I've been working toward "doing less but doing it well" for some time. And yet new and shiny projects are always presenting themselves.

Must say no more often.

Must say no more often.

Must say no more often.

Must say no more often.

I blame John Scalzi, who posted a list of writerly goodies to come today over at the WhateverYou know, Monkey King see, Monkey King do, so I just started listing my own projects for the coming year to see what was already done. It's a much bigger list than I thought. Here's my projects for 2007, most already turned over to editors and freelancer ( Read more... )

I stink of paint. Actually, the whole house stinks of paint. Five layers in the hall, three in the study, bath, and hall closet, plus trim. It's taken three times as long as I feared, but it's all done but the touchup. Famous last words, of course, as touchups can take hours as well ( Read more... )

Last night was the final night of a writing class I took to get out of some of my old ruts. The group, four strong, met at the same Uptown Espresso as always, but we soon adjourned to the marina ( Read more... )

I know the rewrites are going well when I crank up the keyboard at 8 AM, and look up to find it is noon.

Fixing Chapter 5 is going to be a mess, though. I need to shuffle the whole thing so it starts with concrete action and leads into a (much smaller) infodump. I have no idea why I thought starting a chapter with exposition was a good idea.

I've combed through the first 90 pages of the Venice book, and made good revisions. Taking 7 months away from it gave me a chance to see it much more clearly. It has definite Big Issues (several chapters that just need to disappear!), but it's fixable into something workable. I was astonished at how much junk was littering the draft, but I feel ( Read more... )

Some writerly progress on the Eberron thing. Less so on the novel.

Looking to reverse that this afternoon.

I hit my wordcount around mid-afternoon today, then ran errands, tried out a bicycle by Marin, and went to anime night at John's place with shadawyn and irishninja.

A good day.

It's all about the typing this weekend (again!) as I try to meet various and overlapping deadlines. I'm staying ahead of the deadline Reaper, but only just.

• Tinkered with another novel chapter for the NY Editor. Thinking of renaming the book. Thinking of cutting whole scenes to improve pacing/throughline. Must... resist... urge ... to rewrite ( Read more... )

I've spent more than 12 hours today writing in various venues. Hit the rewrite in the morning with the Fairwoods gang, did about 25 pages of novel updates. Wish someone had told me sooner than Chapter 1 still sucked, but was totally fixable. So much useless exposition. And the blocking! Needed some work.

Apparently my fiction skills are not 1337 ( Read more... )