Carolyn's Blog

Thursday, December 30, 2004

Things going well until today when I fell asleep on the couch. Dead asleep at 5:30 pm. Oops. That's because I've been up until 11pm everynight the past few days, which means getting up at 5am leaves one rather sleep deprived. And now I'm futzing around. I've tidied my desk. Why? Because the scene I'm working on is not happening. So, I'm going see if I can make it happen. Sigh.

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Monday, December 27, 2004

I feel like I've settled into my Crimson City hero and heroine. Odd how they seem to have sparked immediately. I also thought I would have trouble with my demon notion, but so far (admittedly just past 25% done) it seems to be working out great. I'm trying hard to write only the stuff that advances the romance. It's early days, so I imagine a lot of this will be unrecognizable or just flat out gone. The good news is that I can just feel the tone I want. Dark, deep and really gritty. Of course, I'm nowhere near there because I need a skeleton to work with, which is what I'm building right now.

[Deleted a bit about being done ahead of schedule because I don't want to jinx myself.]

I have to go to work tomorrow, but I'm in denial about that right now.

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Thursday, December 23, 2004

Today, a little shopping. Lots of wrapping. That's it for writing today.(OK, not really.) Due to a caffeine mishap (ordered a double macchiato at other than my usual coffee place just because, and through a series of comedic mishaps accepted a triple cap just to end the pain) I am not just fully caffeinated but over-caffeinated. I'll be up late.

My wiki is up just today. No links to it yet on the main website. I need to decide how this changes my site structure. Cool, though. I see lots of uses for it.

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Wednesday, December 22, 2004

So, staying ahead of schedule. I think I may have written a boring part today. Sigh. Tired, still fighting off illness. Not prepared for holidays. Virtually no gifts wrapped. Need sleep. Good night, and happy holidays if I don't blog between now and whenever.

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Tuesday, December 21, 2004

Still on schedule with Crimson City, a bit ahead. I don't have enough words yet to know if I'm heading in the right direction, but it seems my h/h have quite a spirited relationship. Some mutual mistrust going on. Apparently, I'm more of a time waster than I thought. All those quick trips to do something else, just for a sec. But it's also pretty hard work. Not sure about my stuff tonight. But I have to move forward. I made up a demon-spawn monster and h/h had to fight it.

Actually, right now, I think it's just I hate that first draft. Ick. Thin. Silly. Stuff that's not set up or is just unsupported by motivation. Stick figures, or, in this case, cardboard monsters?

Would like to hear on The Rake, but then, anybody who's working this week is probably out of her mind.

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Sunday, December 19, 2004

I think I've had the world's most frustrating weekend. One, I'm getting sick. All in all, not terrifically a bad thing right now, since early onset of fever often means some intensive creative work gets until, of course, the illness sets in. Then it sucks. But I thought, hey, it's the weekend, I'll way exceed my target 857 words for Crimson City probably by thousands of words. Not. Distracted by this totally icky thing with something I won't mention but is irritating and vexing beyond belief. Son a bit unclear on the concept of "Leave Mommy alone right now she's busy writing!"

Also, I learned that my gym time has been extremely good and profitable time because I notebook what I'm going to write so I have a clue what to write about when I do write. No gym this weekend. So last night when I went to bed (having only slightly exceeded target) and not very happy with what I'd done, I realized, as I am staring at my notebook pages, that I needed to do something completely different. Doh.

So today, I did that, and that fixed the stupid stuff I did yesterday, but I still only not-quite-doubled my daily target today because of vexing and irritating situation mentioned above and because my son sat outside my door whining and when he wasn't whining, someone else would walk by and ask a totally stupid question, (Did you read in the paper about...?) and plus, I was not completely focused and so easily distracted by all this crud.

So, I made a big bold sign that I taped to my door, setting out my deadlines and my target word counts and listing what I had done so far. And of course, that was cause for quite a lot of comment and discussion right outside my door where I was thinking that 101 words in one day was probably a miracle rather than a disaster. But then son went to bed, the sign lost it's newness appeal and I finally got in a flow.

I am on target for having a complete MS in 100 days, leaving me 31 days to edit.

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Thursday, December 16, 2004

P.S. to previous post: I need to be ahead of schedule because then I'll have enough time to spend on pure editing.

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For what it's worth, I am ahead of my daily goals for Crimson City (I think I'm going to call mine "Crimson Key" or something like that). We'll see. I have to be really strict with myself. Backside in chair, no email, straight typing. Plus I need to institute a rule about not going back to edit, much. I think maybe the rule could be no editing until after I've hit word goal. Then I can go back.

Interesting thought, if a bit lowering. If I pull this off, I think that means all this time I thought I was working as hard as I could, I wasn't. I think I got lazy. Pressure is good. Ask me again in a month. I'm still on the honeymoon.

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Wednesday, December 15, 2004

Well. The updated pages of The Rake are off to Kate and I'm going to let that just sit. I'm working on Crimson City now, actually writing now, rather than notebooking and plotting. I wrote 1400 words last night. But I think I'm coming down with something horrible. Work is stressfull right now so no chance of getting some downtime which I desperately need. I believe I'll be titling it "Crimson Key" or something like that. Total of 8K plus. Only 90k to go! Also, I signed the agency contract today and mailed it, so that's just really a good thing. What a relief.

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Monday, December 13, 2004

I'm so tired right now I can hardly keep my eyes open. I have an agent now. I'm going to bed.

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Sunday, December 12, 2004

Things OK except tomorrow I have to be at work at 4 a.m. in case there are issue with the East coast users. Ick. Had to go in for a bit today to resolve some server connection issues for the datawarehouse, but that was easy. I have a quad latte ready to be re-heated in dark of morning. I just want this over so I can concentrate on writing! My email to the agent explaining my situation seems to have had some result. She emailed me this weekend and said she'd call me Monday.

I think the Rake just about rocks. I girded my writer's loins and fixed the part that was giving me fits. I've emailed the revised chapts 1-4 plus synopsis to Kate. So there. Must go to bed now becuase the alarm is set for 3 a.m.

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Saturday, December 11, 2004

OK, monster project seems to have gone in OK, big test is Monday when all the production users are hitting the server. But, now I can talk a bit about Crimson City It's a done deal. I'll be writing Book 4 which means that I will have to write extremely fast. But I love the story! Vampire hero, human heroine who think they're enemies but end up working together in the demon world to stop demons from overrunning Crimson City. I'm nervous but excited. I'm going to drop my school units down to 2 instead of 4. I've told my family that I'm going to be very busy.

The Rake is fab so far. Revised chapters will be off to Kate probably tomorrow because she said I could email them to her. So, I hope to have some kind of news soon. Will go post the new chapter 1 now. No agent yet, but I emailed the one who has my stuff right now and gave them my situation. I suppose if I don't hear by Monday, I'll just cold call another agent I have in mind and see what happens. Already though, I got my option clause limited and clarification on name ownership. More than what I got on the prev two which only goes to show I made the right decision there.

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Thursday, December 09, 2004

Monster project this weekend at work which, as you may have deduced, means I'm working this weekend. Ick. I've agreed to write book 4 for the Crimson City series. Due end of April. {Sanity check may have failed) The Rake going fine, have new stuff for Kate which I'll send tomorrow. So. There you have it.

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Wednesday, December 08, 2004

Well, the fp thing is pretty much a go. Fixing the rake. Freaking out. That is all.

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Monday, December 06, 2004

Teetering between 93K and 89K.Whole lotta ripping out and rewriting. However, I will have new chapters to send very soon. Also teetering between "this really sucks" and "wow, darn good." sigh.

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Wednesday, December 01, 2004

Sigh. Well, OK, only sort of. I briefly hit 93K, but then I deleted Chapter 1, so I'm back at 89K. I haven't layered back in the stuff that's in Chapt 1 that I need, so I think I'll make it back to 90K pretty quickly.

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