Unwater
New words: 266
Total wordcount: 68,639

Darling: Enki's gang lived in a derelict subway station where mold grew from cracks in the walls and dead bug goo spattered across the benches like paint. Rats squeaked somewhere down the tunnel--or bats, but Angela wasn't going to check--and water dripped with staccato syncopations. But even in these poor conditions, wide-leafed plants thrived in chipped clay pots, all glossy and green and perfumed so sweet the air was barely breathable in this miasma.
Typo: in a crit: "superhoes" (Fortunately I caught that in time...)
Deaths: No, and if I don't get to the end, no redshirt will ever die again.
Mean things: Too many people paying attention to her.
Webpage Angela should have read before signing up for the military: How to Survive in the Jungle

Prayer: Father, please be with S, R, and J.

Ferret adventures: Simon played in the box with tissue paper inside -- tissue paper makes great crinkly sounds, you see -- and did the cutest "I'm drowning I'm drowning!" thing with his paws in the air, throwing his arms over the side of the box, and sliiiiiiding back in.

--

Did crits again this morning. Then stared dumbly at UNWATER the rest of the afternoon. Clearly I cannot crit and write on the same days. Critting takes too much brain and kind of makes me hate everything I've ever written. *sigh*

In retrospect, I should have just done the other crits I owe today, rather than wait for another day. Friday, I guess, I'll just spend the whole day on the OWW. (And if I manage to get done early, finish up those manuscripts sitting in my inbox. *double sigh* *triple sigh*

How can I not have enough time to do anything when I don't even have a job? (Other than slush. I mean like a real job. :P)

--

This morning I locked the opening of my vampire story. It's just under friends lock, so if you're on my list it's still there, but mostly I expect to be severely embarrassed of it very soon and don't want anyone else to see it.

I have also begun research: reading books featuring vampires to see what I like and what cliches I can stomp around on and poke fun at. I've had a few recommendations already, so I'll get through those.

Yesterday, I stopped by an endcap in B&N dedicated to a popular series that now has its own TV show, read the backs of the books, and returned them to their spots. I think I got the gist through that, and further reading is unnecessary. Even I do not approve of the boyfriend:roller derby ratio there, and I'm usually pretty lenient about that.

--

Today was the sort of day I started out thinking yeah, Ima get to 70k! Then nothing was happening, so I lowered my goal to make it easier on myself. 69k! Not even a thousand words for the day. I can do it!

Then there was still nothing happening, so I said how about to 68,500? That's just 127 words. Please please just 127 words?

Obviously I managed that, but seriously, this isn't me. It's not even the book anymore. The book has plot and an ending and everything. It's me. Too busy thinking about Other Things and they're distracting me, depressing me, and all of this lack of progress? Not really helping. I just want to write my stories, darnit.

I've had a block in my head, something keeping me from feeling like I could write. I wanted to write, I just couldn't make the words come out. I stared at the cursor and waited for the book to write itself. And 8+ hours and only getting 150 words is not doing anything. Seriously.

So I put UNWATER away for a while, did several reviews on the workshop, took care of a lot of slush, and pulled out THREEFOLD BLIGHT since I've had the first three chapters on the workshop for a while and thought it was maybe time to put up the next one. I was going to post Friday, but got another member view, so I decided to wait the weekend in case they reviewed. Meanwhile, I went through and tidied up chapter four...then five...and then I was just sort of lost in my own story.

Oh, I remember. This is what booklove feels like.

When I mentioned it in chat, stillnotbored reminded me I'd been writing outside of my sandbox (my comfort zone) for a long time now. DELUGE was well outside my sandbox. It was someone else's sandbox. It wasn't even in the neighborhood of my sandbox. I mean, don't get me wrong. I'm pretty sure DELUGE is the best thing I've ever written because it was such a challenge and there are a lot of things I really love about it, but it wasn't my sandbox.

Then I worked on HARPY for a long time, whitepapering all the prose, trying to dig into the meat of the story more, ground the action and setting better -- and then I worked on the YA version, too. (Then more DELUGE.) (Then more HARPY.) And HARPY is cool, but you know how sometimes you do something and you think it's all right but it's not the greatest? And then everyone tells you how awesome it is? That's how I feel about HARPY. It's not what I love writing.

Then, because I'm a crazy person, I started UNWATER, which is in the DELUGE world. Same characters. (The ones who lived, anyway.)

Notice how none of those are in my sandbox? And that's what I've been doing for about seven months?

Okay, no wonder my storybrain stopped cold. No more, it said, and since I had Blight up on the shop, I opened Blight for posting the next few chapters.

And that's where the booklove went. I spent the weekend with Blight. Mostly read and changed some prose for clarity, tried to make Sadie a little more proactive in places, and fixed mostly whatever jumped out at me. I still have notes from when people read the last draft and I need to reread those at some point, but mostly I wanted to spend some time with a comfy book and feel productive, too. So I didn't do much, but I like what I did. It's a slightly better book because of it.

I feel slightly better, too.

THREEFOLD BLIGHT is in my sandbox. It's smack in the middle next to Toil/Chaff and Mariele about pretty prose, lots of setting description, and true love. They're not edgy or dark or ever going to be popular, but I love them. They're pleasant stories (even with names that include the word "blight") that make me smile.

I finished going through Blight again this afternoon and sent it to a couple people who wanted to see it.

Not sure what I'm going to do now. I have a full ms to crit and can do some more on the 'shop, but as far as writing, it's going to be low stress for a while. And revising something I love.

(Even if I've already revised it a million times. That just means there's less I need to do.)

--

THREEFOLD BLIGHT

Sadie sees things others don't: mermaids in fountains, fairies in her attic, and the end of the world.

The townspeople call her crazy behind her back, but she tries not to mind. She's more concerned about the trees she finds melting into sharp black puddles -- they leave wounds that never heal -- and the hole in the sky, which is sucking in clouds and stars and slices of the moon. At the same time as the world is dying, Sadie meets a stag who save her from a mountain lion. But the stag is also a fox and ferret and eagle...and a young man with no name or memory of his past, and no power to control what shape the magic forces him to become. All he knows is that he's hiding from someone. Sadie names him Changer.

The end of the world has three parts: the hole in the sky; sickness of the earth; and a hidden thing, a changing thing, a forgotten thing. Sadie wants to believe Changer isn't connected to the threefold blight, but as she searches for answers in priests' libraries and long-dead sorcerers' notes, she realizes they're both more involved than anyone. In order to save the world, Sadie will have to give up her life, and Changer's.

Unwater
New words: 645
Total wordcount: 15,825

Prayer: Father, please be with J, A, S, R, and A.

Ferret adventures: I love listening to their little snoring noises.

Kippy adventures: She must know when I'm about to get up to use the restroom. Without fail, she sits on my lap and I'm trapped. Must not disturb the Kippeh.

--

Worked on a sock between sentences tonight.

A lot of sock got done.

I went back and read over what I wrote yesterday and tried to make it suck less. I'll probably do the same thing tomorrow with what I wrote today, but at some point I would like to make some forward progress on this.

I've also been thinking about looking at Toil and Chaff again to see if I can make them any better. And I have other things I could fix up (TotS, Blight, Cass...) and see if they might find a home in the big bad world. I guess...I'm kind of feeling like, as much as I love exploring the Deluge world and seeing what trouble I can get Angela into, there's not much point in slaving over a hot keyboard if nothing's happening. If I was at least making progress, then continuing on would be fine. It's a reward book, after all. But I'm not making that much progress and I'm still doing a lot of flailing to find the other half of the plot. It's not feeling like a reward.

Dunno. I suppose I don't have to commit to anything just yet. I can sit around and be a lump. I like being productive better.

Well, there's always the sock.

I finally got through Harpy.

I also have 13k of words I've earned for Unwater. I have a friend's ms to read this weekend, and partials to read next week. And a full I should get back to before someone else snatches him up.

At some point I will spend some of my Unwater words. (I have a list so I can keep track.)

This is draft 5.0 of Harpy. I will work on 5.1 soonish, and then finish the YA version, which won't take nearly as long. (Please, commas, don't let it take as long.) I wonder how I shall reward myself for getting through 5.1 and the YA draft. Since they will be quicker, perhaps a thousand Unwater words per chapter, rather than scene.

I cannot express how relieved I am that this is done. I like this book, but it isn't my favorite. I don't think it's even ever been the current favorite. That people like it so much never fails to boggle me (though I'm glad they do...), and working on it has always been a test of my powers of focus. But now I have squeezed out more worldbuilding, setting, character, and hopefully destroyed 95% of the bad prose. (I sent it to two friends who will no doubt inform me of all the typos and editing artifacts.)

It's a better book, if nothing else.

*thanks em-dashes and semicolons while in a thankful mood*

Eye use spell-chequer.

Florescent and fluorescent = not the same thing!

Five drafts, and I just now find out about that error. From a crit on the OWW.

Better later than never?

(I did it in Deluge, too. I'll just turn in my badge and gun now, thanks.)

1. There was a mugging while folding laundry today. I was innocently folding a t-shirt and thinking about one tiiiiny aspect of the worldbuilding in DELUGE, just letting it turn over so maybe I could figure out how they did this one thing. And then...it exploded.

See, a few weeks ago, there was another mugging while I was in the music store. A title, in case I ever wanted to write a sequel to DELUGE. The new one calls itself UNWATER. Well, I said I'd keep it in mind, but I have ten million other things to do and if it was just a title, I didn't have a use for it. (For the records, titles never come first for me. This was obviously a trick.

So this innocent "Gee, I wonder how they do that" got together with the title and made a conflict. Now I have a story.

I made notes and went back to revising. Because really. I have enough stories trying to claw their way out of my head.

2. During the query-reading-marathon last week, along with the ten million partials, I got thinking this whole thing would go a lot faster if I had the first five pages of people's manuscripts with the query. (Because mostly when I get partials, I can tell by the first several pages whether I'm going to like the rest.) I asked Jenny if she would change the guidelines for me. And she did! Yay!

So the new guidelines are up on her blog.

I think this will be a good change for all of us. Me, because I will probably request fewer partials and therefore be less crazy by the end of the week, and you, because now if your query doesn't wow me, maybe your first five pages will and I'll want to read the rest.

3. Look what came in the mail on Friday. *giggling madly* So shiny and pretty and pointy. (Seriously, I will have to be careful not to drop this one on my toe. It's very pointy on the other end.)

My book woke me up to tell me the end.

Yes. It seems to be a combination of sleep deprivation and pretending you're giving up for the night to go to sleep. They hate when you go to sleep.

I woke up with the end spilling out of my ears -- the end of the scene I'm on, the last two scenes, and some dialogue -- and I'm not stupid enough to think I'll remember it in the morning. (Hey look, it's morning now! But I think it was like 4am when this happened.) So of course I staggered out of bed and wrote down all my plot. 500 words of notes.

This weekend will be pushing to the end. Please don't mind if I ignore everyone and everything. I'll see you on the other side.

(I kind of love it when they do this. It means they want to be written as much as I want to write them. Oh, booklove.)

Deluge
New words: 2244
Total wordcount: 78,314

Typo: Infodumb. This was actually in chat, but it still cracks me up.
Darling: ...
Deaths: Yep. A gross one. And lots more...just in the background.
Mean things: Meanest thing. The scary guy is back. Her brave moment works against her. Drowning.

Flute practice: Insert ARGH here. I tried it again today, and really. I am so not playing this. My fingers don't do this. My mouth won't make these octave leaps. There is no reason for me to play an A four lines above the staff...and then a very bottom G. That's a three octave difference. That's the whole flute. It's INSANE and I'm not going to drive myself crazy for something that's supposed to be fun.

So I'm going to play the part that makes sense. I'm going to try the next bit that still kind of makes sense. The whole wretched thing ends on a half note D. I'll play one, too. (Or maybe I'll end on that Bb, since that's where the real crazy starts and a D sounds horrible there.) Call me a quitter or a coward if you want, but I cannot do the rest of it. Can. Not.

Prayer: Father, please be with J and his family, S and her family, and J and her family.

Ferret adventures: Yesterday, while I was plying, Leanne was upset that I wouldn't pick her up. So upset that she nipped at my toes a few times, and then climbed up the side of the cage, turned around, and squirmed onto my shoulder. Because my hands were busy and I hadn't stopped what I was doing long enough to get her.

Well. That'll show me.

Also, this happened tonight:


Sorry it's so dark. I didn't want to get up and turn the light on and risk him getting distracted. If you can't tell, he's trying to open the drawer. He gets it, too! But, I guess, finds squeezing himself in there to get the bag of treats too difficult.

That's Simon, coming over to help him.

--

This is the hardest book I have ever written.

I know they're all supposed to be hard, and it's true, they each present new challenges. But some books are less comfy than others. Some are more comfy. Threefold Blight, for example, was a comfortable book. I spent hours on it every day, but I could spent hours on it every day. And they were great hours. I loved every. single. one. It ended up a book I'd be happy to read and reread, and it's bedtime safe.

But this one, I write a few paragraphs, stop and think, write a little more... Even on the good days, it still takes me forever to get anywhere.* And then I get to the hard scenes. The ones I look at myself after and go, "What is wrong with you? Why would you write this?"

These scenes end up more like -- Write a few words. Stop. Sigh. Stare. Sigh. Watch the ferrets. Eye book. Get something to drink. Write another few words. Rinse and repeat. With extra long breaks for looking at calming yarn pictures on Ravelry.

Before I started writing Deluge, I called it the sad book in my head. What I thought I knew about the plot has changed a lot, and Angela has matured from how I originally imagined her, but the central things to the story -- everything violently ripped away, and trying desperately to heal only to end up in the same position, and how can it work out better this time? -- those things have all stayed the same. It has a name in my head now, but it's still the sad book.

I really love this book. You know, in spite of it being this book and more of a challenge than I originally set out for. I just hope I'm doing Angela justice, and I hope one day it gets published and then I can not think about it again.**

I don't know. Maybe it isn't as awful as I think it is. But it's certainly way out of my comfort zone. Way way way out. There's like one plotline I'm clinging to for dear life, because it's the only one that still feels like it might belong in one of my stories. But even that is tinted a shade darker, thanks to all the other stuff hanging around this book.

Next book? Well, after I revise Blight and anything else that pokes its head up for revision, I'm heading over to the superhero book for some fluffy YA sarcasm. 'Cause really.


*I've said it before but it's important to remember: I'm not a fast writer. I average 500 words an hour on a good day. I just spend a lot of hours writing.

**Until my imaginary fancy agent calls me to tell me the book has been banned everywhere, and can we stick to unicorns from now on? Wait, I don't have unicorns in my books, except those ones in ST, and they were homicidal. :S

Deluge
New words: 659
Total wordcount: 4466

Flute practice: Kippy flees when I get out my flute. Though shattering to my ego, that's one way of reclaiming my desk, I suppose.

Also, inhaling hair when you breathe in to play a big note? Not so good.

Prayer: Father, please be with J and his family, S and her family, J and her family, and B.

Ferret adventures: Though they have boxes of toys, the boxes themselves are still more interesting. As well as yarn store bags and the paper packages reams of paper comes in. :S

Kippy Adventures: As if my notebooks weren't good enough. Now she's taken over the keyboard.


Someone has control issues.

--

I started reading NEVERWHERE the other day. I know I'm the last person in the world, but wooooow. That book is filled with good.

What other books are filled with good that I have yet to read?

--

Despite sitting at the computer all day, I felt really scattered when faced with DEUGE. I got some progress, but I don't have hearts and flowers for it, just...yeah, that's good enough for a first draft. It'll work. And that's fine, but I am going to resurrect my booklove...or die trying! (Right after yarn and food and Stargate and sleep. And leaving the house tomorrow. And then probably my very own deluge of queries, which I will get to as soon as inhumanly possible. Yes, then booklove. *firm nod*)

Deluge
New words: 1181
Total wordcount: 3203

Typo: Nothing amusing.
Darling: See below.
Deaths: A beetle.
Mean things: Intruder! Knife at her throat. There are roaches in her apartment.

Flute practice: hollailama and I decided we're going to change how we do our recitals. Instead of the beginning of every month, which we obviously FAIL at, we're going to try every month and a half. So this one will be July 15, and the next one will be September 1, and so on. That'll give us a couple extra weeks to prepare, especially when we're throat-deep in novel love and can't be bothered to take an hour out of our day to practice. :|

But I have been practicing. I am right now, in fact, working on the dead princess song, and it's mostly memorized.

Prayer: Father, please be with J and his family, S and her family, J and her family, and J's friend.

Ferret adventures: It kills me when they go to sleep in their cages and somehow end up with limbs sticking out between the bars. Tails and feet everywhere! (But I have to admit, my favorite is when they squoosh their noses on the bar. That's the silliest.)

Kippy Adventures: I love how surprised she looks when she's flicking her tail around my desk and a bit of paper moves. "Oh, it made a noise!" Un huh. Your tail is doing that.

--

Well, I don't remember what I was planning on doing once I finished revising Blight. I know it was probably something really important and brilliant, but if I didn't write it down...

So I figure I'll work on DELUGE a bit. It was between this and ALMOST INVINCIBLE, and Deluge inspired me more. I might go back and forth and kind of sort of work on both of them, but I think we all know how that turned out when I said I was going to do that with Deluge, Invincible, and Blight... So I can't make promises I'll manage to work on both at the same time.

I am going to try to take it easy, though, as far as writing this because there are things I need to take care of. Not that I can think of them right now. Too busy thinking about how to resolve various conflicts in this book. Ahem. (Note to self: make list of things to do: pay attention to Jeff and the other mammals, eat, play with yarn, sleep if you can find the time.)

Yeah, we'll see. It should take my mind off having sent Blight off for people to rip up. And I think soon I'll be able to get started revising a few other things that have been waiting their turn after being torn to shreds by my loffly critter buddies. This should be fun and traumatic. *grin*

Here's the beginning of Deluge. I had the first couple thousand words written before I started working on Blight, and I still mostly like them. Although now I keep wondering if it secretly wants to be in present tense.

Dear book, don't make me bite you.

( A few hundred words )

It's first drafty and I've already caught some word rep -- I know there's more lurking in there! -- but I loff it so.

I'm also quite aware this is going to be a challenging book for me in a lot of ways. It's not a normal Jodi-book at all: darker, modernish, and pretty serious. Get set for lots of writer angst.

--

Unrelated, I like this chart: Fiber Burn Chart. It's obvious we should all be wearing wool, alpaca, silk, and cashmere. Poor us! (amberdine suggests wearing fiberglass. Not sure I'm on board with that.)

Okay, I finished revising THE LOYAL SWORD, and now I'm feeling yearny for something else to work on. (Breaks, what? I don't believe in them.) I need to read and critique at least one novel before I start doing anything else, but then...

So quick, what should I do? (Of course, I reserve the right to ignore the poll results and not write ticky book, and for those of you who're already clicking BRANDED, you know it's been years now and I still haven't finished it, right? No promises. :P )

Poll #1158752 Bossy poll
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 32

What should I work on?

I've come up with a list of titles (and silly titles) for not-Shipwreck. I come to you, my LJ buddies, for help narrowing it down, or telling me I think of lame titles.

It's quite possible I'll ignore the results of this poll and hate all titles anyway, but I have to call it something, I suppose. Seeing as how there are still no shipwrecks in not-Shipwreck.

Poll #1142172 Title!
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 38

What should I title not-Shipwreck?

Shipwreck
New words: 4000
Total wordcount: 66,500

Typo: na
Darling: He kissed her with cold, wet lips, and pulled back with a muttered apology. "I'll try again when we're not trapped in a snow hole."
Silently she agreed that the warmer kisses were better, but kept hugging him anyway. The shivering wasn't all that nice, either, but it was better to shiver together
Deaths: Nearly Cassandra!
Mean things: Hard questions. Bright lights. Attack! Bad news. Stuck in a snow hole. Possible hypothermia. (There should be more hypothermia in books.) Most unromantic, cold and wet kiss ever. (See darling.)

Prayer: Father, please be with J and his family, and S and her family.

Ferret Adventures: I give them a nice bowl of soup and what's the first thing that happens? Simon spills it. *sigh!* Okay, yes, it was too warm for his taste, but spilling it isn't going to do anything other than give it a nice dirt flavor. Which might have been the goal all along...

Kippy Adventures: Once again, she doesn't want us to sleep. Pawing at the door. Knocking my glasses off the dresser in the middle of the night... (Fortunately I wake up at the slightest noise that isn't the alarm clock. Unfortunately, I wake up at the slightest noise that isn't the alarm clock.) Meowing and running around the house like a crazy person.

--

Dear book,

"Snow Quiet" is not an appropriate title. Sure, it fits with themes and stuff, but really. Say it out loud, book. See? Not going to work.

Thanks for thinking about it, but let's keep trying, okay?

Hearts and kisses,

Jodi

--

Dear Jodi,

Wow, you're really picky. It's better than your idea -- Shipwreck. There isn't even a shipwreck! There's barely a ship!

But you have a point about Snow Quiet. (Unless you'd like to add a few poison apples and handsome princes and evil stepmother queens and mirrors. Let me know what you think.) "Magic of Snow" probably won't make you happy, either, hmm? What about "Boom!"?

Or [Title], since you have [TownName] and [LakeName] and [SomeKindOfDevice]? Really, I guess it's kind of a miracle there are character names, or we'd have [MainChick] and [MysteriousHotGuy] and [DoomedSecondaryCharacterNumberSeven] and so on. Yeah, I really like [Title]: a novel.

Explosions and smooches,

[Title]: a novel

--

Dear BOOK,

[FrustrationAndShock]

Jodi

Shipwreck
New words: 4340
Total wordcount: 38,260

Prayer: Father, please be with J and his family, S and her family, and H and her family.

Ferret Adventures:


--

I might have the seed of a title. I'm going to poke at it some and see what happens.

I didn't get as much done today as I was hoping. (You look at the number and laugh, but please remember I wrote from 7am until now, with a few breaks for food, yarn, and ferrets. And actually, I eat over the computer. *slob*) But at the rate it was going to begin with, I'm fairly pleased with the progress. I got a lot of backstory in, revealed a couple scary things to the characters, and there is a Tentative Plan, but most of them are gonna die anyway. Poor fools!

Tomorrow I get to write yet another talky scene. (I feel like they're all talky scenes, even though I know they aren't.) I try to break them up with action scenes, or trick people into thinking my talky scenes are action scenes (look, Ma, no scene breaks from the talky into the action...ish stuff). But after that, we get to go to the space ship! I wonder what can go wrong there. Something cool, but plotty, too. Maybe magic will attack them. Somehow. Magically.

Then there's more Investigating of the Murders, and a couple more murders while they're doing that. (This'll be how I trick you into thinking my talky scene has action. Something might blow up in the middle of investigating, and they'll be all, "Oooh, what's that? Ow ow hot!" and then go back to talking, and at the end of the scene, hah, more dead people. It's an action scene! (So you're supposed to think. :D) And I seem to have lost track of my parinthesis.)

*deep breath*

After that, I think we get more talky scene to go to the old city, where hopefully more plot will happen. Plot that is not, "And then scary monsters attacked! Boom!"

I've been rewriting the prose in SHADOW OF VENGEANCE, as I've mentioned before. I, um, also ended up bleeding a little more worldbuilding into it, and trying to smooth out some of the conversations so the people who are supposed to be friends actually look like friends. And signaling the end more because I will be forever paranoid about The Structure Problem it had in the first few drafts.

*sigh*

I remember when this book was barely squeaking out at 80k. I also remember when it was 95k. And I remember when it was 115k...

This part I'm at now? Used to be the halfway point in the book. I hope it isn't still. Because if it is, we have a problem. I'm 73k in.

I see much trimming in my future with this book. As it is now, if I were to print it out in SMF, it could cause back strain for anyone trying to carry it around.

(I think part of my problem is that I'm always soooo happy to go back to this book, because I love the characters and world so much, and every time I come back, I discover something new about it. So I add it. And the book grows. Anyone else have a Book of Doom like that? Please tell me I'm not the only one.)

ETA: The intimidated ferret mood icon is cracking me up. *jawdrop* *eyetwitch* Yeah, that's kind of how I feel. *grin*

These are the opening paragraphs from SHADOW OF VENGEANCE. Oh, how they've changed...and haven't.

( One )
( Two )
( Three )
( Four )

Oh, hello, line of direction. How nice to meet you.

And this is just structure and content changes. If I showed you all the nit-picky line edits, we'd be here all night. :P

(And I'm not changing it again! ...at least not until I realize it sucks and needs to be changed again. :D)

Harpy Book
Pages edited: 27 - 33
Total pagecount: 259

Prayer: Father, please be with J and his family, S, H, and R.

Ferret Adventures: Was knitting in the ferret room today when Stewie crawled on my lap and looked up at the sock in progress, and delicately took one needle in his teeth and began pulling it off the stitches. Great, got the message! Pay attention to Stewie, not the sock! (Either that, or he just wants to stash it.) Furthermore, Kippy was sitting on my lap and Simon came over. He completely ignored me, and jumped on Kippy to snuggle her. (Chaos ensued.) A bit later, Leanne came up, saw Kippy, and gave me a look like, "What's she doing here?"

Kippy Adventures: I was trying to take a picture of my fancy wristwarmers for my yarn blog. I'd just put them on the floor when Kippy runs into the room and dives underneath one. (Picture on the blog.) So okay, I can deal with that. But then I tried again, and still, more Kippy than pink yarny thing. After a while I tried putting one on, but she crawled on my hand. Then I decided to try and pet her with that hand so she would at least be near it (because apparently she feels for my wristwarmers like Simon feels for her), but she wanted to wrestle with my hand (or the wristwarmer) instead. *sigh*

--

Either this book gets slightly better the further you go in, or I'm too tired to notice the suck. If it's the latter, I wonder if I can just make sure everyone is really tired when they read it... Chapter one looks increasingly better every time, so that's good. I only had to fix a few sentences this time through, rather than spork and rewrite every single paragraph.

I swear, I'm not normally this whiny. (About my WIP, anyway.) I don't know what it is about this book. Usually I have a very healthy confidence level, but this book makes me feel like I know nothing! Silly book.

Now I must go be exhausted in my warm bed. Twenty-nine degrees F here. Good thing I have lots of socks.

...And it says, "For a quick write, call Jodi."

Cast: Book that shall not be named (not the harpy book), and me
Setting: my brain, one month ago

Book: Hey. Want some pretty prose?
Me: Meep?
Book: Yeah, I thought so. And some MHG with lots of cuteness and damage?
Me: *whimper*
Book: Think about it.
Me: *is strong* *does other stuff*
Book: *knows better*

One week later...

Book: Hey, want some worldbuilding?
Me: *burble*
Book: And some conflict?
Me: *swoon*
Book: You want to take a few notes? *waggly eyebrows*
Me: *takes actual notes, not "note"*
Book: *bides time*

One week later...

Book: Hey, how you doing?
Me: Revising. I'm strong and I don't need you to define me.
Book: Whatevs.
Me: *revises harpy book*
Book: Want a first scene?
Me: *big eyes*
Book: *gives first scene*
Me: *writes "notes"*
Book: *has writer wrapped around little finger*

Present day...

Book: Hey, you want some words?
Me: I'm reading.
Book: But you could be writing.
Me: I'm reading. *is strong*
Book: You read one book, got really inspired. Read a quarter of another book and put it down. And you're a quarter of the way through another book and thinking about me between paragraphs. Clearly you want me!
Me: *twitch* I'm reading.
Book: But you could be writing.
Me: Still reading. (*whimper*)
Book: How about some scope? And a few scenes between the MC and the MHG? And some backstory?
Me: Um... You got a title?
Book: Yep.
Me: Well...
Book: Awesome. Open the document and let's get started.
Me: *compelled to obey book*
Book: *cackles*

Reviews: Kiss: 203 - end

Prayer: Father, please be with J and her family, J and his family, S and her family, and K.

Ferret Adventures: Finally, Stewie is beginning to understand the power of tummy, and that I am unable to control myself when a ferret rolls over. He's not sure if this is a good thing or not, but it's a good way to get my attention.

Kippy Adventures: Kippy is obsessed with fetch. Obessed! Sometimes she gives me enough time to write a whole sentence, or say a whole thing to chat friends, but mostly I am interrupted to throw hair ties or milk rings for her. And she meows if I'm not fast enough. Not only that, but now no place is sacred. She followed me into the bathroom to continue the game. *hangs head* *doomed*

--

Two more books and some pages left to read, and unless anyone sends anything else to read before I'm done with those, I get to start revisions on the titleless harpy book. I'm pretty excited about getting back to work. And I will find a title this draft or die trying!

A book I am Not Writing is trying to seduce me. I must look really easy, because the first thing it said was, "I'll give you pretty prose and doomed romance," and it had my attention. I was strong, though, and resisted. I kept on resisting when it started on about cute boys and worldbuilding and conflict. I have been strong like you wouldn't believe! When I say I took notes, I actually mean notes, not "I say notes but I mean prose."

Well, I was strong and mocking it because a) no title (heh, like that ever matters), b) no character names (I just name them all Holly, anyway), and c) no first scene... and then it said, "Ohh, first scene. We can do that. Have some setting, conflict, and we'll keep talking about the MHG. He'll get there eventually. And he has Damage."

Then I got a little melty and sighed and took some "notes" and some notes.

The plan is to continue being strong, though. I've taken "notes" before and managed to avoid writing a whole book... a few times I've done it, anyway. And I plan on going back to every single one of them. I just need to write down everything I can before it goes away!

*is strong* *looks forward to revising* *thinks about the joys of revision*

Harpy book
New words: 3191
Total: 38,265

38,265 / 80,000 (47.8%)

Prayer: Father, please be with J and his family, S and her family, and C and her family.

Ferret Adventures: It's funny to just be sitting here, pretending to write, and all of the sudden you hear a toy being tortured in the other room. It goes on for about five minutes, bang bang bang, and then...silence. Did they wake up just for that?

Kippy Adventures: She was pretty quiet most of the day. I'd been wondering what she was planning until I got up to brush my teeth, and suddenly she ran around the house like the invisble elephants were chasing her. *sigh*

--

It was really hard to write today. There are a few likely reasons why, and they're all good reasons... I just wish I knew which it was so I wouldn't panic about the first two. (The last one's okay. I hope it's just the last one.)

1. I've been writing too much the last week and a half and I've burned myself out.

It stinks, but it'is easily solved by slowing down for a few days and not stressing about wordcount. I like writing fast, but it isn't a race. Just because the story has been pouring out so far doesn't me it has to go at the same speed the whole way through. (I'm just really excited and want to know what happens in the end!)

2. I've made a wrong turn and everything I worked so hard to write today needs to be deleted and turned toward the right direction.

The scariest of possibilities. I hate deleting words. And I hate feeling like I did something wrong. My brain is pretty good about picking these things out soon after they happen, though, so if I must cut, it will only be a couple thousand words. I'll have to backtrack to where I started with the wrongness and redirect everything, but I can do that. (As long as I can figure out where I'm supposed to be going.)

3. I'm tired.

The best possibility, and the most likely. I didn't sleep much yesterday and this whole week has been third shift, which always involves little sleep. Plus, with the racing through the story I've been doing, the exhaustion is finally kicking in. This can be cured with a nice long nap.

Whatever it is, that doesn't change the fact that Harriet needs to give me the rest of the plot right now Or Else. Even if I couldn't write it pretty, I could still make decent placeholder scenes and go back later when I had a vocabulary again.