If you're brave enough to fly

A couple of days ago, I had an epiphany.

I was about 50k into this draft of Shaede, and finding myself frustrated, though I couldn’t really figure out why.  I was doing some reading and it hit me – the damn thing was in the wrong point of view.

I tend to always write in third person for novels.  I don’t know why.  I just do.  And I think, for this series, third just doesn’t work.  So I sat down and hammered out a rough rewrite of the first chapter in first person, asked for a few opinions.

Yeah.  It needs to be in first person.

This is going to add on rewriting of what I already have, and probably at least another draft or two to really get Sy’s voice right.  But it’s been flowing really well, and I’ve been seriously looking forward to sitting down and writing every day.

Most days lately I’ve been struggling to get to 1k words, checking and rechecking my word count as I meandered up to my daily word count goal of 2k.  These days three days, working in first person, I blink and I’m at 2k.

Today has been a bit harder, because I’m randomly fatigued (probably weather changes, since there’s a cyclone bearing down up north) and pain levels are higher than lately, but I still got to 2.6k in a session and may come back to finish off the 4k chapter later on today.

I might be crazy, but this is working and it’s right.

Mirrored from Stephanie Gunn.

First of all, a heads up that there is a group interview with some of the Bloodstones authors (including me) live at Erin Underwood’s blog, Underworlds.

Secondly, I know I have been somewhat absent about these parts.  I burned out pretty hard after finishing the draft of Never, both  physically and mentally.   I started to get sick, and kept getting sick with recurrent respiratory infections (I’m having to pause to cough and splutter here while typing).  The kid got sick, too, and so did the husband, both with a pretty nasty flu.

I tried to work on a few short stories, without success, then tried to do some novel outlining.  It got to the point where I could barely string a sentence together, and I was cringing every time I thought of reading.

It’s kind of ridiculous how long it takes to recognise that depression is taking over again.

I had been trying, with some success, to come off medication.  I guess that success was short-lived, because I’m now back on the meds and feeling much more motivated about everything.  I’ve been reading again, and am working on getting back in the writing groove.

I’ve admitted that the current novel I’ve been trying to outline, Wintersun (previously entitled The White Raven) isn’t quite ready to come forth yet.  I have a bunch of research I need to do, and in the meanwhile, I’ve unearthed an old novel of mine, Shaede, to work on again.  It’s an exercise in seeing how much I’ve developed as a writer, if nothing else.  Not sure what the plan is going to be with this one, but for now, it’s fun being back in that world again.

Mirrored from Stephanie Gunn.

I think that perhaps Reqiuem isn’t fully formed enough in my mind to be written right now.  I have some great ideas for it, but the flesh of it isn’t there yet.

I hate to admit this, since I’ve spent a good amount of time flailing away at it.  But I think it needs to go back to the men in the basement for a while.

Instead, I think I shall return to edits of Thought and Memory, which needs some serious beating into shape.  And plotting out it’s companion book (and finding a better title for it).  And plotting the sequels to Shaede (which do have names – Daemon and Fae).

And a quick note to all of those who have been awesome and done beta reading for me – if I can return the favour at any stage, let me know?  I really appreciate your work so, so much.  I owe you guys a lot.  I have been bad with betaing stuff in the past, but I want to make an effort to improve on that.

Mirrored from Stephanie Gunn.

Today’s progress:

Project: Shaede line edits.

Pages edited: 50

Total pages: 429

Goal: 429 pages (changed formatting, so numbers are different)

Writing:

…and these edits are finished.  As always, going through the manuscript, I found a million things I could tweak.  I could conceivably keep on tweaking forever, and so I’m going to stop now.

Worked more on the query letter (many thanks to those who have been helping there) and spent time working up a list of agents to query.

Next week, I shall begin work on a first draft of Requiem and start querying for Shaede.  It’s going to be nice to be generating words again. 

Real life:

Laundry.  Avoiding the heat.  It got to just a smidge under 42C today.  Never have I been more happy to have good air conditioning.

Total words for 2009: 0

Mirrored from Stephanie Gunn.

Today’s progress:

Project: Shaede line edits.

Pages edited: 47

Total pages: 379

Goal: 430 pages (changed formatting, so numbers are different)

Writing:

Editing was actually pretty good today.  Caffeine, in moderation, can be a good thing.

I also finished writing the damn synopsis of this novel, and started bashing my head against a query.  Which is currently acting only to make me want to go back and rewrite the book.  Sigh. 

Real life:

Managed a walk and grocery shopping.  I think I’m finally starting to feel normal again.

Total words for 2009: 0

Mirrored from Stephanie Gunn.

Today’s progress:

Project: Shaede line edits.

Pages edited: 47

Total pages: 379

Goal: 430 pages (changed formatting, so numbers are different)

Writing:

Editing was actually pretty good today.  Caffeine, in moderation, can be a good thing.

I also finished writing the damn synopsis of this novel, and started bashing my head against a query.  Which is currently acting only to make me want to go back and rewrite the book.  Sigh. 

Real life:

Managed a walk and grocery shopping.  I think I’m finally starting to feel normal again.

Total words for 2009: 0

Today’s progress:

Project: Shaede line edits.

Pages edited: 44

Total pages: 332

Goal: 433 pages (changed formatting, so numbers are different)

Writing:

Editing wasn’t so bad today, despite the fact that my brain wanted to be doing nothing at all.  One of those days.

The numbers have changed, since I changed the formatting on the MS today.  I was reading it deliberately with different formatting earlier, but it bugged me too much to keep on doing so.

I am still plodding along with the synopsis and finally started working on the query.  Both of which are totally unfun, but needed.  Glamour!  It’s there somewhere.  Really.

Real life:

Not a lot.  The human suit is still being stupid in general.

Total words for 2009: 0

Mirrored from Stephanie Gunn.

Today’s progress:

Project: Shaede line edits.

Pages edited: 32

Total pages: 220

Goal: 335 pages

Writing:

Editing was going well today, until the human suit had other ideas.  Mid-afternoon crash led to a nap and much feeling of awfulness.  Sigh.  Such is life with the human suit.

I did also make a start on getting a synopsis together.  I’ve been doing research at the same time as editing, preparing a list of agents so I can start submitting once I have this editing done, as well as written the synopsis and a query. 

Real life:

Not a lot.

Total words for 2009: 0

Mirrored from Stephanie Gunn.

Today’s progress:

Project: Shaede line edits.

Pages edited: 32

Total pages: 220

Goal: 335 pages

Writing:

Editing was going well today, until the human suit had other ideas.  Mid-afternoon crash led to a nap and much feeling of awfulness.  Sigh.  Such is life with the human suit.

I did also make a start on getting a synopsis together.  I’ve been doing research at the same time as editing, preparing a list of agents so I can start submitting once I have this editing done, as well as written the synopsis and a query. 

Real life:

Not a lot.

Total words for 2009: 0

Today’s progress:

Project: Shaede line edits.

Pages edited: 33

Total pages: 188

Goal: 337 pages

Writing:

Editing went much better today.  Though my brain still felt exhausted after 30 pages.  I guess the human suit is still recovering, so things might be slow going for a while.

This story is sinking its teeth into me again.  I’m finding myself wanting to go back to the sequel I’ve written, Daemon, which is currently in first draft.  There’s not much point in working on it until I’ve sold this one, though.  Better to work on diversity.

I need to do a post sometime about all of the different novels brewing in my mind.  They seem to be breeding these days.

Real life:

Cleaned the house, did laundry.

Total words for 2009: 0 <— I am beginning to loathe this zero.  Hopefully next week I’ll start generating some words, dammit.  Though technically, I could probably allocate some words for this editing. 

Mirrored from Stephanie Gunn.