And one of those goals is to write in here more often-- every other day, at least, hopefully.  (M/W/F, to start with.)

I haven't been getting as much work done as I would like because C and the roomie are both home, but I have been writing daily (1K a day) so far.  So, that resolution, at least, is on track.  Now to keep it going! 

I figure if I keep going, and keep going at that level, I will have ~350K words by the end of the year, and that's a good output. 

I just need to finish this short story, figure out what I'm doing with the Cai story, and then get back to work on the Nicholas novel.  Which will hopefully be easier to do next week when things aren't so crazy here.  Wish me luck!

Still editing the Nicholas book.  Work slowed way down when I got sick.  I went from a good 2K a day output to ZERO, and stayed there.  Bleah.  Finally, after weeks and weeks of that, I was able to start back up, making a few edits that I knew would make the book better.  Doing that, I added 1K yesterday, and then a few hundred today. 

So, slow progress is still progress, right?

*sigh*  I'll keep plugging away, and pray for a better word count tomorrow!

So, I had this idea today that makes Blood of the Chosen a MUCH better book.  I'm super psyched about it, because it combines the two elements that I liked about the old book in a much better way.  I wrote down as much of it as I could into a synopsis, and I'll let it "stew" while I finish Nicholas.  :D

Nicholas, by the way, continues apace.  I'm hoping to finish it during NaNo.  Essentially, what I am doing for NaNo is working on it, since the 50K of NaNo would hopefully finish it.  My minimum goal for the month of November is 34K, with my hope, of course, to be to win NaNo.  I am nearly done with Chapter 6-- I have to go back and fix an error I made in it, and then I will be done with it.

As to the rest of the writing?  Well...  I think two novels will keep me busy for a while!  But I do have a few ideas kicking around the ol' cranium...  :D

Finished Chapter 5, and that's a good thing.  I may be, depending, 1/3 or 1/4 of the way through this beast.  I've set up the plot elements, and I'm quite pleased with them.  Now I need to do the misdirection and see how that goes.

I'm vaguely hopeful that I can still finish it before Nov 30, but it will depend greatly on if we travel between now and then.  If we do, that'll likely scrap that deadline.  If not, then I might still hit it.  If we get visitors, too, that might push the deadline back.  (and, naturally, if I get sick again I'll be very worried about my deadline.  Hopefully I'll be healthy between now and then.  *knocks on wood*)

I'll be working diligently between now and then, regardless.

Generally, the first milestone is 10K-- this time 'round, I have hit two at once.  Chapter 5 is a biggie, and I'm working on it at the same time that I hit 10K!  Next up: 25K. 

I am still very happy with the book itself.  I have to change a few things, including the eye color of my main character (I finally saw a person with this coloring, and I decided it's cliche and doesn't work for the character), but other than that I'm delighted and booking along.

I like having a mental picture of the characters as I work on them, and it can occasionally lead to breakthroughs.  Like the realization that one of my characters has to be older than I'd realized! 

Fun stuff.  :D

Finished Chapter 3 yesterday, and began work on Chapter 4 today.  Chapter 4 stuttered and sputtered quite a bit, but I'm hoping that now that things are rolling right along, I'll be able to get a good chunk of work done on it tomorrow.  At the very least, I have to introduce the character who has been dancing around my brain all day.  I am impatient to get her on the page, even though I know that the "reality" of her will not be as fun as the "dancing-in-my-head" version of her.

Still.  It'll be fun to share her with other people.  I am totally looking forward to showing her off.  Shiny! 

Anyway, off to bed for now, to dream of things to do to torture my characters.

The Nicholas writing plan proceeds apace!

I have an outline, I have two chapters, and I am working on the third chapter tonight.  It's been getting good feedback from my first writers, and that makes me happy as well.  Not that I wouldn't write it if it didn't get good feedback, but good feedback is always a bonus.  :)

As an extra bonus, I have feedback on Blood to work on as well, for those times when I can't work on the Nicholas story for one reason or another. 

I love it.  I love working on the mystery, I love writing again, and it's just all good.  I hope it stays that way.

So, I am back from Dragon*Con and I have SO much to do.  I need to outline Nicholas, gut the first part of Blood, rewrite the first part of Nicholas, and then gut and rewrite the Cai short story as well. 

If I actually buckle down and work on these things, I could be busier than sin for quite a while. 

The plan is to start with Nicholas, write the tentative outline this weekend, and then start real work on it next week.  I have a "sixty-day" plan, where I'm hoping to get it mostly done in the next two months, by working on it pretty much every day, barring any trips or anything like that.  (And, since we have a trip, I'll miss out on a day, but I'm hoping that being away from home will enable me to do what I did in Miami and work extra lots while I'm there, parked in a library or something.  So hopefully I won't lose too much progress.)  Of course, this is all predicated on believing that Nicholas is a 100K-120K novel, and that I can manage 2K words a day or so.  If that ends up not working, I'll adjust my schedule accordingly.

My editor finally got back to me, and between his first impressions and the stuff I got from the writing panels that I attended at Dragon*Con, I have a head stuffed full of ideas.  I'm putting Blade on hold for a while, both because it's a sequel and I don't need to be working on it while I have other ideas-- no sense in writing a sequel when I haven't sold the first book yet-- and because I have to let it percolate a bit.  I think that the changes I'll be making to Blood will change it, as well, so I'm going to do them first, and work on it later.

My editor's words made such a huge difference.  The practical experience of having someone actually sit down and tell you "this doesn't work, and here's why" is very different from "this is what you should do after you write a book."  Anyway.  I need to get to work.  Of course, at the moment, I have to go chop veggies for dinner... but after that, I get to sit down and write outline-y goodness.  And then read books about writing a mystery, and pray that my tentative ideas play out in the big novel. 

Switching over from the old version of Word to the new version seems to have screwed up my novel, and I am not enough of a Word egghead to be able to figure out the formatting issue.  It is, of course, driving me insane.  Stupid reason not to work on a novel, but there it is.  It was so distracting that even though I had gotten caught up (in Blade, incidentally) on where the story was and what I needed to do to it, I couldn't compose myself enough to actually write on it.

Stupid.

I worked on Nicholas again instead.  Which isn't a complaint, it's just...  I want to work on Blade again.  It's irritating me that I am not, because I am much farther along with that novel than I remembered (I am nearly to the funbits!  The climax!  The slog of the middle is almost over!) and I would really, really like to just be done with it now, please? 

Naturally, that's easier said than done, especially when the formatting has gone all wonky.  FEH!

I am thisclose to doing a copy/paste into notepad and making a new Word document.  Of course, I want to know what went wrong so I can avoid it in the future-- which is the only reason I have not done that-- that's the easy way out.

At least I have a backup plan in case I can't fix it.  And, of course, there is always the last resort-- the shout-out in LJ of "help!"  Because LJ has all the answers.  *grin*

Anyway.  I have a basic, bare-bones plot for Nicholas, and I am considering writing an outline.  I have gotten far enough into the story to have gotten "backstory" in my head from most of the big players, and it's a lot of fun.  I really like that world.  It's come together well, and I am pleased. 

So, that's where that stands, and I'll probably start putting together the Nicholas outline tomorrow.  And start kicking around an actual title.  "Nicholas," while the narrator, isn't the focus of the book-- the murder is.  (Duh, right?)  Hopefully getting the outline together will help me come up with a title.

Last week was pretty hectic, as the visit from my friend turned into this huge and massive energy suck, because everything that could go wrong did.

Still, I did manage to squeeze some writing time in, and I also managed to do some research.  A visit to the gun range later, and my main character in Nicholas now carries a .45, because that is totally the gun he would carry.  (Not incidentally, it is also the gun I would carry if I could, but I don't have my concealed carry permit yet.  Yet.)  I also got the joy of shooting a Caltech .223, which was incredible! and fun, and now I want to go back to the gun range a lot more, but damn if ammunition isn't expensive.  Feh.  Still, I think if J has his way we'll be going a bit more regularly than we had been, which is a good thing.  :D

I am writing a paranormal mystery.  Me.  Who'd've thunk it?  Thank goodness for Dragon*Con next week, because I need some guidance with that.  I am so unprepared for the genre it's not funny.  I don't even read many mysteries these days, though I have increased my intake since I have started writing this one.  Speaking of, yes, I am going to D*Con!  (Hopefully.  It is the plan, anyway, barring unforeseen complications.)  I have a schedule, preliminarily, and I am all kinds of excited because I have two panels with a certain author that I have a love/hate relationship with, and one panel with Anne McCaffrey on my schedule. 

Yes, you read that right.  The Weyrlady herself.  Dude.  I cannot wrap my head around it.

I will have my notebook with me.  I am debating bringing a book to have her sign.  I have a very old copy of DragonSong that it would be nice to have her sign, but it's a panel and I don't know the rules about that.  Still.  Can you say SQUEE?

Yay DragonCon.