Yarnagogo's Treadmill

Keeping Score

I've been treadmilling in my head at work this week. I get to work at 6am. I use the first two hours of my shift to settle in and get comfortable. At 8am, I start writing. Through interruptions I've been averaging about 1200 words in two hours. I find that two hours is all I can comfortably do, splitting my brain like that. The job is obviously more important, and I drop the writing every couple of minutes to do something that needs to be done. But it's usually pretty quiet during those hours, and if I stick to it and put my head down, I can get it done.

I've been writing longhand, and then later in the day opening the computer that I share with a coworker and taking forty-five minutes or so to bang the words in. I'm not thinking or editing, not even really trying to avoid typos, just trying to get it all in there as fast as I can (although I do catch interesting things and change them on the fly). I find when I have twenty pages of handwritten work to type out, I just hate it. But eight pages at a time, that's do-able.

So yep. Wrote 1288 words on Thursday, 1188 on Friday, 1100 today. My goal right now is 5,000 words a week, and I've met that, and I'm working something like 80+ hours this week (I'm on an 18 hour shift right now, sigh) so I'm taking tomorrow OFF. I think I'm going to take tomorrow off of everything, actually. Maybe I'll go to the movies, if Lala wants to see a chick flick. Otherwise, it's a pajama day. Not doing anything that isn't relaxing and fun.

Wednesday

Well, hello. Here I am. Ready to start writing on the second novel. To continue, that is. It's just been so long since I actually wrote this piece....

1. 10:07
2. 1.5 hrs.
3. I'll jump right into whatever I decided the next scene will be. I won't check email. Nope.
4. 11:29, almost an hour and a half, 2000 words, working most of the time.
5. Worked on several scenes. Feels like I'm not quite sure of the characters yet -- still living with the last ones, perhaps. What makes these ones different? What makes them real?
6. Tomorrow I'll work on thinking about the characters and into the party scene.
7. I'll work at work. I'll write in my journal and transcribe it when I get home. See how that works.

Well.

Work does not agree with the treadmill journal, or at least, not while revising. I *did* work last week during my 62-hour work week, but I just focused on finishing the quick read of the current 1/2 novel-in-progress. You can't really plan a work amount when you're working 911 -- I would read as long as I could, and then I'd answer a phone, put in a call, have three conversations with co-workers, answer two more phones, then read another paragraph and start over again. I could only manage that craziness about an hour a day, so I got the work finished, and roughly line-edited, and that's all.

So now I'm ready to figure out how to get from the middle, where I am now, to the end, which I kind of know. There's this big blank spot in front of me. Sometimes I like to lie in bed when I can't sleep, and instead of thinking about to-dos or bills, I think about whatever I'm working on. I never expect a breakthrough, and god knows, if one happened, I'd forget it by morning, but it's fun to think so hard about something that the characters ramble your dreams the rest of the night.

Wish they would solve how to get from here to there, though.

1. 10:50am
2. 1 hr or until I have what I want.
3. I will plot. Scene by scene, until the end. Ack!
4. 11:43am, almost an hour
5. I think I really did  plot it all out, and it made me laugh out loud once, so that scene, at least, will be fun.
6. Tomorrow I'll dive into the first new scene. Would like to finish this book by Oct. 15th, so I can get ready for nanowrimo. Or, as I'll be doing it, NoBoWriMo, since I think I'll be writing a collection of essays, deliberately flouting the rules of it being a novel.
7. I'll write here at the cafe in the morning.

I feel confident now that I can finish this book. What I'm worried about is going back to the first half and making it match the second half. Ah, well, that's the editing phase, isn't it?

Hey, a romance editor hit me up after reading my chapter on Gather.com and said I was a good writer. She works for an erotica house, so my work isn't for her, but she thinks that I'll do well targeting the house I had in mind.... So exciting to hear! And right now I'm #3 of 300 in the competition! Who knows what'll happen, but I'm well chuffed right now, just having fun watching where this goes.

Gah

Today is the day the chapters went live on gather.com, and mine has an egregious typo that I apparently stuffed in AFTER my two fabulous editors checked it over. Instead of no way, it says now way. Bleah. And I can't edit it -- it's disqualified if it is. I would see that, and my brain would turn off if I were reading it.

Oh, well. It made me finish the novel, and that's all the success I need right now.

1. 8:56
2. 1 hr.
3. I will read over the Nadine pages, fixing perspective problems.
4. 9:58
5. Went okay, struggled to stay focused and not think about the chapter, live out there, with a stupid typo. This one I'm working on, though, doesn't totally suck. And I stopped mixing perspectives as much - they're now separated into scenes about half-way in, so I came to my senses at some point.
6. Tomorrow I go back to work for a 60 hour week, so I'll keep reading. Goal for this is to finish the rough edit, and plot out the rest of the novel.
7. I'll work for an hour at work.

With Lala at the Cafe

We had a really nice sunny ride here. I don't know why, but it gives me such a thrill to ride here. Maybe because I've just never done it before recently, and it makes me feel like a kid.

1. 1:32pm
2. 1/2 hour
3. I am just going to read today, and write down what that 2nd-to-last novel was doing when I abandoned it more than a year ago, at 140pp. Nice work to do at the cafe. 
4. 2:36, an hour, 1/2 hr more than I planned
5. I read about thirty pages. And OHMYGOD, how did I not remember it was written in the omniscient? Flip-flopping between the two characters mid-scene? Yes, I wrote this years ago, but please. I knew better than that then. Was I trying something out? I don't remember, but it's going to require a lot of fixing. Still really like the characters and the premise, though.
6. Tomorrow I'll keep reading, keeping line-edits to a minimum, but cleaning up perspectives.
7. I'll write at the cafe in the morning.

While I was working, I looked up at Lala  and she was smiling at me. When I asked her what was up, she said, "you look like you must have looked when you were eight years old and doing homework." Also, she said, "did you write and smoke when you were a smoker?" I said yes, and she said, "I could tell. You kind of have a free hand," and she showed it floating around.

Working Hard

Found out last night that something called gather.com is having a competition sponsored by Simon and Schuster, a first romance novel contest. You enter your first chapter, and it goes to a vote, then if it makes it past that round, the second chapter goes to a vote, and then the whole work is judged by them after that. Winner is paid, published, and featured at Borders.

Yay! Why not? However: They want the WHOLE work. That means it has to be done. And roughly edited. This is a first draft, hardly edited at all. I am at the cafe at 825 in the morning, planning on staying here until I'm done. Doesn't have to be great, I am telling myself -- after all, yesterday I had no intentions of sending this anywhere yet.

1. 8:27
2. until I'm done, hopefully less than eight hours
3. Priorities this morning:
    a. Make first two chapters shine
    b. Make line edits from marked hard copy of rest of work
    c. Slap on a happy ending
    d. Send it out.
        1. Update: 9:36 - the first two chapters are done, as well as I can. Having Bethany and Lala read them. Scared! I've editing about the first fifth. Lord, I can't believe I'm sending out a first draft of ANYTHING even if it is only an online contest.
        2. Update: 12:45 - first half of the book is line-edited, and I'm working on slapping on that ending. I'm emotionally overwrought. The writing actually almost made me cry. They're about to be happily ever after, and I had to take a break. But so exciting! I will need a drink tonight.
         3. 1:35pm. I just typed The End. I am wild with happiness.
        4. The goddamn hippies are here, playing bad guitar and singing right behind me. Screw this, I'm going home to finish the line edits.
        5. 4:01pm: 80 more pages to line-edit. I'm dying here.
         6. 5:15pm. Done. With all the line-edits. I'm sure I have one million typos I missed, but at this point, who cares? Drinking champagne!
        7. 5:36pm. Submitting to gather.com    What the hell?
4. 6:01pm. The entire thing is done. I sent out a NOVEL today. For a CONTEST.9.5 hours. Almost 4,000 words written, to the end.
5. Went fucking great.
6. Tomorrow I am seriously working on nothing.
7. I will work at nothing all day (well, I'll be at work, but apart from that, nothing).

Tuesday

Only today and Wednesday off, and then I go back to work for the first time since the tonsillectomy. Very sad about that. Not that I mind work, because I really don't. But it's work. I'd rather be at home. And I'm a little worried about keeping the writing motivation going. So hard to write after a 15  hour day. So I'm thinking of a new plot, inspired by an article on writing in bed that was in the latest Poets and Writers magazine. It's good to write in the open (here, at the cafe, around people and sounds) and also in the retreat (the bedroom). I learned while recovering that I LOVE to be in bed when I'm not sleeping. Futzing on the computer, watching movies, reading, writing, it's all good and comfortable. Not the best according to sleep experts, but I'm willing to risk it. I think I'll do my normal going to bed things after work, and then instead of reading before sleep, I'll write a little. Doesn't have to be a lot, but some. Just to write every day.

1. 9:57
2. -1 hr (have to be at dentist in an hour)
3. Will work on J's office scene and getting on the road.
4. 10:31am,  1/2 hour, 68460, 929 words written
5. Damn! That was hair-raising. But the big action went well.
6. Tomorrow I'll work on finishing this scene -- not too much more time with her, need to switch to him, his finding out, arriving, looking. PS - what's going on with T and J? Add something to that scene?
7. I'll write at the cafe in the morning for at least an hour.

and PPS: Fabrizio deAndre is good, intense music for writing the fast, intense scenes (Khorakene and Dolcenera, specifically)

Monday

I'm going to allow myself to have titles like that here. Monday. The real creativity has to come in a minute. Not right now. I'm at the cafe, Sigur Ros in my ears -- I actually sat here and did a little emailing, with no music, and I realized how weird and connected I felt to the room at large. It was okay, but it's very comforting to just sit here, surrounded by people who are all doing their own things, with music in my ears drowning out any chance of my participation, thinking about words. A glass cave.

1. 10:08am
2. 1 hr
3. I'm going to decide whether I need C's reaction to what just happened, or can I move A to weeks later, in J's office?
4. 10:57, 50 minutes, 67531, 1160 words written
5. I jumped right to the scene in J's office, no transition from C. Don't need that emotional pull -- for right now he's the bad guy, and I can leave him as such. Went well. I do the best when I write dialogue -- when I write about a person alone in a room, having feelings, oh, I can wander in circles. But dialogue, I can just roll along. Way more fun.
6. Tomorrow I'll work on getting her on the road. Perhaps I'll get to the bridge collapse! Oh, yeah.
7. I will work at the cafe, before or after the dentist appt, depended on dad being in town.

My friend Ann is in town today. We are going to play in the city! Yay!

A Stunning Realization

I realized something yesterday, something huge. This novel I've been working on, it's a genre romance. There. I said it. I'm writing it for a target audience, and I have writer's guidelines in mind. I will say, right now, that having read romances for years and years as a teenager and into my early twenties, I knew there were a lot of bad ones out there. But I kept reading them because some of them were good. Well written. Engaging. Romantic. That's what I've been going for. I can write literary fiction and Be Serious; I can and have pulled that off. But it's been a much more fun ride, this silly romance. Really, really fun.

And perhaps that's how I got this far, and reached this realization: I'M ALMOST DONE. No, really. Yesterday, I realized that I only had one more big scene in mind, and that it was the denouement. But that couldn't be! I was only up to 65,000 words!

Then I checked the guidelines, and ahem, that's the upper limit for the slim-sided imprint I chose to target.

In eloquent literary terms: Dude. That means I get to write a few more scenes, and I'll be DONE. Which means I will type the words The End. That, of course, won't mean the end of work, lots of editing, and apparently, paring down to meet to word count, but that's a good thing -- there are several scenes in the book that strike me as background rather than essential.

But it's there! The end is coming! It's reachable! I could hardly sleep last night. Look at me, wasting all this time here. Need to be moving into writing.

1. 9:39
2. 1.5-2 hrs. (I'm at the cafe, and I've heard knitters converge here at 11am. We'll see.)
3. Working on Trixie scene -- this has to flare up. This will be the breaking point, the point where it gets personal.
4. 10:49, a little more than an hour, 66366
5. I finished the scene! And boy, it went better than I thought it would. Became vitriolic, which it needed to do, but I'm always nervous about writing that kind of thing. Too easy to let it get out of hand and out of character. A little bit worried that Cade departed from type a bit, but I can fix that later if so.
6. Tomorrow I'll get A to J's office, discuss new project and Tom, then the drive home....
7. I'll write at the cafe in the morning.

Exciting!

Oy

Yesterday didn't go so well. I mean, I wrote, but it wasn't until about 11:30pm, when I got in bed alone, a few glasses of wine for the worse. Sudden inspiration struck, or maybe it was tipsiness, but I wrote. And it was such a relief -- I'd been trying ALL day to talk myself into writing, and I wasn't able to, not until that moment. Don't know what my problem was, just tired and a little blue. Actually went to bed in the middle of the day to nap and read. I think I've taken this vacation idea seriously. I think I'm ready to go back to work. I never thought I'd say that. Next Thursday is my first day back, and then I'll work ALL THE TIME to pay people for working for me while I was recovering, so I think I might live to regret those words.

But today, I'm here again. It's still morning, which is important in my mind. If I write before noon, the rest of the day is a gimmee. What I get done I get done. But no lines, no success.

I heard something the other day, something trite, and not true in all circumstances, but I'm embracing it for myself: You can't fail if you don't quit. In terms of chasing a dream, in terms of writing, as long as I keep doing it, I am succeeding. I love that. I can't fail if I don't quit. Period.

So here I am.

1. Saturday, August 18, 11:18
2. 1 hr (or 833 words, for our Ravelry mini-challenge)
3. I'll work on the T, she's going to move A away from C - oh, boy, I think I haven't plotted out what happens next, exactly. Will look at that, also.
4. 12:08, almost an hour, 65099, got my words done
5. This scene seems to be taking a long time to get on paper, but I don't really enjoy writing T that much. I'm not convinced this is a strong enough needs-to-be-here scene, but I'll finish it and decide later. Do need something to drive them apart again.
6. Tomorrow I'll finish this scene if it kills me and move A into Janet's office to discuss next project.
7. Tomorrow, in the morning, at the cafe.

I really, truly do better here at the coffeeshop. I have to remember that. As much as I sometimes don't want to leave the house, it's just easier here, with iTunes in my ears, drowing out the chatter and music, no cats, kittens, or dogs pulling at my legs, no chores to do, nothing to do but sit here and write.