crap-writing-is-crap

Week One of Vacation… sort of.

Week one sort of because it wasn’t a full week — school was out Thursday. So it’s been about four days of vacation. And in the past week, I’ve finished up all of my planning and all of my worldbuilding. Things are ready to roll in the fall on completing The Sea Prince, and I even finally remembered how I was going to make this thing actually work.

It turned out that I had already done quite a bit of worldbuilding on The Sea Prince, but it was all over the place. Some was in the Scrivener file. Some was on my hard drive. Some was printed out and was in a notebook, and some was in another notebook. So completing the worldbuilding for The Sea Prince was largely compiling all of the existing worldbuilding and seeing what I was missing. Which wasn’t much.

Now it’s time for me to really start working on Imaginative Anthropology, which means that I’ll be reading a lot this summer, and taking notes, and making an outline. I have a very basic one already, but I need to tweak it and maybe move things around. Right now, the idea is to give a intro to cultural anthropology, a second intro to worldbuilding basics, and then bringing them together and making them play nicely. This is the first time I’m trying to put into words how I building the worlds in which I play, so it may end up being very similar to asking a centipede how it coordinates all of those feet…

I’ve filed one of the short stories I was working on in my “Unlikely to Develop” folder. It was a vague idea, and it refused to come together into more than a dozen paragraphs which had no ending. I’ll revisit it at some point in the future and either figure out the problem or let it go back into hibernation. So that leaves one short story to work on over the summer, which will go into Morrigan’s Wrath as bonus material. Working title is Broken Feathers.

And that is the current state of the state I’m in. Mental state, I mean. Physical state… well, I’m in Florida. If you have a vacation you’re planning, plan to vacation anywhere else. Literally ANYWHERE else. Because Florida: It’s not the humidity, it’s the hate.

Posted by EASchechter in 2023 plans, accountability, crap-writing-is-crap, Imaginative Anthropology, research is fun, summer, The Sea Prince, 0 comments

Monday, Monday…

And boy, is it being Monday-ish. It’s not even 11:00 here, and I’m already done!

At the moment, I’m working at the dining room table, waiting for the AC Service techs to show up to look over the air-conditioner. No trouble, just annual service. But having someone strange COMING TO OUR HOUSE AND COMING INSIDE THE HOUSE is pegging all the anxiety meters.

Then we have to leave the house, because going out to pick up a certain young man’s new glasses didn’t work on Friday — by the time we left the house, the optician had already closed for the day. And there’s a grocery pickup on the way back. So I have a full day, and I haven’t even figured in the writing yet!

Wings of Air
Heir to the Firstborn, Book 4

43247 / 120000 (36.04%)

I might have to do some backwards writing today.  I threw out about four hundred words this weekend, and Wings of Air is better for it. I’m going to go through the last two chapters and see where else I can tighten — we’re meandering way too far off course. There are scenes in there that don’t advance the plot or the character growth, and I need to tighten the timeline.

Writing is rewriting is rewriting is rewriting… and I think I’ll have a better book out of it when I’m done. And it won’t (well, shouldn’t) change anything that’s already live.

In other news, John Zedebee and the Heir to Elfland (final title, darn it) has gone off to the box set publisher. I’m working on the outline for the next one, tentatively titled John Zebedee and the Monstrous Town, but I need the input of someone else who is working in the box set, because I’d like their characters to be part of it.

Not much else is going on here, and focus is at a premium, so I’m wrapping this up. Stay safe, everyone. Stay in if you can. Remember to wash your hands and wear your mask.

I want to see you all on the other side of this.

Posted by EASchechter in 2020 plans, accountability, crap-writing-is-crap, Heir to the Firstborn, I really want some dull, John Zebedee, why-the-writing-is-slow, Wings of Air, WIP, wordcount, 0 comments

>Brain Freeze

>I don’t know if this is due to holiday craziness or the cold down here (yes, it does get cold in Florida. Right now, they’re saying it will go down to the 20s tonight.) but my brain has been refusing to function. Nothing has been done on Drum Mage, nothing done on Sable Locks. My brain feels like a wasteland. Frozen tundra. The words will come back out when the thaw hits, I guess. Hopefully, there’s no permafrost in there.

Now, I did start Sea Prince (a mainstream novel that I’m collaborating on with the person with whom I wrote Nomad’s Moon), and I think I’ve gotten a page in a day and a half — which is actually pretty good, because I’ve been trying to get that much done all year! Have I mentioned I hate writing battle scenes? So naturally, this one starts with a battle scene! Once I get through the battle, things will start moving faster. I can’t even foist the battle scene off on Danielle, who likes that kind of thing, because she is spending the holidays at the bottom of the world. Literally! She’s in Antarctica!

On the up side, I finished a pair of mittens, and am almost finished with a pair of socks and a wonderfully cuddly shawl.

Posted by EASchechter in a-writers-life-is-never-dull, crap-writing-is-crap, except-for-when-it-is, 0 comments

>My inner editor sucks rocks…

>I came to the decision this morning that everything I wrote yesterday is crap, and needs to be redone.

I hate it when this happens. I’m already behind on this manuscript! ARGH!!!!

Posted by EASchechter in crap-writing-is-crap, Princes of Air, writing, 0 comments