A Little Bit Goes A Long Way

Another day, a few more words. Upstairs in 296 I plugged in my drive and thought man I'm too tired to get any inspriration. But there came the words. Yes, only for about ten minutes, but I'm that much closer to closing out chapter two.

But this morning, lying in bed giving Birdie her morning back rub, it occured to me that there's not even close to enough tension. One of my perennial problems. It's not real life! It has to be overblown and PASSIONATE. Kelsey needs to really freak out, and she's going to manifest that by really, really, reallyreally wanting her cell phone - which is outside the bomb shelter. I'm thinking that's one of those things I'm going to come back to later, on paper while I'm on vacation.

You know, that really helps the whole coming out of the bomb shelter thing...Kelsey runs for the cell, doesn't see Miriam, turns when Opal gasps and freaks when Miriam falls on her grandmother.

Rain Rain

...keep it comin! My knee is not getting better, so I'll take rainouts. Actually, it would get better if I'd spend more time on the treadmill.

Yesterday I typed a lot of evaluations, but still had some creativity left in me so I typed some more on the Kelsey and Grandma Opal in the bomb shelter scene. Not as much as Tuesday, but some. I'm very pleased that I haven't given up or gone to another project, even though my mind keeps trying to talk me out of it by thinking of how all the people I know will judge my writing. Or by trying to get me more interested in that CGUS novel, which I really, really want to write, now that I know there's a chance it'll actually get finished. Or by knowing A Day of Trouble and Ruin won't be a very good book.

None of that is swaying me from finishing it, no matter how long it takes. Nice feeling.

A Few Good Days

I have them now and then, and they always seem to surprise me. Yesterday I wrote several hundred words for Kelsey and Grandma Opal in the bomb shelter. I might have actually gotten the chapter finished, but I was upstairs and Carol Kennedy was in and it was loud. *shrug* Still, got a lot done and corrected some stuff. I was happy.

My bad habit of printing chapters all the time and then never doing anything with them seems to be broken. I haven't printed anything for quite a while, but I'm still putting words on paper. My mood generally may be poor (everyone is tired today, and I feel like I need about five more hours sleep - and my knee, though feeling better, is still damned sore) but I'm still writing and that feels really good.

Today I'll try to write some if I get a chance, but course eval typing is in full swing so who knows. Also, today is Secretarys Day, so I've gotten flowers, candy and a free lunch in the Tudor Room (which is not really such a wonderful thing, but the thought is nice).

My next big challenge is to push into the middle of the book, where Parker and Kelsey begin to both learn about each other and have growing distrust of each other. They have to get really tired, have close calls, begin to learn their new world... It's a lot, and I've been avoiding. I need to push on.

Forceful

I so did not want to write yesterday. Been a few days, completely out of practice, losing interest. But then I got upstairs and opened it anyway, and spent about a half hour correcting stuff and moving pieces around to their better spot. I've decided to definitely put Opal and Kelsey into the bomb shelter, have them talk a bit, then have Miriam invade and end of chapter, then have chapter three be Parker and the tv.

There was a teen movie on this weekend that I've seen the end of about five times called Crazy Beautiful, and it inspired a bit of character building scene that I want to write down before I forget it.

I get to go upstairs again today, hopefully it won't be as busy as it was yesterday. People are expressing interest in the book. No pressure.

The Long Weekend

Felt like crap. Did a lot (considering the state of my health) yard work, a wee bit of cleaning in the house and ironed shirts while watching a cool PBS show on philosophy. Spent quite a bit of time either icing or heating my knee, sitting on the couch playing SIMS rather than writing.

Same Ole No Show

I don't remember much about yesterday except I was in a really foul mood and scared off all the dance faculty who insisted on getting close and hanging out, even though I told them I was in a rotten mood and sick with a cold. If I didn't like them so much...

But when I went up to 296, all I was in a mood for was to turn on the tv and vegetate. NICE and quiet up there. Just what I needed. But then, in the middle of watching a video about UFO's I plugged in my flashdrive and wrote a tiny bit in the Parker Sees Hell And It's Coming scene in the restaurant.

Then I went to the Business Expo with Birdie and we had dinner gratis and picked up all manner of Way Cool Stuff, then it was time for my COLD softball game. Amazing the difference, pitching when you're NOT coming off a bowling season, but I hit well and ran better than I expected. Added bonus was my pants are now too big. *g* I really had been worried I might split them out, but damned if they weren't bagging off my butt. *happy sigh* The knee is a problem. Today it hurts like a muthuh, and I was surprised that it's not the running that hurts (and I'm running like DUCK...how weird) but the stopping and starting.

Yakkity Yak

Lots of talking with Kate yesterday, mostly about her book, which I read the first chapter of, and I was underwhelmed. It was obvious, probably because I'm familiar with her writing, that she was writing in an "inferior" genre, and that her heart wasn't really in it. I told her as much, and I hope I wasn't out of line.

I got my briefcase organized again, but I only wrote about three sentences. Today I'll be upstairs at four o'clock, so I should be able to get some writing done.

And of course I got Birdie's cold. I haven't been sick ALL WINTER, but last night my throat got sore and I slept like the dead from 8:00 to 4:45, when I woke up despite not having set my alarm.

Not Too Shabby

Yesterday I wrote a few paragraphs. I'm in a weird place, writing-wise, because I can see that I can do it, and I'm getting older. My options get more limited by the day and I really want to see something published.

And, I'm not that into the story I'm writing. Maybe other people will like it, but I'm thinking it's kinda lame. On the other hand, I really want to finish it, so I can have a finished novel to show a publisher that I can do it.

But man, I really need to get past the first three chapters. I keep tweaking and revising the little I've written so far (about nine thousand words) instead of pushing on. The words I wrote yesterday are labeled chapter four, but it should be chapter three. See, I need to arrange my chapters better. I need to re-organize. But I need to push on. Argh!

A New Day

I did "write one paragraph, minimum, even if it's crap" thing yesterday because that's all I could manage. Didn't even bring my briefcase. Didn't bring it today, either.

Busy.

Too busy.

On the way back from lunch I was (as I often am) thinking about a title and came up with A Breath Away from Death. Mmmmaybe.

Blankity Blank Blank

The bad words I'm thinking. I've lost interest in the danged book, so I've got to force myself again to put new words on the page. Last night I woke at 11:00 and 1:00 and 2:00 and finally got up at three and laid on the couch, where I was afraid to go completely asleep for fear I would miss the alarm. I was too tired when I finally did get up to do more than sit and stare for a while, then put some paint on the paint-by-numbers canvas Birdie gave me for Easter.

So, I'm doing too much revising and forgetting, again, my rule to Just Write. Or, as Dory would say, "Just keep writing, writing, writing. Just keep writing..."

Casual Friday - the 13th

It should have been casual, anyway. Cheryl is out, Kay is out, none of the faculty were here but Dr. Henson, but it took me an hour and a half to get to my coffee and doughnut. Sheesh.

Yesterday I got some typing done, and added a wee bit, but didn't get to print anything out because Carol and Michelle were hogging the printer upstairs.

Today I want to organize again, and push on to further chapters before I get bogged down.

Blank

Yesterday, that is. I was so excited about getting so much done on Tuesday, so yesterday I was really going to do some serious typing and get all the handwritten stuff done and finish chapter two.

Yeah, you got it. It was one of those days I was working all day. Not so much busy as solid. Had a stack of intership form letters nearly six inches high. Then I was so brain dead that I just went home and crashed.

Hopefully today, being caught up and all, I can get that typing done. Tonight is supposed to be our first softball game of the year. I had a bad dream about trying to play while hideously fat, and it's fucking SNOWING, and I'm more out of shape than ever and my knee has something wrong with it. Nope, not looking forward to it.

Yeah buddy!

Yesterday was awesome! I took a laptop to the library and typed till my head was swimming. Then I walked around a little bit, came back and wrote a while longer, because apparently my mind wasn't done, yet. *g*

Kate was confused about some motivations, and found a couple of typos. She's really interested in Tran, who disappears from the book after chapter one, so it's not that important to know him that well.

I typed a couple of pages on the Kelsey and Grandma Opal go into the bomb shelter, pages I've been meaning to get to but haven't. It felt great! I even named the cat on the run and decided to keep the name because it's cute and fits a seaside town: Skiff.

Then I closed the laptop and pulled out my bowling pencil to make notes, and wrote a whole nuther half page! Awesome! And you know, I whiz away typing in this blog and the language is easy to read and not stilted. I'm still trying to learn how to JUST TYPE when I'm writing so I can approach the same level of easy confidence. Because when I'm WRITING, the words become cramped and lame and often don't make sense. I *like* to read my journaling, but sometimes reading my fiction is painful. My biggest goal - after actually FINISHING the book - is to achieve that easy going nature in my fiction. I believe Kate called it, "Lean and mobile, so it reads fast".

Further down the blog I see I was writing about putting a really cool and confident character in the situation of Zombie Apocolypse, and it suddenly occurs to me that I have done that, briefly. I don't even remember his name, but when I re-wrote Dead City in that screenwriting class, there was a guy in it who took to apocolypse like a duck to water. So what happened to him? I killed him to end the prologue. ;-)

Chapter One

I sent the not-really-finished chapter one to Kate last week and have been kicking myself ever since, because it's so unfinished it's basically a pile of crap. Still, she's so used to dealing with clueless undergrads who are unable to write in their native language that she was very kind to my rough effort. She made some EXCELLENT suggestions, and pointed out some goofs that - after she pointed them out - were pretty obvious.

Of course I forgot to bring my laptop today, and I'll be spending a couple of hours at the library tonight. I'll probably borrow one of the Kinesiology laptops, because there's no way I want to write by hand.

Tonight I will work on revision of the two chapters I have ninety percent done, and I will write as much of chapter three that I can. Chapter one of course has to be the grabber. Parker is the right character to sell the book to its expected readers - boys. But Kelsey is the more interesting character to me of course. Still, I'm getting along with Parker pretty well. The one character I'm most interested in that I can't really continue is Tran. He's cool and confident, and I think it would be neat to see what that kind of character does in this situation. Maybe a later work...

Last night I did something I should have done a lot sooner: back up my work. Duh! Now it's on my flash drive and my desktop at home. You would think a person who is considered a "computer guru" would be better about doing that.

Waste of Time

That's what this weekend was, writing-wise. I'm beginning to have a difficult time writing. When I'm to this point, the novel is pretty whole in my head and I lose interest in it. Of course that makes it difficult for other people to read it. ;-) I couldn't even FIND my briefcase this weekend, and didn't see it from Friday evening until Birdie brought it out the door with her this morning on the way to work.

It was a really, really busy weekend, so I'm tired, and I hurt my knee somehow on Saturday working on the garbage dump behind the garage at my house down south. I didn't realize how far down the damned garbage goes. I scraped off about two inches of top soil and still found broken glass. And I only pushed the pile back about two feet. There're five more feet to go, and it's deeper farther in. Now I think I may get the house ready by July for sale.

Anyway, I really need to get on chapter three. I just scribbled down the basic description of the clown zombie, and that's the only writing I've done in three days. I read this morning that the Oprah Book Club is doing "The Road", which is on my Amazon Wish List because it's a post-apocolyptic novel. I read the exerpt on the book club's site and nearly fell asleep. You know, as much as I envy writers' ability to wax poetic and all that, I can't read that crap. So you KNOW I'm not writing that way. I compared my spare piece of prose with that and felt pretty weak.

Fuck it, though. This is all about getting it done, not winning a prize. I've already gotten tired of the story, but I want to get it finished just so I know I can do it.

Fast, fast, fast!

That's how this day has gone. I've been busy for the first time in weeks, doing brain-deadening work involving spreadsheet formulas, copy/pasting graphs into Word documents...

(glyph of zombie face)

I've written exactly one sentence today, just before the technology committee meeting began. Maybe I'll get some done at home tonight. *snort* Yeah. Right.

Trouble Averted

This morning was a minor breakthrough. I didn't feel like writing, not one little bit. I got the girls out, made coffee, sat on the couch staring blankly at the morning news show, all the while berating myself for wasting time and not writing anything.

Right in the front of my notebook are large, black slogans dashed off when I began: Write Every Day! Even If It's Just A Paragraph! Even If It's Crap! So, I made myself pick up my briefcase and get out chapter two and my pen. Put them on the couch and got coffee and cereal. Picked them up when I was finished with breakfast.

I still didn't want to do it, and was actually feeling quite petulant when I put pen to paper. I fully expected to see that pen sitting without moving. I kept waiting for the tv news to draw me back in.

But it didn't happen! The pen started moving. I scratched out some words and started adding some down the margin. Kelsey and her Grandma Opal are in the back yard and GO has just asked her if she is indeed a lesbian when the huge, normally immobile neighbor bursts out of the house and "runs" across the street, screaming out a warning. I had forgotten that the "chapter two" I had on the flash drive was actually a quick sketch and not actual prose. Duh. So I started cleaning that up and before you know it, a half hour has gone by and I had to put down the pen.

Whoo Hoo! That felt GOOD, man. I'm going to type that up as soon as I post this, then I guess I'll get to work. ;-)

Big Gulp

I was playing with the title again yesterday and came up with The Second Coming of the Grim Rheeper, which sounded cute at the time, but still doesn't do it for me.

It was a big day. Dean Wilkerson came over and gave me a puzzler of a spreadsheet job to do RIGHT NOW, which I will tackle in a moment. Up to then, I had been alternating counting out evaluations and writing the end of chapter one. Got a LOT done, which made me feel better after the slacker weekend. It's true what I tell people about "writer muscles". Writing is like exercising. The more you do it, the easier it gets. (And since softball season starts in eight days, I really should consider some exercising. Ahem.)

But THEN - I sent chapter one to Kate. What a scary friggin moment that was. And then I saw a truly inane sentence at the end of the chapter and felt like a moron. *sigh* She might be able to give me a quick critique today before travelling.

Crap and more crap

Life on the house recovery front is a huge heaping pile of steaming shit. I intend to NOT let that stand in the way of finishing this book, which still doesn't have better than a working title, though I came up with a cutsie name for the comet last Friday. Dana is pulling his crap again. He stood in the kitchen yesterday and essentially mocked me for fixing up the house. He insisted that no one who could afford the amount I'm asking for it is going to do anything but raze it and build a new house on the existing basement.

Yeah, that made for a really nice trip home.

Saturday morning for about five minutes was the only work I managed to devote to the book. I had an idea, and even though we were supposed to be leaving for work at the house, I grabbed my bowling pencil and the legal pad and scribbled madly for a few minutes. Basically it's more on the Kelsey and Grandma Opal get the warning scene.

I also figured out why Parker thinks his mom may have survived the apocolypse. She's one of those people who bought the Homeland Security gas mask and duct tape. If I ever finish this one and write the sequel, she may turn up somewhere.