Or who have enough interest to offer a theory:

I need a connection between the two opening story lines.  i.e., I need a reason the Lindorm and the digging half-djinn show up about the same time.

I was reviewing my opening material, and felt very foolish that I don’t have a clear connection.  But better late than never, right?  This is what I’ll be puzzling over today and I hope to have an answer by the time I sit down to write more tonight.

So far I’m thinking something along the cheezy lines of big-baddie guesses a human lindorm could be what finally destroys him.  I hate “predestined” story lines.

And yet I’m cool with “meeting destiny on the path you take to avoid it.”

There is a delicious story about a man hearing he would die that same night.  He immediately buys the fastest horse he can afford and gallops till the horse drops and finds an inn to hole-up in.  He’s found dead the next morning.

Death had noticed the man on his list for that night and wondered how that was possible, being so far from the man’s home.  When the man came galloping into town, Death knew the solution.

Go figure…

Anyway, there’s a bit in one of my fave books The Perilous Gard (and honestly, this is what made me aware I’d screwed up and needed to fix something):

Master John (only a minor baddie we later learn) is contemplating the best way to get rid of Kate who knows MJ sold off Christopher to be sacrificed by the pagans.  He’s already fabricated a story of Christopher running away to avoid his brother’s anger.

“How was I to know that you’d fall secretly in love with Christopher Heron and run away with him when he fled the castle?”

“What!” Kate sat bolt upright, her wits scattering again. “B-b-but–” Kate stuttered furiously, “I’m not in love with Christopher Heron. How could I be in love with Christopher Heron? I’ve only talked to him twice in my life!”

…

“You must perceive that I could never tell Sir Geoffry the you had simply died of an illness or disappeared of your own accord.  It would be entirely too strange and remarkable to have the both of you vanishing separately for different reasons at one and the same time…”

Ah, the advantages of really knowing your favorite books (i.e., for me that means listening to them): They continue to instruct even when you’re not with them.

“I put it to you as one reasonable person to another.”

–Master John

On the 24th of May I had 8 scenes to write.

After tonight I have 3 left.  And (if I keep what I started months ago) one of them is half-written already.

“Now do I most grudge a time of rest or halt in our chase.”

(recognize the line?)

Spoken about both the urgency and distance of the goal, and even reaching a stopping spot before midnight it’s the only line in my head.

I am cheered by the steady progress– I feel I’ve been more disciplined in latter days than earlier this year– but at the same time, by increasing the length of the project, I’ve slowed every stage.

~ ~ ~

Out of perhaps nine samples I put out at the beginning of the month I have received back three (though two others have been promised, they’ve not yet materialized) and here I have a significantly different version.

There are some higher-stakes readers I avoided giving the story before, but now I feel desperate enough that I might ask for their help with the next round.  And I’ll still want to re-read it fully in the new form before I can be comfortable passing it to them.

So— on we go.  It is a cheering thing: to see the end grow nearer, even though it is not yet in reach.

But tiring, also: we are still too far out for a final sprint.

What I love about others being invested in my story: More people to catch mistakes or add consistency.

I was just describing my newest scene to Jay (I picked up a jingle bell to put away and saw I was smiling *way* too much for an “overthrow” scene)

But he was a bad-guy, so it’s okay to be thrilled, right?

Jay’s response was to question when the shooter acquired the skill.  So now I’ve got notes for tonight for where the add the evidence.  I like what it does for character development…. Maybe the kids’ll nap today and I’ll get to it sooner…

One of my shortest scenes involves a magical character speaking with a second character who doesn’t know she has the capacity for magic. And I had to laugh.

A: Are you telling me you’ve never learned to walk through walls?

B (angry): No. I have it on my list right after learning to fly, so haven’t been able to get to it yet.

A: You are too rigid, child. You need to work out of order.

~ ~ ~

A week ago I made a list of the scenes I needed to round out the storyline for this longer version of the story.

Then, as I mentioned somewhere on-line, I cut two of those scenes before I ever wrote them.  I hacked away at the next one in line, and made a character-history discovery that was very meaningful.

From that discovery two nights ago– along with the timing I gathered from the map-making last night– I was able to discover motivation and reaction for one of the cut scenes and actually got it written tonight– over 1300 words.

I returned because I recognized my initial “math” was correct and I needed those scenes.

It was Tanith’s voice in my head when I realized I’d finished that “impossible” scene.  You’re too rigid, child.  You need to work out of order.” And now I have a new de-blocking technique when working with new material.

Much of my writing is adaptation and expansion.  Untangling, if you will.

When it comes down to creating utterly knew stuff out of me, I find myself freezing up.  This expansion is good for me (along with all the other things, like organization, it’s teaching me) because it’s giving me a section of the book that is founded on nothing but my own imagination.  And I need the exercise.

~ ~ ~

I’ve read enough accounts from “established” authors to know writing never gets “easy.”

Though I have to dispute this on some level: there are definitely times when this is easy– or I’d never have gotten started.  I’m not so dedicated and “believing in myself” or my story that I’d do this out of grit.

But even knowing that, anybody who’s been following my process any length of time can tell this novel has been a tremendous learning experience— and I have to imagine the next round will be easier somehow because of these bits and pieces I’m learning as I go along.

So I made my first serious map tonight.

And a huge confusion just dissolved.  I have a level of understanding about the chase/questing segment that just did not exist before I had the distances in front of my eyes.

I am so thankful at this point it’s an established trait of half-djinn that they can travel at great speed– since this story would *not* work without that property.

The other thing I did was force myself to put a date *and time* on every scene.  That took a while, and showed some inconsistencies.

For example, I have two separate times when I jump-cut to another action line and the shift is actually back in time a few hours.  This is something I need to fix.

One interesting point is how I calculated the date for the kidnapping.

I already knew I wanted the big showdown to happen on summer solstice, since I liked the idea of fighting huge darkness on the day the sun doesn’t set (remember I’m setting this story in my latitude).  Counting backwards, and allowing for travel times (you see, I just told you the map was an important step), the kidnapping occurred on June 2nd (772, but who’s counting…), which is four years to the day after Linnea was attacked.

So I wondered if I ought to shift the numbers so the line-up wasn’t so exact, or if I ought to see if I can dig up a reason for this day to be magical/significant to the djinn that have been responsible for these characters’ “bad luck” over the years.

I’ll think on that tomorrow.  Feel free to offer your opinion.

Not quite.  But I did stay up past Midnight massaging in bits and pieces that till now have been left out.

I have set aside the “finished” version and have begun integrating all the bits of story I took out before I knew the ending.

Now that I know what’s going on all these extra things seem to fit more than ever.

Yes it’s long, and it’s getting longer, but if I can shift in my mind the types of book I am comparing it to, it no longer needs to be threatening.

I have eight new scenes to write, and depending on what I end up with I might actually have enough for two books after all.  But for now I’m plugging at one *long* book.

I think it would be delicious to have it all as one, but till I get farther I can’t be sure.  Don’t want to analyze too much now.  Too many variables.  But I will say this:

150,000 words is my (uneducated) goal at this point (just over 120,000, now).  Till I pass that you won’t hear me complain again about length.  It’s just an incredibly long story with lots happening.

And we might be back to the perennial complaint that there is no breathing room…

Just get it down. That’s the stage I’m at now.  It’s so different writing with the road map of what is already going on.

Thoughts:

• So I’ve cut over 4,000 words (and I’m still over 101,000!), and I hope to streamline the battle scenes for more reduction.
• I’ve come across so many typos (even in names!) that I’m wishing I hadn’t sent out my first round already.  But there we are; and I’m getting very useful feedback trickling in, shaping some of my changes.
• One thing I’m loving about this revision process is that it really does get easier as I go along.  Not (I think) because I’m so much more experienced, but because the faults are refined a bit more away each time, so that section that was a *total* slog last time around was a simple clean-up this time.
  • Hey, I can see some personal application for that too… {grin}
• One of the very cute things about getting comments back is being complemented for certain things that were done… by accident, or instinct you might say.  That is, there are “pockets of brilliance” here (very small pockets ;) ) and I love them being noticed, but I can’t take conscious credit for all of them.  They weren’t all calculated.
  • And that’s the fun part.  That I can end up with “freebies” like that.
    • Of course, being cheered for the things I did think of is the best.  Lets me feel clever.

Got rid of about 3000 words tonight.

Down to 102,598.  Still shaking my head at the length.

I don’t think we have any *enormous* loss.  Which of course is the point of cutting.

No, I haven’t gotten all my mss back, and no, no one told me to cut these particular scenes, but my [ctrl]+x was ready to cut something and I dismissed them as too “Elrond’s Council,” which I imagine to be hard to sell these days.

Yes, they’re saved somewhere.  I can always put them back if *someone* decided they needed to see more. {shrug}

It just feels nice to cut.

No, not that way.  Not one of my issues.

Total change of subject:

Remember all my grousing about cartography and map-making, and how I had no idea even how to start?

Well now I do!  This article was the perfect introduction (of the concise, to-the-point variety so important to me) to make the process seem quite possible and even reasonable.  Now I just need to quit reading for a little bit and work on it ;)

Joule creamed my left knee on Mother’s Day and I’ve been babying and icing it ever since.  Finished two books since then (both *awesome* consolation for my state), so I could probably take a breather and try mapping for my stillness activity tomorrow.