Category: Witches

The Werewolves are Winning

I’ve been really bad about keeping this blog updated lately. Sorry. On the up side, I have been getting a lot of writing done. A lot. I’m a little over 50k into the sequel to Witches. That’s flowing along pretty well, and the action is heating up. I’m being mean to Bali at the moment, but hey, somebody’s gotta do it, right? She’ll thank me later, when everything blows over. (Probably.)

I’ve been busy killing zombies, too. Being as gross as possible is pretty cool. And I’ve actually really enjoyed writing two military men characters. Most of my characters are normally fairly clean-mouthed. But not Sammy and Luke. Not in this chapter, anyway. But what can you expect when you’re under attack by hordes of flesh-craving zombies? They’re very persistent, I’ll give them that. Sammy, as usual, provides a shot of humor to even the direst situation. I’ll be sorry to finish writing him…

Not to mention getting to know Chance’s new high school in the Werewolf story. Can I just say that she has a really crappy first day at her new school? It’s great, really. For me. Not for her. (She’d probably hate me, and rightly so.) She is so much fun to write. Clearly, I haven’t progressed much (mentally) past my high school days. Or so it seems when I sit down to write her. She practically jumps through the keyboard and onto the page, full of snarky comments and attitude (not to mention her to-die-for wardrobe). Her new friend Benjy has really surprised me, too. I had no idea he was going to turn out quite like he has. Actually, even though the sequel to Witches is coming along so well, and I’m enjoying the zombie story, too, my Muse is itching to play in Chance’s world almost exclusively. I know discipline is good for a writer, but it seems like I get my pages done for Chance in a split second, and sometimes, it’s a whole lot harder to hit my goals on the other stories. I think I’m going to have to devote one day a week completely to Chance’s story. That should satisfy my Muse, and give her incentive to hit my goals on anything else I’m working on. Sounds like a plan.

I probably won’t post here again until sometime late next week. I’ll be flying to Dallas this Thursday, and then my best friend and I are driving to Tulsa for Conestoga. This year should be interesting. It’s in April instead of July this year, so most of the “regular” writers won’t be there. I’m a little disappointed, but I’m looking at it as an opportunity to find new favorites. After all, I didn’t know most of the regulars when I first went to Conestoga in 2007.

No, I Haven’t Fallen Off The Face Of The Earth…

…Why do you ask? I did go on a trip home to Texas at the end of March for a week, so that kind of knocked me out of my routine. But now I’m getting back into the swing of things, and making significant progress.

I’ve finished up this round of edits for the Atlantis story, now tentatively titled Heart of the Sea. I’ll be looking for beta readers for it soon, but I think this draft is stronger than the last one. I’m a little too close to it at this point to be sure, so only time will tell.

The zombie story is actually coming along quite well. The rest of it is completely figured out and outlined. Yay! I think that’s one thing that sort of held me back when I worked on my chapters: not knowing quite how everything would work out. Roughly twelve chapters left, so maybe three months or so until the first draft is finished. The chapter I’m working on now should be fun, lots of zombie blood and guts!

The werewolf story is actually smoothing out now. I went back and wrote a couple of chapters over the main turning point in Chance’s life. I wanted to get the details of what had happened worked out in my mind, and I wanted to see if my first instinct to start in the other spot was correct. It was, but writing those chapters gave me a much better feel for the story itself and what’s going on. Surprisingly, it’s going well, considering I’m working outline-free.

The sequel to Witches is going very well right now. I’m about 30k in, and the characters, my old friends, are still very much alive and breathing for me. I know where this one is going, and I’m having a lot of fun. It’s good to get back to my oldest set of characters. I’m hoping everything keeps coming together like it has been.

Milestone

Today I started writing the sequel to Witches. I was terrified to touch the keyboard. Terrified. I spent roughly 7 1/2 years working on Witches (Not that it’s done yet. Oh, no. Not by any means.), and it’s my baby. So I’m terribly afraid to mess up its little sister. Even though this story is completely outlined already, and ready to go. I was still scared to start writing.

But when I made myself start, it flowed surprisingly easy. The characters were just there, in my head, right where I left off. Like it hadn’t been two years since I did anything but editing on the story. It was great, really. And unlike last time, I already know all the horrible things I’m going to do to my characters…

In Brief

So, I finished my first edits for the 2YN story (still looking for a title…). I also finished this slash-and-burn edit of Witches. I cut right at 50k words, so I still have a lot to go. I’m also doing a rough outline of the sequel to Witches. And I’m a third of the way through my phase outline for the NaNo 2008 story, which is now tentatively titled A Tempest of Angels.

Started the new day job this week, too. The new place is so much more laid-back than the old one, it’s hard to believe it’s even the same field. It’s much the same, of course (in what we do), but very different as well. There’s been a lot of reading this week (Sadly, not the pleasurable kind.). I even have a test tomorrow. Bet you didn’t know vampires had tests, did you?

Searching for Titles

Good news: I finished the edits on the 2YN story today. Yay! It’s coming in at about 73k right now. I just have to revamp the last two chapters, and I’ll be finished with this draft. That should push it up to around 75k, hopefully. Now I just have to come up with a title. Something about dragons, maybe. I hate trying to come up with titles.

In Witches, I only have 20 chapters left to edit, so I’ll be through on Monday. That’s really cause for celebration. I have to say, though, this isn’t an in-depth, fix-every-little-thing-edit. No. The main purpose of this pass is to shore up some weak areas, and to ruthlessly cut as many words as possible from this 300k behemoth. So far, I’ve cut 42k words. I expect to cut another 15k or so before I’m through with this round, putting me around 57k cut. Which means I cut around 19% of the MS. Not bad. But…I need to cut around 50%, and that leaves me a LONG ways to go. Sigh. I know I’m going to have to cut two chapters that I dearly love in the next round of edits. I just know it. I love both of them, but they’re not really necessary to the story. Sniff. I’ll mourn them when the time comes, then I’ll get over it.

I’ve been brainstorming the new NaNo story. I’m still really excited about it. I know what the first two chapters are about. Sort of. I did have what I think is a really great idea on the name of the used bookstore my female MC owns: Secondhand Lines. What do you think? I’m still struggling to title this story as well (okay, and pretty much all my stories except Through Shadowed Stone). There’s been some great ideas on the NaNo boards, but none that have spoken to me yet. I’m thinking about looking up some Bible verses having to do with angels and seeing if I can twist one of them a bit to come up with something suitable.

Progress Update

Long time, no update. Oops. Procrastination is my downfall. I’ve been working on my goals, I just haven’t been posting about them. I’ll do better. I promise. Well, I’ll try to do better.

Out of my ten writing-related goals for the year, I’ve completed two of them: finishing the first draft of my NaNo 2007 story, and starting to submit Through Shadowed Stone. I’m up to four rejections out of my first batch of five on TSS, and I’ll be sending out the next batch of queries tomorrow.

I still haven’t worked on the zombie story. Not for months. It’s horrible. We’re (my writing partner and I) really going to have to get on the ball with this story so it doesn’t completely lose all its momentum. Re-reading the last few chapters of the story is on my to-do list for today, and I’m planning on working on the next chapter on Monday.

I am working on editing Witches. I’ve been going back through the chapters and highlighting the important things: information, dialogue, description, etc. I’m planning on basically rewriting most of the story, cutting the extra things out, and just tightening it in general. I’m mostly happy with the chapters I’ve edited so far, but I want to be able to continue to juggle all of those balls in the later chapters as well.

I’m still working on the 2YN class. I haven’t started editing it yet. I have re-read the manuscript and made notes in the margins, just little comments to myself. I’ve done Zette’s assignments, including making a timeline in Excel. I’ve never worked much in Excel, so that was an interesting assignment. I’ve found several places where I could add scenes and tension in, so it was definitely a worthwhile assignment.

I have a couple of new story ideas percolating in my mind that I’m getting pretty excited about writing. Both of them are urban fantasy, which I’ve never written before, and I’m eager to start. But I have too much else going on right now to start a new story (much less two). I’m saving one of them for NaNo, although I’m not quite sure which one. The other one, well, if it’s ready in a couple of months, I may start dabbling with it.

March Madness

I haven’t made much actual writing progress lately, since I finished the first draft of my 2YN story, but I’ve been working on other things. I’m getting more heavily involved with the edits for Witches, trying to cut a lot of the extraneous details and wanderings, at the same time as strengthening the conflict and some other weak spots. Editing is hard for me. Very hard. Without that initial rush of creative energy, the work seems to drag, no matter how much I still love the story and the characters. Of course, Witches is the first thing I ever really tried to write, so it’s my baby. And killing any part of my baby is hard, no matter how much I know it needs it. The reactions from my crit group to the changes has been pretty positive, so I’m hoping to keep the improvements at least on that level.

The only new words I’ve written in the last week have been on the synopsis for Through Shadowed Stone. I’ve never written a synopsis before, and I know the drafts I have now are…not very good. Not horrible, I don’t think, but nowhere near good. I’m so grateful to have found the workshop on Forward Motion on putting together a submission package! It’s going to be a lifesaver, without a doubt. The original draft for my long synopsis was 1k over where it needed to be, so I had to cut that. The shorter synopsis involved cutting another 750 words. I know I tend to be a bit wordy, but cutting things out of the synopsis was difficult for me. The current result is definitely still a work in progress. It needs a lot of smoothing before I even get to the polishing stage. It’s more of a step-by-step description right now than a narrative. I know I need to make it flow, and show a lot more of my writing voice. But it’s a start.

I’m also working on a novel crit for a novel exchange. Well, “working on” may be the wrong word. I’m working on starting to read the story so I can critique it. I’m a fast reader, so I’m not worried about that part. I’ll read through the story the first time fairly rapidly, then go back through at a slower pace and pick it apart. I’m really looking forward to reading it, though. I just did another novel crit on a work with really strong, vibrant writing, so I’m looking forward to reading this one as well. I just have to conquer my procrastination tendencies and get started.

Other than that, well, there is no other than that. Besides working crazy hours this week, that’s all I’ve been doing. Hopefully I’ll be able to keep up the rather chaotic pace for the rest of the month.