General update

Editing will carry on tonight for Termion! It will! No matter how tired I am for waking at 4.33am...:)

On the morning commute today I worked out more for APWP. Cat invasion is planned. I am not kidding.

Getting ideas for a new religious wip - it'll be sci-fi! Set in space (lots of scope for expansion), protag (female, naturally. Might be married, not sure yet) is part of a diplomatic team. Said team comes from a less conservative planet/colony. On way to conservative colony/colony with mixed religions where there's a lot of tension. Ambassador dies. Protag has to step in. Much *conflict* involved :) In very early stages of imagination. Got to work out weapons next...I'm thinking of knives - less likely to cause a hull breach.

POA revised again

Moments after I'd published the previous post, I received a message from a fellow writer. So here's the twice revised POA

* Still write 1 page a day on APWP

* By 1st July (2009), have a revised version of Termion.
* Give said edition to my fellow writer. We're swapping stories for beta reading!
* Once beta reading complete, make another round of revisions.

Could be an entertaining month and a half. It's fun having someone at the same point as me, good encouragement for both of us.

if we slack without good reason, the infamous flaming wooden spoon will emerge!

Revised plan of action

Attacks by germs is a wonderful opportunity to contemplate life. Amidst internal, mental yells of 'die! monster die!' at the tv (yes I was pretending the monsters were germs), I finally figured out my POA for the next few months of writing.

First of all, no panicking. I am still working on APWP. Only, just a page a day. More if I can manage it. 1 page is manageable.

Why just one page? Well, I need to start revising other works. First up: Termion.

Goals for Termion broken into smaller chunks

#1 Read it all the way through.
I can stop to breathe, carry on with life etc. However. I must not stop to delete words, or add new ones in. If I must, I can write down ideas in a comments box. This is to remind myself what is in the story.

#2 Go through each chapter, noting down characters, action, clothes, place names, etc. Everything which I conveniently forget and then have to insert using CAPITALS.

#3 Decided whether this is going to be a one POV book or not. Hopefully I'll have a better inkling after #1 & #2. I'm leaning towards adding one in - not just for the sake of it. That wouldn't work. But the majority of my wips are several POV, and I'd like to keep it this way for marketing purposes.

#4 Start revisions (with or without 2nd POV).

#5 read through again.

#6 Send to beta readers.

My logic: once I have an agent, I'll pretty much be doing this anyway (writing new wips while editing other ones). I may as well get used to it all now.

Kaboom!

That is the sound of me exploding. Just been one of those days.

There is hope: after my slightly busy day, I am going to blow up computers...in my wip. :) An incident happens, Sophie gets mad, and 'boom' go the computers in the library. Glass everywhere. Chaos. Bounty hunter tries to get her...but can't. Not just yet :) I may not be able to do certain things in the real world, but I can do what I want on paper.

PS: the blowing up of computers was due to happen in chapter 10. It's just pleasant that I get to do it today.

Chapter 10 APWP complete!

Whoohoo! I sat down this evening, and wanted to write more on my bounty hunter's entrance. I got to one point, and was tired, so nearly called it a day. But I pushed on, and finished the chapter. It's rough, but its heading in the right direction.

I had so much fun writing it. I look forward to starting the wip about Arcelia's past. Quite an interesting one, that totally deserves its own story. Turns out APWP is the prequel to Misty Chaos, and Arcelia is the character who initially was extremely clumsy when she first started out at the bounty hunter training school. Not that you'd know it now, in chapter 10.

Having a bounty hunter is leading to research on guns. Possibly grenades too. It's good thing writers are peaceful, considering the topics I have to research an outsider could think I was up to no good.

Chapter 11 will see me returning to Sophie. Many items go 'boom' in that chapter!

People are wrong. Authors don't write stories.

Characters hijack an author's mind and force the author to write with a sword to their neck. Or in my case, a paw of a cat (who won't be a cat in the rewrite but we're not going into that now).

Here I am, at my little laptop, ready to crack on with the rest of chapter 10, about Acelia, the bounty hunter (who has carpet in her ship). I've got it all planned out. She'll dock, have a few problems at the spaceport thanks to a previous client, then she'll get on to tracking down Sophie.

But no. One of the cats from Catopia (I kid you not, at least in this version) demands to magically appear on Acelia's ship. It wants to guide Acelia to the correct path.

My muse is bent over, tears streaming down her cheeks as this fluffy thing sits on my shoulder, claw out, going 'write! write!'. What's a writer to do? I'll do it, just to keep the cat-not-cat happy. Just keep quiet on the fact that I can change this chapter in next revision, ok? Who knows where this strange cat-not-cat will lead me...

(image taken by Anna Cervova, downloaded from http://www.publicdomainpictures.net/view-image.php?image=399 )

Edited 10 minutes later to add: Nope, now not a cat. Now a Light wants in on the game. *throws hands up in the air*. A Light!

Not a light bulb type of light. A Light: a human like being, who is clothed in one solid colour and glows the same colour. A Light who has the power to animate molecules. A Light.

This is mutiny, I tell you. True mutiny. Sometimes I wonder why I sit and roughly plan what's going to happen. It changes the moments my fingers hit the keyboard.

391 good words.

That word count isn't bad, considering that I want to fall asleep right now. It's a bit early, but I can't write any more tonight. I'm that tired. I've kept going as long as I can - Acelia the bounty hunter is a lady of luxury - but her story will have to wait until tomorrow. She'll love all that time planning what her fee will buy her.

Going to read and finish off a book instead!

That chapter is written!

APWP, Chapter #9, is written. WHoohoo! It's dire, but I don't care. It's done. I skipped the bounty hunter section, and will make it chapter 10. Because, knowing the way my muse works, it could well end as a whole chapter rather than a few paragraphs. We'll see.

Off to read now :)

A Price Worth Paying Chapter 9...over 3 days

I started writing it yesterday. It was like a dripping tap. Drip, drip drip. It's not a filler chapter per se, its actually quite important. Words just aren't flowing out of me. Yesterday made around 560 word progress.

Today I've hit the 928 word mark. (not even 1k!) I've been pushiung myself to write, and was doing fairly well. Until I got a phone call from a friend which lasted best part of 45 minutes... Not a lot I can do now. It's time to wind down for bed.

I hope tomorrow I can finish this stubborn chapter. As a good friend said to me today, just work at it, I can fix it in the next revision. At that point I was seriously considering just putting down bullet points. My short sentences and lack of description feel like glorified bullet points.

I guess this is what being a writer is all about. Words flow = fantastic. Words are squeezed out, one by one = not so fantastic, but at least they are words and hopefully I can improve them on numerous rounds of edits when Muse is a little more forthcoming with ideas.

A Price Worth Paying Chapter 8 & 9

Chapter 8 was written yesterday, and is now posted on CC.

Chapter 9...is happening right as we speak (although halted for dishes). My muse had a field day at work, while I was putting packs together (pieces of paper in certain order) I figured out quite a bit of APWP's plot. Coming up in the story are:

* spaceships
* bounty hunters
* maybe blasters
* glowing people
* things go BOOM!

...and other delights. I'm having so much fun with this one! We'll ignore the state of the actual writing, true scrappy first draft style.

I had decided who to kill in APWP...

...but I then realised I was thinking of the wrong wip! I thought 'oh!' so and so is a really good one to kill, she'll make it hard for the main protag to continue....but I was thinking of Flower Girl and White Lily. My bad.

Still, this character could die in A Price Worth Paying. She's linked to a secondary character, could make things interesting. Or... - my muse is thinking hard - Yes. There are alternatives.

At least 1 person has to die in every book I write. Because it's fun! And I'm an evil writer that way.

I'm all settled now for an hour and a bit of writing chapter 8. I'm 'plugged in', as my mother says. Final Fantasy Advent Children soundtrack tends to be my writing music. It makes me oblivious to everything else, so I'm currently writing downstairs. Not that I'm usually needed for anything after drying the dishes.

Do you have to kill characters in each novel? Or can't you bear to let them die? Me, I'm finding it quite satisfying having characters die. As some of you know, I adore anime. The latest series I'm watching (I won't give the name out so I don't spoil anything) quite a few of the main cast die by the end. I'm 2 episodes away, so a few more could still die. I used to hate characters dying, I'd cry my heart out and say it was unfair. Now, well, death is part of life. I still cry my eyes out, but I say 'brilliant writing'. Death changes life so much for the characters involved, it adds great conflict to stories.

Alternatively, if you don't have a character die in each story you write (or read, I guess, although you'd have little say on that as a reader), what is the 1 thing you have to do for each story? Blowing up places? (I know a few of you have to do that! Pyromania rules!) Does there have to be a set ratio of stories with zombies in? Spaceships?

What's your 'thing'?

PWP chapter 7...

...is written! Wrote it before dinner. Rearing to go for number 8, but wanted to read, and now tired so am reverting to anime before bed.

Unexpectedly I didn't carry on with Mina's POV in 7, I went back to Aurora, Sophie's aunt. Totally unexpected, but it worked. 8 will be back with Mina - its an exciting episode in the bio lab!

Tol-Tol's character is developing fast. That cat has attitude (even though he won't be a cat in the next version). Just like his namesake :) I wish his namesake could talk, I'd have the best conversations.

Chapter 8 is scheduled to be written tomorrow, after a trip to the library and some Japanese work.

PWP chapter update!

Last night I started writing chapter 6. I had a clear picture of what I wanted to happen. About 2-3 events.

Muse got into hypermode. What I thought would be a short chapter (1700) ended up as 2212. I only wrote about one event. Which ended up being great fun!

Today, after work and Japanese, I was driving home and all I wanted to do was write. So here I am after going through emails etc. I'm going to work on chapter 7!

See you on the other side!

Drat. Just remembered I need to go and edit chapter 6 which I posted on CC. I'd called a certain benig a Fairy, just because I couldn't come up with anything else. Now I know what I'm calling it/the species. Lights.

Finished chapter 5! It has smush :(

I'm happy to finish it. Not happy that a character is insisting on some smush. It's mild, but oh I don't like it. Awful character. Bad character. Unfortunately, she's not one I dare to argue with at this point in time. Come the rewrite, I'm sure I can figure a way to reduce/eliminate the smush. Except I feel that it may have to stay, once people read it and get back to me on it.

Sigh.

Overall, the story is going well enough for a first draft. So I'm off to read now, before bed :)

Working up to a chapter a day

That's been my aim. Due to time constraints and other factors, that didn't happen Saturday or Sunday. But, both days I did get some writing in. Really hope to finish chapter 5 of Price Worth Paying today. I know I'm doing all I can, so I'm not beating myself up. Well, not too much :)

You aren't seeing double, this is Chapter 3 of A Price Worth Paying

The previous chapter 3 is now chapter 4 :) Still unwritten, but I've got chapter 3 out.

It involves....

Sophie's true family
A drink container going up in smoke
Talk of evil scientists
Discoveries!

A Price Worth Paying Chapter 3 - Paint splatters

Lots of paint splatters. In hair. On the cat. On the walls. Having supernatural talents has a price. The pain proves difficult for Sophie to handle. Aunt Aurora still pretends nothing's wrong.

That's it. Just got to write it!

Sorry - I wrote the wrong title. Very, very sorry. This one is being written

Chapter 2 A Price Worth Paying

...is finished! Whoohoo!

I'm hoping there isn't a total saturation of talking cats in novels. Or a species from another planet. Oh well. I can always change the animal in later edits!

It's definitely heading in interesting directions. I have to finish one draft of a novel by the end of the month. Maybe I'll make PWP this novel to finish. It's fun. I'll try and get blasters in it somewhere, although its more paranormal stuff.

Might get some more writing in today - who knows! Haven't done any yet. Want to, just need the time. I am on holiday!

My wip turned sci-fi on me!

Which isn't a big deal, because I love sci-fi, but it wasn't supposed to be sci-fi! My muse is steering it in a very strange direction. It has an evil doctor who likes experimenting, beings from a different planet, hybrids, spaceships (no blasters yet) - totally not what I'd planned for it!

It's great fun writnig it. I've got a cat who can read and type and do all sorts of intelligent things. An artist as an aunt, lots of mystery going on. It's good fun, although I'd rather know what's happening in the story before I write it, but I can't force my muse to to anything she doesn't want to.

Still finding it hard to write Imperial Intrigue - its going to remain one of those challenging wips for a long time.

Wrote chapter 2 of Acquisitioners the other day. Hoping to finish off chapter 2 of A Price Worth Paying today. That's the wip which my muse is changing into sci-fi.