the next 2 weeks to make it, but I think I can do it).  I've switched from A.C. world building to Phoenix world building for the challenge just to be sure to make my word counts.  Besides, once the basics are down, I find it hard to world build too far ahead of where I'm at in the revisions.  With the way revisions are going on A.C. now, it looks like it will come to about 130k, give or take, but I suspect cuts are coming in a few chapters towards the end, so we shall see how close that is.

I have another project starting to tug at me a bit, but it definitely needs some background work before I can start developing the plot and actual novel(s).  I'm considering picking up a notebook and just fiddling around with it while I continue to work on A.C. and Phoenix -- nothing major: basic world development, character histories, working out some of the decisions I need to make before I can start writing.  Those things will take awhile, so I doubt I'd start the actual writing until well after A.C. is off my plate, so to speak.  Of course, then I have Quest to worry about, but hopefully it won't be nearly as difficult to put together.

I do have to say, A.C. has been quite a journey.  Sometimes it's been as frustrating as hell, but I think I've learned quite a bit about writing in general and my process in particular.  Even if it never gets published, that right there makes it a success.  At least it will once I actually finish it.  ;)

My progress on A.C. and Phoenix has been slower than I would like it to be.  Granted, a lot of that was the physical problems that literally slowed me down and forced me to bed.  Without a laptop, doing any kind of writing was particularly hard.  With my iron levels as low as they were, it isn't any surprise that all I wanted to do was sleep.  So, I'm not kicking myself at being so far behind on either book, but I am disappointed in general.  I was hoping to be finalizing v6 of A.C. by now and getting it off the beta readers.  Instead, I'm still floundering my way through v4/5.  And I had hoped to be working on v3 revisions of Phoenix by now, but I don't even have a rough draft done.  Like I said, it couldn't be helped—being sick for 8 months took a lot of wind out of my sails, so to speak.

So the first thing I've done to help myself out is to readjust my goals for the two books for this year.  I'd like to just get the v4/5 version done for A.C.  And a rough draft for Phoenix would be nice, though I suspect that might be pushing it a bit.  I may have to be content with just getting the building draft done plus a whole lot of world building.

Which brings up a point quite briefly: just because you're writing in the same world doesn't mean no more world building.  In this case I need a whole bunch of different locations developed and I'm in a different time period than A.C.  So, yea, a lot more world building on my end.  The good news is that most of the basics are pretty set: magic, the gods, and so on, giving me a ready foundation for what I need to do for the other book.

Anyway, the second thing I'm doing to help get me going is to sign up for some challenges through my writing group.  Now, admittedly, I do this every time they hold a challenge, but I decided to join into this one a bit differently than in the past: I've focused my challenge choices so they apply to these two novels, especially A.C.  Now I do have a critique challenge in there, but the other two are novel revisions and world building specifically.  Neither has a high goal at the moment, but I will push them higher if I can.  I won't know if I can until I'm close to completing the ones I have: revise 7 chapters in 8 weeks and do 24k in world building.  I had to resist adding other goals that could derail me by giving me too much to do—I need to keep my focus on the two novels at hand and what I need to finish for them.

The one down side is that I've cut my weekly word count goal for Phoenix itself, the reason being that I need the world building before I can go too much further into developing the book itself.  That's part of what the building draft is all about: pulling together the information you need for descriptions and whatnot and putting all of it in the where it's needed.  When you get to the rough draft stage later, it's just a matter of working the details in that you need where you need them and spreading them out a bit.

Trust me, it works, for me anyway.

My weekly and daily goals are now adjusted a little to make the challenge goals the priority.  I'm actually not too worried about the world building stuff.  Between the two books, if I can't come up with 24k, then I'm just being lazy. REALLY lazy.  But the revisions do worry me.  I'm in the last 11 chapters, yes, but I'm also in the chapters that are going to require the most change.  Some are going to see drastic cuts.  Others are just plain going to have to be rewritten.  I suspect in the end I'll have 8 or 9 chapters instead of 11, but the chapter a week thing just may not happen with the amount of work that needs to be done to get there.  But I guess that's kind of what challenges are all about:  you reach for something you're not quite sure you can make and hope you actually do get there.  If they were all easy, it wouldn't be a challenge, right?

One of the things I've been neglecting as I work on Assassin's is the world building.  I put a lot of thought and effort into world building early in the novel's creation (or, actually, it's fourth incarnation), but I ended up burning out on it and stopping for a very long time.  Really, not the best thing to do since I need the world building.  Most authors seem quite capable of remembering things from one chapter to the next, but my combined ADHD and anemia make memory a serious issue for me.  It's so bad, I like to say i have a 5 minute memory lifespan...literally.

I need the world building, and I need it on paper where I can double check in case I forget and can't easily find it in previous chapters (Alden actually has 5 separate binders for world building), so  ignoring it as long as I have isn't a good thing.  I have characters and things towards the end of the book that I haven't taken the time to think about or get to know, and that not only means inconsistencies in the writing, but it also means it will be harder to weed out the clichés and the images that have been seen before.  The best reworking of certain ideas for my world has come when I've written something down and let it percolate a bit before I am set on it.  Waiting so late in the novel's development means there's less of a chance of the unique taking root, and that can be a real problem.  For example, one of my races is dangerously close to a gaming race, and having the time to think about what I've put down in their cultural profile gives me an opportunity to redevelop them a bit and take them further from that comparison.

In fact, some of what's been holding up any work on Randi Kayde is the world building.  I have an entire new concept for it to work out and just haven't wanted to tackle it.  Loving the concept of a book doesn't necessarily motivate you to work on the much needed background material.  Besides, I have my hands more than full with the novels I'm currently working on.  Once I need a break from Alden, then I'll probably revisit Randi.

Since I've got little going on for the editing job at the moment, I'm taking my unexpected "free" time to work on the missing world building for the end of A.C..  Getting it done now will provide me a little time to do some rethinking for when I work on v6—which is a revision brought on largely by changes in my world building.  Mind you, there are other things that need to be worked out in v6, but a large part of the reason to revise again is the world building.  I'm just not able to stop where I am and go back in a draft and make changes based on a new idea I just had.  Which I think is a good thing—waiting until I've finished the current revision gives me a chance to think through and develop the changes a bit.

So, while I'll still be working on actual A.C. chapter revisions, the main goal this week is to get through the rest of my world building list.  I've already had a character's new profile force a change in a battle scene in the chapter I'm currently revising.  This is the one thing I have to admit I enjoy about world building.  Other authors get to know their characters and locations while actually writing them; I discover my characters and locations when profiling them.  My characters rarely, if ever, surprise me in the story; but they frequently surprise me as I work on their profiles.  I find that very cool.

I've actually made enough little bits of progress when trying to get myself in a place to work on world building (seriously, when I'm working on world building is when I am most easily distracted in my writing) to make a decent dent in what was left of my list.  I now have less than a dozen things left to profile, and most of that is characters (which are the most fun to profile).  Since we're heading into the weekend, and Friday, Saturday, and Sunday are the days set aside for my own writing anyway, I should get these all done fairly quickly.

Then I get to start again for Phoenix.  The good news there is that some of the building will have already been done since Phoenix takes place in the same world as A.C.  And I'll take whatever breaks I can get.

There's been a lot going on—mostly health issues, but a few other things a well—and now A.C. and Phoenix are stalled.  Hopefully not for much longer, but I'm having a lot of trouble getting back with it.  It's like I didn't fall off the cart but got tossed off instead, and no one noticed I was missing so the cart kept going.

And this is going to be another place where I have problems if I ever become pro: how do you write when you're sick and stressed, and how do you get yourself back on track when you can barely get out of bed?

Don't get me wrong: I needed the week off I just took.  I wasn't getting enough sleep.  I could barely sit up most of the time.  I'd not only not make coherent sense if I even tried to write or revise, I wouldn't be doing my body any favors either.  When you're that sick, you take the break and just accept it.

But when you're done being that sick, you've got to get back on your feet, and I'm not doing so well at that.  I am picking at A.C. revisions, yes, and most of that needs to be done off the comp (I revise by hand; revising by comp doesn't work for me), but picking is the operative word here.  I'm definitely not doing as much as I should be.  I can't even seem to convince myself to do the world building I really, really need to get done for both novels.

I am managing to get back on track with my editing work, but my own writing?  I just can't seem to find the motivation to get with it.  And it's driving me crazy that my own motivation, or lack thereof, is what could be my downfall as a writer.

We've got more upheaval coming this month, but, somehow, I've got to find a way to work through it.  Any suggestions?

Phoenix Rising has been sent off to a writing buddy for a plot check.  The notes draft isn't quite done—it needs some actual notes—but the story itself is.  Politics play a big part in this novel and I needed someone who likes that kind of thing to make sure they work. Last thing I want is to get to the point where I'm posting it for crits with my writers workshop and find out that the politics really don't work so the whole thing has to be stripped back to a point where I can fix them—probably back to the outline.  I would have sent it off at the narrative draft stage, but there isn't really enough in that stage to see this kind of thing.  It can help with general plotting, help makes sure the subplots are fairly woven in, stuff like that, but it's not so great at something like this because there's just not enough of it to see how well it works.

While my buddy checks it, I'll be adding notes and starting some character profiles and the like.  I'll also be continuing with A.C. revisions.  The current chapter has gone slower than the previous few, but it also was written out of order and about...7? years ago—and hasn't been touched since being written.  It was originally going to be, get this, chapter 10.  I should finish it by the end of this upcoming week.

Regardless, it's been a wonderfully productive weekend so far.  Tomorrow (erm, later today), I'll work on notes for the notes draft and probably chapter 4 of NPB.  I need 13k/week to make my word count goal for the year.  With a little pushing, I think I can actually make it this week.  We'll see about next week.