The words trickled in yesterday. A sentence here, a sentence there. I wound up with less than 400 at the end of the day, without the justification of having gotten a lot done. I didn’t even make it to yoga. I did, however, resist eating an incredibly delicious-looking cream puff that filled my house with sweet scents through the afternoon. C was making them for a special occasion dinner and they looked–and smelled–so good. But I feel as if I’ve been paying for the foods I ate on Wednesday for three days of sluggishness, high anxiety, achy joints and general malaise, and I wasn’t willing to start that cycle over again.

Interestingly, today (day 4), I took the dog for a really long walk, had great book thoughts while I was doing so, made my bed, straightened the living room, put my shoes away and started writing a blog post instead of browsing the internet for an hour or two… alas, the joints still hurt, but supposedly a food reaction lasts three days and apparently it’s now over. I enjoyed the French fries, but they weren’t worth it. But at least I’m not starting over for the sake of a cream puff. (They did look impressively good, though.)

Today’s goal: to write words. Maybe to start the scene with the fun new character I was imagining on my walk. I hope they turn out as snappy as I imagined them.

I hope your Sunday goes well!

Yesterday I got a ton done. Not a ton of words, unfortunately. But I met with the kitchen people, I went to the grocery store, I made chicken soup using the broth from the other day, I had a long phone call, paid some bills, researched health insurance… it was a productive day.

Just not with words.

I have reasons–or at least suspicions of reasons–that mostly boil down to how much NaNo does not work with my writing style. I think, as a writer, that I’m like one of those painters who does lots of sketches first. All of the sketches matter. All of the time spent thinking matters. I tried to convince myself yesterday that even though the words I was writing were terrible, I should just keep writing and consider it a first draft. But the words were too bad for that. I needed to work out the sketch first, decide what was happening, how and when, and that involved time spent doodling, not drawing. Yesterday was a doodling day.

Today… I’ll see. Onward I go, writing every day, blogging every day, and eventually, past experience indicates that I will have a book. Eventually. Just probably not at the end of November or even at the end of December. But when I get there, I think it’ll be fun.

Days should not begin with a dog throwing up in your bed. It should be against the rules of life. The roll of the dice should prohibit it.

Um, it’s early. I’ve got laundry in the washing machine already, go me. Except it’s just the sheets from my bed with the quilt waiting patiently in the laundry basket, so as chores go, it’s… well, not a net negative, but a net neutral at best. That chore didn’t exist last night so doesn’t really count as something useful to have done, and I’m in the middle of it so it’s not finished. I guess that does make it a net negative.

Something big is rustling around in my backyard. I thought it had to be a dog and then I realized both dogs were still with me. That’s a good horror movie feeling. But I went outside to check it out and whatever it was got very still, so I’m voting opossum or armadillo. Not serial killer, because then, of course, I would be dead. I’d be a bad horror movie cliche, the unarmed woman going outside to check on a mysterious noise. But most backyard mysterious noises turn out to be rabbits, so I wasn’t actually worried except for that momentary thrill of fear.

Today… will include writing. And going to a kitchen cabinet store, and trying to deal with my health insurance online, and (*fingers crossed*) some progress on a cover for ALM, but mostly, I hope, writing. It’s not a good sign that I’m really wishing for caffeine, but I am.

When I am really into what I’m writing, I get totally spacey. I wander through my house as if it’s invisible, I trip over things and then kick them out of the way instead of moving them, I leave dishes piled in the sink and on my bedside table, I promise the dogs that I’ll take them for a walk and only remember when they wiggle their way into my lap…

My sink is empty, my floors are spotless with nothing to trip over, the dogs are well-walked.

Word count yesterday: probably negative. I edited instead of writing. And then got frustrated with what I was trying to revise and edited some more. And then cut some more. Next I hated myself, hated every word I write, decided I was a terrible writer, and played a lot of Shanghai. Finally I talked myself down from that and spent a long while trying to think myself into my story world, trying to capture bits and pieces of scenes and interactions. At 9, I went to bed. I woke up this morning, still not in story world, but still determined that I’m going to get there.

I like Grace, I like Cam, I believe that they’re going to have a good story together. At the moment, it doesn’t include much in the way of adventure, so I’m going to find them some adventure, but I’m also just going to write the scenes that come to me, as mellow as they are. And–a resolution, a promise, probably mostly a lie–I am going stop thinking about the eventual reader. If I can make this a story that *I* love, then I need to have faith that other people will love it too.

Today’s goal: to get myself into writing mode, story world, whatever I want to call it. To get to that place where the story is as real to me as reality. And if I don’t make it there, to not have that be because I didn’t put all my energy into trying.

A measly 210 words yesterday. But I had a lovely day, which really should count for something. The Food & Wine Festival was perfect–beautiful weather, delicious food, terrific level of people. Some of the food stands had no lines at all and none of them had such long lines that I immediately lost interest in the food, which has happened before.

However not drinking alcohol for three months meant that a couple glasses of wine, followed by a flute of champagne, went straight to my head. I was buzzed when we got home and not at all inclined to get back to writing. Instead, I played with the dogs and went to bed early. Then proceeded to not sleep. I woke up congested and coughing, alas. I knew I would, but it’s the price I chose to pay for my yesterday.

Today I am going to write, but I think I’m going to try a new strategy. Since Ghosts, I’ve never written out of order. With Ghosts, the first things I wrote were actually the sex scene and the scene with the little boy and the swing, but I wound up seriously having to rewrite them, because they didn’t fit in the final book the right way. I decided then not to do that again, especially because keeping track of my Word documents got difficult. But I’m using yWriter for this project and it’s designed for that kind of flexibility. It will be really easy to mix and match scenes as I need to. So today and tomorrow, I’m going to be trying to write whatever comes to me, whatever scene is in my head, without worrying about the linear direction of the book. I’m hoping that writing that way will get me some higher word counts, instead of getting stuck when I have to make important decisions. (Example of said decisions: who can understand a ghost whose native language is Arabic? Does Akira speak all languages of all ghosts? Do ghosts understand one another automatically?)

Goal for today: eh. Lots of words but without pressuring myself? That feels like a good goal. But it’s Day 8 and if I’m going to hit the finish line, it’s time for a couple really good word count days. I hope Cam and Grace will oblige!

I have realized a weakness in my writing: a weakness that I’ve sort of occasionally stumbled across now and again but that hit me again yesterday while I was also coincidentally engaged in falling down an internet rabbit hole of the highest order.

I can’t write arguments.

Real arguments, the kind where tempers flare, heated words are exchanged, people storm off in a huff, maybe some dishes get thrown. I’ve done a few fight scenes now and those have gotten easier for me, but I’m not talking about hero(ine) vs villain scenes here. I’m talking real people getting angry at each other. I don’t know how to write it. Probably because I don’t know how to do it very well, either.

If you can guess from this that yesterday’s writing didn’t go so well, kudos to you. 500 words and I mostly stopped trying when 11:30 rolled around and I knew that any more words were going to end up being tomorrow (today)’s words.

The internet rabbit hole was hours and hours of distraction, reading about a SF author who presented as young, sweet, and new to the scene and who was recently revealed to be a long-time (well over a decade), destroyer-of-communities, virulent troll. Fascinating reading although so saddening. Words can do so much damage. (If you want to fall into this rabbit hole, my starting place was Jim Hines blog. But it’s not a feel-good story in any way, so you might want to skip it.)

Anyway, the combination of struggling to write a fight scene while reading about someone who aggressively destroyed people’s happiness through her words has left me really thoughtful. Part of me thinks, hmm, I really need to get better at this. A larger part of me thinks, yeah, not interested. I do believe that anger can be constructive. I also think that I’m going to keep my characters–at least the ones that I want the readers to empathize with–smart, mature people who don’t resort to screaming and name-calling. So today’s plan becomes some reworking of the scene I was struggling with. Maybe the reason I couldn’t write it is because that’s not where the story wanted to go.

Today’s bigger plan: one last trip to Epcot’s Food & Wine Festive. I’m still going to try to squeeze some writing in, before and after, but it’s a gorgeous day to wander around the world, eating foods that are very much out of my diet, and appreciating life.