Scarlet Letters

61,458 / 60,000 (102.4%) Love always takes. Love cuts deep and watches the blood flow. There is power in love, the power over another, leveraged whether or not the recipient is even aware of it. Love is ties that bind, love is agony digging into the skin. Love always hurts. That's why I firmly believe no one can choose to love and certainly doesn't choose who they love. No one would choose the abyss. It chooses you. -- the author Love and faith have to overcome death. Otherwise, what good are they? -- Angiss the bayou halfling

60,958 / 60,000 (101.6%) Okay, just about finis. Of course, as soon as I declared the damn thing done, my brain coughed up another brilliant idea, right in the middle of our trip through the Way of Lights. That little something missing from the ending. Another voice in Alesia's head. Except, of course, it will require several additional moments throughout the second half of the goddamn book. Which at least gives me something to do at tomorrow's write-in besides spellcheck. Still, tonight is the Wineglass Ritual. And tomorrow I will send it to the publisher, and pending edits, I'm done. Now what to do next. This has been bugging me for some time. Oh, I have a handful of things I've procrastinated on, edits due on a couple of projects sent back to me with a "fix this and we'll reconsider." And there's the Christmas sale to kick off, next year's tour to plan, plenty of work to keep me occupied. I suppose I'll also spend at least a mon...

I really hate the golem battle. I originally intended them to face only one golem, but it was so dull I added two more, and still I don't like it. It needs something, a twist or a trick I could have implanted earlier on. Can't think of a thing, but that might be because it's 1:52 a.m. Hating this scene. Granted, it's "and then there were two," but yikes, my guys need to actually have a good fight or something. On the other hand, the Chapter Twelve heartbreak was sufficiently destructive that I felt all warm inside. There might be something wrong with me. Plus: "Go back to sleep, Kiddo, I've got golems to kill." I am the weirdest mom in Illinois. Yesterday's Favorite Fuckup: • They rushed at the cage, dragging out their own man out before Slive. (Department of Redundancy Department) Today's Favorite Fuckup: • The phrase "thrashing throes" is not a good phrase. No, really. It's just not. It's a sign that you need to hang ...

47,474 / 60,000 (79.1%) Take another look at that wordcount. It's 47474. I could not do that again if I tried. Not a bad session, considering I spent a good portion of the afternoon restructuring Chapter Eight and had to stop for dinner and a two-hour game of Disney Monopoly. Yes, my sunny Sunday afternoon consisted of swamp battle, barbecued ribs, Monopoly and cannibalism. There is nothing weird about my life, not at all. Many thanks to Ohari for explaining to me the proper way to treat an arrow wound. For those of you keeping score at home, you don't want to pull out an arrow because it's duh, triangular, so you'll rip hell out of the victim pulling it out. Best is to shove it the rest of the way through, break off the arrowhead and pull out the shaft. Of course, depending on its placement, you could be screwed anyway. Today I did a lot of Twittering while working. Here's a few choice conversations: GINGERSNAPS: It probably isn't proper for me to ...

As of today, I am officially moving my target word count to 60K. Longer would be even better, but I believe in aiming for reasonable goals. The work is going well enough that I think I'll hit 60K. 43,156 / 60,000 (71.9%) I'm dithering over the chapter after they leave the elf village. This is how it's currently structured: a) Angiss has another vision of Wynter. b) When he wakes up, Tam and Kance fight over the Quest. c) Alesia wakes up from a nightmare and cuddles with Kancethedrus. d) They are all awakened to fight the ghoul. e) They are captured by the Evile. It could happen this way: a) Alesia wakes up from a nightmare and cuddles with Kancethedrus. b) They are all awakened to fight the ghoul. c) Time passes. Angiss has another vision of Wynter. d) When he wakes up, Tam and Kance fight over the Quest. e) They are captured by the Evile. I rather like the second structure better. For one thing, it gives more passage of time so everything doesn't happen at...

I know a lot of authors read me here and elsewhere. Here's my suggestion for us this holiday season: A Recovering American Soldier c/o Walter Reed Army Medical Center 6900 Georgia Avenue,NW Washington,D.C. 20307-5001 Send a signed book. Do it today. Hell, do it today and do it again next month. Surely those folks could use something besides daytime TV to occupy their minds. I'm not the only one. Let's see if we can't make this a big thing, eh? Pass it on.

I should dock the payment for all the FirstReaders. In the first draft, the boat lands on a sidebar, folks. SIDEBAR. As in an article that accompanies a larger article in a newspaper. Usually, see, a boat would land on a sandbar. I think I was a little tired when I wrote that. Also, I don't pay the FirstReaders. Well, some of them get cookies. Met up with the Nanoers again today. I find this is very helpful in keeping me going. I really think it's valuable. I've never been able to write with anyone else around before, and it's good when everyone's on the same work ethic: crank it out. Also, I can never remember whether farther or further is distance, and someone always knows that shit. Tomorrow: major rewrite of the elf village sequence. That's going to take some serious caffeine. 37,094 / 55,000 (67.4%)

****This entry brought to you by the fact that LJ is down. Your normal writing-only content will resume as soon as my tremors have eased, which is probably about the time LJ comes back.**** My son was extremely excited to bring me the PTA newsletter this morning. Since the PTA newsletter isn't usually a big deal in our household, I was curious as to the cause. It seems the PTA newsletter interviewed various students about their favorite authors, and my son... NO. He did not say, "My favorite author is my mom!" And you know, it didn't occur to me until right now to be annoyed! HEY! Shouldn't I be his favorite author? Sure, he's far too young to read any of my books, but hey buster, those books help pay for our palatial estate (read: two-bedroom apartment) and the shoes on your feet and the glasses you broke! Humph. Anyway, it seems my nine-year-old responded thusly to the PTA: "My favorite author is Peter S. Beagle. He wrote THE LAST UNICORN. My mom met hi...

I can't take credit or blame for a mosquito with an eight-foot wingspan. Not my idea. Everyone, please go blame Randy Richards, creator of Dreadmire. He's the sick and twisted one. Muahahaha. ME: I forgot how much I enjoyed hurting my characters in chapter seven. Does that make me a bad person? SELENA: Since your characters are figments of your imagination, it just makes you a masochist. ME: But I enjoy the screams of anguish from my First Readers as they experience the misery and grief. Is that unChristian? SELENA: Would that make it the Passion of the Christ? ME: Didn't see that one. I read the book. :) Arr, arr. 34,614 / 55,000 (62.9%)

Well, my basic goal for this afternoon's write-in was to get through the new chapter detailing a flashback to Wynter's adventures. Achieved, more or less. What I learned, however, was that my son is not always capable of sitting quietly while I work. Granted, he's... my son. But he did very well at the previous write-in, armed with his MomSchool bag full of workbooks, crayons, books, etc. He worked steadily on his MomSchool workbooks while I cranked out the work. This time he had all that, plus toys at the coffeehouse and his DVD player. Yet for some reason he simply could not focus on any one activity. At all. Every fifteen minutes or so he needed something, and that meant no focus for me, either. I'm not at all happy with the new scene, but I think I'll be able to fix it. Now all I need is to make time slow the hell down so I can finish it all on time. Today was not a good day for mom-writer-life balance, folks. I could've used a clone of me cleaning the apart...

Some actors are Method actors. Take a personal experience that created an emotional response similar to what your character feels, and draw on it. This was very difficult to accomplish as a young college student. I was supposed to play Nora of A DOLL'S HOUSE, a woman with a domineering, degrading husband, in a scene with a tender, kind man who truly loves her. A fantastic scene in a wonderful play, and yet as a nineteen-year-old unmarried girl, I couldn't draw on any life experience like this. I had to draw from my own limited experiences in love and extrapolate what it would be like if such things happened. Now I wonder if I need to be a Method writer. Is there such a thing? Can I create such a thing? To some extent, all writers are Method writers - we draw on our own experiences to inform our characters and stories. But this problem needs greater resolution. Tam has to be worth it. Kancethedrus and Alesia don't do what they do for Wynter. Alesia never even meets Wynter, a...

Today I did something I never did before: went to a write-in. I'm not officially doing Nanowrimo, because it requires you to upload your work and I can't do that when it's under contract. But the local Nano group is active and fun, so I've kind of been lurking on the outskirts. After freezing my tuckus off herding Cub Scouts in the Veterans Day parade, we went to Denny's, where the Nanoers were working. The boy ate the world's ittiest hot dogs - "Mom! They're tiny!" - and I worked on the book. Surprisingly, it worked well. The boy studiously work on his MomSchool papers while I typed, and I got a good bit done. We might have gotten more done if we'd had more than an hour or so. I was very pleased - it's possible, then, that I could take him with me to other write-ins and see what I get accomplished. I truly wish I knew why it's so hard to write at home. It can't just be my lack of an office. There has to be a reason why the atmosphe...

13,654 / 55,000 (24.8%) In case anyone's counting. :)