(no subject)

So. Bird of Dusk's current draft is finished. (See my last post for the whole call for critiques thing. Yes, I did that first. I figured that revisions to chapters 30-35 could be done while I'm sending out chapters 1-6. Turns out I caught an error in chapter 4 and tweaked a thing or two in 5 anyhow, oops. But no harm done yet)

130,000 words (Actually, I think it ended out at 131k). Two characters got squished into one, chunks of text near the end went away. I hunted down and destroyed all instances of certain words in the wrong contexts. I still feel like there must be something in the closing sections to reduce, but I figure it can wait for crits.

Also, the story I've been pecking at on the Dana is going to get thrown back into the dark pit of my psyche. (It's not the good kind of dark pit of the psyche, that involves facing your demons, making yourself uncomfortable and stretching as a writer. It's the other kind, the kind that seems exploitative and in it for the bad thrills. And which, if you feed it too much, turns off the parts of you that think about the consequences of exploitation.)

I know my *very* next projects (2), but both are short fiction and shouldn't take long.

So now I'm thinking about what to work on. It seems like I've been reading a lot lately that involves entourages (modern and older) and how they tend to surround celebrity and royalty, and I've been wanting to work some of that into the Serpent Prince, etc. (There are reasons neither Prince nor Duke have much entourage during some parts of the story, but there are places I glossed it over; partly because I'm in first person and Ketan wouldn't think to comment on it, but more often because I didn't think about it enough.)

However, of all projects, the Labyrinth/DWJ pastiche has been kind of sitting in my mind. And I'm thinking that one might be a good one to move onto the Dana. It certainly has the "This is a raw draft" effect. It also has the "this should be fun" effect.

I'm also finding that the current course; editing and writing one more advanced project at home and doing crazy first-drafty work on the Dana at lunch hour really works for me. Being in totally different geographic locales, It's easier to keep the editing monster and suck monkey away from the first draftiness, and it's easier to corral them to work when i need them at home.

But I'm considering a few other things, too; between projects, my mind tends to recall and cling to bits from all over in a desperate effort to shake off the last project. because it's *real* easy to end up thinking more about Bird of Dusk. That's what I had my brain trained to do for the last month, after all. So. As good a way to decide as any. Let me know if anything sounds good:

( First lines )

(no subject)

So. Bird of Dusk's current draft is finished. (See my last post for the whole call for critiques thing. Yes, I did that first. I figured that revisions to chapters 30-35 could be done while I'm sending out chapters 1-6. Turns out I caught an error in chapter 4 and tweaked a thing or two in 5 anyhow, oops. But no harm done yet)

130,000 words (Actually, I think it ended out at 131k). Two characters got squished into one, chunks of text near the end went away. I hunted down and destroyed all instances of certain words in the wrong contexts. I still feel like there must be something in the closing sections to reduce, but I figure it can wait for crits.

Also, the story I've been pecking at on the Dana is going to get thrown back into the dark pit of my psyche. (It's not the good kind of dark pit of the psyche, that involves facing your demons, making yourself uncomfortable and stretching as a writer. It's the other kind, the kind that seems exploitative and in it for the bad thrills. And which, if you feed it too much, turns off the parts of you that think about the consequences of exploitation.)

I know my *very* next projects (2), but both are short fiction and shouldn't take long.

So now I'm thinking about what to work on. It seems like I've been reading a lot lately that involves entourages (modern and older) and how they tend to surround celebrity and royalty, and I've been wanting to work some of that into the Serpent Prince, etc. (There are reasons neither Prince nor Duke have much entourage during some parts of the story, but there are places I glossed it over; partly because I'm in first person and Ketan wouldn't think to comment on it, but more often because I didn't think about it enough.)

However, of all projects, the Labyrinth/DWJ pastiche has been kind of sitting in my mind. And I'm thinking that one might be a good one to move onto the Dana. It certainly has the "This is a raw draft" effect. It also has the "this should be fun" effect.

I'm also finding that the current course; editing and writing one more advanced project at home and doing crazy first-drafty work on the Dana at lunch hour really works for me. Being in totally different geographic locales, It's easier to keep the editing monster and suck monkey away from the first draftiness, and it's easier to corral them to work when i need them at home.

But I'm considering a few other things, too; between projects, my mind tends to recall and cling to bits from all over in a desperate effort to shake off the last project. because it's *real* easy to end up thinking more about Bird of Dusk. That's what I had my brain trained to do for the last month, after all. So. As good a way to decide as any. Let me know if anything sounds good:

( First lines )