Nobody, darnit

Just wrote 2400 words in less than two hours. I seem to have a couple styles of writing. One is prose intense, pretty, and usually involves short stories and/or lots of action, description and inner monologue. The other happens in my novels, and is the way I started writing. I inevitably fall into the pattern of having a bunch of characters sitting around talking. And that's what happened with this scene. One line just flows after the other (especially since I'm dealing with my second favorite character, ever) and suddenly, I've got 2400 words, of mostly dialogue. Whether or not this is a good thing is something I'll determine later. I'm just happy to be writing, even if it's all indulgence.

I'll give you my favorite bit (which, look! doesn't involve dialogue!)

Vittore was taken up a graceful but gray spiral staircase to the Low Matriarch's office. It was much like the rest of the temple--simple but with bright and careful embellishments. In this case, a single line of multi-colored tiles ran around the plaster wall just below eye height. Lace curtains fluttered beside an open window and just barely shrouded the view of the ocean beyond.

The room was unostentatious without being boring. It annoyed him that he liked it. However, the straightbacked chair he sat in was, to his relief, hard and uncomfortable.

"You haven't brought me here before, Holiness," he said.

The Low Matriarch nodded. She was a short woman who appeared taller when sitting behind her polished maple desk. The mica sewn to her veil was neatly done, but a single piece was missing on one side, and a frayed thread dangled on the other. She was neither too neat, nor too messy. Matronly, with expressive wrinkles that made her interesting to look at, she was the least offensive person Vittore had ever met, and he tried hard to find ways to dislike people. She perpetuated the belief in gods, but too many people did that for Vittore to hold it against anyone. Not that he liked her.

Bull sharks leaping up river rapids like salmon. For real.
I'm listlessly researching river systems in hopes of finding cool setting stuff to get excited about, for the novel I'm starting. (Montana Book is temporarily set aside in favor of Fat Fantasy.) This imaginary river in particular has the geology of the Zambezi, but with the climate of the Danube. I want a floodplain to start with, but I'll probably just throw in a nice gorge and waterfall and make myself be content.

And salmon shark. I can't forget the salmon shark.

I'm at the Rainforest, having a most excellent time. Right now I'm 222 words into the day. Had 2200 words yesterday. I'm not sure what I'm writing next though, so I think I might be bound for a walk.
I definitely have a fascination with writing characters who are two people in one body. I love transitioning smoothly between two voices. This time, I'm writing first person, and both personalities are speaking first person with no scene break. But it should be pretty obvious. And to anyone who reads this and considers exactly how autobiographical it is, I have never ever felt like I wanted to disembowel my whole family, and I've never actually suffered a dissociate personality episode. Just so ya'll know. I did, however, replicate my grandfather's ash scattering yesterday in a highly emotional scene. (Different location and people, same spontaneous huddle and ash beneath my fingernails.)

In other Rainforest news, we went for a drive around the lake yesterday, first having to go way up the river into the mountains. We saw roughly 40-50 elk in about five different groups, all of them right on the side of the road and not at all inclined to flee. They just stared a bunch at these people who eagerly hopped out of the car to stare at them in return.
There's also a Christmas tree out in the middle of nowhere.
Also, a coyote.

And this morning, I discovered a wonderful thing. I wanted a shower, but instead of combing out my gawdawful bedhead and twisting it into a bun, I just twisted up the tangles, and it's actually really nice. It almost makes me want to tease my hair on a regular basis. Almost. Anyway, I'm totally rocking the cute secretary look today.

Okay, back to work.

Holy Smokes, I wrote a non-genre short story! With me submitting this to our group for next week, that will make three weeks in a row we've had one non-genre piece (out of two). What's the world coming to?

Bit of a writing breakthrough today. It started last night, when I was putting off analyzing a long complicated scene. Right before bed I realized that the answer to why the scene seemed to have no purpose (interesting scene, still no purpose) was that it was needed to be rewritten entirely from the pov of a totally different character. Cue groans and passing out. I'm forcing myself to go over my scene checklist (see below cut) for each scene. I have to force a choice out of at least one of the characters in each scene, something that affects events in future scenes. So I forced the proper pov character to take action. what action should they take? Why, that big thing he does, that before was halfway through the book, but is now scooted up a few chapters? I'll move it forward even more! Cue a lot of mental dragging and watching scenery go flying every which way. So that shook things up for the best, and it forced me to dump a second scene and replace it with something that will be even more exciting and plot relevant. And hopefully have mermaids.

I say it a zillion times, but I'm going to keep saying it. I'm so glad I do this for fun, because I'd hate to think I'd be crushed if I did a whole lotta work which I had to toss and replace with more work, which got tossed, and then replaced that, and in the end, no one even liked the book and it never sold...ugh. I'm not letting myself go there.



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Urghh... my head hurts. Sinus headache, I think.

I'm going to try to submit something for the next Sword and Sorceress anthology, deadline May 15th. I spent the last couple days brainstorming ideas--all of them based in my giant world, of course. If nothing else, I'm going to get some worldbuilding done.

Last night, I had the first of two sessions with my writing group critiquing my novel. We've never done anything like this before, and I think it went really well. Julie "Precious World Virgin" McGalliard, and Keffy managed to focus on different things--Julie on plot arcs, and Keffy on character arcs. They both picked up on what I was trying to do, and noted where I wasn't quite succeeding.

Tonight, I hear, there shall be Dexter and fake margaritas and Thai food. Tomorrow, hopefully, I'll convince lordseamus to see if the pull cord on our lawnmower can be fixed, since no one in the house can turn the damn thing on and mow the lawn before our landlord yells at us.

Last night, I put something through my critique group for the first time since we restructured it. It was also the first time the new group used our novel critiquing system rather than the short story system. We read the first three chapters, then decide if we think we can tackle the whole novel. I think it worked really well. My group rocks.
I'd already given kehrli the full novel, and he printed it out at work in two neat, coil-bound volumes with laminated sparkly gold covers. <3

I got a couple of moments of, "you know that thing you always do in your books and that everyone yells at you for, but you've actually not done in this one? You should do that here." (Specifically, I always throw out too many characters and plot information at once. In this book, the start's more leisurely, but the plot doesn't really get going for two chapters. I'm pretty sure I can find a way to have it both ways.

We talked about using clothing descriptions to relay the technological level of the society. I've done my best to downplay the generic medieval fantasy-land stuff in my story, and as a result, I think my world-building's lopsided. As in, all my details are of non-generic stuff, but if it's generic, then I don't mention it, even if it's something important like the tech level.

I have to write an addition to a scene that will involve one of my necromancers going through the enormous pile of work requests he gets everyday, and figuring out which jobs he'll take. Because of the way my necromancers work, this involves raising the dead, certain types of healing (broken bones being easiest--they usually leave disease to the priestesses) and exorcisms.
So yeah, slush pile from hell.

Zero Draft = Done!
Currently at 116816 very barfy words.

Thankfully, I never published the book this is a prequel to. I'd be so screwed. I'm finally at the big battle scene that history (and a character who was present!)speaks of later. I just looked at that original book, and the long letter that described the battle and the events building up to it in detail. What I wrote then, and what I've spent the past couple months writing, are nothing alike. I write all my stories backwards. I don't know how I'll survive if I'm ever published. o_O