I beat time I set. I rejoice.

Strider is one of my favorite books. It's in my kid's lit pantheon with Tangerine, The Westing Game, and A Wrinkle In Time.

Children's literature, writing, and objective failure/subjective success are all on my mind today.

I've determined that UA is what "they" classify as 'middle grade', and therefore have been thinking about it differently. Today saw a lousy number of words, but I made strides in structure, themes, and characterization (sic; no spell check on the iPtouch, and I'm not sure that looks right.)

Today also found me crunching numbers and breaking my big million word goal down into categories and projects and giving them ballpark word quotas. It seems like I evolve my process once a week, honing day by day to find out what works for me.

Speaking of the big million word goal, i'm starting to believe I won't make it by the end of the year. For one, January is nearly over and I'm 25,000 words in the hole. That's more than a week's quota. Spread out over the remaining days this year, it's only 70 additional words daily, but considering the struggles I'm having keeping up right now, that's more difficult than it sounds.

On the side of subjective success: I've written at least 300 words every day since I started this project on January 3rd, and my running total is over 40,000 words for the month. The project is working. I'm taking writing more seriously. Even if I keep fumbling along at half my daily goal, I'm still going to get a heck of a lot done this year. The million word mark isn't just something to do for 2010, it's also an assignment for me to get the "crap" out of my system and put a few practice novels in a trunk. Even as i fall farther behind schedule, I don't despair.

I beat time I set.

It hurts, Annie! It hurts!

Lines from The Miracle Worker, such as the one above, keep running through my head.

It does hurt, but I'm too tired right now to do anything about it.

Writing was awful all day. I don't know if it's just a matter of exhaustion or what. Today's just been weird. Everything I wrote, I wanted to smack myself in the face, but I didn't want to throw in the towel either.

Surviving January 26th was a masochistic endeavor. (First line, anyone? Or maybe it should be May 3rd...)

Example of how worn out I am:
23:29 - close firefox to take one more stab at writing before midnight
23:31 - deem writing fiction a lost cause for the night.
23:33 - want to blog about the day, but starting firefox again is such a feat, BLOG FROM iPHONE.

Because typing with two fingers on a touch screen is the easiest thing ever.

All my works in progress bore the crap out of me.
I have no idea where the current scene in UA is going.
I haven't touched TUMORS in over a week.
The short story I wrote last night was total wankery.
I have no desire to give up on my writing goals.

Those are all complaints.

I bore the crap out of myself.

That is also a complaint.

But my biggest complaint right now: crappy blogger/iPhone interface.

just to be.

Still confused and struggling, as usual. It feels a little different these past couple weeks, since I set out on an epic writing project that thwarts me at nearly every turn.

Emotional moments from today: frustration at the lack of spontaneous expression in my work. My art wings are still so small. I don't have my own voice with it. Writing is good, but it doesn't feel expressive. I imagine that dancing or playing music (or painting) could scratch that itch, but-- Actually, stompy dancing would do quite nice. Good thing I'm my own downstairs neighbor.

Neat trick how explaining something in a poetic way offers a solution.

Other emotional moment: frustration at my inability to turn off the recording device in my brain. Not the one that makes memories, but the one that takes not on what I see and hear and processes it into something more. I needed to relax, but books made me think about writing, and music made me think about drawing, and I just needed to let go.

Speaking of letting go, I crunched some numbers and reorganized my database of writing goals. I'm giving myself Saturday off. It means bumping my wordcount the other 6 days from 2800 to 3250, but I think it's wise to give myself a day off. Writing won't be verboten on Saturdays, just not required.

I've taken to writing 400 words at a time using Write or Die. The desktop edition is nice because it has a word meter and a time meter stacked on top of each other so it's easy to see how words-written compares to time-left. In the New System, 3250 words = 8 "sessions". That's pretty much my workday. I should probably start spending the other 30 minutes each work hour doing other, you know, writing. Or reading.

Instead, this past week I spent those in-between times watching the fantastic second season of In Treatment.

But come Monday another weekend of performances will be behind me, and I'll start setting my alarm for 9:30, and we'll see how things go from there.

Turning in

After three days of good progress on my project, I'm writing today off as a "nil".

Quite little sleep happened last night, followed by a good dose of Museum, a great dose of Social, and an epic dose of Cooking (curry). Now I'm just blasted worn out at 10:30, and have to be up in 10 hours.

Correction, today's not a nil, just 21%.

...


...

Upon reconsideration, my laptop is coming to bed with me. Twenty one percent is a good deal more inspiring than a blank page. With the little bit of evening remaining, I'll try to work that up to a 40% or so.

Soupy twist.

half-edited flash

Palette cleanser between midnight snack and going back to the novella. Half-prompted by my own prompt to Correspondence Chapbook Collective for Creativity to Try Writing an omission.

"That's really what you want?"

The fish looks half dead in the water, rolled on its side to show a pale belly to the equally pale sky. It looks half dead, but I know it is alive because it waves a fin in the air, mirroring the fin underwater that keeps the fish beside my boat. That, and it speaks with me.

Laying on its side is the only way the fish can look at me with its dark, gaping eye as we converse about the weather, the lake, fishing, and, of course, my wish.

Reeling it in, though no easy feat in itself, hadn't been enough. No, besides locating the most singular fish west of the Rockies, besides luring it, besides pulling it out of the water (all twenty six inches, then I was allowed to let it back in the lake), I also had to charm it. Ladylike. Luckily, that part had been in my study materials, so I had come prepared. At least I didn't have to kiss it.

When magical creatures like this fish are discovered, treasure hunters make a cottage industry of pamphlets, ebooks, and guided tours. But few outside the business realize how much trial and error experimentation goes a verified discovery.

Some creatures need gifts, some need favors, some need validation. Some needed to be haggled with. Some need kisses, some need tickling, some need blood. Some need a stiff drink. Each creature of wonder has its own rules and rituals that must be observed, and unlike the combination locks securing the vaults that hold the world's gold, magical beings can't be defeated by a stethoscope, a good ear, and a deft touch. Very often. Less than one percent.

I had researched diligently to find something to grant my particular wish (magical entities aren't immune to poisons of bigotry and jealousy). Every listed creature within three hundred required more sacrifice, money, or vacation time than I had stashed away. Stumbling onto the possibility for a local, magic fish--and an easygoing fish at that--was a boon.

Truthfully, the discovery was more tripping over than stumbling onto. A story of the wish fish was printed in a newspaper wrapped around a jewelry box beneath a stack of Spanish language National Geographics in the junk room at the end of the hall on the third floor at an estate sale in the house that Jack built. I was there looking for cast iron.

And damn if the paper wasn't older than my mother, but the report was succinct. It said all the lucky wish recipient had done was catch a massive fish with black eyes and green fins, reel it in, hear its voice, toss it back, then have a nice chat with the magical, socially-starved individual.

Where I'm from, people don't really talk, so that last bit was harder than it sounds. I practiced chit-chat at a local coffee bar for a full month, but eventually the owner asked me to stop making the other customers uncomfortable. I wasn't comfortable either, but practice wasn't helping so I set off to talk. To. That. Fish.

It's passed now, though. The slimy, scaly conversation is heaped in my mind's junkyard of useless memories alongside how to get to my elementary school, the combination of my brother's bike lock, and the number of trees on the northern bank, which I counted while waiting for the fish to take my bait.

Now that fish is floating gently and staring at me, as though willing my body to tip from the boat and drown in its deep, black eye.

"You're sure?"

I nod.

"Well, alright then."

With a flick of its emerald tail, the fish wriggles back into the darkness far beneath my boat.

I don't notice any change, or feel any different. But I don't suppose I would.

Did you know that to be called a fish, an aquatic vertebrate has to have at least two pairs of paired fins? I need to revise some doodles, and stat!

This is quite a bit more edited than the 10k words of the WIP I have going. Less than 1000 words are more forgiving for proofreading in that way.

I want to go on about everything I'm discovering by writing so much this week, but I'm too busy writing.

Yay letters that make words.

Sometimes I try to avoid proper nouns, namely names, in my work. This most commonly happens in slush work, like the novella I'm currently plowing through. From the outside it seems a little contradictory due to my interest in identity and name magic, but sometimes I'm just playing with concepts and don't want to invest in fully clothing my characters. (That sounds way worse than I meant it.)

This can be solved by picking generic, nondescript names, like the Billy, Bobby, Evan, Jack and Frank who star in one line of this novella. Find-replace will be my friend when I evolve these characters, or maybe when I do a full rewrite they'll have different names.

Other solution: picking out random letters from something nearby, or playing with pleasing sounds in my head. Sometimes this doesn't work for the best, like the "Burbull Bolt" my character is exploring in a collaborative project. Occasionally, however, a name like "Echston" pulled from a bag of dehydrated veggies brings a degree of serendipity to a story.

This Echston bought up a lot of property in a city, beginning with an orphanage, then the surrounding buildings until he owned everything around a public square. He closed off the square and hired people to be part of his secret project. They all lived/worked in Echston's buildings around the square. Yes, it's a bit cult-like. Especially when you find out the people living in that area are calling themselves "Archstones" and the orphanage at the center of it is called "Keystone". It works so well, it amazes me that Echston was the first piece, not the last one, mutated to make the others fit.

...
...
Well there's 300 words and 40 minutes I won't get back.

Double edged sword cuts both ways

I've undertaken a new project that I will be referring to a lot (especially on Twitter), but not talking about much. Bits of it will be posted from time to time as well, but it's all very rough. If I was at my computer right now I'd show a bit of tonight's work, but I'm in bed on the Touch again.

Correction: if I was on my laptop, I'd still be working on the blasted thing.

I modified a NaNoWriMo spreadsheet to keep track of my daily progress (quantity, not quality, dearies!), and determined that my system will count by calendar days rather than wake/sleep days. Two nifty benefits of this: first, my push for end of day numbers happens while I still have a couple buckets of energy in me, and second, as long as I make use of those post midnight hours, I have a headstart when I wake up in the morning and am at my worst.

Suffit. Any more and I risk tipping my hand.

New toy!

My mom got a new iPhone for christmas, and kindly sent me her old 1st gen to use as a Touch.

In the past ten minutes alone it has made my life better by providing a flashlight so I didn't trip over Reagan's slippers while he was sleeping, and then made my life much MUCH better by introducing me to the possibilities of silent, handheld blogging.

You see, it's around 26 degrees F outside, and the basement where my computer is has an uninsulated sliding glass door, and I leave the thermostat (one floor above) set at 60 (I'm paranoid about really high heating bills, unprecedented due to spending my first 25 years in temperate climes). My eyeballs get cold down there.

Up here, however, our bedroom is the warmest spot in the house. I'm curled nicely under blankets, benefiting from my husbands body heat, and noiselessly returning to a beloved pasttime.

Oh, the joys of an iPhone. If only it could act as a remote for my 'lectric blanket...