After twenty-one years of writing essentially for fun followed by eight years of trying to (and occasionally succeeding at) writing professionally, I've gotten to the point where I don't always know the ins and outs of my own writing process until I have to put it into words for someone else. That happened today, explaining the method I've used to ( Read more... )

In this case, it's one that's back to the beginning: I finally wrote the "prehistoric prologue" (covering 1 Billion B.C. to the 17th century A.D.) for Shenandoah that I'd been dithering about on and off over the past few months, finally figuring I should just write one and then decide if I want to keep it ( Read more... )

Our lawn is more than a week overdue for mowing, by traditional neighborhood standards, and one effect of this has been that with the flowers cropping up all over our front yard, we've had an influx of honeybees ( Read more... )

I've set up the group with the advocates of the chapter title...now all I have to do is figure out exactly which direction I could take them in that I like best and works the best in the story.

PROGRESS REPORT

New Words: 1600 on chapter 3 ("The Advocates, 1959") of The Great Valley.

Total Words: 109250.

Reason For Stopping: Finished the scene ( Read more... )

A few months ago I wrote an entry here that was brainstorming about whether I should break Shenandoah into two books or three. At the time I decided on two for various reasons, but kept in mind my plan of how the series could become a trilogy. I think I hit the trilogy tipping point yesterday ( Read more... )

...that I never really, seriously thought things like "I wonder how much work Shenandoah will be?" before I started work on it, or that I never really, seriously think about how much work I still have to do yet on The Great ValleyBecause if I thought things like this I would have been way too intimidated to ever get started at all, or finish them ( Read more... )

I just realized that today marks the one year anniversary of my starting to write ShenandoahSo technically I wasn't quite right about how long it would take me to write the entire thing. I figured it would be a year, but other necessary projects started consuming my writing time too, primarily the Book Rescue and the Fitness Stuff ( Read more... )

Quick story note first: my flash fiction piece "The Frozen People" (which originally appeared in Abyss & Apex back in 2005 or something like that) has now been "reprinted" as an audiocast in Drabblecast. Woot! I like those hard-working pieces that aren't content to be in just one magazine.

As for the title entry...

I broke Shenandoah into two ( Read more... )

Happy Easter! I hope those of you who celebrate it had a good one, and those of you who don't had a good Sunday anyhow. :)

PROGRESS REPORT FOR 4/10/09

New Words: 3100 on chapter 7 ("The Survivors, 1865") of Shenandoah. The backlash hit the good guys in a big way.

Total Words: 263350. But now that I've pretty much decided to split Shenandoah ( Read more... )

PROGRESS REPORT

New Words: 1000 on chapter 7 ("The Survivors, 1865") of Shenandoah. The good guys try to stop the bad guys from violently breaking up a freedmans' political meeting, but only succeed at some cost to themselves.

Total Words: 260250.

Reason For Stopping: I wasn't originally planning to do a workout today, but then I remembered that ( Read more... )