Yesterday’s word count: approximately 0

I say approximately, because I might have added a sentence or two. Came home from Full Sail, wrote my post, opened the file and decided to eat something. Came back and sat down to write, maybe wrote a sentence, and thought, oi, I need a twenty minute power nap, while I decide where this scene is going. I had an idea for the ending that would mean going back and deleting or revising the last 5000 words or so. I need to decide if I want to carry that out or go with my original plan. A nap will give me that sleep decision-making ability.

Three HOURS later, I woke up in time to head off for a meeting. I came back full of good intentions, but wound up eating dinner, drinking wine, and talking to my housemate and her boyfriend until late in the night. When I finally say down at the computer, I looked at the clock and said, well, it’s already tomorrow, so those words don’t count anyway, and went to sleep.

Drat.

But today’s another day, right? Again, two commitments outside the house, possibly three, which is going to throw off my count, but I’m definitely going to try for 500 words, squeezed between appointments or banged out before bedtime. But I still haven’t made my decision about where I’m going. I was really set on the whole haunted house in the dark thing–it was so vivid to me–but I’m not sure the story needs it.

Yesterday’s word count: 519 words.

When I got home last night, my count was at 498. I thought about tagging a bit of dialog with “she said” but decided that was an unnecessary cop-out. Instead, I added a knock on the door. It’s not as much of a plot ninja as it sounds: the bad guy was chasing my heroine and one of the kids and they’d gotten safely behind a door, but I didn’t know what happened next in their conversation. Resolving to keep writing, make the goal, get it done, got me into the next part of the scene. I felt so satisfied with myself at the end of those 21 words. Although not quite so satisfied that I kept writing–I poured myself a glass of wine and watched some Agents of SHIELD instead. 4th episode last night and it might finally be getting good.

Today’s goal: oof. I’m tired, getting off to a very late start and have evening plans for the second day in a row. I think I’ll make it 500 words anyway. I don’t know exactly what’s going to happen–I’m well into the creepy, running-around-a-scary-house-in-the-dark sequence and sort of worried that the word “dark” is being seriously overused–but if I get into it, I hope it’ll get fun. Setting my goal at 250 words is like an implicit promise to myself that I won’t be getting into the writing, so the bigger goal is better. That said, I’m not trying for any 1000 word craziness. I’ve got too much to do and it’s already afternoon!

Yesterday’s word count: 651 words.

In other words, I didn’t meet my goal. But I also didn’t break the chain. I’m counting that as a success.

My two extremes as a writer are flat, ie sentences that feel long-winded and dull; and hokey, metaphors that go over the top. I generally try to hit the sweet spot in-between the two extremes with simple sentences and just enough description to set the scene. Yesterday I felt like I was veering back and forth between the two. It’s a critical moment and I want the reader’s adrenaline to be flowing. But at the same time, I don’t want to get gushy.

A couple paragraphs that show what I mean:

He reached out for her and grabbed, his hands closing on her shoulders only briefly before they slid up and around her throat. Natalya’s eyes widened and her hands came up, clutching his wrists, trying to wrench them away, to loosen his fingers. Her nails dug into his skin, feeling the give under them, the dig that said she might be drawing blood, but he didn’t relent.

Her head fell back. The pain in her cheek still hurt more than his hands around her throat, but the pressure felt as if it were forcing her larynx back into her vertebrae, a steady weight closing off her air supply. She kicked Thompson, but her bare foot against his shin was a leaf against rock. He didn’t react and her toes hurt. Drawing her leg up, she tried to knee him in the groin, but his legs were close together, preventing her from reaching an angle that could do damage.

Leaf against rock? Does that cross into hokey?

Preventing her from reaching an angle? Are those really the words that she’d be thinking while being strangled? She’s a doctor, which is why the larynx against vertebrae works for me–I’ve been careful to try to make her voice a medically knowledgeable voice, even in extreme moments.

But I don’t know whether yesterday’s words are successful or not. Today, I guess, I just keep writing and try to save the editing for later. Goal: 500 words, because I’ve got other things to do, including making some fun revisions for my presentation at Full Sail tomorrow. I had some great ideas about it while I was walking the dog this morning, when I should have been thinking about Nat’s next moves. C’est la vie. It’s Oct 16th and I still aim to finish by Halloween.

Quick post today, because I’m off to yoga in 10 minutes. And I haven’t written a word yet, ARGH. I like to at least get started before yoga so that I’m motivated to pick it right up again when I get back.

Anyway, yesterday proved a challenging but successful word count day. At 4PM, I had about one good sentence and it was annoying me. It was one of those days when I just couldn’t find a starting place. I kept writing bits, deleting them, trying again, saving a few words, mixing it up. I was stuck. But at 4, I decided I couldn’t stand the thought of breaking the chain and instead of giving up for the day, I started writing something, anything–and then it started to go. I had to introduce a new character, which annoyed me, but it was the way to solve my dilemma, and I wound up with 1100 words by the end of the day.

Today’s goal: 1000 again. It’s going to be the last day for several where I have good writing time — the rest of the week is errands and out of the house stuff and busy days, so it will probably be close to my last chance to get serious words done until next Monday. (I do intend to write W-F, just not ambitiously.) But I’m hoping I can get deep enough into my next chapter that even if I lose some days, I can start back with some momentum. Wind in my sails, so to speak!

For so long on this book, it’s been two steps forward, one step back. Except for the times when it’s been three steps back. I’ve been working on it since June of 2012. Twice I tossed pretty much all of it and started again.

The original version opened with a house fire. It’s gone, the house is back and whole again, except that not a single scene takes place there. I don’t even want to think about how much time I wasted mapping out a floor plan for that house. There was a scene in a restaurant that I spent months writing. Literally, months. It no longer exists. There were characters who played major roles that no longer even show up, except for brief mentions while they’re offstage.

I’ve considered giving up multiple times, just throwing it away and moving on with my life. I’m not sure why I’ve stuck with it except that I could remember a time when writing was really fun. I knew that once upon a time, I finished scenes with little bursts of glee. Once upon a time, I loved my characters, I wanted them to be real and spending time with them brought me joy. Once upon a time, I closed my files at the end of the day with excitement about what I was going to write the next day. I have persisted, day after day after day, for 400+ days, because I wanted to have that experience again.

I’ve had it this week.

I love what Natalya did in her last scene. I think Travis is amazing, maybe the most interesting character I’ve ever written and I want to keep writing him more and more and more. Colin is sitting in an interview room right now with a woman who plays an incredibly minor role–this is her only scene and it will last for less than a chapter–and she is so real to me. I know exactly how torn and troubled and overwhelmed she is, how she so much wants to do the right thing, but cannot see a path between love and loyalty and truth.

It feels so nice.

And I’m pretty sure that it’s been this process of tracking my words, trying to stay honest about them, setting a daily goal and striving to meet it, that has gotten me back to this place. I know it’s not going to work every day–I know that there were moments this week that were hard and that I’ve had days when I really didn’t want to write–but right now, on this bright Sunday morning, it feels great to know that I’m writing today because I want to, because I think it’s going to be fun.

Yesterday’s words: 1061, not including the deleted and revised ones.

Today’s goal: to finish the scene I’m in, however many words it takes, and move on to the next one.

I use Grammarly’s plagiarism checker because it provides me links to such entertaining reading material.

So I got an email from Grammarly a while back asking if I’d be interested in writing a sponsored post in exchange for a $10 Amazon gift card. I can’t say that I’ve ever considered the question of whether I’d write a sponsored post and I suspect that this will be the first and last I ever write. But I kind of wanted to try Grammarly out and they were also going to give me a two week free trial, so I figured, sure, might as well.

The very pleasant guy from Grammarly told me to write the first half of the above line, following it with a reason of my own. Preferably a catchy reason. (I don’t think he said that, exactly, but they do give their favorite reason of the month a $100 gift card. Mine will not be their favorite reason.)

I, of course, had to therefore try the plagiarism checker out. So I ran the first chapter — yes, one chapter, only 5000 words or so — through it. I’ll let the results speak for themselves.

Flagged as needing citation:

should be cited to http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6318423/25/Hitchups (A how to train your dragon fan fiction)

should be cited to http://www.amazon.com/Tipping-Point-ebook/dp/B0091JD008

should be cited to http://bewilderingstories.com/issue291/desperate_women.html

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4720045/3/iKiss-My-Verson (An iCarly fanfic)

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7831202/1/Bury-the-Hate (Vampire Diaries)

http://forum.finsandfur.net/index.php?topic=14095.0

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5268840/5/Crash-Into-You (Transformers/Beast Wars)

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/9227896/1/Just-This-Once (Yu-gi-oh)

http://bestlaidplans.homestead.com/Chapter1.html

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6495996/1/Escape-to-Fame (Harry Potter + WWW Raw crossover)

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7438431/1/DiamondDust-Karin-s-Story (bleach)

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5509148/1/No-Rest-for-the-Wicked (Glee)

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/8946233/1/A-change-between-us (Cartoons > Regular Show)

http://www.urmc.rochester.edu/cardiology/patient-care/conditions/heart-attack.as…

I feel as if there’s amazing potential for a game here. Like some kind of reverse Mad Libs, where you take the common phrases and write a completely different short story with them. I’m also impressed by my own apparent plagiaristic diversity — Yu-Gi-Oh and Glee, Transformers, and iCarly? Wow, what a wide range of taste I have.

And who knew that such a thing as Harry Potter and World-Wide-Wrestling crossovers even existed, much less that they had cornered the market on the use of the sentence, “I can help with that. Let’s get you”. I so want to know how that author finished the sentence. Let’s get you to the wrestling arena? The Gryffindor common room? Like, is it magical wrestling or is it wrestling at Hogwarts?

Anyway, I said I’d write a post and I did. It took me a surprisingly long time because I had to cut-and-paste all those phrases and citations one at a time, so I do feel like I’ve fulfilled my end of the deal. But I probably won’t submit it to get my gift card because…eh. It feels like I’m being mean. But it was so ridiculous that I had to share. Vampire Diaries and How to Train Your Dragon? Really?? It made me laugh. I’m willing to bet there are hundreds, if not thousands of stories and books in the world that include the sentence, “What’s the last thing you remember?” But, no, a Vampire Diaries fanfic gets the credit.

Postscript: You know, it did occur to me belatedly that if I was still in school, that level of citation checking would have rocked. If I was writing an academic paper, I would have loved it. It even gives you the citations in proper format — multiple types of format, depending on what you need — so you could just cut-and-paste the citations into your bibliography. Doing citations for academic papers is a pain, and I can imagine that having Grammarly as a backup to double-check that you cited everything would be seriously handy. If I hadn’t lost my hard drive, I’d run one of my papers through it and see how closely their citations matched the real papers that I used. Maybe I’ll see if I can find a backup.

Postscript 2: And yeah, no. I tried it with an academic paper and it was just as ridiculous. For example, half the titles of publications in my references got flagged as plagiarism with instructions to cite to the NCBI. That doesn’t even make sense. It’s like saying please credit the library for the books held within it. Not a useful tool!

Yesterday, C and I went to the Epcot Food and Wine Festival. Yay!

I missed R, of course. For years, he and I went together. We ate escargot and bison and he tried everything with an enthusiasm that made me quietly hum with pride and delight in him. I think, in fact, that somewhere on youtube there’s a little movie I made a few years ago of us at the Food & Wine Festival.

But missing R was not meant to be the point of this post! C and I had a good time. It was ridiculously, uncomfortably hot–sweat dripping down my back and down the back of my legs kind of hot–so we went into all the little shops between food stands. It was fun to browse in the stores and see all the jewelry and glass and perfume from around the world. For obvious reasons (ie, total lack of interest from the boy), R and I never spent much time doing that.

And our food choices were spectacular. We ate at Scotland: Seared Scottish Salmon with Cauliflower Puree, Watercress and Malt Vinaigrette and Vegetarian Haggis. Also Canada: Seared Rainbow Trout with Bacon, Frisee and Maple Minus 8 Vinaigrette and Wild Mushroom Beef Filet Mignon with Truffle Butter Sauce. Also New Zealand: Gratinated Green Lip Mussels with Garlic and Herbs, Lamb Meatball with Spicy Tomato Chutney, and Venison Sausage with Pickled Mushrooms, Baby Arugula and Black Currant Reduction. (If you’ve never been to the Food & Wine Festival, these are all tapas-sized portions, about $5 each and consisting of six or seven bites of food, not a full-fledged meal.)

My favorite was definitely the salmon from Scotland. It was delicious. Least favorite, the vegetarian haggis also from Scotland. It was not delicious, at least not to me. C liked it, though, so it wasn’t wasted. The beef from Canada was good, although really heavy on the mushrooms this year (and I’m not a mushroom fan). The rainbow trout was pretty yummy, but I probably wouldn’t bother to have it again. The mussels were remarkably good, better than I expected, because the garlic butter on them was yum. The lamb meatball — honestly, it tasted just like a meatball sandwich with tomato sauce. Nothing wrong with it, but eh. And I liked the venison sausage, but not the pickled mushrooms, while C thought that it wasn’t particularly appealing. Overall, though, it all added up to a really good meal and a remarkably nice afternoon.

Welcome home, Lynda! I hope the Supernatural convention was everything you wanted it to be. (Did you get to meet Misha? He seems like such an unbelievable sweetheart.)

I just spent an hour posting all the updated versions of chapters on fictionpress. If you want to try to catch up with the story there, here’s a link for you: http://www.fictionpress.com/s/3036333/1/A-Gift-of-Time

I can also send you a Word doc if you want. I’m not sure which would be easier? I suppose it depends on the type of comments you want to make.

Of course, I’m also making the assumption that we’re going to be beta-reading chapters as we write–do you agree that we’ll be able to push one another better if we’re familiar with our stories as they’re being written or would you rather wait and read at the conclusion?

And onward: writing today will be back with Natalya. I’m feeling bizarrely anxious about starting, I think because I was really enjoying what was going on in my imagination with this scene and I want it to be as good in pixels as it was in my head. Pressure, pressure. But I’m aiming for at least 1000 words today. What’s your goal?

Talk to you soon! (Or, you know, write to you soon. :))

I am wearing actual workout clothes, for possibly the first time in my life since I finished my last college PE class with relief.

Both dogs are mystified by this.

But in ten minutes, I’m headed to a yoga class at the Y, so I’m dressed for the occasion. I’ve been wearing capris and tank tops when we go to yoga, but I decided last weekend that maybe I really ought to have better clothing options. It doesn’t make me feel athletic, however, just kind of silly. And maybe a little fat.

I really like yoga, though. I think that’s the only time I’ve ever said that about a form of exercise, but yoga feels good. Whenever I get lost with the poses, I just breathe for a while. Twice, tears have started flowing, for no real reason, except that I’m being in the moment and when I’m in the moment, I discover that a deep well of sadness is brimming up inside of me.

That sounds as if it ought to be unpleasant, but it’s not.

Yoga — recommended.